We Can Beat You, But Not Pay You

It's time to add the rich to the naughty list...

Yesterday, Democrats and Republicans both agreed that working class and poor Americans would be getting a very fat lump of coal this holiday season - as they failed to extend unemployment benefits to millions of Americans. As Tom Eley wrote: 

On Wednesday, 800,000 unemployed US workers woke up in the morning having lost for most what is their only source of income—jobless benefit checks that average about $300 per week. By Christmas, another 1.2 million workers will follow them into the cashless economy, where they will join the far larger number of jobless workers who receive no benefits at all. Millions more will follow next year.

The cutoff came after Congress failed to reauthorize a program that extends jobless benefits beyond the 26 weeks afforded by most states. Leading Congressional Democrats have indicated that the benefits might not be restored for months, if ever.

The tossing of millions of workers—and through them millions more children—into abject desperation is by any measure a social catastrophe. Hunger, which preyed on 50 million Americans last year, will rise sharply. It is reported that soup kitchens and food pantries, already strained to the breaking point, are bracing for record demand. Homelessness and the foreclosure crisis will be exacerbated. Hundreds of thousands more families will lose their utilities in the midst of the winter heating season.

As our friends in the paper Internationalism wrote on the unemployment crisis this summer, when benefits were still being doled out to us on a month by month basis: 

These back-and-forth battles serve a number of objectives for the ruling class. When the Democrats blame the Republicans for failing to extend unemployment benefits the aim is to present the state as the ultimate social guardian, the lie that the state cares for the needy and protects its citizens. But the very nature of these extensions is that they are only happening one month at a time, constantly keeping the unemployed waiting, worrying, dependent, and always on the verge of total destitution. Despite the claims of "concern" these measures aim to maintain the feeling of helplessness and powerless among the unemployed which is already created by the frustratingly complex and humiliating processes of applying for and collecting these benefits in the first place.

This feeling of powerlessness is reinforced by the mechanism of the unemployment benefits system itself, whereby each unemployed worker relates to the state as an isolated individual - a needy person asking for help - powerless to do anything but beg. But where the individual can feel lost the working class has the capacity to collectively confront the state.

The Republicans, on the other hand speak the language of "fiscal responsibility" to try and reinforce the stereotype of the unemployed not trying hard enough, and being a drain on the national economy. This propaganda tries to mask the real extent of capitalism's crisis as well as undermine the real solidarity those in work feel for those who are unemployed.

Yet when workers see the petty squabbling between the parties it's not taken as proof that one or the other is uncaring or incompetent, but that the state in general, does not care about unemployment. And the idea that the unemployed are undeserving wears thin when more than 1 in 6 people in the US are either out of work or working part-time because they cannot find jobs, and when every worker knows that he or she could be laid off at a moment's notice, like so many others already have been.

Thinking about ways in which unemployed workers can fight, Internationalism looks back at ways in which unemployed workers resisted in the 1930's: 

In the first years of the Great Depression, unemployed councils were organized in the neighborhoods of Harlem and the Lower East Side of New York City, which occupied relief offices en masse, stormed City Hall, engaged in demonstrations, and opposed evictions and other attacks with the force of numbers and resolute class violence. Before long, similar loose organizations of the unemployed sprang up all over the country.

But as unemployment benefits get cut in the United States, sending even more millions of Americans spiraling into a windfall of foreclosure, depression, and poverty - we see police brutality and repression getting worse and worse. In Modesto as in other places across the country, police are coming under more and more fire from people who are fed up with repression. According to the Modesto Bee:

Though the number of arrests and contacts with the public were at the lowest level in years, Modesto police officers used force more often in 2008 and 2009 than in previous years, and the department saw a 22 percent increase in citizen complaints alleging police misconduct.

On Thursday, the Modesto Bee reported that again, although police arrests were down, police use of force was again up in the city. And while claims of police misconduct through citizen complaints are up from previous years, there were only two sustained findings of 'police misconduct.' Coming under fire from protests, the recent police shootings of two people in September, and the publishing of a series of letters about police brutality in the department, the city is launching a 'independent investigation' this year.

The city has chosen Palo Alto based lawyer Bob Aaronson to lead the investigation. Bob has led investigations into police in Santa Cruz, Davis, and Frenso. In all of these cities, ongoing police misconduct, murder, and brutality cases have gone on during his employment.  The City will be paying him him close to $200 a hour. In Frenso over the past years, private groups have shown how Fresno police have engaged over the years in unprecedented murder and brutality, all without fear of being reprimanded.

The actions of the elites against the working class are not unconnected to the rise in police brutality. As things get harder, the elites will makes sure that the police are on hand to make sure that rebellion does not break out. That the reigns are always held a little tighter. It's up to us to break them. We need to start forming mass assemblies in our neighborhoods to begin to talk about not only the rise in police brutality - but also how we will respond to the crisis and government attacks like the cuts to unemployment.

Bellow is a video from a youth involved in the recent battles against cuts by government to education in the UK. The young man points out how the struggles have brought many young people out into the street who before were more concerned with the internet and television. It also showed many of them the realities of what the police and the media are in society. Furthermore, it has brought them into solidarity with workers in struggle, as their solidarity expands beyond just other students to other workers as well. This is the direction we need to be heading in. Organizing and directing our struggles, and acting in solidarity with other workers.