The Spark

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

Issue no. 1138 — September 27 - October 11, 2021

EDITORIAL
Only the Working Class Can Fix the Schools

Sep 27, 2021

Children have returned to school across the U.S., to find themselves in the same old mess—starting with severe overcrowding that plagued most public schools already before the pandemic.

The overcrowding goes hand-in-hand with a severe teacher shortage. Since March 2020, when school systems across the U.S. switched to “remote” or “hybrid” learning, thousands of teachers who qualified for a full pension have retired. Many of these teachers did not want to return to the “circus” of having to teach, in effect, two classes at once—as one 51-year-old Michigan teacher considering an early retirement put it. And many other teachers quit without a full pension, for fear of catching the virus in overcrowded classrooms and bringing it home to elderly and at-risk family members.

These experienced teachers should never have been pushed to such frustration. And not nearly enough new teachers have been hired to replace them either. School districts and county and state officials had a year and a half to do that; but they did nothing—neither to keep the existing teachers, nor to recruit and train new ones.

But it’s not just teachers that are in short supply. Already crowded classes are merged and doubled up because there are not enough substitute teachers to cover for teachers who are out. Long lines form for lunch and snacks because of a dire shortage of cafeteria workers. And the ride to and from school can take hours because bus drivers, also short-handed, have to make multiple rounds to transport students.

For all these workers—the essential workers that make schools run—these jobs simply don’t pay enough for them and their families to live on. But school officials and politicians still parrot that tired lie of “people don’t want to work,” instead of increasing pay.

And then there are the shortcomings of school facilities, starting with the lack of adequate ventilation to prevent the virus put into the air by one person from infecting others.

The only safety measure school officials have offered is masks—which, alone, cannot prevent the spread of the virus. And when Covid cases and even outbreaks inevitably occur, these same officials simply send students home for forced quarantines, or even shut down the whole school—putting all the burden on parents, especially working-class parents who risk losing their jobs to stay at home with their children.

Is this really all this society can do for public school students—that is, the vast majority of the children in this country?

Of course not; so much more could be done, as some schools, especially some private schools—those the very wealthy can afford—have shown.

These schools have hired enough teachers and other school workers to keep class sizes small. They have made full use of existing buildings, and also expanded their facilities, to provide for social distancing during breaks also. They have set up constant monitoring and testing for Covid symptoms, and hired health care professionals to run them.

Yes, to apply these measures at every single school in this country would require a lot of money. But how dare officials claim that this society can’t afford these measures—that is, to keep our children safe from the virus—when, for example, the federal government has already handed over billions of dollars to pharmaceutical companies to hoard several times more Covid vaccines than what is needed to get the whole U.S. population fully vaccinated?

But providing every child with a good education is not a goal that this society is organized to achieve. Instead, society is organized today, first and foremost, to allow business owners to make a profit. The biggest among these capitalists, who reap the biggest profits, hold their power over the whole society.

That’s why politicians and officials, who impose big capital’s agenda on us, will never put money into the education of working-class children—and they, Democrat and Republican alike, have proven this for decades.

Only the working class, if organized in our class interests, has the possibility to re-organize society for that purpose. The means for that, the wealth of the entire society, is created by the workers’ labor. The working class has to take it back from that tiny, greedy minority of hoarders, and use it for our needs—starting with the education of our children, who are the very future of our society.

Pages 2-3

To Mask or Not to Mask?
It’s Not the Right Question, nor the Only Answer

Sep 27, 2021

Genesee County Health Officials receive death threats after issuing mask mandates. Parents gather to protest Oakland County school mask mandate. Grand Blanc parents have mixed feelings about mask mandate. Crowd of unmasked students press into Washtenaw County school, violating COVID-19 mandate.

These are just some of the headlines in Michigan newspapers, reflecting what has happened in the past month with the return to in-person schooling after 19 months, and with the focus on mask mandates—where the experts say that “will help students go back to school safely.”

And so, you have parents on either side of the masking question, fighting each other at protests; parents attacking health department and school officials at school board meetings; parents accosting school staff at school entrances; parents taking their children out of school. And into this mix, there are political, sometimes right-wing forces, that have consciously used parents’ concerns for their children to direct them into either reactionary, backward attitudes about science and education, or to lull them with the view that masking will solve all of the problems.

Today, parents everywhere, are being directed to focus on the mask mandate. And for those parents who want masking, yes, it’s true that masking can be among the mitigation measures used to reduce the spread of the virus. But that is not all that is necessary, by a long shot. For what has been done, in the last 19 months, to put in place the primary measures that would be necessary to allow our children to be able to breathe? To go to school and learn. And play with their friends. And see their teachers’ faces. For teachers to see our children’s faces and read their expressions. And make up for all the deficits in learning and socialization that occurred in the last 19 months. And be as safe as possible from the virus.

There are many, many steps that COULD HAVE BEEN TAKEN to mitigate the problems associated with COVID, but, for the most part, especially in working class and poor school districts, they haven’t been. Where is the social distancing, with smaller class sizes, which would require more classrooms and therefore, more schools? Where are the outdoor pods and facilities constructed that would allow kids, not just kids from privileged backgrounds, to enjoy fresh air, and not be in close quarters? Where are the new ventilation systems, the extra school buses and drivers, the extra and better paid teachers, extra support staff, extra social workers, and nurses?

It will take a tidal wave of resources, of money, of planning, to even begin to address the problems associated with COVID, and the ability to provide a decent and quality education and safe environment for our children.

And so, if today, the powers that be have directed us to focus on masks, it is a way to divert us and have us turn against each other, rather than stand together. Because they have been unwilling and incapable to really seriously address the problems they have created. Hell, they can’t even provide PPE to nurses, but they are happy to see ordinary people at each other’s throats, fighting over the masking mandate. Anything to keep everyone misdirected from where the fight has to take place.

