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Workers: Unite to Fight for a Living Wage

By Joseph Rosen

Citing low unemployment, Trump boasts that the economy is booming under his leadership. Is this really true? Unless you’re counting the profits of the ultra-rich, no.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) determines the official unemployment rate by taking a telephone poll. If you’ve worked just one hour during the week of their poll, you count as employed. Excluded are more than 2.3 million workers locked up in jails, prisons, and detention camps across the country.

Add to this more than 5.2 million people who currently want a job but have not looked for work in the last 4 weeks. Usually these are merely discouraged workers, but according to the BLS, they have “dropped out of the labor force.”

Economists who continue to take the unemployment rate at face value wonder why wages have barely budged. “Full employment” ought to enable workers to bid for higher wages. If the bosses deny a pay raise, the worker can easily take another job—or so the theory goes.

High paid economists might learn a thing or two from talking to workers. As it turns out, low-wage, temporary, and part-time jobs make up the largest growing sector in the economy, continuing a trend of the last thirty years. A recent study by the Brookings Institution found that more than 44% of U.S. workers make less than $18,000 a year. 36% of the workforce has to work more than one job to get by.

These conditions typify the most recent phase in a global class war in which the capitalists have, with few exceptions, outmaneuvered workers for control over the world’s factories, farmlands, mines, etc.

Capitalists want governments that guarantee them labor as cheap as they can get it, whether that means cutting social programs or enslaving workers. Whenever they succeed in installing governments for this purpose—whether by coups, invasions or bribery—they advance their goal of pitting workers against one another in a global race to the bottom.

We workers have the power to turn the tide. The capitalists depend solely on the labor of the international working class for their profits. Our labor makes the world run. Workers in the United States need to realize that our well-being is bound up with the well-being of the workers of the world. For this reason, we need to come to the defense of any nation that resists the domination of our shared enemy—the ultra rich bankers and bosses who want nothing more than to grind us down so that they can live it up. Workers should treat the borders of every nation that resists U.S. imperialism as they would a picket line.

All workers have the right to a safe and reliable job that allows them time to care for their communities. But we’re going to have to fight to get it; the first step is to know which side you’re on.

Minimum Wage Has Increased in 46 States
It’s time Louisiana workers get paid $15 an hour!
Raising the Minimum Wage
will Raise the Wages of All workers

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Billions for Agribusiness and Seafood Bosses, Nothing for the Workers

Seafood Workers Alliance/Alianza de Trabajadorxs de Marsico y Pescado.

Bail Out the Workers!

By Joseph Rosen

The year through May 2019 was the wettest 12-month period on record in the United States, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Floods affected 14 million people during this time. The Mississippi River carried floodwater and agricultural runoff deep into the Gulf of Mexico, precipitating a “catastrophic regional fishery disaster,” according to U.S. Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross. In response Congress has appropriated $165 million for damages. However, these funds are earmarked for “eligible fisheries,” not for the workers who have lost jobs or wages as a result of this latest capitalist-caused climate change disaster.

The workers deserve a bailout of their own. After all, they are the source of all wealth generated by the seafood industry.

Floodwaters killed 95% of oysters in the Mississippi Sound and toxic algae blooms forced Mississippi beaches to shut down for the entire summer season. As a result, the director of the Mississippi Department of Marine Resources reported a loss of $150 million to businesses ranging from restaurants to hotels and seafood processing plants. In Louisiana, Gov. Edwards announced that the fishing industry suffered a loss of $258 million.

These figures only reflect a loss of business revenue. What about the loss of wages for deckhands or for workers in seafood processing, food preparation and hospitality? According to the Louisiana Seafood Promotion & Marketing Board, more than 25,000 people work in the Louisiana seafood industry alone. While businesses are awaiting their bailouts, workers have suffered setbacks to their health and their housing because of the loss of work.

