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We Deserve 100% of Hotel Taxes, That’s a “Fair Share!”

By Ashlee Pintos

Mayor Cantrell’s office is claiming a victory for “Fair Share” New Orleans on the issue of what we call the Stolen Tax dollars. This ridiculous months-long negotiation between the Mayor’s office and the Convention Center has resulted in huge benefits for big business with a marginal benefit for the city. While $180 Million is stolen from New Orleans yearly, Cantrell has only asked for a fraction of the money (a one-time $48 Million with an additional $27 Million over the next 5 years). While the remaining yearly $153 Million is forgotten about for a perceived victory for the Cantrell administration, the convention center has been promised $300 Million for a new hotel and a portion of (more) Airbnb taxes among other concessions. How is this a fair share for the workers?

For over two years, the New Orleans Hospitality Workers Alliance and the Peoples’ Assembly have been bringing this issue to light. It was not until this past year that Mayor Cantrell started to acknowledge the $180 Million in tourism taxes (such as the hotel tax) that are collected yearly. NONE of this money touches the city’s general budget: it currently goes to private, non-elected boards composed of big business/corporation owners and politicians who use these millions to further fatten their wallets. $180 Million is a quarter of the city’s general budget. We could use this yearly money to fund healthcare, childcare centers, paid vacation and sick leave, quality transportation, AND fix streets.

Tax money is supposed to be collected to use for goods and services for the benefit of the people. How can it be that politicians are nicely asking for the return of tax money from rich capitalists? This is robbery of the people on behalf of big business. Cantrell is complicit and as Mayor, she should be held accountable. Why does she want to give the people’s money to the same rich capitalists who oppress us workers?

Without hospitality workers who hold up the tourism industry, none of the profits or the tourism taxes would flow into the city. Meanwhile who pays high rents, high property taxes, and high sales taxes, all with a constant boot on our neck? Us workers! Who gets huge tax breaks and also makes away with millions in tourism tax money? The Convention Center! In New Orleans workers would need a quadruple raise to make a living wage as we currently make a base of $7.25 an hour and even less as tipped workers at $2.13.

If someone had been taking a quarter of your already-too-small paycheck, every single month, for years and you found out about it; would you kindly ask them to pay you back? Would you only ask for a fraction of it? Would you negotiate? Absolutely not!

We as workers have consistently maintained our demand that ALL of the money be given back to the people. All tax money should go into the general budget for city council discussion and public input. It is not up to the Mayor to unilaterally decide to give this money to the Sewage and Water Board to pay the extremely high salaries of their administrators. These funds will not be used to lower our rates. In fact, the Mayor has said she supports raising taxes for drainage. This scheme does not insure a properly functioning system. It’s because of a lack of public oversight of the board that millions were stolen from the budget before.

We need all of us workers to come together to continue the struggle, and we must be ready to fight for what is ours in the first place.

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Six Companies Control National TV/Cable Media

As of 2019, 90% of the United States’ media is controlled by six media conglomerates: Comcast/NBC; Fox Corporation; Disney/ABC; Viacom; Time Warner Media; and CBS.

118 people who sit on the boards of directors of the 10 biggest media giants are on the corporate boards of 288 national and international corporations, and 8 out of 10 big media giants share common memberships on each other’s boards of directors. (“Big Media Interlocks with Corporate America” by Peter Phillips, CommonDreams.org, June 24, 2005)

This integration occurs at the very pinnacle of corporate power. For instance, board members of ABC/Disney, NBC/GE, CBS/Viacom, CNN/Time Warner, Fox/News Corp., New York Times Co., Washington Post/Newsweek, Wall Street Journal/Dow Jones, Tribune Co., Gannett and Knight-Ridder also sit on the boards of 13 of the Fortune 500’s 25 most profitable companies and have indirect connections to the other 12. This linkage forms a huge matrix of interlocking corporations and monopolies, usually with banks at the center, that control the U.S. and to a large extent the world economy.

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Media Monopoly Spins the “News” to Benefit the Rich

John Georges’ pals at his Cypress Lakes Country Club in Destrehan, LA.

The Advocate &  The Times-Picayune merge. Both now owned by wealthy businessman John Georges.

By Gavrielle Gemma

Every newspaper, TV and radio station represents the interests of either the capitalist class or the working class. Workers Voice newspaper represents the interests of the workers, whether employed, unemployed, undocumented or incarcerated. There is another difference in that Workers Voice openly sides with the workers, while the establishment media lie and promote a hidden agenda on behalf of the super-rich.

