Showing posts with label bourgeoisie. Show all posts
Showing posts with label bourgeoisie. Show all posts

Tuesday, July 12, 2022

The Benefits of World Hunger

 

Rise, like lions after slumber
In unvanquishable number!
Shake your chains to earth like dew
Which in sleep had fallen on you:
Ye are many—they are few!

~ Percy Bysshe Shelley

 


“The Paradise of the Rich is made out of the Hell of the Poor.” --Victor Hugo

“For I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me.”

--Matthew 25:35

The Benefits of World Hunger

by C.A. Matthews

There have been so many upsetting stories in the news lately that it's difficult to know what to write about and what hasn't been written into the ground already. But one article I encountered in my readings this past week hit me out of the blue, and I couldn't shake it. I decided to borrow its title and explore some of the aspects of what those five words mean.

The title? The Benefits of World Hunger.

You can learn more about how this intriguing article came about from this article:

United Nations Scrubbed Article Heralding Benefits of World Hunger from Website After It Went Viral   https://www.globalresearch.ca/united-nations-scrubbed-article-heralding-benefits-world-hunger-from-website-after-it-went-viral/5786053

The original article written by George Kent is now archived here:  https://archive.ph/zKzzH

To give you a flavor of what the thesis of Professor Kent's article is, here's an extended quote:

The non-governmental organization Free the Slaves defines slaves as people who are not allowed to walk away from their jobs. It estimates that there are about 27 million slaves in the world, including those who are literally locked into workrooms and held as bonded laborers in South Asia. However, they do not include people who might be described as slaves to hunger, that is, those who are free to walk away from their jobs but have nothing better to go to. Maybe most people who work are slaves to hunger?

For those of us at the high end of the social ladder, ending hunger globally would be a disaster. If there were no hunger in the world, who would plow the fields? Who would harvest our vegetables? Who would work in the rendering plants? Who would clean our toilets? We would have to produce our own food and clean our own toilets. No wonder people at the high end are not rushing to solve the hunger problem. For many of us, hunger is not a problem, but an asset.

The last two sentences really grabbed me. No wonder people at the high end are not rushing to solve the hunger problem. For many of us, hunger is not a problem, but an asset.

Hunger… an asset? When you put it that way, I guess it is. Those who have everything necessary for a healthy and comfortable lifestyle--such as a lovely home, easy transportation, an excellent education, a satisfying career, plentiful food, adequate medicine/healthcare, travel opportunities, entertaining hobbies, etc.--don't have to worry about the little details in life. They just happen. They happen because those with material wealth believe they deserve the wonderful things that happen to them, too.

Why are designer vegetables so cheap and abundant in the upscale supermarkets? How do posh meeting haunts magically keep themselves so sparkling clean? The answers are simple. These things are the way they are because those who have wealth typically don't share much of it with those who have little to none. The threat of starvation is enough to get the Haves what they want from the “slaves to hunger.” The threat of starvation forces the Have-Nots to do all the grunt work/dirty work the Haves never have to do for themselves.

The threat of starvation--The Benefits of World Hunger--is what makes capitalism go 'round--and 'round and 'round and 'round!

Why do so many people put up with capitalism and its constant threat of starvation? Commentator Caitlin Johnstone paints the picture perfectly:

Things are getting worse and worse because the systems that are in place are designed to exploit and oppress rather than to uplift and help thrive. Those systems will protect their own ability to continue to exploit and oppress until the people use their numbers to replace them with something healthy. The people will never use their numbers to replace abusive systems with something healthy as long as they are successfully propagandized away from doing so.

 This is why our political and media institutions act the way they act and why our systems are set up in the way that they are: to keep us from realizing how easy it would be to shrug off the old mechanisms of oppression like a heavy coat on a warm day and build something new that works for all of us.

