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
Apr 8, 2024
At 1:30 in the morning of March 26, the Dali, a container ship, lost power after leaving the Port of Baltimore and rammed into one of the support pillars of the Francis Scott Key Bridge. The collision caused a catastrophic chain reaction that led to the collapse of the 1.6-mile bridge, a portion of which fell onto the ship and into the Patapsco River. The bridge spanned the lower Patapsco River in the outer Baltimore Harbor, including part of the Baltimore beltway, I-695, and part of the interstate highway network. It carried more than 30,000 vehicles daily—that’s more than 1,000 cars an hour on average.
Authorities were able to close the bridge after a warning was received, but six construction workers were killed while repairing potholes on the bridge, falling 185 feet into the Patapsco River.
The news media and Governor Wes Moore want us to believe this was an unforeseeable accident. A rare occurrence. In fact, ships hit bridges on a routine basis. Just a week before, a barge hit the U.S. Highway 59 bridge over the Arkansas River in Oklahoma. In fact, there were 74 reports of vessels colliding with bridges between April 3, 2023, and April 3, 2024. That is an average of six collisions per month! In 1980, 35 were killed when a freighter struck the Sunshine Skyway Bridge in Tampa Bay.
There were multiple safety issues with this container ship, the Dali. It lost power and steering, so a huge, undermanned container ship was out of control and approaching the bridge.
The first defense for protecting the base of the bridge was inadequate because the bridge had concrete barriers that were too small and had been previously damaged. A second defense would have been to disallow a huge container ship in inland waters, one that capitalists have greatly expanded in size to minimize cost and maximize profit. Finally, where were the tugs to guide the ship through? In the harbors, tugboats ensure better navigation. But the bosses have cut back there, too, to decrease costs and increase profit.
All these things—larger ship size, small crew size, not using tugs, and no barriers for bridge supports—have one thing in common. It’s all about money and profits. Now, instead of carrying people to and from work, the bridge is creating huge traffic jams for all Baltimore commuters, not just the ones who used to use the bridge. And it is blocking the port, preventing ships from leaving and entering. A total of 15,300 port workers are out of work. There are another 140,000 jobs linked to activities; these workers could also be affected by the port closure.
Make no mistake. The capitalists, their bankers, and their advisors understand the life-threatening problems that are being created in shipping and infrastructure. According to The New York Times, studies show that 309 major bridges on U.S. navigable waterways have deteriorating, potentially outdated, or completely lack protection systems, and around big cities like Boston, New Orleans, and Philadelphia. One hundred ninety-three of them carry 10,000 vehicles per day without protection.
In 2021, the Biden administration pushed through legislation of 40 billion dollars to repair/replace bridge protectors. But this targeted money would address only one-third of the 43,000 bridges in poor condition.
So, they know about it. In fact, they have been making decisions for years that divert money away from infrastructure and into the capitalists’ bank accounts. For those who control the infrastructure, the cost of maintaining it is high, while they view the risk of disaster, like in the Key bridge, to be low. So, the money goes elsewhere.
Under capitalism, profit is the tail that wags the dog. Every second of every day, capitalist bosses and Wall Street are making decisions for all of us based on profits—decisions that put society in danger. The question is not “Is there enough money?” It is how the money, the result of the labor of millions, will be used.
Billions for war, nothing to prepare, maintain, and protect vital infrastructure? Crumbling bridges, roads, water systems, electric systems…. Will workers continue to accept a society that puts profit in front of human life? That society, run by the capitalists, creates a disastrous environment of storms, floods, droughts, and tornadoes while failing to maintain even the basic infrastructure.
The choice for a different world lies with the working class exercising its collective power to get rid of capitalism and replace it with a system that puts life first.
Apr 8, 2024
If trends continue, 83 BILLION DOLLARS will be stolen in 2024 from the federal government’s two Medicare Trust Funds. What bandits are responsible for this theft? None other than the insurance corporations who “manage” the many Medicare Advantage Plans!
The Medicare Payment Advisory Commission, a little-known body set up by federal law in 1997 to advise Congress on Medicare costs, issued its latest report, Medicare Payment Policy, on March 15. On page 25, it says, “We estimate that Medicare spends approximately 22% more for Medicare Advantage enrollees than it would spend if those beneficiaries were enrolled in FFS [traditional] Medicare.”
In other words, the private health insurance corporations that run Medicare Advantage Plans are charging taxpayers 22% more than it would cost the Medicare Trust Fund to pay for traditional fee-for-service Medicare. So why not cut out these middlemen corporations who are overcharging? Why indeed!
Apr 8, 2024
California ranks 46th out of all 50 states and the District of Columbia for providing preventive care visits for kids five and under, according to a 2022 federal government survey.
According to the Los Angeles Times, in 2021, 60% of babies did not get their critically needed doctor visits in the first 15 months of their life; 65% of 2-year-olds were not fully vaccinated; half of children did not receive a lead screening by their second birthday, which is crucial in providing healthcare for brain development; and 71% of children did not receive their recommended developmental screening in their first three years.
This is not because of a lack of health insurance coverage. On paper, 97% of California’s children have health insurance. Then, how is the healthy development of more than half of California’s youngest residents, including 1.4 million children ages five and under, critically undermined?
