“People Love to Vote for a Raise”: Red States Gear Up for Minimum Wage Vote

Missouri, Alaska and Nebraska are voting on ballot measures that could raise wages for nearly a million workers.

By Michael Arria

October 13, 2024

Source: Truthout

This election season, there’s understandably been intense focus on ballot questions that will affect reproductive rights, but there’s been less discussion of the fact that multiple states will also be voting on whether to raise their minimum wage and grant workers paid sick time.

Twenty-six states have an initiated constitutional amendment process, which allows citizens to place legislation on the ballot for a vote by gathering a predetermined number of signatures. The strategy is often an effective tool for activists who are up against right-wing state legislatures opposed to liberal reforms.

The Fairness Project is an organization founded on the premise that increasing wages, advocating for working families and improving benefits are popular, nonpartisan priorities if you can get them in front of voters.

“If you can put it on the ballot, people love to vote for a raise,” the group’s executive director, Kelly Hall, told Truthout. “This strategy has resulted in raising the wage every time it has gone on the ballot. It’s been a very effective tool for helping to separate common-sense issues like raising the wage from the partisan politics that keep these highly popular issues locked up in state houses.”

As Hall notes, red state voters living in states with the amendment process have consistently elected to raise wages, expand health coverage and establish paid sick leave.

“These issues are associated with progressives, but they have a great deal of support on the ground everywhere,” Hall said. “Fighting back against ‘Obamacare’ might be a litmus test for how much of an extreme conservative you are, people on the ground support having health care for their low-income neighbors and having the funds to keep their hospitals open. There is a lot more complexity in how folks want to support their communities than the candidates they are given the option to vote for necessarily reflect.”
Ballot Initiatives in Missouri, Alaska and Nebraska

When they vote in November, Missouri voters will decide on Proposition A, which would raise the state’s minimum wage and mandate paid sick leave for all private employees. If passed, the minimum wage would rise from $12.30 to $13.75 by 2025, and reach $15 per hour in 2026. Employers would be required to provide one hour of sick leave for every 30 hours worked.

According to the Economic Policy Institute (EPI), the move would mean more money for about 900,000 workers. The group Missourians for Healthy Families and Fair Wages says that boost would help 137,000 parents and, by extension, 338,000 kids in the state.

Missouri Jobs with Justice Executive Director Caitlyn Adams told Truthout that Missourians are a more complex voting bloc than people might assume, pointing to the fact that the state increased the minimum wage in 2018 and passed Medicaid expansion in 2020.

“Missouri is definitely a state that uses the ballot initiative as a tool to pass progressive policy,” said Adams. “We have a pretty hostile state legislature, but we have a lot of momentum because we have a lot of voters who support these economic issues but don’t necessarily connect those issues to the candidates they elect.”

“We’ve been building an arc of policies in concert with grassroots groups and directly impacted people,” added Adams. “We are in cahoots with workers. We’ve really been building these policies with people; we haven’t pulled them out of the sky. They are things that are going to give people tangible wins in their life and build power for use in local arenas.”

Jonathan Gartin was working as a line cook in Springfield, Missouri, during the 2018 vote, and the pay bump inspired him to become involved in organizing.

“It was Missouri voters who gave me my first raise. I remember being able to fix my car for the first time, it really helped me and it made me realize what people can do,” he told Truthout. “It was really an empowering experience.”

This time around, Gartin helped gather signatures to put Prop A on the ballot. He says he was very excited to hear that paid sick time was also being addressed, as he’d seen the need for such legislation while working in the food service industry.

“I was a waiter in 2020 when the pandemic hit,” said Gartin, “We had a cook come in sick, a mother who didn’t have sick time. Half the restaurant ended up getting COVID, and we were shut down for days. This is a safety net that everyone needs.”

A minimum wage hike and paid sick leave are also on the ballot in Alaska. The measure would raise the state’s minimum wage from $11.73 to $13 beginning in 2025, $14 per hour beginning in 2026, and $15 per hour beginning in 2027. It would also require employers with fewer than 15 workers to award 40 hours of paid sick leave to each employee on an annual basis. Employers with 15 or more workers would be required to award 56 hours.

An EPI report from May found that the question’s passage would mean a raise for 30,800 workers, collectively netting them an additional $51,141,000 in wages. More than 20 percent of the workers possibly getting an increase currently have incomes below the federal poverty line, and nearly 50 earn less than 200 percent of the poverty line. Women make up more than half of the workers who would see their wages raised. The initiative would also disproportionately benefit workers of color.

Again, Alaska is often viewed as a solidly red state because it’s consistently won by Republican presidential candidates and is associated with its former governor, Sarah Palin. However, Alaska AFL-CIO’s President Joelle Hall says such initiatives prove that the state is actually purple.

“We’re like a cake,” Hall told Truthout. “The frosting is what people perceive as being our federal presentation. For 50 years we only had Republicans serving in Congress, but really this is a Sarah Palin bias,” she says, referring to the former governor and vice presidential candidate.

“We’re pretty purple. If you look at our legislature, we have a coalition government with Republicans, Democrats and independents,” she continued. Hall added:


Generally, the state’s politics is “It’s none of your damn business what I do.” We are pro-choice, we don’t care who you marry. We like guns, we like to hunt, we like to fish. We are more on the libertarian side of conservatism than opposed to the religious fundamentalist side of conservatism. We’re very middle of the road if you distill it down and those people usually vote for the candidate that they think is going to do the best job. They’re not really bothered with partisanship. Sixty percent of Alaskans choose neither party. That tells you that people want to be flexible with how they vote. We look conservative from the outside, but I’d say that’s the Sarah Palin filter.

These aren’t the only red states where labor issues are on the ballot.

A Nebraska question would require all Nebraska businesses to offer paid sick leave to workers, earning them one hour of leave for every 30 hours worked. More than 250,000 workers currently lack paid sick time in the state.

Like other red states with the ballot initiative process, Nebraskans have consistently backed wage hikes despite their conservative reputation. In 2022, nearly 60 precent of voters backed a minimum wage hike that will incrementally raise the rate to $15 an hour by 2026.
Federal Minimum Wage

The year 2024 marks the 15th year in a row that the federal minimum wage has remained at $7.25.

“When I am president, we will continue our fight for working families of America, including to raise the minimum wage,” Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris told the crowd at an August campaign event in Las Vegas, Nevada, but there’s ample reason to view this claim skeptically, as she’s not the first candidate to make it and has offered very little in the way of details.

GOP nominee Donald Trump hasn’t claimed that he will raise the minimum wage and in 2020 he expressed skepticism about raising the rate. “How are you helping your small businesses when you’re forcing wages?” he said during a 2020 debate. “What’s going to happen and what’s been proven to happen is when you do that these small businesses fire many of their employees.”

According to Business For a Fair Minimum Wage — a national network of business owners pushing to raise worker wages — 20 states have minimum wages that are no higher than the federal rate. Unsurprisingly, many of these states lack a ballot initiative process that allows organizers to take the question directly to the people.

National Employment Law Project senior researcher and policy analyst Yannet Lathrop told Truthout that workers continue to face an uphill battle in many of these states.

“If you have legislatures not willing to pass pro-worker policies and you don’t have the ballot initiatives at your disposal you can continue to bring up the issue,” said Lathrop. “Unfortunately, it doesn’t always mean that you will get the policy. You’re relying on some sort of federal action to raise wages and improve working conditions, but the public needs to understand these are important issues.”

A Mutiny Against the West’s Order

Western hegemony is in decline, and the Left has to reckon with a new international balance of power. Peter Mertens, general secretary of the Workers’ Party of Belgium, spoke to us about what the “mutinies” in the Global South mean for socialist strategy.

By Peter Mertens, Loren Balhorn 

October 12, 2024

Source: Jacobin





For a decade or so, the idea of a “world order” led by the West has been coming apart at the seams. The United States is increasingly unable to play its self-proclaimed role as global policeman, its legitimacy stained by disastrous illegal wars abroad and the rougher edges of its own domestic political combat. Rising powers like China and India are no longer content to play second fiddle to the world hegemon.

