the Voice of
The Communist League of Revolutionary Workers–Internationalist
“The emancipation of the working class will only be achieved by the working class itself.”
— Karl Marx
the Voice of
The Communist League of Revolutionary Workers–Internationalist
“The emancipation of the working class will only be achieved by the working class itself.”
— Karl Marx
Aug 5, 2024
The U.S. government has sent more warships and fighter jets into the Middle East. These military forces just added to what already was a massive U.S. military presence in the area.
The new deployment of U.S. forces came after the Israeli government conducted two assassinations—killing a Hezbollah leader who was in a civilian area of Beirut, Lebanon and killing a Hamas leader while he was in Iran.
Joe Biden said that the Israeli assassination of the Hamas leader in a sovereign country “wasn’t helpful” toward bringing about peace in the region. What peace? U.S. actions in the Middle East have only increased the threat of a bigger war. Israel would only conduct such a bold attack in Iran because they knew the U.S. would be ready to step in to defend Israel from a retaliatory attack by Iran. It is not clear what Iran will do, or how the U.S. and Israel will respond. The U.S. government may not want a wider war. But it seems ready to risk an escalation of the current war.
With the war in Gaza, the Middle East is already a tinderbox that could explode into an even bigger war at any time. The U.S. supplies the bombs and missiles that allow the Zionist regime to conduct genocide against the people of Gaza. Last October, Hamas forces came across the border and killed over 1,000 Israelis. Since then, Israeli forces have killed a reported 40,000 Palestinians in Gaza, most of them women and children who have nothing to do with Hamas. More lay buried under the rubble in Gaza. The Israeli government continues to kill Palestinians on the West Bank, either with its own military forces or by giving right-wing Israeli vigilantes a free hand to murder.
Occasionally, the U.S. administration has been publicly critical of the Israeli government, trying to take some distance from its most murderous actions. The interests of the U.S. government don’t always align with the Netanyahu government, which is trying to hold on to power in Israel. Sometimes the Zionist state takes actions the U.S. government would prefer that it didn’t. But as U.S. imperialism’s closest ally and surrogate, it is granted wide latitude to operate in its own immediate interests.
The Israeli regime exists as the strongest military state in the Middle East due to the money and weapons supplied by the U.S. government. It receives more military aid from the U.S. than any country in the world. If the U.S. cut off that supply of money and weapons to Israel, it could end the current massacre of Gazans immediately. But to allow Israel to weaken or perish would mean losing its policeman in the Middle East, one which protects the interests of U.S. corporations and banks, and their access to the oil and trade routes of the region.
The U.S. presence in the Middle East has been a disaster for the people of that region, leading to extreme impoverishment, to anger and the possibility of a popular uprising. U.S. imperialism not only uses Israel as its cop, but also props up Middle East dictators against their own populations and sometimes sets one regime against another in a war, all in the interest of controlling the Middle East for the profit of U.S. capitalists.
U.S. imperialism enforces its economic domination in the world by any means, including military force. The U.S. uses the threat of using its own forces, and has, again and again, used its own forces around the world—Iraq, Afghanistan, Vietnam. The U.S. government may not be seeking a bigger war right now in the Middle East. But its actions backing the Israeli regime increase the threat of a wider war. If that war does spread, it is likely that the war will not be limited only to the Middle East. No people in any country will be safe. The working class here and in every country will be the people to pay for the war and die in the war.
The working class here and in every country has no interest in any war. The international working class has the power to take on the capitalist class, which is powering this insane move toward war.
Aug 5, 2024
Democratic Governor Gavin Newsom, following a recent Supreme Court decision, ordered the clearing of homeless encampments and the banning of outdoor sleeping. As a result, cops will more easily keep out the homeless from big business districts and wealthy neighborhoods.
But the huge increase of homelessness will not be stopped. Because nasty rent increases and the destruction of affordable housing by super-rich developers and real estate magnates will continue. They are the real reason for homelessness.
Aug 5, 2024
The latest surveys on back-to-school expenses for families with elementary and high-school age children are indicating the average cost for school supplies can range anywhere from $586 to $875 for each child. And if you have more than one child, well, do the math.
Parents are told they have to go into their own wallets to “make sure their students have the supplies needed for a successful school year.”
Why? It’s one thing that kids need some new clothing, and a backpack. But many school districts routinely send out a list of what school supplies students should be bringing with them to school. And then, when families are expected to put out funds for electronics—and in some underfunded school districts, cleaning products, that’s something different altogether.
