PCMLE: May 1 Manifesto – United, let us continue the struggle against the enemies of the workers and the people

En Marcha #2091 from April 24 to May 7, 2024 [ pcmle.org/EM/spip.php?article13101 , occasionally articles are posted in English; The PCMLE website has been re-done?  Slightly edited.] 

Central Organ of the Marxist-Leninist Communist Party of Ecuador

MAY 1 MANIFESTO

United, let us continue the struggle against the enemies of the workers and the people

[photo]

Workers

The streets and plazas will once again be covered with the voices of indignation and the demands of millions of workers around the world on May 1st. There are sufficient reasons for this: we live in a society in which those who work for exhausting daily hours live badly, while the owners of capital increase their wealth by the minute. Workers all over the world stand up and exclaim that the struggle for social emancipation is present and growing!

In our country, the commemoration of this exemplary day takes place in very particular circumstances. Due to the very nature of the prevailing capitalist system and the action (or inaction) of the different governments in power, Ecuador is immersed in a serious crisis of bourgeois institutions: corruption and organized crime; the drug trafficking mafias have penetrated all state institutions; they are in the Executive, the Legislature, the Justice System; they are present in the leadership of the Police and the Army, in the political parties of the right. The activity of these groups has been promoted and covered up at the highest levels, and legal frameworks have been created to prevent their punishment and guarantee them impunity.

But that is not all. Day by day, unemployment, underemployment, poverty, forced migration, school dropouts and many other serious social problems are increasing. Daniel Noboa's government has not been able to solve these problems, simply because it is not interested in doing so. He is in Carondelet [translator:  the president’s residence] to benefit his class: the big business people, the owners of capital. Didn't he forgive them about two billion dollars of debts they owed to the state, of which 80 million dollars went to the companies of his father, Álvaro Noboa? For the rich, forgiveness of their debts and tax exemptions; for the poor, an increase in the VAT, an increase in the price of gas, a reduction in the budget for health and education, minimal investment in public works!

Noboa is a president who lies and does not fulfill his campaign promises. The people have identified him as such, which is why in the referendum of April 21 he had a hard defeat where it hurts the most: on the questions that sought greater levels of exploitation of the workers and protection of international capital.

The political maneuver of the bourgeoisie and its government was to mark questions D and E in their favor in the midst of a discourse that put at the center – almost as the only element – the issue of the fight against insecurity and criminal violence. However, the people have an important capacity for discernment and did not fall into the trap; they understood that the struggle for security is one thing and it is quite another thing to allow anti-popular policies and attacks on the sovereignty of the country to be applied.

Noboa and the big business owners were defeated in the referendum, and he was defeated by the trade unions, students, teachers, merchants, youth and women's organizations, the left-wing parties and movements, and all those who voted and called for a NO vote on questions D and E.

New fights are coming, this time in the streets. The government has in its plans the increase in the price of fuel, the privatization of state companies, the increase in electricity rates, among other anti-popular measures; it is negotiating with the International Monetary Fund in exchange for receiving new loans that will be used to pay outstanding debts to international creditors, not to meet the needs of the people. The government's interest is also to economically strangle the IESS [Ecuadorian Social Security Institute], it wants to bankrupt it in order to privatize the social security system. We must prevent this.

The new struggles demand the strengthening of the unity of the workers, of all popular sectors, the left-wing political organizations that have demonstrated political consistency with the interests of the people; unity of action in a political-social front that, while raising popular demands, proposes and fights for an economic-political program that takes the country out of the crisis, without affecting the interests of the people; that has as its banner that the crisis be paid for by the rich, who are responsible for it.

Workers

The world is going through difficult times. The interests of the big international monopolies, the inter-imperialist struggles are the cause of the armed conflicts that threaten to become widespread in Europe and the Middle East. Israeli Zionism is responsible for the genocide against the Palestinian people, and has the support of imperialist powers such as the United States, the United Kingdom, Germany, Canada and reactionary governments such as Javier Milei of Argentina or Daniel Noboa of Ecuador; We condemn this genocide, as well as all those who support it; We also reject the imperialist war that has Ukraine as their field of operations. The peoples of the world want peace; The imperialist powers promote war because it is also a source of conquest and accumulation of wealth for the monopolies!

