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Letter to Our Fellow White Workers:

Are you tired of being afraid? The news says we’re threatened by protests and “unrest.” But show me the protestor that’s a banker, a boss, a bill collector, or a landlord. While the boss is trying to cut your benefits or wages, we protestors are fighting to raise them.

Our wages are pitiful, our debts are piling up, and good jobs are harder and harder to come by. Yet the talking heads on TV are telling us to blame everyone but the ones sitting on all the money and power, who are living in mansions while we struggle to make ends meet.

The government can’t find the money to guarantee hurricane evacuees a place to lay their heads at night while billionaire Trump is handing out millions in “relief funds” (our tax dollars) to his slumlord son-in-law. Trump handed out trillions to increase the value of his cabinet’s corporate investments.

The politicians and their mouthpieces in the big business media are selling us lies. Trump, Pelosi, and all their billionaire buddies are the real criminals.

They want us to believe that Black or immigrant workers are stealing our jobs or living off what we pay in taxes. Our fellow workers aren’t the ones to blame for the more than 30,000,000 layoffs this year. Immigrant workers pay taxes; Amazon doesn’t. While we’re going hungry, Amazon’s CEO Jeff Bezos has gotten $48 billion richer since the beginning of the pandemic. Who’s stealing from who?

Whether by layoffs or cut hours, slashed benefits and pensions, or attacks on union rights, the rich are out to turn us into paupers—now more than ever. And though some may be spared today, the capitalists have it out for workers of all nationalities, Black and white, documented and undocumented. They’re poisoning and killing us off with drugs. Now they’re threatening tens of millions of us with evictions and foreclosures in the middle of a pandemic. We’re doomed if we don’t wake up and unite.

Are you better off now than you were in 2016? In 2008? Obama dumped trillions into the banks 12 years ago, and this year, Trump has dumped trillions into Wall Street. Yet again we workers have been hung out to dry.

Trump’s campaign promised to protect our jobs four years ago, but where are they now? Real unemployment numbers are worse than any time since the Great Depression. Instead of jumpstarting a jobs program, the Federal Reserve just spent $250 billion of our money to buy private corporate stocks. Just like after the 2008 bailout, trillions of dollars of our money will wind up stashed in private off-shore bank accounts.

Trump had four years to bring the troops home. Instead, he’s brought us to the brink of war with countries that have done nothing to us, like oil-rich Venezuela and Iran. Meanwhile, 200,000 people in the U.S. have died of COVID on his watch.

Trump sits on his gold-plated toilet and offers us nothing but fear and bullshit. And Trump’s fear-mongering is nothing but a service to the billionaires who sit on the boards of insurance, pharmaceutical, oil, and war-profiteering companies. He wants you to pay more for private health insurance even though the deductible is so high you can’t even use it. He wants you to doom the future of the planet to protect oil companies’ profits, not oil workers’ jobs. He wants you to believe that China threatens our national security so that he can give billion-dollar contracts to his buddies on the boards of war-profiteering companies.

It’s time we see through the lies that keep us workers from getting organized. Our enemies have enormous wealth that they’ve taken from our labor. But we’ve got the power of the world’s working class on our side—as long as we stay united. The bankers, bosses, and war-profiteers will do their damnedest to pit us against each other, to bribe us, or to trick us into squabbling over crumbs while they make out like thieves.

White workers, aren’t you about done letting the rich use us make themselves richer? They don’t give a shit about us. Trump said of his own supporters that COVID-19 might be a “good thing” because it would keep him from having to shake hands with “disgusting people.” Biden is just the same.

It’s only right if you’re angry. It’s time to turn that anger against the real enemy. Reject the racist lies of the rich! Reach your hand out to your fellow workers and start marching towards the future we deserve. United, we workers can win the world.

Sincerely, Sally (Alabama) and Joseph (Mississippi).

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Thanks to Trump, COVID-19 Vaccine Further Out of Reach

Trump sides with pharmaceutical companies and private profit instead of world’s people.

by Jennifer Lin

Trump has announced that the US won’t participate in the WHO-backed COVID-19 Vaccine Global Access Facility (COVAX), a global initiative of 156 countries working together to develop a safe and effective Covid-19 vaccine and distribute it globally. Trump has already withdrawn funding from the WHO, which he falsely accuses of being controlled by China.

While international organizations including the WHO have praised China for its pandemic response and for assisting countries worldwide in curbing the pandemic, Trump insists on blaming China for Covid-19 in order to distract us from just how horrible the situation is in the US. Trump, who doesn’t believe in wearing masks and wants everyone to go back to work even though 200,000+ people in the US have died from Covid-19, once again shows he has zero commitment to public health.

Rather than being on the side of the people, Trump and his cronies are siding with pharmaceutical companies that have been profiting off the pandemic. One of these companies, Gilead, was given $99 million of US taxpayer money to develop remdesivir, a potential treatment for Covid-19. Gilead plans to sell remdesivir at $3120 per patient.

Pharmaceutical companies like Gilead see the pandemic as a giant cash cow, where the people fund research and development for lifesaving resources that Big Pharma hoards to secure billion-dollar profits. That’s why pharmaceutical companies are racing to produce vaccines as part of Trump’s Operation Warp Speed, which aims to sell vaccines by January 2021.

