the Voice of
The Communist League of Revolutionary Workers–Internationalist
“The emancipation of the working class will only be achieved by the working class itself.”
— Karl Marx
the Voice of
The Communist League of Revolutionary Workers–Internationalist
“The emancipation of the working class will only be achieved by the working class itself.”
— Karl Marx
Jul 7, 2014
The Supreme Court struck a blow against unions as they exist today. Ruling on an appeal from a few home care providers in Illinois, backed up by a national anti-union group and big money, the five ultra-conservative members of the Supreme Court ruled that workers cannot be required to pay an agency fee to a union.
“Agency fees” evolved from the paternalistic, bureaucratic way labor law was established in this country. It requires a union, once authorized, to represent all workers, whether or not all workers voted for the union and whether or not they want to belong to the union. The political rationale for “agency fees” is that since the union is required to represent all workers–union members and non-members alike–those non-members who don’t pay union dues should be required to pay a fee to cover expenses tied to negotiations and grievances. It’s just a simple business contract, the union serving as a lawyer for the workers.
The June ruling of the Supreme Court was said to be written somewhat “narrowly,” that is, applying only to the particular circumstances of the Illinois case. But the actual text of the ruling repeatedly attacked the 1977 Supreme Court ruling that had first authorized “agency fees.” And almost every commentator assumes that this case is only the beginning of what will be a series of Supreme Court rulings that will deprive unions of resources, rendering them unable to function.
The fact is, unions today depend on employers to collect dues for them. They depend on favorable rulings from the courts, or at least not overtly hostile rulings. They depend on “friendly” politicians–who can turn “unfriendly” overnight.
1977, when the court authorized “agency fees,” was not a period of growing labor unrest–just the opposite. Strikes had begun a steady downward slide, union membership was going down. “Agency fees,” combined with deals cut with supposedly “friendly” governors helped the unions for a period of time to mask the fact that they were losing members in their traditional strongholds. Unable to convince workers in the “transplants” or in many of the parts plants to join their union, for example, UAW leaders looked toward public sector workers, including graduate assistants at universities, as a way to maintain total union income.
In another example, AFSCME rapidly became the biggest union in the country; then it was bypassed by the SEIU. Both targeted some of the same public sector employees, in addition to health care workers. In many cases, unions got the right to represent certain groups of workers as the result of negotiations between a governor or other public official and the union apparatus. The workers were barely consulted, often going through only a perfunctory vote, whose outcome was practically preordained.
At that point, public sector unions began to hold an ever larger share of union membership. But it was not because public sector workers fought to organize themselves into a union, but because politicians granted union recognition and agency fees as another tit-for-tat deal: Union dues for votes and bodies to work on election campaigns.
The political winds have shifted. Republicans have become outright hostile to unions, and Democrats only lukewarm “friends.” (Democrats for years talked about making it easier to organize a union but they haven’t yet delivered on their talk.)
It’s obvious that workers need to organize themselves. Without organization, each individual worker stands at the mercy of powerful and wealthy interests. But it doesn’t require the help of courts or governors or legislatures for workers to organize. The ability to organize rests on the desire of the workers to do it, and the readiness to mobilize their forces–and that rests, in part, on militants in the working class who put their confidence in the workers’ capacities. If there is anything the history of the workers’ movement tells us, it’s that.
The workers today, when they see the need to organize themselves again, have the forces and the potential power that can let them do it–again.
Jul 7, 2014
Energy Answers has begun building a power plant to generate electricity by burning waste near Baltimore’s Curtis Bay. Thousands of tons of municipal waste, demolition debris, car tires, and other auto parts will burn there. The plant will be allowed by the EPA to release 1,000 pounds of lead and 240 pounds of mercury into the air each year.
Neighborhood students have held several protests, saying the incinerator is less than a mile from the local elementary and high schools. Curtis Bay, this neighborhood in south Baltimore, already has plants that produce nearly 90 percent of Baltimore’s toxic air pollution.
The developers say this incinerator is clean. If this incinerator is so clean, why didn’t they build it in a rich neighborhood? Why did they choose to put it in a heavily working class, already polluted neighborhood?
Jul 7, 2014
Chicago Public Schools announced they are laying off 1,297 workers, about half of whom are teachers. The mayor’s appointed Board of Education had the gall to say that at least it wasn’t as many as last year–when they closed fifty schools!