Things will keep getting worse until we find a way to cut through the propaganda brain fog and rise like lions.  -- Our Entire Civilization Is Structured Around Keeping Us From Realizing We Can Do This

So, hunger is a great motivator to keep the vast majority of us working for meager wages, a.k.a. slave wages. Constantly toiling, we laborers never have the time or strength to come to the realization that we as a group might actually be able to end this oppressive system. We've been brainwashed by our “superiors” to think that we can't do anything, and that's the way it is. We've been made to feel inferior by those who have it all and can't be bothered to share any of their wealth with us.

The Benefits of World Hunger… It explains so much. We The People are controlled by our stomachs and our minds, through the threat of starvation and through an insipid indoctrination into an economic system that can only exist by keeping those who labor constantly worried about the threat of starvation.

How do we escape this threat? How do we take away the benefits that the well-to-do, a.k.a. the bourgeoisie, expect from this corrupt, exploitative system? How do we keep them from threatening us with hunger by buying up all the arable farmland, such as billionaire Bill Gates is currently doing?

First, we the workers must learn to feed ourselves without outside interference. Feed ourselves with food grown in our backyard gardens and community gardens. We need to food bank together with our neighbors. Food co-ops and other organizations that take care of the nutritional needs of the working people are essential. Mutual aid groups are a necessity.

Secondly, we must feed our minds and our souls with uplifting, nourishing praise and rhetoric that teaches us that we are indeed capable of creating a fair and just society. We can create a society where none are made to starve or live in fear because of the threat of hunger.

We must free ourselves from the bondage of The Benefits of World Hunger and all who believe the threat of starvation must continue.

 “The only way to deal with an unfree world is to become so absolutely free that your very existence is an act of rebellion,” said Albert Camus. We must become rebels. We must become free to act and to think for ourselves. We need to feed each other with the confidence that no one will ever be able to use a essential element such as food against us ever again.

In a moral and just world, hunger should never be thought of as a benefit to any person, place, or thing. We need to resist any government or leadership that insists that it is.

The mayor of L.A. getting rid of homeless people.

Related articles:

Corporate Billionaires Are Wrecking the Supply Chain https://popularresistance.org/corporate-billionaires-are-wrecking-the-supply-chain-just-look-at-the-railroads/ 

Mutual Aid Groups That Arose During COVID Gather to Build Power Regionally https://truthout.org/articles/mutual-aid-groups-that-arose-during-covid-gather-to-build-power-regionally

Our Entire Civilization Is Structured Around Keeping Us From Realizing We Can Do This  https://caitlinjohnstone.substack.com/p/our-entire-civilization-is-structured

Stagflation and Global Hunger Are On the Horizon. Neoliberalism Needs To End https://truthout.org/articles/stagflation-and-global-hunger-are-on-the-horizon-neoliberalism-needs-to-end/

Dutch Farmer Protests Inspire More Actions Amid Food Shortages https://popularresistance.org/dutch-farmer-protests-inspire-more-actions-amid-food-shortages/

Pushed To The Brink https://jesseventura.substack.com/p/pushed-to-the-brink

Why Capitalism Loves Disasters (video) https://youtu.be/v2ZVx8QiEUg 

The People RISE UP! (video of Sri Lanka uprising) https://youtu.be/SnXGnQVHdIc

The Benefits of World Hunger by George Kent: https://archive.ph/zKzzH

United Nations Scrubbed Article Heralding Benefits of World Hunger from Website After It Went Viral https://www.globalresearch.ca/united-nations-scrubbed-article-heralding-benefits-world-hunger-from-website-after-it-went-viral/5786053

Seen on Twitter:


*** 

In a near-future dystopian world, hope blossoms where mutual aid and democracy begins...

Zonta’s world is turned upside down when Jake arrives at their village's community garden to investigate the disappearance of agents of the Authority. Can she persuade him to switch sides before the Protectors (antifascist fighters) take action?

Available now: https://www.extasybooks.com/Where-the-Bodies-Lie 

Please buy direct from the small publisher and not via Amazon. Why? Amazon takes a huge percentage of the book's price and leaves very little for the publisher and author to share. Thanks.

 

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Tuesday, January 18, 2022

Exploited People

 


Exploited People... 

