the Voice of
The Communist League of Revolutionary Workers–Internationalist
“The emancipation of the working class will only be achieved by the working class itself.”
— Karl Marx
the Voice of
The Communist League of Revolutionary Workers–Internationalist
“The emancipation of the working class will only be achieved by the working class itself.”
— Karl Marx
Apr 2, 2012
In the weeks since Trayvon Martin was murdered, the media has carried out a second attack on Martin, assassinating his character, just as George Zimmerman assassinated his body.
Not just Fox News–we expect vile racist garbage to come spewing out of the mouths of those right wing fanatics, funded by some of the wealthiest people in the country.
But the sedate, proper media do exactly the same thing–they just do it more “politely,” pretending that in this situation it’s perfectly normal to be neutral, to give us both sides of the story.
There aren’t two sides to this story. Trayvon was lynched, every bit as much as all those young black men during the 1930s, 40s and 50s were lynched just for looking the wrong way.
Yes, he wasn’t lynched with a rope, hung from the branch of a moss-draped Southern tree. He was gunned down in the street by a vigilante who condemned him to death for being “suspicious”–that is, for being nothing more than a young, black man, walking naively down the street.
Just as with all those lynchings of an earlier day, his murderer goes unpunished. In the modern-day racist state of Florida, the murder of a young black man calls forth no punishment. And if punishment ever comes, it will only be because of all the angry rallies and demonstrations not only in Florida, but around the country.
Trayvon Martin was supposed to be one of the lucky young men–a football player, respected in his school, living a somewhat comfortable life. But he was killed anyway.
It could not be more clear–in this modern-day racist United States of America, it is open season on young black men.
One in ten young black men will die before they reach the age of 18. Some are killed by racists, some by cops, most by other young black men, all of those young men living in the dire circumstances that poverty and unfulfilled needs create. Lack of jobs–a 70% rate of unemployment if you are black, without a high school diploma. Lack of access to decent schooling–this country spends less than one-third as much on poor black children in the big urban centers as it does on the children of the wealthy white bourgeois out in their suburbs.
More young black men will end up in prison than get into college–because there aren’t jobs for those without an education, and there are few decent schools that could provide a real education to children who are poor and black.
Nearly half of all young black men in the urban centers come out of school functionally illiterate. From the day they start until the day they leave school, they are jammed into classrooms where individual attention isn’t even a passing dream.
This, too, is a kind of assassination, a kind of lynching of a whole generation of young black men–and young women too.
There is enough wealth in this capitalist society that this systematic deprivation could be overcome in a generation. More than enough. And the racism that feeds on poverty could be overcome. But none of this will be done by a system whose basic aim is to keep accumulating more wealth in the hands of a tiny bourgeois class, while further impoverishing the population.
This system certainly can’t provide justice for Trayvon Martin and his family, nor will it shut down the open season on young black men. This can only be imposed by the population itself, especially by the black population, and it can be imposed by all those young black men who today recognize themselves in Trayvon Martin.
Apr 2, 2012
Five weeks after Trayvon Martin was murdered, his killer George Zimmerman has still not been arrested. People are being told to wait for the findings of a special prosecutor appointed by Florida Governor Rick Scott, a federal investigation, and a county grand jury. But Zimmerman’s defenders are using the time to concoct an argument that Zimmerman acted in self-defense, saying that it was Martin who attacked him and that the Florida “Stand Your Ground” law, which is an open invitation to vigilantes, gives Zimmerman wide latitude.
But the 911 tapes show that it was not Trayvon Martin who initiated the confrontation. On the contrary it was Zimmerman armed with a gun who was tracking Martin.
The tapes show that the police told Zimmerman to stay in his car but he did not. Instead, he got out of his car, with a gun, and chased after Martin.
So even if Martin did attack Zimmerman–which is highly doubtful–it would still have been Martin who was “Standing his Ground,” not Zimmerman.
If the “Stand Your Ground” law is not patently racist, then it applies to Trayvon Martin in this case and not Zimmerman. Even the lead detective, Chris Serino, who wanted to charge Zimmerman, but was overruled by the state’s attorney, recognized this.
That the law does not apply to Trayvon Martin is a reflection of a deeply racist system. Yes, Zimmerman may have been given a break because his father was a magistrate in the Virginia court system and his mother a court clerk. But the fact that Zimmerman has gone this long without being arrested, that the whole “justice” system is not up in arms, and that every elected official is not up in arms over the case means the whole governmental system is racist and needs to go.
