According to the United States Census Bureau, 3.8 million tenants are likely to be evicted in the next two months. Comparatively, only 3.6 million eviction cases were filed in the entire year of 2018. In 2018, the Eviction Lab at Princeton University estimated that there were only 898,479 evictions in 2016, although this number may be a low estimate compared to more recent reports.

High rent, low pay

The 3.8 million facing eviction is the tip of the iceberg. The Census Bureau also estimated that 8.5 million tenants are behind on their rent as the month of August comes to a close.

Millions of people are behind on rent and facing eviction in part because of the soaring rent prices. In June of this year, median rents in the U.S. topped a staggering $2,000 per month — the highest ever recorded.

Renters across the country have seen rent increase by almost 25% since before the pandemic, with an increase of 15% in just the past 12 months, according to real estate marketplace company Zillow. Nearly half of renters have been hit with rent hikes.

Rents have increased dramatically due to high inflation, which the people of the U.S. cite as their top concern by a wide margin. High rents are also due to the highly predictable and avoidable, affordable housing shortage, and wage crisis.

Caution is necessary when analyzing the so-called “shortage.” Data is often presented as if there are not enough homes for people in the U.S., which is not true. According to the 2020 Census, nearly one in ten homes are vacant.

There is, however, a shortage of homes that are currently both usable and set at a price that working and poor people can afford. In January 2019, over three years ago, the country already had a shortage of seven million affordable housing units for low-income renters, leaving only 37 affordable rental homes for every 100 low-income tenant households.

This shows that even with years of advance notice of an ongoing affordability crisis that has now ballooned into massive proportions, the U.S. government did not take the necessary steps to provide enough affordable housing for people. The lack of available housing has caused demand to skyrocket, therefore increasing rents.

The current wage crisis was also avoidable. According to the National Low Income Housing Coalition, the wage a worker must earn to afford a “modest” one-bedroom home in 2022 is $21.25 per hour. This means that the average minimum wage worker must work 79 hours a week to be able to live in a simple one-bedroom unit. In the most expensive (and most populous) states, the statistic is worse at 99 hours per week in New York and 83 hours in California.

President Biden campaigned on the promise of setting the federal minimum wage at $15, which some argue is long overdue and even inadequate. The current federal minimum wage is $7.25 and has been since 2009 when it was last increased.

Biden had the opportunity, once he was elected, to act on this promise. He chose not to. As early into his administration as February, when the Senate Parliamentarian (an unelected position) ruled that raising the minimum wage to $15 could not be included in Biden’s “American Rescue Plan” bill, Biden gave up the fight. “It just doesn’t look like we can do it,” Biden said, despite the fact that his own Vice President Kamala Harris could have easily overruled the Parliamentarian.

Failure of social services

After waves of housing protests, including rent strikes, during the height of the pandemic, many states as well as the federal government implemented an eviction moratorium. The moratoriums fell short of the growing demand to cancel rents during the pandemic, a movement that correctly predicted that mass evictions would occur once tenants were required to pay their growing rent debts post-moratorium. Yet, the moratoriums were a victory of the massive housing movement at the height of the pandemic.

Nowhere in the United States was the call to cancel rents heeded. And now that all statewide eviction moratoriums have ended, including the federal moratorium which was struck down by the Supreme Court on August 26, 2021, tenants who had accrued rent debt are now being put through the eviction machine. A year after the federal moratorium, evictions are once again at pre-pandemic levels, although the financial security of the nation’s tenants is not.

And while most of the pandemic-related federal assistance money for rent relief has been distributed to states, some states are lagging behind in the distribution. In an especially cruel move, the conservative governors of Arkansas and Nebraska outright refused funds for renter relief.

—

Housing is a multi-billion dollar industry in the U.S.. While millions of tenants now face eviction, the handful of billionaire landlords have amassed $24.4 billion in profit during the pandemic according to a 2021 report. 3.8 million tenants could lose access to a basic part of human life while their landlords make billions more than they will ever need.

Source: Peoples Dispatch

Heard the news about Jeff Bezos’ $500,000,000 yacht? I wanted to wait a little while to write something and submit it for publication — just to be sure Big Boss Jeff hadn’t slyly succeeded in buying the Rotterdam City Council and Mayor. What a downer that would be (and, of course, he may yet succeed).

Lately, I’ve been reading the writings of that young ignorant supporter of the Confederacy turned abolitionist turned anti-imperialist and world-touring Weisenheimer, Mark Twain. Herewith is my result regarding Mr. Jeffery Preston Bezos. 

Broken News 

(The latest news link I could find was this August 11 article, so it’s not breaking, it’s long broken, in fact, it’s downright stale news.): 

“Rotterdam Won’t Dismantle Historic Bridge to Let Jeff Bezos’ $500 Million Superyacht Pass” [Credit: Town and Country]  

Now there’s a magazine that I must confess I have never bought a copy of, but I’ve seen it prominently offered at many a supermarket checkout aisle. So, is it bought by bumpkins who aspire to affluence and will attain it by regularly purchasing lottery tickets and this magazine? I am ashamed to admit that this is the very first article from this fine bourgeois publication that I have ever read. In that regard, I must offer thanks to the serendipity of the search engine. “Read all about it,” as they say in the news biz, and here it is:

Jeff Bezos’s Superyacht Is Nearly Completed

A limerick dedicated to Jeff Bezos by Kermit Leibensperger

When whales get beached, the shrimp laugh*
There once was lubber named Bezos.
Who thought his big yacht would be famous,
He offered to pay off,
But Council said “F___ off
That yacht is a crime infelicitous.”

* A Bethlehem Steel blast furnace coworker of mine enjoyed repeating this with an ear-to-ear smile: “When whales get beached, the shrimp laugh,” so I must credit him with my limerick’s title. He religiously repeated this whenever the news reported that some big cheese who thought they were beyond the law had come in contact with the law — in a big, big way, as big cheeses rarely do.  

