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 27, 2017
In the U.S. and internationally, many professional women have decided to stop keeping the bosses’ sexual harassment, assault and rapes a secret. They have told their truth in press conferences and by joining the Twitter campaign: #MeToo. Men who were victims of sexual abuse as children or adults have come forward, also.
This is similar to what happened in the campaign against sexual abuse by priests in the Catholic Church. In both cases, success at public shaming reached a critical point. Public support for the victims allowed a breathing space for an outpouring of previously hidden truth. Today’s groundswell has allowed professional women in many walks of life to publicly shame and “out” powerful and “respectable” men for their repulsive, demeaning and often criminal behavior.
In fields where the man’s “public reputation” matters, women have felt protected enough by the #MeToo campaign to multiply their voices. A few disgusting and powerful men have been forced to resign. This has particularly happened in the world of media. Because the media industry depends on public image, predators have fallen in the world of movies, journalism, and the Olympics. When the “YUK!” factor gets high enough, viewers tune out. The bosses decide to cut their losses and start firing a few serial predators.
But for the masses of ordinary working women whose bosses are not the least bit famous and whose power does not depend on a good public reputation, what can women do? Sexual harassment happens to women who work in fields and farms, in mines, in factories, in hotels, in restaurants, in offices, in transportation, with computers, in court rooms, and in legislatures. If the truth ever comes out, we will learn that women workers in the White House have been victims, too.
Every day on the job, with no fanfare, militant working class women have learned to stand up to their harasser and let him have it with both barrels. Whether the woman gets fired or not has a lot to do with having a network of support and respect organized around her. The reaction of coworkers matters. Tolerating harassment strengthens the boss. It is one more leg of management’s divide-and-conquer strategy.
But at any particular moment, working class women are not always in a position to feel able to fight. Some who are most victimized by sexual predators work in isolated jobs. Women who work in hotels as maids, or in private homes as domestic servants or as farm workers in isolated fields describe frequent sexual harassment.
For as long as rulers have been lording over workers, for as long as “class society” has existed, women have made the decision to feed their families and keep quiet. But their abusers are no less wrong.
How can we call this a “modern” society–a “civilized” society–when any low level boss, in any walk of life, can get away with demanding sexual favors in exchange for women keeping a job or getting a promotion?
Sometimes a look at history makes the present clearer. In the Dark Ages, the bosses of that society, feudal lords, demanded sexual favors from the women who worked for them. It was “normal.” This preying on women sexually has deep roots. Some days it seems not much has changed from then until now. If it feels to working women like it will take a revolution to completely topple this deeply rooted oppression, that is the truth. At a minimum, it will take a lot of organizing in workplaces before working women feel safe to speak up.
But every fight for dignity has the possibility to become contagious. If the fight begun by professional women starts to spread to working class women’s lives, a way forward can open up for all working people.
On the subject of women’s secrets, here is another: The secret suppression of women’s role in the history of social movements. It’s another “secret” that needs to be outed!
Many a social movement, many a strike wave, many a revolution has reached its tipping point and begun the long road to victory when women decided they were fed up. Courageous acts by individuals as well as masses of women demanding food for their families have often been the spark to light the powder keg of revolt. In the end, for working class women to throw off the harassment of the petty boss requires the same solution as for workers in general to throw off the harassment of the petty boss. Organize!
Nov 27, 2017
June was a particularly disastrous month for riders on the New York City subway. A rush hour train careened off the rails in southern Brooklyn. After another derailment, 34 people were sent to the hospital. A track fire sent nine people to the hospital. And when a crowded train stalled in the middle of a tunnel, leaving hundreds in the dark without air conditioning for an hour, passengers beat on the walls and clawed at the doors like a scene from a real-life horror film. One person scrawled on the fogged-up window: “I Will Survive!”
After these disasters, New York State Governor Andrew Cuomo declared that the New York City subways were in a “state of emergency,” and okayed an immediate infusion of hundreds of millions of dollars earmarked for the New York City subways. But this money is no gift. The public shells out 45 per cent more money to use and support New York mass transit in the form of higher fares, taxes and fees than it did 10 years ago. But over the last decades Republican and Democratic administrations at the city and state level have stripped billions earmarked for mass transit to subsidize the profits of various sectors of the capitalist class. For example, last year millions in New York City transit money was diverted to subsidize upstate ski resorts after a warm winter. Billions more have been spent on a few opulent stations and other projects in the wealthiest New York City neighborhoods that benefitted big real estate developers and banks.
