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The Dirt on Dat Dog

By Max Wilde

In a city where 40% of the population earns just 7.5% of the total city-wide income, and women make just 67 cents for ever dollar a man makes, it’s easy to imagine that the food and hospitality industry is hell for working women–especially with bosses like John Besh. In October of last year, 25 women came forward with horror stories of the sexual harassment they faced while working at his New Orleans restaurants. Sadly, to many working class people in New Orleans, it wasn’t surprising that a dirtbag business owner would assault his employees and allow or encourage management to do the same.

One unsurprised worker is also a locally famous street performer named Qween Amore who has grown accustomed to harassment and discrimination on and off the clock. “As a trans person of color, I’ve come to realize that safety is a privilege, and in my experience, I am never truly safe” Qween told Workers Voice. Only last November, she was fired from Dat Dog on Frenchmen. The reason for the firing? “The last time I went to dance [in the Quarter] I was attacked by a brass band. They stole my equipment and proceeded to further assault me, so I ran into Dat Dog seeking protection. The cops were called, and I got arrested for disturbing the peace… A couple days later, Dat Dog decided to fire me because I ran inside and the brass band followed me in.”

According to The U.S. Transgender Survey, 77% of trans respondents who had a job in the past year took steps to avoid mistreatment in the workplace, such as hiding or delaying their gender transition or quitting their job, and 30% reported being fired, denied a promotion, or experiencing some other form of mistreatment related to their gender identity or expression.

Dat Do’,s management firing an employee for being the victim of transmisogynistic violence would be more shocking if they didn’t already have a history of gendered abuse. And in the very few cases where a manager stepped down or was let go for their behavior, new bosses are always willing and ready to take on the sexist mantle. It’s not ‘a few bad apples’ that make working in the hospitality and food industry so hard for so many women, but rather the oppressive position of bosses in the lives of workers and the role of men in the lives of women.

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Rock ‘N Bowl Hosts White Supremacists

Rock ‘N Bowl, a bowling alley on Carrollton Avenue, will be hosting a fundraiser for the Monumental Task Committee and the Beauregard Monument Association this January. These two organizations have for years been at the forefront of defending the city’s white supremacist monuments. They openly glorify figures like P. G. T. Beauregard or Robert E. Lee, who fought to defend the South’s brutal plantation slavery regime. The Monumental Task Committee openly brags on its website that it’s polished the Henry Clay and Jefferson Davis monuments. It can’t be easy for them to defend against the accusation of being white supremacists while they’re so busy licking slave-owners’ boots.

Rock ‘N Bowl is donating its parking, lunch, bowling, and bar funds to these organizations. This isn’t the first time either—Rock ‘N Bowl organized a fundraiser in March of last year for the same cause. The mask is off, this mom and pop shop is complicit in these organizations’ white supremacy.

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Fight Against Bayou Bridge Pipeline Continues


By Isabella Moraga-Ghazi

L’eau Est La Vie camp is being built to protect the water, wetlands and ways of life across the coast of Louisiana from the Bayou Bridge Pipeline (BBP), proposed by Energy Transfer Partners (ETP). On December 14 2017, ETP was granted a permit from the New Orleans District Office of the Army Corps of Engineers giving it the go ahead to lay this pipeline from Nederland, Texas to St. James Parish west of New Orleans.

There has been a long pushback from many different groups, and with the granting of this permit, L’eau Est La Vie is preparing to resist the construction on the front-lines. Cherri Foyltin, one of the many upstanding indigenous women leading the fight against BBP, with blessing from the Atakapa-Ishak Nation, recently bought a large plot of land on the route of the proposed pipeline. The land will be used as a sanctuary for incoming water protectors.
As tension between ETP and local environmental activists rise, this space provides hope that this resistance will not be in vein. Though pipeline construction has not begun yet, it is only a matter of time before water protectors will be standing in protest in front of large metal machines and police barricades. This fight is not futile, as local media would like you to believe, but more people must be willing to speak up.

This pipeline affects the livelihood of everyone in southern Louisiana; receding wetlands make hurricanes unstoppable; oil spills make waterways undrinkable and toxic to our seafood; crude chemicals spread cancer and disease to our neighbors, and the list goes on. If you feel for this fight, L’eau La Vie Camp is accepting donations and asking for volunteers. Find out more at nobbp.org.
Stand in solidarity with marginalized communities across southern Louisiana being affected by environmental racism and make our government officials hear us when we say “NO OIL IN MY BOIL! KEEP IT IN THE SOIL!”

