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Filthy Rich Declare War on Workers: 2020 is Year to Unite and Fight Back!

Cuts to Food Stamps, Medicaid, Workers Rights Will Hurt All Workers

One social program after another is being cut. Overtime and safety laws are being gutted. Millions of people are losing food stamps, others Medicaid. Threats are made to completely cut Medicaid and Social Security. Trump is moving to kick people off of disability benefits. Millions are imprisoned for slave labor or thrown into migrant prisons. Meanwhile, more than $1 trillion ($1,000,000,000,000) is handed out to ultra rich war profiteers who have bribed politicians into slashing taxes for the ultra rich.

The purpose of these attacks is to make all workers poorer. The capitalist class wants more and more people to be desperate to accept jobs for low pay.

This will bring down the pay of all other workers. It’s a race to the bottom unless we fight back.

Every one of the social programs we once had were won by workers fighting for them. Some go back to the massive movement of workers in the 1930’s when workers won unemployment insurance as a benefit to all workers. Capitalist politicians—both Democrat and Republican—have sought at every turn to wipe these out, treating unemployed workers as criminal “welfare recipients” while the lazy rich get tax credits galore.

44% of the U.S. workforce makes less than $18,000 a year, and millions more are barely above that. Yet the 1% have amassed incredible fortunes, and the gap gets worse every year. Both Trump and the majority of the Democratic Party are funded by these greedy, disgusting people.

If you still have a job with survival wages, it may feel okay to turn your back on cuts to the poorest workers. But this is a wakeup call: they are coming after you, too.

Solidarity of all workers needed to fight back against the capitalists
In France today, millions of workers have shut down the country to stop the theft of their pensions. In Chile today, millions are saying no to austerity. This is true around the world.

Massive worker protests are needed in 2020
Every worker and community organizer can circulate a petition calling on working-class communities, unions, and activists to support the call for a massive protest. Don’t depend on an election or politicians—unite and fight.

Petition:
Time to Unite and Fight!
To Unions, Community Groups, Activists:
We, the undersigned, are joining the call for the millions of workers to unite and fight against low wages, cuts to social programs, pension theft, and for a stop to endless wars and the destruction of the planet.

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Do Like Dr. King: Oppose Imperialist War

The United States is “the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today.” — Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

By Malcolm Suber

For more than two decades, the U.S. public has been treated to annual MLK marches that repeat the mantra from the 1963 March on Washington, where Dr. King pronounced his dream that the U.S. would be a country where one day his four little children would “not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.” The racist white ruling class annually cites this vague dream as a measure of the progress that Black people have made in this country. This has prevented us from evaluating the entire scope of continued Black oppression in the U.S.

Dr. King kept moving and organizing after the March on Washington. His vision also began to grow beyond the fight for civil rights for the oppressed Black nation. By 1967, Dr. King had studied national liberation movements around the globe and had concluded that his duty went beyond the fight to reform racist U.S. domestic policies. Perhaps the best example of his growing consciousness was his speech “Beyond Vietnam,” delivered at the Riverside Church in New York City. This is a speech that the ruling class does not want you to hear and study.

By 1967 the war in Vietnam was gaining the attention of everyone, and millions of anti-war protesters hit the streets demanding an end to U.S. carnage of the Vietnamese, who were trying to gain national independence for their homeland. These mass marches were inspired by the civil rights struggle.

In 1967 the war was at its peak, with about 500,000 U.S. troops in Vietnam. The U.S. would drop more bombs on Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia than were dropped in all of Europe during WWII. This objective situation forced
Dr. King to conclude that the U.S. was “the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today.”

King saw the U.S. war on Vietnam  as an enemy of the poor.

The ruling class and its press condemned King for speaking out against the war, threatening to cut off funding for the civil rights struggle. But for King, standing against racial and economic inequality meant exposing how the military-industrial complex had become an essential part of capitalist exploitation. King saw the war as an enemy of the poor. He saw the army using poor Black and white young men as cannon fodder to pursue the aims of U.S. imperialism. King said Vietnam was an unjust war meant to continue the domination of Western capitalist governments over colonial peoples.

