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Multi-Racial March Hits Cover-up of KKKops’ Racist Murder
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- 04 October 2012 256 hits
Two comrades went into the Haitian countryside to meet with two groups about the necessity to build the struggle against capitalism. The first group was a reading group made up of 15 high school and university students. The second group was a freedom school (“tilekòl”) of 12 regular agricultural workers and 30 of their friends.
The agendas of both meetings were to discuss a mass campaign to end cholera in Haiti and the historical importance of August 14. This date commemorates the initial planning meeting in Bois Caïman, in the north of Haiti in 1791, of slaves for their revolution against slavery.
In every period of imperialism, the class enemy brings not only a political and an economic oppression, but also genocidal dangers (e.g., yellow fever in the colonial period, “chik,” a parasite which attacks the feet, in the period of the 1915-34 U.S. occupation, and cholera with the current UN/Minustah occupation).
Both groups discussed the source of the exploitation and assassination of the working class — the capitalist system. Even if we are able to win today’s reform struggles, as long as capitalism exists there will be other similar problems to resolve tomorrow.
The only way out of this perpetual struggle is to destroy the capitalist system. We must transform ourselves into determined fighters, build our Party into a mass party internationally, and create an egalitarian communist society that serves the interests of our class.
Cholera: The Bosses’
Killing Machine
The youth group began with some information about the continued presence of cholera in Haiti. This disease of poverty has been made worse by the lack of clean water and sanitation. Fifty percent of city-dwellers and 70% of people in the countryside do not have access to clean water; fewer have adequate toilets. It continues to kill four to five each day. After the devastating earthquake in 2010, UN occupation troops brought the cholera virus by leaking their waste matter into the Artibonite River, the source of drinking water for tens of thousands of working-class people in the Plateau Central.
The Haitian government, the UN (including the World Health Organization), the imperialist countries, and the “humanitarian” organizations all maintained their silence. They did not prepare for the possible appearance of any epidemic after the earthquake. They did the minimum necessary when cholera was introduced. Once the main manifestation of the epidemic was over, they all turned their backs and walked away.
Today, cholera continues to spread, not only in Haiti, but in the neighboring Dominican Republic, in Spain, in Ghana and elsewhere where working-class people live in poverty. It was noted that the budget of the hated UN occupation troops — Minustah — for 18 days would pay for the inoculation of every man, woman and child in Haiti!
We debated whether Minustah’s presence in Haiti serves any purpose other than suppressing the will of the masses. We also discussed how superstition about the spread of cholera (not by a magic powder but by the lack of clean water and sanitation facilities) hides the political reality that it was brought to Haiti by imperialism. The ruling class allowed cholera to spread by its racist neglect. By ignoring the continued cholera epidemic, the working-class’s ability to organize and fight back is weakened.
Youth Study History of Haiti’s Revolution
During the presentation about the slave revolt of 1791 we learned that it was the first planned meeting between the “maroons” (those who had escaped slavery and lived freely in the mountains) and slaves. It led to a mass violent uprising lasting 12 years, ending the ability of the slave owners to continue their brutal, racist exploitation of the slaves. It also led to the successful abolition of slavery and the independence of Haiti from the yoke of French colonialism.
Bourgeois education teaches students in Haiti that what happened at Bois Caïman was a spontaneous, religious ceremony that relied on superstition. In our discussion, we learned that the planning of the insurrection used the cultural symbols of voodoo as tools of resistance against slavery. The young people asked why voodoo was no longer a tool of resistance against capitalism but just another religion which weakens workers’ ability to fight. It was pointed out that the capitalist class always corrupts popular culture and turns it into a poisonous substance that alienates workers.
Workers Organize Against Flood Conditions
The peasant group — tilekòl — has been meeting for several months, in part to resolve their water problems. When it rains, instead of watering their fields, it floods them. They have no access to clean water and are forced to pay for drinking water. The contamination and privatization of water is a problem for workers around the world. A similar struggle continues in the 12 districts to the east of Valle de Mexio, near Mexico City.
Tilekòl has decided to organize its community and fight back to change these conditions. They can try to solve the flooding problem and irrigate their fields by creating a system of canals (typically used in Haiti to solve flooding.) They will organize “koumbites” — collective work teams — to dig the canals. However, they don’t have the hand tools necessary to do the job. They also require an adequate system to bring clean water to the community with a series of public fountains.
Therefore, they have agreed to circulate a petition among all the members of their community and organize a huge delegation to present the petition to the local bosses demanding that they act. However, more action will be needed.
All of these steps are important to show that workers have the skills needed to run society for the benefit of all. When workers around the world understand that we don’t need the bosses or their capitalist system, we will be one step closer to breaking the chains of our oppression!
New York City, September 27 — “Justice for: Shantel Davis!”
We chanted in the halls of the Presbyterian Church where the Women’s City Club of NYC was presenting the head of the murdering NYPD, Ray Kelly, an award for enhancing the life of residents.
