Liberation Audio

This short piece is about Cuba's renowned Henry Reeve Brigades, the famous "Cuban Doctors" that travel around the world helping in the world's worst disasters and pandemics.

In this piece, we talk briefly about the history of the brigades, their importance today, and how they are a product of a revolutionary socialist state and society.

We are releasing this on the anniversary of 26 de Julio so that we remember why revolution is both possible AND necessary, so we may be inspired to change our world, and take power for the people!

Read the full article: https://www.liberationnews.org/the-henry-reeve-brigades-and-the-fruits-of-revolution/

Yesterday, the United States surpassed 140,000 COVID-19 deaths. More than 3.7 million people in the U.S. are known to have fallen ill, by far the largest number of cases in the world.

The Trump administration’s monumentally criminal refusal to wage effective war on the virus has caused needless suffering for millions. Tens of millions of people are being driven to economic ruin, with unemployment, no health care, and mass evictions looming.

But the pandemic’s disastrous results in the U.S. were not inevitable.

Socialist Cuba is proof

Today, July 20, 13 of Cuba’s 15 provinces — minus Havana and nearby Mayabeque — will move to the third phase of reopening. In the last 28 days, two full incubation periods, the 13 provinces plus the Isle of Youth have had zero incidence of COVID.

Phase three means that all commercial and productive activity can resume, with food establishments, stores, and services able to open. Masks are still required in public, and mass events like the Carnivals that normally take place in July in Cuba are suspended.

Although Havana is still in phase one, the incidence of new COVID cases is extremely low. There was only one new positive case in all of Cuba yesterday. There have been a total of 2,446 positive cases since COVID-19 first appeared in the island, with 87 people who have died. Cuba’s population is 11.2 million.

How has Cuba been able to flatten the curve?

Read the full article: https://www.liberationnews.org/cuba-flattens-the-covid-19-curve/

Usually we share narrated articles from our newspaper, but today we want to let you know of an important day of action. This Saturday, July 25, the Party for Socialism and Liberation and other organizations from across the country are taking to the streets to demand “Stop Evictions and Foreclosures, Cancel the Rents & End Racist Police Terror!”

We will adhere to physical distancing guidelines and wear facemasks. Everything to make sure we’re safe as possible

But we have to get out in these streets. Just think about it. More than 50 million people have lost their jobs. 30 percent of home buyers missed their June housing payments. And at least 20 million tenants could not pay their rent.

A wave of evictions and foreclosures is starting to sweep the country. The number of homeless is growing. People are being evicted from their homes while being told to “stay home” in the middle of a surging COVID-19 pandemic. You can’t tell people to stay home and then kick them out for not being able to pay with money they can’t make for work that they can’t do!

But instead of providing real, needed relief, the government is unleashing police: to evict people from their homes, to harass the homeless and to continue to carry out routine acts of violence and brutality in Black, Latino and Indigenous communities.

Since the brutal May 25 police murder of George Floyd by the Minneapolis police department millions of people have participated in thousands of demonstrations in every state to demand an end to racist police terror and the immediate defunding of police departments. This national revolt against racism is taking place within the context of the unfolding economic depression.

That is why, on July 25 we will be taking to the streets to demand a “Stop to Evictions and Foreclosures, Cancel the Rents & End Racist Police Terror!” JOIN US! Find an action in your city at: CancelTheRents.org

https://www.canceltherents.org/

This essay examines the theory and practice of the Leninist party from the time of Lenin until today. We turn to Lenin’s key writings and to the history of Bolshevism and the international communist movement to delineate the distinctiveness of the Leninist party. Throughout we pay careful attention to the differences between Lenin’s time and ours.

Read the full article: https://liberationschool.org/the-leninist-party-in-history-and-the-present/

PSL organizer Kameron Hurt talks about George Jackson, his revolutionary life, his imprisonment, the historic events around his life, and what we can still learn today from this monumental figure in the Black radical tradition.

The current period is the most favorable for socialists in the United States in decades. Against the backdrop of the Great Recession, waves of activity around the Occupy Movement, the Black Lives Matter movement, and the Bernie Sanders campaign have produced a profound radicalization in political attitudes across society. Socialism is viewed favorably by close to half of the population and a substantial section of young people are sympathetic towards communism and Marxism.

The key challenge facing revolutionaries in this moment is how to convert this explosion in pro-socialist consciousness into an organized force in society. While this includes the rapidly-expanding ranks of new cadre who are dedicating their lives to the cause of socialist revolution, a real organized force in society will draw its strength from the tens of millions of people who suffer the profound injustices of the capitalist system and are searching for an alternative. This base, or potential base, for the socialist movement can be found primarily amongst the 140 million poor people in this country.

As communists and other radicals across the country grapple with this question, the concept of dual power has rightfully become a topic of considerable interest and debate. However, the working definition of dual power used by organizations and individuals is often so broad and general that it renders the term practically useless. As such, it is important to disentangle the concepts and history bound up in these discussions in order to think clearly about the way forward for those fighting for revolutionary change.

Read the full article: https://liberationschool.org/dual-power-and-revolution/

12 points on the U.S. state and the necessity of revolution

1. The Party for Socialism and Liberation stands for the overthrow, dismantling and complete replacement of the core institutions of the capitalist state, which are the “special bodies of armed men,” namely the police, prisons, military and courts. This core of the capitalist state cannot be reformed into a neutral body. It must be abolished by means of a revolution.

2. The centrality of these violent institutions in capitalist governance is reflected in their gargantuan scale. Combined, the state institutions far outpace any other part of government spending. The sprawling U.S. prison system is the largest in the world, accounting for 25 percent of the world’s prisoners with only 5 percent of the world’s population. It includes 1,833 state prisons, 110 federal prisons, 1,772 juvenile correctional facilities, 3,134 local jails, 218 immigration detention facilities, as well as military prisons, civil commitment centers, state psychiatric hospitals, and other institutions. There are more than 790,000 armed officers across local, state and federal police agencies. The U.S. military is one of the largest employers in the world and even in “peacetime” the United States maintains more than 2 million active-duty service members. The National Guard numbers around 450,000.

Read the full article here: https://www.liberationnews.org/how-will-the-police-be-abolished-a-marxist-perspective/

In an exciting development for the Party for Socialism and Liberation, on July 2 the PSL was officially designated by the New Mexico Secretary of State as a qualified political party in the state of New Mexico. This despite the onerous requirement of signature gathering, made even tougher in time of the pandemic.

Now, when New Mexicans register to vote or update their registration, they can make their party affiliation the Party for Socialism and Liberation. Also, when they go to the polls in November, New Mexicans will be able to vote for a grassroots socialist presidential campaign!

Read the full article: https://www.liberationnews.org/psl-gains-ballot-status-in-new-mexico/

PSL organizer Kerbie Joseph reminds us that Black Liberation icons like the Panthers were deeply connected to the struggle for socialism, a fact that is often (purposefully) erased.

This PSL public forum from 2019 reviews the now-debunked Russiagate hysteria and how it connects to the tradition of anti-communism in the US to propagate US imperialism. This topic is still relevant today as not only do the establishment liberals still use Russia scapegoating, but now scapegoat other countries as well, namely China.