Saturday, October 1 – 10:00 a.m. to 1:00 p.m.
Gather at Grand Park, march to Pershing Sq.
Friends, please come out and support on October 1st, DTLA, 10am-1pm. Marching from Grand Park to Pershing Square. Speakers, spoken words, music at both ends!
#TransRightsAreHumanRights #HealthcareforAll #M4A #UniversalHealthcareNow
Trans Radical Activist Network
On behalf of the Delegation of Puerto Rico
Press statement
Within the framework of the XXVI Seminar of Political Parties and a New Society, held in Mexico City from September 22 to 24, 2022, seventy-three organizations from the 30 countries present, unanimously expressed their solidarity with the People of Puerto Rico. They also accused both the Puerto Rican colonial administration and the United States government for causing the material conditions that have made a Category 1 hurricane like Fiona cause so many tragedies to the people, a large part of which is without electricity or water. More than 13 people have perished, thousands are at risk, houses have been lost, structures have collapsed, and floods have caused countless tragedies.
The government of Puerto Rico has negligently failed to fulfill its responsibility in maintaining in good condition the infrastructure of our archipelago, thus propelling reservoirs and rivers to easily exceed their limits and endanger the structures and lives of surrounding residents.
It is shameful that in the twenty-first century, the United States possesses Puerto Rico as a colony and imposes a Fiscal Oversight Board (JSF) on it since 2016, under a “PROMESA Law” that has cruelly been an instrument used for the destruction and impoverishment of the people, taking away the resources of its vital essential services and transferring them to vulture bondholders in a process of collecting an illegitimate debt.
That Fiscal Control Board and the colonial government of Puerto Rico have imposed privatizations that have plunged the people into conditions of great suffering, especially the privatization of energy under the recently created US-Canadian company Luma Energy. The government promoted this company as a world-renowned, experienced company that would improve the country’s energy system and reduce rates.
But the reality is that since Luma assumed control of the country’s energy system in June 2021, the Puerto Rican people have experienced 7 major outages, substation explosions, and service instability causing many losses of domestic and industrial equipment, almost all caused by a lack of proper maintenance of the electrical agency facilities. In addition, they have increased the rate 7 times. And as a punishment to the People and their working class, the experienced labor force of the state energy agency was displaced, replacing it with workers without the required experience, many of them brought from the United States, paying them almost triple the salary that the displaced workers earned.
The cruel inefficiency of Luma and its defense by the colonial government has aggravated the current situation where even hospitals and care centers are without power, putting thousands of lives at risk. Faced with this calamity, the displaced workers of the Electrical Industry and Irrigation Workers’ Union and other national energy unions ask the government for an Executive Order to employ these experienced public servants and thus speed up the energy reconstitution process; however, Governor Pedro Pierluisi rejects this offer that would save Puerto Rican lives and instead prefers to endorse the hiring of foreign workers brought to Puerto Rico under onerous multimillion-dollar contracts paid by the people.
The eyes of the world are now on Puerto Rico and this terrible situation will be made known as widely as possible. The organizations participating in the XXVI Seminar urge the governments of Puerto Rico and the United States to take action to stop the enormous suffering of the Puerto Rican people.
Mexico City, September 24, 2022
September 26, 2022, from Havana
Cuba dawned today with great expectation for the long-awaited news: The Family Code will be law after the majority of Cubans supported the document during the popular Referendum held on Sunday.
Early this morning, the president of the National Electoral Council (CEN), Alina Balseiro Gutiérrez, announced in a live broadcast that the preliminary results of the vote count have affirmed that the Code will be law.
The count at this point has determined that 3,936,790 of the 6,251,786 Cubans who went to the polls voted Yes for the document (66.87 percent). With most of the ballots counted, the electoral authority assured that 1,950,090 people voted NO, (33.13 percent).
“Although some constituencies in three provinces are still counting, the CEN certifies these results as valid and irreversible,” the president of the CEN said and congratulated the people for their participation in the legislative process and for the discipline and civility demonstrated during the Referendum.
“The official results will be released later today, but it can already be confirmed that the Family Code has been ratified,” she stressed.
The results are a reflection of Cuba’s need to have a new Code of Families, one that portrays the country we are and the one we want to be, that complements the humanist essences of the Constitution, and that leads us towards a fairer and more inclusive country.
The results are not a surprise. The document was submitted to a popular consultation at the beginning of 2022 and was built on the basis of almost individual experiences and needs of Cubans. Each one was a legislator with input, and expectations grew along with the document, which advocates affection and love.
However, since the Code began to be designed some conservative sectors of the country tried to incite the ‘No’ because some of the rights it extends -such as the possibility that two people of the same sex can marry or adopt children – goes against their religious beliefs.
“There are people who, by faith or creed, have not understood that the Code doesn’t deny the type of family they defend, but rather gives guarantees for other types of families,” the Cuban president said after casting his vote on Sunday.
At the same time, there were toxic campaigns on social networks and in the extreme right-wing media sponsored from U.S. Florida to incite Cubans to say No, under the argument that “supporting the bill means supporting the government.”
It is a new strategy to demonize and discredit the Cuban Revolution. “If the Code said the complete opposite of what this one says, those haters would also be criticizing it,” Diaz-Canel clarified.
