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
Sep 26, 2022
Railroad workers will be voting on a tentative agreement that was reached on September 15 between the freight railroad companies, the federal government and the leaders of the railroad workers union. At this point, it is unclear what the railroad workers will do—will they vote to accept this agreement, or will they decide to strike?
What is clear, however, is that the railroad bosses, government politicians and the whole capitalist class fears a strike by railroad workers. In July, after 99% of the railroad workers had voted to authorize a strike, the federal government stepped in to stop it. President Biden issued an executive order under the Railway Labor Act mandating a 60-day “cooling off” period and government arbitration.
During this arbitration period, leaders of 10 of the 12 railroad unions agreed to contract settlements. But the workers in one union, representing railroad mechanics, machinists and maintenance workers, immediately voted down the tentative agreement. And the two biggest unions, representing conductors and engineers, had not reached an agreement as the 60-day period was about to expire and a possible strike was looming. At that point, the government stepped in again. Biden personally applied pressure for a settlement. Some Congressional leaders threatened to impose a settlement on the unions. The capitalist-owned media went full-blast denouncing a possible strike, crying about how much a strike would disrupt the supply chain and the whole economy.
The railroad workers, like other workers today, certainly have a reason to fight. The railroad workers have been under attack by some of the biggest Wall Street speculators, who have been buying up and merging together dozens of the railroad companies that used to exist. Today just seven railroad companies carry 88% of all the freight in the U.S. and Canada. Like other companies, the railroads used these mergers to push fewer workers to do more work. In the last 6 years, the railroads have eliminated 30% of their workers.
The railroads’ increased profits went straight into the pockets of the wealthy investors. Over the past decade, the railroad companies gave their big stockholders 146 billion dollars in stock buybacks and dividends. These profits were produced by the labor of the workers, but they came at the expense of the lives of the railroad workers and their families. With 30% fewer workers, the remaining workers were overworked and forced to work in unsafe conditions. They were always on call, never knowing when they could be called into work, forced to work whenever the bosses demanded. Workers could even be fired for going to the doctor or taking care of a family emergency. So railroad workers, facing the same inhumane conditions as other workers face today, voted to authorize a strike.
The tentative agreement that was reached supposedly addressed a few of these concerns. But it certainly did not address most of them. It could not because it did not bring back the 30% of the jobs that were eliminated, which would be the only way to even to begin to address the conditions the workers are facing. The railroad workers will have to decide if they are ready to accept this, or ready to fight.
But whatever these workers decide today, it doesn’t change the fact that workers everywhere are facing the same attacks. It doesn’t change the fact that millions of workers today have a reason to fight. It doesn’t change the fact that a fight started by railroad workers, or any group of workers, could spread quickly. That’s what the capitalists and their politicians are very aware of. That’s why they stepped in so quickly trying to stop a strike by the railroad workers.
History has shown us that, sooner or later, a big fight by the working class is coming. And when it does, workers learn quickly. They learn what the bosses already know and what the bosses are afraid of: the power workers have when they decide to use it.
Sep 26, 2022
The question of reproductive rights has been in the news since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in June. But this question is not just about the legality of abortion. In this society, the burden of preventing pregnancy falls most heavily on women. It is made difficult in a society that doesn’t provide women with affordable and reliable access to health care and even turns it into a political issue. Some of those politicians who pass laws controlling women’s bodies even have the nerve to blame women if an unexpected pregnancy occurs. All of this falls even harder on working class women.
Condoms are a common method of birth control, yet they are by no means cheap. And as many women know, it’s not always easy to get men to wear one. They also don’t always work and can often break. Even though men are the ones who wear it, it’s still left up to women to make sure they don’t become pregnant.
The pill is more effective and gives women more control over when they get pregnant. However, unlike condoms, it requires a prescription from a doctor and insurance to help pay for it. Many women don’t have access to these things. The pill is cheap to produce, so in a decent society, it would be easily available. Different pills also work differently, with possible side effects ranging from acne, headaches and bloating to depression and blood clots. It can take months of trial and error to figure out which type works best for someone. But who has the time and resources to go through all of that? Plus, it has to be taken every day at the same time each day. With all of the responsibilities that capitalism imposes on women, it’s ridiculous to think that it’s possible to do that.
Some women turn to another, more infrequent option, which is a shot in the arm or thigh every three months. Once again, you need regular access to a doctor, time off work, health insurance and money to get it. If your insurance plan changes, it’s not easy to figure out where to go in order for the shot to be covered. A reasonable society would be able to provide consistent care and reminders, rather than making people deal with a complicated medical system that changes all the time.
