Monthly Archives: March 2020

Pandemics, climate change and presidential vision have significant consequences for the future as we address our existential threats. There are stark differences being presented in our current presidential campaign from incremental movement forward to bold proposals necessary to address the scope of the problems we face in an interconnected world.

The Covid-19 pandemic challenging our nation and world is simply the latest crisis and certainly not the last. Following prior coronavirus outbreaks of SARS in 2002 and MERS in 2012 this represents simply the latest global health threat that comes at the interface of human health, animal health and the environment. This evolving crisis currently in its early stages will take months before its ultimate impact on our world is known. We find ourselves woefully behind as we react to the daily exponential spread of this virus that knows no sexual, racial, economic, temperate, political or geographic boundaries, racing to get ahead of its scourge. Certainly the most vulnerable among us including elderly, poor and those with preexisting conditions are the ones most at risk. I will not even attempt to cover the potential shortage of hospital and critical care beds the nation faces, most of which are filled at any given time even before the pandemic, let alone ventilators for mechanical ventilation should this crisis reach its full potential.

In the U.S. those who survive the current pandemic will be left to rely on our existing healthcare system. Our current patchwork of piecemeal health coverage leaves people to gamble with the outcomes of their diagnoses and their economic future.

Many are losing their jobs as a result of this crisis. How many of them will lose their health insurance as well? And how many will be left bankrupt from this illness or any other health crisis?The reality is that all of us may find ourselves one illness or injury or job loss away from bankruptcy. Four in five Americans who have suffered bankruptcy due to medical bills and illness had health insurance when they became ill.So in addition to being a health crisis, we find ourselves in an economic crisis as well, without sick leave, a living wage and income guarantees during our time of need.And when this pandemic passes, without systemic change there will remain 90 million or more with the resultant job losses in this country who have either no insurance or who are under insured. And we will return to the reality that approximately 70,000 people die in this country each year prematurely due to lack of health insurance.

We must recognize the interconnectedness of the health of our nation and planet to the economic security of our citizens. Unless we make the connection, our future is in doubt.

For the cynics in our nation, it should now be obvious that it is in our own self-interest to want everyone in our community to be healthy to protect ourselves. As a community, nation and world we are, in the words of Senator Sanders, only as safe as our least insured person.

What is called for is a systemic shift from a reactive response to a prospective approach to health with universal healthcare that covers every American Medicare for All, integrated with a fully funded public health and global pandemic planning office as we prepare for the next inevitable pandemic.And rest assured, there will be another and another pandemic as our world responds to the Anthropocene. In the end, this is not a political choice, it is a survival choice. Yet we have allowed all medical choices to become political choices in how we choose to allocate our treasure in taking care of the most vulnerable.

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The global crisis of climate change demands an equally bold action and is also presenting a health crisis around the world that effects every medical specialty and organ system on a daily basis. It especially effects women, most notably pregnant women and women of childbearing age, children and the elderly. The last five years have been the hottest five years on record. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report identifies that we have from 8 to 10 years to dramatically alter our use of fossil fuels to curtail catastrophic climate change averting disastrous outcomes. In the United States, the Green New Deal sets forth the necessary aggressive campaign that we must undertake in order to avert such calamity moving to a carbon free economy by 2050. Only one candidate understands the gravity of the situation and is willing to take on the root cause of the problem while putting into place the solutions necessary to match the change in course that the scientists tell us is necessary.

Rather than address the severity and urgency of the problems we face, an attempt to protect the economics of the fossil fuel industry and confuse and frighten those less versed in the crisis, the response has been framed as posing a revolution versus incremental progress.This attitude was seen in previous bold societal initiatives such as ending slavery and giving women the right to vote labeled as radical ideas that needed to wait their time in history rather than recognizing the sentinel moment in history that each of these challenges represented to our nation and world.

