Mamdani Treads an All Too Familiar Path

Richard Mellor

Zohran Mamdani's election as Mayor of New York City inspired thousands of working class people, giving many of them hope that their living standards were about to improve. It showed that a candidate that kept the issues to the needs and aspirations of working class people could get elected even in the face of vicious racist and xenophobic attacks from the Wall Street criminals, land speculators and real estate pimps that control the city's finances. Beyond that, as a Muslim, he won in a city with a large Jewish population as he spoke in support of Palestinian rights.

The propaganda machine was relentless.  Never ending fear mongering, threats from the billionaires that they would take their money and leave the city never toppled the Mamdani train from the tracks. How can that not be exciting?

The problem is, we have seen these campaigns before. Myself and others like me, particularly those of us that have been around for a while, have lived through many of them. So, exiting as his victory was, it was an electoral victory, in the face of many firsts---he's a Muslim, he is an immigrant born in Uganda, a child of Indian parents. There is one unfortunate similarity with other victories like his; he is a candidate of the other Wall Street Party-------the Democrats.

I went back to look at Jesse Jackson's platform in 1988 and it was similar to Bernie Sanders platform 30 years later. Jackson made class appeals, talked of "us and them" ""fishes and sharks" "haves and have nots" and so on. But the Democratic Party machine put a stop to all that nonsense and Jackson shifted to the right, to the, "we are all in this together" mode. Class war must not be mentioned even in its mildest form which is what Mamdani’s platform was.

Alexandria Ocasio Cortez's victory was exciting too. Any time the big guys get taken down a peg it gives people hope that things will change for the better. But that hope gets dashed pretty quickly because the Democratic Party is a capitalist party and as much a billionaire’s party as the Republicans are. 

Those three billionaires we saw in the front seats at Trump's inauguration would be sitting in the same spot were a Democrat elected president. The billionaires own both parties and we could see that during the 2020 election when even the hated Dick Cheney, who was often referred to as Satan by many Democratic Party faithful’s, switched sides and was Satan no more. In the face of Trump, the imbecile George W Bush, the guy who slaughtered a million Iraqi's and destroyed their country, one of Michelle Obama's close friends, became cuddly. These people know only too well how important class solidarity is.

The Democratic Party is known as the black hole of all social movements. After the Battle in Seattle in 1999 that shook US capitalism, the trade union hierarchy that is an arm of the Democratic Party in the workers' movement, sent its staffers in to temper the movement, direct it away from any independent path politically and it to the safe confines of the Democratic Party. 

 

The base Mamdani built was purely for electoral reasons. But that base should have and can be, a starting point for an independent direct action movement based in our communities and organisations, and as Mayor of a major city like New York the resources are there to spread that movement beyond the Big Apple. He had the support of major unions in the city.

 

But unless, there is some secret strategy that I don't know about, it looks like Mamdani is in there with AOC as a rising star in a party that represents big capital. They will join Bernie Sanders as yet another disappointment that will tend to drive people in two ways, one is to abandon the electoral process altogether and the other to seek a way out through right wing or nationalist policies. The complete failure of the Democratic Party to offer a way out is a major reason we have the sexual deviant racist in the Oval Office. 

Airlines Want More Taxpayer Money to Pay Wages, Safeguard Profits.

Striking Airline Workers last year. We're all in this together now?

Richard Mellor

Afscme Local 444, retired

"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."  *

Back in March, US airlines received $25 billion from the US taxpayer under the $2.2 trillion stimulus deal known as the “Cares Act”. This money was intended to keep the Airlines afloat for the summer by covering their labor costs. They also received, $25 billion in loans and loan guarantees. One of the conditions for the hand out was that the Airlines were barred from laying off, or to use the media’s euphemistic terminology, furloughing employees. This ban ends October 1^st 2020.

Well, the airline bosses and their investors are coming back for more money and are disappointed in the Republican proposal for the next coronavirus aid package there’s that there’s no money in it for them. Hence the resort to a dose of economic terrorism. If they don’t get it they will be laying off thousands more workers. American Airlines says it will have to lay off 25,000 workers and United Airlines some 36,000 if the taxpayer won’t pay their wages. United Airlines told its pilots that until a vaccine is available things will not improve much and the airline’s original plan to layoff about one third of its pilot workforce in 2020 and 2021 won’t do the job without taxpayer money.  Alaska has threatened to layoff 35% of its workforce.

American allocated around $11.9 billion toward buying back its stock over the past five years and paid out more than $1 billion in dividends during this same time period. Meanwhile, American’s chairman made over $11 million in salary in 2019 and other executives another $20 million. Investors in the airline industry, what amounts to a form of mass transportation on a continent, claim that it will be 2024 before the global air traffic returns to anything like they were before the coronavirus hit.

It’s always interesting to look at the language the unknown figures behind the scenes in this particular field use when making public statements.  All the talk from the airline investors through those that manage the business, never mentions profits. They need help to “prevent” thousands of job losses. They are desperate to “avoid cuts” “We hate taking this step, as we know the impact it has on our hardworking team members.”, says one executive. Some team the workers are on where they never control the ball.

The airlines are hoping that workers will leave through early retirements or as they put it “on their own”. Thousands of workers have left “on their own” at Southwest Airlines for example but one has to laugh at the language again as it implies there was no external pressure, nothing happening in the outside world or the economy that would cause thousands of workers to just leave their jobs “on their own.”

One can only imagine the uncertainty and fear that many workers must be experiencing in this crisis. Beyond this, the huge stimulus will have to be repaid and the future is one of further concessions and attacks on US workers. All the talk of essential workers and heroes is pretty nauseating as these very same workers have been abused and denigrated for ever. Nurses and other professionals in the health field aside, these heroes are in positions we are all encouraged to avoid. They are reserved for the poor, the immigrants and so on.

Airline bosses are hoping that the union leadership will agree to concessions to try to save jobs and there is no indication that they will not. When capitalism goes in to crisis, the labor hierarchy’s immediate response is to bail it out.

Aviation unions representing pilots, flight attendants and mechanics are all supporting an extension of the aid for another six months. In a letter from the unions to Congress in June they called for another $32 million for “passenger airlines cargo carriers and aviation contractors.” “This is the simplest and fastest way to maintain Congress’ historic commitment to keep aviation workers on payroll.”, the letter said.

Sara Nelson, President of the Association of Flight Attendants (AFA) made an appeal on social media in March:   "We have told Congress that any stimulus funds for the aviation industry must come with strict rules that includes requiring employers across aviation to maintain pay and benefits for every worker," Nelson said in the video. "No taxpayer money for CEO bonuses, stock buybacks, or dividends; no breaking contracts through bankruptcy; and no federal funds for airlines that are fighting their workers' efforts to join a union."

