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
Oct 2, 2017
When Donald Trump and Congressional Republicans announced their tax cut “plan,” Trump called it a “giant, beautiful, massive, the biggest ever in our country, tax cut.” For him and his wealthy friends, he may be right! For the rest of us, you can bet that it will end up being a giant ... massive attack.
Calling this a “plan” is a huge overstatement: the proposal is only nine pages long and lacks real detail. But there’s more than enough to tell who it will benefit and who it will not.
According to a report from the Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center, individuals in the top 0.1%, or those making more than five million dollars a year, would get back at least $500,000 a year. The top 1%, with incomes more than $730,000, would get $130,000. But people making up to $25,000 a year will only see a $60 break in their income tax every year. And some of us will pay more in tax.
While we will see little or no benefit from this proposal, wealthy individuals would clean up.
For corporations, the boon is even bigger. The corporate tax rate would be lowered from 35 percent to 20 percent, a huge cut in taxes. Trump and other supporters of the plan claim that the current tax rate causes companies to take their money offshore and claim their profits in other countries. But as everyone knows, no corporation actually pays the 35 percent rate—a whole pile of deductions and other schemes allow companies to pay little to no taxes much of the time.
Trump claims that many of these deductions will be eliminated—but this is one detail that is conveniently missing from the plan: no specific deductions are mentioned for elimination. So when we see that the rich and the corporations will pay lower tax rates, we can assume that in fact the actual taxes they pay will be much, much lower.
In fact, a massive tax cut for corporations is the stated goal. Trump, the Republicans, and the corporate heads all claim that this will allow companies to use that saved money to invest more in their companies, bringing more production, more jobs and higher wages to working people in the U.S.
What a crock!
Corporations are already making record profits today. And what are they doing with that money? Instead of investing their profits in production, they have been pouring more and more of it into speculation—because that’s where they can make even more money more easily. If they get even BIGGER profits from Trump’s tax breaks, they’ll just pour even more into speculation, benefitting nobody but themselves.
But the cuts in their taxes WILL create massive deficits in the U.S. budget—up to six TRILLION dollars over ten years by some estimates. And who will end up paying for those deficits? The politicians have systematically been using deficits from earlier tax cuts to justify “massive” cuts in education budgets, Medicare, Medicaid, and every other social service they can find. They will do even more of this. They will continue to borrow “massive” amounts of money from Social Security—and then they will turn around and say they must gut it in order to “save” it! Everything the Republicans AND Democrats have been doing to us for the past 40 years, they will do even more; but now ramped up worse than ever.
For more than 40 years, the working class has seen these attacks increase and intensify—because the fight it would take to stop them is a fight of the whole working class. We haven’t seen such a fight developing until now. But it could develop. And sooner than we think.
That’s why it’s important to look reality in the face: to prepare for tomorrow’s fights. The lies told by Trump, other politicians and the wealthy classes they serve are nothing but daggers aimed at our hearts.
Oct 2, 2017
For more than two decades, Disney’s annual profit has skyrocketed, but at the same time the company paid close to nothing in taxes to cities where it was located, while securing many subsidies from them, according to the Los Angeles Times.
Look at Anaheim, California, for example. In 2015, the City of Anaheim approved an agreement to exclude Disney from any entertainment tax for 45 years. This tax of only $1 per ticket could have generated more than one billion dollars for Anaheim during the term of the agreement. Instead, Disney got it. Last year, the city granted Disney a tax rebate worth 267 million dollars for a luxury hotel the company plans to build. Disney’s parking garage, built and paid by the City of Anaheim, generates more than 35 million in annual revenue, but Anaheim gets only $1 a year for the lease.
In 2016, Disney reported a profit of close to 9.4 billion dollars.
When the city officials declare that their cities are bankrupt, they are lying. The money the cities need is in the coffers of the companies.
Oct 2, 2017
Health officials declared a hepatitis A outbreak in Los Angeles County. The outbreak was first recorded in San Diego County, where 450 people are affected and at least 16 have died of the virus. The virus spreads from person to person by ingesting fecal matter through food, sexual contact and sharing of drug paraphernalia.