Living In The Modern Day Slave State
by Coast Watcher

A recent meme posted on social media summarizes the nature of modern industrial relations. In the meme—a reproduction of a work announcement at an unnamed place of business—the workers are informed that one of their co-workers has passed away due to COVID-19. It goes on to set out strict instructions on how to mourn the person, any contravention of which will result in their "immediate dismissal." To cap it all the order ends with a line from an Emily Dickinson poem—as if this helps soothe ruffled feelings.


How different is this order to slavery in America’s antebellum South? Or indeed anywhere on this planet that had—or still has—a wage slave-based economy?

One can imagine the plight of field slaves in some long ago Southern state. They watch in horror as a fellow slave falls over  from a heart attack and dies. He is then carried away to the sparse plot of land where their dead are buried. The overseer approaches and tells the slaves they have five minutes to mourn, and if they want to mourn any more than that they have to do it on their own time. Oh, except that their free time is now curtailed since they’ll have to work longer to make up the shortfall of labor hours caused by the inconsiderate death of their fellow slave...

Next thing that happens, the overseer states blithely, "Anyone questioning this order will be whipped. Here’s a poetic statement I came up with to make you all feel better. Have a nice day. "

Think this sort of thing doesn't still happen in the 21st century? You believe that the government will protect workers from this kind of exploitation? Here's a telling quote:

The only urgency we’re seeing at the federal level is the urgency of continuing to sacrifice the working class on the altar of economic growth. For too many policy makers, learning to live with the virus means learning to live with preventable death and suffering. Direct, predictable payments could solve that, but at this point, that’s as hard to imagine as the pandemic ever coming to an end under the prevailing political conditions.  John Knefel, How Did We Go From Stimulus Checks to "Go To Work With COVID"?


A labor shortfall in modern America is hardly addressed any differently than it was prior to the Civil War. With COVID-19 on the rampage, Delta Airlines found itself facing a staff shortage. As a result, it bribed/coerced the Centers for Disease Control into shortening the quarantine time for an infected person from ten days to a mere five. Schools across the country took advantage of this CDC decision to force teachers back into the classrooms while they were still recovering from COVID, in spite of the disease having a track record of flaring up long past even the previous ten day quarantine. The Chicago mayor even outlawed remote learning and threatened teachers to return to work.

Childhood hospitalizations due to the omicron variant of COVID have skyrocketed in the last month in some American cities. "It's a mild variety" according to government spokespersons and mainstream media pundits. Can you imagine how much higher the numbers would be if it wasn't so "mild"?

It’s no wonder teachers and other workers are striking. Social media is full of accounts of people quitting after receiving peremptory texts from management ordering them back to work or else. Perhaps those doing so no longer face the whip or the other brutal methods used by slave owners to chastise unruly slaves, but official sanctions bite as hard. Unemployment pay is hard to get, and it doesn’t last for long. Landlords are evicting those who are behind on their rent, and student loan payments will be expected soon enough.

It’s my opinion that much more strike action is needed. Workers at Kroger stores in Colorado, Starbuck outlets across the country, and others are all taking strike action and/or joining unions to demand fairer wages and working conditions in the face of the risks taken every day to keep these businesses running. (Target workers are even creating their very own union: https://targetworkersunite.com/)

Meanwhile, the US government is doing nothing to help citizens beyond the token issue of COVID-19 home testing kits (on request only from a government website that's sure to crash). As a further measure to reassure the public, the government has decided no longer to issue daily records of deaths from the disease. Because if we don't know how many of our fellow citizens are dying from COVID, then it's not really happening, right? Now, get back to work!

There are rumors circulating that EU countries are preparing to take an influx of economic refugees from the US, as the American economy is expected to tank later this year. While there’s not much evidence in fact that this is the case, it’s a clear indicator of our times that such rumors circulate at all and are given credence. 

It's time to stop all worker exploitation. It's time to let the capitalists know who is really in charge of the economy--the workers. Don't be afraid to walk out, sit down, or march on the picket the lines. Human beings can only take so much punishment and cruelty from the ruling class. Their time of exploiting the people is about over. Let's do all we can to hasten its ending, shall we?

