Posted on

Abolish the Capitalist Supreme Court – Editorial

Trump poses a real danger by nominating an extreme conservative and open white supremacist woman to the Supreme Court. The tyrannical decisions made by the Supreme Court and federal judges result in immense harm to the people. However, in the panic over the nomination, people overlook the most fundamental aspects of the court—that it is a capitalist tool of the billionaire ruling class and that only mass struggle against the capitalists can beat back reactionary court rulings.

The lifetime-appointed judges of the Supreme Court and the Federal courts uphold the undemocratic right of the capitalists to own and control all of society to the detriment of millions of workers and oppressed people. There are no workers who are judges. When an occasional woman or non-white person is nominated they are carefully vetted to make sure they uphold the capitalist order.

This author worked on a massive rent control referendum in Baltimore that was voted for overwhelmingly by thousands. One federal judge overturned the people’s decision by deciding that the referendum illegally interfered with the rights of landlords. Some democracy!

Respect for Ruth Bader Ginsburg must be acknowledged for stubbornly trying, while coping with a painful disease, to outlive a Trump administration. But to attribute gains made for women or LGBT people to her rulings alone rather than the mass action of women or the LGBTQ movement is false and deceptive.

Crediting a capitalist court or Congress for progress plays into the same mythology that attributes hero status to Franklin D. Roosevelt for the New Deal laws. In reality, it was the militant struggle of millions of workers to challenge the capitalist system that won social security, unemployment insurance, and more. When corporate lobbyists voiced their objections to these reforms, Roosevelt revealingly said, “Do you want me to wait until workers march on the White House with machine guns?”

MASS INDEPENDENT MOVEMENT AND POLITICAL ORGANIZATION CAN PUSH THEM BACK

The struggle can push the right wing back. In fact, it is the struggle alone that succeeds in winning new laws or repealing others. The Supreme Court, federal courts and the constitution upheld slavery and racist Jim Crow laws until the movement was too powerful to ignore. No Supreme Court judge, congressperson, or senator was responsible. The Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of the Civil Rights Act while three of the justices had affiliations with the KKK. The capitalists let the court know they considered it better to grant some temporary concessions on paper rather than fan the flames of revolt which might threaten the system as a whole.

The real tragedy of 4 years of Trumpism is that for all the damage his regime did on behalf of the capitalist class, no liberal or social democratic politician saw fit to answer these attacks by calling for a powerful mass movement in the streets. Workers could have mounted the people power to unseat Trump at any point over the last 4 years; instead, liberals preached that a vote for the Democratic party was the answer. Instead of arousing the rage of workers based on the real harms done to us, the Democrats trotted out a doomed impeachment campaign on behalf of the Pentagon and the CIA.

If Biden is elected, will he march up to the Supreme or Federal Court and handcuff judges for their crimes against the people? No. If a federal judge rules that we have no right to protest police terror or a pipeline and that the Justice department can charge us with sedition, will Biden defy these judges? Of course not! Because above all else, Biden will reverently obey the institutions of capitalist society. If he didn’t, he’d run the risk of lifting the veil of deception from the eyes of the working masses. Biden supported the illegal coup against the democratically elected Evo Morales in Bolivia so that Elon Musk and the Tesla corporation could obtain lithium for their cars. Will he not do the same here?

Trump has nominated the reactionary Amy Coney Barrett. If the masses block him by taking to the streets, that would at least serve to show the power of the people. But at the same time, we need to expose that the Supreme Court, and all U.S. courts serve the interests of the capitalist class and will never deliver real justice to the people.

We need to sweep away the illusion of checks and balances. We need courts made up of and for the workers and oppressed. We need to mount movements and struggles to lift us all up from oppression and exploitation, but ultimately, we must exercise the greatest democracy of all and claim our right to revolution.

Posted on

Trump’s Storm Troopers Target Immigrants

In cities across the U.S. people have democratically decided to show solidarity to migrants and immigrants. These sanctuary cities have directed the police not to check immigration status, to racially profile undocumented workers, or to call in ICE (Immigration & Customs Enforcement) to imprison our brothers and sisters in detention camps. New Orleans is one of several so-called sanctuary cities.

The ultra-racist Trump, just like the Louisiana legislature, refuses to accept any local decisions to raise wages, get sick pay, or deny corporate tax exemptions and more. Both rule solely to provide millionaires and billionaires with profits at the expense of the entire working class.

These anti-working class, racist politicians want to bring U.S. Border Patrol Tactical Units into sanctuary cities, armed to the teeth to arrest immigrants. These units are like the storm troopers of the Nazis. If they are allowed into our city, they will not stop with immigrants: the militarization and super weaponry will be used against the entire working class.