This additional school spending amounts to, in fact, another wage cut for working class families. All school supplies should be provided at the schools, by the school districts.
Aug 5, 2024
When Donald Trump was ranting about immigrants, he also insulted black people by talking about “black jobs,” as if black people could only do certain jobs.
When Simone Biles won another gold medal at the Olympics, singer Ricky Davila taunted Trump and celebrated Biles by writing “Simone Biles being greatest, winning gold medals and dominating gymnastics is her black job.”
Simone Biles added to it by posting “I love my black job.” Good for Simone Biles! She deserves another gold medal in the category of “Best way to slap down a racist, stupid wannabe president.”
Aug 5, 2024
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu accepted an invitation to speak before the U.S. Congress and received several standing ovations from both Republican and Democratic politicians who were in attendance. His appearance was met by thousands of people protesting in the streets of Washington, D.C. over his direction of war in Gaza that has resulted in the deaths of close to 40,000 Palestinians and a great deal of suffering by many more.
In his speech, Netanyahu slandered the protestors, referring to them as “Iran’s useful idiots,” saying “many choose to stand with evil,” and that they “stand with Hamas” and “rapists and murderers.” The politicians in attendance responded to these lies with their most enthusiastic ovations of the night.
Some Democratic members of Congress made a show of skipping Netanyahu’s appearance, which is a bit hypocritical given that they’ve repeatedly approved of sending billions of dollars in weapons to the Israeli military, even while it carries out its murderous campaign in Gaza. The main response of the Democrats, including both President Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris, to the protests, though, was to condemn those few among the thousands of demonstrators who burned the American flag.
While American politicians occasionally pretend they disapprove of the mass murder being carried out by Netanyahu and the Israeli military, the love they showed Netanyahu at his speech before Congress shows he has their full approval.
Aug 5, 2024
No sooner had Biden named Harris his successor than everyone else in the Party closed ranks around her. All top Congressional Democrats endorsed her, including Nancy Pelosi. The Clintons endorsed her. And then, Barack Obama himself, and his wife Michelle, endorsed her in a staged video call.
It all culminated in a virtual vote, a week before the Democratic Convention, in which Harris was the only one on the ballot.
In two weeks’ time, the entire Democratic apparatus transferred from Biden to Harris. And not only the Democratic apparatus, but the entire liberal media fell in line. Harris became, in record time, the party’s nominee.
So much attention is being focused on the individual qualities of the two candidates. But clearly, the Democratic apparatus is working like a well-oiled machine to continue its administration—that is, to continue to represent the capitalist system in its entirety, from economic decisions to war decisions to running day-to-day business for the capitalists.
While they hint at and promise that her tenure will be kinder and gentler, they are really lining up for business as usual—a future where workers pay and the rich play.
Aug 5, 2024
Nearly two-thirds of 5,000 hospitals in the U.S., or around 3,900, are so-called non-profit businesses, according to the IRS. Unlike us, non-profit hospitals pay no taxes, that is, no property tax, no state or federal income tax, and no sales tax. Zilch!
These “non-profit” hospitals include Mayo Clinic, Cleveland Clinic, Johns Hopkins, Mass General, and Stanford University, among the most prestigious hospitals in the U.S. and the world.
These hospitals generate vast sums of money from their operations. For example, Stanford University generated 62% of its operating revenue in 2023 from its hospital services. One hospital, Atrium Health Foundation (Charlotte, NC), was so profitable that it parked $52 million of its 2017 revenue in the Cayman Islands, the tax evaders’ paradise.
These hospitals reward their Chief Executive Officers (CEOs) with mind-boggling yearly payments in return for generating so much money. For example, the non-profit Banner Health (Phoenix) paid its top executive 21.6 million dollars in 2017.
On paper, to claim non-profit business status, these hospitals are supposed to lower healthcare costs or provide free healthcare for those who can’t otherwise afford it and provide some vague “community benefit.”
But this is often a cruel joke. Many of us know someone burdened with an exorbitant bill from a so-called non-profit hospital, a bill we simply cannot afford to pay.
Many experts have denounced these hospitals as naked profit grabs. “Hospitals are some of the biggest businesses in the U.S.—nonprofit in name only, … Great work if you can get it,” said Martin Gaynor, an economics and public policy professor at Carnegie Mellon University.
