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How Should We Fight Back and Exert Power? Women, Workers, Youth: Take to the Streets!

By Gavrielle Gemma

All eyes are focused on the upcoming presidential election to replace Trump who represents the filthy rich capitalist class. Trump has declared war on workers, women, immigrants, people of color, LGBTQ people, the environment, social security and Medicaid, and on all the species of the planet. Trump is funneling trillions of taxpayer dollars to war profiteers, private prison companies, and militarized police, and he is best friend to every racist, ultra-right, anti-working-class dictator in the world.

The Sanders campaign has unleashed a movement that is either anti-capitalist or else critical of capitalism. That many in this movement believe in some form of socialism is a breath of fresh air in the United States. This movement challenges the attacks on social programs that have become the status quo in the U.S. for the last 50 years. Hopefully this movement will grow and continue its political development so as to stimulate a struggle. Already, the movement is more progressive than Sanders himself—especially against imperialist war.

Relying on elections alone puts the movement in a precarious position. Even if Sanders wins the nomination, it’s doubtful the capitalist backers of the Democratic Party will throw their support behind him. The capitalist system is not democratic, as it is presented to be. For example, both parties agree with the undemocratic appointing of the Supreme Court and federal judges for life.

The exploitation of workers, racism, and sexual oppression are built into this system, which will continue to ravage life in order to keep profits flowing to the capitalist class.

If the Democratic Party does not see our movement in the streets on all our issues of concern, they will at best halt the attacks but not reverse them. And Sanders himself, a long-time participant in capitalist politics, needs to feel the heat. He has already indicated he would go to war with Iran, North Korea, and support “humanitarian” (what a lie!) interventions. Notwithstanding a few slipped comments about the great things Cuba has done—which he followed up with the usual imperialist slanders—Sanders ignores the right of self-determination for the people of Venezuela and has done nothing to support Bolivian workers, peasants, and indigenous people in their fight to unseat their capitalist rulers who are violent reactionaries and puppets of the U.S. We cannot separate domestic policy from foreign policy. This error always leads to disaster.

Sanders, who does not want workers to replace the capitalist state with a state for themselves, has sown confusion around his use of the term “socialism.” Sanders is setting the stage for mass disillusionment by merely promising the rewards of “socialism” without promoting the need for workers to orient their struggle towards the total seizure of power from the capitalists.

This has been the historic role of social democrats, especially in Europe, who enjoyed great working-class support and electoral victories. But once in office, their collaboration with the capitalists reversed the course of progress. Failing to really unseat capitalism has led many European workers to turn to right wing parties.

On the other hand, the movement could turn in a revolutionary mass direction.
A movement that does not look to the path ahead will falter. A movement that stays solely in the realm of electoral politics will not win. Many say, “Well, what do you call for? After all, we propose a concrete change.” So do Revolutionary Socialists. We’re not against the Sanders movement—just the opposite: it is potentially a great development. This is especially true for the thousands of young women, women workers, and oppressed women pouring into the campaign associated with socialism.

But why not take this movement into the streets? Laws have always come after the mass movements that won labor rights, civil rights, women’s or LGBTQ advances. Even if the Democratic Party wins, it will be critically necessary to unite and hit the streets so there is enormous pressure and a visible commitment to fight for the needs of the people in solidarity with the workers and oppressed nations of the world.

When the civil rights act of 1966 was declared constitutional by the Supreme Court, there were three justices who were in the KKK, and they voted for it. How do you explain that? It was the power of the people in the streets everywhere.

Women are powerful; we are the rock in every industry in every city in every state. The work of women—paid and unpaid—moves society forward. But without organized action, that power is only potential.

Our challenge is to organize, unite and exert a power that cannot be ignored. This is what the women of Chile, Iraq, the First Nations of Canada, India, Brazil, and many more countries are showing the world under difficult circumstances. We cannot be lulled into the false belief that we can change the world by pulling a voting lever alone. We must fight to win.

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An Interview with John Catalinotto: Re-evaluating  the German Democratic Republic and the Fall of the Berlin Wall

Workers Voice Radio, November 9, 2019

Gregory William: Today is the 30th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, which is being celebrated in the capitalist media. Just today there was an unveiling of a statue of war-monger, of arch-enemy of the working class, Ronald Reagan, in the city of Berlin, and the guest of honor for this unveiling is Mike Pompeo of the Trump administration. 

All we ever hear about the fall of the Berlin Wall, or the end of the Soviet Union, is that this was a triumph of freedom and democracy. But we have to ask ourselves, is that true? Was that really the effect of it? 

