Take Back the Unions for Their Members

LABOUR  •  May 10, 2022  •  Amandla

What we are witnessing in the labour movement today is quite simply a tragedy. At a time when the working class is suffering as never before, leaders of South African Federation of Trade Unions (Saftu) are tearing the young federation to pieces.

The working class needs this federation to strengthen and grow. It is the only potentially militant, independent grouping of trade unions in South Africa. And it is not just a question of the labour movement needing such a leading force. It is the working class movement as a whole.

Community organisations are weakened if they are unable to get the active support of organised workers. Abahlali baseMjondolo (the people of the shacks) needs the active support and resources of organised workers. The Xolobeni struggle for the “Right to say No” is strengthened by the support of a federation of workers. The loss and the setback to the working class movement will be huge.

What Lies Behind the Dispute

The heart of the dispute inside Saftu comes down to a strategic difference over how to build the working class movement politically. National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa (Numsa) argues that the correct way is to build what it calls a Marxist-Leninist Vanguard Mass Party. The Saftu General Secretary and a number of affiliates favour the building of a mass working class party or Movement for Socialism. Numsa established its “vanguard party,” the Socialist Revolutionary Workers Party (SRWP). It now wants Saftu to throw its weight behind the SRWP. It views as a class enemy anyone who stands in the way of that project.

And here is the first error, which can be traced back to the degeneration of the Bolshevik Party after the 1917 revolution. The Bolshevik Party regarded itself as indispensable to the working class. Without the Bolshevik Party, the revolution would fail. And it was not just the Bolshevik Party, it was its leadership. And not just its leadership, it was the General Secretary. So the interests of the working class become reduced to the interests of the Party and thereafter to the infallible leader.

Defence of the Party becomes synonymous with defence of the working class. Perhaps it was more understandable at a time when the Bolshevik Party had just successfully played a leading role in a revolution. It is rather less understandable when the party we are talking about is a largely dysfunctional, factionalised, small grouping of mainly Numsa worker leaders and staff. It is an organisation that was able to secure only 24,439 votes nationally in the last election. It is support for this organisation that Numsa appears to be willing to shatter Saftu, a federation of 600,000 members.

What an irony. The famous Numsa Special Congress in 2013 led to Numsa’s expulsion from Cosatu because the affiliates of Cosatu required allegiance to the ANC. Numsa is now ready to break Saftu apart because it requires allegiance to SRWP. Is there no learning from history?

Whence the Factionalism?

Factional politics are narrow politics. Politics which fetishises a tactic or strategy at the expense of having a perspective of the interests of the working class and the poor as a whole. Numsa fetishists a particular form of political party. Only a Marxist-Leninist Vanguard party will retain a revolutionary perspective. Only a Marxist-Leninist Vanguard party can be relied on to not sell out. Look at Syriza; Podemos: living proof.

Era of Investment Companies

And then there is the other aspect of this tragedy – the sell-out to a lifestyle for union leaders funded by a union investment company. In Numsa’s case it has been a particularly insidious process because of the business that the investment company engages in. The main customers of the Numsa Investment Company (NIC) are the union’s members. This has become clear as the sordid story of 3Sixty Life (the main subsidiary of NIC) has unravelled through amaBhungane and GroundUp.

3Sixty makes its money by selling insurance policies to workers. Numsa organises 350,000 workers. A perfect synergy you might think. The benign view of this model is that Numsa’s company makes money by selling policies to members and then ploughs that money back into the union for the members’ benefit. It must have looked like a pretty model on someone’s computer 15 years ago.

But what of the consequences of turning your members into customers? What of the consequences of turning your shop stewards and staff into sales people? What of the consequences of giving the union leadership a source of income separate from the subscriptions of its members?

It might look like a clever financial model. But when looked at politically and organisationally it is a nightmare. So the less kind view of the model sees a membership delivered as customers to an industry that has always been known as exploitative. It wants to sell policies. Selling of policies works on commission. The more you sell the better everybody does. So workers are persuaded one way or another to spend some of the little they earn on policies, often with no clear idea of their real value. And Numsa opens its doors to this industry. Numsa becomes part of this industry. And the membership becomes its prey.

And the problems grow. Once the investment company is so deeply entangled with the union, it starts to have an interest in how that union is run and by whom it is run. The doors to its customers must remain open. The tail starts to wag the dog as the interests of the company become more important than the interests of the union’s members. The results are plain to see in Numsa now. Bitter struggles for leadership positions have ended up in court cases around elections. Stories about money flowing in the election process abound. Compared to ordinary workers, the investment company has plenty of money. It has the means to buy people.

And if you think we exaggerate, listen to Khandani Msibi, the CEO of the investment company, himself. In recent court proceedings he was challenged – why did he spend money on the birthday party of the Numsa General Secretary? Why did he buy his daughter a laptop? What was the value for the company in these expenditures? They could not be valid expenditures if there was no benefit to the company. And what was his answer? It came straight out of the Bosasa playbook – these expenditures were “marketing initiatives”; they “allowed 3Sixty Life access to Numsa events where it could further its brand and strengthen relationships. When he said this, he jumped right out of a frying pan and straight into the fire. He was proudly proclaiming to the world that by sweetening the Numsa GS, he gained access to the union. What’s the difference between that and Gwede Mantashe’s security system? Or Malusi Gigaba’s bags full of cash? All of it is about access – access to the state as a market. Access to Numsa as a market. Looks very much the same.

And Now?

So where does the trade union movement go from here? It seems clear that we have now reached a point where the interests of the leadership have become separated from those of the membership of many unions. A leadership layer enjoys a lifestyle very far from that of the members. They develop an interest in making sure they remain the leadership. This happens at all levels. Which full-time shop steward, after four years working in an office, with access to a computer and a car, wants to go back to being a worker on the production line? Which General Secretary, who lives in a modern, middle-class housing estate and drives a Mercedes Benz or a BMW to work, with a bodyguard to boot, wants to go back to the ranks of the union again?

