Senate Republicans began their press conference with Senator Tom Cotton, who called for the “investigation of protesters funding” and the “Department of Education to withhold funding from universities.” Additionally, they called for the removal of visas and the deportation of international student protesters.

When a journalist pushed back on the accusations of antisemitism by student protesters, Senator John Kennedy called the protests “rule by mob” and praised Tulane University, the University of Florida, and Vanderbilt for repressing protesters.

When asked about the protests, Karine Jean-Pierre, White House Press Secretary, pivoted to condemning antisemitism and hatred, referred to the protests as a “small group of students that are disrupting academic experience”, and refused to answer questions on police brutality of protesters. Journalists continued to press Jean-Pierre on how the White House views the protests and their cause, trying to push back on the press secretary’s conflation of protests with antisemitism; Jean-Pierre highlighted the necessity for peaceful demonstrations and condemned hatred, again not answering journalists' questions. 

These dual press briefings highlight the bipartisan nature of support for Israel and the attacks on the pro-Palestine movement. “Biden condemns the use of the term intifada and hate speech and hate symbols have no place in America,” said Deputy Press Secretary Andrew Bates, in a recent statement from the White House.

In a recent statement from former President Donald Trump, he compared the campus encampments to January 6, “because they’re doing a lot of destruction, a lot of damages, a lot of people getting hurt very badly.” Comparing the campus encampments to the 2017 Unite the Right Charlottesville protest, Trump said: “The hate [at Charlottesville] wasn’t the kind of hate that you have here.” These comments are in the context of Biden signing $14.1 billion in aid to Israel and vowing to “make sure that Israel has what it needs to defend itself.”

Despite these attacks, campus encampments are continuing to spread around the nation, and in fact, around the world. The movement to end U.S. aid to Israel is growing and people around the world are demanding an end to genocide, an end to occupation, and a free Palestine!

#FreePalestine #Analysis

Jacksonville, FL – On Dec. 8, President-elect Donald Trump announced fast food executive Andy Puzder as his pick for Secretary of Labor. Puzder is the CEO of CKE Restaurants, which owns Hardee's, Carl’s Jr. and several other national chains.

If confirmed by the Senate, Puzder will head up the Department of Labor, which sets wage and hour standards, controls unemployment insurance and enforces U.S. labor law.

During his presidential campaign, Trump criticized free trade agreements like NAFTA and the proposed Trans-Pacific Partnership and portrayed himself as an anti-establishment candidate. This populist message resonated with a section of white workers in Midwestern states hit hard by free trade agreements, like Michigan and Ohio.

Far from standing up to big business, however, Trump stands ready to lead an onslaught of attacks on the working class on behalf of corporate America. During the interim period before his inauguration on Jan. 20, 2017, Trump has made peace with the same banks and monopoly capitalists he sometimes criticized during the campaign. The cabinet assembled by Trump includes more billionaires than any previous administration. Instead of ruling through loyal politicians and bureaucratic puppets, the 1% directly holds power in Trump's administration, with certain corporations and banks (Exxon Mobil, Goldman Sachs) explicitly getting seats at the table.

Trump's cabinet picks signal the beginning of a massive government-led employer offensive against labor unions, collective bargaining and workers' rights. With labor at its weakest point in decades, employers hope to deal a mortal blow to the remaining unions and roll back the protections and gains made by working people. The next four years promise an open class war between employers and workers – a war that today's unions are incredibly ill-equipped to fight. To defeat the Trump offensive, labor must embrace the weapons they fought and won with in the past – and do so quickly.

Opening shots: The Carrier scam and trade policy

Trump announced Puzder as his pick for Labor Secretary just days after posting a string of nasty anti-union attacks on Twitter. Leaders of United Steelworkers (USW) 1999, which represents Carrier manufacturing workers in Indiana, came under fire from Trump after a heavily publicized deal struck between the president-elect and Carrier management earlier in the month.

Trump met with Carrier over plans to outsource its profitable Indiana manufacturing operations to Mexico, seeking lower labor costs and higher profit. In exchange for a series of corporate tax cuts totaling at least $6 million, Carrier supposedly agreed to keep some of their plants in the U.S. According to Trump, the deal saved 1100 U.S. jobs slated for relocation.

Details later emerged revealing that Trump's deal only keeps about 800 jobs in the U.S., leaving 600 Carrier workers unemployed. Chuck Jones, president of USW 1999, slammed Trump for leaving the union out of negotiations and exaggerating the number of jobs saved by the deal.

Trump responded on Twitter with a whiny anti-union rant directed at both Jones and USW 1999. Blaming the union for outsourcing, the president-elect wrote, “If United Steelworkers 1999 was any good, they [Carrier] would have kept those jobs in Indiana.” Trump singled out Jones, who he claimed had “done a terrible job representing workers.”

By themselves, these tweets seem petty and childish. In actuality, they mark a dramatic shift in the president-elect's public approach towards organized labor. Trump criticized union leaders for backing his opponent, Hillary Clinton, on the campaign trail, but he stayed away from the outright anti-union rhetoric used by other Republican candidates, like Scott Walker and Marco Rubio. His goal was obvious: break off a large percentage of union voters from Clinton. With the election over, Trump dropped all pretenses. He attacked USW 1999 by name and blamed the union for the loss of U.S. manufacturing jobs.

Trump campaigned heavily against corporate outsourcing and he repeatedly vowed to bring manufacturing jobs back to the U.S. But cabinet picks like billionaire and free trade advocate Wilbur Ross for Commerce Secretary suggest Trump has no intention of “ripping up” trade agreements like NAFTA. It seems more likely that Trump will scapegoat unions, higher wages, and work rules for supposedly making domestic manufacturing too expensive for corporations.

Weaponizing the Department of Labor

Thus far, Trump's proposed cabinet secretaries hold views sharply at odds with the stated purpose of their departments and agencies. Texas Governor Rick Perry, an oil industry puppet and Trump's pick for Energy Secretary, called for abolishing the Department of Energy in 2012. Similarly, climate-change denier Scott Pruitt received Trump's nomination to head up the Environmental Protection Agency. For the Secretary of Housing and Urban Development, Trump tapped Ben Carson, an outspoken opponent of public housing for poor and working people and a person with zero government experience.

Trump's pick for Secretary of Labor follows this trend. As the top executive of a major fast food corporation and an outspoken opponent of unions, Puzder has frequently come into conflict with the Department of Labor he now seeks to run.

Workplace safety ranked low on Puzder's list of priorities as CEO of CKE Restaurants. During Puzder's tenure, the Department of Labor issued 98 OSHA safety violations, including 36 that posed fatal or serious bodily harm to workers, to CKE Restaurants and its subsidiaries. Employers have long sought to roll back OSHA, which allows workers to anonymously report hazards to the Department of Labor and carries steep fines for violations. With Puzder able to control OSHA investigations and enforcement, companies stand to make larger profits at the expense of the health and safety of workers.

Wage theft runs rampant throughout the fast food industry, and CKE Restaurants under Puzder was no exception. The Labor Department conducted numerous investigations into wage theft complaints by workers at CKE Restaurants, most of which resulted in fines, settlements and damages awarded to workers. A particularly disturbing 2007 investigation found that Hardee's Food Systems Inc., a part of CKE Restaurants, had illegally withheld overtime from over 450 workers and was forced to pay $58,000.

Employers will face no such consequences from Trump's Secretary of Labor. Wage theft investigations will become few and far between as Puzder scales down the size of the Labor Department, which already suffers from a shortage of staff. Puzder also pledged to repeal overtime protections for workers, which were expanded under President Obama, paving the way for greater exploitation and higher profits.

Trump declares war on the Fight for $15

In the last four years, fast food workers, like those employed by CKE Restaurants, have waged a countrywide struggle for a $15 per hour minimum wage and union representation. Using a combination of protests and one-day strikes, the Fight for $15 campaign has won victories in cities like Seattle, Los Angeles and New York City, where local governments have agreed to raise the minimum wage to $15 per hour for some workers. Their efforts, supported heavily by SEIU, have mainly targeted the fast food industry, where corporations like CKE Restaurants rake in obscene profits by exploiting a non-union, low-wage workforce.

By picking a fast food CEO to head the Department of Labor, Trump has declared war on the Fight for $15 movement. Puzder vocally opposes raising the federal minimum wage, currently at $7.25 per hour, which puts him in line with Trump's own position that “wages are too high” for workers in the U.S.

National right-to-work: Trump's anti-union kill shot

National right-to-work legislation sits at the core of this new employer offensive against unions.

Right-to-work laws force unions to represent workers who refuse to join and pay dues. This gives workers a disincentive to join, since they receive all the benefits of union membership whether they pay dues or not. The effect is a net drain on union resources, which go towards representing non-members, and a weakened position at the bargaining table with employers.

Right-to-work laws came about in 1948, when an anti-labor coalition of Democrats and Republicans passed the Taft-Hartley Act on behalf of employers. This devastating piece of legislation outlawed solidarity strikes, restricted union activity and allowed states to pass so-called 'right to work' laws. Since that time, 26 states have enacted right-to-work legislation. The Bureau of Labor statistics estimates that workers in these states make about $6000 per year less than workers in states where all workers in union workplaces pay dues.

After the 2010 election brought a wave of Tea Party governors to power, employers successfully passed right-to-work laws in union strongholds like Michigan, Indiana and Wisconsin. Since then, however, unions defeated similar efforts in Missouri, West Virginia and most recently Virginia. Attempts to push right-to-work in the three strongest union states – California, New York and Illinois – have go nowhere.

With union density at its lowest point since the Great Depression, employers hope to break organized labor with national right-to-work legislation. Republican Congressman Steve King of Iowa and Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky introduced the National Right to Work Act to both houses of Congress in 2015, but it stalled in the face of a guaranteed veto by President Obama. Trump, an outspoken supporter of right-to-work, along with a Republican-controlled Congress, gives employers an opportunity to turn their twisted dream into reality.

Support for national right-to-work legislation – along with other anti-union laws, like the Employee Reform Act – in Trump's proposed cabinet goes beyond Puzder. Billionaire Betsy DeVos, tapped by Trump for Secretary of Education, was the main financial backer of Michigan's 2012 right-to-work law. DeVos is the daughter-in-law of Richard DeVos, the founder of Amway, who made his fortune by ripping off poor and working people with ‘multi-level marketing’ pyramid schemes.

DeVos pushed right-to-work in Michigan under the Trojan horse of ‘education reform,’ aimed at weakening teachers’ unions and converting public schools into private charter schools. As Education Secretary, DeVos can leverage national education policy against both the teachers’ unions and organized labor as a whole.

Labor must fight back

The danger posed by Trump brings to mind another U.S. president who presided over a massive employer offensive against Labor: Ronald Reagan. Reagan came to power in 1980 with the full backing of banks, billionaires and corporations. After the economic crisis and stagnation of the 1970s, employers desperately wanted to boost profits, and they saw organized labor as their main obstacle. Reagan set to work immediately by breaking the 1981 Professional Air Traffic Controllers Organization (PATCO) strike. In doing so, he signaled to employers that the federal government would support their campaign to roll back wages and benefits.

Unfortunately, labor finds itself in an even weaker position today than it did under Reagan. In 2015, union membership reached its lowest point since World War II, sitting at 11.1% (14.7 million). The private sector experienced an even worse drop in union membership, going from 16.5% in 1983 to 6.7% in 2015.

