One Struggle Newspaper - Number 4 - Spring 2014

One strugglE

Anti-Capitalist News and Analysis from the belly of the beast Number 4 • Spring 2014

A Garment Worker in Bangladesh Speaks Out:

by Stephanie McMillan ina* was 15 years old last year when she started working at Pretty Group, a garment factory in Gazipur, a suburb of Dhaka, Bangladesh. She spoke of her situation: “We suffer a lot because they don’t give us enough salary. I receive 5000 taka (less than $65) per month. They don’t pay overtime.”

This is actually higher than the minimum wage of 3000 taka ($38.72) per month, but is still not even close to being enough to live on, confirmed Faiezul Hakim Lala, the President of the Bangladesh Trade Union Federation. The BTUF is an autonomous (non-NGO-affiliated) workers organization established in 1978. It organizes rickshaw pullers, construction workers, informal laborers, railway, jute mill and garment workers, rice farmers and others.

Lala explained that soon the government is planning declare a higher minimum wage for the workers, but only because they want votes in the coming election. The new proposed minimum wage will be a paltry 4500 taka per month.

The BTUF declares that this is totally inadequate, and that the bare minimum to support a family with two children should be 18,000 taka.

This takes into account 10,000 tk for basic food (daily calories only for survival, enough just to continued on page 2

M

Mina said in a soft voice, “I usually work from 7 in the morning until 10 or 11 at night, and sometimes until 3 a.m. They force us to work at night, midnight.”

Congo: They Play Workers Like Football An Interview with Mutombo Nkulu-N’Sengha Mutombo Nkulu-N’Sengha is an Associate Professor at California State University, Northridge who joined the Religious Studies Department in 2003. Dr. Nkulu-N’Sengha teaches courses in African religions, Americans’ religious diversity, and comparative religion.

The interview was conducted by Marlon Stern (artist and activist in the Los Angeles area, who also transcribed the interview), and Stephanie McMillan (cartoonist/writer and organizer in South Florida).

SM: Tell me a little bit of the background on your projects in the Congo. Talk about the general conditions, the toxic waste dumping, mine conditions and worker conditions, how imperialism is affecting the country?

MN: Democratic Republic of Congo is a country in Central Africa with almost 70 million people now. DRC is very important and interesting to study in terms of the effects of globalization.

This is not a poor country. There is no desert.

There is no reason why people should be starving continued on page 4

In this issue: A Garment Worker in Bangladesh Speaks Out Page 1

Congo: They Play Workers Like Football Page 1

EPA Hearing on Oil and Injection Well Drilling in the Everglades Page 1

Mobilizations and Mass Movements

Page 16

Fight the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP)

Report Back: EPA Hearing on Oil and Injection Well Drilling in the Everglades, 04.11.14

Page 7

The Minmum Wage Struggle in Haiti

Page 8

RRN: Solidarity with Workers in Haiti

By Sarah Cruz

The Limits of Non Profits

Porous limestone, pumping aquifers, crystal clear springs, estuaries, birds, turtles, fish, manatees, panthers, birds, BIRDS. A slow moving river of grass. Drinking water, life. I really cannot articulate the magic, beauty, and life force that is Florida. Whether or not you’ve experienced the Everglades or other Florida wild lands, (it’s cool if you’re just the indoorsy type) we can all agree that drinking water is vital to all forms of life, both human and non-human.

The world over, water, land, and life are being murdered by capitalists’ desperate need to expand markets. Extraction, especially hydraulic fracturing or fracking, is expanding at alarmcontinued on page 3

Thinking Around the NSA

Page 9 Page 10 Page 11

10 Years of UN Military Occupation of Haiti Page 12

Fighting Fascism, Fighting Capitalism Page 13

Beyond Identity, Toward Emancipation Poetry for Action

Page 14 Page 15

Artists & Writers in Solidarity with Garment Workers in Haiti

Page 16

Join the Rapid Response Network!

Page 16

SWEATSHOPS IN BANGLADESH

continued from page 1 go the next day to the factory) as well as 4000-5000 tk for rent (for two rooms), 15000 tk for transportation, plus some for medical allowance and children’s education.

Mina said in a soft voice, “I usually work from 7 in the morning until 10 or 11 at night, and sometimes until 3 a.m. They force us to work at night, midnight.” I asked her how she gets home. She said she walks by herself, but that it wasn’t far. “I’m scared but still I do it.”

“If we say anything about it [being forced to work extra hours] then they threaten us. We’re scared to lose our jobs.” She lives with her sister, also a garment worker.

“Sometimes we say that we should move out from here, but we have no options.”

Mina said that she sewed sweaters, and also attached labels. I asked her what the labels said, but she didn’t remember. She described the colors, though: white with blue and red. I googled some common brand labels on a laptop for her to examine. She recognized one, and pointed to it on the screen, nodding. “Yes, that one.” Tommy Hilfiger. (A brand worth $3 billion in 2010 when PVH Corp. bought it in 2010).

Vijay* is an industrial engineer, also living in Dhaka. Though he has a higher level job, he still works long hours, coming home after 10 p.m. each night, and struggles to make ends meet. He lives with his wife and child in one room of their extended family’s house. He prefers not to name the company he works for, in order not to risk losing his job. It employs 4500 workers who produce garments for major brands including H&M (Sweden), Next (UK) and Gap (USA).

His task is to increase factory efficiency, maximizing production and minimizing cost. He showed me a small metal contraption that

Drawing by Stepanie McMillan

A Garment Worker in Bangladesh Speaks Out:

“We want proper hours of work, 8 hours, which is the official law. Not more than that. We want a proper salary…”

“The foreign buyers come often to inspect our factories,” he said, and therefore they comply with age and safety regulations. However, he also said that the owners break the rules when they can get away with it, and provide false records about the workers’ pay. “They show the foreigners papers that say they pay us on time and the proper amounts, but they don’t. They tell them we get

“In prison, there is some freedom. But in factory, there is no freedom.”

-- Abdul, member of Garment Workers Union attaches to a sewing machine.

“This folds belt loops,” he said. “It eliminates one job on each production line.”

He tells me that his company does not hire underage workers, though he knows that many others do. (At a meeting I attended with members of the Garment Workers Union, affiliated with BTUF, several workers confirmed that children under 18 are working at factories producing clothing for JC Penney, Walmart and Disney).

2 • onestruggle.net

one day off per week, but we don’t.”

Vijay showed me a chart that quantified how many minutes it’s supposed to take to produce each garment. Based on that speed, the workers are given production targets, quotas to fulfill within the workday. If these are not met, the workers must work extra hours.

The workers can usually keep up the fast pace at first, but soon grow tired, explained Vijay. “Then they are criticized, and told, ‘You are not working properly.’”

For example, one particular item for the Gap is supposed to take 22 minutes and ten seconds. A line of workers is ordered to produce 1000 of these per day. Vijay said, “Our factory group produces 800,000 items per month, minimum. A realistic profit for the factory owner, after all production costs, is at least $2 per item. Think, how much money that is.” I asked him about wages. “The minimum wage was recently raised, but the owners totally ignored it. They also raised production quotas,” he said.

For those who don’t like to do math, the factory owners make $1,600,000 profit after all production costs. That’s after paying $174,240, which would be the total monthly labor cost at the minimum wage, to be divided among 4500 workers.

Mina continued describing her life as a garment worker, “If I am a little late, my supervisor criticizes me a lot, and threatens me that I will lose my job.” I asked her if she had ever been physically abused.

She replied, “They have not beaten me but they do it to the helpers of

the operators – they usually slap them or beat them. I’ve seen that.

They are 14 or 15 year old girls, and some older women too.”

I asked her if she knew that in stores in the west, the sweaters she made often cost $40-$50 or more.

Her face fell. “No,” she whispered.

I asked, “How would the workers feel to know that they work two weeks or a month for the final retail price of a single sweater?” Mina seemed close to tears. “I feel bad.

This will hurt our feelings, but we don’t have any choice. We have to work, that’s all.”

I asked Mina if there was anything she wanted to tell people who might see her interview in other parts of the world. She replied, “I want everyone should know this story, then we won’t suffer, maybe people could help us. It’s good for it to be exposed, how we’re suffering.”

I asked her, finally, “What do garment workers want?” The translator said he wasn’t sure Mina was mature enough to answer this question, but agreed to ask her anyway. She didn’t hesitate, or need to think about it. She sat very straight, her voice becoming strong. “We want proper hours of work, 8 hours, which is the official law. Not more than that. We want a proper salary. The right amount for us to live. We want them to pay us on time. And we don’t want to be forced to work extra hours. That’s all we want.” ■ “I wantand to state our are position. *Mina Vijay false We didtonot consider the colnames, protect theirthat identities. lapse at Rana Plaza was an accident. We stated that it is a mass killing of the workers. It was not an accident. Because the building, it was already declared that it was not usable. There was a bank branch [in the same building], they had 13 or 19 employees. On that day, they did not come to the office. The office was closed.

That day, on 24th April, this year, the workers came in front of the factory, and they declined to enter the factory, because they already knew that this factory was not safe for them. On this day, the owner of the building, he had some guards, some musclemen.

They threatened the workers, to enter the factory and work. At the same time, the owner of the garment factory stressed that, if you do not do it, you do not get your salary. If they are one day absent, the owner will cut three days wages.”

-- Faiezul Hakim Lala, President of the Bangladesh Trade Union Federation

environment

EPA Hearing on Oil and Injection Well Drilling in the Everglades

Extraction, Injection Wells & Pipelines for FL Over the past five years, Florida’s Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) has granted all but two of the 39 drilling applications submitted. “Sixteen of these have been applied for in the past year—14 of which are in Collier and Hendry counties…” (1) Situated on the Gulf of Mexico, much of Collier County is in the Big Cypress National Preserve and is home to incredible estuaries, rookeries, and panther habitat. Hendry County borders Collier County to the northeast and is also part of the Everglades system, which should naturally flow from Lake Okeechobee (another mess).

