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 1, 2013
Wall Street is booming. The Dow index is at an all-time high, and so are corporate profits. Supposedly, the economy is getting better too.
We are told the employment situation is also improving. The official unemployment rate dropped to 7.7 percent in February. But the official rate lies. When you factor in discouraged workers who have dropped out of the labor force and those part-time workers who want full-time work, the unemployment rate is really 14.3 percent.
And there are many part-time workers who want full-time work. Supposedly, the economy added 170,000 jobs in February, but the economy actually lost 276,000 full-time jobs. Only because it gained 446,000 part-time jobs, could the politicians claim a net gain of 170,000 jobs. Not exactly the solid, secure jobs people need!
In fact, this shift to part-time jobs has been happening for years. Since 2007, 5.8 million fewer Americans are working full-time, while 2.8 million more are working part-time.
Nonetheless, the economy IS getting better–for some: with their record corporate profits and record cash holdings, companies are paying out more in dividends to their stockholders than ever before. Stockholders are to get upwards of 300 billion dollars in 2013, up from 282 billion in 2012. At the same time, companies are buying back more shares of their own stocks–almost 118 billion dollars worth in February alone. This amounts to another gift to shareholders, since these companies are buying back their stocks when those stocks are selling at an all-time high. Instead of creating jobs, they’re taking their mounds of accumulated cash and handing it over to their shareholders. As one financial advisor put it, “They’re saying ‘I don’t know what to do with this. You take it.’”
The rest of us are told to be patient, to expect that our situation will slowly get better because of the unimaginable wealth being accumulated at the top.
But the worsening situation for working people is the REASON for that accumulation of wealth! They are making their profits BECAUSE they continue to take so much from us. The wealth isn’t trickling down–it’s gushing upward.
Since the early 2000s, the profit share of business income has been rising, and is now at a record 25.6 percent. At the same time, the labor share–that part going to wages and benefits–has dropped five percent.
As one writer put it, “We now have an economy built to assure high corporate profitability even when it’s operating far below capacity and when most families and workers are faring poorly.”
This IS the “better economy” they promise us!
This better economy will never provide us with the jobs or the decent, comfortable life we need. And that is an outrage–because there is plenty of work to be done: roads and bridges that desperately need to be fixed, lighting to be upgraded and turned back on, housing and schools to be built. If we put everyone to work doing all the work that needs to be done to give people the decent life they deserve–we would have zero unemployment! More than that–wages would go up. Those of us forced to work overtime to make ends meet could have a reasonable work week.
The work is there. The wealth is there. And the need for jobs is certainly there. But capitalism will never bring all these together to provide us the life we need and deserve.
If anything shows us why the working class should fight to get rid of capitalism, that’s it!
Apr 1, 2013
Today, two cases on same-sex marriage are in the hands of a Supreme Court that has consistently ruled to reduce individual rights and increase inequality. The Supreme Court has upheld new restrictions on women’s right to choose, as well as the discrimination against women in the workplace. It has also effectively outlawed voluntary efforts of public schools to racially integrate and reduced the few environmental protections that still exist.
These kinds of rulings are consistent with what the Supreme Court has done throughout history with only a few very rare exceptions. The Supreme Court may pose as the upholder of basic rights and equality, but in reality it is one of the U.S. capitalist class’s key institutions to impose its rule on the workforce and population.
Certainly, up until slavery was abolished by the Civil War, the Supreme Court upheld its legality. In one of its most famous decisions, the 1858 Dred Scott case, Chief Justice Roger B. Taney, along with six other justices, ruled that the Constitution “distinctly and expressly affirmed” the right to property in slaves. According to Taney, Black people were “beings of an inferior order, and altogether unfit to associate with the white race ... and so far inferior, that they had no rights which the white man was bound to respect.” That was how these supposed “enlightened” and “esteemed” justices justified such barbarism.
