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New Orleans Hospitality Workers Demand Income Replacement During Pandemic

From our comrades in the New Orleans Hospitality Workers Alliance, their demands of the city to meet the immediate needs of workers during the COVID-19 emergency:

List of Demands

  1. Immediate expansion of unemployment insurance. Change the current eligibility to include those who stay home during this crisis, who do not have paid leave. This should extend to all gig, independent contractors, and freelance workers. 
  2. Expansion of Medicaid to all who need health care.  
  3. Expansion and an increase of food stamps to all workers and families in need.
  4. Testing, ER visits, and treatment for COVID -19 must be free for all and administered at conveniently located test centers that are geographically dispersed. Expansion of testing must be done urgently
  5. Issue an order that no workers be fired for staying home  
  6. Immediate closure of restaurants, retail shops and bars with a guarantee that when the establishment reopens workers will get their jobs back. 
  7. Those who choose to keep working at essential places like pharmacys, hospitals and supermarkets should be given full protective gear. 
  8. Order a state-wide halt to evictions, foreclosures, water, electric and internet cut offs. (Including student loan payments and credit card debt.)
  9. People without homes should be provided shelter and utilities necessary to protect themselves from both contracting and spreading COVID-19. (We have enough houses to shelter every person in the city, and we demand that anybody in need of housing is granted access to one of our numerous uninhabited units.)
  10. Establish a system for no cost food  and other necessities distribution to quarantined people or areas and to sick or self-isolated households
  11. Price controls put into effect to shield workers from the disruptive effects the virus has on the global economy.
  12. Establish easily accessible centers to replace breakfast and lunch for all students. (Currently New Orleans has only set up one school each on the East and West banks. Closing the schools without many food centers will create massive hunger for Louisiana’s children.)
  13. Waive citizenship requirements for state and local benefits  to ensure all workers have the option to stay home and effectively contain the virus.
  14. Immediate release of migrants in detention camps and incarcerated people not convicted of violent crimes. (These sites are overcrowded with limited access to healthcare. This will improve containment of the virus and cannot be ignored. Provide remaining prisoners with free phone calls as visits are being stopped and deposit money in their commissary accounts especially as prisoners must buy their soap, etc.)
  15. Guarantee replacement income for all (on top of the expansion of unemployment)

The eyes of all workers in Louisiana, who are very aware of the huge inequality between legislators and government official’s income and health coverage, are on the actions of the government.  This is the time to suspend state and local corporate tax exemptions to provide resources for these measures. Suspend the city charter which gives $180 million dollars in tourist taxes to private companies, suspend the $300 million dollars in public funds that is being used for a private convention center hotel and the millions being used for the super dome renovation. 

These public funds MUST be redirected towards this crisis immediately!

We hope you will carry out the responsibilities to the people of our state and work expeditiously to enact these necessary measures.

Sincerely, 

The New Orleans Hospitality Workers Alliance

504.444.9096

www.NOHWA.org

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Protect Trans Children: Withdraw SB172/HB466

The New Orleans Workers Group calls for the withdrawal of two anti-trans bills filed in the Louisiana State Legislature. SB172/HB466, which target trans youth in sports, are designed to humiliate, isolate, and encourage bullying of trans and gender non-conforming youth. The intention of the bill is to terrorize trans people and subject children to genital and hormonal testing by government officials.

This is an attack on trans people, gender non-comforming people, and all children in Louisiana. It is intended to scare trans people back into the closet by encouraging outrage and equating being trans with being a threat to children. It is intended to distract workers from the real predators–the capitalist class–preying on our children. We call for all workers to stand against these attacks and in solidarity with trans children.

These bills and others like it across the country, from South Dakota to Florida, are backed by five national organizations: the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), the Family Research Council, the Heritage Foundation, the Kelsey Coalition, and the Alliance Defending Freedom.

These organizations are funded by the Koch brothers, the Coors family (as in the beer), the DeVos family, war profiteers, the Mellon family of bankers, and other capitalists. The Family Research Council is classified as a hate group.

