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
Aug 3, 2015
Ford Motor Company says that it must “catch up” with GM and Chrysler in the new contract about to be negotiated and voted on. Ford has higher labor costs than the other two because its contract with the UAW limits the number of second-tier, that is lower-paid, workers it can hire. As a result, Ford has been forced to give 800 second-tier workers a raise up to first-tier pay.
The Wall Street Journal and the rest of the business press explain that GM and Chrysler were given a special deal in 2009 because of their bankruptcies.
Not true–or in any case, it’s not the whole truth. And the part they left out is the most important. GM and Chrysler, supported by the top UAW leadership and by the U.S. government, scared their workers into voting for more concessions in 2009, right in the middle of the 2007 contract.
Then the companies, the union leadership and government officials tried to push through the same concessions at Ford, threatening to close plants.
It didn’t work. Ford workers didn’t give in to this blackmail. They voted against additional concessions, the first time that a national UAW contract was voted down, and stayed voted down. It was also one of the few times in decades that workers at any large national company refused demands for more concessions.
In order to do it, Ford workers had to face down the top UAW leadership, national and local, who were busy pushing the deal, repeating threats about plant closings. And they had to wade through lies and false advice given by the big media.
With 40 plants spread all over the country, from Buffalo to Kansas City, from Detroit to Louisville, workers had to find ways to communicate with each other. Leaflets began to appear at Ford’s Dearborn plant. They were sent to workers in other plants, who used them to mobilize opposition in their plants. Signs, leaflets, posters, buttons, even T-shirts began to appear. Workers posted their sentiments at their work stations. In fact, workers were publicly voting NO even before the balloting. When the voting started, they had to keep track of their own vote totals, so the vote couldn’t so easily be stolen. Ironically, they posted the results on an online discussion forum set up by Ford.
The fight was led by a few people who held local union offices–in particular by Gary Walkowicz, a bargaining committeeman at the Dearborn Truck Plant, joined by a few other reps and by dozens of rank-and-file militants. Expressing the sentiment that had been building in the auto plants for a long time, they opened the floodgates to that very big NO!
The turning point came when International UAW Vice President Bob King was booed off the stage that Ford Motor Company had set up for him inside the Dearborn Truck Plant. Workers shouted, “NO! NO! NO!” sending him right back where he came from. The same thing happened at Ford’s Kansas City plant a few days later. And UAW President Ron Gettelfinger fared not much better at his own local in Kentucky.
Overall, the vote was almost three to one against: 22,952 NO to only 7,816 Yes, according to the workers’ own tally. The spread was too big for “creative counting” to steal.
One vote obviously did not reverse the situation of the working class. And in the next contract, two years later, UAW leaders managed to scare Ford workers with dire threats that they would force workers out on strike.
In fact, unless workers are prepared to fight for what they need and should have, they have no way to enforce what they want.
But the fact is, this NO vote happened and that’s why 800 two-tier workers at Ford today are making first tier wages.
Yet, today, no one in the media, or the union, or the company talk about it. Isn’t it obvious why they try to keep it quiet?
Whatever the bosses and their flunkeys pretend, the workers can have the upper hand. But they have to be ready to use it. This is true in every workplace, every industry, all through this country, throughout the world. When workers do figure out how to fight–and the first thing to do about that is to decide to do it–they also can figure out how to impose what they need.
Saying NO is just the first step. But it’s a necessary step.
Aug 3, 2015
Chicago will pay 150 million extra dollars in interest, on top of the already high interest, on the 1.1 billion dollars it borrowed this month. This is because its bonds were recently given a “junk” rating.
Supposedly, the city has to pay high interest rates because of the high risk it might not be able to pay back the loans–but investors know better. Chicago is a wealthy city, and it has written into the loans that it will increase property taxes “without limitation” if it has to, in order to make bond payments. One investment manager put it this way: “We believe the city has the ability to raise revenue and cut expenses. If you are a citizen with the city, you don’t necessarily want to hear that.”
No, Chicago workers don’t want to hear that! People who work for the city don’t want to take cuts. Taxpayers don’t want to pay more and get fewer services. And they damn well don’t want to see rich investors get 150 million dollars taken out of city services.
Aug 3, 2015
Sky-rocketing drug prices are bankrupting many patients fighting deadly cancers. More than 100 oncologists from top cancer hospitals around the U.S. documented this in an article this month in the Mayo Clinic’s medical journal.
