Real Rights

The minimum wage increase protests are a key part of the human rights movement. Many protesters want a 15 dollar an hour wage and better benefits for workers (including better working conditions). These protesters have occurred nationwide. They are courageously fighting for human dignity. In Australia, the minimum wage is over $16 an hour for fast food workers. Salvatore Babones is the senior lecturer of sociology and social policy at the University of Sydney in Sydney, Australia. He is an associate fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies in Washington, D.C. He writes for Truthout and other publications. We live in a new era. A minimum wage of $15 is not unrealistic since we don't live in the 1950's and the 1960's anymore. Some conservatives in the media and the press have criticized this idea. That extremist Charles Koch (who is worth $44 billion) recently said that the best way to stimulate the U.S. economy is by eliminating the minimum wage altogether. This is wrong since many of folks like Koch refuse to look at other countries to gauge their views on the minimum wage. When you look at foreign countries, their minimum wages are much higher than America. These nations are doing fairly well. Nations like France, Germany, Australia, etc. will have occasional recessions like America has right now. Over the long 30-40 year period, they do just as well as the United States economically. These nations have higher wages for their workers. And so while overall economic growth is about equal between the U.S. and other countries, conditions for ordinary working people are far better in places like Australia and Europe. Australia has no massive recession. There was no single quarter in which GDP declined in Australia in a long time. There was a mild slowdown in hiring back in 2008 and things picked right back up. Even lower wage workers in Australia have vacation days, sick days, four weeks annual leave, and full health insurance. There is the argument that raising the minimum wage will result in fewer jobs. Yet, the scholar Babones mentioned the following information about that argument: "...And so what we really need to do is instead of arguing from theory that if you raise minimum wage it would cause problems for employers, you should argue from fact, that is, look at countries where the minimum wage is higher, see how well they're doing. And, in fact, those countries are doing quite well. Even in the United States, we recently raised the minimum wage from an extraordinarily low level of $5.15 an hour in 2007 up to--now it's $7.25 an hour--not a high level, but still that's an enormous increase in the minimum wage, you know, almost a 50 percent increase in just a few years. And what have we seen? Even though there's been a big recession in the U.S., we've seen low-wage employment actually increase. So, you know, the idea that raising the minimum wage will hurt employment just has no basis in empirical fact. It's an interesting idea, and it's a very nice idea if you're an employer and you want to pay low wages, but the studies just don't bear out that raising the minimum wage has any impact on employment whatsoever..." Australia has raised their minimum wage almost every year. America has only seen three increases in the past 15 years. In Australia, there is an organization called Fair Work Australia. Each year, it reviews economic conditions; reviews productivity levels in the economy, and set the minimum age accordingly. Also, Big Macs are more expensive in Australia than the States in 70 cents more. Yet, Australia has full health insurance, and other benefits. Babones further states that: "... The cost of living in Australia is in fact slightly higher than in the United States. And if you want to make an adjustment for that, the Australian fast food wage of $17.98 an hour probably comes down to around $12 an hour if you adjust for cost of living. On the other hand, if you adjust for the fact that that Australian $17.98, on top of that, Australian workers get four weeks' annual vacation, retirement benefits, and full health insurance, then of course you would have to revise the figures upward. So there is some truth in the argument that the cost of living is higher in Australia. But on the other hand, you get more for your tax money and you get more for your wages in Australia as well. So I think the two either balance out or in fact probably workers are better off in Australia..." So, the fight for a higher minimum wage is a just cause.

