On May 27, the Tk’emlúps te Secwépemc First Nation said that preliminary findings from a survey of the grounds at the former Kamloops Indian Residential School in British Columbia uncovered the remains of 215 children. This news has been met by a massive outpouring of grief in Indigenous communities. 

Indigenous people have created memorials to the children, with 215 pairs of children’s shoes, toys and flowers appearing on the steps of government buildings, churches and residential school buildings across Canada. Statues of prominent Canadian historical figures who bear responsibility for the residential school system, such as John A. Macdonald and Egerton Ryerson, are being covered with red paint and pulled down. 

The confirmation of the remains of the 215 children at Kamloops is only a beginning; there are many more unmarked gravesites to be found and analyzed. While hundreds of graves had already been identified, residential school survivors have said for years that additional children are buried in many different areas, and asked Canada for years to fund searches at all residential school properties. Thousands of families seek to know who is buried there and what happened to their children.  

Kamloops was one school from more than a century of government-sanctioned Indian residential schools in Canada. Abuse of every kind at these schools was the norm. At St. Anne’s residential school in Ontario, survivors described whippings, beatings, widespread sexual abuse and punishment by shocks delivered in an on-site electric chair. 

Medical experiments were permitted to be conducted on the children. Diseases such as tuberculosis and influenza swept through the schools, with the children’s malnourished bodies often too weak to survive. 

Some Indigenous (First Nations, Metis and Inuit) children died from tuberculosis or malnutrition. Some died of a broken heart. Some died trying to run away and return home. Some died from beatings and some from suicide. 

No one knows how many children died nationally in Canada, but estimates range from 6,000 to as high as 25,000. 

The children had their hair cut, were beaten for speaking their mother tongue, were told that their families and spiritual beliefs were evil, were subjected to physical, emotional and sexual abuse.  

Imagine living in a community where outside authorities such as priests and Mounties swoop in to grab your children and carry them off to a residential school. Imagine that you are told you cannot even see your children unless you behave, or that you will not receive your meager rations if your child does not go to the school. Imagine how quiet your community is after the children have been snatched away. 

Your child may return home broken, or may never return at all. 

Not ancient history

Catholic missionary residential schools began in “New France” (French colonies in North America). Residential schools became part of Canadian government and church policy from the 1830s on with the creation of Anglican, Roman Catholic and Methodist schools in Ontario. 

These colonial experiments set the pattern for post-Confederation policies from 1867 on. Approximately 150,000 Indigenous children in Canada experienced that era of residential schools.  

The last residential school in Canada closed in 1996, so this is not ancient history. 

Some children also were forced to attend government-run day schools, where abuse and cultural genocide were also common. There are still many school survivors and even more families descended from those who suffered at the schools. 

Indigenous people certainly never forgot about the residential schools. What occurred in these schools has also caused intergenerational trauma, impacting families for generations. 

Chief Clarence Louie of the Syilx Okanagan Nation in British Columbia said that Indigenous people still feel the impact of the schools today. “The level of inhumane and criminal treatment of First Nations children at the hands of colonial governments and organized religion is deeply disturbing,” he said in a statement. 

“We are calling on the Province of British Columbia and Government of Canada to directly address these atrocities.” 

Settlers in Canada are now paying more attention to the issue, yet some of them dare to deny that the residential schools were so horrific. This modern amnesia and denial by the oppressor nation ignores thousands of Indigenous people who participated in the painful six-year process of the national Truth & Reconciliation Commission (TRC), which issued reports in 2015 detailing many of the abuses at the residential schools with 94 Calls to Action. 

The government has failed to respond to many of the calls, including refusing to fund the requests to identify missing children and their marked and unmarked burial sites. Often the schools and authorities failed to tell families what happened to the children at the schools and refused to return the bodies home because they did not want to pay for transportation or have the families know how abused the child had been. 

This information was widely available and publicized, and multiple calls to action were included in the TRC report. Yet all too many settlers continued to profess ignorance or disbelief about residential schools even though information has long been available. 

Canada’s white ruling class has benefited immensely from the destruction of Native families and communities. As Indigenous people were violently forced onto reserves and often denied the ability to hunt, farm and fish to support themselves, vast tracts of land were renamed, divided, and handed out by the Canadian government to railroads, settlers, logging and other interests. 

The stolen children were taught that their systems of governance and ways of life were bad and backwards, told they had no need for or right to the land in the face of allegedly superior Canadian “civilization.” 

Generations of genocide 

The residential school system was part of an intentional, long-term Canadian government policy to devastate Indigenous families and steal Indigenous lands by forcing people onto reserves (known as “reservations” in the U.S.) and disconnecting children and communities from the land. 

The schools were run with the backing of the Canadian government and churches. The educational views of the Methodist Minister Egerton Ryerson were influential; he wanted to “take the Indian out of the child,” force assimilation to white ways and have schools teach Indigenous children rudimentary skills in order to become farm laborers or take other jobs in service of white bosses. 

While some Indigenous families may have hoped that their children would get a good education at the schools that would help their communities and children, that is not what happened. 

The first Canadian prime minister, John A. Macdonald, pushed for the residential schools because, “When the school is on the reserve the child lives with its parents, who are savages; he is surrounded by savages, and though he may learn to read and write … he is simply a savage who can read and write. … [T]he Indian children should be withdrawn as much as possible from the parental influence.” 

Macdonald also had a policy of starving Indigenous people from the prairies in order to clear a path for the transcontinental railway by forcing them to move to reserves. Macdonald and the prime ministers who followed had millions of willing accomplices, supported by parliaments and legislatures, churches, political parties and white public opinion.  

The United Church of Canada apologized for residential schools in 1986, the Anglican Church of Canada in 1993, the Presbyterian Church in Canada in 1994. Canada formally apologized in 2008, but has continued to implement policies that negatively impact Indigenous children and families. 

