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
We Need to Tax the Rich. Are Unions Going About it the Right Way in California?
By Fred Glass
Quick, what action is guaranteed to freak out the capitalist class? If you answered, “Propose a credible campaign to pass a progressive tax”, congratulations! Ever since Marx and Engels in The Communist Manifesto included “taxing the rich” among activities the working class could take to advance its cause, the response by capital to any notion of parting with any portion of its ill-gotten gains has been predictable. Most recently we witnessed the lurid warnings of disaster looming in New York should democratic socialist Zohran Mamdani be elected Mayor, emanating from his idea for a modest income tax increase on the wealthy to fund improvements needed by all New Yorkers if they wanted to be able to afford to live in the city in which they work.
The arguments against taxing the people best able to pay higher taxes are stored in a well-thumbed playbook, rolled out of mothballs by right wing defenders of privilege every time the notion of tax fairness re-enters public conversation. But just as mothballs tend to lose their potency over time, shibboleths about taxes in place since Prop 13, passed in 1978 in the dawn of the neoliberal era in California have lost their ability to shield the rich from voter anger.
Why? Economic inequality, growing over the past fifty years in tandem with the decline of organized labor, has accelerated since the first Trump presidency, and now, with an oligarchy and the MAGA movement well on the way to crushing the sad remnants of New Deal regulations and programs, replacing them with open looting of the public sector, the tired anti-tax refrains are no longer playing well in Peoria, let alone New York.
Does anyone still believe that billionaires are “job creators”, who would rather pay workers a wage to produce a product than invest in job-killing AI? Does anyone other than Republican elected officials think cutting taxes for the wealthy actually leads to more jobs, versus adding more mansions or yachts to their hoard?
Here in the Golden State, fourth largest economy in the world, and home to one quarter of the country’s billionaires, two proposals are potentially heading to the November 2026 ballot that would provide the working class with opportunities to retrieve some of the wealth it produces, in the form of state revenues to pay for desperately needed public services. They will also hand the wealthy a choice: either do right, agree to a modest restoration of tax fairness, and demonstrate that the superrich remain a part of the broader human community; or resist, watch their failed messaging fail again, and further cement pariah status for themselves.
One of these ballot measures is already gathering signatures to qualify for the 2026 November ballot. It is the product of a re-energized progressive tax coalition, dormant since the defeat of Proposition 15 in 2020, but responsible for two prior victories, Proposition 30 in 2012 and its renewal in 2016 as Proposition 55. These bumped the top income tax brackets up to 13.3% (including a 1% surcharge on incomes of a million dollars), bringing in between six and twelve billion dollars per year to bolster schools and social services in the wake of the Great Recession, while other states were slashing education and healthcare.
Props 30 was written as a temporary tax. Prop 55 extended it to 2030. The current petition drive, headed by public sector unions but mainly bankrolled by the California Teachers Association, aims to make the tax permanent. But as a tax already in place for more than a dozen years, its rollover is unlikely to produce more than token opposition from right wing rich people who have lost on the issue twice before. Perhaps some of them have learned from experience that (shocker) they are still rich people despite paying the highest state income taxes in the country. And the very richest among them might be keeping their powder dry to try to stop the other initiative.
This one, spearheaded by SEIU-United Health Workers, proposes to assess a one-time tax of 5% on the wealth of the state’s two hundred billionaires (who combined hold almost two trillion dollars) to offset the pending impact of federal cuts to Medicaid funding to the state, estimated to be around $20 billion per year. If left unaddressed, these cuts would throw several million people off of Medi-Cal (California’s version of Medicaid) and destroy tens of thousands of health care jobs. The UHW proposal—which has not yet been issued a title and summary by the state attorney general, a necessary step before signature gathering—is supported by a southern California hospital association. It would raise an estimated $100 billion over five years and then expire.
Crucially, however, the “California Billionaire Tax Act” has no other labor backers, not even the parent organization of UHW, the SEIU State Council. The campaign website foregoes the standard “supporters” page, most likely because there aren’t any. No matter; UHW has the money to qualify the initiative by itself, should it choose to do so. Passing it is another question.
