Tres crisis del capitalismo Todos somos Asotrecal 12

Workers and oppressed peoples of the world unite!

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Sept. 6, 2012

Vol. 54, No. 35

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Stop Wall St.s war on women

Independent ghtback can stop attacks
By Kathy Durkin When U.S. Rep. Todd Akin, a Republican Senate candidate, stated that women dont become pregnant from legitimate rape, he insulted all women, especially survivors and victims of sexual assaults. Akins misogynistic remarks defy scientific fact. Virulent anti-abortion forces deliberately promote this misinformation to try to stop legal abortions and government funding for them in cases of rape. Akin repeated the anti-abortion propaganda espoused by Dr. John Willke, a former leader of the so-called National Right to Life Committee, who deceitfully postulates that women falsely report rape to obtain abortions. The right wing outrageously seeks to decide what is real rape and to blame women if their traumas arent legitimate. Moreover, they callously lack sympathy for survivors of sexual assaults, including statutory and date rape, all of which leave longlasting scars. Republican vice-presidential candidate Paul Ryan and Akin have colluded in Congress to try to redefine rape, so that Medicaid would fund fewer abortions for poor women. This is a reactionary period during the worst global economic crisis since the 1930s. Wall Street seeks to solve its crisis by transferring even more wealth from working and poor people to the banks, including by stripping every government program that peoples movements won and millions need. The right wing is unleashing vile demagogy in its ideological, political and economic war on women, workers, immigrants, people of color, and lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender communities. While the superrich are trying to grab everything they can and not pay taxes they are scapegoating recipients of government benefits which they blame for the budget deficit and are targeting lowincome and oppressed women. Right-wing pundits and politicians are emboldened in slandering women to whip up their reactionary base to garner votes for the GOP RomneyRyan presidential slate. They want to demolish Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and other social programs, and aim to overturn womens right to equal pay and more. Their platform proposes a constitutional amendment banning all abortions, with no rape or incest exceptions, and which could undo contraceptive rights. But what about the Democrats? Yet, can women put their trust in the Democrats to fight back? Can we forget Democratic President Jimmy Carter saying, Life isnt fair, when he signed into law the Hyde Amendment in 1977, banning Medicaid funding of abortions? Pro-choice activists fought to win exceptions for rape, incest and to save a womans life, even though reactionaries unsuccessfully pushed the bogus forcible rape issue to curtail federal abortion funding. This law has been used to deny millions of low-income women safe medical procedures. What about President Bill Clinton, a Democrat, who unleashed a war on poor women when he gutted Aid to Families with Dependent Children in 1996 and cut $55 billion from essential social programs? This act further impoverished countless Continued on page 9

March on Wall Street South SPECIAL SECTION

Labor & racism Monroe, N.C., then & now Southern Workers Assembly Undocubus heads to Charlotte Youth & students build march Events schedule Fighting Bank of Americas foreclosures WWP message to marchers
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Workers incomes plunge

RNC & Bank of America targets of protest

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Despite tropical storm and hurricane warnings, and the postponement of the Republican National Convention, some 1,000 protesters came out Aug. 26 and 27 to protest the reactionary Mitt RomneyPaul Ryan ticket. Read more coverage in an upcoming issue of Workers World.
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SOUTH AFRICA Miners struggle

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IRAN Hosts Non-Aligned meet

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Sept. 6, 2012

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MICHIGAN

WORKERS WORLD

LGBTQ community is Hungry 4 Equality

By Martha Grevatt Detroit David Garcia, executive director of Affirmations, Detroits lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer community center, went on a 24-hour hunger strike on July 30. He sat in an armchair near the centers street-facing window. Garcia was followed by seven other community center leaders from the African-American LGBTQ support center, KICK; Detroit Latinoz; and five centers in other Michigan cities. These eight launched the Community Center Networks Hungry 4 Equality campaign to raise public awareness of the discrimination LGBTQ people face in Michigan. The state has some of the most hateful legislation in the country. An Equality Rights Hall of Shame profiles six prominent bigots. CCN plans to continue the campaign for 100 days until Election Day with a new volunteer fasting in the window for 24 hours every day. There is no shortage of volunteers. This writer was told that to be an official striker she would have to sign up soon, as most of the slots were taken. The hunger strikes website describes how antiLGBTQ oppression manifests itself in Michigan. A worker can be legally fired, evicted and denied public accommodation based on their sexuality or gender identity/expression. The right to marry and/or to adopt children is denied. House Bill 4470, passed in January, denies domestic partner benefits to city workers, even in cities that previously provided them. This anti-democratic bill nullified decisions of elected city officials or, as in Kalamazoo, the voters to give all employees equal benefits. Pending legislation includes HB 5039, which would block city ordinances that bar anti-LGBTQ discrimination; Senate Bill 518/HB 5040, which would allow students in university counseling programs to refuse to counsel clients based on moral or religious grounds; and SB 975, which would allow employers, health care providers and insurance companies to deny services under a moral exemption. In the Hall of Shame are three state legislators Jase Bolger, David Agema and Tom McMillan along with Michigan Attorney General Bill Schuett; Troy, Mich., Mayor Janice Daniels; and Gary Glenn, state president of the American Family Association. Bolger gained international notoriety for silencing two female state representatives who used the words vagina and vasectomy in a House debate on reproductive rights. In addition to backing the above-mentioned bills, Agema proposed legislation to eliminate state funding for HIV/AIDS services and use the savings for airport maintenance. Schuette defended Public Act 297, which denied domestic partner benefits to state workers, and wants to prevent transgender drivers from having their gender identity listed on their licenses. Daniels who will face a recall election in November drew public ire for using a bigoted slur, writing on Facebook that she wanted to throw away her I love New York bag because the state recognized same-sex marriage. Glenns AFA is classified as a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center. He campaigned vociferously against anti-bullying legislation designed to protect LGBTQ and all schoolchildren. What will defeat ignorance WW spoke to hunger striker Charlie Erickson, from Dayton, Ohio, and residing temporarily in metro Detroit. Im from out of state but those same laws are similar in other states, the young activist explained. The marriage laws, the ability to freely express myself, having fear of being fired, not having the same rights as straight people is very important. This is the least I can do. I feel lucky today to be born in this era, but thats due to struggles such as these. Its just about reaching out to people, making relationships. One of the main things that brings people out of ignorance is that they know someone who is LGBT, Erickson concluded. In fact, many Michigan workers have been brought out of ignorance by their LGBTQ family members, friends and coworkers. The Hall of Shamers dont speak for the majority. An example would be the jury that awarded $4.5 million to University of Michigan student activist Chris Armstrong. Armstrong sued former Michigan Assistant Attorney General Andrew Shirvell for defamation and harassment after Shirvell repeatedly slandered, threatened and abused him online and on campus. On his Chris Armstrong Watch blog, Shirvell labeled Armstrong a viciously militant homosexual activist who mocked Christians. Armstrongs attorney, Deborah Gordon, described the jury as a diverse group of people from different ethnic and religious backgrounds whose consensus was that this was defamation, unprotected by freedom of speech. (Between The Lines, Aug. 17) The fasters have spotters, people who accompany them to make sure they are okay during the fast. Commenting as a high school student, Charlies spotter Bridget said, if there is more activism among youth, then the future can change faster for the better.

this week ...

In the U.S.
Stop Wall St.s war on women. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 RNC & Bank of America targets of protest . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 LGBTQ community is Hungry 4 Equality . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 Why incomes plunged during capitalist recovery. . . . . . . . 3 New Yorkers rally for paid sick time . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 Chicago teachers seek good contract . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 Activists refuse plea deal . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 Vigil protests cop killing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 Cops snu out young lives. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 NYC cops shoot 10 during morning rush . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9 Immigrant youth targets of new racist edict. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9 UNAC condemns threats against Syria, Iran . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11

March on Wall St. South

Labor, racism & organizing the South . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 1962 and 2012 Two trips to Monroe, N.C. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 Organizing for Southern Workers Assembly . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6 Undocubus heads for N. Carolina protests. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6 Why you should join the 11% . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6 Activists build Southern march . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7 Actions set vs. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8 Bank of America gets ongoing federal bailout. . . . . . . . . . . . 8

Around the world

Unrest in mines after Marikana massacre . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10 Tijuana meeting on ght for education, public jobs . . . . . 10 Non-Aligned Movement meets in Iran, de es U.S. . . . . . . . 11

Editorials
Stay in the streets!. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8

Noticias En Espaol
Tres crisis del capitalismo . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12 Todos somos Asotrecal . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12

Workers World 55 West 17 Street New York, N.Y. 10011 Phone: 212.627.2994 E-mail: ww@workers.org Web: www.workers.org Vol. 54, No. 35 Sept. 6, 2012 Closing date: Aug. 28, 2012 Editor: Deirdre Griswold Technical Editor: Lal Roohk Managing Editors: John Catalinotto, LeiLani Dowell, Leslie Feinberg, Kris Hamel, Monica Moorehead, Gary Wilson West Coast Editor: John Parker Contributing Editors: Abayomi Azikiwe, Greg Butterfield, Jaimeson Champion, G. Dunkel, Fred Goldstein, Teresa Gutierrez, Larry Hales, Berta Joubert-Ceci, Cheryl LaBash, Milt Neidenberg, Bryan G. Pfeifer, Betsey Piette, Minnie Bruce Pratt, Gloria Rubac Technical Staff: Sue Davis, Shelley Ettinger, Bob McCubbin, Maggie Vascassenno Mundo Obrero: Carl Glenn, Teresa Gutierrez, Berta Joubert-Ceci, Donna Lazarus, Michael Martnez, Carlos Vargas Supporter Program: Sue Davis, coordinator Copyright 2011 Workers World. Verbatim copying and distribution of articles is permitted in any medium without royalty provided this notice is preserved. Workers World (ISSN-1070-4205) is published weekly except the first week of January by WW Publishers, 55 W. 17 St., N.Y., N.Y. 10011. Phone: 212.627.2994. Subscriptions: One year: $30; institutions: $35. Letters to the editor may be condensed and edited. Articles can be freely reprinted, with credit to Workers World, 55 W. 17 St., New York, NY 10011. Back issues and individual articles are available on microfilm and/or photocopy from University Microfilms International, 300 Zeeb Road, Ann Arbor, Mich. 48106. A searchable archive is available on the Web at www.workers.org. A headline digest is available via e-mail subscription. Subscription information is at workers.org/email.php. Periodicals postage paid at New York, N.Y. POSTMASTER: Send address changes to

