Working Class

Workers Should Run The World

December 16, 2020 Maximillian Alvarez, In These Times. Create! Labor Unions, Worker Rights, Working Class

We chat with Erek Slater, a bus operator for the Chicago Transit Authority, where he’s been working for the past 15 years. Erek is a family man, a father, and a three-term elected shop steward and executive board member of the Amalgamated Transit Union, Local 241. We talk about his working life and all that goes into being a bus operator, all the things that passengers never see — even though we depend on workers like Erek every day to live our lives. We also talk about Erek’s experience as a shop steward and about his unshakeable commitment to honor, justice, and empowering the working class. In fact, it was because he stood up for these things that he was unjustly dismissed from his job in May.

Austerity Is Still A Political Choice

November 30, 2020 Grace Blakely, Tribune Magazine. Strategize! Austerity, COVID-19, United Kingdom (UK), Working Class

When Rishi Sunak delivered the spending review earlier this week, the coverage focused predictably on levels of government borrowing. With GDP set to contract by more than 11% in 2020 – the largest fall in three centuries – and unemployment expected to reach 7.5%, government spending is the only thing standing between the UK economy and complete economic meltdown. As a result, we’re forecast to see the highest levels of public borrowing since the Second World War. In this context, Sunak felt the need to balance some new spending pledges...

COVID-19 Economy: A Deliberate Disaster

November 26, 2020 Bruce Lesnick, Counterpunch. Strategize! COVID-19, Joe Biden, Recession, Working Class

With nearly 12 million cases and a quarter million deaths in the US so far (over 55 million cases and 1.3 million deaths world-wide), the COVID 19 pandemic is ravaging civilization. The disease is on track to be the deadliest epidemic since 1918. The economic fallout for the working class has been severe. In the US, unemployment has skyrocketed, with 45.4 million new unemployment claims since March 14. At least 1/6 of those with jobs before the pandemic are now out of work. According to The New York Times, “The economic downturn is shaping up to be particularly devastating for renters, who are more likely to be lower-income and work hourly jobs cut during the pandemic.”

Left-Democrats Abandon Struggle For The Working Class To The Right

October 29, 2020 Roger D. Harris, Popular Resistance. Educate! 2020 Elections, Democrats, Joe Biden, Working Class

All indications are that Joe Biden is heading for a landslide win. Losers will be Trump and those Republicans who have not already defected to the Democrat’s big tent. Collateral damage, however, may be the progressive cause. Some leftists have advocated temporarily subordinating an independent working-class alternative to campaign for the leading neoliberal candidate. For example, the Open Letter: Dump Trump, Then Battle Biden argues for “the most urgent task — defeating Trump in the election with as big an Electoral College margin as possible, to undermine his predictable efforts to steal the election.”

The Nightmare Facing The Poor And Working Class

October 15, 2020 Jeff Schuhrke, In These Times. Educate! Congress, Economic insecurity, Recession, Working Class

As millions of U.S. workers face unemployment, food insecurity and eviction amid the coronavirus pandemic, the limited aid provided by the federal government’s flawed CARES Act from March has long since dried up. Last week, following more than six months of stalled negotiations with congressional Democrats over a new economic relief package, President Trump abruptly announced he was halting talks until after the November election. While the president quickly backtracked and is now reportedly continuing to negotiate, the federal government’s ongoing failure to pass a new relief package spells catastrophe for a U.S. working class...

The Way Forward For NYU Graduate Students

October 7, 2020 International Youth and Students for Social Equality at New York University, WSWS.org. Strategize! Higher Education, Unions, Worker Rights, Working Class

Since July, the Graduate Student Organizing Committee (GSOC), which is affiliated with the United Auto Workers (UAW) union and has over 2,000 graduate workers as members at New York University, has been involved in contract negotiations with the university administration. The previous contract, negotiated by GSOC and the university in 2015, expired on Aug. 31. GSOC has agreed to a second extension of the contract, which includes a no-strike clause, until Oct. 13. GSOC is affiliated with the UAW Local 2110, an amalgamated union that has repeatedly negotiated concessionary contracts for workers throughout New York City.

The Left And The Election Crisis

September 27, 2020 Larry Holmes, Workers World. Strategize! 2020 Elections, General Strike, Trump, Working Class

The political crisis in the ruling class that is playing itself out in the presidential election is not really about Trump, any more than it’s about saving democracy, decency and all the other stuff that Democratic Party leaders are shouting about. This crisis is about the capitalist system starting to break down and fall apart, and what must be done to rescue capitalism and U.S. imperialism from demise. This crisis has been building for a long time. The COVID-19 pandemic has accelerated the course of the crisis; it’s like pouring gasoline on a burning police station.

In The Worst Of Times, The Billionaire Elite Plunder The Working Class

September 4, 2020 Nick Baker, Counterpunch. Educate! Pandemic, Recession, Ruling Class, Working Class

Since March, more than 58 million people in the U.S. have filed for unemployment. The Internal Revenue Service now predicts that the U.S. economy will have almost 40 million fewer jobs in 2021 than they predicted before the pandemic, as a result of the prolonged economic depression. As it becomes widely recognized that the economy is not going to “bounce right back” into full activity – even when coronavirus cases do eventually decline – and that the current depression will continue for a long time, companies are doing anything they can to drive their stock prices higher.

