San Francisco, CA—Capitalism cannot and will not provide adequate housing for the working class. In the ferociously gentrified San Francisco Bay Area, where the median price of a single-family home now exceeds $1.6 million (sf.curbed.com, 4/5), more than seven thousand people are homeless (San Francisco Chronicle, 6/28). With an acute shortage of shelter beds, the number of homeless camps has exploded. Thousands—including families with children—are living in cars, tents, parks, abandoned buildings, outside bus stations, or in the streets.
Many homeless people, including both teachers and students, have jobs but cannot afford a lease in a city where the average one-bedroom apartment rents for $3,334 a month (rentjungle.com, June 2018). Thousands more are housing-insecure. They face impossible rent increases and are headed down the eviction-to-homelessness pipeline.
Yet countless houses and apartments in and around San Francisco sit empty. And the technology exists to build thousands more. How is this catastrophe possible?
The Bay Area housing crisis can be traced straight to the anarchy of capitalism. Silicon Valley mega-firms like Apple, Google, and Facebook build huge production facilities with no plan for housing and support services for their workers. Between 2012 and 2016, more than 373,000 new jobs have been created in the Bay Area—and only 58,000 new housing units permitted. Since 2011, the competition of high-salaried tech workers for scarce housing stock has doubled the median price of a home, squeezing out lower-paid workers. Empty lots and “tear-down” properties in Silicon Valley sell for over $1 million.
What the profit-crazy millionaires and billionaires cannot anticipate, for all their fancy technology, is that the working class—citizens and non-citizens alike—will fight back and unite in a multiracial force to confront their oppressors, and ultimately to smash the inhuman profit system.
“American Dream,” R.I.P.
For a very few generations, the American Dream of home ownership looked like an answer for many workers in the U.S. Ownership meant housing security and the accumulation of wealth. Passing this wealth down to one’s children allowed for upward mobility. After World War II, U.S. capitalism was rapidly expanding around the world. Within the U.S., the real estate industry was making money hand over fist. Both suburbia and undeveloped areas in cities like Oakland saw massive development of single-family homes. In the 1950s and 1960s, supported by anti-racist struggles and unionized jobs, some Black workers who left the South in the Great Migration bought homes in the Bay Area’s flatlands. Immigrant workers bought homes in Fruitvale and Chinatown.
But the American Dream was always color-coded. Banks, real estate interests, and the federal and state governments enforced racist redlining to segregate neighborhoods. The racist exploitation meant that Black, Latin, and immigrants workers were forced to pay higher interest rates for mortgages—or could not qualify to buy a home at all.
A recent article in the SF Business Times reported that HUD (the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development) has now defined the minimum annual income for “affordable housing” for a family of four in the Bay Area at $117,400. Which means that the great majority of Latin, Black, immigrant, low-wage, and non-union workers need not apply!
Why capitalism can’t build its way out of the housing crisis
Capitalism invests in housing only when it generates an ever-increasing profit. Beginning in the late 1970s, sections of the working class started losing ground in wages and buying power. Concentrated among Black, Latin, Asian, single heads of households (predominantly women and new immigrant workers), the wealth gap has continued to widen. Since the 1970s, the “hourly inflation-adjusted wages grew only 0.2 percent per year. In other words, though the economy has been growing, the primary way most people benefit from that growth has almost completely stalled…Large wage gains have accrued to workers at the top…and wages have been declining or stagnant for the bottom half of the income distribution” (Harvard Business Review, 10/24/17). Meanwhile, the cost of housing (workers’ largest family expense) has risen by 73 percent for a two-bedroom home (rentjungle.com, June 2018).
After the U.S. subprime mortgage market collapsed in 2007, inequality reached new extremes. The resulting flood of foreclosures robbed the working class of billions of dollars of wealth. Oakland was among the hardest-hit cities, with more than 35,000 homes lost between 2007 and 2012. Evictions and displacement from rental properties soared as well. The so-called American Dream was now a waking nightmare for the working class—and a new golden new dawn for the rapacious pigs of finance capital. (See box on Blackstone.)
