Stealing Governors, Housing & Minimum Wage - Now More Than Ever

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bjfb2UF3sRs&ab_channel=MomentOfClaritywithLeeCamp

Twitter Censorship Reaches New Level

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WLpfPZe59Zk&ab_channel=MomentOfClaritywithLeeCamp

‘Capitalism on a Ventilator’/ The impact of COVID-19 in China & the U.S.

By Ted Kelly posted on October 13, 2020



https://www.workers.org/2020/10/51831/




“Capitalism on a Ventilator: The Impact of COVID-19 in China & the U.S” chronicles the terminal decline of capitalism. The book itself is an example of what can be accomplished through cooperation by progressive working-class organizations.

This anthology is a collaboration by social justice advocates like Ajamu Baraka of the Black Alliance for Peace, Margaret Flowers and the late Kevin Zeese from Popular Resistance, the Greyzone’s Max Blumenthal, historian and journalist Vijay Prashad, and Workers World Party leaders Monica Moorehead and Deirdre Griswold. The brilliant political prisoner and jailhouse professor, Mumia Abu-Jamal, contributes an essay dictated to Prison Radio. Firsthand accounts and analysis come from Lee Siu Hin of the China-U.S. Solidarity Network, who co-edited the book with Sara Flounders of the International Action Center.



The compilation of these works is an act of internationalism and working-class unity. The result demonstrates the successes and true potential of a socialist system and exposes the cruelty and injustice of the capitalist system.

In reviewing this groundbreaking anthology, I had foremost in mind that many of our readers have lost a loved one to the novel coronavirus that broke out in late 2019 and quickly spread across the Earth. Some of you reading this may have contracted COVID-19 yourself. The virus does not discriminate in its indifference to race, gender, nationality and even class, as has become abundantly clear since the U.S. White House “super spreader event” in early October.

But capitalism, on the other hand, does discriminate — in order to survive. It must draw borders and then enforce them at the barrel of a gun. It must isolate communities from their neighbors, and it must pit co-workers against each other. It must make a virtue of competition while outlawing cooperation.

“Capitalism intentionally breaks down social cohesion,” writes Sara Flounders in the book’s introduction. “Mass mobilizations, unions and community self-control organizations are a threat to exploitation. Police repression and racism are an essential part of the fabric of this society, used like Krazy Glue to forcibly hold together a crumbling system.”

Capitalist COVID’s toll on workers

Thirty-six and a half million workers in the U.S. joined the ranks of the unemployed as of October. As their jobs vanished, so did their health insurance. The lucky ones who kept their jobs faced the danger of exposure to a deadly virus. Grocery store and food distribution workers relied on pitiful wages without any guaranteed hazard pay. Even hospitals faced mass shortages of personal protective equipment (PPE), as nurses and other health care workers had to reuse disposable facemasks and fashion smocks out of trashbags and tarps.

One of the fastest growing job sectors in the U.S. is warehouse work, and the average salary is about $13 an hour. But none of these massive distribution networks were mobilized by the U.S. government to allocate dwindling supplies of PPE. Many of the 1.5 million warehouse workers are asking themselves if the risk of distributing cheap consumer goods during a pandemic is really “essential.”

The lives of our family members and friends and colleagues have been flung like coal into a furnace to keep the engine of capital running. For capitalism, this human sacrifice was, indeed, “essential” — essential to the functioning of a system whose sole purpose is to enable a small cohort of property owners to keep for themselves all the wealth that we create with our work. The stolen value of our collective labor is what they call profit.

This theft isn’t a secret. It’s a capitalist crime that’s committed in broad daylight, on the books, with the sanction of the courts and the approbation of the corporate press — just like the state murder of George Floyd.

The COVID-19 pandemic death toll in the U.S. had already surpassed 100,000 by May 25, 2020, when workers of the world saw with clarity what this capitalist state considers truly essential to its survival. On that day, the lynching of George Floyd by Minneapolis police was murder and not a “mistake.” It was an atrocity, and it is not an aberration.

Only with naked force can such a relatively small group of people — the capitalist class — maintain control over so many human beings. This class scatters and divides us with racist myths, xenophobic paranoia, the pseudoscience of “biological gender” and other outright lies, until workers and oppressed people lose sight of who our enemies really are.

As the virus festers, and we try to reckon with the fact that nearly a quarter of a million of us are now gone, we can come to only one conclusion: Mass death is the policy of the capitalist state.

