In the Worst of Times, the Billionaire Elite Plunder Working Class America ~~ Nick Baker

https://socialistaction.org/2020/09/05/in-the-worst-of-times-the-billionaire-elite-plunder-working-class-america/

In the midst of a global pandemic, unprecedented economic collapse, mass unemployment, hunger and desperation, the stock market is booming and the richest of the rich are richer than ever before.

‘They Couldn’t Arrest Us All’: Civil Rights Veteran Rutha Mae Harris on MLK, Protest, Prison and Song ~~Ahmna Mohdin

If anyone wishes to post civil rights music or music about class struggle, this is a good place to put it. 

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https://portside.org/2020-10-08/they-couldnt-arrest-us-all-civil-rights-veteran-rutha-mae-harris-mlk-protest-prison-and

Rutha Mae Harris has never been afraid to sing in front of a crowd. Even as a 22-year-old facing the 250,000 people who had gathered at the Lincoln Memorial in August 1963 for the historic march on Washington, she felt excited rather than scared. After all, at earlier protests, she had faced police pointing batons, fire hoses and even guns, and each time, when she sang, her terror faded away.

Nations, Nationalism, War and Class Struggle

A few related pieces on the subject of nations, nationalism, war and class struggle.

In Whose War Shall We Fight ~~ E. Debs

and selected quotes on the subject by Red Robbo

PRIVATIZING THE COMMON GOOD: THE 21ST-CENTURY ENCLOSURES ARE HERE ~~ Ashley Dawson

https://www.hamptonthink.org/read/privatizing-the-common-good-the-21st-century-enclosures-are-here

~~ posted for Collectivist~~

Fossil capital has been granted immense power, producing life-giving heat and light but also plunging communities into darkness when they fail to return outsize profits. In 2011, DTE Energy, the investor-owned utility (IOU) that controls southeast Michigan’s energy infrastructure, repossessed one thousand streetlights from Highland Park, a city in the larger metropolis of Detroit. The city was left in the dark. Like many other Black-majority cities across Michigan, Highland Park was struggling at the time with capital flight and spiraling levels of austerity. Once home to Ford and Chrysler auto assembly plants and the well-paying jobs that they generated, Highland Park had seen its fortunes crash in the 1990s and the 2000s as the automakers shipped jobs abroad.

Trump’s turn from immigration to the enemy within ~~ Ryan Devereaux

https://mronline.org/2020/10/07/trumps-turn-from-immigration-to-the-enemy-within/

~~Posted for Collectivist ~~

LISTENING TO Donald Trump describe the U.S. in 2016 was to hear a story of a nation in peril of losing its identity to waves of brown-skinned invaders. Immigration and the border, particularly the urgent need to build a wall between the U.S. and Mexico, dominated Trump’s campaign rhetoric. Once in office, the president’s top immigration adviser, Stephen Miller, rammed through one punishing initiative after another, banning travelers from Muslim-majority countries, separating immigrant children from their parents to deter others from making the journey north, forcing tens of thousands of asylum-seekers to wait out their cases in the border’s most dangerous cities, and plowing through protected lands to stand up towering new sections of border wall. Today, asylum at the border is effectively dead, and Trump’s Department of Homeland Security is using the coronavirus as a pretext to boot immigrants out of the country–including families, children, and babies–as swiftly as possible.

So it may have come as a surprise to some that immigration hardly came up at all in the first presidential debate of 2020. This is at least partially due to the fact that the Trump administration’s framing of its priorities has evolved over the past several months, as waves of protests challenging the power and brutality of American policing have swept the country. Without question, the anti-immigrant machinery marches on. In July, the Migration Policy Institute catalogued more than 400 executive actions the administration has taken on immigration since Trump’s inauguration. Those policies continue to impact countless individuals and families across the country and around the world every day, and if the claims of a former top DHS official are true, Miller has an immigration campaign of “shock and awe” drawn up and ready to go should Trump remain in office. But with those efforts simultaneously in motion, the Trump administration has increasingly and prominently centered purported threats posed by leftists, anarchists, and anti-fascists in its bid to hold onto power. This widening of the threat aperture is straight out of the authoritarian playbook, said Jason Stanley, a professor of philosophy at Yale University and author of “How Fascism Works: The Politics of Us and Them.”