Then, following the Civil War and the period of Reconstruction, the Southern planter class and Northern capitalists returned the newly freed black population to another form of servitude through the violence and lynching that accompanied the Jim Crow laws. In its sweeping 1896 Plessy v. Ferguson decision, the Supreme Court upheld that, also. Of course, Jim Crow was not just aimed at the black population, but poor white workers and farmers, by dividing the workforce against itself. These laws were a tool to break and weaken social movements and fights of the poor and the oppressed. The justices cynically justified Jim Crow by claiming that black people were supposedly treated “separate but equal.”
When workers dared rebel and go on strike against harsh working conditions and impoverishment imposed by the capitalists, the Supreme Court came down firmly on the side of the capitalists. Starting in 1895, the Supreme Court upheld labor injunctions by companies that effectively outlawed big strikes and authorized the use of police, private police, National Guard and U.S. troops to violently smash those strikes. Between 1880 and 1930 courts issued 4,300 injunctions for big companies–all with the Supreme Court’s blessings.
Even the most basic legal rights and protections, supposedly guaranteed by the Constitution and Declaration of Independence, went right out the window during periods of war and crisis. During World War I, the Supreme Court upheld the arrest and imprisonment of those who dared speak out to oppose the war. In one famous case, the Supreme Court upheld the 10-year prison term against prominent labor leader and Socialist Party Presidential Candidate Eugene V. Debs, simply because he gave a speech opposing the war. Then, 25 years later, during World War II, the Supreme Court upheld the internment in concentration camps of 160,000 Japanese-Americans.
Of course, there have been certain exceptions, when the Supreme Court ruled the other way. In 1937, for example, the U.S. Supreme Court did not strike down the Social Security Act of 1935, which many had expected, given the court’s thoroughly reactionary record. But the ruling took place in the midst of a powerful workers’ movement, which included general strikes and sit-down strikes. The Roosevelt administration and many big capitalists sought to curtail these movements by granting some limited concessions to the elderly, unemployed and poor. So, when they agreed to grant the basic right not to starve to death for the first time in this country’s history–the U.S. Supreme Court did not oppose it. Above all, because Social Security was never a big protection.
Later, after a number of openly reactionary rulings during World War II and the McCarthy period, the Supreme Court finally reversed its open support of Jim Crow segregation, most dramatically in its 1954 Brown v. Board of Education ruling. This reversal was not because the members of the court suddenly woke up and decided that segregation was “immoral.” No, what changed the court’s mind was a black mobilization that was gaining momentum, especially with the return of hundreds of thousands of black veterans following World War II and the Korean War. With the Brown decision, the Supreme Court began to pose as the black population’s long lost friend and ally. Of course, the Supreme Court also stated that segregation should be “ended” with “all deliberate speed,” which gave the legal opening to the segregationists to drag their feet for decades. Black people still could rely only on their own struggle and not on the Supreme Court.
On January 22, 1973, after a decade of vast social struggles, in which women played a key role, the Court finally issued Roe v. Wade–the ruling that has stood ever since as the symbol of women’s freedom, banning Texas, and de facto the other states and the federal government, from “unwarranted” intervention in a woman’s decision concerning abortion. Sweeping as the decision appeared to be, it also came with big limits. The Supreme Court ruled in such a way as to leave the legal door open for new limits on this basic right–and those began almost immediately. As soon as Roe v. Wade was issued, it was already being eroded–including in later decisions by the Supreme Court itself. Obviously, restricting the rights of working class women and the poor is a bedrock of capitalist domination of the society.
This proved once again that the Supreme Court does not guarantee any rights, that the only rights people have are those right they are ready to fight to defend.
Apr 1, 2013
The U.S. Supreme Court is deliberating on the constitutionality of a federal law that defines marriage as the union of a man and a woman. This law, called the Defense of Marriage Act, was passed in 1996.
While the Supreme Court Justices pontificate, it is likely they will dodge a political bullet by referring the issue back to the states arena, where right-wing forces are making it a focus. The battle for fundamental individual rights will have to be carried out in state, after state, after state.
