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
Nov 24, 2014
President Obama’s offer to grant temporary legal status to five million out of the 11 million undocumented immigrants is a trap. His temporary legal status can be revoked at any time. Any people who might have applied, just made it easier for the government to use its powers against them, including deportation, since they handed over all their vital information.
Sure, in his prime time speech on November 20, Obama pretended to supposedly “understand” the plight of the undocumented. He actually dared to say that he just wanted to help them “get right with the law”–when it is this government’s own laws that discriminate against undocumented immigrants, that deny them even the most basic rights, that force them to live in the shadows.
No, there is nothing “right with the law.”
In fact, Obama’s speech was filled with blatant, outrageous and dangerous lies. He accused undocumented immigrants of not paying taxes. Yet, the government’s own records show that immigrants not only pay taxes, public officials deprive them of even the minimal social benefits that undocumented immigrants’ taxes paid for, starting with Social Security, disability insurance, unemployment insurance–as well as health care for the poor and the elderly.
Obama actually had the nerve to say, “All of us take offense to anyone who reaps the rewards of living in America without taking on the responsibilities...” No, Obama does NOT speak for “all of us.” And working for poverty wages, living in crowded slums, being at the mercy of the police and the immigration authorities does not constitute a “reward.”
Finally, Obama said that he wanted to deport only dangerous criminals, when his own government agencies have swept up hundreds of thousands of ordinary people every year, losing them in a spider’s web of internment camps and kangaroo courts.
In fact, Obama’s latest policy is part of at least a decade-long attempt by Democrats and Republicans to enact an immigration “reform” that big U.S. companies have long been pushing for. But the two parties have hit a dead end repeatedly, because neither party wants to be blamed for the so-called “reform,” once it is passed.
This “immigration reform” has been advertised as having a “pathway” for undocumented workers to achieve citizenship. But the supposed “pathway” would last decades and is filled with so many delays, most would never reach citizenship. This would create a layer of “legal” workers open to be super-exploited by big companies. This layer of workers would have fewer rights, since if they lost their job, they could risk also losing their “legality.” The bosses want to take advantage of these workers’ more desperate conditions, force them to accept worse pay and working conditions. Some sectors–such as hotels, contractors, lawn service companies–already employ “undocumented” workers. They already use their desperate condition to pay incredibly low wages and use those low wages as a battering ram to lower other workers’ wages. But with a reform like this, the bosses want to broaden the attack. They want more possibilities to lower wages and, incidentally, deepen the divisions they have already created inside the work force.
The workers without papers don’t lower wages. They don’t cut jobs. It is the bosses who eliminate jobs by forcing one worker to do the work of two or three. The bosses are the ones who cut our pay and benefits for all of us. It is the bosses’ politicians who slash spending on our education, social services and benefits, while raising our taxes, all for the benefit of the richest.
Confronted by this assault, there is only one way for workers to defend ourselves: we have to fight together as one simple class. We have to fight for jobs for everyone, to increase the pay for everyone, to extend government benefits and services for everyone.
When the bosses and public officials divide workers by labeling some “illegal” and others “temporarily legal,” it is nothing but a vile trick. Against this, all workers have one obvious and necessary demand: full legalization of all workers immediately!
Nov 24, 2014
Since Obama signed the Affordable Care Act (ACA) into law in 2010, share prices of the major insurance companies have more than doubled, according to the New York Times. That is, the so-called healthcare industry immensely profited from the ACA.
According to this law, most Americans must have coverage; the government partially subsidizes it. The subsidized coverage would be nearly $2 trillion through insurance exchanges and Medicaid over the next 10 years.
Only, this subsidy is a bonanza for the health care industry. For example, Aetna, an insurance industry giant with revenue of over 47 billion dollars, recently reported that it is having “a very good year,” thanks in part to “excellent performance in our government business, which now represents more than 40 percent of our health premiums.”
And the Federal government is working with the companies in this scheme. One government official told the healthcare insurers at a recent conference in Washington: “We are in this together. You have been our partners. We are very grateful.”
So, all this “big government” politicking is for a casino show. The companies, in collusion with the Federal government, under Democrats or Republicans, are there to loot the workers at every turn.
