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
Jul 18, 2011
Two full years into the “economic recovery,” 34 million people are either without a job, unable to find full-time work or considered to be outside the labor force. That is, almost one quarter of the working age population is either unemployed or underemployed.
It’s a catastrophe, and it’s not at all natural. It was created by capital’s race for profit.
Every boss who pushed up his company’s profit margin by coercing three workers to do the jobs of four produced unemployment.
Every boss who eked out more profit by cutting wages, driving more people to work long hours overtime slammed the door on anyone looking for a job.
On one side of the equation stand 34 million unemployed or underemployed people; on the other side is 1.7 trillion dollars in profit, rolled up by the 500 biggest companies in just one year, 2010.
This doesn’t take into account what the banks have done–those villains whose thirst for every last dollar of profit produced the financial crisis. Holding the economy hostage, they threatened to go belly up until they got trillions of dollars in bailout money. How many trillions, nobody knows.
But this we do know: everyone of those dollars given as a bailout to the banks was a dollar that was not spent on the needs of the population. The trillions in bailout money were drained out of public services, social services, education–and this drain of money meant many fewer jobs, much greater unemployment.
Every bridge that wasn’t repaired cost a hundred or so jobs. Every water system left to spring another leak cost a few hundred jobs.
Cuts in school funding meant teachers laid off, aides laid off, school medical workers laid off, cafeteria workers laid off, janitors laid off.
Reduced funding to states and cities meant cuts in fire departments, water departments, police, public lighting–and therefore fewer people working in those services.
The loss of jobs was not something natural or normal. It was the direct result of a system intent on wringing profit out of the hides of working people.
We won’t begin to see the end of this pervasive unemployment, this unnatural catastrophe–not so long as profit is king.
So un-throne the king.
Take part of those trillions away from profitable companies that laid off people. Use the money to put the unemployed to work.
Take back the trillions handed out in bailouts to the banks. Use those trillions to hire people back into public services. Hire other people to rebuild the rotting infrastructure–the roads, bridges, school buildings, public lighting, water systems, sewage systems. Put teachers back into the classroom–provide them with aides and technical support so they can do their jobs.
There is more than enough money in this economy to get rid of unemployment overnight. That money is sitting in the bank accounts of a few thousand big companies and a few dozen big banks.
Take it back from them. Why not? They stole it.
Jul 18, 2011
In the month of June, in the entire USA, only 18,000 new jobs were created.
In the month of June, in the entire USA, one out of four middle-aged men could not find full-time work. Not to mention the job situation for young people, which is much worse.
The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) has some forecasts. As things are now, simply to keep from getting any worse, the economy would have to add 260,000 new jobs every month.
Or, merely to reduce the official unemployment rate from today’s 9.2% down to 8.2%, the economy would have to add 391,000 new jobs per month. June’s 18,000 doesn’t even register on that scale.
The recession is over? A fairy tale!
Jul 18, 2011
Even as study after study shows that charter schools don’t make for better education, Detroit Public Schools Emergency Manager Roy Roberts has plans to turn as many as 45 additional Detroit public schools into charter schools. And he appointed a new director of the school district’s charter school office, overseeing all charters in the district.
Who is it? Doug Ross–founder of New Urban Learning, a charter school company that runs several charter schools in Detroit.
Wonder which company Ross will give those 45 schools to?
Can somebody say cha-ching? Doug Ross hears cash registers ringing!
Jul 18, 2011
Detroit Public Schools Emergency Manager Roy Roberts says the DPS financial system is “broken.”
Broken? But the system’s already been run for two years by another Emergency Financial Manager, Robert Bobb. Sounds like Roberts is admitting that an EFM wrecked the system!
And he did. Bobb laid off hundreds of workers and closed tens of schools, while hiring his friends as consultants–and the deficit ballooned to over 320 million dollars.
