WlltNEltS ,I1NI',1" 2se No. 463 21 October 1988 Democrats, Republicans Wage War on the Poor Sylvia Plachy New "workfare" bill will cut off last lifeline for poor black women and their children, throwing millions off the welfare rolls. • enaGI e -II II For black people in racist America, supreme expression of how in America, welfare reform, it's a plan to turn the ity of which happen to be white-while the "land of the free" has always been a to paraphrase Gore Vidal, there is only ghettos into vast cemeteries-because demanding that one of the parents do 16 prison house of terror and degradation. one party, the property party, with two there are nojobs to get. The aim of this hours of unpaid "community service" Over the past couple of decades, the right wings. legislation is to see to it that layers of the every week. This provision is closer in inner cities have become dumping In the obscene "newspeak" of Rea­ minority population die, because this concept to the old workhouses of Vic­ grounds for millions of.human beings ganite reaction it's called the "Family decrepit capitalist system no longer torian England or to the chain gangs of thrown on the scrap heap by the racist Security Act." It has about the same needs them. convicts who broke rocks in quarries rulers who have looted this country dry. relation to the security of black and His­ As Andrew Hacker. pointed out in an and built roads in the South. Over three million people have been panic families as the sign Arbeit Macht article titled "Getting' Rough' on the Women with children over the age of turned out of their homes, to huddle, Frei (Freedom Through Labor) posted Poor" (New York Review of Books, three (which can be lowered to six starve and die in the streets. The black over Hitler's concentration camps had 13 October), the overwhelming biparti­ months by individual states) will be ghettos and Hispanic barrios are rav­ to the freedom of the Jewish victims it san consensus behind the new welfare compelled to enroll in job "retraining" aged by AIDS, while hospitals there taunted. The same day this "workfare" law "derives from the fear that growing programs. Yet the government has cut have been shut down. Abortionclinics law was passed, the Senate shot down a numbers of black and brown Ameri­ back funding for job training and are terrorized and bombed by "right to measly 40 cents an hour increase in the cans are ... producing children who may employment programs by a whopping lifers," forcing black and Hispanic minimum wage. In this club of million­ be a burden to society." This brings to 68 percent over the past six years to help women to bear children they can't aires, the Republicans demanded that mind nothing so much as Jonathan finance the trillion-dollar high-tech afford to feed, or to be butchered in any increase be coupled with an even Swift's "A Modest Proposal," a biting "Star Wars" Pentagon boondoggles. back-alley abortions. And, embold­ lower sub-minimum "training wage"! satirical attack on Britain's malign And for "child care" during the "retrain­ ened by Reagan reaction, the fascist And to top it off, the Senate once more neglect of starving Irish children in the ing," the Family Security Act will dole nightriders of the Ku Klux Klan and refused to ratify a 19-year-old interna­ 18th century famine. To prevent "the out six bucks a day, which couldn't even skinhead Nazis murder and maim. tional treaty outlawing genocide! children of poor people from being a get one of the more destitute people on Now Congress has .enacted a "wel­ Genocide is what this new "workfare" burthen to their parents or country, and the street to watch your kids. fare reform" which embodies like is all about! Millions of single mothers for making them beneficial to the pub;' Pimping off desperate poor people nothing else the wanton cruelty and on welfare who refuse to take a job­ lie," Swift proposed that the wealthy who want to be trained for jobs has cold-hearted viciousness of the Reagan any job, anywhere, at any starvation buy and eat the babies ofthe poor, offer­ become one of America's few growth years-written, engineered and pushed wage-will be cut off without a cent, lit­ ing up various recipes. industries. Hustlers stand outside wel­ through by the Democrats. Crafted by erally left to starve. Suspected fathers At least then the poor and huddled fare and unemployment offices hawk­ New York Senator Daniel ("henign are supposed to be hounded down masses of Europe could hope to emi­ ing phony training programs which neglect") Moynihan and proudly pa­ through genetic "paternity" tests to have grate to the "land of opportunity." But "offer little meaningful training or