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 15, 2013
Under the guise of balancing the budget, President Barack Obama has taken the lead in spearheading an outrageous attack on the U.S. population, and most markedly, on senior citizens. In the most reactionary of proposals, he has proposed cuts in income to elders while at the same time raising costs for their medical coverage.
Of course the President is not alone in drafting his wish list: This is an old agenda that both Republicans and Democrats have been dreaming of for years. In fact, Obama laid the groundwork for his proposal last year in what were called “private deficit reduction talks” with John A. Boehner, speaker of the House. In fact, these two powerful leaders of both parties reached a basic agreement that the costs of the budget deficit would be put squarely on the backs of the population. Their only problem was how to do it in a way that would avoid a general outcry on the part of the population that could damage political careers or even perhaps lead to social mobilization.
But now, with the elections safely over, the gloves come off. Under the guise of balancing the budget, Obama loudly demanded higher taxes on the rich in exchange for cuts to the Social Security and Medicare programs.
What an elaborate charade! According to the press, even some Republicans called the proposal a shocking attack on seniors. (Not the Speaker of the House, Boehner, however, who mumbled something about Obama making a “decent” start on the problem.)
No one believes a word about the higher taxes on the rich: Hell, they have paid next to nothing in taxes as private individuals as far back as the Reagan administration. Their corporations pay even less. While working people may pay 25 to 33 percent of their income, the IRS has allowed these corporate giants to pay a tiny portion of a low percentage of 3 or 4 percent in taxes on billions of dollars. Some huge corporations even get refunds!
No, the only ones getting a tax increase are the poor and working people who got an added 2 percent hike in Social Security taxes; that is, a 2 percent reduction in current income, every day.
While the demand for taxes on the rich will be dropped along the way, you better believe that the cuts proposed for Social Security and Medicare will stay on the table.
More outrageous still, all of these lying politicians are well aware that the costs of Medicare and Social Security do not have any part in increasing or decreasing the Federal deficit! Social Security and Medicare programs are funded by direct taxation of the population on every dime earned. Social Security and Medicare both are paid out of trust funds that have accumulated huge resources over time. These funds are not depleted: far from it! The Social Security fund has been running at a SURPLUS for years. The funding for these two programs had NOTHING to do with the deficit that the Federal Government racked up.
All of these lying politicians know this. Deficit? Look to where the money really went. It is going to pay the costs of the outrageous wars the U.S. has carried out against Iraq and Afghanistan for more than ten years: wars that decimate the populations of these countries and destroy generations of U.S. workers while bringing nothing of value. Oh, but the war contractors have gotten fabulously rich in the process, haven’t they?
And what about the bailouts to the banks? Seven hundred billion dollars given to Wall Street in one gift alone from the U.S. Treasury; money that had to be borrowed from the very banks that received it back with no controls, no demands on how the money would be used. Money that threw the economy into a tailspin and created a deficit unprecedented in world history.
Finally, there is the outright gift to the wealthy of increased tax breaks. Taxes that were previously demanded were eliminated, leaving the most able to pay with little or no obligation.
The proposal to cut the Social Security and Medicare entitlements has nothing to do with paying the debt. If they wanted the debt paid, they would demand the money from the banks and those who stole it, increase taxes on the rich, and stop the wars.
This latest attack by the Democratic and Republican government bodies against the working class makes clear who the government represents. And it certainly isn’t the working class. They work for the wealthy capitalists and the bankers.
So why should we listen to them? Why should we pay the price they demand?
These cuts in Social Security and Medicare will certainly happen unless the working class fights back. The politicians up to now have been afraid they may push us over the edge. Every president since Roosevelt has been afraid to go this far.
Let’s show them that their fears are warranted, and that we are already over the edge when it comes to taking any more abuse.
Apr 15, 2013
Kevyn Orr is a hot-shot lawyer picked by Michigan Governor Snyder to be the emergency financial dictator over the city of Detroit. Orr is from the Wall Street law firm of Jones Day, lawyers to the very wealthy and to all the major banks. In fact, Jones Day advises Bank of America Merrill Lynch–which just happens to hold the municipal bonds of Detroit!