A new vision and practice for the labour movement is needed. The only direction when dealing with such a bureaucratised leadership is to organise workers again from the ground up. To build the capacity of members to challenge the vested interests of the leadership. To take back the union for its members.

Such organising is often called a rank-and-file approach. It’s a foot soldiers approach. In fact, of course, it’s where unions started in the 1970s and 80s in this country. There is a task to rebuild our trade union movement where the interests of members prevail and where to lead is to serve. We have to break the pattern where union leadership is about escaping your class position and status. In fact, we have an article in this issue (No. 81) about one such successful rank-and-file struggle in the United States.

It is time to begin the arduous task of building democratic organisation again from the grassroots. To struggle to wrest control of unions from those who currently mislead them. It won’t be a rapid process. There may be victories but there will certainly also be defeats along the way. But on this, there really is no alternative. •

This article first published as an editorial in Amandla No. 81, and reposted on AIDC website.

Amandla is a left wing media project built around a magazine that publishes six editions per year. It was initiated in 2006/7 by activists coming from different political traditions on the left.

 

The Fight to Defend Abortion Rights

FEMINISM  •  May 9, 2022  •  Erin Brightwell

In many countries around the world, winning or defending the right to abortion access has been a key feature of women’s movements in recent years. From the historic repeal of the constitutional ban on abortion in Ireland in 2018 to the Green Wave movement which won legal abortion last year in Argentina, millions across the world have mobilized to fight for new reproductive rights gains, and to defend abortion rights from right-wing attacks. But these are part of a longer trend: since 2000, 31 countries have expanded access to abortion.

Campaigns to win abortion rights are part of a broader global women’s revolt which has exploded on every continent in recent years. Women have stepped forward to lead movements fighting for feminist demands, and have come to play outsize roles in struggles where the primary demands are not around women’s rights, such as in the revolutionary movements in Sudan and Myanmar. In the years just prior to the pandemic, International Women’s Day was revived as a major event with mass rallies and walkouts in many countries. #MeToo has been a truly international phenomenon, and the fight against sexual violence has fueled movements in the streets in countries all across the world, and spurred a recent wave of high school walkouts in the US.

Attacks by the right-wing on abortion have also been a growing feature internationally, including in the United States. In some countries, right-wing parties and governments, often linked to conservative religious forces, are using the issue of abortion to mobilize their bases. The 2016 Polish “Black Monday” protest saw over 100,000 workers, mainly women, walk off the job to defeat the right-wing Law and Justice party’s attempt to push through a total abortion ban. This protest was a watershed event, inspiring activists and movements around the world to fight for women’s rights in general, and the right to abortion in particular.

Class Society and the Control of Women’s Fertility

With abortion access now under dire threat in the US, and with political polarization increasing generally in many countries, the stage is set for fierce battles against reactionary forces around reproductive rights in the coming year. If the right succeeds in dismantling protection for abortion rights on the national level without an all-out fight to oppose this, it would have significant costs to the credibility of the political establishment. Furthermore, other hard-won social gains such as marriage equality could be the next target of the right-wing agenda.

Women’s oppression has its roots in the origins of class society, when, in order to maintain control of wealth, the male-dominated ruling class needed to ensure a clear line of inheritance. Control of women’s reproduction by the ruling class also has an ideological component. A tiny handful of people cannot expect to maintain control over a brutally exploitative economy if the working class, who represent a majority of society, are united and organized. The ruling capitalist class has always used sexism to divide the working class. Working class men may have no control over their lives while they’re at work, but they are offered instead the domination of their female partner and children according to the ideology of capitalism.

Male domination of the family is now rejected by large sections of working class people in many countries. However, even in countries where women’s mass movements had a transformative impact on women’s roles in society, the idea that men have the right to control women’s sexuality and reproduction persists in different ways, and plays an important role in maintaining divisions in the working class.

As more women go to work outside the home, entrenched views of male domination of women’s sexuality and reproduction tends to weaken as women earn their own wages and have more independence. The monumental women’s movement of the 1960s and 70s in the US occurred as a large influx of women were moving into the workplace. The further globalization of the world economy under neoliberalism led to the growth of industries such as textiles in poor countries and an increase of women in the workforce in many countries. This process is also connected to the increasing urbanization of the population in poor countries.

The increasing presence of women in the workplace worldwide is a key factor in the trend of women demanding freedom from traditional patriarchal control, including on the reproductive front. Social factors, particularly the role in society of organized religion, are also important in influencing abortion restrictions. Positively, internationalism has played a big role in recent years with women’s movements taking inspiration from movements in other countries.

The need for the ruling class to control women’s reproductive capacity continues to be a feature of capitalist society. A number of capitalist regimes today are concerned with the reproduction of the working class and maintaining the population at a level where there will be enough workers to avoid economic stagnation and crisis. In both Iran and China, the regimes are facing long-term trends toward declining population and part of their response has been to strengthen penalties for abortions in Iran, and to begin to restrict abortion access in China.

The Revolt Against Patriarchal Norms

A significant feature of movements for abortion rights in a number of countries, especially in Latin America, in the past period has been women revolting against the social power of the Catholic Church and its highly sexist, even misogynistic policies and practices. The power of the church in many countries has been a form of social control utilized by the ruling class to shore up the capitalist state, and the political elite historically has been tightly linked with the church hierarchy. The legalization of abortion in Ireland and Argentina represents major defeats to the social control of the church. This has been a broad process: pro-abortion protests occurred in several Latin American countries on September 28, International Safe Abortion Day. Significant movements for abortion rights are building particularly in Chile and the Dominican Republic, and in Mexico the decriminalization of abortion was recently won.

