the Voice of
The Communist League of Revolutionary Workers–Internationalist
“The emancipation of the working class will only be achieved by the working class itself.”
— Karl Marx
the Voice of
The Communist League of Revolutionary Workers–Internationalist
“The emancipation of the working class will only be achieved by the working class itself.”
— Karl Marx
Oct 26, 2020
The news media has everyone focused on the elections. Will the new president be a Democrat or a Republican? With the election just days away, what miracle will happen after November 3rd passes? The answer is...none.
Will the virus go away? Will the economy be put right—back to a place where millions were unemployed and underemployed anyway as a daily fact of life? A life where only a small proportion of workers had the security of long term employment whereas the majority of workers scurry from job to job, holding one, two and three jobs in an effort to make ends meet?
This system, which just registered its highest number of new coronavirus cases in one day, after almost eight months of pandemic, has failed us. This system that has failed to deal with the most basic of human needs, the right to a healthy life, decent medical care, food and shelter—failed. And in spite of the hype, we have no reason to believe that those conditions will magically disappear after the election.
Why? Because no matter who is elected, the same capitalist class, the owners of the banks, military contractors, real estate developers, hedge fund managers, oil companies, insurance companies, hospitals and drug companies and on and on, will still be calling the shots. Both parties have already said that there will be no public health care for all, no Medicare for all. Biden said he supports the private plans. Trump supports health care with free helicopter transport—for himself!
The U.S. economy was hit badly by initial shutdowns due to their mishandling of COVID-19 beginning in spring. And what have they done to prepare for this even greater spread of illness now, eight months later?
Nothing. And while those in political power and their masters on Wall Street were concerned by the immediate financial impacts on their profits, they pretended that the economy would rebound after the initial shocks.
Well, now we know. The so-called temporary unemployment caused by the virus has deepened into permanent unemployment. Before the virus even peaked in October, millions more workers were finding themselves permanently without work. While the official stats keepers spend week after week explaining that unemployment is better, we are living the reality. We have regained not even half of the jobs lost in the beginning of the pandemic! There are twice as many new jobs lost as there are jobs opening up for those who have permanently lost old ones! How is that a recovery?
This devastating eight-month run of sickness, death and lost employment has been a disaster for the working class. The bailout of trillions went almost entirely to the capitalists. Did they use it to bolster the economy and jobs? No. They squirreled it away and funneled it to their stockholders. Do they care that small and medium businesses, neighborhood stores, start-ups are going under and taking workers and their neighborhoods with them? No!
The working class is hanging over the cliff, about to crash when the last of unemployment extensions and CARE legislation dries up. And what are they doing?
Trying to get elected. They are prepared to let the crisis run its course. After all, those that lose will return to their mansions, golf courses and country clubs. Most are millionaires, not just Republicans like Trump.
The virus epidemic, the unemployment—that is ours to worry about. A future? Something better? Neither Democrats nor Republicans are bringing it.
The working class has to get up, fight back, sick or not, and follow the leadership of its own class, behind a program to get rid of capitalism and build something new. The working class needs leaders who are workers, not politicians, not millionaires. People who know what it means to live the American nightmare that they call the American dream.
There are candidates in two states who represent the view that workers need their own party, the Working Class parties of Michigan and Baltimore, Maryland.
Of course, a vote for them won’t mean a change in our conditions. But it can send a message to other workers, that there are many already who are fed up, ready to fight, and no longer willing to put up with their bullshit.
When workers do get up and fight, they will build their own mass organizations, follow their own political programs. It has been done before. And we can do it again.
Oct 26, 2020
Before COVID-19 hit, tens of millions of children already worked in India’s garment, jewelry, fireworks, tobacco and other factories, in car workshops, on constructions sites and farms. Many had been trafficked into India’s cities from far-off villages. Today, that number has swelled enormously.
