Posted on

Support Incarcerated Workers’ Strike in Alabama (Calls to Action)

by Jennifer Lin

In protest against the utterly inhumane conditions in Alabama DOC, the prisoner-led Free Alabama Movement’s 30-Day Economic Blackout has stopped work from Jan 1 to Jan 31.

On January 1, incarcerated people across Alabama’s prison system went on a work strike and 11 people in isolation went on a hunger strike. Officially called the “30 Day Economic Blackout,” the strike is being organized by the Free Alabama Movement, founded and led by imprisoned Black men fighting against mass incarceration and prison slavery. People in Alabama’s prisons live in heinous conditions in overcrowded cells and are ten time smore likely to die from homicide than in any other state. Incarcerated peoples’ loved one can no longer visit them in person; Alabama is only allowing virtual visits due to COVID-19, but the Free Alabama Movement claims this is a front to permanently end in-person visits to psychologically torture incarcerated people even more. These virtual visits are insanely profitable for tech companies that have contracts with prisons. The strike is calling on people to show solidarity by boycotting 5 corporations that profit from prisons and forced prison labor: Securus Technologies, JPay, Access Correction, Union Supply Company, and Alabama Correctional Industries.

Prisons are a tool for the mass torture and dehumanization of primarily Black and brown people and funnel huge profits to private corporations through forced labor. They are designed to prop up capitalism and further the oppression of workers. Now incarcerated people are being left to die in crowded and dirty cells without access to adequate medical care during COVID-19. These people are our friends, family, and community members. The Alabama strike is a tremendous act of resistance that we must support.

The people on hunger strike have been brutally repressed with beatings, mace, harassment, and threats. The Free Alabama Movement is asking everyone to engage in an email, phone, and twitter storm of support. Tell Dunn: “At Kilby Correctional Facility, Sgt. Williams and Officer Landrum jumped on an bead a prisoner who is participating in a hunger strike. Alabama DOC needs to intervene immediately by investigating this incident and firing both guards.” – from the the #Alabama11. Show your solidarity by joining this call!

Call, Email, Twitter the Alabama Corrections Department
Alabama DOC Commissioner Jeff Dunn:
334-353-3883
Jefferson.dunn@doc.Alabama.gov
Twitter @ADOCDunn

Posted on

City of New Orleans Promotes Tourism Amid Rising Pandemic Numbers

by Daniel Meinecke, musician

Musicians in New Orleans are outraged over the decision from the city to spend money on Dick Clark’s ‘New Year’s Rockin’ Eve’ concert production. Initially Lieutenant Governor Billy Nungesser pushed for the state’s involvement in the even to the tune of $500,000 only if singer Lauren Daigle was to be the representative for Louisiana. This caused outrage amongst the community because Lauren Daigle was also partially responsible for the super spreader event in November that Sean Feucht hosted and the city police and leaders failed to shut down. Mayor Cantrell requested to the event promoters that they remove Daigle from the concert, which caused the outrage of Nungesser and the removal of state funds from the project. Mayor Cantrell should have used this opportunity to vilify Nungesser, who is more aligned with Daigle than the needs of the people of New Orleans. However, the Mayor was insistent on the event happening, so she funded the spot in the concert through the New Orleans Culture and Heritage Fund (NOTCF) and used it to keep the event in New Orleans, but with the New Orleans artists PJ Morton and Big Freedia.

The funds were pulled from this account because the slot in the NYE production was to be an advertisement for tourism to New Orleans. This is despite the current spike in COVID-19 cases. “New Orleans cannot market itself out of the situation it is in,” said a representative of Music and Culture Coalition of New Orleanse.

