Ken Klippenstein: Luigi-Inspired Arsonist Threatened “Our Way of Life,” Feds Say

Luigi-Inspired Arsonist Threatened “Our Way of Life,” Feds Say

Does that mean gas prices will go down now?

Ken Klippenstein April 15, 2026

Fire engulfs the Kimberly-Clark distribution center in Ontario, California

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A 29-year-old California man has been arrested for allegedly causing $500 million in damage when he set fire to a Kimberly-Clark warehouse to protest the cost of living and the Iran War.

“All you had to do was pay us enough to live,” the Justice Department’s indictment alleges he said in video posted to Instagram. “[T]hey had it coming … fucking eight hours, six days … stuck paying rent on a bullshit ass apartment that I can’t afford to fucking live … pedophiles out here fucking children, profiting off … fucking wars.”

In a press conference, Assistant U.S. Attorney Bill Essayli went out of his way to stress that the defendant had “compared himself to Luigi Mangione” in a comment to a witness.

No one was injured in the early morning fire, but Justice wants to make a point: Chamel Abdulkarim’s target was the system of capitalism itself.

Arson, and admittedly a serious case (if the government is correct); and politically motivated, given the remarks Abdulkarim made. 

But Mangione? The FBI and the national security machine is going to jump on this, affirming for them that a “copycat” terrorist points to a bigger trend lurking in society.

That fact is at the very center of NSPM-7 — national security presidential memorandum 7 — signed by President Trump last September, that identifies “anti-capitalism” as a so-called indicator of domestic terrorism. The directive opens with a section that mentions “the 2024 assassination of a senior healthcare executive” — i.e. Luigi Mangione — as indicative of a growing threat.

Take a look at what the federal indictment focuses on, alleging Abdulkarim said:

• “[S]hould have paid us enough to fucking live.”

• “1% is a fucking joke.”

• “If you’re not going to pay us enough to fucking live or afford to live, at least pay us enough not to do this shit.”

• “Billionaires profiting off of war ...”

• [Y]ou know, we may not get paid enough to fucking live, but these bitches dirt cheap”

• “All you had to do was pay us enough to live. Pay us more of the value WE bring. Not corporate. Didn’t see the share holders picking up a shift.”

• “[T]hey had it coming … fucking eight hours, six days, [unintelligible] stuck paying rent on a bullshit ass apartment that I can’t afford to fucking live … pedophiles out here fucking children, profiting off [unintelligible] fucking wars.”

	Federal indictment 898KB ∙ PDF file
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US Attorney Essayli goes on to cast the arson attack as a sign of anti-capitalist sentiment, promising to “aggressively” pursue anyone who attacks capitalism — or “our way of life,” as he put it: 

“Look, America is founded on free enterprise and capitalism. Anyone who attacks our values, our way of life, our system, which provides the best goods and services to the most people, we’re gonna come after aggressively.”

Get used to stuff like this. As I reported in January, a leaked draft copy of the Department of Homeland Security’s upcoming annual Homeland Threat Assessment introduced a new “extremism” threat category: “class-based or economic grievances.”

Screenshot of leaked Homeland Threat Assessment

By contrast, state authorities did not portray the crime as some sort of threat to capitalism. In fact, San Bernardino County District Attorney Jason Anderson seemed to not understand it at all.

“Arson, to me, is a real head scratcher; I do not understand that somebody who is suspected of arson does something where they get no value out of it,” Anderson said at the press conference.

They still don’t get it.

While reporting on this, when I tried to figure out what exactly the suspect’s job entailed while working for Kimberly-Clark — the company whose 1.2 million square foot facility he allegedly set on fire — I realized that he didn’t actually work for them, but for a third-party contractor, something called “NFI Industries.”

The dreary name reminds me of reporting on Amazon warehouses and hearing one worker after another bitterly refer to its much-hyped $15 minimum wage as not applying to them because they worked for similar subcontractors. This two-step is also how Amazon can claim it’s not them but rather the contractors responsible for the infamous practice of workers having to pee in bottles to meet their punishing quotas.

NFI has been accused of similar practices and was sued in 2015 by New Jersey port and warehouse truckers who said the company systematically misclassified them as “independent contractors” while exercising full employer‑style control. In 2022, a federal judge ruled in the driver’s favor, ordering NFI to pay them over $5 million in a class action settlement.

The obscene price of gasoline as a result of the Iran war (part of our hallowed “way of life,” which allows oil companies to price gouge even in emergencies) has once again thrust the cost of living into the spotlight. Millions of Americans resonate with Mangione and Abdulkarim. 

Isn’t anyone in power curious why that is? 