All the officials say there is no conflict of interest, because Orr has temporarily resigned from the firm and put his stock in trust. Ha!
What they really mean is they all agree that the banks should be protected at all costs!
And they want that cost to be paid by the workers and the poor of Detroit.
Apr 15, 2013
Boats are running aground in the Great Lakes because the big ports and channels haven’t been dredged. There should be money to dredge. In fact, the trust fund responsible for this activity has a surplus on paper of six billion dollars.
But like other trust funds–Social Security and highways, for example–the money was used in gifts to the banks and corporations.
No wonder the infrastructure is falling apart!
Apr 15, 2013
Six months after opening toll lanes on one of Los Angeles’s most congested freeways, officials admitted that the toll lanes have actually slowed down traffic in the other lanes–the opposite of what they had promised.
For the privilege of using the fast lanes on the 110 Freeway, drivers have to buy a transponder for $40, pay a $3 fee on top of it every month, and then, for each one-way trip, they have to pay a toll between $4 and $15 (the price is higher when there are more cars on the freeway). And those who refuse to pay all this money are punished with an even slower daily commute than before!
Of course, the extra congestion is not a surprise–especially since officials are using the former car-pool lanes as toll lanes. Carpoolers can still use those lanes without a toll, but they must buy a transponder and pay the monthly fees–which many have chosen not to do.
Los Angeles is not alone. Eighteen metropolitan areas in nine states are charging tolls for “freeway” lanes. It’s another way for public officials to charge extra money for services they are supposed to provide.
Apr 15, 2013
Manipulating the cost-of-living allowance is the favorite way that politicians have already cut Social Security benefits. One economist, John Williams of ShadowStats, has demonstrated that previous changes in the cost-of-living formula have already cut the real value of benefits by more than half since the 1970s.
The politicians have cut Social Security benefits in other ways as well. They have pushed back by six months the month when the government pays the cost-of-living allowance increase. They are gradually raising the official retirement age from 65 to 67 years old. They are increasing the premium for Medicare Part B, which is deducted from Social Security checks, much faster than the yearly cost-of-living increase for Social Security. And they added a tax to Social Security benefits when the retiree’s annual income is over $25,000 counting Social Security. Estimates are that these changes cut Social Security benefits that beneficiaries actually receive by another 20 per cent.
For retirees and their families, it’s death by a thousand cuts.
Already, the average Social Security benefit has been pushed down so far that it is barely above the poverty line. People work their whole lives, then help build up the wealth of society–only to be plagued by destitution and want in their last years. And this in a society oozing money. Outrageous!
Apr 15, 2013
In the 2014 Budget proposal, President Barack Obama has proposed to shrink Social Security cost-of-living increases. Over 10 years these cuts would amount to a 3 percent reduction in benefits–or close to $500 per year for those collecting the average benefit. In 20 years, it would mean a 6 percent reduction, or close to $1,000 per year!
He is also proposing 392 billion dollars in cuts to Medicare and other health care funding over the next 10 years. While the details of these proposals are not yet clear, to date these proposals include combining deductibles and copays from Medicare A and Medicare B together. This would result in increased costs to Medicare recipients as the much larger costs of deductibles and copays for hospitalization services are added to the lower costs of physician treatment. The government certainly intends to take these larger percentages of money for Medicare directly out of retirees’ Social Security benefits.
The administration says that they will give retirees a small increase in Social Security at age 76 after they have depleted their pension and savings to offset the impoverishment that these measures will bring. Promises, promises: Don’t hold your breath.
Apr 15, 2013
For electoral purposes, Republicans in Michigan’s state legislature are holding hostage the health care of the working poor. They are refusing to pass Republican Governor Snyder’s request to expand Medicaid to those who are below 138 percent of the federal poverty level. By doing so, they are turning down up to two billion dollars in new federal money to pay for that expansion. This hurts almost half a million people in Michigan who could qualify for this potentially life-saving health insurance.
The Medicaid expansion would allow individuals earning less than $16,000 a year to be eligible, in addition to a family of four who make less than $31,500. Imagine blocking aid to individuals or families at this low income scale!
Certainly, aspects of Obamacare WILL cost working people more money in the future, but this is not one of those aspects. Expanding Medicaid will benefit working people.
