Michael Brown, Eric Garner, Tamir Rice And The War on We the People!

From The Warzone
Michael Brown, Eric Garner, Tamir Rice
And
The War on We the People!

by Mike Griffin
mgriffwzef [at] comcast.net

The untimely homicides of these three victims of police violence has rightly sparked outrage nationwide and the ensuing non-violent demonstrations are bringing focus to a not so secret war on ordinary Americans. I am grateful for those who have braved the elements, risked their freedom, and I am in awe of those who have engaged in civil disobedience. Thanks to video evidence, even the mainstream media has been unable to deny the injustice heaped on ordinary Americans by out of control criminals carrying badges except Fox news.

The greatest social changes in America came as a result of civil unrest. The sit-down strikes in labor struggles, the civil rights struggles in the sixties, and Viet Nam war protests all have a common factor in that government was complicit in murdering ordinary Americans as solely an instrument of the ruling class. The victims were not just people of color, any particular race or gender, but the common thread was class. The working class and poor have been victimized by the wealthy elite even before the drafting of the U S Constitution.

Thousands of Native Americans were needlessly slaughtered from 1500 until 1924 for the sole purpose taking their land. A classic example was the 1864 slaughter of the Cheyenne and Arapaho, mostly women and children, in Sand Creek Colorado. The massacre, led by Colonel John Chivington, a Methodist-Episcopalian minister, came the day after a peace summit had produced a treaty. Native American men were scalped, had their noses, ears and testicles cut off, the latter to be used as tobacco pouches.

At the turn of the 19th century, the corporate elite responded to mass union organizing with an enormous immigration campaign. America’s shores filled with mostly European workers not because of their skills but because they spoke many different languages, were difficult to organize, and easy to exploit. Conditions similar to the H1 Visa program of today. Government at the behest of their corporate masters aided the effort. Savvy unions responded by training organizers to speak different languages. Immigrants were used as scabs [strike-breakers], but ultimately saw the benefits of standing together as a class.

Newspapers, corporations themselves, clamored to support the ruling class. Chicago papers and the infamous Randolph Hurst dynasty, called for the hanging of union organizers. Hang them they did! The Haymarket Martyrs were hung in Chicago after being framed by the police.

In 1898-1900 coal strikes in Illinois were incited to violence when coal operators brought trainloads of black strikebreakers [scabs] from the South. Violence grew so intense, the governor ordered the National Guard to load the scabs back on trains and send them back to Alabama. Many of the black miners left voluntarily when union leaders boarded the trains to plead their case. Many miners were murdered by armed security and strikebreakers firing from the trains. Race was a powerful tool for the bastards of the boardroom.

In Ludlow Colorado in 1914, the Rockefellers hired private detectives armed with machine guns to fire on striking miners and their families living in tents after being evicted from company-owned shacks. When that failed to rout strikers, Rockefeller, who agreed to pay guardsmen’s wages, convinced the Governor to order the National Guard to attack. Dozens of strikers and family members were slaughtered. The guard then torched the tent city. Beneath one tent, in a pit dug to protect families from gunfire, lay the bodies of 11 children and two women.


No-one was ever held accountable in these blatant murders. In the words of Jay Gould, Robber Baron elite, “I can pay half of the working class to kill the other half’. Today the Rockefellers, known for philanthropy paid for by the blood and bones of workers and their families, are the benefactors of media saint-hood.

In the roaring twenties and since, scores of striking workers were murdered by armed thugs, National Guardsmen, and federal troops at the behest of employers. Being a striking union member in America was a death sentence. In many instances, cowardly union officials aided the effort to crush strikes. Throughout the 19th and 20th centuries, U.S. Presidents from both parties have used the War Powers Act to crush strikes and destroy the rising power of working Americans.

In 1920, with the United Mine Workers [UMW] racially integrated, the Alabama state police used machine guns to fire on homes in Pratt City. Throughout the state, convict labor was used extensively to mine coal with no pay. Black union miners were routinely murdered by state and local police and hanging black workers was common. Imagine the gall of black miners standing shoulder to shoulder with white men in Alabama.

Today in privatized prisons, tens of thousands of American jobs are performed by prisoners with pennies for pay but huge profits for prison owners. Our prison system filled with a disproportionate number of black inmates, have become the plantations of the 21st century. Keeping them full is a top priority. Who said slavery was ended by the Civil War?

The media and politicians labeled unionists “communists” or “socialists” [red baiting] to convince the public to view those seeking economic and social justice with scorn. We still hear those murmurs today from the Republican Party and quickly echoed by the corporate media at any mention of the gross disparity of wealth in America. We hear that same shameful message from the podiums of many of our churches who clamor to support the capitalist system.

