/leftypol/ - Leftist Politically Incorrect

Deal to restructure Puerto Rico power company debt crumbles as some bondholders walk away
On Monday, bondholder groups that had opposed the board’s proposals filed a document noting that BlackRock and others were joining them in a deal that would become effective on Oct. 1. The enlarged group now holds or insures nearly 90% of outstanding bonds issued by Puerto Rico’s power company, according to a court filing. Experts have said the dismissal of almost the entire board could lead to the appointment of new members who might be favorable to hedge funds seeking full repayment.
https://apnews.com/article/puerto-rico-power-company-debt-board-blackrock-620450990cfc0f867a5332894272bf6c

1,400 school workers strike Evergreen Public Schools in Washington state
On Tuesday, August 26, more than 1,400 classified staff in the Evergreen Public Schools in Vancouver, Washington, walked out, launching the first strike in the district’s history. The strike by members of the Public School Employees of Washington (PSE SEIU Local 1948) forced the district to postpone the start of the 2025–26 school year until September 2.
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2025/08/30/hppd-a30.html

California lawmakers reach deal with Uber, Lyft that would allow drivers to unionize
The agreement includes a bill for collective bargaining backed by the Service Employees International Union along with a measure sponsored by Uber and Lyft that would significantly reduce the companies’ insurance requirements for accidents caused by underinsured drivers.
https://apnews.com/article/uber-lyft-drivers-union-gig-worker-california-transportation-74ea0034d3b1d7211e4a0fbc43e98ebf

Mother of boy, 15, held at gunpoint by US immigration agents files $1m claim
The teenager, a US citizen with disabilities, was in a vehicle with his mother outside Arleta high school in Los Angeles on 11 August when masked immigration agents surrounded them and pulled them from the vehicle. They said the boy was a suspect in a crime, and handcuffed him for several minutes until they realized they had the wrong person, the Los Angeles Times reported. His mother told NBC4 that the agent told her son they had confused him with someone else, but to “look at the bright side: you’re gonna have an exciting story to tell your friends when you go back to school”.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/aug/29/immigration-agents-los-angeles-detention-damages-claim

3 Texas workers killed by toxic gas at sewer plant
Three workers were killed Wednesday after being exposed to toxic hydrogen sulfide gas at the Westwood Shores sewer plant near Trinity, Texas. Hydrogen sulfide, produced by the decay of organic matter, is a well-known hazard in sewers, sewage treatment facilities, food processing plants, ranches and landfills, as well as in certain industrial processes.
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2025/08/30/hppd-a30.html

Social Security whistleblower who claims DOGE mishandled Americans’ sensitive data resigns from post
In a letter to SSA Commissioner Frank Bisignano, Borges claimed that since filing the complaint, the agency’s actions make his duties “impossible to perform legally and ethically” and have caused him “physical, mental and emotional distress.” “After reporting internally to management and externally to regulators, serious data and security and integrity concerns impacting our citizens’ most sensitive personal data, I have suffered exclusion, isolation, internal strife, and a culture of fear, creating a hostile work environment and making work conditions intolerable,” Borges added.
https://apnews.com/article/social-security-whistleblower-doge-resigns-data-misuse-f699b258fdf9e37a4a90ab62d492af94

Missouri's governor calls special session to redraw congressional maps in push to boost GOP seats
Missouri Gov. Mike Kehoe announced Friday that he will convene the state’s General Assembly for a special session next week to redraw congressional maps as Republicans push to create more GOP-leaning districts ahead of the 2026 midterms. Kehoe said in a statement outlining the move that for the special session starting Wednesday he is directing the state’s Republican-controlled Legislature to “take action on redistricting” to ensure districts “truly put Missouri values first.”
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2026-election/missouri-governor-special-session-redistricting-congressional-maps-gop-rcna228130

Chicago mayor signs order with blueprint for fighting a potential Trump crackdown
Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson signed an executive order Saturday aimed at curbing the power of federal law enforcement officers and National Guard troops that he said President Donald Trump has threatened to deploy to Illinois. “We find ourselves in a position where we must take immediate, drastic action to protect our people from federal overreach,” Johnson, a Democrat, said in a press conference.
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/politics-news/chicago-mayor-signs-order-blueprint-fighting-potential-trump-crackdown-rcna228212

Pro-Palestine protester splatters paint all over NY Times editor’s home
Besides smearing red paint on the walls and steps, the vandal or vandals wrote “Joe Kahn Lies, Gaza Dies” in black marker on the sidewalk in front of the front door. Building residents called police after the vandalism was discovered a few hours later. No arrests have been made.
https://www.nydailynews.com/2025/08/29/ny-times-joseph-kahn-home-vandalized-gaza-red-paint/
https://archive.ph/sUug8

Legal Aid Society calls for investigation into NYPD’s use of facial recognition technology
In a letter sent this week, the Legal Aid Society asked the NYPD’s Office of the Inspector General, a division of the city’s Department of Investigation, to look into instances in which the police department has allegedly violated its own policies on how to use the technology. The NYPD has employed facial recognition technology for years, despite protests from advocates and experts who question its reliability and its potential to lead to biased results and increased profiling. The Innocence Project cited six cases in which Black people were misidentified and falsely accused of crimes by facial recognition technology. Growing concerns over the technology’s usage led the City Council to pass new standards on how police should be using the technology.
https://gothamist.com/news/legal-aid-society-calls-for-investigation-into-nypds-use-of-facial-recognition-technology
https://archive.ph/TvupW

