The official unemployment rate also rose in August to 3.8%, from 3.5% in July. The August rate was the highest since February of 2022, when the jobs market was still recovering from the 2020 recession. Almost all groups saw a rise in their unemployment rate, with teenagers and Asian Americans seeing the biggest increases of almost one percent. The biggest exception was for African Americans, whose unemployment rate actually fell by one-half of one percent from July to August.

Government austerity, or cuts in spending, are showing up in the job markets, as all levels of government combined (federal, state and local) have only added 5000 job the last two months. More and more state and local governments, including school districts and state colleges and universities, are facing budget deficits, which means spending cuts and/or raising taxes or fees. Student loan interest starts to accrue this month, and payments are beginning in October. Last but not least, the federal government is facing a likely partial shutdown in October, as right-wing Republicans in the House of Representatives are refusing to pass any bill to continue funding.

Signs of distress are also growing among working-class households. Rates of late payments are rising for credit cards and car loans, even as student loans, the biggest chunk of consumer debts, are still in payment suspension. Many retailers are reporting sagging sales.

#SanJoséCA #austerity

The crisis over the debt ceiling is a result of growing polarization in the United States. Up until the 1995, Congress regularly raised the debt ceiling so that the U.S. government could carry out its spending commitments passed by Congress. But since that time, Republicans in Congress have weaponized the debt ceiling every time there was a Democratic president. By refusing to raise the debt ceiling and forcing a possible reneging of U.S. spending obligations, Republicans caused a partial government shutdown in 1995-96 under President Clinton, forced major cuts in government spending in 2011 under President Obama, and are now demanding more spending cuts under President Biden. What really concerns the Republicans is social spending that benefits the poor, not the deficit or debt. Under President Trump, Republicans raised the debt ceiling three times.

What the Republicans are demanding is the rolling back of federal Government spending. They want to spare military spending, Social Security, and Medicare (health insurance for seniors and disabled). However, they want to eliminate student loan relief, put work requirements for Medicaid (health insurance for low-income households), SNAP (Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, commonly known as food stamps), cutting funds to the IRS (which would make it easier to cheat on taxes and reduce tax revenues, making the deficit bigger), and cutting green energy subsidies passed under the recent Inflation Reduction Act.

Work requirements for Medicaid would cut of health insurance for an estimated 1.7 million low income individuals. Cutting off Medicaid would worsen the health care inequality in this country. The proposed Republican cuts would end food stamps for about 275,000 people. Already there is a hunger crisis in the United States, and cutting food stamps would just make it worse.

While the Biden administration had started by saying that they were not going to negotiate, they have given ground and were negotiating. Biden has said that he would accept some, but not all of the cuts. One problem with compromising is that the debt ceiling would only be raised for nine months, and then another round of Republican and right-wing demands would be put on the table. The Republicans say that their goal is to balance the budget, without touching the military, social security, or Medicare. But this would require a whopping 80% cut in all other programs, hitting programs that help working-class and poor Americans the hardest.

Unless Biden can take special measures, like invoking the 14th Amendment, or gives in to the Republicans, there is a chance that the federal government would run out of money as soon as June 1. In the last debt crisis in 2011, the Obama administration was ready to prioritize payments for U.S. government bonds to avoid a default. The Biden administration is likely to do the same, which would mean delaying other payments, especially Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid, which are the biggest non-military spending programs. These would mean putting the needs of Wall Street over seniors and low-income families.

#SanJoséCA #DebtCeiling

San José, CA – Cracks in economy began to show up as Silicon Valley Bank, based in Santa Clara, California, just north of San José, was shut down on Friday, March 10. The bank was the 18th largest bank in the United States, and mainly served high-tech startups, venture capitalists and wealthy individuals.

The recent slowdown in Silicon Valley and interest rate hikes by the U.S. central bank, the Federal Reserve, undid the bank. A run on the bank developed, as depositors pulled their money out of the bank. The bank was forced to sell U.S. government bonds at a loss because of higher interest rates and tried to raise more money or sell itself. When this failed, the bank was shut down by California regulators and control handed over the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation. or FDIC.

This bank failure is the largest since 2008 when Washington Mutual was taken over by J.P. Morgan Chase during the financial crisis. The failure of Silicon Valley Bank followed the announcement by Silvergate on Wednesday that it would be winding down because of losses in cryptocurrency markets. These two bank failures in one week shook Wall Street, extending the selloff in stocks and sending Bitcoin back below $20,000.

Another sign of a slowdown came on Thursday, March 9 when the Department of Labor reported that new claims unemployment insurance rose more than 20%, to 211,00 for the week ending March 4. While the total number is relatively low, this is the biggest increase in new application in eight months.

The Labor Department’s report on jobs and unemployment released the next day also showed a slower job market. 311,000 net new jobs were created in February, a good pace but far lower than the more than 500,000 new jobs in January. Industries hit hardest by the 2020 pandemic were still in recovery mode, led by gains in the leisure and hospitality. But the announced job cuts by tech firms and falling online sales caused losses in information, transportation and warehouse jobs. The slowdown broadened across industries, as the percent of industries showing job losses grew from 32% in January to 44% in February.

The unemployment rate in February ticked up by two tenths of one percent from the record low in January, coming in at 3.6%. But while the unemployment rate for white Americans only rose at 0.1%, jobless rates of oppressed nationalities all increased much more, with the highest increase among Latinos, whose unemployment rose 0.8% to a total of 5.3%.

The unemployment rate for teenagers (16-19 years old) and those who had not graduated from high school saw their unemployment rates rise by 0.8% and 1.1%, respectively. A big surge in the number of people unemployed for less than five weeks increased 17.5% to 2.3 million, showing that job loss were driving the rising unemployment rates

Average hourly wages were up 0.2%, but average hours of work per week fell by 0.3%, meaning that average weekly earnings fell in February. But these were money wages, while purchasing power fell even more because of continuing inflation.

#SanJoséCA #economy

The cuts in food stamps benefits are part of the larger package of cuts to programs that were started during the COVID pandemic in 2020. Those programs – including expanded unemployment benefits to include the self-employed and gig workers, expanding those who qualify for Medicaid (health insurance for low income individuals and households), and expanded child tax credits – have all be cut or will be in the months ahead.

Total spending on the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program or SNAP, the formal name for food stamps, will fall by more than $15 billion this fiscal year, which runs from October 2022 to September 2023. At the same time, military spending, including military aid to Ukraine, will rise by $120 billion, or eight times as much, this fiscal year.

Food costs are up by more than 10% as compared to a year ago, straining working people’s budgets. Most economists expect a recession this year, which would slash the incomes of working people. About 40 million people in the United States are what the federal Government calls “food insecure,” and these cuts will just make the problem worse, especially for children and seniors.

While private charities cannot make up for cuts in SNAP food stamp benefits, this cut comes at a time where private charities are also under stress. The Second Harvest Food Bank that serves San José and distributes free food in Santa Clara and San Mateo counties saw the number of people it served double in 2020 with the pandemic. But even though the pandemic illnesses and unemployment have both come down, the rising cost of rent, gasoline, food, and well, just about everything, has made it harder to keep food on the table. The local food bank is still serving 80% more than in 2019 before the pandemic and will be challenged to help the growing number of people in need.

