the Voice of
The Communist League of Revolutionary Workers–Internationalist
“The emancipation of the working class will only be achieved by the working class itself.”
— Karl Marx
the Voice of
The Communist League of Revolutionary Workers–Internationalist
“The emancipation of the working class will only be achieved by the working class itself.”
— Karl Marx
Nov 23, 2015
Since the terrorist attack in Paris, France occurred, the U.S. news has been dominated by a campaign against the admission of Syrian refugees into this country. This campaign may have been started by the Republicans, but it has won strong Democratic support.
Republican politicians have tried hard to persuade us to blame immigrants for our worsening economic conditions due to unemployment. Now, with an opportunity to blame the refugees for “possible terrorist attacks,” the Republicans think they have a political gift from heaven. And the Democrats aren’t about to let them corner this market.
Governor Snyder of Michigan was one of the first to issue a temporary stop on Syrian immigration, citing the need to review security measures with the federal government. No doubt for the governor, the news storm that followed was a welcome diversion of the news away from the blame his administrators were getting for the poisoning of the Flint water system.
Within days, the majority of Republican governors had announced a ban on absorbing Syrian refugees. Finally, the Republicans called for and won a vote in the U.S. House of Representatives to drastically tighten screening procedures on Syrian refugees. The measure was supported by dozens of Democrats.
Of course, Donald Trump, who wallows in reactionary phrase-mongering, has been crowing. Referring to his fellow politicians, he said, “After Paris, they’re all on the bandwagon.” Yes, they’re all sporting their reactionary colors, competing with each other to be the most militaristic, the most bombastic. Just like little backyard bullies.
Stoking fears in the U.S. population, politicians of both stripes pretend to befriend the U.S. working class and protect us from terrorism and economic harm.
Well, they are not our friends. In making all Syrian refugees into possible terrorists in the eyes of the population, they are leading working people into a trap that in the end will devour us. It will do as much harm as the ban on refugees does to those who are fighting to escape war-torn zones with their lives.
Yes, the threat of terrorism is real, and the unleashing of violence against innocent populations is no longer confined to “other” places, but has come back to hit Europe and the U.S. as well. And the terrorists who carry out this violence are brutal and inhumane. But the vast majority of those who are suffering this violence are the inhabitants of Iraq and Syria, the people who are desperately fighting to get out of the war zones.
ISIS is the indirect creation of the superpowers, first and foremost of the U.S. ruling class. It arose from the shambles caused by imperialist wars in Iraq and Syria. It is brutal and reactionary precisely because its ranks came from brutal and reactionary forces–the “Sunni Awakening,” which the U.S. once helped arm and set up to do its bidding in the region.
If we want an end to the threat of terrorism, if we want to live in “peace,” we need to find the means to end the constant wars the U.S. ruling class has engaged us in. Workers of these countries are part of our class. Their fight to improve their circumstances and combat the ruthless rulers that capitalism is alternately creating and disposing of is part of our fight. And their desire to flee, to get away from this violence should be something we identify with and feel deeply.
Politicians in this country who work to demonize the refugees are the same ones who have drained our children’s schools of money, to give it to the wealthy capitalist class. They drain money from every part of society to give it to the banks. They carry out policies that impoverish the working class in this country, and they try to divide us in this country by race and ethnicity. And now they try to line us up behind them in a racist, anti-Muslim campaign.
No!
Nov 23, 2015
Eleven women have brought a lawsuit against the Housing Authority of Baltimore City, landlord to 19,000 people in dozens of apartment complexes. The women charge the Housing Authority allowed sexual harassment to go on and did not repair problems in their units.
The women described horrible conditions in their apartments, including no heat in winter, broken window panes, plumbing that didn’t work, mold, mice and rat infestation.