City’s misuse of Culture Fund benefits tourism companies, not artists

The biggest issue of the misuse of these funds is that the board of the NOTCF has been unable to pivot the use of these funds to help the community, but instead goes ahead with an advertisement to promote tourism. Even Kristin Palmer of the City Council who also sits on the NOTCF board said, “NOTCF is not in the business of promotion, but to invest in our people,” according to meeting minutes from an NOTCF meeting on December 18th. Kristin Palmer was also the only dissenting vote on the measure to allow the use of the funds for the concert. The NOTCF is out of touch with the community and actively digging itself into a hole as it fund projects not related to helping the community through a pandemic that has left people out of work for 9 months.

Posted on

Trump’s Nightmare Space Wars Endorsed by Biden

We need money to end COVID-19, poverty, unemployment, racism and debt, not space bombs.

by Gavrielle Gemma

Militarism and war are the biggest ways capitalist vampires are sucking the peoples’ blood to amass huge profits. Trump may be on the way out, but Republicans and Democrats have endorsed his nightmarish space wars program – the U.S. Space Force, which was established in 2019. Both parties recently voted to give $15.2 billion to the new Space Force as part of the military budget for 2021.

U.S. throws out international treaty

After the fascist shut-down of the Capitol, politicians proclaimed that the U.S. believes in the rule of law. But the only laws they believe in are laws protecting private profits. In 1967, the U.S. signed an international Outer Space Treaty banning nuclear weapons and military bases in outer space and prohibiting any nation from claiming sovereignty over space. This treaty has been ignored.

New Space Force to threaten the world

Space Force is the Pentagon’s “separate military branch for American supremacy in space.” The Space Force is headed by General Jay Raymond, who wrote the “capstone war-fighting doctrine” for space, the plan for Space Force to encircle the globe with U.S. satellites to control the global GPS and for many satellites to have missile firing capability.

The Pentagon, on behalf of private corporations, has for years been carrying out a U.S. cyber war. There has been a lot of media hype about how maybe Russia, maybe China, maybe Iran hacked into the U.S. systems. These hysteric reports distract us from the failures of the U.S. with COVID-19 and growing poverty. Meanwhile, the U.S. openly bragged in 2019 that they have hacked Russian power grids, which has the potential to endanger the lives of millions of people.

Control of the global GPS could be used for even more deadly ends around the globe, as so many systems rely on this navigation system. Space Force would extend the already extensive hacking by the U.S. into countries’ systems around the world, increasing the threat to lives of the world’s people.

Biden signals he will continue Trump’s investment in space war

Profiteering corporations – including fascist Tesla’s Space X, Lockheed Martin, L3Harris, York Space System, Rand Corporations – are racing to feed at this new source of wealth stolen from the working people. Bill Gattle of L3Harris said, “the whole industry is moving from building a few satellites to building hundreds of them.”

In September, Joe Biden told the Military Officers Association of America that, “we have to make smart investments in technologies and innovations – including in cyber, space, unmanned systems, and artificial intelligence […] to meet the threats of the future.” That Biden would be for extending Trump’s Space Force project is not surprising. Biden’s transition team has many militarists, military corporations representatives, bankers, and Wall Street executives on it.

Space News, a publication for the profiteering space ware industry, responded to questions regarding the Biden administration’s support for Space Force. Velos, a military consulting firm, wrote “space continues to be a bipartisan policy and Joe Biden’s campaign has articulated their belief in the importance of the doman.” Velos continued, “the Democratic Party national platform supports continuity with NASA and the Space Force.”

The military section of the capitalist economy is growing ever larger. It represents the most racist and right-wing, pro-fascist elements of society. That is why the Pentagon, who has oversight of operations in D.C., openly delayed National Guard troops moving into D.C., allowing the fascists free reign on January 6.

All the money the government is giving to war profiteers belongs to the people. Their wars in space of on the ground are only to enrich the obscenely wealthy. A working-class anti-war movement can stop them, and we will.

Posted on

Biden Installed Fascists in Ukraine in 2014

Trump’s Gone – Good.
Don’t Count on Biden to Fight Fascism.

December 7, 2015, Ukraine’s President Petro Poroshenko welcomes Joe Biden to Kiev, Ukraine.

