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$4 at Newsstands and Bookstores SocialistViewpoint H The philosophers have only interpreted the world in various ways; the point is to change it. —Karl Marx H MAY/JUNE 2014 VOL. 14 NO. 3 Pennsylvania has 540 children serving Life-Without-Parole (LWOP) prison sentences. Read Children Don't Matter: The Numbers Don't Lie on page 56. Photo of the author, Kerry Shakaboona Marshall, above. On the Front Cover: s Auto parts in a factory. Read A Practical Solution to an Urgent Need on page 2. A Practical Solution to an Urgent Need - Page 2 A conscious, directed effort to save postal services in the United Minorities face nearly 40 percent more exposure to toxic air Life, Death and the Bottom Line - Page 16 pollution. Read Environmental Injustice on page 48. Viewpoints on the Crisis in Ukraine - Page 18 James Connolly Rises Again…In Song - Page 40 17-year-old Dafna Rothstein Landman said, “If necessary, I will go to jail.” In the biggest wave of conscientious objection Israel has seen since 2008. Read Israeli Youth Refuse to Serve on page 37. USA: Bad Jobs Country By Glen Ford A new study shows that the U.S. working to pass trade treaties that will ants for 20 years. The Democrats were economy has finally produced more further establish the legal structures of in power when the banks were set free jobs than there were before the Great the global race to the bottom—treaties to loot and plunder 15 years ago. Every Recession of 2008. The problem is, so blatantly biased towards corpora- employment study has tracked the they’re mostly bad jobs in fast-food tions and against every principle of steady decline of union membership, restaurants and low-wage retail. The democracy and national sovereignty, which the Democrats have done virtu- National Employment Law Project that the language must be kept secret. ally nothing to reverse. That’s quite found that there are almost two mil- understandable since finance capital lion fewer good paying jobs than there has steadily increased its campaign con- were back in 2008, but also close to two Capital’s global plan tributions to Democrats. None of this million more jobs in the low-wage sec- is to reduce all has been a secret, and no one should be tor of the economy—meaning, most of workers to a state of surprised that, as a result, most new the new jobs have been bad jobs. jobs are bad jobs. As far as Wall Street is Actually, the change in the jobs pic- absolute insecurity, concerned, that’s good news. ture during the Great Recession was so that they will What makes the current era different just a speeded up version of what capi- accept those bad from the past is that neither of the busi- talism has been producing in the United ness parties even bothers to pretend that States for more than 30 years. It is by jobs without com- it has a plan for a good jobs society. design. Every time employers have plaint. That means the people must put for- turned the screws on labor, in terms of ward their own plan, through their own wages, benefits and jobs security, Wall organizations—and learn to avoid the Street has rewarded those companies. However, the main problem for Democrats, whose job is to nip genuine The Lords of Capital have also richly American workers isn’t that Wall people’s movements in the bud, so as rewarded the politicians from both par- Street’s economic and social plans are not to disturb the corporate order. ties for removing the remaining obsta- secret—because, for the most part, —Black Agenda Report, April 30, 2014 cles to the direct rule of the rich. they’re not. Big Capital’s intentions Capital’s global plan is to reduce all have been quite clear for decades. The workers to a state of absolute insecuri- NAFTA trade treaty has been savaging http://blackagendareport.com/con- ty, so that they will accept those bad U.S. factory workers and Mexican peas- tent/usa-bad-jobs-country jobs without complaint. That requires the destruction of what we used to call the social safety net—a term that sounds increasingly quaint in the dog- eat-dog environment engineered into the system by Wall Street. Make no mistake about it: austerity is the common program of both the busi- ness parties. That’s why you will hear no countervailing vision from the Democrats, whose message differs from Republicans only in tone, not in substance. Both answer to the Lords of Capital. Barack Obama, the great actor and political chameleon, pretends to com- miserate with his Democratic minority and working class constituents. Like his mentor, Bill Clinton, Obama claims to feel their pain. Yet, he is feverishly FC SOCIALIST VIEWPOINT Vol. 14, No. 3 SocialistViewpoint May/June 2014 Vol. 14, No. 3 SOCIALIST VIEWPOINT www.socialistviewpoint.org CONTENTS email: [email protected] (415) 824-8730 U.S. Politics and the Economy James Connolly Rises Again… In Song ............40 A Practical Solution to an Urgent Need ............. 