Questions have arisen over the migrant workers’ revolt in the small Italian town of Rosarno, Calabria. The NY Times (1/12) suggested that the reason for the violence  was  locals and immigrants competing for the fruit harvesting jobs, although immigrants had worked in the fields for years. Fifty people were injured, cars burned and windows smashed. The major Italian news agency claimed “racism and poor conditions fueled violence,” ignoring not only Rosarno’s anti-racism demonstration after the conflict, but also the national anti-racism demonstration of 250,000 held in Rome last October.2 Once again, the bosses’ media didn’t dig below the surface.

The Comitato Lavoratori Immigrati e Italiani Uniti (Committee of United Italian and Immigrant Workers), an immigrants’ rights organization in Rome, analyzed what happened. This report from Italy is based on that analysis.

The violence that exploded after local youths shot at three African laborers grew out of an intense class struggle that began years ago, when wholesalers increased profits by reducing the prices paid for agricultural products and local residents refused to accept  a one-euro wage-reduction for each box of fruit. To make up the cheap labor shortfall, the Calabrian Mafia, or ’Ndrangheta, began organizing “illegal” immigration. Africans were promised decent pay and living conditions, but were forced to accept much lower wages and inhuman living conditions after arriving in Italy as undocumented workers.

The Italian press reported one of the workers as saying, “I, too, was protesting... but then the situation got worse and they began shooting.... I can’t go back [to Rosarno].”

It’s not hard to read between the lines. The immigrant workers were not protesting random shootings, but rather lousy conditions and pay. To intimidate them into keeping their mouths shut and their heads low, the ’Ndrangheta began shooting at immigrants with air rifles. The gangsters’ strategy backfired, and Rosarno became the site of open class warfare.

Italy’s current government has adopted a tough stance toward “illegal” immigration. It shipped about 1,200 undocumented workers to detention centers. Others fled to nearby regions. The xenophobic Interior Minister, however, has announced that more than half will be given working papers.

The fruit rots on the trees, but that’s not the only thing rotten in Calabria. In a town of fewer than 16,000 residents, it’s not possible that almost 2,000 Africans could have been employed in the fields and not been noticed by the police. Calabria was a concrete example of the class struggle, illustrating how capitalism not only needs a reserve army of the unemployed on a global scale, but also requires its government servants and organized crime to regulate that workforce.

What happened in Calabria shows that so-called unorganized and unskilled immigrant workers possess a militant class-consciousness, and that it’s the bosses profiting from their labor — and not presumably native-born workers — who foment racist violence.

While currently modest in size and influence, PLP in Italy is helping to develop an international anti-racist movement that proposes a revolutionary solution to the oppression faced by exploited and superexploited workers alike. J

Sources:

 Donadio, Rachel. “Looking Past the Facade of Italian City After Riots.” New York Times <http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/13/world/europe/13italy.html?scp=1&sq=Donadio&st=cse>.

  “Migrants ‘treated badly in Italy’ MSF and UN say racism and poor conditions fuelled violence.” 12 January, 16:44. <http://www.ansa.it/web/notizie/collection/rubriche/english/ 2010/01/12/visualizza_new.html_1672936977.html>

 Corriere del Mezzogiorno 13 gennaio 2010 “Gli africani di Rosarno a Castel Volturno.” <http://corrieredelmezzogiorno.corriere.it/notizie/cronaca/2010/13-gennaio-2010/gli-africani-rosarno-castel-volturnoe-coloniali-la-spesa-diventano-negrozi-1602281073901_print.html>

  La Repubblica. “Maroni annuncia: asilo politico per gli immigrati feriti a Rosarno.” http://www.repubblica.it/cronaca/2010/01/17/news/maroni_su_rosarno-1984669/

The unemployment figures coming out of Washington are as a phony as a three-dollar bill. By reporting that the unemployment rate went “down” in January to 9.7% from the previous month’s 10%, the Obama administration is trying to spread the notion that the great recession is receding. Bullshit! No matter which way capitalism twists the figures, unemployment and underemployment is the highest since the Great Depression. Consider the following:

• Firstly, when taking into account “discouraged” workers who’ve given up looking for non-existent jobs (not counted in the phony 9.7% statistic), plus part-timers who can’t find full-time jobs (also not counted), the actual rate is 21.2%. (Shadowstats.com) In fact, one reason for the “lower” 9.7% rate is that more workers stopped looking for jobs, conveniently reducing the number the government counts as unemployed.

• Secondly, how do they square the “fact” that unemployment is decreasing if the government reports another 20,000 jobs lost. And this is only the initial figure. Often when the current month’s figures are announced, they are “revised” once the following month’s numbers are reported, usually revised downward. They’ve already lowered their December employment level downward by 1,363,000. One wonders what the revised January figures will be a month from now. It’s hard to keep up with the half-truths and outright lies.

• Thirdly, long-term unemployed — those out of work more than a year — are no longer even counted in the “discouraged” category (courtesy of the Clinton administration’s “re-definition”). The number of long-term unemployed is the highest in 70 years.

• Fourth, unemployment among 12 million undocumented workers is hardly included in these totals.

