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Cuba: Hurricane Response Is a Political Question
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- 29 September 2017 29 hits
The ability of a society to respond to natural disasters is primarily a political question. Communism is the exact opposite of the hopeless self-serving mantras of modern capitalism. While Cuba has long ago given up socialism in favor of becoming the next vacation hot spot, the ideology and practices have hung on to some degree, both in the state’s priorities and the outlook of the people.
Cuba’s reaction to Hurricane Irma gives us a fading look at what has been lost as the communist movement has declined over the last 50 years as well as a small glimmer at what is possible in a society fully dedicated to serving the needs of the great masses of people.
Hurricane Response After the Socialist Revolution
Shortly after the socialist revolution in 1960, Cuba developed a sophisticated hurricane response system in the wake of Hurricane Flora, a 1963 storm that killed 1,750 people in Cuba. The system included standing evacuation plans for every household and frequent drills. The whole preparation and response to hurricanes was organized under a civil defense system that organized people throughout the island to participate in the readiness, evacuations and immediate response. The Civil defense system has hung on, at least for now, even as socialism has been abandoned by the Cuban rulers.
[T]hey save enormous numbers of lives by massive evacuations. … this time they evacuated a million people. And even though the infrastructure is poor and many of the houses are very poor, [the state’s] focus is on saving lives.
…[the civil defense organizations] have all the neighborhoods mapped. They know exactly who lives where. They know who the vulnerable people are, and they know who the elderly people are and where they live. And a couple of days before the hurricane hits, they evacuate them all. They start with those people. Pregnant women get put in hospitals. People with infirmities get also put in hospitals. Others get taken to either shelters or with family or friends who are living in more secure houses. But everybody in Cuba knows what they’re going to do if a hurricane hits.” (Democracy Now, 9/22).
Compare what happened in Cuba, where 10 lives were lost in one of the places hardest hit by Irma to the situation in Florida where 11 people died at a single site as a result of the failure of the nursing home administration and State authorities to evacuate the Rehabilitation Center at Hollywood Hills. After Hurricane Irma knocked out their power “residents …spent three days sweltering in stiflingly hot rooms despite the fact that a fully functioning and air-conditioned hospital is right across the street”(NBC 9/21).
Perhaps even more sickening than the complete abdication of responsibility by those in-charge of the care of the nursing home patients is how the profit system makes an honest evaluation of what went wrong in Hollywood Hills impossible to assess as the finger pointing has begun.
A critical issue—whether administrators from the Rehabilitation Center at Hollywood Hills in Broward County made distress calls for help to Gov. Rick Scott’s private cellphone — will probably not be cleared up soon. On Sunday, the Florida governor’s office revealed the four key voice mails from the center have been deleted…
The center’s administrators maintain the calls to Scott were seeking “immediate assistance.” Scott’s office, however, says the calls never indicated an emergency, and that the information was passed on to the appropriate state agencies. But now the voice mails are gone (Washington Post 9/25).
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FIGHT GENOCIDAL CAPITALIST LAND GRABS IN MYANMAR
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- 25 September 2017 27 hits
Imperialism and Capitalist Exploitation at Heart of Myanmar’s Destruction of Rohingya Community
MARCH TO MYANMAR EMBASSY
SEPTEMBER 30, 4PM, 1747 Columbia Rd NW, WASHINGTON, DC.
The imperialist rivalry among China, India, and the US is embedded in the destruction of Rohingya villages, the murder of Rohingya people by the military and racist vigilantes, and the forced migration of at least 400,000 refugees into neighboring Bangladesh. These attacks are mainly portrayed as an attack on Muslims who have been denied citizenship in Myanmar, and labelled in the mass media as a religious issue. But is religious persecution at the root of this human crisis? Or is it a storyline meant to mask the true cause: displacement of peasant farmers by capitalist and imperialist interests in order to exploit a strategic, resource-rich region?
