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Veterans for Peace Support Venezuela

President Donald Trump has called on Venezuelan soldiers to disobey orders and join coup perpetrators headed by U.S.-backed opposition leader, Juan Guaidó. If they do not do this, President Trump threatened: “You will find no safe harbor, no easy exit and no way out. You will lose everything.”

While President Trump speaks of supporting democracy in Venezuela and Latin America, the real purpose of the U.S. assault on the Venezuelan government is to fully open the vast Venezuelan oil reserves to U.S. and other Western oil corporations as well as to destroy progressive governments in Latin America that put their own peoples’ needs above the profits of foreign corporations.

The Veterans For Peace Statement of Purpose states that, “we will work, with others both nationally and internationally:

  • To increase public awareness of the causes and costs of war
  • To restrain our governments from intervening, overtly and covertly, in the internal affairs of other nations
  • To end the arms race and to reduce and eventually eliminate nuclear weapons
  • To seek justice for veterans and victims of war
  • To abolish war as an instrument of national policy.”

In this spirit, Veterans For Peace (VFP) calls on all members of the U.S. military to refuse illegal orders to intervene in Venezuela. Furthermore, VFP urges all U.S. military leaders to inform the president that they will order their units to stand down from preparations to invade Venezuela.

Illegal, immoral and irresponsible U.S. actions, including “sanctions” (economic war) have already taken a great toll on the people Venezuela. Nonetheless, the vast majority of Venezuelan people and military are standing firm against foreign intervention. Now there is a very real possibility that President Trump will order U.S. troops to intervene in Venezuela, whether through a direct invasion and occupation, or through support for irregular counter-revolutionary forces. This would likely lead to a widening war that could spread to other Latin American countries and the Caribbean, bringing increasing suffering to the peoples of Latin America and the U.S.

It is illegal under both U.S. and international law to launch a military attack against another nation unless it is clearly in self-defense, and is approved by the United Nations. There are a number of options for GI’s who do not wish to follow illegal orders. Veterans For Peace wants service-members to be fully informed as they make profound choices with possibly serious consequences. We urge GI’s facing possible deployment to contact the National Lawyers Guild Military Law Task Force at (619) 463-2369 and/or help@militarylawhelp.com for referral to a civilian attorney to discuss your options. Many of their member lawyers are willing to do an initial pro-bono (free) consultation.

Refuse to be used in an illegal war. Follow your conscience and be on the right side of history.

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31,000 Grocery Workers Win Strike in New England Save Health Coverage and Get Raises

Image Credit: UFCW Local 328
By Gregory William

Thirty-one thousand Stop & Shop workers went on strike in Connecticut, Massachusetts, and Rhode Island and beat back company cuts to health care, pensions, and wages. The work stoppage carried out by unionized employees of the grocery store chain shut 240 stores. The scale of the strike rivals that of the West Virginia teachers’ strike last year and is the largest private sector strike in the entire U.S. in three years. Stop & Shop workers are organized with the United Food and Commercial Workers Union.

Cashiers, stockers, bakers, deli clerks, butchers and others walked off the job on April 11, after the company presented a “final offer” in contract negotiations which included higher health care premiums and deductible, and replacing proposed pay raises with bonuses. The company intended to cut pensions and roll back overtime pay.

Employees considered this a slap in the face when the grocery chain’s parent company, Ahold Delhaize, is worth $44 billion; they have also saved millions over the past couple years because of Trump’s corporate tax breaks.
One associate, who was picketing outside a Stop & Shop in Middletown, Connecticut said, “They’re a billion-dollar company because of us. We’re out here striking and protesting to show what’s fair and what’s right.”

Many Stop & Shop shoppers have shown solidarity by boycotting the stores that have remained open during the strike. Some posted to Twitter and other social media sites. Twitter user, Hester Prynne, wrote, “#Solidarity well done. I’ve never crossed a picket line, I’m not about to start now!” On the same platform, a shopper by the name of Julias, said, “Good for you. All of you. Our country is moving backwards in many ways. I work in an entirely different industry, but like most, ours is putting profit before employees. We are stressed, overworked and fed up.”

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U.S. Military is the World’s Biggest Polluter

By Nathalie Clarke

Our planet is being sacrificed to corporate greed. As the rich get richer, the rest of us must deal with poisoned air, water, soil, and food. But one major actor in the current environmental crisis gets to walk away blameless time after time: militarism. In order to continue to make a profit in a system where most of us struggle to make ends meet, the super rich have expanded the military so they can go steal resources and workers from foreign countries and maintain business as usual at home. Whether in France, the United States, Germany, or Norway, all capitalist countries have built up military forces geared towards invasions of other countries, costing tons of money and countless lives.

