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‘Thin Blue Line’ terrorizes Black mother and child

https://www.workers.org/2020/11/52139/




By Betsey Piette posted on November 2, 2020


Philadelphia

Not held accountable for brutalizing Black Philadelphia residents earlier this year during protests over the murder of George Floyd, police in Philadelphia appear to be more emboldened, and essentially out of control.

Less than 10 hours after two police officers were caught on video shooting and killing a 27-year-old Black man, Walter Wallace, Jr., who was in need of mental health intervention, 15 officers surrounded an SUV driven by Rickia Young and proceeded to brutalize and terrorize Young, her nephew and her two-year-old son.
Wallace had been killed in front of his mother and neighbors who were pleading with police not to shoot, late in the afternoon of Oct. 26. Young’s car was surrounded by cops wielding batons they used to smash the car’s windows shortly before 2 a.m. on Oct. 27. Both incidents took place within a mile of each other in West Philadelphia’s 18th police district.

A viral video of the police attack on Young, a Black 28-year-old home health aide, surfaced the next day. (tinyurl.com/yyvly22e) Her SUV is seen attempting to make a three-point-turn to leave the vicinity of 52nd and Chestnut streets, near a police confrontation with demonstrators protesting Wallace’s murder. After first signaling the driver to make the turn, around 15 officers then surround the vehicle. Several use their batons to smash the car’s windows.

Police then drag Young and her 16-year-old nephew from the car and proceed to beat them on the street. An officer is seen reaching in to remove a toddler from the car’s back seat.

As abhorrent as this police conduct captured by the video is, what happened after the incident is even more disturbing.

FOP uses child for pro-police propaganda

A social media post from the National Fraternal Order of Police (FOP) appeared on Facebook and Twitter on the morning of Oct. 28 showing a young, white, female officer holding a Black child (Young’s) with the false caption: “This child was lost during the violent riots in Philadelphia, wandering around barefoot in an area that was experiencing complete lawlessness. The only thing this Philadelphia police officer cared about in that moment was protecting this child.”

The FOP went on to say: “We are not your enemy. We are the Thin Blue Line. And WE ARE the only thing standing between Order and Anarchy.” The post has since been deleted.

Philadelphia civil rights attorneys Kevin Mincey and Riley H. Ross III, who are representing Young, later held a press conference where they denounced this propaganda and provided details about the police attack.

Cops: ‘He’s gonna go to a better place’

According to the lawyers, Young drove from her home near Temple University in North Philadelphia to pick up her nephew in West Philadelphia after seeing news coverage of the police riot against protesters. She took her son along to get him to sleep in the car. When she unknowingly turned onto a street where police were confronting demonstrators, she complied with their orders to turn around just before police surrounded her vehicle.

After badly beating Young, police separated her from her son and held her for several hours before releasing her without charges. Attorney Mincey told the media that when Young asked where police were taking her child, they refused to say, telling her, “He’s gonna go to a better place, we’re gonna report it to the Department of Human Services.” (Philly.com, Oct. 30)

While handcuffed, Young was given medical treatment at Jefferson University Hospital with police standing by. She had a bloody nose, a swollen trachea, blood in her urine, and swelling and pain on her left side. (Philly.com, Oct. 30)

During transport in a police van Young was able to use another woman’s cellphone to ask her mother to pick up her son. According to Mincey, police directed the toddler’s grandmother to a Center City location four miles from the arrest site, where she found the toddler sitting in his car seat in a police cruiser with two officers. “The child had a lump on his head and glass from the SUV’s broken window was still in his car seat,” Mincey said.

Police have not told Young where her car is. Mincey said that Young’s purse, wallet, and her son’s hearing aid were left in the car. The attorneys intend to file a civil rights case against the police department on behalf of Young and her son.

Young stands a good chance of winning her lawsuit. Should the Wallace family file, they too are likely to win. On average Philadelphia pays out $10 million a year for lawsuits stemming from police brutality. But in Philadelphia it is the taxpayers who pay for civil suits stemming from police abuse – police officers are protected from having to take direct responsibility.

FOP’s open reign to terrorize

Frank Rizzo, the notoriously racist and brutal former police commissioner (1968-71) and mayor (1972-80), gave the FOP free rein to unleash terror against the city’s Black and Brown communities, with little fear of reprisal. Not one mayor since Rizzo has dared to challenge this mob in blue.

In response to broad criticism of Philadelphia police actions against demonstrators early last summer, on Oct. 29 the City Council passed a ban on police use of “less lethal” munitions – tear gas, pepper spray and rubber bullets — against demonstrations and other activity protected by the First Amendment. Yet the resolution makes no mention of guns and batons – liberally used by cops in Philadelphia this week.

With the city’s political establishment reluctant to take on the “Thin Blue Line,” it is unlikely they will make any fundamental changes. This is why the movement is demanding: “Abolish the police!”

Amazon bans book exposing U.S. COVID chaos–a commentary

https://www.workers.org/2020/11/52143/




By Sara Flounders posted on November 2, 2020


A decision by the Amazon company to block a book focused on a scientific and cooperative approach to COVID-19 amounts to corporate information control operating at a new intensity. This censorship occurs while almost every form of U.S. media permits and promotes racist, unscientific and thoroughly confusing information.



The censored book is “Capitalism on a Ventilator: The Impact of COVID-19 in China & the U.S.” This anthology of 55 articles by a broad range of social justice authors discuss the importance of free health care, social distancing, testing, protective equipment, education and social mobilizations during the pandemic.

The book highlights the differences in policy and state organization toward a virus that has so far caused fewer than 5,000 deaths in China, but more than 225,000 deaths in the U.S. The book also shows the glaring lack of social support infrastructure in the U.S. in contrast to U.S. trillions spent on elaborate military, police and prison infrastructure, both at home and worldwide.

“Capitalism on a Ventilator” is unique in challenging the sharp rise in racist attacks on Asian people in the U.S. during the pandemic that flow from government, business and media hostility to China. Its commentaries expose the attacks on China by both Democratic and Republican parties through their endorsing and imposing sanctions, military operations, trade wars, and cancelations of cultural and academic exchanges.

