Two worlds in one city

Originally published in Socialist Worker.

Also published at Dissident Voice.

Comment: Gary Lapon
Gary Lapon reports on the tough realities for working people in a city that Joe Biden just visited.

September 16, 2008

DEMOCRATIC VICE presidential candidate Joe Biden held a fundraiser at the Log Cabin in Holyoke, Mass., September 10, raising $300,000 with a $500-per-seat reception, followed by a $2,300-per-plate dinner.
Meanwhile, across this small city of about 40,000 people, 300 new families sought food assistance this summer from Margaret's Pantry, emptying its shelves.Biden's visit with the well-to-do served to highlight the scale of the social crisis in Holyoke, one of the poorest cities in Massachusetts.

According to the Boston Globe, "one in five public school students [in Holoyoke] is homeless, living in a shelter or foster care, doubled up with another family, or in transitional housing...the U.S. Census Bureau reported last month that the proportion of school-age children living in poverty in Holyoke increased from 33 percent in 2000 to nearly 40 percent in 2005."

Gender and race play a major role in poverty, and the impact is stark in Holyoke. According to the Census Bureau, in 2000, 22.6 percent of families in Holyoke lived below the poverty line. The percentage rose to 48 percent for families with a female head of household and 71 percent of families with a female head of household and a child under five.

Holyoke is over 40 percent Latino, and per capita income for Latinos in Holyoke in 2000 was $7,757, just 40 percent of the per capita income for white residents. Around 60 percent of residents qualify for food stamps, which average about $1 per person, per meal.

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"ONCE KNOWN as 'The Paper Making Capital of the World,' Holyoke has a rich industrial history," reads a report profiling Holyoke from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. "But the city has suffered from what many small cities in New England have experienced: a decline in manufacturing, population loss, and a shift toward a new economy based on services."

A Wistariahurst Museum essay called "Holyoke's Industries" sheds some light on what is meant by a "rich industrial history."

It's a history rich in suffering. Irish immigrants died digging canals in the city in the mid-19th century. Immigrant workers, including children, arrived in Holyoke starting in the mid- to late-19th century to work 90-hour weeks in the paper mills and textile factories for low wages. Today, rates of poverty, injection drug use and HIV are among the highest in the state.

It's a history rich in struggle. From the unemployed immigrants who marched on City Hall in 1876 demanding work and crying out that "We didn't come to this country to starve"; to Anna Sullivan, who led an organizing drive for the Amalgamated Textile Workers Union during the 1930s, winning the first 40-hour week at the Skinner Silk Mill, Holyoke workers have a strong working-class tradition.

It's also literally a history of the rich. Just minutes from the old industrial downtown are the old mansions of families like the Skinners, which amassed their fortunes on the backs of workers.

Like so many cities and towns where exploited workers created the wealth that made the U.S. ruling class into the wealthiest in the history of humanity, Holyoke workers have been tossed aside like pieces of trash, left to fight for the occasional scrap as the once-bustling city crumbles around them.

Enter Joe Biden, champion of the credit card companies that prey on the poor in cities like Holyoke to tap the local elite and add to the nearly $400 million that Barack Obama has raised so far in his bid for the White House.

Biden dined with wealthy supporters to the tune of $2,300 per plate, raising a total of $300,000 in an evening in Holyoke. $2,500: that's over two years of food stamps for the average recipient. $300,000: that's almost $2,350 per family with children in a homeless shelter in Holyoke, more than enough for first and last months' rent and a security deposit in an apartment around here.

With heating oil prices in Massachusetts expected to increase by at least 50 percent this winter, combined with skyrocketing prices for essentials like food, health care and education, Holyoke residents and others in New England and across the country will face tough choices this winter on questions like eating enough or staying warm.

Biden wasn't available to answer questions about what he and Obama plan to do to prevent what is shaping up to be a disastrous winter for the poor of Holyoke, whose lives are already hanging by a thread.

As reported by a local ABC station, Biden spent eight seconds walking from his car to the Log Cabin banquet hall in Holyoke, past a crowd of supporters who couldn't afford to attend. Biden made a beeline for the big money, neglecting to even wave to the crowd assembled outside as he fixed his hair to look good for the local elite.

