At least 31 US states easing restrictions despite rising pandemic death toll

https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2020/05/01/open-m01.html






By Kate Randall
1 May 2020

In the US as of Thursday evening there were nearly 1.1 million cases of COVID-19 and nearly 64,000 deaths. More than half of these deaths have taken place in just the past two weeks. Globally, cases have risen to over 3.3 million, with 234,000 deaths. This means that more than a quarter of all deaths have been in the US.

Despite the daily rising figures, at least 31 US states will be easing social distancing measures over the next few days, allowing some businesses, restaurants, malls and public places to reopen. While the loosening of restrictions varies from state to state, none of these states has met even the Trump administration’s weak “advisory” on reopening, which said states should wait for COVID-19 cases to decline for 14 consecutive days before the reopening process begins.

A study by the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy (CIDRAP) at the University of Minnesota predicts that the novel coronavirus is likely to keep spreading for at least another 18 months to two years, until 60 to 70 percent of the population has been infected. The study authors recommend that the US prepare for a worst-case scenario that includes a second big wave of infections in the fall and winter.
Mike Osterholm, who directs CIDRAP, told CNN, “The idea that this is going to be done soon defies microbiology.”

Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Dr. Anthony Fauci warned Thursday that states need to proceed carefully as they roll back restrictions. “When you pull back there will be cases, and what we need to do is make sure [states] have in place the capability of identifying, isolating and contact tracing individuals,” he said.

However, President Donald Trump—with his approval rating for his handling of the crisis falling to a record low of 43 percent according to a new Morning Consult poll—is promoting a reckless and criminal policy, placing the health and lives of countless millions of Americans in danger. The White House policy is based not on the health of the US population, but on boosting Wall Street and filling the coffers of the giant corporations.

Federal guidelines encouraging people to social distance, in place for 30 days, were allowed to expire Thursday after Trump indicated he did not intend to extend them. Referring to the restrictions, the president told reporters Wednesday, “They’ll be fading out, because now the governors are doing it.”

Southern states Georgia, Oklahoma and South Carolina paved the way for reopening beginning last week. Governors in several states—including Alabama, Maine, Tennessee and Texas—allowed stay-at-home orders to expire on Thursday. Additional states, including Iowa, Florida, North Dakota and Wyoming, will be lifting more restrictions on Friday. Less dense states, including Alaska and Montana, are also beginning to reopen.

In one of the nation’s most wide-ranging moves, Texas Governor Greg Abbott, a Republican, is allowing retail stores, restaurants, movie theaters and malls to reopen at 25 percent capacity. Beaches in Galveston will be allowed to open. In Alabama, Republican Governor Kay Ivey allowed many retail stores as well as beaches to reopen Thursday, while in Maine, Governor Janet Mills, a Democrat, will allow barber shops, hair salons and pet groomers to reopen beginning Friday.


However, many of the most populous states, including California, Michigan, New York and Illinois, are continuing their extended shutdowns. In California, Governor Gavin Newsom, a Democrat, ordered Orange County beaches to stay closed after residents flocked to beaches during last weekend’s high temperatures.

Deaths from COVID-19 in Massachusetts have gyrated in the 100 to 250-a-day range, with no indication that the “curve” has begun to flatten. New Jersey recorded 458 new virus-related deaths on Thursday, the most that the state had reported in a single day since the pandemic began. New York recorded 306 new deaths Thursday, as the death numbers very slowly decline. The state’s death toll has risen to a staggering 23,780, more than one third of the US total.

In Lansing, Michigan on Thursday, demonstrators crowded into the lobby outside the House chambers at the state’s Capitol, shouting to be allowed onto the House floor. The protesters, many not wearing masks and toting rifles on their shoulders, demanded to be allowed onto the House floor in protest over Michigan’s state of emergency.