If the bailouts look anything like those going to agribusiness to pay for Trump’s disastrous trade war, the bulk of the federal funds­—aka tax-payer dollars—will go to big monopoly companies leaving workers by the wayside. Last year the U.S. Dept. of Agriculture set up the Market Facilitation Program (MFP) to shield so called “family farmers” from the loss of revenue due to retaliatory tariffs. The U.S. government has already disbursed $14.4 billion in relief through MFP. The top one-tenth richest recipients have received the majority of all payments. Meanwhile, the National Retail Federation predicts that 67,000 jobs will be lost in the agricultural sector due to Trump’s anti-China trade war.

Big seafood companies are already being subsidized by taxpayers. Omega Proteins, a company whose workers harvest almost all of the menhaden (pogies) from U.S. waters, has received $2,910,958 in tax subsidies from the state of Louisiana since 2010. In that time, at least 5 workers have been killed by unsafe working conditions on Omega’s watch.

The $165 million earmarked for fisheries should be used to help laid off workers get back on their feet. We workers need to fight for our right to a decent, stable, and safe job; the bosses are never going to do that for us.

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Freedom Now! ICE Concentration Camps Are a Menace to All Workers

By Joseph Rosen

Thanks to President Trump and Governor Edwards’ racist persecution of migrants, a few rich shareholders at private prison companies GEO Group, LaSalle Corrections, and CoreCivic have raked in millions of dollars in profits from an expanding network of more than 15 lockups across the state.

Meanwhile, working people in Louisiana have seen their families torn apart and their wages kept criminally low.

On any given day, around 9,000 men, women, and children are held captive in ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) concentration camps across Louisiana for no reason except to terrorize and super-exploit non-citizen workers. With taxpayer money, ICE contracts private prison companies and parish jails to carry out this abominable ‘business.’

Every year the capitalist U.S. government deducts millions in taxes from the paychecks of workers—citizen and non-citizen alike—in order to hand that money over to multi-millionaire prison owners. Last year, more than $600,000,000 in taxpayer money went to GEO Group; CEO George C. Zoley skimmed $6,963,460 for himself alone.

Capitalists reserve some of their profits for bribing politicians: in 2016, the GEO Group Political Action Committee spent more than $1 million this way. Similarly, the owners of LaSalle Corrections have donated thousands of dollars to Louisiana politicians including Governor Edwards. For this price, GEO Group and LaSalle secure more business and influence over the policies that affect their means of profit-making. This is just one way they work to keep wages down for all workers, citizen and non-citizen alike.

Dec. 3: Human rights demonstrators shut down private-prison firm GEO Group’s corporate headquarters in Boca Raton, FL.

The owners of private prison companies like GEO Group and CoreCivic also reap huge profits from the forced labor and slave wages of the men and women in their custody. Over 60,000 people held captive in a GEO Group work-camp in Aurora, Colorado are seeking damages for being forced to work for $1 or less a day, many under the threat of solitary confinement. Just as in other prisons across the country, this type of slavery is widespread: GEO Group alone operates 130 facilities across the country.

Capitalists get the most profit out of production by putting workers in competition with one another for wages. The less they pay one worker, the lower the wage rate another worker will have to settle for. Citizen workers are worse off when the bosses cheat their non-citizen brothers and sisters who are worse off when the bosses cheat their imprisoned brothers and sisters. Workers are strongest when we come together to fight against our common enemy: the millionaires who would enslave us all if only they owned enough prisons to keep us captive. Workers must unite to put an end to the camps and gather our forces for war on these slavemaster CEOs.

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“Ukraine-Gate” Hides Real Ukraine Scandal in Plain Sight

Ukrainian troops with the NATO flag, the flag of the Azov battalion, and the Nazi swastika.

By Joseph Rosen

Instead of charging Trump with sexual assault or incitement of hate crimes or crimes against humanity, the Democrats have centered their impeachment inquiry around the allegation that Trump withheld nearly $400 million worth of military aid to Ukraine in order to press the current government for dirt on his potential rival, Joe Biden. Practically no voice among the capitalist owned media has been raised to point out the fact that this aid is destined for a military with openly fascist Neo-Nazis militias in its ranks.

