Activists in British-occupied Northern Ireland have won a major victory for reproductive and LGBTQ rights. With the passing of a new law, a ban on abortion dating back over 150 years has been overturned and same-sex marriage has been legalized. Both will go into effect next year, and those currently being persecuted for having abortions will be freed sooner. A coalition that involved activist groups, trade unions, and more fought for the new laws, bringing an end to some of the strictest abortion laws in Europe. Earlier this year, the Republic of Ireland also legalized abortion and made it available for free to all people.
Venezuelan Workers Protest Trump’s Criminal Blockade
By Gregory William
The Trump administration has made no secret that they want to overthrow the democratically elected government of Nicolas Maduro in Venezuela. Trump (with the Democrats following his lead) has thrown his support behind right-wing forces surrounding Juan Guaidó, who simply declared himself president in January. These extreme right-wingers want to overturn every gain made by the Venezuelan people. They want to make cuts to healthcare, education, and everything else that actually lifts up workers. They want to privatize Venezuela’s natural resources, including oil and gas, so that the rich can amass even more wealth. There is nothing good about anything Guaidó and his supporters plan to do.
As part of Washington’s escalation against the Venezuelan people and government, Trump signed an executive order at the beginning of August imposing what amounts to a full embargo against the country. Trump’s war-mongering National Security Advisor, John Bolton, announced the new policy at a meeting in Lima, Peru. Keep in mind that Bolton played a key role in the George W. Bush administration’s attacks on Iraq, and he has made a speaking career for himself going around the world promoting war against Iran. His policies devastated the Middle East, resulting in the deaths of millions, including thousands of U.S. soldiers who died for no reason (except to secure profits for U.S. weapons manufacturers and oil conglomerates).
Economic embargoes are war by other means. The primary victims are ordinary people, with children and the elderly being the most vulnerable and the most impacted. Economists Mark Weisbrot and Jeffrey Sachs conducted an extensive study that came out in April 2019, concluding that U.S. government sanctions against Venezuela have already killed 40,000 people. They wrote, “the sanctions are depriving Venezuelans of life-saving medicines, medical equipment, food, and other essential imports. American sanctions are deliberately aiming to wreck Venezuela’s economy and thereby lead to regime change.”
On August 10, thousands of Venezuelans flooded the streets of Caracas to protest the U.S. embargo. Many held signs and banners that said #NoMoreTrump! The embargo is an act of economic terrorism intended to crush every last vestige of democracy in Venezuela and to bolster the rich at the expense of the working class. As workers, we must stand in solidarity with the Venezuelan people and call for an end to U.S. imperialism.
Epstein: Sex Predator and Trafficker to the Ruling Class
By Sally Jane Black
Sex trafficker, pedophile, extortionist billionaire Jeffrey Epstein was a typical member of the capitalist class. He died August 10, taking with him secrets that would have exposed the fact that the capitalists that run the United States and much of the world are debauched, violent parasites who prey on children and women. He allegedly committed suicide. Most people believe he was killed given the danger he posed to other members of the ruling class.
Depravity and Extortion
Epstein trafficked girls as young as 14 on one of his private islands, officially called Little St. James, referred to by locals as Pedophile or Orgy Island. Epstein would invite rich men to one of his properties, and he would force young girls he had lured to have sex with them. He would then gather details of these incidents to extort these men and make child pornography. His network of extortion and sexual violence operated on a massive scale for decades, hidden in plain sight.
Epstein had ties to the CIA and the Mossad (Israeli intelligence agency) who counted him as an asset. The sexual extortion Epstein engaged in was useful to both organizations. When Epstein was first convicted of sex crimes in 2007, his intelligence connections kept him immune from any real consequences: he was sentenced to only 13 months in minimum security prison for soliciting sex with a minor.
Epstein owned a money management firm catering to billionaires, including the head of Victoria’s Secret’s parent company L Brands, Les Wexner, who was Epstein’s primary source of money. He also associated with the pro-Israel billionaire’s club called the Mega Group, co-founded by Wexner. It was in one of Wexner’s mansions that Epstein sexually assaulted a woman named Maria Farmer, which Wexner’s security team helped cover up.