The main reason is that the families of these children are poorly paid workers. Most of these workers are insured under the State of California’s Medi-Cal program for low-income residents, California’s version of Medicaid. Because Medi-Cal pays doctors far less than other insurers, these workers have difficulty finding doctors or hospitals that accept Medi-Cal insurance.
About 11 million Californians live in a primary care shortage area where there are few if any pediatricians. Or they live in rural agricultural areas and can’t afford the costs or time off work for an hour-long drive to reach a hospital. Babies and toddlers need yearly healthcare visits, and parents can’t make this happen.
These workers turn California into one of the wealthiest regions in the world. These are farm workers who produce almost all the country’s almonds, apricots, dates, figs, kiwi fruit, nectarines, olives, pistachios, prunes, walnuts, and another 400 agriculture products. Other workers make California a leading technological force worldwide by working in plants to manufacture technological marvels like Tesla’s electric cars and Apple’s iPhones.
So, the very rich who run California and its businesses keep their workers in third-world conditions, condemning these workers’ children to a future of poor health.
Apr 8, 2024
In late March, Boeing announced that its CEO and President, David Calhoun, was stepping down at the end of the year, as fleets of Boeing planes were grounded worldwide after a door plug blew out of an Alaska Airlines flight back in January.
When Calhoun was named CEO of Boeing in January 2020, he was supposed to reassure the public that Boeing planes were safe after two crashes of Boeing 737 Max jets in 2018 and 2019 took the lives of 346 people.
Calhoun talked frequently about how he’d made safety a top priority for Boeing. But actions speak louder than words. After the pandemic hit in 2020, the company carried out waves of layoffs, buyouts, and retirements, bleeding the company of experienced workers, technicians, and engineers in its quest to lower labor costs and increase profits.
In November 2022, as Boeing began to churn out 737 Maxes after a two-year shutdown, Calhoun mocked all those who voiced concern about the lack of safety due to the big cuts and inexperienced labor.
Obviously, the main priority at Boeing was never safety but profits and the enrichment of Boeing’s major stockholders. As Boeing slashed its workforce, it showered Wall Street investors with 68 billion dollars in dividends and stock buybacks over the past decade.
Calhoun himself didn’t do too badly. In his first year on the job, he made over 21 million dollars, a 6.8 million dollar increase from what the prior CEO made. Besides that, Calhoun had the use of private jets supplied by Boeing to take more than 400 trips in three years around the country from his two homes, one a sprawling waterfront house at New Hampshire’s Lake Sunapee, the other in a gated South Carolina resort community.
Boeing’s big attacks on its workforce over the years showed that Boeing’s main priority was never safety but its profits to increase the wealth of the capitalist class on the back of its workforce.
Apr 8, 2024
Eight Latino immigrant workers were filling potholes on the Francis Scott Key Bridge in Baltimore’s harbor when it collapsed at 1:30 AM on March 26. One survived with no significant injuries. Another had critical injuries. The other six died.
Latinos make up about 33% of the U.S. construction workforce, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, even though they account for only about 17.6% of the U.S. population. They do everything from clearing out heaps of debris from flooded homes to tearing down moldy drywall, building, and rebuilding streets, constructing, and reconstructing homes and office buildings, and repairing faulty electrical wires.
Latino workers will almost certainly help build a new bridge in Baltimore after the wreckage of the old one is removed.
These facts show that the terrible things some people say about immigrants are not true. Most immigrants work hard—many at dangerous jobs. They also have a significantly lower crime rate than native-born U.S. citizens.
Some of the people claiming terrible things about immigrant workers are simply trying to turn working people against each other.
Apr 8, 2024
The Richmond Standard, the only newspaper that is supposed to cover local news in Richmond, California, is nothing but a public relations outlet for its owner, Chevron. Chevron uses its so-called newspaper to cover up the misdeeds of its refinery in Richmond.
This working-class town is a Chevron company town. Chevron is the city’s largest employer. Chevron’s network of pipes and low-lying cooling ponds cover the city. The Richmond public high school’s mascot is the Oilers.
In 2012, an explosion at the Chevron refinery injured 19 workers. The air pollution caused by this explosion forced 15,000 Bay Area residents to go to the hospital for respiratory complications. To stifle negative publicity, Chevron set up its own so-called newspaper in 2014, The Richmond Standard.
Chevron is the largest polluter in the area. Its refinery is prone to frequent flares shooting upward from its four smokestacks. It pollutes Richmond’s air with smoke and poisonous sulfurous gases.
But The Richmond Standard remains silent about the reasons for these flares and pollution. In 2021, when a Chevron refinery pipeline ruptured, dumping nearly 800 gallons of diesel fuel into San Francisco Bay, this newspaper did not report it.
In the past, two news organizations, the (Richmond) Independent and the San Francisco Chronicle, reported about Richmond. But decades ago, The Independent was shuttered, and due to big cutbacks, the San Francisco Chronicle stopped covering the city.
Now, because The Richmond Standard is the company news organization and not reliable, Richmond residents rely on each other to get the real news they desperately need. They learn, for example, about the Chevron refinery’s misdeeds by questioning retired refinery workers.
Clearly, workers must stand together to learn, act, and survive against a giant company like Chevron’s misinformation.