The Pope has never apologized, and Catholic orders such as the Missionary Oblates of Mary Immaculate, which ran about 47% of Canada’s residential schools, including the one in Kamloops, have refused to turn over their records.  

Far from being hidden, information about the inhumane conditions at the schools appeared as early as 1907. Dr. Peter Henderson Bryce, a highly respected expert in tuberculosis, surveyed the health of First Nations children in residential schools. He found that children in the schools were dying at the rate of 24% per year, and the death rate rose to a staggering 42% over three years. In one school that kept complete records, 76% of the children had died. 

Bryce said “medical science knows just what to do,” and he implored Ottawa to improve ventilation in the schools, stop putting sick children in with healthy children and ensure they had equitable access to tuberculosis treatment. As Bryce noted, the Indian Affairs budget for tuberculosis treatment for First Nations across Canada was far less than what was provided to the less populated city of Ottawa. 

Nothing was done. Bryce would later lose his federal civil service position due to his constant whistle-blowing efforts.  

Attacks not limited to Canada 

In the U.S., an estimated 500 government-funded Indian boarding and day schools operated in the 19th and 20th centuries. NABS (National Native American Board School Healing Coalition) has identified 357 boarding schools alone. 

The first federally-run Indian boarding school was the Carlisle Indian Industrial School in Pennsylvania, in operation from 1879 to 1918, which used harsh military discipline to force Native children from all over the U.S. to assimilate. 

At many of the schools, unmarked graves exist and remains of children are still undergoing a process of repatriation to the children’s tribes. Researchers say that most of the more than 350 U.S. Indian boarding schools have cemeteries associated with them. 

The US has never had an accurate accounting of the Indian boarding schools, the number of children who attended or those who died at the schools. By 1900, there were about 20,000 children in boarding schools; by 1925, that number had more than tripled.  

Brazil, Australia, Mexico and Venezuela were among the other countries that had mission and other residential schools for Indigenous children.  

Even with the closure of residential schools, the mistreatment and removal of Indigenous children continued. In all too many countries, foster care became the “new residential school” – meaning that many Indigenous children are put into care rather than their families receiving the support needed to be able to keep their children. In Canada, Indigenous children comprise 7.7% of all children under age 14, but 55.2% of children in foster care. 

Canada under Justin Trudeau’s Liberal Party continues to conduct  “belligerent and litigious” legal battles against survivors of Canada’s residential schools and child welfare systems and refuses to properly fund services for Indigenous children. In the U.S., Indigenous children are disproportionately in foster care, and right-wing evangelicals continue to attack the Indian Child Welfare Act in hopes of being able to separate even more Native children from their tribal nations and families.

In the U.S., Australia and other countries, Indigenous kids continue to live at the bottom of the heap. 

Land-back beats reconciliation 

The Canadian Parliament has now acted to designate Sept. 30 as a national day of truth and reconciliation to learn about and honor Indigenous people who attended residential schools, those who survived and those who never came home. 

It is always important for the survivors and their families to be able to speak the truth about the harm they experienced that continues to reverberate through Indigenous communities. They have worked so hard to improve conditions for these communities. It’s important for settlers to commit to knowing the truth about residential schools. 

But there can be no reconciliation without reparations, justice and the return of land to Indigenous nations. Apologies and holidays are useless if people from the oppressor nation are not taking immediate and decisive steps to undo the toxic settler-colonial systems and anti-Indigenous racism that continue to exist.  

Visit this website for some ways to support the Tk’emlúps te Secwépemc First Nation as they take responsibility for ensuring that the children’s remains will be identified and rematriated.

The Socialist Unity Party/Partido por el Socialismo Unido stands in solidarity with the Lesbian/Gay/Bi/Trans/Queer/Two-Spirit (LGBTQ2S) community, not only as we celebrate Pride Month, but also as queer people continue to fight back against the systemic oppression imposed on us by capitalism. 

We are encouraged by the growing number of Pride marches around the country now demanding that police not be allowed to participate due to continued arrests and harrassment of the queer community. 

The clarion call to reclaim Pride has been heard in all corners of the country. It reminds people that Stonewall was a rebellion sparked by the frustration of repeated humiliation and violence by the New York Police Department. 

That three-day rebellion grew into a movement of resistance — not just against police terror, but one that opened up the fight for respect for the queer community. It demanded an end to discriminatory firings and being kicked out of apartments, as well as out of families. The movement worked hard to show the world that “Gay is Good.”

Over the past year, the queer community has come out in large numbers as part of the Black Lives Matter movement, calling for justice for the many Black and Latinx people who have been murdered by police. There is a natural link between these communities, as both movements began as rebellions against police brutality and killings. It is well known that oppression breeds resistance.

This natural alliance defies the wishes of the capitalist class, which only seeks to break down the mutual support and solidarity which strengthens these two working-class movements. 

Liberation for Palestine and LGBTQ2S

Today the fightback against repression is strongest in those communities that have come under tremendous attack. Just as the Stonewall Rebellion was a community united against years of beatings and disrespect, so too are our Palestinian siblings united as they continue their decades-long resistance to Israeli occupation and life under apartheid conditions. 

We condemn the recent U.S.-armed-and-funded Israeli bombings in Gaza that killed at least 260 Palestinians and left thousands homeless. We condemn the actions of racist Israeli settlers evicting residents who have lived for decades in the East Jerusalem area of Sheik Jarrah. This ethnic cleansing is deplorable and a crime against humanity. 

We call on the queer community to resist the attempts at “pinkwashing” by the state of Israel, which tries to paint itself as the perfect tourist destination. This only uses the queer community as a pawn as the U.S. and Israel try to justify the theft of Palestinian land. 

We have nothing to gain in supporting Israeli atrocities committed against our Palestinian siblings. 

We stand with the Reclaim Pride Coalition marchers and other queer activists who were brutally attacked by the NYPD during the past year. It’s said that a leopard never changes its spots. While it is good that police have been banned from the NYC Heritage of Pride march, that event continues to pander to corporate interests. 