Some of his victims were lured from Trump’s Mar-a-Lago Club. Trump was sued in 2016 by a woman who claimed he and Epstein raped her at one of Epstein’s parties. She later dropped the suit after she received death threats. These accusations were scorned by mainstream, corporate-owned media, which instead attacked the alleged victim. Trump said of Epstein, “[He] likes beautiful women as much as I do, and many of them are on the younger side.” Reports from accusers also put Bill Clinton on Epstein’s private island at least once. Flight records put Bill Clinton on board Epstein’s private jet—nicknamed the Lolita Express—as many as 26 times.
Epstein invested in a billionaire Glenn Dubin’s hedge fund and helped sell it to super bank JP Morgan. Dubin is one of Epstein’s accused sexual predators. Others in Epstein’s circle include the heir to the Estee Lauder fortune, former Israeli prime ministers, surveillance capitalist Peter Thiel, former New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson, former Democratic Senate Majority Leader George Mitchell, former head of Bear Stearns Alan Greenberg, former Secretary of Labor Alex Acosta, his defense attorney and accused sexual predator Alan Dershowitz, and billionaire Charles Bronfman.
Hypocrisy
Epstein was not an aberration, as his vast network shows. Their actions flow from the capitalists’ belief that they, as rulers of the majority, can do whatever sick thing they want without penalty. Like most of the super-rich, Epstein had ties to both major capitalist political parties, international governments, and the rest of the ruling class. The ruling class promotes “family values” while living lives of luxury, violence and depravity. At the same time, they vilify LGBTQ people, people of color, migrants, and other working class people, calling them criminals and predators. Workers and oppressed people will only get justice when we finally take these rotten capitalists from power. There will be no place for Epstein or any of his gang in a socialist society built on the foundation of equality and respect for all people.
Lesson of Puerto Rico: Mass Action in the Streets Can Quickly Succeed Where Elections Won’t
If we want radical change, our message to one another must be “Take it to the streets!” We must do as the people of Puerto Rico have done. With a general strike, the Puerto Rican people ousted a woman-hating, homophobic, racist, capitalist governor who is owned by the international banks. We need to follow in the radical, militant footsteps of the Puerto Rican people, instead of thinking the Democratic Party, or individuals, will do it for us.
Stop the Terrorist Threats Against the Squad!
By Jennifer Lin and Gregory William
Trump is leading the racist, sexist attacks against especially Ilhan Omar as well as Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Rashida Tlaib, and Ayanna Pressley (aka ‘the Squad’). They are all progressive women of color, and this upsets white supremacists. These attacks show how completely intolerant Trump and his rich backers are of people of color and women having a voice, or a vote, or a different point of view even when elected.
At a campaign rally in North Carolina, Trump attacked Ilhan Omar, inciting the racist crowd to chant “Send her back.” Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez says that she has received so many death threats that she stiffens when someone knocks on her office door. The right-wing attack is not confined just to incendiary racist rants but also includes the threat of outright violence.
As Trump continues to attack the Squad, Black, Brown and LGBTQ people are being murdered in the streets, and workers are being stripped of rights and getting poorer. Children are dying in migrant prisons run for profit. Each year, $1 trillion goes to the Pentagon rather than to education, healthcare, housing, and families.
The scapegoating of migrants and extreme racism is always the tactic of fascists and cannot be ignored. In his rise to power, Hitler whipped up racism and other reactionary tendencies to turn people’s attention away from the capitalists that had just created the devastating depression. That Trump is doing exactly this should be deeply concerning to us. This is not to say that full-blown fascism is here…yet. But if we workers do not defeat the ruling class, our society may degenerate into a fascist regime. Every time politicians hand over more taxpayer money to the Pentagon, they increase the already outsized power of war-profiteering monopolies who are headed by the most fascistic wing of the capitalist class. These capitalists have long been ready to facilitate an outright fascist takeover of the state and are only waiting for the majority of capitalists to come to the agreement that fascism is necessary to maintain a capitalist system in crisis. Brazil, India, and the Ukraine (all staunch U.S. allies), give a grim picture of a possible future for the U.S.
