Hunger and social misery soar in Washington D.C. during the pandemic

Nick Barrickman & Dominic Gustavo

As the COVID-19 pandemic continues to cut a path of sickness through the population, numerous studies and investigations have revealed the growth of a far more pervasive and silent killer stalking the United States: hunger.

According to a report published last month by the Food Research and Action Center (FRAC), the number of people in the US experiencing a persistent lack of food sometimes or often climbed above 29 million people in July. This number represents nearly 11 percent of the US population. This is a near quadrupling of the number of such people in 2018, when 8 million adults were in this category.

The report states that in 38 states and the District of Columbia, 1 in 10 adults with child dependants find themselves without enough food to feed themselves and their family on a regular basis.

“Food need is being driven by unemployment, particularly in service industries, e.g., Uber drivers, childcare workers, hospitality industry, including hotels and restaurants, home health care and school services,” a representative of the Falls Church Community Services Council in Northern Virginia told the World Socialist Web Site in an email. “Our recent clients now include people who were managing before the pandemic, but now can no longer afford rent, utilities and food.”

People wait in line at a food pantry. (AP Photo/Mary Altaffer, File)

Falls Church, located in the near-suburbs of Washington D.C., is an independent jurisdiction inside Fairfax County. In 2011, it was named the wealthiest county in the United States, with a median income of $113,000 per household, its wealth largely attributable to the number of federal contractors stationed nearby. The city’s largest employer is its school system.

Last month, a report in the local ABC News affiliate WJLA noted that the Capital Area Food Bank, a supplier to over 450 charity organizations and groups in the area, found a nearly 300 percent surge in demand for its services. When contacted, Amanda Rogers, Communications Director for the Fairfax County Neighborhood and Community Services office, reported a surge of “residents who have never called or had a case open with CSP [Coordinated Services Planning] before.” This was nearly four times more than the average monthly new caller rate in fiscal year 2019.

While the need is dire, the pandemic has restricted the ability of local charities to respond. According to the WJLA report, out of nearly 150 food banks in the D.C. area that partner with the Capital Area Food Bank, “only 45 are operational.”

The Falls Church Community Services Council reported “a lack of volunteers willing to risk illness while making sure people get food.” This is especially noticeable as “the core of many food pantries’ volunteer bases are in the most vulnerable age group” for COVID-19. In addition to this, “Many stores [in spring] had placed limits on purchases of food as well as paper goods and cleaning supplies which some pantries provide.”

In other words, a complete breakdown has occurred throughout charitable networks, affecting everything from personnel to supplies.

“Location is another factor,” NPR reports, in addition to resource scarcity. A report last month using data from the US Department of Agriculture found, “People who live in food deserts are often more likely to experience food insecurity because food is harder to obtain where they live.” The report notes that 19 million Americans live in regions classified as food deserts, where supermarkets stocking fresh fruits and vegetables, dairy products and other healthy foods are nonexistent.

This has affected every demographic in the US population. According to the US Department of Agriculture, while African American and Hispanic families are more than twice as likely to be food insecure, the report notes that rural areas of the United States are more likely to become food deserts due to the spread out population as well as the lack of economic opportunity.

The stark growth of social misery is a searing indictment of both the Democratic and Republican parties. Both parties sought to shore up big business and Wall Street interests through the passage of the multitrillion-dollar CARES Act as the pandemic swept across the United States in early spring. The enacted bill was a giveaway to the financial elite, who have seen their wealth and holdings skyrocket during the pandemic. Meanwhile, the minor benefits awarded the working population became memories months ago.

It is significant that the primary recipients of the aid are teachers and home health care workers, i.e., those who are being placed on the front lines by callous officials determined to reopen public schools and businesses in the pursuit of profits. In Northern Virginia, Fairfax County, the region’s largest school system, is beginning this week sending groups of schoolchildren to in-person classes. The purposeful impoverishment of teachers and other education workers has been instrumental in forcing them back to work in unsafe conditions.

A team of reporters from the World Socialist Web Site visited So Others Might Eat (SOME), a non-profit organization in Washington D.C., located a little over a mile from the White House and National Mall. We spoke with Terrelyn, a retiree who had been accessing SOME for nearly two years. “I usually visit this place at the end of the month, or on Wednesdays to get groceries,” she said. “That way, the only thing I have to worry about is buying meat.”

Terrelyn confirmed that need for food aid during the pandemic was dire. “If you come out here around 7 a.m. in the morning, it looks like a block party” due to the number of people lined up to receive free breakfast. “You can still see construction workers cleaning up the mess from the number of people [who line up to receive free meals]. A lot of people have become homeless during the pandemic because of foreclosures,” she said.

According to the Public Broadcasting Service, “Roughly 21 million people were already struggling to scrape rent together before the pandemic hit. Now, with unemployment at record highs, only a temporary government moratorium on evictions keeps many from losing their homes.” A study by Princeton University’s Eviction Lab found in a study of over 2,600 women with children that those who had been evicted were more likely to develop physical and mental health issues within a year’s time. The children also suffered in their schooling.

Terrelyn explained that she had yet to receive any stimulus money during the pandemic because she lacked internet access and could not establish that she was no one’s dependent. “It doesn’t matter who is elected [in the November 3 presidential election],” she said, “there won’t be any stimulus for us.”

Belarus opposition declares general strike against Lukashenko government

Clara Weiss

The stand-off between the pro-EU, pro-NATO opposition and the regime of Alexander Lukashenko in Belarus has entered a new phase with a general strike that was declared by the opposition on Monday. On Sunday, more than 100,000 protesters had demanded again that Lukashenko, who claims to have won the August 9 presidential elections, step down. They were met by riot police who threw stun grenades into the crowds and arrested at least 500 people.

That same night, Lukashenko ignored an “ultimatum” to leave office issued by opposition leader Svetlana Tikhanovskaya, who claims to have won the presidential election and has been living in exile in Lithuania since August. The opposition claims that tens of thousands of workers and students joined its call for a general strike on Monday. However, it seems that walk-outs and demonstrations were centered among college and high school students.

In the capital Minsk, a large crowd of college students gathered in front of the Belarusian State University (BGU), chasing security forces away and blocking streets in the city center. Communication workers, as well as medical workers from six different hospitals in the city, reportedly joined the protest. On social media, pictures circulated, showing protests and walk-outs by college and high school students from across the country. Many coffee shops, restaurants, and libraries reportedly also closed. In Minsk and other cities, pensioners joined large demonstrations against Lukashenko.

