Workers Resistance

Author: Fight Back

  • Israeli war planes, artillery attack Syria

    Israeli war planes attacked Syrian military positions inside Syria, March 19. The Syrian Arab News Agency is reporting that one person was killed and seven more were wounded in the attacks.

    On March 18, Israeli forces fired artillery, tank and anti-tank shells into Syria. The aggression followed the wounding of four Israeli soldiers in the illegally occupied Golan Heights.

    A statement issued Syria’s Command of the Army and the Armed Forces said, “This new aggression came in a bid to divert attention from the successive victories achieved by the Syrian Arab Army.”

    In recent weeks the Syrian Army won a spectacular victory over U.S. and Israeli-backed terrorists in Yabroud City.

  • Government austerity in the U.S.: Good for profits, bad for workers and oppressed

    For the last three to four years, the U.S. government has gone an historic bout of austerity, by raising taxes and cutting spending. This has contributed to a weak economic recovery, with workers still facing an official unemployment rate of 6.7%, which would be even higher if millions of unemployed had not given up looking for work. At the same time corporate profits have boomed to record highs.

    Austerity has hit oppressed nationalities (African Americans, Chicanos, Mexicanos and other Latinos, Asian Americans and others) hard. These groups have even higher unemployment and poverty rates, and suffer even more from government cuts to unemployment and other services. Women, who also have lower incomes and who are more likely to bear the brunt of child rearing, have also been hit hard by government cuts.

    Government austerity began as state and local governments began to raise taxes and cut spending after the 2007 start of the deep recession. Because almost all state and local governments have to balance their budgets, they began to raise tax rates and cut spending as their income, property and sales tax revenues sank with the recession. By the end of 2013, state and local government spending in the U.S., adjusted for inflation, was down to the level of early 2001, even though the overall economy has grown 25% since then.

    These cuts hit poor and working people the hardest as governments cut spending in programs funded by TANF (Temporary Aid to Needy Families, commonly known as welfare) and Medicaid (government health insurance for low income children and others). State and local government workers, including public school teachers, who are disproportionately African Americans and women, saw layoffs, furloughs and pension cuts. Many states raised their sales tax rates to increase tax revenues, but sales taxes fall the hardest on low-income families who have to spend all of what they earn.

    While federal government spending did go up and federal taxes were cut to combat the worst of the recession and financial crisis, by 2010 federal spending on goods and services peaked and started to decline. With the worst of the crisis behind them, and Wall Street and corporate profits back on the rise with the help of hundreds of billions of dollars of bailout aid, the federal government turned to cutting the budget deficit which had grown dramatically. This path was formalized in the 2011 Budget Control act that started the sequestration process of forcing cuts in future spending.

    The passage of the Budget Control Act in 2011 was another example of how Washington D.C. is beholden to Wall Street, not the working people of this country. While the unemployment rate was 9.0% and there were more than 6 million fewer jobs than the recession began in December of 2007, corporate profits had recovered to pre-recession levels in 2010, and by 2011, were hitting new record highs. With the banking and auto industries stabilized by the federal government bailouts and Federal Reserve loans, working people, both with and without jobs, were put back on the chopping block by both Republicans and Democrats.

    The payroll tax cut, which mainly benefitted working people, was allowed to end, leading to what was in effect a 2% increase in the payroll tax rate for working people. This hit lower income workers the hardest, since they often pay more in payroll taxes than income taxes. In addition federal extended unemployment benefits were first cut back and then again allowed to expire, even though long term unemployment continued at record high levels. The sequestration process has also led to cutting 57,000 low-income children from the federal Head Start program and imposes cuts in wages and pension benefits for federal workers.

    Over the last two years while payroll taxes have increased by 18%, mainly because of the end of the payroll tax cut, corporate tax revenues have actually fallen 1.2%. This is during the same time that corporate profits in the U.S. grew by 9% to hit all time record highs. At the same time the median, or typical household incomes, adjusted for inflation, have dropped to levels last seen in 1999. So working people, with fewer jobs and lower incomes, are paying more in federal taxes, while corporations, which are making record profits, are paying less.