The lead author of this article, Dr. Ayalew Tefferi, a hematologist at Mayo Clinic, said that “The average gross household income in the U.S. is about $52,000 per year. For an insured patient with cancer who needs a drug that costs $120,000 per year, the out-of-pocket expenses could be as much as $25,000 to $30,000–more than half their average household income.”
As a result, about one in five cancer patients don’t take their treatment as prescribed, the doctors wrote.
Most of these drugs are developed by universities and government research institutions, funded by tax dollars. A dose of synthetic drugs, like Gleevec, used to treat chronic myeloid lymphoma, a type of blood cancer, costs less than a dollar to manufacture. Manufacturing a dose of Epogen, which is used with cancer drugs, costs less than $10 to make. But, the drug companies charge hundreds of dollars per dose for such treatments.
Drug companies are acting no different than gangs on a dark corner, who demand “Your money or your life.”
Aug 3, 2015
Maryland ranks as the wealthiest state in the U.S., yet one in seven of its children live in poverty. And in Baltimore City, the rate of children living in poverty is even higher, one in four.
A recent study found about 180,000 children living in poverty in this wealthy state, up by about 50,000 children since the recession of 2008.
Most politicians will proudly proclaim the recession is over, with incomes rising, unemployment falling, more houses selling. But these gains are all concentrated at the top: the top incomes have risen, houses for millionaires are selling, unemployment may be falling but NOT in Baltimore City.
It should come as no surprise that young people went into the street following the death of Freddie Gray. Unemployment in Baltimore for black people is higher than it was in 2008. For young black men, the rate of unemployment is a demoralizing one out of three. Officially. In reality, it’s much worse.
Yet in the poorer neighborhoods, work desperately needs doing. Houses need rehabilitation or tearing down, with at least 16,000 abandoned properties in Baltimore. The city could put plenty of young people to work learning the trades needed to do such jobs.
Instead, Baltimore politicians, just like politicians in every jurisdiction, pretend that giving tax breaks to developers and corporations that demand them is a way to provide jobs. There is not the slightest proof that these wealthy interests provide jobs. If they did, the politicians would be shouting it from the roof tops.
Baltimore residents, Baltimore’s unemployed, those concerned for children in Maryland certainly need to be shouting from the roof tops–for jobs, jobs, jobs–if they want to see children live better.
Aug 3, 2015
Marilyn Tavenner was chosen to be the top lobbyist for the nation’s health insurance industry. Tavenner is the former Obama administration official who led efforts to implement the Affordable Care Act.
When asked about her new priorities, Ms. Tavenner said she wanted to protect Medicare Advantage, the program under which private insurers “manage care” for more than 30 percent of the 55 million beneficiaries of Medicare–and get a big cut to do it. No wonder the board of America’s Health Insurance Plans voted for her unanimously! She has repeatedly demonstrated her loyalty to insurance companies ... keeping that gravy train flowing straight from our pockets to their pockets!
Aug 3, 2015
Chicago’s City College board voted a steep hike in tuition–some students’ costs will jump 73%. Chicago City Colleges serve more than 120,000 students, overwhelmingly working class. A big portion of students attend part-time–they also work or have child-care responsibilities. And they will suffer the biggest increases.
The City College Board, made up of Mayor Emanuel’s cronies, is raising the tuition to cover the entirety of this year’s budget deficit. That is, they are forcing the students to pay for the financial crisis.
Students were notified of the price hike just a day and a half before the vote was taken. Many had already paid, and so were mailed notice that they owed more money.
City Colleges provide a necessary education for the working class. Instead of making students pay for the budget shortfall, the city should get money from those that have it: take back the millions given to wealthy corporations, like United Airlines, Marriott and Hyatt hotels, and Miller-Coors. Tax the downtown trading firms. Tax the big corporations, many of which pay no taxes at all. These are the people who create Chicago’s overall budget shortfall.
Some students at City Colleges have gotten together to try to organize against the tuition hike. The administration has already reacted–threatening some of the organizers, including threats to revoke the student visas of certain foreign students. Their fight is the same fight as the one in the public schools, and for other public services. Working people in Chicago have every interest to support and join all of these fights, to wage the broad struggle that could make Emanuel and his wealthy pals step back.
Aug 3, 2015
U.S. Senators voted on July 30 to delay enforcing their own measures for railroad safety. Only two and a half months after eight people died in an Amtrak crash outside Philadelphia, the Senate voted not to enforce the safety rules for railroads that the Senate itself had established in 2008–after another railroad crash with fatalities.
