Socialist Alternative Issue #64 - June 2020

ISSUE #64 l JUNE 2020

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SOCIALIST

BOSSES RISK OUR LIVES FOR PROFIT

WE DESERVE A SAFE REOPENING subscription address box

INSIDE TRUMP’S MISMANAGEMENT LABOR UNDER LOCKDOWN TAX AMAZON

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WORKERS’ PROGRAM TO RESTART THE ECONOMY Tony Wilsdon and Erin Brightwell Workers across the country are facing unacceptable choices: risk your health and go back to work, or face economic hardship and maybe be fired and cut-off from unemployment. Meanwhile the richest 0.01% have retired safely to holiday homes and bunkers to sit out the pandemic. We should be under no illusion - this is what the ruling elites have always done in times of hardship. The working class has been left on the front lines in times of pandemics, war, and depression.

Is it any surprise that workers are fearful of the future? Particularly frontline workers who are disproportionately lower paid, women, and people of color. As the billionaires try to drive through a shoddy reopening of the economy, we need to discuss in our workplaces and communities what a return to work that prioritizes the needs of the working class would look like. There should be no return to normal.

Workplace needs to be safe: While still on a small scale, workers are starting to rediscover their real power – the power to stop production through a strike.

The recent upturn in walkouts and strikes have won important gains in safety. This needs to be turned into organization. Unions need to immediately launch organizing drives in non-union workplaces across the country.

We need to organize safety committees in all workplaces. They should be elected by workers, without the bosses present. Shop floor power is essential across union and nonunion workplaces. If this starts as a closed online group, as we saw with the Instacart workers, then this is a first step. The next crucial step is to build support on the shop floor through lunch and break time meetings with supportive coworkers and without management present.

No safety – no work: We need social distancing protocols and personal protective equipment (PPE). This could include staggered shifts or an expansion of workspace per worker. If that means slowing down the pace of work - then slow it down!

We need to demand: J The right to PPE. The right to social distancing from other workers and the public. No retaliation or threat of unemployment against workers who refuse to work in unsafe environment

Program for full employment: The economy is collapsing into a new depression. Unemployment is approaching its highest level since the Great Depression.

Forbes magazine states that 42% of jobs lost will not return.

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We need to demand: J No cuts in hours or wages - tax the wealthy and big corporations to pay for fully funded public services, including robust unemployment benefits. The super-rich should pay for the failure of their system.

J We need an extension of current unemployment benefits - including the $600 a week top up. No one should be threatened with losing their unemployment if they refuse to return to an unsafe workplace.

J The labor movement should be on the front lines fighting for a massive jobs program, for a reduced workweek to share out the work with no reduction in pay, and for a living wage for all those laid off or unemployed.

For a massive Green New Deal jobs program: J This is the only way to tackle climate change and provide jobs for tens of millions of workers. To be successful this needs to be tied to public ownership of the massive energy companies and banks. This alone can make possible a Green New Deal in the interest of workers, not the profits of the bosses.

No evictions or foreclosures: J No one should lose their homes. We need to demand a continued extension of eviction and foreclosure bans through this depression.

J We need to organize to fight every attempt by landlords at evictions.

J Big landlords should not ride out this crisis while working people hemorrhage money to make rent. Rent should be cancelled for the duration of this pandemic and back rent should be forgiven.

J For universal rent control on a national scale and a tax on the wealthiest corporations like Amazon to build high quality, publicly owned social housing. Immediately bring the top profit-making corporate landlords into public ownership.

Bankruptcies: Labor needs to fight every job loss. We need to protest any further bailout of the bosses. Rich CEOs squandered their recent mega tax break. They failed to invest back into the workplace. Instead they lined their pockets and those of rich shareholders.

We need a socialist approach to bankruptcies which starts from the needs of the working class.

J If a big corporation declares bankruptcy, we should demand their financial records be inspected by workers’ representatives to see if they are really bankrupt. If they are not bankrupt - no layoffs. If they are bankrupt, this demonstrates the failure

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WHY I JOINED SOCIALIST ALTERNATIVE Dyese Collierville, Tennessee Grocery Store Deli Clerk I’ve always been left leaning. I genuinely believed that personally recycling, using less fuel, and voting every other year would eventually make a difference.

I even hounded most of my family into doing some of the same. But the world kept turning and the environment kept suffering.

Bernie’s loss of the primary in 2016 was upsetting, and the way he was robbed by the Democratic Party was worse, but it wasn’t enough to make me take action. I started in the fall of 2019 as a grocery store deli clerk. The work is monotonous, and management is ever vigilant. My coworkers agree that management is strict, that we aren’t paid enough, that our working conditions are poor. Tennessee is a Rightto-Work state, so while I am in a union in my workplace, most of my coworkers are not. This weakens the power of our union, and many of my coworkers don’t see a way for us to change our conditions.

My frustration with my situation is what finally made me join Socialist Alternative.

Things haven’t changed much yet at my store, but I know that improvements in workplace conditions begin from a place of

of the owners, not workers. We should demand that jobs be protected and the ownership of the company passes into public hands through public ownership, with the workplace retooled if necessary.

Workers and the community should then make decisions about how the workplace can provide products and services that working families need.

No budget cuts: J With states facing huge deficits, they are already looking to cut spending on needed social services like Medicaid and SNAP. Working people shouldn’t suffer due to the backwards priorities of capitalist governments. We need to tax the rich and big corporations locally and nationally.

J The federal government should use a tax on big business to provide disaster relief to states. This money should not be used to bail out banks or major corporations but should be put directly into providing needed social services to working people.

Labor movement needs to step up: Trade unions are the only organizations

talking to and organizing with my coworkers and neighbors, and through this things could change for the better.

With the coronavirus crisis forcing changes to all our daily routines, my job has only gotten harder. Corporate considers me and my coworkers expendable, and only spends the bare minimum on inadequate protective gear while they make record profits. All of us agitating for change will make things safer for us as workers, and the general public. What they’ve given us in hazard pay isn’t enough to compensate for getting sick, especially when it’s only available after a confirmed diagnosis. Now they are using the reopening of the economy as cover to end the hazard pay all together.

I joined Socialist Alternative with the hope of working with other working-class people like me, drawing from the knowledge and experiences of other socialists to fight to improve the conditions at my store. I agree with Socialist Alternative’s approach that power comes from below, from movements of the working class.

Building more branches of Socialist Alternative in the South will be crucial for myself and others to rely on. We can build campaigns in our workplaces and communities, and the socialist movement more broadly. J

workers have to directly defend their rights.

At the same time, the union leadership needs to change its approach. The leaderships of most major unions have been woefully inactive during this pandemic and have not stepped up to champion the demands of their members or organize the unorganized. (With a notable exception being National Nurses United.)

J Out of this pandemic and depression, we need to build radical fighting unions which help organize social struggle of all workers against eviction, poverty, and for full employment on living wages.

For a new political party for working people: The enormous engagement in Bernie Sanders’ electoral campaign shows the massive support that exists among working people and young people for a pro-working class program. The Democratic establishment was prepared to go to any length to stop Sanders and unfortunately he capitulated. This demonstrates how the Democratic Party is not a vehicle working people can use to transform society. We need a new workers party that organizes and fight for workers’ interests and is committed to socialist policies to point a way out of the horrors of capitalism for working people. J

2 S O C I A L I S T A L T E R N A T I V E . O R G

POLITICS

Trump’s Criminal Mismanagement

Ruling Class Divided on Addressing Crisis Keely Mullen

On January 22, after the first confirmed case of COVID-19 was discovered in the U.S., Trump reassured the world that the outbreak was “totally under control.” On February 10, days after the first confirmed death, Trump told us that by April the virus would “miraculously go away.” In the first week of March, with the U.S. approaching 1,000 confirmed cases, Trump reminded us that the virus was “very mild” and that he “wasn’t concerned at all.”

While the sick continue to die and the dead overflow from morgues into refrigerated trucks, Trump has continued to willfully misinform the American people about the nature of this disease. The actions of his administration and the Republican Party have exacerbated ten-fold the scale of the crisis we are now saddled with.

New research from Columbia University found that if social distancing measures had been implemented just two weeks earlier, 84% of COVID-19 deaths and 82% of cases could have been prevented. This underlines the criminal role of this reactionary, anti-science president.

Trump’s Botch Job As of the writing of this article, 94,629 Americans have died from coronavirus and over 1.5 million have been infected. 38.6 million Americans have filed for unemployment benefits, nearly 25% of the total workforce. 43% of Americans said they or someone in their household has lost a job or taken a pay cut because of the pandemic. The food bank network Feeding America reports that demand has increased 70% since the pandemic began.