Economic inequity and the brutal treatment of workers sparked the great sit-down strikes in auto and manufacturing. The mass action struck fear in the employing class. Congress responded with the passage of the NLRA [National Labor Relations Act]. Under the ruse of protecting workers, the Act authored by a New York Democrat, indemnified employers from civil law and made violations of worker’s rights labor violations. The Act issued heavy fines on unions while giving employers a slap on the wrist.

What little comfort the Act gave workers was lost when congress, acting on behalf of the corporate elite, passed the Taft Hartley Act in 1947. Taft Hartley crippled unions with injunctions, massive fines and denied the right to picket and use boycotts. Both acts were designed to deceive labor and deny them the means to fight back.

Today, the heavily politicized NLRB Board refuses to indict employers while levying heavy fines on unions. Employers can literally get away with killing workers on the job. Under the Act, employers who steal wages and violate constitutional rights are guilty of labor violations which can take up to 10 years to remedy. An employee who steals from an employer will go to prison immediately.

Using race and red-baiting to divide workers became powerful weapons for the rich and devious. After the end of WW2, Senator McCarthy [Wis] initiated a witch hunt aimed at organized labor to divide workers and abate the power of unions. Many loyal Americans were blacklisted and driven from the labor movement. Like the labor movement in Nazi Germany, labor lowered its head and obediently abetted the effort. Labor surrendered many of its most militant and successful organizers. The media was a powerful ally in the assault on workers.

The Civil Rights movement of the sixties brought one of the most successful social changes in our nation’s history but not without great sacrifice and the brutal murder of black and white Americans. Police at every level, with the help of government officials, turned every demonstration and rally into violent confrontations while the corporate media touted demonstrator violence. Had it not been for non-violent civil disobedience and mass demonstrations, nothing would have changed. The Civil Rights Act benefited all working class Americans and the poor.

Whenever civil unrest threatened the power of the ruling class, the police obediently resorted to violence. At no time in history has any police agency refused to violate the rights of the working class. They always have and always will use the power of their office on behalf of the ruling class. Even the best of those charged with the duty to protect and serve will follow orders issued by the elite. Protect corporate property and serve the captains of capitalism.

Dr. Martin Luther King understood the movement was about more than rights for black Americans. He came to Memphis to support striking garbage workers. He recognized that class warfare and economic disparity were key components in the fight for social and economic justice.

The movement generated grave fear for the ruling class and their political prostitutes. They feared continuation of this mass unrest could endanger their economic grip and control on the democracy only they deserved to enjoy.
Independent investigations have revealed that Dr. King’s assassination was more than the actions of a single shooter. The plot to Murder Dr. King involved the Memphis police, Tennessee state police, and even federal agents and certain events suggest they knew in advance Dr. King would be murdered.

Another dynamic of the civil rights movement was the political fallout for politicians supporting the Civil Rights Act. After signing the act into law, President Johnson remarked to his staff, “I think I just signed away the support of southern Democrats [Blue Dog Democrats]. That division between the majority of southern politicians, mainstream Democrats and American’s working class is very much alive today.

FBI Director, J Edgar Hoover, misused the power of his office to spy on Dr. King, initiate smear campaigns and violate his civil rights. While the media lavished praise on Hoover as America’s top cop and built a pedestal he did not deserve, history paints a much different picture. Most of Hoover’s actions violated laws he was charged to enforce and in spite of undue praise, he was no more than thug carrying out the agenda of the ruling class. In every struggle, the corporate elite, corrupt government and the media worked hand in hand to divide America.

Working Americans made significant gains in the fifties and sixties until corporate America initiated moving jobs to non-union southern states and off-shoring jobs to take advantage of low-cost and slave labor. The straw that broke the camel’s back was Ronald McDonald Reagan’s firing of 44,000 Air Traffic Controllers. Reagan’s hatred of the working class and blatant racism was a powerful message to America’s workers.

While Reagan looked for that illusionary “Welfare Cadillac”, cowardly labor leaders misled by an incompetent AFL-CIO President, Lane Kirkland and his Executive Council, sat on the sidelines. Kirkland’s excuse was that controllers were not affiliated with the AFL-CIO. [Controllers did not pay per capita dues]. While media whores lavished praise on the mean-spirited Reagan to the point of journalistic orgasm, his real legacy had a extremely negative impact on working Americans forever.

Since Reagan’ reign, organized labor has left the bosses table twirling their shorts on their fingers while workers suffered significant losses. Much of that loss was self-inflicted. Labor chose to collaborate rather than fight.