Aug 5, 2024
Chicago’s school board, appointed by Mayor Brandon Johnson, passed the budget for this year at the end of July. The 9.9-billion-dollar budget dealt with a 505-million-dollar deficit by making cuts—cuts which the mayor denounced. Yet the School Board voted the budget unanimously.
The Board laid off 600 staff and teacher aides in June, as well as a smaller number of teachers. Five percent of teacher positions are vacant. Unfilled teacher positions mean, in fact, cuts to students’ education. But the Board is balancing the budget by leaving many of these positions unfilled. Moreover, at many schools, money for anything other than staff has been cut to the bone. Concerts and plays at one Southside high school will have to take place in the afternoon—while many parents are still working—because there’s no longer money to pay security overtime to cover evening performances.
Moreover, Mayor Johnson has proposed that the school board should cover a 175-million-dollar pension payment, rather than the city. Johnson and the Teachers Union criticized former mayor Lori Lightfoot for doing exactly that, just a couple years ago. And no wonder—it meant more cuts for the schools. So far, this school board has refused.
Teachers Union Vice President Jackson Potter defended Johnson and his political flip-flop, telling the meeting: “We have to deal with the conundrum of robbing Peter to pay Paul on the city side.” Well, Peter and Paul are broke because the ruling class, which controls the real money in this society, doesn’t want to pay for the schools OR for city services!
Over a decade ago, the Chicago Teachers Union leadership won election and mobilized their members to defend the city schools, a fight that culminated in the big teachers strike in 2012. Teachers Union president Karen Lewis won a lot of admiration from working people and union activists for confronting Mayor Rahm Emanuel and defending education for the working class.
But, in the decade since, the union leadership has shifted to make electoral politics their primary focus. To their members and to the city, they pushed the idea of electing their organizer, Brandon Johnson, to the mayor’s office as the solution to the problems for the working class in both the schools and the city at large. It is becoming more and more obvious that this was not the solution they promised us.
The ruling class has the money. Johnson either doesn’t have his hands on it or won’t spend it.
To get any of that money would take a fight by workers across Chicago, starting with teachers and school workers, parents and students. But this is not what Johnson and the CTU propose.
Aug 5, 2024
When Joe Biden stepped down, UAW president Shawn Fain gave the union’s endorsement to Kamala Harris. Fain said the decision was easy because the Republicans are the party of billionaires and the Democrats are the party of the working class.
There’s no doubt the Republicans stand on the side of big business. Year after year, election after election, the UAW and other labor unions have continued to endorse the Democrats. The idea that the Democrats represent labor developed over decades as the Democrats took credit for the gains the working class won for itself.
In the struggles of the 1930s and 40s, workers made massive fights, including the sit-down strikes in auto and elsewhere. In the 1960s, the civil rights movement and rebellions pushed against the worst abuses of racism.
The Democrats took credit for what people won in the streets by passing some laws, at the same time trying to put a brake on the movements.
The workers don’t need the Democrats. The working class needs to organize its own party to organize the fights of the future, not to be tied to the leadership of organizations that represent the ruling class. In pledging support to a capitalist party, Fain stands in the way of workers freeing themselves from capitalism, which is the cause of our exploitation.
Aug 5, 2024
Film: Two American Families: 1991–2024, streaming on PBS or on YouTube, 2024
This special, two-hour documentary was filmed over more than 30 years. It is a portrait of two families, one black, one white, in Milwaukee, done by Frontline, Bill Moyers, and filmmakers Tom Casciato and Kathleen Hughes. You see the racism the black family faced. You see both families willing to work hard and dreaming of a better life for their children. The film shows the economic decline over the last 30 years, no matter who’s president, and how the families had to fight from slipping into poverty. And you see the price both families had to pay.
Book: The Rent Collectors: Exploitation, Murder, and Redemption in Immigrant LA by Jesse Katz, 2024
This new book traces the life around MacArthur Park in Los Angeles County, California from 1980–2023. It is a book about struggling Latino immigrants, the appeal of the gangs to the young, sidewalk vending to survive, the role of the gangs in the community, but so much more.
This non-fiction narrative traces the lives of individuals caught up in actual events, such as an accidental gang killing of a newborn. But the author repeatedly steps back from the events and gives the reader the historical and familial context of a refugee from El Salvador, the plight of women refugees fighting for their families, or incredibly damning statistics of the California prison system. The book focuses on specific events but never neglects the big picture.
