After ordering Ford Canada workers to ignore strike deadline, Unifor announces job-cutting agreement

Roger Jordan

Unifor ordered the 6,300 workers that it represents at Ford Canada—including those employed at the Oakville assembly plant and two engine plants in Windsor, Ontario—to remain on the job after Monday’s 11:59 p.m. strike deadline to facilitate the conclusion of a tentative agreement with the automaker.

The deal, which Unifor President Jerry Dias announced at a press conference yesterday, sets the stage for further attacks on autoworkers’ wages, working conditions, and jobs.

Talking more like a corporate CEO unveiling a new product line than a workers’ leader reporting back to the rank-and-file, Dias spent the lion’s share of his press conference boasting about the new investments in electric vehicle production Ford Canada is reportedly planning to make.

Dias called it “an historic day,” because the proposed agreement purportedly secured the auto industry’s presence in Canada for “the long term” and would start “a discussion as a nation on how we use our natural resources for the betterment of all Canadians.”

According to the head of Unifor, Ford and the federal Liberal and Ontario Conservative governments will invest CAN $1.95 billion in the automaker’s Canadian operations. Of this, $1.8 billion is supposed to go to converting the Oakville Assembly Plant to a facility that, starting in 2025, will be capable of producing five electric vehicle models.

Dias refused under questioning to confirm how much of the investment would be provided by the federal and Ontario governments respectively, but suggested the figure in media reports is erroneous. In a report subsequently confirmed by other news organizations, the Toronto Star reported Sunday that the two governments have offered Ford $500 million in state subsidies.

The Oakville plant, Dias claimed, will also assemble the batteries to be used in the electric vehicles. A 6.8 litre engine was also secured for the company’s Windsor facilities. “We hit a home run,” Dias proclaimed.

The more Dias trumpeted Ford’s investment plans, the more evident it became that this was a ruse to avoid any discussion whatsoever of the essential contents of the proposed contract—be it wage-rates, pensions, work-rules or what, if any, contractual commitments Ford has made in terms of job security and future employment levels.

Even when he was asked directly whether the approximately 4,250 autoworkers at Oakville would have jobs through 2023, when assembly of the Ford Edge SUV and Lincoln Nautilus are scheduled to end, Dias refused to provide an answer. He repeatedly stated that only 3,400 workers are employed at Oakville, suggesting that the union has written off the hundreds of workers laid off at the plant since July 2019.

When taken together with his repeated references that a significant portion of the Oakville workforce is, or will soon be, eligible for retirement, it is clear that Unifor is scheming with Ford to push older, higher-paid workers out of the plant with the carrot of an early-retirement scheme and the stick of further concessions on work-rules and speed-up. A smaller number of younger workers and new hires—working at vastly inferior pay levels under the discriminatory multi-tier wage regime—would then be employed after the plant’s retooling, ensuring the automaker greatly enhanced profits.

Of the economic package Unifor has agreed to with Ford, Dias would only say that the proposed agreement provides “gains” and “progress” on improving the hated multi-tier wage system. However, the union already made clear in the bargaining updates it sent out during the contract talks that the lengthy “grow-in” period for new hires, currently 10 years, will remain in place.

Dias was forced to acknowledge that the agreement would result in further job cuts. He claimed that when the Oakville plant is retooled, Unifor will likely have 3,000 members working there. However, given that the fifth electric vehicle model is only scheduled to leave the production line in 2028, it seems likely that the plant will operate at least for several years below even this reduced level. The Unifor president was also conspicuously silent on the fate of the workers employed at the Bramalea Distribution Centre, which is to be closed and replaced by two smaller regional depots.

Unifor is determined to ram through its deal with Ford as quickly as possible and has scheduled a ratification vote for this Sunday. Autoworkers must reject this anti-democratic sham. Unifor is withholding essentially all information about the proposed contract until just before voting begins on Sunday morning, and will, as it has frequently done in the past, give workers no more than a “Highlights” brochure that excludes or downplays major givebacks.

Workers should refuse to vote on Unifor’s “historic” deal until they are provided the contract in full and given at least one week to study and discuss its terms prior to any ratification vote. This is all the more necessary because, due to the pandemic, the meetings will be held online, making it all the more difficult for workers to consult with each other and question Dias and others on the bargaining committees.

At Tuesday’s press conference, Dias did say that the proposed deal with Ford is for three years, meaning that it will expire simultaneously with the agreements negotiated in the United States between the UAW and the Detroit Three. Dias previously stated that his goal in seeking a three-year deal was to enable Unifor to compete more directly with the UAW for investments. However, yesterday he put a twist on this, declaring that Unifor intends to “work hand-in-hand with the UAW” to stop the “migration of investment to Mexico.”

The pledge to “work hand-in-hand” with the UAW, a criminal organization whose top officials have either been convicted or are under investigation for accepting kickbacks from the automakers, must be seen as a threat by workers. Over the past three-and-a-half decades, the unions have used anti-Mexican chauvinism and nationalist appeals to pit workers in North America against each other so as to enforce pay cuts and layoffs.

Dias wants this to continue, as he indicated with his call at yesterday’s press conference for a national-corporatist strategy to establish Canadian capitalism as a leader in green technology. He appealed for a “discussion” on “how do we use our lithium in Quebec, our nickel in Sudbury, our cobalt in northern Ontario, and our aluminum in Quebec and British Columbia,” because these products, critical for manufacturing batteries, would provide “the foundation for Canadian jobs.”

Autoworkers at Ford and the Detroit Three’s other Canadian operations have no interest in supporting their “own” corporate elite in the global scramble for market share and profits. Instead, autoworkers must unify their struggles with their class brothers and sisters in Mexico, the United States and internationally to launch a counteroffensive in defence of all jobs and the overturning of all concessions.

To conduct such a struggle, autoworkers must immediately form rank-and-file committees in their plants to seize control of the contract struggle and prepare an industry-wide strike to fight for their demands. As the World Socialist Web Site Autoworker Newsletter stressed in its recent statement, “There is an enormous well of rank-and-file anger against the auto bosses and their Unifor accomplices. But if workers are to prevent Unifor from once again running their struggle into the ground and corralling them into voting on a concessionary contract whose true details they have not been allowed to see, they must act now. They must take matters into their own hands by building a network of rank-and-file committees in all Detroit Three and auto industry plants.”

National Education Union letter to Boris Johnson: A total surrender to herd immunity

Tania Kent

The National Education Union (NEU) has offered continued collaboration and support for the Johnson government’s herd immunity programme.

