https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mnzhz1pDMhU&ab_channel=Election2020
Tuesday, October 13, 2020
French universities enforce de facto herd immunity policy on COVID-19
Samuel Maréchal
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2020/10/12/fren-o12.html?pk_campaign=newsletter&pk_kwd=wsws
As part of its murderous herd immunity policy, the French government forced universities and schools to reopen with a near full program of in-person instruction in early September. The government’s aggressive university reopening campaign has benefitted from the critical support of the unions and pseudo-left political organizations.
In the month since the reopening, COVID-19 cases in France have accelerated rapidly, quadrupling from 4,982 cases per day on September 1 to 20,330 on October 9. As early as September 13, 12 clusters were reported at universities throughout the country, and on October 2, Fredérique Vidal, the minister for Higher Education, Research and Innovation, admitted 40 French higher education institutions were closed due to outbreaks. A recent report from the UK showed that half of new infections were from schools and universities, exposing the causal link between reopening and the spread of COVID-19 in the wider population.
Young people act as the primary spreaders of disease through the population and, contrary to pseudo-scientific claims promoted by the bourgeois media, are themselves vulnerable to the virus. Official government data shows that since the beginning of the pandemic, at least 40 people under the age of 30 have died from COVID-19 in France. Underlining the risk to college students, in September an otherwise healthy 19-year-old studentin the US developed neurological complications from COVID-19 and tragically died.
In response to the rising tide of cases at universities, on October 5 Vidal’s ministry decreed that universities in maximal alert areas must conduct in-person classes that do not exceed 50 percent of their nominal capacity. The only other measures taken by the ministry have been to recommend that universities enforce mask wearing, encourage regular handwashing and a 7-day-quarantine for positive individuals, even though this latter measure runs contrary to the WHO’s 14-day quarantine recommendation.
Even if these limited measures were adhered to, they do not protect students or prevent universities acting as vectors for the spread through the wider population. In reality, the reopening of universities has formed an integral part of the ruling class’s herd immunity policy.
Students have taken to social media to expose and condemn the conditions this fall. Posting to #balancetafac on Twitter, Maxime, a history student, commented: “If one person is infected, the whole university will be sick within two weeks.”
Another student, at Paris II Panthéon Assas, posted a video exposing dangerous conditions at the university. Quentin, a student at the Sorbonne, wrote, “In universities all over France, it seems that the virus does not exist. The state is responsible for this.”
With crowded corridors and dining halls, as well as the close quarters and shared facilities of university residence halls, students cannot protect themselves. Another issue regularly raised by students is that lecture halls and dining facilities at universities often have little air circulation and, in some cases, do not even have windows.
A student at the École Normale Supérieure told the WSWS that the university’s administration failed to notify students that a classmate tested positive for the virus only one day after attending a lecture. It wasn’t until two weeks after the incident occurred that students were informed. In an email to the student the administration declared, “people present in the same classroom were not declared ‘contact cases,’” and then because no one else in the class had been symptomatic “you were not informed.”
The school cynically added this was proof that “when applied strictly (spacing, masks, disinfection), positive people do not contaminate other people in the same classroom.”
The potential consequences of this recklessness are deadly. How many students, not knowing of their exposure, continued to attend other classes, returned to shared residences, or even visited family members during this time?
The university administration’s utter disregard for student safety exposes Macron’s insistence that we must learn to “live with the virus” as a euphemism for uncontrolled spread through the population. Students are expected to get the virus, and when this does occur this information should be suppressed so that students have “no need to overreact.” Of course, by “overreaction” they mean that students take measures necessary to protect themselves and their acquaintances.
The French ruling class, mirroring the policy enforced by the financial aristocracy across the globe, have been planning to implement a policy of herd immunity since the beginning of the first confinement. The reopening of universities and schools is a crucial part of the plan to restart the extraction of profit from the working class which is desperately needed to back up the €750 billion handed to the European banks in March.
Despite having months to increase teaching resources, ensure access to high-quality internet for all and train professors to maximize the effectiveness of online learning before September, the state and university administrations instead worked to downplay the deadly implications of a return to in-person instruction.
