San Diego educators launch rank-and-file safety committee to halt school reopenings and save lives

San Diego Educators Rank-and-File Safety Committee




https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2020/10/16/sdrf-o16.html?pk_campaign=newsletter&pk_kwd=wsws

The San Diego Educators Rank-and-File Safety Committee has been established in direct opposition to the dangerous reopening of schools to in-person instruction throughout San Diego County in Southern California.

Our efforts are part of a growing network of safety committees built by rank-and-file teachers, schools workers, parents and students throughout the US and internationally. These committees answer directly to the interests of the working class, not to major corporations, Wall Street, or their political representatives in the Democratic and Republican parties. Nor do we answer to the teachers unions which have facilitated school reopenings, allowing tens of thousands of students and educators to become infected and dozens of educators to die in the past three months.
Unlike the union bureaucracies, our rank-and-file safety committees are genuinely democratic organizations that serve to unite the working class to halt the spread of the pandemic and save lives.

The drive to reopen schools and colleges serves the interests of Wall Street and the financial elite, whose political and union lackeys promote the lie that schools can be reopened “safely.” In San Diego, as in New York City and other Democrat-led cities and states, the implementation of the phased-in “hybrid model” is a political ploy being used to begin the transition to fully in-person learning. However, the majority of teachers, students, and staff know full well that there can be no guarantee of safety with any in-person teaching, and hybrid models fundamentally accept the same risk of exposure, infection, and death as fully in-person learning.

In allowing for schools to reopen to in-person instruction, California’s Democratic Governor Gavin Newsom is signing on to Trump’s homicidal herd immunity strategy which will result in a terrible escalation of disease and death. The local, state, and national teachers’ unions have signed on to this strategy. Since the entire political establishment is united in pursuing this criminal policy, teachers must organize and mobilize independently.

As educators, students, and working class community members committed to preventing the further loss of any life, we forcefully reject the policy of “herd immunity” peddled by politicians and district officials alike which endangers the working class.

To write off the death of even one student or school employee as an “acceptable casualty” or “inevitable loss” is reprehensible. We insist: The life of each and every student and school employee is invaluable and non-negotiable! California is approaching 785,000 COVID-19 cases, with a death toll nearing 15,000 as cases and deaths continue to rise throughout the state. Despite these staggering figures, Governor Newsom’s reopening plan allows any county with a test positivity rate below 8 percent or a daily case positivity rate of 7 per 100,000 over a 21-day period to reopen schools for in-person instruction.

In those counties with a positivity rate higher than 8 percent, schools can still apply for waivers to reopen to in-person instruction. Hundreds of schools throughout the state, particularly elementary schools, have already received these waivers to reopen. San Diego County has reported 50,614 cases and 826 deaths and a current positivity rate of 3.5 percent, and has been able to reopen schools and businesses since September 1.

The challenges posed by the pandemic in education can only be met by devoting the necessary resources to it. While workers are routinely told that there is no money for education or any necessary social services, this is a blatant lie in California, the wealthiest state in the US and home to over 150 billionaires.

Social conditions were already dire prior to the pandemic. One in three K-12 students in California faced food and housing insecurity as the state has one of the highest poverty rates in the country. A 2018 study by the Hope Center for College, Community, and Justice found that over 50 percent of community college students have experienced housing and/or food insecurity, figures which have undoubtedly been exacerbated by the economic fallout from the pandemic.

Having already been starved of state and federal funding for education for decades, schools in California face unprecedented budget deficits in the coming years as a result of the economic crisis produced by the pandemic. Tens of thousands of teachers and school employees have been laid off since March, with hundreds of thousands more educators’ jobs threatened by looming budget cuts.

More than 400 San Diego Unified School District (SDUSD) employees were laid off in April alone due to compounded economic issues, and over 200 teachers, librarians, and counselors in Sweetwater Union High School District (SUHSD) were laid off in March due to a more than $30 million budget deficit prior to the pandemic.

