Thousands protest in Peru against impeachment, pandemic and economic implosion

Rafael Azul

Wednesday was the third day of mass protests across Peru. Thousands mobilized in protests against the political, economic and health crises racking this South American country. The demonstrators were met with water cannon and police repression.

On Monday, November 9, Peru’s Congress removed President Martín Vizcarra from office. The next day Vizcarra was replaced by Manuel Merino, president of the Congress. Demonstrations took place in various cities in opposition to Vizcarra’s ouster. As president until elections are held on April 11, 2021, Merino is also continuing to preside over congress.

Protesters confront riot police in Lima

Merino is the third president in the span of one presidential term; Pedro Pablo Kuczynski, Vizcarra’s predecessor, was elected in 2016.

Merino defended the congressional action, defining it as a “process of democratic transition” to defend the Peruvian nation and declaring that the assembly’s votes “were not purchased” and followed due process.

Vizcarra had been impeached for “permanent moral incapacity.” It was alleged that he had received bribes connected to construction projects in 2011-2014, when Vizcarra was governor of the southern province of Moquegua. The accusations are based upon plea bargains by other defendants, without any trial or even investigation having taken place.

Vizcarra’s removal resulted from the legislature’s second impeachment attempt. An impeachment attempt two months ago, allegedly for “influence peddling,” did not obtain the required two-thirds vote of the legislature.

The US State Department indicated that US officials were “following events closely.”

“We look to Peruvian institutions to uphold the constitution and the rule of law,” a spokesman declared. “We note that national elections are scheduled for April. As a region of democracy and prosperity, we call on Peruvians to continue to pursue their political ends via a peaceful, lawful, democratic process.”

Ironically and hypocritically, the statement came on the same day that Secretary of State Mike Pompeo told a State Department news conference that there would be a “smooth transition to a second Trump administration,” backing the attempt by the White House to overturn the results of the US presidential elections.

The State Department’s declaration had more to do with its desire to quell the popular reaction to Vizcarra’s removal than with any genuine defense of the democratic process.

In Lima, Peru’s capital, the decision to replace Vizcarra with Merino brought many people into the streets. On Monday night and Tuesday, crowds marched and rallied to protest the Merino’s appointment. A Tuesday protest march along the streets of downtown Lima was blocked from reaching the Congress building. In the course of ten hours of protests, dozens were arrested and several were injured by the police.

Protests are also taking place in the cities of Ayacucho, Cusco, Trujillo, Piura and Iquitos, centers of mining and industry.

While Vizcarra has denied all the accusations against him, political corruption has been endemic in Peru’s ruling elites. Vizcarra himself became president upon the resignation of President Kuczynski because of corruption charges in March 2018 involving the Brazilian construction giant Odebrecht. Nearly every living Peruvian ex-president has been implicated in corruption probes.

Vizcarra’s removal was carried out by all the political parties represented in the legislature. Sixty-eight out of those who voted (out of 130 legislators) have themselves been accused of corrupt practices and are barred from running again for office.

Vizcarra’s removal and the appointment of Merino have taken place in the context of a deepening social and economic crisis. In addition to its government being racked by accusations of corruption, Peru is an epicenter of the COVID-19 pandemic, with the highest per capita COVID-19 mortality rate in the Americas.

While the Peruvian politicians continue to enrich themselves through service to the country’s financial oligarchy and foreign capital, Peru implodes. By August of this year, Peru’s gross domestic product had declined 30 percent; unemployment is 40 percent higher than in 2019. Many companies have declared bankruptcy and Peru’s economy has yet to bottom out.

Tourism has contracted by 90 percent, construction by 67 percent and mining by 37 percent.

Like his predecessor, Vizcarra ruled as an enemy of the working class and agent of the mining cartels. In June, following three months of lockdown, without having stopped the coronavirus and under pressure from the ruling class, Vizcarra opened the economy, with devastating effects. Hospitals have run out of resources; the rate of new cases and deaths continues to accelerate. A regime headed by Merino will only deepen the attacks on the Peruvian working class.

