Trump executive orders set stage for tens of millions of evictions

https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2020/08/10/unem-a10.html

By Jacob Crosse
10 August 2020

On Saturday, President Donald Trump announced a series of constitutionally dubious executive actions at his exclusive golf resort in New Jersey that would, among other things, slash federal unemployment benefits by at least $200 and fail to extend a partial federal moratorium on evictions.

The previous day, a comprehensive analysis by researchers at the Aspen Institute, based on data from the US Census Bureau and the National Low Income Housing Coalition, estimated that between 28,900,000 and 39,900,000 tenants in the US are at risk of eviction by the end of the year.

The authors warn that “if conditions do not change” and without “robust and swift intervention,” up to 43 percent of renter households will be at risk in the next several months. Since the start of the pandemic, 30 percent of renters have reported using government aid or other forms of assistance to pay rent, while another 30 percent expect to have to borrow cash or obtain a loan to pay September rent.

After two weeks of half-hearted negotiations and theatrics between Democratic congressional leaders and Trump administration officials, both sides adjourned Friday without reaching an agreement to extend the now-expired federal unemployment enhancement for the roughly 30 million Americans who had been receiving it. Nor did the two sides reach a deal to extend the federal partial moratorium on evictions, which, according to the Urban Institute, covered roughly 12.3 million people.

Speaking before wealthy supporters in a gilded ballroom at his private Westminster golf club, Trump claimed that his executive order on evictions “will solve that problem largely, hopefully completely.”

In fact, it will “largely” and “completely” do nothing to prevent the coming tsunami of evictions, nor those already in progress in cities such as Milwaukee, which saw 502 filings for the week of July 26, according to EvictionLab.org. The executive order is nothing but a directive to federal agencies instructing them to “consider” whether a temporary halt on evictions is necessary.

Prior to the pandemic, millions of US workers and their families were already besieged by skyrocketing rental costs coupled with a dwindling supply of affordable housing and stagnant wages. The pandemic has further exposed the terminal rot of American capitalism and left millions on the brink of homelessness.

Researchers at the Joint Center for Housing Studies at Harvard University found that between 2012 and 2017 the number of available units renting for $1,000 or more a month increased by five million, while the availability of low-cost units—that is, units renting for $600 a month or less—declined by 3.1 million. Units offering rents between $600 and $999 also decreased by 450,000 over that same period.

At the same time, roughly 53 million workers in the US, according to the Brookings Institution, are deemed “low-wage workers,” with a median hourly wage of $10.22. Nearly half of them, working in retail sales, food preparation, personal care, building cleaning, construction or driving, have been laid off during the pandemic or had their hours drastically reduced.

By July 2020, 50 million workers had applied for some sort of unemployment assistance, and 20 million renters reported living in households where someone had suffered a COVID-19-related job loss. Food pantry requests in some states have increased by as much as 2,000 percent (New Jersey), while 30 million have reported not having enough to eat.

Job losses have overwhelmed working class neighborhoods. The New York Times reported that unemployment rates in the South Side of Chicago, North Las Vegas, South Los Angeles, and certain New York City boroughs, which hovered around 10 percent prior to the pandemic, have ballooned to more than 30 percent in the last four months.

Rental prices have continued to increase. Data compiled by Zumper.com, an online rental platform, found that nationally rent is up 0.7 percent on a year-to-date basis for a one-bedroom apartment, meaning the median rent for a one-bedroom apartment stands at $1,233 a month. The rent for a two-bedroom apartment increased by exactly one percent, to $1,493 a month.

In New York City, the average rent for a one bedroom unit, at $2,840, remains unaffordable for the vast majority of human beings on the planet. The World Socialist Web Site spoke to Chad, a college student and part-time cook for a private dining club in Manhattan. “When the quarantine started, we all got laid off,” he said.

Chad explained that he attempted to apply for unemployment benefits the day after he was laid off in mid-March. “The application itself—it was very difficult because you couldn’t sign on to the website,” he said. “And then, when you tried to call, they would just send you on an endless loop till they finally kicked you out, as in hang up on you.

“Press five to talk to this person, and then press eight to talk to that person. And they just kept doing that until it just kicks you out. You just have to keep trying. For weeks I didn’t get anything.”

