US District Court Judge: “It Is Every Individual’s Obligation To Confront The Current Siege In Gaza”

By Juan Cole

February 2, 2024

Source: Informed Comment

Federal Building, Oakland, CA on Jan. 26, 2024 — Crowds gather to listen to speakers and performers while they wait for plaintiffs and lawyers to exit the courthouse following their time pleading their case before a federal judge

U.S. District Judge Jeffrey S. White of the Northern District of California ruled Tuesday in a lawsuit brought by Palestinian-Americans and the Palestinian human rights group al-Haq against President Joe Biden, Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin and Secretary of State Antony Blinken for their involvement in an Israeli genocide against the Palestinians of Gaza. White found that the suit had merit on the facts but that a district court could not overrule the president of the United States on foreign policy. That is, the conclusion of the case was more about the separation of powers than about whether the Biden administration is guilty of participating in a genocide.

The judge felt he had to dismiss the case, given a whole plethora of previous Supreme Court decisions. He clearly did so, however, with enormous regret.

White seems to be calling for mass political action by Americans on the issue. He asserted that “It is every individual’s obligation to confront the current siege in Gaza.” He went on to lament, however, “but it also this Court’s obligation to remain within the metes and bounds of its jurisdictional scope.”

He wrote in his conclusion,

“There are rare cases in which the preferred outcome is inaccessible to the Court. This is one of those cases. The Court is bound by precedent and the division of our coordinate branches of government to abstain from exercising jurisdiction in this matter. Yet, as the ICJ has found, it is plausible that Israel’s conduct amounts to genocide. This Court implores Defendants to examine the results of their unflagging support of the military siege against the Palestinians in Gaza.”

Here is a federal judge pleading with the president of the United States, the secretary of state, and the secretary of defense to cease their unstinting support for Israeli military tactics in Gaza that are so extensively harming the lives of Palestinian civilians in Gaza.

White wrote, “On November 13, 2023, Plaintiffs filed this suit against the Defendants to “take all measures within their power to prevent Israel’s commission of genocidal acts against the Palestinian people of Gaza.” (Compl., Prayer for Relief.) Plaintiffs allege that Defendants violate their duties under Article I of the Genocide Convention by supporting Israel’s military actions following the attacks of October 7, 2023.” They asked the court to issue a preliminary injunction against the Biden administration from further participating in and aiding these genocidal acts.

The idea is that the US is a signatory to the Genocide Convention of 1948, which makes it US law, so that Biden and his cabinet secretaries are violating not just international law but American domestic law.

White noted that the International Court of Justice recently found that the charges of genocide against Israel are plausible, given the wholesale destruction of civilian life and property and given the public statements of intent voiced by Israeli leaders.

In the British and American tradition of common law, precedent can be cited from abroad, so it is legitimate for White to instance the ICJ preliminary order that Israel cease behaving in ways that can plausibly construed as genocidal.

White quoted the ICJ preliminary decision at length in his own ruling, saying, “The ICJ found that:

‘the military operation being conducted by Israel following the attack of 7 October 2023 has resulted in a large number of deaths and injuries, as well as the massive destruction of homes, forcible displacement of the vast majority of the population, and extensive damage to civilian infrastructure. While figures relating to the Gaza Strip cannot be independently verified, recent information indicates that 25,700 Palestinians have been killed, over 63,000 injuries have been reported, over 360,000 housing units have been destroyed or partially damaged and approximately 1.7 million persons have been internally displaced.’”

He further noted that “the International Court found that it considered it “plausible [that the] rights in question in these proceedings, namely the right of Palestinians in the Gaza Strip to be protected from acts of genocide and related prohibited acts identified in Article III of the Genocide Convention, … are of such a nature that prejudice to them is capable of causing irreparable harm.”

For a court case to go forward, certain basic criteria have to be met. Do the plaintiffs have standing? White appears to have accepted that they did. That is, real harm was being inflicted on the families of these Palestinian-Americans from the Gaza Strip. Is there firm evidence of a crime being committed? White says that there clearly is, and he joins his voice to that of the ICJ here. Has the action been brought in an appropriate venue? And here the case failed, not on its merits, but over this jurisdictional issue.

The problem with this case, White held, is that it concerns political policy, and the Supreme Court has a long history of holding that courts cannot interfere with executive decision-making in the purely political realm. Moreover, foreign policy is a primary example of executive decision-making of a political sort in which courts have typically declined to intervene. So the separation of powers between the judiciary and the executive disallows White from telling Biden what he can do in the political realm, especially in the area of foreign policy.

White writes, “Foreign policy is constitutionally committed to the political branches of government, and disputes over foreign policy are considered nonjusticiable political questions. See, e.g., Haig v. Agee, 453 U.S. 280, 292 (1981) (“[T]he conduct of foreign relations … [is] exclusively entrusted to the political branches … [and] immune from judicial inquiry or interference.”). “The President is the sole organ of the nation in its external relations, and its sole representative with foreign nations.” United States v. Curtiss-Wright Exp. Corp., 299 U.S. 304, 319 (1936.”

He noted that not only does the president have wide latitude in foreign policy that cannot be easily challenged in the courts, but that the policy of unstinting support for Israel’s actions is also rooted in Congressional legislation. So where can this action be brought, since it is so clearly meritorious in the judge’s eyes?

In asserting that “It is every individual’s obligation to confront the current siege in Gaza,” White seemed to be calling for mass political action by the people. It is a remarkable appeal for a federal judge. He recognizes that we won’t get justice on this issue from Biden or from Congress. If things are to change, all Americans must confront this genocide in the legal ways available to them.


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Juan Cole is Richard P. Mitchell Collegiate Professor of History at the University of Michigan. For three and a half decades, he has sought to put the relationship of the West and the Muslim world in historical context, and he has written widely about Egypt, Iran, Iraq, and South Asia. His books include Muhammad: Prophet of Peace Amid the Clash of Empires; The New Arabs: How the Millennial Generation is Changing the Middle East; Engaging the Muslim World; and Napoleon’s Egypt: Invading the Middle East.

Judge Rejects US Complicity Case, But Urges Biden to Examine 'Unflagging' Support for Israel

An attorney for the group representing the plaintiffs said it is "unprecedented and damning that a federal court has all but affirmed that Israel is committing a genocide" with U.S. support.


U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken looks on as U.S. President Joe Biden speaks during a meeting in the Roosevelt Room of the White House
(Photo: Drew Angerer/Getty Images)

JAKE JOHNSON
Feb 01, 2024
COMMON DREAMS

A federal judge in Oakland, California dismissed a lawsuit Wednesday that aimed to stop the U.S. from aiding Israel's catastrophic assault on the Gaza Strip—but also offered sharp criticism of the Biden administration's unwavering support for the war.

U.S. Judge Jeffrey White of the Northern District of California ruled that the suit brought by Palestinian rights organizations and individuals in both the U.S. and Gaza falls "outside the court's limited jurisdiction" and must be rejected on technical grounds.

White described the case as a rare instance "in which the preferred outcome is inaccessible to the court," but notably pointed to the International Court of Justice's finding that South Africa's genocide case against Israel is "plausible" and suggested the U.S. government should reconsider its role in supporting the assault on Gaza.

"Both the uncontroverted testimony of the plaintiffs and the expert opinion proffered at the hearing on these motions as well as statements made by various officers of the Israeli government indicate that the ongoing military siege in Gaza is intended to eradicate a whole people and therefore plausibly falls within the international prohibition against genocide," White wrote.

