On Monday, the Biden administration signaled to Congress that it should subvert the ratification process and impose a contract on rail unions, preventing a nationwide freight strike in December. With the rail companies and other titans of capital clamoring in the press and behind closed doors about lost profits and economic catastrophe, the politicians on Capitol Hill are jumping into action to prevent what would be the most significant national display of strength by a single sector of workers in many years. 

A mere 30 minutes after Biden’s announcement, Democrat Nancy Pelosi promised that the House would rush to vote this week on a bill to force the unions to accept a contract brokered by the Biden administration and that the Senate would vote on the bill shortly after. On Wednesday, the House overwhelmingly passed this horrific sell-out of rail workers — only eight Democrats voted against the two bills that make up the deal. With only one exception, the entire progressive “Squad” voted yes on the initial deal, despite their messaging that it was bad for workers.

This move by Biden and Congress is a massive betrayal of the over 115,000 rail workers who have been organizing for months to fight against the bosses to win their demands. The Democrats, for all their posturing as representing the oppressed and exploited, have demonstrated once again that they have no interest in fighting for workers. It shows that Biden, a self-proclaimed “proud pro-labor President,” is nothing other than a loyalist bending the knee to capital at the expense of workers’ living conditions.

For more than three years, workers have been fighting for better pay and healthcare, but also, crucially, for paid sick leave and changes to scheduling and staffing so that workers are no longer forced to work grueling hours. Currently, workers receive no sick days, and many have no time to spend with family or to rest and take care of themselves. These policies have deadly consequences for the people who work the railways. In June, a 51-year-old engineer died of a heart attack on a train after being forced to delay a doctor’s appointment. Yet, because giving workers paid time off threatens to eat into their profits, the railroads have refused to move on these and other demands. In response, workers have rejected bad faith agreement after bad faith agreement and have been prepared to strike since the summer.

Biden’s maneuver isn’t the start of government interference in the rail workers’ contract negotiations. Acting under the powers of the anti-worker Railway Labor Act of 1926, the government has meddled in contract talks for years. As soon as a nationwide railway shutdown became a possibility this summer, the administration jumped into action. Biden formed the Presidential Emergency Board (PEB) to track the negotiations and help broker a deal. Labor Secretary Marty Walsh met with the bosses and the workers at the bargaining table to try to make progress in the negotiations and prevent the worst-case scenario: a national rail strike that would grind the transport of goods and potentially hundreds of thousands of businesses to a halt.

The tentative agreement that Congress is now likely to enforce was brokered by the Biden administration in September. It offers certain concessions to workers that the bosses were not initially keen to put forward, but it does not address workers’ central demands. As one example, it provided just one sick day per year, while workers are demanding fifteen.

While eight of the twelve unions involved in the negotiations agreed to accept the contract, four unions, which collectively represent 55 percent of rail workers, rejected it. With the mandatory cooling off period set to end in less than two weeks, workers are ready to strike as soon as December 9. The unions involved in the bargaining have agreed that if the contract is not ratified unanimously by all twelve unions, they will all strike together. This determination to fight is an encouraging sign: it is the reason the Biden administration and Congress – Democrats and Republicans alike – are now moving mountains to force a contract. 

Just before Biden’s announcement to ram through a deal, he received a letter from a coalition of more than 400 companies urging the government to intercede on their behalf. Biden – with hollow sympathy for workers and a hypocritical reluctance to “override ratification procedures” – is dutifully acting to preserve corporate profits and prop up a tenuous economy. For their part, the heads of the Democrats and Republicans are falling into line by supporting the measure and acting together to make sure the rail negotiations favor the bosses.

In a perverted reversal, a handful of Republicans are trying to bolster their standing with labor by decrying Biden’s decree as an attack on workers but they don’t support the demands workers are actually making. Despite their anti-establishment rhetoric, the Republican Party is staunchly anti-labor, as their record makes clear. Indeed, Republican leaders are working hard alongside Democrats to avert the strike. Other Republicans have signaled over the past several months that they would vote against imposing the current tentative agreement so they can broker one that is more favorable to the rail companies. Many of the 129 Republicans who voted against the bill in the House did so for this very reason.

For their part, several progressive Democrats – including AOC and Jamaal Bowman – came out against Biden’s call to impose the contract as it stands, pointing to the fact that the deal does not meet workers’ demands. Bernie Sanders said that the deal does not go far enough. He has called on Congress to ensure that provisions are added to address concerns about sick days and staffing. 

Yet, when the time came for the vote in the House, AOC and Bowman both voted to pass Biden’s sell-out of the rail workers, alongside many other members of the Squad. Yet again, the fresh-faced, progressive Democrats have shown themselves to be wolves in sheeps’ clothing. They may drape themselves in progressive rhetoric – a few even call themselves socialists —  but they just sold out the working class and actively undermined class struggle. Even with the additional provisions for sick days, they voted to subvert workers’ democratic right to decide the terms of their contract and to make matters worse, voted on a contract that goes against workers’ demands.

The question is not whether Congress should fight for slightly better provisions in a state-approved contract. Fundamentally, it should not be up to Congress to dictate what goes into a contract and whether workers can strike or not; allowing Congress to supersede the democratic rights of workers to ratify their contracts tramples the basic protections that working people have won through decades of struggle. Despite their pro-worker positioning, even progressive Democrats fell in line behind the rest of their party and organized against workers to avoid a strike at all costs.

What happened this week is further evidence that worker power is not being built in the halls of Congress. In fact, worker power is being categorically dismantled there. This latest sell out of the working class is one more piece of damning evidence in a towering pile that chaining the workers’ movement to a party of the bosses is not just a dead end, but one that leads to the defeat of workers’ efforts. There is no way to justify the strategy of organizations like the Democratic Socialists of America which convince their members and supporters to spend time, money, and political energy to get “democratic socialists” elected to Congress. Less than a month after they “got out the vote” for progressives in the midterms, the progressives have sold out the workers movement. AOC, Bowman, Ilhan Omar, and the rest of the Squad just voted to break a strike.

For capitalist politicians, averting the strike isn’t about the toll a railway shutdown or lockout would take on working families. It isn’t about businesses shutting down, leaving workers without jobs. It isn’t about inflation. These are just lies meant to turn public opinion against rail workers and their determination to win better conditions. What Biden, Congress, and bosses across the United States are actually worried about are the billions in capitalist profits that would be lost if rail workers withhold their labor, as well as the example that a nationwide strike would set for the rest of the working class.

Congress is acting with uncharacteristic speed to enforce Biden’s contract on over a hundred thousand workers and attempt to quash a strike. This is an unequivocal attack on workers’ rights. It flies in the face of everything workers have been fighting for over the last three years. And though it is a particularly egregious example of anti-worker legislation, the Railway Labor Act is not the only one of its kind. Workers across the country face similar no-strike clauses and anti-strike laws that stand in the way of fighting for better living and working conditions. 

Workers can harbor no further illusions that Biden is a “pro-labor president” or that the Democratic Party fights in the interest of the working class. It is clear that this system is built to protect U.S. imperialist profits, not to ensure better conditions for workers. 

Nevertheless, the power remains with the rail workers. They do not need Congress’s permission to strike. Their success lies in their continued determination to fight and to remain uncowed by the maneuvers of a government that works on behalf of the bosses. This means breaking with the logic that the Democratic Party and the institutions of the U.S. state can be a vehicle to fight for better conditions, a logic that is upheld at the highest levels of union leadership. To win needed sick days and better staffing, to win living wages and quality healthcare, these workers can hold no illusions that relying on capitalist politicians is anything other than an alliance with their enemies.

The post Biden, Congress, and the Squad Just Voted to Block a Rail Strike. Workers Should be the Ones Who Decide appeared first on Left Voice.

The winter holidays have arrived, and the shopping season is popping off. For the logistics sector, this means peak season. You will start seeing Christmas decorations and people wearing coats amid the first snowfall, and you will also see more Amazon, USPS, FedEx, and UPS workers carrying crazy amounts of packages. I work for the latter, the so-called Big Brown.

This year, UPS drivers made the national news, because they work long shifts, at a fast pace, and often have to pee in bottles. Many videos and photos have been shared of the high temperatures inside the trucks and workers suffering heat exhaustion during the summer. This can have extreme consequences: in Pasadena, California, Esteban Sanchez Jr., a 24-year-old UPS driver, died on June 25 inside the package car after collapsing in sweltering heat.

But there is another sector of UPS workers who get less publicity and don’t get the warm treatment from customers, since they work behind the scenes: the warehouse workers. And the company doesn’t even care if we wear the trademark brown.

We are essential for the company; we load, unload, scan, sort, and stock packages. Without us, the trucks on the streets would be empty. Nevertheless, we are treated as disposable.

The workforce is mainly Black, Brown, and immigrant. The turnover is high, and the company takes advantage of the most unemployed or underemployed sectors to constantly refresh this workforce — from young people working their first job to people in their 50s who can’t get another job. Most of us are part-timers. We start at midnight or at the dawn, and by 9 a.m., all the trucks need to start heading out. Our starting hourly wage is $15.50 — barely above New York City’s minimum wage. We work an average 20 to 25 hours a week, though the Teamsters-UPS contract guarantees us only 17.5 hours. So our weekly pay can vary from $271.50 to $387.50. Except during the peak season, when there is a lot of overtime.

For this reason, many of us have two or three jobs. Many of us have no days off. Because the nightshift is so tiring, finding a second or third job is difficult. Most UPS warehouse workers have gigs at other logistic companies or in the food industry; some make deliveries or drive for rideshare companies. The time to rest, sleep, study, and enjoy life becomes reduced to almost nothing. We are drained, mentally and physically. We suffer pain and injuries to our backs, knees, and hands. Many have insomnia or other sleeping problems.

I have been working for two years as a preloader, the person in charge of loading and unloading the trucks. Depending on the shift, most of us wake up around 2 a.m. to clock in at 3:30 or 4 a.m. (earlier in peak season), and we work until 8 or 9 a.m. The start of our day is already hectic; commuting to the warehouses at night has its complications, like having to wait for one or two buses or trains for over 20 minutes.

Once you arrive, you can be tasked with loading up to four trucks, each of which can carry more than 250 packages. Imagine thousands of pounds of industrial and consumer items overflowing on the conveyor belt; medical supplies, tires, bed frames, hardware tools, Christmas trees, and other large items.

Warehouses have many conveyor belts, each distributing thousands of packages among more than a dozen trucks and trailers. Belts are full of packages that you have to sort at high speed, picking the ones that belong to each of our designated trucks and shelving them according to a route-delivery sequence.

A voice from the speakers announces when your 10-minute break starts. It reminds you when you have only three minutes left, then two minutes, one minute. Depending on which belt you are working on, bathrooms can be far away, and there is only one or two sources of water for the hundreds of workers. In the summer, temperatures are very high; given the fast pace of work, you end your shift soaked in sweat. In winter, the big warehouses keep all their doors open for the trucks, making the place frigid.

A big fight for drivers is to end the two-tier system, which was undemocratically imposed by the Hoffa leadership. Most union members voted against it in 2018. Since then, the two-tier system has created two categories for drivers, with a new “second class” of drivers who do the same job as long-term drivers but are paid up to $10 less per hour. But the imposition of a two-tier system isn’t unique to UPS — this strategy has been imposed by bosses across industries in order to undermine the historic conquests of the working class, and they’ve hired new workers under new categories that have cut wages, benefits, and rights.

A similar system is imposed on the warehouse workers, one that is created by hiring seasonal workers. To become a union member with contractual rights on the job, you have to work 40 days in a 70-day period. Of course, peak season — from October 15 to January 15 — doesn’t count. The reason is quite simple: the company wants workers without rights who can be exploited, sent home for the day, or fired at will.

Once you are hired as a seasonal worker, neither your job nor your work hours are guaranteed. It is heartbreaking to see many of the seasonal workers sent home after showing up at 4 a.m. expecting to work. Management speculates and plays with people’s lives every day. They always care about having the fewest workers possible to do the daily job, and they use these reserve workers to take over for those who are on vacation, sick, or showing up late. Seasonal workers have fewer rights and benefits; they do not have paid holidays like Thanksgiving Day, and their Black Friday shifts are paid at the normal rate instead of at triple time, as required in the union contract. The demand for equal jobs, equal pay, is essential to breaking this false division among workers.

Instead of guaranteeing everyone paid work hours (full-time for those who need it and 25 paid hours a week for part-timers), and distributing the work among all the hands available, the bosses choose to overwork us with four trucks and over a thousand packages. A more humane and sustainable workload would be two trucks per worker, which would drastically reduce injuries, create more jobs, and improve the quality of the work.

UPS is a highly profitable company, having made $9.9 billion in profits in the first three quarters of this year, and it is waiting to increase those profits now in the holiday season. UPS is run by millionaires: according to the website salary.com, in 2021, Carol B. Tomé, the UPS CEO, made $27,620,893 in total compensation. Of this total, $1,336,251 was received as a salary, $1,397,139 was received as a bonus, $1,125,023 was received in stock options, $23,670,426 was awarded as stock, and $92,054 came from other types of compensation.

The same website shows that the other nine executive members also have millionaire income. To name some: Scott A. Price, the president of UPS International, made over $9 million ($1,140,372 on salary and bonus). Brian O. Newman, the chief financial officer, made $15 million ($3,889,557 on salary and bonus). Nando Cesarone, president of U.S. Operations, made over $8 million ($1,159,275 on salary and bonus). Then you have 11 members of the Board of Directors who each made over $280,000 in total compensation.

The contrast with the warehouse workers is jarring.

This is the reality across the logistic sector. The companies’ billionaire profits are based on grueling working conditions and low wages. But warehouse workers have been fighting back. On Black Friday, Amazon workers in the United States and more than 30 countries around the world carried out everything from strikes to protests at their warehouses. The international Make Amazon Pay campaign included strikes at 18 warehouses in Germany and France, and protests in the U.S., India, Japan, Australia, and South Africa. At an Amazon warehouse in Missouri, workers walked out demanding a $10 raise.

