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Workers’ Voice newspaper: March-April edition
The U.S.-Israel war on Iran is a major escalation in the Middle East that has dangerous implications for working people everywhere. The brutality of the imperialist assault internationally is paired with the attack on civil liberties by the Trump regime inside the U.S. This includes the continued operations of ICE and Border Patrol, the threats to the 2026 mid-term elections, environmental rollbacks that deeply impact the Black community, and unchecked police brutality.
Our editorial in this issue warns us: “There is a great danger of underestimating the determination of the U.S. corporate elite to drive through this effort. We cannot rely on court rulings or upcoming elections to save us. We must organize now, not only for mass demonstrations and community networks against ICE violence, but to find our way to building a new working-class party through which we can organize our political defense on every plane and on every day.”
In this issue we also have articles on the Epstein files and the ruling class, the San Francisco teachers’ strike, and a review of the new album by U2.
The March–April 2026 edition of our newspaper is available in print and online as a pdf. Read the latest issue of our newspaper today with a free pdf download! As always, we appreciate any donations to help with the cost of printing.
Click on the image to read the paper or message us to get a hard copy:
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COVID-19: It’s Them or Us
The effects of the new coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic are unraveling important truths that can transform into valuable lessons for the working class and other oppressed sectors. Lessons that, given time and the correct circumstances, should become concrete actions.
By Daniel Sugasti 03/23/2020
“We are all in the same boat”, say the governing leaders and the big capitalist news media. If this is true –because anyone can get infected by the virus– the most appropriate image is not one of a rowing team, but of the Titanic sinking, with life boats only for “the first class”, for the rich and the powerful. Because no country has –or will have– remotely enough ICU beds or respirators for all of the most endangered population.
“We are truly at war”, asserted president Trump on Sunday, March 22nd. Against the spread and lethality of this virus, sure, without a doubt. But the leaders approaching this war (the bourgeoisie) are not confronting the enemy as they should, nor in a direct manner. They do it from the commodity of their mansions and with the certainty that if they do fall ill, they’ll be tended to in the best manner.
Besides the recommendations to reinforce hygiene habits, the only measure that is taking any effect is social distancing, or quarantine. However, this is impossible for the majority of the working class, if it does not come accompanied by other measures that’ll guarantee this effectively.
The “stay at home” or “shelter in place” slogan –that many governments have not yet ordained or did so quietly to avoid diminishing the profits of their bourgeoisie– is not applicable for millions of workers around the world, who are torn by the terrible dilemma of being forced to go to work, risking infection, or starving to death.
As always occurs in class societies, in this double crisis, both sanitary and economic –where one feeds off the other–, the proprietary classes will do anything in their reach so that the losses and the dead, fall on or come from the working class. We have here our first lesson. While it is necessary to take individual precautions and organize to counter the spread of the virus, we must not lose sight of the other ongoing war, parallel to the one imposed by the fight against COVID-19: the conflict against the capitalist system, in all its presentations, that has always proven it does not give a damn about the working class. So the struggle is double: against the virus and against the bourgeoisie [1]. It’s them or us.
We constantly hear about the differences in mortality rates among the different age groups. But not much is said about the relation between mortality and class differences, which apparently has not shown its most lethal facet. The pandemic will affect families and individuals differently, depending on the material conditions of each. It’s not the same to be over sixty and in need of a respirator in an ICU when you’re rich than when you’re poor. It’s true that the virus does not discriminate between social classes. But the capitalist States, with their regimes and governments, do make this distinction when implementing measures that affect us directly.
After China, the epicenter appears to have moved to the European continent, where there are powerful imperialist countries with incredibly superior resources to those of semi-colonial countries. We are witnessing an ascending curve of infections and deaths, especially in Italy and the State of Spain. As we write this, the death toll in these countries surpass 6,000 and 2,200 respectively.
But if we consider the political systemic destruction of public health services of both States, dictated by the neoliberal agenda, it is not hard to understand this horrendous situation. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), the ICU beds in Italy were reduced by half in the last 25 years: from 575 places for every 100,000 inhabitants to 275 currently. Something similar has happened in the State of Spain. We know that the public health system has suffered from: repeated cuts to its funding, labor precariousness and increasing privatization, process that took a major leap after the 2008-2009 crisis. This explains, among other elements, how the mortality rate, whose average is generally 3.8%, is 6% in the State of Spain and in Italy it is 9.2%. The new virus infected an economy and a health system that was already “immunocompromised” by the deliberate actions of their capitalist governments.
If this is the situation in parts of Europe, the situation in the United States, the most hegemonic imperialist force, is not any more reassuring. With more than 30,000 infected, it has become the third country with most cases. Until now, 400 people have died. And all the conditions are in place for this sanitary crisis to get worse. The main problem is that there is no public health care system per se in the U.S. More than 27 million people in the country are uninsured, a number that has increased during Trump’s governance. A medical consultation for someone without insurance costs hundreds of dollars. Other tens of millions of people are underinsured, that is, that they have a basic plan that often doesn’t cover even a fraction of the cost of a consultation or treatment. In fact, the working class in the United States, especially undocumented immigrants and the poorest sectors, are more afraid of going to the doctor because of economic repercussions than they are of actually being infected by the coronavirus or having any other illness.
So, if this the reality in imperialist countries, what can we expect in semi-colonial countries like those in Africa or Latin America? Well, specialists are categorical when stating that the consequences would be apocalyptic in Africa. In Latin America, the pandemic has not yet reached the levels of China or Europe, but it is beginning to wreak havoc in a much worse structural scenario than that of European countries: poverty and misery; pure and harsh unemployment; informal or precarious labor; rural misery; overcrowding and terrible housing conditions in the urban cities, when there’s even access to housing, are part of the subcontinent’s reality. The coming months will unveil all the existing and cumulative precariousness over the decades.
The truth is that the coronavirus comes to make matters worse in Latin America and the Caribbean. Of their 629 million inhabitants, 30% are considered poor and 10.7% survive in extreme poverty. In 2014, 70 million people were registered as homeless in the region. These are all data from the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC). The countries with the worst rates of homelessness are Honduras (45.6%), Nicaragua (29.5%) and Guatemala (29.1%). In Haiti, 60% of the population is poor and 24% is considered extremely poor ($1.24 a day).
According to the ILO, informal labor in Latin America reached 53%, affecting about 140 million workers in 2018. On the other hand, though owning the major sweet water reserves in the world, about one third of the Latin American and Caribbean population lack access to drinking water. As far as basic sanitation services go, it is estimated that 70% of homes don’t have access to proper fecal sludge management [2]. The countries with the least access to drinking water in Latin America are: Haiti, Dominican Republic, Nicaragua, Ecuador, Peru and Bolivia [3].
Currently, over 75% of Latin America’s and the Caribbean’s inhabitants reside in urban zones. In fact, it is the second most urban region in the planet. The problem is the degrading housing conditions. According to the IDB, there is about a 6% housing deficit in the region, not to mention that 94% of the «houses» are not of good quality. Just in Brazil, we’re talking about a shortage of 7.78 million houses, according to data from 2017 [4].
Moreover, extreme poverty impedes millions from accessing basic hygiene products such as soap. In the middle of this crisis, this is criminal: how do you prevent infection of COVID-19 and other diseases not only without real possibilities of social distancing, but also having to live in crowded, precarious conditions, with no access to drinking water or soap, without basic sanitation? Isn’t this a death sentence for millions of people?
With a global recession nearing –of which COVID-19 is considered a precursor–, the capitalist governments are not worried with saving lives, rather they’re rushing to save the profits of big businesses and banks. This is a well known recipe: when the 2008-2009 crisis blew up, the U.S. government injected 700 billion dollars of public funding to banks and businesses. The European Union did the same, destining 200 billion euros just to save the banking system, at the cost of condemning millions of workers to unemployment, the cold, evictions, death. Now the IMF predicts a recession that is “as bad or worse” than the one at the brink of 2008.
The question, now, is the same: who will pay for this new recession? This is yet to be seen. It will be defined in the class struggle arena, that may acquire new forms of struggle.