Socialism pushes back COVID

But it doesn’t have to be this way. We know this because socialist states have shown us a different world is possible.

“The success of China’s struggle against the virus and the U.S. failure demonstrates the success of China’s socialist system and the failure and dysfunction of the U.S. capitalist system,” writes Lee Siu Hin. “It also shows that the arrogance of the U.S. — due to the ceaseless anti-communist cold war against China — meant that the U.S. could not put aside differences and learn from China’s successful experience.”

Lee Siu Hin, who has appeared on Workers World Party’s weekly live broadcasts (every Thursday at 8 p.m. ET), was in China in January and on his return to the U.S. followed closely the mass mobilization of worker power to contain the spread of the virus.

According to the World Health Organization: “In the face of a previously unknown virus, China has rolled out perhaps the most ambitious, agile and aggressive disease containment effort in history.” (“Truth and Propaganda about Coronavirus,” Vijay Prashad, Weiyan Zhu and Du Xiaojun)

The working class of China, Cuba, Vietnam and other socialist countries have provided us with an example of this truth. Every day, those of us living under capitalism confront unemployment, racism, ecological destruction, sexism and transphobia, poverty and homelessness and terror. Capitalism tells us that’s “just the way the world works.”

But socialism shows that they are obstacles which can be overcome through the power of a united and uncompromising working class.

Sheldon Whitehouse's EPIC Breakdown of Dark Money

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uCPp5UIawe8&ab_channel=TheMajorityReportw%2FSamSeder

Resurgence of Child Labor Amid Global Pandemic Offered as Proof That 'Capitalism Is Monstrous'

"Good time to remember that a number of free market economists defend child labor as being a good thing."


by
Kenny Stancil, staff writer



https://www.commondreams.org/news/2020/10/15/resurgence-child-labor-amid-global-pandemic-offered-proof-capitalism-monstrous




As the Covid-19 pandemic and corresponding economic upheaval threaten to push up to 150 million people into extreme poverty by 2021, in-depth reporting Thursday from the Associated Press showed that the coronavirus crisis is also undermining two decades of gains against child labor in the developing world, where an entire generation of impoverished children lacking access to safe education opportunities are being driven by economic necessity to work alongside their parents or in place of unemployed caretakers.

Progressive author and commentator Nathan Robinson said Thursday on social media that the dire situation demonstrates the depravity of the global economic system and its inability to guarantee the well-being of all the world's inhabitants despite there being more than enough resources to do so. "Capitalism is monstrous," he said.

Robinson also noted that it's a "good time to remember that a number of free market economists defend child labor as being a good thing because it's 'freely chosen' and work is good, so prohibiting it would be 'coercive.'"


In a Twitter thread, Robinson cited multiple examples of economists defending the alleged virtues of child labor, which Jeffrey Tucker of the right-wing think tank American Institute for Economic Research for instance described as an "opportunity [taken] away from kids" by compulsory schooling.

Tucker's euphemizing of child labor, which he imagines to be "exciting," is diametrically opposed to the AP's horrifying account of the resurgence of young people—coerced by worsening poverty and disrupted learning routines amid the coronavirus crisis—taking on often dangerous work to help keep their families from going hungry or becoming homeless.

"With classrooms shuttered and parents losing their jobs, children are trading their ABC's for the D of drudgery," wrote María Verza, Carlos Valdez, and William Costa in AP. "Reading, writing, and times tables are giving way to sweat, blisters, and fading hopes for a better life."

The journalists provide numerous examples of what potentially millions of children around the globe are doing now instead of going to school: "Children in Kenya are grinding rocks in quarries. Tens of thousands of children in India have poured into farm fields and factories. Across Latin America, kids are making bricks, building furniture, and clearing brush."

In addition to several harrowing photographs, AP shared the following video depicting the haunting "sounds of child labor":



"These children and adolescents," AP noted, "are earning pennies or at best a few dollars a day to help put food on the table"—putting in long hours at jobs that used to be after-school activities but have in recent months been transformed into full-time work.




Astrid Hollander, UNICEF's head of education in Mexico explained that "child labor becomes a survival mechanism for many families."

"We have seen new children and adolescents selling in the street," Patricia Velasco, manager of a city program for at-risk people in La Paz, Bolivia, told AP. "They've been pushed to generate income."

