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Local Workers Strike Back Against Sexual Harassment

On February 23, 2018, the New Orleans Hospitality Workers Committee (NOHWC) held a March to End Sexual Harassment and Discrimination in the Workplace. Starting at Congo Square, the NOHWC along with 50 workers marched down Decatur, taking over the street all the way to Bamboula’s. This action was organized on behalf of a committee member who used to work at Bamboula’s, where a manager sexually assaulted her on several occasions. When she confided in her General Manager about the continued harassment, no action was taken and the harasser was allowed to remain employed at Bamboula’s.

NOHWC marched on the establishment. At Bamboula’s, committee members went inside to deliver a set of demands that will be continuously delivered until they are met. Bamboula’s responded to the action by closing their own door. Almost all guests left the bar. However, management did not accept the demands.

This is only the beginning of a campaign to end sexual harassment and racism in all New Orleans workplaces. Please keep in touch with NOHWC and upcoming actions either on Facebook at NOHWC or online at www.nowhc.org. United and organized, the 88,000+ hospitality workers of this city have the power to demand our rights.

Here are our Demands:

  1. Bamboula’s will no longer foster a culture of sexist or racist harassment.
  2. Terminate the manager, Jim, in a timely fashion for the sexual assault of workers.
  3. Terminate the General Manager, Jen, in a timely fashion for supporting sexual harassment in the workplace.
  4. Post the Rules and Regulations provided by NOHWC where customers and employees can easily read.

As the march went through the Quarter, many workers came out of their workplaces to applaud, raise a fist of solidarity, and show support for their fellow workers.

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Solidarity With BARE NOLA

In the New Orleans Workers Group, we believe in the political power of workers united together in struggle. We proudly support all the workers of New Orleans, recently deemed the #1 tourist destination in the world by the NY times. We salute BARE NOLA and all the workers organized against the recent raids on Bourbon St. clubs.

We recognize these raids as an attempt by the ruling class to separate women into legitimate and illegitimate classes. They think that they can get away with it because these clubs aren’t grocery stores, factories, or warehouses. These claims are flimsy excuses that rely solely on stigma and disorganization to work. They expect to be able to walk in and delegitimize these workers in the eyes of the city.

They expect to be able to attack without meeting organized resistance. The only ones they have delegitimized are themselves. Yesterday they were bold enough to parade their so-called “victory” on Bourbon and hold ceremony in front of the city.

Because of the resistance of the workers, Landrieu hid like a coward and the tourism board was made to look foolish.

The ruling class relies on a narrative that this city is full of vulnerable people broken by a storm, uneducated and needing to be watched for their own good; that the most vulnerable of these people are the marginalized women on Bourbon, forced into work against their will. Those organizing against these raids are not vulnerable women, but a group of women united, understanding their collective power.

For the New Orleans Workers Group, the recent ATC raids on the workers of Bourbon St. amount to nothing more than a cruel and illegitimate act of repression. Under the guise of a moral campaign against sex trafficking, these raids are a cynical effort by the ruling class to remake Bourbon St. according to their interests, without the slightest consideration for the workers who have earned them billions in profits.

We reject the so-called “moral authority” of Covenant House, an institution that advocates for laws that criminalize the youth they pretend to serve. We reject the conclusions reached in the APLV study of 2016, which was fabricated in order to bolster the case of real estate developers and their unceasing drive to make New Orleans a playground for the rich. Most importantly we recognize this campaign as an attack on the rights of women workers, LGBTQ workers, and non-white workers.

The city and the tiny class of owners whose interests it represents invoke a sexist “morality” in one breath as they pretend to defend the interests of women in the other. The Workers Group rejects any attempt to divide the city’s workers, and we denounce as criminal the firing of hundreds of our fellow workers. As fellow members of the working class, we stand in solidarity with the dancers and other workers fighting back against these raids. #letusdancenola

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Operation PUSH: Florida Prisoners Plan Strike

Prisoners spread throughout the Florida Department of Corrections have announced a strike starting on MLK Day. The strike is aimed at undermining the exploitative, racist prison system. The prisoners have contacted the Gainesville chapter of the Incarcerated Workers Organizing Committee (IWOC) and the national Campaign to Fight Toxic Prisons with a list of demands. These include

  1. Payment for our labor, rather than the current slave arrangement
  2. Ending outrageous canteen prices
  3. Reintroducing parole incentives to lifers

Secondary goals:

  • Honor the moratorium on state executions, as a court ordered the state to do, without the legal loophole now being used to kill prisoners on death row.
  • Stop the overcrowding and acts of brutality committed by officers throughout FDOC which have resulted in the highest death rates in prison history.
  • Expose the extreme environmental conditions we face, including mold, contaminated water, and being placed next to toxic sites .