Millions of teachers and students have been forced to confront the devastating consequences of the full reopening of schools from September 1. There has been a massive surge in coronavirus outbreaks, with 1,700 schools recording infections. Many have been forced to close, fully or partially. Teachers have already begun to be hospitalised and teachers’ mental health is now recorded as the most compromised of any profession.

Warnings have been issued by Chris Whitty, Chief Medical Officer, that the virus is “spiralling out of control” with 50,000 daily infections predicted in the next four weeks and Prime Minister Boris Johnson has announced a raft of ineffectual measures to suppress the pandemic. The death rate could rise to 200 a day by November.

Mary Bousted at a Policy Exchange think tank event in 2013 (Credit: Policy Exchange)

How has the “largest teaching union in all of Europe” responded? Despite growing opposition by its members, it has not raised a single demand on the government to protect its members. Instead it insists that the Tories must “act now” and fondly “hopes” that this hated government “will be able to get this situation under control quickly.”

The NEU letter sent on September 20 to Johnson, which was made public in a break with the union’s normal practice of behind the scenes discussions, takes a solemn tone.

“The issues raised in this letter are so serious and pressing that we are making its contents public,” the NEU writes. The “serious situation” does not reference any concerns regarding the impact of schools in accelerating the circulation of the virus, or on the risks that are posed for the health of staff or children. The union’s concerns focus on the catastrophic failure of the “test, track and trace” system in undermining its support for the full reopening of schools, which the NEU has desperately tried to sell to its membership.

The letter states, “As the testing regime buckles under the strain of demand, staff and pupils cannot get tested, or get results, and schools cannot deal with outbreaks or sustain full opening if people are unnecessarily isolating.”

The NEU fully accepts the government’s insistence that schools must not close under any circumstances and explains, in introducing the letter, “With lockdowns likely but further school closure ruled out by the Government, today’s letter calls for the testing regime to be significantly and urgently increased for schools.”

The government has unofficially responded by announcing that teachers will be fifth in the order of priority for testing, but children will not be tested as a priority. This is under conditions where the Office for National Statistics has established, “In recent weeks, there has been clear evidence of an increase in the number of people testing positive for COVID-19 aged 2 to 11 years, 17 to 24 years and 25 to 34 years.”

The NEU’s letter continues with a warning to Johnson that despite its own best efforts, they may not be able to control the anger that will emerge: “He (Johnson) must not take the continued support of schools for granted.”

The letter attempts to distance the NEU from the fallout of the government’s disastrous policy, but the situation facing education staff and pupils is the direct product of the criminal role it and other unions have played in demobilising and suppressing opposition to the government’s agenda of subordinating the health needs of society to the profit drive of the major corporations.

From the outset of the pandemic, the NEU have blocked all moves to combat the deadly consequences of the government’s handling of the virus. Their central demand has been for the Tories to work with the unions on their “back to work/back to school” drive.

The closure of schools on March 20 was an outcome of mass opposition among teachers and parents through the launching of petitions and in direct opposition to the unions. On March 16—one week before lockdown—Mary Bousted, NEU joint general secretary, endorsed the government’s insistence on keeping “schools open,” because, “They are a major public service. For children on free school meals, they are a place where children get fed. Having your child at school allows parents to work.”

Even as the UK’s COVID death toll was rising exponentially to levels among the highest in the world, in May the NEU welcomed government plans to reopen schools, especially, “[Education Minister Gavin] Williamson’s statement that his door is open” for discussions with the union.

At the end of August, the NEU junked it’s 5 tests for the safe reopening of schools, which included the R rate being below 1, test, track and trace being fully operational, social distancing in place and the protection of vulnerable staff. Not one of these measures was in place then and is not in place now. The NEU now accepts that while it isn’t safe for schools to reopen based on their criteria, they won’t challenge the government.

There is a growing recognition among teachers that the unions are accomplices in the crimes being committed. The response on social media to the union’s letter reveals the chasm between the union and its members. Some of the many responses on the NEU’s own Twitter page included Ann who said: “Given over 50s high risk & in Sweden it’s proven teaching in a primary school increases risk by 70%, will education unions insist over 50s are shielded in the event of 2nd lockdown? Lives are at risk, currently unacceptable situation. Schools aren’t safe.”

Allison said, “This is not good enough. Boris and his cronies have ignored your letters this whole time and vilified teachers for not sacrificing themselves like martyrs. Now is the time for strike action. Send out the ballots now! But instead this spineless union and criminally negligent government will force teachers into unsafe workplaces with 50k infections a day by 13 Oct.”

“Great the NEU have written another letter. What about taking action? Teachers are being treated as minions and told to do as whatever they are asked, regardless of the science which says its unsafe. What about health and safety at work? Why are you leaving it to individuals,” asked another teacher?

Kers commented: “You set out 5 tests, track and trace was one of them. That hasn’t been met. Yet we don’t act.”

Rachel writes, “None of the five tests have been met, we’ve just been thrown into the lion’s den; and to use Boris Johnson’s famous words back in March ‘some of you may die’. So comforting!”

Educators must draw critical lessons from their experience with the trade unions. The opposition and anger that exists cannot find expression through these bureaucratic and privileged organisations. The necessary measures to protect teachers, pupils and their families will not come about due to the actions of the unions. Left in their hands the only result will be a massive increase in deaths.

The Socialist Equality Party has launched the educators independent rank-and-file safety committee to provide an alternative means of struggle. The fight against the pandemic must be taken out of the hands of the ruling elite and their accomplices in the Labour and trade union bureaucracy.

Facebook plans political censorship in anticipation of “chaos” and “violence” in the 2020 US elections

Kevin Reed

The social media monopoly Facebook is preparing to take “exceptional measures” including aggressive action to “restrict the circulation of content” on its network if the 2020 US elections on November 3 result in “chaos” or “violence.”

In an interview with Facebook Vice President of Global Affairs and Communications Nick Clegg, the Financial Times reported that the social media corporation had “drawn up plans” for handling “a range of outcomes including widespread civic unrest” or other unprecedented “political dilemmas” during the counting of in-person and mail-in ballots.

Clegg told FT, “There are some break-glass options available to us if there really is an extremely chaotic and, worse still, violent set of circumstances.” Although he did not reveal any details about Facebook’s planned responses, Clegg referenced the actions taken by the world’s number one social media platform previously in countries where social unrest erupted.

