The residents of East Palestine, Ohio, and of communities all along the Ohio River basin, for hundreds of miles around, are the latest victims in the war between the working classes and the bosses — in this case, mostly big financier companies like Vanguard Group, Blackrock, and JPMorgan Chase. Although the people and ecosystems of Ohio were exposed to these toxins by the careless greed of Norfolk Southern, this disaster doesn’t have just one father. No, to get to this place, Norfolk Southern has lobbied and bribed its pet politicians, has spent $450,000 on Democratic politicians in just 2022 alone, and spends every year over $1.5 million in lobbying to the Congress. This disaster has been years in the making. Under the administration of President Obama, proposed safety regulations for cars like those being transported by the Norfolk Southern death train were scuttled by Norfolk Southern dollars. Although a train leaking vinyl chloride had derailed in New Jersey in 2012, Obama’s administration took the rail company bribe and let the deadly transport continue.

Under the Trump administration, the rail companies went farther — they pushed the government to withdraw regulations requiring better braking systems on all cars carrying hazardous waste.

The final blow came this last fall and winter when President Biden and the capitalist-controlled Congress helped the rail giants crush a railway worker’s strike. One of the chief demands of that strike was an increase in staffing on the sometimes miles-long cargo trains that the rail companies send cross-country with dangerously slow braking systems (developed in the late 1800s), without proper hazardous waste warnings, and now with chronically and criminally over-tired workers.

They asked for fourteen sick days. They did not receive fourteen sick days. They did not receive twelve sick days. They did not receive ten sick days. They did not even receive the seven sick days that Democrats hastily tacked on to the contract at the last minute. They did not receive five sick days. They did not receive one sick day. The rail workers have received exactly what they started with: no paid sick leave.

This united, capitalist front of Republican and Democratic politicians is directly responsible for the tragedy in East Palestine. President Biden, President Trump, President Obama, and all the cronies and lackeys in Washington are as responsible for the derailment as if they had dropped a phosgene gas bomb directly on the town of East Palestine.

At 8:54 p.m. on 3 February, along main track 1 in East Palestine, Norfolk Southern’s general merchandise freight 32N derailed, jumping 38 cars from the track and causing a fire. The train was hauling 20 hazardous material cars and 11 of those cars derailed. Train 32N was 150 cars long. “The longer the train, the heavier the train, the more wear and tear it puts on the actual rail itself, as well as the equipment,” said Jared Cassity, legislative director for the country’s largest rail union, SMART-Transportation Division. “We’re seeing more wear and tear. We’re seeing more unintended train separations, which is where the train breaks apart.”

How many rail workers do the monopolies put on trains that are 150 cars long? Two. Plus one trainee. For transportation magnates, fewer employees means more profits. Not only that, 32N broke down at least once before derailing in East Palestine according to Norfolk Southern employees. It could happen again. It will happen again.

The National Transportation Safety Board promises a full report in a few weeks, but for now all we know is that the government claimed the fire threatened the pressurized vinyl chloride cars. When subject to fire, a pressurized vinyl chloride car is dangerous to a range of at least a half mile, according to the National Library of Medicine, and the only way to put the fire out is to flood the entire area and cool the containers.

Sittig’s Handbook of Toxic and Hazardous Chemical Carcinogens contains this ominous warning: “The only respirators recommended for firefighting are self-contained breathing apparatuses that have full face-pieces and are operated in a pressure-demand or other positive-pressure mode.”

Since the derailment, thousands of local animals have died, poisoned by the release of the hazardous chemicals. In the few days after 3 February alone, before the controlled release began, 3,500 dead fish were found in local waterways. It is almost certain at this point that, despite government protests to the contrary, the Ohio River has been contaminated.

Andrea Belden was staying with her boyfriend and their two cats at his grandparents’ East Palestine house when the train jumped the tracks. Although they fled immediately when the evacuations were announced, her 2-year old cat Leo fell ill. Leo, who had been given a clean bill of health two weeks prior at his vet appointment, was sent to the emergency vet and Andrea was told that “his heart was enlarged, he had fluid around his heart and in his lungs, [and] his blood pressure was severely low.” The vet told her it was heart disease triggered by vinyl chloride poisoning. When she wrote to Norfolk Southern asking for help to pay the $11,000 and mounting veterinarian bills, she was told that she should file a damaged property claim and might get recompense in weeks or months. She couldn’t afford to continue his treatment. Leo died.

