In early June, the official numbers of those infected with Covid-19 had exceeded 110,000 and 11,000 deaths had been registered in Mexico. Other sources such as Mexicanos Primero (MP), the New York Times, SkyNews of the United Kingdom or El País of Spain, have uncovered significant underreporting of the number of patients, and they estimate that the deaths are much higher than the official numbers. MP is the bosses’ group that, allied with Televisa, promoted the educational reform that attacked the labor rights of thousands of teachers in the country. All their numbers are incorrect because all bosses, national or imperialist, treat workers as disposable.
What the government figures hide, is that the infections and deaths are a reflection of the inequality of the capitalist system and the contradictions between the working class and the capitalist class. The largest number of sick and dead are workers in the marginalized neighborhoods of big cities, workers in the maquilas and health workers, mainly in –Iztapalapa, Nezahualcóyotl, Mexicali and Tijuana–. That difference is a reflection that this criminal capitalist system cannot protect the health and life of the working class.
Mexico had enough time to prepare and acquire the necessary protective equipment and supplies to deal with the pandemic. For example, just a few weeks ago planes began arriving from China and the United States with tons of supplies. Meanwhile thousands of health workers became ill and hundreds died. But the health authorities and the government were not only irresponsible in not buying the equipment on time, but also in distributing it too late; Throughout the pandemic there have been constant protests by hospital staff demanding masks, gloves, and protective suits. Mexico has purchased more than $56 million in respirators, face masks, gowns, gloves, and more (Aristegui Noticias, 4/9). This was done to silence the protests of medical personnel who have had to work for decades in the precarious public health services.
The health system in Mexico is broken because the bosses and their government, in the last four decades, have prioritized the growth of private healthcare systems at the expense of public services. So now, there is a lack of doctors, nurses, clinics, and hospitals in public health institutions. The working conditions of health workers have also been under attack. Low wages and loss of rights like pensions and even the right to free medical services demonstrate this. Many doctors and nurses have to work in more than one public or private health institution to earn a living wage.
The current government says it is transforming health services and the workers’ conditions in that sector. But the reality is different, as between a third and a quarter of the patients with Covid-19 are health workers. Hundreds have died due to the criminal negligence of the health authorities who have not provided them with the minimum equipment and means of protection to care for Covid-19 patients (Aristegui Noticias, 6/2). Furthermore, to meet the growing demand of coronavirus patients, they have to work longer and more strenuous days due to the lack of personnel.
The government has opted for political theatrics to deal with the pandemic, clad in pseudo-scientific language. Every night the epidemiologist responsible for the strategy reports statistics on the number of sick and dead, on the prognosis of infections and the occupancy rate in hospitals that are increasingly less credible. This has increased the mistrust of many workers about the very existence of the virus and the danger it represents. This mistrust is natural towards a government that has always lied to benefit the capitalist class.
Members and friends of the Party have denounced the racist genocide represented by the inability and ineptitude of the Mexican government and of the capitalist system to deal with the pandemic. The ruling class has put its profits over the health and lives of the workers. Only a system led by the working class is capable of putting the interest of humanity above the profiteering interests of a minority. That is why we organize study groups with our base to clarify these ideas, stay united and prepare to support health workers. They are fighting for better working conditions which, in turn, will save workers’ lives.
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Asian, Latin, Black, and white— to smash racism, we must unite!
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- 12 June 2020 104 hits
WORCESTER, MA, May 30—Today the Progressive Labor Party (PLP), along with 200 friends from the Worcester community, came out with only a days’ notice, to lead the first of three demonstrations protesting the racist lynching of George Floyd, and to support the thousands of rebels in Minnesota, who are protesting the kkk-killer cops. The murders of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery, Alex Flores, Zachary Bear Heel, Eyad Hallaq and many others, have moved millions of people to militantly oppose racist police murders, not just here but around the world.
At the demonstration a PLP member spoke and shared historically how capitalism created race and racism to divide the working class, exploiting white workers and super exploiting Black, Latin, Indigenous, Asian and undocumented workers, making super profits from their stolen labor. Our comrade asked everyone which side they were on and to join us and fight for an egalitarian communist world where racism, sexism, borders and imperialist wars are outlawed and the distribution of wealth is shared. She urged everyone to join the PLP.
As we led chants, people drove by, honked their horns in support, and took our flyers and CHALLENGEs. At one point a train conductor gave us the power fist sign and blared his horn as he passed by. A firetruck honked in support of us.
When a car of racists drove by heckling us, protesters holding signs chanted, “Black lives matter!” and, “Racism means we got to fight back” to drown them out.
We led several passionate chants: Same enemy, same fight! Workers of the world fight back!, and had an open microphone where young people spoke about why they were out here. Many of these youth showed their class anger and pain about what the cops and politicians are doing. Our comrade spoke about how the entire profit system is guilty as hell and that reforms are not enough.
Some of the bosses in City Hall tried to disrupt the demonstration by sending out social media posts saying that the PLP rally was cancelled. However, we prevailed and went forward! One of the bright spots at our demonstration was that there were no politicians present.