We’re going to talk to John Catalinotto. He’s a long-time organizer, notably playing a key role in the American Servicemen’s Union during the U.S. war against Vietnam. They were organizing rank and file troops, as workers,  to resist the imperialist war. He’s the author of the book, Turn the Guns Around: Mutinies, Soldier Revolts and Revolutions, which came out in 2017. He spent time in East Germany, also known as the German Democratic Republic (GDR), or socialist Germany. 

John, can you say a little bit about when you first went to the GDR? What was your impression of this society? Was it absolutely horrible like they say in the capitalist press? 

John Catalinotto: No. It’s wasn’t. The first time I visited the GDR was in 1973, more as a tourist than anything else. I speak German, so I talked to people. Right at the border, you had to go through a process that wasn’t pleasant, because it’s like all these official people. But once you get a quarter mile away, it was like any other city, and people were living like they live anywhere else. 

Only in this case, they had a lot of social benefits that were more extensive than what Western Germany had, which had more benefits than the U.S. had at that time. They had pretty much written into the laws a lot of social benefits. There was a great deal of equality. There was absolutely no unemployment. So basic security and being able to stay alive without too much trouble was easy for the people of the German Democratic Republic, and there was no problem for a visitor. 

In fact, I ran out of money because that was the particular week that Nixon had made some changes in how they support the dollar, and the dollar dropped enormously against the Western European currencies, so I ran out of money. But on a little bit of money, I could buy milk and bread and stuff like that, and survive for the last couple of days that I was there. 

I would say that what you hear about it is not the truth. What we’re hearing today is the version of history as told by the winners of this battle in a long class war. 

Gregory William: What kind of benefits did people actually enjoy? What was the status of women’s rights or for workers? 

John Catalinotto: You have to live in a place to know how it actually works out in reality. But there are certain things that were definitely true. For example, any woman who wanted to work, worked, and not only was able to work and get a job, but had support if she happened to be a mother, especially if she was a single mother. There was care available both for infants and for kindergarten. So you had infant care and care for 3-6. It was very inexpensive, or free, and it was available to anyone who wanted it. In Western Germany at the time, only about 50% of women were in the workforce, whereas about half of the workforce in the GDR were women. [In capitalist West Germany, a married woman needed her husband’s permission to work outside the home as late as 1977.]

That’s one one way of measuring it, but there’s a lot more. They had rights to healthcare, abortion, education (all the way up to university, which was free).

They had rights to housing. Of course, they did not have adequate housing in the beginning years after World War II and even into the 1970s. Housing was short. [In the 1970s, the government initiated a massive wave of public housing construction aimed at ending the housing shortage.] But especially for people who had special problems, like single mothers, they would be put higher up on the list for receiving housing. 

Gregory William: Listeners have to understand that this was a society that had been destroyed during the Second World War. This was a country where Nazism was born, where Hitler was in power. That’s how bad it was in Germany. There was a long revolutionary workers’ tradition in the country. Unfortunately, Hitler was able to rise to power and went about destroying everything that had been gained. 

But once Nazism was defeated by the Soviet Red Army, the East German people (with Soviet aid) built the society back up from the ashes. And just to think of the fact that Hitler had been trying to conquer the world and oppress, and even eradicate, people for being Jewish and other nationalities. But then the German Democratic Republic, the socialist German society, was then supporting liberation struggles in Africa, at a time when the U.S. and West German governments were supporting the racist Apartheid regime in South Africa. I mean, how amazing is that? 

Gavrielle Gemma: We should also recall how the GDR government dealt with the Nazis as compared to how the capitalist government of West Germany put the Nazis into the government. 

John Catalinotto: In West Germany some high profile Nazis were charged with war crimes in Nuremberg after the war. But they more or less let the Nazis stay in the positions that they had, even if it was in teaching, the police, or the courts, etc. They kept a lot of it intact even though they dismantled the Nazi party. 

But in Eastern Germany they had to purge the education system, and the police, and the entire system outside of that. And, of course, if they caught war criminals, they put them on trial. So they had to build up a new cadre of people to run the government that were not associated with the Nazis in any way. That was hard to do, of course.

Also, Western Germany received a lot of assistance, or investment, from the United States, which came out of the war extremely wealthy. The U.S. [government and ruling class] were able to purposefully assist the development of the capitalist economy in Western Germany. They knew that this was the front line of a global war that they were carrying out against the socialist countries, and they made life very difficult for the people in the GDR. 

