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If you don't support AES countries like China or especially the DPRK, you aren't a leftist
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The reports are damning, but the conclusion is inevitable.
Maude C. | Red Phoenix correspondent | Ohio–
“Sofia,” a 17-year-old tobacco worker, in a tobacco field in North Carolina. She started working at 13, and she said her mother was the only one who taught her how to protect herself in the fields: “None of my bosses or contractors or crew leaders have ever told us anything about pesticides and how we can protect ourselves from them.” (Benedict Evans/Human Rights Watch)
Across the United States, child labor violations have risen fivefold in a decade. Over 5,000 minors were illegally employed last year alone. Yet instead of strengthening protections, Republican and Democrat lawmakers, the faithful servants of American capital, are systematically erasing them. They are slashing minimum wages for teenagers, eliminating safety databases, and legalizing hazardous work for children.
Let us not mince words: this is not a policy failure. It is the logic of capitalism made manifest.
Capitalism treats human beings as commodities. Its sole motive is profit. When employers can pay a child less for the same work as an adult, they will. When they can evade oversight, they do. According to Marx, capital is “dead labor, which, vampire-like, only lives by sucking living labor.” Today, that vampire has set its sights on our children. The elimination of work permits in Indiana, the sub-minimum “training wage” in Nebraska, the removal of hazardous occupation lists in West Virginia. These are not isolated mistakes. They are a coordinated class offensive designed to create a cheaper, more vulnerable workforce.
The defenders of this system claim it is about “opportunity.” But as Lenin understood, “Freedom in capitalist society always remains about the same as it was in ancient Greek republics: freedom for the slave-owners.”This is freedom for corporations to exploit, freedom for slaughterhouses to hire children, freedom for fast-food chains to work ten-year-olds past midnight.
The Biden administration’s meager enforcement efforts were met with a 97% decline in wage and hour cases under the subsequent administration. The state, regardless of which faction holds office, ultimately serves the interests of capital. When those interested require the exploitation of youth, the state clears the path.
We must not stop our struggle after achieving vital reforms. We need to continue to raise our demands until we establish a system that places human need above private profit. We need socialism.
The working class must call to action the following:
- The immediate repeal of all state-level rollbacks to child labor protections and the establishment of a uniform, higher federal minimum wage with no sub-minimum “training” exceptions.
- The codification of federal standards that supersede these regressive state laws, ensuring that no child in any state can be legally employed in hazardous conditions or for exploitative wages.
Under socialism, the labor of every person, young or old, would be valued not by its cost to an employer, but by its contribution to society. As Stalin stated, “In capitalist society, labor is a burden. In socialist society, labor is a matter of honor, a matter of glory, a matter of valor and heroism” (Report of the Central Committee to the 16th Congress of the Communist Party, 1930). We do not need “training wages” that teach young workers their labor is worth less. We need education, dignified work, and the guarantee that no child is forced into a factory to support a family.
The fight against child labor exploitation is inseparable from the fight against capitalism itself. Every hour that a teenager works for sub-minimum wage is an hour that weakens the wages of all workers. For every hazardous job a child is forced to take, more poor kids will be driven into the meat-grinder of capitalism to take menial positions that are dangerous, just as they did in the early 20th century.
But a challenge against the capitalist state is only a plea. True protection will not come from the same legislature that passes these bills. It will come from us, from the organized power of the working class. As Dolores Huerta so clearly stated, “People have the power to solve problems in their own communities. People shouldn’t wait for the power to try and help them.”
The fight against the exploitation of children is a fight for the entire working class. It is a fight against the principle that profit is more important than life. Let the ruling class hear our response. We will not accept a society that treats our children as commodities. We will organize. We will resist. And we will build a movement capable of not just restoring these protections, but of establishing a system where the labor of every person, young or old, is valued for its contribution to human need, not its price on the open market.