Most of India’s child laborers had been sent to work because their families could not afford to raise them, often even to feed them. Then hundreds of millions of India’s poorest workers lost their income when India shut down because of COVID-19.
On top of that, a government-run network of more than a million early childhood centers were closed. These centers provided the only consistent sources of food, clothing, and immunizations for many poor children.
Hundreds of millions of families were faced with added mouths to feed, right as their income dried up. The exploitation of children increased as many sent their children into dumps to comb through garbage, often barefoot and without gloves. Girls were married off to older men, often from villages far away, by the tens of thousands.
Now, when recruiters come back to the villages looking for workers, they want only the cheapest labor: children. According to Dhananjay Tingal, director of a non-profit that fights child labor, “After lockdown the traffickers refused to hire the adults for work. They told the families they would only hire the children, so the families felt they had no choice.” For work days that often stretch twelve hours, the average wage for these trafficked children comes to about 50 cents a day—just enough to buy food.
Whatever laws are on the books against child labor, bosses will do whatever they can to get the cheapest labor possible. They will take advantage of hunger and desperation to drive tens of millions of children into sweatshops and brothels, for profit. For these bosses, the pandemic has been an opportunity.
This capitalist system that condemns millions of children to scrounge in trash heaps deserves to be thrown in a trash heap itself.
Oct 26, 2020
On August 31, deputies of the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department shot 16 times and killed Dijon Kizzee. The Sheriff’s Department later claimed that deputies wanted to stop him for riding his bike on the wrong side of the street in South Los Angeles. This killing spurred weeks of protests.
As shocking as this police killing was, it is not unusual. Since 2005, the police and sheriff deputies in Los Angeles County have shot 16 people for minor bike violations, according to a study done by the Los Angeles Times. People were shot after the police said they were riding on the sidewalk, biking without a light or on the wrong side of the road. In 11 of these incidents, including that of Kizzee, the bicyclists, all male and Black or Latino, were killed.
In 2009, for example, two Inglewood cops in an unmarked car began to follow Richard Tyson, 20 years old, after they said they tried to stop him for biking on a sidewalk. Tyson asked them, “Why are you always messing with me? I’m just coming from the store.” Tyson biked away, and the officers, who said they thought he had a gun, followed with lights and sirens. After a cop chased Tyson to the backyard of an apartment complex, he shot Tyson six times, killing him. The police later admitted they found no gun.
The police are an occupation army in working class neighborhoods. Using minor infractions as the excuse to harass, demean and degrade, hanging the threat of violence and prison over everyone’s heads. They impose order in neighborhoods ravaged by poverty and widespread unemployment.
Oct 26, 2020
Exide Technologies, a company worth $1.1 billion, walked out of a bankruptcy court in Delaware, free of any obligation toward the thousands of families that Exide has poisoned for more than 30 years.
Exide’s battery recycling plant in Vernon, near Los Angeles, spewed out lead, arsenic, and other poisonous chemicals into the air, water and soil of surrounding residential areas. In these neighborhoods, where more than 100,000 mostly working-class, Latino people live, two generations have already grown up with lead poisoning as children, and have been living with different types of cancers and respiratory illnesses as adults.
The State of California regulators allowed Exide to operate on “temporary permits” for 30 years, while it spewed pollution and dumped hazardous waste, poisoning tens of thousands of people who lived around the plant!
Only after the community’s outrage at Exide’s heinous crimes were Exide and its government protectors forced to close the plant. But when it came to the clean up, the U.S. Attorney’s office basically let Exide skate, in a “deal” in 2015. The feds dropped criminal charges, in exchange for Exide’s promise to clean up the plant, which they did not do.
Government agencies and the legal system are there to protect corporate profit, no matter what the cost in lives and health of workers. Now California taxpayers are expected to foot the bill for their poisoning by Exide.
Oct 26, 2020
Landlords in Washington, D.C. filed court papers to evict one in every nine renters in the city in 2018—18,000 households, according to a recent report. East of the Anacostia River in mostly working class and black Ward Eight, landlords threatened one in four renters. Over 1,700 households were physically evicted that year.