As a friend told me today when I brought up the Kimberly-Clark fire: Who that’s worked a shitty job hasn’t fantasized about burning it all down? (This is literally the plot of the cult classic movie Office Space!)

Democrats and Republican politicians alike mouth “affordability” but do nothing. Civil government is also starved, bled of resources by our national security colossus that devises more and more ways to spy on anyone opposed, or drowns out their voices by flooding the media with security-speak. 

There are basically two ways the government can respond to things like the Kimberly-Clark fire: (1) treat them as national security threats to be monitored and preempted forever; or (2) address the underlying grievances causing them.

Sounds like a real “head-scratcher.”

Subscribe if you would’ve left Milton’s stapler alone 

Will The AFL-CIO Leadership Back the Billionaire for California Governor?

Richard Mellor

Afscme Local 444, retired

HEO/GED

11-20-25

 

I just paid a visit to the AFL-CIO website not expecting to see much that would inspire me and, sure enough, my expectations were realized. As the capitalist offensive has reached Defcon 4 under the sexual deviant Trump, the first headline that stands out is a call to “Get it Done For American Workers.” The headline refers to the Protect American Workers’ Act which is in Congress and, according to the AFL-CIO leadership, will, “…restore collective bargaining rights to more than one million federal workers.” after Trump’s Executive Order took them away.

 

The AFL-CIO leadership, those folks that have given billions of dollars of their member’s money to Democratic Party candidates over the years, along with resources like precinct walkers and staffers for phone banks, managed to get 218 legislators, Democrats and Republicans, to sign a petition that will require Congress to vote on the Act.

 

Workers’ living standards and rights are being savaged on a daily basis, and in response, the action the heads of an organization with 14 million people affiliated to it and whose member have their hands on the levers of society, recommends  that we call our representatives and pressure them to vote for the Protect American Workers’ Act. They graciously provide the number and a form we can fill out that will make it easier. They are truly in another world.

­

Collective bargaining rights are important. The right to a union and to have our representatives meet with the employers on our behalf was a huge step for working class people that arose during the rise of industrial unionism and the formation of the CIO in the 1930’s. There were three general strikes in 1934 and the mass sit downs culminating in the 44-day occupation of the GM plant in Flint Michigan, thousands joined the communist party and much of the legislation that followed was the politicians simply codifying what US workers had already won in the streets, workplaces and communities of America. 

 

When you force your oppressor to yield a little, you recognize it and build upon your own strength, you don’t don’t thank them for their kindness. But crediting politicians and the so-called democratic process for the gains of the 1930’s is the necessary alternative to the truth, that workers’ power, us relying on our own strength and the willingness to challenge laws that restrict workers’ rights is what led to the New Deal. Roosevelt saved capitalism from itself.

 

The excitement about a piece of legislation that may or may not be passed is the labor hierarchy hoping for a respite, pleading with the bosses’ and their political parties to be a little less aggressive. And bargaining rights, which gives the labor officialdom a seat at the table, has for years meant them bargaining away our rights and material wellbeing. When the system goes in to crisis as it always does, the trade union hierarchy sees it as their role to bail it out. And it is to their members and the working class as a whole that they turn.

 

In the Wisconsin events 0f 2011 when 100,000 surrounded and occupied the state capital, the two main demands from the labor bureaucracy’s point of view were bargaining rights, without which they wouldn’t have a job, and dues checkoff where the employers collect union dues through payroll. This saves the union officials’ work or having to interact with their members in a serious way and the employer can drop it any time they like depriving the union of funds.

 

Despite this history, according to the AFL-CIO’s own figures, more than 70% of Americans support the right to join a union. 

I’ll add this, if the unions were winning serious material gains, or even fighting for them utilizing the potential power of the organized working class to punish profit taking, millions would be drawn to the labor movement. Mamdani’s election shows what talking about issues that really affect people actually does. When the AFL-CIO leadership’s support for Starbucks means nothing but the well-worn statement “We stand in solidarity with..” and a Democrat joins the picket line for a photo op, or we are given the phone number of a legislator, no one takes them seriously. 

 

In addition, organized labor has the resources and social power to run our own candidates. I read yesterday that the tech billionaire, Democrat Tom Steyer is running for governor of California. He’s going to make sure the corporations pay their fair share, break up the monopoly of the power utilities and ensure, “California remains the place people come to start businesses…..” because that’s why people come here.  He will also launch the largest home building program in the history of California and make California a top ten state for public education.

 

I will say with conviction that no worker with a brain in their head will believe this for one minute; you can’t do both. It is nothing new. Promises like this from rich people and in this case a billionaire, and what is just political chicanery, is one of the primary reasons for the rise of Trump. More importantly, it is the primary reason some 100 million people don’t bother to vote in national elections. 