You brought up the GDR’s assistance to the anti-colonial liberation struggles. Now, it’s significant that [in the commemorations of the wall coming down] they put up a statue of Ronald Reagan, not Nelson Mandela. If they wanted to raise a statue of freedom, it should be Nelson Mandela or one of the other African leaders. But no, they didn’t do that. The choice here is telling. 

During the history of the German Democratic Republic, especially in the 60s and 70s, they gave enormous amounts of assistance to those who were carrying out the liberation struggles in southern Africa. For example, if a liberation fighter was wounded in South Africa, or Namibia, or Angola, or Mozambique, in battles with the colonial power, they would often be slipped out of the country and treated in East German hospitals at no cost. This is the kind of stuff that was going on all along. 

I was there in 1989, just a few weeks before the wall came down, and I interviewed some Angolans who were getting technical training at Humboldt University in East Berlin. This is the kind of thing that the German Democratic Republic was doing throughout that entire period – assisting the liberation struggles in the way that they could do best, which was most often giving technical help. It wasn’t as industrially advanced, and didn’t have as much capital, as western Germany, but it was still very technologically and educationally advanced. 

Gregory William: Thank you, John, we’re going to have to wrap it up. I just want to make one final statement. With all the gains that the workers made in East Germany – once that system was brought down because of counter-revolution – the gains of the working class there were decimated. Industry was dismantled, mostly, in the eastern part of Germany. And with the east absorbed into the new unified Federal Republic, Germany returned to its imperialist ways. They have played a part in the NATO wars, and the U.S. invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan. And within the European Union, Germany acts to impose anti-worker austerity policies on weaker European countries, like Greece. So it is playing precisely the opposite role that the East German republic played (which was a progressive, peace-loving role). So the dismantling of the GDR was a real loss for the global working class, and for humanity as a whole. 

John Catalinotto: I hope we can do as much as we can to correct the false impressions of history that are being imposed upon the working class here in the United States. You just have to be skeptical whenever the bosses, the ruling class, lays down what seems to be a united, uniform position on something. You have to be skeptical enough to ask why they are doing it. You have to ask what interests does it serve for them. And, in this case, the point is to vilify the whole idea of socialism. And I think that one reason they’re doing it here is that there’s a lot of dissatisfaction with capitalism, especially among young people. It’s not satisfying the needs of the people, and they’re looking for something else. So those on top are saying, “Look how terrible it was,” and they lie and exaggerate. 

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Hard Rock Hotel: The Real Story

What You Won’t Read in The Advocate or City Hall’s Press Releases

By Gavrielle Gemma

Without even knowing the technical specifics of the collapse, it’s obvious that capitalist greed, faulty construction and engineering, and city complicity are to blame.

City approves crooked developer, extra height
Company gave campaign $$$ to politicians
In 2011 the City Council approved a waiver for extra building height. They authorized a crooked developer, Kailas, to manage the project although this company was criminally guilty of robbing Road Home funds after Katrina.

While only one family member was jailed, the judge in his sentencing said that he was taking the fall for the whole family. This company, Kailas, and the building company they contracted, Citadel Builders, both donated thousands of dollars to Mayor Cantrell’s campaign.

Though one building inspector has been indicted and two more have been suspended, the full details of the unfolding scandal involving the New Orleans Department of Safety and Permits remain closed to the public. There is suspicion of widespread payoffs.

Citadel Builders was cited by the State of Louisiana for 11 safety construction violations in 2018 alone. They do not make public the nature of these violations. Still the building proceeded.

Workers in shut down area must get emergency pay
Lawsuits are already being filed by workers who were in the building and workers in the surrounding area who are losing income. The city is demanding the developer reimburse the city $400,000 for police and fire, etc. but is ignoring the daily crisis hundreds of other workers are now experiencing. The mayor should issue an executive order to pay these workers from a city fund that should be made immediately available to all those out of work. The city can sue the developer for compensation. Unemployment insurance will not cover many hard-hit workers or be enough to survive on in the coming months.

Independent investigation needed
An independent investigation must be conducted with the involvement of Hard Rock workers, construction unions and community leaders. We cannot depend on the city, inspectors or developers to fully disclose reasons for this extraordinary event.

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Global Environmental Crisis: Capitalism, Imperialist War are the Roots of Crisis

South Africa, September 2019.

Only a global organization of the working class is up to the task of halting the climate and environmental crisis.  We must fight to meet the needs of all peoples of the world equally.

