Can You Imagine?
By Stewart Acuff
UPDATE: Since this piece was written Border Patrol shot and killed Alex Pretti, 37, as he lay pinned to the ground by a number of brown shirted “officers”. There have been many more demonstrations and community organizing callings for an end to the occupation
Relentlessly the rain fell all day on Saturday, January 10 including during a 200 person protest against ICE in front of the John Brown Courthouse in downtown Charles Town. The crowd stood through the rain totally exposed, smiling but stoic as hell. The ICE (Immigration Customs and Enforcement) crisis of Renee Good’s shooting death by an ICE agent had just landed as our community was figuring out next steps after the ICE crisis at the MiDegollado Restaurant in Charles Town. At Mi Degollado ICE agents had sent customers and staff scattering with a day of business ruined.
Other businesses are being closed, ruined, family resources completely emptied. One small businessman is barely hanging on because of ICE. Even workers with work visas and permits are afraid of coming to work. One of his work leaders for almost 10 years was picked up by ICE, dropped off at the border, went home and was back at work in a month. But with ICE focused on West Virginia because of our red hat maga Gov. Morrissey, the workers even with work permits are afraid to be on the streets. The businessman said most of his immigrant workers have been with him eight to ten years. In his words: “People have settled here. They’ve created home and raised American kids. They pay taxes, go to church and are great workers. Now they’re afraid to go back and forth to work.”
Can you imagine watching the U.S. government chase and hunt your friends and workers and destroy your company and your family’s living?
Community leaders are working to create and streamline support for immigrants who may be vulnerable. Faith leaders are amongst those working to support immigrant working families. Folks are finding ways to communicate urgent news across towns and counties, but the protests after Renee Good’s killing have been the largest expressions of support for immigrants families and working class neighbors.
The next day, Sunday, January 11, there were three more protests against ICE (Immigration Customs & Enforcement) in our area. The sun was in and out, no rain, but cold and windy.
About a hundred protestors gathered in downtown Martinsburg. The crowd spread out along both sides in every direction King and Queen Streets.
As we’ve done this entire last year the crowds were joyful, loud, engaging and spirited. We do our best to remain above the maga juvenile behavior. It is the most raw and on the ground democracy there is. We are literally on the street engaging our neighbors in the greatest challenge of our lives…saving democracy.
Thirty folks gathered that Sunday in Berkeley Springs in front of the Morgan County Courthouse. They have established themselves in a largely red area. Every week some of them meet us in Martinsburg to protest at the offices of Senator Shelley Capito and Congressman Riley Moore. Since Renee Good’s killing they’ve been holding a vigil at 2 pm everyday.
Dr. Eric Schwartz, one of the leaders from Hagerstown, Maryland reported: “We had roughly 80 folks. It was a quiet and reflective atmosphere. Many people were also coming by with clothing and food donations. “
The national news on ICE and their deportation activities has been beyond fast. While courts have rolled back Trump’s ability to deploy the National Guard, the administration has been deploying more and more ICE agents across the United States, across West Virginia and across the Eastern Panhandle. Ironically, more than 50% of Americans disapprove of ICE deportation behavior (Quinnipiac Poll 1/13/2026). Deportation had been the last policy of the Trump Administration that enjoyed public support.
On January 13, CNN reported that six federal DOJ attorneys in Minnesota have resigned in protest of Trump’s pressure to protect the killer of Renee Good.
All of us are tested in this moment that will determine whether we are free or fascist. Nobody can tell you which side you stand on, but you gotta pick a side. Then you gotta live with it the rest of your life…and eternity.
Florence Reece was married to a coal miner and union organizer in East Kentucky in 1933 when Hitler imprisoned unions folks in Germany and American coal miners were on strike fighting for their union.
Florence Reece wrote “Which Side Are You On?”
That is the primary question–the first and most important.
My dad was a Southern Baptist preacher. Like all of us he had flaws, but he taught me that has served as a compass: ” Son, we’re always on the side of the underdog.”
I believe that goes for most of us.
…
Originally published in the “Spirit of Jefferson”
Immigrant Stories: Five and Six
By Myrna Santiago
The final assignment for “World History: from 1500 to the present” is an oral history with an immigrant. It is a scary assignment for most of the students; after all, the majority take that class in the first semester of their first year. They were in high school only three months prior. The most frightening part is having to find an immigrant and ask them about that aspect of their life. I do not allow students to interview fellow students. They have to find someone older and with more experience. That makes the assignment nerve-wracking. How do you go up to an “adult” and ask her to talk about such intimate and potentially traumatic time in her life? The oral history is due at the end of the term, after we have reached the twentieth-century in the textbook, with its upheavals, wars, and drastic economic changes. The students know the context for their subjects’ lives and what led them to leave the land of their birth and their communities behind. When it is all done, students are truly glad they did the work. They learn so much from listening to just one person’s story. Their single story puts a human face to the texts they read and the news they hear or see in the media. Migration is not a sound bite anymore; it is real people revealing the reasons why they left behind everything they knew and love to venture into the United States. What you will read here is just a sampling. The compilers of the stories are: Marelize Meyer, Madeline Haun, Riley Drummond, Collin Kopchik, Colin Jones, and Adam Mills. All except for Adam are first year students.
Professor Myrna Santiago
Saint Mary’s College of California
From Central and South America to the Bay Area
I was born October 24 1961. I lived away from my mother in a small village in El Salvador. Not a big city or even what a suburban area would look like in the U.S., but a village, small but home. Most people there made their living by working in small businesses, like selling pupusas and tortillas in food stands or small restaurants. My mother moved to Venezuela early on in my life so I lived with my grandmother and my older sister. Most of my other relatives, like my cousins and my uncle, also lived in other areas around El Salvador. I lived in the village for most of my childhood leading up to high school. However, when I reached high school there weren’t any nearby high schools to go to, the only schools near my village were elementary and middle schools.
However, I wanted to continue my education so I ended up going to a school in another state. I still lived in my village, but now I had to ride a bus for hours to get to school. My sister eventually moved out to start college while I was in high school deciding to live on her campus grounds. I saw a few conflicts such as a short war, only lasting a few days, around when I was six or seven years old. The war was known as the “football war,” a war between us Salvadorans and the Hondurans. I didn’t know much about it at the time, just that it affected me and my family, I was too young to understand.
Then, while I was in high school, the civil war struck. The Salvadoran government started fighting an organization called the Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front (FMLN), a guerrilla rebel group that was founded to push back against the government’s mistreatment of poor people. The government responded to their formation by attacking the FMLN and killing Salvadoran citizens who supported their cause. Because of the killings me and my family were relocated to an area between El Salvador and Honduras. We didn’t have any houses or buildings there, just tents for a lot of people. So many people were relocated to this area that it was hard to keep track of people once they were there. Family and friends were often separated in the growing crowds, as was the case with my uncle who went missing there. Neither me nor my family ever saw him again.
Me and my grandmother lived in the camps while the war raged on. While we were there we learned that the Salvadoran military was killing college students who supported rights for poor people. Among those killed was my sister. I was 17 back then and she was 19. It was after that when my mother arrived to take me to Venezuela.
I left El Salvador while the war was still in progress. However, my other family members like my grandmother stayed behind. I then stayed with my mother in Venezuela for two years. I decided not to go to college during this time, or any time in the future. After spending those two years in Venezuela I decided to move to the U.S., in October 1988. I was allowed to visit as a tourist and was given a permit to stay for six months. After that I applied for citizenship, which was eventually approved. I often worked as a caretaker or babysitter while I was there. Eventually I had two daughters in the U.S. My first daughter decided to live in the U.S. for a while and then travelled back to Venezuela after growing up. My second daughter on the other hand decided to stay and would eventually have my granddaughter.
Even after the civil war was over there were still problems with the country. I learned that after the war the FMLN became a political party in the Salvadoran government and the government was reformed. However, many who served sentences after they immigrated from El Salvador to the U.S. were deported, so this resulted in many gang members being deported back to El Salvador where they caused problems without the intervention of the government. The two primary gangs were MS-13 and the 18th Street gang, mostly teenagers. Often they would recruit kids that thought they were cool, needed protection, or needed money. On top of killing each other they threatened workers to give them a portion of their pay. So for the food vendors who made their living selling food, now had to give up their money. If they didn’t pay up for any reason, then the gangs would make them disappear or just kill them on the street. This caused even more Salvadorans to come to the U.S. including my cousin, who, on top of having to deal with a large earthquake in 2001 which destroyed a lot of property, needed to provide for her children still living in El Salvador. She had lost everything in the earthquake but still needed to provide for her kids so she had to move here without them and send money back.
At this point in time most of my family was now living in the U.S., however, my grandmother still hadn’t come to the U.S. So after getting U.S. citizenship I wanted to return to El Salvador to see how things were. But as it turned out, my grandmother wasn’t in El Salvador anymore. She had moved to Honduras. And, in between the civil war and the gang violence, all transport to my village was cut off. There just weren’t any buses that could take you there anymore.
I’ve been in the U.S. for 33 years now. At this point I have lived in the U.S. for longer than any other place I’ve lived in, including El Salvador and Venezuela. Most of my family members in El Salvador have immigrated to other parts of the world, mostly to the U.S. My cousin lives close by, still sending the money she earns to her children. She had left them when they were 5 years and 3 years old respectively, now they are full grown adults. And although she knows they are still alive and well, she hasn’t seen them since she left. My second daughter also lives close by with my granddaughter who I sometimes take care of while she is at work.
My mother and first daughter still live in Venezuela, which now has its own problems. Venezuela is under a dictatorship at the current time which makes me worry for my mother and daughter’s safety. But at the present moment they are fine. El Salvador has gotten a new president who is cleaning up the country and taking care of the gang problem by jailing them.
However, there are still gangs in the country and the situation would be unlivable for people like me who would be considered too old for many jobs there. I’ve worked long-term as a caretaker for a family, taking care of their children and their house. I’ve worked for them for almost 20 years, so I’ve gotten to know the family very well. But the youngest is almost old enough to not need my help anymore, so I’ve been working with the family to try and find other potential jobs. Despite that bump, I have been living a steady life with financial or social problems.