The Queer Liberation March, which is also held on the last Sunday of June, lifts up the original, radical politics of the movement that began that summer night in 1969 — for those who have forgotten or are so young they may not have been aware.

Unite to fight ongoing attacks

Although many gains have been won over the 52 years since Stonewall, the struggle is not over.  

The right wing continues to use our rights as a galvanizing tool at election time. Same-sex marriage rights are constantly under attack. There is still not a federal law prohibiting discrimination in employment, housing and public accommodations. 

Trump is gone, but his followers in legislatures around the country have introduced one bill after another trying to undo the gains we have made. The right-wing packed U.S. Supreme Court has agreed to hear cases that may grant the right to discriminate based on religious beliefs, as well denying same-sex couples the right to be foster parents or to adopt. 

But using religion as a tool of oppression is nothing new. Religion has been used by capitalism and imperialism to justify the genocide of Indigenous people. Religion has been used to justify murder, rape, pillaging, robbing our communities of resources, sexism, and now homophobia and transphobia. 

The most vulnerable segment of the queer community — transgender individuals — live with day-to-day fear of physical as well as political attacks. The number of transwomen murdered so far this year has already surpassed last year’s number. The right wing is strongly pressing for laws that deny gender-affirming healthcare to youth and allow legal molestation of transgirls in school sports by checking to see which genitals they have. 

We reject these attempts to misgender and repress our transgender sisters. We assert that transwomen are women. 

Capitalism has only misery to offer the queer community. It will take the socialist reorganization of society to ensure that LGBTQ2S people are able to live in dignity. 

Stonewall still means fightback — for our liberation, and for the entire working class!

On May 18, in response to Israel’s attempted expulsion of Palestinian families from their homes in the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood in Jerusalem, the continued attacks on the Aqsa Mosque as well as Israel’s bombing of the Gaza Strip with more than 1,050 air raids, the Palestinian General Federation of Trade Unions – Gaza Strip (PGFTU) urged the global trade union movement to support Palestinians and the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement.

The PGFTU appeal called for labor unions to:

– Boycott Israel’s racist occupation, including a refusal to unload its ships;

– Demonstrate and put the apartheid state of Israel on trial for war crimes;

– Affirm Palestinians’ right to freedom and independence, the establishment of an independent Palestinian state with Jerusalem as its capital, and the right of Palestinians to return to their homes and villages.

The appeal was answered forcefully in the Port of Oakland, Calif., site of the most successful labor action to date against the atrocities in Gaza.

The Israel-based ZIM ship Volans left the Port of Oakland on June 5 unworked after reportedly “meandering in circles, outside of the port,” reports an Arab Resource and Organizing Center (AROC) press statement. The ZIM ship was unable to navigate through the united protest of community and labor.

ZIM is the world’s 10th largest shipping company. ZIM is a major transporter of weapons to and from Israel.

The International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU) Local 10 and the ship’s clerks in ILWU Local 34, as well as the Port Truckers, honored picket lines coordinated by the Block the Boat Coalition, at times numbering over a thousand protesters. ZIM ships left the port unloaded after 16 days of picket lines.

“We are sending a strong message that profiteering from Israel’s apartheid and ongoing violence against the Palestinian people will not be welcome in the Bay Area,” said Lara Kiswani, executive director of AROC.

#BlockTheBoat actions protesting various Israeli ZIM ships have been planned in numerous other cities, including Los Angeles, Seattle, Houston, New York, Detroit and Philadelphia.

One labor statement at the end of May read, “The ILWU Northern California District Council stands in solidarity with Palestine and Palestinian communities across the world who are fighting for justice.”

On June 6, in Elizabeth, N.J., hundreds defied heavy police pressure and joined a community picket and blocked the gate leading to the terminal where the ZIM ship Tarragona docked.

International solidarity

Workers’ organizations responded to the appeal of the Palestinian union federation as news of the horrendous Israeli massacre and courageous Palestinian defense circled the globe.

Protests took place in Italy, Greece, Ireland, Canada and South Africa. Over 100 labor and community organizations nationally and internationally endorsed #BlockTheBoat actions!

The International Dockworkers Council issued a statement strongly condemning the massacre of civilians and children in Palestine.

Recognizing apartheid in Israel, South African dockworkers heeded the PGFTU call and refused to offload ZIM cargo.

Italian dockworkers in Livorno refused to load an arms shipment onto a ZIM ship.

The Doro-Chiba rail workers union of Japan wrote, “We full-heartedly salute Local 10 for refusing to handle the freight from the ZIM ship Volans.”

Local 10 and Black union leadership

Speaking on the Local 10 action, retired ILWU leader Clarence Thomas said, “We affect the global economy.” 

He said, “It was the longest action taken against an Israeli vessel using community blockades at the Port of Oakland.

“The first Local 10 action was in response to the killing of unarmed people in international waters on board the ship Mavi Marmara, which was attemp­ting to bring humanitarian aid to the ­Palestinian people in 2010.”

In August 2016, an action to stop ZIM ships from unloading at the Port of ­Oakland was organized by Block the Boat for Gaza, a coalition of about 70 organi­zations led by AROC. 

The action became a movement. A gigantic ZIM ship left the Bay Area of California unworked at that time. Rank-and-file members of  Local 10 honored community picket lines for four days. Other ports from Los Angeles to Tacoma joined the “Block the Boat Movement.”

At the June 4 mass picket in Oakland, Local 10 President Trent Willis discussed the history of the ILWU in terms of fighting racism against the Palestinians as well as against African Americans.

Call for the MWM

When it initiated the Million Worker March in 2004, ILWU Local 10 called on rank-and-file union members to “Mobilize in Our Own Name,” the title of Clarence Thomas’ new anthology.

African American union leaders from Local 10, joined by others in the Coalition of Black Trade Unionists, organized the MWM with demands to fight racism, sexism, economic injustice and war. 