By Gavrielle Gemma

Youth climate strikers have forced the environmental crisis on to the world stage. They have also forced the capitalists and all the governments they control to scramble to come up with plans that sound responsive while they protect the profits of the fossil fuel and weapons industries along with the politicians in their pockets.

We must keep the movement going strong in the streets but to succeed, we need to honestly size up the opposition.

President Trump is an enemy of the planet and the people, but the Democratic Party politicians also personally benefit from the status quo. For decades they’ve been totally bought out by the capitalists in charge of oil, chemical, agribusiness, banking and military industries.

We must recognize that though they rule by different methods—one more openly fascist, the other more deceptive—both uphold the rule of capitalism, private property and oil profits. Hillary Clinton received millions from the oil industry and the Saudi Monarchy.

Why do millions starve when there is a global surplus of food? Why are countries bombed for oil? Why is a trillion U.S. tax payer dollars going to war profiteers every year? Why do we continue to use fossil fuels when clean and sustainable energy alternatives are available?

Because capitalists do not care how many millions die and suffer as long as they prosper.

More than ever the movement needs the leadership of those with the most to lose from the global ecological crisis—the workers, the displaced, and the oppressed nations of the world. That’s why we must fight to end capitalism, imperialism, and racism. We must fight for global economic equality.

United Nations is not the answer.
While 193 countries belong to the United Nations, it is controlled by the security council which is made up of superpowers and is dominated by imperialist countries. The United Nations gave cover to the invasions of Iraq and Libya – both wars for oil.

Were the United Nations a real force for the people, its delegates would have marched out of the UN headquarters to a nearby meeting of oil executives and ordered a mass arrest for crimes against humanity and other species. The oil executives had called this emergency meeting to figure out how to rebrand themselves and co-opt the movement.

“The change that needs to take place—the trillions of dollars of investment—is only going to come from companies with resources and scale,” said Ben van Beurden, chief executive of Shell. In other words, please don’t come after us.
If the climate change movement rose up against the $1 trillion a year U.S. military budget, we would have plenty of resources to be used for all the needs of humanity, other species, and the planet. The obscene profits they are sitting on need to be seized by the masses and used for survival, jobs and the environment. Clean energy, water, air, food and medical care cannot be under the control of private profiteers; it must belong to the people.

The climate struggle must recognize the inequality caused by imperialism in order to build solidarity and strengthen the movement.

We cannot fix the climate disaster with individual efforts or by thinking technology is the problem. Posing less air conditioning or more bike-riding as solutions fosters the right-wing phony claim that the movement is elitist. Air conditioning is a health necessity and should be available free to all people in every part of the world that needs it. Safe bike riding is important, but we need clean mass transportation for all. Poor people here and around the world lack these necessities.

Climate struggle and anti-imperialism are two wings of the same bird.
The U.S. Military is a private army for the oil barons, not for democracy.
The U.S. budget is looted for a trillion a year that could be used for social benefits and earth repair. Politicians that support a “Green New Deal” but vote to increase the military budget are dangerous. We cannot fight for the earth without fighting for peace, against the weapons industry, imperialism, inequality, and racism.

Sheer numbers won’t do. On June 12th, 1982 a million people demonstrated in New York city against nuclear power. But its leaders were silent on nuclear weapons and U.S. wars. On the very day of the protest Israel was using U.S. weapons to bomb people in Palestinian refugee camps. A million voices were ignored easily by the government which said, “Let them march and sing, in the end they support us.” No struggle succeeds unless the rulers feel threatened by economic loss or fear that they may lose the people’s allegiance to their rule.

The movement must understand the root cause of the crisis; this will guide us in knowing where and how to build alliances among communities of all nationalities, and between youth and the working class.

The fight to save the planet must be the fight to uproot the cause of the environmental crisis. To win this fight we have to harness the enormous untapped power of the working class who once they know which side they’re on will be unstoppable. Organized, the working class can decide for itself what we will and won’t produce.

A worldwide day of outreach to the workers is the next step.

Let future strikes be led by youth and workers.
We should fight against pipelines and pesticides, and we should fight to save all species threatened by extinction. By mass action we can force change to some laws and this is important. But to save the planet, the human race and all species, to guarantee a healthy future for all the people of the world, it will take an overthrow of the capitalist system which puts profits above life itself.
Unions are joining the effort against climate change; workers are asking why they can’t have jobs that are safe for their communities and grandchildren. Youth of all countries have taken the lead once again, just like they did in the fight for civil rights in the U.S. displaying great courage and determination.