No, today, we should refuse to be turned against each other, because the real fight that should be taking place is not over the question of masking. The real fight, for parents, teachers, and anyone who values children as our most valuable resource, is to fight to take back the wealth we have created by our labor, and use it for our children, and the rest of society.

Lung Healthcare Brought to You by Philip Morris

Sep 27, 2021

Philip Morris, the world’s largest maker of cigarettes, now wants to sell medical products to treat the very diseases they create. Lung, throat cancer, respiratory disease … it’s a long list.

Why? Because the enormous profits of such cigarette companies are declining, as are worldwide smoking rates. These companies have invested in vaping and e-cigarettes, which are like cigarettes and have also been found to contribute to similar diseases. To boost its revenues!

The company plans to purchase Vectura, a major developer of inhaled treatments for lung disease often related to smoking.

It’s like someone breaking your knees and then selling you the crutches,” said Ruth Tal-Singer, a scientist specializing in the treatment of smoke-related diseases.

Next, we will hear, Philip Morris is getting into the mortuary industry to “horizontally” integrate its businesses. After all, only profits count under capitalism.

Haitian Migrants Kept out at the U.S. Border

Sep 27, 2021

Thousands of Haitians fleeing hunger and violence have been arriving at the Texas-Mexico border. In August, the U.S. border saw a new record for migrant arrivals, after the record set in July—more than 200,000 people are now arriving each month.

The public here was subjected to startling images of a massive camp of at least 14,000 Haitian migrants under a bridge in Del Rio, Texas, trapped there in squalid conditions by the U.S. Border Patrol. Other images showed Border Agents on horseback chasing down fleeing people, wielding ropes as whips, driving some into Mexico, rounding up others for detention.

Many have expressed outrage that the Haitian people, driven from their country by disasters, poverty, and political turmoil, were treated like animals by the U.S. border guards. Senator Maxine Waters said she deplored the treatment. Kamala Harris called it inhumane. Press Secretary Jen Psaki said that Joe Biden agreed. But finally, it didn’t amount to a change in the policies being used against the migrants.

The Biden administration had already said that it would deport these migrants swiftly, with flights arriving in Haiti the day after the attack on this camp.

The response of the U.S. under Biden remains the same as it had been under Trump. That is, to pay the governments in Mexico and Central American countries to block people from passing through; to use the excuse of the pandemic to deport people immediately; to deny most the right to even apply for asylum. If they have been granted the right to an asylum hearing, they push migrants to “remain in Mexico” while they wait years for a hearing.

The administration has acted swiftly to clear the thousands of migrants from under the bridge. But this doesn’t mean that the migrants have been allowed asylum here. Far from it.

The press, attempting to identify where the thousands of migrants were relocated, had found out that more than 2,000 had been deported, over 1,000 of them on planes back to Haiti, and that around 4,000 were detained pending deportation, while thousands more are being given “interviews.” The government adds that “some” families have been allowed to stay because Mexico won’t accept them.

The horrific scenes under the bridge are no longer there, although some migrants still are. But the brutal policies remain—now out of sight.

Crisis in Haiti

Sep 27, 2021

Most of the migrants coming to the southern border fled Haiti a decade ago, after the 2010 earthquake. Many have been living in Brazil and Chile, where they formed the lowest paid part of the workforce—in fact, many of the migrant children were born in South America and have never seen Haiti. But now the South American countries are in the midst of their own economic crises, and work has dried up.

So, in desperation, thousands are attempting the journey of many thousands of miles to get to the U.S., a journey that for many includes an attempt to walk through the densest jungle in the Americas.

Haitians from South America have now been joined by other Haitians fleeing the most recent earthquake and the deteriorating economic and political situation on the island following the assassination of President Jovenal Moïse in July. Haiti still has 650,000 people who need emergency humanitarian assistance from the earthquake that struck in August, according to the U.N. Thousands more are fleeing hunger and violence in other parts of the Caribbean and Central America.

U.S. corporations suck enormous wealth from the low-paid labor of Haitian workers—both in Haiti, and from those who manage to make it out. U.S. governments have ensured that exploitation can continue by repeatedly invading the island, propping up one dictatorship after another. And while the details are different, the same could be said for the other countries migrants are fleeing from.

This is what the capitalist, imperialist system means today: increasing numbers of people find themselves in unliveable situations, and no laws or border walls can keep them from trying to find a way to survive by fleeing to wealthier countries like the United States.

The Biden administration, just like every administration before it, has no interest in giving refuge to the Haitian population. It represents capital, and capital accumulates profit off of human exploitation

Pages 4-5

The Bell Rings and Prince George’s County Fails

Sep 27, 2021

In Prince George’s County, Maryland, schools have started. Too bad the children can’t get there. After schools knew for months they needed to hire more bus drivers—they are still 190 drivers short. It’s not like people don’t need jobs.

The county’s solution: Tell the parents to make “alternative plans.” That is code for the children having to walk, or parents having to drive them.

P.G. expects working parents who are already tired and stressed to pick up the ball the county dropped in their laps.

Washington Gas Call Center Slammed

Sep 27, 2021

Since December, customers of Washington Gas in D.C., Maryland and in Virginia have had to endure disgustingly long hold times to reach customer service. People trying to restore cut-off service, open or close accounts, or solve billing problems have had to wait up to three hours on hold. More than 20 people called a local NBC station in just one week to complain, and a Virginia agency has been getting over 30 complaint calls per day.

The company says its third-party call center service provider Faneuil will hire more people. But why would it? Faneuil is making its money!

Maryland Boss Steals Wages from Mexican Workers

Sep 27, 2021

A seafood packing house owner on Maryland’s Eastern Shore grossly underpaid Mexican workers on short-term visas, according to his September guilty plea in a federal case.

Captain Phip’s Seafood for years would apply to immigration authorities for permission to hire workers from Mexico for certain specific summer jobs with set wages such as operating ice-making machines. But once the workers arrived, owner Philip Harrington would also have them do other jobs that normally paid significantly more, such as shucking oysters and driving trucks. But he would only pay them at the low rate. Harrington also pled guilty to deliberately hiring nearly 90 undocumented people to work in his family’s two hotels in Ocean City and a number of other family businesses.