 

BIO: Coast Watcher is tired of the blatant greed and inhumanity of the bourgeoisie. Why do we let them treat us like trash? It's time to rise up and create a workers' utopia--or at least put everyone on an equal footing with universal health care, UBI, guaranteed housing and education, among other things. Power to the People!

 
Related articles: 

Economic Update: Strikes Amid Reviving US Labor Movement (video)  https://youtu.be/4f2SeF60IQU

How Did We Go From Stimulus Checks to "Go To Work With COVID"? https://truthout.org/articles/how-did-we-go-from-stimulus-checks-to-go-to-work-with-covid/

Biden Urged to Fire COVID Response Chief Over Damning Failures https://scheerpost.com/2022/01/16/biden-urged-to-fire-covid-response-chief-over-damning-failures/

 Supreme Court Leaves Workers Without COVID-19 Protection https://popularresistance.org/supreme-court-leaves-workers-without-covid-19-protection/ 

Biden's Failure to Provide At Home COVID Tests Looks Extra Riduculous Arriving from the UK  https://popularresistance.org/bidens-failure-to-provide-at-home-covid-tests-looks-extra-ridiculous-arriving-from-the-u-k/ 

Australian Trade Unions Demand Free COVID Testing For All As Cases Surge https://popularresistance.org/australian-trade-unions-demand-free-covid-testing-for-all-as-cases-surge/

***

From UltraViolet:

The Trump-packed Supreme Court is poised to overturn Roe v. Wade this summer--and the minute that happens, it will unleash a wave of state-by-state battles by anti-choice radicals to ban abortion with zero exceptions in at least half the country

To kick off their push to ban abortion in as many states as possible in 2022, the anti-abortion movement is planning a march in Washington, D.C., on January 21, the eve of the 49th anniversary of Roe v. Wade, and we must fight back.

The anti-abortion movement's strategy is to try to convince politicians that most Americans want abortion banned, despite the fact that a wide majority of Americans actually supports legal abortion.1 They think that if enough people show up on the National Mall, it will convince any wavering governors or state legislators that the American people support their radical anti-abortion agenda.

We can't let them get away with it.

To stop the anti-abortion movement from controlling the narrative on this historic day and make sure that the media and the public hear from America's pro-choice majority, we're planning a series of actions to get our message out, including a flash mob at the Supreme Court, petition delivery to every U.S. senator, and a daylong pro-Roe social media campaign.

To go big, we need to raise as much money as possible to fund our counter-protest actions. Will you chip in to help defend abortion rights on this historic anniversary of Roe v. Wade?

The current Supreme Court is the most conservative in a generation, and it's clear that there is a majority to end the constitutional right to abortion.

The court declined to block a draconian ban on abortion in Texas--twice. It heard oral arguments on Mississippi's abortion ban, in which they were asked to immediately overturn Roe v. Wade. In the disastrous oral arguments on these cases, the justices compared Roe to the notorious Plessy v. Ferguson case upholding Jim Crow and argued that abortion isn't needed because babies can simply be given up for adoption.2

The moment the anti-choice majority on the Supreme Court dismantles Roe, abortion bans from Idaho to South Carolina will go into effect. Abortion will likely become illegal in 22 states or more. Over 40% of people able to become pregnant will see their nearest abortion clinics close, with Black people, Indigenous people, and working-class people of color being hit the hardest.3

This is the all-out, state-by-state battle for legal abortion that we'd hoped would never come. But it's here, and the fight begins on January 22, the 49th, and likely final, anniversary of Roe v. Wade.

We can't let the anti-abortion minority control the narrative with their lies and disinformation. So, on January 22, we're planning a series of actions to get our message out that Americans support abortion rights, including a petition delivery to every single senator, a pro-Roe social media campaign, and an on-the-ground flash mob in front of the Supreme Court.

Will you chip in $5 to help us go big on what could well be Roe v. Wade's last anniversary?

Thank you for fighting alongside us!

