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U.S./Israel Out of Syria!

By Quest Riggs

As Syria fights the last battles of its over 7-year war against U.S. and Israeli-backed terrorist insurgency, it still faces many challenges and a rough road ahead. This long, dirty war which has been fueled by the US and its allies, has cost 500,000 Syrian lives and an estimated $400 billion in damages. The war has driven 10 million Syrians to flee their homes, creating one of the worst refugee crises in the world today. Needless to say, despite their celebrating their victories against terrorism and invasion, the people in Syria will live with the trauma of this war for generations.

However, western imperialism and its puppets in the middle east are still aggressively harassing the Syrian people and the Syrian army. In the past 18 months Israel has shot over 200 missiles into Syria. The U.S. still maintains its illegal invasion of Syrian territory, with 12 military bases and up to 2,000 special operations soldiers. U.S. Generals (Trump’s best friends) continue to regularly threaten Syria with further bombing and invasion.

Syria is now openly engaged in the early stages of what could be the last major battle of the war. Most of the western-backed terrorist forces, Al Queada, ISIS, al-NUSRA, which the U.S. has branded as terrorists are the so called “rebels” receiving support from the U.S. and Israel. They are concentrated in the northwestern city of Idlib, and the Syrian Army is preparing for an offensive with the support if its allies. They have had to make these preparations and conduct negotiations in the face of the aforementioned bombings and constant threats of intervention from imperialist politicians.

But why are the imperialists being so aggressive and threatening when Syria is close to ending its war? The answer is clear if you look at the history of U.S. war-mongering in the middle east: the imperialists make money off of wars and stealing natural resources, so they’ll only allow peace if they can hold a dominant, colonizer position.

Just within my generation, the U.S. has invaded and devastated Iraq, Libya and Afganistan. These countries, home to some of the world most ancient civilizations, had long been victims of western intervention and aggression, but they remained relatively stable until the U.S. and its allies invaded. They all now lay in ruins.

In Libya, the U.S. invasion caused the growth of a domestic slave trade as well as terrible sectarian violence between warlord and fundamentalist groups. In Iraq, the U.S.-installed government is viciously repressing protests where everyday Iraq citizens are demanding basic necessities like food and water and jobs. Afganistan has never seen an end to violence since the U.S. invaded, and NATO today uses the war-torn country as a military training ground. Last year the U.S. even dropped its most powerful non-nuclear bomb in Afganistan. One thing is for sure: the military industrial complex and the oil executives are laughing to the bank every time workers and oppressed people in the U.S. believe the lies that they feed us on the corporate media to justify these wars.

We should express our support for Syria in in their struggle against imperialism and for their right to self determination. We also must voice our opposition to the threats that U.S. politicians and generals have been issuing and demand that the U.S. & Israel stop their attacks and pull their troops out of Syria. Only then can Syrian workers rebuild their communities and advance their struggles against capitalist and imperialist oppression.

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Genocidal War in Yemen Made in the U.S.

A young survivor of the August 9, 2018 US/Saudi bombing of a school bus, with fragment of U.S. made missile. Photo by Yemeni photographer Ahmad Algohbarya.

By Malcolm Suber

Although most of our readers have very little information about the war in Yemen, we believe it necessary to give a working class perspective on one of the most devastating wars occurring in the world today. The U.S. capitalist press hardly mentions this war. The reason for the lack of coverage is that the U.S. imperialist ruling class bears real responsibility for the crisis. A quote from a Yemeni doctor sums it up this way: “The missiles that kill us – American made. The planes that kill us – American made. The tanks… American-made. You are saying to me where is America? America is the whole thing.” (From a PBS report by Jane Ferguson)

The Yemeni civil war pits Iran-backed Houthi rebels against the fascist Saudi Arabia-backed government forces who receive their weaponry and military advice from the U.S. pentagon.

Leaving aside the complex question of who is right in the conflict, there is no question that masses of innocent civilians have wrongly become targets. Hospitals, schools, mosques and other non-military targets have been hit. The Saudi led forces have dropped cluster bombs on Houthi sites.

