Inmates at the Metropolitan Correctional Center in Chicago hold up signs asking for help during the coronavirus pandemic, April 20, 2020.
In the United States, the COVID-19 infection rate is 5.5 times higher for incarcerated people, and a new report shows that prisoners are organizing in record numbers to fight for survival. In just the first 90 days of the COVID-19 pandemic, 119 instances of resistance were documented by Perilous Chronicle. Nearly a dozen of these uprisings and protests took place in Louisiana, which saw the most of any state.
Since these early efforts, thousands continue rebellions across the country’s jails, prisons, and especially in ICE concentration camps as adults and children bravely demand their rights to health and life. We must join this cause and also demand freedom: for non-violent people held in jails, prisons, and ICE concentration camps, we say #FreeThemAll!
Nurses rallied at the entrance to Rikers Island jail in Queens, New York, this year.
Think back to the beginning of this year. A stay-at-home order has you trapped inside. Now imagine you have no phone, no computer, and no one to talk to. You are by yourself fourteen days in a row. This sort of prolonged isolation is a form of torture. It has been the daily life of thousands of incarcerated people since March.
In Orleans Parish jails, If you test positive for COVID-19, if you were in contact with someone who tested positive, if you are being treated for non-COVID-19 related illness, or medical staff simply deem it appropriate, you are forcibly subjected to fourteen days of solitary confinement. This policy has not stopped infections. As of October 16, 10 inmates in OPP were listed as positive for COVID-19.
The best policy to stop the spread of COVID-19 is also the most humane: free all nonviolent inmates and detainees! This applies to all jails, prisons, and so called “detention centers”. In the meantime, incarcerated people who have been denied visitations deserve a chance to video-conference with their families and communities. End the torture now!
Raises $170 Million to Pay for Golf Trips and Racist, Anti-Worker Organizing Runs Bribery Schemes for Pardons While He Lets 2,200 Die from COVID-19 Every Day
Trump knows he lost the election. But he can’t resist a good scam. So, he sat down with the equally corrupt Giuliani and started scheming. They decided to tell his duped loyal supporters that the election is rigged and call for donations to an election defense fund. The money goes into a personal PAC, “Save America” to use any way he wants. Give it to himself and his little darling children, host parties at Mar a Lago, or maybe buy another gold-plated toilet. This fund will also be used to organize racist, anti-worker attacks on the people by the likes of his “Proud Boys” and others, who are ultra-right-wing stooges for Wall Street.
He’s also running a bidding scheme for payoffs, going now for over one million dollars a pardon for people who are war criminals, banker thieves, scammers of seniors, slum lords, and people who generally would like to see workers’ wages dropped to $1 an hour. Oh, and course, who’d like to legalize child labor and end public schools.
Throughout his term in office, Trump and his rotten children have all profited personally as has his rabid dog, Giuliani. Melania, famed for saying who cares about migrant children in cages, has fared well for the time being. But Trump will probably dump her when she gets a gray hair. Time for a new model.
Drug Dealing Billionaires Conspired to Sell More Oxycontin Despite 450,000 Dead from Opioid Overdoses
While thousands go to prisons for long sentences for dealing petty amounts of drugs, the billionaire Sackler family got off with no jail time despite pleading guilty to criminal charges of conspiracy to push Oxycontin—especially to doctors prescribing large amounts. The Sacklers even gave payments to doctors whose “patients” died. The Sacklers are celebrating what is really a win for them, as they siphoned off at least $10 billion from the company which is now in off- shore accounts. So, as they live it up, millions of family members mourn and workers at the company are left wondering whether they have jobs or pensions. This proves once again that prisons are mainly concentration camps for the poor and that the wealth of the rich buys them immunity for the crimes they commit.
Louisiana Movement for Workers Councils leads anti-eviction march on Sept. 8.
By Ashlee Pintos
While politicians and the big business media promise that a coming COVID-19 vaccine will magically fix the economic crisis, over 12 million renters around the country will owe an average of $5,850 in back rent by January 1. In Orleans parish alone, some 30,000 households are vulnerable to evictions, and thousands more are on the brink of foreclosure. Even before COVID, working people have been struggling to make ends meet as rent prices and property taxes have skyrocketed as a result of gentrification. Now, millions of us are unemployed or have had our hours and wages cut and we’ve received little to no help with our mounting debts.
This issue is shaking the core of the entire country, with thousands of households in almost every large city facing possible evictions. the Democratic and Republican parties can agree on a trillion dollar war budget, but they can’t agree on relief for workers in some of our most desperate hours. Our only way out of this crisis is to organize ourselves, independent of the two parties of Wall Street and the Pentagon. this has taken a heavy toll on us workers but we must take heart at our massive numbers: would they dare to evict us if we banded together?