The demonstrators carried signs reading, “You’re Killing Small Businesses” and “Impeach Whitmer,” referring to Michigan’s Democratic Governor Gretchen Whitmer. Many sported hats and other paraphernalia supporting Trump’s reelection campaign. While the Republican-controlled state legislature voted not to extend Michigan’s state of emergency, Governor Whitmer said the state of emergency would continue by executive order.

As the battle plays out over the reopening of major cities and more populated states, many sparsely populated areas of rural America are seeing a rapid rise in COVID-19 cases. Many of the hospital systems in these areas are ill-equipped to deal with a sudden surge of cases, and the lack of testing has not provided a roadmap for local health officials to prepare.

Despite the rural settings, many people in these areas work in large-scale industries, such as food processing. Angela Hewett, associate professor in infectious disease at the University of Nebraska Medical Center, noted in a recent briefing of the Infectious Diseases Society of America that one of the reasons the virus is rising is because it is running rampant among workers in factories and farms. “These are not places where typically people can work from home,” Hewett noted.

The Dartmouth Atlas Project tracks the top 10 regions with the fastest growth rates in COVID-19 cases. It finds that these are primarily in metropolitan areas with large-scale factories, located primarily in rural states. The project aggregates county-level data to form 306 geographical areas known as “hospital referral regions,” i.e., where people get their health care.

Vox.com notes that Houma, Louisiana, population 32,000, in Cajun country, has almost as many cases per capita within its hospital region as Chicago. Greeley, Colorado, home of a large JBS meatpacking plant, has more cases per capita within its hospital region than Washington, DC.

The Chartis Group reports that 63 percent of rural hospitals don’t have intensive care unit (ICU) beds. Many rural hospitals have lost a substantial portion of their income due to the suspension of outpatient services and face financial ruin and shutdown, leaving communities without a local hospital. If the models of epidemiologists prove true, peaks of COVID-19 in rural areas may still be weeks away. The drive to reopen states and relax social distancing places vulnerable populations in these areas in extreme peril.

Dozens of decaying corpses found piled in unrefrigerated trucks at New York City funeral home

https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2020/05/01/corp-m01.html






By Philip Guelpa
1 May 2020

In a gruesome example of how the COVID-19 pandemic has devastated New York City, authorities reported the discovery on Wednesday of dozens of decomposing bodies stored in trucks outside of a funeral home in Flatlands, a working-class neighborhood in Brooklyn.

Police were summoned to the scene in response to calls from nearby residents complaining of a horrible stench, with one caller reporting blood leaking from a truck. Upon arrival, they found two trucks stuffed with decomposing bodies. News reports quote residents saying that the sight of corpses on the sidewalk had become a common occurrence. The scene is reminiscent of ones reported in other countries.

It was not immediately determined whether these were all victims of COVID-19, but the staggering number of additional deaths due to the pandemic has overwhelmed existing mortuary facilities throughout the city.

To date, more than 18,000 residents have died from COVID-19, putting a huge strain on the normal methods for disposition of the dead—interment or cremation. Prior to the pandemic, New York City’s normal death rate was approximately 150 per day. At its peak earlier this month, the rate had reached approximately 800.

The city has had to resort to emergency measures to deal with the immense numbers of corpses. These include the digging of mass graves on Hart Island, the city’s pauper’s cemetery for 150 years, where over a million people are already buried, and the stationing of refrigerated trucks at hospitals and funeral homes to temporarily store the deceased. The trucks at the Brooklyn funeral home were a tractor trailer and a U-Haul, neither of which were refrigerated. Crematories are now allowed to operate 24 hours a day, and the city has explored the possibility of digging mass graves in public parks.

Mike Lanotte, the president of the New York Funeral Directors Association, said in an interview with CNBC, “There is definitely a lot of stress on the entire death care industry right now in New York City because of the death we’ve witnessed.” As if to emphasize the gravity of the crisis, the New York Post report on Thursday, a day after the discovery in Brooklyn, that a funeral home in Queens is jammed with many dozens of bodies stored in caskets awaiting cremation. That facility has experienced a dramatic increase, from an average of seven or eight bodies a week to more than 20 a day.