Nov 24, 2014
Chicago Mayor Rahm Emmanuel’s appointed school board has slashed budgets, laid off teachers, and closed more than 50 schools since 2011, due to what it calls budget shortfalls. It claims there is a money shortage. In fact, it owes as much as 100 million dollars. This is the result of financial scams carried out against the schools by the big banks with the help of their friends running the school board and its financial advisors.
The Chicago Public School system started on a campaign of school construction in the mid-1990s. Initially, it borrowed money to pay for the construction by issuing bonds at fixed interest rates. Around 2003, however, a new Chief Administrative Officer named David Vitale, began pushing for the CPS to enter into what he called “more creative” borrowing methods involving floating, rather than fixed, interest rate bonds and interest rate swaps.
It’s no wonder Vitale was so keen on these slick arrangements. He came straight out of the banking world as a former vice chairman and director of Bank One Corp.
The big banks were mounting a widespread campaign to draw municipalities and school districts into such schemes. They sent roaming salesman around the country to give presentations on how governments could benefit financially from these new methods.
Vitale and CPS undertook to issue a specific type of floating rate bond called “auction rate” bonds, whose rates were determined by bond auctions. CPS also entered into interest rate swap agreements with the banks. The banks made this combination of floating rate bonds with interest rate swaps attractive by including large upfront payments to the cash-strapped district. Under the arrangement, if the banks set the swaps in motion, CPS would issue new floating rate bonds to pay off old fixed rate debts. CPS would pay the banks the old fixed interest rates and receive in exchange a floating rate from the banks based on a common floating rate called the Libor. Assuming that the floating rate on the new bonds was close to the Libor rate, all CPS would have to pay would be the fixed rate payments.
Unfortunately for the CPS, in late 2007 the auction bond market collapsed, causing bond interest rates to skyrocket. The auction bond rate went to 9 per cent, while the Libor remained low.
CPS decided to terminate the swap agreement and go back to fixed rate financing. Unfortunately, the agreements came tied to huge termination costs, which are now expected to go as high as 100 million dollars for two of the swaps.
This financial boondoggle was no accident, and certainly not unique to the Chicago Public Schools. A similar floating rate bond-interest rate swap agreement contributed to the city of Detroit’s financial crisis that led to its bankruptcy.
These types of agreements were not even legal in the state of Illinois, when Vitale and CPS first considered them. Illinois state lawmakers passed a bill to legalize them just months before the CPS issue its first auction rate bond.
Internal memos from Bank of America show the bank knew the auction bond market was going to collapse in late 2007. The banks had for years propped up the auction bond market by buying bonds themselves. In late 2007, Goldman Sachs pulled out of the market, starting its collapse.
Despite its knowledge of the coming collapse, Bank of America still entered into a 30-year floating rate bond-rate swap agreement with CPS.
Rahm Emmanuel says the agreements CPS agreed to were a “contract” and says it should simply deal with it. He recently claimed those types of agreements all occurred before he took office, yet the Chicago Tribune recently showed that he, in fact, had entered into new agreements himself.
The Chicago Public Schools “debts” are the result of a huge scam by the banks. Emanuel and other Democratic and Republican politicians view the public schools as a way to make more profit for the banks, not as a means to educate children. This is where their society is taking us.
Nov 24, 2014
Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s latest anti-education scheme is to privatize preschool. The city would borrow 17 million dollars from Goldman Sachs and Northern Trust Bank, along with the Pritzker Family Foundation (run by Chicago billionaires and Obama’s Secretary of Commerce). The borrowed money would pay for 2,600 slots for four-year olds in private preschools. If the kids are ready for kindergarten, the banks get $2,900 per child; and if they do better in third grade, an additional $750. If the kids use fewer educational services, the Chicago Schools pay out more, up to 30 million dollars.
For the 17 million dollars the investors lend to the program, tax payers will pay back 4.25 million dollars each year. By the end of the 18 years the program is to run, the city will have paid back 76.5 million dollars. Quite a return for the so-called “social investors!”
Following the Black Movement in the 1960’s, the government set up Head Start. At the beginning, this was run by local schools and provided a real improvement for poor kids. But even then, by the third grade, much of this was lost, due to the poor condition of working class schools. In more recent years, Head Start has been cut back and is now run by social service agencies and churches getting government money.
