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
Feb 15, 2016
A company executive for Carrier fired the company’s workers en masse, February 11. Caught on a cell-phone video, he coldly told workers their jobs were being shipped out to Monterrey, Mexico. “Nothing you did,” he said, “it’s only a business decision.”
Making its way quickly to YouTube, the video showed some workers booing, others yelling “fuck you” or “shit starts now.” Most looked stunned.
It was an opportunity made to order for demagogues campaigning for votes. And Donald Trump, the billionaire real-estate speculator, a demagogue if there ever was one, rushed to grab it: “I’ve been telling everybody this from day one: we’re going to have nothing left. Steel production is going to be there. Mexico is going to be the car capital of the world. Michigan is being decimated.... I’m talking about it all the time. There’s even a piece of the reason that I like the wall for economic reasons.”
Unemployment stalks working class neighborhoods, with poverty trailing after.
Trump has used that to his advantage, talking about it all the time—as he said.
The question is, what does he say? What does he propose?
Like Bernie Sanders, who rails against the Obama administration’s Trans Pacific Partnership, he proposes to set up a wall, actual and legal, around the U.S. and its economy.
It’s a subterfuge. It dodges the issue. Jobs aren’t disappearing overseas. They are being ground up by big companies and the banks behind them. Here, like everywhere else, companies push fewer workers to put out more work.
In the quest for profit, big capital maneuvers, schemes, and threatens workers with the transfer of jobs—to another state or another country—in order to get them to work themselves out of a job right where they are.
You know that’s right. You’ve been working in plants where the pace of work increases, and the number of workers goes down. You work in a big store—more customers, fewer workers. If you’re one of the few left in an office, you rattle around the empty space where other workers used to sit—then pick up the extra work. You see class sizes go up year after year if you’re a teacher.
This isn’t going to stop until working people begin to fight for ourselves—fight for jobs to be worked at a decent pace; fight for a high enough wage so we don’t need to work overtime; fight for time for ourselves, friends and families. With productivity advancing in this country as fast as it has been, there’s no reason we couldn’t have more time off: more vacation days, shorter work days, shorter work weeks—all resulting in a decent wage at the end of the week. Don’t know what a decent wage is? Of course, you do! We all know just what we need to live a comfortable life—and not worry about how it will end.
People like Trump and Sanders don’t call on us to fight for our own class interests—no more than do any of the more “traditional” candidates: Clinton, Bush, Cruz and all the rest. They simply spout propaganda that helps out the big employers, reinforcing their lies that foreign competition is taking the jobs.
We need our own candidates, standing on a working class platform, speaking to the working class, telling the truth about what’s going on, proposing to lead a fight for what we want, and what serves ordinary people. We need our own candidates, our own political party. A working class party.
Feb 15, 2016
The Chicago Public Schools and the top leadership of the teachers’ union presented an offer to the unions’ “big bargaining team” that would have included more than 100 million dollars in cuts per year. Some of the union’s leaders indicated they were ready to accept the offer. But many rank-and-file teachers were “seriously pissed off” that this was even presented as a “serious offer.” And the big bargaining team, after hearing from many teachers in their own schools, rejected the proposal.
In retaliation, CPS announced 80 million dollars in cuts to schools, and said it would stop the “pension pickup” in 30 days, which would be a 7% pay cut. Outright extortion! If you don’t accept the first offer, CPS will impose even worse!
But it’s clear that, at least so far, many teachers will not be suckered by such a crude threat. Several thousand school workers, students, and supporters marched downtown at the Bank of America in response to the cuts. And when sixteen teachers went inside to protest all the money the bank is taking from CPS, they were arrested.
Accepting cuts will not help the Chicago schools. That money will only go where public money has already been going: to banks and developers. The teachers are right to resist!
Feb 15, 2016
Mold, mushrooms, mice and rats? Leaks causing ceiling tiles to collapse? Gym class having to be held in the hallway because the gym has been allowed to rot? The Detroit Public Schools make international headlines with its deplorable conditions.
