On June 12, 2019, the Mayor of New Orleans was proud to announce an award of $12.5 million dollars in FEMA funding that was made available to elevate 52 “historic” homes that have experienced severe flood damage. BUT this celebratory moment proved to be a slap in the face of the Black working class residents of Gordon Plaza, who occupy 54 homes that were built on the toxic soil of a Superfund site (the former Agriculture Street Landfill), and rightly deserve a fully funded relocation.
How is it that the 52 “historic” homes (primarily the property of rich folk or potential tourist attractions) were prioritized over the need for a fully funded relocation of Black working class people that live on dangerously toxic soil?
Just last month, ANOTHER report came out declaring that Gordon Plaza, as a New Orleans neighborhood in the Upper 9th Ward, is within the census tract.
According to the Louisiana Tumor Registry report, Gordon Plaza is found to have the second-highest consistent rate of cancer among all Louisiana census tracts in the entire state.
YET and STILL, the entire city council of New Orleans is silent on this issue.
YET and STILL, the newest mayor, in a line of mayors who “seemed” to care about Gordon Plaza, during election season, is SILENT on this issue.
When will the city of New Orleans really demonstrate an action oriented, resourced investment in Black working class people, with Black working class involvement and community accountability? We cannot wait for that answer!
Collectively, we must demand change! We must organize for what we want! We must organize for what we need! How we gonna make New Orleans rise?
On June 6, 2019, the New Orleans City Council voted unanimously on a resolution that states their opposition to the recent abortion ban bill that Governor John Edwards signed May 30. The bill that has been passed is another assault on working people’s reproductive healthcare as it bans abortions in the state of Louisiana after the 6 week mark of pregnancy. This bill has no exceptions for rape or incest and in conjunction with the already existing Hyde Amendment, which blocks Medicaid funding for abortion, access to choice for working/poor people is increasingly impossible.
At the council meeting, members of the New Orleans Workers Group demanded that City Council take the necessary steps to declare New Orleans an abortion sanctuary city and that they decline to prosecute anyone seeking an abortion or providing one within Orleans Parish.
Resolutions look nice for the careers of politicians who want a reputation for being “on the right side of history,” but what does that do for us workers who are most affected? Nothing! We need to demand more of city council members and law enforcement. We demand action!
History has already shown us the terrible consequences for poor people when abortion access is restricted. The results of this ban are death, forced generational poverty, and further oppression of child-bearing people. This is just what the capitalists want, and without a mass movement to engage in struggle over our human rights, this is just what they will get.
Here in New Orleans, local politicians rave about being a “progressive city” with Democrats in office and a handful of liberal policies that contrast the rest of the Republican State. However, this has historically meant very little as Baton Rouge continuously denies New Orleans home rule.
Think making New Orleans an abortion sanctuary city is too bold? Just last week, an all-white-male city council in Waskom, TX, declared their city a “sanctuary city for the unborn.” Waskom, TX, conservatives wanted to prevent the opening of an abortion facility after the one in Shreveport, LA, just 20 miles east of their town, was threatened with closure following Louisiana’s abortion ban. If the right-wing can so easily declare sanctuary cities to their liking, why can’t New Orleans do so for its people? It is long overdue that New Orleans take up the struggle against Baton Rouge.
Many charter school and charter network leaders are earning upwards of $200,000 per year in a city with a median income of $38,721.
My survey of budget audits for 34 New Orleans charter schools for the 2017-2018 school year reveals:
Among charter networks, CEOs received an average salary of $190,743 while managing an average of 4 schools.
Among non-network schools, the average principal earned a base salary of $143,417.
The salary charts of the neighboring public school district of Jefferson Parish recommend that a principal earn up to 1.75 times a teacher’s salary. On average, leaders in New Orleans earned 2.96 times what teachers earned.
Most audits stopped including teacher salaries in 2017-2018, but audits for the two previous years reveal a trend of increasing inequality. Between the 2015-2016 and 2016-2017 school years:
Average teacher pay dropped nearly 1% at non-network schools ($50,644 to $49,768) and 0.2% at networks (from $51,005 to $50,640).
Average leader salaries increased nearly 9% at non-network schools (from $144,217 to $155,234) and over 20% at networks (from $156,828 to $176,329).
Teacher shortages are a problem in New Orleans. According to a Cowen Institute report, teachers in New Orleans with Master’s degrees and 5 years of experience would need to spend 44% of their income on rent alone.
Information about pay for paraprofessionals or co-teachers is lacking in the audits. The Orleans Parish School Board (OPSB) lists salaries for “Aides” between $18,863 and $23,955.
The school workers who support students’ most critical needs—security, nutrition, and health—are among the worst paid. The OPSB pay scale permits paying nurses and security workers as little as $22,427, while nutrition workers can earn as little as $16,000.