Anti-immigrant Attorney General Landry Has Got to Go!

Like Trump, Louisiana Attorney General Landry has been one of the loudest and ugliest voices in Louisiana against undocumented immigrants and migrants. This vicious racist and anti-immigrant millionaire opposed raising the minimum wage and initiated a lawsuit to stop Medicaid expansion and to destroy beneficial features of the Affordable Care Act. His lawsuit, which threatens the lives of 700,000 adults and children, was never decided by the workers of Louisiana.

Landry wants to divide workers by pitting citizens against immigrants. In 2017 he led a group of Attorneys General who threatened to sue Trump if he did not cancel the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) policy, which protects 800,000 undocumented immigrants from deportation. Yet when it comes to making profits, Landry is only too happy to exploit migrant workers as part of a “guest” worker contract that his business rigged in order to get skilled and unskilled labor for cheaper than he could get it locally.

Guest workers work under conditions of semi-slavery. This program requires workers to sign contracts stating they will not complain or organize, or they will be deported immediately. Many “guest” workers are forced to live in horrid conditions, and their pay is deducted for food and housing. There is no path to citizenship. The racist-in-chief Trump has overseen an expansion in guest worker programs. There are more short-term migrant farm-workers being exploited as “guest” workers than ever before.

This goes to the very core of why the capitalists, and their media, are beating the message that we should blame immigrants rather than the super-rich. The purpose of the anti-worker, anti-immigrant and migrant hatred is to divide us while they laugh all the way to the bank. They want to lower the wages and benefits of all workers.

We need to tear down the prisons which make Louisiana the world’s prison capital for citizens and immigrants alike. Private prisons for profit, eight of them, are now operating to cage immigrants and take their children away.
All workers should reject the storm troopers and view an attack on immigrants as an attack on all workers. ICE and storm troopers out of New Orleans or anywhere! An injury to one is an injury to all!

Posted on

Filthy Rich Declare War on Workers: 2020 is Year to Unite and Fight Back!

Cuts to Food Stamps, Medicaid, Workers Rights Will Hurt All Workers

One social program after another is being cut. Overtime and safety laws are being gutted. Millions of people are losing food stamps, others Medicaid. Threats are made to completely cut Medicaid and Social Security. Trump is moving to kick people off of disability benefits. Millions are imprisoned for slave labor or thrown into migrant prisons. Meanwhile, more than $1 trillion ($1,000,000,000,000) is handed out to ultra rich war profiteers who have bribed politicians into slashing taxes for the ultra rich.

The purpose of these attacks is to make all workers poorer. The capitalist class wants more and more people to be desperate to accept jobs for low pay.

This will bring down the pay of all other workers. It’s a race to the bottom unless we fight back.

Every one of the social programs we once had were won by workers fighting for them. Some go back to the massive movement of workers in the 1930’s when workers won unemployment insurance as a benefit to all workers. Capitalist politicians—both Democrat and Republican—have sought at every turn to wipe these out, treating unemployed workers as criminal “welfare recipients” while the lazy rich get tax credits galore.

44% of the U.S. workforce makes less than $18,000 a year, and millions more are barely above that. Yet the 1% have amassed incredible fortunes, and the gap gets worse every year. Both Trump and the majority of the Democratic Party are funded by these greedy, disgusting people.

If you still have a job with survival wages, it may feel okay to turn your back on cuts to the poorest workers. But this is a wakeup call: they are coming after you, too.

Solidarity of all workers needed to fight back against the capitalists
In France today, millions of workers have shut down the country to stop the theft of their pensions. In Chile today, millions are saying no to austerity. This is true around the world.

Massive worker protests are needed in 2020
Every worker and community organizer can circulate a petition calling on working-class communities, unions, and activists to support the call for a massive protest. Don’t depend on an election or politicians—unite and fight.

Petition:
Time to Unite and Fight!
To Unions, Community Groups, Activists:
We, the undersigned, are joining the call for the millions of workers to unite and fight against low wages, cuts to social programs, pension theft, and for a stop to endless wars and the destruction of the planet.