They said that the only way workers can successfully struggle for their democratic rights is to organize independently from political organizations controlled by the bosses.

In 2004, the AFL-CIO leadership, in collusion with the Democratic Party, took national measures to sabotage the MWM by dishonestly claiming that it would interfere with union support for John Kerry’s presidential election campaign.

In July 2020, the country erupted with protests, labor strikes and shutdowns against the police murders of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor and numerous others.

The AFL-CIO “Racial Justice Task Force” announced a plan for “taking concrete action to address the long history of racism and police violence against Black people.”

Last week the AFL-CIO quietly released its report, calling for police unions themselves to be the primary mechanism for reforming police practices. As spokespeople for the police unions often voice the loudest support for racist killer cops, the AFL-CIO report amounts to a hostile rejection of calls from progressive members for the federation to kick out police unions.

The progressive demand to exclude police organizations from the AFL-CIO rightfully asserts that workers’ unions must be organized independently from the bosses and the repressive forces of the state that represent them. After all, who are the ones to bust workers’ heads when they protest for a living wage?

The call to “Mobilize in Our Own Name” is the only way that workers can unite internationally against capitalist exploitation and U.S. imperialist aggression in support of Israeli apartheid.

Block the Boat actions hit U.S./Israeli interests at the “point of production” and prove that workers are in the most powerful position to enact change.

https://www.facebook.com/AROCBayArea/videos/181969900514605

Footage of just 1 of 6 gates that community and workers held down in solidarity with Palestinian workers.

Los Angeles — On May 22, Black and Brown organizations joined forces with the Palestinian movement across the world, demanding that Israel end the seige of Gaza and Sheikh Jarrah, an end to the illegal occupation of Palestine and to all U.S. funding and arming of Israel. 

Palestinian organizations, including Al-Awda: The Palestine Right to Return Coalition and the Palestinian Youth Movement (PYM), which led massive demonstrations in the city a week prior, were invited to speak at the action.

Initiators of the rally, march and car caravan included the Harriet Tubman Center for Social Justice, Unión del Barrio, Southern Christian Leadership Conference, Black August Los Angeles, American Indian Movement Southern California, Central American Resource Center, All-African People’s Revolutionary Party, Puerto Rican Alliance, National Young Lords Organization and members of the Socialist Unity Party Black Caucus.

These organizations, responding to Israel’s catastrophic war crimes, felt the need to highlight and activate the power coming from the fundamental role historically played by Black and Brown organizations in the U.S. in fighting injustice, racism and white supremacy, with an understanding of the potential power those battles can have in building solidarity with other victims of U.S. imperialism abroad.

Many in the Palestine movement note that the current shift towards solidarity with the Palestinian people is partly a result of the recent struggles for Black lives here in the U.S., helping to build the consciousness necessary to emphasize that Palestinian lives and the lives of all oppressed peoples subject to racism and genocide matter.

Uplifting show of unity

At MacArthur Park in downtown LA — in a community predominantly made up of oppressed people of color — a large rally drew at least six television crews covering the event. 

It began with many speakers addressing the need to highlight the historic bond between Black organizations and the Palestinian right to self-determination, and their dedication to continue to call out and fight against racism and imperialism there and here.  

Many rally participants were uplifted by the show of unity between the many Black and Brown organizations that came together and spoke in one united voice of support. 

Regarding the horror of the most recent Israeli war crimes, Harold Welton, former Black Panther and member of Black August Los Angeles, said: “Over 60 Palestinian children have been killed and the corporate news seems to dance around that fact. Our tax dollars are being used to send precision-guided missiles and high-tech bombers targeting civilians.” 

Ron Gochez of Unión del Barrio, addressing the rally participants and the Palestinian people, declared: “The leftist movements of Latin America, of Nuestra America, the movements in Africa, the movements all over Asia and all over the world, are with you. The only people that side with Israel are those aligned with the colonial imperialist U.S. government.”

Speakers from Al-Awda and the PYM conveyed the reality of the continued siege in Gaza and Jerusalem’s Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood and pledged their support to fight racism here against Black and Brown peoples.

This action also had a very natural feel with speakers whose experiences paralleled the situation of Palestinian people. Xochilt Sanchez, organizer with the Central American Resource Center said: “As a Salvadoran American, I empathize with the pain and loss of the Palestinian people. I see my own family’s pain reflected in their struggle against land occupation, state violence and forced displacement. 

“I stand in solidarity with the Palestinian people because, as a Central American, my people have also been massacred and driven off their lands. Historically and throughout modern history, Central Americans have suffered bombardments and mass killings by the hand of the police and military, backed and funded by the United States.”

Palestine and Black liberation

That sentiment was reinforced by Rebecka Jackson of the Socialist Unity Party Black Caucus, who had visited occupied Palestine: “The struggle of Palestine is the struggle for Black liberation. Occupied Palestine is a place where Afro-Palestinians are treated as second-class citizens or subjected to apartheid. Our struggles are inextricably linked. We are being systematically exterminated by the same poison of white supremacy and capitalism. 

“The struggle for Palestine is one of Indigenous rights, of native Semitic peoples, Muslim, Jewish and Christian, who had lived in peace and solidarity before Western intervention,” Jackson explained.

“This is not a struggle of religion. This is a struggle against white supremacy. Israel is a white supremacist, capitalist state that viewed the indigenous people of Palestine as less than human and sought to eliminate them as they fulfilled the same ‘master race’ philosophies originated by Jim Crow and then by Nazi Germany. 

“In Israel Black people are met with the same brutality and genocide as in the U.S. The Israelis have their own word for n*****, though they won’t hesitate to adopt the English term when they just want to say it either. 

“When African Jewish refugees arrive, they keep them in cages like animals, calling them ‘terrorists,’ and they are often held without food, water or facilities. Sound familiar? The Israeli state is the apartheid state — and so is the U.S. state. They are an echo of the same anti-Blackness and anti-Brownness. 