A 2018 report by the United Way of Louisiana concluded that the minimum annual income required to support human life in New Orleans in 2016 was $19,548 for a single adult and $53,988 for a family of four.
Income inequality contributes to high turnover rates in the school system and economic instability in the communities it is obligated to serve. Pay transparency and living wages for all school employees should be required of all institutions receiving public funds.
Children and youth lead a march organized by Take ‘Em Down NOLA in 2018.
Letter To My Young Brothers and Sisters:
By Enigma E
First off, much love and respect to you, my young brothers and sisters. Secondly f*ck this white supremacist/capitalist system we live under. I know you’re frustrated. I know what it means to not feel accepted in mainstream society. What it means to not be given the benefit of the doubt, what it means to constantly be judged, constantly be thought of as the one that did something wrong and whatnot. This system is set up for us to fail: look at it historically from us being declared 3/5ths of a human being, to chattel slavery, to the convict-leasing system, to Jim Crow, to the mass incarceration state presently.
We have and always will be the biggest threat to overthrowing this system. We have to turn the justifiable rage within us into a mass organized movement. Imagine if we had all the youth from every ward and part of the city clicked up on one page, united under one cause. That’s thousands of us in the street demanding what we deserve from a city that makes over $8 billion dollars annually off the culture and labor of the people that suffer the most. It shouldn’t be that way, where the rich live comfortably, and the large majority of Black and Brown people have to live check to check and never have time to enjoy the fruits of their labor.
We outnumber the police, the wealthy and all the crooked ass politicians. I know we look at those people as having power, but they have a false system-based power. But we the people have a REAL POWER. The power to shut down all factors of production of the system by not participating in it. Once organized, we can decide what we want from the schools rather than these multi-million-dollar charter networks that steal money from us. We can decide what we deserve to be paid for our labor rather than shareholders dictating what we get. We can decide what we want our neighborhoods to look like rather than letting gentrifiers and land consultants decide. Every aspect of life can be radically changed with us being on the same page and exerting our power.
Some ways we can accomplish that is: 1) Reading, writing, distributing this newspaper and joining the New Orleans Workers Group, which organizes to uplift the working class and youth in and around the city; 2) Listening to audiobooks and YouTube speeches of Malcolm X and The Black Panthers as you’re playing video games or simply walking somewhere. You can pay homage and learn from the powerful speeches of the revolutionaries that came before you; 3) Organize people you know already: people around your house, at school and family members. We have to shift conversations into radical political thinking, slowly but surely; And lastly 4) stay committed to the cause. We are in a battle for our livelihood every day. We must stay committed to fighting for the freedom of all poor and oppressed peoples. We are the ones that make up everything around us, so we should be the ones enjoying it, too.
All Power my Peoples! The ancestors live through US!
Protesters march ahead of the corporate Pride parade to protest attacks on the LGBTQ community. New Orleans, June 9, 2018.
By Gregory William and Sally Jane Black
On June 28, 1969, the cops raided the Stonewall Inn in New York, and the mostly working class queer and trans people there fought back. For three days they fought, forcing the cops to withdraw. This was a small victory over the police, but that victory was won with blood and sacrifice. And it inspired the whole world.
Stonewall was an important moment of resistance because it brought working class LGBTQ people together to fight back, and in the wake of the rebellion, they began to organize. Within a week of Stonewall, a group known as the Gay Liberation Front (GLF) formed, naming themselves after the Vietnamese National Liberation Front. Taking cues from the civil rights movement, the women’s movement, the labor movement, the resistance around the world against imperialism, and especially from those who had been fighting for LGBTQ rights before them, the GLF and other organizations like Street Transvestite Action Revolutionaries (STAR) fought for the rights of LGBTQ people with militant action, collective visibility, and radical anti-capitalism.
Without the radical resistance that followed, ACT UP and other groups might never have forced the pharmaceutical corporations, the FDA and other government agencies to respond to the AIDS crisis at all. Without it, homophobic anti-sodomy laws might never have been struck down. Without it, our spaces would be raided more frequently, and our love would still be hidden away. Without it, many more of us would have died in the closet.
The rebellion at Stonewall and the radical organizing that came afterward were the birth of what is now known as Pride, but Pride no longer reflects this legacy. Instead of fighting the police, Pride celebrations often include them despite their role as our oppressors. Instead of being anti-capitalist, they have corporate sponsorships. Instead of taking inspiration from anti-imperialist movements, they celebrate the U.S. military that wages murderous wars for profit around the world.