With media support, the owners of America launched a massive counter-offensive both against both labor and the movement for equal rights for women. Gender proved to be a strategic weapon to divide the working class. Again organized labor largely sat on the sidelines, while the more conservative skilled trades unions resisted accepting women into their ranks.

In 1989-90 the UMW struck Pittston Coal in West Virginia, Virginia, and Kentucky. The state police was brought in to support the employing class. In West Virginia, miner-organizer John McCoy was murdered while a state trooper sat in his patrol car just yards away. No one was ever charged. The use of police agencies to attack workers was never restricted to attacking African Americans.

The Pittston strike was brought to a head when miners led by UMW Vice President Cecil Roberts, armed with ownership shares of stock, seized the Pittston processing plant in Virginia and occupied it for three days. The UMW had moved their assets to Canada to keep them from being seized by the federal government. The government responded with tens of millions of dollars in fines.



In many and of the struggles we have mentioned, police agencies of all levels, were inserted undercover to spy on union members and protesters and crush working class movements by committing criminal acts, including murder, to discredit the working class. In the WTO demonstrations in Seattle, it was police agencies who committed acts of violence and property damage while the corporate media refused to report it.

The result of the assault on labor has been the killing of hundreds of miners, mostly non-union, in disasters caused by gross safety violations committed with impunity. With a UMW contract in force, most of these disasters would not have happened. Leading the pack was AT Massey Coal, headed by power broker, Don Blankenship. A T Massey has controlled coal producing state governments on both sides of the aisle and has unfettered access at the federal level.

In the nineties, the American Dream was devastated by the election of Bill Clinton, the ultimate Blue Dog Democrat. Clinton pandered to Wall Street by passing NAFTA [North American Free Trade Agreement] causing the loss of millions jobs to countries known to be among the worst human rights violators and polluters in spite overwhelming opposition from his own party. He then went on to touch pee pees with Newt the Grinch, in his “Contract on America”. Millions of American workers have been displaced and forced to start over at jobs paying only a fraction of their former wages and most below the poverty line.

Welfare Reform was a direct assault on America’s poor and unemployed, black communities and especially children. America’s wealthiest were given huge tax breaks paid for by the suffering of the poor. While the media focused on “Slick Willie’s” sexual exploits with Jennifer Flowers and Monica Lewinski, Clinton screwed millions of American workers and the poor with NAFTA and Welfare Reform. Trade agreements have devastated American jobs and our economy.

History however, is as the media says it is. Forget facts and the damaging results of his treachery. Today, Clinton the scumbag is a philanthropist and American icon praised by every major network.

Mine safety, OSHA [Occupational Safety and Health Administration], EPA, financial regulatory agencies and all agencies charged with protecting workers and the public, took a real beating under the eight years of George W Bush. Bush appointed Elaine Chao, wife of Mitch McConnell, as Secretary of Labor. She had no qualifications other than the will carry out the corporate mandate to dismantle the U S Department of Labor. Chao worked tirelessly to roll back National Labor Relations Board [NLRB] rulings that rightly protected American workers.

Bush went on the offensive to crush civil and constitutional rights of working Americans and the poor. Using national and Homeland Security, Bush pummeled free speech, freedom of assembly, and the right to engage in peaceful protest. The move to militarize police agencies at all levels was a top priority. Military equipment was provided to every major police department to prepare for growing civil unrest.

Since the nineties, the employing class has focused on dividing Americans by age. Labor contracts significantly lowered wages and benefits for younger workers entering the workforce, pitting them against older workers. Younger workers resenting the exploitation have been disenfranchised and no longer see unions as protective of their rights. Many have become skeptical of programs like Social Security and Medicare. Media whores pounded the idea into their heads those programs won’t be there for them.

Lower wages, higher unemployment and the ability to abuse guest worker programs have dramatically increased poverty while the cost of living has skyrocketed. CEO compensation however, has risen dramatically.

Throughout our history, the ruling class has used we the people at their beck and call to carry out for profit wars. While the Revolutionary War, WWI and WW2 were in the interests of American sovereignty, the rest were to bolster the wealth of the top 5%.

The Civil war took the lives of 620,000 Americans to salvage the right of the elite to own other Americans and exploit their labor. The Civil War was more about profits and control of the under classes than race. Race was a powerful tool and sadly, that war has never ended. The Korean War took the lives of 36,516 with 7,500 still missing, Viet Nam 58,209 killed with 10,000 missing and Iraq war with 5000 killed with more than an estimated 500,000 wounded or suffering from Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome. The overwhelming majority of these deaths and injuries were Americans from the working class or poor.


