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
Jan 20, 2025
By the time this paper will be printed, Donald Trump will have been sworn in as the 47th president of the United States. He’ll be beginning his second (non-consecutive) term in office.
To many Democrats and liberals, this is the worst thing that could ever happen—the second coming of Hitler, or even of the Devil himself.
For many of Trump’s supporters, he’s expected to perform miracles: to end wars across the globe, to lower prices overnight, to bring back desperately needed manufacturing jobs. Even many working people who hope for something better just hope that his election will bring about a lowering of grocery prices.
In reality, despite all the hyperbole and despite Trump’s own boasts and flamboyant pronouncements, Trump is nothing more than the latest in bourgeois politicians to occupy the Oval Office—a role created by the “Founding Fathers,” the capitalist class, to serve their needs and run their system. Trump may seem like a loose cannon, but he knows who his masters are, and he is ready to serve them.
This can be seen clearly by who his political friends are. Not only are “Tech Bros” like Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg and Jeff Bezos cozying up to him; his inauguration fund has received over 150 million dollars in donations, including many one-million-dollar donations from many different corporations. They’re not donating out of the kindness of their hearts, or just because they want to get on Trump’s good side. They’re donating because they know that he will act in their interests, whatever he does.
But when it came to promises made to the working class, Trump wasted no time in backpedaling, even before he got into office. Lowering grocery prices, the main thing working people hope to see, suddenly became “very hard to do.” Ending wars? No, he’s threatening more wars.
And in this way, he’s no different from any other president before him—not Biden, not Obama, not Bush or Clinton. Obama promised “Hope and Change.” What change did he bring about? He bailed out the banks, pumped billions into the banking system, and let millions of homeowners lose their houses after the 2008 banking debacle. Biden proclaimed himself the most pro-labor president ever, because he showed up for a few minutes on a UAW picket line; but he forced the end to the railroad workers’ strike.
And it’s clear that Democrats do not see Trump as the existential threat to “democracy” that they painted him as. Biden kept many of the policies and tariffs that Trump enacted while in office the first time. And his support for Israel in its slaughter of Gaza could hardly be considered better than whatever Trump does. Democrats and Republicans know very well that ultimately, they’re all on the same side. And it’s not the side of the working class. Ever.
What Trump is VERY good at is distraction. He may be doing it for his own benefit, but it helps his fellow capitalists at every turn. Whether it’s pointing to immigrants at the border as our “enemies,” or just saying crazy things to inflame outrage among liberal media outlets concerned with protecting the “norms” of how the system works. We’re all supposed to be outraged along WITH him, or outraged AGAINST him. What a useful distraction! Especially if there are working class people on both sides of that equation, and they end up blaming each other for whatever happens.
No, working people need to be united—not only against him, but against every single politician the capitalists throw at us.
The essayist and political commentator H.L. Mencken had this to say almost 100 years ago: “The whole aim of practical politics … is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, most of them imaginary.” Donald Trump, as a bourgeois politician, is delivering that in spades, for those who follow him AND those who fear him.
Meanwhile, the more workers are distracted and blaming each other, he and his fellow politicians, and the capitalists they serve, can turn around and screw us over.
The ONLY answer for working people is to not expect anything to change fundamentally, whether Democrats or Republicans are elected. But instead, to organize our own party, our own political force, so that the working class can appear on the political scene in its own name in preparation to use our power to transform this society.
Jan 20, 2025
Washington Suburban Sanitary Commission (WSSC), the local water authority, finally lifted its recommendation for its 1.9 million customers to limit water use. Starting Sunday, customers were told to flush toilets less, not use dishwashers and washing machines, etc. The company said it responded to 63 breaks and leaks by Monday morning.
Why so many? WSSC says its goal is to have “only” 34 service interruptions due to water main breaks for every 100 miles of water mains.
What? We pay high prices for water and we assume they do something with the money like replacing old pipes instead of just waiting for them to burst!
Jan 20, 2025
Ford Motor Company was just approved for a low-cost government loan to build battery plants in Tennessee and Kentucky. The loan was for 9.6 billion dollars, which was even more than Ford initially asked for. And this is despite the fact that Ford is delaying the building of the second battery plant in Kentucky. It looks like the government is just giving money to Ford.
If a working person like us needs money to pay our bills, do you think we can get a low-cost loan??? Fat chance of that!!!
There is something wrong with a system in which the wealthy people who have money can get more than they need, and the working person who needs something can’t get a dime. That’s called capitalism.
Jan 20, 2025
There was a lot of talk in 2024 about the rate increases requested by DTE Energy. It is not just DTE however. For people whose utilities are provided through Consumers Energy, there is also a big rate increase proposal coming up for later in 2025.