Censorship by monopoly control

On Sept. 24, World View Forum, a small educational not-for-profit publishing company, received this message from Amazon:

“We’re contacting you regarding the following book(s): Capitalism on a Ventilator: The Impact of COVID-19 in China & the U.S. by Sara Flounders (AUTHOR); Carlos Martinez (AUTHOR); Monica Moorehead (AUTHOR); Kevin Zeese (AUTHOR); Ajamu Baraka (AUTHOR); Deirdre Griswold (AUTHOR); Mumia Abu Jamal (AUTHOR); Vijay Prashad (AUTHOR); Margaret Kimberley (AUTHOR); Lee Siu Hin (AUTHOR). Due to the rapidly changing nature of information around coronavirus, we are referring customers to official sources for advice about the prevention or treatment of the virus. Amazon reserves the right to determine what content we offer according to our content guidelines. Your book does not comply with our guidelines. As a result, we are not offering your book for sale. To have your book reconsidered for publication, please update your book details (i.e., your title, cover image, and/or product description) and resubmit.”

World View Forum immediately tried to reverse Amazon’s decision and provided layers of authentication of information. But there is no appeal or even a complaint process to Amazon decisions. The company’s emails are sent from a no-reply address.

Amazon trumpets that it has the widest range of book titles, ease of placement, best order fulfillment and lack of censorship. As the world’s largest online book seller, Amazon claims that it resists calls to censor or otherwise restrict books, and that for it to pull a book is exceedingly rare.

The company has been more than willing to make a profit by selling white supremacist propaganda and wild conspiracy theories that the COVID virus is human-made. During the pandemic Amazon has listed products that are dangerous quack cures for the virus.

But a book that discusses how socialist countries have had great success in controlling the deadly COVID-19 virus through cooperation, free healthcare and public education – that book has information that capitalist giant Amazon has decided must be censored.

Amazon allows COVID hoax book

Right-wing media darling Alex Berenson self-published “Unreported Truths about COVID-19 and Lockdowns” with Amazon in June 2020. Berenson is notorious for denouncing masks, quarantine measures and school closings, and for claiming the count of deaths and infections in the U.S. is a hoax and massive overcount. He appears regularly on far right media, including Breitbart, Fox News and The American Conservative.

When Amazon sent Berenson a stop-publication message similar to that sent to left publisher World View Forum, Berenson simply turned to a powerful billionaire friend – Elon Musk, the fourth-richest man in the U.S., who has made more than $48 billion in profit during the pandemic. Demanding Amazon publish Berenson, Musk publicly threatened and pressured Amazon’s billionaire owner Jeff Bezos through the public venue of the Washington Post – which Bezos also owns.

The result? Amazon immediately backed off from its decision to pull Berenson’s COVID-hoax book.

Why? Because both Bezos and Musk are capitalist powers who have a vested interest in keeping their businesses running at top speed during the pandemic, even if this costs many lives. So promoting a book that spouts non-scientific theories that COVID is a hoax and that there is no need for protective equipment, social distancing, testing of workers or shut down of businesses is also in their economic interest.

Musk, with his multi-billion-dollar Tesla auto advancing down production lines, has shared tweets like “Coronavirus panic is dumb” and “It’s the lockdown, not the virus, that causes the problems.”

Bezos also has his multi-billion-dollar reason to allow COVID hoax publications: to keep Amazon’s global distribution system of warehouses operating at full capacity during the pandemic. With Walmart first, Amazon is the second-largest employer in the U.S., with 1.5 million workers.

On Oct. 1 Amazon admitted that 19,816 of its workers had tested positive or been “presumed positive” for COVID. But its production lines roll on.

As for Berenson’s right-wing COVID book, the Bezos-owned Washington Post gave full coverage to the Bezos-owned Amazon reversal and highlighted the agreement to print and distribute the book.

Capitalist hostility to China

Controlling the narrative on responsibility for this global pandemic is a high priority for the entire U.S. ruling class.

On the surface the two U.S. imperialist political parties appear to have sharp differences in response to the pandemic. But they are united in promoting hostility to China.

Nevertheless, the stunning difference in results between the U.S. and China in response to COVID-19 – and the pandemic’s impact on the two very different economies – has been impossible to ignore.

The corporate media response is to suppress any mention of the positive impact that China’s free health care, guaranteed income during quarantine, coherent national planning and deep community participation has had on pandemic illness and mortality rates.

Instead, the only explanation given by big business media for the sharp difference is that China is “authoritarian,” “heavy handed” and “dictatorial,” and that the population is “resentful and repressed.”

The New York Times summarized this hostile approach in an Oct. 31 article: “Authoritarian Strategy: Effective, but Suffocating.” This lengthy “analysis” failed to mention a basic fact: that at this time, China’s COVID-19 deaths are under 5,000, compared to U.S. deaths of over 225,000. And the U.S. has only one-fourth the population of China!

Other censorship of left communication

Amazon is not the only corporate media monopoly censoring left-leaning news and organizing. Google and other major search engines have reset their algorithms to filter and restrict almost all alternative and socialist news sites. With search traffic rerouted away from these sites, this drastically reduces the number of views by more than 50%. Google claims that this is to combat “fake news.”

Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and YouTube are stepping up their blocking of antiracist organizing and anti-imperialist solidarity. This is done by their equating posts by violent white supremist organizations and neo-Nazi militias with antiracist, anti-capitalist organizing.

In the current censorship sweep, YouTube has directly intervened to block a webinar featuring a Palestinian leader, Leila Khaled. Thousands of Twitter and Instagram accounts have been disabled and hash tags eliminated. Shutdowns have impacted It’s Going Down, CrimethInc and the PNW Youth Liberation Front in Portland, Ore.

Plans by the Baltimore Peoples Power Assembly for a Peoples Mandate were shut down on Facebook, along with the accounts of connected organizations and accounts of the administrators of the Facebook sites. This in turn impacted a Cuba Solidarity Conference as well as a SanctionsKill Facebook account that was threatened with shutdown for posting news of the impacted Cuba Conference.

A mobilized pushback forced Facebook to step back from this sweeping attack.