Following these false assurances from the government, many students signed expensive rental contracts with the Centre régional des œuvres universitaires et scolaires or private landlords. This has ensured the continued flow of money to state-run halls, while students now face the prospect of months of online classes in tiny apartments with poor internet access, or returning home and endangering their families.
Other students reported that they were left uninformed about the status of their courses until days before they were scheduled to begin, leading to a last-minute scramble to find housing for the upcoming year.
Middle-class organizations such as the Nouveau Parti Anticapitaliste (NPA) and the Solidaires student union offer no way forward to defend French students’ health and rights. Sauvons la recherche, a researchers advocacy group affiliated to Solidaires student union, republished a reactionary open letter originally published in Le Parisien on September 10 which declared, “We cannot live in fear.” Meanwhile the NPA has supported the reopening of schools.
For all their ostensible rejection of capitalism, these organizations shamelessly support and promote the dictates of the capitalist class.
Students across Europe and the US are facing the same deadly conditions. As the autumn term begins, a new wave of struggles against the herd immunity policy of capitalism and decades of crippling austerity in education is beginning throughout the world. This includes the mass occupation of 700 Greek high schools by students and teachers, the Brazilian teachers strike, and the ongoing graduate student struggles at universities across the US.
Students, youth and workers across the world are jointly confronting the deadly imposition of herd immunity by capitalist governments. As the world economic and public health crises worsen, the working class’s struggle against global capitalism is intensifying. This is the social force to which students must turn in the struggle for their own safety and rights to a high-quality education and standard of living.
First and foremost, this means totally breaking from the various bankrupt Stalinist, Maoist and bourgeois movements that have previously dominated student politics since the upheavals of May 1968 and seriously engaging with the history of the working class and its vanguard, the Trotskyist movement as embodied in the International Committee of the Fourth International and the Parti de l’égalité socialiste.
Excess Death Rate During The Coronavirus Pandemic By U.S. State, March-August 2020
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RpkQPOOXYs4&ab_channel=JAMANetwork
350,000 US education jobs slashed in September
Renae Cassimeda
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2020/10/12/educ-o12.html?pk_campaign=newsletter&pk_kwd=wsws
K-12 schools and colleges across the United States have issued yet another round of mass layoffs stemming from the economic fallout of the pandemic, with at least 350,000 education jobs slashed in September alone. According to the latest jobs report from the Department of Labor, employment in local government education fell by 231,000 and state government education by 49,000, while employment in private education decreased by 69,000.
The September layoffs come four months after an unprecedented 1.4 million layoffs to education workers throughout the country as a result of the pandemic. As was the case in April and May, the layoffs have affected in most part classified employees such as bus drivers, food service workers, campus assistants, paraeducators and other school employees. These school staff have been added to the growing mass of tens of millions facing evictions, hunger and destitution.
These mass layoffs take place as deadly school reopenings are pushed by federal and state governments across the US, in order to get students back into the classrooms to force their parents back into workplaces. Over 30 school employees and students have already died since schools began to reopen en masse in late July, while at least 42,778 students and educators have been infected and the health and lives of millions of people have been placed at risk.
School districts across the nation are facing financial disaster and ruin. Researchers at the Learning Policy Institute have estimated the pandemic’s financial costs to public schools to be between $199 billion and $246 billion, which includes both the increased costs of dealing with COVID-19 and the loss of state revenue.
Furthermore, there have been record declines in enrollment throughout the country. Though there is not yet comprehensive national data on enrollment declines, a recent report from NPR shows there have been major reductions in dozens of school districts across at least 20 states. Of note, Los Angeles Unified School District in California, the second largest district in the country, has reported a drop in enrollment by 11,000 in students, while Miami-Dade County Public School District in Florida has lost at least 8,000 students, primarily from pre-K and kindergarten students.
Student enrollment is directly tied to the amount of state funding allocated for school districts, and such massive declines in enrollment throughout the US will be used to justify further austerity.