Nelson is regarded as a left winger in organized labor but, like all of them is wedded to the Team Concept stressing workers and bosses have the same interests. “We’re all in this together, there is no difference” she says in the video as she appeals to national pride and how important this industry is to all of us carrying our troops and so on. Congress must protect our paychecks she says.

Airline-catering providers, security companies, ground handlers and cleaning services got $3 billion of the Cares Act to cover pay and benefits for workers through the end of September with the same conditions----no layoffs. But numerous contractors that laid off or furloughed some 9,000 people since the Cares Act was passed received some $728 million in funding. https://www.wsj.com/articles/stimulus-money-for-airline-contractors-comes-under-scrutiny-11596044969

Yes we’re all in this together.

And Sara Nelson is placing our salvation and economic interests in the hands of the billionaires and millionaires in the US Congress. Even if we take the name of the legislation, the “Cares Act”. It has two different meanings. Workers care about wages, jobs, security etc., and investors that own the airline industry care about profits. There have been other top labor officials that liberals and sections of the left in the unions have gone gaga over, Amy Dean was one as was SEIU’s Andy Stern.  Always looking for a savior except the organized power of the working class.

Joining with airline executives and the investors behind them under the “all in this together” canopy is a guarantee that union members and the working class and taxpayers as a whole will suffer. After workers saved US capitalism from itself in 2008 bailing out the auto industry being one example, the end result was that Ultimately, the government lost about $11.8 billion on its investment in the auto makers.

I have done a fair bit of flying and have nothing but respect and admiration for the flight attendants. They work non-stop taking care of their customers and working through various time zones that can be very stressful. I remember when the airline industry forced concessions of them and attendants, (mostly women) found themselves in some areas, having to apply for welfare. Others who had planned to retire had those dreams dashed.

Not much of an “all together” attitude there. Sarah Nelson who has gained some respect for her outspoken views and sounding quite militant, is in danger of ending up as they all do, participating in the attacks on their own members, by relying on the Democratic Party and Congress, a direct result of the Team Concept and the view that there are no differences.

It is absurd that the taxpayer, the working class which is most of us, are borrowing billions of dollars that we will hand over to a ruthless bunch of wasters so that they can keep the business and pay our wages. After the Great Recession the hatred and anger at the super rich and the government was very strong. Here we are bailing the system out again and the heads of organized labor are reminding us that there are no differences among us; bankers and hedge fund managers, are no different to waiters and welders.

This is the time for any labor leader that claims to be heading in a new direction to call for the nationalization of the airline industry. If we are paying the wages why don’t we collectively own the company?  In the UK, workers have shown that they want the re-nationalization of the major important industries, mail, rail, water and do on. In the US we never hear any alternative views only pro-market propaganda from representatives of the two big business parties and their candidates. In the debates we only hear carefully scripted questions and answers from the two big business parties, I recall Jill Stein getting arrested trying to get in to the debates some years ago.

Our postal service is a public agency and an extremely efficient one if we are talking about serving the majority of the population rather than providing profits for a minority that don’t work. Many fire departments, the TVA, are public so are social services despite being savaged by privatization to a great extent. Public services like public jobs are overwhelmingly positive.

Nationalizing a major industry within the framework of a capitalist economy is not the be all and end all of it, only a small step but an important one as it undermines the propaganda that the market and the private sector is the only means of organizing society. Relying on our own collective strength and applying it through a direct action fight to win strategy, and building our own independent political party is the path the US working class must open up ahead.

*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

Gary Indiana Airport: Accelerated Removal Hub Deports Thousands, Wrecks Familiess

Richard Mellor and Sarah Bortt in Gary Indiana

Myself and another activist from Chicago attended a protest rally at Gary International Airport this morning (2-23-17) where a coalition of groups from North West Indiana and Chicago has held regular protests against deportations.  Gary airport is a desolate place particularly this time of year and it is here that some 200 immigrants a month get their last look at the United States. In all, well over 12,000 people have been "removed" from their homes and families and flown out of the airport since the deportations began in the summer of 2013.

It was a bitterly cold day but the rally was well attended, perhaps two to three hundred people and there were numerous speakers. I arrived a little late and could not stay for the entire event or to see the buses arrive that bring the deportees. For those of us that have never experienced it we can only imagine the horrible consequences of ripping people from their communities and families.



The protestors have been limited to a small section of the the airport's parking lot and made sure they stay there through the presence of heavily armed SWAT teams and local police.  There was a representative of an SEIU local there and some rank and file USWA (Steelworkers) members. I have to apologize to the reader (viewer) as the cold sort of got to me and I regrettably deleted the rest of my video clips and they had women speaking in them. So I only have this one and the one below both men.

In relation to the unions, the young guy in the video below who I believe was from the Black Lives Matter movement talks of the need to shut the place down and to physically stop the buses bringing the victims to be deported. This is what we have to do if we want to stop it and he's right. Mass protests, strikes, occupations and violation of the laws, what amount to anti-social laws, is what has to happen. It is good someone from SEIU is there and workers from the USWA and probably others.

But union members have to wage a struggle inside our unions to force the union leadership to mobilize the power of the millions of members and our communities. We have to raise this issue and others, and challenge the present passive and pro-boss policies as such a struggle will help educate the average member on what must be done.  In the process of this battle for the consciousness of the working  class a new leadership can be built. SEIU has 1.6 million members. The Chicago Federation of Labor has 500,000 workers affiliated top it, all of them under assault.  There are 266,000 union members in Indiana. This is a potential pool of activists.

Some will say that only 14% of US workers are in unions. But when the French General Strike began in 1968 when 10 million workers went out and millions occupied the factories and workplaces and threw their managers out, only ten percent of French workers were organized. The present union leadership is aware of this, they are aware of the anger that exists in society and among their own members and are terrified of it. They will shudder at the thought of attempting to mobilize it in defense of immigrants or anything else because when workers move in to struggle we tend to seek class allies, the divide and rule obstacles that the bosses' use to divide us tend to break down some and we get a sense of our own power, the power that works and is needed as the young man describes below. The present union leadership has the same world view as the bosses. They worship the market and capitalism and such a movement threatens this so they avoid it like the plague, for them, mobilizing the power of their own membership and the working class as a whole can only lead to chaos.

It is this worldview, their own consciousness, what the English historian Christoper Hill called the "Stop in the Mind" that is the primary source of the class collaboration, and betrayals on the part of the trade union hierarchy, corruption and graft where it exists is a secondary feature.

Once again, I apologize for only two clips both men. If folks would like to investigate further check out NorthWest Indiana Resistance  on Facebook and also Refuse Fascism a group also involved in these protests took extensive video with more speakers. You can see it here.

Damn the US Dams as US infrastructure takes a back seat to war.