Jan 20, 2025
The news media declared Baltimore, Maryland, the city with the most fatal drug overdoses after 6,000 lives were tragically lost between 2018 and 2022. This figure was double that of any other large city.
After Baltimore was exposed as the overdose death capital, Maryland state officials tried to make the spotlight go away by rushing to fund a few new addiction programs.
Baltimore may be a harbinger of things to come. The push to transfer public money into corporate healthcare profit is getting worse by the day. Two New York Times stories shined a light on one example.
According to reports in December and January, a for-profit drug treatment program called PHA Healthcare saw 13 deaths since 2022 that can be traced to participation in its internet-based “addiction treatment program.”
Dilapidated apartments were rented out in Baltimore by a company tied to PHA Healthcare. Homeless victims of addiction were offered free housing. “Drug treatment” was provided via the internet. Residents got almost no human support. Instead, videos were made available as “drug treatment.” Therapy “courses” were taught by inexperienced counselors.
Medicaid was then billed 3,000 dollars a month per resident for addiction counseling. The company’s founder previously worked as a corporate financial advisor before going to jail for fraud. The owner started this new company after his prison release.
In December, the founder was looking to expand his company and held an open house for Baltimore property owners to come and learn more about filling their buildings with “treatment programs.”
But the media exposure of this “treatment program” was enough for the State of Maryland to order this company to stop seeing patients.
Instead of blaming this one schemer, take a look at this twisted society. Addiction treatment is HARD. It requires real human connection. Profiting off addiction treatment is becoming a growth industry. A society addicted to profit can’t help people addicted to drugs!
Jan 20, 2025
A strain of bird flu, called H5N1, is spreading in poultry and dairy farms in California. Several million birds have been reported to have been infected at chicken and turkey farms. More than 700 dairy herds—71% of all herds in the state—have also been affected by H5N1.
The outbreak is not limited to California—and not just to birds and cows either. The virus has also been detected in more than 200 dairy farms in 15 other U.S. states. And so far, about 70 people in the U.S. have also been infected.
In December, the U.S. Department of Agriculture ordered testing of raw milk in 13 states. But experts point out that government officials have been looking away from the actual hubs of virus transmission to humans: California dairy farms. Of the several dozen human cases that have been reported in California, almost all of them are dairy workers. And the real number is undoubtedly much higher: dairy workers say that they have seen many co-workers come to work with flu-like symptoms. These workers, typically low-paid and many of them undocumented, don’t want to miss work and get fired.
In the meantime, farm operators have been largely ignoring even the simplest preventive measures, such as distributing protective gear to their workers.
“The USDA has dropped the ball, big time,” said Dr. Michael Osterholm of the University of Minnesota. “I think it was out of fear to protect the industry.” Just like during the COVID-19 pandemic, when government officials put company profits above the safety of workers and allowed companies to ignore protective measures in workplaces.
Profit above everything else: it’s a symptom of the disease called capitalism that has taken over the economy.
Another symptom of this disease is budget cuts in government services—so that the politicians running the government can funnel more tax money to their patrons, big capitalists. So, California’s ONLY lab that has authorization to confirm bird flu cases, the California Animal Health and Food Safety Laboratory in Davis, has been severely understaffed.
After the bird flu outbreak started last March, most of the lab’s experienced workers and their supervisor resigned, pointing to overwork and low pay. Workers told the Los Angeles Times that understaffing has led to quality control missteps. A current lab worker, Victoria Ontiveros, said, “We are stretched so thin that mistakes can happen. I was so tired and mentally drained.”
We are now in peak flu season, where viruses find ample opportunity to mingle and develop new strains—which raises the possibility of a new strain of bird flu that can pass from one human to another. Then we might end up with another deadly global pandemic like COVID-19, experts say.
If we do, it will be yet another predictable—and preventable—pandemic, let loose on humanity by the workings of the capitalist system.
Jan 20, 2025
Chicago’s School Board has been negotiating with the Teacher’s Union for months. Very little has come of it, so far.
One of the main things the union is asking for is 20 minutes of “prep time” for elementary school teachers. Before Rahm Emanuel became mayor, elementary teachers had 30 minutes before every school day to get their classroom set up before students came in. Any parent can understand that—it only makes sense to be ready and settled before teaching 30 children. But Emanuel insisted on lengthening the school day without additional staff. Meaning the teachers’ work day now begins at the same time that students walk in. It has meant higher burnout and turnover for teachers since.
The union, pushed by teachers, demands to have 20 minutes of prep time put back into the school day. The school board replies that they do not want to shorten the day, and that they cannot afford to hire any additional staff. The School Board is offering raises, but they are saying they can’t do anything else that costs money.