The Louisiana Movement for Workers Councils is an effort to unite all working people, employed and unemployed, to demand that the state and federal government provide us with what we need to survive this crisis, using our tax dollars. Looking back on the history of social security, food stamps, and unemployment insurance, we know that it has always been the struggle of the masses that has forced those in power to concede to our demands.
Time and time again, government officials cry that their hands are tied, that they cannot call a moratorium on evictions or provide extended unemployment insurance. But we are organizing to push back against the State Legislature that has given over $150 million in tax breaks to oil companies amid a pandemic. We’re organizing to demand that the Mayor and local politicians, whose sights are set on making New Orleans “the number one city to do business,” use their emergency powers to halt evictions and foreclosures. It is only our solidarity with one another that can keep us in our homes and win the relief we need.
From our comrades in the New Orleans Hospitality Workers Alliance, their demands of the city to meet the immediate needs of workers during the COVID-19 emergency:
List of Demands
Immediate expansion of unemployment insurance. Change the current eligibility to include those who stay home during this crisis, who do not have paid leave. This should extend to all gig, independent contractors, and freelance workers.
Expansion of Medicaid to all who need health care.
Expansion and an increase of food stamps to all workers and families in need.
Testing, ER visits, and treatment for COVID -19 must be free for all and administered at conveniently located test centers that are geographically dispersed. Expansion of testing must be done urgently
Issue an order that no workers be fired for staying home
Immediate closure of restaurants, retail shops and bars with a guarantee that when the establishment reopens workers will get their jobs back.
Those who choose to keep working at essential places like pharmacys, hospitals and supermarkets should be given full protective gear.
Order a state-wide halt to evictions, foreclosures, water, electric and internet cut offs.(Including student loan payments and credit card debt.)
People without homes should be provided shelter and utilities necessary to protect themselves from both contracting and spreading COVID-19. (We have enough houses to shelter every person in the city, and we demand that anybody in need of housing is granted access to one of our numerous uninhabited units.)
Establish a system for no cost food and other necessities distribution to quarantined people or areas and to sick or self-isolated households
Price controls put into effect to shield workers from the disruptive effects the virus has on the global economy.
Establish easily accessible centers to replace breakfast and lunch for all students. (Currently New Orleans has only set up one school each on the East and West banks. Closing the schools without many food centers will create massive hunger for Louisiana’s children.)
Waive citizenship requirements for state and local benefits to ensure all workers have the option to stay home and effectively contain the virus.
Immediate release of migrants in detention camps and incarcerated people not convicted of violent crimes. (These sites are overcrowded with limited access to healthcare. This will improve containment of the virus and cannot be ignored. Provide remaining prisoners with free phone calls as visits are being stopped and deposit money in their commissary accounts especially as prisoners must buy their soap, etc.)
Guarantee replacement income for all (on top of the expansion of unemployment)
The eyes of all workers in Louisiana, who are very aware of the huge inequality between legislators and government official’s income and health coverage, are on the actions of the government. This is the time to suspend state and local corporate tax exemptions to provide resources for these measures. Suspend the city charter which gives $180 million dollars in tourist taxes to private companies, suspend the $300 million dollars in public funds that is being used for a private convention center hotel and the millions being used for the super dome renovation.
These public funds MUST be redirected towards this crisis immediately!
We hope you will carry out the responsibilities to the people of our state and work expeditiously to enact these necessary measures.
The New Orleans Workers Group calls for the withdrawal of two anti-trans bills filed in the Louisiana State Legislature. SB172/HB466, which target trans youth in sports, are designed to humiliate, isolate, and encourage bullying of trans and gender non-conforming youth. The intention of the bill is to terrorize trans people and subject children to genital and hormonal testing by government officials.
This is an attack on trans people, gender non-comforming people, and all children in Louisiana. It is intended to scare trans people back into the closet by encouraging outrage and equating being trans with being a threat to children. It is intended to distract workers from the real predators–the capitalist class–preying on our children. We call for all workers to stand against these attacks and in solidarity with trans children.
These bills and others like it across the country, from South Dakota to Florida, are backed by five national organizations: the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), the Family Research Council, the Heritage Foundation, the Kelsey Coalition, and the Alliance Defending Freedom.
These organizations are funded by the Koch brothers, the Coors family (as in the beer), the DeVos family, war profiteers, the Mellon family of bankers, and other capitalists. The Family Research Council is classified as a hate group.
None of them are from Louisiana, South Dakota, Kentucky, or other states where these bills have been submitted. No one in these states has asked for laws like these to be passed.
These are the same tactics anti-LGBTQ forces have taken for decades. They know they can paint LGBTQ people as dangerous to children and pit workers against one another. They test them out, state by state, to see what will create the most division and the least fight back.
Workers across the U.S. have stopped bills like these; Louisiana workers must not let these capitalists divide us and terrorize our children. Stand with trans people! Withdraw SB172/HB466!