The United States is the world’s largest exporter of food. The U.S. exports more than twice as much food as the next two largest food exporting countries combined. Yet we cannot manage to feed our own people, while spending more and more on the military and war.

#SanJoséCA #lowincomeFamilies #foodStamps

San José, CA – On Sunday, February 19, more than 350 people from the Japanese American community gathered at the San José Buddhist Church Betsuin Hall for the 43rd annual Day of Remembrance. The San José Day of Remembrance was organized the Nihonmachi Outreach Committee. The event commemorates the signing of Executive Order 9066 by President Franklin Roosevelt in 1942. Executive Order 9066 laid the basis for the incarceration of 120,000 Japanese Americans in concentration camps during World War II.

With the theme “Reparative Justice: Together We Rise”, the program stressed the unity of the Japanese American community with others who have also faced a history of national oppression in the United States. The program began with a live statement by Sumi Tanabe, and a video statement by Satomi Susie Yasui, both of them Nisei (second generation Japanese Americans) women who were sent to the camps as children.

After a candlelight procession through San José Japantown, the program restarted with a solidarity statement by Athar Sidiqee, chairman of the South Bay Islamic Association, whose original mosque is just blocks away from Japantown. The Nihonmachi Outreach Committee has had an American Muslim speaker and even a co-chair for 20 years, in solidarity with that community following the wave of attacks and government harassment following 2001.

The guest speaker was Veronica Martinez, representing the Amah Mutsun Tribal Band, whose historic lands are just south of San José. The Amah Mutsun have been fighting corporate development on these lands.

Ending the program was a performance by the San José Taiko, a Japanese drum group. In her introduction to the Taiko, Yuzo Kubota said that “I am the voice of the oppressed.” The Taiko then played DoR, written and inspired by previous Day of Remembrance programs.

#SanJoséCA #JapaneseAmericanInternment #Antiracism

San José, CA – Thousands of University of California students and workers are currently on strike across the state. In late October, the United Auto Workers union which represents 48,000 academic workers, called a strike authorization vote. In a historic vote, 98% of the 36,558 people who participated voted yes to strike. This is the largest academic workers’ strike in the history of the country.

The United Auto Workers (UAW) represents four types of academic workers at UC: postdocs, academic researchers, student employees and student researchers, each represented by their own bargaining unit. Workers are fighting for higher pay, childcare benefits, subsidies for transportation, reimbursements for international student fees, greater job security, and accommodations for students and workers with disabilities. Since bargaining began last April, the union has filed over 26 unfair labor practices against UC, which include making changes to contracts without negotiations and withholding necessary information at the bargaining table.

On Monday, November 14, the first day of the statewide strike, over 250 workers and students picketed outside UCSF Mission Bay in San Francisco. The crowd stayed strong from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. chanting “48,000 workers strong! We can fight all day long!” and “Who’s got the power? We got the power! What kind of power? Union power!”

Anagh Sinha Ravi, a graduate student worker, linked the need for higher pay to skyrocketing rents in San Francisco. About 92% of academic workers spend over one-third of their salary on rent, with 40% of these workers spending over half of their salary on rent. “Being rent-burdened has had a big effect on my ability to perform my work because I'm constantly worrying about being able to find an apartment or being able to make ends meet when I do find an apartment,” says Ravi. He also stressed the importance of showing solidarity with international students, who have to pay an additional $15,000 in tuition on top of their visa fees. The union is demanding a $54,000 minimum salary for graduate workers. Currently the average academic worker’s salary is only $24,000.

Transportation costs also burden workers, many of whom cannot afford to rent near the UC and have to spend hundreds of dollars a month on transit passes, parking fees and gas. To address this, the union is demanding free public transit passes, subsidies for bikes and e-bikes, and cash incentives for students to commute more sustainably. Students claim this will also help mitigate the impacts of climate change.

Just a day before the strike, the union won an anti-bullying protection that would establish real recourse for workers. “The only reason the UC even took this seriously was because we called a strike authorization vote to make them take it seriously,” says Dr. Evan Holloway, a postdoctoral fellow and member of the bargaining team in UAW 5810, which represents postdocs. This victory was a direct result of mass action by UC workers.

Academic workers are rising up. They are not afraid to withhold their labor because they know that the UC cannot exist without it. They are not afraid because they know what is possible through mass action. In the words of graduate researcher Maura McDonagh, “This is what it takes. We know that together we have the power to get the UC to change.”

#SanJoséCA #UAW #UniversityOfCalifornia

Recent announcements of job cuts means that unemployment will continue to rise. Technology firms are leading the layoffs, with Twitter cutting half their workers (3700 jobs), and Snapchat 20% (1300 jobs). In the post-pandemic period, exercise equipment company Peloton cut 32% of its workforce (1250 jobs) in two rounds of layoffs, and used car retailer Carvana cut 25% (2500 jobs).

A different picture was painted by the jobs report, which said there were 261,000 net new jobs created. While this is a solid gain, it is the lowest number since December of 2020, and is another sign of a slowing economy. The slowdown in job growth was broad based, with only accommodation (hotels) and local governments hiring more than this year’s average.

Part of this divergence between the unemployment rate and new job creation is that more and more people are having to work more than one job to make ends meet. Different government agencies estimate that between 5 and 15% of workers are doing this, which would mean more jobs but not more people with jobs.

One of the reasons for this is that over the last two years price increases have outpaced wage gains. In addition, the average number of hours worked has gone down. Between the two, the purchasing power of workers’ weekly earnings was down by more than 9% since the end of the last recession.

In response to high inflation, the Federal Reserve, the U.S. central bank, has been raising the interest rate at the fastest rate in 40 years. On Wednesday, November 2, the Fed raised the interest rate for the fourth time in 2022. The Federal Funds Rate that the Fed targets has gone from around zero in March to a bit over 3.8% this week, and more increases are coming. The Fed’s goal is to slow demand for goods and services, and thus bring down inflation.

One problem that will make this task more difficult is that big corporations have been increasing their prices when demand slacks off. For example, Campbell Soup, which has a bit more than half of the canned soup market, actually raised their prices when demand for Campbell Soup dropped off as restaurants reopened and people started eating out more as the pandemic eased.

The vast majority of economists think that the fall in demand from rising interest rates will lead to the start of a recession in 2023. Total domestic demand for goods and services made in the United States has been slowing over the last nine months, with the July to September 2022 period showing only a 0.1% growth. The last two quarters, or six months, have seen a fall in spending on business investment on new plant and equipment and new residential construction. A drop in this investment sector of GDP is typical of a period leading into a recession.

While most economists think that the recession will be relatively brief and mild like 1991 and 2001, they are assuming that a financial crisis will not break out. But in fact, there are growing strains the in financial system, especially in the market for U.S. government bonds that centers the financial sector. Aside from that, the Federal Reserve is not going to slash interest rates as they did in 1991, 2001, 2008 and 2020, because of continuing high inflation. The last time a recession happened when the Fed was raising interest rates, was the brutal 1981 recession where unemployment topped 10%, the highest rate since the Great Depression of the 1930s.

