America's Youth Rise to the Occasion in Response to ICE Violence.

By Mark Provost

 

I spent a couple hours last night, and a couple more today, reviewing countless photos from the massive protests around the country on Friday. 

 

Few people grasp the size, spread, and significance of these protests led by high school and college students. Legacy media can't adequately cover these events (even if they wanted to) so I'm going to give it a shot. 

 

To see spontaneous and organic protests organized by young people is to behold collective joy. I've reviewed thousands of images and videos. You don't see a single student scrolling their phone. They are living in the present and exuberant. They link arms, hug, and support each other. 

 

Some of the walkouts were organized by the senior class; other times by freshmen. These young people are forming their identities and have made the decision to become active subjects in the American story. They appear determined to turn a new chapter. 

 

A few of the signs adopt familiar messaging from previous protests like NoKings. Other signs are direct communiques to the adults who are supposed to be protecting them.

 

One of the more popular signs read: "We're skipping our lessons today to teach you one." Another sign said, "My immigrant parents work harder than your president." Signs featured curses that aren't permitted at home or school.

 

I noticed the boys who climbed the highest light poles and edifices proudly waved Mexican flags. The physical liberation of their bodies against artificial constraints betrays their spiritual and moral development. 

 

I pause on the images to reflect and zoom in on their expressions, homemade signs, and take in the camaraderie. These kids and young adults are making history and they're more aware of that than anyone else. 

 

I'd prefer to resume my day but I can feel my soul recharging. I stare into the imagery and no longer feel trapped by impending doom. It is impossible to bear witness to a youth uprising and not feel immense hope about our future — coupled with the commitment to help them make it a reality.

 

The anti-ICE protests mark a definitive turning point in our nation's trajectory, one that began with the emergence of Donald Trump as a force of nature roughly a decade ago. 

 

The walkouts also mark the moment the baton of anti-fascist activism has passed from the nation's oldest generation — who thus far accounted for the bulk of visible protests — to the youngest generation.

 

That corporate media and the commentariat refuse to acknowledge this seismic shift doesn't diminish its historical impact. 

 

The public murder of Renee Good and Alex Pretti, and the larger occupation of Minnesota, had the opposite of its intended outcome. The regime wanted to make a glaring example of Minneapolis —a diverse medium-sized Blue island in an ocean of Red — that resistance to their agenda is futile.

 

But by trying to stomp out an active fire in Minneapolis, Trump spread glowing embers to every town and city — the hot coals even hopped generational gaps. The broadening generational participation against the regime is arguably more important than the growing geography of resistance. 

 

That isn't to say the geography of rebellion isn't impressive. One can map concentric circles from the epicenter in Minneapolis across the Midwest: school walkouts in the tiniest towns in rural Minnesota, a massive protest in neighboring Milwaukee and throughout Wisconsin, student walkouts in Michigan and in St Louis, Missouri. I saw photos of students in Cleveland and Columbus, Ohio. Ten thousand took the streets of Chicago. 

 

Across the plains and America's heartland, deep in Trump country, thousands of students poured out from their schools in coordinated and peaceful fashion. At an anti-ICE protest in front of a high school in Fremont, Nebraska, one student in an SUV waving an oversized Trump flag struck a classmate then fled the scene, to the horror of screaming students and faculty.

 

We bear witness to MAGA's violence against children, whether it's little Liam Ramos or a white child participating in their first sidewalk picket. The threat of physical danger and death lurks even in the most unlikely places, which means no protest against the regime can be glibly dismissed as purely performative. The symbolism of a Trumper injuring a fellow student then attempting to escape accountability was likely not lost on their classmates or the community. 
MAGA flees from the crime scene as fast as they dash from relevance; the Quickest Reich.

 

Friday's protests were so widespread I had to cross check common city names to identify which state it was in. For example, there was a huge march near the Bay in Lafayette County, California, as well as a protest in Lafayette, Indiana, home of Purdue University. Students and neighbors hit the streets in Lafayette, North Carolina. Two nights prior, the community of Lafayette, Louisiana protested against local police cooperation with ICE. Students from more than 100 schools in Georgia walked out. 

 

I saw a photo of students in Burlington under swirling storm clouds against a lush green mountainous backdrop wearing only flannels and hoodies and knew it couldn't be Burlington, Vermont, where despite three feet of snow and below freezing temps, saw at least 1,000 people march. That's how I learned of Burlington, Washington nestled in the Skagit Valley, where students lined both sides of the freeway. Students throughout Portland, Oregon led walk outs. I watched a clip of people marching through historic downtown Portland, Maine, accompanied by a brass band, that was so long it went for two minutes.

 

Students in California hit the streets from San Diego to Sacramento and everywhere in between. On the other coast, students walked out at Brooklyn Tech, the largest high school in the nation. 

Trump's invasion and occupation of Minneapolis not only spread the resistance across geographies and generations, but by extension across races. Aside from a few communities which remain mostly white, the majority of US children already live in a multi-racial society, go to diverse schools, and they don't want to see their friends and neighbors abducted, tortured, and deported. 

 

Let me quickly point out the unlikely example of my hometown of Manchester, New Hampshire. When I began school in the early 80s, 90% of the city's student body was white. All the non-white students combined comprised only 10% of the student body. Today, half of Manchester students are non-white. 

 

Many Manchester students are from recently immigrated families as our city is a UN designated relocation sanctuary for displaced refugees. We have immigrants from Sudan, Darfur, and the former Yugoslavia. In our small northern New England former mill town — in the nation's third-whitest state — our residents speak more than 100 languages.

 

Students rose up across the West, from Denver to Reno, from Tucson to Deep Red Dallas. Their families are from South and Central America. They are Mexican, Chicano, Mexican and Chicano, living alongside and among hundreds of Native American Nations and their communities. Their ancestors have been here and crossed imaginary borders for millennia before Christopher Columbus ever stuck his syphilitic foot on their soil. 