Working people are captives to a disaster of monstrous proportions. Trump’s complete mishandling of this crisis demonstrates not just his incompetence, but ultimately his diehard allegiance to his cohorts in the billionaire class.

One example of this is scandalously detailed in a recent New York Times exposé on Trump’s bizarre, bumbling supply procurement task force run by his son-in-law Jared Kushner. The team was tasked with sifting through potential suppliers of masks, ventilators, and other crucial supplies. Reliable emergency planning experts were locked out of the process, replaced instead by transplants from venture capital and private equity firms. Trump and his allies were more concerned with pleasing their private sector associates than providing equipment to health care workers who had been forced to wear trash bags and re-used masks.

Trump’s criminal mishandling of this crisis puts a real question mark over his chances JUNE 2020

for reelection come November. He will likely build his campaign around a general anti-China approach and will ramp up xenophobia in an attempt to distract from the disaster he has exacerbated and to whip up his base leading up to the election. But if there are serious outbreaks of COVID-19 in Southern and Midwestern states that Trump won in 2016 and if mass unemployment is here to stay, this will give the Democrats a real opening in November.

How Do We Reopen Society?

Many working people across the country, some anxious about their ability to withstand another month without a paycheck and others reeling from the extreme loneliness brought on by long-term isolation, are desperate for society to open up again. But they are also concerned with the way reopenings are being carried out and fear a second wave.

While the overall rate of new infections in the U.S. is going down, if you exclude New York, New Jersey, Massachusetts, and a few other states, the rate is actually climbing. In smaller towns and rural communities in the Midwest and South, new hotspots are emerging. Shoddy reopening plans will only exacerbate these outbreaks. Additionally, contact tracing and testing numbers are nowhere near where they’d need to be in order to safely reopen in most places.

Millions are watching their bank accounts empty, and while the stimulus checks and $600-a-month unemployment top up have provided some temporary relief, 74% of Americans have already spent the $1,200 or expect it to last less than four weeks. Additionally, millions have still not seen a penny.

Many are at a dire crossroads and there is no competent leadership pointing the way forward.

The “reopen fever” is being painted by the right wing corporate media as ordinary Americans fighting for their freedom, their right to work. However, even in states that have partially reopened, like Texas, business owners report few customers. A clothing store clerk in Texas reported to Reuters, “There’s absolutely no one coming around here.”

The ruling class itself is divided on the question of how to to reopen the economy.

Right-wing politicians and a section of corporate CEOs are ferociously fighting for the

Trump tours a Michigan Ford factory in May without a mask. country to reopen immediately no matter the consequences while another section of the ruling class urges caution and warns of the need for increased stimulus.

The real “reopen fever” is being supercharged by forces that have coalesced around the Save Our Country Coalition (SOCC) - a coalition which includes the Tea Party and the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), both organizations thoroughly committed to pro-corporate, anti-worker causes.

They are drooling over the opportunity to drive through their pro-corporate, anti-worker agenda in the wake of this crisis.

A reopening, as articulated by SOCC, would necessarily include tax cuts for the rich, dramatic cuts to social services, and an erasure of employers liability if their workers become sick or die. In addition to being motivated by opportunities to cut spending and ramp up privatization, these forces are also motivated by a desire to avoid a wave of bankruptcies and maintain a competitive edge over China.

A different section of the ruling class is urging caution in the race to reopen. This section is represented partially by Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell who warned that a rapid reopening could trigger a worse economic fallout down the line if it leads to a massive second wave of the virus. He has also advocated on multiple occasions for continued stimulus to keep the economy afloat.

Unlike Trump who predicts a rapid economic recovery, Powell and most economists predict a longer-term crisis with the potential for a full scale depression.

What About the Democrats?

The depth of the current crisis has forced

the Democratic Party leadership to squirm a bit more left than they’re comfortable with.

They have been forced to accept that mammoth federal and state spending will be required to keep society running in the short term.

Nancy Pelosi and the leadership of the Democratic caucus in the House have proposed significant spending through their HEROES Act including a second round of $1,200 stimulus checks, $200 billion in hazard pay for essential workers, an extension of the $600 a week unemployment top up through January, as well as increased spending on SNAP benefits and direct aid to state and local governments. Of course, this legislation is being blocked by the Republicans in the Senate.

While more aid for working people would be welcome, we should also point out that the HEROES Act is full of half measures and is wholly inadequate. It does not do enough to protect the unemployed, it does not guarantee health care to millions of people who have lost their employer-provided insurance, and it does not set out public health guidelines for states requesting assistance. It also doesn’t change the fact that across the country Democratic politicians like New York Governor Andrew Cuomo are looking to cut funding for social services to offset the states massive loss of tax revenue. And to date the bulk of the stimulus that has been implemented has been to bail out corporations and banks not ordinary people.

Another example of the change in the Democrats’ thinking can be found in the changing tenor of Joe Biden’s campaign.

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3

POLITICS

The Sacrifice of Tara Reade

Democrats Betray the #MeToo Movement Ginger Jentzen

important to the party.

Jeffrey Epstein. Harvey Weinstein. Brett Kavanaugh. Donald Trump. Powerful, wellconnected men have used their money and influence within the bilionaire class to discredit, undermine, and pay off countless women who’ve brought forward allegations of sexual assault, many of whom felt emboldened to fight back within the rising tide of the #MeToo moment. Tara Reade’s allegations against the Democratic establishment’s procorporate candidate, Joe Biden, exposes the deep hypocrisy of their approach to fighting sexual assault and harassment.

Once again, the real priorities of the elite are laid bare. Despite eight women bringing allegations of inappropriate touching alongside Reade, Biden is defended to the hilt by the liberal establishment for whom the interests of women is subordinate to defending corporate interests. The number one goal of the Democratic leadership was to get rid of Bernie Sanders and replace him with a frontrunner that would reliably serve Wall Street.

Whether or not their chosen candidate had a record of abusing women was a secondary consideration.

Obviously the Democrats do not wage the same overt attacks on women’s rights as the Republicans. However, the Democratic leadership ruthlessly fought Bernie’s program.

Combined with leading Democratic figures now attacking rather than standing with Tara Reade belies that women’s rights or the interests of the working class are substantively

Liberal Feminism Doesn’t Stand With Tara The broader liberal establishment turned its back on Reade. Planned Parenthood, Emily’s List, NARAL, and other prominent women’s organizations issued statements that amounted to accepting that Biden made a statement, and that’s enough.

However, the establishment as a whole knew for months what was coming. Tara Reade went to the #MeToo fund Time’s Up and they refused to help her. The New York Times sat on the allegations against Biden for 19 days before reporting on it. If Reade’s story had been a part of the public debate in February/early March, it would’ve complicated the establishment shoving Biden to the fore to stop Bernie.

The cover-up and dismissal of the accusations against Biden by the Democratic elite are a slap in the face to the ordinary people who shared their stories under the viral #MeToo that inspired heroic protests. #MeToo began in Hollywood but amongst workingclass women the conversation turned to organizing against sexual harassment when your assailant has power but isn’t famous. Collective action taken by McDonald’s workers and 20,000 Google workers walking out against sexual harassment on the job led to concrete victories won through workplace organizing.

Tara Reade.

We Need Our Own Independent Party To root out and fight against sexism, we need a new party built by and for workingclass people which views sexual violence as an endemic threat, not as a talking point during election cycles. This party would need to fight tooth and nail, alongside the labor movement, to win affordable, social housing built by taxing big business and the rich; to combat workplace harassment with a fight for equality; and for Medicare for All that includes free abortion on demand, alongside free, high quality childcare.

It would be a massive mistake for the feminist movement to rally behind Biden.

Papering over allegations, questioning the timing of when they come up, and apologizing for openly sexist behavior continues to help Trump and the right wing - and undoes the steps forward made with the convictions of serial rapists Weinstein and Epstein. The Democratic Party once again shows that its leadership is fundamentally opposed to grassroots movements that can win the participation of the wider working class. If two scandal-ridden, billionaire-backed, recorded abusers are the best candidates U.S. capitalism can produce, working people need an alternative. J

Horrific Conditions as COVID Spreads Through Meatpacking Steve Edwards “As of May 22 at 12pm ET, at least 220 meatpacking and food processing plants and 20 farms and production facilities have confirmed cases of Covid-19, and at least four food processing plants are currently closed.

At least 19,160 workers have tested positive for Covid-19 and at least 72 workers have died.” Food and Environment Reporting Network Since the middle of March, it has become clear that meatpacking plants, along with acute care hospitals, nursing homes, and prisons, are the places most likely to incubate and spread COVID-19.