Rally against Lukashenko in Minsk on October 25, (Credit: Homoatrox)

The NEXTA Telegram channel claimed that many railway workers also joined the strike, leading to substantial delays of trains on Monday. NEXTA, which has become the main opposition channel, is run by a young Belarusian blogger from a foundation in Warsaw that is funded by the far-right Polish government of the Law and Justice Party (PiS).

NEXTA also reported that at Grodno Azot, a chemical fertilizer plant in the west of the country, 200 workers demonstrated on Monday morning to show support for the strike. At least 50 of them were arrested. On Tuesday, the opposition called for an “economic boycott” of the regime, including through a boycott of companies that are run by figures around Lukashenko, the general reduction of purchases and the refusal to pay utilities for two months.

The strike wave in August and early September in Belarus brought the country’s economy to the “brink of collapse,” according to an analysis by the German business daily Handelsblatt, costing billions of dollars. The Belarusian GDP was less than $60 billion in 2019. The strike committees that were formed then have since been disbanded or collapsed, according to media reports.

So far, it does not seem that the strikes have assumed as large a dimension as in August. However, the Lukashenko regime clearly fears the spread of strikes in the working class and the movement among the youth, and is preparing for a violent crackdown against the protests. Speaking to his cabinet ministers on Tuesday, Lukashenko warned of a “radicalization” that was under way and stated that the government was confronted with a “terrorist war” from “criminal organized gangs.”

He insisted that the demonstrators had “crossed a red line” and instructed his cabinet: “Don’t try to convince anyone—not the workers, not the students, not the teachers, not the doctors, not the public sector workers. … Those who illegally joined unsanctioned protests have forfeited their right to be students. Send them into the army or onto the streets, but they must be removed from the colleges. The same goes for the teachers, there are just a few of them, but those who behave in a disgusting way in the colleges [must be fired]. I repeat: don’t try to ask or convince anyone, this is useless. … I’m appealing again to the parents of children in schools and colleges: take your children off the streets, otherwise it will be painful.”

The Russian government has refused to comment on the situation and insists that it does not give Lukashenko any advice as to how to deal with the protests and strikes. However, it was reported that on October 22, the head of Russian foreign intelligence, Sergey Naryshkin, visited Lukashenko’s palace.

There is evidently enormous concern about the strikes and the fact that Lukashenko, after 11 weeks of protests, has been unable to shut down the movement. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov noted on Monday, “Of course, we are following the situation. It is extremely important for us that the factories in Belarus are operating in a reliable and timely manner.”

The online newspaper Gazeta.Ru published an analysis evaluating the potential fallout from large-scale strikes in Belarus for the Russian economy. About 45 percent of all Belarusian exports go to Russia. Russia is especially reliant on Belarusian manufacturing of tractors and parts for the Russian defense industry, and also imports a substantial amount of milk produce from Belarus. The greatest fear in Moscow, Gazeta.Ru said, is that strikes could impact the operation of the Druzhba oil pipeline, which is delivering Russian oil through Belarus to the European Union (EU). Russia’s economy has already been hit hard by the COVID-19 pandemic, and its GDP is expected to shrink by 9 percent this year.

Even more than the economic impact of the strikes in Belarus, however, the Russian oligarchy fears that they will spread to workers in Russia. Social and political anger over both the mass impoverishment of the population and the policy of “herd immunity” with regard to the coronavirus is running high in the Russian working class.

Workers in Belarus, Russia and across the region are indeed facing the same economic, political and social problems, as a result of decades of Stalinism and the restoration of capitalism by the Stalinist bureaucracy. However, any struggle for social and political progress requires the independent intervention of the working class on the basis of a socialist and international program.

Such a struggle is impossible without a conscious, political break with the right-wing opposition of Tikhanovskaya, which is heavily nationalistic, anti-communist and backed by the imperialist powers. Despite its limited appeals to widespread social and economic discontent, the opposition is deeply hostile to the working class. It speaks for sections of the ruling and upper middle class in Belarus that seek to advance their own social interests by integrating the country more closely into the EU and NATO.

Earlier in October, Tikhanovskaya met with French President Emmanuel Macron, as well as German Chancellor Angela Merkel and foreign minister Heiko Maas. There is little question that, at this point, all major steps by the opposition are discussed with Berlin and Paris. The opposition is also receiving funding and is in close discussions with the governments in Poland as well as the Baltic states, all of which are ferociously anti-Russian and nationalistic.

German imperialism, in particular, regards the crisis of the Lukashenko regime as an opportunity to bolster its own influence in the region and undermine Russia. Under conditions of growing inter-imperialist tensions with the US and an international economic breakdown, Berlin has recently significantly stepped up its intervention in the former Soviet bloc. In this regard, Berlin’s aggressive intervention in the highly dubious case of anti-Putin oppositionist Alexei Navalny, and its backing of the Tikhanovskaya opposition in Belarus are of a piece.

German companies already have a substantial foothold in the region, which has been turned into a cheap labor platform for German imperialism after the restoration of capitalism in 1989–1991. In terms of geo-strategy and war preparations against Russia, Belarus is also of enormous significance. After Ukraine, where Berlin and Washington backed a far-right coup in 2014, Belarus is the last country on Russia’s western borders that is not directly aligned with NATO. While Lukashenko has been seeking to balance between NATO and Russia in recent years, the installment of an openly pro-Western regime in Minsk would signify a major geo-strategic blow to Moscow. Germany, as well as the US, also seeks to roll back the influence of China, which has become one of the main investors in the Belarusian economy under Lukashenko.

Gig workers hired to evict people from their homes as millions struggle to pay rent

Dominic Gustavo

A startup company by the name of Civvl is seeking to recruit temporary “gig” workers to assist landlords in evicting tenants who have been unable to pay rent in the midst of the economic depression triggered by the coronavirus pandemic.

Civvl is owned by OnQall, a developer that provides a platform for a number of other app-based services. However, Civvl is markedly different from the other apps, some of which are used for house-cleaning and mowing lawns.

The startup, described by VICE News as “Uber, but for evicting people,” has posted ads across the US looking for gig workers to join eviction crews to assist in what the company’s website calls “debris removal.” In other words, it is hiring people to clear out the possessions of evicted people.

Like opportunistic vultures, the company’s owners seek to take advantage of an economic crisis in which millions are unemployed and cut off from federal assistance. Desperate workers—in many cases struggling to pay rent themselves—are now to be utilized by the startup to evict other struggling people for the purpose of turning a profit.

