Sabemos que la Corrupción está intrínsecamente ligada al modelo neoliberal capitalista. Pero en una colonia, donde no hay salvaguardas en ninguna de las entidades del gobierno local, el efecto es devastador para la población.

Esta semana en Puerto Rico fueron arrestados dos alcaldes por el FBI, una entidad federal estadounidense. Y aunque ahora esté aparentemente combatiendo la corrupción, no nos olvidemos de que esta es la misma agencia que en el 2005 trajo a PR cientos de agentes para asesinar, dejándolo desangrar, al patriota machetero Filiberto Ojeda Ríos.

Los arrestados de esta semana se suman a 31 casos de corrupción desde el año 2020. Desde secretaria de Educación- que por cierto era una gringa – pasando por contratistas, legisladores y sus familiares, empleados del correo, agentes locales de la policía y del sistema carcelario, productores de entretenimiento, alcaldes y personas en su carácter privado.

Pero sobresale una acusación más perversa incluso, porque atañe al mismo gobernador Pedro Pierluisi y que tiene que ver con la ilegalidad de los fondos con los que financió su campaña para la gobernación. Así que no sólo ha sido el ejecutivo con menos votos, apenas una tercera parte del electorado, sino que su administración está plagada de corrupción a altos niveles donde están involucrados desarrolladores, aseguradoras, muchos contratistas, productores de cine, y hasta una tienda de la Guardia Nacional. Todos sirviéndose con la cuchara grande a través del gobernador, robándole al pueblo que sufre por la falta de empleos, jubilación digna y servicios esenciales.

Ahora nos seguir descubriendo a todos los accionistas y dueños para exponerlos públicamente para que sea el pueblo quien realmente logre juzgarlos.

¡Porque solo el pueblo salva al pueblo!

Desde Puerto Rico, para Radio Clarín de Colombia, les habló Berta Joubert-Ceci.

THURSDAY, MAY 12, 2022 AT 5:30 PM – 6:30 PM
Baltimore Press Conference & Rally on Anniversary of Dr. King’s Poor Peoples Campaign
100 N Holliday St, Baltimore

On the anniversary of Dr. Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.’s Poor People’s Campaign March

Join us for a special Press Conference & Rally to announce the Baltimore Poor People’s Campaign Unity March & Caravan from Baltimore to D.C. and the National Welfare Rights Union Conference to be held in Baltimore

Thursday, May 12, 5:30 pm to 6:30 pm
@ City Hall, 100 Holliday St

Please join us and speak out on why you will be participating and supporting.

SUNDAY, MAY 15, 2022 AT 1 PM
Nakba Day march for Palestinian resistance and return

While international news headlines remain largely focused on the war in Ukraine, little attention is given to the horrific consequences of the war which are felt in many regions around the world. Even when these repercussions are discussed, disproportionate coverage is allocated to European countries, like Germany and Austria, due to their heavy reliance on Russian energy sources.

The horrific scenario, however, awaits countries in the Global South which, unlike Germany, will not be able to eventually substitute Russian raw material from elsewhere. Countries like Tunisia, Sri Lanka and Ghana and numerous others, are facing serious food shortages in the short, medium and long term.

The World Bank is warning of a “human catastrophe” as a result of a burgeoning food crisis, itself resulting from the Russia-Ukraine war. The World Bank President, David Malpass, told the BBC that his institution estimates a “huge” jump in food prices, reaching as high as 37%, which would mean that the poorest of people would be forced to “eat less and have less money for anything else such as schooling.”

This foreboding crisis is now compounding an existing global food crisis, resulting from major disruptions in the global supply chains, as a direct outcome of the Covid-19 pandemic, as well as pre-existing problems, resulting from wars and civil unrest, corruption, economic mismanagement, social inequality and more.

Even prior to the war in Ukraine, the world was already getting hungrier. According to the United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), an estimated 811 million people in the world “faced hunger in 2020”, with a massive jump of 118 million compared to the previous year. Considering the continued deterioration of global economies, especially in the developing world, and the subsequent and unprecedented inflation worldwide, the number must have made several large jumps since the publishing of FAO’s report in July 2021, reporting on the previous year.

Indeed, inflation is now a global phenomenon. The consumer price index in the United States has increased by 8.5% from a year earlier, according to the financial media company, Bloomberg. In Europe, “inflation (reached) record 7.5%”, according to the latest data released by Eurostat. As troubling as these numbers are, western societies with relatively healthy economies and potential room for government subsidies, are more likely to weather the inflation storm, if compared to countries in Africa, South America, the Middle East and many parts of Asia.

