Gulf Social Disaster: Twin Capitalist Parties at Fault
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· AUSTRALIA $1.50 · CANADA $1.50 · FRANCE 1.00 EUROS · ICELAND KR100 · NEW ZEALAND $2.00 · SWEDEN KR10 · UK £.50 · U.S. $1.00 INSIDE 18,000 Boeing workers strike against concessions — PAGE 3 A SOCIALIST NEWSWEEKLY PUBLISHED IN THE INTERESTS OF WORKING PEOPLE VOL. 69/NO. 36 SEPT. 19, 2005 SPECIAL ISSUE Gulf social disaster: twin capitalist parties at fault, workers need labor party based on fighting unions The following statement was is- sued September 7 by the Socialist Workers outraged Workers 2005 National Campaign. The social catastrophe in the wake of at class-biased Hurricane Katrina is an indictment of the capitalist two-party system in the and racist United States through which a hand- ful of billionaire families maintains its gov’t response political power and its wealth. BY BRIAN TAYLOR SOCIALIST AND LAURA GARZA NEW ORLEANS, September 5— WORKERS Thousands of working people headed back today to neighborhoods on the 2005 CAMPAIGN outskirts of this city. As vehicles came to a halt on the hot, traffi c-jammed The deadly lack of preparedness highway, with only several hours re- for the crisis unfolding across the maining to pick up belongings before Gulf Coast and the brutal and belated curfew, people began talking to one government response provide further another. Many of the conversations we evidence of whose class interests are were part of were marked by outrage at represented by politicians at the fed- AP/Eric Gay the response of federal, state, and local eral, state, and local level. Without Heavily armed police SWAT team drives past working people stranded at the New governments and capitalist politicians exception—whether the Republican Orleans Convention Center September 1 in wake of Hurricane Katrina. Continued on page 4 White House and bipartisan Congress, Louisiana’s Democratic party gover- nor and New Orleans mayor, or other Cuba: 1,500 doctors stand ready to aid victims Democratic and Republican offi cials in that state, Mississippi, Alabama, Revolutionary gov’t offers example of international solidarity and beyond—these political servants of the employing class demonstrated Cuban president Fidel Castro made ary government’s offer to immediately by U.S. offi cials (see news article on contempt for working people and cal- the following remarks September 2 on send 1,100 medical personnel and page 7). The statement was distributed lous disregard for their conditions and that country’s “Roundtable” television material to aid victims of hurricane by the Cuban Mission to the United Continued on page 9 program. He reiterated the revolution- Katrina in the United States. Two Nations. The translation is by the days later the Cuban government Militant. increased its offer, organizing a ❖ New York City, Sunday, September 11 brigade of 1,586 physicians, ready Our country is ready to send tonight, for immediate mobilization. in the early hours of the morning, 100 Four Years Later: Resisting U.S. Rulers’ As of September 7 this offer, fi rst clinicians and specialists in Compre- announced August 30, had not been hensive General Medicine, who at Global Assault on Workers and Farmers accepted or publicly acknowledged dawn tomorrow, Saturday, could be at the Houston International Airport, ❖ Organizing and using union power: Texas, the closest [major airport] to the the contradictions building in the U.S. today region struck by the tragedy, in order to ❖ Labor Day be transported by air, river, or land to Iraq and the ‘global war on terrorism’: locations isolated from shelters, facili- the deepening crisis of the imperialist world order actions boost ties, and neighborhoods of the city of ❖ Cuba, Caracas, and Washington: New Orleans where people and fami- the sharpening confl ict in the Americas lies requiring emergency medical care solidarity for or fi rst aid may be found. This Cuban personnel would be car- Jack Barnes national secretary of the Socialist Workers Party airline strikers rying backpacks with 24 kilograms of Jacob Perasso Socialist Workers Party candidate for mayor of St. BY JACOB PERASSO medicine known to be essential in Paul; member of UFCW Local 789; recently returned from Caracas AND MARSHALL LAMBIE such situations to save lives, as well world youth festival as basic diagnostic kits. They would be DETROIT — Two hundred strik- prepared to work alone or in groups of Norton Sandler and Arrin Hawkins event co-chairpeople ing Northwest Airlines mechanics, Mary-Alice Waters president, Pathfi nder Press; just returned from cleaners and their supporters ral- Continued on page 7 research trip to Cuba lied alongside thousands of other workers and unionists in the Labor Alyson Kennedy member of UMWA Local-9957-in-becoming at Co - Op Day parade here September 5. The mine in Utah and defendant in coal bosses’ retaliatory lawsuit members of the Aircraft Mechan- Also