Of course, the big problem in L.A. is rising homelessness. The homeless population is especially vulnerable to the virus because of the extremely unsanitary conditions, including little or no access to bathrooms or clean running water.
As this hepatitis outbreak shows, homelessness is a serious problem for all of us–for the whole society. But politicians treat the homelessness problem as a nuisance that can be resettled some place far away, rather than the crisis that it is. It is a social crisis, which requires all the resources society could muster to help people in need.
In other words, politicians should do about this crisis what they do for their corporate buddies!
Oct 2, 2017
A referendum on Iraqi Kurdish independence was due to go to a vote on September 25. But the Iraqi Supreme Court called off the vote. While Iraqi Kurdistan has had autonomy since 2005, the Iraqi courts claim the referendum would be unconstitutional. But that’s not the real reason they nixed this vote!
It’s not only the Iraqis and their prime minister Haider Al-Abadi, who don’t want to see Kurdish independence. The imperialist powers, especially the United States, along with regional powers including Turkey and Iran, are all opposed to this move.
In 1991, at the end of the first Gulf War, the U.S. leaders supported the Iraqi Kurds against the Saddam Hussein regime. They made a deal that turned the Kurdish part of Iraq into an autonomous region. And in 2005, two years after the fall of Hussein and the start of the second Iraq war, this autonomy became official.
The Kurdish region was relatively prosperous, thanks to oil resources and trade with nearby Turkey. It was also relatively peaceful in contrast with the other regions of Iraq that were ruined by the imperialist war. This reinforced the Kurds’ relative power and enriched the Kurdish ruling class. But making Kurdish independence official would create insoluble problems for the imperialist leaders.
As soon as Kurdish president Massoud Barzani announced the plan for a referendum on independence, the U.S., Britain, and the U.N. sent a delegation to try and talk him out of it. The regional powers including Turkey and Iran also voiced their opposition to Kurdish independence. Turkey feared that a declaration of independence by Kurds in Iraq would encourage independence movements among Kurdish people in Syria on the Turkish border, or even Kurds living in Turkey itself. Iran, with a population of 80 million, has 8 or 9 million Kurds who might want to speak up for the same thing.
The Americans sent an envoy, Brett McGurk, to try to deal with this problem for these U.S. allies, who make up the international coalition involved in the Syrian and Iraqi wars. He tried to convince the different Kurdish groups to postpone a referendum on independence until the war with ISIS is over.
The problem for the U.S. is that it needs Iraqi Kurdish troops in its war against ISIS. In fact, since ISIS launched its offensive into Iraq in 2014, the Kurds are the only troops who have consistently mounted resistance, while Iraqi troops have often fled. More recently, Kurdish troops participated in the first phase of the recent U.S.-led offensive to re-take the Iraqi city of Mosul from ISIS, because they consider that city to be part of Iraqi Kurdistan.
The imperialist leaders are only interested in what the Kurds can do to serve imperialism’s aims, especially as cannon fodder against ISIS. But the Kurds have their own aims, which are not at all the same.
Oct 2, 2017
On September 19th, Trump addressed the United Nations. Along with his nationalist and militaristic threats came criticism of the U.N. itself. “The United Nations was founded on truly noble goals,” said Trump, but “in recent years the United Nations has not reached its full potential, because of bureaucracy and mismanagement.”
The U.N. was not actually founded for “noble aims.” It was created at the end of World War II by the victorious powers to assure their hegemony over the entire world. And the U.S. has used the U.N. to justify its military occupations and interventions as the defense of international law. This was the story in the Korean War, in Iraq during the 1991 war, and on many other occasions.
The U.N. has never functioned democratically, but instead reflects the real relationship of forces among the imperialist powers. The permanent members of the U.N. Security Council, the U.S., Russia, France, Britain and China, each has the right to veto any decision which runs counter to its interests.
The U.N. was set up to help those big powers deal with the crises created by the imperialist order and by an economy dominated by giant corporations with no interest but maximizing their profit. It has been, since its beginning, an instrument to maintain some semblance of world stability. The leaders of the imperialist powers, including Trump, don’t intend to throw it away.
