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Gun Violence Should Not Turn a Profit: A Revolutionary Take on Guns in the US

 

By the New Orleans Workers Group

Dear fellow students and workers,

We congratulate the youth movement for taking the first steps to fight gun violence. We are all grieving and outraged by the school shootings in Parkland and throughout the United States.

But more than thoughts and prayers, what we extend is Solidarity. As much as we grieve, we work for a solution.

This work begins with the question: Why? Why do we have a culture of gun violence?

Our answer: Because arms dealers make a killing off it.

In the wake of the Sandy Hook shooting in Newton, while families were burying their children, gun corporations were laughing their way to the bank. During that year following the shooting, the three largest gun manufacturers (Sturm Ruger, Remington Outdoor, and Smith & Wesson) saw their profits skyrocket 70%. As a whole, the gun industry adds up to $8 billion.

Where do these profits go?

Arms dealers live in luxury. Firearms tycoon Ugo Beretta lives in a mansion, walls decorated with elephant tusks and buffalo heads, Venetian chandeliers hanging from the ceiling. He drives a Maserati, has a private butler and cook, and his wife had a teddy bear made for her out of cash—and his gun company is only the 9th largest.

Everything that doesn’t fund the arms dealers’ blood mansions floods the NRA’s multi-million-dollar bank vaults.

Then the money-making cycle restarts as the NRA funds America’s profitable gun cult. Gun lobbyists have politicians at every level of government in the palm of their hand, all the way up to Donald Trump, who received $30 million from them. In some states, like Florida, lobbyists skip the politicians and just write the gun laws themselves. It’s there that the NRA pushed through the “Stand Your Ground” law, which justified the murder of Trayvon Martin and basically legalized hate crime. It’s not just political: the NRA wants to make violence a part of everyday culture. Their ads are just propaganda putting the mask of “freedom” on gun violence. Their million-dollar donors get the NRA’s “Golden Ring of Freedom”— which comes with a fancy blazer and a lifetime of lavish receptions and parties. This is nothing short of a glorification of America’s violence.

What do we think is the fix?

The New Orleans Workers Group believes gun control misses the main point. It treats the symptom, not the disease: profit, and the culture of violence it creates. Even if we have gun control, the (rich white) people who can afford guns will still find ways to get them because they’re in such a profitable market. Meanwhile the poor will be left defenseless. Everything from background checks to buyback programs will hit working class communities the hardest. Black communities will have nothing to protect themselves against hate crime and police violence.

At the end of the day, we can’t solve the gun problem as long as arms dealers can turn a profit.

We also believe that this point is for the entire culture of violence and can’t be separated from police brutality or war profiteering. No kind of arms dealer should make profits– whether they sell to shooters, racist cops, or the US military empire.

No massacre is too big or too small for them: if militarizing a racist police force or launching a war will make money, they’ll make it happen.

Racist cops and war are just as much of cash cows as school shootings. Glock, a top 10 gun corporation, sells 2/3 of all police handguns, the same handguns that the police uses to murder 1,000 people per year (hundreds of them black and indigenous). General Dynamics, Raytheon, BAE Sytems, Boeing, and Lockheed Martin (the top 5 military arms dealers) make a grand total of $133.9 billion yearly. They’re the biggest money-makers, responsible for the biggest bloodbath: the “War on Terror” that’s so far killed 4 million Muslims, mostly innocent civilians. But that’s 4 million lives they’re ready to spare if it lines their pockets.

There’s no way around it: The solution to the capitalist culture of violence involves eliminating guns for profit and wars for profit.

If the government can regulate profits made off things like medicine, it can make it a crime for arms tycoons to exploit violence to line their pockets. It’ll be up to the students and workers to build a movement to make that happen.

Love and Solidarity,

The Students and Workers of the New Orleans Workers Group

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Conditions are Dismal for Louisiana Women

By Gavrielle Gemma

In New Orleans, tourists can hop between fancy restaurants, concerts, conventions and giant drinks in the French Quarter. Rarely do they ever see that women here and throughout the state are suffering.