For the moment, ILO estimates that, as a minimum, 25 millions jobs will be lost. In the U.S., the Secretary of the Treasury, Steven Mnuchin, informed Congress that he fears unemployment will grow 20%, practically more than double what Trump received when he took over. According to ECLAC, Latin America will suffer a -1.8% contraction of the GDP, that might generate an increase of ten percent in unemployment. Only in Brazil, before the circulation of COVID-19, there were 13 million unemployed.
Latin American governments are following the same lead as Trump and the European Union: saving banks and businesses. In fact, they’re taking advantage of the chaos to deepen their ultraliberal agendas and pressure counter reforms that sell out historic rights won by the working class.
In Brazil, for example, Jair Bolsonaro’s ultra right government not only authorized even more flexible labor laws, authorizing reduced working hours and reduction of salaries by half [5], he even proposed the suspension, plain and simple, of work contracts, without pay for four months [6]. Their minister of economy, the rabid neoliberal Paulo Guedes, announced a first financial package equivalent to 2.2% of the GDP for “the national economy”, that is, to rescue big businesses such as commerce, tourism, aviation, etc. There is even talk of the possibility of a 1.2 trillion Brazilian reales’ aid from the Central Bank, for the financial market. To paint a better picture, in 2008, the Brazilian banks’ rescue consumed 117 billion Brazilian reales. The problem is that 90% of those resources will be repaid by the very own taxpayers, since they don’t provide much more than measly postponements of some payments, certain facilities for obtaining credit, advancement of acquired benefits, etc. Only 0.2% of that amount will be used directly to salvage homes, though always under the form of immediate assistance: the Bolsa Familia program will be amped by 0.1% and another 0.1% will be used to reinforce the public health system. This is in line with the criminal minimization of the health crisis by Bolsonaro, which he qualifies as senseless “hysteria”, that could generate a catastrophic humanitarian crisis in Brazil. On another note, the Argentinian minister of Economy, Martín Guzmán, announced a series of aids that sum up to 2.2% of the GDP. Of that, 1.63% of the GDP will be destined to public credits, mainly for businesses and other sectors; only 0.6% will be used towards reinforcing public infrastructure and incrementing social assistance [7].
Sebastián Piñera, who faces the revolution in Chile with fire and blood, announced an economic package plan of 11.7 million dollars, that is, 4.7% of the GDP, destining a great amount to save businesses. It’s worth noting that there is no public health system in Chile, since everything has been privatized during the last 40 years of neoliberalism [8].
We’re living uncertain times in all terrains. On March 23rd, the pandemic reached more than 300 thousand cases with 100 thousand new cases just in the four days before. It is possible that, at some point during the next few months, the curve of infection by COVID-19 will begin to flatten. However, the effects of the economic and social crisis will be more profound and long-lasting. In other words, if we don’t stop the governments, this global health crisis will become a humanitarian tragedy that will leave a lot more poor than dead by the new virus.
One last consideration. The crisis unleashed by the COVID-19 pandemic shows the complete inability of the capitalist system to face the problems of the immense majority of the world population. The images of Italian military tanks transporting cadavers of people, who may have survived if there had been enough respirators and public resources to tend to them, is, among other things, macabre proof of the bankruptcy of this way of production and social organization.
Capitalism is not only incapable. Capitalism kills. This must be crystal clear in the conscience of workers.
The incapability is such that no small amount of superiority preachers of the “invisible hand” of the “free market” started to beg for aid all of a sudden to the “public treasure chests”. State intervention, for capitalists, must be “minimal” to tend to the needs of the proletariat and the poor, and “maximum” when it comes to reducing the risk of losses to their profits.
The conclusion we can draw from the aforementioned is that only anticapitalist measures can face this pandemic and the possible recession that is coming.
A united front of the whole working class is necessary to have the cost of the crisis paid by its creators, the capitalists. We will not pay the piper.
It is time to demand free testing and effective quarantine to protect the lives of everyone. This means defending our jobs and the conquests of our class. Demanding measures like the ban on layoffs and reduction of salaries; for the State to guarantee salaries by attacking the interests of the businesspeople. We need to fight to guarantee a living wage for informal workers and the self-employed, for those who survive on the highs and lows of each day.
We need to fight to guarantee hygiene products, alcohol, face masks, gloves and everything necessary for the protection of families, especially the poor. To guarantee the essential necessities for the protection of medical personnel, who are at the front line against this pandemic. We need to suspend the charging of basic services (rent, electricity, water, gas, etc.) and taxes for working families.
We need to fight to guarantee free, universal, quality, public health care systems. We need to fight to materialize heavy investment in scientific investigation.
To reach these objectives, that are a matter of life and death for millions, there is no other way out, that doesn’t imply attacking the interests, the profits of the greatest capitalists.
A socialist program involves confiscating and nationalizing all hospitals and pharmaceutical industries in private hands; confiscate and nationalize every laboratory and business that elaborate test kits, respirators and medical equipment in general; confiscate and nationalize hotels, leisure spaces, and any other infrastructure that may serve as attention premises for the sick or shelter for the homeless.
They will say this is impossible, that there is no money. Socialists and the working class will reply that this is a lie.
Expropriating the bourgeoisie, socializing the means of production and reorganizing the world economy in service of the lives and meeting the needs of the immense majority of the population, under the democratic control of the working class, there will be resources a plenty. Like not many times in history, the crossroads between socialism or barbarity is set in a very dramatic manner.
In semi-colonial countries, like those in Latin America, ceasing to pay external debt, is an absolutely indispensable measure to fund an emergency plan to save the lives of the working class, not the banks.
The problem was never a lack of material resources, but at which class’ disposition they’re in.
It is no time for halfway measures. It’s them or us.
Translation by: Anastasia Ransewak
Notes:
[1] See: <https://litci.org/es/menu/especial/coronavirus/para-los-trabajadores-hay-dos-guerras-contra-el-coronavirus-y-contra-la-burguesia/>.
[2] See: <https://blogs.iadb.org/agua/es/coronavirus-dia-mundial-del-agua/>.
[3] See: <https://elpais.com/internacional/2015/05/13/actualidad/1431542093_232345.html>.
[4] See: <https://economia.uol.com.br/noticias/estadao-conteudo/2019/01/07/deficit-habitacional-e-recorde-no-pais.htm>.
[5] See: <https://g1.globo.com/economia/noticia/2020/03/18/em-programa-antidesemprego-governo-propoe-reducao-proporcional-de-salarios-e-jornada.ghtml>.
[6] See: <https://www1.folha.uol.com.br/mercado/2020/03/governo-vai-editar-nova-mp-para-autorizar-corte-de-50-em-salario-e-jornada-de-trabalho.shtml>.
[7] See: <https://www.celag.org/latinoamerica-y-el-covid-19-movilizar-recursos-o-gastar-en-la-gente/>.
[8] See: <https://litci.org/es/menu/mundo/latinoamerica/chile/el-salvataje-a-las-empresas-del-plan-economico-de-pinera-es-una-burla-para-los-trabajadores/>. -
April 5 web event: Author reads from new novel about Spanish Civil War
Sunday afternoon, April 5, 4 p.m. Eastern Daylight Time, 1 p.m. Pacific Time
In a live internet simulcast, author Michael Schreiber will read aloud several chapters from his new novel (an unpublished work in progress) about the Spanish Civil War of the 1930s. The fictional work — with episodes of romance and humor, and stirring battle scenes — is based on real events.
The story involves a character, Arthur Rose, a young idealistic worker from Philadelphia who volunteers to fight in Spain in early 1937. He is wounded during a suicidal charge up a hill in Aragon. Much later, in 1953, he is entrusted with a “mission” to return to Spain, now under the Francisco Franco dictatorship. Memories of his adventures during the war, and the guilt that he harbors from those days, come flooding back.
The reading by the author will take about 40 minutes, with time for questions afterward. If you would like to attend, please register on this website, and you will receive a link to the Zoom call. Register here!