Minimum-wage workers have been badly affected by inflation this year. While a new UPS-Teamsters contract negotiation is starting in March, the need for an immediate raise is acute. Warehouse workers everywhere are showing that you can fight to improve your working conditions outside the regular contract-negotiation period.

The current contract ends in July 2023, and it is expected that Teamsters will go on strike if demands are not met. Workers are demanding an end to excessive overtime, an end to the two-tier system, higher pay for part-time warehouse workers, more full-time jobs, job security for feeders and package drivers, an end to surveillance and harassment, and a heat exhaustion and injury prevention plan to cope with extreme weather.

Drivers and warehouse workers have unite for the upcoming contract negotiation. Improving our working conditions will mean a victory for us all. It will improve our quality of life and break the divisions imposed by management, making a stronger unionized workforce at UPS.

It is on us.

The post “Grueling Working Conditions and Low Wages”: A Testimonial from a UPS Warehouse Worker appeared first on Left Voice.

Just a week after the midterm elections, the Senate voted to end the National Emergency Declaration on Covid-19. This vote, in which Democrats joined Republicans 62-36, comes after the U.S. handled the Covid-19 pandemic in impressively pitiful fashion, with over 1 million dead and millions more grappling with long Covid-19 symptoms. It also comes as winter months approach and respiratory illnesses are on the rise, particularly among children as pediatric intensive care units reach capacity.

Ending the National Covid-19 Emergency declaration could affect anything from the access to medical supplies to helping cover costs of Covid-19 testing. Its end could also help pave the way to restart student loan payments. Ironically, the vote comes with the help of the Democrats, members of the same party who claimed just a week earlier that they needed the public’s support at the ballot box so they that could keep protecting the public interest, from Covid-19 policies to protecting abortion rights.

At this point, there have been several Covid-19 emergency declarations, all of which can be read about here. If this most recent vote passed in the House and were approved by President Biden — of note, in March the Senate voted 48-47 to end the declaration, but the House did not take up a similar vote — it would end the national emergency declaration, but the public health emergency would remain in effect. This means that key aspects of healthcare changes after the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic (such as expanded Medicaid access, reimbursements for telehealth visits, expanded vaccine access) would stay in effect. Nevertheless, ending the national emergency is the first step to ending other Covid-19 policies more generally. Though Biden has said he would veto the measure, this is the same man who recently declared that the pandemic is over and has repeatedly shown that he puts the needs of capital above the health of the public.

Leading up to and throughout the midterm elections, the Democrats claimed that it would be crucial to vote for them to protect our democracy. Democratic politicians claimed we needed to vote to support the party to protect the right to abortion, to safeguard gender-affirming care for trans youth, and to slow the ongoing environmental collapse. As usual, they left out their hypocrisy on these issues, having failed to codify Roe at every opportunity, routinely distanced themselves from trans issues, and continued to support fracking, along with increased oil and natural gas production. Yet they continue to beat their chests, falsely claiming that they are the party that follows the “science” and protects the human rights — they just forget to mention that they do this only when it suits their political agenda.

Now after the midterms, much of the Democratic Party breathes a sigh of relief that it did not do as bad as expected — or as Elizabeth Warren argues in a recent piece, the party should celebrate because voters “awarded” Democrats for all their work protecting people’s “lives and livelihoods.” Meanwhile, Democratic politicians go right back to voting to end Covid emergencies and restart student loans.

The Democratic Party does this every election. It’s the party’s MO: hold our rights hostage, tell us to vote to protect those rights, then go ahead and betray the same promises. The party shows us time and time again that it is a party of capital and that it does not care about the public’s well-being beyond passing policies to maintain the functioning of the capitalist system.

At the same time, the Republican Party continues its rightward march. Many of the party’s politicians want to undermine voting rights while attacking trans children, reproductive rights, the teaching of history in schools, and so on. The Democratic Party even funded some of these worst elements during the midterms in hopes to have easier wins. But even with election wins, the funding of these bigoted rightwing sentiments only helps them grow stronger.

It can’t be any clearer: neither party defends the interests of the poor or working class. As Tatiana Cozzarelli noted in her recent piece for Left Voice, “The idea that elections and these institutions could bring about change feels like a distant idealistic dream. The working class is on a sinking boat, and while both parties want workers’ votes, neither one will throw them so much as a life-vest.”

We have to fight for the future we want together outside all ruling-class parties. We need a party of the working class that fights all forms of oppression and fights the capitalist system, which offers nothing for us but ongoing suffering and despair. We need a party that fights for another world that is possible.

The post Senate Votes to Overturn Covid-19 National Emergency appeared first on Left Voice.

The recent acquisition of Twitter by Elon Musk has proved to be the best example in recent memory of the inherent power of labor: that workers produce the goods that companies sell, and that our bosses and the owners of these companies could not build them if they tried. To quote the labor movement classic “Solidarity Forever”: 

It is we who plowed the prairies, built the cities where they trade

Dug the mines and built the workshops, endless miles of railroad laid

Now we stand outcast and starving midst the wonders we have made

Musk sauntered into the Twitter headquarters in late October, after a protracted legal battle sparked by his 12-year-old-gamer-level shitposts on Twitter (including an offer to take Twitter private at $54.20 per share, which even your grandmother recognizes as a banal weed reference). He promptly fired most executives, and ultimately laid off 3,700 workers in areas from software engineering, to content moderation, to ad sales and more. Musk also began a petulant campaign of firing anyone who disagreed with him publicly and privately, utilizing workplace surveillance tools (like the Slack workplace administrator’s ability to read private Slack channels) to fire anyone who hinted at displeasure with his leadership or a desire to organize. 

The circus of Musks’ clear mismanagement of Twitter brings into stark relief the fact that he is in charge of Twitter, like his other companies, purely because he had the resources to buy it. Not because he’s a genius, but because he had access to money. Workers built Twitter, and they could be running it without him right now.

Workers Built Twitter

Let’s be clear: Elon Musk has no idea how the software that runs Twitter actually works. He has made it abundantly clear that he has not even a basic understanding of how a website like Twitter functions under the hood, or how it was built, or what Twitter workers do all day. On his first day in the office, he demanded that workers print out their code so that he could review it himself, apparently under the impression that a 16-year-old social media site with a system architecture made up of dozens if not hundreds of component pieces of software, each made up of thousands if not hundreds of thousands of lines of code, could be remotely consumable by a single person kicked back in a La-Z-Boy for light bedtime reading. 

If it is not already clear why it is patently absurd that Musk could “read the code” for Twitter — which itself likely could make up a longer document than several Encyclopedia Brittanicas put together, if printed — then it should be obvious that he has no idea what technology Twitter is built on top of, how it works, or what that means for the business. 

It cannot be emphasized enough: Twitter workers built Twitter. It cannot be run without them. The new owner of Twitter, ego and all, could not even begin to try. Musk is not in charge of Twitter because he is smart or even capable, he is in charge because he had access to the money to buy the company (through astronomical loans he has now saddled the company with), and Twitter’s previous executives called his bluff. 

This is not unique to Twitter, or even to the tech industry, although we are seeing this phenomenon speed-run in front of our eyes in a spectacular display. As journalist and critic Malcolm Harris tweeted:  

All bosses are similar to Musk in that they are the owners of the companies we work for based on their access to capital to start or purchase them, not because they have worked harder than the people who built the company and keep it running today. 

We are seeing incredible solidarity from Twitter workers, through the Twitter worker (Tweep)-created layoff guide for Tweeps, and through backchannel group chats where workers are venting, helping each other, and sharing helpful information. We are also seeing them quit en masse, flexing their power to stop working (by quitting) and leaving their man-child CEO high and dry. This is a reminder of the opportunity all tech workers have: all workers can organize and take collective action together, because without us, nothing runs. Together we hold an enormous amount of power.

As one anonymous software engineer from outside of Twitter told Left Voice, “it’s both satisfying and depressing to me to see the rare group of workers who actually do have power just say fuck you to this guy and quit.” Quitting is not the only thing we can do together (although Twitter workers are in a particularly horrible situation, and no one could blame them for leaving). More widely though, industry-wide, without organizing to exert control over our shitty jobs, to make them better, how can we be sure the other workplaces in the tech industry aren’t just bad in the same ways? By organizing in our workplaces, we can exercise control over our working conditions, what we build, and how it gets used. Together, in large numbers, we can walk out or strike for better pay, for better conditions for the most precarious among us, we can form unions and bargain for contracts with job protections and the right to have a say over our work. We could even organize to take full control over the places where we work. Sustained solidarity and class struggle are the only ways to begin to take back our workplaces from people like Musk. 

The Only Way Tech Workers Can Protect Their Jobs Is to Organize

The layoffs happening at Twitter are also happening at other big tech companies across the world. Meta, for instance, is laying off 11,000 workers, Amazon has signaled it will lay off 10,000 too. Stripe, Lyft, Microsoft, and many others are following suit. The layoffs at these companies happen at every company during cyclical downturns, when growth rates start to decline. Investors start making noises about wages and employment numbers being too high, in order to drive down labor costs to raise their profit share. We’ve seen that in the past year, with venture capitalists complaining that tech companies are overstaffed. But the workers who just got laid off will likely tell you that this is not the case. Many of them were working 50-60 hour weeks, including a long list of things they wanted to build and ways they wanted to improve their work, but didn’t have time for, even before many of their coworkers were laid off. 

To make venture capitalists and shareholders happy and to make those stock prices go back up, CEOs will lay workers off. As soon as the stock prices increase, they’ll start re-hiring. Sometimes they rehire the exact people they laid off, like Kickstarter tried to do in 2020 and like Twitter is trying to do now. And don’t forget, the number of people that get laid off, like the 11,000 that Meta is laying off and the 10,000 that Amazon is laying off, are not numbers, they are people — People who deserve better than to be tossed out of their jobs at the whim of a stock price graph. 

This is how the capitalist economy works, how it’s always worked, and how it will continue to work. The only way workers can protect themselves from the whims of shareholders and minute changes in the stock market, and shitty bosses, is the same way every other industry has done it for centuries: organizing unions, and organizing together for better conditions for us all.

Organizing in the Tech Industry: Organizing for the Social Good

Organizing tech workers is important because all workers deserve to have control over their working conditions. That’s important especially for some companies — though not all — because they have produced or could produce things that actually are useful and can be used for social good. 

The impact of Twitter on social movements in the past 10 years cannot be understated, as the social media platform has played an important role in not only the spread of information but also the sparking of movements as well. It was critical during the 2011 Arab Spring, as well as in the uprisings for black lives over the past seven years. The platform became a popular vehicle for sharing videos and pictures of the police and other state entities in full body armor, riot shields, assault rifles and tear gas brutalizing those protesting because of the murders of Michael Brown, Freddie Gray, Geroge Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and so many other Black people by the police. Without social media platforms like Twitter, much of the public would still believe the narratives put forward by the media and police about riots, looting, and victims of police violence who were “no angels.” 

Any platform used to spread information, however, can also easily be used to spread misinformation. Twitter has been used by the far right on a multitude of issues, including election misinformation, which led to the right-wing riot on January 6th. Twitter workers had in fact demanded in an open letter that Trump be removed from the platform before executives finally did on January 8, 2021 (Trump was banned and has now been reinstated by Musk). Furthermore, the platform is a hivemind of anti-LGBTQIA+ propaganda, with notable pundits like Matt Walsh constantly posting transphobic content, adding further physical and emotional abuse that has real world consequences for an already oppressed community. 

These right-wingers are only deplatformed when they hurt Twitter’s bottom line. If the workers had control of the platform, then decisions on moderation actually allowing freedom of speech, information, and general safety on the site would not be decided by greedy capitalists. 

Elon Musk’s purchase of Twitter should be a warning sign to workers in the tech industry. Under a capitalist system, our jobs are always on the line. This is especially true in an industry that can allow a billionaire to collapse a multi-billion dollar company in less than a month. All tech workers could be in the same volatile position that Twitter workers (and ex-Twitter workers) are now in. The only way to secure a stable future for workers in the tech industry is to organize and unionize, and win more control of our workplaces. 

The post Workers Built Twitter — They Should Own It, Not Elon Musk appeared first on Left Voice.

The novel World War Z came out 15 years ago. In it, Max Brooks tells the story of a global zombie apocalypse via personal accounts by different survivors — science fiction in the form of oral history. The new novel Everything for Everyone by M.E. O’Brien and Eman Abdelhadi uses a very similar format. Twelve different people give long interviews about their memories of a global insurrection against capitalism that began in 2052. Twenty years later, they are all living in communes. It’s particularly entertaining when young people in this communist future struggle to understand concepts from the bad old days, such as “rent” and “police.”

Comparing these two novels, why does it feel more realistic to see the undead eating brains, than to see people building a new economic system based on collaboration? Helping us to imagine what is possible is what makes Everything for Everyone such a great read.

Marx famously refused to dedicate more than a few lines to the description of what communism would look like.¹Communism “makes it possible for me to do one thing today and another tomorrow, to hunt in the morning, to fish in the afternoon, rear cattle in the evening, criticize after dinner, just as I have in mind, without ever becoming hunter, fisherman, shepherd or critic.” — Marx, The German Ideology. Trotsky was almost as reticent about what communism might look like, trusting that future generations would be far smarter than us.

But speculative fiction about life after the revolution can be more than just fun. Personally, I am a big fan of Banks’s The Culture series about a pan-galactic communist civilization, as well as Le Guin’s The Dispossessed about anarchy on the moon. In a time when it’s so easy to be hopeless, O’Brien and Abdelhadi have done the Left a great service in encouraging readers to dream. It is particularly inspiring to imagine what New York City, currently a playground for billionaires, could be like if it were run by its residents.

To appreciate this book, a good starting point is a contrast to the speculative fiction of Jacobin’s founder, Bhaskar Sunkara, who opened his 2019 book The Socialist Manifesto with a long thought experiment about a socialist transformation from 2018 to 2038. Sunkara’s vision was based on electoral victories by progressive Democrats who then pass a series of reforms. In line with his theory of “evolutionary socialism,” Sunkara predicted two decades of capitalist development uninterrupted by crises, wars, or climate change. Looking back from just three years later, this piece has not aged well (to put it mildly).