Fighting Amazon’s ban on scientific truth

The publication of “Capitalism on a Ventilator” was organized by the anti-imperialist International Action Center, in collaboration with the China-U.S. Solidarity Committee. These organizations and the authors have affirmed their determination to get the book published as part of the ongoing political struggle against the virus and for socialism.

The banned book’s table of contents and list of authors, along with four chapters, is available at https://wp.me/p4Yme1-404. Readers are urged to break the ban on “Capitalism on a Ventilator” by sharing the link and your short reviews widely on social media. Maintain pressure against Amazon banning books with a left perspective by tweeting the Washington Post @JeffBezos.

No matter the outcome, the election will not fix racism, police terror

By Monica Moorehead posted on November 2, 2020




https://www.workers.org/2020/11/52148/







Nov. 2 – CNN reports that a record 95 million-plus voters have already cast their ballot in the presidential race as of today. This number already represents at least 70% of the 139 million total votes cast during the 2016 election, all but guaranteeing there will be a record-setting number of votes by Nov. 3 and the highest percentage of eligible voters in more than a century.
Voters are traveling hundreds of miles and standing or sitting in long lines for hours, braving wind and rain, wearing masks and social distancing at polling places, hoping that their vote will be counted in a timely manner.

There is no doubt that an unprecedented number of those votes were cast by African-Americans, particularly in Georgia, North Carolina and other Southern states, and in urban areas, where Black people reside in large, disproportionate numbers. There are political and historical reasons why voting is taken so seriously by Black people.

The main social base for the Democratic Party has been African Americans, particularly since the Black masses in the South legally won – through mass struggle – the right to vote under the 1965 federally mandated Voting Rights Act. But there has been an ongoing threat to the exercise of this basic democratic right.

Not since the passage of the Great Compromise of 1877 – which violently stripped formerly enslaved Black people of any kind of democratic rights achieved under the radical period of Reconstruction after the Civil War – has voter suppression been so blatantly encouraged and instituted as it is now, with the vocal blessing of the Trump administration.

Those who have felony records have either lost their right to vote forever or have to go through many legal maneuvers to win it back. With Trump’s pro-cop, racist appeal to his base of armed, neofascist, rightwing militia working hand-in-hand with the police, Black people and others deemed to be supporters of the Joe Biden/Kamala Harris ticket have been physically threatened or actually attacked for attempting to vote or to promote the vote.

These attacks are being reported around the country. For instance, in Graham, N.C., Black demonstrators, including children as young as three years old, were viciously attacked by police with pepper spray on Oct. 31 when, while marching to polling places, they stopped to protest in front of a Confederate monument. Some were arrested.

Police violence escalates

Pennsylvania Governor Tom Wolf has sent the National Guard to Philadelphia to impose a curfew in the aftermath of the police murder of a 27-year-old Black man, Walter Wallace Jr., who was shot multiple times in front of his home. His mother had called for an ambulance for her son, who had a history of mental illness, but the police arrived instead and executed him in broad daylight. Wallace is the most recent addition to the tragic list of nearly one thousand people killed so far by the police in 2020.

Several hours after the Wallace shooting, a young mother, Rickia Young, had her car surrounded by Philadelphia police while attempting to leave an area where a protest was taking place. She and her teenaged nephew were then beaten by the police while her 2-year-old son sat in his car seat. Despite many arrests and now the calling in of the National Guard, community and political activists have kept a strong presence in the streets demanding justice for Walter Wallace, just days before the election.

Another disturbing sign of racist state repression in Philadelphia has been the completely unwarranted arrest by the Federal Bureau of Investigation of Ant Smith, a leader of the Philly REAL [Racial, Economic and Legal] Justice coalition. REAL Justice was formed to defend Black Lives Matter by fighting all forms of racist repression. There is a national call on social media and in the streets demanding the freedom of this dynamic Black activist and for all the false charges against him to be dropped.

It is very difficult to separate all these events in Philadelphia from the overall repressive atmosphere in the lead-up to the election.

An ongoing war against Black people

While white supremacy and police brutality have always been relied on to maintain capitalist rule, the lynching of George Floyd has caused the intensity of police brutality to be even more scrutinized. According to a study by Bellingcat and Forensic Architecture, at least 950 incidents of police violence against peaceful protests have been recorded over the past five months, including “more than 500 instances of police using less-lethal rounds, pepper spray and teargas; 60 incidents of officers using unlawful assembly to arrest protesters; 19 incidents of police being permissive to the far right and showing double standards when confronted with white supremacists; five attacks on medics; and 11 instances of kettling.” (Guardian, Oct. 29)

Misogyny, anti-LGBTQ2S+ bigotry, ableism, and other oppressions are also intensified under the white supremacy exhibited by Trump and his ilk.

The current crisis of police and neofascist violence, instigated by the White House, once again proves that the fight against the state is a key part of the Black struggle for self-determination. At the height of the Black Liberation struggles here and worldwide during the 1960s, Youth Against War and Fascism, a mass unit of Workers World Party, brought the slogan “Stop the War Against Black America” to the movement. This was to build broad solidarity between the antiwar movement and Black militant groups facing a brutal, state-sanctioned, FBI-led assault that included incarceration, intimidation, infiltration and assassination.

Over 50 years later, the same political message still applies. But now the Black Lives Matter movement is carrying forward the struggle for justice and equality with a broad multinational base. For over eight years, since the racist murder of 17-year-old Trayvon Martin in Florida, the BLM movement has been on the front lines in battling police brutality in all its forms, embracing all political currents regardless of nationality, sexuality, genders, gender expressions, generations and abilities.

It has been acknowledged that BLM constitutes the largest mass movement in the history of the U.S., involving millions of people while gaining international supporters. This unprecedented resurgence of activism was mainly spurred on by the nearly nine-minute public execution of George Floyd by the Minneapolis police on May 28. Since then, protests against the police have taken place in thousands of cities and in various forms, including spontaneous strikes by professional basketball, baseball, hockey and soccer athletes – despite the COVID-19 restrictions.