Meat plants are cold, noisy places where when workers need to communicate with each other they have to get close and shout in each others’ faces. Ventilation systems keep the air constantly in motion between them and the effects of this on the virus in the air is still being studied. The work is physically hard, workers are sweating despite the refrigerated temperatures, eye protection gets steamed up and masks become soaked.

As many media images have shown,

workers on the deconstruction lines stand, literally, shoulder to shoulder with absolutely no physical distancing. A minimal six feet of physical distancing would mean doubling or tripling the size of each workstation. That would mean either reconfiguring or rebuilding these massive meat factories and, until that’s done, it would mean laying off something like half the workforce.

Instead Trump and the governors of most rural states, at the behest of the meatpacking companies, are ordering factories to reopen as “essential infrastructure” - orders which the industry wants to protect it from lawsuits and from paying for benefits for laid off workers.

Taking Advantage of Undocumented Workers and Refugees The slaughterhouse industry employs half a million people. The meat industry accounts for more than 5% of the U.S. economy, making it roughly equal in size to auto manufacturing.

Across the meat industry but especially

in poultry plants, particularly in the South where unions are weakest, corporations have gone out of their way to hire undocumented immigrant and refugee workers with little or no rights.

Two-thirds of the workers in beef and pork, and a significant portion of poultry processing workers are organized in one union, the UFCW, and its affiliate the RWDSU. Walkouts have already occurred, such as in Crete, Nebraska where 50 workers walked off the job when they were told that Smithfield Foods had reversed a decision to close the plant for deep cleaning after an unknown number of workers had tested positive. These were organized workers, members of UFCW Local 293 but far from backing the workers’ demands the union failed to support the strike, denying any involvement with it.

Sustained job actions are a necessity to win the massive changes that are needed to protect workers’ lives, and if posed in this way would receive widespread support, just as health and safety measures generally are supported by the vast majority of working and middle class people. And as noted above, the impact on the profits of the meatpackers,

and on the economy, would be immediate and could inspire widespread strikes against attempts to prematurely reopen the economy.

The CDC has produced a report on “COVID-19 Among Workers in Meat and Poultry Processing Facilities” without proposing any solutions, including to the overcrowded living conditions and company buses that these low-paid workers rely on which are a contributing factor in the growth of coronavirus hotspots in the mostly small towns where most plants are located.

The union should demand not only safe distancing and PPE on the job but also safe transportation and affordable and spacious housing for meatpacking workers and their families. The union leaders’ failure to take action points toward the need for a democratic, rank-and-file movement to take control of this massive union in the interests of the membership as a whole, electing workers’ representatives who live on a workers wage, and are prepared to lead their members in a determined struggle for restored living standards and health and safety measures determined by the workers whose lives depend on it. J

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LABOR

Labor Organizing Under Lockdown Justin Harrison, member CWA 13000 As the double blows of an unfolding global economic crisis and the Coronavirus pandemic hammer working-class families, essential workers have taken action - including strikes and walkouts - to win hazard pay, sick leave, and on-the-job safety.

In some industries where unions have maintained a strong organized base they were able to secure agreements to protect their members from the worst aspects of the immediate crisis. Communication Workers of America (CWA), for example, bargained agreements with Verizon and other telecom companies, covering workplace safety, working from home, hazard pay, and up to 26 weeks of paid sick leave with full medical benefits. United Electrical Workers (UE) teamed up with the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) and pivoted from Bernie Sanders campaign work to providing organizing support to essential workers opening up possibilities to organize union drives in non-union workplaces. The National Nurses United (NNU) has been active through the course of the pandemic, publicly advocating for patients and protesting for better working conditions for health care workers. Some unions have initiated petition drives, protests, and call-in actions to politicians in support of essential workers.

However for many of us, union and nonunion alike, the institutional response has been depressingly inadequate. While these agreements and campaigns are good first steps, they have not mobilized a fraction of our capacity to fight and largely limited activity to appeals to politicians, public opinion, and the “better nature” of the bosses.

They are bare minimum examples of what is needed and possible if more union leaderships took aggressive action in defense of our working conditions and to address the social impact of the pandemic.

For the most part, without pressure from unions - or self-organized non-union workers - employers have done the bare minimum legally required under shifting federal guidelines. These guidelines have continued to morph based on what convenient for the bosses to enable continued production, instead of being based on science and what is needed to keep us healthy and stop the pandemic. This pro-employer attitude coming from the highest levels of government has placed us all in jeopardy. On top of this, the Trump administration has blocked OSHA from enforcing health and safety policies specific to COVID-19, while “providing temporary enforcement flexibility for certain requirements” and relaxing its general enforcement of workplace safety in response to the national emergency.

While the wealthy have been “sheltering in place,” enjoying some quiet time for JUNE 2020

reflection, these big business owners have been clamoring to reopen the economy no matter the risk to working people’s lives. Meanwhile, essential workers have continued to work with woefully inadequate protections. Others have been forced to juggle homeschooling, child and family care responsibilities, and the increased stress of securing food and other essentials under quarantine, all while “working from home” if they are lucky enough to still have a job.

Millions of us were summarily laid off when “non-essential” businesses closed in response to public health social distancing requirements, losing both income and our health benefits.

Organizing for Safer Workplaces and Safer Society But where unions have taken action, small but significant gains have been won. TWU Local 234 in Philadelphia was hit hard by COVID-19. Over 250 public transit workers have been infected and at least seven have died. After weeks of patiently attempting to negotiate with the local transit agency to get busses and trains cleaned, and better quarantine protocols for workers - among many other issues - the frustrated local union president threatened job actions in an open letter and video released to the public. Within the week they had an agreement that vastly improved protections for transit workers and the riding public.

Non-union supermarket workers at Trader Joes, Whole Foods, and Instacart, among others, have been organizing sickouts and other job actions. In May, non-union New Orleans sanitation workers staged a heroic strike. Additionally, McDonalds workers across the country have begun organizing for on-the-job protections. Workers have had to fight for PPE, for limited store hours, and reduced customer traffic to maintain social distancing, among other things. While it’s been a very difficult fight, workers have won some of these demands including some hazard pay.

The courage and energy of these workers moving into action follows a wave of public and private sector strikes in 2018 and 2019.

Workers were already fighting back before the pandemic hit.

If a wider layer of union leaderships had more aggressively campaigned for strong on the job protections and pro-worker social policies from the beginning of the shutdown, we would be in a much different place right now. By using our victories as a rallying cry

Striking sanitation workers in New Orleans. for non-union workers, and initiating broad public campaigns for paid sick leave, hazard pay, for real on-the-job safety, and other demands, linked to an active union organizing drive, unions could begin to shift the balance of power in the workplace in our favor. From Amazon warehouses to non-union public hospitals, unions should be present at all worker actions and in discussions with workers fighting back about organizing in their workplace.

Too many union leaders have taken a timid, conservative attitude toward the crisis, limiting their demands to what they think is possible instead of what is needed. Unfortunately for working people, what these union leaders think is possible is often dictated by big business and their politicians.

We need to seriously assess our response to this first wave of the pandemic. The harsh reality is that despite the sacrifices we’ve made over the past three months, the actions of city, state, and federal authorities have been drastically inadequate to contain the virus.

In all organized workplaces unions should have fought for COVID-19 agreements with guarantees for fully-paid sick leave with no retaliation or fear of losing your job, free access to testing, and hazard pay. Unions have the right and responsibility to demand input into any changes in basic working conditions such as work schedules to accommodate social distancing, and the reorganization of work for worker and public safety.

Where the bosses resisted these demands the unions should have been prepared to take strike action if necessary.

Demands for Re-Opening Infection control and workplace safety will continue to be vital issues as the economy is re-opened. At the exact moment when we need to expand services for our communities, cities and states are threatening massive cuts due to revenue shortfalls caused by the rapidly expanding economic crisis.

Unions should aggressively oppose these cuts and demand expanded hiring of public health workers, education workers as well as an army of contact tracers.

The gains we have made in workplace health and safety over the years were won through hard struggle not by asking nicely or making appeals to morality. We can’t rely on Trump, corporate politicians, city and state governments, or our bosses to respond to “reasonable requests” for safety and services. The refusal of employers and the state to secure the needs of working-class people should be met by fierce resistance, from organized non-violent civil disobedience through direct action and strikes if necessary.

Unions, based on the organized economic power of the working class, can be playing a leading role in advocating the determined defense of workers across all industries, union and non-union, leveraging the current mood to fight into real lasting organizing, stronger union leaderships and where necessary building new unions and reversing the decline of organized labor over the past 30 years. By leading the fight for strong proworker public health and industrial policies to slow and finally stop the spread of Coronavirus, the unions could once again take center stage as dynamic agents of progressive social change. J

5

Preparing for a Post-Lo Potential for Struggle Bryan Koulouris Food bank lines over a mile long. Fortyone percent of families with children under the age of 12 struggling to buy enough food.

