the Voice of
The Communist League of Revolutionary Workers–Internationalist
“The emancipation of the working class will only be achieved by the working class itself.”
— Karl Marx
the Voice of
The Communist League of Revolutionary Workers–Internationalist
“The emancipation of the working class will only be achieved by the working class itself.”
— Karl Marx
Oct 10, 2022
Inflation is running at a 40-year high. Prices for basic necessities, including rent, food and transportation, are so high, many are forced to work huge amounts of overtime just to make ends meet.
So, what do top government officials propose? Jerome Powell, the Chairman of the U.S. Federal Reserve, says he wants to use interest rate increases to slow economic growth and increase unemployment.
That’s their solution: Increase unemployment and cut wages!
Powell just repeats the same lies as all the other bankers and bosses: unemployment is too low, and workers are making too much money.
This is nonsense! Unemployment is not low. Companies and public agencies have closed so many workplaces and downsized so much over the last decades, tens of millions of workers have been left high and dry. Suicides, overdoses, alcoholism—deaths of despair—skyrocketed.
And homelessness has exploded!
The same goes for Powell’s moronic, really sick claims about workers’ wages. Wage increases haven’t even kept up with inflation. We’re getting poorer, not richer.
The real deal is obvious. The big companies have been increasing prices in order to rob the public. Oil and gas companies boost prices—after creating artificial shortages. Meat packers and supermarkets use inflation as a cover to raise prices much faster than expenses. Auto companies boost prices and limit production to the most expensive cars. As for real estate developers and big landlords, they took advantage of the lack of affordable housing by jacking up rents by 20% in one year.
Inflation has been very profitable. In fact, profits have reached record levels, and it’s all for the benefit of the richest parts of the population.
Now, the Federal Reserve is promising that the slowdown won’t be too painful, that they will engineer what they call a “soft landing.” But that’s a fairy tale. Big layoffs by major employers and much more unemployment are coming. But that won’t necessarily mean an end to high prices and inflation. Big companies could continue to raise prices, even as demand falls. That’s why many economists are predicting a return of “stagflation,” that is, high unemployment and inflation.
Workers need more jobs, not fewer. We need more teachers, more health care workers, more production workers. And we need decent pay so that we are not forced to work all that overtime and second jobs.
But to get that, workers will have to take back the wealth from corporate profits. And that means carrying out a fight, a fight that is not limited to one company or agency, but a fight that will spread and grow. Because all workers face the same terrible crisis. We all face the same money-hungry capitalist wolves. We need to unite together and mobilize the power that workers have as a class.
Oct 10, 2022
Joe Biden said that the war in Ukraine could lead to nuclear “Armageddon.” He said that Putin’s threat to use nuclear weapons in Ukraine could cause the U.S. to respond, hinting that this could lead to a much bigger, even more devastating and murderous war.
U.S. government military and intelligence analysts have said that, at this point, they have not seen any move by Russia indicating that Putin is ready to use nuclear weapons on the battlefield. It is not clear if Biden’s words were a threat aimed at Russia, or if they signaled a change in U.S. policy in Ukraine.
But whatever Biden was doing, it is U.S. government policies which provoked this war. Decades of U.S. and NATO aggression against the Soviet Union, and then against Russia, provoked Putin’s brutal, criminal invasion of Ukraine. U.S. and NATO military forces have surrounded the former Soviet Union with troops, bases, and missiles. Imagine if Russian missiles ringed the U.S. on the Mexican and Canadian borders.
Even before the beginning of this war, NATO countries, predominately the U.S., armed and trained the Ukrainian military. The war in Ukraine has become a proxy war that the U.S. government is waging against Russia. The U.S. government is supplying the Ukrainian government with weapons, planning and intelligence. Ukraine is supplying the soldiers, those doing the dying. The weapons the U.S. is sending have kept the war going as it has developed into a stalemate of sorts between the two sides. The longer the war goes on, the more the Ukrainian population, and even the Russian population, is paying the price.
This war, like most wars, holds the threat of expanding into a wider war, threatening the lives of tens of millions of people. The longer this war goes, the more the threat. Neither side may intend to wage such a war. But the circumstances of any war can lead to an escalation and response by one or both sides, leading them to use their most barbaric and destructive weapons, including nuclear weapons.
It is not clear if Putin and the Russian regime would initiate a nuclear war. What is clear is that the U.S. government has shown it is capable of using nuclear weapons, because it has already done so.