 

This is America and it will take more than chintzy sheet metal concentration camps and masked Rent-A-Goons to erase us. 

 

A sizable chunk of America's youth realize a sizable chunk of American adults are violent, racist, and delusional. Young people aren't waiting until they can vote to make political demands and take political action, something we adults should take a cue from. 

 

It's impossible to look at these brave children and sincerely believe this nation is on the cusp of descending into a fascist hellhole. If the growing demonstrations signify anything, it's that America's future will look dramatically different than the regime envisioned.

Sky’s Shutter

 

Amazon Labor Union Victory Also Brings Dangers.

 

Richard Mellor
Afscme Local 444, retired
GED/HEO
4-11-22

The young workers at Amazon, and throughout the US, including places like Starbucks and the fast food super exploitative industry, are the voice of the future and are shaking up the organized labor movement. This is a very powerful, positive development and working class people union or otherwise must give support wherever we can.

But for those of us who have spent many decades as rank and file activists in the labor movement and most importantly rooted in the workplace and community struggles building working class power, history has taught us that with such victories there are many dangers.

The first of course is the bosses.; the capitalist class. And when we talk of capital we mean the state, the two political parties of capitalism, the police the judiciary and the all so important mass media that they control.

But there are other, more pernicious dangers, and those are some, not all, of the forces that will claim to be friends, that will offer their assistance. The right wing pro-market leadership of organized labor that view the established unions as employment agencies with themselves as the CEO's, will be eager to draw the new leaders in to their camp and along with them the millions of young workers that are a potential source of revenue in the form of dues money.

The present leadership atop the AFL-CIO and the Change to Win Coalition are committed to the market and capitalism and the right of the bosses to own the forces of production and to profit from it. They do not oppose Jeff Bezos' right to own Amazon, they merely want him to be less aggressive, to treat his workers fairly. This is a utopian dream.  Decades upon decades teach us this as workers.

There are also many left forces, again not all,  that see themselves as the sole owners of the correct strategy and tactics necessary to take the movement forward, that see themselves as the educators of the working class, that rarely enter a dialogue with the working class or listen to what the working class has to say.  They see their role only as leaders of the working class. Many of them have proved incapable of accomplishing what you have and certainly have failed to challenge the present leadership of organized labor whose concessionary policies have brought us this far.

Along with this, threats will come from conservative pro-market elements in the Democratic Party, the Democratic Party that is funded by Wall Street just like their Republican relatives.  Different sections of the ruling class tend to one party, or the other, energy and oil for example with the Republicans, and tech and others to the Democrats. But as we saw with the defeat of Trump, the US elite uses both these parties to get their man or woman in to the drivers seat. The Democratic Party is the only political party to use nuclear weapons on urban communities.

As so called progressive Democrats like Bernie sanders who is a recruiter for the Democratic Party are sent to woo the new young leadership we are seeing arise today like the folks in the video, remember what that party is and its history. Remember that Nancy Pelosi, a representative of the real power in that party,  reminded a naive young DSA member that  "we are capitalist" and that the Democratic Party is capitalist. Brothers and sisters, we have suffered serious defeats over decades under Democratic and Republican Administrations alike.

We won the right to unionize by relying on our own strength as workers, our ability to shut down production and hurt them where it hurts most, profits.

These comments are not to lessen the importance of your victory, but only to warn you of the dangers from an old veteran of union, workplace and community struggles. Dangers will come from left and right. My feeling is that the youth of today are astute, are certainly street smart as they say. But the forces against you are very powerful and extremely devious. Always keep your feet rooted firmly in the working class and the communities that are ours.

I see that in France there are strikes throughout the country of Amazon workers; there is hope in the insane capitalist world where everything is for sale. In the meantime, thank you for your inspirational efforts that are shifting the balance of class forces in the US and probably the world.

The Firing of Starbucks Union Leader Laila Dalton

This is republished from More Perfect Union 
A bit late with this but it is further evidence of the changing mood and increased union activity in the US. Check out the video at the end of this publication that we added and also if you haven't already seen it click on the link to the video/tweet in the middle of the piece. Tried to embed it without success. These developments, Amazon, Starbucks and the new young, super exploited workers are not going away. In addition to the bosses, there are additional dangers this movement will have to confront, among them, the moribund, conservative clique at the helm of the AFL-CIO and established unions. Alongside this are the liberal/left elements, some in the lower ranks of the union hierarchy that will also temper this movement, render it acceptable to "good" employers and most importantly the Democratic Party.  The publisher's editorial board  here is clearly a Democratic Party group that includes Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders and those of us active in the labor movement for many years are well acquainted with the treacherous role of the Democratic Party in the workers' movement and organized labor in particular.

These heroic young leaders are no fools. The Democratic Party has an agenda of its own and has been the death of independent workers' movements; our power cannot be won through this party of Wall Street, the "lesser evil". Workers have won what we have through relying on our own strength, our unity, in the workplaces and communities in which we live and will only be advanced politically by having our own independent working class party. Richard Mellor

Starbucks Fires Union Leader For Protecting Herself Against Harassment

• TwitterApril 4 2022

By Jordan Zakarin

Starbucks on Monday fired a Phoenix-based barista and union leader named Laila Dalton, an act of retaliation that caps two months of unrelenting harassment against the 19-year-old shift supervisor.

The dismissal comes just one day before the National Labor Relations Board sends union election ballots to workers at Starbucks’ Scottsdale and Mayo location, where Dalton has worked for several years.

According to a notice of separation provided by two district managers, Dalton was fired for recording audio on her phone while performing inventory in the backroom of the store. 

As More Perfect Union has reported, Dalton has been accosted by her managers on multiple occasions; footage of the harsh discipline sessions have repeatedly gone viral and stoked outrage at the company. In March, the NLRB issued a formal complaint against Starbucks for subjecting Dalton to a series of abuses meant to disrupt the union campaign and force her to quit. 

