Companies that break strikes for profit? My God. This is right up there with Blackwater for filthiness.

WSWS writers should double down on commercial strike-breaking companies and their principals and expose them in all their reeking glory.

My brother and I took some digital photos of the striking Rhode Island Hospital workers late this afternoon. How can I send them to the World Socialist Web Site ? The picket line was high spirited with signs like " Patients Before Profits ".

Hello Ron, The best thing is to send the pics to editor@wsws.org. Mark it "Pics for Jerry White"

As a resident citizen of Rhode Island I greatly appreciate this article and will forward it to my old friend whose registered nurse wife is on that picket line. I will try to join it this afternoon.

" Liberal " Democrat Governor Gina Raimondo , a Hillary pal , could only say : " Let the cooler heads prevail ". You can be sure that she was not talking to Dr. Nicole Alexander Scott, Director of RIDOH .

A letter to the editor in the Providence Journal today ( ON-LINE ) by Christine Jennings of Cranston begins :

"The July 20 news story “As strike looms, planning increases” might give readers the impression that nurses at Rhode Island hospitals care about only themselves. Bolstering this idea, a full page advertisement lists the compensation provided by the hospitals. There is surely more to the story. "

Yes , you can be sure that those striking workers have an old and vicious enemy in the editorial board of the Providence Journal. I recall numerous strikes when the newspaper made itself the official voice of the ruling class of Rhode Island. To be sure , they have decimated their own work force in recent years. And there were ugly strikes there in the past.
The short letter that I sent the PROJO supporting the Rhode Island Hospital nurses is not likely to be published. It would upset the fawned upon " Rhode Island Center for Freedom and Prosperity " - more " socialist propaganda " from an old commie.

I assume you saw the July 21 Providence Journal editorial conflating free markets with free speech and bemoaning the perception among young people "that capitalism is a brutal system that helps the rich feast on the poor, disdains compassion, creates enormous inequalities in wealth and oppresses minorities."

One reason , I am sure, the Providence Journal , dropped COMMENTS ( " Join the Conversation " ) was that pernicious " socialism " - was winning the war of ideas. Again and again you will see capitalism extolled by smugly comfortable people with a very atrophied social conscience . Deep down they think the world in which they are on top simple must be the best of all possible words. Only sinister trouble makers will deny it ?
The old " beatnik " in me. observed long ago that " getting ahead " in
capitalist America comes very close to making a pack with the devil. The cult of CONFORMITY turns decent people into soul dead idiots.
The Ginsberg poem " Howl " summed it up. Less poetic but quite eloquent and inspiring " The Communist Manifesto " ( read Leon Trotsky's essay " The 90th Anniversary of the Communist Manifesto " ) .
[ Since the Providence Journal went up in price to $2:50 and down in quality I have not been a daily reader . . Thanks for the reference . I will check that July 21 editorial on line. ]
ADD :
Copyleft: Leon Trotsky Internet Archive (www.marxists.org) 2003. Permission is granted to copy and/or distribute this document under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License.

LEON TROTSKY SPEAKS

[It is hard to believe that the centennial of the Manifesto of the Communist Party is only ten years away! This pamphlet, displaying greater genius than any other in world literature, astounds us even today by its freshness. Its most important sections appear to have been written yesterday. Assuredly, the young authors (Marx was twenty-nine, Engels twenty-seven) were able to look further into the future than anyone before them, and perhaps than anyone since them.

As early as their joint preface to the edition of 1872, Marx and Engels declared that despite the fact that certain secondary passages in the Manifesto were antiquated, they felt that they no longer had any right to alter the original text inasmuch as the Manifesto had already become a historical document, during the intervening period of twenty-five years. Sixty-five additional years have elapsed since that time. Isolated passages in the Manifesto have receded still further into the past. We shall try to establish succinctly in this preface both those ideas in the Manifesto which retain their full force today and those which require important alteration or amplification.

1. The materialist conception of history, discovered by Marx only a short while before and applied with consummate skill in the Manifesto, has completely withstood the test of events and the blows of hostile criticism. It constitutes today one of the most precious instruments of human thought. All other interpretations of the historical process have lost all scientific meaning. We can state with certainty that it is impossible in our time to be not only a revolutionary militant but even a literate observer in politics without assimilating the materialist interpretation of history.]