The U.S. government was the first to develop nuclear weapons, and the only government to use them. In the final days of World War Two, when Japan was trying to sue for peace, the U.S. government dropped atomic bombs on the civilian populations of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in Japan. In so doing, it demonstrated to the entire world that it had a bigger, more destructive weapon than any other power … and, more horrifying, that it was willing to use it. The U.S. government, representing the interests of U.S. corporations, was signaling its intention to ensure U.S. capital’s domination of the post-war world and to threaten anyone who opposed them with annihilation.
U.S. government policy toward the former Soviet Union and Russia, and its role today in the Ukrainian war, are continuations of that same policy. When Biden says that this war could lead to nuclear “Armageddon,” he is right, and he knows it, because he is representing the interests of U.S. imperialism which threatens the entire world all the time. It is U.S. capitalism, U.S. imperialism, which built up a nuclear arsenal, forcing the Soviet Union to do the same. It is U.S. imperialism which has invaded other countries and fought wars around the world, all of which contained the threat of escalation into bigger wars.
U.S. imperialism is the leading power in the world capitalist system. For over a century this system and the capitalist drive for expansion and profit has led to two world wars and continual regional wars, without a day of peace. Today, the war in Ukraine, or the next war, holds the threat to escalate into another world war, even a nuclear war, threatening the lives of everyone on the planet.
A system which only knows war, a system which threatens to wipe out a large portion of humanity, is a system that needs to be gotten rid of and relegated to history. It needs to be replaced by a system in which working people, the majority of the population, are free to determine their own future.
Oct 10, 2022
We are not all in the same boat when it comes to natural disaster. It goes without saying that natural disasters like Hurricane Ian have the worst impact on working class and poor people. Wealthy people hear a hurricane is coming to town and they can just walk away. They have other properties they can go to. They can afford to stay in a luxury resort far away from the path of the storm. As individuals, workers, on the other hand, face insurmountable problems. Where do they evacuate to? How do they get there? With what money?
Under capitalism, these social problems are left up to the individual. Luxury resorts, hotels, even school dormitories outside of the danger area were not made available at no cost to potential storm evacuees. No buses were organized to remove people and their pets from a life-threating storm. In this society you need money, a car, gasoline, and a place to go. And it is left up to the individual, regardless of if they have the resources or not. There is no collective solution organized.
Another huge impact comes in the aftermath of Ian. What happens to people who lost everything? Their homes, their cars, all their possessions and their jobs may have been shredded or soaked in the hurricane. While most people may have some property insurance, they don’t have flood insurance. These people are facing homelessness. This not something the wealthy have to worry about in the least. Florida is one of the most expensive states to live in, even though there is no individual income tax. In the wake of the Ian disaster, affordable housing will be even harder to come by.
Yes, a hurricane caused the destructive winds, rain, and storm surge. But it is the way this society is organized that led to over 100 deaths and to working class people not having good answers to how they are going to live now that they have lost everything.
Right now, society is organized so that the wealthy are in power. They make decisions about our lives, like deciding it’s OK not to evacuate people to safety even if it means people will be killed. Society could be organized differently. The people who do the work and whose labor creates the wealth could be in power. That will require an organized fight by the working class. A fight that is now more imperative than ever.
Oct 10, 2022
In Michigan, the November 8 election offers the chance to vote yes on Proposal 3, which aims to restore abortion rights lost when Roe v. Wade was struck down. This proposed constitutional amendment would keep abortion legal and establish a right for individuals to make their own reproductive healthcare choices.
The reproductive healthcare choices being voted on are listed on the ballot. The proposal calls for the individual to decide about pregnancy, prenatal care, childbirth, postpartum care, contraception, sterilization, abortion, miscarriage management and infertility.
In Michigan, Proposal 3 almost did not make the ballot. Big money attempted to block it. Now a coalition of conservative religious groups and far right legal organizations are funding attack ads claiming Proposal 3 is “confusing”. It’s the dishonest attack ads that are confusing!
In reality, if Proposal 3 passes, this will be only the beginning of a longer struggle for reproductive rights. The non-partisan Michigan Citizens Research Council explains, “The proposal, if adopted, has the potential to impact several existing Michigan laws and is likely to be challenged on many dimensions in the courts for years to come.”
A late September Detroit News poll of likely voters showed 61% support Proposal 3. A near majority of people who say they “lean Republican” even support Proposal 3.
Yet if Proposal 3 does pass, no one should believe it will guarantee the right to reproductive freedom. Having the Roe Supreme Court decision of 1973 did not guarantee THAT right. To guarantee a right, always takes a fight. A law on the books about rights is only as strong as the population mobilized to defend those rights.