The disaster at the Hard Rock was preventable. Workers had documented the shoddy construction and corners cut days before the collapse, but the bosses ignored their warnings. In order to prevent another deadly incident of this sort, workers urgently need to be able to walk off the job if they deem the worksite a threat to their lives. If this right cannot be enforced by a union contract, it should be protected by city law. Every worker in New Orleans deserves this basic protection.
Workers should be free to exercise their rights without fear of retaliation or loss of work and wages; otherwise, a right is a right in name only. The case of Delmer Joel Ramirez Palma, the Hard Rock worker who was captured by ICE and deported for taking the courageous step of blowing the whistle on criminal developers, should be an outrage to all workers. To tolerate this type of terrorism is to give the bosses a free pass to walk over any right or protection that stands in the way of their profits.
The New Orleans Workers Group has proposed and is petitioning signatures for the following Emergency Worker Dignity and Safety Ordinance to be passed by the city as soon as possible. Sign the petition here. The ordinance is as follows:
The City’s immediate response and top priority is to properly and safely remove people’s bodies from an accident site so that their families can begin to have closure.
Any group of workers who decide that their job site conditions are unsafe have the right to walk off the job free of penalty and with the day’s pay.
Such action, and/or any potential accident, will immediately trigger an independent investigation.
Workers who walk off their job for safety concerns will be protected from termination.
Workers classified as 1099 contractors are protected under the ordinance.
Workers’ rights to walk off the job due to safety concerns are protected under the ordinance regardless of documentation status and are protected from ICE involvement and deportation.
All workers who utilize their right to walk off an unsafe job are protected from retaliation and termination should they go to the press about their experience. This is to protect “whistleblowers.”
Workers will receive full pay and benefits for the time they are unable to work until employers address the workplace safety conditions.
To get involved in the campaign to pass the Emergency Worker Dignity and Safety Ordinance, contact the New Orleans Workers Group:
Five months have gone by and the Hard Rock building still stands as a testimony to the murderous greed of the developer group 1031 Canal Development, LLC and the criminal indifference of the city. For killing three workers, causing injuries to 18 workers and lost wages for hundreds more, and for disrupting bus service on 21 lines, the developers have yet to be charged with any crime. Nor have they paid a dime for the havoc their greed and negligence has caused.
Worse, five months have gone by and the remains of two of the workers killed in the disaster, Quinnyon Wimberley and Jose Ponce Arreola, have yet to be removed from the rubble. Their families have been denied the basic dignity of a proper burial while the city claims to have already spent more $12 million to deal with the fallout from the collapse. New Orleans residents deserve a full accounting of this figure. How much of this money could have been spent hiring a crew that specializes in excavating human remains from buildings damaged by earthquakes or bombings?
Now, against the wishes of the mourning families, Mayor Cantrell has ordered the building to be demolished with the bodies of the killed workers inside. This outrage cannot stand. The city estimates that the demolition and recovery will cost an additional $11 million at least. This money should go towards the safe removal of the killed workers before the building is imploded. The families of Quinnyon Wimberley and Jose Ponce Arreola deserve respect!
New Orleans Peoples Assembly leads the 2019 International Working Women’s Day March.
By Sanashihla
On Sunday, March 8, the New Orleans Peoples Assembly will host its 2nd Annual International Working Women’s Day demonstration, rallying at Congo Square at 1:00pm, followed by a march to the steps of City Hall. The purpose of the demonstration is to build local and international solidarity of working class women to end what causes us harm, while building toward the new society that we so urgently need and want.
This year’s theme is anchored in a demand for higher wages. The minimum wage in New Orleans, and the entire state of Louisiana, remains unchanged since 2008 at $7.25, with no current signs of rising above that amount. This is despite the constant increase in the cost of housing, healthcare, childcare, food, water, etc.!
New Orleans blames Baton Rouge and says that it cannot raise wages without the state’s cooperation. The state of Louisiana, primarily run by white conservative Republican men, caters to the greed of the rich ruling class of Louisiana and refuses to concede to the demands of the people. Yet the local government (currently led by Democrats) is not actively challenging the dictates of the state. Ever wonder why?
All of this is a problem. However, WE ARE THE SOLUTION! Our revolutionary sister Assata Shakur said, “People get used to anything. The less you think about your oppression, the more your tolerance for it grows. After a while, people just think oppression is the normal state of things. But to become free, you have to be acutely aware of being a slave.” Now, in 2020 nobody wants to think of ourselves as enslaved. Yet, if the material conditions demonstrate that forces are placed upon our people that are oppressive, we need to work actively to change those conditions.
Though we are no longer facing literal chattel enslavement, we face enslavement by new names and in new ways, from mass incarceration to the reformed exploitation of labor called “wage enslavement.”
Just as our ancestors who resisted chattel enslavement fought back, and won to move the needle forward, we must continue to the struggle toward complete liberation. When we fight, we win! Join us in the streets on Sunday, March 8 at 1:00pm!