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Page 3

Why incomes plunged during capitalist recovery

By Fred Goldstein The mass of the people fell back financially during the latest so-called capitalist recovery even more than they did during the crisis of 2007 to 2009. A Sentier Research LLC analysis of U.S. Census Bureau data shows that median household income in the U.S. fell 2.7 percent during the crisis that began in December 2007 and officially ended in June 2009. But household income fell 4.8 percent almost double that since the downturn through June 2012. The Sentier report was written by two former Census Bureau analysts. (bloomberg.com, Aug. 23) Both younger and older workers have been hit hard, with the Black population hit hardest. Those between ages 25 and 34 had a median income decline of 8.9 percent and those between 55 and 64 had a 9.7 percent decline. The Black population overall had an 11.1 percent decline. The median household income was $54,916 in December 2007, when the crisis began. As of June, it was $50,964. So this measure of income has fallen almost $4,000, or 7.2 percent, since the crisis began. And there is no end in sight. The Pew Research Center recently issued a 140-page report entitled The Lost Decade of the Middle Class. The study documented that this past decade has been the first since the Great Depression in which income steadily declined, without any letup, from 2000 to 2010. The report uses the term middle class for the mass of working-class households which had incomes between $39,000 and $118,000. This use of middle class as an income category obscures the defining characteristic of the exploited working class that it works for wages and sells its labor to the bosses which constitutes the vast majority of households. With the official unemployment rate staying above 8 percent and the total unemployment rate including those who have stopped looking for work and those forced into part-time jobs at over 17 percent, there are 25 to 30 million unemployed in the U.S. Attacks on workers: Givebacks & robots The studies are silent on what is behind this drop in household income. The capitalists are recovering, but for the workers this is a long-term, endless jobless recovery. And the bosses are using high unemployment to attack workers wages and benefits. Caterpillar workers, for example, were just forced into taking a six-year wage freeze and big benefit givebacks in one of the greatest setbacks for the labor movement since the crisis began. The bosses are not only attacking workers wages through giveback contracts and increased exploitation. The employers have used the crisis to escalate the development and installation of advanced robots to replace workers altogether. It is a law of the profit system and capitalist development that each capitalist seeks to defeat its rivals by lowering labor costs and increasing profits. Robotization in the digital age is a principal means of technological attack on the workers. The Aug. 18 New York Times gave a few examples in the recent article Skilled Work, Without the Worker. Flextronics near San Francisco has an assembly line that runs 24 hours a day, seven days a week, at which robots do all the lifting and almost all the precise work in turning out solar panels. Humans are left to do some trimming and fastening. Vision technology enables giant machines to move rapidly over the skin of widebody Boeing commercial jets and make precise rivets. Earthbound Farms in California has robot arms with suction cups that package lettuce. Each robot arm replaces two to five workers. Philips Electronics, the giant transnational Dutch firm, installed giant glass cages at its plant in Drachten. Video cameras above the cages guide robot arms to pick parts and assemble them. The arms bend wires within millimetric accuracy, set toothpick-thin spindles in tiny holes, grab miniature plastic gears and set them in housings, and snap pieces of plastic into place. The cages replace hundreds and hundreds of workers. Tesla Motors has a plant in Fremont, Calif., with 8 to 10-feet-tall robots that can change their own hands to be able to perform welding, riveting, bonding and installing. This is a huge advance over singlefunction robots in most industrial plants. The largest grocer in the U.S., C&S in Newburgh, N.Y., has installed 128 rover robots that race along tracks at 25 miles per hour to retrieve or drop off items. Each rover is connected to a central computer and races toward its destination on command. The operation also has robot arms that have the grace and dexterity of a skilled supermarket bagger to operate on cases of food. Technology and capitalist overproduction Technology under capitalism, instead of being a blessing to lift the burden of labor from workers, is a curse, used by the bosses to lay off more workers and intensify exploitation. This race by the capitalist corporations and groupings to shed labor is going on behind the scenes across the globe. Foxconn in China, which employs more than 1 million workers, is planning to install 1 million robots. This is a worldwide trend in capitalism that can only be stopped by the massive intervention of the working class. The spread of job-killing technology is making the skills of even low-skilled workers obsolete. It is leaving a generation of youth entering the labor market to face unemployment or dead-end jobs. It is putting more and more pressure on unions as well as on the mass of the unorganized working class. Furthermore, overproduction is occurring because all the productivity increases stemming from robotization and automation have created piles of goods that cannot be sold for a profit. That is why the U.S. economy is on the brink of another downturn. That is why the British economy is now in a downturn. The projection for the German economy is for contraction as well. Greece and all of southern Europe are in crisis. And China, Brazil, India and the hundreds of millions of workers in the developing world are faced with insecurity, low wages and new waves of unemployment. This development is not just an aberration. Karl Marx explained the general law of capitalist accumulation, which dictates that the capitalist class as a whole must use greater and greater technology to get rid of workers and to lower wages. This law means capitalist stagnation, recession and depression without letup. The latest reports on income decline, unemployment and underemployment, and the jobless recovery show that capitalism as an economic system is reaching a dead end. Classwide ghtback needed But Marx also indicated the way out in a famous address on the future of the trade unions to the First International in Geneva in 1866. In this speech he actually dealt with the type of crisis now facing the workers, immigrants and all oppressed people, not only in the U.S. but around the world. Marx had a sweeping vision that has never been more urgent for the working class to adopt. Marxs address is quoted as it appears in the book Low-Wage Capitalism by this author: Apart from their original purpose, they [the unions] must now learn to act deliberately as organizing centers of the working class in the broad interest of its complete emancipation. They must aid every social and political movement tending in that direction. Considering themselves as acting as the champions of the whole working class, they cannot fail to enlist the non-society men [the unorganized men and women FG] into their ranks. They must look carefully after the interests of the worst paid trades, such as agricultural laborers, rendered powerless by exceptional circumstances. They must convince the world at large that their efforts, far from being narrow and selfish, aim at the emancipation of the downtrodden millions. Karl Marx, Instructions for the Delegates of the Provisional General Council, Geneva Congress of the First International, September 1866. Nothing could better speak to the needs of the labor movement, the working class movement, and what the goals of the new revolutionary generation should be. The old form of class organization and the old method of class organizing in which 60-plus different labor federations operate in competition with each other or in isolation, each seeking to protect the interests only of its own members in disregard of the working class as a whole and with passivity in the face of racism and persecution of immigrant workers, women, lesbian, gay, bi, trans, queer people that form of class organization is obsolete and self-defeating. This antiquated form of struggle allows the bosses to divide us and to pick us off one at a time. It fails to marshal the true strength of the multinational working class. It means that the multinational working class fights with both hands tied behind its back. This orientation allows the entire labor movement to stand passively by as the Caterpillar Corporation delivers a near-lethal blow to the workers of the Machinists union, while they are left to stand alone against a predatory transnational giant. The policy of collaboration with the Democratic Party as opposed to class struggle allows the labor movement to engage in stalling tactics and futile electoral diversions after, for example, the workers and students, supported by the community, heroically seized the state Capitol in Wisconsin to defend public workers in 2011. It allows the labor movement to take a hands-off attitude to the racist murder of Trayvon Martin, the railroading to prison of Cece McDonald, and so many other racist, sexist and bigoted atrocities. This narrow outlook permits not putting up resistance to militarism and war while vital human services are slashed. The only way to fight back in this age of globalization, technological assault, and divide and conquer is to organize and mobilize on a classwide basis and to break out of the deadly, no-win framework of the capitalist profit system. Goldstein is the author of Low-Wage Capitalism and Capitalism at a Dead End. More information is available at www.lowwagecapitalism.com; the author can be reached at fgoldstein@ workers.org.

New Yorkers rally for paid sick time

A rally at New Yorks City Hall on Aug. 22 demanded paid sick time for workers at small businesses in the city. Organizers paid tribute to a Brooklyn, N.Y., grocery worker who died from cancer after not being able to miss work without pay. Felix Trinidad was just 34 the father of two young children when he succumbed to cancer after not seeking treatment for chronic stomach pain. His spouse, Anastacia Gonzalez, told the crowd He was so worried about taking time off of work that he didnt go see a physician. She said Trinidad was afraid of losing his job at a supermarket. A bill before the City Council would require businesses employing 20 or more workers to give them each nine paid sick days per year. Billionaire Mayor Michael Bloomberg opposes the measure, but a recent poll showed 73 percent of New York voters approve of it. (Associated Press, Aug. 23) Report and photo by Anne Pruden

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Chicago teachers seek good contract

Obamas former chief of staff.) When the CTU called for a strike vote Since the third week of August, the Chi- this past June, 90 percent of its members cago Teachers Union has been practicing voted and 98 percent of those voted yes. The legislature added days to the school how to conduct a strike. About a third of Chicagos public schools those in so- year, two hours to each school day and called track E start in mid-August, removed the CTUs right to bargain over and the CTU has been conducting infor- such issues. The Chicago Public Schools mational pickets in front of these schools system on its own withheld a budgeted 4 percent wage increase because, it claimed, before and after classes. The pickets explain to the commu- it was out of money. When the CPS tried, in the middle nity that small class size, early childhood education, school counselors and social of the year, to increase the school day, workers, and well-maintained facilities the union pointed out that such a major not only help teachers teach, they help change needed planning. Then an arbitrator agreed with the union that such a mastudents learn. The web page ctunet.com/deserve de- jor increase in working hours should be tails the unions ideas of what students compensated with a major wage increase on the order of 15 to 20 percent. deserve. At that point, the CPS and the CTU Chicago Mayor Rahm Emmanuel and his billionaire astroturf backers (astro- came to an interim agreement to hire turfing is promoting political change that 450 new teachers to supply students with benefits corporate interests under the guise physical education, arts, music and major of being a grass-roots organization) tried foreign languages. The head of the school board, Jeanto stop the CTU from striking by getting the state legislature to pass a law requiring Claude Brizard, claims that the longer at least 75 percent of CTU members to vote school day is working well at track E yes before they could authorize a strike. schools now in session, while Karen LewThe mayors supporters bragged that this is, president of the CTU, says the longer was a higher percentage than any public school day isnt working and if we just union had ever gotten for a strike vote in leave it up to these guys, it will never be a Chicago. (Emmanuel is President Barack better school day. (Chicagoist, Aug. 24) A By G. Dunkel number of blog posts from local activists support Lewis. No race to top Arne Duncan, the current secretary of education, was formerly the CPSs chief executive officer. He developed his ideas on the value of competition and closing underperforming schools during the seven years he ran the CPS, resulting in Race to the Top (Obamas answer to George W. Bushs No Child Left Behind). When Vice President Joe Biden spoke at the American Federation of Teachers biannual convention in Detroit at the end of July, the CTU conducted a very careful protest. Their delegates and a few allies held up 8 -by-11-inch yellow pieces of paper with the slogan STOP RACE to the TOP. The leaflet the CTU handed out to delegates at the end of Bidens speech makes the point, Education funding shouldnt be a race with winners and losers. Fully fund education for all. CTU President Lewis came in first in the voting for the AFTs executive board, which was held after the demonstration. In a CTU-produced video called AstroTurf on YouTube, the CTU draws the connection between its local struggles and the nationwide campaign to privatize education, make oodles of money and destroy public service unions: Teachers, parents and community supporters in Chicago have fought valiantly marching, filling auditoriums at hearings and parent meetings, even occupying a school and taking over a school board meeting. But now we find ourselves facing new opponents national education privatizers, backed by some of the nations wealthiest people. They are running radio ads, increasing press attacks, and mounting a PR campaign to discredit the CTU and the benefits of public education. If the CTU manages to maintain its ties to the community and the solid unity it has developed, it has a good chance to win its local struggle and push back this national campaign against public education and unions.

Activists refuse plea deal

Vigil protests cop killing

BALTIMORE

Representatives of the Baltimore Peoples Assembly gathered for a vigil and protest in front of the boarded-up house that Rudy Bell Sr., a homeless veteran, had made his home at 1607 W. Lexington Street. This was also where he was shot to death by Baltimore city police on Aug. 18. Bell is the 10th person killed by Baltimore police since the beginning of this year. Neigh- Friend of Rudolph Bell Sr. stands with Rev. Cortly CD Withbors said he suffered from erspoon schizophrenia. A neighbormicrophone displaying a handwritten pehood resident, who knew Mr. Rudy, as he tition of those who protested his killing. was affectionately called, spoke from the Report & photo by Sharon Black

Supporters defend charged activists.

WW PHOTO: CHRIS RYKIEL

By Steven Ceci Baltimore Two representatives of the Baltimore Peoples Assembly, the Rev. Cortly CD Witherspoon of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference and Sharon Black, an organizer for the All Peoples Congress, have refused a plea deal to do 10 hours of community service. The two activists were arrested for trespass on Aug. 6 at the Unity March to Stop Police Terror and for Jobs and Recreation Centers. Their trial is now set for Oct. 4. Witherspoon and Black marched with about 100 other people at the Aug. 6 march from East Baltimore to City Hall. Participants included victims and families of police abuse and killings, community activists advocating for jobs and recreation centers, and other groups, including the Occupy movement. At City Hall, the two activists, acting on behalf of the Baltimore Peoples Assembly, entered the building to present Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake a letter outlining what was voted on by the 142 representatives who attended the June 30 Peoples Assembly. The letter detailed a call for community control of police; his cousin, Hilton Vega who was also killed were shot 22 times, 11 in the back, by police detectives Patrick Brosnan and James Crowe. Allene Person and Josefa Villanueva attended. Timur Person, Persons son, was killed by police in the Bronx on Dec. 13, 2006, two days before his 20th birthday. Villanuevas son, George Villanueva, was framed by Hines for allegedly pushing policeman Alain Schaberger off a stoop to his death, an act Villanueva didnt do.