The recent history of U.S. involvement in Ukraine incriminates both Biden and Trump
Since the fall of the Soviet Union and the dissolution of the Soviet Bloc, the U.S. ruling class has been determined to gain unfettered access to the human and natural resources of the former socialist republics. But Ukraine’s longstanding commercial and cultural ties to a sovereign Russia have been a barrier to U.S. domination.

Eager to replace a relatively Russian-aligned government with one that would more readily yield to U.S. colonial desires, the U.S. State Dept. and CIA leapt at the chance to lend their support to an insurrection against the elected government of Viktor Yanukovych in 2013/2014. That the 2014 coup was carried out by violent Neo-Nazi gangs did not bother Obama, Clinton, or Biden in the least. All they wanted was a Ukraine “open for U.S. business.”

Since the coup, state companies have been sold off at fire-sale liquidations and the country’s rich farmland has been raided by transnational agribusiness firms like Monsanto. Mass layoffs have caused a surge in unemployment. The government has deployed fascist street gangs to repress any resistance to these widespread attacks on workers.

Per the demands of the U.S., the post-coup government has pledged to phase out much of its business with Russia. More alarmingly, they have taken steps towards entry into the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) which is carrying out war games closer and closer to Russia’s borders.

Ukrainian Prime Minister Olesky Honcharuk speaking at a Neo-Nazi rally on Oct. 13.

End all U.S. military aid to the fascist Ukrainian government
At least $1.5 billion of U.S. taxpayer money has been used to supply the fascist Ukrainian government with arms and military equipment since 2014. This “aid” supports Neo-Nazi militias such as the Azov battalion who have welcomed American white supremacist terrorists into their training grounds. The government of Ukraine’s capital Kiev officially sanctions patrols by the Neo-Nazi militia C14, who have carried out pogroms against Roma communities and violent attacks on LGBT people.

Since 2014 more than 13,000 people have been killed and hundreds of thousands more have been displaced in a war on the People’s Republic of Donetsk and the People’s Republic of Luhansk, both formed in the Donbass region after seceding from Ukraine in the wake of the right-wing coup.

Because the Donbass remains a bulwark against the building up of offensive U.S./NATO forces, they receive limited support from the Russian government. But the main reason that the people of the Donbass continue their armed struggle against the fascists is that they reject the privatizations, pension cuts, and plant closures that Kiev is carrying out on behalf of the U.S. and E.U. capitalists in charge of the International Monetary Fund.

Workers in the U.S. don’t have any interest in common with gangsters like Biden or Trump, much less with the war profiteers or bankers that they work for. The capitalists’ recent record in Ukraine shows that they regard fascism as just another means to exploit and steal from working and oppressed people. If the U.S. ruling class doesn’t shrink from arming swastika-wearing soldiers in the Ukraine, they’re not likely to withhold arms from the fascists at home. We workers must organize to root out and smash the fascists wherever they exist; we can’t leave it up to any capitalist government to do that for us.

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Louisiana Cities Are Being Taken Over by Banks

Eight Louisiana municipalities have been put under the control of a “fiscal administrator.” As many as fifteen others are being considered for take over.

By Joseph Rosen and Nath Clarke

Across rural Louisiana, villages and towns have seen their elected governments replaced with the dictatorship of a “fiscal administrator” appointed by a committee run by Attorney General Jeff Landry. Without the input of any of the towns’ residents, these “administrators” are authorized to lay off public workers, raise fees, and make cuts to education, utilities, and other public services—all in order to make payments on the debts incurred by past municipal governments.

The Fiscal Review Committee is made up of multi-millionaire Attorney General Jeff Landry, Legislative Auditor Daryl Purpera who has spent years trying to cut Medicaid funding, and State Treasurer John Schroder who is bought off by the Louisiana Association of Business & Industry, a group of ultra-rich CEOs and corporate bosses.

Every year, the Fiscal Review Committee declares towns, villages, and cities “financially unstable”—which can mean anything from the failure of a city government to pay back bank loans to a failure to provide an audit. Eight towns are currently under the rule of a fiscal administrator; as many as fifteen are being eyed by Purpera.