Facing opposition from teachers and students throughout the county and amid rising positive cases in the region, the three largest school districts in San Diego County were forced to begin the school year under a virtual model, in an attempt to bide time for plans to reopen in-person instruction. These districts—San Diego Unified School District, Sweetwater Union High School District, and Poway Unified School District—plan to finalize a date for in-person reopening plans under a phased in, hybrid model for their student populations by the end of November.

San Diego Unified School District, the largest district in the county and second largest in California, has already begun implementing phase one of their reopening plan by offering voluntary one-on-one as well as small group in-person instruction to the district’s 60,000 TK-5th grade students, as well as in-person sessions to its 12,000 students with special needs.

Other public school districts, such as Cajon Valley and Lakeside Unified, will be offering in-person and online options for their entire student population starting this month. Dozens of private schools in the county have already begun fully in-person instruction.

At University of California San Diego (UCSD), the campus will hold 12 percent of their classes in-person, and allow more than 7,500 students into the on-campus dormitories at the end of September. The Fall quarter has yet to begin but already the university has announced that at least 47 students, 21 staff and 184 health care workers have so far tested positive for COVID-19.

Nearby San Diego State University (SDSU) has made national headlines for their skyrocketing cases as a result of in-person classes and on-campus housing. As of September 20, over 851 students have tested positive for the virus, with roughly 200 more positive tests each week.

Motivated by science and the interests of teachers, students, and their communities, we issue the following immediate demands:
An immediate halt to all in-person and hybrid instruction for K-12 schools and colleges in San Diego County until the virus is contained! This is non-negotiable. It is not possible to reopen safely at this time.


Full funding for public education, internet access and online instruction so that schools can remain online! Students and teachers have been left with inadequate training and preparation for online learning, no doubt compromising the educational and teaching experience. Large portions of the trillions of dollars handed to the rich by Congress through the CARES Act must be redistributed to provide educators and learners the means and technology necessary to carry out fully remote instruction, including high-quality computer hardware and software, and utilities free of charge. Families must be provided with high quality food, mental health care, special education supports and all other resources needed to provide the best remote learning environment for every student and educator.


Full income protection for all educators who choose to teach from home! Teachers must be protected from losing their positions at their school if they decide to remain virtual. Additionally, teachers must be provided unlimited sick leave to avoid the macabre outcome of rationing sick days based on severity of symptoms. We reject the blackmailing of teachers who are threatened with losing their credentials should they break contracts to protect themselves by refusing to enter schools.


Full income, housing protection and medical care for parents who elect to stay home to facilitate their children’s education! The well-being of children is not limited to ending the immediate threat of the virus, but also having a stable home life and access to nutrition. Parents must be liberated to focus on the issues and concerns that arise with their children’s education, without the threat of economic ruination. Teachers, school workers, and parents have the same interests. Unlike the politicians, educators are genuinely concerned about the loss of income that parents would have if they stay home in order to ensure the safety of their child.


Full support to whistle-blowers who draw attention to the problems at hand for all school employees, students, parents and the public! We reject the cover-up of COVID-19 cases where schools have reopened. Teachers and students have been retaliated against and censored by administrators across the US for revealing dangerous policies and outbreaks, but all information regarding cases and the spread of the virus must be shared. Any efforts by administrators or government officials to conceal the details about the spread of the infection must be opposed and the truth revealed to the public.


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 and their own safety committees to enforce safe conditions. All nonessential workers and laid-off workers must be provided with full salary and access to free health care, including regular COVID-19 testing.


For the immediate freezing of college tuition, abolition of student loan debt, and the provision of free housing and meals to all students during the period of remote instruction! Universities are opening up across the nation with massive spikes, forcing thousands of students to isolate in dormitories in prison-like conditions. This must be stopped.


For the full protection of all immigrant students, workers and their children, including full income support while they are unable to work in unsafe workplaces! A large number of students in San Diego County cross the border daily to attend school in the US. Thousands of families straddle the border, with millions more in families comprised of members with mixed immigration status. We demand a halt to all imprisonment and deportation by the federal authorities and the abolition of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement and its brutal and criminal operations. We call for a united struggle of workers and students in the US and Mexico.