No sane person who cares about health care for the poorest Californians can disagree about the need for something like this, given the Trump regime’s federal budgetary moves. And glib, historically false arguments about runaway rich people leaving California a smoking fiscal desert aside, it’s past time for billionaires to cough up a fairer share of taxes. But many questions arise, out of which I’ll just broach two: if both measures make the ballot, will the Billionaires Tax harm the chances of making Prop 30/55 permanent? And can the two campaigns figure out how to get along and make public conversation about taxing the rich a positive and dominant narrative—instead of, say, allowing the capitalist class to spend bajillions to make it “union thugs kill the goose that lays the golden egg for the golden state”?
Time is short. November 2026 will be upon us before we know it. Let’s hope the necessary work of coalition building, message agreement and assembling the field campaigns will show the way to getting the wealthiest Californians to pay their fair share for the common good.
…
Our Trade Unions Must Step Up – Speech for Tradeswomen Inc.* – October 30, 2025
By Molly Martin
Sisters, we’ve come a long way.
When we first started Tradeswomen Inc., we had one goal:
to improve the lives of women — especially women heading households —by opening doors to good, high-paying union jobs.
It took us decades to be accepted by our unions. Decades of proving ourselves on the job, standing our ground, demanding a seat at the table.
And now — by and large — we’re there. We are leaders. Business agents. Organizers. Stewards. We have changed the face of the labor movement.
But sisters, we are living in a dangerous time.
Our own federal government is attacking the labor movement. And we cannot look away.
We all know that Donald Trump is gunning for unions. Project 2025 is his blueprint — a plan to dismantle workers’ rights and roll back decades of progress.
Let me tell you some of what’s in that plan.
*It would roll back affirmative action, regulations we worked so hard to secure,
*Allow states to ban unions in the private sector,
*Make it easier for corporations to fire workers who organize,
*And even let employers toss out unions that already have contracts in place.
*It would eliminate overtime protections,
*Ignore the minimum wage,
*End merit-based hiring in government so Trump can pack the system with loyalists,
*And — unbelievably — it would weaken child labor protections.
Sisters and brothers, this is not reform. It’s revenge on working people.
And yet, too many union members still vote against their own interests. Why?
Because propaganda works. Because we are being lied to — by the media, by politicians, by billionaires who want to divide us.
That means our unions must do more than just bargain wages. We must educate. Engage. Empower. Because the fight ahead isn’t just about contracts. It’s about truth.
We women have proven ourselves to be strong union members — and strong union leaders.
We’ve built solidarity. We’ve organized. We’ve made our unions more inclusive and more reflective of the real working class.
And now it’s time for our unions to stand with us.
Many of our building trades unions have stood up to Trump, and to anyone who would divide working people.
But one union — the Carpenters — has turned its back on us.
The Carpenters leadership has disbanded Sisters in the Brotherhood, the women’s caucus that so many of us fought to build.
They have withdrawn support from the Tradeswomen Build Nations Conference, the largest gathering of union tradeswomen in the world. They’ve withdrawn support for women’s, Black, Latino, and LGBTQ caucuses claiming they’re “complying” with Trump’s executive orders.
That’s not compliance. That’s capitulation.
But the rank and file aren’t standing for it.
Across the country, Carpenters locals are rising up, passing resolutions to restore Sisters in the Brotherhood, and to support Tradeswomen Build Nations.
Because, they know:
You don’t build solidarity by silencing your own. And our movement — this movement — is built on inclusion, not fear.
While the Carpenters’ leadership retreats, others are stepping up.
The Painters sent their largest-ever delegation — nearly 400 women —to Tradeswomen Build Nations this year.
The Sheet Metal Workers are fighting the deportation of apprentice Kilmar Abrego Garcia. The Electricians union is launching new caucuses, organizing immigrant defense committees, and they are saying loud and clear:
Every worker means every worker.
Over a century ago, the IWW — the Wobblies — said it best:
“An injury to one is an injury to all.”
That’s the spirit of the labor movement we believe in —and the one we will keep alive.
Our unions are some of the only institutions left with real power to stand up to the fascist agenda of Trump and his allies.
We have to use that power — boldly, collectively, fearlessly.
Because this fight is about more than paychecks. It’s about democracy. It’s about equality. It’s about whether working people — all working people — will have a voice in this country.
Sisters and brothers, we’ve built this movement with our hands,
our sweat, and our solidarity.