Over 20 million jobs lost in April alone. Total unemployment is now approaching 40 million or 25% of the workforce, the same level reached in 1933, at the height of the Great Depression. 30% of apartment dwellers are unable to pay their rent fully. At this rate is estimated that up to 35 million people will lose their employer-based health insurance plans.

Up to 40% of small businesses closing their doors permanently. These are not the figures of a developing economy; this is the most powerful capitalist country in the world. And if the billionaire class and the politicians that serve them remain in the driver’s seat, this situation could get worse.

While we face uncertainty, social isolation, and decreased living standards, many of the billionaires are capitalizing off of this crisis.

According to Business Insider, America’s billionaires increased their wealth by over $282 billion in just 23 days during the height of the pandemic. Jeff Bezos, the tax-dodging richest man in the world, will likely become the world’s first trillionaire this year. They’ve profited from our misery, and the billionaire class are the ultimate hoarders, not your neighbors with lots of toilet paper. These heartless profiteers have stolen our wealth, and we need to get organized to take it back.

The economy will be reopening in phases

throughout most of the country in the coming weeks, but we’ll be returning to a much different situation than the one we left behind roughly two months ago. If Trump, the billionaires, and many Democratic state governors get their way, then we will be returning to work without the proper protections in place, setting the stage for a new wave of infections, overwhelmed hospitals, and death. Instead, we need workers’ control over reopening the economy with workplace safety committees meeting at lunch and during breaks (without management present) to formulate demands.

In addition, we need wide-scale testing and tracking to prevent further spread of the virus and an extension of unemployment benefits (including the extra $600 a week) for as long as the crisis continues. (See page 2 to read a working-class program for the return to work.)

Already within the conditions of “shelter in place,” there was an increase in courageous struggle by “essential” workers. Health care, grocery, and retail workers carried out social distancing protests demanding safety for themselves, their patients, and their customers. Amazon warehouse, Instacart, and meat factory workers walked off the job to prevent the spread of infection, often without union protection. Many of these heroic workers were victimized by their bosses with firings and other retaliation, leading to even more dangerous working conditions. Renters are getting organized across the country to cancel rent while landlords threaten record numbers of evictions, often illegally.

While supporting the spread of these heroic struggles, we also need a sense of proportion about what they represent. The vast majority of people not paying rent are doing so because they can’t afford to, not because they’re organized into a cohesive movement or organization. To effectively resist evictions, we’ll need to change that. Also, many of the strikes in non-union workplaces were carried out by small groups of workers, not the majority of wage-earners. Some of the strikes relied too heavily on an orientation toward the mass media rather than organizing on the shop floor.

There were exceptions to this at some Amazon warehouses, but we will need to be better organized to effectively resist the bosses’ safety violations and exploitation.

The existing unions should be using this opportunity to launch massive organizing drives at workplaces across the country. Unfortunately, with a few exceptions, this has not been happening. We should face up squarely to the reality that given the scale of the economic crisis, a large part of the jobs being lost are not coming back once the economy reopens, including in aviation, steel, and small businesses. Some of these jobs may never come back. In fact, the billionaire class wants to leave more of us without jobs if they get their way.

Budget Cuts and Privatization

As Naomi Klein correctly argued in her book Disaster Capitalism the ruling class and their political servants use tragedy as an opening to cut budgets, privatize services, and generally increase exploitation and profits. This happened following the hurricanes in New Orleans and Puerto Rico, and the economic crisis of 2008 led to worsening levels of inequality. In the current pandemic and economic collapse, the ruling class will aim to bust unions, destroy small businesses, privatize education, and cut vital services that are needed now more than ever.

Millions of working people don’t want a return to a “normal;” support for Medicare for All legislation has gone up dramatically in recent months. Grocery workers, often paid less than a living wage, are seen as heroes by millions. Health care workers, often organized into fighting unions like National Nurses United (NNU), are revered almost universally. Anger at the super-wealthy has increased, and more people are joining socialist organizations, particularly the Democratic Socialists of America and also Socialist Alternative. More people see themselves as dependent on a wider community of working-class people and realize that Rally of the unemployed at the local Communist Party headquarters in Washington, D.C. (1930). the billionaire class is not “essential.”

6

When the ruling class tries to make working people pay for this crisis, they could be met with sharp and determined resistance.

Teachers unions have been at the forefront of a new wave of strikes and labor organizing in recent years, particularly but not exclusively in Republican-dominated states. Now, New York Democratic Governor Andrew Cuomo aims to restructure education, working hand-in-hand with the union-busting billionaire Bill Gates.

Cuomo will not be alone. State and federal debt will be used to justify huge cuts to not only education but also our vital public hospitals and other necessary services. In this situation, our best defense is a good offense.

We should demand, as Socialist Alternative is doing in Seattle, that the big corporations like Amazon be taxed to pay for education, housing, and a jobs program. Teachers’ unions should demand no cuts to education as well as smaller class sizes and more support staff in order to carry out social distancing when a return to schools is safe and necessary.

At the federal level, attacks on the U.S. postal service are ramping up. While billionaires and corporations are being bailed out, the Trump administration said it will not be increasing funding to a postal service in danger of running out of money this fall. This could lead to union-busting, cuts, and privatization which would pave the way for non-union behemoths like Amazon and FedEx to increase their share of control over logistics. So far, these threats have not been met with enough fight back with many unions begging politicians to step in and act rather than organizing resistance. However, there are the rumblings of resistance with the American Postal Workers Union organizing some social distance protests in various cities. This should be seen as an organizing step toward a threat of determined strike action to beat back attacks on our postal service.

Trump’s newest proposed budget includes drastic attacks on Medicaid and food stamps, which would not only cut economic lifelines for working families but also likely lead to increased spread of virus infections and death.

Health care workers are on the frontline of both this crisis and can be at the forefront of a determined fightback. Their biggest union, National Nurses United, has a fighting approach that puts forward demands that would benefit all working people. With increased support for Medicare for All, a mass campaign for guaranteed free health coverage could beat back Trump’s agenda.

Biden has said he would veto Medicare for All legislation! This shows that we can’t depend on corporate-controlled Democrats to fight for us, and that unions are strongest when they fight in the interests of all working people and the poor rather than having a narrow focus on snuggling up to the bosses. RoseAnn DeMoro, former executive director of the NNU, has herself drawn this conclusion about the

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ockdown World: Democratic Party with a recent tweet saying “Fundamentally, we need a progressive third party. I am willing to spend the rest of my life working for that.”

Unemployment and Lessons from History Marx and Engels, the founders of scientific socialism, pointed out that the capitalists try to use unemployment to drive down wages.

The ruling class doesn’t like full employment because then workers are in a stronger position to demand higher wages, better benefits, and increased safety. The threat of losing our jobs is used against us to try to get us to accept less. Mass unemployment, on a scale even higher than 2008-9, is likely to be the reality for years to come. Socialists and union activists have confronted this situation before. In the Great Depression, “Unemployed Leagues” were set up throughout the country by socialists and communists. They successfully organized against evictions, for rent control and for direct payments (“relief”) to the unemployed with direct actions and mass protests. Then, when strikes broke out in the mid-1930s, the capitalists wanted to use the unemployed as strikebreakers to weaken the strikes, but the Unemployed Leagues were linked up with the workers movement and supported unions.

The left and unions should actively organize around demands that address the needs of the poor and unemployed. For instance, organizing renters to collectively take action and make demands on their landlords and the state is important ongoing work that can bring people together. Unions should support the call to cancel rent that was popularized by the “Rent Strike 2020” petition with millions of signatures. Unions should also demand taxes on big business to fund necessary services and extend unemployment benefits, building new organizations of the unemployed in the process.

The bosses will not only seek to cynically use the destitution of the unemployed to undermine workers’ struggles, they also try to make us think that our problems can be solved by “individual” solutions. They want us to think that losing our safety, health care, housing, or jobs is a “personal” or “family” problem that we can solve on our own through individual initiative or appeals to the good will of the billionaires. Due to decades of propaganda against collective action and getting organized, this can have some impact as millions are stunned by the drastic effects of the economic crisis.

In the Great Depression, strike figures were at all-time lows before the mass struggles of the mid-1930s. After the last economic crisis in 2008, there were no mass organized left demonstrations against the bank bailouts, and the right-wing Tea Party seized the initiative, blaming public sector workers for the crisis before the Occupy movement developed in 2011.