(By the way, this coworker liked to steal sporty cars for fun before he technically qualified as an adult —  not that I think he ever could grow up because after working with him for over a decade, I knew the fellow well, and he was too intelligent to do much in the way of grownup things, the “Awfuler… things that ever were,” I concur with him wholeheartedly and like to whistle that song from the musical “Peter Pan” occasionally. The entire lyric is a masterpiece to me. But back to my digression …

This worldly-wise USW brother claimed to be a Mensa member, but I didn’t fall for that yarn because, as a youth, he got caught purloining a car. You know, quite a fair percentage of them never do get caught. I learned this firsthand when my ’66 VW vanished. I contacted officers of the law, and they have been clueless to this day, as those who enjoy this newspaper are well aware. 

Getting back to the background story, qualifying as a youth offender at the time of his grand theft auto conviction (Note to readers, not geezers like me: Video games did not exist in the 1960s and 1970s if you are one of the unfortunates, sadly addicted to the game with the same name), the only effect my friend’s juvenile arrest and detention had on him by the time that I came to know him was bragging rights. I fondly remember his grand theft auto saga whenever I see the scene in the prequel movie “Star Trek” where teenager James T. Kirk sends his mean stepfather’s antique Corvette over a cliff …  after the joyride of a lifetime. That movie is a favorite, like my old blast furnace brother. 

While announcing a minimal $10,000 student debt relief plan, Biden announced another $3 billion additional military expansion in Ukraine. 

Earlier this month, when Senators Elizabeth Warren and Chuck Schumer said the debt relief plan should cancel $50,000 per student borrower, most student borrowers found that to be inadequate.

The $3 billion weapons package is the largest yet for Ukraine, according to Defense One, the Atlantic Media trade publication for the military-industrial complex. It will push total U.S. aid well past the annual budgets of at least eight federal programs, including the entire judicial branch. 

Since most of the Pentagon budget and military spending is handled secretly, there have probably been larger weapons packages that were not announced or reported.

The announcement came just five days after a previous statement unveiled a $775 million package of advanced missiles, armored vehicles, drones and artillery. The package includes additional HIMARS, the High Mobility Artillery Rocket System, and Howitzers.

No mention is made in any of these announcements that the massive U.S. military spending has been one of the factors in the serious and, for some, devastating inflation rise this year.

The U.S. has been escalating its NATO proxy war against Russia, not just with the largest arms buildup in U.S. history but with covert and special forces operations such as the assassination in Moscow of Russian journalist Darya Dugina. The assassination had the earmarks of a special forces operation, like the drone assassination of an alleged al-Qaeda leader in Kabul, Afghanistan, that Biden announced on August 1.

Dugina and her father, Alexander Dugin, have been elevated from the fringes in the U.S. media. Neither are big capitalists with the power that would bring nor in any position of political power; they are an easy target. Dugin is known for his outspoken far-right Russian nationalism, a view that is not popular in Russia and is not espoused by any in the government, including Putin.

The assassination was most likely a test, a show by the imperialists that they could strike in the heart of Moscow. 

Russian authorities have identified the killer of Darya Dugina as Natalya Vovk. Vovk is associated with the Azov battalion Nazis of Ukraine. The Azov battalion received training by the U.S. CIA. 

Vovk escaped to Estonia, a NATO member state. Any action to seek her extradition puts Russia in a direct conflict against NATO, even more directly than the U.S. proxy war in Ukraine has.

Ammunition in amounts ‘never seen before’

According to Defense One, the $3 billion package Biden announced on August 24 would be the largest single chunk of the total of $13.7 billion the United States has announced since February. Moreover, it will contain ammunition in amounts “we’ve never seen before.”

As noted, the Defense One figures are limited to the officially announced military packages. But Congress approved a $40 billion “Ukraine aid” package in May, which the Washington Post said was 60% military funds. The $13.7 billion figure cited by Defense One is just a fraction of the total U.S. military spending on the Ukraine war.

Still, the $13.7 billion package is more than the annual budget of some federal programs, Defense One admits, such as the National Science Foundation ($9.2 billion) and the Small Business Administration ($1.7 billion), according to Statista. It is larger than the annual budgets of the federal judiciary ($9.7 billion), Congress ($6.6 billion), or the Executive Office of the President ($0.6 billion). It is creeping up on the budgets of the Environmental Protection Agency ($15.9 billion), if not NASA ($24.9 billion).

Tracking largest arms transfer in U.S. history

Below is a timeline of all publicly disclosed major weapons shipments or funding packages going back to Feb. 24, compiled by the think tank Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft. 

This list only contains publicly announced information. The Pentagon admitted on August 11 to sending at least one type of missile that had not been previously mentioned in their press releases, so this list is not exhaustive.

August 8

The Pentagon announced that it would send $1 billion worth of security assistance to Ukraine via presidential drawdown, including:

• HIMARS ammunition (This is an acronym for High Mobility Artillery Rocket System. These mobile missile launchers can fire a wide range of munitions, including rocket artillery and short-range ballistic missiles.)
• Artillery ammunition
• Javelin missiles and other anti-armor weapons

August 1

The Pentagon announced an additional $550 million of security aid via presidential drawdown, including:

• HIMARS ammunition
• Artillery ammunition

July 22

The Pentagon announced that it would send $270 million of military aid to Ukraine, with $175 million authorized via presidential drawdown and $95 million coming via Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative (USAI) funds. This included:

• Four additional HIMARS
• HIMARS ammunition
• Four Command Post vehicles (These can be used as a tactical operations center or an armored ambulance, among other things.)
• Tank gun ammunition
• Phoenix Ghost drones (These are a type of “loitering munition,” or a weapon that can wait in the air for extended periods before attacking a target. The U.S. created this for use in Ukraine.)

July 8

The Pentagon announced an additional $400 million of military assistance via presidential drawdown, including:

• Four additional HIMARS
• HIMARS ammunition
• Artillery ammunition

July 1

The Pentagon announced it would send $820 million of security aid, with $50 million authorized via presidential drawdown and the remaining $770 million coming via USAI funds. This included:

• HIMARS ammunition
• Two National Advanced Surface-to-Air Missile Systems (NASAMS) (This system launches missiles to defend against various types of aircraft, including drones.)
• Artillery ammunition

June 23

The Pentagon announced an additional $450 million in military assistance via presidential drawdown, including:

• Four HIMARS
• Artillery ammunition
• Grenade launchers
• Patrol boats

June 15

The Pentagon announced an additional $1 billion in lethal aid, with $350 million authorized via presidential drawdown and $650 million coming from USAI funds. This included:

• Howitzers (This is a popular long-range artillery weapon.)
• Artillery ammunition
• HIMARS ammunition
• Two Harpoon coastal defense systems (These launch missiles that fly just above the water’s surface to attack planes and ships.)