DPS headed fully down this road 20 years ago, when they privatized and cut to the bare bone the first line of defense, the building custodians. What did they expect to happen? Custodians are not “unnecessary” or “expendable.” The only one expendable is the capitalist system, which is destroying the schools and our children’s lives.
Feb 15, 2016
An organization called “Illinoisans for Growth and Opportunity” took out full page ads in both the Sun-Times and Tribune attacking Chicago teachers for rejecting the cut-filled contract offer at the end of January.
This organization of wealthy Democrats is led by Greg Goldner, who ran Emanuel’s first campaign for Congress in 2002 and who owns a company that markets red-light cameras across the country. A billionaire Houston couple, the Arnolds, is the group’s biggest donor. John Arnold made his fortune operating a hedge fund and working as a “trader” for Enron!
So what do these parasites have to do with Chicago schools? Simple: they want to steal the money needed for our children’s education.
Well, they can get out of our business and slide right back into the slimy holes they crawled out of!
Feb 15, 2016
The teachers’ sickouts and Mayor Mike Duggan’s visit to the schools prompted by them shed some light on the deplorable conditions faced by teachers and students in the schools. The teachers’ union tried to bring in its own health inspectors to collect evidence to test for things like mold that might be dangerous.
The DPS responded by threatening to arrest union members if they let the inspectors into the schools, claiming the inspectors would be “disruptive”! As if the rotten conditions aren’t already disruptive. The schools could easily have found a way to accommodate the inspectors, who traveled from across the country to do their job. Instead, they chose to obstruct them from exposing the truth.
Feb 15, 2016
Journalist Dana Goldstein’s book, Teacher Wars, shows, through 200 years of U.S. public school history, how education has been constantly underfunded and how teachers have had to fight off attacks in many epochs.
From the early 1800s, politicians wanted public education at the lowest possible price. One key way to cut costs of education was to hire women as teachers. Publicly, officials argued that women would offer a more pure, that is, a more “Christian” education, than men. But in reality it was a way for politicians to cut costs because women teachers were paid less. The justification was that men teachers had families to support—as if women didn’t!
But women turned out less “Christian” than the politicians hoped. Susan B. Anthony, later famous as a suffragist, was among the New York women teachers who fought to raise their salaries, which in 1850 were half what men teachers were paid.
In 1897, Margaret Haley helped to found the Chicago Teachers Federation, a precursor to the American Federation of Teachers. Haley found out that seven utility companies in the Chicago area paid no taxes. And she also publicized that the Chicago school board was renting out its real estate cheaply to area businesses and to two Chicago newspapers. Handing money over to businesses will sound familiar to those following the Chicago Public Schools battles of today!
In 1905, Chicago teachers like Haley joined local Teamsters in a strike for higher pay and union rights. The newspapers, showing which side they were on, claimed striking teachers were teaching their students “sedition, revolt against constitutional authority, disrespect for law, and subversion of private and public rights.”
Ridiculous attacks on teachers continue with the education fads of today. For example, the book looks at merit pay. It’s supposedly a method to improve educational outcomes—although no research supports this idea. In reality, it’s just another attack on teachers’ pay. Goldstein also looks at the history of Teach for America. She agrees with one graduate of that program, who explained, “Giving the least experienced teachers the toughest classes to teach is a stupid plan.” In fact, TfA is best seen as yet another cost-cutting measure.
Teacher Wars gives a useful look at the history of education with its constant blame of teachers, who are meant to remedy the ills of a society that itself has no solution to poverty, racism or sexism, whether in the classroom or the work force. Behind this history is the fact that capitalism needs the public schools because it needs a workforce with some degree of education. But the capitalists want this education for the masses on the cheap!
Feb 15, 2016
The American Medical Association has launched a campaign to ban the advertising of prescription drugs and medical devices.
Drug makers spent more than 4.5 billion dollars on advertising in 2014. They use massive campaigns to promote the most expensive drugs, to champion brand-name drugs over generics, and to abuse patients’ trust with deceptive arguments. For example, a commercial for an anti-cancer drug sold by Bristol-Myers Squibb offers “the chance to live longer,” without specifying that the gain in life expectancy from this extremely expensive product is no more than three months. Gilead has spent 150 million dollars on advertising for Hepatitis C drugs that cost consumers tens of thousands of dollars.