West Virginia Kroger workers reject sellout agreement, vote overwhelmingly to strike

Zac Thorton

In West Virginia, workers for the grocery and retail giant, Kroger, have resoundingly rejected a pro-company sellout agreement which sought to impose higher health care costs and eliminate or reduce certain benefits for senior employees. In addition, workers have signaled their determination to defend their interests by voting overwhelmingly for strike action.

The proposed contract, which covers the Charleston-area Kroger stores, was rejected 1,551–130. The current contract, which was ratified in 2017, expired on August 29, but has been extended indefinitely while the company and the union continue to negotiate.

Under the proposed agreement, Kroger would place a cap on the amount of money it contributes to health care benefits, placing more of the burden on its employees. Beginning in 2021, this cap would be 10 percent, and by 2023 it would be lowered to 8 percent.

According to the Herald-Dispatch, Paula Ginnett, president of Kroger’s Mid-Atlantic division which oversees West Virginia, said that the proposal “included a $20 million wage investment that would allow associates to grow their hourly pay. Some associates, she said, could improve their rate by up to $4.65 per hour depending upon their position during the life of the next contract.” The reality is that the company’s increased pay offering will hardly alter the fact that Kroger workers receive poverty wages.

For the average full-time Kroger worker, the current contract lists starting pay as a meager $8.75 per hour, with increases every six months, capping out at $15.26 after 72 months. Under the proposed agreement, pay increases would take place on a yearly basis (referred to in the contract as “levels” numbering 1–4, with 4 being the maximum). For new hires on or after Nov. 1, 2020, starting pay would be $10 per hour. By 2023, a level 4 worker will cap out at $15 per hour. If they are “red circled,” they will cap out at $16.16 per hour. In the end, these small pay increases will be unable to offset the increased health care costs.

The move by Kroger to increase health care costs for its workers, under conditions of a global pandemic which has claimed the lives of over 230,000 people in the US alone, is an outright provocation. To date, West Virginia has over 30,000 total cases and 553 deaths. Now with the reopening of schools and the continuous erosion of basic safety measures, cases in the state have begun to surge.

Kanawha County, where Charleston, the state capital and largest city is located, accounts for the majority of the state’s cases, with over 4,000, and the highest total deaths with 117. Nearby Logan County has the second highest, with 48 deaths.

The union representing West Virginia Kroger workers is the United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW) Local 400. Fearing an explosion of working class anger in response to the company’s efforts to attack workers’ living standards, the union was forced to hold a strike authorization vote in order to save face in the eyes of its membership, as well as to buy more time to conspire with the company on a new sellout agreement.

Despite workers voting 1,490–199 in favor of strike action, the union will do everything possible to avoid a strike. This was pointed out by Kroger Mid-Atlantic Corporate Affairs Manager Allison McGee, who said, “Associates are continuing to report to work as scheduled. A strike authorization doesn’t mean a strike. At this point, the union has not called for a work stoppage.”

The World Socialist Web Site recently spoke to James, a worker in Virginia for the supermarket chain Giant, who is also a member of UFCW Local 400. James was angered by the effort to attack Kroger workers’ health care, commenting, “They [Kroger] can afford anything. It’s had record profits during the pandemic.”

James stated that, after having his hazard pay eliminated while the pandemic still raged, he and other employees had received a mere $150 “bonus” from the corporation. “Even this was taxed,” he said, noting that when all was said and done, he only received $108. “Now they want to come after [workers’] health care? F––– that! We should all be on strike over this outrageous attack.”

The WSWS also spoke with a Kroger worker in Nashville, Tennessee. He remarked, “It’s awful, however, it isn’t surprising. Kroger isn’t known for its compassion, at least not among its employees. Some companies try to be profitable by making their employees proud to work for them (or so I’ve heard). Kroger is more thuggish about it, for lack of a better word.”

In order to defend their interests, the workers in West Virginia must take matters out of the hands of the pro-company UFCW and into their own. Throughout the pandemic, the union has done nothing to safeguard the lives of grocery workers, who, as genuinely essential workers, have been forced to remain on the job throughout the pandemic. It was not until the workers themselves started to take action that the companies began providing personal protective equipment and sanitation products. The Socialist Equality Party encourages all workers to form independent rank-and-file safety committees to protect their lives and defend their interests.