June 1

The Pentagon announced an additional $700 million in military assistance via presidential drawdown, including:

• HIMARS ammunition
• Javelin missiles and other anti-armor weapons
• Artillery ammunition
• Four Mi-17 helicopters (These can be used for transport or combat.)

May 19

The Pentagon announced $100 million in lethal aid via presidential drawdown, including:

• Howitzers
• On the same day, Congress passed a $40 billion aid package for Ukraine, roughly half of which was earmarked for military assistance.

May 6

The Pentagon announced $150 million in military aid via presidential drawdown, including:

• Artillery ammunition

April 21

DoD announced $800 million in further aid via presidential drawdown, including:

• Howitzers
• Artillery ammunition
• Phoenix Ghost drones

April 13

The Pentagon announced that it would send an additional $800 million in military assistance via presidential drawdown, including:

• Howitzers
• Artillery ammunition
• Largest arms transfer in history: Biden escalates U.S. proxy war in Ukraine
• Switchblade drones (This is another form of loitering munition.)
• Javelin missiles and other anti-armor weapons
• Armored personnel carriers
• 11 Mi-17 helicopters
• Various types of explosives

April 6

The Pentagon announced an additional $100 million in aid via presidential drawdown, including:

• Javelin anti-armor systems

April 1

DoD announced that it would send $300 million in lethal aid using USAI funds, including:

• Laser-guided rocket systems
• Switchblade drones
• Puma surveillance drones
• Anti-drone systems
• Armored vehicles

March 16

The Pentagon announced it would send $800 million of military aid via presidential drawdown. The exact contents of this package are unclear, but it likely included Mi-17 helicopters, Javelin missiles, and Stinger anti-aircraft missiles.

March 12

The White House announced that it would send $200 million in lethal aid via presidential drawdown, including:

• Javelin missiles
• Stinger missiles

March 10

Congress approved $13.6 billion in aid to Ukraine, roughly half of which was earmarked for military assistance.

February 25

The White House announced that it would send $350 million in military aid via presidential drawdown, including:

• Anti-armor weapons
• Small arms

On Aug. 4, a Russian court convicted Brittney Griner of drug smuggling and possession and sentenced her to nine years in jail. She was arrested in February for carrying cannabis vaping cartridges through the Moscow airport.

Griner, an African American athlete, played during the off-season in Russia. Many WNBA stars take similar international gigs due to unequal pay compared to their male counterparts. 

NPR reports: “The Olympian and [W]NBA champion says she must have put the cannabis in her bag by mistake. Her defense team notes that Griner has a medical marijuana card in Arizona to help her cope with injuries sustained over years of competition. But personal cannabis possession is illegal under any circumstances in Russia, similar to U.S. federal law.” 

Brittney Griner should be free. Instead, she has the misfortune of being one of the few diplomatic cards Russia holds at a time when U.S. imperialism is waging a global war against that country. Currently, it takes the form of a proxy war in Ukraine and economic sanctions. But like the recent U.S. provocations against the People’s Republic of China, it threatens to spill over into a world war.

A socialist government, or even a progressive bourgeois-nationalist one, would understand the value of releasing Brittney as a gesture of goodwill to the Black community in the U.S. Unfortunately, that is not the Putin government’s orientation. 

But the movement and community here need to know that there are nongovernmental organizations in Russia that oppose the U.S./NATO proxy war in Ukraine and support the cause of the Donbass republics, which have been working for Griner’s release.

Among these groups is the Foundation to Battle Injustice headed by Mira Terada, an unjustly convicted Russian citizen kidnapped by the U.S., who spent two-and-a-half years in U.S. prisons. It was Terada who proposed the prisoner swap idea that the Biden regime is now taking credit for.

On Aug. 5, Russia Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said Russia is ready to discuss a prisoner swap for Griner, “within the framework of the channel that has been agreed by the presidents. There is a specified channel that has been agreed upon by [Russian President Vladimir Putin and U.S. President Joe Biden], and no matter what anyone says publicly, this channel will remain in effect,” Lavrov explained at the Association of Southeast Asian Nations summit.

Biden & Co. ignored Brittney Griner’s plight for months, refusing to negotiate with the Russian authorities in good faith while they were busy setting up the war crisis in Ukraine and vicious sanctions on Russia. Griner’s case might never have reached the point of a trial or conviction had Washington acted differently.

It must be pointed out that many thousands of Black and Brown people have languished in U.S. prisons for years, even decades, for possession of marijuana and other recreational drugs. In 2020 Forbes reported, “An estimated 40,000 people today are incarcerated for marijuana offenses even as the overall legal cannabis industry is booming.”

The best way we can support Brittney is to demand that the White House make serious concessions to gain her release and allow her to return home – including ending the multi-billion-dollar weapons shipments fueling Ukraine’s war on Donbass that began more than eight years ago. 

On the same day Griner was convicted, U.S./NATO-supplied long range weapons were used to target a funeral in the capital of Donetsk, killing at least 8 people, including a 12-year-old girl. U.S.-supplied weapons have also recently been used to scatter anti-personnel mines across the city streets, killing and wounding civilians.

The people’s movement in this country must fight to stop the brutal U.S.-NATO-Ukraine war that is killing people daily and end the sanctions and military threats against Russia’s people. The billions of dollars being spent on the U.S. proxy war are dollars stolen from the Black community and other poor and working-class people here at home.

Tell Joe Biden: Free Brittney Griner! And stop the U.S. war on Russia and Donbass!

Nancy Pelosi, the speaker of the U.S House of Representatives, landed in Taiwan Province on August 2. Her trip is a dangerous provocation against the People’s Republic of China.