Oct 2, 2017
City of Detroit residents pay–by far–the highest auto insurance rates in the United States, as is true for residents of the State of Michigan as well. One zip code in Detroit–48227–has an average auto insurance rate of $7,415 a year!
The auto insurance industry claims that rates are highest in Michigan because it is the only state that requires unlimited medical benefits for accident victims. But according to Michigan Public Radio, this claim is impossible to prove since auto insurance companies are allowed to hide information. “Michigan is one of the few states that doesn’t require the insurance companies to ... [release]... profit margins on the auto insurance.”
In fact, in all but four states, auto insurance companies don’t release much information at all. Auto insurers argue that information is “valuable” and they don’t want to be forced to give it away for free!
But in California, Illinois, Texas and Missouri, SOME information is required to be released and it has gone to good use.
In 2017, a study on auto insurance discrimination was put together by Consumer Reports and ProPublica. When the numbers were crunched about injury and property damage claims in these four states, discrimination against minorities was found across the board.
People with a perfect driving record paid more for auto insurance if they were part of a minority group. The study found “good drivers” paid 30 percent higher rates–on average–in minority neighborhoods as compared to predominantly white neighborhoods. This was true even though costs for the insurance companies were often higher in predominantly white neighborhoods!
It is legal in Michigan and most other states for auto insurance companies to price according to characteristics that have nothing to do with your driving record.
An insurance researcher named Douglas Heller looked into this in Michigan. He comparison shopped auto insurance companies, using the Esurance.com website. He used the same exact address and car. The only thing he varied was the “type of person” trying to get the insurance. What he found was horrible. He found auto insurance companies charging more for women than for men, charging more for single people than for married, and charging more for factory workers than for lawyers.
The auto insurance industry uses CUTE advertisements on TV to sell their product, but their business practices are UGLY. No wonder the auto insurers fight to keep their data secret!
Oct 2, 2017
Mike Duggan, in his 2013 campaign for mayor of Detroit, made the differential insurance rates that Detroiters pay a big issue. What Duggan said spoke to people.
But now, four years later, a new election stares Duggan in the face. Rates are still skewed, and still outrageously high. So Duggan has offered up insurance “reform.”
Yes, it could lower rates a little–by cutting pay-outs for medical care a lot. But it does nothing to reduce the outrageous profit of the insurance industry.
It’s a nice gift to the insurance industry, combined with an attack on us–which Duggan must hope no one notices ... until after the election!
Oct 2, 2017
This article continues our series on the 100th anniversary of the Russian Revolution, taken from the words of participants.
“Civilization has made the peasantry its pack animal. The bourgeoisie in the long run only changed the form of the pack,” Trotsky wrote in the chapter of his History of the Russian Revolution devoted to changes in the way of thinking in the countryside. The peasantry, who represented three-fourths of the population, lived under conditions that varied depending on region and social situation, from the landless agricultural worker to the farmer who rented out his land. It also included the small landholders who struggled to feed their families and the big proprietors who ranked among the village notables. But during the course of the revolution, the peasants expressed themselves in more and more radical ways, not holding back from breaking past the Provisional Government’s hesitations and taking direct possession of the land.
In his memoir, Through the Russian Revolution, the U.S. socialist journalist Albert Rhys Williams recounted the visit that he took in August 1917 to the village of Spasskoye in the Volga River basin with Yanishev, a Bolshevik militant who had been driven out of the village ten years earlier and who had not returned since: “Since our arrival, the villagers had been asking Yanishev to make a speech. In the early evening, there arrived a delegation beseeching him.
‘Think of it,’ said Yanishev. ‘Ten years ago, if these peasants had suspected that I was a Socialist, they would have come to kill me. Now, knowing that I am a Bolshevik, they come begging to talk. Things have gone a long, long way since then.’ …
The committee drew a wagon out upon the village green and when the throng was thick around it, Yanishev mounted this rostrum and began telling the Bolshevik story of the Revolution, the War, and the Land.