None of them are from Louisiana, South Dakota, Kentucky, or other states where these bills have been submitted. No one in these states has asked for laws like these to be passed.

These are the same tactics anti-LGBTQ forces have taken for decades. They know they can paint LGBTQ people as dangerous to children and pit workers against one another. They test them out, state by state, to see what will create the most division and the least fight back.

Workers across the U.S. have stopped bills like these; Louisiana workers must not let these capitalists divide us and terrorize our children. Stand with trans people! Withdraw SB172/HB466!

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Tom Benson, Thief Who Treated New Orleans as a Cash Cow

By Gavrielle Gemma, New Orleans Workers Group

Occasionally, we see stories of corruption. Occasionally, a few are jailed.  Though they may have stolen millions, these corrupt capitalists go to “Club Fed” and get out in months.  Most of these are cases where the rich stole from the rich. None of these compare to the “legal” corruption carried out regularly.

Tom Benson died at the age of 90, the richest man who lives in Louisiana. (Oil company barons are richer, but they take their loot out of state, leaving us with their destruction.)  When Benson started his parasitic career, he had $300 million, and when he died, it was $1.5 billion, a fortune built on and stolen from the labor of workers of Louisiana. Benson put his snout in the public trough and sucked it in, all with the consent of willing political “elected” officials, who were rewarded for their loyalty to Benson.

From 2009 to 2012, the state paid Benson $23.5 million a year to keep the Saints here, something he callously leveraged first while the city was still reeling from Hurricane Katrina.  Deals like this are not unusual in places where teams are privately owned for-profit organizations instead of the property of the working people who support them.

A ruling class lackey, Doug Thornton, served as an agent for the Louisiana Stadium and Exposition District (LSED), and was later rewarded by Benson with a vice presidency of SMG, the company that manages operations at the Dome and Smoothie King Center. While executives like Thornton enjoy our money and live in luxury, SMG pays $8.00 an hour to employees and no benefits.

The Scheme

Thornton became the bag man and negotiator for an even sweeter deal for Benson.  After public protest at Benson receiving over $100 million from the state, Benson and Thonrton came up with new schemes even more lucrative.

The yearly payment was cancelled, and instead the state gave $85 million to upgrade the Superdome, adding 3,200 seats, club lounges, box suites, store and concession.  All money from these upgrades went to Benson: an estimated $12 million a year.  If Benson didn’t make $12 million, the state would make up the difference.

Benson was then given tax breaks, and his real estate company, Zelia, bought Dominion Tower.  The state then leased from the now-renamed Benson Tower two thirds of the space for the next 15 years. The LSED also renovated a Benson-owned mall (now Champions Square).

So, Benson also got $3.18 million in profit from renting space, $2 million from Champion Square, and a $2.8 million tax refund (yes you read it right) from taxes collected on visiting players’ salaries—with the $12 million, that put him close once more to the $23.5 million a year in Benson welfare checks.  Plus, he got valuable property and rights to the Saints name and sales.

The Gift to Benson that Keeps on Giving (Our Money)

The Benson dynasty keeps all revenue produced at the Superdome, paying no rent.  Saints gate receipts alone are $63 million, revenues from parking and concession $14 million. They are sales tax exempt.

Of course, it would be wrong to only call out King Benson and not the politicians who, in exchange for bribes, set it all up.  The capitalist ruling class and all their minions are weeping for Benson, secretly wishing they had thought up these schemes for themselves.

As they bow and weep phony tears at the coffin of a crook, weep for the workers at the Superdome, who are underpaid, usually working two jobs.  Weep for the theft of money that should go to the workers of New Orleans,who keep it all running and struggle to survive.   And then stand up and fightback.

 

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Solidarity With BARE NOLA

In the New Orleans Workers Group, we believe in the political power of workers united together in struggle. We proudly support all the workers of New Orleans, recently deemed the #1 tourist destination in the world by the NY times. We salute BARE NOLA and all the workers organized against the recent raids on Bourbon St. clubs.