In Michigan, Proposal 3 got on the ballot because of the power of the people who mobilized. Outraged over the fall of Roe, close to 30,000 people volunteered to collect signatures. The number of signatures collected was more than for any ballot initiative in state history! Whether Proposal 3 passes or not, this same power of people organized will be needed after election day to make sure reproductive freedom for all is implemented!
Oct 10, 2022
An historic drought has been plaguing nearly 20 western states, covering close to half the land area of the continental U.S. Lake Mead, the largest water reservoir in the U.S., has been declining for decades and it is now at 27% of its full capacity—its lowest-ever level since the lake was created by the Hoover Dam in the 1930s. The second-largest reservoir in the U.S., Lake Powell, has receded even more, to 24% of its capacity.
The river that feeds these two reservoirs, the Colorado River, is also drying—its flow having declined by about 20% from 20 years ago, at the beginning of the current drought. At this rate, Lake Mead and Lake Powell may even become “dead pools”, meaning their water may stop flowing downstream. That, in turn, means the Colorado River would stop supplying the water and electricity that at least 40 million people rely on—not to mention the agricultural products that are shipped from this region to all parts of the U.S.
Authorities in the seven states that get water from the Colorado River say, under these conditions, they have to impose water conservation measures on residents. The problem is, residents actually use only a small fraction, about 8%, of the water drawn from the Colorado River—while as much as 80% of it goes to agriculture. And authorities are suggesting no measures to reduce the amount of water used by agriculture, especially by big corporate farms, where the lion’s share of the water goes. On the contrary, the federal government has actually been encouraging farmers to use more water!
In fact, for many decades, Big Agriculture in the Southwest, especially in the deserts of Southern California and Arizona, has relied on huge amounts of water being transported from far away, and practically for free—courtesy of federal and state governments.
Thanks to this very generous supply of water, big corporate farms have grown highly profitable crops which, otherwise, would not grow in a desert. One example is cotton. In Arizona, for example, tens of thousands of acres of desert farmland are still being used for growing cotton, even though cotton prices have gone down. But cotton growers continue to grow it, thanks to huge federal subsidies.
First, the federal government provides cheap—almost free—water to cotton growers through a well-developed water system that carries water from the Colorado River, hundreds of miles away. The federal government also subsidizes loans for cotton growers, as well as crop insurance premiums, all of which, in the end, ensure the profits of not only growers, but banks and insurance companies as well—all paid for with taxpayer money!
Between 1995 and 2015, for example, Arizona cotton growers got more than 1.1 billion dollars in cotton subsidies. But it’s not just Arizona. In California, cotton subsidies amounted to more than 3 billion dollars during the same time period.
And it’s not just cotton. California’s Imperial Valley near the Mexican border, a desert, is home to very large corporate farms. The favorite crops of these big corporate farms are also some of the most water-guzzling crops, such as almonds, pistachios, and alfalfa. Most of these crops are exported. California grows more than 80% of the world’s almonds, which require enormous amounts of water when grown in the desert. As for alfalfa, which is used as animal feed—so much of it is exported that commentators have dubbed alfalfa exports “exports of water to China and the Middle East”—at a time when households are asked to cut down the use of water, and pay more for fruits and vegetables, all supposedly because of the drought!
It would be impossible for big agriculture to grow these crops in such massive amounts, if it were not for California’s two huge water distribution projects, the Central Valley Project, built by the federal government in the 1930s, and the California State Water Project, built by the state government in the 1960s. Thanks to these two big projects, which authorities have built, and expanded, at the expense of taxpayers and workers, big agricultural companies get so much cheap water from the government that they even sell part of it to other farms, sometimes even back to state agencies, for 10, and even 20 times the price they pay for it!
Nothing has slowed down this greedy orgy of Big Agriculture, and the complicity of federal and state governments—not even a drought of historic proportions.
Oct 10, 2022
Over the last couple of decades, solar panels have been installed on the roof tops of more than 1.3 million homes and businesses in California, which is by far the largest solar panel market in the country. But since the life span of solar panels is only 25 years, many are ending up in landfills, where components that contain toxic heavy metals such as selenium and cadmium are contaminating the soil and seeping into the groundwater.
The companies that sold these solar panels advertised them as a clean and reliable source of electricity, whose cost was supposed to be lower than the power that came from utility companies. But for the capitalists who own these companies, such as Elon Musk and Warren Buffett, the main attraction for getting into the solar panel business was the massive government subsidies on the federal and state levels, including corporate tax credits and exemptions, grant programs, loan programs, and personal tax credits and exemptions. All that taxpayer money fed massive profits by big companies, as well as the fortunes of the multi-billionaires who own them.