Shaken by these regular reprimands, Dalton had begun recording when working by herself or in close proximity to her managers.

“I’m always expecting it, because I’m harassed every single day,” she told More Perfect Union. “I never know when someone’s going to come harassing me, so I always want to be recording.”

NEW: Leaked video shows a Starbucks manager reprimanding a 19-year-old barista to tears in a union-busting effort.

Phoenix shift supervisor Laila Dalton was disciplined after handing out union cards to coworkers.

Starbucks tried to make her quit. Instead they filed for a union. pic.twitter.com/JKLmkwtNVf

— More Perfect Union (@MorePerfectUS) March 4, 2022

Managers first confronted Dalton about the recording on Saturday, when they asked if her camera had been capturing audio on March 23rd and March 26th. Because Dalton had not told anyone about the recording, it was unclear how management knew about the contents of her phone. Arizona is also a one-party consent state, meaning that permission is not required to record conversations where the person recording is present.

Starbucks workers are usually offered a final warning notice before their termination, an important step that Dalton’s managers ignored until Monday during her firing. The final warning notice they handed her during the termination, which included a reprimand for going into the backroom to pick up a coworker on her day off, was dated March 18th.

The first incident occurred on January 25th, days after Dalton and three colleagues had submitted their signed union petition to the labor board. During that first conflict, Starbucks’ regional manager blindsided Dalton with a long corrective action form littered with reprimands for offenses such as missing work while in the hospital and texting her manager. After an intense encounter, the manager repeatedly attempted to coerce Dalton into handing in her resignation.

Dalton’s termination took place about one hour after Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz told employees in a town hall that the company was “being assaulted in many ways by the threat of unionization.”

Note: here is a video showing an interview by one of her bosses:

Black Lives Matter: Jim Crow by stealth

Police detain Ieshia Evans during a protest against police brutality in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, on July 9, 2016, days after police shot and killed Alton Sterling. (Reuters/Jonathan Bachman.) Source

by Mark Bygrave - UK trade unionist and Labour party member.

As a result of the civil rights movement from the 1960s onwards, and the shifting cultural outlook of white Americans who had generally moved to the view that overt acts of racism were unacceptable, reforms were introduced which, for a period of time allowed for some increases in living standards for some black US citizens.

A programme of “affirmative action” was also introduced by white liberal politicians, desperate to find a solution to the anger coming out of black communities and to contain it within the capitalist system itself. Although this did bring some material benefits to a minority of black people through education, media, business and other workplaces, where positions were “reserved” for them, it also played into the hands of the right-wing, who weaponized affirmative action amongst white workers, to further sow division. They used the line that “he only got the job because he’s black”, showing that there will never be an end to the bosses trying to divide our class along race lines whilst they wield social and economic power, however much tinkering is attempted.

The ruling class thought they could socially engineer a section of their class to open it up to black and brown people who would then act as apologists and advocates of capitalism and keep the mass of blacks in check. Nowhere is this more exemplified than by people like Candace Owens who are part of the Trump media offensive to give black cover to the white ruling class and try split US blacks along class lines. Owens effectively blames African-Americans for their own predicament, and “bad choices”, all the while refusing to acknowledge the objective conditions that the vast majority of blacks are born into. In the UK we see comments along a similar vein from the likes of Labour MP David Lammy and former head of the commission for racial equality  who never once raises the issue of class and only ever talk about tinkering and reforms of a system that has racism hardwired into its DNA that will ultimately do nothing for the mass of people, but may advance the careers of a select few.

What is systemic racism?

In the US it is the system of mass incarceration that underpins racism in US capitalism. Mass incarceration effectively replaced the Jim Crow segregation laws and was begun by Nixon, using the “southern strategy” and then put into full effect by Reagan in his now infamous “war on drugs”. Billions of federal dollars were offered to state and local law enforcement, on the condition it was used in the “drug war”, which became a euphemism for terrorising and criminalising black communities.

The stealth of this system is that its supposed to be “colourblind” and only goes after “criminals” but everyone knows the colour of the person a politician is talking about when they refer to a “criminal” is the USA 

In fact, when Reagan started his drug campaign, the majority of white Americans did not even view drugs as a major issue. It was jobs and health that were the main issues for white Americans, but US capitalism was not able to address these, given the world economic situation at the time. So neo-liberal policies were introduced to transfer public money into private hands, to increase profitability for capital together with huge tax cuts for the rich to kick start a boom paid for by the poorest sections of US society mainly black and brown people. 

Supported by media depictions of black men as pimps, dealers and rapists, the ruling class set about de-humanising black people with negative stereotypes prevalent throughout white American TV, newspapers, movies and news reports.

All studies show that drug use was and remains pretty near equal amongst whites as it is blacks, but white kids had nothing to fear in the suburbs if they happened to be found in possession of small amounts of cannabis after Reagan’s declaration of war.

Moralizing and hand-wringing

In contrast, in black communities we saw young black males arrested, charged, convicted or imprisoned at alarmingly high rates and then being ripped from their families, devastating community ties and foundations.

We then had to listen to the moralising hand-wringing of white commentators in mainstream media, talking about absent fathers and the lack of moral guidance denied to black children, and suggesting that black fathers were ‘feckless’, whilst all the time ignoring the destruction of families through racist law enforcement, poverty and underfunded education.

Police were given powers to stop and search, even though the 4th Amendment was specifically written to prevent unlawful search and seizure. Various challenges were made even all the way to the Supreme Court, but a “drugs exception” is now implicit, even though it is not specifically written anywhere in the 4th Amendment. The supreme court judges have effectively given the green light to racist stop-and-search and allowed a branch of law enforcement to define the constitutional rights of citizens.