    While the budget deal in December of 2013 softened some of the near-term austerity by increasing cuts in the future, this was offset by the end of federal Extended Unemployment Insurance benefits. The Budget Control Act of 2011 and the December 2013 budget deal set the course for years of federal government austerity in the future.

    In addition to specific tax increase and spending cuts that hurt working people, the policy of austerity is an overall drag on the economy, keeping unemployment higher than it otherwise would be. The combined tax increases and spending cuts at all levels of government are the greatest in at least 50 years, causing a total drag on the economy equivalent to almost 2% of GDP, or $300 billion dollars, and the loss of millions of jobs, both directly as government workers are cut, and indirectly as the tax increases and spending cuts reduce economic activity and employment.

    Both Democrats and Republicans use the federal budget deficit as the main reason why there is a need for austerity. The politicians claim that without austerity, that the U.S. could end up like Greece. But this is wrong on two fronts. First of all, the Greek government debt crisis happened only because the Greek government bonds are all in euros, so there is a risk (and reality) that the government can default on its debt. This is what happened to Russia in 1998 and Argentina in 2001, where both countries sold a lot of their government debt in foreign currencies that they couldn’t pay back.

    In contrast, Japan’s government debt is more than 50% larger than Greek government debt, compared to the size of each country’s economy, and has had no debt crisis. But Japanese government debt is all in Japanese yen, allowing the government to print money to pay off the debt if necessary, so there is no default risk. Similarly, U.S. government debt is all in U.S. dollars, so the U.S. could also print money if necessary to avoid default.

    The other problem with using the example of Greece to push austerity is that much of Greece’s economic decline has come from their extreme austerity policies. Under pressure from the European Union and the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the Greek government has imposed extreme austerity. Government spending on medical services has been cut by some 40%, and the drag of higher taxes and less spending has pushed the unemployment rate in Greece to more than 25%.

    Perhaps the only good thing to be said about U.S. government austerity is that it could be worse. Government austerity here in the U.S. is not as bad as in Greece, Spain, Portugal and other European countries that are being arm-twisted into raising taxes and cutting deficits. In addition, so far Social Security has been off the chopping block, despite Wall Street’s effort to privatize Social Security and replace it with individual investment accounts, managed, of course, by big banks and other financial institutions.

    With the federal government on course for another ten years of austerity, the fight to maintain and even expand Social Security and to restore and expand the federal government safety net, starting with federal Extended Unemployment benefits, will be important for working people, oppressed nationalities and women in the U.S.

  • Gainesville International Women’s Day panel: Solidarity, Palestine and Rasmea Odeh

    Gainesville, FL – On March 18, University of Florida Students for Justice in Palestine, Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), and the Freedom Road Socialist Organization (FRSO) filled a room with about two dozen students and community members to celebrate International Women’s Day. They hosted an educational panel titled, “Celebrating Women’s Solidarity and Palestinian Activism,” which addressed the history of the holiday, the Palestinian women’s movement, and the trumped-up immigration charges against Palestinian women’s rights activist Rasmea Odeh.

    Farah Khan of Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) opened the panel with a summary of the history of International Women’s Day. She traced back its roots to the socialist movements of the early 1900s and spoke of the huge 1917 strike in czarist Russia. This massive strike, led mostly by women, demanded an end to poverty, war, and the oppression of workers, and cemented a long tradition of militant women leaders fighting for revolution against the ruling class.

    Another SJP member, Tesneem Shraiteh, then connected International Women’s Day to the crucial role played by women’s organizations in the Palestinian liberation movement. She pointed out the existence of feminists who deny the oppression of women in countries occupied by the U.S. or its imperialist agents, such as Israel, and characterized their feminism as limited and damaging: “You have some Israeli women who identify as feminists and want equal rights for women, but not if you’re Palestinian. Some feminists don’t understand the imperialist borders around the women’s movement, dividing women against each other along lines of class and race. But there can be no equality for women without equality for all.”