Child workers interviewed by AP told reporters that they missed school but understood the need to assist their families, and their parents expressed dismay at the implications of interrupted schooling.

Despite resource constraints, caretakers explained that they are doing their best to prevent their children from falling behind.

"Under their mother's watchful eye, the children work through schoolbooks they were given in February at the start of the school year," wrote Verza, Valdez, and Costa in AP. "Each morning in the workshop, she has them take time to study."

According to the news agency, governments are still trying to figure out exactly how many students have dropped out of their school systems, but with 1.5 billion schoolchildren affected by school closures at the height of national lockdowns, UNICEF has estimated that the worldwide numbers are likely in the millions.

Moreover, for at least 463 million children whose schools closed due to Covid-19, remote learning is not a possibility, prompting UNICEF executive director Henrietta Fore in August to declare the widespread disruptions in learning a "global education emergency."

Experts explained to AP that "in the past, most students who have missed class because of crises like the Ebola epidemic returned when schools reopened."

"But the longer the crisis drags on," they said, "the less likely [children and adolescents] will be to go back."

According to Fore, "the repercussions could be felt in economies and societies for decades to come," which is why UNICEF's Reimagine campaign calls for "urgent investment to bridge the digital divide, reach every child with remote learning, and, most critically, prioritize the safe reopening of schools."

Why Won’t Feinstein Call Out Amy Coney Barrett’s Lies?

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pN5IwX1UYqg&ab_channel=NomikiKonst

Up in Arms Over Failed Barrett Hearings, Watchdog Calls for Feinstein's Removal as Ranking Member on Senate Judiciary

Allowing the California Democratic senator to remain, argues Demand Justice's Brian Fallon is a "monument to our side's weakness on the fight for the courts."

by
Jon Queally, staff writer



https://www.commondreams.org/news/2020/10/15/arms-over-failed-barrett-hearings-watchdog-calls-feinsteins-removal-ranking-member

Angered by her soft approach during this week's confirmation hearings for President Donald Trump's Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett—on top of her failure to embrace progressive reforms to the nation's highest court—the head of a progressive judicial watchdog group on Thursday called for Sen. Dianne Feinstein's removal as the leading Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee.


During Tuesday's hearing for Barrett's confirmation, Fallon was among the many vocal critics of Feinstein's performance."It's time for Sen. Feinstein to step down from her leadership position on the Senate Judiciary Committee," said Brian Fallon, executive director of Demand Justice, in a statement. "If she won't, her colleagues need to intervene."



In his statement on Thursday, Fallon argued that Feinstein "has undercut Democrats' position at every step of this process, from undermining calls for filibuster and Court reform straight through to thanking Republicans for the most egregious partisan power grab in the modern history of the Supreme Court."

With Republicans set to ram through a vote on Barrett next week—scheduling a committee vote for Thursday and a floor vote in the Senate on Friday—Democrats have proved unable, or in the minds of some unwilling, to do anything to stop it.





As Elie Mystal wrote for The Nation on Thursday, the only solution to the Barrett "debacle" is expanding the court once Democrats win back the Senate.

"The argument for court expansion is often presented as retribution for Republicans messing with the court, first by blocking the nomination of Merrick Garland, now by rushing the appointment of Ruth Bader Ginsburg's successor," noted Mystal. "But there is a higher purpose for court expansion, one that goes beyond avenging Ginsburg and Garland. Expanding the court now—through raw political power, if necessary—is the best way to reform and depoliticize the court for future generations. Expanding the court is the way to save it. It's a lot like breaking a bone to reset the leg."

While progressive voices, and many Democratic lawmakers, have been increasingly strident in their call for increasing the number of the justices on the Supreme Court, Feinstein has not made her position on the subject known. Asked last month by a New York Times reporter if she would support an expansion, Feinstein responded: "Ask me when we win the majority."

But offering his assessment, Slate's Mark Joseph Stern tweeted Thursday that expanding the Supreme Court is the only viable option for Democrats if they want to actually win the kind of future they say they believe in:


For Fallon, Feinstein's failures—from putting decorum before principles during this week's hearings to dismissing a new generation of Democratic activists clamoring for change like she did with Sunrise Movement climate campaigners in her offices last year—can no longer be tolerated.


"If Senate Democrats are going to get their act together on the courts going forward," Fallon said, "they cannot be led by someone who treats Sunrise activists with contempt and the Republican theft of a Supreme Court seat with kid gloves."