The most effective option is an IUD. A doctor has to push a small device through the cervix and into the uterus while the woman is fully awake. It’s an invasive procedure that can often be very painful, with only the recommendation to take a couple of ibuprofen beforehand. As with any medical procedure, things can go wrong and the device may need to be reinserted or removed. Under normal circumstances, cramping and spotting can last up to one month afterward. Does anyone give women time off to deal with the pain and blood caused by the procedure? Of course not! Like with many things, women are expected to deal with the pain and continue their lives as usual. There could be other ways to make the process more manageable and less painful, but this society doesn’t prioritize women’s well-being.
The limited healthcare that is available to women is under attack, making it even harder for working women to gain access. Society needs to make safe and easy access to birth control methods a priority because pregnancy and children are an issue for the whole society. We have the means to do it, but it will take a fight to get it.
Sep 26, 2022
September 30 marks the 20th anniversary of a consent decree between the city of Baltimore, the state of Maryland Department of the Environment and the Environmental Protection Agency, the EPA. Twenty years ago, the city had to admit its 100-year-old water and sewer pipes were breaking constantly, and sewage was reaching people’s basements in countless back-ups.
But state and federal funding was minimal, even though Baltimore is one of the poorest jurisdictions in a wealthy state. Instead, city and county residents and businesses were the ones who paid, double and then double again. Yes, 20 years later, with water mains still breaking daily, and with too few people to answer the phones about the bills, four times as much money comes from those using the system as they had to pay 20 years ago.
Baltimore, claiming a shortage of funds, began asking the EPA for more time to fix the numerous problems in water and sewage five years ago, and was granted it. This past March, however, the Maryland Department of the Environment took over the two main sewage plants in the area, after sewage leaked out in enormous amounts, including fecal matter.
A scathing report issued after the temporary take-over pointed out dozens of vacancies in the sewage plants, changes in management, clogged machinery, etc. People living near those two plants are afraid to use the water flowing from the pipes and the city issued advisories against swimming or fishing nearby.
It’s no wonder Baltimore says it has no money to fix this mess. Bethlehem Steel was one of the main industrial users of water in Baltimore County for 120 years and got special rates. Nonetheless, when it went bankrupt and closed, and was bought by four successive corporate entities, all of them left the city of Baltimore owing millions of dollars.
How many other companies owe the system money that residents don’t hear about?
And how many other cities have 100-year-old pipes breaking down due to lack of maintenance all across the country, in which residents pay the piper and corporations either dump waste into the water or get out of paying like ordinary people or small businesses pay?
Sep 26, 2022
The U.S. policy in Ukraine as stated has been to weaken the Russian state headed by V. Putin. It appears that the U.S. government is pushing closer to accomplishing its current goals in Ukraine on behalf of U.S. imperialism. In a series of recent decisions, Putin is reacting to the continued pressures of an unending U.S. assault. Deadly armaments, U.S. intelligence and planning are all being thrown against Russian troops in Ukraine.
In the most recent war developments, this push by U.S. leaders has reinforced the Ukrainian army to the extent that it was able to retake territory lost to Russia. This, in turn, has forced the Russian bureaucracy led by Putin, into a yet tighter military and political corner.
In a series of responses, Putin is looking to bolster his position: he has begun calling up reserve troops and has initiated voting referendums in occupied territories of Ukraine. His apparent goal is to reinforce his army while solidifying and claiming occupied areas of Ukraine as part of an expanded Russia.
Meanwhile, in much anticipated announcements, Putin has reiterated and amplified his threat to use nuclear weapons. Like other heads of state, including those in the U.S., he makes the claim that the threat alone may deter further encroachment on his positions. Like them, he claims to have the ability to “limit” nuclear intervention in the event that it is invoked.
These recent actions, after months of grueling war, have brought Putin increased problems inside of Russia. No doubt, the more the Russian population is threatened with sacrifice of life and limb, the less they may be willing to support unending conflict. Putin is also facing increased pressures within his own leading groups, including a right-wing sector that is pushing for even higher levels of military engagement.
The role U.S. imperialism plays comes at a high cost: the displacement and death of the Ukrainian population, and the death of Russian troops. What will that “freedom” look like now, in this devastated region with its battered and displaced population? Does freedom mean free to be exploited by Ukrainian oligarchs and U.S. capitalism absent Russian interference? And at what point does the war in Ukraine develop into a wider war throughout the region?