For the last 20 years, groups such as Human Rights Watch have documented land grabs by Myanmar’s military regime that have displaced the rural poor indiscriminately across all of the country’s 135 ethnic groups. For example, in Keren province on the border with Thailand--viewed as a prime spot for tourism, industrial expansion and agricultural development—rural populations have had their homes and farmland confiscated without compensation, and been arrested for trespassing when they continue to work the land.
Western sanctions against Myanmar’s military government were in place throughout its rule, up until the 2015 elections, when Aung San Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy (NLD) prevailed. But despite the election victory, Myanmar remains largely under military control. Current aggressive military actions against the Rohingya and other ethnic groups in the area may lead to a reinstatement of sanctions. The brutal response to the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army (ARSA)’s attack on local police stations is being labelled by Myanmar’s government as a “security issue”, while the UN and Western nations portray it as “ethnic cleansing” of a large section of Rakhine province. The value of the territory now being cleared of Rohingya villages and others derives from China’s interest in building a $7.3 billion deep sea port at Kyaukpyu on the Rakhine coast and developing a $3.2 billion industrial park nearby. This is part of China’s $900 billion Belt and Road Initiative in Asia and would give China a foothold in the Bay of Bengal and the Indian Ocean. India also seeks to strengthen its role in the Bay of Bengal through its deep water port at Sittwe.
With so much at stake, it is clear that the Nobel Peace Prize awarded to Aung San Suu Kyi is as meaningless as that given to Obama—or Henry Kissinger, for that matter. Human rights are easily overlooked in the blinding glare of profits from pipelines and industrial development. Some of the country’s Buddhists, who are impoverished themselves, nevertheless have been won over to carry out ethnic and religious persecution and are helping the military, similar to the way some poor white workers in the U.S. blame their poverty on immigrants and Black people. The only solution to this problem, which is emblematic of others taking place worldwide, lies in class struggle and multiracial, multiethnic unity. The fight against anti-Muslin prejudice in the US and worldwide is part of the antiracist struggles necessary to build the unity needed to destroy the capitalist system worldwide.
The Progressive Labor Party is an international revolutionary communist party with organizers in 27 countries. We support the struggles of Myanmar’s workers and farmers against the government’s efforts to drive people off the land and impoverish them in slave-labor industrial development. We condemn the ethnic cleansing of the Rohingya and call upon the many oppressed Buddhists and others to join in demanding that the military cease and desist their attacks on the Muslim population and other groups in the area. We need to build a world where workers run the society, not the military and fake Nobel laureates. Fight for communism!
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The devastation of mass flooding in South Asia, West Africa, and the U.S. has exposed the anarchy of capitalism, a failed system that magnifies destruction instead of preparing society to get through the storms.
Under capitalism, resources are invested where the greatest profits can be made. In general, capitalist bosses have little interest in keeping themselves in check—partly out of greed, but mainly out of fear that other capitalists will get to those profits first.
This profit-driven pathology leads to ever growing chaos as development, pollution, and overcrowding into unplanned cities outpaces the minimal resources the rulers allot to manage the problems.
This is a world crying out for the sanity of communism, a world built around the needs of the masses of people, the international working class. A system based on workers’ needs—not the bosses’ profits—would channel the massive resources now hoarded by the capitalists to be used instead for the good of society.
Under capitalism, mass destruction is barely addressed once the news cycle moves on. This is most apparent when the people suffering are Black, Latin, or Asian. Racism becomes a tool used both to hide what is happening and to justify the mass poverty that generates poor housing and subsistence living standards for hundreds of millions of people across the globe.
Under communism, problems of development would be dealt with in open and honest struggle. Once again, the needs of the working class would be primary.
South Asia: Stripping the Hills
Flooding across India, Bangladesh, and Nepal killed over 1400 people and left more than 40 million homeless or without the basic means to sustain themselves. “Across flood-affected parts of Bangladesh, India and Nepal, millions of people have lost their main source of income, whether it be from destroyed crops and dead livestock, damage suffered to local businesses or because they are displaced” (Independent, 9/7).
Hardest hit were families that “live in bare mud houses and rely on subsistence farming....Those farms are now underwater, and thousands of people are stuck living under plastic tarps in camps for displaced people where disease is beginning to spread (New York Times, 8/29).