What does Roberts propose? Get rid of consultants? Sue Bobb for malfeasance while in office? No. He wants to impose a ten% pay cut on all employees across the board, and to cut 853 jobs. In other words, to reduce services to students.
Pledging that Detroit parents will get something different this time–Roberts is carrying out the same attacks!
But that’s no surprise–because imposing an Emergency Manager is NOT about fixing the schools or their finances. The purpose has ALWAYS been to do just what Bobb did and what Roberts is preparing to do: to shuttle all that public money into private hands.
Jul 18, 2011
On July 12 Ahmed Wali Karzai, the U.S.-sponsored strongman in southern Afghanistan, who ruled over a vastly corrupt fiefdom, was assassinated in his own home in Kandahar by a trusted aide.
Ahmed Wali Karzai had first been sent into southern Afghanistan, after the U.S. forces invaded Afghanistan in late 2001 and made his brother, Hamid Karzai, president of the country. Southern Afghanistan had been the base of support for the Taliban. After the Taliban was forced to flee, rival warlords fought for control over Kandahar, the second largest city in the country, and vied for support of the CIA and Pakistan secret service.
Ahmed Wali emerged from this fight as the most important power broker in that region. He cornered the business rackets that brought in huge sums of dollars in American military spending, including building bases and other construction projects, transporting military goods and speculating in property. The CIA also paid Ahmed Wali for a variety of services. He fingered people for the CIA’s assassination teams. He helped to recruit and run an Afghan paramilitary force called the Kandahar Strike Force, which carried out its own assassinations, not to speak of terrorizing the Afghan population as gun-toting thugs.
Ahmed Wali also profited greatly from the cultivation of poppies and the trafficking of drugs. He was even aided in this by U.S. poppy eradication efforts in the north and east of the country, which shifted most of this business to the south. Today, almost 90% of the world’s supply of opium comes from the southern region of Afghanistan that had been under Ahmed Wali’s thumb.
All U.S. officials could say after Ahmed Wali Karzai’s assassination was that he would be greatly missed. One American official lamented to the New York Times, his death would leave a “huge power vacuum.”
With Ahmed Wali Karzai gone, the door is now open to a fragmentation of power, as governors, tribal chiefs, other drug traffickers and hired contractors fight over the political and financial spoils and cut their own deals with the CIA and the U.S. military–with the population caught in the middle.
Just one more crime, in a whole series, committed by the U.S. against the people of Afghanistan.
Jul 18, 2011
The Los Angeles Department of Water and Power (DWP) wants to increase electricity and water rates by about five% a year for each of the next three years. Last year, the DWP hiked rates by 5%, also.
The DWP is a city agency, a very, very rich city agency. Last year, the DWP turned over to the city 260 million dollars, or eight% of all the money DWP took in.
Obviously, annual rate hikes will provide even bigger surpluses every year, money that the politicians can use to boost the profits of big business.
These annual rate hikes are simply another disguised tax increase on ordinary working people to further enrich the wealthy and big business, who drain our tax money out of the city budget.
Jul 18, 2011
Media billionaire Rupert Murdoch, who owns Fox News, recently had to completely close down his profitable weekly newspaper in Britain, the News of the World. Why? His paper was caught “repeatedly, and flagrantly” hacking into people’s telephone voice messages.
In one case, a reporter deleted messages on a missing child’s cell phone. This misled her parents into thinking their child was still alive–deleting her own messages–when in fact she had been murdered!
To silence the scandal, Rupert Murdoch had to shut down his own paper. Where do things stand with his media empire now? He’ll have to “scrape by” with profits from his Fox Broadcasting Company and its 27 U.S. stations plus others around the world; his 150 publications in Australia; his Wall Street Journal and Dow Jones publications on three continents; his 11 different 20th Century Fox or similar movie studios; his ownership of Hulu; his billboard advertising network News Outdoor; his digital media holdings which include AmericanIdol.com, and more.
The deeper scandal continues–one man controlling so much of society’s wealth–and using his media empire to feed the population his own rotten ideas.