Inside: Bill Estrada and Dave Prince on taking advantage of expanding ics Fraternal Association (AMFA) Arizona, New Mexico political opportunities Local 5 marched with the United tighten border controls 2 Auto Workers Local 174 contingent, Reception: 1 p.m. Program: 2 p.m. which included several local mem- Mississippi farmers hit by Refreshments afterward bers locked out since May 1 from crisis after hurricane 5 Hercules Drawn Steel in Livonia, NYU Law School, Tishman Auditorium, Michigan. The Labor Day parade UMWA, Co-Op miners press for went through the downtown area dismissal of harassment lawsuit 6 40 Washington Square South under the banner “Marching to Sponsored by the Socialist Workers Party National Committee and Young Socialists protect Health Care, Pensions and Airport workers in UK fi ght to defend union 6 Hosted by Socialist Workers Party in New York (212-736-2540) Social Security.” and Newark (973-481-0077) After the parade, 150 AMFA strik- ers and their supporters held an im- FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CALL, OR VISIT WWW.THEMILITANT.COM Continued on page 9 EU price cuts sharpen New York meat packers fi ght for back wages imperialist debt offensive BY BRIAN WILLIAMS maintains a network of health clinics The European Union has announced and helps pay for drainage and irriga- plans to cut the price it pays for sugar tion projects. “If we didn’t have sugar imported from semicolonial nations we would have fl ooding every year,” by 39 percent over the next fi ve years. Guyanese president Bharrat Jagdeo The move will devastate sugar pro- told the New York Times. Jamaica duction in 18 of the poorest African, has 40,000 sugar workers, but another Caribbean, and Pacifi c countries. 200,000 jobs are related to production According to the South Africa– of this crop. based Business Day, the plan—which The price cut can mean the “death will be before the European Union knell” for sugar production in Bar- council of ministers for approval in bados and Trinidad and Tobago, the November—will cost these sugar- Times noted. producing countries $490 million Among the nations most impacted a year. in Africa are Mauritius, Malawi, Workers in the sugar industry will Swaziland, and Mozambique. Militant/Dan Fein be the most affected. “Their jobs The crisis in the sugar industry of Former BMW Meats strikers Ismenia Hernández (second from left), Lucía are at stake,” Komal Chand, leader semicolonial countries stems from the Hernández, and Martha Fiallos (right) at August 28 UFCW picnic. of the union that represents 20,000 protectionist measures of the U.S. and NEW YORK—Workers at BMW Meats in Farmingdale, Long Island, Guyanese sugar workers, told the European Union governments. These struck for nearly a month demanding payment of unpaid wages and the Financial Times. “We feel that we include subsidizing the production of reinstatement of fi red workers. The company went out of business August have been betrayed.” sugar in their own countries, impos- 23 and the workers, members of United Food and Commercial Workers At the July Group of Eight summit, ing tariffs on imports, and dumping (UFCW) Local 342, continue to press for what is due them. leaders of the most powerful imperi- surpluses on the world market, which Fifteen workers from the plant attended a picnic in Brooklyn organized by alist countries pompously announced contributes substantially to the de- the union. “We were ripped off by the bosses. I am still owed three weeks’ plans to cancel the foreign debt owed pression of world sugar prices. vacation and back pay,” Ismenia Hernández told the Militant at the union by 18 of the world’s least developed Despite low wages for sugar event. Shop steward Mercy Manas noted that the bosses paid them a week’s nations. Guyana, one of the 18, was workers in the Caribbean, the cost wages in cash only after they were on strike for a week. to see a cut of about $9 million in of production there is substantially —DAN FEIN annual debt service costs. The sugar higher than the world market price. price cut, however, will wipe out “Whereas Brazil and Australia can about $40 million a year in income produce raw sugar for less than 7 from the country, outstripping any U.S. cents per lb,” reports the Times, State gov’ts tighten border controls “debt relief.” “Guyana’s most effi cient factories can Sugar production in Caribbean produce sugar at about 18 cents per lb BY ARRIN HAWKINS to install more surveillance cameras, countries has fallen by more than 50 and costs elsewhere in the Caribbean The governors of Arizona and New infrared and motion detectors, and percent the last two decades, declin- can be much higher. In some Jamai- Mexico declared states of emergencies fences along the border, and add 2,250 ing from 11 percent of world output can state-owned factories, costs are in mid-August in counties that border more prison beds to hold people await- in 1985 to 3 percent in 2003.