On May 24, socialists and activists from across France and other countries including Germany, the Spanish State, Russia, the United States, Algeria, and more rallied at the Charenton Space in Paris to attend an internationalist rally against imperialist militarism, the international Far Right, and the genocide in Gaza. In addition to the 2,000 people who attended in person, there were another 2,000 individual connections virtually around the world.
Organized by Révolution Permanente — the sister organization of Left Voice and our international organization, the Trotskyist Fraction — the event was a collective shout of defiance against rearmament and austerity in an epoch of imperialist crisis. But it was also a call to organize internationally from below — for students, workers, and leftists to unite against the capitalist class in our own independent organizations and to join our struggles against genocide, the attacks of the bosses, xenophobia, racism, transphobia, and all forms of exploitation and oppression.
The event featured speeches by comrades in the Trotskyist Fraction who are part of the worker and student movements all over the world, who struggle side-by-side with a strategy and program to use the power of the working class from below to fight to tear capitalist up from its roots and build a socialist society organized according to social need, not profit. Speakers came from France, Russia, the United States, Argentina, Germany, and the Spanish State. The TF-FI is formed of groups in fourteen countries across the world; it organizes the international network of socialist publications that publishes in seven different languages.
Below we republish the intervention of our comrade Julia Wallace from Los Angeles. Julia is a revolutionary socialist, union militant, and founding member of Left Voice, the U.S. section of the Trotskyist Fraction – Fourth International. With over 25 years of activism, she has been at the forefront of struggles against racism, police brutality, and for the rights of immigrants, women, and LGBTQIA+ communities. Born to a teacher involved in the Black Panther Party’s Freedom Schools, Julia’s commitment to social justice was instilled early on. She is a social worker in Los Angeles and an active member of SEIU Local 721, the largest public sector union in Southern California. Within the union, she advocates for a revolutionary approach to labor organizing, challenging both oppression and bureaucratic complacency. As a leader in the Black Lives Matter movement and a vocal opponent of U.S. imperialism, Julia fights for a socialist alternative that centers the self-emancipation of the working class and the oppressed.
***
Greetings from the revolutionaries in the belly of the beast, the United States. The Far Right is attacking our democratic rights with unprecedented speed. The Trump administration wants to create a “new normal” where immigrants are deported without civil rights, where anyone who defies Trump will face retaliation, and where fear and austerity go hand in hand. Daily attacks. But many of us here and watching: we have fought the repression. We have faced jail, we still may face the charges. We have been retaliated against, tear-gassed, and beaten, and still we stand for revolution. Trump, Macron, neoliberals, and bureaucracy — we can take them on. Their power is not inevitable.
President Trump, in his second term, is much more determined to save a declining U.S. imperialism on the backs of workers. He is a billionaire capitalist who inherited wealth from his family, who invested in the Nazis. Trump is a misogynist, bigot slumlord who came to power on bigotry, anti-science, and fear, with the aid of an undemocratic electoral system itself rooted in slavery.
Trump’s strongest weapon is the oldest one of the capitalists: “divide and conquer” the working class and oppressed.
Trump and the Republican victory have immigrants as their targets. Immigration agents called “ICE” conduct terrifying raids. They knock down people’s doors, bust their car windows, and even pretend to be children’s parents in order to take them from school. Immigrants with tattoos are being sent to Guantánamo Prison with no due process. We fight for them all because the workers’ struggle has no borders. No one is illegal.
Under Trump and the Republicans, Mexican, Haitian, and Venezuelan immigrants have all been sent to El Salvador, to a notoriously repressive prison, the Terrorism Confinement Center. Even public officials have been targeted, like the mayor of Newark, New Jersey, Ras Baraka, a Democrat who, during a publicized visit to an immigration detention center, was aggressively arrested by police. Trump is attacking social services, trans rights, and the right to unionize.
Trump seeks to consolidate executive powers, openly defying the already-undemocratic institutions of the state.
Conversely, Trump freed the far-right activists who stormed the Capitol. While the Trump administration funds the continued genocide in Palestine and is bombing Yemen, it is also continuing Biden’s brutality, threatening students and faculty alike by brutally repressing encampments protesting in solidarity with Palestine. Trump is attempting to cut funding to universities that dare defy him. Columbia University union president Grant Miner has even been detained, expelled from the university. Mahmoud Khalil, a leader of the pro-Palestinian movement and a student at Columbia University, is still detained and threatened with deportation.
Trump does not pretend to be neutral. He is an open representative of the capitalist class. His administration ushers billionaires into the state, like his friend Elon Musk, who gave the Nazi salute, and union buster Jeff Bezos. Like many far-right politicians, Trump was able to turn the disgust with neoliberalism and chauvinism into an electoral victory.