We recognize these raids as an attempt by the ruling class to separate women into legitimate and illegitimate classes. They think that they can get away with it because these clubs aren’t grocery stores, factories, or warehouses. These claims are flimsy excuses that rely solely on stigma and disorganization to work. They expect to be able to walk in and delegitimize these workers in the eyes of the city.

They expect to be able to attack without meeting organized resistance. The only ones they have delegitimized are themselves. Yesterday they were bold enough to parade their so-called “victory” on Bourbon and hold ceremony in front of the city.

Because of the resistance of the workers, Landrieu hid like a coward and the tourism board was made to look foolish.

The ruling class relies on a narrative that this city is full of vulnerable people broken by a storm, uneducated and needing to be watched for their own good; that the most vulnerable of these people are the marginalized women on Bourbon, forced into work against their will. Those organizing against these raids are not vulnerable women, but a group of women united, understanding their collective power.

For the New Orleans Workers Group, the recent ATC raids on the workers of Bourbon St. amount to nothing more than a cruel and illegitimate act of repression. Under the guise of a moral campaign against sex trafficking, these raids are a cynical effort by the ruling class to remake Bourbon St. according to their interests, without the slightest consideration for the workers who have earned them billions in profits.

We reject the so-called “moral authority” of Covenant House, an institution that advocates for laws that criminalize the youth they pretend to serve. We reject the conclusions reached in the APLV study of 2016, which was fabricated in order to bolster the case of real estate developers and their unceasing drive to make New Orleans a playground for the rich. Most importantly we recognize this campaign as an attack on the rights of women workers, LGBTQ workers, and non-white workers.

The city and the tiny class of owners whose interests it represents invoke a sexist “morality” in one breath as they pretend to defend the interests of women in the other. The Workers Group rejects any attempt to divide the city’s workers, and we denounce as criminal the firing of hundreds of our fellow workers. As fellow members of the working class, we stand in solidarity with the dancers and other workers fighting back against these raids. #letusdancenola

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New Orleans Disgrace: Statue Venerates Andrew Jackson, Slaveholder and Mass Murderer of Native Americans


On March 15, 2017, Trump laid a wreath on an Andrew Jackson monument in Nashville, giving a ten-minute speech in which he declared himself a “big fan“ of Jackson. Previously, he had hung a portrait of Jackson, his “hero“, in the Oval Office.

Ten Reasons to Tear Down the Jackson Statue:

1. Using his position as a colonel in the Tennessee militia, Jackson seized land by force from poor farmers to benefit slave holding plantation owners. He personally acquired over 640 acres and set up the Hermitage Plantation and owned over 300 slaves.

2. Jackson acquired land reserved for Cherokee and Chickasaw, in violation of law, to found Memphis Tennessee.

3. Jackson whipped slaves and sent troops out to capture runaway slaves.

4. To acquire more land for slave owners, Jackson stole land from Indian nations across the Southeast. As President, Jackson enacted the Indian Removal Act of 1830. Although the Supreme Court ruled against this policy, Jackson defied the court and ordered the removal.

5. Jackson represented the slave states that voted to enact the removal policy. The southern state governments destroyed Indigenous governments, banned assemblies, denied Indians the right to sue or testify in court, or dig gold on their own land.

6. Jackson drove 17,000 Cherokees from their farms and force-marched them to Oklahoma in winter, which came to be known as the Trail of Tears.

7. Jackson’s Trail of Tears caused the death of 8,000 Cherokee and Chickasaw and 4,000 Choctaws. They died from brutality, hunger, exposure, and disease in prison camps.

8. In 1816 Jackson ordered the horrific massacre of 330 free Blacks, men women and children at “Fort Negro” in Florida. This was a thriving farming/herding community of free Blacks. Jackson wrote “it ought to be blown up…destroy it and return the stolen negroes to their owners.”

9. While in the military, Jackson invaded Florida in 1818. He carried out wars against the Seminole, Creek and Muscogee Indians. Jackson’s purpose was to acquire Florida for slave owners and prevent runaway slaves from joining the Seminoles. Jackson burned the homes and crops of the Seminole and others.

10. Jackson was opposed to treaties calling them “an absurdity” and said, “the government should simply impose its will on them.”