Russia, Turkey negotiate cease-fire in Armenian-Azeri war over Karabakh

Alex Lantier

On November 10, a cease-fire backed by Moscow and Ankara went into effect in the six-week war between Armenia and Azerbaijan over the disputed Nagorno-Karabakh region. Unlike previous truces negotiated by Russian, French and US officials which collapsed immediately, this cease-fire has so far held. This appears to be largely because, unlike previous ceasefires, it has support from the Azeri government and its main international backer, Turkey.

The two former Soviet republics have repeatedly waged fratricidal wars over the Karabakh, which first broke out in 1988 in the run-up to the Stalinist regime’s 1991 dissolution of the Soviet Union. Whereas Armenia took over the Nagorno-Karabakh in the 1988-1994 war, however, the current cease-fire agreed by Russian, Armenian and Azeri officials makes substantial concessions to Azeri territorial demands, handing much of the Karabakh to Azerbaijan.

In this image taken from footage released by Azerbaijan’s Defense Ministry on Sunday, Sept. 27, 2020, Azerbaijan’s soldiers fire from a mortar at the contact line of the self-proclaimed Republic of Nagorno-Karabakh, Azerbaijan. (Azerbaijan's Defense Ministry via AP)

Recent weeks saw major Azeri advances, relying on devastating strikes from Turkish and Israeli high-altitude drones. Evading Armenia’s older air defense systems with tactics worked out against Syrian and Russian forces in the decade-long NATO proxy war in Syria, they destroyed Armenian missile batteries, artillery and armored vehicles. After Azeri forces reported this weekend that they had captured Shusha, Nagorno-Karabakh’s second-largest city, Armenia agreed to a ceasefire.

According to the truce, Armenian and Azeri troops are to initially remain on their current positions. As 1,960 Russian peacekeepers with armored vehicles and equipment deploy along the contact line, however, Armenian troops will withdraw. Armenia will retain those parts of the Karabakh it currently holds, including the capital, Stepanakert. It must also return to Azerbaijan the districts of Agdam and Kalbajar, which it took over during the 1988-1994 war, by November 20.

The deal also calls to secure complex land routes through the mountainous region. Azerbaijan is to guarantee the security of the Lachin Corridor linking Stepanakert to Shusha and then to Armenia. The corridor will be patrolled by Russian peacekeepers. Armenia will guarantee the security of land routes from Azerbaijan via Armenia to the Nakhchivan Autonomous Republic, a landlocked Azeri-administered enclave separated from Azerbaijan by Armenian territory.

This shaky cease-fire, even if it holds, will not resolve the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, which the region’s capitalist regimes have proven incapable of resolving for three decades. Not only does it leave the way open to more aggressive nationalist elements on both sides to advance claims on the entire enclave, but it is likely to trigger new population displacements Armenian authorities only 10 days to abandon regions they have held for a quarter century.

This comes after a new, massive loss of life in the latest war. Russian officials have stated, based on estimates privately communicated to them by Azeri and Armenian officials, that at least 5,000 people died in the war from September 27 to October 22. Official Azeri or Armenian casualty totals have still not been published, however. Moreover, Azeri forces’ advances and Armenian bombardments also forced an estimated 90,000 Armenians and 40,000 Azeris to flee their homes.

Nonetheless, officials across the region applauded the deal, which Turkish official sources said was negotiated on Saturday between Russian President Vladimir Putin and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. Kremlin press secretary Dmitri Peskov applauded the “not insignificant efforts” involved.

The Foreign Ministry of Iran, which like Russia has traditionally supported Armenia, declared that it was “content about the signing of an agreement” and expressed “hope that the agreement would lead to the final arrangements for long-lasting peace in the Caucasus.”

After Azeri President Ilham Aliyev hailed the ceasefire as being “of historical importance” and a “capitulation” by Armenia, Turkish Defense Minister Hulusi Akar visited the Azeri capital, Baku yesterday and declared: “The present situation is very pleasing for us. This operation is an awakening ... The Azeri army has shown its power to the whole world.”

In Armenia, where the government had largely hidden its growing military setbacks, protesters stormed the parliament and beat parliamentary speaker Ararat Mizoyan.