But the crisis facing labor goes beyond membership numbers. Most of today's union leaders have abandoned the strike weapon as a tactic for struggle. Only 12 work stoppages involving a total of 47,000 workers took place in 2015 in the U.S. Even in 1981, the same year Reagan busted the PATCO strike, 145 work stoppages involving 729,000 workers took place around the country.

Instead of struggling against employers and contending for working class power on the shop floor, union leaders have favored an approach of collaboration with management. Since this strategy seldom produces better contracts, these same leaders put the union's money, time, resources, energy and reputation into electing politicians, mostly from the Democratic Party, in hopes of passing pro-worker legislation. Put simply, this strategy came crashing down in 2016.

The Trump offensive has the potential to devastate unions and the entire working class if the labor movement continues down the same failed path. Employers hope to break organized labor once and for all under a Trump presidency, and this radical anti-union cabinet of one-percenters intends to lead this effort. It's well-past time for the U.S. labor movement to reclaim its historical legacy of militant, production-halting strikes and resistance.

Dave Schneider is a 26-year-old Teamster shop steward and community organizer from Jacksonville, Florida.

#JacksonvileFL #JacksonvilleFL #Trump #DonaldTrump #Analysis

El uso de puro inglés en las escuelas se esta usando como vehículo para mantener diferentes naciones bajo opresión. Esta es una arma que se ha usado a través de la historia para conquistar y destrozar naciones enteras. Se utiliza reemplazar un lenguaje con otro para borrar el método de comunicación y mejor aprendizaje. Por ejemplo, se sabe que los españoles destrosaron a pueblos enteros reemplazando los lenguajes indígenas con el español.

La educación bilingüe sigue siendo atacada igualmente para los mismos propósitos. Miles des estudiantes siguen siendo negados el derecho de usar su lenguaje natal como base para aprender. La falta de apoyo en un lenguaje que los estudiantes necesitan significa que muchos estudiantes no podran armarse con las herramientas educación les que necesitan para sobrevivir en este mundo. Muchos no están pensando en el futuro de niñas y niños que seguirán bajo condiciones opresivas a causa de que se les niega una educación justa.

La mayoría de los estudiantes Chicanos no están en programas bilingües, solo 30% realmente lo están. El resto, 70% han sido educados en clases de estudio que usan puro inglés con apoyo mínimo. En la Proposición 227, sigue reenforzando ese tipo de genocidio educacional, es por eso que muchos estudiantes batallan con sus materias.

Desilusionados con un sistema que no les enseña adecuadamente y que no se preocupa más que en meternos en clases donde bajo estiman sus habilidades y los tratan como inútiles. Es por eso que el nivel de estudiantes Chicanos, Afro-Americanos, Latino Americanos, y Nativo Americanos y otros grupos opresionados siguen 50% o más del porcentaje que se salen y no terminan sus estudios o no reciben su diploma.

Sin embargo, se le hecha la culpa a los programas bilingües por fallas de un sistema inadecuado en adaptar o tomar en cuenta nuestra cultura y lenguaje.

Además lo mas critico es que se les esta despojando de su identidad y haciéndolos renegar su propio lenguaje, cultura, y por consecuencia sus propios padres. Este tipo de actitudes se refleja en la mentalidad de las niñas y niños por que se crea un ambiente negativo en cual se hace ver el lenguaje de inglés como la única manera de aprender y de “triumfar” en los Estados Unidos.

El inglés se hace ver como si fuera el único lenguaje de ser inteligente. A través del inglés están asimilando los estudiantes y otorgándoles una manera de pensar muy asimilada. En otras palabras los programas que se están usando para reemplazar los programas bilingüe son un proceso de Americanización. Americanización en el sentido de que al cortar el lenguaje natal se corta la cultura, la historia y se reniega de donde vienen sus padres, familia, antepasados y costumbres, reemplazando con ideales individualista que no les ayudara a salir del tipo de opresión mental o físico en el cual se encuentran muchas naciones sujetas a opresión en este día y sociedad.

¡Hasta La Victoria Siempre!

#EstadosUnidos #Analysis #ChicanoLatino #laEducaciónBilingüe #Autodeterminación #LaNaciónChicana #NacionalidadesOprimadas

In the end, an unjust agreement was forced on the Yugoslav government. Kosovo is occupied by foreign troops. British commandos go door to door in Serb villages telling people, “We can't guarantee your survival,” and Yugoslav patriots who resist the occupation are being jailed and murdered.

The Anti-War movement

One response to this criminal war was the construction of a powerful anti-war movement. Tens of millions, in countries around the world said NO to this war. The capitols of Europe were rocked by protests. The U.S. embassy in China was trashed. Sailors in the Greek Navy refused to go into action against Yugoslavia. In Russia and the Ukraine, there were huge demonstrations, and thousands signed up to fight as anti-NATO volunteers.

In our country the anti-war movement can list a number of important accomplishments. By raising a banner of resistance to the war, it was possible to have a real debate about the nature and aims of the war. At the point when the air war ended, that movement was poised to become a more powerful force.

As a part of the international fight against the war, there can also be no doubt that the movement limited the actions of the Western powers. For example, they couldn't introduce ground troops into a “hostile environment” in Yugoslavia.

Serb Americans, who courageously added their numbers and knowledge to the movement, made a critical contribution to the peace movement.

Finally, despite the intense propaganda drive which attempted to give the war a “humanitarian” cover, many people who had not been active in the anti-intervention movement in the past, stepped forward and got involved.

Some Problems

Unfortunately, some people who should know better, were confused and tried to confuse others. As NATO bombs were raining down on factories and farms, they joined the anti-Yugoslavia chorus. Confusing the aggressor with the victims of aggression, these people said that all sides were to blame.

Rather than doing the work to build an anti-war movement, they sat on the sidelines and said silly things like the more we criticize Yugoslavia, the stronger the movement would be. Others showed up at protests calling for “independence for Kosovo,” which in practice means to carve up Yugoslavia and make Kosovo a NATO protectorate.

And the people who called for a “United Nations solution” to conflicts inside Yugoslavia are getting just what they asked for: the U.N. will appoint a government to work hand-in-hand with the occupying NATO troops in Kosovo.

Just as in Iraq, the U.N. solution is the U.S. solution.

More Wars Ahead

The Western powers are competing with each other to extend their political and economic domination over the former socialist countries of Eastern Europe and Soviet Union. The occupation of Kosovo will speed up their attempts at expansion, and sharpen the competition between them.

The outcome of this will be more wars of aggression by the Western powers. Right now the U.S. is engaged in an air campaign against Iraq. Ships and submarines have been sent to the Yellow Sea for the purpose of threatening people's Korea.

We have entered a period where we can expect more unjust wars. The rich and the powerful in the West are going all-out to seize the land, labor, and natural resources of others. We in the anti-war movement have our work cut out for us.

#UnitedStates #AntiwarMovement #Analysis #Yugoslavia #NATO #Europe

Many crimes against Iraq have been justified by the demonization of Saddam Hussein. Invasion was justified by claims that he possessed ‘weapons of mass destruction,’ had ties to al-Qaeda, and posed a threat to the territorial United States.

The claims turned out to be lies. There were no ‘weapons of mass destruction’ or programs to develop them. There were no ties to al-Qaeda. He did not threaten U.S. territory.

Those who still support the occupation now say it was justified because Saddam Hussein was a ‘brutal dictator.’ One of the main complaints against him is that ‘he killed the Kurds.’ The usual reference is the Anfal campaign of the Iraqi army from Feb. 23, 1988 to Sept. 6, 1988. It is claimed that Anfal was a campaign of genocide. It can now be said that the ‘Anfal genocide’ never happened. It is another lie.

Ironically it is the second of the illegal U.S.-run ‘trials’ of Mr. Hussein in Baghdad that allows this conclusion. The facts and circumstances of the ‘trial’ can be analyzed without any concession to the legitimacy of the ‘court.’ Nor, since it is illegal, is there any reason to wait for the ‘court’s’ findings before reaching one’s own conclusions. Applicable principles of international law are presented in Appendix A.

Certain facts are not in dispute. The campaign took place in the late stages of the Iran-Iraq war. The Iraqi army fought units of the Iranian army in Northern Iraq. Kurdish guerillas, called peshmerga allied with Iran against the government of their own country. In order to suppress the guerillas the Iraqi government displaced large numbers of Kurdish civilians from border areas.

Press reports say the current charge is genocide during Anfal. By any definition the crime of genocide means the extermination of large numbers of people. At first no definite number of civilian fatalities was given in news reports, but in September the ‘prosecution’ was several times reported to say there were 182,000 deaths.

The ‘trial’ on the Anfal charges began on Aug. 21, 2006. There were 13 sessions of the ‘court’ between that date and Sept. 26, at which time it recessed.

In the press reports studied for this analysis no statement or presentation of methodology was reported. No systematic studies were reported. No sworn affidavits were reported. No expert testimony was reported. Evidence of this kind would have been front-page news. It can be concluded that no such evidence was introduced. See Appendix B for the tabulation of articles.

Instead all testimony was anecdotal. As an example, on Aug. 22, the first day of testimony, a witness named Ali Mustapha Hama was heard. He testified to events in the village of Balisan on April 16, 1987. The BBC reported: “Ali Mustapha Hama said there was greenish smoke, and minutes later, a smell like rotten apples or garlic. He spoke of a newborn infant who was trying to “smell life”, but breathed in the chemicals and died. Many others died too, he added. During cross-examination, defence lawyers asked Mr. Hama how he knew the aircraft were Iraqi, and prompted Hama to say he had helped shelter guerrillas in his village.”

The death of an infant is a very bad thing. Still, the number of fatalities definitely averred by Mr. Hama is one. He also admitted that there was guerilla activity in his village. Genocide is a large-scale crime against civilians, meant to exterminate an ethnic group. Thus Mr. Hama’s testimony did nothing to establish genocide. Another witness heard the same day was not even reported to have made any definite statement of fatalities.

Between Aug. 22 and Sept. 26 the news reports speak of 17 witnesses. Definite statements of fatalities came to a total of 43. Some of the fatalities could have overlapped. No attempt to differentiate between civilian and military casualties was reported.

Of the 15 witnesses, three admitted to having been peshmerga guerillas, whereas genocide is a crime against civilians. One of the three former guerillas, Moussa Abdullah Moussa, now lives in Tennessee. Another witness, Katrin Michael, now lives in Virginia.

One of the witnesses, Mahmoud Hama Aziz, testified on Sept. 9 to seven fatalities at an unstated location in 1987, prior to Anfal. The New York Times reported the next day that evidence bearing on Mr. Aziz’s testimony had been found in a mass grave discovered in 2004, whereas the ‘prosecution’ claims investigations have been going on since 1991 (see Doebbler, below.) The timing of the ‘discovery’ is so convenient as to raise still more doubts.

21 of the 43 fatalities, including the Balisan incident, occurred in 1987, before Anfal. That leaves at most 22 during the Anfal period or at times not stated. The question arises as to what happened to the other 181,978 of the 182,000 claimed victims. At this rate it will take about 689 years to account for the alleged fatalities.

Hence in the first month of proceedings the ‘prosecution’ presented no case at all.

The original trial judge was removed for political reasons on Sept. 20 (see below.) Later sessions descended from farce into chaos. Defense lawyers boycotted the ‘trial’ on orders of Mr. Hussein. Anonymous ‘witnesses’ gave testimony behind a screen; documents were stolen from defense attorney Badia Arif Izzat in the courtroom building, and so forth.