Oil drilling has existed in the Everglades and in North Florida on a relatively small scale since the 1940s, but new technologies like horizontal drilling and acid fracking, coupled with the mad drive for new markets, are emboldening the industry to drill in regions, previously not considered. In Florida, one target area is the Sunniland Trend, which stretches from Ft. Meyers on the west coast to Miami on the east coast and includes parts of Collier and Hendry counties. (2) Drilling also requires injection wells, which are concrete and steel tubes drilled hundreds or even several thousands of feet into the ground to store the byproduct of oil drilling and fracking.

This toxic mix of salinated water and chemicals has been given the falsely innocuous term “brine.” We already have a number of injection wells in Florida, and we have seen that even those with the most stringent regulations are not safe. When 20 strictly-regulated disposal wells in South Florida failed in the early 1990s, partially treated sewage leaked into aquifers that housed potential drinking water for Miami. (3) Mario Salazar, a 25-year technical expert in the EPA’s underground injection program, has given dire warnings about our nation’s reliance on these precarious wells, “In 10 to 100 years we are going to find out that most of our groundwater is polluted.” (3) In the first few months of 2014, the state DEP approved a permit requested by Texas based oil company Dan A. Hughes. It allowed exploratory drilling and an injection well in Golden Gate Estates, a residential community just northeast of Naples in Collier County. However, the DEP bypassed a required advisory committee that assesses dangers to the Big Cypress Watershed and makes recommendations about permits within the region. Because of the legal efforts of the South Florida Wildlands Association and other organizations, the DEP was forced to convene the committee after the fact and postpone the permit.

Some members of One Struggle, including myself, attended the March 11th public EPA/ DEP hearing, packed with around 300 people from across the state. I stood in the back, angry, as we listened to the Big Cypress Swamp Advisory Committee drone on with bureaucratic proceedings and misinformation. A comrade

Bobby C. Billie, a member of the council of Miccosukee Seminole Nation Aboriginal Peoples, testifying at the hearing. He said: “Don’t think about money - think about your grandchildren.” asked, “Should we disrupt this? This is maddening!” A man standing next to me vented loudly, “This is a ring and circus!” A Golden Gate resident demanded, “How could this committee, charged with making a recommendation to the DEP about this permit, know so little about the issue?” Soon the room swelled with anger.

Shouts from the crowd quickly overtook the orderly proceedings. Claims made by state and oil industry officials about the expected minimal impacts to water quality and endangered panthers were met with cries of “bullshit!” Every attempt to quiet or pacify the crowd was met with combativeness. It was awesome.

Eventually the committee decided they couldn’t make a recommendation that day. They scheduled another meeting for March 31st, and more people showed up to that meeting to demand they reject the permit. Eventually they did. But this is not quite a victory. The Big Cypress Swamp Advisory Committee only provides a recommendation to the state DEP, which is not legally binding.

As of April 15th, the Florida Department of Environmental Protection notified Judge Alexander and the Florida Division of Administrative Hearings that it intends to ignore the recommendations of the Big Cypress Swamp Advisory Committee to deny the Golden Gate oil well permit. A state DEP lawyer argued that the committee’s recommendation against the permit was “beyond the Department’s purview” and that “there is no basis, under its existing regulatory authority, to deny the application.” (4) Judge Alexander in Tallahassee will make the final decision.

Meanwhile, Spectra Energy and Florida Power & Light (a subsidiary of NextEra) have natural gas pipeline projects in the works for Florida.

The Southeast Market Pipeline would link lines from the Marcellus Shale region down to Alabama, Georgia, and Florida. (5) FPL is also currently pushing for a 3,750-megawatt gas-fired power plant in Hendry County. (6) The fight for the Everglades, the fight against capital’s devastation of life, has always been a fierce one. The intensity will only amplify.

Resistance We are facing a catastrophic situation, but this moment also presents an opportunity to organize. Environmental crisis makes so clear the destructive and insane nature of capitalism.

Photo by Sarah Cruz

continued from page 1 ing rates in North America. Pipelines are snaking their way from coast to coast. In Florida we know the Gulf of Mexico is littered with oil platforms and its waters are permeated with oil and Corexit, but we never imagined that drilling would hit land. We live atop porous limestone situated only feet above our water table and our aquifer system that provides the majority of the state’s drinking water.

It’s a literal dead end, as capitalists invest in our very destruction. (7) The struggle to defend our land and water must be directly tied to the death of this system.

We need a movement to do this, a broad one filled with all kinds of people, all participating for varying reasons, but unified against one common enemy—capital.

Retirees, landowners, suburban housewives, fisher people, NGOs, indigenous leaders, students, radicals, progressives—almost everyone at the March 11th hearing was ready to fight for land and water. This was really encouraging but if our goal is a classless and sustainable society, we must go further. We must connect the dots between ecocide and capitalism so that our efforts are not coopted and recycled back into the system.

We cannot afford to be derailed by voting, fighting for property rights, symbolic actions, allowing NGOs to lead our fight, or false divisions. Reformist struggles can play a positive role, but only when we engage in them strategically, with the larger objective of building a combative mass movement.

I’m grateful to folks who work within the legal system to slow the rate of destruction, but a mass of organized people in the streets can impose their demand rather than jumping through bureaucratic hoops to ask nicely.

I admire the bravery of folks who shut down extraction sites, but what about the people who work at those sites? They are not our enemies.

They are dominated by capitalism as well, compelled to work jobs that destroy their children’s land, water, and air.

This is why we need a broad movement that goes beyond single issues and makes the connection that all of us, dominated and exploited by capitalism, must unite. One Struggle is organized around this concept—uniting all who can be united at this moment; growing organized relationships and networks of people who agree that capitalism must die; and determining how we can fight together. This is why we attended this hearing. The leaflet we handed out is online.(8) We will never all agree about the exact details of what a new society should look like, nor how to get there (nor should we), but if we can unify against the cause of our destruction, we can be powerful in our work to defeat this system, to defend land, air, and water for human and nonhuman life. We must. It is so urgent. ■ (All references available at onestruggle.net) onestruggle.net • 3

INTERNATIONAL

Photo by Antony Njuguna

continued from page 1 or waiting for rice to come from Europe. Congo, as you know, is well endowed in terms of natural resources, but it is one of the poorest countries in the world in terms of lifestyle of people.

Congolese have a joke, they say, “We have become capitalists without capital, nationalists without a nation.” They put it this way, and sorry for this joke, “Our tragedy is to be rich, Congo is like the most beautiful woman in the world, everyone wants to be friendly and come and have a piece of her.” That’s exactly what is happening with this country because there are so many minerals. It has been a battlefield.

There is a proverb which says, “When two elephants fight, the grass suffers, when two elephants make love the grass suffers equally.” Peace between the US and Russia was not good; they pack their stuff and move out. They create a mess and then they say, “Hey, now you are free, now you can deal with your dictator.” Before, we support them because they say we are here to fight communism or we are here to fight capitalism.

Congo has a history of being a victim of globalization. One major step was the Renaissance, during the Renaissance you have slave trade, so Africa is brought into this global market, but the

people don’t benefit, and of course you had a genocide during the time of King Leopold. That was a major genocide. The population of Congo was reduced by half. With the invention of the automobile, they need rubber for tires, so half of Congolese killed. Now in this age of digital technology we need computers and Congo happens to have 70 to 80 percent of the world’s reserve of coltan [short for columbite-tantalite, an ore used in electronics]. Because of that mineral Congo has become a battleground again, and we have lost more than 5 million. Some will say it’s a tribal war, but this has nothing to do with tribalism.

This is a post-modern type of barbarism exported by those who are fighting for minerals. The war in the Congo “ended,” but never completely ended. There have always been these mineral conflicts. Diamonds, cobalt, gold.

Of course someone is selling weapons. Congolese don’t make weapons, so they are buying them and someone is selling them and benefitting from war. I always tell people those who sell weapons don’t like peace. They talk about peace: “blah blah blah.”

The other aspect of this is people who are involved with mining industries are mining without any safety conditions. I heard, I haven’t read yet, there was a situation during the colonial time, the Shinkolobwe mining business of uranium. The mineral for the atomic bomb that was used on Hiroshima, Nagasaki, Japan came from Congo.

It was sold by Belgium to the US. There are clear documents on that.

They made people carry the stuff on their head without any protection. It’s something we need now to really look into. If we have powerful 4 • onestruggle.net

…during the time of King Leopold [II of Belgium]. That was a major genocide…

With the invention of the automobile, they need rubber for tires, so half of Congolese [were] killed.

When you kill ten million Africans you aren’t called ‘Hitler’ international lawyers who have access to documents; it’s well documented. They worked people to death. The city is Legashi. Congolese minerals are not pure, they are often mixed. There is always small dose of radioactivity there, cobalt, uranium, etc. What we witness now is genetic mutation. Pollution has been so deep that it has reached the level that we are now giving birth to children without limbs without heads without mouth without legs. This is happening not just one case but in many cases in Lubumbashi.

I talked with the minister of health in Katanga who is a medical doctor. He clearly told me, listen, find your friends there, everyone knows what is happening, we simply do not have power.

These people are so powerful, if you have a network, people who can lobby the UN, and not just

…Congo happens to have 70 to 80 percent of the world’s reserve of coltan… Because of that mineral Congo has become a battleground again, and we have lost more than 5 million. talk about what to do with all these people who are sick, a way to force these multinationals to pay some money at least.

There is a river. We have Kafubu and Lubumbashi, the two rivers there. I do not know which one, but one is technically dead. It is full of chemicals. People don’t know. Down the stream people are still fetching that water and drinking it. They don’t know at all in villages. This is a serious issue, Chinese are involved and again they don’t’ care. It’s water mixed with acid. They do not follow any safety guidelines.

Globalization isn’t good for Congo. It is good for 0.001 percent of politicians. In the USA there is a law that you cannot bribe government officials to sign deals, but they do it all the time. Many people

Photo by Peter Marshall

Congo: They Play Workers Like Football

are coming from these mining companies. The Congolese politicians, they know how to play the game: “If you do not give us one million under the table, we give the contract to China or South Korea.” So they get paid. I was told, for all this mining stuff the country is getting barely three to five percent. Three to five, not even 20, not 15. Two percent is used to bribe government officials.

MS: Are there any big multinational corporations that are really entrenched over there?

