On Strike‪!‬ On Strike!

As the antiwar protest movement continues to organize on campuses, even with many students now going home for the summer, Biden continues to tank in the polls due to his backing of the genocidal war on Gaza and the cost-of-living crisis that has been burying working people in the US.

The question for young people, working-class people, and the antiwar movement is: what should we do in this election given the terrible options on offer from the two capitalist parties, Joe Biden and Donald Trump? And how do we use this election to build the strongest possible movement to end the war on Gaza?

On Strike’s Kshama Sawant and Emily McArthur speak with Nick Cruse, a citizen journalist, writer, activist, and the main co-founder of the Revolutionary Blackout Network (RBN), which has covered the war on Gaza since it began.

We discuss the ongoing student protests, including the strikes by UAW academic workers at the University of California, the need to build for mass protests at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago this August, the independent anti-war presidential campaign of Jill Stein, and the urgent need for a new party for working people.


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The U.S. Presidential election is now less than 5 months away. Working people continue to struggle, as the world falls deeper into crisis and war. Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza continues, funded off the backs of American workers, even as a majority of Americans oppose the slaughter.

Meanwhile, the political establishment and media have presented working people with a rotten false choice: Warmonger-In-Chief Joe Biden or right-wing billionaire Donald Trump. We need to reject both Biden AND Trump, who offer nothing but more war and suffering. The billionaires have two parties, we need one of our own. And we need to build an independent movement that can end this war on Gaza and win real gains for working people. We need mass protests at the Democratic National Convention this August in Chicago to demand an end to the slaughter and of all U.S. funding of the Israeli war machine. Workers Strike Back is helping build that movement.

We also need to demand that unions rescind their endorsement of Joe Biden, who is no friend to unions or workers. Instead working people should support Jill Stein, the strongest independent left, antiwar candidate.

On Strike speaks with union educator Joe S about his and other workers’ recent efforts to pass a resolution in the Washington Education Association to rescind the union’s endorsement of Biden, and how we can fight to build a new party for working people.


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As Pride month begins, trans and queer people around the world are searching for ways to fight back against escalating attacks on their basic rights. In 2024 alone, 580 anti-trans bills have been proposed in state legislatures around the United States. This number is already set to surpass the appalling record set in 2023, when right-wing legislatures passed dozens of draconian anti-trans bills attacking everything from pronoun use in schools to gender-affirming care.

How do we stop these anti-trans attacks, and win bold positive demands, like free universal healthcare which includes gender-affirming care?

Young and queer people should look to the lessons from the history of the fight for queer rights, including Stonewall and ACT UP. We urgently need to get organized with other working people and build our own, independent organizations like Workers Strike Back to win the change we need. The fight for trans rights is also firmly bound up with the fight against other forms of oppression, including the growing movement to stop Israel’s murderous campaign against the people of Gaza. We need to get organized to stop these attacks and end oppression in all its forms.

On Strike is joined this week by trans socialist activists Sophie Scholl and Margot Stewart to discuss the militant roots of Pride, and the way forward for trans and queer liberation, including the fight for gender-affirming care and the role of the LGBTQ movement in the fight to end Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza.


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On April 19, Volkswagen workers in Chattanooga won a historic victory, voting by 73 percent to join the United Auto Workers, or UAW. This was the first-ever union victory at a foreign auto plant in the South, and a huge start to UAW’s national campaign to organize 150,000 non-union auto workers in the United States, at companies like Volkswagen, Mercedes-Benz, Toyota, Tesla.

But this success in Chattanooga was soon followed by a disappointing loss at a Mercedes-Benz near Tuscaloosa on May 19, where 56 percent of workers voted against unionizing.

Why did the UAW campaign win at Volkswagen and lose at Mercedes?

On Strike speaks with Logan Swan, a union Ironworker with Ironworkers Local 86 and a casual longshoreman represented by ILWU Local 19, and member of Workers Strike Back. Logan tells us about what went right and what went wrong, and how those lessons can be applied in order to restart the fight to unionize the Mercedes-Benz plant.

