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
Mar 17, 2008
Based on one lie after another, the Bush administration took this country into an infamous war against the people of Iraq.
Starting March 20, 2003, five years later, it gives no sign of stopping. John McCain is talking about a 50-year occupation. Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama each pretend they will remove troops, but each very carefully makes no commitment. How many troops will come out? When? Over how long a period to remove them all? Neither say.
All three of the presidential contenders voted for every funding measure for the war. All three voted against the one measure that called for a simple setting of target dates for withdrawing troops. It couldn’t be more clear: those who are vying to take over the government promise only more of the same.
They are as responsible as Bush for the consequences of this war: over one-hundred thousand Iraqis killed by military action, more than 600,000 dead because of what the war has done to the infrastructure in Iraq–destroying hospitals, making drinkable water hard to come by, driving out most doctors and medical personnel, pushing the cost of food and other necessities beyond the reach of ordinary Iraqis, etc.
And it’s worse even than that. Four million Iraqis have been driven from their homes. Two million, those who had the means, got out of the country. Two million more, who had no way to escape, live in refugee camps out in the desert, or stacked up dozens to a small apartment or hut.
Some people left their homes to avoid the bombing or military action. But most were driven out by actions purposely taken to purge Iraqi neighborhoods. Death squads–some in militia uniforms, some in Iraqi army uniforms, some in U.S. uniforms–swept through whole neighborhoods or villages, turning them into bloody ghettoes.
Bush may have planned, lied and schemed to carry out this war in the interests of big U.S. oil companies, but the Republican Party and the Democratic Party fully share responsibility for this crime, a crime that includes the deaths in Iraq of U.S. soldiers, the suicides in this country after they return, and the life of misery and disability to which many are condemned.
From the beginning, the population knew this war was about oil and not weapons of mass destruction. If we knew, then the politicians–the Clintons, Obamas, Kennedys, McCains, etc.–they all knew.
If we wait on them, we will be going through this same election scam, with the same promises four years from now.
Why should we wait on them to stop this war? U.S. soldiers are leaving the army, others are refusing, even if only indirectly, to carry out orders in Iraq. Such actions are what eventually led, during the Viet Nam war, to the army crumbling.
When an army crumbles, wars end. Do we want an end to this war? Then give our support to the troops, whose actions and inactions are already creating problems for the generals.
Mar 17, 2008
The financial system has continued to unravel. The fall of house prices is greater than any time since the great depression. Big financial companies are slumping under a mountain of bad debt. Month after month, U.S. statistics confirm that unemployment has been growing and spreading, like a toxic plume. Top government officials, business leaders and economists, who only a few months ago oozed smug self-confidence and publicly pooh-poohed any talk of recession, are now in full panic mode because they are in danger of losing a lot of money.
What to do?
Since last summer, the U.S. Federal Reserve has again and again opened the flood gates and let loose a wall of money. Then on March 7, the Fed outdid itself with an even bigger bailout program than before. It announced a 100 billion dollar short-term loan program for banks, allowing the banks to offer bad debts as collateral, basically offering something for nothing. When that didn’t calm the markets, four days later, the Fed added on an even bigger lending program worth another 200 billion dollars.
On that news, the Dow Jones Industrial Average shot up by 411 points, its biggest one-day gain in over five years. And why not? Basically, the Fed has opened up the vaults of the U.S. Treasury to the biggest banks and investment companies in the world. The Wall Street Journal even published a chart showing that the Fed is stocked with 713 billion dollars in U.S.-backed securities, bonds and bills. All that hard-earned money taken from ordinary taxpayers will soon be gone. For these big banks and brokerage houses, it is Christmas all over again.
What an incredible waste. That money could be used to meet the needs of the population–to keep people in their homes, feed the hungry, provide much-needed jobs, better education and health care. Instead, it is being used to bail out the wealthiest people in the world.