Pelosi arrived on the 58th anniversary of the Gulf of Tonkin incident. In 1964, President Lyndon Johnson claimed Vietnamese torpedo boats in the Gulf of Tonkin had attacked a U.S. Navy destroyer.

The Pentagon Papers later admitted this was a lie, a complete fabrication. That it was a lie didn’t stop LBJ, who used the lie to start bombing Vietnam.

Even the United States government concedes that there’s only one China. Because it’s an island, Taiwan is the only part of China that wasn’t liberated in 1949 by the People’s Liberation Army during the Chinese civil war.

With U.S. assistance, the defeated dictator Chiang Kai-shek fled to Taiwan Province in 1949. His regime had already slaughtered 28,000 or more people in Taiwan during a massacre that began on Feb. 28, 1947. 

It’s doubtful that TV’s talking heads will mention that atrocity or that “democratic” Taiwan was under martial law from 1949 until 1987.

Nancy Pelosi claims she is going to Taiwan Province because of her concern for “human rights.” The Chinese Revolution is one of the greatest triumphs of human rights. 

In 1959, the People’s Liberation Army abolished serfdom in Tibet. Nancy Pelosi likes to be seen with that former serf owner known as the Dalai Lama.

What’s more of a human right than the right to live? When Mao Zedong declared “China has stood up” on Oct. 1, 1949, and the People’s Republic of China was born, Chinese people lived to be on average just 36 years old.

By 2022 life expectancy had more than doubled to reach 77.3 years. That’s a longer lifespan than in the capitalist United States.

Capitalist mouthpieces like The Economist, Bloomberg BusinessWeek, and The Wall Street Journal have attacked the People’s Republic for its public health measures against the COVID-19 pandemic.

Despite China having over four times the population of the United States, the U.S. death toll from the coronavirus is 70 times as large. As of Aug. 1, there have been 1,026,937 deaths from COVID-19 in the U.S. compared to 14,735 deaths in the People’s Republic. (With 9,506 of those deaths occurring in Hong Kong.)  

The real attitude of Speaker Pelosi towards human rights can be seen in her trip six months ago to “Israel,” which is really occupied Palestine.

Pelosi didn’t visit Gaza, which is the world’s largest ghetto. Instead, she declared that U.S. support for the Israeli apartheid regime was “ironclad.”

Nancy Pelosi’s Baltimore

Although Speaker Pelosi’s congressional seat is in San Francisco, her hometown is Baltimore. Pelosi’s father, Thomas D’Alesandro, Jr., spent eight years as a congressman there before becoming mayor of a thoroughly segregated Baltimore from 1947 to 1959. Her brother, Thomas D’Alesandro III, was also Baltimore’s mayor from 1967 to 1971.

Pelosi’s father was mayor when 24 people were arrested on July 11, 1948, for playing on the all-white tennis courts in Baltimore’s Druid Hill park. White and Black tennis players, as well as their supporters, were jailed for defying segregation laws.

H.L. Mencken ― who had suggested to Clarence Darrow to put William Jennings Bryan on the stand during the Scopes “Monkey Trial” ― denounced these Jim Crow arrests in his last newspaper column. Many of the brave activists were supporters of the Communist Party and the Progressive Party, whose presidential candidate Henry Wallace was denouncing the Cold War.

One of the many humiliations suffered by Black people in Baltimore when Pelosi’s father and brother were mayors was when it snowed. While the all-Black Flag House projects remained covered in snow, the streets were swiftly cleaned next door in all-white Little Italy.

The city officials claimed they had no responsibility to plow the driveways of a public housing project, which the Flag Houses were. The 14th amendment right to equal protection didn’t exist in Baltimore, Charm City.

The D’Alesandro family lived in Little Italy. Black candidate Billy Murphy challenged the white mayor William Schaefer in the 1983 election. Here’s newspaper columnist Michael Olesker quoting Nancy Pelosi’s father:

“On the night of the election, I saw D’Alesandro at Schaefer’s campaign headquarters. I was now writing a column for the Baltimore Sun.

“’How did the vote go in Little Italy?’ I asked.

“’Schaefer won, 487 to 1,’ D’Alesandro said. One vote for Murphy in the entire community?

“’Yeah,’ D’Alesandro said. “And we’re gonna find that guy.’” 

Nancy Pelosi was silent about her father’s threat to the anti-racist who cast their vote for a Black candidate. While Pelosi was not yet a member of congress, she had already been chair of the California Democratic Party. 

We’ll always remember Viola Liuzzo, the mother in an Italian-American family who fought for Black freedom and was murdered by FBI informant Gary T. Rowe in Selma, Alabama. Father Jim Groppi, who fought racism alongside Vel Phillips and Lloyd Barbee in super segregated Milwaukee, won’t be forgotten.

Nancy Pelosi wasn’t a fellow freedom fighter. She was 23 years old and missing in action when hundreds of people were arrested on July 4, 1963, so Black children could attend Gwynn Oak amusement park just outside of Baltimore.

Driving Black people out of San Francisco

Nancy Pelosi’s San Francisco is the most gentrified major city in the United States. The median household income in her 12th congressional district is $120,000. Many poor and working people can’t afford to live there.

Seventy-seven billionaires live in San Francisco. That’s more than London’s total.

It’s these billionaires that Pelosi represents when she denounces the People’s Republic of China. Not the 8,000 homeless people living in San Francisco, including 4,000 human beings who live on its streets.

Nancy Pelosi’s own fortune has been estimated to be $135 million. 

Since 1970, more than 50,000 Black people have been driven out of the metropolis. While San Francisco was 14% Black in 1970, today it’s less than 6% Black.  Meanwhile, 40% of San Francisco’s homeless population are Black. 

Speaker Pelosi is also representing the reactionary forces who oppose the Chinese Revolution. Just as Miami is a center for Cuban counter-revolutionaries, so San Francisco is one of the centers of those who hate the People’s Republic of China.

It’s the social conditions of California ― with 161,000 homeless people and 205,000 people locked-up in jails and prisons ― and the exploitation it represents that Speaker Nancy Pelosi wants to bring to China.

Taiwan was stolen from China by the Japanese Empire in 1895. Three years later the United States occupied the Philippines and killed a million Filipinos.