In D.C., as in many other places, the law lets landlords file for eviction very soon after a tenant misses only one month’s rent. The 100 biggest landlords tried to evict one in six tenants—east of the river, one in two. Half the renters in the city spend nearly a third of their income on rent. A quarter pay over half their income on rent.
Politicians decreed a moratorium on evictions because of the pandemic. But when the moratorium ends, thousands of people will face eviction and homelessness, during a pandemic, in the capital of the richest country in the world—a pandemic inside a pandemic.
Oct 26, 2020
While essential workers risked their lives in this pandemic, and at-home working parents faced other enormous problems, the world’s richest capitalists could sit twiddling their thumbs and gain billions of dollars off everyone else’s labor.
A recent report by the world charity Oxfam reported the billions made by corporations and individuals.
Thirty-two of the world’s biggest corporations saw combined profits of at least 100 billion dollars over these months. In the same period, more than a million people around the world died due to coronavirus, at least 400 million jobs disappeared, and more than 400 million small businesses are at risk of collapse all across the globe.
Meanwhile, Apple, Microsoft and Google paid out 117 billion dollars to shareholders. Jeff Bezos, founder of Amazon, already with a fortune of 200 billion dollars, gained an additional 92 billion dollars in the last six months. This increase to one individual’s fortune by itself would more than pay for a million new U.S. teachers, and to make classrooms safer for all children during this pandemic.
So what about the “losers?” Since a lot of transportation was halted by the pandemic, the six largest oil companies, Exxon Mobil, Total, Shell, BP, Chevron and Petrobras (Brazilian Petroleum Company), LOST 61 billion dollars in the past six months. But they still sent 31 billion dollars to their shareholders!
Oct 26, 2020
Hertz, the car rental company, claimed the protection of the U.S. bankruptcy courts in May. The company closed most of its car lots and laid off thousands of people.
Hertz paid 16 million in bonuses to executives shortly before it closed down and now it is asking the bankruptcy judge to allow it to pay another 14 million in executive bonuses.
When a Texas fracking company, MDC, went to the bankruptcy court, it had just paid 15 million dollars in bonuses to its executives.
JCPenney did the same, filing for bankruptcy while giving its chief executive a five-million-dollar bonus as it laid off 85,000 people and shuttered 850 stores.
When the fourth owner of the Baltimore-area Bethlehem Steel mill left the city, he had not paid a seven-million-dollar water bill. And earlier, Bethlehem Steel used the bankruptcy court to get out of paying retirees’ promised pensions and health care.
Bankruptcy court ... where richly paid executives claim the company is broke.
Oct 26, 2020
What follows pages 4 and 5 are excerpts from some of the speeches given by candidates of the Working Class Party of Michigan on October 18, 2020. All told, the Working Class Party has 12 people on the ballot in Michigan. Their picture, with a caption indicating what position they are running for, also appears on page 7.
In addition, David Harding is running for mayor of Baltimore for the Working Class Party of Maryland.
Top Row: Sam Johnson, 13th Congressional district; Gary Walkowicz, 12th Congressional district; Simone R. Coleman, 14th State House district; and Andrea L. Kirby, 9th Congressional district.
Middle Row: Larry Darnell Betts, 15th State House district; Kimberly Givens, 7th State House district; Mary Anne Hering and Hali McEachern, our two candidates for State Board of Education; and Louis Palus, 75th State House district.
Bottom Row: Linda Rayburn, 4th State House district; Kathy Goodwin, 5th Congressional district; and Philip Kolody, 14th Congressional district.
Oct 26, 2020
.... Every election season, the Democrats and the Republicans pretend to care about working people. They want our vote to legitimize their horrible leadership.
In Congress right now, there are 436 members. A wealth study by the Center for Responsive Politics found 279 of them are millionaires. I find it hilarious that this many rich people are pretending to speak for ordinary working people!
