https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FNNk6qqMC7A
Thursday, September 10, 2020
Under Trump’s Presidency, Military Veterans and Service Members Have Been ‘Losers’
Putting Trump’s words aside, his actions have shown a disregard for the health and welfare of military families.
September 9, 2020 Steve Early, Suzanne Gordon THE AMERICAN PROSPECT
https://portside.org/2020-09-09/under-trumps-presidency-military-veterans-and-service-members-have-been-losers
For the last few days, Donald Trump has been furiously denying conversations reported in The Atlantic in which he referred to veterans, active-duty soldiers, and World War II fighters interred in a military cemetery as “suckers” and “losers.” In one rebuttal to this “fake news,” the president insisted that he has “never called our great fallen soldiers anything other than HEROES.”
Trump’s opposition has worked itself into righteous indignation over his comments. VoteVets, the Democratic Party–backed advocacy group, denounced “Traitor Trump’s” disdain for those “making the ultimate sacrifice in defense of our democracy.” Presidential candidate Joe Biden took it as further confirmation of his opponent’s unfitness “to be the commander in chief,” and a personal insult to his late son, Beau, a Bronze Star winner in Iraq. Democrat M.J. Hegar, the Afghan War veteran seeking a U.S. Senate seat in Texas, found Trump’s remarks “sickening” and issued “a call to action to every patriot across the country … to stand up for the next generation putting on the uniform.”
What none of these or other critics have dared to address is the fact that, under Trump, too many veterans and service members have, in fact, been “losers.” In short, a better target for Democratic outrage than Trump’s words would be his administration’s actions.
For example, largely out of sight, millions of Americans suffering from wounds of war have had their health care coverage eroded on Trump’s watch. Secretary of Defense Mark Esper is attempting to reduce Pentagon spending in the one place where more is actually needed—the Military Health System (MHS). Esper’s budget includes over $2 billion in cuts to care for 9.5 million active-duty personnel, military retirees, and dependents. More service members and their families will be forced to go off base, using their Tricare insurance for reimbursement of private doctors and hospitals currently flooded with COVID-19 patients.
“If enacted,” one expert told me, “these cuts will seriously jeopardize the ability of the MHS to fulfill its mission to provide the health care to which the DOD family is entitled … the MHS is in a ‘death spiral’ during a time of national COVID-19 pandemic emergency.” Two programs at risk are the DOD’s Center for the Study of Traumatic Stress (CSTS) and Center for Deployment Psychology (CDP), both based at the Uniformed Services University (USU) in Maryland, which functions as the nation’s federal health professions academy. At these research centers, clinicians study how to develop more effective ways of treating military trauma.
One of the major goals of these programs is reducing the high rate of suicide among current and past service members. According to the DOD, 541 men and women on active duty or in reserve units died by their own hand in 2018. The Veterans Health Administration (VHA) reports that the risk of suicide among former military personnel is 21 percent higher than among other Americans. On average, 20 veterans die by suicide every day. A bill that passed the Senate unanimously (with the support of Democrats outraged by Trump’s comments) would allegedly ameliorate this by providing mental health care grants to non-VA programs. But instead of beefing up the VHA’s own mental-health programs and giving access to more veterans as well as their families, this “suicide prevention” measure would accelerate privatization.
Just as Esper’s proposed MHS cutbacks and related privatization push would undermine the quality of medical care and related specialized research, the expanded outsourcing of VHA care has created the same negative impact on nine million veterans. In 2018, with bipartisan support, Trump won congressional approval for the VA MISSION Act of 2018. While Trump takes credit for “VA Choice,” a bill that originally passed more than two years before he became president, it’s the MISSION Act that should be hung over his head.
The law has taken billions of dollars from what should go to the VHA budget for direct care to patients in veterans’ hospitals, diverting that money to private-sector providers, which deliver lower-quality care at higher cost, studies show. Pandemic conditions in non-VHA hospitals and the related disruption of private medical practice throughout the country have forced Veterans Affairs Secretary Robert Wilkie to briefly “pause” this vast outsourcing program.
