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Privatization

Puerto Rican Workers: No Peace If Energy Is Privatized

June 8, 2021 By  Worker's World. , , , ,
Union organizations today warned Governor Pedro Pierluisi and the Financial Oversight and Management Board that they will paralyze the country if the LUMA Energy contract — that increases rates, allows the consortium to leave Puerto Rico if a hurricane strikes and displaces thousands of workers — is not canceled. “We are warning the attorney for the Financial Oversight and Management Board, Gov. Pedro Pierluisi, that there will be no peace in Puerto Rico if the contract is not repealed and they listen to the people who demand, not only a public and more efficient PREPA, but also one free of fossil fuels. Right now there is a favorable atmosphere for paralyzing the country, and if the governor continues to be deaf to the people, we will do so.

Puerto Rican Unions To Hold Biggest National Strike Since 2019

June 5, 2021 Maryam Alaniz, Left Voice. , , ,
Workers in Puerto Rico are planning a national strike and demonstrations today in response to the recent privatization of the island’s power system. These are the biggest strikes on the island since 2019 when workers went on a general strike against former governor Ricardo Rosselló. Several unions in Puerto Rico made the call for a national strike yesterday during a press conference including the General Union of Workers (UGT), Solidarity Union Movement, Central Federation of Workers Local 481 / UFCW, Puerto Rican Association of University Professors, Puerto Rican Union of Workers, and the Frente Amplio de Camioneros, among others. Under the call, “Fuera LUMA!” Puerto Ricans are demanding the cancellation of a contract with the private U.S. and Canadian company LUMA Energy.

New York City: Closed Door Negotiations Could Privatize Workers’ Medicare

June 4, 2021 Paul Becker, Portside. , , ,
A hush-hush operation between New York City and the Municipal Labor Council (MLC) to essentially privatize the health care coverage for thousands of retirees has exploded into public view in the past several weeks. The internet has been buzzing with protests against the closed-door negotiations that would take retirees out of traditional Medicare and place them in a Medicare Advantage program run by private insurers, with all its traps and pitfalls. The MLC is composed of the leadership of about 100 unions with members employed by the city. The city continues to pay for part of their health care coverage, under union negotiated contracts, after they retire. “What they’re doing is using public money to subsidize a private operation,” said Norm Scott, who was an elementary school teacher in Brooklyn for 35 years.

The Self Determination Of Native Americans Hinges On This Supreme Court Case

May 24, 2021 Margaret Flowers, Clearing the FOG. , , ,
A case brought before the United States Supreme Court by three Native American women, who have been representing themselves, may decide the future of the 1975 Indian Self Determination Act. Clearing the FOG speaks with Charmaine White Face, a petitioner in the case, about her fight to stop the privatization of an Indian Health Service facility, Sioux San Hospital in Rapid City South Dakota, that serves 325 tribes in the area. She describes how the privatization is harming the health of the people who use this historic hospital. To her knowledge, this is the first effort to privatize an Indian Health Service hospital. If the privatization is allowed to continue, which has been done without the consent of the people who are impacted, it will set a dangerous precedent for all tribes and allow any federal agency to take a similar illegal action.
Chicago Public Schools Lincoln Park High School

Chicago Eliminates Another Arne Duncan Initiative

May 18, 2021 Diane Ravitch, Diane Ravitch's Blog. , , ,
While Arne Duncan was superintendent of schools in Chicago, he received over $10 million from the Gates Foundation to begin “turning around” low-performing schools. He supported the creation of The Academy for Urban School Leadership (AUSL), which subsequently took over 31 schools, some of which raised test scores but were criticized for pushing out low-scoring students. One of AUSL’s goals was to train teachers for urban schools.

I’m Still Here, Though My Country’s Gone West

May 2, 2021 Vijay Prashad, Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research. , , ,
A full generation has elapsed since the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) collapsed in late 1991. Two years earlier, in 1989, the communist states of Eastern Europe dissolved, with the first salvo fired when Hungary opened its border. On 3 March 1989, Hungary’s last communist prime minister Miklós Németh asked the USSR’s last President Mikhail Gorbachev whether the border to Western Europe could be opened. ‘We have a strict regime on our borders’, Gorbachev told Németh, ‘but we are also becoming more open’. Three months later, on 15 June, Gorbachev told the press in Bonn (West Germany) that the Berlin Wall ‘could disappear when the preconditions, which brought it about, cease to exist’.

Farmers Block Expressway In Indian State Of Haryana To Protest Against Farm Laws

April 11, 2021 Priya Yadav, Sputnik News. , , ,
Hundreds of farmers from across India have been camping out Delhi's borders for the past four months to protest against newly introduced agricultural laws by the federal government. While the farmers are demanding the laws, passed last September be repealed, the government has agreed to only making amendments and refused to repeal them. Intensifying their protests against newly introduced agriculture laws, farmers blocked the Kundli-Manesar-Palwal expressway at several places in state of Haryana on Saturday. Several farm leaders were detained by the Haryana Police even as farmers sitting on the expressway were forcibly removed for allowing the traffic to pass. Huge jams on the highway have been seen since morning when farmers hit the expressway. 