Only class struggle can resolve class contradictions

While it is understandable that millions of people will breathe a sigh of relief if the Biden/Harris team defeats the Trump/Pence administration, class relations will not fundamentally change. An election cannot rectify class contradictions, even though it serves as a barometer to test the political mood within society. Ultimately, the vote boils down to which representative from one of the two major capitalist parties – Republican and Democrat – will best administer the repressive capitalist state apparatus to keep the billionaire, corporate bosses and bankers in power so they can ruthlessly exploit the workers and oppressed.

In terms of U.S. foreign policy, while there may be various strategies and approaches, both Democrats and Republicans are on the same page when it comes to advancing the imperialist aims of expanding the U.S. empire for profits versus respecting a country’s right to sovereignty and self-determination. History has shown that the Democrats could very well start a war, as could the Republicans.

While it isn’t surprising that police unions have endorsed Trump, Biden has made it crystal clear that he is opposed to any BLM call to defund the police. Harris has faced criticism for being the “top cop” in California as state prosecutor before becoming senator.

The police have never been more isolated and unpopular, according to opinion polls. This has not kept their brutal tactics from being on full display in preparation for the coming struggles, including rebellions on the horizon as the economic crisis looms heavy over the coming months. This crisis will manifest itself with more massive unemployment, evictions, and hunger on top of the worsening surge of the COVID-19 pandemic. The Democratic Party has shown itself to be ineffectual in pushing the Republicans to back a second stimulus package that could bring temporary economic relief to the hurting masses.

A militarized, occupying police presence will only bring about more capitalist instability as the masses of people become more rebellious with want and need. And whoever occupies the White House for the next four years will not be able to contain the angry masses if they are in a fighting and desperate mood.

The masses, with the aid of political left forces, will have no other choice but to confront the ruling class’s racism and white supremacy and unite to fight and organize for immediate human needs – now more than ever during this pandemic crisis. This is why it is important to stay in the streets once the elections have come and gone – to fight for a socialist future.

Washington D.C. Public Schools halt reopening plans as teachers mount sickout strike

Nick Barrickman




https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2020/11/03/dcps-n03.html?pk_campaign=newsletter&pk_kwd=wsws




On Monday, officials in the Washington D.C. Public School (DCPS) system announced a halt to their plans to reopen schools after hundreds of teachers began calling out sick. The sickout took place after a member-wide vote last week of the Washington Teachers Union (WTU) resulted in 93 percent of teachers declaring “no confidence” in Democratic Mayor Muriel Bowser’s reopening plans, which had been slated to begin Nov. 9.

The WTU suggested teachers take a “mental health day” before Tuesday’s presidential election. “We are living in turbulent times and teachers are experiencing a great amount of fear and anxiety around the national elections as well as the District’s Return to School Plan,” declared WTU President Elizabeth Davis in an email to teachers Sunday. “While one day off may not by itself cure burnout, a mental health day can provide you with a much-needed and well-deserved break.”
The announcement comes after the Washington D.C. region has seen an increase of COVID-19 cases in its jurisdictions. The seven-day daily average of new cases recorded Monday for Maryland-DC-Virginia stood at 2,274. This exceeded the previous high of 2,218 set during May.

According to the American Academy of Pediatrics and the Children’s Hospital Association, 61,000 children caught COVID-19 in the United States last week. In all, over 853,635 children have caught the virus in the US, or nearly 11.1 percent of the total COVID-19 cases in the country, dispelling the myth promoted by Democrats and Republicans across the US that children are less susceptible to the virus and that schools can be reopened “safely.”

The WTU and DCPS officials have been at loggerheads over certain precautions in the district’s school reopening plan. The plan was to begin allowing 11 students per grade to attend what was being termed “CARE classrooms” starting Nov. 9.

Under the plan, nearly 7,000 of the district’s 47,000 students had been identified to resume in-person learning, ostensibly to remedy the loss of learning occurring among the most vulnerable and developmentally challenged students. This partial reopening is intended to create a wedge to fully reopen schools, in order to force working class parents back into unsafe factories and workplaces producing profit.

Last month, the Public Employees Relations Board ruled that the city’s reopening plan was illegal because it didn’t consult the WTU and others in formulating it. DCPS has maintained that it does not need to have union support for its plans and was prepared to continue with the reopening.

Teachers are demanding that they be given rights to refuse in-person instruction, while DCPS is insisting that only individuals with proven health risks or family members and dependents vulnerable to COVID-19 should be granted such rights. Teachers are also concerned that DCPS’s safety promises will not be met once schools open.

Last month, DCPS announced that they would be pulling middle and high school staff—who are currently maintaining distance learning programs for their students and were not set to return to classes until 2021—to help teach in-person elementary school students. This raised immediate concerns that distance learning would be undermined, as online students would be forced into massive “virtual” classes with a limited number of staff to run them.

In addition to the WTU’s promotion of the sickout, the Council of School Officers (CSO), a union overseeing school principals, sent a letter to Bowser and DCPS Chancellor Lewis Ferebee raising objections to the lottery system being used to award seats to students deemed to be most in need.

According to the CSO, the stated goal of partially reopening the school system—to serve students “furthest from opportunity”—is not being done under the current lottery formula. The letter states that the DCPS’s criteria for selecting the neediest students awards the same number of seats to students from wealthier schools as it does for those in poorer communities. In poorer schools, 11 seats per grade will hardly make a difference, the principals say. In addition, principals claim they are being cut out of the process of selecting the students who are most in need for in-person learning.

While currently at odds with DCPS on the fine print, the WTU and other associated organizations have sought to collaborate with the school system in its efforts to force a reopening as COVID-19 cases increase. In September, when Bowser announced plans to send children to class even before November, the WTU sought to help identify teachers willing to return.

Last month, CTU president Davis told the Washington Post, “We do know that there are extenuating circumstances in regards to [DCPS’] budget and what they can do [to provide safety precautions]. We want to be reasonable in our asks, and we made concessions.”

The WTU’s blog post on Sunday states: “While many elements of an agreement have been reached, the Union believes that plans should be revised to ensure greater equity across the city to ensure that students furthest from opportunity have access to additional in-person learning opportunities and that no educator should be required to return to in-person learning if they don’t believe adequate protections for themselves, their students and the community are in place.”