However, that doesn’t mean there aren’t any problems with this country. The most recent problem for immigrants like me is ICE deporting people like me who can only make a living here. I thankfully have citizenship, but people like my cousin who only have temporary protection status are at risk of being deported if ICE ever comes here. So although I’m not personally at risk of deportation, I am scared that my cousin or other family and friends could be sent to a place where they can’t sustain themselves or their families. Everyone who comes to the U.S. has their reasons and even if they aren’t citizens, it’s upsetting that my cousin who has spent more than twenty years in the U.S. paying her taxes, working, and paying to live here could be at risk. I understand that some people like MS-13 and the 18th Street Gang come to the U.S. and cause more problems than benefits, but people like me and my cousin have sacrificed a lot just to be here to keep our families and ourselves safe. And yet the people here try and force us out back to the wars and the gangs. So although this country lets me and others work and make our living, it’s also the cause of our fear just as the wars and gangs once were. But even after all that was lost and after all who died I still believe that the steps I take and the price me and my cousin pay is worth it.
.
My Story Moving to the U.S.
Hello, I am 54 years old. I was born on January 16,1971 and I grew up all throughout my childhood and until I reached the age of 21 in Mexico. But, then in February of 1993 at age 22, I immigrated to Texas. I was not able to migrate until I was of an adult primarily due to my parents residing in Mexico and my mother only having a work visa to come to the United States on provisional status.
I remember my mother saying how wonderful the United States was as a child, and I always wished I could live there but it was not possible as my father was working in Mexico. I finished all the required schooling in Mexico at age 17 and then worked at a local factory where the temperature was extremely hot. I made little money and lived in a small home with my father and other family members. I worked at the factory as I was waiting on a temporary work visa so I could go to the United States. I wanted more opportunities of advancement and freedom and felt that I could have made a better life in the United States.
I had a few family members that already lived in the United States in Texas, so I moved in with them and began looking for employment. The largest problem with coming to the United States is that I did not speak English at all. I had to learn English and if I had known how hard it was, I would have learned that before I came. Unfortunately, I only had a temporary work visa, so not many companies would hire me when I came to Texas, so I worked as a waitress making most of my money from tips at local Mexican restaurants. They want you to work many hours and only for low pay, they tell me that I should be happy to be here since I am only here on a temporary visa. I worked as many hours as I could. Not knowing our income taxes, I made little money after paying social security tax. Mexico does not have social security tax, so this is something to which I was not used to.
American people were not very friendly when they realized I could not speak English. I always felt they treated me meanly and worthless. I know that I could not speak up for myself or even report anything to anyone as I really did not have a voice. It was extremely hard adjusting to how Americans would treat me. My family would tell me it is because I am from Mexico and with not being able to speak English, they assumed I was illegal. I began taking classes at community college where I could afford to go to. Since it is so expensive in the United States I was only able to afford a couple classes that helped me communicate better, but still to present day I cannot speak English fluently. My English is combined with Spanish, and I just apologize when I cannot explain something clearly. My family only spoke Spanish in Mexico so I was just trying to learn what I could in a brief time and it helped a little, but at least I knew how to communicate a little bit. I did know that in order to get a good paying job and really make something of my life I would have to learn and get help anywhere that I could.
I met my husband after eight years of living here in the United States. After marrying my husband and having two children I returned to Mexico to visit my parents after living a total of nine years in the United States. In returning to Texas, I realized that my work visa had expired. Not being able to return to the United States legally, I decided to use my mother’s visa identification to gain entry. I was successful and when I returned to Texas, I began the process for my own documentation for renewal. The documentation process took
almost two years, and I had to save money for the citizenship renewal which cost hundreds of dollars. Upon my appointment with the immigration office, they asked me how I came back to the United States with an expired work visa? I was honest with them and told them what I had done with using my mother’s identification and they said that I will be deported back to Mexico. With my children, I was given four months to leave voluntarily, or I would risk a much larger penalty for falsifying my legal status and possibly never gain entry again to the United States. If I did not deport voluntarily, I would be at risk not being able to come back to the United States for ten years. My penalty was three years, and I could not go back to Texas at all. I voluntarily left the United States with my two daughters (ages 7 and 8), while my husband remained in San Antonio.
Having little money and with the two children, we decided to sell our home in San Antonio that my husband owned, and he moved to Mexico to be with us. We could not be a family for three years, and it is too expensive for him to travel to Mexico and see the children and me. Because of the money that he made from selling the home we were able to eventually build a small home in Mexico, but having to go back was extremely hard on the children and was a big adjustment for us. Again, I spoke truly little English, but my daughters spoke English and now had to learn Spanish. It was hard on them, but they had to learn. The other children made fun of them as they knew they were not from Mexico because from the way they looked, dressed, and talked. My husband who worked in manufacturing was able to work closer to the border to Texas and Mexico so he would visit us regularly and help when he could.
As part of the penalty, I had to stay where I was originally from, so I took my children and moved back with my parents. To watch our daughters struggle the way that they did bothered me the most. They could have stayed with family in Texas that already lived there, but they did not want to, and I did not want that either. I could not imagine not being able to see my children for three years. They now understand as adults why they were treated the way that they were, but as children they never understood. Even though they were Mexican by their heritage, they were not born there and that is very different. The schooling in Mexico is not as good as in the United States so I was worried that they would not learn as much as they did when they were in Texas. I studied with the girls on learning to speak Spanish for school and helped them adjust the best way I could.
As time passed the kids and I adjusted and my husband was making good money in manufacturing, so we were able to build a home in Mexico. It was a smaller sized home, but at least at least my family and I were able to have our own home. We remained in Mexico until I could begin my citizenship renewal and until the penalty was complete. We returned to Texas almost four and half years after I voluntarily deported, now legally back to the United States. I received my permanent resident card which I had to have for five years and then would be able to get my Certificate of Naturalization which took two more years. Our daughters returned to Texas, finished high school as well as graduated from college at the University of Texas. The home in Mexico we still own today to which we visit family and spend holidays there. Both of my daughters now speak fluent Spanish and English which now I am glad for both, but I remember how hard it was for them to learn. With becoming a legal citizen and returning to Texas, I was able to find good employment with larger pay and finding more opportunities than before when I was in the United States. I have all the things I dreamed of: a good paying job, a home, and family support that is always here. I miss my family in Mexico, but we can go see them now freely as we wish to. I tell all my family in Mexico how hard it was to get here and how difficult it is to succeed.
My biggest lesson I learned was learn English before you come to the United States, come here legally, and do not let your documentation expire. I know it would not have been as hard if I had done that myself, but until I went through everything I really did not understand. Getting out of Mexico for the American dream is what I wanted and never had anyone tell me how difficult it would be. My biggest regret is letting my renewal documentation expire but thankful for the opportunity to be back in the United States and living in Texas but my greatest satisfaction is how successful my daughters have turned to be.
…
Immigrant Stories: Three and Four
By Myrna Santiago
The final assignment for “World History: from 1500 to the present” is an oral history with an immigrant. It is a scary assignment for most of the students; after all, the majority take that class in the first semester of their first year. They were in high school only three months prior. The most frightening part is having to find an immigrant and ask them about that aspect of their life. I do not allow students to interview fellow students. They have to find someone older and with more experience. That makes the assignment nerve-wracking. How do you go up to an “adult” and ask her to talk about such intimate and potentially traumatic time in her life? The oral history is due at the end of the term, after we have reached the twentieth-century in the textbook, with its upheavals, wars, and drastic economic changes. The students know the context for their subjects’ lives and what led them to leave the land of their birth and their communities behind. When it is all done, students are truly glad they did the work. They learn so much from listening to just one person’s story. Their single story puts a human face to the texts they read and the news they hear or see in the media. Migration is not a sound bite anymore; it is real people revealing the reasons why they left behind everything they knew and love to venture into the United States. What you will read here is just a sampling. The compilers of the stories are: Marelize Meyer, Madeline Haun, Riley Drummond, Collin Kopchik, Colin Jones, and Adam Mills. All except for Adam are first year students.
Professor Myrna Santiago
Saint Mary’s College of California
Boat People Story
I was part of a mass exodus from Vietnam known as the boat people. I was born on in 1973 in Saigon, Vietnam, right at the end of the Vietnam war. I don’t remember the war since I left Vietnam and the war was before I was born. By the time I was two years old, the communist North Vietnamese had full control of the country. My father had fought for South Vietnam, working closely with the U.S. After the Communists gained control of Vietnam he was arrested and sent to a rehabilitation camp with a bunch of other U.S. sympathizers. I can still remember being a little kid, around four or five years old and my mother would take me, my brother, and my sister to go see him in prison. The prison had been an old U.S. military base that was converted to hold prisoners. I can still remember talking to my father through a chain link fence while he was locked away. Besides my dad being in prison, life was pretty normal.
I attended school in Vietnam and although my memory is foggy when it comes to my old day to day routine, I distinctly remember that all the kids in school had to wear matching red neckerchiefs to show support to the Communist Party. I used to walk to school which was quite safe to do. When I was six years old my father was released from the rehabilitation camp. Before the war had begun, my dad had worked as a math teacher. This was a profession he was no longer allowed to pursue because of his connection to the United States. I think that the communists were worried about his stern influence being near the kids. Because of this my father was forced to find whatever job he could, and he got a job as a bus driver.
In 1979, my father had enough. He realized that our family did not have a future in Vietnam. He paid in gold to get our family onto a fishing boat so we could escape. I was told not to tell anybody about our plans to leave. Not even my grandparents could know because if they told anybody, we could all be arrested. We left late at night and went to a small fishing port where we rendezvoused with forty other Vietnamese people who we would be escaping with. My family and I had to wade through mud to get to the boat. Once we got on board we were ushered into the belly of the boat, the area where the caught fish were supposed to go. I remember sitting there anxiously waiting for the captain. We waited and waited but the captain never showed up. We would come to find out that he had been captured by the police on his way to the boat and therefore was not able to make the journey with us. So all we had was the first mate who was not qualified to be driving the boat by himself, and a bunch of civilians desperate to get out of Vietnam. Despite not having a real captain, we left Vietnam that night. I remember we had to hide in the belly of the boat for quite a long time after we left shore. We had to make it look like we were just a normal fishing boat and not a bunch of escaping civilians. For five days we floated on this boat. We had no idea which direction we were headed and we were all just hoping we would end up somewhere safe. And then finally on the fifth day, our boat ride finally ended and we spotted land.