On January 6, hours after the fascist storming of the Capitol, Biden was delivering a speech about this “unprecedented assault” on democracy. But Biden’s actions the day before make a mockery of this statement. On January 5, Biden announced his pick of Victoria Nuland for the position of undersecretary of political affairs. Nuland was Asst. Secretary of State in the Obama/Biden/Clinton regime. In this role she was tasked with toppling the elected government of Ukraine because they refused to cut ties with Russia and because Ukraine had resisted the building up of NATO military bases in their country.

In 2014, the U.S. got the coup they were hoping for and Nuland along with Senator John McCain could be seen at right wing rallies, standing shoulder to shoulder with openly neo-Nazi groups celebrating the overturning of the Ukrainian government. A leaked 2014 phone conversation between Nuland and U.S. Ambassador Geoffrey Pyatt revealed that they’d planned the coup and had even hand-picked leaders who would serve U.S. business interests.

In order to carry out the coup, Nuland and her co-conspirators relied on fascist militias who took over government buildings and drove out the elected government by force. These were the same fascist forces that months later burned 39 people alive when they besieged and set fire to a union building in Odessa. THey hoped this act of terrorism would crush workers’ resistance to their newly installed regime. For more than 7 years they’ve waged a brutal war against antifascists in Eastern Ukraine. This war has been supported by U.S. military personnel and funded with more than $1 billion worth of U.S. taxpayer dollars.

December 6, 2018. Ukrainian president Petro Poroshenko poses for a picture with the members of the Ukrainian military who openly display the “Totenkopf” insignia of the Nazi SS.

Biden and the wealthy capitalists that he serves took advantage of the “business friendly” environment that the fascist government enforced. Formerly state companies were scooped up at fire-sale prices and Ukraine’s rich farmland was raided by Monsanto. Biden’s son was put on the board of a formerly public owned gas company and paid $50,000 a month, just like a member of the Trump Klan.

Mass layoffs followed the privatizing of state industries. Pensioners were cheated out of their retirements on the orders of the U.S. controlled International Monetary Fund (IMF). IN a speech to the Ukrainian parliament Biden urged lawmakers to make the “difficult reforms” that the IMF demanded. Now fascist gangs patrol the streets of Ukraine to repress any resistance to these anti-worker attacks.

Last month a United Nations resolution to “combat the glorification of Nazism, neo-Nazism and other practices that contribute to fueling contemporary forms of racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia, and related intolerance.” 130 countries voted in favor of the resolution. The U.S. and Ukraine were the sole votes against. The Democratic Party did not object.

Jan 6, 2021. Fascist inside the Capitol building wears a shirt that reads “Camp Auschwitz,” a reference to the Nazi death camp where 1.1. million people were exterminated.
Posted on

What is Antifa? It Means Anti-Fascist

It is we, the People – Black, white, Latinx, Asian, Indigenous, workers and students, all genders, all ages, struggling for jobs, better wages, food on our tables, respect, equality, and peace. Antifa means to fight by any means to defend the people against racism and fascism and for workers’ rights. Antifa are those who fought against slavery, workers who fought to defend their unions, mothers who stood up tot he KKK, youth who bravely fought on the front lines in Portland against the same scum who rampaged in Washington D.C.

Millions of U.S. workers took up arms against the fascists in WWII. They were Antifa.

While the U.S. government entered the war to gain colonies and profits, and U.S. capitalists helped fund Hitler, millions of workers from the U.S. and around the world took up guns against the German Nazis during WWII. They lost their lives fighting to smash Nazi fascism. They were Antifa.

Who are fascists? Cowardly puppets whose strings are pulled by super rich right wing funders who hate working people and use them to do their dirty work. Fascists are the cowards who are too afraid to fight the real enemies of the people. They want a government of billionaires, with stormtroopers terrorizing all. Trump is a racist, fascist in chief, and mass murderer of the people, who from his golden toilet, waited on by servants, tells his fascist tools what to do on behalf of his wealthy friends.