"It is every individual's obligation to confront the current siege in Gaza, but it also this court's obligation to remain within the metes and bounds of its jurisdictional scope," he continued. "This court implores defendants to examine the results of their unflagging support of the military siege against the Palestinians in Gaza."

"We are still devastated that the court would not take the important step to stop the Biden administration from continuing to support the slaughter of the Palestinian people."

The ruling came as the estimated death toll from Israel's assault on Gaza passed 27,000—likely a dramatic undercount, given the number of bodies believed to be trapped under rubble and the growing difficulty of counting the dead as the Israeli bombing campaign nears the four-month mark.

Diala Shamas, senior staff attorney at the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR)—which represented the plaintiffs in Defense for Children International – Palestine v. Biden—said in a statement Wednesday that the federal court's ruling was "far from a win for the U.S. government."

President Joe Biden, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken, and Pentagon Secretary Lloyd Austin were named as defendants in the lawsuit, which sought an emergency order halting U.S. support for Israel's assault on Gaza. In its response to the lawsuit, the Biden administration argued for the case's dismissal on procedural grounds.

"It is unprecedented and damning that a federal court has all but affirmed that Israel is committing a genocide while criticizing defendants Biden, Blinken, and Austin's 'unflagging' support for the acts that constitute that genocide," said Shamas.



During oral arguments last week, Palestinian plaintiffs testified to the appalling destruction that Israel is imposing on Gaza's population, most of which is now displaced and at growing risk of starvation and disease. More than 100 of the plaintiffs' family members have been killed by Israeli attacks in Gaza since October 7, when the bombing began following a deadly Hamas-led assault on southern Israel.

"I have lost everything in this war," said Dr. Omar Al-Najjar, who testified from a Gaza hospital. "I have nothing but my grief. This is what Israel and its supporters have done to us."

Mohammed Monadel Herzallah, another plaintiff in the case, said in response to Wednesday's ruling that "it is important that the court recognized the United States is providing unconditional support to Israel's ongoing genocide in Gaza and that a federal court heard Palestinian voices for the first time."

"But we are still devastated that the court would not take the important step to stop the Biden administration from continuing to support the slaughter of the Palestinian people," said Herzallah. "Currently, my family lacks food, medicine, and the most basic necessities for survival. As Palestinians, we know this is a hard struggle, and as plaintiffs we will continue to do everything in our power to save our people's lives."

Exxon and Chevron Announce Record Shareholder Returns in Hottest Year on Record

CEO Mike Wirth boasted that in 2023 Chevron “produced more oil and natural gas than any year in the company’s history.”

By Olivia Rosane , 

COMMONDREAMS

Published February 3, 2024

Michael Wirth, Chairman and CEO of the Chevron Corporation, during the Milken Institute Global Conference on October 18, 2021, in Beverly Hills, California.

PATRICK T. FALLON / AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES

U.S. oil companies ExxonMobil and Chevron announced their second-highest profits in a decade on Friday, with both companies paying out a record amount to shareholders in 2023, which was the hottest year on record due largely to the burning of fossil fuels.

“In 2023, we returned more cash to shareholders and produced more oil and natural gas than any year in the company’s history,” Chevron chief executive Mike Wirth boasted in a statement.

Exxon also said it processed a record amount of oil and gas through its refineries. While profits for both companies have declined relative to their record hauls in 2022, Exxon CEO Darren Woods told CNBC’s “Squawk Box” Friday that “we’ve more than doubled our earnings power from 2019 to 2023.”

Exxon reported a total of $36 billion in profits with $32.4 billion paid to shareholders, while Chevron took home $21.4 billion and paid out $26.3 billion, putting them behind only Apple, Microsoft, and Google parent Alphabet for total payouts from a U.S. company, according to a Wall Street Journal analysis. The shareholder payouts far surpassed what either company had planned to spend on climate solutions, the Journal said.

“While millions of Americans suffered in extreme weather events in 2023, Exxon and Chevron raked in huge profits from the fossil fuels driving those disasters,” Global Witness strategy lead Alice Harrison said in a statement. “They’re now choosing to reward their shareholders instead of investing in clean energy in a brazen wealth transfer from energy consumers to Big Oil shareholders.”

Global Witness said that the combined nearly $59 billion that the two companies paid to shareholders was equal to what every household in California and Texas paid in energy bills last year and would be enough to pay for nearly two-thirds of the damages from the year’s worst weather disasters in the U.S.

Both companies also have major mergers planned for 2024: Chevron with Hess and Exxon with Pioneer Natural Resources. If these mergers go through, the two companies’ greenhouse gas emissions will spike by more than 20% this year, Global Witness calculated based on Rystad Energy data. The two companies would therefore release more climate pollution in 2024 than Australia, Brazil, and Spain combined.

“These companies are in open rebellion against scientists, energy consumers, and life on planet earth, with their emissions set to rise sharply by 20% in 2024,” Harrison said. “This means more catastrophic weather events, more deaths worldwide, more hardship, and more suffering.”

Greenpeace USA focused on the harm that Chevron has caused to communities in California, where it is headquartered.

“This greedy company drains our wallets, drills in our neighborhoods, and poisons our air, all while locking us into a future filled with climate-driven disasters,” Greenpeace USA’s California climate campaign director Zachary Norris said in a statement.

In California, Norris said, fossil fuels drive both local pollution and increased climate disasters like floods and wildfires. Chevron is one of three companies that holds two-thirds of the state’s orphaned oil wells, which release both greenhouse gases and carcinogens and would cost $10 billion to cap and clean, according to a Sierra Club analysis. Often these wells are positioned near low-income communities of color.

“Chevron needs to face its destructive legacy: stop drilling, start paying to clean up their mess, and fund the transition to a clean energy economy,” Norris said.

Shell 'Doubled Down on Oil' in 2023 as Planet Burned: Analysis

The company paid nine times more to shareholders than it invested in "Renewables and Energy Solutions."


A protester pretends to celebrate outside Shell's London headquarters.
(Photo: Greenpeace U.K./X)

OLIVIA ROSANE
Feb 01, 2024
COMMON DREAMS

Oil major Shell paid nine times more to shareholders in 2023 than it invested in its "Renewables and Energy Solutions" program, according to a Global Witness analysis released Thursday.

The analysis comes as Shell announced its total profits both for the fourth quarter of 2023 and for the entirety of the year. The company took home $28.25 billion in adjusted earnings and paid out $23 billion to shareholders. It also raised dividends by 4%.

"Shell chooses shareholders over climate, once again," Sjoukje van Oosterhout, the head researcher for Climate Case Shell at Friends of the Earth Netherlands, said in a statement. "In the last year, $23 billion went to shareholders, and Shell is now adding to that by increasing the dividend by 4%. Without considering the cost to the climate and human lives."

"Time is running out, but Shell refuses to change course and is racing full speed towards the destruction of the Earth."

When accounting for its "Renewables and Energy Solutions (RES)" investments, Shell combines both real climate solutions like wind and solar with investments in gas, hydrogen, and carbon capture and storage, leading Global Witness to file a greenwashing complaint against the company with the Securities and Exchange Commission last year.

Shell spent a total of $2.681 billion on all of these efforts, which was nearly a quarter less than the $3.469 billion it invested in 2022. At the same time, its greenhouse emissions increased by 4%, based on data from Rystad Energy, and will likely climb by another 5% this year.