    Michela Martinazzi, of University of Florida SDS, then presented the case of Rasmea Odeh, the Chicago Palestinian leader who is a long-time organizer for ending the occupation of Palestine. She was arrested last year and charged for immigration fraud, but she is only one of a long line of Arab, Muslim, or anti-war organizers facing political repression from the U.S. government. Martinazzi urged the event attendees to sign the StopFBI.net petition to drop the charges against Rasmea Odeh.

    Martinazzi stated even though International Women’s Day commemorates the victories of women – from suffrage to legendary workers’ strikes – women progressives still face attacks on every front of society and the fight goes on: “This day should be a reminder of the struggles we’ve won and the challenges we’ve faced, but it should also be a reminder of the battles we have yet to win.”

     

  • Minnesota students confront President Kaler to demand real diversity

    Minneapolis, MN – On March 12, 35 students interrupted a ribbon-cutting ceremony at the University of Minnesota to protest the lack of real diversity on campus. The protest was organized by a new student group called Whose Diversity? and was supported by Students for a Democratic Society (SDS).

    At the ribbon-cutting ceremony, students marched to the front of the crowd, chanted and spoke to the audience and administration before the event began. As U of M President Kaler begun speaking, protesters raised signs that read, “Support the right to self-determination,” “does my culture make you uncomfortable?” and “We reject racism” between President Kaler and the crowd. Unable to speak clearly or even see the audience, the president made a handful of remarks and then turned the microphone over to the next speaker. Non-white students are silenced every day by university administrators, but Whose Diversity? flipped the script.

    The ribbon-cutting ceremony was the public unveiling of the newly-remodeled second floor of Coffman Memorial Union, the Minneapolis campus’ student center. This is where student cultural centers are located, such as the La Raza Student Cultural Center, Black Student Union, American Indian Student Cultural Center, Women’s Student Activist Collective and many more. Students revealed that the second floor remodeling – which students resisted throughout the process – was an attempt to ‘whitewash’ the previously vibrant space because a conservative white man threatened to sue the University for discrimination several years ago.

    For years the administration has been tightening the largely non-white groups’ annual budgets and restricting their access to their own spaces, particularly on the second floor of Coffman. At the protest, students demanded “Where are the murals?” referring to historic cultural murals that the administration destroyed as part of the remodel of the student cultural center spaces. The murals were an important legacy of student struggle at the U of M – such as a mural depicting the historic 1969 student takeover of Morrill Hall which resulted in the establishment of the African and African-American Studies Department. Flustered by the students’ disruption of the press event, President Kaler hid in the student government office until it was his turn to speak.

    While Minneapolis is 18.6% Black and 10.5% Latino, the U of M remains overwhelmingly white. The U of M’s student body is 4% Black and 2.4% Latino/a in 2014. And the Chicano Studies, American Indian Studies and African American & African Studies departments are continually underfunded, as are non-white student groups. Students demanded that these issues be addressed. After the protest, students gathered to celebrate a successful action and motivate people to keep building the student movement.

    Students for a Democratic Society member Stephanie Taylor said afterwards, “The University systematically excludes poor and oppressed nationality students. UMN needs to expand access and support for departments and programs that serve these students. It’s not about diversity for the sake of diversity, it’s about justice for oppressed and exploited communities in our state.”

  • Boehner trashes Senate measure to restore Extended Unemployment Compensation (EUC)

    Washington, DC – House Speaker John Boehner came out today, March 19, against the Senate measure to restore unemployment benefits for the long-term jobless. In a statement issued by his press office, Boehner stated he was “open” to an unemployment insurance extension, but that it must be “fiscally-responsible” and help “to create more private-sector jobs.” He then stated, “There is no evidence that the bill being rammed through the Senate by Leader Reid meets that test.”

    In Congress ‘fiscally-responsible’ is often a code word for cuts to social programs that serve working and low-income people. ‘Private sector job creation’ means handouts to corporations or removing environmental regulations.

    Nationally, Republicans have staked out the political terrain that blames jobless workers for high unemployment rates and poverty on the poor.