Trump has blamed violence in Washington D.C. on Antifa and Black Lives Matter protesters. Liberals put equal signs between us and the fascists. Some say the fascists were just people with “complaints.” This is dangerous. Fascists and white supremacists are people who are puppets for the ultra-rich capitalists they claim to hate. Donald Trump, whose father was a member of the KKK, is a slum lord and a crook, surrounded by racist war mongering maniacs. He steals our taxes, hates, despises, and spits on working people. They will never win if we the working class unite to defeat them!

Posted on

INDIGENOUS LAND: Water Protectors Fight Pipeline Construction (International Briefs)

Jan. 9: Water protectors fight the construction site for an oil pipeline near Palisade, MN.

Hundreds of water protectors have been braving the harsh Minnesota winter to defend the territorial rights of Indigenous nations against Enbridge, a multi-billion-dollar pipeline company headquartered in Canada. Dozens of Indigenous activists and allies have been arrested as Enbridge attempts to push through construction of a tar sand oil pipeline, which would expose hundreds of miles of Indigenous land to toxic spills and would have a carbon cost equal to 50 coal power plants.

Enbridge has spent hundreds of thousands of dollars to hire Minnesota state police as private goons to protect their pipeline and their profits. Oil and gas companies, with the help of the American Legislative Action Council (ALEC), are also using their money to sponsor a Minnesota law to make protesting a pipeline a federal offense. The oil tycoon Koch brothers run ALEC which funds anti-worker, anti-LGBTQ, anti-abortion laws in multiple states, and was behind a similar anti-protest law in Louisiana. They practically own the Louisiana legislature.

One January 14, 3 activists halted construction on the Line 3 pipeline by locking themselves together inside a pipe segment. They demand that U.S. and Canadian governments recognize the treaty rights of Indigenous nations and immediately halt the construction of KeystoneXL, Line 3, and DAPL fossil fuel pipeline projects. Through militant action, these and other activists are standing up for us all.

Posted on

ARGENTINA: Argentinians Win Right to Free, Safe, Legal Abortion (International Briefs)

After decades of struggle and massive street mobilizations, Argentinians win abortion rights.

On December 30, the Argentinian Senate passed the Voluntary Termination of Pregnancy bill, legalizing abortion for any pregnant person. This victory follows decades of struggle led by Argentina’s women’s movement, LGBTQ community, and labor unions. As the bill was being debated, thousands of militant demonstrators filled the streets surrounding the National Congress to show support, erupting in cheers once the law passed. “We won it in the streets. We’ll see you again in the streets,” said Gostine Bete, and abortion rights activist with the Movimiento Popular por Dignidad.

Argentina’s new law guarantees free, safe, and legal abortions to women and people of any gender who become pregnant and request an abortion within the first 14 weeks with extensions in cases of rape, risk of life or health of pregnant person, or risk of still birth. Along with the right to abortion, a 1,000-day Plan bill was passed to strengthen healthcare service and nutrition for mothers and newborns from pregnancy until the child’s second birthday.

Posted on

FRANCE: Following Massive Protests, France Withdraws ‘Security’ Bill (International Briefs)

Mandatory Credit: Photo by ISA HARSIN/SIPA/Shutterstock (11029703ae) Demonstration Place du Trocadero in Paris, called in particular by journalists’ unions who denounce an attack on freedom of expression and the rule of law, following the adoption by the National Assembly in first reading November 20, 2020 of article 24 of the global security law proposal, brought by Gerald Darmanin, Minister of Interior in the government of Emmanuel Macron. This article penalizes the malicious diffusion of police images Demonstration against global security law, Paris, France – 21 Nov 2020

More than half a million people across France took to the streets to protest of the so-called Global Security Bill, which was passed in late November. The bill would have forbidden the publication of images where a police officer can be identified and expanded the ability of the “security forces” to film ordinary citizens without their consent using bodycams and drones. Although the bill has been withdrawn as of December, right wing lawmakers say they will return with a new version.