The current administration has taken away many of our rights. Last year, the Trump regime released a memo instructing federal agencies to define gender strictly based on biology, effectively erasing trans people’s legal rights, and attempting to set up a DNA database to match people to their sex chromosomes. They also instructed them to reinterpret Title VII, the law that protects against employment discrimination, so that no protections would be extended to LGBTQ people at all. Now, three similar cases are going to the Supreme Court to determine if this reinterpretation will be upheld.
At the same time, cases have made it legal for businesses and healthcare professionals to refuse to serve LGBTQ people on religious grounds, and insurance companies and Medicaid have stopped covering trans healthcare needs–if they ever did to begin with. Furthermore, bathroom bills continue to be announced, anti-sex work laws that disproportionately affect LGBTQ people are being passed, murder and suicide rates of LGBTQ people are rising, and more.
This is no time to throw a party. This is a time to fight back.
These attacks are not fueled by religion or morality, but by the capitalist class’s growing fear of a united working class. As the economy continues to head toward crisis, the capitalists know that they are vulnerable. If a crisis occurs while the ruling class is not strong enough to fight back, the capitalist class will fall. Trying to divide us, they pass these laws and policies to scapegoat and criminalize LGBTQ people (just as they do with immigrants, women, prisoners, black people, indigenous people, etc.) They’re terrified that we workers will unite in our understanding that the greedy rich are the real criminals.
We will not be liberated unless we are united. We must stand in solidarity with one another against all of their attacks. There is no race or nation that does not include us. Attacks on immigrants, women, prisoners, and sex workers are attacks on LGBTQ people. Attacks on black, brown, and indigenous people are attacks on LGBTQ people. We must all stand together to protect our rights as workers.
The ruling class wants us to forget that everything we’ve won has been through our own blood and sweat. For this reason, they sometimes pander to us or take our slogans for their own—only as long as we don’t name them as the enemy. But we must fight for ourselves. We must organize and take to the streets if we have any hope of winning true liberation.
We know that it is possible to fight back and make change even in this period of deep reaction. If the wave of teacher strikes since 2018 has shown us anything, it’s that mass, collective organizing still gets the goods.
In 2018, the TransLatin@ Coalition in Los Angeles unfurled a massive banner reading “Trans People Deserve to Live” at the 5th game of the World Series at Dodger Stadium. They did this at personal risk to themselves and were escorted by security out of the stadium. This kind of in-your-face politics is a far cry from the tame corporate Pride events we have become used to.
And the militant spirit and tactics of LGBTQ rights groups like ACT UP are alive and well here in Louisiana. On May 15, activists from the New Orleans Abortion Fund, Women with a Vision, the New Orleans Workers Group and the New Orleans Peoples Assembly staged a “die-in” in the style of ACT UP at the Louisiana State Capitol, protesting the suite of anti-abortion legislation being pushed through by the legislature. These brave demonstrators have been slapped with bogus charges of disturbing the peace and criminal destruction of property, but they are persevering. This is the politics of militant confrontation that we need and can inject into the LGBTQ and other peoples’ struggles today.
Who’s threatening who? Map shows locations of the dozens of U.S. military bases surrounding Iran.
No More Wars for Oil!
By Gregory William
Without ceasing their efforts to overthrow the legitimate government of Venezuela, the Trump administration and the U.S. military command have been revving up threats against Iran.
Trump and his gang have already demonstrated through their use of inhumane economic sanctions that they are willing to destroy the lives of thousands of people—all so that their capitalist masters can gain control of Iran and Venezuela’s oil fields.
In early May Trump’s National Security Advisor, John Bolton, announced the deployment of a carrier strike group and a bomber task force to the Persian Gulf to “send a clear and unmistakable message to the Iranian regime that any attacks on United States interests or on those of our allies will be met with unrelenting force.” Since then Trump has sent an 1,500 additional troops to the region.
Does Iran pose any threat to the U.S.? No!
Since the beginning of the last century, the United States has carried out more than 100 invasions of countries around the world. In that time, Iran hasn’t invaded a single country. Nor have they started a single war.
Bolton has had a hand in several U.S. invasions and wars—not least in Libya and Iraq, where hundreds of thousands have died as a result. During the lead-up to the Iraq war, Bolton systematically churned out lies about Iraq’s non-existent “weapons of mass destruction” to convince the public that war was necessary, leading to absolute devastation in that country and massive looting of U.S. taxpayers’ money. Bolton has been advocating for war with Iran for over 20 years and is now trying ratchet up tensions so that an accident or a false-flag attack might provide a pretext for war.
Here’s another claim workers might hear in the U.S. capitalist-owned media. Isn’t the Iranian government a despotic theocracy that curtails the rights of its people, and isn’t that a good reason for the U.S. to intervene?
