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
Oct 14, 2013
When the Republicans pushed through the supposed federal government shutdown on October 1, the Democrats were more than willing to let the Republicans take the blame.
Certainly, it wasn’t a shutdown for everyone. After all, we all had to continue to pay all the taxes to the government. And the top Democrats and Republicans continued to pay their own fat salaries and their expensive perks. But these same officials immediately cut off pay for millions of government and contract workers–with “promises” to pay it back later. And while they safeguarded the government programs that take care of the top capitalists’ needs, they slashed programs like Head Start, WIC, and Meals-on-Wheels, thus depriving millions of low-income people food, education and other forms of the measly aid that the government still provides.
In other words, the government shutdown was a naked attack against working people and the poor.
Sure, the Republicans put on an act of opposing Affordable Care Act (ACA), or “Obamacare,” as they like to call it in their usual appeal to their extreme-right wing base. But the Republican Party itself, despite all the rhetoric aimed at its right-wing, really supports the ACA. Because the ACA is a vehicle to boost the profits of the big health insurance companies and medical providers.
Not surprisingly, a week into the shutdown, the Republicans switched their demands. They said they would agree to reopen the government–as long as the Democrats agreed to compromise on the government deficit. Obama and the Democrats did agree to talk about cuts, pretending that the Republicans are forcing them to negotiate more cuts.
But that too is just an act. For Obama, with the blessings of the top Congressional Democrats, has already included big cuts to Social Security benefits, Medicare and Medicaid in the budget that he proposed last April. In other words, the Democrats have already proposed to slash the very entitlements that they said were sacrosanct.
What would make these cuts even more devastating is that they come on top of earlier cuts to social spending and public services that the Democrats and Republicans have been working together to slash for the last two years. Each time, both parties used threats of government shutdowns, debt ceilings, government defaults and sequestration as a cover for the fact that they were really working together to cut social spending for working people.
Don’t believe all the lies about how these cuts were needed to reduce the government deficit. No, they cut deeper into what the government spends on the needs of the population, in order to give more to the capitalist elite through big increases in military spending, as well as cuts to corporate taxes and taxes on the wealthy.
Just last year, both parties voted to make permanent almost all of the Bush tax cuts to the rich and big companies. And now, Obama and the Republicans have also agreed to “reform” corporate taxes, which is just another way of saying cut corporate taxes even more.
All these tax cuts and subsidies for the capitalist class will pave the way for bigger deficits–which will be paid for by more cuts in social spending for working people.
The government shutdown and the cuts are just another chapter in the vicious class war that the capitalists and politicians have been waging against working people and the poor.
The working class is losing this war because too many people still believe there is nothing they can do about it.
That’s not true. Working people have the power and the numbers to turn the tables on the capitalists and their politicians. When someone decides to make a fight, their fight can then open the way for others to follow.
Oct 14, 2013
Perrigo Company is leaving Allegan, Michigan–but only for tax purposes.
Perrigo is the world’s largest producer of store-brand over-the-counter drugs. It’s merging with Elan, an Irish biotech company.
But, say their executives, this will mean no operational, management, or structural changes in Michigan.
No, because the merger is a legal dodge to get out of paying Michigan and U.S. taxes. The new Perrigo company will register in Ireland and pay Irish taxes at 12.5%, instead of paying 30% U.S. taxes. The company says it will save $150 million a year.
“It’s a nice structure for us,” said a Perrigo vice-president.
It’s also a nice example of why local governments are running out of money. And legal loopholes like these aren’t made available for workers.
Oct 14, 2013
Michigan governor Rick Snyder appointed several people to head up a task force to “address blight” and tear down buildings in the city of Detroit.
And who are these appointees? Heading the task force as “land czar” is Roy Roberts, who as Emergency Manager of the Detroit Public Schools helped hand schools to private charter companies, and even split fifteen schools out into a separate district–also to be picked clean by private interests.
Also on the board is Tom Gilbert, a real estate magnate who has bought more than 30 buildings in Detroit at rock bottom prices over the past three years.
So now the people responsible for clearing abandoned properties will be the ones who have been speculating on them all along! How clear can it be? All the talk about “redevelopment” is so that these speculators can grab up even more properties for a song.