These developments are still in their infancy, but it’s increasingly clear that a new balance of power is emerging on the world stage. This is the subject of Mutiny, a new book by Peter Mertens, who is general secretary of the Workers’ Party of Belgium (PTB). He spoke with Jacobin about how our world is changing and what he thinks it means for socialists in the West and East alike.

Loren Balhorn: Your new book, Mutiny, isn’t quite what I would have expected from the general secretary of a Marxist workers’ party. I guess I was expecting something a bit, well, wordier. Can you say a bit about how it came about, and what you sought to achieve with it?

Peter Mertens: Two things were important to me when writing the book: first, understanding today’s tilting world order, because a lot of things are happening — there is a war in Europe, a genocide in Gaza playing out in real time on our smartphones, the far right exploding in France and Germany, and more. Fifteen years ago, you’d hardly have imagined it. So I wanted to understand for myself what is happening both politically and economically.

The second thing was to translate that into an understandable language. My books are about democratizing knowledge, including here in Belgium. A lot of things are happening right now — Audi intends to close its plant in Brussels, for example. It’s one of two car factories left in this country, whereas fifteen years ago there were five — and a lot of people want to understand why.

I’m pleased that the book is being used in some parts of the Belgian trade unions to understand things like Joe Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act, the growing rivalry between the United States and China, and what they could mean for Europe. The biggest compliment I get is when a worker writes me and says, “This was my first time reading a nonfiction book. I thought I was too stupid to understand it, but I did.” People want to understand, and they can, but you have to give them access to the information.

Let’s unpack the metaphor in the book’s title a little bit, “mutiny.” What exactly are you referring to? Where is this mutiny happening?

There was this idea after the Soviet Union disappeared in 1991 that we had reached the end of history — the United States would be dominant forever. After that, there were of course various tipping points, or what I call “watershed moments,” but today something else is happening: for the first time, the economies of the Global South, of the five BRICS countries — Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa — are larger than those of the G7. That’s remarkable and completely different from the 1950s and ’60s, where you had a Non-Aligned Movement that was of course politically much more radical, clearly anti-imperialist and anti-colonial, but economically still very dependent on the Global North.

The shift is happening at the economic level. But it also has consequences on the political level. Who would have thought, fifteen years ago, that Iran and Saudi Arabia would reconcile thanks to Chinese mediation? Or that the fourteen Palestinian factions would come together and sign a joint statement, also brokered by the Chinese? Or that the Namibian president would rebuke Germany on the world stage?

Don’t get me wrong: I’m under no illusions that these governments are all progressive. It’s very mixed. But to stick with the metaphor, there is a mutiny happening on the upper decks. There is a new self-confidence and assertiveness growing in the Global South.

You mean among the ruling elites of the Global South?

Yes, exactly. Within the state apparatus. There is also power from below, with grassroots movements trying to push through a progressive agenda. That’s the mutiny below deck. But above deck as well, the Global South is in turmoil, searching for a new form of nonalignment, a realpolitik that serves national interests. That’s why I call it a “double mutiny.”

For example, Narendra Modi’s government in India is obviously reactionary — it attacks the peasantry, it does nothing to protect the rights of women, and it unleashes racist pogroms against Muslims. You could almost call it a kind of Indian fascism. Below deck, you have a peasants’ movement, a women’s movement, and a working-class movement opposing that government. But at the same time, above deck, on the international stage, you have this kind of mutiny by the Indian government against the current world order, with the foreign minister S. Jaishankar telling Washington in no uncertain terms that India will never join NATO, even if the United States would like it to.

South Africa’s government is not reactionary, but it’s also clear there that the African National Congress (ANC) was responsible for a lot of privatizations and neoliberal policies that vastly increased the gap between the rich and poor. I was in Soweto for a presentation of my book, and I spoke with members of the NUMSA (National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa), who broke away from the main trade union confederation and protest against the government. The level of corruption and inequality there is crazy — it’s like two worlds in one state. But at the same time, South Africa is the only country to stand up against Israel at the International Court of Justice, and it is doing so in a very serious way.

That’s the dialectical approach I take in the book. I think we have to support this mutiny on the upper deck without having any illusions that it will necessarily lead to a more progressive politics. The world is tilting, but it can tilt in any number of directions.

You alluded to the politics of the Non-Aligned Movement, the last time the world order began to “tilt.” Another historical precedent we could look at would be the revolutionary wave after World War I, when the world order not only tilted but was almost overthrown.

You said yourself that the current mutiny is primarily economic and, in terms of its political radicalism, quite tame indeed. Given that reality, to what extent does it really pose an opportunity for socialist politics?

I think the first thing is to develop a sense of hope and self-confidence again. In Europe, on the Left, we tend to have a very defeatist and pessimistic view of the future that is based on nostalgia for the past, for the socialist revolutions of the twentieth century. And yes, the working-class movements of the twentieth century gained a lot of things — social security systems, for example — at least partly because our ruling classes were afraid of a socialist revolution.

But we have to live in the present; 2024 is nothing like the period after World War I, with mass working-class movements in Italy, Austria, Germany, Hungary, and so on. We are not in that situation. But things are changing — objectively, economically — and people are looking for explanations. As Marxists, we should have the self-confidence to provide those explanations.

Why are prices so high? Why are government ministers telling us to turn our heating down in winter? Why is Western Europe suddenly threatened with deindustrialization? We, as the Left, as the movement of the working class, have answers to those questions. We don’t have solutions to every problem, but we have a vision of a world that is more equal, more ecological, and more democratic than the rotten system today.

The most important thing, though, is that we have to have the self-confidence to struggle, to go into the working-class areas and fight the battle of ideas against the far right, against the religious fanatics. Conditions are getting worse for working people all over Europe, and I think we are in the beginning of a longer phase — five years, ten years, I don’t know — of struggling over their ideas, of struggling over the working class. We aren’t yet at a point where we have a world to win — first we have to win over the class.

Okay, but if we’re talking about winning over the European working classes, what does the global mutiny have to offer them? If we look at the specter of deindustrialization, for example, one could blame that on the sanctions against Russia, but there are also broader, irreversible trends at work, like the growth of the Chinese electric vehicle industry. Isn’t this kind of a zero-sum game for many workers?

I don’t think protectionism is the answer, but what has happened over the last five years, and especially since Russia’s illegal war against Ukraine, is that Europe has become more and more economically dependent on the United States. In that sense, the US has been the biggest winner in Russia’s war so far.

What we need, what the European working class needs, is a vision for a Europe that is independent of Russia, but also of the US and China. Europe needs a bit of self-confidence as a continent — not an imperial continent, but a continent that follows its own path, because I think we will lose if we are caught up in a conflict between the United States and China.

We need a plan for social and ecological investments on a massive scale as part of a broader European industrial strategy. I mentioned Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act — Europe has an answer to that, the Green Deal, but it mostly consists of incentives and subsidies for the private sector. That’s not what we need to address the challenges we face.

I went to Berlin while doing research for the book, and as a Belgian, I naively expected that German trains would be on time. It was a catastrophe! But it’s not just Germany, it’s not just Belgium — everywhere in Europe, our transportation systems are underfunded, our schools are underfunded, our hospitals are underfunded. We need massive investments in public infrastructure across the board, which, incidentally, will also create a lot of jobs.

It’s not a revolutionary approach or a socialist approach; it’s basically a neo-Keynesian approach. But that’s the phase we are in right now, a phase of chaos, and we have to put forward tangible democratic, social, and ecological proposals to get out of that chaos.

I don’t disagree, but couldn’t you say that, in Europe, our mutiny has already come and gone? Jeremy Corbyn was defeated and expelled from the Labour Party; the Left in Spain has taken a series of electoral beatings; in Germany, Die Linke is on the verge of collapse. Meanwhile, the far right is winning elections in country after country. Hasn’t the momentum shifted to the other side?