Protests erupted again in Poland last year against a new draconian abortion ban imposed by the right-wing government with the full support of the Catholic hierarchy, with which this government is tightly linked. This time, much of protesters’ rage was targeted at the church itself – a sharp development in a country where the church has a special status and role in the state, as it played a major role in the restoration of capitalism following the collapse of the Stalinist regime. Images and videos went viral of a young woman holding a sign saying, “Let us pray for abortion rights,” in front of a church altar, and crowds chanting “fuck the clergy” at a historic church site in Krakow. Unfortunately, the movement in Poland was not able to reverse the abortion law last year, but the protests showed that working class people and particularly young people are becoming increasingly opposed to the domination of religious ideology over some of the most personal aspects of their lives.

Liberalization of abortion laws is occurring around the globe. The longstanding abortions ban was removed by the Supreme Court in South Korea in 2019, where a campaign by activists pushed the regime to act. Abortion has been both widely practiced and deeply taboo in South Korea. Despite being formally illegal since 1953, abortion was relatively easily accessible as the government was interested in reducing population growth, particularly during the 1960s. The situation changed around the turn of the 21st century, when the Korean government became concerned about the slow population growth, and some medical practitioners who performed abortions were prosecuted for it.

This happened against the background of a decades-long increase in the percentage of Korean women who were in the workplace, with an even sharper increase beginning in 2014. In 2017, campaigners gathered over 200,000 signatures for a petition demanding legal abortion. Thousands joined street protests, taking inspiration from the victory of the Irish campaign to repeal the anti-abortion eighth amendment. Public opinion was undergoing a sea change: in 2010, 33% of Koreans supported repealing the abortion ban, but by 2017, 51% did.

Abortion laws have recently been liberalized in Thailand and Benin. A new law loosened abortion restrictions somewhat this year in India, though the procedure still requires a doctor’s authorization and unsafe abortions remain a major cause of maternal mortality. The new Israeli government is discussing relaxing abortion restrictions.

While the general trend internationally is toward women’s movements winning increased abortion rights, there are important exceptions, such as the US and Poland, where abortion crackdowns are used mainly to stoke the voting bases of major right-wing parties, as well as China and Iran. The attacks of the Chinese and Iranian regimes on reproductive rights are more focused on increasing the birth rate in the face of rapidly aging populations, and both regimes also trade in promoting sexist gender roles that emphasize male domination in the family. In China, the regime has moved somewhat cautiously, restricting abortion rights in a piecemeal fashion because they are concerned about provoking a backlash from the world’s biggest working class. In November, the Iranian government approved a broad set of new regulations which restrict women’s access to contraception and strengthen penalties for performing abortions, including potentially the death penalty.

Situation in the US

Since the oral arguments in the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization case were heard at the Supreme Court on December 1, it is no exaggeration to say that Roe v. Wade, the crowning achievement of the US women’s movement of the 1960s and 1970s, is hanging by a thread. It’s fairly clear that the six conservative justices, which include Trump’s three right-wing appointees, intend to uphold the Mississippi law that bans abortion after 15 weeks – the law being challenged in the Dobbs case. The Court could uphold the Mississippi law either by moving the limit for banning abortions from fetal viability outside the womb to 15 weeks, or by dismantling Roe completely and leaving abortion law entirely up to the states. If they choose to weaken Roe by limiting abortion protections to apply only to the first 15 weeks of pregnancy, that will likely be just the first step in removing protection for abortion entirely.

Should the Supreme Court overturn Roe either via Dobbs in 2022 or in a subsequent court case, an enormous swath of the country will lose the right to abortion within weeks or months, meaning 42% of women of childbearing age in the US will live in a state where abortion is illegal. Abortion will remain legal in other states, and clinics in these states will see an increased caseload as women who have the means will travel to get abortion access.

Women seeking abortions who are in the first 10 weeks of pregnancy may be able to use abortion pills at home, which the FDA has recently authorized to be prescribed through telemedicine and sent to patients by mail. However, 19 states currently prohibit telemedicine visits to dispense abortion pills, and right-wing forces in Republican-controlled states are already looking to further criminalize the use of abortion pills. The Biden administration has legal options to challenge the anti-abortion pill laws as a recent piece in the New York Times details. Many women will be forced to seek out illegal and potentially unsafe abortions, or carry unwanted pregnancies to term.

How Did We Get Here?

Roe v. Wade established the legal right to an abortion in the US in 1973. For most of the nearly 50 years since Roe, it has been under attack by organized anti-abortion forces that are organized by the Christian Right which represent a powerful Republican voting block. Literally hundreds of laws have been passed by legislatures in Southern and Midwestern states that restrict access to abortion or make it illegal. The courts have overseen the slow chipping away of abortion rights by allowing laws to stand which make abortion more difficult to access, while striking those down that outlaw abortion outright.

Some of the abortion restrictions imposed in Republican-controlled states are inhumane and are evidence of a truly disturbing degree of hatred for women. A 2019 Kentucky law that requires abortion providers to perform an ultrasound, describe the fetus in detail to the patient, and force the patient to listen to the fetal heartbeat before performing an abortion was allowed by the Supreme Court to go into effect. For women who are nine weeks or less into pregnancy, this ultrasound must be done transvaginally – forcing women seeking abortions to undergo a highly invasive and completely unnecessary medical procedure that constitutes a form of assault by the state.

Twenty-six states require women to attend an initial appointment and then undergo a waiting period, which is completely unnecessary on any medical basis, before receiving an abortion. In six states this waiting period is 72 hours, and in one state, Utah, the law specifies that weekends and holidays can’t be included in the 72 hours. Waiting periods especially target working-class and poor women who have to take time off work or arrange childcare for two appointments instead of one. In the many states where there are only a few or even just one abortion clinic, women often have to drive hundreds of miles to get to a clinic for two appointments, and pay for lodging during the waiting period.