Oct 14, 2013
Dominick’s, one of the two biggest supermarket chains in the Chicago area, announced it is pulling out of its 72 stores. Some of these stores will be bought and run by competitors, but many will probably close. The fate of the 6,600 Dominick’s workers is up in the air, and many areas are likely to be left without a big supermarket.
Chicago used to be full of working class neighborhoods, whose residents shopped at traditional supermarkets. But Dominick’s has been losing business in recent years to both high-end stores like Whole Foods and discount-like dollar stores, Aldi, and Wal-Mart. Chicago is increasingly divided between rich neighborhoods, where people are willing to spend more, and poor neighborhoods, where people can’t afford to shop at a regular grocery store.
The closing of Dominick’s will deprive workers and ordinary people of the option of having nutritious food available at affordable prices. It is one more step in the wrong direction.
Oct 14, 2013
The low-income residents living in downtown Los Angeles have been complaining for years about toxic fumes emitted from an oil field located next to their neighborhood. Allenco Energy operates this oil field on a land leased from the Catholic Archdiocese of Los Angeles.
After Allenco started to extract oil, the residents began to smell a chemical odor on the streets and in their homes, and then started to have headaches, nose-bleeding and dizziness. The residents complained to state air quality officials 251 times within the last three years, and officials issued 15 citations against Allenco for foul odors. But, nothing changed.
The Los Angeles basin contains large deposits of oil. In the Los Angeles area alone, more than 3,700 derricks extract oil from about 55 active oil fields.
Oil production in this area and California dramatically increased over the years. Allenco increased production from the downtown field by more than 400%, from 4,178 barrels in 2009 to 21,239 in 2010, according to the State of California, as L.A. gas prices skyrocketed from 1.55 dollars per gallon in September 2004 to 3.92 dollars per gallon in September 2013.
So, this is capitalism at its best. Companies snatch oil deposited under Los Angeles and their owners cook out huge profits from this oil. At the same time, people of Los Angeles are poisoned by chemicals from derricks and robbed at the pump.
Oct 14, 2013
The Affordable Care Act went live for enrollment across the U.S. on October 1. Some information became available on the costs to individuals buying insurance through the Michigan Health Insurance Marketplace. It depends on their age, county, and smoking status. It also varies based on how much co-insurance the individual will get stuck with, from 10% for a “platinum” plan to 40% for a bronze. And some services won’t be covered at all.
None of the plans are “affordable.” A single 35-year-old Wayne County (Michigan) resident making just $20,000 a year will pay almost $2,200 a year, plus 30% of covered services. A 55-year-old Wayne County smoker could pay almost $13,000 a year for a plan that still makes them pay 10% of medical costs.
At these outrageous prices, many people will choose to go without and pay the tax penalty, which starts around $100 in 2014, and rises to almost $700 by 2016. The only ones smelling like roses in this garbage heap are the health insurance companies.
In every state, there are at least two plans available, in most states many more. When you look inside the system, you see 100 insurance companies who between them are offering 1,700 products.
Supporters of the system, especially the insurance companies, say it means a wide range of “choice.” But is it really feasible that human beings who have such similar physical make-ups could be 1,700 ways different when it comes to health care?
No, it has little to do with choice and everything to do with what is and isn’t “affordable.” Does anyone “choose” to have a cheaper “bronze plan” that pays only 70% of services if they can afford a complete plan (not offered by ACA at all) that protects them from unforeseen catastrophic liability?
Like a huge roulette wheel, their latest insurance scam is turning, offering the same limited benefits to the uninsured and last to be insured, correcting some inequalities. But the profit system is ruining any true opportunity for real, affordable care.
Oct 14, 2013
California Governor Jerry Brown signed into law a bill that bars a large number of professional athletes from filing workers’ compensation claims.
The law says that to qualify for workers’ comp insurance in California, it’s not enough that the injury occurred in California–the athlete has to be a “California athlete.” An athlete will be considered “out of state,” and not qualify for workers’ comp, if he played less than two years for a California team, or seven years or more for a team from another state, no matter how long he played for a California team.