Aug 5, 2024
Today, there are candidates in three states whose goal is the formation of a working- class party. In Michigan, where there are 15 candidates, Working Class Party has been on the ballot since 2016. In Illinois and California, where it is more recent, there is one candidate in each state. Seventeen candidates, three states, but all running on the same program which is reproduced on the next page. These 17 candidates want to use this election to let working people speak, to show there are tens of thousands of people who want to fight for their own party, based on a program like this.
Juan Rey, 37th Congressional District California
Ed Hershey, 4th Congressional District Illinois
Working Class Party Candidates in Michigan:
Jim Walkowicz, 9th Congressional;
Andrea L. Kirby, 10th Congressional;
Gary Walkowicz, 12th Congressional;
Simone R. Coleman; 13th Congressional;
Linda Green-Harris, State Rep 16;
Lou Palus, 3rd Congressional;
Mary Anne Hering, State Board of Education;
Suzanne Roehrig, WSU Board of Governors;
Logan Ausherman, State Rep 8; Kathy Goodwin, 8th Congressional;
Larry Darnell Betts, State Rep 3; Liz Hakola, 1st Congressional;
Marc DaSacco, State Rep 2; Linda Rayburn, State Rep 7;
Hashim Malik Bakari, State Rep 13.
Aug 5, 2024
This system creates inflation, driving down our standard of living—letting the corporations, banks and financial groups take an even bigger share of society’s wealth. Capitalism relegates many people to unemployment, temporary or part-time work, while forcing others to work overtime—this, too, comes from the drive to amass profit. In such a system, working people die young, 10 or even 15 years younger than those who profit from our labor.
We are caught in the grip of a system which not only cheats our schools, roads and water systems to spend money on war; it is preparing to take us to war.War today is a giant commercial enterprise. Military spending props up the profits of almost every big corporation in the country, depriving us of needed schools and services. But it’s not just money. Today, the U.S. is involved in actual wars in Ukraine and Gaza, and in shadow wars throughout the Middle East and elsewhere. To accept these wars prepares us to accept tomorrow’s deadlier wars. Working people will pay the full price for these wars unless the working class takes control away from the capitalists who head us to war.
To Fight Against Inflation· Wages, pensions, and disability payments should automatically and immediately be increased whenever prices increase.
· The capitalists won’t do that. The working class will have to impose those increases on them, make the big companies use the money they give to wealthy stockholders today—use it to guarantee everyone’s wages.
To Fight So Everyone Has a Job· Divide the available work among everyone who wants to work. Let everyone work fewer hours, but let everyone keep a full week of pay. Decent pay. Slow down the pace of work—this would also provide jobs for people who need them.
· The capitalists won’t want this either. But they could pay for it. They have hoarded vast amounts of wealth they stole from our labor. We need to take it back.
To Impose Our Needs Requires the Working Class to Control the Situation· The working class today sits in the very heart of the economy. We produce the food, goods and services society needs; we transport them; we see they get distributed. We work in the center of financial services. We can control the capitalist class’s own economy, where its power is, when we mobilize our forces together.
To Defend Our Own Class as Capitalism Moves toward War· To fight, we need the full forces of our class, which is powerful—when it is united.
· But to unite our forces, we have to recognize the reality of all the vicious ways parts of our class are attacked, leaving us divided. We have to have each other’s back.
· We are all part of one class, black, white, native-born, immigrant, women, men—all of us. We have the power to change our situation—when we stand together.
Aug 5, 2024
Special thanks to all of our new candidates. I am just thrilled to have a record number of candidates.
And speaking from experience, it’s just living your life in a brave way, living your life as a truthful person, living your life as a fighter, living your life who speaks truth to power.
You are campaigning every day, and the biggest thing that I learned from being a candidate the first time was how much people are so sick and tired of being sick and tired.
They’re so happy to see somebody else who gets it like they get it.
They’re so happy to see somebody who has hope, somebody who’s not attacking another person, another party.
We’re talking about the future, we’re talking about the power of the working class.
You see it, this is kind of an example, whenever there’s a “natural disaster.” The ordinary people are the only ones who save lives.
It’s just like a switch is flipped, and people who were in the flood are saved, people who would be in danger from being trapped in the tornado, all the neighbors come out, they go through the neighborhood, they get all the trees down.