The two large capitalist newspapers, The Advocate and The Times-Picayune, plus Nola.com (and the Gambit) just merged in the hands of one of Louisiana’s richest businessmen, John Georges.

Georges is CEO of Georges Enterprises, which includes over 50 businesses: Imperial Trading Company (with sales of $1 billion), AMA Distributors, The Advocate newspapers, and numerous restaurants. He made a fortune off of video poker machines across the country, as well as restaurants and an exclusive country club. He is also on the board of First National Bank. From the profit extracted from the labor of workers in those industries, he didn’t raise wages but spent $50 million to buy The Advocate. He pushes alcohol, cigarettes and gambling at truck stops around the country.

Why did King Georges want The Advocate? In that paper’s own words: “His counsel will be sought. He will be courted and schmoozed by every powerful person in the state, sooner or later. What’s more, he will have a forum for his platform should he choose to run again for office. Should he not, he will be in a position to help crown the next king.” So much for “democracy!”

Both newspapers have been around for over 150 years. As recently as 1960, The Times-Picayune used its pages to openly advocate white supremacy and to maintain segregation. In an editorial, they wrote:

“The Orleans Parish School Board, the governor, the attorney-general and members of the Legislature have worked hard to avoid even token integration…[we] regret that their efforts did not achieve complete success.”

The Times-Picayune ended: “So far as we are concerned, we don’t like school integration any better in 1960 than we did in 1954, when we urged a relentless legal fight against it: but it doesn’t do any good to adopt an ostrich attitude and stick our heads in the sands.”

Today, they are more subtle but still uphold “news” and opinions that satisfy the rich white establishment at the expense of working class people, Black and white. They routinely oppose raises for teachers and attack their unions. While in the recent past they promoted outright segregation, today they promote policies that uphold institutional racism like gentrification, the privatization of schools, mass incarceration, low wages and high Black unemployment.

While Workers Voice is written and funded by workers of all nationalities, The Advocate and The Times-Picayune are solely under the editorial control of rich, white people.

As Dwight Ott, one of the first Black reporters with The Times-Picayune, wrote in a 1993 letter entitled “New Orleans’ newspapers give white view of the city”:

“For most of its years, historians and journalists said, the newspaper has been a powerful force in New Orleans, shaping and reflecting racial attitudes and the character of the city. And for the greater part of its years, the newspaper gave readers an image of black people as intellectually and morally inferior, relegated to a lower social caste than white people and often little more than lazy or criminal. It’s that image of black people that many people carry today…

Many people remember a newspaper that fought to keep schools segregated, calling integration ‘evil’ and [Dr. Martin Luther] King a ‘troublemaker.’ The Times-Picayune was a paper with no full-time black reporters until the 1970s, one that rarely wrote about black people unless they committed crimes.”

On May 2, The Times-Picayune bosses notified staffers by email at 2 pm to show up for a 3 pm meeting. At the meeting they were informed that as part of the merge deal, they would all be laid off. They were then told that they could reapply for their jobs.

According to a report in VICE News, “Times-Picayune staffers were shocked.” According to a WARN (Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act) notice filed with the Louisiana Workforce Commission, 161 staff members are being fired.

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Education Not Experimentation

May 18, Erase the Board led a march demanding quality public schools.

By Christina Tareq

“This is our Tuskegee,” shouted Armtrice Cowart, co-founder of Erase the Board, a grassroots coalition of community leaders, parents, and education justice groups. “Our children are being experimented on. This is our civil rights movement.” On Saturday, May 18, Erase the Board, along with the Peoples’ Assembly, Take Em Down NOLA and Step Up Louisiana, took to the streets to demand an end to OneApp, an end to charter school expansion and to demand the re-opening of quality public schools that are adequately resourced with the city’s tax dollars.

Post-Katrina, the New Orleans education system has become a cash cow for private charter school networks. Charter schools are not accountable to parents or children but only to the people who bankroll these education experiments on children through grants. Charter schools are also allowed to use unchecked disciplinary action which traumatizes children through rigid and damaging “behavior rules.” They are increasingly replacing educators, nurses and school social workers with police officers. They’ve also replaced thousands of qualified local educators with unqualified young people through Teach for America.

Currently, nearly 60% of students in the top 6 performing schools in New Orleans are white while 80% of Black students are in failing charter schools. The closure of public schools and the rise of charter schools marks a new era of segregation in education. If you support equitable and quality education in Orleans Parish for ALL children, get involved with Erase the Board. You can find out more on their social media pages @erasetheboardnola.