The People’s Republic of China will recover Taiwan sooner than later. Nancy Pelosi’s dangerous trip needs to be rejected by poor and working people.

On July 29, the FBI violently raided the African Peoples Socialist Party’s Uhuru House in St. Petersburg, Florida, and their Uhuru Solidarity Center in St. Louis, Missouri, as well as the private residence of APSP Chairman Omali Yeshitela using flash-bang grenades and then handcuffing him and his partner in their home. 

Chairman Omali is 80 years old, and this unjustified intrusion was amplified by the violence of the FBI. He was never accused of possessing weapons or participating in violent actions to justify this terror against his family.

His supposed crime? Helping to disseminate “Russian propaganda,” working with an alleged agent of Russia and taking his direction — not to plant bombs or pass on State secrets mind you — but simply for purportedly having the same opinion and giving a platform to words that counter the U.S. narrative about its wars.

Flimsy excuses like these were used by the FBI in orchestrating the violent slaughter of members of the Black Panther Party, some while they slept like Chairman Fred Hampton in Chicago. And more new evidence recently came out about the culpability of the FBI in the assassination of Malcolm X.

In fact, the history of this country is littered with false accusations, sabotage, and assassinations of Black political organizations. When J. Edgar Hoover led the FBI, his racism-inspired hatred of the civil rights movement and Black people in general, justified with his crusade against anyone he deemed a communist, is well documented.

As progressive organizations dedicated to building social justice in this country, we must especially be in complete solidarity with the Black victims of this latest attack against yet another Black organization by the FBI and reject the use of this newest anti-communism. Despite Russia now being a capitalist country, this Cold War propaganda from the Soviet era utilizes the same big lies and vilifications as an attempted club against solidarity. 

These lies attempt to hide the hypocrisy of a government that uses the National Endowment for Democracy and USAID, and others to sponsor regime change worldwide and encourage many to instigate violence against popular movements. In addition, the alleged Russian agent, Alexander Ionov, who is not accused of fomenting violence, is targeted for simply supporting the efforts of those who oppose U.S. imperialist policies abroad.

In response to the charges, he wrote: “Stop looking for enemies everywhere. No one threatens democracy in your country except those people who infringe on women’s reproductive rights, create unbearable conditions for migrants, and also oppress people on racial grounds! You are now supplying weapons to Ukraine and other countries. You are interfering in the internal affairs of other countries. I have been and will be a friend of many Americans. If you see me as your enemy, then this is your right, but it is not on the side of justice!”

The U.S. capitalist class, which had hoped the trillions spent on war would solve its economic contradictions and growing political isolation – is now desperate to cover itself, threatening anyone mentioning its naked oppressiveness with arrest.

Instead of protecting the public against terrorist white supremacist groupings, the FBI is trying to stifle dissent to hide the fact that the U.S. is using the war in Ukraine to expand NATO and as a proxy war against Russia and China, recklessly flirting with World War III.

In demanding allegiance to its narrative, Facebook was pressured by the U.S. government into giving the reins of monitoring and censoring of posts over to the pro-NATO Atlantic Council. The Atlantic Council’s board of directors includes former CIA Directors Michael Morell and Leon Panetta and former Assistant to the President for Counterterrorism and Homeland Security Frances Townsend. In a letter explaining the purpose of this and the recent hijackings of other social media, including TikTok, Twitter, and Reddit, by U.S. intelligence agencies, Facebook explains, in summary, that it is to ensure that the narratives presented on social media correspond with U.S. foreign policy goals.

These “goals” are to distract us from the highest inflation rate in 40 years; the crumbling of vital infrastructure; the lack of a functioning health care system; the rise in homelessness and the desperation of working and poor people in this country.

This must be a wake-up call to all our organizations and activists fighting for a better world. We must not let them isolate any of us and pick us off one by one. In this historical period, our most important task is to unite and fight the power of reaction. Today, the U.S. government’s support for fascist movements abroad and their refusal to stop white supremacist terror here is a march toward fascism. And, as far away as it may seem for some today — as history informs us — that ideology and its accompanying terror could turn the desperation of workers into a tool used against themselves.

Not only is it urgent that we stand in solidarity with the APSP but also with all those affected by these FBI raids, which hope to use this attack to test and extend their political persecution more generally across our entire working class. In fact, although the FBI seemed to reserve their greatest violence against the APSP, other non-Black organizations have been indicted with the same ridiculous charges.

We remain in solidarity with the APSP and others targeted by the FBI and reject this new version of McCarthyism and racist terror.

FBI and the U.S. government, stop your racist targeting of Black organizations!

We the undersigned have the right to fight against the U.S. war, for liberation, and for social and economic justice!

Socialist Unity Party
Black Alliance for Peace

United National Antiwar Coalition (UNAC)
Martin Luther King Coalition of Greater Los Angeles
Partido Nacional de La Raza Unida

Association of Raza Educators Los Angeles
Puerto Rican Alliance
Harvard Boulevard Block Club
Harriet Tubman Center for Social Justice

San Diego Coalition to Free all Political Prisoners
Struggle-La Lucha newspaper
Peoples Power Assembly
Unemployed Workers Union
Youth Against War & Racism
Women In Struggle/Mujeres En Lucha
Prisoners Solidarity Committee

Solidarity with Donbass & Antifascists in Ukraine
Malcolm X Center for Human Rights & Self Determination
LA MAS

 

Chicago — A series of victories were won in the past month by the movement to free survivors of torture and wrongful conviction at the hands of the Chicago Police Department. Clayborn Smith, Marcellous Pittman, Juan Hernandez, Rosendo Hernandez, Arthur Almendarez, John Galvan, Eruby Abrego, Jeremiah Cain, David Gecht and David Colon have all had historic judgments in their cases.

In the case of Clayborn Smith, a decision by the Illinois Appellate Court authored by Justice Cynthia Cobbs reversed the decision of Circuit Court Judge Alfredo Maldonado, finding that Detectives Kenneth Boudreau, John Halloran and James O’Brien had tortured Clayborn Smith into his confession. They granted him a new trial.

