Category: Uncategorized

Twenty years of U.S. bombing and occupation have killed 241,000 men, women, and children. Thousands more have been maimed for life.  Nearly 6 million Afghans had been driven from their homes by the U.S. puppet government. U.S. banks and Afghan officials have profited enormously from the vast opium fields guarded by U.S. troops.  $2.26 trillion has been looted from the U.S. treasury to enrich oil companies and war profiteering corporations. This money could have been used for jobs, fighting climate destruction, fires, pandemics, and providing education, housing, and healthcare for all.

Have we workers in the U.S. gained from this bloodshed?  No! This was a rich man’s war.

U.S. policy in Afghanistan is motivated by a drive to control mining, energy resources, transportation, and the opium trade in the region. Now that the Taliban has taken over the government, they may drive a harder bargain for a U.S. cut of profits than the puppet government that preceded them, but the U.S. Taliban negotiations that have been underway since Trump’s term will continue under Biden.

Biden and politicians now cry crocodile tears for the Afghan people after funding and training the original Taliban forces. State sanctioned slavery, torture, and the brutal oppression of women have not affected close ties between the U.S. and Saudi Arabia, from which the Taliban draws much of its funding. From Syria to Afghanistan to Xinjiang to Colombia, the U.S. arms and funds ISIS or other right-wing death squads wherever they served to bring about or maintain domination by U.S. financial interests. Did the occupation and destruction of Libya bring any benefit to the Libyan people who once had free education, healthcare, housing, and borders open to immigrants? No, the people are impoverished, enslaved, and controlled by warlords each vying to be the favorite of the U.S. government.

Without Popular Support, U.S. Puppets in Afghanistan Fell Quickly

It took just a few weeks for the Taliban to take control of Afghanistan. Why didn’t Afghans rally to defend “their” government from advancing Taliban fighters? Because the corruption of the puppet government was plain for all to see. As U.S. troops withdrew, former President Ashraf Ghani and his cronies fled the country with suitcases of cash. Meanwhile, 90% of Afghans live in poverty. Afghans are painfully aware that the now-deposed government was only propped up to protect the profits of U.S. investors in gas pipelines, mines, and poppy farms. They are sick of being sold out to foreign occupiers by millionaires like Ghani.

U.S. Invasion Funded, Trained the Taliban, Destroyed People’s Progress

U.S. Interventions Destroy Workers’ Rights, Social Benefits, and the Liberation of Oppressed People

The U.S. occupation that began in 2001 is predated by U.S. involvement going back to the 1970s when the CIA funded and armed the Mujahideen that opposed the movements for social progress spearheaded by the Afghan left and supported by the Soviet Union. In 1978, with broad popular support, socialists overthrew the Afghan King, establishing the Democratic Republic of Afghanistan (DRA). Anahita Ratebzad described DRA laws the U.S. fought to destroy: “Privileges which women, by right, must have are equal education, job security, health services, and free time to rear a healthy generation for building the future of the country […] Educating and enlightening women was a high priority.” This and other progressive steps were destroyed with U.S. arms and training of the Mujahideen, which became the Taliban. The U.S. particularly opposed the measures taken by the DRA to divide the old feudal landowners’ properties among the Afghan masses. The Soviet Union, with a 1,000-mile border with Afghanistan, joined the DRA at their request to defend their gains against a U.S. occupation and Taliban government.

“War on Terror” Just Another War for Profit

No Afghans and no Iraqis were involved in the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon. These attacks were used as pretext to destroy the independent governments of the Middle East that had formed during the anti-colonial struggles after WWII. This policy was outlined in 1997 by Donald Rumsfeld, Dick Cheney, and their Project for the New American Century. Independent governments like Libya, Iraq, and Syria were attacked because they stood in the way of U.S. and European domination of the world’s resources, including its people.