The struggle for democratic change is linked with winning lasting peace in Iran: Payam Solhtalab talks to GAWAIN LITTLE, general secretary of Codir, about the connection between the struggle for peace, against banking and economic sanctions, and the threat of a further military attack by the US/Israel axis on Iran
What is the role of the US sanctions regime in this situation?: US sanctions have undoubtedly played a massive role in deepening the plight of the Iranian people, as the country’s economy has already been hollowed out by a parasitic financial and mercantile elite and three decades of unrestrained neoliberalism. This top echelon, whose interests are safeguarded by the regime in a relationship of mutual dependency, has made Iran’s weak and corruption-riddled economy even more vulnerable — essentially rendering it easy prey to crippling US sanctions. The main impact of this has been felt by working-class Iranians.
https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/struggle-democratic-change-linked-winning-lasting-peace-iran

Camila Azeñas of the Communist Youth of Bolivia: Preliminary Analysis of the General Elections in Bolivia
The general elections in Bolivia, held on August 17, have yielded a result that traditional political science and superficial analysis attribute exclusively to the internal fracture of the Movement Towards Socialism (MAS-IPSP). According to their conclusions, the struggle between the factions led by Evo (without a presidential candidacy, who officially campaigned for the null vote and achieved 19.78%, from which 5% average null vote from recent elections must be substracted), Arce (the current president, represented in the elections by Eduardo Del Castillo, his ex-Minister of Government with 3.17%), and Andrónico Rodríguez with 8.51% (current president of the Chamber of Deputies) would have divided the pro-government vote, allowing the victory of an 'outsider'. However, this explanation is insufficient because it mystifies the underlying class reality. The triumph of Rodrigo Paz and Edman Lara with the Christian Democratic Party (PDC) is not a conjunctural accident, but rather the result of the structural convergence between the exhaustion of social-democratic reformism, which ideologically disarmed the working class, and the rise of a new conservative power block, articulated around a national-religious, anti-statist (but not anti-capitalist) and right-wing populist discourse, which knew how to capitalize on discontent and offer an illusory salvation within the frameworks of capital.
https://www.idcommunism.com/2025/08/preliminary-analysis-of-general-elections-in-bolivia.html

What Is To Be Done? by Vladimir Lenin ch.1 Dogmatism And “Freedom of Criticism”
A. What Does “Freedom of Criticism” Mean?
“Freedom of criticism” is undoubtedly the most fashionable slogan at the present time, and the one most frequently employed in the controversies between socialists and democrats in all countries. At first sight, nothing would appear to be more strange than the solemn appeals to freedom of criticism made by one of the parties to the dispute. Have voices been raised in the advanced parties against the constitutional law of the majority of European countries which guarantees freedom to science and scientific investigation? “Something must be wrong here,” will be the comment of the onlooker who has heard this fashionable slogan repeated at every turn but has not yet penetrated the essence of the disagreement among the disputants; evidently this slogan is one of the conventional phrases which, like nicknames, become legitimised by use, and become almost generic terms.” In fact, it is no secret for anyone that two trends have taken form in present-day international Social-Democracy. The conflict between these trends now flares up in a bright flame and now dies down and smoulders under the ashes of imposing “truce resolutions”. The essence of the “new” trend, which adopts a “critical” attitude towards “obsolete dogmatic” Marxism, has been clearly enough presented by Bernstein and demonstrated by Millerand. Social-Democracy must change from a party of social revolution into a democratic party of social reforms. Bernstein has surrounded this political demand with a whole battery of well-attuned “new” arguments and reasonings. Denied was the possibility of putting socialism on a scientific basis and of demonstrating its necessity and inevitability from the point of view of the materialist conception of history. Denied was the fact of growing impoverishment, the process of proletarisation, and the intensification of capitalist contradictions; the very concept, “ultimate aim”, was declared to be unsound, and the idea of the dictatorship of the proletariat was completely rejected. Denied was the antithesis in principle between liberalism and socialism. Denied was the theory of the class struggle, on the alleged grounds that it could not be applied to a strictly democratic society governed according to the will of the majority, etc. Thus, the demand for a decisive turn from revolutionary Social-Democracy to bourgeois social-reformism was accompanied by a no less decisive turn towards bourgeois criticism of all the fundamental ideas of Marxism. In view of the fact that this criticism of Marxism has long been directed from the political platform, from university chairs, in numerous pamphlets and in a series of learned treatises, in view of the fact that the entire younger generation of the educated classes has been systematically reared for decades on this criticism, it is not surprising that the “new critical” trend in Social-Democracy should spring up, all complete, like Minerva from the head of Jove. The content of this new trend did not have to grow and take shape, it was transferred bodily from bourgeois to socialist literature. … . . . ..
https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1901/witbd/i.htm

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