Posted on

Women’s Reproductive Rights Under Renewed Attack

The Trump administration is carrying out an assault on Title X, a law that created programs to provide birth control and other reproductive health services to millions of workers across the United States. Planned Parenthood and other organizations funded through Title X were recently informed that they must comply with a gag rule that will prevent providers from giving birth control or information on abortion to patients. The administration is moving forward with the gag rule in spite of multiple cases in the courts.

While Planned Parenthood, the largest provider of reproductive healthcare in the country, is the primary organization affected, almost all providers of reproductive care will be restricted by this rule. Planned Parenthood alone will lose $60 million in funding, and as clinics who cannot find funding elsewhere shut down, those that are still open are overwhelmed. Some clinics are increasing the number of patients by 70% to make up for the loss. Rates are already going up at clinics as they try to make up for the lack of funding.

The rule is another attack on reproductive rights which attempts to criminalize abortion and miscarriage and prevent the working class from having control of their bodies and lives. By attacking access to birth control and abortion, the ruling class is attempting to prevent women from fully participating in society. The ruling class will still have access to reproductive care, being able to afford providers who do not rely on Title X funding; this gag rule is a specific attack on poor folks, people of color, women, and LGBTQ people.

Though Roe v. Wade has not yet been overturned and the legal right to an abortion still exists, states have been restricting abortion access at an accelerated rate in the past year. Actions around the country have protested each new law, with a coalition of activists in Louisiana even holding a die-in at the state capitol and a major protest that blocked New Orleans’ Poydras St. in midday traffic.

A larger, militant movement is needed to prevent the complete rollback of reproductive rights. Restrictions on reproductive rights not only keep women from participating in society, they also rob women of the autonomy needed to organize for their liberation. Because women’s labor (inside and outside the home) generates enormous wealth for society, capitalists will always have a vested interest in exploiting them. This is why women must step into their revolutionary power and fight back against the capitalists. The path to women’s liberation is bound up in the revolutionary struggle to abolish capitalism.

Posted on

Food is a Right— No Cuts to Food Stamps!

By Antranette Scott

Once again capitalist figurehead Donald Trump has continued his assault on the working-class. This time he’s focusing his attack on hungry working class families and students who receive reduced/free lunch. The administration is trying to strip more than 3 million workers of food stamps.

The attack will cut $25 billion from SNAP over the next decade by ransacking the Broad-Based Categorical Eligibility. This important provision helps states streamline SNAP eligibility for families that have applied for certain other assistance programs for low-income people. This key categorical eligibility also gives states the flexibility that they need to smooth benefit cliffs in SNAP that prevent low income families from facing sudden loss of benefits whenever a wage goes up slightly.

The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities gives a concrete example of how the loss of this eligibility is bad for workers. They give the example of a woman earning $12.50 an hour and raising two kids. This puts the family at 125 percent of the federal poverty level, and they receive approximately $161 per month in SNAP. Thanks to the categorical eligibility, if that worker gets a 50 cent raise per hour (an additional $86 per month in earnings), the family’s monthly food assistance benefit will go down by $31, leaving them with a net gain of $55. Under Trump’s heartless rule, that same worker would lose all their SNAP benefits overnight! For making 50 cents more per hour the worker would be losing $75.00 a month.

This sudden loss of benefits also would have devastating effects at school cafeterias across the country. When a family loses SNAP benefits through the gutting of categorical eligibility at home, that immediately makes school children ineligible for a reduced/free lunch. For some students this is the only time in the day that they have access to a nutritional meal.

Here at the Workers Voice we know that the best way to trim the budget is to stop feeding the Pentagon our hard-earned tax dollars. With nearly 1 trillion dollars of OUR tax dollars being allotted to imperialist wars and the highest polluters on our planet, we see where the Trump administration’s priorities lie: in fattening the wallets of war profiteers! Trump and his goons do not care about working people.

We need our tax dollars spent on quality education, access to adequate healthcare, and job development. This resolution to undermine and defund SNAP is not going to benefit the working class. We need to organize to get our needs met. We need to agitate and say NO to defunding SNAP! No to Imperialist Wars! No to politicians that don’t care about workers!!! Only by ending the rule of the capitalist class can the workers see the wealth that our labor generates go to uplifting us ALL!