According to the Metropolitan Transportation Commission (MTC), the shortage of affordable housing “is a primary driver of all our transportation problems.” At the current rate of new housing construction, an MTC study estimated that Oakland residents would have to wait until the year 2295 to house its projected population in 2040!
Because of racist gentrification and decades of “urban removal,” the Black population of San Francisco declined from 13 percent in 1970 to less than 6 percent today (Seattle Times, 5/11/15). Oakland is now following a similar trajectory. With 94 percent of new development now reserved for market-rate or luxury properties, Oakland has lost more than 30 percent of its Black population since 2000. Immigrant families are also leaving in droves, with landlords using the threat of ICE to evict them or raise their rents.
The working class fights back
Bay Area homeowners and renters are uniting in an anti-displacement chapter of the Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment (ACCE). Most of the organization’s struggles focus on keeping workers in existing housing and blocking the displacement-and-eviction-to-homelessness pipeline.
To stop evictions, ACCE members organize with direct action and phone blasts against individual landlords and big Wall Street investors. Recently, more than 30 members took over the Blackstone/Invitation Homes office (see box) in Sacramento and succeeded in getting a rent increase reduced from $250 to $60. One family avoided foreclosure, while three others remain in their homes at reasonable rents.
ACCE is building a mass movement to restore and expand rent control. It’s also organizing a campaign to push landlords to sell distressed properties to a collection of “socially conscious investors” or land trusts to enable affordable rentals or mortgages, with families owning their homes but not the land.
Reform and Revolution
“Housing is a human right.” “Housing for people, not for profit.” These are common chants when ACCE members and friends turn out to confront landlords, the politicians who protect them, or real estate bosses like Blackstone\Invitation Homes. The chants follow the communist principle that all workers deserve decent housing. These actions are limited, however, because they focus on the needs of individual tenants, not on system change or the destruction of capitalism. Battles around evictions and rent control don’t solve an essential capitalist contradiction: Shrinking workers’ wages can no longer purchase what the working class produces, the basis of capitalist profit.
Getting involved in these struggles has given Progressive Labor Party members the opportunity to raise our communist politics about the limits of capitalism. Some ACCE members joined us on May Day, while others came to a demonstration against the separation of immigrant children from their parents at the Richmond Detention Center.
While celebrating our reform victories, members of PLP point out that the many battles over the years have yet to guarantee housing as a working-class right. To accomplish that, we must destroy capitalism and replace it with communism: no money, no buying or selling of commodities like housing. Instead of running the economy for profit for a few, we will organize and distribute collective production based upon the needs of the entire working class.
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Blackstone Equity Group: Housing Racketeers
Blackstone Group\Invitation Homes is the world’s largest private equity firm. Based on proprietary logarithms, the company calculated that areas like Oakland, with high job growth and a shortage of housing, had the greatest profit potential. After the crash of 2007, it made wholesale bids on auctions of “distressed loans” and amassed a portfolio of 82,000 homes. As a result, Blackstone captured the wealth lost by individual homeowners in foreclosure. The filthy rich got richer; the working class was devastated.
In 2017, Blackstone became the dominant player in the rental market in Alameda, an island city in the San Francisco Bay that connects to Oakland with bridges and a tunnel. Blackstone bought the 615-unit Summer House apartment complex, the largest in Alameda, for $231 million. Now its management company is initiating mass rent increases and evictions.
In the 1940s, in another part of Alameda, public funds built housing for military and shipyard personnel, most of them lower-income Black, Latin, or immigrant workers. In 1958, the Alameda Housing Department demolished the 760-unit Chipmen housing project and sold off the publicly owned parcels to private speculators, who subsequently developed the Summer Homes. Some owners gamed the federal government to obtain low-interest loans. Some deliberately allowed the housing to deteriorate and then tried to evict their tenants. Finally, in 2005, Kennedy Wilson bought the complex for $87 million and spent $30 million in renovations. Between 2006 and 2016, they also filed the highest number of unlawful detainers in Alameda, the first step to eviction. In 2017, they finally sold the complex to Blackstone for $231 million, a tidy profit (East Bay Express).
This process is labeled “gentrification.” We can see it for what it is: capitalist maximization of profit off the backs of a working class that is desperate for housing and stratified and divided by wage differentials.