Afghanistan has important pipelines, transportation corridors, and natural resources. U.S. military geologists appraise untapped mineral wealth alone to be $1 trillion. The U.S. government’s long occupation was a bid to control those resources by military force. Absent boots on the ground, they will be looking to extract these resources by working with the Taliban.

Workers Demand U.S. Withdrawal of Military, CIA, and Mercenary Forces

After initially withdrawing troops, Biden has ordered 6,000 military personnel back into the country where they have, in recent days, been involved in horrifying scenes at the airport. We must demand that all military personnel and all private military contractors leave the country and cease to perpetuate suffering, war, and death.

Though the exit of the U.S. has been compared to the withdrawal after defeat in Saigon, unlike the progressive, socialist government in Vietnam that threw off U.S. empire, the people of Afghanistan now face uncertainty at the hands of reactionaries created through decades of U.S. involvement. Afghan people deserve peace and prosperity, but these will never be won if the U.S. is involved. The national destiny of Afghanistan should be determined by the Afghans and the Afghans alone. Their own history of struggle shows the way.

The U.S. must stay out of the sovereign affairs of Afghanistan and all nations, including Haiti, Cuba, Venezuela, Iran, and Yemen. This includes an end to military intervention, blockades, and U.S. sanctions.

---

We Must Unite to Defeat the Covid-19 Delta Variant

• Fight for Vaccine & Mask Mandates
• Make Vaccines, Tests, and Masks Available for All
• Fight for Paid Leave for Vaccination and Quarantines
• Fight for Secure Housing, Jobs, and Childcare
• Resume and Broaden Unemployment Insurance
• Fight Racism in Health Care, Give Medical Oversight to Communities of Color

On August 6, the Louisiana Department of Health reported that 3,000 children had tested positive for Covid-19 in just four days. Some are critically ill. Hospitals are beyond capacity. Shortages of hospital staff, ambulances, and EMTs are causing health care to be rationed. Patients are being held in ambulances as they wait hours for beds to open up in hospital hallways. Every day, dozens die from Covid-19 in Louisiana.

Insurance companies have raked in billions in pandemic profits. Meanwhile, the U.S.’s health care system ranks last among economically developed countries. By every measure of care, the for-profit system is failing.

Since the beginning of the pandemic, profit-making corporations have received trillions of dollars in bailouts from federal and state agencies, especially through the Federal Reserve Bank. Billionaires have increased their wealth by $1.8 trillion. Feeling secure in their guarded estates and pampered with the best healthcare money can buy, the ultra-rich and their government lackeys have decided to let people die. They are using the cut off of unemployment and other benefits to create even more desperate workers so bosses can drive down wages. Evictions and an end to food stamp supplements are planned for the fall.

Real Public Safety Means Protection from the Virus and Its Effects

While we’ve been dealing with record unemployment, evictions, and hunger, the racist Louisiana legislature handed over millions of 2020 CARES Act dollars to prisons and sheriff’s departments. The Biden administration redirected $350 billion in 2021 Covid-19 relief money to cops. Mayor Cantrell wants to give tens of millions in Covid-19 relief dollars to build up the police and jails. We say use this Covid-19 relief money for sick and quarantine pay and for back rent. Real public safety means protection from the virus and its effects. Economic and social desperation drives crime. Fund people’s needs, especially the youth, not cops and jails.

National Security Means Protection from Covid-19, Secure Housing, Food, Wages and Healthcare, Not War

A recent study showed that just $21.3 billion would wipe out the debts of the roughly 6.4 million households currently behind on rent. That’s less than the extra $25 billion in tax-payer dollars that the Senate Armed Services Committee voted to add to the already record-level U.S. war budget. Now there’s an effort to sneak in an extra $50 billion in war spending through the infrastructure bill. This would be enough to cover sick and quarantine pay for every worker. The money is there when it comes to bombing working people around the world. The money is there for the profit-making war corporations who elect congress. But when it comes to meeting people’s needs, we’re left to choke on pennies.  