It’s just like people kind of understand that the government is not there for us, that only we are here for us, and that’s what we reinforce by being Working Class Party candidates, that’s what we reinforce when we campaign, the power of the working class, just helping more people to move this much further ahead to understanding their own power.
Society wants working class people to be victims. It’s always, “Oh, these poor, poor people.”
No, we are the people who do every job in the world.
The working class makes the whole world run.
We can make the whole world stop.
But right now, we just need to help more people around us to understand our real power.
Aug 5, 2024
The U.S. has now transferred its fourth shipment of cluster bombs through its Miesau munitions depot in Germany to Ukraine for the Ukrainian army to use. These bombs were outlawed by 124 countries because they break up into many, many smaller bombs which explode in the air over a very wide area, with many pieces falling to the ground only to explode months or years later when disturbed. Most of the victims are civilian children.
There are still 80 million live bomblets in Laos, half a century after the U.S. stopped bombing there. The U.S. stopped producing them in 2016 but kept its stockpile for uses like now in Ukraine, exactly because they are so lethal to combatants.
Meanwhile, Germany agreed in 2009 to stop using them and spent tens of millions of dollars to destroy its stockpile. “The danger that cluster munitions pose to civilian populations can only be eliminated if the ban on these munitions is comprehensive,” Germany’s president declared at the time.
But last July the U.S. demanded to transfer cluster bombs through its massive, three-square-mile base in Miesau, staffed by hundreds of workers. The German president caved in, saying, “We cannot, in the current situation, block the United States.”
Many Ukrainians will suffer for decades to come. The U.S. military doesn’t care about the population of Ukraine—or the population of Germany, for that matter.
Aug 5, 2024
This article is translated from the July 27 issue, #1332 of Combat Ouvrier (Workers Fight), the paper of the Trotskyist group of that name active in Guadeloupe and Martinique, two islands that are French overseas departments in the Caribbean.
More than 40 migrants lost their lives on July 17 when their boat caught fire north of Haiti, not far from Cap-Haitien, the country’s second largest city. The coast guard rescued around 40 survivors, seven of whom were seriously burned.
The migrants were on an overloaded makeshift boat, attempting to reach the Turk and Caicos Islands, 150 miles away. The number of attempts and departures of migrants by boat has been on the rise since the upsurge in violence at the end of February, and has not changed since the appointment of a new government in June.
In the provinces, as in the north around Cap-Haitien, farmers are no longer producing, and small traders are no longer circulating. In the capital, in the industrial zone businesses are closed. Inhabitants of working-class neighborhoods are struggling to survive. They are the first to suffer the consequences of insecurity and lack of food, exacerbated by the violence of the gangs that control 80% of the capital and the country’s main roads.
Fleeing gang violence, over 600,000 displaced people across the country are seeking shelter. Some are attempting to leave by sea, as the border with the Dominican Republic is closed. But they face a new obstacle, a “security cordon” set up by countries in the region, which have turned back more than 86,000 Haitians since the beginning of the year.
Since the departure of Prime Minister Henry in June, the transitional authorities have been supported by a multinational mission. A second contingent of 200 Kenyan police officers has arrived, bringing the total to 400. So far, the first contingent has not carried out any operations against the gangs, apart from joint patrols with the National Police.
The hard-working population can only rely on its own strength and organization to cope with the violence it has to endure.
Aug 5, 2024
This article is translated from the August 2 issue, #2922 of Lutte Ouvrière (Workers Struggle), the paper of the Trotskyist group of that name active in France. The article discusses the police shooting of Sonya Massey.
In early July, in Illinois, a white police officer shot a black woman while in her home. A chilling video released by the authorities shows how the woman, who had called the police herself, was shot in the head for no reason.
This type of murder, involving the racism that permeates the police force, is unfortunately common in the United States. In this case, the victim’s relatives organized protests that left the local authorities no time to discreetly cover up for the police officer, as they often do. The press got involved and the authorities decided not to support the murderer, who was dismissed by the sheriff, indicted and jailed pending trial.
On the campaign trail, courting black voters, Vice President Kamala Harris made it known that she had telephoned the victim’s mother. But to think that electing a woman of color to the White House would protect black Americans from police violence would be a mistake. Under Obama, police racism continued unabated. And many remember that in her long career as a prosecutor in California, Kamala Harris never prosecuted police officers for violence.