The humanitarian disaster in Yemen is unthinkable. The UN puts the number of displaced at over 2 million, with 22 million Yemenis in danger of a cholera outbreak and starvation because of disruption of international aid shipments. Yet the civil war in Yemen has received very little attention in the US bourgeois press because it does not fit in their hierarchy of important news.

For one thing, Yemenis are poor, non-white people from a distant third world country. Secondly, both Democratic and Republican party politicians support US intervention on the side of the Saudis. Thirdly, covering the story in depth would require digging into US imperialist business leaders as merchants of death with sales of the most advance weapons to the reactionary Saudi regime.

News coverage of the Yemeni civil war would also reveal the double-dealing of the US government which pretends to be waging a war against Al-Qaeda and ISIS terrorist organizations yet is supplying them with funds and weapons as part of the Saudi-led forces. The Saudis are also allying themselves with the Zionist Israeli regime as partners in conflict with Iran.

Under the Obama regime, the US carried out drone warfare against the Houthis which resulted in some of its main leaders being assassinated, including anti-terrorist Imam, Salem bin ali Jaber. Those US drones bombed school buses and wedding receptions killing many civilians that the Obama administration labeled as mistakes and collateral damage.

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The Prison Strike Is Over But The Fight Is Not

Banner reads End Prison Slavery, Support Prison Strike, Aug 21 – Sept 9

By C.T.

Prisons are one of the biggest systems in the US that cash out on hurting Black, Brown and poor white people in the US. People in prison are also forced to work for pennies a day while making corporations rich. This system of slavery is legal in the US because of the 13th amendment. The 13th amendment was written after the Civil War to lock up Black people making prisons the new plantations and prisoners the new enslaved.

From August 21 to September 9, prisoners across the US organized work and commissary boycotts, hunger strikes and other protests to demand better living conditions and the right of every prisoner to apply for parole as well as other improvements. This was a truly amazing protest because prisoners cannot just call each other on the phone, send a text, email or Facebook message whenever they want. Additionally, reporters do not want to write stories that are hard to verify. This means that many major newspapers were not interested in covering the strike because it is simply too hard to reach prisoners, especially when they are being punished inside the prison for being a part of the strike. Some newspapers even made up lies about the strike to make it seem less powerful than it was.

From what we know, prisoners were able to strike across over a dozen states; many were put in solitary confinement and even transferred to other prisons as punishment for fighting against injustice.

Yet the strike went on and people all over the US have been trying to support the strike by calling prisons, writing letters, protesting outside of prisons and showing support and bringing attention to the strike anyway they can. In New Orleans, the People’s Assembly and Workers Group held a solidarity protest in front of the Orleans Parish Prison on Aug 21st. During the last week of the strike, a banner was put up on I-10 facing the prison that demanded ‘the end of prison slavery.’ Celebrities like J. Cole used their platform to shine a light on the strike and murals supporting the strike can be found across the US.

Although the strike is over, there are still so many ways to support our brothers and sisters in prison that are fighting for a better life.

To learn more you can find information on: https://incarceratedworkers.org https://www.facebook.com/BlkJailhouselawyer/

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STOP Evictions in New Orleans! Housing Is a Right!

By Nathalie Clarke

In many cities in the United States, gentrification has been threatening the housing security of workers. New Orleans is no exception–on average, 4.22 evictions occur every day according to Princeton University’s Eviction Lab. And this number refers only to official evictions, those ordered by a judge, which means it’s definitely an underestimate of how many working-class families wind up homeless. Most tenants know all too well that landlords can also informally evict tenants by paying them to leave or locking them out of their property. These eviction rates are all the more disturbing because in the United States, 75 percent of qualified families do not receive federal housing aid and one in four poor renting families is spending over 70 percent of income on rent and utilities.