By diverting billions of dollars from subways and mass transit, city and state officials created large budget shortfalls. They then used these shortfalls as the excuse to saddle the transit system with massive amounts of debt, debt that tripled in just 15 years. Some of this debt was taken out to service older loans, like using one credit card to pay off another. To service that debt has been extremely profitable for the financial sector. It has meant that the banks and big investors swallow up 16 per cent of the entire mass transit budget, almost three billion dollars every year–huge amounts of money that should be going for service and maintenance.
So, even though daily ridership doubled in the past two decades, top officials put the subway system on the equivalent of a starvation diet. New York City is the only major city in the world with fewer miles of track now than before World War II. Fewer trains are running today than in 2007, and those that are running break down more often. More than 2000 jobs in critical areas like repairing signals, tracks and cars have been left unfilled. Even simple measures to keep the city moving–like positioning medical help at busy stations to escort sick passengers off trains, or assigning platform conductors to handle large crowds, or having extra trains on standby have been almost done away with.
The main infrastructure, the very backbone of the subway system, including the century-old tunnels and the track routes, has been left to crumble. And the signal and communications system predates World War II on most lines. In an age of computers and high technology, the New York City subways still rely on mechanical switches and vacuum tubes that are linked by fraying cloth-covered cables and wires.
The subways are a part of the vital infrastructure. But what has been done to the subway system is one example of how the capitalist class uses Republican and Democratic politicians and officials to cannibalize this infrastructure, robbing the working class of its taxes and jobs, along with imposing much longer and more hazardous commutes.
Nov 27, 2017
The city, under pressure from the Regional Transit Authority, proposes to raise fares for buses and trains. Never mind that pay isn’t going up. Never mind that rent IS going up all over the city. Never mind that the city, state and county keep raising taxes on working people. Somehow, they have to come back, yet again, to dig even further into our pockets.
Supposedly, this is the only way to raise money to keep the system running. They say there’s no money in the city to do that. Except, of course, for the two billion dollars they have lying around to offer to Amazon....
Nov 27, 2017
Detroit’s children have the highest rate of lead poisoning in the state of Michigan–8.8 percent of kids tested were found to have elevated lead levels in 2016. In one ZIP code, more than 22 percent of children had lead poisoning!
This level is up from 7.5 percent in 2015. Officials blame a higher rate of abandoned building demolition in that period for the rise. There was a much higher risk for kids who lived within 200 feet of a demolished building.
Lead paint was banned starting in 1978, so any homes built before then had lead paint in them. This lead paint deteriorates over time and gets in the air and soil, as well as flaking off and being ingested. In addition, Detroit has an estimated 125,000 lead service lines for water in the city, more than the rest of the state combined.
So–officials are in effect saying that there is nothing that can be done about lead getting into the environment when older buildings are demolished. That’s ridiculous! Of course there are ways to demolish a building while being very careful to contain any hazardous waste coming from the materials in the house–and you can bet that in more wealthy areas, careful steps are taken to contain those materials. But of course, those methods make demolition more expensive–apparently more expensive than the politicians are willing to pay. It’s more important for them to clear this land for development than it is to keep children safe!
And if the demolitions are making the rate spike right now, they are not what created the problem in the first place. The fundamental cause is that officials have let decades pass during which aging homes containing lead were allowed to fall into disrepair and ruin. Children living in these areas have experienced high rates of lead exposure for years.
City and state officials point to that very fact, that the problem has been longstanding, to explain why they won’t handle it quickly. State Department of Health and Human Services spokeswoman Angela Minicuci said that Detroit’s situation can’t be compared with Flint. “You can’t make an apples-to-apples comparison,” she said. In Flint, “there was this impact on health, but it was a man-made crisis versus [Detroit, where there are] historic issues of lead exposure in the environment as a whole–it could be paint, it could be in soil, it could be related to the industry.”