King’s stance on the Vietnam war applies to U.S. imperialism’s present policy of forever war spread across multiple countries from its more than 800 military bases around the world. The ruling class formula for its forever war doctrine comes directly from lessons it learned in Vietnam: drone strikes instead of mass bombings; volunteer soldiers instead of draftees; censorship of images of mangled bodies returning from the battlefronts; and unquestioning reverence for the military.

The Pentagon-sponsored mantras of “thank you for your service” and “support our troops” go hand in hand with the ruling-class attempts to prevent the revival of a mass anti-war movement. This movement would demand cutting the military budget as well. King would join us today and urge us to rebuild the anti-imperialist, anti-war movement.

We ask that you honor Dr. King by joining our freedom struggle to end the rule of the capitalist class and to close all U.S. bases around the world.

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An Interview with John Catalinotto: Re-evaluating  the German Democratic Republic and the Fall of the Berlin Wall

Workers Voice Radio, November 9, 2019

Gregory William: Today is the 30th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, which is being celebrated in the capitalist media. Just today there was an unveiling of a statue of war-monger, of arch-enemy of the working class, Ronald Reagan, in the city of Berlin, and the guest of honor for this unveiling is Mike Pompeo of the Trump administration. 

All we ever hear about the fall of the Berlin Wall, or the end of the Soviet Union, is that this was a triumph of freedom and democracy. But we have to ask ourselves, is that true? Was that really the effect of it? 

We’re going to talk to John Catalinotto. He’s a long-time organizer, notably playing a key role in the American Servicemen’s Union during the U.S. war against Vietnam. They were organizing rank and file troops, as workers,  to resist the imperialist war. He’s the author of the book, Turn the Guns Around: Mutinies, Soldier Revolts and Revolutions, which came out in 2017. He spent time in East Germany, also known as the German Democratic Republic (GDR), or socialist Germany. 

John, can you say a little bit about when you first went to the GDR? What was your impression of this society? Was it absolutely horrible like they say in the capitalist press? 

John Catalinotto: No. It’s wasn’t. The first time I visited the GDR was in 1973, more as a tourist than anything else. I speak German, so I talked to people. Right at the border, you had to go through a process that wasn’t pleasant, because it’s like all these official people. But once you get a quarter mile away, it was like any other city, and people were living like they live anywhere else. 

Only in this case, they had a lot of social benefits that were more extensive than what Western Germany had, which had more benefits than the U.S. had at that time. They had pretty much written into the laws a lot of social benefits. There was a great deal of equality. There was absolutely no unemployment. So basic security and being able to stay alive without too much trouble was easy for the people of the German Democratic Republic, and there was no problem for a visitor. 

In fact, I ran out of money because that was the particular week that Nixon had made some changes in how they support the dollar, and the dollar dropped enormously against the Western European currencies, so I ran out of money. But on a little bit of money, I could buy milk and bread and stuff like that, and survive for the last couple of days that I was there. 

I would say that what you hear about it is not the truth. What we’re hearing today is the version of history as told by the winners of this battle in a long class war. 

Gregory William: What kind of benefits did people actually enjoy? What was the status of women’s rights or for workers? 

John Catalinotto: You have to live in a place to know how it actually works out in reality. But there are certain things that were definitely true. For example, any woman who wanted to work, worked, and not only was able to work and get a job, but had support if she happened to be a mother, especially if she was a single mother. There was care available both for infants and for kindergarten. So you had infant care and care for 3-6. It was very inexpensive, or free, and it was available to anyone who wanted it. In Western Germany at the time, only about 50% of women were in the workforce, whereas about half of the workforce in the GDR were women. [In capitalist West Germany, a married woman needed her husband’s permission to work outside the home as late as 1977.]

That’s one one way of measuring it, but there’s a lot more. They had rights to healthcare, abortion, education (all the way up to university, which was free).

