🧵Last week ICE carried out a police state raid in Dearborn, MI arresting my Palestinian client & refusing to let me speak w/ them for 5 days.

This was a high level decision to intimidate & block opposition to US support for Israeli war crimes.

Here's what happened, pls share: ICE agents staked out home for many hrs, intimidating neighborhood. When the individual left home, ICE followed & carried out high-visibility arrest w > half dozen vehicles & many agents. Such ops are not conducted on whim of local officers, but are directed from DHS HQ in DC. 2/

🧵What is happing in DSA?

Since 2015, DSA promoted itself as largest socialist org in US. Now:

📍Membership collapsing
📍>$1 million budget deficit
📍Chapters "dissolving entirely" & members "burned out"
📍Convo voted to remain Dem faction

Here's what all socialists must know: The membership totals are collapsing:

▪️Last yr DSA ran campaign for 100k. Now they say they have only 22k who pay monthly dues

▪️Report to convo says “we will spend over $1.6 million more than we will raise, which puts us on track to deplete most of our current savings.”

2/

DSA efforts to block interest in socialism & prop-up Dems continue. Leaders of DSA met w/ Dem officials & here's a 🧵on what they said:

"We’re not going to have a third party of the left. We’re not going to have a socialist party in the United States.” 1/
wsws.org/en/articles/20… The interview, published in Socialist Forum, featured DSA member Daraka Larimore-Hall, who is currently Vice Chair of the CA Democratic Party (2nd from left). The above quote is from him. Also featured David Duhalde, Kristian Hernandez & Richard Flacks. It was a Dem love fest.
2/

Shostakovich's Leningrad Symphony was performed in that city on Aug. 9, 1942, the date by which Hitler had proclaimed the city's downfall.

That day, the Red Army launched a diversionary attack to stop German artillery so the performance could be heard. 1/
wsws.org/en/articles/20… "That evening, as the orchestral players tuned up and the audience filed into the auditorium, the Red Army pounded the enemy w/ 3,000 high-caliber shells to draw fire away form the concert hall. "We played our instrument in the symphony too, you know," said one general. 2/

🧵8 of the 9 people who "liked" this tweet (not many!) are Dems/UAW officials. No wonder they "can't imagine voting for Lehman," since he represents the rank-&-file!

They're nervous about the support Will is winning from all over the US running as a socialist for UAW president! 1/8: Ash Tomaszewski is/was a law clerk for a Democratic United States Senator and sits on the bargaining committee of the Harvard UAW.

2/8: Lisa Xu is/was a UAW official who was paid $55k by the UAW in 2019 according to federal filings.

As the Dems establish they are unified for escalating the war against Russia, & as Trump-backed fascists threaten to take congress, it's a good time to remember that Trump likely won in 2016 in part bc of the devastating impact of the wars in Iraq/Afgh.

wsws.org/en/articles/20…

Speaking of “throwing the anti-war movement under the bus,” last yr @briebriejoy called WSWS "bad faith" for exposing @AOC's defense of Biden & pro-war Dem Party. Gray *specifically* attacked WSWS for criticizing AOC's support for war... 1/3

https://twitter.com/briebriejoy/status/1585074266277842944

Gray said "the most bad faith part of Eric London's article" was its opposition to AOC's attack on "class essentialists" who "deprioritize human rights" (i.e. opponents of "humanitarian" justification for war). Gray then attacked WSWS on Rising & defended AOC/progressives. 2/3

On Monday, "progressives" including @AOC & @DemSocialists members of congress call for negotiations w/ Russia & warn of nuclear war.

On Tues they capitulate & demand escalation. Such is the reactionary dynamic of Democratic Party politics.

WSWS responds:
wsws.org/en/articles/20… @AOC @DemSocialists 2/

When I take new asylum clients from Central America, I look up their hometown to see if there was a massacre committed by US-backed death squads.

In this way I learned of this massacre today. This is US imperialism. How dare it lecture anyone. 1/

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dos_Erres… In the early afternoon, the Kaibiles [death squad] separated out the children, and began killing them. They raped women and girls, and ripped the fetuses out of pregnant women. They bashed the smallest children's heads against walls and trees... 2/

Irish socialist James Connolly on the monarchy (1910):

The king [George V] "adds fresh fuel to the fire of hatred with which we regard the plundering institutions of which he is the representative. Let the capitalist and landlord class flock to exalt him; he is theirs..."

1/5 "...in him they see embodied the idea of caste and class; they glorify him and exalt his importance that they might familiarise the public mind with the conception of political inequality, knowing well that a people mentally poisoned by the adulation of royalty..."

2/5

Want to know why so many workers hate the Democratic Party? Exhibit A:

In Minnesota's 1st Congressional District the Democrats have just nominated Jeff Ettinger, former CEO of Hormel Foods. The 1st CD is home to Austin, the site of bitter 1985-86 strike against... Hormel. 1/ Democratic Governor Perpich deployed the national guard to attack workers. The workers own union, the UFCW, attempted to crush the strike & actually decertified the local where the strike was taking place (P-9), and told all the workers to vote for the Democrats afterwards. 2/

Another figure who exemplifies social physiognomy of trade union bureaucracy is Jacob Morrison, who brought union exec Connor Lewis onto his show to attack WSWS last week.