Cops snu out young lives

By Stephen Millies Brooklyn, N.Y. Nicholas Naquan Heyward Jr. was just 13 years old when he was killed by Robocop Brian George on Sept. 27, 1994. Nicholas, an honor student at Nathan Hale Middle School, was playing in a stairwell at the Gowanus Houses where he lived in Brooklyn, N.Y. The 18th annual Nicholas WW PHOTO: ANNE PRUDEN Heyward Jr. Day of Remem- From left, Margarita Rosario, Josefa Villanueva and brance was held on Aug. 25. The Nicholas Heyward Sr. Police Brutality, which helped build the next day Nicholas would have Day of Remembrance along with the been 31. People gathered in Nicholas Naquan Nicholas Naquan Heyward Jr. Memorial Heyward Jr. Park, next to the Gowa- Foundation. Joining Heyward was Juanita Young, nus Houses. Brooklyn District Attorney Charles Hines refused to even present a whose 23-year-old son, Malcolm Fergucase to the grand jury against the shooter son, was killed by a Bronx cop on March cop. But the people in the neighborhood 1, 2000. Police later tried to frame Young, forced the Parks Department to rename whos legally blind, for allegedly throwing a box of cake mix at them after they intheir park after their young hero. Nicholas Heyward Sr. told people, A vaded her home and beat her up. Margarita Rosario told how the pain of child is supposed to bury his parents. The parents arent supposed to bury their losing her son, Anthony Rosario, will nevchild. Heyward has never stopped fight- er go away. He was killed by two of foring for justice since his son was killed. mer New York Mayor Rudolph Giulianis Hes been a mainstay of Parents Against bodyguards on Jan. 12, 1995. Rosario and

the firing and adequate charging of police who have shot, killed or brutalized community members; and other key issues, including providing jobs and keeping recreation centers and fire stations open. Black and Witherspoon requested a meeting with the mayor and asked for someone from her office to meet with them regarding these emergency issues or to agree to an expedited meeting date, considering that recreation centers were to close at the end of the week and that the problem of police terror is acute. As a result, both organizers were charged with trespass, taken to Central Booking and jailed until they saw a court commissioner the following day. Supporters meanwhile continued to rally outside City Hall. Both Witherspoon and Black assert that they are innocent, which is why they refused to plead guilty or to accept a plea deal. Their charging documents state that they were on the property of the mayor and City Council. Both see it as ironic since City Hall is the property of the people. Black and Witherspoons refusal to take a plea deal was met with cheers from the group that had gathered in their support for this preliminary court appearance. Michael Ojeda and Carmen Ojeda told how their 11-year-old daughter, Briana Ojeda, died of an asthma attack on Aug. 27, 2010, while a nearby cop did nothing. Detective Philip Atkins shot and killed 23-year-old Shantel Davis while she was in a car in Brooklyn on June 14. Davis sister, Natasha Duncan, and uncle, Harold Davis, told the crowd that Atkins whos had six federal civil rights suits filed against him lied when he said his Continued on next page

March on Wall St. South S M AS H R A C I S M

By Saladin Muhammad U.S. labor movement need to be heard and seen challenging this war on Black America, which is largely a war on the Black working class. This war is destroying communities, institutions and lives. In addition to promoting fear among whites, what is often unstated and downplayed by the term racial profiling is that it seeks to promote white supremacy a sense of white privilege and national chauvinism that has been structured in the economic, social and political culture of U.S. democracy to align the white working class with the capitalist elites and system. Racial profiling is part of capitalisms neoliberal strategy of forcing down wages, eliminating pensions and causing economic and social dislocation, which have created massive unemployment, homelessness, and gentrification for millions of mainly Black and working people of color. Racial profiling turns the dislocated into commodities for the prison-industrial complex. There are more than 2 million mainly Black and working-class people of color incarcerated in the U.S. prison system. They are a super-exploited part of the U.S. working class. Vicky Pelaez reports at Global Research, At least 37 states have legalized the contracting of prison labor by private corporations that mount their operations inside state prisons. The list of such companies contains the cream of U.S. corporate society. While some states pay the minimum wage, deducting for food, clothing and rent, In privately-run prisons, [workers] receive as little as 17 cents per hour for a maximum of six hours a day [or] $20 per month. (March 10, 2008) Without a race and class analysis of the attacks on the working class, the labor movement looks at these attacks in a narrow and economist way, one that prevents it from being seen as an organization that seeks to unite and empower the broad working class. Labor movement must organize the South The attacks on the trade unions are part of the corporate strategy to dismantle organizations that provide an organized and democratic framework for uniting and empowering the multinational and multiracial working class to resist these attacks. Capital recognizes that the trade unions, in order to survive and grow, must become part of the broader social movement that is challenging the corporate attacks throughout society and internationally. The campaign in Wisconsin to recall Gov. [Scott] Walker points out the failure of the labor movement to struggle against racism as one of the major weaknesses in this important campaign. Reportedly, 39 percent of union households in Wisconsin voted in support of Gov. Walker partly in response to the racist messaging of the Walker campaign. There is also something seriously wrong when the U.S. national labor movement fails to make a concerted effort to organize labor in the South, especially when the U.S. economy has shifted a major part

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labor, racism & organizing the South

The following are edited excerpts from an Aug. 25 article by Saladin Muhammad, of the Southern International Worker Justice Campaign, entitled U.S. labor movement must struggle against racism and white supremacy to rebuild its strength! As the U.S. and global economic crisis intensifies, the scapegoating of the most oppressed sections of the working class also intensifies. Racial profiling is a polite way of saying that Black and working-class people of color are being targeted by state and vigilante repression. It is important that we recognize this targeting as a major part of the capitalist strategy to divide the working class and to recreate major and long-term antagonisms to prolong the life of the capitalist system. Capitalist crisis amounts to a war on Black America The murder of young Trayvon Martin in Sanford, Fla., by a racist white vigilante and the role of the Sanford Police Department and local and state governments and the use of the Stand Your Ground law in trying to protect the killer and justify his racist act have triggered a growing movement of resistance. Malcolm X Grassroots Movement reports, Every 36 hours starting from January 1, 2012, until July 9, 2012, a Black person has been killed by the police inside of the U.S. The voices and actions of the of its manufacturing to this region. The South is also the location of a major concentration of direct foreign investments. Labors failure to call for repeal of the right-to-work laws in the South a region where they are the most concentrated, and where labor is the least organized and the most exploited also reflects an historical bias by the U.S. labor movement, which is linked to its failure to mount a serious struggle against racism and white supremacy within its ranks and throughout society. Thus, the South as a region has been victimized by a form of racial profiling and national chauvinism, which has expressed itself and aligned itself with U.S. foreign policies against other oppressed peoples of color throughout the world. If the U.S. labor movement is to rebuild its strength during this period of major economic crisis, it must take up the struggle against racism and white supremacy/ national chauvinism, not as an abstract debate, but as part of its social, political and organizing agenda. Black workers are taking the lead in trying to build a movement to organize the South. Both dominant corporate political parties are holding their national conventions in Southern states because they understand not only their critical role in the presidential elections, but also in the U.S. and global economy. Support the Southern Workers Assembly as a step toward building a Southern Labor Alliance and a mass social movement to organize the South.

1962 and 2012 two trips to Monroe, n.c.

By Deirdre Griswold Monroe, N.C. What has changed? What has remained the same? Thats what we asked ourselves as the four of us two African Americans, two whites piled into a car in mid-August and drove to Monroe from Charlotte, N.C. We had been helping to build the March on Wall Street South taking place during the Democratic National Convention in early September. Wed also participated in a one-week school on Marxism attended by a great group of young activists, most from the South. This writer had last been in Monroe in 1962, when it was a hot spot in the Black Freedom struggle. Freedom Riders had come through there the summer before. Most challenging to the racist power strucContinued from page 4 gun accidentally discharged. Every Saturday, theres a march at noon from 38th Street and Church Avenue in Brooklyn to the 67th Precinct to demand justice for Davis. Join the Facebook page Justice4ShantelDavis to get involved in this struggle for justice. City Councilmember Stephen Levin presented a City Council proclamation in honor of Nicholas Naquan Heywood Jr. A representative for the Malcolm X Grassroots Movement spoke about their Cop Watch program. Carl Dix of the Revolutionary Communist Party announced the Blow the Whistle on Stop and Frisk demonstration on Sept. 13. ture was the stand taken by the head of the local NAACP branch, Robert F. Williams, in motivating and organizing for armed self-defense of the Black community. Steve Millies wrote in a 1996 obituary of Williams for Workers World: On too many Saturday nights, KKKers would drive through the Black community, shooting it up. When North Carolina Gov. Luther Hodges did nothing to stop the attacks, Williams and the local NAACP chapter formed a National Rifle Association chapter and trained its members in using firearms. In the summer of 1957, a Klan motorcade attacked the home of NAACP member Dr. Albert E. Perry. An armed defense squad drove them off. Klan Mae Mallory night riding came to a sudden stop in Monroe. Williams also preached what he practiced. He became known nationally for politically defending the right of selfdefense a right that, even though it is acknowledged by law, had in fact been denied the oppressed Black nation. In 1961, racist violence against the Freedom Riders was at its peak. Williams and several others were hit with a bogus charge of kidnapping. One of those indicted was Mae Mallory, whom I had met earlier that year in New York while protesting the assassination of Congo leader Patrice Lumumba. Both Williams and Mallory, in fear of their lives, escaped from Monroe. Williams made it to Cuba and then to China. Decades later, he came back to the

Robert F. Williams

U.S. and the state dropped the phony charges against him. Mallory spent almost two years in jail in Cleveland, where the Monroe Defense Committee carried out a vigorous campaign against her extradition to North Carolina. It was representing the MDC that three of us two Black, one white had driven from New York to Monroe in 1962 to support Williams and Mallory. Twenty- rst century racism Unlike that trip of half a century ago, this year we didnt have to conceal the fact that Blacks and whites were traveling together in the same car. On the approach to Monroe, everything looked different. Where a winding country road had once bordered the town, there was now a new four-lane divided highway flanked by endless chain stores and bank branches. I was looking for something familiar, something to jog my memory. We found it when we got to an older neighborhood next to the railroad tracks. There was the Monroe I remembered from 1962

small, white clapboard houses, now 50 years older but still with neat front lawns. Inside had been only the barest sticks of furniture. At that time, the only jobs Black men could get in the textile mills were as sweepers. The only jobs for Black women were as domestic workers for $15 a week. Today, the mills are shuttered and crumbling. We asked an African-American man in a fish store about jobs. He shook his head, There are no jobs. On the other side of the tracks, the houses are larger, newer, some made of brick. We found the library, a new building with a section on Monroes history. A white librarian told us proudly of being on a march last year to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the Freedom Rides. How much has changed? She lowered her voice. There are still some who wont let go. Those some wield a lot of power. So much so that recent efforts to commemorate enslaved people who died while being forced to serve their masters in the Civil War ran into fierce resistance. The some didnt want any monument to Black people in Union County, N.C., including for those who fought for the Confederacy. There may not be cross-burnings in Monroe today, but the African-American community still knows terror. Its the economic terror of a white boss deciding whether you work or not. And its the police terror that upholds the bosses and fills the jails with people of color. There wont be any post-racial society in the U.S. until this terror has been eradicated. Email: dgriswold@workers.org

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Sept. 6, 2012

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organizing for Southern Workers assembly