Stunning Effect of the Downturn While it could take time for people to face up to the need for collective action, these lessons from history do not mean that a “stunning JUNE 2020

A woman waits for food at a distribution point in Orem, Utah on April 20, 2020. effect” will last indefinitely or that things will play out in the same way as in the past. This crisis has been triggered by a pandemic, and heavily unionized health care workers have tremendous authority in society; they could provide important leadership in the fight against coming austerity.

Also, in this crisis the young generation has already experienced deep inequality and economic devastation, rather than the illusions in capitalism that came with the “roaring ‘20s” or the “dot com boom” of the 1990s.

Last year, 2019, was also a historic marker of a worldwide revolt against the injustices of capitalism and oppression with tens of millions taking decisive, bold action across the world.

In the U.S., there was a small but important strike wave in 2017-2018, and millions of people radicalized through the Bernie Sanders campaigns. Black Lives Matter burst onto the scene in 2014 and has continued, though more in the form of one-off demonstrations in reaction to police killings of black people. The struggle against racism and the anti-immigrant far right will undoubtedly continue in the next period and should be championed by socialists and the workers movement. The socialist left has grown in recent years, and exemplary victorious struggles led by a conscious left often give people confidence and pave the way for millions to get organized and fight back.

Role of the Left Even with small forces, the organized left can play an important role in struggles, and clear leadership is needed now more than ever in looming battles against the billionaires. In

this context, it is completely wrong for Bernie and AOC to lead up “unity task forces” with Biden and his billionaire backers. We shouldn’t be giving the Democratic Party leadership left cover, but instead preparing for battles against them over education privatization, hospital closures, and other issues. The left should put forward a clear program to benefit working people and map out the struggles necessary to win our demands.

DSA is correctly not endorsing Biden, which should be welcomed. They could build upon this by popularizing the need to organize the unemployed, resist the coming wave of evictions, and calling on union leaders to prepare for the looming battles against austerity we’ll face. For example, in New York brazen attempts are being made to cut spending on hospitals. Two of the hospitals facing cuts are in one of areas hardest hit by the coronavirus in the country, a district in Brooklyn represented in the State Senate by DSA member Julia Salazar. She could give an important lead by linking up with the New York State Nurses Association and launching a no-cuts campaign. These struggles could pave the way for what’s desperately needed: a mass working-class party in this country that stops at nothing to break the power of the billionaires once and for all.

DSA could play a part in this process by running viable socialist candidates independent of the Democratic Party, basing themselves on a class struggle approach like Socialist Alternative member Kshama Sawant in Seattle.

In the labor upsurge of the mid-1930s, three bold strikes in 1934 paved the way for the mass unionization that followed. They were led by the left, armed with an analysis

of capitalism and a class struggle approach.

The Minneapolis Teamsters strikes that year, chronicled in the book Teamster Rebellion by Farrell Dobbs, were an absolute model for all union struggles and the role that socialists can play within them.

With our small forces, Socialist Alternative is continuing in this tradition with our efforts in Seattle to Tax Amazon (page 10), Rent Strike 2020, and our Workers Speak Out initiative which brings together frontline workers across industries to share experiences, discuss strategy, and plan actions. In these efforts, we work alongside many activists outside Socialist Alternative, often people moving into action for the first time. It will take a united workingclass movement to address the dual horrors of this pandemic and economic crisis.

Society needs to be re-organized to meet our needs. We need mass testing and production of personal protective equipment. This task can’t be left to the billionaire hoarders who want us to die for their profits. Instead, we need a democratically planned economy with the top 500 corporations taken under workers control to ensure the safety and livelihoods of all. Only this, a socialist society, can lay the basis for a sustainable economy that provides green jobs, guarantees health care, builds quality social housing, and puts the majority of the world’s people - the billions of people, not billionaire hoarders - in control of our own destiny. J

7

BUDGET CUTS

Republicans Seize on Financial Crisis

Defeat the Attempt to Privatize USPS Minneapolis Postal Worker The COVID-19 pandemic has caused mail volume to drop dramatically at the United States Postal Service (USPS), and the Postmaster General Megan Brennan has said publicly that, without action from Congress, USPS could run out of money by September.

Congress has given billions in bailouts to corrupt corporations, yet Trump has promised he would veto any stimulus bill that included funding for the postal service. In late April, the Washington Post reported that the Trump administration was in talks with USPS about a $10 billion loan in exchange for giving huge control over the agency to the Treasury Department.

The Trump Administration is using the crisis to attempt to privatize the postal service and break the postal unions. The only way out of this financial and political crisis is with action led by postal workers that can engage and bring in both organized and unorganized logistics workers as well as broader layers of the working class. We have to fight back not only against attacks on the postal service, but against attacks on our living standards as a whole as the economic crisis deepens.

In 2006, the Republican-controlled Congress passed created a “Pre-Funding Mandate” that forced the postal service to fully fund retiree benefits and pensions 75 years into the future. The only federal agency forced to do so. This was done in order to push the

postal service into financial difficulty so the case could be made for privatization.

In 2018, a Trump Administration study claimed the only way to save the postal service was to privatize the agency, cut service, raise rates, and - under the guise of revising collective bargaining - attack and attempt to break the postal unions.

COVID-19 Deepens Crisis The COVID-19 pandemic has caused a partial shutdown in the U.S. and world economy, which has caused anywhere from a 30-50% decrease in mail volume nationwide. While there has been a slight increase in package volume as people are quarantined at home, it has not made up for the lost revenue from the drop in mail volume.

Without postal and delivery workers of all stripes, no one would get any of their online orders or packages and would be forced to expose themselves by going to stores (even that wasn’t possible in many cases). Postal and delivery workers are taking on a higher risk by handling packages and letters and deserve hazard pay for this risk.

It can be difficult for postal workers to demand hazard pay at this moment due to the dire financial situation at the agency, which is why the demand needs to be linked with the demand for Congress to fully fund the postal service.

Postal and delivery workers put their lives at risk during the COVID crisis.

Worker Action Needed The Postal Workers’ COVID-19 Response Facebook group has already reached over 20,000 members, and has been a good way for postal workers across the country to stay in touch, ask questions, and share stories. This could also be taken up at local or regional levels, with closed Facebook groups for postal workers from every craft and union to organize standouts, coordinated call-in campaigns to congressional offices, or other actions around the demands for hazard pay, repealing the Pre-Funding Mandate, and fully funding the USPS. While a strike may not be needed at this

Public Education Facing Cuts and Privatization Matt Maley

In a matter of days, teachers across the country were forced to completely transform their classrooms and develop distance-learning coursework suitable for their students.

Melissa Vozar, Chicago public school teacher and member of Socialist Alternative, reported having to coordinate getting laptops to students who didn’t have them and sitting on the phone with students for hours walking them through unfamiliar online platforms.

Now, teachers across the country are being rewarded for their hard work with continued school privatization and budget cuts.

The Privatization Scheme Privatization is a decades-old project of the ruling class with two main aspects: the first step is to defund public institutions, like schools, and the second is to replace them with private & for-profit “options” like charter schools. The privatization of schools has been a bi-partisan project since 1983, when the “A Nation At Risk” was produced by the Reagan Administration. This report marked

the beginning of a new era for public education, but privatization peaked under Barack Obama’s presidency.

Early on, public school funding was diverted to private schools through voucher programs and similar schemes. Defunding public schools took a new turn with the advent of massive, for-profit charter school networks. Under the Obama administration, funding for charter schools increased dramatically. This “charterization” of schools tends to be especially violent after economic and natural crises like the gutting of New Orleans public schools, to be replaced by charter schools, in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.

The unrelenting cuts to education budgets at state and local level by both parties combined with vicious bipartisan attacks on teacher unions had been building pressure for years until the levee finally broke early in 2018, with the historic strike of educators and school workers in all 55 counties of West Virginia. This quickly spread with big fights across the country.

California, in particular, has been a big laboratory for charter experiments and has

seen dozens of strikes in a few years, including several big strikes against privatization.

Educators in Los Angeles and Oakland rang in 2019 in a decisive way, with the question of privatization and charter schools on the minds of parents and teachers. One demand was a moratorium on new charter schools, something both Oakland and LA won; these were definite victories, if temporary ones, in the fight against privatization.

What’s Coming for Public Education Two years of struggle have put the corporate privatizers on the back foot, but the fight is not over. The global economy is staring down a collapse, triggered by COVID-19 but with far deeper causes, that could match the scale of the Great Depression. Already state governments are releasing initial budgets with massive cuts. Layoffs have already been announced in California because of statewide budget cuts.