Loyola University law professor Davida Finger wrote in the Advocate : “The vast majority of tenants hauled into court on eviction matters are not represented by attorneys and eviction hearings can be completed in a matter of minutes. My research on First City Court evictions over the last several years shows that from 2015, the annual number of eviction cases filed has increased steadily each year. An analysis of demographic information in census bureau tracts where evictions are most heavily ordered shows that Orleans neighborhoods that are primarily African-American are more likely to have higher numbers of evictions ordered.“

In New Orleans, landlords and city officials alike have let gentrification run rampant. Historic working-class neighborhoods like the Bywater and the Treme have become artists’ hubs with accordingly high rents. The price of one-bedrooms increases by 2% every month, and 9.6% every year. Although costs of living in the city are steadily increasing, wages have not risen accordingly. Louisiana is among five states that rely exclusively on the federal minimum wage, which hasn’t been raised since 2009 although it’s lost 9.6% of its value due to inflation.

Basically, workers are earning less, and paying more, which means they often have to work several jobs just to be able to afford a modest home close to their workplace. With workers’ purchasing power decreasing as their costs of living rise, families become more and more at risk of being late on their rent. In Louisiana, landlords don’t need to give their tenants a grace period, and can charge them late fees or give them a five-day notice to vacate, even if tenants are only a day behind.

Recent studies show that to live comfortably in the Big Easy, a family needs to make at least $60,782. Meanwhile, the median household income in New Orleans is $36,964–$23,818 short of what’s needed to live comfortably. Most workers spend 50% or more of their budget on housing, according to the Greater New Orleans Fair Housing Action Center. The National Alliance to End Homelessness found that between 2015 and 2016, 6% more people were at risk of becoming homeless because of rent burden.

Why are rents skyrocketing? Part of it is the many once long-term residences being converted into short-term Airbnb rentals for tourists, which benefits landlords at the expense of tenants. The other part is a worldwide trend in late capitalism, gentrification, whereby older, affordable neighborhoods are being invaded by wealthy, educated hipsters who move in and push out long-term residents.

For the rich, the housing crisis has obvious advantages. Not only can landlords make more money by charging more for rent, but even restaurant owners and other rich bosses get a piece of the pie: workers fearing eviction and homelessness will put up with more exploitation at work and will be more afraid to organize. What they forget is that the more they keep us oppressed under the boot of economic exploitation, the less we have to lose. With their endless attacks on our basic rights, the rich bosses simply fuel our fury and are creating a force to be reckoned with. The workers from every industry create the wealth of this city; we will not continue to accept less than what we deserve. Our brothers and sisters currently unionizing in fast food chains, restaurants, bars, and hotels leave the bosses trembling, and we will continue to fight until we break our chains and their world crumbles

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Black Cyclists Fined 5 Times the Rate of Whites

By Dylan Borne

Recent reporting in the Times Picayune by Chelsea Brasted has dug up some disgusting, but not surprising, statistics about the NOPD’s treatment of Black bicycle riders.

Based on information from the “Regional Planning Commission’s 2015 New Orleans Pedestrian and Bicycle Count Report” and the New Orleans Municipal and Traffic Court: Black people make up only 26% of overall cyclists while whites make up 69%. Yet Black cyclists get hit with 63% of the fines for biking violations while whites only get 32%.

In other words, cops are over 5 times more likely to give citations to Black cyclists than white ones.

Most of these violations are totally harmless, and the ones that can cause problems don’t merit a huge fine of hundreds or thousands of dollars (a penalty that can suck working class people into debt traps and deepen poverty).

These fines are just another example of the laws being on the books for the purpose of the police using them to attack black working class communities. In this respect, it’s no different than how the police in Louisiana are three times more likely to arrest black people for marijuana than white people (Southern Poverty Law Center), or how black teenage boys nationally are 21 times more likely to get killed by police than white ones (ProPublica).

It’s also a way of raising revenue for the city without stepping on the toes of the rich. Instead of taxing hotels, casinos, and restaurants that profit from the workers of New Orleans, the city government taxes ordinary working people through these fines.

These fines, just like traffic cameras do not make us safer, just more desperate. The city can provide free education to all riders and car drivers, rather than further impoverishing them with another oppressive fine.

