Capitalist oligarchy, the UAW and the class struggle
On the eve of the UAW Constitutional Convention, American capitalism has minted its first trillionaire, SpaceX CEO Elon Musk.
•Socialist Equality Party
Latest articles
Trump’s White House cage match: A fascistic exercise in sadism and slander against the American Revolution
It would be difficult to conjure up a more grotesque expression of the collapse of American democracy and the depravity of American capitalism in its death agony.
•Barry Grey
This week in history: June 15-21
Lori Berenson show trial in Peru; Soweto uprising in South Africa; Truman signs the Universal Military Training and Service Act; German working class votes to expropriate the former monarchs.
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US government forces shutdown of Anthropic’s most powerful AI models
The export-control directive against Anthropic reveals the capitalist state asserting direct power over who may build and deploy the most advanced AI, and for what ends.
•Evan Blake
Trump, Iran announce ceasefire agreement
While the terms of the settlement remain undisclosed, this much is already clear: The Trump administration achieved none of the aims for which it went to war.
•Andre Damon
USPS workers discuss 4 deaths at Palmetto facility, privatization drive in public meeting
The USPS Workers Rank-and-File Committee meeting reviewed the four deaths at Palmetto, Steiner’s restructuring plans, the USPS safety crisis and reports from postal workers in Britain and Canada.
•our reporters
New Zealand train crash exposes inadequate safety systems
Six people were injured in the crash, which could have been avoided if Wellington’s train network was equipped with modern safety systems used in Auckland and many other parts of the world.
•Our correspondent
Manslaughter charges filed over Hong Kong’s Wang Fuk Court fire
Manslaughter charges over Hong Kong’s Wang Fuk Court inferno expose a vast corrupt system of profiteering, bid‑rigging and brutal housing conditions.
•Erik Long
The Ebola epidemic in the Congo: Nearly 1 month since the declaration of the Public Health Emergency of International Concern
Nearly one month since the declaration of a public health emergency of international concern, WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus has issued a bleak assessment of the outbreak.
•Benjamin Mateus
Australian High Court rejects Labor government’s demand for immunity for illegal detentions
The Albanese government’s extraordinary bid to block a false imprisonment case essentially sought to protect governments being sued for any illegal action.
•Mike Head
Political issues in the Karmelo Anthony murder case
Anthony’s 35-year prison sentence stands in sharp contrast to far more lenient sentences and outright acquittals given to defendants in similar “self defense” cases, namely those in which victims were political targets of the Trump administration and the far right.
•Dan Conway
Australia: Officeworks sacks hundreds of workers
The restructuring by the office supplies retailer is another demonstration of the relentless corporate drive to lower labour costs, and the complicity of governments and trade unions.
•Antony Walsh
Rich Flu: What happens when wealth becomes a plague?
In a darkly humorous and disturbing movie, a media executive approaches the high point of her career just as a mysterious illness begins to kill the world’s plutocrats.
•Erik Schreiber
Chile’s fascistic Kast government seizes student debtors’ savings accounts with aid of Boric-era laws
The legal architecture now being used to seize workers’ wages was built through the very reform that the pseudo-left sold to students as a “victory.”
•Mauricio Saavedra
ICE escalates violent enforcement operations across Detroit metro area
The Trump administration has granted ICE an expansive mandate to conduct enforcement with no meaningful constraint—no requirement to identify themselves in plainclothes operations, no obligation to notify families, no accountability for injuries caused during pursuits or arrests.
•Lawrence Porter
Join the fight for socialism! Become a Socialist Equality Party Supporter!
The Socialist Equality Party (UK) is launching an initiative to sign up hundreds of new SEP Supporters and involve them in the party’s campaigning and educational work.
•Socialist Equality Party (UK)
Education cuts provoke school strikes across England
A government beholden to big business and not social needs has seized the drop in pupil numbers to slash public services to fund its key priority, military spending.
•Tania Kent and Tom Pearce
Kenyan police kill three amid anti-Ebola facility demonstrations
Protestors are angry that they should be made to bear the risks of a deadly viral disease that has already led to the deaths of at least 138 out of 695 confirmed cases in Congo, for the benefit of Washington.