“As Palestine has always supported our liberation struggles, as they sent us solidarity to Ferguson and Minneapolis and Louisville let us send the same support back,” said Jackson. 

“As people around the globe have lifted up the names of Michael Brown, George Floyd and Breonna Taylor, let us today lift up the names of Haftom Zarhum and Babikir Ali Adham-Abdo, who were beaten to death by racist Zionists. And Solomon Teka and Yehuda Biadga, who were murdered by Israeli police.

“Why do we love Palestine, why do we fight for Palestine? When we are united in struggle we beat with the same heart and fight with the same fist. If we can free Palestine, we can free us all. 

“From Mandela, to the Black Panther Party to Che Guevara — we are all revolutionary socialists dedicated to smashing imperialism and capitalism and liberating the world. None of us are free until we all are free,” she concluded.

For thousands of years human societies have protected diplomats from harm, even during wartime. That hasn’t stopped the U.S. capitalist government from trying to seize the Venezuelan envoy Alex Saab.

Sabb was Venezuela’s ambassador to the African Union when he was arrested in Cabo Verde on June 12, 2020. The African country seized Saab on the demand of the United States and has kept him in jail since then. The diplomat was traveling to Iran to help arrange food shipments for Venezuela when he was taken from his aircraft during a fuel stop.  

So what does that have to do with the United States? For 20 years the U.S. ruling class has been trying to overthrow the elected government of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela.

Wall Street wants to return Venezuela to the days when then-New York Gov. Nelson Rockefeller had a 100,000 acre ranch there. The Rockefellers considered the oil-rich country to be their private property. 

Venezuela’s poor people meant as much to Rockefeller as the 33 Attica prisoners that he had his state troopers murder in 1971.

That changed in 1999 when the late Hugo Chávez was elected Venezuela’s president and the Bolivarian Revolution began. Poor and working people took back their country from Big Oil.

Over 3 million homes have been built. While over 20,000 children in New York City are homeless and 100,000 lack permanent housing, not a single child in Venezuela is homeless. 

Six million families were provided with food by Local Supply and Production Committees, which Alex Saab was trying to help. 

The response of both Republican and Democratic presidents has been to issue cruel sanctions on Venezuela, which strangled the country’s economy. These sanctions have cut Venezuela off from most of the world economy. 

The White House even had the Bank of England seize a billion dollars of gold belonging to Venezuela. The British capitalist government refused Venezuela’s plea to use some of the gold to pay for needed medical supplies during the coronavirus pandemic.

The U.S. claims its sanctions — which it also imposes on the rest of the world — were violated by Ambassador Saab, even though he never visited the United States. 

Cabo Verde is a country of islands off the west coast of Africa. It waged a liberation struggle along with other Portuguese colonies.

The U.S. supplied the Portuguese government, then a fascist regime, with napalm to burn Africans alive. Amilcar Cabral, who led the freedom struggle in both Cabo Verde and Guinea-Bissau, was assassinated with the CIA’s approval.

Now the CIA wants Ambassador Alex Saab to be turned over to the U.S. Alex Saab deserves freedom and Cabo Verde, and all Africans, deserve reparations.

We are grateful to the United Teachers Los Angeles (UTLA) educators who drafted and passed area motions in support of the people of Palestine. This motion builds on UTLA’s history and tradition of commitment to educational equity and racial justice. In standing with Palestinian educators and students, you will affirm the right of young people to grow up and learn in an environment free of surveillance, over-policing, and military occupation. In rejecting the systematic treatment of Palestinians as second-class citizens within their own schools, you will take a stand against racism and discrimination that Palestinian students and educators face every day because of their national origin. Your position will send an important message to today’s youth who will go on to become the leaders and decision-makers of tomorrow.

Education is not a neutral force in young people’s lives, but an active agent of change that has a profound effect on students’ worldview and moral compass. This motion — if passed — will help call attention to that fact. Israel has violated numerous international human rights laws and has been officially designated as an apartheid regime, including by Human Rights Watch and Israeli human rights organization B’tselem. In the past month, entire apartment buildings in Gaza have been leveled in seconds, with entire families being wiped out in single airstrikes. The direct link between our taxes and Israel’s military makes these atrocities possible, demonstrating U.S. complicity and our responsibility as citizens to stand against this injustice.

The U.S. currently sends $3.8 billion taxpayer dollars in military funding to Israel every year. Just a few weeks ago, President Biden signed off on a $735 million weapons deal with Israel as the heavy bombardment of Gaza was taking place. As our besieged people in Gaza continue to suffer under the fire of bombs and the misery of the blockade, that same injustice is being funded — indeed, single-handedly being made possible — by the taxes we filed this month. Those are tax dollars that could be going to health care, public education, mental health services, housing or a host of other services that are helping to build communities up rather than engage in endless warfare or further the engineered suffering inflicted against Palestinians by the Israeli occupation.

For too long, friends and allies of Palestine have had accusations of anti-Semitism leveled at them for taking a stand on Palestinian rights. These false accusations rely on a disingenuous conflation of Israel and Jews that is intended to silence and criminalize Palestinians by portraying their resistance to occupation and ethnic cleansing as a form of bigotry or irrational hatred. This tactic is intended to stifle speech critical of Israel when its brutal actions are, on their own terms, indefensible. It is not anti-Semitic to criticize the state of Israel for its acts of military aggression and its ethnic cleansing against the Palestinian people. Taking a principled moral stance on a situation of clear injustice is in no way a form of racism or prejudice as has been alleged. There is a critical difference between criticizing Israel as a violent nation state and attacks on Jewish people because of their identities. Anti-Semitism makes a home in white supremacy, not in a grassroots movement for justice for all.

Many Palestinian students and their families in our schools are affected by the censorship and silencing around Palestine. Not only are they constantly silenced for speaking about Palestine: they are told within the classroom setting that their country does not exist and frequently find themselves confronting racist stereotypes about Arabs, Muslims and Palestinians, which often have a direct and lasting effect on their mental health and school performance. As their families are directly impacted by this disparate treatment, it is important that teachers support them, especially while they are grieving and dealing with horrific violence inflicted upon their relatives in Palestine.