This is the fourth year out of the last five that Chicago has laid off at least 1,000 workers in the schools. Between these layoffs, school closings, constant churning of staff, and the increase in charter schools, public education in Chicago is under the gun.
It will only get worse until teachers, parents and children push to put their needs on the agenda.
Jul 7, 2014
The Emergency Financial Dictator for the Detroit Public Schools has announced new rules allowing for a class size of 43 students in sixth through twelfth grade.
Imagine trying to organize the work in a classroom of 43 sixth-graders, all with different needs and capacities and problems!
It shows that public officials have abandoned all pretense of providing an education to young people in the city. In fact, they did long ago.
More than half of Detroit students have already been pushed out of the public school system in the last ten years. Many left because of class sizes going up. Others left because their schools closed–and the DPS debt plan calls for closing another 26 schools in 2015. Others left because the school system has been so squeezed of resources. But what kind of alternative choice did they have?
Some were driven into the Education Achievement Authority. The EAA was created by the governor, who handed over some of the worst performing schools to officials appointed by the state. It was a designed disaster from the beginning, parking students in front of computers with totally green teachers. No surprise, the students in the EAA did even worse on achievement tests than they had in the public schools. The EAA was also a huge money suck away from schools, a chunk of it going to officials: they spent $178,000 just flying around the country to attend “conferences”; the head of the EAA racked up a $10,000 bill just for gas for his limo!
Some students went to charters. The charters also perform worse than the public schools–even on those stupid test scores the state is trying to impose. In the traditional schools in high poverty areas, 47% of students were proficient in reading in the 2013-2014 school year, compared to only 42% at charters.
This should be no surprise. Charters spend less on the classroom, and more on buildings and profit for their owners. They have less experienced teachers, who are paid less. They are also almost completely unregulated in Michigan, meaning that some of the worst charter school operators have been allowed to expand at the expense of the traditional schools. Many of the worst are openly run for profit, meaning their bottom line is to make money for their owners, not to educate students.
Detroit is a testing ground for the nationwide attack on public education, driven by some of the richest billionaires in the country. Their plan is clear: Starve the public schools of resources. Then use the poor state of the public schools as an excuse to push charters and other steps toward privatization like the EAA. Finally, transform public education into a privatized system that funnels profits to private operators, and provides a decent education only to those who can either afford to live in an area that still has public schools, or to send their kids to private school.
Every child should have the right to an excellent education. The solution isn’t so difficult: provide poor and working class children with the kind of education the rich already get, with additional services to deal with all the problems of poverty. All it would take is money. But this capitalist class–greedily trying to put its hands on ever more money–won’t spend it on workers’ children.
Jul 7, 2014
Iris Stevenson, popular music teacher and director of Crenshaw High’s acclaimed choir, was pulled out of the classroom last December. For the rest of the school year she has been a “housed teacher,” ordered to sit in an empty room six hours a day, without being allowed to make contact with district employees–not even with her substitutes to give them lesson plans.
The purpose of this “teacher jail” is, supposedly, to ensure “student safety.” And how is this 30-year veteran teacher supposed to be a safety threat? She is said to have taken her choir on an “unauthorized trip” to Paris, France and Washington, D.C.–a ridiculous accusation, given that a trip like that, which even requires passports, can’t happen without the explicit consent of the students’ parents.
In fact, no one really knows what the exact accusation is, because Stevenson has not been charged formally yet, just like the 450 other L.A. teachers who languish at various teacher jail sites–a sort of Guantanamo on U.S. soil.
Obviously, the district’s self-appointed inquisitors can use this “investigation process” to get rid of teachers who stand up to district policies. Stevenson herself has opposed attempts to privatize her school in the past–like fellow Crenshaw teacher Michael Griffin, who spent more than a year in teacher jail before the district admitted there was no reason to keep him there.
This teacher jail can also be a convenient way for district administrators to “reduce costs.” Many of the detained teachers, especially those with high seniority, eventually agree to take early retirement in frustration–often forgoing some of their earned retirement benefits.
LAUSD, as other school districts, has had a consistent policy of replacing older teachers with younger, and lesser-paid, teachers–or not replacing them at all. And this policy has gone hand-in-hand with reckless attacks on teachers.