Both the current head of the National Transportation Safety Board and its previous head told Congress that the PTC, the positive train control, a safety system to force trains to brake, would have saved the lives of those who died.
The legislation passed in 2008 on train safety gave the railroads seven years to install PTC systems. While Amtrak claimed it would meet the December 2015 deadline, it had not installed the PTC system on the part of its track where the crash occurred in May. And both freight and commuter railroad systems have stated they did not have the funds or the equipment to finish installing PTC by the end of this year.
But Congress has now adjourned without dealing with railroad safety.
These politicians go off on summer vacation with the blood of railroad victims dripping from their hands.
Aug 3, 2015
The company providing meals in Washington, D.C. public schools has suddenly quit its contract. In June, Chartwells-Thompson agreed to pay more than 19 million dollars to settle claims that it pocketed millions of dollars in kickbacks from big food suppliers like Tyson Chicken and Kraft. This is quite a change from 2008, when Chancellor Michelle Rhee privatized D.C. school cafeterias. At that time she and the company insisted meals would be cheaper and healthier.
Politicians and corporations always say privatizing is better. But providing public services for profit gives companies the incentive to bilk the budget. Corporations try to maximize their profits, which means charging more, getting rid of workers or cutting pay and benefits, or lowering the quality of the products–or all of these.
The same company paid out a similar settlement in New York in 2012. So, what about the other 500 school districts across the country contracting with Chartwells- Thompson, and all the other school districts contracting with other companies?
Profit rules them, too. Food for thought!
Aug 3, 2015
At the beginning of 1944, the Japanese military leadership, concluding that they could not win the war against the United States, began pushing for a negotiated peace. In December 1944, the Japanese government made overtures that it would like to surrender.
But instead of accepting Japan’s surrender and discussing their outstanding differences, the U.S. launched a policy of mass terror bombing. This began on the night of March 9-10, 1945, when U.S. planes dropped 500,000 napalm bombs on Tokyo in order to ignite a firestorm. Temperatures reached between 600 and 1800 degrees Fahrenheit, reducing 16 square miles of the city to ash. About 100,000 Japanese civilians were killed, another million or so were wounded, and a million more were rendered homeless.
The Tokyo firebombing was just the start. Over the next three months, the United States destroyed an additional 64 Japanese cities, killing hundreds of thousands of civilians, maiming thousands more, and rendering a huge portion of the Japanese population homeless and completely destitute.
Almost all of the victims were women, children, and old men. War production had already stopped since Japan completely lacked raw materials. The reason for these firebombings was not military–in the official sense of the word–it was to terrorize and murder Japan’s civilian population.
The terror culminated when the U.S. dropped atomic bombs on the cities of Hiroshima on August 6 and Nagasaki on August 9, 1945. The destruction was unprecedented. Everyone and everything close to the blasts was simply vaporized. People further out were crushed by falling debris, burned by fires, or inundated with radiation which made them go blind and made their skin fall off. The United States killed somewhere between 90,000 and 160,000 people in Hiroshima, and about half as many in Nagasaki–not counting all those who died in the following years from the effects of the radiation. In fact, many more people would have been killed except that the Nagasaki bomb exploded on the ground, instead of in the air as it was supposed to, thus limiting its blast.
The United States justified the terror bombings by claiming that without them, the U.S. would have had to launch a bloody invasion of the Japanese home islands that might have cost one million U.S. soldiers their lives. In reality, records show that the U.S. government knew perfectly well that Japan was already defeated, and that no invasion would be necessary even to secure the unconditional surrender that the U.S. insisted on. Immediately after the war, the U.S. analyzed the effects of its strategic bombing policy. Its Strategic Bombing Survey Report concluded: “certainly prior to 31 December 1945, and in all probability prior to 1 November 1945, Japan would have surrendered even if the atomic bombs had not been dropped, even if Russia had not entered the war, and even if no invasion had been planned or contemplated.” Thus, the U.S. military itself knew that the atomic bombings were “unnecessary” from any conventional point of view.
But the U.S. had a different military problem. The two world wars had made the U.S., the only true “winner” in those wars, the world’s dominant imperialist power. This would let U.S. corporations exploit the entire world, by investing, loaning money at high interest rates, grabbing raw materials, and dominating the world market.