"Shell's shareholders remain some of the biggest winners of ongoing global instability and reliance on fossil fuels," Global Witness senior campaigner Jonathan Noronha-Gant said in a statement. "The turmoil in fossil fuel markets, caused by war in Europe and the Middle East, has helped Shell rake in enormous profits—but instead of investing in clean energy, the company has doubled down on oil, and gas, choosing climate-wrecking U-turns and shareholder pay-outs."

Shell, like several oil and gas companies, raked in record profits in 2022 following the spike in energy prices precipitated by Russia's invasion of Ukraine. While 2023's payout is less than 2022's nearly $40 billion, it is still Shell's second-highest since 2011, the Financial Times reported. The company also reported its second-highest cash flow in its history at $54.2 billion.

"Profits seem halved, but apart from last year, they have never been higher since 2011," van Oosterhout said. "While people all around, but also in the Netherlands, are struggling to make ends meet, Shell, Exxon, and Total are still benefiting from causing the climate crisis."

Global Witness calculated that the amount Shell paid to shareholders last year would be almost enough to pay off the average 2023 gas and electric bills for all Florida households. Greenpeace U.K. pointed out on social media that the average British worker would need to work for 640,000 years to match Shell's 2023 profits.

2023 was also the hottest year on record, and likely the hottest in 100,000 years, mostly due to climate change from the burning of fossil fuels.



"They are burning our planet and laughing all the way to the bank," Greenpeace U.K. said on social media. "How on Earth is this fair?"

Van Oosterhout argued that Shell's plans went against a 2021 Dutch court ruling ordering the company to comply with the Paris agreement, as well as the COP28 agreement to transition away from fossil fuels.

Van Oosterhout said that Shell CEO Wael Sawan "is still pressing on the brakes when it comes to sustainable investments and in the meantime is still launching major new fossil projects e.g. in Brazil and the Gulf of Mexico. Time is running out, but Shell refuses to change course and is racing full speed towards the destruction of the Earth."

Noronha-Gant, meanwhile, argued that shareholders could not expect to keep profiting from Shell's actions into the future.

"Shareholders be warned that this unstable and short-termist business outlook will ultimately make your investments worthless in the future," Noronha-Gand said. "When the history books are written, Shell and its shareholders will be held accountable for their devastating impacts on global temperatures, displacement of millions, support for dictators, and disruption of food supplies."

A Year After Ohio Disaster, Renewed Calls for Rail Safety Legislation


"Folks like us, who live along or near the tracks, refuse to be treated as collateral damage in the way of big railroads' profits," said Congressman Chris Deluzio.


This video screenshot released by the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) shows the site of a derailed freight train in East Palestine, Ohio.
(Photo: NTSB/Handout via Xinhua)

JESSICA CORBETT
Feb 02, 2024
COMMON DREAMS

On the eve of the first anniversary of a toxic train derailment in East Palestine, Ohio, residents, lawmakers, and members of U.S. President Joe Biden's administration are renewing calls for Congress to swiftly pass federal legislation boosting rail safety.

In a Friday letter, U.S. Rep. Chris Deluzio (D-Pa.) urged House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) to "bring the Railway Saftey Act to the floor for a vote before Congress adjourns for the August recess," highlighting that the bill is backed by Democratic and Republican lawmakers as well as the Biden administration and former President Donald Trump, the GOP presidential frontrunner.

Deluzio, who introduced the House version of the bill with Rep. Nick LaLota (R-N.Y.), noted that the Norfolk Southern train derailed and released hazardous materials "less than a mile from the Pennsylvania state line and the homes and farms of my constituents."



"Without dwelling on the resulting health problems, environmental scare, and general lack of trust that I still regularly hear from my constituents, I instead want to empathize that we cannot accept congressional inaction, and how the February 3, 2023 derailment could have been much worse," the congressman wrote. "Folks like us, who live along or near the tracks, refuse to be treated as collateral damage in the way of big railroads' profits."

"Over the last two centuries, railroad companies have wielded their power and influence to protect their profits and avoid commonsense safety measures, allowing them to cut corners and pad the pockets of their corporate shareholders at the expense of the American people," he explained. "After the East Palestine derailment, the big railroad lobby sprang into action once again and lobbied members of Congress—directing them to do nothing to make rail safer and risk cutting into their profits."

The Railway Saftey Act—led in the Senate by Sens. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) and JD Vance (R-Ohio)—contains provisions to enhance safety procedures for trains carrying hazardous materials, reduce the risk of wheel bearing failures, require well-trained two-person crews, force carriers to face higher fines for wrongdoing, support communities impacted by disasters, and invest in safety improvements.



Brown and Vance have also issued fresh calls for action this week.

"Over the last year, I've visited East Palestine repeatedly, and our staff is there even more often," Brown said Tuesday. "Each time, we ask residents what we can do. They want the support and the compensation they are owed, but they do not want this derailment to define them. I don't want that either, and I don't want any other community in Ohio or around the country to have to deal with a disaster like this ever again."

"As I've told the people of East Palestine—and as I keeptelling them: I'm here for the long haul," he added. "I will always fight for the people of East Palestine. I will always fight to hold Norfolk Southern accountable. And I will always fight to make our railways safer."

As Nexstar's Reshad Hudson reported Tuesday:

Vance says he's working with Brown to get the needed support for the bill.

"It's not going to eliminate every train crash, but it hopefully can make these things much less common because they happen way too often,” Vance said.

According toRoll Call, U.S. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg told reporters this week that his department has "done our part" and "we are pressing industry to do their part, Congress needs to act as well."

"Any congressional leader of any party who is serious about railroad safety should support funding for railroad safety inspections... and should support the Railway Safety Act," he said.

While the outlet noted that delays in the House are partly tied to a forthcoming national Transportation Safety Board investigation report, the bill's sponsors and Buttigieg are largely blaming industry opposition, with the secretary saying that "in the past, there have been times when Congress stood up against the railroad lobby... they should do that now."

The White House announced this week that Biden plans to visit East Palestine sometime in February "to meet with residents impacted by the Norfolk Southern train derailment and assess the progress that his administration has helped deliver in coordination with state and local leaders to protect the community and hold Norfolk Southern accountable."

The White House also reiterated the administration's support for the Railway Safety Act—a bill that is backed by workers but also contains loopholes that "you can run a freight train through," as Eddie Hall, national president of the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Trainmen, warned last year.

Other measures before Congress include the Railway Accountability Act—led by Brown along with Sens. John Fetterman (D-Pa.) and Bob Casey (D-Pa.), who are also fighting to pass the Railway Safety Act.

Demands for congressional action on rail safety and more have also continued to pour out of East Palestine and surrounding communities—particularly from people who remain displaced and are suffering a wide range of symptoms.

"What I've been experiencing is some of the fear that I've never known in almost all of my 70 years," Stella Gamble, a grandmother of nine who lives less than a mile from the derailment, said in a testimony shared by The Real News Network. "I am so afraid for my grandchildren and for the other children in this town. My granddaughters have rashes on their skin. They've been having female issues. They get massive headaches."

"I think that the whole thing behind everything that's happened here is the same as it is everywhere else in this country. It's all about the money," Gamble added. "Everything about it is the money, and they will gladly sacrifice a few thousand Appalachians to keep their trains going through here... We're just a sacrifice. That's how I feel. And I feel like my grandkids are being sacrificed, too."