Meanwhile, experienced clinicians, who deal with troubled soldiers and veterans, fear that their efforts to coax them into treatment could be undermined by Trump’s “sucker/loser” labeling. In military culture, mental-health problems and even physical injuries are too often stigmatized as a sign of personal failure and weakness. If you’re depressed due to PTSD, a traumatic brain injury, chronic pain, hearing loss, or some other service-related condition, there’s pressure to not self-report. Instead of seeking professional help, the sick, angry, and suicidal resort to self-medication, via drugs and alcohol, or worse.
The abuse of veterans and active-duty soldiers does not end with health care. In 2017, Vice President Mike Pence broke a tie and was the deciding vote in the Senate for a bill that repealed a Consumer Financial Protection Bureau rule allowing class action lawsuits against financial predators. Veteran and military groups staunchly opposed the bill, as military communities are prime targets for scams and rip-offs, and service members who frequently travel lack the time or resources to pursue individual arbitration claims. In other words, Trump made suckers of military families, who sacrifice to preserve constitutional rights like the right to a trial before peers. This may also increase the risk of military suicide since financial instability is, as Lt. Col. Samuel R. Cook has argued, “suicide’s weapon of choice.”
Trump’s statements are hardly the way “to bind up the nation’s wounds” or “care for him who shall have borne the battle,” as Abraham Lincoln said. But his denigration of soldiers, dead and alive—from John McCain to the next unknown veteran suicide victim—is not playing well in the ranks. Recent polling by Military Times confirms a further decline in Trump’s popularity within the military since 2016. Forty-one percent of active-duty personnel surveyed said they were voting for Biden, while 37 percent still favored Trump. Nearly 50 percent of those surveyed held an unfavorable view of Trump, a reversal from his 46-37 favorability ratings in 2017. Among officers, the disapproval rate was even higher, at 59 percent, with more than half expressing strong disapproval.
On November 3, the nation’s 20 million veterans, who backed Trump over Hillary Clinton four years ago, will have the opportunity to change their position. It would be a fitting way to prove they’re not suckers, by helping to defeat a politician who privately disses and dismisses them—through words and deeds—while publicly lauding their heroism.
New York City educators launch safety committee to halt the reopening of schools
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2020/09/10/nyce-s10.html
By the New York City Educators Rank-and-File Safety Committee
10 September 2020
We announce today the formation of the New York City Educators Rank-and-File Safety Committee to oppose the school reopenings enacted by Democratic Mayor Bill de Blasio with the full support of the United Federation of Teachers (UFT). The opening of schools for more than one million students directly places the lives of educators, school workers, students and the broader community at grave risk for the sake of corporate profit.
This criminal decision promises to re-infect the population of the largest metropolitan region in the US, with a population of 20 million people. The horrific scenes from March, April and May, when mass graves were dug on Hart Island, when hospitals were overwhelmed and the healthcare infrastructure was brought to the verge of collapse, will soon be repeated unless we mobilize the working class to put an end to these homicidal policies. The city alone has lost at least 25,000 people to the virus, the majority of whom were working class residents.
In launching this committee, we stand wholly independent of both the Democrats and Republicans, as well as the UFT and its backers, all of whom have conspired to enforce the reopening of schools. The UFT has played a treacherous role in covering up for the lies of de Blasio and Schools Chancellor Richard Carranza, while attempting to suffocate the rising tide of militancy among educators by issuing hollow threats to strike while engaging in backroom deals with the de Blasio administration to force educators back into unsafe schools.
In a span of less than 48 hours last week, UFT President Michael Mulgrew, who preempted a scheduled delegate assembly vote for strike authorization with the announcement of the deal he struck with de Blasio, went from denouncing unsafe conditions in schools to proclaiming that the DOE was carrying out “the most aggressive policies and greatest safeguards of any school system in the United States of America.”
In fighting to oppose the reckless reopening of schools, we base ourselves on the following non-negotiable, scientifically-grounded demands:
We demand the immediate suspension of all plans to initiate in-person learning across all K-12 schools and colleges in New York City. All teachers and students must be provided with the technology necessary to carry out fully remote instruction, including the provision of high-quality computer hardware and software and all other accessories. High-speed internet access must be provided to all families free of charge, by converting the telecommunications corporations into public utilities.