The threat of death is inherent in every police stop

Once stopped by the police, the nightmare for any black person really begins. If they question the stop, protest or resist in any way, the police will use brute force, then pile on trumped-up charges, like assaulting an officer or resisting arrest, and the pretext to be taken to jail is achieved. If this is not bad enough, the threat of death by cops is inherent in every situation when a black person is stopped. A cop only has to say he felt his life was threatened to use deadly force.

The nightmare of a criminal justice system that is so weighted against poor people is then shown in full glare. Too poor to have a lawyer and with a token public defender system so underfunded and overworked that it means anyone arrested is faced with staying in jail or trying to get bail.

The bail system is then the next hurdle where you are expected to raise surety for thousands of dollars through family or friends, which is a near impossibility. Contrast that with the case of Epstein, who was in jail arrested on suspicion of sex with minors and who was released on bail within four hours.

So the pressure to get out of a stinking jail is applied by the prosecutor's office, where the DA has so much power to intimidate and extract a confession or plea deal it becomes clear that the pursuit of ‘justice’ is non-existent. If you try to plead ‘not guilty’ and want to go to court, the DA can effectively threaten to escalate and add more charges, without any evidence. So you can enter the system on a charge that carries, say, 3 months prison and end up being faced with more serious charges that carry 20 years, if found guilty. Is it any surprise that most people cave in and take a plea deal, especially if faced with legal fees they cannot afford and continued incarceration?

Vast majority of charges never go to court

In around 97% of convictions, the person charged never sees the inside of a courtroom, except to agree to the deal with a judge. It is openly acknowledged by both defence and prosecutors in the US that if every person arrested actually demanded a court appearance to fight their charges, then the system would collapse, such is the number of people charged at any one time.

It is clear that the legal system, in terms of the experiences of poor people and especially black and brown caught up in it, is not the ‘pursuit of justice’. The aim is to get a conviction and for the arrestee to be criminalised for life and then to be excluded from mainstream society. What is this, if not segregation or Jim Crow by the back door?

Another step taken by Republicans and Democrats was to introduce mandatory sentencing, effectively removing the discretion of judges to look at the individual circumstances of the perpetrator and the crime itself and decide on sentencing. Now it became possible to receive a sentence for minor drug offences that was longer than for violent crimes. It was not unheard-of to be sentenced to life for a first-time offence.

In 1982, a Supreme Court ruling upheld forty years of imprisonment for possession in a case involving an attempt to sell 9 ounces of cannabis, and several years later the same Supreme Court upheld a sentence of life for defendant with no prior convictions who attempted to sell 23 ounces of cocaine. The 8th Amendment is supposed to protect citizens from “cruel and unusual” punishments, but once again ,there appears to be an exception for black people.

Is it any wonder that the vast majority of black people feel alienated, disconnected and unwelcome in the country of their birth? The constitution and the American dream are entirely meaningless to them.

Weapons, vehicles and surveillance equipment

The “war on drugs” allowed federal money to be showered on police  to purchase weapons, vehicles, surveillance equipment and anything else the police wanted. Within a few years police became completely dependent upon this funding which was only renewed if convictions and arrests continued to rise, so a perpetual cycle of mass arrests whilst cuts to social programmes were continued causing immense pain to families who were nearly all just trying to get by in some of the toughest neighbourhoods in the world. And so began the school to prison pipeline - a deliberate and constructed system to criminalise as many black youth as possible creating a cycle of deprivation and self fulfilling crime stats justifying further budget increases for the police.

New laws were also introduced, whereby police could seize assets and property, even if they only suspected it was from the proceeds of the drug trade. It wasn't long before law enforcement had a perpetual motivation to keep the war on drugs going to provide an ever-expanding flow of money into their departments.

In most US cities, the police budgets are more than all of those provided for social services put together, only emphasising the priorities of the capitalist class towards the black population.

This means that simultaneously there were police round-ups mass arrests alongside the defunding of schools, cuts to social services and other welfare programmes. A harsh collateral punishment was introduced where tenants could be evicted from public housing if a family member was convicted, so the damage and terror was not confined to just the arrestee and widened out to catch even more innocent poor people.

Prison system a multi-billion dollar business

The USA has 5% of the world's population, yet holds 25% of the world's prison population. Black males make up 4% of the US population but are around 40% of that prison population.  The prison system itself is now a multi-billion dollar business, where private companies have monetised every aspect of incarceration to profit off the backs of inmates, including forced labour for many well-known product brands, meals and phone calls for inmates, along with ancillary services and other profitable revenue streams.

Mass incarceration is making billions for the largest corporations in America whilst impoverishing black people.

Let us also not forget that once convicted of a felony in the USA and prison time is served, this is not, as one would expect, the end of the sentence. A convicted felon enters a parallel universe in which discrimination and stigma are legal. This also applies to people who accepted a plea deal and a felony conviction in return for not going to prison. In fact, the majority of convicted felons have not served prison time.

A 2008 study showed there were a shocking 2.3 million people in prisons and jails but a staggering 5.1 million under some form of “community correctional supervision”. Every single job application in the US requires the applicant to tick a box if they are a convicted felon. This all but excludes most people from obtaining even a basic minimum wage job and ever returning to society; it also prevents rehabilitation, so the cycle of petty crime – just to survive – is repeated, ultimately resulting, in many cases, in a return to prison.

In the 80s and 90s, both the Republican and to their shame, that ‘friend of the workers’ the Democratic Party, in efforts to outdo each other on being “tough on crime” agreed ever-more draconian post-felony release sanctions.

In almost all states a convicted felon cannot even get food stamps, cannot get public housing and with parole officers who provide no support and are just used as a force for social control. A convicted felon will be discriminated against quite legally by private landlords and forever denied licences for a wide range of professional bodies, resulting forever being locked out of mainstream society.