All residents of East Palestine within a 1-mile radius of the crash were evacuated on February 6, the day Mike DeWine and Pennsylvania’s Governor Shapiro (a Republican and a Democrat, respectively) decided they were going to vent the vinyl chloride cars. Those who refused to depart were arrested by the East Palestine sheriff’s department and taken out of the zone of death. Despite the danger, Governor DeWine and all state and federal officials involved in the crash gave the all-clear signal for the residents to return home a mere two days later, on 8 February.

In the meantime, the all-empire news has been obsessed with something of little or no moment: Chinese-made weather balloons. The media has been plastered with the announcement of a Chinese balloon shot down over the Atlantic, near South Carolina. The People’s Republic informed U.S. officials that it was an off-course civilian balloon, but the Department of Defense has spent the last two weeks blanketing the news media with stories about a worldwide Chinese spy balloon network. Coverage has been focused almost entirely on the “spy balloon” story which, even if it were true, would be a matter of no moment for most of the residents of the U.S. Empire — unlike the poison-cloud released from the Norfolk Southern train in Ohio.

Only in the past few days has the Norfolk Southern death train been publicized to any degree. On February 8, a reporter was arrested at a press conference given by the Ohio governor and charged with criminal trespass; this is the degree to which the U.S. government wants the people of this empire to see the criminal contempt with which the capitalists treat the working classes. It took until February 15 for the state of Ohio to drop the charges against the arrested reporter, even though he was clearly arrested at a press conference merely for doing his job.

Given the disregard with which the organs of the U.S. state, even those that are supposedly “non-political,” like the Center for Disease Control, have treated the COVID crisis, and given the response of the government to legitimate inquiries about the dangers of the spill, it’s not surprising that the residents of East Palestine are asking questions. At a town hall conference on the 15th, many complained that they still felt sick. The Environmental Protection Agency, although certifying that everything is supposedly safe, has warned that residents shouldn’t vacuum for too long (for fear of disturbing particles and throwing them into the air where they’ll be inhaled) and that they should disinfect and clean surfaces continuously. When the residents at the February 15 town hall asked where the representatives of Norfolk Southern were, they were told that none had chosen to attend because they didn’t feel safe.

In the coming days, Norfolk Southern will try to defend itself. Some of what you’ll hear is even true — train derailments do occur at a fairly regular rate in the U.S. (about 1,000 every year), but disasters of this magnitude are rare. The rail monopolies have completely reorganized their operations to cut out the costs of workers since the start of the COVID pandemic. Precision Scheduling Railroading, the cousin of “just in time” inventory management, was developed by the railroad owners to reduce the number of workers per train — at great savings to the monopolists and at great costs to the people living in the U.S. Empire. Trains are now 30% longer, some miles from the engine to the last car. During COVID, the rail industry has fired 30% of its workforce. Conductors and other workers are required to walk miles from car to car, to work on skeleton crews, and to be responsible for increasingly long trains. Those workers are badly paid, given no time off, and are forced to work while sick if they want to keep their jobs.

This is class warfare. Railway workers, traditionally the most well-organized labor sector in the U.S. Empire, have always stood at the forefront of the working class battle for control over production. Who are the most impacted by lax safety standards, out-of-date brakes, and skeleton crews? Railway workers. Who are most impacted by train derailments? Railway workers, followed closely, in the cases of chemical leaks like this one, by the working class people who live near the rail lines themselves. At every step of the way, railway workers warned of something like this and did whatever they could to combat it — to no avail, as the federal government did its job and sided again and again with the railroad monopolies.

The fight against workers for control over profits, for control over industry regulation, for control over their very lives, is intensifying. It’s no wonder that the monopolists are striking some of their hardest blows at the rail industry, which has stood ahead of most other U.S. production in terms of organized labor. Rail workers are class-conscious. They know it takes a walkout of just a few people to paralyze the entire rail system across the whole country. The rail monopolies are only the forefront of the capitalist response to organization among the working classes. As a comparison, for forcing workers to work in unsafe conditions and causing a chemical explosion, the People’s Republic of China sentenced the owner of a chemical firm in Tianjin to a suspended death sentence. Here in the U.S., executives are almost never held accountable. The fact of the matter is, the rail workers don’t need Norfolk Southern. They don’t need the investors that own the monopolies. They don’t need the capitalist “managers.” In fact, management from the capitalists — really, interference from the investors — merely degrades their ability to work, their ability to keep the people of the U.S. safe as they transport the dangerous chemicals required for the many industrial processes across the country. Without the investors, the monopolists, the industrial capitalists, production would be smoother, faster, cleaner, more democratic, and safer.

