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
Aug 15, 2022
In early August, Congress passed two big spending bills, which the Democrats say are game changers. About 386 billion dollars of this new spending the Democrats say is aimed at using subsidies and tax breaks to encourage companies to invest in new technology in order to reduce the emission of greenhouse gases that causes global warming.
Of course, major companies could have made these investments themselves long ago. Certainly, they had the money. They made record profits decade after decade. But they didn’t reinvest those profits. They all advertised that they were “green” and “environmentally friendly,” but they took their record profits and funneled them to their biggest stockholders, the capitalist class. These companies didn’t even reinvest to replace old, decrepit equipment. They preferred to run everything into the ground in order to squeeze out as much money as possible.
So, these companies never stopped spewing out so much pollution, the planet has been heating up at a fast pace, while our air, water and land is ever more poisoned and ruined.
Today, just because the planet is warming, just because there are more and more environmental disasters, these profit-hungry companies have not suddenly changed their tune. They are always in competition with each other to increase their profits and the wealth of the capitalist class.
The huge flood of government money coming out of this latest spending bill will not really change this. It might spur some companies to invest in wind and solar farms, as well as other technologies such as electric vehicles, energy storage, solar panels, heat pumps, etc.
But above all, these companies will extract the maximum “value” from government subsidies and tax breaks. That means pocketing most of the taxpayer money in order to fatten their profits and increase the wealth of the capitalist class. So, whatever these companies actually produce in so-called clean or renewable energy will be a drop in the bucket compared to all the other pollution they will continue to spew out.
And, as usual, the politicians and government officials will let them get away with it.
The proof of that is just how much in this new “clean energy” spending bill also benefits the same old oil and gas companies that contribute so heavily to the harmful emissions that cause global warming. Not only do the oil and gas companies get brand new tax breaks from this “clean energy bill.” They also got the federal government to lease more federal land and more offshore oil leases. They even got the government to agree to major “environmental regulatory rollbacks,” which will allow them to pollute even more.
That’s why the oil and gas companies wholeheartedly support the “clean energy” spending bill. It is why Exxon Chief Executive Darren Woods told Wall Street financial analysts that it was “a step in the right direction.” This support by the oil and gas companies greatly angered the Republicans around Capitol Hill, because it was the Democrats who managed to please the corporate tycoons rather than the Republicans!
This bill will increase, not reduce pollution and emissions.
No, this government will never solve the problems of global warming or the increasing amounts of environmental destruction. Just like it will never solve hunger and homelessness, or the crises in health care, education, or the economy. Because what the government does is dictated by the profits of a tiny minority, the capitalist class, who are ruled by only one law: ever higher profits, no matter what.
That is why this society needs a revolution. Another class has to replace the capitalist class. And that class can only be the working class, which has every interest to solve the problem of global warming, as well as all the other big social and economic problems that are only getting bigger. The working class also has the power to do this, given its central place in the economy. It produces everything. It makes society run. That gives workers a huge amount of power, when workers break down all the divisions that separate them and organize together.
There is no reason why the economy couldn’t be organized in such a way as to benefit everyone. The problem is who has the power. Today, the power is in the hands of the capitalist class. Only the working class can replace them.
Aug 15, 2022
On August 8, the F.B.I. executed a search warrant of Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort.
Republicans immediately fell all over themselves to denounce the operation, calling it a sign of "tyranny," a “pre-emptive coup” against Trump running in 2024, and something that would only happen in a “banana republic." Right-wing propaganda outlet Breitbart even published the names of the F.B.I. agents involved in the search. All of this lit the fire under some in the far-right, culminating in an attack on the F.B.I. headquarters in Cincinnati that led to the attacker being killed.
Democrats at first debated among themselves—is it worth giving Trump another victim card to play, or does Trump need to be held accountable to “the rule of law?” When the warrant and list of seized materials were released on August 12, they indicated that Trump kept classified documents in his home—maybe related to nuclear weapons? Maybe having some dirt on French President Emmanuel Macron that would be useful to Vladimir Putin? Democrats crowed about Trump’s corruption and violation of the Espionage Act, and celebrated that finally Trump might be held to account.
Whatever the eventual outcome of the search, it seems that a large share of the country’s state apparatus—and behind them, the bourgeoisie—is ready to dump Trump once and for all. This is just the latest step, after the January 6 Committee hearings.
Trump played a useful role for them. The 40-year decline in living standards has discredited the “status quo” in the eyes of much of this country’s population. Trump has been able to channel that discontent in such a way that it pits the working class against itself, reinforcing the racist, anti-immigrant, and misogynist attitudes that the capitalist class has always encouraged to divide the working class.
But at the same time, Trump is a wild card. Not only is he self-serving, openly corrupt, and clearly careless with documents they want to keep secret. He is also willing to direct the population’s anger against the state apparatus itself—the “deep state” or “regime” in Trump’s words.
For the bourgeoisie and its state apparatus, it’s one thing for Trump supporters to shout to “build the wall” against immigrants. It’s another thing for a Trump supporter like Marjorie Taylor Greene to hawk “Defund the F.B.I” hats and shirts!
All this has produced a problem for the Republican Party. Trump has given them a very solid base—but it is a minority base. It remains to be seen if the Republican Party will be able to extricate itself from Trump the man, while keeping the loyalty of the Trump base. So Republicans have been doing verbal flips all over themselves to find some way to defend this obviously corrupt criminal, while maneuvering to see who among them will be able to attract his base.
But while the bourgeoisie, its political parties, and its state apparatus try to find a way to extricate themselves from Trump’s sticky hands, for workers, the problem is much deeper than this one man. Trump is certainly an enemy of the working class. But behind Trump stand legions of Republican politicians fighting over the chance to play the same reactionary, anti-worker game, from Ron DeSantis to Greg Abbot to Marjorie Taylor Greene—and they are not going away, whatever happens to Trump.
