Many, the usual types, are greeting 2025 in a mood of despondency and despair. A second Trump administration fills them fear with and anxiety. In response, they are falling back on the same old strategies and slogans that failed to defeat Trump in 2016 and failed to prevent his return in 2024. Others, not as usual, but perhaps becoming more and more common, have drawn the wrong conclusion from the ajusticiamiento of United Healthcare CEO Brian Thompson.

The American Party of Labor is proud and humbled to announce its promotion to full membership within the International Conference of Marxist-Leninist Parties and Organizations (ICMLPO). The decision was made by a unanimous vote among the delegates of over 20 member organizations from around the world at the 2024 plenary of the Conference.

Trump’s re-election is yet another step towards open barbarism and the institutionalization of a reactionary form of politics representative of the general decline of the American capitalist system. Trump’s victory opens a new period of potential violence against minorities, women, all marginalized peoples, and the working class at large, necessitating the organization of immediate resistance.

The Zionist invasion of Lebanon is a criminal war of aggression, ethnic cleansing, and genocide in the service of imperialism. This attack is a war crime that must be condemned by all the peoples of the world. Despite statements from the bourgeois ruling politicians in the U.S. that a broader regional war would be avoided, they have once again proven themselves to be genocidal liars. Just as the U.S. Government claimed they would prevent Israel from a ground invasion of Rafah, yet continued arming Israel as they bombed refugee camp after refugee camp, the U.S. imperialists will continue to send billions of dollars of aid to Israel for Zionist expansion into Lebanon. Our rulers blatantly display their own hypocrisy and their true pro-war interests when they make braggadocious proclamations as Kamala Harris did at the 2024 Democratic National Convention: “As commander in chief, I will ensure America always has the strongest, most lethal fighting force in the world.”

A little more than thirty years have passed since the so-called Cold War came to an end, and the world is experiencing a conflict-ridden moment due to the exacerbation of contradictions between the imperialist powers, who continue to fan the danger of a new world conflagration. The seriousness of the current scenario is due to the depth and breadth of the problems that arise, to the forces and factors that act on the world stage, and to the serious implications that, in the future, can increase the current problems. But, at the same time, it is a period in which there is a rise in the struggle and rebellion of the workers, youth, women, peasants, peoples, and indigenous people, who –facing the governments’ anti-popular plans– demand their rights and condemn authoritarian and warmongering policies.

We, the Latin American parties of the International Conference of Marxist-Leninist Parties and Organizations (ICMLPO), held a productive meeting in which we analyzed the economic, political and social scenarios unfolding in the region; we evaluated our revolutionary political activity in each of our countries; and, we defined our activities for the immediate future:

The inflexible struggle to defend economic and politic interests of the working class must be at the center of our work… In this work, it is becoming clear to more and more people that the capitalist-imperialist system is no longer capable of progress, that it offers no prospects – except crisis, poverty and war. This also makes it clear that we have to fight for every millimeter of positive change for the working class, that we must reinforce our Marxist-Leninist parties and organizations, in order to advance in the fight to abolish this system and replace it with a socialist society.

There has of late been a disturbing tendency in some circles calling themselves “anti-imperialists” to couch their supposed opposition to imperialism using the rhetoric and iconography of imperialism itself… The language and optics of imperialism is just that – imperialist – and the attempt to color anti-imperialism in shades of red, white, and blue is at best wrong-headed, and at worst vicious hypocrisy; ignorant, hypocritical, and perhaps a cover for something far more sinister.

Our day of solidarity and struggle, when we will test our strength to unite against the exploitation, impositions, and attacks of the international bourgeoisie and imperialism… Since the 1st of May 2023, we have raised our flags of struggle higher by growing our unity and strengthening our solidarity in our strikes and acts of resistance in almost all countries.

On Sunday, March 31, 2024, the American Party of Labor successfully concluded its Fifth General Congress. Delegates from all around the country as well as local activists gathered in a union hall in Orlando, Florida, draped in red flags with images of the Party’s grain and gear symbol, to vote on measures to improve the Party’s internal structure and external organization and to revise the Party’s guiding documents.

On April 1, Israeli warplanes bombed the Iranian Embassy in Damascus, Syria, killing seven Iranian diplomatic and military personnel. This attack was a blatant violation of Iran’s national sovereignty, and under international law constitutes an act of war. Twelve days later, Iran launched retaliatory drone strikes against Israeli targets.

The official “theme” of the UN for this year’s IWWD is titled, “Invest in Women: Accelerate Progress,” which is not only brazenly capitalistic but also shamefully ignores what is arguably the most pressing and immediate concern for women internationally at this time: the ongoing genocide of Palestinians at the hands of Israel and its imperialist allies. The UN itself has acknowledged that two-thirds of the people killed in Palestine since Oct. 7 have been women and children. The most recent reported toll of the approximately 30,000 confirmed deaths includes at least 12,660 children and 8,570 women.

The American Party of Labor calls on all members of the US military, in Bushnell’s memory, to stand up against the atrocities being committed in Palestine and around the world by refusing to be part of the imperialist war machine. To be conscientious objectors, to launch a soldier’s strike, to put down your guns, and to prevent arms shipments are the best ways to honor and respect our comrade’s pain and sacrifice.

The Resist US-Led War Movement is an international network of democratic, progressive, and anti-war organizations and individuals committed to opposing US imperialism and its ward of aggression. The Resist US-Led War Movement combats militarism and imperialist war; demands an end to Zionism, apartheid, and all forms of systemic racism; and supports the rights of all peoples to self-determination, sovereignty, and peace.

On the centenary of his death, we continue to strive for revolution and socialism in our respective countries, because today as yesterday the general crisis of the capitalist system confirms the validity of the October Revolution, Lenin, and his legacy.

The bloody conflicts all over the world re-emphasize every day the importance and urgency of raising the flags of struggle against imperialism. The working class and peoples of the world must shoulder this struggle, because the imperialists are directly attacking the working class and peoples in order to plunder the underground and above-ground riches.

Resistance against Israeli apartheid and the aggression against Palestine and the Palestinian people can only be supported. Condemning Israel and its aggression and massacres, CIPOML supports the just resistance of the Palestinian people to the end.

There is one more subject concerning firearms that we as a Party would like to address at this time: a specific quote from Karl Marx which many people within US socialist and communist circles use to justify lax gun regulations across the country. If you have been around the socialist and communist movement for some time you have probably seen or heard people use the phrase “under no pretext” in opposition to the idea of instituting regulations on the sales and purchases of firearms within the US. This slogan, “under no pretext,” which is itself not an analysis of the firearm crisis faced in the US, is a shorthand version of an excerpt from Karl Marx’s Address of the Central Committee to the Communist League, written in 1850.

Any attempt to identify a single gender dynamic from any point in the history of human societies as a universal and immutable definition of gender is a metaphysical and anti-dialectical notion, the most covert of denials to the Marxist-Leninist world outlook. As social relations continue to develop so will our understanding and conceptions of ourselves in relation to our engagement with each other and the material world. The opportunism of queer-antagonistic revisionism is an open betrayal to the working class of all backgrounds.

The United States, which has gun culture intertwined within it, is going through a turbulent period of economic instability which has led to the intensification of the alienation people experience and feel within American society. This same alienation as well as the reactionary fervor of certain segments within the American capitalist class has led to an increase and growth in far-right politics within the US. This growth in the far-right mixed with the current gun culture has led to an increase in right-wing violence, including mass shootings like the one that recently occurred in Allen, Texas.