Apr 8, 2024
This film is a comedy/drama about time efficiency experts, speed-ups and layoffs, and workers fighting back. It stars Anthony Hopkins and Russell Crowe, but the real stars are the workers in this 1966 Australian moccasin factory. The efficiency experts recommend mass layoffs, but the workers demonstrate there’s more to life than profits. A timely film.
This book is a long-awaited retelling of Mark Twain’s Adventures of Huckleberry Finn from the point of view of Jim, Huck’s slave friend. The author allows us for the first time to see and hear the world not through the eyes of Huck Finn but rather through James’ (Jim’s) and to feel his perceptions and anger with the benefit of 150 years of hindsight. It is a horrifying sight, yet filled with the promise of a better world, a world James knows that he himself must fight for and will not be easily won.
Apr 8, 2024
Some of the 1800 part-time teachers at the University of Michigan, called “lecturers,” rallied on its Ann Arbor campus on Friday, April 5. They’re threatening to strike after six months of contract negotiations with the university over wages.
The university is proposing a five percent salary increase to Ann Arbor lecturers but offering less than half of that—a 2.25% salary increase—to lecturers at the Dearborn and Flint campuses. Right now, the pay is equal.
But even that “equal” pay has not been enough for all part-time teachers who are only paid for time in the classroom and not for all the other work they do, like seeing students during office hours and test and lecture preparation. All universities and colleges make money off of that part-time labor, which in the U.S. amounts to 51% of all faculty. And while U of M has a much lower ratio of part-time teaching staff, at 16%, it still holds that this university saves money by hiring teachers part-time.
The University says that Ann Arbor, Dearborn, and Flint campuses have separate and independent funding sources and budgets and that Dearborn’s and Flint’s budgets cannot sustain the same wage increases. In other words, one university, but three separate and unequal campuses: one in Ann Arbor, which is the extremely wealthy and heavily endowed campus, with students from wealthier class backgrounds, and the other two, more heavily weighted with working-class student populations.
One lecturer at Friday’s rally had the obvious solution: the money can be moved from Ann Arbor to Dearborn and Flint!
He’s right. The money is there. But in this class society, how schools are funded and how teachers are paid is organized according to class.
Apr 8, 2024
In an open letter to California’s governor and superintendent of education, leaders of unions representing school workers, including the SEIU, Teamsters, and two teachers’ unions, point out that many California schools are not providing the funding for arts and music education required by state law.
Proposition 28, which voters passed by a two-to-one margin in 2022, requires that one percent of the state’s public education budget be designated as additional funding for arts and music education. The extra funding is no doubt badly needed: after years of deep cuts, only about one in five schools in California had a full-time art or music teacher in 2022.
It was school workers who revealed that many schools are cheating—by using the funds provided by Prop 28 for already existing programs without expanding them and keeping the extra money.
The letter did not name specific schools or school districts, but the president of UTLA, the Los Angeles Teachers Union, did say that L.A. Unified was one of the violators of Prop 28. L.A. Unified is not only the largest school district in California; it also has a very large, low-income, working-class student population—and the shortage of art and music teachers affects, first and foremost, schools in low-income areas.
The letter points to some of the tricks district and school officials stoop to in cheating their students in art and music classes. But it’s nothing new for politicians and officials to withhold funding from schools, especially working-class schools, including funding required by law.
Apr 8, 2024
Rental apartments in Chicago’s South Side working-class communities are consistently denied proper heating during Chicago winters, even during the most severe cold spells.
During a record cold snap in January, the city received nearly 1,300 no-heat complaints, the highest number of monthly complaints in five years. On some days temperatures dropped to 30 degrees below zero on consecutive days—cold enough to produce frostbite in ten minutes.
Working-class renters were especially hard hit in the South Side neighborhoods of Woodlawn, South Shore, Burnside, and Chatham. A recent study revealed that for many years, renters in these neighborhoods have always made the most no-heat complaints—at least 100 and often more than 300 per month. While these neighborhoods have only 8% of the city’s rental units, their renters make up over 20% of the complaints.
Although a city ordinance requires inside heating of at least 68 degrees, it has never been seriously enforced, and South Side renters commonly experience temperatures well below that. Most often, investigations are closed without any action being taken against the property owner. Without explanation, some complaints are never investigated. Sometimes, landlords turn on heat just before inspectors arrive to avoid a citation. Inspectors may come days or weeks after cold snaps have passed or arrive unannounced when tenants aren’t at home to let them in. Thirty percent of investigations are never performed due to an inability to gain access to the building. Other investigations are delayed months due to a shortage of city inspectors.
Renters are left to fend for themselves. They rely on plastic wrap to cover their windows. Many uses multiple space heaters connected throughout the apartment with extension cords, often creating a fire hazard.
For years, the city’s capitalist politicians, already beholden to building owners and powerful real estate interests, have been fully aware of the deplorable conditions facing renters in these neighborhoods. Despite the city ordinance and radical political rhetoric, they have consistently failed to take meaningful action.
Apr 8, 2024
Ford just laid off about 1,500 workers who were building electric F-150 trucks at its plant in Dearborn, Michigan. Ford is going from 3 shifts down to 1 shift there. At the same time, Ford announced that it will delay building an electric SUV at its plant in Oakville, Ontario from 2025 to 2027, meaning that those workers will be without a job for over 2 years. And Ford said it is delaying the opening of a new plant in Tennessee where it says it will build electric pickup trucks. The workers who were supposed to be hired will be kept waiting another year.