Workers Must Advance Our Own Demands in the Battle Against Covid-19

Workers must lead the way in the fight for public health protections. This means fighting for universal vaccine mandates. Smallpox vaccines stopped a virus that claimed 500 million lives. We need to respond to Covid-19 with social solidarity, not with the selfishness being preached by corporate bosses and the politicians in their pockets.

Covid-19 has killed 11,260 people in Louisiana and hospitalized tens of thousands more. The good news is that the Covid-19 vaccines are very effective preventing serious illness and death. The unvaccinated make up more than 90% of people hospitalized for Covid-19.
Vaccines and masks help prevent the spread of Covid-19. Mandating these measures is essential to protecting our communities, but we should also demand:

• High quality masks, free and available for all. Shields for workers in contact with the public.
• Fun masks for all children in all schools. Parents refusing to wear masks or refusing masks for their children are endangering their children and should be provided health education and counseling.
• Every worker must be guaranteed paid time off to get vaccinated and paid time after as needed.
• Every worker and every caregiver must be guaranteed paid quarantine time with food delivered.
• Rent should be covered, and all back rent should be cancelled for affected households.
• Vaccines should not be made for profit. Vaccines should be equitably distributed around the world. Vaccine technology should be a public good for all.

Demand the Right to Survive, Not the Right to Infect

The right wing is claiming that individual and states’ rights to reject vaccinations and other protections trump the right to be safe from the virus. This phony defense of personal ‘liberty’ is used to justify right-to-work laws, and all kinds of discrimination. Union rights, the right to vote or work in a safe environment or live free of racism—the right-wing has fought to to deny all of these by empowering business or government with the right to fire, discriminate, and exploit.

Right-winger Louisiana Attorney General Jeff Landry is criminally misusing his office to campaign against Covid-19 protections, including the use of vaccines and masks. He is building a racist, pro-death movement. An attorney general is not authorized to create policy. He is using the office to rally a right-wing following as he begins to campaign for governor. He is the successor to David Duke and must be stopped.

Landry says only local areas can decide on masks. But Landry opposes the right of cities across Louisiana to raise the minimum wage, sick pay for all, workers safety laws, and anti-racist education in the schools. This flunky of the rich lives off kickbacks from his oil company friends, opposes Medicaid, food stamps, civil rights, worker safety laws, raising the minimum wage, or doing anything to address climate change. He ought to be charged for mass murder and thrown into jail alongside Texas governor Abbott and Florida governor DeSantis.

Use Science to Serve the People

Heath care in the U.S. is bound up with racism and discrimination against low-income people. This cannot be ignored or dismissed. We cannot fight to change that by playing into right-wing ideas. The racist idea that Black people were inherently more susceptible to Covid-19 had to be fought to show that the real issue was lack of access to healthcare, good jobs, adequate housing, etc. The renowned Black scholar W.E.B. Du Bois fought against the phony “science” used to justify racist oppression of Black people. But he implored workers and Black people not to discard science but fight to have it benefit the people, especially the Black community.

Many people of color have reason to distrust the racist and anti-poor U.S. healthcare system. A statewide body of doctors, medical staff, and health professionals of color should be convened immediately to counsel and help people decide to vaccinate. This body should be given authority and funding to ensure that other safety measures are also put into effect. Special effort is required to guarantee that people of color are getting adequate access to vaccines, masks, income, housing, medical care, and sick pay.  

It is time for leaders in unions and other workers to put life into the slogan “an injury to one is an injury to all” and show solidarity to demand a science-based pandemic response that protects humanity. This means masking and vaccine mandates, paid sick leave, cash assistance, freedom for all non-violent prisoners, and programs to ensure needs such as housing, food, childcare, healthcare, and education are guaranteed for all.

End the Blockade and Murderous Sanctions against Cuba!