A felony sentence means permanent exclusion

Once on parole, you are subject to regular surveillance and monitoring and you may be stopped and searched, without consent, at any time. Is it any wonder that once somebody enters this world where the normal rules of citizenship do not apply there is a high rate of return to prison?

The US bureau of statistics shows that 30% of released prisoners were re-arrested within six months of release. Within three years, nearly 68% were rearrested for at least one offence.

This is the aim of mass incarceration and the criminalisation of the black community and is Jim Crow by stealth, reinvented and rebranded to hide its nature from white America because it is acknowledged that in 21st century even amongst whites, the idea of living in a racist society is abhorrent. So the ruling class have had to develop, evolve and rebrand their system of control of the black population and made it “colourblind” and pretend its only aim is to go after “criminals” to fool middle class white America.

More African-Americans adults are under correctional control today – in prison or jail, on probation or parole – than were enslaved in 1850, a decade before the Civil War began.

In contemporary USA, it is not an exaggeration to describe the vast majority of black neighbourhoods as similar to the ‘Bantustans’ of Apartheid South Africa. The murder of the jogger Ahmaud Abery by white men who planned a lynching because a black man dared to run through “their” neighbourhood, gives an insight into how African Americans are forced to stay only where whites decide they should belong.

It's generally viewed that one of the roles of the police is to act as border guards, keeping black people in their zones and enforcing an unofficial travel ban to white neighbourhoods.

Systemic racism highlights that as important as it is to draw attention to the appalling bias in jobs, income and financial standing, it extends beyond the basic economic indices. African Americans live with the knowledge that there are some white citizens, especially the police, who would have no hesitation in killing them, because they know the justice system will almost always find a way to get them off.

This is clearly an attempt to divide workers in a “culture war” where if you are white you are expected to take the side of one ‘your own’ tribe. This must be resisted by all activists and by the Labour and trade union leaders. Quite rightly, the vast majority of our class are appalled by racism, but at the same time, very few are aware of what institutional or systemic racism actually consists of.

Heroism of youth on the streets

Important discussions about the role of the police have begun amongst the radicalised youth taking part in the uprisings in the US and as socialists we must intervene in these discussions. The role of the police in society has been exposed as a force for social control, not fighting crime.

In the US, even the police themselves acknowledge that they have been used as the “go to” organisation for the consequences of social issues, deprivation, underfunding of services and poverty that are not policing matters; from stray dogs and minor disagreements, through to far more serious social and health issues like drugs, unemployment, overcrowded housing. For too long, the stock answer has been “call the cops” and white America has been happy to go along with it.

The funding of the police must be subject to far more scrutiny where the workload of police could actually be reduced significantly if money was spent on services like mental health and drug rehabilitation programmes. Investment could be diverted to youth training and education programmes, but most of all, the so called “war on drugs” must end and be replaced with policing by consent with full democratic accountability at state, city and local level by means of elected democratic organs, where citizens can determine policy, operational guidelines and fully direct the work of the police.

We must listen to the youth and workers and encourage establishment of socialist education groups where the gap between unorganised workers and trade unions can be bridged.

The workers in the mighty US trade union movement must take inspiration from the heroism of those youth on the streets and be at the forefront of some bridge-building, by making links at grassroots level, inviting speakers to their local meetings for example. 

We have already seen examples of how unionised workers can support the struggle e.g. bus drivers in NYC refusing to assist transporting arrested demonstrators.

Union members must look at their own leaderships, who have continually sought conciliation and collaboration with the same people who support mass incarceration and they must break with any illusions that the Democrat Party or the capitalist system can provide social peace, economic prosperity or stability for any worker black or white.

We will fight for and will welcome any minor reforms this uprising may bring the workers of the US. But the capitalist will try to take any concessions back again sometime in the future. In the U.S, we are seeing a movement of the working class developing that is confronting racism and the murder of the black population by the police. It is inevitable that the capitalist system itself will come under fire as well. In this ongoing struggle a major goal must be the creation of a political alternative to the two capitalist parties, a workers’ party based on the unions and working class communities. This will give us a place to fight for our own class interests and strengthen the struggle for permanent change which will allow African Americans, Latinos and all POC to determine their own destiny. 

The ruling class are now relying on the Democratic Party to absorb this new wave of anger, with Obama and Pelosi both exploiting the situation to get Biden into power. The ‘lesser of two evils’ raises its head again in US politics, so we must agitate for a workers’ party, which, if established and armed with a socialist programme, would be unstoppable in a challenge for power and become a beacon to the world working class.

The US in 2020 has entered the world stage as one the opening episodes of the unfolding world revolution inspiring outpourings of solidarity in Paris, Berlin London and other cities around the globe. The internationalism of workers to the plight of our black brothers and sister is real and concrete and should fill us with optimism for the struggle that is about to unfold in the coming period

No Justice No peace!

For a Socialist USA, a socialist American continent and a Socialist World!

Postscript: This is an excerpt from the book, The New Jim Crow - Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colourblindness by Michelle Alexander 

“Jarvious Cotton cannot vote. Like his father, grandfather, great-grandfather, and great-great-grandfather, he has been denied the right to participate in our electoral democracy. Cotton’s family tree tells the story of several generations of black men who were born in the United States but who were denied the most basic freedom that democracy promises—the freedom to vote for those who will make the rules and laws that govern one’s life. Cotton’s great-great-grandfather could not vote as a slave. His great-grandfather was beaten to death by the Ku Klux Klan for attempting to vote. His grandfather was prevented from voting by Klan intimidation. His father was barred from voting by poll taxes and literacy tests. Today, Jarvious Cotton cannot vote because he, like many black men in the United States, has been labeled a felon and is currently on parole.”

June 6, 2020

Hundreds of Thousands in the US and Around the World are Standing in Solidarity With Black America.