In the face of a bombardment of attacks, there is resistance to Trump and the Far Right.
Protests, some in the tens of thousands, marches, students walking out from secondary school, continued protests for Palestine, and town hall disruptions have revitalized May 1 as a day of protest for workers and immigrant rights. Community organizations have swarmed immigration raids, stopping deportations. Nazis attempted a protest in Ohio — an armed Black community sent them running for their lives, cowering behind the police. There’s even been opposition from former Trump supporters. This marks the beginning of a resistance with different aspects and sectors of the population against Trump. Trump has lost legitimacy, which has led him to slow down. For example, Trump rescinded the visa-termination orders of 1,500 student immigrants. With Trump’s initial threats, he has been forced to somewhat retreat, but the fight continues.
But there is a risk, comrades. Democrats like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (AOC) and Bernie Sanders are attempting to co-opt the resistance; they organized ironically named “Fight Oligarchy” rallies with tens of thousands of people in attendance. They even mildly criticized the Democrats for not fighting Trump enough.
Both AOC and Sanders voted for more money toward the genocide in Palestine. Sanders said he would “work with” Trump to further militarize the U.S.-Mexico border, the deadliest border in the world according to human rights groups. Sanders and AOC assisted in breaking the potential railroad strike of December 2023, which had the potential to shut down the national supply line. A couple of months ago, Sanders voted to confirm Marco Rubio, a far-right, warmongering politician. How can you “fight oligarchy” when you promise to “work with” the oligarchy?
Furthermore, the Democrats paved the way for Trump’s policies. From the “deporter in chief,” President Obama, who deported more immigrants than any other president in U.S. history, to the last president, Genocide Joe, the Democrats presided over the worst genocide in recent history. We, as socialist revolutionaries, cannot legitimate capitalist parties. Republicans and Democrats work to undermine the independent political organization of the working class.
Both the Democrats and Republicans are the party of imperialism, capitalists, landlords, and cops. There is no lesser evil among our class enemies.
Class collaboration is working-class submission. We can’t be in the same political party as Jeff Bezos or Hillary Clinton and expect to have our interests represented. We need a working-class party that fights for socialism, that fights every injustice that the oppressed face with the methods of the working class, led by the working class.
The leadership of the unions, like UAW president Shawn Fain, called Trump a “scab” who is a sellout to the workers. Six months later, Fain said he supports the tariffs and will work with Trump. Fain and Teamsters president Sean O’Brien share the reactionary illusion that tariffs are somehow going to create jobs and improve the lives of workers in the U.S. But tariffs only serve the interests of the bourgeoisie, as does “free” trade. They seek to align the U.S. working class with its national class enemies. Like World War I and II, the race toward chauvinism can only lead to international destruction. The union bureaucracy, even when it is combative, does not believe in the power of the working class to run society.
The revolutionary Left must be the strongest opposition to any attempts at economic imperialist control. We cannot politically capitulate to any national bourgeoisie, even those with strong rhetoric against Trump, such as President Sheinbaum in Mexico. From Ukraine to Russia to China, our allegiance is with the working class and to opposing any efforts toward militarization in Europe and around the world.
Last month, my union, SEIU Local 721, a multiracial union of majority women, social workers, sanitation workers, and nurses, went on strike with 55,000 workers, inspiring the city and the country. Our dues money helped elect the same Democrats attacking our living standards, which is why we say the rank and file must break our union from the capitalist parties.
Conversely, the leadership of the DSA, the Democratic Socialists of America, the largest self-proclaimed socialist group in the U.S., claims the red banner of socialism and is calling for those dissatisfied with the Democrats to join them. We cannot reform our exploitation; we must combat it until the end.
There is only one solution: working-class revolution!
The Trotskyist Fraction has put forward electoral campaigns with a clear class-independent revolutionary program, like that of our comrade Myriam Bregman and here in France. As Left Voice, we aim to contribute to the emergence of a revolutionary party with our comrades of the TF, fighting against racism, for socialist feminism, and for workers’ hegemony. This is what we write about; this is what we do.
Personally, I saw the power of revolutionary Trotskyism in Argentina when I visited the worker-controlled factory Zanon in Neuquén 15 years ago this year. While I was there, the union bureaucracy assassinated socialist youth Mariano Ferreyra from the Partido Obrero in broad daylight. Among the nationwide demonstrations against his murder was the subway system strike in Buenos Aires, led by the PTS, which is in the leadership of that union. As someone who spent many years protesting the murder of Black and Brown youth, I had never seen a political strike. This convinced me that this was a political organization that needed to develop in the United States and around the world.
