What has been happening in the past two weeks in the large cities of Egypt, from Cairo and Alexandria to Suez and others, reflects the resolve of the people, the youth and the educated, the women and public employees, peasants and workers, trade union activists and democratic and progressive political forces of Egypt for fundamental changes in the economic, political, and social governance of that country. The corrupt and dictator regime of Hosni Mubarak outlawed all the opposition forces by establishing a suppressive security apparatus. And by scandalous manipulations of the elections in the past decades (including widespread vote rigging during the last parliamentary elections a few months ago), facilitated the rule of the reactionary and lackey regime in Egypt. The objective of the struggle of the Egyptian people, in addition to putting an end to the despotic regime, is to end the unprecedented corruption of the state apparatus, the plundering of the national wealth of the country, and the fierce exploitation of the working people in all its dimensions. The current popular movement aims at liberating the country from the state of political subordination and dependency, under-development and the rule of fear and intimidation that has devastated the country and driven the majority of the people to abject poverty in the past nearly 4 decades.
What’s happening in Wisconsin is not complicated. At the beginning of this year, the state was on course to end 2011 with a budget surplus of $120 million. As Ezra Klein explained, newly elected GOP Governor Scott Walker then ” signed two business tax breaks and a conservative health-care policy experiment that lowers overall tax revenues (among other things). The new legislation was not offset, and it turned a surplus into a deficit.”
Walker then used the deficit he’d created as the justification for assaulting his state’s public employees. He used a law cooked up by a right-wing advocacy group called the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC). ALEC likes to fly beneath the radar, but I described the organization in a 2005 article as “the connective tissue that links state legislators with right-wing think tanks, leading anti-tax activists and corporate money.” Similar laws are on the table in Ohio and Indiana.
Walker’s bill would strip public employees of the right to bargain collectively for anything but higher pay (and would cap the amount of wage hikes they might end up gaining in negotiations). His intentions are clear — before assuming office, Walker threatened to decertify the state’s employees’ unions (until he discovered that the governor doesn’t have that power).
Unionists across Japan on February 10 and 11 took part in actions with the aim of putting pressure on large companies to increase wages to help in the recovery of Japan’s economy.
In Tokyo on February 10, members of the People’s Spring Struggle Joint Committee’s unions, including participants affiliated with the National Confederation of Trade Unions (Zenroren), staged a day of action.
During the lunch break, about 7,000 workers participated in a rally held at Hibiya Amphitheater under the slogan, “Eradicate poverty! Provide job opportunities! Protect employment and livelihoods!â€
The Communist Party, USA urges the widest possible solidarity with public workers all over our country. We especially salute the workers and demonstrators in Madison, Wisconsin who have captured the imagination of the nation with their powerful and peaceful protest against union busting and crass efforts to destroy the livelihoods of thousands of dedicated public workers. Teachers, health care workers, firemen, sanitation workers, Emergency workers, police and municipal workers of all kinds are under severe, nationally coordinated attack by rightwing Republicans and some conservative Democrats. T hese atta cks will not onl y weaken the economy but also deny vital public services to millions who need them the most.
This “prairie fire” is just the beginning of a massive popular upsurge. Wisconsin and similar actions developing in Ohio, Indiana, Pennsylvania, and in many other states, are evidence of a broad and unified coalition of resistance. Like Egypt, young people and students in Madison are bringing great energy to the fight. This is the reinvigoration of the mighty coalition that swept our country in the 2008 elections. It is a powerful coalition built around core forces of the progressive movement: our multinational, multiracial, male and female, young and old, gay and straight, working class and organized labor, with the civil rights, youth, women, environmental, LGBT, peace and senior movements.
This attack is in large part payback by extreme rightwing Republicans for the billions of dollars they have received from billionaires, banks, corporate CEO’s and the super rich for election campaigns, attack ads, rightwing conservative PACs and funding for extreme tea bagger organizing.
The movement of Wisconsin workers and youth against budget-cutting and attacks on government workers continued to spread on Friday, with tens of thousands more teachers and students walking out of their classrooms, while the major demonstration in Madison continued unabated.
Demonstrations that began on Monday with an unexpectedly large march of 1,200 University of Wisconsin graduate and undergraduate students have since drawn hundreds of thousands more into struggle. The crowd surrounding the capitol building on Tuesday grew to between 13,000 and 20,000, and demonstrations have been estimated at between 20,000 and 30,000 on Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday.
“I never really wanted to start freelancing. It pretty much happened by accident,†said Ray Phomsopha, a young freelancer. “Freelancing sounds great as an idea. Great day rates, freedom, being your own boss.â€
Ray is not alone in this thinking. According to Freelancers Union, a non-profit that represents independent workers, nearly 30% of the workforce today can be classified as freelancers or independent workers who have thrown off the drudgery of a regular 9-5 job. They work as writers, graphic and web designers, advertising specialists, translators and artists. They have struck out on their own, becoming their own bosses and having the freedom to decide when and where they are going to work and for how much. Sounds like a pretty sweet deal, especially for many young workers who are looking for a new approach to work that includes the flexibility and adventure we crave.
But, behind all the glitz and glamour that freelancing is wrapped in, is a harsher reality that many young workers run into blindly. There are some who are able to make it the freelancing world. Those who can make it work are generally older and more established people in their fields of work. New comers, however, quickly find themselves in protracted struggles just to get by.
The corporate news media is obsessed with the “tea party” dominating the Republicans. This conservative movement does not attract many young people and actually seems restricted to the white, wealthier, and older base of the Republican Party, although it does try to speak to the concerns of working people under the Great Recession.
In fact, the tea party and the capitalist forces that back it hope to use fear to attack the historic victories of workers, such as Social Security. One of the most important of their “divide-and-conquer” tactics, both historically and now, is racism. Whether it takes the form of passing SB 1070 in Arizona or denouncing social spending as “redistribution” to attack an African-American in the White House, the name of their game is to scare white workers into aligning themselves with the rich.
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