Posted on

Impeachment Hearings Keep Needs of the Working Class Off the Agenda

By Malcolm Suber

What is the American public to make of the impeachment inquiry taking place in Washington, DC? Daily we are tantalized with the prospect of some government “whistleblower” finally producing the “smoking gun” that will nail the criminal Donald Trump. The Democrats promise eventual evidence of Trump’s “high crimes and misdemeanors,” never mind the criminal U.S. wars that have seen 44,000 U.S. bombs dropped in the first year of Trump’s presidency. The Democratic Party leaders and their backers know that the Republican majority US Senate will not vote to remove Trump from office. Instead Trump is being given the opportunity to pose as the victim of the Democrats who failed to nail him during the Russiagate investigation. To his base of true believers, Trump is fighting the Washington establishment who seek to undermine his plans to put “America First” on the world stage.

The U.S. working class has more pressing problems than Trump’s crooked attempt to pressure the Ukrainian government into investigating his rival crook Joe Biden. We should follow the lead of the workers and oppressed in Puerto Rico, Chile, Sudan, Honduras and Haiti. They have all taken to the streets to demand the resignation of their corrupt bourgeois governments. Millions of Puerto Ricans took to the streets to demand #RickyRenuncia and a change in government followed. Millions in the U.S. can do the same by demanding #TrumpResign.

The U.S. imperialist ruling class regime requires endless war abroad and intensified state repression at home, both of which are rooted in white supremacy and the arousal of hatred for non-whites. Democrats are carrying out an impeachment inquiry that casts doubt on Trump’s loyalty to their program of war mongering. This lets the Democrats tout their pro-war and anti-Trump credentials, all while skirting the real problems of income inequality and cuts to social programs such as food stamps and Medicaid. Just like Russiagate, Pelosi and the rest of the war-loving Democrat leadership have united to condemn Trump for pressuring a foreign power to interfere in the so-called “democratic” U.S. electoral process while the suppression of working class and oppressed voters continues to rise across the country.

Millions of Puerto Ricans took to the streets to demand #RickyRenuncia and a change in government followed. Millions in the U.S. can do the same by demanding #TrumpResign.

To support this impeachment inquiry is to suspend our knowledge that the U.S. is a sworn enemy of both Ukrainian workers and domestic whistleblowers.

The Nazi-loving regime in Ukraine receives direct U.S. government support. Recorded phone conversations between U.S. State Dept officials reveal that the top U.S. ambassador to Europe Victoria Nuland actively promoted the violent opposition forces which took power in the 2014 coup that toppled the Ukrainian government. The Obama/Biden government helped turn Ukraine into a failed state beholden to international finance capital and the rule of Nazi hordes. At home, the Obama administration prosecuted more whistleblowers under the Espionage Act than any other administration in US history.

The current probe into the quid pro quo call between Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky is the height of hypocrisy. The truth is Trump’s brazen bribery upsets the capitalist ruling class who would prefer that the oppressed masses not know how these gangsters operate. Both Republican and Democratic Administrations have used the State Department and the CIA to influence international politics to benefit their individual electoral positions. The imperialist U.S. government has staged coups, invasions and proxy wars abroad, all to secure a world safe for US investments in capitalist exploitation.

The current efforts to impeach Trump allow the US ruling class and its politicians in Washington, DC to ignore the needs of the working class and the poor. Guaranteeing a living wage, ending mass incarceration, jailing racist police, addressing the climate catastrophe, ending imperialist war and opposing capitalism are all off the agenda. By exposing their hypocrisy—much less their own dirty deeds—the Democrats have only improved Trump’s chances for re-election. Revolutionaries and forward-looking workers shouldn’t be put off course by this political theatre. We should focus on educating the working class that our only salvation is organizing class struggle for our own interests, not those of the U.S. imperialist ruling class whether they fall into the camp of Pelosi’s Democratic Party or Trump’s Republican Party.

Posted on

Sewerage and Water Board Continues Assault on Orleans Parish Residents

Rate-Payers Have No Voice in Board Decisions

The New Orleans Sewerage and Water Board (S&WB) continues to add insult to injury. The latest moves include granting retroactive pay raises of $20,000 – $45,000 to S&WB managers. Protest was so loud, even by the daily ruling-class papers, that the recipients of the raises were forced to resign on August 20. Mayor Cantrell had acting Executive Director Jade Brown Russel demand the resignations. Then on August 21, Russell was forced to resign and was replaced by retired US Coast Guard Rear Admiral David Callahan who will run the S&WB for two weeks until Ghassan Korban, former Milwaukee Public Works Commissioner, arrives in the first week of September.

Meanwhile the S&WB ordered the resumption of water cut-offs on August 13 despite knowing that the billing system has not been fixed. They claim that more than 7000 people are more than a year delinquent and that the S&WB desperately needs money. Yet they have money to grant raises to the big wigs and to hire legal teams to fend off lawsuits stemming from the August 5, 2017 flooding.