The killing of George Floyd and so many others shows that the bosses’ profits and racist culture has to be destroyed. Capitalism cannot be fixed. The message of the Progressive Labor Party at this rally was that racism, sexism, fascism and the profit system that supports them have to be destroyed with a communist revolution in which production would be for need and the elimination of exploitation would remove the material basis for racism and poverty. We spoke of the need for mass, militant, multiracial unity and called for communist revolution.
Abolish the police
On Sunday Black Lives Matter held another demonstration. Five hundred people turned out. Many were young, Black, Latin and white. The police turned out in force. The group organizer spoke about race and police racism. A young Black woman who spoke gave a moving speech about anti-Black racism and called for the abolishment of the police. She had also given an inspiring speech and sang a moving song at the Saturday rally. There were many people who wanted to fight racism but there was no discussion of how to change the racist system and there was no talk of multiracial unity.The young protesters here were enthusiastic and militant, but a lack of class analysis and hatred of the bosses gave the cops an opportunity to obscure the racist nature of police under capitalism. Even though the cops turned out in force, and on horses which nearly rode up on the sidewalk, some of the leaders of this rally disappointingly wound up shaking hands with the police and taking selfies.
Politicians and Black misleaders defend racist capitalism
The third protest was on Monday June 1, 2020. This one was called by the City bosses under the guise of Black leadership. The Black director of the Boys and Girls Club where the police gang unit is headquartered spoke. A Black minister who supports cops in the schools spoke. The police chief who would later that night order an attack on the youth walking home from the rally and the City manager who brought criminal charges against protesters in 2016 also spoke. They all lied about fixing racism while at the same time being the executioners of a racist system.
Even this orgy of racist speakers could not completely shut out the militancy and anti-racism of the working class and our Party. Two thousand people came and then marched to the Court house. Many chanted, “ No Justice, No Peace!” Our sign said, “The Kops, The Kourts, The Nazis and the Klan, All Are A Part of the Bosses Plan!” Our comrade also carried the red flag and wore a PLP shirt which said “Smash All Borders with communist revolution!”
NEWARK, NJ, May 4—Our club celebrated May Day virtually this year. Emboldened by Covid-19’s exposure of capitalism’s total failure for millions of workers — and laying bare the racism of capitalism worldwide— we invited more than 200 people to “march with us” on May Day. An inspiring video made for the event featured May Day marches from around the world, as well as past PLP May Day marches putting the intergenerational and multiracial membership of our Party on display.
50 people from our two study groups, old friends and newer friends we’ve met through our work in mass organizations all learned more about the Party. After May Day, some participated in a PLP caravan protesting racist U.S. immigration policies.
Our lead speaker was a Black comrade who is a NYC transit worker. He described the conditions in the MTA, where more than 100 of his coworkers have died from Covid-19. Thousands have tested positive due to the racist negligence of Cuomo and the bankers toward both transit workers and riders. Transit workers have also died in other cities, and some cities have only recently been providing face masks for workers or requiring passengers to wear them (The Guardian, 4/20). He showed how workers are the ones who actually make everything run in society – and these mostly Black, immigrant and women workers have responded with mass heroism in healthcare, transit, food production and distribution, and more.
Putting forward the Party’s analysis of the need for a communist revolution, a retired doctor in our club connected the current pandemic to capitalism, as agriculture for profit has spurred deforestation and emerging viruses. Capitalism’s disregard for human life and the environment for profits led to the failure of U.S. capitalist leaders to contain the pandemic, instead of a working class-run communist world that puts workers’ health first.
Another Party member addressed our challenges in winning workers to building a mass PLP because of mass cynicism from the collapse of the old communist movement. This may be the hardest task, because the ruling class has worked overtime to build anticommunist lies and to suppress the accomplishments of the once-revolutionary old movement.
Comrades outside the U.S. also spoke, including a worker from China, who described gains for workers and peasants as a result of the 1949 revolution before it was reversed. A professor from Puerto Rico showed images of masses of college students and workers protesting government policies during the 2017 Hurricane Maria devastation, and more protesting today during Covid-19. These examples along with reports about PLP members’ work in current mass struggles keep alive the reality that building a successful movement is difficult, but possible.
In our club’s evaluation, we discussed how to organize in this period. This included expanding the PLP website and Facebook page; virtual organizing meetings; and finding online ways to discuss work in our areas of concentration on a regional, national, and even international level, not just locally.
Click image for Flyer that was distributed in Minneapolis
The Big Fascists, the international finance capital wing of the U.S. ruling class, is in disarray—and the working class is paying the price. With more than 350,000 workers killed by the pandemic, including more than 100,000 in the U.S. alone, the capitalist bosses are pushing forward with a chaotic “reopening” of the economy that may kill millions more. Meanwhile, capitalism has plunged into a severe international economic crisis that rivals the Great Depression of the 1930s. As imperialist rulers fight for their threatened profits on the road to fascism and World War III, hundreds of millions of workers worldwide are faced with joblessness, hunger, and a siege of preventable illness. Racist inequality has murdered untold numbers of Black and Latin workers, from Detroit to Tanzania to Ecuador.