The owner of the Brooklyn funeral home, Andrew T. Cleckley, reported that he and other funeral directors were overwhelmed by an unprecedented influx of bodies, and that he only resorted to using the trucks after his chapel was already filled with over 100 bodies and his freezer had stopped working.

Cleckley said that, due to the high demand, he was unable to obtain refrigerated vehicles. The location of the funeral home was not registered with the city’s Department of Buildings as a funeral parlor, but as a venue for automobile sales and machinery manufacture. As a result of the discovery, the funeral home has been cited for violations by the city’s Health Department, but no criminal charges have so far been brought.


Describing the situation as “unconscionable” and “absolutely unacceptable,” New York City’s Democratic mayor Bill de Blasio declared, “I have no idea in the world how any funeral home could let this happen.” He claimed that a “substantial amount of refrigerated trucks [are] available.”

However, reports from across the country recount incidents of COVID-19 victims stacked in the hallways or utility closets of hospitals and nursing homes, including a case in Brooklyn where management had left 10 corpses in a room with living residents. It should be noted that the mistreatment of the working-class dead in a profit-driven funerary system is not a new phenomenon.

Whatever the immediate circumstances of the particular incident at the funeral home in Brooklyn may be, the fact of the matter is that this horrific episode is undoubtedly just the tip of the iceberg. The carnage that has overwhelmed New York City and the rest of the world is the inevitable result of decades of the dismantling of the health system in the city and across the globe and the criminal ineptitude and a policy of malign neglect by the ruling class, all with the aim of maximizing and prioritizing corporate profits, over the health and welfare of the working class.



The author also recommends:

Seventeen bodies found piled in a New Jersey nursing home
[18 April 2020]

New York City digging mass graves for coronavirus victims
[11 April 2020]

Sixty-eight Amazon workers fall ill with COVID-19 at Winsen, Germany warehous

https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2020/05/01/wins-m01.html






By Marianne Arens
1 May 2020

Hardly any other company is profiting so massively from the coronavirus pandemic as the international logistics company Amazon, whose owner and CEO, Jeff Bezos, has increased his wealth to $120 billion. While Bezos has amassed over $25 billion during the pandemic, Amazon workers remain exposed to great danger many weeks after the pandemic began.

In Amazon’s HAM2 Winsen distribution centre, located south of Hamburg, at least 68 of 1,800 employees were infected with COVID-19 by April 23, first reported in an April 23 article in Manager-Magazin. Only on that day did the management react by handing out masks to some workers.

Winsen is a new and ultra-modern site that’s equipped with hi-tech robots. It should have the best conditions to establish workflows to ensure the safety of critical workers. Nevertheless, even at this location, workers are insufficiently protected.

Like everywhere else, Amazon allowed work to continue almost unrestricted during the lockdown, and the virus was able to spread unhindered. For a long time, workers were forced to work in highly unsafe conditions—without face masks, gloves, goggles or COVID-19 testing—and this has remained virtually unchanged to this day.

It was already known two weeks ago that “more than a dozen employees had fallen ill with COVID-19”, as the Elbe-Geest weekly reported on April 17. On March 25, a report by news weekly Der Spiegel said there had been at least three confirmed cases of coronavirus in the Winsen logistics warehouse. Management simply placed markings on the floors indicating social distancing, staggered the start and break times and used more plant buses than usual to take staff to the station in order to reduce overcrowding.

At the same time, the company implemented hourly bonuses of two euros in Germany and Austria and 60 cents in Poland, in order to create an incentive for employees not to take sick leave. This contributed to the fact that many of those urgently in need of the money did not stay at home, even when they were already ill. When the Winsen facility opened two years ago, many unemployed people and refugees were hired, who are dependent on every euro.