Protests by students, parents and black community organizations have not yet succeeded in bringing Stevenson back to Crenshaw. But that’s the only way to force district bosses to back up–those vicious district bosses, whose relentless policy of getting rid of teachers and increasing class size, is the real threat to the safety of students.
Jul 7, 2014
In three months time, the Detroit city water system carried out a campaign of mass water shut- offs.
Water is as necessary for life as the air we breathe. To cut it off can only provoke a bigger public health crisis than what already exists in a city where the sewers regularly back up into the streets and emergency services are practically non-existent.
Of course, water system officials talked about “deadbeats,” and “shirkers,” and they yelled about a “non-payment” crisis.
There is a crisis, but it wasn’t caused by the population of Detroit, whom the water system is targeting.
Since the 1970s, federal money to pay for water infrastructure has been cut back by more than three quarters. So the Detroit water system, like systems all over the country, began to strong arm the population. The Detroit water system increased water rates by 119 per cent in ten years time. And people’s usage is padded by the fact that the water system has so many leaks that only a small part of what they were billed for was actually delivered.
On top of that, in different periods, the billing system didn’t work, so people weren’t sent bills. When they finally did get them, many people discovered they owed astronomical amounts.
In a city rife with poverty, where there is no money to spare, people could be hit by a bill for $8,000.
There are some customers, however, who haven’t been hit with any shut-off notice. They just happen to be the ones who owe the most: the State of Michigan, for example, owes five million dollars for the state fairgrounds, which it leases to Meijers and other stores. The Detroit Red Wings hockey team, which just got another subsidy from the city, owes $82,255. Ford Field, the home of the Detroit Lions football team, owes $55,000. City owned golf courses owe over $400,000.
These guys and other big debtors, in fact, owe most of the money not paid to the Water Department.
And yet the Water Department is coming for the poor people, shutting off their water, driving them out of their homes.
It’s enough to make you think they are trying to drive the poor people out of Detroit, to make room for the Dan Gilberts, the Fords, the Ilitches and all their ilk.
Jul 7, 2014
The following is from an April 6 presentation in Baltimore at a Spark public meeting after the showing of the documentary “Crime after Crime.”
There are no words that can fully express the magnitude of injustices on top of injustices heaped on Debbie Peagler. Unfortunately, she is not alone.
Women in the U.S. are twice as likely to suffer domestic violence as breast cancer. Far more Americans have been killed in the last dozen years at the hands of their spouses or partners than in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Most were women.
No, Debbie Peagler is not alone, not only because she was violently abused, but because she was tried, convicted and imprisoned for defending herself. Ninety percent of the women in jail for murder I, murder II or voluntary manslaughter were trying to defend themselves from a husband’s or boyfriend’s violence. A study conducted by the Michigan’s Women’s Justice Clemency Project found some very revealing statistics about defendants who were victims of domestic violence. One is that domestic violence victims who killed their spouse had higher conviction rates and longer sentences than all others being charged with homicide, including men with histories of violent crimes.
In one case in Baltimore County, a judge sentenced Kenneth Peacock to 18 months—for killing his unfaithful wife.
The very next day, in the same county, a different judge sentenced Patricia Ann Hawkins double that for killing her abusive husband in self-defense. And what do we learn from this? It is OK to kill your cheating wife. It is not OK for a wife to defend herself against an abusive husband.
Many times, as it was in Debbie Peagler’s trial, no judge allowed the history of abuse to be shown during the trial. In the U.S., killing in self-defense is not a crime: however for most women, neither the laws of self-defense nor evidence of battering are allowed to give a complete picture of the situation. This is the picture: a woman dies every eight hours from domestic violence. And yet courts dare to repeatedly send women to jail for killing their abusers.
In a Florida case, Marissa Alexander was convicted in 2012 on three counts of aggravated assault with a deadly weapon. One count for each of her two children and one for her husband. And sentenced to 20 years in prison. Was anyone hurt or killed? No! She fired a warning shot when her husband threatened to kill her and charged at her. And he was in violation of a restraining order. But she’s the one going to jail!
Once in prison, women are often subjected to sexual and physical abuse from the guards. A Department of Justice report showed rising abuse of female prisoners and corrections officers easily getting away with rape and other violence and abuse. Pregnant women are routinely shackled during the birthing process in 32 states including Maryland. Here female prisoners are shackled while giving birth!