The startup’s own website declares it to be the “FASTEST GROWING MONEY MAKING GIG DUE TO COVID-19.” The website assures its clients that “Civvl gets them out!” amid photos showing furniture and other possessions being hauled out into the streets with police standing by.

Civvl (Image Credit: company website)

As Civvl’s Craigslist ads explain, “Unemployment is at a record high and many cannot or simply are not paying rent and mortgages.” It continues: “We are being contracted by frustrated property owners and banks to secure foreclosed residential properties. ... There is plenty of work due to the dismal economy.”

Amid a stream of bad press, the company adjusted the language on its website to indicate that it does not, in fact, carry out the evictions. However, this appears to be contradicted by the fact that among the positions listed is that of “process server,” a person who would be contracted with serving court documents and posting eviction notices on properties. Other services include that of “eviction standby.”

As for the legality of the evictions, the company makes clear in its terms of service that it is merely carrying out the dirty work of the landlord, who assumes all legal responsibility.

Many have expressed outrage over such blatant profiteering from the growing misery of masses of people. VICE News spoke with Helena Duncan, a Chicago housing activist and paralegal. “It’s f*cked up that there will be struggling working-class people who will be drawn to gigs like furniture-hauling or process-serving for a company like Civvl, evicting fellow working-class people from their homes so they themselves can make rent,” she said. Others expressed their indignation on Twitter with one user tweeting: “These people are just evil.”

The absurdity and criminality of this state of affairs will not be lost on workers. A CNN report on evictions from September 2 featured the eviction of an elderly Houston woman who could no longer afford to pay her rent. As the landlord’s mover hauled out her possessions, he lamented, “Maybe today it’s her, tomorrow it’s me.”

The CDC has imposed a moratorium on evictions effective through December 31, 2020. However, this hasn’t stopped landlords from resorting to illegal methods to evict their tenants, including utility shutoffs and intimidation tactics.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) moratorium has been subject to different interpretations among varying state and local governments, leaving many low-income and vulnerable tenants at risk for eviction and homelessness.

Avery Kreemer, the founder of Ohio Eviction Watch, recently spoke to the WSWS on the eviction crisis in the state. He explained: “Each county and each court will interpret the moratorium differently,” said Kreemer. “One of our reporters lives up in Akron, and someone from the Legal Aid Society told her about a woman who lives on the county line. The court she lives under decided she was not covered under the CDC order, but if she had lived two miles to the west she would have been protected under that court.”

Despite the CDC moratorium, many renters are unaware of the protections available to them, and landlords take advantage of this ignorance to carry out illegal evictions. In some states, tenants must fill out a declaration in order to remain exempt from eviction. In other states, such as Maryland, tenants may be required to provide documentation to assert that they qualify for exemption.

Phillip DeVon, an eviction prevention specialist at the Chicago-based Metropolitan Tenants Organization (MTO) told VICE, “One thing we know just from experience, especially with housing: just because something is technically legal, doesn’t by any stretch mean that it’s right, ethically speaking.” Regarding Civvl, DeVon said, “With this particular company, it sounds like they’re doing what landlords often do, which is prey upon a lack of knowledge and information about people’s rights.” He added, “It’s very dishonest. … It’s like, ‘Oh, don’t call us a hitman. We don’t pull the trigger! We just connect you with someone who’s willing to.’”

The eviction crisis in the US, as part of the broader social catastrophe brought about by the pandemic depression, is rapidly assuming monstrous dimensions. According to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP), which is tracking growing rates of unemployment, hunger and general hardship, some 11.8 million adult renters—or nearly 1 in 6—were unable to pay their rent last month.

The CBPP acknowledges this to be a significant undercount since younger, less educated, and Black and Hispanic renters—demographics that are statistically more likely to be struggling to pay rent—were less likely to respond to the survey. The advisory firm Stout Risius Ross conducted an analysis that concluded that as many as 34 million people may be at risk for eviction.

Unemployment, which is closely tied to difficulties paying rent, is still at record highs. The CBPP, having analyzed the Census Bureau population survey, concluded that some 31 million people were unemployed, or lived with an unemployed family member. Among them are 7 million children. The CBPP further acknowledges this to be an undercount, since it doesn’t include workers who have been furloughed, workers who have given up on looking for a job, and people who are caring for sick relatives and/or their children because of closed schools. If the family members of these workers are counted, some 54 million people—1 in 6 in the country—live in households with a disenfranchised worker.

The owners of Civvl clearly anticipate the avalanche of evictions that is coming. Its website states frankly, “Moratorium ends Dec 31, 2020,” and urges landlords to “Secure your booking and act fast.”

While the company is rightly receiving widespread condemnation, it would be mistaken to characterize this phenomenon as an anomaly. The entire capitalist system is predicated on violence and exploitation.

The appearance of a startup such as Civvl is merely the odious expression of an old maxim, made infamous by Democrat Rahm Emanuel, “You never want a serious crisis to go to waste.” The opportunism of Civvl is reflected on the grand scale by pharmaceutical companies such as Regeneron, which is set to make a fortune from its Covid-19 treatment. Even though the project was federally funded—to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars—the treatment will likely be unaffordable for a great majority of the population, even as the company’s executives—already the highest paid in the industry—are due to receive billions of dollars.

In an economic system that subordinates everything, even human life, to the accumulation of wealth, it is perfectly logical to take advantage of a situation in which millions of human beings may be expelled from their homes. A bourgeois political economist would undoubtedly praise the entrepreneurial spirit displayed by Civvl’s owners, as well as the genius of their business model: utilizing unemployed poor people to remove other poor people from their residences.

The despicable attempts by this startup to prey upon the misery afflicting millions of working people is mirrored by the machinations of a ruthless financial oligarchy that has taken advantage of the pandemic crisis to engineer a multitrillion-dollar bailout to itself. The ecstatic booming of the stock markets and the exorbitant increase in the wealth of the richest 1 percent are to be contrasted with the growth of severe poverty and misery among the masses of the working class.

This is not an aberration, it is the inevitable result of capitalism, and it is how the system is designed to function. As the decay of American capitalism accelerates, it will be reflected in increasingly degenerate displays of greed and opportunism by the ruling class.

Peru’s political crisis deepens with second motion to impeach President Vizcarra

Cesar Uco

A reactionary and disparate alliance of political parties in the Peruvian Congress has filed a second motion to oust President Martin Vizcarra, accusing him of moral incapacity in connection with alleged bribes. The charges are based on the testimony of an as-yet unidentified cooperating witness working with the attorney general’s office.