•Kipchumba Ochieng
UK: “Filton Four” Palestine Action protesters jailed as terrorists in historic attack on democratic rights
The sentencing at Woolwich Crown Court of Charlotte Head, Samuel Corner, Leona Kamio, and Fatema Rajwani marks a watershed moment in the Starmer Labour government's escalating war on democratic rights and the criminalisation of opposition to war and genocide.
•Robert Stevens
Australia: Union offers no way forward for striking ACT teachers
The strike showed strong opposition among educators to the deepening attack on public schools, where conditions are already close to impossible. But the union speakers sought to channel this anger behind plaintive appeals to the same Labor government carrying out the attack.
•Martin Scott
Mexico’s teachers march against wage and pension cuts as tens of millions are doled out on FIFA World Cup
Despite the populist guise of Morena, President Sheinbaum has cited “budgetary constraints” in prioritizing financial elites over teachers’ demands.
•Don Knowland
Reinstate Nexteer worker Antwiane Sanders immediately! An injury to one is an injury to all! Remove the company’s cops in the UAW bureaucracy!
Antwiane Sanders, a Nexteer worker with more than 10 years on the job, was fired after speaking out against the fourth tentative agreement at a UAW Local 699 roll-out meeting held on company premises.
•Statement of the Nexteer Workers Rank-and-File Committee
European Central Bank lifts interest rate amid rising inflation
The rate rise was the first since 2023 and sets the stage for other central banks to possibly follow suit.
•Nick Beams
Teachers in Türkiye to launch an indefinite protest in Ankara
Private-sector teachers in Türkiye will launch an indefinite protest in Ankara—where the NATO summit will be held in early July—to demand their social rights.
•Can Denizli
Elon Musk the world’s first trillionaire: The SpaceX IPO and the social physiognomy of oligarchy
On Friday, Elon Musk became the world's first trillionaire. A syndicate of investment banks priced SpaceX on the Nasdaq at $135 a share Thursday night. When trading opened Friday, the stock leapt to $150, climbed as much as 30 percent intraday, and closed up about 19 percent at $161, lifting the company’s market capitalization to roughly $2.1 trillion.
•Joseph Kishore
APWU webinar on post office closures diverts workers into appeals to Congress, corporate America
The APWU's 200,000 members are being directed to the very same forces that are driving the destruction of the post office.
•Tom Hall
Text of tentative agreement exposes UAW bureaucracy’s effort to betray American Axle strikers
One thousand striking American Axle parts workers are being rushed by the UAW bureaucracy into voting on a sellout tentative agreement announced on Wednesday and deliberately denied adequate time to study and understand what is in the contract.
•Kevin Reed
4 University of Michigan anti-genocide protesters plead not guilty, are released on bond in federal conspiracy frame-up
These arrests advance the drive by the Trump administration to construct a pseudo-legal framework for the criminalization of left-wing political opposition.
•Stephen St. Clair
UNITE HERE Local 11 cancels strike by 2,000 hospitality workers days before 2026 FIFA World Cup
A planned strike by 2,000 hospitality workers was called off by UNITE HERE Local 11 after the announcement of a tentative agreement. Ninety-six percent of members voted overwhelmingly for strike action.
•Joshua Rodriguez
Germany: As unions close ranks with corporations and the state, steelworkers need international unity to defend jobs
IG Metall is not fighting against the steel corporations and government, which is pouring hundreds of billions into war and rearmament while slashing social spending. It is closing ranks with the worst enemies of the steelworkers.
•Dietmar Gaisenkersting, Peter Schwarz
Bernie Sanders’ AI “sovereign wealth fund”: a public-private partnership to bail out the tech giants
Sanders’ scheme amounts to a state bailout of the AI monopolies, giving Washington a direct stake in propping up their speculative valuations while binding them to the US imperialist war machine.
•Evan Blake
Democrats counter Trump’s White House UFC spectacle with nationalist “No Kings” concert
The June 14 No Kings event aims to dissipate mass opposition to Trump by subordinating workers and youth to the Democratic Party and American nationalism.
•Jacob Crosse
San Diego County schools gutted by cuts in 2025-26, as budget deficits deepen
Every major school district in San Diego County is in deficit. The 2025-26 school year has brought mass layoffs, pay cuts and campus closures, with deeper austerity projected for years to come.