Morrison was a leader of the Alabama College Democrats & has never had anything to do w/ class struggle. 1/ (note flag pin!)

Morrison is essentially a Democratic staffer using trade unions for personal career advancement. In this 2018 interview, he is ID'd as "Programs Director" for the Alabama College Dems & asks listeners to donate to the AL Democrats. 2/

blogtalkradio.com/marcusechols/2…

PA State Education Ass’n official Connor Lewis has attacked the WSWS/SEP, & it’s worth looking at where this attack comes from. He is a case study in the social physiognomy of the American trade union apparatus. What is the source of the extreme hostility to the WSWS/SEP?

🧵1/ Lewis is a parasite who is enriching himself on workers dues. He first attempted to get a PhD, but soon left academia & decided to make a more lucrative career as a union bureaucrat. He started when grad students attempted to unionize at Penn St, making just $41,778 in 2017… 2/

🧵The Sri Lankan Socialist Equality Party (@SepLanka) has just rejected a request by a capitalist party that it participate in a coalition to prop-up capitalist rule & enforce IMF diktats amid insurrectionary demonstrations. #SriLanka #SriLankaCrisis

1/

wsws.org/si/articles/20… On July 5, the Samagi Jana Balawegaya (SJB) party invited the SEP to join an "all-party consensus" & the SEP responded:

"The SEP flatly rejects the invitation. At the same time, I take this open letter as an opportunity to re-explain to the working-oppressed public..."

2/

The gvm't of Ukraine has just banned another round of political parties, most of them left-wing.

One party that was *not* banned is Social Movement (Sotsialnyi Rukh). Why not? Bc this org is led by individuals w/ close ties to US intelligence agencies.🧵

wsws.org/en/articles/20… Most of Sotsialnyi Rukh’s political leadership is/was employed by the Ukrainian Center for Social and Labor Research (CSLR), which is publicly documented to have been funded over many years by the CIA's National Endowment for Democracy (NED).

2/

A 🧵on a vastly underreported element of the #January6th coup attempt involving #Alito. Last week, evidence emerged that #GinniThomas advocated for Mark Meadows bring Sidney Powell into a more prominent role in the preparations for the coup.

This is important because... 1/ On January 6, Powell filed what is called an “emergency application” to the Supreme Court on behalf of Texas Republican and Trump ally Louie Gohmert and a number of far-right state politicians. The emergency application argued that Pence was violating the constitution...

2/

So many socialists & anti-imperialists of my generation owe a big part of our radicalization to #JulianAssange. In the name of the war on terror, US launched wars based on lies killing millions. Noxious jingoism, xenophobia, the emerging police state & it was all bipartisan...
1/ He was tormented and tortured by three administrations, spied on by the CIA, separated from his children, his wife, his friends. Driven into a deep depression that is hard to fathom, rotting in a dungeon for so many years...

2/7

What do @jacobin & the CIA's National Endowment for Democracy have in common?

They both promote Volodymyr Ishchenko, pictured at Jacobin event in Berlin last week (w/ @jeremycorbyn at right). Ishchenko's work has long been funded by NED & Soros foundation.

A 🧵 w/ receipts: Ishchenko is no opponent of imperialism. In 2014, he led the Center for Social & Labor Research, which received NED grants to "monitor protests."

His CV states this work was "supported by the National Endowment for Democracy & Int'l Renaissance Foundation" (which is Soros). 2/

Jacobin is promoting Volodymyr Ishchenko, an individual whose work was funded for several years by the CIA-linked National Endowment for Democracy.

He has a byline at Jacobin but his own resume states he has been "supported by National Endowment for Democracy." 1/

https://twitter.com/jacobin/status/1491921171050237952

Here's Ishchenko's CV, which is available online. Also funded by George Soros' Open Society Foundation. 2/

A 🧵: Here's how the US government built a fake Ukrainian "resistance" funded thru the Nat'l Endowment for Democracy, Solidarity Ctr & other CIA-linked orgs, & here's why DSA members are promoting this "resistance" to justify imperialist war vs Russia.

wsws.org/en/articles/20… On 6/3, DSA member Ashley Smith published an article in @tempest_mag titled “Solidarity with the Ukrainian resistance!” Smith writes:

“Now more than ever we should build solidarity with Ukraine’s resistance and defend its right to secure arms including from the US and NATO." 2/

Today, May 9, is the day the working class of the Soviet Union defeated Hitler at the cost of 30 million lives. Thirty million—120 times more than US soldiers who died in the war.

1/ Will the NATO powers, corporate media & complacent cultural institutions stop the Russo-phobic hysteria for 24 hours to remember the incredible sacrifices and courage of the people of Russia in the fight against fascism? Of course not.

2/