After a month, Chad started receiving his state benefits, “200-some-odd dollars,” he said. Shortly thereafter he began to receive his federal supplement, bringing the weekly total to “about $800, which is less than what I made, but being that there was nowhere to go I could just sit in the house and save money.

“When I had the stimulus plus the extra unemployment, I saved a lot of that money,” he continued. “I went to a real minimalist lifestyle. I didn’t spend anything extra. I just paid what I needed, and I stayed current on my bills.

“For the average New Yorker, [$800 a week] is a bare minimum. If I wasn’t married, with another income in my household, I would be decimated right now.”

Without the $600 federal enhancement, “my savings are going to dwindle,” said Chad. “For the last [two] weeks, I got $200, so now covering my bills, the money that I saved up is slowly going to be depleted. When it gets below a certain amount, then I’m going to worry.”

Asked what he thought about the Democratic Party’s recent negotiations, Chad said, “I don’t think anybody’s doing anything. What I will say is that I don’t see any sense of urgency on the Democratic Party’s part. They’re good. They have free health care for life. All of them make a good amount of money. So, they’re not hungry. They have nothing to worry about.”

He continued, “These lawmakers, they don’t know the struggles of an average person. And they’re sitting there arguing over giving people pennies. What did they give us, $1,200 in April? How long does $1,200 last an average person if you’ve got to worry about rent, food, and whatever? I think it’s laughable that they’re arguing about this.

“Another thing that I thought about: You’re forcing these kids to go back to school just so you can make the average working person go back to work. We live in a society where you have to gamble with your kid’s life just to make sure that they have a life.

“For example, I jog every morning. I pass by two or three daycare [centers] on my morning jog. I’m looking at these parents dropping their kids off at daycare just so they can go to work. That’s a shame that it has to be that way. You have an administration that’s so inept that they’re willing to gamble with the average working person’s life just to keep this economy going so rich people can still sit out in quarantine. That’s exactly what’s happening now.

“I consider myself one of the fortunate ones. I’m not rich by any means, but I’ve been able to get by. But ask me a month from now, ask me two months from now how that looks. I can guarantee you it’s going to look totally different. Once these costs start adding up, they will be more than the $200 a week that I’m bringing in.

“This government in general, whether Democrat or Republican, nobody came up with a clear, concise way to deal with COVID-19. The Democrats are the ones saying, ‘Hey, it’s not us saying it.’ But I didn’t hear them propose anything that would help.

“We live in a real interesting time. We have other countries that dealt with it better, but then we have other countries that opened up but had to shut right back down, which is what we’re going to go through here. But I don’t know if we’re going to shut down. I think they’re just going to sit there and keep doing what they have been doing, pretending that it’s not happening.”

Rising popular anger over Nepali government’s response to COVID-19

https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2020/08/10/nepa-a10.html

By Rohantha De Silva
10 August 2020

The Nepalese government of Prime Minister Sharam Oli has mobilised the police to shut down protests and arrest demonstrators denouncing the administration’s failure to control the coronavirus pandemic.

According to the most recent official figures, Nepal, with a population of 28 million, has 22,2972 confirmed cases and 75 deaths. Thousands of people are currently confined in cramped makeshift quarantine facilities that lack basic sanitation facilities and have now become virus hotpots.

On July 31, youth affiliated with the “COVID-19 Nepal: Enough is Enough” Facebook group, demonstrated outside the prime minister’s residence in the capital Kathmandu.

Members of the social media group denounced government indifference to the plight of the masses and raised concerns about the rising number of suicides across the country. More than 1,200 people killed themselves during the government’s 74-day coronavirus lockdown over job cuts and the resulting loss of income.

Protesters demanded that the government health authorities increase the use of the more effective Polymerase Chain Reaction Test, instead of the Rapid Diagnostic Test.

A major reason for Nepal’s relatively small number of reported infections is the limited testing being carried out. Although the Nepal Communist Party (NCP) government previously claimed it would conduct 10,000 tests per day from July, testing remains at just 4,000 per day, one of the lowest rates in the world.

Demonstrators also demanded proper contact tracing of infected individuals and safer quarantine facilities for women and the oppressed Dalits, who have been harassed and attacked. They also called for financial transparency over the 10 billion rupees the government claims to have allocated for pandemic control.

According to the media reports, police attacked the demonstration, detaining about 50 youth, including random individuals who happened to be in the area. As Aalok Subedi told the Kathmandu Post: “I was at Big Mart [a local department store] when the police accosted me and put me in their van.”