More info at incarceratedworkers.org

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Tax Bill is an Attack on Workers – We Must Fight Back

By Gregory William

The Republican tax overhaul is the most sweeping change in the U.S. tax system in over 30 years. The bill is complex, but overall it is designed to make the rich richer. For example, the corporate tax rate drops from 35% to 21%. The Trump family and other billionaires will also reap huge savings because of changes to the estate tax; individuals can shelter up to $11.2 million in assets from estate taxes, and couples can shelter up to $22.4 million.

Perhaps more importantly, the tax cuts will increase federal debt, giving Republicans an excuse to cut healthcare, housing programs, programs for children, the elderly, and disabled including Social Security and Medicare. In short, their agenda is to attack the poor and working class, outright stealing from ordinary, struggling people. These programs are run using our tax money. They are not “entitlements,” except in the sense that, yes, we are entitled to what is already ours. We know that this will come down especially hard on people of color, LGBT folk, immigrants, the elderly, and women.

It is likely that we are entering a period of increased hardship and austerity. However, we should be clear that these policies are not coming out of nowhere. This is a continuation of a 40+-year trend. We are under the shadow of the great reversal. Even in supposedly progressive countries like France and Canada, the capitalist class has systematically attacked the social programs that workers fought for tooth and nail. Worldwide, wealth and resources are more and more being redistributed to the top.

A new U.N. report has confirmed what we already knew: Extreme poverty is prevalent in the U.S. and rising. Philip Alston, the report’s author, has said that in the U.S “if you’re born poor, guess where you’re going to end up – poor.”

This situation did not suddenly come about when Trump was elected. Inequality has risen through Republican and Democratic presidencies, and regardless of which party controlled Congress. The people have long given the Democratic Party the benefit of the doubt. But time and again, they have shown that their allegiance is to the billionaire class. It was Obama who bailed out Wall St., leaving the people behind in the so-called economic recovery following the financial crash. And the Democrats overwhelmingly voted in favor of the recent $700 billion military budget (more money for war profiteers means less money for workers).

We cannot afford to keep putting our faith in the Democrats. In this period of increasing inequality and oppression, we must focus on building up our own organizations and movements, truly independent of the Democratic Party. Most of all, it is necessary that we build a revolutionary movement to overthrow capitalism itself. We must fight for socialism.

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Trump Threatens World With Nuclear War

DISMANTLE U.S. NUCLEAR WEAPONS ARSENAL

By Dylan Borne

It’s very clear that everyone in Korea wants peace. On January 2nd, North Korea offered an olive branch to the South: they asked to attend the 2018 Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang, South Korea. South Korea accepted and responded with its own offer—diplomatic talks— which the North accepted. To many Koreans, peace and reunification might be possible.

Yet the United States government, controlled by its capitalist ruling class, continues to press for war. Korea sits on trillions of dollars’ worth of mineral wealth and tens of millions of laborers. The rich that run the US see them like they see their workers— as possible resources. And the US government is stopping at nothing to wage war to take those resources. That’s why:

  • It’s the US, not North or South Korea, that split the country by imposing the 38th parallel in 1945 (a divide and conquer approach)
  • It’s the US that continues to occupy the peninsula with almost 30,000 troops and forced the South to give the US permission in their constitution (Koreans can’t even call their country their own!)
  • It’s the US that continues to make nuclear threats (Trump screaming “my nuclear button is bigger!”)

