Day: July 15, 2018

By Malcolm Suber

Over the weekend of May 18-20, 65 delegates representing more than 20 cities and states held the first National Liberation Assembly of Black anti-capitalist and anti-racist organizers.

The Assembly was the result of years of veteran revolutionary organizers observing the upsurge in the Black mass resistance struggle exemplified by the massive response to the Trayvon Martin and Mike Brown killings at the hands of white supremacists and racist police. This upsurge revealed the necessity for a well-planned country-wide response from the most advanced sections of our movement. It was concluded that serious revolutionary organizers had a duty to try and unite so that the Black Liberation Movement (BLM) could be rebuilt along sound revolutionary lines rejecting the dead-end leadership of reformist and Black capitalist forces.

Black mass struggle has broken out against police terror and police murder; for jobs and a livable wage; against the oppression of women;  for housing for the homeless and affordable housing for working class families; for universal healthcare; for protection of the children and the elderly; against environmental racism; for community controlled quality education; for equal treatment of immigrant workers, for human rights for our LGBTQ brothers and sisters; and for the removal of all monuments to white supremacy.

These movements have lost their potency because they are localized and without the visibility and guidance that a country-wide revolutionary leadership could provide.

The National Assembly held workshops on the many fronts of struggle and discussed the central question of how can revolutionary fighters overcome their differences and establish a centralized organization centered in the black working class and unified in an anti-capitalist, anti-racist Black United Front.

There was a National Liberation Council elected with the authority to self-expand for inclusion for regional, gender balance, diversity and youth.

A proceedings committee was formed and charged with the task of gathering, assembling and publishing National Assembly papers for distribution, study and debate as part of the process leading to a 2nd National Liberation Assembly which will adopt a program for Black liberation.

by Dylan Borne

The Democrats and Republicans have joined hands to give $716 billion of our tax dollars to the military in 2019. That’s $82 billion more than this year. To buy even more warships, fighter jets, submarines, missiles, tanks and nuclear weapons, these stolen tax dollars will go to private profit-making war corporations, who then turn around and fund politicians. This money also funds the wars in the Middle East that have killed over 4 million people to date. Already, the total budget is 3 times more than China spends on its military and 10 times more than Russia—even though the US government says China and Russia are the boogeymen.

But even that $716 billion is an underestimate. In addition to the Pentagon budget, the following expenses and more add up to a real military budget of over $1 trillion:

• Department of Energy developing thousands of nuclear warheads

• State Department marketing weapons worldwide

• CIA training Latin American death squads

• Justice Department contracting out prison slave labor to make uniforms, night vision goggles, body armor, and more to arms corporations

• Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE) deporting or imprisoning millions of immigrants, including children, for “homeland security”

• Military grants for universities to develop new weapon technologies

• Military grants for local police to buy weapons

Who wins out from all this spending?

War corporations (like Raytheon, Lockheed Martin, Boeing, General Dynamics, etc.) are raking in billions of dollars from the sales of missiles, fighter jets, and all kinds of other weapons to the military. Oil companies like Exxon and Koch Industries get a kick of it too, since wars in the Middle East always leave large oilfields open for them to steal (after killing or displacing the land’s former inhabitants). For them, more war means more money.

By the way, these corporations aren’t the ones paying for this military budget. In 2015, Koch got $156 million in tax breaks ($77 million from Louisiana!). In 2016, Boeing got $305 million. It’s ordinary workers that get the bill deducted from our paychecks, while the corporations skim the cream.

Sellout politicians (Democrats too!) and corrupt generals fuel the fire

War corporations get their way by pulling the strings at the highest levels of government.

John Bolton, the National Security Advisor, came into office fresh out of working for EMS Technologies, a company that made a fortune selling weapons to the government. Now, he’s in charge of making military recommendations, and he’s openly pushed for war on Iran “by 2019.” It wouldn’t be a surprise if war corporations hire him right back once he retires.

In the 2016 elections, war profiteers gave an average of $43,000 to every Republican in Congress, and $32,000 to every Democrat. If you think it’s only Republicans who want to buy more weapons, think twice: Democrats are cheering them on. The large majority of them support increasing military spending—after all, that’s what they’re paid for.

The military’s top generals take bribes in the hundreds. These generals sound the alarm for war, and are rewarded by arms dealers with a cushy job and a fat paycheck once they retire. Investigations reveal that over 70% of retired generals get six-figure contracts from war corporations (on top of their $250,000 tax-funded pensions).

Who loses?

The rest of us do.

While billions upon billions are being stacked onto the military budget, over 30 million workers are losing their healthcare because of federal cuts. It would only take $80 billion, a fraction of military spending, to make all public colleges and universities in the US free. Child hunger is higher than it was 50 years ago, youth unemployment plagues black neighborhoods, Puerto Rico is still without electricity, Flint still has lead in its water, and New Orleans still has an affordable housing crisis, even though it’s cheaper to fix these problems than to build more warships.

Adding up all its fuel burning, oil spills, toxic chemicals, and nuclear waste, the US military is the world’s #1 polluter.
Our environment and our communities bear the cost. Corporations that care more about money than human lives laugh their way to the bank while we workers foot their bill.