Now — it’s time to defend it. Together.
Solidarity forever!
…
*Tradeswomen, Inc. is a grassroots recruitment, retention and leadership development organization for women in blue-collar skilled crafts whose goal isto increase the number of women in construction and related trades.
Berkeley’s 1970 political poster explosion
By Lincoln Cushing
A Good Political Poster Can Threaten Authority
UC Berkeley’s Daily Cal recently reported about the closing the student Multicultural Community Center, specifically noting art and signage on their windows and walls. “If any posters on the wall related to student activism, international relations or ethnic studies, administrators required them to be relatively uncontroversial, according to a campus junior and MCC intern who wished to remain anonymous in fear of retribution.” (“UC Berkeley administration silently shutters student multicultural space” by Emewodesh Eshete, November 25, 2025)
Berkeley is known for being a hotbed of activism, but posters weren’t always part of the equation. The seminal Free Speech Movement in 1964? Just a very crude one for a legal defense fundraiser. But as activism rolled up – Stop the Draft Week, the rise of the Black Panther Party, the fight for ethnic studies at San Francisco State and UC Berkeley, People’s Park – posters gained traction.
After Richard Nixon escalated the Vietnam war by expanding into Laos and Cambodia, Ohio National Guard troops killed four protesting students at Kent State on May 4, 1970. 11 days later, two African American students were killed at Mississippi’s Jackson State College. A simmering student movement exploded in rage, and college campuses all over the country went on strike and made posters. The epicenter was UC Berkeley, where new research is revealing the details of that brief few months when over 500 distinct titles were printed that rivaled the fabled student posters of Paris 1968. The subjects ranged widely – not just against the war, and against all war, but also taking on G.I rights, police brutality, the environment, educational reform, consumerism, and an out-of-control president. Most were made by amateurs, their first and only handmade piece of original art.
The output has been generically credited as “Berkeley Political Poster Workshop” but no such entity existed. The primary screenprint workshop was Gorilla Graphics, in the basement of UC Berkeley’s Wurster Hall. Others were made at the Art Department and Wheeler Hall. At least one was printed at a nearby fraternity, another made of embossed vinyl. Several were offset printed at sympathetic shops near campus, including Berkeley Graphic Arts under the hand of FSM veteran David Lance Goines. One of the distinctive features of the screenprints was that many were printed on the back of used tractor-feed computer paper, and even that feature offers depth. A dot-matrix American flag polemic begins with “The person who handed you this flag is not a radical leftist or a revolutionary, he is an engineering student with interests no less patriotic than your own…”
Some art faculty were very supportive, especially Peter Selz and Herschel B. Chipp, who organized an exhibition of protest art at the University Art Gallery. Professor Chipp also produced Posters for Peace, a fundraising folio edition of selected images. He noted that “Students of the College of Environmental Design led in organizing effective production and distribution and were soon joined by art students and many others. Unlike the French students of 1968, their efforts were directed toward enlisting the support of the public, and they opened their workshops to it and provided posters to anyone who wished to use them.”
Yet contradictions existed. While Chicano artist and UC instructor Malaquias Montoya appreciated seeing the new political energy expressed as art, he could not help but notice how many Berkeley faculty that had just earlier disdained such work were now embracing such activity. “These students were all of a sudden getting A’s for making political posters, and when I was doing the same thing they gave me shit every day.”
Many of these are eerily prescient. A poster by Kamakazi Design Group (a short-lived project with a made-up name led by UC professor Marc Treib) shows 1943 Nazis rounding up Warsaw ghetto civilians with the headline “America is a democracy only as long as it represents the will of the people.”
An image combining the clenched fist with a peace symbol was later recycled for the April Coalition for Berkeley City Council, the progressive slate that included Loni Hancock – and won.
As we can see from current UC administration actions responding to the heavy hand of a Trump presidency, posters are still a threat. Despite being a unique and powerful event in the history of popular democratic media, the 1970 posters from Berkeley and other sites nationwide have not seen enough serious scholarship. Books and exhibitions on protest art give this body of work a nod, but much of what has been written has errors and is woefully incomplete. The clock is ticking for gathering first-hand accounts. These posters deserve better.