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U.S. government uses coronavirus to attack marginalized people
The U.S. government has been slow to take emergency measures that would protect working people from the most devastating effects of the coronavirus. Instead of centralizing a coordinated national response to the pandemic that puts people’s lives before corporate profits, all levels of the capitalist state have been hard at work stepping on the rights of workers, Indigenous people, immigrants, prisoners, and the reproductive rights of women and queer people.
“Why bargain?” asks the boss
On March 18, the same day that the first coronavirus relief package was signed, the Federal Labor Relations Agency passed a decision that extends the ability of federal workers to stop paying union dues from 15 days to year-round. The next day, the National Labor Review Board suspended all union elections. The former policy is meant to be permanent, while there is no set end-point for the latter.
Even though the Democrats claim to have pushed through guarantees for labor in the stimulus plan, in reality their measures do nothing to protect the rights of working people. The package contains hundreds of billions of dollars to be given to corporations large and small as “grants.” That is, the government will be paying all or almost all of companies’ costs and letting the corporations pocket whatever revenue as profit.
The “concession” for labor is that these companies are barred from breaking their collective bargaining contracts for two years and will be “neutral” if their employees want to unionize, if the process is legalized again. Of course, the whole point of a contract is that the terms are supposed to be guaranteed by law. And employers are legally compelled to be “neutral” in the face of union elections. However, neither legal fact has ever stopped employers from violating their own agreements or spreading lies and intimidation to workers who want to unionize.
The general movement towards a maximum attack on labor rights is clearly shown in the places where precedents are being set to use the coronavirus to outright suspend collective bargaining agreements. Minnesota and California, in the name of emergency responses, either have or are considering unilaterally suspending state workers’ collective bargaining contracts, without negotiation. On March 25, the U.S. Citizenship and Immgration Services refused to engage in post-implementation bargaining, a basic right won by American Federation of Government Employees Council 119, which represents about 13,000 USCIS employees. Two days later, the Jacksonville Aviation Authority sent out a memo to all Bargaining Unit employees suspending their union contract and cancelling end-of-year PTO payments.
These are the first rumblings of what will become a large-scale frontal attack on labor. Socialist Resurgence has already begun to receive reports of companies threatening to unilaterally decertify their workers’ unions after the coronavirus crisis passes and business returns.
BIA says no to tribal sovereignty
In a major blow to Indigenous peoples’ right to self-determination, the Bureau of Indian Affairs informed the Mashpee Wampanoag Chairman Cedric Cromwell that it intends to disestablish the tribe’s reservation, located within the boundaries of Massachusetts. The move is unprecedented for recent times, as there was no court order for the decision. Using disease and pandemonium to seize Indigenous peoples’ land is a common tactic for the U.S. government, which is fundamentally based on such acts of dispossession and genocide.
By using the crisis to flaunt even the inadequate checks that Native Americans forced the government to implement, the Bureau of Indian Affairs is positioning itself to potentially decertify more reservations. In a time in which Indigenous people are leading the fight against capitalism’s ecological destruction, and land speculation grows without bounds, the federal government is continuing the almost 530-year-long process of colonial dispossession on this continent.
Plenty of masks for ICE, no soap for immigrants
The Democrats and Republicans are taking advantage of the coronavirus pandemic to permanently tighten border security and strengthen formal divisions between citizens and non-citizens. The ACLU was advocating as early as March 16 for the immediate release of all at-risk detainees, a demand that somewhat lagged behind that of the prison rights movement, but it was not until the 27th that a federal judge in New York ruled to release 10 detainees considered vulnerable from facilities with known COVID cases.
This decision follows hunger strikes and protests by detained immigrants around the country. The Philadelphia Inquirer reported on March 29, for instance, that at least 180 detainees at the York County [Pa.] Prison have started a hunger strike to demand their release because of the coronavirus epidemic. “We are chickens in a chicken coop here—we are like sitting ducks,” one striker told the newspaper.
The small amount of immigrant releases so far constitute the other side of detention centers’ ramping up violence against detainees. Buzzfeed reports that there have been four instances of use-of-force at ICE facilities, including pepper spraying over 70 immigrants.
ICE recently released a guidance letter, claiming that sanitation measures are being taken, yet there is unanimous agreement by the people actually being held that they have neither soap nor water. The lack of sanitation in the concentration camps organized on behalf of the United States capitalist class is not a new development. Last year, multiple children and adolescents died of preventable infectious diseases during or immediately after being held by ICE.
There has been no slow-down in the Gestapo-like enforcement of immigration law since the crisis has come into full swing. Even after California was locked-down, the Los Angeles Times detailed reports of ICE agents carrying out arrests with “masks at the ready.” While nurses and doctors are forced to protest for masks and other safety equipment, ICE agents are slated to receive as many as they need.
On top of using the repressive apparatus of state violence, the government is also withholding benefits from immigrants. The stimulus package as written, which is itself a massive handout to capital, gives no payouts to non-citizens. That means that workers at all points of the citizenship process, documented or not, who have been laid off due to the recent situation will receive no support at all from the federal government.
Locked up
Since the seriousness of the coronavirus threat has become well understood, movement organizations have been calling for the immediate evacuation of prisons and full release of non-violent, older, and immunocompromised incarcerated people. By the time Iran had only 2300 confirmed cases, the Iranian government released over 54,000 inmates. Meanwhile, with tens of thousands of cases in the United States, various states have only released handfuls of people. Instead, visitation rights are being curtailed. Due to the draconian policies of the U.S. carceral system, inmates now must go for an indefinite amount of time without speaking to loved ones or spend highly inflated amounts of money to use prison phones.
The situation is becoming increasingly drastic as corrections officers, medical staff, and detainees are testing positive in accelerating numbers. Rikers Island, N.Y., is quickly becoming a hotspot and crisis center; there were over 50 cases reported on March 25. One inmate reports that the sinks are totally inadequate for basic hand washing and that the island’s medical facilities were already overwhelmed. Some states, including Connecticut, Kentucky, and Kansas, are actively refusing to release any incarcerated people.
Bill Barr released a memo to the Bureau of Prisons detailing procedures to begin to release some federal prisoners. According to the Marshall Project, the reality of this memo is that it has an extreme level of racial bias. The memo “instructs the prison system to prioritize for release only those prisoners who receive the minimum possible score on a ‘risk assessment’ algorithm called PATTERN. This computerized rating system, which has never been used before, deems white-collar offenders, who are disproportionately white, generally safe to be let out of prison. But it does not deem safe to release drug addicts with a history of prior arrests, who are disproportionately black due in part to the biased policing practices of the War on Drugs. Only 7 percent of black men in federal prisons would be considered low-risk enough to get out using PATTERN—compared with 30 percent of white men.”
Reproductive rights
According to CNN, Mississippi, Ohio, and Texas have all designated abortion as “non-essential” elective surgery. These states are acting as the front-runners in a despicable race to smash women and queer people’s right to choose to have an abortion. Other states are following in their footsteps. The Kentucky attorney general, Daniel Cameron, on March 27, directly called for the Cabinet of Health and Family Services to declare abortions as “non-essential.”
Author Jenny Brown, in her recent book “Without Apology: The Abortion Struggle Now,” points out that first-trimester and even most second-trimester abortions are very simple procedures. Many can be done at home in a safe process using mifepristone and misoprostol. However, due to anti-women policy in the U.S., taking those pills is considered a surgical procedure, with the same bureaucratic and financial consequences as other, also safe, methods.
These anti-abortion measures hypocritically threaten the health of people seeking abortion. Texas has made an exception if to allow abortions in the cases that they are “medically necessary to preserve the life or health of the mother,” but the earlier an abortion takes place, the safer it is, and they are certainly much safer than taking a pregnancy to term, especially in a global health pandemic in which all hospitals are expected to be at capacity.
In the aftermath of the arrival of the pandemic, Planned Parenthood has been specifically singled out with difficulties in accessing recovery funds. According to the Planned Parenthood Advocacy Group, “The bill gives the Small Business Administration broad discretion to exclude Planned Parenthood affiliates and other non-profits serving people with low incomes and deny them benefits under the new small business loan program.” The bill also specifically includes abortion service providers from counting as health-care facilities, despite being mandated to keep hospital standards and, of course, being necessary health-care facilities. Speaking to Vice News, Nikki Madsen, executive director of the Abortion Care Network, said, “Probably every independent clinic in the country is at risk.”
