The research and technology for the Pfizer (Biotech) and Moderna COVID vaccines came from the National Institute of Health and was paid for by the public. Yet Pfizer has already made $900 million in profit from the vaccine. In April 87% of all vaccines went to richer countries, and the poorest countries only got 0.2%. It is the combined labor and resources of the people that produced these vaccines. They belong to the people and should be mass produced and distributed to the entire world. An independent panel of scientists, workers, and international representatives should be convened to investigate and inform the U.S. public of the nature of the deaths caused by capitalist politicians and corporations.
Biden is running backward on many of whatever progressive measures his campaign promised. Instead, he is hyper-focused on war alliances and infrastructure and technology bills that are nothing more than subsidies to war profiteers and mega-corporations.
The committee to work out a ‘compromise’ on infrastructure spending has been called bipartisan. This is incorrect. Both Democrats and Republicans are partisan to profit-making capitalist corporations.
Gone from Biden’s $2.25 trillion proposal are climate, childcare, and tax-the-rich proposals. The new ‘compromise’ plan lays out $579 billion over 8 years – all for projects that will enrich various capitalist sectors. Most of the money will come from “left over COVID relief funds” except for a possible gas tax hike which hurts lower-wage workers the most. Trump’s tax cuts for the rich will remain in place.
The market rose to record heights hearing news of the plan for corporate subsidies and the absence of new taxes on profits and the super-rich. Wall Street consultants are issuing lists of which companies to invest in.
The bills include huge corporate subsidies for military projects, energy, supercomputing, AI, semi-conductors, pharmaceuticals, plastics and roads. These hand-outs are justified with the claim that is necessary to ‘counter’ China in order to protect U.S. interests. These are the interests of the capitalists, not the people whose funds for social programs will continue to be looted and handed over to war-profiteering corporations.
It is urgent that people stop clinging to the Democratic War Party. The power of the people is in the streets, as is being shown all around the world.
It is especially important for workers and progressives in the U.S. to realize that they cannot content themselves with fraudulent temporary gains for a few while supporting the predatory death machine of U.S. militarism and imperialist economic attacks. The “competitiveness and infrastructure priorities” are all to intensify the capitalist plan to drag workers to the bottom through war and economic strangulation. The countries that the U.S. singles out for attack are each in their own way trying to increase social benefits for their people. When these countries are destroyed by wars or sanctions, it lowers the living standards of workers in the U.S. as well.
After years of activism from New York’s LGBTQ community, NYC Pride banned police from their official Pride parade, and a Seattle Pride organization has followed suit. Both cities have long resisted corporate Pride events and police presence at LGBTQ events, and with last year’s mass protests against police terror, the community finally succeeded in expelling the pigs.
Recent years have seen major, more militant events during Pride, like New York’s LGBTQ Liberation March from 2019, which rejected the corporate Pride event in favor of a more political, cop-free protest. Seattle has had a Trans Pride March that has been free of police for many years.
Amid last summer’s uprising against police terror, LGBTQ activists endured brutal repression and arrests in Seattle and many other parts of the country. The Capitol Hill Pride Festival announced their decision to kick the cops out last week and denounced the police for their ties to right-wing organizations as well.
For the past three years, the New Orleans Workers Group protested the presence of corporations, cops, and military in the local Pride parade. In 2020, after a motorcade for Pride, the people of New Orleans tore down the bust of slaveowner John McDonough in Duncan Plaza.
Pride events commemorate the Stonewall Rebellion in 1969, an uprising against police brutality against queer and trans people at the Stonewall Inn in New York. Police, corporations, and the military are enemies of LGBTQ liberation, as they serve the rich ruling class that funds and profits off our oppression.
The U.S. supports fascism in dozens of countries through direct financing, military support, and other coercive measures. Biden has continued the U.S. foreign policy of backing dozens of dictators around the world who use terror to carry out the orders of U.S. corporations and banks to keep wages low and workers desperate. But people around the world are resisting U.S.-supported fascism in record numbers and with increasing organization.
Colombian General Strike Enters Seventh Week
In Colombia millions of workers and peasants have come together to carry out a general strike now entering its seventh week. Strikers demand that the government protect the safety and dignity of workers, repeal anti-worker laws, uphold rights of Indigenous and Afro-Colombian communities, end land exploitation by big corporations, and guarantee basic needs including education, housing, food, and employment.