New York faces a $16 billion budget shortfall and the deficit is expected to grow to $66 billion over the next four years. According to a report by the New York State School Boards Association (NYSSBA), school budget cuts combined with increased costs would leave nearly four in 10 school districts in the state either financially insolvent or unable to provide a sound, basic education to their students.
New York City alone faces a $9 billion debt for the next two years, and Democratic Mayor Bill de Blasio has already instituted mass furloughs and threatened layoffs of 22,000 workers if the city is denied funds from the state. On Thursday, city officials announced they will not be paying teachers $900 million in retroactive pay due to budget cuts.
Various financial maneuvers and stop gap measures such as hiring freezes, cuts to programs, and school funding deferments have allowed many districts to stave off greater budget cuts and layoffs, but only in the short term. September’s mass job terminations are but a foreshadow of the looming economic disaster many districts face in the coming months. In many districts there are politicians promoting illusions that federal aid will stave off cuts, but in reality the entire political establishment is determined to destroy public education by starving districts and states of funds. The transition to remote learning, while necessary for public health, will be used by capitalist politicians to justify further budget cuts and mass layoffs.
The mass layoffs in education have largely gone unreported in the mainstream media, while the American Federation of Teachers (AFT), the National Education Association (NEA), and their state and local affiliates have done nothing to expose their extensiveness or carry out any struggle in defense of workers’ jobs. A snapshot of some of the recent layoffs include:
In New York, Schenectady City School District laid off over 100 teachers, social workers and school counselors and over 200 paraprofessionals on September 15 to cover $22 million of a $28.5 million budget deficit. Albany City School District eliminated nearly 220 full-time positions and restructured two specialized schools to cover $16 million of a projected $26 million deficit. Another 220 layoffs were announced at the end of September in Rochester City School District. The layoffs, which include cafeteria workers, custodial staff, and campus assistants, will be effective October 16.
In California, Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD), the second largest district in the country, has seen nearly 520 job terminations and 265 resignations since August, which includes both school employees and teachers. The Los Alamitos Unified School District eliminated 15 positions last month. Originally planning to lay off 292 workers in the district, the board withdrew its intention after plans were made to reopen elementary and middle schools in the district to in-person instruction. The decision came after teachers were on the brink of strike action and the union backed down from opposition, helping to push through a plan to reopen schools.
In Florida, Broward County Public School District is offering pay raises to teachers who agree to teach in-person, while teachers who don’t return must apply for a leave of absence, which in most cases will likely be unpaid.
In Frederick County, Virginia, nearly 600 school bus drivers and food service workers in Frederick County Public School District were laid off, effective September 15.
In Maryland, Baltimore City School District last month announced layoffs of over 450 temporary employees and imposed a hiring freeze as it tries to make up for a $21 million budget shortfall. The layoffs will affect many full-time employees, including some teachers and teachers’ assistants.
In Dayton, Ohio, over 240 school employees at Dayton County Public Schools were temporarily laid off last month in order to save $2.4 million over the course of nine weeks. Layoffs included teachers, nurses, counselors, administration, bus drivers and clerical staff. The layoffs have been met by protests from parents, teachers and other school staff.
The Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act allocated only $13.2 billion of the total $2 trillion for K–12 public education, which accounted for less than 2 percent of total public education funding in the 2020–21 school year. This funding, which was stipulated to be used only for additional costs in dealing with the virus and not budget issues, has long since dried up.
Trump’s Education Secretary Betsy DeVos recently stated at an online event, “We have continued to urge states and districts to make sure they’re offering [in-person learning] as an option to families. Of course, these are state and local decisions, but we will continue to use the bully pulpit to urge this to happen.”
In July, Trump offered to include $105 billion in a future stimulus package, under the stipulation that if a given local district did not reopen, the money would be withheld, to “follow the child.” These are code words for transferring public funds to private, religious or privately-managed charter schools, with Trump seeking to blackmail schools into reopening with in-person instruction.
A Special Education teacher in Hawaii with a PhD in Education, who has been teaching in Hawaii Public School District for over 20 years, spoke on the conditions in her state. She has been on medical leave since classes began in August and recently put in for leave without pay through December due to the uncertainty of schools reopening.
