NEWARK, NJ, November 1 — As capitalism’s economic crisis deepens, sparks of working-class resistance continue to flare up internationally. More workers search for leadership for this fightback. Some see the capitalist system behind the attacks. They’re eager to learn how our class can shape our collective future. PLP needs to be in these struggles, where these fighters will see the truth of our politics.
Legal services workers here are joining in this fight. Today, 50 people, including about 20 legal workers and clients, a vanload of people from a local soup kitchen, community militants, students and other workers marched against the five percent cut in Food Stamps, the continued underfunding of free legal services for the unemployed, and the very low-wage workers, and mass racist unemployment in cities like Newark. The marchers were both united and militant.
Even before the devastating funding cuts of the last five years, inflation has halved the real value of federal government grants to Legal Services. Then the 2007–2008 housing crash killed the main source of funds from property taxes, followed by the slashing of first state and now federal monies.
Hundreds of Legal Services workers statewide have been laid off or forced out. The workloads of those who remain have increased. Wages have been cut. At one office, a four-day week was recently instituted, with total wage and benefit cuts there since 2008 now reaching 40%.
Worse, Legal Services clients have seen their advocates often unable to assist them with legal problems dealing with basic survival — evictions, foreclosures, bankruptcies, unemployment appeals and welfare fair hearings, just to name a few.
The attacks initiated by the Clinton-Republican 1997 welfare reform have not stopped. Neither Obama nor any national politician supported an extension of the tiny 2009 Food Stamp increase. That “raise” followed mass anger against the bankers’ role in the crash of 2007–8, and has now been eliminated.
U.S. rulers need to cut so-called safety-net programs to build a war chest for future wars against their imperialist rivals. Their politicians are sharpening their knives for more cuts to Food Stamps, ranging from $4 billion to $40 billion over the next decade.
A local Legal Services union-formed action committee planned and led today’s march. That committee led an 18-month campaign, gathering nearly 2,000 signatures on a petition demanding restoration of state Legal Services funding. Those petitions were delivered to Governor Christie in June. Before the march, that committee was expanded to include non-union staff and clients. That decision proved to be crucial to the worker-client unity expressed at the march.
Along the way, the marchers stopped at a local Bank of America, Newark City Hall and the state unemployment office. Speakers included a Legal Services worker, a statewide community action group and several soup kitchen clients. The clients’ stories of hunger, homelessness and being turned away by government agencies — supposedly set up to help people — were both heartbreaking and infuriating. At the unemployment office we loudly chanted “Jobs yes, racism no! Food Stamp cuts have got to go!”
During the march, PLP members and friends distributed 175 copies of CHALLENGE. A local union and community militant gave the wrap-up speech at the Federal Building, just as Homeland Security cops were trying to shut down the rally. He pointed to mass racist unemployment as the source of poverty, homelessness, hunger, substance abuse and other social consequences. He targeted the capitalist drive for maximum profits as inevitably leading to the crises being experienced worldwide today.
In contrast to prior speakers, who attacked individual politicians like Christie or Newark Mayor Corey Booker, this speaker made it clear that unemployment and poverty are a product of this economic system.
He asked the crowd what kind of world we would want our children to grow up in. On one side, he posed the dictatorship of the .01 percent, using their vast capital to control the government, grinding down the world’s working class to lower levels of existence; on the other side, an anti-racist world based on equality where workers as a class run our lives for the good of society as a whole.
The speaker declared this march was just the beginning, and challenged the crowd to commit themselves to this last vision of a new society. A number of marchers loudly cheered this call.
The future is bright for those who labor and struggle to make ends meet. PLP’s aim is to lead a revolution for communism to bring about that world, where poverty, unemployment, racism and sexism will be a distant memory.