Author: Workers Voice

NATO Meets to Prepare War And Economic Murder

On Friday, Biden went to Europe to proclaim U.S., European, and Japanese capitalists’ intention to dominate the world by any means necessary, including extortion, sanctions, and war. His tour started with the G7 summit, a meeting of the world’s richest capitalist governments—U.S., Canada, England, France, Germany, Italy, the EU, and Japan. This gang of thieves ought to hide their faces as millions around the world have died from COVID-19 and starvation solely because of their greed. They just blocked Venezuela from buying COVID-19 vaccines. 

After the G7 summit, Biden will meet with NATO, the joint armed forces of the G7 gang. Since its founding in 1949, NATO has been used to deny self-determination to dozens of countries around the world. U.S./NATO attacks on Syria, Afghanistan, Palestine, Libya, and Iraq have driven millions of desperate refugees from their homes. Meanwhile, the “democratic” billionaires of the G7 countries have only increased their wealth and their stranglehold over the people of the world.

Biden Giddy with Right-Wing Alliances to Attack China

Biden claims that the G7 is an alliance of democracies as opposed to oligarchies and tyrannies. There is no truth to this claim on either the domestic or the international front. G7 member states support the most brutal dictatorships, including Saudi Arabia and Israel, while the U.S. itself cages one quarter of the world’s prisoners in its prisons, jails, and detention centers. The G7 countries hoard vaccines for themselves while China has already sent more than 350 million vaccines to countries around the world.   

Like Trump and Obama, the Biden administration has singled out China as the main obstacle to realizing Western capitalists’ dream of total world conquest. The aim of the U.S. and its junior partners in the G7 is to recolonize and take the vast wealth of China, subjugating the Chinese masses to the rule of U.S capitalists. When Biden claims that their war maneuvers are meant to protect “U.S. interests” he means the interests of banks and corporations, not the interests of U.S. workers or any other member of the global working class.

Blood-soaked NATO Lies To Drum Up War Fever

Biden claims that the building up of NATO forces is necessary to counter Russian or Chinese “aggression.” This conveniently ignores nuclear-armed NATO’s own record of aggressions, such as the carpet-bombing of Yugoslavia, the destruction of Libya, the brutal occupation of Afghanistan, and more. As G7 members meet, the U.S. is carrying out troop exercises in 6 countries in Africa. Despite promising no NATO bases near Russia, Russia is now surrounded by them. 28,000 NATO troops will be deployed for military exercises across Europe this year. NATO’s war budget makes up 55% of total global military spending. Who’s the aggressor?

The U.S capitalist government and its mouthpieces in the media trot out lie after lie to justify the U.S. war buildup and the annual $1 trillion dollar handout to war profiteering corporations paid for with U.S. taxpayer dollars. The U.S. has 800 foreign military bases; China has one foreign supply depot. The U.S. is building bases all through Asia and just allowed its puppets in South Korea to build long range missiles aimed at China. The U.S., proclaiming imperial right of the sea and space, is sailing nuclear armed ships off the coasts of China, Venezuela, and other nations.

Workers Must Resist NATO’s Drive to WWIII

The governments of the G7 alliance have spent more than a century trying to enslave the people of the world and have condemned tens of millions to death in the process. Like the Berlin Conference of 1884 and many imperialist conferences since, the G7 summit is a coming-together of capitalist vultures to carve up the world for themselves. The “shared interest” that unites the G7 is capitalist greed. Whether the capitalist powers are united in greed or divided by greed, we workers are the ones to suffer the consequences. We’re the ones that die in their bloody wars for profit.  

We have nothing in common with the champagne guzzling warmongers assembled in these boardrooms. Workers of all countries should demand the immediate dissolution of the G7 and NATO, which endanger the world for the profits of a few. 

On May 27, Mayor Cantrell announced “Operation Golden Eagle,” a plan to deploy Louisiana State Police in New Orleans neighborhoods alongside NOPD.  On the same day, the family of Ronald Greene and hundreds of others were marching on the Governor’s Mansion to protest his murder by state cops.

In May 2019, LA state troopers murdered beloved community member Ronald Greene, a Black man from Monroe. Video footage leaked in May 2021 shows three cops beating him to death and then bragging about it. A lawsuit against state cops Jacob Brown, Dakota DeMoss, and George Harper, all of whom are white, revealed text messages between them bragging about another brutal assault—that of Antonio Harris—during a traffic stop. 

Racist Police Terror Serves the Rich 

These acts of armed racist terror go on every day. They are not the exception but are the rule. Most go unknown to the public due to police threats of retaliation. Only the atrocities that are videotaped get attention.  