“It is not a problem of convictions, reasoning, or feelings; there are people who adopt that position because they consider that if it is a Code within the Revolution, then it should not be approved,” he added.
But Cuba, with our love, and the heterogeneity of our society won. September 25, 2022, is already a historic day. Cuba proved once again that building a revolution means never stopping to search for more justice, in spite of adversities.
Source: Resumen Latinoamericano -US
Get PDF here
On Sept. 25 car and bike caravans in many U.S. cities are rightly demanding that Cuba be taken off the U.S. State Department’s “State Sponsors of Terrorism” list.
Didn’t know there was such a thing?
Every presidential administration appoints a secretary of state. Now it is Antony Blinken; before him was Mike Pompeo, and under Obama it was John Kerry and Hillary Clinton. And the president, through the secretary of state, can put countries on this list or take them off. It is arbitrary.
As a parting slam against Cuba, on Jan. 12, 2021, just eight days before Joe Biden assumed the presidency, the Trump administration condemned Cuba once again. And Biden has let it stand, although he can waive provisions or decide to remove Cuba from the list altogether.
There are automatic consequences, not only for the country put on the “naughty” list, but other countries, businesses and even individuals. The State Department website says sanctions “include restrictions on U.S. foreign assistance; a ban on defense exports and sales; certain controls over exports of dual-use items; and miscellaneous financial and other restrictions.”
Okay, the U.S. won’t give foreign aid or sell weapons or export “dual use” items – like how Washington blocked chlorine to purify water in Iraq when that country was on “the list,” or how it designated Pastors for Peace/U.S.-Cuba Friendshipment school buses and toasters as possible “dual use” items!
But let’s look at “miscellaneous and other restrictions.” Additional “sanctions laws that penalize persons and countries engaging in certain trade with state sponsors” are activated.
If a relatively small country like Cuba wants to buy ventilators or other medical equipment, raw materials for their life-saving vaccines, or anything on the international market, who will trade with it when threatened by the U.S.?
There are plenty of examples of mega-fines levied by the U.S. against major foreign banks, corporations like Honda and even Airbnb. Is it worth the risk of irritating Uncle Sam to trade with a small market of 11 million people?
There is no knowing what else is activated, just by putting a country on “the list,” until you run afoul of it. If a vacationer from England enjoys a vacation at Varadero, snorkeled, or enjoyed a bird-watching or cigar aficionado trip – perfectly legal in their country, unlike the U.S. – they are surprised if they decide to visit the U.S.
The U.S. excludes these individuals from using the visa waiver program simply because they enjoyed a Cuban beach. They may not get an appointment for a visa interview for months.
Even U.S. states have automatic laws prohibiting sales to countries on “the list.”
Who is the real terrorist?
What gives the United States the authority to call anyone a terrorist?
Cuba was again voted to be part of the United Nations Human Rights Commission. A Cuban woman got the highest number of votes for the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW). On Nov. 2 and 3 the U.N. General Assembly will again call on the United States to end its one-sided war against Cuba – as it has for 30 years.
Pro-blockade politicians try to use the scary word “terrorism” to stop people from looking for the facts. Is it really terrorism to help end racist South African apartheid? At a time when police and their agents were assassinating Black leaders like Fred Hampton, Mark Clark, Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr. was it wrong to give refuge to Assata Shakur? Was it wrong to host peace talks to end the civil war in Colombia? These are some of the excuses that are given to divert from the real reasons.
Cuba gained independence and sovereignty through a revolution. Cuba prioritizes human needs and development, not exploiting workers to make a handful of billionaires rich. It has no landlords or predatory bankers. Instead of restricting rights, Cuba expands rights, consultation and participation.
Compare Cuba’s new Families Code referendum on Sept. 25 with the U.S. Supreme Court’s reversal of Roe v. Wade, denying bodily autonomy – the most basic of human rights.
“Will the real terrorist please stand up?” The title of this documentary made by Saul Landau as the world fought to free the Cuban 5 from U.S. prisons seemed irrelevant on Dec. 17, 2014, when the U.S. decided to switch Cuba strategies — Gerardo Hernandez, Ramon Labanino and Antonio Guerrero, the last three Cuban heroes, flew home, free from U.S. penitentiaries.
But after Jan. 12, 2021, the history of U.S.-sponsored terrorism against Cuba and its friends became important to review.
It is important to note that Cuba has never attacked or threatened the United States. Never planted bombs in hotels, shot bazookas at the United Nations or assassinated diplomats in the streets of New York or Washington, D.C., never spread biological toxins or attempted to assassinate political leaders. In fact, it was information from Cuban intelligence in October 1984 that prevented the assassination of President Ronald Reagan in North Carolina.
All of the actions described above were, however, carried out by the U.S. and its agents against Cuba.
The Oct. 6 anniversary of the first midair bombing of a commercial airliner will be recognized in Barbados with a renovated memorial to Cubana Flight 455 and the 73 people who died. Luis Posada Carilles, who died a free man in the U.S., organized and paid for this mass murder.
At the same time, communities across the U.S. are asking for better relations with Cuba. Most recently, the City Council of Willimantic, Connecticut, called for the U.S. to end the blockade in a 7-2 vote.