Meanwhile, the Democratic Party oversaw the conditions that opened the door for Trump’s demagogy—and they continue to do so today. If Biden has an atrocious approval rating, it’s not because workers “can’t see all the good he’s done"—it’s because under his presidency, we face skyrocketing prices, stagnant wages, and continually deteriorating services! The Democrats serve the capitalist class just as much as the Republicans, even if they position themselves to attract a different electoral base. And in this period, the capitalist system cannot offer workers even the crumbs we got 40 years ago. So the “reasonable” Democrats running this atrocious system can only continue to feed the anger of the population—which is largely being directed today by right-wing demagogues like Trump.
There is only one way out of Trump and Trumpism—for the working class to organize itself to fight, to put forth its own interests, its own answers to this crisis. Otherwise, whatever happens to Trump the man, the forces driving the right-wing turn of this country continue to accelerate.
Aug 15, 2022
Texas Republican Governor Greg Abbott and Arizona Republican Governor Doug Ducey have been sending thousands of migrants by bus from their home states to Washington, D.C. and New York City. According to Abbott, they are doing this to protest against the immigration policy of Democratic President Biden and his administration.
D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser and New York Mayor Eric Adams are not happy with this. They have both appealed to the Biden administration for financial and other help in dealing with this influx of immigrants, many of whom did not want to be sent to Washington or New York.
Abbott and Ducey are clearly playing politics with immigrants’ lives. But so too are Biden and the Democrats. They are not seeking an answer to the immigration “problem.” They just don’t want it delivered to their doorsteps!
The “problem” would be solved if all workers in this country had decent paying jobs, whether they are immigrants or born here. And if anyone could come here and be granted legal status.
This would stop the super-exploitation of the immigrant population, and stop the bosses here from playing off one part of the working class against another. This is the solution to the immigrant “problem” that workers here must fight for.
Aug 15, 2022
Despite its condemnation of Trump’s border wall policy, in some areas the Biden administration continues to build on it. This includes the construction of a secondary wall 200 feet away from the border along Friendship Park, which runs along the San Diego-Tijuana border. Friendship Park is the only binational park between the U.S. and Mexico. It was built with the express purpose of allowing friends and loved ones across the border from each other to spend time together. But with two walls running through the park separated by 200 feet, visitors in either side of the border will no longer be able to hear each other.
Activists and people who frequent both sides of the border have protested the recent plans to close it, that it is the only way they can see friends and family.
In 1971, the Nixon administration inaugurated Friendship Park, stating that on both sides of the border people could reunite and enjoy each other’s company. At that time, there was only a short fence marking the border, and people could freely touch and embrace one another... legally.
Sometimes, people on both sides of the border traveled long distances to come to Friendship Park just to see each other for an afternoon.
But over the years, the U.S. government placed ever more restrictions. Under the Clinton administration, authorities placed a 30-foot fence in the middle of the park. Visitors were no longer able to embrace one another. They resorted to “fence kisses,” pressing their fingers through the fence as the only means to embrace one another.
Despite their condemnation of Republicans’ rhetoric toward the U.S.-Mexico border, the Democrats implement the same basic policy of dividing families and building ever more walls. The only difference is that the Democrats do it a bit more quietly.
Aug 15, 2022
Amazon executives have a secret plan to defeat union drives at their warehouses, according to a recently leaked internal memo. The plan is to target hiring “vulnerable” students from poor families, and people recently released from jail. Executives figure the students can’t afford college, and the former inmates won’t be hired by other bosses. So the Amazon executives imagine the workers will become loyal “pro-company speakers” in the warehouses. They even crow over what they call the “school-to-warehouse pipeline.”
These bosses forget desperate people sometimes fight back. People with nothing have nothing to lose in a fight for their own interests!
Aug 15, 2022
Governor Gavin Newsom and his fellow California Democrats have declared California an “abortion sanctuary” and announced additional funding and legislation to make abortions more accessible. But as some women have already discovered, California does not acknowledge every woman’s right to an abortion. California law actually forbids late-term abortions, even if doctors determine that the fetus will be born carrying severe physical impairments.
This is what Christina, a Californian who did not want to disclose her last name, found out. During the 27th week of her pregnancy, doctors told her that the brain of her fetus had not been developing properly. If born, Christina’s child would have a very painful and very short life. Christina decided to have an abortion instead—a difficult decision which, Christina said, she made for the sake of her baby.
That’s when Christina found out that very few doctors in California would perform this abortion. The state law says that it is illegal to perform an abortion if the fetus is viable, unless the patient’s life or health is at risk. “Viable” is defined vaguely, as “able to live outside the womb without intensive medical intervention.” Faced with the possibility of criminal charges, doctors usually will not even consider an abortion after 24 weeks so they are on the safe side of the law.
Under time pressure, Christina ended up going to Colorado to get an expensive abortion—one of the six states (plus the District of Columbia) that don’t have a limit as to at what time during pregnancy an abortion is legal. In fact, there are only six clinics in the U.S. that perform abortions after 26 weeks, according to Access Reproductive Justice.
There are no statistics kept on how many women who live in California are forced to leave the state to get an abortion, but Christina’s story is certainly not unique.
After the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, nine states have already eliminated access to abortions. That will likely push more pregnancies into a late stage, before women can get an abortion—at which point more women in the U.S. may find out that California is not necessarily the abortion haven California politicians want women to believe, even if they have the means to travel to California.