Apr 2, 2012
The Supreme Court is currently reviewing the health care law passed two years ago, with enormous interest in the media and from the supposed two sides of the debate, the Republicans and the Democrats.
The Republicans oppose the “Affordable Care Act” because they claim, loudly, the U.S. health care is the finest system in the world. It’s just fine, say the Republicans, ignoring the millions of Americans who don’t have it. As Romney put it, there is supposedly a safety net for the poor. This so-called safety net is Medicaid, which these very same Republicans, with much help from the Democrats, have cut and cut again in their budget fights. And even before those cuts, too bad for millions of poor or near poor people or even middle class people in the U.S. who needed all kinds of preventive care or dental care or eyeglasses. Too bad, no money for that–in the country with the most resources in the world.
Then the Democrats come forward to the public with lies that they are “reforming” the health care system.
It’s no reform. The whole rotten system based on profit would be left in place. The main difference is that millions of people would be forced to buy health care insurance, which they have already demonstrated they cannot afford. And the insurance that the poorer parts of the population could buy–or face a financial penalty–would come at a cost of thousands of dollars in deductibles and co-pays.
In all other richer countries of the world, and in a number of poorer ones, health care is provided to the entire population at a considerably lower price than what is paid in the U.S.
So what makes the difference? In the U.S. capitalism has had fewer fetters put on it. As a result, the system demands that we pay for the profits of the health insurers. Then we pay so hospitals and medical associations gain profits. Then we pay so the pharmaceutical industry and the medical equipment suppliers obtain their juicy profits.
By the time they all take a piece of the pie, we, and the U.S. health care system, are pretty sick. It doesn’t matter how the Supreme Court rules: We still won’t have decent health care.
Apr 2, 2012
Over the weekend of March 17th, 10 people were killed in Chicago. One of them was a six-year-old girl, Aliyah Shell, shot by two teenagers while she sat with her mother and sister on her own front porch. Another 39 people were wounded by shootings during the same weekend.
Mayor Rahm Emanuel and Police Superintendent Gerry McCarthy promise to crack down on the gangs they blame for the killings. We’ve been hearing this line for decades. Hypocrites like Mayor Emanuel destroy education and job prospects for the poor, then pretend to act outraged when this results in violence. They have no solution but to lock up more young people. This cuts them off from any chance of getting a decent job by giving them a criminal record, and adds to the cycle of violence.
These killings are one more mark of the sickness of this society, which provides no future for millions of young people.
If the top priority of this country was a decent-paying job for everyone, a decent education, and access to affordable health care for everyone, just think what a dent that would make in the cycle of violence.
Apr 2, 2012
The Supreme Court recently ruled against a Maryland State employee who sued the state for denying him sick leave to deal with his diabetes and hypertension and then fired him–despite provisions of the Family Medical Leave Act (FMLA). The court said states are immune from lawsuits involving monetary damages including cases where their employees are illegally denied FMLA time off or fired.
This decision is a blow against the rights of all workers. While it explicitly denies the right of only state workers to sue their employer, it adds to the many attacks being made on all workers’ rights–public and private–all over the country. It undermines even the limited relief that FMLA has brought to workers who need time off to deal with health problems they or their family members may have.
Does anyone believe that private companies won’t try to challenge their workers’ rights under FMLA, too?
Apr 2, 2012
How did administrators respond when high school seniors at Detroit Public Schools’ Frederick Douglass Academy protested outside their building, chanting: “We want an education!”?
They kicked these 50 young men out of school! They were being expelled for wanting to learn!
Demanding more teachers and more books, most of the senior class of this 200 student school, along with some parents, attempted to shame school administrators into doing their job.
Up until 2010, this school had done better than most in Detroit, meeting federal academic standards. When a long time principal was reassigned, students were increasingly left just to pass time in the gym or cafeteria, due to a lack of teachers.
Said one protesting senior: “I want the kids [that are] under me, I want them to be able to have the education that we were supposed to have that we didn’t get.”
Said another: “They didn’t listen to us when we complained to the administration. They didn’t listen to the parents when they complained to the administration, so I guess this is the only way to get things solved.”
Yes, it is. What a valuable lesson to learn at any age!
Apr 2, 2012
In Niger, more than six million people need immediate aid–or they may starve. Famine stalks the country, according to the U.N. and Oxfam, an international anti-poverty organization.
Families in Niger are forced to cut back on meals; some move to the cities; some go to neighboring countries. There is a shortage of cereal, which makes up 14% of the consumption of 15 million people. The Niger government blames drought and locusts and caterpillars.