Almost all Amazon employees are now worried that they could become infected and pass this on to their families. This is evident from letters received by the amazon-watchblog.de website and other media. Several employees anonymously criticise the fact that washrooms in the distribution centre are cleaned far too rarely. Crowds and congestion are still forming at the time clocks, turnstiles and entrance gates. Anyone who leaves the workplace a few minutes too early to avoid standing in line faces a deduction from their working time.

Amazon workers cannot rely on the service sector union Verdi in any way whatsoever. As employees from Winsen reported, management worked with the works council to conceal the first positively tested COVID-19 case in the dispatch centre for almost 14 days.

In order for Amazon to accept the introduction of a works council in one of its thirteen warehouses in Germany, Verdi officials dutifully comply with all of management’s machinations. The attendance bonus of two euros per hour, which obviously contributed to the spread of COVID-19, was also approved by Verdi works council representatives. A member of the works council at the Leipzig distribution center told the newspaper taz that the works council had no conception of how to deal with coronavirus and was “waiting for the worst case” to happen.


A trial before the Wesel Labour Court revealed that even the surveillance cameras in the halls are operated with the consent of Verdi and the works council. Amazon had boasted that they would monitor the “social distancing” in the halls by surveillance camera, adding that the data would be transferred abroad and made anonymous.

Amazon Rheinberg’s works council had apparently successfully filed a complaint against this last step—the transfer of the data to servers abroad. In a report on the ruling, the court said that it “assumed that the transfer of the data abroad was contrary to the works agreement on the installation and use of surveillance cameras in force at the company.” It found that this “violated the works council’s rights of co-determination.” In other words, an agreement with the works council on camera surveillance had already existed for a long time.

The total number of the 13,000 Amazon employees in German logistics centres who have been infected by COVID-19 has not been established, because unlike the professional players in the German football league, and like all ordinary workers, they are only tested when acute cases are already causing a stir in their surroundings.

In the United States, Italy, France and Spain, several Amazon employees have already spontaneously refused to work, so as not to be exposed to the coronavirus danger. Through spontaneous strikes, they have also defended employees who had been dismissed for their brave protests. Following strikes in New York City, Chicago and Detroit, Amazon workers also stopped work in Minneapolis on April 27 to protest the firing of one of their colleagues. At least two Amazon workers in the US have already died of COVID-19, both in California.

In France, a court decision last week forced Amazon to temporarily close six shipping centres and clean them up because the risk of coronavirus infection affecting nearly 10,000 workers was so obvious. Previously, hundreds of Amazon workers in France had used their legal right to stay away from work if they were at risk.

The International Committee of the Fourth International (ICFI) and its section in Germany, the Sozialistische Gleichheitspartei (Socialist Equality Party, SGP), call on Amazon workers to join together in action committees independent of the unions like Verdi, to fight together with Amazon colleagues around the world, for the following demands:
Immediate cessation of operations in Winsen with full pay for all workers in quarantine! Full medical care for every single sick person, protection of the families and full financial security! Security for both refugees and temporary workers!


Continuation of work at Amazon only for socially critical items, under conditions that guarantee maximum safety for the employees. It is necessary to equip every employee with personal protective equipment and provide regular tests for all.


Regular cleaning of all distribution centres under the control of workers’ committees, which work independently of the company and trade union and are advised by reliable medical experts, virologists, etc.

The trillion-dollar corporation has all the means and possibilities to easily meet these demands, but as an Amazon worker in the US said, “The corporation only cares about profits, it doesn’t care about our lives.” Therefore, it is urgent that this vast network of distribution centres and be transformed into public enterprises and placed under the democratic control of the working class—without compensation for their owners and large shareholders. There is no reason why this wafer-thin layer of the super-wealthy should be enriched by the distribution of vital goods.

The World Socialist Web Site calls on all Amazon workers: Write to us, report on the situation in your distribution centre and expose the criminal indifference of management, the works councils and unions like Verdi to the coronavirus pandemic.