No, I don’t agree. We may have lost some momentum, but the potential is still there. On the social and economic level, all of the problems are still there, and the class anger is still there. It expresses itself in many ways. Look at France: first you had the gilets jaunes movement, then you had some of the biggest strike waves since 1968. In my book, I describe the “winter of discontent” last year in Britain, which was much bigger and lasted a lot longer than the racist riots organized by Elon Musk’s friends on Twitter.

Even in Germany, you have a lot of strikes and industrial actions. The question is whether they are translated into a political expression and whether there is a political organization that wages the battle of ideas. In my city, Antwerp, the far right used to get 40 percent of the vote. But the Workers’ Party of Belgium spent decades campaigning in working-class communities, going door-to-door, talking to people about their problems, and explaining why they are class problems. You can’t get into social housing? The problem is not your Sudanese neighbor, but the fact that we don’t have enough social housing. In the last election, we beat the far right and won 23 percent of the vote.

Of course, there are workers with racist and fascist ideas who really are lost to our cause, but a lot more of them are not, and we have to fight over them. People are hurting, but people are isolated. We have to organize, organize, organize if we want to reach them and bring them together. That doesn’t mean we can’t lose, or at least face temporary setbacks, but at the end of the day, we can’t leave the working class to the far right.

It sounds like what you’re saying is that, at least in Belgium, the momentum of the 2010s “mutiny” was captured by an organization and thus did not dissipate in the same way.

Yes, absolutely. It’s like the story of the three little pigs. The first pig builds a house of straw, the second builds one out of wood, and the third builds his house out of bricks. When the wolf comes, he blows down the straw and wooden houses, and only the brick one is left standing. In the Workers’ Party, we say we are building a brick house, because the wolves are coming and we want to be prepared.

Now, it takes a lot longer to build a brick house, and it can be very tempting to build one out of straw instead — one that relies on social media and charismatic spokespeople — but at the end of the day, without durable structures, you are lost. You need a party rooted in communities and workplaces, that meets on a regular basis, that intervenes in the community, that educates its members and serves as a kind of university for them. We shouldn’t be naive: if we are going to confront capitalism, if we are going to organize real ruptures in how our societies are governed — not just participate in a coalition, but lead a government that actually improves working people’s lives — we will need a strong organization behind us.

Ultimately, I think what we saw in the 2010s was the last gasp of a kind of movementism rooted in the collapse of the Soviet Union and the triumph of neoliberalism. I have a lot of respect for the people who built movements like Podemos, but I never thought they could last.

Assuming we manage to get our house in order in time and build those working-class parties you describe — what then? Your book ends by saying if the mutinies in the Global North can lend a hand to those in the Global South, we can move the world in the direction of a social, ecological transformation. What would that look like? The days of truly international socialist movements are so far back in time, it’s hard to imagine one today.

For now, I think it is important to open windows for those kinds of discussions, because ultimately we will have to recreate those movements ourselves. That’s what the book is trying to do.

When I was in South Africa to present it, some people came up to me and said, “You poor boy, it must be so tough in Europe with all of those fascists.” But I responded, “Are things any less difficult here?” Look at India, look at the new government in Argentina. Fascism is not just a European thing, it’s a global thing — and so is class struggle. The class interests of a British nurse and a South African miner, or an Indian farmer and a landless peasant in Brazil, are ultimately the same.

There is a very institutionalized way of doing trade unionism, a very top-down way, where the only international exchange is at the executive level. But there is another way, an internationalist way, where you draw the links between struggles in other countries. I think that is what’s happening in some ways right now around Gaza. Some people call it a Vietnam moment. I don’t think it’s reached that level, at least not yet, but it’s certainly a moment where all kinds of people — students, but also workers — are opening their eyes to the international dimension of politics and coming together to oppose a grave injustice. That, I think, opens up the possibility of a more global movement.

The BRICS are not socialist, they aren’t even anti-imperialist, but they are a game changer in terms of how the global economy is structured. The Left should critically support them to the extent they challenge the current world order, while also building our own forums and institutions that go beyond them.

The last two years have seen a number of terrible wars — not only in Ukraine and Gaza, but also in Sudan and the Congo, to name just a few. Is there not a danger that the end of the unipolar world order will also be very violent?

Like I said, right now we are in a phase of chaos, and chaos always kicks up a lot of dust. But the Left should not be afraid of that dust. If you look at all the disasters imposed on the countries of Asia, Africa, and Latin America — not only during colonialism, but also in the neoliberal period — it’s clear that the current order is already very violent.

This process is just beginning and is currently in the most difficult phase. It could go in a far-right direction, but our job is to ensure that it doesn’t. I realize there are people in Europe who feel like they have stable lives and are afraid of the chaos, but that chaos is caused by capitalism. We have to show people a way forward, through the chaos, to a new kind of stability — a socialist stability.

The Labor Movement in Myanmar Is Facing Brutal Retaliation

By Khaing Zar Aung

October 11, 2024

Source: Jacobin


Striking garment workers demonstrated outside the offices of the International Labor Organization in Yangon, Myanmar, earlier this week demanding that global apparel brands ensure workers are not punished for participating in pro-democracy protests. Photo: Andrew Tillett-Saks, Twitter.

Since the military coup in Myanmar in February 2021, the military has tried to force us into subordination with killings, torture, bombing, countless arrests, and displacement. Since then, over three million people have been internally displaced. At least 8,000 civilians, including many trade unionists, have died. Seventy percent of the total nation has faced armed clashes.

More than 86,000 buildings, including schools and health care facilities, have been attacked and destroyed. Around 400,000 government employees who joined the civil disobedience movement have lost their jobs and income. At least 26,799 people have been arrested, among them over 500 trade unionists.

For more than three years, the military has waged an open war against the people of Myanmar, and the world has started to notice. Yet the oppression by successive military regimes has been ongoing for decades, a fact that is seen in the many who had to seek refuge in Norway over the years. We thank the Norwegian people, the Government of Norway, the Norwegian Burma Council, and the Norwegian Confederation of Trade Unions, for the many years of political and financial support and for allowing the Democratic Voice of Burma to be established in Olso.

In February 2021, the Confederation of Trade Unions Myanmar [CTUM] issued a statement condemning the coup and leaving the National Tripartite Forum. We organized our members and the opposition on all fronts. Members and leaders of CTUM took to the streets and helped bring hundreds of thousands out in protest. The military issued arrest warrants against all the CTUM central committee members, including myself.

All our passports were declared void, and we all have court cases against us for state treason. The CTUM headquarters office was ransacked, and everything was taken. Our family members are under constant threat — forcing many to leave the country. Many were tortured to death or forced into hiding.

Our organization has experience fighting against the military regime, having done so since 1988. We can confidently say that today’s regime is much weaker than the one twenty years ago, and the democratic forces are much stronger. The military has lost more than half of the country’s territory because of the coordinated attacks by democratic armed forces. We can win, and we will win.

However, the international community can and must do more to support our people, who are risking their lives to free our country.
Corporate Hypocrisy

The military denies workers all human rights and creates conditions where garment workers make $1.50 US dollars per day without any chance to improve their conditions through organizing. Meanwhile, fake unions are sprouting up under the Made in Myanmar project funded by the European Union. Made in Myanmar is a stain on the EU and must be stopped immediately. It is nothing but a cover-up for global brands that want to benefit from the cheap labor in Myanmar under the guise of “providing jobs.” What they provide is slave work.

When workers dare to organize in genuine trade unions, the leaders and their families are threatened with arrest, torture, and death. In many garment factories, working conditions are close to slavery, with more than sixteen-hour workdays at poverty wages to produce garments for European consumers. It is a convenient lie for multinational fashion brands to argue that they generously stay in Myanmar to provide jobs for otherwise unemployed workers. In reality, they make use of cheap labor.

Under this military regime, any talk of “heightened due diligence” is nothing but window-dressing. Show me one brand that has stopped the countless arrests, torture, and murders of trade unionists fighting for decent work in their factories. They can’t stop it, of course, because it is not possible. Brands claim to do due diligence, but their so-called “responsible business conduct” is simply impossible under a military dictatorship.