The prosecution has had all the time and opportunity needed to formulate a case. The alleged events occurred 18 years ago. Northern Iraq has been out of Baghdad’s control since 1996, when the Clinton administration unilaterally imposed the ‘no-fly’ zones on Iraq.

Nor has there been any lack of investigative expertise and money. The New York Times reported on July 1, 2004 that, “The Federal Bureau of Investigation is leading the investigation, along with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms and agents from the Justice Department.” The New York Times also said on July 20, 2005 that the U.S. had spent more than $35 million on the investigations.

In a case as intensely political as this it must be presumed that at the beginning the ‘prosecution’ will present its case at its strongest. It presented a shambles. Moreover the scale of time and resources behind the ‘prosecution’ removes any argument that a case could be made with more effort. There is only one way that is at all plausible, likely, or straightforward to explain the ‘prosecution’s’ failure to even begin to make any case: there was no ‘Anfal genocide.’

Other circumstances support the same conclusion.

The charges are not even clear. None of the cited news reports give more than the word ‘genocide.’ The specification of charges might answer some questions. A moderate effort found a document termed a ‘charging instrument’ for the first ‘trial’ of Mr. Hussein, the Dujail case. It is posted at http://www.law.case.edu/saddamtrial/documents/20060515_indictment_trans_saddam_hussein.pdf. Charges for the Anfal ‘trial’ were not posted at the same site, however. Repeated Internet searches using ‘charging instrument’ and/or other search terms failed to find the corresponding prosecution statement for the Anfal ‘trial.’ Hence the ‘prosecution’ case is not easily available. It is apparent that the Bush administration and the ‘prosecution’ do not want their case to be known to the public.

The most basic and routine of defendant’s rights are violated. Defense attorney Curtis Doebbler writes:

The violations of unfair trial are too numerous to mention here, but include almost every provision in article 14 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights that could be violated at this juncture of the proceedings. . .

The prosecution alleges to have been collecting evidence since at least 1991 – which, of course, could only be true if it were the United States government doing the collecting – and has at least been doing so since April 2003 when dozens of American lawyers and Iraqis who had not lived in Iraq for years were shuttled in to build a case. The defense lawyers, despite requesting visits with their client since December 2003 when he was detained, have to date not been allowed the confidential visits that are necessary to begin to prepare a defense. No visits were allowed with the most senior lawyers until after the trial had started and at each visit American officials exercise the authority to read any materials brought into the visiting room despite the fact that all meetings remain under close audio and visual surveillance. As if this were not enough, evidence has been withheld from the defense lawyers. They have been denied access to investigative hearings; they have been denied prior notice of witnesses, and they are prevented from even visiting the site of the alleged crime.

From: http://jurist.law.pitt.edu/forumy/2006/04/farce-of-law-trial-of-saddam-hussein.php

If any sound ‘prosecution’ case were possible these abuses would be unnecessary.

Mr. Hussein’s defense team has been denied physical security despite repeated requests. During the first ‘trial’ three of his attorneys were murdered. During the current ‘trial’ legal assistant Abdel Monem Yassin Hussein was murdered. He was kidnapped on Aug. 29. His body was found five days later. The murders of defense personnel argue further against the possibility of any ‘prosecution’ case.

The blatantly political nature of the ‘trial’ was exposed again on Sept. 20, when puppet Iraqi ‘prime minister’ Nuri al-Maliki removed judge Abdullah al-Amiri from the case. The reason for this outrageous abuse was reported by the New York Times on Sept. 15 as follows:

“One witness, a Kurdish farmer, testified that in 1988 he had pleaded with Mr. Hussein for the life of his wife and seven young children. He said a furious Mr. Hussein shouted, ‘Shut up and get out.’ In court, Mr. Hussein jumped up to defend himself. ‘Why did he try to see Saddam Hussein?’ he asked the judge, referring to himself in the third person, as is his habit in court. ‘Wasn’t Saddam a dictator and an enemy to the Kurdish people, as they say?’ The judge replied: ‘I will answer you: you are not a dictator. Not a dictator,’ he repeated. ‘You were not a dictator.’ Mr. Hussein, smiling, replied, ‘Thank you.’”

Five days later the judge was removed. If the alleged events of 1988 had really occurred it is extremely unlikely that the puppet ‘government’ would again have discredited itself and the ‘trial’ with this shameless interference.

Even more extraordinarily, an AP report on Aug. 21 said that “the trial does not deal with the most notorious gassing – the March 1988 attack on Halabja that killed an estimated 5,000 Kurds. That incident will be part of a separate investigation by the Iraqi High Tribunal.” The report did not say why Halabja is to be treated separately.

The Halabja incident is the biggest thing in the ‘genocide’ case. The ‘prosecution’ has dismembered its own case. It is trying to carry water by knocking the bottom out of its own bucket. The omission strongly suggests that there is no more to the Halabja story than there is to the ‘Anfal genocide.’

\* \* \*

The most serious doubts arise repeatedly that any valid case against Mr. Hussein can be made. Just as in the notorious ‘Downing Street Memo’ minutes of a July, 2002 meeting of the British cabinet, “the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy.”

In the United States the burden of proof is on the prosecution to prove its case ‘beyond reasonable doubt.’ The defects of the ‘prosecution’s’ case are so great as to constitute overwhelming doubt. There is no reason at all to believe that genocide was committed in the Anfal campaign. Only one conclusion can be drawn: the ‘Anfal genocide’ never happened.

\* \* \*

In all of the years of its war with Iraq, U.S. imperialism has had only one significant political success: the demonization of Saddam Hussein. The ‘brutal, corrupt dictator’ line is heard across the political spectrum. Investigation would seem unnecessary.

One result is that to a great degree antiwar opinion sees the war in Iraq as no more than a war for oil. It is insufficient to stop without looking at Iraq, but that is what almost always happens.

Firstly, the oil already belongs to Iraq. From its side the war has always been a war for sovereignty, i.e., its rights of national self-determination. Since occupation it has also become a war for independence.

‘War for oil’ also raises further questions. There are many ways to get oil. War is the worst way to get it. The question is why U.S. imperialism has resorted to war. There are many countries that have oil. The United Arab Emirates has almost as much oil as Iraq but nothing is ever heard about it. The question is why Iraq is different.

Again the answer is that modern pre-occupation Iraq always fully asserted its rights of sovereignty. The war is Iraq is an unjust war for oil versus a just war for sovereignty and independence.

The highest questions of any war are questions of historical content and direction, questions of just and unjust causes. Antiwar opinion is most of the time not even aware of these questions. More than anything else it is the demonization of Saddam Hussein that denies the masses a full understanding of the war.

The revolutionary significance of Iraq’s great struggle disappears. The linkage of the struggle in Iraq to that of Palestine disappears. Too often the need to support the just and heroic Iraqi resistance becomes lost; too often the necessity to immediately demand unconditional withdrawal of all foreign forces as objectively the only way to end the war becomes lost.

Very little about Iraq and nothing at all about Saddam Hussein should ever be accepted on the basis of authority. There are no such authorities in the U.S. government. There are no such authorities in the U.S. media. There are no such academic authorities. There are no such authorities in the antiwar movement. Throw away all ‘authoritative’ ideas about Saddam Hussein!

There are only determinations: sound methods, sound concepts, facts and logic, history. On method one can, for instance, look at the Iraqi side directly. Daily accounts of resistance activities are posted in English at http://www.albasrah.net/pages/mod.php?header=res1&mod=gis&rep=rep.

Political statements of the Iraqi Baath Arab Socialist Party and pre-occupation speeches of President Saddam Hussein are posted at http://www.al-moharer.net/qiwa_shabiya/qiwa.html.

The war will end and can only end in the defeat of imperialism and its expulsion from the Persian Gulf. The people of Iraq are stronger than imperialism.

-- October 2006

Appendix A: The ‘trial’ Violates International Law

1. The invasion of Iraq is a violation of international law.

Excerpt from ‘A Farce of Law: The Trial of Saddam Hussein’ by Curtis F. Doebbler

The glaring illegalities of the current process begin with illegal origins. The invasion and occupation of Iraq is widely understood to be illegal. On 5 March 2003, three of the five members of UN Security Council and Germany, which was then a non-permanent member, unambiguously declared that a US-led invasion without further Security Council authorization would violate international law. On 16 September 2004, UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan reiterated what was by then obvious to almost every international lawyer, that the invasion and occupation of Iraq is illegal. In fact, this is a textbook case of illegal aggression in violation of the prohibition of the use of force by one country against another found in article 2(4) of the Charter of the United Nations and under customary international law.

The Nuremberg Tribunal described such illegal aggression as ‘essentially an evil thing. Its consequences are not confined to the belligerent states alone, but affect the whole world. To initiate a war of aggression, therefore, is not only an international crime; it is the supreme international crime differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole.’

http://jurist.law.pitt.edu/forumy/2006/04/farce-of-law-trial-of-saddam-hussein.php

Curtis Doebbler is an American member of Saddam Hussein’s legal defense team and a professor of law at An-Najah National University on the Palestinian West Bank

2. The ‘trial’ of Saddam Hussein violates provisions of international law to which the United States is signatory.

Excerpts from ‘Iraq and the Laws of War’ by Professor Francis A. Boyle

On 19 March 2003 President Bush Jr. commenced his criminal war against Iraq by ordering a so-called decapitation strike against the President of Iraq in violation of a 48-hour ultimatum he had given publicly to the Iraqi President and his sons to leave the country. This duplicitous behavior violated the customary international laws of war set forth in the 1907 Hague Convention on the Opening of Hostilities to which the United States is still a contracting party, as evidenced by paragraphs 20, 21, 22, and 23 of U.S. Army Field Manual 27-10 (1956).

. . .

This brings the analysis to the so-called Constitution of Iraq that was allegedly drafted by the puppet Interim Government of Iraq under the impetus of the United States government. Article 43 of the 1907 Hague Regulations on land warfare flatly prohibits the change in a basic law such as a state’s Constitution during the course of a belligerent occupation: ‘The authority of the legitimate power having in fact passed into the hands of the occupant, the latter shall take all the measures in his power to restore, and ensure as far as possible, public order and safety, while respecting, unless absolutely prevented, the laws in force in the country.’ This exact same prohibition has been expressly incorporated in haec verba into paragraph 363 of U.S. Army Field Manual 27-10 (1956).

http://www.countercurrents.org/iraq-boyle221205.htm

Francis A. Boyle is Professor of Law at the University of Illinois.

Appendix B: Tabulation of News Reports

#Iraq #Analysis #Trial #Anfal #SaddamHussein #MiddleEast

According to a USA Today/CNN/Gallup/Red Cross poll, 39% of New Orleans families are still split up. People recently interviewed by Fight Back! casually mentioned children and grandchildren living in five different states. Parents with children in school are staying in whatever town they landed in after Katrina, at least through the end of the school year. Then a decision has to be made about uprooting again. According the poll, 15% of New Orleans respondents still don’t know where some of their relatives are.

Over 600,000 people were moved from shelters to hotels by mid-October. As of Oct. 14 over 15,000 people were still in shelters. The U.S. government then closed the shelters, sending people mostly to hotels. FEMA trailers are being set up in Louisiana and around the Gulf. Families have priority for trailers, but the waiting list is already months long – shutting out many families and virtually all singles. Being forced to live in a hotel room is not a vacation. Every aspect of living becomes a logistical hurdle: eating, laundry and basic privacy.