Mar 17, 2008
Twenty-three million people in the U.S. took just one prescription anti-depressant, Prozac, in 2006. In Britain, 31 million prescriptions for anti-depressants were filled in 2006 (in a total population of 60 million people).
Yet a recent study shows that most anti-depressants are little better than sugar pills at relieving anxiety or depression. Researchers at a British university just published the results of studying 47 clinical trials on anti-depressants. Most of the studies were done on U.S. patients with depression, and especially focused on such popular anti-depressants as Prozac, Effexor and Paxil.
One professor doing the study concluded, “This means that depressed people can improve without chemical treatments. Given these results, there seems little reason to prescribe anti-depressant medication to any but the most severely depressed patients.”
In fact, the professor had another warning when he was interviewed. “One of the problems with anti-depressants is the risk of side-effects, such as an increased potential for suicide. Given that risk it is important, it is important to know there are alternatives that seem to do as well or nearly as well but without the side-effects.”
So why haven’t sugar pills been prescribed? They have “side effects” on the profits of GlaxoSmithKline, Eli Lilly, and the rest of the pharmaceutical industry.
Mar 17, 2008
Poorer people consistently receive later diagnoses on certain kinds of cancer. As a result they die at a much higher rate.
Researchers at the American Cancer Society released a report in February, based on a study of almost four million patients with cancer diagnoses between 1998 and 2004. They found far more black people and Hispanic people were diagnosed at Stages 3 and 4 of cancer than were white people. That reflects the fact of greater poverty in these populations. But poor white people face the same situation. When diagnosed at Stage 3, only half survive. When diagnosed at Stage 4 (the most advanced) only 8% survive.
And why don’t they get the screening? Because they have no health insurance or only Medicaid which doesn’t pay for regular screenings.
The U.S. health care system kills.
Mar 17, 2008
At least two adults die each day in Michigan because they have no health insurance, according to a report by Families USA, a health advocacy group. Twice as many people died across the country in 2006 from a lack of health coverage as from homicide!
People without insurance are much less likely to have regular checkups, so they are more likely to be diagnosed with a serious illness at an advanced stage. Diabetics can die for simply being unable to afford a vial of insulin.
These deaths could easily be prevented–if not for a health care system organized around profit.
Mar 17, 2008
The media across the country reported that the U.S. unemployment rate dropped to 4.8% in February, down from 4.9% in January.
Huh?!
More and more people are out of work. So how can the unemployment rate be down?
The Labor Department can pull this rabbit out of their hat because the unemployment rate doesn’t measure all those who are not employed. It only measures those who are actively looking for a job. And last month, 450,000 people just left the work force, many so discouraged that they stopped looking for work. So poof! The government’s unemployment rate is down.
For men between 25 and 54, the unemployment rate is 4%. But the number who don’t have a job? Almost 13%!
So the economy is doing well–if you pay no attention to the man behind the curtain!
Mar 17, 2008
The Consumer Price Index released by the Labor Department remained officially unchanged in February. According to the government, the cost of food held steady and the cost of gasoline actually declined in February.
What?! What planet are they living on?!
Even according to their lying statistics, prices of groceries have skyrocketed from a year ago: Compared to a year ago, bread is up 12%, rice and pasta 13%, cheese 15%, milk 17%–and eggs are up a whopping 25% (and 63% from two years ago!).
We all know how gas prices have leapt up in the last year. And in March, they’ve already jumped up to record levels–a $3.28 average nation-wide.
Maybe prices for their champagne haven’t gone up–but the prices of what WE need sure have!
Mar 17, 2008
Cook County, under the control of the Democratic Party, voted on February 29 to increase the sales tax by another 1%, bringing the total in Chicago to 10.25%, the highest of any big city in the country.
There is plenty of tax money already there to avoid this latest sales tax increase. But it is given away in subsidies to business. This is done through TIF’s, which means Tax Increment Financing districts. All the increased taxes after this scheme was put in play have gone into the TIF slush fund.