They had rights to housing. Of course, they did not have adequate housing in the beginning years after World War II and even into the 1970s. Housing was short. [In the 1970s, the government initiated a massive wave of public housing construction aimed at ending the housing shortage.] But especially for people who had special problems, like single mothers, they would be put higher up on the list for receiving housing. 

Gregory William: Listeners have to understand that this was a society that had been destroyed during the Second World War. This was a country where Nazism was born, where Hitler was in power. That’s how bad it was in Germany. There was a long revolutionary workers’ tradition in the country. Unfortunately, Hitler was able to rise to power and went about destroying everything that had been gained. 

But once Nazism was defeated by the Soviet Red Army, the East German people (with Soviet aid) built the society back up from the ashes. And just to think of the fact that Hitler had been trying to conquer the world and oppress, and even eradicate, people for being Jewish and other nationalities. But then the German Democratic Republic, the socialist German society, was then supporting liberation struggles in Africa, at a time when the U.S. and West German governments were supporting the racist Apartheid regime in South Africa. I mean, how amazing is that? 

Gavrielle Gemma: We should also recall how the GDR government dealt with the Nazis as compared to how the capitalist government of West Germany put the Nazis into the government. 

John Catalinotto: In West Germany some high profile Nazis were charged with war crimes in Nuremberg after the war. But they more or less let the Nazis stay in the positions that they had, even if it was in teaching, the police, or the courts, etc. They kept a lot of it intact even though they dismantled the Nazi party. 

But in Eastern Germany they had to purge the education system, and the police, and the entire system outside of that. And, of course, if they caught war criminals, they put them on trial. So they had to build up a new cadre of people to run the government that were not associated with the Nazis in any way. That was hard to do, of course.

Also, Western Germany received a lot of assistance, or investment, from the United States, which came out of the war extremely wealthy. The U.S. [government and ruling class] were able to purposefully assist the development of the capitalist economy in Western Germany. They knew that this was the front line of a global war that they were carrying out against the socialist countries, and they made life very difficult for the people in the GDR. 

You brought up the GDR’s assistance to the anti-colonial liberation struggles. Now, it’s significant that [in the commemorations of the wall coming down] they put up a statue of Ronald Reagan, not Nelson Mandela. If they wanted to raise a statue of freedom, it should be Nelson Mandela or one of the other African leaders. But no, they didn’t do that. The choice here is telling. 

During the history of the German Democratic Republic, especially in the 60s and 70s, they gave enormous amounts of assistance to those who were carrying out the liberation struggles in southern Africa. For example, if a liberation fighter was wounded in South Africa, or Namibia, or Angola, or Mozambique, in battles with the colonial power, they would often be slipped out of the country and treated in East German hospitals at no cost. This is the kind of stuff that was going on all along. 

I was there in 1989, just a few weeks before the wall came down, and I interviewed some Angolans who were getting technical training at Humboldt University in East Berlin. This is the kind of thing that the German Democratic Republic was doing throughout that entire period – assisting the liberation struggles in the way that they could do best, which was most often giving technical help. It wasn’t as industrially advanced, and didn’t have as much capital, as western Germany, but it was still very technologically and educationally advanced. 

Gregory William: Thank you, John, we’re going to have to wrap it up. I just want to make one final statement. With all the gains that the workers made in East Germany – once that system was brought down because of counter-revolution – the gains of the working class there were decimated. Industry was dismantled, mostly, in the eastern part of Germany. And with the east absorbed into the new unified Federal Republic, Germany returned to its imperialist ways. They have played a part in the NATO wars, and the U.S. invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan. And within the European Union, Germany acts to impose anti-worker austerity policies on weaker European countries, like Greece. So it is playing precisely the opposite role that the East German republic played (which was a progressive, peace-loving role). So the dismantling of the GDR was a real loss for the global working class, and for humanity as a whole. 

John Catalinotto: I hope we can do as much as we can to correct the false impressions of history that are being imposed upon the working class here in the United States. You just have to be skeptical whenever the bosses, the ruling class, lays down what seems to be a united, uniform position on something. You have to be skeptical enough to ask why they are doing it. You have to ask what interests does it serve for them. And, in this case, the point is to vilify the whole idea of socialism. And I think that one reason they’re doing it here is that there’s a lot of dissatisfaction with capitalism, especially among young people. It’s not satisfying the needs of the people, and they’re looking for something else. So those on top are saying, “Look how terrible it was,” and they lie and exaggerate. 