It is likely that ratio could be applied to the entire U.S., where resolutions representing more than 41 million residents have been passed in labor unions and city councils, state legislatures, school boards and county commissions.
A small but important first step toward justice is for President Biden to remove Cuba from this scurrilous and self-serving list. Do it now!
As we support the heroic Puentes de Amor monthly caravans through the streets of Miami by creating support actions in our local communities on the last weekend of each month, let’s raise the demand to #Delist along with #UnblockCuba.
All out for Cuba on the weekend before the vote at the United Nations, Oct. 29-30!
Talk given at Burning Books in Buffalo, New York, on Sept. 17, during the Eyewitness Donbass and Russia national speaking tour.
We have to first address the most recent accusations against Russia regarding alleged mass graves since the ruling class is flooding the airwaves with this.
In the first place, I’d like to ask – who is the source of that information? Well, according to Reuters, which tries a little harder to show a semblance of objectivity, the source is solely the police. So the sources are the police and Ukrainian President Zelensky repeating this accusation.
Since 2014, however, the police and official sections of the military in Ukraine are led by open supporters of the World War II Nazi German occupation and celebrate the symbols of Nazi Germany.
Second – the Euromaidan Press, one of the very few media outlets still allowed to operate in Ukraine, is widely circulating this story on social media. It also ran stories pushing allegations of rape by Russian soldiers, “confirmed” by former Ukrainian Ombudsman Lyudmyla Denisova, who claimed that 25 teenage girls were kept in a basement in Bucha and gang-raped; nine of them were said to be pregnant.
After evidence showed those claims were completely false, these accusations called into question the legitimacy of other Ukrainian government claims. The Ukrainian parliament promptly fired Denisova.
However, these stories had already gotten a very wide circulation. The same exact stories are still being circulated. Now, has Zelensky ever set the record straight on those lies as they continue today?
Third – has the U.S. corporate media been caught passing on outrageous lies that push U.S. imperialist war? Remember the crying and sad 15-year-old girl from Kuwait testifying before a very sympathetic and angered legislative body in Washington about babies being thrown from incubators by Iraqi soldiers, verified by corporate media? It was beamed around the world to build support for the first Iraq War.
Or how about the weapons of mass destruction and chemical weapons stories passed on as verified truth, but weren’t? At least 500,000 Iraqi children died of U.S. sanctions as a result of those tales, which all turned out to be unverified lies by the Pentagon and the Kuwaiti monarchy.
U.S. fueled Ukrainian civil war
Enough of that. I want to talk about playgrounds.
Playgrounds are wonderful. I saw the joy when my child was between ages 3 and 8 playing on the playground. Here we have the science of physics and engineering used for the sole purpose of creating see-saws and swings designed to hold a child’s weight, manufacturing squeals of joy from children, not bombs.
But children can’t live on playgrounds alone. They need nourishment. Speaking of that, isn’t it incredible that there was a shortage of infant formula in the richest country in the world? But there was plenty of money for weapons for Ukraine.
In fact, Secretary of State Anthony Blinken last week brought another $2.8 billion to Kiev. And this is just the tip of the iceberg. Some $70 billion has now been pledged for the war just this year. It’s the largest single transfer of arms in U.S. history.
See, the war didn’t start with the Russian intervention on Feb. 24. The U.S. began this war against Russia in 2002, and in a more concerted effort in 2004 with NGOs like the National Endowment for Democracy fomenting civil war in neighboring Ukraine.
Do you remember Blackwater, the corporation that provides mercenaries to the U.S. military? They are the folks who shot at Black people trying to escape the floods in New Orleans during Hurricane Katrina.
Well, U.S. military advisers and Blackwater (now called Academi) trained fascist forces in Ukraine, with Washington sending them weapons for the coup in 2014 against a democratically elected Ukrainian government.
Up to this year, they spent $22 billion in that effort.
This war for oil profits and to increase threats against Russia and China includes the desire to further expand NATO, the most belligerent, violent, and aggressive military alliance in the history of the world. When Martin Luther King Jr. said “the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today – my own government,” he would have surely included the U.S.-led NATO.
After the Warsaw Pact was dissolved, NATO was free to bomb Yugoslavia’s passenger trains, demolish homes and kill Chinese journalists, then go on to the wars of Iraq, Syria, Libya, and Afghanistan. In fact, the number of NATO countries doubled in 20 years and encircled Russia like a noose. And when Ukraine, following orders from the U.S., called for its inclusion in NATO, with weapons that would be controlled by Nazi forces like the Azov Battalion, Aidar Battalion, Right Sector, and others – this presented an existential threat to Russia.
When 150,000 Ukrainian troops were lined up at the border of the Donbass region earlier this year, after increasing their bombings from 70 per day to 1,400 between Feb. 15 and Feb. 22, the people of the now independent republics of Lugansk and Donetsk formally requested protection from the Russian government to stop a humanitarian crisis caused by the Ukrainian military. The Russian military had a responsibility to stop a genocidal nightmare pushed by the U.S.
U.S. media cover-up
Why hasn’t all of this been reported by the corporate media?