The war in Ukraine has immediately impacted food supplies to many parts of the world. Russia and Ukraine combined contribute 30% of global wheat exports. Millions of tons of these exports find their way to food-import-dependent countries in the Global South – mainly the regions of South Asia, the Middle East, North Africa and sub-Saharan Africa. Considering that some of these regions, comprising some of the poorest countries in the world, have already been struggling under the weight of pre-existing food crises, it is safe to say that tens of millions of people already are, or are likely to go, hungry in the coming months and years.

Another factor resulting from the war is the severe US-led western sanctions on Russia. The harm of these sanctions is likely to be felt more in other countries than in Russia itself, due to the fact that the latter is largely food and energy independent.

Although the overall size of the Russian economy is comparatively smaller than that of leading global economic powers like the US and China, its contributions to the world economy make it absolutely critical. For example, Russia accounts for a quarter of the world’s natural gas exports, according to the World Bank, and 18% of coal and wheat exports, 14% of fertilizers and platinum shipments, and 11% of crude oil. Cutting off the world from such a massive wealth of natural resources while it is desperately trying to recover from the horrendous impact of the pandemic is equivalent to an act of economic self-mutilation.

Of course, some are likely to suffer more than others. While economic growth is estimated to shrink by a large margin – up to 50% in some cases – in countries that fuel regional and international growth such as Turkey, South Africa and Indonesia, the crisis is expected to be much more severe in countries that aim for mere economic subsistence, including many African countries.

An April report published by the humanitarian group, Oxfam, citing an alert issued by 11 international humanitarian organizations, warned that “West Africa is hit by its worst food crisis in a decade.” Currently, there are 27 million people going hungry in that region, a number that may rise to 38 million in June if nothing is done to stave off the crisis. According to the report, this number would represent “a new historic level”, as it would be an increase by more than a third compared to last year. Like other struggling regions, the massive food shortage is a result of the war in Ukraine, in addition to pre-existing problems, lead amongst them the pandemic and climate change.

While the thousands of sanctions imposed on Russia are yet to achieve any of their intended purpose, it is poor countries that are already feeling the burden of the war, sanctions and geopolitical tussle between great powers. As the west is busy dealing with its own economic woes, little heed is being paid to those suffering most. And as the world is forced to transition to a new global economic order, it will take years for small economies to successfully make that adjustment.

While it is important that we acknowledge the vast changes to the world’s geopolitical map, let us not forget that millions of people are going hungry, paying the price for a global conflict of which they are not part.

Ramzy Baroud is a journalist and the Editor of The Palestine Chronicle. He is the author of six books. His latest book, co-edited with Ilan Pappé, is “Our Vision for Liberation: Engaged Palestinian Leaders and Intellectuals Speak out”. Dr. Baroud is a Non-resident Senior Research Fellow at the Center for Islam and Global Affairs (CIGA). His website is www.ramzybaroud.net

Source: The Palestine Chronicle

Lugansk, May 5 – The United States spent the money allocated to fight COVID-19 to support neo-nazis in Ukraine, said John Parker, coordinator of the Harriet Tubman Center for Social Justice and one of the leaders of the U.S. Socialist Unity Party, during a meeting with the Chairman of the Government of the Lugansk People’s Republic Sergey Kozlov.

“Now we can clearly see what the U.S. government is doing in Ukraine and Donbass. The money that was intended to fight the pandemic, which is about $16 billion, they spent on supporting neo-nazis who are killing children,” he said.

The political leader noted that many Americans do not know that the United States is promoting the ideas of fascism in Ukraine.

Earlier, the Chairman of the Government of the LPR presented Parker with an honorary badge “For Good Deeds.”

Source: Lugansk Information Center

Presentation on behalf of the Socialist Unity Party and Women In Struggle at VII International Seminar for Peace and the Abolition of Foreign Military Bases in Guantanamo, Cuba, May 4.

Since the last international seminar in 2019, Cuba has achieved much – the implementation of a vaccination program that benefited not only the Cuban population, but those most in need of vaccines and health care around the world, by sending doctors and medicine abroad. 

In spite of a coup supported by the U.S. in 2009, and the subsequent support of dictators loyal to the U.S. government, the Honduran people were able to overcome the violence and terrorism and courageously build a movement capable of electing a socialist and anti-imperialist woman, Xiomara Castro. After becoming president, Castro immediately canceled the electric bills for 1 million people suffering from poverty created by the corruption of the former president. 