Only one in four registered voters voted for Trump. It is not stupidity, apathy or ignorance that stops people from participating in the electoral process. Voting is not an excersize in civics, if our material conditions continue to decline no matter which party is in power; why vote. The same applies to union membership. If dues go up and wages down, why pay them?

 

The reality we are facing is that more than a century of the domination of the two capitalist parties over US political and economic life is over.

 

In my view though, the US population is not as right wing as the mass media would have us believe. A poll by Gallup in 2023 found that, 63% of US adults agreed that “the Republican and Democratic parties do ‘such a poor job’ of representing the American people that a third major party is needed.” 

 

A Pew poll in 2021found that 87% of Americans believed that the government should play a role in ensuring clean air and water; 64% said it should ensure health insurance for everyone and 43% said it should provide high speed Internet access.

WSJ 8-13-14-22

 

As opportunity knocks once again for working people and in particularly organized labor, we can bet that if Steyer is the Democratic Party’s choice, the labor officialdom will support him. Three million workers are affiliated to the California Labor Federation AFL-CIO, almost 800,000 to the LA Labor Federation and that’s the best we can do; a billionaire savior. 

 

I was a delegate to the California State Labor Federation’s biennial conference in 1994 and, as I often did, introduced a resolution on the need for a Labor Party from my local. Executive Secretary John Henning, an excellent speaker criticised the Democratic Party in his introductory remarks, but opposed the resolution. Here is what he said:

 

"The two party system can't give relief because capitalism in large finances both parties.  In one way or another.  We may say it finances the Republican Party more.  But have you ever known Democrats en masse to turn down the enticements of capitalism?....... We were never meant to be beggars at the table of wealth.  We were never meant to be the apostles of labor cannibalism on the world stage.  We were meant for a higher destiny.  We were never meant to be the lieutenants of capitalism.  We were never meant to be the pall bearers of the workers of the world." 

 

Politically, the trade union officialdom functions as the representatives of the Democratic Party inside the workers’ organizations. 

 

I am an optimist as I believe that as a result of the clashes between capital and labor in wider society that are ahead, organized labor will also find itself engulfed in internal struggles of its own and new, likely younger leaders will emerge out of these battles.

 

The capitulation of the present union hierarchy who are the beggars at the table of wealth to use Henning’s words, has set us back years and ensured that the coming battles will be quite unpleasant to say the least. But history shows us that the working class will not go meekly to the gallows. 

California Governor Gavin Newsom Vows to Defend Democracy by Rigging Elections to stop Election Rigging

CA Governor Gavin Newsom signs the Election Rigging Response Act to save Democracy
Source: Cal Matters

Richard Mellor

Afscme Local 444, retired

HEO/GED

08-26-25

 

Electoral warfare

It seems we’re preparing for war here in California. 

Back in June, Donald Trump pressured Texas Republicans to redraw the state’s Congressional maps to favor Republican candidates, undermining Democratic Party power in the state and most importantly, increasing the number of Republican seats in the US House of Representatives where that party has a very slim majority. 

We have an intense electoral competition every four years between two capitalist parties over who gets to govern society and reap all the benefits thereof.

 

Putting it bluntly, the Texas move is a political power grab. It is clearly harmful to working class and poor people as any strengthening of the Republican Party over workers’ lives is a recipe for poverty and in many instances a death sentence. Those Democrats and others that have condemned it as a very bad undemocratic move are right.

 

In response, California’s Governor Newsom has picked up the baton and has become the leading Democrat in the fight against Trumpism, electorally anyway. Initially Newsom had threatened to do a bit of redistricting of his own that could cost Republicans half their Congressional seats in the state and, if successful, change the balance of power in the US House of Representatives 

 

Many never took the threat seriously as gerrymandering is frowned upon and California has an independent redistricting commission that was given the power to draw electoral boundaries by the voter in 2012, taking it out of the hands of the state legislature.

 

But Newsom introduced new electoral maps at a rally on August 15^th and has called a Special Election for November 4^th in order to get support for his proposal from the California voter.

 

The legislation is called Proposition 50 and normally thousands of signatures are required to get a proposition on the ballot. But the California constitution allows it if it is passed by two thirds of the state legislature. As California is a Democratic Party stronghold, a one-party state basically, Governor Newsom’s Proposition passed and the campaigning has already begun.

 

The issue is very controversial as the independent citizen commission is very popular and was considered a huge victory taking the drawing of electoral boundaries out of the hands of the politically charged legislature with both parties at war over voting power. 

 

Naturally, the state’s Republicans are opposed to Proposition 50 and lots of money is being spent on both sides of the issue. The state-run election is expected to cost about $250 million.  The hypocrisy of California’s Republican Party is evident opposing Newsome’s redistricting for overriding the electoral commission and “Undermining our Democracy”. Meanwhile, the Republican Party introduces similar legislation in Texas.