This scheme of Rahm Emanuel is certainly not a substitute for a decently-run Head Start program. It is really aimed at letting investors profit at the expense of kids!
Nov 24, 2014
Truck drivers are on strike against five trucking companies that serve Los Angeles and Long Beach ports.
The two ports handle 40 per cent of the country’s imported goods, and the big companies that run the transportation in and out of the harbor make huge amounts of profit. But many of the truck drivers who transport those goods and generate the big profits for the companies work for very low wages–some even for less than minimum wage.
The scam that trucking companies pull is to call truckers “independent contractors” instead of company employees. That way truckers, who routinely put in 12 hours or more a day, don’t get paid for the time in between assignments, nor for their breaks or overtime; and they don’t get benefits either. On top of that, truckers are responsible for the fuel, parking, insurance and maintenance costs of the trucks–which puts drivers under a huge debt.
Many drivers have to work 40 hours a week just to cover the cost of supposedly “owning” their truck, or “leasing” it from the trucking company they work for–which basically indentures them to one company. But somehow they’re not employees?!
The companies’ exploitation of the drivers is so blatant that drivers have won dozens of wage theft claims they filed with the California Labor Commission in the past few years. The state has ordered the companies to pay drivers millions of dollars in back pay–but companies haven’t paid. They are doing what companies always do–appeal the decision and let the case linger in courts for years. In the meantime, the companies continue to rake in millions of dollars in profits, while drivers and their families continue to live in poverty.
That’s why the truckers are on strike–for the fifth time in the past year. Considering that there are many trucking companies, this is clearly a minority strike. But a strike’s impact can be greater than the number of participants. And a strike can expand. During a previous strike in July, dock workers honored the truckers’ picket lines, shutting down four terminals at the ports. That’s when, within two hours, the bosses got an “arbitrator ruling,” declaring the dock workers’ action illegal.
These truckers are clearly determined. And that determination opens up other possibilities: dock workers, and other port workers, could join the strike again this time, especially since the dock workers themselves are without a contract since July. If the truckers are able to spread their strike to more companies and more industries, they may trigger a bigger fight involving a bigger part of the working class.
That kind of fight is necessary for the working class to turn around the downward spiraling of wages and working conditions in this country.
Nov 24, 2014
On November 12th, 300 million miles from the earth, the Rosetta space probe launched the Philae module onto the Churymov-Gerisemenko comet. This achievement was due to the work of hundreds of scientists, engineers and technicians from several European laboratories and institutes. It shows what humans are capable of, especially when their work is freed from the law of profit and their collaboration isn’t hindered by national boundaries
This isn’t the first time that a space probe has flown by a comet. In 1986, probes were sent to meet Halley’s comet and to photograph it from close up. But that encounter only lasted a few hours. This time, the Rosetta probe, sent into space in March of 2004, traveled more than three billion miles. That is four times the distance the earth takes around the sun, and it took ten years to get close to the comet.
During this long trip, instruments designed and built with technology at least 15 years old were put to sleep to save energy. And scientists cut all contact with the craft when it was furthest from the earth. Two and half years later, on January 6th, 2014, they reestablished contact at a place chosen in advance.
In order to prepare the launch of the Philae module to study the comet surface, Rosetta was set in orbit around the three mile long comet. After figuring out the best place to launch Philae, the Rosetta probe descended 12 miles to the comet in seven hours.
Once it landed on the comet, instruments aboard Philae took samples from the comet and sent the results to earth, obtaining a lot of information.
Like all comets, Churymov-Gerisemenko has gone around the sun since the beginning of the solar system 4.5 billion years ago. The study of this data increases the knowledge of matter at the origin of the solar system. Maybe it will discover that complex molecules playing a role in development of life on earth were already present in the comet.
Each new scientific achievement shows what humanity is capable of. Accumulated knowledge and continuously deepening scientific understanding allow us to envision still more exceptional possibilities. Referring to the centennial of World War I, the astrophysicist André Brahic said at the launching of Philae: “2014 is so much better than 1914.”
It’s true that in 100 years science has continuously advanced, but we can’t say the same thing about society. In many ways other than purely scientific, 2014 resembles 1914. In relation to scientific progress, the defects of society are all the more revolting.