Aug 15, 2022
The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) recently announced that Montrose Chemical Company, which manufactured DDT in the Los Angeles area, had dumped massive amounts of acid waste directly from massive barges into the Pacific Ocean off the Los Angeles coast.
Montrose Chemical Company produced DDT as a pesticide in Los Angeles from 1947 to 1982. Over the last couple of decades there have been “new discoveries” of just how much DDT and toxic chemicals associated with its manufacture Montrose had dumped. In 2008, the EPA reported that Montrose dumped tons of DDT and other forms of toxic waste directly into the sewer system. This toxic waste was ultimately discharged near White Point Beach on the Los Angeles coast. Last year scientists at UCLA and the EPA announced that there are more than half a million barrels of toxic waste that Montrose dumped along a 12-mile swath of seafloor 3,000 feet deep, in an area that is larger than the city of San Francisco.
The U.S. government banned the use of DDT in the U.S. in 1972 after it was found that in humans, exposure to DDT is linked to breast cancer, immune system deficiencies, obesity, birth defects, reduced fertility, and testicular cancer. DDT also causes deadly diseases in fish, birds, and sea mammals, leading to widespread die-offs. But the U.S. government allowed Montrose and other U.S. chemical companies to continue to produce DDT for sale to foreign markets until 1982.
Montrose wasn’t the only company dumping highly toxic waste in Southern California waters. From the 1930s to the early 1970s, California and the Federal Government also approved 13 other areas off the Southern California coast for the dumping of military explosives, radioactive waste, and various chemical and refinery byproducts—including 3 million metric tons of petroleum waste.
Today, the ocean floor off the coast of Los Angeles is the world’s largest known repository of DDT. Said one scientist, “These chemicals are still out there, and we haven’t figured out what to do. They are an issue, and we still don’t have a plan.”
What plan? Which plan are we expecting to have after the EPA and other sources have reported such toxic dumping for more than 40 years? There is no plan because these companies won’t pay for such a plan. The U.S. government won’t make any plan. They won’t clean it up for the same reason they dumped it there in the first place: profit before life.
Aug 15, 2022
With a vote of 11–3, the Los Angeles City Council expanded a city ordinance banning encampments to include any location within 500 feet of a public or private school.
Before the vote, homeless advocates protested the measure loudly, pointing out that as much as 20% of the city’s sidewalks would now be off-limits for homeless people, and that the new measure would cut many homeless people from much-needed support services. When a few of the protesters physically approached the council members, police arrested one of them and expelled the rest from the meeting.
In response, council members who voted for the measure said they had no choice, because they could not allow school children to be exposed to drug use and erratic and even dangerous behavior they say many homeless people engage in.
The problem is that this ordinance is a police measure that, at best, will move homeless people from one part of the city to another. But it does nothing to address the crisis of homelessness in Los Angeles, which has reached catastrophic dimensions. Year after year, the number of homeless people in L.A. has continued to soar beyond control. According to HUD data, there were 63,700 homeless people in L.A. (one in 61 city residents!) as of February 2022. And the true number is certainly much higher.
This worsening crisis is a result of the profit drive of the capitalist class, and how it affects the working class. As companies lower wages and landlords increase rents, families are pushed out of their homes. And this happens as tens of thousands of housing units in L.A. are purposely held vacant by their owners to keep rents high, and as most new housing is exclusively luxury homes for the wealthy.
In recent years, Los Angeles voters have agreed to tax themselves, more than once and by large margins, to provide large amounts of money for housing for the homeless. But capitalists, with the complicity of city and county politicians, have simply pocketed much of that money. In 2016, for example, Proposition HHH, a city measure, allocated 1.2 billion dollars in bond money to build 10,000 permanent housing units for the homeless. Six years later, only a little more than 1,000 of the promised units are built. And even those few units are built, in reality, for the benefit of capitalists: city politicians fork over, on average, 600,000 to 700,000 dollars apiece for these tiny apartments!
The disaster of homelessness shows the inability of the capitalist system to answer the social crises it creates.
Aug 15, 2022
In July, L.A. city authorities unveiled the new, $558 million dollar 6th Street Bridge with much fanfare in a two-day celebration. The bridge, which spans three-quarters of a mile, connects East Los Angeles working class neighborhoods with the very expensive Arts District in downtown Los Angeles. The architects gave the bridge a striking artistic design, a lower-level pedestrian walkway, and several green spaces underneath.
The new bridge is the largest infrastructure built by the City of Los Angeles in the last 30 years, and it is expected to help real estate developers accelerate gentrification. The bridge is also expected to be heavily used as a location for Hollywood movies, TV commercials and musical videos. The old bridge that it replaces was always a favorite location for the entertainment media. Since the new bridge’s opening, one newspaper article proclaimed, “Hollywood got its favorite filming location back.”
After the new bridge opened, there were several reports of street takeovers, drag racing, and people climbing on the bridge, which were widely denounced by city officials and the news media. The police even shut down the bridge for four straight days for what they called illegal activity.
But what is missed in all these reports have been the huge crowds of ordinary people drawn to the bridge during all times of day and night, carrying out all kinds of activities, including parties and celebrations. This is because the bridge is one of the few well-lit public spaces for people to gather and enjoy themselves. According to the Trust for Public Land, Los Angeles ranks as one of the lowest in the country for public space. The surrounding area around the bridge is particularly bad. For example, East L.A., with a population of over 120,000, has only seven parks. Nearly half of the residents are not within walking distance of a park. This doesn’t even account for the size of the parks. With the exception of one, they are the size of one city block. And the parks themselves are run down, fenced off, and closed after dark.
The recent events at the 6th Street Bridge highlight the lack of any well-maintained and lit places for people to enjoy because big companies use all possible spaces for making profit.