Our interjection of anti-racist politics as well as the reality about the death squad (NYPD) that Ray Kelly leads was not welcoming news for these high-society women. We brought the fight directly into their arena. The struggle for an indictment of the kkkop Philip Aktins continues, intertwined with the struggle to end capitalism’s racist reign.
ELWOOD, IL, September 20 — Workers at Wal-mart’s contractor Roadlink here have been on strike since September 15. Two days earlier they had filed a lawsuit for non-payment for all hours worked, for being paid less than the minimum wage and for non-payment of overtime they had worked. Several workers who sued were fired on the spot. This sparked the walkout.
The workers’ hellish conditions include enduring extreme temperatures, inhaling dust and chemical residue and being forced to lift thousands of boxes weighing up to 250 lbs each with no support. Their work-day can vary from two hours to 16 hours. Injuries are common as well as discrimination against women and retaliation against workers who protest these conditions.
This warehouse is a key Midwest distribution center for Wal-Mart. Six lawsuits have been filed against it for wage theft.
While a trillion dollars worth of goods passes through the Chicago region, the majority of warehouse workers are temps paid poverty wages; 25 percent need public assistance; 37 percent work more than one job; and 96 percent of temp workers have no health insurance.
Wal-Mart warehouse workers in southern California have also walked out protesting similar conditions after lawsuits were filed to stop mass firings.
It appears Wal-Mart’s exploitation is not exclusive to China. Capitalist oppression is worldwide.
The term “free trade” is a lie, since it implies that it is only about buying and selling (trade) without hindrance (free). Actually, free trade agreements (FTAs) are a mask to cover exploitative relationships imposed by the more powerful economies on the less powerful — i.e., imperialism. Take, for example, the “United States–Dominican Republic–Central America Free Trade Agreement” (CAFTA-DR). This treaty, like other FTAs, contains malignant elements that are hidden under the benign-sounding title.
CAFTA-DR prohibits any Central American country from opposing an attempt by a U.S. business to set up a subsidiary within its borders, so long as the business meets certain requirements. And if a member country objects that those requirements have not, in fact, been met, that country can be sued by the U.S. business at the World Bank. In 1965 the World Bank set up its International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID) for just that purpose, with the participation of almost 150 countries from around the world.
Thus Pacific Rim, a mining company, has staked a claim in El Salvador to extract gold. The company claims that its plan will preserve the environment, including the nearby river Rio Lempa. Rio Lempa is the source of livelihood for many Salvadorans, through farming and fishing. The workers in these industries have been fighting against Pacific Rim for some time now, knowing full well that the many poisonous chemicals used in mining will pollute and destroy their river. Indeed the workers have formed organizations and put so much pressure on the Salvadoran government that so far it has refused Pacific Rim’s permit to mine the gold. As a result of their resistance, a number of workers in these organizations have been threatened with death or actually murdered.
Under capitalism the laws are designed to protect the bosses and their system. Thus, Pacific Rim and the U.S.-based Commerce Group are suing the El Salvadoran government in the ICSID for lost profit.
Commerce Group has already polluted the San Sebastian River with aluminum, zinc, iron, manganese, and nickel, among other toxic metals. One study found that these toxic elements produce weakness, fatigue, rashes, and mental confusion in 60% of the local population, with women and children most affected.
But Pacific Rim and Commerce Group are not in business to care about the health of the local working classes. Rather they are in business for one thing only — profit — and health problems are not their concern.
Furthermore the rules of the ICSID do not even permit it to consider environmental or health problems, but rather only narrowly defined investment issues. It is likely therefore that it will grant Pacific Rim and Commerce Group the $100 million they each seek from the Salvadoran government, as compensation for their lost profits. Thus does imperialism illustrate the power of the strong over the weak, but only when the weak fight by themselves, separated from the rest of the world’s working class. When workers around the world unite in one powerful force under the leadership of PLP, such struggles can not only be won, but can be transformed into revolution by putting a complete end to capitalism and its current manifestation of imperialism. Join us.
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France Moving to Open Fascism: Police State Technology
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- 04 October 2012 300 hits
PARIS, September 16 — As in most Western “democracies,” French capitalists are using new technologies to reinforce the state’s police powers. The latest step is the organization of a Justice Ministry “national platform for court-ordered wiretaps,” to become operational this fall.
This 42-million-euro (53 million USD) centralized computer system will collect, manage and store massive amounts of information: who owns which cell phone, calls made and received, SMSes and e-mails, Internet pages that have been visited, on-line purchases and GPS information. Presently this information is scattered among 350 different police and gendarme stations and is managed by five or six different private companies.
Work on the new centralized system began in 2006 in utter secrecy. It has been classified “Top Secret — Defense.” The National Commission on IT and Liberty — which normally must be consulted whenever such a system is created — has been shut out. No watchdog agency (even though such things are just window-dressing) has been set up.
The computer programs used to spy on the French will be the same ones that the Amesys company sold to dictator Muammar Khadafy to spy on Libyans. The computers will be housed on the premises of the Thales company, which won the contract to manage the system.
The bosses are establishing this creeping police state to enable them to move swiftly to crush any rebellion against future imperialist wars or against massive unemployment (see adjoining article).
