In his State of the Union address, Obama boldly announced a three-year spending freeze starting in 2011 that will affect every area of the budget except the “Defense” budget, Veterans Administration, Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. This threatens funding for education, transportation, fiscal aid to state governments, housing and food assistance, all kinds of regulatory agencies and many other as yet unknown essential social programs.

A new movement of students and education workers has erupted in response to the vicious budget cuts raining down on public education in state after state. The media coverage of March 4th actions across the country – and particularly in California, the epicenter of the new movement – was extensive. But this was by no means a spontaneous outburst of resistance. The protests were organized by student and public sector union activists who are on the front lines of this growing movement.

Howard Zinn, historian, professor and left-wing activist, died on January 27th at the age of 87. Best known for his book “A People’s History of the United States”, Zinn and his many other historical and dramatic writings were gaining in popularity at the time of his death.

On Martin Luther King Day, January 18, in Chicago, over 200 people came to a march initiated by Public Workers Unite! to protest against cuts to public services, demanding “Not on our backs! Fund public services, not the wars! Tax the rich, not working people! Money for jobs, not bankers!”

If there was any shred of doubt left as to the Democrats’ complicity in carrying out the brutal occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan, Obama’s December announcement of deploying 30,000 more troops to Afghanistan erased that doubt for good, making their role startlingly obvious for all to see.

On January 23, over 100 United Auto Workers (UAW) activists and union oppositionists gathered in Detroit to discuss how to build on the momentum produced by the national contract rejection by Ford workers last November. This was the first time in history that UAW members in the Big Three automakers have voted against a contract endorsed by the UAW leadership.

Stung by the shock defeat in the Massachusetts special Senate election, President Obama had proclaimed that he was prepared to curb the major banks and Wall Street. He referred to the bonuses in Wall Street –amounting to over $150 billion as “obscene.” “If these folks want a fight, it’s a fight I am willing to have... Never again will the American taxpayer be held hostage by a bank that is too big to fail,” he said.

For bankers, the new year started the way it usually does: with massive, unjustifiable bonuses. The numbers are staggering on their own, but the situation becomes infuriating when you consider the state of the economy. Bonuses given out by major banks and securities firms for 2009 were reported to be a record-setting $145 billion, up 18% from 2008 (Wall Street Journal, 1/14/10).

International Women’s Day (IWD) was founded in 1910 in order to confront the great inequalities women faced in the labor force and society as a whole. Unfortunately, one hundred years later, women still make up a majority of the world’s poor.

A century ago, socialist women established International Women’s Day (IWD) as a way to reach out to working-class women. At the Second International Congress of Socialist Women in 1910, Clara Zetkin, chair and delegate from the German Social Democratic Party, proposed IWD as a day to campaign for economic and political equality for women. The very next year, on March 19, 1911, one million women and men in four European countries took part in the first IWD events organized around the slogan, “The vote for women will unite our strength in the struggle for socialism.”

Following modern history’s only successful slave revolution, the U.S. government refused to recognize Haiti upon its 1804 declaration of independence. This reflects the intense hostility of the U.S. (and the other big powers) to the Haitian Revolution and the mortal fear of its revolt spreading to slaves in the U.S and throughout the Americas. the United States did not recognize Haiti’s independence until 1863, in the midst of the Civil War.

A month after the catastrophic 7.0 magnitude earthquake in Haiti, over 230,000 people are now estimated dead. Another 300,000 have been injured and 460,000 people are living in makeshift camps in Port-au-Prince. Food aid has been extremely slow to arrive, and desperate Haitians carry signs pleading for assistance: “Help us, we’re starving,” (Associated Press, 2/12/10). A million people are now estimated homeless.

Socialist Alternative is in political solidarity with the Committee for a Workers’ International (CWI). With sections in over 35 countries around the world, the CWI is a global socialist organization working to unite the working class and poor in a fight against global capitalism and for democratic socialism.

In 2009, Democratic Governor Christine Gregoire and the Democrat super-majority in the state legislature wrung out a $9 billion deficit through an all-cuts budget, hacking away at everything in sight from education and health care to services for children, the poor, and the elderly. Big business and the rich, by contrast, escaped unscathed – the state’s regressive tax system remained horrendously skewed in favor of corporations like Boeing, Microsoft, Weyerhauser, Amazon, and the rich who own them.

You wouldn’t know it, but a study found that Massachusetts provides the least amount of support for higher education in the entire U.S., (Illinois State University’s Center for the Study of Education Policy in cooperation with the State Higher Education Executive Officers). Usually regarded as one of the top states for quality public education, funding has been slashed for the last five years. Astonishingly, funding has been cut by 37% over the last two years.