Aug 15, 2022
Three Maryland Eastern Shore towns agreed to pay five million dollars to the family of Anton Black because their cops killed him at age 19 in 2018. Someone who saw Anton Black walking with a child, who was a family friend, assumed it was a kidnapping and called the cops.
Everything that so-called responsible adults did to Anton Black that day led to his murder, the murder of a young life filled with promise and hope. The money for the family was hard-won and deserved, but all the money in the world won’t bring Anton Black back to life.
And no one should believe that cops are there to protect and serve working class people.
Aug 15, 2022
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi visited Taiwan despite the Chinese government’s warning that such a trip would be seen as an act of aggression against China. The Chinese government claims Taiwan is part of China. After Pelosi left Taiwan, the Chinese government responded to her trip by staging a series of military exercises in the seas around Taiwan.
It is not clear whether or not the Biden administration, behind the scenes, encouraged Pelosi’s trip. What is clear is that this trip was seen by China as a deliberate provocation by a leader of the U.S. government. What is clear is that her trip continued a policy by the U.S. government of open hostility toward China.
This hostility started after the Chinese Revolution of 1949. Up until that revolution, the Chinese economy had been controlled and dominated by the leading imperialist nations, including the U.S. The Chinese revolution, fought and supported by the population and led by Mao Tse-tung, threw out the nationalist regime that was supported by the U.S. government. Under Mao, a new Chinese government attempted to give China some freedom from imperialist control and a chance to develop their own economy. This limited the ability of U.S. capitalists and the other imperialist powers to control the resources of China; it limited their ability to directly profit from the labor of Chinese workers.
The Chinese government, in recent years, has opened up more of their economy to Western investment. But U.S. capitalists still do not have a free hand to make maximum profits in China, like they do in most of the rest of the world. China, with its population of over 1.4 billion people, is a prize that U.S. capital would like to more fully exploit.
When the U.S. government denounces the Chinese dictatorship, that is only a smokescreen that they use to cover their real policy, which is to expand the interests of U.S. capitalists in China.
Sometimes this U.S. policy toward China has played out around the island of Taiwan, which is located just over 100 miles from the Chinese mainland. Taiwan is where the U.S.-supported nationalist government fled after they were thrown out by the 1949 revolution. Since then, the Taiwanese regime has been tied to and supported by U.S. imperialism. The U.S. government has used Taiwan as a pawn in its policy directed against China. The U.S. trains Taiwanese troops and supplies them with weapons. There are even some U.S. military personnel stationed in Taiwan.
When the U.S. government denounced China’s recent war exercises around Taiwan, that is pure hypocrisy because it is the U.S. which stages naval war exercises in the Pacific Ocean near China. U.S. navy warships regularly patrol the seas between Taiwan and China, which is a main shipping lane for some Chinese commerce. It is the U.S. which has naval and military bases in Japan, the Philippines, South Korea and Guam—countries which are surrounding China. It is the U.S. which has over 375,000 military troops and military personnel in the Asian Pacific region. All of these U.S. bases and U.S. forces pose a direct military threat against China.
And those who run this country are making a deliberate campaign to follow through on this threat. The two main political parties who serve the capitalist class of this country regularly denounce and demonize China. The capitalist-owned media, both liberal and conservative, regularly proclaim that China is an enemy of U.S. interests. Pelosi’s trip to Taiwan just added to the propaganda aimed at the U.S. population. Bit by bit, those who serve the capitalists are preparing the U.S. population for a possible war against China. They have to use propaganda on the population because such a war would not be in our interests.
Aug 15, 2022
This article is translated from the August 12 issue #2819 of Lutte Ouvrière (Workers’ Struggle), the newspaper of the revolutionary workers’ group of that name active in France.
Taiwan is a small island of 14,000 square miles located around 120 miles off the southeast coast of China. With just over 23 million inhabitants today, it has been a field of maneuver for imperialism for more than a century.
The island was governed for a long time by imperial China. In 1895 it became a colony of Japan after rising Japanese imperialism defeated China. In 1945, after the Japanese defeat in World War II, the imperialist powers decided that Taiwan would be returned to the regime of the Chinese Kuomintang party under Chiang Kai-shek. This nationalist dictatorship had imposed itself in China in the mid-1920s, but it was contested by a powerful peasant rebellion led by the Chinese Communist Party.
As early as 1945, the American General Staff made Taiwan a military base. They equipped and trained Kuomintang divisions sent to continental China to try to stem the advance of Mao Tse-tung’s communist troops. At first, the population of Taiwan viewed the departure of the Japanese colonizers with relief. But in came the arbitrariness, corruption, and brutality of the Kuomintang apparatus, with no other concern than that of filling their own pockets at the expense of the islanders.
So the Taiwanese population was pushed to revolt. On February 27, 1947, yet another excess by the Kuomintang police broke the camel’s back. Demonstrations multiplied for two weeks. But on March 8, fresh Kuomintang troops arriving from mainland China won the upper hand. They carried out mass executions night and day for a week, shooting anyone who stood in their way. This bloodbath caused between 10,000 and 30,000 deaths.
Under the protection of American troops, in 1949 the island became the last refuge of nationalist troops beaten on the continent by Communist Party soldiers. The Kuomintang and Chiang Kai-shek imposed a fierce dictatorship on the Taiwanese people. For 40 years, in a period called the “White Terror,” 140,000 people were imprisoned for sympathizing with the Chinese Communist Party or for opposing the Nationalist government. Between 3,000 and 4,000 were executed. The island became a prison for its working class.