Here’s how some of it was doled out in the last couple years alone: 40 million dollars to the merger of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange with the Chicago Board of Trade, just after they reported 579 million dollars in combined profits, and despite the fact that they were cutting 400 employees! Then there’s 51 million dollars to Walton Street Capital LLC, which is developing the old Chicago Post Office. And 58 million dollars to developers of Union Station, led by Jones Lang LaSalle Inc. Also 26 million dollars for the Brickyard Mall, and even $225,000 for a Starbucks!
Today over half of all the property tax collected in Chicago goes to TIF’s, which means that more than half of the property tax money that Cook County should have to use on public services is going to business. The Cook County politicians are lying when they say they have to raise the sales tax by another 1%. They could cut it by much more than that!
Mar 17, 2008
The IRS started sending out notices to taxpayers about how big a tax rebate–or "Economic Stimulus Payment"–they can expect. Most individuals will get between $300 and $600 and couples $600 to $1200.
The amount depends on your income and how much is taxable. Those with the lowest incomes will get only $300. Those in the middle will get $600. People at the top will get less, unless they can cut their taxable income through tax breaks.
The politicians have already handed out hundreds of billions through various bank lines of credit and the Federal Home Loan Bank to financial institutions to bail them out of the mortgage crisis. Add in what they"ve pushed through the system to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and it means they"ve set up mechanisms for the very people who caused the current financial crisis to put their hands on roughly a trillion dollars–round figures, give or take a hundred billion or so!
And all that for 20 of the country’s largest banks, investment banks and other financial institutions.
What they"re doing is like giving $50 to the family of a murder victim–and a million dollars to the murderer!
Mar 17, 2008
Like Senegal at the end of 2007, now Cameroon and Burkina Faso have experienced famine riots. Other African countries could follow because everywhere the prices of basic necessities have skyrocketed, making daily life impossible for the population.
The following articles are excerpted from the March 14th issue of Lutte Ouvrière (Workers Struggle), the paper of the revolutionary workers group of that name active in France.
In Cameroon, violent demonstrations took place at the end of February, notably in Douala, the economic capital and major port of the country, and in Yaounde, the political capital. Other large cites like Bafang, Bamenda, Kumba and Nkongsamba were affected.
The majority of the demonstrators were young, and they were brutally attacked by the police and the army. There were a hundred deaths and close to 2000 arrests. Today, the army has closed off the streets of Yaounde and of Douala while the courts condemn those arrested for rioting.
It all began on February 23, when the truck drivers and city transportation drivers went on strike to protest the increase in the price of fuel. No sooner had the government attempted to calm down the conflict by announcing a reduction in price of a few cents, than the population descended into the streets to protest the high cost of living. In Cameroon, as in many other African countries, the prices of basic necessities have skyrocketed these last few months. This explosion in prices of commodities such as beef, fish, cooking oil, rice, sugar, flour and gasoline has made daily life impossible for the poor population. Even those with a wage can’t make do thanks to the high cost of living, not to mention all those who don’t have a job. According to the unions, 70% of the working age population lacks employment.
But the high cost of living is not the only cause of these riots. There is also the project to revise the Constitution, which has allowed the dictator Paul Biya to stay in power for 25 years. He wants changes that would allow him to stay in office until 2011. That is why the slogans shouted by the demonstrators were a mix of "Down with the high cost of living" and of "Biya must go!" Biya accuses the population of being manipulated by his political opponents’ as if the population doesn’t have eyes for itself to see how incredible wealth has been accumulated by a corrupt class of political leaders. These leaders have flaunted their wealth in public ever since independence. As if the population doesn’t understand that the principal resources of the country have been taken by the foreign multi-national corporations, which pillage the forests and the resources that lay beneath the soil. These corporations are responsible for the poverty.
....