Until today, the U.S. working class has not been drafted bodily into this war, which is being conducted and led by the U.S. upper class. While the cost of continued military spending crushes the U.S. economy and places workers in a worsening condition, will the next step be another unending military intervention like Afghanistan, Iraq and so many others? Or will a nuclear war make short shrift of that?
The U.S. working class has nothing to gain in supporting this war by the very ruling class that is exploiting us here, today. It has every reason to support a revolutionary solution against all dictators and their ruling classes, be they American or Russian.
Sep 26, 2022
Although 40% of Los Angeles County’s jail inmates have been diagnosed with mental illness, the jail detains them for extended periods without providing proper treatment or medicines or transferring them to a state hospital. Considering that this largest county jail in the U.S. cycles about 120,000 inmates each year, the jail imprisons a vast number of mentally ill people.
The county jail uses all kinds of excuses to detain them. For example, it deems these inmates as “incompetent” to stand for trial because they cannot understand why they are suspected of a crime and imprisoned. But the jail keeps them in prison without any trial and denies any treatment for their mental illness. Such inhumane imprisonment is a complete trap.
The conditions in the jails are horrific. The Los Angeles County Sheriff’s deputies regularly chain mentally ill inmates to chairs for days or leave them to sleep on a concrete floor without bedding. According to the American Civil Liberties Union, the jail routinely fails to provide clean water, functioning toilets, adequate food, and a shower to these inmates. Medications the mentally ill detainees need for treating diseases such as schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, or chronic PTSD are also not routinely provided.
"You can’t get out. They just declare you incompetent. There’s no bail. There’s nothing", said Haasjes, one of the mentally ill inmates jailed for more than a year. The county finally released him thanks to his cousin, a retired social worker, who testified about his lack of care before state lawmakers and had several court orders issued.
In this society run in the interests of the capitalist class, those people whom this system can’t exploit or make a profit off of are discarded, thrown away and warehoused in jails under conditions straight out of the Dark Ages. Such policies show how barbaric capitalist society truly is.
Sep 26, 2022
On September 30, 1962, a black man named James Meredith became the first black person allowed into the University of Mississippi to study for his bachelors degree.
The governor of the state of Mississippi had outright refused the ruling of the Supreme Court that Meredith had a right to enter the university to study. The governor had no trouble whipping up a mob, some armed, to confront Meredith and the U.S. marshals sent in by President Kennedy to enforce the law. The September riots that took place in Oxford, Mississippi 60 years ago left one journalist dead, and thousands of people wounded.
Meredith and every other black person in the South had lived through decades of harassment and worse from white people. This era is now called Jim Crow, during which segregation was enforced throughout the Southern states, as it had been since 1876, when Reconstruction ended. These laws were not only enforced by the political leaders and so-called law enforcement officials, but by the terror carried out by the Ku Klux Klan. Black people in the South faced murder, torture and incarceration, in jails that attempted to kill prisoners by using them to do the work that black slaves had done before the Civil War.
Nor was prejudice, murder and terror limited to the South. Many politicians used prejudice against black people for the purpose of getting elected and bosses used all kinds of prejudice to divide the work force to prevent organizing for better working conditions and pay.
Meredith had grown up in the extremely segregated Mississippi of the 1930s and 40s, and spent nine years in the U.S. military after graduating from high school. Meredith became active in the civil rights movement after he returned home in 1960. After his applications to study at the University of Mississippi were rejected, the NAACP, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, took his case all the way to the Supreme Court. The court finally ruled he had a right to enter the university.
Meredith was one of the heroes of the civil rights movement.
Sep 26, 2022
Republican Governors Greg Abbott of Texas and Ron DeSantis of Florida have continued to ship hundreds of migrants to Democrat-controlled cities, most of whom have legally applied for asylum in this country. Abbott even sent two buses of asylum-seekers to Vice President Kamala Harris’ house. To outdo him, DeSantis flew two planeloads of migrants to Martha’s Vineyard, a vacation island for the wealthy in Massachusetts.
When busloads of migrants were dumped in Chicago, Mayor Lori Lightfoot promised to "welcome them with open arms," saying the city would supply its “new neighbors” with food, fresh clothes, and a place to take a shower. This has increasingly become the Democrats’ strategy: to appear welcoming and humane, to draw a contrast with the cruelty displayed by the Republicans, and to trumpet the few migrant “success stories” they can find.
As Democrats point out, Republicans Abbott and DeSantis are doubling down on Trump’s anti-immigrant showmanship, competing to make cruel political spectacle.
