The Current Crisis of US Imperialism and its Impacts on the People

Imperialism is a political, economic, and military system in which a miniscule elite of corporate and financial monopolists utilize their vast wealth and political power to direct the imperialist state machinery to divide and conquer the world amongst themselves, use force to subjugate the people into economic exploitation and political oppression, and occasionally go to war with one another when the opportunity to redivide spheres of territory arises for them. All aspects of society become tied inextricably to the whims of this imperialist elite within their system, in the imperialist core and its colonial periphery. Given the anarchic and chaotic actions of the imperialists in unceasingly utilizing their power over all of society to indulge their profit-driven interests, imperialism will always exist in a state of crisis, even if the level of crisis varies between booms and busts and between imperial core and semi-colonies.

Today, the crisis of US imperialism has neared its breaking point, at home and in each of the regions of the world strangled by its tentacles.

The US and global economy is in shambles. Working and daily living conditions are becoming more destitute as energy, food and other basic prices rise, and more and more workers are being pushed out of secure employment and many are forced into more precarious forms of work through contractualization, easily manipulated “flexible” work hours and work deemed “criminal” by the state when no options are left. Inflation increased US electricity prices by 3.6% throughout 2023, gasoline prices by 3.8%, rent by 5.8% and food by a staggering 21%.  And while Biden bragged in his State of the Union address that his administration oversaw 15 million jobs created in three years, these are mostly part-time without benefits, and one worker may need to have three of these jobs just to get through the month. Instead of addressing these basic concerns of working class people, US corporate interests spend an average of $433 million a year on union busting lobbying while the number of so-called “Right To Work” (anti-union) states has risen to 28.

The crisis carries over throughout all other elements of social life as well. With privatized healthcare unaffordable to most, more and more working people are crippled by sickness and injuries that should be free to cure. Like healthcare, education and homeownership are also more and more reliant on debt which make them unattainable to many. As people lose access to these resources, reactionary voices of those in power stoke fear and animosity towards those outside the traditional white heterosexual male positionality and translate this social animosity into anti-people policy. For women, the gender pay gap is still exponential and ⅘ of all US states have some form of abortion ban or limitation. By end of 2023, 429 anti-LGBTQ bills existed in 39 states, 56% of young LGBTQ people could not access appropriate healthcare, and 14% attempted suicide. $25.9 billion is being spent on repressive border security after 205,125 deportations were undertaken last year. 2023 saw 1,232 reported police killings, disproportionately against Black people and other people of color.  These facts expose how racism, sexism, homophobia and transphobia, xenophobia and other discriminatory mindsets are used to shore up support for the more reactionary factions of the imperialist ruling class in a way that merely deepens the social crisis itself.

The natural environment and the people’s access to its resources is not spared by the crisis of imperialism. The corporate-driven climate and environmental crises lead to widespread pandemics like Covid-19, famine, devastating floods, power outages, land grabbing, and mass displacement in the US and across the world, with many climate refugees migrating to the US. Biden and Harris may have attracted at least $650 billion in clean energy manufacturing, but these came in large part to the US’s hosting of the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation fora last year that attracted multi-millionaires and billions to rewrite international trade, labor and environmental laws to better suit their investments. Biden also approved more fossil fuel land sales than nearly any President before him, like the Alaska Willow oil project, the Mountain Valley fracked gas pipeline and many others that will cause irreparable environmental destruction and delay transitions to cleaner fuel.

As the people of the US drown in the economic, social and environmental crises listed above, the only recourse for the imperialists at the helm of the US state is to double down on their repressive tactics to keep working people in their place. But the loss of political legitimacy in the eyes of many people has pushed the US ruling system into a deep political crisis that is then pressed onto the people. The attempted coup by Trump on January 6th, 2021, and the “uncommitted” voter movement against both Trump and Biden for the open-arms policy of the brutal genocide of Palestine shows not only the deep divisions drawn in US society by the upending breakdown of the political crisis but also how far either Republican or Democrat faction is willing to go to crush their opposition and remain on top of the imperialist spoils. The near-unanimous outrage at the US for its unwavering funding of the Zionist genocidal regime from every member of the United Nations except for the US’s small pocket of allies proves just how isolated the US finds itself in the world it seeks to remain on top of.