We landed on a small Indonesian resort island and were met quickly by the police. I think they were trying to ask us questions, but I could not understand them because we did not speak the same language. None of them spoke Vietnamese so it was impossible for anybody to communicate with each other. Somehow they came to understand that we were Vietnamese refugees and were looking for help. They drew us a map which directed us to a different island that had a refugee camp on it. But we were scared, we knew that there was food and shelter on the island we had landed on and didn’t want to risk getting lost on the way to the refugee island. So instead of listening to the Indonesians and going to the refugee camp, we decided to take a different route.
Our new captain drove our boat to the other side of the resort island. We all disembarked from the boat and promptly burned it like Columbus! Now we had no way of leaving the island. Not too long after we burned the boat, the Indonesian police showed up shooting their guns in the air and yelling at us. I was terrified, I thought that they were going to kill me, but they didn’t. They calmed down and allowed us to stay on the island while they called the United Nations for help. We stayed on the resort island for twelve days. On the twelfth day the UN boat arrived. I remember being shocked at the size of the boat, it was a massive freightliner. It was so big in fact that it had to anchor pretty far away from the island so as not to get stuck in the shallow water. I remember my family boarding a small boat that the island’s locals had found and being ferried over to the massive UN ship. When we arrived at the side of the UN ship, they threw down a rope ladder and I had to climb up. When I got to the top of the ladder I was pulled onto deck by one of the UN staff members. The freight ship had multiple levels. I remember the level where we spent most of our time looking a lot like a school gym during a natural disaster, one where there are sleeping bags all over the floor and everybody is crammed together. To a young kid like me the entire thing felt like an adventure. But the fun part of the adventure was coming to an end. The freightliner took us to the refugee camp island that the Indonesians had told us about.
The refugee camp was weird. It was definitely not as fun as the boat had been. When we showed up there were hundreds of Vietnamese already there. This number quickly turned into thousands due to the massive influx of people. I went from being around the same 40 people for weeks to suddenly being around a massive amount of other Vietnamese. Because of the massive influx of refugees to this camp, there weren’t enough barracks for all of us. The UN paid Vietnamese men like my father to help build more barracks. He helped build barracks while we were in the camp. We were lucky enough to get a spot in a barracks quickly and that was where we lived for the next seven months. There were new people coming to the camp every day. At its peak there were somewhere between five and ten thousand refugees. Every barrack held only 100 people, so there was a push to build housing fast.
The barracks were very simple longhouses that were built in a cross so that if viewed from above the barracks would look like a + sign. There were four long wooden beds made of smooth wood, each long bed separated by the hallways and could accommodate 25 people. A family of five like mine was allowed a fifth of one of these beds. What separated us from the next family was a simple plank of wood. I remember sitting up in bed and being able to see everybody in our bed, laid out in a seemingly endless row. Despite the dreariness of the camp, it didn’t stop my brother and I from being kids. I remember playing all sorts of games with him. We would make yo-yos out of Coca-Cola bottle caps and would use soda cans to make small boats that we could play with. They were simple toys but we didn’t complain because we didn’t care, they kept us entertained.
During our time at the refugee camp, my father was interviewed by the UN. He told them that he was a political asylum seeker who had aided America during the war. It took the UN quite a while to background check my dad and make sure he was actually who he said he was. When they became sure of my dad’s connection to the U.S., the United States were obligated to take in my family. Funnily enough, my father didn’t want to go to the United States. He had heard that the cost of living was high and he would have preferred going to Canada or Australia. Neither of those countries would take our family, so we went to the United States. The UN found a sponsor for my family, a Catholic church in California.
So finally after seven long months in a refugee camp, my family got on a transport ship and traveled to Singapore. From Singapore we got on a plane and flew to SFO (San Francisco Airport). I still remember arriving in San Francisco on March 24th, 1980.The change in scenery was drastic, I went from living in the rural countryside to flying into a massive city. I had never seen so many lights in my life! They seemed to be endless. We were picked up at SFO by a sister who was affiliated with the church.
She drove us and we were shown to the apartment that would become our home for the next couple years. We arrived at that two-bedroom, two-bath apartment with one suitcase that was being shared by my entire family. Luckily the apartment was already furnished with clothes in the closets for us. We were shocked that we had been given the place. Nobody in my family knew any English except for my father who knew a very small amount. While we were at the apartment, members from the parish would come over to help us. I remember families coming over and bringing their kids who we would play with. Being in such a new country was a culture shock. It was like I had been born again and had to learn everything new. I distinctly remember being taught how to use the toilet because we had never had one before. The Church got my father a job as a janitor in a machine shop and my mother got a job cleaning houses. Me and my siblings began to go to the Catholic school affiliated with the Church. One of the nuns took us aside for two hours a day to teach us English. My parents saved money for three years and were soon able to afford a house. My family couldn’t afford to continue going to Catholic school so I began going to public school.
It took my parents a year or two to get their green cards which allowed them to live and work in the United States, but we weren’t citizens yet. It took five years of working and living in the U.S. before my parents were finally allowed to take the citizenship test. When they passed, we all became citizens. I was eleven years old when I officially became a citizen of the United States. My dad continued to work at the machine shop. He was promoted quickly and was able to work as a machinist instead of a janitor. It was a job he had to adapt to quickly since he had no experience as a machinist.
My mom discovered that she wanted to start her own business. She opened her own beauty salon which she ran for over a decade. When I was in middle school I worked for her every day after school. By that time, I was good enough at English that I could schedule all the appointments. My other job was to clean all the dirty towels at the beauty salon and fold them. My siblings and I never sat around, there was always something to do. My mother had a knack for being good to people and listening. Because of this she had a massive amount of clients.
It was very important to my parents that my siblings and I went to college. It was not something that they ever told us they expected from us. They never said that they wanted us to get straight As but we knew that they wanted us to succeed. I went to UC Berkeley for my undergraduate and master’s degree in engineering. My sister went to UCLA where she majored in Biology and went on to become a lawyer. And my brother got an econ major from UCLA and ended up working for the FBI. We all wanted to work hard and succeed for our parents. I believe that my family achieved the American dream. I feel more connected to America now than I do to Vietnam.
.
The Immigration Story of X
The name I go by is X, but that wasn’t always my name. I was born under a different name, a male name, on August 17, 2003, in the Philippines. My story of immigration isn’t loaded with tragedy or misfortune, but it is important. My story is a testament to the expectations of the U.S. given to Third World countries, and the stark difference in its reality.
In the Philippines, I lived with my mother, aunt, grandma, step-brother, and stepfather. My life was simplistic; I would wake up every morning at 5 A.M., leave for school at 6 A.M., where I would attend nine to eleven classes, and after school activities, then go home around 10 P.M. This routine was quickly disrupted when my father, who lived in the U.S., expressed his desire to bring me into the country. I was left mostly out of the conversation as I was still a minor; however, arguments ensued between my mother, who wanted me to stay, and my father. My father wanted me to have better opportunities than could be given in my home country, especially a better education. My mother just didn’t want me to leave her.
I personally was excited at the prospect of living in America; it was completely glorified in the Philippines. For context, Manuel Quezon, the second president of the Philippines, established good relations with the United States, which influenced the representation the U.S. received in the Philippines. Most popular media followed American trends, celebrities, and culture. English was even placed into our curriculum, and spoken colloquially. There was also
this held belief stemming from our glorification of America that whiteness was greatness. In 2016, Rodrigo Duterte was elected into office and turned the tide on relations between the United States and the Philippines, and strengthened our relationship with China, which also greatly influenced aspects of Filipino culture. However, America remained idealized, prompting my excitement for emigrating. While my dad worked to get me to America, my mother was simultaneously working towards emigrating us to Japan. She had permanent residence in Japan, and my brother and I had been staying with her for a month. She was working out the details, trying to get us enrolled in school, and adjusting to life in Japan, when my father surprised us by filing a petition for me. I was set to go to America.
In April of 2021, I made my move to America in the sunny city of San Jose, California. I had assumed when I got there that my transition would be seamless, but I was very wrong.
Immigrating to the United States during COVID-19 was detrimental to my transition. At the time, socialization was at an all-time low, and despite the regulations for COVID being looser in the U.S., very few people wanted to interact with me. There was also an influx of racism towards Asians, making my transition even harder. I also struggled with letting go of the ideas ingrained in me surrounding race, a hard lesson I had to learn as someone who went to a predominantly Mexican school. I eventually adjusted, and five months after I immigrated, I came out as transgender.
Coming out changed everything. My dad didn’t accept me for who I was, and society accepted me even less. It was times like this when I missed home. The Philippines is surprisingly transgender inclusive. I attended a private Catholic school and was devoutly religious. Yet, the nuns who taught me were more accepting than my peers, even before I put the pieces together about my identity. This was my greatest shake-up in the picturesque view of America I had. I did have a sense of pride about my transness in some aspects of my life, especially being a transgender immigrant. I had also hoped my story would get me into higher education, but COVID had hit my dad and me hard financially, and with his unacceptance of my identity– which led to his refusal to pay for school– going to college just wasn’t an option. Slowly, my American dream was crumbling.
My story ends back where it started, my home. Last year, I spent a month in the summer visiting home and seeing all my friends and family. I hadn’t realized how much I missed home until I came back; it was almost like I never left. My friends and I picked back up from where we left off immediately, my family accepted me with open arms, and I was seen as me, as a woman. It was shocking to me how open and accepting everyone was, and for a moment, I could imagine my life if I had stayed in the Philippines, going to the same university as my friends, being around an accepting family. The moment I arrived in the Philippines, my mom greeted me at the airport by grabbing my face and telling me how pretty I was. I felt truly accepted then; I felt truly at home. The whole month I was there, my family tried to get me to move back, saying I could go to university with my friends and be with my mother, but I declined.