But famine affects the whole Sahel area of Africa. People are fearful due to the lack of rain, but the real problem is the high price of food.
It’s not just a natural catastrophe. The Niger people now must pay for the fact that French colonialism imposed the cotton production on them at the expense of food crops. In Niger and in many other African countries, speculators drive up the price of cereals, enriching the financial markets.
Much more than swarms of locusts, the capitalist system causes the people of Africa to suffer, many to die.
Apr 2, 2012
On March 22, another general strike took place in Portugal. Like others before it, this strike was very widespread, with workers coming out from the subways, the railroads, the ports, in health care, the post office, the courts and many from the public sector. The strike was called by the CGTP (General Confederation of Portuguese Workers), the union federation linked with the Communist Party.
The strike was in reaction to changes in the Work Codes proposed by the right-wing government that are now being debated in Parliament.
These changes, giving the bosses “flexibility,” tend to make layoffs easier and, specifically, to cut unemployment payments. The new code would end all year-end bonuses for public sector workers, who are poorly paid. And it would end paid vacations, which in Portugal amounts to two months’ salary. The changes would also eliminate four holidays paid for all workers and other paid days off. And the politicians pretend these measures, so favorable to bosses, are needed to pay off the sovereign debt and to obey the demands of the Troika (The European Union, The Central Bank of Europe and the International Monetary Fund), which has loaned Portugal 78 billion Euros.
Lower “labor costs” will do nothing about this economic crisis. In Europe, Greece and Ireland have wages lower than those in Portugal, and the crisis is worse in those countries. The other measures–like suppressing paid holidays and increasing the work day by half an hour in the private sector–may threaten 100,000 jobs. That’s how many jobs could be eliminated if this reform is passed. The CGTP has denounced the austerity, the lowering of wages and the miserable retirement plans that will reduce popular consumption. It also challenged the sales of the companies themselves. Precarious employment situations–affecting 21% of the workers and 35% of the youth, and 14.5% unemployment in the working population–also reduce what the population can buy.
Workers understand very well that they are the victims of the crisis. They show their discontent and their rejection of austerity by responding to the unions’ call for the strikes, on March 22 and on March 31, a day when another general strike was proposed. The government and the Troika do not ignore this discontent. But they do not imagine that the anger of the workers can go further.
Perhaps they’ll get a surprise.
Apr 2, 2012
Aricept–a two-billion-dollar a year drug–is supposed to improve memory for people with Alzheimer’s. In 2010, the drug was set to go off patent, meaning much less expensive generic forms could be made and sold.
To avoid losing sales, drug-maker Eisai and distributor Pfizer ran a clinical trial with 1400 people that used a higher dosage of Aricept. They told the FDA that this 23-mg dosage would do more for the brain than the old 10 mg and 15 mg doses of Aricept.
In fact, when FDA researchers looked at the data, they found the side effects of the 23-mg Aricept were far worse than for those using the lower doses. And the benefits scarcely improved functioning. They recommended NOT approving the 23-mg dose.
But they were overruled by an FDA director.
It’s obvious why drug makers proposed a 23-mg dosage: Doctors could not make up the unusual dosage by giving patients a prescription for the old 10 or 15 mg sizes already available in the cheaper version.
But why would an FDA official agree? In any case, Alzheimer’s patients can expect to puke their guts out so that Eisai and Pfizer can make billions more dollars on their “new”, “patented”, and useless drug.
Apr 2, 2012
On March 10, a 16-year-old girl died in Larache, in Morocco. Amina al Filali committed suicide, swallowing poison, because she was forced to marry the man who raped her.
The horror of young Amina’s situation stands out because she killed herself. But how many other Moroccan women and girls suffer this same horror? There certainly are no statistics to say. The law allowed Amina’s rapist to escape years in prison for what was called the “offense” of rape of a minor simply by marrying his victim.
The part of Moroccan society still stuck in the Middle Ages condemned the young woman, forcing her into a second and tragic attack. She had no choice but to marry her rapist. Her own family withdrew its complaint against the rapist, preferring this forced marriage to the dishonor that Amina’s lost virginity and her ruined reputation would have represented in their eyes and among those around them. So the Larache family announced the marriage, and then arranged a reconciliation between the two families.
The Moroccan law, reformed in 2004, made a few advances in the status of women. Before that date women were totally treated as minors who passed from the father’s authority to the husband’s. But polygamy was not totally abolished in Morocco. And there are numerous exceptions to the law, so that as soon as the reform passed, there was an increase of 50% in the marriage of minors in rural areas in one year. That’s exactly how families got around the law.