Thirty years ago, Mexican workers sued the same family for stealing their passports, not paying overtime, ordering them not to leave the workshops or company housing without permission, and threatening to drive them back to the border if they complained.

Over 30 years, nothing changes, even when the same bosses are found guilty over and over.

Behind California Governor Newsom’s Supposed Landslide

Sep 27, 2021

California voters rejected a Republican-led attempt to oust Gavin Newsom, the Democratic Party governor, in a special recall election on September 15 by a very wide margin.

For Newsom, the key to victory was the specter of Donald Trump.

“You either keep Gavin Newsom as your governor or you’ll get Donald Trump,” President Joe Biden said at an election-eve rally in Long Beach. Biden was just echoing what Newsom and his allies had been saying for weeks: Gavin Newsom was the only person who stood in the way of a takeover of the highest office in California by the far right.

The Democrats blanketed the air waves with this message paid for largely by a dozen of the Democrats’ billionaire buddies, including Netflix CEO Reed Hastings, Stuart and Lynda Resnick (the biggest landowners in California), George Soros, Google’s Eric Schmidt, and Laurene Powell Jobs (Steve Jobs’s widow).

In a state in which registered Democratic voters outnumber Republicans by a two-to-one margin, it finally spurred enough Democrats to bother to vote against the recall in the home stretch of the final days of the election.

Certainly, Newsom could not run on his policies and record as governor and expect to win. Since he took office three years ago, Newsom and the Democrats have presided over a true disaster for big parts of the working population, including the murderous rates of COVID disease and death amongst essential workers, the increasingly disastrous levels of unemployment and homelessness, and the crippled social services that collapsed in the face of all these disasters, leaving big parts of the population high and dry. And since the Democrats completely dominate state politics, holding every important state-wide office that includes a super-majority in the two houses of the state legislature, they don’t even have the Republicans to blame.

The Republicans might have tried to jump-start their long-shot recall campaign with the video and pictures of Newsom right before last Thanksgiving, having dinner with a dozen wealthy friends at the extremely expensive and snobby French Laundry Restaurant and not even wearing a mask, at the same time he was ordering ordinary people to spend the holidays in isolation. But those pictures from the French Laundry also struck a nerve for ordinary people, symbolizing what the Democratic Party really is, a party for the rich that is currently personified by Newsom himself, a multimillionaire Napa Valley winery owner with deep ties to the California corporate elite.

It is an illusion and a trap to believe that Newsom and the Democrats are any kind of protection against politicians like Trump and the extreme right wing. On the contrary, the sacrifices that he and the Democrats impose on the working population in the interests of the capitalist class leads to ever more demoralization and disorientation that the extreme-right wing and other demagogues then take advantage of.

More U.S. Dead from Covid than in 1918

Sep 27, 2021

The “Spanish flu” epidemic of 1918 killed about 675,000 Americans, by the CDC’s estimate. The COVID-19 epidemic has now killed 675,000 Americans and is predicted to kill 100,000 more by January 1.

In 1918, there was a war on, and troops were sent from base to base for training and then sent overseas, all while the virus killed them by the hundreds. Some cities used strict quarantine and isolation measures, and lost fewer people; some cities such as Philadelphia defied public health officials and held parades to promote the war. In such cities, many more people died.

They didn’t know about viruses or have electron microscopes or vaccines in 1918, but they knew contagion and death. In the 100 years since, science has studied such epidemics and has a very refined understanding of viruses, the different strains, and how to combat them. Yet the death tolls are now identical and today’s will soon be greater.

Like the war of 1918, the bosses have decided that the global economy of 2021 must go on. Quarantining, testing and tracing, well-known public health measures, had to yield to the pressure of getting the economy moving again—that is, turning the flow of profits back on. Rigorous safety measures are too costly for the billionaires’ system. So the basic, perfectly good, effective public health measures won’t be organized or funded. The necessary workers won’t be hired. Just get the vaccine and go to work! Go to school! So what if we carry the virus, so what if we infect others, so what if the hospitals are beyond capacity for months, so what if we run out of nurses and doctors? The profit-making machinery must run! The public health machinery, not so much; and only so much as will generate profit margins and dividends.

The 1918 flu epidemic spread and killed relentlessly because of the demands and pressures of that day’s capitalist economy. A hundred years later, we have astoundingly advanced science, and all the lessons of that and other epidemics. But we still have the capitalist economy. We still suffer from the same profits-first demands and pressures.

A hundred years later, capitalism produces the same social results, the same unnecessary deaths, the same global spread, the same endless medical emergency. It’s a system that should be eradicated.

Third Shot Boosts Profits

Sep 27, 2021

The U.S. government is offering booster shots for the COVID vaccine as of late September. About 100 million doses will be available in the coming months.

The reason behind this decision, according to its promoters, is that the effectiveness of the vaccine shots we received earlier declines, which can make our bodies more vulnerable to renewed attacks from the virus. The providers who stand to profit from this third shot have provided little data supporting it, according to scientists working on infectious diseases.

Such data could and should have been obtained by systematically tracking large populations for the spread of COVID variants and the populations’ infection and vaccination levels. But the state and the government organizations, like the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), which should have initiated such tracking at the onset of this epidemic more than one and half years ago, failed. As a result, these organizations currently have hodge-podge information about declining vaccine effectiveness deduced from incoherent data.

Still, pharmaceutical giants are aggressively pushing these booster shots since COVID vaccination is a highly profitable business. For example, Pfizer will make 22 billion dollars from the COVID vaccine sales with a net profit of close to 4.5 billion dollars.

We are again caught between a rock and a hard place. Defective vaccination reasoning is pressing us from one side, and the greedy companies are pushing us from the opposite side. This social system, capitalism, created this trap for us.