Our 2020 candidates, like the majority of people in this country, are working class. Our candidates have held multiple jobs. Our candidates started working early—in their teens. As 2020 candidates we have auto workers, teachers, restaurant/kitchen/hotel workers, healthcare workers, an insurance worker, a construction worker, a maintenance worker, a student, and a retired state worker—just to name a few of the jobs our candidates have held during their lifetime. Our candidates, like our working class community, do valuable unpaid work, taking care of their community, taking care of family—which includes raising children or caring for family members who are ill. In 2020 caring for family now includes becoming a teacher’s aide as students learn from home....
Disdain for people who have less formal education is a disgusting prejudice in this society. It is a putrid prejudice that needs to be called out just like racism and sexism. This prejudice is one of the ways that those with billions of dollars pretend they got their obscene wealth because of “merit.” “Merit” is like a magic wand billionaires like to wave over their piles of money to pretend they “earned it,” instead of admitting they used exploitation to “steal it.”
Yes, education is important. It should be free and easy to obtain for all. All types of education and training. My idea of intelligence—the intelligence that I value—is not based on a piece of paper. It is all the knowledge that it takes to make the work flow correctly on the front lines. It is the construction intelligence it takes to create and build something new. It is the mechanical intelligence it takes to fix what is broken. It is the physical agility, engineering intelligence and logic it takes to build a vehicle. It is the medical intelligence it takes to care for the sick. It is all the unique abilities it takes to be a teacher. It is the mathematical intelligence it takes to follow the money. It is the social intelligence it takes to plan a fun party. It is the emotional intelligence it takes to make wise decisions. It is the artistic and musical intelligence it takes to create beauty. It is the tactical intelligence it takes to protect others. It is the organizational intelligence it takes to bring the working class together to fight.
It is all the ability and all the experience it takes to do all the jobs that our candidates represent and for all the functioning of society to happen that the working class makes possible....
I am here to say workers will have to make a new party to fight for what we all need. We have to change ourselves so that we become the leaders that the working class needs. We have to become the fighters that our class needs.
Oct 26, 2020
.... Not one of our candidates grew up thinking about the day they would run for political office. But here we are. The working class has been quiet for too long in this country and because of that silence, the race to the bottom is getting faster and faster.
We are not here as individual candidates but together for a common message. The Working Class Party actually stands for something. We are a group of candidates that are from so many different backgrounds and upbringing. And to me, mostly importantly, Race.
I was driving home with my 16-year-old daughter the other day. And there was a rally near my home. I told her before we got there just so she wasn’t too surprised. She said something to me that really stuck with me and made me realize how important the Working Class Party was for the future. She said “Mom, it’s scary because all those people are voting for Trump. People voting for Biden just don’t want Trump in office.” Wow. How often do we really have a chance to say we really want this person to represent ME, that they know and understand my issues? Even when we do, we are still stuck fighting a system that thrives on the oppression and control of the working class.
I think it is very important for my children to see someone that looks like them stand up for them and what matters to them. For our Black and Brown friends and family to see that WE can stand up just like our ancestors did, to take control of our futures and fight for what we know is right. To be able to stand with others who don’t look like you, because division makes us weak. Let me tell you, being poor don’t care what you look like.
The candidates of the Working Class Party, with all of our differences, realize we have more in common than different. We are tired of being the wealth creators that don’t see the benefits of that wealth. Tired of waiting for legislation to provide the basic needs of life. Clean water, air, food. Don’t be fooled though, neither this election nor the next will provide what the working class needs to make permanent change for equality.(racial, economic, sexual, and so on) Those changes will come when the working class demands the coffers be opened and we are able to fund and organize the society to fit our needs....
