Austerity

Police Unleash ‘Brutal Attacks’ On Austerity Protesters In Storm-Ravaged Puerto Rico

May 3, 2018 By Jessica Corbett, Commondreams.org Resist! Austerity, May Day, Police State, Protests, Puerto Rico, Repression

Police in Puerto Rico deployed tear gas and fired rubber bullets to shut down May Day protests as thousands of people took to the streets of the U.S. territory, which is still battling the devastation caused by Hurricane Maria—and a debt crisis that preceded the storm. While people worldwide demonstrated Tuesday to demand improved labor conditions on International Workers Day, Puerto Ricans also turned out to protest the Trump administration's failed response to the humanitarian crisis that followed the hurricane as well as austerity measures imposed by the federal government both before and after the storm struck last September.

Teachers Walk Out At DC’s Anacostia High School

April 7, 2018 Perry Stein, Washington Post. Resist! Austerity, Education, Teachers

Washington, DC - Frustration at Anacostia High boiled over Wednesday, with the entire teaching staff walking out of class midmorning to protest building conditions — conditions teachers say city officials should have addressed with greater urgency. Teachers said the cafeteria was flooded and no toilets were working when educators arrived at the Southeast Washington school at 8 a.m. Teachers made a last-minute decision to organize a 9:30 a.m. walkout. The school system said repairs to toilets were complete by 10:15 a.m.

Real Goal Of “Russiagate” Is To Prepare For Endless Austerity Fnd War

March 3, 2018 Glen Ford, Blackagendareport.com Educate! Austerity, Inter-Imperialist Rivalry, Propaganda, RussiaGate

Robert Mueller, the former head of the national political police (FBI), has indicted 13 Russian nationals for the crime of sowing “discord in the U.S. political system” and encouraging “U.S. minority groups not to vote in the 2016 U.S. presidential election or to vote for a third-party U.S. presidential candidate.” The defendants’ nationality makes their acts of political speech a crime, in Mueller’s legal view, but “at least 20 Americans” are embedded in the document as unindicted co-conspirators “ because they interacted in various ways with the Russian team’s activities during the 2016 presidential campaign. These U.S. citizens “were just engaging in politics,” said independent journalist Marcy Wheeler, on Democracy Now! “They were putting together campaign events. They were engaging in online speech. That’s like, you know, the most sacred part of being an American citizen. And yet, they were unknowingly interacting with Russians….”

Athens Rally Moment Of Truth For Greeks Under Thumb Of EU-Imposed Austerity

February 5, 2018 By Michael Nevradakis, Mintpressnews.com Resist! Austerity, European Union (EU), Greece, Rally

ATHENS, GREECE (Analysis) – Hundreds of thousands of Greeks took to the streets of Thessaloniki, Greece’s second-largest city, on Sunday, January 21, in a mass rally opposing a compromise on the part of the Greek government regarding the Macedonia name dispute with Greece’s northern neighbor, temporarily recognized by the United Nations as the “Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia” (FYROM). As talks between the governments of Greece and FYROM have progressed, seemingly out of the blue and after a very long period of dormancy, a significant percentage of the populace in Greece is seizing the opportunity to participate in the first large-scale street demonstrations in the country since the days leading up to July 5, 2015 referendum rejecting an austerity proposal put forth by Greece’s creditors.

Mass Protests Against Austerity, Unemployment Shake Tunisia

January 11, 2018 Bill Van Auken, Wsws.org Resist! Austerity, Protests, Tunisia, Unemployment

Tunisia has erupted over the past three days in demonstrations and violent clashes with security forces. Workers and youth have taken to the streets in at least 18 different towns in protest against a 2018 austerity budget that will only exacerbate prevailing conditions of mass unemployment, poverty and social inequality in the North African nation. The Interior Ministry acknowledged that a 55-year-old man was killed during a protest on Monday in the town of Tebourba, about 20 miles outside of the capital of Tunis, and five other people there were wounded. There were conflicting reports over the cause of death, with some protesters saying the man had been run down by a police vehicle, while the authorities claimed he had been overcome by tear gas. In a number of areas, the army has been called out to back up local security forces and protect government buildings and banks.

