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Philadelphia Library Workers Demand: Keep Libraries Funded, Open to Community

Library workers in Philadelphia, along with allies, have been organizing to keep libraries in the city open and fully funded. In 2018, an average of two branches out of 54 were closed on any given day, either due to lack of staff or building problems. Many libraries, for instance, need roof repairs. There were a total of 750 emergency closures in 2018.

On June 13, around 50 members and allies of the Friends of the Free Library demonstrated outside City Hall. The unionized library workers and supporters are demanding an annual funding increase of $15 million a year. Remarkably, they have pushed Mayor Jim Kenny and the City Council to agree to a $3.5 million increase in the 2020 budget. $1 million of the increase is marked for salary raises, $500,000 is for building repair, while $2 million is for six-day service during the school year (a major demand of the campaign).

This is not close to the total amount that they are demanding, but it is a gain.

The fact that the library workers have a union is no doubt key to their success so far. And they worked hard to make this happen through grassroots campaigning over nine months. They gathered over 5,000 petitions in favor of the funding increase, made hundred of phone calls, and filled city budget hearings, keeping the pressure on the administration.

The union demand for a $15 million increase is far from unrealistic. The city continually finds more money to give to the police department, which is not making residents any safer. The administration increased the police budget by $18 million in 2019 to $709 million. It is being raised by $54 million in fiscal year 2020. Just like in New Orleans and in cities across the country, the Philadelphia police get a bigger share of the budget than any other sector of city government. Each library branch currently gets only $400 for community programs.

Whereas increasingly-militarized police forces terrorize people of color as well as working class whites, public libraries play a vital role in our communities.

Libraries provide children and youth with educational and fun activities. Across the country, 59% of libraries help patrons find health insurance resources and 18% bring in healthcare providers for free screenings, according to the Institute of Museum and Library Services. Immigrant communities rely on libraries for language learning services. Working class people use library computers to look for work. Libraries provide people with gathering places. Libraries preserve local history. In short, they are one of the few truly communal resources that we have in a capitalist society where everything is increasingly-privatized and run in the interest of the rich. We have good reason to fight for public libraries and to support the workers who make them run!

South Philadelphia librarian Abbe Klebanoff, a member of AFSCME District Council 47 Local 2186 puts it best, “When libraries are closed, when libraries are short-staffed and underfunded, we can not do our job and be there for those in our community who need us most.”

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Uber, Lyft Drivers Organize for Recognition as Employees Not Contractors

Uber and Lyft drivers are using strikes to win gains.

The CEOs of Uber, Lyft, and Juno (another “ride share company”) have gone into panic mode as the California legislature considers amending state law to reclassify drivers as employees rather than independent contractors. The heads of the three companies wrote a joint statement that appeared in the San Francisco Chronicle, arguing that drivers do not want to be employees, but instead prefer the “flexibility” that precarious gig work affords! The fact that the CEOs of competing companies collaborated on an op-ed is remarkable, but it shows how vulnerable they feel. Their entire business model revolves around denying workers rights and benefits, precisely because drivers are misclassified as contractors.

The other legal sleight of hand involved in their model is the “ride share” concept itself. These companies run taxi services, which look somewhat different because of the advent of mobile phone technology, but they are taxi services nonetheless. Corporate backers threw money at these companies when they were starting up, enabling them to monopolize the industry without being subject to the same regulations as taxi companies.

The model of precarious gig work is a threat to the entire working class. We should make no mistake: every single capitalist living off workers’ labor would be pleased to misclassify their workers as independent contractors—that way they wouldn’t have to pay benefits or a minimum wage.

Workers are organizing to put an end to this race-to-the-bottom business model. Back in February, New York City passed a ride share driver minimum wage of $17.22 an hour. In reality, this is equivalent to $15 an hour, accounting for the fact that drivers have to cover payroll taxes and do not get paid time off. Still, it is a major gain. When the enemy attacks, you know you are doing something right. Lyft and Juno both filed suits against the New York Taxi and Limousine Commission in an attempt to block the minimum wage law.

