Sept. 25: Malcolm Suber and members of Stand with Dignity speak outside City Hall .
On September 25, Stand with Dignity and community organizers showed up to City Hall to demand that the City of New Orleans stop its shakedown of working-class, majority Black residents. They called for immediate relief from the fines and fees that have targeted poor, working residents while the rich get off with tax exemptions galore. Since 2002, more than 56,000 warrants have been issued for municipal and traffic offenses. These fines, fees, and warrants are traps for cash-poor residents. Community organizers demanded that the City stop sentencing its residents to debt slavery. Stand with Dignity puts it plainly: “Being poor or jobless is not a crime.” STOP THE SHAKEDOWN!
Haitians continue to fill the streets in the hundreds of thousands to demand an end to the criminal U.S.-backed government of President Jovenel Moïse. Moïse has tried to rob the Haitian masses on the command of U.S. capitalists and international banks. The Haitian people have risen up to show that they won’t take it any more. The days of the ruling regime are numbered.
On September 7 thousands of Venezuelan workers, peasants, and students participated in the Great International Anti-imperialist March in Caracas. There it was announced that the International #NoMoreTrump Campaign had collected 13,287,742 signatures against the coercive measures, financial blockade and economic terrorism imposed by the U.S. government of Donald Trump. The working masses of Venezuelans ask for the solidarity of workers around the world to demand an end to the cruel U.S. embargo, an end to the gangster Trump regime, and an end to U.S. imperialist bullying.
165,000 Pro-China demonstrators took to the streets of Hong Kong on June 30, 2019.
U.S. Media Censors Pro-China Demonstrations
By Gregory William
Who is leading and funding the protest movement in Hong Kong? Tellingly, demonstrators outside the U.S. consulate called on Trump to take over Hong Kong. The Hong Kong Human Rights Movement and other involved groups are funded by the National Endowment for Democracy, a CIA project. Leaders with these groups held meetings with U.S. and British officials in luxury hotels. Although many Hong Kong workers are impoverished, these organizations represent the very wealthy.
On behalf of capitalism, the U.S. government has tried to destroy China since they liberated themselves from colonialism in 1949 and set about building a socialist society. Unsurprisingly, the U.S. corporate media has not covered pro-government demonstrations in Hong Kong, even though half a million marched on August 18.
Capitalism and Colonialism to blame for Hong Kong’s problems
So-called pro-democracy groups distribute British flags and call for the return of British colonial rule. Britain cruelly colonized China for 156 years to steal its labor and wealth. Colonialism always counts on a small group of privileged people who collaborate with the colonizers to become wealthy at the expense of workers and peasants.
Through the Opium Wars (1839-1842, and 1856-1860), the British empire decimated the Chinese economy, got millions hooked on opium, and subjugated the population. This was done largely for the British East India Company, which needed markets for opium after the military takeover of India. This led to decades of rule by brutal warlords sponsored by different imperialist governments.
The majority of China was liberated from colonial rule in 1949 when the Communist Party, under the leadership of Mao Zedong, came to power. At that time, colonial conditions were so bad that life expectancy was only 36 years. With the establishment of the socialist economic system, life expectancy rose to 68 years by the early 1980s. Today it is over 76 years.
Nevertheless, the British government held control of Hong Kong until 1997, developing it into a world financial center like New York. When China regained Hong Kong, the government unfortunately agreed to allow capitalism to flourish in the territory. This is why it is one of the world’s most expensive cities. More than half of Hong Kong apartments cost over $2,550 a month. So many people sleep in 24-hour fast food restaurants that they are dubbed McRefugees. At the same time, Hong Kong is home to a million millionaires. Seventy percent of their obscene wealth is in real estate.
Democracy for millionaires, poverty for workers
Recent laws bringing Hong Kong more directly under Chinese government control have terrified the millionaires. China’s failure to alleviate the workers’ suffering, however, has alienated some workers from the mainland government. The millionaires stepped in to take advantage. Whenever there is a revolutionary vacuum this happens.
The immediate spark of the protests is an extradition bill. The proposed law would allow Hong Kong authorities to hand over criminals wanted in the mainland. The rich see this as a threat to their power. They do not want any barriers to their profits. Although there should not be billionaires or even millionaires, China does imprison and execute capitalists who go beyond certain limits of destructiveness. For example, billionaire Xu Xiang was sentenced to five years for his role in crashing the country’s stock market. This is intolerable to Hong Kong’s elite.