•Our reporters
India’s Cockroach Janata Party: A political safety valve aimed at diverting India’s deprived youth
While the popularity of the viral sensation and now newly-founded political movement known as the Cockroach Janata Party reflects the deep anger and frustration of India’s unemployed and student youth, the CJP will only them into a political dead-end.
•Kranti Kumara
Oligarchy: Trump and the Breakdown of American Democracy
Spanning 2015 to 2026, this volume traces Trump’s rise to power, his coup of January 6 and his second term to their source in the corporate-financial oligarchy, and advances the socialist strategy required to stop the threat of fascism.
•David North
Workers Struggles: Asia, Australia and the Pacific
South Korea: Kakao platform workers strike over low pay; India: Rural childcare workers protest in Himachal Pradesh; Sri Lanka: Duncan Estate workers continue strike over allowances and workloads; Australia: UGL contract workers extend action at Woodside’s LNG plants.
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Preventable deaths of almost 16,000 patients last year in A&E in England
The Royal College of Emergency Medicine identifies the cause as hospitals being under resourced and pushed to the brink of collapse.
•Tony Robson
Britain’s defence secretary resigns, demanding massive increase in military spending
The military and the media is demanding that Labour utilise its existing parliamentary majority to push through a vast increase in military spending, while slashing welfare and social services to pay for it.
•Robert Stevens
Lucy Worsley Investigates: The American Revolution: Is this all the BBC can offer on one of the most decisive events in world history?
Worsley’s narratives—whether on the Romanovs, the Peasants’ Revolt, or the English Civil War—consistently displace class antagonism, economic crisis, and mass political struggle, fixating on monarchs, courtiers, domestic interiors and historical cosplay.
•Paul Mitchell
Australian pseudo-left tries to head off rebellion against Labor-union sellout of Victorian teachers
The pseudo-left are trying to keep teachers within the union straitjacket as it works with the Labor government to impose a sellout deal.
•Committee for Public Education
New Zealand’s pseudo-left ISO calls for “anti-war” alliance with pro-imperialist Labour and Green parties
The group’s call to support the bourgeois opposition parties is aimed at trapping workers and youth who are moving to the left and blocking the development of a socialist anti-war movement.
•Tom Peters
UAW bureaucracy announces deal in bid to end American Axle strike
The United Auto Workers bureaucracy is rushing to end the 10-day strike to prevent American Axle workers from linking up with Nexteer, Dana and other parts workers fighting decades of UAW backed wage cuts.
•Kevin Reed
NATO’s war summit to convene in Ankara in July
The NATO gathering in Ankara will be a historic war summit. It will be driven by escalating imperialist war abroad and the suppression of the social and democratic rights of the working class at home.
•Barış Demir
Nexteer worker fired for opposing UAW sellout
The firing of Antwiane Sanders exposes the bureaucracy’s real function: policing workers on behalf of the corporations by suppressing opposition and enforcing labor discipline.
•Sheila Brehm, Jerry White
After week of escalation, Trump threatens ground invasion of Iran
The fascist president has stated at least 38 times since March, by CNN’s count, that a deal with Iran is imminent.
•Andre Damon
What the USPS Workers Rank-and-File Inquiry uncovered about Palmetto RPDC, where 4 workers have died in 2 years
In November 2025, the USPS Workers Rank-and-File Committee launched an independent inquiry into the deaths at the post office because management, federal regulators and the union bureaucracy had failed to protect workers.
•Jane Wise
Students across Chile protest criminalization of youth and education cuts
Several generations of Chilean students have passed through an educational system systematically stripped of resources, handed to profiteers and disrupted by closures and regulatory failures.
•Mauricio Saavedra
Merz’s government statement: War abroad, social counterrevolution at home
World power politics, attacks on social rights and military rearmament are Merz’s priorities ahead of the European Council meeting in Brussels in mid-June.
•Johannes Stern
Canada Post workers vote reluctantly for concessions-filled contracts as government-backed jobs massacre continues
After over two years of the CUPW leadership isolating postal workers, conniving behind the scenes with management and the government, and blocking any attempt to broaden the fight to other sections of workers confronting the same attacks, the prevailing mood among workers was that they had no option but to accept
•Daniel Berkley
Educators in US and UK support fight against Australian Education Union sellout
Teachers in the United States and Britain have sent messages of solidarity to teachers and Education Support staff in Victoria fighting a sellout union-Labor deal.