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City Budget Ignores Youth, We Must Fight for Youth Services Not Jails

63% of City Budget goes to cops and jails, only 3% to children and families.

By Malcolm Suber

New Orleans mayor Latoya Cantrell and arch-racist DA Leon Cannizzaro have teamed up to announce yet another scheme to supposedly curb an uptick in crimes committed by youth, especially young Black men. They are using sensational reports of youth crimes to call for more funds for the NOPD, more police patrols and more police contact with our youth (meaning more unwarranted stops and searches).They are also calling for stepped up enforcement of the citywide youth curfew.

The mayor and DA paint a picture of Black youth as predators in need of rounding up and locking away from the majority of law-abiding residents; so they call for an expansion of the juvenile lock-up as well as the trying of more juveniles as adults.

We workers should not be taken in by this ruling class propaganda. Youth crime is tied to the lack of gainful employment opportunities and lack of recreational and cultural programs that provide youth with positive things to do in their non-school hours. Why don’t the Mayor and DA address the root cause of juvenile crime instead of offering a band-aid on the cancerous conditions which exist for New Orleans youth? The working class community is rightly frustrated by the almost nightly barrage of reported criminal activity by alienated youth. But the Mayor and DA are only playing to this frustration in order to get the public to consent to their plan to lock up more youth. These youth in many cases are lashing out against the rich white ruling class and their politicians who have written them off as nothing more than a public nuisance.

Where is the money for more programming at our recreational centers? Where is the money for hiring full-time coaches? Where is the money for counselors and for youth employment? Rather than ‘disrupting’ the pipeline to prison, the Mayor and DA are actually facilitating the mass incarceration of our youth. They would rather spend more money on surveillance cameras and give fat contracts to their friends to monitor ankle bracelets on the growing number of youth arrested by the NOPD.

“What we are seeing and the rhetoric we are hearing from the political elites is because the system continues to fail our communities. We do a great job of holding vulnerable youth and parents accountable, but who will hold the system accountable? WE WILL THAT’S WHO!”
— Families and Friends of Louisiana’s Incarcerated Children (FFLIC)

Even though the capitalist media claims the USA economy is robust and nearing full employment, Black youth unemployment is nearly 50%. Many of their parents and guardians are forced to work two jobs and the youth are left to raise themselves. By allowing these conditions to fester, we show that we are not really concerned about saving these youth from the path to enslavement in the USA prison system.

Our task is to help our youth build a movement that champions their demands for a quality of life that gives them the freedom to explore their revolutionary history of struggle for Black liberation. This movement will train our youth to avoid the modern day slave catchers and give real meaning to being woke and the understanding that Black Lives Do Matter.

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Abortion Ban Unmasked

Protesters demonstrate against the abortion ban bill at the Louisiana State Capitol building on May 15, 2019, in Baton Rouge.

Backed by Big Oil and War Profiteers; They All Lie, Don’t Care if Children Die

Protesters say: We Won’t Go Back!

The push for laws banning abortion is led mainly by rich white men and funded by ultra-rich capitalists. These are the same people who oppose equal pay for women, civil rights laws, raising the minimum wage, and funding for programs that help women and families raise children. These are the same people that cheer for wars that kill thousands of children. They encourage their buddy war profiteers to raid the federal budget while they try to end programs like Food Stamps and WIC. They are for profit-making jails, religious intolerance and environmental destruction. They deny funds for programs that would address Louisiana’s maternal mortality crisis, where more women die in childbirth than anywhere else in the country—the number of deaths being twice as high among Black women. While they wrap themselves in the cloak of religion, their real motive is to increase profits by further driving women down.

These immoral forces have hidden hands and deep pockets. Their funders include the Koch brothers—oil billionaires and extreme racists responsible for widespread voter suppression—who run the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC). ALEC gives politicians money in exchange for passing prewritten laws. A majority of the Louisiana legislature are recipients of ALEC funds and are members. Gov. Edwards gave the keynote address at their recent convention. These hypocritical men have always used their wealth to fly “their” wives and mistresses to have abortions no matter what they proclaim. They want to limit the number of heirs to their wealth. Banning abortions will not stop them; it will just mean that more working class women will die.

In Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, and the other 47 states, reproductive choice rallies took place May 21 and 22. Tens of thousands of people came out. Every poll shows the majority of Americans support choice, including abortion access. Photo: Birmingham, Ala.