Stop U.S. Funding for Counter Revolutionaries

The Cuban Revolution Will Prevail

For 60 years, the U.S. has tried to crush the Cuban revolution in order to reclaim Cuba as a colony. Cuba has withstood U.S. invasions and blockade to do all in its power to end the racism that prevailed under U.S. domination, ensure equality for Black Cubans and LGBTQ Cubans, and provide free healthcare, education, and housing. The heroic Cuban people have defended their sovereignty and their right to a life of common dignity, defying U.S. military and economic assaults, attempted assassinations, economic sabotage, and right-wing terrorist attacks.

Today, the Cuban government called the people to the streets in defense of the revolution, and hundreds of thousands have responded.

We in the U.S. Need to Stand with Cuba

No country, including the U.S., can thrive isolated from trade, unable to purchase what is needed for its people. Cuba, an island only 90 miles in length, has summoned the revolutionary determination of the masses to not only maintain their independence but to put the welfare of the people above the wealth of a few. Despite having its access to fuel, spare parts, medicines, and other essential items blocked by the U.S., Cuba has managed to develop 5 COVID vaccines and send its medical brigades to assist dozens of countries around the world. By putting people’s health over private profit, it has kept COVID deaths to 1/14th the rate of the U.S.

Biden and his mercenaries in the Cuban right wing are exploiting the hardships that U.S. sanctions have produced. Biden hasn’t repealed any of Trump’s 243 brutal sanctions, which were imposed in order to starve the Cuban people to the point of begging the U.S. for mercy.

The U.S. wants total capitalist control of the island, which means destroying every social program won by the Cuban revolution. If the U.S. were to succeed in recolonizing Cuba, every last program for Cuba’s workers, children, and seniors would be wiped out. The Cuban international medical brigades would be dismantled, and apartheid against Black Cubans would be reinstated as it existed before the revolution.

Stand with Cuba, demand an immediate end to the blockade, sanctions, and U.S. funding of right-wing mercenaries in Cuba, Haiti, and Colombia.

Change of Presidents Carried Out to Intensify Repression Against The People

A professional hit team made up of Colombian military personnel assassinated Haitian president Jovenel Moïse on July 8. The U.S. armed and trained Columbian military mainly takes its orders from Washington. This was the aim of Biden and Clinton’s “Plan Colombia” which was put into effect in 2000. For decades the Colombian military and paramilitaries have assassinated hundreds of trade unionists and social organization leaders. 

In only the last few months, millions have taken part in country-wide rebellions against the murderous regimes of Duque in Colombia and Moïse in Haiti.  Like Colombia’s military, the Haitian National Police have been responsible for murders of protestors and assassinations of social leaders.

The U.S. government, through both Republican and Democratic administrations, has never hesitated to carry out or attempt assassinations of revolutionary leaders, especially in Africa. They have also assassinated once friendly heads of state as soon as they moved to break free of U.S. imperialist economic domination. And as with the case of Diem of then South Vietnam or Park of South Korea, they’ve assassinated outright puppets once they’ve deemed them ineffective for their ends.

Biden’s. C.I.A. Director Burns Visits to Crush Uprising of the People

The assassins of Moïse, reportedly wearing U.S. Drug Enforcement jackets and possessing inside information on the compound, are likely instructed by the U.S. CIA. Biden’s Director of the CIA, William Burns visited Haiti and Columbia just weeks ago to coordinate increased repression in Colombia and Haiti, and to plan attacks on Venezuela.

What would compel the U.S. to act so decisively to intensify repression at this time—even to the point of assassinating their former puppet Moïse? A major step forward in the Haitian struggle had begun. A citizen’s armed militia had formed to unite dozens of neighborhoods to resist the Haitian National Police and effectively turn the activity of desperate youth towards the revolutionary struggle.

Representing the masses, these unified forces demanded an end to the Moïse regime who was attempting to change the constitution to keep himself in power. More importantly, they’re fighting to end the super-exploitation and poverty caused by U.S. government on behalf of corporations who have sucked the life blood of the Haitian people for their profits.  France and Canada are junior partners in this exploitation and death.