The U.S. military admits to using 395,000 barrels of oil every day and produces about 38,700,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide (CO²) every year (a typical passenger vehicle emits about 4.6 metric tons of CO² per year)—which doesn’t even take into account all the emissions they won’t admit to. The military’s fossil fuel consumption drains our landscapes and drives coastal erosion. If you’re asking yourself why Louisiana loses a football field of land every hour, why our city risks going underwater in the next 100 years, you need look no further than the military.

The U.S. military admits to using 395,000 barrels of oil every day.

The Paris Agreement, and other international accords made by politicians have time and time again EXEMPTED military operations from even trying to reduce their carbon footprint. While poor people get told to recycle, become vegan, stop using straws, reduce our plastic bag use, the crooks in Washington continue to expand the military. Individual actions are not enough! We need to oppose rich men’s wars and unite with working-class people across the world. If we don’t oppose militarism, climate change will continue to devastate the lives of working people across the world.

In spite their supposedly “progressive” stance on environmental issues, Democrats are unwilling to challenge the U.S. military, which not only drains resources from the budget each year, but also causes significant environmental harm. Multi-millionaires like Nancy Pelosi don’t oppose the bloated military budget because they profit from the arms industry and the drive to war.

Our politicians, the monsters who vote to bomb children in Iraq, destroy forests, pollute landscapes, and build more and more nuclear weapons, will not be swayed with words of encouragement, votes, or polite calls and emails. The working-class is under attack—our communities are being destroyed by climate change, our families are sick from the poison in our food, air, and water, our children are sent off to fight in unjust wars, and our future is at stake. United, as one band, one sound, we have the power to take back what is already ours and build a better world.

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Free All People Jailed for Marijuana!

End the Bail System!

By Tina Orlandini

Our families and communities need an immediate release of all those incarcerated for marijuana related offenses and an end to money bail as part of the broader movement toward prison abolition in this country.

Hundreds of thousands have been arrested and imprisoned for minor marijuana related offenses. In 2017, approximately 659,700 people were arrested in the United States for marijuana law violations and of that number, about 91 percent were charged with possession only. Unsurprisingly and in keeping with the discriminatory practices of the police through campaigns and policies like the War on Drugs, Stop and Frisk and Broken Windows theory, about 47 percent of the above-mentioned arrests were of Black or Latinx people (drugpolicy.org), and the rest were poor whites. The rich are not arrested.

Louisiana has its own fraught history with strict marijuana laws, criminalizing the use and possession of the drug in nearly every occurrence with the exception of medical marijuana, which was legalized in 2017. While 11 states in the U.S. have legalized recreational use of marijuana, Louisiana continues to lock up its people for the same activity. As Louisiana’s marijuana laws currently stand, penalties include up to 15 days in parish jail and/or up to $300 in fines for possession of up to 14g; up to 6 months in jail and/or $500 in fines for over 14g; and the time and fines go up from there to double-digit-year prison sentences and hundreds of thousands of dollars in fines (findlaw.com).

Here in New Orleans, in 2016 the city passed ordinance 31,148, decriminalizing marijuana possession and allowing for ticketing rather than arrests, but police can still make arrests for possession under state law (Marijuana Policy Project). On top of all this, New Orleans’ antebellum money bail system keeps the accused in jail without the ability to “buy their freedom” even before a trial. This system with clear roots in slavery is now employed as modern-day institutionalized bondage for people of color, poor whites, immigrant and queer folks.

The history of these laws clearly shows the intent was to push mass incarceration and slave labor in prison. In 1971, President Nixon held a press conference announcing the War on Drugs and declaring drug abuse “public enemy number one.” Painted as a “law and order” stance on the proliferation of drug activity in the United States, the media frenzy that followed—as well as related policies and carceral tactics—at their core were simply strategies to neutralize and destroy radical movements burgeoning at the time, in particular those lead by Black revolutionaries. These policies and the War on Drugs were expanded by Ronald Reagan in 1982, and again, validated and proliferated by mainstream media which elevated racist stereotypes in poor Black communities.

Bill Clinton carried the torch with the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994, most famous for its implementation of habitual offender laws or three-strikes laws which require a person found guilty of a violent felony and two other offenses (such as drug possession) to serve a mandatory life prison sentence. This law led to bottlenecked courts, the overcrowding of prisons and our current state of mass incarceration and the prison industrial complex. Many of these policies were inherited and maintained by the Obama Administration and the current, outwardly racist administration bares no signs of reform, so here we are today, in the most incarcerated country in the world and the second most incarcerated state, with a large percentage of arrests due to minor offenses like marijuana possession.

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60 Biggest Companies Paid No Taxes on $79 Billion in Profits

The companies included IBM, Netflix, General Motors, Chevron, and more. Despite reporting profits of $11.2 billion without paying a cent in taxes, Amazon actually applied for a refund of nearly $129 million.

Companies that claimed tax cuts would create jobs have laid off thousands.