Hundreds of thousands lost their jobs. People who have worked all their lives are stalled. Many of us have experienced the agony of weeks of job search, knowing the jobs aren’t really there. Add to that having to struggle daily for the basics of hygiene, food, housing and transportation and your chances are grimmer. Over 363,000 people filed for hurricane related unemployment – but many are discouraged about even doing that, since its just another snarl of red tape to be navigated.

The federal Opportunity Zones for ‘rebuilding’ the Gulf offer pathetic wages and overturn affirmative action hiring – ironic when one considers 75% of New Orleans residents are non-white. This opens the specter of white-owned companies hiring oppressed nationality people at less than prevailing wage (less than $7 per hour, in New Orleans) to demolish homes of poor Blacks and Latinos to replace those homes with mansions for the rich.

For homeowners, the struggle with insurance companies has begun. For those who are uninsured, ‘underinsured’ – a term that will come as a surprise to many – or who get swindled by greedy insurance companies, rebuilding will be difficult or impossible. Many are being forced, out of sheer financial desperation, to put their family property up for quick sale. Real estate speculators are already circling like vultures to cash in on people’s tragedy.

The most devastated part of New Orleans is the Ninth Ward, which was submerged under floodwaters from Bush’s broken levies. Many residents are trying to come back, after dealing with the continued nightmare of a FEMA and government failure. But it seems like the government is determined to shut out Ninth Ward residents. Bush’s Housing and Urban and Development secretary, Alphonso Jackson, was quoted in the the Houston Chronicle, Sept. 29, “New Orleans is not going to be as black as it was for a long time, if ever again.” The Chronicle said that HUD Secretary Jackson wasn’t sure if the Ninth Ward should be rebuilt at all. 20,000 people are from the Ninth Ward, almost all of them Black and low-income.

On Sept. 27, Bush gave a fancy speech and moved on. The speech and smirking ‘apology’ were designed to lull us into thinking things were OK, but the Katrina evacuees outside the Reliant Center/Astrodome said, “Too little, too late.” The lives of thousands of displaced New Orleans residents were destroyed because of Bush’s deliberate decision to not fund basic maintenance on the levies, followed by his callous disregard for human life.

Over half of homes in New Orleans (which is 67% Black) were rented. Low wages, even for skilled workers, combined with national oppression have made renting a fact of life. A poll conducted in early October said 60% of folks plan to return to New Orleans. It stands to reason many are people who rented. On Oct. 25, many renters were officially evicted. It is essential that repatriation efforts include not just the construction of affordable rental housing and more subsidized housing – but homes to all former renters who want them. Bush’s call relies on private charities – and we know from bitter experience that charities pick, choose and discriminate. Poor people and Black people in New Orleans deserve reparations from the U.S. – a government that killed hundreds of New Orleans people. Housing should be given to all former residents who want it, no questions asked.

These disasters spawned by Katrina and Bush will continue every day. When the government keeps your life turned upside down, it is a hurdle to demanding the justice you deserve. That is why it is crucial for everyone all over the country to keep up the struggle for justice for Katrina survivors – read between the lines of what the mainstream media puts out and think about the people’s lives behind the government sound bites. It is up to us to keep the truth front and center.

The events following Hurricane Katrina show some basic truths about this country: The government and the economic system – monopoly capitalism – serves the very rich and no one else. African Americans face a system of racism and national oppression that robs Black people of equality, land, democratic rights and political power. The shadow of the plantations still hangs over the Gulf region. Black people in the South need political power, liberation and the right to self-determination. A system that lets people die on freeway overpasses has forfeited its right to exist.

#UnitedStates #PoorPeoplesMovements #Analysis #AsianNationalities #AfricanAmerican #ChicanoLatino #HurricaneKatrina #FEMA #OpportunityZones #monopolyCapitalism

East Los Angeles, CA – The streets here were filled with Chicanas and Chicanos of all ages on Aug. 26 to commemorate the Chicana/o people's struggle for liberation and self-determination. Aug. 29 marked the 30th anniversary of the Chicano Moratorium.

Aug. 29 is a day to commemorate the 500-plus years of Chicana/o people's struggle. It has been a constant battle of resistance. It reminds the world that we have always been at war, from the invasion and attempted conquest by the Spaniards, followed by the Manifest Destiny plan of the United States, through the Mexican-American War that took away our lands.

We became wage slaves for capitalism.

Our ancestor's families became the wage slaves and suffered brutal exploitation – picking crops they couldn't afford to buy with what they got paid. On top of labor exploitation, these same families suffered a thousand abuses, including tuberculosis and other poverty-caused diseases – just like native peoples who were exterminated by illnesses brought by the western societies.

During the U.S. war in Vietnam, huge numbers of Chicanos were drafted. We went from the fields or unemployment lines, straight to the front lines as infantry. Mexicanos were recruited by offering them citizenship. They were killed in the so-called “War for Democracy” in Vietnam. It was a false citizenship. Chicanos and Mexicanos came back home to suffer wage exploitation or no jobs at all. Chicana's labor was demeaned, after they had been worked to death to maintain the country's war supplies.

In recent years, the type of work Chicana/os, Blacks, Filipinos and Native Americans are forced to do has changed, because of the new industries, but the exploitation has not changed.

What was fought for in the 60's and 70's was quickly lost with the coming of Reagan. No health care, along with welfare cuts, continues to plague communities of color. The current political system has brought new oppressive conditions for Chicana/os and Mexicana/os. We are facing attacks against every member of our families.

With Proposition 187, poverty diseases have returned, as its aim was no health care for the “undocumented”. It goes on, with Proposition 184, “Three Strikes You're Out”, for the adult Chicana/os; Proposition 209 for the dismantling of Affirmative Action to keep us out of education; Proposition 227 abolishing Bilingual Education to get rid of our language and culture, aimed at our children; and Proposition 21, “Baby-Three Strikes You're Out”, aimed to incarcerate our Chicana/o youth. Now youth are brutalized by police as we were by the marines during war times. The police represent the state at home as the army represents the state in the wars abroad.

The use of the propositions maintains these conditions by creating the idea that people of color are not deserving of basic services, without looking at how we sustain the country with our blood and sweat. The Chicanas of the last generation worked traditionally male jobs, contributing labor to the economy. Now as Chicana/os are going to be the majority of the nation, Chicanas are also the targeted to be among the poorest of women because of Welfare Reform.

The political system is a disguised war tactic. Today we are still under the repressive state. Manifest Destiny still exists, as the U.S. has its eye on the other half of Mexico. It has never stopped trying to take the rest of the land. They have continued to exploit and oppress the nation of Mexico through North American Free Trade Agreement – depriving the nation of its self-determination. The U.S. government supports the Mexican government in its attempt to suppress the indigenous nations like Chiapas.

The Chicana/o Moratorium reminds us that not much has changed as we continue at war. It took us 20 years to make some gains, and, in just a little over a decade – half the time it took to fight for them – the gains were gone.

Our second generation hasn't even gotten a taste of the hard struggle of the first generation. The journalist Ruben Salazar was to publish the realities of the Chicana/o peoples thirty years ago and was killed so that he wouldn't expose these realities. He was silenced. Many others have been too.

On Aug. 26, 2000 we marched again to show that our history is alive in the struggle of today. Even though our nation is brutally exploited and oppressed, we have been able to survive and fight.

Uphold the right to self-determination and liberation for the Chicana/o Mexicana/o people.

#EastLosAngelesCA #AntiwarMovement #Analysis #ChicanoLatino #Proposition21 #ChicanoMoratorium #proposition187

In 1967, the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. described the economic plight of African Americans: “Let us take a look at the size of the problem through the lens of the Negro’s status in 1967. When the Constitution was written, a strange formula to determine taxes and representation declared that the Negro was 60% of a person. Today another curious formula seems to declare that he is 50% of a person. Of the good things in life he has approximately one-half those of whites; of the bad he has twice those of whites. Thus half of all Negroes live in substandard housing, and Negroes have half the income of whites. When we turn to the negative experiences of life, the Negro has a double share. There are twice as many unemployed. The rate of infant mortality (widely accepted as an accurate index of general health) among Negroes is double that of whites.”

Today, thirty-five years later, the overall economic situation of African Americans has shown little change. While Black family income is now about two-thirds that of whites, many of the ‘negative experiences’ are more than twice that of whites: the unemployment rate for Blacks is more than twice that of whites, the rate of substandard housing and infant mortality for African Americans is about two and a half times that of whites, and the Black poverty rate is almost three times that of whites.

In Dr. King’s time, many tried to blame African Americans for this economic gap. The same is true today, where so-called ‘scholars’ try to blame the Black family, lack of education or even lack of intelligence. But Dr. King saw through these excuses for discrimination: “Depressed living standards for Negroes are not simply the consequence of neglect. Nor can they be explained by the myth of the Negro’s innate incapacities, or by the more sophisticated rationalization of his acquired infirmities (family disorganization, poor education, etc.). They are a structural part of the economic system in the United States. Certain industries and enterprises are based upon a supply of low-paid, underskilled and immobile nonwhite labor.”

So where do we go from here? I for one think that we need to change our economic system from one based on profit, capitalism, to one based on providing for people’s needs – socialism. I cannot say that Dr. King was for socialism. But I do believe that the economic goals that he fought for – a guaranteed job or income for all and economic equality between whites and nonwhites -cannot be achieved under capitalism.

(Both King quotes are from Where Do We Go From Here? Chaos or Community.)

#StPaulMN #CapitalismAndEconomy #PoorPeoplesMovements #Analysis #PeoplesStruggles #AfricanAmerican #WorkersAndGlobalization #ReverendMartinLutherKingJr #WhereDoWeGoFromHere

We can not wait for politicians to address our needs. We need to continue protesting and organizing. The ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) attacks continue with more raids, more enforcement and heightened vigilance at work sites. Next month companies will have 90 days to correct any discrepancy in documents of their workers, as part of a crackdown announced by the Department of Homeland Security and the Social Security Administration.

The companies that do not correct any kind of errors in documentation and fail to fire undocumented workers will be subject to major fines and possible criminal charges. This is a harsh, direct attack against immigrant workers that will cause unemployment and destruction of the wellbeing and lives of Latino families. We must resist this attack. Congress also approved an amendment to the Homeland Security Act for more money to militarize the southern border with Mexico, hiring more border patrol agents, electronic surveillance and constructing more ICE detention centers.

We need to organize protests against the ICE raids and deportations. The ICE detention centers are full. Our people suffer horrible conditions and abuse. We must protest and demand better conditions and their release. We must support the growing religious immigrant sanctuary movement and support the students who struggle for better education and jobs.

Our tactics need to be more militant – similar to the historic struggles of our Chicano and African American people. For example we should use civil disobedience, like in L.A. on Aug. 15, against the institutions and organizations who attack us and those who are against immigration reform, like the Republican Party. We should also support the economic boycott called by pro-immigrant rights groups in Arizona for Sept. 3-9. Arizona has proposed more racist state laws.

We need to focus pressure against the congress with delegation visits from the community. We can organize mass marches like May 1 and Aug. 18 in L.A. We must develop a long range plan that includes the call for national unity of community groups and activists with a base, unity with groups in Mexico and Central America, a national conference in early 2008, building towards a great labor and economic boycott for May 1 2008. We can build the movement for immigrant rights, by applying pressure on the presidential candidates in the upcoming elections and by participating in the movement against the Iraq war.

Nothing worthwhile comes with out a struggle. There are powerful forces that are working to exploit and oppress the undocumented and to hold down all Latino people. Now is the time to strengthen our movement, to beat back the attacks on the undocumented and to promote full equality and legalization. We can and will win.