Vizcarra is accused of taking close to $300,000 from Obrainsa, a company seeking a construction contract, when he was governor of the department of Moquegua, a mining region in the south of Peru. Obrainsa was part of the “Club de la construcción” a consortium of 31 firms that included Brazilian giant Odebrecht—implicated in kickback and bribery scandals throughout the hemisphere—which received billions of dollars in public infrastructure contracts.

Vizcarra went on to succeed Pedro Pablo Kuczynski as president when the latter was forced to resign amid Odebrecht corruption charges in March 2018. Nearly every living Peruvian ex-president has been implicated in corruption probes, while one, Alan García, shot himself to death in April of last year rather than surrender to the police.

President Vizcarra, middle. (Credit: Galería del Ministerio de Relaciones Exteriores/Wikimedia Commons)

This is the second attempt to impeach (or seek a presidential vacancy against) Vizcarra in little more than a month. In the last vote, 32 legislators voted in favor of ousting the president, 78 against and 15 abstained. The opposition-dominated Congress required 87 votes for the motion to succeed out of a total of 130 legislators.

Given the track record of Peru’s presidents and other bourgeois politicians, the charges against Vizcarra are at least plausible. Those bringing them, however, are pursuing interests that have nothing to do with a crusade against corruption.

The latest motion has been presented by members of the Union for Perú (UPP) with the support of Podemos Perú, Frente Amplio, two Acción Popular congressmen and one independent.

Behind the new impeachment attempt lie a scheme by the president of Congress, Manuel Merino from the center-right Acción Popular party (AP), to take over the presidency, and a bid by Antauro Humala to gain his freedom. Antauro, an ex-army major and the brother of former president Ollanta Humala, who is also under investigation for illegal deals with Odebrecht, is serving a 19-year sentence in connection with an abortive nationalist coup in 2005.

It is known that Antauro Humala also has presidential ambitions if he gets out of prison. (Parties have begun to announce pre-candidates for the presidency in the run-up to April 2021 elections).

UPP, the main party promoting the impeachment, was founded by the late ex-secretary of the United Nations Javier Pérez de Cuellar, who unsuccessfully challenged then-president Alberto Fujimori, who is now imprisoned for crimes against humanity, in the 1995 presidential elections.

Currently, UPP is led by one of its co-founders, José Vega, an ex-union leader and delegate of the Stalinist-dominated General Confederation of Peruvian Workers (CGTP). In 2006, Vega entered an alliance with the nascent Peruvian Nationalist Party (PNP) of Ollanta Humala, who lost the presidential election that year, but became president after winning the 2011 election.

Vega is reportedly in talks with Antauro Humala’s ultra-nationalist supporters on changing his party’s name and running Antauro as its presidential candidate.

Frente Amplio, which represented the bourgeois “left” in the last elections, running former Humalista Veronika Mendoza as its presidential candidate, has demonstrated its reactionary character by joining with these right-wing parties in backing the impeachment.

Vizcarra criticized the Congress for considering a second impeachment motion in barely one month and with little more than five months to go until presidential elections.

“I do not know if it will be once a month, having so much to do, so much work, generating this type of distraction and confrontation when we are so close to the elections,” he said.

The new political conflict reflects the crisis of the entire Peruvian ruling class as it confronts the country’s worst recession in decades. In addition, the death toll from COVID-19 remains alarming. While the number of infections and deaths have decreased, a new wave of infections is expected following the resurgence of the virus in Europe and the US.

To date, the Ministry of Health (Minsa) has officially recorded more than 34,000 COVID-19 deaths, but the real toll is far higher. The National Information System on Deaths (SINADEF) puts the figure at 65,000. A Minsa worker who spoke to the WSWS put the estimate at 80,000, saying, “We know that Minsa is hiding the true figures. In my office we receive news that every day three to five Minsa employees die. It is a desperate situation.”

Peru has the highest per-capita mortality rate in the world, and is sixth in the number of infections, with more than 890,000.

Under conditions of the deepening economic crisis and the still uncontrolled pandemic, Vizcarra and a large sector of the bourgeoisie fear that an impeachment trial could further fuel the growing militancy of the working class.

Over the last two months, doctors have joined two 48-hour strikes and are threatening a broader indefinite strike. They have the support of the entire health sector and most of the population for their heroic sacrifice in fighting the coronavirus pandemic.

With 199 deaths from the virus and more than 4,000 infected, doctors have been the most affected by COVID-19 and express the growing anger of the Peruvian working class over the response of the ruling class to the pandemic.

In addition, there is the Las Bambas mining conflict where protests have prevented the Chinese transnational mining company MMG Limited from transporting copper to the port of Matarani (Arequipa).

Members of the Peruvian congress have charged that the government will make use of the armed forces to prevent Vizcarra’s impeachment. Prime Minister Walter Martos said, “We will never use the Armed Forces in political acts.” That he is compelled to issue such a denial is telling. It is well known that Vizcarra and the armed forces chief of staff have been collaborating closely since the president dissolved the old congress in late September of last year.

The direct intervention of the armed forces is an increasing threat as the COVID-19, economic and impeachment crises coalesce.

British Columbia New Democrats win majority government buoyed by business, union support

Penny Smith & Roger Jordan

British Columbia’s trade union-backed New Democratic Party emerged the victor from Saturday’s provincial election. With a half-million mail-in ballots still to count, provisional results give the New Democrats 55 of the 87 seats in the provincial legislature and 45 percent of the popular vote,

Premier John Horgan called the election seven months early with the aim of securing a parliamentary majority for the NDP, which came to power in 2017 at the head of a minority government thanks to a “confidence and supply agreement” with the Green Party.

This gambit paid off. The Liberals, who held power for 16 years beginning in 2001 and fell just one seat short of clinging to power in 2017, have been reduced to 29 seats, their worst result in a generation. The Greens took three seats, the same number as in 2017, and with a similar 15 percent vote-share.

Premier John Horgan (Credit: Flickr/Province of British Columbia)

The media is full of reports proclaiming an “historic” NDP victory. But Saturday’s results were not the result of any groundswell of popular enthusiasm for the Horgan government, which has pursued pro-big business policies and formed a close partnership with the Justin Trudeau-led federal Liberal government, while posturing as a “friend of working people.”

At 52.4 percent, voter participation was the lowest in any BC election since records began to be kept in 1928.