While this isolation abroad and the political crisis at home unravels in the wake of the economic, social and environmental crises, the only recourse US imperialism has left is its military might. The US still holds by far the largest military in the world, with a projected budget of $874.2 billion for 2025. The recent holding of the 75th NATO summit in Washington, DC promised billions more from the alliance to keep its proxy war against Russia going in Ukraine where around 350,000 Ukrainians and Russians have been killed since 2014. The Rim of the Pacific military exercise that just concluded in US-occupied Hawaii was an unabashed show of force against China and North Korea as more US bases and military alliances bring the Indo-Pacific region to a boiling point. Over 40,000 confirmed Palestinians killed with many more missing and injured and forced starvation being used as a weapon by the Zionist occupiers showcases the sheer depravity of US imperialism in crisis. The renewed ambition for imperialist wars is aggressively propagated from the highest levels of the state bureaucracy, spread through news media, popular entertainment and the silencing of front-line resistors, truth tellers, and movements for justice.

In the midst of this ruling class struggle between the Republicans and Democrats for the iron throne of the White House, false promises of recovery and ultranationalist fervor are used to mask the intentions of both sides as the 2024 Presidential election looms closer. The entire US ruling system is exposed for its inherent inability to serve people’s needs as an economic depression looms and previously held legal democratic rights are stripped.

In order to truly view the bankruptcy of the political establishment and the true imperialist interests of both sides, their political platforms must be exposed for the false solutions they are.

The Republican Party Platform: A Roadmap for American Fascism

The Republican National Convention held this past July in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, brought out party officials, sitting and past Republican Congress people and even celebrities to speak on the political direction of the party. However, most of the speeches were devoid of any true political messaging and instead relied on sweeping, passionate calls that would have been more at home in an entertainment venue. The messaging was less about actual policy than it was about throwing support behind one person - Donald Trump.  Key examples include TV Wrestler Hulk Hogan who ripped open his shirt onstage to reveal a Trump 2024 shirt underneath, and Texas Senator Ted Cruz claiming the US is facing “a literal invasion” by migrants from the US-Mexico border and that, “when Donald Trump is President, we will fix it.”  Trump’s own speech amounted to a 90-minute ramble that only threw insults at his Democrat competitors without naming any real policy promises.

Yet, the 2024 Republican strategy hides a darker method behind the bombast and apparent political foolery on display at the RNC. Of note to this point was the acceptance speech of JD Vance, Trump’s Vice Presidential pick. Vance opened his talk in a way that sounded like a critique from the political left against corporate greed, uncaring Wall Street manipulation of the economy and skyrocketing unemployment. However, when he reached the moment to name outright the clear culprit, he laid the ultimate blame on undocumented immigrants, allowed through the border by Democrat officials, stealing people’s jobs and causing havoc to traditional (meaning white) American values.

What Vance’s speech demonstrates is a change in strategy from Trump and establishment favorite Mike Pence’s 2016 and 2020 campaigns that now seeks more intentionally to draw on working class experiences of the crisis of US imperialism. Vance’s placement on the VP ticket is itself a testament to this, as his whole political persona is based on his supposed rise from a working class community in Appalachia to economic success based on nothing but hard work. But the truth is that Vance was placed in power by millionaire venture capitalist fund money, most notably by Trump-favorite and PayPal founder Peter Thiel. This fact lays bare the true Republican strategy: dress up unhinged monopoly capitalism in working class clothing to speak to the US working and middle classes; whip up racist and sexist tropes to tap into the most reactionary emotional drive in just one segment of the masses; demonize the whole rest of the masses to direct anger away from the monopoly capitalists at the true root of the crisis; and, finally, throw to the sidelines any substantive political program to instead put faith in one strongman leader promising to magically “make America great again.”  In a word, the Republican Party has become the ultimate organization for bringing about unbridled American fascism.