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Mexico: AMLO will build fascism and hedge on U.S. imperialism
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- 13 July 2018 96 hits
Mexico’s President-Elect Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador (a.k.a. “AMLO”) represents a significant step toward fascism. His July 1 landslide victory was forged by a capitalist coalition seeking to impose greater discipline on a famously corrupt ruling class. His fake-leftist campaign misled millions into an electoral process that justifies massive inequality and daily attacks on workers and students.
Lopez Obrador’s reforms will sacrifice workers in the name of deadly all-class unity. Since his election he has championed a national “reconciliation”: “I call on all Mexicans…to put above their personal interests, however legitimate, the greater interest, the general interest. The state…will represent all Mexicans, rich and poor….” (New York Times, 7/1). Populist rhetoric aside, nationalism always serves the needs of the bosses’ state. Only communism can serve the needs of the working class.
Industry and inequality
Today’s political crisis in Mexico has been building for decades. From 1929 to 2000, the Mexican bosses controlled the country through a decaying single-party system, the cynically named Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI. The brazen theft and infighting by PRI politicians culminated in the deeply unpopular regime of President Enrique Pena Nieto: “[V]iolence has surged, the economy has stagnated, and corruption has dominated the headlines” (North American Congress on Latin America, 7/4). While half the Mexican population lives in poverty, Mexico has 30 billionaires (Forbes, 4/17/17) and at least 145,000 millionaires (WealthInsight, 2015).
The collapse of the PRI and the rise of Lopez Obrador and his populist MORENA party reflect a split between the biggest thieves—the industrial bosses who rely on Mexico’s export trade versus small-time capitalists who steal and skim local resources. When Mexico’s economy was mainly agrarian, the big capitalists were content to plunder from the nation’s oil reserves and the early telecommunications industry. But over the last 20 years, under the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), Mexico has developed a huge manufacturing economy. They did this on the backs of the industrial working class, a source of cheap labor and high profits:
With a daily minimum wage of only $4, Mexican labor has a significant cost advantage over the US and Canada. Mexico has become the world’s largest exporter of flat-screen televisions; it’s also home to the world’s seventh-largest automotive industry, and it has a $6 billion aviation sector (JPMorgan Chase, 10/10/2016).
As they seek to build a national highway system and other critical infrastructure for their factories, the big rulers can no longer tolerate local police, politicians, and drug bosses siphoning off billions of pesos. At the same time, they need to enlist the patriotic loyalty of a working class that regularly takes to the streets “to protest impunity and economic mismanagement” (NACLA, 7/4). For all his attacks on “the mafia of power,” Lopez Obrador persuaded the big bosses that he is ready to serve them. He has promised to contain the national debt, maintain close relations with U.S. finance capitalists, and promote “a border economic zone that would encourage more foreign investment” (Washington Post 6/29).
False promises and fascism
As a firebrand mayor of Mexico City from 2000 to 2005, Lopez Obrador gained a reputation for progressive reform. But he also hired Rudolph Guiliani, the arch-racist ex-New York City mayor and now a shill for U.S. President Donald Trump. He partnered with Carlos Slim, the richest person in Mexico, to gentrify center-city neighborhoods recovering from the 1985 earthquake, pushing out workers to usher in the wealthy (Brookings Institute, 7/3). Now he is promising universal pensions, a national scholarship fund, and a revived healthcare system, with no plan to fund them aside from a vague promise to end corruption. But a number of AMLO’s “high-profile political allies have in the past been linked to corruption and electoral fraud” (LAT, 7/10).
“Today AMLO is a much more moderate, centrist politician who will govern the business community with the right hand, and the social sectors and programs with the left,” said Antonio Sola, who created the effective fear campaign that branded Mr. López Obrador as a danger to Mexico in the 2006 election he lost” (NYT, 7/1). Notably, AMLO has backed down from earlier opposition to a 2013 reform to open up Mexico’s national oil company, PEMEX, to private and foreign investment (Washington Post, 7/2).
In short, Lopez Obrador’s populist appeal lays the basis for a mass fascist movement. MORENA offers the biggest capitalists a potentially powerful force to attack smaller bosses and any workers who fail to fall in line with the rulers’ program.