South Asia is struck by monsoons every year, often with flooding, but capitalism has vastly worsened the problem through the race for profits that leads to unplanned farming and industry that wreaks havoc on people’s lives. The latest siege of floods in India was aggravated by barren hillsides, stripped to accommodate industrial farming. As the hillsides collapsed and riverbanks disintegrated, floods crashed into densely populated communities. According to N. Biren Singh, chief minister of the northeastern Indian state of Manipur, hills in the neighboring state of Assam “in particular have suffered from deforestation besides conditions influenced by climate change” (Hindustan Times, 9/10).
Sierra Leone: Routine Disasters
A similar situation has unfolded in Sierra Leone in West Africa, where unsafe housing is routinely swept away during the rainy season. Just outside Freetown, the country’s capital port city, flooding last month led to a mudslide that killed more than 400 people, with another 600 or more missing (Al Jazeera, 8/19). The disaster struck the outlying town of Regent, a settlement of over one million people. Because of massive poverty, they are forced to build homes on a steep hillside while seeking work in the capital.
“There is little to no urban planning going on in the city at all levels of society.… There is a chronic housing deficit in the city and the issues only get discussed on an annual basis when flooding happens and [it] comes into the spotlight. Although the government has relocated some communities from informal housing [squatter communities], these are often forced resettlements which leave residents on the outskirts of the city so many soon return to their original homes” (The Guardian, 8/14).
Texas: Bosses’ Incompetence
In Texas, Hurricane Harvey damaged or destroyed over 185,0000 homes, leaving more than 40,000 people in shelters (ABC News, 9/1). The bosses’ decision not to evacuate left thousands stranded in the rising waters. The capitalists proved once again that they have no ability to quickly and safely redirect resources to serve workers’ needs in emergencies.
In 2005, when Houston was evacuated during Hurricane Rita, hundreds of thousands of people who left to evacuate on their own were jammed and stalled on highways to nowhere. People were trapped without food or water. An illegal bus carrying nursing home residents exploded, killing 26 people.
Twelve years later, the continued haphazard growth of Houston has left the city no closer to an effective evacuation plan, even when there is ample warning of an impending disaster.
Racist Media Coverage
While there has been extensive reporting on the flooding in Texas and Florida, news coverage of the monsoons that have ravaged millions of Black, Latin, and South Asian workers around the world have barely been covered by the 24/7/365 /news networks, which compete for the most ridiculous celebrity gossip to fill their air time.
Additionally, the news barely referenced the fact that most people forced into shelters in Texas and now Florida are poor Black and Latin workers without resources to evacuate.
Resources Toward Profit
As the Washington Post (8/29) noted, Houston’s flooding was made exponentially worse by the area’s rampant overdevelopment, which has paved over wetlands and other areas that once served as a natural drainage system for floodwaters:
Growth that is virtually unchecked, including in flood-prone areas, has diminished the land’s already-limited natural ability to absorb water, according to environmentalists and experts in land use and natural disasters. And the city’s drainage system — a network of reservoirs, bayous and, as a last resort, roads that hold and drain water — was not designed to handle the massive storms that are increasingly common.
Capitalism is about profits above all else. In a world where the bosses spend trillions of dollars on war, build skyscrapers on manmade islands, and send tourists into space, billions of people live in mud homes or tin shacks or in cheaply built housing tracts in known flood paths. Capitalism is incapable of effectively guiding society. As long the bosses’ profit keep rolling in, they do not care if workers live or die.
But after workers seize power under communism, and abolish money and profit, resources will be shared according to the needs of our class. Floods, monsoons, and earthquakes will be prepared for. Development will be governed by safety and rational planning. The unnatural disasters of capitalism will become relics of the past.
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Chicago: Multiracial Nurses Fight Sexist Working Conditions
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- 15 September 2017 30 hits
CHICAGO, September 13— In preparation for their planned one-day strike today, a multiracial group of nurses at University of Illinois Hospital (UIH) protested for better wages and safer working conditions. They chanted, “You save money—We save lives!”