Victor Serge, reporting from crisis-ridden Germany in the late 1920s, said that the social democrats were the only ones who believed in the future of capitalism. Today we can say the same thing about Sunkara, who seems to have more faith in capitalism’s ability to deliver progress than most capitalists do.

Everything for Everyone is far more realistic: the authors understand that the coming decades will see terrible catastrophes. Socialism, if it is to come about, will be a product of working people’s life-or-death struggles to survive.

Looking back from 2072, characters recall that one of the initial battles in the war to liberate New York City took place at the Hunts Point Market in the Bronx. Clearly, the authors were just as inspired by the Hunts Point Strike in 2021 as we at Left Voice were. Thirty years from now, working people are suffering from famine and military occupation, and in pitched battles against the NYPD and the U.S. military, they manage to take over food distribution.

This novel describes the 2030s and 2040s marked by “dead zones” stretching across California, an imperialist war against Iran, nuclear bombs in Mississippi, internment camps, and a pandemic called LARS-47. When people begin to rise up against mass death, the result is anything but peaceful. Beating the capitalists requires revolutionary armies (including a North American Liberation Front) defeating U.S. federal troops, police forces, fascist groups, and religious cults. The book’s characters, while describing relatively stress-free lives, are all processing their traumas in different ways.

The authors are being honest about what the coming period might very well look like: It was never going to be easy to get rid of a ruling class willing to burn the entire planet in order to maximize their profits. And even once we’ve beaten them, it won’t be easy to manage the havoc they leave behind.

Communism Without Transition

In their vision of revolution, the authors of Everything for Everyone follow the ideas of the current we might call autonomism or abolitionism. They imagine “communism without transition”: on the day of the insurrection, money and all forms of power are eliminated entirely. People live together in communes of a few hundred people and coordinate their work in a decentralized way via the internet and artificial intelligence. While this is a vision we share for what a communist society would look like, it is not something that will fall from the sky — as Marx argued,²Marx wrote that he had discovered that “(1) that the existence of classes is only bound up with particular historical phases in the development of production, (2) that the class struggle necessarily leads to the dictatorship of the proletariat, (3) that this dictatorship itself only constitutes the transition to the abolition of all classes and to a classless society.” — Marx, “Letter to J. Weydemeyer.” a transitional society will first overcome the legacies of capitalism.  

In a way, the authors sound like classical anarchists. But anarchism at least had mass organizations like the CNT-FAI, an anarchosyndicalist union with a million members in Spain in the first decades of the 20th century. In this novel, revolutionary organization is something that happens more or less spontaneously. As a result, questions of political leadership — crucial for every revolutionary process in history — are erased.

To name just one example, an important precursor of the global insurrection is the fight to liberate Palestine — which, again, seems completely realistic. How are the Palestinians, after a century of colonization, able to finally break the power of the Zionist state and its imperialist backers? We are told that there is a really big demonstration to the border of Gaza, and many Israeli soldiers drop their weapons and flee, eventually emigrating from the Levante. It sounds too easy. The Palestinians’ liberation struggle is led by a “council of elders” — which would imply that the different bourgeois factions who have led the Palestinian movement for decades had simply disappeared, and Palestinian communists had won leadership without the least kind of struggle.

This boundless faith in revolutionary spontaneity, without a need for any kind of preparatory work — what Daniel Bensaïd referred to as the “Zero Point of Strategy” — is where the book loses its sense of realism. The insurrection happens without any kind of theory, or any lessons from previous centuries of class struggle. The authors are not ashamed of this utopian approach. There is no mention at all of Marx, Engels, Lenin, Trotsky, or Luxemburg — or even Mao, Ho Chi Minh, or Guevara. (A faction called the “Zetkinistas” is briefly mentioned, as if Zetkin were any less an advocate of a centralized communist party than Lenin was.)

Instead, the utopian socialist Charles Fourier is the only classical thinker who is quoted. Fourier postulated that if enough people simply were convinced that an equal society were possible and necessary, then “four or five months” would be enough to start building communes and quickly create “universal harmony.” In other words: move out to the countryside and start building socialist communes. The autonomist/abolitionist tendency today is taking up this utopian mantle. 

If revolution were this easy, though — if we just needed enough people to rise up when capitalism enters into crisis — then we would have won socialism many decades ago. If two world wars weren’t enough to lead a spontaneous global uprising to victory, then what is?

Where Are the Workers?

Struggles against capitalism have been going on for almost 200 years. But diverse experiences, from the Paris Commune in 1871 to the global revolt of 1968, lead to the same conclusion: massive self-organization of working people is a condition for radical change — but self-organization by itself can’t be victorious, unless it is accompanied by a revolutionary organization with a clear program. To use the language of the Russian Revolution, both soviets and Bolsheviks are necessary.

One element that is completely missing from this book is the working class, and more generally all the labor needed to keep human civilization running. There are brief references to pharmaceutical factories — one in Lima, Peru, and the other near Jackson, Mississippi — that get taken over by workers who begin producing medical supplies for the common good. This is similar to the real-life experience of Zanon in Argentina, a ceramics factory taken over by workers — a process where Trotskyists played a big role.

Reading about the New York Commune, one wonders: What actually happened to humanity’s productive apparatus? People have advanced technology — but who is manufacturing the semiconductors? The main forms of labor that are mentioned are social reproduction of different kinds.

It’s not even clear where food is coming from to feed the millions of people who must have survived. There is talk of people going upstate and finding farmers happy to collaborate. But the history of revolutions shows that the relations between city and country are never going to be as simple as asking nicely — especially at the vast scale that is necessary. Farmers need political and material incentives to become part of a socialist project — besides the fact that U.S. agriculture has already been “collectivized” to a large extent by mega corporations.

If we think about the vast challenges of keeping the modern economy running, much less radically transforming it, we understand why the working class needs organization  — and why it ultimately needs a kind state power. As socialist society develops, such a state power will become increasingly unnecessary and the new workers’ state will “whither away.” But it seems dangerous to hope that everyone, absolutely everyone, will become communists on Day 1. This kind of utopian socialism is a formula for defeat.

Just like we study the German Revolution of 1918/19 to understand the limits of spontaneous self-organization and the need for a revolutionary party, the novel Everything for Everyone provides lots of inspiring ideas, but also reveals important limits of neo-utopian socialism. This book can help us dream. But in order to make the dream of global communism a reality, we are going to need a revolutionary strategy based on the lessons of the past — which we call Marxism.

M.E. O’Brien and Eman Abdelhadi, Everything for Everyone: An Oral History of the New York Commune 2052-2072 (Brooklyn, Common Notions, 2022), 256pp., $18.

The post What Will Communism Look Like in New York City? appeared first on Left Voice.

The World Cup began in Qatar on Sunday, accompanied by a flurry of mainstream media attention. But little to nothing is being said about the country’s notoriously exploitative regime. Trade unions and political parties are banned, and freedom of the press is limited, let alone liberal democracy. On August 5, 2019, thousands of construction workers won a strike against brutal working conditions and unpaid wages. This marked the beginning of various demonstrations that occurred over the years in the stadium and infrastructure construction sites for the World Cup.

FIFA has a long-standing history as a battleground for political influence. Benito Mussolini bought votes for the 1934 World Cup to legitimize his military dictatorship in Italy. For the Gulf countries, sport is a means of sanitizing their reputations, increasing their international political influence, and attracting investments by organizing major competitions in the media spotlight. They have also bought prestigious clubs, including Manchester City and Paris Saint-Germain, and they sponsor both FC Barcelona and FIFA. But how did a country a third the size of Puerto Rico manage to reach this position in the geopolitical arena?

From Pearl Producers to Ferrari Manufacturers

Qatar was a British colony until 1971, famous for its pearl production and deep poverty, and for harboring the most radical wings of Islam. From the 1990s onward, however, its growth was meteoric. Fundamental to this were its relations with the United States, which was engaged in the first Gulf War from 1990 to 1991. Qatar played a key role in supporting imperialism by lending its Air Force’s al-Udeid Armed Forces base, located 32 kilometers from Doha. This base, which houses around 5,000 soldiers, has since been used for the vast majority of U.S. military operations in the Middle East, from the invasion of Iraq in 2003 to the current tensions with Iran.

In 1995, Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani staged a coup d’état against his father; both belonged to the ruling family, which had maintained the tribal balance in the peninsula for centuries. From that moment on, Khalifa began a series of internal structural reforms, particularly on the economic front. He invested in liquefied natural gas (LNG), a technology that was not yet very developed. This allowed the peninsula to transport gas from the largest reserve in the world to any part of the globe. LNG is today essential for supplying energy to Europe, particularly in the context of the war in Ukraine.

This is the basis of Qatar’s wealth, which enabled the country to create large investment funds as part of a plan of economic diversification. They became major shareholders of large multinationals such as Volkswagen, Iberdrola, and Rosneft, among others. They became the fourth-largest real estate investor in the United States and a major investor in the City of London. This is the plan for the future, when the country’s 160 years of gas reserves are exhausted.

In little more than 20 years, Qatar has become the richest country in the world: at $137,000, it has the highest GDP per capita. Although 3 million people live on the peninsula, only around 300,000, or 12 percent, are considered citizens. Indians, Nepalese, Bangladeshis, Filipinos, Egyptians, and other nationalities make up the rest of the population as part of a monumental absorption of labor owing to the demand caused by gas extraction. In total, there are an estimated 23 million migrant workers in the Arabian Peninsula.

Qatar developed the most advanced and open political system of all the emirates by establishing the Consultative Council, a 45-member parliament — which only citizens vote for and in which parties are banned — with a national constitution. The country invested in a high-profile educational system with international universities. The capital, Doha, is a financial center that competes with the big world players; multibillion-dollar deals are closed in the city’s West Bay. In addition, the country has opened religious centers for all denominations. Qatar is thus seen as a true oasis amid the “petromonarchies.”

In contrast to neighboring Saudi Arabia, Qatar maintains commercial openness, has a relatively liberal political system, and has advanced in internal reforms. All this has helped raise the regime’s geopolitical aspirations. Qatar sought to distance itself from the interests and policies of Saudi Arabia after the 1991 Gulf War, fearing the Saudis would occupy the country, as they did Kuwait. In 2003, Qatar gained regional importance when Riyadh expelled U.S. troops from its territory after it accused the monarchies of harboring terrorists. But Qatar, even though it is also a monarchy, allowed the U.S. to establish a base within its borders.

One of the pillars of its geopolitical influence is the state-owned news network Al Jazeera. It was founded to gain regional influence, to maximize “friends” and limit “enemies.” Al Jazeera openly supported the Arab Spring, gaining enormous regional prestige, although its local edition is much more controlled. It is open to all political and religious currents, such as Hamas, Hezbollah, the Taliban, and officials of the State of Israel, and it has also criticized the rest of the Gulf monarchies.

Internally, Al Thani renewed the councillors, called for free municipal elections in which women were allowed to vote, and created the role of the country’s first lady. But the central personality of power would remain the emir (king), and freedom of the press, political parties, and trade unions would continue to be prohibited.

Al Thani’s policies led to ties with the Muslim Brotherhood, providing fundamental support during the Arab Spring. It also led to ties with Iran and Turkey, both of which were key to evading the economic blockade imposed in 2017 by Saudi Arabia and the rest of the Arab monarchies belonging to the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), an economic and military alliance created in 1979 to contain Iranian influence. Qatar’s position now makes it a regional actor of decisive weight in the open geopolitical conflicts with Iran.

A World Cup of Slaves

As soon as Qatar bought the FIFA votes to host the 2022 World Cup, it began the titanic task of constructing stadiums, hotels, and infrastructure for hosting. The fate of the competition rested on the shoulders of 2 million South Asian and African migrant workers who dared to balance on top of the country’s ostentatious skyscrapers.

The successive strikes carried out by Nepalese, Indian, and Bengali workers are shattering Qatar’s image in the world arena. They have made visible the true basis of accumulation of the Qatari economic model: the kafala system of sponsorship (or, more accurately, of semislave labor). Its basis is gross mistreatment and lack of labor rights. Qatari employers can withhold the passports of migrants and threaten them with deportation to extort them to do whatever they want. Workers have to ask for permission if they want to leave the country or change jobs. They work overtime, 16 to 18 hours a day for just $200 a month — if they’re paid on time — and live a life of overcrowding in the country of skyscrapers.

Worse still, construction work is outdoors, as it is anywhere in the world, which in Qatar means toiling in temperatures of up to 122 degrees Fahrenheit (50 degrees Celsius). The number of deaths so far due to high temperatures and abysmal working conditions since Qatar was awarded the tournament 10 years ago is 6,500. If the 2022 World Cup were to have a minute of silence for each dead worker, the tournament would have to be played in silence.

These horrific working conditions led to an explosive wave of strikes that made visible the subhuman working conditions for migrant laborers in Qatar despite the prohibitions. They held a picket on the Dukham highway, where hundreds of South Asian workers participated. The protest helped win collective bargaining, a minimum wage, and payment of wages owed, as well as the imprisonment of company officials for international labor law abuses. The Qatari regime, however, did not abolish the kafala as a system of bondage, the workers’ main demand.

The Qatari government, which has close ties to the construction companies, claimed in a report on August 22, 2019, that they are going through a financial crisis, using this to justify that lack of payments. Yet they showed unprecedented flexibility in addressing the scandal, despite not tolerating any protests. On the other hand, the Qatari government’s financial crisis is based on tensions with Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and other members of the GCC, which have been withdrawing funds from Qatar’s financial system to generate a liquidity crisis after almost a decade of estrangement since the rivalries initiated by the positions taken in the Arab Spring. This ended around 2021, when relations began to rebuild.

This geopolitical conflict will likely keep Doha from guaranteeing minimum labor rights and abolishing the kafala system. The regime will need more and more slave labor to sustain its financial and gas empire. It will have to decide between confronting the Gulf monarchies or a mostly migrant workers’ movement, one that is rebelling against the petromonarchy.

Originally published in Spanish on November 18 in La Izquierda Diario.

Translation by Otto Fors

The post The Slave Labor World Cup appeared first on Left Voice.