The reopening of schools for in-person learning shall only be determined democratically by rank-and-file committees of educators, school workers, parents and students, based on an independent assessment of trusted scientists and health experts. We will not accept the current deadly working conditions imposed upon us. Our demands are based on science and the interests of the vast majority of the population, and they are not negotiable.


Should rank and file safety committees decide for schools to reopen face-to-face, we demand safety measures, preparation, and sanitation of facilities be enacted at the highest scientific level. Universal daily rapid on-site testing of all faculty, students and staff must be made mandatory. School ventilation systems must be renovated or replaced to comply with scientific recommendations for a safe environment. Registered nurses must be stationed at every school, and authorized and trained to oversee testing and robust contact tracing. Working alongside educators organized in the rank-and-file safety committee, they must ensure that safety protocols are fully enacted. Teachers have the collective right to refuse to work under unsafe conditions.

Each of these demands must be fully paid for by the corporate and financial oligarchy that controls the entire political system in California, among the most unequal states in the US. During the first three months of the pandemic, the state’s 154 billionaires, including Tesla CEO Elon Musk, collectively amassed $174.4 billion, almost as much as the entire $202.1 billion state budget for the 2020-21 fiscal year.

San Diego is also a center of the military-industrial complex and the principal home port of the US Navy’s Pacific Fleet. The cost of a single aircraft carrier is $13 billion and the total costs of the developing Nimitz class of carriers was $37.3 billion, enough to hire 462,000 teachers each earning an $80,000 annual salary. We reject the lie that there is no money to fund high quality remote education and services to all students amid the pandemic!

All workers and youth have the same interests in defending their lives and their right to high quality public education. Education, from preschool to university levels, involves teachers, substitute teachers, specialists, nurses, office staff, counselors, administrators, bus drivers, special education support staff, cafeteria workers, custodians, electricians, construction workers, psychologists, and volunteers working together with parents and students.

The national, state, and local teachers’ unions tell educators that all they can do is appeal to the conscience of the powers that be, even though their economic interests are diametrically opposed to the interests of teachers, school workers and parents. From the national American Federation of Teachers (AFT) and National Education Association (NEA) to the local San Diego Education Association (SDEA) and Sweetwater Education Association (SEA), they continue to appeal to congress to pass the fraudulent HEROES Act, while pushing open the doors to the most vulnerable students in order to set a precedent towards full reopening.

Our committee bases itself on science. We warn that the current reopening plans are extremely dangerous and will lead to the rapid spread of the COVID-19 virus throughout the population. We call on all students, educators, and workers to organize independently and democratically. Join the San Diego Educators Rank-and-File Safety Committee and take up the fight to prepare for a general strike of the entire working class to halt the reopening of schools, stop the spread of the pandemic and save lives.

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IMF reports on global economy: Political conclusions

Nick Beams




https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2020/10/16/imfr-o16.html?pk_campaign=newsletter&pk_kwd=wsws

One of the most significant issues to emerge from the reports prepared by the International Monetary Fund for its semi-annual meeting conducted from Washington this week is the total dependence of the global capitalist economy and its financial system on the state.

It was not the intention of their authors, but these reports, revealing the extent of state intervention by governments and central banks, blow apart for all time the nostrums of the so-called “free market,” which lie at the centre of the various forms of bourgeois ideology and mystification.
When the pandemic initially struck, the air was filed with talk of “snap backs,” “rebounds” and “V-shaped” recoveries as the proponents of the “free market” sought to promote the resilience of this system.

But facts, as the saying goes, are stubborn things and they speak to the far-reaching and deep-going nature of the crisis.

The headline figure to emerge from the IMF reports was a 4.4 contraction in the world economy this year followed by a 5.2 percent rebound next year and a return to growth of 3.5 percent thereafter.

But even on this best-case scenario, based on the assumption that the virus can be brought under control, either via a vaccine or other measures, the cumulative loss of global output compared to the pre-pandemic path is forecast to grow from $11 trillion in 2020–21 to $28 trillion in the period 2020–2025. At least 90 million people, and most likely many more, are expected to fall into “extreme deprivation” this year alone.