Our Party salutes the struggle of the working class, of the workers of the city and countryside, the youth and women of the popular sectors who are confronting the anti-popular policies of their governments, all those who rise up against the exploitation and domination of capital and fight for revolutionary transformations. That is the meaning of the commemoration of May 1, the day of struggle of the proletariat and peoples of the world.

The PCMLE, a member of the International Conference of Marxist-Leninist Parties and Organizations, raises its banners together with these struggles; it is the millions of exploited and oppressed, with their unity and struggle, who will sink capitalism-imperialism and build the society of the future, socialism-communism.

Long live the International Day of the Working Class!

Long live the struggle of the workers and peoples of Ecuador for their emancipation!

Long live the international solidarity of the peoples!

With Marxism-Leninism, for revolution and socialism

Central Committee of the PCMLE

Marxist-Leninist Communist Party of Ecuador

UNAC: Solidarity with the student protesters for Palestine + other anti-war events and notices (13-year cicadas are out and calling)

13-YEAR CICADAS IN NC

Early this morning I was noticing that an old root sprout from a larger red maple looks dead, and then I noticed a brown cast-off cicada exoskeleton.  Did I miss it from last summer?  Then I noticed about 15 more, and a black, yellow, and red-eyed adult Brood XIX 13-year periodical cicada, maybe a female periodic cicada, and I probably heard some of their calls (and maybe a cuckoo as well, mowing, etc).  I definitely heard a few calls around mid-day.  Someone else saw one here on the 27th.  Given that they are already calling, they must have begun emerging around a week ago.  In past emergences I don't think I heard them until the first or second week of May.  Brood XIX (the Great Southern Brood) includes all four known species of 13-year cicada, one discovered recently, but I think only three species emerge around here.  Their appearance and sounds are very similar and all of these, both 13 and 17-year cicadas, are in genus Magiciada.  Brood XIII of 17-year cicadas (the Northern Illinois Brood) will emerge near Chicago this year, coinciding with XIX after 221 years, and these are supposed to be large broods.  Periodical cicadas are unique to the Eastern US and only appear above ground for about a month after many years underground sucking on tree roots, but apparently there are cicadas in India's northeastern Meghalaya state and Fiji that have higher abundances on even year cycles.  I think the various cryptically colored annual species, which might actually have multi-year life cycle as well, start emerging in late June, after the periodic cicadas are gone.  At least around here, periodic cicadas miss the large cicada killer wasps of late summer, solitary wasps that specialize in hunting cicadas. I hope to write more about cicadas in coming weeks. 

ANTI-WAR EVENTS

The Deir Yassin Massacre in Palestine was April 9, 1948.

Information and photos from occupations and protests in the USA, Canada, and throughout the world:  cpcml.ca/Tmlm2024/MS5428.HTM#1

Global protest calendar (note that some of the entries are old, such as a Nakba Day protest in Raleigh, NC in 2022):  samidoun.net/2022/04/calendar-of-resistance-take-action-for-palestine/

There was Students for Justice in Palestine organized a protest at UNC-Chapel Hill April 26th and an occupation began before the 26th, apparently only passively opposed by the administration so far (PSL Carolinas:   www.instagram.com/uncsjp/p/C6Oi7TdOhaQ/?img_index=1 , references to other events: a book study group April 6th at 2pm at the PSH in Durham, the 27th at 2pm in Raleigh, and the 30th at 5:30pm at the 180 Cameron Avenue YMCA in Chapel Hill with author Richard Becker; a march at UNC on the 28th at 3pm; a protest April 27th in Columbia, SC; April 24th writing to Mumia Abu-Jamal (?); a May Day March and Rally at Durham's CCB Plaza at 5pm on the 1st ).  Commencement will be May 11th and classes end April 30th:  registrar.unc.edu/events/category/university-registrars-calendars/spring-2024/list/ There was an occupation during the Occupy movement, or maybe both UNC and a Chapel Hill occupations. 