Their Democratic opponents may not be as openly cruel—but they may be even more hypocritical. Biden’s immigration policies have so far been essentially the same as Trump’s, denying almost all asylum applications. So, for all the welcome Democrats offer these migrants while the news media is present, most will soon join the ranks of the undocumented. And as soon as the cameras are off, help goes away.
There are already over 11 million undocumented immigrants in this country. No one is giving them food or showers. Even though they pay all kinds of taxes, just like everyone else, they cannot apply for most government benefits. They are forced to accept the lowest-wage jobs and the most dangerous working conditions. And the actual situation of the undocumented is not very different in states run by Democrats than it is in states run by Republicans.
While they carry out fundamentally similar immigration policies, the political games both parties play help turn workers’ attention away from our real enemies: the capitalist class. All while this class profits by super-exploiting the undocumented, and by using their desperation against the rest of the working class to drive down everyone’s wages and working conditions.
The only way workers will be able to address our problems is to gather our forces and fight the capitalist class and its political lackeys in our own class interests, first of all for higher wages and better working conditions. When we do, the working class answer to immigration will be simple: every worker here needs the same rights. As the old slogan goes, an injury to one is an injury to all. And when we fight, these migrants could be a source of strength. After all, just to get here required a great deal of courage and determination, qualities we will need in our struggles.
Sep 26, 2022
So far, this fire season in California has not been as disastrous as past years. But there were still nine deaths from wildfires and over 900 structures destroyed. And the authorities are warning that the worst months could be ahead, driven by hot, dry winds coming from the desert that occur more often in the autumn.
If anything, the conditions behind this crisis are getting worse. Fires that break out tend to spread faster and burn hotter than they did before, leaving residents very little time to escape.
Generally, these worsening conditions are blamed on climate change: hotter and drier conditions that make forests and everything in them more combustible. But, in fact, climate change is only making worse some dangerous conditions caused by the policies of big business and the banks, that have destroyed vast natural resources for their own enrichment.
Fire should be a normal and often essential part of the environment in California. In big parts of the state, it rains only during a few months of the late fall and winter. During the rest of the year, vegetation dries out and bakes under the sun, becoming potential kindling. Scientists estimate that before European settlers arrived, fires burned on a much wider scale than anything seen today. But these fires were not the kinds of conflagrations that the state is now experiencing. They were of low and medium intensity, and they actually served a kind of housekeeping purpose. For the fires regularly burnt up all the leaves, needles, branches, dead foliage and live underbrush that regularly builds up in forests.
But once big business came to California in the mid-nineteenth century, these fires threatened the investments and wealth of the big logging and mining companies, and so the fires were suppressed. For more than a century and a half, putting out every single fire was the official policy of the U.S. government. This policy allowed the dangerous build-up of dead trees and vegetation. This didn’t stop fires from breaking out. But it did assure that when fires did break out, they were bigger and hotter.
So now, top U.S. government officials say they are modifying their policy. They say they want to manage forests, cut down small trees and reduce dead vegetation with controlled burns in order to reduce the amount of fuel that can burn up when fires hit. Of course, really reducing fire risk is expensive, labor-intensive work. It means removing dense stands of small trees and thick underbrush that accumulated for decades as wildfires—a natural part of the landscape—were suppressed.
But that is not what the politicians are proposing. Instead, they are putting all federal land agencies, like the U.S. Forest Service, whose budget is based on the sale of trees to logging companies, as well as the National Park Service, under significant political pressure to conduct commercial logging operations. And these companies have been doing more of the same thing they always do, cutting down mature, old-growth trees that are turned into expensive lumber. Sometimes these companies even clear-cut mature, old-growth forests.
Thus, when visitors arrived in Yosemite National Park this spring, they saw fully loaded logging trucks roaring along the roads as commercial logging crews felled countless mature trees—some of them over five feet in diameter—and hauled them to lumber mills and power plants where they’d be burned in the Sierra Nevada foothills.
This does nothing to alleviate the dangerous conditions in the forests. It destroys more of the environment and makes it more likely that when fires break out, they are worse, because of cutting down old-growth trees that are much more fire resistant than younger trees. Many of California’s most devastating recent fires—including 2018’s deadly Camp fire that reduced the town of Paradise to ashes and killed 89 people—seared straight through forests that had been heavily logged several times in the past.
Thus, the very companies and government authorities that destroyed the environment in the past in their drive for profit, are continuing to profit from that crisis … by making the crisis worse.