Jul 18, 2011
Since the introduction of the cholera bacteria in Haiti in October, 2010, the epidemic has killed more than 5,400 people in eight months, with more than 340,000 people infected. Even if cholera seemed to be retreating, the arrival of the rainy season provoked a new explosion of the epidemic.
In the region of the capital Port-au-Prince, hundreds of thousands of refugees continue to crowd into temporary shelters set up after the January 2010 earthquake. According to the World Health Organization, from May 2nd to June 12th this year, there were 18,000 cholera cases registered in the capital. But the situation is worse in rural areas, for these areas are inaccessible due to flooding.
Several scientific reports have established that the bacteria responsible for the epidemic was introduced into Haiti by soldiers from the country of Nepal. (Haiti didn’t have cholera before these U.N. soldiers arrived.) They came as part of the U. N. “Mission to Stabilize Haiti.” Up to now, the United Nations hasn’t recognized its responsibility for the introduction of the epidemic, and has done nothing to remedy the situation.
Obviously, cholera occurs with poverty. The state of destitution of the Haitian population provides a particularly favorable ground for the spread of the disease.
But the Haitian government and international organizations are indifferent, at best, to the condition of the Haitian population. Their scorn for the poor population also contributes to this situation.
Jul 18, 2011
President Obama and Congress are making big noise about the government’s debt ceiling–that is, the limit put on the total U.S. government borrowing from private sources. Republicans say they won’t raise the ceiling until spending is reduced, because the debt has become “catastrophic.” Obama says that if Congress doesn’t raise it by August 2, the government will not be able to borrow any more money and Social Security checks won’t go out. Both parties make the situation sound really dire.
In fact, voting to increase the debt ceiling is nothing new. Congress has voted to raise it 73 times since 1940–including 16 times under Reagan, seven under George W. Bush, and three so far under Obama.
But this time, both parties are trying to use this vote as a bludgeon to ram through huge attacks on the population. The Republicans want across the board cuts on all domestic programs. Obama’s proposal, which he calls a “Grand Bargain” or a “Big Deal,” puts “everything on the table.” He proposes to cut Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security, and to cut aid to the states–which means even further cuts to social programs, public services and education at the state and local level.
What both parties propose is an attack–like the austerity plans European governments are pushing to attack their populations–even if U.S. politicians try to hide it behind all their blather about a budget crisis.
Jul 18, 2011
The following report from Great Britain appeared in the July 8th issue of Lutte Ouvrière (Workers Struggle), the paper of the revolutionary workers group of that name active in France.
At the time of the national mobilization on March 26th in London, Mark Serwotka, leader of the Public and Commercial Service Union (PCS), with 750,000 members, announced “coordinated strikes” to protest attacks on public sector pensions for June 30th.
This appeal by PCS and the three main teachers’ unions was the first call for a national strike since 2006, and the response was good.
Marches and rallies were organized in most cities, with good participation for a Thursday work day. There were 30,000 striking in London, according to the police.
According to the PCS, the proposed changes will cut pensions by 30% to 50% compared to the current payout, which is already inadequate. To get this reduction, employees would pay 3% more for pensions. And they would have to retire at age 66 instead of 60. It’s no surprise that so many were angry.
And more attacks are expected: for example, on retirement systems for city workers and for national health care workers.
But there are two other urgent threats affecting these workers whose pensions are under attack, that is, job cuts and increases in the cost of living.
The loss of jobs has affected all sectors, but especially the state and semi-public sectors. For example, 20,000 postal jobs are supposed to be cut (in addition to 65,000 lost over the past three years); 15,000 job cuts at Lloyds Bank (which the government took over in 2008, already having eliminated 43,000 jobs); 25,000 job cuts in municipal services and national health care (bringing the total announced in one year to 180,000); not to mention job cuts disguised by the use of temporary workers.