One Year After East Palestine Spill, the Next Catastrophe Is Waiting to Happen

The consensus among railroad unions and workers is that without new regulations, disaster will strike again.

By Mark Gruenberg , PEOPLE'SWORLD   February 3, 2024

An aerial view of a derailed freight train near Whitemarsh Township, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, on July 17, 2023.

LOKMAN VURAL ELIBOL / ANADOLU AGENCY VIA GETTY IMAGES


Truthout is a vital news source and a living history of political struggle. If you think our work is valuable, support us with a donation of any size.

WASHINGTON — One year after a Norfolk Southern freight train derailed and crashed, with chemicals pouring from its tank cars to poison the small town of East Palestine, Ohio, there’s a consensus among railroaders and their unions:

Another such disaster is waiting to happen.

And it could occur, they add, not in a small rural town with one rail track, such as East Palestine, but in a major rail hub with many miles of tracks and hosting hundreds of daily freight trains. In other words, a big city. Like — the obvious one — Chicago.

The big freight railroads would shrug it off, says Ed Dowell of the Train Dispatchers. After all, data shows there are three accidents a day on U.S. freight rail tracks.

RELATED STORY

Norfolk Southern Used Sick Leave as Bargaining Chip to Erode Safety, Union Says
The company wanted to withhold sick leave unless the union agreed to support an industry-favored inspection system. By Sharon Zhang , TRUTHOUT March 2, 2023

“In the rail industry, they accept the loss of life,” he says.

The best way to stop a future catastrophe? A new federal law forcing railroads, notably the big Class I freight carriers, to put safety over profits. But right now, that’s unlikely to happen, thanks to congressional gridlock and corporate lobbying.

In other words, the aim is legislative re-regulation of an industry that was deregulated decades ago and claims — wrongly — it can regulate itself.

The result? Railroaders “doing more with less” which “endangers the public and our members,” says Eddie Hall, new president of the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Trainmen/Teamsters. Workers have less training, less time for inspections, and less protection from honchos’ retaliation.

“East Palestine was not the beginning of the crisis” over safety on the nation’s freight railroads, says Greg Regan, president of the AFL-CIO Transportation Trades Department, who has lobbied lawmakers and the Biden administration on the issue.

“It’s the culmination of years of degradation of safety. The industry would like to regulate themselves and that is something we cannot accept.”

“Congress still has not acted,” adds Biden Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, referring to the comprehensive pro-safety re-regulation bill Regan and unions campaign for. “If they did, it would be a decisive victory for rail safety and for you.

“Our department would have tougher tools” to pursue recalcitrant railroads with. “Such as more inspections, more enforcement, and higher fines” for law-breakers.

Regan estimates rail labor is still “one or two Republicans short” of the ten GOP senators whom they need to pass comprehensive re-regulation, along with all the Democrats and independents. Rail industry lobbying helps sidetrack it. Legislation needs 60 votes to avoid Senate filibusters.
Swayed by Lobbyists

“There are some aspects” of inaction on rail safety where recalcitrant Republicans “are swayed by high-paid lobbyists,” Regan says. “There’s sympathy” from lawmakers on safety “as long as they don’t have to take a vote.”

But he admits gridlock plays a role, too. If leaders “weren’t haggling about the budget, this would be on the (Senate) floor.” And the outlook in the GOP-run is even shakier. “They’ve had one committee hearing; that’s all.”

The Feb. 2, 2023 Norfolk Southern freight train wreck in small and rural East Palestine loosed hazardous chemicals that poisoned its air and ground water. It sent a mushroom cloud billowing overhead and killed pets and thousands of fish.

It also tanked home values — if you could find buyers — and sickened some residents, along with 39 Maintenance of the Way/Teamsters members sent to clean up the mess.

Meanwhile, the railroads cater to their Wall Street backers, who demand profits over people. Their clout is so huge that a hedge fund engineered the ouster of one rail CEO who paid attention to safety in favor a profit-oriented honcho who’s willing to push its priority down.

“And there’s an omnipresent threat of harassment and intimidation” by line supervisors whose bonuses are tied to moving freight as fast as possible, and who view safety precautions as a roadblock, adds Jared Cassidy, assistant legislative director of Smart’s Transportation Division.

East Palestine’s fate shows re-regulation of the nation’s railroads is absolutely necessary, Regan, plus Cassidy, Regan, Hall and other rail union leaders said in a February 1 zoom press conference the day before the first anniversary of the disaster.

There’s also no question the railroads “want to regulate themselves” as almost every speaker said one way or another. In myriad ways, they don’t do so, the unionists said.

The litany of hazards the leaders detailed ranged from inadequate training to having untrained workers perform jobs mechanics would do — because the railroads have slashed 30,000 workers since 2015, including 1300 mechanics at one big freight railroad alone, down to 115,000 total.

Warning systems direct alarms far away when something goes awry on a freight train, such as the overheated broken freight car brakes that led to the East Palestine disaster.

In that crash “you had alert going to someone sitting at home in his living room, watching 19,000 miles of track on a screen,” says the Train Dispatchers’ Dowell. “And they’re constantly being harassed” by higher bosses, “’Move the train, move the train, move the train.’”

Trouble sensors along the tracks are too many miles apart, especially since trains are now two, three or four miles long. Tracks badly need repair — but mid-level supervisors tell workers to ignore that.
Railroads Force Quick Inspections

Railroads force workers to inspect locomotives and freight cars even more quickly, down to five seconds for a freight car with multiple rivets and wheel assemblies. Mid-level managers pressure workers to ignore flaws. And if the workers speak up about hazards, the rail bosses retaliate, the union leaders said.

And there’s lack of human hands-on oversight. Railroads let workers go so they could switch to “precision scheduled railroading” in yet another attempt to save money.

“The rate of total accidents has risen by 19.5%” since 2015, one rail union speaker said. “Injuries increased 4.4%, train miles by 27% — and they cut the workforce by 20% while increasing overtime by 59%. And when the number of (freight) carloads decline by 10%, accidents should be going down. They went up.”

Railroads also lobby for one-person crews, which endangers safety, the railroaders say. There may be worker success on that, soon.

The Federal Railroad Administration sent a mandated two-person crew rule to Biden’s Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs. Biden Transportation Secretary Buttigieg promised action soon on several rules, though he didn’t specify that one.

But changing rules may not be enough. A succeeding administration could and would easily undo what workers want. Former Republican Oval Office occupant Donald Trump’s Republican regime proved that over and over again. So did right-wing ideologues in judicial robes, notably in Texas.

Meanwhile, Congress gridlocks on everything. And it’s influenced by increasing rail lobbying spending such as a 30% hike by Norfolk Southern in 2023, compared to the year before.

And public inattention doesn’t help. That led to a plea at the end of the press session with the rail union leaders: Call your representative. Call your senator.

“Don’t let this die,” Jared Cassidy of Smart Union’s Transportation Division urged reporters.

“Every day we have three major accidents” on freight rail lines and though they haven’t led to fatalities, they expose problems that left unsolved would lead to another East Palestine, he explained.

“This shouldn’t be just labor versus management” over safety “but about what’s going on” in the nation’s freight rail system “when these things happen. Things are going wrong every single day” and constituents should be concerned. After all, an East Palestine could happen to them.

“Money talks, but people talk louder.”