Some maintenance men demanded sexual favors for repairing the units. Despite complaints, the workers were not disciplined and despite work orders to fix the problems, some apartments have remained in terrible shape. Neither problem was new; neither problem was unknown to those running the Housing Authority. But it was difficult for these women to come forward. The first seven who did so were from the Gilmor Homes, scene of some of the angry spring uprising in Baltimore.
Only after the lawsuit was filed did the problems receive media coverage. Only now are some politicians, particularly three who have put their hats in the ring for mayor in next year’s election, saying that the housing commissioner ought to resign.
The Housing Authority may not have disciplined workers for sexual harassment, but it did fire a worker for calling attention to how long these problems had gone on! He was re-instated only after this became a scandal.
It took a lot of courage for these women, whose place in a rent-subsidized housing unit is not assured, to step forward and protest.
Nov 23, 2015
A federal jury ruled in favor of Donald Eugene Gates in his civil lawsuit against District of Columbia police. Gates spent 27 years in prison after being wrongly convicted of the 1981 rape and murder of a Georgetown University student, Catherine Schilling. Gates was exonerated in 2009 after DNA tests pinned the crimes on another man.
In the lawsuit, Gates’ attorneys showed two D.C. detectives, Ronald Taylor and Norman Brooks, paid an informant, Gerald Max Smith, $1,300 to falsely claim Gates confessed to the crimes. Smith at the time had two felony convictions and was facing a third for a purse-snatching in the area where Schilling was murdered. The cops withheld the information regarding Smith’s past criminal record and impending trial from Gates’ defense attorneys. The charge against Smith was dropped in exchange for his testimony against Gates.
Gates’ conviction was also based on false testimony from an FBI forensic analyst, Michael Malone, who testified that a hair sample taken from Gates was “microscopically indistinguishable” from hairs found on Schilling’s body.
An internal FBI investigation later showed Malone’s testimony did not match his notes in the case. The investigation also showed that not only Malone, but other FBI analysts made similarly false and misleading reports in cases around the country.
Following the verdict, the District agreed to award Gates a 16.5 million dollar settlement. In his case, Gates at least received something for the 27 years of hard time he spent in prison because police schemed to get a conviction. But his case shows the kind of “justice” the poor routinely receive in the U.S.
Nov 23, 2015
OSHA scientists have set limits for usage of 470 of the most common toxic chemicals in the work places, but thousands more are not yet tested. Why? Congress has cut OSHA’s funding.
After protests from miners and others, OSHA began, in the 1970s, to regulate dangers in the work place. And these regulations brought down the number of black lung cases and deaths for miners, to give one example.
But years of de-funding, thanks to the efforts of corporate lobbyists, have left their mark. In the work places, there are an estimated 50,000 deaths caused by working conditions per year, about 190,000 illnesses and billions of dollars in medical costs.
That’s what it means when Congress turns OSHA into a paper tiger–to save corporations some money.
Nov 23, 2015
Warren Buffett’s company Berkshire Hathaway reported 9.4 billion dollars profit for the last three months. Only the day before, a company now controlled by Berkshire Hathaway, Kraft Heinz food company, had cut 2,600 jobs.
Buffett is often portrayed as a straight-talking Midwesterner who stands for limiting corporate greed.
Really?! He just doubled his profit by turning the screws on workers at companies he owns, like those at Kraft!
Nov 23, 2015
For the fifth time in five years, Baltimore Gas and Electric, BGE, is demanding a rate increase. They told the Public Service Commission that installing smart meters was a 500 million dollar cost. Taxpayers have already put up 200 million dollars of the cost. Now BGE wants to collect the rest.
These smart meters are supposed to save money, by telling us how much energy we use. Supposedly, over the last three years, BGE customers saved 28 million dollars. If that money were spread over all the customers using BGE, it would mean a credit of less than $10 per household each summer. So this savings does not begin to cover the increase that BGE wants to charge us. Delivery charges, for example, have DOUBLED since 2010.
What has not doubled is the credits we get. What has not doubled are family wages–unless we are talking about the wages of some BGE executives!