#UnitedStates #Analysis #ChicanoLatino #ImmigrationAndCustomsEnforcementICE #detentions

In 1967, exactly one year before Dr. King was assassinated, he made an impassioned plea to stop the War in Vietnam. “Somehow this madness must cease. We must stop now. I speak as a child of God and brother to the suffering poor in Vietnam. I speak for those whose land is being laid waste, whose homes are being destroyed, whose culture is being subverted. I speak for the poor of America who are paying the double price of smashed hope at home and death and corruption in Vietnam. I speak as a citizen of the world, for the world as it stands aghast at the path we have taken. I speak as an American to the leaders of my own nation. The great initiative in this war is ours. The initiative to stop it must be ours.”

Dr. King saw the war in Vietnam as a part of a larger problem, saying, “The war in Vietnam is but a symptom of a far deeper malady within the American spirit, and if we ignore this sobering reality we will find ourselves organizing clergy and laymen concerned committees for the next generation. They will be concerned about Guatemala and Peru. They will be concerned about Thailand and Cambodia. They will be concerned about Mozambique and South Africa. We will be marching for these and a dozen other names and attending rallies without end unless there is a significant and profound change in American life and policy.”

Dr. King also supported worldwide revolution when he said, “These are revolutionary times. All over the globe men are revolting against old systems of exploitation and oppression and out of the wombs of a frail world new systems of justice and equality are being born. The shirtless and barefoot people of the land are rising up as never before. ‘The people who sat in darkness have seen a great light.’ We in the West must support these revolutions.”

Drawing on his famous “I Have A Dream” speech of 1963, Dr. King made a call for economic justice, racial equality, and peace. “Our only hope today lies in our ability to recapture the revolutionary spirit and go out into a sometimes hostile world declaring our eternal hostility to poverty, racism, and militarism. With this powerful commitment we shall boldly challenge the status quo and unjust mores and thereby speed the day when ‘every valley shall be exalted, and every mountain and hill shall be made low, and the crooked shall be made straight and the rough places plain.’”

(All quotations are from Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s speech, “ A Time to Break Silence,” delivered to a meeting of Clergy and Laity Concerned on April 4, 1967, exactly one year before he was assassinated.)

#UnitedStates #StPaulMN #AntiwarMovement #CapitalismAndEconomy #PoorPeoplesMovements #Analysis #AfricanAmerican #DrKing #MartinLutherKing #ATimeToBreakSilence

As Fight Back! goes to press, Teamsters (IBT), Service Employees International Union (SEIU) and the United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW) have quit the AFL-CIO.

For now, UNITE HERE, which combines needle trades, hotel and food service workers will not leave and continues paying dues to State Federations and local labor councils.

The departing unions are part of the ‘Change to Win Coalition’, which also includes the Laborers, UNITE HERE, the United Farm Workers and the Carpenters Union. The Carpenters Union left the AFL-CIO long before the convention.

The break up puts about one third of organized labor outside of the AFL-CIO.

The Debate that Wasn’t

The ongoing decline of the size and influence of the trade union movement provides the backdrop for the split. In the private sector, less than 8% of workers now work under union contracts.

Though many AFL-CIO convention delegates watched it unfolding, their disbelief and anger filled the convention when four of the largest unions remained outside. Chicago radio stations in the African American and Latino communities were flooded with calls from workers wanting to know if they would still work under collective bargaining agreements. Across the U.S., workers in union halls and workplaces are asking what this means. Workers are left wondering, because the debate preceding the convention was restricted to a small layer of top union officers. The debate never reached the rank and file union members.

Though narrow, the issues debated are important to everyone who is concerned about the direction of the labor movement. One camp, the Change to Win Coalition, is led by SEIU’s President Andy Stern. The other camp is headed by the AFL-CIO’s John Sweeny, a former president of SEIU.

The problems of organizing the unorganized, union restructuring, along with the role and nature of political action are common concerns of all workers. Unfortunately, 90% of union workers had no idea these debates were taking place.

Class Struggle Unionism

On the eve of the AFL -CIO Convention, Chicago trade unionist Joe Iosbaker, leader of the Labor Commission of Freedom Road Socialist Organization, spoke to a packed hall. Labor and solidarity activists from across the U.S. listened closely.

Iosbaker stated, “Sweeney’s failures have led to a revolt in the palace. There is not much to say about the ideas on either side of this debate. But the debate itself provides an opening to raise the need to transform the unions. The unions need to become organizations of class struggle; they need to oppose the corporate class at home and U.S. imperialism abroad.”

“Some people say the way forward is democracy. We certainly support union democracy. We fight for union democracy in order to have worker-run organizations and to more effectively wage class struggle – not just to have fairer rules for replacing one set of bureaucrats with another.”

Iosbaker added, “The way forward for the labor movement is to revive class struggle unionism. We need unions to be fighting organizations, not dues collection machines. It means reviving tactics of earlier generations – of the 1910s and the 1930s. During those periods, workers did not content themselves with going on strike and holding up picket signs. They used every tactic in their arsenal, from sit-down strikes to shutting down production at the plant gates or to taking the fight industry or class wide. Class struggle unionism also means solidarity unionism, where unionists go all out in support of key struggles when they break out.”

Iosbaker also noted that labor movement needed to take on discrimination faced by African American, Chicano and Latino, Asian and other oppressed nationality workers. Unless this is done it will be impossible to build a labor movement that reflects the actual composition of the U.S. working class.

Stern and Sweeney, as well as the other union leaders on both sides of this debate think that labor management cooperation is not only possible, but good. In an April issue of HRO Today, a magazine that promotes outsourcing, Andy Stern stated, “The sum total of the wage race to the bottom is that this generation of American workers will be the first ever to have a worse quality of life than their parents. To try to stop the wage drops, unions have been an anti-competitive force, protectionist. But what union wages should be is like electricity, which allows their users [employers] to operate more efficiently with better quality.”

In various articles and speeches, Stern explains his belief that corporations should accept unions because unionization will aid them in their business plans. The Sweeny camp holds the same view and work life itself proves them wrong.

Political Action

The $200 million spent backing Democrats in the last elections is a source of dismay for many in the labor movement. Some progressives in and around trade unions are hoping the Change to Win split will lead to a break with the pro-big business Democratic Party. More likely it will lead to ‘bi-partisanship,’ meaning supporting Republican and/or Democratic candidates for narrow opportunistic reasons.

In a post-convention interview with the Detroit Free Press, Teamster head Jimmy Hoffa, Jr. speaks of supporting Republican candidates. Historically the IBT has a track record of backing Republican candidates, such as Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan. Hoffa supported a Republican attempt to drill oil in the Alaskan National Wildlife Refuge. It was Hoffa’s ploy to gain power and money through union membership. Hoffa would run the Teamsters’ hiring hall for the corporations and the government. The plan failed.

For its part, the American Federation of State County and Municipal Workers (AFSCME), one of the pillars of the Sweeny-AFL-CIO camp is spending a half million dollars to back the Republican candidate in New York City’s mayoral race. Similar to an earlier ‘go it alone’ approach by Dennis Rivera of SEIU 1199 in supporting a Republican candidate for governor of New York, these strategies only benefit the narrow interests of one union over the others.

Independent political action that is consistently pro-worker and advances the interests of the oppressed is not on the agenda of the Stern or Sweeny camps.

That said, it was clear in the pre-convention debate that Stern placed more stress on organizing the unorganized as a road forward, while many of the unions in the Sweeny camp stressed changing the political climate.

Labor Unity

The end of the AFL-CIO as it was presents some challenges for militants in the labor movement as it is – particularly for those active in Central Labor Councils (CLCs).

In a July 28 memo John Sweeny orders, “We must reject efforts to pick and choose the places and terms of ‘partnership’ and support. These unions are proposing a form of free

ridership: No financial or other support for the national AFL-CIO, no responsibilities or obligations under the AFL-CIO Constitution, but selective buy-in at central labor bodies of their choosing.” In other words those who quite the AFL-CIO are to be kicked out of local labor councils and statewide federations.

For his part, Stern could care less about the CLCs and knew full well that the split was likely to tear them apart.

In a number of cities where the CLCs have become a rallying point for militants and progressives, moves are being made to defend them. The key is to defend the right of affiliation to the CLCs for the local unions that have left the AFL-CIO.

The Future

This new situation presents challenges and opportunities for those that want to advance the labor movement. The main thing however, is to build a labor movement, that is of and for workers. Collaboration with management has gotten the movement where it is today – facing a crisis in the face of an employer offensive.

On the issue of class struggle unionism, Joe Iosbaker points out, “Those unions which in the last decade or two have started down this path of class struggle unionism, however fleetingly – such as the Staley workers, the Detroit newspaper workers in the mid 1990s, the mineworkers at Pittston coal in the early 1990s, and Local P9 at Hormel in the 1980s or the workers at UPS, or the Charleston Five of the International Longshoremen’s Association – have shown us the path to a renewed labor movement. The path of a militant, class-conscious labor movement is the only road forward.”

#ChicagoIL #Analysis #AFLCIO #AFLCIOSplit #classStruggleUnionism

Ten years ago, John Sweeney was elected president of the AFL-CIO. Supporters of his New Voices slate rallied to oust the stale leadership of his predecessor, Lane Kirkland. Under Kirkland, workers had seen 20 years of declining wages, benefits and working conditions. For 20 years, attacks by the capitalists had come down, and the defenses put up by the unions failed to turn them back. In fact, most unions hadn’t fought at all.

Of course, there were always workers willing to fight. Those workers were excited that a new period in labor was being ushered in by Sweeney’s rise to power. Sweeney promised to turn things around. He called for organizing millions of new workers into unions and getting workers to register and vote so that the politicians couldn’t ignore unions. He also called for building coalitions and taking action against abusive bosses. Where Kirkland wanted to build bridges with management, Sweeney said, “I’d rather block bridges than build bridges.”

Today, the Sweeney/New Voices period is coming to an end. Judged by the goals that were declared at the outset – to end the decline in wages, benefits and working conditions for U.S. workers and to turn around the decline in the membership and influence of unions here – Sweeneyism has failed. Less than 8% of private sector workers are in unions and only 12% of employed workers overall. While many new workers have joined unions, the union leaders have not been able to stop the de-unionization of manufacturing.

Reform Proposals Spark Debate

By now, everyone in the AFL-CIO agrees that there is a crisis, and that the unions must organize new members faster or die. A new debate has emerged in the federation in response to a proposal for drastic changes. The reform proposal comes from union leaders who believe the decline in labor can be stopped (despite the Republican Party’s domination in politics today), but only if unions change their structure and strategy, merging to create bigger unions in each part of the economy.

The defenders of the current set-up say the answer is more political efforts. They want to increase money spent on supporting Democrats running for office, in hopes of getting changes in labor law that would make it easier to get union recognition in organizing drives.

You could say that the old leadership emphasizes changing the external environment, while the challengers see changes to the internal workings of labor as a key to labor revival.

The two sides can’t be described as left vs. right. Each side has some correct ideas and some wrong ones.

The reformers see an entrenched group of union ‘fiefdoms’ that are resisting change. The defenders have criticized the upstarts as arrogant and undemocratic. The charge of being undemocratic comes from the old leadership saying that individual unions must have autonomy about where to organize and whether to merge or not. Also, lower level officials who are supporters of the current state of the Federation defend some of its structures, especially local labor councils, civil rights caucuses and departments, and the expanded executive board, which includes more union officials that are Black, Latino and women.