Global brands that stay in the country, like the Danish brand Bestseller, implicitly accept the rampant violations of trade union rights. Brands even contribute to these violations by paying taxes and factory “protection fees” to the military. They are funding the regime. No more excuses: global brands must responsibly exit Myanmar.
Our Campaign at the ILO

The International Labour Organization [ILO] formed a Commission of Inquiry to investigate forced labor and the violation of freedom of association in Myanmar. The commission adopted its report in August 2023, confirming that military authorities violate Myanmar’s obligations under the relevant conventions. It recommends that actions to be taken by the ILO Governing Body, including within the framework of Article 33 of the ILO Constitution. We need not only the trade unions but also employers and governments at the ILO to back the conclusions of the Commission of Inquiry with firm actions.

We trade unionists will continue to fight against the brutal military regime as we seek the establishment of a federal democratic system. We are very grateful for the support of the international union movement in this struggle. We need your continued solidarity and support, politically and financially, to remove the military as quickly as possible.
Military Conscription

In October 2023, the United Nations news agency reported the ILO Commission of Inquiry’s findings. The recommendations urge the military authorities to immediately cease all forms of violence, torture, and other inhumane treatment against trade union leaders and members; to release and withdraw all criminal charges against trade unionists detained in relation to the exercise of their civil liberties and legitimate trade union activities; and to fully restore the protection of basic civil liberties suspended since the coup d’état.

The recommendations also urge the military authorities to end the exaction of all forms of forced or compulsory labor by the army and its associated forces as well as forced recruitment into the army. Yet on February 10, the military regime in Myanmar implemented a compulsory national service law, as reported by televised state media. The new legislation mandates that all men between the ages of eighteen and thirty-five, as well as women aged eighteen to twenty-seven, must serve up to two years under military command. Additionally, specialists such as doctors up to the age of forty-five are required to serve for a period of three years.

The UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Myanmar, Tom Andrews, has condemned the junta’s implementation of compulsory military conscription as a sign of the regime’s “weakness and desperation.”
The Need for Comprehensive Economic Sanctions

If you all observe the above happenings, it is clear that the Myanmar junta cannot be moved by resolutions alone. Resolutions must be enforced by economic sanctions, the only available nonviolent action to end the military regime.

I stand here representing not only workers and trade unions from Myanmar, but also 183 democratic organizations, including organizations of youth and women, strike committees from across the country, student unions, and government employees such as teachers, doctors, and nurses who joined the Civil Disobedience Movement following our call. Together we:Demand a total arms embargo and comprehensive economic sanctions — with enforcement through legislation provided within the US and UK systems against the three national banks, which mainly collect foreign currency.
Call on multinational companies — including insurance companies and fashion brands — to exit responsibly from Myanmar.
Call on shipping companies to stop delivering weapons and dual-use goods like fuels for military vehicles and airplanes to Myanmar.
Call on the European Union to withdraw the “Everything But Arms” [EBA] trade benefits from Myanmar.

The EU’s EBA program was designed to offer trade incentives to the poorest countries to promote democracy and full respect for core human and labor rights. The EU withdrew some preferences from Cambodia in 2020 because it does not respect workers’ rights, but it maintains the full EBA preferences for Myanmar.

The EU thus maintains that it is possible to implement due diligence in a country where industrial zones are under martial law, where freedom of association is banned and all genuine trade union representatives are under arrest warrants, hunted, tortured, or killed. The EU must stop subsidizing the military with the EBA trade preferences. It must recognize the government in exile and do everything it can to support our liberation struggle.


Khaing Zar Aung is president of the Industrial Workers Federation of Myanmar (IWFM), an executive committee member of the Confederation of Trade Union, Myanmar (CTUM), and a member of the Myanmar Labour Alliance. She has been blacklisted by the Myanmar military junta. Since the 2021 coup she has been forced to live in exile.

How Climate Change Threatens Workers

Worker risk is also a function of workers’ power in the workplace — or lack thereof. Where they work, the conditions they work under and their ability to protect themselves against obvious threats make workers more vulnerable than average citizens.

By Jordan Barab

October 12, 2024

Source: Portside



At least six workers in a Tennessee plastics factory are dead or missing after managers allegedly told them not to evacuate despite urgent warnings of severe flash flooding. What does this tragedy say about the unique threat that workers face from climate change and related adverse weather events?

Climate change is not a hoax, as some politicians continue to argue. It is very real as we witnessed most recently the past several days as a climate change-fueled hurricane wreaked havoc and death from Floridaas far north as eastern Tennessee and western North Carolina. Hundreds are confirmed dead and many more are still missing.

Hurricanes, floods, heat, fires and other severe weather phenomena have the potential of hitting everyone. Some — who may live on the coast or in a fire-prone areas — may be more at risk than city-dwellers, but Hurricane Helene has shown us that few locations are immune, even for people who thought they were protected because they lived in an inland city like Asheville or up in the mountains far from the hurricane-prone coasts.

While anyone can be at risk from adverse weather events, workers bear an added element of risk because of the jobs they do and their lack of control in their workplaces. Must attention has been paid over the past few years to the growing number of worker illnesses and deaths from heat exposure — and the federal government as well as a growing number of cities and states are slowly taking action to protect workers. (At the same time, some states — like Texas and Florida — are heading the other direction — making it more difficult for localities to protect workers from the effects of high heat.) Many of the jobs most at risk, for example agriculture and construction, have large numbers of immigrant workers who may not feel protected complaining to OSHA or other authorities about unsafe working conditions

But the threat to workers is not just from the elements. It’s not just from Mother Nature, however climate-altered she has become. Worker risk is also a function of workers’ power in the workplace — or lack thereof. Where they work, the conditions they work under and their ability to protect themselves against obvious threats make workers more vulnerable than average citizens to the risks posed by climate change.


The threat to workers is not just from the elements. It’s not just from Mother Nature, however climate-altered she has become. Worker risk is also a function of workers’ power in the workplace — or lack thereof. Where they work, the conditions they work under and their ability to protect themselves against obvious threats make workers more vulnerable than average citizens to the risks posed by climate change.

Most people, when they receive hurricane or flood warning, have the option of evacuating from their homes and heading to a safer location. Facing high heat, most people have the ability to live and work in air-conditioned homes and offices, or retreat into air-conditioned shops or cars during a severe heat wave. Even the effects of wildfire smoke can be minimized by staying in a climate-controlled dwelling.

But workers often are not in control of their working conditions or safety. If workers who labor outdoors are not allowed to take rest breaks in the shade without being threatened with discipline, if they don’t have access to water during a heat wave without being or if can’t protect themselves from toxic wildfire smoke without risking their jobs, or if they’re not allowed leave work in the face of and approaching tornado or floods without fear of being fired — what we’re seeing is basic job blackmail: your job or your life.

And these are not just theoretical risk, as we’re now seeing down in Tennessee.
Impact Plastics

This problem for workers was no better illustrated than what we’re learning from the tragedy at Impact Plastics in Erwin, Tennessee, where at least six workers were swept away by the flooded Nolichucky Rive. Three workers died: Rosa Andrade,
Liliana Verdugo, Monica Hernández and Bertha Mendoza. Three remain missing. Many of the workers at the plant are Hispanic.

At least one survivor and families of the missing workers say they were not allowed to evacuate despite increasing urgent warnings. Given the known path of the Hurricane, workers are wondering why they were even forced to come to work that day.

Impact Plastics is denying the allegations, claimed that workers were allowed to leave on time, and their jobs weren’t threatened if they left. “When water began to cover the parking lot and the adjacent service road, and the plant lost power, employees were dismissed by management to return to their homes in time for them to escape the industrial park. At no time were employees told that they would be fired if they left the facility.”

The company claims that they allowed employees to leave when water began covering the parking lot, but “While most employees left immediately, some remained on or near the premises for unknown reasons. ”

But Impact workers tell a different story.