It’s not just Ford doing this. GM, Stellantis, Tesla, and other auto companies are also slowing down and delaying plans for electric vehicles.
Why are the companies cutting back on electric vehicle production? Ford said they are cutting back because of a “downward pressure on prices.” What Ford means is what everyone knows—that the prices of electric vehicles are too damn high. But the auto companies don’t want to reduce prices and thus reduce profits. They would rather sell fewer vehicles and put workers out of a job.
The whole move toward electric vehicles was presented as a move to save the environment and slow down climate change. But under capitalism, electric vehicles are just another way for the capitalists to make profits. Every decision the capitalists make is based on what makes them the most profit. A system run by the capitalists only works for the capitalists, not for the working class.
Apr 8, 2024
Corporate giant 3M will pay six billion dollars to nearly 250,000 veterans who acquired hearing loss or permanent ringing in the ears because of defective earplugs the company sold to the U.S. military. This settlement is being called the biggest mass lawsuit in U.S. history. The facts show how corporations use government money for their own profit, not for anyone else’s safety or benefit.
In 1999, AEARO, owned by Wall Street hedge fund Vestar Capital Partners, began selling its dual-sided Combat Arms Earplug Version 2 to the U.S. military. Company researchers had not yet tested the earplugs, and when they did, they quickly realized the earplugs fall out too easily and are ineffective. But AEARO said they were effective. The military made them standard use for all deploying service members and bought more than five million pairs over the following decade. 3M bought AEARO in 2008 and raised the price from five dollars to eight dollars per pair, selling the military millions more. Only after a competitor sued and exposed how AEARO lied did 3M stop selling them to the military in 2015. But it still markets identical earplugs to private construction workers!
An audiologist who works with veterans explained the damage done to a quarter million troops and who knows how many civilians: “They try to adapt. They go back to work. They go back to their families, but there’s one slight difference: They’re not hearing.”
Apr 8, 2024
Montgomery County, Maryland, public school parents are speaking out about the district’s plan to reassign half the paraeducators from the county’s center for students with autism to other schools.
The number of students in the county diagnosed with autism has risen from well under 2,000 in 2012 to 4,000 now, an increase of more than 140%. But the number of paraeducators who assist teachers in their classrooms has risen by less than nine percent.
The district established Darnestown five years ago as a center for autistic children. Now, the district plans to provide autism services in more schools. But officials are using this proposal to justify transferring paraeducators from Darnestown. The center is already horribly understaffed, with ratios as bad as 12 children to two paraeducators, which means six children with autism per paraeducator. The ratio should be more like 1.5 students for each staff member.
As parents are demanding, children with autism need more attention, not less!
Apr 8, 2024
The following are excerpts from speeches given at The SPARK dinner in Detroit on March 17. Videos of the speeches will be available on The SPARK website.
The cost of living has always been a problem for the working class, but every day now, our dollar is worth less and less. And the cost of basic necessities is growing at astronomical rates. Grocery prices have risen 25% in four years. Some families are spending up to 30% of their income just on food. A report by Groundwork Collaborative studied the U.S. Department of Commerce data and looked at price increases in food and household goods between April and September 2023. By analyzing corporate costs, the prices they charged, and the profits they made, the Groundwork Collaborative showed that corporate profits accounted for 53% of price inflation! Over half!
And it was not Covid that caused these price increases. If we compare the 40-year period before Covid, corporate profits drove price increases by only 11%. These increases are no accident, they are deliberate and intentional.
Medical costs are so high, people are making the choice every day to NOT seek needed medical care or medication. Journalists at Kaiser Health News and National Public Radio found that 41% of adults, a whopping 100 million people, are suffering under the weight of medical debt. And two thirds, or 66 million people, are holding off on medical care they or a family member needs because of cost.
We are not just talking about those without insurance. A lot of those carrying this debt have insurance, but there are high deductibles, copays, pharmacy costs, and basic premiums.
Healthcare should be a human right—free of charge, of excellent quality, and performed by well-paid healthcare workers. In the richest country in the world, it is the bare minimum of what should be provided!
Another thing that should be the bare minimum in the richest country in the world is free, quality education. We are gouged at every level of the education system, starting in daycare. Weekly child daycare costs an average of $284 a week, according to the Cost of Care report. Then, once they are able to go to formative school, there is a latchkey, school bus fee, after-school activity fee, 6th-grade dues, 9th-grade, and senior dues. Then college, if you choose that route.
As of the end of 2023, nearly 44 million people in the U.S. “owed” about 1.77 trillion dollars on student loans. One out of every five households in this country is paying student loans. The average borrower has over $37,000 in loans for attending a public university and over $11,000 for attending a community college.
This, too, is deliberate and intentional. According to the National Center for Education Statistics, for the 1970–71 academic year, the average in-state tuition and fees for one year at a public non-profit university was 394 dollars. By the 2020–21 academic year, that amount jumped to 10,560 dollars, an increase of 2,580%. Student loans are the only avenue for so many of us in the working class to get an advanced education. From the beginning, the government, through the Department of Education, contracted with loan servicing agencies that make money off of servicing federal loans. The government turned higher education into just another avenue for profit. Loan servicing agencies are paid. Banks are paid. And hedge funds can buy up student loan debt.