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Prisons are deathtraps for COVID-19
By LUCAS ALAN DIETSCHE and ERWIN FREED
Workers and oppressed people are dealing with fear, the shortages of sanitary products, and items necessary for everyday survival during the COVID-19 crisis. There are closings of schools, political events, rallies, parades, and work places due to possible students, elderly, and immunodeficient people being infected. Unfortunately, prisoners are often not seen as a highly vulnerable population by the mainstream media.
Coronavirus suddenly exploded in China’s prisons with reports of more than 500 cases spreading in three provinces. In Iran, 54,000 inmates were temporarily released back into the country from virus infection fears. In Italy, where the death toll continues to rise exponentially, prisoners rioted and escaped due to the COVID-19 fears.
Prisons are not a closed biosphere to defend against a pandemic. As in Solzhenitsyn’s “Gulag Archipelago,” the U.S. criminal justice system has different levels of ecosystems where just the tiniest variable can compromise the whole system. From MRSA and TB as well as sexually transmitted diseases, the ecosystem has the power to put an immediate lock-down on incarcerated persons’ mobility.
But COVID-19 means that not just one inmate is likely to be infected. The levels of the criminal justice system involve: First, contact with police in being arrested and booked; then jail, court, transportation, prison. Throughout that process, the different parts of prison, staff, teachers, medical staff, etc. can be possible infection contacts. Even the mail system of letters and packages to and from prisoners can be possible carriers.
As with many health declarations throughout the world, U.S. authorities have urged people to stay six feet away from each other. This is impossible in a prison, where inmates often are close together due to overcrowding.
Prison administrators, wardens, sheriffs, and district attorneys in many states are coming to realize that their network and veins of holding cells, day rooms, segregation, migrant induction centers, recreation centers, libraries, and transportation vehicles could all be danger areas because the mobility of correctional officers, medical staff, library staff, and incarcerated people on work-release makes them possible COVID-19 contacts. That is not to mention the fact that temporary living placement, halfway houses, and migrant induction centers all are vulnerable to COVID-19.
Incarcerated people, especially now when they have literally nowhere to go if an outbreak happens, should be looked at as an extremely fragile and often immunocompromised community. The historical racism of the United States has meant that a preponderance of people of color are sent to prison, many of whom have pre-existing health problems caused by poor living conditions, such as heart problems, diabetes, and asthma.
Insufficient air, cleaning facilities, and simple hygiene units are not supported by prisons’ meager medical staffs in the event of an outbreak. With crucial health supplies such as masks becoming low throughout the country, such products will become increasingly less prioritized to prisons. If possible, prisoners will have to buy extra hygiene products through the canteen, giving more profits to private companies.
These wide levels of priorities have come about because of the emphasis on incarceration from both the Republican and Democratic capitalist parties. Although the COVID-19 in prisons and jails has the potential of growing into a major humanitarian crisis, the major presidential candidates will differ only in surface-level tactics.
In recent days, many jails and prisons have been releasing inmates to deter possible outbreaks. In Wisconsin the Department of Corrections has stopped admissions into prisons and juvenile facilities. Since there has been running litigation against the sexual and physical treatment of juveniles in Lincoln Hills and Copper Lake Juvenile Facilities, the Wisconsin ACLU could not comment on the COVID-19 deterrence in these facilities. This might have been too late to stop the prison-industrial ecosystem from being compromised.
At this time of writing, many jails in the states of Georgia, Massachusetts, California, New Jersey, and Wisconsin as well as the notorious Rikers Island, N.Y.—where the virus has spread quickly—have incarcerated people who are infected. An incarcerated woman at a women’s prison in South Dakota has tested positive for the virus.
Besides health concerns, the easy defamation of fundamental civil rights is appalling. The right to have an attorney, jury, and other habeas corpus rights are being slowly compromised because of the dangers of contact. The Federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) and some state prisons are banning visits. Visits instead happen through the computer, with a visitor off-sight. Federal prisons are banning lawyer visits for 30 days.
The crisis shows that what is considered criminal can change in a week. Marxists point out how the ruling class creates crime to socially control the “surplus population,” e.g., unemployed, homeless, incarcerated peoples. These shifts and contradictions are unmasking how crime is socially created through capitalism. As described in Mother Jones magazine, the Kenosha, Wis., Police Department posted on its Facebook page, “Due to the growing concern over the flu, Coronavirus and other illnesses, the decision was made to cancel all crime in the Kenosha area. … We are unsure when this ban will be lifted. We ask anyone who was planning to commit any crimes to please stay home for their safety.”
Many jails are still booking people for both felonies and misdemeanors. Instead of being part of the solution, many police are retooling their efforts in regard to crime control. In New Orleans, public defenders are calling for the release of all people charged with non-violent offenses. New York Democratic Governor Andrew Cuomo is looking to grant emergency clemencies to older, sick non-infected people. In Ohio, however, the Correctional Facilities administrative officials are more worried about their precious criminal justice system breaking down, than the people involved. Ohio is releasing healthy inmates from the jails and giving them reduced sentences to serve at home or on bracelet.
The capitalist criminal justice network keeping the status quo is resulting in slave labor. To the prison-industrial complex, prisoners are more useful than non-incarcerated wage workers for emergency production related to COVID-19. In a reactionary move, Democratic New York Governor Cuomo has cynically instructed prisoners to make hand sanitizer for less than starvation wages. On CNN, Cuomo touted this brand like he was advertising it for sale.
The situation is chronically normal, as everything from military supplies to high-risk fire fighting utilizes coerced prison labor. Despite the fact that capital is using incarcerated labor to produce its emergency supplies, many media sources write that in case of a huge wave of deaths from the epidemic, Cuomo has said that the prisoners will dig mass graves. The prison industrial complex will always choose prisons as a surplus population to be used and thrown away at will.
The pandemic seeping into the prisons and jails is a horrendous health community situation.
As immediate demands, Socialist Resurgence calls for:
1) Evacuate all people in immigration detention. Abolish ICE and close all deportation centers. No deportations.
2) Stop all new incarceration of people older than 55.
3) Suspend all mandatory check-ins, probation holds, people not convicted, and court appearances.
4) End juvenile detention.
5) Create transitional housing, free health and community emergency services, and educational and job-training services for all prisoners and ex-prisoners.
6) Release people who committed violence in self-defense against domestic violence, trafficking, or sexual assault. We do not support carceral feminism, which advocates use of prison to incarcerate violent domestic offenders; capitalist prisons do not make people safe.
7) Free all political prisoners!
As long-term demands for the future, we call for:
1) Transformative justice and abolition of prisons!
2) Socialist revolution, to create a society in which we have no police and prisons!
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Why Socialism? An SR webinar: Watch the video!
A SOCIALIST RESURGENCE ONLINE EVENT
This webinar by Dan Belle was recorded on April 1, 2020
WATCH THE VIDEO NOW: https://www.facebook.com/SocialistResurgence/videos/2886515601442670/UzpfSTEyNzA3Mjk0MTk2ODM1NDI6Mjg2MzI4NTQxNzA5NDU5Mw/ or on youtube below
COVID-19 is mounting its destructive path through the nations of our world, revealing the stark incompatibility of private profits with public good. Meanwhile, the most that the ruling class of the U.S.A. can muster to relieve workers, the producers of society, is equivalent to a band-aid upon a festering bullet wound. Questions have arisen, louder than ever and sharper than ever: Is there no respite from the suffering and destruction wrought upon us by capitalism? Is a better world possible? What could this world look like?
Socialist Resurgence’s Dan Belle will try to cut through the confusion and explain not only what socialism is, but what socialism in the concrete present could look like, and why we must fight for it.