Robert Jarvis, a worker at the plant, reported that his bosses were hesitant to let employees leave the premises until it was too late.

“We were all working, and the power went out, and I got a text right when the power went out from another employee saying that the parking lot was flooded. I started walking out towards the break room — that’s where you walk out at to the parking lot — and I seen the parking lot flooded,” Jarvis recalled. “And I was like, ‘what do I do?’ And they told me to move my car. So I went to go move my car to higher ground, which it was still in water, there was no dry ground in that parking lot, I got out, I said ‘Can we leave?’ And the woman said ‘no, not until I speak with Gerry [Impact Plastics founder Gerald O’Connor].”

“About 10 minutes later she came back and said ‘y’all can leave.’ It was too late,” Jarvis continued. “We had one way in, one way out, and when they told us we could leave, the one way out was blocked off. So we were stuck in traffic blocked on that road waiting to see what we were gonna do. Because everyone knew it was one way.”

Another worker described how the company ignored the imminent threat until it was too late:

Jacob Ingram, a mold changer at the company, told the Knoxville News Sentinel that as the flooding started, managers instructed employees to move their cars away from the rising water – but would not let them leave. “They should’ve evacuated when we got the flash flood warnings, and when they saw the parking lot,” he said to the newspaper. “When we moved our cars, we should’ve evacuated then … we asked them if we should evacuate, and they told us not yet, it wasn’t bad enough.

“And by the time it was bad enough, it was too late – unless you had a four-wheel drive.”

Ingram told the Knoxville News Sentinel that he and 10 other employees later tried to leave by taking refuge on an open-bed truck. Debris hit the truck, made two people fall into the water and eventually caused the truck to flip.
Weak Legal Protections

The Occupational Safety and Health Act, passed in 1970, was supposed to eliminate job blackmail. Employers were given full responsibility for maintaining a safe workplace and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration was created to enforce the law and the standards that OSHA established. No longer would workers be forced to choose between their jobs and their lives.

But the promise of OSHA was never fully realized. The agency has been chronically underfunded, new standards can take decades to issue, workers who are not represented by unions have trouble exercising their rights under the law — especially the right to refuse imminently dangerous work — and the political power of the business community and the Republican party have obstructed efforts to address these problems.

The impact of climate change and severe weather events on workers has been especially difficult for OSHA to address. The agency is working on a heat standard which was launched early in the Biden administration. But it will likely take close to two years before that standard is finalized — and only if Kamala Harris wins the presidency. A re-elected President Trump will do the bidding of his business backers and stall the standard indefinitely.

There are no OSHA standard directly addressing the problems faced by the workers at Impact Plastics.

OSHA faced a similar situation in December 2021 when 16 workers were killed when huge tornadoes ripped into the Mayfield Consumer Products plant in western Kentucky and an Amazon warehouse in Edwardsville, Illinois. OSHA investigated the Amazon plant, where six workers died, but the agency declined to cite the company because there was no OSHA standard specifically covering that situation. When there is no specific OSHA standard that covers a hazard, OSHA turns to legally burdensome General Duty Clause — Section 5(a)(1) of the OSHAct — which requires employers to provide a safe workplace. But the General Duty Clause is vulnerable to legal challenge and in the Amazon case, OSHA eventually determined that “no OSHA standard applies and it is not considered appropriate at this time to invoke Section 5(a)(1).”

Instead, the agency sent Amazon a Hazard Alert Letter (HAL) describing three major failures in Amazon’s emergency response program that led to the fatalities. OSHA sends HALs when there is not enough evidence to sustain a General Duty Clause violation. The letter identified risk factors and recommended to the employer “that you voluntarily take the necessary steps to eliminate or materially reduce your employees’ exposure to the risk factors described above.”

Kentucky OSHA took a more aggressive approach, issuing a $40,000 citation against Mayfield Consumer Products. The main standards cited addressed the plant’s failure to secure exit routes or develop emergency action plans and alarms.
What Is To Be Done?

Climate change is here, it is getting worse, and as citizens of Tennessee and western North Carolina who live far from the hurricane-prone coast have learned, no place is safe anymore. Workers have much less control over how to respond to climate emergencies than the general population. Worker safety laws are weak, and there are few adequate OSHA standards covering climate emergencies. OSHA is working on a heat standard, and a standard that would protect emergency responders, but no work has been done to address the hazards that killed the Impact, Amazon or Mayfield workers.

Workers desperately need enhanced protections — OSHA standard or laws, for example that allow workers to leave a workplace or shelter in place in the face of severe weather alerts. Workers and supervisors need to be trained in how to respond to the growing variety of threats facing the world — particularly the world of work.

And employers need to face consequences for threatening workers with their jobs when the seek to protect themselves.

Immigrant rights groups like the Tennessee Immigrant and Refugee Rights Coalition (TIRRC) are working with the Impact workers and providing needed legal support. TIRRC Executive Director Lisa Sherman Luna stated that

From providing multilingual warnings and information before, during, and after instances of severe weather to prioritizing outreach and recovery efforts in under-resourced communities, it’s clear all cities across the state must do more to ensure they are prepared for the next time disaster strikes. And while today we focus on meeting the needs of people displaced by this impact of climate change, we must also call our government to take steps to reverse the course of climate change, from investing in clean energy and common sense measures to protect our environment, so that Tennesseans have the freedom to breathe fresh air, drink clean water, and thrive for generations to come.

The Labor Council for Latin American Advancement (LCLAA) issued a statement, stating in part:

“Any loss of life is a tragedy, but the preventable loss of life, where productivity is prioritized over human safety, is nothing short of disgraceful,” said LCLAA’s National President, Evelyn DeJesus. This tragedy has profoundly hit the growing Latino community in Erwin, Tennessee, especially hard and should serve as a sobering reminder to local officials. Latinos make up 8% of the population here, and they must not be treated as expendable. Distressed families have questioned officials on why they had not been asked for photos or information to help identify their missing loved ones. They have expressed frustration at the lack of support in locating their loved ones, which is simply unacceptable, and we must do better.

Local authorities are responding. Tennessee OSHA is now investigating Impact Plastics, as well the fact that Impact did not notify Tennessee OSHA of the workers’ deaths. The Texas Bureau of Investigation (TBI) has also launched an investigation. The TBI has more authority to pursue criminal charges than OSHA.

But it’s not enough to act after workers have already died. Congress, state legislatures and Federal, state and local authorities need to put a special focus on the unique problems that workers face as a result of climate change-related weather events. It’s already too late for some, but the threat of climate change –and the need to address related workplace issues — will only get more urgent.

Bad Climate Socialism
The opening salvos of the interstate insurance wars.

By Hamilton Nolan

October 11, 2024

Source: How Things Work



Few things are as easily predictable as the path that America is walking down towards its awful, inevitable national political war over the costs of climate change. Each catastrophe will propel us to take another step towards our looming irrational meltdown. Hurricane Helene has now done her part, and our short-sighted politicians are doing theirs.

Helene devastated portions of the Florida coast, mangled inland towns in Georgia, and caused Biblical flooding in the Carolinas that has been compared to an Appalachian version of Hurricane Katrina. In the desperate atmosphere that rushes in as every major storm dissipates, Florida Congressman Jared Moskowitz took to Fox News to promote the bill that he filed last year to require the federal government to backstop disaster insurance costs for high risk states. Florida Politics reports:


“It would add no money to the deficit. It would allow states to buy bonds that when we have these 1 in 1,000 year storms would take that off of the plates of the insurance companies, which is driving up 25% of the cost on reinsurance,” Moskowitz said. “Even if my bill doesn’t move or go anywhere, I think the United States government and Congress has to start realizing that we have to amortize the risk.”

“We have to spread this risk around,” he added. “It can’t just be on one state or two states to deal with this. Just like FEMA (the Federal Emergency Management Agency) spreads risk around when there’s a big disaster, FEMA comes in and helps local cities, counties and the states recover, I think we’re going to have to do the same thing in the insurance market.”