This progressive legislation is happening against a backdrop of increasing struggles led by drivers. In March, hundreds of drivers in Los Angeles turned off their apps for 25 hours in protest of low wages after Uber decided to reduce per-mile pay in Los Angeles County and parts of Orange County by 25 percent. The strike was spearheaded by Riverside Drivers United.

On May 8, drivers went on strike in at least 10 U.S. cities, and in locations worldwide—for example, in Melbourne, Australia, and in cities across the U.K.

These protests make it more likely that legislation benefiting drivers will be passed, and that the companies themselves will make concessions. Without struggle, there is no forward movement.

And before we start feeling too bad for the company heads who are playing the victim, we should note that Uber paid its top five executives $143 million in 2018; its CEO got $45 million. Their revenue in 2018 was $11.27 billion, with total assets of $23.99 billion. (And it’s not like they have to use that money to maintain fleets of cars…) They may act like they can’t afford to pay workers or give them the benefits they deserve, but this is just another sleight of hand.

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Honduran Workers Fight Back Against Cuts, Demand Removal of U.S. Puppet

Honduran educators and healthcare workers lead a general strike. Tegucigalpa, May 27, 2019.

U.S.-Backed Dictator’s War on the People Drives Emigration

By Joseph Rosen

Hundreds of thousands of Hondurans are rising up against the corrupt and repressive U.S.-backed government of president Juan Orlando Hernández. The united effort continues daily despite the Honduran government ordering country-wide police and military attacks. Some of the worst repression has come from the U.S.-trained and supported Honduran special forces known as TIGRES.

The police state over which Juan Orlando Hernández rules came to power in 2017 through a rigged election that was met with widespread national protests and international condemnation. The demand to remove the president—”Fuera JOH”— is now heard daily across the country.

Hernández’s regime continues the legacy of the government that was installed in 2009 when the U.S. State Department under Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama used the CIA to orchestrate a coup that forced out the popular elected government of Manuel Zelaya. Under Zelaya the government was shifting funds to meet people’s needs. This is why the U.S. carried out the coup. In only one year after the coup, the national education budget was cut in half and public healthcare spending was cut by 20 percent. In the two years after the coup, more than 100 percent of all income gains went to the wealthiest 10 percent of Hondurans.

Thousands protest cuts to social programs, layoffs

The current surge of protests began after trade unions of health and education workers called for strikes and mobilizations to protest widespread layoffs and cuts to social programs. These attacks were forced on the people as a condition of loans that the government receives from the International Monetary Fund (IMF), a consortium of banks dominated by the U.S. and its imperialist partners.

Hundreds of thousands of workers, Indigenous people, peasants and students heeded the unions’ call to action. Because of these massive mobilizations, the National Congress of Honduras was forced to nullify the law that would have enacted the cuts. The masses have been emboldened by this win; now they’re marching with even more determination to take down the illegitimate president.

Mobilizations will continue to swell as Honduras approaches the ten-year anniversary of the U.S.- orchestrated military coup. The Platform for the Defense of Health and Education, a driving force behind the protests, has demanded that the government withdraw its military forces and guarantee that healthcare and education workers not face retaliation for the strike.
New Orleanian and Honduran workers are in the same struggle

The struggles of workers in New Orleans and in Honduras are connected.

In 2010, Hernandez’s predecessor and U.S. puppet Porfirio Lobo Sosa made a visit to New Orleans to sign a memorandum of understanding with former mayor Mitch Landrieu to partner on healthcare and public education “reforms.” The post-coup Honduran government has modeled its attack on public education on the privatizations carried out in New Orleans after Katrina.

More Honduran-born people live in New Orleans than anywhere else in the United States; many of these refugees have migrated because of the difficult conditions forced on their country by U.S. imperialist intervention. Many of the same Honduran workers who helped to rebuild New Orleans after Katrina now face harassment, deportation and concentration camp detentions.