MN: Oh yeah, I have a list in my office I could check. In fact we have a business ethics project we are working on; it’s not going to be efficient, but it is a way of doing something. If these people could abide by the rules and then create a coffer where we put money for social services, like for schools, hospitals and for cleaning, if people have been suffering from pollution. We can then say, these are the guidelines of the government, whoever wants a contract here must follow this. But we are still working on that. Now the US Department of Commerce is on board. Before we were going to have a meeting in Washington, but then the government was shut down, so the Congolese team did not come.

Multinationals work in cahoots with politicians and members of parliament. The people are excluded. Politicians, they have money. Congo is full of money. They have hotels where one night people are spending 600 dollars a night. Not only Europeans, but Congolese as well. They are making a tremendous amount of money. People become millionaires overnight. But people are extremely poor. What is the salary? Between 40 and 100 dollars a month. We are talking a man with a wife and seven or eight kids going to work from 7 am to 4 pm. This is a regular salary.

SM: Is it worse for miners? Is there a minimum wage law?

MN: They talk about it, but is not followed. In fact I heard people complaining that Chinese were not following it. They were lying when they hired people, saying they will give them like $500. But once you are inside, if you talk, you are kicked out. People are poor, unskilled workers, they play them like football. If you are fired, there are many hundreds who are willing to take the job. And people are not aware. Africa is not like Europe. Europe has a tradition of organizing against these things. In Africa people know, so they complain, but they cannot take a clear action. The only thing that has been working is striking. Since the time of the dictator, there have been people who strike.

SM: Are the strikes spontaneous; do workers

Photo by Marcus Bleasdale

INTERNATIONAL

Mining Coltan, one of the rare “conflict minerals” that makes your cellphone work, in the Democratic Republic of Congo build an organization first?

MN: There is an official organization, a union, but it is sometimes not efficient. It depends on the relationship between the multinational and the Governor and the President himself, because they can send soldiers to crush them easily.

SM: Are some of the union leaders also corrupt?

MN: Oh very often, yeah very often they work with the government. They bargain up to a certain point.

SM: So it is very difficult to organize?

MN: Well it can be done. There is hope because of youngsters, because of internet, they see all this happening around the globe and they do organize in terms of raising awareness. When things bother the University, they know how to organize and challenge. The University director is often appointed by the President. The director of University in Congo is a government official. Lubumbashi has 30,000 students. When they do bad things, students can dissent in to the city and burn cars and stuff. The director there is really working with the government.

SM: What do you think about the potential for more international organizing, organizations spanning different countries to put pressure on some of these companies?

MN: I think that is badly needed. Youngsters now who do stuff on Facebook, they know, they need support from people who can talk about stuff in New York Times or maybe the UN. They have the idea, the connections. In the case of the Congo there is a limitation because of the language. If they work with Belgium, Belgium doesn’t really have any influence. France a little bit.

It’s really an Anglo-Saxon world which is running the show. People do want to see something. Students, those who study political science, professors who teach political science, there are people who are radical. They bring things in to the classroom. As a result, Congolese are very suspicious of the UN and the US. They say all the wars we have in Congo are because America is making the war to control minerals. That’s what you hear from everyone.

MS: Do they say anything about China?

MN: They don’t see China in terms of political power; they see China making things that don’t last. They say if you buy something Chinese it is not going to last.

MS: Do the people get the connection between coltan and cell phones?

MN: Yeah that people know, especially students talk about it. There are programs that talk about it on TV. They know that this whole war, people make us work to take out minerals or impose the will of the President. It is complicated because you can have a good African president, and he is terrorized, and in the end he wants to save his skin so he signs deals. He knows in four years that he will not be in charge. That’s what happens with many ministers too. They told me that in the Ministry of the Environment you have inside the Ministry a German Office, a French Office and a US Office.

Inside the building! So they run it. These Congolese are just there talking.

They bring 200 trucks to go in the forest. The Minister has three; all the rest is run by these agencies.

SM: So basically they are there to prevent regulations from being enforced?

MN: They say they want to save the forest. But who is cutting big trees in the forest? Congolese don’t have machines. It is multinationals that are going in there to cut trees.

SM: So there is a strong sense, it sounds like, of an anti- imperialist sentiment?

MN: Oh yes, Congo because of the assassination of Lumumba has always been suspicious of the UN and the US itself, and what we call the Troika; the US, France and Belgium, because Belgium colonized us. People see that these three countries have always worked together. They worked together to eliminate Lumumba and impose Mobutu who was there for 32 years.

People are suspicious. In fact they told the UN, what are you doing here? Go home. You see them everywhere in the Congo: UN soldiers. The conflict is in Kivu. Few are there, but they are running here and there. They are having a good time trafficking women and mineral. That’s what they do.

SM: Does the UN actually protect the mining concerns? In Haiti, the UN guards factories in the free trade zone.

MN: I do not see them doing that directly. If they hear there is going to be something, then yes. I know the US embassy is heavily guarded.

SM: Do you see the UN as a proxy for US, French and Belgian imperialism?

MN: Among the Congolese people, since the assassination of Lumumba, there is this suspicion. They say the UN, Europe and US are all the same.

That’s the way they see it.

SM: What’s the potential, do you think for the anti-imperialist struggle? Kicking out the UN, kicking out the foreign companies and taking that land back?

MN: It’s not a matter of just struggling. Personally I’m kind of disappointed.

I don’t understand why the Occupy movement has failed. You have brilliant minds in this country. These people were there in the crowd and making newspapers, reporting immediately. They have the technology. If they failed, then what is the likelihood of people in the Congo facing Coca-Cola or some other company?

The thing is this, when you had a tyrant—Russia, Belgium, France or somebody else—it was different. Now there is democracy. But what does democracy mean? For companies it is very good. They sponsor a guy, give him a helicopter and money. He can buy beer for people. This is what is happening, democracy bought easily. They decide who they are going to

But what does democracy mean? For companies it is very good. They sponsor a guy, give him a ­helicopter and money. He can buy beer for people. put in charge. People don’t have time to go check. They are poor. If you go to them, they say, “You come from America, you are rich, so get out of my face. Are you solving my problem? My child is sick and I don’t have food.”

That’s the way it is.

Even someone who is lying to them, who will exploit them tomorrow even more, as long as they come along and give a little money, people follow. It’s not that I’m pessimistic; it’s a matter of preparing the ground for resistance. People have been talking about “globalization with a human face.” There is nothing with a human face there. It is a matter of mobilizing people. Internet is good, but internet can also domesticate the mind of the people. What do they show on the internet? All these little boys and girls have these Chinese cell phones. They have all kinds of things, but what do they see? Any academic thing about revolution or change? Or do they see pornography? See that and go sleep. No revolution tomorrow.

I say it’s a matter of being patient. Really patient. Let’s work grassroots.

Let’s make things visible, show real issues. Explain to them how the machine works. You can’t see the machine if you don’t know how it works.

You don’t see American perspective. It’s the Lebanese who are controlling things. The Lebanese control Congolese politicians. They control trade.

Now you have Chinese, they are buying land for 50 years and 100 years.

Where I come from, they built a soccer stadium, and everyone helped, but they don’t know that land is going to be bought and they will not be allowed to grow food. But if you don’t see it, they think it is nonsense, they will not see it.

I showed a video on water because I created an English club and we are discussing things. My idea is if they know English they can have access to some ideas on the internet on the bad things too, at least to survive in this environment. They saw a video on Colorado River and the water war coming. They were touched, because Congo doesn’t have a desert. They were touched—they didn’t know there is not enough water in the world. They asked what can they do? I said, “Plant a tree.”

I have faith in the youth, once you show them clearly.

SM: They have to understand how the system works.

MN: We want to create this journalist school for youngsters to start making videos. To document pollution and all these things. Make videos of the deformed children and make it visible. They did follow Occupy closely. They watched it on TV in Kinshasa and Lubumbashi. ■ onestruggle.net • 5

The Mass movement

Mobilizations and Mass Movements (This is an abridged version; the full article is available on onestruggle.net)

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Drawing by Stepanie McMillan

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his is a discussion of two approaches employed in organizing at the mass level: mobilizations and mass movements. Mobilizations typically entail calling on people to participate in rallies, protests and other actions. A mass movement pushes dialogue and strategizing from the revolutionary or intermediate levels to the mass level, building organization and consciousness through continuity of practice.

Mobilizations and organized mass movements are two distinct and essential tools we must wield in our fight to defeat capitalism.

They exist in dialectical relation to one another, with the organized mass movement as the main goal. Mobilizations have two roles: they are both a method to build a movement, and they are the outward expression of the organized movement.

The needs of the mass movement should determine the ways in which people are mobilized, and in turn, mobilizations must perennially consolidate and reinforce our efforts to build the movement. The organized movement is the point—any mass mobilizations that do not contribute to building and strengthening it are meaningless activist endeavors that lead nowhere.

Mobilization is the collective response, spontaneous or organized, of the dominated and/or oppressed masses to either oppose measures taken by the dominant classes (defensive), or to make demands that are in their interests (active).

Types of Mobilization: * Defensive: This is the response (organized or spontaneous) by the dominated and/or exploited masses to reactionary measures taken by the dominant classes in general, or by the capitalist class in the US. * Active: This is the demand (organized or spontaneous) by the dominated and/or exploited masses for political, social and economic rights.

These popular demands pressure the system to change, and while they expose the oppressive nature of the system, these struggles also contain the inherent danger of being co-opted by the system without changing its fundamental exploitative nature, by winning changes in bourgeois law and objectively enlarging bourgeois democracy. Historical examples include the achievement of voting rights for women, the Civil Rights struggle, and the fight for workers rights such as a higher minimum wage and the eight-hour day.

