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Corporate Campaign Bribes Pay Louisiana Legislators to Wage War on Workers

The minimum wage of $7.25 has been around since 2009. It was too low then, and it is way too low now. The official inflation rate does not count rent, food, utilities, tuition, or healthcare. The real inflation rate is between 7% and 13% depending on where you live. Adjusting for real inflation would mean a minimum wage of $12.60 to $16.88. EVen $12.60 is not a living wage. We want $15/hr.

The Louisiana Legislature is determined to totally impoverish workers even though most states have minimum wages higher than Louisiana’s. In 28 states, minimum wages are from $8.75 to $14 in 2021. While we work for pennies, Louisiana legislators live in luxury and give tax exemptions, abatements, and outright subsidies every year to corporations in exchange for campaign contributions, which are really bribes.

Florida voters have won a minimum wage increase to $15/hr over the next 4 years, despite millions spent to oppose their efforts. We want to vote for $15 an hour. Let Louisiana workers vote!

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NYC Fast Food Workers Win Just Cause Protections (Labor Briefs)

On December 17, fast food workers in New York City became the first in the country to win protections against arbitrary layoffs and reduced hours. NYC passed two “just cause” bills that prevent bosses from firing a worker or cutting their hours without giving a valid reason, either economic or related to job performance. This is a historic win for fast food workers who have been declared essential during COVID-19 but are treated as disposable, forced to work without healthcare, a living wage, hazard pay, and paid sick leave. They are often fired without warning or reason. Like many other essential work forces, the majority of fast food workers are Black and Brown people and women, who have suffered the most from COVID-19 and bear the brunt of the exploitation and lack of job security in the fast food industry. But fast food workers have fought back valiantly. They were the first to hold rallies for a $15 minimum wage and have been rallying and striking across the country demanding safety protections and higher wages since the pandemic. We should celebrate every victory for workers, anywhere and everywhere and never forget that it is our collective power that will help us win our long overdue rights.

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City of New Orleans Promotes Tourism Amid Rising Pandemic Numbers

by Daniel Meinecke, musician

Musicians in New Orleans are outraged over the decision from the city to spend money on Dick Clark’s ‘New Year’s Rockin’ Eve’ concert production. Initially Lieutenant Governor Billy Nungesser pushed for the state’s involvement in the even to the tune of $500,000 only if singer Lauren Daigle was to be the representative for Louisiana. This caused outrage amongst the community because Lauren Daigle was also partially responsible for the super spreader event in November that Sean Feucht hosted and the city police and leaders failed to shut down. Mayor Cantrell requested to the event promoters that they remove Daigle from the concert, which caused the outrage of Nungesser and the removal of state funds from the project. Mayor Cantrell should have used this opportunity to vilify Nungesser, who is more aligned with Daigle than the needs of the people of New Orleans. However, the Mayor was insistent on the event happening, so she funded the spot in the concert through the New Orleans Culture and Heritage Fund (NOTCF) and used it to keep the event in New Orleans, but with the New Orleans artists PJ Morton and Big Freedia.

The funds were pulled from this account because the slot in the NYE production was to be an advertisement for tourism to New Orleans. This is despite the current spike in COVID-19 cases. “New Orleans cannot market itself out of the situation it is in,” said a representative of Music and Culture Coalition of New Orleanse.

City’s misuse of Culture Fund benefits tourism companies, not artists

The biggest issue of the misuse of these funds is that the board of the NOTCF has been unable to pivot the use of these funds to help the community, but instead goes ahead with an advertisement to promote tourism. Even Kristin Palmer of the City Council who also sits on the NOTCF board said, “NOTCF is not in the business of promotion, but to invest in our people,” according to meeting minutes from an NOTCF meeting on December 18th. Kristin Palmer was also the only dissenting vote on the measure to allow the use of the funds for the concert. The NOTCF is out of touch with the community and actively digging itself into a hole as it fund projects not related to helping the community through a pandemic that has left people out of work for 9 months.

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Louisiana Attorney General Jeff Landry: Enemy of Working People, Friend of Fascists & White Supremacists, Servant of Oil Companies

THROW LANDRY OUT!