I couldn’t bring myself to completely hate my decision to live in the United States, despite the wildly skewed ideas I had gone in with. It wasn’t as free or accepting as made out to be, or really all that great, but I had built a life here with new friends and new opportunities, things I can’t just leave behind.
.
The last two in this series on Monday
Immigrants Stories: One and Two
By Myrna Santiago
The final assignment for “World History: from 1500 to the present” is an oral history with an immigrant. It is a scary assignment for most of the students; after all, the majority take that class in the first semester of their first year. They were in high school only three months prior. The most frightening part is having to find an immigrant and ask them about that aspect of their life. I do not allow students to interview fellow students. They have to find someone older and with more experience. That makes the assignment nerve-wracking. How do you go up to an “adult” and ask her to talk about such intimate and potentially traumatic time in her life? The oral history is due at the end of the term, after we have reached the twentieth-century in the textbook, with its upheavals, wars, and drastic economic changes. The students know the context for their subjects’ lives and what led them to leave the land of their birth and their communities behind. When it is all done, students are truly glad they did the work. They learn so much from listening to just one person’s story. Their single story puts a human face to the texts they read and the news they hear or see in the media. Migration is not a sound bite anymore; it is real people revealing the reasons why they left behind everything they knew and love to venture into the United States. What you will read here is just a sampling. The compilers of the stories are: Marelize Meyer, Madeline Haun, Riley Drummond, Collin Kopchik, Colin Jones, and Adam Mills. All except for Adam are first year students.
Professor Myrna Santiago
Saint Mary’s College of California
From Odessa to the United States
I was born on October 18, 1985, in Odessa, a city on the Black Sea in Ukraine. My family is Ukrainian and of Russian descent. Most of my early memories are from daily life with my family. My parents both worked hard. My father was very loving and supportive. He was a policeman and now retired, and my mother stayed home to take care of us. I grew up with my older sister, who has always been one of the closest people in my life. My childhood felt ordinary in the best way. I went to school, I played some sports, and had friends. I learned Russian and Ukrainian at home, and later I picked up some Romanian, English, and German at school. I never imagined how important languages would become for my future.
Before I left Ukraine, my life was stable. I lived in a nice, pleasant, and small apartment with my husband. My family lived nearby, so it was very easy to see them often. After finishing school at university, I first worked as an assistant at the local college, and later I took a job at a shipping company doing accounting work. That was where I met my future husband. My husband and my sister eventually became professors. She taught at the local university, and he taught at the local college. I am proud of them both. Our life was predictable, which I appreciated. We had routines, gatherings, holidays, and the traditions that make up the culture I grew up with. Nothing felt fragile at the time, and I think that made the changes to come harder to accept.
Even before the war reached our region, there were signs of instability. Everyone talked about Russia’s aggression becoming more dangerous and even though Odessa wasn’t affected immediately, the way some eastern cities were, the tension was weighing over everything. When the war escalated in 2022, the feeling of uncertainty became more intense. I didn’t want to live under occupation, and I became more worried about my son. His safety was my priority and I knew his opportunities would be limited if we stayed. Many educated Ukrainians were already leaving because they didn’t see a future for their children at home. I understood why.
The hardest part was realizing I had to leave what I knew behind and without my husband. We had many conversations about it, but the truth is that I can’t fully describe how he felt. We both just knew it was necessary for our son, and that understanding helped us through the hardest part. Still, leaving my home, my husband, my parents, and my sister was very painful. I kept thinking about everything I was giving up, but I also reminded myself why I was doing it. My son didn’t speak Romanian, so even though my company could have transferred me, that wasn’t a real solution for him. I wanted him to have a real future, one not shaped by bombs or fear.
I arrived in the United States in June 2022. The exact day is a little blurry. There was so much happening. The journey didn’t feel real until I was halfway through it. I flew through a small airport in Romania, then had a very long layover in Germany, it was Munich to be exact, before boarding the eleven-hour flight to California. I was exhausted, terrified, and very unsure about my English. I had only my son with me, and every hour felt heavier because I was responsible for both of us. Waiting in the airports was very confusing, and at times very frightening, but I kept reminding myself that someone I trusted was waiting for us when we landed. We just had to get there. That thought helped me stay focused and hopeful.
When we finally arrived in the United States, I felt overwhelmed by the size of everything.
The roads, the noise, the spaces; it all felt huge compared to Europe. The United States is just so big! I have seen maps but I still can’t believe how large the country is. I also didn’t really understand how different the states could be culturally and politically. I learned what it meant to be conservative and liberal. I learned I was fortunate to be going to a state that was more accepting of immigrants. At the time I understood America was more welcoming of immigrants than other countries. I didn’t know California was known for being more welcoming too.
Everyone seemed friendly, especially seeing my young son with me, which helped very much, but I could not stop feeling unsure if I was understanding everything correctly. It was very hard to grasp the language completely and I felt that way almost all the time.
I remember I wanted to sleep for days, but life here began right away. The hardest adjustment was definitely the language barrier. Even though I knew some English, speaking it every day was stressful. I worried constantly about misunderstanding something important or making the wrong decision for my son because I didn’t know the right words. There are so many words in English that mean the same thing or can have another meaning entirely even when those words sounded similar and that has taken some time to understand. But my son adjusted very fast. He is 13 and thankfully smart. He likes the American customs, the food, and the safe community where we live. He made friends very quickly. He now speaks both Russian and English fluently, and he feels very at home here. We also met other Ukrainian and Bulgarian families through school and some County services. There is an organization called Project Second Chance and it helped us build a small but strong community, and that support has mattered more than I can say. It keeps me and my son connected to Ukrainian and Russian culture. It can be very comforting to me.
I stay in touch with my husband and the rest of my family through phone calls and voice messages. The time difference makes it difficult, but hearing their voices, especially my sister’s, keeps me steady. I listen to her and it helps me feel connected to the life I left behind.
Today, my life looks very different from what I imagined years ago. I work at a daycare center, which was not what my education originally prepared me for, but I find happiness in it. The children make me laugh, and the families have been kind. The owner has helped me very much. I also rent my home from her, and her support has made my transition easier. I have improved my English through work and working with a tutor I have with Project Second Chance. I think it’s funny to learn American expressions, like “easy peasy, lemon squeezy,” that don’t seem like real sayings, but when I said that one time that person understood what it meant and laughed that I knew it. Work and community have been so important to my life here. I know I am more fortunate than others. And I am thankful. But even with this stability, I still worry about deportation. My son and I are here under temporary protected status, and the future feels uncertain. I check updates online every day and throughout the day and talk to others in the same situation because I want to understand what might happen. My visa is up for renewal, and I don’t know what the next steps will be. That uncertainty is always on my mind.
What I want most is simple: I want to stop feeling like I’m in survival mode. I want a stable, peaceful life for my son. I want him to grow up safe, educated, and able to choose his own future. I hope one day we can all be together again, my husband, my parents, my sister, and me, but I know that may take time.
Leaving Ukraine has taught me that life can change without warning, but also that people can change in ways they didn’t know could be possible. I am not the same person I was before the war. I’ve learned to navigate fear, distance, and uncertainty. I’ve learned a new language, built a new life, and watched my son grow stronger because of everything we’ve been through. I am so proud of him.
What I want others to understand is my situation was probably different from other immigrant stories. My husband’s best friend had immigrated with his wife to California many years before I came here. They helped me understand what to do about school and how to find healthcare. I was very lucky to live with them for a year until I got a stable job and found a place of my own. I learned so much from them. I look back and think about what I left behind: my home, career, family and my culture and it was so hard, but I know others had it worse. As immigrants we all carry a lot inside us that we don’t always show.
If l could offer one message, it would be to hopefully treat people with patience. You never know what they have survived, or how hard they’re trying to rebuild. My hope is that our future becomes a little more secure each year, and that someday I won’t have to worry about papers or borders. Until then, I will keep working, learning, and taking care of my son, because he is the reason I started this journey and the reason I keep going.
.
Migration Story from Russia
I was born on March 3, 1980, in Saint Petersburg, Russia. I entered the world just as the final curtain was coming down on the Soviet era, and I spent my entire youth navigating the chaotic, unpredictable aftermath, the true dawn of a new Russia. What defined those years wasn’t a clear political doctrine; it was a constant, relentless uncertainty. I suppose that feeling of deep, inescapable instability is the core reason I eventually decided to leave.
My childhood was a study in contrasts. I remember the simple, enduring comforts, the taste of sunflower seeds bought on the street, the familiar rumble of the tram cars, the camaraderie of playing football after school in courtyards surrounded by old, solid buildings. But these moments of normal life were just windows in a house built on sand. Below the surface, the adults were terrified. As the old Soviet framework dissolved, hyperinflation devoured people’s life savings. Crime rose quickly, and basic things, like stable pensions, just disappeared. Even as a child, you absorb that fear. You can sense that the floor is about to fall out.
My parents were tireless professionals, my mother a nurse, my father an electrician. They worked their full schedules, but in the late 1990s, their salaries were constantly devalued by inflation. It felt like running on a treadmill. You earned your wages, but before you could spend them on anything meaningful, their value had halved. I remember the financial strain being a constant, low, exhausting dread in our home.
When I finished school, I decided to pursue computer science. My thinking was simple: technology was new; it was modern. Maybe it was a place where corruption and economic collapse couldn’t reach. I graduated in 2002, fully qualified, yet the job market was a broken landscape. I could only find piecemeal, low-wage work, repairing networks, setting up personal computers. I had a valuable degree, but I couldn’t secure the one thing that defined success: a predictable, stable career path. My life was not about moving forward; it was about surviving the current month.