There will be a May Day March and Rally at 5pm May 1st at CCB Plaza in Durham, demanding a $25 hour minimum wage, affordable housing, that Duke University pay its "fair share of taxes," a ceasefire, divestiture from war, etc (PSL Carolinas:  www.instagram.com/pslcarolinas/p/C6FCfoJPP6H/ ; can be viewed without joining Instagram)

UNAC is organizing a webinar "May 2:  Remember the Odessa Massacre [May 2, 2014]!  US and NATO Out of Ukraine" Thursday, May 2nd 12pm ET, with speakers Bruce Gagnon, Joe Lombardo, John Parker, Phil Wilayto, and Alison Bodine, and a member of the Uhuru 3 (related to the Biden FBI raids against the African People's Socialist Party), on trial September 3rd in Tampa (despite the raids under Obama, I don't think anyone from FRSO faced a court trial):  us06web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_XcxaoXglQragoqh1Dc9oHg#/registration

Peace Walk 2024:  Silence the Drums of War, from Maine to DC, now beginning May 7th:  peacewalk2024.org

"1,000 Grandmothers" Song Festival:  Women's Voices for Peace May 9-10th in DC:  www.codepink.org/grandmasdc

The 19th annual Israeli-Palestinian Joint Memorial Day Ceremony May 12th at 8:30pm in Jerusalem, 6:30pm in London, 1:30m in New York City, and 10:30am in Los Angeles:  www.afcfp.org/2024-joint-memorial-day-ceremony

Nakba Days of Action May 14-15th in Washington, DC:  secure.actblue.com/donate/stop-arming-israel-action-days

Nakba Day ("Memory of the Catastrophe") is May 15th each year:  en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nakba_Day

There was a Nakba Day Protest at 12pm Sunday, May 15, 2022 in Raleigh, NC's Moore Square:  samidoun.net/2022/04/calendar-of-resistance-take-action-for-palestine/ and www.instagram.com/p/CdRPVFkp3wn/ (PSL Carolinas)

Water Melon 5K Fest for Palestine May 18th at WakeMed Soccer Park in Cary, North Carolina:  www.gathergood.org

The first annual PaliCon May 18-19th in Dearborn, Michigan, by New Generation for Palestine:    www.ngpalestine.org and www.tickettailor.com/events/ngp1948

Naksa Day ("Day of the Setback"?) June 5th? – en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naksa_Day

Israeli air and naval forces attacked the USS Liberty in international waters off Egypt's Sinai Peninsula June 8, 1967, during the 1967 War.

3rd annual global 24-hour Peace Wave June 22-23, during the annual RIMPAC exercise;  see:  24hourpeacewave.org 

No to NATO, No to War, Free Palestine July 6-7th in Washington:  "NATO will be coming to Washington, D.C. in July to meet and celebrate their 75^th anniversary.  NATO, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, no longer is related to the North Atlantic but has redefined itself as an international imperialist organization and, as it always has been, an extension of US imperialism.  It has been an aggressive military alliance that has started wars from Afghanistan and Iraq to Ukraine and is a supporter and partner in the Israeli genocide in Gaza.  When NATO comes to the US, we will meet it with an alternative summit of our own and a demonstration.  UNAC will join with others for these events and will also hold a meeting of our own with other anti-imperialist forces.  Please mark your calendars, save the date and prepare to join us in Washington, D.C. during the weekend of July 6 – 7.  More information to follow soon or you can contact us at UNACpeace [gmail]."

The Poor People's Army March from the RNC in Milwaukee July 15th to the DNC in Chicago August 19th:  www.poorpeoplesarmymarch.com (my browser doesn't want to open this link) 

More actions and anniversaries are listed in recent calendars.  Quds Day ("Jerusalem Day") was April 5th in 2024, the last Friday of Ramadan; Israel's Jerusalem Day overlaps with Naksa Day in 2024:  en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quds_Day and en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jerusalem_Day

Wake County's Bookmobile will be touring Wake parks during the summer:  www.wake.gov/departments-government/libraries/about-wcpl/library-go

A new song by David Rovics – "Boycott, Sanction, Divest:"  davidrovics.substack.com/p/boycott-sanction-and-divest-video

Send letters to multiple university administrations:  actionnetwork.org/letters/solidarity-with-university-students-for-peace  They say send a letter and then go to your local university in person, and I need to go over to the UNC campus for multiple reasons.  Maybe this week.