Posted on

Mayor Cantrell’s Affordable Housing Meetings Are a Sham

By Sanashihla

An August 29 meeting in the 9th Ward called by the mayor about the housing crisis was beyond disappointing. One after another city official droned on about proposals mostly benefiting developers, not homeowners or tenants. 9th ward residents were not allowed to speak but merely put a question on a card where the officials could pick and choose. Residents should be allowed to get up at these meetings and the politicians should shut up and listen. What are they afraid of?

Black New Orleanians are being pushed out of homes and apartments all over the city to be replaced by mainly white professionals. The city backs this scheme by granting tax incentives to developers and pursuing code violations that are unimportant but expensive.

The only “relief” offered were loans to fix homes; Mayor Cantrell even threatened homeowners who hadn’t made these repairs. Far from fighting new assessments which are raising taxes in Black neighborhoods like Gentilly or Treme and further pushing people out, Cantrell is actually pushing to get those extra tax dollars out of working class New Orleanians.

When the Residents of Gordon Plaza showed up to the meeting en masse, they were also ignored.

Initially, the mayor didn’t mention anything about Gordon Plaza on her own. It took an audience member’s question/comment card submission for the mayor to mention that the city “might have—but no promises” plots of land that can be considered.

Gordon Plaza was a city initiative, framed as “affordable housing,” promoted toward Black residents as an opportunity, that led to the crisis at Press Park and Gordon Plaza being built on toxic soil in the first place.

The residents are demanding a fully funded relocation, where they can be fairly and justly compensated for their homes in the context of an increased cost of living, increased property taxes, and the fact that their houses could sell for top dollar if the neighborhood that it sits on were not toxic. Cutting checks in the name of the Residents only requires resolve. And considering the Residents of Gordon Plaza are not even seeking restitution for the impact on their health or medical bills associated with living in the second-highest cancer-causing neighborhood in the state of Louisiana, this is a small request.

A fully funded relocation of 52 households would only cost half of what the City of New Orleans spent on installing red and blue flashing surveillance cameras all over the city.

It’s the working-class residents across New Orleans who need the real breaks, not a handful here and there but all. Working class residents can’t keep up with the constant rise in the cost of living, particularly with increases on rent and property taxes.

Posted on

Stop Caging Workers!

Photo: Christina Tareq

On Friday, September 27, dozens of hospitality workers and supporters gathered in Congo Square for a Workers Unity Rally called by the New Orleans Hospitality Workers Alliance. Organizers stressed the urgent need for workers to resist police and ICE terror in the workplace. Speakers included Eugene Grant of the Slow Rollas Brass Band who spoke on behalf of street musicians who have been targeted for harassment by the police who take their orders from gentrifiers and real estate developers. From Congo Square demonstrators marched through the French Quarter, calling on their fellow workers to come together to fend off cops and ICE agents who are attacking workers on behalf of greedy, racist bosses. Demonstrators chanted “Lift the wages, no more cages!” Grant summed up the attitude of the marching workers best, chanting “We gotta fight to get it!”

Posted on

Louisiana Workers Have No Candidate In Governor’s Race

We Must Build a Workers Party

By Malcolm Suber

The multi-national Louisiana working class finds itself in well-worn and familiar territory as we approach the October gubernatorial election. We are being asked to choose between three rich, conservative, anti-choice white men who are squabbling among their class to see who best represents the interests of the oil and gas millionaires who are the real puppet-masters that run this state.

Neither Ralph Abraham, Jon Bel Edwards or Eddie Rispone have a program that will serve to improve the living conditions of Louisiana workers. All three are pursuing the right-wing goals of more intense exploitation of the workers while promising even more tax cuts for the rich. Rispone and Abraham promise to be the most loyal suck-ups to white supremacist President Donald Trump. Their program boiled down and addressed to the white workers and the white middle class is “if you like Donald Trump, you will love me”.

Meanwhile, the gist of Jon Bel Edwards’ program which is addressed to the white Republican majority is “I have successfully maintained your priorities for four years, why not extend my stay.”