Here are just a few of Louisiana Attorney General Jeff Landry’s Crimes Against the People. Landry has overstepped his authority by actions not authorized by the people of Louisiana.

  • As head of the Republican Attorneys General, Landry organized a robocall for people to march on the Capitol. Landry refused to sign letters from other attorneys general to condemn the fascist violence in D.C. Instead he attacked Black Lives Matter protesters and said Antifa was responsible. Landry is not representing the people but a small group of racist thugs. He should lose his office for using his position to encourage them.
  • Despite 400,000 dead in the U.S. from Covid including 8,000 so far in LA, Landry sued to end safety measures in LA. Landry has opposed all workers’ safety measures against COVID, including hazard pay and universal healthcare.
  • Landry gets funding from billionaires like Charles Koch and ALEC, the ultra-right wing corporate lobby that funds most of the state legislators, and writes the laws they submit. When they say jump, he says “How high?”
  • Landry sued to get rid of Medicaid and deprive nearly 700,000 adults and children of healthcare. The people did not authorize him to do this as the State attorney general.
  • Landry wants to kick 810,000 Louisianans off of Food Stamps.
  • Landry opposes raising the minimum wage.
  • Landry opposed workers getting paid sick time off.
  • Landry is for increased fossil fuel production but not for guaranteeing jobs for oil workers.

REMOVE LANDRY FROM OFFICE AND THROW HIM IN JAIL FOR CRIMES AGAINST THE PEOPLE!

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Tell Orleans DA Jason Williams: “Time for Justice! Drop the False Charges Against Mickey Davis and Caleb Wassell!” (Calls to Action)

Take Down All Symbols to White Supremacy

On Saturday, June 11, hundreds of people took down a statute of slaveowner John McDonogh in Duncan Plaze and threw it in the river, rejecting the racist monument and everything it stood for. NOPD singled out and falsely accused two people among the hundreds. Mickey Davis and CAleb Wassell were assaulted and arrested. In an act of openly racist retaliation, the city members of the white supremacist Monumental Task Committee appraise the statue in order to inflate the value of it and charge Caleb with a felony that could come with a sentence of 10 years in prison.

The charges are a blatant attempt to intimidate the mass movement that arose this summer in response to police terror and racism. Six months later, the city is still pursuing these ridiculous charges, with not evidence that either Davis or Wassel was involved in the alleged “crime” of removing a racist eyesore from a public park.

STAND IN SOLIDARITY WITH MICKEY AND CALEB!

Contact the district attorney and demand that ALL charges be dropped!

District Attorney: (504) 822-2414
communications@orleansda.com

Suggested message:
“I am contacting you to demand that the District Attorney’s office drop all charges against Mickey Davis and Caleb Wassell. The city must respect the will of the people of New Orleans, who decided to remove from the public landscape a statue that venerated the slaveowner John McDonogh. It’s time that New Orleans join the ranks of cities across the world who are taking the path of progress by disowning monuments to slavery, genocide, and racism. Drop the baseless and unjust charges against Davis and Wassell now.”

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Put an End to Gender Violence – Get Organized!

July 18, 2020: Demonstrators at a BLM rally for Black women led by New Orleans Workers Group.

by Lauren Gutierrez

With consistent attacks to dominate our bodies, control our lives and degrade out worth, the U.S. government and many other countries around the world still fail to acknowledge women or femmes as whole and autonomous human beings. Instead, we are left to persistently fight for our human rights along with the day-to-day struggle of living in this over-burdening capitalist world.

Women or femmes are disposable property within their own homes. According to a new study, one in three women murdered worldwide are killed by an intimate partner, which may actually be a higher number due to lack of data or missing information. From the pathetic criminal justice response to reported rapes and domestic violence to a broken healthcare system, society, and government continue to fail women and femmes, leaving us to depend on our partners support, even if they are toxic and abusive. Meanwhile, hundreds of women are in jail for defending themselves.