    More than 2 million workers have been hit by the failure to renew Extended Unemployment Compensation (EUC) at the end of last year.

    Republicans got what amounts to veto power over legislation to extend jobless benefits when the Democratic leadership failed to insist on including extended unemployment insurance into the December 2013 budget compromise.

  • Immokalee workers demand higher wages from Publix

    Lakeland, FL – For almost five years farmworkers in Immokalee, organized by the Coalition of Immokalee Workers (CIW), have been fighting for higher wages from Publix Supermarkets. Immokalee, located in southwest Florida, grows many crops, including tomatoes and oranges. The city is home to many migrant farmworkers mostly from Mexico and Central America. Publix, whose headquarters is in Lakeland, Florida, is a multi-billion dollar corporation with over 1000 grocery stores throughout the South.

    The CIW has been pressuring Publix to pay a penny more per pound of tomatoes it buys from the farms in South Florida. As it stands, the Immokalee workers are paid by piece, meaning they are paid anywhere from 30 to 50 cents per 30 pound bucket of tomatoes they pick. Since the corporate buyers set the price they pay for tomatoes, they essentially set the wages for the farmworkers in the fields. The CIW have also been trying to get Publix to sign onto the Fair Food Program, which would advance the conditions for the workers. It would help stop slavery, harassment from the bosses, allow for break times, and many other things.

    Since March 5, Immokalee workers on “The Now Is the Time Tour” had been going to different cities throughout the South to talk about the Fair Food Program and urging companies like Publix and Wendy’s to sign on. Different cities had marches and protests. On March 14, the CIW arrived in Lakeland. Hundreds of protesters gathered outside of a local Publix store. Groups of people arrived throughout the night to take part in a 24-hour vigil. The local police were in full force, as well. They told people not to enter the parking lot – threatening them with arrests and car towing. On March 15, hundreds more gathered outside the store. The crowd was a mix of farmworkers, community members and students. They picketed for hours while chanting “The people united will never be defeated!” and “J-U-S-T-I-C-E is what we want, Justice in Immokalee!”

    In the hot Florida sun, almost 1000 people marched into the streets towards downtown Lakeland. For over two miles, men, women and children of all ages waved banners, flags and signs in the face of traffic and onlookers. Cars honked their horns and people cheered from the sidewalks.

    They marched to a park in downtown Lakeland where the CIW had set up a stage for speakers, and musicians. It opened up with speakers, and was followed with Huapango music (Mexican folk). Oscar Otzoy, a farmworker and member of the CIW said, “We’re here to celebrate the dramatic transformation underway in the fields as a result of a the Fair Food program and communicate the urgency of Publix’s participation as Publix continues to ignore us, to disseminate misleading statements and turn their back on the farmworkers who fuel their soaring profits.”

    Farmworkers acted out in a theatrical piece which showed the horrible conditions that they endure in Immokalee. It also showed how conditions improve when farms sign onto the Fair Food Program.

    From the stage, students from around Florida spoke. Diego Guerra of CHISPAS from the University of Florida fired people up and led them with a chant, “What do we want? Justice! When do we want it? Now!”

    Veronica Juarez who grew up in Immokalee spoke on behalf of Tampa Bay Students for a Democratic Society, stating “My mom is a farmworker so I’ve seen the horrible conditions that the farmworkers face first hand; from the harassment of the crew leaders to the wage theft. It’s great to see that the CIW is trying to change these realities so that the workers will have better working conditions and higher wages.”

    Marisol Marquez, an activist from Tampa and member of the Freedom Road Socialist Organization had this to say, “The U.S. time and time again, continues with exploitation of undocumented immigrants and farm workers – specifically those who are from Mexico and Central America. Just like Publix, the U.S. tries to turn the other way when confronted by the same people they oppress. NAFTA is one of those horrible examples of how the U.S. doesn’t start its terrible treatment of immigrants just at home, it also does it abroad. That is why you see so many immigrants crossing the border and risking everything to do so. Using economics and exploitation, they hurt people across the globe.”