We demand full employment security and wages for all workers in New York City. The threat of layoffs, reduced hours and pay, and forced retirement issued by the mayor and cynically repeated by the UFT, underscores the reactionary character of the Democratic Party and its backers in the trade unions. We reject any form of austerity in the home of Wall Street and the center of world capitalism. The vast wealth of the financial oligarchy must be heavily taxed to pay for the health and safety of all workers and the education of the younger generation!
We demand full income protection for all parents who need to remain home to facilitate their children’s education for the duration of the pandemic, as well as a relief package to immediately provide generous economic resources for all those that have been cast into the ranks of the unemployed.
We demand the immediate freezing of college tuition and abolition of student loan debt, as well as the provision of free housing within dormitories and meals to all international students and others in need wishing to remain as residents of their post-secondary institutions during the period of remote instruction.
We demand that all decisions regarding the viability of reopening schools for in-person learning be determined democratically by rank-and-file committees of educators, school workers, parents and students, based on the independent assessment of trusted scientists and health experts.
We demand the immediate retrofitting of all classrooms and school buildings to ensure they have modern, high quality ventilation systems and air purifiers. The costs associated with this must likewise be borne out of the enormous horde of profits accumulated by the financial oligarchy.
We demand full protection for undocumented immigrant workers and their children, including full income support while they are unable to work in unsafe workplaces. We demand a stop to all imprisonment, deportation by the federal authorities and the abolition of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement gestapo.
Halt all nonessential production! Until the pandemic is contained, only key industries such as food production, medical care and logistics should remain open. Workers in those industries must be provided with the most advanced safety measures to prevent infection. All nonessential workers and laid-off workers must be provided with full unemployment benefits and access to free health care.
The school reopening plan now being imposed on educators is based on several lies.
The first and most fundamental of these lies is that it is possible under conditions of a raging world-wide pandemic to open schools safely.
After the first six weeks of mass school reopenings across the US, in which tens of thousands of infections have been connected to K-12 schools and colleges that have opened up for in-person learning across the country, it has become patently clear that no form of in-person instruction is safe.
The very organization of schools, which bring groups of young people together in confined indoor spaces for prolonged periods of time, renders sustained social distancing practically impossible without the imposition of prison-like conditions on children and adolescents. No attempt to scapegoat young people for the ill-conceived and reckless school reopening policies being promoted by both Republicans and Democrats can hide this fact.
In the case of New York City, home to the largest K-12 school district in the country and an early epicenter of the pandemic, the more recent reduction in infection rates that has been used by Mayor de Blasio and Governor Cuomo to justify the reopening of schools ignores both the ongoing impact of the coronavirus in states across the US as well as the resurgence of infections in countries that prematurely lifted restrictions such as Israel.
It should be recalled that De Blasio only reluctantly closed down schools in March, under intense pressure from rank-and-file teachers and education workers who were threatening to conduct wildcat strikes and sickouts. A growing body of scientific studies has shown that without the closure of schools, the death toll already exacted by the virus would have been even larger.
Though de Blasio has attempted to justify the reopening of schools with rhetorical ploys referencing the hardships faced by impoverished children, he has proven to be just as zealous in forcing educators and students back into unsafe schools as a condition for the resumption of the extraction of profits from workers and equally willing to carry out the murderous policy of “herd immunity” as his Republican counterparts.
Second, none of the safety measures demanded by teachers, parents and students as conditions for a safe return to schools have been enacted by the New York City Department of Education (DOE). Indeed, Carranza continues to serve as a mouthpiece for the lies emanating from City Hall.
After promising that upgrades or renovations to decaying and inadequate ventilation systems across hundreds of school buildings, the DOE orchestrated a series of fraudulent inspections of facilities. Despite the sham character of these inspections, recently released reports document hundreds of instances of non-existent ventilators as well as inoperative supply and exhaust fans in schools. In a recent town hall with school administrators, Carranza responded to attendees’ concerns by saying that as long as a room had a window, regardless of its condition or position with respect to adequate airflow, it could be used as a classroom.