As the pandemic deepens and Trump erects barricades around the White House in anticipation of massive Election Day protests, there is mounting anger among teachers and the broader working class in Washington D.C. In order to contain a social explosion on the eve of the US presidential elections, the WTU and DCPS have opted to pull back from having a direct confrontation with teachers through reopening of schools.

Weighing the possible outcomes of the US elections, the WTU and DCPS calculate that the effort to herd teachers back to classrooms can be better carried out under a potential Democratic Biden presidency than amid popular protests against a threatened Trump putsch to defy the election results and stay in office.

A teacher in nearby Anne Arundel County, Maryland, told the World Socialist Web Site, “This is a political calculation,” in reference to the decision to keep classes online for elementary school students. They added that the WTU and DCPS are “playing their cards and waiting for another day” to introduce in-person learning.

The teacher noted that in his district teachers are being forced to report to class on schedule next week, stating, “They are not following the science.”

Rather than mobilizing the working class in mass opposition to the homicidal herd immunity policies of the capitalist class and the threat of a Trump dictatorship, the teachers unions and the Democratic Party are seeking to divide and restrain the working class in order to better carry out the policies of Wall Street and the military-intelligence apparatus.

It is essential that teachers in the Washington, DC area and throughout the US take matters into their own hands and form independent rank-and-file safety committees controlled by and answerable to the teachers themselves in order to fight off the threat to their health, safety and democratic rights.

We encourage all teachers in DCPS to join the national Educators Rank-and-File Safety Committee and take the crucial step of forming a local committee in Washington, DC. Contact us today and we will do everything in our power to help you build a committee and coordinate your struggles with educators and workers throughout the region, across the US and internationally.

Teachers strike across France against first day of deadly school reopenings

Will Morrow




https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2020/11/03/fran-n03.html?pk_campaign=newsletter&pk_kwd=wsws





As schools reopened across France yesterday after the holidays, mass opposition among students and teachers at the Macron administration’s deadly school reopening policy is growing. Assemblies of teachers met at schools yesterday morning and resolved to strike against the lack of safe conditions to prevent the spread of the virus. Images are being widely shared online showing students crammed like sardines into hallways, classes and cafeterias.

The government is reopening schools despite a second wave of the pandemic that its own scientific council has warned will likely be larger than the first, which killed more than 30,000 people in France and 200,000 across Europe. More than 37,000 people have now died from the virus in France, with another 416 deaths reported on Monday.
Despite the government’s cynical claims that it is determined to protect students’ psychological well-being, the school reopening is driven by entirely different concerns: to ensure that parents can continue to work, and that the corporations can continue to obtain profits throughout the pandemic, regardless of how many lives are lost as a result.

A Twitter account reporting on opposition among teachers to the Macron government reported dozens of local strikes by teachers organised in assemblies at schools across France on Monday morning.

At the Balzac de Mitry-Mory school, 24 teachers organised to strike at 8 a.m. yesterday. At the Romain Rolland school in Clichy-sous-Bois near Paris, another 22 teachers voted to strike. In the Feyder school in Epinay-sur-Seine near Paris, 47 teachers voted by 100 percent to strike at 8 a.m. Classes were held for 60 students out of 1,600 enrolled. At the Berthelot school in Pantin, north of Paris, 28 teachers resolved to strike against the demand that they return to classes “as though nothing was happening.”

At Bachelard school in Chelles, 20 staff lodged their “right to strike” with the direction due to unsafe conditions caused by the pandemic and “non-respect of the health protocol.”

At the Jean Jaurès school in Clichy, teachers walked out, and the administration told families that the school may be forced to close. At Von Donghen school in Lagny, classes were cancelled after teachers threatened to strike. At the Flora Tristan school north of Paris, half of teachers supported a strike at 8:30 a.m. At the Joliot-Curie school in Nanterre, teachers voted 53-3 for a strike at midday. At the Olympe de Gouges school in Noisy-le-Sec, over 30 teachers voted to strike in the morning. At the Eugène Hénaff school in Bagnolet, 18 teachers voted to strike.

At the Alice Guy school in Lyon, the student body reportedly refused to enter classes, and there were reports of further strike action by teachers in Montpellier and Marseille, as well.

Safety protocols inside schools are essentially non-existent. One teacher writing into Le Monde stated: “I feel humiliated. While in the media there are grandiloquent statements to support our teachers, in reality there is nothing. … The health protocol is the same as before the holidays! The students continue to change between classes, with 30 crammed into a class. We have not received disposable masks since the beginning of the confinement! We have the right to only two masks on Sundays!”

Existing protocols state that social distancing must be respected “to the extent that it is possible.” Given the overcrowding of schools, this simply means they do not apply anywhere. Parents are advised to “take the temperature of their children before they go to school” and to “keep them home” if they have a temperature of over 38 degrees. Since it is well known that many cases are asymptomatic or exhibit symptoms after they have already been contagious, this will do nothing to prevent the spread of the virus in schools.

The protocols state that “social distancing is not required for students in the same group (class or year level) either in closed spaces or the exterior.”

Students aged over six are being made to wear masks, contradicting the government’s earlier lies that young students were neither contagious nor in danger from the virus.

“It will be very difficult for them to stay six hours a day with a mask, while on the street, they don’t have to wear one,” Haydée Leblanc, a primary teacher in Abbeville, told France3. “Then they will spend their time touching the mask! Before, we were told that wearing the mask for young children was counter-productive, because they could actually spread the virus faster with their hands. Apparently the doctrine has changed.” Noting that it was a public relations stunt, she stated, “it’s above all to add something to the health protocol to reassure families.”

The Macron administration is pursuing a policy that it knows will cause thousands of additional cases and deaths. Schools will act as vectors for the transmission of the virus, countless children will become infected, and will infect their family members and friends.