What you are seeing here is the unfolding of a process that is as certain as the rising sun. Humans emit greenhouse gases that cause climate change. This generates a lot of short term wealth as well as problems that reveal themselves in the long term, incentivizing companies to keep snatching profits as long as possible despite exacerbating the eventual costs of the problem. Natural disasters, particularly storms and wildfires, grow more intense over time. Insurance rates for homeowners in areas prone to these disasters rise, quickly becoming unaffordable. Said homeowners panic and demand relief from their politicians. This is where we are now.

As I have written before, there are two paths out of this dilemma. One is the more socialist path: The government enforces limits on carbon emissions to curb climate change, and publicly funds a rational plan for the managed retreat of homeowners from disaster-prone areas. This is an expensive and politically difficult but humane solution. Then there is the free market path: Allow insurance companies to set rates where math dictates they should be set to properly account for risk. Living in disaster-prone areas quickly becomes impossible to afford for many people, who are forced to move. Banks will not write mortgages on uninsured homes, so new construction in these areas declines. Fewer people move in, more people move out, and the population shifts to safer locations. This method would be accompanied by tremendous human suffering, as people are forced out of their homes by economic pain, but it would accomplish the same goal as the more humane path, in a way that is consistent with the American valorization of capitalism.

We are not going to follow either of these paths. Instead, due to the nature of our political system, which rewards cowardice and punishes anyone who might dare to tell coastal homeowners that they are fucked, we are going to get a blend of the worst aspects of both options. Politicians will demand federal bailouts of the costs associated with each disaster, and they will introduce various regulations and financial schemes to artificially hold down the price of insurance—well below its true price, meaning a price that would allow insurance companies to fully pay for all of the costs that climate change will impose. These costs will continually increase. Eventually, the costs to the nation of subsidizing the ability of people to live in unwise locations will be so enormous that all the rest of the citizens will revolt. “Save our homes!” one side will cry. “Why should I pay for you to live at the beach?” everyone else will cry. A vicious political war will ensue. It will be brutal. All the while, climate change will continue apace. The only real question is how long we will spend dithering on our unproductive and childish bickering before we are forced by nature to address the root causes of this problem. Knowing America, I suspect that we can dither deeper into disastrous territory than you might imagine.

In his demand for the federal government to rescue Florida’s homeowners from their insurance costs, Jared Moskowitz is playing his part in this process. It is easy to spot the flaws in his plan. “It would add no money to the deficit,” he says. This means nothing. Costs are costs. “We have these 1 in 1,000 year storms,” he says. We seem to be getting these one in one thousand year storms every five years now, Jared. Why do you think that is? “We have to spread this risk around,” he says.

Do we?Asheville.

I am a socialist and I fully believe that the most rational way to manage a country is for the federal government to take on the costs of goods that everyone needs. If we socialize the costs of the fire department and the police and the military and schools and health care and roads and the other necessities of life, we build a safety net that ensures that even poor people and poor places have access to the necessities that everyone in our rich nation deserves. However, there is a difference between socializing the costs of things we need more of, and socializing the costs of things we need less of. Universal public health care would be good. Universal public insurance for people to continue to build more beachfront homes that scientists tell us will be at ever-increasing risk of destruction from climate change—allowing us to delay our ultimate reckoning with the need to phase out fossil fuels? Not good. Socialism is a tool. It demands at least a minimal level of judgment. If you socialize the costs of a bad thing you make that bad thing cheaper and ensure that you will get more of it.

This issue, more than any other I can think of, combines almost all of America’s systemic flaws into a single toxic stew that we will all be forced to choke down. The flaws in our electoral system ensure that politicians who tell voters the hard truths about the changes that will be necessary to deal with this problem are defeated by those willing to tell voters cheap lies about easy fixes that allow everyone to maintain their current lifestyles. The flaws in our cutthroat economic system ensure that the needs of rich people in expensive beach houses will drive this discussion far more than the needs of poorer people who live in disaster-prone areas. The flaws in our hysterical post-Cold War attitudes about the evils of socialism ensure that no adult conversation can be had about what a responsible solution will look like. And the flaws in our national political media discourse ensure that as this issue comes to a head, and the states begin to sort themselves into “those who want bailouts” and “those who do not want to pay for bailouts,” the arguments between the two sides will become absolutely poisonous. Imagine pouring all of the political attack ads around welfare and billionaires and red state bastards and blue state commies into a blender and mixing it with the tears of a million people whose homes have been washed away and the outrage of a hundred million other people who are struggling to make a living and believe that they are being asked to pay for some asshole to live in a mansion on Miami Beach. And then allow the entire conversation to be led by, you know, Ron DeSantis. It will be terrible.

What makes me especially morbid about all of this is the fact that we are still in the early stages. It is clear that climate change’s disastrous cost will have to get much, much higher before Americans begin to genuinely consider the idea that we will have to change the way that we live. A big truck and a big house on the beach with a big air conditioner is still seen as a birthright in this country. The indignation that will accompany the increasingly loud demands for the federal government to defend this birthright will be incredible to behold. I hope that we can reach the point of pulling off the Band-Aid on this issue sooner rather than later. But I admit that I am not optimistic. Every excruciating step of this long path is going to have to happen. We can only try to make it happen before it’s too late.




Hamilton Nolan is a labor writer for In These Times. He has spent the past decade writing about labor and politics for Gawker, Splinter, The Guardian, and elsewhere. More of his work is on Substack.

‘Reckless Conduct’ of Big Oil Caused Milton—And Now They Should Pay

By Julia Conley

October 11, 2024

Source: Common Dreams


Recreational vehicles and camper trailers law strewn about in a trailer park in the Florida Keys in the wake of Hurricane Irma September 12, 2017. U.S. Customs and Border Protection photo by Glenn Fawcett/Flickr

As Hurricane Milton’s 145 mile-per-hour winds began closing in on Southwest Florida on Wednesday and people crowded into makeshift shelters across the state, climate advocates and other observers said the life-threatening storm and massive disruption to millions of people’s lives should make Americans “furious” at those who have helped make extreme weather more frequent and dangerous.

As Nathan J. Robinson wrote in Current Affairs, climate scientists and meteorologists have unequivocally told oil companies and policymakers that fossil fuel extraction is causing planetary heating, which has led to higher temperatures in oceans and bodies of water including the Gulf of Mexico, where the rapidly strengthening hurricane formed.

But despite the knowledge that fossil fuel giants like ExxonMobil and Shell had decades ago that drilling for oil and gas would cause “violent weather” and “potentially catastrophic events,” the industry’s profits have only grown as the U.S. has continued to subsidize their pollution-causing activities.

“The failure by our political class to deal with this completely solvable issue is staggering and shameful,” wrote Robinson. “Many of them have children and grandchildren. Presumably they would like their descendants to inherit a world worth living in. And they could make that happen. Unfortunately, it would require challenging the power and profits of some of America’s most influential corporations.”

In the Substack newsletter Heated, Arielle Samuelson explained on Wednesday how fossil fuel extraction and planetary heating “mutated” Hurricane Milton, which stunned weather experts this week as its wind speeds grew at a record-breaking pace, from 60 miles per hour to 180 miles per hour in just 36 hours.

It was the second time in recent weeks that a hurricane in the region has intensified quickly; areas that are expected to take a direct hit from Milton are still overwhelmed by the destruction left by Hurricane Helene.

Hot temperatures in the planets’ oceans and gulfs fuels hurricanes, and as Samuelson noted, scientists say the “extremely hot” Gulf of Mexico “was made far more likely by heat-trapping pollutants from the fossil fuel, agriculture, chemical, and cement industries.”

She continued:


In the past two weeks, ocean temperatures in the Gulf of Mexico were about 30-31° Celsius (86-88°F)—about 1 to 2° Celsius above average. The climate crisis made these extraordinarily high ocean temperatures at least 400 to 800 times more likely over the past two weeks, according to a rapid attribution study from Climate Central.