In turn, Judge Maldonado found, in the case of Marcellous Pittman, that his tortured confession at the hands of Halloran and O’Brien was inadmissible. Marcellous Pittman also had the charges against him dropped by the state’s attorney’s office. Within the written decisions by each of these judges, it was laid out plainly that these detectives with a history of torture are not credible and should not be called as witnesses.

Justice Cynthia Cobbs in the Clayborn Smith case stated in her decision “the defendant has produced sufficient evidence of a pattern of physical abuse by the detectives in question” referring to Detectives Boudreau, Halloran, and O’Brien. And Judge Roberto Maldonado stated in his decision in the Marcellous Pittman case that his ruling called into question the credibility of Halloran and O’Brien’s denials.

These decisions come after years of campaigning by the Chicago Alliance Against Racist and Political Repression (CAARPR)’s Campaign to Free Incarcerated Survivors of Police Torture, Mothers Activating Movements for Abolition and Solidarity (MAMAS), and the Chicago Torture Justice Center to free survivors of police torture and wrongful convictions and hold torturing officers accountable.

In October 2021, CAARPR began to pressure the Cook County State’s Attorney’s Office (CCSAO) to take action on 409 cases of torture and wrongful conviction, detailed in a comprehensive report that can be found on the Chicago Alliance website.

CAARPR presented the CCSAO with nine demands. These included that their office move to vacate convictions for all those framed, tortured and wrongfully convicted, especially in cases involving detectives with a pattern and practice of torture; that cases involving Jon Burge’s Midnight Crew, of which Boudreau, Halloran, and O’brien were a part, be reviewed and the related convictions vacated; and that the CCSAO publicly state that they will cease calling detectives with established records of torture as witnesses. These recent rulings directly reflect the campaign’s demands.

Another demand of this campaign was for the CCSAO to “Provide information on the status of their promised comprehensive review of Guevara’s cases. Rapidly complete the review and vacate all convictions in which Detectives Reynaldo Guevara, Joseph Miedzianowski, or Ronald Watts were involved.”

Reynaldo Guevara is a former homicide detective who secured dozens of convictions by framing mostly Puerto Rican and Black young people. According to the report, “Over 50 individuals have accused him of coercing confessions through physical or psychological torture or through manipulating witnesses to obtain convictions. Many of them were juveniles at the time of their arrest.”

Cook County Judge Obbish said Guevara “has now eliminated the possibility of being considered a credible witness in any proceeding” due to the evidence against him and his refusal to testify. This is a judgment that is now being applied to other torturer cops such as Boudreau, Halloran and O’ Brien.

The leading force behind the effort to free survivors of Detective Guevara has been the organization Innocent Demand Justice(IDJ), which is led by Guevara survivors themselves as well as family members like Esther Hernandez, who has been fighting for the freedom of her two sons, Juan “Poochie” Hernandez and Rosendo Hernandez since their wrongful imprisonment in 1997.

Alongside MAMAS, CAARPR and CTJC, IDJ mobilized rallies for court dates, hosted phone zaps, pressured elected officials, met with the state’s attorney’s office, researched Guevara thoroughly, and spoke out in the media. These organizations demanded justice for all of Guevara’s victims, meaning immediate release, charges against Guevara, and reparations for those tortured.

On Friday July 15, the Hernandez brothers were released with all charges dropped against them. This came as part of a wave of exonerations of Guevara survivors, including Eruby Abrego, Jeremiah Cain, David Colon and David Gecht. The release of these survivors, and the decision by the state’s attorney’s office to not re-try them for these baseless charges, are a result of the movement to free torture survivors and the wrongfully convicted.

Esther Hernandez, responding to her son’s release, saying, “I can’t even explain how I feel right now, I’m so joyful.” She added, “As I come to these other cases, I see them come home, I’m like ‘Oh my God, our day is coming.’ I get happy every time I see somebody come out, an innocent man coming out of prison.”

In addition to survivors of Boudreau, Halloran, O’Brien and Guevara being released, two survivors of Detectives Victor Switski and John Hanrahan were released the following day. John Galvan and Arthur Almendarez were wrongfully convicted in 1986 after Hanrahan and Switski tortured them into signing confession statements to a crime they didn’t commit. The detectives told them that they would be able to go home after signing these confessions. They made many attempts to file motions for their witness confessions to be suppressed and quash the arrest. They were sentenced for life without parole with Galvan being sent to Stateville and Almendarez to Hill prisons. New evidence emerged of police coercion, and after 35 years, their case was finally vacated by a Cook County judge.

Detectives Hanrahan and Switski were also mentioned in CAARPR’s CFIST Report on the Pattern and Practice of Torture within the Chicago Police Department. The CFIST report not only clearly demonstrates a long pattern of abuse by crooked officers, but how innocent lives will continue to be lost and harmed, the victims and their families.

“This long pattern of abuse will not stop unless community control of the police is established and all wrongfully convicted prisoners are given immediate release,” said Kobi Guillory, at a rally outside the Cook County Jail in response to this wave of decisions. These victories in the Campaign to Free Incarcerated Survivors of Police Torture and Wrongful Conviction are a sign that the powers that be are responding to the demands of the survivors, families and activists who continue the fight for justice.

Source: FightBack! News

Despite the bloodshed in the U.S. capitol, Trump’s attempted coup on Jan. 6, 2021, is often portrayed as a clown show. The capitalist media showed countless pictures of the bare-chested Jacob Chansley wearing a fur hat with horns.

Many people still question why it took over three hours for the Pentagon to send troops to stop the insurrection. 

Gen. Charles Flynn, then deputy chief of operations, was one of those responsible for the 187 minute delay. He’s the brother of retired Gen. Michael Flynn, Trump’s first national security adviser who wanted the U.S. military to overturn the 2020 election results.

Col. Earl Matthews claims that Charles Flynn lied about the delay. The former D.C. National Guard officer sent a 36-page memo to the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 riot.

Because Washington, D.C., has been denied statehood, Mayor Muriel Bowser ― unlike a state governor ― couldn’t call out the D.C. National Guard herself. Bowser had to ask the Pentagon to do it.

