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Former and Present Racist Occupiers Unite to Threaten N. Korea

by Gavrielle Gemma

President Trump met with his right-wing counterpart in Japan, Prime Minister Abe, on the first leg of a trip set up to threaten N. Korea, challenge China and forge a new imperialist alliance. Calling Japan a “Warrior Nation”, Trump urged Abe to quickly militarize Japan and promised to sell Japan weapons of every kind.

Japan had brutally occupied Korea from 1910 to 1945 when the U.S. took over after Japan’s defeat in World War II. Their military dictatorship of Korea involved shooting down and imprisoning thousands of worker and farmers fighting for independence and banning the Korean language, schools, newspapers and religion. By 1935, they “owned” half of all farmland stolen from Korean peasants and forced 5 million Koreans into the Japanese army to do all the dirty work for their imperialist army, even being used as military medical experiments in Japan. Over 200, 000 Korean women were kidnapped and forced into sexual and domestic slavery. After Japan lost out to the imperialist U.S., it was banned from developing a military. But now the Trump/Wall ST. /Pentagon Junta is urging them to massively militarize.

Japan threatening N. Korea is no different than if the U.S. had a press conference with a European colonizer in Africa to threaten to directly reoccupy the countries that had liberated themselves from colonialism. On the Korean peninsula, only N. Korea has liberated itself. South Korea has remained a colony of the U.S. with 40,000 troops, many bases and aircraft carriers and nuclear weapons. The U.S. has supported all the S. Korean dictatorships and corporations that impoverish the Korean working class. South Koreans Protest U.S THAAD missile systems and occupation. No War – Peace

Japan kidnapped 200,000 Korean girls and women called “comfort women” into forced sex slavery for Japanese troops. Others were forced in domestic slavery for Japan’s rulers. Koreans before and after WWII were abused and brutally discriminated against in Japan.

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Offshore Oil and Gas Production Continues to Cause Devastating Damage in the Gulf South

In October, an underwater fractured pipe, owned by LLOG exploration company, released 672,000 gallons of oil into the Gulf of Mexico, 40 miles southeast of Venice Louisiana. This is the biggest spill in the Gulf since the Deepwater Horizon rig exploded in 2010, spilling over 200 million gallons of oil, claiming eleven workers’ lives, and causing devastating effects to our ecosystem and coastal communities.

This most recent spill falls into a distinct category; it’s the first blowout in history to release oil in such deep waters, nearly a mile below the surface. Due to the depth of the spill, we won’t see the traditional shoreline effects that we’re used to. The true impact is occurring far under the sea, where it threatens fish, deep-sea corals, gelatinous zooplankton, and diverse communities of shrimp, crabs and other organisms.

The oil and gas industry has continuously been unwilling to address its environmental and community impacts in the Gulf South, not to mention its role in global climate change. The rate of marsh shoreline erosion increases with oiling and Louisiana’s wetlands are already disappearing at the alarming rate of a football field worth of land an hour. These wetlands are a crucial buffer zone protecting coastal communities from flooding and storms.

It’s time to move away from the dangerous, destructive oil industry to renewable energy sources that provide safe jobs for our communities.

L’eau Est La Vie camp is a floating pipeline resistance camp in Southern Louisiana. We fight in the bayous of Louisiana, Chata Houma Chittimacha Atakapaw territory, to stop the Bayou Bridge Pipeline, an Energy Transfer Partners project and the tail end of the Dakota Access Pipeline.

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Dennis Banks, American Indian Movement Co-Founder, Dies

By Joe Stern

Revolutionaries around the world mourned the death of Dennis Banks, legendary Anishinaabe Leader and co-founder of the American Indian Movement (AIM). Like many indigenous people of his generation, Banks was forced into boarding school at four years old. There he suffered beatings and other abuses in the US genocidal experiment to “kill an Indian, save the man”. These abuses included cutting the boys’ hair, refusing to let students speak their tribal languages or practice their tribal religions, and extreme physical deprivation.

In 1968, Banks co-founded AIM with Clyde Bettecourt to fight Native oppression and endemic poverty. A year later, he took part in the occupation of Alcatraz Island in California. In 1972, he helped lead AIM’s “Trail of Broken Treaties”, a caravan of numerous tribes protesting treaty violations and reservation conditions which came from across the US to Washington DC, and occupied the Bureau of Indian Affairs building. In early 1973, 200 armed Lakota and members of other indigenous nations occupied Wounded Knee on the Pine Ridge Reservation for 71 violence filled days.