In Burkina Faso, protest marches against the high cost of living turned into riots at the end of February. For a dozen days, the wave of anger that began in Bobo Diolasso, the second largest city of the country, spread to other large cities like Ouagadougou, the capital, and also to Banfora and Ouahigouya. Some government buildings like the tax office and the town hall of Bobo paid the price. On February 27, Ouagadougou was nearly in a state of siege. When the authoritarian regime of Blaise Compoare sent in troops, it only reinforced the unanimous opposition of the population to him.
In fact, the anger of the population only needed a pretext to explode. The government sparked the anger when it increased three or four-fold the price of a sales license and other taxes imposed on the small merchants and on all who try to get by engaging in little jobs. But the government is not the only one at fault. The large capitalist groups like Nestle, Unilever and Danone with their hands deep in food circulation, are equally responsible for the increase in today’s prices. These multinationals possess enormous quantities of food stored inside their warehouses. They speculate on these food commodities and provoke increases in the prices of what is sold on the stands of the little vendors.
As long as this situation continues, the populations of Africa, like those in all the poor countries, will inevitably face famine. The riots of these last weeks are but a warning of what is likely to inflame all of Africa and the other countries of the Third World.
Mar 17, 2008
In Haiti, some people are forced to eat mud in order to survive. The extreme poverty of the majority of the population permits a handful of individuals to live lavishly. These wealthy scum amass profits by exploiting workers–paying less than $3 for a day’s work. They enlarge their bank accounts by speculating on the relation between the local money, the gourde, and the dollar. And they speculate on the price of staple foods. The daily wage even for a worker in the industrial parks isn’t enough to meet the needs of a family.
It’s this situation the U.S. troops reinforced when they went into Haiti in 2004.
The Haitian Organization of Revolutionary Workers (OTR) published an account of this situation in Voix des Travailleurs (Workers Voice) Issue 172, December 2007, from which we have translated the following excerpts:
Under the rule of Duvalier, Fort-Dimanche was a barracks. That’s where they locked up political prisoners, tortured and sometimes executed them. Then, after Aristide’s return from exile in 1994, the police of Fort-Dimanche were driven out. Many people who didn’t have shelter occupied the old barracks. Those who didn’t find a room and also those who were already settled in cleared the ground, which was filled with wild plants, the remains of the dead, rats, grass snakes and garbage of all sorts that gave off a nauseating odor. They called us “koko-rats” because we looked for something to eat in the trash thrown out by U.S. soldiers in Haiti at that time.
We resisted the politicians who wished to kick us out and finally we won the battle. We chose to give Fort Dimanche another name. After reflection, we chose Village-Démocratie. Because, at that time the leaders spoke of the return of former president Aristide who was in exile. They said they had sown democracy and it was necessary to harvest it. So, we considered the occupation of Fort Dimanche as a democratic action because we had a right to shelter as human beings.
....
The conditions of life of Village-Démocratie are parallel to those of other slums of the country, notably Cité Soleil (in the capital Port–au-Prince).
Every time it rains, the zone floods because there is a gully which goes next to the village, and currently a good number of small homes are sinking into the mud. To compensate for this situation, we are obliged to raise the walls and put sheet metal back on.
....
Besides that, the high cost of living gets more difficult every day. There are people who only have pieces of clay soil to eat. They prepare it like a cracker: they put salt on it and then dry it in the sun. For some people this is the ‘food’ which keeps them going during the day. It’s really serious for the health of people. Therefore, I think that the leaders know very well what misery the poor population is enduring. At election campaign time, they and their representatives are present in all the poor neighborhoods to ask us to vote for them. But they choose to worry only about their own business and not give a damn about us.
Mar 17, 2008
In Logan, Ohio, people wait 5 hours in line to receive a box of emergency food rations twice a month.
The lines of cars and trucks start forming four hours before the food distribution center opens. Lines of 200 vehicles stretch for over two miles. Both laid off workers and the “working poor,” those who make $5 to $6 an hour, line up for food that they couldn’t otherwise afford. The elderly make up the largest group of recipients.