After the results of the U.S. midterms rolled in, the Democratic Party collectively breathed a sigh of relief. The predicted Republican “red wave” turned into a trickle as Democrats won key races across the country, retaining their Senate majority and losing the House by a smaller-than-expected margin.

Democrats’ elation is understandable. But something curious is also happening: some on the Left are claiming that there was a different kind of red wave — of socialism, that is. Jacobin proclaimed that “the elections were one of the best the Left has had in memory,” and DSA claimed the organization — and the progressive movement — had “racked up wins.” 

To be sure, progressive ideas and ballot measures found support across the country, and it’s clear that many sectors of the U.S. electorate are further to the left than the two parties. But to claim that November 8 was a victory for the Left is a distortion of reality, and an attempt to bolster the failed strategy of building working-class power in a capitalist party. 

Victories for “Leftist” Candidates?

Writing in Jacobin, Branko Marcetic claims, “Centrists were wrong: Left-Wing candidates won.” Accompanying the article was a picture of John Fetterman, the candidate from Pennsylvania who beat out Dr. Oz for a Senate seat. 

Fetterman may hold progressive views on certain issues, like cannabis legalization, but let’s be clear: he is not, by any stretch of the imagination, a leftist, and he moved right throughout his campaign. He chauvinistically said he will be “tough on China,” boasting that he was the only Senate candidate from Pennsylvania who hadn’t done business in or praised the country. He has emphasized his support for police and said the movement to defund them was “always absurd.” And his support for fracking shows his allegiances lie with fossil capital, not with people or the planet.

Even on issues where Fetterman is not just a middle-of-the-road Democrat, the leftist bar is on the floor. Marcetic writes that Fetterman is “moving toward universal healthcare” and cites the politician’s support for a $15 minimum wage as a leftist credential. But Fetterman has moved away from supporting Medicare for All, the previous litmus test for progressives, and even politicians like Joe Biden and Chuck Schumer support a $15 wage — an unacceptably low goal amid historic inflation.

Fetterman is not alone in being forcefully shoehorned into leftism in order to fit in Jacobin’s success narrative. Jacobin also praises Pennsylvania’s pro-cop governor-elect, Josh Shapiro, as well as incoming Vermont senator Peter Welch who traded healthcare stocks while fighting to pass a bill favorable to these same companies. Branko Marcetic even claims that Tim Ryan, who increasingly moved to the right (and lost) in his race against Republican JD Vance in Ohio, “borrowed somewhat from the Left’s playbook.”

These politicians are not leftists, and the 2022 midterms were not a leftist wave, but don’t take our word for it — just read the bourgeois press, which is touting November 8 as a victory for centrism. A New York Times article states that, “In battleground states and swing districts across the country, voters voiced their support for moderation.” The same publication muses about how the Democratic Party can build “John Fetterman 2.0” to secure more victories in Pennsylvania and beyond. An article in The Atlantic titled “How Moderates Won the Midterms” emphasizes the winning strategy of “Democrats who focused on the economy, eschewed the party’s progressive wing, and reached out to traditional Republican voters.”

Clearly, neither the politicians themselves nor the Democratic Party see the midterms as a win for leftism. So why are some on the Left, like Jacobin and DSA, pushing this narrative?

These leftist sectors’ strategy hinges on supporting candidates in the Democratic Party and trying to move these politicians leftward. Whether pushing for a “dirty break” with the Democrats or for a realignment of the Party, success is measured by the electoral wins of nominally progressive candidates running on the Democratic Party line. By their logic, socialism can be won through the ballot box if politicians merely adopt enough progressive policy positions. 

Framing John Fetterman, Josh Shapiro, and others as victories for the Left helps vindicate Jacobin and DSA’s strategy. But as history has shown, time and time again, this strategy is a losing bet — even when it comes to more progressive candidates like members of the “Squad” in the House.

More Squad = More Socialism? 

Centrist candidates aside, it’s true that the Squad expanded its ranks. Maxwell Frost — Congress’s first Generation Z lawmaker — won his race in Florida, and will be joined in the House by Texas’s Greg Casar, Illinois’s Delia Ramirez, and Summer Lee, Pennsylvania’s first Black female congressperson. These individuals espouse progressive positions on many issues, and their election shows that progressive ideas are gaining steam. But do more Squad members mean that congress can be turned into a vehicle for leftist change?

The records of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (AOC) and other Squad members show that when push comes to shove, these representatives almost always fall in line behind the capitalist establishment. They repeatedly vote for big military budgets and even for increasing police budgets, and support imperialist intervention abroad. Jamaal Bowman is a staunch ally of Israel and, together with AOC, voted to give more military aid to the apartheid regime. And as their unanimous vote to renominate Nancy Pelosi as House Speaker shows, they will never fundamentally oppose the pillars of U.S. capitalism. Meanwhile, progressives’ policy goals, when they are not defeated outright, are increasingly watered down to make them palatable to the defenders of the status quo on both sides of the aisle.

Nonetheless, many on the Left believe that every new member of the Squad, and even the addition of one or two slightly more progressive senators, means we’re one step closer to winning progressive victories in areas like climate change, healthcare, and poverty. The argument goes something like this: if we only had more “democratic socialist” votes in Congress, we would finally be able to pass legislation like the Green New Deal and Medicare for All. 

As Tempest highlighted after the 2020 election, this idea that the Left is gradually winning stems from “an electoralist perspective that equates winning elections with ‘building power’ and that uses electoral victories as a gauge of strength.”

But this strategy misses a key point: these politicians are funneling progressive energy into a racist, imperialist, capitalist party. Once in power, they provide left cover for the Democratic Party’s politics and rightward shifts, and end up upholding the very systems they speak out against. 

We’ve seen how the Democrats de-fanged and co-opted the 2020 Black Lives Matter movement, with politicians who two years ago wore kente cloth and decried George Floyd’s death now positioning themselves as pro-cop and “tough on crime” after the biggest social uprising in the country’s history. Democrats are doing the same with reproductive rights, using abortion as a pawn to win elections. On imperialism and the economy, Democrats hardly diverge from Republicans at all beyond supporting more state-interventionist approaches to social spending. And yet Congress’s “democratic socialists” have repeatedly worked tirelessly to get out the vote for these politicians, like AOC hitting the campaign trail with New York governor Kathy Hochul. 

Elections Can be a Socialist Tactic

November 8 was less of a victory for Democrats and progressives than it was a repudiation of the extreme Right and GOP, and the records of progressives in Congress show that running as Democrats does not guarantee progressive wins — these candidates water down their program and betray the working class at every turn. 

History has shown, time and time again, that the reformist Left’s project of building socialism within the Democratic Party is failing. As a result, sectors like Jacobin have to revise their goals downwards, shifting to the right alongside the party they claim they can to reform, to the point that they claim that even politicians who are pro-police, support fracking, and trade healthcare stocks are victories for the Left. 

This does not mean, however, that leftists should reject the electoral arena: elections are a powerful tool in leftists’ arsenal, but not through the Democratic Party. 

Socialists need to organize independently of capitalist parties, and run for elections as part of our own party with an openly socialist program. Running in elections allows us to popularize our ideas, denounce capitalist oppression and exploitation, and indict capitalist democracy. A presence on the political stage helps us engage with those who are looking for alternatives to this wretched system that has nothing to offer the working class and oppressed. 

The 2022 midterms were not a “red wave” of socialism, and it sets back our struggle to pretend that they were. We don’t win by shoehorning patently un-leftist politicians into a leftist mold. We don’t win by voting for these politicians, and, above all, we don’t win by working inside a party that’s inherently opposed to our class interests. We win by fighting independently of the two parties of capital, with our own revolutionary party, uncompromising on issues of exploitation, oppression, and imperialism. 

The post Jacobin Is Wrong: The Midterms Were Not a Socialist Wave appeared first on Left Voice.

This leaflet was written by Martin Reilly, a Toronto Education Workers/Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE) 4400 militant who has been active in rank-and-file organizing for the past two years.  Left Voice supporters met Reilly during the historic strike action that defied an effort by the government  to make the CUPE 4400 strike for a living wage increase illegal.  The defiant strike received wide support within the labor movement, and throughout Canadian society.  With a strike deadline approaching, it is going to be extremely important for education workers to apply the lessons from the two day illegal strike, which proved the power of the working class when it uses its methods (like strike actions) of struggle.  

Labour Has the Power to Win A Cost of Living Contract That Keeps Up With Inflation!

Use the Power of the Strike to Win A Just Contract! 

Build Working Class Solidarity With All Unions Fighting Against Concessions! 

With two days on strike, Labour forced the Ford government to step back on their strikebreaking “Keeping Students in Class Act.” Our solidarity achieved something which hasn’t been seen in Canada in some 20 odd years, but just repealing this law isn’t enough. We need to be able to care for ourselves and our families. We’ve lost 11% of our wages in the last decade to inflation, and inflation is only going up. Our siblings make an average of $39, 000 a year, poverty wages even according to Ford. Our “raises” need to go up alot to match inflation , and go even further to be true to the word. 

The OSBCU put together a list of demands which would achieve that, a 3.25 per hour raise every year for a three year contract, as well as improvements in many other areas of our work and lives. This is what we need. We’ve shown we have the power to make history, let’s use it to get the contact we deserve. Not a penny or a letter out of place from our original demands, no concessions!

To win that requires that we take ownership and control of this fight.  Our union leaders keep telling us that it’s the rank and file you make our fight powerful.  Since that is the case, any decision to call off a strike should be one that rank and file members make collectively and democratically.  This time we stay out until we win all of our demands.

The post Education Workers Have the Power to Win in Toronto appeared first on Left Voice.

The Garífunas of Honduras are an Afro-indigenous people who have lived on the country’s scenic northern coast for more than 225 years, before the republic was founded. In recent decades, they have come under increasing threats from private corporations in the tourism sector and extractive industries, among others, which have colluded with the state and organized crime to dispossess the communities of their lands.

The threats and violence have intensified in recent years, especially since 2015, when the Inter-American Court for Human Rights (IACHR) issued rulings against the state of Honduras and in favor of the Garífuna communities of Punta Piedra and Triunfo de la Cruz. These rulings required that the state provide reparations and guarantee the Garífuna people’s ancestral rights over their lands.

In the context of the communities’ struggle for their rights, four young leaders of Triunfo de la Cruz, including the president of the patronato (community council) Sneider Centeno, were abducted on July 18, 2020. The community has yet to receive answers from the state regarding their whereabouts.

Honduran president Xiomara Castro, who took office on January 27 amid great expectations of change, has failed to take any steps to comply with the IACHR rulings, despite having promised to do so during her campaign.

Meanwhile, the development of Special Economic Development Zones (ZEDEs) on Garífuna lands has continued. These are special-jurisdiction areas in which private companies are entitled to establish their own police forces and judicial, legal, and tax systems—a clear cession of sovereignty to foreign companies. While the National Congress repealed the law establishing these jurisdictions in April this year, after Castro’s inauguration, construction in these areas has continued, without further opposition from the national government.

On November 7, the National Police and the army carried out a violent eviction in the Garífuna community of Punta Gorda. Community members were brutally beaten and six land defenders were detained, including Melissa Martínez, coordinator of the Black Fraternal Organization of Honduras (OFRANEH) of Punta Gorda. An international outcry led to the release of the activists, but the charges against them remain.

La Izquierda Diario, Left Voice’s sister publication, spoke with Miriam Miranda, an activist and OFRANEH’s national coordinator, about the evictions and about the struggle of the Garífuna people under Xiomara Castro’s administration.

Can you tell us about the struggle of the Garífuna people for recognition of their rights over their land in the community of Punta Gorda?

It’s important to mention that the community of Punta Gorda is in the process of reoccupying its ancestral land. An essential fact is that it was the first community founded in Honduras, more than 225 years ago. When our ancestors arrived in 1797, they settled and were welcomed here in Punta Gorda. Bloody battles were being waged at the time between Spain and other colonizer countries such as England and France, and the Garífuna people were welcomed here so they could join the troops in the struggle to defend Honduras. So, our community already existed here before Honduras became a republic. And, therefore, Punta Gorda is not just any community. That’s why they can’t claim, as they are doing now, that we have to submit our “documents” — as if this were a conflict of interest between two individuals with a deed to a piece of land.

It’s important to emphasize this because the conflict is about an ancestral right that is recognized by Convention 169 of the International Labour Organization (ILO) on the rights of indigenous and tribal peoples. Since Honduras is a signatory of that Convention and of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, we have been able to resort to the Inter-American judicial system. We, the Garífuna people, have the right to be taken into account and have our ancestral rights recognized, based on our ancestry as well as on international law concerning the rights of indigenous peoples. 

The events that took place in Punta Gorda result from the fact that we have ancestral property here and there is a community that has lived here since our ancestors’ time.

What happened in Punta Gorda on November 7?

We were informed that there was going to be an eviction, and our comrades were very scared. They arrived here to evict the community at 11:30 that morning. The brutality with which they carried out the operation shows, as Melissa [Martínez, from OFRANEH] said, that they intended to kill us. That was the attitude of the police when they arrived. People were beaten; some had their arms broken. They didn’t even respect the elderly or the children.

There is an important question here that we want to look into. On whose behalf did the state — that is, the presiding judges and the prosecution — issue the orders? I think there are hidden interests here that we haven’t been able to identify. I think someone had something to gain from this.

Do you mean private companies in the tourism industry?

We’re talking about private companies and businesspeople, but also people who want to create a crisis. This is a strategic moment when candidates are being nominated for the Supreme Court. And the Supreme Court and the Public Prosecutor’s Office stand against Xiomara Castro’s government.

The brutality of the operation; the way they came in here to destroy everything, including the houses that had already been built; the way they beat our brothers and sisters — there is a pregnant woman who is severely injured — all of this is a strong message about what they intend to do, not only in Punta Gorda.

It’s important to mention the extreme hate and racism these events reveal. The build-up to this operation started a while back. There’s a local media outlet called Roatán Hable Claro that had been spewing hate, not only accusing the Garífuna people of invading the land, but also carrying out a hateful media campaign for months. That’s how they prepared the groundwork for November 7.