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ETP’s Pipeline explodes in PA, No ETP Bayou Bridge Pipeline in Louisiana

Flames light up the sky early Sept. 10, 2018, after a gas line explosion in Center Township, Pennsylvania.

By Peyton Gill

Energy Transfer Partners (ETP) is responsible for a pipeline explosion in Pennsylvania that occurred early in the morning on September 10th, right outside Pittsburgh. The Pennsylvania Public Utility Commission says it suspects the blast was caused by heavy rainfall, which they believe caused the pipeline to slip on the saturated ground, break, and then explode. The 24-inch diameter pipeline had gone into service just 7 days prior. Energy Transfer Partners is the company behind the Dakota Access Pipeline and the Bayou Bridge pipeline. Local authorities hadn’t been told ETP had begun using the pipeline to transport any gas or liquids because the pipeline had been behind schedule with construction problems. This explosion continues ETP’s horrible track record with explosions, sinkholes, spills, and leaks.

In the past 48 years, there have been 44 oil spills, each over 420,000 gallons, in U.S. waters. Over the past 30 years, at least 8,000 significant pipeline related incidents have occurred in the U.S. NOT counted in this total are 1,000’s of less significant pipeline-related incidents. We need to keep an eye on these pipeline projects because these big oil and gas companies are gradually connecting pipes across the states and spilling barrels of oil with no consequences

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Rise for St. James AKA Cancer Alley! Environmental Racism is Real, Y’all

By Peyton Gill

On September 8th, 120 people came out to support the residents of the Gordon Plaza neighborhood in their demand for a full, just relocation. A lot of powerful words that have been building up in the struggle were shared on the mic from residents and supporters. I talked to a mother who lived 3 houses over and she said, “No one ever really hangs outside their homes. I have to tell my daughter you can’t play in the grass.” Ms. Shannon spoke on the mic, “We want the same satisfaction that folks up in the Irish Channel and St. Charles are getting. We voted her (Mayor Cantrell) in just like they did.” Environmental Racism is a real thing y’all. Raise awareness! #GordonPlazaResidents.

Buses came around 11:30 am and we headed over to the rally in St. James Parish to support those residents who are stuck in between the Mississippi River and more than 4 dozen crude oil reservoirs with no path out in the case of an explosion and who live with fumes, chemicals, and smog that envelops their town. The bus ride was about an hour, provided with a delicious lunch prepared by Brother T! We arrived at a pavilion to rally with 100 or so of the local community members involved in the fight against the oil companies and the parish and state government officials who enable their abuses.

One resident told me they were really excited because this is the first time a group has come out to support and rally with ‘em. We marched up Burton Street, lined on one side with the homes of low-income Black families, predominantly elderly and many handicapped. On the left side of the street, across from their homes, huge oil storage tanks lined up on hundreds of acres, with plenty more coming in the future.

Travis, a resident down the way in Ascension Parish said, “At one time St. James was nothing but country area. You could have rolled around on the weekend in the sun with your windows down. And everybody liked to do that. But you can’t do that now, because St. James smells horrible, you know, you smell different chemicals everywhere. It’s like a big super EXXON.”

After the march, we went back to the pavilion for some more great food and speakers from 5th district HELP, Mount Triumph Baptist Church, The League of Better St. James, L’eau Est La Vie Camp, and individual residents spoke of the work that needs to be done and what has happened up until now. It was an overall great day with outstanding community involvement. But there is still work to be done because these people and families are still living on and in toxic environments. What can you do? Contact/email the mayor’s office to demand the residents of Gordon Plaza receive a fully funded relocation (504) 658-4900 & mayor@nola.gov. Contact 350 New Orleans and give support to 5th district HELP for St. James residents.