During Trump’s September 24 UN speech, he not only came out in support of the Hong Kong protesters, he berated the Chinese government for not allowing unfettered capitalism. He said, “Not only has China declined to adopt promised reforms, it has embraced an economic model dependent on massive market barriers.” In keeping with longstanding U.S. policy, Trump wants to undermine what is left of socialism, and to recolonize China. This is the thrust of the trade wars. But why should the U.S. government dictate how other countries run their economies?
More socialism is needed, not less The capitalist media says socialism is the problem. But the issues facing Hong Kong—and the rest of China—stem from capitalism, which has created inequality. The socialistic elements of the Chinese economic system benefit the vast majority. Workers in mainland China have no interest in losing the remaining gains of socialism. Workers in Hong Kong have an interest in accessing those gains themselves. They both have an interest in expanding socialism.
Millions of Chinese people rose up in the 1960’s and 1970’s to drive socialist revolution forward, but the Chinese Communist Party began opening the country up to capitalism in the late 1970’s. However, there was not a full-scale restoration of capitalism, as happened in the Soviet Union. This is why China has raised millions of people out of poverty. The remaining socialist elements, including the state ownership of banking and many key industries, and economic planning, have been responsible for these gains for the masses, not capitalism.
Nevertheless, the re-emergence of large-scale capitalism in China and capitalism in the Communist Party is a danger to the masses of people. The future of China depends on how well the Chinese working class organizes against this. Workers’ strikes are common in China, and this is a good thing. As Mao said, “It is right to rebel against reactionaries!”
The answer is not for the rest of China to become more like Hong Kong, or for Hong Kong to drift closer to the ruling classes of the U.S. or Britain. The answer is more socialism.
Those of us organizing and fighting for revolutionary socialism need to be constantly aware of the lies of the rich ruling class. We need to solidly defend all people fighting for their right to self-determination and tell the truth about all the gains that people have made in their struggle to build socialism in the face of constant imperialist attacks.
The people of Cuba have maintained a revolutionary culture which has made strides for humanity over the last 60+ years despite violent attacks and embargoes by U.S. imperialism. Recently the Trump administration tightened the sanctions and embargo placed on the Cuban people as imperialist punishment for having a peoples’ government and providing free health care and education.
Following the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, Cuba was isolated, and the United States and other imperialists renewed a vicious attempt to suffocate the country. This led Cuba to enter what is known as the “Special Period,” where Cubans were faced with extreme economic hardship with no help from the outside world (limited access to imports, the global market, oil, etc.). They lost 80% of their imports as well as exports. The Cuban people were faced with the immense task of building up production from within, using all that they had on their small island in the Caribbean to feed, house, educate all human life.
The capitalists’ goal and ideal outcome would have been (and still is) the starvation, suffering and death of the Cuban people. They have bombed rice fields, blocked shipments of food and medicine, and made travel or trade with Cuba illegal. What was the result?
The result has only been validation that socialism does work. Despite the violence against Cuba, they have achieved a near 100% literacy rate, 85% homeownership (compared to 65% in the US) with no homelessness, and they have built a healthcare system that puts countries like the United States to shame. They have developed a vaccine for lung cancer, virtually eliminated mother-to-child transmission of HIV and have some of the most progressive policies for queer and trans people in the world.
While the U.S. has reallocated over $270 Million from FEMA to Border Patrol in the middle of hurricane season, Cuba holds the torch for the best hurricane preparedness in the world. They have offered hurricane relief to the U.S. (including New Orleans after Katrina) which has consistently been turned away by the U.S. government.
The Trump administration has tightened the blockade heightening a fuel crisis for Cuba as well as terrorizing Venezuela. The democratic presidential candidates are no better: Bernie Sanders bashed socialism in Latin America, calling Venezuela’s President Maduro a “vicious tyrant”. These types of comments are not accidental nor are they a failing of Sanders’ political development: they are distinctly anti-communist, anti-worker, and set the stage for imperialist intervention in Cuba and Venezuela.
Is Cuba perfect? Of course not. We must understand the damage that hundreds of years of colonial terror and capitalist exploitation leaves behind and celebrate all that the Cuban people have accomplished despite the odds. The forward movement of the revolution is how revolutionaries acknowledge issues and empower the masses to find solutions collectively. Cuba’s president has said that the people will not enter another Special Period. Cuba’s response to these attacks is more revolution to maintain and renew the revolutionary culture that has inspired the Cuban people throughout the years. Solidarity with the Cuban People!
