FIGHT FOR COMMUNISM!
International Communist Workers Party
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FIGHT FOR COMMUNISM! |
International Communist Workers Party | |
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Water. One of life’s necessities. Yet in capitalist USA, safe drinking water is not guaranteed. In Flint, Michigan, home of many of the laid off auto workers, families have been drinking polluted water for over a year. In this majority black city, toxic chemicals and bacteria have contaminated the drinking water. Ten people have died from Legionnaire’s Disease. Children have elevated lead levels. In 2014, thousands of families in neighboring Detroit had their water cut off because they couldn’t pay their bills.
Profit—or workers’ lives
This is the inevitable consequence of a society where workers’ lives only have value if they create profits for some capitalist. We fight for communism—a society organized to meet workers’ needs. That will take a revolution. We won’t have abundance right away when we take power. We may be building communism after war. Water treatment plants may have been destroyed. Safe water may be very scarce. But we will build a new society based on communist principles—from each according to commitment; to each according to need. We’ll do away with money. And we’ll work together to provide the basic necessities as we fight to expand revolution around the world, until all our class sisters and brothers are free from capitalism’s yoke.
Flint: the rise & fall of US capitalism
Like many places worldwide where our class brothers and sisters are dying for lack of safe water, the crisis in Flint is caused by racism, class oppression, and profits.
In the 20th century, the Flint General Motors factory was one of the biggest, creating super profits for one of the world’s biggest capitalists. It was the home of the militant 1937 sit-down strike, uniting black, white and immigrant workers to build US industrial unions. By the 1960s there were 80,000 people working there.
In the 1980s, GM laid off all but 5,000 of those workers, part of massive nationwide layoffs. US capitalists, forced to compete with their imperialist rivals, shut down the factories where workers’ unity and reform struggles had won some temporary benefits. They moved production to areas where racism allowed them super profits—especially Mexico and the US South.
At the same time, the top 10% of US households increased their share of wealth from 68% in 1983 to 73% in 2007. The workers who had produced that wealth were thrown out on the street. Neighborhoods declined as unemployed workers couldn’t pay the rent; cities couldn’t collect taxes. Roads and bridges began to fall apart.
In 2014, Michigan’s governor appointed an emergency city manager for Flint. He decided that to save money, Flint would stop buying water from nearby Detroit, and start pumping water out of the super-polluted Flint River.
After sixteen months of polluted water, the crisis became a media event. Governor Snyder apologized. President Obama is sending emergency aid. The National Guard is handing out water filters and bottles of water. But the children of Flint—disproportionately black—will suffer the effects of lead poisoning for the rest of their lives.
Last weekend, protestors shut down the bridge connecting Oakland with San Francisco with huge banners proclaiming “Black Health Matters!” and “Healthcare not Warfare.” US capitalism is in crisis, attacking the entire working class with racism directing the sharpest attacks on the lives of black workers and their children. Capitalism can’t be reformed. It must be overthrown. People angry over racist police murder and unsafe water must see that only a communist revolution can allow us to build a world where we will share the basics of life—including clean water—like the sisters and brothers we are.