Backing the Board up, the Civic Federation, a political organization of Chicago’s ruling class, threatened Chicago Public Schools with a state takeover if they spend too much on students. It’s like they’re saying: “You can have raises for staff, or prep time, but definitely not both.” They balk at this small thing, and totally rule out providing the resources for an education like they have in the wealthy suburbs.
Chicago is a wealthy city—a quick glance at the miles of gleaming skyscrapers is all you need to see that. But the ruling class has never been willing to spend money on the schools to provide a decent education to the city’s working-class students. Nonetheless, the money IS there.
The working class, starting with the school workers and parents, could wage a fight to put more money into the schools. That’s the only way—the union’s months of negotiating have not and will not do it alone. And so long as the ruling class runs this society, we can count on them to neglect our schools.
Jan 20, 2025
Due to teacher shortages in public schools, students in some of the poorest areas in urban and rural Michigan are sixteen times more likely to have teachers with temporary or emergency credentials than their peers in Michigan’s wealthiest public school districts. And a number of these teachers also are assigned to teaching subjects that are not in their field.
These latest revelations come out of a recent study done by a non-partisan research and advocacy non-profit organization, Education Trust-Midwest.
Teacher shortages. Why? Experienced teachers can find higher pay, lower class sizes and more resources in more affluent school districts. Fewer and fewer young people are going into the teaching profession if it means they take on serious student loan debt, only to get a teaching job in a district that may qualify you for a Bridge Card because the pay is so low.
So, high-poverty school districts are more hard-pressed to retain experienced teachers and end up taking on teachers with little or no experience in the subjects they are hired to teach, hire them on a temp basis, and pay them less. In the words of a ninth grade math teacher with Detroit Public Schools Community District (DPSCD), “They are trying their best but they are literally not trained.” And she talked about how her students were taught in middle school by a long-term substitute and are missing the foundations of algebra. No wonder that you see the problems with lower test scores in reading and math in the high-poverty school districts.
This most recent study, like numerous ones before, just puts into print, with statistics, what working-class parents, students and teachers, and anyone who works in public education have known for a very long time: all education is not created equal. And poverty and inadequate resources put into public education are the common threads that run through all the problems.
So year in and year out, while politicians talk about “equitable funding,” they actually place education funding at the bottom of their priorities after using public money for bank bailouts, corporate subsidies and incentives.
And year in and year out, education experts conduct studies that draw conclusions about “What Can Be Done to Fix” the problems in the highest poverty school districts, never questioning, “Why poverty?” They never conclude that to “fix the problems,” eradicating poverty has to be the first step.
But in any event, ALL children should have the best quality education, no matter where they come from. After all, children are the future for the whole of society.
Jan 20, 2025
Altadena and Pacific Palisades, where the two biggest wildfires in the Los Angeles region hit on January 7, look like bombed-out war zones. Two dozen people were killed in the first week of fires, with the official toll rising as more bodies are discovered. Thousands of homes, businesses and landmarks were also destroyed, leaving tens of thousands suddenly without shelter in one of the most expensive cities in the world, where there are few if any vacancies.
In reality, the wildfire crisis has collided with the real estate crisis.
Certainly, fires are a part of the environment in southern California, where it only rains a few months a year. The rest of the year, dead vegetation bakes under the sun, becoming kindling that catches fire easily. But those fires, which burn off dead vegetation and clear the land for new, healthy growth, play an important housekeeping role, and plants and animals have adapted to and benefit greatly from fire.
Some parts of Los Angeles, such as the rustic canyons of Malibu, where wealthy people live and play in great luxury and splendor isolated from the rest of the city, burn at least once every decade. The owners manage to rebuild, usually on a bigger and grander scale, because the main cost burden is shouldered by ordinary taxpayers and rate payers of the insurance companies.
Real estate developers have also built entire communities in more far-off, fire-prone areas, where land is cheaper, while ignoring or minimizing just how dangerous an area may be, despite the likelihood that one day all those homes and businesses will face fire.
Pacific Palisades, which was hit by the biggest wildfire on January 7th, is the home mainly to wealthy people, including many celebrities, who live on pleasant hills surrounded by beautiful Topanga State Park, with views of the Pacific Ocean. For decades, Pacific Palisades had been spared from destructive fires because whenever a fire did break out, the fire department rushed to put it out.
But on the morning of January 7, when a small brush fire broke out on a hill above Pacific Palisades, the fire department was stretched thin. Unusually dry and extremely windy conditions had caused several fires in other parts of the city to break out at the same time. The Los Angeles Fire Department (LAFD), whose budget, like the rest of the public sector (except for the police), had been slashed over and over again, wasn’t able to get any fire trucks to Pacific Palisades for close to an hour. By that time, 60 mile an hour winds had turned a small brush fire into a raging firestorm that soon enveloped the entire town.