[…]

The science is also extremely clear that heat-trapping pollution causes sea-level rise and heavier rainfall, both of which make hurricanes more dangerous. Rainfall rates for tropical cyclones are expected to rise with the planet’s temperature, causing deadly flash floods like those found in Asheville, North Carolina. Sea level rise also means that coastal communities, and communities further inland, are more likely to be flooded during a storm.

That’s an objectively scary reality. But we know the primary source of greenhouse gas pollution, scientists note, so we also know how to slow the problem.

The lingering destruction of Helene and the impending landfall of Milton come, noted Fossil Fuel Media director Jamie Henn, weeks after three Democrats in Congress introduced legislation to require fossil fuel companies and oil refiners that do business in the U.S. to pay into a $1 trillion Polluters Pay Climate Fund, with their contributions based on a percentage of their global emissions.

The fund would be used to finance climate adaptation and other efforts to confront the impacts of the climate crisis.

In a press briefing on Wednesday, President Joe Biden noted how the damage done by Helene and the rapidly evolving news about Milton has left overwhelmed Americans vulnerable to misinformation, with some urging them to direct their anger at the White House or the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA).

Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump has made baseless claims that FEMA funds were spent on funding for immigrant shelters, while U.S. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) wrote on social media that an unnamed “they” can control the weather and suggested the federal government is deliberately keeping emergency aid from people in states controlled by Republicans.

As fossil fuel firms and political leaders march “us toward the tipping points,” wrote Robinson, “many people won’t understand what is happening to them.”

“In a chaotic information environment filled with endless falsehoods, they’ll conclude that the president is manipulating the weather, or FEMA is trying to kill people,” he wrote. “The real story, however, is straightforward: We have a political class that is vastly more committed to sending weapons to war criminals than funding emergency management, and which will not acknowledge the basic facts of the problem (and the known solutions) because some large economic actors benefit in the short run from the destruction of the planet.”

“Truly, it’s revolting,” he added. “What an absolute disgrace our failure to deal with climate change is.”

Candice Fortin, U.S. campaigns manager for 350.org, said that fossil fuel executives and the politicians that support them have “blood on their hands” and called on Biden to unequivocally stand on the side of hurricane victims by declaring a climate emergency.

“This is a climate emergency,” said Fortin. “Every time we repeat that, countless more lives have been lost or upended by the fossil fuel industry. How many more times will it take? We call on President Biden to use his executive power to declare a climate emergency so we can finally protect frontline communities.”

At Newsweek, organizer and attorney Aaron Regunberg wrote that oil companies’ contributions to the climate emergency have been compounded by their vast efforts to spread misinformation and hide their knowledge that fossil fuel extraction was heating the planet.

Exxon CEO Darren Woods, he wrote, pushed for a surge in the company’s extractive activities while “overseeing a substantial portion of the company’s climate deception efforts,” and received $198.9 million for his “climate crimes” from 2015-23, as well as owning Exxon shares worth $371.1 million.

“Regular people are paying the ultimate price for this sociopathic greed,” wrote Regunberg. “The families made homeless, the wives and husbands and parents and children who lost loved ones to Helene—these victims deserve justice no less than victims of street-level crimes, and the companies and corporate executives responsible for their pain and suffering deserve criminal punishment at least as much as, if not far more than, the average street-level offender.”

“Climate victims have paid so much for Big Oil’s reckless conduct,” he added. “It’s time to make the polluters pay.”

 

Facing the fascist danger

By Kevin B. Anderson

Published 11 October, 2024

First published at New Politics.

In autumn 2024, the largest democratic republics in Europe and North America remain in extreme danger, amid ongoing and deepening fascist threats, especially in the United States.

France: Centrists betray July vote, allying with neofascists.

In France, voters mobilized by the left defeated the neofascist National Rally party in the July parliamentary elections. But by September, the authoritative newspaper Le Monde published a somber editorial noting that by now the neofascists had been placed “in the position of arbiter or censor” of the government, with the left sidelined (“Matignon: Un choix qui ne referme pas la crise politique,” September 7, 2024).

How did this happen? July saw a surprising and exhilarating defeat for the fascists, one where the left took the lead in creating a “republican front” against them, forcing most of the centrists into line. In the event, the neofascists came in a humiliating third, after the leftist New Popular Front and after President Emmanuel Macron’s “centrist” Together bloc. However, France’s semi-authoritarian constitution, originating in De Gaulle’s 1958 coup, allows the president huge powers. Using these to the fullest, the increasingly rightwing Macron refused to allow the leftist New Popular Front even to attempt to form a government, likely with his Together bloc the minor partner. Instead, he appointed conservative politician Michel Barnier as prime minister, rather than even trying to negotiate with the left. Even though Barnier’s small party combined with Macron’s lacks anything near a parliamentary majority, he has entered into a corrupt informal agreement with the National Rally, which now has veto power over policies and legislation. This bodes ill for migrants and refugees, people of color, the working class, as well as for Ukraine, and most of all for the future of French democracy.

Evidently, French centrists and conservatives have finally moved far enough to the right to do what has been feared over the last several decades. They have decided to side with the fascists against the left, in order to preserve austerity, avoid even the mildest tax increases on high incomes or wealth, and because they are also becoming increasingly anti-immigrant, more openly racist and Islamophobic, and repressive. They have also slid to the right in the face of mounting unrest from the left, from labor, from youth of color in the banlieus, and from a new generation of students determined to defend Gaza in the face of an Israeli genocide in which the French state is complicit.

In response, the left held large protest demonstrations around the country on September 7. Tens of thousands took to the streets, with their white-hot anger expressed by slogans like “Barnier, go f—yourself, you did not get the votes.” With larger labor demonstrations scheduled for October, it could be a hot autumn. But for now, the left has been defeated and the fascist threat in France is looming larger.

Germany: Fascist surge in the east

September 1 state elections in the east showed dramatic gains for the neofascist Alternative for Germany (AfD). In Thuringia, AfD garnered a third of the votes and in Saxony, over 30%. Moreover, leftwing parties saw their vote sharply diminished, with the Left Party going down below the level for any representation in the state parliament in Saxony, and dropping to 13% in Thuringia, where it had held power in a coalition. The Social Democrats and the Greens did equally poorly. The new red-brown Sahra Wagenknecht Party (BSW), which recently split off from the Left Party, received 12% in Saxony and 16% in Thuringia. Overall, the BSW represents another type of shift to the right, in this case from parts of the left with Stalinist roots. While still in the Left Party, Wagenknecht opposed the COVID vaccine. Today, BSW attacks some aspects of capitalism and claims to support labor, but is hostile to immigrants and refugees, climate justice, and sexual minorities. Like AfD, it opposes Ukraine.

At a national level, the Thuringia and Saxony elections have already driven the governing coalition government — comprising the Social Democrats, the Greens, and the liberal Free Democrats – to the right, as seen in the September 9 announcement that Germany will require border checks from other European Union countries. This rolls back freedoms of circulation within Europe going back three decades. Germany will also begin to deport Syrian and Afghan refugees to their respective countries, despite the extreme levels of danger facing them under these horrific dictatorships. In addition, the Free Democrats have shifted right in a particular way, against environmental restrictions, now declaring that they cannot support “anti-automobile” policies.

Over the past year, Germany has seen an upsurge in labor actions and a series of large street demonstrations against the fascist threat represented by AfD, implicitly if not actively supported by the ruling coalition. Yet under the same coalition government, pro-Palestine voices have been muzzled to a greater extent than even in the U.S., including the rescinding of invitations to renowned international scholars who have criticized Israel and bans on demonstrations by students and youth. This is another type of rightwing politics, put forward in the name of democracy and largely spurious charges of antisemitism. (And while some progressive intellectuals like Hartmut Rosa have defended pro-Palestinian voices, others like Jürgen Habermas have simply and shamefully echoed Israeli war propaganda.) With this, and their anti-immigrant politics, the centrist democrats are making it increasingly difficult for any kind of united front against fascism with the very popular forces that would be able to confront it in the streets, should it come to that.

