Dec. 6: Jesse Perkins, a resident of Gordon Plaza, addresses students participating in a Climate Strike organized by Sunrise New Orleans. Students demanded that the city fully fund the relocation of all residents of Gordon Plaza, a housing development built on toxic soil.
By Nath Clarke
On December 6, 2019, 200 people gathered at City Hall for a Climate Strike organized by Sunrise New Orleans. They demanded that Mayor Latoya Cantrell and the City Council:
Champion the Green New Deal
Fully fund the relocation of Gordon Plaza residents
Stop the construction of the fracked gas plant in New Orleans East
Commit to 100% renewable energy
Students of all ages spoke on the urgency of organizing in the face of the current climate crisis. Reverend Gregory Manning, a pastor at the Broadmoor Community Church, talked about environmental racism—and how people of color often are on the front lines of the fight against coastal erosion. Jesse Perkins (pictured at right), a resident of Gordon Plaza who’s been leading their fight for fully funded relocation spoke as well. Gordon Plaza is a Black, working-class neighborhood in the Upper Ninth Ward built on a Superfund site. For over 30 years, the residents have been organizing for the right to live on soil that won’t kill them.
Families and human rights defenders gather at the Mississippi Capitol to protest conditions inside Mississippi jails and prisons. Five prisoners have died in MDOC custody between Dec. 29 and Jan. 3.
On January 7, protesters gathered at the Mississippi State Capitol building to speak out against the deplorable conditions that prisoners have endured in Mississippi jails and prisons.
Since Dec. 29, 2019, at least five prisoners have died because of the violent conditions in Mississippi prisons. Recently, the Mississippi Department of Corrections (MDOC) has moved inmates to a notoriously decrepit maximum security unit at Parchman, the state penitentiary. This unit had previously been forced to close due to inhumane conditions. Prisoners have documented a lack of plumbing and electricity, flooded quarters, rampant black mold, and more.
Mississippi governor Phil Bryant justified this inhumane treatment of prisoners as retaliation for “gang violence.”
Sharon Brown, who has family on the inside, responded: “It is not a gang war. It is a systemic war. The biggest gang sits right there in that tower,” Brown said, pointing to the Capitol building.
Protesters are demanding an immediate reform to these inhumane conditions, the end of corporal and group punishment, educational and vocational-technical programs, the decriminalization of marijuana, restoration of regular family visitation and more.
The Sacklers—the biggest drug dealers in the U.S.—are in court for knowingly profiting from pushing millions into opioid addiction, specifically with OxyContin, produced by their company Purdue Pharma.
But they have never been criminally charged. Instead, courts are working out a financial settlement that will go to state governments, not the victims.
Now it has been revealed that this rotten family withdrew $10 billion from the company to put in family-owned bank accounts in order to hide their real wealth and to ensure that they continue to live it up.
All their money should be seized and distributed to those driven into addiction by these psychopathic capitalists, and they should all be jailed for their crimes.
Prisons cost the federal government billions of dollars to keep approximately 2.3 million people behind bars each year. The City of New Orleans currently dedicates 63% of its $721 million dollar budget to jails, police, and other reactive measures. The “City of Yes” says no to returning stolen tax dollars to working families by continuously dedicating only 1% of the budget to job development and 3% to children and families. Families around the country spend thousands of dollars each year just to keep in contact with dear ones who have been placed in prisons. They send money to incarcerated loved ones and incur debt to pay for emails, phone calls, food, and personal hygiene items.
Research done by a collaborative, participatory research project with 20 community-based organizations across the country like the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights, Forward Together, and Research Action Design shows some hard hitting facts about how America’s punitive jail system is deeply impacting families as much as the incarcerated.
One report states, “The high cost of maintaining contact with incarcerated family members led more than one in three families (34%) into debt to pay for phone calls and visits alone. Family members who were not able to talk or visit with their loved ones regularly were much more likely to report experiencing negative health impacts related to a family member’s incarceration.” If we want to support building whole communities, we must examine what punitive systems like this really achieve. Who do they benefit? The rich ruling class is waging war on working people and the poor. We must call for an end to the prison industrial complex and support building communities where families can be healed. We must fight for the right to self-determination for all people.