Many people have been inspired by the Squad, Bernie Sanders, and other political figures; however, these politicians are being used to keep young people and progressives, who are hungry for change, tied to the capitalist pro-war Democrats. The main function of the Democratic Party has been to stop the independent action of the workers and youth. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi pushed through on a multi-billion-dollar bill to fund ICE and the Department of Homeland Security, with none of the migrant protections that are backed by progressives. House Democrats recently united with Republicans to hand over a record $738 billion to the Pentagon, which will only worsen U.S. militarism and imperialism. Representatives Tlaib and Ocasio-Cortez were among those who supported the budget. These progressives’ calls for a Green New Deal mean nothing unless they commit to dismantling the war machine.
Another “Great Recession?” Lesson from 2008: Capitalism Breeds One Crisis After Another for Workers
By Gavrielle Gemma
Trump’s tax cuts went into the bank vaults of billionaires, instead of creating jobs. The treasury is being looted by military war profiteers, banks are reaping record profits, and wages can’t buy the products workers need to get by. Around the world capitalists are sending workers on a race to the bottom. These factors are intensifying the inherent tendency of capitalism to produce crisis after crisis with the working class and oppressed picking up the tab every time.
The monopoly for-profit media (in all, six companies) are sounding the alarm of an imminent new recession. Hundreds of articles are being written but not one considers what a crash would mean for working people, only how best to save the capitalist system and the obscene profits that it guarantees the rich.
While imperialist countries cooperate to occupy and loot other countries and scour the world for arms contracts and cheap wages (enforced by U.S. weaponry given to local puppets), they also are fierce rivals for market domination. This led to both WWI and WWII, which left hundreds of millions dead. Both the Republican and Democratic parties are united in their devotion to the imperialist cause. That is why both vote to increase the military budget time and time again. Different style, same outcome.
In 2008, the “Great Recession” began.
The last inevitable bust happened when Bush Jr. was in office, and the capitalist government ran to bail out the banks and others who caused the crash. First, they instantly found $700 billion ($700,000,000,000) of our money and gave it out to the banks and insurance industry in a program called TARP (Troubled Asset Relief Program).
Obama was elected in 2008 and many workers, Black and white, believed he would feel their pain already under way. Instead, Obama continued the bank bailout and allowed the Federal Reserve Bank (the Central Bank of the U.S.—with our money in it) to hand out $14.4 Trillion dollars ($14,400,000,000,000) of free money, without interest, to desperately prop up the teetering capitalist system. A University of Missouri study says $29 Trillion, but the true figure is kept a state secret. Other Central Banks around the world did the same. Nothing was done to stop the bleeding in the working class.
Immense suffering of the people ignored.
Demonstrations by workers and youth demanded to bail out the people, not the banks, but this did not happen with the force needed, a point we’ll come back to again. Here’s what did happen.
30 million jobs were lost. Nine million homes were foreclosed. (The current Secretary of the Treasury Mnuchin was named “foreclosure king” for his role in this massive swindle). Pensions were cut by more than 25%, and in some cases completely wiped out. Across the globe more than 90 million jobs were lost and poverty soared.
Recovery for corporate profits not workers’ wages.
While many jobs have replaced those that were lost, most are at much lower wages and without benefits, and millions are temporary or part-time jobs. Banks, however, are reporting record profits of $240 billion, with just six raking in $100 billion, in part because of the sickening tax cuts and handouts to the rich, sold to us as incentives to create jobs, which is a lie. The banks also make massive profits from low wages, opioid deaths, destruction of the environment, mass incarceration of U.S. and migrant workers, and the warfare capitalist state. The banks and corporations either hoarded tax savings or used it to buy their own stocks. Goldman Sachs Bank (GS), best friend to Trump, Obama and the Clintons, scored especially big from the tax cuts. The current Trump cabinet has 5 Goldman Sachs executives running our lives. The ex-president of GS, Gary Cohn, is president of the Economic Council.
Repeat history or organize?