• Finally, the Bureau of Labor Statistics assumes that employment in new businesses more than offsets layoffs by firms going out of business. (And the number of “new businesses” is also an assumption.) But if the folding businesses don’t report their payroll elimination, the BLS just counts those workers as “still employed.” Shadowstats.com estimates because of this and other “quirks” the BLS undercounts monthly job losses by about 150,000.

The Racist Nature of Unemployment

Of course, the headlines don’t shout out the racist unemployment rates among black and Latino workers, or youth. Because of racist discrimination, black and Latino unemployment is well over 30%. And youth unemployment hovers around the 50% mark — one out of every two young workers can’t find jobs.

In cities like Detroit — which has been in the throes of a depression for years and where an overwhelming majority of the population is black —— the overall unemployment rate of the entire working class is 50%. In states like California, it’s nearly 30%.

The “official” jobless rate, hovering around 10%, represents over 15 million workers. So the unemployment and underemployment rate plus “discouraged” uncounted workers totaling over 21% means there are well over 30 million workers who can’t get full-time jobs. And there are nearly 200,000 soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan who are not counted as part of the labor force. Without these two imperialist wars, a goodly percentage of these “jobholders” would be jobless. Not to mention a good portion of the 2.4 million inmates in prison.

Unemployment itself is a killer. According to a 1971 Congressional study, it leads directly to the deaths of hundreds of thousands from stress-related heart disease and other recession-related afflictions.

Capitalism has never had full employment. It’s inevitable “boom-and-bust” cycles breed unemployment in periodic recession/depressions, not to mention breeding wars which kill millions of workers worldwide (another way to “lower” unemployment?).

A mass movement to fight racist unemployment must be the order of the day. Communists in such a movement would be linking this horror to how the system needs and uses unemployment to weaken the whole working class. Such a movement could become a real “school for communism.”

Building the PLP out of this “school” can help lead to a revolution that would destroy the bosses, their system, and evils like unemployment, racism and war, replacing it with workers’ power — communism. 

The main change since our last visit to Israel/Palestine over a year ago has been the intensification of racist violence by Israel bosses against Palestinians. On 12/27/08, Israel swooped down on the tiny occupied Gaza strip, killed 1,440 people, including about 430 women and children, wounded 5,000 and left 50,000 homeless. It’s been well-documented that the Israeli military used banned weapons, such as white phosphorous, and targeted civilians who had nowhere to flee.

Since then, no supplies have been allowed in through the high wall completely surrounding the territory, so there’s been no rebuilding. The water is contaminated with sewage, all industry has ceased, and the sick cannot leave for medical care. Gaza is a concentration camp for 1.5 million people.

The supposed rationale for the Israeli attack on Gaza was an unsuccessful attempt to defeat Hamas, the Islamic fundamentalist party that won the 2006 Palestinian election, but was driven out of the West Bank and took up leadership in Gaza. Ironically, it was the Israelis who began building up Hamas in the 1950s as a counterweight to the secular nationalist Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO).

Despite Hamas’s militant rhetoric, the only actual resistance emanating from Gaza were some primitive rockets which killed 13 Israelis over several years. The Israeli slaughter’s main point was to further humiliate and intimidate the Palestinians, build Israeli nationalism and impress the West with Israel’s might. Currently, Egypt, a lackey of Israel and the U.S., is building a steel wall on its side of the border with Gaza to close the tunnels which are Gaza’s only source of goods.

In 1948, when Israel became a Jewish state, over 700,000 Palestinians — 6 out of 7 — were forcibly driven from their homes in Israel into Gaza, the West Bank or to other countries. Today there are 4.5 million Palestinians who still live under Israeli military occupation. Travel from this area, and even within it, is restricted by over 700 checkpoints, which can only be crossed with a permit. Only a minority of Palestinians are eligible for these passes — the rest are prisoners in their towns and villages. Unemployment exceeds 50%, amid shortages of water and health care. Palestinians who live in Israel comprise 20% of Israel’s citizens, but are second-class citizens, with inferior housing, schools and wages.

Currently the number of Jews and Arabs in Israel/Palestine is almost equal, and Israel engages in a furious game of trying to maintain a majority of Jews in Israel proper so it can claim to be a “democracy” by winning elections. To this end Israel’s rulers are accelerating their campaign to remove as many Palestinians as possible from its territory while grabbing as much land as possible.

The apartheid Wall, which Israel has built since 2002 to surround the Palestinians, cuts through large parts of Jerusalem where Arabs live, and they are now being declared “non-Jersulamites,” thus losing their access to Israeli health care and the right to work. Thousands of homes occupied by Palestinians in East Jerusalem — where they were driven 60 years ago — have been declared illegal and are being demolished or forcibly taken over by Israelis.

Eighty-five thousand Bedouins live in “unrecognized” villages in Israel, where they receive no services and have simply been declared “not to exist.” In the desert, people are living in boxes and shipping containers, only miles from modern cities. Meanwhile, half a million Israelis have moved into settlements in the occupied territories, complete with Israeli-only roads connecting them to Israel.