 

The Democrats are just as bad introducing what is termed the “Election Rigging Response Act” as a strategy against a rival party’s election rigging in Texas and claiming that they are defending democracy. It’s no wonder American’s have come to despise politics and politicians and have abandoned the electoral process in their millions. Newsom and the Democrats are saying the legislation is only temporary until 2030 and we’ll see how that goes.

 

Is This the Best Democrats Can Offer Workers?
I am opposed to this legislation. It doesn’t serve the interests of working class people to support legislation that gives the Democratic Party more power over our lives that it already has? Same goes for the other capitalist party. This is electoral warfare between two parties that represent the US capitalist class including the billionaires among them. California is home to 200 billionaires, 82 of them in the San Francisco Bay Area where I live. The same three billionaires, that sat behind Trump at his inauguration would be just as supportive of Newsom or any Democrat that occupied the Oval Office. They own both parties.

 

There are many Californians that are uncomfortable with Newsom’s Electoral Rigging Act as it is electoral rigging, but Trump is so despised I can’t see Newsom’s Prop 90 being defeated. Either way, Newsom is the Democratic Party’s front runner for President in 2028 and this is a major campaign booster.

 

But the most important lesson workers should draw from this episode and Newsom’s proposal is how quickly the political process works when they need it to. This measure has gone from a threat from Newsome to a place on the ballot in a few weeks made possible by the legislature which the Democrats control. It’s akin to Biden and Pelsosi’s anti-union legislation that they introduced to Congress overnight when rail workers threatened a crippling strike in 2024. Both Democrats and Republicans united on that one. No problem reaching across the aisle when it comes to workers’ rights or profits.

 

Workers can’t look to the Democrats to defend democracy and as the statistics show, are hungry for a political alternative to the two capitalist parties.  We should take no side in this war. We have some serious issues in California and the nation and neither party will resolve them.

 

This is reflected in the general disgust Americans have with politics and the two political parties that have dominated US political life for over a century or more. In national elections close to 100 million people never bother to vote. Only one in four eligible voters voted for Trump for example. All is not well on the home front and this is reflected in various polls.

 

According to a December 2024 Gallup survey, “62 percent of Americans said that the federal government should ensure that all Americans have health coverage, 

 

 Another survey in 2020 found that nearly four times as many voters support increasing public transportation funding as support reducing it. A similar survey in 2023 found that 70 percent of respondents agree that “providing people with more transportation options is better, “ for our health, safety, and economy than building more highways.”

 

A Half of all renters spent 30% or more of their income on rent in 2023 while 56% of Black or African American renters did so. US Census Bureau.

 

82% of Americans want the government to make housing more affordable PEW research and Two-thirds of Americans prioritize developing alternative energy sources, like wind and solar and  About three-quarters of Americans support a U.S. role in global efforts to address climate change

 

These are just a few issues that are important to US workers and the middle class that any politician or party could tap in to that would galvanize the population and help to transform the balance of class forces in the US. The failure to do this is a major reason for the rise of Trump.

 

Organized Labor’s Potential Power in California
In addition to electoral activity, and in conjunction with it if working people had a party of our own, California has two million workers affiliated to the California Labor Federation AFL-CIO and the LA Labor Federation alone has 800,000 workers affiliated to it; nothing moves in California if these workers decide to stop working. It is the power of the organized and the unorganized working class that we must look if we want to shift the balance of power in California and the US in our favor and it is this power that can defend democracy and stop the threat of fascism. Those that think the Democratic party can defend us from fascism are terribly wrong and have not learned from history.

 

It’s clear through this experience that California could be a different place if the political power the Democratic Party has in the state was used to confront the issues facing millions of people and changing life for the better. Millions of people want change but they can’t get it no matter which party is in power because, as Nancy Pelosi once said when she answered a question about socialism from a young Naïve DSA member, the Democrats are “Capitalists”. Both Democrats and Republicans are enemies of working class people.

 

Workers’ shouldn’t vote to give either one of these parties increased power over our lives and instead rely on our own strength by participating in any way our personal resources allow in the building of a united, working class direct action movement and an independent political party based on the working class, our organizations and communities.

Afscme Local 444 History From a Participant #2

Richard Mellor

I'm reposting this that I posted a couple years ago as I just noticed the video was private. I've changed it to public and it's a little bit of labor history, my former local Afscme 444 during the early eighties.

