July 1 was the deadline for state plans to implement this law, including it requirements for its slave-labor program known as worfare. The August 22nd cut-off of food stamps for millions of people is approaching fast. Welfare "reform" is war. As summer passes and fall arrives, casualties on our side-the poor, the unemployed, the working-poor, the homeless, non-citizen immigrants, and all the oppressed of our society.
 
    This move set forth by the ruling class brings an unprecedented threat to the oppressed and working-class of our nation. People can starve! The law's political thrust  was aimed at  welfare recipients-forcing them onto workfare to drive down wages and weaken unions. Some $28 billion is being cut from food stamps alone, which adds up to some 24 billion pounds of food per year being taken from the working-class and oppressed. The grim specter of hunger looms.
 
    The capitalists and their servants are in for a big surprise if they expect the working-class and the oppressed people to submit quietly. Without struggle, there is no progress!
 

War On Immigrants

    The "Anti-Welfare" measures are starting to hit home for many nation-wide. The "Anti-Welfare" law signed by the Clinton administration tool effect April 1st, 1997. The first measure handed down were the "anti-immigrant" measures This racist law forces many immigrants who receive welfare to go to work for subminium wages. The forms work the "anti-welfare" mentions are "workfare" and "Volunteer" work.
 
    Immigrant labor has been the backbone to production and services on the West Coast. Immigrant workers contribute billions of dollars to the economy. Immigrants from all nationalities who have been vastly super-exploited are among the deeply working poor working class. Immigrants have been stuck at the bottom performing the hardest labor at lowest-paid jobs. Latinos' and other immigrants now face deeper cuts and an orchestrated campaign of bigotry and racism from Congress and the capitalist media.
 
    With the nations fast-changing demographics are being met with desperate racist campaigns organized around such reactionary and unconstitutional initiatives such as Proposition 187 and Proposition 209, against immigrants and affirmative action. Proposition 209 was created to end all California state-government related affirmative action programs.
 
    The underlying driving force for these attacks on immigrants, and on the black communities, as well as other poor working-class, and oppressed, is the thirst for cheap flexible labor. The capitalist's mount unending racist against oppressed like Latinos, blacks, women, working-class, homeless, lesbians/gay men,  and all other oppressed of our society. The idea of having cheap labor is to exploited the exploited further, so they can pay someone less for the same job. This part of the law denies the basic social rights to those who have toiled the hardest at the lowest wages. This is the big part of the motivation to push campaigns like Proposition 209 and Proposition 187.
 

Child Poverty and Capitalism

    Children are among the poorest group of people in the United States. One of four children under the age of six now lives in poverty, and one out of every two African American children. Thirty percent of all Latino children live beneath the poverty line. Two out of every three families with poor children had at least one full-time worker during the year.
 
    Why are so many children poor? One obvious reason is government policy. Government policy has been to slash and destroy what has been labeled the welfare state by right-wing propagandists. Since the cost of welfare, and AFDC accounts for less than two-cents of every tax dollar spent, the notion that a huge welfare state exists is a conservative fantasy.
 
    An estimated 1.5 million children will be thrown off welfare, that's a half a million more than originally expected. Many more children will be sleeping on grates, sidewalks, and park benches in the United States. Eight million families mostly poor working-class will lose an average $1,300 per year largely as a result of food stamps cuts. Other provisions of the welfare law cuts off monthly SSI for an estimated 250,000 families with disabled children.
 
    With these kind of cut backs millions of children face a staggering health care crisis in the United States. What is the nature of their crisis? Children are not entitled to go to a doctor if they don't have the money to pay exorbitant doctor and hospital bills. Health care is a right, not a privilege! Yet as many as 10 million children have no health care. The number of children lacking private health care coverage, health care has a risen by an average of 1.2 million per year. This averages out almost 3,300 children a day going without health care, because the working class are expected to pay more and get less.
 
    Parents are getting poorer, children are getting poorer. The income of the wealthiest 5 percent of the population increased by 43 percent, during the same period the poorest 20 percent of households experienced a drop in real income from $8,473 in 1979 to $8,350 in 1995. Hourly wages for young workers in their child-bearing years--20 to 29 years old are 20 percent less than what their parents made in 1973.
 

War on Workers

    The welfare laws sole purpose is to lower wages, and thus make more profits for the owning class. The laws centerpiece
is that its requirement for 25 percent of all current welfare recipients be working at a paying job or "workfare" by the end of this year. By 2002 this figure must be at 50 percent.

    Regardless of who gets the job, wages are held down. The Clinton administration and the capitalists knew this would happen. In hopes the working-class and the oppressed would pit against each other. We won't let it happen! The problem facing us is the ruling class as well as capitalism. Capitalism is an economic system that allows few to monopolize on the wealth created by many.