In the spirit of maintaining UTLA’s commitment to an equitable workplace for teachers and students alike, this motion is a gesture toward the same values of dignity and self-determination upon which the union was originally founded in 1970. Born out of a strike and tax revolt, UTLA’s early years were rooted in a commitment to racial and economic justice that pushed back against unjust taxation and teachers’ vastly inferior bargaining power in California. A vote in favor of this motion would build on that history and extend the same key concerns internationally, where much of our tax dollars go.

The Palestinian Youth Movement would be honored and humbled to support UTLA in any way possible, in expressing support for Palestine and in passing this motion. Many other educational organizations around the world — including the National Union of Teachers in Europe and San Francisco Teachers Union — have already taken a vocal stance in support of the Palestinian people and against Israeli apartheid and occupation. We are immensely grateful to see that UTLA, a union that consistently takes stands for justice and for the communities of Los Angeles, is on a path to joining them. We extend our deepest gratitude to you again.

Palestinian Youth Movement – Los Angeles-Orange County-Inland Empire Regional Chapter

Desde Lima, 8 de junio: Perú vive horas históricas. Pedro Castillo, un hombre del país invisible, rural, pobre, con sombrero blanco y un liderazgo en ascenso, puede convertirse en el próximo presidente. Así lo indican los números que la Oficina Nacional de Procesos Electorales (Onpe) arroja cada media hora y que todos siguen en radios, televisores, redes sociales, viendo como Castillo, progresivamente, se ubica por delante de su contrincante, Keiko Fujimori que se queda con pocas posibilidades de victoria.

La tendencia aparece como difícilmente reversible. Fujimori afirmó en la noche del lunes que los votos del extranjero podrían “emparejar” el resultado, y denunció la existencia de “indicios de fraude en las mesas (…) planificado y sistemático”. El anuncio de la candidata de Fuerza Popular ocurrió cuando Castillo la aventajaba por 90.000 votos, con el 94.47% de las actas, tanto del Perú como de fuera, contabilizadas.

No se trata de una elección más: el resultado dirá no solamente quién será el próximo presidente, sino qué tipo de modelo económico, político, se intentará construir y qué conflictos habrá en un país en crisis política prolongada. Castillo, quien durante la primera vuelta electoral figuraba en la categoría “otros” en las encuestas electorales, y era conocido centralmente por su dirigencia en la huelga docente del 2017, emergió producto de esa crisis y de sus aciertos.

La trascendencia de la elección fue clara desde que se supo que el maestro campesino, candidato del partido Perú Libre, pero sin provenir de su estructura, iba a enfrentar a Fujimori.

La amenaza percibida por el statu quo peruano, los poderes empresariales, mediáticos, partidos de derecha, fue proporcional a la campaña de miedo, muchas veces terror, que se desplegó contra Castillo y lo que significaría un gobierno bajo su presidencia.

El despliegue contra el candidato de izquierda resultó apabullante, en el marco de un país con fuerte concentración mediática en manos del grupo El Comercio y medios aliados. Los principales periódicos y canales de televisión pasaron a afirmar día tras día que su victoria llevaría al país al comunismo, una crisis económica, con aumento del dólar, desempleo, robo de ahorros, expropiaciones masivas. Esa amenaza, en el marco de un país golpeado por la pandemia y la recesión, se unió a otra: los puentes que existirían entre Castillo y el terrorismo.

Esto último buscó activar los resortes de miedos, traumas y dolores anclados en la sociedad peruana, de forma distinta en el interior del país respecto a la capital, Lima. Castillo fue terruqueado, palabra usada en la política peruana para acusar a alguien de terruco, es decir terrorista o cercano a lo que fue Sendero Luminoso. El dispositivo de miedo buscó así ligar al candidato presidencial con la crisis económica y la violencia, dos fantasmas profundos de la historia reciente peruana.

La campaña mediática del miedo estuvo acompañada de un proceso de construcción de una imagen democrática y maternal de Keiko Fujimori. Una de las expresiones más simbólicas de esa operación fue el rol que cumplió Mario Vargas Llosa al llevar adelante un apoyo activo a Fujimori. El premio Nobel de literatura giró integralmente su postura de treinta años. En el 2016, por ejemplo, cuando Keiko Fujimori llegó a segunda vuelta y finalmente perdió por 40.000 votos ante Pedro Pablo Kuczynski, había afirmado: “Keiko Fujimori es Fujimori, todo lo que representó Fujimori está vivo en la candidatura de Keiko Fujimori y sería una gran reivindicación de una de las dictaduras más corruptas y sangrientas que hemos tenido en la historia del Perú”.

Uno de los momentos culmines de ese giro ocurrió durante el acto de cierre de Fujimori el jueves antes de las elecciones. Allí, entre repeticiones del estribillo de campaña “hoy enfrentamos una grave amenaza, al comunismo le tenemos que ganar”, Álvaro Vargas Llosa, hijo de Mario, subió al escenario para abrazar a Keiko y afirmar que “la causa de la libertad es hoy Keiko Fujimori”.

La violencia mediática, así como la unificación de actores históricamente enfrentados, fue reflejo de la amenaza percibida ante una posible victoria de Castillo, quien llegó con una propuesta central: refundar la patria a través de un proceso constituyente. El candidato de Perú Libre puso sobre la mesa la necesidad de desmontar la Constitución redactada en 1993 bajo Alberto Fujimori y recuperar la soberanía sobre los recursos estratégicos mineros, energéticos, centrales en la economía peruana.

La velocidad con la cual emergió su liderazgo puede explicarse por la existencia de un descontento social profundo del orden de lo económico y lo político. Uno de los últimos acontecimientos que evidenció esa situación fueron las masivas movilizaciones de noviembre, que ocurrieron ante la destitución del presidente Martín Vizcarra llevada adelante por el Congreso, seguido del nombramiento de Manuel Merino al frente del Ejecutivo. Éste último se mantuvo cinco días en la presidencia hasta renunciar debido a la magnitud de las protestas.