The active mobilization might be used to win some concessions or to “make our voices heard”—in other words, to popularize the struggle more broadly in society. The demands might be partial (presented in stages less than total transformation). If they are, for example, in a workplace, they might be directed at one or a group of industries, and could be local or national. These demands have the potential to affect local industries or even entire societies. * Spontaneous: Collective spontaneous mobilizations are usually short-lived, with limited demands. Within these types of mobilizations, there is a dialectical relationship between combativity and political consciousness, with combativity being the dominant and determinant aspect. This is a problem because the participants

have not adequately defined the nature of the enemy, their demands and their long-term objectives. This makes them vulnerable to being easily pacified and having their demands easily recuperated. Also, when political consciousness is not in command of combativity, a mobilization can become self-defeating and even, in the final analysis, a gift to the bourgeois propaganda machine. * Organized: Collective organized responses are more defined, with an appropriate balance between political consciousness and combativity. The participants’ understanding of the en-

“… from the masses… to the masses…” emy is deepening, and becomes increasingly rational. They develop the methods to build organization, the capacity to advance, the ability to retreat to defend gains, and to handle repression. This type of mobilization fosters determination and stamina, and can better endure the test of time.

Mobilization does not happen by magic. It is the masses’ response to atrocity or to intolerable conditions. Even if this response is combative, and might appear radical, it could be limited to a demand for reforms and stay stuck in reformism.

It is very difficult to discuss mobilizations separately from the organizational capacity of mass movements. We must also examine the role of the revolutionary and intermediary level organizations in relation to mass movements.

Before we define and elaborate on these organizational forms and their relationships, we will discuss two tools of mobilization: agitation and propaganda. * Agitation: This expresses an issue in a concise manner and calls people to action. Agitational materials include leaflets, posters, radio, television, social networking and other media.

Their purpose is to bring issues to the attention of the people through active presence in popular neighborhoods, workplaces and schools as well as to spread them beyond direct contact by using communications technologies like the Internet. Agitation seeks to arouse the outrage of the masses, and to connect with people who are already outraged. Raising political consciousness, though undertaken, is secondary to fostering combativeness.

* Propaganda: This is aimed at raising political consciousness by revealing the underlying reality of an issue through theoretical analysis.

Propaganda materials include newspapers and newsletters, web sites and discussion forums, conferences and debates, and one-on-one discussions. Their purpose is to facilitate the masses’ collective understanding of the internal contradictions that give rise to external (or visible) manifestations of phenomena, and to engage in political dialogue with the masses to move discussions forward on questions relating to revolutionary transformation.

Agitation and propaganda foster a dialectical relationship between the popular masses and the organizational structures (mass, intermediary and revolutionary organizations). These structures must be comprised of the masses (the classes, fractions of classes and social categories) they aim to organize. The purpose of agitation and propaganda is to construct and develop organizations at all levels. The purpose, in turn, of these organizations is to facilitate autonomous collective power, capacity and consciousness at all levels.

For agit/prop to be effective at mobilization, it must express the character of the dominated and/or exploited classes that it is directed to. We must, at all organizational levels, be very aware of whom we are addressing and the interrelations between the various classes. For example, many students have a middle class background, while another large sector of students have parents who are in the working class and/or the social category of working people, and some students are working people themselves. To be effective, agit/prop must take these factors into consideration.

In creating effective agit/prop, organizations are well advised to implement the Mass Line, which is an organizing method that bases itself on the principle “from the masses, to the masses.” This means participating in the struggles of the masses, basing our practice on their concerns and ideas (as well as objective conditions), and bringing to these struggles our understanding of the nature of the system and the goal of transformation.

This back-and-forth relationship between the organized level and the masses can help us avoid these common errors: ● Tailgating the masses (expressing the lowest common denominator and weakening our demands) ● Sending wrong messages ● Making erroneous calls for action that don’t correspond to the mood of the people or objective conditions ● Over- or underestimating the capacity of the masses or sectors we are trying to mobilize ● Misunderstanding the conditions, or the relative strength and weaknesses of the popular forces in relation to the enemy ● Proposing pompous slogans that don’t connect with people, with long-term demoralizing and demobilizing effects ● Falsely inflating the struggle through exaggeration, which inevitably leads to deflating it Goals are long-term aims; priorities are immediate activities along the path to our goals.

We should not confuse the two, but always be clear about the dialectical relationship between continued on page 7

IMPERIALIST GLOBALIZATIOM

Fight the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP)

By Mashuq Aditi ight at this moment, the corporate power and political puppetry of 12 nations are negotiating a new form of legality for exploitation. The negotiation is over the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), a Free Trade Agreement (FTA) involving 12 countries, which other countries are likely to join after it is ratified. The treaty, which would have the same authority as the United States Constitution unless it directly opposes it, is being drafted by 600 corporate advisors and a few labor union and academia representatives.

To put it simply, a FTA has two main purposes: use states’ power to enforce the protection of corporations’ assets and investments and enable a “race to the bottom” in wages. The latter happens through the removal of restrictions on transfers of capital from one nation to another and by offering protections to foreign investors that prioritize them over national ones.

Along with Transatlantic Free Trade Area (TAFTA), which involves the U.S. and the European Union, the TPP confirms that the most abusive seizure of state power on behalf of capitalists yet- made possible for the first time with the passing of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA)- has been mostly ignored.

In 1996, two years after NAFTA was passed, Ethyl Corporation, a U.S. corporation that produced a toxic gasoline additive, threatened the Canadian government with a lawsuit if they were to pass a ban on the chemical.

In 1997 the ban was passed, Ethyl sued, and in 1998 the case was settled, giving Ethyl $13 million gathered from the very same people exposed to their toxicity. That same year the Canadian government revoked its ban on the additive; Ethyl had effectively coerced Canadian authorities into foregoing a basic government responsibility: protecting its people from an identified public health hazard. Since then, and also in 1998, there have been two other settlements involving similar environmental disputes, with Mexico paying $90 million and Canada paying $18.6 million in total.

These kinds of lawsuits follow what’s called an “investor-state dispute settlement” (ISDS), a process through which corporations can sue entire nations in external arbitration courts if its decided that countries’ regulations have or will cause a loss of current or future profits for foreign investors. These courts are a part of the World Trade Organization and UN. So far they have ruled in favor of corporations in 31% of all ISDS up to 20121.

The precedent established with these cases may have lea Peru to allow Renco Group, Inc. to continue their metal smelting operations in one of the world’s most polluted sites. They threatened to start an “investor-state” lawsuit as allowed by the 2006 U.S.-Peru FTA, despite evidence showing that children in the area were severely lead-poisoned.

Of course, threats to already-fragile ecosystems posed by corporations near them is not the only threat to the environment inherent in the TPP. According to TPP coverage from The Guardian, The Washington Post, and the environmental journal Grist various reports show that none of the negotiating countries oppose proceeding with the deal without adding limits to carbon emissions. This means it will be impossible to legally stop oil energy corporations drafting the agreement, such as ExxonMobil, Halliburton, and Shell, from expanding their operations.

In addition to ongoing oil extraction and consumption, fracking is also likely to increase. As mentioned in a recent Grist article, the fact that Japan, the largest natural gas importer in the world, will not sign the deal unless the U.S. commits to ensure its supply shows there’s absolutely no consideration about the environment. Although not enough information

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from the environmental policy chapter has been leaked to be able to tell if the TPP will include worse policies than those in NAFTA, the fact that it involves twelve countries and that it’s likely going to incorporate more in the future makes it especially dangerous.

Other, more immediate threats posed by the TPP include massive job relocation, no real improvement in labor standards, longer patents for medicinal products that prevent generic brand competition, and severe enforcement of intellectual property laws.

As mentioned, FTA’s primary goal is coercing countries into competing for investments by providing low-wage labor. So far, for all countries in the context of a multinational free trade agreement, this goal is usually detrimental to the weakest states joining the pact and beneficial to the strongest ones. However, the success of dominant nations in an FTA goes as far as the crumbs dropped by the biggest corporations to satisfy the masses. Take Monsanto, for example; it is clear that it’s one of the negotiating forces with the most weight in the process since the U.S. is the only country that opposes a ban against government subsidies to agriculture. The fact that the U.S. wants to subsidize the agricultural industry and not the manufacturing sector doesn’t make sense in terms of job-creation. The manufacturing sector employs more people and there’s a high risk of job-loss with the United States joining a pact that includes Japan, its biggest competitor in the car industry, without subsidizing the manufacturing sector.

Since agricultural corporations actually pay taxes, 22% in the case of Monsanto, there is a “return on investment” on behalf of the government.

But we must ask ourselves into whose pockets is the government money received by Monsanto going and, in turn, where are their taxes going?

People don’t want more imperialist wars, a quasi-public healthcare system, and the elimination of jobs.

As we articulate our opposition to the TPP it’s important to resist using the rhetoric of unions and NGOs, which are centered on stopping “offshoring”, preventing other countries from devaluating their currency in order to increase exports and foster consumption of domestic goods, and maintaining “Buy American” government procurement preferences.

These messages do the opposite of fostering international working class solidarity and the strategic relationship-building among autonomous workers’ organizations that should develop from said solidarity. This form of resistance is based on the belief that capitalism will continue destroying the world regardless of this agreement, but because the potential damages this treaty threatens us with are so serious, we must unite against it.

And it is also based on the learned hopelessness that the Republic’s branches of government have conditioned us to. In response to the TPP, the House of Representatives and Senate have only brought up their opposition to Fast-track and currency manipulation, respectively. The feedback the House might contribute for the drafting of the text is by no means guaranteed to ensure a trade agreement that is fair to people in dominated countries, or even people in the U.S. Trade agreements in the past have favored capitalists and facilitated their emerging monopolies. We have every reason to believe this one will have the same effect. Some recent estimates about climate change suggest we’ll reach a potentially devastating “tipping point” in 40 years at the current rate of production and consumption. It’s in our best interest to fight this horror now and not wait for the masses. It begins with you. ■

Mobilizations and Mass Movements

continued from page 6 them. Once we define our goals, we can work out our priorities. Mobilizations are priorities– they are mainly a tactic to gather forces (keeping in mind both quantitative and qualitative concerns) to build organized mass movements.

Mobilizations can represent the interests of a variety of classes, and must be differentiated accordingly. Mobilizations defending the interests of different sectors of the capitalist class in the US, represented by the competition between the Republican and Democratic parties, are all reactionary. The contradictions between these sectors are second-

ary to their commonality—there is no road to revolution, nor even the possibility of significant reform, within the current capitalist/imperialist framework.