One big lesson of the education revolt of 2018 and 2019 is that the money clearly

exact moment, it may become necessary in the near future with continued attacks from the Trump Administration, and inaction from Congress. The COVID-19 pandemic has deepened an already unfolding financial crisis at the agency, and this could be a life or death situation for the public postal service.

This economic and political crisis has revealed that it is only through organized and coordinated action by postal workers and the broader working class that we can stop the attacks from Congress and the White House, as they attempt to push the cost of this economic and public health crisis on the backs of workers everywhere. J

exists in society to fully fund services like education. It is simply being hoarded by big business and the super-wealthy. Yet time and time again politicians on both sides of the aisle choose to defund schools, close hospitals and privatize prisons, instead of taxing the rich and big corporations. An example of the way forward for progressive funding for public services is the Amazon Tax fight in Seattle, a fight which was recently endorsed by the Seattle Education Association (see page 10).

When schools reopen, teachers and school employees will be forced to fight for proper social distancing protocol in their classrooms as well as adequate PPE. On top of this, schools will be told to tighten their belts due to the dire economic crisis. Working families should not be forced to pay for the crisis created by the billionaire class. Public-sector unions, including educators, must immediately begin building a united movement for no-cuts budgets on the basis of taxing the rich and big business, starting with public-sector union resolutions demanding states end all corporate taxbreaks before making cuts or layoffs. J

8 S O C I A L I S T A L T E R N A T I V E . O R G

I N T E R N AT I O N A L

Coronavirus Catastrophe Unfolding in the Neo-Colonial World George Brown and Cedric Gerome A truly global and volatile crisis, the coronavirus pandemic’s epicenter of suffering and devastation has shifted rapidly across oceans and continents. Among the most significant developments of recent weeks has been the opening up of a new, especially catastrophic chapter in this crisis, as the virus begins to decisively hit the neocolonial world. This includes the regions which are historically and currently under the economic domination of the key imperialist countries, including Latin America, Africa, the Middle East and most of Asia.

For the most part, these regions have not yet experienced an explosive growth of the pandemic. Yet with overcrowded cities, widespread slum-like housing conditions, low living standards, a large percentage of pre-existing health problems, poor access to basic sanitation and dilapidated medical infrastructure, the neo-colonial world is inevitably heading for further waves of devastation.

In Brazil, which now has the second most confirmed cases of any country (second only to the U.S.) the utter debacle of right wing president Jair Bolsonaro’s handling of the pandemic has precipitated his regime into its most severe political crisis yet. Meanwhile, a silent and invisible spread of the virus is already underway in many other countries, while not being reflected in official figures because of abysmally low levels of testing.

Many of the problems driving the pandemic crisis are exacerbated in the neo-colonial world. In Europe, the crisis was worsened by a shortage of ICU beds, which averaged 4,000 per million people. However, in Africa, there are only five ICU beds per million people. Another graphic example is that 34 sub-Saharan African countries spend $200 or less per capita on health care annually, one twentieth of what Britain spends.

The UN Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA) warned in April that the pandemic was likely to kill at least 300,000 African people and risked pushing nearly 30 million into extreme poverty. In war-zones, in refugee camps, in territories under military siege and occupation like in Kashmir, Yemen, or Gaza, conditions are most conducive to new humanitarian disasters. Indigenous communities, like in the Amazon region and elsewhere, are facing the danger of being virtually wiped out by this pandemic.

Economic Time-Bomb But even countries which have hardly been touched by COVID-19 so far are facing the combined effects of the lockdowns and of the rapidly developing global recession.

Unlike in 2008 when the crisis took a while to fully reach many neo-colonial countries,

JUNE 2020

the effects of the global recession are this time immediate and brutal.

According to the International Labor Organization, 1.6 billion workers in the informal economy – nearly half of the global workforce – stand in immediate danger of having their livelihoods destroyed. Capital flight from the so-called “emerging economies” is already four times greater than in the crisis of 2008-09; local currencies, investment, trade, global tourism and remittances from abroad are all collapsing.

Neo-colonial countries are heavily dependent on the fluctuation of prices of raw materials, the export of which constitute a primary source of income. The severe contraction in the world economy and the shutdowns in the advanced capitalist countries have depressed demand and prices alike, driving many countries to the verge of financial collapse, with local capitalist governments already unloading the costs on the shoulders of workers and poor via new austerity measures. Faced with the crash in oil prices, the Nigerian government has removed the oil subsidy while the Algerian government has slashed this year’s budget by 50%.

Governments have contracted new loans from the IMF, which will have to be repaid via similar measures later. The debt of neocolonial countries was already a gigantic ticking time-bomb in the period before the pandemic. Over the last decade, the total debts of the 30 largest so-called “emerging markets” alone rose from $28 trillion to $71 trillion. This could explode into an avalanche of debt defaults in the coming period, provoking new shocks in the world financial system.

Perhaps most prominent among these is the prospect of a new, mega default by Argentina.

This explains the limited "concessions" imperialist powers and institutional creditors have been ready to accept, such as the decision of the G20 meeting to suspend debt service payments of the world’s poorest countries for one year. However, the scale of these debts, the growing nationalism and tensions between imperialist countries, as well as the profound internal crises they are themselves grappling with, are all likely to make any coordinated response aimed at defusing this bomb much more difficult than in the past.

Before the pandemic, 46 low-income countries were spending more on servicing their debt every year than on their public health systems. Socialists should campaign for these debts to be repudiated immediately, for capital controls to be introduced, and for

A nurse places a protective face mask on a patient in Siliguri in eastern India. the key sections of the economy on a national and regional basis to be put under public ownership and democratic planning to ensure that resources are used for people’s needs.

Growing Anger With informal work and the lack of social safety nets being the norm, and most people being incapable of saving money or stockpiling food, the lack of mobility resulting from the lockdowns and the lack of serious relief plans from capitalist governments have aggravated a hunger crisis for millions of people. The UN has warned that the world is facing “multiple famines of biblical proportions,” despite having the productive capacities to feed at least 10 billion people. Meanwhile, health organizations are warning of a new flaring up of already existing deadly infections because of the reduction in vaccination campaigns and depleted health resources in many parts of Africa, the Middle East, Asia, and Latin America. Capitalism is exposed more irrefutably than ever as a parasitic system throwing humanity backwards.

The massive distress facing hundreds of millions of working people and poor because of the reckless and often brutal way with which lockdowns have been imposed (over 200 people died due to lockdown measures in India for example), is now cynically weaponized to justify the reopening of economies as recklessly as they were shut down in the first place, in absolute disregard for the health and lives of ordinary people. Workers and the poor should not have to be forced to choose between their health and their livelihoods. They should fight for a society that can guarantee both.

To head off growing anger at their

incapacity to respond to people’s needs, the ruling elites are using the crisis to boost the state machinery of repression. They are resorting to “emergency” procedures, bypassing parliaments, broadening state surveillance, sending the army onto the streets, unleashing increased violence and repression against dissenters, as well as scapegoating racial, sexual, and religious minorities.

However, a fightback has already begun.

If the COVID-19 pandemic initially allowed the ruling classes to weather the revolutionary storms they were facing in country after country at the end of last year, this won’t be a lasting phenomenon.

An article from Bloomberg, entitled “This Pandemic Will Lead to Social Revolutions,” while written from a pro-capitalist standpoint, reflects a good understanding of the revolutionary upheavals that are coming: “The immediate effect of COVID-19 is to dampen most forms of unrest . . . But behind the doors of quarantined households, in the lengthening lines of soup kitchens, in prisons and slums and refugee camps — wherever people were hungry, sick, and worried even before the outbreak — tragedy and trauma are building up. One way or another, these pressures will erupt.”

From the health care staff striking for protective equipment in many parts of Africa to the female textile workers blocking roads to demand unpaid wages in Bangladesh; from the Brazilian people banging pots against Bolsonaro to the youth expressing their rage against the banks in Lebanon’ streets, the masses are showing everywhere that they are not ready to take this new crisis lying down. J

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S O C I A L I S T A L T E R N AT I V E I N A C T I O N

Signature Gathering Starts

Seattle Tax Amazon Fight Heats Up

Logan Swan On Saturday, May 16, more than 250 Seattle activists fighting to Tax Amazon for housing and jobs met through a Zoom conference to decide on and plan the next stage of the movement - going all out to get the signatures for our ballot initiative. Following an energetic plenary discussion on a resolution outlining new developments and the launch of a safe, socially distanced signature gathering campaign, the campaign raised nearly $11,000!