Workers can show their solidarity with our Honduran sisters and brothers by demanding an immediate withdrawal of all U.S. military and intelligence personnel from Honduras and by demanding an immediate end to all U.S. funding and support of the Honduran security forces and government, which are terrorizing the Honduran people.

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Hundreds of Wayfair Workers Walk Out, Protest Company’s Support of Concentration Camps

Hundreds of workers at Wayfair Inc. organized a walk-out to protest the decision of their bosses to fulfill contracts with BCFS, a company that operates migrant detention camps near the U.S. border.

The workers made public that the company had recently approved a $200,000 order to supply furniture to a camp that would hold captive up to 3,000 migrant children.

In a letter to the bosses, they demanded the company “cease all current and future business with BCFS and other contractors participating in the operation of migrant detention camps at our Southern border (or anywhere else).”

Less than a day after the CEO Niraj Shah rejected the workers request in writing, they announced a walk-out for the following day.

The 547 worker signatories to the letter wrote, “the United States government and its contractors are responsible for the detention and mistreatment of hundreds of thousands of migrants seeking asylum in our country— we want that to end. We also want to be sure Wayfair has no part in enabling, supporting, or profiting from this practice.”

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Migrant Children Held in Brutal Conditions

The separation of families has a long history in the U.S. This image shows the fate of many Indigenous and African children.

If this can happen, whose children are next?

Attorneys visiting a detention facility near El Paso, Texas reported that 250 infants, children and teens had been held for 27 days without adequate food, water or sanitation. Children were taking care of sick infants. 15 children had the flu. They were fed uncooked frozen food and had gone for weeks without bathing or a change of clothing. The facility is located in Clint, Texas, in the desert.

The children had been separated from adult caregivers. At least six children have died in detention since December. A teenage mother with a premature baby was in detention for nine days.

The attorneys went to court, but the Trump administration argued that the government is NOT required to give children soap, toothbrushes or diapers.

The Justice Department argued that the camps were not required to provide children with beds. Children have been sleeping on concrete floors with aluminum foil blankets.

Toddlers have been separated from parents and caged in camps.

U.S. imperialist policies like NAFTA have destroyed rural economies. They have put in place dictatorships such as the one in Honduras which has driven thousands from their homes. But they don’t find refuge here.

The Trump administration has threatened to carry out terror raids to deport millions across the U.S. Trump also says the U.S. can keep migrants in unlimited detention. These concentration camps are being run by private corporations for profit so the government wants to fill them up.

This is what was done during slavery to Black and Indian children. This is what they did to Japanese Americans during WWII. This is what the Nazis did.
This policy is an attack on all workers, citizen and immigrant. They want to push down all our wages and take away all benefits. We must stand up together to demand their release.

Close the concentration camps!

Abolish ICE!

Free the children and the families!

Full legalization and equality for all immigrants!

Children at the McAllen, Texas, Border Patrol station are denied bedding, nutrition, and sanitation.
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Secretaries of Defense Make a Killing


On June 18 Trump’s nominee for Secretary of Defense Patrick M. Shanahan stepped down after being exposed as a domestic abuser. Before becoming Secretary of Defense, Shanahan served as Boeing Senior Vice President, Supply Chain & Operations.

Shanahan’s replacement and now acting Secretary of Defense Mark T. Esper, was previously a senior executive at the Raytheon Company as vice president for Government Relations.

In 2017 Boeing sold $26.9 billion in arms, Raytheon $23.9 billion. These 2 companies are the 2nd and 3rd largest arms manufacturers in the world after U.S.-based Lockheed Martin.

Every year billions of dollars of arms are paid for with U.S. tax-payer money. According to estimates by the Costs of War project at Brown University’s Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs, the average American taxpayer has spent almost $24,000 on war since 2001.