Who would have thought in 2020 I would be talking to my children about lynching, not as a part of history but as part of their everyday. Explaining to them what it means to drive while black. And how to act in the presence of a police officer. These are the same concerns our ancestors fought and died to get rid of. But here we are today, suffering the same challenges and issues our ancestors suffered from.
Not addressing the issues of the working class as a whole will keep us divided and acting like crabs in a bucket.... In the end with this capitalist system, the corporations are the only ones that win. The working class ends focused on the crumbs on the floor when there is a whole pie up on the table.
Please remember it is not the election that will change our society. Only when the forces of the working class are pulled together, will we see the change that everyone says they want. Your vote for Working Class Party candidates will show the world that we want something different. But your actions will be what makes the Working Class Party a success.
Oct 26, 2020
.... Everyone is wondering when we will get past this pandemic, when things will return to normal. But “normal” before the pandemic was already a crisis for the working class. Normal was an economy increasingly offering only low-wage, temporary jobs. Normal was a society where the infrastructure was crumbling and schools weren’t given the money needed to educate our children. Normal was a health care system that didn’t keep working class people healthy—even without the virus....
We don’t know when we will be past the pandemic. But today, we see the capitalists already preparing for the “new” normal, the one they want, where the working class will be further impoverished, so that the wealthy can get even richer.
The blood-sucking speculators on Wall Street are saying that they expect to keep getting even richer in the future, no matter who is elected president. Meanwhile, company after company—Disney, Allstate, Exxon, Boeing, American Airlines, United Airlines, to name just a few—recently announced layoffs for the near future. These new layoffs will be coming on top of the tens of millions of workers who still have not returned to work.
Governments at all levels are already proclaiming that due to the pandemic they will be reducing spending on public services. That means roads, bridges, water systems, schools, will further deteriorate. And that also means that many more people who are working on public service jobs will be thrown out of work....
This is the new normal that the capitalists and their government are planning for us.... But it doesn’t have to be OUR new normal. The working class can prepare and needs to prepare to bring our forces together to fight for the future that we want and need.
.... There are many millions of people without a job today, wanting to work. The bosses say that there is not enough work for everybody, fine, we can divide up the work, put the workloads back the way they used to be, or even less, so the jobs are reasonable. If the bosses say they still don’t need everybody, OK, everybody can work fewer hours per week to produce the things needed. And if the bosses say less hours means less pay, we say NO, pay everyone a full living wage every week, which would be equivalent to what we make in 40 hours, plus all the overtime they used to schedule us for.
When the bosses say the money is not there, we say YES, it is there. Take it from the capitalists’ profits and from all the profits our labor has produced in the past.
These profits and wealth could also be used to make sure that our wages don’t fall behind prices. When inflation goes up, our wages should go up.
.... Take back the tax money stolen from public services. Restore public services. That would put people back to work. Hire the teachers, the maintenance people, the bus drivers, the counselors to run the schools safely. Hire the construction workers to build more schools. The same thing with fixing the roads, bridges, getting everyone clean water and good sewer systems. Hire all the workers needed to build and maintain this infrastructure.
.... It could be done. The money is already there. But it is going to take a fight to get ahold of that money.
To make that fight we must stand together as one class, to have all our forces together, to not be divided.
This is important, we can’t let ourselves be divided by racism.... Racism is part and parcel of the capitalist system. The capitalists exploit the whole working class, and the black population has always been the most exploited part of the working class. But black workers have also led the kind of fights that the working class needs to make to really change things.
When we refuse to be divided, when we stand together, the working class can make the kind of fight that can change the whole society. No politicians or anyone else will do it for us. Only the working class has the power to make a better future for everyone.
Oct 26, 2020
.... We are told, we have the right to vote. But what does it matter if we don’t have someone who speaks for us, who addresses the real problems the laboring population faces? We are told, vote as if your life depends on it. But what does it mean when the only choice is between two big parties, both of whom, at the end of the day, defend this very system that rests on the exploitation of labor? What have these two parties brought us?