Clayton, Louisiana has been under the thumb of a fiscal administrator since 2017. Because their water system is not “profitable enough,” the Fiscal Review Committee is suggesting they increase the monthly water rate by $10. In a town where 40% of residents live below the poverty line, an extra $10 monthly expense can send a family down the path of ruin. Elsewhere, the committee has proposed cuts to public hospitals which have often been left to ruin for years already, cuts to public schools, and water shutoffs for entire villages. In Clarence, Louisiana, the Fiscal Review Committee recommended increasing traffic fines and fees in a village where fines and forfeitures already comprise more than half of the village budget.

Under the capitalist mode of production, the infrastructure that supports a community of workers is left to rot as soon as capitalists find another place to get their profits from. This applies to cities like Detroit and Flint whose workers produced billions of dollars of wealth for the owners of auto manufacturing plants just as it’s true for Bogalusa, once home to the most productive sawmill in the world. The workers of these cities now live under “emergency managers” where even the elected members of the capitalist government do not have a say over the direct appointees of the banks. Their “fiscal administrators” demand that the working and oppressed residents not only fend for themselves but pick up the tab for the debts incurred by their previous capitalist rulers. Add to this the cost of living with the environmental ravages left by capitalist exploitation.

Workers around the world are standing up to free themselves from the stranglehold of institutions such as the International Monetary Fund that demand that workers sacrifice their pensions, their jobs, their land and their security so that their capitalist governments can keep an open line of credit with the imperialist banks.

Just as workers across the world from Haiti to Chile have stood up to the dictatorship of the banks, so must Louisiana workers rise to defend their right to a life of dignity. Louisiana workers, demand your freedom: Cancel the debts! Fire the fiscal administrators!

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No More Tax Exemptions for Real Estate Developers

Renters have nothing to gain from another handout to developers. A tenants’ union is the way forward.

By Joseph Rosen

Most households in New Orleans are spending more than half of their income in rent. Across the city, the rate of evictions is on the rise. In response, politicians are selling us ‘solutions’ to the housing crisis that are devised by the very people at the root of the problem. Various schemes to ‘reinvest’ in neighborhoods or to provide ‘affordable housing’ all amount to the same thing: handouts to the rich who are intent on pushing out working class, mainly Black New Orleanians.

One scheme—so called “opportunity zones”—has proven to be an enormous windfall for rich investors and real estate developers. This tax loophole was put into effect as part of Trump’s 2017 tax cuts for the rich. Landlord-in-chief Trump who inherited his real estate fortune from his redlining KKK father designated more than 8,000 census tracts across the country as “opportunity zones,” including 25 in Orleans Parish. These cover the Treme, Gentilly, 7th Ward, Gert Town, Algiers, Central City, Magnolia and more—all areas targeted for gentrification.

By stashing money in so called “Opportunity Zone Funds” rich people can skip out on taxes that would otherwise be applied to the profits that they get from their various enterprises. Workers in New Orleans have to pay a 9.45% tax on the purchase of a hot meal while real estate investors can pay as little as a 0% tax on the purchase of an apartment building—all in order to supposedly “spur investment” in areas “of greatest need.” This giveaway has resulted in a massive land grab. Real estate holdings have been consolidated into the hands of fewer and fewer landlords. The New Orleans Redevelopment Fund is an “opportunity zone” tax shelter worth $30,000,000.

Vote no to Constitutional Amendment 4
Big property developers have devised yet another scheme deceptively claiming it will help with affordable housing. An amendment to the Louisiana state constitution would give the city the authority to waive property taxes for investments in “affordable housing” units, exempting properties up to 15 residential units. This amendment does not even specify how the term “affordable housing” would be applied. The city is already rewarding developers of high-end condos with millions in tax exemptions for making as few as 1 out of every 20 units “affordable housing.” Worse, this giveaway increases gentrification by raising rents in the neighborhoods where these expensive new condos are built, forcing more workers out.

To live, workers need to be paid more. To make higher profits, bosses need to pay less. The bosses have the money, the workers have the numbers. The solution makes itself apparent. The same applies to renters. Renters need a real tenants’ movement that can organize for rent control, tenants’ rights and an end to mass evictions.