The United States generally financed the development of the local bourgeoisie and industry. This was done with billions in direct grants, on top of U.S. military aid and entanglement with the Vietnam War. Taiwan served as a permanent fallback base for American troops throughout the conflict, as well as a spare parts workshop for military equipment and the main supplier of food.
Martial law was only lifted in 1987. This allowed the regime to give itself a democratic facade starting in the 1990s. Today, the Kuomintang is no longer in power; it is the opposition. The Taiwanese bourgeoisie has grown and prospered under the protection of imperialism, thanks to the markets and capital provided by imperialism. The ruling class has built a certain consensus among the part of the population which has a higher standard of living than many in mainland China. But the state apparatus that protects Taiwan’s capitalists, with its thugs, is still a dictatorship.
Aug 15, 2022
The human rights advocacy group, Amnesty International, issued a statement in August that when the Ukrainian military turns Ukrainian schools, hospitals and civilian neighborhoods into new military bases, they must immediately help ordinary people evacuate and relocate to a safer area.
Amnesty International has issued multiple reports on Russian military war crimes. But just one report on Ukrainian civilians being harmed by lack of action on the part of the Ukrainian military has led to international condemnation.
President Zelensky has called for international pressure on Amnesty International. The Amnesty Director in Ukraine, Oksana Pokalchuk, resigned in protest of this report that was issued by the Secretary General of Amnesty International. She chose to support President Zelensky and not to support ordinary people caught in the crossfire.
According to the report, so far this year, the Ukrainian military has operated out of civilian buildings in at least 19 towns and villages. One Ukrainian whose home was damaged in a Russian missile strike said to an Amnesty International investigator, "We have no say in what the military does, but we pay the price." According to one resident of the eastern city of Lysychansk, "Everywhere the Ukrainian military settle is bombed and everything is destroyed."
This investigation found ordinary people in need of help were NOT being evacuated by the Ukrainian military. In general, Ukrainian President Zelensky has given orders for all civilians to evacuate combat zones, but concretely, how is a paralyzed person or a poor person supposed to do that?
Amnesty investigators could find zero examples of the Ukrainian military helping ordinary people evacuate when the military took over hospitals, residential neighborhoods and schools.
Amnesty International is not the only organization documenting brutal disregard for civilian life by the Ukrainian government. A separate United Nations investigation from earlier this year reported how a nursing home for the handicapped was taken over by the military. Residents were not helped to evacuate. In fact, the Ukrainian military placed land mines all around the nursing home and this prevented evacuation. Some handicapped residents may have been killed.
Billions of dollars from the West are being poured into funding the war in Ukraine. The money is there to evacuate civilians if that were ever the priority in any war.
Aug 15, 2022
This article is translated from the August 12 issue #2819 of Lutte Ouvrière (Workers’ Struggle), the newspaper of the revolutionary workers’ group of that name active in France.
The Israeli government launched a deadly military attack on Gaza on Friday, August 5, a day off in Palestine. The attack was officially intended to “prevent” a reaction by Palestinian nationalist group Islamist Jihad to the arrest of one of its leaders. Within three days, 46 Palestinians including 16 children were killed, and 360 injured.
Brand-new Prime Minister Yair Lapid unleashed his deadly artillery and drones on the Gaza Strip hardly more than a year after the last military operation, which killed 260 Palestinians and 14 Israelis. Under the guise of protecting the people of Israel, Lapid deliberately put them at risk of receiving retaliatory rockets from Gaza. It didn’t matter to him, since it was an opportunity to issue the threat: “Anyone who tries to harm Israel, know that we will find you.”
In this case, it was the 2.3 million people of Gaza who were harmed. Worse than that. These casualties were caused by so-called targeted bombings which hit a population with nowhere to take refuge. They are crammed into overcrowded apartments, locked inside Gaza’s border by a land, air and sea blockade that has dragged on for 15 years.
Per routine, after arresting Islamic Jihad militants in Jenin in the occupied West Bank, Lapid’s government blocked border checkpoints which had allowed thousands of Palestinian workers and small merchants to cross daily into Israel from Gaza’s north. But this also prevented patients from going to the Israeli hospital, and blocked oil tankers delivering fuel for Gaza’s only thermal power plant. Already subject to daily power restrictions, Gazans found themselves without any electricity in the blazing middle of August. “We live in a giant prison and no one protects us, not Hamas, not the Palestinian Authority, not Israel,” said one victim’s relative.
Indeed, it is a situation of apartheid that the Israeli power imposes more and more on the Palestinian population by accelerating colonization.
This is even the case inside Israel, dividing the Jewish population and the so-called Israeli Arabs. Meanwhile, from one war to the next the inhabitants of Gaza are reduced to hostages with no other prospect than to survive amidst poverty, unemployment, and fear.
This latest warlike operation Lapid launched continued for a day after the ceasefire negotiated by Egyptian authorities. Evidently its sole objective was to refresh the prime minister’s aura within an unstable government in the eyes of the most right-wing segment of Israeli public opinion. Before early elections announced for November, this may represent the start of an escalation of rivalry between Lapid and former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. The Palestinian and also the Jewish population will have to pay the price.
Aug 15, 2022
Local governments have partially or totally cut off the supply of water to people across a huge swath of Northern Mexico. In some parts of Monterrey, one of the country’s biggest and richest cities with about five million people, there has been no running water for more than 75 days. When a little water does come out of the tap, it is green, foul-smelling, and full of particles.
Supplies of bottled water have also been running out, and prices have skyrocketed. The government has been sending water trucks out to the parched neighborhoods, but they often arrive just once a week. Residents wait in line for hours, and in some cases, anger has boiled over, with residents stoning and stealing water trucks and breaking into pipes.