In later years, Banks became a substance and alcohol abuse counselor. However, he remained active in the fight for socialism and women’s liberation running for Vice President on the Peace and Freedom Party. He was also active in last year’s struggle against the Dakota Access Pipeline.

The indigenous peoples and all revolutionaries will long hold the memory of revolutionary activist Dennis Banks.

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Humma Ohoyo Holitopa

by Isabella Moraga-Ghazi

this land is not conquered or broken;
she is living, persisting, and thriving.
curse to the nay-sayers
for I talk to her everyday.
she dreams wildly.
so wildly, and so vividly that she sees her destruction and rebirth, emulating the resilience
of the phoenix, continuously stream in the consciousness she holds.
why do we stop her dreams?
dreams that are much more valid than me’s or you’s.
the ancestors sing through her.

in the moss, in the cypress.
in the pelicans, in the possums.
her song is quiet but strong.
if you listen closely, she says “yakoke” and “si vous plait”
to me and others like me.
but a vengeance she has.
a vengeance so strong it makes Katrina look weak.
a vengeance so strong it makes Andrew Jackson’s knees tremble.
a vengeance so strong it makes the BP oil spill look far from a disaster.
a vengeance so strong it makes Marie Laveau startled.
and that vengeance lives through me and others like me.
for the obligation we have bestowed on us is a tall order of demanding respect.
when it is quiet, tohbi ofi need be afraid.
for you shall know, that vengeance is no longer resting.
it is living, persisting, and thriving.
and it will not rest until she is doing the same.
“vee wan cee,” she says, “and do not betray me.”
she believes in us.
it is time we believe in us.
and it is time we believe in her.

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Capitalism Breeds Sexual Harassment: Women Should Take to the Streets to Show Our Power!

By Gavrielle Gemma

For thousands of years before class society developed, men and women, expressing many forms of gender identity, lived and worked together with mutual respect. In fact, if anything, women were held in the highest regard.

Once class society developed based on individual rather than shared accumulation, mother right, the rights of women, was overthrown as women and children became the property of rich men and the family a unit to advance further private wealth and inheritance.

Just as U.S. imperialism demonizes countries, other religions and people to justify genocidal bombings and occupation, women were and are brutally depicted as less than human. Men suffering the worst exploitation and oppression could feel superior to women who were the servants of even the humblest peasant or worker. As the heroic Lucy Parsons said, “We are the slaves of slaves”. Racism among white workers is designed to make them feel that at least they are better than Black people. In both cases the rich white capitalist class laughs all the way to the bank.

The problem lies in the private ownership of all the means of production and the capitalist class that owns the Congress and the Presidency and the Supreme Court. This is a Congress that has never been able to pass an Equal Rights Amendment. The problem lies in that women workers do not control and run things as we would under socialism. Congress has allowed a rapist pig to be president – Donald Trump – for fear that firing him over being a sexual predator would not serve Wall Street’s interests.

Even while new exposes are constantly being revealed, the real condition of working class and oppressed women sinks lower every day. But what cannot be undone is the potential revolutionary force that women workers are in capitalist society.

In the meantime, we must not be handcuffed to internet petitions and phone calls to Congress. We need to get out into the streets by the millions to say no to Sexism, Racism, Poverty, Homophobia & War. They need to be afraid of our power.

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Student Debt Slavery: the Ruling Class’s Latest Shackles on Workers

by Dylan Borne

“I am a 60 year old mom and I work as a janitor to help my son pay his student loans. I have arthritis which makes my job even harder.”

A woman named Darlene posted this on studentdebtcrisis.org. She’s one of the 44 million Americans carrying crushing student debt. In the past decade, student debt rose to the highest it’s ever been. Now more than $1.4 trillion, it has overtaken auto loan, home equity, and even credit card debt. The average student graduates from college with $35,000 to repay—and counting. In just three years, between 2010 and 2013, the number of “seriously delinquent” loans (loans too high to repay) doubled. Many indebted workers are college dropouts, pressured to go to college by the competitive economy but ending up even worse off than if they had never gone to school.