As I say in the video, it's not likely I will write about this history so I'll speak it for my own satisfaction and for my grandchildren and anyone else who might find it interesting. As far as workers as union activists go, it's pretty similar to all of them. It is, after all, working class history and that history belongs to the vast majority of us but it is hidden and ignored by the big business media. When we think about it, the 44 day Flint sit down strike should be labor's 4th of July. The regular 4th of July is the celebration instituted by the capitalist class of the British colonies on this continent, in particular the northern industrialists, honoring their break from the semi-feudal British Empire.

The first short I did is here.   https://www.facebook.com/679989067/videos/2039094356431052/

Resolution From Richmond CA City Council. Support and Solidarity with Palestinians

 The remainder of the resolution in PDF form can be download here: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1-o9Lz9clQL3E4kfef4UlfU-_wfsSnlb0/view?usp=sharing

 Get your city council and union to do the same.

March 4th 2010, Students and Workers Fight Back

Richard Mellor

As usual, I forgot to mention, please hit the thumbs up on You Tube if you like the video. Also share and "like" it on Facebook. Thank you.

A few comments about the student and workers' protests and strikes in 2010 against the increasing costs or fees at public universities and for workers, attacks on wages, benefits and working conditions. I discuss here an issue that arose when two small business owners, food and drink vendors who had concessions at UC Berkeley called a strike in opposition to the University contracting out a much larger chain.

Students rightly sided with the small business owners against the contracting out of work to a chain but completely ignored the workers in these small businesses. The strike was called by the bosses, not the workers. This lack of class consciousness, was so obvious. I raise it not to condemn young workers, particularly those at university, for this weakness; I understand it to a degree. But it reflects the petit-bourgeois culture of much of the self styled socialist groups along with overconfidence, and at times, arrogance of those students that were from middle or upper middle class backgrounds.

After all, they went to the best schools, they lived in successful communities and they have been told from day one how bright they are and how they are born to lead. Working class youth in the workplace or union hall are very different.

Sacramento Teachers On Strike

Teachers and school workers rally in Sacramento, California. (Ian Lee / Jolie Media)

 

Richard Mellor

Afscme Local 444, retired.

GED/HEO

 

Sacramento (CA) teachers, members of the Sacramento City Teachers Association, are on strike demanding pay that “….reflects the cost of living under inflation, more support for students, and the preservation of their health care plan.”

 

 Along with full-time teachers,  The SCTA represents, “… all part-time teachers and substitutes, adult education, special education, pre-school and children’s centers, school counselors, psychologists, nurses, social workers, librarians and many others in the Sacramento City Unified School District”, according to its website.

 

The demands are not new in the labor movement. The reality though, is that some of the wage gains made in the labor upsurge that has occurred during the pandemic have already been eaten up by inflation. And as far as health care is concerned, we are beyond the period where we can make any significant gains in health care, most union battles on this up to now have been defensive ones, maintaining what we already have. The demand has to be a national health care system not one controlled by insurance companies for profit, what amounts to a sickness industrial complex

 

I am a retired public utility worker with a defined benefit retirement plan and, by most US standards had an exemplary health care plan.  The defined benefit retirement has been almost eradicated in most US workplaces replaced with a stock market-oriented plan. Also, I retired at 54 and now you have to be 67; we are going backwards. And like nurses, teachers are in the forefront of the assault on workers in the US. The time when nurses and teachers considered themselves to be “professionals” rather than workers is long gone. Both these professions have been proletarianized.

 

In the video that accompanied this article on the strike, from Jacobin, one teacher says that we need smaller class sizes. This is nothing new. Not only is it virtually impossible for teachers to achieve the best results in a public-school classroom with 30 or more students and having to deal with all the social issues that come in to this workplace, the politicians of both parties are waging a campaign of school closures. These school closures naturally affect the poor and, in particular families of color.

 

Charter schools, the pathway to privatization, are on the increase. At the Democratic Party state Convention earlier this month, charter school proponents were involved in drawing up the party platform according to one education blogger who writes:

At the eleventh hour, following an eleven-hour meeting finalizing draft proposalsfor updating the 2022 CADEM platform, it came to light that one of its 23 platform “planks”, that of Education, had been tampered with by charter school (CS) industry insiders.

 

The Democratic Party will not defend public education yet the entire leadership of organized labor, including the NEA and CTA are wedded to it.

 

I know readers might be tired of me raising this important point. But the CTA leadership stresses that the CTA is, “The unified voice of educators in California’s public schools and colleges, CTA is a powerful and passionate advocate for students and public education.”

 

It’s good to be passionate and it’s good to advocate for anything we believe in, but to be powerful means something different. Workers’ power lies in our ability to withdraw our labor power. It is not appealing to this or that big business politician or writing to the Dear Abby column. It means stopping the economy or a section of it from functioning. This power in the last analysis is all we have. The bosses have capital, the media, the police, the justice system and the state but we have the numbers.