Nov 23, 2015
The minimum water and sewer bill in the Baltimore area has reached almost one thousand dollars a year! Some families pay more.
Imagine what $80 a month means, when half the families in Baltimore earn less than $41,000 a year! It can mean some people lose their homes. Yes, the Baltimore politicians have allowed houses to be sold at tax sale time, while evicting people from their homes for owing water bills of just a few hundred dollars.
Results? Water-main breaks are still frequent, tying up traffic for days. And in heavy rains, raw sewage still goes into the watershed and into the Bay.
In the 21st century, we have a right to clean and affordable water.
Nov 23, 2015
Almost one in six Californians lives in poverty, based on the U.S. government’s official poverty limit of $24,230 per year income for a family of four. But reality is even worse than that. The government has another poverty rate, adjusted to the cost of living (housing, food, utilities and taxes); and based on this more realistic measure, almost one in four Californians is in poverty.
In fact, for the working class, the poverty rate is even higher than that, because California has a large affluent population–upper-middle class people who are very well-off.
This poverty increase is a result of falling wages–the median wage in California has declined by more than 6 percent since 2006, while the cost of living has been increasing steadily, creating huge profits for the capitalist class.
Under this capitalist system, the enormous wealth that a small minority enjoys comes from robbing millions of workers of the fruits of their own labor. We can see that very clearly in California.
Nov 23, 2015
The nation’s biannual report card looks bad. NAEP, the National Assessment of Education Progress, showed falling scores on reading and math for fourth and eighth graders. LESS than HALF of fourth and eighth graders measure as proficient at reading and math.
Overall city scores are lower than suburban scores, and that is hardly surprising, given that most suburbs–the wealthy ones–have more resources for their schools than do the cities. Nor is it surprising that children who live in poor neighborhoods had lower scores than others. This society almost across-the-board devotes fewer resources, less experienced teachers and more crowded classrooms to their education.
The NAEP report card tells us what has long been known: When students have more of what they need for a good education, their test scores tend to be higher.
It’s obvious that a society, IF it were democratic, would draw the necessary conclusion: to put enough money into poor neighborhoods to provide the education needed!
It’s equally obvious, American society doesn’t do that.
Democratic? Not by a long shot!
Nov 23, 2015
The following articles are from Lutte Ouvrière (Workers Struggle), the paper of the revolutionary workers group of that name active in France. They were published a few days after the terrorist attacks in Paris.
Nov 23, 2015
The terrorists who struck on the evening of November 13th coldly and methodically killed the greatest number of men and women that they could: people at cafés and bars, the Bataclan concert hall, and the Stade de France. At least 129 died, and more than 300 were injured.
They killed indiscriminately, at random, in order to instill terror. In the face of such a shocking expression of barbarity, it is impossible not to be seized with horror. Nothing can justify such massacres. Those who carried out these acts are enemies of all humanity, and therefore enemies of the working class.
At this moment when all of us are so devastated, the politicians are taking advantage of this emotion in order to silence any opposition and force everyone to line up behind their policies. On Monday afternoon, the entire political class held a solemn session in the French Congress to call for national unity behind them.
They speak to us of unity, but does this mean that the right wing and the National Front are going to stop their disgusting competition over who can attack Muslims and immigrants the most? Will the government put an end to this climate of generalized mistrust? Of course not! The state of emergency and the intensification of police powers will surely result in an increase of racial profiling and a general atmosphere of suspicion that will pave the way forward for the worst racists.
For Hollande, Sarkozy, and Marine Le Pen, “national unity” means uniting behind their own leadership to go to war. Even if the right wing and the National Front criticize Hollande’s policies for being still too soft, they are ordering us all to align with the government and support its war effort, to accept the state of emergency and the restriction of freedoms. And they argue that if someone doesn’t support this path of war, it’s because they are with the jihadists!
We won’t let ourselves be intimidated by this sort of blackmail! We denounce both the terrorists AND the responsibility of the French government.