They stood listening while evening darkened into night. Then they brought torches, and Yanishev talked on. His voice grew husky. They brought him water, tea, and kvass [a fermented rye drink]. His voice failed, and they waited patiently till it came back again. These peasants who had labored all day in the fields stood there late into the night, more eager to gather stores for their mind than they had been to gather food for their bodies. …
So much reverence and age-old longings in those eager faces pressing around the speaker. So much hunger in these questions rising out of the dark. Yanishev toiled on until he was utterly exhausted.”
In his History of the Russian Revolution, Trotsky relates the words of a Moscow liberal newspaper that echoed the concerns among the landlord circles in the summer of 1917: “The muzhik [Russian peasant] is glancing round, he is not doing anything yet, but look in his eyes—his eyes will tell you that all the land lying around him is his land.”
Analyzing the hundreds of struggles that broke out during the revolution all across Russia, Trotsky continued: “In that autumn period, the villages were struggling with the kulaks [wealthier peasants], not throwing them off, but compelling them to adhere to the general movement and defend it against blows from the right. There were even cases where a refusal to participate in a raid was punished by the death of the culprit. The kulak maneuvered while he could, but at the last moment, scratching the back of his head once more, hitched the well-fed horses to the iron-rimmed wagon and went out for his share. It was often the lion’s share. ‘The well-to-do got the most out of it,’ says the Penza peasant, Begishev, ‘those who had horses and free men.’ Savchenko from Orel expressed himself in almost the same words: ‘The kulaks mostly got the best of it, being well-fed and with something to draw the wood in.’
According to the calculations of Vermenichev, to 4,954 agrarian conflicts with landlords between February and October, there were 324 conflicts with the peasant bourgeoisie. An extraordinarily clear correlation! It alone firmly establishes the fact that the peasant movement of 1917 was directed in its social foundations not against capitalism, but against the relics of serfdom. The struggle against kulakism developed only later, in 1918, after the conclusive liquidation of the landlord.”
Oct 2, 2017
Two big hurricanes, Irma and Maria, that hit Puerto Rico ravaged the island, destroying its electrical grid and leaving most of the population desperately short of food, clean water and fuel. Governor Ricardo Rosello warned that recovery of basic services, like electricity, could take four to six months.
But much of Puerto Rico’s infrastructure had already been greatly weakened and destroyed long before those hurricanes hit.
More than a half century ago, Puerto Rico, which is a territory of the U.S., appeared to be an economic success story. In the 1970s, the U.S. Congress passed a law saying that businesses operating in Puerto Rico did not have to pay any federal taxes. This attracted some multinationals and industries, which moved from the mainland to Puerto Rico, boosting employment somewhat. But starting in 1996, the U.S. Congress progressively suppressed the tax exemption, and U.S. companies gradually left Puerto Rico, leaving the economy in a shambles, unemployment skyrocketing and almost half the population living below the poverty line.
To keep afloat, the Puerto Rican government borrowed increasing amounts of money. To big banks, speculators and hedge funds, this debt was highly attractive because of the high interest payments that the Puerto Rican government was forced to make, and the fact that those interest payments were completely tax deductible. Pretty soon, the government was borrowing money to make payments on the debt. Debt fed on itself.
Last year, Puerto Rico had a total debt of 73 billion dollars, the biggest debt of any local authority in the U.S. This debt included 20 billion dollars for the three big municipal utilities that provide power, water, sewer and transportation. The payments on this enormous debt bled the economy dry, causing blackouts and shutdowns of the water system and public transit–not to speak of a collapsing public healthcare system and a collapsing education system, making life on the island impossible for hundreds of thousands of families who then fled to the mainland.
But that economic and social disaster didn’t stop the U.S. Congress from trying to squeeze out even more money for the speculators and bankers that hold the Puerto Rican debt. Last year, Congress created the Financial Oversight Board, called “Promesa,” made up of bankers and former government officials, to which Congress gave the ultimate control over Puerto Rico’s finances.
What is most shocking today is the lack of help or support from the U.S. government, despite its enormous resources, including thousands of planes, ships, helicopters. A week after Hurricane Maria hit, none of the bare necessities had made it to most of the population in dire need–little or no food, water, gas, medicine, and no tarps to throw over houses without roofs. “Nothing. Nothing. They haven’t brought anything here,” one resident told the New York Times.