The “double rape” of Amina, followed by her suicide, provoked indignant rallies, including 300 people in front of the courthouse in Larache. Then feminists organized a sit-in in front of the Moroccan Parliament in Rabat, demanding the abolition of the law allowing rapists to escape court by marrying their victims.
Moroccan law helps to perpetuate the social and religious ideas that treat women like merchandise, to be sold at a lower price if they lose their hymen.
Furthermore, poverty in the poorest parts of the country, where there is no work, pushes the social custom that marries off girls at an age when they should be going to school.
Apr 2, 2012
On March 13th Heather Lynn McGuire was shot in the back of the head and dumped in the middle of a busy intersection in Kensington, Maryland outside Washington, D.C., left to die. She was murdered by her estranged husband, Philip Gilberti.
It turns out that Gilberti had just been let out of jail without a hearing on the day before he shot his wife. He had been arrested twice the weekend before the murder for stalking, violating a protective order and threatening to kill his wife. The judge knew there was a terrified woman trying desperately to escape from this man. She was in the process of getting a divorce and she had been in hiding from him and shelter-hopping because he kept finding her. Nonetheless, the judge released Gilberti on bond, doing nothing but issuing a new order for him to stay away from his wife.
The judge didn’t believe the wife, and instead acted as if the husband were not an immediate violent threat.
The problem is not just one “violent” man or one judge, but much deeper. This is not the first time a husband killed his wife. This is not even the first time a protective order failed to protect. This happens regularly. Not always so publicly and dramatically, but it happens.
As much as some would claim otherwise and as much as the violence is private and often hidden, the fact remains we live in a society that devalues women. It’s a society that assumes a man has ownership rights over his wife.
Apr 2, 2012
Last year three people had more than a billion dollars of income. All three run hedge funds, those financial scams which amass billions by speculating in financial markets. Ray Dalio got 3.9 billion dollars, more than the average income of 100,000 workers in a year. Carl Icahn got 2.5 billion dollars and James Simons 2.1 billion.
These ultra-rich pay a special tax rate, only 15%, on income coming from capital. This is lower than the tax bracket many workers are in. Every time there is a whimper in Congress about making the hedge fund billionaires pay ordinary tax rates, their friends among both the Democratic and Republican politicians swiftly stuff a sock in someone’s mouth!
Apr 2, 2012
With the first phase of the Expo Line set to open April 28, Los Angeles Mayor Villaraigosa announced triumphantly, “this is a critical step towards creating the multi-faceted transit network that Angelenos deserve.”
“Critical step”?
The project is more than two years late, with hundreds of millions of dollars in cost overruns, which means more profit for contractors. The line stretches 7.6 miles west from downtown, while the L.A. area is 34,000 square miles. At this rate it will take a century before we get the “transit network that Angelenos deserve.”
Apr 2, 2012
Bus riders in Montgomery County, Maryland, near D.C., will pay $2 for cash bus fares, up from $1.70. The County Executive also proposed to raise the rates for SmarTrip and monthly passes, carpool passes, and parking meters effective July 1.
Meanwhile, the proposed county budget gives Costco and a mall operator two million dollars to build a store at Wheaton Plaza. A hotel will get two million dollars to relocate its headquarters. Lockheed Martin will get a $900,000 tax break. These are only the latest in a string of 150 private projects that cost almost 25 million dollars in 15 years. Not to mention the land the county sold to a biotech company at a fraction of the price.
This is why working people on the bus and in car pools have to pay more for the right to sit in traffic.
Apr 2, 2012
In mid-March, Joshua Pechthalt, president of the California Federation of Teachers (CFT), announced “a major victory for the thousands of Californians who have risen up over recent months to demand the wealthiest Californians start paying their fair share.”
That’s how the CFT dressed up its complete capitulation to Governor Jerry Brown’s demand that it drop its ballot initiative to increase the tax that millionaires pay. That tax increase was supposed to provide more money for vital programs and services, such as schools and senior and child services, that politicians had been gutting for decades. And it had widespread support in the population, and thousands of teachers, students and other activists had already done most of the work to get it on the ballot, including gathering more than a million signatures.
But the CFT leadership threw all that away. Instead, it agreed to support another increase in California’s already outrageously high sales tax, a tax increase that hits the workers and poor. Supposedly this was a compromise, that is, the tax increase isn’t as bad as the one that the governor is proposing in his initiative.