Brazilian nurses fired for striking in Manaus over PPE

https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2020/05/01/braz-m01.html






By Tomas Castanheira
1 May 2020

Thirteen Brazilian nurses were fired after participating in a strike Monday, along with hundreds of their colleagues at the 28 de Agosto Hospital, in the Amazonian capital of Manaus, which has seen one of the worst outbreaks of the coronavirus pandemic in Brazil. They will supposedly be reassigned to other health care units.

Hospital 28 de Agosto is the largest hospital and treatment center for COVID-19 in Amazonas and is operating under extremely precarious conditions for both patients and health care professionals. The strike was an act of revolt against the lack of personal protective equipment (PPE), which has led to widespread illness and the deaths of several health care workers, as well as the failure to pay nurses’s salaries, in some cases for up to eight months.

Since the weekend before the strike, nurses were already being threatened by the administration, which was appointed by Amazonas’ extreme right-wing governor, Wilson Lima, of the Christian Social Party (PSC). On Saturday, a worker posted an online video in which he claimed to have received calls from the 28 de Agosto management demanding that he delete an earlier post defending the strike.

Fired nurses kept waiting in the Health Department of Amazonas [Twitter].

These threats were not enough to repress the nurses’ protest. As one of them said during Monday’s demonstration: “We don’t have to end [the demonstration], no. We have to have courage, as we are having now.”

The same tone has dominated the workers’ responses to the firing of their colleagues, posted under the hashtags #naovaonoscalar (they won’t shut us up) and #devolvamnossoscolegas (return our colleagues). In one of these tweets, which got more than 700 shares in 24 hours, a hospital employee says: “There is already a lack of employees, because we are contaminating ourselves and others are dying. The 28 de Agosto administration returned the professionals who were at the demonstration and the temporaries are being fired. Revolt against this management.”

A professional from another hospital responded to the post saying: “They are not persecuting people, they are persecuting a class! We will not remain silent.”

One of the fired nurses, Tatiane Lima, declared in an interview with G1: “We held the demonstration and we will hold as many as it takes, because our main objective is to provide working conditions for everyone on the team, and give quality care to the patients.”

The nurses’ struggle arose amid the collapse of the health care system in Manaus, long before the epidemic has reached its peak. The latest government figures, presented on Thursday, record 5,254 cases of the disease in Amazonas and 3,273 of them in Manaus. However, the government itself acknowledges that due to the absence of even minimally adequate testing, the real numbers are tremendously higher.

The same is true for deaths. While backhoes are digging mass graves for thousands of people in Manaus, officially only 312 have died of COVID-19 in the capital of Amazonas. One estimate indicates that in the week of April 21–28 alone, more than 700 people may have died of the disease.

Nurses strike in Manaus, Amazonas. The banner reads: "Nursing Calls For Help. Negligence in Health Care".

Health professionals account for a significant share of those infected. According to the government, more than 400 have been diagnosed with the disease. But on Monday alone, when a drive-thru testing system was set up exclusively for health professionals, more than 90 of them tested positive for the coronavirus.


The fired nurse Tatiane Lima said about 25 percent of the employees at the Hospital 28 de Agosto were sent home with symptoms of the disease.

Underlying the firing of the strikers is the state government’s effort to stifle any opposition under conditions in which it has been undermined by charges of corruption directly linked to the coronavirus crisis.

Governor Lima is accused of making an overpriced purchase of 28 respirators, which were strangely acquired from a company specializing in wine distribution. The government paid four times the market price for the respirators, using the state of emergency to avoid bidding. In addition, medical associations reported that the devices are only support respirators, inadequate for COVID-19 treatment, which requires mechanical ventilators.

The Lima government also paid more than 2.5 million Brazilian reals (around US$500,000) to rent a deactivated private hospital for three months and turn it into a specialized treatment unit for COVID-19. Questions have been raised as to why this money was not used to equip the collapsing public health system.