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Billions for Agribusiness and Seafood Bosses, Nothing for the Workers

Seafood Workers Alliance/Alianza de Trabajadorxs de Marsico y Pescado.

Bail Out the Workers!

By Joseph Rosen

The year through May 2019 was the wettest 12-month period on record in the United States, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Floods affected 14 million people during this time. The Mississippi River carried floodwater and agricultural runoff deep into the Gulf of Mexico, precipitating a “catastrophic regional fishery disaster,” according to U.S. Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross. In response Congress has appropriated $165 million for damages. However, these funds are earmarked for “eligible fisheries,” not for the workers who have lost jobs or wages as a result of this latest capitalist-caused climate change disaster.

The workers deserve a bailout of their own. After all, they are the source of all wealth generated by the seafood industry.

Floodwaters killed 95% of oysters in the Mississippi Sound and toxic algae blooms forced Mississippi beaches to shut down for the entire summer season. As a result, the director of the Mississippi Department of Marine Resources reported a loss of $150 million to businesses ranging from restaurants to hotels and seafood processing plants. In Louisiana, Gov. Edwards announced that the fishing industry suffered a loss of $258 million.

These figures only reflect a loss of business revenue. What about the loss of wages for deckhands or for workers in seafood processing, food preparation and hospitality? According to the Louisiana Seafood Promotion & Marketing Board, more than 25,000 people work in the Louisiana seafood industry alone. While businesses are awaiting their bailouts, workers have suffered setbacks to their health and their housing because of the loss of work.

If the bailouts look anything like those going to agribusiness to pay for Trump’s disastrous trade war, the bulk of the federal funds­—aka tax-payer dollars—will go to big monopoly companies leaving workers by the wayside. Last year the U.S. Dept. of Agriculture set up the Market Facilitation Program (MFP) to shield so called “family farmers” from the loss of revenue due to retaliatory tariffs. The U.S. government has already disbursed $14.4 billion in relief through MFP. The top one-tenth richest recipients have received the majority of all payments. Meanwhile, the National Retail Federation predicts that 67,000 jobs will be lost in the agricultural sector due to Trump’s anti-China trade war.

Big seafood companies are already being subsidized by taxpayers. Omega Proteins, a company whose workers harvest almost all of the menhaden (pogies) from U.S. waters, has received $2,910,958 in tax subsidies from the state of Louisiana since 2010. In that time, at least 5 workers have been killed by unsafe working conditions on Omega’s watch.

The $165 million earmarked for fisheries should be used to help laid off workers get back on their feet. We workers need to fight for our right to a decent, stable, and safe job; the bosses are never going to do that for us.

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Students Stand Up, Fight Back!

Across the country, students are standing up to “hoodie bans” and other oppressive rules.

By Enigma E

This past November students at Helen Cox High School in Harvey, LA walked out of class to protest the injustice done to a female Muslim student, who was harassed and violated by the school administration for wearing a hooded jacket. She was asked to take off her hoodie, which she was using to protect against the cold weather and as a covering for her body as she respectfully practices her faith of Islam. When the administrator tried to forcibly remove the hoodie from the young woman, students came to her defense, which led to the walk-out. As the students protested the oppressive hoodie rule and the mistreatment of one of their peers, the administration called the cops which only escalated the situation. Six cop cars and two firetrucks showed up to the school. The cops arrested a sixteen-year-old student and charged him with battery of a police officer in addition to other charges.

The students were reacting to the over policing of their bodies and culture. Jefferson Parish School District started enforcing the “hoodie rule” after the murder of Trayvon Martin, while the racist, capitalist-owned media was busy blaming Trayvon for his own murder. This campaign went hard criminalizing young Black people for their choice of clothing.

