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
Sep 3, 2018
On the early morning of August 26, a fire swept through the back porch of a house in Chicago’s working class Little Village neighborhood, killing 10 children. The nine cousins and one family friend ranged in age from 3 months to 16 years old.
After the fire, the city charged the landlord with more than 40 building code violations for the two apartments in the building, including for missing smoke detectors and smoke detectors that didn’t have working batteries. These charges are too little, too late for the ten dead kids.
This landlord has been cited before in a different building for not having a smoke detector, as well as for not having a carbon monoxide detector, keeping a building at low temperatures, not having a working space heater, and not providing hot water. For all that he had to pay ... $2,000. For repairs he should have made anyway!
Chicago has great fire codes ... on paper. But in the poor and working-class neighborhoods, the profits of the slumlords come first.