MARK GRUENBERG
Award-winning journalist Mark Gruenberg is head of the Washington, D.C., bureau of People’s World. He is also the editor of the union news service Press Associates Inc. (PAI). Known for his reporting skills, sharp wit and voluminous knowledge of history, Mark is a compassionate interviewer but tough when going after big corporations and their billionaire owners.

Youth Fight Back as Biden DOJ Seeks to Derail Historic Climate Case

"These youth have been politically targeted and persecuted, for over eight years, as the enormous power and machine of the Department of Justice singles them out among tens of thousands of other plaintiffs."

The 21 youth plaintiffs in the constitutional climate case Juliana v. United States pose for a photo in New York City.
(Photo: Our Children's Trust)

BRETT WILKINS
Feb 02, 2024
COMMON DREAMS

As the Biden administration seeks to derail a historic youth-led climate lawsuit against the U.S. government, plaintiffs in the suit—some of them now in their mid-to-late 20s—on Thursday moved to block the Department of Justice from further delaying the case.

Plaintiffs in Juliana v. United States filed a challenge to the Biden administration's bid for a stay in the case, calling the Justice Department's latest petition for a writ of mandamus "nothing short of shocking."

The DOJ's Justice Manual "provides that a writ of mandamus is an 'extraordinary remedy, which should only be used in exceptional circumstances of peculiar emergency or public importance,' the plaintiffs' filing notes. "The only emergency in this case is the climate emergency that defendants created and the Department of Justice prolongs with further delays."

"The true irreparable harm is the approximate cost of climate disasters or other climate economic harm since this case began and even since the first trial in this case was stopped in October 2018."

Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz—a longtime backer of the plaintiffs—filed a declaration supporting their motion. Lambasting the DOJ's claim that the agency is "irreparably harmed" by having to dedicate human and financial resources to the trial, Stiglitz wrote that "to suggest the harm to children's health and homes and constitutional rights is worth less than the money the government has to spend to litigate a case is to suggest every case could be stayed only because it cost taxpayer dollars to litigate."

"The true irreparable harm is the approximate cost of climate disasters or other climate economic harm since this case began and even since the first trial in this case was stopped in October 2018 and through the end of 2023, along with any projections of the range of harm going forward," Stiglitz added, "as well as the amount the U.S. has spent (and continues to spend) subsidizing the fossil fuel industry."

Originally filed in 2015 when the plaintiffs were between 8 and 19 years old, Juliana v. United States accuses the federal government of violating young people's constitutional rights to life, liberty, and property, and argues that its actions contributing to the planetary emergency constitute a failure to protect essential public trust resources.

The Obama, Trump, and Biden administrations have all worked to kill the case, delaying trial by years. In 2018, the U.S. Supreme Court stopped the case from going to trial days before it was set to begin. On December 29, U.S. District Court Judge Ann Aiken ruled that the plaintiffs could proceed to trial, which was set to begin January 19. However, on January 18 the DOJ said it would file for a writ of mandamus.

The incessant delays have been accompanied by what the plaintiffs describe as "the most aggressive and discriminatory legal tactics" used against them by the government.

As the plaintiffs' latest filing explains:
These youth have been politically targeted and persecuted, for over eight years, as the enormous power and machine of the Department of Justice singles them out among tens of thousands of other plaintiffs, in an effort to stop our nation's youth from taking the witness stand, when every court to review the Juliana plaintiffs' claims has said that there is life and death at stake, the survival of the nation is at stake, and there is merit to their constitutional claims. All they seek after trial is a declaratory judgment of their rights and the government's wrongs, just as the students in Brown v. Board of Education did 70 years ago.

As Stiglitz concluded in his motion, "The federal government has expended taxpayer money taking the case up on appeal, rather
than allowing it to go to trial."

"The amount of time and money spent over the past six years seeking early appeals and mandamus has been large," he added. "We have already laid out the magnitude of the damages to the youth plaintiffs, their generation, and the public. In economic terms, and for the health of the nation, the balancing of potential harms is clear: This case should finally be decided at trial without further delay."

Nine arrested as Columbia University students protest Israeli actions in Gaza

2024/02/02

Students participate in a protest in support of Palestine and for free speech outside of the Columbia University campus on Nov. 15, 2023, in New York City. 

- Spencer Platt/Getty Images North America/TNS

NEW YORK — Nine people were arrested Friday during protests in and around the Columbia University campus over Israel’s actions in the war in Gaza, police said.

A protest that started Friday afternoon was led by the pro-Palestinian group Within Our Lifetime, and drew hundreds of demonstrators, said the Columbia Spectator, a student newspaper.

The demonstration gathered on Broadway outside the Morningside Heights campus. Not all the protesters were affiliated with the university.

At least one Columbia student was arrested, said Barnard student Maryam Iqbal, 18.

“He’s my friend,” Iqbal said of the arrested student. “I watched him getting taken away in the van. He was just peacefully protesting.”

The protest, which drew a large New York Police Department presence, continued into the early evening and moved several blocks south on Broadway.

Campus officials were prepared in advance.

Gates on the Broadway side of the Columbia campus were closed at noon “out of an abundance of caution,” said a memo from a university official.

A “safety escort” program, that allows students to ask campus public safety officers walk with them overnight, was shifted to midday.

Columbia students made up a majority of protesters earlier in the day at the inaugural address of Laura Rosenbury, who has been appointed the next president of Barnard College, the women’s college at Columbia. About a dozen protesters showed up at the event, and 10 were escorted outside, the Spectator said.

Charges against the arrested protesters were pending Friday evening, police said.

Several Columbia students sought medical treatment after they were sprayed with a chemical agent during a campus protest Jan. 19.

© New York Daily News

California health care workers won a path to $25 minimum wage. Now they fear a detour

2024/02/03

Forecasters at the finance department are estimating that the health care minimum wage could cost the state roughly $4 billion to implement in 2024-25.. 

- Alessandro Biascioli/Dreamstime/TNS

After seven years working as a dialysis technician, Romer Tamayo was still earning less than $25 an hour last October when Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a minimum wage law for health care workers.

The Brentwood father of two was excited by the wage hikes promised in Senate Bill 525.

During his tenure at a Fresenius dialysis center, Tamayo’s pay had never increased by more than a dollar in a single year. He now earns $22.68, up from $18 when he was hired.

Under SB 525, Tamayo would receive two annual dollar pay bumps in a row. The measure spells out what dialysis workers should expect — an hourly minimum of $23 starting in June 2024, $24 beginning June 2025 and $25 in June 2026.

Now, however, those promised wage increases seem more like an illusion to Tamayo than a promise.

In early January, Newsom proposed a 2024-25 state budget aimed at staving off what the Department of Finance estimated could be a $37.9 billion shortfall. In the budget proposal, the governor said he wanted spending guidelines put in place on SB 525 that could suspend the annual wage hikes depending on the state’s revenue outlook.

Newsom said that he had been assured that the union backing the measure, SEIU California, would work with employer groups and key legislators to add the guidelines.

Known as triggers, such budgetary controls are not new.

In 2016, for instance, Gov. Jerry Brown asked for such a mechanism before the Legislature enacted Senate Bill 3 to raise the state minimum wage to $15 over a six-year period, said Ken Jacobs, co-chair of the Center for Labor Research and Education at the University of California, Berkeley.

In the case of SB 3, triggers were enacted that allowed suspension of those minimum wage hikes if forecasters at the California Department of Finance predicted retail sales declines, job losses or a budget deficit of more than 1% of annual revenue.

