BALTIMORE, April 6—The West Wednesday weekly protests in Baltimore against police terror are not derailed by Covid-19. Named in honor of Tyrone West, the rallies have moved from the streets to the screens, streaming to Facebook Live. This shows the creative and resilient spirit of the working class in the face of crisis. The struggle also shows the growing anti-racist movement open to communist ideas.
Nationwide protest on Facebook
People on Facebook have created “Watch Parties,” with more than 200 people watching the most recent West Wednesday including people from far away.
Stevante Clark from Sacramento, California talked about the ongoing struggle to win accountability for the police murder of his 23-year-old brother, Stephon, who was murdered in his grandmother’s back yard by cops Terrence Mercadal and Jared Robinet in 2018.
Those cops first claimed they thought Stephon was holding a crowbar. In their re-telling, it morphed into a gun, then a cell phone. The truth: Stephon was killed for nothing less than racism!
Also joining in was David Harrison, cousin of Willie McCoy, who was executed by six cops shortly after he fell asleep in his car while waiting in a drive-thru lane at a Taco Bell in Vallejo, California in February of 2019. Workers who couldn’t wake up Willie called 911 for a wellness check. Instead of medics, seven cops arrived only to execute Willie: another example of deadly systemic racism.
Tawanda Jones was the host. She is the sister of unarmed Tyrone West, a young Black worker beaten to death by up to 15 kkkops in July of 2013.
She contrasted the ruthless killing of Willie McCoy to the soft handling of white supremacist Dylann Roof who, once in police custody, was given a cheeseburger and a bullet-proof vest, right after he murdered nine Black parishioners in cold blood in Charleston.
West Wednesday Live also discussed COVID-19. A member of Progressive Labor Party explained that the government is enforcing quarantines, but none of them are saying, “Call out the capitalists bosses who allowed us to get here.” How could they when the government serves the capitalists.
Capitalism here in the U.S. has less hospital beds—and we’re the richest nation in the world - per person than in 11  other countries, including] South Korea, China, and Italy.”
She talked about how New York closed 20 hospitals that mostly served Black and Latin working class neighborhoods in the past 20 years, based on what’s profitable for the rich, not what’s needed to preserve life.
Capitalism driven by logic of profit
Thirteen years ago in the wake of near-pandemics (SARS, bird flu, swine flu), the U.S. government had launched a project for 70,000 additional ventilators.  However, “because of corporations putting money over mankind,” those ventilators never got manufactured.
A company, which had contracted with the federal government to build smaller, more mobile, less costly ventilators, actually did produce three working prototypes, but that company got bought by a larger company that was already producing and selling ventilators at higher prices (NYT, 3/29).
Like all capitalists, those profit-driven business owners were focused on maintaining the highest possible profits and, not wanting to undercut sales of their more expensive machines, intentionally sidelined and buried the project that would have created an emergency stockpile of 70,000 life-saving ventilators. The result is the racist and criminal loss of lives and disproportionately these are the most exploited, Black, Latin workers.(NYT, 4/8)
Michigan has kept track—in 70 percent of the cases—of the racial background of people who have gotten sick with COVID-19. While Black folks make up just 14 percent of the state’s population, they have accounted for more than 33 percent of the cases, and 40 percent of the deaths.
The PLP speaker then said, “The real enemy is capitalism. It ain’t Donald Trump. It ain’t the corona. It’s capitalism...We can defeat the corona, but we should also dismantle and destroy this sick system because it’s really killing us!”
How to serve the working class
Another speaker was a fighter, here in Baltimore, who talked about how people with low incomes, when picking up food distributed free at sites run by the City, often have to wait in lines without a reliable capability for physical distancing, forcing low-income families to be at higher risk for getting Covid-19.
So he has organized a food pantry where contributing volunteers stock and drive the food directly to the homes of families in need.  
We expect online West Wednesday to grow, and to include more and more of the fighters against racism and against police brutality, in Baltimore, and from all over!