The U.S. has taken it upon itself to remove women’s body parts. Doctors have been removing the uteruses of migrant women in ICE concentration camps built under the Obama administration and utilized in Trump’s America. Some of the most vulnerable women are those from a foreign country caged and dependent on their captors to provide food and healthcare. Our government has seen this as an opportunity to mutilate and torture mostly black and brown migrant women.

There is an epidemic of missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls in the U.S. and Canada where 4 in 5 Indigenous women experience violence in their lifetime, which includes human trafficking. In many cases, missing Indigenous femmes are misclassified as Hispanic, and missing adults don’t show up in the law enforcement database. These crimes aren’t even reported on or resolved within the public eye, so they basically remain invisible to society.

Since 2015, police have murdered 48 Black women. How many of them can you name? The most noted young woman of them all, Breonna Taylor, has yet to see any justice after police took her innocent life.

The life expectancy of a Black transgender woman is 35 years. At least 350 transgender and gender non-conforming people have been killed globally in 2020. 98 percent were trans women or trans feminine. 79 percent were people of color. This doesn’t include those deaths that were unreported or misreported, either by deadnaming or misgendering the victims.

The majority of Louisiana voters have chosen to add oppressive language to the Louisiana Declaration of Rights, weakening the protection of and funding for abortion access. The addition begins with the words, “To protect human life” as it utterly disregards the human life of the woman herself. But just as has been done in Argentina, Ireland, and Poland, we will turn this around in Louisiana. Massive, women-led struggles around the world demand abortion rights, an end to violence against women, and rights to food, wages, and housing. We need to get busier here.

In a capitalist patriarchal society, it is okay to oppress or dominate women or femmes. We are still seen as property within our homes and the government still fights to control our bodies and decisions on family planning. Our lives are valued less than a masculine person and even seen as a commodity for sex or slavery. Women and femmes are treated as less than human – as an object. In my opinion, people and the government seek to control what they fear. If dominance over femmes is a badge of honor, then being a femme in control of oneself must be the “holy grail.” Onward.

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Support Incarcerated Workers’ Strike in Alabama (Calls to Action)

by Jennifer Lin

In protest against the utterly inhumane conditions in Alabama DOC, the prisoner-led Free Alabama Movement’s 30-Day Economic Blackout has stopped work from Jan 1 to Jan 31.

On January 1, incarcerated people across Alabama’s prison system went on a work strike and 11 people in isolation went on a hunger strike. Officially called the “30 Day Economic Blackout,” the strike is being organized by the Free Alabama Movement, founded and led by imprisoned Black men fighting against mass incarceration and prison slavery. People in Alabama’s prisons live in heinous conditions in overcrowded cells and are ten time smore likely to die from homicide than in any other state. Incarcerated peoples’ loved one can no longer visit them in person; Alabama is only allowing virtual visits due to COVID-19, but the Free Alabama Movement claims this is a front to permanently end in-person visits to psychologically torture incarcerated people even more. These virtual visits are insanely profitable for tech companies that have contracts with prisons. The strike is calling on people to show solidarity by boycotting 5 corporations that profit from prisons and forced prison labor: Securus Technologies, JPay, Access Correction, Union Supply Company, and Alabama Correctional Industries.

Prisons are a tool for the mass torture and dehumanization of primarily Black and brown people and funnel huge profits to private corporations through forced labor. They are designed to prop up capitalism and further the oppression of workers. Now incarcerated people are being left to die in crowded and dirty cells without access to adequate medical care during COVID-19. These people are our friends, family, and community members. The Alabama strike is a tremendous act of resistance that we must support.

The people on hunger strike have been brutally repressed with beatings, mace, harassment, and threats. The Free Alabama Movement is asking everyone to engage in an email, phone, and twitter storm of support. Tell Dunn: “At Kilby Correctional Facility, Sgt. Williams and Officer Landrum jumped on an bead a prisoner who is participating in a hunger strike. Alabama DOC needs to intervene immediately by investigating this incident and firing both guards.” – from the the #Alabama11. Show your solidarity by joining this call!