Labor history in the US is a rich and militant history of heroism and sacrifice. Yes, it also has its negative side, racism, sexism, xenophobia and all the other strategists that the bosses’ have used to undermine our unity and power, but we need to learn the lessons of the positive aspects of US labor history.

 

The reality is that if we stay united on a class basis as workers, if we see that our material interests are all the same, whether our wages are paid by Tesla or the state, we can win. And this mean organized and unorganized. It is not the fault of the unorganized or the 86% of US workers that are outside the ranks of organized labor. It is the fault of the leadership of organized labor.

 

The teachers are members of the Sacramento City Teachers Association (SCTA) affiliated to the state CTA (California Teachers Association) with some 310,000 members. The CTA is also an affiliate of the largest union in the US the National Education Association (NEA) with 3 million members.

 

California is also a unionized state with 2 million workers affiliated to the California Labor Federation which is the state arm of the AFL-CIO. The Los Angeles County Federation of Labor AFL-CIO has more than 800,000 workers affiliated to it and the docks of the entire West Coast of the US are organized. The same with the East Coast. How can anyone claim we are week with that amount of members in crucial industries?

 

Just as an example, the ILWU contract is up in July 2022, this workforce is also under attack. There are contracts up all over the place and organizing drives taking place throughout the US. All of these struggles have to be brought together. We have power, we just have to use it. The ILWU slogan is “An injury to one is an Injury to All” The employers have the same slogan and take it to heart. Does three reader really believe that Michelle Obama hugs George W Bush and claims he is her friend and partner in crime because she likes him? I very much doubt it, they understand the importance of class solidarity and so should we.

 

The problem is not that workers are weak here, it is that the heads of organized labor refuse to mobilize the potential power of the organized workers and hit the bosses where it hurts most, profits. This failure is what drives workers to the right and away from our traditional organizations.

 

In the Sacramento strike, close to eighteen hundred classified school staff — including “bus drivers, cafeteria workers, yard monitors, and custodians — represented by the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) Local 1021 are also striking.” This is a positive development and such solidarity has to be expanded throughout the labor movement and in to working class communities.

 

The labor officialdom will whine about the law and that we have to abide by the law. The only force in US society that cares about obeying laws when they want something is the present trade union hierarchy, except when it comes to suppressing the rights of their own members of course. Of course we have to consider the law and the consequences. But we have to mobilize the forces, enough of them, to negate this power. The problem is that the trade union heirarchy stars from a defeatist position. It’s like a boxer deciding it’s best not to hit the opponent otherwise they might hit back. The object is to counter our opponent’s offensive.

 

The US labor movement was built not by obeying laws but by mobilizing to challenge them. The laws of capitalist society are not written for workers they are written to defend capital; they will always use the law against us; they have shot and deported us in the past. Lawyers never built the labor movement, ordinary workers did and the rest of us benefited from it. In fact, it is the future generations that benefit from labor or any other social struggles more than those that engage in them. I have a good life here in the United States because people I never knew fought for it.

 

I am not a dreamer. Of course, the present leadership of CTA, NEA and the entire labor movement will not engage in this battle for our futures, and it’s not because they are criminals or corrupt in the way that we normally use those terms. They are bankrupt ideologically. They view the world the same way the boss does. The boss has the right to make profit no matter what. The boss has the right to own the factory. The bosses have the right to do with labor what they wish. When capitalism goes in to crisis they move to bail it out and we suffer the consequences.

 

We have what we have today, and we are getting less of it, because workers from all backgrounds, not just labor but those oppressed and marginalized peoples who suffered additional assaults in a racist and exploitive society rejected the status quo.

 

The SCTA leadership says that the teachers are on an open-ended strike. This is very similar to what we hear from the leadership and their army of full-time staff in all these disputes, “we will be here for as long as it takes” (full time staff and officials don’t lose money in these strikes normally.). I do not mean any disrespect here but this sort of rhetoric doesn’t phase the bosses. Workers can’t be on picket lines forever and they know it. One of the first communications we got from our employer when we struck was that our health insurance ended at the end of the month. That’s why they oppose a public health system.

 

We are in a favorable period and we have seen strikes like the one at Volvo and the bakery and Nabisco strike where workers held firm. We should also remind ourselves that in 2018-19, teachers struck in right to work states and made major gains, and they did so in opposition to their own leaders. This was possible because in these strikes, the labor hierarchy was weak or non-existent. No union can win alone, isolated facing the courts the cops, and what are at times global corporations.

 

I share the numbers (the members) and the important role organized labor (unorganized too) plays in the national economy. Without us, nothing works. But we have to reject the policies and strategy of the present leadership that have failed us for decades. It means a battle with them, we cannot avoid this. It means replacing them or leading where we can with demands that meet our needs not what is acceptable to the bosses or their politicians.