Back in May 2024, Freddy Escobar, an LAFD Captain II, had warned city officials: “We don’t have enough firefighters and medics, we don’t have enough fire engines, we don’t have enough trucks and ambulances in the field. And we don’t have the equipment and staffing to respond to half a million emergency calls for service every year.” In fact, the L.A. fire department’s budget had been slashed so often over the past decades, it is now operating with only half the number of fire stations than in the 1960s—when the city was much, much smaller than it is now. So, when the wildfires did hit, 20% of the LAFD fleet of emergency vehicles was out of service because the positions of 61 mechanics and sheet metal workers had been eliminated over the past year—a perfect example of how the capitalist class guts public services that are often a question of life and death, in order to fund their own enormous tax breaks and subsides.
More big problems emerged. As the LAFD and other fire departments gathered their forces at Pacific Palisades to fight the fires, water lines started to sputter. Before long, the hydrants ran dry. This is because the system in Los Angeles to deliver water to fire fighters hasn’t been modernized to deal with the big urban wildfires that are becoming more common. Instead, it was designed to fight local fires of a few structures or homes at the same time. Of course, it is hardly a surprise that local government is not modernizing the water system for fire fighters, since it isn’t even replacing most of its crumbling, hundred-year-old pipes and water mains that are so decrepit. They leak like a sieve and sometime erupt like geysers—despite the fact that water rates have gone through the roof. The reason for this is simple: the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power is a major cash cow for the capitalist class—pocketing the enormous surpluses every year for itself.
As Pacific Palisades was burning to the ground, another huge wildfire erupted in Altadena, more than 30 miles east. Altadena is a working- and middle-class suburban community below the foothills of the San Gabriel mountains. All indications are that the fire started when a Southern California Edison high voltage power line that traverses a canyon above Altadena was hit by high winds and began to throw off sparks, setting off the fire that swept down the mountain and destroyed the town.
This too is not an accident. The big electric utility companies are by far the biggest cause of wildfires in California, having caused more than 3,600 wildfires since 1992, according to data from the U.S. Forest Service. And the problem is getting worse. Over the past few decades, the share of fires known to be caused by power infrastructure has grown across the state. This includes some of the biggest fires in state history, such as the Thomas fire in 2017, that affected Ventura and Santa Barbara Counties, and one of multiple wildfires that ignited in southern California in December 2017. That fire was started when high winds forced Southern California Edison’s (SCE) power lines to collide, a situation known as “line slap,” raining burning parts of the power lines to the ground, that then set off the fire.
Southern California Edison charges some of the highest electric rates in the country. But it simply won’t spend the money to maintain or upgrade or make its equipment safe. It pinches every penny so it can funnel more to its big stockholders and executives. SCE and the other big power companies in California stand out as the grossest, most disgusting symbol of how capitalist greed grinds down lives and destroys the environment.
Of course, the survivors of the fires will have to deal with all the consequences in a never-ending disaster and struggle to survive, squeezed by the banks, and deserted by the insurance companies, which had long ago recognized the dangers represented by the wildfires. They had begun pulling out of the state, leaving homeowners high and dry.
History proves that after all past disasters, capitalists take advantage of people’s vulnerability and desperation to buy up assets on the cheap and swallow up most of the disaster relief to rebuild, making their homes and developments bigger and more opulent, leaving the workers in the dust.
No, the class war of the capitalists against the workers is not suspended during disasters. The capitalists don’t suddenly feel a sense of compassion and love for all those who do the work and make everything run for them. On the contrary, the capitalist drive to accumulate ever more wealth at the expense of the working class goes into high gear. It’s why the motto of big capitalists is: “Never let a crisis go to waste.”
It’s one more reason why the working class has no other choice but to organize itself independently in order to get rid of this rotten system.
Jan 20, 2025
In a little more than a week, wildfires in the Los Angeles metropolitan area destroyed at least 12,000 homes and other buildings. More than 200,000 people were evacuated from their homes.
Among the fire victims are many working-class people, for example in Altadena, large parts of which have burned down. How many of them will be able to rebuild their homes and restart their lives? If California wildfires from recent years are a measure, their prospects are bleak.
After a fire, both rents and home insurance rates go up, leaving fire victims unable to find a place to rent that they can afford, or buy a new house—especially working-class people with few or no resources. They end up in trailers, on friends’ couches or on the street. Many renters whose buildings do not get damaged also lose their homes, because their landlords raise the rent.