The school reopening takes place as reports by the government’s own scientific advisory bodies make clear that the partial confinement of the population, while keeping non-essential business and schools, will not significantly cut the spread of the virus. The Pasteur Institute estimated that the partial confinement would bring the rate of reproduction of the virus to 0.9, with the “pessimistic scenario” that it would be brought down to only 1.2 by the government’s measures, meaning a continuing exponential spread of the virus.
Children will also fall sick and die. Official claims that youth are not in danger from the virus are lies. French health authorities report that 170 people aged under 19 are currently hospitalised with COVID-19, of which 23 are in urgent reanimation care. The long-term health impacts of the virus on youth are still unknown.

France’s corrupt union bureaucracies are hostile to a struggle against school reopenings. They have been in continuous discussions with the Macron administration on its reopening policy, and have done nothing to mobilize the mass opposition among teachers and students. On October 30, the unions cynically published a notice authorising strike action between November 2 and 7. But its aim was only to provide some means of maintaining control over the growing opposition among teachers.

The growing strike movement among teachers and students must be unified and organized. For that, teachers need their own organizations, rank-and-file school safety committees, independent from the trade unions.

The struggle to close non-essential industries and let workers and youth safely confine at home requires the mobilization of teachers and broader layers of workers in mass strike action. The best allies of teachers and students in France are their counterparts in Germany, Britain, and across Europe and beyond. These forces can fight to prepare and mobilize workers for a European general strike and a struggle for the working class to take state power and impose a scientific policy against the COVID-19 pandemic.

The socialist perspective in the 2020 US elections

Joseph Kishore—SEP candidate for US president
14 hours ago

https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2020/11/03/kish-n03.html?pk_campaign=newsletter&pk_kwd=wsws




This report was delivered on November 1 to the final meeting of the Socialist Equality Party’s 2020 election campaign, titled “On the eve of the Civil War Election.”

The United States elections are being held under conditions of unprecedented social, economic and political crisis. Whatever happens in the coming days and weeks, there is no going back to the status quo. The alternative confronting workers in the United States and indeed internationally is socialist revolution or capitalist barbarism.

As the election comes to an end, the coronavirus pandemic is spiraling out of control. The Socialist Equality Party has defined the global coronavirus pandemic as a “trigger event,” that is, an event that is accelerating and bringing to a head all the underlying contradictions of American and world capitalism.

The virus is natural in origin, but its effects are bound up with the society in which it has emerged. It is exposing the consequences of decades of social reaction and the endless diversion of resources into the financial markets and the instruments of militarism and war. It is revealing the nature of capitalist society, a society dominated by a financial oligarchy whose control is no longer compatible with democratic forms of rule. And it is propelling millions of workers and youth into social and political struggle.

The average number of daily new cases globally is approaching half a million. The average daily death toll, according to official figures, is above 6,000. Already, nearly 1.2 million people have died. After a drop in the summer months, new cases throughout Europe are at record levels. In France, new cases average over 40,000, nearly ten times higher than the previous peak in early April. In the UK, new cases are above 20,000. In Italy, new cases peaked on Friday at over 30,000, more than five times the level in late March, when the explosion of deaths forced the shutdown of the entire country.

No country, however, has proven more incapable of safeguarding public health than the United States, which has four percent of the world’s population but nearly a quarter of deaths from COVID-19. More than 236,000 people have died from the coronavirus, and 1,000 more are added to this horrific toll every day. The number of infections is approaching ten million, increasing by more than ten percent in the past two weeks alone. The virus is spreading without restraint throughout the country, and hospitals in Texas, Wisconsin and other states are reaching or have surpassed capacity.

The pandemic and the response of the ruling class to it have created a social crisis in the United States unlike anything seen since the Great Depression. According to official figures, 13 million people are unemployed in the United States, seven million more than before the pandemic hit. Two and a half million people have been unemployed for more than 27 weeks, and this figure is increasing at a faster rate than at any point in recorded history. The number of people in poverty has increased by eight million since May, and ten percent of the adult population reports that they cannot buy enough food. Amidst a deadly pandemic, nearly one fifth of households report that they are not getting medical care because of the cost, while nearly half report that they are struggling to cover basic expenses and bills.

Mass layoffs are accelerating, as the ruling class uses the conditions of the pandemic to implement far-reaching changes aimed at boosting profitability. The economic consequences of the pandemic are having a permanent and devastating impact on an entire generation of young workers, predominantly employed in the gig and service sectors.

This catastrophe is the product of definite policies pursued by the ruling class over the past ten months. The financial oligarchy is implementing a policy of mass death and social devastation. After first downplaying the danger, the pandemic was utilized to organize the largest transfer of wealth to the rich in world history, far surpassing even what was done following the 2008 financial collapse.

The printing presses of the Federal Reserve have been turned over to Wall Street, to the tune of trillions of dollars. Bank profits have surged. Morgan Stanley announced last month that its profits have risen 25 percent compared to a year ago. Goldman Sachs is doing even better, with quarterly profits at $3.6 billion, nearly double from a year ago. The wealth of the corporate and financial oligarchy has soared to new heights. Since the end of February, Jeff Bezos has increased his net worth by close to $80 billion.
The pandemic and the crisis of American democracy

It is impossible to understand the political situation in the United States on the eve of the elections outside of this social reality.

The final weeks of the election campaign have made clear: Trump is not running for president; he is running for führer. The White House is the center of a conspiracy to ignore the results of the election, stoke fascistic violence, and utilize the courts to overturn the popular vote.

It is less than one month since the initial exposure of a fascistic plot to kidnap and murder the governors of Michigan and Virginia, plots that were encouraged and incited by the highest levels of the state. The plots grew out of the anti-lockdown demonstrations in April and May, following the bailout of Wall Street, as the ruling class was implementing its back-to-work campaign. They were encouraged by Trump’s calls to “liberate” Michigan, Minnesota, Virginia and other states from any restraints on the spread of the coronavirus. Far-right organizations are being mobilized in order to implement and enforce a homicidal policy of the ruling elites.

In the final days of the election, Trump is doing everything he can to delegitimize the results. If the results are not known by the evening of November 3, he said in Pennsylvania yesterday, “you’re going to have bedlam in our country.” He denounced two recent Supreme Court decisions at least temporarily allowing the counting of mail-in ballots that arrive after Election Day. “Somebody’s going to play games, and they just got an extension. What’s the extension all about? Wouldn’t you like to hear, Nov. 3, we win, we lose?” There is, in fact, nothing in the Constitution that requires a result of the election on November 3. The winner of the election is determined after all the ballots are counted.

