Letters of July 20

Ecuador: strike vs. capitalist crisis
On June 13 here in Quito, Ecuador, a mobilization began towards the capital in response to the call of the Conaie Confederation of Indigenous Nationalities of Ecuador (CCINE) for a national strike against the neoliberal government of Guillermo Lasso. The strike and march on the capitol have been triggered by rising fuel prices and transportation costs, unemployment, massive layoffs, and budget cuts for health and education. Added to this is an escalation of violence by the uniformed officers towards the population, even going so far as to sign a cooperation agreement with the U.S. A bill presented in the United States Senate recently called again, “to Strengthen ties of the Association between the United States and Ecuador,” but with the U.S. in charge.
Other sectors have joined the strike, although timidly. The brutal repression in  October 2019, under the regime of then-President Lenin Moreno is still present. The leader of CCINE, Conaie Leonidas Iza, was violently arrested and kidnapped for 10 hours, but the mobilization is being strengthened day by day, with strikers more resolved to see that their 10  demands are met and many calling for the resignation of the President.
The mass media portray the indigenous people as violent coup plotters, trying to turn public opinion against the national strike. Spanish-language media outside the country has given little or no importance to this crisis.
But the violence and repression come from the government through its Decree 455 that established a state of emergency for certain provinces, allowing the use of lethal weapons by the uniformed police and military against protesters, court intervention and internet blocking. All this shows how the government serves imperialism and the local capitalists.
Thousands of workers in Ecuador are protesting, claiming their right to enjoy the benefits they produce, demanding better education, better health services, a better system of protection for citizens, not repression towards them, but above all respect for their humanity with better living conditions, including employment with wages that support good living. We are the ones who produce and run everything, therefore we demand respect that our work and production be valued. But the only way we can ever enjoy the fruits of our collective labor is when we take power away from the bosses with communist revolution, and produce for our needs, not for their profits.
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Capitalist atrocities, not just statistics
I read the article “Racist bosses further displace homeless workers” in CHALLENGE, 6/8/22. Soon after I read the article, I had a conversation about homelessness with a friend, a working class tenant who recently began reading CHALLENGE. These two things made me think of the similarities between the struggles of housed and unhoused workers both in the U.S. and around the world.
Here in Los Angeles County, the official “Point-in Time” count of the homeless population in 2020 was 66,436. According to Dr. Margot Kushel of UC-San Francisco, this number is likely an undercount because the vast majority of unhoused here are “unsheltered,” meaning they live outdoors, and are therefore more difficult to count. Homelessness is deadly. Almost 2,000 unhoused workers in LA County died from April 2020 through March 2021, a 56 percent  increase from the 12 months before the pandemic began (NY Times 4/25/22).
But for the working class, homelessness is an international plague which has skyrocketed worldwide during the pandemic economic crisis. For example, between 2014 and 2019, official government statistics show a 50 percent increase in the numbers of homeless workers in Sao Paulo, Brazil’s largest city. On the ground homeless advocates say those numbers went up further from 25,000 before the pandemic to 60,000 at the end of last year. Mass racist unemployment of 13 percent and falling worker incomes have forced more and more workers in Brazil into the streets (voanews.com 12/20/21).   
In Inglewood, California (a predominantly Black and Latin city adjacent to Los Angeles), long-term racist unemployment, gentrification and displacement are everywhere and have vastly increased the homeless population. Meanwhile, Inglewood’s mayor and City Council, who passed a punitive “anti-camping” ordinance in 2021, have been the main cheerleaders for the new multi-billion dollar football stadium (SoFi) and a new multi-billion dollar basketball arena (Intuit Dome).
A public campaign forced these Inglewood politicians to enact rent control in 2019, but the ordinance has loopholes benefitting landlords. Because the ordinance allows vacancy decontrol, landlords have an incentive to refuse to make basic repairs, forcing tenants to move and then jacking up the new rents. The Tenants’ Union that I am part of has been organizing against evictions of tenants unable to pay rent, and to demand repairs for apartments with unlivable conditions. Union members have worked closely with a number of tenants, including my friend.