As well, the 2014 budget proposed by the governor already counted on federal money coming from the Medicaid expansion. Without that money, new initiatives to provide dental care for low income children, mental health and substance abuse services for veterans and a program to prevent infant mortality would not receive funding either.
Republican legislators are playing politics because expanding Medicaid requires them to accept the federal Affordable Care Act (ACA), often called Obamacare. Most of the current crop of Republicans will be up for re-election and are currently not “term-limited.” So for their own selfish political reasons they are NOT wanting to vote for it. In front of their Tea Party voters, they do not want to be seen as supporting anything having to do with Obamacare.
Apr 15, 2013
Caterpillar says it will lay off up to 300 workers at its Milwaukee area factories that build some of the biggest mining machines in the world. This announcement comes two weeks before their contract with the United Steel Workers union expires and is obviously an attempt to intimidate the workers.
Caterpillar had 5.7 billion dollars in profits last year. We need to prohibit layoffs, to protect the vital jobs of workers and undercut such tactics!
Apr 15, 2013
David Cote, the CEO of Honeywell, got 16.3 million dollars in pay last year. Assuming he worked 10 hours a day–it takes time to get to the country club to meet customers!–that comes to $6,269 per hour. This is the going rate for parasites at the top of big companies.
Apr 15, 2013
The L.A. Times recently quoted a worker who said, “Managers say, if you don’t want to work, you can leave, but there are hundreds of people waiting for a job.”
Using this threat, companies squeeze more work out of each worker and reduce the number of workers. As a result, the rate of profit companies make per worker has risen 34 percent since 2004.
Think of how many more workers could be employed–at decent wages–if that 34 percent were put to meet our needs and not their profits!
Apr 15, 2013
Margaret Thatcher, former prime minister of Great Britain, died at age 87. Her death prompted just as many expressions of hatred as of support, at least in Britain. The “Iron Lady”–as a Russian newspaper nicknamed her in 1976 after a particularly nasty anti-Soviet speech–remains, in the eyes of the working classes, the major figure behind an offensive by big capital. Since the early 1980’s, this attack has continued to deepen social inequalities, with all of the devastating effects we see today.
In 1975, after sixteen years of a rather dull political career, Thatcher was elected leader of the Conservative Party. This happened almost by accident, since she was put forward as a diversionary candidate by the party’s right wing. Four years later, during the 1979 legislative elections, she became Prime Minister following her party’s victory. She quickly moved to show how “tough” she was, letting ten Irish political prisoners die during a hunger strike. Her surge forward on the basis of a populist chauvinism allowed her to be reelected in 1983 in the wake of the Falklands War (between Britain and Argentina.) She was then reelected in 1987. Finally, in 1990, a movement was provoked by a new tax, the “poll tax,” that was particularly unjust on the working class. This situation gave the same right-wing factions of the party that had brought her to power a pretext to force her to resign from her post.
When she became Prime Minister, Thatcher had to deal with the legacy of the previous five years of a Labor Party government. During these years, the leaders of the unions, discredited by their support for the government’s austerity policies, had been continuously outflanked by wildcat strikes. This had come to a climax with the “winter of discontent” of 1978-1979 and its six months of strikes, which started in the auto industry and went on to paralyze the public sector.
Prudently, Thatcher avoided taking on the workers directly, instead pressuring the union bureaucracies. In the fall of 1979, the leader of the English employers’ association, who was close to Thatcher, pushed through an agreement with the Trades Union Congress (TUC). The agreement required the TUC to put an end to all strikes of solidarity, to limit the size of the picket lines, and to restrain the role of the delegates elected by workers. One year later, this agreement became the first anti-strike law passed by Thatcher’s government. This law was reinforced in 1982 when another law passed requiring advance notice and absentee voting for every strike movement. The law made the union apparatuses legally responsible for “damages” resulting from any strike conducted illegally by their members.
In reality, these anti-strike laws were only used by the government much later, and only in a small number of cases. But these laws remain to this day the main argument of the union bureaucracies to justify their inaction in the face of the bosses’ attacks. In this way, Thatcher succeeded in getting the union leaders to police their own ranks. Still, large strikes marked this period, although working-class combativeness was gradually tamed: a strike of 14 weeks in the steel industry in 1980, 12 months in the mines in 1984-1985, and 13 months in the London print shops in 1986–to name only the most important. These strikes ended in defeat–because the government stood against them, of course, but also and above all, because of the strictly corporatist character that the union leaders forced on the strikes.