.... Both parties carried out huge cutbacks on the public health system. And we need to say that—to tell the truth about this health care system—that it is based on profit, and is responsible for the huge toll that the coronavirus has taken on the population and disproportionately on working people.
Today, the working class is caught in a severe economic crisis, where tens of millions are unemployed, and there are more to come. This crisis is related to how both parties in this government have served a wealthy class that has received billions in subsidies, gifts to big corporations and big banks, financial and real estate speculators. And we need to say that.
We live in a deeply racist system, one that since its beginning, was built on slavery.... Almost every political administration, no matter Democrat or Republican, has continued to reinforce this system, including passing all those repressive laws which created the pipeline to prison, and which have been enforced unequally. And we need to say that.
For decades both of these parties have starved our children’s schools, starved roads and bridges, starved workers’ neighborhoods, starved public transit, for money. For decades, the wealthy have increased their stash, accumulating what the two big parties squeezed from us in taxes. And we need to say that.
Workers are essential. Workers do make everything run and know how everything works. We are the only ones who are saying this. Our program says working people have the power, when we stand together as one class, ready to fight. The only way forward for the working class to defend itself, is to make a fight.
When you vote for Working Class Party, you’re voting for those ideas. You’re not voting for one or two people to get into office. You’re voting to show that there are people who agree that the working class has the power, when it is organized, to solve the problems we face, and that it can build a decent society for everyone.
It’s not only important that Working Class Party is on the ballot in Michigan, it is also vital that Working Class Party stays on the ballot. The vote that will keep us on the ballot is for our candidates for State Board of Education.... Let everyone know, wherever they are in Michigan, they can vote for Hali McEachern and Mary Anne Hering for the State Board of Education.
Oct 26, 2020
The following article was the editorial in SPARK workplace newsletters of October 20.
We face the rapid spread of a contagious virus because government for decades raided public health funds—just like it raided funds for roads, dams, bridges, public transit, sewer systems, water systems, flood control, fire control, and education.
The Republican Party and the Democratic Party both handed out tax breaks, subsidies and outright gifts to the banks, the corporations, and the wealthy who own them. Our tax money went into the pockets of a greedy capitalist class.
We are living through an economy in collapse because that same capitalist class sacrificed the needs of the whole population in its mad dash to accumulate more profit. Jobs were slashed, wages cut, employment made temporary or part-time or by contract. Capitalist profits flooded into speculation, endangering our lives along with the whole economy.
For decades, government reinforced this mad dash for profit by legally making it harder to fight back. Republicans openly attacked workers’ rights; Democrats, who pretended to defend unions, did nothing. Both parties made it harder to get unemployment benefits. Both made it harder to get Social Security disability. Both made changes to inflation indexes that lowered our incomes.
When the virus hit, it just compounded all the problems of an economy in crisis.
Neither the Democratic Party nor the Republican Party has an answer to these crises because both have always supported the right of the capitalist class to run the economy.
Working people won’t overcome these crises in the voting booth. The only way to really change our fate is to mobilize our class against the capitalist class and the government that defends it. We will resolve these problems when we fight to put our hands on this wealth stolen from decades of our labor. Maybe there is no big fight by working people today, but that is what we need.
And we need to be united, black and white, immigrant and native born, women and men. The working class needs all its forces to go into battle. But the enemies of the working class seek to inflame differences among us and to divide us. Our answer must be: NO! We will not allow the cancers of racism to spread in our class.
So, what can we do in this election year, when the working class is not mobilized in its own name, fighting for everyone’s interests?
In most states, working people have no way to express what we really think. If we vote for either of the two big parties we say we agree with what they do. We say we want them to continue doing it. Our vote for either gives them a stamp of approval. That means, we throw our vote away.
But in two states, Michigan and Maryland, there are parties on the ballot that give us a choice. Both of these parties took the name Working Class Party, to show their allegiance to our class.