The police can’t, don’t, won’t enforce all the restraining orders all the time. A restraining order is only a piece of paper—it rarely protects an abused or threatened woman. Courts continually demonstrate that they oppose women defending themselves.
It is too pervasive and systematic to be simply bad cops, bad prison guards, bad prosecutors, bad judges, illegal incarceration. What these stories and statistics add up to is not just the legal system but an entire society that enforces and condones violence against women.
Even though it happens behind closed doors in intimate relationships, hidden and secret, domestic violence is absolutely a social problem that requires a social solution. It’s not just a question of some violent men. It comes from the way society is organized. Domestic violence, like rape and most violence against women or children is based on the organization of society into social classes and on the development of the family as we know it today as the basic economic unit.
That organization still makes most women and their children dependent on an individual man for their support. And the exploitation to which both women and men workers are subjected often leads to the violence that explodes within families.
The history of violence against women today bears out the truth in Marx’s observation that the oppression of women in any society is the measure of how oppressive overall the society is.
Jul 7, 2014
Crime after Crime tells the story of the legal battle to free Debbie Peagler, an incarcerated survivor of domestic violence. She was convicted of the murder of her abusive boyfriend and sentenced to 25 years to life in prison.
Debbie Peagler, an African-American, suffered mountains of abuse first at the hands of a boyfriend who brutally beat her and forced her into prostitution, and later by prosecutors who cornered her into a life behind bars for her connection to the murder of her abuser.
Peagler began a relationship with Oliver Wilson when she was 15 years old and pregnant. A year later, Wilson asked Peagler to help him “earn some money.” Only when she was sent in the room with a “john” did she finally realize that Wilson was attempting to pimp her. When she refused, he beat her and berated her. Eventually, she began to prostitute herself for Wilson’s gain.
Peagler finally managed to separate from Wilson. Wilson and two armed accomplices attacked Peagler and threatened to kill her and her family. Wilson was arrested for assault with a deadly weapon, but was released the following day.
Fearing for her daughter’s life, Debbie’s mother asked some neighborhood gang members to get Debbie’s boyfriend to stop abusing her. They agreed. And Debbie introduced Wilson to them. Trying to teach him a lesson, they ended up beating him to death.
Peagler was arrested and charged with first-degree murder. Facing the death penalty, she pleaded guilty in order to save her life and was sentenced to 25 years to life in prison.
Debbie Peagler’s story took an unexpected turn two decades later when two rookie land-use attorneys, Joshua Safran and Nadia Costa stepped forward and took her case pro bono. Through their perseverance, they brought to light long-lost witnesses, new testimonies from the men who committed the murder, and proof of perjured evidence.
The documentary detailed every corruption and all the politically driven resistance that the lawyers and Peagler encountered. Every twist and turn an added outrage on top of a huge pile of outrages. Paroles denied. Retrial denied. Deals were reneged on. Request for compassionate release DENIED.
Denied parole on several occasions, Peagler was finally granted parole. She had spent more than half her life in prison. Ten months after her release from prison, Debbie Peagler died at the age of 50.
As the documentary points out, there are thousands of Peaglers who never receive any justice. It would be an outrageous claim to say Peagler herself got even a drop of justice.
Jul 7, 2014
The Supreme Court once again ruled on a case that takes away the rights of women to have access to contraception. The so-called “Hobby Lobby” case, decided at the end of June in favor of a right-wing religious family that owns stores of that name, ruled that religious freedom for the owners means they can prevent their health insurer from covering contraception for their employees.
Contraception is currently a legal requirement under the Affordable Care Act. The Act had already backed off on requiring employers to provide abortion coverage in their employee health care plans.
This new “Hobby Lobby” ruling allows employers of working class and middle class women to stop paying for contraception, under the guise of “religious freedom.” So now a greater part of the female population will be at risk of unwanted pregnancies.
The attacks on women’s rights and on clinics providing contraception and abortion have been unrelenting. Only three years after Roe v. Wade the U.S. Congress began the attack on the right to abortion with the so-called “Hyde Amendment,” passed every year since by politicians of both parties, to restrict the use of Medicaid funding for abortions. In this way, poor women were denied a legal abortion.
Of course, wealthy women, not only in the U.S. but everywhere, could always obtain both contraception and an abortion.