Finally, the ultimate existential threat is the threat of nuclear war. Interestingly, the existential threats of climate change and associated pandemics are not disconnected from nuclear risks and war as each one results in conflict from resource depletion to global economic crises. When these crises bring nuclear nations into conflict, nuclear war is an option. As a physician dedicated to raising awareness about the dangers of nuclear war, I must state that there is no effective medical or public health response to nuclear war, no matter how small and prevention is the only response. Even a suitcase nuclear device detonated in one of our major metropolitan areas would overwhelm our entire national health and critical care system. Such a device in a city like Los Angeles would cause tens of thousands of severe burns requiring round the clock intensive burn bed care, yet the entire U.S. has less than 2,000 burn beds. Any nuclear war, by intent, accident, or cyber-attack would be far worse potentially ending civilization. The only way to prevent this scenario is by the complete abolition of nuclear weapons. Such a global movement banning nuclear weapons is underway around the world as nations are ratifying the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons. Senator Sanders has said time and time again, Maybe instead of spending $1.8 trillion a year globally on weapons of destruction money to kill each other, maybe we pool our resources and fight our common enemy, which is climate change.

Thesebold ideas throughout history have been criticized as being too much too soon. The same is being said of the current proposals to provide universal healthcare through a Medicare for All program or boldly addressing the climate threats taking on a global leadership role through the Green New Deal while guaranteeing the economic wellbeing and safety of our people, and yes abolishing nuclear weapons, when in reality the future generation may decry we did too little too late.

This is indeed a sentinel moment in our world.The status quo is not acceptable. We must recognize the interconnectedness of the health of our nation and planet to the economic security of our citizens. Unless we make the connection, our future is in doubt. We must wake up to the reality that we are one human family and this is not about one man or one idea. This movement is real and it is unstoppable. If there ARE future generations, when your childrens children look back and ask, when the planet was threatened, what did you do? What will you say? Its about us, ALL of US! #NotMeUs

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Coronavirus and Our Existential Threats This Presidential Season - Common Dreams

The IWWD celebration in Boston, March 7.

The socialist origins of International Working Womens Day were celebrated March 7 by the Boston International Action Center and the local branch of Workers World Party. A powerful program saluted both the key role of student activists in the Sanders movement in the U.S. and the courageous women-led uprising in Shaheen Bagh, Delhi, India, against repression and anti-Muslim laws in that country.

Women freedom fighters, past and present

WWP youth activist and Team Solidarity singer Kristin Turgeon greeted the crowd with a trilogy of songs dedicated to women freedom fighters. She honored General Harriet Tubman, leader of the Underground Railroad, who struck countless blows against slavery and freed hundreds of enslaved African people; Puerto Rican Independence fighter Lolita Lebron who opposed U.S. colonialism and was imprisoned for 25 years for her actions; and all working-class women. Turgeon closed her set with a rousing rendition of the Union Maid refrain: Im sticking to the union until the day I die.

Turgeon then shared a brief history of IWWD, born through the life and death struggle of women garment workers in New York City in the early 1900s. She paid tribute to women in unions who are still militantly striking over a hundred years later for better pay, health care benefits, protection from sexual harassment and winning. She also saluted Indigenous women and Two-Spirited people on the front lines to protect their land, water and national sovereignty rights from murderous energy companies, polluters and perpetrators of violence.

Turgeon concluded: This is a period of change for the entire working class worldwide. What better time than now to fight for housing, food, jobs, quality education and universal health care for all? The revolutionary struggles of women from India to Palestine and Africa to Latin America and Asia will hasten the changes we are fighting for here in the U.S. Lets take this opportunity to build a strong and united socialist movement that can fight for the liberation of the entire working class and self-determination for all oppressed people!

From Sanders campaign into socialist action

Akilah DeCoteau, a student at Northeastern University and organizer with Huskies for Bernie, shared why she became involved in the Sanders campaign: I was attracted to Sanders message when he asked, Why do we spend more than the next seven countries combined on the military? Why are we the only industrialized country that doesnt guarantee health care to all its citizens? I wondered why, too!