The Afro-Brazilians are a great black people. They are our brothers and our sisters. As a black American, it is important to have solidarity with my Brothers and Sisters from Brazil including black human beings all over the world. So, there are a lot of links between Brazil and Africa. Now, this doesn't mean that everything is peaches and cream. We have to oppose many Afro-Brazilians being killed by genocidal police and militarized forces. About 90 percent of the Brazilian imports from Africa are oil and other natural resources. There has been a growth of African and Brazilian collaborations. This South to South linkage is growing. The North South alliance has been common too for a long time. Yet, mostly white or white passing leaders control the 37 Brazilian embassies in Africa. Even in Brazil, some black human beings are rarely shown in television or they are stereotyped in a sick, sexual fashion. Many poor Afro-Brazilians are killed by the police (after legitimate affirmative action policies have gone in Brazil). There is still mistreatment of continental born Africans who live in Brazil. Fernanda Polacow and Juliana Borges have documented the discrimination and racism that many African migrants face in Brazil (as also documented by Aljazeera. I saw a video on it recently in the Aljazeera website). Angolan immigrant Badharo instead finds barriers and even racism in Rio. Rio is presented as this cosmopolitan, progressive city. Many Africans from Angola come into Brazil. Ironically, Brazil and Angola were colonized by wicked Portuguese imperialists centuries ago. Ironically, Brazil has liberalized its immigration laws. The racism and violence has spiked in targeting the black population of Brazil including Angolan migrants. In June of 2011, an 11 year old Brother named Juan Moraes was killed by the Military police in June of 2011. Like Trayvon Martin, the value of young men of black African descent in the Diaspora is not respected by white racists. Mother of a young black man executed in 2006 by a death squad, in Santos, São Paulo, Débora Maria da Silva doesn’t see an improvement in the situation in the country. The street sweeper Edson Rogério Silva dos Santos was shot dead in May 2006, during a wave of attacks in the state of São Paulo, when he went to buy medicine. For the mother of Edson, blacks are the biggest victims, because they live in the poorest areas of the city. According to her, the state still maintains a racist posture, even 125 years after the abolition of slavery in the country. There have been young black men dying by murder and young black women dying from lack of health care.  “Os jovens negros morrem e as mulheres negras também morrem (Young black men are dying and black women are also dying).” The Movimento Negro (black movement) is still fighting in Brazil against the genocide of black youth, the criminalization of poverty, and mass incarceration. There has been huge police violence in the state of São Paulo. So, women have the right to receive safe, affordable health care in Brazil indeed. Yalaorixá Yá Makumby Vilma Santos de Oliveira was brutally murdered on Saturday, August 3rd in Londrina. She was a great Afro-Brazilian woman. She was a long time leader of Movimento Negro (black rights organizations). Two other human beings died too at the hands of a sick man. Yá Makumby Vila de Oliveira Santos and Olívia Oliveira dos Santos, 10, also died by the sick man. Yes, he was not black. Now, Yalaorixá Yá Makumby Vilma Santos de Oliveira was a militant of the Movimento Negro (black movement) in Londrina for over 30 years. Well known in social movements, she was one of the militants that fought for the quota system in universities of Londrina. So, our war against white supremacy is not just in the States. It is everywhere. Black people are fighting for human liberation in the States, Africa, Brazil, and all over the world.  Many European and American banks control much of the resources that flow in the world. Many Brazilian mining companies have caused violence in Mozambique. These acts are a product of the evil of the greed for coal, diamond, and oil resources.


In South Africa, there was the Natives' Land Act of 1913. That was the first major piece of segregation legislation passed by the Union Parliament. It remained a cornerstone of Apartheid until the 1990's when it was replaced by the current policy of land restitution. The Natives' Land Act of 1913 forced blacks to be relatively restricted from the legal ownership of land (at that stage to 7 percent of the country). This percentage later increased to 13%, at about 158, 734 km² a 1/6 bigger than Greece, resulting in an estimated population density of 30/km², the same as modern USA. The Act created a system of land tenure that deprived the majority of South Africa's inhabitants of the right to own land outside of reserves which had major socio-economic repercussions, because the owners did not develop and leverage the land into a successful commercial resource. Other segregationist legislation included the Franchise and Ballot Act of 1892. It limited the black vote by finance and education. There was the 1894 Natal Legislative Assembly Bill that deprived Indians the right to vote. The General Pass Regulations Bill of 1905 denied blacks the right to vote altogether. It limited black human beings to live in fixed areas. There was the Asiatic Registration Act (1906) requiring all Indians to register and carry passes; the South Africa Act (1910) that enfranchised whites, giving them complete political control over all other race groups; the above-mentioned Native Land Act (1913) which prevented all blacks, except those in the Cape, from buying land outside 'reserves'. The reserves were the "original homes" of the black tribes of South Africa. The reverses were later called bantusatans of which the failed objective was to make self-government, quasi-independent ethnically homogeneous states. The state reserved 87% of the land which whites exclusively could purchase. The Natives in Urban Areas Bill of 1918 was designed to move blacks living in "white" South Africa into specific 'locations' as a precautionary security measure. The Urban Areas Act of 1923 introduced residential segregation in South Africa and provided cheap unskilled labor for the white mining and farming industry. There was the 1926 Colour Bar Act of 1926 preventing blacks from practicing skilled trades. Even the Native Administration Act (1927) that made the British Crown, rather than paramount chiefs, the supreme head over all African affairs; the Native Land and Trust Act (1936) that complemented the 1913 Native Land Act and, in the same year, the Representation of Natives Act, which removed blacks from the Cape voters' roll. The final 'apartheid' legislation passed by the South African parliament before the beginning of the 'Apartheid' era was the Asiatic Land Tenure Bill (1946), which banned any further land sales to Indians. So, these unjust laws were part of the white supremacist agenda of apartheid. The Black voters' roll was abolished in 1948. In fact, universal suffrage never came into South Africa until the 1994 general election in the post-apartheid era. From 1948, the National Party administration extended the existing system of racial discrimination and the denial of human rights into the legal system of apartheid. This lasted until 1991. There was the 1950 Population Registration Act that formalized racial classification and introduced an identity card for all persons over the age of eighteen (that specifying their racial group). Official teams or Boards were established to come to an ultimate conclusion on those people whose race was unclear. Many families of the coloured people (or mixed raced folks of what we call today) had their families separated and were allocated different races. There were rules banning interracial relationships in the Prohibition of Mixed Marriages Act of 1949 and in the Immorality Act of 1950. Many areas provided for blacks under apartheid were inferior to those of whites. Apartheid harmed political freedom by banning any party subscribing to Communism back in 1950. A human being has the right to peacefully believe in whatever philosophy they want. There was internal opposition to apartheid for decades as well. The ANC opposed apartheid. There was the Pan Africanist Congress or the PAC that organized demonstrations against the pass laws. The pass laws were segregation laws that severely limited the movements of the nonwhite populace. The Black population was required to carry these pass books with them when outside their homelands or designated areas. Failure to produce a pass often resulted in the person being arrested. Any white person could ask a black African to produce his or her pass in the era of apartheid South Africa. So, courageous anti-apartheid activists were common in South Africa.