The prosecution of women who have had miscarriages and stillbirths has been a horrifically dystopian measure that reactionary state governments and individual district attorneys have taken against mostly poor women. Two women in rural California were charged with manslaughter after they had miscarriages and the prosecutor says they used illegal drugs. One of these women, Adora Perez, remains in jail serving an 11-year sentence. In Alabama, an estimated 500 women have been arrested for pregnancy loss, including a woman who lost her pregnancy when she was shot in the abdomen. (The charges were eventually dropped.) Right-wing authorities are actually stepping up the criminalization of pregnancy, with three times the number of women facing prosecution for allegedly harming their fetus between 2006 and 2020, compared to the period of 1973 to 2005.

The leadership of the anti-abortion right argues that any fertilized ovum constitutes a person, and their concern for “unborn persons” consistently outweighs concerns for the person who is pregnant. This serves as a very thin cloak for the reactionaries’ broader program of trying to turn the clock back to the norms of the traditional male-dominated family as a core unit of society. While a clear majority of Americans agree that women should have the right to abortion, there is a significant right-wing minority, especially within more conservative states, who can be mobilized against abortion rights. This makes abortion one of several useful wedge issues for right-wing politicians whose broader programs of unbridled free market economics – pro-business tax cuts, deregulation and privatization – are becoming less and less popular. At the same time, among younger evangelicals for example, there is less enthusiasm for the anti-abortion and anti-LGBTQ themes of the right.

Abortion has been weaponized in a different way by the Democratic Party establishment, which, despite being dominated by nominally pro-choice politicians, has proven itself of little use in defending abortion rights from right-wing attack. Democrats have long voted for the Hyde Amendment as part of spending bills, which bans the use of federal Medicaid dollars for abortion care. Biden campaigned on a promise to repeal the Hyde Amendment, but promptly abandoned that promise when West Virginia Senator Joe Manchin objected. 2021 saw an enormous escalation in anti-abortion lawmaking with the introduction of over 100 new abortion restrictions, including the horrific Texas abortion ban, and yet the traditional women’s organizations linked with the Democratic Party offered no response in terms of mass actions.

One of Biden’s campaign promises was to codify Roe v. Wade as “the law of the land.” The House has passed the The Women’s Health Protection Act which would guarantee the right to an abortion in law. There’s no doubt that passing it in the Senate will not be easy – it will require eliminating the filibuster and putting heavy pressure on anti-abortion Democratic Senator Bob Casey and potentially Joe Manchin, who has a mixed record on abortion. But the Biden administration didn’t even pretend to try.

The Democrats are now preparing the ground to use the threat to Roe to drive left-leaning voters to the polls in 2022’s midterm elections, when big sections of progressive and especially younger voters are deeply disappointed in the Democrats’ general inaction. A powerful defense of Roe will require mass mobilizations, civil disobedience, walkouts and possibly strikes. The Democratic Party has proven over many decades and countless opportunities that it won’t lead a fight for abortion rights, or anything else, based on a mass movement strategy.

Texas Abortion Ban

On September 1, 2021, the second most populous state in the US suddenly lost meaningful abortion access when the Supreme Court let Texas SB8, the infamous law banning abortions past six weeks of gestation, stand despite the fact that it clearly defies the Roe decision. Since SB8 went into effect, abortion clinics in neighboring states have been overwhelmed by demand from Texans seeking abortions, while the number of abortions performed in Texas has been cut in half. Copycat legislation has been introduced in several states to replicate the legal trick that was used in SB8 to give the reactionary Supreme Court majority an excuse for voting to let the law stand.

The Biden administration and various liberal organizations have launched lawsuits to try and suspend the Texas abortion ban, but the federal courts including the Supreme Court are stacked with right-wing judges appointed by Trump. Some legal challenges to the ban have been thrown out, and others are working their way through courts, but it will likely be years before the lawsuits are resolved, and in the meantime, the law still stands.

While there was a real mood among pro-choice people, and particularly young people, for taking action to oppose SB8 in September, the historic organizations of the women’s movement, that are linked with the Democratic Party, refused to call mass demonstrations. The leadership of Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), an organization with more than 90,000 members, didn’t move to organize demonstrations and build a movement, instead calling for people to give money to abortion funds that help low-income people access the procedure.

Eventually, Women’s March, the organization that came out of the mass protests in 2017, did call nationwide protests for October 2, but left the organizing of them to local affiliates, which in many cases consisted of one or two individuals who weren’t necessarily experienced activists. That tens of thousands of people came out to hundreds of protests all across the country despite the lackluster organization shows the anger that exists against abortion bans and the desire to defend reproductive rights. A big opportunity to bring much broader forces into active struggle was missed due to the absence of leadership from the traditional women’s organizations or from DSA. The right-wing, including the Supreme Court majority, were likely emboldened by the relatively subdued protest response to the Texas ban, and that can have an impact on their deliberations on the Dobbs case.

In Texas, the small forces of Socialist Alternative worked alongside students at University of Houston and organized a student walkout and rally to help build for the October 2 action. Young people showed in the uprising against the murder of George Floyd that they are prepared to take action against injustice and oppression. This fall, young women have led protests and school walkouts against sexual assault at universities and high schools across the country, a development that has mostly gone under the radar in the national corporate media. Stopping the right-wing attack on abortion will require a mass movement that is driven by the energy and radicalism of young people.

What Strategy to Defeat the Right?

The movements that have won abortion rights internationally in recent years show that mass struggle is what is needed to overcome the patriarchal control of women’s bodies that is at the root of abortion bans. Historically, liberalization of abortion regulations has often accompanied movements for the broader liberation of working class people. Abortion was legalized within a few years of the working class taking power in the 1917 Russian Revolution. In South Africa, the right to abortion was passed by the first parliament to be seated after the defeat of the apartheid regime, and abortion was legal for brief periods in Spain in territory controlled by leftist forces during the Spanish Revolution of the 1930s. Abortion rights in the United States were won by the massive women’s movement of the 1960s and 1970s which was part of a broader uprising of workers and oppressed people with revolutionary characteristics during the same period.