Chicago:
El Milagro Workers on Strike

Sep 27, 2021

Second shift workers at El Milagro tortilla company walked off the job the afternoon of Thursday, September 23rd. Dozens of workers picketed in front of the company’s Little Village restaurant.

The pandemic increased demand for foods like tortillas. For the workers, this meant a grueling speed up, under working conditions that were already difficult. At least 85 El Milagro workers in Chicago caught Covid during the pandemic, five of whom died. The company has offered higher pay to attract new hires, but they didn’t necessarily raise the pay of workers who’ve been there for years, making some angry enough to hit the bricks.

Strikers returned Friday to find the company had locked them out. Workers at El Milagro do not have a union, but they were working with Arise Chicago Workers Center. They are only the latest workers, like those at Nabisco, who have started to fight.

Pages 6-7

Biden:
What Climate Change?

Sep 27, 2021

President Biden spoke to other countries about the need to make changes in order to have a “clean energy future.” In his first month in office, Biden signed an executive order “pausing” oil and gas leases on public lands for private companies to drill at taxpayers’ expense.

The U.S. government controls 26 million acres of public, taxpayer “owned,” lands and another 12 million acres of public waters, on which it can allow oil companies to drill for crude oil or natural gas.

In a three-month period earlier this year, the Biden administration allowed about 1200 new leases for drilling on public lands. In a similar period, the Trump administration allowed about 1400 new leases for this drilling.

In the summer of 2021, the Biden administration approved the process of selling 90 million acres of water to allow drilling companies to produce as much as a billion barrels of crude oil and four trillion cubic feet of natural gas. This sale more or less matches what was allowed under the Trump administration.

The talk about defending the environment, to cut down on the emissions that increase climate change, that was just talk for the purposes of the election campaign of 2020. The reality is that all politicians in office support the oil and gas companies as they drill for fossil fuels.

Electric Car Scheme Destroying Environment

Sep 27, 2021

The transition to electric cars has already spurred the demand for raw materials necessary for the manufacture of electric batteries to skyrocket. To satisfy this demand, mining companies are ransacking the whole world.

One component of batteries is lithium. Several companies are aggressively searching for ways to strip lithium ore from the Pacific Ocean’s floor more than two miles deep, while scientists warn that this kind of mining will destroy vast amounts of sea life.

Companies are also mining lithium on the land. For example, Lithium Americas has already received a permit to mine lithium by bulldozing massive swaths of earth located at a pristine high desert, Thacker Pass, Nevada, and then using immense quantities of sulfuric acid and underground water to extract the metal.

This capitalist drive is also destroying humans. More than half the world’s supply of cobalt, another crucial material of electric vehicle batteries, comes from the Democratic Republic of Congo. Amnesty International estimates some 40,000 children are working in the Congo’s cobalt mines under horrible conditions as cheap labor to enrich electric vehicle manufacturers like Tesla.

These companies claim that, by pushing for electric vehicles, they are saving the environment, preventing climate change, and bringing a more modern future. But this is nothing but a cover-up for ever more environmental destruction and a gruesome human toll. These companies’ only goal is to profit as fast and high as possible at all costs.

If these companies get away with their profit-driven thievery, they will destroy the pristine lands, ocean floors, deserts, and forests not yet exploited.

California’s Climate Control Scam

Sep 27, 2021

The state of California claims to be a leader in reducing the amount of greenhouse gases that cause climate change. One of the chief ways they do this is by companies buying carbon credits.

Through the carbon credit scheme, any company, such as a refinery, a plastics factory, or a power plant, can purchase these credits from a landowner or a farm to emit more than the company’s allocated limit of greenhouse gases, such as carbon dioxide. California then assumes that this excess amount of pollutants is absorbed, for example, by the trees of the landowner, or a farm that tends its soil in a certain way or uses specific types of manure. If these landowners and farms don’t get the carbon credit money, they would cut the trees or farm their land in environmentally destructive ways, as the reasoning goes.

As such, this carbon credit law is nothing but a scam concocted between the companies and California to give a green light to companies to pollute, while claiming that they are really helping the environment.

In one example, a petroleum refiner, PBF Energy, bought carbon credits from Eddie Ranch located in Mendocino in northern California. The trees on Eddie Ranch’s land are supposed to absorb excess carbon dioxide emitted by PBF Energy’s two refineries located in southern California. But the Mendocino fire of 2018 scorched these trees, and there is nothing left on Eddie Ranch’s land to absorb anything. But PBF Energy continues to purchase carbon credits from Eddie Ranch.

And the State of California goes along with the scam, continues to stamp these carbon credits as if nothing happened. “Most of the members of the Task Force [responsible for the carbon credit scheme] either represent organizations that have a vested interest in expanding the use of offsets or have ties to industries and organizations that stand to benefit financially from offsets,” one State official wrote after he resigned from the Task Force. So, these state agencies are in cahoots with the companies in setting up such carbon credit schemes.

The share of the pollution compensated by the carbon credits constitutes only a tiny fraction, 4%, of PBF Energy’s total greenhouse gas emissions. So, the company still pollutes the environment with the remaining 96% of the total emissions. Nobody aims to reduce this large chunk of environmental destruction, making the carbon credit a bribe paid for the government’s silence.

Guinea:
Electric Cars Pollute

Sep 27, 2021

Translated from Lutte Ouvrière (Workers’ Struggle), the newspaper of the revolutionary workers’ group active in France.

Production of bauxite worldwide is expected to rise from 372 million tons this year to 406 million tons in 2025, according to a study by Globaldata.

Bauxite is ore from which aluminum is refined—one of the main resources in electric vehicles made by all the giants of the automotive industry: Ford, Toyota, Volkswagen, Renault ....