From the United National AntiWar Coalition's original post April 24th ( nepajac.org/solcol.htm ) and an April 27th email bulletin; slightly edited:

Solidarity with the Student Protesters for Palestine:  Divest from Apartheid and Genocide

Thousands of students in colleges across the country have continued the growing protests on their campuses despite repression by university administrations and the government to end them.  These protests have been held in order to pressure their universities to stop supporting genocide in Gaza through their investments and their support for the apartheid regime of Israel.  The protests have also called for a ceasefire in Gaza and an end to Zionist oppression of the Palestinian people.

[Photo:  "Columbia students  rally for Palestine"]

The campus actions come after months of protests across the country and across the world in opposition to what the International Court of Justice has called a “plausible” case that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza.  Despite this finding, Israel has doubled down on its war against the people of Gaza and Palestine and the US has upped its support for Israel, most recently with a new 26-billion-dollar aid package.

 

The campus protests have been happening across the country for some time but on April 17^th, the students at Columbia University upped the ante and set up an encampment on their campus to maintain a permanent presence for Palestine; a fitting action given the fact that Israel has destroyed all the universities in Gaza.

 

On the same day that the encampment was set up, Minouche Shafik, the president of Columbia, testified before Congress in Washington, D.C. where she supported the false claims that the protests are antisemitic. She announced that she has fired a professor who expressed support for the Palestinian resistance, and she has since called the police onto the campus to put down the demonstrations.  Dozens of students have been arrested and many expelled.

 

Minouche Shafik herself has previously held jobs with various imperialist organizations.  She was a former World Bank vice president, former International Monetary Fund [IMF] deputy managing director, former British Department for International Development permanent secretary and former Bank of England deputy governor and is presently a 2022-appointed Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation Board member. 

 

The presidents of the University of Pennsylvania and Harvard had previously been called before congress for McCarthyite interrogation to pressure them to curtail freedom of speech and clamp down on campus protests at their schools.  This interrogation caused both college presidents to resign. 

 

However, the repression of the student protesters has not stopped them, and in fact the protest at Columbia has grown in size and spread to campuses throughout the country.  Occupations and civil disobedience actions on the campuses are now also happening at UC Berkeley, The New School, NYU, Rutgers, Tufts, Vanderbilt, Yale, [UNC-Chapel Hill (?), the University of Indiana-Bloomington, Emory, Washington University, the University of Michigan, MIT, Emerson, Humboldt, Smith, Pomona, Arizona, Northeastern,] the University of Minnesota and many other places as the list grows daily.   Additionally, at Columbia, Barnard and other schools the faculty has come out to defend the students, and support freedom of speech and assembly on their campuses.  

 

With the school year coming to an end and graduations happening across the country the administrations are concerned that the graduation ceremonies could be disrupted by protest.  There is also a concern that with elections coming up in November, the protests are exposing the role of the US government and the Biden administration as being complicit in supporting genocide. 

[Photo:  "Columbia 1968"]

In 1968, Columbia University decide it would knock down the homes of the people in the surrounding Harlem community to build a new gym.  This, happening in the context of growing opposition to the Vietnam war[, ] led to a student rebellion that took over buildings on the campus.  The police violently removed the protesters from the Columbia buildings as students fought back.  This was the beginning of the protest movement that swept the country and the campuses and led to the police and national guard murders of students at Kent and Jackson State Universities.  These murders were followed by protests that shut down universities across the country.  Such an event today could have much more far-reaching consequences as US imperialism and Zionism have been exposed as never before, the US and its NATO allies are being defeated in Ukraine and their economic structures are being challenged.