The NDP victory is attributable to two factors: broad support from the establishment, including large sections of business that until recently railed against the NDP as “socialist,” and widespread popular animosity toward the BC Liberals—a coalition of federal Conservatives and Liberals, and former Social Credit supporters—because of their long association with austerity.

In the lead-up to the election, Canada’s “newspaper of record” and the traditional mouthpiece of the Bay Street financial elite, the Globe and Mail, published an editorial endorsing the re-election of the BC NDP government. It praised Horgan for having “governed well” and pledging to keep “a steady hand on the wheel” with a “plan of only modest increases in spending over the next few years” despite the health and socialeconomic crisis triggered by the COVID-19 pandemic. Yesterday, in a further editorial, the Globe again praised Horgan, calling him a “centrist on economic files” who has successfully parried Liberal attempts to paint him as “anti-development,” but added the warning that the mounting social crisis means “his second term is going to be a lot tougher.”

The NDP campaign trumpeted its supposed positive handling of the COVID-19 pandemic. “The last thing we should do now is go back to a government that puts the wealthy and well-connected before the needs of people,” Horgan declared in a typical campaign appearance. “Putting people first has been at the heart of our pandemic response and it will continue to be if our team is re-elected.”

This is a pack of lies. The Horgan government has been at the helm of the province’s criminal response to the COVID-19 pandemic, which has produced deaths in long-term care facilities, left homeless people and other vulnerable sections of society to fend for themselves, and has now triggered a mounting and potentially catastrophic “second wave” by recklessly pushing to reopen schools and businesses. In this it has had the full backing of the trade unions.

On March 16, when other provinces were adopting shelter-in-place policies, the BC NDP government refused to order a lockdown. British Columbia banned gatherings of over 50 people, but exempted a slew of vaguely defined “essential services,” including the lucrative construction and mining sectors, subordinating workers’ health to corporate profit.

When more than 100,000 furloughed and laid-off workers in the province were put onto federal emergency rations in the form of the Canada Emergency Response Benefit, the NDP topped it up with a meagre one-time payment of $1,000. Meanwhile, it has offered billions in tax breaks and subsidies to the energy and infrastructure corporations.

With over 12,000 infections and more than 250 deaths recorded since the start of the pandemic, and more than 150 new COVID-19 cases now being reported daily, the NDP government has made clear that will not disrupt corporate profit-making with further social-distancing and lockdown measures. Nine months after the World Health Organization declared a global health emergency over COVID-19, testing in BC remains extremely limited, with authorities routinely failing to screen asymptomatic people, even if they have been exposed to virus.

In line with their political counterparts throughout the country and capitalist governments around the world, the BC New Democrats are implementing a reckless back-to-school policy forcing students and teachers to return to overcrowded and often poorly ventilated classrooms. Opposed by many teachers, parents and students, this policy has already led to a rapid escalation in infections.

A majority of teachers have reported conditions in their school as either “completely inadequate” or “somewhat inadequate.” In the week prior to the election, over 800 parents across the province kept their kids home from school for a day to protest the disastrous conditions presided over by the NDP and its union allies.

Despite the deplorable conditions in senior care homes, and the long-known fact—well documented by the province’s chief medical officer, Dr. Bonnie Henry—that the low-paid, transient workforce employed by private long-term care facilities has contributed to the spread of COVID-19, Horgan has called the province’s combination of private

care and public care providers a “healthy mix.”

Many people were misled into believing that when the BC NDP formed a minority government in 2017, it would put an end to the hated big business Liberals’ 16-year reign of austerity and ultra-low taxes for big business and the rich; reinvest in health care and education; and take steps to reduce what is one of the country’s highest child poverty rates.

However, Horgan made clear from the outset that this would not be the case. On taking power, he boasted that his government’s spending plans were based on the fiscal framework that had been laid down by its Liberal predecessors.

The BC premier has served as a close ally of the federal Liberal government, which has cut tens of billions from health-care transfers to the provinces, committed tens of billions to purchasing new fleets of warships and warplanes, and integrated Canada even more fully in the US military-strategic offensives against China and Russia.

The BC NDP government and its union allies were quick to endorse the deal Trudeau struck with the Trump administration to refashion the North American Free Trade Agreement so as to make it a more expressly US-dominated trade war bloc aimed at challenging the economic and geostrategic rivals of US and Canadian imperialism, above all China.

The NDP has also proven its readiness to deploy state repression against protests. In February, it was Horgan and the NDP who ordered militarized RCMP units to raid a protest camp set up by the Wet’suwet’en First Nation against the construction of the Coastal Gas Link pipeline across traditional Wet’suwet’en territory. Horgan infamously insisted that the “rule of law” needed “to prevail,” citing a BC Supreme Court decision that in December granted the company an injunction for unimpeded access to work sites.

Canada’s financial elite also knows that Horgan can be trusted to keep a tight rein on public spending. Since 2017, his government’s balanced budgets have helped produce a worsening of the opioid epidemic, rising homelessness and increasing social inequality. The NDP has built less than 3,000 new affordable housing units out of its much-touted 10-year goal of 114,000.

Since the outset of the pandemic, Horgan’s NDP colleagues in the federal parliament have stepped up their close cooperation with Trudeau’s Liberals. With the unions’ enthusiastic support, they ensured passage of the Liberal government’s September 23 Throne Speech, which pledged to enforce the reckless reopening of the economy and offered state support to Canadian capitalism so it can remain “globally competitive” in a post-pandemic world.

The trade unions, which have responded to the greatest crisis of global capitalism since the 1930s by suppressing working-class opposition and deepening their corporatist ties with big business and the federal Liberals, joined with the Globe in calling for an NDP election victory in BC. Horgan is “the right leader to help navigate British Columbians through challenging times,” declared Unifor President Jerry Dias. A union release demagogically added that the NDP’s platform offers “a vision for BC’s future that leaves no one behind.”

The NDP’s BC Economic Recovery Plan tells a different story. The province brags that 250,000 jobs lost due to COVID-19 have been restored. However, there were more than 350,000 losses since the pandemic began. The unemployment rate in Metro Vancouver has climbed to 12.5 percent from 4.6 percent before the pandemic. Small businesses have been battered, as government aid packages have proven woefully inadequate. Since February, 8,000 have closed in Metro Vancouver alone.

Horgan is promising a Recovery Benefit Fund that would make available $3 billion per year to build schools, hospitals and other capital projects. Included in the fund is a one-time rebate of $1,000 for families and $500 for individuals that would come from the price-gouging car insurance monopoly, ICBC, an obvious election bribe.

Even if these paltry commitments were made good on, they are a drop in the bucket.