Images of police brutality particularly against Muslims, Black people, and migrants in France have galvanized opposition to President Macron’s repressive, racist, and anti-worker policies. In addition to the ‘security’ bill, Macron has promoted a bill called Supporting Republican Principles. THis bill seeks further restrictions of Muslim life by banning home-schooling, expanding surveillance of Muslims, and subjecting publicly funded organizations to tests of their French nationalism. Protesters must stay in the streets to ensure this racist bill is also withdrawn.

Posted on

INDIA: Indian Farmers Surround Delhi in Protest of Pro-Corporate Laws (International Briefs)

Hundreds of thousands of Indian farmers plan a tractor parade into Delhi on Jan. 26 if the anti-people, anti-farmer Farm Acts aren’t withdrawn.

On November 26, over 500 farmer’s organizations cutting across religion and caste came together to begin a nationwide struggle against the right wing BJP government’s anti-farmer, pro-corporate Farm Acts. These laws would condemn millions in India to poverty and hunger by allowing domestic and foreign corporations total control over Indian agricultural production as well as the ability to hoard and sell essential food stuffs on the black market to maximize corporate profits.

More than sixty percent of Indians are agricultural workers. Their struggle has been joined by labor unions, students, women, youth, workers, and peasants. Recently, on December 30, the Center of Indian Trade Unions (CITU) held a countrywide strike at over 100,000 workplaces.

This is the longest and most powerful farmers’ protest in India’s history. This militant struggle has been brutally repressed by government forces who have already killed more than 60 people. But the farmers are steadfast. Thousands have camped out for weeks on the outskirts of Delhi and plan to hold a parade into Delhi on January 26 if the government does not address their demands, including the total withdrawal of the Farm Acts and provision of pandemic relief.

Posted on

End the U.S./Saudi Genocide of the Yemeni People

World’s Worst Humanitarian Crisis Must be Stopped

The people of Yemen are suffering the worst humanitarian crisis in the world because of U.S. imperialism. Since 2015, the U.S. had backed a Saudi led war against Yemen by supplying weapons and bombs that have killed hundreds of thousands of Yemeni people and destroyed the county’s cities and agriculture. 20.5 million of the 29 million people living in Yemen lack access to clean water and sanitation, and over 60% of the people are starving. Half of the country’s healthcare facilities have been destroyed. Every day children are dying from starvation and preventable illnesses.

Stop the War Coalition has called for a global day of action on Monday, January 25. Join the Workers Voice Socialist Movement as we stand in solidarity with workers and oppressed people all over the world to say:
No War on Yemen!
12 Noon, January 25 at Duncan Plaza
Loyola Ave at Gravier St, New Orleans

U.S. uses “terror” designation to starve more children through sanctions and blockades.

Now international organizations are withdrawing aid from Yemen because the U.S. is calling Houthis in Yemen “terrorists.” This designation goes into full effect on January 19. The Houthis are an Indigenous people that have long resisted U.S. imperialism, overthrowing the authoritarian U.S.-backed regime in 2014 and establishing a government in the north of Yemen, while the south is ruled by a U.S. puppet government. The U.S. has no right to determine the national destiny of the Yemeni people.

Not only is the U.S. spreading vicious lies about the Houthis, they are recruiting members of al-Qaeda to help Saudi-backed militias overthrow the Houthi government. The U.S. capitalist ruling class doesn’t care if millions more Yemeni people die so long as they can crush any opposition to U.S. imperialism.

Workers around the world must unite to demand an end to the U.S./Saudi war on Yemen. As workers living in the most powerful and violent imperialist country on Earth, we have a special duty to stand with the people of Yemen and demand that not one more of our tax dollars go towards aiding, supplying, or abetting the Saudis in this genocidal war.