•Committee for Public Education
“Work or starve”: Trump’s SNAP cuts drive millions from food stamp rolls
Veterans, individuals experiencing homelessness, parents whose youngest child is 14 or older, and people who were in foster care at age 18 are among the groups stripped of previously held exemptions from providing documentation of work to receive SNAP benefits.
•Kate Randall
US Army Special Operations Forces conduct urban warfare exercises across Los Angeles region
The same military apparatus bombing Iran and funding genocide in Gaza now conducts combat exercises over working-class Los Angeles neighborhoods.
•Marc Wells
Far-right violence against migrants continues in Belfast
Fascist mobs used hit lists that were known to the Police Service of Northern Ireland, to target migrant homes, confirming that the PSNI allowed a pogrom to be mounted.
•Paul Bond
Workers Struggles: Europe, Middle East & Africa
One in two workers at France’s national railways walk out over pay and conditions; further protests across Iran’s cities by high school students, academics, sacked steel workers and medical students as living standards plummet due to US sanctions and savage bombardment; miners at strategic copper mine in the Congo strike over poverty pay and conditions
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Attend UK public meetings: Your Party’s collapse—Time to build the Socialist Equality Party
The Socialist Equality Party’s message to workers and students is that it is time to break out of the cycle of betrayals. Our public meetings will discuss the building of a genuine socialist and internationalist party of the working class.
•Socialist Equality Party (UK)
One million young people in UK not in education, employment or training
Six in 10 NEETs (not in education, employment or training) have never had a job—up from four in 10 in 2005
•Darren Paxton, Jordan Hammond
One-day nationwide strike in Portugal opposes right-wing labour reform
The June 3 strike was the second nationwide strike against Trabalho XXI in six months, after the December 11, 2025 strike--the first in 12 years--which paralysed the country.
•Santiago Guillen
Earthquake off southern Philippines leaves at least 46 dead
The flouting of safety standards in order to cut costs in the Philippines and in countries around the world regularly turns so-called "natural disasters" into man-made ones.
•Ben McGrath
Preface to the book: “The Ukraine War and the Fight for Socialism: The Case of Bogdan Syrotiuk”
The volume “The Ukraine War and the Fight for Socialism: The Case of Bogdan Syrotiuk” brings together for the first time the most important statements and articles on the case.
•Johannes Stern
Sri Lankan President pledges separate courts for Buddhist monks, placing them above the normal law
The Dissanayake government’s move is a further step in strengthening the Sinhala-Buddhist chauvinist state and towards autocratic rule.
•Pani Wijesiriwardena
Trump orders second day of new strikes on Iran, vowing to attack “very hard”
The United States bombed Iran for a second consecutive day Wednesday, with the US military announcing that it had begun striking “multiple targets” in Iran at 5:15 p.m. Eastern time. CBS News reported Wednesday that two US officials said the targets included ammunition depots, command-and-control nodes and warehouses.
•Andre Damon
US consumer prices jump as workers pay for American imperialism’s war on Iran
Skyrocketing energy prices are devastating the living standards of tens of millions of working people.
•Patrick Martin
FBI raids pro-Palestinian activists at University of Michigan, indicting 8 and arresting 7
The Trump administration escalated its political persecution of anti-war protesters on Wednesday, as the FBI and federal law enforcement agencies raided homes across southeast Michigan and unsealed a 63-page indictment charging eight individuals associated with pro-Palestinian activism at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor.
•Barry Grey
4 workers dead at Palmetto: The safety crisis, the privatization drive, and how postal workers can fight back
These were not simply tragic accidents but the lethal results of austerity. Preventing them requires an organized movement from below, not beholden to management, toothless regulatory agencies or corrupt union officials.
•USPS Workers Rank-and-File Committee
Trump signs $70 billion blank check for ICE and Border Patrol after Democrats enable passage
The bill funds the immigration Gestapo through the end of Trump’s term without a single restriction on its operations.
•Jacob Crosse
Hersheypark workers in Pennsylvania reject 4th tentative agreement, vote to strike
While workers have demanded strike action, the bureaucracy of the Chocolate Workers Local 464 is keeping them on the job.