Pennsylvania, a battleground state, is a particular target. “Are they going to mysteriously find more ballots” after polls close, Trump asked yesterday. “Strange things have been known to happen, especially in Philadelphia.” National Guard troops have been deployed to Philadelphia, where they will remain until after the election, following the eruption of protests over the latest incident of police murder.

Whatever happens over the coming weeks, Trump is building up a fascistic movement based on extreme nationalism, anti-socialism and authoritarianism.

Trump’s fascistic politics are directly connected to the ruling class’ policy of “herd immunity” in relation to the pandemic. In his campaign rallies, accompanied to chants of “Superman,” Trump is doing everything he can to downplay the threat to the lives of millions of people and encourage the spread of the coronavirus. In recent days, he has claimed that doctors are deliberately falsifying the cause of deaths due to COVID-19 in order to make more money. Trump’s son, Donald Jr., declared in a recent interview that deaths from the virus are “almost nothing,” echoing Trump’s earlier comment that the coronavirus affects “virtually nobody.”
The Democratic Party and the bankruptcy of “lesser evilism”

While Trump is attempting to steal the election, the Democrats are doing everything they can to cover up the threat to the most fundamental democratic rights.

At his own campaign events, Democratic candidate Joe Biden makes no mention of the election coup, the plot to kidnap and murder Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer and other governors, the confirmation of Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court, or anything else related to the threat to democratic rights in the election. Indeed, the Democratic Party played a central role in the ramming through of the nomination of Barrett by refusing to do anything to stop it.

The Democrats’ cowardice in response to Trump’s conspiracies is entirely bound up with their own opposition to any policies to address the spreading pandemic or the devastating social crisis. Beyond talking about masks, the Democrats have nothing to propose, as they reject any measures that threaten the interests of the corporate and financial elite.

The Democratic Party is terrified of anything that will spark mass unrest, which would threaten to develop into a movement against not just Trump, but the entire capitalist system.

The Democratic Party and the various pseudo-left organizations that surround it insist that in these elections all the energy of workers and youth must be directed toward the election of Joe Biden. Only in this way, they claim, can there be a return to “normalcy” and an end to the disaster that has been produced by Trump.

Completely absent from these arguments is any actual analysis of what the Democratic Party is and the class interests that it represents, or the social and political conditions that have produced Trump.

The Democratic Party is a party of Wall Street and the military. Indeed, as the election approaches, Biden’s fundraising in the third quarter has benefited from an influx of money from the finance industry. For the past four years, the opposition of the Democratic Party to Trump has focused not on his fascistic politics, but on the demand of dominant sections of the military and intelligence agencies for a more militarist foreign policy against Russia and in the Middle East, which culminated in the impeachment fiasco.

Biden has the support of some of the leading war criminals of American imperialism, who have wreaked havoc on populations throughout the world: John Negroponte, the former US ambassador to Honduras during the US-backed war against the Sandinistas, former ambassador to Iraq and former Director of National Intelligence; Michael Hayden, the former Director of the CIA implicated in constructing “black site” torture centers under Bush; Colin Powell, one of the leading architects of the 2003 invasion of Iraq; and countless others.

The policy of a Democratic administration will be one not of social reform, as the apologists for Biden claim, but brutal austerity. The eight years of the Obama administration, in which Biden was vice president, saw a massive transfer of wealth to the rich following the 2008 economic and financial crisis. Indeed, it was the legacy of Obama, along with the right-wing and militarist character of the Hillary Clinton campaign, that allowed Trump to posture demagogically as an opponent of the status quo.

And it is remarkable that as Trump engages in his fascistic plots, the layers around the Democratic Party have dedicated themselves in an extended effort aimed at attacking the democratic foundations of the United States and attacking the legacy of the American Revolution and the Civil War. The center of this campaign is the Times' 1619 Project, a work of historical falsification which presents all of American history as a conflict between races, aimed at promoting the Democratic Party’s politics of racial division.

As for Bernie Sanders, what has become of his so-called “political revolution”? The central aim of Sanders’ campaigns, both in 2016 and 2020, has been to contain mass social anger and opposition to both parties, to contain it within the framework of the Democratic Party, and to ensure that it finds no genuine progressive expression. He is performing that role now as a leading campaigner for Joe Biden.

To rely on the Democratic Party to defend democratic rights would be suicidal.
The social and political roots of the breakdown of American democracy

Moreover, nowhere in the media and political establishment is there any serious analysis of social and political conditions that have produced an unprecedented crisis and breakdown of American democracy. Trump is presented as some sort of demon from hell. To paraphrase Trotsky in writing about Hitler, they claim that if it were not for Trump, American democracy would blossom like a garden. What a contemptible lie! Trump is an expression of a far deeper disease.

For decades, the ruling class has been engaged in a single-minded pursuit transferring wealth to the rich. Beginning in the late 1970s and 1980s, the ruling elites launched an offensive to destroy all the gains won by workers through bitter struggle. Endless resources have been channeled into the financial markets through deindustrialization and the ripping up of social infrastructure.

Social inequality has reached levels not seen since before the Great Depression. With the crucial assistance of the trade unions, working class opposition to this social counterrevolution was suppressed. As a result, the national income share for the bottom half of the population fell from 20 percent in 1980 to 12 percent in 2014, while the income share for the top 1 percent rose from 12 percent to 20 percent. Wealth and income are even more heavily concentrated in the top 0.1 and 0.01 percent of the population.

The American ruling class responded to the dissolution of the USSR with an orgy of militarism. The terrorist attacks of September 11 were seized on to invade Afghanistan and then Iraq. More than one million people were killed in the “war on terror.” Torture was instituted as official government policy. NSA spying on the population became a central element of conspiracy against democratic rights. The persecution of Julian Assange, supported by the entire political establishment and in fact spearheaded by the Democratic Party, was used as a test case for the criminalization of opposition to war.