Meanwhile, the TUC had changed with the ease of a chameleon, adapting to the new situation with a policy called “New Realism,” in favor of a new “partnership” with the bosses and their politicians.
The year 1985 and the defeat of the miners marked a turning point in Thatcher’s rule. She had forced working class fights to retreat; then her government openly set about its goal of rejuvenating the profits of big capital. After decades of under-investment and financial parasitism in Britain’s sphere of influence, profits were at their lowest when compared with other economies of similar size.
Between 1985 and 1987, a whole series of taxes affecting stockholders, businesses, and the richest taxpayers were eliminated or cut in half. The working classes paid for the state treasury’s deficit with an increase in indirect taxes, such as the value-added tax (VAT), a kind of sales tax.
Thatcher’s government began privatizing the public sector–one of the largest in Europe at the time–on an enormous scale by selling off enterprise after enterprise at rock-bottom prices. Millions of public housing units were also “privatized,” thereby causing the number of home loans to skyrocket, all to benefit the financial sector. By the same token, the way was cleared for the real estate bubble of the following decades and for the acute housing crisis that Britain is experiencing today.
At the same time, the City, the financial center of London, was the stage for what was termed the “Big Bang”–the financial deregulation that effectively allowed all the corporations to speculate directly on the financial markets. Due in part to the inflow of big American banks hoping to use the City as a European outpost, a huge inflation of London’s financial sector began, with all of the parasitism it implies for the rest of the economy.
This policy, known as “Thatcherism,” would anticipate what happened in the rest of the industrialized world. This same financialization took place in more or less the same way, under all governments, whether on the right or on the left, for the same reasons. Every government was attempting to halt the fall in profits resulting from the chronic crisis of the capitalist economy.
Thatcher was certainly a worthy servant of the British bourgeoisie, as the first one to put this policy into practice. But as soon as her task was carried out, her nasty reputation became a political threat. Thatcher provoked tens of thousands of demonstrators to descend into the streets in protest against the poll tax, so her former protectors quickly got rid of her. In fact, the power of the “Iron Lady” stood on feet of clay.
Apr 15, 2013
At the same time Margaret Thatcher was gaining her stride in attacking workers in Britain, U.S. President Ronald Reagan was confronting unionized labor.
More than 30 years ago, on August 2, 1981, Reagan threatened the Professional Air Traffic Controllers Organization, PATCO, with firing its 13,000 members for an “illegal strike.” Two days later, he fired 11,000 air traffic controllers, curtailing commercial air traffic in the U.S. until military controllers were brought into the towers of U.S. airports.
His action gave impetus to the bosses to do the same, with workers fired for striking at Phelps Dodge copper mines and at International Paper.
The results of Reagan’s move would be lower pay for air traffic controllers, worse stress in the control tower, less safe travel and more pressure on unionized workers not to strike. They were threatened with the same consequences as befell PATCO.
The attack of bosses and their governments against workers were international from the start.
Apr 15, 2013
The American news media is filled with reports of North Korean saber-rattling and threats against South Korea and the United States. Pundits discuss whether the U.S. might be forced into another war.
There’s saber-rattling going on alright–but it has been carried out by the United States itself. And if there is a war, it will be one started by the U.S.
The U.S. has had an aggressive stance toward North Korea for decades, ever since the Korean War. In that war, the U.S. carpet bombed North Korea, trying to bring it to heel. And ever since, the U.S. has tried to punish North Korea, making it difficult for the Koreans to trade with the rest of the world.
But in 2012, the Obama administration began stepping up and creating excuses for this aggression.
In April 2012, the U.S. called for additional sanctions against North Korea, claiming it had launched a ballistic missile test–even though all experts agreed that North Korea had actually launched an earth observation satellite into orbit, which is not at all related.