The reformers include some of the more liberal unions: SEIU, UNITE-HERE (garment and textile workers and hotel workers) and the Laborers, but they also include the pro-Bush Carpenters and the notoriously corrupt Teamsters.

The defenders include president Sweeney, AFSCME (American Federal, State, County and Municipal Employees), the USW (recent merger of Steelworkers and PACE, the Paper and Chemical workers) and the Machinists.

Sweeney’s main antagonist in the debate, Andy Stern, like Sweeney himself, comes out of SEIU, my own union. It makes sense that it would fall to Stern to challenge Sweeney, who preceded him as president of SEIU, as SEIU has been the most successful union in the country in the last decade. They have grown more and added more new union members than any other union in many years.

This debate is intense. SEIU has said it will leave the AFL-CIO if there isn’t reform along the lines proposed.

It is exciting that there is a debate going on. When a rank-and-file worker says, “The union leaders have failed us,” it is commonplace for serious union activists to dismiss it as cynicism. When frustrated unionists declare, “Union officials are in bed with management,” the standard response is, “What choice do they have but to make concessions?”

But when a president of a union of 1.8 million workers says, “[The AFL-CIO] has no enforceable standards to stop a union from conspiring with employers to keep another stronger union out – or from negotiating contracts with lower pay and standards than members of another union have spent a lifetime establishing,” this reinforces what militant unionists have argued. The fact is that most leaders of the international unions in the U.S. see themselves as partners with management. As the corporations and politicians have demanded concessions, most union leaders have gone along, ‘conspiring with employers.’

What’s Missing from the Debate: Class Struggle Unionism

There are big problems with President Stern’s “New Strength Unity” plan. A lot has been written about his arrogance and about union democracy having no role in the big plan. Also missing is a commitment to the national struggles of African Americans, Chicanos and other oppressed nationality peoples against racism and oppression. Another argument has been made in some places that organizing in the service industry isn’t the same as organizing in basic industry, because service industries don’t face production moving away or out of the country.

But mainly what’s missing from Stern’s proposal is class struggle.

In a Jan. 30 New York Times piece, “The New Boss,” Matt Bai wrote this about Stern:

“He came to embrace a philosophy that ran counter to the most basic assumptions of the besieged labor movement: the popular image of greedy corporations that want to treat their workers like slaves, Stern believed, was in most cases just wrong. ‘What was good for G.M. ended up being good for the country,’ Stern says.”

In various articles and speeches, Stern explains his belief that corporations should accept unions because unionization will aid them in their business plans.

This is wrong. It is wrong historically – taking the G.M. example, it took a fighting workers movement at General Motors to win basic advances for workers there. Even when G.M. was at its peak in the post-war era, when the ruling class was honoring a social pact with big labor, working in auto factories still shortened workers lives and made the bosses wealthy while the worker’s family earned a decent living – nothing more.

Stern is wrong strategically. He negates the old adage in the trade union movement that, “What management gives with a teaspoon, they take away with a shovel.” In fact, in the recent period, the working class has been on the defensive, engaging in sporadic and limited battles against a sharpened employer onslaught. The temporary acceptance of unions by some employers can’t be seen as anything more than a concession to certain strengths in specific markets.

Stern is wrong fundamentally. The future holds nothing but more struggle between workers and the ruling class. The way forward for the labor movement isn’t ‘market density.’ The way forward, as it has been in every historical advance for workers, is class-struggle unionism. Those unions which in the last decade or two have started down this road, however fleetingly, such as the Staley workers, the Detroit newspaper workers in the mid-1990s, the mineworkers at Pittston coal in the early 1990s, and Local P9 at Hormel in the 1980s, have shown us the path to a renewed labor movement. In these examples, the workers fought all-out, militant battles against the bosses. They rallied workers across the land to support them. Without these kinds of tactics, and even going further, like stopping production, there’s no hope of turning back the attacks on us.

Class struggle unionism means broadening the outlook and demands of the unions – a return to solidarity unionism. That means organizing and mobilizing the membership to fight management and support other struggles. Our demands and our slogans should reflect class demands. We should draw as sharply as possible the lines between the workers and the bosses in our work. Hormel, Pittston, and Staley – these are the models we need to emulate.

Transform the Unions

There are some who say that the debates in the AFL-CIO are not important. Some class struggle unionists [like Tom Laney, a militant from the United Auto Workers – see letter to editor] argue for unionists to leave the AFL-CIO unions or start new unions that are founded on class struggle, not class collaboration.

To them, I’d point out another ten-year anniversary this year. In February 1995, the Staley workers of Decatur, Illinois charged into the AFL-CIO executive meeting in Bal Harbor, Florida. They were there to ask why the hell the richest union federation in the world couldn’t help them defeat a corporation from Britain that was destroying their lives. Their protest got them on the front page of the New York Times. The Staley workers, members of the Paperworkers union, together with other striking workers from Decatur (Rubber Workers at Bridgestone and UAW workers from Caterpillar), exposed Kirkland, and helped to compel him from office. This helped open the way for Sweeney to come to power later that year.

A militant minority of rank-and-file workers learned a key lesson from the War Zone of Decatur. By getting the masses of workers involved in an all-out battle for their felt and urgent needs, we build a fighting workers’ movement that can transform the unions.

The Staley workers took advantage of the debates among labor leaders to advance their cause. We should do the same. The developments in labor create better conditions for building a fighting workers movement. New organizing is positive. Market density will, to a degree, help workers bargain and union leaders that want new members have to take a fighting pose at times.

And as mentioned above, the debates bring out the failures of the labor bureaucrats and get many more involved in debating which way forward. For sure, the current debate doesn’t go far enough, and doesn’t involve the masses of current union members, let alone the majority of workers not yet in a union. We should help spread the debate.

A Fighting Workers’ Movement

Workers and our allies who want to see the cause of the unions advance remember the old song, “Solidarity Forever.” At many labor rallies, this is dusted off. Many know the first verse, which raises the banner of power through a union. Like many old songs, far fewer people know the second verse:

Is there aught we hold in common with the greedy parasite -

Who would lash us into slavery and would crush us with his might?

Is there anything left to us but to organize and fight -

For the union makes us strong.

We face a “greedy parasite” that proves every day he is willing to “crush us with his might.”

What the labor movement needs is to develop fighting unions – unions that break beyond the bounds of the current ways of doing things and engage in all-out fights against the bosses. Like the founders of the CIO in the 1930s, we need militant picket lines, sit-downs and class-on-class battles. Like the Staley workers ten years ago, we need to unite with the reformers in the labor leadership, while pushing forward rank-and-file struggle and organization toward our strategic goal of transforming the unions. To John Sweeney and Andy Stern, we say, “Yes, let’s organize, but organize to fight.”

![Photo montage of 4 big strikes](https://i.snap.as/t3ACu6Fi.jpg “Photo montage of 4 big strikes Unions with the class struggle at the center. From upper left: Staley workers in Decatur, IL; 1937 Flint, MI sit-down strike; UMWA miners at Pittston, WV; Local P-9 in Austin, MN.

Fight Back! photo illustration by Steff Yorek (Fight Back! News/Illustration by Steff Yorek)”)

#UnitedStates #Analysis #AndyStern #AFLCIO #JohnSweeney #LaneKirkland

The list of airline managements seeking or already pocketing concessions is staggering. At first it was airlines on the financial brink such as Delta, United and US Airways that sought take-backs. Then, predictably, management at other carriers began smelling blood and seeking concessions, such as Alaska Airlines management, which is threatening to outsource mechanics jobs and slash thousands from the flight attendant and pilot union contracts. Or Hawaiian Airlines, which, despite earning profits, remains in bankruptcy and is demanding concessions from union workers.

The cuts are devastating. Flight Attendants at US Airways were once among the highest paid in the industry, with solid work rules and vacation practices won through decades of union struggles. Now, after two rounds of concessions, they are at best in the middle of the industry. The number of vacation days were cut almost in half, work rules slashed, pensions taken away, and wages went far below carriers such as Southwest. Under the recently approved US Airways mechanics agreement, almost half the jobs will be contracted out and people remaining will work harder for far less money.

Where does the power of the employer come from? To be sure, the bankruptcy courts have consistently sided with management, gutting contracts and stealing pensions. And the federal government, with the business-dominated National Mediation Board, is hostile to labor. Yet despite these obstacles, given the shaky finances of some of these carriers, even the threat of the strike gives the union the enormous power to force a company out of business.

The Association of Flight Attendants put out a call for a nationwide strike in the event a bankruptcy court voided the union contracts. This call, while militant and followed up by strike votes at several carriers, did not result in any strikes. Why? Because few workers are willing to risk putting an airline in bankruptcy out of business.

The real power of management lies in the fact that workers are competing against themselves – in a race to the bottom that guarantees working people will not win. Here, the lesson is what we have learned before, when the United Food and Commercial Workers led the race to the bottom in meatpacking in the 1980’s and when the United Auto Workers was decimated as locals competed for jobs.

That is why the Association of Flight Attendant’s call for a strike of all airline workers was so refreshing and met which such enthusiasm among frontline fighters throughout the airline industry. The rules of the game are set up for failure. What is called for is industry wide solutions, forcing industry wide standards, and newer and more militant tactics. Just like many times in the past, anti-union courts and politicians may claim these tactics are illegal. But just as in the old mineworker slogan went, “You can’t mine coal with bayonets,” you can’t run the airline industry without airline workers.

It is good that the AFL-CIO’s top officials are finally talking about the urgency of organizing, about streamlining the AFL-CIO, and making the unions more relevant. Ignored for years, these are key elements to restoring labor’s power. But as the example of the highly unionized airline industry shows, density is not enough. At the end of the day, the key question is how can workers win battles that will improve the lives of working people.

#UnitedStates #Analysis #AirlineIndustry #FlightAttendants #concessions

A wave of layoffs and concessions is sweeping the airline industry. Starting with U.S. Airways last fall, airline management began using the bankruptcy courts to blackmail unions into agreeing to massive wage cuts and sweeping work rule changes. The end result of this process, if it is not halted, will be a transfer of billions of dollars from airline workers to the owners of the industry.

The airline industry is one of the most heavily unionized industries in the U.S. Pilots at all of the major carriers and the vast majority of the smaller carriers are organized. Flight attendants are organized at all the major airlines, except at Delta and most of the regional and smaller national airlines. In contrast, the rate of unionization for all private sector workers is just over 8%.

Just a few years ago, airline unions were on the move, fighting to gain ground lost in the 1990’s. Pilots and mechanics were finally racking up wage increases in the double-digit range. Then, a combination of the prolonged recession – when business travel drops and people have less money for vacations – and the downturn in passenger flying following the airplane hijackings in September 2001 shook the industry. According to the Association of Flight Attendants, “the real problem is that $20 billion less in revenue is coming into the United States airline industry today than in 2000.”

The Drive for Concessions

The airlines are taking advantage of this crisis in the industry to try to beat down the unions, which rank among the most powerful unions in the country. The companies have been chomping at the bit to do this for years, frequently proposing legislation to take away the right to strike for airline workers.

Pilots at major airlines such as United Airlines and U.S. Airways have already agreed to pay cuts of 30% or more. Flight attendants, mechanics and other airline workers have taken large concessions at U.S. Airways and United. Other airlines have jumped on the bandwagon as well. Management at Northwest Airlines, American Airlines, Midwest Express and many other airlines are lining up at the trough and demanding concessions from workers.