When the U.S. targets a country for war, the media lose their pretense of objectivity and become an arm of the Pentagon. They report without verification any stories that fit the narrative vilifying the people and leadership of the targeted country.
Ukraine has purged itself of any public opposing views against this U.S. proxy war against Russia. Journalists not willing to play along have either been jailed or killed and media outlets are closed for simply reporting the truth.
There are two major manufacturers of U.S. propaganda in Ukraine, established with money from NGOs like the National Endowment for Democracy, the European Endowment for Democracy, and other U.S. intelligence and NATO funders. They are the Kiev Independent and the Euromaidan Press.
The Kiev Independent has a cozy relationship with the Azov Battalion, one of those fascist organizations that got money and weapons in 2014. Azov is now an official part of the Ukrainian military, and along with other fascist and white supremacist groups including Aidar, Right Sector, and Svoboda, they especially target the Donbass region.
Azov sends out videos and reports of “verified” atrocities by the Russian military and the Kiev Independent funnels these stories and videos to Western media, while also disseminating them through social media.
The Euromaidan Press had an interesting and heart-wrenching story about an older couple who were simply trying to get humanitarian aid to a shelter established by the Ukrainian military to protect people in Rubizhne, a city in the Lugansk region, from the Russian military which, they said, were targeting civilians.
What is so interesting about this story is that the alleged account they wrote about happened a few weeks before I visited Rubizhne.
Euromaidan Press’ story becomes more dramatic when it is revealed that this well-meaning couple met up with bullets from a Russian checkpoint. The woman, they wrote, was instantly killed, but the man lasted just long enough to call his son and speak to him for the last time before the last beat of his heart.
The reality of Rubizhne
Heart-wrenching, isn’t it? However, the fact is that the shelter in Rubizhne, which I visited and at one point held 350 people, was filled with people who were escaping the bombings of their homes, not by Russian tanks, but by Ukrainian tanks – according to them. And, the Russian military was not in control of the area when this story allegedly happened – the Ukrainians were.
Larissa, the manager of the shelter in Rubizhne, was brought to tears when she told me what had happened weeks before we arrived. She said the people in the shelter, including her daughter, were under threat of starvation, with no food or water or fuel to run the well, nor the ability to go out and get these things, due to the heavy fighting going on while this area was under Ukrainian control.
She said that even under those conditions, Russian military personnel made the choice to risk their lives to bring water, food, and vital supplies to the shelter. If not for that humanitarian aid, they may not have survived.
As we traveled further west in the Lugansk region, we ran across a tuberculosis hospital that had been retrofitted by the Ukrainian military to make war against civilians and used in violation of the 2015 Minsk II agreements.
That facility was full of artillery – 122mm shells that penetrate tanks and aircraft. The walls had been redecorated with symbols of Nazi Germany and the emblem of the Azov Battalion – the same one used by the 18-year-old white supremacist who massacred Black shoppers at the Tops grocery on Jefferson Avenue here in Buffalo.
We then traveled to Krymske, which in 2015 was occupied by the Ukrainian military. They violated the ceasefire treaty by using this location and bunkers just east of it for the sole purpose of bombing civilians and the Lugansk Peoples Militia in the neighboring town of Solkinyki.
Ukraine’s assault on these areas began in 2014 when the people of the Donbass region decided not to go along with the backsliding of history created by the U.S.-sponsored coup: a new anti-Russian government of puppets to U.S. interests and fascists who glorified World War II German Nazis and their collaborators in Ukraine.
So, with a vote of over 89%, the people of the Donbass region voted to have two independent republics – the Lugansk People’s Republic in the north of Donbass and the Donetsk People’s Republic in the south.
However, instead of honoring the democratic wishes of the people of Donbass, the new coup government in Kiev began massacring civilians in this region with tanks, resulting in the occupation of Krymske by the Ukrainian military, until late February 2022 when the combined forces of the Lugansk People’s Militia and the Russian military forced them out.
The first impression you get when entering the town of Krymske is how normal-looking the homes and buildings are, unlike in Solkyniki, where the homes look more akin to Swiss cheese and the administrative buildings are more rubble than structure.
This is due to the constant bombing of Solkyniki by the Ukrainian forces from 2014 until February 2022. By 2017, in fact, the civilian population there had to flee for their lives.
In Krymske, however, although they did not have to fear being bombed by the forces of the Lugansk People’s Militia, the horror this population faced was the occupation of a military led by Nazis.
U.S., Ukraine and white supremacy
Before coming here today, we visited the Tops supermarket on Jefferson Avenue. What was once abstract in our heads became very real when we saw the pictures of those who had died at the corner memorial there.
This community understands the ugly danger of white supremacy all too well. And it has also raised its head most blatantly and proudly in Ukraine today, thanks to the billions of dollars in U.S. support given to the Azov Battalion and other white supremacists since 2014.
Andriy Biletskyi, founder of the Azov Battalion, said in 2010 that the Ukrainian nation’s mission was to “lead the white race of the world in a final crusade…” Today followers of the Azov movement are encouraged to commit atrocities wherever they are living and post them on social media.