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New Zealanders March Against Attacks on Muslims

Hundreds of Thousands Show Solidarity

By Joseph Rosen

On March 15, a white supremacist Trump supporter carried out a brutal massacre of 50 Muslims in Christchurch, New Zealand.  These fascists think their actions will get popular support, but tens of thousands of New Zealanders, white and not, Muslim and non-Muslim prove them wrong. Along with thousands more across the world, they poured into the streets to show solidarity with Muslims.  Like the recent Pittsburgh synagogue massacre and the deadly 2015 attack on the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, this was an assault on families gathered in worship.  In Christchurch, the terrorist also specifically targeted immigrants. Among the dead and injured were families who had fled to New Zealand seeking refuge from the devastation of the Western imperialist wars on Palestine, Syria, Somalia, Pakistan, Iraq, and Afghanistan.

The mass murderer cited Trump as “a symbol of renewed white identity and common purpose.” The Trump administration’s racist and anti-immigrant program has included a “Muslim ban” on travel and an expansion in concentration camps for undocumented men, women, and children whom Trump regularly dehumanizes as “criminal.” In the wake of the attack, Trump has downplayed the threat of white nationalism. In contrast, the New Zealand prime minister Jacinda Hearn stated that “as a nation, [we need] to confront racism, violence and extremism.” While this statement is a welcome rebuke of Trump, her hypocrisy needs to be challenged. Like Democrats in the U.S. who condemn Trump’s racist rhetoric but happily support and fund genocidal wars against Arab countries, Hearn’s own party is in a governing coalition with the right-wing “New Zealand First” party whose leaders echo the anti-Muslim and anti-immigrant tirades of Trump and who, together with the Hearn’s Labour Party, support the U.S.-led wars and military occupations in the Muslim-majority countries of Syria, Iraq, and Afghanistan.

Horrific as these individual fascists’ attacks are, U.S. wars for oil and profit on the Muslim-majority countries of the Middle East have cost the lives of millions more. The most obvious difference between the terrorist attack in New Zealand and George W. Bush’s self-described “crusade” against the people of Iraq and Afghanistan is that Bush is responsible for the death and displacement of millions of people. Another difference is that Bush’s wars garnered profits for his capitalist friends. Dick Cheney’s former company Halliburton alone gained $17.2 billion in Iraq war-related revenue from 2003-2006. But rather than admit that these wars are fought for private profit, the capitalist-owned media promote the white supremacist idea that the “civilized” West is at war with its “uncivilized” other.

The capitalists can only carry out their wars for profit if they succeed in dividing the working class against itself. Their media outlets gave the New Zealand fascist the publicity that he sought. To win over a section of the workers to support, promote, fight and die in their wars, they will resort to the most hideous racism and lies. In countries such as the U.S., Australia, New Zealand, and Israel– all founded on the right of white settlers to the “spoils” of their government’s colonial plunder– white workers have been repeatedly duped by the racist myths and lies of their bosses. Yet their adherence to this hateful ideology hasn’t done anything to reverse the general decline in their living standards which continue to worsen under capitalism.

Workers cannot play into the hand of these would-be Nazis. We must organize ourselves through international solidarity and solidarity at home. This means opposing imperialist wars for profit and rejecting white supremacy.

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Venezuelan Workers Mobilize to Defend Their Country

Members of the National Bolivarian Militia, a reserve defense force of 1.6 million volunteers.

By Joseph Rosen

U.S. Supports Wealthy Few Who Want to Destroy Gains

Venezuelan workers, peasants, women, Afro-Venezuelans and Indigenous people are demonstrating and arming themselves to stop an attempted U.S./CIA coup. Over the past few weeks, hundreds of thousands of Venezuelans have poured into the streets to rally against U.S. imperialist aggression, in defense of their homeland and in support of their government. On February 27, thousands commemorated the 30th anniversary of the mass uprising called El Caracazo. Diosdado Cabello, president of the National Constituent Assembly, addressed the assembled masses: “Thirty years ago, the Venezuelan people made their voices heard by taking to the streets. They demanded freedom. They called for imperialism and neoliberalism to stop running over them. To the imperialist powers, I say: I don’t know who you’ll have to rule over Venezuela in the event that your coup succeeds because you will face Venezuelans protesting and fighting back every day in the streets.”