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Oroville Dam last winter.  A near catastrophe averted: this time

By Richard Mellor

Afscme Local 444, retired

A damning report on the condition of US dams has been released by the American Society of Civil Engineers according to today’s Wall Street Journal. According to the report, 30% or 27,380 of the nation’s 90,580 listed dams are rated as “posing a high or significant hazard” and more than 2170 of that 30% are “deficient and in need of upgrading”

The WSJ article gives the Calaveras reservoir dam as an example. This dam is 10 miles from the city of Fremont a little south of where I am sitting right now. The Calaveras dam, like many of California’s 1585 dams sits next to an earthquake fault, somewhat scary given that almost three quarters of the state’s dams are rated as “having high or significant risk of failure.” The reader is probably aware of the events at the Oroville dam, the nation’s tallest, here in Northern California earlier this year when some 200,000 people were evacuated after the dam spillway developed a hole during heavy rains.

In that case, three environmental groups — Friends of the River, the Sierra Club and the South Yuba River Citizens League filed a complaint with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission that warned about a possible failure with the emergency spillway 12 years earlier. As is more often the case, that advice was ignored.

A new Calaveras dam is being built to replace the old one but is four years behind schedule after seven years of work so far. “The issues hampering the Calaveras reservoir project show how difficult it is to replace an old dam…” the Journal writes.  And what might these issues be I wonder?  Of course; what a silly question.  As with all the dams that have the potential to bring catastrophe to unsuspecting residents “funding and inspection staffing are considered inadequate” the report said.

Ivan Wong, a seismologist in the Bay Area says that “It’s a huge problem with limited resources…..We can barely pay our schoolteachers, but if a dam fails and there’s a population downstream we’re talking about a disaster.”.  The total estimated for upgrading the dams in question is $64 billion and included in that figure is $22 billion for those posing the highest risk according to the Association of State Dam Safety Officials. This is equal to the net worth of one very rich human being in this country, Bill Gates. Gates, Buffet and Jeff Bezos of Amazon are worth more than $233 billion between them. In all honesty, do workers actually think this is a good thing? Is this civilization? Is it that obscene comparison of wealth and how its spent what makes America great?  Surely not.

So there are no "limited resources" in the real sense. Society has the labor power and capital. The only issue delaying the repairs to US dams, and failing teachers and the education of our children and other social needs in general, is not a lack of funding but the allocation of the wealth of society that is created by the working class. Labor is the source of all wealth remember. 

When a catastrophe happens like Katrina or the poisoning of the Eel river in Virginia, the BP spill in the gulf or the explosion in West Texas that just about blew up a whole community, the cause is the political system and those that govern it; they are market driven disasters. The tragic fire in a block of council flats in London last week was another system failure as the political representatives of the capitalist class made decisions about housing that placed profits, investment and land speculation ahead of social needs. It sort of sickens me to see the Queen down at the tragedy when she lives in the same borough. Did she never wonder why her neighbors had to live like that?

The people that make these decisions are murderers. The people, regulators and politicians that allowed energy companies to write their own regulations and rules for deep water drilling that led to the Gulf spill are murderers.

People understand this in a way. But the overwhelming obstacle is our own consciousness-----that “stop in the mind” that the historian Christopher Hill wrote about with regard to the revolutionists that challenged the feudal aristocracy and system in the English revolution. In that instance people believed that the king was king by divine right. How can one kill the king?  Cromwell proved that idea bankrupt. Today people feel powerless, particularly so in the US where we have no political party of our own and where the heads of the organized workers’ movement are wedded to the market and capitalism and act as agents of the capitalist class in our movement. Propaganda about the efficiency of the market and that there is no alternative to capitalism spews out of the mass media, the mouths of the trade union hierarchy and the thousands of churches on Sundays. We are in a struggle for the conscious of the working class.

To challenge the status quo, the power that rules and that responds to challenges to its rule with violence, seems such a daunting task. I was just in London and talked with young Poles and other Eastern Europeans what it was like for them, the uncertainty of their lives now since the passing of Brexit. Will they be allowed to stay or forced to leave? On more than one occasion the response was that it didn’t matter, there was nothing they could do.

It is rare if not impossible for there not to be something one can do in any situation. Doing nothing keeps us trapped as victims of forces we think we cannot control but we can affect the world around us, it's how society advances. In the absence of a social force that we can turn to, join, and use as the instrument to fight back, we close our eyes to it all. But Katrina showed, as the attacks on 9-11 showed, we close our eyes to the actions of our own government and those that control it at our peril.

As Socrates wrote, "Just because you don't take an interest in politics doesn't mean politics won't take an interest in you."----and take an interest it will. The Trump health care bill is an example of it.  There will be some fierce fighting in the streets and the workplaces of America at some point as an overconfident US bourgeois intensifies the war against the US working class. It might take a serious environmental catastrophe or an event like a dam disaster or some other social infrastructure failure, to kick it off or it might be a seemingly spontaneous outburst that has been festering beneath the surface of US society that can be contained no longer, diverted by 24 hour sports, religion, mindless mass media and other diversionary clutter.  But happen it will.

Seattle Seahawks: Team and Fans Should Support Kaepernick

By Richard Mellor

Afscme Local 444, retired
member Green party USA

It is being reported that the entire Seattle Seahawks team will support Colin Kaepernick in his protest of racism and police brutality in the US by either sitting or kneeling during the national anthem at this Sunday’s game. Reports are vague from saying the entire team will kneel or sit to others saying there will be an honor of the country and flag but it will  be a surprise.

If this is true it’s very good and though I do not necessarily think if something does take place it will be a protest of the national anthem as it is being described in some circles but at the right to protest in general. It’s absurd that the national anthem is sung at sports events and that people are pressured to stand and put their hands over their hearts and stuff like that. We even have weapons of mass destruction flying over the game at times although they don’t fire missiles at us like they do throughout the world.

It’s developments like these, even small activities, that scare the hell out of the US capitalist class.  It’s the same reason the trade union hierarchy fears a victory, a strike that makes gains, wins more benefits or time off, as a victory inspires while a defeat brings further despair and the view that we must accept our lot, we can’t win. Victories raise expectations. The reason the unelected mass murderers that run the US are so fond of drone warfare is they know that too many US troops die and these unpopular wars of plunder portrayed as wars for freedom will come to an end. They are not popular, the mood is not there and the burden so far is falling on the shoulders of a small section of US working class families.

There is still tremendous anger that lies not so deep beneath the surface if US society. This is why I oppose focusing on gun ownership as the root cause of the crisis of homicides, mass killings and family anihilations in this country, it obscures the real problem---a crisis of capitalism, of the system.

US Workers and the middle class are overwhelmed with the struggle to keep their heads above water amid mass propaganda about how wonderful things are and how great the country is.  We work longer, as much as two months a year longer, than workers in most advanced capitalist countries. Tiny little Cuba, an island nation bullied and blockaded by the wealthiest and most powerful economy in history for decades that at the same time supports mass murderers elsewhere, has the same life expectancy, a lower infant mortality rate and a better health and educational system than the US.

