Politicians are responsible for Amtrak/truck disaster in Nevada. One of many.

On June 24th, a big rig traveling at 70 mph failed to stop and slammed in to a train at a railroad crossing in Nevada (video above).  The driver of the truck was killed along with five people on the train, including the train's conductor, Laurette Lee.  We see these intersections throughout the US in both rural and urban settings.  In rural areas, the two vehicles are traveling at considerable speeds and are warned of each others' presence by a series of warning lights. Eight months before, at the same intersection in the video, a truck failed to stop and disaster was narrowly averted when it swerved and hit a guard rail and signal tower.  The conductor on the train that time was Laurette Lee who, in a sad twist of fate, was killed on June 24th. She was murdered by the state.

Tim Elam, the assistant conductor who survived on June 24th, was with Ms Lee eight months earlier and they watched the speeding semi approach.  "I said, 'Laurette, he doesn't seem to be slowing down'" Elam told the San Francisco Chronicle*, "No he's not" Lee replied.  "She said, 'Brace for impact' and we held on" Elam said.

Detroit

I spoke to a conductor I know about this issue and he echoed the views of Tim Elam and Jack Rice, the engineer on the train that was struck leaving six dead and injuring more than 80. "There are so many close calls ...sometimes they'll stop and sometimes they'll just crash through the gates." Rice told the Chronicle. He went on, "In the last year or so, I've been real close to hitting cars or trucks at that same crossing at least four or five times."  It appears that accidents and near misses are a regular occurrence at these intersections.  Safety groups estimate that a train in the United States collides with a person or vehicle nearly every three hours and in 2010 there were more than 2,000 collisions between vehicles and trains at railroad crossings according to Operation LifeSaver.

So now there's few dead people we hear the same response we always do from the representatives of the people that control the workplace and society.  In response to the disaster, Scott Magruder, a spokesperson for the Nevada Department of Transportation says that, "Now this comes up again, we're going to do a more detailed analysis" in order to prevent such accidents from happening in the future.

Now what comes up again?  What has come up is that six people are dead, 80 injured.  After the 2010 near miss the state "studied" the intersection in question and determined "nothing was amiss" says the Chronicle. Well, something is "amiss" and has been "amiss" for a long time throughout the country, not just at this intersection. We know this because workers talk about it all the time.  Just talking to two of them reveals that it is common knowledge among those who do the work that there is a problem.  But workers, nor our organizations control the workplace.  I remember it took years at my place of work just to get air seats for truck drivers to help reduce back and other problems like kidney issues associated with their work.

Maryland

Oil rig disasters, mine disasters, environmental catastrophes like the nuclear disaster in Japan, the real truth, the "more detailed analysis" always comes after the fact; when they cannot avoid the publicity.  Their first attempts will always be to blame the worker.

Leaving aside all the objective reasons that lead to such disasters like the pressure on workers to get the job done on time, to cut corners, to speed up; one of the problems is that these two means of transportation should meet at all and for that, there is one simple solution, what we call a "no brainer" here in the US.  "Ideally" the engineer and the conductor told the Chronicle, "..the state will consider building an overpass so trains and trucks don't ever have to meet.  But that's expensive."

"Expensive", that's it is it? It's too expensive a problem to fix they say as drones drop bombs and missiles on people in faraway lands.  This situation brings up two important points that are connected.  One is the issue of Democracy and representation in society and the other is the allocation of society's resources, including capital and Labor.  It is obvious to a blind man that we have the capital and Labor available in society to remedy such a simple problem like trains and trucks colliding at intersections. But it hasn't happened.

Workers know about work which is why the bosses tap in to our knowledge in order to increase productivity and their exploitation of Labor.  It's quite clear that workers on the railroads knew of the dangers that led to the death of six people.  The life experience of workers teaches us that they talked about it and complained about it and suggested ways to remedy the problem, especially in this instance as they have a Union.  And our experience also teaches us that that their protests, their suggestions, would have been met with the usual line of defense.  'We don't have the money".

So the political structures of society are there not to advance the interests of workers but to advance the interests of the owners of capital.  At the moment, corporate profits are on a roll as millions of Americans are losing their shelter. It is not profitable to build overpasses to serve the public.  It does affect the transportation of commodities and trade and when that is affected enough, overpasses might be considered, until then, we'll hit the same roadblock.   But Warren Buffet, Bill Gates, Dick Cheney or George Bush don't travel by bus or train so they aren't affected.  How is it possible that we live in a "democratic" society, a democracy for all, when the desires of the majority are not fulfilled, the voice of the workers ignored with catastrophic consequences? 

We have become resolved to the idea that we can't change this situation. They spend billions of dollars a year convincing us, through their media, their allies in the pulpit and the workers' organizations that this is the way things are and will always be.  This is why they deter travel and fill the airways with garbage so that we are not influenced by alien ideas.  This is the reason for their "red scare" and their ideological offensive against socialist ideas. The now defunct Soviet Union was a totalitarian distortion of socialism where worker's control, alive for a brief moment, was snuffed out by the Stalinist bureaucracy due to historic conditions and the weakness of the subjective factor. But the capitalist media insists this was socialism/communism and it failed. Of course, capitalism never fails, just greedy individuals do.

But the history of workers' struggles is full of examples of how a democratic socialist  workers ' republic would function; how the knowledge that workers have at the point of production can become the property of society as a whole, can become social fact.  The Paris Commune,  revolutions like in Spain in 1936, and particularly early on in Russia where the working  class took power for the first and only time in history through the workers' councils or Soviets; these offer great lessons for us but we won't hear about them or learn from their successes and failures on Desperate Housewives of New Jersey.  The history of the formation of the United States as a modern nation state is full of examples of democracy from below, and socialist ideas.

There is no exact blueprint for workers' control, or workers' democracy, and there is no absolute guarantee that human society and the environment that nurtures it will survive the ravages of capitalism. But what is clear is that we have to replace the structures of capitalist democracy with committees of workers in each industry and workplace with elected representatives, councils that also send democratically elected representatives to wider councils in the communities, in other industries, councils composed of and dominated by the working class, consumers, professionals, experts of all types and small business, who all contribute to making society function through productive Labor and who must liberate the productive forces from their present owners.   In other words, the allocation of resources, capital, Labor power and nature, must determined not on the basis of profit but for social need in order to advance the interests of humanity in harmony with nature.

The present functionaries of society allocate resources for one reason only, profit and the accumulation of capital for private gain.  Their actions and the actions of their political representatives kill hundreds of thousands of Americans every year, far more Americans than "terrorists".  Those that die as a result of a conscious decision by politicians to throw money at bankers, at arms manufacturers and who make laws that allow individuals to accumulate vast sums of wealth created by Labor, are murdered, including those we are talking about in this instance.  It is not possible that those who make the laws in society aren't aware of the simple solution to train/truck collisions.  They are aware and knowingly refuse to take action; they are guilty. 

It is not the punishment of individuals that will change this situation no matter how despicable they may be.  It is the system itself that has to be changed.  Drawing lessons from Labor history and the great social struggles that have occurred as workers rose up to resolve the crises facing us in our lives is what will help us understand the way forward. 

Workers have the numbers, we have the social power to bring capitalism to a halt. A united international working class cannot be beaten.   It is not easy to confront the power structure, we are generally conservative creatures and tend to take the easy way out.  But there is no easy way out.  As Tom Paine said, "The period of debate is closed."  

 It's time for action.


*  Railway crews had dreaded crash site: SF Chronicle 7-2-11