The vote on the jail expansion, which took place on December 5, was painted as a victory by some, as every city council member voted “Yes” on the sheriff’s proposal. The Temporary Detention Center (TDC) that was supposed to be closed in 2017 and has been illegally operating ever since with more prisoners than the proposed bed cap of 1,100, has been approved by the city to remain open. They intend to use the TDC to warehouse mentally ill people who have been incarcerated. This vote does nothing to challenge the unjust criminalization of the mentally ill or the lack of public, accessible mental health services. City Councilmembers Banks and Palmer worked out a last-minute concession to those opposing the proposal: instead of the proposed bed-cap of 1,438 (bed caps determine the maximum amount of people that fill them), there is now a person cap of 1,250.
While we understand that we cannot abolish prisons overnight (without revolution), we must also be clear that this is far from enough. As long our community members’ lives are sold into prison slave labor, all of us working people are under attack. In this society, the overwhelming majority of “crime” that leads to incarceration stems from poverty. When people’s backs are pushed against a wall with low wages and high taxes, rent, and food costs, a situation is created where people must act to survive. If the New Orleans city government (or the US government at large) actually wanted to put an end to crime, the proactive solution would be to fund quality jobs, healthcare, childcare, and education. The interests of the majority would be served by a living wage and social programs that build communities. But when we look at the city budget, it is clear they have allocated OUR money where THEIR interests lie. Over 60% of the city budget goes to cops, jails, and reactive measures.
By filling prison beds with thousands of predominantly black folk, there are millions to be made in profit. Over 50,000 people fill Louisiana’s jails and prisons, and there are over 8,000 undocumented people in detention centers.
Over $1 million of tax payer money is paid out to Louisiana’s prison economy every day.
Not only are we the ones being incarcerated en masse; we’re also the ones who are paying for it! While the minimum wage has not gone up in over 20 years, Louisiana remains one of the highest incarcerated places on the planet.
With nearly 60,000 of our community members in cages, the rich can further their profits by forcing incarcerated people to work for as little as 86 cents per day. As previously mentioned, the lack of funding for quality jobs ensures that unemployed and underemployed people will be chained and caged. This keeps all of our wages down. By incarcerating poor and working class people, the rich keep a boot on our necks by restricting our access to political engagement and community life. By filling jails with predominantly black and brown folk, the state can continue to vilify us, using racism to justify their violence.
How can we truly fight back against this war on our bodies? Only a united front of working people can put an end to the prisons and jails of the capitalist U.S. We say, “lift the wages, down with cages!”
61% of college students have to take out loans to pay for their education; for many of these students, their debt becomes a lifelong burden. In total, over 44 million people in the US owe more than $1.5 trillion to various loan providers. The majority of this debt has accrued over the last decade.
Since 1987, the number of students enrolled in public and private institutions has almost doubled. In this time, costs have more than doubled. Students often have no choice but to accept these loans, sometimes with fluctuating interest rates that go as high as 25%. Once out of school, students are discovering that wages aren’t high enough to live, much less service their debt.
Parasitic loan companies have a record for making the repayment process as difficult as possible, charging fees for payments and forcibly holding back payments to extend the debt. As loan company Navient (changed from Sallie Mae as lawsuits piled up) admitted in court in a rare moment of corporate honesty: “there is no expectation that the servicer will act in the interest of the consumer.” These words sum up the industry, cold and unwavering in their pursuit of maximum profits.
It should be no surprise that more than 3,000 students default on their loans every day. The ultra-rich shareholders at Navient do a service to their fellow capitalists when they saddle workers with the distraction of never-ending debt. They count on the constant harassment by debt-collectors and the threat of wage garnishments being enough to keep people in line. They count on us always running on the hamster wheel to avoid poverty, with little time to consider a future beyond debt bondage. They expect that we’ll suffer our debts in private while we’re denied jobs because of our credit scores. But there are 44 million of us! We must unite to demand a cancellation of all student debt! Education should be free; other workers have won this right across the world. It’s time we catch up! Cancel the debt!