The cease-fire is a humiliating defeat for Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan. Elected in 2018 after mass protests against former Prime Minister Serzh Sargsyan, he advanced a chauvinist platform demanding full international recognition of Armenian authority over the Karabakh.

Pashinyan announced on Facebook the cease-fire handing over much of the Karabakh to Azerbaijan, calling it “unspeakably painful.” He continued, “The decision is made basing [sic] on the deep analyses of the combat situation and in discussion with best experts of the field. … This is not a victory but there is not defeat until you consider yourself defeated. We will never consider ourselves defeated and this shall become a new start of an era of our national unity and rebirth.”

Pashinyan had to hide as protesters stormed his official residence, tearing his nameplate off his office door and chanting, “Nikol betrayed us.”

Middle East Eye reporters at protests in Yerevan saw a woman shout at riot police: “I have lost all my relatives. I have lost my house. What are you going to do about it?” Another man, a former Armenian inhabitant of the Nagorno-Karabakh, who fought in the 1988-1994 war but had to flee to Yerevan in the current war, approved the cease-fire: “If we had carried on, we would only have lost. Many more people would have been killed.”

The Stalinist dissolution of the Soviet Union proved to have disastrous geopolitical consequences, throwing the Middle East and Central Asia open to bloody ethnic conflict and imperialist wars.

Enormous uncertainty still hangs over the cease-fire. As Russia and Turkey wage proxy wars as they back rival sides in the civil wars triggered by NATO intervention in both Libya and Syria, Azeri forces shot down a Russian Mi-24 on November 9. Baku subsequently called it a “tragic mistake.” The Kremlin also appeared to contradict Turkish claims that they would deploy peacekeepers to enforce the ceasefire, saying that only Russian peacekeepers would be deployed.

Perhaps the greatest danger comes from the explosive political crisis in Washington after the 2020 elections, and the risk of new US wars in the region. As Trump launches a coup trying to remain in office even after Democrat Joe Biden won the vote, both Trump and Biden have signaled a highly aggressive policy. While Trump nearly went to war with Iran last year, the Democratic Party has relentlessly demanded aggression against Russia, denouncing Trump as a Russian agent.

Significantly, both Russia and Iran have warned against CIA-backed Syrian Islamist militias who were transported from the Syrian war to Azerbaijan with tacit Turkish support. Iranian state-run IRNA agency warned that “the Islamic Republic’s firm response to the terrorists should they transgress against the Iranian borders is a calculated, firm and strategic position. … If after having expelled the [Al Qaeda-linked militias] from Syria and Iraq, some people help their deployment in Iranian borders, they have certainly made a grave mistake.”

Russia, whose war-torn regions of Chechnya and Dagestan also border Azerbaijan, made similar warnings. Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov called to “prevent the transfer of mercenaries, whose number in the conflict zone, according to available data, is already approaching 2,000. In particular, Putin raised the issue during a phone call with Turkish President Erdoğan on October 27 and during regular conversations with leaders of Azerbaijan and Armenia.”

Concerns are mounting in Russia’s post-Soviet capitalist oligarchy that this truce could prove to be not the end but the beginning of a regional war across the former territory of the Soviet Union. This was the subject of the financial daily Vedomosti ’s article yesterday titled “How Russia Lost the Second Karabakh War.”

Warning that Ankara’s successful support for the ethnic-Turkic Azeris would encourage “pan-Turkic plans,” it wrote: “The balance of power in Turkic republics of Central Asia will also change radically … There is no doubt that Turkic nationalist and separatist groups inside Russia itself will also act more strongly.” It added, “Also we must suppose that this operation, judging from its execution, was not planned by the Azeris, or even by the Turks.”

Noting that the NATO-backed regime in Ukraine is now purchasing Turkish drones as it pursues its conflict with Russia in eastern Ukraine, Vedomosti called for a Russian build-up of “loitering weapons and strike drones.” It added, “The Armenian catastrophe of 2020 must serve as a warning to others, so that we do not end up learning a similar lesson.”