Maybe the poisoning in Detroit doesn’t have a specific cause like switching the water source, which is what happened in Flint–but the bigger cause is the same: Capitalism, and the push to make profits, whatever the consequences might be to the population. And aid didn’t come to Flint because the state and federal governments recognized a problem–no, they tried to deny the problem for two years, but the population of Flint fought and fought, and made the problem known, until officials couldn’t deny it any longer. That’s when they found the money to start addressing the problem.
Today they say they can’t find the money to save children’s lives in Detroit, because “Detroit is not like Flint.”
Well, it can be.
Nov 27, 2017
The only Target store in central Baltimore City has announced its closure for February.
Target is a company with revenues of 70 billion dollars a year from 1800 stores.
As in other big cities, many chains have closed or moved to the suburbs. Even in the Baltimore suburbs both Sears and Kmart have announced store closings.
What makes Target’s decision and other store closings so much like robbery is that elected officials find tax breaks to bribe companies to open. For example, this Target was part of a mall that got 15 million in tax breaks to renovate.
Over and over, we see retailers pit cities and regions one against another to see how much they can collect before they decide where to put the next store.
Nov 27, 2017
The Baltimore city government sold Janney Street Park to olive oil manufacturer Pompeian, Inc. for one dollar so the company can redevelop it to expand its storage space. The company is the biggest supplier of olive oil to Wal-Mart.
This 1.4-acre park is the only park in the industrial neighborhood of Kresson, north of Highlandtown. Longtime resident Cathy Gentry has spoken out ever since 2014, when the city first proposed to give the park away. It is used every day by children on the swings and basketball court; adults play soccer and volleyball in the field, families hold parties and baby showers there, and Pompeian workers eat lunch in the shade under the trees.
Gentry and her neighbors put together petitions in English and Spanish, got more than 170 signatures, and met with city officials.
Their campaign isn’t over.
Nov 27, 2017
Insurance companies in California raked in 5.4 billion dollars in profits off Medicaid, the federal health insurance program for the poor, from 2014 to 2016. These “gigantic profits,” as an expert in the field put it, represent a 16-fold increase in average yearly Medicaid profits for the insurance industry, compared to the preceding two-year period of 2012-2013.
The explanation is simple. The profits began to skyrocket in 2014, when the Medicaid expansion kicked in under the ACA. The law not only expanded Medicaid enrollment by raising the income limit for eligibility, but the federal government also footed the bill for states to significantly increase their Medicaid payments to insurers–supposedly because insurers would have to pay all those extra bills for the newly insured people.
But, apparently, insurance companies just pocketed the extra profit handed to them, without providing adequate service in exchange. In fact, the two companies that made the biggest Medicaid profits in California, Health Net (1.1 billion dollars in 2014-16) and Anthem (549 million dollars in 2014-16), are also two of the lowest-performing Medicaid insurers, according to surveys and patient complaints. (For example, patients complained that the insurers were not providing enough specialist doctors in a given area–which is a common complaint about plans offered under the ACA in general, especially the less expensive plans.)
And what did state officials do? Nothing. They admit that they didn’t even audit the insurance companies to see how much of the billions of dollars they handed them were actually being used for patient care!
In other words, this whole Medicaid expansion amounted to nothing more than a plain, old-fashioned, huge government handout ... no, not to poor people, but to big capitalists.
Nov 27, 2017
In the last few weeks, a string of men have been exonerated after the Cook County State’s Attorney dropped charges against them.
Arthur Brown was released after 29 years in prison. Jose Maysonet had been locked up for 27 years. Nevest Coleman and Darryl Fulton were released after 23 years. Fifteen more men were exonerated from drug convictions. All of these cases shine a light on what Chicago police and prosecutors have done for decades.
The fifteen men whose drug convictions were overturned had all been set up by a corrupt cop, Sergeant Ronald Watts. Watts ran a protection racket on the streets of Chicago for a decade. One of the exonerated men, Leonard Gipson, had three drug convictions brought by Watts. “Watts always told me, ‘if you’re not going to pay me, I’m going to get you,’” Gipson said. “And every time I ran into him, he’d put drugs on me. Every time.”