Hosted by Socialist Resurgence, Socialist Resurgence CT, Community-Labor Forum Philadelphia, Maine Socialist Resurgence, Lake Superior Socialist Resurgence, Socialist Resurgence of Cleveland, Socialist Resurgence of Philadelphia and Vicinity, Red on Green and Socialist Resurgence of the Shenandoah Valley
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Want 80,000 ventilators? Expropriate GM and Ventec now!
An employee of Hamilton Medical AG tests a ventilator at a plant in Domat/Ems, Switzerland, March 18, 2020. (Arnd Wiegmann / Reuters) By JUAN CRUZ FERRE
This article is reprinted from Left Voice: https://www.leftvoice.org/want-80000-ventilators-expropriate-gm-and-ventec-now
As of Friday, the United States has more confirmed cases of covid-19 than any other country in the world. The fragmented and extremely commodified nature of the U.S. healthcare system is simply not prepared to provide appropriate care to the thousands of patients flooding the hospitals, not to mention the thousands more that are on the way. In many hospitals nurses and doctors lack even the most basic protective gear, and the number of ventilators currently available is far short of what will be needed in just a week or two.
Earlier this week, president Donald Trump invoked the Defense Production Act, threatening to take control of certain industries in order to produce the much needed protective and technological equipment. However, he has not taken any further measure in this regard. Instead, he has been waiting for corporations to make the decision to invest, based on their calculations of the costs involved and the profits they can make.
This Friday, the New York Times reported that an almost finished deal with General Motors and Ventec Life Systems was put on hold because the price tag for the production of 80,000 ventilators was more than $1 billion. At the same time, hospitals across the country—also more concerned about their bottom line than with preparing for the peak of the pandemic—are postponing the purchase of additional necessary ventilators due to high costs.
Let’s remember that GM filed for bankruptcy in 2009 and received a $50 billion bailout from the federal government (much of which was never paid back). Now the world is facing the most critical public health emergency of the last 100 years, and this same company is delaying the production of life-saving ventilators in order to make a profit
But this is what capitalism is about, after all, and we can’t expect corporations to save the day when they are the ones who created these problems in the first place. We can’t rely on capitalism’s rules, on the much touted laws of supply and demand, to address the urgent needs of our population. The only immediate solution, even if partial and late, is to nationalize the key industries that can produce ventilators, starting with GM and Ventec Life Systems. The government should force ventilator companies to share their blueprints and technical knowledge for the production of their equipment, and put all capable companies to work producing them right now.
From the beginning, Trump has underestimated the threat of this pandemic. Starting on January 22, he has repeatedly claimed that the coronavirus was “under control,” that it was comparable to a regular flu, and more recently he questioned the need for tens of thousands of ventilators. He has refused to use the test provided by the World Health Organization, and has intentionally restricted the availability of tests to keep the number of cases artificially low. The emergency measures to address this public health emergency, including the nationalization of the healthcare system (just like Spain and Ireland have swiftly done as a response to the pandemic) and the nationalization and immediate retooling of key industries, should have been taken two months ago. Now New York hospitals are almost at maximum capacity and the dearth of protective gear is causing health care workers to get sick and die. New York hospitals have already been stretched to the limit, as reports of ventilators being shared between two patients graphically show. The scarcity of ventilators means that hundreds of patients with acute respiratory distress will not have the mechanic support they need to survive. And the responsibility for those lost lives will fall squarely on Trump, GM, and Ventec.
In order to survive this crisis we need to nationalize GM, Ventec, 3M, and other key industries and put them under workers’ control. This government can’t be trusted because, as we have seen, it only cares about securing profits for the capitalists. The workers at these companies are the only ones who have the knowledge and ability to retool the factories and run them, while ensuring safe working conditions for those in production. The time for lukewarm ideas is past, we need bold, radical measures now.
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Workers Fight Two Wars: Against the Coronavirus and Against the Bourgeoisie
Since the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic, at the end of 2019 and the beginning of 2020, the world seems to be living an almost apocalyptic situation: the economy is collapsing, governments and people are panicking, and cities, countries, and houses are being isolated or blocked. Sporting, cultural and religious activities have been suspended; public transportation had reduced its frequency, and part of health care has been suspended in other areas. Nobody knows life will get back to “normal,” neither at what cost.
By Alejandro Iturbe
The life of the workers, already very hard, is increasingly hellish: many of them, risking contagion, must continue to go to work in factories and companies on overcrowded public transportation, and pay for the familiar preventative items, such as chinstraps and alcohol gels, whose prices heavily increased. Moreover, in many cases, companies do not even provide them with such care items in their workplaces.
Amid the catastrophe, the bourgeoisie and the bourgeois governments seek to continue exploiting the workers at all costs, even maintaining the manufacturing of expendable products such as the luxury cars of the FCA plant, in Pomigliano, Italy. Others, like Swiss Medical in Argentina, refuse to pay the compulsory leave the government had determined for those employees who had to care for their children because of school closures.1
But the attacks do not end there. In Brazil, the Bolsonaro government is back with an old business aspiration and threatens to cut wages by half to “avoid layoffs”2, while others have already begun to lay off, such as the Chinese-owned Caoa Chery, automotive in São José dos Campos.3
While they attack the workers, the bourgeois governments, as always, help the companies: the government of Donald Trump has just announced a package of 800 billion dollars in this direction.4
The bourgeoisie and the governments are trying to charge the cost of the economic crisis that already existed, and which is now exacerbated by the effects of the coronavirus pandemic, on the workers’ backs.
That is why workers have to face two wars. The first, along with the rest of the population, for the preservation of their lives and that of their families, against the coronavirus. The second, against the bourgeoisie, the governments, and their attacks. A war that, far from being mitigated by the first, is exacerbated by the catastrophe.
The Class Struggle Continues
That is why, a little hidden by this catastrophe, the class struggle continues its course, driven by already existing claims, and incorporating a new field of demands to fight for. Revolutionary processes like the Chilean one keep their flame, and other struggles in the world are added, showing, in an incipient way, a situation that can be explosive.
It is logical that the epicenter of the struggles concerning the fight against the coronavirus is in Italy (the country with the most acute situation in the world), and the industrial workers of this country, as shown by the recent wave of ” savage strikes ” (without the support of the “official unions”).
The wave of strikes reportedly began at Fiat-Chrysler’s Pomigliano plant (FCA) in Naples, which employs 6,000 workers. Workers on the Alfa-Romeo luxury car production line added spontaneously at the start of the afternoon shift last Tuesday, protesting against unsafe conditions.
The next day, the company announced the closure of that plant, along with the Melfi, Atessa, and Cassino facilities, until Saturday. But it did not say it was because of the strike but because the plants would be “disinfected”.5 With that, they Were not only trying to hide the strike but also leaving the possibility open for workers to get back to production as quickly as possible.
From Wednesday to Friday, the wave of strikes spread throughout Italy and affected all major industries. “The workers are on strike against the coronavirus, or rather against the government that keeps the factories open despite the coronavirus,” wrote the Corriere della Sera. In Brescia, in the Lombardy region, which is among the most affected by the disease, the Secolo d’Italia wrote on Thursday that “workers in some factories have started another “strong strike”.
Shipbuilding workers in Fincantieri, Liguria, left their job positions after a worker tested positive for coronavirus. The strike quickly spread to the company’s other shipyards on the Ligurian peninsula. The work stoppages are affecting the entire steel industry in Italy. Most of the metallurgical factories have closed their operations until March 22.
Amid the growing rebellion among the rank and file workers, the main national metalworkers’ unions (whose union bureaucracy, until now, “looked the other way” and collaborated with the companies) were forced to issue a statement on Friday warning that if the companies did not shut down operations, by March 22 the strikes would hit the whole industry.
In Uruguay, construction workers held a strike and a mobilization, called by the sector’s union, to demand the validation of an agreement for a special license, signed with the companies but rejected by the government. In Argentina, the metallurgical workers of Rio Grande, in the distant Tierra del Fuego, decided in assemblies to abandon the factories in the face of the bosses’ delay to take a stand.
Conditions for working safely
In other cases, the workers’ claims are not for the suspension of the work activity but for the companies to provide the elements and sanitary security to carry out the work.