Richard Mellor
Afscme Local 444, retired
Editor Facts For Working People Blog

Capitalism has always been a system of crisis and violence. Here in the US, we are in the belly of the beast, ruled by the most brutal bourgeois on the Planet. But we are more powerful than them which is why they divide us, why they keep racism and all other forms of social division alive. But we are in a new period, a new era. US capitalism is in an acute political, economic and social crisis. Its two parties that have dominated political and economic life for over a century are incapable of resolving in the slightest the crises at our doorstep. Its global influence is waning which makes it even more dangerous as it is armed to the teeth and its body political filled with religious lunatics and right wing bourgeois thugs. Only the working class, united and conscious of the role history has set out for us can rid us of this madness and build a new democratic socialist world.

The present global response to police violence and racism in the US is unprecedented in my life time and as I say in the video, Black America will not tolerate this meekly. The Black working class and youth in America is discovering that there are many allies among the new activists, young workers from all backgrounds and cultures that they bringing with them in to the fray. There is tragedy yes, but we are in exciting times, we are seeing the US masses setting foot on the world stage like I have not seen in my time here. The 14 million workers in the trade unions must join this movement and increase its social power. Despite years of betrayals and class collaboration on the part of the labor hierarchy, the ranks of organized labor are in the position to inflict extreme harm to the captains of industry and Wall Street and the system that propagates racism, poverty, war and environmental disaster. Linking up with the struggles here and abroad we are an unstoppable force Be diligent, don't trust our enemies and beware "Greeks bringing gifts." It is a good time to be alive. Don't mourn----organize.

UK Solidarity: "White People are Joining Us". These are Good Times

Richard Mellor
Afscme Local 444, retired

There are very positive developments coming out of the latest acts of violence by the police against people of color in the US. We should not be lost and buried by those obsessed with property damage and place that above black lives and a minority of de-politicized and de-classed people.  Given the complete betrayal of the heads of organized labor here in the US (Where are they one might ask) and the absence of a national leadership and social force that can pull all the aspects of the movement against capital together, it is vulnerable from all sorts of alien forces, not just the state and it will inevitably have periods of confusion and steps forward and steps back. But there is a great leap forward at this moment and the virus is not the only thing that has changed the game.

Believe me, the ruling elites are afraid. They will do whatever they can to undermine the unity and global solidarity we see in this movement. The organized working class, those in crucial positions in the economy and production and distribution of society's necessities, must take note. The US military we saw in Washington today will be used against us as strikes are terrorism to the bosses. Strikes are looting, are violent assaults on the bosses' profits as far as they are concerned. Using the military is a dangerous step as 40% of the US military are minorities, they are the sons and daughters of workers.

The organized workers cannot avoid a struggle with the present union leadership that suppresses militancy and  any rank and file movement from below that threatens the relationship they have built with the bosses based on labor peace. When capitalism goes in to crisis, their first move is to bail it out. We cannot ignore the present leadership that has led strike after strike in to defeat after defeat. The GM strike that left the other two major auto companies unscathed, in fact, continued the partnership program with them while GM workers were on strike is an example of why organized labor's rank and file cannot continue to follow and must lead. The 14 million members of the trade unions cannot sit back and accept the present leadership's slogan "leave it to us". We must join this movement.

These youth are our future. Black America has reached a point almost of no return, they cannot continue to allow the murder of  unarmed black men, the abandoning of the public school system and the continued conditions in their communities that breed violence, despair and a life of never ending trauma for their children to continue.  In a war like this, the torching of a police building is a legitimate target. We can change the world, but we cannot do it without class unity without the workers of the world recognizing the bond that we have with each other.

Lebanon, Chile, Ecuador: There is Reason to Be Cheerful

Chileans protest in Valparaiso as government introduces reforms to end them.

Richard Mellor

Afscme Local 444, retired

I have finally found some time to catch up on world news and what I read confirms the optimism I have felt over developments the past couple of years. We are witnessing a worldwide movement of youth rising up in response to the global assault of capitalism on humanity and the environment. Climate change has taken a rightful position as one of the main concerns but we are also seeing new movements in opposition to austerity and economic warfare. The events in Chile and Lebanon are two examples and in both of them, the state has made concessions to mass street protests and in both cases, the movement wants more.

In Chile, the youth, since joined by workers, have fought pitched battles with the state that began on October 18^th with a protest against an increase in subway fares. This was the spark that set off nationwide protests against austerity in general, electricity prices, deteriorating public health services, a failing pension system and more. Reports in the media have detailed sexual abuse against some of the arrested protestors and there have been numerous deaths. Both the Dockworkers and Miners unions have called for a general Strike to support the youth protests against the right wing US supported government of the billionaire Sebastian Piñera. As I write, I see that homicide charges have been filed against one state official.

Throughout the world we can see that these movements arise in response to austerity measures forced on what the capitalist media refers to as, “developing nations” that cannot get access to capital without forcing the workers and middle class to pay for it and the accompanying debt.

In Ecuador, the government was forced to relocate in the face of protests against austerity measures including removing fuel subsidies demanded by the IMF in return for a $4.2 billion loan. In Ecuador, like Brazil, the indigenous population is in the forefront of the struggles against global capitalism’s war on the environment.

In an effort to halt the protests and prevent them spreading, the Piñera government in Chile has offered to increase wages, social payments and subsidies in energy and medicine. He has issued apologies for the government’s “lack of vision” in dealing with the frustration among Chileans. (Financial Times 10-25-19). But these concessions costing $1.2bn a year, about .4% of the of GDP are not likely to calm the storm. 

More is needed to head off further protests and the possibility of a political shift in the 20121 elections say some Chilean economists; “we are living through a social earthquake so it should be treated as such. Reconstruction, bringing back confidence and harmony -----that’s costly”, says Chile’s former central bank governor.

Eduardo Engel, a respected Chilean economist argues that with a budget deficit of just 2% of GDP plus a “relatively low” debt to GDP ratio, Chile can afford it and satisfy most of the protesters demands. Whether this is possible at this point or how far the movement will go is unclear.