While those detained were released later that evening, the police attack points to fears by the Stalinist NCP administration that the youth protests will become a rallying point for mass anti-government demonstrations.

“Covid-19 Nepal: Enough Is Enough!” has over 209,000 Facebook members. The mainly middle-class youth involved in the group are not affiliated with any political party, another indication of the widespread disaffection among Nepali youth with the establishment parties.

The organisation, however, is attempting to divert these youth into futile attempts to pressure the government. Dhirendra Shrestha, 29, told the media, “We are not demanding that the government step down” but telling it “that what they are doing is not enough.”

Attempting to politically hijack this movement, the Nepali Congress party has voiced its “support” for the organisation. Like the Stalinist NCP, Congress governments are equally responsible for the dangerous, rundown state of the Nepali health system.

The July 31 demonstration is one of several protests in recent months. On June 9, around 150 people staged a sit-down protest outside Oli’s residence. It was attacked by the police using water cannons and batons. Later in June, hundreds of youth took to the streets in major cities around the country.

Responding to widespread anger over the July 31 arrests, Deputy Superintendent of Police Roshan Khadka told the media that his officers would end the random detention of protesters.

These assurances are worthless.

In June, five protestors were arrested for staging a hunger strike at Patan Durbar Square in and on July 30 another group was arrested on their way to file a “Right to Information” petition with the courts. Police officers did not have warrants for those arrests and the youth were harshly treated while in custody.

The anti-government opposition is not confined to its inadequate response to COVID-19 but also to the government’s indifference to the pandemic’s devastating economic impact on millions of the country’s poverty-stricken citizens. Nepal’s economy relies almost entirely on tourism and remittances from overseas migrant workers. Revenue from these sources has all but collapsed.

Migrant workers from Nepal, including those unable to return from India and the Gulf State countries, face a dire situation. Despite repeated calls by the Nepali Supreme Court, the Stalinist NCP government has refused to provide any significant assistance to these trapped workers.

Nor has the government provided any serious financial relief to those involved in the tourist industry. The desperate situation facing urban workers, day labourers and the rural poor, as well as small entrepreneurs, including small shopkeepers and the farmers, is appalling.

Confronted with the growing mass discontent, the NCP government has resorted to whipping up chauvinism and religious sectarianism to divert attention from the escalating social crisis. On July 13, Oli claimed that Lord Ram, the mythical Hindu god, was not born in Ayodhya, as claimed by India’s ruling Bharatiya Janatha Party and other Hindu extremists, but in a Nepali village. This was Indian “cultural encroachment,” Oli declared.

The inadequate and indifferent response of the Stalinist NCP administration to the coronavirus pandemic is not an accident. Like its counterparts throughout South Asia and internationally, the Nepali ruling elite is not interested in the fate of working people and rural toilers confronting the coronavirus disaster but is determined to defend the profit system and further enrich the capitalist class.

Clashes in Beirut as ruling elite exploits anger over blast

https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2020/08/10/beir-a10.html

By Jean Shaoul
10 August 2020

Thousands of people poured into Martyrs’ Square in Beirut Saturday, for the third successive day, to vent their anger over Tuesday’s deadly port explosion, with similar protests taking place on Sunday.

They blamed the catastrophe on the plutocrats who have governed the country for decades, living in obscene luxury while workers face job losses, ever-deepening poverty, constant power outages and garbage piled up everywhere.

The explosion has killed at least 158 people and injured 6,000 more, with a further 100 people, mainly port workers, known to be missing. Around 300,000 people—12 percent of the city’s population—have been made homeless. The blast blew up buildings, shattered windows and set neighbourhoods ablaze. Officials have estimated losses at $10 billion to $15 billion.

The catastrophic blaze—apparently the result of welding work on the door of the hangar storing 2,750 tons of ammonium nitrate—could have been prevented. It was the result of the criminal neglect and callous indifference displayed by successive governments and the ruling elite. They ignored repeated warnings about the dangers for years, especially after a similar explosion in 2015 at the Chinese port of Tianjin that killed 173 people and injured hundreds.

The billionaires and millionaires that rule Lebanon allowed the powerful chemical, impounded in 2014, to be stored without proper safety controls close to residential neighbourhoods.