Cops are violent, racist thugs. Because they protect the rich, they are encouraged to be a brutal force. The more hardship grows in the working class of all nationalities, the more the rich need their police to protect their obscene wealth.  Despite the world witnessing police crimes and despite damages sometimes paid, they continue to not only get away with this but are praised and rewarded with increased funding. This has not changed since the murder of George Floyd.  

State Police Kill Prison Reform Bill

In June, the Louisiana State Police and Louisiana Supreme Court successfully lobbied to kill a bill that would have automatically expunged eligible offenses from peoples’ records. Through the efforts of Voice of the Experienced (VOTE), several prison reforms did pass this year. But the fact that the Louisiana Legislature dropped House Bill 604, which would have automatically wiped criminal records after parole, is a blow to thousands of people. This measure would have enabled people to get jobs, vote, and have social benefits.  Prison follows you even when you get out, and that is what the rich want: to terrorize the poor for the rest of their lives, forcing them into low-wage jobs, or perhaps, back to prison to be further exploited. 

Incarceration Means Big Money for LA Lawmakers, Wardens, Prison Corporations 

Louisiana legislators rake in hundreds of thousands of dollars from sheriffs and police officers. That’s why they and other elected officials aim to keep Louisiana as the most incarcerated place in the world. While police and prison departments get massive funding, wardens personally profit. Capitalists in charge of Louisiana’s prison system get rich from the operation of private prisons, exploitation of enslaved prisoners, and from food and phone contracts. The entire system is rotten, but don’t call it corrupt: it does exactly what it is designed to do for the benefit of a few white Louisiana capitalists. 

Get Louisiana State Troopers off our streets now! 

Millions of people rose up last summer to demand an end to police terror, calling for cities to defund the police and abolish ICE. Instead of funding cops, cities need to fund good jobs, good education, housing, and healthcare. We say free the non-violent incarcerated in state prisons and jails, free the migrants, and free the children! Get Louisiana State troopers off our streets! Jail the cops who murdered Ronald Greene!

SESSION RENEWS ATTACKS ON WORKERS, CUTS TAXES FOR RICH

While workers have been suffering from hunger, unemployment, and poverty wages, the Louisiana Legislature has spent most of the last session focused on lowering taxes for the rich and enabling even more blatant corruption.  

Another year has passed with no raise to the minimum wage (still at $7.25), when $15 an hour would raise wages for half of all Louisiana workers, especially women and Black workers.  

$300 million a year has been diverted from the state general fund for education, healthcare and other services to road construction. This will line the pockets of Boh Brothers and others mega-builders who contribute to their campaigns. 

Louisiana lawmakers also moved to strip the additional $300 million in FEDERAL money to the unemployed. This is a giveaway to employers who pay poverty wages to desperate workers. After dealing this blow, they make it seem like raising maximum unemployment a whole $28 a week is an act of kindness. The max now is $247, the lowest in the country. Many workers get less than $150.  

Add to their crimes the denial of Medicaid coverage to women after giving birth which endangers the lives of many new mothers. 

FIRE THE LOUISIANA LEGISLATORS, STRIP THEIR MEDICAL BENEFITS, TAX THEIR INCOMES  

Just a few days ago the Legislature agreed to end some corporate loopholes, but only after lowering the tax rate for corporations, 200 of which already pay no taxes. They have made the “temporary” sales tax hike permanent putting the burden on the poorest.  

These legislators, with only a few exceptions, own companies or receive personal compensation from sheriff’s departments, water corporations, oil and gas and plastic companies’ companies, banks, real estate developers, and law firms representing the rich.  This is why they continue to praise and give exemptions to companies like Formosa Plastics, which is killing the Black community in Cancer Alley in St. James Parish. 

Workers Must Get Organized to Stop the Louisiana Legislature’s War On Workers  

The Louisiana legislators are smug, sitting in their mansions and country clubs as Louisiana remains the worst in child poverty, mass incarceration, unemployment benefits, wages, maternal deaths, and vaccination rates.  

They attempt to block education about the history of racism in the U.S. and Louisiana, which suffered massacres of Black residents in Colfax, Thibodaux, Opelousas, Bossier, St. Bernard, Orleans Parish and more. These were attempts by KKK-type groups backed by white politicians to prevent Black men from voting and from taking seats in elections they had won. Today, as Louisiana joins other states to suppress voting rights, that aim is being pursued by other means. 

The legislature is controlled by right-wing white supremacists, and while the burden falls especially hard on Black Louisianians, their policies create suffering for millions of workers of all nationalities. The state government’s claims of democratic legitimacy are ridiculous. They do not even allow a method for a popular vote to be put on the ballot by the people. We, the working class, have no representation.    