According to a report on the “Status of Women in the States” issued by Institute for Women’s Policy Research, Louisiana’s score for employment & earnings and health & well-being was ‘F’. Poverty, reproductive rights and elected representation earned ‘D-‘.

Black women earn only 49% of white men’s earnings. It’s 68% for white women and 52% for Latinas. Black women are only 28% of managerial or professional jobs, yet have the highest percentage of women working.

Infant mortality and women’s mortality rate during childbirth are about the worst in the country. Louisiana ranks 49 out of 50 states for women’s health and well-being and 46th for reproductive rights.

Neither the state nor New Orleans has any laws giving workers paid sick leave or vacation. Most women have no pensions. Only one women was elected to a state executive office and women had no seats in Congress.

The good news is that women in unions earn $252 a week more than those who have no union.

Women in the city and state have potential power that has not yet been organized or exerted. We make up a large percentage of the work force and the bosses make billions in profits from our labor. We will soon make our power known.

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Mayor Elect Latoya Cantrell: No Friend of the Working Class People of New Orleans

By Malcolm Suber

There’s an old saying that you can tell a lot about a person by the company they keep. If we use this as a measure of our mayor-elect, LaToya Cantrell, we can safely predict that New Orleans workers have four years of hard struggle ahead. Cantrell styled herself as the people’s candidate during her mayoral campaign. She was widely embraced by a number of self-proclaimed progressives like Step-Up Louisiana as being on the side of the workers. Her campaign even issued a statement about forming a people’s transition team that would include residents from all walks of life and social classes.

What we find of course is a transition team made up of the usual suspects, members of rich white ruling class and their most loyal lackeys. The transition team is co-chaired by Walter Issacson, former head of the Aspen Institute; Norman Francis, former President of Xavier University; and Gayle Benson, wife of Saints owner Tom Benson, Louisiana’s favorite charity who became a billionaire on our tax subsidies to his empire. A few community people were thrown in as window dressing.

This ruling class transition team will help mayor-elect Cantrell develop policies for her administration. The make-up of this committee tells us that New Orleans workers cannot put any faith into Cantrell’s mantra that “we’re moving forward together” and that she is a “bottom up organizer”. Hardly. Workers will discover that Cantrell, as all the mayors before her, are solidly in the hands of the developers and local capitalist class that stand for low wages, racism, police terror, mass incarceration, sexism and gentrification. Cantrell will be new wine in an old bottle.

On top of all the above, Cantrell is requiring those who join her transition team to sign “disclosure agreement” which forbids them to discuss transition team proceedings. So much for being transparent and welcoming all points of view.

We in the New Orleans Workers Group are not swayed by sloganeering and empty promises. We will continue to organize and prepare New Orleans workers for a fight against the bosses and their newest servant-mayor LaToya Cantrell.

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The State Can’t Tax the Rich, But It Can Suffocate Our Colleges?

By Nathalie Clarke and Dylane Borne

In spite of his 2015 campaign promises to reallocate savings to health services and education, Gov. John Bel Edwards, a Democrat who supposedly has the workers’ best interests at heart, showed himself willing to slash education before anything else: to compensate for a $1 billion deficit, he declared on January 22nd that he would cut the Louisiana state budget by $994 million. On January 31st his office announced that he had cut the budget by $672 million since being elected, cutting $11.9 million from higher education–a success in “fiscal responsibility” according to them. Since Bobby Jindal was elected governor in 2008, funding for public colleges has been cut, and tuition has persistently increased, going from 39% of universities’ revenue to 71% in 2015.

This new cut is just the continuation of capitalist politics: these cuts will disproportionately affect working families that cannot afford out-of-state or private universities, ridiculous fees at private hospitals, or private healthcare. In 2016, when Edwards threatened the Louisiana Legislature with a $131 million budget cut, SUNO declared that 50% of adjunct faculty would be released, eliminating certain course sections. In 2010 UNO faced $13 million in cutbacks. As a result, multiple programs including Women and Gender Studies and other liberal arts majors were completely eliminated.