In 2019, Olena Semenyaka, the head of international outreach for the Azov movement, told Time Magazine that Azov’s mission was to form a coalition of far-right groups across the Western world, with the ultimate aim of taking power throughout Europe.
She also acknowledged contacts with the U.S. Rise Above Movement (RAM) and said that RAM members came to Ukraine from the U.S. to “learn how to create youth forces in the ways Azov has.”
After this meeting, RAM members participated in and helped organize the August 2017 Unite the Right riot of neo-Nazis in Charlottesville, North Carolina, where Heather Heyer was killed by a white supremacist who drove into the counter-protest she participated in. Three RAM members were arrested for inciting and organizing violence there and sentenced to a little over two years in prison.
How does this relate to right here, right now?
Brenton Tarrant, who killed 51 Muslims in March 2019 as they worshiped in a mosque in Christchurch, New Zealand, wrote in his manifesto that he visited Ukraine. He also wore the emblem used by Azov (the same one we saw on the wall in the tuberculosis hospital) when he did the killing. He featured the Azov emblem in his manifesto.
The recent killing here in Buffalo was done by an 18-year-old white supremacist who said he was influenced by Tarrant — and the beat goes on.
In spite of protest from a former FBI agent about the danger of white supremacist groups here in the U.S. that have international ties, the FBI refuses to put the Azov Battalion, RAM or other white supremacist groups on their terrorist list, which would give them more legal avenues to shut them down. Instead, the FBI recently went after the African People’s Socialist Party for simply having relations with a legal Russian organization.
The FBI has a history of assisting or orchestrating assassinations against Black organizations and activists from Martin Luther King Jr. to Fred Hampton to Malcolm X. We, especially Black and Brown peoples, can’t rely on them. We have to rely on ourselves and the solidarity from our working class.
We can’t rely on those who don’t give a damn about the threat to Black people from these fascist groups, like the Biden Administration and the Democrats, all of whom voted to continue to support feeding these monsters in Ukraine. They are no better than the racist Republican Party when it comes to white supremacy and the murder of our children by either the cops or fascist organizations.
The money they are literally sending up in smoke to bomb ethnic Ukrainians, ethnic Russians, and other peoples in Ukraine could have saved countless lives from COVID – which, by the way, hits us Black people three times harder – or solved the homeless crisis and stopped the march towards poverty for our entire class due to inflation. But they don’t give a damn about our security or our children’s lives.
We are at a critical juncture. What lies before us is the threat of World War III. What lies before us is the threat of unprecedented poverty due to the rise in costs of basic necessities. What lays before us is a return to Jim Crow laws and the lynchings we have already seen in the form of shootings of stores, shootings of churches – all resurrecting the past horrors of the bombing of the church in Birmingham by the KKK.
But if we unify our struggles, if we pledge our solidarity to every movement of working and poor people and people of color; to women and gender non-conforming people and our trans family; to Starbucks and Amazon workers fighting for a union; to Haitian immigrants fighting for their lives along with the entire immigrant community; and pledge to never let U.S. imperialist war be allowed to decimate our class and our struggle – instead of us fearing them, they will tremble at our strength and actions.
Let’s get organized and unified, now! You can do that by keeping in touch with the Socialist Unity Party and joining our efforts to unify and reinvigorate a truly anti-imperialist movement in this country.
President Biden announced a tentative agreement on Sept. 15 between the railroad monopolies and unions representing 115,000 railroad workers. It still has to be voted upon by union members.
The terms may include a 24% increase in wages over four years and a retroactive pay package. Railroad bosses are notorious for agreeing to new contracts years after the old one expired.
A big issue is not being penalized for taking off work to see a doctor. None of these items have been officially disclosed. Everything had to be clawed out of the railroad outfits.
Railroad workers have been under attack for decades. While there were two million workers employed on U.S. railroads in 1920, their number is now less than 150,000.
The capitalist economy would still grind to a halt without their labor. Wheat, corn, lumber, steel, cars, chemicals and coal are shipped by rail. So are many other items.
The elimination of almost all passenger trains outside of Amtrak’s Northeast Corridor may lessen the railroad industry’s visibility. Deindustrialization, especially the closing of many steel mills, has cost thousands of railroad jobs.
Yet globalization depends on freight trains carrying double-stacked containers from seaports to their destination. The seven big U.S. and Canadian “class 1” railroads hauled in $27 billion of net income last year.
That’s more than twice as much what these railroads paid in wages. Meanwhile, CSX CEO James Foote raked in $20 million.
These vast profits don’t prevent rail bosses from turning the screws even tighter on workers. Earlier this year BNSF arbitrarily imposed a new attendance policy without any consultation with unions.
Workers are being threatened with being fired for going to a doctor or even a hospital visit. Forget about taking your child to the clinic.
BNSF is completely owned by the Berkshire Hathaway conglomerate, whose CEO Warren Buffett has a $94.6 billion fortune.
Most transportation workers don’t have Monday through Friday work weeks. Neither do millions of workers in hospitals, restaurants and other 24/7 workplaces.
Many freight engineers and conductors are on call with no set work schedule. They may be forced, along with other railroaders, to be away from their families for a week or more.
Yet their justified demand for more sick days, even if unpaid, was fought by railroad companies.