How Socialists Won Our Democratic Rights

August 10, 2020 Adam J. Sacks, Tribune Magazine. Strategize! Democracy, History, Socialism, Working Class

The myth of modern democracy is that it was handed down from on-high. In fact, the ruling class resisted extending the franchise at every turn – and it was socialists who fought them for the right to vote. Since the advent of the modern state, ruling classes have tried to restrain the voting power of workers and those not “well-born.” Contrary to the mainstream story that capitalism naturally gave rise to democracy, establishment powers in nineteenth-century Europe restricted the vote for as long as they possibly could. Only when faced with mass mobilization — or when continent-wide war wiped out working-class males en masse — was it clear that the franchise could no longer be withheld.

National Uprising Exposes Divisions In The Ruling Class…

August 9, 2020 Ari Saffran and John Peterson, Socialist Revolution. Strategize! Class war, Portland, Ruling Class, Working Class

For weeks on end, the George Floyd protests against racism and police violence shook America. Support for the movement overflowed all demographic boundaries as an estimated 10% of all American adults—some 25 million people—participated in at least one protest. However, although mass gatherings have continued unabated in some cities, in most of the country the torrential river has inevitably receded into its banks as it was deprived of a revolutionary outlet—for now. The revived BLM movement has been a treasure trove of practical experience for the millions who drove it forward.

On Using Our Power To Stop Climate Disaster And Create A Just World

July 20, 2020 System Change Not Climate Change. Educate! climate crisis, Labor Movement, Strikes, Working Class

Time is running out to prevent full-blown climate catastrophe. Intertwined crises of wealth inequality, poverty, racism, and corporate despotism are deepening. When working people refuse to go to work -- when we put a stick in society's gears -- we can make enormous changes quite rapidly. There are many historical examples of this, including, flawed though it was, the New Deal. How can we join forces across movements today to use our power to create the world we want before it's too late? Labor organizer, climate activist, and historian Jeremy Brecher will speak and then answer questions. He is the author of Strike! and the co-founder and policy and research director of the Labor Network for Sustainability.

The Story Behind The Lee Statue In Richmond

July 19, 2020 Peter Rachleff, Progressive.org. Educate! Black Lives Matter (BLM), confederate statue, Richmond, Working Class

Since the May 25 murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis, the Robert E. Lee monument in Richmond, Virginia, erected in 1890, has been a focus of protests, graffiti, and public pressure calling for the removal of this offensive symbol of Confederate aspiration. At twenty feet high, atop a forty-foot base, the bronze Confederate general sits on his horse as if surveying an active battlefield, looming over the former capital of the Confederacy. The monument’s future is murky. On June 4, Virginia Governor Ralph Northam, a Democrat, issued an order to remove the statue, but days later a judge in Richmond issued an injunction blocking its removal.

Green Party Nominates Two Workers For The White House

July 13, 2020 Margaret Flowers and Kevin Zeese, Clearing the FOG. Podcast Green party, presidential elections, Socialism, Working Class

The Green Party of the United States held its presidential nominating convention, a virtual convention, this past weekend. The nominees are Howie Hawkins, a co-founder of the party and the first candidate to bring the Green New Deal to the US, for president and Angela Walker for vice president. Both are members of the working class - a retired Teamster and a truckdriver. Both are also lifelong socialists who are working to build the Green Patry and build unity among the Left in the US. We speak with Howie and Angela about the times in which we live, why they are running and what they hope to accomplish through their campaign.

Ajamu Baraka: Race, Class And US Protests Today

July 12, 2020 Look Left Online. Strategize! Racism, Rebellion2020, United States, Working Class

Speaking at an event organised by the Workers’ Party, the national organiser of the Black Alliance for Peace and the 2016 Green Party candidate for vice president said that: “The current ongoing capitalist crisis has created the most serious crisis of legitimacy since the collapse of the capitalist economy during the years referred to as the Great Depression. We are now seeing, within the economy, the genocidal implications of economic conditions in which young black workers have more value as human generators of profit locked up in prisons than as participants in the economy as low wage workers.” Founded in 2017, the Black Alliance for Peace (BAP) seeks to recapture and redevelop the historic anti-war, anti-imperialist, and pro-peace positions of the radical black movement.

These Workers Don’t Get Aid And Are Going Hungry

July 2, 2020 Rebecca Chowdhury, In These Times. Educate! COVID-19, Food Insecurity, New York (NY), Working Class

Coronavirus cases continue to climb across the Southern and Western United States. In New York, previously the nation’s epicenter, many of the residents reeling from the economic consequences are excluded from any government assistance. Clara Cortes lives in Long Island with her family. Both she and her husband tested positive for the virus, and while Clara has since recovered, her husband spent 54 days in the hospital. Now he is in a rehabilitation center dependent on a ventilator to breathe. “My husband is fighting for his recovery right now and it’s all because of the simple fact that he went to work to support his family,” Cortes said in a virtual press conference. Cortes is out of work, and without steady access to income, it is difficult to pay her mortgage, her husband's medical bills and support her family.

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