Freedom Socialist • Vol. 29, No. 3 • June-July 2008EDITORIALS
The revolt of the hungry
Uprisings by starving people around the world may prove the tipping point for capitalism’s crash. Each element in the global food crisis comes from the chaos of callous government policies that support profit, no matter what the long-term — or even short-term — consequences. Requirements for loans from the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, and restrictions in the so-called “free trade” agreements have gutted the self-sufficient food production of countless countries. Haiti, for example, was once a major rice exporter. It must now import rice from the U.S. at this year’s 74 percent price increase. In 2007-08, the price for corn is up 31 percent, soybeans up 87 percent, and wheat up 130 percent. Severe weather changes, unrestricted land development, land theft, commodity futures speculation, agribusiness, and the conversion of primary food sources to biofuel have forced farmers off their land and into cities where there are no jos. They’re part of an estimated 1 billion slum dwellers worldwide. There’s no food shortage. Shelves are filled — and the protesters know it. They are standing up to a system that takes ever-greater profits out of the mouths of hungry people. The problem of distribution, whether of food, shelter, water, land, or wealth, will not be solved by capitalism. There is enough to go around. But we’ll have to take it. Andy Stern’s SEIU: organizing against labor from within Leaders of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) are going from bad to worse. It’s become standard practice for President Andy Stern and his lieutenants to cook up secret, sellout deals with companies in order to add new dues-payers to their rolls — unionizing workers by giving up things like the right to strike. Now, however, they have sunk to new depths following a competition between SEIU and the California Nurses Association (CNA) to organize nurses in Ohio. SEIU had reached one of its cozy accommodations with the bosses there until CNA stepped in, saying that they had to offer the nurses an alternative to SEIU’s “company union” model. In April, CNA Executive Director Rose Ann DeMoro was scheduled to speak at the banquet of a Labor Notes conference, whose attendees included members of a dissident SEIU group critical of Stern’s course. At the banquet, a large contingent of SEIU members and staffers — sent to the conference by SEIU officials — charged the crowd and physically attacked other unionists, sending at least one to the emergency room. The purpose? Squash discussion and dissent, goon-style. This behavior deserves condemnation from all honest unionists. And it sure as hell shows the need to support SEIU’s reform caucus (read more on page six) in every way possible. When Loving is revolutionary Shockingly, just 50 years ago, one-third of the states in the U.S. still outlawed mixed-race marriage. Mildred Loving, who died May 2, and her husband Richard could have told us all about it. Five weeks after they were married, local police broke into their home at night and arrested them for “miscegenation.” Richard was white and Mildred was Native American and Black. With the help of the NAACP and ACLU, they organized and went all the way to the Supreme Court to legitimize their marriage. With Loving v. Virginia, the court finally toppled all bans on interracial unions and struck down one of the last Jim Crow laws. The 1967 decision was one of the victories of the powerful civil rights movement that won the 1964 Civil Rights Act and the 1965 Voting Rights Act. The Lovings’ struggle makes same-sex marriage seem possible and maybe not so far off. But given the persistent weight of racism in our profit-driven society, it also shows us that winning queer marriage rights will be but one landmark on the way to full gay liberation. |
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