AMLO and inter-imperialist rivalry
As the U.S. declines relative to China, its main rival imperialist superpower, Lopez Obrador is hedging his bets. He is expected to roll back exports of crude petroleum for refining in the U.S. and to build PEMEX’s processing capacity. According to Rocio Nahle, AMLO’s top energy adviser, Mexico needs “to consume our own fuels and not depend on foreign gasoline”—a clear threat to U.S. oil profits, for which Mexico is the leading foreign market (Reuters, 2/22).B
Both Lopez Obrador and Trump sould be loath to destroy NAFTA, a source of super-profits to bosses on both sides of the border. Still, any weakening of Mexico-U.S. trade relations could open the door to further Chinese economic inroads in North America, a huge problem for the main section of the U.S. ruling class. In October 2016, China promised to “elevate military ties to [a] new high and described the possibility of joint operations, training, and logistical support” for Mexico. Since then, Mexico has sold China access to large deep-water oil fields off the coast. Meanwhile Carlos Slim partnered with a Chinese car company to make SUVs in Mexico (The Atlantic, May 2017).
López Obrador and other MORENA leaders “have been vocal about expanding their trade partnerships with countries like China” (Politico, 1/7). After Lopez Obrador’s election, China congratulated the victor and pledged “to work with Mexico to build up mutual trust, deepen cooperation, bring benefits to both peoples and contribute positive energy to the international community” (Xinhua, 7/2). With Mexico’s oil reserves potentially up for the highest bidder, the bosses’ economic competition will inevitably lead to armed confrontation and global war. This fight will likely center upon control of oil and gas, the raw materials essential to the capitalists’ militaries and industries.
Workers can win
Whenever the bosses fight over profits and resources, the working class gets caught in the crossfire. But we can take inspiration to fight back against this deadly system from the workers of Valle de Chalco, Mexico. In early 2017, when gas and electricity prices skyrocketed, they organized occupations, marches, and road blockades. They broke the bosses’ rules to make their own connections to the electrical grid and guarantee power for the masses.
These workers gave us a glimpse of how the working class can organize and run the world for its own needs. When workers around the world organize across borders, smashing the bosses’ nationalism, we can win the communist world we need. Join Progressive Labor Party.
[The baby] “continued to cry when we got home and would hold on to my leg and would not let me go…When I took off his clothes, he was full of dirt and lice. It seemed like they had not bathed him the 85 days he was away from us. [my son] is not the same since we were reunited. He does not separate from me. He cries when he does not see me ... he cries for fear of being alone.”
—Olivia Caceras (PBS News Hour 7/5).
NEW YORK CITY, June 30—Rage at stories like Olivia’s boiled over today as a crowd of 30,000 flowed across the Brooklyn Bridge. While bosses’ segregated schools enforce racism and preach passivity had closed for summer, a vigorous and integrated group of youngsters, some of them new members of Progressive Labor Party, joined the communist contingent at the Families Belong Together march. PLP infused communist ideas of no borders and rejection of the Republicrats into the march against family separation at the southern border.
Smash deportations
More than 700 demonstrations took place across the U.S. and on the border with Mexico today. PLP participated in Los Angeles, Chicago, Washington, DC, and other places.
In New York City, the crowd was multiracial, and fewer U.S. flags were on display than in immigrants’ rights marches of the recent past.
The intergenerational, multiracial and vigorous character of our chanting pulled many hundreds who marched that day to our bullhorn:
“Stop racist deportation, working people have no nation.”
“The racist system – shut it down. Family separation – shut it down.”
“The only solution is communist revolution.”
Some of our chants targeted former president Barack Obama and the Democratic Party as no solution. We met another marcher, whose young son led a chant of “When I say abolish you say ICE. Abolish – ICE. Abolish ICE.” “Abolish ICE.”
This father then led a “people’s mic” and did a great job asking the crowd to repeat the phrase that “the policy of deportation represents a bipartisan consensus.”