The jihadists of ISIS exercise one of the most ferocious dictatorships to exist in the regions that they control. They extort from the populations, force them to live according to medieval precepts, reduce women to slavery, and kill all those who do not think like they do. Their victims are Muslims as well as Christians, which provides enough proof, if needed, that this is a question neither of a “clash of civilizations” nor of a “war of religions,” but of a struggle for the control and the wealth of the region.
But these monsters did not come out of nowhere. The leaders of the imperialist countries have never hesitated to rely on the worst regimes in order to maintain their domination of this region of the Middle East that they colonized. This ranges from medieval dictatorships like Saudi Arabia to the state of Israel, which oppresses the Palestinian people.
And when it was convenient to them, the imperialist leaders provided arms to various militias and maneuvered to sponsor the creation of opposition movements. In Iraq, the United States overthrew Saddam Hussein, destroyed his army, and put in place a regime that excluded the Sunnis. Many of these can be found today in the highest ranks of the Islamic State.
The big powers launched the “war on terrorism” fourteen years ago, after the attacks on the World Trade Center. At the time, there were one or two centers of terrorism. Today, there are dozens. Far from eradicating terrorism, these imperialist interventions cause it to thrive.
One month ago, terrorist attacks struck Turkey, killing 97. Fifteen days ago, a Russian passenger plane crashed in the Sinai Peninsula: 224 deaths. On Thursday, November 12th, a bomb cut down 44 people in Beirut. The war in Syria has already caused 250,000 deaths. So, no, the global level of barbarity has not increased since it struck Paris; it is only that it has now reached us.
France cannot be an island of peace and security in an ocean of war and poverty. A world in which 67 families possess the equivalent of what 3.5 million human beings survive on, a world where Africa and the Middle East are treasure troves coveted by the capitalists but hellish nightmares for their populations, will surely produce such monstrosities. The only way to be rid of them is to get at the root of the problem, which is to attack the domination of the world by this insane economic system.
And so, let us not enlist in this sacred union of the imperialists! We refuse to let Hollande, Sarkozy, or Le Pen speak in our names! It is crucial that we, the working class, whatever our origins, feel ourselves to be a class united by our interests to defend ourselves against this minority that exploits us and plunges the world into barbarism.
Nov 23, 2015
Lutte Ouvrière statement published November 19:
It is significant that the first victim of the state of emergency established by the government, supported by all the politicians of the bourgeoisie, is the demonstration called in solidarity with migrants, planned for the Paris region this Sunday. The heads of the local governments pushed through a by-law banning “demonstrations in public in the entire area surrounding Paris.”
Justified in the name of the “war on terrorism,” the state of emergency is used against those who must flee their own countries because of the terror used by ISIS against them. This state of emergency is also used against people in France who express their solidarity with these migrants fleeing ISIS.
The ban against this demonstration clearly shows the swindle of the government, which consists of diverting the legitimate emotions felt by the entire population of France against the horror of these terrorist attacks, in order to try to brainwash us to accept the politics of going to war in the Middle East. This swindle benefits from the complicity of all the bourgeoisie’s political parties, from the National Front to the Socialist Party.
The pretense of protecting the population is a dirty lie. From the government left to the extreme right, all the parties make political gestures that are not only useless against terrorist groups, but also contribute to aggravating a climate of distrust for their victims, according to what countries they come from.
Sowing suspicion and fear is what the terrorist groups want to do.
Lutte Ouvrière joins with all those who protest this ban against the demonstration of solidarity with the migrants and thinks that this censorship against women, men and organizations that clearly reject terrorism, is unacceptable.
Nov 23, 2015
Following the attacks in Paris, political leaders of the big parties suspended all electoral campaigning [for the regional elections due to take place in December], campaigning that had only just begun. It didn’t prevent them pouring forth what they wanted on all the television and radio channels. What it prevented was the other electoral campaigns, those of the smaller, revolutionary groups, like Lutte Ouvrière, from having the few minutes of television and radio time [allowed to them in French elections].