Why is it possible on the one hand to plan more than ten years in advance the meeting with a comet more than 300 million miles away, yet impossible to plan the construction of housing for all, the production of medicine and food to avoid epidemics and famine? Why such an accomplishment in one domain and negligence in another?
The problem isn’t technological, but a problem of social organization. In this capitalist society, all or almost all is submitted to the law of profit, which benefits a tiny minority but harms the immense majority. Inasmuch as this law dominates, rather than a rational organization of society planned according to human needs, the greatest scientific discoveries continue side by side with the worst barbarism.
Nov 24, 2014
Demonstrations in Mexico protesting police brutality, the power of the drug cartels and the corruption of politicians have occurred continuously in recent weeks. On November 8th, after three cartel thugs confessed to killing and burning the bodies of 43 students who disappeared six weeks before, demonstrators burned the door of the National Palace in the main square of Mexico City.
The pressure of demonstrations has helped expose more information about the massacre of student demonstrations on September 26th in the city of Iguala, in the south of Mexico. Not only had the police shot and killed six students and wounded some twenty others, but the police themselves kidnapped the 43 students! It came out that Iguala police have been working with the local drug cartel to keep this city of 140,000 “under tight control.” The mayor and his wife, who are tied to this mafia, ordered the police to turn the 43 students over to the cartel!
It was only under the pressure of demonstrations demanding a search for surviving students that the President of Mexico, Peña Nieto, launched a federal police investigation. The search by federal police turned up several mass graves with the remains of at least 80 bodies, a testament to the inhumanity of the drug traffickers. But the students’ bodies weren’t in them.
Up to now, 74 people, including the mayor of Iguala, have been arrested. This tragedy reveals the condition of Mexico today: a country where drug cartels and complicit politicians are part of the machinery of the state apparatus. Besides the Mexican bourgeoisie and the U.S. corporations, the cartels dominate this country and get rich behind the facade of a president who regularly closes his eyes to this murderous rottenness.
Peña Nieto is the leader of the PRI (Institutionalized Revolutionary Party), with its decades of corruption. His adversaries aren’t better: when the right-wing PAN (National Action Party) was in power from 2000 to 2012 the power of the cartels grew. As far as the so-called left-wing PRD (Democratic Revolutionary Party), the mayor of Iguala is a member. So they’re all connected to the corruption.
Faced with legal and extra-legal repression, faced with corruption that weighs on the entire society, the Mexican population can only count on its own mobilization to improve the situation.
Nov 24, 2014
The World Bank, which is connected to the United Nations, drew up an estimate of the potential cost of the Ebola epidemic. It included the cost of health care and also the drop in production, trade in goods, transportation, and tourism. It estimated the cost at between four billion dollars if the epidemic remained contained in Sierra Leone, Guinea and Liberia, and 33 billion dollars if it spread outside these three countries and lasted all of 2015.
The reason for this estimate was to stimulate the big powers to make donations. They’ve been hesitant to contribute a few measly tens of millions of dollars, while the U.N. insisted that one billion dollars was needed to stamp out the epidemic.
But as the president of Sierra Leone said, “Up to now, international aid has come in slower than the transmission of the virus.” Undoubtedly, this is the case–because they can’t hope for profit from a disease which so far only affects poor countries.
Nov 24, 2014
Since Ray Rice of the Baltimore Ravens brought into focus the enormous problem of domestic violence, more and more has come out about other sports figures. But violence against women does not begin or end with NFL players. Violence against women is pervasive in the U.S. and invisible except when someone famous is accused. Every 90 seconds a woman is raped in the United States. Approximately 1.3 million women are physically assaulted each year by an intimate partner. Five percent of all children are homeless due to their mothers trying to escape domestic violence.
In this society, violence against women is not considered a problem. Rather, it is encouraged. The fundamental basis of this violence is the treatment of women as the property of “their man,” sanctified by marriage.
Not all violence is so obvious or physical. Recently a young woman did an experiment where she walked through New York City. As she did, the men around her made all sorts of comments about how pretty she was. Some followed her, some even touched her–all of this was captured on video. The behavior of these men scared her; she had no way to know it would not lead to something violent. This happens to many women every day. And it is a kind of violence, because it terrorizes women.
In much the same way, all the pervasive jokes and comments about women are also a kind of violence that most women are numb to by now. But it is the mark of how much women in this country are degraded.