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Jerusalem, the Capital of Palestine

By C. T.

Ahed Tamimi (pictured above) is a 16-year-old Palestinian activist who stood up to Israeli soldiers. The soldiers shot her 14-year-old cousin, Mohammad, in the face with a rubber bullet after firing tear gas canisters directly into the Tamimi’s home. Mohammad had to be put into a medically-induced coma for 72 hours. The Zionist state has jailed Ahed Tamimi, who was unarmed, for confronting the soldiers. She has become an international symbol of Palestinian resistance to occupation and genocide. Free Ahed Tamimi!

“If the olive trees knew the hands that planted them, their oil would become tears.” — Mahmoud Darwish

On December 6, the current U.S. regime declared Jerusalem, one of the oldest cities in the world, to be the capital of the 69 year-old settler-colony of Israel. Since the illegal occupation of Jerusalem in 1967, the zionist entity has demolished 2,000 Palestinian homes, stolen 35% of East Jerusalem’s land for illegal settlements, and denies Palestinians born in Jerusalem citizenship. 75% of Palestinians in East Jerusalem live under the poverty line. 50% of the city’s tax revenue is generated by Palestinians while they receive little to no municipal services.

Further, Palestinians in both East Jerusalem and the West Bank risk their lives on a daily basis to provide the labor that fuels the city’s industry. In addition to risking their lives by crossing checkpoints and working in neighborhoods where settlers carry rifles and work in collusion with the zionist army to hunt Palestinians, their unregulated labor lack a living wage, benefits and labor rights.

Prior to the arrogant US declaration regarding Jerusalem, which the international community has denounced, the US has played a central role in attempting to erase the Palestinian people and their sovereignty. In James Baldwin’s 1979 essay “Open Letter to the Born Again” he writes that “the state of Israel was not created for the salvation of the Jews; it was created for the salvation of the Western interests”.

The West has been successful for decades in perpetuating the myth that this is a religious conflict rather than the active theft of land and resources. In 2016 alone, the Obama regime promised $38 billion dollars in military aid to the zionist entity. The U.S.’s interests in positioning the zionist entity as a military watchdog in the Middle East has been evident since 1948. Unfortunately for Americans who are not the 1%, US interests do not include education, health care, housing or living wages, let alone recognition of indigenous people’s sovereignty abroad and on US soil.

As the American war machine speeds ahead, so does Palestinian resistance. As the Palestinian Authority has consistently proved itself inadequate in representing the full liberation of Palestine and right of return for all Palestinian refugees, now is the time to support grassroots Palestinian movements from Palestine to New Orleans.

One of the best ways to stand with Palestine is to stop the normalization of zionism across every facet of life. This means joining the Boycott, Divestment and Sanction movement (BDS) that seeks to stop the normalization of zionism in our government, our universities and our supermarkets. This means proactive measures to build liberation movements and strategies with the global Palestinian community. This means listening to Palestinians and letting them take the lead deciding the tactics we use against zionism and US imperialism.

This current effort to displace and erase Palestinian life, culture and resistance is nothing new to a people steadfast in our struggle. From the river to the sea, Palestinians will accept nothing less than the restoration of our rightful place on our land and the right of all Palestinians to return to historic Palestine, including Jerusalem, which has been and will always be the true capital of Palestine!

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Local Woman Stands Up to NOPD Brutality

By Quest R

In capitalist society, where we are surrounded by violence every day, many of us become desensitized. After years of never-ending police brutality and murder, some people have started to look at it like a permanent feature of reality that cannot be stopped.

This is not the case for Rodneka Shelbia, a brave New Orleans native who is now in a legal battle with NOPD and the criminal justice system. The New Orleans Workers Group along with a diverse array of community activists and organizations have been working with Rodneka for months to fight for justice in her case.

We interviewed Rodneka for Workers Voice to shed some light on this important local case in her own words. The following is based off of that interview:

Rodneka is from the Ninth and 13th Wards, and went to F.A. Douglas High. She graduated from Southern University and has worked at the Post Office for 6 years. She is also a singer and songwriter, “I write songs about my life, and what I witness,” she said.

In April, she noticed a scene of police brutality. Unfortunately since the case is ongoing in court, Rodneka cannot be quoted on the events of that night. From our investigation, it has been gathered that she saw an officer abusing a women who was holding a baby. She took the baby and screamed for the cop to stop and be human. When other officers came on the scene, the first cop pointed at her and told them to arrest her for battery. At the whim of one cop, Rodneka went from a courageous bystander who stepped in to protect a child to a victim of police violence herself.