Not only has inflation been about 5% for two years, but wages have also been cut from the moment the crisis was announced, especially in the public sector.
These attacks pushed thousands of city workers to go on strike in several cities on June 30th, including in Birmingham, the second biggest city in Britain, even though their union didn’t call them out.
For the moment, the public sector unions have proposed no follow-up to the June 30th strikes. And the Trade Union Congress, the organization of all unions in Britain, didn’t support the June 30th action, because the Labor Party to which it is tied opposed it.
But there must be more actions. The government is still taking the social temperature in Britain, deciding it is better to retreat openly on certain points of its attack on national health care. It fears a clash with the medical professions, who are expressing their anger.
It’s the same with all these attacks. It’s vital that the government and the capitalists who dictate its policy get their fingers burnt facing a workers’ resistance. And the sooner the better!
Jul 18, 2011
Once again the politicians want to cut Social Security, raising the retirement age, AGAIN, and cutting the cost-of-living adjustments, AGAIN.
They claim Social Security is going broke due to increased life expectancy and the beginning of retirement for the “baby boomers.”
No, Social Security is NOT broke.
In fact, over the years the Social Security Trust Fund has run up a huge surplus–2½ trillion dollars–plus the interest that money should have earned.
BUT there is no money in the Trust Fund today. The government “borrowed” ALL of it, using it to finance bailouts and subsidies to the banks and corporations, enormous tax breaks for the wealthy and huge expenditures for wars.
If Social Security is short of money today, get it back from the banks, the big corporations, the military industrial complex and the wealthy.
Jul 18, 2011
President Obama says that he wants to boost taxes on “millionaires and billionaires” in his deficit reduction plan. That would sound fine—except that the Obama administration admits that the increases would be “minor.” At most, they would slightly reduce the 140 billion dollars in tax breaks to the rich and big business that Obama and Congress agreed to in December, when they extended all the Bush tax cuts for two more years.
And they would do nothing about all the other tax loopholes and tax cuts for the wealthy. From 1995 to 2007, the very highest income taxpayers have had the rate at which they pay taxes cut in half. And many of the wealthiest don’t pay any taxes at all. Speculator John Paulson, for example, made nine billion dollars two years ago and paid no taxes.
The same goes for big corporations. In 2010, corporate profits were 60% higher than they were in 2000. Yet, they paid one-third less in taxes. That saved these companies over 100 billion dollars. And some of the richest corporations, like GE, GM and Caterpillar reported billions in profits, but still got billions back from the federal government in tax rebates!
The money these big companies saved in taxes helped them boost the cash just sitting in their bank accounts to two trillion dollars, money taken from the workers that companies are simply hoarding. That comes to $7,000 of cash that these companies have for every person in the U.S.
If the government simply took this money, they could more than balance the budget this year, and have money to spare.
But don’t hold your breath. Obama’s talk about taxing the rich is nothing but a cover for huge attacks against the working class and poor.
Jul 18, 2011
Since July 11, a wave of panic has seized the stock exchanges all over the world as the financial crisis, in the form of debt-ridden governments, takes a turn for the worse. It took just one change in rating by Moody’s, lowering the credit rating on the financial viability of Portugal, to raise the idea that a financial crisis even worse than that of 2008 is about to arrive.
The interest rate that the Portuguese state must pay in order to cover the deficit left after bailing out its banks, has now risen to 17%. Of course, these enormous interest rates are going to be paid to the big banks and other financial institutions, out of the sweat and the blood of the Portuguese people who are already being told they will have to make new sacrifices.
It is the same in Italy, which got the same treatment by the credit rating agencies. Italy saw the interest rates charged on its debt skyrocket to new highs. Just afterward, the leader of the German government, Angela Merkel, insisted that there must be additional cuts in the Italian budget, even though 47 billion Euros in cuts were already announced, with disastrous consequences for the population. And none of this anguish touches the debt in Greece, which is again the subject of behind-the-scene threats and negotiations on its debt.
