Garfield High School teachers voted unanimously to boycott the MAP test and in doing so have given bold action to the simmering anger amongst teachers in Seattle and nationwide at constant standardized testing.

Just outside Sao Paulo, Brazil, between 22 and 27 January, the largest and most enthusiastic and confident CWI Latin American school took place. Approximately 160 comrades from Brazil, Chile, Bolivia and Venezuela participated with comrades also present from Sweden, USA and Britain and the International Secretariat of the CWI.

President Barack Obama’s second-term inauguration (20-21 January) did not inspire the mass enthusiasm aroused by his first inauguration in 2009. There is widespread disillusionment with Obama, who helped save big business after the 2008 slump but has failed to deliver improvements for working people.

Below we publish a declaration published this weekend by Socialismo Revolucionario (CWI in Spain) following the explosion of the government party’s corruption scandal, in which President, Mariano Rajoy, has become directly implicated along with a wide swath of PP leaders. The allegations, revealed in a leaked document claiming to consist of handwritten “off-the-books” records made by former PP treasurer, Barcenas, of illicit payments made on a regular basis to PP leaders, originating in illegal donations made by big business to the party.

Following the second anniversary of the January 25th Revolution, Egyptian streets have witnessed days of mass demonstrations and riots. State forces have brutally repressed many protesters. Last Monday, the army was deployed to try to reinforce a curfew announced as part of an Emergency Law introduced by President Mursi, for a period of one month, in the three cities of Suez, Ismaeliya and Port Said.

For working-class women worldwide, 2012 marked a year of vicious attacks. Ongoing austerity and budget cuts mean women are paying for the economic crisis more than ever. There have been a number of slanderous and outrageous accusations from right-wing politicians, pundits, and even a Supreme Court judge that, in “legitimate” cases of rape, a woman can control her body into not conceiving. Even though there is increased awareness around the issue of domestic violence, it has not slowed the violence that is forced on women every day.

The Occupy-inspired Sawant campaign demonstrates the increasing openness to working-class politics, the hunger for a fighting alternative to big business politics, and the potential for left-wing independent candidates to successfully challenge the corporate Democratic and Republican parties. But this victory is just a beginning, and what’s needed are hundreds of such campaigns nationally, combined with mass protests and labor struggles, to challenge the domination of Wall Street and the 1% over U.S. society.

Social Security Act was born out of intense working-class struggle from all around the country. 1934 and 1935 saw mass movements that were winning real victories; there were local general strikes and demonstrations of tens of thousands of workers in places as widespread as San Francisco, Minneapolis, and Toledo, Ohio. Additionally, the newly formed Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) won millions of new workers into its ranks, largely due to its militant tactics and ability to improve people’s lives. It was only out of fear of these movements and the growing socialist organizations that the Democrats enacted the New Deal, which included Social Security.

Heroic workers are taking a stand, and socialists give them our unconditional support. It’s part of a campaign called Fast Food Forward, backed by Service Employees International Union (SEIU) and New York Communities for Change (NYCC), and it is the biggest attempt ever to organize fast food workers.

The label “right to work,” a term created by corporate interests, is intentionally deceptive. This legislation doesn't provide the right to a job for the hundreds of thousands of unemployed workers in Michigan. What it does is undermine the democratic basis of workers’ right to organize.

Huge space exists for building a new mass party of working people to challenge both corporate parties for power.

The next few months will be dominated by three fiscal battles: Congressional authorization to raise the “debt ceiling” to allow the government to continue to borrow to meet its obligations, the $110 billion in automatic “sequester” spending cuts in 2013, and finally adopting a budget to fund federal government operations in 2013.

In December, Occupy Homes MN – in coordination with Socialist Alternative and other community organizations – launched the Foreclosure and Eviction Free Zone. The FEFZ encompasses the Powderhorn Park and Central neighborhoods, among the communities most ravaged by the foreclosure crisis.

The crisis of capitalism is reaching a dramatic phase, with more and more people looking for solutions to poverty, racism, sexism, declining benefits, environmental destruction, and mass unemployment. The root of these problems is a system that thrives on low wages, slashed social programs, and divide-and-rule tactics to attack oppressed people.

The four day-long hostage crisis at the major ‘In Amenas’ gas facility in South East Algeria and its bloody outcome have sent shockwaves internationally. In this raid and the response to it from the Algerian military, at least one Algerian worker, 37 hostages and 29 attackers were killed.