Killed By Cops
In 2015, there have been 791 people killed by the police. Of those people, 103 of them were killed in the month of August alone. The youngest was 12 years old, while the oldest was 65 years old. They include Freddie Grey whose spine was severed while riding unrestrained in a Baltimore police van. They […]
What Future For Young People?
What kind of future is this society offering to young people today? From work to higher education, it seems like all the doors are being slammed shut. Pathways that are supposed to help you get ahead end up being dead ends. Try to get a job? You end up competing with millions of other people […]
New Orleans – Ten Years After Hurricane Katrina
Ten years ago, Hurricane Katrina landed on the coast of Louisiana, flooding New Orleans. Even though this was a massive hurricane, the chaos that followed was man made. Who can forget the TV images of New Orleans mostly black residents, flooded out of their homes with no safe place to go, no medical care for […]
People Make History – Not Politicians
Every election season we are reminded about how important it is to exercise our right to vote. We are told to hold our breaths and pick between two parties that don’t represent our interest. We are told that voting is the way to change things. We are told that the Democratic Party is the party […]
When Revolutionaries Stood in Elections
In the elections most people have experienced, no matter how appealing the candidates seem, something remains exactly the same – the candidates are promising to run the system in our interests. Even so-called progressives like Bernie Sanders only promise better versions of the same system. They believe the best we can have is a slightly […]
2016 Elections: No Choice for the Working Class
The 2016 Presidential election primaries have begun. Many working people are distrustful of both political parties and politicians in general. President Obama’s approval rating has stayed around 40 percent while the approval rate for the U.S. Congress has been below 20 percent for over a year. In an April 2014 poll, a record high of […]
A Recovery Only For The Rich
It has been seven years since the economic crash of 2008 – when tens of millions of workers lost their jobs and millions of families were kicked out of their homes. The government’s response to this crash is well known – they gave trillions of dollars to bail out corporations and the financial institutions that […]
Killed By Cops
In 2015, there have been 791 people killed by the police. Of those people, 103 of them were killed in the month of August alone. The youngest was 12 years old, while the oldest was 65 years old. They include Freddie Grey whose spine was severed while riding unrestrained in a Baltimore police van. They […]
Straight Outta Compton
Straight Outta Compton is the story of the rap group NWA, which launched the careers of Ice Cube, Dr. Dre, and the late Eazy-E. The story revolves around the group’s struggle to make their music while being manipulated by their management. As many critics have pointed out, the film avoids important and ugly parts of […]
What Future For Young People?
What kind of future is this society offering to young people today? From work to higher education, it seems like all the doors are being slammed shut. Pathways that are supposed to help you get ahead end up being dead ends. Try to get a job? You end up competing with millions of other people […]
Puerto Rico Debt Crisis – The Rich Make The Poor Pay
On July 7, the Puerto Rico government failed to make a 5.8 million dollar payment due on the Island’s immense 72 billion dollar debt to Wall Street banks. The governor of Puerto Rico explained that the Island’s debts were unpayable given the long-term decline of its economy. Immediately following Puerto Rico’s default, the bankers demanded […]
Evictions Can Be Stopped
During the depression of the 1930s as many as 35 percent of workers were unemployed. They had no unemployment insurance and quickly fell behind in their rent. But much of the time they didn’t get thrown out of their homes because large numbers of people stood up together against the police to block evictions. With […]
What Happened to Public Housing?
In 1937, in a period when workers were fighting all over the country for jobs, wages, housing and more, the U.S. Government began a program that promised to provide affordable public housing for low-income families. But the Government never followed through on this commitment. It wasn’t until the 1950s and 60s that most black families […]
The Bay Area – Too Expensive to Live
The average one-bedroom apartment in San Francisco is $3,200 – the highest in the country. Oakland and San Francisco had the highest year-to-year increase in home prices in the country – over an 11 percent increase since last year. Rents in San Francisco increased over 14 percent in one year, and 19 percent in Oakland, […]
New York: Making the Housing Crisis Worse
Rents are skyrocketing in New York City. In the last five years rents have climbed 55 percent while wages have fallen by four percent (when adjusted for inflation). In the last six months, rents have soared twelve percent, and most New Yorkers pay over 42 percent of their income in housing. For most working-class renters […]
Houses For Living – Not For Profit
About 3.5 million Americans sleep in shelters, transitional housing, and places not meant for living. Another 7.5 million Americans have lost their homes and are living doubled-up with family or friends. Over 580,000 people sleep on the street. Over eleven million households pay more than 50 percent of their income on housing, living on the […]
The New Housing Crisis
The U.S. media and the politicians like to pretend that the economy has recovered and is picking up again. If you are among the less than one percent who own the banks, the corporations, the land, the wealth of this country, this is true – in fact times have rarely been better for them. But […]
California’s Drought: A Wasteful System
Because of this extreme drought, California has been hit with a massive water shortage, as most of its water sources are at record low levels. The message from the politicians has been that individuals are to blame for massive amounts of water wasting. In March, Governor Brown issued an emergency water bill to reduce city […]