The financial markets, the big banks and other financial institutions all raise the interest rates at which they are willing to make loans, thus tightening their stranglehold on countries they target.
The sacrifices demanded of the populations to pay this debt are endless. The majority of the population will be reduced to miserable conditions. They may see an end to their access to health care, to education and to housing in order to reassure these infamous financiers, who demand that each dime they lend will be paid back in gold upon demand.
But the financial ‘markets’ are anonymous. In reality, they consist of the largest banks–like JP Morgan Chase or Goldman Sachs–and the largest insurance companies in the world and other big bourgeois families, like the Waltons, the Rockefellers, the duPonts, the Koch brothers, etc. At the most basic level, they are funded by the billions in profits extorted from workers everywhere.
And all the governments act as financial executioners of their own people.
There is absolutely no reason to submit to the dictates of these 21st century loan sharks, who, in addition to the sacrifices they demand, risk precipitating an even greater economic crisis for the whole world.
Of course, the first measure to be taken should be to cancel these debts and to expropriate all the banks and financial institutions. And beyond that, control of the economy and of society must be torn out of the hands of these dangerous fools, these speculators, bankers, financial and industrial controllers, who are totally irresponsible.
Jul 18, 2011
If Congress really wanted to get rid of the budget deficit, it would long ago have stopped the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan—or never started them. It would have cut ALL spending to military contractors.
Companies like Dick Cheney’s KBR, GE, General Dynamics, Lockheed Martin, Boeing, as well as the oil companies, beat the drum to push the country into war—then gobbled up hundreds of billions.
In 2008, two economists, Joseph Stiglitz and Linda Bilmes, wrote a book demonstrating that the first five years of war in Iraq had already cost the U.S. three trillion dollars. Add to these trillions, several trillions more for the last three years in Iraq and the 10 years of war in Afghanistan.
Get some of those blood-soaked billions back from these latter-day war criminals. That could pay for the budget deficit.
Jul 18, 2011
On June 30, American Axle Manufacturing told its Detroit factory workers that the plant would close, and work would be moved to company plants in Indiana and Mexico.
The master plan is really about cutting wages. AAM boss Dick Dauch demanded that workers take cuts below the level of its competitor, Dana Corp. The plant would close, he said, but not right away–not until next February, when the UAW contract there ends. That was his way of saying it wouldn’t close–if the workers give even more concessions.
Workers at AAM have a long history of voting heavily against concessions, sometimes rejecting them by an outright majority. And in 2008, Detroit AAM workers struck for three months in the dead of winter, rather than give in without a fight. When the strike was lost, AAM imposed deep wage and benefit cuts, took away many seniority and health and safety protections, cut dozens of jobs, and pushed a massive speed-up. Now AAM wants even more blood. As a worker told the news, “It seems no matter how much we give this guy, it’s never enough.”
It’s true that giving up more is never a solution. But letting a plant close, without other jobs to go to, is no solution either.
There is a solution but it has not been tried for a long time. Like any other company, AAM cannot live without its production. Workers at all of Dauch’s plants could choose delegates to meet together and work out plans to stop everything, everywhere, until each and every job is preserved.
Yes, it would be hard to get this started. Yes, it would take organizing, above and beyond what we are used to. But then–nothing that we are used to is working.
Jul 18, 2011
Democratic Governor Pat Quinn of Illinois just denied 30,000 state workers their negotiated wage increases, costing the workers $2,500 a year, on average.
Quinn also signed a law passed by the Democratic-controlled legislature, cutting Workers Comp benefits.
Now what was it union leaders have been saying about waiting for help from the Democrats?
Jul 18, 2011
Residents of areas near the huge steel mill just outside Baltimore at Sparrows Point, Maryland, are furious about a recent court decision. A Federal judge ruled that neither the current owner of the mill nor either of its two previous owners are legally responsible for cleaning up widespread land and water contamination around the mill. And Bethlehem Steel, which owned the mill for many decades before this, can’t be held liable either, because it declared bankruptcy in 2003.
