It has been over nine months since the first COVID-19 stay at home orders began in U.S. states. We are going through unprecedented times of uncertainty, yet government at all levels is unwilling or unable to respond. Over the last six months, we have been forced to restructure our lives completely, many losing jobs, and suffering the threat of sickness and death. Over 12 million of us are sick, with over 250,000 deaths, with the numbers increasing every day.
As usual, the lowest-income workers are hardest hit, and both historic and current realities ensure that certain ethnic groups are over-represented among the poor. While all of us are at risk, as of September, one in every 1,020 Black Americans and one in every 1,220 Indigenous Americans have died. In addition, 1 in every 1,400 Pacific Islander Americans, one in every 1,540 Latinx Americans, one in every 2,150 white Americans, and 1 in every 2,470 Asian Americans have lost their lives, according to APM Research Lab’s report “The Color of the Coronavirus.”
Our people, all members of the working class, are dying, while members of the ruling class are protected because they don’t have to leave their homes and put themselves at risk. With an escalating number of cases throughout the country, many of us have loved ones, friends, and neighbors who have become sick or died. Adding salt to the wound, we understand that the spread of this pandemic could have been minimized by government’s taking action based on scientific public health advice.
Despite the massive loss of life and devastating increases in unemployment and hunger, government is doing practically nothing for the everyday person, while spending trillions on corporate bailouts. In the middle of the worst escalation of COVID-19 cases in our country, Congress went home on vacation for two weeks (or, as they say, “recess”), without passing a relief bill.
What Should the Government be Doing?
First, it should immediately use this country’s enormous resources to respond to the people’s growing demands for health care, housing, food, and enough money to obtain their basic needs during this crisis. There’s plenty of capacity to produce everything we need to fight the virus, whether masks, gowns, or ventilators, or tests. There’s plenty of food — it’s going to waste because it can’t be distributed for a profit. There are thousands of people on the front lines, who can tell us how to organize ourselves to fight the virus. There are millions now out of work, who could be mobilized for what needs to be done to solve this crisis, and rebuild our country if society was organized to meet human needs.
Police Terror in the Pandemic
In the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, we witnessed the May 25 murder of George Floyd at the knee of a Minneapolis Police officer, in an agonizing 8-minute incident filmed on a cell phone. Floyd’s death became a spark that led to the biggest protests in American history, involving millions of people of all colors around the country and around the world, demanding systemic change.
A national struggle emerged from the George Floyd Rebellion, based on the demand for cities, counties, and school districts, to pull funding from local police departments, which some have agreed to at least partially do. The demand to defund or abolish the police envisions a new society that divests from armed law enforcement and invests in human needs, such as health and mental health care, housing, education, and other vital human services. The movement is on a collision course with the capitalist system that prioritizes private property over human lives.
Youth Lead the Way
The George Floyd movement, as well as protests to cancel rent and fight for essential worker rights, has been overwhelmingly led by young people under the age of 34. Today’s youth have good reason to want radical change. First, they have grown up understanding the power and potential of digital technologies. They also have grown up in an economy that clearly doesn’t want them. If they are lucky enough to find a job, they work side-by-side with adults twice their age, whose prior employment has been eliminated.
Eighteen to 24-year-olds have been the largest demographic thrown into unemployment by the coronavirus, and groups like the World Economic Forum project that their ability to regain employment will not only take longer than for others, but will likely affect their lifelong job prospects. It is easy for youth to understand the relationship between the new technologies and a dying economy. This is one reason why the base for candidate Andrew Yang, the only Presidential candidate to address the economic costs of technology, was largely between the ages of 18 and 29. It’s safe to say most youth know the world’s broken.
Our youth feel the contradictions between human-made restrictions and human potential, and they’re stepping up to fix things right. The economic crisis being nothing new, but amplified by the pandemic, younger people were already showing an increased interest in socialism and communism in polls at the end of 2019. As conditions deteriorate, younger people are showing solidarity with the great majority of Americans, who must work together as a class to end the domination of the ruling class, that runs the economy as its own private property. With our youth’s morality and vision on our side, our class can secure our future, providing far more than basic needs for countless generations to come.
The stability of having a job is gone for many and, with it, the ability to secure the pursuit of happiness. Being blocked by the ruling class’ private hoarding of what the people have produced, and its refusal to use this socially produced wealth to relieve the growing suffering, opens the fighters to thinking about new solutions. Revolutionaries can play an important role, by introducing a vision of this social wealth’s collective use, once it is freed from private ownership and control.
Some might connect this vision to their spiritual or cultural traditions. Some might link it to the Merriam-Webster definition of communism, “a system in which goods are owned in common and are available to all as needed.” If we can imagine a society without murderous police or politicians, who risk our lives for their careers, and we can, then we can imagine a society where the most powerful technology belongs to everyone and is used to provide enough medical masks, food, and housing for everyone, whether they have a job or not. RC
November.December 2020 Vol30.Ed6
This article originated in Rally, Comrades!
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