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Free Prisoners in Louisiana!

By LaVonna Varnado-Brown

Recently re-elected Governor John Bel Edwards spent a year boasting that Louisiana had lost its title as the highest incarcerated state in the U.S. Information released by the Vera Institute of Justice in April called that statement into question, concluding that Louisiana still had the top incarceration rate in the country at the end of 2018, five months after the governor announced that the state had lost that title to Oklahoma.

The U.S. has the highest incarceration rate in the world. The vast majority of the millions in prison should be released tomorrow with access to homes, jobs, and support to get on their feet. They need to be reunited with their families and communities.

In November, Oklahoma ordered the largest mass commutation in United States history. This release was made possible by an overwhelming popular vote in a state-wide referendum which reduced many charges to misdemeanors instead of felonies. Despite the vote, it took three years for the state politicians to respect the results and pass a bill for commutation, keeping some prisoners years longer. At least 462 non-violent inmates were released. A total of 527 inmates had their sentences commuted, but 65 of them have detainers and will be released later.

“Had these inmates served their full uncommuted sentence, it could have cost the State of Oklahoma approximately $11.9 million for continued incarceration based upon the average costs,” the Pardon and Parole Board said. Oklahoma also provided inmates with opportunities to acquire a state ID before being released. The Oklahoma Department of Corrections held its first “transition fairs” for inmates at 28 facilities across the state, the Pardon and Parole Board said. This type of programming is a first step towards rehabilitation as opposed to a completely punitive system.

Rally at New Orleans Criminal District Court.

Louisiana must start decarcerating human beings who are being jailed for minor drug offenses that the rich are now profiting from. We can take the lead and say: No more cash bail! No more private detention centers! Free mothers to go home to their children! Free all prisoners of a punitive, racially and economically unjust criminal system!

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Freedom Now! ICE Concentration Camps Are a Menace to All Workers

By Joseph Rosen

Thanks to President Trump and Governor Edwards’ racist persecution of migrants, a few rich shareholders at private prison companies GEO Group, LaSalle Corrections, and CoreCivic have raked in millions of dollars in profits from an expanding network of more than 15 lockups across the state.

Meanwhile, working people in Louisiana have seen their families torn apart and their wages kept criminally low.

On any given day, around 9,000 men, women, and children are held captive in ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) concentration camps across Louisiana for no reason except to terrorize and super-exploit non-citizen workers. With taxpayer money, ICE contracts private prison companies and parish jails to carry out this abominable ‘business.’

Every year the capitalist U.S. government deducts millions in taxes from the paychecks of workers—citizen and non-citizen alike—in order to hand that money over to multi-millionaire prison owners. Last year, more than $600,000,000 in taxpayer money went to GEO Group; CEO George C. Zoley skimmed $6,963,460 for himself alone.

Capitalists reserve some of their profits for bribing politicians: in 2016, the GEO Group Political Action Committee spent more than $1 million this way. Similarly, the owners of LaSalle Corrections have donated thousands of dollars to Louisiana politicians including Governor Edwards. For this price, GEO Group and LaSalle secure more business and influence over the policies that affect their means of profit-making. This is just one way they work to keep wages down for all workers, citizen and non-citizen alike.

Dec. 3: Human rights demonstrators shut down private-prison firm GEO Group’s corporate headquarters in Boca Raton, FL.

The owners of private prison companies like GEO Group and CoreCivic also reap huge profits from the forced labor and slave wages of the men and women in their custody. Over 60,000 people held captive in a GEO Group work-camp in Aurora, Colorado are seeking damages for being forced to work for $1 or less a day, many under the threat of solitary confinement. Just as in other prisons across the country, this type of slavery is widespread: GEO Group alone operates 130 facilities across the country.

Capitalists get the most profit out of production by putting workers in competition with one another for wages. The less they pay one worker, the lower the wage rate another worker will have to settle for. Citizen workers are worse off when the bosses cheat their non-citizen brothers and sisters who are worse off when the bosses cheat their imprisoned brothers and sisters. Workers are strongest when we come together to fight against our common enemy: the millionaires who would enslave us all if only they owned enough prisons to keep us captive. Workers must unite to put an end to the camps and gather our forces for war on these slavemaster CEOs.