 

UNAC urges total support for the student actions and demands.

 

Freedom of speech and assembly on the campuses and schools!

 

End McCarthyite repression!

 

Amnesty for all students charged or expelled!

 

Free Palestine!

Toufan (Party of Labour of Iran): Happy May 1st, the International Working Class Day!

 Slightly edited.

Happy May 1st, the International Working Class Day!

 

Worker Comrades,

May 1st, the day of unity, solidarity, and the common fight of workers around the world is coming. This year, we are welcoming International Workers' Day at the same time we are witnessing a deliberate and manufactured widening of the class gap at the hands of the wealthy and capitalist classes. No plan has been put forward to improve the living conditions of the poor and working classes. In fact, the opposite is happening: The wealthy class is doing even more than ever to ensure they maintain and increase their wealth at the expense of the poor and working classes. This horrific and unconscionable trend is occurring due to the continuation of neoliberal policies and under the leadership of the government of Ebrahim Raisi. The exploitation of the workers and the plunder of their labour are increasing every day. Corruption and embezzlement by the government authorities, unemployment, inflation, an increase in back-breaking prices, and consequently prostitution and even the forced selling of human organs have continued to increase.

Job insecurity has pushed society’s working class to the edge. Neoliberal policies along with the arbitrary arrests and repression of labour activists, especially the leaders of worker organisations and guilds, are all being perpetrated by and in the service of capitalists. Repression of the working class is the foundation for the policies of the capitalist regime of the Islamic Republic.

Neo-liberalisation and privatisation of economic systems have brought the working class to misery and stagnation and have created a parasitic sect to suck the blood of the workers. The fight against this system is not a crime but is the duty of labourers and freedom fighters who are concerned about the future of the country and who do not accept being enslaved and dominated by imperialism and Zionism.

It is not possible to secure the interests of the country in the domestic and foreign arenas without dismantling the plundering banks, ending the policies of privatisation, and actively preventing the destruction of public education and health care systems.

 

Comrades!

This year, we welcome the May 1st as more than six months have passed since the "Al-Aqsa Storm", the heroic operation of the Palestinian resistance movement against the Zionist aggressor enemy. After nearly eight decades of the oppression of the Palestinian people, the Israeli Zionists have ramped up their campaign of terror and genocide against the Palestinians.  So far, Israel has dropped more than fifty thousand tons of bombs on the people of Gaza, many times more destructive than the bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. According to the published statistics, the number of children, women, and men killed in Gaza has passed 35,000.

Failing to defeat the Palestinian resistance in Gaza by bombing and invasion, the Zionist regime of Israel has resorted to a new weapon: the starvation of the entire population with the hope of forcing the heroic nation of Palestine to surrender. But this inhumane policy has also failed. The Palestinian resistance movement, with its meagre resources and under the siege of Zionism and American imperialism and its allies, has created an epic resistance against Zionism in the region and has shown that a small and united nation with the will to fight and win can remove obstacles and rub the colonialists’ noses on the ground. The belligerent Israeli regime under the leadership of Benjamin Netanyahu, which has not achieved its stated goals after six months of bombing Gaza, has attempted adventures at expanding the war in the region in order to divert the attentions from the Gaza genocide. But this policy has also failed so far.

 

Worker Comrades!

Today, the stand on the events in Gaza is the choice between humanity and barbarism, between anti-fascism and fascism. The working class of Iran and the world is the vanguard of the deepest expression of sympathy with the Palestinian nation in this unequal massacre that is going on in Gaza and the occupied Palestinian lands. On May 1st, the flag of solidarity with the Palestinian people and against the genocide by the invading Israeli army will be waved all over the world. The Middle East will not see a shred of peace and tranquillity with the war-mongering, savage, colonialist, and Zionist government of Israel. To defend the liberation struggles of the Palestinian people against the occupying Zionist aggressors and murderers is to defend peace, human rights, and human dignity.