But most likely the compromise won’t get on the ballot–it is too late to get all the signatures needed. So, that will leave Governor Brown’s corporate-backed initiative–which Brown didn’t pull–with its higher sales tax increase. De facto, Brown’s tax increase will have the support of the CFT, which joins the other big public sector unions, the SEIU and AFSCME, that had backed Brown’s proposal all along.
Union leaders are simply supporting another politicians’ scheme to blackmail workers into agreeing to tax themselves more, under the threat that if they don’t, there will be even worse, more horrendous cuts to education and every other social program and essential service for the working population.
The goal of the politicians is to get workers to hand over more money that the politicians can then hand over to big business and the wealthy. So, if working people allow the politicians to get their way, the workers will be paying higher taxes and the programs will be cut anyway.
The heads of the unions are simply acting as accomplices to the blackmailers.
Apr 2, 2012
Starting March 20, City of Detroit workers, with little or no advance notice, were summoned to vote on a new set of concessions which the city had patched together with union leaders seven weeks earlier. During the seven weeks, workers had been subjected to arm-twisting, scapegoating, and fear-mongering, especially by the media.
No sooner were the workers bludgeoned into voting “Yes,” than Michigan Governor Snyder, sent down an edict: it’s not enough.
Snyder proposed to set up an “advisory board” that would have powers to overrule and rewrite any public workers’ contract because of the city’s “financial emergency.”
The only real and genuine financial emergency is the one that workers have to deal with at the end of every month. And our emergency can’t be solved with concessions!
The mirror that we face every morning should have engraved on it in big letters: DON’T VOTE YES. IT ONLY ENCOURAGES THEM.
Once a bully gets a nickel they always come back for a dollar. We can’t stop their greed until we stop giving.
Apr 2, 2012
The State of Michigan and the City of Detroit are pushing an attack on Detroit’s city workers. The attack will be used as a battering ram on all public workers in the state–and the country.
Claiming Detroit is in a financial state of emergency, Governor Rick Snyder has been using the threat of an Emergency Manager to force both a financial “consent agreement” on the city and a contract reopener on all city workers.
When they took a look, city workers discovered that a number of the contract proposals were being forced on them by new laws passed by Michigan legislators in this last year. The legislature passed laws directing all public entities to set definite caps on wages, health benefits, and pensions–and to do away with pensions for all new hires, replacing them with accounts like 401(k)s. So, all the contract concessions that Detroit city workers are seeing will be seen by ALL public workers in Michigan when their next contract expires–as dictated by a pack of new state laws.
Not only that, but one new state law basically forces public workers to accept the last offer made by their employer–or they won’t have any pay increases or healthcare after the contract lapses! No extensions will be allowed.
The city’s debt wasn’t caused by what the city paid to its workers and retirees–it was forced on it by the state and the banks.
For the past ten years, the state has underpaid its revenue sharing obligations to the cities by 4.2 billion dollars. It underpaid by 499 million in just this past year. Detroit, as Michigan’s largest city, lost the most money from the state.
Cities had to scramble–especially poor and working class cities, which saw jobs and tax revenues drop in the same period. Like Detroit, many of them turned to loans from the banks.
They got roped into loans with big balloon payments, like the adjustable rate mortgages that forced so many homeowners into foreclosure in recent years. Now, these cities–including Detroit–are faced with the same problem as the homeowners. They owe more and more money to the banks, just because–they owe money to the banks. And the banks are demanding their money.
The banks are finding more ways to dump debt onto Detroit. In the last couple weeks, two debt rating agencies, Moody’s and Fitch–basically arms of the banks themselves–downgraded Detroit’s debt. Why? Because it owes lots of money to banks. And what happens when Detroit’s debt is downgraded? It owes MORE money to the banks: Fitch says Detroit owes a 50-million-dollar “termination payment,” while Moody’s added another 350 million dollars!
State treasurer Andy Dillon, a Democrat, admitted his main concern is the banks in a meeting last week. He said, “The review team cannot do anything that would jeopardize Detroit’s bond rating.” So, the bond holders–the banks–are the important ones in this situation, not the people. The bondholders must be paid!
Just like in Greece, in order to reward the banks, attacks are being pushed on the laboring population. As city workers are being attacked, services and conditions in the city worsen–all city residents are being attacked.
Snyder, Dillon, and Detroit officials plan to leave Detroit city workers and residents with nothing–to feed the greed of the banks.
In Europe, the attacks the banks started in Ireland and then spread to Greece have turned into attacks on the standard of living of working people throughout the continent.
It’s the same here. What’s being pushed in Detroit is only the beginning of what the politicians and the banks plan for the whole state. And we’re already seeing variations of it in cities and states across the country.