These statements are urgent warnings of the necessity of a struggle against ethnic nationalism and its encouragement by Stalinist forces, and the building of an international and socialist, that is to say Trotskyist, anti-war movement against imperialism among workers across the region and the world.

African App Launchpad Cup 2021

Application Deadline: 22^nd November 2020. 

Type: Entrepreneurship

Eligibility:

• Eligible Africa Countries: Egypt, Algeria, Angola, Cameroon, Chad, Comoros, Côte d’Ivoire, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Ghana, Madagascar, Malawi, Mauritania, Namibia, Niger, Rwanda, Senegal, South Africa, The Gambia, Nigeria, Togo and Uganda.
• Apply as Teams or Startups up to 2 Years Old
• Team Size not Less than 2 Members
• A Working Prototype at least is a Must

Selection Criteria: The submitted applications as well as pitching will be judged on the 4 following areas

1. Innovation Originality/Creativity
2. Business Model
3. Art and/or Design of the Game/App
4. Team Competencies.

To be Taken at: Online

Number of Awards: Not specified

Value of Award:

• $72k Total Cash Prizes for Winners
• Business planning training by GrindStone
• Acceleration Program by Microsoft through THINKROOM
• Access to VCs for top winning startups

How to Apply: Register

• It is important to go through all application requirements in the Award Webpage (see Link below) before applying.

Visit Award Webpage for Details

Next Generation Social Sciences in Africa Fellowships 2021/2022

Application Deadline: 1st February 2021

Eligible Countries: Citizens of and reside in a sub-Saharan African country while holding a current faculty position at an accredited college or university in Ghana, Kenya, Nigeria, South Africa, Tanzania, and Uganda.

Field of Study: The fellowships support dissertations and research on peace, security and development topics.

About the Fellowships: The programme, launched in June 2011, responds to a shortage of experienced faculty in African higher education. The Next Generation Social Sciences in Africa program provides fellowships to nurture the intellectual development and increase retention of early-career faculties in Ghana, Kenya, Nigeria, South Africa, Tanzania, and Uganda.

The fellowships are:

• Doctoral Dissertation Research Fellowship
• Doctoral Dissertation Proposal Fellowship
• Doctoral Dissertation Completion Fellowship
• Post-doctoral Writing Fellowship

The doctoral dissertation research fellowship supports 6-12 months of dissertation research costs of up to US$15,000 on a topic related to peace, security, and development.

Proposal development fellowships are intended to support doctoral students working on developing a doctoral dissertation research proposal as well as students who recently completed a master’s degree and seek to enroll in a PhD program.

The doctoral dissertation completion fellowship supports a one-year leave from teaching responsibilities and a stipend up to US$15,000 to permit the completion of a dissertation that advances research on peace, security, and development topics.

Post-doctoral Writing Fellowship supports up to six months of completing an article or book manuscript  through a stipend of up to US$3,000. It will enable the recipient to buy time off from teaching and administrative duties to focus exclusively on finalizing an article for a peer-reviewed journal or completing a book manuscript based on a Next Gen-supported doctoral dissertation that advances research on peace, security, and development. This fellowship is exclusively available for Next Gen alumni.

Offered Since: June 2011

Type: Research, Fellowship .

Selection Criteria: Strong proposals will offer clear and concise descriptions of the project and its significance. Proposals should display a thorough knowledge of the relevant social science literature that applicants will engage and the methodologies relevant to the project. In addition, applicants must demonstrate that all proposed activities are feasible and can be completed in a timely manner. All proposals will be evaluated for these criteria by an independent, international committee of leading scholars from a range of social science disciplines.

Fellows must be willing to attend two workshops sponsored by the SSRC each year that are intended to help early-career faculty produce scholarly publications. We anticipate awarding as many as 45 fellowships in total across all categories each year.

Eligibility: All candidates must:

• be citizens of and reside in a sub-Saharan African country
• hold a master’s degree
• be enrolled in a PhD program at an accredited university in Ghana, Kenya, Nigeria, South Africa, Tanzania, or Uganda
• have an approved dissertation research proposal

The program seeks to promote diversity and encourages women to apply.

Number of Fellowships: 45 fellowships are awarded each year.