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Last Chance to See Museum Exhibit on Gordon Plaza

The Residents of Gordon Plaza are determined to fight for their lives and educate others about how their situation connects to the rest of the city, state and world. Through December 14, they have an exhibit up at the Newcomb Art Museum located at the Woldenberg Art Center #202 Newcomb Circle New Orleans, LA 70118. “The American Dream Denied: The Residents of Gordon Plaza Seek Relocation” is running concurrently with an exhibit about the water crisis in Flint Michigan, titled “Flint is Family.” Both exhibits demonstrate the way government officials have turned their backs on their residents in order to serve the rich ruling class that preys on the people.

The exhibit is a great way to learn more about a local struggle of Black working class residents in their fight for a fully funded relocation off the toxic soil (Agriculture Street Landfill) that the City of New Orleans built their homes on.

The American Dream Denied:
The Residents of Gordon Plaza
Seek Relocation
Through December 14th
Newcomb Art Museum
Tuesday – Friday: 10 am­—5 pm
Saturday: 11 am—4 pm
Exhibit is FREE & open to the public.

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United in Death, Construction Workers Must Unite in Life, Organize Unions and Safety Committees

Three workers were killed in the Hard Rock Hotel collapse: Jose Ponce Arreola, 63; Quinnyon Wimberly, 36; and Anthony Magrette, 49,

Had the workers at the Hard Rock Hotel been unionized, those who spotted the bent beams would have alerted all unions on the job and demanded correction or else have exercised their right to walk off the job without punishment.

On October 10, Randy Gaspard, a concrete contractor, posted to Facebook a video taken by a Hard Rock worker. The video shows a sagging concrete slab, the posts supporting it bending under its weight. The worker who took the video spoke about the excessive space between the support beams and said that they were “already to the point of breaking.” These facts were supported by other workers on the site. This was two days before the collapse.
Gaspard said the workers told the contractor that the extra load was bending support posts but the contractor said to keep removing them, shifting an even greater load to the remaining posts.

Worker safety committees needed; we cannot trust bosses or city inspectors
The biggest factors in the rise of workplace fatalities are deregulation of industry, lack of unions, attacks on migrants, OSHA underfunding, government/industry complicity, climate change, and temporary employment. Changes from permanent to temporary and subcontracted labor also contribute. The capitalists are to blame for all of this. Workers must step forward to organize and defend themselves.

The states with the highest percentage of construction deaths have the fewest unions, the lowest death rates are in states with most unions. The highest fatality rates in 2015 include Louisiana and Mississippi and Arkansas.
Fund OSHA, yes, but don’t depend on it

OSHA, the Organizational Safety and Health Act, was passed in 1970. It set up some standards and inspections. But besides corruption and bribery, it would take 159 years to inspect every work site even once with their current staff and resources.

OSHA penalties are also not strong enough. The average penalty for killing a worker was $6,500 for federal violations and only $2,500 for state plans. Only 33 worker deaths have been criminally prosecuted.

Workers’ blood on Trump’s hands
OSHA was insufficient enough, but the Trump administration is waging an outright war on the working class. He has called for a freeze on new protections, and requires that for every new protection, two must be repealed.

He has called to repeal a law requiring contractors disclose safety and health violations in order to get a federal contract. He has delayed new hazardous materials rules and has eliminated the Labor Department’s safety and health training programs as well as the Chemical Safety board. And he’s cut job safety research by $100 million.

While we must fight for laws and enforcement, the most important thing is to organize safety committees and unions on our jobs. We cannot put our lives, or the well-being of our families at risk by depending on bosses or their capitalist government.

Here are the facts:

  • Construction workers are 6% of the workforce but 21% of
    on-the-job death.
  • Thanks to the Trump Administration’s deregulations, the death rate is increasing.
  • Migrant Latinx workers have the highest rate of deaths.

The bosses are taking advantage of the anti-migrant attack to pay workers less and ignore safety concerns. Their death rate is 18% higher than the national average.

Citizen workers must unite with and defend their migrant brothers and sisters. If bosses can discriminate against anyone, it eventually lowers the wages and working conditions for all workers.

Sample of Union Clauses in a Contract

Right to Refuse Unsafe Work (No Discrimination)
An employee acting in good faith has the right to refuse to work under conditions that the employee reasonably believes present an imminent danger of death or serious harm to the employee. The Employer shall not discipline or discriminate against an employee for a good faith refusal to perform assigned tasks if the employee has requested that the Employer correct the hazardous conditions but the conditions are not corrected, and the danger was one that a reasonable person under the circumstances would conclude is an imminent danger of death or serious harm. An employee who has refused in good faith to perform assigned tasks shall retain the right to continued employment and receive full compensation for the tasks that would have been performed.