Aug 5, 2024
This article is translated from a brief posted on August 3rd on the website of Lutte Ouvrière (Workers Struggle), the Trotskyist group active in France. It discusses events in the aftermath of a recent stabbing attack in Southport, England, where a young man killed three young girls and wounded ten others at a Taylor-Swift-themed dance class.
Following the deaths of three little girls by a 17-year-old boy, far-right activists sought to provoke a riot in Southport, under the false pretext that the murderer was a Muslim foreigner. A mosque was targeted by far-right anti-Islamists. Further disturbances took place in other towns in the north of England and in London over the following days.
The perpetrator of the Southport massacre was born in Britain and his motives are not known. But that doesn’t matter to the far right, which stops at nothing to advance its xenophobic ideas. They are gaining in confidence; they are a danger against which workers will have to defend themselves.
Aug 5, 2024
This July, eighty years after 256 mostly black sailors were unjustly convicted, the U.S. government finally decided to exonerate them, though merely for technical reasons. These sailors had refused orders to return to work in dangerous conditions at the Port Chicago naval facility near Sacramento, California.
On July 17, 1944, sailors were loading munitions under unsafe conditions onto two Navy ships for the war in the Pacific. The munitions exploded, killing 320 sailors and civilians, injuring at least 390 others, and flattening Port Chicago.
This was not an “accident.” Before the explosions, black sailors had reported these dangerous conditions to the Navy. These sailors had been loading munitions individually by hand, crane, and winch to the ships in brutal 24-hour shifts. None of them had been trained for this dangerous work, nor had their white supervising officers. The longshoreman’s union warned an explosion was likely and offered to train the sailors. The Navy ignored the offer. Instead, the officers placed $5 bets on which shifts could load more ammunition.
A month later, the continued unsafe conditions prompted hundreds of sailors to refuse to load munitions, an act known as the Port Chicago Mutiny. A U.S. military court convicted 256 of them on various charges, sentencing 50 of these men to 15 years of prison and hard labor for mutiny. These sailors had every right to refuse to work under such crazy and dangerous work conditions.
The U.S. Navy higher-ups were the actual criminals responsible for the Port Chicago explosion, killings, and destruction because they knowingly forced these laborers into this lethal trap. Instead, the court whitewashed these higher-ups, blaming everything on the sailors.
This year, Navy Secretary Carlos Del Toro, after what he called a “new investigation,” found that these black sailors were erroneously tried as a group and had not been given appropriate counsel. He decided to exonerate them on such technical grounds, instead of correctly indicating the guilty party.
This is an election year, and the U.S. politicians know very well how to look good by exploiting every opportunity. The sailors’ memory deserves so much better!
Aug 5, 2024
Two groups that monitor hunger around the world have declared a famine in Sudan. Observers from the two organizations said that half a million people trapped in the Zamzam refugee camp in the North Darfur region have not been getting any food aid since June.
Right now, Sudan is facing the world’s largest hunger crisis—and this in a fertile country that was once known as a “bread basket.” This catastrophe is man-made; it is the result of a 15-month civil war. Two generals, who together put down massive anti-government protests in 2019, have been locked in a brutal war for power for the last 15 months.
The armies of these two generals have not only been attacking and robbing civilians, but they have also been confiscating food and medical supplies—including the already meager international aid. The city of El Fasher in North Darfur, where the official famine declaration was made, has been besieged by one of the armies since April; and both warring armies have been preventing international aid trucks from reaching the population.
It’s not just the Zamzam camp—the war in fact has uprooted more than 10 million people in Sudan, creating the world’s worst refugee crisis as well. And, according to the World Food Program, more than 24 million people, or about half the population of Sudan, are facing “crisis-level” hunger. In fact, the U.N. reported that 750,000 people in Sudan are already in the process of starving to death.
Experts say that an official declaration of famine is rare, and it is made to push governments, especially those of the wealthier countries, to mobilize donations and aid. That’s nothing but creating a false hope, to say the least.
No, the world’s big powers, above all the U.S., are not into humanitarian aid. They are in fact focused on two other wars right now, in Gaza and Ukraine. And the billions of dollars the U.S. has been pouring into those wars are used to advance the interests of U.S. imperialism—killing, maiming and starving tens of thousands of civilians in those parts of the world as well.
Aug 5, 2024
In the 1930s, workers reacted to constant wage cuts and horrible living conditions following the 1929 stock market crash. Strikes ensued, some of these strikes were carried out by the most exploited segments of the working class, such as farm workers. These workers were treated with the same class hatred that is being directed against migrants today, by large landowners and the authorities in California.