Obviously, this “out of state” clause is just an excuse to deny athletes insurance. And it’s also obvious who the law’s target is: former NFL players suffering from concussion-related ailments.
The team owners wanted this bill because they were worried that insurance companies would raise their workers’ comp premiums, or that they would have to pay expensive medical bills themselves.
For the injured players, this law blocks one of the last avenues they had for any compensation.
Only a small portion of professional players make enough money during their careers–less than four years on average for NFL players–to be able to pay for their medical costs. But a large number of them were seriously injured during their short careers.
Besides football, the law applies to baseball, basketball, ice hockey and soccer, and it also applies to minor leagues, where players are paid even less. And companies in other industries that operate across state lines, such as airlines and trucking companies, for example, will probably try to use this law as a “legal precedent” against their own workers.
California lawmakers have thus sided squarely with the team owners who refuse to help players out with medical bills. This is a huge gift to billionaire team owners. And it’s coming from Democrats, who control both chambers of the California legislature with large majorities, and passed it almost unanimously.
Oct 14, 2013
Democratic Illinois Governor Pat Quinn announced that he won’t approve any more “special incentives” for businesses in the state until the state legislature sends him a bill cutting the state pension system. This came right after agribusiness giant Archer Daniels Midland (ADM) threatened to move its headquarters out of the state if it doesn’t get an extra 24- million-dollar tax break. Quinn said: “We need ADM and all of our big businesses to band together, put pressure on the legislature ... to get a vote on pension reform.”
For years, the state of Illinois skipped its payments into the pension fund, and during all those years, the state was handing over huge incentives to any corporation that came asking. ADM itself got 87 million dollars in tax breaks from just one program between 2004 and 2009. Motorola Mobility, part of Google, got tens of millions. So did Sears, Navistar, and Ford.
Up to now, the politicians have been reluctant to make the connection between corporate handouts and state worker pensions this obvious. But now the mask–and the gloves–are off.
Oct 14, 2013
The Chicago Transit Authority (CTA) had one system that worked consistently: paycards that you could buy and load with money at the stations, or link to a bank account. So of course, that’s the part they decided to re-do, with a huge handout to private contractors. They gave a 454-million-dollar contract to the Cubic Corporation, a major defense contractor, to come up with a new “Ventra” system that can also work as a pre-paid debit card. And MasterCard will handle the payment processing and get a big cut of all the fees.
Even if the system worked, this would screw working people–a single-ride Ventra Card costs $3, instead of $2.25 before. Supposedly fares haven’t gone up–but you have to buy the card for 50 cents, and pay for a transfer whether you need it or not!
On top of that, the Ventra changeover was a train wreck. Many people didn’t get a card in the mail that they ordered, while others got mailed hundreds of cards at once! Some riders got a card but no activation password. And if you tried to call for help, the wait on hold was up to an hour long! Meanwhile, people had to get to their jobs....
The CTA says it has no money for their workers or to provide decent service. But they have millions to waste breaking their only efficient system, all so they can give more corporate handouts.
Oct 14, 2013
From a presentation given at a SPARK public meeting in L.A. on September 22, 2013.
Five years ago in 2008, Los Angeles politicians went to voters in the middle of the economic collapse that was destroying millions of peoples’ jobs and life savings to say they wanted a half-cent sales tax increase: money that most workers didn’t have. The reason for this tax increase was that it would pay for better mass transit. Of course, a sales tax is extremely regressive. It falls much more heavily on working people and the poor. An unemployed worker who has to pay for diapers for their kid pays the same tax as a multi-billionaire.
But voters agreed to the sales tax increase. They voted for it. That just shows how desperate the need is for better mass transit–for everybody.
So after the vote five years ago, what did we get in return for paying a higher sales tax? A fare increase and big service cuts. Bus service has been cut by 20% since then. That’s over a million hours less bus service per year. This makes it much longer and harder for people to get around using mass transit.
The money did not go to the transit workers either. They haven’t had a raise in over six years. That means that every year, their buying power is reduced by inflation. Not only that, but operators saw their medical costs double this January. Transit workers are also forking over higher contributions for retirement pensions. So the standard of living for transit workers is being cut.