On September 15, the calculating Biden White House delayed the hour of the forthcoming strike of U.S. railway unions. While the desiccated puppet Biden himself pays lip-service to the unions, his regime systematically undermines them. The latest outrage forces a 30-day “cooling down” period on the unions ready to strike by requiring them to consider an offer from Biden’s handlers that doesn’t come close to meeting even a single one of the rail workers demands.

One-hundred forty-five years ago, in July of 1877, the city of St. Louis was held by the authority of a revolutionary commune. The Commune of St. Louis began with a rail strike like the one Biden’s masters are afraid of tonight.

It began, as revolutions often do, with a depression.

In 1873 the world-capitalist economy was struck with stagnation and contraction. This depression was kicked off by the Panic of ’73. A series of bank failures in Austria soon spread to the rest of the economy. Credit sharply contracted. Loans defaulted. Banks closed.

Industrial production in the U.S., which had been previously growing at a rate of three times each year, slowed to 1.7 times yearly during the period of 1873-1890. There was a 10% decline in total manufacturing output from the U.S., most of the sectors affected being consumer goods, iron, and construction.

On July 14, 1877, the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad cut wages for its workers for the third time that year. The railroad workers had no unions, but they spontaneously broke out into strike.

The strike started that day, with B&O railroad workers in Martinsburg, West Virginia. They blockaded the town, a critical rail juncture, and prevented all rail traffic from rolling through, demanding that the wage cut be revoked.

The governor of West Virginia dispatched the National Guard to clear the lines and resume rail service, but the guardsmen refused to fire on the strikers. At the same time, the B&O workers in Maryland took up the strike and closed the railroad center at Cumberland.

Albany, Syracuse, and Buffalo New York, all major railyards, closed. The strike spread from the B&O to other lines. In Pittsburgh, the Pennsylvania railroad baron Thomas Alexander Scott recommended the strikers be given a “rifle diet.”

On July 21, the Pennsylvania National Guard bayonetted strikers and then opened fire, killing 20 railroad workers. The strikers did not disperse; rather, they retaliated, trapping the guardsmen in a roundhouse and razing 39 buildings.

Striking railroad workers in Pennsylvania burned 104 locomotives and 1,245 freight and passenger cars. The Pennsylvania National Guard fought their way out of the roundhouse, shooting and killing over 20 people as they cut their way out of the railyard.

This was the background of the strike action in St. Louis. As the country seized in strikes and transport actions, the Workingman’s Party (the first Marxist party in the U.S.) and the Knights of Labor gathered in St. Louis. On July 22, one day after the massacre in the Pennsylvania railyards, train workers held a secret meeting to call for an increase in wages and determined to strike, their numbers stiffened by members of the Workingmen’s Party. They then held a public outdoor meeting, which was steered by that 200 members of that party.

That night, they held a third meeting, and the rail workers adopted a resolution (written by the Workingmen’s Party representatives) that read:

WHEREAS, the United States government has allied itself on the side of capital and against labor; therefore,

RESOLVED, That we, the workingmen’s party of the United States, heartily sympathize with the employees of all the railroads in the country who are attempting to secure just and equitable reward for their labor.

RESOLVED, That we will stand by them in this most righteous struggle of labor against robbery and oppression, through good and evil report, to the end of the struggle.

The demand was put to the bosses, who rejected it immediately.

The strike began at midnight in East St. Louis. Within hours of the announcement, the strikers controlled the city uncontested. They formed an executive committee, comprised of at least 47 people, although all their identities are not recorded and therefore not known. The committee, which met in Turner’s Hall, was elected by the striking workers.

St. Louis was the home of many radical Germans, who had been fleeing from the newly-constituted Germany for years to avoid the compulsory military service instituted under Prussian authority. Roughly 600 of the Workingmen’s Party’s 1,000 members in St. Louis were German socialists.