Guinea is the second-largest bauxite producer after Australia, and mining there has intensified significantly. It shot from four percent of global production in 2014 to 22% last year. Consequences are drastic for farming communities. Opening the surface mines destroyed a square mile of fertile land which farmers relied on for their livelihood. Mining companies gave displaced residents a pittance which in no way made up for their loss of land. Families living nearby were thrown into poverty.

The environmental consequences are just as extreme. By destroying plants and making soil erosion more likely, bauxite mining poisons rivers and streams. And refining aluminum from bauxite generates big amounts of corrosive red sludge. Aluminum refining uses a lot of electricity and releases a lot of greenhouse gases. The world’s biggest producer of aluminum is China, which uses electricity made mostly by coal-fired powerplants. Human Rights Watch says aluminum production releases more than one billion tons of carbon dioxide equivalent each year.

These human and environmental disasters certainly will not prevent automobile capitalists from continuing to use aluminum. Because it’s such a light metal, the International Aluminum Institute expects the sector to double its aluminum purchases by 2050.

Making electric vehicles obeys the same laws as every other activity in the capitalist system: producing at a lower cost in order to make as much profit as possible—with total indifference to the results for people and the planet.

U.S. Flunks the COVID Test

Sep 27, 2021

Tests are the equivalent of scouts in a war. Tests alert any army fighting COVID to the movements of the enemy virus. To fight the virus, public health experts recommend that test results come back fast. But because of the disorganized way in which capitalists produce products, there continue to be delays caused by shortages of chemicals needed for test processing.

The gold standard in COVID testing is molecular tests that are so sensitive they can detect tiny amounts of the virus, even if the person has no symptoms. Called PCR, short for polymerase chain reaction tests, they can be close to 100% accurate.

Rapid tests, which return results in 15 to 20 minutes, have some issues. It can happen that rapid tests say someone is fine who actually HAS the virus. But these tests are good at catching people who have enough of the virus to be contagious. With this knowledge, infected people can stay home and not infect others.

Rapid testing is being subsidized by the governments in Britain, France and Germany, countries that at least have national healthcare for a foundation. People have tests at home when needed, without having to buy them. Countries that have rapid tests have been able to slow outbreaks, and have lowered the number of deaths, unlike in the U.S. While there are still problems, they are ahead on testing issues.

A U.S. public health expert, who returned from a visit to Germany, explained that the frail elderly there were less isolated. People who want to visit can do a rapid test beforehand. Day care centers there were able to stay open during the whole pandemic because of rapid testing.

The U.S., wealthiest of all nations, cannot provide the organization to produce and distribute rapid and PCR tests because capitalism is run for profit. There is not even a minimally connected health care system—we have the anarchy of a private, for profit system.

So, for example, last spring Abbott Labs cut back production of rapid tests by 50% and permanently laid off 2,000 people in Illinois. This happened during a brief time when the Center for Disease Control, the CDC, said people without symptoms and vaccinated people should not test. This CDC recommendation caused the demand for tests to plummet! Then, just as suddenly, the Delta variant took off! The demand for tests surged. But in this industry, the ramp-up is a slow process.

Both rapid and standard tests should be available to identify, trace and treat the population and to isolate the virus.

But the U.S. process remains in shambles because it is not organized to deliver for human need, but for profit. Profit is killing the majority while a tiny minority of billionaires are getting fat as a tick, profiting off the pandemic.

Destroying COVID Tests While in Pandemic

Sep 27, 2021

Abbott Laboratories, a manufacturer of a popular coronavirus rapid test, told its workers to destroy millions of coronavirus test cards last June—and then laid off thousands of the workers, including 2,000 at Abbott’s Illinois plant. Then, Abbot shut down the plant.

"It’s not your fault,” management told the workers it was throwing in the street; that this was “all about money.”

No consolation for the workers, of course, whom Abbott had rushed just weeks before to work faster, and longer hours, to make more tests—to work themselves out of their jobs, that is.

Abbott made a killing selling its tests last winter, when there was a Covid surge in many parts of the country. But when Covid cases dropped in the spring months, Abbott just ordered workers to destroy the tests.

Some of the Abbott workers questioned why Abbott was destroying tests, some of which had seven more months until expiration, instead of sending them to countries where the pandemic was on the rise. Some others already knew the answer: companies want the supplies of an item to be limited so that the price can stay high. Abbot was selling the tests for $20 to $24 each, and had collected $4.6 billion for the tests already by April.

Now, with the Delta variant spreading and the demand for Covid tests running high, Abbott tells customers they have to wait until production increases again.

These are the companies that the world’s fight against the coronavirus is entrusted to; companies for which the pandemic is just another opportunity to make money. The fact that this is about human life and everybody’s health—the investors and executives of Abbott, those pandemic profiteers, do not care about that.

Is it any wonder why, despite all the medical knowledge and technology of the 21st century, the coronavirus pandemic is still raging in many parts of the world after more than one and a half years?

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Afghanistan:
Billions for War, Crumbs for the Hungry

Sep 27, 2021

Translated from Lutte Ouvrière (Workers’ Struggle), the newspaper of the revolutionary workers’ group active in France.

“Everything is closed. There is no more money. In three months people will not have enough to eat. We can’t go on like this,” denounced a resident of Jalalabad, Afghanistan, around 100 miles from the capital, Kabul.

According to the United Nations, as things stand, 97% of the Afghan population could sink below the poverty line by next summer.

Faced with this catastrophe—the result of 20 years of war waged by imperialist leaders—officials promise infinitesimally low aid. The UN had requested 600 million dollars to deal with the immediate emergency. French representatives said they want to make available some 100 million dollars. And the U.S.—after spending two trillion dollars on the war—pledged 64 million dollars.

After the Taliban took power in mid-August, international funding was suspended. But two-fifths of the country’s income had come from foreign funds. In Kabul some banks have reopened, but individuals are limited to withdrawing 20,000 afghanis per week per person, which is under 235 dollars. To access ATMs, people have to wait for hours, hoping that the cash box was filled.