Barack Obama and Joe Biden seek to appeal to the bitterness and anger among working-class people while assuring wealthy donors that they will be responsible managers that answer to the ruling class--a feat that requires them to talk out of both sides of their mouths.

So Obama brags about being against the war in Iraq before it started, but voted for war funding, won't commit to a full withdrawal and intends to escalate the war in Afghanistan.

Biden talks about understanding the plight of workers, but legislates to make it more difficult for them to get out of crushing debt. And he walks past his low-income supporters without a word, in one of the economically hardest-hit cities in the country.

Thanks Joe, we got the message loud and clear: If we want our voices to be heard, we have to join together so they are loud and united enough that they can't be ignored.

Expensive gas won't stop pollution

Originally published in Socialist Worker.

September 4, 2008

I AGREE with David J. Barboza ("Don't fight for cheaper oil") that fossil fuels should be replaced with clean energy, that food subsidies should go towards feeding the hungry rather than lining the pockets of agribusiness giants, and that agricultural self-sufficiency should be restored.

I disagree that we should base our strategy around the argument that higher oil prices "create all the right incentives to conserve that are a necessary prerequisite to a clean-energy revolution we should all embrace."

A fundamental problem with capitalism is that corporations like ExxonMobil and the other few major oil and related companies have the power to shape the market for their products, to actually create demand. And they are driven solely by the profit motive.

During the second quarter of the 20th century, General Motors, Standard Oil of California (now Chevron), Firestone Tire and Phillips Petroleum (now ConocoPhillips) formed National City Lines, a holding company that bought up electric streetcar lines in over 100 cities across the U.S. in order to force people to rely on buses and automobiles.

Although this was more expensive (electric streetcars are much cheaper to maintain and more durable than buses, and cars are horribly inefficient) and worse for the environment and public safety, it conveniently created huge markets for their products.

The Interstate Highway System was created by the National Interstate and Defense Highways Act of 1956, the result of lobbying by the automobile industry and arguments by President Eisenhower that the system would facilitate the quick transport of military vehicles and personnel. The largest public works project to date at that time, the billions spent on highways could have gone to faster, safer, cleaner public transportation.

To this day, in large part because of the massive political influence of corporations that profit from the use of automobiles (who are buying off Democrats in Denver as I write this), public transportation in most places is underfunded and insufficient to get people to work on time, let alone to allow them to drop off their kids in the morning and run all of the errands they need to run.

So there is still a demand for automobile transportation, even though it's more dangerous and causes more pollution than any other form of transportation.

The point is, incentives on the consumer end are not what shapes what is produced or how it's produced. This is decided by capitalists who have the power to make fundamental decisions like what type of transportation infrastructure we have, and don't care how many people get asthma, lung cancer, die in car accidents, or go broke trying to keep up with rising gas prices.

A struggle for lower prices at the pump, at the expense of ExxonMobil's outrageous profits, can be a step towards building the type of movement necessary to win the fundamental changes we both want to see. Such a struggle could be linked to environmental demands already being made by truckers and residents in Oakland ("Fighting for union rights and clean air") and could grow into broader, related demands for things like affordable, clean and expansive public transportation.

A demand for a cap on gas prices should be raised not in isolation but as part of the larger struggle that is needed to combat the devastating impact of the current economic crisis on a working class already bruised and battered by 30 years of attacks.

Millions of workers are being pushed to the edge and/or over it by the high price of gasoline that they need to buy to get to work today, so they can feed themselves and their families tomorrow.

If we celebrate high gas prices and say, "Well, now you'll be forced to conserve," we will only alienate the very people we need to organize with in order to win a sane, clean world.

Gary Lapon, Northampton, Mass.

Misery for workers, profits for the rich

Originally published in Socialist Worker.

August 8, 2008

CHECKING THE news today I noticed two headlines that made my blood boil and reminded me why I'm a socialist.

ExxonMobil posted the highest quarterly profits in U.S. history, making $11.68 billion from April through June. That works out to almost $1,500 per second, $90,000 per minute, or $5.4 million dollars per hour--about 190,000 times the average hourly compensation for a worker in the U.S. during the same time period.

