It is suicidal for the working class to rely on the capitalist state to take care of us. We must do it ourselves. As the Coronavius pandemic rages across continents, the bosses’ state is designed to protect only the capitalist’s own interests. It’s plainer than ever that “national unity,” the idea that a country’s capitalists and workers share common interests, is a dangerous myth. There is no “we” here—it is only us and them, our class versus the rulers, the people who produce value against the people who own value. The bosses are unleashing their state apparatus, from local cops to the federal Centers for Disease Control, to come to the aid of their class. Big and Small Fascists across the globe are releasing unlimited resources to prop up their failing economies. They may or may not succeed. But once thing is clear: The bosses’ state can never serve workers’ needs.
PLP is calling on all workers to take responsibility for the international working class in this urgent period. At the same time, we must respect the limits of the moment. Our challenge is to fight for the needs of our class and a communist society while still taking the precautions necessary to guard the health of our members, friends, families, and class.
The bosses’ self-serving state
The cost of keeping capitalism afloat drains the lion’s share of society’s resources. In caring for the most vulnerable worker, the bosses’ state is missing in action. The responsibility is left to charities, non-profits, and members of our own class.
As we enter the eye of the pandemic, instead of ensuring that people get decent health care, enough food, and a safe place to live, the bosses are focused on business loans, tax breaks, and profits. Crumbs are passed out to the working class as the rulers’ broken health care system builds morgues.
Do they have enough ventilators or even enough one-dollar respirator masks? No. President Donald Trump and New York Governor Andrew Cuomo are busy blaming each other for shortages that are killing health care workers and forcing involuntary DNRs. But the fact is that every president and every governor for the last 20 years has been warned about these shortfalls. Instead of investing in adequate stockpiles for a pandemic they knew was coming, they decided to let people die instead (Intercept, 3/24).
Do they have enough hospital beds or ICU beds? No. To preserve capitalist profits, liberal governors like Cuomo cut beds with a vengeance. In New York City, now the world’s Coronavius epicenter,  20 hospitals have been closed since 2003.
Essentially, the bosses are giving workers two options: Stay home and lose your job and possibly die alone, or ignore the pandemic and risk your life to keep working.
Bosses’ crisis response: fascist genocide
As they scramble to try to save their system, the bosses are looking to abandon or kill the unprofitable segments of the working class: children, the disabled, the elderly. Trump’s buddy, Texas Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick, proposed that people in their 70s and up should “take a chance on your survival in exchange for keeping the America that all America loves…” (vanityfair.com, 3/24). In other words, older people can and should be sacrificed to restore the capitalists’ profit machine and return to business as usual.
This is the essence of fascism, the Nazis’ Third Reich formula: fostering unity with the ruling class to slaughter those groups the bosses no longer need. It’s how workers in Germany came to look the other way as concentration camps were built and became slaughterhouses. Today, Franklin Graham’s tents are going up in New York’s Central Park to warehouse the sick and dying. Tomorrow, it’s not a stretch to envision them as a prototype for U.S. death camps. The German fascists’ Final Solution wasn’t the product of Hitler’s madness. It reflected the cold and calculated needs of the German capitalists to preserve their system in an existential economic crisis.
If we continue to go along with this genocidal agenda, eventually the whole working class will be consumed.
Workers met with confusion and violence
As the Coronavius rages, workers are being forced into confusing and contradictory situations.  Many are still expected to commute to work, pay their bills, and care for their families, despite the rising rate of infection and government mandates to stay home or stay socially distanced.
Instead of taking responsibility for the failures of their system, the bosses unleash violence against our class. In New York City, the subways are crowded in working-class neighborhoods because many people have no paid sick leave and can’t feed their families if they shelter in place (New York Times, 3/30). In India, baton-wielding police are beating workers in the street who violate Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s 21-day lockdown (3/25, NY Post). Around the globe, stiff fines and jail time are threatened against workers who don’t comply.
The working class is fighting back
The positive news is that the working class is rebelling against bosses throwing us into the fire. Workers at Trader Joe’s are unionizing after being denied gloves on the job (Buzzfeed, 3/18). Instacart, Amazon, and Whole Foods workers are striking for Coronavius protections and hazard pay (USA Today, 3/30). Black sanitation workers in Pittsburg are refusing to do pick-ups without better safety protection (Vibe, 3/25).  Many of us have no choice but to work during these dangerous times, whether it’s to pay our bills or serve other workers. But that doesn’t mean we can’t fight for safety protections or protest on behalf of our class.
The capitalists chose not to prepare for a crisis they knew was coming. Now they’re giving us advice—or police-enforced orders—that presume that everyone lives in a small nuclear family in a spacious home with an ample financial safety net. “Shelter in place”  is a death sentence for those whom the profit system has already failed: the homeless, multiple families crowded into small apartments, elderly poor living alone or in unsanitary old age homes, low-wage workers in single rooms in cut-up houses, immigrants who fear deportation if they seek medical care, incarcerated workers penned up by the racist criminal injustice system. The millions of refugees and migrant workers around the world who have no homes at all are completely abandoned. For the working class, capitalism is truly hopeless.
How communists would handle a health crisis
A communist society serves the needs of the people. It develops its greatest resource: the power and knowledge of the international working class. Once the profit system is smashed, all resources will go toward workers’ needs.
In a communist society, the state would protect the most vulnerable. In extreme circumstances, the healthiest people would enlist to care for the sick. Child care would be a collective task, along with distributing food and necessities—without cost.  
We can do some of these things right now. Organize friends and neighbors to take care of those in need. Organize protests against unsafe conditions and attacks on the working class. But keep safety in mind at all times. Do everything possible remotely. If you must go out to work or to serve our class, keep a safe distance.  Otherwise stay in. Covid-19 is dangerous, and the bosses’ health care system can’t be trusted.  
The working class can seize this opportunity to progress toward communist revolution and a workers’ state. But it will require our placing more confidence in our class and our Party, and breaking with the bosses’ state once and for all. Our choice is clear: Either face mass death under capitalism, or fight for communism.