Not surprisingly, in order to maximize their profits from selling and installing the solar panels, these same companies made no provisions for recycling the panels once they stopped working effectively. Of course, it is entirely possible to recycle these panels, since 80% of a typical photovoltaic panel is made of recyclable materials. But disassembling them and recovering the glass, silver and silicon is extremely difficult. Highly trained workers and specialized equipment are needed to separate the aluminum frame and junction box from the panel without shattering it into glass shards. Specialized furnaces are used to heat panels to recover silicon.
The National Renewable Energy Laboratory estimates that it costs roughly $20 to $30 to recycle a panel versus $1 to $2 to send it to a landfill. Most experts assume that is where the majority of panels are ending up right now. But it’s anyone’s guess, since there is no uniform system for tracking where all of these decommissioned panels are going.
“The industry is supposed to be green”, said Sam Vanderhoof, a solar industry expert and chief executive of Recycle PV Solar told the Los Angeles Times. “But in reality, it’s all about the money.”
Oct 10, 2022
Five Detroit cops fired 38 shots at Porter Burks, a 20-year-old black man experiencing a mental health crisis, killing him. Burks’ family had called the police for help, after he had slashed his brother’s tires with a pocket knife. His brother had explained Porter’s condition to the cops when they arrived.
The whole situation was caught on video, which has now become public. The video shows Burks wandering in the street, holding a knife, a long distance away from a cop who asks him to drop the knife. While the cops initially tried to de-escalate the situation, as soon as Burks began to run in the direction of the cops, the video shows they immediately opened fire on him.
Burks was a diagnosed schizophrenic. His family has since explained that he had been mugged recently by two other men in the area, so he carried a knife for protection.
Prominent attorney Geoffrey Fieger has agreed to represent Burks’ family. Fieger called out the police department for initially lying to the public about what happened. The cops first claimed they had attempted to tase Burks before shooting him, which the video clearly shows to be false. On the contrary, the cops handcuffed Burks using zip ties even after they put at least 15 shots into him, before dropping him off at the hospital where he was declared dead.
The police department also claimed that Burks was within six feet of the cops when he was shot, in an attempt to portray the cops as being in imminent danger. The video clearly shows he was still much farther away than that when he was killed.
Burks’ family rightfully called his killing “flat-out murder”. As Fieger put it, “Porter needed help. Instead he was executed.” Burks’ family and others have taken to the streets to protest his killing.
The murder of Porter Burks at the hands of the Detroit police is just the latest example of the cops’ inability to deal properly with someone undergoing a mental health crisis, particularly when it involves a black person. It is certainly true, as both Fieger and Detroit Police Chief James White have indicated, that in part this is a result of the practically complete lack of available mental health care in this society, so that it too often falls into the hands of poorly trained cops to deal with such crises.
Nonetheless, that does not excuse the cops’ failure to find a way to deal with the mentally ill, despite all the body armor they are all too ready to put on display in front of the slightest demonstration of protest against their bloody tactics. The murder of Porter Burks and attempted cover-up by the Detroit Police Department is just the latest example showing that the working class and the poor, and especially those who are black, can’t look for the cops to change. It’s like asking a leopard to change its spots.
Oct 10, 2022
Conditions in Baltimore’s youth detention center and Maryland’s two other large juvenile detention centers have worsened in the last two years. The state recently reported rising numbers of disturbing events in these facilities, including more assaults by children against each other and against staff, and more children talking about suicide. The staff resorts to more physical restraining of the children, putting them more often in handcuffs, shackles, and seclusion. Meanwhile a parenting group for young fathers was discontinued and a new music studio has never been used.
The state has been locking up more young people in Baltimore City, Baltimore County, and Prince George’s County, but has been staffing these jails with fewer workers. Staff are working four and five double shifts a week, which doesn’t help anyone’s temper.
Capitalism offers no future for most working class youth. The Maryland government doesn’t even pretend to give them one.
Oct 10, 2022
This article is translated from the October 7 issue #2827 of Lutte Ouvrière (Workers’ Struggle), the newspaper of the revolutionary workers’ group of that name active in France.
Demonstrations against Iran’s morality police and the compulsory wearing of headscarves imposed on all women and girls from the age of seven have developed into protests against the Iranian regime. The revolt began after the death of Mahsa Amini, who was beaten in a police station.