Nowhere are there any promises to move Louisiana from the bottom of the list of places to live and raise your family. New Census Bureau data released in September showed that nearly 1 in 5 Louisiana residents lives below the poverty line. We now have the third highest poverty rate in the U.S. after Mississippi and New Mexico. Nowhere is there a promise to move Louisiana off the list as the most incarcerated state where thousands of working people are held in gulags for minor infractions of the law. Nowhere are there promises to improve the education of our children. Nowhere is there a program to end air pollution from the oil and chemical companies. And nowhere is there a program to lessen the regressive tax burden on the working class, replacing it with progressive taxes on the property of the rich.

Louisiana workers will never get off the bottom until we begin to organize and fight for our class interests, rejecting the program of the capitalist rulers to divide us along race, gender, sexual preference and immigration status. What that requires is for us to realize that the two political parties—the Republicans and the Democrats—are parties controlled by the rich to protect the interests of the rich. We should be working to develop a mass workers party that promotes the interest of the working class in opposition to the program of the capitalists who are hellbent on keeping us from redistributing the wealth created by our labor, which they currently hoard for themselves.

We must engage our fellow workers in discussions about the deceptive role of the Democrats and Republicans whose campaigns lie, lie, lie, proclaiming they represent all classes. We as wage-slaves do not share the same problems as the bosses and rich capitalists. They want to maintain this system of privilege for the rich and forced misery for the working class. We must get clear that we are at war against the rich billionaires and their government. Workers must fight to put political power in the hands of the workers’ political representatives who have no interest in exploiting working people.

Posted on

Stop Police Harassment of New Orleans Musicians


By Meg Maloney

On Sunday, July 21, musicians, hospitality workers, and community members rallied together in outrage after local musician Eugene Grant, who plays with the Slow Rollas Brass Band, was pinned to the ground and arrested. The arrest came after the owner of Frenchmen Art and Books called the cops because the band was playing outside their store. Grant and his family are calling for musicians to have the freedom to play music in the streets without being forced to pay permits to the city. Musicians should be able to play in the street without fear of police violence. The city should be paying local musicians to play in the street because they help bring in billions of dollars to the city. The Hospitality Workers Alliance stands in solidarity with musicians in their fight. Without musicians and hospitality workers, there would be no tourism in New Orleans. We must come together and organize for our long overdue rights! The time is now!

Posted on

Queen Benson’s Hands in Tax Payer Pockets Again


With the death of Tom Benson, his wife Gayle became the richest person living in the state of Louisiana and the owner of the New Orleans Saints, among other properties. Like her husband before her, she has continued the family tradition of extorting millions of dollars from the city and the state.

Knowing the local workers’ love of the football team, she has coerced the state to pay her $450 million to keep the team in New Orleans for another 15 years (and an ‘option’ for 15 more, meaning another round of extortion from whichever Benson is running things by then). As previously reported in the Workers Voice, this is a common tactic of privately owned teams and something Tom Benson did in the wake of Hurricane Katrina as well, demanding a ransom of $23.5 million a year from the people in order to keep the beloved team from leaving town.

According to Gov. John Bel Edwards, Gayle’s ransom money will come from the state, from the Louisiana State and Exposition District (which is a state entity that runs the Superdome), and a portion from the Saints organization. It will be used to renovate the Dome. Already, the Benson family does not pay rent for their use of the state-owned building, claiming it to be a “small market” for sports in spite of the fact that the team sells out on season tickets almost every year for the 70,000+ seat stadium.

This money comes out of the pockets of the workers, and they will see none of it coming back to them. Improvements to the Superdome will mostly be enjoyed by those rich enough to afford tickets to see the team or the huge concerts that play there, not by the average worker, and most of the money will simply line the pockets of the Benson family. Those who work at the Superdome will continue to be paid $8 an hour while the owners of the team will walk away with millions per game.

The Green Bay Packers, on the other hand, are owned by the city of Green Bay. Given that the workers of New Orleans have supported the team for 50 years, and given that their work has made every bit of profit the Benson family has taken from the city, the people of New Orleans should own the New Orleans Saints. No more handouts to the super-rich! No more privately-owned teams! Make the Saints a true home town team!

Posted on

Resistance to ICE is Growing. Stop the War on Migrants!

Protesters block ICE headquarters in Philadelphia, PA.