Call, Email, Twitter the Alabama Corrections Department
Alabama DOC Commissioner Jeff Dunn:
334-353-3883
Jefferson.dunn@doc.Alabama.gov
Twitter @ADOCDunn

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Trump’s Nightmare Space Wars Endorsed by Biden

We need money to end COVID-19, poverty, unemployment, racism and debt, not space bombs.

by Gavrielle Gemma

Militarism and war are the biggest ways capitalist vampires are sucking the peoples’ blood to amass huge profits. Trump may be on the way out, but Republicans and Democrats have endorsed his nightmarish space wars program – the U.S. Space Force, which was established in 2019. Both parties recently voted to give $15.2 billion to the new Space Force as part of the military budget for 2021.

U.S. throws out international treaty

After the fascist shut-down of the Capitol, politicians proclaimed that the U.S. believes in the rule of law. But the only laws they believe in are laws protecting private profits. In 1967, the U.S. signed an international Outer Space Treaty banning nuclear weapons and military bases in outer space and prohibiting any nation from claiming sovereignty over space. This treaty has been ignored.

New Space Force to threaten the world

Space Force is the Pentagon’s “separate military branch for American supremacy in space.” The Space Force is headed by General Jay Raymond, who wrote the “capstone war-fighting doctrine” for space, the plan for Space Force to encircle the globe with U.S. satellites to control the global GPS and for many satellites to have missile firing capability.

The Pentagon, on behalf of private corporations, has for years been carrying out a U.S. cyber war. There has been a lot of media hype about how maybe Russia, maybe China, maybe Iran hacked into the U.S. systems. These hysteric reports distract us from the failures of the U.S. with COVID-19 and growing poverty. Meanwhile, the U.S. openly bragged in 2019 that they have hacked Russian power grids, which has the potential to endanger the lives of millions of people.

Control of the global GPS could be used for even more deadly ends around the globe, as so many systems rely on this navigation system. Space Force would extend the already extensive hacking by the U.S. into countries’ systems around the world, increasing the threat to lives of the world’s people.

Biden signals he will continue Trump’s investment in space war

Profiteering corporations – including fascist Tesla’s Space X, Lockheed Martin, L3Harris, York Space System, Rand Corporations – are racing to feed at this new source of wealth stolen from the working people. Bill Gattle of L3Harris said, “the whole industry is moving from building a few satellites to building hundreds of them.”

In September, Joe Biden told the Military Officers Association of America that, “we have to make smart investments in technologies and innovations – including in cyber, space, unmanned systems, and artificial intelligence […] to meet the threats of the future.” That Biden would be for extending Trump’s Space Force project is not surprising. Biden’s transition team has many militarists, military corporations representatives, bankers, and Wall Street executives on it.

Space News, a publication for the profiteering space ware industry, responded to questions regarding the Biden administration’s support for Space Force. Velos, a military consulting firm, wrote “space continues to be a bipartisan policy and Joe Biden’s campaign has articulated their belief in the importance of the doman.” Velos continued, “the Democratic Party national platform supports continuity with NASA and the Space Force.”

The military section of the capitalist economy is growing ever larger. It represents the most racist and right-wing, pro-fascist elements of society. That is why the Pentagon, who has oversight of operations in D.C., openly delayed National Guard troops moving into D.C., allowing the fascists free reign on January 6.

All the money the government is giving to war profiteers belongs to the people. Their wars in space of on the ground are only to enrich the obscenely wealthy. A working-class anti-war movement can stop them, and we will.

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Biden Installed Fascists in Ukraine in 2014

Trump’s Gone – Good.
Don’t Count on Biden to Fight Fascism.

December 7, 2015, Ukraine’s President Petro Poroshenko welcomes Joe Biden to Kiev, Ukraine.

On January 6, hours after the fascist storming of the Capitol, Biden was delivering a speech about this “unprecedented assault” on democracy. But Biden’s actions the day before make a mockery of this statement. On January 5, Biden announced his pick of Victoria Nuland for the position of undersecretary of political affairs. Nuland was Asst. Secretary of State in the Obama/Biden/Clinton regime. In this role she was tasked with toppling the elected government of Ukraine because they refused to cut ties with Russia and because Ukraine had resisted the building up of NATO military bases in their country.

