The Virginia Worker

David Frost is a writer in The Writers’ Bloc and an organizer with Roanoke Peoples’ Power Network Virginia has the highest discrepancy between teacher pay and comparatively educated professionals out of any state in the country. Teachers will get a raise of five percent this year and five percent next year. However, this year’s five…

Hugh Stephenson contributes this report on the state of the Sentara/RMH hospital in Harrisonburg, Virginia. He is a member of Socialist Resurgence The world is entering its third year of covid-19. Gone are the “Ra Ra Front Line Workers” headlines of the bourgeois press. Gone are gratitudes by Democratic and Republican Party politicians for front…

Josh Armstead is a worker militant with UNITE HERE Local 23, organizing in the DMV Area I will admit I am not a Virginian, but there was a time when my family were Virginians, migrating every so often to escape the violence of the KKK and racism from deeper parts of the South, before settling…

The Richmond Tenants Defense Council is an organization in the Richmond area which brings together working-class tenants and community members to build power.  The following interview is a conversation between two founding members of RTDC about the organization’s history and its future.  It was originally printed in the first issue of RTDC’s tenant newsletter. L:…

FROM THE EDITORIAL BOARD OF THE VIRGINIA WORKER The Virginia Worker recently published an article by the Communist League of Richmond (CLR), and a response by Shama Bismas, the latter of which contained harsh criticisms of the Shenandoah Socialist Collective (SSC). In the interest of fairness, we are publishing a brief response by SSC.  SSC’s…

The Hidden History of Richmond’s Labor Movement For 150 years, Richmond’s place in history has been as “the capital of the Confederacy.”  But this label hides a rich and complex history, a history that, when placed in conversation with the present, can provide insight, inspiration, and direction.  Join Peter Rachleff for a presentation of one…

Amalgamated Transit Union Organizing Director Chris Townsend offers this article on past electoral failures by the Democrats showing the cyclical nature of liberal electoral politics and the dead end they remain for the Virginia working class The Democratic Party collapse in the 2009 Virginia statewide elections will come as a surprise only to those loyalists,…

For years now the only efforts within the NRV to hold the Radford Army Ammunition Plant to account have been based around the concerns of pollution and health risks for those living close to it. Some even adopted the name “patriots” in an attempt to give a sort of legitimacy to their efforts. Efforts have…

When bad faith debaters have difficulty debunking their opponents’ arguments, they turn to the “Gish gallop.”  The Gish gallop seeks to provide a surfeit of poorly constructed, dishonest, trivial, and illogical arguments– in other words, it seeks to bury the opponent in so much nonsense that it is impossible for them to respond to all…

“In the era of imperialism, there can be no other salvation for most of the world’s nations than through revolutionary action undertaken by the proletariat of the Great Powers, spreading beyond the boundaries of nationality, smashing those boundaries, and overthrowing the international bourgeoisie … The overthrow of the bourgeoisie will enormously accelerate the downfall of…