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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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French Masses Take to the Streets, Rebel Against Government of the Super Rich

By Nathalie Clarke

Paris, France—Since May, French workers from all industries and students of all ages have been rising up against continued austerity. Austerity means cuts to wages and social programs making people poorer. Emmanuel Macron, the bankers’ president, as he’s often called because of his work with super rich bankers and his pro-rich, anti-worker policies, has been doing everything to turn back any small victories workers have won through class struggle.

After privatizing the French railway company, which puts workers at risk of mass layoffs, reducing government investment in public hospitals, and attempting to reform schools to side-line working-class students, he’s recently decided to increase the price of diesel fuel.

In response, over 280,000 workers from various parts of France headed to Paris and other big cities, created makeshift barricades from trashcans and old chairs, and reminded the ruling class how powerful a mass movement of workers can really be. Beyond the big cities, thousands of actions happened all over the country, in small towns, on the sides of roads, at tolls, at roundabouts.

This movement, called the “yellow vests” for the high-visibility jackets they wear, began without a political party or union, amongst workers complaining on social media—now driven to the streets by their fury.

The “yellow vests” movement, so-called for the high-visibility jackets the protesters wear, started without the leadership of a political party or union; the movement began among workers whose protests on social media spilled into the streets.

The movement has not only galvanized thousands of workers, it has widespread support: 80% of French citizens declared they support the yellow vests.

The movement erupted in response to a few cents increase on the price of diesel fuel, but it has come to encompass all workers’ frustrations at the elite government’s disconnection with most of France. Most recent demands include a capped monthly salary of 15,000 Euros (around 10 times minimum wage in France), a tax on airplane and boat fuel (which would affect large corporations and not workers), and an end to French interventions in Syria. The class struggle has allowed people who felt divided because of their race, their political party, the industry they work in, their religion, or their sexual orientation to realize that they have far more in common with each other than with the ultra-rich capitalists.

The yellow-vests have fueled a widespread feeling amongst workers: anger at inequalities stemming from the government’s imposing anti-worker and poor rightwing policies. But because elite politicians like Macron and his cabinet are not amongst those who benefit from welfare, unemployment benefits, or housing aid, they see no problem in reducing spending that literally saves lives. Macron’s Trump-like government claims that the increase in the price of diesel is an ecological tax, acting as though they are not aware that taxes on diesel will disproportionately affect rural areas, where people drive to work every day and where most live below the poverty line. Any tax (that does not depend on income), whether the proposed diesel tax or the absurdly high sales tax in Louisiana, is unjust because people who make 7 dollars an hour pay the same as those who earn over 250 dollars an hour.

The big business media, if it speaks of the yellow-vests at all, will probably talk about the rioting that occurred in several big cities. It was not rioting; it was a justified rebellion. They, of course, make no mention of the billionaires who steal MILLIONS of Euros from France every year by cheating on their taxes. No one will mention that these workers are engaging in the greatest act of self-defense there is: fighting for their right to exist. Poverty is deadly: an estimated 10,000 to 14,000 people die per year because of unemployment in France and 6,000 people die because of homelessness.

A few cents may seem like nothing to elites who have never lived on minimum wage, but we workers know how much a few cents can mean when the paycheck won’t come for another week, rent is due tomorrow, electricity and gas bills were due yesterday, there is no food in the fridge, and the kids need coats for the cold weather. Whether in New Orleans, Louisiana or Orléans, France, workers generate all the wealth of society. Our children don’t deserve to go hungry. We deserve better than to struggle every month to make ends meet. We deserve more than the crumbs the capitalist offers us. We deserve better because it is from the sweat of our labor that the capitalists make their profits, because we are the unsung heroes—carpenters, electricians, culture-bearers, hospitality workers, nurses, teachers, builders, truckers, train drivers—upon whose labor society is built. The capitalists, whether in France or the United States, will not give us what we deserve, but, united as a class, we can take it.

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$2 Billion Tax Exemption Given to Gas Company, While Our Communities Suffer

By Peyton Gill

The Louisiana Board of Commerce and Industry just voted in favor of a $2 billion tax break for Driftwood LNG, LLC. In 2019, the company will begin building a liquefied natural gas export facility in southwest Louisiana. This is yet another company profiting from fossil fuels rather than sustainable energy. That’s a lot of money that could be going into the education budget for our children!