WOMEN CANNOT THRIVE OR BE EQUAL WITHOUT REPRODUCTIVE CHOICE

RICH MEN WANT TO FORCE WOMEN INTO CHILDBEARING

Women should be free to choose whether to have an abortion, use birth control, or raise children. Whether her decision is based on concern for the rest of her children, her religious beliefs, health, rape or incest or timing, this is a fundamental right. Without this right, women are deprived of full participation in every aspect of society. Without this right, women will die and be driven to desperation.

At the same time that abortion access is criminalized, women are being driven deeper into poverty, especially single moms. The Catholic Church, like all other institutional religions, has already declared women second class to preserve male white supremacy. They even ban birth control, which most Catholic women use because they are smart and care about their families.

On May 22, hundreds of demonstrators rallied at Poydras and St. Charles Ave. in New Orleans to demand full funding for all programs that help women raise children if they choose to do so, including free abortion access.

REAL CHOICE IS ABOUT HAVING ABORTION ACCESS, BIRTH CONTROL, LIVING WAGES AND SOCIAL PROGRAMS TO HELP RAISE HEALTHY CHILDREN

The recent demonstration in New Orleans organized by Women With a Vision, the New Orleans Abortion Fund, Black Youth Project 100, Peoples’ Assembly, New Orleans Workers Group and the Hospitality Workers Alliance demanded full funding for all the programs that help women raise children if they choose to do so, while so called right-to-lifers are part of the right wing forces opposing this. Pro-choice means fighting family separation by mass incarceration and imprisonment of our immigrant sisters and brothers. Pro-choice means good schools, early childhood education, full-service free neighborhood childcare centers and sex education and abortion access. It means standing against racism, homophobia and transphobia. There are two movements here. The pro-choice movement stands for uplifting the people in all regards. Those behind the abortion bans are also behind every other right wing attack on the people.

NO SHAME IN HAVING AN ABORTION.

THE SHAME IS ON THE IMMORAL FORCES THAT IMPOVERISH AND CRIMINALIZE WOMEN FOR PURSUING OUR ABSOLUTE RIGHT TO REPRODUCTIVE CHOICE

More and more, women workers and youth are coming into movements for social change: unions, community organizations and revolutionary groups. The anti-choice forces want women to be chained, desperate and unable to participate. But Orleans Parish women and women across the U.S. are declaring that whatever laws they pass, we are still the greatest power. Our voices are being raised, louder and clearer—let the ground shake under these greedy, rotten, rich men.

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Unite Here Local 23 Protests Private Prisons

Members of Unite Here Local 23, representing workers at the Convention Center, protest the proposed Omni hotel project because the “project manager” is involved in the private prison industry.

Members of Unite Here Local 23, a union representing 1,700 hospitality workers in New Orleans protest the Omni hotel project which is proposed to be built south of the main hall of the Convention Center. The proposed project would be managed by the Baton Rouge-based Provident Resources Group, a company with a record of ownership in private prisons.

Gabby Bolden-Shaw, vice president of the Unite Here Local 23 explained union members’ opposition to the project: “It feels like a slap in the face to know this board might work with an organization that has a history of acquiring, financing, owning, leasing and contracting for the operation of correctional facilities,” said Bolden-Shaw. “New Orleans has long had one of the highest incarceration rates per capita among U.S. cities (and) this disproportionately impacts communities of color and working class families.”

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To the trans troops coming home

Why did you join up? To protect America? To defeat terrorists? To serve the ideals of freedom you were taught in school?

Was it long-term benefits and pensions? Healthcare? Because no other job was available? Pressure from your family?

Or was it because there was no other way you could feel strong? Was it because there was no other way to prove that the way you feel about your gender isn’t a weakness?

Was it because someone told you you could be yourself there? Was it because you wanted to hide from yourself there?

Was it something you never before questioned?

It might not feel like it right now, but I promise you, the transgender ban is a process of liberation. Despite the fact that this is fueled by hatred and that 13,700 people have been left jobless, you are now free.

You’ve been lied to. You’ve been betrayed. Now it’s time to come home and stand up for what’s right.

You were not defending the ideals you imagined.

You were used.

The military you were tricked into joining was not the organization you thought it was. Their actions have proven this. The military serves not the people of the United States, but the rich. They serve the select few who have the money and power to command the plunder you were tricked into taking part in (even if all you did was repair trucks).

Every promise they made has been taken away from you through callous transphobia.

You were always strong. You were always better than this world has told you you were. Being trans is not a mental illness, a weakness, or a lie. It’s a way of being that was once rightfully honored, and you should have been celebrated when you came out.

Your siblings still in uniform might still support you. But there’s only so much they can do while you’re back here, so let me tell you, trans soldier, that you have a community here.