Nick Clegg (Credit: Wikimedia Commons/Moritz Hager)

Clegg said, “We have acted aggressively in other parts of the world where we think that there is real civic instability and we obviously have the tools to do that [again],” adding that the company had taken “pretty exceptional measures to significantly restrict the circulation of content on our platform.” FT said Clegg was referring to the actions taken by Facebook to reduce the content reach of “malicious actors” and “repeated rule breakers” during recent periods of unrest in Sri Lanka and Myanmar.

The Right Honorable Sir Nick Clegg is a leading political figure in the UK. He was the Deputy Prime Minister under Prime Minister David Cameron (2010-2015) and leader of the Liberal Democrats from 2007-2015. He was hired by Facebook in October 2018 as a lobbyist and chief international public relations officer.

While the FT report emphasized “concerns” about how President Trump would use social media to “interfere in the process” of the elections or “contest the results or call for violent protest, potentially triggering a constitutional crisis,” the real fear for Facebook and Clegg is that there will be a mass response to the election crisis that will move outside of the US two-party political establishment.

Significantly, FT says, “Facebook has been exploring how to handle about 70 different potential scenarios, according to a person familiar with the situation, with staff including world-class military scenario planners.” In other words, Facebook is collaborating with military-intelligence and bracing for the eruption of mass social unrest in the US during the 2020 elections.

Clegg also said that any extraordinary measures taken by Facebook “will fall to a team of top executives including himself and chief operating officer Sheryl Sandberg—with chief executive Mark Zuckerberg holding the right to overrule positions.” He said, “We’ve slightly reorganized things such that we have a fairly tight arrangement by which decisions are taken at different levels [depending on] the gravity of the controversy attached.”

If true, the description by Clegg makes clear that decisions to utilize the unprecedented power of Facebook political censorship in the hands of a relatively small number of corporate executives. Clegg added that Facebook was committing a significant “amount of resources” at its “Election Operations Center” and “voter information hub.”

Facebook has launched an infrastructure within their platform that they have characterized as “the largest voting information campaign in American history.” At the top of the priority list of this information campaign is “election security” and “fighting interference” which includes teams of more than 35,000 people.

Facebook says it is increasing its coordination with “law enforcement agencies like the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security, and with state officials, civil society groups, and other technology companies.” In explaining how they will “prevent election interference,” Facebook states that its security teams will identify “suspicious activity” and “take down coordinated networks of inauthentic accounts, Pages and Groups that seek to manipulate public debate.”

It should be pointed out that Facebook’s election information infrastructure has been built in collaboration with the Bipartisan Policy Center (BPC). BPC is a Washington, D.C. think tank founded in 2007 by former leading US political figures Howard Baker and Bob Dole (Republicans) and Tom Daschle and George Mitchell (Democrats) to preserve and defend the US two-party system amid growing conflict within the political establishment.

Meanwhile, the FBI is spreading its own misinformation in advance of the elections. In a Public Service Announcement on Tuesday, the FBI said that “foreign actors and cybercriminals could create new websites, change existing websites, and create or share corresponding social media content to spread false information in an attempt to discredit the electoral process and undermine confidence in US democratic institutions.”

The latest news and information about Facebook’s censorship plans for the US elections confirms the warnings issued previously by the World Socialist Web Site about the meaning of the ongoing collaboration of the tech giants with the intelligence state during both the pandemic and on “election security.” The secret meetings being held with White House officials and federal police and intelligence agencies were preparing the censorship regime that is now at least partially being made public.

Going back to 2016, there has been a steady stream of unproven allegations of “foreign interference” by the Russians, the Iranians and the Chinese in the US elections. In reality, the threat to “US democratic institutions” comes from the Trump administration and the refusal of the Democrats to do anything about it. Additionally, the confidence of the public in these institutions is being undermined each day by the grotesque social inequality between the super rich who control the Democrats and Republicans and the reality of life facing millions of people under the capitalist system.

The degree of emergency censorship planning by Facebook—in concert with police agencies and the surveillance state—is a measure of the awareness within ruling circles of the potential for an eruption of mass struggles by the working class and youth in the US after what will be on election day nearly nine months of economic and social crisis triggered by the coronavirus pandemic.

The ruling establishment is well aware that social media platforms such as Facebook are being utilized to organize the mass protests across the country against police violence as well as the growing opposition within the working class to returning to work and school under the unsafe health conditions of the pandemic. Above all, the censorship efforts are aimed at preventing the socialist political analysis and program of the World Socialist Web Site from reaching the working class under conditions of mass protests and a constitutional crisis in November.

While the open threats by Donald Trump to discredit or outright reject the results of the election and refuse to leave office should be taken seriously, workers and young people cannot place an ounce of confidence in the campaign of Biden-Harris or the Democratic Party to defend the constitution or uphold democratic forms of rule in the US. The working class must intervene independently of both parties of the corporate and financial elite, take matters into its own hands and fight for the program of revolutionary socialism represented only by the SEP in the 2020 elections with its candidates Joseph Kishore for US President and Norissa Santa Cruz for US Vice President.

Johnson’s bogus agenda for combating the escalating pandemic will cost tens of thousands of lives in UK

Chris Marsden

Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s raft of measures to supposedly combat the escalating resurgence of the COVID-19 pandemic will do nothing of the sort.

The real aim animating the list of partial, sometimes contradictory, and always ineffectual measures is to prevent a second lockdown and protect the profits of the major corporations and banks, no matter how great the cost in human lives.

After Johnson’s health advisers announced Monday that there would be 50,000 cases a day by mid-October and 200 deaths a day by November without government action, Johnson’s list of measures reads like a cruel joke.

His description of a “perilous turning point,” with daily coronavirus infections almost four times higher than a month ago, and the “R” rate for reinfection above 1 everywhere, is to be met with the maximum “rule of six” on personal gatherings, inside and out, restrictions on pub opening hours to 10 p.m. and table-service only, a maximum 15 people at wedding celebrations, but 30 at funerals (!), a ban on indoor team sports such as 5-a-side football, and similar palliatives. Plans to trial limited live audiences next month have been shelved and fines for individual breaches to the rules doubled to £200, and of £10,000 and possible closure for businesses found to be not “COVID-secure.” Masks will become mandatory for retail and hospitality staff and for passengers in taxis.