    Marquez continued, “My parents, who are from Mexico, are a part of this. My mother swam through the Rio Grande and my father held onto the bottom of a train for four straight days; looking for work. They met in the crop fields. I remember growing up how they took me from tomato field to tomato field with them. Almost every immigrant around the country knows that farm workers will work under brutal conditions if they move to the state of Florida. And yet Florida is known by big businesses as the number one producer of crops like oranges, strawberries and tomatoes. It’s no surprise that business booms when people are forced into slavery and have to work for low wages. Enough is enough, the people are fighting back! And the CIW is paving the way!”

    The CIW plans to continue demanding that Publix sign onto the Fair Food program. Over the years the CIW has reached agreements with corporations like: Taco Bell, Burger King, Walmart, Subway, Aramark, among many others. It is only a matter of time before they make Publix cave in like the rest.

     

  • Immigrant struggle for drivers licenses heats up in Minnesota

    Minneapolis, MN – With the new legislative session underway, the drivers licenses for all campaign is kicking back into high gear in Minnesota. The immigrant rights movement is mobilizing to press the state legislature and Governor Dayton to pass a bill that would grant basic equality for immigrants.

    Currently undocumented immigrants cannot get drivers licenses in Minnesota. Due to extreme weather and inadequate public transportation, the thousands of immigrants that live in Minnesota are forced to drive for everyday tasks, like getting to work and taking children to school. Many of the immigrants that are deported and separated from their families first get ensnared in the criminal justice system when they are stopped for driving without a license. Once in the criminal justice system, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) intervenes and starts deportation proceedings against many people who have done nothing more than drive to work.

    According to Eder Alarcon of the No More Deportations campaign, “I think that as members of the immigrant community we need to struggle for drivers licenses to have access to one of the most important and necessary means of transportation in our state. If Minnesota grants drivers licenses to immigrants it would reduce one of the main causes of immigrants being detained and deported. Drivers licenses are one of the main needs of immigrants to be able to get to jobs that there’s no other way to get to without driving.”

    Several other states allow immigrants to get drivers licenses, and immigrants’ rights activists have won recent victories in places like Illinois and Washington D.C. which now allow immigrants to get drivers licenses.

    Immigrant rights activists in Minnesota have mobilized for several years to try to get the state legislature and the governor to allow immigrants to get a Minnesota drivers licenses. When the Democrats won control of both houses of the state legislature and the governor’s office in 2012, hopes were high that drivers’ licenses for all could finally be passed after several years without success due to Republican control of the Senate, and prior to 2010, a Republican governor. Yet even with Democratic control of both houses of the state legislature and with a Democratic governor, it has still been an uphill battle to get the drivers license bill passed.

    Last year a vigorous campaign succeeded in getting the Minnesota Senate to pass the drivers licenses bill, SF271. Hundreds of Latino immigrants and progressive supporters packed one committee hearing after another until the bill passed the Senate. But as last year’s legislative session wound down, the House version of the bill, HF348, stalled and Governor Dayton signaled he was reluctant to support it. At the end of the session several people staged a hunger strike at the Capitol over the issue, but in the end the House and the governor wouldn’t budge, killing the bill for the year. Since it passed the Senate last session, this year the bill just needs to pass the House and be signed by Governor Dayton.

    The driver’s license campaign in Minnesota is led by the community organization Mesa Latina, with support from the whole immigrant rights movement. On March 14, Mesa Latina led a meeting that rallied more than 200 people at the Waite House Community Center to kick off the campaign to win drivers licenses this year. At that meeting a march at the Capitol for drivers licenses for all was announced for Wednesday, March 26 at 3:00 p.m., with more mobilizations to come as the legislative session advances. Mesa Latina is also encouraging people to sign the online petition to support the Drivers License bill in the House, HF348.

  • “Stalingrad” confronts the disturbing realities of fascism and war

    Last year, I might have thought of Stalingrad as an interesting history lesson. But when I sat down in the theater to watch the new Russian war epic last weekend, all I could think about was the crisis in Ukraine.