Maybe Watts was a particularly crooked cop, but he was not the only one to play fast and loose with evidence.
Two of the other men just released supposedly confessed–but only after they were beaten by the cops. And the prosecutors and judges kept them in prison for decades anyway. In one case, the prosecutors even lied openly in court to keep the man in prison. The other two were put away on very scant evidence. As soon as DNA testing was done, it came out that someone else did it.
By dropping the charges against these four men, the state’s attorney admits that they were wrongly convicted. But how many more are rotting in prison on trumped-up evidence? Joshua Tepfor, the lead attorney for the 15 exonerated men, said up to 500 more convictions should be looked at because they’re tied to corrupt-cop Watts and his crew. That’s just one crew. The other cases involved dozens more cops. How about the thousands locked up by them? How about the tens of thousands prosecuted by the state’s attorneys who were willing to railroad these men to prison?
These cases reveal a “criminal justice” system that has more than just a few “bad apples.” It is rotten to its core.
Nov 27, 2017
Thirty years ago, on November 23, 1987, 4,000 workers at Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan (BCBSM) ended a hard-fought 88-day strike, which pushed back company demands for major concessions.
While wages were an issue in the strike, the company’s intention to drastically cut sick time and eliminate flexibility in work start times was foremost in women workers’ minds, most of whom were responsible for children.
Earlier in 1987, Sally Bier ran for president of the Detroit local union with a slate of 12 executive candidates, with many more workers running for the steward positions.
The program of this slate was “No Concessions, No Secrets from the Workers,” and called for workers to have all information prior to decision making on a contract. In a leaflet addressed to all the workers, they wrote, “Don’t vote for us if you are not ready to fight if BCBSM demands concessions.”
The election was hotly contested, with hundreds of workers involved and active. Bier’s slate was elected, along with previous officials, who continued as the majority on the Board. With Blue Cross aiming to take concessions, there was no opportunity for anyone to settle into a “let-the-union-handle-it” mind set.
The top UAW leadership insisted that all bargaining remain secret. Of course, the company executives and many others were automatically included for information. But the workers were not: they were supposed to await the decisions made by union and company officials.
Bier disagreed and put out daily reports on bargaining and meetings for workers to discuss and vote, not just on what they were brought, but on what they wanted.
Her team insisted that workers should vote on strike demands with everyone in attendance. In the face of threats by the international union and the company, they left the bargaining table in the hours leading up to the midnight contract deadline to discuss in a meeting of almost 1,000 workers in the downtown local. There the workers discussed in detail what the company had last “offered,” and then formulated what they wanted, as their own strike demands.
Vitally important, by their votes in this meeting, workers made the decision to strike THEIR own decision–not the bargaining committee’s, or the International’s, but theirs.
Another meeting of almost 1,000 workers voted to elect a strike committee. Why a strike committee? To run the strike, of course; to make decisions in the heat of the fight and to take decisions to the full body of strikers as often as possible. Workers put themselves forward. Others were proposed–leaders of the local it was important not to exclude. Putting up the strike committee was a means of keeping decision-making in the hands of those making the fight. The committee would organize the strike on a daily basis. Over the 12 weeks of the strike, as the situation got more difficult, some workers stepped aside, but others joined it, reinforcing the workers’ determination to continue the strike.
In addition, strikers decided to have daily membership meetings. This was unheard of, and greatly agitated the international union leaders who wanted to send workers home. But it made sense to the workers. They were proposing to make a real fight, not to have a monthly meeting to vote on a budget or a holiday party.
The strike committee asked those on strike to form other committees, like the picket captain committee, 50-strong, responsible for 24-hours-a-day, 7-days-a-week picketing. There was also a cheerleader committee, a sign-maker committee and the communications team. Workers tackled these and other committee positions with excitement, and were always meeting to figure problems out.
The International Union set up two committees under its control. One of them verified eligibility for receipt of strike benefits based on performance of picket duty. In the beginning, these committees viewed the strike actions directed by the worker committees as a mess. Some of it definitely was! But as the strike went on, and these “official” committees became more involved in the workers’ problems, they became integrated into the workers’ actions and meetings, for the most part.