The Republican Party Platform and the intentions behind it is clear evidence of this drive to fascism.  Fascism is the inevitable outcome of the imperialist crisis getting so deep that all democratic pretenses are thrown to the side and the most reactionary clique of the corporate and financial monopolists unleash an all-out war against the people, using ultra-nationalistic and violent rhetoric to win over one segment of the masses as foot soldiers against their rivals. This was what Trump attempted to do with the January 6th Capitol takeover. The 2024 Republican Platform is a case in point, teeming with sweeping white supremacist, misogynistic, anti-LGBTQ and hyper-militaristic rhetoric acting as both a fear-inducer into the hearts of “traditionally-minded” white nuclear family America and a battle call against the criminal and un-American masses it paints as its enemy.  Headline program points like this include Seal the Border and Stop the Migrant Invasion, and Return to Peace Through Strength. The same sweeping rhetoric is used to address economic woes. Program taglines used include, Build the Greatest Economy in History and Bring Back the American Dream and Make it Affordable Again for Families, Young People, and Everyone.

Subpoints to these main headlines hold hardly any more substance.  Equally lofty and fear-mongering rhetoric crowd this part of the program in slogans and dog whistle calls instead of policy proposals. Anti-immigrant rhetoric abounds: “If we don’t have a border, we don’t have a country,” “moving thousands of troops currently stationed overseas to our own Southern Border,” “Stop Sanctuary Cities,” “Begin largest deportation program in American history,” “keep foreign Christian-hating Communists, Marxists, and Socialists [and “jihadists and jihadist sympathizers”] out of America,” among others. On war and foreign policy, the Republican Platform shockingly calls for an Iron Dome Defense Shield (like the one the US gifted to Israel) to surround the continental US, pouring more public funds into wasteful military spending, while calling on keeping the US military, the number one destroyer of lives around the world in the past 75+ years, “the most modern, lethal, and powerful Force in the World.”

Other economic program headlines include Defeat Inflation and Quickly Bring Down all Prices, and Protect American Workers and Farmers from Unfair Trade. Subpoints to these economic sections include calls towards becoming the, “Number One Producer of Oil and Natural Gas,” and, “terminating the Socialist Green New Deal,” a very capitalist project of the Democrats to decrease carbon emissions while shoring up corporate power, showing how any project of the Republicans' rivals can be easily labeled “socialist,” another widely used move by fascists throughout history. “We will eliminate Taxes on Tips for millions of Restaurant and Hospitality Workers,” comes with no promise to increase wages for these workers, keeping the burden on consumers and not on business owners to help workers make a livelihood. Calls to “Bring home supply chains,” and prioritize “American Producers over Foreign Outsourcers” criticize the neoliberal trade and production system that has devastated the national economies of the US and countless other countries, but only to point the blame at the so-called “globalist” Democrats, a term packed with anti-Semitic and anti-Communist baggage used to whip up fear of anything challenging US patriotism.

Other headlines of the Platform include more social and cultural tropes such as Protect Seniors and the more insidious Cultivate Great K-12 Schools Leading to Great Jobs and Great Lives for Young People. The insidiousness of the latter is in the promises to, “Close the Department of Education,” and “Restore parental rights,” therefore putting educational curriculum into the hands of the loudest and most privileged families in any given locality. This is followed with calls to dismantle the positive gains made in correcting history education to better reflect the experiences of marginalized peoples by pulling funding from any schools teaching “Critical Race Theory” and “Gender Indoctrination,” labels used to describe any anti-racist, pro-LGBTQ rights and other progressive educational topics.  What is called for instead is to brazenly, “Promote Love of Country with Authentic Civics Education,” meaning a return to white-washed history removing any mention of US imperialist aggression, and to, “champion the First Amendment Right to Pray and Read the Bible in school, and stand up to those who violate the Religious Freedoms of American students.”

With such lofty rhetoric, one may wonder how the Republicans plan to get any of their platform actually implemented if voted into power.  Yet, this is where the true fascist nature of the platform comes from. The final headlines to mention are Government Of, By, and For the People and Bring Common Sense to Our Government and Renew the Pillars of American Civilization. This gives the reader, especially the less-informed voter now fearing for their lives from a Communist, Jihadist, Gender-Indoctrinating Migrant Invasion, the relief of trusting their Republican leaders to do the hard work on their behalf.  After all, it was the Marxists, immigrants, LGBTQ folks, autonomy-loving women and their Democrat masters who caused the crisis to begin with.  In about 20 pages of text, very little actual policy is written down.  What is it that the Republicans are actually planning?