This is the case of the Uruguayan meatpacking plant Dayman, whose workers were suspended for this reason, as well as the miners of the Astaldi company in Chuquicamata (Chile).6 In Brazil, the San Pablo workers of the call center conglomerate Almaviva (with 37,000 workers throughout the country) held a strike and a demonstration at the door of the company to the cry of “El, el, el, queremos alcohol en gel“.7
In Spain, there are reports of conflicts at the Mercedes Benz factory in Madrid and the Balay company’s plant in Zaragoza (household appliances). Also, in Madrid, workers at the NH Barajas Hotel have denounced the danger of contagion and spread for workers and guests. In Argentina, call center workers have denounced that they are forced to work in crowded conditions and that there are already two confirmed cases of infected workers.
Also in Argentina, workers at the Rio Santiago Shipyard (La Plata) presented a petition demanding improvements in working conditions and the application of quarantine, while the Internal Commission of FelFort (chocolate factory in the Autonomous City of Buenos Aires) managed to enforce the licenses issued by the national government under the threat of immediate force measures. In Brazil, a strike by the workers of Caoa Chery, supported by the union, forced the company to backtrack on layoffs.
Some of these companies manufacture essential products (food, medical and protective products) and must continue the production either way. In others, which are not essential, companies continue to exploit them by putting their workers at high risk. Fearing dismissal and suspensions, in many cases workers are forced to continue working, but they demand safe and healthy conditions.
As we have said, reality poses not only the combination of demands but the combination of traditional and new forms of struggle, as well as the challenge of [discovering/proposing] new organizational forms for the conditions in which it is not the factory or company that centralizes the class and in which the coronavirus pandemic imposes restrictions on the holding of meetings or assemblies. Also in the form that protests take: in Brazil, there were massive “cacerolazos” and “noises” from the windows of houses and apartments against the policy of the Bolsonaro government.
It is also necessary that the working class starts the debate on which should be the basic objectives, the program and the strategy of the war against bourgeoisie and governments (in this regard, see the IWL-FI statement).8
We would like to finish with one last point about our class: the need for a special policy for the situation of that sector that is on the front line of the war against the coronavirus (the nursing and medical workers), who are not only living long hours in conditions of very high stress but are also beginning to become victims of the pandemic themselves. This is shown by information on the situation in Italian hospitals, which indicates that 2,629 of them have already been infected with the disease.9
Notes:
[1] http://www.laizquierdadiario.com/Swiss-Medical-se-niega-a-pagar-la-licencia-a-trabajadores-que-deben-cuidar-a-sus-hijos
[2] https://www.msn.com/pt-br/dinheiro/economia-e-negocios/para-evitar-demiss%C3%B5es-governo-prop%C3%B5e-cortar-sal%C3%A1rio-e-jornada-de-funcion%C3%A1rios-pela-metade/ar-BB11nIDO
[3] http://www.mundosindical.com.br/Noticias/45874,Em-meio-a-crise-do-coronavirus-Caoa-Chery-demite-59-trabalhadores
[4] https://www.abc.es/economia/abci-trump-estima-ayudas-para-coronavirus-800000-millones-dolares-202003161908_noticia.html
[5] https://g1.globo.com/carros/noticia/2020/03/11/fiat-paralisa-algumas-fabricas-na-italia-por-causa-do-novo-coronavirus.ghtml
[6] https://www.facebook.com/DiarioVenceremos/videos/520283572244812/
[7] https://noticias.uol.com.br/cotidiano/ultimas-noticias/2020/03/20/sem-alcool-gel-e-higiene-funcionarios-de-call-center-fazem-greve-em-sp.htm?fbclid=IwAR17kWee5xZ0_VICRtIeChFrp0QQQIrRUum3Mv0s0b0urGruKqd5R-AQeUY
[8] https://litci.org/es/menu/mundo/coronavirus-el-capitalismo-mata/
[9] https://www.clarin.com/mundo/contagian-curar-2-629-medicos-enfermeras-infectados-coronavirus-italia_0_VrFcehG9s.html -
Italian Workers On Strike Against Profit Over People
Workers in the Lombardy region and also across all of Italy are going on strike against Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte’s orders to keep the country “open.” This is despite the devastating effects of the deadliest coronavirus outbreak in the world with 7,500 dead. This measure expresses the clear class character of the Conte government, concerned with the losses of big corporations during this slow down of the economy, for he is clearly putting profits before people.
Conte and Union Leaderships Push to Keep Italy Open For Profits
After 18 hours of intense negotiations between the government and the union officials of Italy’s biggest union federations (CGIL, CISL and UIL), on March 14th Conte announced that “for the good of the country, for the protection of workers’ health. Italy does not stop.” The measure allowed for the shutting down of small businesses and the service industry, but it is forcing major “essential” industrial factories to keep open- with an excessively generous understanding of what falls into the “essential” category. This measure shows that what is “essential” for the Italian government is to ensure profits for the major corporations, and not the protection of the health of millions of workers and the social welfare of Italian working families.
Rank and File Workers Organize Wildcat Strikes for Social Welfare
In response, starting March 12th, several rank and file union networks, such as Frente di Lotta No Austerity (Front of Struggle Against Austerity), have reported that wildcat strikes are erupting throughout Italy, especially in Brescia and Lombardy regions, as workers are growing increasingly concerned and angry that neither the government nor the union officials are protecting their health and safety. These strikes were initially led by logistical workers, in particular workers of the Amazon warehouses, and also bank and chemical workers who were forced to go to work without basic sanitary protections such as masks, gloves, and disinfection of facilities.
The grassroots strike wave is now getting organized, and the push from below has forced an official strike by the main metalworkers unions (FIOM, FIM and IULM), in the Lombardy region, one of the areas most affected by the virus. In a joint statement, they are calling for a one-day stoppage on Wednesday, March 25th in all factories of the whole region that are not linked to the essential sectors of healthcare and production of goods for immediate need in the COVID-19 crisis. Paolo Pirani, national head of the Uiltec chemical and textile workers, declared that “the decree allows a lot of firms to remain open, many without the proper guarantees and safety norms, creating conditions not agreed with us and fanning a lot of concern among workers.” So far the three main unions of chemical workers (FILCTEM, FEMCA and UILTEC) have declared themselves strike-ready, as have the energy and textile sectors.
We Must Support Workers’ Welfare Strikes Internationally
Workers in the United States, for corporations such as Tesla, UPS, FedEx, and Amazon, are facing similar challenges and they are beginning to organize from below. Rank and file strikes of auto-workers forced the Big Three (GM, Ford, and Chrysler) to close the plants, but Tesla remains open. We must support all workers taking action for everyone’s welfare and survival, and demand immediate paid leave for all truly non-essential workers. All workers, regardless of their situation (salaried workers, self-employed, unemployed, on long-term contracts, seasonal workers, and so on) must receive 100% of their wages, and a minimum wage should be guaranteed for all, based on each country’s standard of living.
The labor unions affiliated to the International Labour Network of Solidarity and Struggles, such as the CSP-Conlutas of Brazil and the Solidaire union in France, support the Italian workers on strike. Resistance is rising up around the world! The fight against Coronavirus is the highest priority! And with our Italian comrades of the PdAc (Partido di Alternativa Comunista) the Italian section of the IWL, who are fighting back against the Conte government that claims, “Italy does not stop!”, we respond: “Italy’s profits stop for us!”
Strike Call by the Lombardy Unions:
Facing Emergency Not Everything Is Necessary:
We Take Action to Defend Life and Healthcare
The Government Decree signed on March 22nd only takes into account part of the concerns raised by the CGIL, CISL and UIL unions. In fact many activities that are neither essential nor indispensable have been included in the list of those who can continue working. We have always advocated for putting worker’s health and safety as top priorities that come before everything else, but we realize the the government has conceded to the undue pressures of the Confindustria (General Confederation of Italian Industry), and that profits and the economy have been prioritized over the health and safety of workers.
This Is Not Going to Work!