Large numbers of people are getting sick and many are dying from dehydration, heatstroke, or drinking polluted water. Small farmers have seen their livestock and crops die. Small businesses like restaurants and flower shops cannot operate.
Part of the problem is caused by the climate. Northern Mexico has faced years of drought, and this year is one of the worst. In the entire state of Nuevo Leon, which includes Monterrey, not one drop of rain fell in the entire month of March, the first time that has happened since the government began keeping records. Average temperatures in big parts of Nuevo Leon exceeded 100 degrees for many days in a row. These conditions are likely to worsen as climate change accelerates.
Another culprit: under a 1944 treaty, Mexico is required to give the U.S. a set amount of water each year. This year, the water came from two dams that normally feed Mexican farmers. Instead, those farmers got water from a dam that normally feeds Monterrey.
Northern Mexico has also been steadily gaining in population as large numbers of industries have located there, especially to produce for the U.S. market. But while the local, state, and federal governments have given tax breaks and built the necessary infrastructure to attract this investment, they haven’t put nearly enough into the region’s basic water infrastructure. As a result, there is a shortage of water storage and treatment systems, and of pollution protections.
But in fact, there is still water available in this part of Mexico—for some. Of course, the rich neighborhoods get water first—irrigated, green golf courses continue to dot the landscape. More importantly, today, Monterrey has facilities for more than 40% of the world’s largest manufacturers, many based in the U.S., including in aerospace, steel, electronics and beverages. These industries have concessions that give them first dibs on what water there is.
No one even knows how much they take. The national water law says that all holders of water concessions must have a meter, but an anti-corruption advocacy group found that only about 11% actually do. But it’s clear the companies take out huge amounts. To give one example, soft drink companies like Coca Cola and brewers like Heineken have major facilities in Monterrey that continue to operate—combined, brewers and soft drink makers draw 24 billion gallons of water a year. Other factories that consume large amounts of water, like the giant Ternium steel mill, also produce without pause. Large farms, often producing for export to the U.S., overdraw water supplies for their fields—with their concessions requiring them to pay nothing for the water they use.
On June 28, the Mexican government issued an official communication "exhorting industrial and agricultural companies in Monterrey to temporarily give up some water to supply the population." It announced that some companies, that, combined, control 49.9 million cubic meters of water, agreed to let the Monterrey water department access 3.6 million of those—while the companies kept the rest.
Since then, a few companies have donated a few cases of bottled water or given a little water back to the city’s water system. All the while, the shortage continues to worsen, and the government has made no moves to take back the water from these companies to help the people who are literally dying of thirst.
The Mexican bourgeoisie—and behind it, the U.S. bourgeoisie—have their priorities. Profit comes first, and the population’s desperate thirst is just an afterthought.
Aug 15, 2022
As of mid-August, over 30,000 cases of monkeypox have been confirmed across the world. The United States accounts for nearly a third of these cases—far more than any other country.
Given the way the U.S. has dealt with the COVID pandemic, how could one possibly be surprised?
Testing for monkeypox, which is essential for understanding the scope and nature of the virus in order to properly address it, has been severely limited. Similar to COVID, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) waited until monkeypox cases started to rise in the U.S. before even beginning to increase available testing. This is despite knowing full well that there was already an outbreak in other countries and that diseases know no borders. As one Harvard epidemiologist put it, “by not ramping up testing immediately, we’ve missed a really critical window of opportunity to bring the outbreak under control or at least to warn people.”
Also similar to the COVID crisis is the severe shortage of monkeypox vaccines. One significant difference is that scientists didn’t have to scramble to develop a vaccine for monkeypox, since one has already existed years before the recent outbreak. In fact, the U.S. at one point had over 20 million doses of the vaccine stored in this country, which they paid biotech company Bavarian Nordic to develop.
Yet by mid-May this year, nearly all of those vaccines were left to expire! Why? Because U.S. officials made no investment toward replenishing those vaccines. Money instead was handed out to Bavarian Nordic to create a newer vaccine, which after over a decade still hasn’t been fully developed.
The vaccine shortage is so bad that the U.S. government keeps lowering the dosage available to each person, thereby reducing the vaccine’s efficacy
The U.S. ruling class is already attempting to cover up its own criminal negligence by emphasizing the fact that monkeypox is currently being contracted almost exclusively by gay and bisexual men. It’s an attempt to give the rest of the population a false sense of protection from the virus, while stirring up anti-gay sentiments, similar to what happened during the HIV/AIDS epidemic. The reality is that without swift preventative action, monkeypox can very well spread more broadly to the general population, like many other diseases.
We’ve already learned from the COVID pandemic the importance of prompt and thorough testing for rapidly spreading viruses, as well as vaccinating the population as quickly as possible in order prevent an outbreak. The material means and logistical decisions surrounding these social problems aren’t in the hands of those scientists and health workers who do the work necessary to make this a reality, however. Otherwise, the countless number of lives affected by the recent health crises could have been avoided.
Instead, the U.S. healthcare system is ruled over and organized by corporations and their government lackeys on the basis of maximizing their profits. The only way we can fundamentally protect our well-being is by putting us, the working class, in charge of running this society, for the collective interests of all.
Aug 15, 2022
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is “loosening” their COVID rules, moving away from quarantines, social distancing and other measures that had been security staples of the pandemic. So now, for example, it is no longer recommending that schools perform routine testing or require students or employees exposed to COVID to test to stay in school. It has also dropped the “six foot” distancing standard. This also applies to most businesses and other institutions.
Their reasoning is that the current variants of the virus are not as lethal and have proven less likely to cause serious illness and death. According to the Washington Post, the CDC report released on August 11 indicated that their guidance revisions were because the more favorable circumstances allow public health officials to focus on “sustainable measures to further reduce medically significant illness as well as to minimize strain on the health care system, while reducing barriers to social, education and economic activity.” They state openly that now they are looking at “individual responsibility” as the means to limit viral spread, rather than federal mandates.