The corporate media has no right to make North Koreans look like they’re the ones that are war-crazy. Nor does it have a right to make it look like the South supports the US government. The US has over 4,600 nuclear weapons and North Korea has no more than 20. Koreans in the South have been protesting every part of the US military occupation for decades. North Korea pledged that it would never strike first in nuclear war, and it even promised it would stop testing weapons if only the US stopped conducting military drills. But the US refuses when Koreans on both sides ask for peace.

The ruling class in the US wants war for the same reason that it wants to raise our rents and lower our wages: money and wealth. Every bullet, rifle, tank, missile, and warship commissioned by the US military adds to arms contractors’ profits. That’s not even counting all the looting US corporations could do after a war. And our taxes pay for it all. Meanwhile, the rich line their pockets, workers still live from paycheck to paycheck, and the government’s so focused on war that it hasn’t done a thing for our roads or schools.

The Workers Group stands in solidarity with the people of Korea, both for their sake and so we can see money being spent on workers at home.

Let’s see schools built before the next bomb.

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Workers, Activists Beware: Do Not Put Your Hopes in Mueller

By Gavrielle Gemma

Every day, the Trump administration ramps up the danger of nuclear war and environmental destruction. Trump has endorsed white supremacy and homophobia, violence against women, a militarized police, an incarceration bonanza, imperialist war, and is pushing to add to the obscene accumulation of wealth of the rich through a tax cut while starving people, destroying Medicaid and Medicare, threatening social security and waging an anti-union, anti-worker war — all for which Trump deserves to be put in jail.

But we are to docilely clap while a former FBI director announces a few indictments for dealings with Russia? Mueller’s job is to discipline the Trump administration into accepting the general direction of the capitalist ruling class. His job is to misdirect the anti-Trump struggle into a safe, legalistic dispute that does not threaten the empire. In fact, the Liberals are attacking Trump from the right.

While the whole Russia-gate is a distraction, it is important for activists to know the truth. The U.S. / NATO military and economic alliance has taken over Eastern Europe, privatizing for profit the national assets of these countries, impoverishing the people and destroying their rights. Military bases encircle Russia on its border. In 2014, Obama/Clinton engineered a coup to oust the elected head of the Ukraine after he declared neutrality in trade with the U.S. and Russia, and the US installed a swastika flying junta in Kiev that is bombing the anti-fascist resistance with U.S. weapons.

Russia’s crimes are that it did not turn over all its assets to U.S. corporations or allow U.S. bases into the country and maintained its independence from the U.S. Wall Street views this as the unfinished counter-revolution. The Putin administration has its own ambitions in trade and capitalist development, which is its right. The progressive movement in Russia will deal with Putin on other issues.

The wing of the capitalist class that wants outright takeover of Russia is pitted against the Trump supporters who want to make a deal with Russia. But both want nothing more than to exploit the region, seeking not to protect human rights but to expand the rights of corporations and the protections they enjoy from the legion of US military bases abroad. They would love to control all Russia’s wealth.

Occasionally, we hear comparisons to 1974 when Nixon resigned. At that time, the U.S. was losing the war in Vietnam and at home, and millions in the U.S. were becoming class-conscious revolutionaries. Wall Street had to channel his ouster into safe ways by focusing on the Watergate burglary rather than the deeper crisis of capitalism and divisions in the ruling class. So Nixon was not charged with genocide. Nor was he indicted for his illegal June meeting of the FBI, CIA, NSA, etc. in an attempt at an outright military takeover of the government, but with LYING. Sound familiar?

The present quiet in the mass struggle is temporary as capitalism is on a massive drive towards more war, poverty and racist attacks. We must cast off illusions or faith in the capitalists to cure their own diseases and resist them diverting us from the real issues. The coming independent struggle of the workers and oppressed, globally and in the U.S., is being born as we write.

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Communist Party of the Philippines

Closing out 2017, the Communist Party of the Philippines and the New People’s Army celebrate the 49th anniversary of the party’s refoundation, vowing to overthrow the U.S.-backed dictatorship of Rodrigo Duterte. Duterte has come under fire for the use of arbitrary arrest, torture, indefinite detention, and massacre of suspected revolutionaries and legal social activists, while carrying out a revved-up drug war resulting in thousands of extrajudicial killings. Trump has lavished praise on Duterte, saying that he is doing an “unbelievable job,” while courting the Philippine leader as an ally against North Korea. The CPP calls on all democratic forces in the country to oust the brutal, pro-imperialist regime.