Mayor Cantrell is attempting to show concern and decisiveness in dismissing the latest mis-leadership team while taking no responsibility although she is the President of the Sewage and Water Board. This is same way Mayor Landrieu tried to duck responsibility. This is just for show as we know that the root of the problem is the lack of local control of the S&WB. True leadership would admit and denounce the dysfunction and refuse to cut-off anyone’s water until actual meter reading is done and exorbitant bills resolved.

Also on August 21, the S&WB refused to attend a scheduled meeting with the Public Works sub-committee of the City Council where they were to present a progress report. Since the S&WB is an independent state agency there is little the council can do but complain. Facing more public anger, it finally appeared at a Council meeting. The Council had passed a resolution (which has no teeth) against cutting anyone off. The new Board members arrogantly dismissed this demand.

The S&WB must come under popular control of the residents who struggle to pay bills, not the rich who are there to sniff out opportunities for their friends to have an inside track to lucrative S&WB contracts. It must also pay reparations to the victims of the Augusts 5, 2017 floods who suffered damages. This of course will not happen unless we organize and force these changes

Posted on

Ring the Alarm Bells of Global War!

CONDEMN DEMOCRATIC, REPUBLICAN COMPLICITY: BOTH PROFIT FROM WAR, TAKE MONEY FROM OUR CHILDREN! INDEPENDENT POLITICAL
ACTION IS NEEDED!

We hold the US presidents, generals and Wall Street responsible for the endless imperialist wars. After all, they make big money from it.
They carry out genocidal terror on people in other countries, creating millions of refugees and causing the starvation of more. They scapegoat immigrants and breed racism in this country. They lie to cover their deeds. They steal from the public treasury (our taxes) and cut our social programs to enrich themselves. Their bank vaults are overflowing with war profits, blood money. And whichever party is in the White house, Democrats or Republicans, both are parties of Wall Street who pursue profit above all else.

We expect more from progressives. Many people who should know better are following the Democratic Party in a blind stampede to hang their hats on anything that attacks Trump- including a dangerous and deceptive campaign of blaming everything on Russia.

There is no lack of REAL things to expose and attack Trump for (like his war mongering and his criminal budget-cuts that steal from the poor) that the masses of people can understand, as we are his victims. The Democrats have chosen this Russia-blaming path because it is a dead-end that will never lead to any real change.

Now a few Democrats are condemning Trump’s recent brutal bombing of Syria because of its illegality, but not the root-causes of the bombing. If Congress voted to approve the bombing (not done during Obama/Clinton bombings), would that make it OK?

These are all wars of U.S. aggression. Working people have no interest in them; only the rich do. The capitalists use them as an excuse to take away our rights of privacy and expression, in the name of a false “National Security”. Real security comes from having good healthcare, housing and education; all of which is threatened by increasing military spending. War is the greatest assault on the working class: THIS is what we must expose to the people of the U.S.

The U.S. capitalist ruling class has only one goal – maximizing profit at any cost. The system is standing on feet of clay only propped up by trillions of tax payer dollars to bailout banks, shamelessly looting the treasury to funnel profits to war corporations, and cutting taxes to the super-rich. Like a wounded beast it’s charging in every direction raining down destruction across the globe and at home. Congress is a millionaire’s club. Their campaign contributions are nothing but bribes. Some say go slow, others are for ripping the heart out of all benefits at once.

Many believe the hype that working class people are all for flag waving endless war. But if they were to stand on a street corner with a petition and talk to workers they would find there is no monolithic belief in any of it. If we ignore talking with, listening and organizing workers, putting faith instead in the other party of Wall Street and the Pentagon – the Democratic Party, we are doomed.

Even white workers who drank Trump’s Kool-Aid are mired in unpayable debt, low wages, and paying more for every basic need as well as education and health care and can be organized. Sitting in ivory towers and repeating wall street democratic party claptrap will not shake white workers from espousing racism, only organizing them against the capitalist system will.

Recently Trump signed the federal budget. The quick vote was solely for getting more billions to the military. With a few dissenters, Democrats voted for it eagerly as Republicans, (as they both have for decades which is the material basis for the rise of Trump and the right). Why? We all knew that following this would be amendments to the budget calling for sweeping cuts to Medicaid, social security and food stamps.

The government has declared war on the workers at home, seeking to extract every penny from us to put in their bank vaults. Workers can and will stop war and fascism. The Republican and Democratic Party politicians will do anything to prop up profits and their own personal gain. The working class has nothing to gain, and all to lose, from the rich mens imperialist wars.