We must define a political line to divert the vast sections of the masses who are currently being led by these reactionary classes. We must win them over to our side, while avoiding the pitfalls of class collaborationism and opportunism/populism. When we initiate mobilizations with the goal of constructing mass democratic organizations and combative mass movements, our orientation must be anti-exploitation, anti-domination and antiimperialist. ■ onestruggle.net • 7

INTERNATIONAL WORKERS SOLIDARITY

500 goud pou pi piti!

(500 gourdes minimum wage!)

On November 7, December 10 and 11 of 2013, thousands of workers in Haiti took to the streets to demand an adjustment to the minimum wage from 200 gourdes daily ($4.54 per day) to 500 gourdes ($1.42 per hour), in addition to subsidies for food, lodging and transportation. Studies by the Workers Rights Consortium (WRC) have estimated the current cost of living for a working class family of 4 in Haiti at 1,100 goudes per day, more than twice what the workers are demanding!

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Workers walked out from the factories in the Industrial Park (SONAPI) and marched through the streets to voice their demands to the Haitian authorities, rejecting the November 29 proposal of the State Salary Council to only increase the minimum wage to 225 gourdes per day ($5.11 per day or 63¢ per hour).

Haitian factory owners retaliated by laying off and firing over 300 workers, among whom were more than 36 union organizers.

As of the end of April 2014, these fired workers have yet to bee reinstated, and the minimum wage is still 200 gourdes. The struggle continues in solidarity with workers in Bangladesh, Cambodia and Vietnam who face similar hardships and repression. The struggle for living wages to counter the “race to the bottom” promoted by “Free-Trade” engages workers from all continents against a common ennemy: imperialism and capitalism!

INTERNATIONAL WORKERS SOLIDARITY

N0VEMBER 29, 2013: FROM IOWA, TO DANBURY, TO NEW YORK, TO FLORIDA AND LOS ANGELES: SOLIDARITY WITH THE STRUGGLES OF HAITIAN WORKERS AND WORKERS ALL OVER THE WORLD!

onestruggle.net • 9

The Mass movement

By Mashuq Aditi spirations for society-changing jobs frequently take form in ideal jobs at nonprofits*. This is partly because they provide jobs, nearly 7% of them in the United States, and partly because they appear to involve less cynical compliance with the status quo than corporate jobs.

Despite your analysis of capitalism and ways to move beyond it (or reforming it, if you don’t believe in anything better), it’s likely that you believe a preliminary step to any sort of massive change to the empire is developing a more progressive and critical political climate in all social contexts. Because the social context created by the nonprofit sector is determined by the constraints of government contracts, foundation and government grants, and individual donations, NGOs are limited in their role as an incubator for progressives praxis.

Even with the increase in the collective realization that “the system” does not work in our interest, nonprofits, might still be imagined as a wholly independent force at play. Although there’s a few ways in which nonprofits can aid the development of a mass movement, they coauthor our current government’s main act: reconciling the management of public outrage and the legitimization of corporations’ profit-motives implicit in the systems of accountability between funders and charities.

Although it might not appear as though nonprofits’ contribute to our current crisis of political apathy, some of us that have worked in nonprofits know that they play a special role in the indoctrination and pacification of potential radical change-makers. On the point about managing (and pacifying) public outrage, we see this in the form of nonprofits’ pretension that they play a crucial role in the “community”. The problem is arises when nonprofits claim to be agents of social change, when in reality they’re just providing services. Of these services only some should be considered necessary in the context of a necessity for a mass movement. For example, if we compare the provision of shelter for the homeless with shitty shrubplanting volunteering “opportunities”, it’s easy to identify which one is actually helping people grow. Nonprofits rarely participate in any sort of popular education practice that is guided by participants’ input, and when it’s there, it usually includes a low number of local residents. Consider that in my current workplace, a nonprofit with a strong reputation among other nonprofits in the county, the term “community” is interchangeable with “nonprofit community”. At least there’s moments of transparency.

The problem is that, although nonprofits could benefit from transitioning into donor-based funding structures, receiving money from the people they are directly benefiting or from those who believe in charity, they

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are stuck in strategies that are dead-end practices for movement-building.

They are not germinating in communities with a commitment to self-determination and political outrage appropriate in our current crisis. The problem isn’t present as much in the strictly charity ones as in the advocacy ones. These claim to represent the working class and work under the notion that the current legislative system is the appropriate venue for the advancement of society. Basically, the justification for nonprofit advocacy is that they understand what the needs of the people are as defined by forms of social aid that are, and have been, provided by the state, without necessarily caring to imagine and fight for advancements that would eliminate the conditions that create a need for institutional charity. . In response to their faith in electoral politics I’d ask: In what time frame will we reach a desirable society? Will it happen before environmental destruction and profit-based wars kill millions more? And what is it that we agree with when we fundamentally agree with the system, imagining change as a set of undignified reforms only?

“Community organizations” advocate on behalf of charity and statesanctioned rights since charity and the state are what sustains them. In fact, nonprofit employees in executive positions commonly make threefigure salaries. It is difficult to expect working class solidarity from individuals making this much, especially when poverty is the condition that gives them a job in the first place. What’s more problematic is what INCITE! (organizers of the 2004 conference, “The Revolution Will Not Be Funded: Beyond The Non-Profit Industrial Complex”), points out as one of elements that creates the nonprofit industrial complex, “[redirecting] activist energies into career-based modes of organizing instead of massbased organizing capable of actually transforming society”. The result: nonprofits adopt campaigns that involve mobilizing about 20 people that actually aren’t getting paid to be at their business-as-usual protest, they get media coverage for it, and there it is, proof that there are activists in the community for the small audience that’s paying attention. The appreciation I get from people that hear I work on an advocacy project at a nonprofit speaks to the misguided, detrimental reliance in the nonprofit sector.

It seems as though institutional charity, as a symbolic, because that’s all it is, is actually considered a pathway to progress.

Perhaps when the crisis of capitalism starts to affect everyone more directly, we’ll finally see the ineffectiveness of nonprofits as agents of social change. We’ll look back at their request for phone calls to x representative to end x budget cuts and realize the whole electoral system they bet on was already bought with ridiculous campaign contributions. We’ll see that they didn’t take care of the work that is empowering people with an accurate roadmap to progress, showing what the dead-ends are, and how urgent the need for organized resistance is right now. * the term nonprofit here excludes universities and hospitals, which technically fall into the same category. ■

Drawing by Stepanie McMillan

Drawing by Stepanie McMillan

The Limits of Non Profits

NSA: THE RIGHT TO PRIVACY?

Thinking Around the NSA

By Mashuq Aditi t is no longer a question that we are being monitored. Now, the question is how do we address the culture of acceptance regarding our loss of privacy and our organizing?

The NSA began attempting to break old encryption technologies in 2000. Ten years later they could decode old encrypted data that, until then, was secure. As NSA whistleblower, Edward Snowden’s last revelation exposed, the NSA and its British counterpart, the GCHQ, are investing $250 million a year in massively invasive software. This software will covertly and heavily influence the design of numerous undisclosed technological products, making them vulnerable to NSA intrusion. With this enormous budget, $230m more than that of PRISM, the government’s giant private data collection and analysis system, it seems warranted to speculate that Apple’s new technology, which allows police officers to block data (read: video/pictures) transmissions in any area, could be a result of an undisclosed partnership between the U.S. government and Apple.

The lack of public outrage following the disclosure of PRISM´s scope, or maybe the short duration of this outrage, is attributable to a larger problem: The apparent problem of apathy. analysis paralysis, or simply the absence of critical thinking in American society.

In the context of an effectively complacent and pacified society, it wouldn’t matter if the NSA monitored an individual’s emails. In a society acceptant of extreme surveillance the sophism that obedient, law-abiding citizens should have nothing to hide from the NSA is presented. However, in the context of a society that is struggling to grasp and denounce the destructive nature of capitalism, the offense that the NSA is committing bears a real, as well as a symbolic, threat. It is not only about feeling powerless over Big Brother stepping into your household. It is about the preemption of specific protest tactics, and the effect this can have on the development of revolutionary praxis in the U.S. If we are to stop capitalism from tearing the world apart, we’ll need more than the right theory to define it and oppose it. Road blockages, occupations, strikes... all of these tactics help win small victories that propel people to continue to fight. But with the passage of H.R. 347, the Federal Restricted Buildings and Grounds Improvement Act (also known as the Trespass Bill) of 2011, all of these tactics might be impaired. Protesters in areas under the jurisdiction of the Secret Service can be imprisoned even if they are unaware that the Secret Service is overseeing the area. In the past, NATO and G8 summits have received this coverage. Manifestations following the line of the 1999 World Trade Organization protest in Seattle for example, are now at risk of being preemptively obstructed before receiving an ok amount of media coverage, one of the few positive effects of these events when they occur in the absence of an anti-capitalist movement.

Preventative measures such as blocking a city square before an action is held, or the placement of undercover police officers posing as protesters (who often incite violence within peaceful actions) are even more easily maneuverable given the reach of PRISM. Both of these tactics were used heavily against the Occupy Movement.

Although it´s unlikely that in the next few years there´ll be sustained conflict between radicals and authorities as a result of environmental degradation (because the more severe effects are likely to show later), the Department of Defense (DoD) has already acknowledged that environmental threats are imminent. The DoD has thus, employed Prism in the search for potential insurgents. As an [date] article [by author] in The Guardian mentions, the 2009 DoD report ¨predicted a resurgence of: ´anti-government and radical ideologies that potentially threaten government stability´ due to ´an era of persistent conflict´ stemming from competition for ´deplet-

Drawing by Stepanie McMillan

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ing natural resources and overseas markets´¨. These predictions highlight and emphasize the need for secure and less technologically-dependent methods of organizing radical environmental resistance. But, it also demonstrates the need for building a wider movement that will be capable of responding to the environmental, social, and economic challenges of capitalism before a state of emergency is reached.

Regarding the development of a social movement, potential large-scale actions that could build unity through demands amplified by media coverage are at risk of being undermined. The preemptive militarization of protest areas, the immediate dissolution of protests, the infiltration of violent undercover agents, etc are obstacles of movement-building actions. The intrusions facilitated by Prism, however, do not necessarily neutralize the possibility of a large-scale social movement.