Many a spotlight has been put on Project 2025, or the Presidential Transition Project of the Heritage Foundation, and for good reason. This shadowy project, funded by conservative billionaires and led by former Trump administration officials, includes a 900-page step-by-step plan to dismantle the checks and balances of the Federal government and put nearly dictatorial power into the executive branch.  It is running a crowdsourcing recruitment campaign to find and train hundreds of potential Trump administration staff to implement every aspect of the Republican Party platform without tying the Project overtly to the platform itself.

Project 2025 provides the finer text that the Republican platform excludes, and for good reason. To actually implement their plan and win over the most backward reactionary tendencies of the masses to answer their battle cry, the fascist faction of the imperialists must fund and direct their project in secret, or else they will expose themselves as the true power behind the throne. True fascism relies on the illusion that the masses are wielding power alongside the elites, retaking their national birthright and making their country “great again.” But fascism, like any variant of imperialism, is controlled and directed by the same corporate and financial elites that caused the crisis in the first place, regardless of political faction. To halt the rise of American fascism, or to defeat it if it succeeds momentarily in taking power, its direct links to monopoly capitalism and imperialism must be constantly exposed for the masses to see who their real enemy is: the imperialists, regardless of which faction they represent. Fascism may have a mass base, but it always has a ruling class character.

The Democrat Party Platform: The Inevitable Failure of Imperialist “Democracy”

The months leading up to the Democrat National Convention in Chicago, Illinois, were some of the most tumultuous the Democrats had seen in over a decade. While US meddling in Ukraine’s pro-Western coup began under Obama (confirmed by the CIA) and took up speed under Trump, it was under Biden that the situation escalated into a full-blown war between Russia and NATO-backed Ukrainian troops on Ukrainian – and now Russian – soil. Under Biden’s watch were the largest railroad, logistics, and auto worker strikes in recent US history, forcing Biden to save face and voice support for auto workers after coming down hard on the former two. And, of course, the Democrats’ unwavering support for the Zionist genocide of Palestine, already referred to as the “Vietnam moment of our time” earned Biden the infamous moniker of “Genocide Joe.” This is a time of one of the lowest approval ratings for the Democrats in at least a generation.

The political crisis for the Democrats reached its pinnacle when Biden appeared to lose focus and completely fumble his words multiple times, most notably during his debate with Trump, as well as at the NATO Summit shortly after. After widespread calls from sitting Democrat Congress people and donors, Biden made the historic move to step down from the 2024 Presidential race and Vice President Kamala Harris was handpicked as the Democrat successor.  Yet, calls for Biden to drop out of the race and a large movement of formerly Democrat voters leading the campaign to vote “uncommitted” in the election is a rejection of both Trump and Biden.  It’s clear that the masses’ discontent with the Democrats became too fearsome to party officials and donors, and the united grassroots opposition to the party that touts  “democracy” won out. A sit-in by delegates with the aforementioned “uncommitted movement” proves the fact that the party of “democracy” is not as united as they would like to think they are.

The subsequent speeches at the DNC reflected not only the attempt to save the party from the morass that Biden had gotten it in, but to shore it up its image away from the crisis of US imperialism itself, a crisis it has been equally at fault for as the Republicans. Democrat speeches celebrated the access to positions of political leadership to more women, people of color and LGBTQ folks while calling out the harsh attacks on women’s reproductive rights and other anti-people policies of their Republican rivals. But the overall selling point of the Democrats, namely that they are not Trump and will work to undo the damage caused by the Republicans, weakly masks all the problems that the Democrats themselves are also responsible for as the other leading imperialist party in the US.

To understand this point, one must take as critical of a look at the Democrat Party platform as the Republican one. For starters, the Democrat platform is nearly five times longer than its Republican counterpart, filled with statistics that its rival is lacking in. While this may be to present a more common sense and practical approach than the secretive Project 2025-informed fascist war cry, the Democrats merely prefer to mask their class interests through “facts” and figures.