In the meantime, it is an ongoing outrage that gay and lesbian couples are being denied protection under the 1,000 plus different federal laws that confer legal and financial rights to opposite-sex married couples. The denial of these rights is inflicting daily harm: Couples are being denied rights to health care, inheritance protection and guardianship of children; and making medical decisions for partners in hospice. The plaintiff in the Supreme Court case, Edith Windsor, now 83, was forced to pay $360,000 in inheritance taxes when her partner Thea Spyer died, because their union of 40 years was not legally recognized.
It’s absurd that someone needs to be legally married to enjoy these rights in the first place. Millions of individuals are today in civil unions that are no less committed than legal marriages, and these couples are denied all protections under the law. So it is even more absurd that in a society that demands marriage, some people are kept from marrying the companion of their choice, whatever their sexual orientation.
Apr 1, 2013
Hundreds protested on March 25 in Fargo, North Dakota as state legislators passed the most restrictive anti-abortion laws in the country. The governor signed these bills into law immediately.
Included was an especially draconian “fetal heartbeat law,” banning all abortions at roughly six weeks, the point at which an invasive vaginal ultrasound might detect a fetal heartbeat. The abortion option will be closed earlier than a woman may even know she is pregnant!
Because Roe v. Wade allowed for restrictions on abortion, the strategy of Taliban-like legislators in North Dakota is to increase restrictions until abortion is effectively outlawed.
New restrictions include: a ban on abortion for a “genetic abnormality”; a requirement that doctors have inpatient hospital privileges to perform outpatient abortions; a law banning medication-induced early abortions; and a measure to put a “personhood” constitutional amendment on the state ballot, giving a fertilized egg legal rights.
“North Dakota politicians are now leading what appears to be a nationwide competition among anti-choice extremists to see who can do the most to strip women of their ... autonomy and endanger their lives,” said Nancy Northrup of the Center for Reproductive Rights.
According to Slate Magazine, “If North Dakota’s new abortion bans go into effect, it could create an 800-mile section of the Great Plains with no legal abortion provider.”
Court battles are planned by advocacy groups to overturn the legislation. North Dakota has deep pockets if there is a long legal fight. The state has nearly a two billion dollar budget surplus, due to a current oil boom.
According to the North Dakota governor who signed the bill: “This bill is ... a legitimate attempt by a state legislature to discover the boundaries of Roe v. Wade.”
No, governor, this attack on women and their right to self-determination is illegitimate and repulsive!
Apr 1, 2013
This article is from the March 15th issue of Lutte Ouvrière (Workers Struggle), the paper of the revolutionary workers group of that name active in France.
Two years after the Fukushima nuclear reactor disaster caused by the earthquake and tsunami that ravaged the coast of Japan, the situation is worse than ever. The Japanese nuclear industry can be described as irresponsible and corrupt, lured on by the hope of profit, completely silent about the dangers the inhabitants of the region continue to face.
Large public works companies were given the decontamination job, chosen only because they knew the right people in the government. They still send out workers to the reactor site, using shovels and brooms on radioactive materials, because these are cheaper than using machines. Three thousand workers take turns day and night, putting a few inches of dirt and branches into trash bags and trash cans. This nuclear waste is unmonitored, and no one knows where to put it. So far, the job of decontamination is only 15% complete. A manager of Tepco, the company that had run the nuclear facility, claimed he planned to throw radioactive water from Fukushima into the Pacific–as if it were only a drop of water in the ocean! No one has any idea what to do with the contaminated water.
The workers doing the decontamination are employed by Tepco or by its sub-contractors. Even the Japanese mafia sent some workers. Some are paid half of what construction workers get. They work under conditions that endanger their health and safety and are completely illegal. A third of the workers don’t even have a labor contract. They remain on the site until the radiation they’ve absorbed amounts to 100 millisieverts, the maximum permitted dose. Some bosses force their workers to cover the radiation device they wear to hide the dose they’ve received. The Minister of Health says more than 200 workers have been exposed beyond the limit of radiation, but in truth, a lot more have been overexposed.