You can fight for what’s right. You can fight for freedom. The fight is here in the United States.

The fight is not for inclusion in the U.S. military. It’s for the end of the U.S. military. It’s to end the power of those who betrayed you.

Take an honest look at the lies you were told. Ask yourself who you served. Ask yourself how you brought freedom or justice anywhere. Witness Iraq and Afghanistan. Witness Libya and elsewhere. Ask yourself if that is what you signed up for.

And then look at what is going on here at home.

You’ve been betrayed, and so have all of your trans siblings who no longer have any legal protections or recognition. Reproductive rights are being taken away state by state. People of color live in fear of unjust incarceration and worse. People are forced from their homelands only to endure torment at our borders.

If you want to fight, if you want to stand up for something, if you want to live your truth, you have to fight back against them.

And that’s what we’re doing. Agitate, educate, and organize with us. Take all that pain and use it in the struggle with us.

With love,

Sally Jane Black

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1,800 Farmworkers Strike in California

Jan 11: Fruit pickers in Bakersfield, CA took to the streets when the bosses at “The Wonderful Company” cut their pay. “Wonderful Company.”
Back in January, nearly 1,800 citrus pickers went on strike outside Bakersfield, California. Now some of the workers involved in the protests are pushing to form a union.

The workers are primarily undocumented immigrants working under harsh conditions. Although some are employed directly by the Wonderful Company (which markets “Halos” mandarins), most are subcontracted. They are hired by third party staffing corporations, then do piece work for the so-called Wonderful Co. Piece work is any type of employment in which a worker is paid a fixed piece rate for each unit produced or action performed. This type of employment was common in the early industrial revolution, but it’s making a comeback. (Uber and Lyft are good ex-amples.) In the fruit pickers case, the workers hired out to pick mandarins and clementines get paid per bin of fruit picked.

On January 11, the Wonderful Co. announced that it was reducing its rates up to 10 percent, going from paying $53 per bin to $48. According to United Farm Workers Secretary-Treasurer, Armando Elenes, “Workers showed up and they were told the price was $5 less than the day before.” He add-ed that during an eight-hour shift, most workers are only able to harvest 1 1/2 to 2 bins of fruit. This is back-breaking work for low pay, while the company bosses raked in $4.2 billion in profits in 2018.

About 1,800 workers walked out of the fields the very day that the pay cuts were announced. They carried out protests around the edges of the farms for four days, with the United Farm Workers coming in to provide support. The company gave in, restoring the original bin rate.

In the months afterward, some workers are carrying on agitation to form a union with United Farm Workers, which would bring the possibility of health care benefits, pensions, sick time, and more. The UFW and the newly-emerging grassroots organizers among the pickers are considering staging a vote to unionize. In the meantime, the UFW has connected the workers with a law firm. The firm is currently helping them to fight for more concessions, like forcing the Wonderful Co. to provide workers with tools so they do not have to buy and clean their own.

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Chattanooga Auto Workers Organize for a Union

As early as April 29 or 30th, Volkswagen workers in Chattanooga, Tennessee, could vote to unionize. The United Auto Workers (UAW) has filed to have an election representing all 1,709 of the Chattanooga plant’s hourly employees. If they succeed, this would be a big advance for the UAW, giving them a foothold in the south—a region undergoing a boom in manufacturing and other sec-tors, but where union member-ship rates (and wages) lag behind other areas of the country.

The UAW attempted to organize Chattanooga auto workers in both 2013 and 2015. In both cases, right-wing politicians in the state carried out lying anti-union campaigns, and when the election finally went before Trump appointees in the National Labor Review Board, it got struck down. This shows how the politicians representing the ultra rich conspire with companies, rig political institutions, and do whatever it takes to undermine the struggles of working people.

This time around the Volkswagen bosses have instituted a disinformation campaign which re-quires workers to attend meetings while supervisors read off anti-union talking points from the company’s newsletter. They are trying to sow division by advocating for merit-based bonuses that depend on competition among the workers. Some workers reported receiving bonuses between $500 and $1000 last year but they were quick to point out that VW reported an operating profit of $15.8 billion in the same time. By that account, there’s plenty of wealth to be shared among the workers!

Despite the billions of dollars that the capitalist class spends spreading misinformation to keep us down, the popularity of unions is at a 15-year high. A recent Gallup poll found that 62% of U.S. respondents support unions, including 60 percent in the South. Unions are even more popular among people aged 18-35, with 65 percent seeing unions as a good thing. All this suggests that the prospects of worker organizing are getting better.