The movement entered its third week despite thousands of arrests and more than 100 deaths. (Iran Human Rights listed 92 as of October 2.) Demonstrations and clashes with police continue in most major cities throughout the country. Some universities suspended classes at the request of students, often with the support of professors. Protesters occupied universities in Tehran, Isfahan, Tabriz, and a dozen other cities. They took up a popular movement slogan: “Woman, life, freedom,” but also: “Students prefer death to humiliation.” Riot police stormed Sharif Scientific University in Tehran, dislodged students by force, and took them into custody.
From a distance it is difficult to gauge the feelings of the exploited millions with respect to this revolt by young people. The masses suffer from shortages, inflation, the economic crisis, and corruption in government. But in any event the movement seems to arouse broad sympathy in petty-bourgeois circles. Various celebrities including members of the national soccer team have shown their support for the protests. Many cultural venues closed in protest. Symbolic as they are, these gestures of support by figures previously loyal to the regime are risky. For example, a former public television host was arrested and charged with fomenting riots and solidarity with the enemy.
Yet again, the ayatollahs’ regime claims that Iran’s national interests are threatened by the demonstrators and that Western powers are maneuvering behind them. They did this in 2017 and 2019 and during every public contestation of policy. So, on October 3 when demonstrators chanted, “Death to the dictator,” Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, broke his silence concerning the protests and declared, “These riots and insecurity are the work of the United States and the Zionist regime.”
But in reality, the American and Israeli governments, like those of European countries, are distinguished more than anything else by their silence. Apart from a few very diplomatic criticisms, the attitude of Biden or French President Emmanuel Macron toward Khamenei’s brutal dictatorship is very moderate when the Iranian regime has trouble with its own people. The Western powers have tried to weaken the mullahs’ regime for decades, because it came to power by overthrowing the Shah’s pro-American monarchy. But they do not want it to be overthrown by a mass revolution!
Even if Iran is less docile to imperialism than Saudi Arabia or Israel, the Iranian regime also plays the role of policeman in the Middle East. Its overthrow would be a factor of instability in the region.
Basically, Biden and Macron are no more bothered by Khamenei’s brutality than by that of Saudi Arabian Crown Prince and Prime Minister Mohammed bin Salman.
Oct 10, 2022
For months now, British workers have been carrying out a growing strike wave against their falling standard of living, as prices rise and wages don’t keep up.
At first, limited numbers of workers began carrying out one-day strikes, organized by some but not all of the rail unions. But increasing numbers of workers are now participating. On Saturday, October 1, about 170,000 workers went out on strike, organizing protests across the country against the fall in workers’ wages relative to prices. That day, for the first time, all the rail unions struck together, shutting down 90% of rail traffic. Postal workers, port workers, government workers, and teachers participated in the strike movement.
While more extreme than in this country, the problems facing British workers might sound familiar. While the government organized the most expensive royal funeral in history, while the companies in the British equivalent of the Fortune 500 have given 80 billion pounds to their stockholders so far in 2022, prices for fuel, heat, and everything else are skyrocketing, while wages stagnate. Workers’ standard of living has been in free fall.
In the face of the unfolding economic crisis in Britain, the Tory government of Prime Minister Liz Truss has been open about its intention to attack the working class in the interests of the richest people. It tried to carry out a massive tax cut for the very rich, and it has proposed cuts to public services. The tiny raises the government proposes in some benefits don’t come close to keeping up with rising prices. At the same time, the home secretary has talked about cutting benefits for all those who can “get another job”. Meanwhile, its leaders blame immigrants for the problems facing “British” workers: The home secretary even said it was her “dream” to see migrants deported to Rwanda.
It remains to be seen how far this strike movement will go, and what perspectives British workers will find. At the October 1 rally, Mick Lynch, leader of one of the rail unions, said: “We are the working class and we’re back as a force in this society … We refuse to be divided … We refuse to be poor anymore.” These sentiments met with broad applause and seem to reflect the attitude of many workers participating in these strikes.
At the same time, the main union leaders organizing this movement encourage workers to put their hopes in the next election—which might be in 2024 or 2025—when the current right-wing Tory government seems likely to be defeated. But just as in the U.S., waiting for an election to replace one set of politicians with another leaves the working class always waiting. And as the British economy shakes under Tory leadership, the Labor Party increasingly poses not as an organization of the working class, but as the “real party of business and fiscal responsibility”, as the British revolutionary workers’ group Workers’ Fight point out in their last workplace newsletter editorial.