It will take years for the real impact of this disaster on the health of the inhabitants of the Fukushima region to be accurately measured. But the real extent of the damage will only be known if health organizations and the Japanese government are completely candid about the situation–which is not what’s happening right now.
A more immediate problem for the people evacuated from a radius of 12 miles around the reactor is compensation. Businesses that furnished faulty materials–General Electric, Hitachi and Toshiba–deny they have any responsibility. Tepco claims it is impossible to pay for the damage caused by its irresponsibility. The Japanese government nationalized Tepco in June 2012, assuming the cost of compensation, but is reluctant to pay up.
Even though the tsunami swept away their homes, the inhabitants are asked for documentation! The 160,000 displaced people have received only a fraction of what they were supposed to get. What they’ve gotten is so little they cannot begin a new life or even live on it. And those who don’t want to return to the region, afraid for their health and their children’s, they have no right to any compensation if they move out of the area without being compelled to do so by the government.
Will there one day be a return to normal at Fukushima? Will the Japanese population feel truly safe from a repetition of such a catastrophe? No, not so long as nuclear energy remains in the hands of cheats, liars, and irresponsible idiots who grab more money by scrimping on safety, protected by a complicit state. This is true for the Japanese nuclear industry and it’s the same everywhere in the world, where production is controlled by a handful of profiteers who put profit before the lives of the entire population.
Apr 1, 2013
This editorial is from the March 29th issue of Lutte Ouvrière (Workers Struggle), the newspaper of the revolutionary workers group of that name active in France.
The second biggest bank on the island of Cyprus went bankrupt, showing the seriousness of the financial crisis that continues to flare up in one place after another. The fact that Cyprus, the smallest country in the euro zone, threatened an explosion of the euro and the fear of a general bank crash shows that we are sitting on a financial volcano.
The European leaders tried to extinguish the Cypriot fire by proposing to tax bank deposits, including those of ordinary people. It blew up on them: The announcement of this tax plunged the entire system into chaos!
A thunderclap struck, not only from the Cypriots, who rose up against this extortion, but also from the financial world, which feared the move would unleash a general failure of confidence in the banks. A short time after this measure was announced, it was abandoned.
The heads of State were completely overtaken by the situation. No one knew what was going to happen when the Cypriot banks were to reopen after a week.
The European leaders are pretending that their new plan is attacking Cyprus’ tax haven and protecting small savers. They now want to give themselves a virtuous appearance. What cynicism! Small savers won’t be taxed on their accounts, but they’ll be taxed in another way, since, on an island with less than a million people, the thousands of layoffs expected in the banking sector will be a catastrophe. As in Greece and Spain, some austerity leads to more austerity.
It’s ridiculous for the French finance minister to say that the new plan attacks the “casino economy” because it’s necessary to make the big Russian accounts pay. The whole world economy is a casino economy, and the bet on Cyprus is just the latest wager.
For years now, the entire capitalist class has dedicated a growing part of what it takes from the exploitation of the workers and public funds to speculation, instead of investing in production. This is what’s feeding the financial volcano.
The capitalist economy is the reign of anarchic competition, a war for markets and profits that can only lead to crises. The “bailout plans” are so much blustering about, where State leaders do what the financiers demand of them. They refinance banks, in reality, speculation, with billions of dollars, while imposing drastic austerity leading to unjust and criminal levies on the poorest.
In all countries where bailouts have occurred, unemployment has exploded, small businesses have shut down, retirees and workers have been reduced to misery and the economies have plunged into depression. The remedy is worse than the disease!
This policy is carried out by right wing as well as left wing administrations all across Europe, for they can’t imagine disobeying the true masters of the economy, the capitalists. Their only concern is to fatten the pockets of the richest and save their profits and wealth–even when they are dangerous speculators, even when the economy and society die from their actions.
But the workers, the principal victims of such an unjust and mad system, aren’t condemned to suffer. They have their numbers and the fact that they make the entire economy run. It means returning to the values of the workers’ movement, for workers need not only to defend themselves, but also to become aware that they have the force, the social power to take power from the bourgeoisie and its political puppets and to expropriate big capital which is leading society to catastrophe.