Lisa Hamler-Fugitt, executive director of the Ohio Association of Second Harvest Foodbanks, said that the network “is on the verge of collapsing under unprecedented demand.”
Things in this country might not be as bad as they are in poor countries like Burkina Faso or Cameroon–yet.
Mar 17, 2008
Iraq was not the first victim of a U.S. "shock and awe" attack. In The Shock Doctrine, Canadian author Naomi Klein describes the development of this deliberate form of state-inflicted terror.
Research by Klein and her staff exposes behind-the-scenes evidence of the way the U.S. government used "shock and awe"–that is, out and out terrorism–against populations from Indonesia to Poland to Iraq. The purpose? To clear the way for some of the biggest businesses in the world to mercilessly exploit the resources of country after country.
But first, Klein shows us New Orleans.
After Hurricane Katrina wipes out the impoverished parts of town, a congressman tells lobbyists, "We finally cleaned up public housing in New Orleans. We couldn’t do it, but God did." A developer calculates that "with that clean sheet we have some very big opportunities."
As we know today, the opportunities he spoke of did not include any for the poor and working class families flooded out of New Orleans!
But the capitalists and their governments don’t simply wait for natural disasters like New Orleans, or the tsunamis of Indonesia, to get rid of people. To show this, Klein turns to Suharto’s military coup against Indonesia’s president Sukarno, in 1965, supported and pushed by the CIA.
Sukarno was one of those nationalists who, during the post-World War II period, tried to keep hold of part of their nation’s wealth that was previously exploited by the big imperialist powers. In Indonesia, Sukarno’s policy was to restrict multinational corporations’ access to resources like precious metals and, in particular–offshore oil fields.
Those rebuffed corporate interests, aided by CIA and U.S. Embassy personnel, gave their money, weapons and intelligence to General Suharto, enabling him to seize power.
When General Suharto’s military coup succeeded, his forces immediately moved to kill several thousand union, community and political leaders. With them out of the way, the military then organized death squads to inflict "shock and awe" on the population, that is, to terrorize people. An estimated one million were killed in these sweeps.
Resistance to the invasion of multinational corporations was broken. Workers’ conditions dropped into misery. General Suharto passed laws giving over ownership of 100% of Indonesia’s oil and mineral resources to corporations in the big imperialist countries.
Senior CIA operations manager Ralph McGehee said Indonesia was a "model operation ... You can trace back all major, bloody events run from Washington to the way Suharto came to power. The success of that meant that it would be repeated, again and again."
But–and this problem, Klein ignores–U.S.-organized terrorism did not begin with Indonesia.
The U.S. government, fronting for U.S. corporations, during World War II destroyed whole civilian populations in urban centers such as Hamburg, Dresden, Hiroshima, and Nagasaki–also to inflict "shock and awe" terrorism. Just as, in its turn, Germany used the bombing of London to terrorize the British.
Both imperialist governments, representing their own capitalist classes, were ready to inflict the most unspeakable horrors on civilian populations. For no other reason than to rearrange by force the world’s corporate holdings and corporate spheres of exploitation.
And before that was World War I, another war that devastated Europe and its peoples, merely to redivide the imperialist holdings of its day.
Today’s imperialism is no different from yesterday’s or the day’s before, except for certain technological improvements in methods of inflicting terror. There’s nothing new under imperialism’s sun. But Klein in her book avoids this problem.
Nevertheless, The Shock Doctrine contains very interesting and useful research by Klein and her staff about the most recent era of U.S. history.
Mar 17, 2008
Agustin Aguayo, an Iraq War veteran and conscientious objector, was held from October 2006 to April 2007 in the U.S. military prison in Mannheim, Germany. While in jail, he received hundreds of letters of support from German citizens, and on December 21, 2007, was awarded a peace prize in Stuttgart by German anti-war organizations. Another soldier, James Banks, a member of the U.S. Army’s 173rd Airborne Division, was recently released from several months in the Mannheim prison for his refusal to deploy with his unit to Afghanistan. Two more members of the 173rd Airborne Division, Andrew Hegerty and Jeffery Gauntt, remain in prison in Mannheim after conviction on the same charges.