The blast has wrecked Lebanon’s, Syria’s and Jordan’s main entry point for cargo, including the grain terminal and the silos that normally hold 85 percent of the country’s cereals, threatening a food crisis for tens of millions of people.

The street demonstrations may appear to be a continuation of last October’s anti-government protests against economic hardship, government corruption and the country’s sectarian political set up. These protests had subsided amid coronavirus pandemic restrictions. But the latest demonstrations were marked by the presence of the Christian and Sunni parties and ex-generals. Their leader is former Prime Minister Saad Hariri, Washington’s and Riyadh’s man in Lebanon, who was forced to resign last year in the face of mass opposition.

The Lebanese national flag was prominent, as were signs extolling October’s “Revolution.” Some set up nooses on wooden frames as a warning to the country’s rulers as the hashtag #prepare the noose took off. While some demonstrators called for a reckoning with all the plutocrats, others centred their fire exclusively on Hezbollah, the Iran-backed Islamist party. Its bloc is the largest in the country’s parliament, reflecting the dominant numerical position of Shia, who constitute 40 percent of the Lebanese population. Protesters burned an effigy of its leader, Hassan Nasrallah.

In the evening, angry clashes broke out with the security forces which fired tear gas and rubber bullets to stop protesters breaking through the barrier to government buildings, wounding at least 238 people. A policeman died after a fall.

Nevertheless, one group of demonstrators, led according to Al-Jazeera by retired army officers, stormed the foreign ministry, declaring it the “headquarters of the revolution.” Before being pushed out by the military, they pulled down the portrait of President Michel Aoun, who has supported Hezbollah’s role in government, suggesting they have their sights set on installing a replacement who, under Lebanese law, must be a Christian.

Others entered the energy and economy ministries, as well as the Association of Lebanese Banks.

Unable to openly call for Hariri’s return to power, these forces are urging the formation of an interim “salvation” government, “potentially headed by the military” and including bankers and other business figures, to “resolve the humanitarian and economic crisis,” and prepare the way for elections on the basis of a new electoral law—in as much as three years’ time. Their aim is to restore the direct rule of the plutocracy, in the service of imperialism, and limit or eradicate the influence of the “mobsters” in Lebanon and Syria—a euphemism for Hezbollah.

Demonstrators pledged to continue the protests, even after Prime Minister Hassan Diab called for early elections to defuse the tensions. He was installed as a “technocrat” to head the government in January after Hariri’s forced resignation.

Diab said fresh elections in two months’ time were the only way out of the country’s crisis. His announcement followed the resignation of several Christian legislators who sought to precipitate an election and that of Information Minister Manal Abdel Samad. Diab has put 19 officials, mostly unnamed, under house arrest and/or banned them from travelling, accusing them of knowing about the ammonium nitrate. They include port and customs officials, judges, and former ministers. Several officials have had their bank accounts frozen.

Aoun has set up an investigation into the blast, which will also look at whether “external interference” was a factor, to report within four days. Commentators have seized on this to pin the blame on Hezbollah, claiming that the warehouse was a Hezbollah explosives dump that prompted an air strike by Israel.

While such suspicions of an Israeli attack are understandable, given Israel’s history of targeted assassinations, cyber-attacks and other assaults on its opponents, there is no evidence to back this up. In a recent border incident with Hezbollah near the disputed area of the Shebaa Farms, Israeli forces were under unprecedented orders to miss their assailants to prevent an escalation. That indicated that Tel Aviv does not want a renewed war with Hezbollah at this stage.

Nevertheless, theories of Hezbollah’s involvement serve a definite purpose—to deflect attention away from the political factions aligned with Washington, Paris and Riyadh, all of which have denied any responsibility for the explosion of a mountain of explosives kept at the port for six years.

Playing a key role in these machinations is the representative of the former colonial power, and suppressor of the year-long “yellow vest” protests, French President Emmanuel Macron. He became the first international figure to visit the country after the blast. Under the cover of offering aid, he is seeking to organise a political coup by the ruling elite against the working class and engineer Hezbollah’s elimination as a political and military force in Lebanon and Syria.

Macron called for an international investigation into the explosion. His model is presumably the fraudulent $700 million “trial” in absentia of four low-level Hezbollah members by a special UN-backed court in the Netherlands for planting the bomb that killed former Lebanese prime minister and billionaire Rafiq Hariri and 21 others in 2005. That court is due to report its findings soon.