But lenders and college administrators are laughing their way to the bank. More loans mean more people paying for college, so colleges take advantage and raise tuition. High tuition means more students take out more loans. The cycle continues, stacking up to a debt mountain nearly the size of Texas’s economy.

Yet real wages and salaries are declining. The value of a college degree now is less than half its value than in the early 2000s, according to the Pew Research Center. Students will have to stop paying; the tower of debt will have to fall.

When this happens, the banks won’t suffer. Whether there’s a Republican or a Democrat in office, the government will bail them out like both Bush and Obama did during the mortgage crisis.

But a solution is possible.

The New Orleans Workers Group demands that the government bail out the people instead of the banks. Cancel student debt. The billionaire bankers can afford to downsize the mansions we bought for them with our interest payments.

College should be free for everyone—like it is in socialist countries like Cuba—so the student debt can’t be amassed in the first place. Banks should be replaced by People’s Banks, overseen by ordinary workers to give out low-interest loans based on helping people sustainably pay for what they need, instead of exploiting them for the bankers’ profit.

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Puerto Ricans Still Left in the Dark

By Ashlee Pintos

Beginning on September 22nd, 2017, a modern colony of the “greatest country in the world” went into complete darkness. The small island of Puerto Rico with its 3.4 million citizens suffered in isolation while Hurricane Maria ravaged the entire country. It was not until day 4 or 5 that the millions of anxious Puerto Ricans living in the states were able to hear any information about their loved ones.

The government has declared only 48 deaths as direct results of the hurricane. However, The U.S. is only counting deaths directly related to the storm itself and does not address the hundreds of deaths caused by the failure of the U.S. government to help the island during Maria’s aftermath. There have actually been reports of over 450 deaths, island wide, with 69 people reported missing. Many of the island’s hospitals are not functioning at full capacity: they are running out of medications and fuel for their generators. This has resulted in hundreds of deaths from a lack of medication, oxygen tanks, and the sanitation that electricity provides to prevent the spread of disease. Relief resources are not being distributed to the island’s remote villages. Instead, the U.S. immediately began the militarization of the island, sending in hundreds of police and military officials.

After almost 2 weeks, Trump finally visited the capital of San Juan, the epicenter of the tourism industry and site of his own personal investments. He has not addressed the villages where dead bodies of humans and livestock have yet to be moved, there is no running water or electricity, and people are desperate for food, clean water, cash, and gasoline. One of his first responses to this catastrophic event was to acknowledge the island’s illegitimate debt of $74 billion and remark that the island is throwing the “budget out of whack.” But that debt has been caused by over 100 years of abuse by the U.S., and compared to state debts such as New York at $143 billion, Puerto Rico’s debt is manageable. Not to mention, the U.S. military budget is well over $800 billion, a figure that could pay PR’s debt 10 times over. Puerto Rico’s debt should be pardoned and the island should be granted liberation!

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Blood in the Cane Fields: An Interview with Chris Dier

By Gregory William

Chris Dier was born and raised in St. Bernard Parish, Louisiana. He was displaced by Katrina, but returned home in 2010. Like his mother, he is a history teacher at Chalmette High School, and author of a new book, Blood in the Cane Fields: The 1868 St. Bernard Parish Massacre.

W.V.: What was the St. Bernard Parish Massacre?

Chris Dier: In St. Bernard Parish there was a massacre in 1868, right after the Civil War. Following the war, many black males had gained the right to vote and that threatened the economic relations of these parishes, where white supremacy ruled the land. Around New Orleans, there were sugar-producing regions where black people were the majority, and had been locked into slavery. When they were emancipated and gained voting rights, many voted for the Republican Party, which in that time had sided with liberation. This threatened the white political and economic elite. That elite pushed the narrative that all the problems after the Civil War were caused by the freed people and a lot of poor whites bought into it…1868 was the first presidential election after the war. The Republican candidate was Union veteran, Ulysses S. Grant, and the Democratic candidate was Horatio Seymour, an opponent of Reconstruction and rights for African Americans…Days before the election, armed white groups, many poor planters – not the elites themselves, who had been stoking the fire – carried out one of the most violent episodes of the Reconstruction era in Louisiana. These groups went from plantation to plantation and executed up to 135 people in the streets.