On the contrary, these obstacles may in fact encourage autonomous anti-capitalist organizations to engage in more effective grassroots strategies. It’s possible that the low (or inexistent) level of internet security anti-capitalists might be able to obtain might push us to rely on personal connections more, drawing in larger networks of personal connections in our disruptions. It’s also possible that a social atmosphere increasingly drained by repression might draw people closer to the brink of outrage, sending millions to the streets regardless of government surveillance.

Whatever the case is, we need to the do the work of denouncing this system and normalizing vocal, public opposition to it. Only this will draw us closer to a transformative awakening. ■

onestruggle.net • 11

IMPERIALISM

Ten Years of UN Military Occupation of Haiti: Background and Current Effects

by the Haiti Batay Ouvriye Solidarity Network o understand the impact of ten years of UN military occupation on the lives of workers in Haiti, one really has to go back to the original push for neoliberal reform in Haiti since the early 1970s, because this most recent intervention and occupation is only the most recent implementation of this policy.

By neoliberal reform, we mean the push for “free trade” (reduction of import tariffs, quotas, etc.), privatization of state-run enterprises, reduction of state social programs (such as health and education), currency devaluation and stabilization, promotion of tourism, sweatshop assembly manufacturing and agro-industry sectors, that support the interests of large multi-nationals—that is to say all the policies that have systematically impoverished workers throughout the “third world” and enriched billionaires and multi-national corporations.

The ’70s saw the original start of the assembly manufacturing sector in Haiti, which was facilitated by extremely low wages, the absence of unions due to the repression of the Duvalier dictatorship, and the huge tax incentives granted to foreign investors. This quickly led to Haiti becoming the top producer of baseballs in the world, a significant producer of electronic goods and various assembled textile products. However, the development of sweatshop assembly manufacturing in Haiti was constrained by conditions inherent to the reactionary dictatorship: a crumbling economy due to a failing agricultural sector and archaic economic structures, very poor infrastructure (little or no electricity, very poor roads and port facilities, etc.), rampant corruption, and an underlying potential for political upheaval due to decades of intense repression. Indeed, despite the rise in assembly manufacturing, crumbling economic structures fostered political upheaval in Haiti, which led to the 1986 ouster of Jean-Claude “Baby Doc” Duvalier into a golden exile facilitated by US Air Force cargo planes.

The imperial neoliberal “plan” was then to institute some kind of “democratic” figurehead state that would implement the full range of neoliberal reforms that the preceding dictatorship had been unwilling to take part in, particularly the privatization of state-run enterprises. To this end, a new constitution was drafted and Marc Bazin, the “Chicago Boy” World Bank economist was lined up as the candidate of choice in UN monitored presidential elections. However, this plan was foiled by the last minute candidacy of a Jean-Bertrand Aristide, a popular populist priest, an advocate of liberation theology who had once put out a record entitled “Capitalism is a mortal sin.” Aristide ran away with the election in December 1990, but was overthrown by a US sponsored military coup after less than eight months in office (after attempting to increase the minimum wage). This led to a 3-year impasse, since the imperial “neoliberal order” had just embraced the electoral process as its main avenue of reform and renounced military overthrows, at least publicly. These 3 years of military rule in Haiti were used to purge the populist movement by killing more than five thousand of its supporters, wrecking and bankrupting the Haitian state, and setting the stage for a more compliant new regime. Aristide was induced to sign on to neoliberal reform and brought back into office by 24,000 US marines in September 1994. This created the first precedent for a UN “humanitarian” military intervention requested by a “constitutional” head of state, in effect forfeiting that state’s sovereignty, and established the MINUAH, first US-UN military occupation of Haiti, which lasted until 2000.

The imperial “plan” was to move ahead with the full agenda of neoliberal reforms, but this did not go so smoothly. The political situation was fraught with contradictions, since the populists had to be constrained by the same reactionary right wing forces that the occupation was sup-

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posed to disarm. Needless to say, there was very little disarmament, and an intricate process of power alliances ensued where the populist movement assimilated some of its former foes by policies of “reconciliation” offering them juicy positions in the government. Aristide dissolved the Haitian Army while the imperialists strived to control the newly formed police forces. The populist imperative was to “rebuild” the state under the authority of Aristide, while the imperial “plan” was to divide and conquer, to foster more compliant right-wing political forces that could prevail in new elections.

Throughout this period, populist forces preserved their rule by compromising their social agenda and creating a new “bureaucratic” faction of the bourgeoisie, which quickly earned the moniker of “Gran Manjè” or “Big Eater,” amassing their fortunes through corruption. In 2004, growing popular dissatisfaction and right-wing opposition to Aristide’s second term enabled a small CIA-sponsored military contingent of about two hundred armed mercenaries of ex-army and exparamilitary members to march into Haiti from the neighboring Dominican Republic, lay siege to the capital and demand Aristide’s ouster. Once again, US cargo planes carried Aristide into exile. This led to the current iteration of US-UN intervention in Haiti, the MINUSTAH, initiated on June 1, 2004 with the landing of a contingent of troops from Chile. This time, the US was overwhelmed by the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan and chose to delegate the stewardship of this intervention to aspiring emerging regional powers in Latin America and Brazil, which claimed the military leadership of the UN mission, although the political leadership has always remained with the US embassy.

Right away, a provisional government was set up through “constitutional” manipulations: the Latortue government. His administration was recognized by the United Nations, the United States, Canada and the European Union, while being denied recognition by a few governments, including those of Jamaica and St. Kitts and Nevis, Venezuela and Cuba, as well as the African Union. The same neoliberal agenda was promoted, this time through the ICF (Interim Cooperation Framework), promising hundreds of millions of dollars of foreign investment for the implementation of these policies, and new elections were scheduled in 2006 with an abundance of pro-neoliberal candidates. But once again, René Préval, a last minute populist candidate, former prime minister under Aristide, former president after Aristide, known as “Aristide’s twin brother,” won the election and resumed the policies of compromise, corruption, power grabbing and “stalling” that were the hallmark of the previous populist administrations.

This was the situation until the January 12, 2010 devastating earthquake that destroyed much of Haiti’s crumbling infrastructure, particularly in Port-au-Prince (the capital), and made more than 300,000 victims plus a million and a half internal homeless. Immediately, this moment was seized as a new opportunity to implement “the plan.” The ICRH, (Interim Commission for the Reconstruction of Haiti) was formed, promising 11 billion dollars in assistance that was tied to various programs that facilitated neoliberal reform. And new elections were called for. At the insistence of Haiti’s “friends” in the “International Community,” the Haitian general election, originally scheduled for February 2010, was postponed to November 28—in the rubbles of the earthquake, in the midst of a cholera epidemic which had spread through the negligence of UN occupation forces from Nepal, and after hurricane Thomas had inflicted further devastation. This same “International Community” then intervened through the OAS to stage a recount of election results rigged to push through their favored candidate, Michel Martelly, an outright pro-business right-wing candidate. Martelly then won the second round of the elections and at once declared: “Haiti is open for business.”

Since taking office in 2011, Martelly has engaged in the same outright power grabbing of his predecessors, while postponing new elections indefinitely, with the tacit approval of this same “International Community.”

So, this brief historical recap shows us that this current UN-US proxy occupation of Haiti, using troops from 29 different countries from 4 different continents, is only a new chapter in the continuing attempt to implement neoliberal reforms in Haiti, the poorest country in the western hemisphere. It has taken several coup d’états, the murder of thousands by right-wing death squads, several flights of US cargo planes taking away former Haitian presidents, several occupations, a new constitution, an

IMPERIALISM earthquake, a few hurricanes, and many attempts at elections to get to this current state of affairs where the “International Community” is finally “having its way.” But Haiti is still embroiled in turmoil: the popular masses are still threatening social upheaval, the ruling classes are still divided in their power grabbing projects, and the imperialist agenda is still puttering along, not quite able to fully implement its “plan.” It has succeeded in destroying the Haitian national economy; Clinton has even apologized for free trade policies that led to the destruction of rice agriculture in Haiti. But there is still over 70% unemployment (the “Free Trade Zones” and industrial parks that were supposed to employ a massive cheap labor force only employ a few thousand workers), and the economy is a wreck—with the drug trade, contraband, foreign aid, and remittances from expatriates forming the bulk of the GDP. To summarize, the impact of this continuous series of imperialist interventions and occupations on the working class in Haiti has been disastrous. Constant repression has been deployed against working class movements and their organizations. Successive coups have been followed by intense repression of worker organizations, which have had to rebuild themselves over and over. Generalized impunity for bosses has been prevalent even under populist administrations, where systemic vio-

Fighting Fascism, Fighting Capitalism

by Jeff Monson

G

rowing up in rural Minnesota and later in the suburbs of Seattle, my only experience with fascists and skinheads was watching the movie “American History X” or reading the history of the Nazis, and the atrocities committed during the Second World War. For the most part, I was unaware fascism really even existed anymore. If it did exist, it was certainly not threatening or relevant. This view has certainly changed the past few years, although the complexities surrounding fascists and even more so the anti-fascist groups that oppose them has created as many questions as definitive answers.

My career as a mixed martial arts fighter has afforded me the opportunity to travel overseas with most of the recent bouts taking place in Europe and Russia. Being known as an anarchist certainly has not helped gain sponsors or get invited to participate in some fighting events, but it opened up opportunities to meet anarchists, communists, anti-fascists, and other groups identifying with the struggle against the destructive forces of capitalism, racism, sexism, and other isms that plague society.

I am often contacted to participate in meetings, do a talk, teach a seminar, and even engage in direct action activities. I have been able to be involved with different groups in Germany, Austria, England, Ireland, Greece, Spain, Ukraine, and Russia. This has been a wonderful experience, and I have learned a great deal about activism outside the US. In my experience there is a common theme within these groups in Europe and Russia not seen in America, and that is a preoccupation in combating fascists.