    In 1848 Karl Marx explained in the "Communist Manifesto." One of the fundamental features of capitalism; that society's wealth becomes more sharply polarized even when the economy is growing. The rich get richer and the poor get poorer.

    Capitalism is an aggressive, expansive system, that constantly seeks new markets, new labor to exploit, and new resources to eat up. It's a system that breeds competition and war! Just like every strike is a struggle against capital, every sit-in for civil rights takes on the vested interests of capital. Every effort to overcome racism, sexism, and bigotry threaten the reactionary ideology underlying the system.

     If the working-class don't take a stand soon, we will soon all become impoverished by capitalism, as well as the right-wing will put forth a new variety of racist eugenics this time by starvation. The standard of living will decrease as the cuts take affect for poor working class, and other oppressed masses.
 

Workfare...

    Workfare, is the first step in forcing welfare recipients into going back to work for subminimum wages. This is one of the major goals of the welfare reform bill. Representative E. Clay Shaw, Jr. says "What we're looking for is an attitudinal change across the entire country... The idea is not to make welfare a way of life, but simply a short-term bridge over rough times." Their motto being "Earn a paycheck, not a welfare check." The truth: They are trying exploit the oppressed masses into thinking that they are going earn a big check from "workfare", you are actually earning much less than a "normal" worker. The whole point of having "workfare" is the create a third-class slave labor force to bust union's (scab workers) so the capitalist can make more profit off workers and pay less. Being that workfare worker will make one-seventh less than that of what they are paying another worker. This laws are aimed at the poorest, will  have the ripple effect of destabilizing the work force.
 
    Another scam the right-wing is put forward is to get welfare recipients to "volunteer" their labor to patch up the "gaping holes" in the Social Services, this what the capitalists would like you to think. The truth: "volunteerism" is being used as a way to justify the governments neglect of the poor in areas of health care, affordable housing, food, and other necessities. This a way to manipulate kindness and humanitarian instincts of people in order to cut government funded programs like AFDC, food stamps, W.I.C, and welfare altogether.
 

Warfare State

    There does exist a very real warfare state that has sucked up close to $4 trillion in weapons production over the last 20 years. This warfare state exists in peace time as well as war time. While 100,000 children are homeless, tens of billions of dollars are poured into military contractors like Lockheed, Boeing, as well as many others, for weapons of mass destruction. Under Capitalism it is profitable to make weapons of destruction and less profitable to house poor children and their families.
 

Cutbacks...

     Each state will get a lump some of money to operate it own program of assistance, with no federal requirement to provide any at all. Poorer states will get less money. States may be given cash rewards for lowering welfare recipients' birth rates. States will be able to refuse to provide additional benefits for women who have children. This means billions of dollars to the corporate bourgeoisie.
 

Stop the Attacks!!

 As the law's brutal components fall into place, and it's wide-ranging effects become more apparent. More and more people must stand up and build a social movement that will fight to stop these attacks coming from the right-wing. Building a movement much like those of the 1930s where workers fought to have some kind of income when they were out of work. All these programs came about because millions of workers were mobilizing.
 
    The wave of militant strikes, plant occuaptions, union organizing, street demoinstrations, and so on scared the hell out of the ruling class. People fought the police  and died in the streets to demand their right as workers. A social movement played a big role in it.
 
    Two words are key to any plan of action: Unity and Struggle, We must unit all the specially oppressed to build a movement of power stoped this racist, biased attacks on the wworking-class and oppressed.

    The relation of repression, broken promises, discrimination, ghettoization, is leading to general desperation. Children as well as many others are suffering the oppression and the victimization of these wide-spread cutbacks, the right-wing and the rulign class are hoping there is no opportunity or ability to fight back. Oh do they have a suprise coming!! We must confront this form of oppression and smash it! We must form an alliance of working-class, women, children, black, lesbian/gay men.Latino, and all other oppressed of our society to wage a war on the capitalists. We must form a new, militant, integrated Civil Right Movement. We will not continue to be the victims of right-wing oppression.

    We must demand that the "anti-welfare be overturned,as well of its cuts suspended, and instead real jobs at living wages be provided for all. We must awaken the political action of the working-class and oppressed, and introduce them to mass, militant struggle to vanquish the system that visits so mush unecessary pain and suffering on millions, while it allows a tiny fraction of corporate bankers, and barons to live in opulence. We will not let the rich get richer!!

    Why should be work for free? When will the capitalists volunteer to do something that will help?!? Like reverse the lay-off's, and give every worker a job with union wages, or decent, affordable housing. NEVER!! This is why it is crucial that we build a movement to turn  this injustice on us all around., We are not slaves to the system, like the right-wing think, nor will we stand for "Wage Slavery"! In this struggle we set out to press forward to win a higher standard of living for all workering-class, and opressed, and Overturn the "anti-welfare" law!!