Co-chairing a virtual international aid conference with the UN over the weekend, Macron insisted that aid was conditional upon “radical political reform.” While claiming he would “never interfere in Lebanese politics,” he said he could apply “pressure.”

Speaking on television on his return to Paris, Macron said that if France did not play its part, “other powers may interfere, whether it be Iran, Saudi Arabia or Turkey.”

In the absence of a revolutionary leadership advancing a perspective for unifying the working class, there are real dangers that the legitimate anger of workers, youth and middle-class layers engulfed by the ever-widening crisis will be channelled behind yet another bunch of kleptocrats, this time possibly headed by military generals.

The demands of Lebanese workers and youth, like those of workers who have risen in revolt across the region, in Europe, the US and elsewhere, have nothing in common with those of their political leaders. Their demands cannot be achieved other than through a unified struggle with their class brothers and sisters internationally for the overthrow of capitalism and the building of socialism throughout the Middle East and around the world.

“A game of Russian Roulette with the lives of children”

https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2020/08/10/flor-a10.html

As statewide cases hit half a million, opposition mounts in Florida to school reopening

By Nancy Hanover
10 August 2020

With many Florida school districts set to open this week and thousands more infected with COVID-19 every day across the state, teachers from across Florida marched on Republican Governor Ron DeSantis’ mansion Saturday to protest his statewide mandate for fully in-person instruction. It was one of dozens, possibly hundreds, of protests against the reopening of schools held across the US over the past month.

On Saturday, Florida hit the ghastly total of 526,577 COVID-19 cases and 8,109 deaths. Test positivity rates stand at 13.3 percent, indicating a chronic lack of testing and therefore a substantially greater prevalence of infection than the official numbers. For three weeks in July, the number of daily new cases averaged more than 10,500, and Florida is now second only to California in total COVID-19 cases.

“We’ve called upon the mayor and local officials to return us to Phase 1 due to the increase in COVID-19 deaths,” said teacher Alex Ingram, marching at the governor’s mansion, according to Florida Today. “We have called upon the school board to close schools. We’ve called on the health department to close schools. Now we’re calling on the governor to close schools.”

DeSantis, a loyal acolyte of the Trump administration, claimed throughout the summer that if school boards wanted to close districts, they needed to be authorized by their local health department. Then he issued a directive to health directors to refuse to close schools. As a result, USA Today noted, “In county after county the health directors’ refrain to school leaders was the same: Their role was to provide information, not recommendations.”

“When we voted to reopen schools, I’ll be honest and tell you I did it because we are under an executive order to do so,” Marc Dodd, a school board member in Lake County, Florida, said last week. “Do I think they’re safe? Absolutely not.”

Meanwhile, it was announced on Sunday that 97,000 children nationally have tested positive for coronavirus from July 16–30, according to the American Academy of Pediatrics. With the US now posting over five million total cases since the start of the pandemic, more than 338,000 have been children. These numbers demonstrate the criminal recklessness of a return to school being justified with the lie that children are either less susceptible or cannot transmit the deadly virus.

Nevertheless, across the US, both Democratic and Republican state officials are presiding over the herding of young people into schools, sanctioning the suffering and deaths of children, teachers, staff and families in the name of the “economy.” By this they mean getting parents back on the job producing profit.

The bipartisan character of the campaign to reopen schools was on full display Friday, when New York’s Democratic Governor Andrew Cuomo declared, “Good news, all schools can reopen.” His statement paves the way for the reopening of all schools across New York, including the largest school district in the US, which will set a precedent for other states and districts to follow.

For its part, the 150,000-member Florida Education Association (FEA) recently did a survey of 44,000 educators and 5,000 parents, showing that 76 percent did not feel their school could be reopened safely. Refusing to call for statewide strike action, however, the FEA opted instead to file a lawsuit July 20 against the statewide reopening. Predictably, the suit has been sandbagged by authorities. On Thursday, the venue for the trial was relocated, and other procedural barriers are anticipated. Meanwhile, students by the thousands are being forced back into the classroom.

Speaking to the World Socialist Web Site, a Florida music teacher with over 25 years of experience denounced the mandate for a return to school. She agreed that it was entirely motivated by the broader campaign for a return to work. “This decision is 100 percent economically driven. We teachers are ‘revered,’ given little muffins and cards on Teacher Appreciate Days. But the bottom line is that we are shouldering the responsibility for getting the economy going. That’s what’s being placed at our feet.”