The taxes collected from the working class should be used to care for these needs and so many others, because the money is there. But lawmakers are using our tax dollars to spend on war. War in Gaza. War in Ukraine. And war in other places that we may not be aware of yet. The U.S. military budget for 2023 was a record-breaking 858 billion dollars. That is 80 billion more than in 2022 and 118 billion more than in 2021.
It’s nearly 300 billion dollars more than the budgets for the 10 largest cabinet agencies all put together—including Education, Health and Human Services, Housing and Urban Development, State Transportation—that is, budgets that directly affect everything from schools to health care, to housing, to roads.
And these 858 billion dollars doesn’t even include all the spending justified in the name of national security, including the U.S. nuclear arsenal, and Homeland Security; nor does it include the cost of veterans’ benefits.
858 billion dollars is larger than the military spending of the next 9 largest military powers in the world, combined: that is, China, India, the United Kingdom, Russia, France, Germany, Saudi Arabia, Japan, and South Korea.
The increases in the military budgets and diversion of funds from social programs is also deliberate and intentional. They are preparing for future wars. The robbing of the wealth generated by the working class is lowering our standard of living. It is preparing the next generation to have less. Less money, less education, less quality of health. Just, less.
And this did not just occur overnight. It took decades and many different presidents, Democrats and Republicans, to get to these absurd military budgets and blatant showing out of greed.
We are in a Presidential election year. Biden for the Democrats and Trump for the Republicans have both clinched their party nominations for the November 5 election already. These guys may have CLINCHED their nominations, but our teeth are CLENCHED!
A January Reuters poll showed that 67% of U.S. adults are “tired of seeing the same candidates in presidential elections and want someone new.” THIS political system, controlled by the wealthy, offers candidates that two-thirds of adults do NOT want. How is THAT Democracy?!
What both Trump and Biden “offer” to workers is a president who will protect our enemies—the wealthiest one percent of people—the capitalist class.
At Biden’s State of the Union address, his team of people made him seem at the peak of his powers. Biden SAID he will tax the rich. Why wait? He is the President right now. And he has been President for the last 4 years. In the first 2 years, the Democrats controlled all three branches of government. Taxing the rich was NEVER accomplished. In reality, the rich and the bosses tell Biden what to do, not the other way around!
One thing Biden HAS achieved—for big business—is that U.S. oil production has hit RECORD LEVELS. At the same time, global temperatures have hit RECORD LEVELS. Biden claimed in his State of the Union that he is “taking the most significant ACTION ever on climate in the history of the world.”
Let’s look at the word “action.” Biden’s action? He handed billions of dollars to the wealthiest in the world—physical money—to corporations in auto and energy. Another action? The physical money handed to U.S. corporations manufacturing weapons of war and destruction.
For workers, we get promises. Promises of maybe constructing a few new affordable homes.
Do you see the pattern? CASH money for them, PROMISES for us!
Of course, if Trump is elected, it will be a disaster. He is a natural born divide-and-conquer capitalist. He and his party are attacking immigrants. But when Trump went to the Texas border, he waved at migrants across the river. He had a look on his face, the way a predator smiles when it looks at prey.
Trump is a bigot, a crook, a liar, a woman hater, and a worker blamer. Every time Trump blames workers, we can be sure the wealthy are the real ones to blame! Trump covers for—and deflects blame off of—capitalists!
In this election year, the Democratic Party wants to tell people that the economy is great. The Republican Party wants to tell people the economy is horrible—because of the Democrats and immigrants, and NEVER because of corporations!
The only thing Trump did for the economy was pass a big tax cut for the rich. In 2020, people voted Trump out because they were not satisfied with the economy! This two-party system is just a back-and-forth game—for them!
Both the Democrats and the Republicans know some of what the population needs, and they refuse to provide it. Why do I say this? They showed us!
Back when the wealthy were worried about Covid, they gave ordinary people a TINY safety net. (It was like a butterfly net!) Yes, they threw out crumbs to workers as cover for the TRILLIONS they were giving to big business. But they KNEW which crumbs to throw.
Legislation, passed in March 2020, gave unemployment insurance the biggest increase in U.S. history. Many more people were eligible. Getting more than 600 dollars a week for unemployment helped! There was more federal assistance money for rent. There were bans on evictions. Food stamps paid at their highest levels. You could NOT lose your Medicaid health insurance. There was money for families with children.
This government that serves the wealthy did NOT do this out of the goodness of their hearts. When Covid hit, the economy shut down. THEY were worried about the reaction of the population. Since then, the Capitalists and their politicians took it ALL away!
Neither of these candidates nor their parties fight for the interests of the working class.
Workers need our own party, a party ready to take on the bosses and politicians and NOT just at election time but EVERY DAY! This year, the Working Class Party will run candidates for office. This is just a small step toward a future MASS working-class party that still needs to be built.
Elections don’t change things. But we can vote to say how we feel. We can stand for the idea that workers need a party to back up the fights of workers—right now, so workers are battling these vicious companies with our whole class behind us.
Apr 8, 2024
This article is translated from the April 5 issue, #2905 of Lutte Ouvrière (Workers Struggle), the paper of the revolutionary workers group of that name active in France.