We also think it’s important to note that it was a joint operation between the army and the police. Some people were saying that the army didn’t take part, but that’s not true. The army was here. It’s in the photos and the videos. It was not only the National Police.

The opposition controls the judiciary, but the National Police and the army are under Xiomara Castro’s command. However, she claimed last week in a tweet that she hadn’t been informed of the eviction. How do you interpret that?

I believe there’s an intense struggle for power being waged and we’re caught in the middle. Powerful interest groups and the narco-dictatorship [under the National Party, now part of the opposition, which ruled the country from 2010 to 2021] strengthened their power in all government institutions. There are even reports that the heads of certain ministries can’t make certain decisions because they’re being blocked by mid-level authorities.

But I also believe that there’s an undeniable reality — that Xiomara’s government needs to make radical decisions in certain aspects to show her political will to address these problems. I’ve said this publicly. You can’t claim innocence when you’re running a country. I think that tweet was very ill-advised,because it makes her look even worse. She’s the president and the commander-in-chief of both the army and the police.

Now this conflict has emerged, which I think she didn’t expect, but it happened. Someone had something to gain from this and they made their move. I suppose they will investigate this to determine who it was, because what happened has made international headlines and has affected Xiomara’s government. The opposition is taking advantage of this. The people left over from the dictatorship — the cachos, as people here call them, from the National Party — are taking advantage of the situation after what happened on November 7.

Beyond the power struggles within the state, do you think there’s a lack of political will on the part of the executive to resolve the problems the Garífuna people are facing?

We have to take into account that the Inter-American Court of Human Rights issued two rulings against the state of Honduras in 2015. Almost eight years have since passed, and President Castro has clearly lacked the political will to take steps toward complying with the rulings. A high-level, inter-institutional commission needs to be set up. We don’t want a commission for people to go to for a photo-op. We want this to be a high-level commission where decisions can be made and where real steps can be taken toward complying with the rulings, which don’t just require decisions, but also significant budget allocations to restore the Garífuna people’s lands. 

We have a problem if the government doesn’t make those decisions and doesn’t establish the administrative mechanisms needed to comply by establishing an inter-institutional commission. Soon Xiomara will have been in power for a year. This was part of her party’s campaign. They said that it was going to be a people’s government, which really raised people’s hopes. We fought against the dictatorship so that what happened here on November 7 would never happen again. People expect things to change.

What was the government’s reaction to the events of November 7?

The government’s reaction was the result of international pressure. We have to be very clear about this. The global outcry over these events led the United Nations and all the international human rights organizations to speak out and, of course, apply pressure on Xiomara. That’s why she had to respond to what happened. The detained activists were released the next morning, but alternative measures have been applied against them. 

It’s important to note that this was done under an amendment to the Code of Criminal Procedure that criminalizes land defenders and is used to prosecute them by establishing stricter measures against reclaiming their lands.

After the global outcry, the National Congress appointed a Special Commission that came here to Punta Gorda and met with us. They’re going to submit a report next week on their visit. Minister of Human Rights Natalie Roque also came here with someone from SEDESOL (the Secretariat of Social Development). They made an emergency visit to hear people’s testimonies.

How have these events affected the Garífuna communities?

What happened here in Punta Gorda has greatly exacerbated the campaign of discrimination and hate on the coast against the other Garífuna communities. The community of San Juan is in the middle of legal proceedings before the Inter-American Court, seeking a ruling. The non-Garífuna people who live around the community are gathering in permanent assemblies because they say that the Garífuna communities want to take their property away from them. The problem is that people with economic power — the businessmen, investors, people linked to the drug trade, people involved in organized crime — are promoting this campaign of hatred against us. 

We’re not just facing a third exile [in our history]; we’re facing genocide. They want to take advantage of everything that happened here — not just incite hatred, but also create the conditions and environment necessary so that an attack against the Garífuna people can be accepted and legitimized. As the general coordinator of OFRANEH, I’m tremendously concerned about this. We’re worried because we don’t know what will happen in the next few months.

What is the current security situation in the Garífuna communities?

The Inter-American Court of Human Rights and the UN Committee on Enforced Disappearances ruled on the disappearance [on July 18, 2020] of the community leaders of Triunfo de la Cruz, including the president of the patronato [community council]. Both organizations have asked the state to respond to the enforced disappearances and ensure the safety of their families and community. But instead there is a climate of terror in the community. Some audios have come out with truly horrifying death threats against community leaders.

Has there been no change in this regard under Xiomara Castro’s government?

This hasn’t changed. On the contrary, the vulnerability and the pressure, the climate of terror, have only worsened. They’re creating a climate of terror in the communities against the Garífuna people, against the community leaderships, so people will stop fighting, so that the communities will stop making demands and remain silent.

This year the law establishing the ZEDEs was repealed, but the construction of the Próspera ZEDE in Garífuna territory is still moving forward.

They’re building their famous towers there and they already have a tower that I think is twelve stories high, in an area where there is supposed to be no construction of that kind, because it’s an island. But they’re still constructing them. And they’ve stated on social media that they’re going to sue Honduras for billions of dollars. 

I think the judicial system and how justice is applied in Latin America and the world is something that we have to pay close attention to. People always talk about the president, but the powers are distributed among people who make decisions in these institutions that were created precisely for that purpose and that are corrupt and can be manipulated. That’s where they plan and execute many of the actions carried out, not only against the communities and peoples who are resisting, but also against the executive branch. 

We’ve already seen what happened in Honduras [the coup against President Manuel Zelaya in 2009] happen later in Brazil — and it will continue to happen in other countries. They have gradually created the conditions for this situation to exist, in which the communities are in a state of complete defenselessness, with a corrupt, murderous judicial system, a system that sells itself off to the highest bidder. That’s what we’re up against.

What are the Garífunas demanding from Xiomara Castro’s government?

She’s the person who has to create the inter-institutional commission to comply with the [IACHR] ruling. That’s the first thing we’re demanding, because she’s responsible for that. She’s the head of the executive. That will be a step forward in recognizing and respecting the rights of the Garífuna people. 

One thing we have to be clear about is that the rulings against the state of Honduras and in favor of the communities of Punta Piedra and Triunfo de la Cruz affect all the communities. They don’t just affect those two communities. They require that the state respect communities’ human rights, but also that it recognize communities’ ancestral right to administer, control, and make use of its ancestral lands.

We also told the people who came [to Punta Gorda] from Congress that we don’t just want them to investigate the events [of November 7]. We want them to make recommendations that the National Congress can approve. My understanding is that the Special Commission was appointed not only to report on what happened, but also to review things like the amendment to the Code of Criminal Procedure and to see what has happened with the rulings. It’s an opportunity to move forward. We told them clearly that we want the report to allow the National Congress to make decisions.

How are the people resisting?

The people are steadfast in their resistance. I’m in the area and there was an assembly on Thursday of the community of Punta Gorda in which hundreds of people participated. They’re not going to stop fighting for their lands. I think that’s very important.

First published in Spanish on November 14 in La Izquierda Diario.

Translation by the author.

The post Under Xiomara Castro’s Government, the Garífunas in Honduras Still Await Answers in the Struggle for Their Land appeared first on Left Voice.

On Wednesday morning, more than 1,300 adjunct faculty at The New School in New York City went on strike. They were joined in solidarity by hundreds of students, full-time faculty, and community supporters. The strike comes after five months of negotiations between the administration and part-time adjunct workers represented by the UAW whose demands include a meaningful increase in wages, no cuts to healthcare, and third-party mediation for harassment and discrimination in the workplace.

Students and workers walked the picket line holding signs with slogans like: “Where is my tuition going?” and “New School, old values.” The energy on the picket line was fervent and resolute: picketers stood on benches leading chants and marched into crosswalks with signs asking cars to “honk for workers.”

Faculty and students alike are fed up with The New School flaunting its purportedly progressive values while exploiting the instructors that keep the university running. Common chants on the picket line included “social justice is not a brand” and “up with the workers, down with the bosses.”

Adjunct faculty make up 87 percent of the teaching staff at The New School, yet the administration only allocates about 8 percent of the budget for their compensation. Part-time faculty have not received a raise in almost four years and their recently expired contract has not been renegotiated in eight. Partnered with rapidly rising inflation, this frozen pay rate has resulted in an 18 percent drop in real earnings.

Despite this egregious wage stagnation, The New School has been unwilling to cooperate with faculty. In 28 bargaining sessions with the adjunct union, The New School’s administration brought wage proposals to only three sessions. Their final wage offer for adjunct faculty was a 3.5 percent raise,a much lower increase than the 10 percent immediate raise and 5 percent annual raise the union has demanded. 

Additionally, adjunct faculty are currently paid per contact hour, meaning they are only paid for the hours they are in the classroom. Each hour adjunct faculty spend preparing for class, holding office hours, and grading student work is unpaid labor that The New School is profiting from.

In stark contrast to the dismal wages for adjunct faculty, The New School spends 2.3 times the national average on administration relative to instruction. This “progressive” university that uses leftist buzzwords as marketing is lining the pockets of administrators while the workers who create all of its value struggle to make ends meet.

The New School’s blatant disregard for the value of its faculty resulted in overwhelming support for a strike: 97 percent of part-time faculty voted to authorize a strike, and 87 percent of part-time faculty working this semester committed to participating in the strike. 

The faculty of The New School are not alone in their struggle for more just working conditions. Weeks prior, NYU adjunct faculty won major raises through a credible strike threat. Just one day before the strike at The New School, workers across the University of California system began the largest higher-education strike in history. Over 48,000 UC workers are now on strike with a focus on winning higher wages to combat inflation. 

The workers at The New School and throughout the country should be an inspiration to others. We must stand in solidarity. The wave of struggle across higher education is a moralizing and positive sign that workers are waking up to the fact that only we can ensure that the ruling class doesn’t make us pay for their crises.

The post New School Adjuncts Strike for Higher Wages Amid Ongoing Labor Struggles and Strikes Across the US appeared first on Left Voice.

As of Monday, 48,000 academic workers at the University of California have gone on strike, fighting for better wages and childcare support, as well as the removal of fees for international scholars, public transit passes, and better protection against bullying and harassment. This is the largest higher-education strike in U.S. history, the largest strike of the year in the U.S., and a pivotal moment for organizers in higher education.

These workers are academic researchers, teaching assistants, graduate student researchers and instructors, and postdoctoral researchers, across nine campuses of one of the world’s most prestigious university systems. The University of California relies on these workers for most of its teaching and research, yet it severely underpays them. Graduate students make on average $24,000 a year while working in areas of the country (such as Los Angeles, Orange County, Santa Cruz, or the Bay Area) with exorbitant housing costs.

As a result, most struggle to afford to live where they work, and many struggle with housing insecurity and homelessness while working at the UC. Over 90 percent of graduate workers and over 60 percent of postdocs are rent burdened, paying at least a third of their income on rent. This forces many into taking additional jobs simply to afford to live within commuting distance of work.

And even working additional jobs is barely enough: Anny Viloria Winnett, a graduate researcher in Community Health Sciences at UCLA, told me she spends about 70 percent of her income (from a university fellowship jointly with a research job) on rent for university-subsidized housing. Louise McClure, a teaching assistant and PhD candidate in English at UC Irvine, pays about half of her income in rent and is forced to live about an hour’s commute from the campus to find housing that she can afford at all.

And those with families can barely afford to pay for childcare, leading many to leave for other jobs. For instance, Stefan Zdraljevic, a postdoctoral researcher in genetics at UCLA, and his partner found the university’s childcare support so meager that it was more affordable for his partner to stop working to take care of their one-year old.

In light of this, workers are demanding higher wages ($54,000 for graduate students, $70,000 for postdocs) and a $2,000-a-month reimbursement for childcare, full tuition subsidies for UC childcare programs, and expanded options for paid family leave.

The university has shown itself unwilling to negotiate. It has counteroffered raises below inflation — otherwise known as pay cuts. It has also falsely claimed that graduate workers only work part-time, and that compensation is not tied to housing costs. And, on Tuesday, it refused to sit at the bargaining table with three of the four bargaining units.

Outside, across nine campuses, crowds of hundreds of workers are picketing, sharing their experiences, and building collective power. They know that they are driving the University of California to a halt by withholding their labor and that the university will have to negotiate.

The atmosphere is both joyous and angry. These are young workers who know that they deserve better and are willing to fight for it. They are part of a growing movement at universities, with graduate researchers and teaching assistants across the country organizing in unions and bargaining for better working conditions. Workers at NYU and Columbia won substantially improved contracts last year. And just last week, workers at the New School in New York have authorized a strike, and workers at the University of Kansas are currently preparing to vote to form a union.

Beyond that, these workers see their struggle as part of a larger struggle for workers’ rights in the U.S. and beyond. Representatives from nurses’ unions, domestic workers’ unions, and progressive elected officials have shown up at picket lines in solidarity and spoken at rallies. The Teamsters Union has authorized workers to not cross the picket line, cutting off the university’s access to deliveries. And many other workers are showing up at the picket lines. The strike is building new pathways of solidarity and collective power that will propel us into a fairer future.

If you want to support the strike and are close to a UC campus, you can join in picketing at every campus from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. You can also donate to the strike fund or sign a community support letter.

The post Historic Strikes at The University of California Could Reshape the Terrain of Labor Struggles in Higher Education appeared first on Left Voice.

Before the dust had settled on the 2022 midterms, and with some races yet to be called, Donald Trump announced his third bid for president. It marked the start of the 2024 election cycle.

Speaking from Mar-a-Lago, where just three months earlier FBI agents raided the estate looking for classified documents, Trump’s kickoff speech was a fever dream of his greatest hits from 2016 mixed with a delusional montage of his four years in office — complete with claims of having ruled “without wars for decades,” a declaration that the invasion of Ukraine “would never have happened” under his watch, and the promise of “making it to Mars.” He ignored the over one million dead as a direct result of his murderous COVID-19 policies. As if the decades-long decline of the U.S. empire had only transpired in the last two years as Joe Biden long-blinked through meetings between heads of state, Trump bragged that his time in office showed a global hegemon “ready for its golden age” at the “pinnacle of power, prosperity, and prestige, towering above all rivals.” 