After my friend called me, we met outside the apartment complex and he walked me to a vacant lot near where he lives. In the middle of the lot, was a makeshift shelter dug underground along with a couch and some large plastic bags with belongings. The shelter had clearly been bull-dozed, maybe by the City. Standing from the back of the lot and looking out, one could clearly see So-Fi Stadium in the background. My friend asked me to take a picture of that scene. He said that the picture “is worth a thousand words” and shows “where we’re at.” Afterwards, I sent the picture to the Union text chat, describing it as “the latest atrocity of capitalism”.
Not long after, my friend and one other tenant who the union has been working with received summonses to go to eviction court. Conditions in their apartments were so bad that both failed the annual inspection by a city-run rent subsidy program. When the landlord adamantly refused to make repairs, the City stopped paying its portion of the rent. The Tenants’ Union is organizing to support both tenants and to prevent yet two more workers from becoming statistics in the local homeless count. My friend sees the connection between racist gentrification, billionaire-funded “redevelopment,” displacement and homelessness. I will continue the political struggle with him and other tenants about why we need communist revolution around the world to end racist unemployment, homelessness, and the commodification of human needs like housing.          
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‘Profit is the name of the game’
 On June 21 members and friends of Progressive Labor Party (PLP) joined hundreds of tenants in a spirited protest against rent hikes in New York City. As we chanted with the Housing Coalition we carried signs saying “Capitalism = Homelessness” and “Contra desalojos, tenemos que luchar” and distributed 77 copies of CHALLENGE. One friend joined PLP and another is seriously considering it.
Black, Asian, Latin and white working class tenants united inside the auditorium where nine  mayoral appointees on the Rent Guidelines Board (RGB) met to vote on rent increases for over one million rent stabilized apartments in NYC. Tenants were angry when less than half of the protesters got inside because we didn’t know to bring proof of vaccination against Covid-19.
The week before the RGB vote tenants protested at the Brooklyn building owned by mayor/landlord Eric Adams. Adams argued that landlords like him need rent increases. Adams has overwhelming backing from the NYC real estate industry.
Since the politicians lifted the rent moratorium put in place during the pandemic there are 230,000 eviction cases for unpaid rent, which tenants can’t pay in NYC courts. Tenants are organizing to monitor cases in court, but we need a much stronger fight back. Nearly 50,000 women, men and children are homeless in NYC while racist mayor Adams has ordered cops to clear the homeless out of the subways and destroyed 239 encampments in the city.                                    
  In the end the RGB gave the landlords their increases. Like our chant says, “Adams, landlords all the same, Profits is the name of their game!” The working class housing crisis will explode so long as the working class allows this racist, profit driven capitalist system with its enormous inequalities to exist! We need revolution! Only communism with workers’ power and PLP can fight for housing for our class. The struggle is long! We remain determined!
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Red on radio: ‘U.S. is a capitalist dictatorship’
I got on WBAI radio New York for the last five minutes of the July 4 “What’s Going On” program at 7 am which was discussing the failures of the capitalist economy today. The supposedly anti-capitalist economists like R.Wolff and others were providing excellent statistics about the reasons for the problems of workers today. When I spoke for a brief five minutes, I asked why the speakers never mentioned that the US is a capitalist dictatorship and that the capitalists’ fear of the working class they discussed is not only of the power workers represent but on how communist ideas and organizing in the 1930s forced capitalists under threat of communist revolution to pay for the many working class survival benefits that have mostly been taken back today. I said real anti-capitalists today need to call for a communist revolution for workers' dictatorship.
To access the useful statistical information from the program you can search the WBAI “What’s Going On” archive for July 4. However, good statistics must be coupled with the correct political analysis, which is provided by the revolutionary Progressive Labor Party.

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