As that same editorial goes on to say, right now, “All these reactionary policies could be rendered harmless, if the working class used the full collective force of the current wave of strikes to push back against the capitalists and their government…. Of course, using the ‘full collective force’ of the working class means organizing it. That’s the next step.”
Whether British workers will find the way to organize that collective force remains to be seen. But wherever this strike wave goes, whatever perspectives it manages to find, it demonstrates the power of the working class. The British Prime Minister and her lesser ministers were reminded of this when they found the trains weren’t running to take them from their party conference back to London!
Here in the U.S. too, workers move all the people and goods, distribute the packages, teach the children, produce all products, staff the hospitals, and do everything else. We face the same basic problems as the workers in Britain. We have every reason to follow their lead and mobilize to stop the decline in our standard of living!
Oct 10, 2022
This article is translated from the October 7 issue #2827 of Lutte Ouvrière (Workers’ Struggle), the newspaper of the revolutionary workers’ group of that name active in France.
Brazil’s general election on October 2 showed the size of the country’s far-right vote. President Jair Bolsonaro ran for re-election with the Liberal Party, which now controls the leading group in the Senate and Assembly.
Claudio Castro, the Bolsonaro-linked candidate for governor of the state of Rio de Janeiro, was elected in this first round. Numerous supporters of Bolsonaro were elected in all states, running under diverse political labels.
For the presidency, many supporters of former President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (Lula) hoped he would win by majority in the first round. But he only got 48.43% of the vote, which is roughly what the polls predicted. On the other hand, Bolsonaro got 43.20%, which was six to 10% more than predicted. A second round will decide between them on October 30. We can expect violent clashes in the four weeks between then and now….
Bolsonaro has a large voter base among evangelicals, gun fanatics, anti-Black and anti-Indian racists, people nostalgic for fascism and empire, members of the gangs controlling half of Rio’s favela slum neighborhoods, and anti-vaccine conspiracy theorists. This hard core is estimated at 20—25% of the electorate. Add to this a number of people who are not unconditional supporters, but who have mobilized widely, as in 2018. Police and soldiers, also, whom Bolsonaro has favored, and who respond to his law-and-order demagoguery. Small landowners who are frightened by the alleged threat of communism represented by Lula. Those disappointed with previous Lula governments. Plus, workers and petty bourgeois for whom Lula’s Workers’ Party is nothing but a mafia of thieves and corrupt people. Bolsonaro also undoubtedly won votes last month by increasing the Brazil Aid subsidy for very poor people from 400 to 600 reais per month—around 120 dollars.
Many of these voters don’t blink an eye when they hear the president spouting blatant untruths. He boasts of so-called economic successes, an alleged increase in purchasing power, action in favor of the Amazon rainforest, and his victorious fight against Covid. But deforestation has progressed like never before. His active refusal of any epidemiological measures is partly responsible for Brazil’s more than 680,000 deaths from Covid. Meanwhile Lula’s supporters are presented as evil beasts and perverts, whom Bolsonaro often makes the gesture of shooting. Several were murdered during the weeks of campaigning. These murders are likely to increase.
On paper, Lula’s victory at the end of the month seems assured…. The Brazilian upper class clearly wants Lula and wants to get rid of Bolsonaro. The bosses see in Lula a man who has support among working people and can ease social tensions to better carry out their policies.
What this means is that, although Brazilian workers have a determined enemy in Bolsonaro, they will have won nothing if Lula wins on October 30. As during his two previous terms, a President Lula would be able—more than Bolsonaro, temporarily, at least—to defend the interests of the bourgeoisie during the crisis and to provide the rich with a smokescreen behind which to carry out their attacks on working people. And so, the working class will have to confront the ruling class.
Oct 10, 2022
What follows is the editorial that appeared on the front of all SPARK’s workplace newsletters, during the week of October 3, 2022.
By Sunday, four dozen people in Florida were found dead, a half dozen more in the Carolinas. Many more were missing, some trapped under collapsed buildings, some washed out to sea. Almost a million people were still without power in Florida, five days after Ian hit—almost half a million more in the Carolinas, another quarter of a million scattered throughout the Southeast. Over 50 towns had no drinkable water. Some had no water at all coming out of the taps. This is only part of the toll that Hurricane Ian inflicted on this country.
Three days earlier it had passed over Cuba, shutting down all power on that island. Two weeks before, another hurricane had struck Puerto Rico, where 245,000 homes are still without power.
Nature may have produced the hurricanes, but the way capitalism organizes society into classes decides who will pay the most severe price in the areas the hurricanes struck.