In October 2012, the U.S. granted South Korea an exemption under an international Missile Control treaty, permitting it to extend the range of its ballistic missiles to cover the entire territory of North Korea. That same month, the U.S. and South Korea agreed to a plan that called for joint operations against North Korea, meeting anything they wanted to call “provocation” with disproportionate force. The plan includes preemptive strikes on North Korean missile sites–in other words, a blank check to attack without provocation.
No wonder North Korea feels a little bit threatened!
In addition, the U.S. has pushed through UN resolutions tightening economic embargoes against North Korea–including prohibitions against trading with the country or doing business with its banks, or from allowing any bulk transfers of cash in or out of the country, completely cutting off North Korea economically from the rest of the world.
No surprise, North Korea decided to do a little saber-rattling of its own. It conducted a nuclear test (only its third ever) in February and made verbal threats against the U.S.
The Obama administration leapt on that test to “prove” that North Korea has nuclear ambitions and that it poses a threat to South Korea, the U.S., and the world. The U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency has declared it has “moderate confidence” that North Korea is making headway on its quest for a deliverable nuclear warhead. Never mind the fact that North Korea is a long way off from actually having nuclear weapons or from having any missiles that could deliver such weapons. Never mind the fact that the same Defense Intelligence Agency declared with certainty that Saddam Hussein had nuclear weapons a decade ago–which everyone now knows was a blatant, bare-faced lie!
It’s all an excuse for the U.S. to step up aggression against North Korea. Starting this past March, the U.S. and South Korea have been carrying out military exercises right off the coast of North Korea, including flyovers of nuclear-capable B-52 bombers. And the U.S. has moved more missile systems into Alaska and California, pointed at Korea–and all of Asia.
This is really what is going on: As it shifts its focus from Iraq and Afghanistan, the U.S. is increasing its military presence in Asia. Its purpose in doing so is to protect economic interests, U.S. corporate profits in the region. Ever since World War II, its overriding economic concern has been control of Asia.
The U.S. is trying to send a message to North Korea that it will not accept any independent maneuvering in the region; and it is also using its pressure on North Korea to increase its pressure on China and secure its cooperation as well.
The U.S. government and its media have painted Kim Jong-Un as a crazy bully. But for bullies, no one compares to the United States ruling class and its military.
Apr 15, 2013
Remember when the government said it would go after the banks and get help for the people who were stung in the sub-prime mortgage pyramid scheme? Well, their “help” is now revealed for the fraud that it is.
After the mortgage bubble burst in 2008, nationwide, the worth of homes evaporated. More than 11 million households were “underwater” by the end of 2011, and most of them still are. These homeowners had been tricked into buying overpriced homes with deceptive, fraudulent “adjustable” mortgage terms.
The collective losses of these 11 million homeowners came to more than 600 billion dollars. What was the government’s idea of “helping” those who lost so much?
Government regulators settled fraud charges against the banks for only a token 3.6 billion dollars, compared to those 600-billion-plus dollars in losses.
The first batch of checks to “help” defrauded homeowners were mailed April 12. Included were 568,476 checks for $300 each!
Three hundred dollars, to cover losses of tens of thousands of dollars? Only in a system owned and controlled by the banks could this be considered any form of justice!
Apr 15, 2013
In 2012 the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved 39 new prescription drugs, the highest number approved in 16 years. And 10 of these were approved through an FDA program allowing shorter, smaller or fewer clinical trials.
The new pathway makes it quicker for new drugs to be approved. And it allows drug manufacturers to lower their costs.
According to Public Citizen, an independent government watchdog group, two of the drugs approved on the fast-track in 2012 were for obesity, despite a task force recommendation against such drugs, and two other approved drugs had life-threatening side effects. Others of the drugs approved were “me-too” drugs. These variations on drugs that already exist included Stendra (avanafil), although it is simply a variation in the structure of a drug we know as Viagra.
Supposedly the industry is pushing to get faster and cheaper approval from the FDA in order to sell us medicines that “fill an unmet medical need.” Obviously, the “unmet need” the drug companies have is for profitable medicines that people will be convinced to take in huge quantities, preferably at high prices.
Apr 15, 2013
The court cases go on against BP, Halliburton, and Transocean for their liability in the 2010 Gulf Oil Spill. BP’s rig caught fire and killed 11 workers. Then it released massive oil pollution, impacting the livelihoods of tens of thousands in the Gulf of Mexico fishing industry.