What ARE they talking about?!!! That is what has been happening all along these past two and a half years, where the population has had to live with this virus that has killed over a million people in this country. Individual parents have had to decide how to school their children. Individual teachers have had to navigate remote learning and all its drawbacks. Individuals who are “essential workers” have had to go to work and risk their lives. All because corporations want profits, and their government of both parties, including their “medical experts” of the CDC, are at their beck and call.
Yes, there was a strain on the health care system. But it was a health care system that was already diseased by the profit motive, with the decimation of public health over the years.
Yes, there were problems with educational activity—but there were never sufficient, widespread, centralized changes to provide all the resources needed to improve the ventilation systems of all schools, to provide more nurses, to have smaller class sizes and be able to provide more outdoor activities.
Yes, there was a strain on economic activity, because businesses wanted workers back to work, and didn’t want to take any social responsibility for testing, quarantining, paying workers who contract COVID or workers exposed to COVID.
And now, these latest measures continue to take away yet more federal and corporate responsibility, and continue to put the burden on individuals.
The latest loosening of restrictions, according to some public health experts, reveals the Biden administration’s strategic shift toward a “live with the virus” approach.
In fact, they want us to live with the virus of capitalism—which is at the heart of the problems that the vast majority of the population, the working class, faces.
And the only remedy, the only “vaccine” so to speak, to rid us of this virus, is the working class’ own ability to overthrow this system and organize a healthy, humane system.
Aug 15, 2022
What follows is the editorial that appeared on the front of all SPARK’s workplace newsletters during the week of August 7, 2022.
When it overturned Roe v. Wade, the Supreme Court declared it was sending the issue of abortion back to state legislatures to resolve. “Giving it back to the people and their elected representatives"—that’s what the Court claimed it was doing. It said that people in different parts of the country hold different views on the question.
Well, in Kansas, on Tuesday, the “people” opposed not only the Supreme Court, but also their own “elected representatives.”
Kansas is one of those states in which support for banning abortion was said to be high. It is also one of those states where Republican legislators used the issue, trying to develop a voting base for themselves. They made abortion a political issue, instead of the medical procedure it is.
The decision, whether or not to have an abortion, is a terrible one, particularly for working women. Pregnancy carries the potential of human life. Women, facing their own pregnancy, know it. But working women have also seen the difficulties of getting by every day in this society as it is.
It’s a society that doesn’t value children. It puts little money into child care and not enough into education. Employers don’t give most working women the paid time-off needed to have a child, to deal with illnesses, to provide for daily needs, etc.
A woman knows what her own life situation is. Would another child make it worse for the children she already has? Could she afford to care for even one child? And what about her own life?
The decision whether to have an abortion is fraught with conflicting realities. Women don’t need some moralizing zealots to tell them that life is involved.
How dare these politicians, many of whom have never changed a diaper in their lives, presume to make the decision for all the women in the country—or even just in one state?
Well, in Kansas, Republican legislators did try to do that. As in 26 other states in the country, they passed laws making it almost impossible for a woman to choose to have an abortion. The Supreme Court, by overturning Roe, validated those laws.
But in Kansas, Republican legislators wanted it clear. They put an amendment to the state constitution on the ballot, giving state legislators the only right to choose.
Well, “the people” stuffed this amendment right back down the Republican politicians’ throats. “The people” came out in large numbers, almost double what was expected. By a vote of nearly 60 to 40%, “the people” said they didn’t want to hand a woman’s right to decide over to politicians.
The vote threw normal political calculations out the window. Some Republicans said they would “soften their language” on the issue—and then, in Indiana, rushed to pass one of the most draconian near-total bans in the country. Democrats said it would become a campaign issue, claiming, “We supported abortion rights for women.”
Supported? Really? Then, in 45 years, why did they keep passing the Hyde Amendment? Hyde was the worst attack on women’s right not only to choose abortion, but actually to get one. Hyde prevents federal money from paying for abortion. Hyde means abortions can’t be paid for by Medicaid; nor by medical insurance for federal employees, for active soldiers and for veterans. Federally funded medical clinics can’t provide abortions or even information about them.
Hyde is re-voted every year. And every year, whether Democrats had the majority or were only a minority, Hyde got more than enough votes to pass. Often it got most of the votes.
This isn’t support. Just as the Republicans do, Democrats look at the painful issue of abortion through the lens of their own political gain.
Abortion is a terrible choice, made necessary because we live in a terrible society which damages human life and the potential that resides in every person. The choice about abortion should not be left in the hands of politicians who defend this society and the capitalist system which organizes it.
Aug 15, 2022
TV: Abbott Elementary, ABC mockumentary sitcom, created by Quinta Brunson, 2021
This network show is filmed like a documentary of an inner-city public school in Philadelphia. Through the Emmy-nominated performances of Quinta Brunson, Janelle James, Sheryl Lee Ralph, and others, we see into the daily life of a financially starved public school and how the workers, in spite of all obstacles, do all they can to provide a quality education and a home away from home.
Book: Savage City by Donal Levin, 2021
Detroit, 1932. This historical fiction book traces the fate of four people through the turmoil of the economic collapse of the Depression, when workers and the unemployed struggled and organized to better their lot. It focuses on the week of the Ford Hunger March, during which five workers were shot dead and countless others beaten and/or shot by the Ford Motor Company cops and Dearborn police. It tells of the attempted cover up and the eventual uncovering of the truth. But more than anything, by focusing on the lives of four very different individuals, it shows the effects of these events through the lens of class, hardship, racism, terror, and turmoil, which are still felt today.