Ese acontecimiento mostró tres elementos centrales. En primer lugar, la descomposición política, partidaria, institucional, en un país donde todos los presidentes desde el 2001 han sido acusados por corrupción -al igual que Keiko Fujimori-, y el anterior, Alberto Fujimori, fue condenado a 25 años de presión por crímenes de lesa humanidad. En segundo lugar, la magnitud de una movilización que no se había visto en Lima desde la marcha de los cuatro suyos en el año 2000, contra Fujimori. En tercer lugar, la poca organización de quienes se movilizaron, la poca capacidad en el país de sindicatos, partidos y movimientos.

El liderazgo de quien encabeza las encuestas y podría ser el próximo presidente emerge de ese contexto político, y en una situación de profunda desigualdad social entre las provincias y la capital, y al interior de la misma Lima, como lo muestra, por ejemplo, el contraste en la zona de Miraflores y los cerros de Villa María del Triunfo.

La dimensión de lo que está en juego podría influir sobre los tiempos para que sea anunciado un resultado oficial. La denuncia de fraude Fujimori, predecible en caso de resultado adverso como el que se presentó a lo largo del recuento, podría afectar ese proceso. En cuanto a Castillo, quien se encuentra en Lima, ha demostrado tener apoyo popular movilizado, algo que podría ser determinante en caso de una pulseada para que sea anunciado el resultado final. 

Fuente: Página12

The May unemployment report wasn’t much better than the April disaster.  

Business news site CNBC summed it up: “Job creation disappointed again in May, with nonfarm payrolls up what normally would be considered a solid 559,000 but still short of lofty expectations, the Labor Department reported Friday. … May’s letdown came after April sharply undershot expectations.” 

The “jobs gap” remains more than 9 million down from pre-pandemic levels. “We are now short between 9.1 million and 11.0 million jobs since February 2020,” said Elise Gould of the Economic Policy Institute. At the rate of about 550,000 new jobs a month, the number of jobs won’t reach the level of February 2020 until the end of the year in 2022. That’s not a booming economy.

Unemployment plagues capitalism and has been a constant since the beginning of wage labor. Prior to the capitalist era, structural unemployment on a mass scale never existed, other than that caused by natural disasters.

While the current high level of unemployment — 23.1% according to the Ludwig Institute’s True Rate of Unemployment — is in part the result of the pandemic response, the underlying reason remains the same: to protect profits.

The reserve army of labor

As Karl Marx detailed in “Capital,” capitalism constantly produces a pool of unemployed workers. Capitalists refer to this as “surplus population” or “the unemployables.” Marx called this a “reserve army of labor.”

Marx said that in the drive to increase profits, capitalists try to reduce their costs by increasing productivity through the replacement of labor with machinery and new technology. This, in turn, creates an artificial surplus population of the unemployed.

This “reserve army of labor” influences wage rates. The larger the unemployed workforce grows, the more this forces down wages. On the other hand, if there is low unemployment and plenty of jobs available, this tends to raise the average level of wages, as workers are able to change jobs easily to get better pay.

In recent years, part of the reserve army of labor in the U.S. has been identified as “the precariat.” That is the growing number of temporary, contract and part-time workers (part of the proletariat) with precarious status. 

Precarious workers are part-time or full-time in temporary jobs, but don’t earn enough to live on. The Bureau of Labor Statistics does not count them as unemployed, but they do not receive a living wage.

Labor shortage?

In the media there have been claims that the depressing monthly employment reports are caused by a so-called “labor shortage.” This is political propaganda attacking unemployed workers, blaming the unemployed for the lack of available jobs. It’s being used to cut the meager federal supplemental unemployment benefits of $300 per week for those who lost their jobs because of the pandemic.

Twenty-five states are ending the $300 federal supplement and also the Pandemic Unemployment Assistance (PUA) for the self-employed and gig workers.

The PUA is a program that should never be cut, but rather should become a permanent program. A growing number of businesses like Uber and Lyft now call their workforce “independent contractors.” These workers are not covered by traditional unemployment insurance. They are covered by the PUA, which is actually paying benefits to more jobless workers than the regular state unemployment programs.

As for so-called labor shortages, there is only one measure of a labor shortage — wages. In a real labor shortage, wages start rising. Capitalists who face a shortage of qualified workers respond by offering higher wages and/or benefits, while capitalists who risk losing workers will raise wages to retain workers. 

But wages are not rising and, for some, are now lower than they were before the pandemic. If wages aren’t rising, it is certain that there is no labor shortage.

This was even admitted by Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell, who dismissed claims of labor shortages, saying, “We don’t see wages moving up yet. And presumably we would see that in a really tight labor market.”

For the mass of unemployed — and a quarter of the workforce is without a full-time, living-wage job, according to the Ludwig Institute — the jobs are gone; there is no returning to the old job. New jobs won’t be the same. Most may require new skills along with new transportation needs, housing locations, childcare requirements, etc.

Even with restaurant jobs, where “tipped” workers often get sub-minimum-wage pay, the jobs are changed. While pay hasn’t gone up, these jobs are now more stressful and potentially dangerous as workers have to deal with anti-maskers and ongoing health concerns. The wages for a harder, riskier job should be higher.

In the “leisure and hospitality” sector, average weekly earnings have not gone up, remaining at a level of about $19,651 per year for full-time employment. 

Far more unemployed than jobs available

There are far more unemployed people than available jobs. 

In the latest data on job openings, there were nearly 40% more unemployed workers than job openings overall, and more than 80% more unemployed workers than job openings in “leisure and hospitality.”

For low-income workers with a job, pay has not been rising over the past year, but the consumer inflation rate has been steadily rising. In April, the consumer inflation rate reached 4.2%. 