In my visit to Mexico this week a teacher friend said that yes, the US has the best universities, great universities, but education for the masses, basic education, is worse than Mexico. This is because the private sector wants in this business; all things must be privatized. The US private sector wants to get its dirty little hands in to Cuba, as it does on the US education system. Everything is a business, all things are for sale for them.

The US is not as conservative as the capitalist mass media makes out. The strategists of capital are aware of this. They also know US history, real history and it is explosive. From the first invasions and the genocidal wars against the native people, (if we ever doubt the violent nature of the capitalist class consider that a strategy against native people included starvation, killing all the Buffalo. In Vietnam they used chemical weapons, dioxin that they sprayed on their food, the Vietnamese people and even their own troops.) the shooting of workers in the textile, coal and auto industry as they tried to form unions, the brutality of the slave system in the South and Jim Crow that followed it. History of class society is a history of looting, plunder and mass murder, let's not kid ourselves. And the history of capitalism wins first prize.

US athletes are supposed to keep their mouths shut. Say nothing about politics, about life in the US, about racism, poverty, the attacks on workers. If you talk at all about veterans call them warriors who are defending our freedom. They are not warriors, they are working class youth who do not have the same opportunities the middle class and upper middle class do and they are not defending our freedoms. The children of the bourgeois,  would laugh at the thought of "defending" anything except profits and they only “think” about that, they send working class youth to do the actual physical work of defending US capitalism, that’s why our youth die and workers abroad die in hundreds of times greater numbers.

The support for Kaepernick could spread and the US is a tinder box. More importantly, when this happens it will not be limited to police brutality or the violence against one particular section of US society. We are witnessing an uprising against the 1% and their corporations in North Dakota. The Native people are fighting to protect their land, which means all our lands in the true sense, they are right to argue that they are the guardians of it and the rest of us can join them in that and the struggle against the multi-nationals and global capitalism. Their struggle is not only uniting Native American tribal groups, it is drawing support from around the country.  

Green Party Presidential Candidate, Stein defacing a corporate bulldozer

We should commend Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein for going to North Dakota and both her and GP VP candidate Ajamu Baraka being charged with misdemeanors for spray painting one of the pipeline company's bulldozers that is also desecrating native burial sites.  From what I understand the term capitalism and certainly not socialism was used but we won't see Hillary Clinton doing this. And the self proclaimed socialist Sanders has called on his supporters not to support Stein as he campaigns for Hillary Clinton, so it's not always about a name although the GPUS recently passed an anti-capitalist and eco-socialist resolution that our candidates should raise at their public events. Sanders opened the door with regard to the term democratic socialism we should not let that door close, we should open it further.

There will also at some point be a revolt within organized labor, influenced by these struggles on the outside. This is dangerous as despite the decline in union membership, major industries crucial to US capitalism are unionized. The trade union hierarchy will not be able to contain the anger that exists within their ranks forever either. In a sense, as so-called workers’ leaders they are the greatest criminals of all refusing to break from capitalism’s deathly embrace.

The US ruling class fears that the numerous isolated battles in the US against the violence of the so-called free market will inevitably move closer together if not contained, will begin to link up in to a wider more general direct action movement.. And so they should. It should link with Flint where the market and rapacious quest for profits poisoned a whole city. There is the gas leak in Southern California that forced mass evacuations.  West Virginia is basically a third world country wracked by drug addition and unemployment. The inner cities are explosive as opportunity does not knock there either.  The unionized US worker, the higher paid, often abandoned by the non profits, NGO’s and other liberal pro-market groups are also being savaged. Auto industry wages have been cut in half with the help of the leaders of the UAW leadership and those in the wider trade union movement. Remember the explosion in West, Texas? They want us to forget about all these market failures, Katrina too was a market failure, a product of capitalism in crisis as is the  trafficking of young women.

Students are immersed in debt that will be carried over to their parents and we have millions in prison. Then we have the massive expenditure on wars to defend US capitalism’s profits abroad as US social infrastructure collapses and public services are slashed. Let’s not exclude the massive environmental destruction from the BP spill to the poison industrial farming dumps on the land to the Japan nuclear disaster. They want us to forget about all this, but they are killing us all.

All these struggles must be linked together as they have the same root cause, capitalism in decay. 

Colin Kaeprnick’s mild protest at the treatment of black people is not what bothers them, it’s that it might turn in to an unstoppable movement of workers, youth, immigrants, all those who have a legitimate reason to “down tools” as they say.

If the entire Seattle Seahawks team does support him at Sunday’s game that is a good start. From what I understand, the head coach is also on board. But we should also be on guard. The owner of the Seahawks is Paul Allen, he is worth about $15 billion according to Forbes and is the enemy of the working class, he makes his money on the backs of some of the most exploited workers in the world; he is not our friend. We must reject the infiltration of these people in our movement. Their only motive will be to temper it, to disarm us and preserve their privileged position as directors of the capitalists system.

Meanwhile, while we keep our guard up, if  the Seattle Seahawks follow up with their threat and join Kaepernick and a slowly developing movement, whatever one can do to facilitate this process; do it.

To former Sanders' supporters: Who to vote for? What to do?

by Sean O'Torain.

As the authors of this Blog predicted many months ago, Sanders would support Clinton. We said when this happened there would be a break in the Sanders' movement and there would be many people looking for where to go to carry on their struggle. This has come to pass. These are our thoughts on this issue and what activists should do today.

We strongly oppose voting or working for any of the capitalist candidates Clinton, Trump or the Libertarian slate. All of these represent the interest of the US capitalist class and oppose the interests of the US working class. This position is contested by many who say yes we agree with this but Trump is worse than Clinton. Look what he will do to the Supreme Court, he might lose it and start a nuclear war, he would also be worse against the rights of women and minorities. There is truth in these points. But not the whole truth nor the most important truth. The most important truth is that it will only be  a mass militant, enraged movement on the streets and workplaces and schools and colleges that will block the policies of capitalism whatever capitalist politician is elected. It will not be the numbers of votes cast nor who is in the White House. This is the essential truth. This is what has to determine our actions. What approach will best build such a movement. This is the question?

The most important truth is this: US capitalism is headed for a new and worse economic crisis than 2008. Along with this US capitalism is bogged down in wars from which it cannot extract itself. And along with this it can no longer afford to maintain its huge military machine with which it dominates the world and at the same time allow its own working class to maintain the living standards to which it has been accustomed. The result is that US capitalism will increasingly step up its attack on the living standards of the US working class to try and maintain its world domination. As it does so minorities will be particularly targeted as US capitalism uses repression and divide and rule and racism and sexism to weaken the US working class. This will be the case under either Trump or Clinton.

So what should the tens and tens of thousands of former Sanders people do?  What should the hundreds of thousands of people who are disillusioned with the two main parties, the hundreds of thousands of people who do not vote, have not voted for years, what should they do? We in our Blog, although it has been more successful than we imagined, can only reach a small number of these people. So here is what we say.