She added, “It is fundamentally irresponsible. It is all about childcare. Meanwhile, teachers are now spending their own money on personal protective equipment and building little plexiglass devices to protect themselves and their students.

“In our county, we had 350 people march on the local health department. We have a large contingency of parents behind us. We call them a ‘momfia.’ We have had the highest rate of COVID in the state and the highest pediatric rate.

“I am slated to return to the classroom on Tuesday. Since my county provides the option to go virtual, purchasing webcams for parents, I will have a camera on me all day. I am now responsible for providing the same quality of education, both live and virtual at the same time. I have no idea how that will work out.”

The music teacher shared a letter she had recently written to protest the resumption of face-to-face instruction. Addressing school board members, she said, “I am writing this letter with the hope of getting you to listen—authentically LISTEN to my concerns, which by no coincidence, are shared by hundreds of colleagues, community members, parents, and families.

“We do what we do with intention, integrity, and at a grueling pace—often at personal sacrifice mentally, emotionally, physically, and financially. Regardless of the workload (which only increases each year), we persist. We spend our own personal time and money taking course after course, training after training—all to better serve our students. Each year we are presented with new mandates and expectations and each year we are grossly underfunded and micromanaged almost to the point of insanity.”

She emphasized, “We cannot provide world class rigorous, standards-based, differentiated and developmentally appropriate instruction within the practical and physical challenges of a raging and novel disease that has ravaged the entire planet and killed hundreds of thousands of human beings. It’s not in our rear view mirror. We do NOT have it under control whatsoever. How many local health officials have you ignored? IT IS IN OUR COMMUNITY. IT HAS INFECTED OUR NEIGHBORS.”

Referring to the inevitable proliferation of the virus as a “game of Russian Roulette with the lives of children,” she stated, “We want to work. We want to earn every penny of our paycheck. We are not in a position to not work. We have car payments and mortgages and medical bills. We are only asking that you look at the data READILY AVAILABLE TO YOU and make a decision that protects the lives of students, staff and families. This is fixable. Do you have the fortitude to do what is right? Because if you don’t, the consequences will not be fixable. Not now. Not ever.”

These sentiments are echoed across the US, as workers are horrified at the dangers of a return to work, but even less inclined to allow their children to be an “experiment,” as recently proposed by Dr. Anthony Fauci. The most recent polling numbers by NPR/Ipsos shows that 82 percent of K-12 teachers nationally are concerned about returning to in-person teaching this fall, with two-thirds preferring remote instruction.

Teachers are not speaking out not just for themselves, but for their students and communities. We urge all opponents of the homicidal demands of the Democrats, Republicans, unions and big businesses to the profit-driven return to work and school to contact us today and sign up for the WSWS Educators Newsletter.

Georgia teachers and students force temporary closure of North Paulding High School over COVID-19 outbreak

https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2020/08/10/geor-a10.html



By Genevieve Leigh
10 August 2020

On Sunday, the superintendent of the Paulding County School district in Dallas, Georgia sent an email alerting the parents of North Paulding High School that the school would be closed for in-person instruction on Monday and Tuesday of this week. The superintendent, Dr. Brian Otett, explained in the letter that the school had suffered nine confirmed cases of COVID-19 since reopening one week ago. The cases included three staff members and six students.

The cluster of cases emerged as a direct consequence of the reckless decision of the Paulding County Board of Education to reopen schools for in-person instruction amid a surge in COVID-19 cases in the state. It appears that the county opened its schools with almost no protective measures in place.

Parents of North Paulding High students reported that they were offered the choice between in-person and virtual learning, but a limit was placed on how many students could do virtual learning. That option was so popular that the limit was reached within a few days. Many families are now on a waiting list, according to the school board.


North Paulding High School opened its doors on August 3. The school made national headlines just days later after students posted pictures and videos of their peers walking through crowded hallways, without masks.

School administrators responded to the exposure with hostility. Two of the students involved were suspended, including 15-year-old Hannah, who told Buzzfeed that she was found to have violated rules against unauthorized use of smartphones in school hallways. The school principal can also be heard in this leaked audio file threatening anyone else with “consequences” if he or she posts anything “negative” on social media.