The way the police handled the youth at their school is indicative of how the police handle poor people on the streets. The police don’t handle rich white people the way they handle poor people of color. It’s been like that for the entire history of AmeriKKKa. Across the globe, capitalist white supremacist rule holds back the masses of the global working class.

The ruling class news sold the students’ righteous protest as “Muslim student’s refusal to remove hoodie leads to chaos at Helen Cox High School.” This oppressive headline implies to the reader that some crazy non-white, non-Christian students were acting violently. The Workers Voice says the students have the right to stand up against oppression!

More actions like this are needed in schools and cities across the country. The world is waiting for the U.S. working class to rise up and revolt against their oppressors. If we don’t, the rich ruling class will continue to make things worse for us. We have to fight back. The youth are some of the most fearless fighters the working class has got.

Young people are justified in their frustration with the capitalist system. They just have to direct that rage towards revolution! Let the youth be free! All power to the people!

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High Schoolers’ Freedom of Expression Under Attack

By Adam Pedesclaux

Far from doing anything to address the root causes of mass shootings, Congress is using these tragedies to sneak an attack on students’ right to privacy and free speech. Texas Senator John Cornyn recently introduced a bill called the Restoring, Enhancing, Securing, and Promoting Our Nation’s Safety Efforts (RESPONSE) Act which would broaden the discretion police have to surveil and repress students based on their online activity. The act would also require federally funded schools to contract for-profit surveillance companies to monitor students’ social media posts for “inappropriate content.”

People are understandably desperate to put an end to mass shootings, but that’s not what this act is really about. If Senator Cornyn were really concerned about curbing mass shootings, he would denounce the white supremacist National Rifle Association and other lobbies for the arms profiteers. Cornyn won’t because he’d lose a source of campaign funds, having taken over $210,000 from these lobbies.

The real reason that this bill has been proposed is that students are beginning to rise up against the oppressive conditions they face in and out of school. The capitalists and their politicians view this as a threat, so they’re moving to suppress the youth’s power.

This act falls in line with other national tragedies that have been used to increase police surveillance on U.S. residents. They want to use school shootings as cover for the diversion of more of our tax dollars to private surveillance companies. They want to empower police to judge whether or not students’ posts are “suspect” or not. The record on police fusion center databases is clear: a person’s speech is most likely to be judged “suspect” when they disagree with the policies of the U.S. government. Progressive minded—not to mention revolutionary—people will be hounded by these “Big Brother” type programs while openly violent white supremacists occupy Congress and the White House. The FBI names earth protectors as one of the largest threats to the country. Funny that they pose such a threat to capitalism!

As workers, we must stop putting up with these bullshit programs. We cannot keep sacrificing our rights to millionaire liars. If we want violence to stop, it is CRITICAL that we ORGANIZE our own communities. The Feds are not going to protect us. We workers hold the collective power to protect our loved ones.

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LGBTQ Workers Benefit from a Union

National union leaders and LGBTQ activists and allies at the Pride at Work Triennial Convention.

By Sally Jane Black

Whether it’s being fired for who we are or harassment over what bathroom we use, sexual assault from customers or offensive homophobic jokes from our bosses, LGBTQ workers often face hostile work environments, especially from bosses and owners. 22% of LGBTQ people face discrimination on the job, with LGBTQ people of color facing it far more often. Nearly half of all LGBTQ workers are in the closet at work because they fear discrimination.

To whom can you turn?

Laws Don’t Protect Us
Though Title VII laws were reinterpreted under Obama to allegedly protect LGBTQ workers, the current administration has rolled that back. The issue is now in the courts. There is no state-level law to protect you, and the city ordinance has no teeth (though the New Orleans Human Rights Commission has recently gained investigative powers, they still have no power to enforce the ordinance on the books). Even if there were laws to protect you, you don’t have the money to take anyone to court.

The cops won’t do anything. They’re on the side of the bosses. For most, there’s no way to fight back.