The money didn’t go to maintenance. The MTA admits to deferring 1.3 billion dollars worth of maintenance on trains, buses, tracks, signals, etc. And $250 million just on the Blue Line. These buses and trains are used heavily and have to be constantly checked and repaired. This is not being done because the MTA doesn’t hire enough employees to do the work. It means that trains and buses are rolled out despite being broken. At the very least, this means there are a lot of unnecessary breakdowns, not to speak of accidents. So trains and buses are late or don’t show up at all. Of course, when trains and buses are late, or break down in the middle of their run, often it is the MTA employees who are the target of the passengers’ anger.
You would think with all of these cuts in service, or lousy service, that the MTA did not have any money, that it was suffering huge budget shortfalls. But the opposite is the case. The sales tax increase has provided over one billion dollars per year in new funding for the MTA–a substantial increase on a budget that was about four billion dollars.
First of all, it is being swallowed up by contractors and subcontractors. Basically they live off of contracts with governments in this country and around the world. These companies are experts at wringing every penny they can from the government. Every single transit line that is being built is budgeted at top dollar for the work. There are then undoubtedly years of delays, during which these companies charge more and more. The MTA doesn’t bat an eye. It pays the extra money. A couple of months ago, the MTA announced that it had budgeted 1.2 billion dollars for the construction of the Crenshaw Line. It then budgeted an extra $200 million as a contingency fund–that is, to cover cost overruns. That is an admission ahead of time that the budget is a fiction, that it will spend much more money.
So the MTA is an important source of profits for big contractors. It is also an important source of profits for the banks and big finance companies. These companies don’t just make a killing every time the MTA uses them to float a bond. They augment that by all kinds of seedy tricks and schemes, some of which were exposed after the financial system crashed and burned in 2008.
One of their schemes is called a sale lease back. The pros call it a SILO–sale in, lease out. Starting in the late 1980s, government officials began to promote what they called public-private partnerships–supposedly to augment the pathetically low levels of infrastructure spending. In fact, these partnerships only augmented private profits even more. The MTA, like public agencies everywhere, sold off its rail equipment, more than 1,000 buses, a parking garage and maintenance facilities in separate deals to investors including Wells Fargo, Comerica and Phillip Morris. Of course, one could ask what the maker of Marlboro cigarettes would do with a bunch of transit equipment, buses and trains–or if they even knew what to do with them. No, they bought them just in order to lease them back to the MTA. This allowed these investors to score a big tax break from the federal government, among other things.
When the 2008 crisis hit and financial markets froze up, other complicated, exotic and very profitable deals that the MTA had with the banks also came to light. One of these was reported on by L.A. Times business columnist Michael A. Hiltzik in 2008. As Hiltzik wrote, one of these financial instruments was a hybrid municipal bond or a variable-rate demand note. Hiltzik reported that the payouts to the banks by the MTA on many of these deals were driven sky-high by the credit crisis.
In 2010, the New York Times reported that the MTA had another kind of financial instrument on its books called interest rate swaps. The largest of the swaps was with Goldman Sachs. The swaps were supposed to protect the MTA from rising interest rates. But as the Times said, to get this protection, the MTA had to agree to pay extra if interest rates went down. For the MTA, taking out this kind of protection was a losers’ bet, because in the years since the MTA took out these swaps, interest rates had mostly fallen. So the MTA paid these banks tens of millions of dollars every year–on top of the interest they owed.
So the banks have been bleeding the MTA.
At the same time, mass transit has spurred the profits of real estate developers. All you have to do is look at nearby North Hollywood to see how this works. First the MTA paid for the Red Line. Then other government agencies provided financing and tax breaks to the big developers to pay for the big luxury apartment buildings and stores. Of course, this development has driven up rents and house prices, driving out working people and the poor from the area. This is being replicated in other parts of the city, such as in East L.A. along the Gold Line.
The MTA owns a lot of land that it turns over to companies to develop. In this way, it relieves the developers of the cost of the land. Currently, Metro owns 16 developments near transit stations, including the Wrigley Marketplace shopping center in Long Beach and Grand Central Market in downtown Los Angeles. Three projects are also under construction, and 12 others are in negotiation.