The posts went viral on social media, prompting a massive backlash from students, parents, teachers and others in the Dallas area and throughout the country. Only after the school was made the focus of nationwide negative attention were the students reinstated.
The homicidal conspiracy of the Paulding County Board of Education

The Paulding County Board of Education has fully supported the bipartisan drive to reopen the schools. As in other counties throughout the country, it has made no serious attempt to protect its students and staff. In fact, as the World Socialist Web Site reported on Friday, in a video released on social media of a county Board of Education meeting held just prior to the school reopenings, the chair of the Paulding County Board of Education, Jeff Fuller, can be heard calling the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) guidelines “complete crap.”

Fuller says: “I would like to see Paulding County lead the way in an absolute normal return to school on August 3.” He suggests that children are immune from the virus, saying that it is “not fair to kids to shove something down their throats that’s not affecting them.” He ends his remarks by urging his colleagues to not “buy into the hype” around the pandemic.

Newly released video clips from the same meeting reveal even more sinister plotting by members of the Paulding County Board of Education to get around Department of Health regulations. Per the Georgia Department of Health, schools are required to classify anyone who has been within six feet of a COVID-19 sufferer for 15 minutes or more as a close contact. In the new clip, Theresa Lyons, a member of the board, suggests that students change seats every 14 minutes to get around this regulation.
Not only did the school board do virtually nothing to provide protection for students, it sought to circumvent the minimal protections that were mandated!
What’s more, there is mounting evidence that the school board was aware of outbreaks among members of the North Paulding High School football team, many of whom, one Facebook video shows, worked out together in a crowded indoor gym the week prior to the school’s reopening. Parents were apparently notified of the outbreaks just hours before the start of the first day of classes.

In addition to the student cases, multiple teachers at North Paulding reported positive tests prior to the first day of school. One infected staff member told Buzzfeed News that she came into contact with “most teachers at the school” during a staff event the week prior to reopening. Teachers and staff are reporting that the school is refusing to confirm coronavirus infections among district employees.

A leaked “Open Records Act” request from a local parent suggests that North Paulding High School alone had 23 confirmed cases before August 5.

If any students, teachers or staff die from COVID-19 in the coming weeks or months, their blood will be on the hands of the Paulding County Board of Education.
Children and the COVID-19 pandemic: What the science shows

The emergence of nine new COVID-19 cases in the last week among North Paulding students and staff tragically confirms the emerging science concerning the ability of children to spread the virus.

A mounting body of scientific evidence shows that young people are transmitters of the virus. Anyone who says that youth are “unaffected” by the virus or in some way immune is either grossly misinformed or consciously lying on behalf of the political establishment, which understands that scientifically verified information will hinder the drive to reopen the economy.

A new report from the American Academy of Pediatrics released Sunday finds that nearly 100,000 children tested positive for the coronavirus in the last two weeks of July. Out of almost five million reported COVID-19 cases in the US, the organization found that more than 338,000 were children.

A new CDC report released Friday looked at nearly 580 children who were hospitalized with the coronavirus between the start of March and late July. Researchers found that hospitalization rates for children increased steadily over that timeline. About one in three hospitalized children had to be admitted to an intensive care unit—a rate similar to the ICU admittance rate for hospitalized adults with the coronavirus.
Twitter Post from a parent revealing Jeff Fuller's refusal to move to virtual learning for the whole school

These are only the two most recent studies in a growing body of scientific evidence, which, taken as a whole, indicates that the reopening of the schools will have catastrophic consequences for students, teachers, and parents.
The way forward for youth, students and parents

The experience at North Paulding High School has been instructive for teachers, parents, and students everywhere. It was only under conditions of a groundswell of opposition that the school board was forced to act.

Nothing will be accomplished without a mass united movement of workers and young people. In order for this fight to go forward, workers and youth must be clearly armed with an awareness of their enemies and their allies.

The demand that schools reopen is central to the ruling class campaign to force workers back to work in order to pump out profits for the corporate-financial elite. While the Trump administration has spearheaded this campaign, the Democrats bear equal responsibility. This fact was underscored on Friday when the Democratic governor of New York, Andrew Cuomo, announced that all schools would be allowed to reopen.

Educators, parents, and students must organize independently of the pro-corporate unions and Democratic Party and form a network of rank-and-file committees in every school and neighborhood to prevent the unsafe reopening of the schools.