Trump begins his campaign well in advance of the primary season, in no small part as a defense against the many lawsuits and legal proceedings against him. He filed papers for a presidential run much earlier than anyone else in history, most likely in the hopes that it can forestall potential prosecution. 

Putting the absurd to the side for a moment, however, Trump’s speech showed a revitalization of his right-wing populist message, coupled with a virulently reactionary social platform and strongman protectionist international agenda. Though not a departure from his two previous campaigns, Trump doubled down on directing his discourse to the U.S. working class — specifically those who feel that the political establishment sold them a bill of goods and left them behind. Even as he repeated venomous, racist remarks against immigrants, made horrific attacks on trans people, railed against the Black Lives Matter movement, and reviled teaching about racism in schools, he attempted to speak to the losers of globalization and neoliberalism as part of a “unified” vision where we all “need to be friends.”

Like the Democrats and the rest of the Republicans this midterms cycle, Trump’s rhetoric foreshadows a 2024 election that will be focused on winning over the working class, which has come to the fore of the political arena in a context of an economy and regime in crisis and a resurgence in the labor movement and pro-labor sentiment. Despite his clumsy attempts at “both sides” pandering, however, Trump rededicated himself in his speech to the worst right-wing aspirations of his base and showed that he stands resolutely against the issues that matter to the hundreds of millions of working and poor people in the United States. He made it clear that four more years of Trump would mean nothing other than further attacks on their living conditions to bolster the profits of big business and the legitimization of the Far Right.

His third run at the Oval Office comes at a time when Trump himself is in a weakened position — not just after having lost the 2020 elections, but after a midterm cycle where most of his high-profile endorsees lost their elections to moderate Democrats. This is not to downplay the number of Trump supporters and ultra-reactionary figures who still make up a sizable number of government officials at both the state and federal level: Trump candidates gained a number of posts this cycle, including Senatorial seats in Ohio and North Carolina, where polarization won out and Republican candidates sailed to victory in now-solidified red states. While Trump may enter the 2024 race on the back foot, it’s clear that the Far Right is here to stay, a symptom of the deep political crisis that the United States faces in the waning days of its global hegemony. 

But overall, these midterms showed an electorate thirsty for stability, and Trump-like “outsider” candidates like TV reporter Kari Lake in Arizona and TV personality and animal abuser Mehmet Oz in Pennsylvania lost their races. Without an appealing vision of how to combat inflation (in a post pandemic-relief world, blaming social spending for the economy tanking didn’t seem to go over well with voters), the GOP had a poor showing against the Democrats and Biden, who leaned into fears about abortion and saving democracy while in key races taking up some aspects of the right’s rhetoric against the Green New Deal, the police, and China. Indeed, even Trump had to moderate his discourse around certain issues in his announcement — He never mentioned the “pro-life agenda” in his hour-long ramble, and he even toned down his references to stolen elections.

If the lack of establishment figures attending the announcement was any indication, Trump launched his campaign with fewer allies than in 2020. Looking for someone to blame for the “red wave” that never was, much of the Republican Party establishment is pointing the finger at Trump for throwing his weight behind candidates who alienated moderates. Notably, Trump has lost the support of Rupert Murdoch and his media empire, who has said he will not back another Trump run; this culminated in the dramatic moment of Fox News cutting away from Trump’s announcement mid-sentence. At the level of wealthy capitalist donors, Axios reports that Stephen A. Schwarzman, the chairman, CEO, and co-founder of finance supervillain Blackstone will not back Trump’s run either. Even his own daughter is trying to distance herself from another Trump campaign.

Indeed, Trump throws his hat into the ring at a moment where the identity crisis of the GOP is in full view and his own success as a candidate is far from assured. Governor Ron DeSantis of Florida is well-positioned after his midterm blowout, with Florida further cemented as a red state. Republicans prefer DeSantis by 10 percentage points compared to Trump for 2024. But this early in the game it remains to be seen who else will enter the ring to challenge Trump and who will rise to the top to represent the Republican Party and sectors of capital betting on the GOP’s vision of resolving the crisis of U.S. hegemonic decline.

Nevertheless, Trump won’t let himself be ignored, and the agenda he put forward in 2016 and 2020 will guide the 2024 primaries and elections. Indeed, though his candidates underperformed in the midterms, “Trumpism” very much pushed the elections to the right this year. Democrats moved to the right on issues from China to immigration to climate change, and although Republicans were forced to avoid endorsing the political turmoil of the 2020 elections and January 6, they did not completely disavow Trump himself.

Trump’s Mar-a-Lago speech highlighted the issues that dominated the midterms and will likely dominate the GOP primaries: immigration, law and order, and the “culture wars” against the rights of trans people, Black and Brown people, and women in particular. Trump leaned heavily into the promise of giving more freedom to the repressive arm of state to brutalize workers, particularly people of color, as well as “cracking down” on immigration by threatening the lives of immigrants and using the United States’ imperialist control over the Mexican government to do it. Not to be outdone by Ron DeSantis and the like, he also promised to end the “gender insanity” of basic rights for trans people and to send in the National Guard to repress protests and dissent.

Beyond the ultra-reactionary bluster that will no doubt mobilize his base to the polls (and the streets), guiding Trump’s speech was a picture of the United States in crisis. He appealed directly to those hit by inflation: “To every worker struggling to survive, this campaign is for you.” He called on teachers, construction workers, and firefighters to elect him and return the United States to a mythical past of prosperity. He brought back his pledge to “drain the swamp!” of the political caste, promising a constitutional amendment to set term limits for elected officials, as well as a ban on taxpayer funding of campaigns and a lifetime ban on lobbying by former members of Congress and cabinet members. 

But behind every promise that “every policy must help the American worker” is the reality that Trump did govern and would govern again in favor of “every business both big and small to allow our nation to compete with other nations.” True to his right-wing bonapartist positioning, Trump is attempting to hoodwink the American working class into supporting his vision of how to keep the capitalist class on top domestically and internationally in the face of a deep structural and political crisis. If his four years in the White House are any indication, at the top of his agenda are tax breaks for the wealthy, attacks on unions, investing heavily in fossil fuels on American soil, and shaking up international alliances in the hopes of offering U.S. corporations a better position when it comes to China. His policies are unequivocally anti-worker.

The Democratic Party will no doubt use Trump’s announcement to bolster its own electoral prospects and to further its agenda in Congress, with a House that is likely to go to the Republicans. It will hide its own lack of alternatives – shown in the doubt around a potential Biden 2024 run – under the guise of fending off Trump at all costs, even as the party panders to Trump’s base, moving to the right on the issues that matter to the working class and oppressed.

Fending off Trump and the Far Right — not just in 2024, but in the long term as the historic crisis of neoliberalism reaches new heights — will require overcoming the logic of lesser evilism and building an alternative for working and oppressed people that does not settle for the crumbs offered to us by the capitalist class while it launches much more brutal attacks against our living standards. Beyond the elections, we need our own political force that will defend our rights while fighting for everything that we deserve: for a union and living wage for every worker, for free abortion and healthcare on demand, for an end to violent borders and police repression, and more. 

As the bipartisan regime continues its gridlock, Trumpism will attempt to paint itself as a way out and the Democrats will paint themselves as the last defense against the ultra-Right. Yet the only thing that can truly unify the demands of the working class and oppressed with our renewed energy to fight for our interests on our own terms, is a party that will harness that spirit in the streets using our own methods — not protests as pressure campaigns on capitalist politicians, but strikes and mass mobilization to shut down the economy we already run to win our demands and stamp out the threat of the Right. 

The post A Weakened Trump Poses as an Alternative for the Working Class in Third Bid for President appeared first on Left Voice.

These midterms were supposed to be a red tsunami. But due in large part to the anger at overturning Roe v. Wade and support for reproductive rights, there was hardly a red ripple. The Republicans will likely take the House by a tiny margin, and the Democrats will retain — or maybe even expand — their majority in the Senate. The Democrats successfully positioned themselves as a vote for reproductive rights which, as these elections showed, are at top of mind for many people. Across the country, including in red states, ballot initiatives indicated support for abortion, and after inflation, abortion was indicated as the primary motivator at the polls.

Despite their inaction around reproductive rights, the Democratic Party strategy of equating a vote for them with a vote for abortion rights worked out well for Democratic candidates. But already, it’s clear that this strategy won’t work out well for reproductive rights, with Biden saying that there still aren’t enough votes to codify Roe. 

These midterms highlighted a will to fight for abortion rights among millions of people. It also highlights how that will to fight is being opportunistically funneled into a party that hasn’t done anything to deserve the reproductive justice vote and still refuses to protect abortion rights. 

Abortion and the Midterms

In California, Michigan, and Vermont, voters enshrined the right to abortion in their states’ constitutions. In Kentucky, a deep-red state, as well as Montana, voters rejected anti-abortion measures, reflecting the results in Kansas over the summer.

A historic number of people voted, especially among voters under 30, and turnout was significantly higher in battleground states. Young voters preferred Democrats by a 28-point margin, with stronger support among young people of color. In Pennsylvania, for example, young voters supported Senate candidate John Fetterman by 42 points.

Exit polls indicate that abortion was a close second to inflation in what drove people to the polls.

In key states like Michigan and Pennsylvania, abortion outpaced inflation as the number one issue that drove voters’ decision-making at the polls. In Michigan this meant a double-digit win for Gretchen Whitmer. In Pennsylvania, it meant that despite a disastrous debate performance, Fetterman flipped a Senate seat by a comfortable margin.

These results highlight yet again the undemocratic nature of the Supreme Court. They highlight that indeed, from red to purple to blue states people agree that abortion should be legal. Nine unelected leaders, in one fell swoop, took that right away.

This is even true of registered Republicans, such as a voter in Pennsylvania who said she would have voted Republican if it weren’t for the Dobbs decision, and ended up voting a straight Democratic ticket. As Tamarra Wieder, the state director for Kentucky Planned Parenthood Alliance Advocates, put it, “Abortion transcends party lines.” She mentioned that her team frequently met Republican voters who planned to cross party lines on the ballot measure.

Not just in these ballot measures, abortion played a role in races up and down the ballot. Younger voters also played a huge role, especially young women; one poll found that 24 percent of women cite abortion rights as a key issue. Many more women registered as new voters after the Dobbs decision.

This does not mean, however, that anti-abortion Republicans were rebuked across the country. That is far from the truth. Ultra-right-wing leaders like Ron DeSantis and JD Vance won by massive margins, highlighting that the Far Right continues to gain seats in the government.

Yet it is also important to note that our rights shouldn’t be ballot initiatives; the right to an abortion is a basic human right. It shouldn’t be put up to a vote — it should be guaranteed as part of our basic rights. With that said, these ballot initiatives indicate that most people agree: people have the right to an abortion.

Yes, It Was Abortion

In the days before the midterms, a sector of the Democratic Party, from Bernie Sanders to Barack Obama, could be heard demanding that the Democrats shift their message to “bread and butter” demands and “working class” issues. Jacobin magazine went as far as to say, “It is the economy you absolute moron” — claiming that campaigns about reproductive rights would be a losing strategy.

It is clear that the economy and inflation are central issues in these elections. There is no denying that. When you used to pay $2 for eggs and are now paying $7, there is no way that the economy isn’t at the forefront of people’s minds.

But the truth of the matter is that people — in fact, the working class — really do care about abortion rights. And this expressed itself in the five ballot measures around reproductive rights, and it expressed itself in the Republican losses throughout the midterms. Jacobin, Bernie Sanders and the like underestimated working-class voters: people know this is a historic attack, and they want to do something to change it.

Amazingly, Jacobin magazine’s round-up of lessons about the midterms barely mentions abortion, flying in the face of all exit polls and the analysis by nearly all political pundits. Since then, Jacobin has adjusted its political line to give more weight to abortion. But it is again worth highlighting that Jacobin’s insistence that that working class cares only about bread-and-butter issues led it to underestimate the role abortion would play in the elections and, more importantly, to call on socialists to focus on those bread-and-butter issues instead uniting the demands around reproductive rights and the economy.

The economic crisis and inflation are reproductive rights issues; in a country with no public childcare and no parental leave, where prices go up while our salaries stay the same, the question of who pays for the economic crisis is a reproductive rights issue.

Yet neither Republicans nor Democrats have a real response to the crisis; they both agree that the working class will pay for the crisis. It’s no wonder Fed chair Jerome Powell is an expression of bipartisan agreement — nominated by both Trump and Biden. It’s also clear that Republicans capitalized on the crisis to try to gain the vote of those who are concerned about the economy — and they did by overwhelming margins. That is precisely why both the abortion rights rhetoric and the “workers first” populism of Tim Ryan are cynical lies coming from the Democratic Party.

The role of socialists must be to lean into this very progressive sentiment among millions of working-class people: we need to do something about abortion rights. The role of socialists should be to highlight that struggles for reproductive rights and the struggle against inflation overlap, that neither party has a solution, and that we must organize to fight all attacks on working-class and oppressed people.

The Cynical Use of Our Rights

The Democrats attempted to center the primaries on abortion rights; they spent millions of dollars to position themselves as the defenders of reproductive rights and to highlight the extreme views of the Republican Party on abortion — and they do have extreme views. For example, the GOP candidate for governor in Pennsylvania, Doug Mastriano (who lost), opposes abortion without any exceptions. In a 2019 interview, when asked if people who have abortions should be charged with murder, he said yes.

The Democrats tried to make these midterms a referendum on abortion, positioning themselves as a vote for reproductive rights. This is not true. The Democrats, who have a majority in Congress, could pass abortion rights today if they wanted to. Biden cynically promised that the Democrats would codify Roe if the Democrats won a majority in Congress — as if they don’t have a majority right now. Moreover, the Democrats have had supermajorities in the past, like early in Obama’s term, and still did not codify Roe.

It’s untrue that a vote for the Democrats is a vote for reproductive rights.

And that is even more true when we see that reproductive rights and reproductive justice, in the legacy of SisterSong, include the struggle against police, prisons, borders, and ICE detention centers, which separate families and deny people the right to parent. As the Democrats ran a campaign focused on law and order, as well as on “protecting the border,” they do not stand for reproductive rights, much less reproductive justice. Reproductive rights also means that the working class should not pay for the economic crisis.