The decision to migrate was triggered not by a single financial crisis, but by witnessing the total collapse of the social contract. In 2006, I saw something in public that I can’t forget. Outside a busy area, a young man was violently attacked by several men, some of whom were clearly posing as police, because he refused to pay what everyone knew was “protection money.” The true, visceral shock was the crowd’s reaction. Total, absolute silence. No one moved. No one dared to call the real police, because they might be involved. In that moment, I realized the full, terrifying truth, you had zero institutional protection, and you had no communal support. Fear was the only thing governing public life.
This realization, combined with the fact that several friends had already successfully moved to places like Canada and the UK, forced my hand. I wasn’t motivated by grand political ideals; I was motivated by an existential need for peace and stability. I needed a country where my effort would actually translate into a secure life. Leaving Russia became a necessity, the only way to exchange a chaotic, high-risk existence for a stable, growth-oriented one.
In 2008, I submitted my application for a work visa to the U.S. I wasn’t running from persecution; I was running toward possibility. When the visa was approved in early 2009, I was stunned. It felt like an impossible lottery win. I arrived in the United States on September 12, 2009, landing at San Francisco International Airport. I had a single bag, six hundred dollars, and a fear so deep I couldn’t name it. My first language was Russian; my second was survival.
That first year in America was a brutal lesson in humility. I worked crushing hours, cleaning offices, repairing electronics late into the night, just to cover the rent. Everything was unfamiliar: the language, the expectations, the way people interacted. I felt displaced and profoundly exhausted. But over time, through sheer persistence, I secured an IT support job, finally using my skills. The most significant shift I experienced wasn’t the external one of changing countries; it was the internal, psychological one. In Russia, my mind was always on guard. I was cautious, suspicious of authority, and constantly alert to danger. Here, I slowly, cautiously, began to let go of that burden. I was learning to trust institutions, something entirely foreign to my experience.
The moment that perfectly illustrated this change was my first visit to the Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV). I went in prepared for the inevitable bureaucratic snags and braced myself for the subtle, or not-so-subtle, demand for a bribe to speed things up. When the workers simply performed their duty and processed my paperwork efficiently and honestly, I was truly astonished. It was a tiny, mundane interaction, but it signalled a massive truth: the system was designed to serve, not to extort. This allowed the constant tension in my mind to finally dissipate.
The culmination of my entire migration story arrived in 2016 when my son was born. Holding him, I understood the profound responsibility I now carried. My purpose shifted entirely from just securing my own life to ensuring his future was built on a foundation free from the instability and constant fear that had shaped my own childhood. Migration was not the end of my story; it was the essential tool I used to create a new, stable legacy for my family. I want him to inherit opportunity, not caution.
My story isn’t about escaping a war zone. It’s about facing the broken realities of modern life, economic chaos, systemic corruption, and the feeling that your life’s efforts could be nullified by forces beyond your control. Leaving was not an act of betrayal. It was an act of profound, existential hope for stability.
My identity did not shrink when I came here; it expanded. I remain Russian, I speak the language, I cook the food, and I miss my city’s beauty, but I am also someone who made a deliberate choice to build my future on stable ground. That single choice reshaped my life, my opportunities, and the entire trajectory of my family.
If I could speak to my younger self, I would say this:
You are not abandoning home.
You are carrying home with you into a better future.
.
Next two stories on Thursday
How Vets in Labor Have Joined Fight Against Trump
By Steve Early and Suzanne Gordon
“The government needs to keep the promise it made to veterans. We served our country, and now they’re breaking their promise to take care of us. We can’t accept that.”
James Jones, a FUN member and Gulf War veteran from Boone, North Carolina
In the U.S., seventeen million people, across multiple generations, have a shared personal identity based on their past military service. About 1.3 million former service members currently work in union jobs, with women and people of color making up the fastest-growing cohorts in their ranks. According to the AFL-CIO, veterans are more likely to join a union than nonveterans. In a half dozen states, 25 percent or more of all actively employed veterans belong to unions.
In the heyday of industrial unionism in the 1950s and ‘60s, tens of thousands of former soldiers could be found on the front lines of labor struggles in auto, steel, meat-packing, electrical equipment manufacturing, mining, trucking, and the telephone industry. Many World War II vets became militant stewards, local union officers, and, in some cases, well-known union reformers in the United Mine Workers (UMW) and Oil, Chemical and Atomic Workers.
According to labor consultant and author Jane McAlevy, the post-war union movement better understood the “strategic value” of veterans than organized labor today. In her own advice to labor clients about contract campaign planning, she recommended the enlistment of former service members whose past “experience with discipline, military formation, and overcoming fear and adversity” could be employed on picket-lines and strike committees.
In addition, the high social standing of military veterans in many blue-collar communities can be a valuable PR asset when “bargaining for the public good” or trying to generate greater public support for any legislative/political campaign.
A D-Day Rally in DC
The wisdom of that advice has been confirmed repeatedly since January of this year by the front-line role that veterans in labor have played in resisting Trump Administration attempts to cut government jobs and services and strip federal workers of their bargaining rights. At agencies like the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA), more than 100,000 former service members have been adversely affected by these right-wing Republican attacks.
In response, the Union Veterans Council of the national AFL-CIO brought thousands of protestors to a June 6 rally on the Mall in Washington, D.C., to hear speakers including now retired United Mine Workers President Cecil Roberts, a Vietnam veteran.
With local turnout help from the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE), National Nurses United, and the Labor Notes-assisted Federal Unionist Network (FUN), other anti-Trump activists participated in 225 simultaneous actions in locations around the country, including in red states like Alaska, Alabama, Florida, Georgia, North Carolina, Idaho, Kansas, and Kentucky. Some “watch parties,” organized for real-time viewing of the D.C. event, were held in local union halls to highlight the labor-vet overlap.
James Jones, a FUN member and Gulf War veteran from Boone, North Carolina, traveled all the way to D.C. on the 81st anniversary of D-Day because he wanted Congress to understand the importance of VA services to veterans like himself.
Jones now works for the National Park Service and belongs to AFGE. He’s urging all his friends who are vets, fellow VA patients, and federal workers to start “going to rallies, and join these groups that are really fighting back. The government needs to keep the promise it made to veterans. We served our country, and now they’re breaking their promise to take care of us. We can’t accept that.”
VA Not For Sale
Private sector union activists, like CWA Local 6215 Executive Vice-President David Marshall, a former Marine and member of Common Defense, the progressive veterans’ group, have also been rallying their fellow veterans, inside and outside the labor movement.
Marshall has joined rank-and-file lobbying in Washington, D.C. against Trump-Vance cuts in VA staffing and services, calling them “a betrayal of a promise to care for us.” Supporters of Common Defense’s “VA Not for Sale” campaign fear that privatization of veterans’ healthcare will destroy what Marshall calls the “sense of community and solidarity” that VA patients experience when they get in-house treatment, as opposed to the costly and less effective out-sourced care favored by President Trump. “Regular hospitals don’t understand PTSD or anything else about conditions specifically related to military service,” he says.
An AT&T technician in Dallas, Marshall was also a fiery and effective speaker at that city’s big “No Kings Day” rally last June, when he explained why he and other veterans in labor are opposing MAGA extremism, political and state violence and related threats to democracy.
“We’ve seen peaceful protestors met with riot gear, and we’ve heard the threats to deploy active-duty Marines against American citizens,” he told a crowd of ten thousand in Dallas last June. “Let me be clear: using the military to silence dissent is not strength; it’s tyranny. And no one knows that better than those who have worn the uniform.”
Veterans for Social Change
Marshall is a third-generation union member born and raised in southern West Virginia. His father and grandfather were coal miners; his grandmother Molly Marshall was active in the Black Lung Association that helped propel disabled World War II veteran Arnold Miller into the presidency of the UMW in 1972. During his own 25- year career as a CWA member, Marshall has served as a safety committee member, national union convention delegate, and now officer of his local.
Marshall belongs to CWA’s Minority Caucus, the Coalition of Black Trade Unionists, and the NAACP. Along with Britni Cuington, a Local 6251 steward and Air Force vet, he attended a founding meeting of Common Defense’s Black Veterans Caucus at the Highlander Center in Tennessee.
Both Marshall and Cuington have since lobbied against the re-districting scheme concocted by Texas Republicans to secure more House seats in mid-term voting this year. Testifying at a public hearing on behalf of the Texas AFL-CIO, Cuington pointed out that “minority veterans already face barriers to access to the services, benefits, and economic opportunities we have earned.” She condemned the state’s new district lines as racial gerrymandering in disguise that will disenfranchise “veteran heavy, working class neighborhoods.”
In his role as a CWA organizer, Marshall has signed up thirty Common Defense field organizers around the country—almost all fellow vets—as new members of his local. He’s now helping them negotiate their first staff union contract. In addition, Marshall encourages former service members in other bargaining units to participate in the union’s Veterans for Social Change program, which has done joint Veterans Organizing Institute training with CWA.
One fellow leader of that rank-and-file network is Keturah Johnson, a speaker at the 2024 Labor Notes conference. She got a job at Piedmont Airlines in 2013 as a ramp agent, after her military service and then become a flight attendant. A decade later, she became the first queer woman of color and combat veteran to serve as international vice president of the fifty-thousand-member Association of Flight Attendants-CWA.
A National Guard Casualty
One CWA member much in the news lately because of his current National Guard service is 24-year old Andrew Wolfe, a lineman for Frontier Communications in Martinsburg, W. Va. He was seriously wounded—and a fellow Guard member killed– in late November after being sent to patrol duty in Washington, D.C. (His assailant was a mentally ill, CIA-trained former death squad member from Afghanistan, relocated to the U.S. after the collapse of the U.S. backed government there in 2021.)
According to Marshall, “it’s shameful that they were ever put in that position,” by a Republican governor going along with Trump’s federalization of Guard units for domestic policing purposes. “It’s all political theatre,” he says. “They were just props, just standing around, with no real mission.” Along with Common Defense, Marshall praises the six fellow veterans in Congress whose recent video statement reminding active duty service members of their “duty not to follow illegal orders” led President Trump to call them “traitors” guilty of “seditious behavior” that should be punished by hanging.