Citing low unemployment, Trump boasts that the economy is booming under his leadership. Is this really true? Unless you’re counting the profits of the ultra-rich, no.
The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) determines the official unemployment rate by taking a telephone poll. If you’ve worked just one hour during the week of their poll, you count as employed. Excluded are more than 2.3 million workers locked up in jails, prisons, and detention camps across the country.
Add to this more than 5.2 million people who currently want a job but have not looked for work in the last 4 weeks. Usually these are merely discouraged workers, but according to the BLS, they have “dropped out of the labor force.”
Economists who continue to take the unemployment rate at face value wonder why wages have barely budged. “Full employment” ought to enable workers to bid for higher wages. If the bosses deny a pay raise, the worker can easily take another job—or so the theory goes.
High paid economists might learn a thing or two from talking to workers. As it turns out, low-wage, temporary, and part-time jobs make up the largest growing sector in the economy, continuing a trend of the last thirty years. A recent study by the Brookings Institution found that more than 44% of U.S. workers make less than $18,000 a year. 36% of the workforce has to work more than one job to get by.
These conditions typify the most recent phase in a global class war in which the capitalists have, with few exceptions, outmaneuvered workers for control over the world’s factories, farmlands, mines, etc.
Capitalists want governments that guarantee them labor as cheap as they can get it, whether that means cutting social programs or enslaving workers. Whenever they succeed in installing governments for this purpose—whether by coups, invasions or bribery—they advance their goal of pitting workers against one another in a global race to the bottom.
We workers have the power to turn the tide. The capitalists depend solely on the labor of the international working class for their profits. Our labor makes the world run. Workers in the United States need to realize that our well-being is bound up with the well-being of the workers of the world. For this reason, we need to come to the defense of any nation that resists the domination of our shared enemy—the ultra rich bankers and bosses who want nothing more than to grind us down so that they can live it up. Workers should treat the borders of every nation that resists U.S. imperialism as they would a picket line.
All workers have the right to a safe and reliable job that allows them time to care for their communities. But we’re going to have to fight to get it; the first step is to know which side you’re on.
Minimum Wage Has Increased in 46 States It’s time Louisiana workers get paid $15 an hour! Raising the Minimum Wage will Raise the Wages of All workers
Millions of workers in France have been on strike to protest the anti-worker policies of the Macron government. Sign reads “Let’s Revolt!”
Workers Tell Capitalist Government, “Don’t Mess With Us!”
By Nath Clarke
Current French President Emmanuel Macron, who puts the interests of bankers and big business above the people, announced plans to gut Social Security, affecting millions of people across the country. The Yellow Vest movement and many unions have been struggling against his policies (cuts to public spending, increased taxes for the poor, and tax cuts for the super-rich) for over a year. Working French people are not done fighting back against cuts to Social Security, public hospitals, and aid for poor families.
After the government announced plans to reform retirements, several of the most powerful unions offered an ultimatum on December 15th: scrap this law or feel the rage of the people. Since December 3rd, the teachers’ union, the train workers’ union, the bus drivers’ union, the hospital workers’ union, the truckers’, the EMTs’, the airport workers’, the refinery workers’, the firefighters’—and even the lawyers’— unions have issued a call to strike.
The rage of the people is a force to be reckoned with: in Paris, public transportation has come to a halt; only every third train is running across the rest of France; entire refineries have been shut down as their workers walk out. Although the government and corporate media are claiming these unions are just lazy or that these reforms will not affect restaurant workers, cashiers, and other workers in the private sector, nobody is fooled.
Nico, a trucker from the Corbières in Southern France, said that although the strikes have made getting around difficult, he understands that these folks are fighting for everyone. Macron’s reforms will mean that Social Security is a fixed rate. In a country where inflation is constantly on the rise, this will affect all workers, particularly women and folks who earn inconsistent salaries throughout their career.