This violence against women does not always stop at a punch or a kick. It can and does lead to murder. Every day, three or four women in the U.S. are killed by their partner.
The U.S. is not unusual: across the world, within the capitalist system, women are treated as property of men, to be degraded or destroyed as men see fit. Only major social movements have pushed this oppression back.
The United Nations has declared November 25th International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women. Only one day out of the year, to pay attention to this disgusting situation. With violence this pervasive, tolerated and encouraged, EVERY day needs to be a day for the elimination of violence against women.
Nov 24, 2014
Forbes magazine just listed the 400 richest people in the world. It focused on the 20 richest, led by Bill Gates, former Microsoft CEO, whose combined wealth comes to more than 750 billion dollars.
750 billion dollars in the hands of 20 people–that’s about equal to the gross domestic product of the Netherlands, one of the world’s richest countries!
Just 10% of all that wealth owned by those 20 people is equal to more than all U.S. government funding for the Department of Education and the Department of Agriculture for a year.
So, is money “trickling down”? More like it’s been flooding up!
Nov 24, 2014
Ex-CEO of Microsoft Steve Ballmer would make a lot of money through only tax breaks by operating a basketball team, the Los Angeles Clippers. Ballmer bought the Clippers from Donald Sterling last August, after Sterling’s racist behavior, ongoing for decades, was finally widely publicized. Ballmer paid two billion dollars for the Clippers, a record for a purchase of a basketball team. At the time, many thought he paid too dearly for a team, since the payment cannot be recovered through ticket sales or broadcast and advertisement revenue.
But it turns out Ballmer is an ultimate schemer–like many other businessmen who use their capitalist system to their advantage. He will recover close to one billion dollars over 15 years by using a tax break related to depreciation of capital assets.
This tax code scheme is a brain-child of another businessman, Bill Veeck, a former owner of baseball teams the Cleveland Indians, St. Louis Browns and Chicago White Sox. According to this tax code interpretation, as rather colorfully explained by a Stanford professor of economics, “When you buy a bull for the purpose of generating calves, that is a depreciable asset. Bill appealed to the IRS that buying a bull is a whole lot like buying a baseball player.” And he got the tax break!
Indeed, very brilliant! For a rich man, sports players, like any worker, are no different than farm animals. Don’t take it personal.
Nov 24, 2014
Highway deaths have been linked to airbags manufactured by Takata Corporation that spew metal when they inflate. Deaths have also been linked to rear gas tank fires in Chrysler Jeep SUVs that catch on fire in rear end collisions.
Pretending to address the problem, recent U.S. Senate hearings made the news, showing National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) officials in the hot seat. Officials defended their practice of limited recalls, citing insufficient evidence of risk. (Perhaps regulators could serve as crash test dummies for further research?)
But the pace of the recalls is only the tip of the iceberg. The problem goes deeper, because the “fixes” proposed by manufacturers are horribly insufficient.
In the case of the airbags, a New York Times investigation has revealed that in addition to problems of airbag inflators not being properly sealed, another problem has surfaced. A cheaper airbag propellant is at the center of the crisis.
To increase profits, Takata pressured their researchers in Michigan to find a cheaper compound for inflating airbags. In 2001 the company switched to the new compound: ammonium nitrate. According to an explosives expert at the Missouri University of Science and Technology, it is “unbelievably cheap” but “it shouldn’t be used in airbags.” This is because it breaks down over time. Its sensitivity to temperature swings and humidity can cause it to become more explosive.
The head of safety for Takata just testified before a U.S. Senate Committee that while ammonium nitrate did have some unstable properties, it could be controlled. Consistent with this cavalier attitude, the New York Times has learned that replacement Takata airbags being installed in recalled vehicles–still contain ammonium nitrate!
In the case of Chrysler, the “fix” for exploding gas tanks is–to install a trailer hitch to “protect” the gas tank. But the NHTSA just acknowledged that the trailer hitches do not protect drivers in high-speed crashes–the type of crashes in which the agency says 51 deaths have already occurred!
But at least they both look like they’re doing something. For the corporations–problem solved!
The Senate and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration are succeeding at their real job: protecting auto industry profits. But at protecting people, they are miserable failures!