By Dante Strobino Charleston, S.C. Labor leaders in Charleston, S.C., hosted a public meeting at the International Longshore Association union hall to build for the Southern Workers Assembly, to be held in Charlotte, N.C., on Sept. 3, the day after the March on Wall Street South. Organized by Donna Dewitt, retired former president of South Carolina AFL-CIO, and hosted by Ken Riley, president of ILA Local 1422 and SC AFL-CIO, this Aug. 9 gathering can be considered a huge step forward for the Southern labor movement. Speakers included Saladin Muhammad, of the Southern International Worker Justice Campaign and retired United Electrical Workers (UE) international representative; Erin McKee, president of Charleston Central Labor Council; Benjamin Lewis, taxi driver and recording secretary with the S.C. Professional Drivers Association; and Chris Nelson, registered nurse at Medical University of South Carolina. Walter Smith, vice president of Mail Handlers Local 334, attended. Speakers highlighted how right-towork-(for-less) laws in the U.S. South make it difficult to organize. Yet workers continue to push forward and find innovative and powerful ways to overcome obstacles and win power on the job. We are caught in the crosshairs of global capital trying to eliminate our jobs. They are now trying to eliminate us with automation, stated Riley, speaking about some of the difficulties the ILA is currently facing in negotiations across the eastern seaboard, particularly in the southern states. Speaking of the need to push the national leadership, Riley said, I would rather be independent and fight the good fight thats needed in the South. We need to get more involved in nontraditional organizing. We need to build independent, strong, fighting organizing campaigns all across the South. Solidarity with Southern workers needed Muhammad spoke about how crucial it is that the entire labor movement understand the importance of organizing the unorganized in the South, a major region of anti-worker reaction which is now spreading throughout the country. When the U.S. labor movement fought against right-to-work laws in Wisconsin, Indiana and Ohio, it did not project a demand to end right-to-work in the South. Muhammad pointed out the long history of struggle in the South against racism and the root of the problem with labor in this country: It began with slavery [and then] Jim Crow that defined relationships of workers to capital. Expanding on the current significance of the area for global capitalist markets and superexploitation with low wages, Muhammad stated: We must understand the role the U.S. South plays in the global economy. Major companies from the United Kingdom, Japan and elsewhere all have concentrations here. Now even major banks are relocating to the South. Bank of America and Wells Fargo have headquarters in Charlotte, N.C. what organizers are calling the Wall Street of the South as they prepare for a major march there before the Democratic National Convention on Sept. 2. We must organize a social justice union movement that is willing to organize agricultural workers, public workers, private workers, hospital workers, workers excluded from national labor protections, into the Southern Workers Assembly, said Muhammad. The Southern Workers Assembly on Sept. 3 will be the next step in forging a genuine Southern labor alliance. It is endorsed by dozens of unions and workers organizations from across the South, including the Food and Commercial Workers, UE and Black Workers for Justice. To learn more about the Southern Workers Assembly, visit southernworker.org or call Saladin Muhammad at 252-314-2363.

MARCH ON WALL STREET SOUTH

undocubus heads for n. carolina protests

Why you should

By Caleb T. Maupin Are the seeds of a communist revolution sprouting up around us? The fury of the youth at Occupy Wall Street, the fearlessness of public workers in Wisconsin and Ohio, the national revulsion against the racist lynching of Trayvon Martin, the overwhelming rejection of right-wing attacks on womens rights, the huge protests against NATO in Chicago, the recent victories in the struggle for lesbian/gay/bisexual/transgender/queer liberation, the mass mobilizations countering the Republican and Democratic conventions these are all signs of bigger, better things ahead. The 99% are in a fighting mood. Elections, police repression and the usual bag of tricks used to slow us down are not working. Rasmussen is a highly respected polling agency, employed by the wealthy ruling elite to gauge public opinion. Last year, it conducted a poll whose results certainly made the super-rich tremble: 11 percent of people in the United States believe that communism is morally superior to capitalism. The U.S. ruling class has nurtured one of the most right-wing ideologies of all the imperialist countries. Why would a section of the population which is constantly deluged with anti-communist propaganda hold this type of opinion? Millions of workers have lost their jobs. Millions of homes have been foreclosed. Youth face astronomical costs for education and little chance of finding decent employment. Racist terror and repression are on the rise. The drive for wider wars continues, while programs serving human

Undocubus travelers stop in Selma, Ala., on their way to DNC protests. Four were arrested Aug. 28 in Tennessee.
CREDIT: UNDOCUBUS ON FACEBOOK

Demanding immigrant rights, undocumented immigrants on a bus tour traveling through Southern states will join the protests around the Democratic National Convention in Charlotte, N.C., on Sept. 1. The Undocubus tour began on July 29 in Phoenix the jurisdiction of racist Sheriff Joe Arpaio and a hotbed of resistance to the states rabid anti-immigrant legislation. The tour will travel through New

Mexico, Colorado, Texas, Louisiana, Alabama, Georgia and Tennessee before arriving in Charlotte. The tours website proclaims: Riding the bus alone is a great risk because of the checkpoints and profiling that have become so common. But the ride is also an arena for mobilizing, where we will build with those who have a story to tell, who have realized the only secure community is

an organized one. We have overcome our fears and are ready to set a new example of courage. Participants are described as students, mothers and fathers, children, people in deportation proceedings, day laborers, and others who continue to face deportation, harassment and death while simply looking for a better life. (nopapersnofear.org) LeiLani Dowell

MarxiSM, reparationS

& the Black Freedom Struggle

Anthology of writings from Workers World newspaper. Edited by Monica Moorehead. Racism, National Oppression & Self-Determination Larry Holmes Black Labor from Chattel Slavery to Wage Slavery Sam Marcy Black Youth: Repression & Resistance LeiLani Dowell The Struggle for Socialism Is Key Monica Moorehead Harriet Tubman, Woman Warrior Mumia Abu-Jamal ILLUSTRATION: SAHU BARRON Domestic Workers United Demand Passage of a Bill of Rights Imani Henry Black & Brown Unity: A Pillar of Struggle for Human Rights & Global Justice! Saladin Muhammad Alabamas Black Belt: Legacy of Slavery, Sharecropping & Segregation Consuela Lee Are Conditions Ripe Again Today? 40th Anniversary of the 1965 Watts Rebellion John Parker Racism & Poverty in the Delta Larry Hales Haiti Needs Reparations, Not Sanctions Pat Chin Available at Amazon.com and bookstores around the country workers.org/reparations

CAPITALISM AT A DEAD END

Job destruction, Overproduction and CRISIS in the High-Tech Era A Marxist View Available soon at Amazon.com

LOW WAGE CAPITALISM

What the new globalized high-tech imperialism means for the class struggle in the U.S. By Fred Goldstein LowWageCapitalism.com

A Marxist analysis of the changing character of the working class by Sam Marcy, with introduction by Fred Goldstein workers.org/Marcy/HighTech/

HIGH TECH, LOW PAY

Books are available at Amazon.com and other bookstores around the country

 POWER

TO THE PEOPLE

workers.org

Sept. 6, 2012

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activists build Southern march

MOWSS activist Phyllis Sones.

Outreach team hitting the streets, Aug. 25.

WW PHOTOS: BRYAN G. PFEIFER

MOWSS volunteer Yen Alcala.

d join the 11%

need are being cut without mercy. Amidst all this suffering, the ultrawealthy 1% sits on top of trillions of dollars while the capitalist system leaves the world in poverty. The planet is heating up, and toxic pollution means almost nothing on Earth is poison-free. Naturally, amid all these problems, some people in the U.S. are coming to understand that there is something wrong with a system where profits are in command.

ry A revolutionactive e youths persp

By Bryan G. Pfeifer Charlotte, N.C. Delegations from across the country are traveling to Charlotte, N.C. otherwise known as Wall Street South to demand a world free of poverty, racism and war. The Coalition to March on Wall Street Souths army of organizers is working day and night to build protests during the Democratic National Convention Sept. 1-6. MOWSS organizers have helped to build a multi-city network of more than 20 organizing centers. They report that the Detroit Moratorium NOW! Coalition has chartered a bus, organizers from Occupy 4 Jobs and other groups are coming in vans from New York City, and activists from the South and elsewhere are joining the protests. For weeks, MOWSS organizers and supporters from many states have been on Charlottes streets distributing thousands of leaflets and posters and attending progressive events, including the Pride Charlotte festival on Aug. 25-26. Theyve helped defend womens health clinics, attended pro-environmental events and gone to city workers worksites and rallies. Elena Everett, of Occupy Durham and a MOWSS Coalition lead organizer, told WW, As an organizer from the South, the process of pulling together these mobilizations in this coalition has been and is inspiring. Its truly a grass-roots, homegrown, Southern-led coalition, and it proves that the peoples movement is alive and well in the South. Everett explained: The South has been historically underrepresented and underresourced. It exists in a legacy of slavery and Jim Crow. Its important for all justice-minded people to understand the importance and significance of our region. We have a third of the entire population of the country living in the South. The working conditions here are the worst in the country. If we really want change in our country, we need to focus on organizing the unorganized and putting forth the resources and solidarity necessary to help Southern organizers organize themselves in their own name. We need to make sure peoples voices are heard, so we need to mobilize and come together. Fighting for liberation Youth and students across North Carolina and beyond are a driving force in this mobilization.

Worsening conditions, growing consciousness

Communism represents the obvious answer. Communism means that banks, giant farms, factories, oil wells and big box stores will be held in common by those who work in them. Peoples power will own and control the commanding heights of the economy. A new government based in community and working-class organizations will replace the current capitalist state. Communism means that the prison system will be torn down. Racist cops will face justice at the hands of the people. Jobs, health care, education and a higher level of human freedom will be guaranteed to all people. This vision is what Karl Marx called the first stage of Communism. It is also called socialism. The Rasmussen poll indicated that to millions of people in the U.S., this sounds great. The fact that 11 percent of the population supports communism is a big step forward. These millions must now be brought together and organized. With coordination, discipline and determination we can push toward a historic victory. We can abolish capitalism, seize power and began constructing a socialist and communist future, right here in what is now the center of world imperialism. Workers World Party calls on all those who are ready for battle to join us. If you are part of the 11 percent, you belong in a fighting Marxist-Leninist organization! Together we can fight so the 99% rule and the 1% is driven out!

Cameron Aviles, 18, a student at Durham Technical Community College, is a peoples poet, member of Occupy Durham and a volunteer MOWSS organizer. Aviles told WW why this march is important: The reason why we march is obvious. Were marching because something is wrong with the world or else people wouldnt be wasting their precious time, sweat and tears to make something this big happen. There will be thousands of us. Thousands of us who could be working. Thousands of us who could be doing homework or studying. Thousands of us who could be spending time with our families. But instead we are bringing our families out to witness and participate in something unprecedented. Fighting for liberation is our job. Lifetime Charlotte resident Bryan Perlmutter is a MOWSS volunteer organizer and a member of the North Carolina State University chapter of Students for a Democratic Society. As he participated in a city workers informational picket at Charlotte City Hall on Aug. 6, he talked to WW about the city and why it was chosen for the DNC: Its evident as you walk around Charlotte that its a city centered around Wells Fargo, Bank of America and Duke Energy. Its clear if you look at political donations and the policies of the Democrats and who theyre really supporting and that it is the big banks, corporations and big utility companies that are passing the burden along to the people. [The Democratic Party] picked this state and specifically this city to prop up the banks and corporations that theyre working for. Added Perlmutter: I see a lot of intersections between the struggles of students and the struggles of workers right now. [I]ts important that we support each other. We have a common theme in that were both being hurt by the banks and corporations, the 1% that are profiting off our education and profiting off the work of city workers and all workers. So its important that we stand together and really come together around our common interests. All our struggles are connected. With solidarity and with support we can join together and overcome the forces that are trying to keep us down. Contact the Coalition to March on Wall Street South: phone 704-266-0362; Twitter @WallStSouth; email info@ wallstsouth.org; go to wallstsouth. org or southernworker.org. Visit the Charlotte Solidarity Center and MOWSS convergence space at 516 E. 15th St.