This gives you an idea of how the MTA is used to provide for the needs of big construction companies, banks and real estate developers. One cannot expect, under these circumstances, that workers’ transportation needs would ever be taken care of adequately–no matter how high they agree to be taxed.
Nor would one expect that when transit workers demand a simple increase in wages, that the government would do anything else but move to block them. To see how this works, just look at what happened in San Francisco earlier this year, when transit workers went on strike after years of wage freezes and wage concessions. When the transit workers dared strike, the news media screamed bloody murder. How dare these workers strike, they said, when the people they transport make so much less. The news media told all kinds of stories about how the transit workers are privileged because they still have pensions. Of course, the logic of these accusations was that no one should have pensions anymore. In reality, what the transit workers were fighting for was only right and just, because after a lifetime of work, everyone should be able to retire with a decent income. They earned that right.
Neither the politicians, nor the bankers, nor the other parasites who feed off the MTA are the ones who actually make transit run. The transit workers do that. And that gives the transit workers a lot of power–if they mobilize and organize. And, given the immediate impact of a fight by transit workers, they have the possibility to address other workers and poor people–to say that we all are facing the same few wealthy blood suckers.
Oct 14, 2013
Front-page articles in the Detroit Free Press and the New York Times perpetrated a BIG LIE about the cause of Detroit’s bankruptcy filing. They blamed the bankruptcy on retired city of Detroit workers getting something called a “13th check.”
Retirees, who manage to live on an average of $19,213 a year, would in some years get a bonus check. It was typically a $250 to $500 bonus around Christmas. The media described these payments as fiscal irresponsibility.
NOT described as fiscal irresponsibility was government not taxing corporations and the wealthy to have adequate revenue for cities. Also not described as fiscal irresponsibility were shady pension debt deals Detroit made with Wall Street banks in 2005 and 2006.
The only connection between the pensions and the Detroit bankruptcy filing is that a political decision has been made to dump pension obligations.
Two legal rulings about these bonuses–one about the City of Detroit and another about Wayne County–found these small bonuses to be legally owed.
For 30 years now, tens of thousands of public employees in Michigan have given up raises in exchange for the promise of an occasional bonus check in retirement. These bonus checks were deferred compensation and are owed to workers.
From the wealthy’s point of view, any money going to retirees and workers must be cut because that money needs to start going to them!
Oct 14, 2013
Over the last three years, trading on world currency exchanges has increased by a third, now reaching 5.3 trillion dollars–a DAY. This is about the same as 90 percent of Japan’s total economic output–a YEAR.
Meanwhile, world trade in goods has stagnated and in some years shrunk. In 2012, the world export of goods was worth 18.3 trillion dollars. This is only 1 percent of world currency trading. In other words, 99 percent of daily trading doesn’t correspond to anything other than speculation, with no usefulness for the economy.
The various nations’ central banks have fed this frenzied growth in monetary speculation with trillions of dollars in credit. When Ben Bernanke, the head of the Federal Reserve Board, announced the Fed would soon lower the amount of money made available, banks, financiers and corporations pulled out the capital they had placed in countries like India, Brazil and Indonesia. This provoked a sharp drop in the value of these countries’ currencies. India’s currency, the rupee, has fallen 25 percent since May. This has resulted in a sharp contraction in the real economy of these countries.
In this economic system, the fact that 99 percent of the money serves for financial speculation is not just totally absurd, but also really harmful. At any moment, this financial speculation can lead to a financial collapse that would plunge all of society into a still more terrible economic crisis.
This economic system must be 100 percent replaced!
Oct 14, 2013
Former Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick was sentenced to 28 years in prison for his conviction on bribery, extortion and corruption charges. His friend Bobby Ferguson was sentenced to 21 years for bribery and extortion. The federal government wants the pair to pay 9.6 million dollars in restitution.
Kwame Kilpatrick may be a crook. Yes. But he’s small-time compared to the real crooks from whom he learned his trade.