But that is consistent with the policy of the government, and the bankers and speculators who it serves, that is geared to only make a profit ... no matter the cost in human life.
Oct 2, 2017
As of September 30, nine days after Hurricane Maria, millions of people in Puerto Rico still lacked electricity, water, food, and other necessities. The mayor of San Juan, Puerto Rico’s capital, explained that “This is a story of devastation that continues to worsen.”
Hundreds of supermarkets across the island remained closed because of a lack of fuel for their generators. As a result, they are imposing rationing. Jose Alvarez, a school security guard in the city of Ponce, reported that “They limit what you can buy. Milk, two. Bread, one package. That’s if they have it.... If six people live in your house and you buy two small containers of milk, how long is that going to last?”
At least 3,000 containers of cargo are stuck in the port of San Juan, including food and other necessities. But the roads are blocked by debris. There is no fuel for trucks to move it. Workers cannot get to the port to help unload, or to the trucks they would drive to take the products to stores. And without refrigeration, much of it will spoil.
The White House bragged that within days after the storm, they had a million liters of water and 124,000 gallons of fuel, plus 274,000 meals to distribute. But Puerto Rico has 3.4 million people! That’s 1/3 of a liter of water, 1/15th of a meal, and a few drops of gas per person. And that’s if these supplies could get to the people who need them, which they have not. The White House also bragged that they have 17 chainsaw teams clearing debris. On the whole island!
At first, President Trump tried to praise the relief effort: “It’s going very well, considering....” The acting Homeland Security secretary, Elaine Duke, said she was “very satisfied” with the government’s response and called it “a good news story.”
Finally, Trump shifted gears, but not until day after day of images of a devastated island filled the TV news, reminding people of the images of New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina in 2005. After the mayor of San Juan criticized the lack of help, Trump attacked her, and then had the nerve to blame the population itself: “They want everything to be done for them when it should be a community effort.” He also complained that “This is an island, surrounded by water. Big water. Ocean water.” As if that was a reason the federal government could not help!
Of course, the fact that Puerto Rico is an island IS a problem–it means the population is trapped. But the U.S. government has plenty of ways to get help to all the people on an island. It’s called the U.S. military.
The military has fleets of cargo planes, aircraft carriers, hospital ships, helicopters to reach remote areas, machines to clear roads and repair water and electrical lines. It has plenty of fuel that it could distribute. The military has skilled specialists who know how to set up operations in places with limited or destroyed infrastructure–like Afghanistan or Iraq. The military has the capacity to feed millions of people with MREs, or Meals Ready to Eat. As anyone who has watched TV can attest, much of Puerto Rico already looks like a war zone, with polluted standing water, floating, rotting furniture, and felled trees and houses.
If the federal government made it a priority, it could bring the necessities of life to the 3.4 million stranded, desperate people on the island. It has the resources. But despite its propaganda, the military does not exist to help or protect people. It exists to maintain the domination of U.S. corporations over the whole world.
Oct 2, 2017
Report from Guadeloupe: Hurricane Maria was a Category 5 storm when it struck the islands of the Caribbean, as powerful as Hurricane Irma which preceded it. But unlike Irma which hammered Saint Martin and Saint Barts, Maria’s center just missed Guadeloupe and Martinique.
Many people lost power and water, large areas were flooded, and roofs were torn off. But while it was very dangerous, this hurricane inflicted less damage and fewer deaths on Guadeloupe and Martinique than Irma had on Saint Martin and Saint Barts. Its center passed 15 miles from Guadeloupe, between the island of Dominica and the Saintes, close to the island Marie-Galante. These small islands are part of Guadeloupe. The damage was worse on these small islands and on the south coast of Basse-Terre than elsewhere, with the waters of the Caribbean coming 600 feet up from the coast and causing some damage. But the damage still wasn’t comparable to what happened on the islands north of Guadeloupe, which Hurricane Irma completely destroyed.