They’re also demanding an end to the routine torture, rape, and murder of social activists and trade unionists carried out or given cover by the U.S. puppet government of Ivan Duque. Much of this terrorism is carried out by mercenaries hired by corporations like BP, Coca-Cola, and Chiquita. Since the strike began on April 28, thousands have been injured and scores have been murdered by U.S.-funded and trained police, military, and paramilitary forces.
In 2021 alone, the U.S. has allotted over $460 million in military aid to Colombia in addition to weapons and training. This falls directly in line with the U.S.’s “Plan Colombia” which sought to establish Colombia as the main U.S. military outpost in South America. Last year, Biden bragged “I’m the guy who put together Plan Colombia…straightened that government out for a long while,” vowing to continue and expand such brutal polices across Latin America. Fascist Israel is the second largest financer of the right-wing Colombian regime providing weapons, military training, and mercenaries.
Solidarity with Palestinian Liberation Struggle Strong
The U.S. gives the Zionist Israeli government over $11 million a day to prop up their genocidal occupation of Palestine. U.S. military support is longstanding, and Biden agreed to sell $735 million in weapons to Israel only days before the latest Israeli assault on Gaza. Though a May 21 ceasefire ended 11 days of murderous Israeli air strikes against the people of Gaza, daily assaults on Palestinians by Israeli police, military, and settler gangs continue unabated as millions of Palestinians remain under occupation and blockade.
Palestinians continue to resist illegal evictions, occupation, and violence. Joined by allies around the globe, the Palestinian people’s movement for liberation continues to grow. Dockworkers and activists have blocked Israeli ships from ports in Oakland, New York, South Africa, and Italy. Major solidarity demonstrations have drawn out millions across the globe including a tens-of-thousands strong march on Washington, D.C. The steadfast struggle of the Palestinians is inspiring people across the world to ramp up the fight against all oppression and end the fascist tide.
Over 1,100 workers at the Warrior Met Coal plant in Brookwood, AL have been on strike since April 1. The miners, who work 12-hour shifts and have been required to work up to seven days a week, demand a reversal of anti-worker measures, including layoffs and wage cuts. Support their strike for higher wages, benefits, safe working conditions, and respect.https://umwa.org/umwa2021strikefund
Thousands of water protectors have responded to the call made by Indigenous women leaders to block construction of the Line 3 pipeline, which the company Enbridge would use to transport nearly 800,000 barrels of crude oil per day through Indigenous territories. Nearly 200 water protectors were arrested in Minnesota last week. Now even more forces are taking up this courageous battle. Stand up for treaty rights and the earth by joining the growing resistance.https://www.stopline3.org/#intro
End U.S. Military and Economic Support for Dictators and Right-Wing Coups
Share Vaccines with the World
Say No to Biden & Congress’ Drive for Global Capitalist Empire & Militarism
On any given night, over 70 million people around the world, including millions of children, do not know where they’ll lay their heads to rest. They have no idea if they will find sanctuary or hostility. They are doing what all working and unemployed people would do here: trying to find a way to survive, have shelter and food, and security. Their suffering is enormous.
Bosses’ attacks on migrant workers meant to bring down all workers’ wages
The Trumpist Republican Party is aggressively organizing using open racism and fear tactics to turn workers against migrants. In Louisiana, Rep. Valerie Hodges, a rich business owner and right winger is whipping up the usual lies claiming immigrants have stolen LA tax dollars and that thousands of undocumented people are stealing public services. Hodges’ real aim is to lower the wages and benefits of all workers. As Salvador Longoria, a New Orleans attorney and advocate for Latino immigrants, puts it: Hodges’ bill “wouldn’t be the first time legislation was passed to affect the undocumented communities yet ended up having an unintentional secondary affect on other communities.” “It’s going to screw the native born population too,” Longoria said. “It’s going to affect everybody across the board.”