Aug 15, 2022
Management at the handful of companies employing nearly all the poultry processing workers in the country met secretly over 20 years to share how they kept pay and benefits low. This became public after federal prosecutors filed a lawsuit and consent decrees in Maryland on July 25.
Over 240,000 workers process poultry in the U.S., with wages averaging just over $15 an hour. Pay is lower on Maryland’s Eastern Shore. Many of the workers with children qualify for food stamps, but need to rely on local charities anyway. Injury rates are very high. At one Maryland plant, federal safety officials in 2015 reported more than a third of the workers suffered carpal tunnel syndrome.
Meanwhile the companies, like Cargill, Sanderson Farms, and Wayne Farms, make profits well over four billion dollars a year.
It’s nothing new for bosses like these to share techniques for exploiting workers. And it’s nothing new for the government to pretend to make a big fuss, while making sure exploitation rolls along smoothly. The consent decrees would have the companies pay into a fund that supposedly will repay the workers what they lost because of the bosses’ conspiring. But the award money is as little as $400 per worker!
This shows what we’re up against. Employers get together to trade ideas and plan … workers need to do so too!
Aug 15, 2022
A regional office for the National Labor Relations Board ruled in favor of the Warrior Met Coal company, saying that the United Mine Workers Association must pay 13.3 million dollars for costs the company has incurred during the union’s strike against the Alabama company.
Some 1,100 miners went on strike against the company 16 months ago. After the company’s previous owner declared bankruptcy, the company cut the miners’ pay by $6 an hour, increased their health care costs from a $12 co-pay to a $1,500 deductible, took away overtime pay for Sundays and holidays, reduced paid holidays from 13 to three, and turned the costs of workers’ retiree health care over to a Voluntary Employees Beneficiary Association, among other cuts.
The company has continued to mine coal using strikebreakers throughout the strike. It says it won’t accept a settlement of the strike with the union unless the union agrees to the firing of 37 workers for their activity in the strike, which the union refuses. In October 2021, the company got a local circuit court judge to issue an injunction telling the union to stop all picketing and other activity within 300 yards of Warrior Met Coal, although it was allowed to resume restricted picketing in February. Local, county and state police have acted as escorts for strikebreakers, but have taken no action against company management and strikebreakers who have intentionally struck picketing miners.
The company asked the NLRB to force the union to pay costs the company has incurred because of activities carried out by the striking miners blocking access to the mines, threatening the company’s security guards, and vandalizing the property of the company and its strikebreakers.
In June, the union agreed to accept a settlement requiring it to pay some of the company’s costs, saying it did so to protect workers against questioning by the company. According to the union, the final 13.3 million dollar bill the NLRB regional office sent the union was 33 times what NLRB lawyers had estimated they would be asked to pay. The NLRB says the union owes the company not only for costs to increase security at its facilities, but also for its lost revenue for unmined coal!
This latest decision provides still more evidence that these miners, fighting an isolated strike in the back hills of Alabama, cannot rely on legalities to get what they need and deserve. The company is determined to break their strike, with the help of courts, police, and, now, the regional NLRB that are friendly to it.
But the miners can have forces on their side, too. There are plenty of other workers facing similar conditions to those of these striking miners and with similar interest, like miners for other companies and other areas, and workers in other industries. Many of them, if called upon, would be happy to join the fight of these striking miners. Bringing more forces into their struggle can push the company and legal authorities back.
Aug 15, 2022
Bill Russell, one of basketball’s all-time greats and an outspoken fighter against racism, has died.
On the court, Russell was a dominant force at every level. He led his college team, the University of San Francisco, to two national championships in 1955 and 1956. He also won an Olympic gold medal with the U.S. team in 1956. He went on to win 11 championships with the Boston Celtics, including eight in a row. Russell became the first black head coach of any American major sports league when he became player-coach for the Celtics from 1966—69. The team won two of its championships with him as coach.
He brought athleticism to the center position and excelled even more on defense and rebounding than offense. He averaged 22.5 rebounds and 15 points per game. He was a tremendous shot blocker, though the number is unknown because the league did not keep statistics on it at the time.
Yet despite all the success he brought to his teams, he faced racism even from his team’s own fans and white teammates. He and other black teammates often heard taunts from fans in Boston. Racists once broke into his home in Reading, Massachusetts, and sprayed racist epithets on the walls and left feces in his bed.
Once, when the Celtics traveled to Lexington, Kentucky for a game against the St. Louis Hawks, Russell and his black teammates were denied service at the restaurant of the hotel where they stayed. Russell led a strike against the game, but the white players played the game. Bob Cousy, one of those teammates who was himself a great player, admitted he was later ashamed that he failed to support Russell’s cause.
Russell was active in the civil rights movement. He took part in the March on Washington in 1963. Later that year, when Medgar Evers was assassinated, he offered his help to Evers’ older brother, Charles, in Jackson, MS. He took up Charles Evers’ proposal that he set up an integrated basketball camp, despite facing death threats for doing so.
When Muhammad Ali spoke out against the Vietnam War and received threats, Russell expressed his support for Ali, along with football great Jim Brown and basketball star Lew Alcindor, later known as Kareem Abdul-Jabbar.
After a less successful run as head coach with the Seattle Supersonics, Russell brought his great sense of humor and knowledge of the game to professional basketball broadcasts as a TV commentator. He continued to speak out against racism, supporting the Black Lives Matter movement and Colin Kaepernick’s protest efforts in pro football.
Bill Russell will long be loved and remembered, not just as a great athlete, but for using his well-earned fame to fight for the rights of others.