This practice is part of the reason why drug prices are so high, even when there exists a less expensive alternative or their effectiveness is in doubt.
In the United States, as in other countries, what counts the most for drug companies is not what their medicines can do for the sick, but how much profit they can make for themselves.
Feb 15, 2016
Hundreds of Teamster retirees packed a hearing in Detroit last week to protest proposed pension cuts. People had come from all over Michigan.
People were angry. Pickets outside the building held signs such as “Pension Theft,” and “Your Government Found a Way to Steal Your Pension.”
Retirees are blaming the government because Congress passed a law in December 2014 that allows “multi-employer” pension funds to make cuts. So the Teamsters’ Central States Pension Fund is proposing to cut the pensions of more than 270,000 current and future retirees–anywhere between 50 per cent and 70 per cent!
Many of these workers had multiple employers because companies lay off workers. Or, they go out of business ... specifically to stop paying out pensions!
As one retiree pointed out, companies paid “special dividends” to their stockholders, but did not cover their pension liabilities. The pension money that the companies kept was not even theirs–it was the money workers had put aside for their retirement!
It’s robbery in plain sight. But in this capitalist society, the laws, the courts, the whole legal system, allow–in fact help out–capitalists to rob workers. Even those who are already retired.
The protest in Detroit shows the anger that continues to simmer among working people. Better if it were to boil over!
Feb 15, 2016
The following is excerpted from an article in Class Struggle Issue 106, Winter 2015, the journal of British comrades of Workers Fight.
The whole experience of 14 years of war on terror shows that, instead of reducing, let alone “defeating” terrorism, it has only managed to produce more and more terrorists.
Indeed, the number of casualties in terrorist attacks has never stopped rising since 9/11. And it is still rising. Every single North African and Middle Eastern country has been affected over the past year. But in some countries, terrorism has become part of day-to-day life. So, since the beginning of the year, every single week has claimed the lives of 105 civilians in Afghanistan, 135 in Iraq and 500 in Syria. To these figures should be added the 150 weekly victims murdered by the Nigerian militia Boko Haram, a direct and indirect by-product of the bombing of Libya.
There is a logic to all of this: the more the rich countries carry out military aggression against the poor countries, under whatever pretext and in whatever shape or form, the more casualties and destruction they cause in these countries and the more they push vengeful youth into the arms of whoever appears to be fighting their imperialist world order—including the most blood-thirsty militias, such as ISIS.
So, one thing is certain: whatever Cameron may claim, ISIS will not be defeated by dropping more bombs over Syria, nor by sending troops there. Or to put it differently, using either of these methods will only result in producing dozens of ISIS siblings, all more brutal and monstrous than ISIS itself, not just in Syria, but in many other parts of the world.
The fact is that the rich countries’ governments are incapable of protecting the population against terrorism quite simply because they cannot be both part of the problem and part of the solution. It is their “war on terror,” in other words, their attempts at protecting the stability of their world system of oppression, which have produced the Talibans, al Qaedas, ISIS and all the other similar monsters that now exist in many poor countries—and is bound to produce even more in the future.
But, at the same time, it is the poverty, injustice and violence of their capitalist order that makes it chronically unstable. And no one will ever be immune to the built-in violence of this mad capitalist system until it is replaced by a social organization designed to meet the needs of all.
Feb 15, 2016
An L.A. Metro bus operator, Balwinder Jit Singh, was attacked on his bus in November by a passenger. Singh was later hospitalized. He had a black eye, a bruised jaw, and a swollen face. He continues to experience pain and blurred vision.
The bus operator, Singh, was apparently singled out because of his appearance. He is a Sikh, an Indian religion, and has a beard and wears a turban. Because of that, the passenger called him a “terrorist” and “suicide bomber” and accused him of hijacking the bus. This racist attack is no accident.
There is a big increase in terrorism. But this is because the U.S. military is carrying out all these terrible wars and bombings in the Middle East and Central Asia. To cover this up, the U.S. media and public officials are demonizing the people who are victimized by those conflicts and fleeing to survive. Such demonizing incites these racist attacks.