In the nearly four decades since, the Supreme Court has authorized more and more restrictions on the “right” to a legal abortion, most of them passed by the states.
At this time 42 states restrict abortions after a certain number of weeks. Thirty-two states and the District of Columbia prohibit using state funds for abortions except in certain circumstances. Forty-six states allow health care providers to refuse to provide abortions. The list of restrictions is much longer but these show some of the reasons for the difficulties women have in obtaining abortions. Mississippi and North Dakota have only one abortion provider remaining. Montana has only four, one of which was attacked in March of this year. At least 100 incidents of violence against abortion clinics have taken place every year since 1997.
But “rights” are never really given by the courts. Roe v. Wade was passed in the context of a time period filled with angry people throughout the U.S. demanding their rights: black people, first and foremost, but also many many women, Native Americans, gay people, anti-war protesters. There was also a large strike wave. The 1973 decision reflected the decision made by the ruling class to step back when it was facing the anger of a considerable part of the population. It is with that same anger and mobilization that women, and the whole working class, can begin to impose their needs and wishes.
Jul 7, 2014
Cancer-causing trichloroethene (TCE) continues to pollute the groundwater at U.S. army base Fort Detrick in Frederick, Maryland. TCE is a solvent with many industrial uses. It was used as a refrigerant in biological weapons research at the fort from 1953 to 1970.
The source of the polluted groundwater is supposedly a site where eight 55-gallon drums of TCE were found buried in 1988 near a Fort Detrick building where the refrigerant had been used. But even after the drums and thousands of tons of soil were removed, the groundwater still tests unsafe.
TCE also was found leaking from dumped material at Fort Meade, located between Baltimore and Washington, D.C. In fact, toxic and radioactive wastes have leaked on thousands of military bases in the U.S. and overseas.
Not only is the U.S. military the world’s biggest killer, it’s also the world’s biggest polluter.
Jul 7, 2014
Last December, the giant food-services company Aramark won a 145-million-dollar contract to provide food at prisons in Michigan. This replaced 370 state jobs with low-wage Aramark jobs.
The result? Food shortages, understaffing, maggots in food, and most recently 150 prisoners getting extremely sick, probably from spoiled food served at the Parnall Correctional Facility in Jackson. Prisoners have protested the food at prisons across the state.
If there were such a thing as justice, the Aramark execs who peddle this rotten food and the politician cronies who gave them the contract would be on their way to a prison cell crawling with maggots. Right now!
Jul 7, 2014
In a letter to House and Senate leaders on June 30, President Barack Obama wrote, “I have ordered up to approximately 200 additional U.S. Armed Forces personnel to Iraq.” He added that “this force is equipped for combat,” and that it “will remain in Iraq until ... it is no longer needed.” Indefinitely, that is.
But hadn’t Obama said in early June, when he deployed 300 military “advisers” to Iraq, that he would NOT send combat troops? Well, he did anyway, and not limited to 200 either. The same day, Pentagon officials told the press that 100 additional troops, who had been on standby in the Middle-East since mid-June, were also being moved to Baghdad. Accompanied by attack helicopters and drones.
Add to that at least 3,500 soldiers stationed in Kuwait next door. PLUS at least 30,000 more troops present in the region. PLUS thousands of “private security contractors”–that is, mercenaries–in Iraq, whose full number is never disclosed. PLUS hundreds of military aircraft in the Middle East, including F-16s, and MQ-1 Predator and MQ-9 Reaper drones.
No, the U.S. war machine never left Iraq. And now it’s being engaged in full-fledged combat operations again–officially, and in bigger and bigger numbers.
Jul 7, 2014
Prices are going up all over. Gas prices, bus fare, utilities, food. Our wages are not going up. This means we cannot buy as much today as we could even a month ago. The solution to this problem would be for all companies to increase our wages as prices increase. But it is hard for the bosses to see logic when dollar signs are blocking their visions.
They need a little push—or maybe a big shove!
Gas prices are going up—again. Eight to ten cents a gallon, according to AAA. Why?
The war in Iraq is the excuse being used this time to explain why we have to pay more. But it’s not the reason.
Speculators—wealthy people who gamble on the price of crude oil futures—are artificially driving up the price we pay for gas at the pump.