But the strike was called off this morning. Why? The union reached a tentative contract agreement, which must still be ratified by the nurses and approved by the University of Illinois’ board of trustees. Details of the contract has yet to be released. Yet, the struggle is far from over.
The nurses were demonstrating in response to their stalled union contract negotiations with the sexist and racist hospital bosses. Progressive Labor Party (PLP) comrades here have been supporting the UIH nurses in their struggles against the bosses. PLP aims to win workers away from the reform struggle treadmill and towards the politics of revolutionary communism.
‘Women’s Work’ of Nursing Devalued
Nursing is a majority-women profession and the ruling class always pays less for “women’s work.” The work itself is discounted and devalued simply by being done mostly by women. Sexism is why the hospital bosses think that any nurse can work any unit—the bosses think the work can’t be that hard since women do it, therefore they should be able to do it wherever and under any conditions. This is sexist garbage. Nurses are crucial to patient care, and deserve a stable working environment. Without nurses, no hospital would cease to function.
The rampant sexism also explains why the hospital bosses think they can get away with terrible the nurses’ working conditions. Their assumption is that women workers won’t stand up and fight against their attacks. They are dead wrong!
From Pakistan to Haiti, from Poland to Chicago, women workers are leading the struggle to bury capitalism and replace it with an egalitarian communist world, one where all labor is valued.
Unsafe Working Conditions = Poor Patient Care
The UIH is a state hospital where the majority of its patients are Black and Latin workers, many of which are rely on federal and state aid. The hospital is a wreck: hazardous staffing ratios force nurses to accept direct patient care on top of managing the unit, and more. The UIH bosses are using racism to attack both healthcare workers and patients alike. The unsafe conditions lead to more stress and burnout for healthcare workers, which in turn leads to poor care outcomes for those same Black and Latin patients.
While racism and sexism are two potent weapons in the capitalist bosses’ arsenal, they also expose two of the bosses’ biggest weaknesses. Historically, the most significant worker movements have occurred struggles where the workers reject the bosses’ divisions and unify across gender, race, nationality, and job titles to demand an increased living standard for all workers. It remains the task of the international working class led by the communist PLP to overcome the bosses’ destructive divisions and organize for workers’ power worldwide.
Bosses’ Hack Union Will Only Sell Nurses Out
The 1,200 nurses represented by the Illinois nurses Association (INA) are demanding a mere an annual 3 percent cost-of-living increase. The Hospital proposing paying nurses a $500 cash bonus the first year of the contract with one percent increases in each of the next two years (Chicago Tribune, 9/5). Throughout the contract negotiations with the UIH bosses, the union misleadership has only proposed the usual plea for crumbs from management, including a paltry wage increase and permission for nurses to speak with union hacks during their shifts.
It’s important for nurses to strike for better working and living conditions. The INA union misleaders only used the threat of a strike but called it off at the eleventh hour. They are not a legitimate fighting force representing the interests of the workers. If the INA actually cared about the success of a strike or the interests of the nurses instead of just collecting membership dues, they would be coordinating with other unions across a wide range of other professions to build the struggle into something much bigger. They would connect the sexist and racist attacks on nurses to the crises of capitalism and its drive towards imperialist war.
However, to do so means bringing attention to the union’s own limits. Given their reformist nature, these collaborating unions will only take the struggle against their capitalist masters so far, before it’s back to business as usual.
In It to Win It with Workers
Instead of winning workers to accept some crumbs, comrades in PLP are fighting to win workers to the idea that they deserve the entire cake. Whether it’s nurses, mechanics, sanitation workers, or teachers, it’s the international working class that truly makes the world go round. Armed with a Party organized for communist revolution, the world is ours to win. Supporting the brave UIH nurses is another step in that long struggle!
BOSTON, August 19—The City braced for a post-Charlottesville, Neo-Nazi Free Speech rally at the Boston Commons. The Progressive Labor Party contingent joined the 40,000 antiracist demonstrators, which included their co-workers, friends, and union. We held a large banner that read “No Free Speech For Fascists, Smash Racism With Multi-Racial Unity.” We distributed 1,500 leaflets.