Communists have always affirmed, “The emancipation of the workers will be the work of the workers themselves.” This objective is necessary not only for all the exploited but for the entire society.
Apr 1, 2013
In Spain, the entire country continues to mobilize against “desahucios,” that is, against evictions of homeowners who can no longer pay their mortgages. Unemployment, job insecurity, and wage cuts are the cause.
The current legislation makes it possible for banks to initiate legal proceedings against people who can no longer make their monthly payments, which continue to go up as variable interest rates rise. If after several months the borrower is insolvent, they can be evicted from their home and the housing is turned over to the bank that issued the mortgage.
But even worse than being put out in the street, those evicted are not free from the mortgage debt. Nor is any family member who co-signed for the mortgage loan. All are responsible to continue to repay the loan on a home to which they no longer have the keys! The bank can even resell the home.
Only the poorest, most isolated individuals with no relatives can get free of this debt after foreclosure. This horrible phenomenon, creating misery for hundreds of thousands of people, has continued to develop along with the economic crisis. The banks now have a huge real estate inventory, recovered thanks to a truly revolting law. It’s no wonder that the mobilization against it has continued over the past two years, with broad support in the population.
Growing protests demand that families remain in their homes. Many have raised their voice against the fact that the debt to the banks is not ended when the keys are turned over. A petition calling for a change in this law has been signed by almost a million and a half people.
The Spanish government says it will consider a reform of the law, but without committing itself to anything. The banks are opposing any proposal that lets homeowners off the hook. If homeowners don’t pay back, the banks will be on the hook for these “toxic assets,” that is, the so-called non-creditworthy loans.
As has been true for some years now, the situation of the Spanish working class continues to deteriorate. It’s no surprise that the number of those determined to back down the government and the banks is increasing.
Apr 1, 2013
The banks of Cyprus are being “rescued” by taking depositors’ savings away from depositors and using those funds to bail out the banks! Those banks had encouraged everyone to think that banks were safe places to keep money.
In this country we are also told that banks are safe, because deposits are insured by the FDIC. Well, until the FDIC decides otherwise, that is.
If U.S. banks need an emergency bailout, there appears to be at least one legal loophole available to grab depositors’ money. The FDIC can order that deposits be converted to equity in the bank. Presto! Equity is not insured, and disappears when a failing bank needs rescuing.
Funny how insecure this so-called “security system” turned out to be!
Apr 1, 2013
A disabled Iraq War veteran, Tomas Young of Kansas City, is near death. Before entering hospice, he wrote a powerful open letter to former President George W. Bush and ex-Vice President Dick Cheney, accusing them of war crimes. He addressed them in part as follows:
"I write not because I think you grasp the terrible human and moral consequences of your lies, manipulation and thirst for wealth and power. I write this letter because, before my own death, I want to make it clear that I, and hundreds of thousands of my fellow veterans, along with millions of my fellow citizens, along with hundreds of millions more in Iraq and the Middle East, know fully who you are and what you have done. You may evade justice but in our eyes you are each guilty of egregious war crimes, of plunder and, finally, of murder, including the murder of thousands of young Americans—my fellow veterans—whose future you stole."
The 33-year-old, who was in Phil Donahue’s 2007 documentary “Body of War,” drew a clear and powerful picture of the Iraq war and Cheney and Bush’s responsibility for it. The same picture could be drawn of the Afghanistan war–and of the Obama administration’s culpability in continuing both wars.
Young’s reflections on the war are an invaluable voice of truth for U.S. soldiers caught in the nightmare of war.
Apr 1, 2013
Health care spending data for 2012 has been published by the International Federation of Health Plans. It shows exactly what has been true for as long as the data has been published: in the U.S. we pay many times what people pay in other rich countries on health care.
All health care spending in the U.S. amounts to one dollar out of every six of the yearly Gross Domestic Product. The average of the other rich countries in the world amounts to one dollar out of every eleven.
