Workers Blast NYC Ebola Plan

STATEN ISLAND, NY, October 17 — “You haven’t answered any of my questions!” an angry nurse shouted at Mary Bassett, the New York City’s health commissioner. The subject was Ebola — and the surge of racism that is scapegoating immigrants for the failures of capitalism in containing this disease.
At an overflow town hall meeting in “Little Liberia,” home to thousands of residents from Liberia, Sierra Leone, and Guinea, many spoke of how teachers were sending their children home merely for being West African, or refusing to ride in the same elevator. Some local healthcare professionals have called for an indefinite ban on flights from the three affected countries, or a quarantine of the entire neighborhood!
The first question to Bassett, an appointee of liberal Mayor Bill DeBlasio, came from a nurse born and raised in Sierra Leone: Why had the city failed to follow Center for Disease Control (CDC) guidelines to protect those assigned to treat Ebola patients with proper gear? When the commissioner hedged on her answer, and the nurse kept pressing her, security tried to take the microphone away.
The event was packed with television cameras, reporters and police. It started late, with city, state, and federal politicians wasting the first hour by repeating that New York is a city of immigrants, and that immigrants have nothing to fear. The commissioner had nothing useful to say beyond stating that anyone with “Ebola-like symptoms” should somehow get to the designated “Ebola Center” at Bellevue Hospital in Manhattan.
The hundreds of West African immigrants loudly asked why a center wasn’t on Staten Island. As a matter of fact, why haven’t Ebola Centers been created in every borough to care for residents who may be exposed? One man received thunderous applause when he asked why the government couldn’t send vans or buses to reach residents who may be too afraid to step foot outside their homes, especially those with documentation issues who do not trust the government. The city representatives’ only response was to tell people to keep checking the CDC’s website for updates.
New York is about as prepared for Ebola as it was for Hurricane Sandy, another “natural” event turned into a disaster by capitalism. To the bosses, working-class lives are worth little, whether we are threatened by imperialist war, racist police terror or a viral epidemic.
Profits Over Cures
The Ebola Virus Disease (EVD), also known as Ebola Hemorrhagic Fever (EHF), is an infectious, aggressive virus with a high mortality rate. It was first identified in 1976, and experts remain unclear on its origins. Until this year, Ebola vaccine development was considered a high-cost, low-profit investment.
Anthony Fauci, head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, explains that even small, poorly funded labs have made tremendous progress in developing Ebola antibody therapies, including five candidate vaccines that successfully protected non-human primates from Ebola. But the large pharmaceutical companies, Fauci noted, showed no interest: “To develop a vaccine that treats little outbreaks every thirty or forty years — well, that’s not much incentive” (Scientific American, 7/30/14).
Contrast this murderous indifference of capitalist medicine to the communist society envisioned by Progressive Labor Party, where money will be abolished and scientists will work to save all workers’ lives.
Imperialism Bred Ebola Crisis
The Ebola outbreak is in a region where the capitalist health infrastructure has been decimated, partly due to two civil wars in Liberia. These conflicts were the product of U.S. imperialism, which divided the majority indigenous Krahn people and the descendants of 19th-century U.S. slaves. With the backing of U.S. President James Monroe, the newcomers colonized Monrovia and helped secure business relations with the U.S. ruling class. More recently, dogfighting capitalist factions have used child soldiers to help them murder hundreds of thousands of workers. Millions more were displaced into refugee camps, perfect breeding grounds for Ebola. As for the long-term impact, the capitalist mouthpiece Financial Times suggested that the economic impact could ultimately kill more than the virus itelf, as workers flee farmlands and mining, timber and rubber companies suspend operations (FT, 10/09/14).
None of this history was lost on the audience packing the hall in Staten Island. The event got even hotter when a paramedic denounced the rise in racism against people from West Africa and the row of complicit politicians seated in the front row. He exposed the myth that the city is “one happy family” by pointing out that the last ten years have seen twelve city hospitals serving black and Latin workers shut down.
He also said, “We’re standing two miles from where Eric Garner was strangled to death by racist killer cops. That’s the city we live in, and we as working people need to unite!” The audience cheered and responded, “That’s right!” Some rose to their feet.
After volunteering to help spread public awareness about Ebola, the paramedic finished by saying, “As members of the international working class, whether you’re from Liberia, Guinea, Sierra Leone, or Staten Island, we need an international, multiracial, anti-racist movement to fight back like Ferguson did against racism and Ebola!”
The audience cheered, the politicians were furious, and the cops looked uncomfortable and angry. Outside, after the meeting, a lively discussion connected the Ebola outbreak to the imperialist-backed civil wars that have shattered Liberia and Sierra Leone. More than a dozen men and women from the neighborhood shared their experiences, from their lives in their home countries to the racism they’ve experienced in New York. When someone mentioned the need to build a movement to fight back, one woman said, “Now we’re talking about revolution!”