Folks near our bullhorn, but not in PLP, joined in on the chant for communist revolution. On another occasion, it was met with a few boos. A PL’er clapped back, “There has been many more opportunities to vote than we’ve had at communist revolution. Voting is the real failure.” The two times communists took state power (in Russia and in China), they eradicated poverty, diseases, the burden of individual child care, and illiteracy, just to name a few.
We met people interested in the idea that liberals are the main danger. This represents a new potential openness to the communist idea in the mass movement.
On the bridge we met a marching band and taught them the tune to Bella Ciao (Italian anti-fascist song during World War II). Soon after our inimitable resident PLP vocalist led us in a rousing performance, capturing our determination to press forward in the struggle. Folks around us were re-energized to add their voices in song. We sang in unison, “I’ve got a feeling that someone’s tryna hold us back and there ain’t gonna be no more stuff like that.”
Reject Democrats, too
The main message of the march was to vote Democratic. Some young volunteers walked around with clipboards, signing marchers up to be a registered voter. PLP and friends reject the Democratic Party’s plan to co-opt working-class anger. Likewise, we do not take heart that a “democratic socialist” Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has won a Bronx/Queens district seat in Congress.
Yet we dare not drop responsibility of this moment. The profound disgust and anger that workers and youth have for the Donald Trump regime leaves many open to a more profound rejection of the system, of capitalism, than before. Informed people know that Trump inherited an emerging fascist state built up by Obama.
A crucial political lesson the schools teach is passivity. This year was a bit different, as liberal bosses now want to rebuild (much like the movement behind Obama) a momentum for a more inclusive U.S. imperialism and fascism. A vision to which Trump is an outrage.
Spectre of communism
Things are changing, and this was a school year full of boss-sponsored political ferment, from #MeToo to walkouts against gun violence and even a cynical push to integrate a tiny fraction of students at ‘elite’ schools. Movements of workers and youth angered by the racism and sexism inherent in capitalism will always be hard for the bosses to control.
Our Party is growing. Karl Marx’s spectre of communism continues to haunt the capitalists. Ten young people and one teacher joined PLP this year and plans for three new youth clubs are in place for the next school year. The task remains to be more involved with both the class struggle and these new members and their families. A communist world is the best world for all of our families.
ANAHEIM, CA, July 9—The Anaheim 3, who stood up to Ku Klux Klan in February 2016, won the day in court this morning! The injustice system was forced to back down.
Multiracial organizing forced the bosses’ hand
For the fourth time in this battle, anti-racists rallied outside the courthouse. This morning’s picket line was 30 strong. We led militant chants and distributed CHALLENGEs and leaflets. “Wherever racist scum spew their hate, the PLP and other anti-racist fighters will be there to smash them.” Passersby honked their horns, stopped to take pictures, and offered support.
After the picket line, we packed the courtroom. Our upbeat and unapologetic multiracial unity was a stark contrast to the somber atmosphere in the room. When it was announced that two of the defendants were having their charges dismissed, we exploded in applause and cheers. The last defendant pled no contest to the two misdemeanor charges of battery and resisting arrest. The no contest plea can be expunged after a year.
This victory is not without complications. We know that the capitalist criminal injustice system is racist; the defendant whose charges were not dismissed is a Black man. True “justice” can only be found through communist revolution. Under communism, racism and all other anti-worker ideology and policy will be illegal. Nonetheless, this is a victory for workers and anti-racist fighters. After being attacked, we were able to organize and fight back.
The ripple effect of fightback
As we left the courthouse, other defendants in the courtroom for unrelated cases congratulated us and said, “Keep up the fight back.” This is significant because it shows the power of multiracial organizing. Workers will always rally in defense of antiracist communists and fighters against the KKK, the racist cops and courts who protect them, and this racist, capitalist system which creates all of this.
Out in the hallway of the courthouse our base raised funds to help cover the court fees for the day. While a PL’er began to deliver a “thank you” speech to one of the lawyers who worked hard to defend the Anaheim 3, he turned it into a “thank you” speech to the crowd. He heralded the brave antiracists who came from afar to ensure that the Klan was not allowed to spread their racist filth. The lawyer said he was proud to represent these courageous fighters. He and many others will celebrate with us at our upcoming victory party.