Tax breaks like these are often given to companies because they claim they will create jobs and hire local workers. But the companies getting these tax exemptions are giving Louisiana nothing back in return. The Industrial Tax Exemption Program (ITEP) has provided billions of dollars to companies in public subsidies, and these companies have actually cut their net employment. According to a study by Together Louisiana, “Over 20 years, ITEP has provided $23 billion in public subsidies to 1400 companies, which companies, over the subsidy period, have cut their net employment by 26,000 jobs.” The Industrial Tax Exemption Program (ITEP), is state run and is the largest program of state subsidies given to corporations in the United States.

It seems that the government’s main role is to give our tax money to the corporations; this shows who they really represent. Some school boards and towns are starting to push back on this. But lobbying will not work. We need a mass movement of workers to put an end to this thievery.

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Mississippi Casino Workers Win Union Contract

Unite Here! members from Beau Rivage and IP Casinos complete Shop Steward training on August 27, Biloxi, MS

At the beginning of September, the workers at the Beau Rivage Casino (owned by MGM Resorts International) voted to form a union. That makes the Beau Rivage the third casino on the Gulf Coast to unionize. Over 1,000 workers at the Beau Rivage are included in the union. They are represented by the MGM Gaming Workers Council, which is comprised of Unite Here Local 23, International Brotherhood of Teamsters Local 891, and International Union of Operating Engineers Local 406.

Under the union contract, workers will see a pay increase—in fact the highest across-the-board pay increase that Unite Here! has managed to win for any group of workers on the Gulf Coast. But the pay increase is only part of the win. Workers at the casino now have the option to join the union health insurance plan at a lower rate.

They are also no longer isolated individuals, fireable at will; they are part of a collective bargaining arrangement. That means that whatever issues they have with the owners or management in the future, the have the backing of their other co-workers and the rest of the union. Other MGM workers are already unionized in Las Vegas, Tunica, and New Orleans.

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Disney Workers United Win Big!

For months, Disney World workers struggled to get a new union contract. This fight has taken over nine months, with workers taking to the streets and marching outside key locations such as the Disney Springs shopping complex near Orlando. Participants in these actions included everyone from cast members to custodians at Disney’s Florida establishments. The hard work has now paid off, however, with a new contract.

The contract has been negotiated by the Service Trades Council Union, which is comprised of six unions, and represents 38,000 workers. With the four-year contract, starting pay will go from $10 and hour to $15 an hour by 2021. The contract is the result of the unions sticking to their guns. Back in May, Disney offered to implement $15 an hour starting pay, with the caveat that they would cut protections and benefits. The unions refused the deal, and now the workers have gotten the raise they demanded without losing any key benefits or protections. The unionized workers will also be getting a $1,000 bonus that Disney had previously withheld during negotiation

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UPS Workers Fighting for Contract

The current round of UPS contract negotiations has not yet come to a conclusion. UPS workers are represented by the Teamsters Union, with the largest private sector union contract in the U.S. The UPS Teamsters are comprised of 260,000 members in the UPS package division and UPS freight. These workers occupy a potentially-powerful position in the US economy which, like the rest of the world economy, is driven more and more by logistics and distribution. UPS is still the top logistics corporation in the U.S., though they are facing increasing competition from non-unionized Amazon.

The main point of contention is the creation of a two-tiered hiring system. Under this set-up, there would be regular drivers and so-called “hybrid drivers.” These drivers would deliver packages part-time and do other work for the rest of their shifts. They would not be guaranteed forty hours a week, would receive less pay, and would not be eligible for overtime when working weekends.

On September 7, Teamsters in Louisville, Kentucky, held a “vote-no” rally at a UPS freight operation. At the rally, Local 89 president Fred Zuckerman said, “The big thing is we need to get this rejected.” Zuckerman believes that workers in the union will not go for a system that will drive a wedge between regular drivers and the hybrid drivers. According to some in the union, such a system would ultimately undermine regular drivers as well, since the company would have an incentive to push higher paid, regular drivers out and replace them with hybrid drivers. The deadline for voting is October 5.

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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.

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Why is Cable/Internet So Damn High?!