Shasta County CA: Taking On The Extreme Right

 

Richard Mellor
Afscme Local 444, retired
GED/HEO

I'll be sharing this with folks abroad as I know workers in other countries are interested in what is happening here in the US, in particular the growth of fascist movements, white supremacists, Christian nationalists and so on.

The woman here is in Shasta County California where extreme right groups, (who hate government apparently) are taking and have taken control of local politics. Workers in other countries might find it almost comical that the U.S. Democratic Party, one of the most powerful capitalist parties on the planet, is referred to as a communist or Marxist party by millions of US Americans and a national health system is communist as well. The governor of California, a millionaire businessman named Gavin Newsom is a tyrant. One of the indications of tyranny for these people is the state enforcing a mask mandate in a pandemic. Some of them went berserk over a law mandating safety helmets on motorcycles.

The ignorance of politics, and geography among the US population is considerable. The media here is extremely powerful and influential. I recall that scene in Terminator 2 when the kid asks the Terminator why Skynet would attack Russia, “Aren’t they our friends now?”, he says.  The insertion of that dialogue is not an accident; it’s propaganda. It was written as part of US and western capitalism’s jubilation at the collapse of the Soviet Union, the totalitarian regime that was the world’s only other superpower. 

But overnight, a movie seen by millions makes it clear the Russians are our friends now. That was then of course, the Russians have since become our enemies again.

Shasta County CA

 

The woman interviewed here is a Democrat and reporter in Shasta County. She started her own website titled anewscafe.com  Watch the clip contained in this interview of one of the extreme right-wing leaders talking about her in a council meeting.  Whether or not one agrees with her political views or her party affiliation, she is a very brave person.She can be reached at: donig.anewscafe@gmail.com I am sure she would welcome even words of support.

 

I have to raise this, but California is a major union state and around the 6^th largest economy in the world. There are some 2 million workers affiliated to the State Federation of Labor, the state arm of the national AFL-CIO. Los Angeles Labor Federation has some 800,000 workers affiliated to it and the all important ports, Oakland, Longbeach, San Pedro are all unionized. In other words, the docks and Pacific Rim trade is dependent on labor peace which the present trade union leadership do their very best to maintain. The politics of the right wing is racist, sexist, xenophobic and anti-worker in general. The right wing is heavily populated by small capitalists and backed by extreme right sections of the US ruling class, they hate unions.

 

The potential power of organized labor in California could counter the right wing forces though education and providing an alternative to the growth of right wing ideas and ideology in general. This could be backed up by mass action and organizing the millions of unorganized workers; transit workers in the Bay Area have the potential to cripple the California economy but this power is held in check by their leadership. The problem as things stand is that organized labor’s present leadership is tied to the Democratic Party through the Team Concept in politics an extension of the Team Concept in the workplace, and is terrified of any independent movement below that threatens their relationship with big capital based on labor peace and worship of the market.

 

I am convinced this dam will be breached but sooner is better than later on this one.

 

California, Where the Democrats are King.

 

Richard Mellor
Afscme Local 444, retired
GED/HEO

All true, but there is one glaring omission in this report as in all the reports from "muckraking" style news shows in the US whether it's Bill Maher, Trevor Noah John Stewart or the Jimmy Dore show; there is absolutely no mention of the reality we all face, that we live and function in an economic system of production. Our system of production we know as capitalism or the so-called free market system.

The cause of this barbaric situation where insurance companies determine whether or not a human being can receive medial care is simply "corruption".  Corrupt people, corrupt politicians, corrupt corporations, run I assume by these corrupt people. It's completely devoid of any class analysis at all. Capitalists are simply referred to as "Oligarchs" or "Plutoctrats" when corruption is left out.

This is not an accident. Our misfortunes are either our own fault or the consequences of flawed people making decisions based on greedy self interest. There is no suggestion at all that the Democratic Party which is all powerful in California is a capitalist party serving the interests of the capitalist class much like the Republican Party. Political parties have class content. They are not social clubs. Capitalist politicians in these parties may or may not be corrupt in the sense they they violate even the rules of the market but that is not the problem. Their job is to defend the so-called free market system, defend the capitalist mode of production and that is contrary to workers' interests. 

They cannot campaign on a program of cuts and austerity in order to make the rich richer and the corporations stronger, no one would vote for them. And that is where we are today, the two parties of capital have had their day; they are both in crisis and this is a global occurrence.