We know about the Chicago city worker pensions being under attack. This comes in the wake of Detroit's bankruptcy filing. It is clear that the corporate elite wants to use Detroit as a model for other cities in America. The financial elite is using a coordinated campaign to shred worker pensions and contracts. This agenda has been spelled out in their documents for years and decades. Banks and credit rating agencies deal with this issue. The media is paying attention to Chicago, because of its underfunded pension system. There is a 2013 Pew Charitable Trusts report on municipal pension. A New York Times article wrote the following information: "...The financial woes of Detroit, which last month became the nation’s largest city to file for bankruptcy protection, dwarf the financial issues here. But as Detroit makes its way through the federal court system, other cities, including Chicago, are wrestling with overwhelming pension liabilities that threaten to undermine their capacity to provide municipal services and secure their futures. ” The article continues to mention the following information: "...Among the nation’s five largest cities, Chicago has put aside the smallest portion of its looming pension obligations... Its [pension] plans were funded at 36 percent by the end of 2012, city documents say. Federal regulators would step in if a corporate pension fund sank to that level, but they have no authority over public pensions.” The Pew report identified four cities whose pensions remained less than 80 percent funded through the downtown. These cities are Chicago, Charleston, W.V., Omaha, and New Orleans. That report rated Chicago's funding levels as the worst among the largest cities in America. Illinois' state pension funds are considered to be the worst among all states, with $100 billion in unfunded pensions. Retiree healthcare liabilities are reported to be 6 percent funded. It is now estimated that the four pension funds for workers directly employed by the city of Chicago are underfunded in the amount of $19.5 billion. The pension funds for Chicago are underfunded in the amount of $19.5 billion. In addition, the pension fund for Chicago teachers is underfunded by $7.5 billion and that for Chicago Park District workers by nearly $500 million. All together, the six funds have an average of 50 percent of the funding they are estimated to need to pay out contractually agreed-upon benefits, ranging from a low of less than 30 percent for the firefighters’ pension fund to a high of just under 65 percent, for city laborers. The crisis in funding levels came as a result of a decision. The decision is about city leaders to take out undeclared loans against workers' pensions in the form of a series of pension payment holidays (including the use of inadequate payment schedules). These low pension payment levels on the part of state and municipal government allowed both Democratic and Republican parties to maintain artificially low tax rate all throughout the previous decade. That this would result in a crisis of pension funding was entirely predictable. Even before the Detroit bankruptcy announcement, Democrats in the Illinois state government and in Chicago itself have been pushing for the state legislature to enact massive cuts in pension and retirement benefits both for already retired workers and for current workers. The banks are more being angry about the slow rate of cuts to worker pensions in Illinois. This is why Moody has an unprecedented downgrade of Chicago's credit rating by 3 levels last month. The Mayor of Chicago Rahm Emanuel (or the President Obama's former chief of staff) agrees with these massive cuts. He said that: “What the system needs is a hard, cold dose of honesty. I understand the anger. I totally respect it. You have every right to be angry because there were contracts voted on. People agreed to something. But things get updated all the time.” Emanuel refuses to raise taxes or call for any encroachment on the wealth of Illinois' 17 billionaires. Workers are being called for massive reductions in their quality of life. There are many disagreements among the Democratic speaker of the Illinois House and the Democratic Senate President on how the pensions should be cut. That is why the state's Democratic governor Pat Quinn ordered paychecks for state legislators to be withheld until a decision is made. State law demands more payment from the city and the state to make up for the decades of inadequate payments. This is why the extremists want more pension cuts. As a result, Chicago faces $483.4 million in pension payments this year, a number which jumps to $1.1 billion for 2016. Anticipating these payments, the city has estimated that the budget deficit for next year will be $338.7 million and $1.53 billion in 2016. Emanuel will phase out subsidized health insurance as of January 1, 2014. These workers will be forced to either have health insurance independently or receive subsidies from Obama's Affordable Care Act. Emanuel wants state legislators to raise the retirement ages and employment pension contributions (including a freeze in cost of living adjustments). Workers must be warned that the ruling class wants to reduce workers to levels of poverty. This hasn't been seen in generations. Chicago and Detroit face anti-democratic measures by extremists who want austerity.