Sep 26, 2022
The working class needs its own party, to organize its forces and put forth its own interests in the political arena. While such a party does not exist, people who believe it must be built have successfully put Working Class Party on the ballot in the states of Michigan and Maryland plus one U.S. Congressional district in Illinois. People who agree with this idea can vote for Working Class Party in those three states in November.
Below is the text of a Working Class Party brochure distributed in Michigan, Maryland and Illinois, and reproduced on the independent website workingclassfight.com.
We are living in a system that catches us in the bonds of inflation.
We are living in a system that cannot produce decent paying jobs for most young people.
And we are living in a system that still cannot prevent Covid from ravaging the most fragile part of the population. Over a million people in this country have died from it.
There ARE Answers to Inflation
There ARE Answers to Unemployment
We won’t get these things without a fight
To fight, we need the full forces of our class, which is a powerful class—when it is united.
We won’t change our situation with an election. But we can use this election to say there are people, tens of thousands of people, who agree with this program for the crisis.
Vote November 8 for Working Class Party candidates
In Illinois: Ed Hershey in the 4th Congressional district.
In Maryland: David Harding for Governor, Cathy White for Lieutenant Governor.
In Michigan:
Top Row: Jim Walkowicz—9th Congressional district, Andrea L. Kirby—10th Congressional district, Gary Walkowicz—12th Congressional district, Simone R. Coleman—13th Congressional district
Middle Row: Larry Darnell Betts—State Senate district 2, Mary Anne Hering—State Board of Education, Lou Palus—3rd Congressional district, Liz Hakola—1st Congressional district
Front Row: Linda Rayburn—State Senate district 3, Kathy Goodwin—8th Congressional district, Kimberly Givens—State Senate district 6
Sep 26, 2022
This article is translated from the September 23 issue #2825 of Lutte Ouvrière (Workers’ Struggle), the newspaper of the revolutionary workers’ group of that name active in France.
On September 19, demonstrations broke out anew in Iran protesting against the death of a young woman, Mahsa Amini. The morality police had arrested her six days earlier for “wearing inappropriate clothes.” She died in the hospital on September 16.
Amini, 22, was admitted to the hospital in a coma the day after her arrest. Many Iranians have little doubt that police beatings killed her. Amini’s death triggered a real wave of anger against the regime and its auxiliary forces. Starting that Saturday, demonstrations attracted women and men by the thousands in many cities, including the capital Tehran. They denounced the authorities and even shouted, "Death to the Islamic Republic!" With their cellphones recording, women took off their headscarves—some burned them—and cut their hair short.
Police intervened by arresting several demonstrators and dispersing the crowds with clubs and tear gas. According to the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, police fired live ammunition in some towns, which killed at least six people. But the wave of anger was such that Iran’s president had to promise an investigation. Iranian legislators saw the way the wind was blowing and made sure to denounce the morality police in the press—rather unusual for them!
The morality police are responsible for imposing heavy pressure on women—enforcing compulsory wearing of headscarves in public, and also prohibiting the wearing of coats above the knee, tight pants, jeans with holes in them, and brightly colored outfits. An Iranian woman posted a video in which she explains that from the age of 7, "If we don’t cover our hair, we won’t be able to go to school or find a job. We are fed up with this gender apartheid regime."
This religious pressure exerted against women is one of the tools which allow the Iranian regime to maintain its dictatorship—by mobilizing its troops and spreading fear throughout society.
This pressure hits all poor people and all workers. Support the demonstrating fighters who rely only on themselves and revolt courageously for their freedom and their dignity!
Sep 26, 2022
This article is translated from the September 23 issue #2825 of Lutte Ouvrière (Workers’ Struggle), the newspaper of the revolutionary workers’ group of that name active in France.
For several weeks, the poor of Haiti have been expressing their anger explosively. Demonstrations, revolts, and attacks on public buildings and mansions of the rich happen one after another. The wave was amplified in recent days by the government’s announcement of insane gas price increases. The prices of kerosene and diesel more or less doubled.
Haitian comrades in the Organization of Revolutionary Workers (OTR) devoted the entire September issue of their monthly to this social explosion. Here are excerpts from their editorial.
Insecurity, unemployment, and misery: ever since independence, the exploited masses have never known better under the leadership of the dominant classes. Even worse, after 218 years, the greed and irresponsibility of the bourgeoisie and its lackeys propel the whole country into the horror of armed gangs which dominate and exploit ordinary people. For a long time running, the rulers of this society have shown a thousand times that they no longer deserve to control the economy. It is up to the working class and the masses to organize to kick them away.