Decoteau continued: Sanders stated it was time to get corporate influence out of politics, it was time for us to take on the military-industrial complex, the for-profit health care industry, and to start investing in people, instead of bailing out Wall Street. I couldnt have agreed more!

She continued, Today, there are tens of thousands of supporters like myself who have realized it is possible to rally, march and organize for the changes we need. Since the start of the campaign, Ive been organizing with local socialist groups for the first time, and I will continue mobilizing with these organizations to fight for these issues. This presidential campaign has exposed how the government and media have failed us. More people are losing trust in the two-party system and we will see an exponential growth in leftist organizations. No matter what happens with the Sanders campaign, this is just the beginning! We will seize the moment!

Shaheen Bagh: Women resist

Shaheen Bagh protest in India.

After a panel of young women spoke, Padma and Pratyush came forward members of the Boston Coalition whose goals are to work in solidarity with activists in South Asia on justice and peace. They gave a detailed account of events that birthed the Shaheen Bagh uprising in India, which has sparked mass resistance across the country and inspired women, working-class and justice-loving people everywhere.

The movement began on the evening of Dec. 15, 2019, when 15 to 20 women, many in hijabs, left their homes and took to the streets in their Muslim-majority neighborhood of Shaheen Bagh. They occupied a major highway that led north to Indias capital of New Delhi. Word quickly spread of their sit-down strike and more women joined. Many were mothers and grandmothers protesting for the first time.

What sparked their protest? News of a vicious attack by Indian police at the nearby Jamia Millia University, where students were beaten, tear-gassed and shot with live bullets. Scores were arrested and the school ransacked.

The students had been preparing for a march on the capital to protest repressive and discriminatory changes in Indias citizenship laws, specifically aimed at Muslims, passed by its Parliament on Dec. 11. The National Register of Citizens (NRC), the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) and the National Population Register (NPR) were laws sponsored by the right-wing, Hindu-fundamentalist government of President Narendra Modi.

The shocking violence inflicted on students, combined with the passage of discriminatory citizenship laws, was the spark that lit the fuse of the Shaheen Bagh womens righteous resistance.

Pratyush explained: In addition to targeting Muslims, these citizenship initiatives are a mechanism for persecuting poor landless peasants and migratory workers as well. There are several hundred million people in India, who as migrant workers especially Dalits [previously known as untouchables] and Indigenous have no documents and [would] become illegal and stateless. Thus, they can be forced into detention centers for super-exploitation.

Pratyush continued: The idea of citizenship has colonial roots now people living in South Asia for thousands of years are suddenly illegal. In the northeastern state of Assam in India, where the National Register of Citizens was first implemented, the problem started with the forced migration of people during the British colonial occupation. This is a project of genocide in language and deed, with parallels to the historical violence and murder of im/migrants, communists and Jewish people.

Padma opened her talk by thanking the IAC and WWP for their consistent anti-imperialist work and their many decades of solidarity with poor and oppressed peoples around the world. She went on to describe the difficult conditions faced by women in India where the maternal mortality rate is 174 women per 100,000 live births. Women are denied many basic rights, including access to maternity care and day care. A crime against women occurs every three minutes in India, with Dalit women facing even higher rates of violence. Living in a patriarchal country, most women have the added burden of no state or property papers in their own name.

Padma shared: In the Shaheen Bagh [protests], women of all ages, from 9 to 90, have come together to resist the Indian governments repressive citizenship laws. The majority of women are homemakers and seamstresses who do odd jobs to support their children and families. They have refused to go home, stating, We eat, sleep and live on the road.

Padma emphasized: Women are leading the fight to force the Modi government to repeal the CAA and NRC, which threaten the rights of the most vulnerable in society, including Muslims, poor women, oppressed castes and LGBTQ2+ people. People are now using the constitution and Indian flag to tell the fascists, Dont take away our rights given to us! People of Muslim faith who fought the British are refusing to be criminalized and marginalized. Popular chants at the Shaheen Bagh protests include: Speak up, we are all one! Inquilab zindabad! Long live revolution! Long live love!