Boris Johnson during his televised speech from Downing Street on Tuesday evening (Credit: Downing Street--gov.uk)

In “a shift in emphasis,” those office workers who can work from home should do so. But everyone else must get in their cars, onto buses, trams and trains and continue to work in offices, factories, distribution and retail outlets. Children, teenagers and young adults must all go to school, colleges and universities, and take their place in crowded classes, lecture halls and dorms with no social distancing and poor ventilation that will guarantee the continued explosive spread of the virus.

The restrictions may be in place for “perhaps six months,” Johnson warned, before reassuring MPs, “This is by no means a return to the full lockdown in March, we are not issuing instructions to stay at home.” This was a “delicate balance” between limiting infections and not damaging the economy, he said.

Similar measures have been adopted in Scotland and Wales.

The cost of this to the working class will be devastating. Arguments against lockdown prefaced on warnings of its economic cost are made cynically by a government that is intent on handing all society’s wealth over to big business and the super-rich, continuing to slash jobs, wages, benefits and essential services in the process. Johnson has made no mention of extending the jobs furlough scheme or reinstating the ban on evictions during lockdown. He and his government could not care less.

Neither do those citing such concerns, including various trade union leaders, ever call for the expropriation of corporate wealth or running the economy in the interests of working people rather than the super-rich. What they invariably do is to minimise the extent of the death toll that is now threatened.

The UK yesterday recorded 4,926 new coronavirus cases, the highest total since early in May, confirming a pattern of at least a weekly doubling. And contrary to government claims, the real extent of testing is not massively greater than it was then and will not be in future. Johnson has promised a £100 billion national testing programme, but his recently appointed head of testing, Baroness Dido Harding, yesterday suggested that tests will likely no longer be available on the National Health Service and would have to be purchased privately by those who need them. Moreover, in his televised broadcast last night, Johnson only spoke of his mass testing programme being operational in the spring, saying, “That’s the dream!”

All claims that the demographic shift in infections to the young would mean fewer deaths are already being disproved. Another 37 deaths were recorded yesterday, taking the official total to 41,825 but the more realistic estimate of total deaths to 57,636. Daily hospital admissions have more than doubled since the beginning of the month to 237. And an explosion of the pandemic in winter of the extent suggested, during the flu season, will increase the death rate per infection way beyond that recorded in the spring.

Fundamental democratic rights are also under growing threat. Johnson intends to meet the explosive social anger this will generate with state repression. During his speech, he promised, “We will provide the police and local authorities with the extra funding they need, a greater police presence on our streets, and the option to draw on military support where required to free up the police.”

There is no opposition to any of this coming from the Labour Party and the trade unions. Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer said in Parliament that he backed Johnson’s plans, criticising the government only for its failures on testing and lack of leadership, without specifying any alternative other than a call for a more “targeted” jobs furlough scheme as demanded by business and industry groups.

Earlier Starmer had delivered a keynote speech to the online Labour Party congress so right-wing that it could have been written as a deliberate satire. Monotonous and mind-numbing references to “my country” that “has given me so much”—above all becoming the Director of Public Prosecutions and having “the privilege of leading the Crown Prosecution Service”—to “our country,” Britain as the “best country,” “world beating,” “the country I love” and to “this United Kingdom,” were reinforced with pledges to safeguard the “national interest,” “the security of our nation” and “national security.”

This was interspersed with constant references to “family” (Starmer apparently came from a loving one and was lucky enough to have one himself), to “family values” that “mean the world to me” and his insistence that “family really does come first. Always.” He then closed his speech by reassuring “those people in Doncaster and Deeside, in Glasgow and Grimsby, in Stoke and in Stevenage” that “We love this country as you do … That, in the end, is why I do this … To make a difference to my country.”

Between these nauseating bouts of jingoism, Starmer repeated his pledge that “Labour will act in the national interest” and as “a constructive opposition.” Stressing that “We need a national effort to prevent a national lockdown,” he offered himself as a more serious leader capable of preventing one.

Starmer stressed that the policies on which Labour will fight the next election in 2024 “won’t sound like anything you’ve heard before,” that “the debate between Leave and Remain is over” and promised to work “hand-in-hand” with the private sector and trade unions. For their part, the trade unions have already worked hand-in-glove with Johnson throughout the pandemic and are fully behind Starmer’s “Tory Party Mark II” agenda of collusion with the employers against the working class—having provided 96 percent of all Labour’s funding since he became leader in April.

The only means of combating the escalating danger from the pandemic and defeating all efforts to destroy jobs, wages and livelihoods is through the independent political mobilisation of the working class. What is needed now is the construction of rank-and-file safety and action committees, to organise a fightback in opposition to the pro-company unions, and the building of the Socialist Equality Party to break the suffocating grip of the Labour Party once and for all.

The CDC retracts its guidance that stipulated the airborne danger of the coronavirus

Benjamin Mateus

On Friday, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) published new guidelines acknowledging that the virus causing COVID-19 is primarily transmitted through small airborne particles. This admission implies that people occupying poorly ventilated areas such as classrooms, meat packing factories, production lines, churches, grocery stores, etc., are at risk of acquiring COVID-19 if someone else in the room with COVID-19 is contagious. Airborne particles, unlike respiratory droplets, can linger in the air and concentrate throughout an enclosed room.

The CDC wrote in no uncertain terms that the most common modes of transmission for SARS-CoV-2 were through “respiratory droplets or small particles, such as those in aerosols, produced when an infected person coughs, sneezes, sings, talks, or breathes. These particles can be inhaled into the nose, mouth, airways, and lungs and cause infection. This is thought to be the main way the virus spreads.” They also added that these airborne particles could travel beyond the six feet limit that has been the officially stated social distancing yardstick.

However, by Monday afternoon, the guidelines had disappeared off their pages, reverting to their previous position that the virus is spread mainly from person-to-person in close contact. There is no longer a mention of “airborne” or “aerosol.” Only a comment stating that “a draft version of proposed changes to these recommendations was posted in error to the agency’s official website” indicates that a retraction occurred.

David J. Sencer CDC Museum in Atlanta, GA (Wikimedia Commons)

Given the recent controversies surrounding the CDC, the exposure by Politico over the administration’s manipulation of the weekly reports, essentially being taken hostage by the Trump administration and the political establishment to censor the scientific data, it is apparent that the national public health institution is being used to provide a cover for the ruling class policy of herd immunity. The small window provided by this slip underscores the deeply criminal intentions that are at play.