    In less than four months time, the world watched a large, right-wing movement in Ukraine force a democratically elected government from power and replace it with a coalition ranging from far-right oligarchs to out-and-out Nazis. Russia responded to the new fascist-led government by condemning the undemocratic takeover and stationing troops in Crimea, a small region in the southeast of Ukraine comprised of a majority ethnic Russians.

    The move by Putin drew condemnation from all the usual players in the Western world, including U.S. President Barack Obama and German Chancellor Angela Merkel. While Russia defends its defensive posture out of concern at the fascist takeover, pundits in the West ridicule them and downplay the very real threat of a fascist Ukraine, the largest country on Russia’s western border. The New York Times, for instance, ran an op-ed titled “Putin’s Phantom Pogroms,” that argued – against all evidence – that Russia’s concern was a cynical ploy to dominate Ukraine. Funny, of course, for a newspaper that has a history of defending the U.S.’s many wars of aggression.

    But the threat of fascism in Ukraine matters a lot to the Russian people, and movie-goers in the U.S. would do well to see Stalingrad to better understand why.

    Stalingrad focuses on a small band of Soviet soldiers trying to defend a key neighborhood from the Nazi invaders. The neighborhood is situated in front of a major Red Army supply route, making the stakes incredibly high. Made up of a few sailors and the survivors of a war-weary combat unit, the group makes a courageous stand against the German occupation at great cost to themselves.

    You see the devastation wreaked by the Nazis on the Soviet Union on full display in the film. The neighborhood where the bulk of the film takes place is full of wreckage and dilapidated buildings. Food is scarce, and fresh water is even harder to find. Having executed most of the men left in the city, the Nazis regularly terrorize women and children in the most barbaric ways, giving the audience a glimpse of the horror of Nazi occupation. They rape Soviet women, withhold food and basic goods from the population, and forcibly relocate entire neighborhoods of people.

    In one particularly disturbing scene, a sadistic German lieutenant orders all of the women and children in the neighborhood to line up at gun point. He randomly accuses a darker skinned woman and her child of being Jewish, and the Nazi soldiers force them into a wooden structure and burn them alive. Other films on Nazi occupation explore this element of fascist violence, like the 1985 Soviet film Come and See, but Stalingrad shows how these acts of barbarism outraged ordinary working people enough to give their lives in order to drive the Germans back to Berlin. Anyone following the events in Ukraine will have a better understanding of why the rise of fascism in the neighboring country is so terrifying to the Russian people.

    One point that stands out in Stalingrad is the class composition of the Red Army and the class consciousness of the ordinary soldiers fighting German occupation. One soldier reminds another during a dispute that they are fighting in a “worker and peasant army,” showing how ordinary Soviet soldiers conceived of the war in class terms. Another soldier, who remains silent for most of the film, is revealed as a factory worker with an incredible talent for singing. His factory committee, recognizing his talent, sent him to Moscow to sing in operas and arias. Although the film shows us that he is a well-known celebrity, we find out he enlisted in the Red Army the day after the German invasion in 1941.

    Contrast that with just about any U.S. war film. Movies like Platoon show working class people in the U.S. forcibly drafted into the military to fight wars on behalf of the rich. Some justify it to themselves in nationalistic terms, but most soldiers were forced to risk their lives because of their class background.

    In Stalingrad, the workers fighting Nazi occupation have pride in their class, not just their country, which directly contrasts with the Nazi soldiers. At one point, a German officer tries to psyche his soldiers up to storm the Red Army’s neighborhood base by telling them that they will conquer India after defeating the USSR. Addressing a battalion made up of many child soldiers, some no older than 13, he talks about Indian women in the most racist terms and explains the Nazi imperialist project as their reason for fighting. Stalingrad highlights that while the Nazis fought for colonial and imperialist expansion, the Soviet Red Army fought for freedom from the jackboot of fascism.