But a strong movement needs to think ahead, think strategically and understand that only with the workers on their side can we win. We will win.

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Another “Great Recession?” Lesson from 2008: Capitalism Breeds One Crisis After Another for Workers

By Gavrielle Gemma

Trump’s tax cuts went into the bank vaults of billionaires, instead of creating jobs. The treasury is being looted by military war profiteers, banks are reaping record profits, and wages can’t buy the products workers need to get by. Around the world capitalists are sending workers on a race to the bottom. These factors are intensifying the inherent tendency of capitalism to produce crisis after crisis with the working class and oppressed picking up the tab every time.

The monopoly for-profit media (in all, six companies) are sounding the alarm of an imminent new recession. Hundreds of articles are being written but not one considers what a crash would mean for working people, only how best to save the capitalist system and the obscene profits that it guarantees the rich.

While imperialist countries cooperate to occupy and loot other countries and scour the world for arms contracts and cheap wages (enforced by U.S. weaponry given to local puppets), they also are fierce rivals for market domination. This led to both WWI and WWII, which left hundreds of millions dead. Both the Republican and Democratic parties are united in their devotion to the imperialist cause. That is why both vote to increase the military budget time and time again. Different style, same outcome.

In 2008, the “Great Recession” began.

The last inevitable bust happened when Bush Jr. was in office, and the capitalist government ran to bail out the banks and others who caused the crash. First, they instantly found $700 billion ($700,000,000,000) of our money and gave it out to the banks and insurance industry in a program called TARP (Troubled Asset Relief Program).

Obama was elected in 2008 and many workers, Black and white, believed he would feel their pain already under way. Instead, Obama continued the bank bailout and allowed the Federal Reserve Bank (the Central Bank of the U.S.—with our money in it) to hand out $14.4 Trillion dollars ($14,400,000,000,000) of free money, without interest, to desperately prop up the teetering capitalist system. A University of Missouri study says $29 Trillion, but the true figure is kept a state secret. Other Central Banks around the world did the same. Nothing was done to stop the bleeding in the working class.

Immense suffering of the people ignored.

Demonstrations by workers and youth demanded to bail out the people, not the banks, but this did not happen with the force needed, a point we’ll come back to again. Here’s what did happen.

30 million jobs were lost. Nine million homes were foreclosed. (The current Secretary of the Treasury Mnuchin was named “foreclosure king” for his role in this massive swindle). Pensions were cut by more than 25%, and in some cases completely wiped out. Across the globe more than 90 million jobs were lost and poverty soared.

Recovery for corporate profits not workers’ wages.

While many jobs have replaced those that were lost, most are at much lower wages and without benefits, and millions are temporary or part-time jobs. Banks, however, are reporting record profits of $240 billion, with just six raking in $100 billion, in part because of the sickening tax cuts and handouts to the rich, sold to us as incentives to create jobs, which is a lie. The banks also make massive profits from low wages, opioid deaths, destruction of the environment, mass incarceration of U.S. and migrant workers, and the warfare capitalist state. The banks and corporations either hoarded tax savings or used it to buy their own stocks. Goldman Sachs Bank (GS), best friend to Trump, Obama and the Clintons, scored especially big from the tax cuts. The current Trump cabinet has 5 Goldman Sachs executives running our lives. The ex-president of GS, Gary Cohn, is president of the Economic Council.

Repeat history or organize?

It is often said that those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it. Whether in 2020 or 2022, capitalist recession or depression is inevitable. Relying on saviors such as the Democratic Party, warfare or bailing out bosses is not the way to go. We need to understand how capitalism is a dying system of total anarchy meant only for the 1%.

The global workforce produces all the wealth in society which is stolen by capitalist free loaders who scapegoat the poor and immigrants while they hide in their gold-encrusted mansions. The election of social democrats to capitalist government will not stop this, and most often they collaborate with the capitalists to enact anti-worker measures and cuts to social programs. It is this collaborationist policy that has led millions of workers in Europe who have historically voted socialist to look to the fascist parties as happened during the period of depression in Germany when the Nazis rose to power.

As revolutionary socialist workers, the New Orleans Workers Group is building an independent organization of workers fighting for our own class interests. We need to prepare now in our minds and work to get this message of struggle, global solidarity, workers unity and independent action out. Join us.

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Media Monopoly Spins the “News” to Benefit the Rich

John Georges’ pals at his Cypress Lakes Country Club in Destrehan, LA.

The Advocate &  The Times-Picayune merge. Both now owned by wealthy businessman John Georges.