There’s no reason to believe that this is a concern of Trump and company. One of the U.S.’ closest allies in the region, Saudi Arabia, recently beheaded 37 men and hung one of their bodies upside down on a pole in public. This hasn’t been a topic of discussion in Washington. Meanwhile, the U.S. continues to support the Saudi regime’s genocidal war in Yemen and gives the Israeli government billions of our tax dollars to murder innocent Palestinian children.
The Iranian forces that Bolton and Trump are promoting as the possible “liberators” of the country hail from the now-deposed fascist monarchy or alternately, from the so-called ‘National Council of Resistance,’ an organization aligned with the Saudi monarchy and Israel.
U.S. imperialists clearly have no interest in promoting democracy or human rights in Iran or anywhere else in the world. The long history of U.S. interference in Iran proves it.
In U.S. wars for oil, playbook hasn’t changed
In 1953, U.S. and British espionage agencies orchestrated a coup in Iran, ousting the democratically-elected prime minister, Mohammad Mosaddegh. In 1951, under the leadership of Mosaddegh, the Iranian parliament voted to nationalize Iran’s oil industry which had until then been under the control of the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company—later known as British Petroleum (BP), the same company responsible for the horrible Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. The Iranian government intended to use their oil resources to benefit the people of Iran rather than British and American shareholders.
Before the coup, the British initiated an international boycott of Iranian oil. They were trying to put an economic stranglehold on the country to make it bend to the wishes of the British and U.S. capitalist classes. In place of the popular government of Mosaddegh, the coup orchestrators installed General Fazlollah Zahedi, who shored up the rule of the Shah (the Iranian prince). The new regime relied heavily on Washington to stay in power. According to the CIA’s own declassified documents, for example, Iranian mobsters were on the U.S. payroll to stage pro-Shah riots as the coup was underway.
Under the Shah’s rule until 1979, thousands of social leaders, trade unionists, workers, students, and peasants were tortured and murdered by the SAVAK, a Gestapo-like agency set up by the CIA. Inequality soared to become almost the worst in the world, according to the International Labor Office. The people of Iran suffered all these hardships to enrich the owners of an imperialist oil cartel. This is really existing “free” market capitalism at work.
In 1979, the Iranian masses rose up to overthrow the imperialist-backed Shah. Although many of the demands of the revolution have not been met by the government of the Islamic Republic that replaced the monarchy, national independence remains a victory that the masses of Iranians are intent on defending. Any progressive Iranian knows that a U.S. war would be a terrible setback to their own struggle for political power within the country.
Why we must say no to intervention today
Nearly four times the size of Iraq, Iran is a country of 80 million people. A war with Iran would condemn an entire region of the earth to years of death and insecurity. This terrible cost to humanity would be paid by U.S. workers too. For every dollar of our taxes that’s wasted on death machines, that’s one less dollar spent on education or healthcare or all the things necessary to give us real national security.
We— the workers of the world— must stand up and declare that we will not pay for their oil with our blood.
U.S. Hands off Iran! End U.S. sanctions against Iran! Bring the troops home! Close the U.S./NATO bases! End U.S. aid to Saudi Arabia and Israel!
Around 200 students at Tuscon Arizona’s Desert View High School staged a walkout after fellow student Thomas Torres-Maytorena was detained by Border Patrol. Torres-Maytorena is facing possible deportation just weeks ahead of his graduation date. The students marched four miles from their school to the local sheriff’s office to demand that sheriffs immediately end their collaboration with immigration authorities. The students demand Torres-Maytorena’s immediate release back to his family and friends.
Students Stage 36-day Sit-in at Johns Hopkins University
Until they were arrested on May 8, students at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, MD had staged a 36 day sit-in to protest the school’s contracts with Immigrant and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and the formation of JHU’s own private police force. Over this time, hundreds of fellow students and faculty and community members came to the occupied building for screenings, panels, and community meetings.
The students also took up the cause of Tawanda Jones, who for 300 straight weeks, has held a weekly “West Wednesday” march to protest the Baltimore Police’s murder of her brother, Tyrone West. “Tawanda has been working for 300 weeks, she has been struggling to demand accountability—we also will not stop and these are the kinds of actions we are willing to take to be listened to,” Jilene Chua said. “We’ve tried so many ways to be listened to and nothing has really been working. This is the extent to which right now we are willing to go to be heard.”
“We demand the cancellation of the private police force. We demand the end of the contracts with ICE. We demand justice for Tyrone West.”
After chaining themselves to the building, they issued a statement: ”we hope we have shifted the path of this campus. We hope to have changed the history of Johns Hopkins and its relationship with Baltimore and the broader world. We will remain here until President Ronald Daniels negotiates,” a statement from the sit-in read. “We demand the cancellation of the private police force. We demand the end of the contracts with ICE. We demand justice for Tyrone West.”