By Enigma E

My grandmother is on a fixed income and her Cox bill recently shot up from $100 a month to $190 once her one year promo package ended. That was for the second slowest internet and the basic cable channel package. I have to play the same charade with Cox every time the bill goes up. I call them with intentions to cancel because the bill is so expensive, then they send me to the non-retention department where they then “magically” find a way to lower the bill. This is a sinister business practice, where they take advantage of folks who don’t have the time/patience or the negotiating skills to reach a compromise with the money hungry company.

We have where the City Council is supposed to regulate these companies via the “Utility, Cable, Telecommunications and Technology Committee”, yet they allow them to be a monopoly ripping us off. They don’t really regulate anything; if they did, we would have a higher quality of service at a much lower cost. Much like many other politicians, the utility committee works on behalf of big business instead of the working class people of New Orleans.

Cox offers the slowest internet service for low-income students at a reduced rate. This is merely a tease for the working class families that receive this service because the tier of internet service does not accomplish all that you need in an efficient manner, such as viewing videos for homework help, being able to live chat with someone when dealing with a billing issue, job training or health care assistance.

This problem isn’t unique to just New Orleans either. A Center for Public Integrity analysis of internet prices in five US cities and five comparable French cities found that prices in the US were as much as 3.5 times higher than those in France for similar service. The analysis shows that consumers in France have a choice between a far greater number of providers — seven on average — than those in the US, where most residents can get service from no more than two companies.

So, we as the working class people in this city, state and country must demand that the utility commission boards tell Cox they will lose their franchise unless they roll back the cost. Public pressure can force laws that favor the vast majority of the people and not the greedy pockets of a select few. #AllPowerToThePeople

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Indian Tea Farmers Strike for Living Wage

Starting on Tuesday, August 7, Indian tea farmers went on strike in the Himalayan foothills of West Bengal state. Workers demanded an increase in daily wages. The unions planned the strike to coincide with monsoon season, which is peak production time. This is in order to exert maximum pressure on the tea estate owners and the government.

Aloke Chakraborty, president of the central committee of the United Union of Plantation Workers stated: “More than 400,000 workers from around 370 tea gardens are participating in the three-day strike. The minimum daily wage for a worker at the plantation is 169 rupees ($2.46). We have demanded a 20% raise to 203 rupees ($2.96).”

The tea plantation system in India is a holdover from the colonial era. Since the time of British rule, tea has remained a major Indian export, generating great wealth for the big tea companies and landowners at the expense of the farmers. These plantations are frequently in the news because of low wages and other abuses. Tea farmers are often from the ranks of India’s most oppressed ethnic minorities and face an uphill battle just to survive. Nevertheless, they have increasingly commanded national attention in recent years as they have organized for access to clean water and other basic rights. The recent strike could indicate an upturn in the movement in West Bengal.

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Activists Expose Convention Center for Stealing Tax Dollars

On Wednesday, August 24th, a delegation of militant activists went to a meeting of the Exhibition Hall Authority (the bureaucrats and wealthy capitalists running the Convention Center) to publicly criticize the Ernst E. Morial Convention Center for trying to steal $329.5 million in tax dollars from the city budget. The Convention Center wants this money to build a hotel for its own profit, even though $329.5 million is more than enough to provide health insurance to every uninsured worker in New Orleans and house every homeless person in the city.

Alec Arceneaux and James Ponder of the New Orleans Hospitality Workers Committee attacked the hotel project for being a “grand larseny.” In their joint statement, they said: “We demand an end to this robbery. Return the people’s stolen tax dollars back to the general budget, and use it to SERVE THE PEOPLE.”

Gavrielle Gemma of the People’s Assembly: “We’re not here to appeal to your morals, because we know you have none,” she said. “We’re only here to warn you that there will be an eruption in this city.”

Dylan Borne of the New Orleans Workers Group: “The NOPD is terrorizing and locking up black and brown youth every day. Yet the biggest gangsters and criminals in the city still aren’t behind bars, they’re sitting right here in front of me.”

Belden “Noonie Man” Batiste, Congressional candidate, exclaimed that the whole board should be arrested. He also shamed Robert “Tiger” Hammond, so-called union leader of the AFL-CIO, for selling out to the board instead of representing the working class.

Kim Ford called the Exhibition Hall Authority the worst board she’s ever seen and criticized its members for living like Kings while the workers who showed up to the meeting spend “our last dollar trying to park outside.”