By Gavrielle Gemma

Every newspaper, TV and radio station represents the interests of either the capitalist class or the working class. Workers Voice newspaper represents the interests of the workers, whether employed, unemployed, undocumented or incarcerated. There is another difference in that Workers Voice openly sides with the workers, while the establishment media lie and promote a hidden agenda on behalf of the super-rich.

The two large capitalist newspapers, The Advocate and The Times-Picayune, plus Nola.com (and the Gambit) just merged in the hands of one of Louisiana’s richest businessmen, John Georges.

Georges is CEO of Georges Enterprises, which includes over 50 businesses: Imperial Trading Company (with sales of $1 billion), AMA Distributors, The Advocate newspapers, and numerous restaurants. He made a fortune off of video poker machines across the country, as well as restaurants and an exclusive country club. He is also on the board of First National Bank. From the profit extracted from the labor of workers in those industries, he didn’t raise wages but spent $50 million to buy The Advocate. He pushes alcohol, cigarettes and gambling at truck stops around the country.

Why did King Georges want The Advocate? In that paper’s own words: “His counsel will be sought. He will be courted and schmoozed by every powerful person in the state, sooner or later. What’s more, he will have a forum for his platform should he choose to run again for office. Should he not, he will be in a position to help crown the next king.” So much for “democracy!”

Both newspapers have been around for over 150 years. As recently as 1960, The Times-Picayune used its pages to openly advocate white supremacy and to maintain segregation. In an editorial, they wrote:

“The Orleans Parish School Board, the governor, the attorney-general and members of the Legislature have worked hard to avoid even token integration…[we] regret that their efforts did not achieve complete success.”

The Times-Picayune ended: “So far as we are concerned, we don’t like school integration any better in 1960 than we did in 1954, when we urged a relentless legal fight against it: but it doesn’t do any good to adopt an ostrich attitude and stick our heads in the sands.”

Today, they are more subtle but still uphold “news” and opinions that satisfy the rich white establishment at the expense of working class people, Black and white. They routinely oppose raises for teachers and attack their unions. While in the recent past they promoted outright segregation, today they promote policies that uphold institutional racism like gentrification, the privatization of schools, mass incarceration, low wages and high Black unemployment.

While Workers Voice is written and funded by workers of all nationalities, The Advocate and The Times-Picayune are solely under the editorial control of rich, white people.

As Dwight Ott, one of the first Black reporters with The Times-Picayune, wrote in a 1993 letter entitled “New Orleans’ newspapers give white view of the city”:

“For most of its years, historians and journalists said, the newspaper has been a powerful force in New Orleans, shaping and reflecting racial attitudes and the character of the city. And for the greater part of its years, the newspaper gave readers an image of black people as intellectually and morally inferior, relegated to a lower social caste than white people and often little more than lazy or criminal. It’s that image of black people that many people carry today…

Many people remember a newspaper that fought to keep schools segregated, calling integration ‘evil’ and [Dr. Martin Luther] King a ‘troublemaker.’ The Times-Picayune was a paper with no full-time black reporters until the 1970s, one that rarely wrote about black people unless they committed crimes.”

On May 2, The Times-Picayune bosses notified staffers by email at 2 pm to show up for a 3 pm meeting. At the meeting they were informed that as part of the merge deal, they would all be laid off. They were then told that they could reapply for their jobs.

According to a report in VICE News, “Times-Picayune staffers were shocked.” According to a WARN (Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act) notice filed with the Louisiana Workforce Commission, 161 staff members are being fired.

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War Profiteers Seize Federal Budget

EVERY SOCIAL PROGRAM UNDER ATTACK

By Gavrielle Gemma

The ever-growing military budget of over $1 trillion a year —that’s 1,000,000,000,000 or a million millions— exists for two purposes.  First, it lets the heads of profiteering war industries loot the treasury for themselves. Second, it enables the ultra-rich to loot the wealth of other countries through invasion and occupation. The U.S. military and its imperialist allies use lethal force to extract cheap labor and resources like oil from the countries they target, blocking any efforts of the workers to organize themselves and installing and supporting right-wing dictators.

There is nothing about the war budget that brings security or peace to the working class here or anywhere else.  Yet year after year both Republicans and Democrats vote to increase it. This looting of the treasury is at the expense of everything workers need. Both parties of Wall Street set aside their differences and dance at the altar of war profits.

Trump has just demanded another increase in the war budget and a cut of $2.7 trillion —that’s about 3,000 billion dollars—to Medicare, social security, disability, food stamps, housing, Medicaid, transportation, student loans, education, pensions and non-military agencies.

