Statement of the Tudeh Party of Iran: Widespread popular protests are a renewed beginning for challenging religious–capitalist despotism and for liberating the homeland from deprivation, poverty, corruption, and the anti-people rule of the Islamic Republic!Dear compatriots,
The political system ruling our homeland—namely the absolute guardianship of Ali Khamenei—is irreformable. Relying on extensive military and security structures, this government has openly and violently violated the people’s rights and authority to determine their own destiny. Without moving beyond this regime of religious despotism and big-capital rule, there can be no hope for improving current conditions, easing economic pressures, reducing poverty and deprivation, resolving electricity and water shortages, or ending the violent and bloody wave of repression against freedoms and democratic rights. This dictatorship has not only dragged Iran and its society to the brink of collapse and destruction, but has also exposed the country to the serious and repeated danger of foreign intervention and the replacement of the current despotism with another decayed form of tyranny—one dominated by servants of U.S. imperialism and the genocidal Israeli government. The experience of popular protests over the past decade—especially the January 2018 protests, the November 2019 protests, and the great “Woman, Life, Freedom” uprising in autumn 2022—demonstrates that without efforts to organize a general and nationwide strike and halt the daily functioning of the Islamic Republic, it is impossible to create the objective and effective conditions for moving beyond it.
https://www.tudehpartyiran.org/en/2025/12/30/statement-of-the-tudeh-party-of-iran-widespread-popular-protests-are-a-renewed-beginning-for-challenging-religious-capitalist-despotism-and-for-liberating-the-homeland-from-deprivation-pover/Outputs and outcomes of the last several months. New Year's summary of the social war in Ukraine 2025The development and continuation of our media depends solely on its audience. Please support our work on this fundraising page to continue enjoying materials like this one. Many thanks to the Olga Taratuta Solidarity Initiative and everyone else involved!
Already the fifth and largest conflict with the territorial recruitment centers (TRCs) in Odessa for the week happened in the early hours of October 30 at the "7th Kilometer" industrial market. A crowd of warehouse workers overturned their bus, broke its windows, and physically injured an enlistment group, forcing them out of the market. The regional TRC also claimed that protesters used batons and pepper spray. According to the market's deputy director, Irina Tkach, their entrepreneurs and staff were not among these loaders. An asphalt plant, supermarkets, and post branches are also located nearby. There are more people working there than at the market. The Security Service of Ukraine has opened a criminal case on obstructing mobilization activities; the defendants face 5 to 15 years in prison. It could have been the most militant labor protest in Ukraine since Independence Day 1998, when striking coal miners clashed with riot police in front of the Lugansk Regional State Administration. And two months have passed since then. There's still no word of any repression in this case, though an investigation is ongoing. It seems the state Moloch still fears the united working masses. Things are much more difficult for those who risk fighting a gang of torturers alone.
https://libcom.org/article/outputs-and-outcomes-last-several-months-new-years-summary-social-war-ukraine-2025Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson Is Caught in a TrapWhen labor activist Brandon Johnson upset Paul Vallas in Chicago’s 2023 runoff mayoral election, the Left had good cause for optimism. One of their own, a former Chicago Teachers Union (CTU) activist, had just won the highest elected office in the third largest city in the United States. And, even better, he did so with an explicit commitment to pursuing a racial and economic justice platform. After the Sanders 2020 campaign, it was a much-needed glimmer of hope for the American left. And for a time it seemed that the hard work of local activists had finally paid off. Johnson’s victory was made possible by support from the United Working Families Party, founded as a coalition between the CTU and Service Employees International Union Health Care Indiana Illinois and now including a range of other progressive unions, along with the impressive get-out-the-vote efforts of community-based organizations. While Johnson’s assembly of a traditional electoral coalition of blacks, Latinos, and lakefront white liberals was certainly formidable, it would be the governing coalition that would determine whether or not he could fulfill his social democratic agenda. Inevitably, this would mean working with real estate developers and the corporate class writ large to feed the growth machine with financial incentives and corporate subsidies. This conundrum was hardly unique to Chicago. Brandon Johnson, like all progressive mayors, is caught in this contradiction of urban governance in America; he cannot govern without accommodating the financial, insurance, and real estate (FIRE) sectors. But he cannot accommodate the FIRE sectors and build “the safest, most affordable big city in America.” Examining the challenges confronting Brandon Johnson can help to anticipate the kind of governing constraints that Mayor Zohran Mamdani, who lacks the benefit of an activated institutional base such as the CTU, will soon face from the much more powerful FIRE sectors in New York. If Chicago was a battle, then New York will be nothing less than a full-scale war.
https://jacobin.com/2025/12/municipal-politics-chicago-johnson-housingWhy Sudan's war risks becoming a permanent political system in 2026Sudan approaches 2026 carrying the weight of a war that no longer shocks the outside world and has begun to settle into daily life inside the country. Since April 2023, fighting between the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) has hollowed out cities, emptied neighbourhoods, and displaced more than 14 million people. Famine is no longer a forecast but a lived reality in parts of Darfur, Kordofan and central Sudan. Attacks on civilians and the obstruction of aid have become grimly routine, while health systems have collapsed and schools remain closed. What makes this moment especially dangerous is not only the absence of peace talks that work, but the growing sense that the war is learning how to endure. Markets, armed groups and survival strategies are reorganising around violence rather than waiting for its end. Ceasefires, sanctions and diplomatic timelines increasingly function as mechanisms for managing collapse rather than reversing it. With 2026 approaching, the question is no longer whether another round of negotiations will be announced - after nearly 1,000 days, the war has outlived diplomacy. The more urgent issue is whether it is quietly hardening into a permanent way of governing territory, resources and people.
https://www.middleeasteye.net/opinion/why-sudans-war-risks-becoming-permanent-political-system-2026