While Cheney “had more important things to do”, Bush hid out in Alabama as a member of the Texas Air Guard, and Mitt Romney received three Missionary Deferments while he was in England, America’s working class fought the wars. Clinton dodged the draft by fleeing to an Ivy League college. How ironic that America’s slimiest cowards can buy their way into the highest office in America and use that power to initiate war for profit; after refusing to go to war.

The war in Iraq was about oil and was conceived in the energy meetings with Dick Cheney, Condoleezza Rice, and leaders of the energy industry, including Ken Lay of Enron, long before the attack on 9-11. Efforts to expose this unholy alliance have been thwarted by war criminals Dick Cheney and George Bush, claiming Executive Privilege. Bush, Cheney, and Donald Rumsfeld lied about WMDs, intelligence reports submitted by the CIA, and Iraq’s involvement with Al Qaida. Those three “asses of evil” went on to denigrate the service of veterans and shame our nation by legitimizing the use of torture. They will never be held accountable for violating the Geneva Conventions and human rights.

To avoid the political pitfall of initiating the draft, Bush, Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld, mobilized the National Guard, pulling families apart and using unqualified and unprepared Americans from main street America. Many have returned home to joblessness, their families separated, their homes foreclosed on and their lives in total disarray. Tens of thousands returned home missing limbs, their eyesight, and suffering from PTSD.

Business leaders and a cunning media have launched a bogus “hire veterans first” campaign. Tens of thousands of veterans returned home to find the pledge to rehire them, just another mirage. It takes approximately 5 years to process a claim against an employer who violated the right to be rehired. How many veterans can afford to wait years for a job? Veterans can get hired first if they stand in line behind 11,000,000 illegal immigrants, H1 visa workers, or they are willing to relocate to some third world rat hole.

From 2005 to 2011, 49,000 veterans have committed suicide, 150,000 are homeless with an estimated 1,000,000 on the brink of ending up on the streets. Many more have taken their lives and become homeless since 2011. New studies reveal a conservatively estimated veteran suicide every 56 minutes or approximately 22 per day. Hey; what the hell! We gave them a parade, a holiday, and a few media circuses.

The cost of corporate wars is much greater than the hundreds of billions spent in Iraq and Afghanistan that crushed the American economy. The real costs are to the lives of returning veterans who served a nation unwilling to accept responsibility for their care. Thousands of veterans receive care from charities set up to care for them while right wing politicians scour the planet for tax breaks for the wealthy through budget cuts in services to our veterans and the working class.

The war on workers has taken an enormous toll as well. More than 100,000 workers die each year from injuries or occupational illness due to exposure in the workplace. Thousands more Americans die from exposure to pollution and harmful chemicals in our environment.

It is absolutely insane for the elite and their political prostitutes [Republican and Democrats] to advocate dismantling all the federal and state agencies that protect workers and the environment. In the last Republican primary Governor Goofy, Rick Perry TX., wanted to eliminate three federal agencies but couldn’t remember them. He is followed by the antics of Louie Ghomert Pyle, TX. It must be the water in Texas.

Dividing Americans by race, gender, age, ethnicity, and income are extremely effective in manipulating the control not only this nation, but the economic interests of the rich and devious world-wide. Never since the Civil War, has this nation been more divided. Advancing poverty, promoting hunger, and forcing economic hardship on “We the People” guarantees maximum profits, but more importantly, crushes any resistance to the status quo.
America’s elite, including America’s first black President, are embarking on another trade agreement, the Trans-Pacific Partnership [TPP]. The TPP will rob our economy of millions of jobs, drive down wages and lose much needed revenue to fund government. TPP provisions attack American sovereignty and deny ordinary Americans the means to seek remedy for damages created by foreign investors. TPP is another tool for transferring the wealth.
Normalizing relations with Cuba is another step based on the same agenda. It is about trade, exploitable labor and transferring income from American workers to the top 5%. There will be mass Cuban immigration to the US, both legal and illegal as the wily Castros will empty their prisons just like Mexico did. Normalization is a step in the right direction but only if we enforce our immigration laws and protect the rights of those who legally come to America from exploitation and human rights violations.

All levels of government have and will continue to use imminent domain to seize the property of working Americans along with billions of our tax dollars, in the name of economic development. Seizures are quietly occurring all over the US; many for foreign investors, while the media turns a blind eye. With all the pro-Keystone pipeline coverage, not one mainstream media outlet has bothered to mention the seizure of farmland in affected states or treaty violations with the Ogallala Sioux Indians. Seizures are benefitting foreign companies shipping oil to another foreign country.

The current immigration bill is the brainchild of the US Chamber of Commerce who spends tens of millions lobbying for corporate interests, against American workers, and to influence elections against the will of most Americans. The Chamber, its affiliates, and huge numbers of associations representing powerful corporate interests, are the biggest threats to democracy in America.