•Douglas Lyons
“I would be willing to strike”: New York transit workers prepared to fight for their needs
The MTA claims there is “no money,” in the richest city in the world, for pay that keeps pace with inflation. Meanwhile, around 15 percent of the MTA’s overall budget is spent servicing debt to Wall Street firms like BlackRock and Vanguard.
•our reporters
Collapse of Franco-German fighter jet project exposes sharp tensions
The Future Combat Air System (FCAS), considered a lighthouse project of Franco-German plans to arm Europe into an independent imperialist great power capable of standing up to both the US and China, has failed spectacularly.
•Peter Schwarz
ICE abducts mother at Ann Arbor middle school
The Trump administration’s targeting of the Detroit metro area, the historic heart of the American auto industry and home to nearly a quarter million manufacturing workers, makes it clear that ICE is not engaging in narrow immigration enforcement but a terror campaign aimed at the working class as a whole.
•Anthony Callahan
Students across Chile protest criminalization of youth and education cuts
The protests were directed against Kast’s newly installed fascistic government and its across-the-board spending cuts in the public sector in service of Chilean and international capital.
•Mauricio Saavedra
Mr. Nobody Against Putin: A portrait of Russian working class life, but in the service of NATO
Under the cover of a generally humane portrayal of the impact of the Ukraine war on a beat-up working class Russian town, the film, at its core, promotes typical US-NATO anti-Putin politics.
•Andrea Peters
Washington meddles in Peruvian election with runoff too close to call
A paper-thin margin separates the two candidates as the Trump administration openly maneuvers to shape the outcome in Washington's favor.
•Francis Portocarrero
Counterpunch extols “socialism with Mexican characteristics”
As Sheinbaum's approval ratings fall amid spending cuts and deepening social crisis, Ottenberg offers a pseudo-socialist fig leaf to a government facing growing opposition from below.
•Andrea Lobo
Platner wins Democratic Senate primary in Maine
Platner’s promoters—large sections of the Democratic Party and the trade union apparatus, most avidly its so-called “progressive” wing—present him as a genuine representative of the working class. He is nothing of the sort.
•Jacob Crosse, Barry Grey
Far-right pogrom burns out immigrant families in Belfast
The family of stabbing victim Stephen Ogilvie defended “migrants who make a deeply valuable contribution to our country” and insisted, “We do not want this terrible tragedy to be used to divide people or fuel hostility.”
•Robert Stevens
An opponent of the class struggle attacks Trotsky, writes a cautionary tale of the 1926 British General Strike
This review makes clear that Trotsky’s writings are the working class’s indispensable guide to this critical historical experience.
•Thomas Scripps
Educators strike in Australian capital as public education crisis deepens
Teachers and school assistants in Canberra will join a 24-hour strike this Thursday over essentially the same issues of poor pay and deteriorating conditions that confront educators everywhere.
•Kaye Tucker
Wall Street anxiously awaits speculative SpaceX launch
The launch comes in the wake of last Friday’s sharp fall of tech and AI stocks, which sent a tremor through financial markets
•Nick Beams
Record One Nation polling underscores crisis of Australia’s two-party system
The far-right party is a temporary beneficiary of explosive social discontent that will increasingly find expression in the struggles of the working class.
•Oscar Grenfell
May 8: How the Soviet Union’s victory over the Nazis is being erased from memory
The commemorative day on May 8 in Germany is being used ever more shamelessly as an opportunity to falsify history and create the ideological conditions for the wars of the present.
•Katja Rippert
IG Metall union accepts closure of Mahle auto components plant in Neustadt an der Donau
The union is celebrating the plant closure and loss of 400 jobs as a great success, as it has achieved "a significantly improved financial safeguard." Previously, the workforce had proved that it wants to fight to preserve jobs.
•K. Nesan
Trump booed at Madison Square Garden during NBA playoffs
Thousands of basketball fans booed President Trump during his appearance at a playoff game in New York between the New York Knicks and San Antonio Spurs.
•Sandy English
Will Lehman issues open letter to UAW members and delegates on eve of Constitutional Convention
Lehman, the Mack Trucks worker waging a rank-and-file campaign for the presidency of the United Auto Workers, distributed an open letter Tuesday to a list of 300,000 UAW members maintained by the federal monitor.