    Technically speaking, the cinematography of Stalingrad is masterful, which was released in IMAX 3-D. An early scene features a large battalion of Soviet soldiers storming a Nazi fuel bunker from the water. The amphibious landing blows up in their face – literally – as the Nazi commanding officers destroy the bunker in order to prevent the Red Army from capturing the fuel. The enormous explosion is only outdone by the sight of Soviet soldiers, burning alive from the oil fire, bravely charging the German barricade and tackling Nazi soldiers to the ground to also burn. Released the same weekend as 300: Rise of an Empire, the sequel to the racist fantasy war epic of the same name, Stalingrad provides all of the stunning visuals and thrills while remaining rooted in reality.

    All of that said, you can tell Stalingrad was made in the Russian Federation, and not the Soviet Union, more than 20 years after the restoration of capitalism. The film mentions the Soviet Union and bits of dialogue pay homage to socialism, but the tone of the film is more nationalistic than any World War II films produced in the USSR. After the film, I couldn’t help but contrast Stalingrad with Come and See, which focused on the Belarusian resistance to brutal Nazi occupation. If Come and See is the Apocalypse Now of Soviet war films, Stalingrad was much more like Saving Private Ryan. The political nature of the events on-screen is purposely toned down to emphasize the visuals and the plot, which might make the film disappointing to some Soviet history buffs.

    The people of the former Soviet Union take the threat of fascism very seriously, and Stalingrad clearly articulates why they should. Most histories of World War II in the West would have us believe that the U.S. single-handedly defeated Hitler. Ultimately, this is why Stalingrad is such an important film for people in the U.S. to see. Of the 60 million people who died in World War II, the Soviet Union bore the brunt of the war against fascism, suffering more than 7 million military deaths and millions of other civilian deaths. Even the highest death tolls for the U.S. place the military death toll no higher than 420,000.

    Stalingrad forces us to confront the reality of fascism and war from the perspective of Russians, which is more important than ever before with recent developments in Ukraine. The Soviet Union is gone, but the people of Russia all have parents, grandparents, or great-grandparents who paid the ultimate sacrifice defeating fascism during World War II. For people in the U.S., World War II films like Stalingrad provide important ground for discussing the roles of other nationalities in defeating the Nazis, which is often downplayed in Hollywood. Stalingrad provides such discussions, and that alone makes it worth the ticket price.

  • Young UPS workers are fighting back

    Tampa, FL – Young workers at UPS are fighting back against low pay, part-time work and concessionary contracts that attack employee health care. The “Vote No” movement at UPS, a rank-and-file revolt of Teamsters against the cutbacks pushed by UPS management and some sell-out union officials within the Teamster union, sparked young workers across the country to hit the gates of their buildings to leaflet and organize their coworkers.

    “When we saw the proposed agreement, it did nothing to address the issues faced by thousands of Teamsters across the country. As a part-timer, I felt like I was being sold out. That’s when my co-workers and I found the Vote No movement and began leafleting our co-workers and speaking out at meetings against the contract.” said Dustin Ponder, 25, a part-time UPS worker in Tampa.

    The agreement would hit young part-timers especially hard, introducing health care cuts, lower raises, no hope for full-time employment anytime soon, and moving the full-time pay progression from three years to four years for future drivers. “The IBT let us down in negotiations. UPS made billions off our labor while part-timers are being worn down and struggling against poverty. Paying more for insurance while cutting our raises is inexcusable. As a husband who is trying to take care of a sick wife, these concessions hurt us the most,” states Cory Oliver, a 24-year-old part-time activist in Milwaukee, Wisconsin who has been with the company for six years.

    The vast majority of the part-time work force at UPS are young workers between the ages of 18 and 30. Most make under $10,000 a year, and perform back-breaking labor, often without health insurance for their first year. Many of these workers, who are trying to support families, or pay their rent, are forced to work two or three jobs just to make ends meet.

    From the militant 1997 UPS strike to winning a national master freight agreement for truckers nationwide in the 1960s, the Teamsters union has long been at the forefront of worker struggles in the U.S. This new generation of fighters is hoping to continue making history of their own. They are trying to build a nationwide network of part-timers, working with Teamsters for a Democratic Union. They’ve created a Facebook group called “Part Time Power at UPS.” They are planning to start monthly nationwide contract enforcement campaign and create a set of national UPS contract demands for part-timers before of the next IBT [International Brotherhood of Teamsters] international elections and the next contract negotiations.