Other targets of U.S. imperialism like Bolivia and Venezuela have successfully maintained their sovereignty in spite of the illegal and devastating sanctions by the U.S. and its complicit imperialist allies in Europe, Canada, Australia and Israel.

Now, what have the U.S. rulers done in that time? Well, they continue to flounder in their attempts at containing the coronavirus due to their dependence on the market, rather than a more democratic and centralized approach in line with the international community. They contributed too little too late to combating the unequal access to vaccines suffered by developing countries, especially on the continent of Africa. 

The U.S. government is now aggravating the crisis by taking vital resources needed to combat a further spread of the virus for the purpose of sending $33 billion more to fund a proxy war in Ukraine, including arming Nazi military regiments there, and extending NATO’S hunger for oil profits and regime change – targeting Russia and China.

Regime change in Ukraine

Starting in 2004, the U.S. spent over $22.4 billion for regime change in Ukraine. Washington orchestrated and funded a coup in 2014 with billions of dollars in weapons, training and public relations from the National Endowment for Democracy. Much of that funding and training went to self-proclaimed fascist and white supremacist organizations, some of whom carry the symbols of Nazis they admire. They even celebrate the collaboration of those in Ukraine who supported Nazi genocide against Jewish people in World War II. 

As Obama sold out the people of Africa with the further implementation of AFRICOM, so has Ukrainian President Zelensky with his collaboration and promotion of Nazism – as when he recently introduced a member of the Azov Battalion to the Greek Parliament, and appointed self-proclaimed Nazis to political office, like the current governor of Odessa.

These are the same forces that have murdered and terrorised the people of Lugansk and Donetsk in the Donbass region for eight years, causing the deaths of 14,000 people. It was the Azov Battalion and similar forces, now an official part of the Ukrainian military, that were primarily responsible for those deaths and the increased genocide. It was only curbed when the Donbass people’s request for assistance to stop the humanitarian crisis was met by Russian military intervention. 

We believe that the people of Lugansk and Donetsk, who are rarely mentioned, even by so-called anti-imperialists in the anti-war movement, had every right to ask for assistance to save the lives of their children. And we believe that the greatest threat to humanity today is the continued expansion of NATO, willing to use nuclear weapons and other weapons of mass destruction, as the U.S. did when it bombed Hiroshima and Nagasaki, killing 80,000 civilians in seconds, then tens of thousands more slowly and painfully. 

We believe that Russia has every right to defend itself in not allowing another NATO member state on its borders, especially one with a military led by Nazi regiments that could be put in possession of nuclear arms.

We hear much in the Pentagon’s propaganda machine – the Western corporate media – about the targeting of civilians by Russia. Much of this has been proven false, and even contradicted by Pentagon advisers. The media’s faith in the U.S. State Department information comes in spite of the knowledge that contradictory news is being suppressed in Ukraine. Three television stations were closed for not reporting coverage favorable to the Ukrainian government. 

Western media help fascists

Much information came out in Ukraine exposing the Azov Battalion when it took over hospitals, schools and apartment buildings in Mariupol. The U.S. media continued the narrative of attacks on civilian buildings and not Azov outposts. Doctored and mislabeled videos and photos were prevalent during the beginning of the Russian intervention, even showing Israeli bombings and Palestinian resistance as “evidence” of Russian brutality and Ukrainian resistance. 

This follows a long history of U.S. corporate media misinformation to push war – from the sinking of the Lusitania to the Gulf of Tonkin incident to “weapons of mass destruction.” The corporate media were also willing accomplices in the destruction of Libya and Syria, using blatant lies and unchecked information from the U.S. State Department.

The bombing by Nazi-led forces of the center of the city of Donetsk, killing over 20 civilians waiting at an ATM machine, was verified by various organizations in Donetsk, media outlets and independent journalists in the Donbass region. But you never saw that report because the TV reporters and news publications in Ukraine that report those types of stories have been closed down. Those who would have protested and reported this missile attack on civilians in Donetsk, like Alexander Matyushenko from the Levitsa association in Dnipropetrovsk (Dnipro), or the 37 journalists detained in early March, have been jailed. 