“We have to stay in lock-step with them and show everyone following the Constitution that we have their back,” Marshall says.
…
Attack on Venezuela: Democracy Demands Solidarity With People—Not States
By Clifton Ross
The Jan. 3 attack on Venezuela has exposed faultlines in the Bolivarian project and possible fractures in the ruling clique of the messianic Bolivarian revolution. The whole affair poses serious challenges to us as internationalists. Which side can we support, if any?
If we believe in democracy, the people of Venezuela have already answered that question for us. On July 28, 2024 they elected opposition candidate Edmundo González Urrutia with 66% of the vote. More than 90,000 people volunteered as poll watchers and millions took to the streets to defend that election. Nicolás Maduro ignored the results of that election with the full cooperation of government institutions.
Now González and opposition leader Maria Corina Machado are being sidelined by both the Donald Trump and the new Delcy Rodríguez regimes. Although González remains the only legitimate ruler, it appears unlikely, if not impossible, that he will be able to return to Venezuela from exile in Spain. Trump has taken out the dictator and his wife, but has left the dictatorship intact.
“An internal coup facilitated by imperialism”
As I’ve been unable to safely return to Venezuela since 2013, I rely on scholars, analysts and reporters, most of them Venezuelans, who I know I can trust from my years of writing on the subject. To get perspective on the current situation, I first checked in with Rafael Uzcátegui, sociologist, activist and former national coordinator of Venezuela’s oldest and largest human rights organization, PROVEA. Rafael sees the capture of Maduro as an “internal coup” and the events surrounding the military operation that took out the Venezuelan dictator indicate that he may be right. In his piece posted on Facebook from Mexico City where he now lives—in forced exile like roughly one quarter of the Venezuelan population—Rafael warned readers against “becoming the useful fools of the (left-wing) oligarchy.”
While recognizing that the Jan. 3 attack was “worthy of condemnation from many angles,” Uzcátegui notes that current information indicates this was “an internal coup within Chavismo, facilitated by ‘imperialism.’” Now-President Delcy Rodríguez’s actions since the attack give weight to his argument.
Rodriguez, the former vice-president, was in Russia at the time of the attack, even though Venezuelan airspace had been declared a “no fly zone” by the US. She could only have managed to leave the country, then, with the help or assent of the US. According to Anatoly Kurmanaev and others reporting for The New York Times (Kurmanaev is another excellent source on Venezuela), Delcy Rodríguez had been chosen weeks earlier as “an acceptable candidate to replace Mr. Maduro, at least for the time being.” When one asks, “cui bono?” and observes the complicated dance that she did in the aftermath of the attack, her role becomes clearer.
Right after the attacks, the new President of Venezuela condemned the action and engaged in the appropriately anti-imperialist rhetoric of the Bolivarian aristocracy. Rodríguez condemned the attack and declared that “there is only one president in Venezuela and his name is Nicolás Maduro Moros.” When Trump threatened her with an even worse fate than Maduro’s, she backed down the following day and offered a conciliatory message that Uzcátegui posted on his page with the words, “draw your own conclusions.” In her message, which also began with a nod to the anti-imperialists, she said “We extend the invitation to the US government to work together on a cooperation agenda aimed at shared development, within the framework of international law and to strengthen lasting community coexistence.” Most telling was the fact that in her message there was no mention of having Nicolás or Cilia returned to the country.
According to the Venezuelan constitution, when a president is removed from power, whether by death, abdication or, in this case, a kidnapping, elections are to be held within 30 days for a new president. The Bolivarian government has long since decided to ignore any inconvenient requirement of its own constitution (initiated by Hugo Chavez in 2000) and Rodríguez no doubt knows that Maria Corina Machado (MCM) would easily beat her in an electoral contest. So there has been no mention of elections, and Trump himself declared that Machado, the Nobel winner who called on him to intervene in the country and has flattered him and promoted his policies incessantly since winning the Prize last year, “has no respect in the country” of Venezuela.
Prospects for the democratic opposition and social movements
Despite Trump’s ignorant assessment of MCM’s role in Venezuela, she continues to be the most popular leader in the country, but the opposition that supports her has been neutralized. While as much as 85% of Venezuelans consider Maduro to be illegitimate, based on his theft of the July 28, 2024 election, an equivalent number of Venezuelans see Urrutia as the only legitimate ruler. Nevertheless, it’s now clear from the lack of opposition to Maduro’s capture, the conduct of the operation, the way the Bolivarians have regrouped around Rodríguez, and Trump’s own statements, that neither the perpetrators nor co-conspirators in the Jan. 3 attack have any interest in allowing liberal democracy to return to Venezuela.
Unfortunately, prospects for the opposition to reorganize itself now are fairly bleak. Not only has MCM allied herself with the traitorous Trump, but there is very little left in the country from which to build a democracy after 25 years of Chavista rule. Hugo Chávez began destroying the institutions and rewriting the history of the Venezuelan Democratic Revolution of 1958 from the moment he came to power. No sooner had Chávez been buried in 2013 than the years of battling Madurismo began, first with the student revolt of 2014. Those protests continued, almost daily, for years, followed by massive daily demonstrations against the Maduro dictatorship throughout the spring and summer of 2017. Then came the Juan Guaidó* fiasco of 2019, and the repression in the aftermath of the theft of the 2024 presidential elections. Every attempt to bring about real democracy has been crushed and now most of the leadership of the liberal democratic opposition is either in jail, in exile or in hiding.
There is a growing awareness on the left in the US and other areas where populist fascism is growing that a liberal democratic order is the only environment within which social movements can be organized and competing parties can arise to challenge dictatorial power. Until we experienced the first taste of fascism, many of us had been convinced by Leninist ideas and the rhetoric of authoritarian left regimes, like those of Chávez and Cuba’s Fidel Castro. We never imagined that we in the US would be in the situation of the Venezuelan opposition and social movements.
Indeed, the coup that captured the Bolivarian leadership completes a strange cycle. Chávez was the harbinger of the wave of populism that has swept the world since 1999, and now at its apparent zenith, that wave completes a circle from left to right with Trump’s attack on Venezuela. Trump has at once brought the Bolivarian Revolution under his control, for the moment, and assumed its mantle. The enantiodromia—the process of things turning into their opposites—from left to right is culminating in this dramatic moment, and it therefore is crucial that we understand the process and rethink everything we once believed we knew.
Solidarity with people, not states
Throughout this first quarter of the 21st century political activists have continued to judge things by the ideological frame of left and right, an antiquated frame that goes back to the French Revolution. But more and more thoughtful people on the left and the right are recognizing that the actual political poles today are the authoritarian kleptocrats versus the populations they rule. It’s now apparent that authoritarian kleptocrats can be found across the political spectrum, and their rhetoric is merely a matter of culture and style. Here it’s urgent that we follow Uzcátegui’s advice to “Search, contrast, connect the dots, ask yourself questions… And, above all: think for yourself.”
If we step outside of our ideological frame, let go of our ideological loyalties just long enough to consider an objective analysis of our situation and the situation of the people of the world, we might recognize that the only object of our solidarity should be the subjects under the rule of the criminal networks taking over the world. In each instance this international crime syndicate comes to power with its own national character and rhetoric to mesmerize the population. It manifests as here as populist capitalism, in Venezuela as socialism and in Europe as varieties of fascism, but in every case the results are the same: the demise of liberal democracy, rule of law, separation of powers, and the institutionalization of dictatorship, economic decline, rampant corruption, repression and fear.
In the US many of us in the struggle for democracy are recognizing the need to build alliances with the former Republicans, the Never-Trumpers and other elements of the Right to fight the fascist forces of MAGA. We need to take that coalition-building international and acknowledge and support democratic forces around the world, regardless of the political stripe of the states they oppose. Democracy is about the demos, the people, all of us, left and right, of all races, nationalities, tribes and ethnicities. The thousand or so political prisoners of Maduro have now been transferred de facto to Rodríguez, and while they may be construed to be “right wing” prisoners of a “left wing” dictatorship, authentic internationalists need to see them as allies in a common struggle for democracy against the world-wide force of populist fascism.
The piece is edited by: Marcy Rein
* Juan Guaidó was the opposition President of the National Assembly of Venezuela who was technically made president of the country in a parliamentary maneuver to depose Nicolás Maduro. He led a brief failed insurrection and soon was forced to leave the country. He now lives in exile in the United States.
…
Shipyard Unionism: A Novel of Triumphs and Defeats
By Kurt Stand
“A Review of Goliath at Sunset“, by Jonathan Brandow
“Here’s what’s wrong in this yard. Two white welders get fired and blackmailed into silence for their jobs. A third one, black, with an unblemished record, is fired for the same supposed offense and the company refuses to budge.”
“Ain’t right!” someone called.
“But not one of the three welders should have lost a minute of pay, much less their jobs. And why? Because you can’t breathe carbon monoxide! They are all victims of this company’s core value: Production over safety!”
It is rare to read fiction rooted in workplace life, rare to read fiction that explores the inner-life of a union in conflict within itself and with management. Thus the value of Jonathan Brandow’s Goliath at Sunset. Set at a shipyard in Quincy, Massachusetts where Brandow worked for 9 years, he uses his experiences as a welder and a union officer to give Goliath an authenticity that is too often lacking in fictional depictions of labor. This is evident in his awareness of the complexity of the characters in the novel, in the picture he presents of union meetings, grievance handling, rank-and-file organizing.
Set in the late 70s — early 80s. at the time of the Iran hostage crisis and the racist violence that followed attempts to desegregate Boston’s public school, Brandow places his work in a wider context of events shaping the time without ever losing his focus on the shipyard. The novel centers on the life of Michael Shea, a Vietnam vet whose personal experiences lead to awareness of class injustice (fueled in part by his mother’s picket line assault that results in her death), and, unusual in the community in which he was raised, awareness of racial injustice and a rejection of the racial hatreds that surround him. Shea’s status as a veteran at a time when jobs were plentiful, enables him to find work as a welder. The hazards of shipyard work, the union’s unwillingness to fight back, lead him to become an engaged unionist and eventually, a shop steward. This is shown against the backdrop of personal challenges and difficulties that make this path anything but a linear march of progress.