Clearly, a statement that indicates the airborne nature of the SARS-CoV-2 virus brings into stark relief that the opening of schools is a dangerous initiative, one rooted in ensuring the factories and production lines are operating at breakneck capacity, and every productive hand is gainfully employed unadulterated by the needs of their children or families. From the perspective of the ruling class, schools are not primarily a place of education, but temporary safe holding locations for children and adolescents while their parents are laboring at work.

Children and young people infected with COVID-19 fair better than older adults, but they are not impervious to the dangers of the virus. There have been well-documented cases of infants, toddlers, teenagers and young adults succumbing to the infection and suffering from the morbidity it causes. They are also quite efficient at transmitting the virus, especially as asymptomatic carriers. By all accounts, school reopenings and children are a key element in the policy of herd immunity that is being embraced openly by every political spectrum of the capitalist class.

Behind this policy is the need to effectively cull the most unproductive sector of the population—the retired and enfeebled who are a drain on the surplus value that is generated by the working class. If it happens to kill a few thousand children or hundreds of thousands of adults in the prime of their lives, the surplus population will quickly fill in these gaps.

The globe has, in a few short months, reached close to 1 million deaths, of which 200,000 have occurred in the United States, a byproduct of the criminal policies implemented by political parties at every level of the state. More than 60,000 of these deaths occurred in people under the age of 65. Yet, these deaths are glossed over as attention is directed to the nomination of the vacant Supreme Court seat, the upcoming elections, the state of the economy, or Russian and Chinese intrigue.

By all accounts, a significant majority of these deaths have occurred in the working class, as studies have shown that poverty has been a driver of the infection. As usual, Trump states most directly what the ruling class thinks of the working class, when he says that COVID-19 “affects virtually nobody.”

The data behind the aerosolization of the virus are numerous and have come from various sectors. A study of a video in a restaurant in China unequivocally demonstrated that an air conditioner was able to push virus-laden air infecting others who were seated more than six feet from an infected individual. A case study from Washington state found that one person infected 52 individuals. In South Korea, a single cluster of 346 confirmed cases occurred in February at a Shincheonji Church in Daegu, mostly attributed to just one person.

An NIH study published in May using highly sensitive laser light as a detector demonstrated that loud speech could emit thousands of oral fluid droplets each second that lasted eight to 14 minutes before disappearing from “the window of view.” A more recent study from the University of Florida confirmed viable virus particles isolated from respiratory droplets collected from SARS-CoV-2-infected patients up to 16 feet away.

The World Health Organization (WHO) updated its guidance in July after several hundred concerned scientists advised the international health agency to acknowledge the growing evidence that airborne transmission of the coronavirus can be a health hazard in indoor spaces.

The modified statement says, in effect, “short-range aerosol transmission, particularly in specific indoor locations, such as crowded and inadequately ventilated spaces over a prolonged period of time with infected persons cannot be ruled out.” However, the WHO has not entirely endorsed aerosol transmission as a primary route of infection, adding in their most recent press brief on a question about the CDC guidance change, “we still, based on the evidence, believe that there is a wide range of transmission modes.” However, as an agency of the United Nations, despite the sincerity on the part of their scientists, they are bound by the political noose that conditions their criticisms of the US and EU.

Among the signatories that wrote to the WHO in July have been Dr. Jose-Luis Jimenez, a professor of atmospheric chemistry at the University of Colorado, and Lidia Morawska, an engineer and the director of the International Laboratory for Air Quality and Health at the Queensland University of Technology, who have been vocal in asserting that the framework used by epidemiologists, such as at the WHO, is based on older science from the 1930s that no longer withstands the recent evidence on the physics of droplets.

Lydia Bourouiba, an MIT researcher who studies the spectrum of droplet sizes, explained to Vox, “We’re always exhaling, in fact, a gas cloud that contains within it a continuum spectrum of droplet sizes. The cloud mixture, not the drop sizes, determines the initial range of the drops and their fate in indoor environments.” According to her study published in JAMA in March, the factors that determine how long the respiratory droplets linger in the air is based on the speed of the cloud, the temperature and humidity of the environment, and the individual droplet makeup of each cloud.

It is worth considering that Chinese researchers in a preprint study titled “Indoor transmission of SARS-CoV-2” found that more than 7,300 cases were driven by 318 outbreaks, of which only one occurred outdoors. Empirical evidence of recent mass protests has confirmed that outdoor transmissions are rare, which points to the concerns being raised by health agencies on the arrival of cold weather in the Northern Hemisphere and crowding of the population indoors which will reignite the transmission of the pandemic.

The University of Colorado has called for classroom capacities not to exceed 20 to 30 percent of previous capacity. Fewer bodies also mean fewer aerosols and less work for the HVAC systems and viral countermeasures. Additionally, they further recommend running ventilation systems 24/7 and upgrading filters to MERV13, which was shown in a 2013 study to capture more virus-carrying particles. They also recommend portable air cleaners with HEPA filters matched to the size of the space involved.

However, a US Government Accountability Office (GAO) report from June noted that 54 percent of public school districts need to update or replace multiple building systems or features in their schools. About 36,000 schools nationwide need HVAC updates. Yet, according to a GAO survey of the 50 states and District of Columbia, most states do not conduct statewide assessments to determine school facilities’ needs and instead leave this task to the underfunded school districts. The need to renovate and retrofit public schools is an acute social need, but it is doubtful if funding for such a measure will see the light of day.

Ken Cook, president and co-founder of the Environmental Working Group, has recently called for the resignation of Dr. Robert Redfield, the head of the CDC, for his politicization of the institution relatedly acquiescing to pressures. “The whole point of the CDC is to stand firmly on science—and science alone—when rogue waves of political and economic expediency threaten to wash away concern for public health ... never before has a CDC leader dragged the agency through such a series of manifestly deadly misstatements of science, willful communications blunders and life-threatening guidance flip-flops, all at the behest of political leaders whose publicly avowed goal is to minimize the mortal danger the novel coronavirus poses to American people.”

This statement is accurate to a point. Behind Redfield’s blunder and the political establishment’s deadly intent are the demands imposed by capitalism to ensure the markets are fully operational regardless of the inherent risk to the population. However, paraphrasing Marx, science owns us and should guide socially necessary work accordingly.

What will be critical is the character of the political leadership that must unite the struggles of all workers as a cohesive instrument to defend the population against the slaughter being planned by the capitalists.