That’s a backhanded cut in wages, so that workers are really getting paid less than they were a year ago. 

Food, housing, jobs

Most significant has been the continuous inflationary rise of food prices, actually double the overall rate of inflation in 2020. For the unemployed and low-wage workers, more than a third of their income is being spent on food, leaving most of them short of funds for housing or transportation.

This is the crisis for jobless workers. What is going to happen when the federal eviction moratorium ends on June 30? More than 10 million tenants are behind on their rent and face eviction once this moratorium is dropped. 

A job is required in order to have housing, food and transportation. Everyone needs a job at a living wage to survive. It’s a basic human right.

The right to a job is even backed up by federal law. The 1946 Employment Act and the 1978 Full Employment and Balanced Growth Act legally obligate the president and Congress to use all available means to achieve full employment.

Also adopted in 1946, the United Nations Charter on Human Rights declares, “Everyone has the right to work … and to protection against unemployment,” as well as the right to housing, education and health care.

Now more than ever, the government should be made to enforce these laws.

Elizabeth, N.J., June 6 — On the heels of a historic victory in Oakland, Calif., where the Arab Resource and Organizing Center (AROC) sent apartheid-profiteering Zim Shipping’s ship, the Volans, back to sea without being unloaded, hundreds of protesters set up a militant picket line at the Maher Terminal’s employee entrance to encourage dockworkers not to unload the Zim Tarragona.

The action at the Maher Terminal was the first ever pro-Palestine protest held in the Port of New York/New Jersey. It was part of an International Week of Solidarity called for by AROC to “Block Zim Everywhere.”

In the days leading up to the action, organizers were met with harassment and attempts at intimidation by Port Authority police and private security personnel, when they were simply handing out flyers to the dockworkers. This was followed by attempts by police to silence and contain our action away from the gates of the terminal. New York and New Jersey community participants chose to defy the pressure from the police and security forces and marched their way to the terminal gate, facing down police in riot gear.

The #BlockTheBoat victory in Oakland, today’s New York-New Jersey mobilization, and similar mobilizations around the world, are an example of what powerful worker and international solidarity looks like. The #BlockTheBoat movement answered the call directly from Palestinian trade unions in Gaza asking workers across the world to refuse to handle Israeli goods, deal with Israeli businesses or handle Israeli cargo, in accord with the campaign for Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) for Palestinian rights. 

Zim Integrated Shipping Services Ltd. is Israel’s largest cargo shipping company, dealing in Israeli-manufactured military technology, armaments and logistics equipment, as well as consumer goods. The Zim Tarragona is one of the only remaining Zim-owned ships in the fleet. They’re required by the state of Israel to maintain it for national security purposes. It flies the apartheid Israeli flag.

This Wednesday, June 9, at 4 p.m. in Staten Island, Block the Boat will continue supporting the International Week of Solidarity with a protest outside the ZIM America offices at 1110 South Ave., Staten Island, NY 10314.

On May 26, the seriously ill political prisoner Ali Osman Köse was taken to the Thracian University Hospital in Edirne, near the border with Bulgaria and Greece. This came after months of protest actions in Turkey and Western European countries, which are part of a campaign launched by the People’s Front–Turkey to demand the revolutionary’s release.

The revolutionary, who has been in the prisons of Turkey’s fascist oligarchy for 37 years, suffers from multiple health problems, the most serious one being kidney cancer, which poses a threat to his life. In addition to the kidney, his tumor has affected the adrenal gland, the spleen, and part of the pancreas.

On the morning of May 31, Ali Osman Köse underwent surgery to remove the tumor in his kidney. At 19:30 on the same day, it was reported that the operation was successful, and there was no danger to the revolutionary’s life. One of his kidneys had been completely removed and samples of his spleen and pancreas were taken for examination for pathology. After the operation, he was transferred to the intensive care unit of the hospital.

On June 2, Ali Osman Köse was taken out of intensive care and transferred to a room in the political prisoners’ ward of the hospital. Although he had undergone an extremely serious operation, the fascist oligarchy had him handcuffed to his bed and guards kept on duty in his room around the clock.

In the afternoon of June 7 it was reported that Ali Osman Köse was taken out of the hospital to be transported to Tekirdag F-type isolation prison, even though his treatment is continuing.

According to the doctors, it took between 2 and 4 years for the tumor to spread to such an extent in Ali Osman Köse’s body. In recent months, the revolutionary was taken successively to the State Provincial Hospital in the city of Tekirdağ, the Tekirdağ City Hospital, the Namık Kemal University Hospital in the city of Tekirdağ, and the Institute of Forensic Medicine in the city of Istanbul. In none of these hospitals was it found that he suffered from cancer. If Ali Osman Köse had indeed been examined in even just one of all these hospitals, this tumor, which can be detected even just by touching the body with the hand, would have been found, and his treatment could have begun much earlier.

The medical reports according to which Ali Osman Köse may remain in prison are not based on any scientific data gathered during the examinations carried out. These reports are entirely politically motivated.

During the examination at the 3rd Specialized Department of the Forensic Medicine Institute, Ali Osman Köse stated to the doctor that he had been experiencing pain in his kidneys for many years, dating back to 1994 when he was subjected to severe torture by the political police. The doctor replied, “If you had something in your kidneys, your color would not be like this.” This doctor, as well as the doctors who signed the medical reports without even examining Ali Osman Köse, are responsible for allowing his illness to progress to this extent.

The applications filed by the lawyers of the Peoples’ Law Bureau to have Ali Osman Köse examined by independent expert doctors, to be released to undergo treatment, and to be released due to coronavirus infection, were not upheld and all were given a negative response.

The application submitted to the Constitutional Court of Turkey for Ali Osman Köse to be released to undergo treatment has not yet been answered.

The fascist state with all its institutions is responsible for allowing his illness to progress to this extent. Ali Osman Köse must be released immediately and undergo adequate treatment.

Source: New Solution