The spotlight is now on the U.S. Secret Service. Almost all of the agency’s text messages from Jan. 5 and 6, 2021, were lost. 

The alleged reasons for these deletions are as phony as the excuses given for the 18.5 minute gap in one of Richard Nixon’s Watergate tapes. Rep. Jamie Raskin exclaimed, “I smell a rat.”

Secret Service spokesperson Anthony Guglielmi is claiming that the destruction of this evidence was simply a technical screw-up. Guglielmi said the same when he was a public relations flack for the Chicago police department.

He tried to explain the lack of sound — in five police tapes that showed the murder of Laquan Mcdonald — as operator error. Convicted police officer Jason Van Dyke had shot the Black teenager 16 times.

It was very convenient that the conversations Van Dyke had with the other cops on the scene were lost.

Inspector General Joseph Cuffari of the Department of Homeland Security knew of the Secret Service erasures of the Jan. 5-6 text messages back in February of this year but he failed to inform Congress. His office was ready to issue a warning in October 2021 that the Secret Service was refusing to disclose texts and other records but failed to do so. 

The Secret Service and the coup

A year before the news broke about the lost texts, a book revealed an important part of Trump’s coup attempt. “I Alone Can Fix It: Donald J. Trump’s Catastrophic Final Year,” by Washington Post reporters Carol Leonnig and Philip Rucker, was published in July 2021.

The authors disclosed that Vice President Mike Pence refused to be driven away from the Capitol by Secret Service agents, saying “I’m not getting in the car.”

Pence is a bigot, not a hero. But he knew the Trump conspirators were trying to prevent him from counting the electoral college votes. Secret Service official Anthony Ornato, who was then serving on Trump’s staff, wanted to take Pence to the Andrews military base.

While jokers like Rudy Giuliani and pillow salesman Mike Lindell were getting publicity, the Secret Service was going to kidnap the Vice President. At the same time Gen. Charles Flynn and other Pentagon officials were preventing the National Guard from clearing Trump’s lynch mob from the U.S. Capitol. 

With the support of a section of the “deep state” and Vice President Pence removed, Trump was to declare the election invalid and try to remain in the White House. Secret Service agents deleted their text messages as part of the cover-up.

The Jan. 6, 2021, coup failed for the same reason that Trump’s earlier June 1, 2020, coup attempt flopped. (That was a week after George Floyd was murdered, when Trump wanted to declare martial law against the Black Lives Matter movement. His consolation prize was having demonstrators attacked with pepper spray and tear gas in Lafayette Park across from the White House.)

Most of the “deep state” ― which is the real state’s repressive apparatus of the Pentagon, cops, courts and prisons ― failed to back the coup.

It’s one thing for Kenosha, Wisconsin, police to welcome fascist vigilantes like Kyle Rittenhouse. It’s a different matter when the Pentagon’s Joint Chiefs of Staff considered whether to help overturn the 2020 election or not.

The generals and admirals fear hundreds of thousands of GIs would refuse to carry out such orders. While 26 million people marched in 2020, demanding Black Lives Matter, many more millions would take to the streets if Trump tried to stay in office.

Regime change in Dallas

“It can’t happen here” has been a typical media response to claims of political conspiracies in the United States. This attitude has been evaporating because of Trump’s attempted coup and the disclosures of the House of Representatives Jan. 6 committee.

The history of capitalism is punctuated by conspiracies. The African Holocaust and the Holocaust of Indigenous peoples in the Americas jump-started the world capitalist market.

Capitalism’s bloody record includes trampling on its own laws.

Karl Marx quotes the British trade unionist T. J. Dunning:

“With adequate profit, capital is very bold. A certain 10 per cent. will ensure its employment anywhere; 20 percent certain will produce eagerness; 50 per cent, positive audacity; 100 percent, will make it ready to trample on all human laws; 300 percent, and there is not a crime at which it will scruple, nor a risk it will not run, even to the chance of its owner being hanged.” 

Capitalist climate change’s high temperatures are killing thousands of people. That didn’t prevent the world’s 60 biggest banks from lending $742 billion last year to fossil fuel outfits, according to the Rainforest Action Network.

Big profits are why the banksters are helping to cook the earth. The $6 trillion the U.S. spent on atomic weapons were also very profitable, even if capitalists would be incinerated in a nuclear war.

Lyndon Johnson became president because of a successful coup d’état. The Secret Service stood down, allowing John F. Kennedy to be assassinated on Nov. 22, 1963, in Dallas.

Secret Service agents were told to get off the rear of JFK’s limousine just before it made the fatal turn in front of the Texas School Book Depository. On Kennedy and the Secret Service, Abraham Bolden, the first Black member of the president’s Secret Service detail, was framed so he couldn’t testify before the Warren Commission. Bolden was pardoned by President Biden on April 26.

JFK shouldn’t have trusted the Secret Service. Neither should we.

Police brutality and violence against innocent people isn’t exactly a rarity in the Front Range of the Rocky Mountains. From the senseless beating of a 73-year-old woman with dementia when she became confused outside of a local Walmart to the horrific torture and murder of an unarmed 23-year-old Black man, Elijah McClain, Colorado police departments are no stranger to enacting racist terror and severe brutality on the community. 

During the early hours of Sunday, July 17, the Denver Police department added a chapter to that already long and bloody saga. As bars were letting out in downtown Denver, the police opened fire wildly at crowds of people. The officers claimed they were returning fire at a suspect who had brandished a firearm and opened fire himself. There is no evidence that this suspect discharged a firearm. 

Five other people were severely wounded and ricocheting bullets and shrapnel grazed dozens of others. Groups of friends went from enjoying a Saturday night out to being victims of a terrorist police attack. The police and their political allies tell us that they “protect and serve” the community. Does this feel like protecting or serving? Do we really think that the individuals wounded and their loved ones feel protected and served by the Denver Police Department? 