People like Peter Karmanos, the head of Compuware, Dan Gilbert of Quicken Loans, racing magnate Roger Penske, and Jim Nicholson of PVS Chemicals, for example. They all received huge tax breaks from the city with Kilpatrick’s help. They were in deeply enough with him that they handed him $150,000 to leave the state after he resigned.
Those four are just a few of the corporate thieves who have stolen a lot more than whatever Kilpatrick and Ferguson ever took–and they’re the real reason Detroit is in a financial crisis today.
So as the news media celebrate having Kilpatrick and the bankruptcy crisis in their “rear-view mirror,” the real crooks, the bosses and the banks, are still very much on the loose!
Oct 14, 2013
Herman Wallace, who spent 41 years in solitary confinement at the State Penitentiary in Angola, Louisiana, has died. Wallace and two other men, Albert Woodfox and Robert King, became known as the Angola 3 when activists against abusive prison conditions publicized their decades held in isolation.
Wallace and Woodfox were falsely convicted for the murder of a guard, Brent Miller, during an uprising at Angola in 1972.
Prison authorities claimed King was tied to the murder but never charged him. They used the murder as a pretext to keep the three in solitary confinement for decades. Because Wallace and Woodfox were known members of the Black Panthers, who stood up for the rights of other prisoners, the state of Louisiana attempted to make an example of them.
It has continued to do so, despite international support for the Angola 3 by Amnesty International and many artists and dignitaries. At least three film makers have produced documentaries about them. Woodfox’s conviction was overturned twice only to be reinstated on appeal. It was overturned a third time in March and is again being appealed.
Herman Wallace managed to gain a small taste of freedom when a U.S. district court judge ruled he should be given a new trial–when he was just days away from dying of cancer. Even while he lay dying, a Louisiana district attorney felt it necessary to indict him again. Such is the vindictive nature of the racist American system of injustice, which must attempt to silence anyone who dares to speak out against it.
Oct 14, 2013
The Teamsters international union brags that the proposed new contract creates 2,500 new full-time jobs. But today, UPS has about 120,000 part-timers. The vast majority of these part-timers want to work full time. UPS certainly has the work for them. The 1997 strike at UPS was over the issue of creating full-time jobs. Workers can’t live on part-time pay. UPS can be forced to come up with tens of thousands of full-time jobs, not a tiny 2,500.
Oct 14, 2013
On September 29th, Barack Obama and Iranian President Hassan Rouhani spoke on the phone. This phone call seems like an historic reversal, coming thirty- five years after the break between the two states, following the fall of the Shah in 1979. But undoubtedly the two countries’ diplomats began quiet discussions a long time ago, which weren’t limited to the question of Iran’s nuclear development, but included the situation in the Middle East and in Syria in particular.
To make possible this thaw in relations, Rouhani was presented as a moderate who has made a number of gestures toward the western countries. But Rouhani wasn’t the first Iranian head of state who wanted to establish peaceful relations with the United States. Up to now, the U.S. preferred to ignore these gestures and continue with sanctions against Iran, hoping to weaken the regime.
So Obama made a political choice to use this occasion to revive relations with Iran, showing that the question of Iran’s nuclear development had never been the true reason for the freeze in relations between the two countries.
The U.S. is having difficulty facing up to the chaos its military interventions in Iraq and Afghanistan and elsewhere have reinforced in the region. Two years ago, when civil war broke out in Syria, the western countries believed they had found an opportunity to get rid of Bashar al-Assad. But today they find themselves in a situation without a solution, obliged to choose between Assad’s victory, which hardly pleases them, or that of a rebellion dominated by uncontrollable Islamist groups, which pleases them still less.
Never mind. The leaders of the U.S. have always known that they could make an agreement with the Syrian, Iranian or Russian leaders, on condition of giving them some concessions. This is what it wants to do today, by involving them in an attempt to establish a certain stability in the region. This may or may not happen, since the forces and contradictions which the U.S. helped stir up are uncontrollable.
Above all, nothing can repair the immense harm which imperialist domination causes and will continue to cause.
Oct 14, 2013
The following was presented at a SPARK public meeting in Baltimore, Maryland after showing the documentary The Untold Story of Emmett Till.