No such delay ever happened, Jacobs said, but these sort of fiscal controls ensure there’s a relief valve during times of budgetary crisis like the revenue shortfall California is facing now.
Health care minimum wage could cost CA $4 billion in first year

Forecasters at the finance department are estimating that the health care minimum wage could cost the state roughly $4 billion to implement in 2024-25.

As an employer, the state of California would have to raise wages for its own workers covered under SB 525, said Finance spokesman H.D. Palmer. It also would see increased reimbursements for Medi-Cal as providers raised pay for their employees covered by the bill.

The state budget estimates do not, however, take into account findings from researchers in the Labor Center at UC Berkeley, who found that the state would realize cost savings as a result of implementing SB 525, Palmer said.

The Labor Center team pointed out that almost half of the 500,000 or so health care workers who wouldbenefit from the new minimum wage depend upon one or more public safety net programs, including Medi-Cal, the CalFresh food program, the CalWorks welfare program which offers cash aid and other services, and federal tax breaks for low- to moderate-income families.

“Raising the health care minimum wage to $25 an hour would help reduce these working families’ need to rely on safety net programs, thereby reducing state Medi-Cal spending as many affected workers become eligible for federally subsidized insurance through Covered California,” Laurel Lucia and other Labor Center researchers explained in their brief.

After the enactment of SB 525, Tamayo said, he was looking forward to having a little more money to survive because inflation has raised the cost of almost everything. He has two children, one in high school and the other in elementary, he said.

Before emigrating from the Philippines, Tamayo worked as a ship captain the Merchant Marines. His pay allowed him to put four of his siblings through college.

Two of them became registered nurses, working in dialysis clinics in the United States. They recommended he get a job as a dialysis technician when he began talking with his wife, an RN in the Bay Area, about moving to California to help rear their daughter who was then in elementary school.

The cost of child care was high, he said, and the couple figured they could coordinate their work schedules to ensure that at least one of them could mind their daughter at all times.
Low pay leads to worker shortages, researchers and unions say

Tamayo’s job at a dialysis clinic near the couple’s home has allowed him to be available for first his daughter and now his son, he said, and that’s the main reason he hasn’t looked for other work with more potential wage growth.

Health care researchers and unions have said turnover is high and recruitment difficult in many regions of California because there’s a shortage of workers willing to take on low-wage jobs in the field.

The Berkeley researchers said that, if a $25-an hour minimum wage was instituted across the industry, “patients, workers and industry alike would benefit from lower turnover rates, better staffing, and better outcomes, like reduced hospital stays and even lower mortality rates.”

As the powerful Coalition of Kaiser Permanente Unions negotiated a new contract last year, low-wage workers in its ranks repeatedly complained that labor shortages were hurting patient safety.

And, on the same day that Newsom announced he had signed SB 525, Kaiser Permanente and its unions issued a joint statement saying they had settled their contract dispute. The terms included the three-yearpath to a $25 minimum wage spelled out in the bill now law and wage bumps for veterans already earning that pay.

So, if SB 525 is delayed, will this give Kaiser an edge in recruitment? Will it drive other companies to match this wage?

Kaiser can’t hire everyone, Lopezlira said, so the competition for workers won’t have anywhere near the impact that a minimum wage would have. Studies have shown that hourly wages at other businesses could remain the same or rise up to 24 cents for every dollar that a competitor raises pay, he said.
‘How could people survive with this salary?’

A minimum wage boost, however, typically results in better income across the board not only for entry-level personnel but also for veteran workers already getting that same pay or up to $3 above it, said Berkeley’s Enrique Lopezlira, a labor economist. Employers raise wages for veterans to retain them.

The health care minimum wage currently would apply to at least 500,000 workers who provide direct care within the facilities. This would include janitors, groundskeepers and security staff. The governor also has asked for further clarification of the occupations covered under the law.

Tamayo, 46, said his wages have never reflected the degree of responsibility that he has or the demands of a job where there’s no margin for errors.

“You’re working for 12 hours nonstop,” he said. “You have those brief breaks, but once you’re inside the clinic, you don’t stop working. Even our patients notice that and tell us to slow down.”

People’s lives hang in the balance, Tamayo said, so he has to be sure patients get the prescribed treatment, connect them to dialysis machines, monitor their condition and disconnect them from machines.

Tamayo has at least four patients under his care at any given time, he said, but he may have to watch over as many as eight when one of his co-workers goes on break.

“I was so shocked when I came here,” he recalled of his first week at the clinic. “I was like, wow,how could people survive with this salary? It’s not even a quarter of the money I made when I worked (as a ship’s captain) in the Philippines.”

____

© The Sacramento Bee

POSTMODERN DRUIDISM

What We Can Learn From Trees

They are our ancestral model for cooperative, non-violent, and sustainable communities.


Trees after a winter snowstorm are a feast for the eyes.
(Photo: fo.ol/Flickr/CC BY-SA 2.0)

H. PATRICIA HYNES
Feb 03, 2024

Common Dreams

As I began this piece on trees in forests, woods, and parks, a friend asked, why in January in New England? Why didn’t I wait until the deciduous trees were a palette of new spring green crowning the stark brown trunks and branches of winter? The next day, January 7, nature provided the answer: a 10-inch snowstorm. Trees after a winter snowstorm—their upstretched dark deciduous branches shouldered with snow and their downreaching evergreen branches pillowed with snow—are a feast for the eyes.

“A forest is a sacred place... The medicines available in the forest are the second most valuable gift that nature offers us; the oxygen available there is the first.” These are the words Diana Beresford Kroeger, Irish-born and educated in the ancient Celtic culture of spiritual and physical respect for trees. This brilliant botanist went on to receive advanced degrees, culminating in a doctorate in medical biochemistry. She affirmed that simply walking in a pine forest is a balm for the body and soul, elevating our mood, thanks to their chemical gift of pinenes, aerosols released by pine trees and absorbed by our bodies.

Korean scientists confirmed that walking through forest areas improved older women’s blood pressure, lung capacity, and elasticity in their arteries. Walking in an urban park with trees, or an arboretum, or a rural forest reduces blood pressure, improves cardiac-pulmonary parameters, bolsters mental health, reduces negative thoughts, lifts people’s moods, and restores our brain’s ability to focus—all findings of recent studies. Park RX America (PRA), a nonprofit founded in 2017 by the public health pediatrician Dr. Robert Zarr, has established a large network of healthcare professionals who use nature prescriptions as part of their healthcare treatment for patients. A sample prescription: “Walk along a trail near a pond or in a park with a friend, without earbuds, for half an hour, twice a week.”

Without trees, we could not survive, whereas they have and could live without us.

The healing potential of nature even stretches to those hospitalized. Patients recovering from surgery heal more quickly and need fewer pain killers if they have a hospital room with a window that looks out onto nature. Similarly, studies of students in classrooms with a view of nature have found that they both enjoyed learning and learned more than students without a view of nature.

Suzanne Simard worked for Canada’s minister of forests doing research on the most efficient ways to re-grow forests that had been clear-cut by the logging industry. Loving forests since a child growing up in rural British Columbia, she grasped immediately that clear-cutting whole areas of a forest and applying herbicide to kill any competitor plant or tree before replanting monoculture tree seedlings was a “war on the forest.” In testing her insight, she found that clear-cutting and planting single species seedling trees made no difference to speeding up the growth of the desired tree plantation and in some cases, reduced tree survival in the monoculture wood lots.