On September 30, 376 workers at Bayou Steel in LaPlace found out that they were out of a job. The company, which produces structural steel, gave no warning, in violation of the Federal Worker Adjustment and Retraining Act. The law requires that larger employers to give 60 days notice before a mass layoff. The plant is set to close by November 30. It is one of the biggest employers in St. John the Baptist Parish.
Bayou Steel has filed for bankruptcy after being acquired by Black Diamond Capital Management, an investment firm out based in Connecticut. It is common for these types of firms to buy up companies, run them into the ground, make off with the assets, and screw the workers over in the process. The New Orleans Workers Group is willing to stand with these workers in whatever fight they choose to undertake.
Finally, because the Residents of Gordon Plaza are determined to fight for their lives and educate others about how their situation connects to the rest of the city, state and world, they have an exhibit up at the Newcomb Art Museum located at the Woldenberg Art Center #202 Newcomb Circle New Orleans, LA 70118. “The American Dream Denied: The Residents of Gordon Plaza Seek Relocation” is running concurrently with an exhibit about the water crisis in Flint Michigan, titled “Flint is Family.” Both exhibits demonstrate the way government officials have turned their backs on their residents in order to serve the rich ruling class that preys on the people.
The exhibit will be featuring Gordon Plaza through December 14th, so everyone can learn more about a local struggle of Black working class residents in their fight for a fully funded relocation off the toxic soil (Agriculture Street Landfill) that the City of New Orleans built their homes on.
Newcomb Art Museum Hours:
Tuesday – Friday: 10 am—5 pm
Saturday: 11 am—4 pm
Exhibit is FREE & open to the public.
Forty-nine thousand General Motors workers began striking on September 16. This is the largest private sector strike in the U.S. since GM workers walked out in 2007. The capitalists are increasingly denying workers benefits and regular jobs as they make super profits from using and discarding workers at will. A major issue of the strike in all three countries is the right of temporary workers to equal pay and job security. This strike helps all workers. As usual, the capitalist government sides with GM as it harasses and arrests strikers on various picket lines.
Members of the United Automobile Workers union, or UAW, the strikers are pushing back against GM’s attacks on the workforce carried out in the aftermath of the 2007-2009 recession. During the recession, the government bailed out GM with $50 billion in taxpayer money, just as they did with the giant banks. Instead of improving conditions for the workers, GM “restructured”, bringing in more low-paid temp workers and subcontractors. Over time, the number of regular, full-time union employees has declined. Employees are increasingly overworked.
GM has effectively increased the level of exploitation in its plants, bringing in $35 billion in profits over the last three years. In 2018, they paid no federal income taxes. Now, they have the nerve to ask employees to pay more for health insurance. The workers are not standing for it.
GM’s anti-worker restructuring shows that, under capitalism today, no workers are truly secure. What we used to call “good jobs,” (jobs with benefits, decent pay, etc.) can be put on the chopping block at any moment. It is increasingly important for workers to stand together, whether we are full-time, part-time, temp, or subcontractors.
One of the most advanced demands of the union is for GM to reopen a car factory in Lordstown, Ohio. GM had shut down this facility, along with plants in other states, as part of a cost-cutting measure that resulted in the loss of thousands of jobs. Workers demanding that a factory be re-opened indicates that the working class is becoming more assertive and confident of its power. The UAW was built when workers occupied the factories they were striking against. The time has come to say, “our labor, our plants!” and take them over.
The bosses need us. We don’t need them!
On September 18, residents of Gordon Plaza were able to break bread together, and exchange experiences with environmental activist Desmond D’Sa, of South Africa. Residents of Gordon Plaza told D’Sa about their decades long struggle for a fully funded relocation off of the toxic soil that the city of New Orleans built their homes on.
D’Sa shared with the residents the many ways in which our struggles are local AND global, and he cited many examples of actual wins that demonstrated people power. The working class people who are organizing and fighting on the front lines in South Africa have been able to shut down over 40 harmful chemical plants and win improved conditions and social services for workers.