On April1, the Israeli army bombed the Iranian consulate in Damascus, Syria, killing eleven people, including seven Iranians. This air raid on Syrian territory was the fifth in a week, following hundreds of others carried out since October 7.
In the preceding days, the Israeli army had killed military leaders of Hezbollah in southern Lebanon, the Shiite party that is an integral part of the Lebanese state it co-manages. The Israeli army no longer confines itself to exchanges of fire close to the Lebanese border but launches attacks up to 100 kilometers into the country, targeting towns such as Baalbek. Over the past six months, 346 people have been killed in Lebanon, including 70 civilians.
In Syria, as in Lebanon, by targeting Hezbollah fighters or buildings or Iranian elements, Israeli leaders claim to be fighting terrorist organizations that finance Hamas and launch rockets against Israel. In so doing, they are themselves acting as state terrorists. They grant themselves the right to wage war throughout the region and to shoot down their adversaries without the slightest respect for the sovereignty of the target countries and without regard for neighboring civilian populations, as they did in Gaza. By attacking an Iranian embassy and multiplying their fire toward Lebanon, Netanyahu, his far-right ministers, and his generals are deliberately taking the risk of a warlike escalation in the region.
Since the beginning of the destruction of Gaza, Iran and Hezbollah, despite their virulent rhetoric against the Zionist state and their outspoken support for the Palestinian cause, have been far less warmongering than Israel. The main reason is that they know that Israel can count on ongoing military support from the United States. For weeks now, U.S. Secretary of State Anthony Blinken has been touring the Middle East, claiming to be seeking a political solution for Palestine. Negotiations are taking place in various regional capitals. Blinken repeats that the United States wants at all costs to prevent the Israeli massacre in Gaza from turning into a wider regional war. But at the same time, week after week, tens of thousands of deaths after tens of thousands of deaths, the United States has continued to supply arms and munitions to Israel. Until March 25, it opposed every U.N. resolution calling for a ceasefire in Gaza.
Netanyahu’s stubbornness and headlong rush to war are starting to worry the imperialist leaders, who do not want the conflict to spread to a region where they themselves have left many time bombs ready to explode. This has led them to raise their voices, to publicly criticize the Israeli leadership, and to finally vote for a resolution that was critical but had no effect. In Gaza, the Palestinian population continues to die. Recently, the Israeli army completed the destruction of the al-Shifa hospital, claiming hundreds of victims, and killed seven Westerners working for an NGO. Outside, Israel continues to launch raids.
The Israeli government is blatantly ignoring not only U.N. resolutions but also well-measured advice from Washington. Biden shows his powerlessness to rein them in. Netanyahu knows he can afford this provocative attitude because Israel remains, for the United States, the surest regional cop for ensuring imperialist order in the Middle East.
Apr 8, 2024
After a two-week siege by Israeli forces, al-Shifa, Gaza’s largest hospital and one of its biggest employers, is in ruins—a wasteland, as one of the hospital’s surgeons put it.
After raiding the hospital in November, Israeli forces returned to al-Shifa a second time on March 18. Fighting with Hamas fighters ensued, trapping patients and staff in the hospital, as well as residents in neighborhoods around it.
When Israeli forces and their tanks left the hospital complex on April 1, the emergency and surgery departments had been mostly destroyed—and so were many homes around the hospital. Bodies lay decomposing in the hospital’s courtyard and its hallways.
Israeli commanders said that none of the casualties were civilians—a claim strongly disputed by Palestinians and also by the World Health Organization, which said that, during Israel’s siege of the hospital, 21 patients had died and that the rest of the patients were left without enough food, water, health care and basic sanitation.
In any event, what was Gaza’s largest hospital, with 17,000 surgeries and 250,000 emergency room patients a year, has now been definitely rendered out of commission. Out of 36 hospitals that existed in the Gaza Strip six months ago, only about 12 are functional, and only partially. They severely lack supplies, including basic needs such as bed space and anesthesia.
Al-Shifa, once a rare symbol of remedy for Gaza’s impoverished population, has now been reduced to another symbol of Israel’s all-out, barbaric war on the people in the Gaza Strip.
Apr 8, 2024
There has been loud and widespread condemnation in international media over the deaths of seven aid workers in Gaza on April 1.
Israeli officials said the killings were a “tragic mistake,” which certainly doesn’t ring credible. The Israeli military killed these aid workers in three airstrikes that targeted and hit the three cars carrying the victims. And the Israeli military has killed about 224 aid workers in Gaza in the last six months, according to the U.N.
So, the outcry is certainly justified. But why now? After all, in the past six months, Israel’s massive military assault on Gaza has killed more than 33,000 people, more than 40% of them children!
Is it because six of the seven victims were Westerners? Is it because they worked for World Central Kitchen, a nonprofit founded by Spanish celebrity chef José Andrés? Or is it because, in the latest polls, a majority of Americans said they disapprove of Israel’s actions in Gaza, and the Democratic Party is worried about losing votes in November?
In any event, the incident elicited criticism from quarters that, until now, have staunchly defended the carnage in Gaza. U.S. President Biden said he is “outraged and heartbroken” and called the humanitarian situation in Gaza “unacceptable.” U.S. Secretary of State Anthony Blinken called for an independent, third-party investigation. British media even quoted three former British Supreme Court justices who called for a halt to British arms sales to Israel so as not to be “complicit in genocide.”