With all the aspects of social and economic insecurity and the extortions of armed gangs, the working class and the masses have borne the brunt of the torments of the ruling classes for many months. Having acquired the country’s means of production by violence and trickery, the rich classes cut their way to the top of society and are making it work for their benefit only.
Rising unemployment threatens the very existence of the majority of the population, but the bosses react with yet more layoffs. The outsourcing agencies, which had around 60,000 jobs in the 1990s, are on the verge of bankruptcy. Bosses export their capital to other countries considered safer and to other activities considered more profitable. Without any severance pay, workers are thrown onto the streets. Deprived of the ability to sell their labor power to live, they are condemned to freefall.
Given the high cost of living, the big merchants organize the black market. Consumer goods prices are constantly rising. Simply eating enough has become the hardest thing for a poor or even middle class family. “Let them die, as long as our bank accounts are full,” the importers and other traffickers say!
Gas and oil prices are rising. In a blur of hustle and bustle, importers and merchants sell the small quantities they bring in—but on the black market and for three times the price. It doesn’t matter to them that transportation prices fly beyond the reach of the population.
Kidnappings are on the increase. Murders and massacres are common in working-class neighborhoods. The rich travel in armored cars and surround themselves with hordes of security guards. All the while they keep financing and arming criminal gangs to control the population.
[...]
Only a revolution led by the workers alongside the poor farmers and other strata of the exploited masses will put an end to the rule of the capitalists and fat cats. Socializing the means of production is the indispensable condition. The survival of the vast majority of the population depends on this. Young workers, young intellectuals, and militants who see themselves in this struggle, let us set up the party of revolutionary workers which will organize and guide the exploited masses toward victory.
Sep 26, 2022
All 3.2 million people living in Puerto Rico lost electricity on Sunday, September 18, even before Hurricane Fiona made landfall—that is, before Fiona’s strongest winds hit the island. Two thirds of Puerto Ricans were also left without running water, as water pumps failed due to flooding or loss of power. Five days later, on September 23, one third of the customers on the island still had no electricity, and hundreds of thousands of people were without clean water.
For Puerto Ricans, this is a repeat of the complete disaster wrought on the island by Hurricane Maria in 2017. Back then, many Puerto Ricans had to live without electricity for several months—and some as long as 11 months! It is estimated that at least 5,000 people died from the consequences of not having power and clean water during the months after Hurricane Maria.
Five years later the same thing is happening again, even though Fiona was not as strong as Maria. But it’s not a surprise. After Hurricane Maria in 2017, mostly makeshift repairs were made to get the electric grid running again, but practically nothing was done to modernize the aging grid.
The catastrophic failure of Puerto Rico’s electric grid can be traced back many decades. But that failure is also tied directly to the island’s long history of plunder by U.S. capital.
Puerto Rico’s status as a U.S. “territory"—a euphemism for colony—has meant that U.S.-based companies were given a free hand to loot the island’s resources. Starting in the 1930s, some U.S. companies set up factories in Puerto Rico, where they paid workers much lower wages than in mainland U.S., while U.S. law allowed them to avoid paying taxes. In the 2000s, after U.S. Congress began to impose taxes on U.S.-based companies’ operations in Puerto Rico, the companies left the island, looking for new places where they did not have to pay taxes, and where wages were even lower. Unemployment skyrocketed in Puerto Rico, pushing nearly half the population below the poverty level.
But U.S. capital was not done squeezing huge profits out of Puerto Rico’s working class. U.S. banks and finance firms bought bonds issued by Puerto Rico to make money off the interest, and the government’s debt increased. By the mid-2010s, Puerto Rico was saddled with more than 70-billion-dollar debt it was unable to pay.
PREPA, the electric utility, stopped doing maintenance. The electric grid became outdated and more prone to failure, while customers had to pay more for electricity.
When Hurricane Maria hit Puerto Rico in 2017, PREPA was under a crushing, 9-billion-dollar debt and had already filed for bankruptcy. In 2021 the government hired LUMA, a joint venture of U.S. and Canadian companies—guaranteeing LUMA more than 100 million dollars a year for 15 years!
As soon as it took over the job in June 2021, LUMA began to impose regular, frequent blackouts on the island’s population, at the same time that it increased the rates customers paid. Nothing got fixed.
While natural disasters keep hitting Puerto Rico, the only question for U.S. banks and corporations is how to squeeze even more profit out of Puerto Rico’s working class.
