Inside Rally! – The Lessons of American History: March-April 2023 Issue

Inside Rally  

March-April 2023 Issue

Subscript Here

The Lessons of American History

The shadow of fascism’s attack on American democracy is as old as it is long (Reconstruction era lessons for fighting fascism). The shadow goes back more than 150 years to the time after the Civil War, when an alliance of Northern and Southern capital used electoral campaigns, court rulings and violence to destroy Reconstruction governments. The promotion of white supremacy in the 21st century strongly resembles that of the 1870s as today’s fascists concentrate their fire on elected officials and on the voting system itself. But capitalism in the 19th century, despite its economic depressions, had vast opportunities for expansion that simply no longer exist today. Today, the capitalist system is dying and the aims of modern fascism are broader than they were during Reconstruction. But an ever-growing emerging class is building its strength to overturn and replace the old system with a new, cooperative one.

Reproductive freedom and a just society

The reproductive justice movement is fiercely resisting the attacks on reproductive freedom following the Supreme Court’s decision in Dobbs v. Jackson’s Women’s Health Organization to strip protection of the right to abortion from the U.S. Constitution. Abortion care is health care.Control of the body is at stake as fascism advances. The Dobbs decision legitimizes forced pregnancy and obedience to the corporate masters of the government. In state after state, fighters see this as an attack on people of all colors and diverse genders. Led by youth claiming power in their own right as a social force, the movement is exposing and confronting the narrative that white supremacist/hetero-patriarchal rule – “white nationalist” rule that claims to be “moral” or “Christian” – is all Americans can expect. As the movement defends clinics and sets up hotlines, it also sees reproductive justice as part of a world in which reproductive freedom, and LBGTQ liberation, is woven into the very fabric of a just society.

New wave of labor militancy

(“From the Editors: Spreading strikes signal rise of new social force“). The huge toxic derailment in East Palestine, Ohio vindicated the nation’s railroad workers who in 2022 had demanded paid sick days off and the end of one-man train crews for safety reasons. President Biden and Democratic Party leaders in Washington shamefully joined the corporations in sidetracking a possible strike. In the United States the number of strikes practically doubled from 2021 to 2022, the sharpest escalation in 30 years  Militant young workers show what combining as a class can mean for winning a world that is sustainable economically, socially, politically and morally. That means a new, cooperative economy. The workers’ right to organize and to vote has to be fought for on the job and in the streets.

The University of California strike

In the same vein (The UC Strike – A New Generation Rising in the Labor Movement), the six-week movement of 48,000 academic workers against the University of California system was the largest higher education strike in U.S. history. It broke with traditional conservative trade union norms by linking with the broader political demand for affordable housing. It exposes the creeping privatization of the UC system to become California’s biggest landlord, where graduate students and post-doctorates cannot afford to live in UC housing on UC salaries. Some grads in UC housing pay 80 percent of their salary back to the University as rent. There is plenty of money in the UC system and it could pay its workers a living wage. People under age 40, both millennials and Generation Z, are increasingly anti-capitalist and increasingly demand that the United States guarantee the basic needs of life to everyone.

Tyre Nichols and police terror

The brutal murder of Tyre Nichols, a young Black man, at the hands of a Memphis police gang brought the movement for police reform back to the spotlight and deepens the debate, says the article “To end police terror, we need to end capitalism.” The job of the police is to be an instrument of control by the capitalist class. Police terror is a key tactic against all poor, displaced and working people. The traffic stop of Tyre Nichols and the following vicious brutality was not a random act by rogue cops. It is part of a systematic suppression of all poor, displaced and working people regardless of the color of their skins, their gender identity or their ethnic origin. We do not need to reform the police; we need to end the capitalist rule of our country and create a new society organized to meet the needs of the people and the planet.

Puerto Rico energy crisis

An obsolete public utility is privatized and its power generators are left to fail. Blackouts follow and utility bills increase seven times. The island has the resources for renewable energy, which the public favors, but the capitalists deliberately neglect. Now the utility adding a 15-year surcharge to the bill to make customers pay the utility’s debt! Capitalists have profited from all of Puerto Rico’s recent disasters! In Puerto Rico energy crisis fuels class action, the all-round fight for life is opening up working people’s eyes to the need for public control of the island’s land, air and water – what is called the commons.

March/April 2023 Vol33. Ed2
This article originated in Rally, Comrades
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