Is Socialism Practical? ~~ Daniel DeLeon

IS SOCIALISM PRACTICAL?

by
Daniel DeLeon

https://www.marxists.org/archive/deleon/works/1906/060903.htm

The Daily People  Sept. 3, 1906

The “practical” man sneers at socialism as visionary, unattainable, and without any immediate social value.

Immersed in his own private affairs, and judging the world from the limited horizon which they afford, he fails to perceive that socialism is the only vital economic, political and moral force of modern times.

Bosses Are Charged with Breaking the Law in Over 40% of Union Campaigns ~~ MICHELLE CHEN

https://inthesetimes.com/article/bosses-union-busting-trump-nlrb-labor-intimidation

Labor unions are more pop­u­lar than they’ve been in over 15 years. Yet a record-low num­ber of work­ers belong to them. The gap between the pub­lic per­cep­tion of unions and their actu­al mem­ber­ship illus­trates just how dif­fi­cult it’s become for work­ers to organize.

In a new report, the pro­gres­sive think tank Eco­nom­ic Pol­i­cy Insti­tute (EPI) found evi­dence that employ­ers are increas­ing­ly brazen in seek­ing to obstruct work­ers’ attempts to union­ize. Records of the Nation­al Labor Rela­tions Board (NLRB), which over­sees pri­vate-sec­tor labor rights and union elec­tions, reveal that in more than 40% of the 3,260 union elec­tions dur­ing 2016 and 2017, employ­ers have been charged with unfair labor prac­tices aimed at under­min­ing elec­toral pro­ce­dures and retal­i­at­ing against pro-union workers.

Time’s Most Influential Indigenous Activist: ‘Capitalism Destroys The Whole Planet’~~ Desirée Yépez

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/nemonte-nenquimo-indigenous-activist-time-influential-people_n_5f764ddbc5b66377b27f8cac?fbclid=IwAR1n5H5PbHcN1NiciMu1i2bPkDjTVCsuZ_idVYdta0n1_XbYtDKnA1nInJs

~~ posted for Collectivist ~~

Nemonte Nenquimo, lauded by Leonardo DiCaprio for her work protecting Ecuador’s Amazon, speaks about her life, activism and motherhood.

Capital and COVID: Why the Left needs disability liberation ~~ M.K. Anderson

https://mronline.org/2020/10/03/capital-and-covid-why-the-left-needs-disability-liberation/

~~ Posted for Collectivist ~~

This all could’ve gone differently. Bob Woodward revealed that Donald Trump knew in February that COVID was airborne, information both men declined to share with the rest of the us until just now. Congress was also briefed. Their only response was to adjust their investment portfolios. The rich have been given a head start to prepare, to plan for millions of deaths, and to prevent their own. In the meantime, the rest of us must work— if work is even available.

I was laid off on the first day of the Texas lockdown. I’d been on FMLA for an illness related to a disability. As Marx said in Capital, Volume I:

Suppose you were in want of an additional workman, and two were to apply, both equally well qualified in other respects, but one had lost a thumb or a forefinger, which would you engage?

The same logic applies to who gets fired first. The cripple, of course.

UNRELIABILITY, SPINELESSNESS OF THE WESTERN ‘LEFT’

http://www.greanvillepost.com/2016/09/30/unreliability-spinelessness-of-the-western-left/

Andre Vltchek - Itinerant Philosopher and Journalist, 30 September 2016

It is tough to fight any real war. And it takes true guts, discipline and determination to win it.

For years and decades, the so-called ‘left’ in the West has been moderately critical of North American (and sometimes even of European) imperialism and neo-colonialm. But whenever some individual or country rose up and began openly challenging the Empire, most of the Western left-wing intellectuals simply closed their eyes, and refused to offer their full, unconditional support to those who were putting their lives (and often even the existence of their countries) on the line.