This will not change until we build independent workers’ organizations like the Louisiana Workers Councils. We need to build a militant workers’ movement to fight back. 

The research and technology for the Pfizer (Biotech) and Moderna COVID vaccines came from the National Institute of Health and was paid for by the public. Yet Pfizer has already made $900 million in profit from the vaccine. In April 87% of all vaccines went to richer countries, and the poorest countries only got 0.2%.  It is the combined labor and resources of the people that produced these vaccines. They belong to the people and should be mass produced and distributed to the entire world. An independent panel of scientists, workers, and international representatives should be convened to investigate and inform the U.S. public of the nature of the deaths caused by capitalist politicians and corporations.

Biden is running backward on many of whatever progressive measures his campaign promised. Instead, he is hyper-focused on war alliances and infrastructure and technology bills that are nothing more than subsidies to war profiteers and mega-corporations.

The committee to work out a ‘compromise’ on infrastructure spending has been called bipartisan. This is incorrect. Both Democrats and Republicans are partisan to profit-making capitalist corporations.

Gone from Biden’s $2.25 trillion proposal are climate, childcare, and tax-the-rich proposals. The new ‘compromise’ plan lays out $579 billion over 8 years – all for projects that will enrich various capitalist sectors. Most of the money will come from “left over COVID relief funds” except for a possible gas tax hike which hurts lower-wage workers the most. Trump’s tax cuts for the rich will remain in place.

The market rose to record heights hearing news of the plan for corporate subsidies and the absence of new taxes on profits and the super-rich. Wall Street consultants are issuing lists of which companies to invest in.

The bills include huge corporate subsidies for military projects, energy, supercomputing, AI, semi-conductors, pharmaceuticals, plastics and roads. These hand-outs are justified with the claim that is necessary to ‘counter’ China in order to protect U.S. interests. These are the interests of the capitalists, not the people whose funds for social programs will continue to be looted and handed over to war-profiteering corporations.

It is urgent that people stop clinging to the Democratic War Party. The power of the people is in the streets, as is being shown all around the world.

It is especially important for workers and progressives in the U.S. to realize that they cannot content themselves with fraudulent temporary gains for a few while supporting the predatory death machine of U.S. militarism and imperialist economic attacks. The “competitiveness and infrastructure priorities” are all to intensify the capitalist plan to drag workers to the bottom through war and economic strangulation. The countries that the U.S. singles out for attack are each in their own way trying to increase social benefits for their people. When these countries are destroyed by wars or sanctions, it lowers the living standards of workers in the U.S. as well.  

After years of activism from New York’s LGBTQ community, NYC Pride banned police from their official Pride parade, and a Seattle Pride organization has followed suit. Both cities have long resisted corporate Pride events and police presence at LGBTQ events, and with last year’s mass protests against police terror, the community finally succeeded in expelling the pigs.

Recent years have seen major, more militant events during Pride, like New York’s LGBTQ Liberation March from 2019, which rejected the corporate Pride event in favor of a more political, cop-free protest. Seattle has had a Trans Pride March that has been free of police for many years.

Amid last summer’s uprising against police terror, LGBTQ activists endured brutal repression and arrests in Seattle and many other parts of the country. The Capitol Hill Pride Festival announced their decision to kick the cops out last week and denounced the police for their ties to right-wing organizations as well.

For the past three years, the New Orleans Workers Group protested the presence of corporations, cops, and military in the local Pride parade. In 2020, after a motorcade for Pride, the people of New Orleans tore down the bust of slaveowner John McDonough in Duncan Plaza.

Pride events commemorate the Stonewall Rebellion in 1969, an uprising against police brutality against queer and trans people at the Stonewall Inn in New York. Police, corporations, and the military are enemies of LGBTQ liberation, as they serve the rich ruling class that funds and profits off our oppression.

The U.S. supports fascism in dozens of countries through direct financing, military support, and other coercive measures. Biden has continued the U.S. foreign policy of backing dozens of dictators around the world who use terror to carry out the orders of U.S. corporations and banks to keep wages low and workers desperate. But people around the world are resisting U.S.-supported fascism in record numbers and with increasing organization. 

Colombian General Strike Enters Seventh Week 

In Colombia millions of workers and peasants have come together to carry out a general strike now entering its seventh week. Strikers demand that the government protect the safety and dignity of workers, repeal anti-worker laws, uphold rights of Indigenous and Afro-Colombian communities, end land exploitation by big corporations, and guarantee basic needs including education, housing, food, and employment.  