Among other things, court testimony so far has revealed that rig managers ordered a gas alarm system disabled. They also did not install the required pipe systems to divert oil overflows off the rig.
And a Halliburton laboratory manager was told NOT to prepare the normal laboratory worksheet when he tested the well-sealing cement after the accident, and not to keep his lab notes. Better to have no evidence than to have evidence that the cement mix was unstable and likely to fail–as they knew.
For managers, this is nothing but normal everyday behavior. Every day, everywhere, workers are put at risk by similar dangerous actions by managers who are under the gun to make production, numbers, profits, and damn the consequences.
The only ones who are going to guarantee safe workplaces are the workers themselves. No one else is interested. Workers need to develop ways of managing their managers!
Apr 15, 2013
On March 21, Chinua Achebe died in the United States, where he had been teaching for many years at universities. His fame dates back to 1959, when his first book Things Fall Apart was published, to be read by millions around the world.
Achebe was one of the first African writers to reach a worldwide audience in the tumultuous decades following World War II. The growing sentiment for national independence spread, with wars raging in China, Malaysia, Viet Nam. Whole populations would shed “rivers of blood” to free themselves of colonial rule and to attempt to find political unity. In Africa, the British, French, German, Portuguese and Dutch colonial governments were forced to grant political independence after numerous struggles engulfed much of the continent.
Achebe, a Nigerian of the Ibo people, was born in 1930. While he knew the culture of the traditional animist Ibo, his father had converted to Christianity. Achebe received a typical British colonial education. His life would straddle both worlds.
His first novel looked without sentimentality at an Ibo man trying to find his way between traditions and some sort of accommodation to the invading Europeans who would use Christianity as a wedge. They wanted the control of enormous natural resources that could profit their corporations.
Achebe’s later works, No Longer at Ease, A Man of the People and other fictional accounts of a period of transition would cast a sharp satiric eye on “independent” African politicians. Often they became infamous for their venality, brutality and slavish adherence to pleasing their former political masters.
Achebe was not alone in depicting this period in Africa. A white South African, Alan Paton, would publish his look at apartheid Cry the Beloved Country in 1949 from abroad. It took longer for African writers to reach the rest of the world. Besides Achebe in 1959, in 1960 Ousmane Sembene published his novel God’s Bits of Wood, about a revolt of Senegalese railway workers against French colonialism. Also in the 1960s, books about African uprisings would take shape in other novels: the Mau Mau rebellion in Kenya against the British depicted by Ngugi wa Thiong’o, whose family took part in it; Ebrahim Hussein on the Tanzanian uprising against German colonialism. Naguib Mahfouz had written of the long battle for Egyptian independence from Britain since the 1950s.
Achebe was able to depict the old ways without condemnation, making the reader aware of its strengths in clan and family ties, but also its brutality, superstitions and rigidity about one’s place in life. He was among the first to point out that European colonial writers depicted Africans in false and condescending ways. He said of Conrad’s novel Heart of Darkness that the writer had treated “Africa to the role of props for the break-up of one petty European mind.” Achebe left a position he had with the Nigerian government when the Biafran war broke out, between the Ibo in the south of Nigeria and the mostly Muslim north.
The title of Things Fall Apart comes from W.B. Yeats’ poem of 1919, part of which reads:
“Things fall apart, the center cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world.
The blood dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.”
Achebe was well aware that Yeats was reacting to the horrific slaughter of World War I. Achebe also shows us how imperialist politics have had profound consequences for individuals.
Apr 15, 2013
Debt, averaging $27,000 throughout the country for student loans, is an enormous burden on a majority of students, even ones who have already left college–with or without a degree. As if that weren’t bad enough in these times of austerity, the interest rates on the loans are being allowed to double on July 1, thanks to Congress.
During the election campaign last year, Congress cried crocodile tears about the poor young people and voted to extend the lower interest rate. Now that the election is over, Congress is allowing the higher rate to kick in.
What is the result? The federal government expects to bring in 34 BILLION dollars from student loans being repaid in the next year–ripped off from young people who would not even be able to afford the current rates!