These committees must be guided by science. They must fight to connect with ever broader sections of the working class to prepare for a nationwide general strike against the reopening of the schools and the broader reopening of the economy.

Only through a broad-based movement of the working class will society be able to contain the pandemic, vastly expand public education funding and ensure that the social interests of the working class take precedence over private profit. We urge all those who wish to take up such a struggle to contact us today, sign up for the WSWS Educators Newsletter if you are an educator, and join our youth and student group, the International Youth and Students for Social Equality if you are a student or young person.

US hits five million COVID-19 cases as testing declines and schools reopen

https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2020/08/10/coro-a10.html



By Benjamin Mateus
10 August 2020

It has taken just over two weeks for the United States to record an additional one million cases of COVID-19. On August 6, the nation reached the grim milestone of five million cases.

As of this writing, there have been 5,187,611 cases and 165,500 deaths. There are 2,367,820 active cases and over 50,000 people hospitalized for treatment of COVID-19. After a low point in the positivity rate of 4.5 percent in mid-June, it has risen to 8 percent, where it has remained for several weeks despite claims of more testing by the Trump administration.

Globally, there are now 20 million cases of COVID-19 and the death toll is 732,000. The United States, comprising 4.25 percent of the global population, accounts for 26 percent of all cases and 22.6 percent of all fatalities. On a per-capita basis, only Brazil, Peru and Columbia have more daily cases than the US (with approximately 163 infections per million people).

Alarmingly, the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) at the University of Washington School of Medicine is now projecting that America’s death toll will reach 295,011 by December 1. The institute estimates that another 135,000 people will succumb in the next 113 days (1,195 deaths per day). These estimates are based on the assumption that mask usage will be inconsistent and that half of the school districts in each state will opt for online rather than in-person instruction.

IHME Director Dr. Christopher Murray acknowledged that should the public adopt near-universal mask usage, estimated additional deaths by that date would drop by 49 percent, to reach a lower total of 228,271. If mandates were eased, the death toll could rise to over 391,000. The present estimate of community mobility, using cell phone data, is at 25 percent below pre-pandemic norms. At the peak of the nationwide restrictions, mobility had declined to 55 percent below pre-pandemic patterns.

The IHME has consistently been overly conservative in predicting the number of infections and deaths from the pandemic, and, by all accounts, the transition to fall and winter seasons can have a significant impact on the dynamics of community transmission.

Given the continuing rise in the rate of new infections and deaths and the lack of any nationally, let alone internationally, coordinated plan to scale up testing, contact tracing, quarantining and treatment, the drive to reopen the schools in the US assumes a homicidal and criminal character.

Several early school openings—Indiana, Mississippi and Louisiana—have been marked by confirmed COVID-19 cases on day one, necessitating closure or quarantining of students and teachers. Experience has already exposed the falsity of claims that schools can be safely reopened for in-person instruction. What, in fact, is being prepared is an explosive increase in infections and deaths.

This is perhaps most clearly exemplified by Florida, with over 530,000 COVID-19 cases statewide and 8,500 new cases on Saturday. Education Commissioner Richard Corcoran told the Hillsborough County School Board that it “needs to follow the law, it’s that simple,” after the board issued a statement that the district did not meet the requirements for safely offering in-classroom instruction when schools resume. In the meantime, Governor Ron DeSantis, who has pushed hard for the schools to reopen, instructed health directors across Florida to refuse to give school boards recommendations or risk assessments.

On August 5, three rural school districts in Texas were the first to head back to the classroom. With some Dallas-area districts poised to begin the first day of fall sessions, state officials were debating if data on COVID-19 infections at public schools should be collected. “This question on data collection is still under active deliberation by the agency, and we expect to have an update in coming weeks on what, if any, data will be required, and how it will be recorded,” said Texas Education Association spokesperson, Frank Ward.

Several school reopenings in Europe and Asia that proceeded with little incident have been cited as examples of the low risk of transmission among school-aged children. However, these nations have a per capita transmission rate significantly lower than the US, along with a much more capable surveillance system to track and trace new infections.

It is worth mentioning that the outbreak in an Israeli school in May of two known COVID-19 cases led to 153 students and 25 staff testing positive, including 87 close contacts outside the school. At the time, the number of daily cases nationwide had for many days been below 30.

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