Strikes Against Austerity In Israel’s Public & Private Sector

January 5, 2018 Jean Shaoul, Wsws.org Resist! Austerity, Israel, Strikes

Israeli workers are facing an onslaught on jobs, wages and conditions, in both the public and private sectors. The attacks organised by the corporations, government and the courts are proceeding with the active collusion of the labour unions. Last week, the trade unions agreed a rotten deal with the government and the Israel Electric Corporation (IEC), the state-owned utility, on the liberalisation and privatisation of industry to snuff out lightning strikes mounted in defiance of a ban on walkouts against market-based reforms. Last August, the High Court of Justice ruled that workers at state-owned enterprises can no longer strike against market reforms, overturning an earlier judgement supporting the right to strike. This was a response to a series of strikes by electrical workers in June and July. The ruling constitutes a fundamental attack on the working class in favour of the financial elite.

Tax Bill Just Opened A New Front In The Class War

December 24, 2017 Miles Kampf-Lassin, inthesetimes.com Educate! Austerity, Corporate duopoly, Taxes

The current economic status quo—with stock markets soaring while wages remain flat and inequality widens—is both unstable and unsustainable. The coming shock will only accelerate these trends in order to benefit the wealthy, and it’s being delivered in the form of tax “reform” by a Republican Party dead set on pleasing its donor class while hanging working people out to dry. As many economists have pointed out, at its core, the GOP’s tax bill represents a massive transfer of wealth from the bottom of society up to the top. The rich will benefit enormously, while half of all taxpayers will actually see their taxes increase over the next ten years.

Fight Harder And Smarter Against Trumpism

December 24, 2017 Sonali Kolhatkar, truthdig.com Strategize! Austerity, Taxes, Trump

The Republican Party is celebrating the passage of a deeply unpopular and comprehensive rewrite of the U.S. tax code, which critics argue is skewed unjustly toward the rich. Members of the party, however, are convinced that we will learn to love the new tax code, as House Speaker Paul Ryan said Tuesday. “When people see their withholding improving, when they see jobs occurring, when they see bigger paychecks, a fairer tax system, a simpler tax code, that’s what going to produce the results,” he said at his weekly press conference. “Results are going to make this popular,” he added, sounding like parents telling their child, “When you’re older, you’re going to thank me for forcing you to take violin lessons.”

CUNY Workers Say: ‘Resist Austerity!’

December 15, 2017 G. Dunkel , workers.org Organize! Austerity, CUNY, Labor, Workers Rights and Jobs

Holding a huge, electrified banner reading “Resist austerity,” while chanting to the rhythm of a brass band, hundreds of members of the Professional Staff Congress marched from the Graduate Center of the City University of New York to a board of trustees’ meeting at Baruch College on Dec. 4. They were making it clear that they do not want to wait six years for a new contract to get significant pay raises. In particular, the PSC wants adjuncts — the part-time instructors who do over 50 percent of the instruction at CUNY — to get a pay increase to a minimum of $7,000 per class. Currently, the best-paid adjuncts get about $4,500 per class.

Monetary Imperialism

December 1, 2017 Michael Hudson, counterpunch.org Educate! Austerity, Capitalism, Imperialism, Inter-Imperialist Rivalry

By Michael Hudson for Counter Punch - In theory, the global financial system is supposed to help every country gain. Mainstream teaching of international finance, trade and “foreign aid” (defined simply as any government credit) depicts an almost utopian system uplifting all countries, not stripping their assets and imposing austerity. The reality since World War I is that the United States has taken the lead in shaping the international financial system to promote gains for its own bankers, farm exporters, its oil and gas sector, and buyers of foreign resources – and most of all, to collect on debts owed to it. Each time this global system has broken down over the past century, the major destabilizing force has been American over-reach and the drive by its bankers and bondholders for short-term gains. The dollar-centered financial system is leaving more industrial as well as Third World countries debt-strapped. Its three institutional pillars – the International Monetary Fund (IMF), World Bank and World Trade Organization – have imposed monetary, fiscal and financial dependency, most recently by the post-Soviet Baltics, Greece and the rest of southern Europe. The resulting strains are now reaching the point where they are breaking apart the arrangements put in place after World War II.