Since that day, the legal system has put her through the works, as is the norm for the thousands of New Orleanians who pass through it every day. “Since then, I don’t feel safe in this system. I don’t trust the enforcers, the protectors, or any other beneficiaries of this justice system any more. Justice is at my expense and for the one who has been exposed,” she said.

Rodneka has refused to stand down, and many in the community have responded. “I’ve received love, time, money, hope, commitment, education, solidarity. In my case the community is diverse. There are others who are just numb. They don’t even know why I’m trippin’. They know I can’t win against the powers that be. I know I’m already winning. My community assures me that.”

She believes that her experience represents much more than an isolated incident “It represents why people revolt, buckle, and don’t fight back all in one. It represents slavery… I would like people to believe and know that they are worth a fight. Their humanity is worth a fight. And suppressing their humanity is not normal if they say its not.”

Rodneka has started the hash-tag #IWillNotBeDesensitized to spread awareness about her case, and to highlight how we cannot allow ourselves to accept inhumane mistreatment of ourselves or each other at the hands of police, regardless of how they try to normalize it. Check out the Justice for Rodneka Facebook page for more updates.

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Former and Present Racist Occupiers Unite to Threaten N. Korea

by Gavrielle Gemma

President Trump met with his right-wing counterpart in Japan, Prime Minister Abe, on the first leg of a trip set up to threaten N. Korea, challenge China and forge a new imperialist alliance. Calling Japan a “Warrior Nation”, Trump urged Abe to quickly militarize Japan and promised to sell Japan weapons of every kind.

Japan had brutally occupied Korea from 1910 to 1945 when the U.S. took over after Japan’s defeat in World War II. Their military dictatorship of Korea involved shooting down and imprisoning thousands of worker and farmers fighting for independence and banning the Korean language, schools, newspapers and religion. By 1935, they “owned” half of all farmland stolen from Korean peasants and forced 5 million Koreans into the Japanese army to do all the dirty work for their imperialist army, even being used as military medical experiments in Japan. Over 200, 000 Korean women were kidnapped and forced into sexual and domestic slavery. After Japan lost out to the imperialist U.S., it was banned from developing a military. But now the Trump/Wall ST. /Pentagon Junta is urging them to massively militarize.

Japan threatening N. Korea is no different than if the U.S. had a press conference with a European colonizer in Africa to threaten to directly reoccupy the countries that had liberated themselves from colonialism. On the Korean peninsula, only N. Korea has liberated itself. South Korea has remained a colony of the U.S. with 40,000 troops, many bases and aircraft carriers and nuclear weapons. The U.S. has supported all the S. Korean dictatorships and corporations that impoverish the Korean working class. South Koreans Protest U.S THAAD missile systems and occupation. No War – Peace

Japan kidnapped 200,000 Korean girls and women called “comfort women” into forced sex slavery for Japanese troops. Others were forced in domestic slavery for Japan’s rulers. Koreans before and after WWII were abused and brutally discriminated against in Japan.

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Offshore Oil and Gas Production Continues to Cause Devastating Damage in the Gulf South

In October, an underwater fractured pipe, owned by LLOG exploration company, released 672,000 gallons of oil into the Gulf of Mexico, 40 miles southeast of Venice Louisiana. This is the biggest spill in the Gulf since the Deepwater Horizon rig exploded in 2010, spilling over 200 million gallons of oil, claiming eleven workers’ lives, and causing devastating effects to our ecosystem and coastal communities.

This most recent spill falls into a distinct category; it’s the first blowout in history to release oil in such deep waters, nearly a mile below the surface. Due to the depth of the spill, we won’t see the traditional shoreline effects that we’re used to. The true impact is occurring far under the sea, where it threatens fish, deep-sea corals, gelatinous zooplankton, and diverse communities of shrimp, crabs and other organisms.

The oil and gas industry has continuously been unwilling to address its environmental and community impacts in the Gulf South, not to mention its role in global climate change. The rate of marsh shoreline erosion increases with oiling and Louisiana’s wetlands are already disappearing at the alarming rate of a football field worth of land an hour. These wetlands are a crucial buffer zone protecting coastal communities from flooding and storms.

It’s time to move away from the dangerous, destructive oil industry to renewable energy sources that provide safe jobs for our communities.

L’eau Est La Vie camp is a floating pipeline resistance camp in Southern Louisiana. We fight in the bayous of Louisiana, Chata Houma Chittimacha Atakapaw territory, to stop the Bayou Bridge Pipeline, an Energy Transfer Partners project and the tail end of the Dakota Access Pipeline.