The unions are faced with bosses who say, “Agree with these concessions or we will go into bankruptcy court and ask that the union contract be thrown out.” And, for the most part, the unions have been going along with the demands. The airline management is acting like management everywhere – the more workers give them, the more that they want. Without a strategy to halt the givebacks, there appears to be no end in sight.

At U.S. Airways, the pilots’ unions had granted management $646 million in concessions per year before the company filed for bankruptcy. Even those massive concessions where not enough for management. As soon as they had them in their pocket, they headed to bankruptcy court to seek to terminate the pilots’ pension plan. That would mean cuts of up to fifty percent in pension benefits that the pilots had already earned.

At United Airlines, the union heads sold concessions to workers by saying it was better to negotiate the cuts than have the bankruptcy court make the cuts. Flight attendants at United agreed to 9% pay cuts before United went into bankruptcy. Now that they are in bankruptcy, United management keeps turning the screws on the workers. They are seeking more concessions and are seeking to spin off 30% of the domestic flying to a low-wage subsidiary. The end result of these concessions is another massive transfer of wealth.

Roots of the Problem

One root of the problem is a system of labor bargaining that ties workers’ fates to the fate of an individual company and the unions’ failure to prevent the development of a two-tier wage system in the industry.

As with other industries in the United States, unions are forced to bargain with an individual company, rather than by industry. That bargaining system ties the workers’ fate to the success or failure of an individual company. It also prevents a class-wide solution to a problem and allows the companies to pick off workers one by one. So, even in relatively democratic unions such as the pilots and flight attendants, workers will vote for concessions rather than see the company go under. If the company goes under and a pilot or flight attendant has to start at a new carrier, they go to the bottom of the seniority list and pay scale. This puts tremendous pressure on even strong unions to agree to concessions.

A related problem has been the development of a two-tier wage system in the industry. In other industries, such as trucking, unionized companies spun off non-union subsidiaries in a process known as double breasting. Then they paid the non-union drivers far less and spun more and more of the work to them.

The airline industry has seen a similar development. Thus, the unionized American Airlines created American Eagle, where flight crews receive lower wages and have looser work rules, even though they are unionized as well. There has also been the development of lower wage regional and national airlines. These are both union, such as Southwest and ATA, and non-union such as Jet Blue. These lower wage competitors are helping to drive the majors into bankruptcy.

Rather than fight against the development of a two-tier wage system, union heads went along with it, negotiating lower wages at the smaller airlines. Beginning in the 1980’s, pilot unions began tying in the wages of pilots to the size of the aircraft. With bigger and bigger planes, that meant pilot wages for the biggest equipment at the major could go well over $200,000 per year, plus multiple pension plans. At the same time, pilots and flight attendants at the regional airlines could be making $15,000 per year. With such a disparity of labor costs, the high wage airlines over the long run were bound to run into trouble.

Short-term Fight-back and Long-term Strategy Needed

Faced with an employer onslaught towards concessions, an anti-concessions movement is desperately needed in the airline industry. Such a movement would argue against all concessions and advocate class-wide approaches to the attacks. While workers and unions at certain airlines may still agree to concessions, the companies would only get them after a fight. And at many airlines where management is jumping on the concession bandwagon, the take backs can be defeated.

In the longer term, the airline unions, as well as unions in every sector, must develop a strategy to break out of the rigid rules bargaining courts and politicians have straightjacketed unions with. Otherwise, weak unions, fighting company by company, will continue to face permanent replacements, threats of bankruptcy and relocations, and the resulting weak contracts. To do so will take intense class struggle and engaging in activities ruled illegal by the courts, with a goal of establishing solid industry-wide agreements. The current state of class conciousness in the industry and among the leadership of the unions is such that this approach will not be adopted in the short run. However, once a broad section of the advanced workers and progressive staff in the industry are won over to the necessity of a strategy, the battle will be half won.

#UnitedStates #Analysis #AirlineIndustry

This debate by a small handful of union bureaucrats intends to shape the direction of the workers’ movement for years to come. Left out of the debate are the millions of rank-and-file workers, shops stewards and local union activists.

In September 2003, Business Week published a surprising article about the formation of a group gathered together by top union officials called the New Unity Partnership. This handful of officials includes the leaders of the Carpenters, SEIU, Unite, HERE, and the Laborers. They are also flirting with Jimmy Hoffa and the Teamsters.

One the surface, the New Unity Partnership is an odd grouping of the more liberal elements of the labor bureaucracy and the pro-Bush Carpenter’s leadership. What unites them is what they see as a lack of progress of the AFL-CIO in reorienting itself towards organizing. They favor the restructuring of the AFL-CIO, more resources towards organizing, and an agreement among unions to organize in industrial sectors.

In pushing for more organizing, they are correct. And the AFL-CIO certainly needs an intensified shake-up.

However, what also unites the New Unity Partnership is the fact that they are among the more top-down, staff-driven unions in the AFL-CIO. The Carpenters, under President Doug McCarron, are engaged in a campaign to destroy the autonomy of local unions. SEIU is known in the labor movement for its reliance on a staff driven model.

Not surprisingly, the reorganization of the AFL-CIO being pushed by the New Unity Partnership is a very staff and officer-driven process. As pointed out by critics, including an excellent piece by the Association of Union Democracy (available on the web at www.uniondemocracy.com/UDR/articles52.htm), this top down approach will not rebuild the labor movement.

Elements of the restructuring favored by this group are already taking place in the labor movement. Central labor councils – many of which don’t do much, but at least as rank-and-file grassroots organizations have the potential to do more – are being consolidated out of existence. Much in the same way, the Carpenters under McCarron are attacking local union autonomy. In Minnesota, for example, a reorganization called the New Alliance concentrated power into the hands of the paid staff of the state’s largest international unions and consolidated local central labor bodies into new staff-driven regional structures. Adding more layers of union bureaucracy will not create a fighting labor movement.

The problems with the New Unity Partnership, however, run much deeper than the lack of commitment to union democracy. The heart of their program lacks a commitment to class struggle unionism. They narrowly see the way forward for the labor movement as simply increasing the market density of organized workers in a given sector.

What the labor movement needs to do, and which the New Unity Partnership cannot offer, is to develop fighting unions – unions that break beyond the bonds of the current ways of doing things and engage in serious fights against the bosses. More organized workers are a good thing, but in and of itself more organization will not produce class struggle unionism.

In the 1980s unions like UFCW Local P9 at Hormel in Austin, Minnesota engaged in a fierce class-on-class fight against concessions. In the process they battled their international union and the company, but got supports from grassroots labor activists across the country. In the 1990s the Staley workers in Decatur, Illinois and the Detroit Newspapers strikers engaged in bitter strikes against their employers. In each of these cases, fights led by workers who came out of the plants were, to varying degrees, sold out by union officers thousands of miles away in Washington D.C.

Any plan for the renewal of the labor movement which is based on consolidating power and decision-making in the folks least likely to fight – the highly paid, comfortable labor bureaucrats in Washington D.C. – is bound to fail.

#UnitedStates #Analysis #Editorials #AFLCIO #NewUnityPartnership #JohnSweeny

On Feb. 3 an important national conference took place in Los Angeles to lay plans for this spring’s protests. A call from the conference organizers stated, “On May Day 2006 history was made. The world watched as millions marched and boycotted the economy.” The statement also noted, “Students walked out, businesses closed and the people refused to buy. In Mexico, Central America and many other countries U.S. corporations were targeted by millions of workers. It was truly a Day without Immigrants.” The call concluded by urging an effort to, “Make May Day another truly historical day.”

Among the organizations backing the Los Angeles conference were the March 25th Coalition LA , May 1st Coalition- New York, Centro Sin Fronteras, BAYAN National, Southwest Workers Union-San Antonio and many others.

Carlos Montes of Los Angeles, a long-time leader in the Chicano community states, “The masses of people are the makers of history. On May Day we will take to streets to press for full equality and to end discrimination.”

This spring will be an important period for the immigrant rights movement. In his state of the union address, Bush made it clear that immigration was on the agenda and stated his opposition to amnesty for the undocumented. There are many in Congress that would like to see a ‘guest worker program that would serve big business by allowing for the exploitation of immigrant labor while denying immigrant workers their rights. It is vital to press the demand for legalization and full equality on May 1.

#UnitedStates #Analysis #MayDay #immigrantRights #internationalWorkersDay

On May 15, Bush sent an unmistakable signal on the direction that he wants to take immigration reform, announcing plans to deploy 6000 members of the National Guard to the border with Mexico. This represents a leap in the longstanding trend towards militarizing the border region and observers agree it will result in more deaths of immigrants as they attempt to cross into the U.S. at more isolated points.

In the Senate, a consensus has emerged in support of a ‘guest worker program’ that, if enacted, locks immigrant workers into a second-class status of exploitation and oppression. The Senate has also gone on record in favor of discriminating against non-English speakers.

House legislation is oriented toward a crackdown on undocumented workers and most of the Republican majority is opposed to any measures that could be described as legalization or amnesty. This means it will be difficult for the House and Senate to agree on a common approach.

In this context, discussion is taking place in the immigrants’ rights movement. The powerful mobilizations of the undocumented have pushed the perimeters of the debate in Congress. Given that vigilance is needed to beat back any attacks, the challenge is to press for measures that lead to full equality and legalization and bringing enough people into the streets to make that happen.

#UnitedStates #Analysis #immigrantRights

Los republicanos sostienen que es necesario efectuar dichas medidas para reducir el déficit en el presupuesto del gobierno federal, el cual se calcula en unos $400 billones en este año. Sin embargo, la reducción a los impuestos de los ricos disminuiría los ingresos al presupuesto en casi el doble de lo que el recorte en los gastos sociales le ahorraría al gobierno. El ala derechista espera que al aumentar el déficit presupuestario, aumenten también los recortes a los programas sociales en un futuro.

Esta propuesta le permite a los estados cobrar cuotas aun más altas por los servicios de “Medicaid” y a la vez recortar los servicios que ofrece a los beneficiarios. El congresista republicano de Texas, Joe Barton, ha afirmado que los pobres deben pagar más por los servicios de salud para que así “se hagan responsables”. Los recortes al Medicaid no solo afectan injustamente a los pobres, sino que también contribuirán al aumento en el costo de los servicios de salud para los trabajadores. Se espera un aumento en el numero de personas que no cuentan con seguro medico, debido a los recortes al “Medicaid” y a que las empresas continúan recortando prestaciones como el seguro medico de los trabajadores. Los hospitales de los condados tendrán que hacer frente a dichos costos, con lo cual aumentara a su vez el costo del seguro medico.

En cuanto a la ayuda financiera para el estudiante, la propuesta establecería un incremento en las tasas de interés a los préstamos para estudiantes, lo cual afectaría a la clase trabajadora. A lo largo del país, los estudiantes han tenido que incurrir en mayores deudas para poder pagar los aumentos en el costo de las universidades públicas. Cada vez aumenta más el número de alumnos universitarios que al término de sus estudios tienen miles de dólares en deudas.

En el pasado existía una demanda de graduados universitarios para trabajar en las grandes corporaciones; ahora mas bien los empleos calificados (como los relacionados con la alta tecnología) son enviados al exterior donde le pagan al trabajador la sexta o décima parte de lo que se le pagaría en los Estados Unidos por salario y prestaciones.