There is now an effort to compile a catalog raisonné of these posters by reviewing physical and digital collections to identify distinct titles and determine where they were produced. It’s an imprecise and incomplete process, compounded by the fact that few were dated, few were credited as to source or artist, and posters were freely shared between groups, making provenance murky. Many institutional special collections include posters from other years or workshops. Readers are encouraged to look at this evolving art history project and submit corrections or additions. As in 1970, it takes a village to get it right.
You can check out more here
All 1970 and artist unknown, unless noted.
…
Between the Rivers- The Worm is Turning
By Stewart Acuff
We’ve been gathering together for 10 months protesting the trump administration over and over in the Eastern Panhandle and all across West Virginia with Senator Bernie Sanders.
We’ve protested their assault on history in Harpers Ferry and Charles Town.
We’ve protested in Martinsburg and Berkeley Springs and Shepherdstown.
We’ve protested for ten months every week at the offices of Senator Shelley Moore Capito and Congressman Riley Moore.
We’ve been amongst the earliest in the nation to take our fear, love of country and neighbors, our anger, our faith and our courage to ask everyone to join us and lift up the values we were taught that shaped America.
AND IT IS ALL WORKING
This week, after a Thanksgiving Break and taking stock of where we’re at, we see the White House chaos, the courts ruling against trump’s retribution against his enemies, maga melting down, trump unable to stop the release of the Epstein files and the truth of trump’s assault on teenage girls, the utter revulsion of voters that resulted in Republican defeats literally in every race in the last election.
Voters now know that trump tariffs fuel inflation, forcing prices up as our government taxes imports even before we buy them.
trump intentionally raising prices with his favorite policy of tariffs. trump is forcing costs to rise, not even trying to lower the costs of necessities.
trump’s ride or die badass fighter has left the stable. Marjorie Taylor Greene is retiring from Congress after her rejection of trumpism. Watching the Epstein/trump survivors must have revulsed and disgusted Greene like it did everyone else. Was it his loss of power? Or his corruption? Or the cost of healthcare for her grown kids? Or their costs of raising a family? We all realize that trump has no plan, just does what makes him feel better in the middle of his dark, empty, terror filled nights.
Steve Miller’s fascistic, unforgivable Deportation Works has destroyed families, andleft our food rotting in the fields, again forcing up grocery prices. In that evil, they’ve put agents of the USA wearing masks, unaccountable to anyone; looking like the gestapo to communities of color.
Much of all this failure is a result of trump’s very fragile and weak personality, his frightening intellectual inadequacies, his ignorance of anything that hasn’t come through a tv screen and the evil the entire world sees.
But mostly trump’s failure is because of gigantic movement building across this country, like we’ve worked for in West Virginia.
Without a call from on high, nor a secret vision shared in our dreams, without a plan; but with a defense of democracy and engaging our neighbors, demanding a better quality of life.
We must keep pushing until the demands of winning the elections next November require us to turn from protest to door knocking. Phone calling, and house meetings, turning out patriots to vote for the Constitution, for democracy, against corruption, for other people, for freedom for everyone.
Scholars and strategic organizers will study what we’re living through: American fascism, the rise of trump/maga cultism, and the wonderful rising of this very powerful, autonomous social movement in every corner of our country. Out actions, our focus on everyday folks has forced our political debate onto our streets and country roads.
Those who would stop the maga/trumpism must focus on how our country can return to freedom to raise the living standards for every family with higher wages, universal healthcare, childcare, ending bigotry.
Our social movement can make ours a kinder, easier place to reach our dreams.
…
No to U.S. Threats and Interference
By Honduras Solidarity Network
November 24, 2025
On November 30, 2025 Honduras will hold national elections in the midst of escalang U.S. interference in the region that includes military acons and threats of outright war against Venezuela, Colombia and Cuba from the Trump/Rubio administration. U.S. officials in the White House, State Department and Congress have been nurturing a propaganda campaign by the Honduran right wing press and organizations against the progressive forces in the country reminiscent of Cold War propaganda. This is layered onto the pre-existing challenges for democracy in a country that only four years ago electorally overturned 12 years of narco-dictatorship installed by a U.S. and Canada-supported coup and which has not yet been able to completely dismantle all the structures or policies of that regime.