Multiracial unity is the antidote to bosses’ racist disease

A week before workers in New York was completely swept into the pestilent tornado of Covid-19, Progressive Labor Party (PLP) comrades and I organized a rally in Chinatown. When I invited workers from my mass work to the action some were opposed. They felt that rather than showing solidarity we are further contributing to racism. For some members in my base, having a rally in Chinatown sent a message that Covid-19 only hurts Chinese people. While their accusations were upsetting, the rally carried on at full force. We set up near one of the busiest intersections in Chinatown with signs in Mandarin and English. Though our numbers were small, we made up for it with a bold and multigenerational contingent of PL’ers of all races and crowd-rousing chants. Workers from a local bank gifted us bottles of water, and dozens of workers enthusiastically received CHALLENGE and leaflets.
The day after a rally, a few comrades and I met with some of the members in my base who disagreed, but were genuinely trying to understand the Party. There was confusion about the meaning of solidarity. Many confused it to mean superficial allyship and not working-class unity. After a long debate, comrades and I clarified that solidarity for communists means that we stand united in common struggle with the working class. And so our rally was politically necessary to show that multiracial unity is the antidote to the bosses racist divisions.
We also explained that our choice to have the rally in Chinatown was political. We did it to one show the connection between mushrooming fascism and inter-imperialist rivalry between the U.S. and Chinese bosses. Chinese workers in the U.S are inevitably caught in the middle of the bosses’ crossfire, and so when the bosses spread their racist propaganda, it means that they’re intensifying their attacks on our entire class.
This became even clearer in the wake of Covid-19 when the U.S bosses showed they were utterly unprepared. Our chants highlighted that there were no testing kits, no hospital beds. Cuts in care and infrastructure invariably means that Black, Latin, and Asian workers, as usual, would suffer the most. The crisis also exposed deepening exploitation: hand sanitizers were made using prison labor.
We exposed how Big Fascist stooges like NY governor Andrew Cuomo set the stage for the conditions that will lead to the butchering of our class on an epic scale. We wanted to motivate our class to unite and fight back rather than give in to the bosses’ racist divisions.
These discussions helped my comrades and I sharpen the contradictions in our mass organization, and although the workers we talked to were not won, good things came out of it. We were successful in getting at least one worker from my mass organization to show up to the rally, and I even won a friend, a sharp young worker in my base, to translate our flyer into mandarin.
Organizing in the time of Covid-19 is difficult but if there is anything this experience has taught me is that even in the darkest nights there will always be sparks in the working class. You just have to keep struggling to find them.