•Our reporters
US railroad CSX plans to reduce human track inspections following government waiver
Automated Track Inspection, used in conjunction with human visual inspections, can be used to greatly increase railway safety. Instead, they are being used to cut jobs on behalf of profit.
•Bill Mertz
A tribute to Gordon S. Wood (1933-2026), historian of the American Revolution
In a career spanning six decades and numerous books, articles and lectures, Wood established himself as the foremost historian of the American Revolution and the Early Republic.
•Tom Mackaman, David North
DSA candidate Raman advances to Los Angeles mayoral runoff as Democrats seek new “progressive” face
The Los Angeles race lays bare the Democratic Party’s increasing reliance on the DSA to contain working class opposition to inequality, war and austerity.
•Marc Wells
The “Big Shrink”: Over half of 50 largest school districts in US facing deep cuts as war on education escalates
Behind the talk of “enrollment decline” stands a conscious ruling class drive to gut public schools and hand education over to private profit.
•Nancy Hanover
“Workers at Flint Assembly and Nexteer should stop production”: Anger mounts against UAW collusion with American Axle strikebreaking
UAW officials at GM's Flint Assembly plant are allowing the company to truck in axles from the strikebound American Axle plant (Dauch Corp.) in Three Rivers, Michigan.
•Sheila Brehm, Jerry White
An opera and an art exhibition in New York focus on Mexican artists Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera
Both avoid serious examination of the complex lives of these great artists of the 20th century.
•Fred Mazelis, Clare Hurley
Pseudo-left parties support new Danish government committed to massive war budget and tax cuts for the rich
That the decision was ultimately taken to integrate the Socialist People’s Party and Red-Green Alliance into government, or at least some form of support for it, speaks to the recognition within the ruling class that they require a political cover to proceed with their agenda.
•Jordan Shilton
Homeless Congolese man Yves Sakila killed at hands of security guards outside Dublin department store
A homeless Congolese man, Yves Sakila, resident in Ireland since childhood, was killed last month in Henry Street, Dublin. He had been chased and forced to the pavement by private security guards of Arnotts department store.
•Steve James
The way forward for resident doctors: Unite all NHS workers against Starmer government
The BMA and other health unions—Unite, Unison, the GMB and the Royal College of Nursing—are suffocating a unified fightback by National Health Service workers.
•NHS FightBack
Israel bombs Iran on the 100th day of the US-Israeli war as fighting spreads across Lebanon and Gaza
Israel bombed Central and Western Iran before dawn Monday, striking air defenses, missile launchers and a petrochemical complex used by the Revolutionary Guard, hours after Iran fired a barrage of ballistic missiles at Israeli cities.
•Andre Damon
Workers Struggles: The Americas
A nationwide strike by Mexican teachers continues, while an eight-week strike by thousands of Nova Scotia care home workers has been suspended by the union ahead of a contract vote.
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Debate blocked at Australian Education Union “briefing” on sellout deal in Victoria
At an AEU meeting, officials declared out of order a resolution opposing their agreement with the state Labor government.
•Our correspondent
Fired “60 Minutes” journalist reveals pro-Trump censorship at CBS News
In a lengthy interview with the New York Times, Scott Pelley details the demands by newly installed corporate bosses for a pro-Trump slant in coverage.
•Patrick Martin
Gordon S. Wood, 1933-2026: Leading historian of the American Revolution
Gordon S. Wood, 92, a leading historian of the American Revolution, died Sunday after being struck by a car. His career spanned more than half a century, most of it at Brown University, where he trained generations of early Americanists and helped shape modern interpretation of the Revolutionary era.
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3 women dead in 25 days: Social murder in Michigan prisons
Four women have died in seven months at Michigan’s only women’s prison, where toxic mold, privatized medical neglect and bipartisan austerity have created deadly conditions.
•Stephen St. Clair
Prominent New Zealand entertainer Lynda Topp denounces government’s military budget
The speech by one of the country’s foremost entertainers fiercely denounced government cuts to the arts budget amid soaring military spending.
•John Braddock
As its contract expires, the Detroit Federation of Teachers hands its podium to the school superintendent
The DFT invited the school superintendent to the union meeting in order to stump for a millage vote, endorsing Proposal S, which will fall on Detroit renters to pay.
•Phyllis Steele
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