Why should we let the same people who attack us here at home affect and poison us against other working people?
Feb 15, 2016
The world price of oil is now at an 11-year low, after a 69% fall over the past year. In fact the slump in world prices has hit just about every commodity. Iron ore is at a 10-year low, following an 80% fall. The metal palladium, which is mostly used in cars and electronics, has fallen by 47% over the past year. Meat and cereal prices fell by 15% over the same period, sugar by 21%, dairy products by 28%, etc.
For consumers, falling prices may sound like good news–that is, assuming retail prices follow, which is far from always being the case.
But due to the perverse operation of the capitalist economy, “good news” may well spell disaster. It already does in the poor producing countries. Not only have their governments responded to this drop in income by slashing already grossly inadequate social budgets, but companies are announcing massive job cuts–like mining giant Anglo-American, which plans to cut 85,000 jobs, out of a total workforce of 135,000.
In addition, there may be another catastrophe in the making. This is because, in order to finance their investment while maximizing dividends, the big commodity companies raised funds by selling bonds representing a share in the value of their future production. This is similar to how, before the crisis, mortgage lenders sold bonds whose value depended on the future repayment of dubious mortgages. Just as mortgage-backed bonds collapsed in 2007 when the real estate bubble burst, today commodity bonds are in free-fall as the commodity bubble bursts. The question is whether, as happened in 2008, this will cause another financial meltdown.
Feb 15, 2016
Saudi Arabia, the United States’ “best friend” in the Arab world, began the year 2016 by executing 47 opponents across the country in just one day. Some were shot by a firing squad, others were beheaded. In many cases their dead bodies were crucified and publicly displayed for several days. There is not much to choose between the Saudi royals’ executions and those propagated on social media by ISIS!
The Saudi dictatorship was careful to present these executions as part of the Western “war on terror” by portraying some of those executed as members of Al-Qaeda. But several among the 47 were known to have been prosecuted due to their involvement in the country’s little-known “Arab Spring”–a long series of protests, between 2011 and 2013, in the eastern Saudi province of Qatif. Among the protestors who were executed was one of the most prominent voices of opposition to the regime, the Shia cleric Nimr al-Nimr.
The province of Qatif is home to most of the country’s Shia minority (close to 25% of the population) which is the victim of systematic social discrimination. The Sunni rulers of Saudi Arabia have always considered this minority a threat. This is not so much for religious reasons, but because, due to this discrimination, increasing numbers of Shias have supported secessionist demands. And since most of the country’s oil reserves happen to be in Qatif, this is something that the Saudi rulers just cannot afford.
Saudi Arabia’s western allies have long chosen to look the other way.
Nor does the U.S. give a damn about the Saudi aggression against poverty-stricken Yemen, which has caused more instability in the region and has resulted, since it began last March, in 6,000 victims, tens of thousands wounded and 2.5 million refugees.
The Saudi regime fanned the flames of the Syrian civil war, by sponsoring various jihadist militias–including ISIS, in its early days. Nonetheless, the U.S. portrays Saudi Arabia as a “factor of peace” and “key partner” in the future political settlement of the Syrian crisis!
The truth is that the U.S. is determined to carry on using the Saudi rulers as its regional police, because of their “effectiveness” in crushing any form of resistance from the population.
Feb 15, 2016
Denmark’s lawmakers overwhelmingly voted last month to empower its officials to seize cash and valuables from refugees fleeing wars and misery of the Middle East, Africa and Afghanistan.
In a brutal show of hypocrisy, Danish government officials said that items of “special sentimental value” such as wedding rings, engagement rings, decorations and medals are exempted. But watches, mobile phones and computers can be confiscated from refugees. “Family portraits,” however, are exempted. How “generous and welcoming” is this “civilized” country!
This law only prolongs the suffering of vulnerable people who are fleeing bloody wars and poverty.
This is not an act of generosity, but an appalling act of barbarism on its face. And, as Bent Melchior, the former chief rabbi of Denmark said, the plan “had the character of what was actually in force during the Nazis’ persecution of minorities.”