The total intervention by governments around the world amounts to what the IMF “Fiscal Monitor Report” describes as a “staggering” $12 trillion, close to 12 percent of global GDP. Total government debt is expected to rise to a record high of 100 percent of global GDP.

On top of this there is the $7.5 trillion which has been pumped into the financial system by the world’s central banks, with the US Federal Reserve leading the way.

In his foreword to the “Global Financial Stability” report, its chief author Tobias Adrian notes that as a result of these actions, “the adverse macro-financial feedback loops that were so prevalent and pernicious in the 2008 crisis have largely been contained.”

That is, at least for now. Because, as the report makes clear, the emergence of a “feed-back loop” in which a crisis in the financial system leads to a collapse in a real economy that in turn feeds into the financial system, has only been pushed down the road and remains an ever-present threat.

According to Adrian “financial vulnerabilities are rising, putting medium-term financial stability and growth at risk.”

Commenting in a blog post on the divorce between the elevation of stock markets in the US to near record highs, in the face of the deepest economic recessions since the Great Depression, he noted: “As long as investors believe that markets will continue to benefit from policy support, valuations may stay elevated for some time.”

In other words, all the calculations used in the past, such as price-earnings ratios and the relationship between the stock market and the underlying economy, are out the window. The rise of the stock market, which has seen the funnelling of trillions of dollars into the coffers of the financial oligarchy, is totally dependent on the provision of money by central banks.

But such a situation cannot continue indefinitely and the very measures taken today to avert a collapse only prepare the way for an even bigger crisis in the future.

According to Adrian, while additional borrowing helped avoid a wave of bankruptcies in the early stages, it has led to a further rise in corporate debt. “But many of these firms already had very high levels of debt before the crisis, and now indebtedness in some sectors is reaching new highs. This means that solvency risks may have shifted into the future and renewed liquidity pressures could easily morph into insolvencies.”

The threat of a crisis goes across, the board. Having already run up large deficits, the fiscal capacity of governments “to provide further support may become more limited.” Non-bank financial institution such as insurance companies and asset managers now play “an important role in credit markets, including in its riskier segments.”

So far they have managed to cope with market turbulence because of “policy support” but at “some point, fragilities could spread through the entire financial system.” As well, “some low-income countries are so heavily indebted that they face imminent debt distress, because of borrowing costs at prohibitive levels.”

The facts and figures presented by the IMF on the global economy and the extent of massive state intervention raise fundamental issues of political perspective before the international working class.

For long decades, the ideologists of the ruling class have maintained that the market system, based on the private ownership of the means of production and finance, is the only viable, the only possible, form of socio-economic organisation.

They have, of course, at times added that there needs to be state intervention to iron out problems that emerge in its functioning. But a qualitative transformation has taken place in the past period.

The 2008 crisis saw the institution of a series of measures described as temporary to be withdrawn once “normal” conditions had returned. But that never happened and the process of quantitative easing, in which central banks bought trillions of dollars of financial assets, became permanent and has been extended in the COVID crisis such that banking and financial systems could not continue a day without it.

The COVID-19 pandemic did not create this tendency but accelerated it, revealing its essential content as the capitalist state steps forward to now play the central and directing role in every area of the economy and the financial system.

The World Socialist Web Site has previously pointed to the prescient analysis made by Leon Trotsky in the aftermath of World War I as capitalist governments in Europe created massive amounts of paper money to cover the debts they had incurred as a result of wartime spending.

Drawing out the historical implication of these actions, Trotsky wrote:


The state-isation of economic life, against which capitalist liberalism used to protest so much, has become an economic fact of life. There is no turning back from this fact—it is impossible to return not only to free competition but even to the domination of trusts and other economic octopuses. Today the one and only issue is: Who shall henceforth be the bearer of state-ised production—the imperialist state or the state of the victorious proletariat?

Trotsky drew out that the urgent task confronting the working class was to seize state power, the establishment of a workers’ government, as the first necessary step to take control of “the disrupted and ruined” economy and regenerate it on socialist principles. This task now rises before the working class even more directly today.