But there can be no doubt that millions of people saw the Democrats as the defenders of reproductive rights and voted accordingly.

The reality is that the nonprofit bureaucracies that have millions of dollars and millions of followers funneled the anger at the overturning of Roe into the Democratic Party. When the Women’s March called a national conference, it was primarily as a mechanism to get people to the polls. And on the weekend of October 8 and 9, the Women’s March called for a weekend of action — explicitly tying those actions to the polls.

We should not see the lack of political action over the summer as a political mistake by these large nonprofits. Instead, we should understand them as working in lockstep with the Democratic Party to funnel all the anger into that party.

And it worked for the Democrats. But it’s not a winning strategy for reproductive rights. Abortion is still banned across the country, and despite Biden’s victory lap, that doesn’t seem like it is about to change. The Democrats aren’t even talking about codifying Roe before the Republicans take the House in January. The reality for abortion is that in states where it is legal, the bipartisan Hyde amendment ensures that low-income people will have a hard time accessing abortion.

Over and over, election after election, people have voted to protect reproductive rights. This highlights just how much people believe this is a basic human rights. But it’s a losing strategy.

Take the Fight to the Streets

It is clear that most people in red and blue states believe that people should have access to abortion. It is clear that people want to do something about it — that’s why they waited in lines for hours to vote, with abortion being top of mind. But we can’t depend on Democrats to protect reproductive rights, and we can’t rely on ballot measures either. This piecemeal strategy is helpful for the Democratic Party elections, but not for making sure that everyone in the country has access to free, safe, and legal abortion.

We also need to highlight the connection between the struggle for reproductive rights and the struggle against inflation, against prisons, borders, and police. These are all reproductive rights issues, and we must organize against and fight them all. It is up to socialists to make those connections, and it’s up to socialists to highlight that both parties will take our votes but offer us nothing.

We need to look to the examples of Argentina, Mexico, Ireland, and Chile, where abortion rights were won in the streets. While the nonprofit leaderships like the Women’s March will drag their feet to organize a movement, socialists can and should play a leading role in the struggle to the streets, not sow illusions that voting for Democrats will protect our rights.

The post Abortion Protected the Democrats, but the Democrats Won’t Protect Abortion appeared first on Left Voice.

On Monday morning, 48,000 education workers, graduate students, postdocs, academic researchers, and teaching assistants represented by the UAW across the University of California system went on strike. This comes after over a year of failed negotiations during which the UAW filed almost 30 unfair labor practice complaints against the University. This historic strike is both the first time postdocs have gone on strike in U.S. history and the biggest strike in California in 10 years. Workers are in a strong position with large turnout across campuses. The strike has been further strengthened by a solidarity strike sanction for Teamsters-organized to UC campuses, and permission for construction workers to not cross picket lines for developments on campus.

At the UC San Diego campus, hundreds of workers joined the picket lines where the energy was forceful and defiant. The UC administration had attempted to negotiate until the 11th hour to prevent the strike, but their offers didn’t match worker demands. Academic workers in the UC system are fighting for a fair contract, with broad demands anchored by pay increases that account for inflation. 

Across the state, 90 percent of graduate workers and over 60 percent of postdocs are rent burdened. Last year, UCSD increased rents in student housing by up to 85 percent, meaning some students put as much as 75 percent of their income toward housing. Additionally, in a state with very little public transit — and as tackling climate change becomes more urgent — access to reliable transportation and greater investment in cycling infrastructure is a central demand for the union. The union is also demanding longer minimum appointment durations for workers such as postdocs and academic researchers who are often kept in precarious employment and unable to push back against abusive labor practices due to these short contracts. 

These dire conditions for education workers and the unwillingness of UC to pay them is a result of neoliberal austerity policies which cut funding for education and forced the universities to rely on tuition and private investment. In fact, public funding for universities is at a historic low. Thus, striking for better material conditions is important but without structural change, workers will eventually find themselves squeezed again. As the fighting spirit of labor builds across the country, demands must expand beyond economic demands to political change.

UC workers are not alone in their fight for better living conditions. With strike authorizations at Temple University, The New School, and negotiations brewing at University of Michigan, eyes are on the UC strike. What happens here will set a precedent for campus worker struggles across the country.

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The UN international climate conference, COP27, opened on November 6 in the coastal city of Sharm el-Sheikh in Egypt. Heads of state, scientists, and NGOs from around the world are meeting for two weeks to discuss global warming and the transition to renewable energies. The international meeting, which has repeatedly proven ineffective in curbing climate change, is taking place in a country notorious for its climate inaction and for its brutal repression and persecution of political opponents and environmental activists.

President Abdel Fattah al-Sissi, who came to power in 2013 after overthrowing the government of Mohamed Morsi, is at the helm of Egypt’s quasi-dictatorial regime. Since coming to power, al-Sissi’s government has exercised repressive policies to an unprecedented extent, even worse than under the government of Hosni Mubarak, the president overthrown at the start of the Arab Spring in 2011. Freedom of the press is almost non-existent, freedom of demonstration is highly limited, and the country has more than 60,000 political prisoners, a figure that makes Egypt one of the most repressive countries in the world.

One of the most eloquent and well-known examples of political repression is that of Alaa Abd el-Fattah. This British-Egyptian activist and blogger, a figurehead of the 2011 uprising and rebellion, paid dearly for his struggle to try to end the Mubarak government’s corruption and authoritarianism. Alaa has been in prison since his 2014 conviction for having participated in “unauthorized demonstrations.” He began a hunger strike a few months ago and stopped drinking water when COP27 started. Once the conference ends, he will be free or dead. 

Tens of thousands of political prisoners like Alaa are locked up in Egypt, often without a trial and exposed to torture. This situation is not going to change: al-Sissi’s Egypt is a favorite ally of many imperialist powers, particularly the European Union and France.

The Egyptian government mounted an intense PR campaign to give the impression that basic human rights would be guaranteed during the conference, but nothing could be further from the truth. The city of Sharm el-Sheikh, a historic haven for the Egyptian bourgeoisie and wealthy tourists from around the world, segregates the local populations, mainly Bedouins, from the country’s wealthier social classes. A literal wall was built around the city to separate these populations under the guise of preventing “criminal or terrorist acts.” Access to the beaches is practically impossible for the inhabitants of the surrounding area since these have been privatized and are now in the hands of unaffordable luxury hotels.

Repression has also extended to the virtual terrain: the official COP mobile app allows intelligence agencies to track the movements of all visitors and even requires users to give their passport number during installation. In the same vein, visitors are blocked from accessing sites that are opposed to the government, including human rights and certain news websites.

The individuals and organizations authorized to witness the summit have been carefully selected. Egyptian NGOs and activists must receive prior approval by the Ministries of Foreign Affairs, Environment, and Solidarity before being allowed to attend. Most organizations with even slightly dissenting voices have not been invited, and protest actions have been relegated to a secure area along the road leading to the resort where the COP activities are taking place. 

The UN and the UNFCCC, which oversee the conference, are turning a deaf ear to this repression. Ahmad Abdallah, the co-founder of the Egyptian Commission for Rights and Freedoms who was not allowed to attend COP27, points out that “they want to greenwash their image and show to the world that they’re not responsible for human rights abuses” and that the UN is complicit in this.

Indeed, COP27 is an unparalleled opportunity for the al-Sissi government to mount a gigantic greenwashing operation in a country that is doing almost nothing to reduce its carbon footprint, clean up cities, or preserve the Red Sea coral reefs. Egypt’s abysmal environmental record can largely be attributed to the liberalization policy undertaken by Hosni Mubarak during his decades in power under the benevolent gaze of the West.

But the situation has deteriorated dramatically since al-Sissi took power. The country is still 95 percent dependent on fossil fuels, oil production has doubled since 2006, and Cairo is one of the most polluted capitals in the world. Fossil fuel extraction, mostly managed by the military, has a devastating impact on the country’s fauna and flora, especially in the Sinai, where Sharm el-Sheikh is located. The old Aswan Dam has had irreversible effects on the ecology of the Nile, whose bed is eroding at breakneck speed. The damage to the Nile delta, combined with the rising waters of the Mediterranean, may cause Alexandria, one of the largest cities and the country’s capital for a thousand years, to sink within the next few decades.

COP27’s host country thus illustrates everything that should not be done in the fight against global warming. The organization of a climate conference in one of the most authoritarian countries in the world that does the least against global warming is already a challenge in itself. Added to this is the fact that the conference is taking place in one of the regions most affected by the effects of climate change. The Sinai Peninsula is bearing the brunt of the effects of human action on the planet.

The choice of Sharm el-Sheikh for a climate conference is a snub to those who fight for the climate’s preservation: this city of concrete and asphalt, an environmental horror, is a symbol of the impunity of the bourgeois classes in the destruction of ecosystems, when the poorest populations are the first to suffer the effects of global warming. As Hussein Baoumi of Amnesty International points out: 

“Sharm el Sheikh is a dream resort where the government can exclude the majority of Egyptians, and invest huge amounts of resources to ensure that everything is under surveillance and their control. It’s telling how the Egyptian presidency and the leadership view their ideal society, it’s a gated one without the masses.

It is in this context that Egypt is hosting COP27 today in almost absolute silence on the part of the heads of state and NGOs invited to the conference. It is true that some timid protests can be heard: the UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak announced that he wants to “discuss” Alaa’s case with al-Sissi. Beyond these token gestures, nothing will change for Egyptians or for the 60,000 political prisoners in the country, considering that Egypt is the partner of choice for most of the imperialist heads of state invited to the conference. Egyptian fossil fuel partnerships have multiplied this year in the context of the war in Ukraine and the current oil and gas crisis. The European Union, for its part, has begun the process of negotiating a lucrative contract for the delivery of Israeli LNG (liquefied natural gas) through Egypt. This system which puts polluters and profits over people will not provide a solution to the compounding ecological crises threatening the planet. 

Originally published in Spanish on November 8 in La Izquierda Diario. 

Translation by Otto Fors

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This past weekend, the Party of Socialist Workers (PTS) in Argentina held over 100 open assemblies across the country’s large expanse. Thousands of workers and young people took part. This was not just one of the largest shows of strength for the country’s Left in recent decades — it was a powerful example of working-class democracy in action. 

The aim of the assemblies was to gather together the growing number of people who are turning toward socialist ideas — nearly 6 percent of the electorate voted for the Workers’ Left Front, a coalition of Trotskyist parties, last year — and to democratically decide on the way forward. 

Assemblies took place from Tucumán in the north, to Neuquén in the Andean foothills, to Trelew in the far south. Participants debated how to respond to the inflationary crisis and what methods are needed to fight the austerity measures of the government. 

In the capital city of Buenos Aires, over 1,500 people joined the assembly. Myriam Bregman, a congress member representing the Workers Left Front (FIT-U), delivered the closing remarks. She told workers they didn’t have to accept the “lesser evil” of bourgeois politics. Instead, she said, workers had the power to “put capitalism where it belongs: the dustbin of history.” Working-class self-organization in assemblies is an essential part of a revolutionary strategy to beat capitalism.

In attendance were oil workers, teachers, agricultural workers, train drivers, and young people in precarious or “gig” jobs. Over 70 hospital workers took the stage and received a standing ovation in solidarity with their ongoing strike.

Bregman and other PTS leaders also called on the country’s unions and left-wing parties to organize a national workers’ conference to coordinate all the workers’ struggles that are now taking place. 

In other cities, speeches were given by worker leaders like Alejandro Vilca, an Indigenous sanitation worker and member of congress, and Raúl Godoy, a leader of the Zanon tile factory under worker control. The MadyGraf printing press, another factory occupied and managed by its workers, hosted a major assembly with hundreds of participants, most of whom were workers from the surrounding manufacturing zone. At every one of these assemblies, everyone in attendance could take the microphone, and proposals were decided by majority votes.

The worldwide cost-of-living crisis, sparked by interruptions in supply chains following the global pandemic and the war in Ukraine, has taken a heavy toll on working-class and poor people in Argentina. The country’s inflation rate is among the highest in the world; over the past year until September, prices rose by an estimated 83 percent. Salaries have not kept up with the steep inflation, meaning that most workers experienced cuts in their real wages over the past two years. 

The working class is beginning to fight back, however. Tire manufacturing workers waged a month-long strike for salary increases and won a more than 66 percent raise despite the resistance of the government and the bosses. Hospital workers are now on strike against cutbacks to healthcare spending and have organized major mobilizations with thousands in the streets. 

The governing Peronists, led by President Alberto Fernandez and Vice President Cristina Kirchner, have attempted to position themselves as “progressives” who will challenge the agenda of the country’s Right. However, this government has taken new loans with the International Monetary Fund, increased natural gas extraction, and is now imposing cutbacks to health and education budgets. 

In order to beat back the neoliberal attacks of the IMF, facilitated by a supposedly progressive government, the working class and the oppressed in Argentina will need to coordinate the different struggles that are taking place across the country. Open assemblies, based on the methods of proletarian democracy, can unite the different struggles. These 100 assemblies show the role that socialist members of congress can play: they don’t give any support to bourgeois governments; instead, they use their positions to support workers’ self-organization. 

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Last month, at an arbitration panel hearing, a judge upheld the discharge of UPS driver and Teamster Ben Douglass for a single comment he made at a September 1 union rally against management retaliation. Douglass, who is an alternate shop steward and outspoken union militant, was accused of “harassment” and  “insubordination” for calling management “liars” and identifying one supervisor as “porn stache.” The comments were made after four supervisors and one security supervisor came outside to surveil and intimidate rally participants. 

Earlier in the summer, UPS management tried to fire Douglass on bogus charges related to not working quickly enough during the heatwave, when temperatures often went above 90 degrees.  And he wasn’t the only one. The same day that Douglass was taken off the job without just cause, UPS also fired Rob Becker, another alternate shop steward, at a facility in Long Island, for getting an iced tea while on the clock. Five months earlier in Massachusetts, they had done the same with Dan Arlin.