In Kiev, arrests began even earlier. On Feb. 27, brothers Mikhail Kononovich and Aleksandr Kononovich, leaders of the Ukrainian Communist Youth, members of the World Federation of Democratic Youth and ethnic Belarusians, were seized and imprisoned along with members of other organizations. 

As I speak, one of our Socialist Unity Party members is traveling in Russia and Donbass, gathering more information on the real situation.

NATO expansion, NATO wars

Since 1990, when the Soviet Union unilaterally disbanded the Warsaw Pact military alliance, NATO has expanded from 17 to 30 member states. In 1999, U.S.-led NATO began raining bombs on the people of Yugoslavia, bombing 10,000 homes and killing thousands of people, including three journalists at the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade. 

Despite the end of the alleged threat from the Warsaw Pact, the belligerence continued with the unfathomable killing of 500,000 children in Iraq by the U.S. But this is just the tip of the iceberg of victims of U.S. and NATO wars, including the millions killed in Vietnam, Korea, Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, Libya, Syria and Yemen. Now slavery exists in Libya, because of the war waged by the Obama administration and NATO – a reality that undoubtedly is destroying the lives of children. 

In Yemen, U.S. assistance to the war led by Saudi Arabia is causing the starvation of millions of children, according to United Nations estimates. Like Trump and Obama, the Biden administration continues the endless wars abroad and the racist wars by police and ICE against people in the U.S., including immigrants, already victimized by U.S. economic wars against their countries, targeted by drones and Border Patrol on the U.S. borders.

The latest U.S.-NATO proxy war, with the corporate media acting as its propaganda arm, carries the danger of igniting World War III, and will do nothing but exacerbate the domestic and international crises of global warming, critical lack of health care, food insecurity and starvation – crises most affecting children.

Capitalism an open wound

Capitalism in the U.S. is exposed like an open wound. Its proclivity towards war is unacceptable, and today we face an unprecedented challenge to stop a possible world war. 

We understand that the crisis of capitalism forces imperialist countries to desperately further siphon the surplus value created by working people and either steal or destroy the productive capacity of lesser capitalist powers like Russia. Russia’s GDP is smaller than that of South Korea, with an almost neocolonial economy dependent on the exchange of raw materials – not the export of capital – to survive. 

That’s an important distinction. It explains why Nicaragua, Venezuela, Cuba, Iran, Syria, Zimbabwe and other targets of U.S. imperialism would suffer most if the U.S.-led NATO forces are successful in this war – not to mention the threat of another NATO member state on the border of Russia, this time potentially with nuclear weapons controlled by a Nazi-led military.

Our historic mission right now is to expose how U.S. imperialism’s escalation of its proxy war in Ukraine exacerbates the crisis of workers and oppressed communities at home and worldwide.

We must highlight the fact that the U.S.-NATO proxy war in Ukraine is an extension of the war against us, so that our working class can understand the source and solution to their problem, and begin dismantling the most dangerous threat to humanity today – U.S. imperialism.

Un borrador de opinión filtrado describe los planes para que la mayoría de la Corte Suprema anule la histórica decisión Roe vs Wade del 1973 que garantizaba las protecciones constitucionales federales del derecho al aborto y la decisión Planned Parenthood vs Casey de 1992 que mantuvo estos derechos. Aquí hay un enlace al proyecto de opinión de la mayoría.

Mujeres en Lucha / Women in Struggle y el Partido de Socialismo Unido / Socialist Unity Party afirman que es hora de tomar las calles y resistir la inminente y profundamente reaccionaria decisión de la Corte Suprema que allana el camino para una oleada de ataques de la extrema derecha, incluidos los elementos neofascistas responsables del golpe fallido del 6 de enero de 2021.

Revertir Roe vs Wade busca hacer retroceder el reloj a la época en que las mujeres, especialmente las mujeres negras, latinas y pobres, se vieron obligadas a buscar abortos clandestinos.

Esta decisión es un ataque a los derechos de todos los géneros, incluidas las personas transgénero y el movimiento LGBTQ2S. Si se afirma, los argumentos en los que se basa el proyecto de opinión también socavarían muchos otros derechos a la intimidad ganados con tanto esfuerzo, incluido el matrimonio entre personas del mismo sexo, y se utilizarían para promover el ataque continuo contra las personas trans.

Este ataque también está profundamente relacionado con los ataques de la supremacía blanca contra el derecho al voto de las personas negras y latinas y los intentos de impedir que los trabajadores se sindicalicen.