Personal Protective Clothing and Equipment
Personal protective clothing and equipment shall be furnished and maintained by the Employer without cost to employees whenever such equipment is required as a condition of employment or is required by OSHA or other agency.

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Women Lead The Struggle

By LaVonna Varnado-Brown

Since the start of capitalism, women have led the struggle against it. Women have set the foundation to transcend dismal conditions, doing the invisible work of educating workers to organize unions and birthing the next generation of fighters. In New Orleans so many boast of our first elected female Black mayor. She ran on a platform to support fully funded relocation for Gordon Plaza residents, hold the Sewerage and Water Board accountable, and improve the infrastructure. But are we better off as women in this city? Cantrell only allocated $120,000 to healthcare initiatives for hospitality workers in 2019, while tax revenue from the hospitality industry is about $200 million. Only $1.5 million out of $709 million city budget goes to early childhood education.

In New Orleans, the hospitality industry generates $8.7 billion per year, according to a report commissioned by the city in 2018. Hospitality workers are the lowest paid workers in the city, and 57% are women. Hospitality workers in New Orleans make an average of $22,069 annually, including tips, while qualifying income for Medicaid is cut off at $16,764. Infant care in Louisiana costs almost as much as in-state tuition for 4-year public college.
Louisiana has the 7th highest rate of imprisoned women in the world and 80 percent of women in Louisiana jails are mothers. Most are the primary caretakers of their children. We see the federal and state budget mirror this misogyny. They prioritize jails and reactionary tactics and declare war on Black people and women. With women being paid less and disproportionately jailed with no money for healthcare and education, we must stop to analyze this issue.

We must remember that the rich ruling class will never allow the powerful work force to vote away their wealth. We must recognize the contradictions that exist around us and educate ourselves to organize and fight back. Move away from reform and concessions and establish self-determination. Break the illusions of “that’s just how it is” we so easily consume from media and society. The Center for American Progress reports, “Women, on average nationally, fare the best in Maryland and the worst in Louisiana. Over 22 percent of women in Louisiana are in poverty, compared to 11 percent of women in Maryland.” Louisiana has the worst in pay inequity between men and women in America. In Louisiana 35% of employed women work in low or minimum-wage jobs and poverty rates for single-mother families with children is 15% higher in New Orleans (56%) than in the United States (41%).

New Orleans Peoples Assembly meets every first Wednesday to break bread with working women in the city. Join us to celebrate our contributions to this city through the work that drives us. Join us to intentionally discuss the ways our solidarity will empower us to reclaim our stolen tax dollars and declare as one, “NO MORE.” We have the power to organize ourselves.

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Bayou Steel Should Be Owned by the Workers!

For decades millions in profit have gone to the capitalist owners of Bayou Steel from the labor of the workers and community. Despite the continued need for reclaiming scrap steel for reuse, the company was handed over by a rotten transnational corporation to a vulture capitalist hedge fund. Hedge funds make their profits by selling off inventory and assets. The Black Diamond fund announced it would close the plant throwing hundreds of workers out and harming local towns.

None of this is the fault of the union, but today unions and workers are trapped in the mindset that capitalist owners can do whatever they want with “their” property.

To fight back against the effects of “restructuring,” run away shops, and automation, we workers must climb out the box and challenge that notion that capitalists, by virtue of laws they passed, cannot be challenged on these decisions. But that won’t happen by relying on courts or politicians. Workers will need to struggle.

The sit-down strikes of the 1930’s all over the country built the unions and defended those workers’ jobs. They are not romantic history but a guide to what is needed now.

The following letter is addressed to members of the United Steelworkers facing layoffs at Bayou Steel:

Dear Officers and Members of the USWA,

We are outraged by the lies and trickery of Black Diamond. ArcelorMittal LaPlace clearly conspired with the BD hedge fund to loot the profits and assets of Bayou Steel, leaving the workers and community high and dry. That BD was obviously negotiating in bad faith is even more egregious.

This bankruptcy should also outrage every hardworking taxpayer in Louisiana. Since 2008, ArcelorMittal LaPlace has enjoyed nearly $11,000,000 in tax exemptions from the state and yet workers will have nothing to show for it if Arcelor and BD have their way. The company should be forced to pay these deferred tax dollars to meet its obligations to the workers.

The company’s illegal actions are not confined to conspiracy and bad-faith bargaining. Failure to abide by the WARN act (by claiming sudden economic catastrophe), premature cutoff of health benefits, and failure to provide severance pay are all crimes against the workers.