Everyone admits there is contamination–the EPA, Maryland Department of the Environment and the Maryland Port Administration. They all agree that it endangers the health of people and wildlife in the area. Bethlehem was even forced to sign a consent decree agreeing to clean the contamination up six years before it declared bankruptcy. But it never did, and now the court says no one has to do it.
The Bethlehem bosses made hundreds of millions in profits over the years. The owners that followed made many millions more just by buying and selling the property. The current owner gets government subsidies and pockets untold amounts of money derived from this property.
Yet the court says none of them are liable.
A perfect picture of modern capitalism: The owners take all the benefits, but none of the risks.
Jul 18, 2011
Michigan Governor Snyder says he wants state workers to give up concessions of up to $6000 per employee. To put it more accurately, he wants more concessions on top of previous concessions.
Here is a partial list.
Since 1991, the pay of state workers has been going down, indexed for inflation.
On top of unpaid furlough days in 2004 and 2009, state employees were forced to “work for free” a number of hours each month for three years. They were “promised” they would be paid back at retirement–a promise no one believes.
In 1997, Michigan became the first state to end defined benefit pensions for new hires. This adds up to billions lost to workers since 1997.
Since 2007 workers have been paying $1000 more a year for health insurance and recent new hires pay two or three times this amount.
This is outrageous! The state is not broke. The state gave billions away to corporations.
And now the state legislature is debating a series of bills that–if passed–would eliminate retiree healthcare for anyone hired after March 31, 1997. In order to give more money to the corporations!
Guaranteed healthcare would be “replaced” with a woefully underfunded sham called a Health Savings Account.
It’s for these reasons and more that the Coalition of State Employee Unions are rallying on Monday, July 25th, at noon at Cadillac Place in Detroit (3040 W. Grand Blvd.) to send a message that workers have sacrificed enough already!
Jul 18, 2011
Leonard Peltier, an American Indian activist falsely imprisoned, was sent to solitary confinement in late June. He was initially framed for the murder of two FBI agents on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in 1975, based on false ballistics evidence and eyewitness testimony from a mentally handicapped woman the cops tricked into testifying.
Peltier has been imprisoned for more than 35 years and repeatedly denied parole. He is in poor health, suffering from severe diabetes and urological problems as a result of his long imprisonment.
The prison system routinely uses solitary confinement as a form of torture against prisoners it targets. The latest move against Pelter is yet another effort by the government to harass and intimidate him because of his militant stance in support of American Indian rights.
Supporters of Leonard Peltier are calling for those who are outraged by this inhumane treatment to send letters demanding immediate action to:
President Barack Obama
The White House
1600 Pennsylvania Ave.
Washington, D.C. 20500
Jul 18, 2011
Geronimo Pratt died on June 3rd in Tanzania at the age of 63. Geronimo was the name Elmer Pratt took when he joined the Black Panthers. The Black Panther movement was born in Oakland, California in 1966, an era of black radicalization. He was one of its militant leaders.
The Black Panther Party in Oakland was influenced by the ideas of Malcolm X before his assassination in 1965. The Black Panthers’ ten point program demanded the end of capitalist exploitation, decent housing, education which takes into account the history of black people, exemption from military service, the end of police brutality and a halt to assassinations of well known black people, and black juries to judge black people.
The party set up a free breakfast program in Oakland for children that was very popular. It also distributed clothes, gave self-defense classes, provided transportation to jails for prisoners’ families, and fought against alcoholism and drug addiction. Some of this was emulated in other cities.