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U.S. Wars Mean Mega-Profits for Corporations, Not Security

By Jennifer Lin

The US is a relentless war machine hellbent on destroying innocent human lives in its quest for military dominance and profit. The Pentagon has reached a deal with Lockheed Martin to procure over the next three years 478 F-35 stealth war planes (the most expensive US weapons systems in history) for $34 billion. This will be the largest procurement of weapons in US history. The deal will allow Lockheed to maintain its position as the world’s largest military contractor. Lockheed is responsible for some of the most atrocious war crimes. Their fighter jets have formed the backbone of Israel’s brutal attacks on Lebanon and Palestine as well as Saudi Arabia’s war against Yemen, which has plunged the country into intense poverty, famine, and disease.

Raytheon is another military contractor that has a history of supplying weapons to Israel and Saudi Arabia. The company has agreed to merge with United Technologies, a corporation that researches and develops aerospace and defense systems. The combined company, Raytheon Technologies Corporation, is expected to rake in $74 billion in annual sales, which would make it the second-largest aerospace and defense contractor after Boeing.

This merger is part of a wider trend in the consolidation of military corporations for the purpose of accumulating more wealth for the capitalist ruling class.

The consolidation of wealth and power among war profiteers, along with banks and oil companies, directly deprives working class people. The lion’s share of our tax dollars are being squandered on deadly weapons instead of being invested in education, healthcare, housing, and much-needed public services that would improve all our lives.

As workers, we must demand an end to U.S. wars. All wars waged by the U.S. serve the interests of the U.S. ruling class, which also wages war against workers daily in the form of capitalist exploitation and oppression. As long as capitalism is allowed to continue, so will wars for profit. Millions of civilians will die, and the planet will continue to be destroyed at an unprecedented rate.

Stopping U.S. imperialist wars must be part of a larger effort to overthrow capitalism. We must continue to educate, agitate, and organize against ALL forms of capitalist exploitation.

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Bankers, War Profiteers Censor Facebook Feed

By Adam Pedesclaux

Its common knowledge that we don’t see everything that is posted on Facebook because certain things are censored. But what doesn’t get said is that the U.S. government and various bomb and weapons manufacturers, banks, and even companies like Nestle and Starbucks control the filter on what we see. Everything we see or read comes through this filter. It makes sense that users would be sheltered from certain violent or hateful content, but with this power to regulate our feeds also comes the ability to censor “undesirable” political content. For the censors, that often means anything that criticizes the U.S. or any other imperialist governments or various companies. After the 2016 election and in the beginnings of the Mueller-Trump foolishness, the same-colored wool that they tried to put over our eyes after 9/11 to push the Patriot Act to better spy and censor us was once again drawn over our eyes—this time under the pretense of stopping “fake news.”

To save us from the monster of “fake news” after the 2016 election, Facebook partnered with the Atlantic Council, which is a NATO lobbying group. For those who don’t know, the Atlantic Council is a group representing government and business interests, with weapons manufacturers like Raytheon and General Atomic being high level members, as well as various domestic and foreign banks including Goldman Sachs and a few oil companies. Lower level members even include Reuters, one of the most commonly sourced news organizations. A “nonpartisan” organization as they describe themselves (yet funded by the never nonpartisan U.S. government and various other governments of NATO nations as well as bomb manufacturers, banks, and many, many more), they lobby for pro-war and business policies (i.e., anti people policies) and now have a major say in what we can see on our Facebook feeds.

It only makes sense, then, that many anti-war and pro-peace pages have been removed without reasonable excuses from Facebook, and they have even attempted to remove teleSUR a few times, a Venezuelan-based news organization that shows the opposite side of the aggressive stance U.S. media has taken against the country. Perhaps this should serve as a reminder not to trust everything on the internet (especially social media) and question the limited perspectives offered to us on these broad issues when we need all sides to formulate opinions.

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Rural Healthcare: United States vs. Vietnam

United States ☒
Vietnam ☑

By Gregory William

There is a crisis of rural health care in the U.S. Since 2005, over one hundred rural hospitals have closed across the country. Many more are on the verge. A study by the North Carolina Rural Health Research Program found that of the 89 hospitals that have closed since 2010, the vast majority (67) were in the South.

