Category: Articles

We Need More Permanent Staff

This article is reprinted from the Speak Out Now healthcare newsletter at Kaiser and Highland Hospitals in Oakland, CA. Travel nurses play a vital role in our hospitals – they help make sure patients are cared for when facilities have higher than usual census, such as during a sudden outbreak, natural disaster, or major accident. […]

Clockin’ In Blues

This article is reprinted from the Speak Out Now healthcare newsletter at Kaiser and Highland Hospitals in Oakland, CA. At Highland Hospital, our nurses’ union contract stipulates that we have a 7-minute grace period to clock in before the start of each shift. This ensures that we are settled and ready to take report from […]

The Wrong Way to Stop the Right

Representative Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez (AOC) made news last week by contributing, for the first time in her nearly five years in the House of Representatives, $260,000 to the campaign arm used by Democrats in the House of Representatives. For her first few years in office, she resisted contributing to the larger fund, choosing to use her […]

Coral Bleaching Another Canary in the Coal Mine

As the world’s oceans get warmer, that heating is becoming a danger to the diverse ecosystems that live along their edges. Last week the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration issued a new report confirming that the world’s coral reefs are undergoing what researchers say is likely to be “the most widespread and most severe bleaching […]

Arizona’s Abortion Ban

On Tuesday, April 9, the Arizona Supreme Court ruled that an old law from 1864 banning abortions could be enforced. There are no exceptions for rape or incest. The law that dates back to before Arizona became a state criminalizes medical professionals who provide abortions or abortion drugs. It punishes them with prison sentences of […]

Outdoor worker safety under attack in Florida: Who is to blame for the abuse of workers?

Heat-related deaths in the U.S. have skyrocketed due to global climate change. Outdoor workers, as well as elderly people and young children, face the highest risk of overheating. In 2022, heat-related deaths had increased by 95% since 2010, and temperatures are only getting hotter, with 2023 ranking as the hottest year on record. While those with access to […]

If Hospital Workers Ran Highland…

This article is reprinted from the Speak Out Now healthcare newsletter at Kaiser and Highland Hospitals in Oakland, CA. Alameda Health System CEO James Jackson recently sent out a memo that AHS is facing a budget gap of $100 million for the fiscal year, and needs to close the gap by June of this year. […]

Residents Unionize!

This article is reprinted from the Speak Out Now healthcare newsletter at Kaiser and Highland Hospitals in Oakland, CA. In recent weeks, residents from Kaiser Northern California have formalized the process of starting a union. This marks a significant step forward, potentially establishing the first union for residents in a Northern California Kaiser facility and […]

Don’t Be Tricked: Nurses with a Living Wage Improve Patient Care!

This article is reprinted from the Speak Out Now healthcare newsletter at Kaiser and Highland Hospitals in Oakland, CA. Last week, Santa Clara County nurses of the Registered Nurses Professional Association went on a three-day strike at three public hospitals – Santa Clara Valley Medical Center (VMC), O’Connor and St. Louise. This was the union’s […]

1934: Unity Between Strikers and the Unemployed Wins a Union

In 1934, the auto parts manufacturing center of Toledo, Ohio was in the grip of the Great Depression, which began with the 1929 stock market crash. One in three workers in this city of 275,000 were unemployed and on relief. The rest of the Toledo working class experienced short work weeks and wage cuts imposed […]

When the Government Declares War on the Unemployed

This is the April 1, 2024 editorial of the New Anti-capitalist Party (NPA) in France, translated from French. Under the pretext of a government deficit, following the growth of subsidies to employers and the swelling of the military budget, French Prime Minister Gabriel Attal has just declared war on the unemployed. On the program: reduction […]

Bird Flu a Product of Industrial Food Production

Since the beginning of 2022, more than 82 million chickens have been culled (killed) in the United States to avoid the further spread of the H5N1 bird flu. The virus is called a bird flu because that is the category of life in which it originates, but it has recently shown the ability to mutate […]

Deadly Droughts Envelop Southern Africa

Since late 2023, millions of people in southern Africa have been facing an extreme drought, disrupting multiple aspects of their everyday life, including access to food and water. Rainfall levels between late January and February of this year were the lowest in at least 40 years. And for central parts of the region, this February […]