Feb 15, 2016
Sweden is preparing to expel 80,000 refugees, as its government declared. The refugees are fleeing wars in Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan. And others are fleeing wars and poverty in Africa. They want to find a land on this earth where they can live.
In this pursuit of the basic wish for survival, more than 170 were killed while making the dangerous crossing from Turkey in January of this year. They drowned in the Aegean Sea, a very beautiful, warm, welcoming sea for other people–such as rich tourists from Sweden who visit every year.
These wars and poverty are the products of capitalism. The drive of big Western companies to exploit the resources of the Middle East, Africa and Afghanistan is the culprit of this misery. And the armies of these rich countries, above all that of the U.S., are the tools of this drive.
Sweden, unlike the U.S., may not be sending its armies to these wars and conflicts. But it exports machines and guns for violence and oppression. It is a major arms exporter in this world. It sells arms to 55 countries, many of them dictatorships, and it makes billions of dollars out of these sales.
These countries, strongholds of capitalism, are directly responsible for this blood and misery bath. Of course they would expel or refuse refugees–who stand as a reminder of the imperialist countries’ crimes.
Feb 15, 2016
A romantic novel has been taken off high school book lists by the minister of education in Israel. It was judged too “demonic” because it concerned a romance between–oh, no–an Israeli woman and a Palestinian man! Horrors, proclaimed the minister, that such a book might encourage unions between Jews and non-Jews. That might threaten the identity of Jews!
The outcry over the book had one immediate result: sales of the book went wild. They increased so much that the book’s publisher put out a new edition.
What a great response to the minister’s racist imbecility!
Feb 15, 2016
On February 21, 1965, 51 years ago, Malcolm X—Malik el-Shabazz—was assassinated.
Malcolm X defined himself in a famous analogy he often used: that of the house slave and the field slave.
“The house Negroes—they lived in the house with master, they dressed pretty good, they ate good because they ate his food—what he left. They lived in the attic or the basement, but still they lived near the master; and they loved the master more than the master loved himself. They would give their life to save the master’s house—quicker than the master would....
That house Negro loved his master, but that field Negro—remember, they were in the majority, they hated the master. When the house caught on fire, he didn’t try to put it out; that field Negro prayed for a wind, for a breeze. When the master got sick, the field Negro prayed that he’d die. If someone came to the field Negro and said, ‘Let’s separate, let’s run,’ he didn’t say ‘Where we going?’ He’d say, ‘Any place is better than here’.”
You’ve got field Negroes in America today. I’m a field Negro. The masses are the field Negroes. When they see this man’s house on fire, you don’t hear the little Negroes talking about ‘our government is in trouble.’ They say, ‘The government is in trouble.’ Imagine a Negro: ‘Our government’! I even heard one say ‘our astronauts.’ They won’t even let him near the plant—and ‘our astronauts’! ‘Our Navy’—that’s a Negro that is out of his mind, a Negro that is out of his mind.”
Malcolm X was undoubtedly the most powerful and militant speaker of his time. With his directness, the analogies he took from daily experience, the biting humor he utilized to confront his audience on their own hesitations and illusions, he found the way to speak to the poor black masses in a way that no one else had done. And he used his podium to become the most effective recruiter for the Nation of Islam.
Like others of his generation, he first came into contact with the Nation of Islam, headed by Elijah Muhammad, while in prison. Paroled from prison at the age of 27, he threw himself into recruitment activity, first in Detroit, where he was chiefly responsible for tripling the membership in Temple One in less than a year, then to Chicago, where he studied with Elijah Muhammad. He built up temples in Boston and Philadelphia and then moved to Harlem.
During the 11 years of his activity as the most well-known organizer for the Nation of Islam, the Nation had a monumental growth. Remember, it was not enough to walk through an open door to enter the Nation of Islam. A person who wanted to join went through a period of work, study and testing, and he or she had to accept the strict rules of conduct that the Nation maintained.
During the years of the 1950s and early 1960s, when a part of the poor black masses were becoming radicalized, the Nation of Islam appeared as the only organization which spoke to that growing radicalism.