Railroad lobby lies
The Association of American Railroads has for decades been spreading lies about railroad workers. The AAR called safety rules “featherbedding.” Train crews were slashed.
Railroad companies want to operate lengthy freight trains with just one worker. Or none at all, with the trains operated by remote control.
The tragic result of these cutbacks was the Lac-Mégantic rail disaster in Quebec, where 47 people were killed in 2013. This runaway train had just a one-person crew.
Railroad capitalists aren’t satisfied with getting rid of 1.3 million jobs over the last 75 years and tearing up 100,000 miles of track. They got rid of most passenger trains before dumping them on Amtrak.
These money bags have a new scheme misleadingly called “precision scheduled railroading.” It destroyed 45,000 railroad jobs in the last six years, a 29% cut in employees.
Surface Transportation Board Chair Martin Oberman said that the class 1 outfits have “cut labor below the bone… In order to make up for the shortage of labor, they are overworking and abusing the workforces they have.”
Trains have increased in length to as much as two miles or more. Railroad yards have been abandoned or downsized. Even the big capitalists who are railroad shippers are angry at the decline in service.
According to the Surface Transportation Board, the class 1 outfits paid out $196 billion in dividends and stock buy-backs over the last 10 years. That’s far more than the $136 billion that railroads spent on new equipment and maintaining the right-of-way.
For almost two centuries the government has lavished subsidies upon the railroads. The latest example is the $14 billion the feds spent on positive train control, a safety system that was decades overdue.
The most notorious of these handouts were the vast land grants stolen from Indigenous nations. Custer had it coming and he died for the Northern Pacific railroad, now part of BNSF.
Thousands of miles of track were laid by enslaved Africans, both before and after the Civil War. The “steel-driving man” John Henry was a prisoner who was worked to death building the Chesapeake and Ohio railway, now part of CSX.
Warren Buffett needs to pay reparations.
Shooting down workers
Striking railroad workers were shot down in 1877 by troops sent by President Rutherford B. Hayes. He betrayed Black people by letting the Reconstruction governments be overthrown by the Ku Klux Klan.
Jay Gould broke the 1886 strike on the Missouri Pacific, now part of the Union Pacific. The rail tycoon declared he could hire one half of the working class to shoot the other half.
General Miles shot down railroad strikers in Chicago in 1894. This war criminal had Geronimo captured and later seized Puerto Rico as a U.S. colony in 1898.
The current negotiations happened a century after railroad workers employed in shops and roundhouses revolted against a 12% wage cut. Nearly 400,000 workers walked off the job on July 1, 1922.
President Warren G. Harding and his thoroughly corrupt administration smashed the strike. At least 10 workers were killed by the National Guard and private detectives across the country.
In 1991, George H.W. Bush was woken in the White House to sign a bill ordering railroad employees back to work. The current negotiations were also met by threats of government intervention.
After years of the big business media claiming the workers and their unions don’t matter, the White House had to get involved.
Joe Biden may be smiling, but he wouldn’t have tolerated a strike, either. Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi had legislation ready to crush it.
All workers have the right to strike. If union members vote to reject the proposed agreement and need to strike, every poor and working person should support it.
A coast-to-coast strike will inspire millions like the Black Lives Matter movement did.
The writer is a retired Amtrak worker and a member of the American Train Dispatchers Association and Transportation Communications Union.
The following statement has been initiated by Friends of Socialist China. Organizations wishing to add their signatures to this statement should contact us at info@socialistchina.org
We strongly condemn the publication by the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) of its Assessment of human rights concerns in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, People’s Republic of China. In the words of former OHCHR lawyer and human rights expert Alfred de Zayas, this document “should be discarded as propagandistic, biased, and methodologically flawed.”
Based on substandard research methods and biased sources, the Assessment is completely lacking in credibility. It treats arms of the military-industrial complex such as the Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI), along with professional anti-communists such as Adrian Zenz, as legitimate sources. Meanwhile the voices of Chinese NGOs, academics and individuals are suppressed, as are the numerous reports of diplomatic trips to Xinjiang – including by representatives of Muslim-majority countries – that have taken place in recent years.
The Assessment pointedly ignores China’s extraordinary progress in promoting the human rights of all ethnic groups in Xinjiang: in relation to poverty alleviation, social welfare, economic development, safety from terrorist attacks, and more. Instead, the document uses deliberately ambiguous language – that China’s actions “may” constitute crimes against humanity – in order to slander the People’s Republic of China whilst maintaining some plausible deniability.
It is highly suspicious that the Assessment makes no mention of then-UN Human Rights Commissioner Michelle Bachelet’s visit to Xinjiang in May 2022. Having visited a prison and spoken to former trainees at a vocational education and training center; having interacted with civil society organizations, academics, and community and religious leaders; Bachelet found no evidence of crimes against humanity. The numerous conversations she had do not form part of the data set for the Assessment.
What is the reason for the disparity between the OHCHR report and Bachelet’s end-of-mission statement? It is painfully obvious that the OHCHR has come under intense pressure from the US to bolster the credibility of the lurid slanders that have been thrown at China by Western politicians and journalists. Such propaganda forms part of the West’s imperial agenda of undermining China.