The situation in Lebanon is somewhat similar and is threatening to topple the corrupt government there. Following the pattern in the Arab Spring of 2011, Lebanon’s youth took to the streets of Beirut on October 17^th spreading to the rest of the country the following day. The spark that lit the fuse was a tax on free phone call applications like WhatsApp, a government effort to raise money to fix the deficit. Unlike Chile, Lebanon is one of the most indebted countries in the world with public debt over 150% of GDP and servicing that debt consumes around 50 per cent of state revenues.

Adding to the anger is that a significant amount of Lebanon’s public debt is held by the country’s private commercial banks and many banks are owned by the country’s politicians and their relatives. So the attempt to tax free phone calls or instituting any other measures to tackle the deficit is seen by many as simply putting more money in corrupt leaders pockets.

As with the Arab spring and indeed the successful teachers/educators strikes and protests in the US, social media networking has played a crucial role. Much criticism of social media is valid, but we must not allow that to negate its positive aspects including in the Arab Spring of 2011, and remind ourselves that like all aspects of life it is a dialectical question.

Lebanon is extremely important in that it shows the tendency of the working class to seek unity and class allies when it moves in to struggle in a serious way. Lebanese Christians, Druze, as well as Sunni and Shia Muslims are united in their opposition to the government and religious sectarianism. Lebanon is a religious state with 18 officially recognized religious groups with the leadership of these groups jockeying for power and promoting sectarianism in the process. Divide and rule is the name of the game.

But the present protests consisting of some quarter of the country’s population, have so far overcome religious sectarian divides and made a conscious effort to do so despite efforts by some sectarian forces to promote them. “The politicians told us that we hate each other, but we don’t, I’m from a specific sect. My friend is from a specific sect. But we’re all here together for our futures and our children’s futures. We don’t want to live the way our parents lived.” said one protestor.

It’s easy to see why the religious leaders of the competing forces in the government want to halt the protests as a united class offensive brings results. Today’s Financial Times points out that, “The prime minister, Saad Hariri, announced a package of economic reforms on Monday evening meant to defuse the protests, including halving the salaries of current and former members of Parliament and requiring the banks to contribute $3.4 billion toward the national debt. The WhatsApp tax had already been scratched last week” New York Times 10-23-2109.

As with Chile, Ecuador and throughout the world, international moneylenders are waiting in the wings with money if the right conditions are met. The Lebanese government hopes these small steps will get things back to normal and, as the Financial Times puts it, “unblock $11bn from donors.”. Donors is an interesting euphemism for these parasites.

The response from the streets has been an emphatic no, demanding that the entire government must go. “The people have lost confidence in the government.”, says one protester. University teacher Rania al-Masry makes it clear, “The sectarian parties and their leaders brought us to this economic crisis and certainly they can’t be the ones to pull us out from it.”

As I absorb what is happening in Chile, Lebanon and around the world I cannot help reminding myself of what I was told once about politics and struggle, namely that consciousness always lags behind events and this is what we are seeing here, particularly in regards to Lebanon and also in neighboring Iraq where similar protests against a rotten regime are taking place. These events are related to the years of madness and war in that region, particularly since the murderous invasion of Iraq by US imperialism and its support for the Zionists and the Saudi’s and every rotten regime in the area. US and Russian imperialism, and their various allied regimes are locked in competition for influence in the region and the plundering of the regions resources so there can be no peace in the long run under these conditions.

We hear and read about the chaos in the Middle East in the western media although the immigration or economic refugees fleeing north in to Europe often referred to as a crisis, is never linked to the historical interference and colonial violence waged by European powers and more recently US imperialism. The same applies to the immigrants from Mexico and Central America. The role of US imperialism in Latin America is never discussed in the US mass media.

The anti-sectarian nature of the Lebanese protests is proof positive that neither Islam or religion in general is the root cause of the crisis in the Middle East but a result of it. We can be sure that the religious authorities from all sects will use sectarianism to undermine the movement if they can.

The demand of the movement to “change the system” refers to the introduction of a more democratic regime, and as one woman puts it in the video above, the building of a wall between religion and politics. In repressive religious regimes no matter which religion it is, women are always among the most severely oppressed, victims of patriarchal violence and excluded from important positions in society.



On all these situations there is considerable confusion and naïve expectations but this is to be expected.  It is also natural that the middle class will also have significant influence and play important roles, particularly in the early stages of a movement. But workers learn through struggle and in particular the struggle for reforms. But major reforms are not possible in this period and any minor changes will not be permanent.

The same forces that are holding the workers of Chile, Lebanon, Iraq and Ecuador hostage are the same forces that drove the GM workers out on strike. Here in the US we must let it sink in to our consciousness that the cuts GM management demanded from its workers were met with glee by Wall Street.

We are in a new era. There is a lot to be positive about in these recent developments but it is a volatile period and I for one can’t say exactly how things will progress, but I’m uplifted by it. A major cause of the confusion as well as the delay in the rise of a global movement against global capitalism is the absence of a leadership that has an understanding of the present nature of the period through which we are passing and the need for the socialist alternative to a global capitalism world. Socialist globalism and international solidarity is the alternative to the madness of capitalist globalism.

These are economic struggles they are not religious in nature and behind them there is always politics or political conclusions that will be drawn by some and the understanding that changing the system doesn’t mean changing the composition of the government, but the capitalist system of production and the superstructure that supports it.

Socialist traditions, that have been strong in the Middle East and also Latin America will re-emerge as the working class rises more to its feet and recognizes that only a democratic socialist world, a global federation of democratic states, can provide the answers people are seeking today by trying to reform a social system that, if left intact, will end life as we know it.