Trumps’ budget cuts won’t be passed as proposed— they never are.  They always demand larger cuts so we are relieved when we manage to beat back some of the attacks.  Again and again the Democratic party colludes in this charade by agreeing to a compromise.  Over the last 4 decades again and again this is the pattern that results in cuts to necessary social programs.

CAPITALIST GOVERNMENT SEIZING MORE POWER TO ENRICH THE FEW

There are two parts to Congress.  The House of Representatives and the Senate.  All budgets arise from the house of representatives.  Congress just voted against Trump’s rotten wall but by declaring a national emergency Trump diverted funds for it anyway.  So what’s to stop a repeat of that as far as cuts go?

Apparently what can’t be achieved by a vote in the millionaire’s club called Congress can be done through declarations and legal decrees. Now that Trump has packed federal and supreme courts with appointments for life, he is also trying to cut all funding for Medicaid and Obamacare by a court decree.

REPUBLICANS AND DEMOCRATS RESPONSIBLE

The whopping tax cuts for the rich pushed by Trump continue the cuts of Bush and Obama, both of whom also increased the military budgets. George W Bush cut taxes by $4 trillion for the rich.  Just as they were set to expire, Obama extended the Bush cuts in 2010  for another $900 billion and extended them again in 2013, saving the rich $5 trillion over ten years.

Both Bush and Obama each increased military spending during their terms by $6 trillion. A few progressive members of congress may vote initially against it but have pledged to support the Democratic Party no matter what. Even these “progressives” don’t oppose U.S. military and economic interventions.

HUNGER OF THE PEOPLE LESS IMPORTANT THAN GOVERNMENT STABILITY

Trump pursues criminal behavior every day. He supports white supremacy. He commits sexual assault. He engages in illegal business dealings and more. But Democrats went after by cooking up a hoax about Russia.  They chose to attack him from the right rather than risk inciting the masses or instability in the government.

The government at this point is an example of state capitalism meaning that its major role is to prop up Wall Street profits and ensure global economic domination through endless murderous wars.  It Is not by the people or for the people.  It is bought and paid for by campaign contributions and tens of thousands of lobbyists. Any remaining measures that benefit the people are a result of the struggle we waged in mass movements. Nothing could be more urgent than an independent movement against war and cuts to programs.

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We Need a Tenants Movement for Rent Control, Tenants’ Rights

Inclusionary Zoning Speeds Gentrification, High Rents, Destroys Neighborhoods

By Gavrielle Gemma

Eviction Crisis in New Orleans:

  • One in every 19 renter households in New Orleans faced a court-ordered eviction in 2017.
  • One in four black renter households faced a court-ordered eviction between 2015 and 2017.
  • The overall eviction rate in New Orleans is nearly double the rate of evictions nationally.

Study done by Loyola law professor Davida Finger and the Jane Place Neighborhood Sustainability Initiative

Working class New Orleanians, especially in the Black community, know that rents are too high and wages too low, and that we have no security in our homes. We are being driven out of many neighborhoods like Treme, the Marigny, the Bywater, Mid-city and more. Black homeownership is way down and the price of buying a house in Gentilly is out of reach. Long time home owners are being forced out by higher taxes in gentrified areas or by newly discovered code violation fines. We travel longer distances to jobs where there is no parking and we suffer with an underfunded bus system. There is no question that city policies favoring developers and landlords have fostered this gentrification.

An independent movement of working-class renters needs to fight for rent control, against exemptions for developers, against evictions and fines and the racist policies these all entail. Long time home owners in Black communities should pay pre-Katrina taxes, not gentrification taxes which push them from their homes. We are told that the state controls tenant issues. Yet a militant movement could win change. In the 1930’s workers blocked evictions and moved people back into their homes.

Politicians and even some housing nonprofits favor the supposed remedy known as “inclusionary zoning” which gives developers “incentives” (millions of dollars in tax exemptions) to build if they set aside a few so-called moderate-income apartments. This scheme only furthers gentrification. Once the new development is built, all the rents in the neighborhood go up and people lose more housing than was gained. The racial composition and cultural character of the neighborhood changes as well.  This scheme provides a cover for politicians to seem as they are doing something about the housing crisis while still allowing gentrification to continue unchecked.