More Republicans in the Congress and Senate have been threatening to hold up the budget to force cuts in Social Security and Medicare. They are trying to blame today’s inflation on the large federal government budget deficit. In fact, during the 2022 Fiscal year the federal government budget deficit fell by more than half, from almost $3 trillion in 2020 and 2021 to $1.4 trillion. But inflation continued to rise to 8% or more for the last eight months, despite the drop in the budget deficit.

Of course, Social Security and Medicare did not cause the large budget deficits; the cause was spending to fight off the effects of the pandemic. In fact, the Republicans have long wished to reward Wall Street – both the investment funds as well as private health insurance companies – by cutting Social Security and Medicare. These programs are the most help to working-class Americans, who have to depend on their benefits in old age. But this austerity will just make the recession worse, not mention the health and standard of living of our seniors.

#SanJoséCA #economy #inflation

San José, CA – Inflation as measured by the Consumer Price Index for Urban Wage Earners and Clerical Workers or CPI-W has been rising this year at the fastest rate in 40 years. This high inflation continued in September, with prices measured by CPI-W up 8.5% over a year ago. Higher prices combined with fewer hours means that the purchasing power of average weekly earnings for workers fell 3.5% from a year earlier.

But many workers’ wages are buying even less than the 3.5% average drop in purchasing power. The difference in hourly pay gains between the highest-paid 25% of all workers, and the lowest paid 25% of workers is the widest on records going back 25 years. While the highest paid workers saw their wages rising on average 7.3% in the last year, the lowest paid workers only saw a 4.3% increase. This means that for lower-income workers, the purchasing power of their paychecks has fallen about 5% from 2021.

Inflation was led by rising energy costs, up almost 20% from a year ago, and food, up more than 11% from a year ago. More people are falling behind on their utility bills and most people are cutting back or trading down on their food purchases.

Prices not counting food and energy were up 6.6%. While this was less than the overall increase in prices, it was also the biggest increase in 40 years. Inflation fighters at the Federal Reserve, the country’s central bank, are more concerned as inflation excluding energy and food is much harder to push down. Most economists are expecting the Fed to raise interest rates by another three-quarters of a percent at both their November and December meetings. This would raise short-term interest rates from just over 3% now to more than 4.5% by next year.

Longer-term interest rates, such as on mortgages, have been increasing even faster as the standard 30-year mortgage interest rate is now 7% or more, the highest in 20 years. This makes buying a house that much more expensive. Credit card interest rates are also rising, adding the costs of household who carry credit card debt.

The only silver lining to the inflation cloud is that Social Security benefits will rise 8.7% in 2023. This is because Social Security benefits are “indexed” or automatically adjusted for inflation using the CPI-W. In addition, there will be a very small drop in the Medicare Part B monthly premium, instead of a usual increase.

But Social Security and Medicare will be under threat if the Republicans win in the November midterm elections, as many Republicans in Congress and candidates are calling for cuts or even ending these essential programs for seniors and the disabled.

#SanJoséCA #economy #inflation

The biggest drop in new jobs was in the government, which went from adding 40,000 jobs in August to a job loss of 25,000. Most of this job loss came from cuts at local schools, which had over 20,000 fewer workers than the month before. Another sign of job market weakness could be seen among retailers, which went from a gain of more than 40,000 jobs in August to a small loss in September. Last, there was a large increase in temporary jobs, often a sign that businesses are getting worried about a coming recession and don’t want to make permanent hires.

The unemployment rate for September did drop to 3.5% from 3.7% in August. But part of this drop in the number of unemployed was because more than 50,000 jobless stopped looking for work and thus were not counted. The number of jobless workers who wanted to work, but did not look for work, in September also grew. These workers do not show up in the official unemployment numbers.

Despite the relative weakness of the report, Wall Street was hoping for an even worse report with fewer jobs and a rising unemployment rate. Investors sold stocks, with the broad based S&P 500 index falling more than 100 points, or about 2.8%.

#SanJoséCA #economy

This led to an outcry among Republicans, reinforced by many articles in the corporate media, that a recession had begun. Republican leaders immediately showed their lack of basic economic sense, saying that the American people were already feeling the pain of recession. In fact, the pain that American workers and small businesspeople are feeling is inflation, which is not a sign of a recession. Just look at the last recessions in 2020 – who was complaining about inflation?

Unfortunately, the corporate media sowed confusion by spreading the common, but wrong definition that six straight months of declining GDP means that there is a recession. Among the worst was the Washington Post, which found an economist to quote (or misquote) saying that the last time that there was a recession without six months of declining GDP was in 1947. In fact the 2001 recession did not have six straight months of GDP falling. In addition the recessions in 1960 and 1970 did not have six straight months of declining GDP.

One reason that two quarters of falling GDP is not used by economists is that most recessions since World War II (when GDP figures were available), have a “double-dip” where there is a bounce in economic activity during a recession. Because of this economists also do not conclude that a recession is over as soon as the economy begins to grow again – the growth needs to be sustained.

The official definition of a recession is a lasting slowdown in the economy as shown by employment, sales, income and industrial production. The most important measure is employment, or the number of new jobs created, which showed an increase of 372,000 in June – not a sign of a recession!

The main reason for the decline in GDP was a decline in business inventories, or the unsold goods on store shelves and warehouses. The decline in inventories was 2% of GDP, more than twice the overall decline. Falling inventories were also a major cause of the decrease in GDP in the first quarter of 2022. Both were an unwinding of the huge build-up in inventories in the last three months of 2021. This build-up was so big that it drove GDP to the highest rate of growth (6.9%) since World War II, except for the post-pandemic bounce in 2020.

But even leaving aside the drop in business inventories, the GDP report showed many signs of present and future weaknesses. Housing construction fell by three-quarters of one percent, showing that the Federal Reserve’s campaign to raise interest rates is have an effect as mortgage interest rates surged and housing sales have fallen. Government spending on goods and services fell by one-third of one percent, showing the ending of the few remaining COVID-19 programs. Business investment fell by three-quarters of one percent. While all of these figures were small, they together outweighed the three-quarters of one-percent increase in household spending on goods and services.

In fact the only strong increase in the report was in U.S. exports. But this is unlikely to continue. Not only do exports go up and down a lot, but the rise in the U.S. dollar is making U.S. goods and services more expensive for other countries to buy. A number of other countries’ economies are struggling, in particular Germany.

The report on Personal Income and Outlays for June by the Bureau of Economic Analysis on July 29 showed that the Federal Reserve’s favored inflation measure, the Personal Consumption Expenditure Price Index hit a new 40-year high, rising 6.8% over the year earlier. This means that according to the Fed, there is no break in rising inflation. This means that the Fed will continue to increase interest rates in big steps. Many economists see another three-quarters of a percent increase likely in September at the next meeting of the Federal Open Market Committee, which sets short-term interest rates.

