New York City, June 30—Over 200  angry retired New York City workers demonstrated in over 95 degree heat in the continuing effort to stop the privatization of their Medicare health insurance (see CHALLENGE, 6/23). Members of Progressive Labor Party (PLP) have been actively building this fight for decades. It was heartening to see marchers whose average age was certainly over 70 fighting back. We may be retired but we haven’t expired!
Under capitalism, decent health care is not guaranteed to all workers. The health benefits which current and former workers in this city have fought for are being eroded and the costs for these benefits are being borne more and more by us retirees. This means higher copays for medical appointments and prescription drugs and more narrow health care choices. The cuts we face today are part of a slippery slope of cutbacks faced by workers around the world that have everything to do with the intensifying rivalry between the world’s top capitalist powers. Chinese and Russian imperialists are challenging the U.S. empire everywhere. There’s the Chinese space station and the Russian cyber attacks. There’s growing Russian influence in the Middle East and Chinese economic expansion all over Africa and Latin America. As the U.S. capitalists gear up for war, the governments that they control have less and less money for worker’s needs such as health care.
Capitalist inequality and racism has been highlighted through the  many struggles around racist police murders and the inequalities pushed front and center by the  Covid-19 crisis. Lower paid New York City workers who are disproportionately Black and Latin will be the hardest hit by the health care changes. The $1,500 maximum annual copays per person will certainly be more difficult to afford for a retired school crossing guard whose pension plus social security may be less than $10,000 than a retired city manager whose income is likely at least 10 times as much.
Starting in the financial district of New York, we marched to several union headquarters and the city’s office of labor relations on our way to city hall. This route underlined the partnership of union misleaders and city bosses in orchestrating this attack on our health care. Their partnership is based on shared support of the capitalist system. Union sellouts use their clout to steer working-class anger away from direct struggles like strikes and into the arms of politicians who are mere puppets of the capitalist state. The capitalist bosses and their politician puppets have all got to go. Workers have to go from protesting to actually running society. That means working class power - communism.
Today’s demonstration, confrontations of misleaders at union meetings, and an online petition which over 23,000 workers have signed point to the anger and struggle that are alive and kicking. Capitalism, however, which needs inequality and racism to exist, will never provide a decent life for all workers. That is why Progressive Labor Party is organizing to end capitalism and create a communist society that will serve the needs of all workers.