The Nation of Islam denounced white society in the harshest tones. Elijah Muhammad spoke of the 6,000 year reign of the “blue-eyed devil” about to come to an end.
Over the years, Malcolm X’s ideas evolved, but he was not more ready to make himself acceptable to American society:
“No, I’m not an American. I’m one of the 22 million black people who are the victims of Americanism. One of the 22 million black people who are the victims of democracy, nothing but disguised hypocrisy. So, I’m not standing here speaking to you as an American, or a patriot, or a flag-saluter, or a flag-waver—no, not I. I’m speaking as a victim of this American system. And I see America through the eyes of the victim. I don’t see any American dream; I see an American nightmare.”
When John F. Kennedy was killed in 1963, Malcolm X responded to a question about the assassination, by referring to the recent murder of Medgar Evers by racists in Mississippi and U.S. involvement in the assassination of Patrice Lumumba in the Congo and Ngo Dinh Diem in South Viet Nam. He added, “Being an old farm boy myself, I was never sad to see chickens coming home to roost.” The Nation of Islam publicly disciplined Malcolm X, ordering him to keep silent for 90 days.
Whatever differences had been evolving inside the Nation, this brought them in the open. In March of 1964, when it became obvious that Malcolm X was not to be reinstated, he announced the formation of The Muslim Mosque Inc. In May of 1964, he announced the formation of a non-religious organization, the Organization of Afro-American Unity (OAAU).
In the spring of 1964, the bourgeois news media in New York ran lurid accounts about the so-called “Blood Brothers.” Supposedly, a gang of young black men in Harlem had organized themselves to attack cops and, more generally, whites.
In contradiction to almost every other black leader, Malcolm said this:
“So the question is, if the Blood Brothers don’t exist, should they exist? Not do they exist, should they exist? Do they have a right to exist? And since when must a man deny the existence of his blood brother? It’s like denying his family.
I think one of the mistakes that our people make—we’re too quick to apologize for something that might exist that the power structure finds deplorable or finds difficult to digest. And without even realizing it, sometimes we try and prove it doesn’t exist. But if it doesn’t, sometimes it should. I am one person who believes that anything the black man in this country needs to get his freedom right now, that thing should exist.”
By 1964 Malcolm X had come to view force as a valid weapon, and the threat of using it as a club held over white society to convince it to redeem its crimes against the black population. He sometimes said that it was not “white society” per se, but capitalist society. In the last year of his life, he made it clear that he was ready to bring down this society, if that was what it took for black people to escape oppression.
But what he did not say was that the very circumstance of capitalist class society made it necessary for black people to overturn it in order to escape oppression.
The biggest burst of radicalization of the black masses came after Malcolm X was assassinated on February 21, 1965. In the summer of that same year came the first massive rebellion, the one in the Watts section of Los Angeles; in 1966, it was Cleveland and Chicago; in 1967, Detroit and Newark, and dozens of cities and towns stretching out from these two, as well as Cincinnati and Dayton Ohio; in April 1968, hundreds of cities across the country went up in flames when Martin Luther King was assassinated.
By 1967 and ‘68, many ordinary black people called themselves revolutionaries. And the call for “black power” was heard everywhere. This was not yet the revolution, but it indicated at least that social revolution might have come out of those circumstances, depending on how the consciousness of the black masses evolved, that is, in part, on what goals were given to them by leaders they trusted.
If Malcolm X had lived, would he have come to the point that he would have given the goal of overturning capitalist society to the black masses?
No one can say. He already had gone through some important changes in his thinking. But he would have had to make an even sharper change, and moreover in the heat of the struggle.
We’ll never know, but we do know that no recognized leaders organized the black masses fundamentally on the basis of their class. And there was no important organization of the left that made a working class revolution seem possible.
All that remains to be done, building on the legacy that Malcolm X and many others, for example, Eugene Debs, left behind.
Feb 15, 2016
A year ago, South Los Angeles residents explained to the city officials that the oil drilling site, located in their neighborhood on Jefferson Boulevard, released gases that caused foul smells, emitted thunderous noise and was the source of other environmental problems.