Just as bad is the power of the insurance companies to set prices and pay different amounts for exactly the same health care. Within the U.S., the range of prices can be four times as much or even TEN times as much—for exactly the same item in health care.
Does anyone need more proof of the idiocy of a health care system on which we are forced to spend so much merely to maintain the obscene profits of this industry?
Apr 1, 2013
President Obama made a starting offer to Republicans on cutting Medicare: he could agree to combine Medicare Part A, which covers hospital services, with Part B, which covers doctor services.
If enacted, it would mean deductibles that are currently separate for the two service types would be combined into one. Those Medicare recipients who use only doctor services, currently 80 per cent of the total, would have higher out-of-pocket expenses, since they would have to spend more to fulfill the deductible.
Obama’s “opening” offer on cutting Medicare is already a huge attack on the elderly population. But it is just the opening wedge, not the end, of what will be a much larger attack by Democrats and Republicans working together.
It’s obvious how big this attack will be from the fact that Obama plans to use a “two-tier” approach to getting the public to accept it. Officials in his administration are saying the changes would only apply to people becoming eligible after 2016.
As it is, Medicare already leaves retired people paying a greater share of their own income on health care today than they did before Medicare was passed. Obama’s proposal threatens to make them pay even more. These proposals amount to euthanasia by out-of-pocket payments!
Health care should be a right, not a privilege–and especially for older people as their health declines. But that won’t happen as long as the politicians who serve the interests of the wealthy are holding the purse-strings.
Apr 1, 2013
Governor Snyder got his way by appointing an Emergency Manager over Detroit. The citizens of Michigan voted against having this type of dictator just last November. Yet Snyder and the Michigan legislature ignored that.
And according to M-live (a website) on 3/26, “A majority of Detroit voters oppose the state takeover of city government. Poll results showed that 59 percent of likely Detroit voters either strongly oppose or somewhat oppose Governor Rick Snyder’s appointment [of an emergency manager].”
So much for the fiction of “democracy” and “majority rule”!
Apr 1, 2013
California’s community colleges have fewer students than at any other time in the past 20 years, a new study by the Public Policy Institute of California found.
It’s not because there is less demand. The college-age population has been growing in California, and community colleges would have served 600,000 more students if the enrollment rate of the 2008-09 school year had continued. But community colleges have been turning away tens of thousands of students every year, because they have laid off teachers and eliminated classes.
That’s the result of budget cuts in the state’s education funding, which community colleges heavily depend on. Between 2006-07 and 2011-12, community-college funding fell from $6,700 per student to $5,100 per student, a 24 per cent drop. Taking into account the drop in enrollment, that corresponds to a 42 per cent cut in overall funding in five years!
College officials allow continuing students and students with better grades to sign up for classes first. So those being pushed out first are working-class people: workers who are trying to go back to school to advance their knowledge and skills, and young people from working-class neighborhoods who don’t get a good education in K-12.
Governor Jerry Brown now says he wants to send community colleges their funding at the end of the semester, not at the beginning–which would force college officials to cut even more classes. And Brown is pushing for charging students who have already completed 90 units $190 per unit instead of $46–that is, four times more. That kind of fee increase would especially target workers who want to go back to school to learn a trade.
This is the same governor who pushed for, and won, a sales-tax increase from voters last November, with the promise that he would put more money into education.
Instead, Brown is leading the charge in this ruthless attack on working people. And the governor and his fellow Democrats can no longer blame the cuts on the Republicans either, since Democratic Governor Brown now also has a Democratic “super-majority” in the state legislature.
Apr 1, 2013
Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s school board released its Hit List of 61 schools on Thursday: Sixty-one schools that will close, be forced to share a building, or have their entire staff fired. This is more than double the number of schools Emanuel closed last year, and is reported to be the largest single school closing event in the U.S.
CPS (Chicago Public Schools) continues to peddle nonsense as its justification: The school board is broke, and by closing schools, it will save money. The Board is lying on both counts.