En el análisis final, la derogación de los derechos reproductivos recaerá de manera desproporcionada sobre las mujeres de color y las mujeres pobres, así como sobre los hombres trans, las personas no binarias y de género no conforme que también necesitan el derecho al aborto. También afectará a las personas transgénero y LGBTQ2S al reducir su acceso a la atención médica. Las muy ricas siempre han encontrado una manera de acceder a abortos y a otros cuidados.

Los principales políticos demócratas y republicanos no han hecho casi nada para detener a la derecha y defender los derechos de las mujeres. Claramente, el ataque ha estado ocurriendo durante años; sin embargo, la Casa Blanca de Biden, con una mayoría demócrata en el Congreso, no hizo nada para prepararse.

En un abrir y cerrar de ojos, Biden y el Congreso se están preparando para entregar otros $33 mil millones de dólares para intensificar la guerra subsidiaria de EUA/OTAN contra Rusia y el Donbass. Pero siguen siendo incapaces de detener la tormenta que amenaza a millones de mujeres, personas de género oprimido y la clase trabajadora en general.

Lo que se necesita para detener esta tormenta es una movilización masiva en las calles, independiente de los partidos capitalistas. Esta movilización debe afectar el poder real detrás de la amenaza de la derecha: los grandes bancos y los patronos capitalistas.

Proponemos hacer una huelga de un día, faltar al trabajo por enfermedad, salirse del lugar de trabajo y hacer una sentada que sería costoso para quienes están en el poder. Nuestro poder como trabajadoras y trabajadores, como estudiantes y como miembros de la comunidad, puede trascender la Corte Suprema reaccionaria y las políticas lucrativas, antimujer, antitrans, antipueblo y antiobreras.

Cuando los negocios como de costumbre se detengan, ¡tendrán que revertir su plan!

The U.S. Supreme Court wants to abolish reproductive rights and return to the days of coat hangers. Elon Musk―the world’s richest man―wants to turn back the clock for all poor and working people.

The 12,000 employees at Musk’s Tesla plant in Fremont, California, work 12-hour days in a racist, sexist, homophobic and transphobic hellhole. Black workers refer to it as the “plantation.”

They’re called “monkeys” by supervisors. Foremen sexually harass women workers. Those that complain often get fired. 

Musk advised workers who were discriminated against to “be thick-skinned and accept [an] apology.” Black employees were often assigned to the worst part of the factory. 

Tesla’s management allows graffiti including swastikas, the n-word and “KKK” to remain on walls for days. You can be sure that if any worker wrote “union” on a wall, it would be immediately taken down. 

The Fremont plant was a former GM-Toyota joint venture that closed in 2004. The workers were represented by the United Auto Workers.

Elon Musk hates unions and uses dirty tricks to keep the UAW out.

The National Labor Relations Board cited Musk for threatening workers with the loss of their benefits if they voted for a union.

Racist workers are allowed to flaunt their confederate flag tattoos. This is what Musk means when he says he wants to restore “free speech” to Twitter.

Rocket boy Elon took over the social media platform with $44 billion in largely borrowed money. Larry Ellison, the Trump-loving former CEO of Oracle software, kicked in a billion. 

Boston-based Fidelity Investments provided $316 million. This may not seem much compared to its $4.5 trillion in assets under management, but it’s politically significant. 

Fidelity is 49% owned by Abigail Johnson and her family, all of whom are Mayflower descendants. It shows that New England’s “old money” is just as bigoted as newer capitalists in Trump’s circle.

Why not? Johnson’s ancestors―the Pilgrims―conducted genocidal wars against the Wampanoags and other Indigenous nations to steal their land.

Elon Musk’s Boer ancestors stole African land. The Bantustans in apartheid South Africa were modeled on Indian reservations in the United States.

‘We can coup whoever we want!’

Last year, Time magazine named Elon Musk as its “man of the year.” In 1938 Time gave the award to Adolf Hitler. He sent union supporters to concentration camps. 

Musk hasn’t been able to do that yet. In the meantime, he supports the neo-Nazis in Ukraine fighting against the people of Donbass and their Russian allies.

Musk was thrilled with the 2019 coup in Bolivia that overthrew a democratic, Indigenous-led government. He tweeted, “We will coup whoever we want! Deal with it.”

The Bolivarian people dealt with the coup plotters a year later when they restored the Movement Toward Socialism government. Not incidentally, the Plurinational State of Bolivia has some of the largest reserves of lithium in the world, which is vital for the batteries in Musk’s electric cars. 