Working people are faced with a triple emergency of public health, housing, and employment and action is needed now more than ever to address our needs. “Business as usual” is forcing workers to bear the burden of the crises of this system, but we don’t have any more to give. Thirty-eight million are unemployed, millions of renters unable to pay and could face homelessness once eviction moratoriums are lifted.

Our movement has been fighting to have digital signatures either be accepted or for the number of signatures required to be lowered, to avoid needing to interact face-toface with others during the pandemic. The political establishment in Seattle and Olympia have refused, and when asked how we can safely practice what little democratic process is available to regular people, the response from officials has been “We don’t know.” Mortgage and student loan paperwork is regularly done digitally, when hundreds of

Read the full version of this article as well as more reporting and analysis at SocialistAlternative.org thousands of dollars are on the line in each case. That collecting electronic signatures to get an initiative on the ballot isn’t allowed is as ridiculous as it is undemocratic.

After the open discussion at the conference, those attending broke out into districtbased discussion groups to collaborate on how to best build the campaign in neighborhoods across the city: how will our “Amazon Tax Prime” ballot petition delivery service work, what local businesses could be won over to supporting the campaign and act as a hub for signature gathering, how to respond to right wing attacks being broadcasted by the media?

After the district breakout groups, the conference voted nearly unanimously for the resolution proposed by the coordinating committee: We cannot rely on City Hall, we’re going all-out to collect signatures.

The Coordinating Committee is the leadership body elected at the first Action Conference in February, made up of union members, faith leaders, socialists, environmentalists, and housing advocates. Following the flat refusal of elected Democrats at the state and local level to meet our needs through legislation or easing the lift of a ballot initiative, the discussion focused on how to scale these obstacles put up by the political

establishment. (Seattle’s Democratic political establishment maneuvered a shameful attack on the movement, suspending committee meetings scheduled to discuss the Sawant-Morales legislation that would raise $500 million for COVID relief, union wage paying jobs, and affordable social housing.)

With only a 1% tax on the 2% biggest businesses in Seattle, 100,000 workingclass households would get four months of $500 payments to help families weather this crisis. The $300 million left over - and full $500 million every year thereafter - would create an estimated 10,000 publicly owned affordable homes in the first decade.

The Amazon Tax would also create an estimated 10,000 union jobs in new construction, creating or supporting 34,000 jobs overall over ten years. In the year prior to the COVID outbreak, Seattle had the highest rate of new unemployment claims in the country, a title it’s held onto despite the 36 million workers across the country that have applied for benefits since the virus hit. In the context of the crisis, and with cuts to needed social services likely to be proposed in state budgets across the country, our tax on Amazon and big business in Seattle is more urgently needed than ever. J

Report: Brooklyn Tenants Organizing Against Big Landlord Elin Miller FTTU Member and Rent Striker One gray, blustery day late in March, half a dozen tenants gathered on the roof of their Bushwick, Brooklyn apartment building, shivering in the wind and bundled up in coats, mittens, and slippers. They decided that together, they would not pay rent on April1 .

Some of them couldn’t afford it; others could, but weren’t sure what they would do when the next bill came. Most, like so many people in New York City and across the United States, had been laid-off or furloughed as a result of the coronavirus crisis.

Many had never been in a situation like the one they were now forced into. None wanted to be. But after a few chance encounters in hallways and flyers slid under doors, they gathered together on the roof and banded together under the daunting notion that it

would be more difficult for their landlord to retaliate against any individual tenant if they all acted at once, together.

With over one hundred rental properties in New York City, FullTime Management (the building owner) embodies the way in which housing — a basic human right — is brutally exploited by large landlords at the expense of their tenants in a for-profit rental market.

Some tenants of FullTime Management report maintenance issues that go unaddressed, ranging from minor to severe. Some tenants complain of uncommunicative managers, and of an obtuse business structure that obscures the internal workings of the company and those at the center of it.

The long history of renters fighting for housing justice in New York City teaches that under such circumstances, strength in numbers is key. Armed with this understanding, these tenants declared themselves a Tenant Association within the building, and they

wrote up a letter to their landlord announcing the formation of their association and requesting negotiation on April rent payments. Within days, tenants were notified only that rent would be due as usual.

This story is not unique. Residents of this building taped a flyer to the building next door and it turned out that not only was it owned by the same landlord, but they were already organizing and reaching out to other FullTime buildings as well. Following the example of other multi-building tenant organizations such as the established Crown Heights Tenant Union, and growing alongside other newly-formed forces, this loose group of Tenant Associations came together to form the FullTime Tenant Union, which now represents scores of tenants, apartment units, and entire buildings. Together, members of FullTime Tenant Union (FFTU) are withholding rent for the month of May, and for the duration of the coronavirus crisis.

In addition to organizing a rent strike, FTTU is taking a number of actions because it is crucial that rent striking is not in and of itself an end-goal. They recognize that when the eviction moratorium is lifted, and when housing courts reopen, a rent strike will not on its own change the fact that those who have had no income cannot simply backpay their rent.

Why should the burden of the crisis be placed onto renters, whose financial situations are some of the most severely impacted by this crisis? Ultimately, FTTU joins the millions of voices across the United States to demand rent and mortgage cancellation for the duration of the coronavirus crisis.

When we, as renters, stand together — like the tenants who gathered on their roof one morning in March in spite of wind and cold and fear — our collective humanity will be more powerful than the greed of those who seek to profit at our expense. J

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POLITICS

Trump Oversees Crisis

continued from p. 3

Throughout the primary he appealed to voters as a reasonable, moderate choice. He banged on about the dramatic cost of Bernie’s proposals and advocated a far more conservative approach to federal spending.

However, New York Magazine recently published an article titled “Biden Is Planning an FDR-Size Presidency.” In the article, Biden is quoted as saying spending needs to be “A hell of a lot bigger” for the duration of this crisis and that the only solution is massive public investment.

While we should have a healthy skepticism of promises from the neoliberal leadership of the Democrats, it is the scale of the economic crisis which is forcing them to move in the direction of a “Keynesian” approach.

This refers to the type of measures taken during the Great Depression by Roosevelt and others which aimed to prop up demand, restart the economy, and save capitalism.

These measures did have a temporary effect but ultimately were not adequate to bring the economy out of the Depression which only happened with the war economy after 1940.

The same will be true this time. Adopting such an approach, even partially, does not mean the Democrats are now our “friends”; they are just recognizing the scale of the threat to their system.

We Need Leadership As the debate around what type of leadership we need in this moment rages on, references will continue to be made to FDR. The Democrats will likely invoke his legacy in articulating their vision for rebuilding the economy. But we must distinguish between short term measures to put money in people’s pockets to prop up the economy and restart the profit machine and real lasting gains for working people. Social Security, wage gains, and union rights in the 1930s were not the product of ruling class benevolence but of ferocious class struggle waged by the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) including a large layer of socialist fighters.

The Democratic Party today fears, as Roosevelt did, the growing wrath of ordinary Americans. The scale of the concessions they grant to working families depends on the size of the working-class fightback. They will never concede the change we really need, including Medicare for All and a Green New Deal, without a massive struggle.

This crisis has exposed just how desperately working people need our own leadership to mount a real fight back. This makes Bernie’s capitulation to the establishment all the more devastating. He has urged his delegates to “turn down the volume” and has repeatedly shamed his supporters into lining up behind Biden.

Sadly, many union leaders have taken an even less combative approach than Bernie.

One of the major hamstrings that has crippled the leadership of most major unions is their cozy relationship to Democratic Party bigwigs and their allergy to a genuine class struggle approach.

Alongside the strengthening and democratizing of existing unions and launching organizing drives, workers may in some instances need to consider forming new unions. Intimately tied in with this task is the project of working people coming together to fight for our own independent political voice.

In order to build a struggle to match the scale of this crisis, we need to begin now discussing what a new working-class political party could look like.

Figures like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez have complained about the loneliness of being a sole democratic socialist voice in a sea of establishment politicians in both parties. However, this loneliness is not inevitable. There exists the immense potential for working people to begin constructing a democratic, mass organization that can be a political home to labor struggles, social movements, and the growing socialist left. It is in a political home like this that we can develop and build the working-class leadership needed to deal with the mounting crisis we face. J

Eric Jenkins Ahmaud Arbery was shot dead while jogging on February 23 in Brunswick, Georgia.

His killers were two white men, Gregory and Travis McMichael. That day, the McMichaels waited in their cars with weapons, including a shotgun that would take Arbery’s life. They claimed that Arbery was the suspect in a supposed string of home burglaries, and that he was running from his latest break in. The McMichaels confronted Arbery. In seconds, Arbery laid dying on the ground. Afterwards, the McMichaels claimed self-defense. The confrontation was filmed by William “Roddy” Bryan, who thought that the recording helped clear his “friends,” the McMichaels.