2 By Chris Kinder By Gregg Shotwell Environment United Auto Workers Loses at Volkswagen ......... 8 Climate Change is Violence.......................46 By Barry Sheppard By Rebecca Solnit Minimum Wage .................................10 Mass Scallop Die Off .............................48 By John Reimann By Jacob Chamberlain School Achievement Gap .........................13 Environmental Injustice .........................48 By Glen Ford By Jon Queally Privatization Perverts Education .................14 By Paul Buchheit Incarceration Nation Life, Death and the Bottom Line ..................16 Scapegoating ‘Bad Apples’ ........................49 By Bonnie Weinstein By Kevin “Rashid” Johnson Documents for Raids on Antiwar Activists Unsealed ..17 Parents’ Nightmare: Babysitter’s Secret ...........53 By Committee to Stop FBI Repression By Bryant Arroyo Criminalizing the Homeless and the Poor..........55 Viewpoints on the Crisis in Ukraine By Josmar Trujillo Ukraine ........................................18 By Zoltán Grossman Children Don’t Matter: The Numbers Don’t Lie ....56 By Kerry Shakaboona Marshall ‘Polite Intervention’ and the Ukrainian Uprising ...21 By Boris Kagarlitsky, Moscow; translated by Renfrey Clarke Marshall Eddie Conway Released..................57 By Susie Day The Coup in Ukraine .............................24 By Mike Whitney Marissa Alexander’s Sentence Could Triple ........58 By Dr. Sinclair Grey III Corporate Interests Behind Ukraine Putsch .......26 By J.P. Sottile Lorenzo Johnson is Waiting! .....................59 By The Campaign to Free Lorenzo Johnson Crimea: A Divisive, Dangerous Assault ............29 By Gabriel Levy The Case of Shanesha Taylor......................60 By Yolanda Spivey International A Prisoner’s Salute to Bobby Sands................61 British Antiwar Movement .......................31 By Dennis O’Hearn By Mike Marqusee Chelsea Manning Acceptance Statement ...........62 Spain’s Massive March Against Austerity ..........32 By Chelsea Manning via Aaron Kirkhouse By Common Dreams staff Mumia Abu-Jamal: Innocent and Framed..........64 U.S. in Search for Kony...........................34 By Rachel Wolkenstein By Glen Ford Three by Mumia Abu-Jamal What’s Really Happening in Venezuela? ...........35 Greetings to NUMSA.............................70 By Chris Gilbert Land Grabs......................................70 Israeli Youth Refuse to Serve......................37 Working for Change .............................71 By Sarah Lazare From Cairo to Suez, Egypt Workers On Strike......38 Letter to the Editor By Erin Cunningham Fifteen Dollars an Hour Now!.....................71 Socialist Viewpoint (ISSN 1535-5438) is published bi-monthly by the Socialist Viewpoint Publishing Association, 60 29th Street, #429, San Francisco, CA 94110. Rates: For one year (6 issues): Introductory rate in the U.S. $20.00; Regular rate in the U.S. $30.00; Bargain rate: $35.00 for two years; All other countries $50.00 (Money orders, checks, etc., should be in U.S. dollars.) Periodicals Postage Paid at San Francisco, California. POSTMASTER: Send address changes to Socialist Viewpoint, 60 29th Street, #429, San Francisco, CA 94110 Vol.Vol.Vol. 14, 14,3, No.No. 233 SOCIALIST VIEWPOINT 1 U.S. Politics and the Economy U.S. Politics and the Economy A Practical Solution to an Urgent Need By Gregg Shotwell ply weather reports from before I was and ash. Walnut was the most aro- born. A note unrelated to the task at matic. It was intoxicating like roasting hand made the transcription personal coffee. Sawdust is a fragrance that pro- as if a co-worker from 1914 tapped me vokes memories as ancient and arous- on the shoulder and whispered his liv- ing as tools made by hands deep in the erwurst scented secret in my ear. forest of our collective memory. Wood, The floors of the factory were maple. even kiln-dried wood, feels and looks The windows were wider than my arm alive. I studied the grain of each piece span and taller than a bishop’s hat to a before I cut, shaped, bored, or mitered child on Easter. In the old days facto- it to fit. The work was satisfying and ries needed light in winter and air in the job was integrated. summer. We were stuck in the old By integrated I mean, each worker days. In winter the panes frosted. We understood their personal role in the dressed in moth-eaten wool sweaters finished product and how our roles as Gregg Shotwell and bulky wool shirts, which garnered individual workers were interrelated. wood shavings like dust mops. In the When we looked at a finished piece of This old airport’s got me down—it’s summer, we opened the windows wide furniture we could locate our individual no earthly good to me, ’cause I’m stuck and let warm breezes mingle with task and identify the tasks of our co- here on the ground as cold and drunk as odors of raw lumber and three-in-one workers in the construction of the whole.