She declared, “I’m done fighting this. Special Education teachers here are not getting approved to telework. I have not gotten unemployment and my school would rather have an unlicensed teacher as a sub for my kids coming face-to-face than work something out with me for distance learning. It’s beyond shameful what’s happening here.”
Sylvia, a preschool teacher in Queen Creek Arizona with 12 years, is one of a handful of teachers in her district who face retaliation after voicing safety concerns and taking leave at the beginning of the school year. She took two weeks’ leave and was threatened with her position being reassigned just prior to returning to work. Her current position was given to the teaching aide, and her application for FMLA has been denied by the district, which is instead offering only 35 continuous days of leave with no pay.
Sylvia commented, “They are keeping the teaching aide in that position and told my students’ parents that they would be changing the teacher requirements for preschool teachers. I’m not feeling well because my rheumatoid arthritis is really out of control due to the stress.
“Right now I am out until December. The stress has taken a huge toll on both my mental and physical well-being. I absolutely need a job and can’t afford to be out without pay, and they know this. I am not sure what to do. I shouldn’t be working but I can’t afford not to. It feels as if they are going above and beyond to keep me out of my classroom, and it definitely feels like I am being punished for taking leave. I am just so disheartened.”
The struggle against deadly school reopenings and the threat it places on millions of lives is inextricably bound up with the fight for jobs and high quality public education. Under the current structures, neither state or local officials, nor the trade unions are offering any protections for jobs or workers’ lives. This is why workers must form their own organizations, independent of the unions, to fight back.
There has been growing opposition to school reopenings by educators, parents and students across the US and internationally. Its most conscious expression has been in the building of the Educators Rank-and-File Safety Committees, which have already been established in New York City, Detroit, Los Angeles, Florida, Texas, and Pennsylvania, with more currently being developed across the US.
This network of safety committees has been meeting regularly through national online meetings to unite and organize education workers and prepare for a nationwide general strike to close schools, provide high quality online education, stop the spread of the pandemic and save lives. We urge all those who wish to take up this struggle to contact us today to get involved.
How the Democratic Party Can Avoid Falling into Right-Wing Traps
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3u1TOFZWjVg&ab_channel=TheHumanistReport
A timeline of the fascist conspiracy to kidnap and kill Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2020/10/12/time-o12.html?pk_campaign=newsletter&pk_kwd=wsws
The conspiracy to target Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer for kidnap and assassination unfolded over a six-month period. The numbers in the text refer to the locations highlighted on the map.
April 15—Armed right-wing activists demonstrate in Lansing at the state Capitol against the coronavirus lockdown orders issued by Governor Whitmer.
(1)
April 30 —Heavily armed right-wing activists demonstrate in Lansing and occupy the balcony inside the state Capitol building, overlooking the legislators. Several of the future conspirators, including Michael and William Null, are in the group carrying assault rifles.
May 18 —Armed right-wing activists rally in Grand Rapids against the coronavirus lockdown, where they are addressed by Dar Leaf, sheriff of nearby Barry County, who has vowed not to enforce Whitmer’s orders. William Null is in attendance, providing security.
June 6 —Adam Fox, Barry Croft and a dozen other people from several states meet in Dublin, Ohio, in the suburbs of Columbus, to discuss action against the coronavirus lockdowns in many states. Fox and Croft organize the meeting after getting in contact with each other online. There is discussion about killing “tyrants” and “taking” a current governor. A key next step decided on is to make contact with a local Michigan militia group to get reinforcements.
June 18 —Fox, Garbin and leaders of the Wolverine Watchmen attend a gun rights rally at the state Capitol in Lansing, apparently meeting face to face for the first time. Fox expresses the desire to recruit 200 men to storm the Capitol, take hostages from the state legislature and top officials, including Whitmer, and try her for treason.