But most Afghans have a much worse situation, without that kind of money. One in three Afghans suffers from hunger. Education and health services that were functioning are now in free fall. “Medical establishments and hospitals that could provide free care are now forced to charge patients, because these hospitals no longer have any source of funding. While their patients themselves are losing their jobs and the prices of basic foodstuffs soar,” the country coordinator of Doctors Without Borders said.

Add to this the weight of the dictatorship that religious fundamentalists want to impose on the entire population. In 2021, as many Afghans say, “The Taliban didn’t change.”

“If we want to advance human rights for the Afghan people, the best way is to move forward with humanitarian aid, to engage with the Taliban and to take advantage of this humanitarian aid to push for the implementation of these rights,” said UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres. But those who protest against the Taliban have no help coming—particularly the women who continue to demand to keep the few rights won under previous governments, like the right to work or study. Humanitarian aid has even become the justification for a policy of coming to any agreement at any cost with those who imposed their power on the population.

Imperialist rulers might indeed rely on the Taliban again in order to maintain their own domination, as in 1996, and as they have done quite often with equally reactionary regimes.

Afghanistan:
A “Tragic Mistake” ... After Thousands of Others

Sep 27, 2021

Translated from Lutte Ouvrière (Workers’ Struggle), the newspaper of the revolutionary workers’ group active in France.

On September 17 the U.S. finally admitted to having killed 10 civilians including seven children by mistake, a few days before withdrawing from Afghanistan.

During the U.S. evacuation on August 25, while thousands of civilians gathered at Kabul’s airport hoping to be able to leave the country, a bomb attack claimed by ISIS killed 80 civilians and 13 American soldiers. In retaliation, the U.S. military bombed a car which it said was loaded with explosives. In reality, it was most likely filled with nothing other than cans of water. The man in the car worked for an American NGO.

After a New York Times investigation, the U.S. military admitted its “tragic mistake.” But this “mistake” is not exceptional. Over 71,000 Afghan and Pakistani civilians were killed during 20 years of war. Contrary to what U.S. leaders claim, the war in Afghanistan was never about helping the people there. It was intended to make a show of force after the attacks of September 11, 2001, even if that meant crushing the population with bombs. No wonder not many Afghans defended the corrupt U.S. military-backed regime as the Taliban was taking power.

Rural Hospitals under COVID:
Caught in a Vise Grip

Sep 27, 2021

Illinois’ downstate hospital region had ZERO intensive care beds available in mid-September. Hospitals are full, caring for COVID patients sick with the Delta variant. The region has 22 hospitals, with 88 ICU beds, to serve a population of 440,000.

Normally, if one hospital fills up, a patient will be transferred to another nearby. But with all of the area’s hospitals full, doctors and nurses must take other measures. Doctors at Franklin Hospital in rural Benton had to put one patient on a ventilator in the ER. Other patients end up in hospitals hundreds of miles away.

Staffing has been an acute problem. For example, Franklin Hospital has 16 beds, but it can only staff six of them! The media carps endlessly that vaccination is lowest in this portion of the state. True perhaps, but it’s only half of the story.

Further downriver, in Mississippi, 771 medical-surgical and 235 intensive care unit beds went unused in August due to a lack of staff to work them, according to the Mississippi Clarion-Ledger. All this while hospitals around the state filled beyond capacity from the latest surge in Covid patients.

Nurses nationwide have suffered severe burnout, from the pandemic. "[The work] looks heroic," said Nichole Atherton, a nurse who quit from a Gulfport hospital. "But that’s not what it is. It’s sweaty and hard and chaotic and bloody. And it’s hard to live in this every day and then go home and live a normal life." Many nurses eligible for retirement have decided to get out. Add to that the fact that many hospital staff have had to take time off to quarantine or have caught COVID themselves. Over 3,600 healthcare workers, among them 1,200 nurses, died of COVID in the pandemic’s first year in this country.

The nursing shortage existed well before the pandemic. Hospitals have taken up the “Lean Production” model used in the auto industry—where a bed not filled with a patient is a bed that’s not making money. Nurses were made to work long hours with high patient ratios, as part of the drive to bring in revenue.

A “lean” system is not one with any slack to accommodate even a minor crisis—much less a global pandemic. Thus huge gaps opened up under COVID. Large hospitals have been filling these gaps by hiring temporary nurses through staffing agencies. Nurses with any freedom snap up these positions. Small rural hospitals don’t have the money to pay for travel positions—they are left with fewer nurses who are more overworked.

The breach has been partly filled by emergency measures. Illinois’ state government sent 100 healthcare workers to its southern hospitals. Tennessee deployed 200 national guard medics to overwhelmed hospitals. Mississippi is paying millions of dollars to engage 1,100 contract hospital workers. But these healthcare systems were already in dire straits before the pandemic.

More than 100 rural hospitals closed between 2013 and the beginning of 2020. One in four rural facilities is at risk of closure. And many of the beds that do exist are not staffed.

In this society, healthcare is treated as a commodity, that is, a means to make profit: for hospital and healthcare companies, for medical practices, for pharmaceutical companies. There is much more money to be made serving patients who are well off and healthy. In this society, rural areas have lower population, with people who have less money, and are less healthy. But the system sets up healthcare institutions to find the most money for the least expense. Given that, rural healthcare can only be neglected, ignored by this system—how could it be otherwise under capitalism?

COVID has shone a spotlight on the situation of healthcare in this country. It has thrown into bright relief the gap between healthcare for the wealthy and that for the working class. This capitalist society will not, cannot care for the health needs of working people.

France:
Nathalie Arthaud’s Presidential Campaign

Sep 27, 2021

France will be holding its presidential election next year. Lutte Ouvrière, the revolutionary workers’ group in France, will be running Natalie Arthaud as their candidate. The following is the announcement that appeared in their paper.

Thursday September 16, during a press conference in Paris, Nathalie Arthaud announced the launch of her campaign for the presidential election. She presented the meaning of her candidacy by taking stock of the last two years.