In his defense, Wilson Lima declared to the TV show Conexão Repórter that “everyone is a [victim of exploiters] at the moment... It is the law of the market, the law of supply. Today everyone is looking for it, so it’s a price that increases significantly.”

It is possible that Lima’s arguments hold some truth. Amazonian workers are most likely the victims of two different crimes, but with the same essential source: government corruption and the profit interests of the capitalist economy, which override the interests of the working masses.

Similar cases of corruption involving the purchase of ventilators and the transfer of funds from the fight against COVID-19 to the private sector have been registered in several states, including São Paulo, Rio de Janeiro and Santa Catarina. These corrupt governments are all conspiring to organize a “return to work” that will generate new profit streams for the banks and companies and result in the massacre of thousands of workers.

On Monday, a day after a record 140 burials were recorded in a single day in the Amazonian capital, Harley Davidson resumed its production of motorcycles at its plant in Manaus. On Thursday, it was Yamaha’s turn. Honda and BMW plan to resume their activities at the Manaus industrial zone on May 18, when the pandemic is likely to reach its peak.

The coronavirus crisis has made it clear that in order to defend their most basic right to survival, the working class must openly confront the capitalist class. Workers around the world need to unify their struggles against the murderous resumption of economic activities in all countries, which is aimed at benefiting the major shareholders of the giant transnational corporations.

In hospitals, health care professionals need adequate equipment to ensure their safety and infrastructure to treat their patients. Workers need to expropriate the wealth of the super-rich and allocate it to meet public interests; and they need to establish control over production, democratically defining what production is necessary and under what conditions it will be carried out.

The coronavirus pandemic fuels the class struggle

https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2020/04/30/pers-a30.html






30 April 2020

The response of the ruling class and capitalist governments throughout the world to the coronavirus pandemic is producing a growing wave of walkouts, sick-outs, demonstrations and other forms of social unrest.

In the United States, a global epicenter of the pandemic, there have been at least 140 wildcat strikes since the beginning of March, according to Payday Report, which aggregates local news accounts.

A broad array of workers from every part of the country have participated, including bus drivers in Detroit (March 16); postal workers in Oklahoma (March 19); sewerage workers in Cleveland (March 20); postal workers in Dallas (March 31); Nabisco snack workers in Portland (April 9); Boeing airplane workers in Washington (April 20); building construction workers in New York City (April 28); recycling plant workers in Illinois (April 28); and transit workers in North Carolina (April 29).
A center of social unrest is now among workers at meatpacking plants, where there has been a wave of coronavirus cases and at least 20 deaths. Workers at Smithfield Foods pork plant in Nebraska walked off the job in a wildcat strike on Tuesday after company executives announced that they would not implement previously announced plans to close the plant. On Monday, workers at a Cold Spring chicken plant in Minnesota walked off the job after several workers tested positive for COVID-19.

There have also been widespread strikes and protests by Amazon, Whole Foods, McDonald’s, Starbucks, Lyft and Instacart workers throughout the country. Over the weekend, fifty workers at Amazon’s Shakopee warehouse in Minnesota walked after several positive tests and after one worker was reportedly fired for staying at home.

Developments in the United States are part of an international growth of social unrest. The past month has seen strikes and walkouts of nurses in Papua New Guinea; doctors in Zimbabwe; sanitation and clothing workers in the UK; distribution and shipping workers in Australia; garment workers in Bangladesh; call center workers in Brazil; and maquiladora factory workers south of the US-Mexico border, to name just a few.

There are many specific issues motivating these protests, but all revolve around the basic reality: For the working class, the fight against the pandemic and for their lives is at the same time a fight against capitalism. The logic of these struggles raises the question of political power—who shall control society, the capitalist ruling elite or the working class?

Many of the struggles have centered on the lack of adequate safety measures and protective equipment for workers on the job. Despite persistent warnings from scientists and epidemiologists, nothing was done to prepare for the pandemic.