It is often said that those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it. Whether in 2020 or 2022, capitalist recession or depression is inevitable. Relying on saviors such as the Democratic Party, warfare or bailing out bosses is not the way to go. We need to understand how capitalism is a dying system of total anarchy meant only for the 1%.
The global workforce produces all the wealth in society which is stolen by capitalist free loaders who scapegoat the poor and immigrants while they hide in their gold-encrusted mansions. The election of social democrats to capitalist government will not stop this, and most often they collaborate with the capitalists to enact anti-worker measures and cuts to social programs. It is this collaborationist policy that has led millions of workers in Europe who have historically voted socialist to look to the fascist parties as happened during the period of depression in Germany when the Nazis rose to power.
As revolutionary socialist workers, the New Orleans Workers Group is building an independent organization of workers fighting for our own class interests. We need to prepare now in our minds and work to get this message of struggle, global solidarity, workers unity and independent action out. Join us.
While the Amazon Burns and Louisiana Drowns…
Cuba tops the list of countries with the most sustainable model of development on the planet, according to the environmental group World Wildlife Federation. The group considers both human development—for example high life expectancy and literacy—and the “environmental footprint” of a country. Despite the criminal U.S. embargo and near constant attempts by U.S. imperialists to undermine Cuba’s socialist system, the Cuban government and the Cuban people are determined to show the world that a better world is possible.
From Gert Town to Gordon Plaza: Residents Demand Non-Toxic Homes
By Nathalie Clarke
Residents of Gert Town, a working-class, Black neighborhood, have been exposed to toxic, radioactive waste for years. There has been no action by city government. Leaked emails from 2013 show city officials discovered the radioactive materials underneath the roads on Coolidge Court and Lowerline Street near the site of an old chemical plant. Because of the Super Bowl, the fat cats and politicians, seeing the potential for massive profits, decided to ignore the problem despite concerns from an environmental consultant.
The land, purchased in 1931 when Gert Town was a white working class area by Thomas-Hayward Chemical Co., has been the site of pesticide and herbicide production, which are both notorious pollutants. Many of the toxic chemical byproducts these chemicals produce remain in the ecosystem for years after the source of pollution has been removed. Basically, it doesn’t matter that the company moved from Gert Town in the 1980s; they left their trash.
The radium-226 found in the soil is an unstable chemical compound that decays and emits radiation. Long-term exposure to radiation is known to increase the risk of cancer and can sometimes cause irreversible damage to DNA. Generations of workers have probably spent thousands of dollars on medical complications—all because of a few greedy CEOs and politicians who serve the interests of the rich bosses and never the workers.
Current residents of the area told the Workers’ Voice they had known for years about the radiation and had been complaining about the dust and smell since the 1980s. “There have been folks getting sick because of this,” one resident told the Workers Voice. “The city would have done something if this was a bunch of white folks on St. Charles,” another resident said.
Capitalism will always prioritize profit over people and the environment. From Cancer Alley to Gordon Plaza to Gert Town, the capitalist ruling class has shown time and time again that they do not value the lives of workers. They care more about stuffing their pockets and hoarding the wealth that we, the working class, produce. Residents of Gert Town deserve fully funded relocation. All human beings deserve homes on land that won’t give them cancer.
Struggle for Fully Funded Relocation Heats Up
By Antranette Scott
On a Thursday morning, Shannon R, Lydwina, Marilyn A., and Jesse P., residents of Gordon Plaza, walked out the doors of City Hall to a press conference. The Residents of Gordon Plaza just finished meeting Mayor Cantrell to discuss the next steps towards a Fully Funded Relocation for the Upper Ninth Ward community. Since the Residents discovered that the homes sold to them through a program targeting Black residents of the Desire Project were on toxic soil, they have been fighting for relocation.
Four weeks before the press conference, the Residents of Gordon Plaza, along with the New Orleans People’s Assembly, engaged in a weekend of outreach during Essence Fest, a yearly cultural festival sponsored by Essence magazine that brings in 500,000 people to New Orleans and generates between $10-11 million annually. July’s issue of Essence magazine ran a story about the fight for relocation. After 1 year and 3 months of attempts to get a meeting with the mayor, the Residents took their story to the streets, the meeting rooms, and the stages of Essence Fest.
