What is happening in Ukraine is terrible, and 4.5 million refugees from that country is an extraordinary number. But as we watch the ongoing wall-to-wall coverage of the Ukraine crisis in Western media, we should keep in mind what is happening to the working people of Ukraine is what is happening to everyone being cast off by fundamental changes in the way the world creates and distributes the wealth that under capitalism dictates our future.
Recent U.N. reports state that in only the first half of 2021, “84 million individuals were forcibly displaced worldwide as a result of persecution, conflict, violence or human rights violations.” Among those were “26.6 million refugees in the world – the highest ever seen.” Right now, the U.N. Refugee Agency reports 6.7 million refugees from Syria, four million from Venezuela, and nearly three million from Afghanistan.
With this perspective, it should be easy to understand the frustration expressed by activist Erika Pinheiro regarding government actions that have made the southern U.S. border a preferred destination of Ukrainian immigrants. Pinheiro told CNN, “The disparate treatment is really mind-blowing. The cases that we’ve seen denied for Black and Brown migrants are life-and-death cases. … We’re talking children who might die are being denied entry.”
Because the ruling class of the NATO alliance is fighting to maintain control over the ruling class of the BRICS nations (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa), the United States treats Ukrainians differently from the majority of refugee immigrants who have been routinely criminalized for decades, increasingly detained and deported, with families torn apart and locked in cages. Our capitalist leaders must convince us, this conflict is much worse than the devastation and often certain death awaiting Haitians, Mexicans and others from Central and South America, or refugees from all the world’s other conflict zones. At this moment, the Council on Foreign Relations numbers 26 concurrent wars involving U.S. interests.
This issue of Rally, Comrades! explores necessary strategies to stop the ruling class war machine. “In the Name of Peace: Rein in Our Government” shows why we need to confront our own government’s role in perpetuating this violence. The $300 million the United States is committing to arm Ukraine is just part of the $2 billion spent on war since 2014. Meanwhile, people are sleeping and hungry in American streets. Millions who lost their jobs during the pandemic are still not back at work. Our political leaders are working overtime to restrict voting rights in the United States. The truth is the war in Ukraine is not a place where the U.S. government has chosen between democracy and fascism. The U.S. government is not fighting for democracy anywhere.
“Reproductive Justice in the Age of Fascist Advance” zeroes in on the movement away from democracy here at home. The laws protecting our lives are being weakened, overturned and repealed. Just months ago, the supplemental Earned Income Tax Credits payments sent to families during the height of the pandemic were terminated. Child poverty rates instantly rose 41 percent. Meanwhile, fascist efforts target migrants, the “unfit,” or families whom the ruling class say are “too big.” Billionaires, including Microsoft founder Bill Gates, media mogul Ted Turner, George Soros, Warren Buffet, and David Rockefeller Jr. meet to plan initiatives for population control across the post-colonial world.
“The Turning Point for the Climate Movement” explains why we cannot depend upon the ruling class for support in any struggle. The Climate movement, along with every movement, is confronting the reality that the politicians, CEOs and organizations touted as leaders, are not just going too slowly. They are consciously moving in the opposite direction of the fighters, acting against all of the needs of people and planet.
As “Government Fails to Protect Public’s Health” shows, the ruling class prioritizes casino capitalism over our lives, recalling how Federal Reserve chair Jerome Powell made a distinction between market volatility and stability, saying that whatever loss individual investors suffer from volatility is only the government’s concern when it constitutes a threat to market stability.
Leading capitalists will always put speculation’s benefits to their class ahead of the harm it causes any struggling member of its own class, never mind those most vulnerable to pandemics.
In “We Celebrate the Life of Al Gladyck,” we pay tribute to a dedicated fighter who understood all too well the health care needs of our class. Al spent his life working to crush the ruling class narrative that our people are forever divided between the “deserving” and “undeserving.” He was relentless in challenging gutless and compromised Democratic Party officials and “business-as-usual” unionists. Pulling together with others in Retirees for Single Payer, Al had a huge impact on organizations like Healthcare-NOW! and others by sticking to a no-compromise path for improved and expanded Medicare for all.
Finally, “Juneteenth – The Southern Question Today” gets at a new kind of strategy for the millions who are cast out of the current system. If the strategy of the ruling class is to divide the working class, then the strategy of the Southern worker and the new working class across the country can only be class unity around a common program. If the strategy of the ruling class is to tie the workers to the elite in one version or another of all-class unity, then the strategy of the new working class can only be class independence. It must put forward its own independent program and fight forward to reorganize society in its own interests and in the interests of all the displaced workers of the world.
May/June 2022. vol.32. Ed3
This article originated in Rally, Comrades!
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