Most Israelis tolerate or applaud their apartheid state because they’re raised on a diet of virulent racism. They’re taught that anti-Semitism is a special form of racism that can never be eradicated, not understanding that racism has been used by ruling classes throughout history to divide the ruled against each other. They also learn that all Arabs are “infected” with anti-Semitism and only want to destroy Israel, and that Jews can only be safe in a militarized state.

Schoolchildren are taught a completely distorted history. There’s no mention of the expulsion of Palestinians from their land, only the myth that they left “voluntarily.” In fact, the anti-Arab racism among Jews in Israel has made them reviled throughout the Muslim and much of the Western world and actually leaves them more vulnerable than ever. Israel receives $3 billion a year from the U.S. and only exists because it is, for now, strategically important to the U.S. as a military outpost which can help protect U.S. oil interests. If and when U.S. rulers decide Israel is more of a liability than an asset, the hated Israel bosses might not survive very long. This could depend on the U.S. ability to sustain enough military bases in Iraq, Afghanistan, the Middle-East and Central Asia so as to no longer need Israeli might, or if the U.S. decides that antipathy to Israel prevents desired normalization of relations with the Muslim world.

Some Comrades

(Next issue: Internal struggles within Palestine and Israel, and the potential for communist organizing.) 

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti — As we entered the city we found it to be remarkably calm, especially at night. Many people sleep in the streets; some do this because they have lost their homes, others because their homes are presently unsafe, and because they fear there will be another earthquake. Workers here have built tent cities to live in. Despite the poor conditions, there is order and community. People arrange their tents into straight lines, leave spaces for public use, and organize a security crew to watch over them at night and to ensure that cars do not trample the tents.

I have not seen any evidence that people are hijacking cars on the roads and stealing provisions, as friends and the media had warned us. This trip has provided me with insight into many ways that the mass media misrepresents the current situation in Haiti. Their portrayal of Haiti is sensationalist because major corporations need to make a profit. Advertising dollars flow with images of “looters,” destruction, and social disorder. Thus, the media’s profit motives contribute to the misleading portrayal. The primary reason, however, is racism.

The idea that Haiti is filled with “robbers” and “rapists” is one that fits into the racist ideology that we are all fed. The idea that workers in Haiti are actually working together to survive under very difficult conditions or that people are organizing themselves into orderly tent cities — and that the major role of the United States has been to patrol with soldiers and guns — is not one that fits the image of Haiti or of the U.S.’s role there. In fact, there are a lot of soldiers all over the city. It is unclear what their function might be. They patrol the streets with big guns at the ready, yet I have not seen any soldiers engaged in the clean-up effort.  (Ed. note: see previous issue of CHALLENGE, and this issue’s front page, for analysis of the U.S. military’s role in Haiti)

Food For Profit, Not For Need

As we drove around Port-au-Prince we saw plenty of evidence of people looking for food. At several junctions, we saw people crowded outside of places where aid was being distributed. I have heard time and time again that there is plenty of food and water in Port-au-Prince, but that it is not reaching the people it needs to reach. The distribution effort is too slow and not systematic. 

We met several pastors outside one of the UN military bases who were soliciting food for their congregation. They complained to us about the lack of food and the poor nutritional quality of the food available — mostly white rice and sardines. There were long lines at places where water was available. Many people walked around with buckets and jugs looking for water to fill them. The situation is so critical that we saw a man drinking water from a puddle on the ground.
There are markets; supermarkets, restaurants and roadside stands that are open and sell food. This food is only available to people who have money to pay for it. There are private companies that sell water that can fill up your buckets or tanks with just a phone call. If you have the money you can survive here. If not, you are forced to search for food and water and hope that you are lucky enough to be close by when the distribution effort begins.

In the newspapers, I have read that there are security concerns with regard to food distribution. I saw people from the World Food Organization delivering food to an orphanage; armed guards accompanied them.
The only guns I have seen in Port-au-Prince, in fact, are those that belong to people in uniforms. The city is crawling with U.S. soldiers and UN soldiers. Although people surely are desperate for food, I have not seen evidence of attacks or violent robberies. Instead, I have seen lines of people waiting for food and water, and people using their creativity to look for food anywhere they can find it.

When we entered the city of Croix-de-Bouquet we saw many destroyed buildings, and a lot of people in need. There are little signs of how the city will begin to rebuild itself. One image I can’t get out of my mind is a destroyed school. It was a seven-story building. During the earthquake, it shook so hard that it completely crumbled. The walls disintegrated and each floor fell on top of the other. People say that there was a room full of students in the basement, and that they likely have died slowly of thirst and hunger, as no one came to clear the building and rescue them.

The loss of life in that one school is a clear example of the fact that many lives were lost, not just because the earth shook, but also because Haiti is a poor country. The incredibly poor quality of the seven-story building meant that the walls crumbled under the weight of the ceilings. The lack of sufficient heavy machinery meant that there were not enough trucks to come and remove the rubble and potentially save the lives of the children and teachers in the basement.

The accumulated human suffering in Haiti is unfathomable to me. Although I have now left Haiti, images of destruction run like a slideshow through my mind. The fact that many of these deaths were preventable makes it worse.

 A friend