The OHCHR Assessment does a profound disservice to the cause of strengthening global human rights cooperation. The report does not enjoy a mandate from the General Assembly or the Human Rights Council, and it runs counter to the wishes and interests of the mainstream of the international community. A joint statement delivered by Cuba at the 50th session of the Human Rights Council in June this year stated its firm opposition to the “politicization of human rights and double standards, or interference in China’s internal affairs under the pretext of human rights”. This statement was signed by 69 countries, the overwhelming majority from the Global South.
Given the OHCHR’s relative silence in relation to persistent human rights abuses by the imperialist powers, it is impossible to avoid the conclusion that the Assessment is politically-motived, produced under pressure from the US, and designed to contribute to a dangerous, escalating New Cold War.
We call on the OHCHR to withdraw its Assessment, and we stand in solidarity with the people of China, subjected to abhorrent and baseless accusations.
Sept. 21 – We gathered last night, coming from Baltimore, Los Angeles, and Denver, at the hotel in Austin, Texas – 12 minutes away from the Austin Convention Center where the National Defense Industrial Association (NDIA) was holding its “Future Forces” conference.
[su_row][su_column size=”1/2″ center=”no” class=”]
[/su_column][su_column size=”1/2″ center=”no” class=”]
[/su_column][/su_row]
The NDIA gathered merchants of death like Lockheed, General Dynamic, Raytheon, and other weapons manufacturers salivating over the prospect of billions more additional dollars to add to the $70 billion already promised for war in Ukraine.
Ukrainian officials and military officers, including President Volodymyr Zelensky himself, were scheduled to attend this conference – some in person, some virtually – to push for more weapons to be manufactured to make up for those already being used to target the Russian, Lugansk, and Donetsk militaries and to target civilians, especially in the Donbass region.
However, as could be seen on the faces of Ukrainian military officers entering and exiting the conference, the last thing they expected to see were activists chanting: “Hey hey, ho ho, war profiteers have got to go!” and “Biden, Biden, can’t you see – we don’t want a World War III.”
Many of the activists from the Freedom Road Socialist Organization, Dallas Anti-War Committee, Socialist Unity Party, Austin Students for a Democratic Society, and other unaffiliated activists were also surprised at the overwhelmingly positive reception this protest received from residents and those working near the Austin Convention Center.
Paul Tardie, who decided to come over after seeing the protest from across the street, said, “Thanks for doing this!” He said that he was frustrated by the one-sided reporting on what he knew was a U.S. proxy war against Russia.
Nicole Rogers and Jacob Rogers from Round Rock drove 20 miles in traffic to get to the demonstration. They had very unique signs reading “Draft beer, not people” and “War money, blood money,” with its own comic strip within the sign explaining how the military-industrial complex profits off of war.
Nicole led chants highlighting the need for peace and not death from the bombs being sold during this convention. A veteran who was walking by and wanted to know more about our protest spoke to her and walked away saying he was with us.
Two members of the Dallas Anti-War Committee joined the protest with their banner, leading the picket line and chants. Members Dan and Cassandra drove three and a half hours to get to the protest.
Baltimore community activists drove 24 hours to get to the protest. That East Coast city is another area victimized by infrastructure neglect, which recently manifested in the presence of E. coli in its drinking water.
Said Sharon Black of the Baltimore Peoples Power Assembly: “We need money for food, housing and infrastructure to rebuild our cities. We need to be fighting for abortion rights and trans rights, not for U.S./NATO proxy wars. Biden needs to stop the Starbucks and Amazon union busters, not spend billions on war.”
What we found out today is that there are a lot of people who now remain quiet, due to the perceived backlash for challenging the lies from the Pentagon and the corporate media about the U.S. war on Russia. They remain quiet because they have a different view.
From the conversations we had with some of them today, we learned that many more than we realized do understand what is really going on – from the Nazi infiltration of the military and government of Ukraine to the war’s billions of dollars in profits for the military-industrial complex.
More importantly, we discovered that when we mobilize and make our rejection of these lies and this war visible through protest – people will find their voices and join us.
Video
[su_row][su_column size=”1/2″ center=”no” class=”]
https://www.facebook.com/strugglelalucha/videos/823160228859947
[/su_column][su_column size=”1/2″ center=”no” class=”]
https://www.facebook.com/maggie.vascassenno/videos/608258940841388
[/su_column][/su_row]
On Sept. 21, U.S. President Joe Biden stood before the 77th United Nations General Assembly and said with a straight face: “If nations can pursue their imperial ambitions without consequences, then we put at risk everything this very institution stands for … You cannot seize a nation’s territory by force.”
The Oxford English Dictionary defines projection as “the unconscious transfer of one’s own desires or emotions to another.” Or, in this case, one’s own actions.
Biden’s remarks were subject to widespread ridicule on social media. But many people who recognize the hypocrisy of a U.S. president condemning others’ alleged “imperial ambitions” may not fully understand how this slander was directed at the embattled people of the Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics (DPR and LPR) of the Donbass region, who have been subject to eight and half years of unrelenting war since the 2014 U.S.-sponsored coup in Ukraine.