The Black Panthers drew the attention of the U.S. government. J. Edgar Hoover was head of the FBI when the Panthers began armed patrols against police brutality. Hoover wrote that the Cointelpro spy plan used against opponents of the Viet Nam war must “make moderate young blacks understand that if they succumb to revolutionary teaching, they will become dead revolutionaries.” Hoover wrote that in March of 1968, just as the FBI was beginning an organized campaign of assassinations. Thirty-eight militants were killed in raids organized by the police and FBI against Black Panther offices. On December 4th, 1969, one of the Panther leaders, Fred Hampton, was executed in his bed. Thirty members of the Black Panthers were given the death penalty, 40 got life in prison, 55 more were sentenced to 30 years in prison.
These prosecutions were carried out as if the Black Panthers’ organizations were “criminal conspiracies to commit terrorist acts.” Twenty-one Black Panthers faced that charge, although they were acquitted in May of 1971.
Geronimo Pratt was one of the victims of this determination of the U.S. government, ready to do anything to prevent the entire black community from rising up. Pratt, an influential militant, was tried and found guilty of a murder he didn’t commit. He spent 27 years in prison. A long legal battle was finally able to free him.
When Pratt was finally freed and the FBI role was brought to light, he was awarded 4½ million dollars in restitution for the 27 years of his life that the government had stolen—an implicit admission of what the government had been doing.
In Tanzania, where Geronimo Pratt went to live, he summed up his life, “I was born under segregation. I had to face KKK terror and all the forms of ignorance which afflicted our people. That gave me a type of pride, the idea that we could lead ourselves and protect ourselves. I was selected for training in this task. But almost immediately, I was sent to Viet Nam, where I survived.
When I returned, Malcolm X was just assassinated. We said then, ‘It’s necessary to do something.’ We were a group of young people and we continued to act for our people in proportion to our means.”
Pratt added that he intended to aid comrades still in prison, like Mumia Abu-Jamal, for example. In fact, the battle he fought for black political prisoners is far from over.
Jul 18, 2011
Prisoners at Pelican Bay State Prison in California began a hunger strike on July 1 to protest inhumane conditions there. Thousands of prisoners in at least 12 other prisons across the state have joined the strike in solidarity.
The prisoners are demanding an end to arbitrarily being assigned to “Special Housing Units” (SHUs) despite no charges filed against them. SHUs are windowless, concrete cells where isolated prisoners are kept in lockdown for 22 hours a day–a modern solitary confinement. Some prisoners have been kept in these cells for decades.
They are also protesting the policy of being required to inform on gang activity by fellow inmates before they can be released from the SHU–a risk to their own safety and the safety of their own families. They demand an end to group punishments against entire racial groups in response to one prisoner from that group breaking a prison rule. They also are demanding food that has nutritional value, access to natural sunlight, one photo a year, a wall calendar and one phone call a week.
One prisoner, Todd Ashker, said in an audio statement, “The basis for this protest has come about after over 25 years of being subjected to these conditions ... in Pelican Bay SHU, where every single day you have staff and administrators who feel it’s their job to punish the worst of the worst. ... And most of us have never been found guilty of ever committing an illegal gang-related act. And all of our 602 appeals, numerous court challenges, have gotten nowhere. Therefore, our backs are up against the wall.”
These prisoners have been driven by such horrible conditions, which amount to torture, to risk their health, perhaps their lives, in a hunger strike.
The conditions faced by the Pelican Bay prisoners exist in prisons across the country. Earlier this year prisoners in Lucasville, Ohio carried out a similar hunger strike. Prisoners in Georgia in December went on strike against very low wage prison labor.
Even the current very reactionary U.S. Supreme Court was forced to recognize the poor conditions in California prisons, which were built to house 80,000 prisoners, but currently house twice that number.
Crime, which put many of these people in prisons, is the inevitable outcome of a capitalist system unable to provide a decent life to all its members. And the conditions that exist inside these prisons simply mirror the viciousness of that capitalist system magnified a hundred times. Stop the torture of prisoners!
Committees in support of the prisoners request that protests be sent to:
Governor Jerry Brown
State Capitol, Suite 1173
Sacramento, CA 95814
Phone: (916) 445-2841