The Haitian Masses Fight for Self Determination

Since 2010, the Clintons and their Foundation have used the guise of earthquake relief to enact programs to open Haiti to even more brutal exploitation by U.S. corporations.  While profits for corporations like Nike have soared, the Haitian masses face increased poverty, lack of food, water, and employment.

Headed by the U.S., the compliant U.N. has declared the next Haitian president with not even a semblance of choice by the people.  This new puppet with a changed face has already asked for U.S. troops. These troops will be used to repress the people’s movement for self-determination, sovereignty, and a revolutionary solution to their misery.

The racist U.S. and French ruling classes have never forgiven Haiti for the heroic 1791 revolution which was carried out by the formerly enslaved ancestors of the Haitian people. This spirit of resistance will prevail again.  Here in the U.S. “progressives” need to end their love affair with Biden who is carrying out an aggressive, murderous militarization around the world to build up U.S. empire.  No modest reform will bring lasting benefit to the U.S. working class when the US. government drives the global masses into starvation and death. 

Workers Voice Socialist Movement Sends our Comradely Congratulations to the Chinese Communist Party on its 100th Anniversary.We in the belly of U.S. imperialism should aspire to live the lives of the Communist Party cadre and the struggling masses who have given so much to bring an end to starvation, illiteracy, and women’s enslavement in China.

The enormous strides for humanity achieved in China are due to state ownership, planning, and the socialist commitment of millions of people. Billionaire Elon Musk and others would have us believe that capitalism brought prosperity to China, as he tweeted today. But where on earth has capitalism ever brought independence, sovereignty, equality, and freedom from hunger and brutal poverty? Nowhere. It was the socialist measures above all that progressed Chinese society in the face of war threats and sanctions.

Workers and oppressed in the U.S. should spend time studying the bravery and heavy sacrifice of the CPC, Chinese workers and peasants. They prevailed against the most horrific British and Japanese colonial oppression. They endured massacres, jailing, beatings, starvation and the open U.S. threat of nuclear bombs such as those dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. They overcame the reactionary forces of Chiang Kai-shek who was supported by Chinese millionaire oppressors and the US. These same forces promote recolonization in Hong Kong today. Depicted as ‘pro-democracy’ activists by the capitalist owned media, their Trump flags and cries for the ‘good old days’ of British colonialism say otherwise.

Many forget the lies that the U.S. has used as pretexts for war and occupation and are now falling for lies about the Chinese, including the racist slanders of Trump and of Biden who both want to blame China for COVID. The facts are clear: China has led the way internally and globally to defeat COVID in a way the U.S. has failed to and never will.

Why is the Biden administration raising military spending to new heights, setting up bases in Asia and flooding the South China seas with warships and military exercises? Is it to promote “democracy” as they claim? The same “democracy” that the U.S. has brought to Libya, Syria, Afghanistan, Iraq, and Yemen? Or to the millions more struggling to free themselves from the death and starvation imposed on them by U.S. puppet regimes in Columbia, Haiti, Israel, Saudi Arabia, and Ukraine? The U.S. wants to recolonize China, plain and simple. U.S. imperialists want claim to every last resource on the planet.

We must stand unconditionally against any military or economic or propaganda attacks on China. Today, the CPC declared that any aggressions launched against China will be met with a wall of steel 1.4 billion people strong, that they will never allow bullying, sanctimonious lies, or war threats to stand in the way of their quest for dignity and self-determination. We and the rest of the world’s people are safer when China stands as a fortress against U.S. imperialism, which aims to crush the world under the boots of a few billionaires.

We look forward to the time when China can remove capitalist foreign corporations and banks from their midst as they now pose more of a risk than a benefit to the development of Chinese society. We are confident that Socialism Will Prevail, and that Capitalism and Imperialist Lies Will Be Swept into the Dustbin of History. Long Live the Chinese People! Long Live the Chinese Communist Party.