Immigrants are the ones ripped off, as they pay billions in federal state and local taxes and are denied any benefits, while the super-rich individuals and corporations pay little or no taxes at all. You cannot get much crueler than denying food stamps, stimulus checks, and social security to the very workers who keep this country fed in the middle of a pandemic that has disproportionately affected migrant workers and their families. The businesswoman Hodges, who routinely opposes all workers’ rights and votes against raising the minimum wage, is the definition of a parasite. Now she wants to cut workers’ ability to claim tax credits for dependents.
Meanwhile the Democrats are capitulating to the right on migration. The truth is Biden is just as responsible for the horrific conditions of dictatorship, starvation, war, unemployment, fear, and climate chaos that has driven people around the world from their homes. Now Biden is calling for the construction of more detention camps for children on military bases.
Workers in U.S. will not thrive by turning their backs on workers under attack abroad
We should work to unite all forces opposed to this inhumane situation, but we especially need to talk with other workers about the source of this crisis. The right wing is busy telling workers of all nationalities that being “tough” on immigration will save their jobs. Many Democrats play along. They also play along with the deception that U.S. wars and sanctions advance the interests of U.S. workers when they’re only carried out to advance the interests of a few bosses, bankers, and war profiteers.
Unfortunately, too many in the progressive movement are buying into Biden’s imperialist policies which only differ in name from Trump’s “America First” policies. Happy to be rid of Trump, many are willing to adopt a false idea that we can have prosperity while ignoring the uninterrupted war, sanctions, and financial strong-arming that the U.S. inflicts on countries around the world. Many echo the lies and propaganda of the government because they’re coming from Biden’s mouth rather than Trump’s. The history of fascism’s rise to power shows how many liberals failed to provide an alternative and in fact were complicit in the development of fascism because they put the winning of one limited objective or another above the entire class struggle. To win workers over to their rightful place in the global class struggle, we must foster an understanding based on class interest, not just morality.
U.S. economic and military policies force people to leave their homelands
The first thing to clearly explain is that migrants are fleeing their homelands because the U.S. government is sabotaging, bombing, or starving their country in order to protect or enlarge the profits of super-rich corporations. We are part of the global working class. When the U.S. destroys a country that is raising wages or providing social benefits to its workers, it will inevitably bring down the conditions here as well. If any group of workers are paid less because of racism, religious bigotry, gender oppression or national origin, the wages of all workers will be lower.
Many migrants are from Honduras, especially here in New Orleans. We must remember that it was the Obama, Biden, Clinton administration that organized and supported the right-wing coup in 2009 that overthrew the elected government of Manuel Zelaya, just as it was instituting progressive social reforms. To this day Biden funds, militarily trains, and supports the brutal right-wing austerity government of Juan Orlando Hernández which has pushed more than 67% of Hondurans into poverty. People do not want to leave their countries; U.S. economic and military policies force it on them.
The goal of every capitalist administration, without exception, is to boost the profits of banks and corporations. This is why both Republicans and Democrats have a love fest around growing the military budget, dropping bombs and imposing arrogant deadly sanctions around the world. They are opposed to any country, be they socialist or merely aiming to free themselves of imperialist plunder. Whether Bolivia, Venezuela, North Korea; whether in Africa, Asia, or Europe, any government that uses its budget for social benefits is the enemy.
The U.S. government calls countries like Israel democratic as they carry out genocide against the Palestinian people. They are in league with the monarchy of Saudi Arabia as they bomb school buses full of Yemeni children. The U.S. aids the government of Columbia as they massacre hundreds of social leaders and trade unionist every year. They prop up the dictatorship of the Jovenel Moïse in Haiti so that Nike and other companies can keep paying workers $3 a day. They spend billions of our tax dollars to crush peoples’ efforts to win a better life for themselves, while they support phony “movements” devised by oligarchies to rob the people and deliver them into the clutches of imperialism. They oppose independence, sovereignty, and self-determination because the imperialist International Monetary Fund and World Bank, dominated by the U.S., NATO countries, and Japan, demand repayment of loans before one child gets a container of milk. They oppose indigenous socialist power in Bolivia so that Elon Musk of Tesla has all the lithium this billionaire desires.
The Republicans as well as Biden and his Democrats stand for the growth of the U.S. empire on behalf of a capitalist class whose control over world production is becoming shakier and shakier by the day. As millions in the U.S. are unemployed and hungry, Biden is building up Space Force and preparing new missile systems, including nuclear weapons. Despite the pandemic, he has not let up on any of the brutal sanctions that prevent one third of the world’s population from accessing the food, medicine, and other basic items they need to survive.
