COVID-19: Stand Up And Fight!–Roger Toussaint

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#coronapandemic #IntWorkersDay

May 1, 2020

Even if you have been around the block a few times, or you are a serial cynic – you are still left shaking your head, not so much at how the US government is using the pandemic to inflict further pain on working people but more at the fact that, thus far, they seem to be getting away with it. Shaking our heads that too many workers still have that ‘wait and see’ attitude to this real threat, not just of the pandemic but even more gravely, the government’s callous disregard of our rights and lives. Too many are still willing to entrust our existence to groups that would rather exterminate or lynch us, in a heartbeat.

Indeed, the battle lines are being drawn. Believe your own eyes! The government and the rich are weaponizing the crisis of the corona pandemic to accomplish their political, economic, and social objectives, by reshaping the U.S undoubtedly, to ‘Make America Great Again’. These include cutting Social Security for its almost 10 million recipients, privatizing the US Post Services to make it solely profit-driven, defunding Medicaid/Medicare, and all public services which the president and his neoliberal enablers, have derisively labeled as “entitlements”.  All of the above have been inserted into the COVID-19 conversation. Interestingly, “right-to-life” rightwing conservatives are singing a new tune: ‘Oh well, death is part of life! Let them die!’ 

So, which side will win out: their or ours? 

These bizarre developments provide a peek behind the curtain into the thinking and actual conversations taking place among the rich and powerful. The economy (read profits) being more important than people’s lives is winning the fight though it is wrong and short-sighted, even from a purely economic standpoint. But the elite see working people as superfluous and expendable – enough that a couple million could be disposed of, if need be, for the sake of the market, for their personal profits and their unquenchable thirst for power and control over the lives of those who labor. In the darkest of times, they look for and see pathways to securing their permanent power over our lives.

To them, it’s all about money and power. They have plenty, more than they know what to do with, and, yet, they want more! So, they seize the opportunity to lower standards, weaken labor contracts and protections, grab up as much taxpayer dollars as they can, defend privilege and entitlement, and crush all opposition to their predatory thirst.  Our choice: Either stand and fight or go like lambs to the slaughter….

The Man in the Mirror & the New Normal

In the middle of this pandemic, attacks on our families and communities, and the reshaping of this society and of our futures for the worse are all taking place rapidly, though at times imperceptibly, because the attacks are so many and so much is going on.  Nonetheless, the connections between the policies being adopted and the long-term goals of those ruling the country are slapping us in the face, every day, and from every direction. The bodies are on the ground in plain sight, while over a million infected are queued up as in death’s waiting room.  They consist of the old, the infirm, the young, and most hardworking and dedicated workers. At-risk are our children, the apple of our eyes. Day after day the government and its agents tell us, to our faces, that we are expendable, disposable. They tell us, and we still don’t believe them.  We pontificate, hesitate, rationalize or justify in order to avoid a hard look at the shame and fragility of the ‘Man In The Mirror’.  That’s the “new normal”.  

This is an urgent call to Wake Up!  As working people, as black people, as immigrants, we are not ‘all in the same boat’ with the rich and powerful. They have fully weaponized the virus pandemic to further their economic, political, and social interests. From the spread of this virus to the “remedies” being applied, to the distribution of $trillions$ in taxpayers’ money that is being furnished to supposedly mitigate the effects of the pandemic, to liability for reckless endangerment of workers and consumers lives; to putting in place measures for the future running of the society – in all these respects, they are winning and we are sleeping, sheltering in place.

Sadly, we have failed to weaponize our own interests, our own needs in this pandemic war whose lasting effects are going to shape all our futures and our lives for a long time to come. We seem to be waiting on THEIR permission to move! It’s as if we forget that we don’t need any ‘Permission To Mash Up The Place’.

As late as it is and even though we would be coming from behind, we need to take to the battlefield, in every arena, to turn this situation around. We must repurpose all the existing structures from; the parents’ councils and school boards to the congress of the U.S; our places of work to the communities, the military to the other security services; and, cyber tactics to hand to hand combat. We need to put aside selfish, childish, things, and work towards true solidarity and common action. And we need a bold, transformative vision along which to create a fairer and more equitable system and society. Our situation cries out for new organizations and for a movement.

We can no longer wait on or rely on others to do this. Certainly not on the Democrats and the organizations tied to them who all promote reliance on the Democrat Party and on their legislative “actions” which just concedes more and more ground which seem to embolden the rich and powerful, while applying band-aids, here and there, to pacify, disarm, and paralyze us. Thus far, they have succeeded and the enemy, both the virus and the rich, has gotten more emboldened. 

The weapon that we do have, happens to be the weapon that has driven change throughout the whole of human history – which is mass, organized, power with the capacity for joint action to bring about social change. Use it! 

Organize! Reach out and reconnect on this with your co-workers, neighbors, family, and friends. Set up networks and build capacity that covers all our other needs for this fight. Cooperate to take joint direct action. Actions, that are bold and fearless, yet sophisticated, sweeping and determined, forceful yet targeted and well-calibrated enough to match the ferocity of the attacks we and our families are faced with. 

We are in real trouble people. Let’s Move Forward and Build Our Movement!

COVID-19 and Caribbean Americans

For decades Caribbean-born workers in NY, as around much of the US, have heavily populated the health care sector, as well as the service economy, and have, from the onset of the pandemic, been among the first to die and in disproportionate numbers. Many are now facing the perils of working in, what authorities are prematurely calling, the post COVID-19 public sector, and still with questionable protective gear. In addition, hundreds of thousands of generally hard-working Caribbean nationals eke out an existence “off the books” and are among the self-employed and many in below minimum wage jobs receive no health care, no food stamps or other public benefits, and certainly no $1,200 “stimulus” checks. Incidentally, many of these workers can now be expected to be deemed “essential” and compelled to go out to work, with little or no rights nor benefits.

By extension and in the midst of the Cov-19 virus pandemic, the US president has moved to weaponize the crisis by flooding the Caribbean Sea with battleships intimidating the region and surrounding Venezuela with military might to foster unrest inside the country and threaten an invasion in order to force regime change and place the government there into the hands of the most right-wing Venezuelans.  

The US has also intercepted and rerouted deliveries of medical supplies headed to the Bahamas, the Cayman Islands, and Barbados’ ventilators from Rihanna. What makes this particularly disturbing is that the US, working with their local cohorts, has worked hard at shutting down local manufacturing, compelling dependence on US goods and products, and strictly controlling and regulating the supply chains. Now the US is using that dependence to strangle any country it chooses to. The US has also been using monetary “aide” earmarked for fighting the pandemic, to punish those countries and governments unwilling to surrender their independence and self-respect to the U.S, while rewarding others with improved funding in exchange for bowing before Trump.  The outcry across the Caribbean ought to be “Never again!”

With 80% to 90% of all food consumed by the Caribbean Community’s 15 nations and 18 million people coming from outside the region primarily (94%) from the U.S, the deadly dangers of dependence and lack of food sovereignty (as well as of course, dependence on tourism) have become as clear as it has become potentially deadly.  Imported food sources, supply chains, shipping, pricing coupled with foreign exchange shortages across the region, all point to severe crises ahead. 

Good thing is that now more than ever, Caribbean people (along with the rest of the wider region) are taking up the challenge of reshaping their futures and economies by looking for solutions within and among. 

BDN expresses thanks to Roger Toussaint for allowing the publication of an extract of a longer work, which is forthcoming.

Roger Toussaint, former President of the Transport Workers Union, Local 100, who led the 2005 NYC Transit Strike, is a founding member of the Caribbean Awareness Committee, NYC.