Here in California, no longer the Golden State but the state of the poor and the imprisoned, we are witnessing a savage offensive against working people and those of us who are the most vulnerable. The budget that was passed this week by the allies of the Labor hierarchy, the Democrats, will cause much misery and poverty related deaths. Yes, the organized working class is being driven backwards and our trade Union rights, or the right even to belong to trade Unions are threatened. This is bad enough in itself as the existence of Unions alone traditionally increases living standards for all workers as the bosses offer crumbs (and repression---the carrot and the stick) to keep them out. Given the assistance they have from the leaders atop organized Labor, the crumbs are now unnecessary.
But the effect of this capitalist offensive is devastating for the poor, women, children the disabled and the aged. Jerry Brown is signing the budget today that the Democratic Party has presented as the solution to the crisis of capitalism; the owners of capital won't invest until the opportunities for profit increase. There are the ongoing cuts to education, the closing of state parks, some 70 of them that are about all some workers have left when it comes to being able to afford a vacation. With less than a weeks vacation a year for even better paid workers like firefighters you can’t go too far in this country at vacation time and if you’re unemployed and have time you don’t have the money.
But included in the budget are cuts to Medi-Cal that provides medical assistance to the poor; they will be limited to seven visits a year. Co-pays will be introduced for hospital and emergency room visits and the adult day health program will be eliminated. The adult day health program serves 37,000 people a year, already not enough, and was introduced to keep people out of nursing homes. The death of this will no doubt please the private nursing home operators whose tab for housing those stubborn old folks that refuse to die will no doubt be picked up by the taxpayer.
The so-called “friends of Labor” are cutting the In-Home Supportive Services program which helps disabled people. This program serves some 436,000 recipients and they will see their helpers 16.5 fewer hours a month. (You wonder who develops these figures to the closet half hour). Not to worry though, this program supplies assistance for minor services like “meal preparation and bathing”. The disabled people don't need a bath they figure as they can't go out too much.
As we wrote in an earlier blog, this budget is relying on increased revenue from better economic times but if that doesn’t materialize Brown will take more to the knife sooner than later. Whole departments are threatened the San Francisco Chronicle reports this morning; departments like that which serves those of us with developmental disabilities. This has already been cut over $1 billion in the last three years. This is good news for the private prison industrial complex continuing the criminalization of mental illness that was discussed in a blog yesterday. Democratic Assembly speaker John Perez whines that the Democrats "tried to make cuts that caused the least harm". "they are very difficult cuts" he adds. Not difficult for him as he's doing OK. Difficult for his victims and in many cases they will result in deaths.
After I had blogged about the leaders of the Oakland Unions accepting cuts to “save jobs and services” I saw a firefighter interviewed on TV. Naturally, they wouldn’t have had someone on there that was angry and talking about getting at the rich etc. We can have violence and rape all over the TV but we must never get angry at capitalism and the rich here in the US. This guy made the point that he was open to cuts to help those that they serve, in other words, for purely altruistic reasons. I believe that this is the case with many workers who are better off, but what is also the case is that those of us in Unions and a bit better off are just motivated by survival, by self-interest. This is the position of the Union hierarchy that is cooperating with the employers in these attacks.
Faced with a powerful combination of the employers and their own leaders those of us that have a little more than the rest hunker down and hope for the best. The problem with this approach is we have benefited from the struggles of others and we haven't the right to abandon the less fortunate of our class, the most desperate and weakest in terms of organization, to the savagery of the market and its proponents; this is not class solidarity, it is class suicide. We must fight to preserve what someone else's fight gave us.
While the heads of organized Labor bear the greatest responsibility for a delay in such a process, those of us in Unions also bear some responsibility to not hunker down but to build caucuses and oppositions within our Unions with a program that meets the needs of all workers and use our social power to achieve it through direct mass action. It is our responsibility to reach out to all workers and make "An injury to one is an injury to all" concrete. It is in our own self-interest to do this.
One of the first steps is overcoming the idea in our own minds that we cannot win. We cannot win using the same methods that have brought us this far. We cannot win if we accept that we have to compete with other workers for the right to live a productive and decent life, American workers or workers of other nations. We cannot win by electing Democrats or Republicans in to office and supporting their imperialist wars which have nothing to do with freedom or democracy. We cannot win by limiting our demands to what is acceptable to the boss and the capitalist class. We cannot win if we accept that the boss has the god given right to own the workplace, the factory, the production of food, and all the products of our Labor and the Labor process itself. We can win the small business person to our banner, and by small business I mean the plumber, the barber, the coffee shop owner, the folks that work and maybe hire a couple of people, not a tech firm with 400 employees. This group is also in the clutches of the corporations, the insurers and the health industry. By taking the financial industry in to public ownership as we have explained in previous blogs, we can provide these small businesses in our communities with cheap credit and relieve them of the burden of health care.
For the vast majority of the people in this world to have the right to a healthy and humane existence and future in harmony with the natural world, we have to deny the capitalist class their right to rule and we have to take from them, the wealth they have stolen from us.
As the war against us in California is raging, I remind the reader of a small detail about this state. As of 2007, California is home to 95 Billionaires, out of 946 total worldwide, according to Forbes 2007 Index of World Billionaires, and the state is home to many millionaires. Los Angeles County had 268,136 millionaire households as of 2006, the largest number of millionaires among the counties in the U.S. and 23 % of the total for the state. Orange County had 116,157 millionaire households and San Diego 102,138. Santa Clara County has 74,824 millionaires. (http://www.missionbayrealestate.info/real_estate_articles/where_do_millionaires_live.html)
This wealth must become the collective property of those whose Labor created it. The economy needs new managers. We are not talking here of the life savings of workers and the middle class that is their means of subsistence. This is the product of years of Labor.
We have the power as we have the numbers and it is workers who make society function. We can build a movement if we fight for something tangible a program that this blog has suggested could include:
No concessions
Jobs for all and a $20 per hour minimum wage or $5 an hour increase whichever is greater
A massive program of public works paid for by ending all wars and occupations and taxing the rich and corporations.
Take back all the bailout money and use it for public works
Free public education---hire one million teachers immediately---class sizes of 15 in all schools
More mass transit
A thirty hour workweek with no loss in pay
Jobs for all
Cancel all student debt
An end to foreclosures, put people back in their homes, affordable housing for all
Make public the books of any corporation claiming bankruptcy---take in to public ownership bankrupt ones and the finance industry
No support for Democrats or Republicans, build a mass working people’s party based on our own independent organizations in the workplaces, communities, among the youth and all the victims of the market.
Build links internationally---for global working class unity.
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