--Sonja, Shaunna, Kathy, Melody, Lindsay, Kimberly, Maria, Elisa, KaeLyn, KD, Iris, Bridget, Katie, Jaya, Meena, Isatou, Luna, and Toni, the UltraViolet Action team

CONTRIBUTESources:

1. About six-in-ten Americans say abortion should be legal in all or most cases, Pew Research Center, May 6, 2021

2. Conservative US supreme court justices signal support for restricting abortion in pivotal case, The Guardian, December 1, 2021

3. Where Abortion Access Would Decline if Roe v. Wade Were Overturned, The New York Times, May 18, 2021

***

National Nurses United

On January 14, nurses held actions across the country, including a candlelight vigil in Washington, D.C. for nurses who lost their lives to Covid-19 and a national virtual press conference. Together, we demanded the hospital industry invest in safe staffing, and that President Biden follow through on his campaign promise to protect nurses and prioritize public health.

Will you join our call for safe staffing critical health and safety protections by adding your name to our petition?

add your name »

As the Omicron variant is exploding across the country, now is not the time to rip away protections for health care workers and the public. 

That’s why nurses, other health care workers, and activists all across the country are coming together to demand:

  • A permanent OSHA standard that requires employers to protect health care workers against Covid-19;
  • Retention and enforcement of the June 21 Covid-19 health care emergency temporary standard until it is properly superseded by the permanent standard; and
  • Restoration of guidance on ten-day isolation after a positive Covid-19 test for health care workers, other frontline workers, and the general public.

As of Jan. 11, 481 RNs have died of Covid-19, among 4,760 health care worker deaths overall, according to NNU tracking data. To date, more than 1.1 million U.S. health care workers have been infected. 

We know that optimal protections save lives, and we will not stop working to win those protections — but we don’t have second to waste. Will you add your name to call on the Biden administration to protect nurses and other health care workers during Covid-19?

add your name »

Thank you for standing with us.

In solidarity,

National Nurses United

 ***

From Friends of the Earth:

ACTION NEEDED: Corporate cruise ships are destroying our oceans -- driving orcas closer to extinction. Last year, we lost Cappuccino and Marina, two of the critically endangered Southern Resident Killer Whale population, which is now down to only 73 remaining orcas.

Scientists agree that orcas face three main threats: food shortage, chemical pollution, and vessel disturbance. Corporate cruise ships magnify all three of these risks and are making it harder for orcas to survive.

If we are going to protect the remaining orcas from extinction, we need to take action immediately to reduce the harm caused by cruise ships.

SIGN THE PETITION NOW

Engine waste, plastic waste, and human waste are ALL dumped directly into the water by cruise ships, damaging orcas’ sensitive habitats, food supply, and ecosystem. The pollution from cruise ships drives away orcas’ vital food source -- contributing to their STARVATION.  

Yet greedy cruise ship corporations continue to increase the size and number of these vessels -- meaning even more disturbances to vulnerable orcas. These ships add more underwater noise, hindering orcas’ echolocation abilities and making it difficult for them to hunt already-scarce prey. More vessel traffic also results in a higher risk of oil spills that can cause death or injury to orcas, and the physical presence of these massive ships interferes with their migration and mating patterns.

Cruise ships are HURTING orcas. We must do something before these beloved animals are gone forever. Please, take action now to help save the remaining orca population from corporate cruise ship pollution.

SIGN THE PETITION NOW

Thank you,
Friends of the Earth

 

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Tuesday, June 8, 2021

No War But Class War

 

No War But Class War

by C. A. Matthews

Bourgeoisie:  (in Marxist thought) the ruling class of the two basic classes of capitalist society, consisting of capitalists, manufacturers, bankers, and other employers. The bourgeoisie owns the most important of the means of production, through which it exploits the working class  --The Free Dictionary

It's a funny word, but it's been receiving a lot more airtime lately. Is it because Americans are becoming more sensitive to income inequality, or is it because they themselves are suffering deprivations due to the pandemic? Either way, more people are openly discussing what they find unfair or unjust in our society and aren't afraid to use either bourgeoisie or the "C word."