Coupled with the most corrupt Supreme Court in history and nearly every major news organization, the class war in American is almost won by America’s greediest anti-American forces. The Immigration Reform Bill has no humanitarian agenda and is designed to legally provide exploitable labor and drive down the economy of American workers. Immigrants, both legal and illegal, currently have no government protection from greedy and callous employers. This new immigration bill will further exacerbate the horrific labor and human rights violations occurring everyday in America and guarantees poverty for all working Americans.

I have chronicled only a small portion of real American history, but you won’t see it on CNN, ABC or Fox news and it won’t be taught in our schools. You occasionally hear about the shrinking middle class, but even there the message is deceiving. The middle class is in reality, Doctors, Lawyers, Small business owners, corporate professionals and other thieves.

More than 50,000,000 Americans are living below the poverty line and are part of the 85% that make up the working class. Most working Americans have not had a raise since 1979 after adjustments for inflation and because of downsizing and out-sourcing; millions have been thrown into poverty.

Most of us, according to government statistics, have never been middle class and never will be. It is a media driven urban myth that a lot of working class Americans errantly choose to believe. The middle class isn’t shrinking, but the working class is, with millions of workers forced into poverty, joblessness and debt. These dynamics are essential weapons in America’s class warfare.

For Michael Brown, Tamir Rice, Eric Garner, and hundreds more victims of police violence who die each year at the hands of militarized police, the cost of corporate control is staggering. Denying Americans, black and white, the right to vote, illegal spying on Americans, illegal searches and seizures, to the economic terrorism inflicted on working Americans, it is all part of the class warfare gripping our nation.

The capitalist system has reached its inevitable conclusion; Corporate Fascism. With the “Corporation” firmly in control of the legislative process, the judicial system, the Executive branch, and the media, the only remedy available to “we the people” is mass mobilization, demonstrations, and shutting down the wheels of commerce.

Socialism is not the answer nor is communism, but real democracy based on the will of the majority of Americans; America’s working class. If we are to save and cherish the values of those who crafted our constitution with the hope of a government of the people, by the people, and for the people, there must be a mass non-violent mobilization. Mobilize in the streets to reclaim our America; our democracy. The American dream must overcome the corporate nightmare!

To save America, coalitions must be built. It will take more than the “Occupy” movement, “Moral Monday” and the demonstrations on the deaths from police violence. The NAACP must step up after years of stagnation and resting on the sacrifice of those who gave them a leg up. NAACP leadership must park their BMWs, stop rubbing elbows with the elite and hold their galas in the neighborhoods instead of the ballroom at the Holiday Inn.

Labor leaders in the AFL-CIO need to come out of hiding behind lifestyles reserved for the rich and devious, and mobilize millions of workers in the streets. The current leaders who won election promising a New Voice for workers need to overcome the laryngitis they’ve suffered for more than two decades. Stop cooperating with the bastards of the boardroom and use the power of many to reclaim democracy, lift up workers and the poor. It’s their job! Their silence on so many deeply important issues is embarrassing. Lead or step aside!

Religious leaders need to rid themselves of tunnel vision and focus on the suffering of millions of Americans and rid this nation of economic terrorism. Our nation’s greatness is about more than abortion, gay rights, being a good servant and prayer in schools. America needs a revival where our religious leaders preach the gospel of sharing and caring for the less fortunate rather than extolling the “virtues” of capitalism. If Jesus came back today and divided the fish and the bread, most modern day religious leaders would not recognize him and they would call him a Socialist. Whether you believe or not, many churches are great allies for social justice, but the majority are lost.

The world’s resources that sustain life are depleting. Fresh water, clean breathable air, food, and fuel that protect us from the elements are under the control of the corporation. Across America cities have made the horrible mistake of privatizing water treatment. Ground water is being poisoned through fracking and drilling tens of thousands of gas and oil wells. Federal lands are being raped under current energy policies and the air we breathe becoming more toxic every day. Polar ice caps are melting at an alarming rate while those who profit from poisoning our planet deny, deny, deny.

Those who deny global warming know it is real, but will not give up the massive profits that insure their control of what precious resources remain. The world’s resources belong to them. If you think the movie “Hunger Games” is pure fiction, we thought Buck Rogers and Flash Gordon and space travel was impossible when I grew up in the coal fields in central Illinois.
America’s owners have the military, the National Guard, local, state and federal police agencies armed to the teeth, but we have the many with the power to peacefully reclaim our democracy; our America.
Mike Griffin
Decatur IL
mgriffwzef [at] comcast.net