Organize workers to fight back against capitalist attacks on our migrant brothers, sisters, siblings
For progressives to refuse to see this as part and parcel of capitalism—to turn away from this reality—is to be complicit in the injustice. It does not mean dropping important domestic struggles, it means not being deceptive about Biden, and weaving together issues that affect the working class so that in the process of organizing, a U.S. worker begins to understand that they and a Honduran worker share a common enemy. It is fantasy to expect the government to be persuaded by moralism: clearly, the horror of children in cages has not moved them to action. We have to join the resistance. We have to demand freedom and full rights for migrants. This means organizing to unite the working class to oppose the filthy rich who are putting our lives and the whole planet in danger. United we can put an end to the immense misery they cause.
Workers Voice Socialist Movement condemns the racist and sexist massacre in Atlanta that has taken the lives of 8 people, 6 of whom were Asian women. This most recent tragedy follows a year that has seen thousands of anti-Asian attacks across the U.S. It is urgent that we put an end to the racist violence afflicting our Asian and Pacific Islander siblings. To do so, we must get to the root of the problem.
Many attribute the rise in attacks to Trump’s racist scapegoating of China for the U.S. failure to control the coronavirus. But Trump is simply the most racist expression of a broader propaganda campaign—pushed by Democrats and Republicans alike—to prime US residents for war with China.
Asians have endured decades of violence at the hands of U.S. imperialism from the Chinese Exclusion Act to the Japanese internment camps to the murderous wars on the Philippines, Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, and Korea. Each one of these atrocities was accompanied by a racist campaign to turn workers against their Asian siblings. The most recent slew of lies, slanders, and racist anti-Asian caricatures took off around the time of Obama/Biden administration’s “Pivot to Asia” which signaled a move by US imperialism to more directly target China for U.S. domination. Polls show that in only the last ten years, U.S. public opinion has dramatically reversed from a once favorable view towards China.
U.S. politicians and the big business media have always needed to demonize the people they’ve targeted for attack because they would have much less success openly admitting that the U.S. is committing mass murder to benefit a few bankers, bosses, and war profiteers. For years they’ve fanned the flames of Islamophobia so that US residents and soldiers would be duped into accepting war on Muslim majority countries like Iraq, Syria, Libya, and Afghanistan. And they resorted to the most disgusting means of dehumanizing Asians in order to justify the murder of millions of Vietnamese, Cambodian, Laotian, Korean, Filipino, Indonesian, and Japanese people, including children.
On March 1, 2021—as millions struggle to survive a pandemic— Admiral Phillip Davidson, the military head of the Indo-Pacific Command, requested an extra $27.3 billion in taxpayer dollars to bolster U.S. efforts to threaten China with violence. To justify his request, Davidson referred to China as “the strategic threat of the century to the U.S.” How many Asians are among the “collateral damage” that these admirals and billionaires are willing to accept in order to sell this lie?
To treat the cancer of racism that is eating away at U.S. society, we have to eliminate the source of its power. Workers can break the chains of racism but we must challenge head-on the lies and slanders that Wall Street and the Pentagon trot out to sell their wars or justify their domination of the world.
Racism and oppressions of all sorts are promoted by the capitalists because when workers are divided against one another they pose less of a threat to the dictatorship of the rich. But if we workers of the world unite to fight for our common interests—for food, healthcare, and housing—their racist lies will increasingly fall on deaf ears. United, workers even have the power to put an end to their murderous wars.
Solidarity with our Asian brothers, sisters, and siblings!
Workers and all oppressed people of the world unite to end U.S. imperialism and white supremacy!
Millions go cold in Texas, Mississippi, Arkansas and Louisiana and in Damascus, Syria
What does the working class in these places have in common? Through military force, the U.S. government has seized oil and gas resources and handed them over to private profiteers who wield total control over, what remains for now, a critical means of survival. The military assault on Syria and U.S. military spending to seize oil for profits has causes deprivation and suffering for workers of both countries.