Edouard, a landscaper who has been going to Yellow Vest protests since last year, told the Workers Voice:
“The government is trying to change the entire system so that different careers get access to different monthly sums based on their supposed societal value. Meanwhile, senators and other politicians will keep their own separate social security system—which receives 1.4 billion euros of funding every year. Cops will also maintain a more beneficial retirement, as France has slowly devolved into a police state under a state of emergency; cops are maiming protesters every week in order to maintain order, while nurses, teachers, servers, and countless other workers are left to starve…This reform is just an attempt to make more money off a system that works perfectly fine… except that it doesn’t generate enough profits for the super rich.”
At the protest on Thursday the 17th, hundreds of thousands of working class folks chanted: “This is democracy,” “Less money for the bankers, more money for the people,” and “Macron, we won’t slow down ’til we stop this reform.” The French government is nothing without the working people whose labor produces all the wealth. It’s the people’s money, and when we unite and fight, we always win.
Workers’ pensions are under attack in the U.S. In 2014, the Obama administration proposed and Congress passed a new pension law that allows multi-employer pension plans (for example, trucking and construction) to cut pensions for current retirees.
Years ago, pension funds were put in a guaranteed account with the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation, a federal program ensuring that funds did not go bankrupt. Now employers put pension funds in 401K funds controlled by Wall Street speculators. These speculators profit from investments they make using pensioners’ money, but when the stocks fall, pensioners lose money.
Like the workers in France, we must take to the streets and demand an end to these attacks.
The 2014 pension law allows plan trustees to cut benefits for retirees in order to save the funds they manage from bankruptcy instead of requiring the PBGC to take them over. This ensures that bailout funds are reserved for Wall Street, not workers. Under the new law, 150-200 multi-employer plans covering 1.5 million workers will be drained over the next decade. Retirees, widows, and widowers and domestic partners whose benefits are reduced are banned from filing a lawsuit to challenge the legality of these reductions.
Due to low wages, less job security, and insurmountable debt burdens, workers in the U.S. are retiring later and later in life, only to face declining retirement incomes. In 2017, the median income of retirees age 65 or older was just $19,352.
On top of this Trump & Co. are threatening social security. All this proves that the U.S. government serves Wall Street financiers, not workers. In France, millions of workers and family members have shut down the country to defend their pension laws. Like the workers in France, we must take to the streets and demand an end to these attacks.
Workers picket outside of Instacart headquarters in San Francisco on September 5, 2019, to demand a $15/hr minimum pay rate, ane nd to employer tip theft, and a line-item breakdown of earnings and expenses.
Instacart is the Uber of grocery shopping. It is a delivery service where customers order through a digital grocery list. Orders are shopped, checked out, and delivered by workers like Vanessa Bain of Palo Alto, California.
Vanessa Bain (VB): I used to work in education and was experiencing burnout. Around four years ago, I decided that I needed to do something different. Things were decent for the first 6-7 months. I was making more money working less hours than I did when I was teaching. I wasn’t coming home totally drained, which was a new feeling for me. I loved it at first.
Around September of 2016, they told us they were going to be taking tips out of our apps. Tips accounted for about 50% of my income. I was devastated, and I knew that I couldn’t take this lying down. I typed “#BoycottInstacart” into Instagram and found somebody else who was thinking like me, and we started organizing together. That was my entry into organizing.
Overcoming the obstacles of organizing in the gig economy
VB: There are a lot of obstacles to organizing in the gig economy:
1) We’re misclassified as independent contractors, so we have no protections under the National Labor Relations Act. This also means we’re not entitled to a minimum wage, overtime, rest, and meal breaks. We’re not entitled to draw from programs like workers compensation, unemployment insurance, and disability insurance.
2) The other major hurdle is that we have no centralized workplace. When organizing typically happens, you’re organizing with people in close proximity who you see on a regular basis. Instacart shoppers and Uber drivers are an atomized workforce. There could be a month or two months at a time where you don’t run into someone else who’s doing the same work. The infrastructure that is necessary to organize in a meaningful way is intentionally absent.
The companies want to pit us against each other and call it the hustle and say that we’re our own boss and our own CEO. This is bullshit. They don’t want us to see ourselves as coworkers who could fight back together. Camaraderie breeds collective action, unionizing, and feeling like we’re interconnected. That interconnectivity between folks and the feeling of being accountable to your fellow worker is incredibly important for organizing. The way in which they are implementing this structure is new, but this is centuries’ old bullshit that was regulated away in decades past, but they’re finding ways to bring it back.