At the center of the novel is a conflict over the role of shop stewards. Do they serve the union leadership, doling out favors to the skilled, the “loyal,” those who are white; do they defend workers by compromising their rights; or do they fight management through unity, creativity, militancy, by organizing rank and file participation – and reaching out for support outside the workplace.
Behind those choices lies a difference as to how to relate to a changing workforce. A shipyard that in living memory had been almost all white men now includes Black Americans, West Indians, Cape Verdeans, Puerto Ricans, a small but growing number of women, all of whom the old leadership fears and resents. And many of the younger white workers don’t have the commitment to the job or union that older ones had. Thus a weakened union, a union that has become parochial, a union that still tries to represent the workforce but does so through compromises with management that allows for small victories at the expense of loss of rights. The price of doing so is at a cost that will come due.
The battle over the quality of the work stewards perform is merged with the battle to have enough stewards. That conflict is central to all that follows as Brandow makes clear early on:
“[Shea] checked his contract … it permitted one steward for each two hundred hardhats in a department. Despite that, the union by-laws capped the number at a single steward [per department]. He couldn’t let that go. How could it be possible that the union – not the company – limited the number of stewards, the front-line protections guys had on the job? Shea realized it really was a black and white issue. The only truly affected department, the only one that qualified under the contract for additional stewards, was welding—the only department with a significant number of black votes.”
That sparks a union meeting where the rank-and-file gets defeated by leadership afraid that opening doors might loosen their own authority. Subsequent battles – over racist graffiti in bathrooms, the lay-off of a pregnant worker, speed-up, safety & health concerns, company disciplinary policies, the conduct of a strike – show the shifting sentiment of workers, how prejudiced attitudes can be broken down and how they can resurface. In all of this, the fights and arguments that take place within the union are always presented in the context of the real problem, management policy that devalues the life of all workers.
Brandow’s description of how a rank-and-file movement organizes demonstrates that understanding, its goal is to strengthen the union as a whole, not to attack or undermine it. Here too, his writing reflects what he lived, the meetings, arguments, tensions, celebrations, camaraderie, disappointments, harsh language flung back and forth even between friends, all contain the ring of truth.
Those complications are also those of the characters who people the novel, all with lives outside the job, all facing the pressures of working-class life in which opportunities are few and (even in a more “stable” era) precarious. The violence in the air post-Vietnam, when reaction was raising its ugly head trying to push down progress toward social justice, the uncertainties as those changes were reflected in personal relationships, are very much part of novel’s depiction of workplace life. The multi-racial character of the shipyard and of Boston and its environs as much a part of the story as the reaction to it, just as is the assertiveness of women pushing back against silences that had prevailed.
That reflects itself in the character of the “sell-out” union president, who remembers with nostalgia, the militancy, the willingness to fight, that built the union. He respects the new militancy of Shea and the others pushing for change, as much as he does all in his power to undermine them. He rationalizes the compromises with management he makes every day, for all he sees is a losing battle. His weakness is part of the problem, no doubt, but nonetheless, he is right – management holds the cards. For those who lived through those times, reading Goliath is a reminder of what happened when layoffs swept industry, fear of job loss leading those who had resisted to accept the unacceptable as safety regulations went out the window. The end result is a feeling Brandow well describes as he records Shea’s thoughts toward the end of the novel as the combination of permanent layoffs, unrelenting speed-up, breakdown of shifts and jobs assignments, leave workers demoralized, the old union leadership out in the cold, younger union activists with a sense of defeat.
“He knew they thought of their homes, fishing trips in New Hampshire, mythic fiberglass boats skimming over the water, the week, maybe two in a year that they prized as their own. They thought of their own little girls and their sons in their yards. All gone. They knew they would go to their graves with a rage they could never concede. They stood by the basin and yearned for a bright, free beginning. For a start they knew they would never be given.”
That describes a reality that those newer to labor activism also need to know for no gain should ever be taken for granted, unity needs to be fought for again and again, struggles for justice at the workplace need to be joined to those taking place in the communities where people live and the broader forces pushing society in one direction or another have to be engaged. Perhaps the greatest strength of the novel lies in making clear that what matters is not just the outcome of a particular battle – for win or lose, it is transitory. Rather what matters is what we take away from each dispute, each organizing effort, how to integrate that in one’s own life. Shea reflects that challenge in himself, his personal weaknesses as much a part of the story as his strengths. The novel’s conclusion providing a good starting point for thinking about how to accept loss, which way to look for new beginnings, a search that – almost by definition, is never easy.
“Cotty and Lonny [two of the rank-and-file leaders] watched them go. They looked around, searching for Shea before they went in. He was the last to join the line. Cotty said, “You did what you could.” Shea nodded without hearing. “For real, man,” Lonny added, poking Shea in the chest. “I mean, we had men and women, black and white, every shift pulling together. That’s real. That’s something they can’t take from us.”
“Yeah, maybe,” he said as he followed them into the ship and headed for his worksite. Shea’s legs ached to skip down the stairs, to churn past the gates, to breathe in the freedom outside. Instead, he stumbled his way past slaggy mounds of main deck debris toward his gear. The last whistle blew.
Goliath at Sunset is published by Hard Ball Press.
To order a copy email hardballpress@gmail.com
…
The Sad Decline in Cal/OSHA’s Worker Protection
By Garrett Brown
One of the most shocking revelations from the recent California State Audit of Cal/OSHA was how few worker complaints actually got investigated – only 17% of worker complaints in fiscal year 2023-24 – by the state worker protection agency. Overall, Cal/OSHA still conducts on-site inspections less than half the time for all types of enforcement activity. Instead of site visits, Cal/OSHA merely sends a letter to employers so that they can “self-inspect” and report their conclusions back to Cal/OSHA. These “letter investigations” now account for 60% of Cal/OSHA enforcement actions.
The current under-50% on-site inspections contrasts sharply with Cal/OSHA’s activity thirty years ago when 75% of enforcement actions were actual visits to work sites by Cal/OSHA inspectors.
The net result of this drop-off of genuine enforcement actions – primarily caused by crippling inspector vacancies, chronic understaffing, and failure to utilize all available financial resources – has meant that worker protections in California are weaker than ever. As documented by a constant stream of news media reports, both old and new regulations cannot be effectively enforced, and worker populations like immigrants in agriculture, artificial stone manufacturers, and numerous other industries are especially vulnerable.
State Audit Findings
In July 2025, the California State Auditor issued its Report 2024-115 summarizing the audit of five years of Cal/OSHA enforcement activity. For the last year of the study – state fiscal year 2023-24 from July 1, 2023 to June 30, 2024 – the State Auditors reported the following activity by Cal/OSHA in response to worker complaints and employer reports of serious injuries and fatalities:
- 13% of worker complaints were invalidated
- 82% of validated complaints were responded to with a letter investigation
- 17% of validated complaints had an on-site inspection
- 42% of employer accident reports were responded to with an on-site inspection
- 58% of employer accident reports (including injuries) were responded to with a letter investigation
That means that a worker filing a complaint that year had less than one chance in five that it would result in an on-site inspection by Cal/OSHA compliance safety and health officers. Even with employer-reported serious injuries and deaths, on-site inspections occurred less than half the time.
Cal/OSHA’s ability to identify and correct hazardous conditions, and to determine the cause of injury accidents, so as to be an effective deterrent to preventable worker exposures and incidents has been severely compromised.
Letter investigations continue to dominate Cal/OSHA activity
Unfortunately, the latest inspection data released this month by the Department of Industrial Relations (DIR), Cal/OSHA’s parent agency, shows that on-site inspections continue to make up less than 50% of Cal/OSHA’s activity.
Cal/OSHA Response to All Types of Enforcement Activity
Including worker complaints, employer accident reports, programmed inspections, referrals, and follow-up inspections
| Time Period | Total Activity:Complaints, accidents, programmed, referrals, follow-up | On-Site Inspections | Letter Investigations |
| CY 2023 | 15,513 | 6,820 / 43.9% | 8,693 / 56.1% |
| CY 2024 | 15,780 | 6,367 / 40.3% | 9,413 / 59.7% |
| Q1 2025 | 3,403 | 1,333 / 39.2% | 2,070 / 60.8% |
| Q2 2025 | 4,504 | 1,875 / 41.6% | 2,629 / 58.4% |
| Q3 2025 | 5,130 | 2,267 / 44.2% | 2,863 / 55.8% |
| Three Qs 2025 | 13,110 | 5,542 / 42.3% | 7,568 / 57.7% |
Data from the Federal OSHA OIS System of DOSH activity entered into the Federal database by Cal/OSHA District Offices, generated on October 28, 2025. [See accompanying DIR document.]
The sad news is that the lack of worker protection, and the lack of an effective deterrent for irresponsible employers, continues unabated two years after the end of the audit period.
A decline from the historical record
The current 40-45% level of on-site inspections by Cal/OSHA contrasts sharply with the practice of the worker protection agency over the last 30 years, as reflected by information from the same data base.
| Time Period | Total Activity:Complaints, accidents, programmed, referrals, follow-up | On-Site Inspections | Letter Investigations |
| CY 2015 | 13,985 | 7,754 / 55% | 6,231 / 45% |
| CY 2010 | 12,316 | 8,463 / 69% | 3,853 / 31% |
| CY 2005 | 12,593 | 8,176 / 65% | 4,417 / 35% |
| CY 2000 | 13,002 | 9,298 / 72% | 3,704 / 28% |
| CY 1995 | 13,358 | 10,076 / 75% | 3,282 / 25% |
Data from the Federal OSHA OIS System of DOSH activity entered into the Federal database by Cal/OSHA District Offices, generated on July 13, 2022. [See accompanying DIR document.]
Cal/OSHA’s total activity was lower in the previous decades, but so were the number of field inspectors positions.