Pouring acid on the wound, BD is keeping a crew in shipping to move remaining inventory out and suck the last drop of profit out.

Their lawyers were fully prepared and filed bankruptcy immediately in Delaware, a tax haven for corporate crooks. The union and community should be appointed trustees based on their investment of decades of labor and support. Rather than getting nothing in these proceedings, the workers ought to be entitled to a preferred status based on the labor they’ve invested in the plant.

After the sit-down strikes in the 1930’s in plants across the country, the U.S. Department of Labor under Frances Perkins was forced to declare the strikes legal as the workers had a property right due to their labor.

Depending on politicians to assist in this situation is a delusion. A recent action by coal miners in Harlan County, KY, shows the way forward. When their company filed for bankruptcy and attempted to cheat the workers out of back pay and more, the workers blocked a train carrying coal inventory until they got paid. Joined by the community, Bayou Steel workers should stop the inventory from leaving the plant.

As long as labor is shackled into believing that only corporate owners have rights and that we must play by their rules, workers will suffer as they force us into a race to the bottom.

The loss of any union job hurts all Louisiana workers; we need more unions. Taking bold action outside the box can invigorate workers and help them see that unions are organizations willing to fight for their rights.

We are workers and community members and would do anything we can to support such an effort. We are sure that many workers will join you if you decide to fight back. It is only by fighting back that you can win even a small measure of what is owed to your members and the community.

In solidarity,
New Orleans Workers Group

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Working Women, Unite and Fight Back!

By Tiffany McCulley

When we look at the world around us, it is so easy to feel despair. Open fascism is on the rise, the right to bodily autonomy is being ripped from the folks it affects the most. These attacks are led by members of both major parties and funded by the super-rich who profit off our oppression. Our trans community’s rights are constantly under attack, and Black trans women are being murdered at alarming rates without consequence. Social programs are being defunded to increase funding for imperialist war. Our school system is held ransom by charter school companies only interested in profits instead of nurturing the brilliance of our children.

Women everywhere are disproportionately affected by the oppression and violence of capitalist society. Capitalism is a boot on our backs, demanding every ounce of our time, our energy, our resources, and our unquestioning obedience to its illegitimate authority. Working women are pushed to the edge. We are feeling the pressure all around us.

We need to know what is at the root of these oppressions and injustices. We need to say its name: capitalism. The capitalist class has always imposed the policy of “divide and rule” on grounds of race, sexual orientation, gender, nationality, and whatever else they can find in order to exploit the working class. Capitalism lays the foundation for the unequal economic and social relationship between the labor of men and women. We once lived in societies where all genders and sexualities were equal. Only when societies became about power and control, about private property, did this change. The ruling class began dividing us and controlling us because they knew we outnumbered them. Today, capitalism is the great divider, and our greatest weapon against capitalism is revolutionary unity.

There are women all over the globe fighting back: working women in Palestine, Puerto Rico, Spain, Pakistan, India, Philippines, Uganda, South Africa, just to name a few. Our sisters across the globe are engaging in militant fights against gender-based violence, unequal pay, discrimination in the workplace, criminalization of sex workers, education access, reproductive rights, and more. In India, women formed a human chain hundreds of miles long with millions of women coming together in resistance. In Puerto Rico, women led the protests that brought the resignation of their governor. Closer to home, indigenous women and Two Spirit people have been at the heart of the struggle against the oil pipelines. Chicago teachers and school staff are striking. Working women are not taking the bullshit anymore. We’re uniting to say, “Hands Off! Hands off our bodies, our paychecks, our lands!”

We are building a working women’s movement. We are clear who our enemy is, and we know that the only way forward is together, united in revolutionary struggle. We are not free while any other woman is unfree. There is strength in numbers and a mass movement of revolutionary working-class women would be a force to be reckoned with.

Are you ready to demand the world we deserve? Then come fight with us; come build with us. In March of 2020, we will be honoring International Working Women’s Day with militant protest and action, and we need you to be a part of it.

