Letters of October 20

Small Actions, Long-time Readers Pay Off

I’m enclosing another $100 check for a donation given for the paper by a long-time reader. He’s the owner of a Haitian restaurant whom we first met in the ’90s during the InCAR days. His restaurant, new at the time, was being victimized by a racist who lived across the street (and was probably encouraged by the cops constantly ticketing customers who parked around there). It was vandalized several times and racial slurs were shouted at the customers.

We held a small InCAR demonstration in front of the racist’s house and since then the restaurant owner has been a regular reader of CHALLENGE! The racist abuse, as well as the parking tickets, also ebbed out after that.

I’ve learned that even very small struggles, and maintaining long-term CHALLENGE readerships, are worthwhile. Another person whom we first met about 20 years ago, and whom I’ve been getting the paper to for at least the past 10 years, just recently participated in one of our activities for the first time in many years.

Thanks for keeping up the good work on the paper.    

A persistent comrade

Capitalism: the Ultimate Bacteria

We are taught tremendous hype about how capitalism, through competition for market share (i.e., customers), creates the best quality products. Products that involve health reveal just how profound a lie that really is.

The news today is of a new bacterial species with a mutated gene that makes it resistant to all known antibiotics. Many old bacteria are undergoing mutations that make them more likely to survive and reproduce because they can resist antibiotics. After all, if any bacterium undergoes such a mutation in the presence of an antibiotic, it alone will survive and multiply, and thereby eventually become more common than other types which are killed by the antibiotics. So antibiotics always create new bacteria that are resistant, since mutations happen randomly all the time, and sooner or later a resistant strain will arise. 

So how has the field of medicine responded to these new antibiotic-resistant bacteria? By inventing new antibiotics. But here’s the problem that capitalism throws in our laps. The new antibiotics require research and development (R&D) and passage through regulatory agencies. That can take 5 to 10 years all told, and it’s very expensive. Much of the R&D is covered by government subsidies, often through the National Institutes of Health (NIH), but the development takes place in the laboratories of the giant pharmaceutical companies, i.e., drug companies.

Then, after having the government pay for much of their R&D, the drug companies sell these products at high prices, on the grounds that the R&D is so expensive (even though they didn’t pay for much of it). The prices put these life-saving drugs out of reach of more and more people, particularly in Africa, Asia, and Latin America, but increasingly so in the U.S., Canada, and Europe.

And now that capitalism is in a financial crisis, and companies are taking fewer and fewer chances, no drug companies want to work on antibiotics. Thus, more and more drug-resistant bacteria are coming into being. Two better known examples are the bacteria that cause tuberculosis and methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, known simply as MRSA, (pronounced “MER-sa”). More and more people are dying from these bacteria around the world.

So what happened to “capitalism, through competition for market share (i.e., customers), creates the best quality products”? Fact is, capitalism creates tremendous amounts of junk that we don’t need but that millions of us can be coaxed into buying through advertising, particularly by hooking our kids. But when it comes to life-saving medicines, forget it.

This is no trivial problem today, and represents just one more reason why the world’s working class needs desperately to get rid of capitalism and set up a communist-led working-class-ruled world.

Saguaro Rojo

International Solidarity with R.R. Strikers in Peru

As recent travelers to Peru, my husband and I were inspired to witness intense struggle and to spend some of our time getting to know international, like-minded workers. Our Salkantay trek (hike to Machu Picchu) was extended by a day because of a railroad strike and road blockades. During our five-day hike with folks from Australia, Portugal and France we had many discussions and one young man showed interest in the PLP website. 

On September 24, 1,000 young demonstrators broke into the Cuzco airport wall, causing the airlines to close the airport—giving us yet another day of adventure. 

Cuzco was the site of protests earlier in the week of September 20, and a railroad strike in solidarity involved the trains from Cuzco to Machu Picchu. The state and local government have acted in concert to privatize water and land in various areas of Peru. Millions will be spent building the Angostura dam, which will transfer water to other areas such as Siguas and Majes, affecting the availability of water to locals from the Apurimac River.

In the Arequipa region of Peru, the Chilean government has bought land in Majes, turning it into “Little Chile,” with Chilean restaurants.  There is no “illegal” immigration between governments so far as profit-making is concerned. 

We were able to march with the demonstrators in Cuzco and pointed out how we were going through issues of privatization over water in Newark. I told two women how tenant families of Newark had had their water shut off while delinquent corporations and landlords had unlimited water. I said how these local struggles emphasize the need for internationalism and an end to capitalism.  We embraced, and my only regret was in not having armloads of literature.

Two enthusiastic internationalists

Profits First Kills Ten

I’ve lived in San Bruno, C.A. for a long time. Nothing ever happens here, until a few days ago. The neighborhood just exploded into flames, from a natural gas line. The first reports were inaccurate, about a falling plane or a gas station blowing up, and the regional utility, PG&E, denying everything. There were later reports that residents had reported gas odors in the area for at least a few days. I myself have seen required maintenance cut back by PG&E over a period of time. They haven’t had official layoffs, but they have not hired for a long time. Attrition has cut back the workers that do all the required maintenance.

As a CHALLENGE reader, I have heard about the aging infrastructure of the U.S. Profits are up, while the workforce is cut back. With taxes going to fund the wars in the Middle East and company money in a falling economy going to profits first, there is less than a minimum for required maintenance of all kinds of systems. We don’t know the exact cause yet, but I would expect that lack of maintenance had a lot to do with it. And whatever the exact cause this time, there are many, many more problems like this one waiting to happen for this same reason. This system puts profits above workers’ health and safety. We need a system that puts workers’ welfare first.

A Friend in San Bruno

[Writers Note: In the aftermath of the disaster that resulted in 37 homes destroyed and at least ten dead or missing, as investigators study bones reduced to dust, federal and state investigators have pointed to decades-old, corroded pipes, and manual shut-off valves. (A 1981 federal report on a previous accident called for automatic shut-off valves.)  The Sept. 20 issue of the SF Examiner carried a photo of the neighborhood engulfed in flames with the following caption quoting B. McCown, retired U.S. Dept. of Transportation executive: “We really don’t have regulations or policies that dictate planning and zoning.”

The story below quoted San Francisco Planning Director J. Rahaim as saying planners were unaware of any provision in the planning or building codes requiring builders to consider pipeline safety risk, other than ensuring that lines are not damaged by construction work. All this in an earthquake-prone area.]