And Congress’s tears are nowhere to be seen.
Apr 15, 2013
Residents of the East Flatbush neighborhood of Brooklyn took part in a series of angry protests following the fatal shooting by police of Kimani Gray, a 16-year- old black youth, on March 9.
The cops claimed Gray had a gun, but he never fired any shots and was hit in the back by three of the 11 shots fired by the cops. The two cops involved were in plainclothes, and Gray’s friends say they didn’t even realize they were police and didn’t hear them say anything before the shooting. One eyewitness said Gray was unarmed and another said Gray was running away when the cops shot him.
The killing by the police of Gray is just the latest incident resulting from the racist NYPD practices of stop-and-frisk searches in poor areas of young Black and Latino men whose only crime is “Walking While Black.” The New York Civil Liberties Union says the number of stop-and-frisk actions recently surpassed the five million mark under the administration of New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg.
The two cops involved in Gray’s shooting also have a history of complaints against them. They have previously been sued a total of five times between the two of them for civil rights violations. Those are just the cases in which people involved were willing to take legal action against them!
The shooting in the back of an unarmed black youth who was fleeing is murder, plain and simple.
The protests which followed Gray’s death at least forced Bloomberg to go through the motions of an investigation, but if past history is any indication it will likely be swept under the rug once people cool down. It’s way past time to put a stop to the racist police brutality of the New York City cops!
Apr 15, 2013
A 26-year-old man with Down Syndrome was murdered in January because he wanted to sit through a second show in a movie theater in Frederick, Maryland. It started out innocently enough. On January 12th of this year Robert Ethan Saylor went to see the movie Zero Dark Thirty. After the movie his aide went to get the car. A theater employee called security when Saylor would not leave the theater or pay for another ticket.
Three off-duty sheriff deputies moonlighting as shopping mall security guards showed up. A struggle ensued. Witnesses heard Saylor cry out for his “mommy” when he was forced face down to the ground and handcuffed. The autopsy revealed many scratches, abrasions and bruises on Saylor’s body. While face down on the ground he went into respiratory distress and died. The Chief Medical Examiner’s Office in Baltimore, Maryland ruled Saylor’s death a homicide as a result of asphyxiation.
Despite this, the grand jury did not indict the three deputies. Of course not. The investigation was performed by the sheriff’s department–the very department the three deputies work for.
Apparently it takes three armed off-duty sheriff deputies to restrain one unarmed obviously disabled man. This was not an emergency. But the cops couldn’t wait patiently, nor listen to Saylor’s aide when she returned and attempted to de-escalate the situation. The only thing that mattered to the police was that Saylor was not cooperating with them–shoot first, ask questions later mentality.
Once again, it seems that the job of the police is to control, intimidate, terrorize–this time to defend a movie theater’s right to collect its $11.
Apr 15, 2013
Recently three women were murdered in horrific ways in the Detroit area by their estranged husbands or boyfriends.
On April 8, Lucinda Bailey was stabbed to death by her husband in their home in Inkster, Michigan. According to Bailey’s brother, she had tried to leave her husband several times after being repeatedly abused by him. After killing Bailey, her husband burned himself to death by getting into his pickup truck in the family garage and setting both the garage and the truck on fire.
On the same day, Lorian Joy Handy was shot to death in her home in White Lake Township by her husband, who then shot himself to death. Their 8-year-old son fled from the house to a neighbor.
A day later, Sharita Williams was shot to death by her estranged boyfriend on her job as a receptionist at a medical center in Detroit. After breaking up with him, Williams had moved and changed her phone number to try to get away from him. She had also gotten a personal protective order against him. After shooting Williams, he went to the building basement, started a fire and shot himself to death. The fire ended up burning down the entire building.
These horrific murders follow an all-too-familiar pattern. More than three-fifths of all women who are murdered in the U.S. are killed by their husbands or boyfriends. When women try to leave husbands or boyfriends, sometimes after being abused in the relationship, the men involved don’t accept the woman’s right to leave and end up killing them. In some cases, like these three, the men are so devastated that they then kill themselves.
This is a mark of a society where men still treat women as property to dispose of as they see fit–just like other property under capitalism.