The inclusion in the list of essential activities (now known as ATECO codes) of a series of activities that are not essential at all, decreases the power of the government decree, and reduces the to the bare minimum the number of workers who can “remain at home.”
This is why, following the call from the Regional and National Confederal secretariat, we consider it necessary to modify the current Decree and to ensure the health of everyone, and thus we declare a
Regional Strike for Wednesday March 25th 2020 in all the Labor Sectors Represented by the FILCTEM, FEMCA and UILTEC regional union locals, in all factories that are undertaking production that is either not truly essential or of public utility for the country, and in all the workplaces where the basic health and safety conditions are not met.
We demand all the Employers Associations and all Factories to have a sense of responsibility and not to increase the tension and exasperation among workers. We demand the use of the existing social safety nets to back the work-stoppage.
Milan, March 23rd 2020
The Regional Secretaries of the FILCTEM-CGIL Lombardia, FEMCA-CISL Lombardia and UITEC-UIL Lombardia -
COVID-19 and domestic violence
By HEATHER BRADFORD
Twenty-one states have enacted stay at home orders which will take effect by Friday, March 27. By the end of the week, half of the population of the United States will be ordered to stay at home. Even without state directives, everyone should stay at home to slow the spread of COVID-19. Unfortunately, this critical public health measure will exacerbate the problem of domestic violence as victims are confined at home with their abusers and face fewer resources to ensure their safety.
Domestic violence is itself an epidemic; according to the National Coalition Against Domestic Violence, 10 million people are abused by an intimate partner in the U.S. each year. One in four women and one in nine men have experienced either severe intimate partner violence, sexual violence, or stalking. In the face of this crisis, the needs of survivors will go unmet as COVID-19 continues to lay bare capitalism’s deadly failure to provide for human needs.
In response to the pandemic, The National Domestic Violence Hotline has created a fact sheet on how COVID-19 impacts survivors of domestic violence. The fact sheet warns that abusers may use the crisis to exert power and control in their relations. This could be done a number of ways, such as withholding items like sanitizer and disinfectants. Abusers may cancel insurance, hide insurance cards, or prevent a survivor from accessing medical attention. They may share misinformation to control a victim through fear and deception.
Beyond the behaviors of abusers, services to survivors may be increasingly limited, and survivors may fear seeking shelter because it is a communal living space. Travel restrictions make it harder for survivors to escape. In addition to the information outlined by the National Domestic Violence Hotline, abusers may feign illness to garner sympathy and lure victims back to them. The economic prospects of increased unemployment and limited housing due to the crisis will make it harder for victims to leave. The cancelation of schools and closure of day-care centers creates a barrier for victims trying to leave with their children, who are at home with both them and their abuser.
The impact of COVID-19 on domestic violence has already been felt in China. According to The New York Times, China has reported more domestic violence during the COVID-19 outbreak. Chinese anti-violence advocate Wan Fei noted that reports of domestic violence doubled during the lockdown. Under Blue Sky, an anti-domestic violence non-profit in Lijiang Province, disclosed that reports of domestic violence had tripled during the month of February.
In January, a woman from Guangdong province in China was told by authorities that she could not leave her village after she had sustained life threatening injuries in a domestic violence incident. She disobeyed their orders, walking for hours on foot with her children until she reached safety with family members. In another incident, a 42-year-old Chinese woman committed suicide by jumping out of the 11th floor of her apartment building while quaratined with her abusive husband in Shanxi province. To counter domestic violence, some women have posted signs in their community urging others not to be bystanders. The hashtag #AntiDomesticViolenceDuringEpidemic on the Chinese social media platform Sina Weibo has also been an online initiative to raise awareness about the issue.
Across the United States, there are already widespread accounts of increased instances of domestic violence. Domestic Violence and Child Advocacy Center (DVCAC) in Cleveland reported to News 5 Cleveland that calls to their hotline were recently up 30%. Melissa Graves, the CEO of DVCAC, reported that these calls often happened during the day while abusers were at work, but with expanded layoffs and stay at home orders, victims will not have the privacy necessary to seek help.
Emmy Ritter, the director of Raphael House in Portland, Ore., reported to KGW8 News that there was increased call volume and more calls from survivors seeking hygiene products and food. These basic items are necessary to survivors who are struggling to rebuild their lives after fleeing violence. Salt Lake City police reported increased domestic violence calls over the last two weeks. Likewise, Transitions Family Violence Services in Hampton, Va., reported an increased number of calls in the last two weeks. Tasha Menacker of the Arizona Coalition to End Sexual Violence expressed to the Phoenix New Times that her agency had seen increased call volume, but that other agencies in Arizona had experienced a decrease in calls. She attributed this disparity to the increased difficulty that some survivors might have finding the privacy to make calls.
To reach out to domestic violence services, survivors must be able to text, email, or call for help. Shelter in place orders, social distancing practices, quarantines, and increased unemployment curtail the privacy necessary to escape abusive situations and cut victims off from social networks that may be able to assist them or intervene on their behalf. Thus, victims are likely to be at home with their abuser for longer periods of time and are at the same time more isolated from the help they need.
The problem of domestic violence is deepened by the atomization of communities into individual households during stay at home orders. Anti-carceral feminists have sought to develop community responses to domestic violence that do not involve police and prisons, such as creating support networks, staying with victims in their home, providing housing and mutual aid, and self-defense strategies. Orders to shelter in place make it harder to connect with victims as neighbors, friends, family members, and activists. This isolation leaves survivors with fewer options outside of police responses, which can be violent and abusive towards racial minorities, chronically homeless, people with disabilities, and the poor.
Because of the risk of COVID-19 in prisons, the police response to domestic violence punishes perpetrators with the prospect of death and illness. Anti-carceral feminists are challenged with the task of developing ways to connect with and offer alternatives to policing in the face of social distancing. Posters and social media, like the efforts made in China, are one solution, but more is needed.
While the private sphere becomes increasingly atomized, domestic violence shelters are generally considered essential services. This means that in the event of stay at home orders or a lockdown, shelters remain open. It is vital that shelters remain open, as they are one of the few resources that survivors and victims have during this crisis.
However, like other essential services, this puts shelter staff at risk of contracting or spreading COVID-19. Shelters are often communal spaces where diseases are easily spread due to cramped conditions, the challenges of maintaining sanitary conditions, and lowered immunity from stress. Shelters must remain open, but shelter staff should receive hazard pay for their work. Shelter staff should also have access to the protective equipment necessary for cleaning the shelter and assisting sick residents.
Gloves, thermometers, masks, and cleaning supplies are in short supply due to the needs of medical institutions. Other necessary supplies include tylenol, diapers, toilet paper, feminine hygiene products, food, and other items, some of which have become scarce as they are hoarded by fearful shoppers. A social response to fighting COVID-19 should include making certain that these necessary supplies are distributed to shelters. Shelters themselves should be expanded by making use of empty hotels, dormitories, or empty houses, so that conditions are not as crowded, sick residents can be properly quarantined, and the increased demand for shelter space can be met.
Whereas shelters are essential services, many other services provided by domestic violence agencies are not considered essential. Visitation centers, legal assistance, support groups, and educational programs may not be deemed essential nor safe. Workers in these areas face job loss and clients who need these services are cut off. By expanding the capacity of shelters through the opening of additional facilities, some of these workers may be able to continue their work. The need for safe staffing levels at existing shelters as staff members become ill also creates a need for more workers. This potentially increases the number of workers who are exposed to COVID-19 but required to ensure necessary services.
At the same time, funding is required to make certain that shelters, hotlines, and other services can continue to operate. Domestic violence resources rely on a variety of funding sources, including grants and private donations. Services that rely on fundraisers and donations may lose funding due to cancelled events. In Dane County, Wis., the county government gave Domestic Abuse Intervention Services $58,000 so they could continue to operate during the COVID-19 crisis after they had to cancel a fundraiser. That amount was only enough for the Dane County shelter to operate for two more months. Fundraisers themselves may become less able to support domestic violence services as donors face financial strain in a spiraling economy. Rather than bailing out corporations, public services that have been shuttled away from government provisions to the non-profit and private sector should be fully funded.