Fascism is bad and we should do everything in our power to stop it, but here is where it gets a bit confusing to me. In all my many visits to Europe and Russia (or anywhere else for that matter) I have never encountered a fascist to my knowledge. Now I have done jiu-jitsu (grappling) seminars in Russia where the anti-fascists have emailed me after, saying there were fascists participating in the seminar and I took pictures with them now on fascist social sites—but no one has ever identified himself or herself as a fascist to me.

I have never witnessed any planned attacks or violence that is said to occur from the fascist groups. I do not doubt that fascism exists, or that there is violence that happens, but what is the consequence of focusing on them as the main problem? I noticed over the course of time requests for open discussion and meetings were being replaced with requests for purely self-defense seminars, “to be ready for the fascists when we see them around the city.”

Despite frequent visits to Europe and Russia, I haven’t actually encountered any self-identified fascists, skinheads, or the like. This, to be honest, has made

lations of worker rights have been undeterred and even aided at times by state-sponsored repression. MINUSTAH forces even directly intervened in 2009 to squash protests by workers who were demanding an adequate adjustment of the minimum wage. MINUSTAH tanks, helicopters and troops were deployed to block worker protests and mobilizations. In this case, MINUSTAH troops were the chief enforcers of the “cheap wage” comparative advantage being promoted by imperialism and the Haitian ruling classes to attract foreign investment.

Under occupation, Haiti has become the “Republic of NGOs,” and these thousands of NGOs have not only contributed to systematically weaken the Haitian state, but are also actively co-opting working class movements.

Throughout these last 28 years of interventions, the nominal daily minimum wage in Haiti has risen from 15 gourdes in 1980 (US $3.00) to 200 gourdes in 2014 (US $4.55), but its real value today is only about half of the 1980 minimum wage (under the Duvalier dictatorship), while rampant inflation continues to eat away at workers’ incomes.

But the US military interventions and occupations in 1915-34, and by proxy in 1994-2000 and 2004 up to the present, have still failed to break the will of the Haitian popular masses to rebel, and the determination of Haitian workers to fight for their rights remains strong. ■

it difficult for me not to marginalize the anti-fascists. I have tried to find justification in the energy spent on the anti- fascist movement, but; isn’t it capitalism that is the real enemy? I’m sure government and the financial institutions are more than happy to have anarchists and anti-fascists clashing in the streets with skinheads, keeping the attention elsewhere while they continue exploiting and stealing money and labor from us all.

I have had the privilege of talking to some people who have offered another way of thinking about this anti-fascist movement.

We get taken advantage of by employers who steal our time and labor, banks who make us servants by putting us in a forever spiral of debt, and the money we do earn goes to companies who profit off what we need to live. So whom exactly do we fight? If I walk into a bank and confront a bank teller about my house in foreclosure, I will be told (if not escorted out) that he/she just works there, and doesn’t have anything to do with bank policies.

Another example is Occupy Wall Street. People from many different backgrounds, occupations, etc. and came together because of a single reason-grievance over the policies of big business, banks, and the government which makes it all possible. Although I would argue that Occupy Wall Street made a significant contribution for the working class, even if it isn’t currently visible, financial institutions and governmental policy really weren’t affected at all. Actually hurting these institutions takes time, coordination, and involves many people.

So going back to our anti-fascist friends in Europe and Russia, who are of course under the yoke of capitalism and being exploited by the these large seemingly untouchable institutions—here exists a real opportunity to fight (often literally) a force such as the fascist groups who support the tyrannical powers that are our oppressors. The irony of course being that the fascists is being exploited in the same manner. It may be difficult to “get the man” as you’re being crushed by the capitalists surrounding you, but much easier to confront the skinheads making rounds at the bus depot.

In many instances it seems the goal of changing society or even local social change instead became literally preparing for battle with the fascists. Lost in this fascination with the fascists is the real enemy. The state, banks, and corporations’ coalition continues to exert control over us and squeeze every penny from our pockets through global capitalism. Just a few years removed from the economic meltdown, banks’ profits at are an all-time high, while workers continue to be displaced, work longer hours and people are still losing their homes. But aren’t these fascists part of the working class as well? Are they not suffering the same economic hardships and exploitation?

I am *not* advocating for sympathy for a twisted, racist ideology, but I am asking if efforts would be better served fighting the common enemy—the orchestrators of economic oppression (capitalists). I can’t help but think these elites watch us fight each other in the streets and feel a sense of comfort that we are venting out frustration on ourselves and do not turn on them.. ■ onestruggle.net • 13

IDENTITY POLITICS

By Vincent Kelley (Excerpt; references and the full article are on onestruggle.net) o provide a theoretical perspective in service of a liberatory political praxis, it is essential to directly address the relationship between class and culture. Feminist Selma James, in her classic essay “Sex, Race and Class,” incisively notes that the “[t]he word ‘culture’ is often used to show that class concepts are narrow, philistine, [and] inhuman.” However, she argues that “[e]xactly the opposite is the case.” For James, “identity-casteis the very substance of class” even though identity, conventionally understood, appears to be a separate sphere from the social relations of production under capitalism. Indeed, “[t]he life-style unique to themselves which a people develop once they are enmeshed by capitalism, in response to and in rebellion against it, cannot be understood at all except as the totality of their capitalist lives. To delimit culture is to reduce it to a decoration of daily life.”

In other words, delimiting culture to a realm independent of class obfuscates the real, material conditions that underly the cultural itself. As a result, such a delimited theory of culture precludes the possibility of an emancipatory politics by erroneously positing that struggles against cultural domination can be disentangled from struggles against material exploitation. As James demonstrates, radical struggles against oppression necessarily entail struggles against exploitation.

On this latter point, Marxist cultural critic Teresa Ebert argues that “[s]ocial conflicts stubbornly make the semiotic a site of class struggle.” She further contends that much of postmodern cultural critique, critique that fails to connect the concrete of the everyday (culture) to the abstract of social totality (the social relations of production), “describes its own unreadable textuality and the opacity of its own writings” but cannot explain the “seemingly autonomous objects and practices” of the cultural tropes it purports to ‘deconstruct’. On the other hand, emancipatory, materialist critique is a “mode of social knowing that inquires into what is not said, into the silences and the suppressed or the missing, in order to unconceal operations of economic and political power underlying the myriad concrete details and seemingly disparate events and representations of our lives.” In other words, materialist critique is a “de-reification of the everyday.”

Ebert’s discussion of “topological” (linguistic, postmodern) versus “materialist” (radical, emancipatory) cultural critique highlights an often under-emphasized point vis-á-vis identity politics: The “cultural turn” within academia has effectively expelled class from critique itself. Critique to demystify ideology has been supplanted by critique to deconstruct discourse. And while the ostensible goal of deconstruction as practiced in ‘postmodern’ literary critique, queer theory, and continental philosophy is to “destabilize group differentiations” and, therefore, the idea of fixed identities, it must first reify the identities it seeks to destabilize. As contemporary cultural critique has trickled down to activist circles, it has served to bolster identity politics, i.e. the further reification of group differences, without progressing to the long-term goal of identity destabilization. But, regardless, destabilization is not an end in itself since freedom from categories (identities) is not freedom from necessity (class). Moreover, as we have seen, such categories are inextricably linked to the social relations of production under capitalism and, hence, cannot be fully eliminated absent an engagement with historical class antagonisms. Thus understood, the postmodern trope of ‘destabilization’ is uncannily revealing; it stops short of abolishing alienated categories in its clinging to difference as a transcendent Good, thereby preserving such categories as objects to linguistically toy with in the practice of what Nietzsche and has successors call “play.” In contrast, materialist critique recognizes that, in a world

T

14 • onestruggle.net

divided by the brutal hierarchies of the exploiter and the exploited, the oppressor and the oppressed, “playing” with alienated categories should be unmasked as an ideological bourgeois linguistic practice. Indeed, it is ahistorical, idealist, and even reactionary to neutralize categories that have always been and continue to be deeply political just to preserve them for intellectual “play.”

Closely linked to Ebert’s aforementioned “de-reification of the everyday” is the demystification of, as Marx and Engles put it, the “bourgeois interests” that “lurk in ambush” in the dark corners of capitalist culture. Selma James cuts right to the heart of these interests when she maintains that The social power relations of the sexes, races, nations and generations are precisely, then, particularized forms of class relations. These power relations within the working class weaken us in the power struggle between the classes. They are the particularized forms of indirect rule, one section of the class colonizing another and through this capital imposing its own will on us all.

In other words, by fostering divisions within the working class, the bourgeois is able to divert revolutionary struggle away from capital and smugly stand by as political opposition is displaced horizontally among the exploited in the form of racism, patriarchy, and so on. By the same token, the Black Autonomy Federation argues that “socalled ‘white’ people are a contrived super-nationality designed to help the capitalists keep workers of color in their place and safeguard the status quo.” As such, “racism is a class doctrine, used by the state for social control of workers of color” (my emphasis). In short, to use Louis Althusser’s term, marginalized identities are interpellated into their ‘place’ in the social relations of production via oppressions such as racism. These oppressions are then internalized by the working class, resulting in a form of intra-class warfare that enables capital to continue its exploitation of labor without mass resistance.

Proponents of identity politics, and anyone fighting injustice and oppression for that matter, recognize that racism, patriarchy, and other oppressions are real and must be dealt with as such.

At their best, they identify oppressive behavior for what it is and demand that members of oppressing classes make space for marginalized identity groups within radical organizations and movements. These individual, internal interventions are extremely important, especially in light of the deleterious effects that racists and misogynists have had personally and politically in radical circles. Indeed, it is what James refers to when she states that “we are seeking to break down the power relations among us on which is based the hierarchical rule of international capital.” But when extrapolated to a politics, the previously necessary individual nature of internal anti-oppression work is transformed into individualism, resulting in a bourgeois political praxis that fails to strike at the material roots of oppression itself: “the hierarchical rule of international capital.”