D’Sa made it clear that the struggle was not simply about winning single issue fights, but about ensuring that each win was connected to a broader fight for freedom from the cause of the crisis that we contend with. Capitalist exploitation of workers’ labor, and the pursuit of expansion and profits are not concerned with the future or the health of humanity. Why? Because each crisis gets turned into an opportunity for disaster capitalists. For every sickness that exists, there is someone waiting to prey on the sick, to charge a fee for the repair or the remedy. Disaster capitalism feeds on the desperation, trauma and despair of wounded people.
D’Sa also spoke specifically about the ways in which the environmental movement ought to be in full solidarity with the workers movement. Workers have power! He spoke of the necessity to build across geographical lines, and struggles, and rise up to fight collectively. “Don’t fight alone. Go together!”, D’Sa said.
Women in Brazil defend against the invasion of Indigenous territories.
By Nathalie Clarke
Amazonia is the world’s largest tropical rainforest. This 56 million-year-old expanse of forest is home to countless species of life—many of which are still undiscovered. Indigenous Nations have inhabited the land for over 11,000 years and have helped shape the forest as we know it. Capitalist media often depict the Amazon rainforest as a vast, unpopulated expanse of land ripe for the taking. This narrative gives capitalists cover for the rampant deforestation that they’re carrying out to convert the Amazon into farmland, erasing the lives and struggles of its Indigenous People.
Although agribusiness tycoons have been burning the forest for decades, the recent fires in the Amazon dwarf past ones. Since the election of fascist President Jair Bolsonaro, environmental laws have been loosened allowing the big bosses in the mining and farming industries to do what they will. So far in 2019, Brazil’s National Institute for Space Research (INPE) reports an 80 percent increase compared to 2018.
“The [fires are] a direct result of each of Bolsonaro’s incentives to deforestation and his actions to make the environmental code more flexible, allowing the rural capitalists who, incited by the president, make the Amazon burn in flames, increasing their massive estates throughout the region. […] The trail of fire visible from space is a result of the expansion of agribusiness, leaving a trail of the indigenous peoples’ blood, as well as decimating the native fauna and flora” said the Brazilian group Movement of Revolutionary Workers.
These fires occurred just after the Waorani people of Pastaza won a landmark victory: half a million acres of their ancestral lands were to be protected from oil drilling. TWO WEEKS LATER we see a drastic increase in fires set to the Amazon by greedy agri-capitalists, backed by their fascist right-wing government. This is no coincidence; it’s colonization and genocide.
The fascist Bolsonaro told reporters in 1998: “It’s a shame that the Brazilian cavalry hasn’t been as efficient as the Americans, who exterminated the Indians.”
In Brazil, in Honduras, in Louisiana, and around the world, Indigenous people have led the fight to save the planet—risking their safety and lives. A recent Global Witness report found that 3 environmental activists are killed every week; with Brazil listed as number four on the list of most dangerous places for them. On July 23rd, an Indigenous leader and organizer, Emyra Wajãpi, was found dead in northeastern Brazil. Two men who were members of Brazil’s landless activist group MST were killed in December 2018 in a rural area in the northeast state of Paraíba. The names and stories of Indigenous leaders who have put their lives on the line are innumerable.
But environmental activists don’t just face challenges from logging and mining companies. The capitalist State itself—the police, the government, the law—often criminalizes them because they know that chaining oneself to a pipeline or blocking the path of loggers stops the flow of capital like no protest alone can.
In 2017, 84 members of U.S. Congress suggested that the Department of Justice should be able to prosecute pipeline saboteurs as domestic terrorists according to definitions in the federal criminal code. Bolsonaro’s racist, violent remarks and the criminalization of environmental activists represent a global trend.
We, the global working-class, must understand our role in saving the planet. We, the derrick hands on oil rigs, the foot soldiers in endless imperialist wars, the servers that watch our bosses waste food every single day, the auto-workers and welders, truck drivers and cooks, must see through the lies these fat cat politicians would have us believe. Our neighborhoods and regions are already polluted with toxic chemicals. Our houses get built on toxic soil. Our food sources get depleted. We are demonized for eating meat or for driving a pick-up while the wealthy are allowed to jet off to Europe every other week.
We are condemned for working in oil and gas even though those are the only jobs available in our communities. How have we gotten even the smallest sliver of the pie?
The Guarani people of central-western Brazil said, “We invite everybody to fight alongside indigenous peoples against the genocidal attack which is currently underway, and which has been reactivated by the current government.” Our only answer to the current environmental crisis is ourselves: whether farmers, pharmacists, or food service workers, we are fighters, survivors, hard-workers, and we are infinitely powerful when united.