Trayvon Martin is this generation’s Emmett Till, the proof that this is still a racist society, that there still is no justice for young black men. Just like the case against the two men who murdered Emmett Till, the case against Zimmerman should have been open and shut–GUILTY of MURDER.
The “justice” system is still violently racist. And blindness to that racism still pervades a large segment of the white population.
Many whites and Hispanics claim that race was not an issue, not in the murder, not in the acquittal. A cousin of Zimmerman known as witness 9 said: “I know George. And I know that he does not like black people.” Of course, everyone who heard Zimmerman’s 911 call knows he is racist when he said: “These assholes, they always get away.” Clearly, he was racial profiling–young black man in a hooded sweatshirt–obviously a criminal according to this racist.
Over the last eight years, Zimmerman made at least 46 calls to the Sanford Police Department, reporting “suspicious activity” involving black males. Yeah, they were black, male and in HIS gated community!
The media, the police, the prosecutors and even the jury explain that the reactionary Florida “Stand-Your-Ground” law made it impossible to convict Zimmerman, not racism.
What bullshit!
If the case really had been decided based on Florida’s Stand-Your-Ground law, Zimmerman would have been convicted. Because the person to whom that law applied should have been Trayvon Martin. He was the one who was stalked, followed through his father’s neighborhood. He was the one threatened by a man with a gun. Zimmerman was the one who initiated the confrontation. Zimmerman, against police instruction to the contrary, chose to hunt Trayvon Martin down.
Trayvon Martin had every right to defend himself.
Yet, NONE of the jurors thought the law supported Trayvon Martin! To them and to many other whites and Hispanics, the law only supported Zimmerman. They actually believed that an unarmed young black teenager was a danger to a much larger, older white man carrying a gun.
They turned the victim into the threat, and the murderer into the victim.
The defense put Trayvon Martin’s character on trial, as if he had done something wrong, something to deserve being shot to death. While Zimmerman was portrayed as a model citizen, Trayvon Martin, on the other hand, was portrayed as a thug. He smoked pot. So what? So have a lot of people. Maybe the kids of the jurors or the jurors themselves, even.
White and Hispanic people who excuse the murder of Trayvon Martin have let themselves be blinded by the racism peddled in this society. To accept that black men are criminals and are to be feared, to accept the devaluing of black men IS racism. And it degrades and de-humanizes those who accept such lies.
White or Hispanic workers who accept and agree with racist lies are fools. They are shooting themselves in the foot. Because they are helping to reinforce the ditch that racism has cut in the working class. Only the bosses benefit from that division. This division between black and white only serves to maintain the exploitation of the whole working class.
Most whites and Hispanics may believe they aren’t racist–maybe so. But like the three jurors who wanted to convict Zimmerman, but didn’t have the backbone to do it, how many of them fail to stand up to the whites and Hispanics who are racist?
And now I want to speak as a white worker to other white workers:
We need to stand up to our white friends, family and co-workers when they say racist things. We need to stand up against the racist verdict. Not standing up means giving your approval to the lynching of young black men.
In the 1930s there was a bitter coal mining strike, and a song was written about it with a line in it saying “there are no neutrals here.” Racism is way bigger and broader than the coal strike in Harlan County, Kentucky. Confronted with this level of violence, there is no way for anyone to be neutral. Saying nothing is equivalent to approving of the racism.
Oct 14, 2013
Jim Benzol, Detroit’s Chief Financial Officer, was suspended with pay for making a racist remark in a meeting with other city officials.
The comment was made while the city treasurer, Cheryl Johnson, was explaining to Benzol about how city officials traditionally patrol neighborhoods for arson during the three-day Angels’ Night leading up to Halloween.
Benzol asked if he could ride with a Detroit police officer. When he got a “no” response, he asked, “can I shoot someone in a hoodie?”
It took until the next day for officials to respond with a paid suspension. They didn’t even walk out on him or call him on this racist remark when it happened.
Is the racism in this society so blinding that everyone just accepts Benzol’s racist remarks as a joke, and he gets a paid vacation?! These people who have been given keys to the city should be run across the Detroit River.