---

This pamphlet collects quotes from dozens of revolutionaries, from Fred Hampton of the Black Panther Party to Leslie Feinberg, pioneering LGBTQ revolutionary, to Lenin, Mao, Engels, and Marx. Their words have inspired millions to fight for a better world.

Fred Hampton (1948—1969)

“You don’t fight fire with fire. You fight fire with water […] We’re gonna fight racism with solidarity. We’re gonna fight capitalism with socialism. Socialism is the people. If you’re afraid of socialism you’re afraid of yourself.”

“We say we’re not going to fight capitalism with black capitalism, but we’re going to fight it with socialism. […] We’re going to fight their reactions with all of us people getting together and having an international proletarian revolution.”

“If you ever think about me, and you ain’t gonna do no revolutionary act, forget about me. I don’t want myself on your mind if you’re not going to work for the people.”

“We ain’t gonna fight no reactionary pigs who run up and down the street being reactionary; we’re gonna organize and dedicate ourselves to revolutionary political power and teach ourselves the specific needs of resisting the power structure, arm ourselves, and we’re gonna fight reactionary pigs with international proletarian revolution.”

“We might not be back. I might be in jail. I might be anywhere. But when I leave, you’ll remember I said, with the last words on my lips, that I am a revolutionary. And you’re going to have to keep on saying that. You’re going to have to say that I am a proletarian; I am the people.”

“We say primarily that the priority of this struggle is class. That Marx and Lenin and Che Guevara and Mao Zedong, and anybody else who ever said or knew or practiced anything about revolution, always said that a revolution is a class struggle.”

Click here to download our pamphlet Revolutionary Leaders on Socialism and Marxist Study!

NATO Meets to Prepare War And Economic Murder

On Friday, Biden went to Europe to proclaim U.S., European, and Japanese capitalists’ intention to dominate the world by any means necessary, including extortion, sanctions, and war. His tour started with the G7 summit, a meeting of the world’s richest capitalist governments—U.S., Canada, England, France, Germany, Italy, the EU, and Japan. This gang of thieves ought to hide their faces as millions around the world have died from COVID-19 and starvation solely because of their greed. They just blocked Venezuela from buying COVID-19 vaccines. 

After the G7 summit, Biden will meet with NATO, the joint armed forces of the G7 gang. Since its founding in 1949, NATO has been used to deny self-determination to dozens of countries around the world. U.S./NATO attacks on Syria, Afghanistan, Palestine, Libya, and Iraq have driven millions of desperate refugees from their homes. Meanwhile, the “democratic” billionaires of the G7 countries have only increased their wealth and their stranglehold over the people of the world.

Biden Giddy with Right-Wing Alliances to Attack China

Biden claims that the G7 is an alliance of democracies as opposed to oligarchies and tyrannies. There is no truth to this claim on either the domestic or the international front. G7 member states support the most brutal dictatorships, including Saudi Arabia and Israel, while the U.S. itself cages one quarter of the world’s prisoners in its prisons, jails, and detention centers. The G7 countries hoard vaccines for themselves while China has already sent more than 350 million vaccines to countries around the world.   

Like Trump and Obama, the Biden administration has singled out China as the main obstacle to realizing Western capitalists’ dream of total world conquest. The aim of the U.S. and its junior partners in the G7 is to recolonize and take the vast wealth of China, subjugating the Chinese masses to the rule of U.S capitalists. When Biden claims that their war maneuvers are meant to protect “U.S. interests” he means the interests of banks and corporations, not the interests of U.S. workers or any other member of the global working class.