In 1945, most of the world’s people lived in colonies or semi-colonies of the old European powers, but the colonial regimes had been severely shaken by World War II. There were struggles in many of those colonies to break loose from the domination of imperialism. The U.S. was not interested in protecting the interests of its imperialist rivals, but it was vitally interested in making sure that Asia, Africa, and the Middle East stayed under imperialist control, this time under the domination of governments dependent on the United States. In Latin America, which had long been the “backyard” of U.S. imperialism, WWII had given many countries a little breathing space from direct U.S. domination, since the U.S. was occupied elsewhere–a breathing space that would soon come to an end. And in Europe itself, the U.S. wanted to assert its status as the dominant power, not a “partner” on equal terms with its allies, Britain, France, and its once and future enemy, the U.S.S.R.
Even the massive U.S. Army could not possibly have kept the population of most of the world in check through permanent military occupation. But the U.S. could use the end of the war with Japan to put the world on notice that it would and could bomb and murder indiscriminately to protect its interests, its domination over the entire world. It was terrorism in the full sense of the term.
The U.S. has proved its willingness to use the same kinds of murderous tactics that it used against Japan many times since: firebombing every city in North Korea during the Korean War; bombing villages in Vietnam where the U.S. killed more than two million civilians; more recently in Iraq and Afghanistan. The U.S. carried out murderous policies in each of these places because in each case the U.S. war aims were to ensure its domination over these countries, and over the surrounding region, against the interests of the population.
When the U.S. ended WWII with a massive assault on Japanese civilians, it was the U.S. declaration of war on the world.
Aug 3, 2015
This article is from the July 31st issue of Lutte Ouvrière (Workers Struggle), the paper of the revolutionary workers group of that name active in France.
During the night of July 27, 2,200 immigrants tried to enter the French side of the Channel Tunnel at Calais. There have been similar photos of immigrants trying to force their way past the fences at Melilla, a part of Spanish Morocco. The inhumane situation of these immigrants explains the desperate attempts they have made.
On July 22, a young Eritrean woman was struck by a car while trying to enter the tunnel. Four weeks earlier, another young woman was killed under similar conditions. An Ethiopian immigrant was found dead in the retention basin of the tunnel, he was only 17 years old.
More than 10 immigrants have died in similar circumstances since the first of June. All were fleeing the extreme misery they faced in their countries of origin, ravaged by war. People from Ethiopia, Eritrea and Somalia are the majority of these victims.
The French and British governments throw more and more forces to try to prevent these immigrants from entering the Channel Tunnel at Calais, chasing desperate people in what the governments call the “jungle” at Calais. But nothing has dissuaded men and women from risking their lives to get through.
By contrast, these events serve as a pretext to raise the fees on the Channel crossing. The stockholders of the Euro-tunnel cynically claim almost 10 million euros in compensation for “losses and supplementary costs due to the influx of immigrants.” These bosses explain that thanks to the immigrants they ought to be allowed to erect additional barriers, which would increase by a third the amount of compensation they claim.
In 2000, this business group already demanded compensation for the same reasons. A tribunal awarded them an estimated 24 million euros for their “losses.”
Their revolting cynicism passes all estimations.
Aug 3, 2015
Last week, a federal judge ruled that the no-fly list was unconstitutional in the way that the U.S. implemented it against a Northern Virginia teenager four years ago.
After a trip abroad to see relatives and study Arabic in 2011, Gulet Mohamed was taken into custody in Kuwait and beaten and interrogated by authorities because he was on the U.S. no-fly list. He eventually made it back home to the United States and sued the government.
Meanwhile, Mohamed’s brother, Liban, a Northern Virginia cab driver, was added to the FBI’s “Most Wanted Terrorists” list on the eve of a hearing in Gulet’s case.
Coincidence? Maybe.
Liban has since been detained in Somalia. In fact, U.S. authorities are negotiating under what circumstance he can come back to the U.S.
The government never admits its actions were wrong. But they spoke volumes when they added Gulet’s brother to the list: Don’t you dare challenge Homeland Security’s authority to violate your rights–or else.
Aug 3, 2015
For banks and hedge funds, Puerto Rico’s debt crisis has been an enormous opportunity for super profits and plunder.
Declaring Puerto Rican debt to be a poor risk, the banks have driven Puerto Rico’s borrowing costs sky high. Interest rates on Puerto Rican government bonds are three or four times higher than other U.S. state and local bonds. On top of that, the banks have been charging hundreds of millions extra in short-term lending fees and bond insurance costs every year. Moreover, between 2012 and 2014, the banks got the Puerto Rican government to pay them close to a billion dollars to terminate toxic financial securities that the banks had sold.