Almost every year for the past decade, the Board has announced a deficit as high as one billion dollars. When the year is over, more often than not, the Board announces a surplus. This past year was no different. By the Board’s own count, the closings will save only around 50 million dollars a year–a very small portion of their supposed billion dollar “deficit.”
These savings don’t take into account the new safety measures they’ll need to add. One of the main issues parents and students raise is sending students across gang boundaries when schools close–and the conflict and violence that inevitably follows.
Ninety per cent of the students in the schools to close are black; in the 100 schools closed since 2001, 88 percent of the students affected were black. Black students make up only 42 percent of the school enrollment in the city overall.
And, most of the schools are in hard-hit areas of the city’s South and West sides–neighborhoods where jobs are scarce, and where boarded-up homes have appeared in greater and greater number since the financial crisis.
Emanuel and the Board say these schools are “under-enrolled,” and that the population in these neighborhoods has decreased. This is another lie. A first-grade teacher in one school slated to close says she has 22 students in her classroom, and said, “I even think there should be a better ratio just because of the needs of 5- and 6- and 7-year-olds. We’re fortunate to have 22 in the sense that other schools have over 30, but I still think it’s really criminal.” A parent at another school said, “This is the first time in a long time this school has actually got a reasonable amount of kids in the classrooms.”
A reasonable amount–that is what the CPS considers “under-utilized!”
Certainly, many black people have moved out of the city–because they’ve been pushed out. Pushed out by closing public housing, and pushed out by the very policy of school closings, which has been going on for more than a decade.
During that same decade, the Board has added more than 100 charter schools, and is adding six more charters this year. Many charter schools move into the buildings vacated by closed public schools. Since 2006, public school enrollment is down by 55,000 students–and 53,000 have gone into charter schools.
So we see what this is: a way to privatize public education, to drive down costs, and to attack teachers–teachers whose strike last fall pushed the city to spend more on public education.
The Board proposes to add boarded-up schools in neighborhoods already littered with boarded-up homes and boarded-up storefronts. All to free up more public funds for the bankers and other private interests. It is a racist assault on public services that working people in Chicago are right to condemn.
Apr 1, 2013
On the same day that Detroit’s Emergency Financial Manager started work, some billionaire and millionaire businessmen held a press conference announcing their 8 million dollar “gift” to the city. This “gift from the corporate community” will be used to buy a new fleet of ambulances and 100 new police cars.
Mayor Dave Bing said, “I want to thank all of you in the business community for the contributions you’ve made for the city to be safe and active.”
Safe and active for them, Bing must mean. For these businessmen are none other than the people whose own enterprises have been showered with money, land, and tax breaks by Detroit politicians over the years. Money, in fact, stolen from the population so that the city is in a state of financial collapse.
Dan Gilbert. Roger Penske. Executives from General Motors. Ford Motor Co., Chrysler, Blue Cross Blue Shield. While all stepped into the limelight to wear the hero halo, it is like a bank robber returning a few rolls of coins from the heist!
Apr 1, 2013
More than 500 Detroit residents turned out for a meeting at the Historic King Solomon Baptist Church and another 100 or so attended a demonstration to voice the opposition to the city’s new Emergency Financial Manager. They were outraged that Michigan Governor Rick Snyder had the nerve to make the appointment in direct contradiction to a vote by the people of Michigan in November to overturn the state’s Emergency Manager law.
Many at the meeting and the demonstration drew the comparison between the state’s use of emergency managers and the old Jim Crow system of the South–and they are exactly right. With one exception, all the cities and school districts in the state where emergency managers were appointed are majority black.
White working people would be fools to believe that what is being done to black communities and school districts will not affect them. Jim Crow meant lower wages and working conditions for white workers in the South, every bit as much as for black workers.
In just the same way, the attacks on public worker wages and benefits and cuts to social services being imposed in Detroit will eventually spread to other cities and school districts.
Unless, that is, working class people band together despite city boundaries to stop them.