She continued: Today there is growing unity among the people across religious and caste lines, with Dalits helping Muslims, while Kashmir is viewed as the Palestine of India. Bold and beautiful murals dedicated to the women of Shaheen Bagh evoke the struggles of women in South Africa and Palestine fighting racist apartheid settlers and passbook laws. The Chilean feminist anthem, Un violador en tu camino/A rapist in your path, has been translated by women and LGBTQ2+ people in India who are performing the song at protests, making it clear that the patriarchy are the rapists and they are the people responsible for the extreme violence against women.

Fighting spirit of women

Padma also recognized the All India General Strike of 250 million workers on Jan. 8, the largest in world history, when workers pressed demands for increases in the minimum wage, unemployment and social security benefits. The strikers also demanded, Repeal the CAA Now!

On Feb. 23, as more and more women joined the protests, the Modi government orchestrated a bloody, anti-Muslim pogrom. Police, backed up by hundreds of armed men, entered Delhi, killing over 50 people and destroying thousands of homes, businesses, communal spaces and mosques.

Immediately after the violence, reminiscent of Kristallnacht (1938) and Nazi pograms against Jewish people in Germany, Modi met with visiting U.S. president Trump. As these fascistic leaders patted each other on the back, they also signed new military deals aimed at encircling China.

The panelists showed video clips of the Shaheen Bagh protests and marches led by women, LGBTQ2+ people and youth in cities from Kolkata and Mumbai to London and Toronto. Pratyush shared a poem dedicated to the workers of India and women of Shaheen Bagh. A lively discussion ensued, including about three recent city council resolutions passed in Seattle, Albany, N.Y., and Cambridge, Mass., demanding repeal of the NRC, CAA and NPR. Plans to pursue a similar resolution from the Boston City Council were discussed.

Padma closed the meeting: The many Shaheen Baghs in India are a testament to the fighting spirit of women largely of Muslim faith who have galvanized other communities to join them in demanding Modis government repeal the discriminatory CAA act. People from all walks of life who have joined these brave women are demanding the right to dignity, to security of life, and an end to caste-, gender- and religion-based violence. Long live the Shaheen Baghs! Long live workers unity! The struggle will continue!

On March 24, the government lockdown of New Delhi to check COVID-19 was used as an excuse for the Modi government to send police to shut down Shaheen Bagh in the dawn hours and clear the site of all those who had been protesting the discriminatory citizenship laws for over 100 days. (hindu.com)

(WWP photo: WWP Boston)

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Shaheen Baghs of India Women lead the struggle! - Workers World

The younger generation, already saddled with student debt and uncertain jobs, will pay a high price as the crisis unfolds.

Economist and economic historian Peter Temin, Professor Emeritus of Economics at MIT and author of The Vanishing Middle Class, has described America using a powerful dual economy model first created by West Indian economist and Nobel laureate W. Arthur Lewis. Common in developing countries, dual economies feature a splitting into two separate sectors where peoples lives are vastly different. As Temin sees it, the U.S. now features an affluent sector, about 20 percent of the population, where people have stable lives and good jobs and an increasingly separate, low-wage sector, roughly 80 percent, where people struggle to get by and find fewer and fewer ways to improve their lot. In a conversation with the Institute for New Economic Thinking (INET), Temin explains what the COVID-19 pandemic reveals about this system, who is most economically at risk, and what it will take to fix things.

Lynn Parramore: As the pandemic takes hold, whats your sense of who is most vulnerable? How does the crisis illustrate the changes brought about by a movement to a dual economy?

Peter Temin: Unfortunately, the current administration is not concerned about people in the low-wage sector, and under it, the rate at which the middle class is vanishing has been increasing rapidly. The rich have gotten richer: As economists Emmanuel Saez and Gabriel Zucman have pointed out, our taxes have become regressive since the 2017 tax cut. And, of course, now Trump wants to aid his friends who are rich and so he wants to bail out the airlines.