Where the Republicans call for drawing battle lines, the Democrat platform calls for Advancing the President’s Unity Agenda and asks, “Will we lower the temperature in our politics and come together, or treat each other as enemies instead?” On this note, another headline of the platform is Strengthening Democracy, Protecting Freedoms, and Advancing Equity. This section calls for “Reproductive Freedom,” “Women’s Rights,” Racial Equity,” “Lgbtqi+,” and “Combating Hate & Protecting Freedom Of Religion.”

But while the Democrats have spoken up for reproductive rights, with Harris being the first Vice President to ever speak at an abortion clinic, they have done little to protect these rights while in office. Additionally, the economic policies of the party have devastated working families, which has pushed the majority of working women in the US to work two or even three jobs just to support their families. And despite talks of racial equity and combating hate, the Democrats have proven to be equally harsh on border militarization and anti-immigrant policy, with the platform policies listed under the headline Securing Our Border and Fixing the Broken Immigration System chock-full of claims that would fit well in the Republican platform, like celebrating the Democrats’ securing of “the first significant increase of Border Patrol agents in more than a decade,” while calling to “dedicate resources to detain and remove individuals quickly.”

The economic headlines of the Democrat platform, phrased in seemingly pro-worker language, include Lowering Prices; Growing Our Economy from the Bottom Up and Middle Out; and Rewarding Work, Not Wealth. And yet, the same economic nationalism abounds, referring to “the best economy in the world,” while trade deals like the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework that Biden championed gives US corporations untrammeled access to plunder the economies of other nations, a clear hallmark of imperialism that ultimately keeps power away from workers even at home. Congressional Democrats and Republicans alike criticized IPEF for not being strong enough. Even claims made about relieving student debt hide the fact that the cost of education continues to rise, leaving students in the position to keep accumulating debt and filling the pockets of the financial monopolists.

Tackling the Climate Crisis, Lowering Energy Costs, and Securing Energy Independence gives a welcome relief to the calls to “Drill, Baby, Drill!” of the Republican platform. But a closer look reveals that no change to the overall system of monopoly corporate power exists in the plan, which is the cause of the climate crisis in the first place. Despite the Democrats being right about the need to rapidly move towards carbon neutral energy, left out is the fact that, if similar wasteful production methods continue to abound by the current owners of industry, fully renewable energy will require four times as much destructive mining around the world as exists now. Also excluded is the fact that the US military remains the top emitter of carbon in the world, at around 205 million tons annually.

This final point leads to the remaining headlines of the Democrat Party platform, and these showcase how ruthlessly the Democrats are still willing to act to maintain the failing system of US imperialism. Under the language of Securing American Leadership Worldwide falls a list of all the regions of the world where US interests lie. The platform paints these regions as nothing more than fronts of US-led war, in even starker terms than its Republican counterpart. China, Russia, Iran and North Korea are all blamed for the instability rocking the world with no mention of the US’s military domination over the world for the past 70+ years that has led to the deaths of hundreds of millions.  The platform still calls for the US to maintain the “Strongest military in the world,” and when Harris called for the US to hold onto the most “lethal fighting force” to chants of “USA! USA!” from the DNC delegates, it could have easily been confused for a fascist-leaning Trump rally. Even within the US, Democrats want to unleash their militarist fantasy. The platform calls for Protecting Communities and Tackling the Scourge of Gun Violence by actually calling for more police officers to be brought out onto the streets as the number of racist police killings continues to rise with no end in sight.

What the Democrat Party platform represents, far from a genuine alternative to the rising fascism of the Republican party, is the inevitable failure of democracy under imperialism. Like outright fascism, limited rights under imperialism are merely means to achieve imperialist ends in times of deep crisis. When the crisis can be managed in a way that keeps the masses at a basic level of economic livelihood, political rights are protected to give the people an illusion of power in society. But when the crisis of imperialism deepens to such an unlivable degree for the vast majority of working people, the conditions we are seeing today, the veil of illusion lifts and the masses have no choice but to fight to demand pro-people alternatives from their leaders.  When this occurs, as it has at nearly every economic depression in history, the imperialists can no longer rule under pretenses of democracy.