*****

Health care workers need communism

After a brief absence in the time of Covid-19, I returned to work at my community health center in the Bronx today. Despite the desperate situation workers in New York City are facing, I was uplifted by the camaraderie of my front line fellow health workers, nearly all of whom are Black and Latin women.
Most of these dedicated women have young families at home, and yet, despite often suboptimal work conditions, they selflessly show up to serve their community. As in the rest of New York, there is a shortage of personal protective equipment (PPE) for health workers, yet my co-workers quickly offered to locate gear for me. I was surprised when a young doctor took me down to the supply room and insisted they give me one of her personally assigned lab coats to wear to see patients. It was particularly touching given that the clinic had never given me a lab coat to wear in my 35 years of service there.
In the course of the day, I quickly realized that it was very difficult for workers to function and maintain the requisite ‘social distancing’ in the hallways and exam rooms. Everyone just did their best to do an optimal job and try to be safe. The clinic is just not set up to deal with a pandemic.
An encouraging moment for me was when I delivered our paper to several regular CHALLENGE readers. The issue sparked a lively discussion about how this profit system simply cannot provide for the working class. Perhaps these desperate times will at least help us illustrate more concretely, why my co-workers need to join Progressive Labor Party and fight for a communist world. Healthcare under this capitalist system is run by profit seeking corporations. Healthcare under communism would be run by and for the working class. Join us.

****

Immigrant workers organize vs. bosses racist bailout
Some comrades have been working in an immigrant-based community organization in New York City for many years. The Coronavius pandemic and the capitalists’ racist response are causing death and panic in immigrant communities. Thirteen people have recently died at Elmhurst Hospital that serves immigrant workers and their families and is totally unequipped or staffed to deal with the magnitude of the crisis.
 Immigrant workers in the community organization are no longer working and many don’t have pay, sick days or health insurance. Undocumented workers are also excluded from the “rescue” package. It’s a choice between food and rent. Comrades have been calling our members and friends to tell them NOT to pay the April rent. Tenant groups have gotten a moratorium on evictions but not a rent freeze, which is unlikely given Cuomo’s and other politicians’ strong ties to the real estate goons. The fight will continue for many months!
A comrade recently made a small donation to a youth team in the organization that has been responding day and night to ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) arrests and detentions during this crisis.
Two immigrant groups in New York City are mobilizing an action April 2-4 when people individually can throw signs from their windows, put up signs on windows and lamp posts, and do sidewalk art. A comrade has translated and texted this message to our friends. We have notified the leadership of the organization and the youth team.
The spirit of collectivity, pitching in for our class in the face of intensifying racism, is an inspiring example of what has been and is communist culture and practice. The fight for revolution, for communism, is desperately needed by the international working class. Join us in this fight for communism, a system without money and profits, without borders, firmly committed to obliterating pandemics, racism and sexism.
On to May Day, remote or not!
*****
Bosses get bailed out for sickening workers
In late March the U.S. government passed a much-touted $2 trillion “rescue” package.  Less touted is that at least half of the benefits go to real estate investors, big corporations and other businesses.  Ninety-six senators voted, and all, including Bernie Sanders and every Democrat, supported the law.
So who is actually being rescued? On page 203 of the package is a tax break for the one percent (NYT, 3/27/20). It benefits real estate investors with more than $500,000 annual income.
This ripoff for the capitalist bosses will cost the government $170 billion over ten years, which is nearly one tenth of the $2 trillion. Among the real estate bosses who will benefit are many family members and cronies of President Trump. The law also establishes a $500 billion slush fund for capitalist corporations.
The capitalist bosses say this ripoff is a Coronavius rescue package. But most of the benefits are for the bosses.  For workers, it will be too little, too late, and gone too soon.  Many Black, Latin, and women workers will be left out.  We are the ones suffering the most risk and worst impacts of the Coronavius pandemic.
To safeguard workers, we need a system that actually provides for our needs and is run by the workers.  That system is called communism.
History shows that capitalist politicians, be they Republicans, Democrats, or social democrats, will never vote to get rid of capitalism.  And even if they did, the bosses would use their armies to defend capitalism.  We need to overthrow capitalism and build a communist society.
*****
Cuomo, just the hero the liberal fascists need right now
NY Governor Andrew Cuomo is no friend to the working class. He never has been and he never will be. He has attacked everything from wages, to housing, to health care and education for workers. His reassurances ring hollow to people suddenly unemployed and left to fend for themselves and their families in crowded apartments or required to risk their health to keep the supplies flowing to those who can afford them. This crisis is wreaking havoc on the working class from which millions will never recover.
When Cuomo speaks his aim is to give permission from the state to lament the mass sacrificing of the poorest section of the working class but to trust that there is no other way. His goal is to bind his audience with him in carrying out the atrocities of capitalism. That is reminiscent of previous fascist leaders.
“No people ever recognize their dictator in advance,” reflected an American journalist Dorothy Thompson in 1935 as she realized that she had misjudged Hitler. “He never stands for election on the platform of dictatorship.
 He always represents himself as the instrument [of] the incorporated National Will.” Applying the lesson to the U.S., she wrote, “When our dictator turns up you can depend on it that he will be one of the boys and he will stand for everything traditionally American.” (smithsonianmag.com 12/13/2016).