Blood-soaked NATO Lies To Drum Up War Fever

Biden claims that the building up of NATO forces is necessary to counter Russian or Chinese “aggression.” This conveniently ignores nuclear-armed NATO’s own record of aggressions, such as the carpet-bombing of Yugoslavia, the destruction of Libya, the brutal occupation of Afghanistan, and more. As G7 members meet, the U.S. is carrying out troop exercises in 6 countries in Africa. Despite promising no NATO bases near Russia, Russia is now surrounded by them. 28,000 NATO troops will be deployed for military exercises across Europe this year. NATO’s war budget makes up 55% of total global military spending. Who’s the aggressor?

The U.S capitalist government and its mouthpieces in the media trot out lie after lie to justify the U.S. war buildup and the annual $1 trillion dollar handout to war profiteering corporations paid for with U.S. taxpayer dollars. The U.S. has 800 foreign military bases; China has one foreign supply depot. The U.S. is building bases all through Asia and just allowed its puppets in South Korea to build long range missiles aimed at China. The U.S., proclaiming imperial right of the sea and space, is sailing nuclear armed ships off the coasts of China, Venezuela, and other nations.

Workers Must Resist NATO’s Drive to WWIII

The governments of the G7 alliance have spent more than a century trying to enslave the people of the world and have condemned tens of millions to death in the process. Like the Berlin Conference of 1884 and many imperialist conferences since, the G7 summit is a coming-together of capitalist vultures to carve up the world for themselves. The “shared interest” that unites the G7 is capitalist greed. Whether the capitalist powers are united in greed or divided by greed, we workers are the ones to suffer the consequences. We’re the ones that die in their bloody wars for profit.  

We have nothing in common with the champagne guzzling warmongers assembled in these boardrooms. Workers of all countries should demand the immediate dissolution of the G7 and NATO, which endanger the world for the profits of a few. 

On May 27, Mayor Cantrell announced “Operation Golden Eagle,” a plan to deploy Louisiana State Police in New Orleans neighborhoods alongside NOPD.  On the same day, the family of Ronald Greene and hundreds of others were marching on the Governor’s Mansion to protest his murder by state cops.

In May 2019, LA state troopers murdered beloved community member Ronald Greene, a Black man from Monroe. Video footage leaked in May 2021 shows three cops beating him to death and then bragging about it. A lawsuit against state cops Jacob Brown, Dakota DeMoss, and George Harper, all of whom are white, revealed text messages between them bragging about another brutal assault—that of Antonio Harris—during a traffic stop. 

Racist Police Terror Serves the Rich 

These acts of armed racist terror go on every day. They are not the exception but are the rule. Most go unknown to the public due to police threats of retaliation. Only the atrocities that are videotaped get attention.  

Cops are violent, racist thugs. Because they protect the rich, they are encouraged to be a brutal force. The more hardship grows in the working class of all nationalities, the more the rich need their police to protect their obscene wealth.  Despite the world witnessing police crimes and despite damages sometimes paid, they continue to not only get away with this but are praised and rewarded with increased funding. This has not changed since the murder of George Floyd.  

State Police Kill Prison Reform Bill

In June, the Louisiana State Police and Louisiana Supreme Court successfully lobbied to kill a bill that would have automatically expunged eligible offenses from peoples’ records. Through the efforts of Voice of the Experienced (VOTE), several prison reforms did pass this year. But the fact that the Louisiana Legislature dropped House Bill 604, which would have automatically wiped criminal records after parole, is a blow to thousands of people. This measure would have enabled people to get jobs, vote, and have social benefits.  Prison follows you even when you get out, and that is what the rich want: to terrorize the poor for the rest of their lives, forcing them into low-wage jobs, or perhaps, back to prison to be further exploited. 

Incarceration Means Big Money for LA Lawmakers, Wardens, Prison Corporations 

Louisiana legislators rake in hundreds of thousands of dollars from sheriffs and police officers. That’s why they and other elected officials aim to keep Louisiana as the most incarcerated place in the world. While police and prison departments get massive funding, wardens personally profit. Capitalists in charge of Louisiana’s prison system get rich from the operation of private prisons, exploitation of enslaved prisoners, and from food and phone contracts. The entire system is rotten, but don’t call it corrupt: it does exactly what it is designed to do for the benefit of a few white Louisiana capitalists. 