First we have to recognize how change major in society comes about. It does not come about through elections. It comes about through major mass direct action struggles such as the union struggles in the 1930's and the Black and women's struggles in the 1950's and the 1960's. So the task is to build movements of struggle which use mass direct action to achieve their ends. Movements such as the Occupy Movement which changed consciousness putting the idea of the 1% front and center. Movements such as Black Lives Matter which has put racism and police brutality front and center. So first and foremost the task is to build mass movements of direct action struggle to take on the attacks  which are part of the capitalist offensive against the working class and the minorities.

Sanders speaks about carrying on his "struggle" in purely electoral terms. This is a mistake. It reflects his commitment to capitalism and electoral and capitalist politics. It will fail. It will lead to only more disillusionment. The task is to build a mass direct action movement against the attacks of the capitalist offensive with roots in the workplaces, the rank and file of the trade unions, the communities and schools and colleges. Then pull these movements together into a united front network which would carry out mass direct action against the capitalist offensive. There are also allies in the small community based businesses that would join this movement.

The trade unions have over 12 million members in the US. These 12 million workers could bring the country to a halt, they could determine the policies of the country.  They could build a mass workers party, they could organize mass direct action for a better life for all which would defeat the capitalist offensive.

But the leaders of this movement are committed to the capitalist system and to the Democratic Party. They will not lead such a movement. In fact they will do, they are doing, all they can to block such a movement. But this does not mean the trade unions should be ignored. The mass direct action movement/network should put down roots in the rank and file of the unions and the workplaces. These should organize to oppose the pro capitalist policies of the leaders and remove these leaders from office and replace them with leaders who are prepared to fight. If this is done these leaders will feel their positions threatened and splits will develop among them with some coming over at least temporarily to fight for the working class and with some clinging on to their pro capitalist position.

As such splits develop, if independent fighting oppositions are being built in the rank and file and in the workplaces, then a new leadership can be built which can fight and lead and as this would develop,  tens of millions of new members would be drawn into the unions. On this basis a mass movement of tens of millions can take on and drive back whatever capitalist government, Clinton or Trump, that would be in power. This is the way to go forward.

As this is done there is the issue of who to vote for and what political work to do in the meantime. This Blog wishes to challenge the conservatism of the leadership of the Green Party and of most of the population of the US. Change is absolutely definite in this country. It is already taking place. It is only a question of time as to when this will explode on a massive basis changing the country in the most unrecognizable manner.  This will happen. Look at the huge numbers who are discontented with both main capitalist parties. They are unprecedented. There is a powerful opening for an alternative.

The main problem is that the leadership of the Green Party do not understand this. They cannot see the big picture. They cannot see such events as in Europe where the new left leader of the British labor Party has been put into his position with up to 300,000 new members joining that party. New left parties have grown from nothing to up to 30% of the vote in a couple of years. Examples are in Greece and Spain.  We strongly advocate that the Green Party leaders in the US stop making welcoming gestures to people like Sanders and instead stand alone and hold their and the Party's hand out to the hundreds of thousands who supported Sanders and to the millions who have not voted for decades.

If the leaders of the Green Party took these steps then a major new political movement could be built in record speed. Look at how quick the Sanders movement developed. A movement so sizable and powerful could be built in months, a movement so powerful  that even if it did not win the Presidency or a majority in congress, would be seen as such a threat that it would force whatever major capitalist party was in power to retreat from its right wing policies.

To keep as many of the former Sanders movement together as possible, to involve as many of those previously not involved in political struggle as possible, we advocate that those who are opposed with the status quo, we advocate to those who want to oppose capitalism to join the Green Party. It is not the ideal situation but it is the best option at this time. The Green Party is not a Workers Party. Nor is it a Bourgeois Party. The trade union leaders could build a workers party if they mobilized their resources but their right wing policies prevent this happening for the moment and it will not happen before November. Therefore we advocate joining the Green Party. As we say it is not a Workers Party. Its class character has not yet been defined.

But it is the Party most taking up the threatening catastrophe of climate change, it has recently added an anti capitalist plank to its program, it is discussing adding an eco-socialist plank also. And it has been gaining support. So given the present overall background we advocate that all who are disappointed with Sander's role and all who are looking for an alternative, and all who have not been involved in political action for decades but who want an alternative to the capitalist parties should join the Green Party. We advocate the leaders of the Green party should lead on this basis. 

But we do not leave it there. We also advocate and are active to the extent our resources allow in seeking to build within the Green Party, in a non sectarian way a left socialist current. This would advocate the following three points.

1. Turn the Green Party into an eco socialist party that would base itself on the collective ownership of the dominant corporations which dominate the world economic, military and environmental policies and with these corporations collectively owned draw up an international sustainable plan of production distribution and exchange.

2. Transform the Green Party into a Workers Party which would have its roots in and represent the interests of the working class and the indigenous peoples and the rural poor and which would organize to end capitalism and in so doing learn the lessons of history: that capitalism will not give up its power without a struggle.

3. Change the internal life of the Green Party from its undemocratic so called consensus method to a democratic method where decisions are made on the basis of majority opinion with minority opinions always having the right to be heard. Only in this way can the Green Party become a living breathing organism which would have the power and flexibility to take on and end capitalism.

Baton Rouge killings. Are we really surprised?

Baton Rouge: Police arrest protesters July 9th

By Richard Mellor

Afscme Local 444, retired

I want to raise some points about yesterday’s shootings in Baton Rouge where another group of cops were shot and as I write three of them are dead.

It goes without saying that we have to oppose these killings. We have to oppose them first of all because individual actions like these are a harmful to the workers’ movement; they are harmful to the black people’s struggle against centuries of racist oppression. They are acts that may temporarily satisfy the desire for revenge by the perpetrator. They may be seen by some as a just response to far greater acts of violence carried out by the state against the individual, his or her family, community, religious group or race. But these type of responses do not take the struggle forward, they arise when individuals can see no other way to oppose racist oppression and the general economic and social oppression they face. They are acts of despair.

I can assume with some confidence that a contributing factor that drove the shooter, an ex marine named Gavin Long, to kill these cops at this moment in time with the understanding that he will sacrifice his own life, is the almost daily murder of (often unarmed) black men by state security forces around the country. We have to recognize also that Long served in the military as did the shooter of five policemen only a week before. Imagine putting one’s life on the line for one’s country yet fearing losing it at home at the hands of the very state you defended, or thought you were defending. Under these conditions, it is not hard to understand why someone might resort to this.

But we must be clear. These events, the killings in Baton Rouge and Dallas, will undermine the movement and popularity of Black Lives Matter and the growing movement against racism and police brutality that has been taking place up to now.  It will strengthen the racists and not help those white workers who are so far unable to overcome that “stop in the mind” to quote the great English historian Christopher Hill, and instead embrace without fear and trepidation the reasons why the slogan and movement around Black Lives Matter is appropriate, as it appears in our society today that they don’t.