In both the labor movement and in social movements, we need to soberly assess the lessons from both our victories and our setbacks. The lessons that Logan shares in this episode will be needed everywhere, especially in the South, which has long been a stronghold for big business and their reactionary, anti-union politics.


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We are thrilled to have as our guest antiwar journalist Chris Hedges.

Many who are watching will already know Chris Hedges. Chris covered the first Persian Gulf War in the 1990s for The New York Times, where he refused to participate in the military pool system that restricted the movement of and reporting by journalists.

In 2003, Chris gave a commencement speech at the graduation ceremony for Rockford College in which he criticized the then ongoing American imperialist invasion of Iraq. His microphone was shut off three minutes after he began speaking. Crhis had to end the commencement speech short because of the disruptions, which included an additional microphone cut, foghorns, and chants of "God Bless America."

Clearly, we are in a completely different period - student antiwar protest movement. In fact, when Chris was speaking on the megaphone at the campus antiwar protest at Princeton University last month, when the campus police and administration prevented Chris from speaking, the students chanted “ let him speak, let him speak!”

Chris has long spoken out against the two warmongering parties in the United States, the Democrats and Republicans, and called for a new party for working people. In the 2008 United States presidential campaign, Chris was a speechwriter for Green Party candidate Ralph Nader. Chris also supported Green Party candidate Jill Stein against the Democrat’s and Wall Street’s candidate, Hillary Clinton, in the 2016 election.

We need to continue building the momentum of the campus anti-war movement with a nationally coordinated mass protest at the DNC in Chicago in August, and by sharing lessons from campus unions that have passed resolutions and strike authorizations in solidarity with the student protests and against police repression. We also need the rank and file of the labor movement to put forward resolutions to rescind their union’s endorsements of Biden. Campus unions should provide a lead to the antiwar movement by calling for a one-day nation-wide strike and walk-out against the war. This is what it will take to end the war- shutting down the profits of the capitalists.


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We are joined by a special guest, Cora Bergantiños-Crespo. Cora is a geneticist, and the outgoing President of UAW 4100, the union of postdoctoral researchers at Columbia University and Mount Sinai Hospital. She is also a member of Socialist Alternative and Workers Strike Back.

Cora talks to us about what escalation strategy the anti-war movement, and specifically the campus encampment protests, urgently need. She describes the role of the labor movement, and the need to harness the power of organized labor in order to end the war on Gaza and end all U.S. military funding to the Israeli state.

A lot of political analysts are comparing this moment to 1968, when the movement against the Vietnam War took its protests to the DNC, and faced all kinds of police repression. That DNC was also in Chicago just as it will be in August this year. It is absolutely crucial that the anti-war movement builds for mass protests at the DNC.

The campus protests are an enormous and historic development, but we also know from history that student protests alone will not be enough to end the genocidal war or the stranglehold of Wall Street billionaires on universities, much less on our society as a whole. They have the potential, however, to be a spark for even larger developments.

There was a near revolution against capitalism in France in 1968 - major student protests acted as a spark that initiated a mass movement leading up to a general strike in France. A revolution would have been possible, which could have then spread regionally and globally, had it not been for the betrayal of the leaders of mass worker organizations who undermined the movement and failed to provide any leadership, in effect rescuing the capitalist class.

If you live in or near Seattle, join us in person for a special rally and public meeting on May 16th at 6PM at Smith 120 on UW campus, where we will discuss these and other next steps for the antiwar movement.

And on Sunday May 19th, Workers Strike Back and Socialist Alternative are hosting a national public meeting over Zoom to discuss how we can take this movement forward by bringing the momentum of the student protests to the DNC in Chicago this August, and having campus worker unions across the country take up the example of UAW 4811’s strike authorization vote and WEA members’ resolution to rescind the endorsement of Biden and bring a powerful challenge to US imperialism and end this genocidal war.

On Strike is 100% funded by working people. BECOME A MEMBER of Workers Strike Back now to support our work: https://www.workersstrikeback.org/mem...

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On Strike is a production of Workers Strike Back.


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