Get Louisiana State Troopers off our streets now! 

Millions of people rose up last summer to demand an end to police terror, calling for cities to defund the police and abolish ICE. Instead of funding cops, cities need to fund good jobs, good education, housing, and healthcare. We say free the non-violent incarcerated in state prisons and jails, free the migrants, and free the children! Get Louisiana State troopers off our streets! Jail the cops who murdered Ronald Greene!

SESSION RENEWS ATTACKS ON WORKERS, CUTS TAXES FOR RICH

While workers have been suffering from hunger, unemployment, and poverty wages, the Louisiana Legislature has spent most of the last session focused on lowering taxes for the rich and enabling even more blatant corruption.  

Another year has passed with no raise to the minimum wage (still at $7.25), when $15 an hour would raise wages for half of all Louisiana workers, especially women and Black workers.  

$300 million a year has been diverted from the state general fund for education, healthcare and other services to road construction. This will line the pockets of Boh Brothers and others mega-builders who contribute to their campaigns. 

Louisiana lawmakers also moved to strip the additional $300 million in FEDERAL money to the unemployed. This is a giveaway to employers who pay poverty wages to desperate workers. After dealing this blow, they make it seem like raising maximum unemployment a whole $28 a week is an act of kindness. The max now is $247, the lowest in the country. Many workers get less than $150.  

Add to their crimes the denial of Medicaid coverage to women after giving birth which endangers the lives of many new mothers. 

FIRE THE LOUISIANA LEGISLATORS, STRIP THEIR MEDICAL BENEFITS, TAX THEIR INCOMES  

Just a few days ago the Legislature agreed to end some corporate loopholes, but only after lowering the tax rate for corporations, 200 of which already pay no taxes. They have made the “temporary” sales tax hike permanent putting the burden on the poorest.  

These legislators, with only a few exceptions, own companies or receive personal compensation from sheriff’s departments, water corporations, oil and gas and plastic companies’ companies, banks, real estate developers, and law firms representing the rich.  This is why they continue to praise and give exemptions to companies like Formosa Plastics, which is killing the Black community in Cancer Alley in St. James Parish. 

Workers Must Get Organized to Stop the Louisiana Legislature’s War On Workers  

The Louisiana legislators are smug, sitting in their mansions and country clubs as Louisiana remains the worst in child poverty, mass incarceration, unemployment benefits, wages, maternal deaths, and vaccination rates.  

They attempt to block education about the history of racism in the U.S. and Louisiana, which suffered massacres of Black residents in Colfax, Thibodaux, Opelousas, Bossier, St. Bernard, Orleans Parish and more. These were attempts by KKK-type groups backed by white politicians to prevent Black men from voting and from taking seats in elections they had won. Today, as Louisiana joins other states to suppress voting rights, that aim is being pursued by other means. 

The legislature is controlled by right-wing white supremacists, and while the burden falls especially hard on Black Louisianians, their policies create suffering for millions of workers of all nationalities. The state government’s claims of democratic legitimacy are ridiculous. They do not even allow a method for a popular vote to be put on the ballot by the people. We, the working class, have no representation.    

This will not change until we build independent workers’ organizations like the Louisiana Workers Councils. We need to build a militant workers’ movement to fight back. 

The research and technology for the Pfizer (Biotech) and Moderna COVID vaccines came from the National Institute of Health and was paid for by the public. Yet Pfizer has already made $900 million in profit from the vaccine. In April 87% of all vaccines went to richer countries, and the poorest countries only got 0.2%.  It is the combined labor and resources of the people that produced these vaccines. They belong to the people and should be mass produced and distributed to the entire world. An independent panel of scientists, workers, and international representatives should be convened to investigate and inform the U.S. public of the nature of the deaths caused by capitalist politicians and corporations.