Jul 7, 2014
Last Tuesday in Murrieta, California, anti-immigrant protesters blocked three buses carrying 140 people, mostly women and children from Central America, and prevented them from reaching a U.S. Border Patrol station. The Border Patrol had sent them to California to be processed for deportation from the U.S.
This anti-immigrant mob gathered after Murrieta Mayor Alan Long urged residents to act against the transfers. Long announced, “Murrieta will remain safe,” implying that the detainees pose a criminal threat to the society. Long added, “We have a responsibility to make sure those who come into our country are free of communicable diseases,” as if these children and women are the disease. Other city politicians and officials chimed in to add to this racist provocation. The whole point was to incite hysteria against the Central American children and women.
These children and women were refugees fleeing the crushing violence of Central America where the murder rate is the highest in the world. Some of these children are escaping from gang initiations. This paralyzing violence is produced by the widespread poverty in El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala, poverty caused by U.S. exploitation of the whole region.
Since October 1, 2013, the U.S. has detained more than 52,000 unaccompanied children and thousands with parents trying to cross the southwest border. Since the detention centers and warehouses in Arizona and Texas were overflowing, the Border Patrol decided to transfer some of these detainees to the stations in California.
Mouthpieces of the rich, like Mayor Long, pit one group of working people against the other to divert attention from the real cause of social misery in this country–including among the children of many people born here. Long said, “I believe the general population is at a boiling point. Certainly, those in the community that are paying attention that are concerned, are at a boiling point and this one issue alone put them over the top.”
No, the children did not bring the population to a boiling point. How could they? Your rich masters, Mayor Long, and their system are the problem. But there are certainly right-wing fanatics like this politician and the extreme-right billionaires who try to divert people’s anger elsewhere. If workers let themselves fall for this hysteria, they will find themselves being used by their enemies, against their own class interests.
Jul 7, 2014
July 2 marked the 50th anniversary of the Civil Rights Act. Signed into law by President Lyndon B. Johnson, this document declared all discrimination based on race, ethnicity and sex, whether it is practiced by public or private institutions, illegal.
But a law alone cannot guarantee respect for everyone’s civil rights–indeed, HUMAN rights, as Malcolm X put it. And we have been reminded of this fact once again in recent days, by the attacks on Central American refugees in Murrieta, California.
What eased the discrimination against black people and other historically oppressed groups in the U.S., at least for some of them and for a period of time, was not laws passed by politicians, but a massive social movement by black people. It was the Civil Rights Movement which forced the U.S. ruling class–and the politicians who spoke for it–to admit in July 1964 that the U.S. had not been the haven of “freedom and democracy” they had always bragged about. It forced them to promise that they would do something real about it.
Black people didn’t believe those promises. They responded to this law with a series of urban rebellions, starting with the so-called “Harlem Riot of 1964” only two weeks after the signing of the Act. Other uprisings followed quickly–in Jersey City, Chicago and Philadelphia, all in August 1964. A year later, in August 1965, Watts exploded–followed by a few other “riots” in the summer of 1966, and then dozens of them across the U.S. in 1967, including massive uprisings in Newark and Detroit.
That’s when black people, other minorities and women started to see some REAL changes–big companies hiring them for better-paying jobs, colleges admitting them, government expanding social programs against poverty and unemployment, etc.
Today, 50 years later, we see a reversal of all these gains–better-paying jobs disappear fast; college tuition, even for public colleges, has skyrocketed out of the reach of working-class families; social programs are constantly cut and threatened to be done away with altogether. All so that the capitalist class can increase its wealth and power, and so that government officials can shovel even more public money and assets their way. And we are told constantly to turn against other working people–white against black, young against old, American against Chinese or Mexican, “native” against “immigrant.”
There is a way out of this quagmire–a big fight, a mass movement that unifies working people. When black people started to organize to fight back against oppression in the 1940s, many people probably thought the odds were against them. But the Civil Rights Movement persisted and spread. It grew in numbers, strength and militancy through the 1950s and ’60s, leading to a mass mobilization of black people. And it brought other parts of the oppressed to fight for their own needs, including the organized labor movement, which carried out waves of strikes–especially after black workers brought their militancy into the plants. That’s what brought real change, if only for a generation or two.
Half a century later, that’s the real meaning of the Civil Rights Movement and the black mobilization that it turned into.