In 2014, the U.S. got the coup they were hoping for and Nuland along with Senator John McCain could be seen at right wing rallies, standing shoulder to shoulder with openly neo-Nazi groups celebrating the overturning of the Ukrainian government. A leaked 2014 phone conversation between Nuland and U.S. Ambassador Geoffrey Pyatt revealed that they’d planned the coup and had even hand-picked leaders who would serve U.S. business interests.

In order to carry out the coup, Nuland and her co-conspirators relied on fascist militias who took over government buildings and drove out the elected government by force. These were the same fascist forces that months later burned 39 people alive when they besieged and set fire to a union building in Odessa. THey hoped this act of terrorism would crush workers’ resistance to their newly installed regime. For more than 7 years they’ve waged a brutal war against antifascists in Eastern Ukraine. This war has been supported by U.S. military personnel and funded with more than $1 billion worth of U.S. taxpayer dollars.

December 6, 2018. Ukrainian president Petro Poroshenko poses for a picture with the members of the Ukrainian military who openly display the “Totenkopf” insignia of the Nazi SS.

Biden and the wealthy capitalists that he serves took advantage of the “business friendly” environment that the fascist government enforced. Formerly state companies were scooped up at fire-sale prices and Ukraine’s rich farmland was raided by Monsanto. Biden’s son was put on the board of a formerly public owned gas company and paid $50,000 a month, just like a member of the Trump Klan.

Mass layoffs followed the privatizing of state industries. Pensioners were cheated out of their retirements on the orders of the U.S. controlled International Monetary Fund (IMF). IN a speech to the Ukrainian parliament Biden urged lawmakers to make the “difficult reforms” that the IMF demanded. Now fascist gangs patrol the streets of Ukraine to repress any resistance to these anti-worker attacks.

Last month a United Nations resolution to “combat the glorification of Nazism, neo-Nazism and other practices that contribute to fueling contemporary forms of racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia, and related intolerance.” 130 countries voted in favor of the resolution. The U.S. and Ukraine were the sole votes against. The Democratic Party did not object.

Jan 6, 2021. Fascist inside the Capitol building wears a shirt that reads “Camp Auschwitz,” a reference to the Nazi death camp where 1.1. million people were exterminated.
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What is Antifa? It Means Anti-Fascist

It is we, the People – Black, white, Latinx, Asian, Indigenous, workers and students, all genders, all ages, struggling for jobs, better wages, food on our tables, respect, equality, and peace. Antifa means to fight by any means to defend the people against racism and fascism and for workers’ rights. Antifa are those who fought against slavery, workers who fought to defend their unions, mothers who stood up tot he KKK, youth who bravely fought on the front lines in Portland against the same scum who rampaged in Washington D.C.

Millions of U.S. workers took up arms against the fascists in WWII. They were Antifa.

While the U.S. government entered the war to gain colonies and profits, and U.S. capitalists helped fund Hitler, millions of workers from the U.S. and around the world took up guns against the German Nazis during WWII. They lost their lives fighting to smash Nazi fascism. They were Antifa.

Who are fascists? Cowardly puppets whose strings are pulled by super rich right wing funders who hate working people and use them to do their dirty work. Fascists are the cowards who are too afraid to fight the real enemies of the people. They want a government of billionaires, with stormtroopers terrorizing all. Trump is a racist, fascist in chief, and mass murderer of the people, who from his golden toilet, waited on by servants, tells his fascist tools what to do on behalf of his wealthy friends.

Trump has blamed violence in Washington D.C. on Antifa and Black Lives Matter protesters. Liberals put equal signs between us and the fascists. Some say the fascists were just people with “complaints.” This is dangerous. Fascists and white supremacists are people who are puppets for the ultra-rich capitalists they claim to hate. Donald Trump, whose father was a member of the KKK, is a slum lord and a crook, surrounded by racist war mongering maniacs. He steals our taxes, hates, despises, and spits on working people. They will never win if we the working class unite to defeat them!