However, the urgent need for a mass movement to defend abortion rights is not a universally-held conclusion. A layer of left activists, including substantial sections of the active members of DSA, are committed to mutual aid as a key organizing strategy as opposed to mass struggle. This layer will probably look to reinforce existing networks that raise money for working class people to travel to states where they can receive legal abortions, or possibly even develop a safe but illegal abortion service in states with bans.

Mutual aid will no doubt be a huge help for many individuals looking to end pregnancies. The left should set its sights higher, however, and launch a determined struggle for full reproductive medicine including abortion, accessible to all, as part of a Medicare For All system. As the third largest socialist organization in US history, the DSA should take a decisive turn toward taking a lead in mass struggle on abortion and other crucial fights for working class people. To not do so risks the DSA’s becoming completely irrelevant as a force that working class people will look to in struggle

Publicly defying abortion bans by taking abortion pills in a very visible way, and linking this action to a mass campaign, was a potent tactic in building support for ending the Irish abortion ban. The use of abortion pills, which can now be legally dispensed through the mail, as a direct action tactic has been employed at a recent Supreme Court protest. Whether this kind of action will be a key feature of the abortion fight in the US seems less likely, although abortion pills obtained legally or not will undoubtedly be utilized more if the Court does dismantle Roe.

In Ireland, the reactionaries were already very much on the defensive in the run up to the 2018 referendum which made the public defiance very effective in exposing their weakness and hypocrisy. The situation in the US today is not the same, as the reactionaries have consolidated their control over big parts of the country as well as the Supreme Court, and will likely make further gains in the 2022 midterms. This in no way means that we should be defeatist, but it makes crystal clear that only a determined and sustained mass movement can defeat the reactionaries here. The use of abortion pills can be an important auxiliary in this struggle but it will not be the central tactic.

As we approach a spring where the Democrats and the liberal establishment will likely ensure that the impending Dobbs decision stays in the news cycle, the idea that we just need to vote Democrat will be repeated by politicians, the liberal media, and other figures in the Democratic Party orbit ad nauseam. Even when elements of the establishment, such as the Democratic Party – aligned women’s organizations, do organize marches or days of action, the main message from the rally stage will likely be to go vote for Democrats in the midterms. This will fall flat with many young women as young people generally are the most disillusioned in Biden, having had the fewest illusions to start with. A key role of revolutionary socialists is to counter the failed strategy of vote–blue–to–defend–Roe and to raise the need to build a mass movement with new organizations of struggle that are independent from the Democrats and their record of failure on defending abortion rights.

At this moment of overlapping public health, political, and economic crises, a disruptive mass movement on abortion rights is not what the Biden administration wants. However, the capitalist class is too divided and Biden and the Democrats are too weak to lead a progressive advance to codify Roe. Biden is amassing a long list of legislative failures: voting rights, labor law reform, policing reform, and most recently the Build Back Better debacle. The possibility of defending and extending abortion rights depends on the development of a youthful, combative and sustained mass movement.

If Roe is dismantled by the Supreme Court, and especially if a substantial mass movement doesn’t develop in response, the consequences are very serious for working class people. It would be the biggest victory for the right in a generation. In addition to the horrific hardships imposed on women by abortion bans, the right-wing could be emboldened to go even further in rolling back other basic human rights that rest on the same fragile legal foundation as Roe. Marriage equality would likely be the next target. Arch-conservative legal arguments hold that abortion, birth control, interracial marriage, and LGBTQ rights are not explicitly referred to in the text of the constitution and therefore are issues that should be left up to the states. Ultimately our rights are not guaranteed by the Supreme Court or capitalist democracy, but by the strength of working-class and oppressed people’s movements to defend those rights.

The road to a victory for the left in the US on abortion rights is nothing if not difficult and uncertain. Building a sustained mass movement, throwing up new organizations of struggle, developing a capable leadership, and avoiding the trap of the Democratic Party are some of the many tasks ahead of us. But in this struggle we can take inspiration from the victories of mass movements around the world in expanding reproductive rights, from Argentina and Mexico to Ireland and South Korea, and from the reality that the majority of working class people in America oppose the reactionary agenda of the right. •

This article first published on the Socialist Alternative website.

Precarious calm prevails one year after Gaza war

A devastating war erupted in Gaza between Israel and Hamas in May 2021. A year later, a tense quiet prevails. But people in Gaza and Israel's south are wary of the possibility of new hostilities.

The streets of Gaza City, one year since the May 2021 conflict between Hamas and Israel erupted

Melon and sunflower crops stretch toward the security fence that encloses the Gaza Strip. At a distance, the outskirts of Gaza City are visible. A year ago, during the war, the Nahal Oz kibbutz and its fields in the south of Israel were a closed military zone.

"We are here just 500 meters [about 550 yards] from the border with Gaza," says Daniel Rahamim, a kibbutz resident. "Last year, we were just staying in our [fortified] safe rooms most of the time."

A year later, calm mostly prevails — but the situation remains volatile. "It's quiet now, and in one minute there can be a war because something has happened in Jerusalem. But we live with it," he says.

In the early evening of May 10, 2021, Hamas and other Palestinian factions launched a barrage of rockets toward Jerusalem, Israel returned fire, and all-out war ensued for the following 11 days.

Palestinian Alaa Abu al-Ouf, 47, looks at pictures of his wife and two daughters who died following an Israeli airstrike last year on Wehda street in Gaza City

In Gaza, 261 Palestinians including civilians, children and militants died, according to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs. While Israel's Iron Dome intercepted the majority of rockets from Gaza, 16 in Israel were killed including children, foreign workers and a soldier.

The conflict was preceded by weeks of confrontations between Palestinians and Israeli police at the Al Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem's Old City, the third-holiest site for Muslims. Other confrontations took place in the east Jerusalem neighborhood of Sheikh Jarrah, where several Palestinian families awaited a decision on whether they would be evicted from their homes to make way for Jewish settlers.
Uneasy calm prevails in Israel's south

For Nadav Peretz, a social worker at the Sha'ar Ha Negev Resilience Center near the town of Sderot, this past conflict was distinct from others. "It was very, very intense. We had hundreds of rockets in 11 days — I don't remember the exact number — that meant between 20 to 50 alerts every day," he says.