As it turned out, there were no reported home break-ins in the area. Arbery was unarmed.

What ensued after Arbery’s death was the legalistic version of hot potato. Gregory McMichael was a former cop and a former investigator for the Brunswick District Attorney (DA) Jackie Jackson who later recused herself from the case. Next came Waycross DA Geroge Barnhill. Apparently, Barnhill previously worked with McMichael on a past undisclosed JUNE 2020

prosecution of Ahmaud Arbery, whose only run-ins with the law was shoplifting and an alleged firearm possession as a highschool student. Not only did Barnhill recuse himself for this reason, but afterwards wrote a public letter defending the McMichaels’ actions, claiming it was in “self-defense” based on Georgia’s “Stand your Ground” law.

Now after this embarrassing spectacle, Georgia’s attorney general Chris Carr has appointed the Atlanta area’s DA Joyette M. Holmes, a Republican-affiliated black woman who is alleged to be the ally of Governor Brian P. Kemp, to take control of the case. It’s clear that the McMichaels connections with the police department and the judicial system allowed them to stay free for 74 days. These institutions are built to ensure the subjugation of working-class people and the poor, particularly black people.

Just like Trayvon Martin and other black people killed by the police, working-class people – black and white – mobilized demanding justice for Arbery. After the leaking of the video showing Arbery’s murder, working people sprang into action. Despite the fear of the COVID-19 pandemic, hundreds of protestors rallied in Brunswick, demanding that both Gregory and Travis McMichael be arrested.

Workers in other cities began to host jogging events with the #IRunWithMaud hashtag. This solidarity from the working class, backed by large mobilizations, forced Brunswick police to arrest the McMichaels.

Justice, however, cannot be obtained with

SOCIALIST ALTERNATIVE ISSN 2638-3349 EDITORS: Tom Crean and Keely Mullen EDITORIAL BOARD: George Brown, Eljeer Hawkins, Joshua Koritz, Kailyn Nicholson, Calvin Priest, Tony Wilsdon Editors@SocialistAlternative.org

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The Killing of Ahmaud Arbery Note: Since the publishing of this article the McMichaels, along with William Bryan who filmed the shooting, have been arrested and charged with murder. This is an initial victory for the movement that was built following Ahmaud Arbery’s brutal killing.

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an arrest. Again, the Travyon Martin case proved that with the acquittal of Geroge Zimmerman.

What is needed to obtain justice is to turn this swelling of solidarity into an organized mass movement of the working class, united across race, gender, sexual orientation, and all other divisions. Such a movement could organize actions for immediate demands and against the racist capitalist system and its armed police force through non-violent mass disobedience.

Working people could launch daily socialdistancing car protests and create immense pressure on all those in power who openly or covertly side with racists vigilantes. These efforts should be organized with the participation of unions – as organizations of working people against the ruling class – they can play a key role in broadening the struggle.

Ultimately, however, to fight for justice for Ahmaud Arbery, workers must question the system that allowed such an event to happen in the first place. Capitalism (a system that has led in many ways to the worst effects of the COVID-19 pandemic that has led to nearly 100,000 deaths nationwide disproportionately working- class, poor black and brown) has proven to be the very source of institutional racism. The movement to defend black lives will need to be to tear down the pillars of capitalism and topple all of its reactionary racist and sexist ideas. Replacing it with a socialist society, where we can begin to undo the legacy of racism and all other oppressions. J

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ISSUE #64 l JUNE 2020 SUGGESTED DONATION $2

Renters Fight Back to #CancelRent

Broaden the Fight Against Trump’s Agenda

Dana White Mandy had recently moved into a new building in Chicago but hadn’t yet met many of her neighbors. She opened her door one afternoon to find a note on top of some moving boxes she’d left outside the door. The note asked how she would feel about trying to organize the tenants in their building together and ended with an invitation to text the phone number scribbled at the bottom. That first note led to Mandy and her downstairs neighbor Daniel pulling together an ad hoc tenants committee with their building neighbors and beginning to reach out to renters in other buildings owned by the same highlyprofitable corporate developer.

Mandy and her neighbors aren’t alone in these initial efforts to reach out to neighbors to fight together for rent reductions and defend against potential evictions. Nearly three million people have now signed onto the Rent Strike 2020 petition demanding a suspension of rents, mortgages, and utility bills during the duration of this crisis. While not all three million signees are actively organizing, there are nevertheless countless stories of renters across the country who have taken this crucial next step to fight for rent relief.

In Minneapolis, renters with Mint Properties have begun a 78-building-wide organizing effort for rent forgiveness that started with just one renter. Tuli took the first step by posting a letter on all their neighbors’ doors. They soon got responses from half the building. One Mint Properties renter who is also immunocompromised stated that she would likely move out anyways because she had lost her job and could no longer afford rent. There are millions of other renters facing similar circumstances - compelled to choose

between moving out now or facing eviction in the future.

Defending Against Evictions The situation will become even more difficult for renters when the additional $600/ week in unemployment benefits provided by the CARE Act expire at the end of July, especially if there isn’t an extension of these benefits or further rounds of stimulus checks.

Eviction moratoriums will also soon begin to be lifted across the country, with Texas’s eviction moratorium already ending on May 18.

Some states never imposed eviction moratoriums in the first place. We shouldn’t doubt for a minute that many corporate landlords will rush to file evictions once these moratoriums are lifted. Even with the best legal defense, renters will face an uphill battle in courts.

While the risks of evictions and landlord retaliation are very real, we clearly can’t count on a legal process that is already stacked against us by years of corporate landlord associations spending billions to advocate for landlord-friendly laws. The best way to defend ourselves and our neighbors who are at risk of eviction is to begin organizing together to collectively defend against evictions like renters in Tuli and Mandy’s buildings have begun doing. Eventually we will likely need to utilize direct action tactics to delay and stop eviction proceedings and build pressure on local politicians by highly publicizing these cases.

Our ability to fight back in the coming months will depend on how organized we are in our buildings and cities and across the country.

In one small building in Boston, one tenant, Eva, reached out to her neighbors through personal handwritten notes and doorknocking while wearing a mask and maintaining

social distancing. Connecting with her neighbors led to the seven-unit building forming a tenant committee which has already been able to win up to 50% rent reductions for all tenants during the crisis.

While we should be organizing in our buildings, it’s also clear we will need more than just a building-by-building strategy to fight back. In Eva’s own words, “Millions across the country are struggling to make rent. Though organizing in my building is a start, and has materially benefited tenants, we need a movement of renters taking up the serious work of getting organized.” Our own building organizing needs to be channeled into fighting for broader political demands, including a rent, mortgage, and utility bill suspension during this crisis. Reports from the National Multifamily Housing Council noted that up to 20% of renters were unable to pay a cent in rent during the first week of May. Without relief, millions more will have to ask themselves whether or not to prioritize rent or other basic necessities in the coming months.

Renters Can Fight Back Of course the challenges that renters are facing under this crisis aren’t a new phenomenon. Today’s economic difficulties come on top of soaring rent increases in recent years.

About 1-in-4 renters now pay over 50% of their income toward rent, leaving little room for saving for unexpected emergencies like a global pandemic and mass unemployment.

As rents rise, private equity firms and large real estate developers meanwhile have profited off the increasing number of workingclass people who can’t afford to buy a home.

In the wake of the 2008 foreclosure crisis, the housing market has become even more

saturated by corporate investors hoping to turn a quick buck by buying up investment properties. From 2011 to 2017, privateequity groups and large investors spent $36 billion swooping up over 200,000 singlefamily homes, many of which were foreclosed properties previously owned by working families.

Our first and most immediate step to build renters’ power is for us to organize in our own buildings right now to fight for rent reductions - but we will need to take this fight further than temporary rent suspensions. These first organizing steps during the crisis can begin to lay a foundation for the kind of organized collective political action needed to fight back against the corporate landlord lobby and for a broader transformation of the for-profit housing market. Under capitalism, billionaires, and even soon-to-be-trillionaire Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, are making billions in profit while working people are struggling to keep a roof over their head.

There is an urgent need for universal rent control on a national scale and a tax on the wealthiest corporations like Amazon to build high quality, publicly owned social housing.

Ultimately we will also need to bring the top profit-making corporate landlords into public ownership to guarantee housing as a human right. As more essential workers also organize to fight for basic safety protections and hazard pay during the Coronavirus crisis, we need to link our struggles as renters to the broader struggles of the working class. Our efforts organizing in our buildings and our workplaces today are an essential starting point now to fight back against a capitalist system that refuses to meet our basic needs, even during a worldwide public health crisis.

J