Baltimore – Right to Rebel
On April 12, Freddie Gray was chased down by three cops for looking at an officer. He was thrown in a police van and when he arrived at the station, his spinal chord was severed and he had three fractured vertebrae and a crushed voice box. He fell into a coma and died a week […]
Albert Parsons: Fighter For Workers’ Revolution
Albert Parsons, a leader of the fight for the eight hour day, was arrested for the murders of seven policemen on May 4th 1886 and executed on November 11, 1887. Six years later the Illinois governor publicly acknowledged that Parsons and the seven other convicted workers were entirely innocent of these charges. Albert Parsons was […]
Union Legislation: A Tool of the Bosses
In the last five years, right wing politicians have successfully imposed restrictions on unions, mainly limiting what unions can bargain over, and the right of unions to automatically collect dues. The vulnerability of unions to these attacks lies in the fact that over the last 30 years, most unions have made huge concessions to the […]
The Right to Work (For Less)
Last month in Wisconsin, Governor Scott Walker signed the latest in a series of so-called “right to work” laws that have been passed in half the states in the country. In most of the 25 states that have passed these laws, unemployment is usually higher than average, and wages are often lower as well. These […]
The Ludlow Massacre: April 20, 1914
This month, 101 years ago, was the Ludlow Massacre, one of the most brutal events in a violent 14-month strike against poverty wages and dangerous working conditions by coal miners in Colorado. Seven months into the strike, on April 20th, 1914, about 1200 strikers and their families living in a tent colony near Ludlow, Colorado […]
Trans Pacific Partnership: Tightening the Grip of U.S. Capitalism
A deal is being struck in order to tighten the control of U.S. corporations on the world markets that will have huge consequences for workers in the United States, Asia, and everywhere else – the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP). The ruling class of the U.S. wants the TPP so badly that both parties, Republicans and Democrats, […]
Purvi Patel: Sentenced to 20 Years for a Miscarriage
Purvi Patel, a 33 year-old woman from Indiana has been sentenced to twenty years for nothing more than having a miscarriage of an unwanted pregnancy and seeking medical attention. The facts of the case don’t even make sense. Patel was charged for two crimes – killing a fetus, and neglecting a living child. These supposed […]
Fannie Lou Hamer: A Leader in the Freedom Struggle
In the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s, many of the most important leaders were women. One of those leaders who stands out in history is Fannie Lou Hamer, born into a family of poor black sharecroppers in rural Mississippi on October 6, 1917. This was a time when most black people in the U.S. […]
Citizenfour: A Film Everyone Should See
During this year’s Academy Awards, there were a few moments when real world events forced there way through the thick wall of self-obsessed stardom that typically surrounds Hollywood. One of these moments came when filmmaker Laura Poitras won the award for the best documentary for her film Citizenfour – a film about Edward Snowden, former […]
Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr. – In their Own Words
For those who are determined in their fight to bring about a society free from discrimination and inequality, their political views are rarely stagnant. The more we struggle, the more we organize with others, the more we study the past – the more our views evolve. Both Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr. were […]
ISIS – Another Excuse for Endless War
On February 11th, President Obama gave a speech demanding that Congress take action by waging a wider war – once again, against terrorism. This time the target is the so-called terrorist group ISIS, the Islamic State in Syria and Iraq. ISIS has made headlines as it seizes territory in Northern Iraq and in Syria. In […]
Afghan Women – Occupation is Not Liberation
The U.S. and NATO invaded and occupied Afghanistan in October 2001. One excuse given for this invasion was that women in Afghanistan needed to be liberated. In fact, U.S. foreign policy towards Afghanistan has never had anything to do with championing the rights of women but rather manipulating the issues to further U.S. economic interests. […]
Film Review – Pride
Pride is a film that provides a rare glimpse of the power of ordinary people to change themselves while they fight to change the world. In 1984, England’s right-wing Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher launched a terrible attack on the most organized section of the working class in England, the miners. It was an all-out war. […]
Health Care From The Inside
The following articles come from information from our workplace newsletters that are distributed every two weeks at Kaiser Oakland, Alta Bates in Berkeley, and Highland Hospital in Oakland. The Crisis in Kaiser Oakland In the first nine months of 2014, Kaiser reported a profit of $3.1 billion, making 2014 its most profitable year yet. The […]
Work Until We Drop
Work literally makes us sick, causes injuries and lowers our lifespans. The stress of short staffing, the feeling of constantly being overworked, the chemicals, exhaust, and dust that we breathe in – it all adds up. Understaffing, long hours, increased stress, repetitive strains – these are the causes of injuries and health issues. It’s a […]
Destroying Public Hospitals
Public Hospitals like Highland and San Francisco General are essential health centers, and they are on the chopping block. These safety net hospitals serve the poor, those without health insurance, and are also some of the best and most widely used trauma centers. And now, over the next five years, the federal government plans to […]
The Affordable Care Act – Still Making A Killing
It’s been over a year since people began to sign up for new health insurance linked to the Affordable Care Act (ACA). The Obama administration says it’s a huge success. And this is sort of true. The program is succeeding at what it set out to do: to deliver more customers to the health care […]
Health Care or Wealth Care?