W.V.: So this was a reaction to Reconstruction, which was coming down from the federal level, but did you also uncover information about what freed people were doing in the region at a grassroots level to secure their rights?

Chris Dier: Yes. The first Republican meeting in St. Bernard was a group of freed people coming together. They had their own processions and meetings. There were a lot of grassroots efforts in Louisiana. Interestingly, 19 years after the massacre, in 1887, black and white St. Bernardians marched in unison against the planter elite. That unity is terrifying to the rich…The idea of race had to be strongly imposed over the centuries, going back to the 13 colonies, where there were many instances of poor whites joining in struggle with enslaved people… During the labor movement in New Orleans, blacks and whites came together in 1892 and 1907 along the Mississippi River fighting for their common rights, and this is what brought about some of the harshest reactions from the rich…There are many lessons in this history for the struggle now.

W.V.: How have your students responded to this research?

Chris Dier: My students have been very eager to explore this event. Many see their last names in the book. Some of the last names of perpetrators as well as victims are those of students sitting in the same classroom today. This is their history and most knew nothing about it…It is so important for young people to learn about history, because they are the ones who are going to carry struggle forward.

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Oppose the Stepped Up FBI-Led War Against the Black Liberation Movement

By Malcolm Suber

The New Orleans Workers Group (NOWG) strongly opposes the August 2, FBI report that named so-called “black identity extremism” as a terrorist movement motivated by retaliation for incidents of police abuse and terrorism against African-Americans. The report predicts an increase in violence based on 6 attacks against police between 2014 and 2016, including Michael Johnson on July 7th, 2016 in Dallas where 5 cops were killed.

In all 6 incidents, a total of 8 police officers were killed, but this doesn’t compare to the hundreds of black people killed by cops according to the Washington Post. In 2015, police killed 259 black people. This move by the FBI to claim that black identity extremism is equivalent to white extremism and nazism is ridiculous on it’s face. We know that the racist white supremacist Donald Trump and the justice department under the leadership of Jeff Sessions are encouraging white supremacists and hell-bent on continuing the slaughter of black people in this country. The (BIE) designation is putting old wine in a new bottle. This is a continuation of the infamous COINTELPRO program created by J Edgar Hoover, designed to disrupt and derail the Black Liberation struggle.

The resurgence of the Black Liberation struggle, inspiring the Black Lives Matter movement, causes great consternation to the white racist billionaires who now run this country. They are hell-bent on preventing the resurgence of a strong black liberation struggle that may spark struggles among other oppressed peoples and segments of US society. NOWG calls for all of us to become more vigilant about infiltrators and agent provocateurs, which are trade tools of the FBI. Hopefully this latest program will not end with the murders and imprisonment of the newly developed leaders of the Black Liberation struggle.

We must all be vigilant and understand that the US state controlled by the billionaire ruling class is not neutral and has always been part of the lynch mob attitude towards the black masses and their struggle for freedom and liberation. We ask all working people and our allies to stand up and expose the fraudulent nature of the BIE designation. The real terrorists, the white supremacist neo-nazi elements of society who are trying to continue the terror campaign of the government and the Ku Klux Klan must be combatted and exposed as racist scum.

If all the oppressed and exploited stand together, we can turn back this assault by the FBI and the government and move closer to the day of the triumph of the workers revolution that will eliminate white supremacy and the billionaire ruling class.

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100 Years Later: Workers of the World Celebrate the Russian Revolution

By Quest R.

In October and November, workers and oppressed people on every corner of the globe celebrated the 100-year anniversary of the first Socialist Revolution: the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution of Russia. The downtrodden people of the Earth have looked to the Russian Revolution for inspiration since 1917, and in 2017, we have proven that the revolutionary legacy is still alive in the hearts of the masses everywhere.

The New Orleans Workers Group held a public celebration of the Bolshevik Revolution on October 29. Speakers gave talks regarding the historical context and significance of the Revolution and its implication on our struggles today. After brief talks, we celebrated with food and drinks and we sang the “Internationale”, the song of working class revolution.

Russian Revolution 100 year anniversary celebrations in South Africa, Russia, Bangladesh, Venezuela, and Italy.