The workers’ struggle was impressive, as evidenced by the 1933 cotton strike in California’s San Joaquin Valley. It remains the largest agricultural workers’ strike in U.S. history. Approximately 18,000 workers participated. Three-quarters of the workforce is Mexican; the rest included Black workers from the South, Filipinos, and white migrants from other states. They were paid by the amount of cotton harvested. Three years of depression had pushed these rates even lower than they were before.
At an important meeting in the town of Tulare on October 1, 1933, workers voted to strike to increase the rates. The union set a strike date for October 4. But many did not wait. Almost immediately after the meeting, hundreds of cotton pickers began leaving the ranches where the harvest season was supposed to begin. Then, on October 4, 1933, almost all harvesting operations came to a halt.
The “growers” (as capitalist farm owners are called in the region) then organized “protective associations” and declared that: “Strikers will work peacefully or leave the state of California.” These protective associations (small militias serving these owners) began evicting strikers from the camps that belonged to these same growers.
The union was led by militants of the Communist Party (CP). These militants were few in number. But they were courageous and devoted to the working class. Their leadership and experience that they had gained in earlier struggles made the huge growth of this strike possible.
One of the first acts of the union was to rent a small 45-acre farm, where they established their headquarters. Five thousand men, women and children then lived in the camp.
The strike spread throughout the San Joaquin Valley. The union sent groups of striking workers to a series of cotton ranches stretching over 100 miles in the valley. The technique was simple, though laborious: groups of strikers in trucks stopped where they found workers in the fields and tried to convince them to join the strike.
In the second week, the growers intensified their attacks against the strikers, terrorizing them using the militias and the police to arrest the strikers. But the strike gained momentum, and most of the cotton remained unharvested in the fields.
On October 10, in the small town of Pixley, 40 members of an employer militia opened fire on a group of unarmed strikers and their families, killing two people. Shortly thereafter, an armed confrontation in another town lasted five hours between the strikers and the growers. After the shootings, local authorities arrested nine strikers, whom they accused of inciting a riot and also of murder. In response to this attempt to break the strike, the workers gathered in front of a church for the funerals of two of the murdered strikers. They turned the funerals into a large demonstration attended by over 5,000 people.
It was the first time in the history of agricultural workers in California that there was a demonstration of this magnitude.
On October 27, the strike committee accepted 75 cents for nearly 100 pounds of harvest, slightly less than what the strikers demanded, but significantly more than the rate offered by the growers at the start of the strike.
Ultimately, the growers and the state claimed victory because they had refused to officially recognize the union as an intermediary to negotiate with the striking workers. But this was only to save face. The agricultural workers’ strike had forced them to back down and grant wage increases. It was a real victory for these 18,000 workers, among the most despised, who had confronted the most powerful landowners in California and their repressive state apparatus.
In this strike, the workers demonstrated that even the most marginalized and exploited segment of the working class could push back powerful employers and their state.
During this strike, the Communist Party had only a small number of active militants in the fields throughout the San Joaquin Valley. These militants deserve serious credit for fighting alongside agricultural workers, providing coherence in organizing the strike and objectives for the struggle. And they effectively won a real credit among some thousands of workers for it.
And at the period of crisis, that influence was priceless. Because this fight can only be understood in a more general context of a significant rise in struggles during this period in the United States. From 1934 on major strikes erupted across the United States, in the automobile industry, in transportation, and the port of San Francisco. That was also true in many other different sectors such as in rubber or textile.
However, the problem is that at that time, the Communist Party under the influence of Stalinism had abandoned its revolutionary ideas. A chance to build a real working class party, a real party of revolution, was missed.
And that would have meant linking this struggle of the farm workers with those of all other American workers. That also would have meant addressing to workers the urgent problem of the period that was coming: a new world war.
The total failure of the capitalist system to ensure a decent future for the population was clearly posing the necessity for workers to overthrow the bourgeoisie and its state, take power, and begin building a socialist society, free from the barbarism we still know today. Once again, it was a missed opportunity that will reappear in one way or another as long as the same capitalist system crushes populations worldwide.
The question remains the same: when workers raise their heads, will there be a significant revolutionary workers’ party to lead this fight to its conclusion against capitalism?!