Over 4,000 rockets were fired by Hamas, Islamic Dshihad and other militant groups in Gaza towards Israel, according to the Israeli Defense Forces. Many headed towards the southern envelope and big cities like Tel Aviv. The Israeli military said it struck over 1,500 targets in the Gaza Strip, among them also an underground tunnel system.

Even now, at any moment, a so-called red alert could go off — a siren that warns residents of incoming rockets or mortar shells fired by Palestinian militants in Gaza toward Israel. People have only up to 15 seconds to seek shelter.

This photo shows rockets launched from Gaza City, towards Israel, early on May 16, 2021

At the Sderot resilience center in Israel's Southern District, trauma specialists work year-round to help residents and local communities deal with the stress of an ongoing threat. "We tell people, it is normal to have a reaction to an abnormal situation," says Peretz, who grew up and lives in the southern region.

So long as Hamas rules in Gaza, which belongs to the Palestinian Territories, and without a political solution, some residents here in the south say that uneasy periods of quiet alternating with periods of escalation are likely to continue. Just two weeks ago, a few rockets were launched once again at southern communities — and the Israeli air force retaliated in Gaza.

Most recently, Israel has been shaken by a series of deadly attacks allegedly perpetrated by Israeli Arab citizens or Palestinians in Israeli cities, which have left more than a dozen dead. While no Palestinian militant group claimed responsibility for the attacks, they have reignited tensions with neighboring Gaza.
Gaza still on hold after last war

On the other side of the fence, in Gaza, the memories and trauma of the intense fighting last May are felt to this day. Rola Dahmann, a young student in Gaza City, remembers this most-recent war as if it were yesterday. The apartment building where she lived with her family was destroyed. They had moved when the war erupted.

"When we left, we didn't take anything. It just happened before Eid, and all of a sudden, everything was gone," she says via Skype from Gaza City, which was closed to press and others in response to the recent attacks. Her father still pays the mortgage for the now nonexistent house and must work two jobs to cover the payments.


Watch video 42:31From enemies to friends

During the war, Israeli airstrikes and artillery fire destroyed or damaged hundreds of housing units. In Gaza City, several high-rise buildings that shaped the city's skyline were flattened and some main streets were damaged.

A year later, reconstruction efforts of the blockaded enclave are advancing slowly. Tens of thousands of tons of rubble have been cleared and recycled to repair roads, according to figures from the UN Development Agency (UNDP).

While there has been no apparent progress in mediation toward a long-term ceasefire, the "quiet for quiet" formula has been relatively stable over the past year, says Mkhaimar Abusada, a professor of political science at Al-Azhar University in Gaza.

In 2021, the Israeli government began easing some restrictions on movement and allowed about 12,000 Gazans to work in Israel. Abusada calls this "unprecedented."

"Since Israel disengaged from the Gaza Strip in the summer of 2005, Israel has closed the gates for Palestinian laborers to work in Israel."

Palestinians gatherered on May 21, 2021, in Khan Yunis, Gaza, to celebrate the cease-fire between Israel and Hamas, which was brokered by Egypt
Constant worries over new hostilities

For more than 15 years, the movement of people and goods in and out of Gaza has been tightly controlled by Israel, and partly by Egypt, due to security concerns. The Palestinian Islamist group Hamas, which rules the isolated territory, is considered a terrorist organization by the US and Europe. Frequent hostilities with Israel and political division among Palestinians have taken their toll on everyday life in the Gaza Strip.

The recent tensions worry Rola Dahmann and her sister Lina. The two belong to a generation of young Gazans who have experienced four full-blown wars and several brief rounds of military escalation. The fear of new hostilities with Israel is always in the back of their minds; there are no shelters in Gaza, and nowhere else to go in times of crisis.

"We don't feel safe," says Lina.

"We still feel what happened last year," adds Rola. "And I am afraid that it might just happen again."

Hazem Balousha contributed reporting from Gaza City.

Edited by: Sonya Diehn and Stephanie Burnett

A history of the Middle East peace process

For over half a century, disputes between Israelis and Palestinians over land, refugees and holy sites remain unresolved. DW gives you a short history of when the conflict flared and when attempts were made to end it.

 

Palestine, International Law, and Territorial Annexation

WAR/PEACE  •  May 3, 2022  •  Khaled Mouammar

Israel has been illegally occupying East Jerusalem, the West Bank, the Gaza Strip and Syria’s Golan Heights since 1967. Israel later illegally annexed East Jerusalem in 1980 and the Golan Heights of Syria in 1981.

The occupation of these territories and the annexation of some of them have long been defined by the United Nations Security Council and International Court of Justice as flagrant violations of international law and the United Nations Charter.

The United Nations, Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch have indisputably documented that Israel has been committing war crimes and large-scale human rights violations in both annexed and occupied territories, and have further recognized that Palestinians are living under an oppressive Israeli apartheid system that is designated by the United Nations as a crime against humanity.

Colonial Settlements

Since 1967, Israel has illegally transferred more than 200,000 Israeli Jews into 12 colonial settlements in occupied East Jerusalem, 490,000 Israeli Jews into 256 colonial settlements and outposts in the occupied West Bank, and 23,000 Israeli Jews into 32 colonial settlements in the occupied Golan Heights of Syria.

By transferring more than 700,000 Israeli Jews into these 300 illegal colonial settlements, Israel is violating Article 49 of the Geneva Convention and is committing a war crime according to the International Criminal Court which is investigating Israel’s war actions in the occupied territories. This population transfer also shows that Israel’s objective is keeping these territories permanently occupied, and either de jure or de facto annexed.