Corporations are not simply corrupt, they are doing what is natural, eliminating their rivals from the marketplace whenever they can. The increased tensions between the US, Russia, China as well as the so-called "emerging" economies (they emerge for a minute then disappear for a while) is also a result of this natural competition between capitalist nation states. The increased US aggression for the past thirty years is a result of this and the decline in US imperialism's power and influence in the world; it feels threatened and rightly so.

Washington ( and the Vatican) welcomed the collapse of Stalinism and the increased market activity of Chinese Stalinism as long as the result was Cambodian or Vietnamese capitalism, a serious rival is  an economic threat and in the end result can lead to military conflict.

This absence of any class analysis, an independent party of the working class and a vibrant, multi-ethinc working class movement has given rise to the the right wing populism and outright fascist elements we are witnessing today.

San Francisco Hotel and Restaurant Workers Demand Work and a Contract

Richard Mellor

Afscme Local 444, retired

10-29-21

 

"Brethren we conjure you...not to believe a word of what is being said about your interests and those of your employers being the same. Your interests and theirs are in a nature of things, hostile and irreconcilable.  Then do not look to them for relief...Our salvation must, through the blessing of God, come from ourselves.  It is useless to expect it from those whom our labors enrich." *

 

Some good interviews here with hotel workers who are demanding to be able to return to work.  They are members of UNITE/HERE local 2. The hotel owners have done very well during this pandemic and the workers say that the bosses are using the pandemic to keep them at home. They have also been without a contract for almost four years.

 

In the past, the union bargained with a multi-employer group where the local would target one of the big hotels and then go to others in order to get them to sign on to the deal. This is also common in auto when the contracts for the big three, Ford, Chrysler/Fiat and GM come up.

 

After the last strike in 2018 that targeted the Marriot chain nationally, one of the most anti-union hotels, The Omni, part of a nationwide chain, refused to sign on to the 2018 settlement.

 

It is great to listen to the comments from the workers and their loyalty to their union. Ordinary working class people built unions at a great sacrifice to themselves and their families, it would be a catastrophe for workers to lose them and anyone who has had to work non-union would in general agree that a bad union is better than no union. The reality is it is what we make it. It is not a choice that in general we have to wage an internal struggle against the pro-market policies of our own leaders, but fight that battle we must; we do not deal the cards we have to play.

 

It is very common to hear the ILWU and Harry Bridges mentioned whenever the issue of the union movement in San Francisco comes up and we hear it in this video and that San Francisco is a union town.

 

But Harry Bridges and the famous San Francisco General Strike was over 80 years ago, there were three General Strikes that year (1934) and a lot has changed since then.

 

To be a union town, in a sense of exercising union power, workers have to be able to confront the employers as a group, not as individual unions and it is not a sign of union power that a company can get away with refusing to sign a contract for years and, in many cases, treat workers the way they do. The San Francisco Labor Council has some 100,000 members and beyond that, has members in key industries and trades; it has the power to shut down the economy of San Francisco and in conjunction with other Labor Councils in the Bay Area, shut down the region’s economy. It is relying on our own strength and position in the workplace that will change the balance of class forces in these battles.

 

California has the 6^th largest economy in the world close to a GDP of $3 trillion in 2020. While the percentage of workers in unions has shrunk (particularly in the private sector) as the labor hierarchy has capitulated to the offensive of capital, key industries are organized.

 

In conjunction, as this blog has already pointed out, there is a bit of an uptick in strike activity as workers are taking advantage of favorable conditions to make gains, this is true of the organized and unorganized alike. One thing is absolutely certain, if what is being labelled striketober 2021begins to take on the characteristics of a wider movement against the bosses’, organized labor will also be convulsed by such a development, the two will feed off each other as union and non-union organically seek allies. There has been a tremendous anger building up in US society for a decades and US labor history and working class history in general has a rich militant tradition. Having never had a national party of our own, gains in all walks have life have been won through physical battles in the streets and on picket lines. They have been one in opposition to the laws not by obeying it.

 

The restaurant and hotel workers, what is often referred to as the hospitality industry, are fighting global corporations. Omni has some 50 hotels in the US and Canada and “In December 2020, unions criticized Omni for using the Paycheck Protection Program to obtain a low-interest loan for business purposes, rather than using the money to pay workers”.   The Marriot Hotel chain is a global giant “…with 582 hotels and resorts….”

 

We are also up against the mass media that is biased, as are the police, the courts and other institutions of capitalism. Union/worker power will be built by mass violation of anti-union anti-worker laws not by appealing to so-called friendly politicians in the Democratic Party.

Also view:

Organized Labor's Rank and File Pushes Back 

14 million Union Members: Why Their Leadership Won't Fight

 

* 1840's appeal from New England laborers to their fellows to abandon the idea that the employers/capitalists would solve working people's problems.  Philip Foner History of the Labor Movement Vol. 1 p192