Capitalism, as represented by Wall Street, has no plan for Puerto Rico’s continued underdevelopment other than to keep what’s already been plundered, and take more. Who collects 100 million dollars a year for not fixing a grid and not delivering power? The bosses’ money racket can only be interrupted by social revolt and revolution.
Sep 26, 2022
What follows is the editorial that appeared on the front of all SPARK workplace newsletters, during the week of Sept. 19, 2022.
A referendum giving a woman the right to make her own decision on abortion and other pregnancy issues, including the right to refuse sterilization, will be on Michigan’s ballot this fall.
The decision whether or not to have an abortion is a terrible one. It involves life: the potential life of the fetus and the life and well-being of the woman who bears the fetus, as well as the well-being of the children she already may have. There is no simple, ready-made answer. The decision, whatever it is, should rest with the woman, who is the person the most directly implicated in the life involved.
It’s clear—and too many women have had to face this—the need to make such a decision is barbaric. But it is also clear that in today’s society, such a right is necessary. The ordinary functioning of capitalist society is barbaric: too many children and the women who bear them are deprived of the sustenance they need even just to survive, much less to develop their full human potential.
For more than a week, it seemed that political maneuvers would keep the referendum off the ballot. It took a court ruling to put it back.
Certainly, the court decision was a kind of moral victory for all those people who had signed the petitions, and whose right to have a vote would have been denied. But moral victories don’t count for much, and nothing is guaranteed.
The religions that have long poured money into imposing their own narrow views on the whole society are already doing just that in the run-up to the vote this November. And their money plays an essential role in this supposed “democracy.”
But the big question is: what will happen if the referendum passes?
The right for a woman to choose abortion would then be enshrined in the Michigan constitution, protected permanently—supposedly.
What a tragic mistake to believe that!
Women gained the right to choose abortion as the result of participating in massive social struggles during the 1960s. The mistake then was to believe that the Supreme Court guaranteed that right in the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision.
Almost as soon as the Supreme Court ruled, women’s right to decide began to be torn up. Poor women and working women whose medical coverage came from government funds have been denied access through annual votes by both parties ever since. Violence, terrorism and laws passed by both parties were used to close clinics. The number of facilities was cut in half, then cut again. By 1990, only 17 years after Roe v. Wade, 87% of all counties had no medical facility or doctor able to perform abortions. It was worse for women in rural counties, where 97% had no facility.
In this capitalist society, the only rights we gain are the ones we fight to impose—and to keep.
Supposedly, three amendments to the U.S. Constitution at the end of the Civil War guaranteed full rights of citizenship, including the right to vote, to the former slaves and their descendants. But it took a massive mobilization of the black population in the 1940s, ‘50s and ‘60s, before the descendants of the slaves finally were able to vote.
In the 1930s, workers imposed the unions they wanted on the bosses—forcing laws to be changed and the Supreme Court to recognize what the workers had done. Afterwards, politicians claimed that the laws gave workers their rights. Today, in the absence of struggles, the workers still have the laws, but they have no rights, and nearly no unions.
Of course, women who want the right to decide for themselves want this referendum to pass. But the fight to keep that right isn’t over.
In this society, organized around class, the only class whose rights are permanent and guaranteed is the capitalist class. For everyone else, it’s a daily struggle.
"If there is no struggle, there is no progress. Power cedes nothing without a demand." The words of Frederick Douglass, 1857.
Sep 26, 2022
Videos: The U.S. and The Holocaust, Ken Burn’s three-part six-hour documentary, produced and directed by Burns, Lynn Novick and Sarah Botstein, airing, or available for streaming on Public Broadcasting TV stations or on the PBS website.
Some may wonder if another program on the Holocaust is just a rehashing of already-known facts. However, Ken Burns and his co-directors focus on a different take: they examine the role of the United States and its relationship to the events in Germany. They show how the U.S.’s genocide of native peoples and its horrific Jim Crow culture served as a model for the Nazis. They examine closely the attitudes and beliefs of the American people, and show how these helped to shape events. And they make these events real with interviews of survivors and historians, and photographs and letters.
Even though their analysis remains sympathetic to Roosevelt and his administration, it is not sympathetic to the policies that invoked this genocide.
Book: The Lords of Easy Money: How the Federal Reserve Broke the American Economy by Christopher Leonard, 2022
This book draws back the curtain that hides the banks and their system and exposes their tricks and frantic maneuvers for all to see. It explains incredibly complicated and high stakes bank moves in ways that ordinary people can understand.