The issue is not state intervention per se—the economic necessity of which has been established by capitalist agencies such as the IMF—but which class directs the social, economic and political power of the state.

If state power is left in the hands of the capitalist class and the financial oligarchs at its pinnacle, then the only outcome of state intervention will be growing poverty and misery for the mass of the population.

This is not a matter of conjecture but a fact of economic life. It has been demonstrated by the experience of the past six months in which state intervention has seen the transfer of trillions of dollars into the hands of the ruling elites as the mass of the population confronts the worst conditions since the Great Depression and a pandemic that continues to rage out of control.

This situation is not simply the product of the policy decisions taken by a Trump, a Johnson, a Macron or any of the other government leaders around the world. Of course, their policies—to carry out a murderous return to work policy so that profit flows may continue or to hand over billions of dollars to the banks and major corporations while cutting assistance for workers—have played a decisive role.

But in the final analysis the decisions they make are the translation into politics of objective economic impulses emanating from the very structure of the capitalist system over which they preside.

These impulses arise from the very nature of the capitalist economy based on the production of commodities, not for their use value in increasing the material well-being of the population or ensuring their health, but to ensure the extraction of surplus value through the exploitation of the working class.

It is this entire system of production that must now be overturned through the seizure of the political power by the working class as the first step in establishing a new economic order.

While they certainly did not intend it, the necessity of this perspective leaps out from the pages of the reports by the IMF on the state of the world economy after just more than six months of the pandemic experience.

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Ahead of New Zealand election, PM Jacinda Ardern lies about reducing poverty

Tom Peters



https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2020/10/16/nzel-o16.html?pk_campaign=newsletter&pk_kwd=wsws




New Zealand Labour Party leader and incumbent Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern participated in a final televised debate on Thursday against opposition National Party leader Judith Collins, ahead of tomorrow’s election.

The debate, like the entire election campaign, underscored the lack of meaningful differences between these two parties of militarism and big business. Neither has put forward any significant election policies. Radio NZ’s Kathryn Ryan commented on Monday, “I don’t think I have ever seen a campaign so void of substantive policy debate and discussion.”

This is because the entire political establishment is conspiring to hide the real agenda of the ruling elite from the working class. The election takes place in the context of an unprecedented global economic crisis triggered by the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. The next government, whoever leads it, will be tasked with ramping up the assault on workers’ living standards, enforcing mass redundancies and wage cuts, while further integrating New Zealand into US war plans against China. To suppress opposition, the police and intelligence agencies, and the powers of the state censor, will continue to be strengthened.

There has been zero discussion by the established parties, including in the four televised debates between Ardern and Collins, about the danger of world war and the threat of dictatorship and fascism in the United States, New Zealand’s military and intelligence ally.

When the two leaders were asked in one debate for their views on Donald Trump, Collins praised him and Ardern pledged to continue to work with him if he is elected—remaining silent on Trump’s threat to stay in office regardless of the US election outcome. After Trump got infected with COVID-19, as a result of his administration’s homicidal “herd immunity” policy that has killed more than 200,000 people, Ardern extended to him “New Zealand’s best wishes for a speedy recovery.”

Neither candidate or any other politician in the election campaign commented on the Trump-inspired plan of fascist forces to kidnap and execute the Democratic governors of Michigan and other states as a means to enable his theft of the election.

Ardern’s government was formed in 2017 with support from the Trump administration, which opposed the previous National Party government’s reluctance to fully align with the build-up to war against North Korea and China. The viciously anti-Asian NZ First Party, which was in the position of choosing who would govern despite only receiving seven percent of the votes, decided to form a coalition with the Labour Party, which shared its overtly anti-Chinese stance, supported by the Greens.

While New Zealand, with 25 deaths, has so far escaped the worst effects of the coronavirus, the working class is experiencing the sharpest social crisis in the post-World War II period after the collapse of the tourism industry, and mass job losses in retail, manufacturing and other sectors.