By Ashlee Pintos and Adam Pedescleaux

In an act of resistance against the racist, capitalist state, a Nashville community came together to protect an immigrant father when two plainclothes ICE agents in an unmarked vehicle came to arrest him. The neighborhood of Black and white workers formed a human chain surrounding the car and ensured the father and son had food and water during the whole ordeal. After four hours, the agents finally left having terrorized the immigrant father and child. Without community support, the father and son would have been separated and thrown into one of the government’s concentration camps.

Protests against anti-migrant terrorism have been taking place all over the country. Over 1,000 activists in Washington, DC, blocked the entrances and exits to the national ICE offices. Led by Jewish activists, this action blocked traffic and ended only when 11 protesters were arrested. At an earlier protest in DC, the activists staged a sit-in at the same offices. In Phoenix, AZ, 16 people were arrested in a similar protest. In Colorado, protesters replaced the U.S. flag at the ICE offices with one of Mexico in act of symbolic solidarity.

They also destroyed a racist Blue Lives Matter flag. And in Rhode Island, a protest outside a concentration camp was attacked by an ICE employee when he drove his truck into the crowd, injuring several people.

In acts of solidarity across California, especially in the San Francisco Bay Area and Los Angeles, hospital staff are being trained how to use their bodies to stop ICE agents from entering hospitals.

In recent months, there have been multiple incidents where sea captains were arrested for saving migrants’ lives in the Mediterranean Sea. Pia Klemp, a German sea captain with an organization called Sea Watch International, faces 20 years in prison for rescuing people fleeing from Libya, a country which was destroyed by U.S. bombings and a right-wing coup a decade ago. While she and her crew are being investigated by Italian authorities, the French city of Paris offered her a medal for her bravery. She declined, denouncing the hypocrisy of the Parisian city government who order their police to oppress migrant workers daily. In June, the German ship captain Carola Rackete brought migrants she had rescued into port in defiance of the Italian police. She now faces charges similar to Klemp’s.

Every act of resistance against ICE and other anti-migrant forces in capitalist countries is a victory for the working class. We must all stand together against the Gestapo-like tactics of these agencies. As attacks on workers worldwide are increasingly violent, it is easy to feel defeated. However, all throughout the world, there are countless acts of resistance that are demonstrating workers’ power.

Posted on

Spend Money on Youth, Not New NOPD Headquarters

By LaVonna Varnado-Brown

The NOPD is pushing the city council for a new headquarters that would cost taxpayers $37 million. With the budget already choked, Mayor Cantrell names her top four priorities as: “Public Safety as a Matter of Public Health, Infrastructure, Economic Development, and Quality of Life Initiatives”. Claiming public health and safety as a top priority is pure hypocrisy, given the fact that Cantrell still has not drawn up an actionable plan to provide the residents of Gordon Plaza with a fully funded relocation. The police building located at 715 S Broad Avenue is old, but at least it’s not lethal.

In the Upper Ninth Ward, residents of Gordon Plaza live amidst toxic carcinogens as they fight for a fully funded relocation that is long overdue. For nearly three decades, residents have continued to file lawsuits and demand that elected officials be held accountable for selling them property on a toxic waste landfill. And to think that the NOPD, which regularly terrorizes black and brown people in the streets, is demanding that the city fund new headquarters! “We know we need a new building, and we need it fast,” said NOPD Deputy Superintendent Christopher Goodly in a budget meeting with city planning officials. “It’s basically time to consider looking at a new headquarters instead of spending the resources to repair a dilapidated building.”

The new building would have to be built on an alternate site so that the current headquarters can continue to operate during construction. Construction will likely cost an average of $350 per square foot. The money for the new headquarters is stolen money. This money belongs to the workers, who generate the revenue for the city budget. Currently, 63% of the budget goes towards cops, jails and reactive programs, while only 3% is invested in children and families and 1% in job development. We cannot stand by and watch those in power continue to repress workers and people of color. No more fully funded luxury office buildings while hospitality workers fight for a living wage!

No more high-tech police facilities while working parents drown in debt over childcare and transportation! The city of New Orleans belongs to us, the workers. We need affordable healthcare, childcare, and reliable public transport. Not a new police building!