In other news, CNN reported that unemployment rose to a four-year high of 5.7 percent as job losses continued to mount for the seventh month in a row in July. So far, the U.S. economy has shed 463,000 jobs this year, 165,000 during the three months ExxonMobil made their record profits (ExxonMobil could use their quarterly profits to pay those laid-off workers $70,000 each).

CNN also pointed out that the 5.7 percent figure "doesn't include those who have become discouraged from looking for work, or those who have accepted part-time jobs when they want to be working full time." When those workers are included, the number of unemployed and under-employed rises to 10.3 percent.

Exxon Mobil is literally making a killing. People in Haiti, Africa, and Asia and elsewhere are starving to death because they're too poor to buy food since skyrocketing fuel prices have contributed to similarly massive increases in food prices.

As Socialist Worker has reported, with workers struggling to afford $4 per gallon gas and sky-high prices for staple foods, demand at food pantries in the U.S. is up 15-20 percent and the number of people on food stamps is up almost 6 percent over the past year.

On top of that, ExxonMobil submitted a no-bid contract in May to have access to Iraqi oil, showing they're not above profiting from the destruction of a nation and the slaughter of over a million people.

According to the UN, it would only take $20 billion per year to end world hunger. That's six months of ExxonMobil's blood money to feed everyone who is hungry.

A handful of people, already some of the richest in the history of the world (ExxonMobil made some $40 billion in profits last year, another record), are getting even richer by an amount that could end hunger. Think about how absolutely vile and disgusting that is.

There was a great talk at the Socialism 2007 conference in Chicago called "You're not crazy: It's sexism," which exposed the rampant sexism in our society and called for a renewed struggle against it.

We should reach out to those around us who are enraged by news like ExxonMobil's record profits in the midst of hard times for working people like us, let them know they're not alone, and tell them: "You're not crazy, it's capitalism."

We need to organize and raise demands like a cap on gas prices, the idea that food is a human right, and a call for no blood for oil--while posing a socialist alternative to this insane system. We have a world to win.

Gary Lapon, Northampton, Mass.

New England Transgender Pride march

Originally published in Socialist Worker.

By Gary Lapon | June 18, 2008 | Issue 674

NORTHAMPTON, Mass.--Hundreds of people joined the first-ever New England Transgender Pride march on June 7 as it streamed past enthusiastic onlookers with the slogan "Remember Stonewall? That was us!"

The march's slogan refers to the 1969 "Stonewall Rebellion," when a police raid on the Stonewall Inn, a bar frequented mainly by lesbian, gay and transgender people in New York City's Greenwich Village, sparked a three-day response from people sick and tired of years of discrimination, harassment and police brutality.

Stonewall led to the formation of the Gay Liberation Front and gave a major boost to the growing gay rights movement that looked to the Vietnamese struggle against U.S. imperialism, as well as the militant Black power and women's rights movements for inspiration.

A 2000 study conducted by the District of Columbia Health Department found that 43 percent of transgender people had been victims of violent crime, 75 percent of which were motivated by transgender bias. Studies of urban transgender populations have found HIV prevalence rates ranging from 14 to 69 percent, a result of a deadly combination of anti-trans stigma, racism, homophobia, lack of access to health care and sex work as the only means of economic survival.

Recent academic studies have found that 16 to 37 percent of transgender participants have attempted suicide, and a 2006 study by the San Francisco Guardian and the Transgender Law Center found that 60 percent of transgender people in San Francisco earn less than $15,300 per year, only 25 percent have a full-time job, and 10 percent are homeless.

The New England Trans Pride march called for full civil and human rights for all people regardless of gender identity, and organizers sought to "unite with one another and allies to speak out for social, economic and political justice of under-represented and marginalized communities, and support the right of all communities to be heard."

Chants on the march ranged from statements of trangender pride and support from allies to demands for "money for jobs/education/health care/hormones, not for war and occupation!"

Marchers also protested the dropping of protection for transgender people in the version of the Employee Non-Discrimination Act (HR 3685) passed by the House of Representatives in November--the legislation now would prohibit discrimination against employees on the basis of sexual orientation, but not gender identity.

Marchers linked their demands for transgender rights to those of all oppressed and exploited peoples, including all LGBT people, immigrants, the people of Iraqi and Afghanistan, Katrina survivors and the poor.

The role of marriage and the family

Originally published in Socialist Worker.