While the Republican party represents the faction of the imperialist class decisive on pulling the emergency switch towards fascism, the Democrat party represents the faction still clinging onto ruling in the old way. While part of this is clearly because a small number of party members fill the ranks who stand with the people and believe that genuine change can be made through the existing system, the rest of the party appeals to more democratic and uniting values merely to counter their rivals in the bid for power. But one critical look at the Democrat party’s 2024 platform reveals yet another round of false solutions playing the same corporate and financial ruling class game. Democrats lead the “USA!” chants just as proudly as the Republicans while the world continues to suffocate under the boots of the largest war machine the world has ever seen.

Reject Imperialist False Solutions! Fight for a Peoples’ Platform!

The class in society that caused the crisis clearly cannot be the one to bring the solution, regardless of their political faction. Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk, two of the richest and most powerful corporate elites in the world with an unending track record of labor abuse of their employees, support and donate to different parties (Bezos the Democrats, Musk the Republicans).  This fact alone blatantly illustrates the true class interests at the heart of the US 2-party system. The people of the US and the world deserve to be free of the imperialist crisis that the ruling class of both Republican and Democrat factions created through their greedy use of the world economy as their private casino.

The people, the exploited and oppressed working masses of the world, have the true power to change society. This is why the imperialist ruling class fears them so much and directs all of its political policies towards placating and subjugating their powerful potential. The options they present are a failing business-as-usual or a fascist takeover. But the real options are between leaving power in the hands of the imperialists or organizing to thrust it from them and put it into the hands of the people. This is where the power of a mass movement comes in - assembling into organizations and committing to wage a fight for a common goal while recruiting more and more people along the way to grow the movement until it’s big and strong enough to win.

The International League of Peoples’ Struggle has acted as an alliance of over 400 of these mass organizations around the world, with its US Country Chapter (ILPS-US) bound together with the power of over 70 member organizations currently. The League is strictly anti-imperialist in character, meaning that it organizes for the ultimate goal of changing the power structure of imperialism itself as opposed to limiting itself to small reforms, while recognizing the positive role these reforms can play when the masses fight for them and build power along the way. Since the imperialists will not give up their power without a fight, ILPS brings the fight through uplifting and supporting peoples’ struggle against the oppressors wherever they turn up.

Since the 2nd National Assembly of ILPS-US in Seattle at the end of 2022 attended by nearly 300 members and observers, ILPS has grown exponentially and begun to launch regional formations in cities across the country under the call, Fight for our Rights, Lives and Planet! Unite Against the Dying, Desperate US Empire! 2023 saw the first successful national campaign that ILPS-US waged with all its members against the economic plundering of the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) forum as it met in the US throughout the year, mobilizing 1,000 to a counter summit and over 6,000 to the streets of San Francisco carrying the call, No To APEC! People and Planet Over Profit and Plunder! This campaign was successful in that it rallied new organizations around militant and anti-imperialist calls that spoke to far-reaching and painstaking political struggle to unite the oppressed and exploited against the imperialist system itself.

2024 so far has seen even more growth of the anti-imperialist peoples’ movement in ways that have been led and supported by ILPS-US. During the nightmarish build-up to all out war, ILPS supported the 600+ attended Cancel RIMPAC (Rim of the Pacific) mobilization in San Diego, the home of the US Third Fleet during the world’s largest maritime military exercise in US-occupied Hawaii. ILPS also led the Resist NATO coalition that culminated in a 400+ march on the White House while the 75th NATO Summit met in Washington, DC. These antiwar campaigns carried equally militant calls such as Peace, Solidarity, Self-Determination! Fight for Lives, Livelihood, and Sovereignty! Resist War and Militarization! and Resist US-NATO Aggression and War Provocations! Defend Peoples’ Struggle for Rights and Liberation! These calls highlighted the need to wage a just struggle for just peace and put the spotlight on the root causes of war itself: the profit-driven interests of imperialism. This culminated in ILPS-US members joining the marches against both the RNC and DNC to continue to expose both imperialist parties.

What differentiates these calls of ILPS campaigns from the points of the Republican and Democrat party platforms is that they speak directly to the people and address what we ought to be doing together, not empty policy proposals from parties that support the ruling system. It was at the march on the DNC that this point became crystalized into the call that ILPS-US will be carrying throughout the whole election period: Reject Imperialist False Solutions! Fight for a Peoples’ Platform! A genuine platform for change must be one for grassroots organizing and coalition building, and this is what ILPS-US seeks to provide our members and allies.