Various unions, Black Lives Matter groups, and others planned two anti-racist protests. One demonstration was held in front of the Massachusetts State House, a quarter mile away from the speakers. The other began two miles away from the Boston Common.
The racist speakers were located in a bandstand in the center of the Common, protected with jersey barriers, fences, Boston police and tactical police, with state police support. Helicopters flew overhead, and sound cannons setup for crowd control.
Reject Republicrats
While public schools face cutbacks and school closures and working people increasingly can no longer afford to live in the city of Boston, Mayor Walsh has chosen to spend over a million dollars to protect fascists and white supremacists. By granting a permit, without even a court fight, Walsh and his capitalist puppet masters have given a victory to these racists. Students of history might remember that the Nazi party rise in 1920s Germany was accelerated after Hitler successfully rallied in left-leaning Berlin. The current crop of fascists, view this rally as a similar opportunity.
Liberal politicians like Walsh and right-wing politicians like president Donald Trump are two sides of the same capitalist coin. While Trump openly promotes the fascists, the liberals protect their ability to organize. Both types of politicians serve various factions of the U.S. capitalist class. These capitalist see their empire slowly crumbling. They are willing to use any means necessary to preserve their investments, including going to war abroad and promoting fascism at home. They fear a united working class opposing their plans. They do whatever they can to divide us along racial, gender, national and other lines. This is why we must unite Black, Latin, Asian and white working people to fight these fascist vermin and their capitalist backers. Ultimately, we must abolish capitalism, a system where eight capitalists have more wealth than half the world’s population.
Fight Back like a Worker
The fascist rally used only 45 minutes of their state-sanctioned two hours. The police escorted them out. The police were in formation and marching out to confront anti-racist demonstrators. We leafleted, spoke to friends and anti-fascist demonstrators, and learned a few things: As police were leading out the fascists, workers on the streets boldly attempted to fight them; there were 33 arrests. There were unaffiliated anti-fascists at the bandstand shouting to the 30 or so fascists. One of the racists came off the bandstand and into the crowd raising his hand in a Nazi salute. He was then punched by an anti-racist.
Unlike Charlottesville, this march had a large number of anti-racist protesters, and few to no vigilante fascists roaming about. This shows that there are many people willing to stand up against fascism.
However, we should not let down our guard. Fascist and racist groups are being reorganized under a less overt racist guise emphasizing a “clean cut” look without the skinhead image or KKK robes. More average white workers, who are victims of capitalism too, are being enticed to see racism as the answer to the problems of capitalism.
Working Class Has A Record for Smashing Nazis
We influenced many demonstrators with our leaflet, the only literature with a class analysis of racism. It made the important point that fascist and racist speech comes at a cost; which is the lives of countless numbers of workers in the U.S. and worldwide. It cost the lives of 6 million Jewish people and 60 million lives to defeat the Nazis in WWII. Racism has made life a living hell for millions of Black and immigrant people in this country. The ending of slavery came at the price of 600,000 deaths during the Civil War.
The few strides made by Black workers in this country owe as much to urban rebellions and militant confrontation against racists groups such as the KKK as to non-violent civil rights marches. PLP and other anti-racist forces have being fighting fascist and racist groups since the 1960s. Past PLP Actions have made attacking the KKK/Nazis popular! One veteran demonstrator said, “Back in the 1970s, PLP and INCAR (Committee Against Racism) terrorized the KKK in Boston. That was great.” In 1979, we led hundreds to attack the KKK Grand Wizard at Boston City Hall. This has inspired the working class to fight and stop fascist and racist groups.
Let us not cheapen these past fights by allowing the rebuilding of racist and fascist movements. Reject the liberal fascist warmongers when fighting fascists; we must build a mass movement that fights racism, sexism and imperialist war and unites workers of all races and nationalities to build a world where all work and fruits of the labor are shared. That society without wages or racism is called communism.