WASHINGTON DC, October 28—“I don’t know what I’ve been told, pharma’s pockets lined with gold!” Lies and tricks will not divide, humanity standing side by side”; “14 billion doses NOW”; “No more pharma greed, global vaccines are what we need” and “Break the patents!” These chants rang out as 100 people marched to the Executive Office Building near the White House to demand the liberal Joe Biden administration end the pharmaceutical industry’s control of vaccine patents.
The multinational and multiracial character of the demonstration demonstrated the value and necessity of internationalism and working class unity. Covid-19’s devastating worldwide spread has hurt workers the hardest in accordance with the racist, sexist and imperialist nature of capitalism itself. The revolutionary communist Progressive Labor Party (PLP) represented these politics at the rally today, adding chants that were picked up like, “This is what SOLIDARITY looks like”.
After the rally downtown, 30 workers and PL’ers marched to the home of Jeffrey Zeintz, who heads Biden’s Covid Response Team. He refused to meet us, so we camped out all night outside his house, and at 6 am rang alarm clocks and had a bullhorn rally to “wake him up” to the need for global vaccines.
Vaccine equity NOW!
Rallying on the eve of the G20 meetings, organizers from the reform group “Justice is Global” were joined by public health workers including Public Health Awakened (PHA), medical students from Rutgers University, PLP members, and several other groups to demand that the Biden administration make vaccine equity a reality around the world.
They called upon the U.S. to demand the G20 countries support the TRIPS waiver, which would release the patents on Moderna and Pfizer mRNA vaccines to all countries. Providing resources to countries to produce mRNA vaccines themselves is needed to guarantee that people everywhere can be vaccinated.
The capitalist drive for maximum profit prevents the capitalist system from solving the global Covid-19 epidemic, let alone addressing how unequally SARS-CoV-2 has affected workers worldwide. The drive for vaccinations again illustrates how only replacing the profit system with global communism can meet our class’s global needs. PLP members brought this message to this rally by selling CHALLENGE, engaging in extended discussions with other participants, and gaining contacts with several of the organizers present.
“We have the tools but not the politics”
Scientists have explained with evidence-based reasoning that vaccinating the entire working class can stop the spread of Covid-19, including its variants, and decrease the risk of new variants that might not respond to vaccinations and emerging treatments. As speakers pointed out, we have the tools but not the politics to end this pandemic.
A high point of the rally was when public health workers from PHA spoke emphatically about the current policy being a public health failure. These young professionals organized for this event at each step of the planning. PLP members have regularly met with PHA every two weeks over the past year and have pushed for more militancy in the group. We are excited by their leadership in this event and look forward to continuing the struggle against capitalism and racism.
Communism will defeat biggest viruses: imperialism and racism
The reform groups organizing the event channeled anger and boldness in attacking both the Biden administration and the pharmaceutical industry’s greed. However, they failed to attack capitalism, connect capitalism with racism and imperialism, or offer real solutions.
Workers around the world are suffering in grotesque ways from this pandemic, and many other health and social conditions exacerbated by the pandemic. Victory in this struggle means breaking with the politicians in Congress and organizing for an international mass communist revolution to destroy capitalism instead. Without this perspective, we end up fruitlessly falling into the trap set by various factions of vicious capitalists and their politicians who run society.
Smash racist vaccine borders and join PLP
The capitalists, meanwhile, have linked the vaccine to profits by limiting who gets vaccinated. India, for example, is the world’s largest vaccine producer but exports them to the biggest imperialists, despite the grand promises of the UN’s COVAX program. Making the vaccine available for free in the U.S. while effectively denying it to the rest of world is a recipe for increased nationalism and extends the racist arrogance of U.S. imperialism even further. As long as we have capitalism, vaccines become just another tool in rivalry among the imperialists as Russia, China, and the U.S. use them to pursue their own alliances in a buildup for World War 3 rather than meet workers’ needs.
The bosses once again are playing with our lives! We fight to build an international revolutionary PLP that can smash all borders and abolish money and make the vaccine freely available to all. While protesting Biden’s bozos like Zeintz at six am are a good start, the urgency of this global struggle demands a different kind of wakeup call — a call to join PLP and sweep capitalism out of power with communist revolution! JOIN US!