The 2024 Peoples’ Platform is a roadmap for system change in opposition to the roadmaps for fascism and imperialist life support that the Republican and Democrat platforms represent. It is a rallying point for current struggles already being waged and new campaigns that can be launched. It includes 10 overall calls that act as umbrella struggles for many particular campaigns and action calls to follow in the months and years to come:

The Economy:

Address poverty, inequality, austerity, inflation, joblessness and labor rights violations by ending corporate control of the economy and orienting production toward people's needs and worker empowerment.

Civil and Political Rights:

Organize and resist against discrimination, repression, state violence and racist police terror. Assert peoples’ collective rights and build a truly democratic system that serves and is led by the people rather than the 1%.

Health:

Create healthy communities by ensuring access to healthy food, water, air, and to healthcare that is free, culturally sensitive, and accessible to all, regardless of age, gender, sexuality, race, disability, and migration status.

Safety:

Create safe communities by ensuring people's needs are met to address the roots of violence. End the war on working people carried out through the racist police, prison, and court system.

Housing:

Ensure decent and affordable housing for all and eliminate the real estate monopoly of the big banks. Fight against gentrification, displacement, and the criminalization of homelessness.

Education:

Eliminate student debt and build an education system that is free, multilingual, and oriented toward solving society’s problems, rather than the profit-driven needs of corporations and the war industry.

Migration:

Resist the attacks on migrants and defend the right to migrate while fighting against the root causes of forced migration. Demilitarize the borders, decriminalize migration, end migrant detention, ensure amnesty for all, and guarantee access to livelihood and all basic needs and services for migrants.

Environment:

End the pollution, violent resource extraction and plunder by transnational corporations and the US military. Build resilient, green, democratically managed and community-driven infrastructure.

National Liberation and Peoples’ Sovereignty:

End US domination over the economic, political, cultural, and military systems of oppressed peoples and nations, and indigenous peoples in the form of occupation, sanctions, intervention, repression, and plunder of the land, promoting instead international solidarity and cooperation for mutual benefit.

Peace and Justice:

End the genocidal US imperialist war machine, redistributing the bloated US military budget towards people’s needs. Uplift peoples’ struggles for their rights, livelihood, and self-determination to promote peace built upon a foundation of justice.

These are calls that come from the people and speak to issues that the masses have been fighting for for generations. Even though they may seem separate and distinct, they fit together in the building of an anti-imperialist united front where people and organizations waging these fights fill the ranks together. The ultimate uniting factor is that the same force is holding back each of these calls being fulfilled: the imperialist ruling class. Through the Peoples’ Platform, ILPS shows through practice how our solutions lie with each other, our unity in struggle, and we are so much bigger in numbers and when united in purpose and action are stronger than the imperialists.

ILPS intends to wage the fights carried in the Peoples’ Platform alongside its allies and their own roadmaps for pro-people change during the 2024 election period, such as the International Migrants’ Alliance and its Grassroots Migrants Agenda, and the Resist US-Led War Movement and its Anti-Militarism Agenda. ILPS member organizations can use the Peoples’ Platform as a rallying point for support for their own platforms too. These side by side efforts only contribute to the unity building that ILPS was launched to invigorate within the anti-imperialist peoples’ movement.

The Peoples’ Platform is not a guide for who to vote for or not to vote for. It is a guide for what to fight for through campaigns, propaganda, mass and direct actions, and ultimately through the building of a mass movement with the power to defeat the current system. In another election cycle bombarded with imperialist false solutions, the people have a rallying cry to expose and oppose the dying, desperate US empire that has kept them exploited and oppressed for far too long.  As we build up our strength, ILPS-US will be putting out the call to action around Election Day itself to hit the streets, hold mass education events, and strengthen solidarity between all peoples and all struggles as the imperialists stumble around their futile schemes to keep us divided. Whoever wins the 2024 Presidential election, ILPS will Defend Peoples’ Struggle in all of its righteous forms and tactics until the power is with the people once and for all.

Long live international solidarity! The people united will never be defeated! We have a world to win and nothing to lose but our chains!