MARCH ON WALL ST SOUTH

Schedule of EVENTS
Sat Sept 1

Festivaliberacin!
Kicko day-long concert/festival, starting at noon, in cultural space Area 15, 516 E. 15th St. Organized by students, youth, LGBTQ people and immigrants. Features teach-ins, speak-outs, workshops, discussions, spoken word. Cultural performances by Jasiri X, Rebel Diaz, RDACBX and other peoples artists.

Sun Sept 2

WALL STREET SOUTH!

Gathering rally in Frazier Park, 11 a.m., march at 1 p.m. March stops at Bank of America, Wells Fargo, Duke Energy & other 1% entities. Closing rally at Frazier Park. Includes contingents and groupings of anti-war activists, Charlotte city workers, unemployed workers, LGBTQ people, youth, students, women and others. Rally speakers will represent and raise issues of workers and oppressed peoples struggles.

MARCH ON

Mon Sept 3

SOUTHERN WORKERS ASSEMBLY

At Westwood Baptist Church, 4800 Wedgewood Dr., 1-5 p.m. Event will bring together organized and unorganized public and private sector workers from the South and beyond. Aims to build a Southern workers alliance, global solidarity and to overturn racist, anti-worker right-to-work laws. (southernworker.org)

Page 8

March on Wall St. South people before banks

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Sept. 6, 2012

workers.org

Bank of America gets Stay in the streets! ongoing federal bailout

editorial
Republicans and are much more popular with workers and people who suffer oppression based on such things as skin color, gender or sexual identity, or country of birth. But when the housing bubble burst and the banks demanded the government bail them out with trillions of dollars, the current Democratic administration opened the doors of the Treasury. The bankers were not being evicted, losing their jobs and medical care, or forced to survive on food pantries. Theyre bankers. The bailouts were to save their fortunes. We live in a period when capitalism is failing. This economic system has divided society between the 99%, who own little beyond their own personal property, and the 1%, who own everything else. The bosses have no answer for the dilemma they have created: The more productive labor becomes, the more jobs are eliminated and the more people fall into poverty. Workers World is for socialism where the workers, not the billionaires, own the means of production. This will take a titanic struggle by the masses of people who have nothing to lose but their chains. One of those chains is the two-party political system that promises everything but delivers little more than wars, jails and taxes. Jobs, health care, decent housing, schools instead of jails, stopping war and oppression these struggles will be won in the streets, not at the ballot box. By Jerry Goldberg The nationalization of the U.S. mortgage industry by the federal government a takeover implemented by the Democrats and Republicans to bail out Bank of America and other banks at the expense of homeowners and their communities opens the door for activists to demand a reversal of these anti-people policies. The first step in stopping the massive, ongoing foreclosure crisis is to demand that President Barack Obama immediately declare a moratorium to stop all foreclosures and foreclosure-related evictions, and then move to implement a plan to reduce the amount owed on the 11.1 million homes currently underwater to reflect their real value. The Federal Housing Finance Agency was created by Congress through the Housing and Economic Recovery Act of 2008. Under HERA, the FHFA, a government agency, assumed complete control over Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, which at the time were quasi-government corporations that controlled approximately half of all mortgages. Since 2008, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac have bought up trillions of dollars in failing mortgages from investor trusts. This operated as a silent bailout to the banks, with the banks being paid full value on inflated and predatory loans. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac then evicted the homeowners following foreclosures and dumped the homes for a fraction of their value, with taxpayers absorbing the losses. The cost to taxpayers for this practice thus far has been $180 billion, with the Congressional Budget Office estimating the ultimate bailout as $389 billion, while many private estimates are much higher. According to the FHFAs 2012 report to Congress, since the federal takeover of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac was completed in September 2008, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac have guaranteed three out of every four mortgages originated since that date. Mortgages guaranteed by the Federal Housing Authority make up the rest. A complete nationalization of the mortgage industry by the federal government has occurred. Nationalization gives banks big pro ts The federal government pays the banks that originate mortgage loans. Bank of America and other banks, which get zeropercent-interest loans from the Federal Reserve, charge borrowers 4 percent interest, and then pocket the difference when the loans are purchased by the federal government. This practice has resulted in the banks continuing to make record profits. (New York Times, Aug.8) The HERA mandated that the FHFA implement a plan to maximize assistance to homeowners to minimize foreclosures, considering the net present value to taxpayers. The Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008 also known as the $700 billion bank bailout bill similarly mandated the U.S. Treasury to implement loan modification and refinancing programs to aid homeowners. Despite the federal takeover of mortgage loans, the Obama administration has relied on the banks to implement loan modification programs such as the Home Affordable Modification Program, which was trumpeted as a means of preventing

Moratorium on foreclosures needed

he Republican and Democratic parties in this election appear to be arguing over the size of the government. Republicans say it must be shrunk to balance the budget. Democrats counter that mean Republicans want to cut especially those programs meant to help those in need whose numbers increase as the economy sheds jobs. Looking at the question this way is totally misleading. It is not the size of the government that is the problem. It is the social class that controls the government and uses it for its own interests. Seen this way, the difference between the two parties becomes narrow indeed. Both serve the interests of the tiny fraction of 1% who control all the productive wealth of this country and much of the world. No matter which party is in office, the powerful government positions are held by people who have run huge corporations and banks or served them in the courts. Look at all the cabinets of the past 50 years. How many cabinet secretaries, Democrat or Republican, have risen in politics by being bankers, industrialists and corporate lawyers? And how many by clerking in stores, picking crops, working in hospitals, sewing garments or building labor unions? The Democrats claim to represent the middle class, by which they mean workers with stable jobs a shrinking category. They appear to reject the outright racism and snobbery of the

Moratorium leader Vanessa Fluker speaks at Oct. 21 BOA protest in Detroit.

WW PHOTO: KRIS HAMEL

up to 4 million foreclosures. With the banks being paid full value by the government on their inflated home loans, and making millions of dollars in fees on foreclosures, they have no incentive to work with homeowners. As a result, the modest modification programs announced by President Obama have been a failure, helping less than onequarter the number of families who have applied. (New York Times, Aug. 19) By the FHFAs own estimate, 11.1 million mortgage loans are underwater, meaning the mortgage amount owed is greater than the value of the home. The FHFA acknowledges that the reduction in house prices has resulted in a decline in housing wealth from 2005 to 2011 of $7 trillion. (FHFA Review of Options report) Despite this reality, FHFA director Edward DeMarco has refused to implement any programs that would reduce principal on mortgages. A July 31 New York Times article implied Demarco was defying President Obama by this refusal. DeMarco, however, is a temporary appointment of President Obama, who could fire and replace him. President has authority to take action The foreclosure crisis shows no signs of slowing. In addition to the 10.9 million foreclosures between 2007 and 2011, in a January speech William Dudley, president of the New York Federal Reserve, predicted an additional 3.6 million foreclosures for 2012-2013. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac own approximately 180,000 vacant homes. The FHFA plans to sell these homes cheap to investors like Goldman Sachs who helped create the foreclosure crisis so they reap more profits as rental properties. (Real Estate Insider, Dec. 4) The struggle to stop this foreclosure epidemic, which is devastating the lives of millions in the U.S., involves several forms, from anti-eviction home defenses to the launching of a political movement that targets the federal government for bailing out the banks at the peoples expense. We must demand that President Obama immediately implement a threeyear federal moratorium to halt all foreclosures and related evictions, and that he place a director over the FHFA who will begin reducing principal to market value on home mortgages for the benefit of homeowners and their families. The vacant homes held by the federal government must be used to house the homeless, not line the pockets of investors, and the government should implement a jobs program to rehabilitate these homes for peoples use. Goldberg is a peoples anti-foreclosure attorney in Detroit and a leading organizer of the Moratorium NOW! Coalition to Stop Foreclosures, Evictions & Utility Shutoffs.

Actions set vs. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac

By Mike Shane Minneapolis Anti-foreclosure and housing rights activists have called for demonstrations at Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac regional offices during the week of Sept. 10. Fannie Mae is the Federal National Mortgage Association and Freddie Mac is Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corporation. Both are U.S.-government-run and taxpayerfunded agencies that are tossing huge numbers of families out of their homes across the United States. The call for the regional actions originated at the Occupy Homes national conference of housing rights activists organized by Occupy Homes MN on Aug. 7-8. Minneapolis was chosen for the conference because it is a center of anti-foreclosure and eviction defense work. The gathering was called to strengthen the growing national network of anti-foreclosure fighters and housing rights activists, who all agree that housing is a fundamental human right. Recently, in a struggle that made national news, the Cruz family and their community supporters in Minneapolis attempted to stop Freddie Mac and PNC Bank from taking the Cruz home. Freddie Mac owns the Cruz loan, while PNC Bank services the loan. The home went into foreclosure after PNC Bank, by its own admission, made an error in processing a mortgage payment and then refused to rectify its own mistake. Activists and neighbors peacefully defended the Cruz home from repeated assaults by the local sheriffs SWAT team, and took more than three dozen arrests. At least 14 persons face felony charges! (occupyhomesmn.org) Activists from coast to coast reported that the federally controlled Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are doing almost all of the foreclosures and evictions in the country today. Fannie and Freddie are even more difficult to work with than the banksters they are bailing out. The ironic tragedy of taxpayers paying to evict family, neighbors and even themselves is now occurring en masse across the U.S. Regional demonstrations are being organized in Atlanta and Chicago on Sept. 10, and in Los Angeles and New York on Sept. 12. While each regional action will set its own demands, the overall demands will include a moratorium on foreclosures and evictions and a mortgage principal write-down to actual market values. The actions will also demand the return of foreclosed properties to communities and the moving of people without homes into homes that are without people. For more information, email moratorium@moratorium-mi.org.

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Quebec students suspend strike, struggle goes on

NYC cops shoot 10 during morning rush

By Julie Fry New York On Aug. 24, two New York police officers turned what by all accounts was a targeted killing by a laid-off fashion industry worker of his ex-boss into a mass shooting when they opened fire on one of the most crowded streets in the city. They shot nine people in addition to killing Jeffrey Johnson, the alleged shooter. Video of the incident appears to show Johnson pointing a gun at the police after they ordered him to stop. The police opened fire, discharging 14 rounds in front of the Empire State Building during the morning rush hour. Many of the rounds hit pedestrians, injuring nine. One of the victims, Robert Asika, was shot in the elbow. He said the police were shooting randomly. Asika was wounded during his first week at a new job (selling bus tour tickets), which he recently found after a year of looking for work. (The Guardian, Aug. 25) This incident comes barely two weeks after New York City police shot Darius Kennedy 12 times in Times Square, although he was armed with only a knife and completely surrounded by police. After the New York Police Department officially admitted on Aug. 25 that all nine pedestrians were injured by police, not by Johnson, the story virtually disappeared from major corporate media outlets in New York City. Police Commissioner Ray Kelly declared the shootings justified, and since then the story has virtually disappeared. There have been no editorials calling for investigations. Nor any analysis of how so many people were hurt when the police were ostensibly aiming at one target only a few steps away from them. Just as with the Kennedy case, the official NYPD position has gone virtually unquestioned by the capitalist media, despite the shocking number of casualties left in the wake of the lastest police shooting.

Mass outpouring in Quebec on Aug. 22.