150 Cities Demonstrate Against U.S. Attacks on Venezuela

People across the world are taking to the streets to call for an end to the U.S. economic war on Venezuela and to defend its people’s right to determine their own national destiny. On February 23, people rallied in at least 150 cities to reject the lies and slanders of the capitalist-owned media and to oppose another disastrous war for oil profits. The cries of the millions of Iraqis and Libyans have not gone unheard; around the world, people recognize that these countries were condemned to U.S. war because their governments, like Venezuela’s, committed no crime worse than to try to use their oil wealth for their own national development.

And the world will never forget the crimes of Trump’s henchmen: National Security Advisor John Bolton’s lies have cost hundreds of thousands of lives in Iraq, Libya, Syria, and Palestine, while U.S. special envoy to Venezuela Elliot Abrams helped to arm and train the right-wing death squads responsible for the murder of thousands of Guatemalan, Nicaraguan, and Salvadoran men, women, and children.

Anti-humanitarian U.S. Government refused Venezuelan aid to
New Orleans and Puerto Rico after Hurricanes Katrina and Maria.

Venezuelan workers have stepped up to the challenge posed by the anti-humanitarian U.S. sanctions by increasing their participation in the Local Production and Supply Committees which distribute government-subsidized food to about six million families every 15 days. Through this program, the Venezuelan government facilitates the distribution of about 50,000 tons of food per month. By contrast, the phony U.S. ‘humanitarian aid’ package that was the focus of the dangerous media stunt at the border amounts to only 60 tons of “food.”

As it happens, that’s nearly the size of the aid package that Bush turned away when the Venezuelan government attempted to deliver aid to New Orleanians after Katrina. The Venezuelan people understand perfectly well that the same U.S. government that is attempting to strangle them by economic blockade has no interest in relieving their suffering with supposed shipments of food. The “aid” ploy was only designed to break the territorial sovereignty of Venezuela so that U.S. and Colombian arms and military personnel could be brought in.

Venezuela Will Not Bend to U.S.

The attempted U.S./CIA coup has failed, and yet the right-wing Venezuelan opposition continue to clamor for war. More than 80% of Venezuelans oppose a U.S. military intervention regardless of their stance on the government. The fact that the would-be puppet Juan Guaido would risk the lives of thousands of his fellow Venezuelans clearly demonstrates that he’s merely a pawn of the Pentagon with no concern for his people.

The government of Maduro has the loyalty of the armed forces, which include 1.6 million Venezuelans who are trained by the government to head up citizen militias. These armed workers and peasants have an enormous stake in the defense of their country and the gains on power they’ve made in the twenty years since the beginning of the Bolivarian Revolution. Describing the Venezuelan people’s will to win, Maduro has invoked the heroic example of the Vietnamese people who fought to defeat the U.S.

A U.S. war would be extremely costly. The Venezuelan people are willing to accept the ultimate cost to defend their freedom from imperialist domination. Workers in the U.S. will also pay if Trump and his gang make war. We can’t afford another rich man’s war. For all the misery that another war would bring, we certainly have nothing to gain. But we have the world to gain when we realize that, like our sisters and brothers in Venezuela, we have the power to stand up to the gangsters who think that their tanks and their bombs entitle them to the wealth that we create.

Hands Off Venezuela! End the U.S. Sanctions Now!

 

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Mass Rebellion in Haiti

Photo credit: Haïti Liberté

By Joseph Rosen

Waves of popular uprisings have been roiling Haitian society for months. Workers, peasants, teachers and students have taken to the streets to oppose the corrupt U.S. backed oligarchy in control of their government. The last upsurge in protests began on Nov. 18, marking the anniversary of the Battle of Vertières which decided the hard-won war for Haitian independence in 1803. For several days, workers across the country mounted a general strike. The streets have surged with hundreds of thousands of people fed-up with a government that has not only ignored their needs but has met their protests with lethal violence.