Aug 5, 2024
By far the biggest of the 50 wildfires now burning in the Western U.S. is the Park fire. Officials say the fire began on July 24 when a man pushed a burning car into a ravine near Chico, California. In less than a week the Park fire had already become the fifth largest fire in California history. It scorched an area 12 times larger than the city of San Francisco. It destroyed 200 structures and forced thousands of people to evacuate their homes. And it’s far from done. Experts say that it has the possibility of becoming the biggest fire in California state history.
Certainly, climate change has contributed to the fire’s explosiveness. The extreme heat in June and July followed a very wet winter and spring that allowed vegetation to grow quickly. The “whiplash” between very wet conditions and extreme heat is how climate change is impacting California.
But also, greatly contributing to this fire’s ferocity and reach has been a huge buildup of dead vegetation over a period of many, many decades. This huge amount of dead vegetation provides the fuel that allows the fire to grow and burn for many weeks and even months.
This huge build-up of dead vegetation is not “natural.” It is due to a longstanding policy of fire suppression by the U.S. and state governments. This policy serves the interests of the capitalist class, because it safeguards their investments in timber, mines, as well as real estate development in fire-prone areas.
But fire suppression goes against the natural environment. Frequent wildfires fit with the particular climate of most of California and the Western U.S., in which it rains only during a few months of the late fall and winter. During the rest of the year, vegetation dries out and bakes under the sun, becoming potential kindling.
In this environment, fires play a much-needed positive, housekeeping role. They clear out dead underbrush and aging foliage. The ashes fertilize the soil. Over thousands of years, plants and animals have adapted to these frequent fires. They spread new seeds and enable biodiversity.
Before California was colonized, it was not unusual for more than one-eighth of the state to burn every year. Indigenous tribes were skilled in the use of low-intensity wildfires to shape the environment, to clear out and fertilize land to grow food, to hunt wild animals, or even to reduce the number of insects.
When the U.S. federal and state governments began suppressing these fires on the orders of the capitalist class, it did not stop the fires from breaking out. It just let the amount of dead vegetation build up a huge amount, so that when fires did break out, they were bigger and more deadly … way before climate change had begun to take hold.
Over the last couple of decades, government officials promised repeatedly that they would change their policy and begin to implement controlled fuel burns over big expanses of the West to begin to reduce the centuries old build-up of dead vegetation. They doubled down on those promises after the 2020 Camp fire destroyed the town of Paradise and killed 85 people in the midst of the worst wildfire season in California history. But last year, the state of California only removed plant material from 54,000 acres and conducted about 37,000 acres of prescribed burns … in a state where there are 30 million acres of forest land.
Politicians in California now claim that they have set a goal of treating one million acres of land per year beginning in 2025 by removing dense vegetation with machines or by prescribed burn. They even say that the Park fire “might” provide “more motivation” for state agencies to reach this goal.
Another empty promise? Probably, given the ongoing pressures of the various capitalist interests out to protect their profits and wealth, no matter how bad a catastrophe they cause.
Aug 5, 2024
An intense wildfire recently destroyed part of the town of Jasper, Alberta, and burned a large section of Jasper National Park in Western Canada. Jasper is known as one of the most beautiful wilderness parks in all of North America and was called a “crown jewel of the Canadian parks system.”
Wildfires in forested areas, often started by lightning strikes, are part of the natural environment. But climate change, which is causing higher temperatures, drier conditions in some forests and more prolonged droughts, has increased the number and destructiveness of large wildfires.
Despite the efforts of hundreds of fire fighters, the wildfire in Jasper was out of control and was worsened by a fire-generated storm, scientifically called a pyrocumulonimbus or a pyroCb. A pyroCb is a huge, smoke-filled thunderstorm generated when extreme heat from a wildfire combines with atmospheric conditions ripe for storm formation.
These heat-generated storms don’t produce much rain, but they can create strong winds, tornadoes and lightning, which can start even more fires. The extreme winds from a pyroCb make a wildfire nearly impossible to put out, while also endangering the lives of firefighters. These tornado-like winds were also reported near the Park wildfire in California.
PyroCbs also send huge amounts of smoke very high into the atmosphere, the effects of which are not yet clear. What is clear is that the number of reported pyroCbs has drastically increased in the last decade as the earth heats up from climate change.
Under a capitalist system which refuses to address climate change, a warming planet is leading to more homes burned, more people killed and destruction of the natural environment.