By G. Dunkel As August began, students in community and senior colleges all over Quebec voted to suspend the student strike that began in the spring and spread to hundreds of schools. The student struggle is reflected in a provincial election set for Sept. 4. The party leading in the polls, the Parti Qubcois, had supported the students and their demands. Its platform called for maintaining the current situation of no tuition for Quebec residents in the community colleges and no increase in senior college tuition. The PQ even selected a student leader, one of the moderates, as one of its candidates for a seat in Quebecs National Assembly. Despite the strike cancellation and the imminent election, the students showed they are determined to remain in the streets. On Aug. 22, some 100,000 students and their supporters mobilized in the afternoon at Place du Canada in downtown Montreal. Both a representative of the nurses union and the Quebec Womens Federation were among the speakers. Jeanne Reynolds, co-spokesperson for the student union group, CLASSE, insisted that the movement will continue before, during and after the election. Many placards and banners on the march brought up the key issues of the student movement: No hike in university tuition fees and repeal of the anti-democratic Bill 78, which became Law 12 when passed last May. Some placards addressed the issue of amnesty for the more than 3,000 people who face charges for taking part in student protests since the beginning of the strike. According to media reports, two of the three major Quebec labor federations didnt take part in the march because it was illegal under Law 12. The student group CLASSE has refused to respect Law 12. The march also contained many broad, anti-capitalist themes. The lead banner read, in French, Broad Mobilization Against Neoliberalism. The speeches the students gave at the wrap-up rally were mostly militantly anti-capitalist.
NEW RELEASE

Two days later, the 100th night march in support of the student strike took place, drawing over 10,000 people even though the cops declared it illegal.

ARIZONA
Paul Teitelbaum Tucson, Ariz. Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer issued Executive Order 2012-06 on Aug. 15, denying all state and local public benefits to undocumented youth who apply for the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals process announced by the Obama administration in June. Brewers order was issued on the same day that DACA eligibility began. This racist, anti-immigrant order is the latest outrage from Brewer, who signed SB1070 into law and outlawed the teaching of Mexican American Studies in Arizona. The DACA process is a concession wrung out of the Obama administration by the struggle of fearless, undocumented youth demanding the passage of the DREAM [Development, Relief and Education for Alien Minors] Act, a proposed law that would grant legalization to children who came to the U.S. before they were 16 years old. Under the slogan, Undocumented and Unafraid, these youth have become known as DREAMers. They have risked deportation, held sit-ins at congressional

Immigrant youth targets of new racist edict

offices and even infiltrated the Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention centers to expose the brutality and humiliation to which immigrants are subjected. Under DACA, an applicant would be allowed to remain in the U.S. and could be eligible for a work permit. Brewers order would deny an Arizona drivers license or any form of state-issued ID to DREAMers. Even with a work permit and a job, these youth would still be ineligible for state unemployment compensation. AZ wealth: Product of immigrant labor Arizona has seen a tremendous growth in population over the last 50 years. In 1960, the states population was 1.3 million people, but it now exceeds 6.3 million, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. This influx provided immense profits for banks and land speculators, who financed the building and home construction needed during this period. The actual task of building the homes was not carried out by bankers, of course, but was accomplished by workers: brick masons, carpenters, roofers, flooring-installers and the like. A report issued by the University of Arizona in 2008 estimates that immigrants comprised between 27 percent and 41 percent of these low-wage construction occupations. (udallcenter. arizona.edu) The same report reveals that immigrant workers comprised 59 percent of all agricultural workers in Arizona. Anyone familiar with the history of the United Farm Workers union is well aware of the terrible conditions to which farm workers in Arizona were subjected. Immigrant workers were also a significant percentage of Arizonas textile manufacturing industry and its service industries, such as janitorial services, building and grounds maintenance, and fast food service. The immense profits made from this exploitation of immigrant labor reside in the hands of the capitalists and predatory banks. Immigrant workers face the racism fueled by these exploiters, their media and their political servants like Brewer. Immigrant rights leader talks to WW Isabel Garcia, a Tucson lawyer, immigrant rights activist, and co-chair of the community organization, Coalicin de Derechos Humanos, told Workers World, Communities across Arizona and the nation are outraged at the callous, ignorant and irresponsible decision by Gov. Jan Brewer to issue an executive order punishing our youth and future leaders on a day that should have been celebrated by all. Garcia praised the DREAMers: Being led to believe that the DREAM Act would be approved for over a decade, after 2006, the undocumented youth decided to take charge of their own political voice and showed their organizational abilities, bravely demonstrating their integrity, intelligence, maturity and commitment to a full human rights agenda for all. Now, receiving a small concession to their just demands, the young people in Arizona must continue to contend with a governor that is bent on furthering her political career by demonizing and attacking the most promising generation in recent history. Not since the Civil Rights/ Vietnam era has a young generation sparked the excitement for a social justice movement, acting as precursors to the Occupy [Wall Street] movement across the country.

Stop Wall Streets war on women

Continue from page 1 women and their families and still has repercussions today. Todays Democratic administration could fight for a federal jobs program to aid women workers who are suffering from this unrelenting recession and number among the 25 million to 30 million unemployed and underemployed. It hasnt. Democrats could propose a minimum wage increase, as so many women have low-wage jobs and real wages are declining. They could strongly counter the attacks on public-sector unions, which have left many women, especially African Americans and Latinas, without jobs. On a federal level, they could fiercely oppose the massive child care cutbacks and women being shut out of crucial medical care in state after state. Locally, some progressive legislators do oppose reactionary measures inside their political institutions. However, much more is needed. Can Democratic leaders be relied on to stand strong to keep Medicare and Social Security which millions of women depend on unscathed in Wall Streets blitzkrieg? The Obama administration didnt even raise a word of protest when the Supreme Court eliminated financial penalties for state governments that refuse to expand Medicaid in the federal health plan, thus harming millions of women. Who can be counted on to fight for womens rights? Women, in concert with other progressive forces and communities, in cohesive, strong, militant struggles. Wall Streets war on women and all working people calls out for a united fightback for womens rights together with other peoples movements to push back the ruthless 1% of the 1%. Capitalism is the problem. Mass struggle is the way to push back the right-wing offensive against women and the entire working class.

WAR WITHOUT VICTORY

Sara Flounders exposes the deceptions, foul methods, and exploitative goals of U.S. imperialism and militarism.
Michael Parenti, author of The Face of Imperialism Available soon at Amazon.com

THE PENTAGONS ACHILLES HEEL

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Sept. 6, 2012

workers.org

Unrest in mines after Marikana massacre

By Abayomi Azikiwe Editor, Pan-African News Wire Mineworkers and their supporters have continued to express outrage at the police killing of 34 strikers and wounding of 78 others at the Marikana mines on Aug. 16 through mass memorial services and rallies. Autopsies show that most of 34 miners who were killed were shot in the back. Miners have continued to protest the deplorable working conditions that led to the strike. Strike actions spread to the Royal Bakofeng platinum mines where workers walked out for three days. They returned to the mines after the company said it would respond to the strikers issues within two weeks. However, mining officials reported, The delegation of workers made a formal list of demands, among them the 12,500 rand wage increase. It was agreed that those issues are going to be resolved inside the normal structures and the company is not in a position to negotiate. All the parties are bound with a wage agreement until June 2014. (Agence France-Presse, Aug. 25) Lonmins mine owners backed off their ultimatum to striking rock-drill operators on Aug. 20 that they must return to work or lose their jobs. On Aug. 27, still NUM is the largest and official representative of the workers. AMCU officials, many of whom are former NUM members, say that the NUM has not fought hard enough to secure decent salary and benefit increases for their members. Unfortunately, rival AMCU members who are walking off their jobs cant reopen existing contracts. Minister of Defense and Veteran Affairs Nosiviwe Mapisa-Nqakula visited the Marikana site and apologized for the governments failure to handle the situation properly. The government has set up a team to investigate the Marikana situation; team members visited the mines following the killings. Mapisa-Nqakula told the angry crowd: We agree with you that blood was spilled here. This is not something we condone. We are sorry, this hurts all of us. As government, we would like to assist you with ANC leader apologizes the organization of Thursdays memorial Members of the African National Con- service. (Mail & Guardian, Aug. 22) Former ANC Youth League leaders Jugress government, including President Jacob Zuma, visited the area during the week lius Malema, Andile Lungisa and others after the Aug. 16 police massacre. Clashes spent considerable time in the area after between security forces and rival mem- the killings. They were involved with the bers of the National Union of Mineworkers memorial services where government (NUM) and the Association of Minework- members were present and reportedly left ers and Construction Union (AMCU) led to amidst harsh criticism from Malema. Lungisa, the expelled ANCYL deputy another 10 deaths prior to Aug. 16. unwilling to return to work without adequate pay and benefit hikes, the striking workers blocked fellow miners from going down the shafts. The two-week strike by 3,000 mineworkers forced Lonmin to suspend operations, and is preventing a total of 25,000 employees from working. Mine executives reported that they couldnt run the facility because only 13 percent of the workforce was showing up. Lonmins statement on Aug. 27 said, There have been incidents of intimidation towards bus drivers overnight as well as intimidation of Eastern workers this morning, preventing them from coming to work. (Reuters) More than 260 miners at the Marikana mines are locked up and face criminal charges ranging from assault to murder. More than 150 of those detained report that police have beaten them in jail. president, said, The police acted like they did before apartheid ended. It is not right and you must not accept it. (Mail & Guardian, Aug. 22) Former ANCYL leaders, now named Friends of the Youth League, reported that they are assembling a defense committee to work for the release of jailed miners. Nationalization of industry needed During the five years since the world economic crisis began, the platinum industry has lost considerable value. Lonmin was valued at $10 billion in 2008; today its value is $2 billion. The Mail & Guardian article reports, The worlds third-largest platinum miner faces uncertain time. Lonmin is losing money and faces the prospect of going cap in hand to shareholders to raise cash to keep it going. The recent developments within the platinum industry will undoubtedly fuel the debate and struggle within the ANC and other allied organizations over their future social and economic policies. Until the country moves toward a noncapitalist path of development involving the nationalization of industry, finance and agriculture based upon the interests of working people and farmers, the class struggle inside of South Africa will intensify.

SOUTH AFRICA

Tijuana meeting on ght for education, public jobs

By Cheryl LaBash Tijuana, Mexico The intense five days of the 9th U.S./ Cuba/Mexico/Latin America Labor Conference and Seminar in Tijuana, Mexico, from Aug. 15 to 19, resolved to prepare for Encuentro Sindical Nuestra Amrica VI (Sixth Unionist Meeting in Our America) to be hosted by Cuba in 2014. ESNA VI will continue integrating working-class movements and class conscious unions that confront the capitalist economic crisis on many fronts. ESNA is a movement of millions of workers throughout Latin America and the Caribbean offering powerful examples for the U.S. working class. The capitalist class has no borders in international trade, finance and exploitation. Neither should workers! On Sept. 12, the unjust imprisonment for the Cuban 5 Gerardo Hernndez, Ramn Labaino, Antonio Guerrero, Fernando Gonzlez and Ren Gonzlez will complete its 14th year. Cuban 5 supporters organized a special program featuring Rosa Aurora Freijanes, spouse of Fernando Gonzlez, on the night of Aug. 17, and shared a special cake marking his birthday the following day. Banners calling on Obama to free the Cuban 5 decorated the meeting hall throughout the conference, making everyone conscious of the need to expand the struggle to free these five heroes. Freijanes had participated in the struggle The United Nations declared Venezuela and Bolivia free of illiteracy after these countries used this method. It is being used in Mexico, Argentina, Ecuador, Peru, Honduras, Nicaragua, the Dominican Republic, Granada, Brazil, New Zealand, Mozambique, Guinea Bissau, Colombia, El Salvador, Uruguay, Guatemala, and St. Kitts and Nevis. Education is mandatory in Cuba and free of charge at all levels, from infant care and pre-school through post-graduate work. Before the 1959 revolution, there were only three universities in Cuba in Havana, Santiago and Las Villas with only 15,000 students, compared to todays hundreds of thousands. Only those in the richer social classes were able to attend. The education style was repetition and memorization with separation between the students and their professors, who were servile to the administration and the government. The new paradigm is University for Everyone with classes in every province and every municipality. Adult education and education for children and adults with disabilities is also emphasized so everyone can develop to their fullest capacity. Cubas debt-free graduates, who are guaranteed a place in productive work, are a sharp contrast to the reality faced by young people in the U.S., but it was not the most striking difference. Answering a question, Vzquez Lozano contrasted the Cuban system to the shockingly low U.S. high school graduation rates, especially for students of color described as a 78 percent push-out rate. We dont expel anyone, she replied, except the beautiful expulsion when they graduate. If students in the course of their studies decide to leave and not continue their studies, our professors go to visit them and bring them back to school. That is where we see the greatest challenge, unity between the students and the teachers. Watch the full panel at www.ustream.tv/recorded/24797976
PHOTO: JOS LINO MEZA PARRA

Seminar students with their certi cates.