In pursuing a doctorate and subsequent years of research, Simard documented that biodiverse forests are the healthiest of forests, with trees communicating with other trees of their own species and other species by an underground fungal network linking their roots with each other. Through this network, known as the wood wide web, trees provide chemical food and medicine to keep each other as healthy as possible. Her work has shown that “the fungal networks between roots of diverse trees carry the same chemicals as neurotransmitters in our brain,” strongly suggesting, she says, that trees have intelligence. She has learned from Indigenous people that “they view trees as their people, just as they view the wolves and the bears and the salmon as their relations.” We need that back, she asserts.

Trees teach us lessons of community and cooperation through all the seasons, writes German forester Peter Wohlleben in The Hidden Life of Trees. He deems forests as “superorganisms,” sharing food with their own species and even nourishing their competitors. Together they create an ecosystem that enables them to live much longer as a community than a single living tree alone, a life lesson for us humans. Moreover, “sick trees are supported by healthy ones nearby… until they recover; and even a dead trunk is indispensable for the cycle of lifesaving as a cradle for its young.”

Trees are essential for life on Earth; the older they are, the more essential they are. They remove carbon dioxide from the air, store carbon in their tissue and soil, give back oxygen into the atmosphere and slow global temperature increases. They offer cooling shade in hardscape urban neighborhoods, buffer cold winter winds, attract birds and wildlife, purify our air, prevent soil erosion during rainstorms, and filter rainwater falling through their soil.

Without trees, we could not survive, whereas they have and could live without us. Older than we so-called homo sapiens (“wise men”) by a thousand times, they are wiser than many humans: They do not wage war with each other nor destroy their own habitat. They know not genocide nor ecocide. They are our ancestral model for cooperative, non-violent, and sustainable communities.

I write this to honor and thank the multitude of forest protectors across our country and those working to restore nature to their towns and cities.
Our work is licensed under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). Feel free to republish and share widely.


H. PATRICIA HYNES is a retired Professor of Environmental Health from Boston University School of Public Health and current Chair of the Board of the Traprock Center for Peace and Justice. She is also on the board of NuclearBan.us. She has written and edited seven books, among them "The Recurring Silent Spring." She writes and speaks on issues of war and militarism with an emphasis on women, the environment, and public health.
Full Bio >

The Left Has a Great Story to Share About Alternatives to Capitalism—But Sucks at Telling It

By CJ Polychroniou

January 23, 2024

Source: Common Dreams

Image by Creative Commons 2.5



For radical socialists, one of the most frustrating political experiences in the post-Cold War era is witnessing the dramatic deterioration of socio-economic conditions throughout the developed world and, at the same time, the failure of the Left narrative to convince the citizenry about the root causes of the problems at hand and that alternative socio-economic arrangements are in turn urgently needed. This is a paradox that open-minded radical socialists should not be hesitant to confront. A critical examination of the failure of the Left narrative to make inroads with the laboring classes in contemporary capitalist society is a must if the political pendulum is to swing back from conservative control.

The Left has always offered solid critiques about the state of capitalism. Armed with a class-driven perspective (“the history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles”) which has become increasingly complemented by a multi-level analysis that also brings into play the role of race, gender, culture and ethnicity, the Left narrative about the nature of the problems facing contemporary capitalist societies has no equal among politico-economic discourses. It explains economic inequality on the basis of the dynamics of a profit-driven system geared toward serving almost exclusively the interests of the dominant classes instead of treating it as an outcome of individual failures (the right-wing version of economic inequality); understands racism as a force of its own, instead of trying to sweep it under the carpet as the Right does, but also recognizes that it’s continuation in present-day society is a consequence of specific institutional arrangements and both implicit and explicit biases; and advocates a succession of policies that aim toward the attainment of the common good instead of catering to the needs and interests of a tiny coterie of corporate and financial elites as conservative policies tend to do.

The Left narrative is intellectually rigorous but also couched in deeply humanistic terms. Since the French Revolution, the Left worldview has always been one that values the common good over narrowly defined private interests, progress over tradition, democracy over authoritarian rule. As such, it favors cooperation over competition, solidarity over rugged individualism, and science over religion and superstition. It is of little surprise, therefore, that the world’s greatest intellectuals, artists and writers in the modern age — from Victor Hugo to Arturo Toscanini and from Pablo Picasso to Jean Paul Sartre — have been to the left of the political spectrum. Indeed, in a continent where ideas have always been taken very seriously, one of the great grievances among 20th century European conservatives was over the fact that so few artists and intellectuals were to be found to the right of the ideological spectrum.

Nonetheless, no matter how intellectually and morally powerful it may have been, the Left narrative about the brutal realities of the capitalist system and the alternative values that should be guiding societal development was never the dominant political paradigm. The forces of reaction have always been a formidable opponent, relying both on the ideological and repressive apparatuses of the state to block radical change initiatives. From the brutal suppression of the Paris Commune by French and Prussian troops during the “Bloody Week” (21-28 May 1871), where some 30,000 Communards were killed, to the role of the CIA in promoting anticommunism in Europe in the period immediately following the Second World War to today’s strategic co-optation of once radical groups into mainstream political forces (the German Green Party, Syriza in Greece, Podemos in Spain, to name just a few), the powers that be have almost always found ways to create barriers to radical social transformation.

The Left narrative has also been undermined by the experience of “actually existing socialism.” Socialism, as practiced in the former Soviet Union and its satellite states, was undemocratic and had little tolerance for individual liberties and freedoms. The political system in place actually sabotaged the social, cultural, and economic achievements of “actually existing socialism,” which were in fact quite extensive, and it was a key factor in people turning away from embracing socialism as an alternative socio-economic order.

Formed in the periphery of the global capitalist system, where neither economic nor political development had yet to reach capitalist maturity (Russia was largely an agrarian society that had never before experienced democracy when the Bolsheviks took power in 1917), the type of socialism introduced functioned on the basis of the centralization of economic resources and institutions in the hands of the state and on single party governance. Workers had no say in economic decisions even though they were touted as co-owners of the means of production. This form of system became entrenched in the “motherland” of socialism after Stalin became an autocrat (1929-1953) and remained pretty much intact even during the so-called liberalization period that was ushered in by Nikita Khruschev (1956-1964), while even less changed under the leadership of Leonid Brezhnev (1964-1982). In the land of “actually existing socialism,” the rulers possessed no wealth and had no private property of their own but made all the decisions for the rest of society. The USSR was at best a “deformed workers’ state.”

Still, socialist and communist parties in the western world were quite popular with the masses both during the interwar years and for much of the postwar period. Communist parties carried a great deal of influence in trade unions and student movements and socialist parties were in power in numerous European countries after World War II. Indeed, the future did seem to belong to the Left.