Virtually all the capitalist media fawns over Musk, who has been anointed a humanitarian for providing satellite services to the Kiev regime. 

According to commentator Yasha Levin, most of this was actually subsidized by the U.S. government. Musk is a big military contractor, with the Pentagon being a sugar daddy for Musk’s Space-X rocket company.

Musk’s biological daddy is a millionaire who owned an African emerald mine. He made his fortune because of the apartheid system that enslaved Black people.

Bringing back 12-hour work day

Two hundred years ago British textile employees worked 12-hour days. Elon Musk wants to make that the working standard today.

It took the labor movement over 50 years to win an eight-hour work day and a two-day weekend for most U.S. workers. The Haymarket martyrs ― labor leaders George Engel, Adolph Fischer, Albert Parsons and August Spies ― were hanged in 1887 for demanding an eight-hour work day.

It was to abolish an 84-hour work week that 365,000 steel workers went on strike in 1919. Employees at the now-closed Sparrows Point steel mill outside Baltimore worked 12 hours every day except July 4th and Christmas.

Strikers, led by future communist leader William Z. Foster, shut down most of the steel industry. The entire capitalist class and its newspapers united to smash the strike. Today, almost all of the corporate media want you to support a war against Russia.

Cops beat up strikers while U.S. Army troops were sent to Gary, Indiana, to defeat the strike. After months of these assaults the strike was called-off in January 1920.

Yet this struggle was not in vain. Hatred towards the 12-hour work day deepened. By 1923, U.S. Steel―then the world’s largest corporation―threw in the towel and instituted an eight-hour work day. (“Steelworkers in America, the Nonunion Era,” by David Brody.)

Almost a century later, Elon Musk sends rockets into outer space and wants to go to Mars. Meanwhile, this pig with his $200 billion stash makes 12,000 Tesla employees in Fremont work a 72-hour week.

That’s six days of 12-hour days. Tesla workers often work weeks straight without a day off.

These horrible conditions libel the memory of the Serbian electrical genius Nikola Tesla. He had at one time been a member of the Socialist Labor Party in the United States.

These conditions will also impel Tesla workers to struggle. Henry Ford was forced to sign a union contract. So will Elon Musk.

Statement from the John Parker for U.S. Senate Campaign

The history of labor in the U.S. is similar to the history of labor in South Korea in terms of how the capitalist ruling class always attempts to undermine the effective organization of workers. And they have two similar strategies: one is to deny any labor rights or rights to organize unions, and the other is to create phony unions and union leaders picked by the ruling class to weaken organized labor.

In both cases, eventually the rank-and-file workers are successful in making their demands – the demands of organized labor, the unemployed and poor, and even non-unionized workers – heard.

The history of the South Korean and U.S. labor movement is one of workers combating the sabotage of capitalist governments whose definition of economic success is contingent upon taking increasingly more from the workers, through longer work hours, wage cuts, austerity taking our social services, and especially now – global inflation that acts as a wage cut, exacerbated by the U.S.-led NATO proxy war in Ukraine threatening World War III.

As workers in the U.S. fight to make their unions fight, the Korean Confederation of Trade Unions (KCTU), which emerged as the answer to phony unions; which pushed greater unity amongst all workers – no matter their industry; and which bridged the international connections with workers abroad, remains a powerful example that cannot be stopped.

The answer to attacks on our unions and workers is to fight even harder and make our unions fight harder. The answer to the offshoring of jobs and decentralization and greater privatization is to build greater unity amongst all workers and build international solidarity.

And, like in the U.S., the pandemic has been bad for South Korean workers, but very good for private companies that employ them. Delivery workers in S. Korea – working 84 hours a week and dying as a result – see their employers making an 11% increase in profit due to the pandemic.

We face similar conditions, and although our labor organization pales in comparison to that of the militancy of the South Korean workers, we are learning and changing and our most oppressed workers are rising up in the Amazon shops from Alabama to New York, where the first Amazon union was established.

But there is also a weight around all of us, which holds us back. That is the shared condition of privatized production. The change to our conditions is limited as long as we do not control our workplaces, factories and other forces of production. We must be the ones making the decisions of what gets produced, how it gets produced, and most importantly, how the wealth we create as workers is shared equitably in society. 

So as we fight to build strength through international solidarity, let’s keep our eyes on the prize:  a society where working and poor people decide the issues of economics, health care, wages and the elimination of war and poverty.