Value of Fellowships: 

• The doctoral dissertation research fellowship supports research costs of up to US$15,000 on a topic related to peace, security, and development.
• The doctoral dissertation proposal fellowship supports short-term research costs of up to US$3,000 to develop a doctoral dissertation proposal.
• The doctoral dissertation completion fellowship supports a one-year leave from teaching responsibilities and a stipend up to US$15,000 to permit the completion of a dissertation that advances research on peace, security, and development topics.
• Post-doctoral Writing Fellowship supports up to six months of completing an article or book manuscript  through a stipend of up to US$3,000.

Duration of Fellowship: Fellowships are offered each year. The doctoral dissertation research fellowship is about 6-12 months

How to Apply: 

• Apply for Doctoral Dissertation Research Fellowship
• Apply for Doctoral Dissertation Proposal Fellowship
• Apply for Doctoral Dissertation Completion Fellowship
• Post-doctoral Writing Fellowship

Visit Fellowship Webpage for more details

UK parents’ strike sabotaged by trade unions and Labour Party

Charlotte Salthill & Laura Tiernan

Boycott Return to Unsafe Schools (BRTUS) called a parents’ strike last week against pupils being forced to attend school during the escalating COVID-19 pandemic. The strike was held last Thursday, coinciding with the start of the Johnson government’s partial national lockdown that excludes schools, colleges, universities and non-essential industry.

The main demands issued by BRTUS enjoy widespread support: that schools be closed to all but vulnerable and key worker children, that fines and other threats against parents be lifted and that students have access to comprehensively funded and resourced remote learning.

A Daily Express poll shows 58 percent in favour of closing schools to help stop the spread of COVID-19. The latest YouGov poll (November 2), found 46 percent support for closing schools and colleges as part of the current lockdown, with 12 percent unsure.

Thousands of parents joined last Thursday’s strike from areas including London, Sheffield, Doncaster and Stoke-on-Trent, Scotland and the Isle of Wight, according to BRTUS. Since it was founded by Tony Dadd six months ago, BRTUS: Parents United has won nearly 15,000 members.

During a Facebook livestream on the morning of the strike, Dadd was asked whether he had a message for Education Secretary Gavin Williamson. He replied, “We are only interested in the safety, health and education of our children. This isn’t an overtly political campaign. You have politicised this issue. We’re a pressure group and represent something like 50 percent of the population. We know there’s massive support that isn’t heard, and the momentum is with us.”

Dadd’s comments raise important political issues for parents and teachers. Any fight to close unsafe schools, protect families and save lives, is, by definition, a political struggle. Dadd notes the “massive support” for school closures “isn’t heard”. But why not? Which political forces are responsible for this? If more than 50 percent of the population believes that schools should be shut to suppress the pandemic, why haven’t mass strikes and walkouts been organised at schools, colleges, universities and workplaces against the Johnson government’s “herd immunity” agenda?

Events surrounding last week’s parents’ strike provide the answer. When the strike was called on November 2, BRTUS called on the National Education Union (NEU) to support the strike and stand “shoulder to shoulder” with parents. But the NEU and other teaching unions refused to back the strike, in a deliberate act of political sabotage. Like their fellow bureaucrats in other unions, NEU officials, led by Kevin Courtney and Mary Bousted, feared that any promotion of the parents’ action would draw behind it the active support of the NEU’s 450,000 teacher members.

Mary Bousted and Kevin Courtney

Two days earlier, BRTUS published a statement, “Together we are strong. GMB and Unite support BRTUS, it’s time for the NEU to join the fightback”. BRTUS provided no information about what support had been offered by the two unions. But neither Unite, Britain’s largest union, nor the GMB, whose membership includes the majority of teaching assistants and support staff, published so much as a statement of support on their websites, let alone called on their own members to strike.

Instead of condemning the actions of the NEU and appealing over their heads to teachers and support staff, on October 31, BRTUS wrote, “The NEU need to collaborate with other school stakeholders—parents--by working with Brtus: Parents United (the largest parent-led safer schools campaign in the UK)”. In line with this pitch for official recognition, BRTUS is watering down its demands for a boycott of unsafe schools to accommodate to the NEU’s fake fight against the Johnson government.