Survivors need safe places such as shelters to meet their immediate needs, but they also need the means to rebuild their lives. The mass unemployment arising from the outbreak will make jobs scarce. Landlords may be reluctant to take on new tenants if they know that rent and evictions are suspended. Survivors need the means to rebuild their lives, which means expanding social programs and public housing.
Financial abuse is one of the many ways that abusers exert power and control in their relationship. Survivors may not have access to money, their own bank account, or control over financial decisions. The overall economic inequality of women makes it harder for them to leave in the first place, as their abusive relationship may provide them with economic security. Paid maternity leave, free and safe abortion on demand, guaranteed housing, universal health care, free and extensive day care, free education from pre-school to Ph.d, are necessary to empower women. Extending these rights to women will go a long way to mitigate the power and control abusers have over them, but also the power and control that capitalist society has over them.
COVID-19 presents an unprecedented challenge to activists and advocates against domestic violence. In the interest of public health, billions of people around the world are relegated to their individual households. For those who are homeless or incarcerated, this creates enormous barriers as they lack a safe place to physically distance themselves. For victims of domestic violence who find themselves locked down with an abuser, it can be a death sentence.
Response to the pandemic has relied upon the social arrangement of private households, but this is not a safe place for many nor a place that is accessible to all. It is a sphere wherein women have been tasked with the unpaid reproductive labor of capitalism. Domestic violence has historically been viewed as a private matter to be resolved within families or between couples, rather than a social problem. As such, individual households have been and continue to be the hidden arena for all manner of horrors against women.
The inequality of women and the violence against them enforces their economic role in the household to sustain capitalism. Considering that the COVID-19 pandemic may last for months, come in waves, and is unlikely to be the last pandemic wrought and exacerbated by capitalism, the question of how to keep people safe during a pandemic without worsening the oppression of women requires deep consideration. For now, keeping shelters open and safe, providing for staff and survivors alike, developing alternatives to policing, building communities in the face of social distancing, and putting demands on the state for increased social provisioning are some of the things that can be done to tackle the epidemic of domestic violence in the context of a pandemic.
Drawing from: https://floridacommunity.com/the-shelter-for-abused-women-children-survivors-heal-through-art-therapy/
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[CHILE] There is No Way to Defeat Neoliberalism Without Defeating the Piñera Regime
The following is an interview of Compañera María Rivera, member of the IWL section in Chile, the International Workers’ Movement (Movimiento Internacional de los Trabajadores), and public defender. Since the beginning of the anti-government protests in October, Compañera María has become one of the faces of Chile’s revolutionary movement thanks to her principled and consistent defense of militants facing off with police and paramilitaries at demonstrations, as well as her work to release political prisoners as a public defender. Here we present an English translation of an interview conducted by a member of PST Colombia, with additional edits for clarity.
Interviewer: Hello, I’m here with María Rivera, militant of the International Workers’ Movement of Chile (IMT), activist, and public defender. María, I’d like to ask you to tell us, the broader socialist public, a bit of what’s been going on in Chile.
María: Hello, thank you for conducting this interview. I’d like to talk a bit about Chile: on the 18th of October, the country entered a revolutionary process. This didn’t come out of nowhere, but rather has its origins in the resistance against the politics of the years of the Pinochet dictatorship, during which the neoliberal mode of governance was first applied. The entire economy was privatized, all of the social services as well, leaving the working class without medical care, without education, without resources: all power has been concentrated in the hands of private ownership. This is a political project that began in the 1980s, and today we can see the disasters that it has caused, as well as the seeds of revolution that it has planted in Chile.
I: Many people agree with this anti-neoliberal analysis, but there seems to be disagreement on the ground about how to exit this crisis situation. How can Chile move on from this situation? Is the task at hand simply to change and reform neoliberalism, or is the only way out from here the total defeat of the Piñera government in Chile (Ed: Sebastián Piñera is the current president of Chile.)
M: Well, what those of us in the MIT believe is that there is essentially no way to defeat this model of neoliberalism without defeating the Piñera regime and its corrupt parliament, and in doing so deepening the revolutionary struggle in order to not only defeat neoliberalism but the rest of the capitalist system along with it.
I: We’ve seen mass demonstrations with strong popular momentum from October until December 2019. Since then, at least according to the media, things seemed to have calmed down during January. But now, in this last month we’re seeing once again street fighting between militants and the police, and we can clearly see that the movement hasn’t gone away. Now that we’re entering March, what is your opinion of the current situation?
M: What we have to say is that the movement has not been shut down. Every revolutionary process has its ups and downs: sometimes many people pour into the streets, sometimes not so many. But what we have seen here is that the Piñera government has no solutions for this situation other than to use more repression against the masses. They have done nothing to solve the actual problems faced by the people. The masses of Chile have made an explosive break and declared that this isn’t an issue of just 30 pesos (Ed: the original protests in October were directly sparked by an attempt to raise metro fares by 30 pesos, roughly 3¢ USD) but rather an issue of 30 years. It all has to do with the capitalist system. The people’s mobilization continues, and people can see clearly the central role that the police play in oppressing the working class with brutal repression.
I: Speaking of repression, on one hand we know that there’s been a massive international solidarity movement standing alongside the victims of state repression in Chile. We’ve seen reports of the horrifying numbers of protestors that have been wounded or raped, with many of them losing their vision in one or both eyes as a result of police brutality. We are aware that many of the protestors have been charged with sedition, and that the MIT has thus considered it a core point of its political line to condemn the actions of the Chilean police against the public.
M: We have seen a sharp increase in the level of repression in Chile. Although we’ve had other recent cases of torture and human rights abuses, such as in 2006, it’s only been since the 18th of October that these abusues have become the constant mode of operation for the Chilean state. We in the MIT have issued statements directed at the police and the military, insisting that they stop oppressing their own people, because in reality it’s the same policemen’s friends and families that are marching in the streets right now. We tell the police that their families also deserve rights, and we are asking them to come join our side, to grow the struggle of the people united against the government. Nevertheless, we have had almost three thousand people imprisoned, more than 400 have been partially or completely blinded by the police, many have been raped, and we’ve also seen tons of other crimes perpetrated by the police. We are anticipating a massive expansion of the number of participants in demonstrations; since March 2nd, there have been mass marches and strikes organized around the demands of the resignation of the government, an end to repression, and freedom for political prisoners.
I: In the past, we’ve seen that what happens in Chile travels through the rest of the world as well. In Colombia, since November 21st we’ve seen the beginning of an important battle, and for those of us in Colombia, Chile’s example has played an important role. We have a saying in Colombia that “Colombia has woken up just like Chile”, and you can see in the Colombian marches that Chilean flags are flown alongside the Colombian ones. Could you say a few words to the people protesting in Colombia, who have risen up alongside Chile in this moment of struggle?
M: Well, really I should say that there’s been a revolutionary wave across the world, in Chile and Colombia but also in France, Hong Kong, etc. These uprisings have different objectives and methods, but what’s common across these countries is that the workers of the world are standing up and fighting. We see the ravages of decadent imperialism, capitalist systems applied by various governments that don’t have answers for the problems of the masses because the capitalist class does not care about these problems. They don’t care that refugees are dying in the Mediterranean Sea, and we can plainly see the barbarity of this system. In particular in Latin America, we’ve had a tradition of struggle against the machinations of imperialism, and thus my message to the people of Colombia is that the entire global proletariat needs to take up the objective of defeating capitalism, and there isn’t a doubt in my mind that we can do it, we the united workers and peasants of the world. We need to advance the project of socialist revolution, because it is the only political movement that can defeat capitalism’s savagery. We must continue to follow this path to revolution and a better world.
I: Thank you very much Compañera María. This is a reminder to the people of Colombia and the international working class, to the working women of the world, that this March is our opportunity to continue the struggle of working women. And I’d ask everyone to continue to stand in solidarity with Compañera Maria Rivera, to support her as she continues her work despite the threats that she has faced from the police and paramilitaries, because these threats that she faces in Chile are the same ones that we face in Colombia.