But actions speak louder than words. U.S. officials have made it clear that U.S. arms shipments to Israel would continue. The Washington Post reported that, on the very day of the deadly strikes, the U.S. State Department approved the transfer of one thousand 500-pound bombs to Israel, among other ammunition. In fact, since October 7, the beginning of Israel’s assault on Gaza, the Biden Administration has sent weapons to Israel directly from U.S. military stockpiles, including 2,000-pound bombs.
It’s American bombs that have been killing tens of thousands of civilians in Gaza—the Israeli military is just doing the dirty work of dropping them. And far from restricting the 3.8-billion-dollar annual U.S. military aid to Israel, as some commentators call for, Biden continues to push for 14 billion dollars in additional arms aid to Israel.
The massacre of Gaza’s population is the continuation of decades of imperialist policy carried out by the U.S. in the Middle East. Since Israel’s founding, the U.S. has given Israel 216 billion dollars in military aid, making this small country, the size of New Jersey, by far the largest recipient of U.S. military aid in history. It’s so that Israel can do the job U.S. imperialism has designated to it: keeping the impoverished masses in the Middle East in check while U.S. corporations continue to draw big profits out of this strategic, oil-rich region of the world.
Apr 8, 2024
There are now more land mines in Ukraine than almost anywhere else on Earth. Unexploded mortars, bombs, artillery shells, and cluster munitions deployed by both Russia and Ukraine add to the danger. U.S. and European “military experts” have advised Ukraine to increase the use of landmines in their own territory to fend off Russian advances.
According to the United Nations, since February 2022, at least 369 Ukrainian people have died from land mine explosions, including 22 children. There have been over 600 injuries.
Right now, if you include the naval mines in water, thirty percent of Ukraine is thought to be littered with land mines. The mined territory is about the size of Florida. The newest mines are colorful and plastic and often scattered by air all over the ground. They can easily be mistaken by children as toys. There is no way all these mines will be able to be cleared before children are harmed.
Globally, in 2021, 5,500 people were killed or maimed by land mines, half of whom were children, according to United Nations data.
The World Bank estimates that the total cost of clearing these land mines after the war will be about 38 BILLION DOLLARS.
How much has the United States committed to the de-mining effort in Ukraine? Only 95 million dollars has been proposed! While wealthy financiers of war are dining on their yachts and discussing future wars, the people of Ukraine will be clearly on their own to fund the decades-long clean-up that this deadly mess requires.
Apr 8, 2024
What follows is the editorial that appeared on the front of all SPARK’s workplace newsletters during the week of April 1st, 2024.
Bernie Sanders introduced a bill into the Senate that would make standard a 32-hour work week with no loss in pay. Sanders called in Shawn Fain, president of the United Auto Workers Union (UAW), to speak in support of this bill at a Congressional hearing.
That is not some pipe dream or pie in the sky. It could easily be done. It would be totally possible for workers today to work even less than 32 hours and get paid even more than the same 40-hour pay. Workers in the U.S. today are 400% more productive than they were in the 1950s. This big increase in productivity should allow every worker to live a much more rewarding life. We could work 10 hours a week and have four times as much vacation time. We could be making much more money and retiring much earlier. The increase in worker productivity makes such things possible.
But things are going in the opposite direction. Workers are working longer hours for pay that is falling further behind prices. Vacations and pensions are disappearing. Workers are being pushed through speedup to work harder. Our lives are getting worse. That is happening because the benefits of increased worker productivity are not going to the workers, they are going into the profits and pockets of a handful of people—the corporate owners on Wall Street. Today, 756 individuals have a total wealth of 4.5 TRILLION Dollars. These 756 people and their families have a wealth equal to almost 20% of the U.S. Gross Domestic Product (GDP)—wealth that is produced by hundreds of millions of workers. For workers to get what we deserve, it would mean reducing the profits stolen by the wealthy few.
Sanders says that the answer is for the government to address this inequality and that his “32 for 40” bill will do that. Fain, in his testimony, cited Democratic President Franklin Roosevelt as someone who stood on the side of the workers. Both of them are spreading illusions and hiding the reality.
Perhaps the government could take from the wealthy and give to the working class. But this government, whether controlled by Republicans or Democrats, has never done so. Both parties have always stood on the side of the wealthy and the capitalist class.
The Republicans have always been known for being on the side of big business. And the Democrats? In the 1930s, Congress had a bill similar to Sanders’ for a 30-hour work week. This bill never passed, even though Roosevelt was president and the Democrats controlled Congress. In the 90 years since then, neither party has ever passed such a bill.
Franklin Roosevelt has often been cited by union leaders like Fain as a president who did things for workers. Nothing could be further from the truth. Shortly after Roosevelt was first elected in 1932, the working class began to fight against the low wages and unemployment of the Great Depression. There were strikes across the country, and a militant working class struck fear into the capitalists and the politicians who represented them. Roosevelt pushed legislation recognizing that workers have the right to organize unions—something that the workers had already been doing by mobilizing their own forces. In 1933, Roosevelt told workers, “No aggression is necessary now to attain these rights.” Roosevelt meant strikes. These strikes by workers were threatening to go way beyond just a fight to attain legal recognition for their unions. The massive strike waves of this time period had the possibility of threatening the whole capitalist system. Roosevelt and the other politicians had the goal of trying to stop these strikes by promising to pass some laws and convince workers to put their faith in the politicians and the government.
