Letters: Organizing and working under Covid-19

Multiracial unity is the antidote to bosses’ racist disease

A week before workers in New York was completely swept into the pestilent tornado of Covid-19, Progressive Labor Party (PLP) comrades and I organized a rally in Chinatown. When I invited workers from my mass work to the action some were opposed. They felt that rather than showing solidarity we are further contributing to racism. For some members in my base, having a rally in Chinatown sent a message that Covid-19 only hurts Chinese people. While their accusations were upsetting, the rally carried on at full force. We set up near one of the busiest intersections in Chinatown with signs in Mandarin and English. Though our numbers were small, we made up for it with a bold and multigenerational contingent of PL’ers of all races and crowd-rousing chants. Workers from a local bank gifted us bottles of water, and dozens of workers enthusiastically received CHALLENGE and leaflets.
The day after a rally, a few comrades and I met with some of the members in my base who disagreed, but were genuinely trying to understand the Party. There was confusion about the meaning of solidarity. Many confused it to mean superficial allyship and not working-class unity. After a long debate, comrades and I clarified that solidarity for communists means that we stand united in common struggle with the working class. And so our rally was politically necessary to show that multiracial unity is the antidote to the bosses racist divisions.
We also explained that our choice to have the rally in Chinatown was political. We did it to one show the connection between mushrooming fascism and inter-imperialist rivalry between the U.S. and Chinese bosses. Chinese workers in the U.S are inevitably caught in the middle of the bosses’ crossfire, and so when the bosses spread their racist propaganda, it means that they’re intensifying their attacks on our entire class.
This became even clearer in the wake of Covid-19 when the U.S bosses showed they were utterly unprepared. Our chants highlighted that there were no testing kits, no hospital beds. Cuts in care and infrastructure invariably means that Black, Latin, and Asian workers, as usual, would suffer the most. The crisis also exposed deepening exploitation: hand sanitizers were made using prison labor.
We exposed how Big Fascist stooges like NY governor Andrew Cuomo set the stage for the conditions that will lead to the butchering of our class on an epic scale. We wanted to motivate our class to unite and fight back rather than give in to the bosses’ racist divisions.
These discussions helped my comrades and I sharpen the contradictions in our mass organization, and although the workers we talked to were not won, good things came out of it. We were successful in getting at least one worker from my mass organization to show up to the rally, and I even won a friend, a sharp young worker in my base, to translate our flyer into mandarin.
Organizing in the time of Covid-19 is difficult but if there is anything this experience has taught me is that even in the darkest nights there will always be sparks in the working class. You just have to keep struggling to find them.

*****

Health care workers need communism

After a brief absence in the time of Covid-19, I returned to work at my community health center in the Bronx today. Despite the desperate situation workers in New York City are facing, I was uplifted by the camaraderie of my front line fellow health workers, nearly all of whom are Black and Latin women.
Most of these dedicated women have young families at home, and yet, despite often suboptimal work conditions, they selflessly show up to serve their community. As in the rest of New York, there is a shortage of personal protective equipment (PPE) for health workers, yet my co-workers quickly offered to locate gear for me. I was surprised when a young doctor took me down to the supply room and insisted they give me one of her personally assigned lab coats to wear to see patients. It was particularly touching given that the clinic had never given me a lab coat to wear in my 35 years of service there.
In the course of the day, I quickly realized that it was very difficult for workers to function and maintain the requisite ‘social distancing’ in the hallways and exam rooms. Everyone just did their best to do an optimal job and try to be safe. The clinic is just not set up to deal with a pandemic.
An encouraging moment for me was when I delivered our paper to several regular CHALLENGE readers. The issue sparked a lively discussion about how this profit system simply cannot provide for the working class. Perhaps these desperate times will at least help us illustrate more concretely, why my co-workers need to join Progressive Labor Party and fight for a communist world. Healthcare under this capitalist system is run by profit seeking corporations. Healthcare under communism would be run by and for the working class. Join us.