They’re also demanding an end to the routine torture, rape, and murder of social activists and trade unionists carried out or given cover by the U.S. puppet government of Ivan Duque. Much of this terrorism is carried out by mercenaries hired by corporations like BP, Coca-Cola, and Chiquita. Since the strike began on April 28, thousands have been injured and scores have been murdered by U.S.-funded and trained police, military, and paramilitary forces. 

In 2021 alone, the U.S. has allotted over $460 million in military aid to Colombia in addition to weapons and training. This falls directly in line with the U.S.’s “Plan Colombia” which sought to establish Colombia as the main U.S. military outpost in South America. Last year, Biden bragged “I’m the guy who put together Plan Colombia…straightened that government out for a long while,” vowing to continue and expand such brutal polices across Latin America. Fascist Israel is the second largest financer of the right-wing Colombian regime providing weapons, military training, and mercenaries.  

Solidarity with Palestinian Liberation Struggle Strong 

The U.S. gives the Zionist Israeli government over $11 million a day to prop up their genocidal occupation of Palestine. U.S. military support is longstanding, and Biden agreed to sell $735 million in weapons to Israel only days before the latest Israeli assault on Gaza. Though a May 21 ceasefire ended 11 days of murderous Israeli air strikes against the people of Gaza, daily assaults on Palestinians by Israeli police, military, and settler gangs continue unabated as millions of Palestinians remain under occupation and blockade.  

Palestinians continue to resist illegal evictions, occupation, and violence. Joined by allies around the globe, the Palestinian people’s movement for liberation continues to grow. Dockworkers and activists have blocked Israeli ships from ports in Oakland, New York, South Africa, and Italy. Major solidarity demonstrations have drawn out millions across the globe including a tens-of-thousands strong march on Washington, D.C. The steadfast struggle of the Palestinians is inspiring people across the world to ramp up the fight against all oppression and end the fascist tide.  

Over 1,100 workers at the Warrior Met Coal plant in Brookwood, AL have been on strike since April 1. The miners, who work 12-hour shifts and have been required to work up to seven days a week, demand a reversal of anti-worker measures, including layoffs and wage cuts. Support their strike for higher wages, benefits, safe working conditions, and respect.https://umwa.org/umwa2021strikefund

Thousands of water protectors have responded to the call made by Indigenous women leaders to block construction of the Line 3 pipeline, which the company Enbridge would use to transport nearly 800,000 barrels of crude oil per day through Indigenous territories. Nearly 200 water protectors were arrested in Minnesota last week. Now even more forces are taking up this courageous battle. Stand up for treaty rights and the earth by joining the growing resistance.https://www.stopline3.org/#intro

End U.S. Military and Economic Support
for Dictators and Right-Wing Coups

Share Vaccines with the World

Say No to Biden & Congress’ Drive
for Global Capitalist Empire & Militarism

On any given night, over 70 million people around the world, including millions of children, do not know where they’ll lay their heads to rest. They have no idea if they will find sanctuary or hostility. They are doing what all working and unemployed people would do here: trying to find a way to survive, have shelter and food, and security. Their suffering is enormous.

Bosses’ attacks on migrant workers meant to bring down all workers’ wages

The Trumpist Republican Party is aggressively organizing using open racism and fear tactics to turn workers against migrants. In Louisiana, Rep. Valerie Hodges, a rich business owner and right winger is whipping up the usual lies claiming immigrants have stolen LA tax dollars and that thousands of undocumented people are stealing public services. Hodges’ real aim is to lower the wages and benefits of all workers. As Salvador Longoria, a New Orleans attorney and advocate for Latino immigrants, puts it: Hodges’ bill “wouldn’t be the first time legislation was passed to affect the undocumented communities yet ended up having an unintentional secondary affect on other communities.” “It’s going to screw the native born population too,” Longoria said. “It’s going to affect everybody across the board.”

Immigrants are the ones ripped off, as they pay billions in federal state and local taxes and are denied any benefits, while the super-rich individuals and corporations pay little or no taxes at all. You cannot get much crueler than denying food stamps, stimulus checks, and social security to the very workers who keep this country fed in the middle of a pandemic that has disproportionately affected migrant workers and their families. The businesswoman Hodges, who routinely opposes all workers’ rights and votes against raising the minimum wage, is the definition of a parasite. Now she wants to cut workers’ ability to claim tax credits for dependents.

Meanwhile the Democrats are capitulating to the right on migration. The truth is Biden is just as responsible for the horrific conditions of dictatorship, starvation, war, unemployment, fear, and climate chaos that has driven people around the world from their homes. Now Biden is calling for the construction of more detention camps for children on military bases.

