Fighting spirit won’t starve, workers won’t stomach capitalist food deserts

CHICAGO, November 14– Progressive Labor Party (PLP) comrades have joined a working-class struggle against the racist closure of a local Aldi’s supermarket in Garfield Park. During a global pandemic that has further strained food access across the country, this disgusting and racist assault against mostly Black workers shows that the bosses will happily let our class suffer.
 Workers in the neighborhood and PLP, however, have banded together to ensure there is immediate action taken to care for our class brothers and sisters. We are also maintaining a long-term outlook that only a communist revolution will rid us of these capitalist cruelties.
Food deserts plague Black workers
Closing this store,  the only source of fresh food in the area,  creates yet another “food desert,” a location lacking healthy eating options. It also exacerbates medical problems such as high blood pressure and diabetes among workers in the neighborhood. According to some estimates, at least half a million workers in Chicago – the majority of whom are Black – currently live within areas considered food deserts (Chicago Sun-Times, 11/9).
But as the global worker fightbacks currently happening  show (see page 3), workers aren’t going down so quietly! Shortly after the closure, some non-profit groups and health advocacy organizations protested at the Aldi headquarters during which they rightfully blasted the attack.
Local workers and organizations  have also organized free distribution of fresh produce every Saturday in the parking lot for workers in the neighborhood. These actions should be applauded and they display that even in the darkest night confidence in the working class can never be overstated. These actions have presented a strong opening for an infusion of communist politics and leadership to ensure food insecurity forever becomes history for all workers.
When bosses starve us, workers provide
The closing of the Aldi store in Garfield Park came as a shock to practically everybody. It was literally open one day and closed the next. A PLP member who works in a nearby neighborhood got wind of the fightback and quickly advocated for our participation in the struggle. He volunteered at the produce distribution where he was able to make conversation with several workers as well as pass out some copies of CHALLENGE.
The following day, in our study-action group, we made a collective commitment to assist in the food distribution while connecting the struggle to other fights going on currently in the city, from Covid-19 breakouts in schools, to closing hospitals, to racist deportations and police terror. It’s essential to see all of these assaults as part and parcel of capitalism’s need to divide and exploit the working class.
Pandemic’s effects on hunger
It is no coincidence that this attack comes during a pandemic that has destroyed food stability worldwide. Almost 15 percent of U.S. households and 18 percent with children reported food insecurity early in the pandemic (Nutrition Journal, 8/31/20).  Nearly four in 10 Black and Latin homes with children have struggled to feed their families during the Covid-19 rampage. The percentages of families considered food insecure have surged among workers, already having surpassed the 2008-09 Great Recession numbers (Politico, 7/6/20).
The pandemic also caused a spike in global hunger, with 2.3 billion people now lacking year round access to adequate food (U.S. Global Leadership Coalition, 9/12). Just as the liberal rulers convened to stake out their hollow plans to tackle climate change in the 2021 United Nations Climate Change Conference this past week, at least four countries—including Yemen, Madagascar, South Sudan, and Ethiopia—are already experiencing famine-like conditions, with both Covid-19 and climate change compounding things, especially for Yemen (OXFAM, 8/4/20, see editorial). The ruling class not only enables this suffering, but tremendously profits from it (CBS News, 3/31).
Plant the seeds of communist revolution
Time and time again, we see the bosses and their capitalist system horrifically fail our class, but as workers we always step up to look out and provide for one another. With every capitalist-caused climate disaster or health epidemic, the selfless and inherently communist character of the working class rises to the forefront in solidarity.
But as noble as these actions may be, alone they will never bring about the world we need and deserve. In order to establish a world that puts the well-being of the international working class above all else, it’s necessary to violently seize state power from the bosses through revolution. The capitalists waste millions of tons of food every year while workers starve, only because they can’t make a profit off it, just like Aldi. Under communism, we will draw from science and the examples of past revolutions in Russia and China that collectivized food production and distribution in order to end malnutrition and starvation.
No capitalist-funded non-profit group will ever advocate for this! As we fight to feed ourselves today, let’s keep planting the seeds of a communist world that will one day ensure that no worker goes without.