June 18, 2008

I AGREE with Peg Rapp's point that the institution of marriage is used to pass the burden of raising the next generation of workers on to working-class couples and single parents ("Marriage is a patriarchal institution").

It's important to point out that this is done not to avoid the responsibility of child-rearing falling on society as a whole, but on the ruling class, those who seek to exploit that next generation without having to bother to pay to raise it.

The burden of reproducing the working class already falls on the working class itself, although some individuals and couples face a greater burden than others. And social services like welfare, child care and public education that socialize some aspects of reproduction are under attack.

To a certain degree, child-rearing is collectivized by workers on a local level in order to make it bearable. For example, when I was little, my mother received baby supplies from neighbors with older children, and she and other single mothers helped each other out with child care.

As long as we live in a society where workers are robbed of the value that we collectively produce and do not have a say in societal-level decisions like whether or not to raise children collectively, arrangements such as these, even though they do not fit the norm of the heterosexual nuclear family as the unit of reproduction, remain survival mechanisms and do not effectively challenge sexism or homophobia.

Gay people who decide to marry are not the ones responsible for the stigma or the extra burden and discrimination placed on single parents, especially single mothers. Individual working-class people (or couples) do not have the power to shape policy or ideology. That power is held by those who control the media, and by politicians like Clinton, Bush and their financiers--who demonize single mothers as "irresponsible" while slashing social services like welfare and child care.

Whether or not individual workers emulate "the patriarchal values and institutions of traditional patriarchal marriages," the notion of the nuclear family endures because of its usefulness to the ruling class that controls the media and institutions such as schools, which manufacture the ideology of our time. And this ideology will be used to justify the oppression and exploitation of women, gays, single parents and working-class people generally.

Finally, although gay marriage is a reform and not a revolutionary solution, the two are not entirely separate. Homophobia, like racism, sexism, xenophobia and transphobia, is used to divide the working class so that it doesn't unite to face the real enemy: the ruling class. Reforms that guarantee equal rights, such as gay marriage, are vital stepping-stones on the path to revolution, because they break down these divisions and give workers a greater sense of their own power.

Because of struggle, in a few generations, gay people went from being classified as mentally ill to being able to marry in two states. Not only does winning the right to gay marriage challenge homophobia and thereby make it easier for workers to unite across lines of sexual orientation, it shows us that struggle can change the world.

This can help inspire the future struggles that can create a world where people are free to love whoever they want, and where no parent or child is forced to go without simply because they exist.

Gary Lapon, Northampton, Mass.

A tax that punishes the poor

Originally published in Socialist Worker.

July 10, 2008

THE TAX on a pack of cigarettes in Massachusetts went up by $1 per pack this month, making the state's tax one of the highest in the country at $2.51 per pack.

Arguments for the tax increase include that it will raise $174 million in revenue this year to pay for the skyrocketing costs of health care under the new "Commonwealth Care" plan, which mandates that the uninsured purchase private insurance (high premiums and co-pays for sub-standard insurance, typically), and that the tax will encourage smokers to quit.

Think about that for a moment: health care costs are supposed to be paid for in part by a tax on smoking, an addiction that kills hundreds of thousands of people per year, makes people sick and leads to much higher health care costs!

In addition to the absurdity of paying for health care with revenue from an addiction responsible for a huge chunk of the nation's health problems, a flat sales tax is by nature regressive. This means that it disproportionately affects people with low incomes. For example, a pack-a-day smoker who makes $100 per day ($26,000 per year) will pay an extra 1 percent of their income in taxes under the increase, while a pack-a-day smoker making $500 per day ($130,000 per year) will pay only 0.2 percent more because of the hike.

And smoking is more prevalent among low-income people. According to a 2006 study by the Centers for Disease Control, 30.6 percent of adults in the U.S. who live below the poverty line smoke, compared to 20.4 percent of those at or above the poverty line.

Why don't people just quit, and why are the poor more likely to smoke? Well, cigarette companies spend millions on advertising that specifically targets low-income and minority populations.

Nicotine is one of the most addictive substances people consume. Additionally, smoking is a way to cope with stress, and, in a society plagued by exploitation, oppression, poverty and violence, it's understandable why so many--especially those closer to the bottom of the income scale--use substances like tobacco as a way to deal with depression and stress.