Missouri was also a former slave state. Two-thirds of Black persons in the state lived in St. Louis (26,387) in 1870, most of whom were either employed as domestic servants or as laborers, with a heavy influence along the levees and among the steamships. By 1877, the Ku Klux Klan had begun a campaign of lynch-terror in the state, and racism was stoked among the workers because the Black laborers were often used as strikebreakers.

In the morning of July 23, having more or less complete control of East St. Louis and with no police on the street to oppose them, the Executive Committee elected by the strikers issued General Order No. 1: no railroad traffic other than passenger trains and mail would be permitted to pass. The committee then appointed the mayor of East St. Louis, John Bowman, arbitrator of the labor dispute. He helped the committee select special constables to guard the property of the railroads from damage. Already, even in its nascent stage, we can see the Executive Committee’s unfortunate attention to the needs and wants of the capitalists.

The Chicago & Alton company tried to start a freight train that morning, but it was stopped and turned back to the yard. The Union Railway & Transit Company removed their wage decrease, but the Transit workers continued to strike in solidarity with their brothers, stiffened by the militants in their ranks.

City officials wired frightened messages. Some warned that this was a repetition of the Paris Commune of ’71.

On the second day of the strike, July 24, the strikers expanded their blockade to include passenger trains. A train was decoupled from its passenger cars and only permitted transit when the locomotive was bare.

At 11:00 AM that morning, twenty-five strikers led by an Ohio and Mississippi Railway engineer seized two Missouri Pacific Railroad locomotives, took Missouri and Pacific engine shops, and tried to persuade the workers there to cease work. They refused.

As unrest increased, 3,000-4,000 people gathered at the depot. It was announced by the city authorities that six companies of infantry were marching to put an end to the blockade and clear the rail lines. For the first time since the strike began, police went out onto the streets and tried to disperse the crowd.

At 4:00 PM that afternoon, flatcars from other striking yards near the city arrived, loaded with more strikers. The word had gotten out that St. Louis was the hub of a powerful solidarity movement across all railway lines.

At 6:00 PM, six companies arrived from Fort Leavenworth. Their commander stated that he had “been ordered here with general instructions to protect the property of the United States,” but he declined to take any action other than to hole up in the army barracks and wait.

That night, Communist leaders held meetings throughout the city. Processions marched through the streets. The city government, paralyzed by the fear that they were not heavily armed enough to act, did nothing. The police remained “inert.”

On July 25, 1877, at 9 AM, the Communists gathered a crowd in a downtown marketplace. There, they convinced wire manufacturers to join the strike. At 10 AM they marched to Turner Hall where the Executive Committee was meeting. At a meeting that morning, a Black worker is said to have asked, “Will you stand with us, regardless of our color?” The crowd shouted back at him “We will!”

Across the river, the Workingmen’s delegates anticipated violence, though the strike remained peaceful in East St. Louis. One speaker across the river in downtown St. Louis said, “The workingmen now intend to assert their rights, even if the result is the shedding of blood…. They are ready to take up arms at any moment.” But the party did not arm the laborers. They were never given the weapons they needed to defend their gains.

An air of solidarity prevailed throughout East St. Louis. The Workingman’s Party declared that all work within the city would soon come to a halt. All would join the strike.

On the morning of July 26, a mass meeting of coopers agreed to cease work. Smelter and clay workers joined the strike. 35% of the striking workers were U.S. born; 29% were German; 18% were Irish; 12% were English or Welsh. A full 12% of the striking workers were Black.

The strike was controlled by its Executive Committee — it issued orders, demands, and instructions. The most prominent members of the committee were not themselves workers but were clerks, a student organizer, a doctor, a drug and bleach maker, a newspaper seller, and a boot fitter. There were many petit-bourgeois men on the committee, which perhaps accounts for its sensitivity to protecting small businesses and private property.

On the evening of Wednesday, July 26, in Carondelet, six miles south of the city center, iron workers arrived at the Martindale Zinc Works to call on its workers to join the strike. The foreman of the works struck a striker with a crowbar. When the police tried to intervene, the strikers drove them off with rocks.

The ironworkers took control of the zinc works and there they unfurled the red flag of the International. By the end of the day, there was not a single manufactory in operation. The strike had shut down the entire city. It was all in the hands of the Workingmen’s Party.