Democrats capitulate as Republicans secure votes to install far-right justice on Supreme Court

Barry Grey & Jacob Crosse

On Tuesday, Utah Senator and former Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney announced that he would support a vote prior to the November 3 election on Trump’s nominee to fill the seat on the US Supreme Court vacated by the death of Ruth Bader Ginsburg. The announcement virtually assures the installation of a far-right justice, to be named by Trump on Saturday, who will shift the court even more decisively against abortion rights and democratic rights in general.

The Democratic Party, whose response from the outset has combined cowardice and dishonesty, sank to the level of farce. Even as the top Democrat in the Senate, Charles Schumer, was denouncing the Republicans for their “hypocrisy” and pleading for a change of heart, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi was secretly negotiating with Trump’s treasury secretary, Steven Mnuchin, to extend funding for the federal government until after the election.

For all her talk of “taking nothing off of the table” to oppose Trump’s antidemocratic court move, Pelosi was focused on preventing a plunge in the stock market by reaching a bipartisan deal with the Republicans on a continuing resolution before the September 30 deadline. The two announced a deal Tuesday afternoon and the Democratic-controlled House quickly passed it in a bipartisan 359-57 vote.

The supposed leader of the “progressive” Democrats in the House, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, could not even summon up the nerve to vote “no” and instead voted “present” on the bill.

United States Supreme Court Building at Dusk (Credit: Wikimedia Commons/Joe Ravi)

So much for going “all-out” to oppose a court appointment that will be used to attack not only abortion rights, but all that remains of the past gains in civil rights, voting rights and social rights, from the eight-hour day to child labor laws, and accelerate the drive toward dictatorship. Rather than use the threat of a government shutdown as leverage against Trump’s Supreme Court coup, the Democrats rushed to demonstrate their fealty to Wall Street and pass the spending bill.

They have evinced no such urgency when it comes to restoring the $600 weekly unemployment benefit that expired at the end of July, leaving millions of laid-off workers and their families without the means to pay rent and put food on the table.

The contrast with Trump and the Republicans, who wage open war against the working class, could not be starker. Trump forced a government shutdown at the end of 2018 when Congress failed to give him the full amount he demanded to build his border wall with Mexico. After the end of the shutdown, he declared a national emergency at the border and illegally appropriated money from the Pentagon to build the wall, without any resistance from the Democrats, who soon after voted to fund his war on immigrants.

The same day as Romney’s announcement and the passage of the continuing resolution in the House, the campaign of Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden reiterated his opposition to passing legislation, should the Democrats win back the Senate and capture the White House in November, to expand the Supreme Court so as to break the stranglehold of the far-right. This was confirmed on Tuesday by a top Biden aide, who spoke anonymously to the Associated Press and called for “de-escalation” in the one-sided battle on Capitol Hill.

The one thing the Democrats never considered was appealing to the mass popular hatred for Trump in the working class and youth of the country. They could have called for all those opposed to Trump’s attacks on abortion rights, his promotion of police and fascist violence, and his threats to declare martial law, defy an election defeat and impose a dictatorship to march on Washington. No doubt such a call would bring out hundreds of thousands, which is precisely why the Democrats rejected it out of hand.

They are fearful of the right, but even more hostile to and terrified by the growth of left-wing social opposition and anti-capitalist sentiment in the working class. They have spent the entire three-plus years of the fascistic Trump administration working to suppress popular opposition and channel it behind their reactionary anti-Russia campaign.

On this and other questions of US imperialist foreign policy, including what they deem Trump’s hesitancy to militarily confront Russia in Syria and the broader Middle East, the Democrats act with ferocity. First, they championed the Mueller investigation and after that collapsed, they carried out the impeachment of Trump, entirely on the basis of his withholding of military aid in Ukraine’s war against Russian-backed forces in the eastern part of the country.

But when it comes to the basic democratic rights and social needs of the working class, they are utterly feckless. Their capitulation to Trump on the Supreme Court issue must be taken as a foretaste and warning of how they will react to an attempt by Trump to sabotage voting and steal the upcoming election.

The Democratic Party already ceded without a fight the 2000 election, handed to George W. Bush by a Republican majority on the Supreme Court. Al Gore, who won the popular vote, said at the time that he did not want the presidency if he lacked the support of the military.

Even when they had a lopsided majority in Congress and controlled the White House, the Democrats did nothing to defend the interests of working people. After Obama’s landslide victory in 2008, the Democrats had large majorities in both the House and the Senate. They did nothing to reverse the looting of the economy by the super-rich or put a halt to the endless wars in the Middle East and Central Asia. Instead, Obama packed his cabinet with reactionaries like former New York Fed President Timothy Geithner and Bush administration Defense Secretary Robert Gates.

Obama expanded the bailout of Wall Street, imposed massive job and wage cuts on autoworkers, expanded the war in Afghanistan, continued the war in Iraq and launched new wars in Libya and Syria. His only major social measure, Obamacare, strengthened the grip of the hospital, drug and insurance corporations over health care and increased out-of-pocket costs for millions of workers.

The Obama administration allowed the Guantanamo concentration camp to remain open, expanded illegal NSA spying, shielded Bush administration torturers, and stepped up the drone assassination program, including the murder of US citizens. It persecuted Edward Snowden, Chelsea Manning and Julian Assange.

The very notion that workers should look to the institutions of the capitalist state, including the Supreme Court, to defend their democratic and social rights is a dangerous fallacy. The Supreme Court is a bastion of capitalist rule. For the vast bulk of its history, it has opposed any extension of democratic rights and ruthlessly protected the property and profits of big business.

The relatively brief periods when it supported democratic and social reform, such as the period of the post-World War II boom, were times of mass social struggle, including the civil rights movement, when the dominant factions of the ruling class felt they had no choice but to make temporary concessions to the working class.

Today, millions of workers and youth are moving to the left and entering into struggle. The protests against police violence, as significant as they are, represent only the heat lightning before the storm of social struggle that is coming.

Social anger and opposition are being intensified by the horrific death and suffering from the coronavirus pandemic, the result of the homicidal policies being carried out by the Trump administration with the de facto support of the Democratic Party. The policy of “herd immunity” expressed in the back-to-school and back-to-work drive has already claimed over 202,000 lives.

Yet despite that, the ruling class is able to shift the Supreme Court further to the right in order to intensify its attacks on the working class. Basic lessons and conclusions must be drawn.

The Democratic Party is a guardian of definite class interests: those of the capitalist ruling elite. It is not and never can be an instrument for progressive change.