Workers in U.S. will not thrive by turning their backs on workers under attack abroad

We should work to unite all forces opposed to this inhumane situation, but we especially need to talk with other workers about the source of this crisis. The right wing is busy telling workers of all nationalities that being “tough” on immigration will save their jobs. Many Democrats play along. They also play along with the deception that U.S. wars and sanctions advance the interests of U.S. workers when they’re only carried out to advance the interests of a few bosses, bankers, and war profiteers.

Unfortunately, too many in the progressive movement are buying into Biden’s imperialist policies which only differ in name from Trump’s “America First” policies. Happy to be rid of Trump, many are willing to adopt a false idea that we can have prosperity while ignoring the uninterrupted war, sanctions, and financial strong-arming that the U.S. inflicts on countries around the world. Many echo the lies and propaganda of the government because they’re coming from Biden’s mouth rather than Trump’s. The history of fascism’s rise to power shows how many liberals failed to provide an alternative and in fact were complicit in the development of fascism because they put the winning of one limited objective or another above the entire class struggle. To win workers over to their rightful place in the global class struggle, we must foster an understanding based on class interest, not just morality.

U.S. economic and military policies force people to leave their homelands

The first thing to clearly explain is that migrants are fleeing their homelands because the U.S. government is sabotaging, bombing, or starving their country in order to protect or enlarge the profits of super-rich corporations. We are part of the global working class. When the U.S. destroys a country that is raising wages or providing social benefits to its workers, it will inevitably bring down the conditions here as well. If any group of workers are paid less because of racism, religious bigotry, gender oppression or national origin, the wages of all workers will be lower.

Many migrants are from Honduras, especially here in New Orleans. We must remember that it was the Obama, Biden, Clinton administration that organized and supported the right-wing coup in 2009 that overthrew the elected government of Manuel Zelaya, just as it was instituting progressive social reforms. To this day Biden funds, militarily trains, and supports the brutal right-wing austerity government of Juan Orlando Hernández which has pushed more than 67% of Hondurans into poverty. People do not want to leave their countries; U.S. economic and military policies force it on them.

The goal of every capitalist administration, without exception, is to boost the profits of banks and corporations. This is why both Republicans and Democrats have a love fest around growing the military budget, dropping bombs and imposing arrogant deadly sanctions around the world. They are opposed to any country, be they socialist or merely aiming to free themselves of imperialist plunder. Whether Bolivia, Venezuela, North Korea; whether in Africa, Asia, or Europe, any government that uses its budget for social benefits is the enemy.

The U.S. government calls countries like Israel democratic as they carry out genocide against the Palestinian people. They are in league with the monarchy of Saudi Arabia as they bomb school buses full of Yemeni children. The U.S. aids the government of Columbia as they massacre hundreds of social leaders and trade unionist every year. They prop up the dictatorship of the Jovenel Moïse in Haiti so that Nike and other companies can keep paying workers $3 a day. They spend billions of our tax dollars to crush peoples’ efforts to win a better life for themselves, while they support phony “movements” devised by oligarchies to rob the people and deliver them into the clutches of imperialism. They oppose independence, sovereignty, and self-determination because the imperialist International Monetary Fund and World Bank, dominated by the U.S., NATO countries, and Japan, demand repayment of loans before one child gets a container of milk. They oppose indigenous socialist power in Bolivia so that Elon Musk of Tesla has all the lithium this billionaire desires.

The Republicans as well as Biden and his Democrats stand for the growth of the U.S. empire on behalf of a capitalist class whose control over world production is becoming shakier and shakier by the day. As millions in the U.S. are unemployed and hungry, Biden is building up Space Force and preparing new missile systems, including nuclear weapons. Despite the pandemic, he has not let up on any of the brutal sanctions that prevent one third of the world’s population from accessing the food, medicine, and other basic items they need to survive.

Organize workers to fight back against capitalist attacks on our migrant brothers, sisters, siblings

For progressives to refuse to see this as part and parcel of capitalism—to turn away from this reality—is to be complicit in the injustice. It does not mean dropping important domestic struggles, it means not being deceptive about Biden, and weaving together issues that affect the working class so that in the process of organizing, a U.S. worker begins to understand that they and a Honduran worker share a common enemy.
It is fantasy to expect the government to be persuaded by moralism: clearly, the horror of children in cages has not moved them to action. We have to join the resistance. We have to demand freedom and full rights for migrants. This means organizing to unite the working class to oppose the filthy rich who are putting our lives and the whole planet in danger. United we can put an end to the immense misery they cause.

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