The business cycle, or the cycle of recession and economic expansion, date back to before the Civil War in the United States. Recessions began long before there even was a Federal Reserve, or a large and active federal governments. While the government and the Fed do not cause recessions, they can influence the timing and depth of a recession. The fall in government spending and continuing increase in interest rates will move up the onset of a recession. With the Fed focused on fighting inflation and the renewed effort to cut the budget deficit in Washington DC, the next recession could last longer and cause more pain to working Americans than economists expect.

#SanJoséCA #recession #economy

San José, CA – Over the last two years, hundreds of thousands of Asian Americans and their supporters have taken to the streets to protest the wave of violence against Asian Americans. From the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, when a Burmese family was assaulted in Texas; to the Atlanta Spa killing in April 2021, where six of the eight people killed were Asian American women, this wave of violence against Asian Americans inspired protests across the country, even including middle-school students.

These protests were the largest ever to draw together Asian Americans of different nationalities. This was in part because the targets of the hate crimes were Chinese American, Korean American, Burmese American, and others. Although the hate and national chauvinism was mainly driven by anti-Chinese sentiment fanned up by racist politicians such as President Trump, the racists did not know and did not care about their victims’ nationalities. There is also a growing common experience of young Asian Americans who were either born here or grew up in the United States, of their common experiences because of the national oppression as people of Asian descent in the United States.

The fight against violence against Asian Americans also pulled many of the different classes in our communities: workers as well as members of petty-bourgeoisie such as small businesspeople, professionals and managers. However other types of national oppression, such as unjust treatment by ICE and immigration can differ, given that more well-to-do Asian Americans better able to afford legal representation.

The struggle against violence against Asian Americans is part of a larger struggle for full equality and against national oppression. Asian Americans have a long history of struggle against racist and discriminatory government laws and actions, from Foreign Miners tax in California in the 1850s to the witch hunt against Chinese American academics today. Asian Americans have also faced racist discrimination in housing, in the labor force, in marriage, in every facet of life.

The struggle against the national oppression aimed at Asian Americans has always had connections with the oppression of African Americans and other oppressed nationalities. Anti-miscegenation laws originally aimed at African Americans were also applied to Chinese Americans and other Asian Americans. On the other hand, restrictive covenants, which banned non-whites from buying many homes (to keep neighborhoods white), were first found in San Francisco, again aimed at Chinese Americans. But these racist restrictions in housing deeds also spread nationwide to enforce housing segregation against African Americans.

The fight against national oppression has also crossed over between Asian Americans and other oppressed nationalities. In 1894, American-born Kim Ark Wong was denied re-entry to the United States after having traveled to China to see his family. The Chinese American community fought a legal case all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court and 1898 won a decision that guaranteed citizenship for American born children of non-citizens. This was especially important for Asian Americans, as Asian immigrants could not become U.S. citizens until the 1940s. This case was important to the Chicano community as well as other Latinos who have immigrated to the United States.

At the same time the struggle of other oppressed nationalities, especially African Americans and Chicanos, both benefitted and inspired Asian Americans. 1947 Mendez v. Westminster decision ended legal segregation of Chicano and Asian children in public schools in California. More than anything else, the upsurge of African Americans in the Civil Rights and Black Power movements of the early 1960s set the stage for the end to the racist 1924 Immigration Act, which imposed quotas in the hundreds on immigrants from Asia. Without this change, Asian American would be much smaller and vastly different today, with only Japanese, Chinese, Vietnamese, and Filipinos as the main nationalities. Many of the young organizers of protests against anti-Asian violence said that this was not their first protests, they first marched after the death of George Floyd.

While Chinese, Japanese and Filipino Americans had fought for their rights since the 1850s, often alongside Chicanos in particular, the first consciously unified Asian American fight didn’t happen until the 1960s. The struggle sparked by Black Students for Ethnic Studies at the University of California, Berkeley, led to the formation of the first explicit Asian American organization, the Asian American Political Alliance or AAPA, in 1969. AAPA was the major Asian American organization on campus fighting for both a department of Asian American Studies and a College of Ethnic Studies that would include Black, Chicano and Native American Studies departments.

The rise of African American revolutionary organizations in the 1960s also had a large impact on Asian Americans. The Black Panther Party inspired the formation of I Wor Kuen or IWK in the late 1960s. IWK was named after an anti-imperialist uprising in China in 1900, but their political program was based on the Black Panther Party’s Ten-point Program. IWK turned towards Marxism-Leninism in order to better grasp the class struggle within the Chinese American community, and eventually merged with other M-L groups that came out of movements of oppression, such as the largely Chicano August 29th Movement and the largely African American Revolutionary Communist League, formally the Congress of Afrikan People, a pan-Africanist organization.

Revolutionaries and Marxist-Leninists in the African American and Chicano movements revived the understanding that African Americans in the Black Belt South and Chicanos in the Southwest were, in fact, oppressed nations in the United States. As nations – that is a historical community with a common language, culture, economy and territory – they had the right to self-determination, up to and including the right to separate and form their own countries.

While a few voices raised the concept of an Asian American Nation, this had no basis in fact. Asian Americans do not share a common language, with most Asian American nationalities speaking different languages other than English at home. They have many different cultures, although they have some historical ties. In fact, Asian Americans comprise many different nationalities from East, Southeast, South and Central Asia: Chinese American, Filipino Americans, Indian American, Japanese Americans, Korean Americans and Vietnamese Americans just to mention some of the larger nationalities.

But most importantly, there is no common territory for Asian Americans in the United States. The most concentrated population of Asian Americans on the mainland is in the San Jose-San Francisco Bay Area, which over the last 20 years has developed two small cities that are majority Asian American. In contrast, in the Chicano Nation there are large cities such as San Antonio, Texas and Los Angeles, California, more than 70 counties across seven states, and even the entire state of New Mexico that are majority or near majority Chicano.

There are many Chicanos and Mexicanos who live outside the Chicano Nation. Some even live in majority Chicano/Mexicano counties such as Adams and Franklin counties in eastern Washington. Chicanos and Mexicanos in eastern Washington are certainly oppressed nationalities faced with economic, political and social inequality. Many have lived in the Chicano Nation, and/or have family there. But with the northern edge of the Chicano Nation some 800 miles away, how could they act on self-determination and separate in any practical way?

In the same way Asian Americans, while certainly oppressed nationalities, cannot be considered to be a nation with the right to self-determination. As communists, we fight for the full equality of the Asian American nationalities, including language equality, political power, etc. in areas of concentration.

We also fight for working-class leadership of Asian Americans and other oppressed nationalities in their fight against national oppression and for full equality. This includes both struggling against reformism, such as promoting voting as the answer for all issues, and narrow nationalism, which sees other oppressed nationalities as the problem (an example of this is opposing affirmative action).

Our strategy for revolution is a united front against monopoly capitalism – against the rule by the billionaires and massive corporations. At the core of this united front will be an alliance between the working class, on one hand, and oppressed nationalities, on the other. Asian Americans will play a growing role in this, both as the fastest growing oppressed nationality, and as a rapidly growing part of the working class.