Workers Voice (WV): Capitalists would like to see the whole economy go in this direction. They want to radically increase exploitation, thus increasing their profits. So venture capitalists just threw money at startup companies like Uber and Instacart.
VB: Totally. And none of these are profitable business models. In a nutshell the gig economy is a Ponzi scheme. Not to sound conspiratorial, but that’s really what it is.
Vanessa uses the internet plus face-to-face organizing WV: How did you face the challenges?
VB: Our organizing is necessarily going to be a hybrid of doing things in person and doing things digitally because we don’t have a centralized workplace. We don’t have a break room, for example. We have to create the equivalent of that online, but not everybody is plugged into social media, so how do you organize? You’re going to have to do it in person. We’re lucky that we do have some sense of shared workspace in grocery stores.
Instacart workers have carried out four walk offs since 2016 VB: Our very first walk off had a couple hundred participants. When we started organizing I don’t think we had the intention of continuing to do this. We did walk outs in 2016 and 2017 and 2019. We did a work slowdown in 2018.
The company has caved to some worker demands, but they are still on the offensive.
VB: Historically, when we do an action, the company gives it about a month and then implements our demands, acting as though it had nothing to do with our action. They don’t want to seem as if they’re responding to worker grievances because workers will see that this works, and we should keep doing it.
The last time they responded by cutting pay. We had a quality bonus, a measly $3 that we were paid for each order when customers rated their experience five stars. It seems like a small sum of money, but a batch can pay as little as $7.00 when you’re shopping and delivering for three customers, so $3 is a big deal. When they cut the quality bonus, it disproportionately hurt people who had done this the longest and were the best at their jobs because it is ostensibly a performance bonus.
Solidarity between shoppers and customers VB: This outraged a lot of customers. So that was like a secondary boycott. Customers were on Twitter and FB sharing the hashtag “DeleteInstacart.” Instacart’s tactics backfired. Instacart is nothing without shoppers and customers. Pissing off both is really a bad business tactic.
I think that solidarity between customers and shoppers is natural because Instacart is just a software program, but we’re the face of it. Customers have more loyalty to the human being than they do to the company that employs them. And if we’re unhappy, customers know.
Instacart began as a luxury service but it’s becoming more of a service that is oriented toward people who are located in food deserts, no transportation, or people who are disabled and house-bound. We provide a vital lifeline. I saw so many instances of people saying, “I can’t leave my home,” “I can’t go to a grocery store,” “I’m house-bound,” or “I have chronic fatigue and I can’t lift things.” But they are still extending solidarity by boycotting.
2020 should be a lit year for labor WV: How do you view the strength of the U.S. labor movement right now and in the coming year?
VB: 2019 has been pivotal year for labor. There’s been an explosion of raw energy and cross-sector solidarity. People from all different types of organizing have expressed solidarity. Some are white collar workers who are well compensated, but they are still organizing in their workplaces because they don’t want the technology that they’ve built to be contracted out to the Department of Defense and ICE. They don’t want the technology that they’ve built to be used to oppress people and contribute to climate change.
I’ve been organizing for three and a half years now and I never felt more optimistic than I do now. And I think that we’re gonna see expansion of a lot of the organizing that has sprung up. I think it’s gonna get bigger, and more powerful. Our problems are rooted in capitalism itself.
A lot of current organizing is rooted in the understanding that capitalism is unsustainable. A lot of the problems that we’re struggling with are inherent to capitalism. At some point, capitalism must go. I’m inspired, and I hope that other people can share in that optimism and can feel like when they look at what Instacart workers did in their organizing, they think, “If this person can do it, then I can do it,” and reach out to one another.
The day that we kicked off our walk off, the Google walkout organizers called us and expressed solidarity. They offered an infrastructure that they had available, and we didn’t. They lent their expertise in areas that we didn’t know much about.
I think it’s going to be a lit year for labor! I’m 33. I think that the tides are changing. I think that people are feeling more empowered and emboldened to take bold action.