Decades of ruling class policy decimated social and health care infrastructure, while deregulation has given corporations a free hand to force workers to labor under unsafe conditions. The proliferation of part-time work in the “gig economy” means that large sections of the working class work for poverty-level wages, with no benefits or safety protections.

Other struggles were aimed at shutting down production at non-essential workplaces. The initial response of the ruling class to the pandemic was to try to downplay it, to keep businesses operating as normal. In mid-March, autoworkers in the US and across the border in Canada launched a series of wildcat walkouts that forced the closure of auto plants throughout North America. Even as the pandemic overwhelmed health care systems, large sections of non-essential production remained in operation.

Increasingly, the struggles of workers are centered on the efforts of the ruling elites to force a return to work even as the pandemic spreads. On Tuesday, Trump invoked the Defense Production Act to force meatpacking workers back to work. Far from protecting workers from the spread of the virus, Trump’s order instead protects meatpacking companies from legal liability from workers who report that they are being forced to work in unsafe conditions.

In other words, Trump is telling corporate America: Kill your employees, and you will face no consequences. What is being done for meatpacking workers will be repeated in different forms for the entire working class.

The class conflict will intensify enormously in the coming weeks and months. The financial oligarchy has utilized the pandemic to transfer trillions of dollars to Wall Street, with the unanimous support of the entire political establishment, Democrat and Republican. All of this will be paid through cuts in social programs, education, and health care, along with a massive intensification of the exploitation of the working class.

Already, Boeing—which sent workers back to work at the beginning of last week—has announced that it is cutting 10 percent of its workforce. Other companies will follow suit. The ruling elite will attempt to use the economic desperation of millions of workers not only to force them back to work, but also to get them to agree to cuts in wages and benefits.

This policy will encounter mass opposition. The actions of the ruling class have not gone unnoticed. The wave of walkouts and protests, generally isolated in different cities, workplaces and countries, is only the initial expression of the pent-up anger.

How can this opposition be developed?

First, it must be organized and unified. This requires the establishment of rank-and-file factory, workplace and neighborhood committees. All the opportunities provided by modern technology, including social media, must be used to connect the separate struggles of workers into a common counter-offensive of the entire working class. These committees must be absolutely independent of the pro-capitalist trade unions, which have done nothing to organize opposition and are working closely with corporations and the capitalist state to get workers back on the job.

Second, the struggle of workers must be unified across all racial, gender and national lines. The pandemic is a global problem that requires a global solution. The response of capitalist governments throughout the world is the same, and the interests of workers in every country are identical. It is necessary to reject all efforts to divert social anger along national lines, including through the anti-China campaign being whipped up by the Trump administration and the Democrats.

Third, industrial action must be connected to a new political perspective, which begins with an understanding that the fundamental problem is capitalism—a social and economic system that subordinates everything to the interests of profit and the accumulation of wealth by the corporate and financial elite.

The response of governments to the pandemic has at every stage been aimed at preserving and advancing the interests of the capitalist oligarchs. The priority has not been saving lives, but saving profits. It is this that has prevented any scientific, rational and globally coordinated response to the pandemic.

The alternative to capitalism is socialism—the restructuring of social and economic life, on a world scale, to meet social need, not private profit.

At the beginning of 2020, in its statement “The decade of socialist revolution begins,” the World Socialist Web Site wrote, “The objective conditions for socialist revolution emerge out of the global crisis. The approach of social revolution has already been foreshadowed in the mass demonstrations and strikes that swept across the globe in 2019.”

Only a few months into the year, the correctness of this analysis has been confirmed. The fight of the working class against the pandemic must be transformed into the revolutionary struggle for socialism.

On May 2, the International Committee of the Fourth International and the World Socialist Web Site are holding an online rally to mark May Day, the historic day of international working class solidarity. We urge all of our readers to register today.