Nov 24, 2014
In Ferguson, Missouri, authorities are focused on controlling the response of the population to a Grand Jury decision on whether or not to indict police officer Darren Wilson. Wilson shot to death black teenager Michael Brown approximately three months ago. Brown was unarmed, and according to witnesses, had raised his hands in surrender.
The governor has declared a state of emergency, enabling him to call out the National Guard. City and state officials are encouraging the population to stay calm. Friends and family of Michael Brown are being urged to call for a peaceful, non-violent protest, if necessary. And the business owners, oh yes, the business owners are bemoaning the prospect of lost profits.
They are complaining that the almost daily protests that have occurred since the most recent shooting of another teenager, Vonderrit D. Meyers Jr, in October have been interfering with business as usual. They are worrying that their profit margins for Black Friday, the day after Thanksgiving, will be compromised, and they worry that possible rioting could ruin businesses and even spread into the more affluent areas, even into St. Louis proper. As one commentator said, “People like to buy stuff when they’re happy, when they’re in a good mood, when they’re optimistic. As you get people who are in anxious or worried or fearful moods, they’re less likely to open up their wallets and spend.”
This callous, shallow perspective is, of course, the perspective of a social class that benefits from the daily exploitation of the working and poor population. Profit comes first, not the perspective to stop the nationwide police killings of almost 400 people a year, mostly young black men.
The perspective to stop the killings by police, to confront power with power and violence with self defense, violent if necessary, is a perspective with roots in the black social struggle that goes back hundreds of years. It is a viable, historical perspective. In the rebellions of the 1960s, riots that engulfed major cities across the U.S. forced the mighty U.S. capitalist class to alter its direction and behavior. They forced the mightiest armed force in the world, the U.S. military, to withdraw from the Viet Nam war, uncomfortable with fighting a war abroad and one at home at the same time. And it forced the ruling class to hire, for the first time, large numbers of black workers into the factories and plants; to open doors of employment that had been closed to the black population.
Yes, the population can stop the indiscriminate shooting of young black men by police; and yes, the police can be pushed back. The response of the population in Ferguson and St. Louis has already made owners tremble for their business and focused international attention on the violence of the system.
While fights like those in Missouri reach a limit when they confront the larger capitalist system, they are a training ground for larger struggles to come, to address not just those who carry out the violence like the police, but those who orchestrate this violent system for their own profit. And as they spread and continue, they provide an important protection against the continued murder of young black men by the system.
Nov 24, 2014
Missouri Governor Jay Nixon declared a state of emergency preceding the grand jury verdict of Darren Wilson, the cop who murdered Michael Brown in Ferguson.
The only thing he is right about is that there IS an emergency.
Black teens are 21 times more likely to be shot dead by police than their white counterparts. Worse still, 65 percent of the children under 14 years old killed by police since 1980 were black! Rarely are the cops held accountable. Attitudes like “black people are killers and criminals” and cops using the “I was in fear of my life,” line serve to justify and explain these lopsided statistics.
Yes there is a state of emergency–the problem is racism, the cops and the so-called justice system, NOT black people protesting and defending themselves against this violence!
Nov 24, 2014
An NYPD cop shot 28-year-old Akai Gurley in the stairwell of a Brooklyn housing project. Akai was unarmed and was described as a “total innocent ... not engaged in any criminal activity of any type” even by police commissioner William Bratton. This shooting comes on top of the killing of unarmed Eric Garner on Staten Island.
Gurley had spent the evening at his girlfriend’s apartment in the Louis Pink housing projects. The couple left the seventh floor apartment and tried to take the elevator down to the bottom floor. The elevator wasn’t working, as usual, so the couple took the stairwell. At the same time two cops were conducting a vertical patrol (top to bottom patrol) of the building. Officer Laing drew his flashlight because there was a light out in the stairwell which had been out for days. When the couple entered the stairwell the cop shot one round hitting Gurley in the chest. He didn’t wait to see who was there and what was happening.
Mayor Bill de Blasio told people that they “shouldn’t connect all the dots” between Akai Gurley, Michael Brown and Eric Garner because this was an “accidental” shooting. Apparently, the hundreds of demonstrators disagree with the mayor’s assessment of the situation.
Maybe it was an “accident,” but why do the cops seem to have more “accidents” when their victims are young black men?
Sorry Mayor de Blasio, but the dots are already connected.