The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) has already granted companies like Johnson & Johnson, Moderna, AstraZeneca, and Pfizer over 6 billion of our tax dollars to develop vaccines. When he was head of Eli Lilly, current HHS Secretary Alex Azar tripled the price of insulin. When asked if HHS plans to make COVID-19 vaccines affordable for all, he replied, “We would want to ensure that we’d work to make it affordable, but we can’t control that price because we need the private sector to invest.” In other words, the U.S. ruling class sees healthcare as nothing but a commodity and is willing to let people die so the rich can profit.

Trump is continuing with the same policy of mass murder we’ve seen since the pandemic began. Corporations have received bailouts totaling $500 billion while workers have lost their livelihoods and lives because of cuts to Social Security, Medicaid, and SNAP, mass unemployment, evictions, and being forced to return to unsafe jobs. How will we workers be expected to pay whatever outrageous prices Big Pharma charges for a vaccine when we’re already bankrupt trying to stay alive?

The WHO says another $35 billion will be needed for COVAX to succeed. Trump’s decision not to join this global effort is a threat not to just our safety, but to the safety of people worldwide. The only way out of the pandemic requires countries working together to develop a vaccine that everyone has equal access to, with an emphasis on protecting the most vulnerable populations. Countries like Cuba and China understand this; they are committed to offering vaccines to other countries rather than hoarding them for profit. We must oppose U.S. capitalists by championing global solidarity and organizing to secure healthcare as a right.

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Breonna Taylor – Say Her Name

Six months ago, Louisville police shot and killed sister Breonna Taylor, 26 years old, who was sleeping in her home. The police lied to obtain a no-knock warrant seeking an individual they already had under arrest. With no warning, in a KKK-type raid, police burst into her home. Her partner, Kenneth Walker, used a legally owned gun to fire one shot at those who invaded his home. The police fired 33 shots killing Breonna and spreading bullets everywhere.

Breonna Taylor was an award winning EMT, a brave woman who served everyone during the pandemic despite the danger to herself. No one is indicted for her murder—for her lynching—at the hands of the racist, out of control police, who work hand in hand with right wing militias and who serve the interests of the ultrarich. With compassion, training, and an accountability to our communities, we can keep us safe but not while the racist protectors of the rich are free to terrorize us.

All we hear from the big business media is that Black Lives Matter protestors, Black and white, are violent outside agitators, terrorists, and looters. Both Trump and Biden have disparaged protestors. Yet 40 million people have joined these protests. The violence has come from the police and armed right wing groups funded by millionaires. Protestors have a right to defend ourselves. Of course, we organize defense and protection from violent fascist goons. Recent exposés have uncovered the emails, texts, and messages of the scum that Trump calls “good people” that document plotted assassinations, killings, fire bombings, and other attacks. The fascists who plan and execute these attacks count on the police to keep them safe.

Over 15,000 protestors have been arrested since the murder of George Floyd. While one of the cops who killed Breonna was only charged with firing into other apartments, none are charged with her murder. They should all be charged, indicted, and put behind bars. But charges should not only be for the triggerman but the police departments and politicians who fund, support, and protect them as accomplices before and after the fact.

The big business media heaped the same lies and blame on civil rights activists. We the people must reject their accusations and call for the freedom of all arrested protestors and the jailing of every last murderer of the more than 14 anti-racist protestors who have been killed since the uprisings began in the wake of George Floyd’s murder.

The struggle to win justice for Breonna and all victims of racist police terror is far from over. The struggle will continue until we put society in the hands of working class rather than the capitalist class, which uses terror and violence here and around the world to gain and protect profits.

The New Orleans Workers Group has organized and will continue to organize mass protests against police terror just as we will continue our work to halt evictions, raise wages, and win income and security for all workers and oppressed people.

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Vote No on Amendment 1

Illustration by New Orleans Abortion Fund

Fight Back Against ALL Attacks on Reproductive Rights

It is imperative that the people of Louisiana vote NO on Amendment 1 on Tuesday, November 3 to protect abortion access in the state.

The capitalist class will not rest until they have stripped the working class of our rights to make our own decisions about our bodies. In Louisiana, they have been campaigning relentlessly to take away our rights to abortion, in recent years passing the most restrictive laws in the country. When their last attempt, which would have made abortion nearly impossible to access, failed, they immediately tried again. This time, they are seeking to limit abortion access via Amendment 1, which will be on the ballot in the November election. The amendment would prevent the state constitution from providing any support for abortion.

Just as with the previous attacks on our reproductive rights, this amendment is backed by Democratic Governor John Bel Edwards and state senator Katrina Jackson, as well as the entire Republican party, Louisiana Right to Life, and the Catholic Church. All of them are funded by out-of-state, right-wing foundations, think tanks, and organizations like the Koch-funded American Legislative Exchange Council and other capitalists. These are the same entities who have backed anti-LGBTQ, anti-woman, anti-reproductive rights laws across the country.

The purpose of these laws is to prevent women from participating in society, terrorize LGBTQ people, and extract as much profit as possible from the working class. These same capitalists back wars around the world, keep children in the concentration camps across Louisiana (where they have also forced hysterectomies on people), support the death penalty and mass incarceration, and subject the working class, especially Black workers, to fascist police terror. Their claims of being “pro-life” are nothing but blatant hypocrisy. They care only for profit, not for children, unborn or otherwise. These laws are acts of terror against the people.

We must not only vote against them but also organize. The state’s laws against abortion already greatly limit access, prevent abortion from being covered by any insurance, and impose unjust and unnecessary restrictions on providers. We must vote against this amendment and fight back against every limitation to abortion access already on the books. Abortion must be free, accessible, and legal. Anything less is an attack on all working class people’s rights to control of our own bodies.