Las familias de bajos recursos tendrán que reunir requisitos aun mas estrictos par obtener los beneficios de “TANF”, por lo cual será mas difícil para los padres de familia asistir a la escuela para obtener mejores trabajos en el futuro, obligándolos a trabajar en cualquier trabajo mal pagado que este a la mano. Asimismo, la propuesta recorta los fondos de ayuda para los niños (“Child Support”) así como el SSI que ayuda a los discapacitados y a las personas mayores.

La reducción a los impuestos aprobada por los republicanos en la Cámara de Representantes extendería por dos años mas una medida ya aprobada por el presidente Bush – vigente hasta el 2009 – que reduce los impuestos a las ganancias obtenidas en la bolsa de valores o por medio de capital y otros negocios. Al presidente Bush le gustaría reducir de manera permanente dichos impuestos para así seguir beneficiando al 1% de la población, los más ricos, que ya de por si tienen en sus manos la gran parte de las acciones de la bolsa.

Gracias a la oposición popular, a la movilización de grandes sectores de la clase media como la “AARP” (Asociación Americana de Pensionados) y a la oposición de los demócratas, fue posible aplastar el plan del presidente Bush y de los republicanos de privatizar el seguro social. Sin embargo, es necesario continuar la lucha en contra de estas medidas propuestas por los republicanos. Los sindicatos de trabajadores, las organizaciones comunitarias en favor de los oprimidos, así como las asociaciones estudiantiles deberán movilizarse en contra de los republicanos y su guerra contra el pobre y la clase trabajadora.

#SanJoséCA #Analysis #BudgetCuts #capitalistCrisis

La administración del Presidente Bush ha dado a conocer sus planes de iniciar la privatización del seguro social creando cuentas de inversiones personales con los fondos que hasta ahora habían sido destinados a las prestaciones sociales. Dicho plan le permitiría a Wall Street recaudar hasta 15 billones de dólares por año por manejo y asesoría de las cuentas.

Como se sabe, el seguro social es la base para las pensiones de la mayoría de los trabajadores. Se estima que dos tercios de los ancianos reciben más de la mitad de sus ingresos del seguro social y que el 90% del ingreso de un tercio de ellos depende del seguro social. El seguro social asegura además a las familias de los pensionados y a personas permanentemente discapacitadas; de hecho un 30% de las pensiones que otorga el seguro social cubre a personas no pensionadas. Es un programa eficiente, considerando que menos del 1% del total de los impuestos se destina a costos administrativos.

De la misma manera en que la administración Bush utilizó la supuesta amenaza de las armas de destrucción masiva para ganar apoyo para la invasión y ocupación de Iraq, así también creó el mito de que el seguro social quedará en la bancarrota y por esa razón no podrá beneficiar a los trabajadores de hoy.

Si en verdad los cálculos oficiales son correctos y no se efectúa ningún cambio en cuanto a impuestos o prestaciones, el seguro social contará con suficientes fondos para 38 años más. Entonces o se efectúa un recorte de un 25% en las prestaciones o se aumentan en un tercio los impuestos a la nómina de los trabajadores.

En la actualidad los impuestos sobre la nómina de los empleados es de un 12%, con éste se paga el seguro social a los beneficiarios. La mitad proviene de las contribuciones de los trabajadores y la otra mitad proviene de la compañía que los emplea; por consiguiente, los fondos que se deducen del salario del contribuyente habrían aumentado del 6% a un 8% en 40 años.

Los cálculos oficiales son tan poco creíbles como la evidencia de las armas de destrucción masiva. Dichos cálculos se basan en el supuesto de que el número de inmigrantes se vería reducido y de que el crecimiento económico sufriría una baja de más de la mitad, hasta un nivel inferior al de los años que precedieron a la guerra civil cuando la economía estadounidense era eminentemene agrícola.

Quienes apoyan la privatización del seguro social actúan con una doble moral cuando argumentan que el seguro social quedará en la bancarrota porque la economía decaerá de forma dramática, a la vez que prometen un aumento del valor de las acciones de la bolsa basándose en épocas pasadas cuando la economía tuvo un crecimiento a pasos agigantados. La bolsa de valores nos quiere hacer creer que nuestras inversiones aumentarán en la misma medida que el precio promedio de las acciones (aproximadamente un 10% por año en los últimos veinte años). Sin embargo, el inversionista promedio sólo obtuvo gananacias entre un 2% y un 3%, lo cual no es suficiente ni para compensar por la inflación debido a que las gnancias por el alza de las acciones de la bolsa benefician principalmente a la bolsa, y a ejecutivos y demás personas influyentes que manejan el sistema.

La administración Bush oculta el hecho de que hasta una parcial privatización del seguro social tendría un costo de uno a dos trillones de dólares, debido al hecho de que el sistema del seguro social se sostiene gracias a las contribuciones de los trabajadores. Es decir, con las contribuciones que realizan los trabajadores de hoy por medio del pago de sus impuestos, se paga la seguridad social de los pensionados de hoy. Los fondos que se destinen a las cuentas de inversiones privadas tendrían que cubrirse ya sea con aumentos en los impuestos, préstamos, o con la reducción de las prestaciones sociales.

Los fondos del seguro social sufrirán una caída cuando la generación de aquellos que nacieron en la era posterior a la gran depresión y a la segunda guerra mundial (los “baby boomers”) se pensionen en los próximos cinco años y acaben con los fondos del seguro social, el cual cuenta actualmente con un trillón y medio de dólares. Sin embargo, el problema de la solvencia del seguro social a largo plazo se podría resolver de manera significativa si se expandiera la base de los impuestos. Hoy por hoy, el seguro social se sostiene por medio de un sistema regresivo de impuestos a los salarios menores de $87,900. Cualquier ingreso superior a dicha cifra y cualquier ingreso derivado de bienes raíces, bonos, acciones u otro tipo de inversiones no paga impuestos. Sería más justo que el impuesto del seguro social se aplicara a todo ingreso pues así obligaría a pagar impuestos a los que reciben buenos salarios y a los ricos, además de que aumentaría los fondos con que cuenta el seguro social en más de un 20%. De ser adoptada hoy, esa medida generaría suficientes ingresos para solucionar el problema de la disminución en los fondos del seguro social, aún sobre la base de los cálculos oficiales. No obstante, el presidente Bush y el partido republicano trabajan en favor de los ricos y jamás adoptarían esa medida. Por tanto debemos crear conciencia entre los trabajadores sobre el mito de la bancarrota del seguro social y organizarnos para combatir a la administración Bush y a Wall Street que nos quieren despojar de nuestro seguro social.

#SanJoséCA #Analysis #privatization #SocialSecurity

Comunidades pobres y de clase trabajadora, ya azotadas por los cesos y reducciones dehoras de trabajo que resultan de la recesión económica, están a punto de sufrir aun mas como los gobiernos estatales y municipales empiezan a cortar los servicios de salud, escuelas y gobierno local, cosas necesarias para nuestras familias.

La recesión ha causado una caída grande en los ingresos de los estados. En Abril, las entradas de los gobiernos estatales mostraron una baja de 20% en comparación con el año anterior. Ademas, las pérdidas en la bolsa de valores ha obligado a algunos gobiernos locales y estales a contribuir mas a los fondos de jubilación de sus empleados. Esta baja en ingresos estatales ha causado que algunos estados han cortado programas y aumentado impuestos. Aquí en California, el deficit que se proyecta es de $25 mil millones, de un presupuesto total de $100 mil millones.

Los estados tambien se encuentran atrapados por la política federal de obligarles a cubrir mas de los costos de bienestar social, en términos de ayuda pública y cuidado de salud. Durante una recesión económica, la demanda para estas servicios aumenta (por ejemplo, el número de personas recibiendo ayuda pública ha aumentado por primera vez en varios años), pero los estados están recibiendo menos ingresos. Porque los estados tienen que balancear a sus presupuestos (cosa que el gobierno federal no necesita hacer) esto significa recortar programas precisamente cuando hay mas necesidad.

Algunos estados, como Missouri y Massachusetts, se han encontrado en una situación tan apretada como para haber necesitado que han demorado la entrega de dinero extra que pagaron los ciudadanos en impuestos. La legislatura de Oregon ha hecho recortes grandes en el presupuesto de las escuelas. El gobernador “Nuevo Demócrata” de California, Gray Davis, ha intentado balancear el presupuesto por medio de cortar servicios de salud para los pobres, cesar a los empleados estatales, pasando la responsibilidad de programas sociales a los condados, y usando dinero prestado, proveniente de los resultados de la demanda en contra de la industria de tabaco, y de distritos escolares.

Minnesota se ha encontrado en una situación presupuestuaria tan mala como para hacerlo recurrir a mecanismos de contabilidad tipo Enron, y con ataques a los servicios sociales. Esto significa que mas tarde este año va a haber una crisis aun mayor. Illinois planea atacar a los empleados públicos. La respuesta de los gobiernos estatales a las deficiencias presupuestuarias es sencilla. Los políticos intentan balancear sus presupuestos en los hombros de los pobres y los trabajadores. En este proceso los mas afectados son las minorías oprimidas.

La crisis de los presupuestos estatales tambien afecta a los municipios y los condados, quienes reciben gran parte de sus fondos del estado. Durante la última recesión, en 1991, California balanceó su presupuesto principalmente cortando los fondos a los condados, que hacían la mayor parte de los servicios sociales. Estas entidades ademas de muchas organizaciones no-lucrativas, se encuentran doblemente impactados, como sus ingresos se van bajando mientras que la necesidad para sus servicios se aumentan.

Por supuesto, si los políticos no fuesen títeres de las grandes corporaciones, sería posible balancear los presupuestos mentras que se mantenían, o hasta expandían, a los servicios sociales. Aqui en California, organizaciones de consumidores, de comunidades y sindicatos, juntos con algunos políticos locales, lucharon a favor de un aumento de impuestos en personas de alto ingreso. Pero la resistencia de la legislatura republicana y el gobernador demócrata paró a este esfuerzo. En vez de eso, el gobernador pretende aumentar los impuestos de cicarros y gasolina, mas imponer un pequeño aumento en los impuestos de ventas, lo que no afecta especialmente a los ricos que son los que pueden pagar mas.

La “guerra en contra del terrorismo” del presidente Bush y sus aumentos de las fuerzas armadas significan que el gobierno federal no da tantos recursos a los servicios de salud y escuelas. Esto aprieta mas a los presupuestos estatales y municipales, que pagan casi la totalidad de los costos de las escuelas. El gobierno federal tambien pudiera ayudar transferiendo mas dinero a los gobiernos estatales y locales. Lo mejor sería si el gobierno federal pudiera cancelar a los cortes de impuestos de los ricos que se implementaron el año pasado, o si rediciera al presupuesto militar. Pero aun sin pedir esto de parte de los político, el gobierno pudiera conseguir dinero prestado y transferir una parte a los gobiernos estatales y municipales, ya que no existe ningún requesito que el presupuesto federal sea balanceado.

Ahora mismo, muchos políticos están utlizando a la crisis del presupuesto para sacar ventajas para las elecciones de Noviembre. Aquí en California, el gobernador está amenazando de parar los cheques de ayuda pública y los fondos para servicios sociales si los republicanos no le aprueben su presupuesto. Piensa echar la culpa a los republicanos con tal de avanzar su campaña re-eleccionista. Los gobiernos municipales y de los condados se van a encarar con mas cortes presupuestuarios cuando se revisa al presupuesto al fin del verano. Los sindicatos y organizaciones comunales deben prepararse ahora mismo para resistir a los cortes de programas que nos acercan.

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