Solidarity is the Answer
In some workplaces, however, LGBTQ workers can turn to the union.
In 1988, workers in Boston organized and went on strike, taking on Harvard University. On their list of demands were raises, healthcare benefits, and protections for gay workers. The university came back with everything but the protections, and the workers refused to go back to work. After a few more days, Harvard conceded. They won the protections in their union contract.

Around the country, LGBTQ protections have become a common part of union contracts, and in union workplaces, LGBTQ workers have their contracts to protect them and the union to back them up.

“An Injury to One Is an Injury to All” is the spirit in which the organization Pride at Work fights against discrimination. Founded in 1994, Pride at Work supports LGBTQ union members around the country. The fight for workers’ rights must include ALL workers; by standing together, we win not just better wages and benefits, but protection from harassment, discrimination, and violence in the workplace. Only as organized workers standing in solidarity can we protect ourselves from homophobia and transphobia.

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Domestic Workers Fight to Win Bill of Rights

The Philadelphia City Council has passed a Domestic Workers Bill of Rights. This is the result of a year-long campaign waged by the Pennsylvania Domestic Workers Alliance, which is affiliated with the National Domestic Workers Alliance. The passage of the bill is a gigantic win for the city’s 16,000 domestic workers, including housekeepers, gardeners, and those who care for children and the elderly.

The new legislation requires employers to have a written contract outlining scheduling, pay rates, and more. Employers must now provide two weeks notice before termination. The bill stipulates requirements for paid time off, meal, and rest breaks.

Nationally, domestic workers lack basic protections. The federal government does not guarantee them the right to a minimum wage, or to unionize. They do not have the right to overtime pay, nor do they have protection from discrimination and harassment. There are over 2 million domestic workers in the U.S. workforce, and they are disproportionately women, immigrants, and people of color. They are some of the most vulnerable workers in the country.

As with other categories of workers, we can see that the only way to change this situation is to organize and fight, as the Philadelphia Domestic Workers Alliance is doing.

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Airport Workers Stage Sit-ins Across the U.S.

During the busy Thanksgiving holiday, airport workers carried out militant demonstrations in 17 cities. These included major airports in Dallas and New York, where 60 were arrested by the NYPD. The workers are tired of low wages and the high costs of healthcare, and innumerable abuses from their employer, Sky Chef.

In Miami, 12 catering workers and UNITE HERE union representatives blocked the arrivals road in front of Terminal D at the Miami International Airport. They chanted, “One job should be enough!”

In Dallas, demonstrator Preston Strickland told reporters, “We feel like because we’re the backbone of the catering operation, we should have affordable healthcare and better living wages.”

This is only the latest in a series of actions carried out by the Sky Chef workers in 2019.

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Trump Says U.S. Military In Syria “Only For The Oil”

By Sally Jane Black

In a rare display of honesty, Donald Trump has stated several times in the last two months that U.S. troops have only remained in Syria to “secure the oil.” Though Pentagon officials have tried to backtrack on his comments (since they are an admission of war crimes), the cat is out of the bag. While Trump previously claimed U.S. troops would be leaving the area—signaling a victory for the Syrian people under threat by U.S. imperialism—troops remain to maintain U.S. corporate control of the natural resources of the region.

The U.S. military’s presence in the Middle East is the primary cause of the instability and wars that have plagued the region for decades.

There is a long history of U.S. imperialism and militarism acting only to rob other nations of their natural resources. Whether it’s Bolivian lithium or Nigerian uranium or Iraqi oil they’re after, the U.S. military serves capitalist exploitation in its plunder of the world’s wealth. In Syria, it has been no different; the U.S. involvement there began when Syria tried to build their own gas pipeline and control their own resources. Since then, the U.S. has bombed hospitals and civilians, spread lies about use of chemical weapons, and backed all kinds of reactionary paramilitary organizations including the so-called “moderate rebels” now murdering the same Kurds the U.S. once backed.

The U.S. military’s presence in the Middle East is the primary cause of the instability and wars that have plagued the region for decades; the impact of imperialism is always violence and suffering for working people. Trump’s remarks expose the long-standing truth. US workers should stand in solidarity with the Syrian people and demand that Trump be prosecuted for the war crimes he admits to.