Left Voice, which reached its 10-year anniversary this year, is organic to the movement resisting Trump and the struggles against racism, sexism, and for unionization put forward by Generation U, like at Amazon. We are fighting in the struggle against the genocide. Our aim is to build a revolutionary party in the heart of U.S. imperialism.
As part of the movement against the genocide, last year in California, the encampment at UCLA was attacked by Zionists under the protection of the police. The reactionaries came with pipes, mace, and explosives; their hours-long assault could not dismantle the encampment. Instead, the next day, thousands of people showed up, including union activists and community members, to defend the encampment against any violent attacks, including from the police. A week after that, there was a vote, and thousands of UAW 4811 workers went on strike across California for Palestine. It was for democratic rights and against repression.
The port strikes, like those in Oakland and Los Angeles, California, that shut down the ports during Occupy, Black Lives Matter, and for Palestine in 2024, show that the strategic position of the working class can prevent militarization and the spread of weapons around the world.
The working class in the United States can physically stop capitalism and imperialism. Imagine if it were organized around a revolutionary strategy.
From Macron in France to Trump in the United States, the Right relies on racism to divide the working class. They want us to believe that the poorest and most oppressed should be despised while they enrich themselves from our exploitation.
Racism requires workers to side with their class enemies against the oppressed. It’s also how Trump won. This is why the struggle against racism, for immigrant rights, and for Black liberation is key for the working class to take up. The multiracial, international Black Lives Matter uprising is more incendiary than a hundred burning cop cars. Black Lives Matter!
In my city, Los Angeles, every major uprising has been against the police. From the queer protests at the Black Cat bar to Watts in 1965 to Rodney King … so many more. And George Floyd, whose execution was live-streamed, led to the largest social movement in recent U.S. history. The police are despised worldwide.
It is impossible to have immense wealth while people wither in pain on the streets without a daily violent, racist, sadistic police force. The police enjoy the brutality. If we, the multiracial working class, the precarious youth, struck for Black lives as the comrades in Argentina did for Mariano Ferreyra, it would be explosive. Cops are not part of the working class; they are scabs, the attack dogs of capital.
The struggles of the international proletariat necessitate organizing Black revolutionaries around the world, and the Trotskyist Fraction takes up this fight for Black liberation. Black people are the powerhouse of the working class of the United States, from the multiracial fight for democratic rights — the civil rights movement — to the combative anti-imperialist Black revolutionary tradition. We are some of the most combative sectors of the proletariat. As Black Trotskyist historian C. L. R. James said, “The only place Black people did not revolt is in the pages of capitalist historians.” Trump is attempting to burn the pages.
And this is why, for many other reasons, and in our fight against the genocide in Palestine, we fight for and defend our comrade Anasse Kazib. We will in no way allow the state, which is so brutal and racist, to attack the people fighting for Palestine, and especially to attack our comrade. You touch one of us, you touch all of us!
The people here in this room and around the world watching, we are already standing up against the Right, and we must continue to encourage the vanguard and the masses to internationally embrace a revolutionary perspective. Continue to be brave, and as my mom, Alice, who was a Black Panther and taught in their Freedom Schools, would say of the ruling class, racists, and bigots: “Never honor their privilege.”
The heroes that came before us, like Harriet Tubman, a Black woman born only knowing slavery, took up arms and freed slaves using an abolitionist network across Canada and Mexico. At one battle at Combahee, she freed 750 slaves and burned plantations to the ground.
We come from those like Toussaint Louverture, who, in the Haitian Revolution, fought alongside thousands of Black slaves against slavery and Bonaparte’s army. It’s important for me, while I am staying in Paris, to pay homage to this revolt against colonialism and oppression and against French imperialism, which robbed Haiti of its future with a century-long crippling debt.
And it is here in Paris where the heroic Paris Commune fought the ruling class, building its own power, more democratic than any other capitalist democracy in history.
Comrades, we come from an incredible history of brave revolutionaries who did not yet see the future but knew and understood that the future had to be revolutionary and had to be socialist.
Ultimately, we fight for liberation through a socialist revolution that overthrows capitalism in the U.S. and worldwide, led by the working class. In the Trotskyist Fraction, we are poised to build an international revolutionary socialist organization, a combat party to fight to make it a reality. Like the slaves who came before us, we conspire to destroy the capitalist regimes of the world, burning the last plantation.
We fight together against the bureaucracy and reformists who attempt to link us to these capitalist parties, against the landlords who want to put us on the streets, the cops who enforce it with violent repression, the capitalists at home, and the imperialists worldwide.
And we fight all of them because, as Trotsky said, “Revolution is impossible until it is inevitable.” La revolución es permanente.
It is this historic task that I encourage us all to take up with the serious pride and joy that it necessitates.