Douglass, a UPS driver for almost two years, had been fighting against unsafe work conditions. During this time, he not only rallied his coworkers and fought for better Covid protections, but also spoke out against the terrible conditions both drivers and warehouse workers faced during the heat waves, all while management sat in comfortable air-conditioned offices. While UPS was forced to withdraw some of the most egregious charges against Douglass and reinstated him with full back-pay, the company had since piled on with even more discipline, using any available pretext to try to fire this outspoken critic of the bosses.

At the arbitration panel — the final step of the grievance process — UPS worked hard to paint a picture of Douglass as an incompetent and insubordinate worker, using past instances of disciplinary action they meted out as part of a longer campaign of targeting. They went hard at Douglass for his speech at the rally against retaliation, with supervisors saying how they felt “humiliated”. These are the same supervisors that shout at, bully and harass workers every day with impunity. Indeed, supervisors who use racist, sexist and other bigoted language are more likely to get promoted than to be disciplined themselves.

The judicial order that upheld Douglass’s discharge serves to legitimize UPS’s union busting efforts. But this ruling also sets a dangerous precedent for the labor movement as a whole, undermining the basic rights of concerted union activity and free speech. What is to stop UPS, Amazon, Starbucks and other companies from retaliating against workers speaking out at rallies, actions or picket lines moving forward? Such rulings illustrate the harsh reality that labor law, the arbitration process, the judges, and the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) — all the official structures for responding to class-conflict — are ultimately tipped heavily in favor of the bosses. Our current legal system, built to uphold the interests of the rich and powerful, allows management to commit wage theft, retaliate against union militants and neglect health and safety, all without major repercussions. Meanwhile, unjustly fired workers like Douglass face an uphill legal battle that can take many months, if not years, to resolve, and there is no guarantee of victory. 

Prior to his discharge being upheld, Douglass filed charges with the NLRB against UPS for retaliatory discipline. Hopefully, the NLRB will overturn the outrageous ruling by the panel judge and order Douglass to be reinstated with full back pay and seniority. However, even if the fight for Douglass’s reinstatement is ultimately successful — which is an open question — it is likely that the process will become a drawn-out legal contest. Both Teamsters Local 804, which is pursuing the case, and UPS, have the potential to appeal whatever ruling is made by the NLRB. It is conceivable that this case could ultimately end up being decided by the Supreme Court. 

UPS’s firing of Ben Douglass is an attack on the whole labor movement, one that needs to be fought tooth and nail. We condemn this outrageous assault on free speech. With the judge’s ruling, we see once again a state apparatus that intervenes on behalf of the bosses, not workers. We must draw lessons from this injustice: working class power comes from shop-floor organization, solidarity, and willingness to take militant action. Strong rank-and-file organization is the best safeguard against victimization.  

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It will probably be a few days before the composition of the U.S. Congress after the midterm elections is known. So far, projections indicate that the Democrats will retain their slim majority in the Senate, and that the Republicans will regain control of the House of Representatives, but by a much smaller margin than expected.

If this is confirmed, the result will leave two years of “divided government,” that is, a sort of institutional impasse through which several presidents, including Obama, have already passed.

Even if the Republicans advance in positions of power, for example, controlling the lower house, they have been left without their “red tide” in a year that looked very favorable for an opposition triumph, with a yearly inflation rate of 8 percent. Meanwhile, the Democrats, despite President Joe Biden’s unpopularity, had a better-than-expected result, although they had nothing to spare.

The midterm elections function as a sort of plebiscite on the government in office, in particular, the progress of the economy. This year, however, other elements entered into the balance, such as abortion rights (and other democratic rights) and above all the weight of the Republican extreme right of former president Donald Trump, who at least until yesterday led the Grand Old Party almost unchallenged.

The results of the midterms show that in general terms, there was no swing to the right. And that the decline of Trump’s leadership may have begun with the defeat of the ultraright candidates sponsored by the former president, particularly in Pennsylvania and Arizona. But this definition is too general to explain the deeper political trends that have been developing since the capitalist crisis of 2008 and deepened with the election of Donald Trump in 2016.

As an expression of a right-wing “populism,” Trumpism is here to stay, although it failed to expand beyond its hard core. But this hard core of the extreme Right is an intense political-social force, not a phenomenon of occasion, arising from the deep political and social polarization that has been installed as a sign of the times, and which is expressed in a distorted way in the so-called culture wars. Almost 70 percent of Republican voters consider Trump the winner of the 2020 presidential election, and the Biden administration, therefore, illegitimate. The most ultra sector of this electoral base staged the attempted takeover of the Capitol on January 6, 2021, under the political direction of the president himself, who was trying to prevent Congress from validating the election result.

In Florida, two leading lights of the Republican Right, Ron DeSantis and Marco Rubio, won their elections, in one of the exceptions of the day. DeSantis is a kind of well-mannered Trumpist. He won with a tough “law and order” speech. He promises to defeat the “woke,” that is, “progressives.” He defines himself as “pro-life,” but unlike other Republican states, Florida has not completely eliminated the right to abortion, having limited it to the 15th week. But it does not appear at first to be a generalized phenomenon. Florida is largely concentrated in the more right-wing Latino electorate, composed mainly of Cuban and Venezuelan exiles. Although it is a warning sign.

The result leaves DeSantis well positioned as an alternative to Trump in the Republican presidential primaries. This was greeted with some relief in the U.S. imperialist establishment, which was already worried about Trump’s possible return to the White House in 2024 — especially at a time when the White House, with its role in the war in Ukraine, had regained leadership over European allies for its dispute with China.

Biden, a classic representative of the Democratic “center,” arrived at the White House driven by the “anti-Trump” wave and helped by the “lesser evil” strategy of more radicalized political sectors that both inside and outside the Democratic Party that were the basis of the “Sanders phenomenon.”

After the murder of George Floyd at the hands of the police, Biden and the Democrats managed to contain and channel popular anger into the elections. Biden’s government, however, which has become very unpopular, now has a left flank in which very interesting phenomena are expressed, among them the trend toward unionization of broad vanguard sectors in the labor movement, the so-called “Generation U,” which managed nothing less than to unionize Amazon plants and warehouses. If current trends deepen, we have two years ahead in which, according to most economic analysts, a recession is likely, and perhaps also new class battles.

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The following statement was released by the BLM group Detroit Will Breathe (DWB) in response to the death of a woman suffering from a mental health crisis. Her death came a month after a 20-year-old Black man named Porter Burks, who was also suffering from a mental health crisis, was shot and killed by police 19 times.

*

Yesterday, Detroit police killed yet another Detroiter having a mental health crisis. This is the second person killed by police within a month. And what has been the response of our elected leaders – who we mobilized ourselves to vote for in fear of the right-wing Republicans? Their response has been to increase the funding of the police without creating any measures for accountability, or any alternative solutions to the growing mental health crisis. 

A higher police salary would not have changed the unfortunate and unnecessary outcome of police responding to a mental health situation. Why? Because people trained and given a license to kill to defend “private property”, aka capitalism, are never fully capable of saving lives. When an armed person intervenes during a mental health crisis, it does not send the message that they are there for your safety. If 50% of the calls made to police are for mental health crises, then at least 50% of DPD’s budget should be reallocated to separate, non-police mental health resources.

To get the type of justice and resources we deserve, we must fight to bring back the militant spirit of the BLM movement, and expand it to include people doing everything they can to make sure “business as usual” doesn’t happen until our demands are met. That doesn’t just mean marching in the streets, but taking action at our workplaces too, fighting and striking for Black and Brown lives. 

It is clear that we need an alternative to the police, but it is also clear that both parties, Democrats and Republicans, are not interested in funding them, especially in majority Black cities like Detroit. Of course, any serious alternative would also require consequences for the use of lethal force against people having a mental health crisis. In Porter Burks’ case, police officers making the elementary decision to pull their guns on a person having a schizophrenic episode is the opposite of de-escalation, and DPD’s original resistance to holding a press conference or showing body cam footage is the opposite of transparency. 

Today we are holding an event at 3pm at Adams Butzel Complex on 10500 Lyndon to speak out against DPD’s attempt to justify their lethal activity against those suffering from mental health crises while discussing the type of alternatives and mental health services we need. For everyone interested in justice, we need you there, ready to bring your ideas and energy. Let’s take the space to discuss a different way for our community.

The post DPD Must Not Be Given License to Kill: Justice for Porter Burks and All Mental Health Victims of Police Brutality and Aggression appeared first on Left Voice.

The surge of strike energy has reached Philadelphia. Just a few weeks after Philly’s art museum workers struck and won, this past Friday Temple University’s graduate students voted overwhelmingly to strike — by a margin of 99 percent. 

Contribute to their strike fund here

TUGSA — Temple University Graduate Student Association — represents about 750 Teaching Assistants (TAs) and Research Assistants (RAs) across the campus. They’ve been negotiating for 10 months, and working without a contract since February. They’ve been stonewalled by Temple’s bosses. 

TUGSA is demanding badly needed changes to their pay and working conditions. Looking at Temple’s own math on its new anti-union website, grad student workers and RAs make just $20,000 a year in a city where average rent is around $1,900 a month. That means yearly rent would be, on average, $22,800 — $2,800 more than the entire yearly stipend. 

The situation is only getting worse in an economy with skyrocketing inflation, especially in the price of food and gas. This means the last year of inflation alone brought major pay cuts for grad student workers, some of the most precarious workers at Temple. So TUGSA is fighting for a 50 percent pay increase in the first year, with 6 percent increases each of the three subsequent years, along with subsidies for childcare and for transportation. 

For its part, Temple is flush with cash. In 2020-2021, the most recent year for which public data is available, Temple made about $165,000,000 in profit, about $80,000,000 more than the previous year. The president alone makes about $1 million a year. It’s in this context that the bosses are laying off adjuncts en masse and demanding huge pay cuts from graduate students.

Temple Bosses Threaten Healthcare and International Students

Temple University bosses are refusing to negotiate. They’re offering 2-percent wage increases in the first year of the new contract and fractions of that for the next few years. In other words, Temple’s administrators are demanding massive pay cuts after inflation — and they’re refusing to discuss any other issues.

Now, the university’s bosses have opened the floodgates on union busting. Their union-busting playbook comes from their lawyers at Morgan Lewis,the same firm the Philly Art Museum hired in their failed fight against the museum union.

Temple’s administration is threatening to strip grad students of their health insurance, and threatening international students by suggesting they could be deported for striking (this is not true: international students have the same rights to participate in union activity). They’re also asking undergraduates to report any TAs that strike. They’ve set up a new union-busting website and they’re directing students there.

But that flood of union-busting alone is proof of the power a strike would have on the university. In fact, Temple recently negotiated a deal with the university’s nurse’s union — probably a sign that they feared a strike across both bargaining units that could link up. 

Real Power to Win

One of the main reasons a strike at TUGSA Temple could be hugely disruptive — and win major concessions — is its leverage. 

Temple is just weeks away from finals. The university can’t function without graduate student workers submitting grades. It’s the same reason 48,000 UC graduate student workers are ready to start striking on Monday.

Another reason the strike could wield major power is the potential for other Temple unions to join in. 

My own union, TAUP, organizes 2,000 of the teachers and librarians across the university. In other words, TAUP would add major weight to the scales of the fight, and could be the difference when it comes to wringing major concessions from the administration. 

But our union leaders in TAUP are walking on eggshells. The union leadership emailed us that we should be prepared to cross the picket line to fill in for graduate students’ classes if necessary. That leadership is trying to toe the legal line — like the “no strike” clause in our contract — in fear of reprisals. 

But for the sake of our own union, we have to fight side by side with TUGSA. TAUP is already in a contract negotiation year. Already, the bosses are flexing their muscles, firing adjuncts en masse. The chances of a good deal at this point are tiny. But if grad workers win — like with major wage increases outpacing inflation — it raises the floor for us, and makes a far better new contract possible. If the grad students don’t win, the university’s bosses will be all the bolder in attacking us.  And crucially, no-strike clauses are designed to do exactly this: to stop workers from using our power together to win. 

Our real power to stand in solidarity will almost definitely have to come from below, from rank-and-filers who organize ourselves across our bargaining units. Those rank-and-filers could meet up and coordinate with TUGSA and with undergrads, and creatively find all sorts of ways to refuse to cross the picket lines. 

That could mean any number of things. Solidarity between teachers and TUGSA could mean outright, coordinated walkouts and wildcat striking. TAUP members could also refuse to scab by “teaching” grad students’ class, but simply having class “outside” — where the picket lines happen to be. And it could mean “working to rule”: if TAUP members are told to scab, we have the legal right to negotiate what that means. Negotiations could be demanded immediately, and dragged out indefinitely, during class time. But we will have to organize ourselves and link across bargaining units to take these steps.

Undergrad students will have a big role to play in all this. The Temple administration is trying to weaponize them against TUGSA, making them informants and strike breakers who blame grad workers for striking. But students have nothing to gain by siding with a massive, and massively expensive, Temple bureaucracy. Temple’s bosses are increasing tuition even as Temple makes enormous profits year-on-year. This tuition pays for a president who makes over a million a year; a few dozen deans and vice presidents that collectively make millions; and massive building projects that help the leaders’ prestige and displace the majority-Black surrounding neighbors but do little for students. 

In fact, undergrads can play a decisive role in supporting a strike. At Columbia and Barnard, for example, undergrads organized en masse to use their meal cards to bring food to the picket lines.

But graduate student workers are perfectly situated — with TAUP allies — to win over the students to the strike. We see them in class two or three times a week and can invite them to rallies and picket lines. 

What’s Next?

As a strike looms, a question does too: How can TUGSA and TAUP link up, and win over the students as allies, too? How can we  coordinate and organize ourselves to build strong TUGSA pickets and stop people from scabbing?

One option — which strikers have often used — is open, outdoor meetings or assemblies at the picket lines each day. Those would be easy places where students and rank-and-filers of different unions could “plug into” the struggle. They’d be places where those different sectors of campus could organize ourselves and coordinate our efforts, figure out how to mobilize more people, strengthen the pickets, and find ways to stop workers and students from crossing them.

Now is the time for every TU union, and every TU union member, to link up, win over our students, and get ready to stand shoulder to shoulder with TUGSA on the picket lines.

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