All of this, all the crimes of American capitalism, all the inequality, all the violence at home and aboard—all of this is coming to a head. Historians will look back at the 2020 elections as both a continuation and a new stage in the protracted crisis of American democracy.
The socialist strategy in 2020 and beyond

There are various scenarios for what will play out over the next several days, on Election Day and after. What can be ruled out, however, is that somehow the political crisis in the United States is going to be resolved peacefully. Whether or not Trump is in the White House come January, the mobilization of fascistic organizations is now a fact of American political life. The pandemic will continue to rage, and there is no faction of the ruling class that proposes anything that will stop it.

What happens, however, cannot be separated from the development of the class struggle. The working class will not and cannot remain a bystander in events. It must prepare to respond through its own independent initiative.

Any attempt by Trump to steal the election in defiance of the popular vote will certainly be met with mass demonstrations. The working class must intervene through the method of class struggle. It must oppose Trump’s coup plotting and the incitement of fascistic violence through strike action, including preparation for a political general strike. Opposition to Trump’s conspiracies must be connected to the independent interference of the working class on the basis of a program that represents its own interests.

The working class requires a perspective not just for November 3, but for November 4 and beyond.

At the beginning of this year, we published a statement on the World Socialist Web Site, “ The decade of socialist revolution begins .” Before the pandemic had emerged as a global crisis, we called attention to the essential characteristics of the world situation that had developed over the previous decade—the institutionalization of unending military conflict and the growing danger of world war; the breakdown of democracy and the rise of the far-right internationally; the degradation of the environment and the growing danger of climate change; and the extreme growth of social inequality, particularly following the 2008 economic crisis.

We wrote: “The objective conditions for socialist revolution emerge out of the global crisis. The approach of social revolution has already been foreshadowed in the mass demonstrations and strikes that swept across the globe in 2019: in Mexico, Puerto Rico, Ecuador, Colombia, Chile, France, Spain, Algeria, Britain, Lebanon, Iraq, Iran, Sudan, Kenya, South Africa, India and Hong Kong. The United States, where the entire political structure is directed toward the suppression of class struggle, witnessed the first national strike by auto workers in more than forty years.”

The dominant and most revolutionary feature of the development of the class struggle, we explained, was its global character. The working class is an international class that has grown enormously over the past two decades and is united like never before through the processes of production and advances in communications.

“The growth of the working class and the emergence of class struggle on an international scale are the objective basis for revolution,” we explained. “However, the spontaneous struggles of workers and their instinctive striving for socialism are, by themselves, inadequate. The transformation of the class struggle into a conscious movement for socialism is a question of political leadership.”

When we launched the Socialist Equality Party election campaign at the end of January, we explained that its central task was to fight for a socialist program and perspective for the working class, not only in the United States but throughout the world.

Then the global pandemic hit. As with everything else, the pandemic had a significant impact on our campaign. We decided very early on to cancel all of our in-person election meetings and our travel plans, in the US and internationally. We also decided that we could not petition to get on the ballot, as attempting to meet the already anti-democratic restrictions in the US—requiring the gathering of thousands and thousands of signatures just to get on the ballot—would have deadly consequences in the midst of a pandemic.

The courts and Democratic Party state governments defended these restrictions. Whitmer, the target of the fascistic coup plot, even referenced the anti-lockdown rallies in the spring to argue that we should have gathered signatures, while the judge in the case complained of gyms being shut down—the same complaint of the militiamen.

While the form of our campaign changed as a result of the pandemic, the essential content remained. Indeed, the pandemic and the response of the ruling class to it has demonstrated that the perspective advanced by the Socialist Equality Party, and only the Socialist Equality Party, is the way forward for the working class.

We say to workers and youth who are listening in on this meeting: The central conclusion that must be drawn from the experiences of this year is to join the SEP. You know what is happening in your plants and workplaces. The ruling class is using the pandemic to carry out a massive restructuring of class relations. The capitalist class has contempt for the lives of workers, forcing you to choose between starvation or sacrificing your lives for profit.

You see what Trump is doing. You see the conspiracies that are being carried out, which are directed above all at the opposition of workers. You know that there is growing anger over inequality, exploitation, unemployment, police violence, the attack on democratic rights, and endless war.

The struggles of workers cannot be advanced unless a socialist leadership is built. A political movement must be developed that takes direct aim at the source of the crisis: the capitalist system.

The fight against the pandemic must be waged on the basis of a program for the massive redistribution of wealth. The ill-gotten gains of the oligarchs must be seized in order to finance universal health care and other critically needed social infrastructure. Non-essential production must be shut down until the pandemic is under control, and all workers must receive full income and be protected from eviction. Where production is essential to the functioning of society, workplaces must be made safe, with conditions overseen by the workers themselves, in consultation with health care professionals.

To organize society on the basis of social need, not private profit, the giant banks and corporations must be turned into public utilities. World economy must be restructured on the basis of a scientific and rational plan. To carry out this program, the working class must take power in its own hands, to establish a government of, by and for the workers.

To organize the struggles of the working class, the Socialist Equality Party is spearheading the fight for the formation of rank-and-file factory and workplace committees, independent of the corporatist trade unions. It fights to unify the working class, in opposition to all efforts to divide workers along racial, gender and national lines.

There is no national solution to the global pandemic, as there is no national solution to any of the great problems confronting the working class—inequality, exploitation, war, environmental degradation. The building of a mass socialist movement in the American working class must be connected to the mobilization of the billions of workers throughout the world, the massive social force that can chart a new way forward for mankind.

The meet these challenges posed before the working class, a new movement must be built, a political movement based not on pragmatic and empty hopes, but on a scientific analysis of the nature of capitalist society. It must be a movement that is based on an assimilation of the great lessons of history. A movement that understands that to the crisis of capitalism the working class must respond with the perspective of socialist revolution.

The leadership of this movement is the Socialist Equality Party and the International Committee of the Fourth International.

I encourage all of you to vote for the Socialist Equality Party candidates, Norissa Santa Cruz and myself. But most importantly, make the decision to join the SEP and take up an active fight for the building of a socialist leadership.