These are just a few of thousands of U.S. soldiers who have deserted, resisted or refused deployment to Iraq or Afghanistan. About 5,000 members of the U.S. Army deserted last year alone, according to “official statistics,” up from about 3,500 the year before. Officially, Army desertions have gone up 80% since the invasion of Iraq in 2003.
This only gives a hint of the much vaster numbers of troops who want out–and get out as soon as they can.
Everyone of them who deserts, refuses deployment or leaves weakens the U.S. wars–and deserves our support.
Mar 17, 2008
One of the top leaders of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), Sal Roselli, has resigned from the union’s executive board.
With 1.9 million members, SEIU is one of the largest unions in the country. And Roselli is the head of one of the largest locals within the SEIU. Roselli said he resigned from the executive board so that he could publicly argue with his fellow union leaders about how the union is run–something he said he was not allowed to do as a board member.
In his resignation letter, Roselli especially targeted SEIU president Andy Stern. He accused Stern of being “top-down,” and making deals behind the backs of not only rank-and-file members but also local and regional leaders (like Roselli).
For decades now, big unions in this country have been forming “partnerships” with big companies. In return for the bosses’ promise not to fight unionization in some workplaces, union leaders accept concessions that hurt workers–such as poor wages and benefits, short-staffing, speed-up, and even layoffs and plant closures. And the top leadership of SEIU has been in the forefront of this “partnership” frenzy.
Roselli, who has been part of the union’s top leadership for more than a decade, has been as much for making deals with the bosses as Stern has been. Roselli’s own huge 150,000-member United Healthcare Workers West (UHW) local in California proudly advertizes its partnerships with big companies, such as Kaiser Permanente, California’s largest HMO. However, like at other companies, short-staffing and cutbacks are the order of the day at Kaiser. And while Kaiser has been making record profits year after year, UHW has been telling Kaiser workers to be happy with raises that are below the inflation rate and with yearly bonuses that amount to a few hundred dollars after taxes.
We don’t know if the split between Roselli and Stern is part of a power struggle for the top leadership of SEIU, or an indication of differences of opinion in the leadership of the union. But we do know that unions will change only when workers act to control their own unions, when they organize inside and outside the unions to carry out massive fights over the things that concern them, for example the disappearance of jobs–especially jobs with better pay and benefits.
Mar 17, 2008
When we went to press, the strike of workers at American Axle had gone on for three weeks and was continuing.
Axle doesn’t even hide the fact that it is profitable–yet it has demanded outrageous pay cuts from workers. It wants to cut workers, who currently make from $17.50 to $28.15 an hour, down to $14.50, or even $11.50!
What garbage. Workers have every reason to insist they keep what they have. In fact, if they were forced out on strike by this blood-sucking company, they should be demanding they want back what they gave away in previous contracts.
And we have every reason to support these workers. Their fight to break this vicious cycle is our fight, too.
Mar 17, 2008
On the evening of March 1, Jamiel Shaw, 17, a star on his high school football team, was standing near his house talking on a cell phone, when two reputed gang members pulled up in a car and asked him if he belonged to a gang. When Shaw didn’t answer, they shot and killed him. His mother, Army Sergeant Anita Shaw, on her second tour in Iraq, was flown home for the funeral. She went from one war zone to another. This was only one of 28 shot over a two-week period in late February in Los Angeles.
On February 21 a man was walking with his 2-year old granddaughter when reputed members of the infamous Avenues gang opened fire, shooting him 17 times. Ten blocks away, police and gang members engaged in a long gun battle, leaving one wounded and one dead.
On the afternoon of February 27, a gunman opened fire at a busy bus stop, shooting five children and three adults–luckily none fatally.