Many workers of all races are appalled at the murder of black people, as they are daily “hunted down” by the police as Philandro Castile’s mother so aptly put it. But these acts of individual retribution will not help build the unity of all workers that is necessary if racism and police brutality is to be ended. Only the unity of the working class can end racism as only the unity of the working Class can end capitalism. And as Malcolm X stressed, “You can’t have capitalism without racism”. Malcolm X chose his words carefully and this can only mean we cannot end racism without ending capitalism.

The struggle for a better world and to end racism has to be a conscious struggle and the strategy and tactics necessary to accomplish this determined collectively, by black folks and by workers from all backgrounds committed to this end. Long’s decision to do what he did was not a collective decision. If Gavin Long’s tactic had been discussed among any group of black American workers, and this is a group I have worked with and lived with my entire 43 years in the US, they would have not supported it I can guarantee it. They would have done what they could to prevent it. It is not the method advocated by Black Lives Matter and practically every other African American organization fighting racial oppression.

This is despite having to listen to police chiefs, politicians and other public figures talk about the need for us to “come together in this hour of need” or words to this affect when cops are killed. We do not hear this when unarmed black men are “hunted down” in the streets of our cities. Workers are not called out on the streets to “come together” for anything other than sports events and other diversionary activities.

And here’s another point that I want to make. It is workers that serve in the military of all nations. It is workers that are sent to fight workers in other countries in these wars to defend corporate profits. What we have in the US is an economic draft as the sons and daughters of the 1%, and their political representatives like the Bush’s and Obama’s, will never face the horrors of war that children of the working class and poor do. A permanent pool of unemployed is a good thing for the military; it provides the war machine with youth who have few other options.  In this process, young working class men and women are brutalized and trained to kill. They become physically and psychologically damaged through the experience.

We can and should oppose what Gavin Long has done. He didn’t discriminate; he killed black cops as well as whites. But it’s quite likely as a Marine he killed a lot more people in his visit to Iraq than he did yesterday in Baton Rouge. He was a trained killer. That’s what being a Marine is about, taking orders and not questioning them. He is not condemned for killing foreigners. In fact, he is seen as a hero for that. He is called a warrior and the more foreigners he would have killed, the more medals and praise would have come his way from the very people now condemning him. If we were to criticize his killing of these people we would be labeled un-American and traitors. Chelsea Manning informed of us of activities like these and got 35 years for it.

The training a worker like Long receives at the hands of the state is used to defend US capitalism in its global war against workers and its rivals. It is also used internally and has been so historically to break strikes and suppress social unrest. But soldiers are workers in uniform. They are not cops and in different times, their military training and discipline is useful to the working class. Changing society will not only require a political party of our own but also a workers militia or workers military force. In this sense, the military expertise workers receive that is used to defend the capitalist state can turn in to its opposite; like technology, it depends in whose interests this skill serves.

It is the history of racial oppression that was also on Long’s mind we can guarantee it. Centuries of violence committed against black people by a state based on white supremacy is present in the consciousness of every black person no matter their class background. They are intimately aware of 300 years of slavery when black workers were forced to work for no wages. When they were forced to do so through the most vicious methods, mass murder, lynchings, being burned alive, similar to the methods of ISIS today.  

Even after the Civil War when blacks fought on the Union side by the hundreds of thousands the violence continued. Officials of the Freedmen’s Bureau were astounded at the violence against blacks. Blacks in Texas  “…are frequently beaten unmercifully and shot down like wild beasts, without any provocation.”, an official testifies. One freed slave testified that ‘”over two thousand colored people” were murdered in 1865 around Shreveport. In 1866, after the South was supposedly defeated, whites set fire to a black settlement and rounded up its inhabitants in Pine Bluff Arkansas:  “A man who visited the scene the following morning found  ‘a sight that apald me 24 Negro women and children were hanging from trees all round the cabins’” writes Eric Foner.*

These events are in the mass consciousness of black folks as much as the great famine and English invasions are in the mass consciousness of Irish Americans, even those who can’t point to Ireland on a map and there is a lot of them.

From what I understand, Long was a thoughtful person. Surely one hundred and fifty years later when black men are still dying at the hands of the state, when the racist flag of the confederacy still flew over public buildings built with the taxes paid by black people and the economic conditions of African Americans are at depression era levels him, and other black folk must ask themselves, “Will it never end?”

Louisiana governor John Edwards said of the killings: "There is nothing more fundamentally important than maintaining law and order. … That is not what justice looks like.  We should recognize that this situation is an extreme crisis for the US ruling class. The police are the armed bodies of men whose purpose it is to defend the state and the interests of the class that rules, the laws that they write. They will not tolerate this situation and it will be poor and black communities that will bear the brunt of the increased offensive, certainly in the immediate term. In the aftermath of Seattle back in 1999 and the Occupy Movement of the past period, state security forces have been increasingly militarized.    This will continue and will be used against all workers as resistance to the capitalist offensive grows."

But as a previous blog pointed out, the movement has to have a an approach to the police that can at very least neutralize them and at best split the more conscious layers from the dehumanized and brutal elements. It must offer an alternative.

It goes without saying that as this crisis continues, the role of the heads of organized labor borders on the criminal. It is their failure to offer a way forward that increases apathy politically, that makes it more likely for workers to resort to acts of sabotage on the job and individuals like Long to take matters in to their own hands. They sit atop an organization with 12 million workers in it with tremendous resources and potential power. They are a disgrace.

I have read that Long wrote the following:

“You’ve got to stand on your rights, just like George Washington did, just like the other white rebels they celebrate and salute did,” he added. “That’s what Nat Turner did. That’s what Malcolm did. You got to stand, man. You got to sacrifice.”

I notice he never mentioned Martin Luther King and assume it was due to his commitment to non-violence. While I am not a pacifist, Martin Luther King led a mass movement committed to direct action and toward the end of his life began to talk of the need for socialism and social re-organization. Malcolm X, while critical of King in his early years, came to understand the importance of the mass movement and uniting all oppressed people in the struggle for justice and freedom.

It is these methods, and a mass movement of a united working class against racism and capitalism that the 1% fears most of all and that will end police brutality, not individual acts of retribution,

* Eric Foner: Reconstruction, America’s Unfinished Revolution

Legalizing Direct Action in Pennsylvania

Where the system is fixed, we are making civil disobedience legal. This is the audacious evolution of the grassroots effort of Grant Township in Pennsylvania. The community, facing the threat of injections wells for the disposal of fracking waste water, banned the activity only to be taken to court by the industry.