For many strikers, the most memorable part of the strike was daily life on the picket lines there in the heart of Detroit. From midnight when the strike was declared, until the days after the strikers had returned, the companionship, the comradery and the experiences as picketers, captains, cheerleaders, sign makers was an unexpected gift of the event. Strike leaders came every day, but so did many other workers. Some came two or three times a week until they couldn’t do it any longer. Attendance on the lines dropped off, but the strike committee scheduled regular demonstrations and “rolls” or moving demonstrations, to ensure workers could always know when and where to reconnect. Outreach committees tried to bring other workers to the line and went out to different workplaces like Ford, Chrysler, GM plants to hand out strike flyers.
The fact that the International Union had not planned for a strike gave workers the opportunity to control their own strike. Workers decided that it was up to them to get everyone down to the picket line. The calling committee was a group of 20 telephone inquiry representatives who called workers to have them report. The fact that other workers, not the International or the local, were asking them to come made it real. It resulted in a whole series of discussions and decisions to insist that four hours a week, the time required by the International UAW to qualify for strike benefits, was not enough! “They can’t require more than the International rules call for, which is four hours!” so said the International. “What a crock!” was the workers’ response. “That’s why they can’t win anything!”
Picketing was 24 hours 7 days, and all committees put that first. But hundreds of workers came through downtown. There were strike halls at St. Andrews Hall and in the basement of the Globe Building, where the local was housed. The Strike Headquarters at St. Andrews Hall had a reading room and a child care area as well. With coffee and donuts, it became the place to be, and to get strike bulletins from the strike committee and notices of demonstrations or “rolls” to come.
During the first week, strikers were determined to keep the non-union workers from going in. Someone put nails down, and the disabled cars and tow trucks held up entry to the parking garage. Strikers blocked cars in militant actions, and Blue Cross got city police to escort cars in. The women strikers were good at calling out to the police to support them, and many did. But the company took steps to get an injunction to limit pickets. Strikers said, OK, so we won’t block, we’ll “roll” around the building, move and move and get hundreds down here to surround the tower, and the Jefferson Building and Edison Plaza.
“Rolls” became a standard operating procedure for the strike. Hundreds of picketers would form lines to encircle the buildings with chanting and singing. Night rolls were the creation of the Cheerleader team, who discovered that weekend events at Cobo Hall and downtown locations made perfect places to roll groups of picketers with signs and flashlights across Jefferson Avenue! They were happy to see that even suburban residents were learning about how dirty Blue Cross was–as they had to slow down and stop for the roll to pass.
When Teamsters from Local 299 decided to “roll” hundreds of trucks around Blue Cross in low gear, cutting off access to and from the building and sounding their horns when strikers made the signal to “BLOW!”, it was one of the happiest times on the lines.
In the beginning of the strike, UAW President Owen Bieber and people from his office participated in a major demonstration in front of corporate headquarters and called on local unions to join in. But that quickly stopped when International staff began to attack the strike.
When the UAW representative from the Strike Assistance Program came on location, he bullied everyone connected with the strike committee. He kicked the strike committee out of the local hall basement and bullied St. Andrews Hall management into dropping the strike headquarters. He set up the strike check payments in a location miles from the downtown local union and strike locations. He encouraged hostility toward the leaders and strikers. He cut off strike benefits to strike committee members and didn’t give it back until he was threatened by the workers. Finally, he even tried to take away the money that was donated to the strike by auto workers and others.
As the strike moved through October and into November, the numbers participating in the strike committee and other committees fell off as workers took up part-time jobs or couldn’t afford to come to the lines as often. Divisions incited by the International began to take their toll.
At the beginning of October, a plan was afoot to put the local union under International Union supervision in a receivership. A popular newscaster put an article in print calling for the removal of the President, and red-baiting in the press and on the lines followed. A large meeting of the Local Union degenerated into shouting and a near fight as two sides, the new and old administrations, fought to control the decisions.
Then agitation for a return to work was started behind the scenes. But the fact that workers discussed collectively, and voted openly in front of each other in a general meeting on whether or not to return, kept the strike from breaking down. Those who were more determined reinforced the others. They said, “We have come this far; I’m not going back for less than what I have now.”