Another main plank in the NDP election platform was more investment in building up Canada’s imperialist war machine. Horgan announced that a re-elected NDP government would subsidize the construction of Canada’s next Polar Icebreaker. Commissioned for the Navy and Coast Guard, the Polar Icebreakers were a key element in the National Shipbuilding Procurement Strategy announced by federal Harper Conservative Party as part of its Canada First rearmament program. The government investment in the $1.3 billion project “will keep BC shipyards modern and competitive,” claimed Horgan.

Vietnam suffers through a “new normal” of extreme weather events

Robert Campion

Vietnam is being pummeled by ongoing tropical storms causing major flooding and landslides in its central regions. As of Monday morning, the death toll had reached 130 with 18 people missing, according to government figures. This was up from 119 fatalities on Saturday, with most occurring in the central provinces of Quang Tri, Thua Thien Hue and Quang Nam.

Close to a million people have been severely affected, with many in desperate need of shelter, food, clean drinking water and income support. According to the UN, as of last Thursday, at least 178,000 homes were currently under water.

Flood levels eclipsed the 1979 record by 0.98 metres, hovering at 4.89 metres for several consecutive days in the province of Quang Binh. The amount of rain that fell between October 6 and 13 was two to six times higher than normal in some regions.

Most of the hardest hit have been poor farmers. Agricultural damage has been extensive, with 1,500 hectares of rice fields and 7,800 hectares of other crops being either flooded or damaged. Close to a million head of cattle and poultry have also been killed or swept away.

Relief workers attempting to provide supplies to a flooded area. (Image Credit: Twitter/UNOCHA)

The government has stated that the damage caused has been “the worst in five years”. Several highways and local roads are blocked with rocks the size of cars, hampering rescue efforts.

About a third of deaths have been of military personnel.

In one instance, a team of 21 rescuers, most of them military officers, was sent to verify reports of 17 workers buried by a landslide at the Rao Trang 3 hydroelectric plant deep in the jungle. The workers were reportedly asleep when they were buried on October 12.

The rescue team stopped at a ranger station for the night and were buried in a rocky landslide. Of the 13 deaths, 11 were from the military. Only four of the 17 workers at the dam have been recovered thus far and authorities have deployed more rescue forces to the scene.

Days later, a barracks in Quang Tri was consumed by a mudslide in the early hours of the morning, killing 20 military personnel, likely the largest number of military casualties suffered in a period of peace, according to officials.

Scientists believe flooding in central Vietnam is the result of a “new normal” of weather patterns driven by complex processes.

On an international scale, the UN Office for Disaster Risk Reduction (UNDDR) reported recently a 75 percent increase in natural disasters in the last 20 years. Between 1980 and 1999, there were 4,212 major natural disasters. Between 2000 and 2019, 7,348 major disaster events were recorded costing 1.23 million lives, affecting 4.2 billion people and costing the global economy USD$2.97 trillion.

The increase is largely attributed to climate related events such as floods, droughts and storms.

Speaking at a virtual conference, UNDDR chief Mami Mizutori accused governments of abandoning effective measures to deal with climate change, “It is baffling that we willingly and knowingly continue to sow the seeds of our own destruction,” he said, “despite the science and evidence that we are turning our only home into an uninhabitable hell for millions of people.”

In the Asia Pacific, the cyclical la Nina phenomenon is intensifying storms in the region, and is expected to continue until early next year. Cambodia has reported 39 deaths from flooding, with hundreds of thousands affected and 46,216 people evacuated to safer ground.

Vietnam has been hit by three tropical storms and a depression in the month of October. Typhoon Mojave, at present travelling westwards over the Philippines, is also likely to impact in the weeks ahead. It is currently bringing heavy rain and strong winds of 130 kilometres per hour. About 9,000 people in the Philippines have fled their homes.

Professor of human ecology at Rutgers University, Pamela McElwee, told the New York Times that the sheer volume of rainfall in Vietnam was, “so extraordinarily out of the normal” that it shattered the government’s midrange predictions of how climate change might increase precipitation in its central regions by the end of the century.

She also stated that the construction of hydroelectric dams and poor mountain roads had weakened the soil. “The earth is just soaked with water and has nowhere to go.”

Christopher Rassi, Director of the International Federation of Red Cross, warned of the economic fallout: “We are seeing a deadly double disaster unfold before our eyes as these floods compound the difficulties caused by COVID-19. These floods are the last straw and will push millions of people further towards the brink of poverty.”

The Vietnamese economy relies heavily on its tourism industry which has been drastically cut back during the pandemic. Borders were virtually closed in late March. Apart from an outbreak in Da Nang Hospital in late July, total cases have been kept low and contained at under 1,500, with 40 deaths.

The Asian Development Bank assessed in September that Vietnam’s economy would grow at around 1.8 percent in 2020, its slowest rate in 35 years and significantly lower than pre-pandemic levels.

The Stalinist regime in Vietnam has ruthlessly pursued a policy of capitalist restoration for decades. According to its own estimates, economic inequality is worsening. Between 2014 and 2018 the GINI index of Vietnam, a standard measure of income inequality, was 0.4 [where 0 represents absolute equality and 1 absolute inequality]. The figure is regarded as a tipping point with higher numbers frequently associated with social unrest and political instability.

Out of fear of social unrest, the regime has sought to suppress criticism from workers and the peasantry. According to the UN, hundreds of people have been interrogated so far over COVID-19 related Facebook posts. In the lead up to the congress of the Vietnamese Communist Party in January 2021, the government has begun a campaign of censoring dissident and left-wing publications.

As COVID-19 floods hospitals, Macron debates second lockdown in France

Alex Lantier

French President Emmanuel Macron is to give a national televised address this evening to announce new policies as the pandemic erupts out of control in France and across Europe.

Health authorities are warning that without immediate, decisive action, the onrush of patients will first flood and then overwhelm France’s medical system. Europe is recording at least 200,000 new cases each day, with France among the worst-hit at 30,000 to 50,000 new cases per day. Moreover, these numbers are doubling every 10 days. Already, 2,900 of France’s 5,800 ventilator-equipped beds are currently occupied by COVID-19 patients. Daily deaths from the virus are also rising sharply, with 2,693 deaths across Europe yesterday, including 523 in France alone.

Together with other European countries like Spain, Belgium and the Czech Republic, France is one of the first countries passing through what is a global upsurge of COVID-19. While daily new cases worldwide oscillated from 200,000 to 300,000 from July to early October, they have this month exploded to nearly 500,000.