job raded by Texas millionaire Lloyd Bent­ their wages garnished or be forced into today, if the racist white rulers have placement. Instead they make money by sen, the new "workfare" law was passed the same scheme if they can't cough up their way, for America's black and His­ taking students incapable of doing the with the most overwhelming Dem­ "child support." The children will either panic poor there will only be someplace required work, keeping them long ocratic and Republican unity that has be left to wander the mean streets alone to die. We the working people pro­ enough to collect a share of govern­ been seen in years. The filial act of the or be ripped away from their mothers duced the wealth of this country, it ment tuition payments and leaving the lOOth Congress, it represents the con­ through "protective payments" to un­ belongs to us, and it's going to take a most naive ones responsible for pay­ sensus of the whole capitalist class, a specified "third parties." This is not socialist revolution to take it back. ing back large Government-guaranteed loans" (New York Times,6 August). "Training" for ... Death Even Business Week (2 November The new welfare act is a horrifying 1987) has admitted that: "Jobs that get Workers' Protests Spread, . maze of deadly Catch-22s which center mothers off AFDC are likely to pay low around the elimination of the Aid to wages, and exclude health benefits: a Nationalist Agitation Deepens Families with Dependent Children Faustian bargain at best, since many (AFDC) program, what has passed for a of these women would find themselves "safety net" for the downtrodden and in the growing ranks of the work­ dispossessed in this society. Underlin­ ing poor. ..." Moreover, what "low ing the explicit racism behind the new entry"-i.e., below poverty level-jobs legislation, the Family Security Acttries there are are certainly not to be found in to piece off the white poor by extending the impoverished inner-city hellholes. SEE PAGE SIX AFDC benefits to two-parent families where most of these women live. So, if on welfare-the overwhelming major- continued on page 4 ~rRogers Brain-Trusts Another Defeat International Paper Strikers Shafted After 16 bitter months, on October 10 threatened to cut offthe meager strike the men who broke ranks in the 1921Jay the outset of the strike in June 1987, strikers at the sprawling International payments. paper strike are known as "sons of IP took the rbad of old-style union­ Paper plant in Jay, Maine took down Now most of the 1,250 Jay paper scabs." busting, contracting for hundreds of their picket lines. Hundreds of shocked workers are out of a job, along with hun­ At- least one striker, in a phone live-in scabs from the sinister BE&K and angry workers descended on Unit­ dreds of strikers at two other IP mills in interview with WV, laid the defeat to strikebreaking outfit, turning the Jay ed Paperworkers International Union De Pere, Wisconsin and Lock Haven, "dirty politics," speculating that their plant into a barbed-wire compound sur­ (UPIU) Local 14 headquarters to learn Pennsylvania. Feelings are running high strike had. been sacrificed on the rounded by 15,000 feet of chain link that the International bureaucrats had along the Androscoggin River against altar of Michael Dukakis' presidential fence and surveillance cameras. At "stabbed them in the back," as local the scab replacements brought in by the ambitions. Mobile, Alabama the company locked officials rightly put it. Not only did company, and even more bitter against Unfortunately, the local leadership out the union. Yet the International the UPIU tops refuse to call indus­ the 78 "super-scabs" who deserted their made the International's treachery a lot leadership allowed the strikers to twist trywide solidarity action, they even coworkers. To this day the children of easier by falling for strike-out artist Ray in the wind, keeping at least 77 other Rogers' "Corporate- Campaign" line, locals at work for IP, 21 of them with­ which also screwed the hard-fought out a contract. Hormel strike in-1986-87. Instead of The strikers' watchword had been organizing to shut down production "Scabs Out-Union In." Now UPIU through mass picketing, seizing the members must bitterly watch as IP plants, "hot cargoing" scab products stands pat with its scab workforce, who and spreading the strike to the rest of the will be the only ones allowed to vote IP empire, they allowed Rogers to in NLRB decertification elections. It's squander the strikers' energy in Madi­ going to take some hard class struggle, son Avenue-style appeals to get house­ absorbing the lessons of this backstab­ wives to boycott certain cosmetics.