Joseph Kishore—SEP candidate for US president

For Trump, Covid-19 Is Perfect Cover to Seize More Power, Increase Reelection Chances

It doesn't matter that this is a global pandemic. Abusing his power for personal gain is Trumps MO.


by
Robert Reich




https://www.commondreams.org/views/2020/04/30/trump-covid-19-perfect-cover-seize-more-power-increase-reelection-chances







Donald Trump has spent a lifetime exploiting chaos for personal gain and blaming others for his losses. The pure madness in America’s response to the coronavirus pandemic – shortages of equipment to protect hospital workers, dwindling supplies of ventilators and critical medications, jaw-dropping confusion over how $2.2 trillion of aid in the recent coronavirus law will be distributed – has given him the perfect cover to hoard power and boost his chances of reelection.

As the death toll continues to climb and states are left scrambling for protective gear and crucial resources, Trump is focused on only one thing: himself.

He’s told governors to find life-saving equipment on their own, claiming the federal government is “not a shipping clerk” and subsequently forcing states and cities into a ruthless bidding war.

Governors have been reduced to begging FEMA for supplies from the dwindling national stockpile, with vastly different results. While we haven’t seen what “formula” FEMA supposedly has for determining who gets what, reports suggest that Trump’s been promising things to governors who can get him on the phone.

Our narcissist-in-chief has ordered FEMA to circumvent their own process and send supplies to states that are “appreciative”.

Michigan and Colorado have received fractions of what they need while Oklahoma and Kentucky have gotten more than what they asked for. Colorado and Massachusetts have confirmed shipments only to have them held back by FEMA. Ron DeSantis, the Trump-aligned governor of Florida, refused to order a shelter-in-place mandate for weeks, but then received 100% of requested supplies within 3 days. New Jersey waited for two weeks. New York now has more cases than any other single country, but Trump barely lifted a finger for his hometown because Governor Andrew Cuomo is “complaining” about the catastrophic lack of ventilators in the city.

A backchannel to the president is a shoe-in way to secure life-saving supplies. Personal flattery seems to be the most effective currency with Trump; the chain of command runs straight through his ego, and that’s what the response has been coordinated around.

He claims that as president he has “total authority” over when to lift quarantine and social distancing guidelines, and threatens to adjourn Congress himself so as to push through political appointees without Senate confirmation.

And throughout all of this, Trump has been determined to reject any attempt of independent oversight into his administration’s disastrous response.




When he signed the $2 trillion emergency relief package into law, he said he wouldn’t agree to provisions in the bill for congressional oversight – meaning the wheeling-and-dealing will be done in secret.

He has removed the inspector general leading the independent committee tasked with overseeing the implementation of the massive bill.

He appointed one of his own White House lawyers, who helped defend him in his impeachment trial, to oversee the distribution of the $500 billion slush fund for corporations. That same day, he fired Inspector General Michael Atkinson – the inspector general who handed the whistleblower complaint to Congress that ultimately led to Trump’s impeachment.

There should never have been any doubt that Trump would try to use this crisis to improve his odds of re-election.

Stimulus checks going to the lowest-income earners were delayed because Trump demanded each one of them bear his name. As millions of the hardest-hit Americans scrambled to put food on the table and worried about the stack of bills piling up, Trump’s chief concern was himself.

It doesn’t matter that this is a global pandemic. Abusing his power for personal gain is Trump’s MO.

Just three and a half months ago, Trump was impeached on charges of abuse of power and obstructing investigations. Telling governors that they need to “be appreciative” in order to receive life-saving supplies for their constituents is the same kind of quid pro quo that Trump tried to extort from Ukraine, and his attempts to thwart independent oversight are the same as his obstruction of Congress.




Trump called his impeachment a “hoax.” He initially called the coronavirus a “hoax.” But the real hoax is his commitment to America. In reality he will do anything—anything—to hold on to power.

To Donald Trump, the coronavirus crisis is just another opportunity.

COVID 19 and Making America Great Again

United States

Confirmed
1.1M

Recovered
133K

Deaths
63,851

Worldwide

Confirmed
3.27M

Recovered
1.02M

Deaths
234K