    “The International only dealt with one issue concerning part-timers: the starting wage. The IBT, of course, only dealt with it in minimal fashion. Teamsters who work part time at UPS make up roughly more than half of the unionized workforce, and UPS Teamsters make up almost a quarter of Teamsters. If organized, part-timers could potentially pick the next IBT President and make both the IBT and UPS deal with part-time issues,” states Charles Jordan, a shop steward active in the part-time movement in New York City’s Local 804.

    2014 promises to be a year of growth in the young part-time movement. The group is encouraging fellow part-timers to get active in their locals by building campaigns to run young militants for shop steward and part-timers for local union offices with the aim to turn their locals into fighting unions that work for the interests of the workers themselves.

  • Minneapolis protests growing danger of a new cold war and U.S. intervention

    Minneapolis, MN – More than 50 people joined a coalition of Twin Cities peace and anti-war groups, March 15, to speak out against the growing danger of a new cold war with Russia. The protest was organized under the call, “No New Cold War with Russia – U.S. Hands Off Ukraine, Venezuela, Syria & Everywhere – No New U.S. Wars and Interventions – People Need Funds for Housing, Jobs and Education, not the Pentagon!”

    A statement issued by organizers says in part, “The Ukraine crisis has the U.S. and NATO issuing threats of sanctions against Russia, we see a build-up of military forces, warships with guided missiles to the Black Sea, F-15 fighter jets being dispatched to Poland. These are dangerous times. For people in the U.S., we must always remember, the U.S. government does not intervene for justice or democracy, but to uphold the interests of the 1%. A new set of wars, or a new cold war with Russia, will not benefit anyone but the corporations and the defense contractors.”

    Holding signs and banners at the very busy intersection of Cedar Avenue and 3rd South Street on the West Bank in Minneapolis, participants chanted and listened to speakers.

    Alan Dale, of the Minnesota Peace Action Coalition, opened the rally and then introduced Marie Braun, of the Twin Cities Peace Campaign and Women Against Military Madness. She said, “Americans came out in force against missile attacks in Syria. Hopefully, Americans will understand that a new cold war is not in their interest. A new cold war will primarily benefit corporations and defense contractors, and that is not the 99%.”

    Meredith Aby, of the MN Anti-War Committee, said, “I find the Obama administration’s recent expressions of concern for the right to dissent in other countries to be particularly outrageous while anti-war activists like myself are under federal investigation in this country for organizing peace protests and solidarity with Colombia and Palestine. Democracy, free speech, human rights – these are excuses given by the U.S. government to persuade the public to support their wars.”

    Aby also said, “It is important that we are here today to say no to the Obama administration’s efforts to delegitimize Venezuela’s democratically elected government. We must oppose the $5 million in the 2014 U.S. federal budget and the hundreds of millions of dollars the U.S. has spent over the past fifteen years funding opposition activities inside Venezuela.”

    The crowd was roused as Braun and Aby each challenged the hypocrisy of the recent statement by Secretary of State John Kerry, “You just don’t in the 21st century behave in 19th century fashion by invading another country on completely trumped up pretext.” They recalled U.S. invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan, the U.S. role in Libya, and its threats to bomb Syria and attack Iran.

    Other speakers included Dave Logsdon, Vice President of Veterans for Peace Chapter 27, and Cherrene Horazuk, president of AFSCME Local 3800. Horazuk recently returned from observing elections in El Salvador. Warning against right-wing threats against the newly-elected government of Salvador Sánchez Cerén, she compared these efforts them to the US-backed protests by the elite in Venezuela.

    The Saturday protest was endorsed by MN Anti-War Committee, Mayday Books, MN Peace Action Coalition, Twin Cities Peace Campaign, Veterans for Peace Chapter 27 and Women Against Military Madness. The Minneapolis protest is one of a series of local anti-war protests being held in cities across the U.S. this weekend initiated by the International Action Center.