(2)
June 20 —Fox hosts a meeting in the basement of the Vac Shack, where he works and lives. He collects the cell phones of all participants but does not detect the listening device worn by an FBI informant, who records the meeting. They discuss plans to attack the state Capitol and use Molotov cocktails to destroy police vehicles which respond. They decide to begin firearms and tactical training in July.
(3)
June 28 —Fox and his group, including Garbin, Kaleb Franks, and Brandon Caserta, attend a tactical training session in Munith, at the home of Peter Musico and Joseph Morrison. Fox, Garbin and Caserta stay for a meeting to discuss attacks on the government and kidnapping of politicians.
(4)
July 10-12 —At least five members of the group, including Fox, Franks, Croft, Garbin and Caserta, travel to Cambria, Wisconsin, 90 miles northwest of Milwaukee, for a weapons training session hosted by an ultraright militia activist. They participate in combat drills, and Croft, Garbin and others try to build an improvised explosive device, which fails to explode.
July 18 —At another planning meeting in Ohio, Garbin proposes “shooting up” Whitmer’s vacation home in northern Michigan, saying the Capitol is too difficult a target. Garbin, Fox, Croft, Harris and Franks also discuss attacking a Michigan State Police facility.
July 27-28 —Fox decides to switch the target of planning to kidnapping Whitmer at her vacation home in northern Michigan, and communicates this proposal to the other members of the group, who accept it.
August 9 —Fox, Franks, Harris and other militia members participate in further tactical training in Munith, this time with an attack on Whitmer’s vacation home as the main project. According to an informant, Harris proposes simply killing the governor, “Have one person go to her house. Knock on the door and when she answers it, just cap her....”
(5)
August 23 —At a meeting at Harris’s home in Lake Orion, all attendees have to bring paperwork to prove their identities, and their discussions are shifted to a different encrypted messaging app because of fear of police infiltration. Franks announces that he has spent $4,000 on a helmet and night-vision goggles to be used in night-time surveillance of the governor’s vacation home.
(6)
August 29 —Fox, Molitor and others locate Whitmer’s vacation home and take video and still photographs of it during a drive-by. They locate the nearest local and state police stations and calculate how long it would take the police to respond in the event of an alarm.
(7)
September 12-13 —The six key participants in the proposed kidnapping travel to a property in Luther, Michigan, owned by Garbin’s family, located about 90 miles from the Whitmer vacation home, to conduct what amounts to a dress rehearsal. Two men from Wisconsin join them. Croft successfully detonates a bomb that would be used against a police pursuit after they seize Whitmer. Silhouettes have been set up in a perimeter around the bomb to determine its blast radius. They drive in three vehicles to the vacation home, where Croft proposes an immediate attack but is dissuaded. They conduct armed surveillance. After arriving back at Luther property, Franks states, “Kidnapping, arson, death. I don’t care.” The next day, Fox posts in an encrypted chat that they cannot wait until late October but must take action earlier.
October 2 —Ultraright activist Eric Allport, 43, is killed in a shootout with FBI agents outside a restaurant in Madison Heights, a suburb just north of Detroit, after they attempt to arrest him on weapons charges. Allport is a supporter of the “Boogaloo bois” and a former neighbor of white supremacist Randy Weaver, the lone survivor of the 1992 Ruby Ridge, Idaho siege in which federal agents killed his wife and son. Allport served an 11-year prison sentence for shooting at police officers. He is not known to be tied to the conspiracy against Whitmer, but the incident may have triggered the decision by state and federal officials to arrest the group.
(8)
October 7 —Federal and state police make arrests across Michigan, in Delaware and South Carolina, rounding up 13 men in total. The biggest raid is at the home of Ty Garbin in Hartland, where Garbin, Fox, Harris and Franks were to meet to pay for explosives and exchange tactical gear, a final step before the planned attack on Whitmer. The raids involve more than 200 local, state and federal agents.
PV Squared - Residential Solar - Our Clients Have Spoken
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D14WxNTuYMw&list=PLDRDpp7uUfrh4kcqNcNSJyku_FckLMtO0&ab_channel=PVSquaredSolar%28PioneerValleyPhotovoltaics%29
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