In Paradise, California, where the 2018 Camp Fire destroyed 15,000 homes, fewer than 3,500 have been rebuilt. Many of the fire victims qualified for money from insurance, federal aid and a settlement with Pacific Gas and Electric, which was found responsible for the fire. But still, many of them couldn’t begin to rebuild because it takes years to collect the money.
After the 2017 Tubbs fire in Napa and Sonoma counties, money from the federal government and charities poured in. But that money soon dried up, and thousands of people found themselves on the street. A year after the fire, more than a third of homeless people surveyed in Sonoma County said their previous housing had been affected by the fire. An additional 11,000 people, including more than 2,300 who had been renters, said they were living doubled-up because they had lost their housing as a result of the fire.
In Los Angeles, tens of thousands of people lived in the streets already before the fires. We can only expect thousands of working-class people to join the ranks of the homeless as a result of the fires. The capitalist economy, which is set up to facilitate profit and nothing else, has no mechanism to take care of the most basic needs of working people—not even those struck by disaster.
Jan 20, 2025
According to the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR), 1,015 inmate firefighters worked to stop the devastating Los Angeles County fires. But the State of California paid a pittance for this highly dangerous work, $10.24 a day, and an additional $1 for each hour they battle the deadly blazes. The maximum pay can reach no more than $29.80 if a prisoner fights the blazes for 24 hours.
This is miserable pay compared to California’s minimum wage, which is $16.50 an hour. These prisoner firefighters earn much less than the state’s seasonal firefighters, who can make a monthly base salary of more than $4,600, and the firefighters employed by the city of Los Angeles, whose salaries start at over $85,000 yearly.
Even with this salary, the fire departments cannot recruit enough firefighters because many people find this salary too low in the face of the high injury rate and deadly work conditions.
For this reason, the State of California continuously schemes to compensate for this firefighter shortage by using prisoners.
For some inmate firefighters, such dangerous work may be a respite from their brutal conditions. As one inmate said, “I was in the prison yard, I’m seeing guys get stabbed, get jumped, get beat up. Cops treat us like s---. But here we get better treatment. They talk to us like humans. We got a job. We’re underpaid, but we got a job.” This capitalist society puts us into such traps, and then such deadly, forced work becomes a choice of the lesser of two evils!
The Los Angeles Times reported that, in the first ten days after Los Angeles’ unprecedented firestorm began, the Eaton and Palisades fires consumed nearly 40,000 acres of homes, businesses, and landmarks in Altadena and Pacific Palisades and killed at least two dozen people.
The contribution of these prisoners to the fight against this immense destruction was crucial and undeniable. But, like other workers, they are extremely shortchanged by this social order.
Jan 20, 2025
On January 15, a ceasefire agreement was reached for the war in Gaza. But the announcement of an imminent ceasefire did not stop the Israeli military from continuing its slaughter of the Palestinians.
In the four days before the ceasefire was supposed to take effect, Israeli warplanes continued to drop bombs and Israeli tanks continued to shell buildings in Gaza, killing well over 120 people, including many children. This was just a continuation of the massacre that the Zionist regime in Israel has waged against the Palestinian people.
The Gaza health ministry has identified over 47,000 Palestinians who have been killed by Israeli attacks in the 15 months of this war. Most of them were women and children, not Hamas fighters. But the number of 47,000 is far from the total number of those killed. The 47,000 does not include all those dead still buried under the rubble of bombed buildings. It does not include those who died from the lack of medical care after the Israeli military deliberately destroyed the hospitals in Gaza. It does not include those, mainly children, who have died from starvation as the Israeli government stopped food and aid trucks from entering Gaza. It does not include those who have died from the cold, after the Israeli military destroyed or damaged about 70% of the housing in Gaza.
The death and devastation in Gaza was inflicted by Israeli military forces, but they were carrying out the policies of the U.S. government. For decades, the U.S government has armed Israel to the teeth and used it as its policeman in the Middle East to protect the financial interests of oil companies and other U.S. corporations. The U.S. government continued to send more weapons to Israel as it bombed Gaza, and did nothing to stop the massacre because Israel was carrying out what the U.S. wanted.
Today the U.S. political leaders, the outgoing Biden and the incoming Trump, want to debate over which one will get credit for the ceasefire. They are both disgusting hypocrites because both of them voiced their full support for the Israeli government’s war in Gaza. Both are responsible for the massacres in Gaza. The blood of the Palestinian people is on their hands, too.
What about the future for the Palestinians in Gaza? Even if the war in Gaza does stop for the time being, the oppression of the Palestinian people does not cease.