But that didn’t stop certain journalists from slandering Lutte Ouvrière, even though the organization no longer had the right to a few minutes of time on the news channels. On the contrary, it was easier for them to attack our tendency, when we did not have the right to say exactly what our views were. For example, the journal West-France published on the Sunday after the attacks an article declaring that “the extreme left, with impunity, legitimizes the blood bath by making the level of violence of the terrorists equal to the violence which we inflict on the terrorists.” And in the same edition an editorial writer summarizes what he says are the positions of Lutte Ouvrière and of the NPA (the New anti-Capitalist Party) under the title, “They excuse the killers.” The bits of our writing quoted do nothing to justify such a slanderous presentation, but that apparently doesn’t bother the writer. Without a doubt, his anti-communism and his desire to punish the extreme left guided him, not intellectual honesty.
And on November 16 on a French TV station, a deputy of the Socialist Party, Malek Boutih, found it necessary to vomit on the parties of the extreme left with the claim that “Their communications produced in the last 48 hours show they are on the side of fascism.” He recycles the old lies of the Stalinists from an earlier time, calling us “Hitler-Trotskyists.” It’s hardly surprising that such slanders are used to counter a revolutionary current that opposes the current propaganda, a propaganda that defends the politics of bourgeois imperialism, which has led us more and more into this impasse.
The workers movement and communists are well acquainted with this phenomenon. But these attacks show what honesty and what attachment to “values” part of the media has.
Nov 23, 2015
The attacks in Paris have become the pretext for those who express their racism without restraint. It helps them to renew violent attacks, unfortunately not new, against symbols of immigration or against the Muslim religion, and sometimes against individuals.
Since November 13, some mosques, houses of prayer, even halal butcher shops, have been defaced with crosses or swastikas, in three different cities. Racist slogans were written on the town hall in Evreux. In another town, the glass windows of a kebob restaurant were broken. Rifle shots were fired near the mosque in the city of Brest. A man of Turkish origin was shot at in Cambrai.
Even worse, this fringe of the extreme right organized meetings, like in Reims, where a dozen of its members held up a banner with violently nationalist slogans outside a meeting called to honor the victims of the Paris attacks. In the town of Pontivy, at a nationalist demonstration known in advance to the authorities, 200 people came together on November 14 shouting, “Kill them all, we don’t want them here,” and beating up a passing North African man.
In recent years, dozens of National Front demonstrations have tried to pit workers against each other on the basis of their ethnic origin or religion.
This fringe, which goes beyond the electoral campaigning of the National Front, is very small numerically. But they are more and more active at demonstrations, taking advantage of reactionary ideas and a climate of distrust against migrants of today and yesterday. So, for example, on November 4 in Angers, 20 or so of these extreme right activists tried to break up a public meeting of the NPA (an anti-capitalist party), shouting “France for the French.”
Such people are directly inspired by the Nazis of the 1930s. They use racist prejudice to recruit more people, hoping to be able to use their strength against all those who displease them–and that means, finally, worker militants and workers in struggle.
Nov 23, 2015
University of Missouri President Tim Wolfe and Chancellor R. Bowen Loftin resigned in response to student protests demanding Wolfe step down.
The protests followed a series of racist incidents that occurred on the university’s campus. In September, the student government president had racist slurs shouted at him by a passing pickup. A few weeks later, a drunken student hurled similar insults at members of a black student organization. Someone drew a swastika in human feces in a dormitory bathroom.
Students complained that Wolfe took little action in response to their complaints. One student, Jonathon Butler, went on a hunger strike demanding Wolfe’s resignation.
The tipping point came when members of the Missouri football team refused to practice and threatened to boycott the team’s next game. The athletes said in a statement, “The athletes of color on the University of Missouri football team truly believe ‘Injustice Anywhere is a threat to Justice Everywhere.’ We will no longer participate in any football related activities until President Tim Wolfe resigns or is removed due to his negligence toward marginalized students’ experience. WE ARE UNITED!”