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Dennis Banks, American Indian Movement Co-Founder, Dies

By Joe Stern

Revolutionaries around the world mourned the death of Dennis Banks, legendary Anishinaabe Leader and co-founder of the American Indian Movement (AIM). Like many indigenous people of his generation, Banks was forced into boarding school at four years old. There he suffered beatings and other abuses in the US genocidal experiment to “kill an Indian, save the man”. These abuses included cutting the boys’ hair, refusing to let students speak their tribal languages or practice their tribal religions, and extreme physical deprivation.

In 1968, Banks co-founded AIM with Clyde Bettecourt to fight Native oppression and endemic poverty. A year later, he took part in the occupation of Alcatraz Island in California. In 1972, he helped lead AIM’s “Trail of Broken Treaties”, a caravan of numerous tribes protesting treaty violations and reservation conditions which came from across the US to Washington DC, and occupied the Bureau of Indian Affairs building. In early 1973, 200 armed Lakota and members of other indigenous nations occupied Wounded Knee on the Pine Ridge Reservation for 71 violence filled days.

In later years, Banks became a substance and alcohol abuse counselor. However, he remained active in the fight for socialism and women’s liberation running for Vice President on the Peace and Freedom Party. He was also active in last year’s struggle against the Dakota Access Pipeline.

The indigenous peoples and all revolutionaries will long hold the memory of revolutionary activist Dennis Banks.

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Humma Ohoyo Holitopa

by Isabella Moraga-Ghazi

this land is not conquered or broken;
she is living, persisting, and thriving.
curse to the nay-sayers
for I talk to her everyday.
she dreams wildly.
so wildly, and so vividly that she sees her destruction and rebirth, emulating the resilience
of the phoenix, continuously stream in the consciousness she holds.
why do we stop her dreams?
dreams that are much more valid than me’s or you’s.
the ancestors sing through her.

in the moss, in the cypress.
in the pelicans, in the possums.
her song is quiet but strong.
if you listen closely, she says “yakoke” and “si vous plait”
to me and others like me.
but a vengeance she has.
a vengeance so strong it makes Katrina look weak.
a vengeance so strong it makes Andrew Jackson’s knees tremble.
a vengeance so strong it makes the BP oil spill look far from a disaster.
a vengeance so strong it makes Marie Laveau startled.
and that vengeance lives through me and others like me.
for the obligation we have bestowed on us is a tall order of demanding respect.
when it is quiet, tohbi ofi need be afraid.
for you shall know, that vengeance is no longer resting.
it is living, persisting, and thriving.
and it will not rest until she is doing the same.
“vee wan cee,” she says, “and do not betray me.”
she believes in us.
it is time we believe in us.
and it is time we believe in her.

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Capitalism Breeds Sexual Harassment: Women Should Take to the Streets to Show Our Power!

By Gavrielle Gemma

For thousands of years before class society developed, men and women, expressing many forms of gender identity, lived and worked together with mutual respect. In fact, if anything, women were held in the highest regard.

Once class society developed based on individual rather than shared accumulation, mother right, the rights of women, was overthrown as women and children became the property of rich men and the family a unit to advance further private wealth and inheritance.

Just as U.S. imperialism demonizes countries, other religions and people to justify genocidal bombings and occupation, women were and are brutally depicted as less than human. Men suffering the worst exploitation and oppression could feel superior to women who were the servants of even the humblest peasant or worker. As the heroic Lucy Parsons said, “We are the slaves of slaves”. Racism among white workers is designed to make them feel that at least they are better than Black people. In both cases the rich white capitalist class laughs all the way to the bank.

The problem lies in the private ownership of all the means of production and the capitalist class that owns the Congress and the Presidency and the Supreme Court. This is a Congress that has never been able to pass an Equal Rights Amendment. The problem lies in that women workers do not control and run things as we would under socialism. Congress has allowed a rapist pig to be president – Donald Trump – for fear that firing him over being a sexual predator would not serve Wall Street’s interests.

Even while new exposes are constantly being revealed, the real condition of working class and oppressed women sinks lower every day. But what cannot be undone is the potential revolutionary force that women workers are in capitalist society.

In the meantime, we must not be handcuffed to internet petitions and phone calls to Congress. We need to get out into the streets by the millions to say no to Sexism, Racism, Poverty, Homophobia & War. They need to be afraid of our power.