Masao Suzuki is chair of the Joint Nationalities Commission of the Freedom Road Socialist Organization and a former member of I Wor Kuen.

#SanJoséCA #AsianNationalities #Socialism #MarxismLeninism #AsianAmericans

Prices paid by production and non-supervisory workers (the CPI-W) rose 9.7% as compared to June 2021, a 40-year high. This is even higher than the 9.1% for the headline Consumer Price Index for all urban consumers (CPI-U) which also hit a 40-year high. This CPI includes prices for goods and services bought by professionals, supervisors and managers, and businesspeople, as well as workers.

The increase in annual inflation from 9.2% in May to 9.7% in June has led many economists to predict that the Federal Reserve may raise short-term interest rates by a full one percent at their next meeting later in July. Before the latest inflation report, expectations were that the Fed would raise interest rates by ¾ of one percent, the same as in their June meeting.

Higher interest rates make mortgages, car loans and credit cards more expensive, putting a drag on consumer spending. Interest rates for bank loans for smaller businesses as well as bonds sold by large corporations are also rising.

For example, gasoline prices, which are up almost 60% from a year ago, reflect the higher oil prices in the wake of the U.S. economic sanctions on Russia. Western oil giants such as Shell, Exxon Mobil, Chevron and British Petroleum are not pumping more oil to make up for the lack of Russian oil, instead they are seeing their profits triple or more as prices rise but their costs do not.

The cost of rents and owners’ housing is up “only” 5.5 to 5.8%, but this makes up a third of the CPI. While the price of homes and the cost of mortgages continue to rise, this just makes home buying less affordable. This increases the demand for rentals, causing rents to rise.

An even faster increase in interest rates is increasing the chances of a recession in the near future. Scattered reports of large companies laying off workers finally showed up in the weekly new claims for unemployment insurance, which jumped to 244,000 for the week ending July 9. While low compared to some of the records set with the pandemic in 2020, it is still the highest number of new applications since November of 2021.

The next recession shows few signs of being as steep as the one in 2020 with COVID-19, or the 2007 to 2009 recession with the greatest financial crisis in the United States since the 1930s. However the typical Keynesian government responses of lower interest rates and more government spending are unlikely to happen. The Federal Reserve is focused on raising interest rates to fight inflation and has said that a recession may be necessary to bring inflation down. The massive federal government aid for extended and expanded unemployment benefits, eviction and foreclosure protections, and increased food stamps, as well as easier access to health insurance and a moratorium on student loan payments are almost certain not to come back with Republicans holding half the Senate and a couple of conservative Democratic senators, such as Manchin of West Virginia, able to block more social spending.

#SanJoséCA #wages #inflation

San José, CA – 40 years ago, on June 23, 1982, Chinese American Vincent Chin died after being beaten by a Chrysler plant supervisor and his stepson. They ended up being sentenced to a $3000 fine, causing an uproar in the Chinese American community. Evidently the killers thought that Chin was Japanese American and blamed him for the success of Japanese carmakers in breaking into the American car market. This racist killing was another of a long history of violence against Chinese and other Asian Americans.

100 years before the death of Vincent Chin, in May of 1882, the U.S. Congress passed the Chinese Exclusion Act which was signed into law by President Chester Arthur. Racist violence before and after the passage of the Chinese Exclusion Act – such as the massacre of Chinese Americans at Rock Springs, Wyoming in 1885 where at least 28 Chinese Americans were killed and had millions of dollars (at today’s prices) of damage to their property – drove Chinese Americans to urban ghettoes in larger cities.

The Chinese Exclusion Act was the only immigration law that ever explicitly excluded a single nationality. Because of this act, and the racist Page Act of 1875, which basically barred Chinese women from coming to the United States, the Chinese American population went into long-term decline. From a peak population of over 100,000 in the 1880s, the Chinese American population shrank by more than 40% to just over 60,000 in the 1920s.

The Chinese Exclusion Act was passed at a time of reaction against oppressed nationalities in the United States. In the U.S. South, there was the betrayal of Reconstruction and the restoration of planters’ rule backed by the Ku Klux Klan that led to the formation of the African American nation in the Black Belt South. In the Southwest the theft of the Mexican Americans’ land, the violence of the racist Texas Rangers and the formation of what became the U.S. Border Patrol also marked the birth pangs of the Chicano nation, Aztlán.

But for Chinese Americans there was no formation of an oppressed nation within the United States. Stalin defined a nation as “a historically constituted, stable community of people, formed on the basis of a common language, territory, economic life, and psychological makeup manifested in a common culture.”

Chinese immigrants at that time almost all came from the southern province of Guangdong speaking similar dialects commonly referred to as Cantonese, from the old Western name for Guangzhou, the largest city and capital of Guangdong province. Over time, the American-born second generation began to speak American English, like many other immigrants to America.

While immigrants from Europe were able to move up from the worst jobs that were low-paying, demeaning, and/or dangerous, Chinese Americans, like Chicanos and Mexicanos as well African Americans, did not. Up until World War II, Chinese Americans worked as laborers in western mines, as farm workers and as domestic servants. Chinese American “houseboys” were common among well-to-do white families in the western U.S. Chinese Americans also did industrial work. Chinese workers made up the majority of factory workers in San Francisco as well as a majority of the laborers building the transcontinental railroad. By the 1880s Chinese Americans were spread across the western United States, often making up a majority of workers in many towns and cities as well as in rural areas.

But not all Chinese Americans were workers. A minority of them were businesspeople in ethnic niches, such as businesses serving the Chinese American community, laundries and restaurants. There were also a number of Chinese American professionals such as doctors who served Chinese Americans.

Chinese American culture was not simply a mix of Chinese and American cultures, but one of a new oppressed nationality in the United States. While some aspects of Chinese culture, such as language and clothing, faded rapidly with the second, American-born generation, other aspects, such as food, did not.

Chinese Americans were molded into an oppressed nationality in the United States, with a common language, economic life and culture. As an oppressed nationality in the United States, Chinese Americans fought many battles for equality and against national oppression. All-round equality means equal political rights, equal economic opportunity, equality of languages and cultures.

One of the earliest racist laws was the Foreign Miners Tax in California, aimed at Chinese and Latino miners who were a part of the Gold Rush. Many Chinese went on to work on the railroads, where they were paid much less than white workers for doing the same jobs. Chinese immigrant railroad workers walked off their jobs to protest being paid less than white workers for the same work. Later, restrictive covenants in real estate deeds banned Chinese from buying homes in most urban areas, starting in San Francisco. Even though these racist restrictions were challenged in court, they were upheld as legal. Then this racist practice spread throughout the country, mainly targeting African Americans to maintain legal segregation in housing.

Both Chinese and Latinos were hit by a Foreign Miners Tax. Anti-miscegenation laws, which prevented African Americans from marrying whites, were also applied to Chinese Americans. Chinese American children were segregated into all-Chinese public school in areas with large numbers of Chinese people, such as San Francisco.