Kids who are working in the gig economy are going to getsquashed down with fewer and fewer opportunities. A lot of them haveeducational debts. Trumps statements about helping them is really justgarbage. If he truly wanted to help, he could fire [Education Secretary] BetsyDeVos. Failing that, he ought to get her or the department to go after theprivate universities those who have tricked the young people trying to getahead and cancel those debts. Thats what the Obama people tried to do andthen it was reversed by Trump in his effort to get rid of everything that Obamaever did.

Young people are very vulnerable, especially those who have not been able to find a steady job and get ahead. Their education has been compromised because teachers have been ill-paid for many years.

Young people are very vulnerable, especially those whohave not been able to find a steady job and get ahead. Their education has beencompromised because teachers have been ill-paid for many years. Teachers workvery hard and are very dedicated I dont criticize the teachers themselves but the low pay makes many people who might be innovating and using recentknowledge to help kids learn often go off and become lawyers and other thingsnow. This sacrificing of the long-run aims of the country has been going onsince the 1970s. Education used to be our very strong suit but now werefalling behind other countries.

LP: The need for social distancing from COVID-19 is forcing many students across the U.S. into online learning. Some view the push for online learning in recent years as a scheme by political groups who dont support robust public education to devalue the teaching profession (as well as an opportunity for tech companies to cash in). Whats your take?

PT: The push towards more online learning is a really bad idea. The poorest people lack access, so it condemns them to staying poor. It doesnt provide any way out. Think of the economist Roland Fryer [the youngest African American to ever receive tenure at Harvard] who got rescued from poverty when he got a football scholarship to the University of Texas. Somebody recognized how bright he was, and he then went to Harvard and won the Clark medal for the best economist under 40, and so on.

The push towards more online learning is a really bad idea. The poorest people lack access, so it condemns them to staying poor.

If online learning becomes normalized, people like thatwont make it out. They wont ever get started. They wont be in a place wheresomebody can recognize their talent and can take them on. Learning takes placepartly by the psychological bonding of kids with teachers. Thats why teachersare so important. Very poor people have parents who dont have jobs andsometimes only one parent or no parent, so this kind of connection to an adultbecomes all the more essential. If you just look at a machine that asks howmuch is 2 + 2, check the box, that isnt anything compared to a teacher saying,have you thought of this or that? For kids with stable households and parents,it might work, but not for poor people. It jeopardizes the future of Americabecause we need to have all of our young people thinking about things andgetting into the world, able to pursue a good idea. People love to talk about theorigins of our very rich entrepreneurs. Those are the people who made it, butyou wouldnt have been able to predict that when they were four years old. Theonly way to catch the talent is to give everybody a chance. Not just the peopleyou know, but all sorts of people. Ability is distributed throughout thepopulation.

For all these reasons, the education part of this is justterribly important. Each time theres a financial crisis, the support for statecolleges goes down. Most of them are now state universities in name only, withjust around 15% of their budget coming from the state. When we think aboutonline learning we may think of grade-school kids, but it makes it difficultfor them to go further, too. With online learning, you never see a book. Youmay just see shorter piece, ten-page essays and so on. You dont get that deepunderstanding that comes from reading books.

LP: This pandemic is also shining a light on Americas incarceration practices, which youve cited as a driver of the dual economy. Could the crisis help us come to terms with how out of step we are with the rest of the world in locking up so many people? Especially vulnerable populations?