Faced with a full spectrum rejection of their right to defend their community the people enacted a law that legalized direct action against the injection wells. As we say in Colorado, when fracking and democracy cannot coexist, one of them must always go. And when the system is not broken, but fixed to produce the exact environmental destruction we are all now threatened by, it is time for a movement to challenge the system itself.

Grant Township has led the way with this groundbreaking effort, and hopefully many communities facing the same industrial threats will follow.

Cliff Willmeng is a registered nurse and leading environmentalist fighting oil and gas drilling in Colorado. He is currently running in the Green Party for US Congress in District 2. WillmengForCongress.org

Changing economy, Increased divisions in US ruling class: The Republican's Trump Problem.

The world of High tech.

Sean O'Torain.

Thank you Richard for yesterday's article which you reprinted on this Blog on the "Republicans Trump problem." I found it and your comments on it very useful. We the authors of this Blog have been discussing for some time the developments in the US capitalist class, its different factions, and how these relate to each other and what they mean politically. We have also been discussing the absolute refusal of the trade union leaders to do anything but support the Democrats and suppress any movement that might emerge that would break from the Democrats. The existence of the 14 million strong trade union movement is practically never mentioned in articles in bourgeois and bourgeois academic journals and even left journals. This is for a number of reasons.

One is that the trade union leadership has prevented the US trade union movement from taking an independent stand, have prevented it from standing up and fighting, have prevented it from representing its members and the working class in general in the past years including and especially in the run up to the present election.  So for most of these journals and voices, the trade union movement and the working class does not exist. It is not just the bias of the bourgeois media, it is also that they do not even notice that there are 14 million members in unions and the potential this represents. For most of the working class, this potential also does not exist in their consciousness. This, more than anything, leaves the vacuum for Trump on the one side and Sanders on the other.

This situation is good for what I refer to as the big bourgeois class. You would think they would be happy. But this is not the case. They do not want Clinton and they do not want Sanders and they do not want Trump who is leading in the race for the nomination of their favorite Party. But they are having trouble in getting a candidate they want and can unite behind to stop Trump. They do not want Trump because he has no understanding of how the world works and the balance of forces that exist in the world. The big bourgeois worry he could drag them into a trade war, an actual war, a war on the streets of America between the classes and or races, and out of such instability even ignite a movement uniting working class people, of all races and genders. Trump is too much of a potentially destabilizing factor for the big bourgeois in the US. For this reason I believe he will not be the nominee of the Republican Party or if he would be he would be defeated in the Presidential election. The big bourgeois would not want, I would even go so far as to say would not allow such a person as Trump at the controls. But and this is a But. The big bourgeois are not omnipotent. Trump has got a lot further than most of us thought.

An important question is why has he got so far? There are a number of reasons. I cannot see them all at present but I will venture to raise a few. The big bourgeois underestimated the anger amongst the lower paid sections of the working class and sections of the youth whose economic circumstances have declined over the past decades while the living standards of the rich have skyrocketed.  Some of this anger has gone to Sanders but some also to Trump. And of course there is the racist and sexist backwardness Trump has tapped into. But there are other reasons why Trump has got so far.  One of these are the changes in the US economy and the rise of the new billionaire high tech faction of the bourgeois class. This has resulted in increased divisions amongst the US bourgeois political and economic class and the weakening of this class. These increased divisions and this weakening have made it more difficult for the US bourgeois to unite around a candidate against Trump.

There are different factions in the US ruling class. There is the Military Industrial complex, there is Wall Street, there are the federal and state bureaucracies, there are the huge religious organizations. But now also in the recent past there has been  the rise of a new faction, and a powerful faction. I am talking about the rise of the new high tech billionaire class. We on this Blog have been discussing the rise of this new faction for some time now and what it means economically and politically. What it means internationally and what it means in the US itself. I will try and confine myself here to what it means to the situation in the US. I also make these points tentatively as I am very far from having a full grasp of all that is involved. I would very much appreciate any comments which would help in a better understanding of these issues and the contradictions which are developing with the rise of this class.

The rise of  this new High Tech Billionaire Class and its affects on politics has not been sufficiently considered. See books like when Google meets Wikileaks, see articles like Technology's impact on the future of government and business as the background for a discussion on these issues. The result of this new faction in the US bourgeois economy and class is increased division in the US bourgeois class as a whole. And flowing from this, a difficulty in them getting together, uniting around an alternative to Trump. This means a weakening of the US bourgeois class. However I believe in spite of this the US bourgeois will be able to unite around a candidate and most likely this will be Clinton as she has proved herself over decades to be reliable and to be most in consonance with the new developments in the US economy including this new rising high tech billionaire class.

There is another issue when considering around whom the US bourgeois will manage to overcome their divisions and unite around. The fact that Clinton is a woman will be an important factor. It is no accident that Trump would appear to have peaked because of his vicious comments against women. Women have increasingly moved into the paid workforce. 50% of the world's factory workers are now women. US women will not let themselves be imprisoned for having an abortion. There is no way this will happen. The extreme reactionary Trump has come a cropper with his attacks on women.

This rising of the women has also increased the crisis in the Republican party and between the Republican Party and the major corporations, that is major sectors of the US bourgeois. In state after state the religious fanatics in the Republican Party have been making it almost impossible for women to have an abortion. They have also been moving to pass laws to discriminate against gay people, lesbian people, transgender people. The backlash from many major corporations of US capitalism has been quite ferocious to this attack on gay and lesbian and transgender rights with corporation after corporation threatening to move out of states that pass such laws. These major corporations want access to all workers just as they want access to undocumented workers, they want to be able to exploit all workers. It is a disgrace that in many cases corporations are opposing these attacks while the trade union leadership make barely a whimper. The WASP ruling class ground their teeth and accepted the African American Obama who turned out to be a very good representative for them. If they have to they will grind their teeth again and accept the woman Clinton.

Decades ago the authors of this Blog, when the Republican Party moved to recruit the born again christian right, correctly said that this would blow up in their faces as most of these were lower paid and they would come into conflict with the right wing anti working class policies of the Republican Party, the Democratic Party and the US bourgeois. We were correct on this. And we should recognize this. But on another issue we were incorrect. And we should recognize this also. What we did not see was that the US trade union leadership would be so rotten. That they would provide absolutely no alternative through which this anger could express itself. We thought there would be the rise of a Labor party or a workers party. Instead there has been the rise of the right wing populist Trump movement within the Republican Party and the liberal populist Sanders movement within the Democratic Party.