The propaganda campaign has consistently opposed domestic reforms and international policies that do not line up completely with the U.S., deliberately incorrectly labeling the self indentfied democratic socialist LIBRE party government as “communist.” This is the same inciting language used by the Honduran and U.S. political forces that undermined Honduran democracy and identified as pro-coup in 2009.
For example, Rep. Maria Elvira Salazar (R-FL) and Rep. Chris Smith (R-NJ) have joined conservative Honduran media to consistently echo the interests of the wealthy Honduran families that dominate Honduras, often comparing the Castro government to Cuba, Nicaragua and Venezuela. Rep. Salazar also co-sponsored, with both Democrat and Republican congress members, the Protect Honduran Democracy Act (H.R. 4202). The bill calls for a clear interventionist position disguised with the language of supporting democracy. These calls for intervention were reiterated during the recent hearing by the U.S. House of Representative’s Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on the Western Hemisphere, where Rep. Salazar warned that the U.S. would not allow another country in the region to fall in the hands of socialism. She, too, defended the 2009 coup d’etat by calling on the Honduran military to intervene “once again to save its country from communism.” Now it has been announced that the very partisan Salazar will be heading up a delegation of congress members to observe the elections.
Given the tense situation with U.S. warships in the Caribbean, this polarizing rhetoric is obviously aimed at inciting fears of Honduras sufferring the same military attacks as Venezuela from the U.S. if the LIBRE party is elected. We do not see any of this as coincidental; it is part of a deliberate, broader campaign to undermine and manipulate voters and the electoral process.
Since at least March 2025, there have been other attempts to undermine the democratic process. The National Electoral Council (CNE), the electoral authority responsible for overseeing and managing the elections, is highly politicized and headed by three counselors, each representing one of the major political parties. Conflicts within the Council have caused concerns for the election. During the March 2025 primary elections, some polling stations in the two largest cities were left without any ballots, while others received the materials many hours late. There were accusations made that the military had not done its job of ensuring that election materials were delivered. There were also accusations that the CNE representative for the National Party, Cossete Lopez Osorio, contracted a private transportation company to deliver ballot boxes, but some deliveries were not made. The conservative pro-2009 coup press then used the crisis to undermine public confidance in the electoral infrastructure and institutions. These mull-faceted and sophisticated efforts continue today.
In late October 2025 information was released by the Attorney General on the existence of audio files of conversations between a major leader of the right-wing National Party and current congressional representative Tomás Zambrano, and the CNE National Party counselor Cossete Lopez-Osorio. The audio files describe strategies – some involving sectors of the military, the media, and the U.S. Embassy – to undermine ballot box transportation and to generate doubt about the electoral results. Zambrano and Lopez claim that the audio files are AI generated, but the discussed strategies are characteristic of the primary election scandal and past strategies being employed by the opposition.
What happens in Honduras is important to people in the United States as well as in the region. Across Lan America, the U.S. government historically works against governments that insist on their sovereignty, especially those that have reform-minded, or radical programs for their own socio-economic development often seen as threatening U.S. interests. This has escalated again in recent years with support for right-wing governments and pares (Honduras’ 2009 coup, Bukele in El Salvador, right-wing candidates in elections in Argentina, Chile, Bolivia). Now the Trump/Rubio administration is both blatantly interfering in elections, economic policy, and is escalating to military action threatening Venezuela and Colombia, murdering more than 83 people, and threatening more violence.
An electoral crisis and instability in Honduras would increase the refugee crisis of Hondurans desperately seeking safety in the U.S. as it would deepen the economic and social crises in Honduras and likely lead to more political violence.
For people in the U.S., the threats of war and political interference by Trump’s government in Latin America and in the Honduran elections also raise the specter of more militarization and political repression inside the U.S. from an administration that has already carried out armed military-style actions in major U.S. cties.
The Honduras Solidarity Network is supporting an electoral observation mission led by Global Exchange, a U.S. based organization together with our partner in Honduras, the Center for Democracy Studies (CESPAD). Follow our coverage from Honduras and be alert to actions supporting the Honduran people and their democracy.
Honduras Solidarity Network: honsolnetwork@gmail.com, X: hondurassol
Facebook: Honduras Solidarity Network
More info: Honduras Now; Global Exchange
…