In the U.S., many of the domestically oriented Small Fascists are going bankrupt. Their racist front man, Stooge in Chief Donald Trump, has called for an immediate reopening of worksites, churches, schools, and other public places, even though most states are failing to meet basic public health benchmarks. Trump has censored recommendations by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and ignored the watered-down guidelines that the spineless agency finally released.
The governors, both Republicans and Big Fascist Democrats, are falling in line as they send workers to their deaths. As he reopened New York City’s stock exchange, the bosses’ blood-money headquarters, Governor Andrew Cuomo called for “supercharging” the economy (New York Daily News, 5/26). He also acknowledged that the rate of positive test results in some New York communities is as high as 40 percent, and at 20 percent in New York City (cnbc.com, 5/26)—which means that not nearly enough testing is being done to control the virus’ spread. (The Trump administration’s own benchmark is 10 percent.) Case rates are rising in much of the South and Midwest. According to Imperial College London, the easing of lockdown regulations could lead to another 100,000 Covid-19 fatalities in the U.S. by July: “[T]here is strong evidence that the epidemic is not under control” (imperial.ac.uk, 5/21).
How would communists handle this pandemic differently? To begin with, we would win the population to a scientific approach to healthcare and economics. As communists, we believe in science. We know that an important aspect of revolution is smashing anti-scientific ideas. After the Chinese communist revolution of 1949, "barefoot doctors" were able to wipe out medical plagues from syphilis to schistosomiasis to drug addiction (Away with All Pests, by Joshua Horn).
Covid-19 and racism
Covid-19 has disproportionately killed Black and Latin and immigrant workers, the same people who are forced by racism and capitalism to live in overcrowded households throughout the world. Available data shows that “on average, the rate of fatalities for Black workers is 2.4 times that of white workers with Covid-19. In states including Michigan, Kansas and Wisconsin and in Washington, D.C., that ratio jumps to five to seven black people dying of Covid-19 complications for every one white death” (New York Times, 5/25).
In the U.S., Black and Latin workers are also at greater risk for infection because they’re concentrated in job sectors with high exposure to the virus: cleaners, groceries, hospitals and nursing homes, slaughterhouses, and food processing plants.
As Trump rallies his swastika-badged racist base to lay siege to state capitols with automatic weapons, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell is paving the way to free businesses from any liability for the workers they’re about to slaughter. Meanwhile, the Big Fascists are offering no coherent plan to keep workers eating while saving their jobs and protecting their health. From racist nitwit Joe Biden, very possibly the next president, to lifelong hack Nancy Pelosi, the House speaker, the Democrats are following in the footsteps of Barack Obama and his craven bank bailouts of 2009. They’re presenting the same profit-driven, corporate-friendly, and pathetically inadequate "relief" to workers today.
With the federal bosses both incompetent and divided, workers' lives depend on small-time stooges like Cuomo or Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, both of whom resisted sheltering people in place until it was too late.
The true fascists: Congressional Progressive Caucus
In April, Congresswoman Pramila Jayapal and her social fascist compatriots, Senator Bernie Sanders and Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, introduced the Paycheck Recovery Act to have the federal government keep workers on the payroll, as bosses are doing in several European countries to make their reopenings more efficient (vox.com 4/17). They understand the necessity of a loyal and patriotic working class to fight the next global war. But Pelosi and Senate Minority Leader, Chuck Schumer, ever loyal to their Big Fascist corporate donor base, refused to include this provision in the Heroes Act (theintercept.com, 5/19). Instead, they are supporting an extension of unemployment benefits and another one-time stimulus check, leaving workers unemployed and at the mercy of the fractured state unemployment systems.
Republican or Democrat, liberal or right-wing or phony “socialist,” all bosses need to mislead workers away from the communist understanding that the profit system can never meet our class needs. Or that fighting racism is a class question, and that only by eliminating capitalism can we truly eliminate racism.
China on the rise
With both sections of the U.S. ruling class in disarray as they flounder in response to the pandemic and resulting economic crisis, inter-imperalist rivalry between China and the U.S. has intensified (Yahoo Finance, 5/14). Richard Haass, a Big Fascist mouthpiece as president of the Council on Foreign Relations, said that China should be held accountable for its role in causing the pandemic, while warning that the U.S. and China were heading toward a new Cold War (Wall Street Journal, 5/7).
Where the Small Fascists would be content with a smaller white military, the Big Fascists know they need to win more workers to believe in a multiracial U.S. that can sacrifice and go to war when needed. Most of all, they need to deceive workers into thinking they have a stake in U.S. capitalism, and into fighting for the rulers’ profits. But China is winning the Covid-19 war with a unified ruling class, a top-down government, and full-blown fascism to discipline both bosses and workers.
No matter which group of bosses comes out on top, workers will be sickened by the disease of capitalism until they rise in revolution and seize state power. Fight for communism! Join Progressive Labor Party!