In contrast to France, Germany now lacks a substantial electoral or labor voice to the left of the Social Democrats. On the other hand, the neofascists are polling at around 20% of the vote at a national level, half their level of support in France and less than half that in the U.S.

Britain’s race riots

The British political system has not so far evidenced a neofascist surge in terms of parliamentary or local elections. One reason lies in the fact that the Conservative Party, especially since Brexit and even more so since Boris Johnson, has absorbed many of these tendencies into its own ranks. Another factor is how the electoral system makes it very difficult for minor parties to win political office. Be that as it may, British far right extremism and racism were on full display in the July anti-immigrant riots, when mobs attacked people and property after false rumors on social media attributed a July stabbing attack at a school that killed 3 children to an immigrant of Muslim origin. (In fact, the perpetrator was born in the UK to a Rwandan immigrant family with a Christian religious orientation.)

As the Marxist-Humanist writer Seamus Connolly reported, “In scenes not seen for decades, people of color are being randomly attacked on the street. The ‘P-word,’ an insult aimed at those of Pakistani heritage has been a common refrain, as have Nazi Flags, Nazi salutes, chants of ‘Allah, Allah, Who the Fuck is Allah?’” (“Race Riots in the UK: Fascist Thugs Take to the Street in a Wave of Violent Clashes,” International Marxist-Humanist, August 5 2024).

For its part, the new and very “centrist” Labor government of Keir Starmer condemned the violence but failed to single out racism, xenophobia, or Islamophobia. Starmer is also doubling down on austerity policies, hardly a way to lessen the appeal of neofascist politics among sectors of the working and middle classes that have seen their living standards decline. He also praised Italian neofascist Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni’s immigration policies, saying she has made “remarkable progress.” Even before taking office, Starmer purged the Labor left, going to far as to expel the internationally renowned former party leader Jeremy Corbyn, who nonetheless kept his seat in the July elections that brought Starmer to power. Starmer is also keeping his distance from the mass anti-racist demonstrations in August in response to the mayhem in July.

The Trumpist, neofascist threat in the U.S.

As dangerous as the above developments are, it has to be said that today it is the U.S. that exhibits the greatest fascist threat. Donald Trump and vice-presidential candidate JD Vance seem bent on fomenting the kind of race riots that broke out in the UK with their concocted stories about Haitian migrants in Springfield, Ohio. This is just one example among hundreds. Trump dominates the Republican Party almost completely, and even if he loses the election in November, it is doubtful he would receive a popular vote much below 47-48%. That this is happening to a political leader who staged a violent coup attempt in 2021 after he was defeated at the polls represents a grave danger not just to democracy, but also to our very existence on the planet of our species given his anti-environment stance.

For all its erratic nature, Trumpism has been consistent in terms of its Islamophobia, misogyny, xenophobia, and hostility to climate justice at a domestic level, and in terms of antagonism toward Iran and China and friendliness toward Putin’s Russia at an international level. It is important to note that Trumpist forces already control a number of U.S. states, including large ones like Texas and Florida, the U.S. House of Representatives, and the Supreme Court. Even if Trump loses in November by traditional measures, it is very possible that Texas, Florida, and other states would not recognize such a defeat and threaten secession, that the House would refuse to recognize the vote, and/or that the Supreme Court would find ways to undermine the election as well. In these senses, a constitutional coup is possible, either instead of or alongside one in the streets as in January 2021.

At the same time, as in the other countries governed by centrists, the Democratic Party of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris has armed and abetted politically Israel’s genocidal war against the Palestinian people, while also undermining if not repressing dissent and opposition from student youth, the Arab community, and other progressive constituencies. In doing so, they have also ignored much of organized labor and a large coalition of Black churches, which have also come out strongly for a ceasefire, if not more decisive measures against Israel’s genocide. The Democrats have also turned to the right on immigration, crime, and the environment (fracking everywhere). At the same time, they support to an extent bodily autonomy, LGBTQ rights, voting rights, environmental protection, and labor.

In the U.S., it is particularly notable how the holders of some of the largest capitalist fortunes, most notably the white South African immigrant Elon Musk, have gone Trumpist, while others are openly leaning toward Trump or remaining openly neutral. Large universities like Harvard have also bowed out of confronting the fascist threat by declaring they will no longer make moral statements about social justice or human rights issues.

The Democratic Party’s support of outright genocide in Gaza, all the while making slight verbal criticisms while continuing the flow of arms and money to Israel, plus their crackdown on campus protest, has convinced many youth and progressives that it would make no large difference were Trump to assume power a second time.

This is utterly false, and goes against over a century of leftwing politics and principles whereby the genuine left (leaving off authoritarian and ultra-leftist currents) has always distinguished between democratic republics and militarist, fascist, or monarchical rule. This was true in the late 1870s, when Karl Marx supported the French republicans, some of whom had put down the Paris Commune, vs. the Bonapartist military. (This kind of issue was central to Marx’s attack in the Critique of the Gotha Program what he insisted on calling the socialist “sect” founded by Ferdinand Lassalle.) It was true as Nazism was rising before 1933, when Leon Trotsky called for a united front with the reformists, even though just a few years before, they had been complicit in the murder of the great revolutionary Rosa Luxemburg and in the repression of the 1919 socialist workers’ uprising she helped to lead. And it is true today, when we need to unite to oppose Trumpism with every fiber of our bodies.

But like our revolutionary predecessors, we need to unite with other forces to fight Trumpism – and fascism everywhere – in ways that make clear our own anti-capitalist politics. We need to show that the economy is not “strong” when one considers the vast poverty and homelessness, and on a larger scale, the decline in real wages since the 2008 crisis. We need to point out that centrist liberals or social democrats have not only helped create the conditions for fascism, but in places like France, are actually forming alliances with the neofascists. We need to show how social democrats, liberals, centrists, and conservatives in Germany, the UK, and the U.S. are adopting many neofascist policies themselves.

Overall, we need to consider the fact that the global fascist threat has been rising over the past decade, as a response to a whole series of revolutions and protests, from the Arab revolutions and Occupy in 2011 to the rise of Bernie Sanders and Corbyn, and from the global movement for Black lives of 2020 to the Gaza protests of 2023-24. Equally importantly, the 2008 global economic crisis exposed the fact that the higher profit rates of the 1950s/1960s were never coming back. Not only has this turned working people against the neoliberal consensus, but it has also led a section of the dominant classes to support outright neofascism in order to recover lost ground, or at least gain something before the deluge, or out of fear of revolution or even redistribution.

Thus, fascism in the U.S. will remain a threat even if Trump loses the 2024 election and is unable to stage a coup. For as in Germany, even a 20% support level for such politics is extremely dangerous, and Trump’s is at over twice that level.

One thing we need everywhere is a coalescence of revolutionary, anti-racist, and anti-authoritarian leftists. For the long haul, we may need to create a pole of opposition to both centrist liberalism and social democracy, the lesser threat, and to neofascism, the clear and present one. Such a pole of opposition, which would have to be international, would also need a politics separate from the campists as well. It would not seek hegemony over the anti-fascist movement but would form a revolutionary and democratic pole within it. A politics of combining class/race/nationality/gender issues, or one that says the true defense of democracy means opposing capitalism as well, or more specific watchwords like, “From Ukraine to Palestine, Occupation Is a Crime,” would be of the utmost importance. But so would forming some real organizations, probably via regroupment. Here, the French left, which voted in a disciplined manner for all non-fascist candidates in July, while also keeping its coalition together and its political independence, has done the most to fulfill its responsibilities in the present period.

We need more serious thinking on these issues and more action. The hour is late and the danger is great!

Kevin B. Anderson is Professor of Sociology, Political Science and Feminist Studies at University of California, Santa Barbara. He is the author of Lenin, Hegel, and Western Marxism: A Critical Study (1995) and Marx at the Margins: On Nationalism, Ethnicity, and Non-Western Societies (2010) and the co-editor of the Rosa Luxemburg Reader (2004)