Cancellation of the game would have cost the university at least a million dollars due to an agreement with the team’s opponent in the game, Brigham Young University. The University, which couldn’t be bothered to deal with racism, wasn’t about to lose big sports money.
It is unusual for student athletes to take such an outspoken political stance. They usually enjoy a somewhat privileged position on a college campus–so long as they “go along with the program.”
But the University of Missouri is only two hours away from Ferguson, where people still renew their protest. And maybe that counted with the students.
Nov 23, 2015
Ford workers ratified their contract by the narrowest of margins, 51 to 49%. The result was up in the air until the last votes were counted–and questioned afterwards. A worker quoted by the Detroit News, said, “the votes didn’t matter, it was going to pass regardless, that’s how crooked they are.”
But whatever the count was, the fact is, this close vote at Ford demonstrates the enormous gap between what the UAW apparatus does and what the ranks want. A 51% percent “yes” vote, even if it were accurate, is not overwhelming approval–not especially when the apparatus pulled out all the stops to squeeze it out.
The lead negotiator Jimmie Settles appeared on television to threaten and brow beat workers into a “yes”. With no shame, Settles laid out his complete lack of confidence in the union to secure anything above and beyond what they had brought away from the bargaining table. He threatened that if workers didn’t accept it, the union would go back to find a worse agreement waiting for them. According to him, all bets would be off, you don’t just go to Door Number Two to see if something better is behind it. If that wasn’t bad enough, he said that voting “no” placed Ford’s nine billion dollar investment in U.S. plants in jeopardy and that parts plants workers would lose their jobs!
The pressure coming from Solidarity House brought 53 in-plant representatives at the Rouge plants to sign a statement in favor of the contract and then join the apparatus caravan through the Rouge plants. The only representative to stick with the workers and to tell the truth about what was in the contract was Gary Walkowicz.
In the face of this overwhelming barrage of threats and bullying from their own leadership, what were workers left to conclude?
What is clear in any event is that a majority of Ford workers were dissatisfied with the result, but saw a real risk in going up against a union leadership that had vowed to ruin them if they took on a fight.
Who can blame them? No doubt, the Ford workforce, in its majority, is not ready for a real confrontation, a real fight with Ford Motor Company to win back the concessions that were taken over a decade, and to resolve the problems and unfairness of the Two Tier system that was not only left in place, but was expanded.
Even harder is the idea of having to fight the International Union as well. Your own Union, sworn to betray you to a worse situation if you do not accept a contract they bring.
The Union based ratification of this agreement on a promise that in four years, in the next agreement, they would bring all workers up to the top tier. While workers are rightfully skeptical of this promise after so many broken ones, the way forward lies in workers deciding to make this promise a reality, and not entrusting the current leadership to do it.
As hard as it may seem, workers need a new fighting leadership. Workers need a fighting union, and in order to face the company again, there has to be a fighting leadership built to replace the bureaucrats and “yes” men that today face the bosses at the table. In the course of this fight at all three companies, workers learned which of their elected reps were honest enough and courageous enough to stand with them all through the fight. There may have been very few of them, but those few can count in the future. Equally important, some rank-and-filers stepped forward, standing up to the old leadership to openly oppose this contract.
In four years, and sooner, workers must be sure that at the point of a real fight with Ford, they won’t face an enemy in their own camp.
Nov 23, 2015
Before the vote, the media yelled about how expensive the new auto contracts would be. But as strange as it may seem, labor costs for GM are going down. By 2019, labor costs at GM will drop to $2,350 per vehicle. In 2014, labor costs were $2,374 per vehicle.
According to Kristen Dziczek at the Center for Automotive Research, “The contract is not as expensive as people think because they can use temporary workers and some people will retire. You will have a different workforce in four years.”
