Cover of “India Against Britain” by Ram Chandra. Published in San Francisco by the Gadar Party [1916]. Excerpts from articles that refute allegations made by loyalists to the British Raj.
Ghadr Party CentenaryOn April 21st 1913,exactly 100 years ago the Ghadr party was formed.Today we celebrate the centenary of the historic occassion. It was a day which will be remembered in the
COMMITTEE FOR THE RELEASE OF POLITICAL PRISONERS 185/3, FOURTH FLOOR, ZAKIR NAGAR, NEW DELHI-110025 Dated: 19.04.2013 Condemn the Growing Tendencies of Re-arrests of Political Activists! Condemn the Brutal Torture and Illegal Detention of Zakir Hussain!! Release Zakir Hussain and Sabyasachi Goswami Immediately and Unconditionally! Punish the Officers Responsible for the Torture and Illegal Confinement of […]
DHARNA AGAINST COMMERCIALISATION OF EDUCATION IN PUNE – MUMBAI AND ALL OVER INDIA Date: Saturday, April 20, 2013 Time: 5 pm to 7 pm Venue: Pune Municipal Corporation Back Gate, Near Nigdi Bus Stop, Pune This is a part of an all-India protest being organised at the initiative of All India Forum for Right to […]
Newark, NJ – The People’s Organization for Progress (POP) put a Hands off Social Security picket line in front of the Essex County Social Security building, April 16. Hundreds of drivers blew horns. Passersby stop to talk and show solidarity. Other participating organizations included the International Action Center, One People One Nation, Veterans for Peace and the Coalition to Save Our Homes.
The protest was in response the Obama administration’s proposed cuts in cost of living adjustments for Social Security. A new “chained Consumer Price Index” would replace the established CPI with a lower percentage. The expectation is that Social Security outlays would be reduced by several hundred billion dollars over the next ten years. It is another proposal to support Wall Street profit demands by plundering the living standards of the masses.
That a Democratic administration would propose such a thing has caused widespread shock. The impact would be far broader than senior citizens, since families and dependents are also supported by Social Security. The protest showed that neither POP nor the other organizations nor the masses will have any of it. Wall Street’s attack on Social Security must be stopped.
At the hospital of the University of Illinois at Chicago, one of the most recognized union stewards is Randy Evans of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) Local 73. With 33 years of employment as a Building Service Worker (BSW) in Environmental Services, and 18 years of service to his coworkers as a steward, you would think that Randy would have a place of honor at the medical center.
But in December, he was given a two-week suspension without pay. The charges against Randy stemmed from his defense of a coworker in his duties as a union steward.
What led management to suspend Randy?
Several of the departments in the hospital, including Environmental Services, Central Sterile Supply, Patient Transport, Dining Services and Material Management, have a terrible history of violations of the union contract, such as failing to meet the deadlines for providing information, failing to respond to requests for meetings and allowing grievances to go unanswered.
Randy won’t tolerate the union contract being treated this way, and is forceful in demanding the respect of these managers. This is the first reason that management has attacked him.
Randy is their scapegoat
Why is this suspension happening now? In November 2011, there was a murder that occurred in the Medical Center. A man killed his ex-wife after management put them both on the same shift, together with her new boyfriend. All three employees involved worked in Environmental Services and the incident exposed the failures of the management methods in that department.
These methods include:
— Disrespect of employees: BSWs should be recognized for their contribution to keeping the hospital free of germs. Instead they get yelled at and told to work harder.
— Overwork: As the medical center has multiplied the number of patients it sees, the work load on every building service worker has increased.
— Denial of benefit time usage: Management doesn’t want employees to use benefit time for vacation and sick leave.
— Divide and conquer: In order to keep workers from uniting against them, older workers are pitted against new; men against women; and nationality against nationality.
–Discipline equals punishment: Workers get written up all the time. They work in fear of being moved to a new assignment or work area; of the loss of pay if suspended; and the ultimate threat of loss of their job.