Additionally, as part of their backroom deal struck with the UFT to delay the start date of in-person classes by 11 days, the DOE recently announced that testing would be limited to 10–20 percent of teachers and students, who would be randomly selected on a monthly basis, effective October 1, over a week after the start of in-person classes.
The third lie upon which the reopening of schools is being based is that the only means by which to address the deepening fiscal crisis aggravated by the pandemic and thereby avert layoffs of city employees as well as cuts to social programs is to immediately reactivate the economy and mortgage future generations through a massive municipal bond issue, which will put the city budget even more under the direct control of Wall Street investors.
Mayor de Blasio, along with city Democrats and their collaborators in the UFT, have been calling on Albany to allow the city to borrow under this pretext as a means of deflecting all public discussion from the demand that the scores of Wall Street billionaires, who have profited handsomely during the pandemic as millions are cast into the ranks of the unemployed, be made to pay for all the safety measures required to protect the lives of working class residents of the city.
De Blasio’s progressive veneer has been exposed as an utter fraud. While the school and city infrastructure continue to languish in a state of deliberate neglect, and the same children he attempts to use as pawns to justify his homicidal school reopening face increasing levels of poverty, homelessness and distress, de Blasio maintains his unrepentant defense of the wealth acquired by a parasitic financial oligarchy.
A genuine defense of the lives of teachers and students can only be carried out by rank-and-file educators themselves, oriented towards mobilizing the broadest sections of the working class in defense of our lives and safety, and to put an end to the pandemic. We call on all those who agree with this fighting perspective to join our committee today.
Graduate students strike at University of Michigan - September 9, 2020
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A8mIONO7NM8&ab_channel=WorldSocialistWebSite
HLM Podcast Ep. 30 - Wildfires, Biden Leading in Polls, 2,200 Troops Leaving Iraq
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=70IIzZa8Kqo
University of Michigan grad students reject administration offer, continue strike against unsafe conditions
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2020/09/10/mich-s10.html
By Jerry White
10 September 2020
In an act of tremendous courage, striking graduate student instructors at the University of Michigan voted by more than 700 to 400 to reject a proposal from the university administration and continue their strike to demand the shutdown of in-person learning amidst the coronavirus pandemic.
The “offer” from the university administration failed to meet the strikers’ main demands. On the demand for a universal right to work remotely, the university’s only offer was that grad students could work remotely during a period of arbitration if they were required to work in-person against their will. On the demand for the demilitarization of the campus, the university agreed only to have two meetings per term to hold further discussions.
The university also agreed to disclose the methodology it had adopted for testing, but would not increase its testing capacity.
The struggle at the University of Michigan is part of a broader fight against the reopening of campuses. In an indication of the catastrophic impact of school reopenings throughout the country, the University of Wisconsin-Madison announced Wednesday that it is moving all classes online after a surge of COVID-19 cases, with more than 1,000 infections over the past several days. Similar outbreaks have occurred on other campuses, endangering the lives not only of students, but also the broader community.
The vote Wednesday rejected the position of Graduate Employees’ Organization (GEO) President Sumeet Patwardhan, who urged that the offer be accepted. In the course of the meeting, many students, including sections of the GEO leadership, spoke passionately against the deal, shifting the sentiment in favor of continuing the struggle.
The vote was held in the face of blackmail from the UM Board of Regents, made up of powerful Democrats, including billionaire Little Caesars owner Denise Ilitch and Jordan Acker, the former assistant to Obama’s secretary of the Department of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano.
The university threatened to take retaliatory action against striking students if they rejected the deal, saying it was “considering all options available,” according to the Michigan Daily. The administration also said its offer would “explode” if it was not immediately accepted, meaning any guarantees against retaliation in it would no longer be on the table.
The strike began Tuesday, a little more than a week after 45,000 students began classes. The walkout immediately garnered popular support, with construction workers honoring picket lines on campus, faculty joining picket lines, and residential advisors in the dorms joining the strike on Wednesday. Professors at outlying UM campuses, including in Dearborn, canceled classes. Solidarity messages were sent by grad students at Columbia University and other campuses.