The health crisis came on top of the economic crisis and worsened it. These years were the years of the spectacular enrichment of great fortunes, achieved at the expense of the workers. In many companies, temporary workers have been fired, production rates have increased, and wages have remained frozen. Soaring prices accelerate the impoverishment of working families.

If the workers do not want to be the eternal sacrifices, they will have to fight for their interests against the big bosses.

When one belongs to the working world, searching among the candidates for someone to better manage this system is a dead end. This system only works well for the rich. We must fight it and overthrow it, and Nathalie Arthaud is a candidate for the presidential election in order to affirm this.

Nathalie’s candidacy will allow all those who share this point of view to come together, participating in her campaign and beyond. She will make a series of trips to different cities. On October 9, she will hold a meeting in Paris at the Mutualité. These public meetings, large or small, will be an opportunity to develop her ideas and to generate as much support as possible now.

U.S. Pledge of One Billion Vaccines Falls Short

Sep 27, 2021

President Biden says the U.S. is pledging more than a billion doses of coronavirus vaccine for the poorer countries of the world. He even says, “We need to go big.”

The world has 8 billion people more or less, and to defeat the coronavirus, perhaps 6 billion people would need two doses of most vaccines, that is, 12 billion doses.

So if a billion or even two billion people are getting vaccinated, that leaves 6 billion people who could still die from coronavirus.

This proposal is not “big.” It is good for Pfizer, not for the world’s poorer people.

Pages 10-11

Mandates, Vaccines, Masks—We Need a Remedy for the Capitalist System

Sep 27, 2021

Nine Republican governors issued executive orders penalizing cities or school districts that try to implement vaccine or mask mandates in their localities.

They pretend to oppose these mandates in defense of "individual freedom"—these millionaire politicians who hog freedom only for their own class. They call it a "civil rights" issue—if you can believe that coming from politicians who have stomped on the civil rights of millions of people for years. They claim they are protecting the rights of everyone "to choose for themselves what is done to their own bodies"—these misogynist men who act to make it impossible for women to control their own bodies.

These nine governors know full well that vaccination and masks are the only real option we have today. This capitalist system, which has always refused to devote the resources needed by public health and the medical research tied to it, has let loose a deadly pandemic on the world’s population.

That’s why every one of them is vaccinated. Most rushed to get the vaccine, and to get it for members of their families, as soon as it was available. In fact, when the vaccines first came out, many of them cut to the front of the line, getting shots before nursing home residents did, before front-line medical personnel did, and before their states’ elderly population gained the vaccines’ protection. They were not the only ones, either. New York’s Democratic governor, Andrew Cuomo, pushed himself ahead of vulnerable New Yorkers, even while masquerading—on TV—as a protector of the elderly population.

We shouldn’t find ourselves caught in a situation where vaccination is our only real option for combating the spread of the virus. Years ago, the possibility, even likelihood, of this kind of epidemic was already widely known by medical science. But plans weren’t made, medical supplies and protective equipment weren’t stocked. Nor were more efficient masks developed, or inexpensive production facilities prepared. Medical personnel were not hired. As for vaccines, research was not widely paid for—not only for the vaccines themselves, but for setting up the facilities that would allow the whole population to be reached. Not nearly enough people with medical and public health experience were trained and hired.

None of this was done, for the same reason that workplaces are not made safe—even though technology exists to do it. None of it was done, for the same reason that weather has been and still is being allowed to become more extreme—even though science has long known what causes this, and what remedies could exist. All the basic ills we face today within this capitalist system come down to the same issue: profit takes priority over human need.

Yes, the virus is infectious and even tricky as it mutates, but it is the capitalist system which is deadly. At least one out of every eight people in this country has been infected, almost 700,000 people killed. On the scale of the world, the World Health Organization estimates the number dead at almost five million—a very incomplete picture of the medical disaster in countries ravaged by imperialism. The “coronavirus scoreboard” testifies to the failure of the capitalist class which leads this country—economically, politically and socially—and dominates the world.

The mandates pushed by Biden and Democratic governors put the obligation to respond to the virus onto the population itself, instead of on the capitalist class, whose drive for profit guaranteed the spread of this deadly virus. To the extent that anyone believes the false assumptions that underlie the mandates, they serve to hide the reality of which class is responsible. They hide what the politicians of both parties have done to the public health system for decades, making it almost totally useless in organizing a response against the virus. And, under the pretext that vaccination is “good for you,” these mandates serve to accustom the population to obeying orders coming from a government that is not theirs and does not serve them.

These mandates are directed essentially against working people, whether in rural areas or in big cities—the very people most deprived of access to decent medical care. The penalties attached to these mandates threaten the livelihood of working people—that is, their lives.

Yes, many working people distrust the mandates. Yes, they are suspicious and angry. The nine Republican governors, like many other right wing politicians, try to play on people’s frustration, frustration that existed long before the pandemic, but enormously increased with the virus and the lockdown, which was a throwback to the Middle Ages.

Getting themselves vaccinated, these nine hypocrites play on the edges of the issue in a way that encourages many people not to get vaccinated. Hoping to build up a voting base for themselves in the next election, they are ready to damn those who would follow them to a death by Covid, something that apparently is more likely for the unvaccinated than for the vaccinated.

This whole issue, with all these politicians carrying out policies and making propaganda that serves no one but the capitalist class, gives a vivid picture of the capitalist system. Stop focusing on the vaccines—consider what would be involved, what the working class would have to do to throw out the whole capitalist system.

Culture Corner:
Kara Walker Art Exhibits

Sep 27, 2021

Kara Walker is a world-renowned artist of cut paper silhouettes that are exaggerated caricatures of racist and sexist stereotypes. Her work brings front and center the history of violence used against African Americans, especially in the antebellum South.

One of her many creations is a series of works that superimposes her silhouettes of slaves onto Harper’s Magazine 1866 prints of the Civil War. It aptly demonstrates the glaring prior omission of images of those forced into slavery.

