Celebrating Working-Class Victories in 2023

By Sarah Anderson

From the picket lines to state houses to the White House, champions in the fight against inequality landed huge wins.

Looking for something positive to celebrate on New Year’s Eve? Consider lifting a glass to the hardworking people behind these inspiring victories of 2023.

1. The ‘Year of the Strike’

More than half a million American workers walked off the job this year. In October, companies lost more workdays to strikes than in any month during the past 40 years.

Big 3 auto workers, Hollywood writers and actors, Las Vegas and Los Angeles hotel staff, and Kaiser Permanente health care employees were among those who used strikes to score big bargaining table wins. For UPS drivers, the mere threat of a Teamsters strike was enough to secure historic wage hikes and safety protections.

After renewing contracts with Ford, GM, Stellantis, and UPS, the UAW and the Teamsters doubled down on efforts to organize the unorganized. The Teamsters picketed outside 25 Amazon warehouses, demanding a fair contract for unionized drivers at a California-based delivery service for the notoriously anti-union retailer. The UAW set their sights on non-unionized car companies, causing so much indigestion among Nissan, Toyota, Honda, and Hyundai executives that they immediately hiked wages for their U.S. employees.

‘That was my home’

Homeless residents face uncertainty as encampment sweeps gain steam.

SAN DIEGO — Tracy Bennett has packed up and moved her tent and possessions so many times when the city periodically clears her sidewalk encampment, she jokes she could run her own moving company.

The black canopy that she’s wrapped in blue tarps and filled with blankets, food, a coloring book and the rest of her belongings, stood on a sidewalk on a Friday morning this month, a few blocks from the Gaslamp Quarter, a downtown San Diego nightlife hub. Her shelter had a bit of holiday flair: On the corner of her tent, near its entrance, sat a stuffed elf and two red stockings tied in green and red tinsel.

Meet the Companies Profiting From Israel's War on Gaza

By Jessica Corbett

"As global resistance to war and apartheid grows, it is important that the public know exactly who is making this violence possible."

As of Wednesday, a U.S.-based Quaker group's online database listed over two dozen companies profiting from the bloodshed in the Gaza Strip, where Israeli forces have spent the last 10 weeks waging what experts call a "genocidal" war that sent defense stocks soaring.

Backed by $3.8 billion in annual military aid from the United States, Israel declared war on October 7 in retaliation for a Hamas-led attack that killed over 1,100 people. 

Is the death penalty dying? Sentences, executions remain low

 The number of executions in 2023 rose to 24 from 18 a year earlier. Texas (8) and Florida (6) made up 60% of the total.

The number of states imposing or performing executions in 2023 was at a 20-year low, according to the Death Penalty Information Center, a group that complies such statistics.

Polling indicates that public skepticism of the fairness and propriety of the death penalty continues to increase. And increasingly, bipartisan coalitions in legislatures are pushing to abolish it in states that haven’t already, the year-end report said.

The U.S. Supreme Court is one institution, however, that seems to be out of step with the growing march against state-sponsored killing.

He’s on Louisiana’s death row, his attorneys say, for a crime that didn’t happen

A Netflix documentary calls into question the methods of forensic examiners in the case

BY: GREG LAROSE

“Definitely, the system in Louisiana is broken.”

That’s the frank assessment of Matilda Carbia with the Mwalimu Center for Justice, one of the organizations representing Jimmie “Chris” Duncan. He’s among more than 50 people incarcerated on death row for whom Gov. John Bel Edwards has used his clemency power to push for state parole board reviews in order to switch their execution sentences to life in prison. 

Critics of the death penalty point out 11 people facing the electric chair or lethal injection have been exonerated or had their convictions reversed in Louisiana since it reinstated capital punishment in 1976. Over that same period, 28 people have been executed. 

Spending on health care in US rises to $4.5 trillion in 2022; a return to pre-pandemic growth rates

BY: ERIK GUNN AND CASEY QUINLAN 

After skyrocketing in the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic and then tempering almost as dramatically a year later, health care spending in the U.S rose just over 4% in 2022, hitting $4.5 trillion, the federal government announced Wednesday.

The annual growth in the nation’s health care spending appears to be returning to pre-pandemic trends, according to a new report from analysts at the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS). The report was published online Wednesday in the journal Health Affairs.

In the four years before 2020, the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic, health care spending rose 4.2% to 4.6% a year, according to CMS.

While last year’s increase was higher than the 3.2% growth in health spending in 2021, it was less than half the 10.6% growth of health spending in 2020.

Tlaib Says $900 Billion Military Budget ‘Impossible to Justify’

OLIVIA ROSANE 

"While Americans struggle to access clean water, basic healthcare, and enough food for their kids, Republicans and corporate Democrats continue to waste our tax dollars on endless war," she said.

As the House of Representatives passed the National Defense Authorization Act on Thursday, Democratic Rep. Rashida Tlaib of Michigan criticized her colleagues for earmarking a record $886.3 billion for the U.S. military while many of their constituents cannot meet basic needs.

"This budget is impossible to justify when our neighbors are struggling to put food on the table, fighting to keep a roof over their heads, and rationing their medication," Tlaib said in a statement.

Watermelon Symbolism for African-Americans and Palestinians

There is a story behind the watermelon symbolism that reflects the struggles for freedom and fights against oppression for African-Americans and Palestinians.

DAVID A. LOVE

DEC 13, 2023

It is possible that watermelons are both a symbol of racism for Black people in America and a symbol of solidarity and empowerment for Palestinians. There is a story behind this.

It all came to light recently when the New York City chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America posted a flier targeting Rep. Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., and calling for a ceasefire in Gaza. The flier featured a drawing of a watermelon with the message: “Make art outside Hakeem Jeffries’ Office.” The flier of a watermelon aimed at a Black lawmaker angered some in the Black community, and understandably so.

Corporate Media Reluctant to Report on UAW Victory From Workers’ Perspective

PAIGE OAMEK

After a historic six weeks on strike, United Auto Workers members ratified new contracts with Ford, General Motors and Stellantis (which owns Dodge/Chrysler). Workers are set to receive 25% raises over the life of their contract, cost-of-living allowances tied to inflation, the right to strike over plant closures, and more benefits in their new contract.

But outlets like the Wall Street Journal (10/30/23), New York Times (11/9/23) and Bloomberg (11/9/23), still struggling to report on labor from a workers’ perspective (see FAIR.org, 9/26/23), instead focused on the economy at large or predictive reporting. Throughout the strike, media seemed interested in any story—how the union will wreck the economy, Musk’s potential countermoves, why the EV transition is doomed—that didn’t focus on bread-and-butter gains for union members.

Pro-Israel PACs poised to spend big to unseat progressive members of Congress in 2024 election cycle

By Mat Schumer

A November house vote to censure Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.) was the latest effort to counter members of the progressive “squad” by politicians backed by the American Israel Public Affairs Committee. The squad, a group of eight lawmakers, mainly women, has been critical of Israeli policy and is calling for a ceasefire in Gaza.

Already one of the most influential political organizations in Washington, AIPAC created a political action committee in 2021, enabling the organization to contribute directly to political campaigns. 

Rep. Rich McCormick (R-Ga.), who introduced the resolution to censure Tlaib for allegedly using anti-semitic rhetoric when speaking out against U.S. aid to Israel, received $10,000 from AIPAC in the 2022 election cycle.

AIPAC also donated to the campaigns of all but one of the twelve Republican cosponsors of the censure.