With the crisis, vulture funds, financial companies that specialize in wringing huge profits out of distressed companies and governments, swooped down and bought up tens of billions of high interest government bonds at a fraction of their face value. Hedge fund manager John Paulson, best known for making billions off the 2008 subprime crash, led the charge, by buying up 100 million dollars of Puerto Rico’s junk bonds. He and other money managers made Puerto Rican debt the hottest trade in the hedge fund world.
A couple of billionaires also went on a buying spree around the island. In 2014, John Paulson spent more than 260 million dollars to buy three of the island’s largest resorts, and announced plans to develop half a billion dollars worth of “residences and resort amenities” to add to the existing beachfront condos and golf courses. Paulson’s fellow billionaire, Nicholas Prouty, spent more than half a billion dollars to turn San Juan’s marina into a bastion of the elite that includes an exclusive club and slips for “megayachts of 200 feet or larger.”
Puerto Rican officials have been bending over backwards to court these billionaires and bankers. In 2012, government officials voted to exempt the wealthy in Puerto Rico from paying state and local taxes on investment income. Considering that the wealthy in Puerto Rico are already exempted from federal income taxes, it means they avoid paying almost all taxes. And it’s the same for their companies, since the corporate income tax in Puerto Rico is a minuscule 4 per cent. Alberto Bacó, Puerto Rico’s secretary of development and commerce, advertises Puerto Rico as the “Singapore of the Caribbean.”
The bankers and the wealthy have already sucked the working population in Puerto Rico dry. Unemployment is more than twice the U.S. national average, and the island’s median household income is less than half the U.S. average. It is also $7,000 less than Detroit–which some of the same bankers and billionaires just put through its own debt crisis.
And that’s just for starters.
State officials say they want to cut the minimum wage below the federal rate of $7.25 an hour, as well as cut the few social programs that exist. The government is also closing 100 public schools, and officials say they want to close 560 more in the near future.
Government officials have also taken aim at teachers. A couple of years ago, they tried to convert teacher pensions to 401(k) plans–which would leave teachers with practically nothing to retire on, since they don’t get Social Security benefits. But after teachers went on a successful two day strike (even though it was considered illegal), the Puerto Rican Supreme Court ruled against the government’s pension reform.
But the teachers know the government is taking aim at them. As Mercedes Martínez, head of the Puerto Rican teachers’ union, told the New York Times (July 23), “The judicial system is not something that we can put our trust in.” She says they are girding for more battles this summer and fall.
“We are talking about a class struggle,” Martínez said. “The rich people want to get richer and the poor people are getting poorer, unless they’re willing to take to the streets.”
Truer words were never spoken.
Aug 3, 2015
Officials in Texas, and the media, have gone to great lengths to insist Sandra Bland committed suicide in her jail cell and was not murdered by the police. After originally releasing only edited videos of Bland’s arrest and incarceration, they say they now found more video showing Bland was unharmed during the three days she was locked up.
Why would anyone believe these liars? Sandra Bland, who was healthy when she was picked up, was dead three days later while in police custody.
She was pulled over for not signaling a lane change, then brutalized on the street by a cop who became visibly upset when she dared to question his demand to put out a cigarette she was smoking in her own vehicle, and then forced her out of her car under threat of “lighting her up” with an electronic taser.
The cop slammed her head against the ground, so hard she complained she couldn’t hear, and arrested her. All of this was on video and all for what started as failure to use a turn signal, something practically every driver does dozens of times every time they drive.
Finally, she was kept in jail for three days, where this same cop worked who had already brutalized her. If anyone believes she was not then brutalized again while in jail, they are not living in the United States of America.
Regardless of how Sandra Bland eventually died, it is the police who are responsible for her death. However it happened, Sandra Bland was murdered. However it happened, these police have to be held accountable for it.
Aug 3, 2015
Trishawn Cardessa Carey, a 34-year-old homeless woman, faces 25 years in prison on a charge of “assault with a deadly weapon.”
In fact, Carey didn’t do anything of that sort. A cell phone video shows clearly that Carey was just holding a baton that a cop had dropped when five cops were roughing up Charly Keunang, another homeless person, on L.A.’s skid row on March 1. The prosecutors agree Carey didn’t attack anyone, but they claim that Carey is guilty of, basically, thinking of attacking a cop.
Thinking of assault? There is, of course, no such crime on the books.
Those cops were busy brutalizing another homeless person when Carey was caught up in the middle. In fact, during that confrontation, the cops ended up shooting Keunang, who was unarmed, six times and killing him–for the “crime” of refusing to move his tent!