Over 75 years ago, Palestinian people, who lived side by side with Jewish people, were killed and thrown off their land by Zionist armed bands. With the support of imperialism, the Zionists set up a state that excluded the Palestinian population. Palestinian people were forced into ghetto-like conditions in Gaza, the West Bank and in refugee camps. They are victims, not just of the Zionist government, but also of imperialism, especially U.S. imperialism.
Today, displaced Palestinians are refugees in Gaza and Israel, but also throughout the Middle East, mingled among other populations, who are also oppressed by imperialism and by their own regimes. The Palestinian presence among them can be important because the Palestinians bring with them a history of resistance to oppression. For the millions of poor and working people in the region, the only way forward is to resist the exploitation of imperialism and the nationalist regimes on a working-class basis.
Jan 20, 2025
The following is excerpted and translated from the January 10, 2025 issue, #2945 of Lutte Ouvrière (Workers Struggle), the paper of the Trotskyist group of that name active in France.
… In this war, Ukrainian soldiers serve as cannon fodder in a conflict between Western imperialists on one side, the Russian state and its oligarchs on the other.
In fact, almost 1,500 soldiers out of a Ukrainian brigade [of 2,500] deserted, including a few dozen on French territory, as soon as they arrived in France [to receive military training]. Many had in fact been forcibly recruited, as is now the practice in the Ukrainian army.
Television showed images of Ukrainian state troops hunting men of all ages in the streets to forcibly conscript them and send them to their deaths on the front. A father of three testified that, in theory, he should be exempted, but that this would not be enough to stop the state in search of cannon fodder. He explained that he had no desire to be killed for nothing: “At the start of the war I would even have wanted to enlist, but today this war no longer makes sense. It has to stop.”
This is what the warlike speeches of the clique of politicians and bought-and-sold intellectuals are worth. They never stop explaining that the Ukrainian population must continue to sacrifice itself for the profit of its oligarchs and Western companies, but more and more, the Ukrainian people are expressing their refusal to see their men killed at the front.
This problem is posed not only for the Ukrainian population but for the Russian population as well, which is suffering a similar fate.
Jan 20, 2025
This article is translated from the January 3 issue, #2944 of Lutte Ouvrière (Workers Struggle), the paper of the Trotskyist group of that name active in France.
On December 26 and 27, Israeli bombing hit several sites in Yemen, including the airport in Sanaa, the Houthi-controlled capital.
The Israeli army said it had targeted Sanaa airport “military infrastructure used by the Houthis” as well as power plants and military sites, notably in Hodeïda, the port in the west of the country, in retaliation for Houthi attacks. “We are determined to cut off this terrorist branch of the Iranian axis of evil,” Israeli Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu warned on December 26, saying he would continue to strike. “We will hunt down all the Houthi leaders,” declared Defense Minister Israel Katz for his part.
So, after Gaza, Lebanon and Syria, the Israeli army continues its murderous headlong rush, targeting Yemen and keeping Iran in its sights. U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres condemned “the escalation,” stressing that the bombardment of transport infrastructure “poses serious risks to humanitarian operations at a time when millions of people need vital aid.” The head of WHO, the World Health Organization, was himself the victim of the December 26 bombing at Sanaa airport. But neither the U.N. nor the World Health Organization impress Israeli leaders.
The Houthist movement emerged in the early 2000s among the Shiite minority in northern Yemen. It developed in the face of a corrupt dictatorial power, against which the population’s discontent erupted in the Arab Spring protests of 2011. It was in response, at the end of March 2015, that Saudi Arabia, backed by the United States, launched a war in an attempt to restore “Yemen’s legitimate power.” This lasted eight years and caused tens of thousands of deaths, famine, and regional chaos due to the multiplication of armed gangs.
However, Saudi Arabia has failed to defeat the Houthis, whom it accuses of being backed by Iran. The Houthis continue to defy it, as well as Israel and its imperialist sponsors. Since January 2024 in particular, they have been carrying out actions in the Red Sea against merchant ships, in the name of solidarity with the Palestinians massacred in Gaza by the Israeli state with U.S. support.
The new bombings against Yemen are not just aimed at the Houthis. They are an affirmation by Israeli leaders that they are ready to wage war throughout the region, including by threatening Iran. Not to be outdone, the United States had also targeted Sanaa a few days earlier. Far from disowning their Israeli ally, they show themselves ready to act in concert.
Jan 20, 2025
Jonathan Steinke and Ken Tran died of asphyxiation from a leak of argon gas while working in a confined space in the basement of Northrop Grumman’s rocket motor factory in Magna, Utah in January 2023. Utah first fined the giant military contractor all of $172,350, calling the safety violations that killed the two workers “serious” and “willful.” But late last year the state discreetly deleted half of the violations and cut the fines by more than half.