That evening, there was another mass meeting at Lucas Market of over 10,000 people. Peter Lofgreen, a Workingmen’s delegate, harangued the crowd and told them that if the managers could not restore their pay, it was time for the management of the railroads to be in the hands of the workers. Full nationalization would be one of the demands made by the Executive Committee.

Thomas Curtis declared that the demands of St. Louis must go all the way to the president of the United States. This, he said, was “not a strike – but a social revolution!”

On Thursday, barbers, wagon-makers, painters, blacksmiths, and mills closed, with only a few remaining open by order of the Executive Committee to make bread to feed the city. The National Stockyards were permitted to slaughter some few animals to keep the people fed. The mayor met with the Executive Committee repeatedly, begging for more shops to be opened, and the committee haltingly tried to oblige the business interests.

In Carondelet, 18 metal workers were organized into a makeshift police force that patrolled the streets. In East St. Louis, the railway workers had a parade with a brass band and banners that said “We Want a Peaceful Revolution” and “Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity.”

That’s when the Executive Committee made its worst decision. At the dawn of the 27th, they caved to pressure by the petit-bourgeoisie and the mayor, who feared the Black labor solidarity and the marches, the mass meetings, the red flag of the International. They issued an order to calm the wealthy. This order stated that “in order to avoid riot, we have determined no large procession will take place until our organization is so complete as to positively assure the citizens of St. Louis a perfect maintenance of order.”

When a group of Black workers asked to join the party, the Executive Committee replied that “we want nothing to do with them.”

While shop-owners were begging the committee to stop the marches, reaction was not asleep. Merchants were raising $20,000 (close to $1 million today) behind closed doors to arm the militia that would eventually attack and destroy the Commune. The St. Louis Gun Club supplied shotguns. 1,500 rifles and 2 cannon were sent by the governor from the state armory. 11,000 volunteers were mustered into service.

On July 27, the governor sent a missive demanding the disbandment of the Executive Committee and all its strike committees. The Workingmen’s Party replied, “Nothing short of compliance to the [just demand for wages] will arrest this tidal wave of revolution.”

The papers were now referring to St. Louis as the “St. Louis Commune.”

At 3:00 PM on Friday July 27, municipal and federal forces arrived downtown. Police cavalry led the way, riding abreast to cover the entire width of the street. They were soon followed by foot police with rifles, the militia that had been arranged by the petit-bourgeois shop owners, and two cannon from the armory. The Workingmen’s Party, having failed to provide the strikers with weapons, had no way to resist them.

Half a block behind the city police came federal U.S. troops, marching with fixed bayonets. The cavalry plunged into the crowd outside Turner’s Hall where the Executive Committee met. One of the officers shouted, “Ride ’em down! Ride ’em down! They have no business here!”

The committee tried to broker an agreement with the city fathers. Those delegates they sent to the meeting were arrested. Within hours, several others had been taken from their hiding places and joined the detainees. 73 rank-and-file workers were arrested during the police surge.

The Executive Committee had failed to protect the revolution from counter-revolution. It had rejected the all-important aid of Black workers that made the seizure of the city possible, spat on the right of self-determination for the former slaves. The remaining members of the committee were now isolated. The strikers were at the mercy of the police.

From July 22 until August 1, the strike committee had controlled the city. It had failed, utterly, to establish the necessary self-defense required for the revolution. It had dealt with the mayor and business interests as allies – cold allies, but allies none-the-less. When the time came, those “allies” turned on the committee and the strike; every request from the businesses and the city fathers was little more than a delaying tactic.

The committee failed to expropriate the property of the dangerous and deadly foes of the revolution: because to them, they were not foes. Indeed, in the face of Black labor solidarity, the committee preferred its white shopkeepers to Black laborers.

What if they had not suspended the mass meetings? What if they had armed the workers? What if they had not broken up the solidarity of Black, white, and immigrant labor and instead expanded their demands to include those of the Black toilers? What if indeed. We cannot know what if, merely study their failings at a moment when power was in the hands of the people and their leaders refused to act.

We must learn the lessons taught by history, and overcome them. We must stand for the freedom of all, not the wages of a few. We must be prepared when the conditions for the next St. Louis commune arrive.