Five months after this brutal murder, captured on video and seen by millions of people online, the cops are still not charged with any crime. But Carey was charged instead. Immediately. Facing 25 years. Put behind bars, with bail set at more than one million dollars–until the authorities reduced it to “only” $50,000 almost five months later, after protests from the homeless community and advocacy groups.
Who would call Trishawn Carey a criminal and treat her like this–while protecting the real criminals, the murderous cops? Only a “justice” system that’s racist, unjust and rotten to the core.
Aug 3, 2015
On July 29, a cop in Cincinnati was charged in the murder of Samuel DuBose ten days earlier. Just three months before, six cops in Baltimore were charged in the murder of Freddie Gray.
The cops in these two cities were only doing what thousands of cops had already done, killing a young black man. But in these two cases, they were charged, and almost immediately. And that was practically unheard of.
How many people are killed every year by cops? Four hundred? Six hundred? A thousand? No one knows because in the United States, this country that counts everything, there is no official count of this kind of murder, murder by cop—no place that tallies centrally all the killings by cops of civilians, nothing that requires local police departments to keep their own count.
Hardly a murdering cop is ever charged. Through newspaper accounts or court records, the Legal Defense Fund identified at least 2,000 black people killed by cops in the last seven years. Of those 2,000 cases, fewer than 30 cops were ever indicted for anything other than minor charges. Only two of them were convicted. Of those two, only one served any time in prison.
If it had not been for the young people of Baltimore who went out into the streets on the night of Freddie Gray’s funeral, he would not even have been another statistic, only another young black man killed. But what happened on the streets of Baltimore, and before that in Ferguson, Missouri, has put authorities on notice: people will have justice.
Of course, young black men are not the only ones killed—older black men are also killed, as are black women. So are whites, so are Hispanics. With few exceptions, all of those killed are poor. But out of all proportion to their numbers, those killed are young, black and male.
Undoubtedly, an important reason for these murders is the outright racism that exists in many police departments, and the deep racism of many cops. But that’s only the smallest part of the problem. These murders are the consequences of conscious policies carried out at the highest level of government, federal and state, for the past 40 years, policies aimed at confining large parts of the poor laboring population.
The whole working class, living through this period of one crisis after another, has suffered high rates of unemployment. But, as has always been the case, the worst of that unemployment rested on the black population—particularly after the big companies shut down their facilities in the big cities and towns, shipping production into the small towns and rural areas where few black people lived. The number of black unemployed rapidly increased—even while the Barack Obamas, the many other black politicians, and the layer of well-off black petty bourgeois and small bourgeois found their place in U.S. capitalist society.
The American state has responded to the growing army of the unemployed by throwing them in prison—under the pretext of a war on drugs.
With only four per cent of the world’s population, the U.S. has twenty-four per cent of the whole world’s prisoners. And then there are all the others—no longer in prison, but with a prison record. Certainly, there are many million poor whites and Hispanics among this number. But out of all proportion, prison defines the life of the black population. One third of all black males will spend time in prison—and in some big cities, the proportion is unthinkably worse. In Chicago, Barack Obama’s home and among the most racist of U.S. big cities, more than 55% of adult black males are either now in prison, have been or will be.
The very large majority of them went to prison the first time for a minor drug offense, even simple possession of marijuana. Whatever they were when they went into one of those hellholes, they aren’t the same when they come out. Quite a few turn to crime to survive. They couldn’t get a job before. Even less can they get one when they come out with a prison record. How else can they survive?
Effectively, a large proportion of the black population has been criminalized as the result of conscious policies carried out under every administration, going back to Richard Nixon, all the way up to Barack Obama. Some of the very worst legal changes were implemented by the Democratic administration of Bill Clinton.
The cops treat all young black males in the poor neighborhoods as criminals. They stop them day after day, search them, use whatever they find—or plant—to arrest them. And if someone resists, they may shoot them. The cops might be marked by racism, but they are simply implementing policies laid down from on high.
Many of those killed were unarmed. But we should be clear. A lot of those young men on the street are hard. They need to be to survive.
Many of those young people are fighters, but who do they fight today? Each other. And maybe workers who live near them. They are fighting against themselves and against their class.
But when there is a fight, when the working class begins to move, these young people have to be brought into that fight, made part of it. They know how to fight. The working class—first of all, black workers, but black, brown and white workers—can give all these hard young men something worth fighting for, no matter what their color.
They could fight against the capitalist class that puts every one of us, every part of the working class, in a kind of prison today.