/leftypol/ - Leftist Politically Incorrect

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez defends decision to support military aid for Israel
"What it does do is cut off defensive Iron Dome capacities while allowing the actual bombs killing Palestinians to continue," she said. "I have long stated that I do not believe that adding to the death count of innocent victims to this war is constructive to its end. "That is a simple and clear difference of opinion that has long been established. I remain focused on cutting the flow of US munitions that are being used to perpetuate the genocide in Gaza." On Saturday, the Democratic Socialists of America, of which Ocasio-Cortez is a member, said it was crucial that lawmakers backed all-encompassing arm embargoes against Israel, including those concerning defensive weapons. “While the Congresswoman voted against the defense appropriations bill itself, voting against funding for the imperialist military-industrial complex and the Israeli genocide, we were further deeply disappointed by her clarifying statement on her position on the Iron Dome.
https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/us-alexandria-ocasio-cortez-defends-decision-support-military-aid-israel

Woman accuses NYPD of failing to protect her from Brooklyn mob in $1.25 million claim
The claim, which is a procedural step required before filing a lawsuit against the city, alleges NYPD officers ignored threats to the woman as she was set upon by the large crowd. A video that went viral after the incident shows one officer ultimately escorting her to safety as dozens of men and boys shout insults at her, threaten her with sexual assault, kick her and throw objects at her.
https://gothamist.com/news/woman-accuses-nypd-of-failing-to-protect-her-from-brooklyn-mob-in-125-million-claim
https://archive.ph/UCgVX

AFSCME rams through Philadelphia city workers contract in vote marked by low turnout
Out of approximately 9,000 eligible members, fewer than 2,400 cast ballots, marking a voter turnout of under 30 percent. The low turnout was effectively a vote of no confidence in the union, which has been actively sabotaging the struggle since the beginning.
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2025/07/22/sjcp-j22.html

Man accused of setting fire to 11 NYPD vehicles is arrested and charged with arson
Jakhi McCray, 21, of Brooklyn pleaded not guilty to arson in U.S. District Court. A criminal complaint unsealed Monday said McCray was recorded on surveillance video scaling a fence to a private lot for reserve New York Police Department vehicles in Brooklyn’s Bushwick neighborhood shortly before 1 a.m. on June 12. A police officer arrived about a half hour later to find the vehicles on fire and the suspect fleeing through a hole in the fence, it said.
https://apnews.com/article/nypd-vehicles-arson-protests-be2a83077ad192c9a941ed49ecc55c5f

'Rigged System': Pro-Union Nebraska Candidate Shreds Private Equity for Jacking Up Home Prices
Independent Senate candidate Dan Osborn, a mechanic and former labor union leader, posted a lengthy thread on the social media platform X on Monday in which he discussed the role that private equity firms play in increasing the cost of housing in the United States. Osborn, who earlier this month announced he'd be running against Republican incumbent Sen. Pete Ricketts, drew a line between the lack of affordable housing and private equity firms that have gone on a buying spree of residential properties in recent years.
https://www.commondreams.org/news/dan-osborn-nebraska-housing-plan

PRWC » The US-Marcos Regime’s Continuing Violence
After three years of bloody rule, the Marcos regime is now further intensifying its fascist repression of the Filipino people. Bloodshed and increasing cases of human rights violations in the name of counterinsurgency continue. It is obsessed with destroying the Filipino people’s patriotic and democratic aspirations and struggles, and ending their revolutionary resistance. It serves the interests of foreign monopoly capitalists, big comprador bourgeois, landlords, and bureaucrat capitalists. To spotlight the intensity and extent of the regime’s brutality and echo the people’s cry for justice, Ang Bayan (AB) issues this report highlighting the long trail of abuses and human rights violations committed by Marcos’s armed minions in the last six months (January to June of this year). The report involves fascist personnel of the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP), the Philippine National Police (PNP), paramilitaries, and other armed agents of the reactionary state. This report is based on information AB has reported, gathered, and analyzed. Because the regime’s intensified repression made it more difficult to send reports, many cases in the countryside went unrecorded. The report also does not include many cases of human rights violations against the Moro people which have not been publicized. AB uses international standards in estimating the number of victims of evacuation and militarization, and in the number of affected children.
https://abolitionmedia.noblogs.org/20439/