The Chinese American community waged a legal struggle for citizenship rights. Chinese immigrants were banned from naturalization, or becoming U.S. citizens, while immigrants from Europe were able to do so. Racists also tried to strip citizenship, which was guaranteed by as the 14th Amendment of the Constitution, from American-born Chinese. The community fought this all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, ultimately winning the case in Wong Kim Ark v. United States in 1875. This decision carried over to Japanese and other Asians, and to Chicanos and other Latinos. Indeed, reactionaries and racists for years have called for overturning this case to try to strip citizenship from American-born Asians and Latinos.

But while Chinese immigrants and their children became an oppressed nationality, they did not have a common territory, unlike African Americans and Chicanos. So Chinese Americans did not become an oppressed nation. This meant that there was no struggle for self-determination – which includes the right to political secession from the United States – among Chinese Americans. How could a number of Chinatowns throughout the West be a separate nation? What Chinese Americans did demand was full equality, in terms of equal pay, desegregation of housing and schools, and immigration and citizenship rights.

Chinese Americans also had a long history of supporting revolutionary movements in China. In the early 1900's, Chinese Americans supported efforts to overthrow the Ching (Manchu) Empire. A few decades later, Chinese Americans supported the Chinese new-democratic revolution led by the Communist Party of China. The great leader of China’s national democratic revolution, Sun Yat-sen, was educated in the Kingdom of Hawai’i and spent years in the United States and was in the United States when the Ching dynasty finally fell in 1911.

Despite their heroic struggles, Chinese Americans were generally excluded from trade unions and the socialist party of that time. Even worse, many “mis-leaders” such as Denis Kearny in the late 1800s called for the exclusion of Chinese from immigrating to the United States. It was only the anarcho-syndicalist International Workers of the World (the IWW, commonly referred to as Wobblies) who tried to unite workers of all nationalities, including Chinese Americans. But the ideology of the IWW did not see the importance of the struggle for democracy, up to and including full equality, in the larger society outside of the workplace. It was not until the formation of the Communist Party USA in 1919 that Marxism-Leninism begin to fuse with the Chinese American struggle.

Masao Suzuki is the chair of the Joint Nationalities Commission of the Freedom Road Socialist Organization. This is the first of a series of articles on Asian Americans.

#SanJoséCA #AsianNationalities #AntiChinese #StopAsianHate

San José, CA – With Bitcoin now down 70% from its record price in April of 2021, businesses based on cryptocurrencies have started to fold. The latest victim was Celsius, a crypto “bank” which stopped withdrawals from its accounts on Sunday, June 12. Celsius had more than $20 billion in assets at its peak in August 2021, drawing investors with yields of more than 18%. But Celsius is looking more and more like a high-tech Ponzi scheme that only lasted as long as new investors kept buying in.

The collapse of Celsius followed the collapse of the “stablecoin” Terra just last month. “Stablecoins” are digital currencies that are supposed to maintain a value of $1, unlike Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies whose value can go up and down. But Terra was not backed by assets such as cash or Treasury Bills (short-term U.S. government bonds), instead it was “backed” by another cryptocurrency, Luna. The attraction of Terra was that it enabled investors to put their Terra coins into Anchor Protocol, which was paying interest rates similar to Celsius. But on May 7, Terra slipped below $1, and continued to drop, eventually losing more than 95% of its value.

The losses from Celsius and Terra are in the tens of billions of dollars, but pale compared to the losses by investors in Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies. Bitcoin is based on solving complex mathematical problems, so it has the scarcity needed for money. The problem is that fundamentally it has little use aside criminal transactions, and even here governments are getting better at tracing and clawing back illegal crypto payments.

For decades low interest rates and low inflation have set the conditions for investors to pursue risky assets. First there was the boom and bust in dot-com stocks in companies that didn’t even have any revenue, not to mention profits. This was followed by bonds backed by risky mortgages which went into default with the bust in the housing market. Most recently there are Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies, and a number of “DeFi” (decentralized finance) like Terra and Celsius.

But what is different today is that the economic environment has changed. Inflation, running at 9.3% (CPI-W) is the highest in 40 years. The Federal Reserve is raising interest rates to jack up the unemployment rate and bring down inflation. On June 15, the Federal Reserve raised short-term interest rates by three-quarters of one percent (0.75%), the biggest jump since 1994. On the same day, the Federal Reserve also began to reduce their $9 trillion stash of bonds by $47.5 billion a month, which will double to $95 billion a month in September. This will increase the amount of bonds on the market, pushing bond prices down and longer-term interest rates up.

This “double-barreled” increase in both short- and long-term interest rates has never been done in such an aggressive manner by the Fed. These interest rate increases are likely to begin to bring down inflation but are all but certain to bring about another recession.

#SanJoséCA #FederalReserve #inflation #Crypto

San José, CA – On Friday, June 10, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that prices for workers’ families, the so-called Consumer Price Index-Wage or CPI-W rose by 9.3% as compared to prices a year ago. This rate of inflation is near a 40-year high, only exceeded by the 9.4% increase in March. The last time that prices rose so quickly was in November of 1981.

The headline number that the corporate media reported was a smaller 8.6%. This was the number for the CPI-Urban or CPI-U that includes households with managers and professionals as well as wage workers. The CPI-W inflation is higher than the CPI-U because the CPI-W puts more weight on the prices of food and transportation that have been bedeviling working families. Food prices are up more than 10% over the past year while gasoline is up almost 50%. On the other hand, recreation costs, which are given a more weight in the CPI-U, are up less than 5%, bringing down the CPI-U.

The CPI-W was the original Consumer Price Index that the federal government began to report on in 1919. After the introduction of the CPI-U, which included more higher-income earners, in 1978 the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported data for both for many years. But in May of 2012, the Obama administration stopped publishing the data breaking down the CPI-W. At the same time the Bureau of Labor Statistics included more “attractive” data tables in the report. The government seems to have taken a page from corporate marketers who will often put a lesser product in a more attractive package.

In response to the high level of inflation, the Federal Reserve Bank, the U.S. central bank, has raised interest rates twice, the second time by one-half of one percent instead of the typical one-quarter percent increase. The Fed is expected to raise interest rates by a half a percent again in June and also July. This is one of the most aggressive rounds of interest rates increases that the Fed has ever done.

Interest rate increases will slow borrowing and spending on goods and services, thereby slowing increases in prices. But this also tends to raise the unemployment rate and in most cases is accompanied by a recession. Thus, more and more economists are talking about the growing likelihood of “stagflation” where the economy goes into a recession while inflation stays high.

The problem that the Fed faces is that many of factors that are spurring inflation are coming on the supply side, not the demand side. One trigger for many of the shortages was the pandemic, where globalized supply chains were subject to factory closures and shipping problems. Another factor is climate change, which has contributed to the worst drought in 50 years on the island of Taiwan, where most advantage chips are made, using processes that are very water intensive. These chip shortages have caused a slowdown in auto production, leading to higher car prices.