PT: Americas incarceration practices are different because we had slavery. [Economics reporter] Eduardo Porter has a book coming out on this, and Im writing about it, too. This is a very hard thing, and were going to have to fix mass incarceration in order to fix urban education, which is education for the poor. But the federal government is not interested in this at all. Trump is not interested. There are district attorneys who are refusing to prosecute for non-violent offenses and reform the bail system and all the things that have built up over the course of the last half century. But whats happened is that there are a lot of vested interests, like private prisons, that want more, not fewer prisoners. So, you have to combat that. Privatization is a problem with incarceration. Youll notice in the present crisis, Trump went to private suppliers to get tests for the virus. Has he gotten them? No. He didnt go to them because they were efficient or had a secret. He wants to privatize everything.

Weve gotten ourselves into a very bad position in the U.S. and its really punishing us right now. A dual economy makes it much harder to deal with a crisis like the coronavirus.

The problem we face in confronting mass incarceration isthat we are a very diverse country. Things look very different in differentparts of the country. Areas in the South that have Evangelicals are differentfrom areas in the northeast, for example. They want to criminalize abortion,and put more, not fewer, people in prison. San Francisco may not be arrestingas many people during the pandemic, but that doesnt mean that youll see the sametrend everywhere. Prisoners are actually included in the census where theprison is, so having that tends to emphasize the votes of rural people. Thatssimilar to the old three-fifths rule in the South [counting three out of everyfive slaves as people in apportioning representatives, etc.] which emphasizedthe votes of slave-owning people before the Civil War.

LP: What kinds of responses to the COVID-19 crisis would help us move beyond the dual economy structure and create more unity between the affluent and low-wage sectors?

PT: It is critical to send money, one way or another, to the low-wage and poor people who need the money to live on and will spend it. That will get things going. We also need to increase funding for early education. Thats what the New York City superintendent has been trying to do. And that brings us back to teachers because early education cant be done on the computer.

Fundamentally, we will also have to change the tax structure. Weve gotten ourselves into a very bad position in the U.S. and its really punishing us right now. A dual economy makes it much harder to deal with a crisis like the coronavirus. People in the upper part need to pay for things for the low-wage part to recover, and of course the government needs to be involved, but there are these pro-austerity people who dont want the government to do anything. They want it all to be the private sector, and that misses the fact that very young kids dont get noticed when you leave everything to the private sector because young children dont buy things. They get lost. Then they end up in prison. The cycle repeats itself over and over. The more diverse the incomes are, the harder it is to make the changes you need. Just as the kids need good teachers, we need to have some leaders who will think about these things. Trump is all concerned with how things go on the evening news, the short-time horizon. What we need is somebody who can look ahead, to ask where are we going? What are we going to be in 20 years, 40 years, 60 years? On the current path, we are becoming Argentina, a place which is very nice for the people who live in the cities and have a lot of money, and pretty terrible for everybody else.

Lynn Parramore is Senior Research Analyst at the Institute for New Economic Thinking.

This article was first published on the blog of the Institute for New Economic Thinking, a nonprofit that seeks to promote changes to our current economic system and support new paradigms in the understanding of economic processes.

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MIT Economist on Coronavirus: Young People Going to Get Squashed - The MIT Press Reader

By a correspondent 23 March 2020

A correspondent in China sent the following notes on the rising political and class tensions in that country produced by the worsening global COVID-19 pandemic and the repressive response of the Beijing regime.

1. Chinas authoritarian government has blocked every city and even every street by brutal means. Every aspect of peoples lives has been affected. Not only are there travel restrictions. Daily supplies have suffered shortages, and the economy has been greatly affected. While emergency measures were needed to combat the pandemic, they were applied repressively, to defend the interests of the capitalists. Dissatisfaction is growing among the masses.

To curb this dissatisfaction, the Chinese bureaucrats strengthened social controls and waged war on public opinion. The newly-issued Internet Information Governance Regulations came into effect in March. They strengthened the governments control over the media and the internet, and further suppressed the revolution of public opinion. They clearly stipulate that network information content producers must not produce, copy or publish content containing illegal information, including opposing basic principles of the Constitution, endangering national security, leaking state secrets, subverting state power and harming national interests.