Trump’s packing of the Supreme Court with reactionaries is further proof that nothing can be defended on the basis of an acceptance of the existing economic and political framework, including the capitalist two-party system. Democratic rights are incompatible with the staggering and ever-growing levels of social inequality generated by capitalism and imposed by all of its political defenders.

There can be no defense of democratic rights outside of a struggle for socialism. The task is to bring to bear the immense social power of the working class in a conscious and unified struggle to put an end to capitalism and establish workers’ power and socialism.

Video footage exposes police shooting of 13-year-old autistic boy in Salt Lake City

Niles Niemuth

Body camera footage released by the Salt Lake City (Utah) Police Department on Monday has shed more light on the horrific police shooting of 13-year-old Linden Cameron on September 4. Cameron remains in the hospital after somehow surviving being shot nearly a dozen times. He suffered broken bones and serious organ damage when bullets pierced his intestines, bladder, shoulder and ankles.

Cameron, who is white and has been diagnosed with Asperger’s syndrome, was shot 11 times as he ran from the police. They had been called to his home by his mother, who was seeking help getting him to the hospital for mental health treatment. She had alerted the 911 dispatcher that her son possibly had a toy gun and had a previous confrontation with police in the neighboring state of Nevada, but that he did not possess a real weapon. “My biggest fear is that, I don’t know, I just don’t want him to die,” Golda Barton said on the call, asking specifically for the aid of a mental health worker.

Multiple videos show that Barton had met a team of four officers down the street from her house to warn them that Cameron was afraid of the police, but that she desperately needed help getting him safely to a hospital, as he was suffering a meltdown. “He sees the badge and automatically thinks you are going to kill him, he freaks out,” she explained.

A screenshot from body camera footage shows Linden Cameron, a 13-year-old boy with autism, lying on the ground after being shot 11 times by police on Sept. 4, 2020. (Credit: Salt Lake City Police Department/YouTube)

The four officers then discussed how they would approach and apprehend Cameron. One officer questioned why they would be entering the home of a boy suffering a “psych problem.” She suggested they call their sergeant “and tell him the situation. Because I’m not about to get in a shooting because [Cameron’s] upset.”

A second officer, who shot the boy a short time later, presciently remarked, “Yeah, especially when he hates cops, it’s going to end in a shooting.”

Despite these apparent misgivings, the group of officers proceeded to approach the home to confront Cameron under the assumption he was armed, despite Barton’s assurances to the contrary. Having spotted the police, the boy took off running down an alley behind his home and the police pursued on foot.

As the officers caught up to Cameron, one of them screamed at him several times, ordering him to get on the ground, before opening fire in rapid succession. A second officer can be heard asking Cameron to pull his hands out of his pockets just as the first officer opens fire.

“I don’t feel good,” Cameron told the officers as he lay on the ground. “Tell my mom I love her.”

While Cameron narrowly avoided being one of the more than 714 people killed by police thus far this year, his grandfather, Owen Barton, 66, was one of the first victims of 2020, having been shot and killed by sheriff’s deputies in Lyon County, Nevada on January 16. As with most police killings, details are sparse, but the official account claims he had advanced on deputies with a handgun, forcing them to shoot and kill him.

Since George Floyd was murdered by police in Minneapolis, Minnesota on May 25, sparking multi-racial and multi-ethnic protests demanding an end to police violence and racism across the country and internationally, at least 300 people have been shot and killed by the police, according to the tally kept by killedbypolice.net. At the current rate, police in the US are on track to kill nearly 1,000 people, a grim toll that they have exacted every year since 2015.

African-Americans, along with Native Americans, are disproportionately killed by the police, but the largest share of victims continues to be white. The victims, regardless of race or ethnicity, are overwhelmingly poor and working class. Like Cameron, many were dealing with some sort of mental illness. A significant proportion of those killed by the police were suffering a health emergency when they were shot.

Floyd’s murder and that of Breonna Taylor, who was killed when police opened fire in her home during a no-knock warrant raid in Louisville, Kentucky, as well as the shooting of Jacob Blake in Kenosha, Wisconsin, have garnered attention from the Democratic Party and the Black Lives Matter organization. However, they have paid virtually no attention to white victims like Cameron, his grandfather, and 25-year-old Hannah Fizer, who was shot dead by police in Sedalia, Missouri last June.

Friends, family and community members have protested largely in isolation to demand justice for Fizer, a convenience store clerk who was killed by a deputy during a traffic stop. Last week, a special prosecutor ruled that the shooting was justifiable and that there would no criminal charges. In July, a protest was held in rural Wilson, Oklahoma to demand criminal charges in the killing of 28-year-old Jared Lakey, who was tased more than 50 times and choked to death by police in 2019.

Even as they feign sympathy for the black victims of police violence and proclaim their commitment to confronting “white supremacy,” the Democrats have slapped down demands for defunding the police and other mild reforms. Democratic Presidential candidate Joe Biden has repeatedly rejected the notion that police budgets should be cut, instead highlighting his plan to give local police $300 million in additional federal funding. The former vice president launched a massive “law and order” ad campaign earlier this month denouncing “violent protesters” against police brutality as anarchists and arsonists.

Meanwhile, President Donald Trump is waging a fascistic reelection campaign, appealing to the police and whipping up the far-right elements of his base. Trump has defended the 17-year-old militia member, Kyle Rittenhouse, who killed two anti-police violence protesters in Kenosha, Wisconsin, while also praising the federal police squad assassination of Portland protestor Michael Reinoehl as “retribution.”

Despite months of protests, police violence is not abating. Rather, the repressive arm of the state is being built up further in an effort to suppress all signs of opposition from the working class. The Department of Justice on Monday targeted New York City, Portland, Oregon and Seattle, Washington as “anarchist jurisdictions,” paving the way for them to lose federal funding.

A state of emergency was declared in Louisville, Kentucky yesterday in anticipation of protests over an imminent decision by the state’s attorney general on whether to bring charges in the Breonna Taylor case. Police began erecting concrete barricades around the downtown business district Monday, and the federal courthouse has been boarded up. One of the officers involved in shooting Taylor, Sargent John Mattingly, sent an email to his colleagues early Tuesday morning defending his actions and encouraging them to confront protesters and to “be the Warriors you are.”

Students occupy schools across Greece to protest unsafe return to classrooms

Robert Stevens

High school students in several cities on the Greek mainland and islands began occupying schools last week to protest the unsafe return to classrooms.