That cannot be said for the island of Dominica. During the night of 18th and 19th of September, the center of Maria passed right over this island. The damage was comparable to that inflicted on Saint Martin fifteen days earlier. Hundreds of roofs were torn off. The rain caused landslides which killed many people.
The Caribbean remains divided into French, British, Dutch, and Spanish colonies with some small independent countries. Whether independent or colonies, these islands have been beset by poverty resulting from the impact of slavery and direct colonization for almost three centuries.
In most of these countries, poverty wreaks permanent destruction. Hurricanes aggravate the situation in direct proportion to this poverty.
Oct 2, 2017
Garment workers in Los Angeles are paid an hourly average wage of $7 for sewing clothes for giant apparel companies, including Forever 21, Ross Dress for Less and TJ Maxx; according to the U.S. Department of Labor. Some workers got as little as $4 an hour. Most garment workers are paid by the piece.
Considering that there are around 45,000 garment workers in Los Angeles, these clothing giants are enormously profiting by exploiting this labor force.
One garment worker, Norma Ulloa, spends 11 hours a day to produce 700 shirts for giant apparel company Forever 21, according to Los Angeles Times. These shirts are priced $13 to $25 at stores, which can generate anywhere between $9,100 and $17,500 from each worker as daily revenue for Forever 21. But, Ulloa earned $6 an hour, which totals $66 as daily income for her.
The current hourly minimum wage in Los Angeles is $12. Ulloa therefore filed a wage claim with the State of California to recover lost wages. Workers like Ulloa have been filing similar claims since 2007 demanding back pay for producing Forever 21 clothing. Forever 21 has not paid one cent since then.
The minimum wage law violations have been ongoing for at least a decade. The minimum wage law was just window dressing.
Oct 2, 2017
The president of University of Maryland, College Park, who gets $600,000 a year, just got a raise of $75,000; the president of University of Maryland University College, who earns $360,000 a year, just got a raise of $50,000; and the president of the Salisbury University, who earns $385,000, got a raise of $20,000.
These presidents were praised for being “market oriented,” meaning, thinking like the boss of a business.
While presidents get CEO salaries, the job of teaching at a college or university has almost disappeared. Three quarters of all teaching at U.S. colleges and universities is done by contract teachers with low pay and no benefits. These college presidents help ensure full-time jobs end and part-time work increases.
Just like bosses everywhere.
Oct 2, 2017
In the past five years, 15 workers have sustained amputations, and one worker’s hand was crushed at a factory in Chicago.
This factory, called Bway, employs about 500 workers who make metal paint and food cans. It is in the Little Village neighborhood, which has many undocumented immigrants–in other words, desperate workers who might have to take jobs this dangerous.
OSHA is the government agency supposedly concerned with worker health and safety. It inspected the Bway factory 32 times in the last five years and cited it with five violations. After the last report, it finally gave them a $500,000 fine–a tiny slap on the wrist–and let it keep operating.
Workers’ safety? No, OSHA is ready to maintain the flow of profits to the corporations–and let workers’ safety be damned. That’s OSHA’s motto.
Oct 2, 2017
In the third week of the school year, Baltimore’s temperatures soared to the 90s. A teacher posted a photograph of a classroom in one of the high schools with a temperature of 114 degrees.
Other classrooms around Baltimore City saw 100 degrees and up during the school day.
As one student said, “It was impossible to learn.”
Yes, and that’s what those in charge of Baltimore’s schools need to take responsibility for. They are the ones who condemned Baltimore’s children to schools not only lacking air conditioning in the hot weather, but sometimes heat in the cold weather, working plumbing in bathrooms and water fountains, etc.
Their decisions to take money away from the schools ensured that Baltimore’s majority poor and majority black school children worked in an environment making it impossible to learn!
Oct 2, 2017
In a recent speech in Alabama, Donald Trump said, “Wouldn’t you love to see one of these NFL owners, when somebody disrespects our flag, to say, ‘Get that son of a bitch off the field right now. Out! He’s fired. He’s fired!’”
If there’s anything that shows the overt racism of the Trump administration and of this society, it’s someone as powerful as Trump and those who support him calling black athletes sons of bitches.