On March 4, suspected Latino gang members fired into an SUV carrying six black people, one of whom was a six-year-old who remains hospitalized in critical condition. The local Latino gang has strong ties to the prison-based Mexican Mafia, and has carried out an open campaign of terror and ethnic cleansing against black people.
These awful shootings put the lie to all the boasts of LAPD officials and top politicians over the last five years about how they had brought crime down, especially violent crime. On the contrary, the violent gangs have continued to grow and flourish in the vast, impoverished neighborhoods in large parts of Los Angeles, where they push drugs and carry out turf wars.
Most of the time the news media doesn’t even report on the shootings. When it does, the news always highlights the calls for more police, patrols, gang sweeps, gang injunctions–that is, a total reliance on police measures that have not only proved ineffective against the gangs, but often victimize ordinary people in the neighborhood, making the situation even worse.
Of course, there is no mystery or question about what measures actually get rid of gangs and violent crime: plentiful jobs that pay decent wages, good schools, good after-school programs–that is, positive programs that address the needs of the population, especially the young people. Of course, such programs are exactly what is cut–supposedly because there is no money.
To get what is needed working people must mobilize and fight against all those who say the city can’t afford it, especially against those lying and thieving officials who serve the interests of big business and the wealthy.
Mar 17, 2008
A new study shows that for the first time in history more than one out of every 100 adults in the U.S. is in jail. According to the Pew Center on the States, close to 2,320,000 Americans were in federal, state or local jails at the start of this year.
The U.S. has the highest rate of imprisonment, as well as the largest number of prisoners, of any country in the world. The second highest rate is in Russia. China, with a population more than four times larger than the United States, has only about two-thirds as many people in prison!
The vast majority of U.S. prisoners are working class people, particularly younger men from the poorer layers of the black population. According to the Pew study, one out of every 30 men between 20 and 34 years of age is in prison–a highpercentage. But for black men in this same age group, it is one out of every 9 in prison!
Government officials tell us that this is necessary to stop crime and keep us safe. But in fact, the opposite is true: sending so many to prison breaks up families and increases poverty and hardship–thereby worsening the conditions that cause crime.
Longer and longer sentences have been handed out for non-violent drug-related crimes–mostly drug dealing or drug use. Many also end up in prison even though they did not commit any crime. The use of DNA evidence to free a handful of innocent people from prison shows that in reality there are hundreds of thousands of innocent people behind bars.
This is no accident. U.S. corporate profit has exploded in the last two decades. These profits have been extracted from the working class by pushing down its standard of living. At the same time, U.S. imperialism, the world’s only superpower, has maintained and expanded its military presence all over the world, as well as fighting two wars and occupying two countries. This policy is paid for by slashing vital social programs, from health care to education to maintaining the infrastructure, thus further eroding living standards of the working class and poor.
The capitalist class has bulked up its police force and prison infrastructure in order to intimidate and terrorize the parts of the population hardest hit by these attacks.
Of course, such an explosive social situation could one day begin to challenge and bring down the capitalists and their system.
Mar 17, 2008
Chrysler Corp. demanded police protection when it eliminated the jobs of a third shift at its Belvidere, Illinois assembly plant.
Chrysler claimed it feared possible violence. But its biggest fear was keeping its production safe from angry, cheated workers.
Chrysler lied to the workers they hired in July 2006 for the third shift. The workers were led to believe they were applying for jobs that would become permanent. Then Chrysler cheated those workers and kept them on temporary ETE status for nearly 2 years before laying them off.
The ETEs were kept without recall rights or any other benefits (such as SUB pay and job bank rights) that would normally belong to workers with over one year seniority.
Chrysler swindled the workers into a deal where the workers got nothing they had implicitly–or explicitly–been promised, but Chrysler got all the production it wanted–at cut rates! Then Chrysler had the gall to accuse the workers of plotting criminal behavior! As Chrysler booted them out the door!
Thugs and criminals deserve whatever payback they get. Chrysler is no exception.