In last night’s debate and subsequent interviews Ardern asserted, in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary, that her government had fulfilled its promise to reduce child poverty and just needed more time to finish the job.

The most recent official figures, from 2019, show a statistically negligible reduction of about 2 percent in the number of children in households below the poverty line of 50 percent of the median income. After housing costs are accounted for, almost one in four children continue to live in poverty. As Collins pointed out, the number of children living in “material hardship,” meaning the poorest of the poor, actually increased between 2018 and 2019 by 4,100, from 13.26 to 13.42 percent.

The government’s pro-business response to the present crisis has made the situation far worse.

The Ardern government, with the full support of its coalition partners, the Green Party and NZ First, and the opposition National and Act Parties, has prioritised the interests of the financial elite. It has handed out tens of billions of dollars in bailouts, loans, subsidies and tax concessions to major corporations. The Reserve Bank’s quantitative easing operation is propping up the profits of the banks by printing up to $100 billion to buy back government bonds.

The same corporations that have been bailed out have carried out mass redundancies, with the collaboration of the trade union bureaucracy which has suppressed any resistance in the working class.

By June, median incomes had fallen by 7.6 percent from last year—the first decline ever recorded. Figures released today show the number of people on the Jobseeker (unemployment) benefit has risen by 61,000 people or 43 percent in the past year. Almost 12 percent of the working age population is on welfare. More redundancies are looming as 95,000 people are in jobs supported by the government’s temporary wage subsidy scheme.

In one of the few heated exchanges in last night’s debate, Collins warned that a Labour-Greens coalition would implement the Green Party’s proposed “wealth tax.” This extremely modest policy, part of the Greens’ attempt to posture as a “left” alternative, would tax assets worth over $1 million at just 1 percent, and assets over $2 million at 2 percent.

Ardern denounced Collins for running “a blatant campaign of misinformation,” and stated that she would never introduce such a tax, which in any case would not meaningfully reduce inequality. The Greens, for their part, say the policy is not a “bottom line,” meaning it will be abandoned in any coalition deal with Labour.

Ardern and Collins both refused to commit to any policies to bring down the cost of housing, which is a major source of wealth for speculators. In the past three years, house prices have risen by more than a quarter and homelessness is deeply entrenched. Ardern’s promise in 2017 to address the housing crisis by building thousands of affordable houses proved to be another fraud. The number of people on the public housing waiting list has nearly quadrupled to 20,000.

Based on the polls, the Labour Party is widely expected to be re-elected either with an absolute majority, or with just under 50 percent of the votes, in which case it will need to form a coalition, most likely with the Green Party (polling between 6 and 8 percent). NZ First, which has made numerous racist anti-immigrant statements resembling the words of Christchurch terrorist Brenton Tarrant, is deeply unpopular with only 2 percent support and is unlikely to return to parliament.

This does not indicate any let-up in the shift to the right by the political establishment. Labour and National have essentially adopted NZ First’s anti-immigrant policies. Both Ardern and Collins indicated that they want to see a reduction in immigration once the borders are reopened, while refusing to give a specific number. The Ardern government is seeking to scapegoat migrants for the social crisis and has refused to give welfare payments to non-residents made redundant.

The National Party polled at just 31 percent in TVNZ’s poll last night. The party is in turmoil with two leadership changes in recent months and several prominent members announcing their retirement after the election. Some of National’s support appears to have gone to the far-right Act Party, which has benefited from positive media coverage and polled about the same as the Greens.

In opposition to the pseudo-left groups, which falsely portray a Labour-Greens government as “reformist” or progressive, the Socialist Equality Group warns that the next government, whichever party leads it, will continue the pro-capitalist onslaught. The policies of the Ardern government have already provoked mass nationwide strikes by nurses, doctors and teachers in 2018 and 2019, which were strangled and betrayed by the unions. The deepening austerity, however, will bring even broader layers of workers into conflict with the government and big business.

We urge those workers and young people looking for a real alternative to mass impoverishment and militarism to read our election statement, watch our recent webinar, and join the fight to build the Socialist Equality Group as the New Zealand section of the International Committee of the Fourth International.

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