The War on Communists in the Hotel Workers’ Union
The Hotel Employees and Restaurant Employees and Bartenders International Union (HERE) gathered in Milwaukee in 1947 for its largest convention in history. With over 400,000 members, HERE was the fifth-largest affiliate of the American Federation of Labor — and growing. But a majority of delegates arrived in a less-than-celebratory mood, seeking to ban the Communists who had been so central to the union’s successes from the organization altogether. Before the vote on a constitutional anti-communist clause, newly elected HERE president Hugo Ernst spoke against the “drastic” motion. He praised “the officers of Local 6 for the splendid work they have done in the hotels in New York, which we tried unsuccessfully to organize a good many years ago.” He attributed their success not to their being Communists (“probably in spite of that”) and lamented that had they refrained “from using their official position for other than trade union principles, probably we would not be confronted with this issue that is before us now.” Dedicating union staff and funds to Communist Party (CP) front activities far afield from contract enforcement was the most salient complaint that opponents had been lodging. But the proposed amendment was carried amid boos while a number of delegates paraded around the convention hall waving American flags and singing “God Bless America.” Communist influence in the American Federation of Labor (AFL)’s Hotel & Restaurant Employees, though, didn’t end with a purge like it would in the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) a year later. In the end, the split was more of a family feud that kept a faction of former party influentials in power, continuing to lead a progressive union that fought for civil rights, socialized medicine, and good union contracts for decades to follow. Today with a growing socialist movement committed to a “rank-and-file” union strategy, New York’s hotel workers provide a lesson in how to gain — and lose — socialist influence within the labor movement.
https://jacobin.com/2025/07/hotel-workers-nyc-communists-purge

Short overview on the process of militarisation in the UK
This summary was written for an internationalist summer camp in France in August 2025, comments welcome. Hopefully we will see the development of a working class anti-militarism, as expressed by small groups of workers in Munich or Grenoble. We encourage fellow workers to engage in a collective analysis of the impact that the current drive for militarism has in their sectors. Since Trump’s tariff war, the UK state is even more desperate to secure its crumbling economic base by showing off as a minor military partner, both to the EU, when it concerns Ukraine, and to the US, when it concerns the Middle-East. The focus of the latter was to obtain a favourable trade agreement by submission. *** Current military involvement: In Ukraine, the Starmer government continues the previous Tory government’s hawkish stand. Shortly after the war started, Boris Johnson, as an unofficial representative of the UK, put pressure on Zelensky ‘not to give in’ and, as the UK is one of the main financial supporters of Ukraine, significantly undermined the peace talks. Starmer was one of the first European statesmen to announce the possibility of deploying troops of a ‘coalition of the willing’ in Ukraine in future, while the UK military continues to train Ukrainian personnel. The UK pushes for a NATO revival, while the EU is debating its own standing army. There are also separate defence agreements between UK and Germany in the making and current negotiations between the UK and France on nuclear cooperation – and how ‘to defend the common borders against migrants’. In the Middle East, the UK army under Sunak took part in the US bombardment of Houthi positions in January 2024 in ‘self-defence’. Under Starmer’s leadership, the UK has continued spy flights for Israel, allowed the US military to operate through its Cyprus airbase, and launched fighter jets in support of Israel during Iran’s recent strikes. (as a footnote: The Starmer leadership used the ‘fidelity’ to Israel and Corbyn’s ‘outdated pacifism’ to purge the party of its left fringe – this partly explains the particularly aggressive tone of the government’s militarism.)
https://www.angryworkers.org/2025/07/16/short-overview-on-the-process-of-militarisation-in-the-uk/