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10 Years Since the Crash: Workers’ Wages Fall, Bank Profits at Record High

By Joseph Rosen

JPMorgan Chase just raked in the largest quarterly profit of any US bank ever ($8.3 billion), and corporate owned media outlets report that the economy is booming. But we workers know better than to hitch our wagons to the stars of Wall Street. Only 10 years ago, the banks went broke gambling on the wealth created by our labor and it was our jobs, our homes, and our lives that were served up as sacrifice so that the gods of finance would stay fat. The government bailed out the banks with $12 trillion of our dollars.

Has the economy improved for workers as well as bankers? What are workers to make of the much-celebrated upturn in employment that Trump smugly claims credit for? We’re told, for example, that unemployment among Black workers is at record lows. So why don’t these figures square with our experience? After all, nearly half of Black men in New Orleans still lack jobs. Who’s seeing all these economic gains when for most of us, it’s as hard as ever to find affordable housing or to keep from being drowned in debt?

Who counts as employed?
Official unemployment statistics are taken by survey and published by the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) every month. According to this agency, any person over the age of 16 who has worked one hour of paid work in the week counts as “employed.” That goes for all 4.6 million part-time workers struggling to get full time work. On the other hand, there are 5.4 million people who currently want a job but have not looked for work in the last 4 weeks. Like a sick joke, these workers aren’t considered unemployed because according to BLS, they are not part of the labor force. If the unemployment figures were revised to include these groups of workers, this adjustment alone would more than double the “official” rate of unemployment. That’s not mentioning the more than 2.3 million people locked up in prisons and detention camps whose hard, unpaid labor generates billions of dollars of corporate profits every year.

Less than half of the workers who lost their jobs during the 2008-2009 recession have regained employment (consider that because of the crash, workers suffered the steepest drop in employment since the Great Depression); most of these workers are no longer counted as part of the labor force. This steep decline and slow recovery in labor force participation has been hovering around levels comparable to the late 1970s for the past three years.

In New Orleans, tens of thousands of workers have been barred from regular employment because of criminal convictions. Excluded from the official “labor force,” these men and women most often work for poverty wages without job security or safety protections, and many have been forced into the underground economy.

Capitalists talk jobs but love unemployment
In capitalist economies such as the US, off-the books workers as well as the underemployed, incarcerated, and institutionalized form a massive reserve of workers whose desperation is played by the capitalists as an advantage over the workers they hire. All bosses want labor as cheap as they can come by it. The more desperate people are for work, the more likely they are to take a job with low pay and/or few benefits. Workers with full time jobs are discouraged from bidding up their wages when they’re told that there are others in the wings waiting to take their place. The capitalists who control the giant monopolies know this all too well. They sponsor and advocate for legislation that criminalizes classes of workers to drive them into the shadows. They (legally!) pay sub-minimum wages to disabled workers, farm workers, youth and domestic and home health care workers. They benefit from slave labor in US prisons and jails. What the working majority knows as misery is profit for the capitalist class. Capitalists and their lackey politicians push for anti-union legislation or invest in mass incarceration because these attacks on workers have the effect of lowering all wages so that profits go up.

As much as it’s hyped, “full employment” is not the goal of US capitalists because it would allow workers too much power, enabling them to bid up wages through the threat of strikes. In fact, over the last roughly 40 years, the number of unemployed workers has actually risen. Meanwhile, US workers’ wages have stagnated despite substantial gains in productivity. The benefits of technological advances all go to the boss while workers, whose labor paid for them, are laid off.

The persistent downward pressure on wages has meant that even employed workers struggle to put food on their table. In 2016, 14.8 percent of full-time, year-round workers (16.9 million people) earned less than the official poverty level for a family of four ($24,563). In New Orleans, 12 percent of full-time, year-round workers earn less than $17,500 a year.

Unemployment is an inevitable feature of the capitalist economy as are the economic crises that swell the ranks of the unemployed and lay waste to our productive capacities. But we should take heart that capitalism itself is far from inevitable. Those among us who are employed must recognize the struggle of our underemployed, unemployed, incarcerated, and undocumented brothers and sisters as our own. Our advantage against the bosses is only as strong as our unity. We cannot deceive ourselves about the nature of the capitalist system and its drive towards economic crisis: far too many of us already live in crisis but soon enough and suddenly, it will spread. As always, the capitalists will expect us to pay for their greed. We must not only refuse them payment; we must reverse the charge. We must fight for socialism.