The plant is pushing production of the new Sentinel intercontinental ballistic nuclear missile which is projected to cost more than $140 billion. Steinke’s father said, “My son died a senseless death … a death that should not have occurred.” His mother said, “I’m angry at Northrop, because they do treat it like it’s a secret. And it is a dirty secret—because if they’d just been responsible, nobody would be dead.”
Northrop Grumman reports 104 fatal injuries in its rocket program since 1960.
Companies like this make the world safe for … profiteering.
Jan 20, 2025
What follows is the editorial that appeared on the front of all SPARK’s workplace newsletters, during the week of January 12th, 2025.
Before the election, Trump promised he would create good-paying jobs by imposing 25% tariffs on all goods shipped to the U.S. And, campaign stop after campaign stop, he promised to end inflation. “Prices will come down,” he said in North Carolina, “you just watch. They’ll come down, and they’ll come down fast.” In Pennsylvania, he proclaimed: “Vote Trump and your groceries will be cheaper.”
Even as he said it, most of his listeners must have known that these were “election promises.”
But only just talking about the economy was enough to get him votes in a time period when people’s lives were increasingly hard, when their paychecks didn’t keep up with their grocery bills, when young adults had to work two or three jobs just to survive and especially when Democrats wouldn’t even admit there were problems, claiming inflation was going away.
It was the usual election gamble vote against the party in office, hope for the better.
Well, there is no better. And Trump quickly made that clear. One after the other, he tore up his promises. Yes, of course he did, to impose them would have cut into the profits of some of the biggest corporations in the world. So Trump, whose billions come from that same corporate world, pulled back, just as Biden had pulled back after he was elected. Neither party is ready to cut into capitalist profit.
So Trump shifted gears. He took to pushing the same grandiose patriotic garbage he had pushed during his last hold on office, when he claimed he would build a fence all along the Mexican border.
This time, his ambition is bigger. Trump demanded to buy Greenland from Denmark. He threatened to take the Panama Canal, using military force. Symbolic of his aims, he gave a new name to the Gulf of Mexico, calling it the Gulf of America. He even wants to turn Canada, which is bigger than the whole U.S., into the 51st U.S. state.
What is this? Is Trump aiming at becoming a dictator, a king of the world? Who knows? But whatever Trump’s ego wants, this super-patriotism he is pushing is aimed squarely at working people.
And Trump is not the only one to push it. He may be more crude and more open about it. But there are others, luring us to take our eyes off the prize: forget jobs, forget food prices, forget wars going on all over the world that U.S. money, its military and its diplomats are fueling. Forget that money spent on wars destroys schools and public services in this country. Forget all that.
The super-patriots push the rabid idea that workers in this country can do well when U.S. military force imposes low wages on the rest of the world. And, just like Trump, they insist that immigrants are to blame for all the problems faced by the rest of the workers in this country.
Workers who accept these views weaken their own class. If we turn our anger against other people just like ourselves, we cut ourselves off from what should be our natural allies. They work for the same multinational corporations that make superprofits by shutting down factories in this country, and going in countries where the U.S. military and diplomats help maintain desperately low wages. Kept in illegal status in this country, they must work in low-wage parts plants and the low-wage sectors of the service industry, driving down other wages.
No, this is stupid. The working class, which has the forces when it is unified, and works in the very center of the economy, could throw out the political class headed by Trump and Biden. It could get rid of the capitalists who run things today to serve themselves. And the working class could build its own society. But to get there, workers have to hold their forces together and that starts with recognizing that we are all one single class.
Jan 20, 2025
This 2025 Oscar-nominated documentary presents 22 short montages made by Gazans since October 7, 2023 about life in a war zone. Constant bombardment, living in a tent city, the struggle to find food and water, not to mention the need for clothing, bedding and healthcare.
Each short clip documents life under war with different points of view, some horrifying, some beautiful and hopeful, even in the face of incredible odds. “They cannot destroy us!” The film describes everyday life under these horrific conditions. A very well-done film which demands action.
This book focuses on the brutal racist murder of Emmett Till in 1955 in a barn in Drew, Mississippi. His “crime”? The young 13-year-old boy was visiting from Chicago, and was accused of violating a taboo he wasn’t aware of: accused of whistling at a white woman in a small Mississippi town’s general store. For that, he was beaten and tortured for hours by multiple white men, finally killed, and his body thrown in the Tallahatchie River, weighted down by a cotton gin fan and barbed wire around his neck.