Trump continued to call for firing of protesting players as more black NFL players were sitting, kneeling, or raising their fists during the playing of the national anthem before NFL games.
The first to do so had been Colin Kaepernick, the quarterback of the San Francisco 49ers, who initially sat on the bench during the anthem before a preseason game in 2016. After his actions were noticed a couple of games later and reported on in the media, Kaepernick explained, “I am not going to stand up to show pride in a flag for a country that oppresses black people and people of color. To me, this is bigger than football and it would be selfish on my part to look the other way. There are bodies in the street and people getting paid leave and getting away with murder.”
In doing so, Kaepernick took a courageous stance against police brutality and the many cases in which cops killed black people, often caught on video doing so, and yet were either not charged or were acquitted of any wrongdoing. Since then, Kaepernick lost his starting quarterback job with the San Francisco 49ers, and after opting out of his contract with the team, has been denied a job with any NFL team, despite having once taken his team to the Super Bowl.
In response to Trump’s disgusting comments, more and more players carried out various protests during the anthem to show their support for Kaepernick and their opposition to such blatant racism and the NFL’s treatment of Kaepernick. The Pittsburgh Steelers, Tennessee Titans and Seattle Seahawks refused to take the field until after the anthem.
Trump’s comments forced the hands of NFL team owners. On the one hand, they couldn’t admit openly they had banished Kaepernick from the league, and they also had to be concerned about turning off their black fan base, who spend a great deal of money on NFL team paraphernalia and attending games.
On the other hand, the owners hoped not to offend the reactionary part of their fan base, who they had for years encouraged to connect the NFL with a super- patriotic attitude supportive of the U.S. military.
To distance themselves from Trump, therefore, many of the owners took the field with their teams, standing for the national anthem but locking arms with the players. They called it a “show of solidarity,” in opposition to Trump while at the same time “showing respect for the flag.” They turned it into a discussion of the athletes’ “right to freedom of speech.”
This is not a question of freedom of speech. If it were, Colin Kaepernick would already have a job. It’s about the owners, the media, and other politicians’ attempt to divert attention away from the question of racism and police brutality.
In the meantime, the great deal of media attention has been a godsend for Trump. It has taken the spotlight off his inability to overturn “Obamacare”–despite his claims. It hides his administration’s totally inadequate response to the people suffering from the destruction wreaked by recent hurricanes in Texas, Florida, and now Puerto Rico. And it hides the reality of his tax cuts–planned to serve the rich at the expense of everyone else.
If there is anyone who deserves to be called by the kind of names Trump used, it’s Trump himself.
Oct 2, 2017
People like Trump and others who criticize NFL players refusing to stand for the national anthem act as though the players are disrespecting some long time-honored tradition. In fact, nothing could be further from the truth.
ESPN’s Stephen A. Smith said in 2016, “Until 2009, no NFL player stood for the national anthem because players actually stayed in the locker room as the anthem played. The players were moved to the field during the national anthem because it was seen as a marketing strategy to make the athletes look more patriotic.”
A 2015 report by Senators John McCain and Jeff Flake spoke out against taxpayer money being used for this kind of “paid patriotism.”
According to their report, the Department of Defense paid the NFL more than 12 million dollars from 2011 to 2015 and 53 million dollars from 2012 to 2015 to pro football, baseball, basketball, hockey, and soccer leagues for “paid tributes” like on-field color guards and full-field flag details.
In other words, what NFL players are accused of “disrespecting” is simply a high-priced effort to recruit young people to volunteer for the American war effort.
Oct 2, 2017
The Director of the Michigan State Police, Kristy Kibbey Etue, decided to weigh in on what she personally thought about black NFL football players taking a knee during the national anthem. She referred to the players as “... ungrateful anti-American degenerates.”
She made the news and is being called on the carpet for her “offensive” words on Facebook. Her defenders say she was just expressing her opinion.
Yes, she was–and her opinion is exactly the problem. She can’t help but transmit that same disdain and racism every single day, to the police force that extends state-wide, including into cities like Detroit. One of her troopers recently Tased an unarmed black teenager while chasing his ATV, and caused his death.
When the chief is a racist, so will be the troops she commands.