No, not that "C word"--although often a discussion of communism comes after the mention of this particular C word. (And not that C word, either, for those who have their minds in the gutter.) The word I'm referring to is simply "class." And before you go off on a rant about how America is a "class-less society," let me ask you one question:

Where did you go to high school?

I learned the awesome power of this particular question when I lived in St. Louis, Missouri. Here's the scenario: You're introduced to someone in a conversation and then about nine times out of ten in the St. Louis area you are then asked, "So, where did you attend high school?" I found it an odd question as an adult long since graduated from high school, but I'm friendly so I shared the name of the high school I attended in Ohio. This threw the conversation for a loop usually, and I often got cross looks or simply ignored for the rest of the evening. But all too soon I learned why they asked me, a total stranger, this question, and why the answer was vitally important for the questioner to ask.

Americans tend to dress and speak alike no matter where or how they grew up. I'm not talking about regional dialects or accents. I'm talking about how difficult it is to tell what side of town a fellow American comes from if they dress similarly and use similar terminology to yours. So, we have to figure out another way to discover what "C word" another American belongs to without seeming too obvious. In St. Louis, it's as easy as asking which high school you went to since this gives the questioner the neighborhood you grew up in (true of both public and parochial schools there) and the approximate value of the home you grew up in, and, therefore, how much money your parents made to support your family.

Of course, if you admit to attending a working class area high school, you might be shunned by those who attended schools in wealthier neighborhoods. That is the true power of the question. It helps separate Americans by class in a relatively quick and painless way. You didn't attend the "right" high school? Then the questioner knows that you're probably not going to fit in well with their bridge club or even know what golf is, let alone how to play it. For recent immigrants and people of color this question is a double insult, as the wealthier high schools are almost certainly populated with a majority of white, native-born students.

Please don't get hot under the collar when I tell you that America displays just as many classes as a Downtown Abbey episode. We all know it's true. Americans don't like to think of themselves as snobs, but we act as human as the rest of the world, and we like to put our inferiors in their place. We've just agreed among ourselves to pretend that we're not capable of such vulgarities as class consciousness.


American might be unique in the fact that here there is such a thing as poor snobs as well as rich snobs here. I know because I am one. My favorite tale of how I first realized how much of a poor snob I was comes from my high school days. (Funny how secondary education keeps popping up, isn't it? Possibly this is where most of us first learn how we're "different" from the others who go on from there to attend Ivy League schools and drive luxury cars.)

There was only one high school in our city, one large public high school. This lead to some interesting interactions among students. I remember talking to a classmate at the end of an English class about where we were both planning on working in the summer. Most kids from our side of town worked part-time in the school year and full-time in the summer months. It's how we were able to afford new shoes, winter coats, and save up for college or trade school. 

Anyway, a third classmate entered our conversation and said something along the lines of, "Oh, I don't know what I'm doing this summer, too. Should I go to horse riding school or tennis camp?" The first classmate and I exchanged knowing glances of the variety of, "Yeah, wouldn't it be nice if the summer months were actually a time to have fun and go on vacations, right?"  We then returned to discussing the benefits of working at the local ice cream shack versus looking for more underpaid big chain fast food work located closer to the highway.

It was then that I realized how much I hated rich people--not necessarily my well-to-do classmate since she was a nice enough person, but how this idea of class kept us separated and how it kept working people from ever enjoying a life that our rich classmate took for granted that everyone else in our high school enjoyed.

Had she ever been to our side of town? Possibly not. Why would she leave her side? She had everything she needed on her wealthier side of town and could go out of town to the big city whenever she or her parents wanted to go. Working class kids just had to make do with what we had and stay put. That was our lot in life. End of story.


I take some hope in the fact that more and more Americans seem free to talk about class and income inequality and the lack of universal health care for all in 2021, but we still have a ways to go. We still need to discuss what concrete steps we're willing to take to destroy this system that condemns those without what our society calls "wealth" to a life of poverty, hunger, possible homelessness, and an early preventable death. If the founders were willing to risk it all for the "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness" why aren't we?