 

Comrades,

The remedy to political and economic problems of the workers, whether in Iran or elsewhere in the world, is unity and organisation. The powerful presence of guild organisations of labourers and the organisation of the working class can be the compass to direct workers' revolutionary and humanitarian activities. Only through organisation can we purposefully fight against the capitalist regime of the Islamic Republic, against imperialism, and against the barbarity of Zionism. Through the party of the working class, we can seize political power and create a bright future. Without the working class party and the acceptance of its leadership, the working class will not be able to continue its fight for peace, fairness, and global wealth equality. So we must continue to strengthen our independent political party, the party of the working class.

 

Hail May 1st, the day of solidarity and a celebration of the united struggle of all the workers of the world!

 

Long live socialism, the banner of human liberation!

 

The Party of Labour of Iran (Toufan)

April 24, 2024

More statements regarding government repression of university protests, Palestine, Iran, and more

 4/27 tinyurl.com/UhuruAsheville "How Reparations Became a Free 

Speech Issue" -- 1pm ET, 12pm CT, 10am PT April 27th in Asheville, NC and online.

www.rightsanddissent.org/news/president-minouche-shafik-free-speech-concerns-on-campus-palestine/

Did Columbia University Violate the First Amendment? -- husseini.substack.com/p/did-columbia-university-violate-the/  (Refuse bipartisan, pro-war fascistic government, under Biden-Harris and state governments?)

Several articles:  fightbacknews.org/articles/atlanta-frso-condemns-attacks-on-pro-palestine-student-protest

Several articles:   consortiumnews.com/

caitlinjohnstone.com.au/2024/04/26/empire-managers-say-russia-china-and-iran-are-tricking-students-into-opposing-genocide/

palestinelegal.org/donate

Iran:  newleftreview.org/sidecar/posts/rules-of-the-game?pc=1598

newleftreview.org/issues/ii54/articles/susan-watkins-the-nuclear-non-protestation-treaty

4/25 -- www.struggle-la-lucha.org/2024/04/25/pflp-solidarity-with-student-protesters-in-u-s/

PFLP:  Solidarity with student protesters in US

[A photo of a rally in Washington Square Park a day after the raid on the Gaza Solidarity Encampment; April 23rd?]

The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) condemns the repressive practices of the administrations of universities in the United States, and affirms its support for the struggle of the student movement in support of Palestine.

At a time when the genocidal war against our unarmed Palestinian people in the Gaza Strip continues, and the brutal zionist practices in Al-Quds and the West Bank, executed by the zionist occupation army in partnership, support, and complicity with the U.S. administration and Western colonial countries, aligned with all the forces of evil and tyranny in the world, when the occupation army has been committing massacres and brutal crimes for over 200 days now, the likes of which human history has never witnessed before; and at a time when all lovers of peace in the world stand by the Palestinian people in their just struggle to reclaim their usurped rights, the ugly face of zionist racism clearly appears.

While our students in American universities were looking forward to support and solidarity from the university administrations, which prioritized their interests, profits, and investments over noble human values, they have undertaken a number of punitive measures against students, faculty, and staff, threatening and extorting them for nothing but standing by the Palestinian people and supporting their just struggle for freedom and human dignity. These administrations prioritize their interests over Palestinian blood and human values and engage in hate speech against Arabs and Muslims, canceling student organizations’ licenses, deluding themselves that by doing so, they can suppress our students’ struggle in the universities within the United States.

We in the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, along with all our people, the honorable of our nation and the world, confirm our steadfast support for the struggle of the student and youth movements, Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) and the Palestinian Youth Movement (PYM) at universities such as Columbia, Rutgers, Yale, and Stanford, among others. We call for enhancing the unity of students and their struggle to divest American universities from the zionist entity and cut all forms of relations with it.

As we highly appreciate the positions, movements, and struggles of our students in American universities, and call for the escalation of their struggle against aggressive policies, and the rejection of compliance with the policies biased in favor of the occupation, we also call for the strengthening of ranks and enhancing the unity of students. We highly value the supportive and solidary positions for the struggle of our people in various American universities and around the world, and all the strugglers for freedom, justice, and human dignity.

Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine
Central Media Office
April 23, 2024

Source: Resistance News Network

4/25 --

NLG Condemns Attacks on Gaza Solidarity Encampments

Dear [ ],

The National Lawyers Guild (NLG) unequivocally condemns the ongoing repression of pro-Palestinian activism taking place on university campuses across the country. The NLG is firm in its support for a free Palestine, and is against Israel’s ongoing genocide in Gaza and occupation of the West Bank. The violent and unprovoked attacks by police on student encampments at Columbia, Yale, NYU, University of Southern California, Emory, University of Texas, and other universities exhibit a dangerous overreach against students’ 1st Amendment rights and further illustrates our country’s spiral into a surveillance state. These militarized police raids also draw attention away from the main call of student protests: end the genocide against the Palestinian people and divest from Israel!

Since October, universities have been at the center of pro-Palestinian activism as students and faculty have responded to the daily atrocities inflicted by the Israeli government and military in Gaza and the West Bank as an occupying force. As a result, those that dare to speak out against the genocide of Palestinians are continually threatened, doxxed, and censored by their school administrations, powerful right-wing organizations, and even their fellow students. Anyone that supports the rights of Palestinans becomes a target of a well-funded movement of Zionist organizations, lobbyists for Israel, right-wing politicians, and media outlets equating any criticism of the state of Israel with anti-Semitism, even and especially against activists that identify as Jewish. Anti-Zionism is not anti-Semitism.

Last week, students at Columbia University set up the first “Gaza Solidarity Encampment” to demand their university divest from Israel. In response, Columbia administration called the NYPD and over 100 students were arrested within 24 hours. This attempt to crush the student movement has only inspired more encampments in support of Palestinian resistance at dozens of other universities [at UNC, etc.?] and the ongoing movement continues to grow. At these encampments, students and faculty have organized teach-ins, shared meals, prayed, and made banners and signs to show their solidarity with Gaza.

The response by university administrations and police departments to student encampments exposes them as agents of fascism and repression. Campus-based organizations, including student chapters of the NLG, have been silenced, sanctioned, and de-certified. Video footage from Columbia, New York University, University of Texas Austin, Emory University, Cal Poly Humboldt, and others shows police in riot gear moving in and attacking students, often within a few hours of them occupying a space on campus. Arrests are now well into the hundreds, and university administrations are suspending, expelling, and taking housing away from student activists and organizers. University administration’s collusion with an emboldened and militarized police force is not a spontaneous reaction to student protest: it is a deliberate tactic to use academic institutions to preserve the power of the war-mongering elite who directly benefit from Israel’s occupation and genocide of Palestine.

Universities should liberate themselves from the attempted puppeteering of the right-wing on campuses and instead fight to preserve academic institutions' integrity as bastions for genuine freedom, democracy, and justice! This would be truer to the real purpose of U.S. universities, once imagined and publicly advertised as a fertile ground for scholarship, creativity, and innovation.

NLG fully supports the demands being put forward by the Gaza Solidarity Encampments:

• For universities to support and amplify boycott, divestment, and sanctions of Israel;
• For universities to officially call for an end to the genocide and occupation of Palestine;
• Drop all charges against student protesters;
• Cease all student disciplinary proceedings immediately; and
• Reinstate all students who have been suspended or expelled. 

The NLG includes over 100+ student chapters and we stand by our student members and all students taking a principled stand in support of Palestine. 

Further Resources: 

Know Your Risks at Campus Protests Infographics

NLG Know Your Rights for Campus Protests Guide

NLG MA and CAIR MA KYR for Student Disciplinary Hearings

NLG KYR For University Faculty and Staff

NLG Palestine Solidarity Resources Guide

Support our work: nlg.org/donate 

4/23 -- www.struggle-la-lucha.org/2024/04/23/new-atrocities-revealed-at-nasser-medical-hospital-unimaginable-genocidal-crimes/

PFLP:  New atrocities revealed at Nasser Medical Hospital: unimaginable genocidal crimes

[A photo of bodies being removed April 21st.]