Those killed and wounded were not well-off people. In Florida, they lived in bungalows, or in rickety two-story houses, old houses, without the modern structure supports which can resist hurricane winds. Or they lived in trailers. These are the people who have to work all the days of their lives just to survive, the “essential people.”
The governor of Florida, Ron DeSantis, reproached people who ignored the order to leave. Where would they have gone? What big resort hotel would have put them up if they had no money to pay? The state did not provide adequate shelters. Florida’s state government knew that the state would take a real hit. But it did not set up shelters supplied with simple beds, some food, and enough water—places where people could go. It had no plan to help vulnerable people stay alive. People in nursing homes, for example, were left in harm’s way. No buses came for people who couldn’t drive.
Some people may well be able to rebuild after this—people with full flood insurance. But that’s not most people. In the areas hit by this hurricane, only 18.5% of the houses were covered by any kind of flood insurance.
The water systems that collapsed were old, left in bad repair. The state didn’t put up money to upgrade them so they could resist storm surges, just like it didn’t put money into reinforcing roads and bridges in low-lying areas.
No, the state’s public funds went to private interests, to the big hotel chains, the big banks, to energy companies, that is, to the capitalist class.
The electric grid and its transmission lines were left vulnerable to any kind of a storm. They should have been upgraded, reinforced. But that would have required the state to force private companies to take money from profit and put it in the grid. That didn’t happen. Power went out.
It was worse in Cuba and Puerto Rico. The ravages the hurricanes inflicted there reflect the impact of U.S. imperialism on poor countries around the world. Cuba continues to be subjected to an economic blockade, which impoverishes the country, leaving it with no money to provide services to the Cuban people. Puerto Rico is dominated by the U.S. pharmaceutical industry and by other U.S. companies that build factories to take advantage of low-wage labor. Puerto Rico is even prevented by U.S. law from fully taxing U.S. corporations. Puerto Rico is treated like a colony.
Even Nature has been impacted by capitalism. Hurricanes like Ian are stronger because the capitalist system has spewed so much pollution into the atmosphere over the last century and a half, that it has created the conditions for more severe storms. Capitalism was too focused on profit to worry about the damage it was doing to the environment and to the climate. And so, hurricanes, tornadoes, windstorms, electric storms, and droughts bear down on us with more severity than a hundred years ago—and will bear down with still more severity in the future.
For all of humanity to have a decent life, this chaotic and destructive capitalist system has to be uprooted and thrown away. It must be replaced by a system whose primary goal is the well-being of the population. This is a question of our survival.
Oct 10, 2022
A cable worker was killed in Fairfax County, Virginia, when the bucket he was operating hit the power line.
His bucket caught fire, and then the whole truck became engulfed in flames. Twelve hundred people lost power as a result.
Cox Cable claims it was an accident. Is it an accident that he was operating this truck by himself? Is it an accident that Cox, Comcast, and Verizon often send their workers out in trucks by themselves? This is not the first time such an incident has occurred. A similar “accident” happened to a Verizon worker a month earlier in Georgia.
Oct 10, 2022
Video: Katrina’s Babies, Edward Buckles, Jr., 2022, documentary on HBO
Edward Buckles was 13 when Katrina hit New Orleans 17 years ago, in August of 2005. The aftershocks continue to haunt all those who experienced it, but especially the children.
Buckles started filming when he was 23 years old, teaching media in a New Orleans high school. Most of the film is letting the children or their families speak. It shows the horrific loss of community and neighborhood, especially black and working-class neighborhoods, that can never be replaced, and the continuing consequences for people’s lives to this day.
But more than anything, the film gives the youth a voice, and thereby a chance to help lead us to a society that values human life and all its possibilities.
Book: The Yellow House: A Memoir by Sarah Broom, 2019, National Book Award Winner
In this novel, the award-winning author tells of the last 100 years of her family’s history in New Orleans and the catastrophic arrival of Hurricane Katrina. Sarah Broom is the youngest of 12 children, and her book lets each member of her family speak. Through their eyes and their voices, you see not just a family saga, but an intertwined history of the city and the choices that determined life in New Orleans. It highlights the racial segregation, the jobs that were there, and those that are gone.
You witness the city “planning” and greed that built highways through neighborhoods or built developments on swamp land that was below sea level. You hear of neighborhoods that are left off tourist maps, neighborhoods that house essential workers and the heart of the city. And you come away with a new definition of home, heartbreak, and social transformation.
Oct 10, 2022
On September 5th, the governor of California signed the Fast Recovery Act, creating an appointed council that could set wages and other workplace conditions for all workers in the fast-food industry. That means, the council’s decisions can affect all 360,000 fast-food workers in California.