Emmanuel Macron (en.kremlin.ru)

Even though the World Health Organization (WHO) warned three months ago that the premature ending of lockdowns in spring was leading to a resurgence of the virus in Europe, the Macron administration and other European governments opposed implementing a shelter-at-home order. As millions contract the highly contagious and deadly virus, they still refuse to allow non-essential workers and youth to shelter at home.

Amid mounting public concern and anger at the upsurge of the virus, Macron held a meeting of France’s national security council from 10 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. yesterday, after which Prime Minister Jean Castex met with the leaders of France’s main parliamentary parties. Macron will hold another national security council meeting before speaking tonight.

Leading doctors have given interviews on major media in recent days to warn of the imminent collapse of the country’s health system in a surge of COVID-19 infections and deaths even more devastating than in the spring.

Professor Gilles Pialoux, the head of the infectious diseases section at Tenon hospital in Paris, told BFM-TV “this is a war situation” and that he “unambiguously calls for a shelter-at-home order.” He warned of a “more rapid, more critical and stronger second wave” than the earlier spike in deaths during the spring. “We probably lost control of the spread of virus as early as August,” he said.

Pialoux bluntly criticized those, such as the Macron government itself, who claim that a general shelter-at-home order is economically impossible, saying: “You can bring back the economy, but you can’t bring back someone who did not get access to life support.”

Pialoux’s statements were echoed by Eric Caulmes, the head of the infectious diseases section of the Pitié-Salpêtrière hospital in Paris, after the emergency meeting yesterday. “The virus is so widespread among us that now, I think today we have no choice. We will have to give a new confinement order,” Caulmes told France Info. “We lost control of the epidemic some weeks ago. The prime minister recognized this, the health minister also.”

Caulmes criticized Macron’s current 9 p.m. to 6 a.m. curfew measure as “a risky bet,” adding: “From an epidemiological point of view, this is not a method whose effectiveness is well established.” He also criticized the government’s “telling people to stop working from home in September, I think that was a mistake. We need to work from home as much as possible. It is a weapon in the struggle against the pandemic.”

Caulmes warned that the explosive rise in cases threatens to swamp hospitals: “Soon we will only have COVID-19 patients in ventilator beds, we will no longer be able to handle other patients if the medical system is overrun with COVID-19. And one should recall that the longer one waits to take the right decisions, the longer they take to show effects.”

The resurgence of the virus is the product of the politically criminal subordination of health policy to the profit interests of the financial aristocracy by capitalist governments around the world. The European Union (EU) reacted to the COVID-19 pandemic by passing an unprecedented €2 trillion in bank and corporate bailouts. However, only a tiny fraction of these public funds went to fund miserly unemployment insurance programs and loan programs for small businesses.

Instead, the banks demanded youth return to school so their parents could return to work, to produce profits on the massive riches that the ruling class had taken from the public purse. Governments advocated criminally irresponsible policies—like going to the workplace even when this was not strictly necessary, as Caulmes mentioned—in an attempt to lull workers to sleep with a false sense of security. As a result, COVID-19 has spread widely.

Broad sections of the ruling class still cling to this tissue of murderous lies. Yesterday evening, French media outlets floated possibilities for the measures Macron might propose tonight, all of them insufficient to halt the contagion. These included a shelter-at-home order on weekends combined with a nighttime curfew, a shelter-at-home order in a few of the worst-hit cities, or a four-week national lock-down in which elementary and junior high schools would remain open, so parents could keep going to work.

These measures have one feature in common: they all force workers and youth to keep reporting to work and school, where two-thirds of COVID-19 transmission clusters occur. Thus, they ensure profits will continue pumping into the pockets of the financial aristocracy, by ensuring the virus continues to spread among working people.

The president of the French Business Federation (Medef), Geoffroy Roux de Bézieux, told RMC that France cannot afford a shelter-at-home order as in the spring. “If we do a total lockdown as in March, it won’t be a 10 percent fall in the economy, it will simply collapse,” he said.

There is no reason to be particularly interested in what Mr Roux de Bézieux believes he can or cannot afford. The funds needed to protect the health system and allow workers, the self-employed and small businessmen to shelter at home until the pandemic is under control should be taken from the vast sums of public wealth that EU authorities have illegitimately given to the super-rich. The survival of hundreds of thousands or millions of people cannot be subordinated to the selfish interests of a parasitic ruling class that has outlived itself and is no longer fit to rule.

The only way to halt the devastating resurgence of COVID-19 is a general shelter-at-home order for all youth and non-essential workers until responsible medical authorities judge the pandemic is under control.

Workers cannot however rely on capitalist politicians like Macron, a former investment banker, or on the negotiations between Roux de Bézieux and France’s bought-and-paid-for union bureaucracy to obtain such a policy. Regardless of what Macron decides today, he will seek to defend the same fundamental class interests, which are inimical to the health and lives of the broad majority of the population. The lockdown this spring, it must be recalled, left millions of workers and small businessmen without financial protection or, in many cases, sufficient food.

The only way forward, as the Parti de l’égalité socialiste and its sister parties of the International Committee of the Fourth International have explained, is the organization of the working class and youth independently of the union bureaucracies and the preparation of general strike action. Such a struggle, waged on an international basis in order to transfer power to the working class and seize the necessary financial and industrial resources to implement a scientifically-based policy against COVID-19, is the only way to stop the pandemic.

Far right attacks scientists as coronavirus infections explode in Germany

Gregor Link

Over recent days, well over 11,000 people have been infected each day with coronavirus in Germany. The Robert Koch Institute (RKI), Germany’s disease control agency, reported 14,714 cases on Saturday on the basis of data supplied by local health authorities. Both previous days saw over 11,200 new cases registered, while there were 11,176 on Sunday and 8,685 on Monday. However, due to the reduced processing of tests in some local health authorities over the weekend, the real number of infections on Sunday and Monday is likely much higher.

Overall, average new infections are twice as high as they were at the end of March and beginning of April when the pandemic reached its initial high point with between 5,000 and 7,000 daily cases.

The available data shows that the drive by the federal and state governments to reopen the economy and systematically encourage the mass infection of the population is threatening the health and lives of hundreds of thousands. It will culminate in a matter of weeks in a catastrophic collapse of Germany’s hospital networks unless a sharp change of course is initiated with the shutdown of schools and the economy.