The story is beyond belief! It follows the Federal Reserve as it funneled hundreds of trillions of dollars, slowly at first and then in an ever-accelerating manner, to stave off banking crisis after crisis. This book reveals and explains in everyday terms the moves of the Fed, behind the scenes in thrilling and horrifying detail. It is especially helpful to understand today now that Jerome Powell and the Fed are raising interest rates and tightening the money supply, and we are, again, on the brink of a worldwide recession.
Sep 26, 2022
A new report from Johns Hopkins University researchers points out that Baltimore City has some of the worst school buildings in the state. Said one of the authors: “The consequences of leaking roofs and failed air conditioning and general cracks in the concrete are that students miss school.”
This report is NOT news. Parents, students and teachers have long pointed out the many problems of the Baltimore City schools. It is not new that some schools still lack air conditioning in summer, although miserable summers have been known in the area for the past 400 years. It is not new that some schools have leaking roofs, clogged toilets, water fountains that aren’t used due to lead pipes, furnace failures. And that is just maintenance.
Weary teachers could talk extensively, and have, about classes having too many students, about lacking books, about broken computers, about buying paper towels and cleaning products themselves.
It is not news that children in Baltimore City do not match children in wealthy suburbs for reading and math skills at grade level. It is not news that the city has more children with special needs, one in five, a problem that was supposedly addressed 20 years ago.
Yes, it has all been said before. For decades, the mostly Democratic officials running the city and the state cannot seem to find solutions. Nor will they, since they all provide funds for corporations and developers, while saying there’s no money for the poorer parts of the population.
Sep 26, 2022
Summer of Soul (Or When The Revolution Could Not Be Televised) is a 2021 documentary film about the 1969 Harlem Cultural Festival. The film was released last year on streaming services, and has played at a limited number of theaters this year.
The film chronicles the Harlem Cultural Festival, a free music festival, which took place over 6 Saturdays from June to August, 1969, at Mount Morris Park (now called Marcus Garvey Park) in Harlem, New York City.
Most people never heard of the Harlem Cultural Festival after it happened, despite being well attended with upwards of 50,000 each Saturday. The estimated total attendance over the 6 days was 300,000 people. This was almost as many people as attended the much more famous Woodstock Music Festival which was going on at the same time in another part of New York State. The Harlem Festival highlighted African American music and culture.
The film footage of the festival was put aside and never seen again until recently, when this new movie was put together. Whereas Woodstock was known around the world and talked about to this day, the story of the Harlem Cultural Festival was completely buried. Almost no one alive today had heard about it, until the movie came out.
The film showed the performers, such as a young (19 years old) Stevie Wonder, B.B. King, Gladys Knight, Sly and the Family Stone, Mahalia Jackson, the Staple Singers, among others. The festival was much more than music, though. It reflects the political and cultural feelings of the time period, with all their merits and their limits.
It takes place toward the end of a period of great political struggle, particularly by the black population in this country. Black people had participated not only in the “nonviolent” Civil Rights Movement, but gone beyond that to carry out urban insurrections in hundreds of cities across the country. Their fights gave birth to other movements like the student anti-Vietnam War movement and the women’s movement. The black population had also experienced assassinations of leaders like Malcolm X, Martin Luther King, and members of the Black Panthers, not to mention the imprisonment of many others.
The film reflects the feeling of cultural pride encouraged by the black nationalism popular at the time and felt by the nearly completely black audience in Harlem. It also devotes a good deal of time to religious feelings and gospel music through the performances of the Staples Singers and Mahalia Jackson and a speech by Reverend Jesse Jackson. While these religious expressions show some of the limits of the movement, the gospel performances also reflect the pain, sorrow and joys of the experiences of black people in this country. They also give a glimpse into the inspiration gospel music provided for other forms of popular music, including that of the other performers in the film.
Notable among performers was the singer, song-writer, and social activist, Nina Simone. Her very moving performance includes her recitation of a poem by the Last Poets, called Are You Ready, Black People? which raises some uncomfortable questions like, "Are you ready to smash white things? To burn buildings? Are you ready?"
The film also includes interviews, today and from 1969, from people who attended, including their views on what was going on in their community and around the world. For example, another famous event was going on right at this time—the first walk on the moon. People in the crowd at the Harlem Cultural Festival were interviewed about this. The comments were clear, comparing the poverty in Harlem with the amount of money spent to walk on the moon. People in Harlem were clearly aware of the contradiction.
Nonetheless, it should also be noted, the movement reflected in the film was nearing its end and would eventually reach its limits. While the black movement won some gains, it stayed within the limits of this society, and many of those gains, though not all, eventually dissipated in the decades which followed.