Among the earliest schools occupied last week were in the cities of Karditsa and Agrinio. According to the director of secondary education in Karditsa, last Wednesday four of the five General Lyceums in the city, were occupied. The two Vocational Lyceum (EPAL) schools in Karditsa are also occupied by students.

On Monday, dozens more schools nationally joined the protests; by Tuesday, more than 100 schools were being occupied nationally.

Despite the resurgence of the virus in Greece this summer—fueled by the homicidal decision to let the tourist season proceed—Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis’ right-wing New Democracy government sent teachers and pupils back to classrooms on September 14. Over 557,516 high school students and 64,000 permanent secondary school teachers, a large part of Greece’s 10 million population, are in danger. The return to school has proceeded unopposed by the trade unions and the main opposition party, Syriza-Progressive Alliance.

A banner on a school fence with some of the demands of the occupying students. It reads: “No more than 15 students per class, Give money to education, We are not expendable! (Credit: Pantelis Paspals/Facebook)

Within one week, this disastrous policy has let COVID-19 rip through the school system, leading to the closure of at least 59 schools. To suspend the operation of a school, at least three cases of coronavirus—of people not directly related to each other—must be identified.

This is contributing to a surge in coronavirus cases nationally, with 453 new coronavirus cases announced Monday and six deaths. On Tuesday, 346 new cases were recorded (210 of them in the most populated region, Attica) and 8 deaths. Seventy-seven patients are intubated. This brought total cases to 15,928 and deaths to 352.

The demands of students occupying high schools include limiting classroom groups to at most 15 students; for immediately hiring more teachers to fill the gaps; that permanent cleaning staff be hired; and that cameras not be installed in schools for e-learning, as proposed by the government. At one school a banner put up by students read: “No more than 15 students per class, Give money to education, We are not expendable!”

The government is letting teaching proceed based on maximum class sizes of 25 for primary schools and the last class of secondary school. For other secondary school classes, the maximum size is 27. These numbers are routinely breached. Efimerida Ton Syntakton reported earlier this month that the Education Ministry’s own figures showed 52 percent of all primary and secondary school students are in classes of over 21 pupils. Classes of 30 and 31 were also reported.

It added that 74 percent of all students (1 million out of 1.35 million) are in classes with more than 18 students; 52 percent (700,000 students) are in classes with more than 21 students.

This week, students in more than 40 schools in Thessaloniki, Greece’s second largest city, occupied their classrooms. They were joined by students at schools in Serres and Sidirokastro with gymnasiums pupils joining at N. Petritsi and Lefkonas after a call was made online. ERT reported that junior high students joined their older schoolmates at the Sidirokastro Lyceum. Juniors at N. Petritsi and Lefkonas also joined the protests, reported Protothema.

Schools are occupied in Volos, Nea Ionia, Agrinio, Kavala and Achaia. In the Achaia area, 39 schools were under occupation Monday, as students marched through the capital, Patra.

In the Ilia region of Western Greece, three schools occupied on Monday were soon joined by more with 13 occupied Tuesday morning in the capital, Pyrgos, and at least four other areas.

Occupations broke out in dozens of schools in Crete, Greece’s largest island. Occupations are underway in schools in the capital, Heraklion, with 14 schools affected as of Tuesday, and in schools in Chania and Rethymno. In Chania at least nine schools were hit, including every year group at two schools, the General Lyceum and the High School.

The independent news site Press Project reported that the dire state of education in Thessaloniki has intensified the protests. Hundreds of students there must study in school basements in unventilated rooms.

In the High School of Kordelio, located alongside a primary school, students are being forced to study in the school yard, as two rooms in the school’s basement are deemed unsuitable.

Throughout the EPAL system and in most of western Thessaloniki’s gymnasiums and lyceums, class sizes range from 25 to 27.

School students are not only crammed into classrooms upon arrival, but also have to travel long distances, sometimes by bus—giving the virus more opportunities to spread. Children unable to enrol at the EPAL Evosmos school were sent to Kordelio by bus. At EPAL Stavroupolis, 1,200 students in overcrowded classes must sit together in the courtyard.

Press Project reported, “In Diavata, regardless of whether students go to a vocational high school (EPAL) or a general high school (GEL), they have to wake up two hours in advance and cram themselves like sardines on the bus alongside workers who at that time are travelling to work in local factories. This is because the closest schools are one or two villages away” from Diviata.

At another school, EPAL Ampelokipi, there is just one cleaner employed for the entire school in the middle of a pandemic.

Some are also protesting the mandatory use of masks. While there have been protests, in Greece as elsewhere, of a small, disoriented section of the population opposed to masks, students are mainly opposing them on the basis that wearing a mask—in and of itself—is not enough to protect them in overcrowded, dilapidated, unventilated schools.

The Tovima newspaper cited a second year high school student involved in an occupation who said, “We believe the use of masks does not have the desired effect if appropriate infrastructure and measures are not in place.”

Moreover, the free masks provided by the state are of poor quality, forcing parents to buy masks for their children. To wear what were dubbed “parachute masks,” children have to cut holes for their eyes through the masks. Greek Deputy Health Minister Vassilis Kontozamanis said a resulting supply of 500,000 unusable masks the state bought at taxpayer expense arose from a “misunderstanding between the government and the contractor.”

The government is responding to the occupations with repression. On Monday, juvenile prosecutor Dimitra Tsiardakli filed an order for police to prevent the disruption of public services by targeting occupied schools in Thessaloniki prefecture.

The order was sent to Thessaloniki’s General Police Directorate and to local police stations. In order to keep teachers and parents from backing the protests, police were also authorized to apply the same penalties to them as to students.

Early Tuesday, a motorcycle police unit arrested 12 pupils at a school in Karatsini in the Piraeus areas of Attica, near Athens. The order for the arrest reportedly came from central police headquarters. The children were only released after their parents were called to the police station.

Yesterday, Efimerida Ton Syntakton reported that the arrests in Piraeus had led to “strong reactions, as a similar event took place in Crete: there were complaints that uniformed officers demanded school principals in Heraklion hand over the names of students taking part in school occupations.”

These nationwide protests in Greece are unfolding amid rising anger internationally among youth and workers at the back-to-school drive organised by capitalist governments. There is explosive opposition in every country that is waiting to erupt. The necessary step forward for students, educators and parents in Greece and beyond is to form independent organisations of struggle, joining the global network of Educator Rank-and-File Safety Committees that have emerged in the United States, Germany, the UK and Australia.