But the U.S. government’s policies to wage economic wars on first China, and now Russia are also a factor. About half of all the goods made in China that the U.S. buys have a 25% tariff, leading to higher prices. The tariffs and embargoes on solar panels in particular are slowing or even stopping solar energy projects, driving up prices for electricity. While the Biden administration is blaming Russia’s president Putin for high gas prices, the fact is that the Russian government has not limited the export of oil to the United States. It is the United States embargo on Russian oil and the U.S. economic war on Russia that is making it difficult for Russia to export its oil, driving up the price of oil and oil products like gasoline.

The Biden administration does have a point in placing some of the blame for high prices on big corporations that have been raking in profits, such as oil corporations and meat packers. When a few large corporations dominate an industry, it is very difficult for any new companies to break in. So when prices go up, instead of new firms coming in and adding to supply, the existing companies can just sit back and let the profits roll in. One thing that can be done in a capitalist economy is to place price controls on key industries like gasoline and meat production, to freeze or even lower prices while making sure that the companies don’t try to limit production.

#SanJoséCA #economy #inflation

While it is true that the biggest rent increases are for new tenants, and most tenants don’t face such large increases, the burden of rising rents is the single biggest factor in the 40-year high inflation rate cutting working people’s purchasing power. Almost one-fifth of inflation comes from rent increases, more than the more widely mentioned gasoline or cars.

Working-class and oppressed nationality/national minority (African American, Chicano, Latino, Native American, Arab American and Asian American) households are hardest hit by rising rents. We are more likely to rent and tend to pay a greater part of our income on rent than others.

An important reason for rising rents is soaring home prices. As homes become less affordable, landlords can more easily raise their rents, knowing that their tenants have less of an option of buying. With home prices up almost 20% over the last year, it is no wonder that rents are rising too.

Another factor in the rise in rents is the growth of corporate landlords. This is a hot new investment for Wall Street. One such firm, Blackstone, made $6 billion in profits over the last year, a sixfold increase. About half of these profits came from real estate.

Not only are these corporate landlords raking in massive profits, but they are also more likely to evict tenants behind on their rent. Evictions did fall from the 3.7 million per year before the pandemic because of the moratorium on evictions by the federal government. This has now expired, and even those states that extended their own eviction bans are ending. A few cities have introduced their own eviction ban, but landlords are pulling strings at the statewide level to stop these local eviction bans.

In many states, including New York, landlords can evict at will, without having to show any cause. New York renters owe the most in back rent of any state, and with their eviction moratorium having ended in January of 2022, more tenants are at risk of eviction than any state.

A needed change is rent control, which caps rent increases. Berkeley, California which had a strong form of rent control that limited rent increases to the rate of inflation plus any documented repair costs. But this law, along with a handful of other smaller cities, was overturned at the state level by landlord-backed politicians.

Despite the difficulties, tenants and their supporters are fighting evictions and rent increases across the country. These struggles will only grow as tenant are squeezed by rising rents and wages that are not keeping up with inflation.

#SanJoséCA #HousingStruggles #renters #inflation

Many student and community organizers, as well as concerned students and community members spoke to the importance of preserving Roe v. Wade, and why the right to abortion and reproductive health care is a human right and should be codified into law. Throughout the rally, “Fight! Fight! Fight! Abortion is a human right!” and “My body! My choice!” echoed throughout campus.

This rally was led by members of Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), along with Student Homeless Alliance (SHA), Young Democratic Socialists of America (YDSA), Party for Socialism and Liberation (PSL), and Freedom Road Socialist Organization (FRSO).

David Almeida from SDS reminded the crowd about the decades long struggle of blood, sweat and tears that the women’s movement faced in the 1960s and 1970s to win these rights. He spoke about the implications this decision would have on the LGBTQ community as well, stating “Roe v. Wade is also the foundation in U.S. law for the privacy rights of LGBTQ people. It’s no surprise that this move comes in the recent context of right-wing legislation across the country restricting access to abortions and targeting LGBTQ folks. Florida’s ‘Don’t Say Gay’ bill and Texas’ moves to criminalize medical treatments for transgender youth are just two examples.”

Almeida continued, “The ruling classes and the SCOTUS are telling women that all the things that they do, such as having a career or getting an education, things that women have fought for the right to do throughout our history, are secondary to birthing and raising children. A person’s health, financial stability, or already-existing family obligations do not matter to them. The authors of this draft opinion pretend to care about ‘precious’ human life, but do not care about the poverty and hardship that these children and mothers would endure.”

Muskan Parashar from YDSA identified it as a working-class issue. “Abortion rights are something 70% of Americans agree on; it’s a working-class issue, it’s a race issue, it’s a gender issue.” Parashar added, “We all know that banning abortions will not stop abortions, they will simply stop safe abortions.”

Irom Thockchom of PSL spoke to the failures of the Democrat Party. “The Democratic Party is in control of two of the three houses of government. [They] had the chance to codify Roe v. Wade, prove to us that we should vote for them and that they actually care about our rights, and the Women’s Health Protection Act lost 49-51, with our old friend, Joe Manchin, deciding that this is not a right that deserves to be protected.”

Tiffany Yep, from Student Homeless Alliance, spoke about her mother’s difficult pregnancy with her, and her other two twin siblings. Her mother had to abort the fourth fetus in her womb due to health complications. “But, most importantly, this fetus put both my mother’s life, and the lives of the other three fetuses at risk. The doctor advised my mom to abort two out of four fetuses, because having more than two babies at a time is considered high risk, and this was compounded by the fact that my mother was already 40 years old at the time, so it was even more high risk. My mother didn’t want to abort them at first, but she chose to abort that fourth fetus because she was able to listen to her doctor, and make a medical decision that was in her best interest, while also giving the rest of us the highest chance at life.”

#SanJoséCA #PeoplesStruggles #RoeVWade

Investors are facing up to the fact that the country’s central bank, the Federal Reserve, is more committed to slowing the economy to lower inflation than it is with propping up stock prices. Inflation has hit a 40-year high of more than 8% the last two months. The Fed has already raised short term interest rates twice, one time by half of a percent for the first time in 20 years.

The Fed has made public plans to begin to sell off its massive stash of bonds. During both the 2008 financial crisis and then the COVID recession in 2020, the Fed bought about $8 trillion in U.S. government and mortgage bonds, to lower short term interest rates to record lows and to reduce mortgage interest rates. The Fed plans to reduce its stash of bonds by almost $100 billion per month or more than $1 trillion per year. This will reduce the amount of money in circulation and in banks and will raise longer term interest rates. The standard 30-year fixed rate mortgage interest rate has gone from 3.11% at the beginning of the year, so 5.27%, a jump of more than 70%.

The Federal Reserve’s inflation fight is raising recession fears on Wall Street. Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell has been praising Paul Volker, who headed the Fed from 1979 to 1987. Under Volker, the Fed raised short-term interest rates, currently at 8/10ths of one percent, to a record high of 20% in 1981 to fight recession which had reached 13% just months before. While inflation did fall, the worst (at that time) recession since the Great Depression followed, with unemployment reaching 10.8%, even worse than the recession with the Great Financial Crisis in 2008.