For Millennials and Generation Z Capitalism's Future is Bleak

Richard Mellor
Afscme Local 444, retired

The Wall Street Journal, the dominant voice of US finance capital, often has interesting and informational articles on its front page saving the Op ed and editorial pages at the back for the more right wing and fascistic type prose.  Today's edition has an article about the crisis that Millennials, those Americans born between 1981 and 1996, find themselves in, (there are crises throughout US society that are leading to an explosion). They are, the article points out, ".....approaching middle age in worse financial shape than every living generation ahead of them." Both Millennials and Generation Z, those born between the mid 90's and early 2000's are pessimistic about the future and who can blame them.

Source: Wall Street Journal

According to a recent Gallup poll:
Fewer Than Half of Young Americans View Capitalism Positively
Americans aged 18 to 29 are as positive about socialism (51%) as they are about capitalism (45%). This represents a 12-point decline in young adults' positive views of capitalism in just the past two years and a marked shift since 2010, when 68% viewed it positively. Meanwhile, young people's views of socialism have fluctuated somewhat from year to year, but the 51% with a positive view today is the same as in 2010.  Older Americans have been consistently more positive about capitalism than socialism. For those 50 and older, twice as many currently have a positive view of capitalism as of socialism.

The Wall Street Journal article describes the effect that the inhuman economic system we live under has on people:

"For the Cochrans, the price was personal. Joseph Cochran, a real-estate manager, proposed to Tasha Brown in 2012. She said yes. Then Ms. Brown, a consumer finance attorney, realized that combining their salaries as a married couple could drive up their income-based student-loan payments. They ditched their wedding plans but forged a life together. Each wear wedding rings. Ms. Brown, 36, legally changed her name and became Ms. Cochran.

The couple run a financial-advice website, whittling away at their combined student debt of $377,000. “If we had zero student loans we’d be married,” Ms. Cochran said. “We have to be far more strategic and creative in order to try to fit everything in around our student loans.” Their strategy included moving from Philadelphia to Maryland four years ago. Ms. Cochran struggled to get pregnant, and the couple chose a state that mandated insurance coverage of in vitro fertilization, she said. The Cochrans now have a 3-year-old son.

Ms. Cochran also has a 17-year-old daughter from a previous relationship and has promised to pay for college as long as the teenager studies at an in-state school. Last fall, the young woman enrolled in community college to get a head start. Her teenager “likes the idea of being able to graduate without having any student loans,”

Ms. Cochran said. The family takes a more practical view of higher education, based, in part, on hard-won experience with jobs and school loans. “We tell her to think a lot about how much is a given major going to pay,” Ms. Cochran said."

The violence, domestic and social. The alcohol, drug abuse, and most importantly the mass shootings, that occur almost daily in US society are all market driven just like the extreme weather. But reading those few sentences above and the negative effect real policies and legislation that is made and enacted by human beings has on people is staggering. The Journal article also suggests that one reason for the "slow progress"  for the Millennials is "bad luck" because they entered the workforce during a downturn. You see, they will find anything to blame other than capitalism itself, the system. Downturns, slumps, are an integral part of the so-called free market economy. They cannot be eradicated any more than racism and war can. They have "bad luck" alright; they were born in a system of production that is brutally exploitative, violent and in its last gasps.

While millennials are better educated than previous generations, "Those college diplomas have come at a high price. And the Journal goes on to point out that, "The average student-loan balance for millennials in 2017 was $10,600, more than twice the average owed by Gen X in 2004...". But this reflects that education, like medicine and other social necessities are primarily businesses in the US. What should be a human right in a civilized society is actually a profit making venture first and foremost. Millions of people are in debt their entire lives and this debt bondage not only dictates their behavior, their health and in the end whether they live or die. It also delays the resistance to it as people are overwhelmed with day to day survival and fear of slipping further toward the bottom. It will guarantee the explosive nature of the mass resistance too it when it comes.

And before I decided to write this blog post I saw a headline that the Trump administration is looking to lay sanctions on any group or country I assume, that participates in aid to the crisis ridden population in Venezuela whose lives have been driven to the brink of the abyss partially through US sanctions. With the US freezing Venezuela's assets, it cannot buy necessities. The excuse for these new sanctions is that aid groups are involved in in money laundering.

The other day I was accused of "hating America much" for criticizing US foreign policy and accusing the US government of being the world's leading terrorists.  The US at the moment s destroying people's lives on a global scale unprecedented in the modern era. People live in constant fear of what it will do next. It is terrorizing the Middle East making claims that it is being threatened by Iran  without providing any evidence at all. The US overthrew the Iranian government in 1953, as well as the Guatemalan one and installed murderous dictators in both. What madness is this?

We only have to look at how US capitalism treats its own citizens to understand exactly how it treats other peoples and invariably the weak and defenseless. Our infrastructure is crumbling. We have over 2 million in prison, more than any other country, and over 50% of them people of color.  Five immigrant children have died in the immediate period in US detention centers, ripped from the families if they had them. Homelessness has skyrocketed and especially so here in the Bay Area in Oakland and San Francisco, the city with the most  billionaires in the world and home prices and rents that most people cannot afford.

There is, as always, a positive side to the negative. The filth that inhabits the US body politic and the boardrooms of the global multi-nationals have gone too far, are overconfident, emboldened by the predator in Chief. The recent assault on women's reproductive and other rights have crossed the Rubicon and people will be forced by the severity of the attacks on US workers and the middle class to respond. For the more astute and serious sections of the US bourgeois, Trump's insanity, running the country like one of his hotels is undermining US capitalism on a world scale.  If there should be an accident in the Middle East or Iran is attacked, and the crazed Zionists would welcome it, Iran will likely retaliate and close the straits of Hormuz disrupting the flow of oil, one fifth of which passes through those straits. Capital likes equilibrium and stability and Trump is no help there.

There's a hard rain gonna fall as the song goes.  Here is a link to the Wall Street Journal article quoted here.