All this changed for the worse with the collapse of “actually existing socialism” and the end of the Cold War. Instead of feeling liberated by the collapse of authoritarian state-socialism, the western Left felt a loss of identity and entered a long period of intellectual confusion and political paralysis. Many of its intellectuals abandoned their long-held ideas about socialism and communism and turned instead to mainstream political discourses, while others fell into depression and retreated altogether from political and ideological struggles. Subsequently, postmodern philosophers emerged on the scene who not only challenged the ideals of socialism but, in one of the vilest interventions in the history of intellectual discourse, identified socialism and communism with the crimes of Stalinism. The works of Marx were either ignored or completely distorted. By the mid-1990s, the intellectual paradigm shifted from Marxism and socialism to postmodernism. Media outlets to the very left of the political spectrum saw their readership decline in substantial numbers, and communist parties fell out of favor with intellectuals, workers, and students alike. By the early 2000s, most western communist parties ended up in the dustbin of history while trade unions lost entirely their political character and turned ever more toward economism. The end result was that the vision of socialism suffered a tremendous blow and the Left narrative about capitalism became quite marginalized, having little impact on the laboring populations that were experiencing declining standards of living, growing economic insecurity, and a shrinking social state under the auspices of neoliberalism.

And this is where things still stand today. Socialism remains in deep crisis in the developed world, with the only exception being the United States, the only country in the developed world that doesn’t even have a left-wing political party.

Indeed, in the metropolis of the neoliberal capitalist universe, socialism is enjoying considerable popular support, especially among the youth. For the first time, socialism in the U.S. has ceased being a taboo. Yet, one could argue that some of the political figures most responsible for the rebirth of socialism in the United States (such as Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Bernie Sanders) are not socialists per se and that their fight is on behalf of a light version of European social democracy.

To stress this point further, the progressive struggle in the U.S. is over a series of selected economic and social issues (universal healthcare, student debt elimination, unionization, and defending social security and Medicare) when Europe’s postwar left-wing movements and parties, especially from the 1950s through the mid-1980s, were aiming for nothing less than the radical transformation of the entire capitalist system. Social rights such as free higher education and free healthcare had already been realized in western European countries, thus making the struggle for socialism not issue-oriented but a holistic project. For example, demands for the socialization of the means of production were on top of the political agenda of all radical left parties and organizations in western Europe. The French communist party did not shy away from labelling the socialist revolution and the “dictatorship of the proletariat” as its key strategic objectives. Yet, indicative of how sour things have gone for the socialist project since the end of the Cold War, popular forces in many European countries find themselves today fighting for the mere protection of basic social rights as the wrecking ball of neoliberalism is in full swing, seeking to destroy the last vestiges of the social state.

The Left narrative is failing to convince the bulk of the citizenry in today’s western world not because the analyses advanced about the consequences of neoliberal capitalism are incorrect but because the vision of socialism itself rarely enters the equation. Leftist intellectuals shy away from making a case for socialism. Critiques of neoliberal capitalism are not in themselves a case for the radical transformation of capitalism and its eventual replacement with a socialist socio-economic order. Critiques of neoliberal capitalism without the ideological underpinnings of a socialist vision ingrained into the analysis suggest that there is no alternative to capitalism, only a better version of capitalism. And today’s Left narrative is overwhelmed with critiques of neoliberal capitalism, which are of course very much needed, but remain largely silent about the question of a future beyond capitalism.

If we are to expect the frustrated and badly battered working-class people to turn their backs on the false promises of the far right and join instead the struggle for a more humane order based on socialist ideals and values, then the ideological battle for the minds and hearts of the laboring populations must be resumed. The vision of socialism must return in full force to the public arena. Ideological belief systems matter in politics. They are what motivates people into political action.

There are, however, also systemic factors responsible for the failure of the Left narrative to convince the laboring population in the developed countries. On the one hand, the ideological apparatuses of late capitalism have elevated the art of political apathy to such great heights that they have succeeded in making an increasingly large segment of the citizenry feel totally helpless about the possibility of making a meaningful change through participation in political struggles. At the same time, they are creating the illusion that success and failure are a matter of character, and that self-realization can be attained based on the pursuit of purely self-centered activities rather than through engagement with other human beings in common struggles for a better future for all. Whether it is the entertainment industry or marketing strategies for consumers, the prevailing mode of reference is the “self,” the individual as an isolated unit with “unique” experiences. Social injustices are virtually never brought into light by the system’s ideological apparatuses, including public education which acts under capitalism as a mechanism for creating social consensus around mainstream values and beliefs. The corporatization of higher education, with its overwhelming emphasis on market skills instead of critical pedagogy for the betterment of society and the enhancement of the democratic ethos, has also contributed immensely to the politics of apolitical culture.

On the other hand, the political agencies and the cultural institutions that are needed for the enhancement of working-class consciousness and for activating the Left narrative into action have been extensively weakened and, in some cases, even become extinct. As stated earlier, communist parties in western Europe are mostly gone while their socialist counterparts have moved so far to the right that they are now virtually indistinguishable from Christian Democratic and conservative parties in general. As for today’s radical left parties, they are anything but radical and reflect the ideological confusion that is the hallmark of multiculturalism and the politics of identity. In sum, the working classes in the developed world find themselves today without mass-based political parties that represent the interests of labor. Little wonder then why working-class people are drawn to the far-right as the leaders of those parties claim to be fighting for the primacy of workers’ interests.

Until a few decades ago, the working-class people throughout the developed world could not only rely on mass parties representing specifically their own interests but also had their own cultural institutions whose mission was to foster ideological awareness and forge proletarian culture. Socialist and communist newspapers made an immense contribution to working-class consciousness and raised the level of radicalism. Trade unions performed an equally important role by organizing various educational and social activities that enhanced solidarity. With the collapse of “actually existing socialism” and the onset of a socialist crisis, all working-class institutions experienced a dramatic fallout. In Italy, l’Unità, which had been founded by Antonio Gramsci and was the official newspaper of the Italian Communist Party, went under. In France, the venerable L’Humanité has been struggling for years with financial woes and low circulation. As for workers’ clubs, they are a thing of the past.

In conclusion, the Left narrative, no matter how accurate and intellectually powerful it may be, cannot expect to catch the imagination of the citizenry without including a vision for a real alternative future. Moreover, working-class cultural institutions need to be reinstituted for the enhancement of class consciousness and authentic socialist parties need to be rediscovered for the Left narrative to become politically effective. Social movements are important, but their actions rarely have lasting effects. Only political parties can succeed in forging the Left narrative into the policy agenda and turn it into a programmatic plan for radical social change. Understandably enough, this is quite a tall order, but the Left needs to win once again the hearts and minds of the laboring classes. But it needs the necessary political agencies and cultural instruments to do so. It cannot accomplish it on intellectual grounds alone, especially with the politics of identity acting as a spearhead for social transformation. The Communist Manifesto would have remained just a mere political document if it wasn’t for the existence of radical political parties across the globe to embrace it as their guide and vision for the emancipation of the working class from the yoke of capital.


CJ Polychroniou is a political scientist/political economist, author, and journalist who has taught and worked in numerous universities and research centers in Europe and the United States. Currently, his main research interests are in U.S. politics and the political economy of the United States, European economic integration, globalization, climate change and environmental economics, and the deconstruction of neoliberalism’s politico-economic project. He has published scores of books and over one thousand articles which have appeared in a variety of journals, magazines, newspapers and popular news websites. His latest books are Optimism Over Despair: Noam Chomsky On Capitalism, Empire, and Social Change (2017); Climate Crisis and the Global Green New Deal: The Political Economy of Saving the Planet (with Noam Chomsky and Robert Pollin as primary authors, 2020); The Precipice: Neoliberalism, the Pandemic, and the Urgent Need for Radical Change (an anthology of interviews with Noam Chomsky, 2021); and Economics and the Left: Interviews with Progressive Economists (2021).