CHICAGO, March 20 – The racist and sexist indifference of the capitalist bosses towards workers in the hospitality industry is making itself painfully clear as the devastation from the Covid-19 pandemic grows. Like all other industries under capitalism, it relies on the value stolen from the labor of workers employed for profits.
The hospitality and food service industry in general are major employers of millions of workers within the United States, many of them Black, Latin, Asian and immigrant women workers. Already workers in these industries have been subject to unpredictable schedules and low pay, and now that local government bosses are mandating that dine-in restaurants close (a proper public health precaution), they are further thrown into economic uncertainty.
During this pandemic, the bosses are terrified by the economic damage that is bound to occur to their businesses and can offer no plan to assist workers, aside from some crumbs and empty sympathy. More than ever, the international working class needs a communist society to help prioritize workers’ health during moments of disaster and to ensure that we can all work as we are able and receive the resources that we need. The communist Progressive Labor Party (PLP) is fighting to build that society.
Bosses hang workers out to dry
Up until a few days ago, I worked at one of the many restaurants in Chicago closed due to the pandemic. As of last week, Illinois had 37 cases of Covid-19 and most people were in denial of the severity of the virus. Because I work with the public and have an underlying health condition, I was slightly worried about becoming ill. My concern was not irrational after all. Two days later, Illinois reported over 100 cases of Covid-19 and as a result, liberal Illinois Governor JB Pritzker (himself a billionaire) ordered all dine–in restaurants and bars closed – my place of employment being one of them.
This restaurant is part of a large restaurant group that owns over 120 restaurants and employs around 8,000 workers. Two days after Pritzker’s order, every worker received a text message notifying us of an upcoming conference call that afternoon where the company president would be updating us on the current situation.
Although there were many people on the call, all the workers were muted and only the president’s voice was heard – typical of the bosses. We listened as he notified us that most of us were immediately laid off and our insurance would be cut off in at the end of the month, however, partners would still be receiving half of their salary. He broke into tears as he explained that he did not know what would happen to the company. He along with the other bosses built an empire with our labor, laid us off, and now we are being subject to listening to him cry over the phone.
In the midst of a pandemic, thousands of workers will not only be devoid of income but they are also going to be without health insurance. Many of these workers are paid minimum wage or a hair above it and often have to fight to be scheduled enough hours to live.
Before the pandemic, my restaurant was so slow that we would close two extra days a week. My co-workers and I were already hurting financially. Internationally, millions of workers are being furloughed from their jobs. When this is over, many of us will not have jobs to go back to. When the bosses are faced with a financial loss, they will cut their ties with us without hesitation. My company, which must make tens of millions of dollars annually, started a GoFundMe for workers being most affected by this layoff. They are asking other workers to pay for the losses.
Communist revolution is on the menu
As long as this capitalist system remains in place, the international working class will be expected to foot the bill for the crises that the system itself creates. But there can be a silver lining, in that many of those same workers most beat down by this racist and sexist profit system will become more open-minded to more cooperative and egalitarian alternatives.
Workers across the globe are starting to display a sense of solidarity through social media by sharing memes about how capitalism is the virus. Some say that we need socialism to fix everything; however, socialism is not enough. The international working class needs to be in complete control of its own destiny, controlling all means of production and using the wealth that we create from our labor to serve our own needs. The only solution is communist revolution, led by the PLP. Workers of the world, unite!

