The South Carolina Department of Corrections announced March 18 that it will now organize executions by firing squad, which was legalized last year after a decadelong halt in carrying out any death sentences. The law, adopted last May, makes South Carolina’s 109-year-old electric chair the state’s primary means of execution, while granting inmates…

AUCKLAND, New Zealand — Students in the Indian state of Karnataka have mounted protests after the state’s high court March 15 upheld a government ban on young women wearing headscarves in schools and colleges. Muslim students from several parts of the state took to the streets the following day. Shopkeepers in Bhatkal shut their stores in solidarity…

BROOKSVILLE, Fla. — “The truckers’ convoy in Washington isn’t about masks. The truckers are on strike because they’re not making any money!” That’s what owner-operators Clyde and Everett Sesler told me in a March 20 visit with them. I am running as the Socialist Workers Party candidate for governor of Florida. Campaign supporters Karl…

Moscow’s deadly war against working people in Ukraine was the backdrop for a gathering of imperialist rulers in Brussels March 24. President Joseph Biden and government heads from Germany, Britain, France and 26 other capitalist countries announced decisions to boost NATO deployments across Eastern Europe and impose harsher sanctions against Russia…

An example of the opposition brewing across Russia to Moscow’s war in Ukraine is the statement by Ivan Fedoseyev, who resigned his position as deputy in a village of 200 in the Perm Krai region March 14. “If I had remained in office, then I would have been involved in what I consider a crime,” he said. ”I am not against Russia, in no way am…

RICHMOND, Calif. — “Why are workers here angry? It’s the lack of respect, the arrogance of the company,” striker Frank Aguirre told this Militant worker-correspondent March 27 as I joined him picketing outside the Chevron oil refinery here. The workers went on strike six days earlier, fighting over onerous work schedules, safety and wages. Aguirre…

Some 40 people rallied in Miami, above, and then caravanned in 20 cars through the streets of Little Havana to City Hall March 27, part of an international day of action demanding an end to Washington’s over 60-year economic war against Cuba. “We will continue the caravans on the last Sunday of every month until the blockade is lifted,” Roberto…

CINCINNATI — Gloria Robinson, president of the Cincinnati chapter of the National Federation of the Blind; Dave Perry, a machine operator at the Cincinnati Association for the Blind and Visually Impaired factory and Teamsters Local 100 shop steward there, as well as a board member of the NFB chapter; and Maggie Trowe, speaking for the Socialist Workers…

MINNEAPOLIS — Striking teachers and educational support staff have been picketing schools every morning and holding rallies several times a week since walking out March 8. Some 4,500 members of the Minneapolis Federation of Teachers Local 59 are fighting for an increase in starting pay for support workers, wage hikes for teachers, for hiring more…

Below is a selection from New International no. 7, which features the article “Washington’s Assault on Iraq: The Opening Guns of World War III,” published just after the first Gulf War. Copyright © 1991 by New International. Reprinted by permission. The war and its immediate consequences did not resolve, but rather exacerbated the economic and…

RICHMOND, Calif. — More than 500 workers, members of United Steelworkers Local 5, went on strike March 21 at the Chevron refinery here in a fight over work schedules, safety and wages. Workers on the picket line that day told this Militant  worker-correspondent they are fed up with being pushed to work long hours of overtime, including being on call…

NEW YORK — During the March 19-20 International U.S.-Cuba Normalization Conference, Sussen Gazal, who is active in the July 26 Coalition in Boston, posed a question to the Cuban delegation. When Gazal visited Havana in 2020 she met a Cuban who told her he had named his son Obama, after the former U.S. president, hoping that his administration would…

MONTREAL — A major cross-country lockout and strike battle broke out March 20 involving 3,000 Canadian Pacific Railway engineers, conductors and yard workers, members of the Teamsters Canada Rail Conference union. Two days later the parties agreed to submit their contract to binding arbitration. The workers are fighting over wages, benefits, pensions…

MONTREAL — Some 530 Rolls-Royce aircraft engine maintenance workers here, members of the Quebec Confederation of National Trade Unions (CSN), set up strike picket lines March 15. Several strikers told the Militant that the company had locked them out while they were in a union meeting, in the process of voting on a strike mandate. But the callous…

DOVER, England — Hundreds of seafarers and workers from other unions joined protests here and in other ports across the country denouncing the summary dismissal of 800 workers by P&O Ferries shipping company. In a planned union-busting assault, P&O vessels were ordered back to U.K. docks, where crews were called to a three-minute Zoom meeting March…

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico — Buoyed by winning a big pay increase, thousands of teachers marched to the governor’s mansion in this capital of the U.S. colony March 15 to protest pension cuts. The new minimum wage for teachers will be $2,750 a month — a $1,000 increase. “This should be an example for us to keep on insisting and persisting, shoulder…

WASHINGTON — The People’s Convoy, organized by over-the-road truckers and others who oppose overreaching government COVID mandates and other attacks on their livelihoods, has been based at the Hagerstown, Maryland, speedway since March 6. Participants are still arriving to join the protests, which call for ending government COVID-19 mandates that…

As we go to press ... Locked-out workers at Collins voted 212 to 67 March 14 to accept the company’s latest offer, return to work. TROY, Ohio — Some 300 members of United Auto Workers Local 128 at Collins Aerospace were locked out beginning Feb. 19 after voting down a contract that would have deepened divisions among workers at the plant. Collins…

In 2015 officials in Palm Beach County, Florida, outlawed so-called panhandling or soliciting on or near any road, claiming it endangered people’s safety. Similar laws that exist across the country are used to turn workers who are homeless into criminals and to give cops and courts another weapon to restrict free speech and political rights that are…

The Socialist Workers Party and the Militant stand for the unconditional defense of self-determination and independence for Ukraine. This is part of our communist continuity back to the Bolshevik Revolution in 1917. We fielded a series of reporting teams in 2014-15 to cover firsthand the working-class mobilizations in Maidan that brought down the pro-Moscow…

An anti-abortion bill introduced in the Missouri legislature March 8 would allow every person in the state to file suit against anyone who assists a woman from Missouri in getting an abortion anywhere in the country. The measure, authored by state Rep. Mary Elizabeth Coleman, who is running for state senate, would also make it illegal to manufacture…

“I am opposed to this senseless war of aggression, and I am calling on Russia to end this war right now to save all of us. We need peace right now,” renowned Russian opera singer Anna Netrebko said after Moscow invaded and began bombing civilian areas in Ukraine. This was a courageous act, a reflection of the widespread opposition in Russia to the…