Lessons from a two-year battle
Organizing in the churches, schools and on our jobs is what made this two-and-half year battle possible. On the road to communism, fighting these charges was a tiny pothole, but we learned valuable lessons to prepare us for future struggles.
We must continue to build long-term, deep ties in mass organizations. Without a decade worth of work in our mass organizations, this fight back effort would have been very difficult. These ties helped us with fundraising, widespread circulation of a petition, hosting speaking events about the case to a larg base of people, and keeping significant numbers at the court appearances we had to make over the last few years.
When we fight, we can win. Other people were arrested and charged that day in Anaheim. Although, we encouraged them to fight the case with us, they chose to plead guilty. They were coerced into accepting multiple charges, exorbitant fines, and lengthy probations. We battled both inside and outside the courtroom and showed why it is so important to fight back.
Working class wants to join
The working class wants to join us on this road to freedom. Today a young Black worker appeared seemingly out of nowhere. She had heard about the court date when the Anaheim 3 spoke at a Unitarian church nearby and felt compelled to show her support. After watching us rally in the morning and reading our literature, she joined the PL crowd for the rest of the afternoon.The worker was interested in attending upcoming antiracist activities. In the future, when we continue to organize, we are sure to meet many more workers like her.
Our class understands that we live in a racist world. We see, live and breath this every day. What the Progressive Labor Party and communism offer are the tools to end racism once and for all. With a class analysis, we can see how capitalism requires racism for its survival and therefore racism can only be eliminated with the destruction of this rotten system. We will continue to battle the gutter racists whenever they appear, but we will win the war when masses of workers understand communism is the only solution. Join us.
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With communist influence, DC metro workers disrupt transit & reveal union’s limits
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- 13 July 2018 88 hits
WASHINGTON, DC, JULY 4—Today the DC-area transit workers held an “unathorized” work action to protest management’s racist mistreatment. Hundreds observed a “1:59” action, which means they came to work one hour and 59 minutes late, causing widespread disruption of public transit on the July 4 holiday. Actions like these reveal how power comes from labor. It also reveals the limits of union leadership. Under communist influence and mass organizing, more transit workers can gain confidence to shut this system down.
We need to do more
In addition to the racist background checks, the transit bosses have increased their harassment on the job, including random screenings of workers. We’ve had some rallies and pickets protesting this harassment. But we need to do more. The bosses are demanding more givebacks in the contract negotiations. We need to organize strike committees at every job location. We need to collectively develop our demands. We need to organize for a strike.
Prior to the action, Progressive Labor Party (PLP) members of the union (Local 689) discussed this proposed protest with other workers. We found that there was a lot of enthusiasm for finally taking an action against management.
Workers who participated in the action will be charged with a “miss” but not a “failure,” a much more serious violation of company policy. The union president suggested that there may be additional work actions in coming weeks. We can’t rely on that. Let’s organize at every barn, at every work location. Let’s fight against every case of harassment. Let’s get ready to strike by fighting back now.
Debating politics of the work action
There was some legitimate skepticism about the likely effectiveness of the action, since there was no advance planning and no specific demands.
How could you measure gaining “respect” from management? Since more workers with less seniority work on holidays, was there unfair pressure on them to bear the likely reprisals from management?
Most importantly, how will we fight back, should Metro take action against the workers who participated?
Workers can’t rely on union leaders
At the union meeting immediately before the action, a militant member declared that it was good to take work actions that disrupt transit service since that is where our power comes from. But it was also vital to organize to get strike ready and collectively develop specific demands against management.
The union president Jackie L. Jeter is clearly feeling the pressure from a restive membership, gave a flimsy excuse about the absence of demands, indicated that a strike might not be necessary, but that each member should have $20,000 in the bank if there was a strike.
Her rhetoric and bluster was an attempt to hide the fact that she has always dragged her feet in challenging management. And her $20,000 comment showed that she had no idea of how a well-organized strike would proceed and was simply trying to scare people away from becoming strike ready.
The PLP influence in Local 689 continues to grow. We will continue to struggle for ever-sharper class struggle as we also strive to bring additional transit workers into the revolutionary struggle for communism. Workers would be in full power and there would be no such thing as exploitative bosses to deny us respect.