These parties are small parties, new parties. They certainly don’t have lots of money. They fight to be heard in a country where the wealthy classes use their money to control political life.
But a vote for their candidates is a way to express what we really think. It’s a way to point the direction we want to go. Every vote for candidates of these two parties can be a statement that we want to build a party of our class, the working class.
Michigan: Candidates of the Working Class Party, for Congress, Kathy Goodwin, 5th district; Andrea L. Kirby, 9th; Gary Walkowicz, 12th; Sam Johnson, 13th; Philip Kolody, 14th.
For State House, Linda Rayburn, 4th district; Kimberly Givens, 7th; Simone R. Coleman, 14th; Larry Darnell Betts, 15th; and Louis Palus, 75th.
Everywhere in the state, you can vote for Mary Anne Hering and Hali McEachern for State Board of Education.
Maryland: Candidate of the Working Class Party, David Harding for mayor of Baltimore.
In every state: parties like these are needed, working class parties.
Oct 26, 2020
In September alone, 627,000 women left the U.S. workforce. This is eight times the number of men that left during the same period.
With the COVID-19 virus loose and tearing up communities across the U.S., working women have been forced to leave work to step in where the system is failing to protect families. We have to care for kids, mostly, who can’t go to school. But also for sick or well husbands, and elders who are stuck with inadequate care in facilities or who are at home depending on us.
What have the capitalists done with the money that was used pre-COVID for these care issues now that schools are facilities are shut down? Why aren’t they rerouting tax money and corporate handouts to us so that we can address these issues?
How will we find our way back out of this triple-plus exploitation at home (love and support, home maintenance, teaching, nursing) and reenter the workforce if we have to leave? How do we demand our right to be human and have our own income so as not to be dependent on men or on this blank-up, don’t-care government?
These are questions only we can answer between ourselves, but better sooner than later.
Oct 26, 2020
Translated from Lutte Ouvrière (Workers’ Struggle), the newspaper of the revolutionary workers’ group active in France.
Around the world 42 experimental vaccines are competing in the race to be released on the market.
The biggest and richest laboratories—Sanofi, Merck, Johnson & Johnson, GSK, Pfizer, AstraZeneca, etc.—are preparing to manufacture billions of doses that could bring them billions of dollars, euros, and many other currencies.
First each vaccine was tested on animals to verify that it triggers their immune systems to respond. But before crossing the finish line, a vaccine has to undergo other tests.
First—phase 1—a lab tests whether a vaccine causes an immune response in a small number of human subjects, and does not poison them. In phase 2, a lab tests a vaccine on several hundred people, including the elderly and children, to be sure all their bodies react in the same way. Finally—phase 3—the vaccine is given to tens of thousands of people. Its results are compared to a placebo, a chemical that has no effect. Possible side effects are measured. Only after all these clinical trials, which usually last several years, may health authorities decide whether the vaccine is safe and effective enough to be used and marketed.
But both during animal trials and human trials, also called clinical trials, each laboratory jealously guards its conclusions and its method of evaluation. Each lab’s protocols for assessing its vaccine are kept secret. The situation calls for them all to pool their observations, discoveries, and knowledge internationally. But instead competition between corporations and the competition for profit rule the day. The time of each phase is shortened. Procedures are sped up, which can compromise the safety and efficiency of the vaccines. The health authorities claim they intend to end the pandemic as soon as possible, but this is an excuse. The reality is that competition rages to win the profit race.
This war is accompanied by a huge squandering of money, knowledge, intelligence, and possibly lives. This could fuel distrust of future vaccines and of immunization in general. But the risk does not come from vaccination. The risk comes from competition and business secrecy.
Oct 26, 2020
California and the entire U.S. West Coast have seen over 8 million acres consumed in wildfires so far this year. Cities up and down the coast saw eery red skies, while residents choked on the dust and ash thrown into the air. Forty three people have lost their lives.