So where to from here? Most likely Clinton will get the nomination and win the presidential election. She will be a white female version of Obama, the drone man, the Military industrial complex man, the Wall street man, the new high tech faction of capitalism man. This is not certain but I believe it is most likely. We are in a very volatile time. Wars abroad, major terrorist acts such as a dirty bomb in a major city in an advanced capitalist country, a major event rooted in climate change and pollution and capitalist methods of production such as fracking, a new world recession, these are all possible, and some even probable, and could change mass consciousness and events. It is not possible to be specific as to what event or events will change things and will lead to large sections of the working class rising to its feet and putting its imprint on the situation. But rise it will. Where and when it is not possible to say. But rise it will. The present situation in the US and internationally will break. A new and very complex period, even more complex than now, will open up and within it or out of it will arise a new movement of the working class, the progressive class in history. The task is and will be to put a cutting edge on this new movement, to build a mass revolutionary movement of tens and tens of millions of workers internationally to open the road to a new socialist world.

The final paragraph in Charles Post's excellent article that we posted on this blog yesterday stated:

"Fortunately, we have a concrete example of how to fight Trump and the right. The mass mobilization against Trump initiated by immigrant students at the University of Illinois-Chicago that led him to cancel his rally is an example that needs to be replicated whenever and wherever Trump attempts to campaign. Along with rebuilding effective social movements among working people, these sorts of mobilizations will build the basis for a real independent political alternative to both right-wing populism and mainstream neoliberalism."

I would add to this the building of an anti capitalist fighting mass direct action movement with organized squads in every workplace, every union local and council, every community, every school and college. The timing of such events, of such a break in the situation is impossible to forecast. But a break in the situation will come and the US working class will take to its feet. The spontaneous mobilization referred to above which closed down the Trump rally in Chicago was an inspiration. On this Blog we covered this mobilization praised it and thanked the workers and youth who took part. We were right to do so. We are also right to say that it will be vastly overshadowed by the movement that lies ahead.

San Leandro Tenants Demand Rent Control Now

This is about local events in San Leandro CA. It might be of interest to readers nationally and outside the country.

You can download a PDF of this here

Project For a Working people’s World

By Richard Mellor

Afscme Local 444, retired
Member Green Party of USA

At the last Rent Board Meeting I spoke of how these boards are dominated and controlled by moneyed interests. We can see how well organized the landlords are from the information in the included graphic. Thomas Silva a member of the board and one of the two “official” representatives of the landlords according to City Council documents, Daniel Johnson being the other one, is a member of the Rental Housing Association, an organization created to defend and advance the economic interests of landlords.

John Sullivan a major landlord is a regular at the Rent Board tenants have told this writer. Sullivan is the “Chairman” of the RHA Mediation Committee. His actual function in this role is to ensure that his income from his investments, which in this case is human shelter, is not disturbed.

We only have to take a glimpse at parts of their agenda to see why it’s so important for tenants, like workers in unions, to have independent organizations. Organizations that do not confine themselves to electoral activity but use direct action tactics like rent strikes, turning up at their fancy dinners like this one in the included announcement and other tactics.  It is a strategy session is what it is.

On the agenda at their luncheon in July was:

(1) Addressing political threats facing the rent control and the rental housing industry

(2) Importance of the upcoming election

(3) Opportunities for property owners/managers to unite and take action to prevent new regulations

By “political threats” they are referring to legislation that hinders their income revenue, the rent tenants fork over to them every month. They use some of that money to elect “industry” friendly politicians. We should ask: why is housing a for profit industry?  How we house society should not be in the hands of hedge fund managers and real estate speculators.

They concern themselves with elections in order to get their representatives in to political positions, to ensure their rental income is safe and legal and political power over the renter is maintained.

And # 3 is clear.  They are aware of the power of association or combination as it has been called and how division weakens their ranks.  They want to speak as a group.  They want to be able to use this combination of moneyed power to keep tenants in a permanent state of insecurity and fear. Despite whatever individual views they may have, these people recognize that racism, ageism, gender discrimination and other such divisions within their organization hurts their collective self interest and we as workers and middle class people should recognize that it hurts ours just as much.

James Kilpatrick is another San Leandro Landlord. He is president of NAI Global that is the “…single largest, most powerful global network of owner-operated commercial real estate brokerage firms” It is a organization of investors, landlords and others engaged in speculative and socially damaging activity.

When you are speaking to rent boards, city councils or other municipal bodies this is who you are addressing. These are the people, the forces, behind the elected officials.

Here in San Leandro we have no rent control. At the next meeting on Tuesday 17^th the Rent Board will present some changes to an already toothless ordinance as far as tenants are concerned. Despite the board having two members that are described as “tenants” on its official website, Sandra Johnson Simon and Maria Luisa Penaranda, along with one listed as “homeowner”, Mia Ousley, a landlord friendly proposal is before the board. Hopefully the two tenants representatives and Ms Ousley will vote against it and present a resolution demanding that the San Leandro City Council immediately introduce rent control legislation  We can be sure that significant discussions between the landlords’ representatives both on and off these boards occur behind the scenes at gatherings like the luncheon described in the graphic above.

In the end tenants, just like workers in unions, can only rely on their own strength, their numbers and their ability to stop economic activity. Tenants in San Leandro have potential power if they organize.  The landlords have the money but they have to get it off the tenants.  The US has a history of renters’ strikes against landlordism, especially in NYC for example.  But there are many strategies and tactics that can be used to fight for your rights, direct action tactics that are legal and within one’s rights as an American. The landlords (who normally like to operate through third parties so they don’t have to look their victims in the eye) have no conscience when it comes to taking hard earned money off tenants.

But it is not just high rents that must be fought, but the power the landlord has over a tenant’s life.  It is not unlike the workplace where, despite rules and regulations, workers face discrimination and harassment every day if they speak up for their rights. Only a strong union with an active membership on the job can defend workers’ rights, not officials in an office in Washington DC.

So building a permanent tenants’ organization must be part of any campaign like this and homeowners (we have landlords too, the banks) should support this. And as we can see, the landlords belong to numerous organizations that are statewide and national in nature. A strong organization will empower tenants to get involved and speak up as retaliation by landlords and their agents can be met with some retaliation (legal activity of course) from tenants. If activity is confined to acceptable norms (it’s called going through channels) the “channels” are designed so the landlords can’t lose.

In the last analysis housing is a human right; it is human shelter. Landlords or real estate speculators like Kilpatrick, Sullivan, Thomas Silva and Morton Friedkin a SL Landlord and land speculator who owns some 2000 or more units in Chicago, see a home as a commodity to be bought and sold as if it were pork bellies on the Chicago exchange or shares in a tech firm. Their activities are destructive to our communities including community based small business.  Security in housing can only be guaranteed through publicly funded affordable housing, the right of every human being in a civilized society.

Tenants, their families and supporters should turn up on Tuesday.  The tenants that have been meeting so far have demanded that the proposal be rejected.  They have also stated that their goal is a strong rent control provision be introduced in San Leandro. They should be supported in this campaign. But we must not have any illusions in the Rent Board, City Council, the courts or other institutions where moneyed interests dictate policy.

Here's a flier the tenants put out with the information on the rent board meeting.  Share it with your neighbors and if you can with tenants in your building.   How the rent increases in San Leandro Will Affect you.