The authors of the Rural Health Research study note that the increase in closures coincides with the 2008-2009 recession, meaning that it is tied to the cyclical crises inherent in the capitalist system. Closures also accelerated in states that did not accept Medicaid expansion. In these mostly southern states, people also tend to be poorer, are more likely to be uninsured, and therefore cannot pay for care. Since our medical system is based around corporate greed and not people’s needs, the closure of hospitals and other healthcare facilities is unsurprising. In fact, the majority of hospitals that have closed are privately-owned, that is, for-profit hospitals.

It’s been drilled into our heads that the market always knows best, that if everything is privatized and for profit, things will run more efficiently. However, we see that the profit motive leads to extreme inefficiency and worse, hardship for the masses of people. How is this reasonable?

Communities across the U.S. lack hospitals and even basic clinics, and people cannot afford care. And yet, there is a parasitic class of “healthcare billionaires,” like Thomas Frist Jr., co-founder of the Hospital Corporation of America. His net worth is $11.6 billion, making him the wealthiest person in Tennessee. This is ironic considering that Tennessee had the highest number of hospital closures after Texas!

Of course, it doesn’t have to be this way. The U.S. has a GDP of about $20 trillion, almost 90 times the size of Vietnam’s GDP ($223.9 billion). Despite having a much smaller economy, Vietnam assures that every ward in the country (including in rural areas) has a clinic. When there isn’t a resident doctor in a village, the Ministry of Health assigns doctors to rotations. Vietnam is also on track to ensuring health coverage to all citizens.

This isn’t an accident. The fact is that Vietnam still has socialist, rational economic planning. Because they had a socialist revolution, the masses of working people have a real say over the direction of the country’s development (even if the government has allowed some capitalism to return).

The state still owns the oil and gas industry, and mostly controls banking, insurance, mobile service, construction, electricity production, ship-building, and many other industries. Land cannot be bought or sold because it belongs to the entire people. Because there is socialist, collective ownership in the economy (without profit being the only consideration), the government can make rational decisions about what to do with social resources. They can say,

“People in this area need a hospital, so we will build a hospital. This clinic doesn’t have a doctor, so we’ll assign one to work there.”

Again, all this is possible because working class and oppressed people fought for these things and won. Collectively, we too have to make the decision that our health—our lives—will not be a commodity. We have to organize to take power and overthrow the capitalist class so that we can pursue socio-economic development that meets the needs of the people and doesn’t destroy the planet.

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Speak Truth to Power

By Jewell Prim

Speak truth to power
To the things that you seek
Freedom
Will not be handed to us
By our oppressor
Especially, if we are meek

Speak truth to power
To the things that you see and hear
Injustice
That purposefully runs
Through our community
Has no place in
The veins of our street

And I know that it is hard.
I too feel the pain,
That we all breathe
Growing up numb
Taught to be undyingly strong
Fervently brave
Face things that we can’t even
Bear to say

But what they don’t tell
You in any classroom
Is the power of the youngest soul
Hidden information
Nutrients that would make
The revolution grow.
That would remove our oppressor
From the centerfold

Did you hear?
About the action that broke
A chain of tears
Led by the children of Birmingham
in May of 1963?
They organized themselves
Took guidance from their leaders
And peacefully descended in protest
into the streets of their very own city

The government sent in their pigs
Squealing in delight
As they arrested little black bodies
Only armed with their power
And their might for demanding what is right.

As young as seven
And as old as the youth grow
They stood up to the system
Those men in the big houses
That feast on the strife of all our kinfolk.

The pigs sprayed those bright black children
With water from the fire hose
And in response they danced
And they sing song sang
Lyrics of unity and love and life,
Knowing that their undying joy
Would be the greatest ammo
To defeat the piercing knife

It was ingrained in the false power’s minds.
They were so sure,
That no child had the grit
To deliver the blow that they deserved

Imagine the view
Of thousands of young people
Flowing into the city in waves
Of devotion to their freedom
Steadfast in their decision
That their people would live
To breathe the freedom that we all must ring
To smile another day.