Which Road to Liberation?

by Monica Moorehead

SOUTH AFRICA

Written in 1993 after a trip to South Africa

How has the disintegation of the Soviet Union impacted on the struggle against apartheid? Has the bourgeois revolution been achieved in South Africa? How does this t with the worldwide revolution described by Karl Marx and Frederick Engels in the Communist Manifesto in 1848? www.workers.org/books/SouthAfricaMM.pdf

to free Nelson Mandela from apartheid South Africa. She knows the people can win freedom for the Cuban 5. The conference highlighted the fight for education and public jobs a point of struggle in communities across the U.S., in Mexico and many other countries. Maribel Vzquez Lozano, a leader in the Cuban Union of Education, Science and Sport opened the conference along with Anbal Melo Infante, representing the Confederation of Cuban Workers International Department. Melo Infante stressed,We have an obligation to support those teachers and students who are creating a movement to oppose the privatization of education. He called such privatization in Mexico, Chile, Europe and the U.S., selling a human right. Melo Infante rebutted the corporate medias lies about the current steps to modernize the Cuban economy, asserting the adjustments underway are aimed at meeting the needs of the people. There is no privatization of the economy in Cuba, he said, only a proposal to open minor areas of the economy to self-employment. The main economic engine will remain in the hands of the state, which will guarantee the social conquests of the revolution free health care, free education through graduate levels, social security, employment and retirement for all Cubans. The highly educated Cuban population is what makes it possible for Cuba to share its benefits around the world, Melo Infante said.

Cubas education system Vzquez Lozano presented details about the Cuban education system, including its ideological roots in the formulations of Jos Mart and Fidel Castro. Castro linked the unequal and low level of education with Cubas neocolonial economic system in his 1953 History Will Absolve Me speech at his trial after the attack on the Moncada Barracks. Emphasizing the primacy of education for socialist Cuba, Vzquez Lozano drew applause saying, Without education, there is no revolution. One of the first acts of the revolution was to create 10,000 classrooms and employ all the unemployed teachers, but it didnt guarantee classrooms everywhere. In 1961, a massive literacy campaign went to the far corners of Cuba, eliminating illiteracy in one year. This dedication to education is shown 50 years later in the Yo s puedo (Yes I can) literacy method developed by Cuban educators and used around the world. A concrete benefit of the growing continental integration represented by ESNA, Yo s puedo originates from a radio literacy program developed by Cuban educators working in Haiti. More than 5 million people in 28 countries have conquered illiteracy using this program since its inception in 2001, including its Braille version for blind people. Internationalist in intent, it is designed to help people 15 years of age and older who have never gone to school develop skills to participate more fully in their society.

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Non-Aligned Movement meets in Iran, de es U.S.

By Sara Flounders A meeting in Tehran starting Aug. 26 puts into the sharpest perspective the waning position of U.S. imperialism globally and especially in the Middle East. Both the U.S. and Israels demands for a boycott of the meeting were ignored. Clearly the U.S. hold is slipping. Despite every U.S. government effort to economically strangle, militarily blockade and politically isolate Iran, 118 countries, including 35 heads of state and 21 foreign ministers, have accepted the invitation to send a high-level delegation to Iran for the international gathering of the NonAligned Movement. More than 7,000 delegates are expected for NAMs 16th summit since its 1961 inception. Iran is hosting the meeting. Its three-year tenure as head of NAM provides Tehran with an opportunity to elevate its international standing and show that Washington has failed to isolate it. The media report the top issues of this world gathering will be opposition to U.S.-imposed sanctions on Iran and U.S.NATO backed efforts to overthrow Syrias government. As host, Iran prepares the first draft of the meetings final declaration. According to reports, the draft will affirm Irans right to peaceful nuclear technology, condemn Israels threats to attack Iran and censure Israels occupation of Palestinian lands. Egypts Mohamed Morsi will be the first Egyptian president to visit Iran since 1979, when the two countries broke relations following Egyptian President Anwar Sadats signing of the Camp David Accords, which normalized Egypts relations with Israel. This action aligned Egypt with Washington against the Iranian revolution. United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, usually compliant with Washingtons policies, said he planned to attend the Tehran gathering. Israels Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called this decision a big mistake. The U.S. State Departments Victoria Nuland called Tehran a strange place and an inappropriate place for this meeting and emphasized that the U.S. considers Iran a threat to the region and the world. (state.gov, Aug. 16) The Non-Aligned Movement was founded in Belgrade, Yugoslavia, in 1961 and was comprised mainly of former colonial countries that were allied militarily neither to the U.S. nor the Soviet Union. Why at this time are so many countries and heads of state interested in participating in a meeting in Tehran, despite Washingtons stated displeasure? U.S. bullying cant force compliance U.S. threats against Iran far surpass economic sanctions. They include sabotage of its infrastructure, assassination of its scientists, abductions of citizens, internal destabilization campaigns and military encirclement. Both the sanctions on Iran and the allout effort to overturn the Syrian government are U.S. efforts to create fear in any other country attempting to develop independently of U.S. corporate domination. To enforce its policies, Washington uses the enormous financial leverage of Wall Street banks, the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, which operate with the banking and financial institutions of Germany, Britain and France, and the combined weight of all U.S.-dominated NATO countries. In January, U.S. congressional legislation demanded that every country in the world participate in economic sanctions and end all purchases of Iranian oil. In March, Iranian banks were disconnected from the SWIFT network that enables electronic financial transactions. July 1 was to be the global cutoff in all oil sales and banking transactions with Iran. Pressure on countries that import Iranian oil were stepped up, as the U.S. and European governments threatened to take action against those who failed to apply sanctions. These steps were supposed to unravel Irans economy. The ability of the worlds largest corporations and banks to seize assets and block all economic transactions threatens every developing country. But the global capitalist system is in crisis and disarray. Western financial institutions provide scant new investment money. The U.S. empire offers developing and formerly colonized countries little and demands compliance with its plans and aims. Even from a strictly business perspective, the governments of many countries knew that sanctions would hurt not only the Iranian economy but also their own economies, by cutting off their commerce with the largest and most stable economy in the region. Immediately, China, Russia, India, the ALBA Bloc in Latin America, and even Pakistan and South Korea announced they would not stop buying Iranian petroleum products. The majority of the global population lives in these countries. Iraq, Afghanistan and Iran After waging war for a decade and occupying Iraq and Afghanistan with hundreds of thousands of troops, spending trillions of dollars and destroying both countries, Washington is still frustrated by reports that Iraq and Afghanistan are trading with Iran. The Aug. 18 New York Times reported: President Obamas announcement last month that he was barring a Baghdad bank from any dealings with the American banking system [was] a rare acknowledgment of a delicate problem facing the administration in a country that American troops just left: for months Iraq has been helping Iran skirt economic sanctions. American officials learned that the Iraqi government was aiding the Iranians by allowing them to use Iraqi airspace to ferry supplies to Syria. Iraq is now a major consumer of Iranian manufactured goods partly because Iraq has virtually no industry of its own. A high-ranking Iraqi delegation visited Tehran in August to increase commercial relations. About 50 percent of Afghanistans oil comes from Iran, Afghan Minister of Commerce Anwar al Haq Ahady told reporters at a Washington Post roundtable. (Huffington Post, May 9) Meanwhile, Afghan traders have proved more than willing to exchange dollars for rials, usable as a currency in many parts of western Afghanistan. Truckloads of cash are crossing the border, allowing Iran to bolster its reserves of dollars, euros and precious metals to stabilize its exchange rates. (New York Times, Aug. 17) The Pentagon has demonstrated its capacity to lay waste to a country through massive bombardment. But it is unable to introduce any progressive change or development. Of course, the governments of some countries within the Non-Aligned Movement have had sharp conflicts and contradictions with each other. But Washingtons apprehension is that under the three-year presidency of Iran, NAM may again focus on its original principle of promoting national independence, selfdetermination, territorial integrity, and the struggle against the heritage of colonialism and imperialism, as Fidel Castro called for at a 1979 NAM meeting in Havana. This Tehran gathering of many of the worlds developing countries is a sharp challenge to the U.S. and Western imperialist powers and NATO, which claim to speak for the international community and for human rights while calling for regime change, armed intervention, no-fly zones in Syria and threatening wider war against Iran.

Anti-war actions called for Oct. 5-7 weekend

UNAC condemns threats against Syria, Iran

By John Catalinotto Confronted with the growing possibility of direct U.S. military intervention against Syria and open Israeli threats of an attack on Iran, the leading section of the U.S. anti-war movement has called for demonstrations on the weekend of Oct. 5-7 to protest the imperialist war drive. The United National Anti-war Coalition issued the call in an email on Aug. 23. The weekend of Oct. 5-7 will mark the 11th anniversary of the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan, in which the George W. Bush administration used the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks as a pretext to foment a war. Within another 17 months, the Pentagon was marching on Baghdad, this time using the pretext of weapons of mass destruction. That pretext was soon proven false. The Bush gang was leading the imperialist world in an attempt to once again conquer those parts of the world that had won some independence from their old colonial status during the time the Soviet Union existed. While the Barack Obama administration has reduced the unpopular U.S. troop exposure and casualties in Iraq, it has used proxy forces and U.S. air power, especially drones, to intervene militarily in at least a half-dozen countries. The imperialist attempt at conquest continues. What the UNAC statement underlines are the new dangers of an even wider war: We know from the Libyan experience that a no-fly zone would require massive NATO bombing of Syrian air defenses and huge civilian casualties. At the same time, State Department spokespeople are targeting Iran and Hezbollah for alleged military support to the Assad government and unsubstantiated terrorist actions. Going after Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, Yemen and Libya, causing massive loss of life and destruction, could be small potatoes compared to the conflagration we might see following military intervention in Syria, Iran and Lebanon. The UNAC release also calls attention to the Israeli governments open threats to take action to allegedly strike Irans nuclear power apparatus, a controversial position even within Israel. The costs of war While UNAC centers its demands on stopping a new war, the call also exposes The politicians and corporate media have waged a campaign of lies against the Bashir al-Assad government in Syria, quoting the oppositions charges extensively without evidence. At the same time the imperialist powers have armed the most murderous elements of the opposition through NATO-member Turkey and the Saudi Arabia and Qatar monarchies. It is all the more impressive that UNAC is taking action at the height of the U.S. presidential election camWW PHOTO: SHARON BLACK paign. By doing so it is underlining the New York City, April 9, 2011. independence of the movement from the enormous cost to the workers and both big capitalist parties, the Republipoor at home, whose social benefits are cans and the Democrats. This is a sign cut to fund these wars. UNAC also brings that there is resistance, at least among the up the internal war against oppressed most conscious political forces, to abanpeoples within the U.S.: Islamophobia doning grass-roots actions during the and scapegoating of Muslims leads to electoral season. UNAC will demand at the actions: No manufactured frame-ups and violence against the Muslim community and by wars! No sanctions! No drone attacks! extension brutal attacks on Sikhs as well. Bring all the troops home now! Selfdetermination for the people of Syria and Immigrants are targeted. UNAC is setting a strong example for Iran! and No to racism, raids and reanti-war movements, not only in the U.S. pression! No to Islamophobia! For more information, see unacpeace. but within all the NATO countries, by standing up to ruling-class propaganda. org.