The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) confirmed that the revelation of new atrocities committed by the occupation at Nasser Medical Hospital are genocidal crimes that exceed imagination and fall within the framework of the zionist doctrine based on committing massacres, murder, destruction, and displacement.

The Front considered the announcement of the discovery of hundreds of martyrs’ bodies in mass graves, executed in cold blood by the occupation inside the Nasser Medical Complex in southern Gaza Strip, and the documented evidence of organ theft from some bodies and the presence of headless bodies, as a reaffirmation that this occupation indulges its appetite for killing and satisfying its vengeance by committing the most horrific massacres and crimes unprecedented in history, under the shelter of the international community’s complicity, the absence of accountability and international trial, and in the shadow of the completely involved U.S., which is the main sponsor of genocidal crimes and has always been the basis and support for the occupation’s practices.

The Front added that the U.S. and its allies are fully responsible for these massacres and the horrific genocidal operations committed by the zionist entity against the Palestinian people, which have reached the extent of violating the sanctity of martyrs and stealing organs from their bodies, confirming that the false and shiny human rights slogans touted by the international community in response to the zionist genocidal war aim to divert attention from the reality of the ongoing battle and to conceal the extent of atrocities committed against the Palestinian people.

The Front called on the free people of the world and the solidarity movements with the Palestinian people to continue their daily activism to intensify pressure on relevant international institutions to pursue the leaders of the occupation, the U.S. and everyone involved in the aggression on Gaza, and to prosecute them as war criminals in international courts.

The Front concluded its statement affirming that the crimes and atrocities practiced by the zionist gangs with direct U.S. and Western support will not succeed in undermining the resilience of our people and their determination to continue clinging to their land and resistance, and our people will continue to play their combative role until this aggression is repelled and expelled from our land.

Source: Resistance News Network

4/14 -- www.struggle-la-lucha.org/2024/04/14/pflp-unprecedented-iranian-strikes-on-israel-signal-turning-point-in-al-aqsa-battle/

PFLP:  Unprecedented Iranian strikes on Israel signal turning point in Al-Aqsa battle

[A graphic with a map, timeline, and photo.]

Resistance News Network report from the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine.

The Iranian response to the zionist entity is a pivotal event that will establish new rules of engagement in the region.

The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine praised the Iranian Revolutionary Guard’s targeting of zionist military sites with dozens of missiles and drones in response to the entity’s aggression against the Iranian consulate in Damascus, describing the Iranian response as a significant pivotal event that will establish new rules of engagement  (https://t.me/PalestineResist/35966) in the region.

The Front confirmed that the legitimate Iranian response broke the prestige of the zionist entity, revealing its fragility and inability to defend itself or restore its deterrence power. At the same time, it confirmed the ability of the Islamic Republic of Iran and the resistance factions to deliver painful strikes to the zionist entity, deepening its internal crisis due to its inability to achieve any of its goals in eliminating the resistance in the Gaza Strip or stopping the strikes directed at it by the resistance in Lebanon, Yemen, and Iraq.

The Front explained that the rush of the American administration and its partners in Britain, France, Germany, and some of their Arab tails (https://t.me/PalestineResist/35971) in the region to use all their defensive weapons to try to protect the zionist entity from the Iranian missiles and drones confirms the involvement of these parties in the zionist crimes in the region, especially in Gaza. It also reveals that this zionist entity has suffered a strategic defeat, has become humiliated and weak, and is unable to protect itself, now imploring its allies to take on this role.

The Front concluded its statement by affirming that the unprecedented Iranian strikes, the first of their kind in history  (https://t.me/PalestineResist/35973) against the zionist entity, represent an important turning point in the battle of the Al-Aqsa Flood and in favor of the resistance factions. The repercussions of this strike will have pressing effects on the zionist entity to stop its genocidal war on the Gaza Strip after the American administration and its allies realized that any escalation in the region would lead to a regional war where their bases and interests will not be safe, nor will the zionist entity be able to defend itself after the collapse of its deterrence power and its humiliating defeat in front of the resistance in Gaza and other fronts.

The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine

Central Media Department

April 14, 2024