By November 2020, COVID-19 had become the leading cause of death in America, despite being unknown just one year ago. With only four percent of the world’s population, the United States accounted for 19 percent of all deaths — almost one out of every five. This isn’t just tragic, it is criminal, and the guilty parties need to be identified and held accountable.
To avoid that, our ruling class uses torrents of scapegoating to hide their responsibility for the system’s failure to protect us. Some of it blames China because that is where the coronavirus was first identified, which defends the capitalist class as a whole and those who compete against Chinese companies. Mostly, people’s personal behavior is falsely blamed for increases in infections and deaths.
For example, on January 4, some news about nine Sisters of St. Joseph in New York who became infected and died after living together in a convent hinted that their living choice was to blame. And when a California hospital employee’s air-powered Christmas costume blew out a virus that infected 43 others, killing one, some blamed the choice of costume. But those nuns weren’t the only older adults who cannot afford spacious, safe housing. And that employee isn’t the only one working with dangerous equipment. A deeper problem is to blame.
Years before the pandemic, our government could have corrected America’s crisis of homelessness and inadequate housing. Months ago, Congress could have ensured enough protective gear for all essential workers and enough financial assistance so that non-essential. workers could shelter at home. Failing to do so, despite the warnings of experts, is inexcusable.
The pandemic has added millions more to the millions that new technology has already pushed out of any productive role in the economy. With no way for this new class to return to what no longer exists, many are organizing in every city and town for their right to housing, health care, education, and enough income to provide for a decent life. This includes challenging the ruling class’s ownership of these necessities.
Across the country, people are taking action like the families of Ynes Torres and Sonia Alvarez-Zayas did in Inglewood, California. Housing activists and churches helped Torres and her four children return to the house they had been evicted from, declaring their determination to prevent Alvarez-Zayas’ family’s eviction during the pandemic. At a press conference before Christmas, Ynes’ daughter Roxana thanked everyone who had been guarding them against being removed again from “the home we grew up in, the home we deserve, and the home we will stay in this Christmas!”
The capitalist speculators who seized control of the home, Trojan Capital Investment, consider these families’ actions to be criminal because they reserve the right to hoard homes until they can be profitably sold. This is also how some see it when impoverished parents shoplift so their children can eat. But even Jeff Zisner, chief executive of workplace security firm Aegis, admitted to the press that what is going on in those stores is “people stealing consumables and items associated with children and babies.”
Let’s be clear: poverty is criminal, not those who must suffer it. And allowing the preventable deaths of hundreds of thousands of coronavirus victims is criminal and should result in the prosecution of those responsible. As the December 17 Business Insider said, “the daily death toll is equivalent to 15 passenger planes, each carrying 150 people, crashing every day.” They should have added that most of these “passengers” were poor people and called it a form of terrorism against the poor.
Today’s amazingly productive technology can be used to provide enough homes and health care for everyone once the new class has torn it free from the grip of the class that profits from controlling them as private property. Common ownership of the means of producing these necessities can result in a new kind of communism, which uses the abundance produced for the people themselves and not the class of criminals now in control.
Published: January 18, 2021
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