The health care industry in the U.S. is not organized to serve the medical and health needs of the population – its main priority is the generation of profits. And this is what stands in the way of quality health care. The Highest Costs In the U.S., health care is a $2.7 trillion industry. The […]
Israel and the U.S. – The Special Relationship
It is clear the U.S. and Israel have a special relationship. Every U.S. official has to make this absolutely clear whether they sit in Congress or in the Oval Office. During the latest war Israel inflicted on Gaza, while nearly one third of all Americans polled believed that the violence was unacceptable, every singe member […]
ISIS – A Product of U.S. Imperialism
U.S. warplanes have started bombing communities in Syria and Iraq, targeting the group called ISIS, the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria. In the last year, ISIS has rapidly extended its control into areas of both Iraq and Syria, which produce large amounts of oil, threatening the profits of big Western Oil companies. This is […]
The Police: To Serve and Protect…Their System!
The militaristic response by the police to the rebellion in Ferguson showed the country and the world something all too familiar to poor and working class people – that the police are heavily armed and ready to use brutal force to put people down. The police are often represented as the good guys who only […]
The United States – The Cop of the World
The U.S. government acts like the cop of the world. It claims that when it wages war, it is protecting people. Politicians do their best to mask U.S. military violence in the language of humanitarian intervention and the promotion of democracy. But just like cops, the real role of the U.S. military in the world […]
Ferguson, Missouri – The War at Home
On August 9, Michael Brown, an 18-year-old unarmed black man, was murdered in cold blood by a cop. The reason? He was walking in the street and questioned the cop’s order to get out of the street. This outrageous act attracted the attention of people across the U.S. and around the world, but not because […]
Destruction of the Environment – A Ticking Timebomb
Climate change is an immediate danger to humanity. Every year for the past 37 years has been warmer than average. And the twelve warmest years have all happened since 1998. We are experiencing this through rising global temperatures, increased numbers of storms and natural disasters. These environmental changes will cause massive human suffering and destruction […]
Capitalism: Leading the Way to Extinction
There have been five major extinction events in the planet’s history. The dinosaurs were killed during the fifth extinction, which scientists believe was caused by an asteroid crash that drastically changed the climate. Now, scientists say we are living in what could be the sixth extinction. But this time, our species is the cause of […]
Film Reviews: A Fierce Green Fire, Gasland
A Fierce Green Fire is a 2012 documentary film by Mark Kitchell that showcases various environmental battles spanning fifty years in the U.S. and around the world. In every situation, regardless of the country, whether people are fighting to defend the forests, their neighborhoods, wildlife, or access to water, the enemy they run up against […]
Fighting For Our Planet – Fighting For Our Future
Around the world, people are taking up the struggle against global climate change as the corporations use every means at their disposal to continue to profit from ecological destruction. From India to Peru people have answered these attacks with protests, demonstrations and strikes. Here is a small sample of some of these recent struggles. Germany […]
Keystone XL Pipeline – A Toxic Disaster
Last month, nearly 400 people were arrested in Washington, DC protesting the Keystone XL pipeline. This pipeline is designed to carry 830,000 gallons of oil per day, travelling over 1,000 miles from Canada to the gulf. The Keystone XL pipeline will ensure that oil will be available to use as a fuel in the U.S. […]
Beyoncé: A Mixed Message of Resistance
Beyoncé recently did something rare among popular musicians – she sent out a message of resistance. Beyoncé calls herself a “modern-day feminist” and released her own album, somewhat critical of the entertainment industry. Her song, Pretty Hurts, criticizes the industry for “shining a light on whatever’s worst,” and claims that “perfection is a disease of […]
The Women’s Movement of the 1970s
Women’s rights in society, from the right to vote to the right to legal abortion, were all fought for and won by women themselves. More than in any other period, the 1970s saw a mass movement of women, inspired by the example of the civil rights and black power movements of the 1960s, pushing back […]
Childcare: A Social Problem – A Social Need
Today most parents work while trying to raise children. Most people work more than 40 hours per week, and are receiving the lowest pay in decades. This means childcare is a major problem for working families, and especially for working women. As a result, many children don’t receive the care and attention that they need. […]
Attacks on Women – An Attack On Us All
In recent years, women’s rights have come under greater attack by politicians, especially the right wing of the Republican Party. These politicians take aim at rights that women have won in the past. Their goal is to channel the anger and insecurity felt by workers struggling to survive in an economy that only serves the […]