If they had not discussed their problems openly, if there had not been a vote to cement the sentiment to stay out, despite the difficulties, workers may have individually decided to give up. Their own collective decision-making protected their future.
Then a scandal broke loose implicating Blues upper management in schemes that gave perks, like money for condominiums or cars, to top executives and those on the Board of Directors, including two UAW officials. The roof blew off! The strike was reinvigorated.
Certainly, the presence of some auto workers on picket lines helped the strikers through difficult times in the strike. Some auto locals came to the line with roses for the picketers and set up events to support the strike, like spaghetti dinners at Locals 160 and 600. Baskets were distributed with food collected by auto workers and other workers.
When the International Union was red- baiting, having support from UAW local leaders like Don Douglas, Pete Kelly, Russ Leone and General Baker reinforced the workers’ renewed determination. In the end, there were some people in the International Union who tacitly supported the strike.
Finally, Blue Cross gave in and came up with a contract offer that was acceptable to the workers. They voted to accept it–but only after Blue Cross brought two fired strikers back.
The strikers were able to hold off a long, concerted attack by the health care giant. In a period when auto workers were being hammered with concessions, when others thought it impossible to make a fight against them, Blue Cross workers got decent wage increases (rather than the uncertain bonuses auto workers were getting) and were able to retain the old time-off-the-job programs. For the quality of life of the predominately female workforce, this was a major victory.
The tenacity of the strikers and their ability to shrug off hardships was the dominant factor in the strike. Accustomed to being told on a regular basis that they couldn’t succeed, that they didn’t have the brains or the status to be anyone, workers heard the exact opposite from the strike leaders. They heard that it could be done, and that they were the ones who could do it: they knew in their brains and their hearts how to organize and fight and win! Being female and running a household requires intelligence and skill and the ability to shrug off problems and work around obstacles. Surviving as workers at the Blues requires more of the same.
Mad and tired of their conditions, the workers stepped forward. Their spirit, their committees, their chants, their anger, their rolls around downtown Detroit represented a fight that, if picked up by other workers, might have changed the condition of the whole working class.
The working class has lost out, time and time again–both before and after the Blue Cross strike–from the lack of revolutionary leadership in the factories and workplaces. Our class deeply needs new leadership with the revolutionary perspective that capitalism, driven by the profit system, must be taken down and replaced with a collective, socialist society and that workers have the absolute right to exercise their power to secure what they need, be it a wage increase, a benefit, or a society that benefits humans, not corporations.
The strike, collectively led by the workers, is a small reflection of what workers can accomplish through their own struggle, once freed from leadership that tells them to wait for deliverance. The Blue Cross strike can serve as an example of what is possible, still today, when a different policy, one resting on the capacities of the workers themselves, is followed.
Nov 27, 2017
On Saturday, November 4, the Saudi crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman, organized a purge of the top levels of his State, arresting some 200 princes, members of the clan of the previous ruler, older ministers, and other wealthy businessmen. He also, apparently, orchestrated the resignation of the Lebanese Prime Minister, Saad Hariri, which was announced the same day from the Saudi capital.
In pressuring the Lebanese prime minister to resign, the Saudi authority wants to readjust the balance of political forces in place in Lebanon for some years–a balance that has allowed Hezbollah, the Shiite party allied with Iran, to gain power via a power-sharing agreement with Hariri’s Sunni group. Over some months, the Saudi government has moved quickly in its anti-Iranian diplomacy. It wants to demonstrate that in the Arab world, it is prepared to oppose in all matters those who work with its Iranian rival.
Whether the political rule being established in Syria and Iraq with the military retreat of ISIS, or in Yemen where the Saudi army is dug in, Saudi Arabia finds itself facing forces that lean upon or could seek support from its Iranian rival–as is the case with the Houthi rebellion in Yemen. It’s also evident in the tensions between Saudi Arabia and Qatar that have been going on for these last months, since Qatar has been collaborating with Iran to exploit a gigantic natural gas deposit in the Persian Gulf.
But behind it all is, as always, imperialism.