Newsletter – Free Yourself From An Exploitative Culture

November 25, 2017 Margaret Flowers and Kevin Zeese, www.popularresistance.org Newsletter Amazon, Austerity, Inequality, Net Neutrality, New Economy, Tax Reform, Thanksgiving, Wealth Divide

By Margaret Flowers and Kevin Zeese. Shoppers hit the malls and online stores this week, spending over $3.5 billion online alone on what is called 'Black Friday'. Some people reject the extreme consumerism, calling it 'Buy Nothing Day' and staying home in protest, others take their protests to the streets. Anti-police violence activists in St. Louis, Missouri, demonstrated peacefully at a major shopping mall to say "No Justice, No Profit." True to form, police responded by violently attacking the 100 or so protesters and arresting seven people. Our friends at The Rules remind us that there are many fulfilling things money can't buy, such as community and wisdom. They write that 'Buy Nothing Day' is "an opportunity... to nurture the feeling of sovereignty you get when you step back from mainstream culture and know that it has no hold on you."

Landmark Study Links Tory Austerity To 120,000 Deaths

November 18, 2017 Alex Matthews-King, independent.co.uk Educate! Austerity, New Economy, United Kingdom (UK)

By Alex Matthews-King for Independent - The paper identified that mortality rates in the UK had declined steadily from 2001 to 2010, but this reversed sharply with the death rate growing again after austerity came in. From this reversal the authors identified that 45,368 extra deaths occurred between 2010 and 2014, than would have been expected, although it stops short of calling them "avoidable". Based on those trends it predicted the next five years - from 2015 to 2020 - would account for 152,141 deaths - 100 a day - findings which one of the authors likened to “economic murder”. The Government began relaxing austerity measures this year announcing the end of its cap on public sector pay rises and announcing an extra £1.3bn for social care in the Spring Budget. Over three years the additional funding for social care is expected to reach £2bn, which Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn said was “patching up a small part of the damage” wrought by £4.6bn cuts. The study, published in BMJ Open today, estimated that to return death rates to their pre-2010 levels spending would need to increase by £25.3bn. The Department of Health said “firm conclusions” cannot be drawn from this work, and independent academics warned the funding figures were “speculative”. However local councils who have been struggling to fund care with slashed budgets urged the Government to consider the research seriously.

Prosperity Through Keystrokes: Understanding Federal Spending

November 18, 2017 Steve Grumbine, www.popularresistance.org Create! Austerity, Budget Cuts, Money, New Economy, Taxes

By Steve Grumbine. It has long been known that our electoral system and methods of voting are corrupt, untrustworthy, and easily manipulated by less than savvy politicians, state actors, and hackers alike. The answers to many of these issues is the same answer that we would need to push for any progressive reforms to take place in the United States: namely, we need enlightened, fiery, peaceful, and committed activists to propel a movement and ensure that the people rise, face their oppressors, and unify to demand that their needs be met. What is not as well-known, however, is how a movement, the government, and taxes work together to bring about massive changes in programs, new spending, and the always scary “National Debt” .

Thousands Protest Tories And Austerity

October 1, 2017 Staff, www.socialistworker.co.uk Resist! Austerity, Conservative, Labor, United Kingdom (UK)

By Socialist Worker. Manchester, UK - Thousands of demonstrators are gathering at the Castlefield's Arena in Manchester today, Sunday, to protest against Tory austerity. The Tories are beginning their annual conference in the city. The slogan of the protest, called by the People's Assembly, is, "Tories out". There is a sense that after seven years of brutal Tory rule, it's possible to kick them out of office. Jane from Manchester told Socialist Worker, "There's a change going on in people's general attitudes, people can see the affect that inequality is having on their lives.

Newsletter – Greater Austerity Coming Unless We Act

September 30, 2017 Margaret Flowers and Kevin Zeese, www.popularresistance.org Newsletter Affordable Housing, Austerity, Education, Health Care, Taxes, Wars and Militarism, Worker Rights and Jobs

By Margaret Flowers and Kevin Zeese. As one of the world's richest nations, the US stands out for having the greatest wealth divide and high levels of poverty. Over the past 40 years, wages have stagnated and, as Lynn points out, "the richest one percent took more than half of all income growth since 1979." Currently, the top 0.1 percent have wealth equal to the bottom 90 percent. It isn't a matter of whether the US has enough money to support basic necessities like health, education and housing, but who has the wealth in the US and where our tax dollars are being spent.

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