****

Immigrant workers organize vs. bosses racist bailout
Some comrades have been working in an immigrant-based community organization in New York City for many years. The Coronavius pandemic and the capitalists’ racist response are causing death and panic in immigrant communities. Thirteen people have recently died at Elmhurst Hospital that serves immigrant workers and their families and is totally unequipped or staffed to deal with the magnitude of the crisis.
 Immigrant workers in the community organization are no longer working and many don’t have pay, sick days or health insurance. Undocumented workers are also excluded from the “rescue” package. It’s a choice between food and rent. Comrades have been calling our members and friends to tell them NOT to pay the April rent. Tenant groups have gotten a moratorium on evictions but not a rent freeze, which is unlikely given Cuomo’s and other politicians’ strong ties to the real estate goons. The fight will continue for many months!
A comrade recently made a small donation to a youth team in the organization that has been responding day and night to ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) arrests and detentions during this crisis.
Two immigrant groups in New York City are mobilizing an action April 2-4 when people individually can throw signs from their windows, put up signs on windows and lamp posts, and do sidewalk art. A comrade has translated and texted this message to our friends. We have notified the leadership of the organization and the youth team.
The spirit of collectivity, pitching in for our class in the face of intensifying racism, is an inspiring example of what has been and is communist culture and practice. The fight for revolution, for communism, is desperately needed by the international working class. Join us in this fight for communism, a system without money and profits, without borders, firmly committed to obliterating pandemics, racism and sexism.
On to May Day, remote or not!
*****
Bosses get bailed out for sickening workers
In late March the U.S. government passed a much-touted $2 trillion “rescue” package.  Less touted is that at least half of the benefits go to real estate investors, big corporations and other businesses.  Ninety-six senators voted, and all, including Bernie Sanders and every Democrat, supported the law.
So who is actually being rescued? On page 203 of the package is a tax break for the one percent (NYT, 3/27/20). It benefits real estate investors with more than $500,000 annual income.
This ripoff for the capitalist bosses will cost the government $170 billion over ten years, which is nearly one tenth of the $2 trillion. Among the real estate bosses who will benefit are many family members and cronies of President Trump. The law also establishes a $500 billion slush fund for capitalist corporations.
The capitalist bosses say this ripoff is a Coronavius rescue package. But most of the benefits are for the bosses.  For workers, it will be too little, too late, and gone too soon.  Many Black, Latin, and women workers will be left out.  We are the ones suffering the most risk and worst impacts of the Coronavius pandemic.
To safeguard workers, we need a system that actually provides for our needs and is run by the workers.  That system is called communism.
History shows that capitalist politicians, be they Republicans, Democrats, or social democrats, will never vote to get rid of capitalism.  And even if they did, the bosses would use their armies to defend capitalism.  We need to overthrow capitalism and build a communist society.
*****
Cuomo, just the hero the liberal fascists need right now
NY Governor Andrew Cuomo is no friend to the working class. He never has been and he never will be. He has attacked everything from wages, to housing, to health care and education for workers. His reassurances ring hollow to people suddenly unemployed and left to fend for themselves and their families in crowded apartments or required to risk their health to keep the supplies flowing to those who can afford them. This crisis is wreaking havoc on the working class from which millions will never recover.
When Cuomo speaks his aim is to give permission from the state to lament the mass sacrificing of the poorest section of the working class but to trust that there is no other way. His goal is to bind his audience with him in carrying out the atrocities of capitalism. That is reminiscent of previous fascist leaders.
“No people ever recognize their dictator in advance,” reflected an American journalist Dorothy Thompson in 1935 as she realized that she had misjudged Hitler. “He never stands for election on the platform of dictatorship.
 He always represents himself as the instrument [of] the incorporated National Will.” Applying the lesson to the U.S., she wrote, “When our dictator turns up you can depend on it that he will be one of the boys and he will stand for everything traditionally American.” (smithsonianmag.com 12/13/2016).