A partial list of these mega greedy companies include AT&T, Capital One, Cox Enterprises, Ford, General Dynamics, Intel, Kimberly-Clark, Lockheed Martin, Macys, Northrop Grumman, T-Mobile, Verizon, Viacom, Walmart, Walt Disney, Union Pacific, CSX, Toys R Us, Sears/Kmart, and JC Penney.

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Support Assange and Manning, Defend the Right to Truth!

WHO ARE JULIAN ASSANGE AND CHELSEA MANNING?

Manning was a former army private who exposed the deliberate killing of civilians in Iraq by the U.S. army. Assange is the founder of WikiLeaks, an online journal that lets the public know what the government is really doing, like spying on U.S. residents or committing horrific war crimes. They were both recently arrested when they should be given medals for telling the truth.

While Manning and Assange are being persecuted, the Trump administration is issuing orders to cover up CIA drone killings of civilians and shutting down investigations into U.S. war crimes by threatening the judges of the International Criminal Court with arrest.

NUREMBERG TRIALS ASKED WHY NAZIS OBEYED ORDERS

Manning took the incredibly brave step to expose U.S. war crimes while in the army. After the Nazis were defeated and put on trial at Nuremberg the message was clear “You have the right to resist an illegal, inhuman order.” This is what she did.

PENTAGON PAPERS AND WIKILEAKS EXPOSED PENTAGON CRIMES

Daniel Ellsberg is a former state department official who released hundreds of pages of internal memos showing the horrors of the Vietnam War. These were called the Pentagon Papers. He was arrested but later exonerated. He is considered a hero. Assange simply released the same type of information digitally.

WHAT DID WIKILEAKS REVEAL?

In April of 2010, Wikileaks published the infamous ”Collateral Murder” video which showed the horrific 2007 U.S. Army massacre of more than a dozen people in Baghdad including civilians, journalists, and children.

Later in 2010, Wikileaks published the “Iraq War Logs” covering the period from January 1, 2004 to December 31, 2009. Manning helped to reveal that in that time 109,032 men, women, and children had been directly killed by the U.S.-led coalition. 66,081 of those people-—nearly two-thirds—were civilians. Wikileaks documents revealed 15,000 deaths that had previously gone uncounted.

The war logs also revealed widespread torture and rape by coalition forces as well as routine civilian killings by U.S. mercenary forces such as Blackwater.

In 2011, after being denied legal immunity for their crimes, U.S. forces were forced to withdraw from Iraq. Had it been earlier that the people of the world—and particularly those in the U.S.— learned the truth about this terrible war, many thousands of lives might have been saved.

Manning and Assange also helped bring to light U.S. war crimes in Afghanistan, revealing more than 92,000 documents related to the war over the same period as the “Iraq War Logs”. The previously covered-up Granai massacre stands as one of the most brutal crimes of this war: nearly 100 people—overwhelmingly women and children—lost their lives in a U.S. airstrike on May 4, 2009. Over 100,000 Afghans have been killed in this longest running U.S. war.

Wikileaks also brought the Guantanamo prison to the attention of the public, exposing the systematic and routine torture of over 800 prisoners. Among the prisoners were an 89-year-old Afghan villager with dementia and a 14-year-old boy who had been kidnapped from his family. More than 150 of these people were detained for years without charge.

ASSANGE AND MANNING ARE THE REAL PUBLIC SERVANTS. TRUMP, OBAMA, AND BUSH ARE THE CRIMINALS.

We deserve the right to know the cost of imperialist wars—especially since it’s our working class brothers and sisters that are under the gun. Because so many lives are on the line, we have a duty to counter the lies that U.S. wars are fought for “freedom” or for “democracy” or for any other noble sounding ideas. To counter these lies, we must arm ourselves with the truth. Wikileaks revealed the business dealings of the war profiteers and it revealed the devastating human toll of the arms that made these billionaires so rich. Wikileaks revealed the truth and for that, Assange and Manning deserve our support.

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Cuba Develops Lung Cancer Vaccine

In socialist Cuba, medical research isn’t geared towards private profit. Instead, it’s done to improve the lives of not only Cubans but all the people of the world.  Recently they developed an immune therapy called CIMAVax which stops lung cancer cells from growing.  It is not preventative but has proven effective to save and extend lives.  It is free to all Cubans. While Trump makes it illegal to buy Cuban products, thousands of Americans have defied the ban to travel to Cuba which makes the vaccine available to them as well.

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Warning: Nuclear Power Owners Gutting Safety Regulations

By Peyton Gill

The nuclear power industry is requesting ending regulations from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC), which is made up of five members appointed by Trump. Straight from the mouth of one such board member, David Wright, “The NRC mission is reasonable assurance of adequate protection—no more, no less.” That is NOT in the best interest of the public, considering nuclear power plant accidents have led to horrendous disasters and diseases in people and towns having to evacuate permanently due to radiation seeping out with its deadly toxicity.