All Health Is Public Health

March 28, 2021 Tinashe Goronga, Dana Brown and Siddhartha Mehta, Progressive International. , , ,
For decades, we have been sold a myth of private health. It is a myth that our health is largely a product of individual choices and personal responsibilities. It is a myth that our healthcare is a service which private corporations can provide, and for which we must pay to survive. But the Covid-19 pandemic has blown up this myth. Our personal health cannot be separated from the health of our neighbors or our planet. Nor can it be separated from the structural factors and policy decisions that have determined our health outcomes long before we are born.

Charter Schools Invaded Our Neighborhoods Without Public Input

February 21, 2021 Carl J. Petersen, Medium. , , ,
East Los Angeles is a community rich in culture and a strong history of activism. Our youth led the student walkouts in the ’60s fought against the Vietnam war during the Chicano Moratorium and have since filled the streets protesting the racist policies by the Trump administration. Still, we have been vastly left behind by our local, state, and federal leaders. Policies to protect our local environment, improve access to health care and make sure that our children are well educated have been inadequate. Charter schools swooped in claiming they could fill this void, but their promises were empty. Their presence brought discord, scandals, left our public education even more underfunded, and did not outperform our local schools.

The New Water Wars

February 1, 2021 Lauren Regan, Civil Liberties Defense Center. , , ,
Weed, California is a small timber-dependent city in rural, far-northern California. In 2016, Roseburg Forest Products (RFP), using legal bullying and exploiting a lack of clarity around water rights, began an aggressive effort to deprive the City of Weed of its main source of public drinking water — all so RFP could instead sell the spring water to the Crystal Geyser Roxane bottled water company. The historic spring, originating on the flanks of nearby Mt. Shasta, has provided the community with high-quality drinking water for the entirety of its 110-year history under an agreement with RFP’s predecessor International Paper.

Ajit Pai’s Broadband Legacy: Haste And Waste

January 21, 2021 S. Derek Turner, Free Press. , , ,
As we documented in our previous three posts, the $9.2-billion Rural Digital Opportunity Fund (RDOF) — FCC Chairman Ajit Pai’s supposed crowning achievement toward closing the broadband digital divide — is looking more and more like one of the most wasteful projects in FCC history. Our first post gave some examples of questionable funding in urban areas that we stumbled upon after spending just a few minutes with the map of winning bidders. This included ridiculous examples of “rural” subsidies awarded to major ISPs to offer broadband in gated urban communities where they already offer service, and awards to bring broadband to a posh resort that is already well-connected.

Indian Farmers Plan To March Into New Delhi

January 3, 2021 Anish R., Peoples Dispatch. , , ,
India’s protesting farmers, who have been camped on the outskirts of the capital, Delhi, have warned of intensifying their agitation if their demands are not met. Farmers’ organizations announced on Saturday, January 2 that they would hold a series of agitations culminating in a tractor parade in Delhi on January 26, which is celebrated as Republic Day. The government has so far refused to accept the key demand of the farmers, which is the withdrawal of three farm laws which were rammed through parliament in September. Farmers fear these laws will drive down the prices they get for their produce and pave the way for greater corporate involvement in agriculture.

The War Against The Postal Service

December 22, 2020 Monique Morissey, Economic Policy Institute. , , ,
The Postal Service is many things—among them, a public service; part of the nation’s critical infrastructure; a regulated monopoly; a good employer, especially for Black workers and military veterans; and a government enterprise competing with and supplying services to private companies. To take advantage of network economies, the United States and other countries shield their postal services from competition in exchange for delivering mail to far-flung and poorer regions. Like transportation and communications networks that are often publicly owned or function as regulated utilities, a national service with standardized pricing promotes commerce and guards against the concentration of economic power.

As Private Cities Advance In Honduras, Hondurans Renew Their Opposition

December 5, 2020 Beth Geglia, Center for Economic and Policy Research. , , ,
Efforts to develop semi-privately governed jurisdictions called Economic Development and Employment Zones (ZEDEs) in Honduras have recently emerged anew. ZEDEs, first legislated as Special Development Regions (REDs) and informally known as “charter cities,” “model cities,” or “startup cities,” are a flexible territorial concession that can be used for city-scale real estate and tourism development, resource extraction, energy production, manufacturing, banking, and the expansion of deregulated digital markets.

Betsy DeVos’s ‘Voucherland’ Spells Disaster For Public Schools

November 17, 2020 Peter Greene, The Progressive. , , ,
Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos, sensing perhaps the need to reaffirm her stamp on education policy, recently gave a speech at an education roundtable at Hillsdale College, a private Christian college in Michigan. The Washington Post called her remarks an “anti-government polemic” that reasserted one of her long-held beliefs: that families, rather than the federal government, should be the “sovereign sphere” for deciding how to spend public money for education. DeVos also made a plug for her Education Freedom Scholarship Initiative, which would provide $5 billion in federal tax credits that states could use to create school voucher programs. 
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