They are telling workers the council will ensure them gains. However, whatever representatives workers do have will always be in the minority. The 10-member council will consist of only four labor representatives. Those four labor representatives are those very same labor officials telling workers that there is a substitute for their own struggle. With the rest being business representatives and government officials.
The council itself is extremely limited in scope. For instance, the council doesn’t set a minimum wage, rather it places a ceiling of up to $22 an hour and no higher. Additionally, the State Assembly will have up to six months to veto all the decisions of the council.
Capitalists are already beginning to challenge the law. Since last month, fast-food corporations have already raised millions for a referendum. And these companies have very deep pockets. Joining McDonald’s against this law are companies like Starbucks, KFC, Taco Bell, and many others.
In collusion with union officials, politicians are acting like they are doing something, but everyone knows none of this will hold water. By doing so, they are attempting to pacify the workers. However, a law with so many holes will do nothing other than help the ambitions of a few politicians.
Whether this law stays or goes, it will not matter when workers begin a class-wide fight. There is no substitute for the class struggle.
Oct 10, 2022
So-called “nonprofit” hospitals are “wringing money out of patients—even those who were supposed to receive free care because of their low incomes,” according to the New York Times.
More than half the roughly 5,000 hospitals in the U.S. avoid paying business taxes because they claim to be nonprofit companies. In return, such hospitals must provide services, such as free care for low-income people, according to the tax law. Instead, one “nonprofit” hospital, Providence, instructed the employees that soliciting money “is part of your role. It’s not an option,” and required their employees to “ask every patient, every time,” with cunning questions, such as, “Would you mind paying?” or commands such as “Payment is expected.” When patients could not pay because of their low income, Providence sent debt collectors to pursue them, even though these patients had rights to free or discounted care.
Under the non-profit company tax law, Providence avoided paying 1.2 billion dollars last year in taxes on revenue of more than 27 billion dollars. The State of Washington found that Providence wrongly claimed 55,000 patients owed more than 73 million dollars.
Providence’s chief executive said in 2021, “Nonprofit health care is a misnomer. It is tax-exempt health care. [Providence] still makes profits.” He would know. This chief executive made 10 million dollars in 2020.
This profit-scheming has a devastating impact on low-income workers. Providence saddled them with bills worth thousands of dollars. Predatory schemes of these so-called “nonprofit” hospitals serve to make their wealthy owners and managers richer.
Oct 10, 2022
The Governor Thomas Johnson Bridge in rural Southern Maryland has been in desperate need of major renovation for decades, with officials promising everything and doing nothing.
The Johnson Bridge was built to link and bring economic development to tobacco-growing Calvert and St. Mary’s Counties near the Chesapeake Bay. Unsurprisingly, it is named after Maryland’s slave-owning first governor.
Over a mile long, the bridge was designed with only one lane each way. Two lanes total. No shoulders. Now 33,000 vehicles cross it every day, more than 20 times as many as originally expected. Nearby Patuxent River Naval Air Station and Calvert Cliffs Nuclear Power Plant contribute much traffic and the need for safe emergency evacuation. But the nearest alternative bridge is 20 miles away.
The bridge went more than two and a half times over budget when built in the 1970s. After only a decade, engineers reported the bridge did not have enough supporting steel. The underside was patched.
Why wasn’t the bridge’s contractor held accountable?
Oct 10, 2022
Baltimore and Maryland officials recently said they would not fund a skatepark—a sports facility designed for people using skateboards and roller skates—near Sandtown-Winchester, the mostly black and poor area at the center of the 2015 rebellion. Until this year, hundreds of thousands of dollars were pledged to build one there, after local civil rights leader Marvin “Doc” Cheatham led a push.
Skating enthusiasts estimate the city has over 29,000 young skaters. Many have to travel miles from home to find an appropriate place to enjoy the sport. No surprise in a city which closed 90 of its 130 rec centers from 1980 to 2010, and then held no activities on Saturdays at the rest for decades! Young people have nowhere to go for safe recreation. Dirt bike enthusiasts are completely disregarded. Skaters are sorely underserved.
The state senator who opposes the project made sure to show his face at the ceremony opening the city’s only publicly funded skatepark in a white neighborhood back in 2017. But now he wants no more skateparks.
The justification for not building a skatepark? Nearby vacant homes and drug markets. What? That’s all the more reason to build the facility—and pay to staff it, so the young people have an activity and a place to go to that they enjoy and where they are safe.