Some of her work is currently on exhibit at Chicago’s DuSable Museum of African American History and also at The Broad in Los Angeles. A large exhibit is opening at the National Gallery of Art on April 10, 2022, in Washington, D.C.

Breathing Fire:
Female Inmate Firefighters on the Front Lines of California’s Wildfires
by Jaime Lowe, 2021

Sep 27, 2021

This book tells the story of ten women inmate firefighters in California, over roughly the last ten years. It includes the ravages of COVID in prisons, the protests against the murder of George Floyd, and the ever increasingly ferocious fire seasons. The author relies on interviews with dozens of inmates and their families. She provides extensive research into the factors that shape them: the history of mass incarceration, and the three-strikes law, and the use of inmate labor as essential forced unpaid labor to fight fires and floods and to build roads. She talks about the obstacles that are raised to prevent them from getting jobs that use their skills after release from prison.

The book is a stark example of the dire circumstances of essential workers and honors their heroism and courage fighting on all fronts, against all odds.

Page 12

Human Rights Crimes at Rikers Island

Sep 27, 2021

Two people died in three days at New York City’s Rikers Island jail last week. Eleven inmates have died so far this year. (Twelve, if we count one person who was granted ‘compassionate leave’ to die at home.)

This figure is a stark result of the deplorable, inhumane conditions that exist at Rikers Island. Six died of illnesses contracted or exacerbated while in the jail. Five died from apparent suicides—driven to it, in all probability, by those conditions.

Conditions at Rikers have always been bad. Built in the 1930s, it was already notoriously overcrowded by the 1950s. Conditions continued to deteriorate decade by decade, up to the present day.

COVID made things even worse. Overcrowding skyrocketed as court cases were halted and inmates were left in limbo. At the same time, staffing at the jail plummeted as guards and other employees were out sick. “Triple shifts"—24 hours straight—became common; so, more guards just refused to come to work. Inmates were left to fend for themselves in overcrowded cells, often with no water, no food, and no toilets. They are unable to contact their families or lawyers for weeks at a time.

State lawmakers who toured the facility reported finding overflowing toilets, and floors covered with feces, urine, cockroaches and rotting food. There was no air conditioning in the sweltering summer. They reported prisoners screaming at them, begging them to help. One prisoner attempted suicide right in front of them.

The vast majority of the prisoners at Rikers have not even been convicted of anything. They were arrested for minor and nonviolent crimes, and are awaiting their trials in jail because they do not have the money to post bail. The latest person to die at Rikers, Isaabdul Karim, had been brought to the jail 31 days earlier for a minor parole violation. It became a death sentence, after weeks without medical care.

Commissions and monitors have called for better conditions and even closing the jail. But nothing gets changed, and conditions continue to worsen. Because this is what incarceration is in this capitalist society: throw away the people brutalized by this society; brutalize and dehumanize them even more.

50 Years ago:
Attica Prison Rebellion

Sep 27, 2021

Fifty years ago, in 1971, prisoners rebelled in Attica, a New York state prison. The rebellion lasted five days until it was savagely repressed, leaving 31 prisoners and nine guards dead, all shot by the police.

The prison system, of which Attica was part, reflected society’s inequalities. In 1969, a crime of fraud by someone who had gained $200,000 led to seven months in prison, at worst. On the other hand, the prison term for a burglary yielding $321 was 33 months.

In Attica, 54% of the prisoners were black, but 100% of the guards were white. Prisoners were kept 14 to 16 hours per day in their cells. Their mail was read, their reading censored and they saw their families only through a separation barrier. They had almost no medical care and early releases were arbitrary. The system of plea bargaining, with 75% of those in prison having no trial, increased the feelings of injustice. The accused pled guilty, whether they were or not, in exchange for a promise of a reduced sentence ... which they didn’t always get.

From 1950 until Attica, there had been some 50 other prison uprisings. But that didn’t prevent a prison official from declaring in 1966, they were “proud, satisfied and happy” with their system.

In fact, as events were to show, the prisons were becoming a breeding ground for revolt.

By 1970, many prisoners had begun to call themselves “revolutionaries.” The black movement and the U.S. war in Viet Nam led to political radicalization for many. These attitudes had spread throughout the population, including among prisoners.

A new type of prisoner appeared: those condemned in ordinary criminal cases whose political consciousness developed in prison. George Jackson was the best-known representative. His book Soledad Brother tells of his development. Jackson was serving a ten-year term in prison for a theft amounting to $70. He supported the radical Black Panthers. He knew that his life was threatened by the U.S. government, which had begun a program targeting the radical wing of the black movement for assassination.

August 1971, George Jackson was shot in the back by a guard in San Quentin prison. The authorities tried to hide this assassination, but the truth came out. It led to a series of riots in many prisons. The Attica revolt was the deepest.

When Jackson was assassinated, some prisoners in Attica seized a courtyard and held 40 guards hostage. The prisoners invited observers, including a New York Times reporter, to visit the place. One wrote, “The racial harmony that reigns among the prisoners was stunning. The courtyard was the first place that I’ve seen where there was no racism.” A black prisoner declared, “I didn’t think that the whites would join in. I cried at the idea that we were all so close. All united.”

The prison administration stalled any negotiations with the prisoners. On September 13th, 1971, Governor Rockefeller gave the green light for an assault by the National Guard, prison guards, and local police, armed with automatic rifles, submachine guns and tear gas. In 15 minutes, 31 prisoners and nine guards were killed. The administration claimed at first that the guards had their throats cut by the prisoners, but autopsies proved that they had been killed by police fire.

These events didn’t prevent other movements in the prisons and the creation of support committees for those accused of further crimes at Attica. In the end, the judicial authorities gave up demanding life sentences for the prisoners who survived the assault.

Attica will always be a symbol of both the brutality of which the U.S. government is capable and of the heroism of ordinary people who have decided to make a stand.

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