November 18—This year the American Public Health Association(APHA) held its annual meeting virtually under the theme Preventing Violence, with racist structural violence perpetrated by the capitalist class a key focus of the program.In past years, this topic would have focused on neighborhood violence, gun control, and “violence interrupter” programs. This year, a culmination of years of communist organizing and sharpening mass fightback against racism succeeded in bringing antiracist politics to greater masses of healthcare workers.
Healthcare workers in the Progressive Labor Party (PLP) have long been members of the APHA and struggled to sharpen the fight against racism among its membership of more than 25,000 healthcare workers. The shift in the APHA’s focus, with racism now identified by the APHA as a social determinant of health, helped bring police and prison violence front and center as public health crises.
PLP members and many friends advanced the fight even further against capitalism this year through a virtual program of our own on October 28, calling for communist revolution. Violent revolution against the ruling class was presented as the alternative to state sanctioned violence against the working class.
Capitalism = violence against the working class
The programs connected the “Preventing Violence” theme to capitalism’s inherent structural violence including a racist lack of housing, food, jobs and education. “Gun control” laws touted by many in the Democratic Party were identified as being used to disarm Black workers while police violence and murder of Black, Latin and indigenous workers continues unabated. A preponderance of Covid-19 cases and deaths among Black and Latin workers and incarcerated persons comprised yet another example.
Progressive Labor Party carried out two major initiatives at APHA this year: fighting mass racist incarceration and hosting an open PLP-led panel on how communism can smash racism and capitalism.
Smash mass racist incarceration
Several members of PLP and many friends took an active part in pushing forward against mass incarceration. Readers of CHALLENGE may remember the consistent pressure we put on the APHA to support this policy: “Law Enforcement Violence is a Public Health Issue” which passed in 2018 after a three-year struggle. This year after the uprisings around the country and the dangers of the Covid-19 pandemic, a resolution to work towards abolition of prisons passed. Over 90 percent of the governing council voted in favor of “Advancing Public Health Interventions to Address the Harms of the Carceral System". Although it passed overwhelmingly, there were early efforts to prevent bringing it up at all. First the reviewers said it had too many references! When many of us wrote to protest such a stupid reason and added even more data, they agreed to let it go forward. When 40 people wanted to speak to the resolution in the hearings, they placed it on the CONSENT calendar. One approved amendment called for “safely” discharging prisoners. Many voted to leave it out because it weakens the action step on releasing prisoners, so we will be dealing with this over the coming year.
This resolution argues for the abolition of prisons and other forms of surveillance, such as probation and ankle monitors. When the “progressive” San Francisco State’s Attorney, Chesa Boudin, (son of fake-leftist and terrorist Weathermen “revolutionaries”) spoke in the Medical Care Section, one of the resolution authors challenged him on the increased usage of ankle monitors in San Francisco. Boudin blamed it on the judges. He did not even raise the role of police and prisons to repress and control workers, particularly Black workers.
The abolition of punishment and a restorative justice approach will require a revolution against the capitalist state that requires racist policing and mass incarceration for its survival. A vague “human rights” agenda is not adequate to the task of fighting capitalism and racism, and PLP must guarantee that class struggle including demands to “put killer cops in cell blocks” is understood as just and necessary.
Communism: the only solution to heal the working class
PLP’s second initiative was a virtual panel for potential public health revolutionaries and friends. A 90-minute presentation and discussion on “Racism and Capitalism: Is Communism the Solution?” attracted an audience of at least 125 participants on Facebook and Zoom platforms. This approach gave PLP members in our public health group an opportunity to be more visible to more workers than in our previous APHA efforts, and the event was recorded for further distribution (see box).
The program highlighted fightbacks against police murder and racist evictions, and calls for the need for a violent revolution against the capitalist class internationally and shared our vision of communism — a society without wages or class divisions, racism or sexism. Multiracial unity in building the class struggle was emphasized as critical to workers’ success. Racism hurts Black workers most severely, especially women, and weakens the working class by dividing us and allows the ruling class to pay lower wages and spend fewer resources on all of us. One speaker addressed the liberal and misguided politics of white privilege, noting “It is not a privilege to be white under capitalism.”
In the setting of the APHA conference on violence, the understanding of the structural violence of capitalism and a militant working-class revolution for communism was accessible and warmly received by the audience. Questions from the audience gave us a chance to discuss the errors and great advances made in previous revolutions and to encourage the fight for the future of the international working class. We have reached out to more of our co-workers and students and have expanded our networks and study groups and we will continue to improve our work in this way.
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Help build the fightback:
1. Join a Progressive Labor Study group
2. Use resolutions in struggles and programs: www.endingpoliceviolence.com
3. Share the virtual program which can be accessed on Facebook: Racism and Capitalism: Is Communism the Solution? Or click on discussion at https://tinyurl.com/y3v7z5pv.
4. Read and contribute to blog by APHA members: www.multiracialunity.org