This book explores how the history of this region built up to this murder. It talks about the corrupt land sales, what happened to Native Americans, how slavery developed, and after the civil war, the role of sharecropping. How racism and cheap forced labor was the basis of the cotton industry. And how Emmett Till’s mother’s courage to expose the world to his brutal murder with his casket open for all to see shocked the world, moving the fight for civil rights ahead.
But the author returns again and again to the site of the barn where Emmett died, the site of it all, to the state of Mississippi and the need for us all to understand and know the depth of our history, a history which affects us all to this day.
Jan 20, 2025
An investigation by The New York Times shows that the federal Environmental Protection Agency, or EPA, is continuing to allow and even push the use of fertilizer made from human sewage which is known to contain dangerous ‘forever chemicals’ known as PFAS. The EPA is doing so despite being warned about dangers of PFAS in ‘sludge fertilizer’ to human health by the huge chemical manufacturer 3M as far back as 2003.
When the farm industry uses this sludge fertilizer, the PFAS winds up in soil and remains there forever. The fertilizer industry estimates farmers have permits to use sludge fertilizer on around 20% of U.S. farmland, according to The Times.
PFAS is another name for a group of fluorochemicals. They have been used in a variety of products like nonstick pans and stain-resistant carpets. 3M used PFAS in products like Scotchgard used to protect leather and fabrics, Scotchban used in food packaging, and foam used by firefighters to put out jet-fuel fires.
A large number of studies have shown PFAS to be associated with many health problems in both children and adults. In children, studies have shown them to be linked with higher rates of infectious diseases, food allergies and asthma, higher frequency of fevers, and lower effectiveness of vaccines. In adults, even low PFAS levels have been shown to interfere with hormone, fertility, liver and thyroid function, cholesterol levels and fetal development.
These ‘forever chemicals’ wind up in human sewage because so many of us have been exposed to them and they wind up in a large proportion of our bodies.
And if anyone should know, it should be 3M, because they knew about the dangers for decades based on research by their own scientists, but continued to spend many years trying to hide them from the public.
In the following years, 3M found how widespread PFAS had become in human sewage and apparently decided to turn over a new leaf, informing the EPA of their findings as far back as 2003.
The EPA knows the dangers of PFAS, designating two of them as hazardous substances and mandating water utilities to reduce their levels in drinking water, yet they continue to push the use of sewage sludge fertilizer.
Jan 20, 2025
The number of people in the U.S. living without indoor plumbing has been increasing for more than a decade—and most of them live in cities—according to a study published in the journal Nature Cities.
This “plumbing poverty,” as experts call the lack of indoor plumbing, used to be a problem of the countryside. But in the 1990s the problem began to shift to cities. The 2008 global financial crisis and the ongoing crisis of unaffordable housing accelerated the trend. Today, half a million U.S. households, corresponding to at least 1.1 million people, don’t have running water. And more than 70% of those households are in cities.
The cities with the most widespread plumbing poverty are some of the cities thought of as the most affluent. New York City leads the pack, with 56,900 people living without running water (2021 figure). Los Angeles is second with 45,900 people, and San Francisco 24,400. Needless to say, these residents live in working-class neighborhoods.
Reasons behind increasing plumbing poverty are skyrocketing rent and the overall cost of living. Many of the people who don’t have running water have jobs, but they can only afford the sub-standard housing that lacks basic amenities. Some live in sheds and warehouses. Others have had water disconnected because they fell behind with water bills.
Historically, the biggest gains in public health and life expectancy were achieved thanks to basic sanitation—easy access to clean running water, flush toilets and sewage systems, frequent bathing or showers. But all that progress is now being reversed. And the reason for it is the workings of the capitalist system.
The driving force of the capitalist economy, the reckless pursuit of profit, drives prices up and wages down. So, as a few already-rich bosses get obscenely wealthy, masses of working class people, whose labor creates all that wealth, are pushed into abject poverty.
Jan 20, 2025
There is a simple reason why every public service is short of money: rich people and corporations have stolen it in subsidies, bailouts, and tax breaks. Elon Musk is the primary culprit—according to Politico he is “the single biggest beneficiary of U.S. government contracts.”
Trump has now appointed him to a committee charged with cutting government spending—but we can be sure those cuts will come from services for the population, not from the handouts to him and his friends!
So when public services break down because they’ve been starved of funds, thieves like Musk need a scapegoat.
During the worst fires in Los Angeles history, he blamed … the L.A. Fire Department’s program to hire more diverse workers through Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) programs! Musk tweeted: “They prioritized DEI over saving lives and homes.”
What a load of B.S.!
Whatever race or gender, to fight massive fires like those in L.A., firefighters need enough trained people and enough well-maintained equipment. That costs money. But Musk doesn’t want us to “follow the money” … because that would lead straight to him and his billionaire buddies.