The most recent mobilizations have centered around the embezzlement of as much as $3.8 billion dollars in public funds by government elites since 2008. There are obvious reasons that so many have rallied against the injustice of the stolen public funds. While Haiti’s bourgeoisie and their crony bureaucrats have been taking vacations to Miami, less than half of the Haitian population has access to potable water. The masses of Haitians are still struggling to rebuild basic infrastructure after the devastating earthquake of 2010. The funds could have been used to meet the dire needs of the Haitian people, one in four of whom lack access to sanitation.

In fact, the so-called PetroCaribe funds in question were intended for development, for the construction of much needed infrastructure and social programs as part of an accord with oil-rich Venezuela under the leadership of Hugo Chavez. This deal reflects a longstanding historical bond of solidarity with Venezuela. In 1816, the young republic of Haiti lent arms and aid to Simon Bolivar and his army in their fight for independence from Spain on the condition that slavery be abolished in the founding of Venezuela. In 2017, the PetroCaribe program was halted due to the imposition of financial sanctions on Venezuela by the Trump administration.

Acts of international solidarity fly in the face of U.S. rulers who have sought to undermine the popular will of the Haitians and the Venezuelans ever since this country was founded by wealthy slaveowners. For more than two hundred years, the U.S. has been relentless in its attempts to keep Haiti as a colony where low wage workers would produce goods for export, up through the bloody coups that removed the last popular government of Jean-Bertrand Aristide in 2004. Even today many Haitians work in sweatshops for an average of $3 a day to produce textiles and garments for U.S. companies.

The current U.S. backed government of President Jovenel Moïse as well as the government of his predecessor Michel Martelly are both implicated in the theft of billions. Some in the streets are still calling for an accounting of the lost funds. An increasing number are learning through struggle that this demand is akin to asking a thief to arrest himself. Fanmi Lavalas, the party of Jean-Bertrand Aristide, is calling to remove Moïse, his ministers, and to establish a transitional government. In their indifference to the suffering of Haitian masses, Moïse and his government have become more an enemy of the people by the day.

As repression grows more brutal, the masses are awakening to the need for a complete overhaul of the state. The Haitian National Police have killed a mounting number of protesters. More troublingly, there have been reports of killings carried out by paramilitary forces, recalling the death squads of the U.S. backed Duvalier regime. On November 13, mercenaries carried out a massacre of dozens in the La Saline neighborhood near Port au Prince; images of the brutal aftermath have fueled the outrage of the anti-government opposition. Among the National Police are 1,300 armed United Nations police officers forming an occupying army that answers to the U.N. Security Council, an instrument of U.S. imperialist rule. For the Haitians set on real revolution, they will have to contend with up to 10,000 U.N. troops should the Security Council authorize it.

The historic destiny of workers and oppressed people in the United States is intimately bound up with the destiny of the Haitian people. In the first case of U.S. aid to a foreign government, the slave-owning George Washington lent over $700,000 to the French planters of St. Domingue in order to put down a rebellion of African slaves. Neither Washington nor the French got their way. Instead, Haiti became the first oppressed nation in the colonized world to win its independence and the Haitian revolution became the standard to which oppressed Africans across the United States aspired in their never ceasing struggle for liberation. Indeed, the heroic example of the Haitian revolution has long shone brightly as a beacon to all oppressed people of the world. Let the freedom seeking people of Haiti lead the way! « Chavire chodyè a » “Overturn the pot!”

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10 Years Since the Crash: Workers’ Wages Fall, Bank Profits at Record High

By Joseph Rosen

JPMorgan Chase just raked in the largest quarterly profit of any US bank ever ($8.3 billion), and corporate owned media outlets report that the economy is booming. But we workers know better than to hitch our wagons to the stars of Wall Street. Only 10 years ago, the banks went broke gambling on the wealth created by our labor and it was our jobs, our homes, and our lives that were served up as sacrifice so that the gods of finance would stay fat. The government bailed out the banks with $12 trillion of our dollars.