In interviews on the picket line Wednesday, students expressed a determination to fight. “This is exciting,” said Ayana. “Something has to change. This is the first strike, but it is going to be one of many in the fight for a socialist future and real equality. We have to shake up the world. Those at the top fear this movement and are concerned that they are going to lose their wealth and power. The laws are written for them, not us."
“We’ve been screwed over by the Democratic Party,” Ayana added. “They are not committed to actual change. They work within the system, telling us they will be less bad—but there won’t be real equality. This is a class society. My mother is an Amazon worker who was homeless, and now she is fighting for sanitizer and a safe workplace. This is capitalism, and we have to end it.”
Since August there have been at least 35,000 new cases of COVID-19 at over 1,000 campuses, with outbreaks in Iowa, North Carolina and other states. Under these conditions, the strike at UM has become a focal point for opposition to the homicidal back-to-school policy, which includes the return of some 50 million students to public schools across the country.
There is no doubt that the American Federation of Teachers (AFT), the parent organization, exerted pressure on the GEO to shut down the strike before it became a catalyst for an expanding movement against the reckless back-to-school policy, which in Michigan is being spearheaded by the Democratic Party. Seeking to isolate the UM strike, AFT President Randi Weingarten, a leading official in the Democratic Party, did not even bother to issue a tweet about it.
Within the working class, however, there is powerful support for the stand taken by the students. The determination not to betray this support was a major factor in the rejection of the administration’s offer.
One striking student told the WSWS, “There’s no power for the workers unless there’s solidarity among the working class. Already we’ve seen the University of Michigan’s Res Life staff go on strike to show their support for our work stoppage!
“The issues with higher education extend far beyond the University of Michigan. The entire structure is built on the exploitation of labor under the pretense of offering a more affordable education. However, that pretense wouldn’t need to exist if the education weren't commodified so heavily and so predatorily.”
Speaking about the rise in social inequality in the US and the role played by the Democratic and Republican parties, he added, “Beyond higher education, our country is facing such horrific inequality issues that we have to band together as a working class, or we won't be able to overcome our present moment. I think that the Democratic and Republican parties do not serve the people or the working class in any capacity. They serve the owning class, they serve corporations, and the vast majority of politicians under those banners serve their own interests far before they serve the interests of their constituents.”
Tim, a Chinese grad student, said, “We have lit a match that could unite a global wave. We need a change.”
Alexis, an engineering senior, added, “The strike shows there is a growing opposition to the whole setup of society. The pandemic has exacerbated the contradictions of capitalism. In the US especially, it has brought out the inaccessibility of health care, education, making conditions even worse for workers. The pandemic has shown how unprepared the US is and the need for the redistribution of resources.”
Ryan, a graduate student instructor, told the WSWS that over the summer the GEO worked with the university. He explained, “We tried to follow their bargaining agreements, and they basically did nothing. We would have meetings with the university, and they would say all the ‘right things’ like ‘we hear you’ and ‘we are working on it,’ and they would just throw us to the side. It became apparent that they were not taking any of our demands seriously.
“Then they forced members of the union to teach in person with basically no protections. We decided to strike. We understand that our demands are going to apply to more than just us. This is a strike for more than just grad students.”
When asked what he would say to other students and teachers around the country who want to fight back, Ryan said, “In this current environment, with the police murders, COVID-19, with the way the capitalist system and neoliberal university treat workers, we have to take a stand. There is just so much anger simmering below the surface among all these people. Once we provided the tool for people to speak out, there has been an unprecedented turnaround. It has been so remarkable. This moment we are in, it has the chance to turn the tables. It takes courage.”
Strikers will return to picket lines this morning exhilarated by their courage and defiance. But if the struggle is to succeed, it must be broadened to the entire working class. This means turning directly to rank-and-file construction, health care and other workers at the University of Michigan and calling for solidarity action by teachers in Detroit and other cities, workers in the auto industry, at Amazon and other logistics firms, and in retail and service industries.
This strike must become the starting point for the development of a powerful industrial and political counteroffensive by the whole working class against both corporate-controlled parties and the capitalist system they defend.
Today, Thursday, September 10, at 7:00 pm, the International Youth and Students for Social Equality is holding a public meeting to discuss the strike and the way forward. We urge all students, workers and faculty in the Ann Arbor area to register today.
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