While Biden was in New York gracing world leaders with his comedy stylings and attempting to whip up a new wave of war frenzy against Russia and China, activists from around the U.S. gathered in Austin, Texas, to protest a conference of the biggest U.S. military-industrial corporations, including Raytheon Technologies, Lockheed Martin and General Dynamics.
Ukrainian president, U.S. tool, and war criminal Volodymyr Zelensky was the invited guest of honor of the National Defense Industrial Association (NDIA). He only appeared virtually, but Ukrainian Deputy Defense Minister Volodymyr Havrylov was in Austin. Havrylov joined the chorus of U.S. officials and billionaire war profiteers, encouraging an unprecedented speedup of weapons production (and profits).
The Biden administration and Congress have committed $70 billion in war aid to Ukraine so far this year.
Thanks to these esteemed folks, on Monday, Sept. 19, another awful massacre occurred in Donetsk, the capital city of the Donetsk People’s Republic. At least nine people were killed and five more wounded when a Ukrainian shell hit a bus stop and destroyed a nearby market. As usual, the target was an entirely civilian area.
At first, rescue workers thought more people had been killed, Donetsk News Agency reported, “due to the large number of body fragments.”
On Tuesday, Sept. 20, a school and several residential buildings in Donetsk were damaged by Ukrainian fire. A civilian was wounded. The next day, a hospital was hit, wounding three.
Now it’s Thursday, Sept. 22. Another mass slaughter of civilians in Donetsk. “Kiev gunmen delivered artillery fire from the occupied town of Orlovka using 155mm projectiles which impacted near the Central Indoor Market building and flower shops and hit the Route 38 mini-bus. Six people, including a 14-year-old girl, were killed, and another six were wounded in the shelling, according to the latest reports.”
In the Lugansk People’s Republic, cities like Alchevsk that had been largely spared from attacks in recent months are now being routinely attacked by Kiev, using long-range weapons provided by the U.S. and other NATO powers. Svatovo, Novoaidar, and Troitskoye were all hit by U.S. high mobility artillery rocket systems (HIMARS) this week.
Referendum to join Russian Federation
This is the backdrop for the decision to hold a referendum for the DPR and LPR to join the Russian Federation. The referendum is being organized quickly, on an emergency basis, and will be held over five days from Sept. 23-27. Residents of the liberated Kherson and Zaporozhye regions of Ukraine will also have the opportunity to vote.
All of these regions, along with Kharkov and Odessa, rose against the fascist-led, U.S.-sponsored coup regime in the spring of 2014. Mass movements in each region declared their intentions to proclaim people’s republics. Only Donetsk and Lugansk were able to successfully resist being crushed by the Ukrainian military and neo-Nazi gangs. Anti-fascists in those areas were forced into exile, imprisoned, killed, or driven underground.
The United States pressed Ukraine to launch a new offensive against the Donbass starting in late 2021 – a deliberate provocation to draw Russia into a military conflict with the NATO military alliance. In February, the Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Militias and the Russian Armed Forces united in a special military operation to protect the Donbass republics and de-Nazify Ukraine. Today many Ukrainian anti-fascists fight in the ranks of the Donbass militias.
A movement for a referendum on joining the Russian Federation has been growing in the Donbass republics for several years. It’s not something the Russian government wanted; Russian President Vladimir Putin resisted these calls in the interests of a negotiated agreement with Ukraine and its Western sponsors. But the U.S. rulers weren’t interested in a negotiated settlement — they wanted war.
If, as expected, the referendum is successful, the Russian government has signaled that it will accept the vote and incorporate the DPR and LPR as soon as October 1.
The decision to join the Russian Federation may not be ideal from a political standpoint and certainly was not the goal of many of the communists and socialists who inspired the independence struggle of 2014. But it is driven by necessity.
Stronger defense for Donbass
Under the Russian Constitution, once the DPR and LPR are part of the federation, Russia will have a much stronger basis to defend those areas and respond to the Ukrainian-NATO attacks, including exercising its nuclear deterrent. The republics will maintain their names and enter the federation as autonomous republics, as Crimea did in 2014.
The recent military setback for the anti-fascist alliance in Ukraine’s Kharkov region and subsequent attempts by the Ukrainian military to break into the DPR and LPR have created enormous anxiety for the people of Donbass, who face genocide in the event of a Ukrainian takeover. This has been the stated policy of not only the hardened fascist battalions like Aidar and Azov but even of high officials in Kiev for the last eight-plus years.
On Sept. 21, President Putin made a national address to present a decree on a partial military mobilization (draft). Up to 300,000 people are to be called up to protect Russian territory from NATO aggression, which will soon include the DPR and LPR. It appears that the Russian government has now accepted the fact that there will be a prolonged state of war with the imperialist West.
We can expect these new defensive measures to be met with a new wave of anti-Russia war propaganda heading into the midterm U.S. elections, on a par with the witch-hunt against all things Russia earlier this year. This is likely to have an impact on the politically weak sections of the anti-war movement here. It is incumbent on principled anti-imperialists and socialist workers to meet this challenge with courage and political clarity.
Victory to the Donbass republics, Ukrainian anti-fascists, and their allies!
Defeat U.S./NATO imperialism and its Ukrainian proxies!
End the New Cold War against Donbass, Russia, and China!
1