Today, by proposing legislation for “32 for 40,” Sanders is telling workers that the government will do something it has never done. Fain had put “32 for 40” as a demand in the auto contract, but he never proposed for workers to make the all-out fight it would take. Fain instead held back the UAW strike against the auto companies and quickly dropped the “32 for 40” demand. Today, both Fain and Sanders are trying to convince workers to put their faith in the Democratic Party.
But a real fight for a shorter work week, a fight for a better future, is possible only when the working class puts its faith in its own power, not in any politicians or legislation. The working class will have to bring forth its own leaders who are ready to lead this fight.
Apr 8, 2024
The U.S. Department of Labor found ten minors, as young as fourteen years old, working at a Tennessee factory making parts for John Deere lawnmowers. The young people were working late-night shifts around power-driven equipment in a busy plant.
The company, Tuff Torq, immediately shifted blame: they say the minors were employed by a temp staffing agency and that they used false names and papers. Tuff Torq wants us to believe they couldn’t tell these workers were years underage? They can’t spot a fourteen-year-old on their own factory floor? Tuff Torq was only too happy to exploit vulnerable migrants, temporary or not. And John Deere was happy enough getting the parts they made.
Child labor has more than doubled since 2018, according to the Labor Department. The department fined Tuff Torq $300,000 and required them to set aside 1.5 million dollars to assist the migrants. That’s nothing—a slap on the wrist—next to the 160 million that Tuff Torq made last year. John Deere, which made 61 billion last year, will not even notice.
Apr 8, 2024
The Florida Supreme Court has ruled against women’s right to choose whether or not to have an abortion.
In 2022, Florida politicians enacted a ban on abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy. Planned Parenthood and women’s rights organizations challenged this law all the way to the Florida Supreme Court. Now that Florida’s highest court has upheld this abortion ban, an even stricter law will go into effect. In 2023, the Florida legislature and Governor Ron DeSantis signed a new law that would ban any abortions after 6 weeks! Before most women even know that they are pregnant!
This ruling will not only affect women in Florida. Since the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, many women who wanted to have an abortion have been forced to travel to states where it was still legal—if they could even afford to travel. Since abortions in Florida had been legal for up to 15 weeks, almost 8,000 women from other southern states had abortions in Florida in 2023. Now, even that option will be denied to women.
Ever since the U.S. Supreme Court threw out Roe v. Wade in the Dobbs decision in 2022, courts and right-wing politicians around the country have been trying to take away women’s right to choose. Before the Dobbs ruling, courts in Florida had said, over and over, that women had the right to abortion based on a 1980 state constitutional amendment that protected the right to privacy. Now, all of a sudden, the Florida Supreme Court is contradicting all its own previous rulings, and Florida politicians are passing even stricter laws against women’s right to choose.
After Roe v. Wade was overturned, women in many states organized for people to vote for ballot proposals or constitutional amendments to protect women’s right to choose. In 2022, in every state where abortion rights were on the ballot, these proposals and amendments passed. Votes and polls have clearly shown, over and over again, that the majority of people support abortion rights. In November, Florida will have an amendment on the ballot that would give women the right to abortion. But by Florida law, it will take a super-majority of 60% of the voters to pass this amendment.
Whatever the outcome of the vote, women and their supporters can’t depend on courts or politicians to protect their rights. They can only depend on their own activity and determination.
Apr 8, 2024
A recent study by the University of Chicago found that the City of Detroit and Wayne County over-assessed 65% of homes with the lowest property values for taxes. In contrast, only 11% of the highest-valued homes were over-assessed.
In 2020, an investigation by The Detroit News showed that Detroit residents paid 600 million dollars too much in property taxes between 2010 and 2017 due to improper assessments. It exposed one of the reasons why 73,000 homeowners had their homes foreclosed on due to unpaid property taxes between 2008 and 2019. In the meantime, the Detroit City Council passed a property tax reform last year, and the city and county supposedly set up a means for people to appeal their assessments. As a result, the issue was out of the spotlight until a recent study came to light, showing that the problem still continues.
Some local activists are pushing for the city to lower assessments by 30% for all houses valued under $35,000 to address the problem. They are certainly right to bring attention to the problem, but this issue points to a much bigger problem.
School funding in Michigan comes from local property taxes, so it depends on the collection of property taxes. This study shows that even that is done unfairly.
Why should something as important as public education be done in each small jurisdiction? Cities with higher poverty rates are doomed to have more difficulty providing adequate funding for quality education.
But taxing the wealthy and the corporations to pay for things like public education would be too much like right in a capitalist society in which they and their politicians make the rules.
Apr 8, 2024
The Metro Detroit Area is gearing up for the NFL Draft, less than 30 days away. There is so much excitement about all the revenue being brought into the city. Overpriced hotel rooms are filling up. Restaurants are creating dishes and drinks with draft themes. Roads are being closed, and orange barrels will be encasing the city. These closures and traffic may not concern some workers since working from home is commonplace. We can only hope management has some understanding for workers who have to travel into the city, like not disciplining workers for tardies and unpaid time. Can we all enjoy the draft?!