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Gordon Plaza Residents Rally

Travis London, a volunteer organizer with 350.org and a resident of St. James Parish, addresses rally at Gordon Plaza.

By Shera Phillips

On September 8, the residents of Gordon Plaza opened their arms at a rally organized by the People’s Assembly, and welcomed people to explore the nightmare that has been their reality for the past 22 years, the nightmare that has caused them physical, financial, emotional and spiritual pain. This nightmare, that outsiders were only able to catch a small glimpse of means life on land so toxic it has caused more death and disease than can be accounted for.

Upon arrival, a few things were alarming. This community is less than three blocks from a public school and college. To the average passerby, there is NO SEPARATION between toxic and “non-toxic” land. The neighborhood makes one feels transported back in time and the abandoned infrastructure reeks of devastation. As soon as I stepped out of the car, I noticed a stench in the air that made me think of the lives lost and the constant battle the residents of Gordon Plaza continue to fight to be recognized as human, deserving of a life free of the 150+ toxins that currently plague their existence.

It is not only imperative that the people of New Orleans, Louisiana, the United States and the world get involved in this fight, but it is especially important for people who live, play, work and study in this community where there is NO POSSIBLE WAY of containing its toxins. The 9th ward IS Gordon Plaza and the Residents NEED a FULLY FUNDED, IMMEDIATE RELOCATION. We are ALL affected. We MUST DEMAND our government’s accountability for their negligence! NOW AND ALWAYS! #WeAreGordonPlaza #BlackLivesMatter

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Gordon Plaza Healing Circle

By Antranette Scott

On September 9th, The Peoples’ Assembly, The Congo Square Preservation Society, and Wendi Moore-O’Neal of Jaliyah Consulting came together to have a Healing Circle for the Ancestors and living members of the Gordon Plaza Community in the historic Congo Square. The Healing Circle centered on honoring the residents of Gordon Plaza who have lost their lives during the struggle demanding fully funded relocation and lifting up the residents who continue in the struggle.

Rev. Denise Graves opened the Healing Circle with the pouring of Libations and grounding the space by acknowledging the past and calling forth the power of possibility of the future. We spoke the names of the residents who have died from a variety of illnesses, honoring their lives. Up next Angela Kinlaw conveyed the story of the residents of Gordon Plaza and shared that community healing and community struggle go hand in hand.

While we must focus on the personal work of healing trauma inflicted upon us, gaining and using tools that help us relate to each other in healthy ways, and combat the effects of white supremacy on ourselves; we must also not lose sight of the battle we wage collectively against the systems and symbols that uphold white supremacy, environmental racism, and economic injustice that. We must work on inner change and collective liberation at the same time. Both are necessary components for true transformative change of the world we live in.

Then Mama Aya Fiyah Mganga and Brotha Shack from True Love Movement lead a guided meditation for the visualization of life after the battle is won. Taking us to the moment when the Residents are living in their new homes after Relocation. Mama Fiyah implored us to engulf all of our senses in that reality, to manifest that future and hold it closely while the residents engage in the struggle for their lives. Brotha Shack also offered the residents access to mental, physical, and emotional health services through True Love Moment’s network of Black health professionals.

Mr. Jesse, a Gordon Plaza resident, gave a testimony on how he has been able to stay in this struggle for over 20 years, and why engaging in activist work is important for not only yourself, but your children and the community at large. Mr. Jesse also talked about taking dedicated time for yourself when you are tired and weary when it is necessary, but jumping back into the fight when you are able again. Wendi Moore O’Neal lead us all in song, calling us to fight for freedom with every breathe in our body. Closing out the Circle, Baba Luther of the Congo Square Preservation Society, called the drummers to play as folks were invited to learn an African dance of healing. Drumming and dancing continued until dusk.