James’s linking of oppression to exploitation has been forgotten in the “privilege discourse” that dominates contemporary identity politics. This discourse consists of individualistic “privilege confessions” in place of collective action to dismantle the structural exploitation and oppression that provides the conditions for the individual behavior that such confessions seek to address. As the blogger at Orchestrated Pulse bluntly states, “privilege work has become a cottage industry of self-help moralizing that in no way attacks the systemic ills that create the personal injustices in the first place.” He further contends that a “substantive critique of privilege requires us to get beyond identity politics. It’s not about good people and bad people; it’s a bad system.” Here, beyond is the key word; indeed, identity politics is a necessary starting point for and component of struggles against oppression but is, as Eve Mitchell notes, “incomplete” when divorced from a critique of capitalism. continued on page 15 Drawing by Stepanie McMillan

Beyond Identity, Toward Emancipation

POETRY FOR ACTION

…delimiting culture to a realm independent of class obfuscates the real, material conditions that underly the cultural itself An analogy may help elucidate the paradoxical necessity and insufficiency of identity-based organizing. To develop technical facility and an understanding of harmony, jazz musicians often practice scales in their formative stages of development. But they don’t practice scales as ends in themselves; the idea is to improvise, a task that requires an ability to think outside—to think beyond—such linear exercises. In other words, the long-term project is to become free from the two common unintended consequences of technical practice for jazz musicians: mindlessness and over-intellectualization. But, even at an advanced stage, jazz musicians will return to practicing scales as a way to maintain their fluid technique and support their improvisatory development.

Identity politics in an emancipatory political praxis functions in a similar way to scale practice in the jazz musician’s development. Like scale practice, identity politics is a starting point on the way to emancipation, the latter which can be likened to improvisation for the jazz musician. Just as the musician must know how different scales fit with different chord progressions, the revolutionary must understand and highlight how particular identity groups are disproportionately oppressed under capitalism. But a truly liberatory praxis cannot stop there; it must move beyond identity toward complete emancipation, beyond linear technical practice and toward improvisation, to continue the analogy. However, just as the musician may return to scales time and time again, the revolutionary can do the same with identity by fighting racism, misogyny, heterosexism, etc. inside and outside radical movements. But, contrary to conventional identity politics, the goal is not to assert identity qua identity, just as the jazz musician’s goal is not to hone technique qua technique. Instead, just as the improviser must free herself from mindlessness and over-intellectualization by going beyond scale practice, the revolutionary must free herself from identity reification and sectarianism, the two common unintended consequences of identity politics. In short, an emancipatory politics must go beyond identity. ■

Untitled poem

An Assessment

Schools and jails privatized, The elders far from wise, Reality relative to membership, Broke ass kids, Sedatives as medicines, The life I live straight restelessness, Decrepitness of derelicts, Sponsorship of wrecklessness, Organize against all this.

Stigmatized hypocrisy, Victimized society by overlord robbery.

Vandalized property.

Expression of suppression, Repression season, The world is screaming, Defense of offensive scheming, A reality that’s stripped of meaning.

Hurdles of progression, Contraception of resistance, Ignorance and division, Are you living or in prison?

Hours cut down to twenty five, Unions pushing Capitol One Cards, At 7.25 you can’t survive, Millions have been foreclosed upon, CEO’s still eating Gray Poupon Student debt bubble, I’m so sick of it, Antidepressants keepin’ my mind fit.

Consumption is the only thing we’re allowed to do, But high unemployment burdens my family too.

International proletariat bein’ squeezed down.

Capitalism is one big trap.

There’s no escape.

Time to fight back.

They condition the conditions Positions of submission A poisonous system time for transition What is there to do?

Collapse the old, create the new Way past due Nothing hits harder than the truth, Rough to smooth Economic exclusion necessitates revolution, Perpetual pollution Needs a solution, Political illusions Parasitic relations Through institutions with the masses, State apparatus helps exploit and dominate classes An illogical situation Artificial “nations” Race discrimination, A contradictory reality; Bourgeois society destroys the seas, Global south forced on its knees Imperial nations Based on domination Usurping the resources Capital enforcers In tanks, on horses, Workers clash with bosses Collision in sight The proletarian struggle Through revolutionary muscle Rulers create conditions of no good Shoot-outs in the hood Corporate/state rulers Benefits are mutual Pig brutality cruel and brutal Masses used as tools To divide is the plan Sects can’t ride on the man, Policies of robbery Intrinsic to the paradigm Usurpers bank on our dime As we exist in a comatose state Stuck in a trance watching tv with an empty plate full of self hate Until we amass a resistance of the masses that can Form a critical opposition Until the blind can see And the deaf can listen..........

by Ricardito, and Amy Grieder

Spark Through the Dark

by Ricardito Ramos

The broken rose can shatter foes Torn pedals are rough to oppose scarred and almost froze Poverty makes it hard to grow Positivity rarely shown Webs of degenerate sewn Crack viles and broken homes TVs show a token road In what image are we mold?

Deviate, they scold Worms grimier then mold Coming from where malt liquor’s sold, Where pissy stairs and dirty halls Where broken dutches always fall What a pity, A city where towers of gold Were built by those who live in hoods so shitty Life so gritty “role models” dumbed down silly Grown ups act like kiddies Streets raise us cleverly witty Fuck slices of pie, let’s take the bakery!

by Ricardito Ramos

Everyday Story

by Ricardito Ramos

She was born into hell, She thinks she’s living well Used for her body Hurting physically, Beaten mentally Told how she should act, Appropriate to show her back Or lay on it in submission Can’t tell when its death that’s kissing Told not to question, That her physique is a blessing And nothing else is worth much Feening for the real touch

Of appreciation Instead there’s degradation Only given power within limits, Had hers broken so now she breaks spirits Showers nude on television Thinks freedom equals prison Suffering from all the bruises From continual abuses Thinks the “baddest bitch” is the truest The picture’s never been clearer A million photos still hates the image in the mirror Calls her homegirls “hoes” Thinks that makes them dearer A beauty derailed In a world where sex is hailed And potential jailed It’s really hard to hate But people do, even when they relate if they only had a clue…………

He was taught to be a man Means to be a boss So his plan Is to fuck and floss Loves his mother But hates his sisters Butt naked he feels should stay the pictures taught to cry is to show weakness so he lives to die and preaches all his dirt not knowing a woman’s or his own worth Living in contradiction Becoming submissive to the system Born a slave dies in a cage Lost to the beast and its ferocious rage Thinks he’s brave As he mistreats his partners Becoming the meaning of soul robber His only control is in destruction Acts in accordance to how he’s taught to function Behaving like the reaper that’s grim Barber shops which supply his trim Provide fuel for his obsession Discussions of how who is dressing Lurking in the night He seeks his pray Pursues through flight Not living right But who’s to blame?

The pawn or game of chess Beats when he should caress The world’s a stage The venue of sad theatrics Its bad how humanity is robbed so drastic He continues to pursue stones and plastic….. onestruggle.net • 15

WHAT YOU CAN DO RIGHT NOW!

Join the Rapid Response Network

Build Solidarity with Workers’ Struggles The Rapid Response Network

has been initiated to offer prompt solidarity to the struggles of workers against exploitation and repression, and to alert groups and individuals of situations that could benefit from immediate attention.

What you can do right now: • Organize phone-in parties to confront business that refuse to respect the rights of workers.

• Distribute Network information and leaflets, online and wherever you go.

• Arrange a presentation by One Struggle in your school, church, or community center.

• Research and investigation into working conditions internationally.

• Donate or raise funds and other material support for workers’ campaigns, and for workers wrongly fired or on strike.

To be notified of specific campaigns, please send us your email address and other contact information. To work more closely with us, please contact us directly and let us know what you’d like to do. onestruggle.southflorida@gmail.com OneStruggle.net The Rapid Response Network is initiated by One Struggle, an independent and autonomous anti-capitalist/anti-imperialist collective. Network participants do not necessarily share One Struggle’s overall viewpoints, but unite for the single purpose of supporting workers’ struggles.

Artists & Writers in Solidarity with Garment Workers in Haiti: Raise the Minimum Wage!

T One Struggle This newspaper is a collective effort to provide news and analysis about social struggles against the system of class domination and the various forms of oppression that underpin it - including but not limited to patriarchy, racism, homophobia, oppression of immigrants, the ongoing theft of land and domination of indigenous people - plus the fight against imperialist wars and international domination, as well as the fight to save the planet from ecocide.

These struggles are all interconnected, and share a common cause: the global system of capitalism/imperialism.

It’s all ONE STRUGGLE! Signed articles represent the views of the writers; not necessarily those of One Struggle as a whole.

Please send questions or submissions to: onestruggle.southflorida@gmail.com Donations are always needed and can be made at: onestrugglesouthflorida.wordpress.com/donate/

he garment industry is a global web of nightmares, where workers don’t make enough to survive. Retailers and brands like Gildan, Walmart, The Gap, Levis, Cherokee, Sara Lee, Hanes and J.C. Penney claim that low wages for factory workers and service employees are necessary because consumers demand low prices, when really it is for their own high profits. For example, Walmart made $15.4 billion in 2011.

The conditions for Haitian sweatshop workers are among the harshest and most abusive in the world. Haitian garment workers receive the industry’s lowest wages in the hemisphere: 200 gourdes, or less than $5 per day. Factories have been refusing to comply with even the totally inadequate minimum wage adjustment to 300 gourdes, which was made into law in 2009.

The State Salary Council of Haiti is set to recommend a new minimum wage at the end of November. The autonomous workers organization Batay Ouvriye (Workers Fight) is mobilizing to demand 500 gourdes ($11.50) per day—the minimum required for a family to survive.

Struggles of workers for decent wages and working conditions, plus the right to organize, are constantly met with severe punishment. We must not passively accept the presence of products on store shelves without understanding—and actively opposing—the harsh conditions of exploitation and repression under which they were produced.

As artists and writers, we raise awareness and help shape public opinion about social and political issues. We declare solidarity with garment workers in Haiti who are demanding a wage that meets their needs, that allows them to feed, house, clothe, and educate themselves and their families.

We are not calling for boycotts, and companies should not pull out of Haiti or anywhere else—workers depend on their jobs for survival.

Wherever these companies do business, we demand that they face their responsibilities to the workers, who make the goods that provide these companies with enormous profits. They should meet with autonomous unions and workers’ organizations, and ensure that their subcontractors respect workers’ rights, provide safe conditions, pay a living wage, and pay parations for stolen wages.

This was signed by 90 artists worldwide, including four Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoonists. The list is available at onestruggle.net.