"No war but class war" says the bumper sticker slogan. I think that's what it's going to take--an all out assault against the institutions that propagate the evil capitalistic class system in this country and the world. Voting out the corrupt billionaire supporters has proved impossible. The Citizens United ruling has taken away our voices since money is speech according to it. We will never be able to outspend the billionaires and their lackeys. We'll have to outsmart and out-fight them in the streets.

In other words, it's time for the pitchforks, folks. 

We can't keep pulling our punches. Speak out, speak loudly, and never give in to those who say it's not a fight worth winning. It is. Our planet is dying because of capitalism. We don't need to maintain the classes to survive. The system is killing us all. We need each other without these artificial divides.

All is not lost for the rich according to this short video--they can be taught to empathize! https://youtu.be/Pg5QFOuMoN8

***

Howie Hawkins and Angela Walker, candidates for the Green Party nomination for president and vice president
 

Over 300,000 immigrants were deported in Biden’s first 100 days — a rate of deportations higher than any period under the openly anti-immigrant Donald Trump or under the “Deporter-in-Chief,” Barack
Obama.

The deportation machine of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Customs and Border Protection (CBP) continues unabated. ICE and CBP defied Biden’s 100-day moratorium on deportations.
Predictably, these agencies targeted Black and Latino immigrants for deportation.

Biden partially rescinded Trump’s “Return to Mexico" policy for asylum seekers, but only for Latin Americans. Reflecting the longstanding anti-Black racism of US immigration policies, Haitians and Africans were excluded.

Black people have been flown by ICE without due process of their asylum requests to countries like Haiti, Cameroon, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo where the political violence means they may face death.

More Haitians were deported to Haiti in Biden’s first 100 days than in the last year of the Trump administration.

Biden has the legal authority to bring ICE and CBP into compliance with the law and his administration’s policies. These rogue agencies’ unions and members campaigned in uniform for Trump in open defiance the Hatch Act. ICE and CBP must be dismantled and replaced with a new agency that will uphold the law.

But Biden shows no appetite for that fight.

Instead, Biden submitted a moderate immigration bill to Congress on his first day in office, the U.S. Citizenship Act, which would leave ICE and CBP in place. It would provide immigrants in the U.S. before
2021 with a path to legal status and, after eight years, to citizenship. But it reinforces the racial biases in the criminal justice and national security systems toward Black, Latino, Muslim, Arab, Middle Eastern,
and South Asian people, who remain targeted for criminal and national security surveillance, discrimination, and arrest that would render them ineligible for legal status and citizenship.

In any case, if the Democrats in the U.S. Senate don’t eliminate the filibuster, no immigration reform will happen. 800,000 Dreamers and more than 20 million undocumented immigrants will continue to live
their lives in constant fear of deportation.

Meanwhile, Biden has continued Trump's "Title 42" public health authority to immediately expel people seeking asylum without due process.

The only exception is allowing the entry of unaccompanied minors, tens of thousands of whom are now stuck in some 200 facilities across two dozen states. Most of these detentions centers are unlicensed and riddled with neglect, abuse, covid, lice, and failure to help connect children with their families or vetted care providers.

While Biden has said he will not build more border wall, his administration is in the courts pursuing eminent domain proceedings that were initiated by the Trump administration against landowners at the border where more wall could be built.

Nor has Biden stopped the policy of co-opting local police into federal immigration enforcement, which has made racial profiling worse and undermined the trust and cooperation of immigrant communities
with local police in solving crimes.

The rule-or-ruin intransigence of the Republicans make them irrelevant to immigration reform—or any other reform. The Democrats in control of both houses of Congress and presidency are negotiating with themselves. They may try to blame the Republicans, but it is the Democrats who could but will not eliminate the filibuster by a simple majority vote in the Senate.

That is why we need the Green Party now more than ever.

We are working to help Greens build that alternative and advance the agenda we advocated during the presidential campaign, from immigration reform and student debt relief to Medicare for All and the Ecosocialist Green New Deal.

Please help us carry on this fight for justice, peace, and the environment with a donation today!

In Solidarity,

Howie Hawkins

***



 

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