Famine: a Genocidal Policy for Gaza

Famine is choking the life out of the population of Gaza where two million people struggle to live. At no other point in recent history has there been such starvation of an entire population. The United Nations predicts that more than 200 people will be dying from starvation every day. Nearly 700,000 people, almost a […]

No Rights Without Trans Rights

The recent International Transgender Day of Visibility served as a celebration for all marginalized gender identities, and a reminder of the distance still to go until we have equality for all. The Right continues to use state legislation to scapegoat trans people and the whole LGBTQ+ community. There are constant and growing attacks on our […]

Vanderbilt Students Protest Suppression

Last Tuesday, March 26, police arrested four students and as many as twenty more were suspended on the campus of Tennessee’s Vanderbilt University after they occupied the university’s main hall for twenty-two hours. A local reporter was also arrested. Right-wing media outlets (see any recent coverage by Fox News) are mocking the protesters, painting the […]

AC Transit: The “Rapid” Displacement of Working Class Families

The “Rapid” Displacement of Working Class Families With the Tempo (BRT) up and running from downtown Oakland to San Leandro, one could take a ride and see the status of the neighborhood. East Oakland has long had a reputation for being “rough,” but it has also been home to many of us. But now with separate […]

Nothing Sweet About Working in the Sugar Industry

For centuries, the sugar industry and the slave labor system that produced the world’s sugar, shaped the global economy and condemned millions – from Brazil, the Caribbean islands, Louisiana and more – to short, brutal lives of labor. Now, a recent New York Times and Fuller Project investigation entitled “The Brutality of Sugar: Debt, Child […]

The “Goon Squad”: A Symptom of U.S. Policing

So far, six police officers have been given 10 to 40 year prison sentences for the racist torture and sexual assault of two Black men in Rankin County, Mississippi. In January 2023 both men were beaten, tasered and sexually abused, and one nearly died during a so-called mock execution. The officers were part of the […]

Tennessee Volkswagen Workers Petition for Union Election

A “supermajority,” well over one half, of the 4,300 production and maintenance workers at the Volkswagen plant near Chattanooga, TN, submitted a petition to the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) on Monday, March 18. The workers want the NLRB to schedule a secret ballot vote on April 17, 18, and 19 to determine if the […]

Baltimore Bridge Disaster Didn’t Have to Happen

At 1:28 a.m. on March 26, a massive cargo ship, known as the Dali, collided with Baltimore’s Francis Scott Key Bridge, resulting in seconds in the collapse of most of the structure and the death of six construction workers who were performing pothole repair on the bridge. Before its collapse, the Key Bridge carried about […]

Standardized Tests Don’t Fix Education Inequality

For the first time, the college entrance exam SAT will be fully online, in a newer, shorter version. Top institutions will reinstate the SAT in admissions, reversing the pandemic-era decision to make the test optional. The shifts surrounding the exam have started a debate on the benefits and disadvantages of the SAT for students impacted […]

A 32 Hour Work Week?

Bernie Sanders proposed a 32-hour work week, though we don’t expect anything to come of it. Instead of waiting for reforms from the top, we can collectively accomplish much more by using our power.

Medical Waste is Making Us Sick!

The largest medical waste incinerator in Baltimore, Curtis Bay Energy, that was just fined $1.75M in October, is now being sued by the state environmental agency, the Maryland Department of Environment (MDE), to impose more fines on the company. On Wednesday, March 20, 2024, the Baltimore City Council had an informational hearing to discuss the […]

U.S. politicians put the lives of immigrants at risk in Arizona

Arizona officials threatened to close vital migrant shelters and warned of a severe spike in homelessness if they cannot secure federal funding for migrant services. Despite the rise in immigrants being released by the U.S. Border Patrol into Pima County Arizona, with a record of 46,000 people released there in December of 2023, Pima County […]

TikTok Ban? A Symptom of US-China Tension

Last week, the majority-Republican House of Representatives passed a bill that would ban TikTok, unless the Beijing-based parent company ByteDance sells the app to a non-Chinese buyer. The bill was passed under the pretext of national security, alleging that the Chinese government could use TikTok to spy on the U.S. public. In reality, they are […]

Airline Industry: Their Profits Over Our Lives

The airline industry in the United States has been in the news recently after a series of alarming safety incidents. In January, a panel blew off the side of a Boeing jet operated by Alaska Airlines in mid-flight, forcing pilots to make an emergency landing. In March 2024 alone, there have been at least 10 […]

“Uncommitted” In A System That Is Committed To Genocide

People in the United States have continued to watch the ongoing slaughter in Palestine with horror and have looked for possible ways to halt the genocide. As one of the forms of protest that people have turned to, hundreds of thousands have been refusing to vote for current President Joe Biden in the ongoing Democratic […]

Eviction Crisis in Rural U.S.