The policy of imperialism in the Middle East has always been to inflame rivalries between regional powers in order to ensure its domination. These rivalries have largely weighed on the war in Syria, which has seen the intervention by militias supported by Saudi Arabia, by Turkey, and by Iran, not to mention Russia, the United States, and other imperialist powers. At the moment when the conflict seems to be ending, the ambitions of Mohammed bin Salman are creating fears that they will uncork a direct conflict between Saudi Arabia and Iran, in Lebanon or somewhere else.
In the Middle East, the domination of imperialism offers only the possibility of eternal chaos.
Nov 27, 2017
Nurses at Washington, D.C.’s United Medical Center hospital and nursing home in Anacostia are having an arbitrated raise and back pay held up by the mayor. The nurses have had no raise in five years. The nurses also raise the problem of under-staffing.
Meanwhile, the city has paid five million dollars to a consulting firm contracted to run the hospital. The city reimburses two of the company’s executives $4,700 a month to fly back and forth from their homes in Florida and North Carolina, pays the rent for their apartments at National Harbor, and even reimburses them for their gas and electric bills. The hospital board member who directs the city’s health care finance department said, “Hospital operations, that task pays well.”
Damn well–for the executives, but not for the nurses!
Nov 27, 2017
The commemoration of the Russian Revolution, and especially the October insurrection, has brought forth a great flow of ink, above all, from those supporting the established order.
These writers have made anti-communist verbal assaults against the first workers power and present it as a dictatorship, a prelude to the dictatorship of Stalin. One hundred years after the revolution, such hatred of the revolution is still strong–because October 1917 represents the greatest victory of the oppressed, of the workers and of the peasants.
The Russian Revolution began in February 1917, in the midst of world war. Those who want to reduce the workers revolution to the Stalinist dictatorship avoid talking about the imperialist butchery, the millions dead, thanks to so-called Western democracies! The tsarist army could barely equip the millions of men it threw to rot in the trenches, with virtually no food nor clothing. This war is exactly what led the workers of Petrograd to launch themselves into an attack on tsarism.
Following the February 1917 victory, those who claimed to represent the workers in power actually gave the power to the Russian capitalists. But despite everything, the Russian Revolution didn’t end like so many other revolutions, because a party existed that called for the workers themselves to conquer political power.
From February to October in 1917, the Bolshevik party went from being a small minority, which set itself to “patiently explain to the masses,” as Lenin wrote many times, that only a workers and peasants power could resolve the huge problems they were facing.
The party of Lenin supported all the revolutionary actions in the countryside, just when the government was refusing to move on any agrarian reform. In the countryside, in the cities, in the factories, Bolshevik militants pushed for the workers to organize themselves, pushed for the soviets to take control of daily life, of industrial production, and of the division of the land. This power of the soviets extended throughout the country.
In August the armed workers drove back the counter- revolutionary troops under General Kornilov. The soviets of the big cities became majority Bolshevik at this point, with the countryside following.
In this context, the Red Guard of Petrograd took power with scarcely a shot. A few blank cannon shots were enough to make the government ministers flee. The Second All-Russian Congress of the Soviets, meeting immediately afterwards, found itself holding a new kind of power, that of the oppressed, the workers, the soldiers, the peasants. The overturn of the old regime took place in the relationship of forces and in the hearts of millions before it was carried out on the ground.
The new regime rested totally on the masses. The first measures taken by the workers power in Russia disturbed all the other governments of the world. Its decree on land established that those who had monopolized the land would find themselves expropriated, that all land now belonged to the state and the peasants could divide it up. The oppressed nationalities gained recognition of their right to emancipate themselves from Russia’s control. Secret treaties were published for all to see. The different government ministries were occupied by workers ready to make them function, despite sabotage and resistance from former civil servants of the old regime. The resistance by the possessing classes was vanquished by the armed workers.
In a few years, despite enormous difficulties tied to the world war, despite armed intervention by imperialist troops against revolutionary Russia, and despite generalized misery, the new regime removed the feudal vestiges of Russian society and the brief power of the capitalist class.
Whatever later happened in Russia under the Stalinist dictatorship, the Russian workers proved that a workers revolution was possible and that a society run by the oppressed was viable.
This remains a fundamental lesson for all the oppressed of the world today. And it is exactly this lesson that bourgeois politicians and journalists want us to forget forever. They won’t succeed.