The 98 commercially operating power plants in the United States need to be highly regulated to protect our bodies and the environment. Entergy operates the Waterford Nuclear Power Plant less than 50 miles upriver from New Orleans, well within the NRC-designated “ingestion exposure pathway,” an emergency zone that mandates emergency plans for the ban of contaminated food and water. The Nuclear Energy Institute group submitted a letter to their buddies on the Commission who themselves have financial interests in the nuclear industry. By creating loop holes, evading safety assessments, and not requiring the nuclear plants to inform the public when there are problems or inspection failures (yes, this is one of the requests the nuclear power plant industry included in the letter), the nuclear industry is able to go unchecked in what is a high-risk danger for all life. Nuclear core meltdowns in Chernobyl in 1986, and in Fukuishima, Japan, in 2011 show this. A near melt down at the Three Mile Island Plant near Harrisburg, Penn., in 1979 left the entire Midwest and East Coast in a three day nightmare during the attempt to contain it. A demonstration of over half a million people took place following that.

The nuclear energy capitalists want the NRC to reduce the burden of radiation-protection and emergency-preparedness inspections, letting plant owners do “self-assessments” and “self-reporting”, and less disclosure to the public of plant assessments. Nuclear reaction plants need to be under the most scrutiny by safety inspectors who are not employed by the plants, and they have no valid correct reason to keep assessment information from the public. This goes to show you what happens behind closed doors in the interest of greed over safety of millions of people and the planet.

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City Spends Millions on Mardi Gras, But Tourism Taxes Don’t Go to the City

By LaVonna Varnado-Brown

In a March 8, 2019 press release, two days after Fat Tuesday, Mayor Cantell expressed deep gratitude to all the departments whose efforts contributed to a successful Carnival 2019. The city spent millions to mobilize the “New Orleans Police Department, New Orleans Fire Department, New Orleans Emergency Medical Services, Department of Health, Department of Public Works, Department of Sanitation, Department of Property Management, Parking Enforcement, Parks and Parkways, Orleans Parish Communication District, and the New Orleans Homeland Security and Emergency Preparedness.”

Aside from whatever enjoyment the people get out off Mardi Gras, its purpose is to bring in millions in profit for the tourist industry, which pays for none of these services. The press release magnifies the fact that the city is subsidizing multiple private industries without concern for the needs of the working class residents of New Orleans. I recognize that the mobilization of these resources is needed to ensure safety for the influx of tourists and New Orleans residents. But the contradiction is that many of these resources are denied to the residents who live and work here every day. In the case of hospitality workers and service industry employees, our work generates the bulk of the revenue that they, in private board rooms, allocate as they see fit—usually away from black, brown, low income spaces.

$180 million in hotel taxes go to private non-elected commissions to boost the profits of private companies.  It does not go into the budget.   Meanwhile we have no money for infrastructure and early childhood education. This $180 million dollars worth of stolen taxes could be allocated for childcare for service industry workers during Mardi Gras while schools are closed.  This money could be used to provide healthcare, maternity leave, and pensions to service industry and hospitality workers.  This is not money that we need to letter write and ask for politely. This money belongs to the working class and has been stolen. We Demand that it be returned and used to elevate the humanity of workers locally. Doing so can only further illuminate and strengthen the city.  The time is now to educate ourselves on the things we want to see changed. Agitate others to view the contradictions that exist. Then organize for revolution. The time for change is now and can begin with you, now.

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Hospitality Workers Shutdown Decatur Street

In commemoration of International Working Women’s Day, over 150 workers and supporters sat down in the middle of crowded Decatur St. in the French Quarter. For half an hour, the workers showed the city a taste of their power, shutting down the street in solidarity with the hospitality workers being forced to work for almost no wages, without healthcare, sick leave, or reliable public transportation. Other workers nearby cheered them on, including bus drivers and truckers who paused in their routes. Many hospitality workers came out of their workplaces raising their fists in solidarity.

The New Orleans Hospitality Workers Alliance and the New Orleans Peoples’ Assembly led a coalition of working women to demand the city and the Tourism Board return $180 million in taxes that currently line the pockets of the rich ruling class instead of serving the people. Hospitality and workers from other industries spoke up in the streets, demanding childcare, maternity leave, sick pay, better schedules, pensions, an end to racist and sexual harassment, and healthcare. All these programs could be funded by the tax money currently hoarded by the city’s greedy capitalists. Speakers included leaders from the New Orleans Hospitality Workers Alliance, Women With a Vision, the New Orleans Abortion Fund, the Amalgamated Transit Union (Bus Drivers) Local 1560, Erase the Board Coalition, New Orleans Workers Group, and others. The rally was conducted in English and Spanish.

As the workers marched out of the French Quarter, they chanted “We’ll be back,” promising to continue the fight.