Syrian oil is nationalized and income from its export goes into public programs. The U.S. ultra- rich can’t stand this, so they impose Texas-style profiteering by force. The U.S. military occupation of Syrian oil fields is preventing oil delivery to Damascus, Syria which has a population of 2.4 million. They too are experiencing very cold winter weather.
The artic storm that hit the U.S. was forecast for over a week. No preparations were made by the Texas or federal government. No airlifting of food, water and thermal blankets was initiated. No emergency income was made available. No emergency orders were issued to ban price gouging of electricity or gas. No money was reserved to fix broken pipes and restore drinkable water to millions. Texas, once Mexico, refuses to give the pennies of FEMA aid to undocumented workers who carry Texas on their backs alongside other workers. There are still blue tarps from hurricanes Harvey and Laura in Texas and Louisiana and unlivable homes all over.
As the storm approached, preparations were being made to bomb Syria. More U.S. weapons were being produced, more U.S. warships were being sent to threaten far-off countries, more U.S. sanctions were being imposed to starve and kill thousands around the world.
The U.S. military is currently directing and funding mercenary forces such as the SDF that are currently occupying Syrian oilfields. They are stealing 140,000 barrels of crude oil daily from Hasakah and smuggling it into neighboring U.S. occupied Iraq. The Governor of Hasakah, Mr. Khalil, said the plundering is directly enabled by U.S. military forces.
Secretary of State Pompeo and Sen. Lindsey Graham admitted to looting Syria’s oil in a testimony to the Senate Foreign Relation Committee in July 2020. Pompeo testified that an American oil company was taking crude oil into Iraq.
At that time Trump stated: “We’re keeping the oil, remember that. We want to keep the oil. Forty-five million dollars a month.”
The bombing in Syria also killed members of the Iraqi security forces who have been fighting ISIS. Iraqis have protested in the hundreds of thousands to demand an end to US occupation. Just last year the Iraqi parliament voted to remove U.S. forces, but the will of the people has been ignored time and time again by the oil hungry US.
Just like the last five presidents, Biden continues to war-monger in Syria under the guise of promoting democracy. He continues to fund the fascist state of Israel and arm the brutal monarchy of Saudi Arabia. Both of these governments are carrying out wars of genocide against the Yemenis and the Palestinians who endure the most extreme cruelties every day.
The politicians and energy company executives who celebrated the “jackpot” they hit when Texas residents’ bills rose by more than 10,000 percent should be jailed. Utilities should be put in the hands of the people who, led by energy workers, can then carry out a just transition to safe, reliable renewable energy.
This bombing should be a wake-up call to those who believe we can support Biden as we focus on only local issues. Syria today; Iran, Russia, or China tomorrow. Nuclear arms production is ramping up and the U.S. is preparing for space war. We must fight for jobs, housing, and a union. In the same breath we must reach the working class with a popular anti-war message as an issue of equal urgency.
The U.S. capitalist economy is dying, and the capitalists are resorting to war profiteering, fossil fuel production, and financial gambling to prop it up. These are the hands behind the rise of the right. If we ignore militarism, if we fail to be internationalists in all our struggles, the working class and oppressed here will suffer mightily.
U.S. Out of the Middle East
Money for Peoples’ Needs, Not for Rich Men’s Wars!
In the 1940s, the Communist Party of India (Marxist) started a movement to address people’s lack of access to healthcare, especially in rural areas. The first People’s Polyclinic (‘Praja Vaidyasala’) in Nellore was founded on the principle that anyone who needs treatment should be treated, regardless of their ability to pay. The Nellore People’s Polyclinic (PPC) trains doctors and volunteers to provide healthcare to peasants, agricultural workers, and the rural poor, who lack access to healthcare and cannot afford to travel to urban areas for care. The Nellore PPC inspired many more people in the communist movement to start their own polyclinics. Communist polyclinics in India now provide low-cost or free healthcare to thousands of people every day, saving lives that would otherwise be lost to the private healthcare system. The U.S. could use a movement like this. The private healthcare system in the U.S. has left thousands of uninsured, poor, houseless, Black, and Brown people without access to what could be lifesaving medical care. COVID-19 has only made these disparities worse and led to more preventable deaths. We must stand up and say, “Healthcare for the people, not for profit!”
