On 23rd March 1989 the oil tanker Exxon Valdez left normal shipping lanes and smashed into the Bligh Reef in Prince William Sound, Alaska. Within hours, the once mighty vessel had spilled over ten million gallons of oil into the icy waters: the largest oil spill in ever recorded in US waters. As the company responsible, Exxon Mobile was slow to act.
News & Analysis
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A Review of Supporting Caste
For the uninitiated, Propagandhi is one of the most outspoken political bands in North America. Beginning with 1993’s “How to Clean Everything”, Propagandhi was loud, fast and vocal. While there were many changes in members, tone and style since then, these three things have remained a constant. The Winnipeg, Manitoba ensemble has reinvented itself with every album; from the poppier “Less Talk, More Rock;” the more hardcore “Today’s Empires, Tomorrow’s Ashes;” all the way to the prog-punk “Potemkin City Limits.”
Worried About the Future?
According to a recent CNN/Research Corp. national poll, only half of all U.S. homeowners are confident they can make their mortgage payments and less than forty percent are confident they can maintain their standard of living in the next year. Moreover, just one in four parents of children less than eighteen feel they can afford their child’s college education, and a scant one in five Americans who have yet to retire are very confident they’ll be able to save enough money to do so comfortably.
STL Public Schools on the Chopping Block
Teachers, students, parents, and citizens in St. Louis have struggled for years to preserve and improve the city’s public education system. However, these defenders of public education have continually faced an onslaught of attacks from the Mayor, Missouri State Government, private interests, and now the School Board itself. Although the history of the St. Louis Public Schools (SLPS) is complicated, only a brief account of the last nine years is necessary to explain why the district remains in its current predicament.
Fight Back Against Womens Oppression!
We are living in one of the most turbulent periods in history. The economic crisis, through its sheer scale and reach, is bringing about a wholesale change in the consciousness of working people the world over. The contradictions and weaknesses of this system are becoming plainly evident as capitalism buckles under its own weight. As always, it is the poor, the oppressed, and the workers who must shoulder this weight in order to hold up the privileges of the rich. Working women in particular have borne the brunt of this burden.
Health Care Reform: Who Benefits?
U.S. workers are well aware of the crisis of for-profit health care. The richest nation is home to an estimated 47 million people without health care coverage. Nearly nine million of these are children, and a similarly sized group are those of between 18 and 24 years old…
…Health care reform became a major factor during the presidential elections. President Obama, who promised “reform,” held a forum on the issue at the White House on March 5th. However, rather than invite those who seek real change, the meeting was packed full of those with a direct interest in maintaining the current for-profit, insurance-based health system.
Obamas Auto Task Force Preparing Worst Cuts in Decades
As President Barack Obama visits Europe following the G-20 summit in London, projecting the “new face of U.S. politics,” in the U.S. itself, this image is already starting to crumble under the harsh reality of the economic crisis. For example, Obama is no longer addressing auto workers in terms of “Change” but rather, with the cold vocabulary of Wall Street: Viability, Profitability and Liability. And these words are not hollow. The administration’s recent restructuring plan is backed up with factory closings, mass layoffs, wage and benefit cuts and possibly the closing of entire companies.
Venezuela Expropriates Cargill Plant
As scarcity of food products was a problem for Venezuelans in 2007 and 2008, a situation was created that could undermine the support foro the Bolivarian government. The Venezuelan government was unable to solve this problem, which contributed to the defeat on the referendum on constituional reform in December 2007. As a result, a campaign was launched on Chavez's direct intiative to solve the problem.
The campaign proved that speculation, hoarding, and smuggling on a mass scale caused the scarcity. Later investigations found that deliberate sabotage was being carried out by the oligarchy. As a result of such sabotage, Chavez announced the expropriation of Cargill on March 3rd.
Canadian Workers Occupy Auto Parts Factory
On Tuesday, March 17th, a group of 80 workers in the industrial town of Windsor, Ontario, occupied the Aradco auto parts plant. This occupation marks the re-awakening of the occupied factories movement in Canada and is an important turning point in the ongoing crisis of the North American auto industry.
A Working Class Program for the Economic Crisis
The Workers International League's working class program for the current economic crisis.
We Need a Working Class Program for the Economic Crisis
The economic crisis has now dragged on for months and there is no end in sight for U.S. workers. Worst of all, we workers, our children and grand children, will have to pay all of this debt back – with interest – and will have received nothing of any real substance in return. Enough is enough! We say, make the rich pay for their crisis!
Editorial for Socialist Appeal Issue 46
The Communist: The Voice of America’s Communist Generation
The Communist is the official newspaper of the party of the Revolutionary Communists of America. It is different from any other publication you’ll find in the US today. Behind this newspaper, there’s a vast network of communist activity from coast to coast. It is a tool for organizing in the streets, at protests and strikes, for building communist cells in our neighborhoods, workplaces, and campuses.
The RCA is on a mission to carry Bolshevism into the political arena of a country that’s ripe for it. Yes, we’re Bolsheviks living in the digital age, and we also use social media and our podcast to spread the communist program. But we’re not the kind of internet leftists who stay inside and “do politics” online. That’s why we need something we can carry with us into the streets and put into people’s hands. The physical paper is an instrument for building a real-life organization—a genuine Communist Party of fighters.