This site is operated by Freeport-McMoRan, which is one of the world’s largest copper and gold producers and also has oil and gas operations.
The residents wanted the city to impose stricter conditions on the company to protect their neighborhoods, including enclosing the drilling equipment in a building.
The city did nothing to intervene in the operations of the multi-billion dollar Freeport. Just as it did nothing to intervene in the field at Porter Ranch–until disaster hit.
The on-going natural gas leak from the field located at Porter Ranch is just the tip of the iceberg.
There are large oil fields all in and around the metropolitan Los Angeles area. The companies have roughly 1,000 active wells, scattered across the city, extracting oil and gas. Many of these active wells are located near homes and schools. And these wells occasionally cause toxic leaks, like the one on Jefferson, affecting Los Angeles residents’ health.
Oil and natural gas are very profitable raw materials contributing to the riches of huge, billion-dollar companies. The City of Los Angeles is compliant with these companies and their dollars–not with regulations signed on a worthless piece of paper.
Feb 15, 2016
Recently, the newspapers headlined a Flint story that said migrant workers are still being poisoned by lead-tainted water because they don’t speak or read English and didn’t hear the news.
Shameful! Almost every electronic and home product on the market gives directions in multiple languages, including Spanish. You mean elected representatives can’t even keep up?!
Feb 15, 2016
Michigan’s Dept. of Environmental Quality (DEQ) follows the policy that is set at the top. That policy is that pollution and contamination are okay if “jobs are being created”–even when jobs aren’t being created. You see this with the Marathon Oil Refinery wanting to increase pollution and the state indicating they might approve this!
THIS was the attitude guiding decision-making in Flint.
It’s an attitude that has been there for years. Whatever a big business wants is more important than the safety of the people.
It makes no difference which party is in the Governor’s Chair. This attitude is how decisions are made by both Republicans AND Democrats.
Feb 15, 2016
Thousands of poor Baltimore City and Maryland children are still being poisoned by lead paint. Yet this problem of lead paint poisoning was supposedly dealt with years ago, first by the banning of lead in paint in 1978 and then by regulations requiring all houses and apartments to be inspected and made safe (from lead paint) before they could be sold or rented.
At a recent hearing, the Baltimore City health commissioner estimated 50,000 children under the age of six were still at risk in the city and thousands more throughout the state of Maryland. Every year, 400 to 500 new cases of lead paint poisoning appear, meaning damage to the growing child’s brain and body.
A journalist’s investigation in December found that two-thirds of the lead paint poisoning cases come from homes built before 1950. Records are not kept on all properties rented, and the city also has few inspectors. In fact, inspections don’t take place until there is a case of lead paint poisoning to check up on–more than a little too late!
The Maryland Department of the Environment does not have a registry of properties that is up-to-date. Thousands of homes drop off the list, stop paying the registration fee, with no explanation and no one to check what has happened.
Last summer, Kenneth Holt, the Maryland secretary for housing and community development, claimed publicly there probably was no lead-paint crisis in Baltimore City. Baltimore women, he said, were faking lead paint poisoning by putting “a lead fishing weight in her child’s mouth, then take the child in for testing.” He claimed mothers are putting their children at risk in order to get better housing. As if a landlord is not legally responsible for renting lead-paint free housing in the first place!
But will the city and state step up and stop entirely preventable damage to poor children? They’ve had the chance ever since lead was shown to be damaging to children in the 1920s. All they’ve done is make it easier for companies to escape prosecution, or even detection.
Feb 15, 2016
The experts now say that children were poisoned in Flint because caustic river water leached lead out of pipes.
Yes, but why is the Flint River caustic?
Could it be GM, which occupied nearly a two-mile length of its banks before pulling up stake and deserting Flint? It dumped so much heavy metal tailings into the river that its banks still destroy new water running by?
Of course, GM’s the culprit, but which governor, which party Democrat or Republican, is ready to challenge GM? After all, as GM used to say, “What’s good for GM is good for the nation.”
No–what was good for GM has poisoned Flint’s children.