In other words, the media lied!!
Nov 23, 2015
For months, Forest Claypool, the CEO of the Chicago Public Schools, has threatened to lay off 5,000 teachers–unless he gets 500 million dollars from the state government. This would mean laying off about 20 percent of teachers and staff. It would mean throwing schools into turmoil in the middle of the year. It would mean much larger class sizes–when many classrooms are already overflowing.
Originally, Claypool proposed that the layoffs would happen before Christmas. His own principals objected that this would mean that there would be no one to enter the students’ semester grades, since the semester ends in January! But Claypool is a businessman, not an educator, so he didn’t even realize that. Or care.
Should the state pay more for decent schools? Certainly. Illinois is spending almost 10 per cent less per pupil than it did in 2008. The state budget crisis is just as fake as the city budget crisis, based on handouts to the rich. But Chicago is a rich city and could easily afford to pay for an excellent education for every child–if that was the city government’s priority.
Claypool, Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel, and Illinois Governor Bruce Rauner all want to use the fake budget crises to force through attacks on the education Chicago provides its children through layoffs, pay and benefit cuts, more school closings, and attacks on union rights.
But the teachers and students aren’t fooled. The teachers union recently took a practice strike vote, in which 97 percent voted for a strike. Hundreds of students from different high schools have demonstrated against layoffs, the expansion of charter schools, budget cuts, and the banks that have been stealing the money that should go to the schools. If a strike comes, teachers could have many allies among the parents and students of this working class city.
Nov 23, 2015
Chicago Public Schools announced at its October Board meeting that it had placed four charter schools on a list to be closed.
Over the past 17 years, CPS has opened more than 130 charter schools, at the same time that it has closed more than 100 public schools. Neighborhood activists, students, the teachers union and politicians are denouncing opening new charters, when the Board is cutting the budgets at so many neighborhood schools.
The Board’s new response is that they will hold these four charter schools “accountable.” All four of these charter schools are performing poorly. But it is no coincidence that all four are also in working class black neighborhoods with impoverished student populations–the same neighborhoods where Mayor Emanuel closed almost 50 schools two years ago.
If the board wanted to improve students’ education, it would fold these schools back into the district, bring up the funding and allow the teachers to join the union. Instead, it proposes to attack these communities again–only now with the closing targets being the very privatized schools they created.
Nov 23, 2015
Illinois claims to have a deep budget crisis because of the pensions of teachers and state workers. Chicago’s newspapers have been printing headline after headline, editorial after editorial, calling for cuts to pensions in order to keep the state solvent. They admit the state didn’t put in its share for years, state workers and teachers don’t get Social Security, and state workers put in years of service. But, they say, Illinois just can’t afford their pensions!
But this whole anti-pension attack is a piece of propaganda orchestrated by some of the richest people in Illinois. In 2010, the Chicago Commercial Club started a fake organization called “Illinois is Broke.” According to the Commercial Club website, “Illinois is Broke” has “driven a constant drumbeat of newspaper editorials” calling for cuts to pensions.
So who are these people and why do they care about pensions? The Commercial Club has been a club of the richest Chicagoans for more than 100 years. It has always been anti-union, anti-worker, and anti-tax–at least for the rich.
Lester Crown and Eden Martin put out the Commercial Club’s main “report” calling for the attacks on Illinois pensions. This report gave “Illinois is Broke” its ammunition. According to Forbes, the Crown family is the 27th richest family in the U.S., with a net worth of almost nine billion dollars, and Lester is the family patriarch. Eden Martin is a rich corporate lawyer who serves on the boards of directors of the Chicago Board Options Exchange and Nicor Gas–two huge companies that have pushed for help from the state and local government repeatedly in recent years.
These are not “disinterested observers”–they are the super-rich, who want to cut pensions so that more of the state’s wealth can be funneled to themselves. No one should believe their propaganda. Illinois is not broke–we just have to get the money out of these rich liars!