Has the economy improved for workers as well as bankers? What are workers to make of the much-celebrated upturn in employment that Trump smugly claims credit for? We’re told, for example, that unemployment among Black workers is at record lows. So why don’t these figures square with our experience? After all, nearly half of Black men in New Orleans still lack jobs. Who’s seeing all these economic gains when for most of us, it’s as hard as ever to find affordable housing or to keep from being drowned in debt?

Who counts as employed?
Official unemployment statistics are taken by survey and published by the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) every month. According to this agency, any person over the age of 16 who has worked one hour of paid work in the week counts as “employed.” That goes for all 4.6 million part-time workers struggling to get full time work. On the other hand, there are 5.4 million people who currently want a job but have not looked for work in the last 4 weeks. Like a sick joke, these workers aren’t considered unemployed because according to BLS, they are not part of the labor force. If the unemployment figures were revised to include these groups of workers, this adjustment alone would more than double the “official” rate of unemployment. That’s not mentioning the more than 2.3 million people locked up in prisons and detention camps whose hard, unpaid labor generates billions of dollars of corporate profits every year.

Less than half of the workers who lost their jobs during the 2008-2009 recession have regained employment (consider that because of the crash, workers suffered the steepest drop in employment since the Great Depression); most of these workers are no longer counted as part of the labor force. This steep decline and slow recovery in labor force participation has been hovering around levels comparable to the late 1970s for the past three years.

In New Orleans, tens of thousands of workers have been barred from regular employment because of criminal convictions. Excluded from the official “labor force,” these men and women most often work for poverty wages without job security or safety protections, and many have been forced into the underground economy.

Capitalists talk jobs but love unemployment
In capitalist economies such as the US, off-the books workers as well as the underemployed, incarcerated, and institutionalized form a massive reserve of workers whose desperation is played by the capitalists as an advantage over the workers they hire. All bosses want labor as cheap as they can come by it. The more desperate people are for work, the more likely they are to take a job with low pay and/or few benefits. Workers with full time jobs are discouraged from bidding up their wages when they’re told that there are others in the wings waiting to take their place. The capitalists who control the giant monopolies know this all too well. They sponsor and advocate for legislation that criminalizes classes of workers to drive them into the shadows. They (legally!) pay sub-minimum wages to disabled workers, farm workers, youth and domestic and home health care workers. They benefit from slave labor in US prisons and jails. What the working majority knows as misery is profit for the capitalist class. Capitalists and their lackey politicians push for anti-union legislation or invest in mass incarceration because these attacks on workers have the effect of lowering all wages so that profits go up.

As much as it’s hyped, “full employment” is not the goal of US capitalists because it would allow workers too much power, enabling them to bid up wages through the threat of strikes. In fact, over the last roughly 40 years, the number of unemployed workers has actually risen. Meanwhile, US workers’ wages have stagnated despite substantial gains in productivity. The benefits of technological advances all go to the boss while workers, whose labor paid for them, are laid off.

The persistent downward pressure on wages has meant that even employed workers struggle to put food on their table. In 2016, 14.8 percent of full-time, year-round workers (16.9 million people) earned less than the official poverty level for a family of four ($24,563). In New Orleans, 12 percent of full-time, year-round workers earn less than $17,500 a year.

Unemployment is an inevitable feature of the capitalist economy as are the economic crises that swell the ranks of the unemployed and lay waste to our productive capacities. But we should take heart that capitalism itself is far from inevitable. Those among us who are employed must recognize the struggle of our underemployed, unemployed, incarcerated, and undocumented brothers and sisters as our own. Our advantage against the bosses is only as strong as our unity. We cannot deceive ourselves about the nature of the capitalist system and its drive towards economic crisis: far too many of us already live in crisis but soon enough and suddenly, it will spread. As always, the capitalists will expect us to pay for their greed. We must not only refuse them payment; we must reverse the charge. We must fight for socialism.