The time for half-measures is over. The safety of our youth demands a full-scale defense of the working class. We must be prepared to wage that struggle, not with appeals to the better nature of our exploiters, but with the unshakeable unity of the oppressed.
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cross-posted from: https://hexbear.net/post/8560405
By https://x.com/AymZerrouki/status/2057061087615287738
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cross-posted from: https://hexbear.net/post/8563702
cross-posted from: https://news.abolish.capital/post/51209
Georgia is one of only ten states that elects its utility commission — the board that has final say over how much millions of Georgians pay for electricity. The state’s public service commission, or PSC, also has substantial say over how that electricity is made and, because fossil fuel power plants are a leading producer of the greenhouse gases, the PSC’s decisions directly influence Georgia’s climate future.
From 2006 until last year, all five members of the PSC were Republicans. Democrats Peter Hubbard and Alicia Johnson won upset victories and have since made it more difficult for Georgia Power to have their decisions rubber stamped. Those elections have had ripple effects in other utility commission races around the country: In Arizona, national activist groups on both sides of the aisle have gotten involved in the race; Alabama lawmakers overhauled their commission in an attempt to shield it from the chance that voters will oust its Republicans.
On Tuesday, Georgia held party primaries for two seats on the PSC. November’s elections, then, will be the Democrats’ next chance to win a majority presence on the commission, and could lead to more renewable energy in Georgia and more scrutiny of Georgia Power’s ongoing expansion plans.
In the District Five race, Democrat Shelia Edwards defeated opponents Craig Cupid and Angelia Pressley. Republicans Bobby Mehan and Josh Tolbert will square off in a runoff on June 16. Libertarian Thomas Blooming is also running for the seat.
“I’m running to be that third vote that’s gonna help them change the trajectory of the PSC,” said Edwards in an interview before the primary. “And to bring some balance to something that’s been completely imbalanced for years.”
Edwards, Mehan, and Tolbert have all said they support clean energy, but the Republican candidates clarified they don’t support any sort of renewable energy mandate.
“I do not think there is a place on the commission for advocates,” said Tolbert. “It’s not a legislative body. It doesn’t set particular policies. Its job is to ensure that Georgians have reliable, affordable electricity.”
Tolbert’s main pitch to voters has been his technical expertise as an engineer with experience working in multiple types of power plants. Mehan, meanwhile, has said his business experience means he can find innovative solutions to problems. He described himself as a pro-gas, pro-nuclear, “all the above energy guy.”
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Control of the commission does not hinge only on Edwards’s race, however. It will also come down to whether Hubbard can retain his seat. The race for District Three could come down to a rematch between Hubbard and Fitz Johnson. Last year’s election in District Three, which Hubbard won, was only for a one-year term. Hubbard ran unopposed in the Democratic primary, but the Republican race was too close to call as of Wednesday afternoon. Johnson leads his primary opponent Brandon Martin by less than 3,000 votes. The results fall within the margin for a recount should Martin request one. Martin did not reply to requests for comment on the result. The winner will serve a full, six-year term.
Unlike most candidates from both parties in the primary, Johnson says the commission has done enough to protect ordinary ratepayers from the costs of serving data centers — a hot-button issue as more data centers flock to the state and Georgia Power spends billions of dollars on new resources to serve them.
The commission’s votes on that utility expansion help drive home the repercussions of this election.
In December, after the two Democrats’ resounding election victory but before the new commissioners took their seats, the five Republican commissioners voted unanimously to approve Georgia Power’s proposal to add 10 gigawatts of energy, most of it made with natural gas.
Earlier this year, advocates pushed the commission to reconsider some of the new energy, arguing that the plan would generate more electricity than the utility’s own forecast calls for. The commission, they argued, overstepped its legal authority. The new Democratic commissioners voted to reopen the issue, but the effort failed — with all three Republicans voting against it.
This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Georgia’s PSC elections have become a referendum on energy prices on May 21, 2026.
From Grist via This RSS Feed.
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