In their letter to the NEU two days later, BRTUS wrote, “we support you in your latest package of demands: 1) Improved testing available for school communities 2) Smaller class sizes 3) Guarantees that vulnerable staff can work from home 4) Increases in school funding, and 4) A Public Health review of all school outbreaks.”

These demands are a political evasion. Despite the NEU’s polite calls for schools to be included in the current national lockdown, the union has steadfastly opposed any mobilisation of its membership to fight for this. The education unions all supported the full reopening of schools in September, suppressing teachers’ calls for strike action in favour of local school “risk assessments”.

The outcome of the NEU’s collaboration with the Conservative government has been catastrophic. More than 8,000 schools have been infected with COVID-19 and 148 education staff have died. Among children in years 7-11 in England, COVID-19 infections increased 50-fold between September 1 and October 23, up from 40 cases to 2,010. Schools, colleges and universities account for more than 50 percent of virus transmission across the UK.

With BRTUS’s claims of “union support” exposed as threadbare, former Labour MP Laura Pidcock was drafted onto the group’s livestream on the morning of the strike to provide the illusion of “labour movement” backing. A protégé of former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn, Pidcock is a rising star of what passes for the official “left” and is currently contesting for a position on Labour’s National Executive Committee.

Laura Pidcock speaking at the BRTUS livestream

After her defeat in the December 2019 general election, Pidcock was installed as National Secretary of the People’s Assembly, a meeting ground for the Corbynite left in the Labour Party and trade unions, with Britain’s pseudo-left and Stalinist organisations.

Pidcock was unable to cite a single example of Labour Party or trade union “support” for the parents’ strike, pathetically declaring that she was speaking in a personal capacity. She did not even mention that she was in the Labour Party. Her statement that “I’m a socialist and collective action should be supported” is worthless. Neither Pidcock, Corbyn, the NEU, GMB, Unite or any of the teaching unions posted a single tweet or statement supporting the parents’ action on November 5.

One of Pidcock’s leading allies on the People’s Assembly is John Rees of the pseudo-left Counterfire organisation. In a video posted on BRTUS’s website, Rees offers praise to BRUTUS as a “grassroots” organisation. But if BRTUS were to openly defy the NEU and appeal for united action to close unsafe schools, Rees’ “support” would immediately evaporate.

One day after the strike, Counterfire published an article amplifying BRTUS’s false message that Labour MPs including Bell Ribeiro-Addy, Ian Mearns and Grahame Morris are backing parents’ fight against unsafe schools. Such claims are political fiction. Not a single Labour MP, including Corbyn, opposed Starmer’s insistence that schools must reopen, “no ifs, no buts, no equivocations”.

These experiences contain vital lessons. As the working class come into struggle, the ruling class and its political agencies in the Labour and trade union bureaucracy, along with their pseudo-left accomplices, intervene at every point seeking to neuter any independent challenge from below. But they have nothing to offer the working class.

The Socialist Equality Party (SEP) supported the parents’ strike. Our warning that the unions were sabotaging a united struggle by teachers and parents have been confirmed.

The central lesson from last week’s parents’ strike is that any effective action against the escalating COVID-19 pandemic--including mass strikes and walkouts to oppose unsafe schools and workplaces--requires a political rebellion against the corporatist pro-capitalist trade unions and Labour Party.

Young people hit hard by UK jobs massacre

Margot Miller

While the UK’s second four-week lockdown will have minimal impact on the spread of the pandemic in the UK, thousands more face poverty due to rising unemployment.

As job losses continue across all sectors of the economy, young people are especially hard hit. A study by the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) and Exeter University found, “More than one in 10 people aged 16-25 have lost their job, and just under six in 10 have seen their earnings fall since the coronavirus pandemic began.”

“Generation COVID and Social Mobility: Evidence and Policy”, published October 26 by LSE’s Centre for Economic Performance, paints a bleak picture. Young people are facing “a dark age of low social mobility.”

The report surveyed approximately 10,000 people over September and October. On top of the 5.4 percent who reported losing their jobs, 7.3 percent were working zero hours though nominally employed. The workless rate in the age group 16-25 was 18.3 percent, compared to 11.9 percent for those aged 26-65.