Throughout the weekend’s events, organizers handed Mayor Cantrell copies of a letter signed by over 40 community organizations who support fully funded relocation for the Residents of Gordon Plaza. After constant pressure from the People, Mayor Cantrell posted a message on all of her social media platforms saying, “my administration is actively working on a solution.”
After this statement, there were 4 weeks of silence. The day before the press conference, the Mayor’s office scheduled a meeting for an hour before the planned event.
At the press conference the Residents restated that any resolution must include: (1) a fully funded relocation; (2) a timeline for when the relocation will happen; and (3) the inclusion of the Residents in planning the relocation process. The Residents reported that Mayor Cantrell promised some movement on the issue in September. They will not, however, be tempered by words; only concrete action will do. The Residents of Gordon Plaza and the community will keep up the fight.
You can hear more about the residents and the fight for relocation on September 5th at The American Dream Denied: Gordon Plaza Seeks Relocation, an exhibit at Newcomb Art Museum on Tulane University’s main campus. The exhibit will have an opening from 6 p.m. to 8 p.m. that includes a reception and informational panel. This event is free to the public. The exhibit will be on display through December 14th and is free and open to the public.
Workers’ Rally Says Mass Action Needed to Fight White Supremacy
On Sunday, August 11, Take ‘Em Down Nola hosted a “Rally to Unite and Fight Back Against White Supremacy” in response to recent white supremacist attacks waged by ICE and the El Paso, TX shooter. Several hundred people gathered in front of Jackson Square to hear community members speak, including representatives from the New Orleans People’s Assembly, New Orleans Workers Group, the Hospitality Workers Alliance, Congreso de Jornaleros/Congress of Day Laborers, New Orleans Renters Union, and the American Federation of Government Employees.
The ICE raids in Mississippi and the massacre in El Paso are violent expressions of the white supremacist ideology that the U.S. was founded upon. From the genocide of indigenous peoples and the enslavement of Africans to the for-profit imprisonment of immigrants and people of color, racial hatred continues to be a tool used by the rich, mostly white ruling class to keep workers and oppressed people divided. When the people are divided, they cannot effectively challenge the institutions that oppress them.
Ashlee Pintos, a member of the Hospitality Workers Alliance and the New Orleans Workers Group, spoke to the importance of showing solidarity for migrant workers who are at risk of being deported the moment they step foot on U.S. soil: “We have to build up our communities so that we can actually protect our community members.” Her words were echoed by Yolanda, a member of Congreso, who denounced the El Paso shooter for claiming that America was being threatened by the “Hispanic invasion.” She called the ICE raids the “true invasion,’’ emphasizing the need for solidarity with migrant workers.
Jessie, a resident of Gordon Plaza, warned the crowd of the extent to which white supremacy has been internalized and institutionalized in New Orleans. Speaking of Mayor Cantrell, who had refused to acknowledge the residents of Gordon Plaza until recently, he said, “The white supremacists control the Black puppets…If we had been white, we would have been relocated.” The residents of Gordon Plaza have been fighting for over 30 years to be relocated off of a toxic landfill. The city has always had more than enough money to provide the residents with a fully funded relocation; however, 63% of the city budget continues to be allocated towards jails and the police, who uphold white supremacy and capitalism.
White workers must also organize to educate one another and dispel the propaganda that continues to fuel racism in the U.S. As Gregory, a member of the New Orleans Workers Group put it, “We have to build a movement that can bring white workers into the struggle as well, along with workers of color, who are sick and tired of this brutal system, who are sick and tired of being murdered in the streets by crooked, racist cops…We have to stand united.”
Our political power lies in our ability to organize against our oppressors. If we want to see a better world, we must actively create that world by organizing in our communities and by educating ourselves and others. We must collectively resist all forms of oppression: capitalism, racism, sexism, imperialism, and attacks against LGBTQ people. Only then can we begin to build a world in which people are truly free.