Canada’s Foreign Enlistment Act makes it illegal to induce or recruit for a foreign military and Canada Revenue Agency guidelines state that “supporting the armed forces of another country is not” a charitable activity. Yet, according to 2017 statistics from the Israeli army, 230 Canadians served in the Israeli military, with periods of service usually lasting around two years, and some registered Canadian charities support the Israeli army.

Since 1967, indigenous Palestinian Semites in annexed East Jerusalem and the occupied West Bank have had to face army and police shootings, settler assaults, deaths, injuries, mass arrests, evictions, home demolitions, land seizures, movement restrictions and intrusive surveillance. During 2021, Israeli occupation forces killed over 350 Palestinians – including 90 children, 60 women and 20 elderly – while injuring more than 16,000.

Currently, the Israeli occupation regime continues to detain 4,450 Palestinians, including 32 female prisoners, 160 children, and 530 administrative detainees are held without charge or trial.

So far this month in annexed East Jerusalem, more than 200 Palestinians have been wounded by police shootings and drones and more than 500 have been arrested; and the sanctity of and access to Muslim and Christian holy sites, the Al Aksa Mosque and the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, have been violated during Ramadan and Easter.

Canadian Double Standard

Canada was quick in imposing sanctions on Russia when it occupied and annexed Crimea in 2014 by banning the import, purchase or acquisition of goods from the region or from any person in that region. Canada did the same thing with respect to the on-going Russian occupation of the territories of Donetsk and Luhansk in Eastern Ukraine this year.

Successive Liberal, Conservative and Progressive Conservative governments have affirmed that Israeli settlements in the occupied territories are illegal.

While Canada was quick to impose sanctions on Russia when it annexed Crimea in 2014, it has not taken any action since Israel annexed East Jerusalem and the Golan Heights of Syria in 1980 and 1981 respectively.

While Canada recognizes that Israeli settlements are illegal, it still does business with them. The Canada-Israel Free Trade Agreement (CIFTA) that was renegotiated in September 2018 permits goods and services from illegal Israeli colonial settlements to enter the Canadian market tariff free.

UN Security Council Resolution 465 of 1980 and UN Security Council Resolution 2334, both adopted unanimously, instructed UN member states not to assist Israeli settlements, yet Canada continues to trade with them, even if it recognizes that they are illegal.

Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch have also affirmed that states have an obligation to ban imports from illegal settlements.

Business With Colonialism

• By not banning goods from Israeli colonial settlements, and flagrantly allowing those goods to enter the Canadian market tariff free, Canada is undermining international law.
• By trading with illegal Israeli colonial settlements Canada is providing them with support. By doing so, Canada is helping perpetuate the illegal situation.
• By refusing to ban colonial settlement goods, Canada is contributing to their expansion by enabling Israel to consolidate its colonization of East Jerusalem, the West Bank and the Golan Heights of Syria which is resulting in large-scale human rights violations of the indigenous Palestinian and Syrian Semites.

By continuing to trade with illegal Israeli colonial settlements, allowing Canadians to serve in the Israeli army and allowing tax deductible donations to be sent to the Israeli army, Canada is knowingly assisting apartheid Israel’s war crimes and the violation of Palestinians’ and Syrians’ human rights and fundamental freedoms, including their religious freedom.

Trade with illegal colonial settlements should not be taking place at all. The fact that it does take place means Canada is violating its international law obligations and reflects a double standard when compared to Canada’s prompt reaction to Russia’s occupation and annexation in Ukraine.

Canada must consistently abide by international law and help end apartheid Israel’s impunity in committing war crimes and crimes against humanity. •

Khaled Mouammar is a Christian Palestinian Canadian who was forced to flee his hometown Nazareth in 1948. He is one of the founders of the Canadian Arab Federation and a former member of the Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada.

The Bullet (socialistproject.ca)

Azerbaijan refugees vow 'Great Return' to Karabakh




We're back: A huge Azerbaijani flag hangs from Shahbulag castle outside Aghdam as returning refugees visit their former homes

 (AFP/Tofik BABAYEV)

Emil GULIYEV
Wed, May 11, 2022,

Ali Hasanov looked over the overgrown ruins of his hometown in Nagorno-Karabakh and vowed to return and rebuild it.

"Whatever time it might take, we will return to Aghdam," said Hasanov. "We want to live here... we belong here."

Aghdam has been a ghost town since June 1993 when Armenian separatist forces took it from Azerbaijan, sending its entire population of 28,000 people fleeing for their lives.

The 65-year-old metalworker returned to the disputed region for the first time since on a Azerbaijan government bus tour of "liberated lands" its army retook from Armenia after six weeks of fighting in 2020.

The latest war -- in which more than 6,500 people were killed -- saw energy-rich Baku take back much of the territory it lost in the conflict in the early 1990s with its old Soviet neighbour in the aftermath of the collapse of the Communism.

Some 30,000 died in that bitter war and hundreds of thousands were forced from their homes.

Hasanov said he "couldn't sleep a wink" the night before he travelled to Aghdam, which was Karabakh's biggest town before it was razed by the Armenians.

He said his "soul was itching to get to Aghdam" ever since he and his family fled the city after it was shelled.

"To me, it was the most beautiful city in the world," he said, standing in the middle of a wasteland that stretched out to the faraway bluish mountains.

The Azerbaijan government began the regular bus trips to the "liberated lands" in January, the first time its former inhabitants have been able to set foot in the mountainous enclave in three decades.

- Dream come true -

It is the first step in what Baku calls the "Great Return", an ambitious government plan to repopulate remote Karabakh with its former Azerbaijani population.

Escorted by police armed with automatic rifles, buses to Aghdam and Karabakh's recaptured cultural capital, Shusha, depart Baku twice a week for day-long trips that only give visitors two and a half hours to see their former homes.

Hasanov said the visit was a dream come true.

"Our house stood behind that fence," he said as tears welled up in his eyes.

"There was an alley of huge plane trees over there, under which we'd play backgammon or dominoes, and over there -- a football stadium, the favourite place for our neighbourhood's lads."