Central train station in Frankfurt, Germany, Thursday, Oct. 8, 2020. (AP Photo/Michael Probst)

In its situation report on Sunday, the RKI noted that 71 cities and districts had infection rates of 100 per 100,000 inhabitants or higher and are therefore potential hotspots. The share of those infected who have died in Germany was calculated by the RKI at 2.3 percent.

The current lower empirical death rate of 1 percent, the institute added, threatens to rise sharply in the coming days. The situation report commented on this, “However, the infections among elderly people is increasing. Because they tend to experience more serious symptoms from COVID-19, the number of serious cases and deaths will also rise.” The institute called for the spread of the coronavirus to be prevented.

As Der Spiegel reported last week, the actual number of infections in Germany is systematically underestimated by the RKI’s published figures. “The most important number in the pandemic, the new infections within the past seven days, is often falsely recorded by the RKI,” wrote the newsmagazine. In the time period under review, at least 30 percent of these figures were incomplete and therefore flawed, because “the data from at least one day were completely” missing. The differential varied across states but was as high as 25 percent, an effect that can under-represent the exponential spread of the pandemic.

With the explosion of new infections, the number of patients being brought into intensive care units is also increasing. As the Tagesschau reported, the number of intensive care patients has almost doubled from 690 to 1,121 in just a week. The figure two weeks ago was 510, and just 293 patients one month ago. This is typical of exponential growth.

Of the 487 patients currently on ventilators nationwide, statistics suggest that more than half will die. Coronavirus patients now account for 4 percent of all patients in Germany. Just 26.4 percent of intensive care beds remain unoccupied.

Speaking to the Tagesschau, Uwe Jansens, president of the German Interdisciplinary Association of Intensive and Emergency Care (DIVI) warned that there will be a shortage of health care staff during the winter. In fact, this shortage could be reached much more quickly. In France, where developments are approximately two weeks ahead of Germany, approximately 2,000 patients are being brought into hospital each day.

Health Minister Olivier Veran stated on Twitter that one coronavirus patient is hospitalized every minute. Tagesspiegel reported on figures from a study by the French professional association of nurses, which showed that 57 percent are on the verge of burnout. Prior to the pandemic, this figure was 33 percent.

Attack on the RKI

Regardless of the record spread of the virus, officials at the RKI and other scientists warning about the rapidity of the pandemic’s spread are increasingly being targeted by right-wing extremist forces. Between March and July alone, the RKI received at least 200 emails with “threats, insults, and slanders.” Among other things, the scientists were threatened with extermination in a gas chamber.

On Saturday night, the RKI was the target of an arson attack. According to the police, unknown assailants attacked an institute building in Tempelhof-Schöneberg with several flammable objects. A bottle full of flammable liquid was thrown through a window, triggering a fire inside a room. A security worker observing the attack was able to extinguish the fire.

Although there is much to suggest right-wing extremist forces were behind the attack, the division of state protection at the bureau of criminal investigations for the state of Berlin said that they are “investigating in all directions.” A political motivation for the attack is being “reviewed.”

The threats and attack on Germany’s main disease control agency amid a global pandemic, which has already claimed the lives of at least 1.1 million people, is a serious warning. Just like in the United States, where far-right militias with close ties to President Donald Trump’s reelection campaign have plotted to kidnap and kill governors who implemented limited lockdown measures, attacks on politicians, scientists and critical journalists have all been increasing in Germany over recent months.

Benjamin Piel, editor-in-chief of the Mindener Tageblatt, published a photo on Twitter showing a puppet that had been hung. A sign was attached to it reading “COVID-press,” and it was hung from a bridge over the Weser river by unknown people.

On the same day in Berlin, there was another march by far-right forces against public health orders. According to police sources, 2,000 people participated, with many disregarding social distancing regulations. Although videos show that the police initially allowed the protesters to proceed and later persistently protected them against counterprotests, at least 18 officers were reportedly injured.

RBB journalist Olaf Sundermeyer reported from the demonstration that death threats were made against the virologist and government adviser Christian Drosten and Social Democrat health expert Karl Lauterbach, as well as demands to visit the home of health Minister Jens Spahn, who is currently infected.

While threatening rallies have been held in front of schools in Baden-Württemberg, Hesse and Schleswig-Holstein, a growing number of reports on social media say that workers in restaurants, on public transport and other sectors have been exposed to increased insults and physical attacks by right-wing provocateurs.

The right-wing attacks are part of an international wave of far-right terrorism, which is being encouraged by the lurch to the right of the entire political establishment. The right-wing dregs of society are being mobilized in order to intimidate the opposition to the reckless policies of reopening the economy and promoting mass infection.

The Augsburger Algemeine Zeitung reported on Monday that 20 protesters forced their way into the office of the local district to demand the abolition of the requirement to wear a mask, which had just been imposed in the face of exploding infections. The incident has striking parallels with similar developments in the United States, such as when armed right-wing extremists made their way into the State Capitol in Michigan.

Profit interests

As in every country, the political measures and edicts issued by the federal and state governments and local authorities are dictated by the profit interests of big business. While growing numbers of workers view with astonishment the inactivity of the government, which is refusing to invest anything in the health care system, the politicians incessantly declare that a life-saving shutdown of the economy and closure of schools must be avoided at all costs.

Yet there can now be no doubt that the opening of schools and businesses is the main cause for the exponential growth of the pandemic. Leading virologists and epidemiologists around the world have repeatedly demonstrated that crowded spaces with poor hygiene and air ventilation create perfect conditions for the virus to spread.

According to the RKI, outbreaks are growing in elderly care homes, hospitals and institutions for refugees and asylum seekers, community centres, kindergartens and schools, as well as “various professional settings and in connection with religious activities.”

The scientists thus refute the claim made by the federal and state governments of all political stripes, according to which infections do not occur in schools.

After school students in Greece and Poland organized school occupations and boycotts, mass opposition to in-person learning is also growing in Germany. On Sunday, the hash tag #BoycottSchools was among the widely discussed hashtags on Twitter.

Teachers, students and parents increasingly realize that the federal and state governments will not lift a finger to contain outbreaks at schools and in kindergartens. As the ARD program Monitor reported, even the installation of air filters by the responsible education ministries was rejected as too expensive. This was in spite of the fact that they are proven to reduce virus-bearing aerosols from the air.

The policy of “herd immunity” pursued by governments in Germany, Europe and other countries, as well as the growth of right-wing terrorism bound up with this, once again make clear that the working class confronts tremendous political challenges. While the opened schools spread the virus increasingly undetected among ever larger sections of the population, workers are being forced to keep slogging away under dangerous conditions to boost corporate profits.