Australia has also had tremendous fires in February of this year, while Siberia, Russia’s polar region, is experiencing some of its largest fires on record as well.
This summer, we saw more ice melt in the Arctic than any other year save one. Glaciers in Greenland and Antarctica are melting. More melting means higher sea levels, threatening coastal communities the world over.
This summer, Louisiana’s gulf coast attempted to recover from Hurricane Delta, just six weeks after taking a beating from Hurricane Laura. This year saw so many Atlantic storms that they ran out of names for them, and so are resorting to Greek letters. It’s only the second time this has happened.
A warmer atmosphere means, overall, more dry vegetation in climates like California—meaning more fuel and so larger and more frequent wildfires. A warmer atmosphere also means warmer oceans. More warmth in the surface layers of the Atlantic means more “fuel” for hurricanes, which can then have higher winds, grow larger, and carry more rain. Global Warming has been driving climate change—to more and more disastrous effect.
The basic science is not new—computer models of global temperature going back to the 1970s predicted today’s global average temperature—fifty years ago. The International Panel on Climate Change has been pointing up the risks for over thirty years now—with steadily increasing urgency.
And what has been the response of the ruling class—the bourgeoisie that controls the wealthy countries? They may have funded the science, allowed these reports to come out—but they have done ... nothing. Nothing, at any rate, that rises anywhere close to addressing the problem as it is posed.
The eight U.S. presidents prior to Trump—from Nixon through Obama—all gave speeches about the necessity of massive investment in so-called “alternative energy.” And all eight, five Republicans, three Democrats, stopped there—with empty words. They did nothing serious.
Why? Because developing new technology would threaten the profits of capitalists, who are heavily invested in the current, fossil fuel burning technology: with the oil companies foremost, followed by auto, plane manufacturers, airlines, trucking companies, utilities.... Their capital is tied up in technologies that produce greenhouse gases—and they want to wring all the profit they can out of their investment.
What is necessary? We would need a lot of money—tens of billions—to develop new technologies to produce energy and transportation without contributing to global warming. The U.S. government did that in World War II, to develop the atomic bomb. They did it again in the 1960’s, to fund the moon landing—to win the “Space Race.” That was a great scientific and technical achievement—one they were only willing to fund because it was part of their Cold War. In service of war, the capitalists will spend whatever it takes. To save our existence—they do nothing.
It is not too late. Climate scientists think we have one or two decades to avert the worst. The working class must take control out of this society out of the hands of the capitalists. Leaving them in power means watching them fiddle, while the world burns and cities drown.
Oct 26, 2020
Most of the workers who harvest this country’s food are migrants. Some are undocumented immigrants, others are here on temporary work visas. In either case, they are vulnerable to extreme exploitation, paid low wages for backbreaking physical labor. As they follow the harvest up the coasts, they are crammed into trailers or barracks, sharing rooms, kitchens and bathrooms, and are taken to the fields on buses with up to 40 people.
When the virus hit, most farm bosses took few, if any, safety measures. As a result, COVID-19 has swept through farmworker camps. According to one study, by mid-October, about 150,000 farmworkers had gotten the virus and about 3,750 had died.
Lipman Farms, a giant agriculture company with farms in Florida, South Carolina, and Virginia, stopped the virus—but only by locking its workers in. Where workers used to be able to go to town on their days off, now they are not allowed to leave. Without access to laundry machines or to the store to buy new clothes, workers report getting rashes from dirty work clothes.
As one worker said, without being able to leave, “You’re practically a slave.” And because these workers are here on temporary work visas, if they quit, they will be immediately deported.
The companies could have built more housing so workers wouldn’t be so crammed together. They could have brought in extra buses, and provided PPE. They could have provided paid days off if a worker has symptoms, and set up a program of regular testing. But that would have cut into profits.
The threat of deportation makes these workers more vulnerable. But never think that the bosses would have a problem applying these same conditions to all of us, despite the lies Trump tells to those of us he calls “American workers.”