Hi friends and comrades,
Here is the 2nd installment of the monthly newsletter for Socialist News and Views.
Since last month’s regular episode, we’ve been taking a look at our collective history, and also taking a look into the future to see where we might be heading.
Our first special after last months episode was a report on the never ending wars of U.S. empire. We took a look at the terror, bloodshed and displacement that our government brought during the so-called “war on terror,” with a specific eye to the massive destruction of Iraq. The amount of money spent on this disaster for humanity was obscene.
The money and weapons that the U.S. said it “needed” — and justified by saying they were being used to “fight terror” — were actually being used to inflict terror. The terror of the empire did not know any national boundaries, in fact. As mentioned by a speech from Jae Yates of Twin Cities Coalition for Justice 4 Jamar (TCCJ4J) in our SNV Special Report: Money For Human Needs Not War, “Since the passage of the 1990 National Defense Authorization Act, the U.S. military has funneled billions of dollars of high grade equipment such as LRADs, armored vehicles, and weapons as part of the 1033 program" to United States police departments.
Instead of spending money on infrastructure like bridges, or needed services like education and healthcare, the US continues to divert massive amounts of money to the military. Billions of mostly military aid are being pumped into The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and Ukraine. The top recipient of U.S. foreign aid is now Ukraine. NATO has now also pivoted to focus on on China as they say it is building up its military and poses “serious challenges” to the European and US alliance. This is occurring as the United States alone is set to spend 3 times what China does on the military.
With the U.S. Military budget this year set at $813 billion, we know, as Monique Cullars-Doty of Black Lives Matter Minnesota said of America in the Special, “we can provide for everyone that is here, we can provide for everyone that wants to come here.” And, as if the fact that the U.S. is spending money on weapons instead of human needs wasn’t bad enough, those same weapons and military hardware are given to police departments. These same militarized police departments kill us in our own communities when we stand up to them, like the murder of Tortuiguita at Stop Cop City in Atlanta, and militarize the U.S. border to harm and criminalize immigrants.
Our next Special Interview also took a look back at a dark chapter of history by specifically focusing on the Lac-Megantic Wreck. For our SNV Special Interview: Nationalize The Railroads, we spoke with “Fritz” Edler, a 40 year rail veteran and Special Representative for Railroad Workers United. We began by discussing the town of Lac-Mégantic in Quebec, Canada, where an overloaded and overlong train carrying Bakken crude oil derailed, exploded, and killed 47 people instantly. This year in July will mark the 10 year anniversary of the wreck. Fritz and I discussed the serious safety concerns that railroaders are continuing to warn about. Showing the similarities and differences to the toxic spill in East Palestine, OH helped us illuminate how those in power continue to allow preventable disasters to occur.
“In both the United States and Canada there have been at least a couple of different situations where the government had to step in when the private operation was so bad, so failed, so incapable of providing the safety…and service” Fritz said, adding that we have to ask the question, “What kind of country do we want to live in?” He asked if we want to live in a country where the trains are run for the benefit of all, or a country where a small group of the rich shareholders make money from the railroads without running trains. Looking forward, the only serious way of preserving the “public good” that the railroads provide (as with many other areas of the economy) is to Nationalize the Railroads.
Looking backwards for our "From The Archive" segment, we traveled to one year before the Lac-Mégantic derailment to another terrible, but important, historical moment. Rose Brewer spoke on April 3, 2012 shortly after the murder of Trayvon Martin (this year, if he was alive, Martin would have turned 28.) Brewer started the talk by discussing another historical killing, that of the 1999 police murder of Amadou Diallo in New York (Note: since enrolling in the Department of Defense 1033 program in 1995 The New York City Police Department (NYPD) has received armored vehicles and night vision equipment.) “For a very long time the face of racism in this country has been entiered in state violence,” says Brewer, before adding that “the police have carried out state violence in the name of the U.S. Government, both domestically and globally. That’s what war and imperialism represents.”
In talking about how these systems work in relationship to each other, she also highlighted immigrant sweeps as part of this state violence. Discussing the fact that black and brown communities have been “patrolled and policed” since the very start of this country’s creation, and that the Department of Homeland security has given money to local police as part of “surveillance operations.” Brewer links this new surveillance to the history of Cointelpro. “Black men are crafted as criminals,” which she says gives rise to white vigilantism, like that in the case of Trayvon Martin’s murder. Looking toward the future, Rose Brewer says, “the struggle for change is not simple or easy,” but it is “our challenge to organize, to build and to be very clear” about what we are up against. And what we are up against are systems of racism, imperialism, and militarism in the form of wars, mass policing, and mass incarceration. These are the systems we must dismantle.
Unfortunately, as mentioned, we do have our work cut out for us. Most immediately, public health infrastructure and social safety net programs that were fought for by working people and put in place during the pandemic are already being attacked and dismantled. These types of austerity programs, under the guise of “an end to the emergency,” are violence that WILL lead to additional poverty and ultimately death.
The drive to pretend the pandemic is all over, and, increasingly, to imagine that the public health mitigations that were put in place were some sort of “over-reaction,” are already eating away at our ability to manage the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic and respond to a future disease outbreak that we know is likely. The push to act as if masks, respirators, and filtration don’t work is part of the bosses’ determined move across the board to undermine not only individual personal use of protective equipment, but undermine its use in the workplace as well. There has been some reporting of use of respirators by workers in clean up of the toxic spill in East Palestine, but not much. This lead one Twitter user to write “why is no one in east palestine wearing respirators?”
To discuss the past and future with the pandemic, I spoke with Justin Lee, who goes by DailyJLee on Twitter. Lee, who has an undergraduate in Engineering and Math, a JD/MBA from Syracuse, and a degree in Healthcare Management and Policy from the Maxwell School said that, with what we know about Covid-19 now, catching it is “not dice you want to keep rolling.” Lee, who also has some history in construction, says “I believe in ventilation,” but so far “the ownership class” are the ones in control of ventilation.
So far, it seems like the ownership class has no interest in taking any more precautions related to Covid, at least as it applies to workers (of course they take precautions for themselves.) Unfortunately, the destruction of the natural world is a key element driving an increase in pandemic disease. One of the largest contributors to climate change and environmental destructions are the world’s militaries and ongoing warfare across the globe.
For our regular April Episode # 45 of Socialist News and Views, we had "Future Perspectives" where workers, organizers, and activists shared their ideas about what we can expect in the future. Many topics were touched on, including climate change, cascading infrastructure collapse, space exploration, income inequality, war, police brutality, fascism, and labor.
But one theme that could be synthesized from all the responses was that we need an intersectional, militant, democratic movement to challenge capitalism and build a better world. Unfortunately, climate change has entered a period of quickly compounding catastrophes, and the menace of fascism is on the rise like no time in recent memory. Wars among imperial powers like the US, Russia, and China are back on the table. Like the often-referenced phrase states; “The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. The second best time is now.” We may not be in the best position, but we must get organized now in our workplaces and communities so that we can secure a future for the planet and its ecosystems of which we are a part.
If you don’t have a political group to participate in where you are, please consider becoming a regular listener to the podcast and subscribing to this newsletter.
Solidarity,
Nick Shillingford
Host: Socialist News and Views
P.S. Here is Hymne Du 18 Mars with lyrics in English celebrating the Paris Commune which we played as a musical break for this months regular episode. And here is the full e-text of Looking Backwards by Edward Bellamy of which I took part of the title for this newsletter.