Such was the destruction, that another refugee from Aghdam, Gulbeniz Jafarova, couldn't even find the ruins of her house.

"But (the) native spirit is hovering here. It feels like I spent 30 years in a prison cell and was just freed," the 55-year-old dressmaker added.

At Aghdam's cemetery she visited the grave of her brother who was killed aged 27, defending the town from Armenian separatist forces who controlled the region until the latest war.

"My mother's last words before she died were, 'My son.' I promised her that I would visit his grave."

- 'We belong here' -

Azerbaijan's government has vowed to spend billions of petrodollars on the region's reconstruction, with $1.3 billion allocated in last year's budget for infrastructure projects such as new roads, bridges and airports.

Baku has pledged to transform Aghdam into one of the country's biggest cities and plans to set up an industrial park.

Foreign Minister Jeyhun Bayramov said in January that "very shortly we will witness the first families returning to their homes" in Karabakh.

But the "Great Return" of refugees remains a distant prospect, given the scale of devastation of towns like Aghdam and the dangers from landmines, which were used extensively in the conflict, which regularly flared up over the decades.

"Whatever time it might take, we will return to Aghdam," Hasanov insisted. "We want to live here. My sons say we belong here."

eg-im/fg/spm

Russians fleeing Putin face lukewarm welcome in France

Anna SMOLCHENKO
Thu, 12 May 2022,



Kashnitsky staged an anti-war protest in central Moscow and spent a night in jail 

(AFP/-)

Artyom Kotenko's world collapsed when Russia invaded Ukraine.

Born to a Ukrainian father and a Russian mother in the southeastern Ukrainian city of Zaporizhzhia, he lived in Russia for most of his life.

"I was crushed. I could not live or breathe," the 50-year-old artist and graphic designer, who is a Russian national, told AFP in Paris.

A week after President Vladimir Putin sent troops to pro-Western Ukraine, Kotenko left behind his old life in Saint Petersburg and went to Helsinki. From there he made his way to Paris, which he says "healed his wounds".

"I stopped feeling like I was suffocating, like I was dying every day. I was able to breathe again," he said in the 13th district of Paris where pro-Ukrainian graffiti adorns the streets.

But much to Kotenko's disappointment, Paris appeared indifferent to his plight.

Kotenko, who worked at Saint Petersburg's State Hermitage Museum, the Tovstonogov Bolshoi Drama Theater and the Higher School of Economics, realised he could not get a job in France.

He wanted to draw on his extensive teaching experience to work with the children of Ukrainian refugees but found out that those jobs were reserved for EU citizens.

"This is strange. This has to change because there are a lot of people like me and there is work for us," he said.

- Political exiles -

French President Emmanuel Macron has led diplomatic outreach to the Kremlin over the war in Ukraine, and Ukrainian refugees are welcomed with open arms in France.

But Russians fleeing Putin's regime realise they are left to their own fate in one of the wealthiest EU countries.

Since Moscow's invasion of Ukraine, tens of thousands of Russians have fled the country in protest over Putin's policies and out of fear for their children's future.

Observers point out that most of Russia's new political exiles are liberal-leaning well-educated professionals in their prime.

Some even draw parallels with the departure of intellectual elites from Soviet Russia in 1922 in a phenomenon that has come to be known as the "Philosophers' Ships".

Some leading Western democracies have indicated their willingness to tap into the professional knowledge and experience fleeing Russians have to offer.

German Vice Chancellor Robert Habeck said in early May that Berlin might simplify visa procedures and help find jobs for Russians fleeing Putin's regime.

"We want them to be aware that we could really use them," he told reporters.

US officials are also considering ways to lure highly educated anti-Kremlin Russians.

The French interior ministry did not respond to a request for comment.

- 'Support them' -

Many political emigres say France should do the same.

"If people seek an opportunity to move here, you need to support them," said Daniel Kashnitsky, a 41-year-old Muscovite, pointing to France's notorious bureaucratic hurdles.

He, his wife and their four children -- two of them adopted -- applied for asylum in France in April and met with AFP in the 18th district of Paris. After a long day at the prefecture the children appeared exhausted.

"We have nowhere to live," said Kashnitsky's 38-year-old wife Natalya. "It's stressful."

The family arrived in Paris more than a month after the war in Ukraine broke out. A public health specialist who previously lived in Sweden, Lithuania and Israel, Kashnitsky said he did not want to leave his "beloved" Moscow.

The war changed everything. First, Kashnitsky staged an anti-war protest in central Moscow and spent a night in jail. He also gave interviews to Swedish media. Then he realised it was time to leave.

"It was important to me to take the kids out," Kashnitsky told AFP, adding that his eldest son was turning 18 in May and could be drafted.

When they arrived in Paris, they had nowhere to go, and airport officials took them to a centre for Ukrainian refugees.

Kashnitsky said they could not stay at the centre. They eventually found a budget hotel outside Paris for which they paid themselves.

Two weeks after arriving in France the family received temporary housing in the southern town of Ales. The future is uncertain but Kashnitsky is optimistic. "I am hoping to be able to start working as soon as possible."

- 'Catastrophic situation' -

After the start of the Ukraine war French university lecturer Antoine Nicolle helped create an association to help Russians fleeing the regime.

"We've created an association because we saw that nothing was being done for Russians," he told AFP.

He said they wanted to set up a fund to raise money for the emigres but due to Western sanctions they could not open a bank account "because of the word 'Russian'" in its name.

"This is messed up," he said.

After more than a month in Paris Kotenko left for Seville where he legalised his relationship with his Spanish boyfriend and hopes to put down roots.

Stressing that Ukrainians need to receive all the support they can get, Kotenko said anti-Kremlin Russians should not be forgotten, too.

"More and more people like me will appear here and they need to be given a chance to gain a foothold, work officially, to be issued humanitarian visas," he said.

"The situation is catastrophic and something needs to be done about it. Otherwise these Russians will simply settle here as illegal immigrants."

hmn-as/del/imm