Since moratoriums on evictions were lifted following the first two years of the Covid-19 emergency, we know that eviction filings by landlords have again climbed to pre-pandemic levels. In the past year alone, a little over one million evictions were filed nationwide. New research by the Princeton Eviction Lab shows that the rural U.S. is […]

Biden’s Budget: It Does Nothing for Workers, and It Won’t Inconvenience the 1%

When President Biden sent his proposed Tax and Budget proposal to Congress on March 11th, he claimed it would end the so-called “trickle down” government economic policies which favor the rich and big corporations. His actual proposals, however, show a huge gap between his rhetoric and the real policy of his administration. To manage the COVID […]

The State of Our Planet (2023)

If there is a political arena where the hopes of reformism are wearing thin and being proven futile, it is among environmental activists. A revolutionary perspective is desperately needed in the climate movement, now more than ever.

It’s Survey Time at Highland

This article is reprinted from the Speak Out Now healthcare newsletter at Kaiser and Highland Hospitals in Oakland, CA. It’s that time again at Alameda Health System to complete the SCORE Culture of Safety Survey. Unfortunately, despite our annual attempts to diligently report our workplace safety concerns via this survey, management consistently ignores the survey […]

Haiti: On the Brink of Social Collapse

Haiti is on the brink of complete social collapse, engulfed in a mass crisis of escalating gang violence, brought on by economic and political instability after decades of foreign intervention. The Prime Minister of Haiti, Ariel Henry, announced on March 12 that he will resign, after weeks of increasing instability and mounting attacks on the government […]

Amazon at a Tipping Point?

A new study released last month estimates that if current patterns of global warming, drought and fires persist, nearly 47% of the Amazon rainforest (by far the world’s largest rainforest) could collapse and become grasslands or other types of ecosystems. In this case, huge amounts of carbon could be released into the atmosphere, adding to […]

Israel’s Genocide of Palestinians Continues with U.S. Support

Israel’s genocidal war continues as it inflicts a state of “total siege” on the people of Gaza. Access to food and water has been severely restricted by the Israeli siege. UNRWA (The United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East) says Israel has blocked it from making any deliveries of […]

U.S. Wants to Make an Example of Julian Assange

Any day now, a British court is expected to rule on Julian Assange’s final appeal of an order that he be extradited to the United States. If he is sent to the U.S., he will face prosecution under the Espionage Act, a 1917 law enacted during World War I specifically to stifle and punish dissent […]

Bosses have a new tactic to stop workers from forming unions

Workers at big non-union corporations like Tesla and Amazon have been trying to organize unions for the last several years. Some of them have been fired in order to scare the rest of the workers away from the effort. In spite of the firings, however, workers at these companies continue to organize. This alarms the […]

New CDC Guidelines Say Go Back to Work!

The federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) announced on March 1 that it is lifting its recommendation to isolate for five days after testing positive for COVID. It now recommends “returning to normal activities when, for at least 24 hours, symptoms are improving overall, and if a fever was present, it has been […]

Mergers: Another Attack on our Wallets

The largest grocery store merger in history is taking place between Albertsons and Kroger. These chains boast over 5,000 grocery stores in 48 states, and employ almost 700,000 people. These chains include Safeway, Ralphs, Kroger, and Vons. If this merger goes through it would be worth $24.6 billion and would cause 22% of the grocery […]

Profits for the Rich, Inflation for the Poor

As oil and gas companies make record profits, gas prices continue to rise. From 2021 to 2023, the country’s top-10 wealthiest of these companies made a combined net income of $313 billion. Average gas prices have now reached $3.34 per gallon, costing people $40 to $50 to fill up their car tank. But, in some […]

Trapped Indoors

This article is reprinted from the Speak Out Now healthcare newsletter at Kaiser and Highland Hospitals in Oakland, CA. In a recent memo sent by the Kaiser administration, we were warned not to leave the downtown Oakland building during our lunch breaks. This was after a couple of workers at Kaiser were victims of theft […]