The example of the American Can apartments shows how “inclusionary zone” fails lower income renters and the broader community. This former factory was renovated with tax exemptions on the condition that the developers set aside a few apartments.  The city agreed that the developer could end this arrangement over time so the owner proceeded to evict these tenants immediately on that date.  Meanwhile this speeded up gentrification, displacing many other tenants and homeowners from the neighborhood.

While former mayor Mitch Landreiu was traveling the country preaching civil rights, he boasted in 2017 in a speech to business owners that the real estate market was booming, and that New Orleans was “becoming the city he always wanted.”  He bragged about the influx of new professionals moving into the city. Wages stayed low and racist income disparity grew. These new, mostly white professionals basically treat Black workers as if they exist to serve them while they party.

We know landlords and developers are greedy. But it is the complicity of city and state officials—upon whom they lavish campaign contributions— that enables them to run amok with their greed. These real estate developers donated not only to the campaigns for Landrieu but also to Mayor Cantrell and the council members (see State Ethics Commission reports). The policies that these campaign donations buy include favored zoning changes, tax exemptions, special loans and a pledge of silence regarding the racist impacts that these policies encourage. They are aided by the non-elected Planning Commission, which is appointed by the mayor and city council, and currently made up of a majority of rich white real estate developers.

Across the country, tenants’ movements are fighting back.  A united fight for rent control, anti-eviction laws and safeguards for working class homeowners is needed now.

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3 Richest Americans Have More Wealth Than 50% of U.S. Population

By Gavrielle Gemma

Charles Koch, a right-wing oil baron who hates workers, is the seventh wealthiest person on the planet. When once accused of stealing crude oil from members of the Osage nation of the Great Plains, Koch responded, “I want my fair share and that’s all of it.” Koch runs a bag man operation called ALEC (American Legislative Exchange Council) which gives money to politicians in exchange for legislation that benefits them. Most of the Baton Rouge legislators are recipients of these bribes.

Koch paid Louisiana politicians to oppose a raise in the unlivable $7.25 an hour minimum wage. Why? Like he said, the rich want all the money for themselves.

No one should be fooled into thinking that the super-rich have “earned” their wealth through superhuman powers.

Every penny they hoard comes from the labor of the workers. The ultra-rich are a band of crooks, thieves and murderers, using inherited money to starve people for their profits.

We should be perfectly clear: they are stealing from us. Yet when we get anything—even a modest wage increase—they claim that we are stealing from them. Enough is never enough for them.

The head of the World Bank, representing the U.S. bankers mainly, has said that wages must be driven down even further. We workers don’t have the purchasing power we had 50 years ago. Younger generations of workers struggle with widespread job insecurity and a lack of benefits, accessible housing and affordable education. The rich want to impoverish all workers—technical, manual, and service workers alike.

The filthy rich feel entitled to every luxury. The lives of our children mean nothing to them.

The increasing concentration of wealth in fewer and fewer hands shows that the capitalist  system is an utter failure.

It’s our labor that runs the world. We vastly outnumber them. Ask yourself this question: Can New Orleans run without sanitation workers? No. Can it run without real estate developers? Yes! We can do without them; they cannot profit without us.

Wealth should belong collectively to the working class and our families. We are entitled to a good life. But we must free our minds and organize to get it!

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Convention Center Hides Amount of Public Money It Will Use to Build a Private Hotel

By Gavrielle Gemma

Once again, big capitalists are trying to grab public money to make private profits. The Convention Center already receives $63 million in stolen tax dollars from hotel taxes that should go to the city general fund. Their recent scheme should land them all in jail. They want to take $340 million in public funds to build a private Omni Hotel, and pay no taxes on sales or real estate. But they will keep the profits!

As if it’s not bad enough, these unelected vulture capitalists presented a “consultant’s” report that deliberately attempts to mislead us. The Bureau of Governmental Research (a business group itself) revealed that there is a $100 million gap between their analysis and the Convention Center. BGR estimates they will use $330 million in public funds.

BGR goes on with a list of other misrepresentations and false assumptions. The Convention Center also claims this will add jobs. But BGR estimates this project will take 130,000 guests from existing hotels. What will happen to those workers?

Clearly we are only seeing the tip of the iceberg in what will be one gigantic financial scandal and rip-off. Who is getting paid off in all this? The big capitalists. Who will lose? The workers and residents of New Orleans.

A few elected officials have raised what amounts to a squeak in protest. But if one looks at their campaign contributions, the link between them and the Convention Center is obvious. Campaign contributions are bribes in reality. At a recent Board meeting, the Peoples’ Assembly, New Orleans Workers Group and the Hospitality Workers Committee organized to fight this theft.