Now, we know that mainstream capitalism is murdering the human family all over the world. For over 5 centuries, its fruits has been nefariously harming societies and murdered over 1 billion human beings (via wars, environmental damage, the system of white supremacy, economic oppression, religious deception, and imperialism). It is a system that is increasingly murdering workers worldwide from Bangladesh to America. Many of those who love corporate capitalism know that their policies are killing workers and other human beings globally. These murders are deliberate and with premeditation. The mainstream media sanitized the truth as a means to stabilize public perception. Such murders are even glamorized in TV programs and movies. The movie Waterloo Bridge outlines the murderous nature of mainstream capitalism. We know that the imperialist wars in the 21st century are a continuation of capitalism. The Iraqi War killed over 4,000 human beings from America. It has murdered 1.3 million Iraqi deaths. More Iraq and Afghanistan U.S. veterans have committed suicide than were killed in battle. In fact, 30 U.S. veterans attempt suicide every day and 18 die from it. In World War I, about 15 million human beings were murdered and 45 million human beings were murdered in World War II. Both wars have capitalist companies funding both sides (as Hitler was brought into power by German capitalists such as Thyseen, Krupp, and Siemens including other American capitalists) and stirring the directions of the war in various directions. In our time, we have White House leaders justifying murdering U.S. citizens via drone strikes. We have the mine disaster killing 13 miners in West Virginia including the miners killed by neoliberal forces in South Africa. We see a lack of healthcare, economic treason, and food exploitation by the elite. If we are awake, then we know that the murder of workers by extreme policies is an abomination. The new genocide is done in the West with the tactics of austerity, militaristic imperialism, and capitalist genocide. We know that every 2 minutes, a baby is born into poverty. Every 15 minutes in America a baby is born to a mother who received late or no prenatal care. One out of every 4 American veterans is now homeless. 22,000 Americans will die needlessly because of private, over expensive capitalist healthcare insurance companies. We have a modern capitalist police state in America with the stop and frisk program in NYC, with the SWAT Team harming communities nationwide, with the unjust laws violating fundamental human civil liberties, with warrantless wiretapping, and with other nefarious evils spreading in the world. We are in a global class war where the elite are murdering human beings, violating laws, stealing pensions, and receiving record bailouts. One of the most spiritually enlightenment facts that I realize in my walk for almost 30 years of my life has been the exposure of mainstream capitalism as consumed with greed, selfishness, subjugation, and exploitation (that uses consumerism and the illusion of freedom as a means to justify its injustices). We must not use irrational violence, which the elite wants (so they can place laws in the books to further suppress human freedom).  For irrational violence against the elite's military, police, and propaganda weapons is suicidal. I believe in self-defense not suicidal actions. In other words, we should use peaceful means to not only help the workers, but help the poor including the homeless. There is why many populists advance commonwealth and cooperatives as alternatives to the current existing order (when a commonwealth allows the community ownership of the means of production by the people). I have no issue with that. We should advance independent political movements working to assist the working class and all of the people. The good news is that the system is not all powerful. There have been some victories against the enemy. These victories include the Preamble, the Bill of Rights (that the common people forced the capitalist class to show), the independence of African nations, the civil rights struggle causing new civil rights legislation, the Vietnam anti-war movement causing the Vietnam war to ended sooner than expected, Social Security, the growing of the Internet, many victories won by the women's right movements, wins made by the labor rights movement, and other victories. The war is not finished yet though. We will win in the end.

 

By Timothy