This pray and spray mentality is all too common in U.S. police departments. The recent carnage in Denver draws disturbing parallels to the recent murder of Jayland Walker earlier this year in Akron, Ohio, and the 2020 murder of Louisville EMS worker, Breonna Taylor. Louisville police officers fired 32 rounds into Taylor’s apartment, many penetrating into her bedroom, where she was asleep. Jayland Walker was shot up to 60 times after 8 Akron police officers fired 90 rounds at him while he was running away from them unarmed. And when actual violence occurs, like in the recent mass shooting in Uvalde, Texas, a “small army of 376 federal, state, and local law-enforcement officers” sat idle while innocent children were killed.

And now, Denver police fired dozens of rounds wildly into late night crowds exiting bars, nearly killing six people. That doesn’t seem like protecting and serving. All Denver police officers involved in this recent shooting need to be terminated from their positions and charged with attempted murder. Further, the City of Denver must pay reparations to all the individuals who Denver Police injured, directly or indirectly.  

Defund the police 100%! Community control now! End racist police terror now!

Breonna Taylor! Jayland Walker! Elijah McClain! Say their names!

Tens of millions of people are righteously angry at the six Supreme Court justices who stole reproductive rights from them. The court’s “Dobbs” decision takes away the right to control one’s own body.

Commonly called the Free Speech law, the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution is supposed to protect “the right of the people peaceably to assemble.” Free speech includes the right to protest at the homes of U.S. Supreme Court justices.

Yet the head of the Supreme Court police service is demanding government officials crack down on demonstrators and possibly jail them. Gail Curley, Marshal of the Supreme Court, complained that “large groups” [actually 50 to 100 people] “chanting slogans, using bullhorns, and banging drums have picketed Justices’ homes.” 

These protesters were expressing the outrage of the majority of the country at the unelected high court.

A mere five of these “justices” can order the execution of an innocent person. That’s what happened on Sept. 21, 2011, when the Supreme Court approved Georgia’s execution of Troy Davis despite the pleas of  Pope Benedict and former FBI Director William Sessions.

Two years before the execution of Davis, the late Justice Antonin Scalia, in voting against an earlier stay of execution, declared that it’s not unconstitutional to execute innocent people. 

But please no bullhorns and banging drums!

Marshal Curley has been joined by the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal and Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan in calling for cops to stop the protests.

The Washington Post claims that these millionaire justices are facing “unceasing harassment and intimidation.” Harassment and intimidation is actually what 1.1 million Amazon workers face on a daily basis from their big boss, Washington Post owner Jeff Bezos.

Bezos is the third richest man on earth, with a $139 billion fortune. As the late A. J. Liebling wrote, freedom of the press is limited to those who own one.

Bezos is now trying to prevent Amazon employees from talking to their fellow workers while off the clock about joining a union. This union buster wants to destroy free speech.

Tear gas and red baiting

After a 10-year-old girl in Ohio was raped and had to go to Indiana to get an abortion, the Wall Street Journal called this “an abortion story too good to confirm.” It was confirmed but the Journal has refused to apologize. 

Gov. Hogan spent $400,000 on a private law firm to try to stop Maryland workers from receiving federal unemployment benefits. 

The state’s Department of Labor delayed unemployment benefits to thousands of workers. That’s a crime. Picketing reactionary judges is not a crime.

Marshal Curley didn’t condemn Arizona cops who tear gassed 1,500 people demonstrating against the Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision in Phoenix on June 24. The Wall Street Journal did not express any concern about club-swinging Los Angeles police who on the same date clubbed and beat journalists covering a protest against the Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision.

Along with these police attacks is the red baiting. “Is This Communist ‘Cult’ Trying to Hijack the Abortion Movement?,” was a July 10 headline in the Daily Beast.

The article attacks Rise Up 4 Abortion Rights, which carried out the courageous protests at the Supreme Court justices’ homes. The Daily Beast claims the group is linked to the Revolutionary Communist Party.

This reeks of Sen. Joe McCarthy and the anti-communist witch hunt. It’s reminiscent of the attacks against the ANSWER coalition and the late Ramsey Clark for organizing anti-war protests 20 years ago.

Objecting to picketing capitalists’ homes isn’t new.  Lucy Parsons organized marches of poor people going to wealthy neighborhoods demanding food. Her partner Albert Parsons was hanged with three other martyrs for demanding an eight-hour work day.

In 1964, the NAACP Youth Council in Milwaukee and its adviser, Rev. James Groppi, were attacked for picketing the homes of judges who refused to resign from the 

all-white Eagles Club. 

Most of the unconstitutional laws forbidding demonstrations at homes were enacted to try to stop the civil rights movement.

Harassing women isn’t free speech

What isn’t free speech is harassing women going to reproductive health centers. Abortion is healthcare.

The police and the courts helped hate groups like the misnamed Operation Rescue harass women. Dr. David Gunn was murdered during a 1993 anti-abortion protest at the Women’s Medical Services clinic in Pensacola, 

Florida. 

So far, the U.S. Supreme Court has upheld injunctions that prevent bigots from getting too close to clinics. But the reactionary majority seek to narrow any protection.

In Madsen v. Women’s Health Center, the court in 1994 upheld a buffer zone around the clinic that prevented bigots from getting any closer than 36 feet. Compare that to election day when distributors of handbills and palm cards are prevented from coming within 100 feet of a polling place.

In the same decision, the court overturned part of the injunction that stopped bigots from harassing women with cat calls and displays of bloody images. These obscenities wouldn’t be tolerated near a hospital.

We can’t count on the capitalist courts to guarantee our free speech rights. In 1919, the U.S. Supreme Court unanimously upheld the jailing of Eugene Debs for making an anti-war speech in Canton, Ohio.

What perhaps most upset the corporation lawyers on the court was his denunciation of their 5-4 decision that threw out a law prohibiting child labor. This was the “good old days” when millions of girls and boys worked in sweatshops and mines.

Debs compared it to a “kind of craps [dice] game — come seven, come ‘leven — they declared the child labor law unconstitutional.” While in prison Eugene Debs ran for president as a socialist and received almost a million votes. 

It’s the power of the people that will protect our rights to organize and free speech. People have the right to confront that sexist pig, Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh, while he’s pigging out on steaks at a fancy restaurant.

What’s criminal are bigots on the high court who want to go back to the days of coat hangers and abortions in alleys.As the protesters chanted near one of these justices’ mansions, “No privacy for us, no peace for you!”