The cigarette tax hike, a 67 percent increase, amounts to a transfer of wealth from the pockets of working-class Massachusetts residents suffering from an addiction to those of health insurance industry bigwigs. It's amazing that there is any room left in the pockets of the latter, now that every Massachusetts resident is mandated to buy their inadequate insurance. For many workers hit by skyrocketing gas, food and health care costs, this could be the straw that breaks their back (if it's not already broken).

According to research by Physicians for a National Health Program, a single-payer universal health care system in Massachusetts would save taxpayers over $9 billion per year by cutting out insurance company profits and bureaucracy. Not only that, it would provide better access and better care than we currently receive with private insurance.

So if Massachusetts' politicians were really interested in providing health care for all, they'd be pushing for single payer, not raising cigarette taxes.

It's not fair to make smokers pay for handouts to insurance companies, nor is it fair to penalize people suffering from an addiction. Instead, more resources should be available to help people quit if they want to. Perhaps some of the $9 billion saved with a single-payer health system could go towards smoking-cessation programs. Even more could go towards removing the stress that goes along with a life of poverty.

As long as our society is run by capitalists and politicians who grind people up as disposable in the production of profits, and see no value in us beyond that, millions will turn to smoking and other drugs to get by.

Massachusetts politicians have shown that they will stop at nothing to squeeze another drop of blood from our battered bodies to quench the thirst of the wealthy.

Gary Lapon, Northampton, Mass.

More misery for Ford workers

Originally published in Socialist Worker.

May 8, 2008

THE FORD Motor Company actually made some money in the first three months of 2008, netting $100 million, it reported on April 24.

How did they pull themselves out of the red? Not by selling more cars. Alan Mulally, the CEO of Ford, is restoring the company to profitability on the backs of current and future workers. He laid off 4,200 workers during the same first quarter of 2008, bringing total layoffs at Ford to about 40,000 over the past two-and-a-half years, and he has promised to "size that production capacity to that [falling] demand"--in other words, lay off more workers.

But as the New York Times points out, "this time around Ford is trying to persuade workers to leave so that it can hire replacements at significantly lower wages, under the contract it signed with the United Automobile Workers union last fall," which allows Ford to pay new hires about half as much as current employees and cut their benefits. According to the Independent, "Investors reacted warmly to the results, sending Ford shares up more than 10 percent by lunchtime in New York."

The situation at Ford provides a clear example of how the interests of capitalists and workers are totally opposed. Workers who've spent their lives making Ford's investors and executives rich are thrown out to look for work in an economy shedding about 80,000 jobs per month.

Meanwhile, this translates into major gains for Ford stockholders, most of whom have probably never even seen the inside of a Ford factory, let alone worked a shift on a dangerous assembly line. Alan Mulally, for example, made $22.5 million in total compensation last year, over 700 times the salary of new hires who'll be making about $14 per hour.

The layoffs also highlight the absence of true democracy--that is, democracy on issues that actually impact working peoples' lives--under capitalism. Ford workers can choose between voting for the Democrats, who have accepted $406,870 in contributions from Ford since 1999, or the Republicans, who have only received $349,747 from Ford during that time.

But they don't get to vote on whether or not they get laid off, or how much of Mulally's $22.5 million and the $100 million in profits should go to improving the lives of the workers who created that wealth or what they produce, or how and when. Democracy stops at the door of our workplaces, where most of us spend a huge chunk, if not a majority, of our time.

As the economic crisis deepens, we can expect the capitalist class as a whole to deepen its attack on the working class in order to restore profitability at our expense, like we're seeing at Ford. They have no problem laying us off, kicking us out of our homes, deporting those of us who are undocumented, oppressing us, denying us our right to health care and sending us to kill and be killed in Iraq and Afghanistan, as long as it translates into more money in their pockets.

All of this is not inevitable though: Workers organized, fought back and won gains during the Great Depression and we can do it again today.

We should look to the International Longshore and Warehouse Union and their many allies--who shut down the West Coast ports on May 1, calling for an end to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and the defense of immigrant and workers rights--for inspiration and an example of the power of the working class to withhold our labor in order to pressure the bosses to meet our demands.

Gary Lapon, Northampton, Mass.