NEW YORK CITY, April 1—Up to now eight Metropolitan Transit Authority workers have died during the raging Covid-19 outbreak.
While their death certificates will determine the virus as cause of death, their real killers were the racist MTA New York City Transit and its inaction to protect its mostly Black and Latin workers from the disease! Given the MTA bosses callous response more will dies as the ink on this issue dries.
The deaths were avoidable. But what’s it to the bosses if a few workers die in the line of duty, so long as the profit machine keeps rolling?
Capitalism has worked overtime to show the workers that our lives are expendable. Progressive Labor Party members working in the MTA continue building bonds with co-workers, and backing demands for MTA to provide sufficient proper protective equipment and sanitary facilities to keep us safe. Some MTA workers also demand housing for homeless workers on the trains— and end the racist cleaning disparities between stations in wealthier and more impoverished communities. At the same time though, none of that is enough. A new world is necessary so such deaths never happen again, either in the MTA, or anywhere else on this planet—communism.
No protection
The deceased eight include bus operators, station cleaners, track workers, conductors, and bus maintainers.
One of the deaths occurred on March 28, when a train operator died of smoke inhalation, heroically giving his own life to bring his train and passengers into a station after reports that someone in the second car squirted accelerant onto a shopping cart and lit it on fire. Though he didn’t die from Covid-19, capitalism and the increasingly unstable atmosphere it is creating with this disease brings out more anti-communist attacks by workers against other workers. Had the operator had protective gear against smoke, he likely would be alive today. But the MTA can’t be bothered with that either.
Transit lies, workers die
Until very recently, the MTA was refusing to provide PPE (proper protective equipment) to its front line workers against Covid-19—and lied about not having to offer it. In early March, they warned a train operator who wore one during his shift not to do so, because of “public perception.” These bosses care more optics than workers’ safety.They’ve failed to properly sanitize our train and bus operating positions and crew room facilities while launching a PR campaign to look as if they’re cleaning the whole system. On transit Facebook pages, many subway train operators and conductors have posted pictures of dirty wipes after taking it upon themselves to clean.
Transport Workers Union (TWU) Local 100 has admitted that at least one of these deaths could’ve been prevented if proper PPE had been distributed. But as the saying goes, a day late and a dollar short! Their acknowledgments won’t bring back our deceased co-workers.
Local 100 has done the bare minimum to secure such protections for us. Even with the MTA agreeing to offer us some pathetic equipment after discussions, this union has shown it’s willing to wait for workers to die before lifting a finger. Under capitalism, today’s unions serve the bosses and crack the whip to keep workers in line and from revolting.
The masks MTA will now provide us with are not the recommended N95 masks, but instead flimsy surgical ones. This persists despite a 2012 pandemic memo the agency put out, mandating they stockpile a six week supply of N95 masks, hand sanitizer, and cleaning wipes for workers.
A visit to any train or bus reporting location for workers shows that any available sanitizer is in rare supply—save for the NY State issued one, made through racist, super-exploitative prion labor. And none of these locations are providing sanitary wipes.
No testing kits for workers
Workers are also upset that MTA Chairman Patrick Foye, who recently contracted the virus, was able to get a test so quickly. Meanwhile we have to jump through hoops just to get one. The number of transit workers with the virus has quickly shot past 600, with over 3,330 ordered to self-quarantine after exposure, as of late March (New York Daily News, 3/31).  The MTA’s Covid 19 hotline has flooded with calls from workers worried about their health. Yet this was the same man who downplayed our concerns, now stricken with the same disease he has allowed to ravage us.
Lack of access to these tests means the real numbers of infected could be even much higher than the MTA’s numbers, spreading the disease and not even knowing it. Foye can take as much time as he needs to recover.
Unfortunately, workers will have to come in without even knowing they have the virus, since testing is virtually impossible for us to acquire, if we don’t feel ill.
More are calling in sick by the day, forcing more service cuts and fewer trains, which leads to heavier ridership and more crowds—a breeding ground for Covid-19. The racist bosses don’t care about forcing their workers and customers to suffer as long as they can save a buck and themselves.
In furthering its efforts to appear protective of workers, MTA recently implemented “social distancing” rules for crews to abide by. We have to maintain six feet from one another, which is virtually impossible to do, given how small many of our crew rooms and locker facilities are.
The MTA has changed the regular weekday train schedule to a modified Saturday schedule—because multiple crews are incapacitated—the rooms have become even more crowded. Under capitalism, being sick is a profit scheme for the bosses.
Liberate transit system with communism
The MTA continues to put profits over workers’ lives, and it is crafting an angry and fearful atmosphere here. Many of us are wondering when, not if, we’ll come into contact with someone who has the virus. Chances are we already have.
We’ve had to take things into our own hands, buying our own cleaning supplies, and hoping that shields us. RTO, the MTA’s train division, people are booking sick as a form of protest, along with being legitimately ill.
Some bus operators sectioned off their front sections, essentially giving free rides, as people entered from the back door. This was before the agency made it an official policy for now.
These modest actions by workers show that workers can and will work in the interest of serving our class.
But the ruling class wants us afraid, so we wont organize as one.  We can’t have reliance on their stooges, like Governor Andrew Cuomo, who is cutting Medicaid from the state budget during this emergency.
Transit workers and riders will continue suffering under these racist crooks until we come together and fightback collectively for our health, and eventually, for a communist revolution!