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Universal Healthcare in Bolivia

The Bolivian government plans to move ahead with implementing universal healthcare in 2018. Evo Morales, president of the South American country, said that “Life is sacred and by the Political Constitution of the Plurinational State, now health is a fundamental human right, and we are going to implement this universal health insurance with the support of all the Bolivian people.”

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Trans People Excluded from Capitalist Society

By Sally Jane Black

The law provides little protection for trans people. In New Orleans, a recent poll showed that 87% of black trans women had been sexually harassed or assaulted by members of NOPD, and across the nation, the police and other authorities do little to prevent crime against trans people. Since January 2017, 28 trans people have been murdered in the United States, including two in New Orleans. Almost all of them have been people of color. Almost none of their killers have been brought to justice. Furthermore, over 40% of trans people attempt to kill themselves. These statistics do not take into account trans people who are not out, or whose families hide their identities after they died. The real numbers are much higher.

Across the board, trans people have been excluded from capitalist society. Trans people are at higher risk of being homeless, bullied, abandoned by their families, or denied healthcare services or jobs. “Right to work” states, which target all workers, make it possible for trans people to be fired for being trans. Health insurance policies routinely classify necessary medical treatments as ineligible for coverage, for the few trans people who can afford insurance.
Meanwhile, in socialist Cuba, the government has created the National Center for Sex Education (CENESEX) to advocate tolerance and educate the population on issues of gender, sexuality, and sex. Despite the fact that trans people make up a small percentage of the island’s population, the Cuban government has made promoting support for trans people a priority, and healthcare for trans people—including hormone treatments and surgery—is provided free within the nation’s universal healthcare system.

The contrast between the response from Cuba and the United States could not be starker. The ruling class in the United States sees trans people as a prop to be used to inspire infighting in all who resist it; the Cuban people seek to embrace all members of their society. Transphobia is an inherent part of the capitalist patriarchy; it will not be defeated and we will not be safe until capitalism is gone.

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Ruling Class Targets LGBT Workers

By Sally Jane Black

Cases before the Supreme Court are threatening to roll back gains won by the LGBT liberation struggle. With the decision to send the Texas case Turner v. Pidgeon back to the lower courts, the Supreme Court has opened the gate for businesses to refuse to pay for insurance and other benefits for same-sex partners, and with Masterpiece Cakeshop v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission currently pending, soon businesses might be allowed to legally discriminate against same-sex couples on the basis of “religious freedom.” What was won through decades of struggle, culminating in Obergefell v. Hodges in 2015, is now being overturned in pieces.

The fact that the right to marry is being ignored by these laws in favor of revoking the more tangible economic benefits that came with it is telling: the objections being made to same-sex marriage are rooted in greed, not a desire to protect anyone’s freedoms. These cases are blatant attacks on workers. As has been seen before, companies will take every opportunity to push back against workers’ gains. If the courts allow them to deny same-sex couples the same benefits as heterosexual couples, it’s only a matter of time before this is attempted to be used as precedent to make those same benefits inaccessible to heterosexual couples. If a loophole can be found, it will be taken advantage of. The goal is not to protect the freedoms of the religious—who mostly support same-sex marriage in this country—but the owners and bosses who want to squeeze every last penny out of their workers.

What these threats show is how easily concessions won from the ruling class can be lost. Unless the working class stands up to the ruling class and fights in unison against the divisive, manipulative attempts to economically punish queer and trans people, real change will never happen.

In December, the Louisiana courts declared that the state could not extend legal protections to queer and trans state workers as another step in a continuing fight between the governor and the state’s attorney general Jeff Landry, who has used trans people as nothing more than a political victim. Previously, the Democrats had offered to remove trans people from these protections in exchange for keeping them for queer people. This is a repetition of the same failed tactics that have been used for decades, from the fight for the Employment Non-Discrimination Act at the federal level to the recent “bathroom bills” which have been used to rile supporters and divide the opposition.