Field inspector vacancies continue to plague Cal/OSHA
DIR has recently claimed that Cal/OSHA’s overall vacancies are below 10%. But a position-by-position hand count of the CSHO positions as of September 1st (the latest data released by DIR) documented 95 vacant field inspector positions for a vacancy rate of 34%.
Nine enforcement District Offices have CSHO vacancy rates at or above 40% — with eight offices having vacancy rates of 50% or more. These offices are: Fremont (67%), Santa Barbara (67%), Long Beach (60%), Bakersfield (57%), PSM – Non-Refinery (56%), San Bernardino (54%), Riverside (50%), San Francisco (50%), and Monrovia (44%). The Los Angeles area District Offices – responsible for protecting workers involved in the clean-up and rebuilding after the January wild fires – have significant CSHO vacancies: Long Beach (60%), Monrovia (44%), and Van Nuys (33%).
The latest available data indicates that 21 field compliance safety and health officers (CSHOs) are “bilingual.” Five of the eight members of the Agriculture Safety enforcement unit are bilingual. Region II (Northern California and Central Valley) and Region VIII (Central Valley and Central Coast) are regions with numerous farmworkers, yet Region II has one bilingual field inspector, and Region VIII has zero bilingual inspectors. It is estimated that at least 5 million of the state’s 19 million worker labor force speak languages other than English, with many monolingual in their native tongue.
There are only two industrial hygienists among the 192 filled CSHO positions, which means that enforcement inspections involving “health” issues – such as heat, wildfire smoke, airborne lead and silica exposures, noise, and ergonomics – are severely limited by lack of qualified personnel.
Media articles capture lack of protection, worker injuries and deaths
Over the last year, both California and national media have highlighted the impact of understaffing and lack of effective protections on the state’s 19 million workers. Immigrant workers have been particularly vulnerable, but all California workers have paid the price for Cal/OSHA’s ineffectiveness.
Among the recent articles on lack of protections for California workers are:
- Los Angeles Times, November 20th stories on farmworkers, child labor, and pesticide poisoning: Here and Here
- Bay Area public radio/TV KQED November 19th story on silicosis cases and deaths among California stoneworkers. Here
- Los Angeles Times, August 19th story on farmworkers continuing to die of heat. Here
- Bay Area Chanel 2 TV April 30th story on multiple fatalities in a San Leandro scrapyard. Here
Enforcement budget cut undermines efforts to improve
Cal/OSHA’s Enforcement budget for the current fiscal year 2025-26 was slashed by $16 million – adding under-funding to under-staffing for the beleaguered worker safety agency. Governor Gavin Newsom – taking a page from President Trump’s playbook – proposed a $21 million cut for worker protection enforcement, and the Democratic Legislature approved a $16 million reduction. Cal/OSHA is financed by a completely independent fund which receives no state revenues, and which has run $200 million surpluses in the last three fiscal years (including the present year). There is no fiscal reason requiring this budget cutback.
California’s worker H&S protections dramatically lower than neighboring states
The standard measure of worker health and safety protection agencies internationally is the ratio of inspectors to workers. The International Labor Organization (ILO) recommends a ratio of 1 inspector to 15,000 workers for advanced industrial countries.
The state of Washington has a ratio of 1 inspector to 28,000 workers, while the state of Oregon has a ratio of 1 inspector to 23,000 workers. This state data comes from the April 2025 “Death on the Job” report issued by the AFL-CIO. The hand count of Cal/OSHA positions on the latest available DOSH Organization Chart documents a ratio in California of 1 inspector to 103,000 workers.
Don’t the workers of California deserve the same level of protection that workers in Oregon and Washington state enjoy?
Workload study calls for 50 more field inspectors
Five years ago, DIR contracted with the CPS HR Consulting firm to conduct a study of Cal/OSHA inspectors’ workload and to recommend a staffing level to meet that load. In their July 2020 report, the consulting company concluded that 328 inspectors were needed to effectively perform the agency’s work. In September 2025, Cal/OSHA has 280 CSHO positions.
Given Governor Newsom’s current cut to Cal/OSHA’s enforcement budget – despite a $200 million surplus in the agency’s primary revenue fund –adding the recommended 50 field inspectors is impossible.
Regulations without actual enforcement are meaningless
California has the reputation of having the most protective workplace health and safety regulations in the nation. On paper, that is certainly true compared to Federal OSHA and many states with their own OSHA programs.
But if the agency required to effectively enforce these regulations, respond to worker complaints, and investigate employer reports of injuries and deaths cannot meet either its legal mandates or mission, then California’s bragging rights are meaningless and are but a cruel joke for sick and injured workers.
It is entirely the employers’ responsibility to have a safe and healthy workplaces that will not poison, kill or maim their employees. But in the real world, effective government enforcement agencies are essential to hold irresponsible employers accountable, to be an effective deterrent to employers considering risking their workers’ health and safety, and to motivate all employers to meet their legal and moral responsibilities.
Sadly, today Cal/OSHA is not such an agency.
…
Rolling Into 2026
By Stewart Acuff
Rolling into 2026, we have a collective task to return our country to a leader in democracy, a force for peace and human rights and for an economy that includes and rewards every worker with a strong sense of the common good and wealth created by work.
Too many politicians, political commentators and leaders have forgotten the break in the economy in the early 1980’s when President Reagan declared war on unions and collective bargaining. Reagan’s National Labor Relations Board helped major corporations break their unions, freeze wages and steal pensions. He started the the de-industrialization that Clinton followed. Reagan passed a huge tax cut for the rich and corporations while he imposed a tax on the Social Security.
The Economic Policy Institute studied the wages in the 34 years (a generation) from 1979 to 2013: “The hourly wages of middle wage workers were stagnant….The wages of low wage workers falling 5% from 1979 to 2013.”
Trump, of course, has made this historic trend of failure even worse. Exploding inflation caused by his silly nonstrategic tariffs that impose a tax on everyone who buys an imported product.
Trump and Elon Musk destroyed hundreds of thousands of living wage federal jobs with good healthcare coverage and pensions.
Every lost job, every lost dollar costs every small business, local workers, local shops, local farmers, local schools because working class wages drive a nation’s economy.
“Trump has taken to saying the issue of affordability is a hoax”
Donald Trump who’s probably never personally bought anything in a grocery store and has no idea how most of us live, has taken to saying the issue of affordability is a hoax like he screamed every time he was impeached or challenged.
But it ain’t working this time because every family goes to the grocery store every week and fills up one or two vehicles with gas, buys clothes and shoes for growing kids and has to house themselves with skyrocketing mortgages and rents.
We know we are being squeezed. We feel it and see it.
When we connect the inflation Trump is inflating with tariffs with stagnant and falling wages, we have an affordability crisis for all of us.
And the twin crises of the economy: inflation coupled with wage stagnation continues to escalate poverty, squeeze working families and slowly kill the American Dream.
This analysis is the road map to Democratic victory in the 2026 midterm Congressional elections.
…
Victor Grossman – A Most Unusal Life
By Gene Bruskin
Victor has died
Don’t tell me you never heard of him?
Really?
I mean,
Shouldn’t you know about a 96-year-old American communist, Harvard educated, US military defector, political propogandist, living for decades on Karl Marx Alee in East Berlin?
Well, let me tell you a bit about him.
After being introduced by my friend Kurt Stand, I first met Victor in 2017 at his 6th floor rent- controlled apartment in East Berlin, joined by my East German friends, just minutes away from the Brandenburg Gate.
He had resided there since the days of the days of the GDR (German Democratic Republic) and had forsaken his US name, Stephen Wechsler.
I haven’t spoken to him for a couple years, but I have regularly received his well-respected BULLETIN. Just this February I read Issue # 231, with his comments on Germany’s recent special election.
Now, how many of us have continued to issue widely read, up-to-date, internationally respected political commentaries for close to 75 years?
You know what I mean?
After serving us drinks and fruit he told us his story.
The essence of it is that he defected from the US military in 1952 to the post war Soviet controlled section of Austria during the height of the cold war by swimming across the Danube. (See his book-A Socialist Defector, published by Monthly Review.)
After noticing that my friends and I were sitting there with our jaws dropped, he continued.
He had been drafted after graduating from Harvard during the Korean War and was stationed in West Germany.
But he had made an error in judgement. He told the army he wasn’t a Party member, and they found out that he lied and were about to court marshal and maybe imprison him.
So, he took the short cut to the Soviet Union for amnesty, by way of the Danube in Austria; what any red-blooded American would do in that situation.
Needless to say, the Soviets were shocked and suspicious. This was not an everyday occurrence, so they threw him in jail.
But Victor’s charm and sophistication won their trust, and they sent him to work in a factory in East Germany, not a bad start in learning about a communist country. Other prominent artists and intellectuals like Bertolt Brecht joined him there.
He loved to brag that he was the only person who had graduated from Harvard and Karl Marx University. And that, after many years, Harvard had him back as a special guest speaker and their reunions.
He married, raised two children and became a journalist, living there through the fall of the East German Wall.
And he kept on rolling until December 2025.
He was charming, warm, engaging, strongly opinionated and intellectually curious. You had to love him.
So, we talked for hours and went out to dinner.
He loved to argue that life in the GDR, although far from perfect, was without the anxieties of the West: healthcare, daycare, abortion, education etc., were all free. Imagine, he pondered, if that were the case in the US? What choice would most people make if they had a choice-a secure life in the GDR or the wild unpredictability of capitalist US?
You couldn’t shake him from his view and having lived the privileged life of a Harvard grad before his life in the GDR, he knew whereof he spoke.
We met again on his US book tour in 2019 and in Berlin in the spring of 2023, over lunch with my East German friends. After agreeing about Palestine, we argued about Ukraine. He wouldn’t let NATO’s provocations off the hook in explaining the Russian invasion of Ukraine. I got his point, but did that mean Putin magically got off the hook? He didn’t budge, but that didn’t interfere with the pleasure of engaging with this most engaging man. He left his mark on me and so many others.
He was the kind of guy you never forget.
Thank you, Comrade, we will long remember you.
Oh, and thank you for your service.
Gene Bruskin
…
Also see a bio of Victor on Portside