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Chicago Education Workers’ Strike Wins Gains for Community, Students

Striking teachers, school staff, and supporters march through downtown Chicago on the ninth day of the Chicago Teachers Union strike on October 25, 2019. (Photo by Max Herman/NurPhoto via Getty Images)

By Gregory William

On November 1, over 30,000 teachers and school workers returned to work after an 11-day strike that won them important concessions from the City of Chicago and the Chicago Public Schools. This strike was carried out by the 25,000 member Chicago Teachers Union and 7,500 education workers from the Service Employees Union (SEIU) Local 73. The solidarity between the two unions shows the way forward for the working class: when we unite, we are stronger. Though SEIU Local 73 settled three days before CTU (winning up to 40% wage increases among other gains), they didn’t leave the teachers’ picket lines until CTU settled.

The unions put forward big, political demands that go beyond education. For example, these unions have taken a leading role in the fight for affordable housing in the city of Chicago. Commentators have noted that it is unconventional for unions to fight for this kind of policy change during contract negotiations, but union members around the country may be taking note. These Chicago union workers understand that the issues affecting the working class cannot be separated from one another. We cannot address problems in education if we do not solve the affordable housing crisis. Chicago unions are keeping the pressure on the city to respect the basic rights of its residents to housing, health, and dignity.

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“Ukraine-Gate” Hides Real Ukraine Scandal in Plain Sight

Ukrainian troops with the NATO flag, the flag of the Azov battalion, and the Nazi swastika.

By Joseph Rosen

Instead of charging Trump with sexual assault or incitement of hate crimes or crimes against humanity, the Democrats have centered their impeachment inquiry around the allegation that Trump withheld nearly $400 million worth of military aid to Ukraine in order to press the current government for dirt on his potential rival, Joe Biden. Practically no voice among the capitalist owned media has been raised to point out the fact that this aid is destined for a military with openly fascist Neo-Nazis militias in its ranks.

The recent history of U.S. involvement in Ukraine incriminates both Biden and Trump
Since the fall of the Soviet Union and the dissolution of the Soviet Bloc, the U.S. ruling class has been determined to gain unfettered access to the human and natural resources of the former socialist republics. But Ukraine’s longstanding commercial and cultural ties to a sovereign Russia have been a barrier to U.S. domination.

Eager to replace a relatively Russian-aligned government with one that would more readily yield to U.S. colonial desires, the U.S. State Dept. and CIA leapt at the chance to lend their support to an insurrection against the elected government of Viktor Yanukovych in 2013/2014. That the 2014 coup was carried out by violent Neo-Nazi gangs did not bother Obama, Clinton, or Biden in the least. All they wanted was a Ukraine “open for U.S. business.”

Since the coup, state companies have been sold off at fire-sale liquidations and the country’s rich farmland has been raided by transnational agribusiness firms like Monsanto. Mass layoffs have caused a surge in unemployment. The government has deployed fascist street gangs to repress any resistance to these widespread attacks on workers.

Per the demands of the U.S., the post-coup government has pledged to phase out much of its business with Russia. More alarmingly, they have taken steps towards entry into the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) which is carrying out war games closer and closer to Russia’s borders.

Ukrainian Prime Minister Olesky Honcharuk speaking at a Neo-Nazi rally on Oct. 13.

End all U.S. military aid to the fascist Ukrainian government
At least $1.5 billion of U.S. taxpayer money has been used to supply the fascist Ukrainian government with arms and military equipment since 2014. This “aid” supports Neo-Nazi militias such as the Azov battalion who have welcomed American white supremacist terrorists into their training grounds. The government of Ukraine’s capital Kiev officially sanctions patrols by the Neo-Nazi militia C14, who have carried out pogroms against Roma communities and violent attacks on LGBT people.

Since 2014 more than 13,000 people have been killed and hundreds of thousands more have been displaced in a war on the People’s Republic of Donetsk and the People’s Republic of Luhansk, both formed in the Donbass region after seceding from Ukraine in the wake of the right-wing coup.

Because the Donbass remains a bulwark against the building up of offensive U.S./NATO forces, they receive limited support from the Russian government. But the main reason that the people of the Donbass continue their armed struggle against the fascists is that they reject the privatizations, pension cuts, and plant closures that Kiev is carrying out on behalf of the U.S. and E.U. capitalists in charge of the International Monetary Fund.

Workers in the U.S. don’t have any interest in common with gangsters like Biden or Trump, much less with the war profiteers or bankers that they work for. The capitalists’ recent record in Ukraine shows that they regard fascism as just another means to exploit and steal from working and oppressed people. If the U.S. ruling class doesn’t shrink from arming swastika-wearing soldiers in the Ukraine, they’re not likely to withhold arms from the fascists at home. We workers must organize to root out and smash the fascists wherever they exist; we can’t leave it up to any capitalist government to do that for us.