Inflation has been eating at the purchasing power of workers’ wages. Even though hourly pay is up over 5%, with inflation over 8%, the purchasing power of workers’ wages has dropped by 3% over the last year. It is no wonder that there is growing dissatisfaction despite rising wages.

Supply side shortages have played a role in the rise of inflation. The COVID pandemic led to a severe drop in spending on services such as travel. People turned to goods, causing a spike in demand that U.S. factories, many still troubled by COVID, were unable to meet. The demand for imports rose, overwhelming ports and truckers. Then there were shortages of computer chips that restricted new car sales, which are off 20% from the current peak, while prices rise at double-digit levels. The lack of new cars increases the demand for used cars, while supply drops as people keep their cars when they can’t get new one.

The U.S. sanctions on Russia have pushed up oil and gasoline prices. The Biden administration has escalated the U.S. economic sanctions on China, causing shortages of solar panels. These shortages continue to crop up one after another helping to drive prices higher. Another supply side shortage is the drop in the number of new immigrants, which started under the Trump administration.

Demand has played a secondary role. When inflation started to take off a year ago, unemployment was still at 6%. While the massive government spending to prop up the economy played some role, it basically ended at the time inflation started to take off.

Inflation is rising in countries around the world, particularly in Europe, where sanctions on Russia have a greater impact. The U.S. and Europe’s economic war on Russia is pushing up grain and food oil prices, causing hardship in poor and middle-income countries dependent on trade with Russia for their basic foodstuffs.

One country much less affected by inflation is China. While China’s socialist economy no longer has extensive price controls like those in the Soviet Union, inflation has been much less than here, running around 1.5%. China was able to clamp down on COVID and limit deaths to about 15,000 as compared to the 3 million deaths there would have been if China had the same death rate at the United Sates. This meant fewer supply-chain disruptions and no need for the massive financial spending that the U.S. government needed to keep the economy alive. While producer prices are rising at almost the same rate as in the United States, the government can directly (through government-owned enterprises) and indirectly (through influence from state-owned banks and Communist Party committees in enterprises) keep businesses from passing on all the price increases. China also maintains a year or more supplies of raw materials such as metals and grains that can be released to curb production and food costs.

#SanJoséCA #economy #stockMarket

San Jose, CA – On May 1, about 400 people had gathered at Roosevelt Park in San Jose to celebrate International Workers Day. Many leftist organizations, trade unions, and grassroots organizations like Papeles Para Todos attended.

In the lead-up to the march, the action kicked off with a dance performance from Calpulli Tonalehqueh, an Aztec dance group. After this performance, a Muwekma Ohlone tribe member presented a land acknowledgment, ensuring that the people of San Jose understand they are on Muwekma Ohlone land.

Event organizers such as Nora Morales, a janitorial worker and member and leader of a local SEIU, spoke about the difficulties and struggles of workers, especially undocumented immigrant workers, over the last year, and throughout the pandemic, stating, “We are essential, resilient, empowered and skilled workers, who are the backbone of every company, and today we are here to celebrate us! Because without our hard work, corporations wouldn’t be able to function properly.”

Sharat Lin from the San Jose May Day Coalition made sure to remind the people of San Jose about the history of the May Day, connecting the struggles of immigrant workers in Chicago during the 1880s, to the struggles of immigrant workers in San Jose today. “On May 1, 2006, International Workers’ Day was reborn in America, when millions of people across the United States marched to protest HR 4337.” This bill would have further criminalized undocumented immigrants and further militarized the U.S.-Mexico border.

Lin also stated, “The nationwide protests effectively stopped the bill in its tracks. On that day, over a quarter million people marched here in San Jose.” San Jose has a large number of immigrants, many of them undocumented, from Latin America, especially Mexico and Central America; they constitute a large part of the core working class in the city.

This year, the city government of San Jose scheduled another event on May 1 which caused logistical issues for May Day organizers. In addition, this event, Viva La Calle, was sponsored by Google and Omidyar Network (a “philanthropic” firm that invests in news media). The city claimed it was an oversight mistake, but the SJ May Day Coalition, as well as the working people of San Jose, saw through their sorry excuses, knowing all too well, that the city government and Silicon Valley tech giants like Google were purposely trying to repress celebrations of International Workers’ Day.

Regardless, the working people were able to fight back and rightfully take back their holiday. Demonstrators took over half the street around 1 p.m., and began marching down Santa Clara Street, towards San Jose City Hall. Led by dancers from Calpulli Tonalehqueh, demonstrators marched behind them, drowning out the speaker systems from Viva La Calle. The chants, “When workers’ rights are under attack, what do we do? Stand up, fight back!” and “El pueblo unido!” “Jamas sera vencido!” were heard all the way to city hall.

At city hall, all attending organizations gathered, as more cultural performances were given, and more community organizers spoke to the people of San Jose. Nancy Robles from the San Jose May Day Coalition and Party for Socialism and Liberation spoke to the needs of working people, and why socialism is necessary to ensure that the people’s needs are met. Papeles Para Todos (Citizenship For All) spoke about their current campaign to hold President Biden accountable, and demand citizenship for all undocumented immigrants in the United States and create a pathway for citizenship for undocumented immigrants. They also demand that migrant detention centers be closed, families no longer be separated, and are calling for equal citizenship rights for all.

Alexander Woolner, from Freedom Road Socialist Organization, who is also a Teamsters union member at UPS, spoke to the importance of labor organizing and the history of the labor movement in the fight for socialism, pointing out that while the trade union movement is at an all-time low, the American working class was faced with similar conditions almost a century ago, and made great strides. “Back then, a man named William Foster dedicated his life to trade union organizing, and I mention him because the organizers of the recent win at Amazon not only read one of his works, Organizing Methods in the Steel Industry, but studied it together and distributed it to workers.”

Woolner also mentioned the recent workers’ struggles with class-collaborationist union leadership in the Teamsters, mentioning the 2018 UPS sell-out that lost many benefits that were won during the 1997 strike, as well as the $4 pay cut earlier this year, which brought UPS wages in the area down from $21 an hour, to $17 an hour. Negotiations for the 2023 contract begin this August between UPS and the Teamsters union. “This will be an important fight, a Teamster win will mean better pay and benefits for UPS workers, and will demonstrate the value of having a union contract and inflame the current labor organizing drive on a larger scale rather than workplace by workplace.”

#SanJoséCA #MayDay #PeoplesStruggles

Signs of economic weakness and growing concerns about rising interest rates also slammed the stock market last week. For the second week in a row, stocks fell. The U.S. central bank, the Federal Reserve, has made it clear that it will raise interest rates sooner rather than later because of the rising inflation, which hit 7% year over year in December. Higher interest rates have usually been bad for stocks, especially for fast-growing companies and more speculative stocks. The technology heavy NASDAQ entered correction territory last week, falling more than 10% from its peak. More speculative financial assets like Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies were slammed, with Bitcoin continuing to drop and ending the week down almost 50% from its record high.

#SanJoséCA #Unemployment #PeoplesStruggles #COVID19