Shadow of the plantation
There’s another underlying reason for the attack on Evans: racism. UIC is an employer whose labor relations were built on white supremacy. When UIC was built in the 1960s, the administration created a racist, two tier pay system. Mostly white workers in Urbana were paid one rate; mostly Black workers in Chicago were paid $1 or $2 an hour less. This system stayed in place until Local 73 grew strong enough to win the Urbana pay grades for all (see Fight Back article http://www.fightbacknews.org/2001fall/chiworkerswin.htm )
What management gives with a tea spoon, they take away with a shovel
When the workers – Black, Latino and white – won that victory in 2001, it didn’t bring an end to the system of racist discrimination at UIC. At the time of the victory over the pay disparity, there were almost 400 BSWs at UIC. Today there are only 250. This was management’s revenge for the workers victory in 2001: downsizing. Today, each worker is doing the work that had been done by two.
Taken together, this labor system is what led to the toxic climate in which the murder took place last year. Rather than dealing with this underlying tension, management is sweeping it under the rug. Are workers angry? Of course they are! Working hard in the face of disrespect, while top bosses get rich off their labor, makes people angry.
The murder last year put the spotlight on hospital administration. Now management is taking the attention off them and putting it on Steward Evans.
Local 73: The only defense workers have
With management like this, workers need union stewards like Evans, a person who is not afraid to speak up.
Local 73 is defending Evans. The union has grieved the suspension, will file an unfair labor practice charge against UIC for targeting a steward for union activity and continue to fight managers who behave like this.
This is not a threat: this is a promise. Human Resources at UIC needs to learn the difference.
APDR Hooghly district committee demands that those behind the killing of Kaji Nasiruddhin and Sudipta Gupta be punished. Both have died in police custody under suspicious circumstances. Nasiruddin, a Trinamul Congress worker under Dhonekhali police station, had fallen out of favour of the ruling group. He was taken to the police station while being relentlessly […]
Salt Lake City, UT – Anti-war activists and students in Utah took their message directly to the U.S. government’s doorstep on April 11 with a rally in front of the Wallace F. Bennett Federal Building.
Roughly 30 people attended, calling for an end to U.S. occupation and military intervention, as well as an end to drone strikes like the one that killed 11 Afghan children on April 8.
“President Obama is the Drone Ranger,” said Utah Valley University professor Michael Minch. “The self-described ‘Vulcans’ who ran George W. Bush’s White House must be green with envy, for Obama has killed far more people, personally authorizing their use, than Bush might have even imagined killing with this killing system.”
The crowd was adamant that the U.S. get out of Afghanistan and stay out of Syria and Iran. Many also voiced their opposition to ongoing threats and war rhetoric against Democratic Korea.
“People on both the right and the left have criticized north Korea for their military first policy,” said Dave Newlin, member of the October 7th Anti-War Committee, who organized the event. “I ask you, what about U.S. military first policy? What about U.S. endless hunger for weapons of mass destruction, for drones and for world dominance?”
Newlin pointed out that the U.S. spent almost $1.5 trillion on wars, military and defense support. That is more than any other U.S. expense and more than any other country. Those in attendance called for that money to be spent on things like education, jobs and health care, rather than war.
Organizer Tess Vandiver, who recently spent time in occupied Palestine, read a moving poem given to her by a Palestinian boy that read, “I feel like I am in a cemetery when I am in my own town.”
Vandiver condemned U.S. support for the Israeli occupation and called for an end to U.S. aid to Israel: “This issue isn’t about a group of people being better than another; this isn’t about whose land is whose, the Old Testament, or the Qur’an. It is about basic human rights and the suffocation of a society.”
The Wallace F. Bennett Federal Building houses both the offices of Utah Senator Mike Lee and the local FBI offices. Protesters took the opportunity to condemn the repression of anti-war activists throughout the U.S. by the FBI and called on Senator Lee to end his support for drone strikes and foreign intervention.
The Historical Significance of Mao Zedong By Henry C.K. Liu (廖子光) This article appeared in AToL on April 13, 2013
Democracy and Class Struggle has deep respect for Henry C.K. Liu and over the years we have learnt much from him, our own analysis of China here was greatly influenced by him, but needless to say our views are not exactly the same has Henry C.K Liu, nevertheless we are in his