(Source: the advocate)

The cuts will destroy TOPS, a scholarship that covers tuition for hundreds of thousands of students. Although TOPS has its own problems (it’s based on ACT scores, and because of how expensive ACT training is, rich whites almost always do better), it’s better than nothing, and the new budget cuts will probably cut it by 80%. The last shred of hope for working families to send their children to college is pretty much gone. Costs of attendance have continuously been increasing; LSU tuition and fees now total almost $30,000.

The seven-figure-income-wealthy rake in the bulk of tax credits by far. (Source: Revenue Study Commission)

Comparison of total percent taxes paid by each income bracket. The lowest 20% of workers pay almost twice as much as the very wealthiest. (Source: Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy)

We call these cuts “capitalist” because they never fail to benefit the rich and powerful at the expense of the working class. When the government of Louisiana decides to cut the budget, it never affects the military, the prison-slavery complex, or the NOPD and their fancy new surveillance cameras, because those are “mandatory spending.” Schools, mental health services, Medicaid, youth programs, and day care are all “discretionary,” or optional, spending. And while the rich contribute only 4.2% of their income in taxes to these programs, the working class pays a full 10%. So not only do workers see their programs cut, but because of the regressive tax code that steals wealth from the poor and redistributes it to the rich, we may not be able to afford private services to replace them. In 2012, a study by the Revenue Study Commission found that the top 2.3% of taxpayers raked in 55% of tax credits. These tax credits alone could refund TOPS– film industry tax credits totaled at $231 million according to the study.

In the past, students and faculty from public universities around New Orleans have fought back against the budget cuts. In 2010 and 2015 at UNO, SUNO, McNeese, and LSU alike, students and professors have rallied, chanted, and marched to defend the right to a decent education. While the government is slow to respond, the 2015 protests led to a partial renewal of TOPS funding. And international movements give us hope: only 50 years ago, in May 1968, students around Paris created a mass movement that, combined with other protests and strikes, profoundly impacted the face of French politics. The state doesn’t have our interests at heart, but it gives us what we deserve when we hold its feet to the fire. Only a powerful student movement will solve our education crisis.

Protest against budget cuts at the University of New Orleans in 2010. Cuts and tuition hikes have only gotten worse since. (Source: gambit)  

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Local Workers Strike Back Against Sexual Harassment

On February 23, 2018, the New Orleans Hospitality Workers Committee (NOHWC) held a March to End Sexual Harassment and Discrimination in the Workplace. Starting at Congo Square, the NOHWC along with 50 workers marched down Decatur, taking over the street all the way to Bamboula’s. This action was organized on behalf of a committee member who used to work at Bamboula’s, where a manager sexually assaulted her on several occasions. When she confided in her General Manager about the continued harassment, no action was taken and the harasser was allowed to remain employed at Bamboula’s.

NOHWC marched on the establishment. At Bamboula’s, committee members went inside to deliver a set of demands that will be continuously delivered until they are met. Bamboula’s responded to the action by closing their own door. Almost all guests left the bar. However, management did not accept the demands.

This is only the beginning of a campaign to end sexual harassment and racism in all New Orleans workplaces. Please keep in touch with NOHWC and upcoming actions either on Facebook at NOHWC or online at www.nowhc.org. United and organized, the 88,000+ hospitality workers of this city have the power to demand our rights.

Here are our Demands:

  1. Bamboula’s will no longer foster a culture of sexist or racist harassment.
  2. Terminate the manager, Jim, in a timely fashion for the sexual assault of workers.
  3. Terminate the General Manager, Jen, in a timely fashion for supporting sexual harassment in the workplace.
  4. Post the Rules and Regulations provided by NOHWC where customers and employees can easily read.

As the march went through the Quarter, many workers came out of their workplaces to applaud, raise a fist of solidarity, and show support for their fellow workers.