Correspondencia sobre artculos en Workers World/Mundo Obrero pueden ser enviadas a: WW-MundoObrero@workers.org Proletarios y oprimidos de todos los paises unios!

Primera parte

Tres crisis del sistema capitalista: 1873, 1929 y 2007

la que las crisis agudas de bajo crecimiento y estancamiento se han convertido en la nueva normalidad. El ciclo histrico de auges y crisis sucesivas, con los que la economa se desplomaba peridicamente para luego volver a levantarse y a alcanzar nuevas cimas, se ha terminado. El capitalismo ha generado peridicamente docenas de crisis cclicas por lo menos desde 1825, cuando la primera autntica crisis de sobreproduccin internacional azot al planeta. Pero la crisis actual va mucho ms all de aquellas crisis cclicas normales. Cualesquiera que sean los auges y las cadas, nada podr sacar al sistema de este prolongado callejn sin salida, ni los billones de dlares inyectados en rescates bancarios y corporativos ni los invertidos en gasto militar para guerras e intervenciones limitadas ni mucho menos cualquier cura cosmtica que se aplique en la herida econmica bajo la forma de estmulos. Este libro se ocupa exclusivamente de la crisis actual en EE.UU., pero eso no significa que sea la primera vez que el capitalismo se ha metido a un callejn sin salida. Al menos dos veces antes se encontr en igual situacin, sin poder crecer, abocado a retroceder hasta el abismo. De hecho, la crisis econmica que se inici con el colapso del mercado de la vivienda en diciembre de 2007 se asemeja a las dos grandes crisis anteriores: la de 1873-1896, a veces denominada la Depresin Prolongada, y la de 1929-1939 o Gran Depresin. La Depresin Prolongada alcanz a todo el planeta y en EE.UU. fue en realidad una serie de graves depresiones. La cada inicial comenz con el colapso econmico de una gigantesca burbuja del ferrocarril y dur desde 1873 hasta 1877. Esto llev a la contraccin econmica ms prolongada que jams haya habido en la historia de EE.UU., ya que dur 65 meses consecutivos. Una breve recuperacin se sigui de otro colapso en la dcada de 1880. Aquella crisis final, la ms drstica, se debi al estallido generalizado de una segunda burbuja especulativa, esta vez del ferrocarril y de la tierra. La crisis se prolong casi hasta el cambio de siglo. Durante todo el perodo hubo tasas de desempleo de dos dgitos y una feroz lucha de clases, desde la huelga ferroviaria de 1877 hasta las huelgas de mineros en las minas de carbn de Pennsylvania, pasando por las luchas obreras de Haymarket en 1886 por una jornada de ocho horas, la huelga del acero en Homestead en 1892 y la huelga del ferrocarril Pullman en 1894. En muchas de aquellas contiendas de clase, los trabajadores hicieron uso de la autodefensa armada contra los ejrcitos de rompe-huelgas a sueldo de los empresarios. Se considera que la Gran Depresin empez en 1929 con el colapso de una gigantesca burbuja burstil. Sin embargo, estuvo precedida por el colapso de una burbuja especulativa de la tierra, que aliment el colapso del mercado de valores, el cual a su vez llev a quiebras bancarias masivas y a un hundimiento econmico a gran escala. En 1931 la tasa de desempleo en EE.UU. fue del 25%. Un breve repunte econmico entre 1934 y 1937 se sigui de otro derrumbe, que dur hasta 1939. Al final de este perodo el desempleo era del 17% y nunca baj de dos dgitos, ni siquiera durante la breve recuperacin. En 1934 hubo manifestaciones contra el desempleo y la hambruna y huelgas municipales generales en San Francisco, Toledo y Minneapolis. A partir de 1935, los obreros ocuparon cientos de plantas en todo el pas, entre ellas la victoriosa y legendaria huelga de brazos cados en Flint, que implant los sindicatos en General Motors. Aquellos aos fueron un perodo de desarrollo prerrevolucionario. Existen muchas diferencias entre la crisis a finales del siglo XIX y la de la dcada de 1930, pero tambin algunas similitudes importantes y fundamentales que ayudan a la comprensin de la crisis actual. En ambas, el funcionamiento automtico del mercado capitalista, el ciclo normal de auge y cada del desarrollo capitalista, se qued exhausto. El capitalismo lleg a un punto en el que ninguna medida de carcter econmico poda por s sola mantener el sistema en movimiento ni hacerlo avanzar por ms tiempo. Estaba sumido en una parlisis econmica; el desempleo masivo sobrepasaba la capacidad del sistema. Ambas crisis se vieron precedidas por largos perodos de enorme crecimiento de las fuerzas productivas, grandes avances en tecnologa e incrementos importantes en la productividad de la clase trabajadora. Desde mediados del siglo XIX, la aplicacin de la ciencia a los procesos industriales y a las comunicaciones dio lugar a lo que suele denominarse la segunda revolucin industrial. Hubo mejoras importantes en los procesos de produccin del acero y los productos qumicos, el uso generalizado de los motores de combustin interna, el desarrollo de la perforacin para la exploracin del petrleo, el telgrafo y otros muchos avances. Estos progresos tecnolgicos provocaron grandes impulsos en el crecimiento de las fuerzas productivas, incluido el desarrollo masivo de la red de ferrocarriles. Dichos avances en la ciencia y la industria coincidieron con la aniquilacin de los pueblos indgenas y la incautacin de sus tierras forzando a los/as africanos/ as capturados/as a una esclavitud que tras la Guerra Civil adopt una forma modificada, la denominada aparcera. Tambin se acompa de la anexin de la mitad de Mxico y la importacin de mano de obra china. Todo esto sent las bases para la apropiacin de tierras e hizo posible la construccin de una red ferroviaria transcontinental, imperios mineros y madereros y el crecimiento meterico del capitalismo estadounidense en el perodo posterior a la Guerra Civil. Del igual modo, en el perodo comprendido entre principios del siglo XX hasta la crisis del 1929, el capitalismo dio un salto tecnolgico hacia la era de la produccin en masa. Fue el perodo conocido por el surgimiento del fordismo, es decir, la lnea de montaje, adems de la denominada gestin cientfica del estudio del tiempo y el movimiento, de hecho el speedup (aceleracin) cientfico. [N.T. MO: El manejo del tiempo y el movimiento fue estudiado cientficamente para evaluar la eficiencia, el tiempo tomado por cada trabajador en cada uno de los movimientos hechos durante la produccin, de forma que se eliminen los movimientos innecesarios y se establezca una normativa de tiempo por movimiento. Esto llev a la aceleracin del trabajo (speed-up)]. El crecimiento econmico se vio alimentado por la produccin en masa de automviles, la nueva tecnologa de construccin de carreteras, la electrificacin de la industria manufacturera, la llegada de la electricidad a los hogares, el telfono y la produccin en masa de radios y electrodomsticos, entre otras cosas. Una vez ms, como en el siglo XIX, la productividad del trabajo aument exponencialmente. Y, tambin una vez ms, el consumo no pudo mantener el ritmo de produccin. Poco antes del colapso econmico, la produccin empez a declinar y se redujeron los beneficios. La Depresin vino despus.

Este artculo es la introduccin al libro, El capitalismo en un callejn sin salida, Destruccin de empleo, sobreproduccin y crisis en la era de la alta tecnologa un punto de vista Marxista, por Fred Goldstein. Traducido por Manuel Talens y Atenea Acevedo. Revisado por MO. El capitalismo, sistema de produccin con fines de lucro, est en un callejn sin salida. La plaga del desempleo masivo, el subempleo, los bajos salarios, la destruccin de los beneficios, los recortes de servicios sociales y el aumento de la pobreza ha sobrepasado sus lmites y est hundiendo en un desastre sin alivio a la clase trabajadora multinacional y a los pueblos oprimidos del mundo. Adems de la amenaza a la clase obrera, la estructura vital que sostiene el medio ambiente del planeta est en grave peligro. Toda una generacin de trabajadores/ as se enfrenta a un futuro sombro. Para una mayora cada vez ms numerosa, el capitalismo slo guarda en reserva desempleo, trabajo marginal no calificado y bajos salarios, ya que cada vez son ms las habilidades ahora incorporadas en el software y en la maquinaria. La tecnologa y la competencia salarial orquestada por la patronal a escala planetaria siguen impulsando la cada de los salarios. Entre las consecuencias polticas y sociales ms venenosas de la crisis se encuentran la intensificacin del racismo, el crecimiento de la industria carcelaria, el aumento de la persecucin de inmigrantes y trabajadores/as indocumentados/as y la guerra contra las mujeres y lesbianas, gays, bisexuales y transexuales. La clase dominante busca sembrar la divisin entre las masas por todos los medios posibles con el fin de desviar la atencin del fracaso del sistema econmico y del obsceno crecimiento de la desigualdad. stas son las ltimas e inevitables consecuencias de las leyes del desarrollo capitalista que impulsan la evolucin de un sistema basado en las ganancias. El capitalismo ha entrado en una nueva etapa, en

Todos somos ASOTRECOL

ltima noticia: La GM acept volver a la mesa de negociaciones resultado de la valenta de los trabajadores colombianos y la solidaridad internacional.
Por Martha Grevatt Activistas de Detroit y de Ann Arbor en Michigan, se reunieron en una demostracin de emergencia para apoyar a los trabajadores despedidos accidentados de la General Motors en Colombia. Trece de estos trabajadores, que han acampado frente a la embajada de EE.UU. en Bogot por ms de un ao, se han cosido los labios en una huelga de hambre absolutamente irrevocable. La corporacin les despidi, por lo que ahora no tienen ninguna fuente de ingresos ni atencin mdica despus de sufrir accidentes laborales que los dejaron incapacitados. Ellos organizaron la Asociacin de Trabajadores y Extrabajadores Enfermos de General Motors Colmotores ASOTRECOL. La protesta se llev a cabo el 15 de agosto frente a la sede de la GM en el centro de Detroit. El Equipo de Accin de la Comunidad Washtenaw basado en Ann Arbor y miembros de Trabajadores Automotrices Unidos, encabezaron el esfuerzo. Otros grupos que apoyaron o que llevaron delegaciones incluyeron la organizacin de empleados de Posgrado y la Organizacin de Empleados Docentes de la Universidad de Michigan; el Comit de Emergencia de Michigan contra la Guerra y la Injusticia; la Coalicin Moratoria Ahora! para acabar con las ejecuciones Hipotecarias, los desalojos y el cierre de utilidades; Solidaridad; Labor Notes; Intercambio Sindical EE.UU./Cuba y la Organizacin para una Sociedad Libre. Gritaban Primero se enfermaron y luego los despidieron para que GM aumentara las ganancias! y Todos somos ASOTRECOL! Diana Sierra, una mujer colombiana que se reuni con los trabajadores en el campamento y es miembro de WCAT y GEO abri la reunin con el compromiso de obtener justicia para los trabajadores y no dejar que los huelguistas mueran. Otros oradores incluyeron el presidente del AFL-CIO de Metro Detroit, Michelakis Chris y representantes de la Caravana de trabajadores automotrices, GEO, LEO y de Solidaridad. Hubo mensajes de solidaridad enviados por trabajadores de GM en Brasil, que han bloqueado una carretera principal, y de Ken Lewenza, presidente de Trabajadores Automotrices de Canad. El mensaje de Lewenza indic que el Sindicato de Trabajadores Automotrices de Canad llevar el maltrato de los trabajadores colombianos a las prximas negociaciones de contrato con la GM. Manifestaciones de solidaridad tuvieron lugar ese mismo da en otras ciudades y hay ms planeadas. A principios de semana, los/as solidarios/as con Asotrecol se manifestaron frente a la planta de GM en Arlington, Texas. Activistas comprometidos/as planean organizar muchas acciones ms para responsabilizar a la GM de la suerte de los valientes huelguistas de hambre en Bogot.