2. At the same time, Wuhan bureaucrats demanded that people express their gratitude for the governments response to the epidemic and even forced various institutions and schools to implement grateful education. This was met with popular opposition and dissatisfaction. An article circulated on the internet: If you have a conscience, you will not ask the frightened Wuhan people to be grateful at this time.(). In this article, the author wrote: You are the public servant of the people, and your job is to serve the people. Now the peoples family you serve is ruined, the dead have just passed away and the tears of the living have not been wiped out. Sick people are unhealed and some of their dissatisfaction is completely reasonable. You should reflect and be ashamed because you and your team are not working properly, rather than accuse the people you serve in Wuhan of not being grateful. This article has now been restricted from spreading on the internet.

3. A nursery rhyme has been criticized and resisted by people. The song, Mobile cabin hospitals are so amazing(), is considered a tribute to the government, ignoring the suffering caused by the plague and government failure. Some people described this as dancing at a funeral and some netizens commented: I cant agree with such publicity, the epidemic is not over, the responsibility has not been identified and there is nothing to praise. Mobile cabin hospitals are medical isolation units set up by requisitioning existing facilities due to the coronavirus outbreaks and insufficient medical resources.

4. During the closure of the cities the government arrested those with different opinions. Three citizen journalists lost contact. The Chinese government did not announce their whereabouts, but a video uploaded by one of the citizen journalists showed him being arrested by police. These bloggers expose the real situation of the epidemic and the real living conditions of the people by uploading videos they have taken. This is not the first time they have said they have been threatened by the government and police:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=np8ZOQATLGY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XWrMZH9Xu6k

5. Due to the impact of the epidemic and the governments city closure policy, economic activities have been greatly impacted and small businesses and shops are under great pressure. Because of Chinas economic failure in recent years and the sudden outbreak of the epidemic, protests by shop owners asking for rent reductions have been held in many cities:

https://twitter.com/i/status/1240918014234513408

https://twitter.com/i/status/1240427844955668481

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— ??? (@fangshimin) March 9, 2020

6. The Chinese government regarded the two hospitals built in the short term during the outbreak as government achievements, but the workers who built the two hospitals encountered difficulties. There are news reports that during the outbreak, workers were overloaded, but wage arrears and wage deductions often occurred. At the same time, after the completion of the construction, due to the closure of the city, the workers were not allowed to return home. The high cost of living and lost source of income put the workers in trouble, but companies and the Wuhan government were unwilling to assist with the workers living problems.

7. Residents have protested across Hubei province that the cost of living and food prices have become unacceptable. A reporter exposed that the food donated to Hubei from various places was put in a warehouse and rotted and was not sent to the residents homes. There are also news reports that the local government uses garbage trucks to deliver food to residents:

8. On March 17, about a thousand Foxconn workers who had returned to work started protesting and striking because they could not get the promised subsidy. These workers are reportedly dispatch workers at Foxconn. The labour dispatching system is a common method of undermining labour rights in Chinese companies. Many workers dub it the slavery dispatch system:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5CqhUrWlk3Q

This is just a typical example of recent strikes by Chinese workers to defend their rights. Similar incidents have occurred in many cities. Although the Chinese government claims that they have basically controlled the corona virus outbreak, conflicts have gradually erupted as workers return to work.

The economic failure caused during the epidemic will prompt the bourgeoisie to intensify its exploitation of the working class. The working class has made huge sacrifices in the fight against the epidemic. The epidemic has increased the pressure on their lives, and made workers want a more resolute voice for labour rights. Therefore, when workers return to work, the backlog of dissatisfaction will push workers to fight the bourgeoisie and inequality. Already we can see that when the city lockdown policy was gradually cancelled, the workers movement began to reappear in various cities.

https://maps.clb.org.hk/?i18n_language=en_US&map=1&startDate=2020-03&endDate=2020-03&eventId=2020032016151780093

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Chinese worker writes on the coronavirus pandemic: Disaffection is growing among the masses - World Socialist Web Site