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By Greg Butterfield
Measures to slow the spread of the coronavirus are being used as a cover by officials of the U.S. capitalist government, from the federal to the state and local levels, to heighten their control and prepare to repress any protest or uprising of the workers and oppressed against the horrendous inadequacies of the for-profit health care system, the rapidly deepening crisis of unemployment and mass poverty, and threatened war moves by the Pentagon.
Pleased and proud to announce my participation in this comics anthology to raise funds for PPE for healthcare workers! Check out the kickstarter to support this project and help get healthcare workers the PPE that they need!
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/gritcitycomics/heroes-need-masks-comic-anthology
In the wake of the coronavirus pandemic, across the world workers on the frontlines of the battle against the spread of the disease have been organizing to demand that governments and employers provide them greater protection. In New Orleans, a group of sub-contracted sanitation workers who work as “hoppers” on garbage trucks have been on strike since Tuesday, May 5, to demand hazard pay and personal protective equipment (PPE).
Why are so many people in nursing homes dying from the coronavirus?
By Stephen Millies
Over 28,000 people across the United States have died in nursing homes or other long-term care facilities.
The high death rate among seniors from the coronavirus isn’t inevitable. Nor is it just a case of many elderly people having weakened immune systems and chronic diseases.
Nearly 70 percent of the 15,600 U.S. nursing homes are privately owned and run for profit. Just to stay in business, the owners have to cut corners on safety. Smaller nursing homes don’t have the room to isolate patients with COVID-19.
Publicly owned nursing homes have been hurt by budget cuts. Medicaid, which pays for most nursing home bills, will be slashed before the trillion-dollar Pentagon budget is threatened.
Longevity is incompatible with capitalist profit.
Unlike the capitalist U.S., socialist Cuba celebrates its older folk. Cubans are proud that more than 2,000 people living in the Caribbean country are at least 100 years old.
Peoples Power Assembly Condemns Blue Angels & Thunderbirds Fly Over
May 2: Our front line workers whether they are nurses, nursing assistants, doctors, hospital janitorial staff or warehouse, grocery, farm, food processing, sanitation, or postal workers need personal protective equipment, full paid sick leave, hazard pay, and safe working conditions–not a $60,000 an hour salute.The close to trillion-dollar Pentagon budget has siphoned off badly needed funds for our cities and towns. This pandemic underscores more than ever the need for global solidarity, not war and racism, including sanctions which starve and hold people hostage.
In spite of the challenges to continuing activism that exist during this COVID-19 crisis, with unity, creativity and especially solidarity, we can still make gains!
By John Parker
In mid-April, 10 nurses employed at Providence Saint John’s Hospital in Santa Monica, Calif., were suspended for demanding the necessary personal protective equipment (PPE) to keep them from infection and possible death due to exposure to the deadly COVID-19 virus while working on infected patients.
The hospital administration underestimated the militancy of the nurses and their belonging to the largest nurses’ union in the U.S., with more than 150,000 members nationwide. The National Nurses United is the largest union and professional association of registered nurses in U.S. history, the labor organization says on its web site.
Add to that the solidarity of the progressive movement and activists who came out consistently for the nurses. A well-attended and loud-honking car caravan protest on April 21 was organized by the union, which invited the community of folks in solidarity with the nurses to come out and demand the nurses be reinstated and given the necessary protections to do their jobs and remain safe.
On that very same day, the hospital reinstated the nurse and will now supply nurses with N95 masks for those working with infected patients.
In spite of the challenges to continuing activism that exist during this COVID-19 crisis, with unity, creativity and especially solidarity, we can still make gains!
Hospitality workers took to the streets Friday afternoon calling for free healthcare and expanded unemployment benefits, among other demands.
In observance of May Day, the international workers rights holiday, dozens of socially-distanced protesters lined up in cars and on bikes in a Mid City New Orleans parking lot.
Before rolling into the streets, organizers with the New Orleans Hospitality Workers Alliance outlined their demands. Among them: free healthcare and testing for hospitality workers, hazard pay and access to protective gear, housing as a human right, and unemployment assistance through the end of 2020.
“We are saying workers will not die for capitalist profits,” one organizer said through a megaphone from the roof of a parked car.
Fighting racism during coronavirus crisis: National webinar & press conference
Saturday, April 4
11 am West Coast / 1 pm Central / 2 pm Eastern
Hosted by Peoples Power Assembly and Harriet Tubman Center for Social Justice - L.A.
To register, go to: https://zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_iwA-RdACRO6K-0p9CAH61w (If you do not receive a return email please check your spam box.)
Speakers include: Rebecka Jackson, Harriet Tubman Center for Social Justice; Jasmine Johnson, youth activist and recent high school graduate; Lee Siu Hin, National Immigrant Solidarity Network; Omowale Clay, December 12 movement; Gloria Verdeu, Coalition to Free Mumia and All Political Prisoners; Reverend Annie Chambers, Baltimore housing activist, Peoples Power Assembly; Ron Gochez, Union del Barrio; Nana Gyamfi, Black Alliance for Just Immigration; Lizz Toledo, Latinx LGBTQ2S activist, Atlanta Socialist Unity Party; and others, including front-line health care workers. The coronavirus pandemic has been disastrous for the working class worldwide. But its impact on people of color, on Black and Brown communities has the potential of being labeled genocide especially in the the U.S. prisons and immigrant detention centers. From Michigan to Louisiana, the death rates are staggering; the disparity between rich and poor, the Black and Brown working class neighborhoods in New York City is equally obvious, with Queens being at the epicenter of the crisis. Rep. Judy Chu reports that attacks on Asian Americans are now about 100 per day, mainly due to the jingoistic rhetoric against China, labeling the coronavirus as the China or Wuhan virus. A large number of front-line workers who are without PPE (Personal Protective Equipment) or hazard pay are people of color, about a third of them immigrants, including food servers at fast food and carryout restaurants, bus and MTA drivers, warehouse, postal and grocery workers and especially hospitals. Rather than lift the inhuman sanctions and blockades of countries like Venezuela, Cuba, Iran, Zimbabwe and many other countries or speed and prioritize the delivery of ventilators, the Pentagon is again threatening Venezuela with false charges against President Maduro, with U.S. warships now deployed off Venezuela. For more information call or text 410-218-4835 or 323-306-6240