Shoppers walk along Oxford Street in London, Tuesday, Oct. 13, 2020. (AP Photo/Frank Augstein)

Report co-author Professor Stephen Machin said, “There is a real concern that people who have lost their jobs are moving onto trajectories heading to long-term unemployment, the costs of which are substantial.”

The consequence for young workers beginning their working lives during a recession can impact “on earnings and jobs for 10 to 15 years, … affecting other outcomes including general health and the likelihood of entering a life of crime.”

A new term, “generation Covid”, has entered the vernacular, replacing the derogatory “snowflake generation.” While older workers face increasing hardship—14.3 million people were living in poverty in 2019—the youth in their families are twice as likely to become unemployed since the pandemic began. Young people make up a significant part of the retail, leisure and hospitality workforces—either working full-time or supplementing their income as students—all heavily hit by public health restrictions.

Recent announcements of job losses at supermarket chain Sainsbury’s, retailer John Lewis, Clarks shoes, Lloyds Banking group and a catering firm at British Airways amount to 7,200 redundancies.

In a bid to compete with discount rivals Aldi and Lidl, Sainsbury is shedding 3,000 jobs on its deli, fresh meat and fish counters, and at its Argos stores.

John Lewis will axe 1,500 jobs at head office, on top of 1,300 announced in July. The company employs 78,000 at its department stores and Waitrose supermarkets.

Clarks plans 700 job cuts, translating to two redundancies from each of its 320 shoe shops out of a total workforce of 3,969. The company already announced 900 job losses in May, with a strong possibility of shop closures.

Aviation and tourism firms have shed lost thousands of jobs due to the freeze in holiday bookings during the summer season. After making 1,068 workers redundant, only 500 staff remain employed by airline caterer Do and Co at Heathrow airport.

Despite registering healthy profits Lloyds, taking advantage of lockdown to further restructure, will lose 1,070 posts on top of the 865 announced in September.

The popular fast-food restaurant chain Pizza Express is to shed a further 1,300 jobs. It already announced 1,100 redundancies in August and the closure of 73 restaurants.

The latest casualties to close on the high street are the Edinburgh Woollen Mill chain and the homewares retailer Ponden Home, both part of the Phillip Day retail empire, announcing 860 redundancies. A further 2,000 job are also at risk as the company calls in administrators.

Even before the latest lockdown measures, which closed bars, restaurants, leisure and beauty outlets, as well as retailers classed as non-essential, a sharp rise in unemployment was forecast come winter. Now, in the run up to Christmas, up to £50 billion worth of trade could be lost.

On Tuesday, the Office for National Statistics reported that a further 314,000 redundancies were announced by businesses from July to September—a rise of 195,000 from the previous year and 181,000 from the previous quarter. October saw a drop of another 33,000 of the number of people on payrolls, meaning that there are now 782,000 less people in employment than when the UK imposed its first lockdown in March.

This continues a trend that began well before the pandemic as companies cut costs in an increasingly competitive global market. High street stores were particularly hard hit by competition from online giants like Amazon, which is expanding as demand for online shopping soars.

In this economic climate, graduate jobs are increasingly difficult to find. The LSE report predicted growing inequality in job prospects as students from lower income backgrounds lost 52 percent of teaching time compared to a 40 percent loss from the highest income groups: “62% said their long-term plans have been affected, and 68% said they believed their future educational achievement will be affected by coronavirus.”

Confirming the World Socialist Web Site’s description of the pandemic as a “poor man’s virus”, the study found, “employment and earnings losses are more pronounced for women, the self-employed and those who grew up in a poor family”.

School students in the state sector are also losing out compared to children in the private sector, which has bountiful resources to provide safe onsite learning. The government will not close schools and release the resources necessary for safe online learning at home, despite schools and campuses being among the main vectors for the virus. The education of hundreds of thousands of children is therefore being seriously disrupted as COVID-19 rips through the classrooms. Pathetic amounts of “catch-up” funding have been allocated for schooling missed during the lockdown. This can have life-long consequences.

LSE report co-author Professor Lee Elliot Major, Professor of Social Mobility at the University of Exeter, said, “We are seeing large and sustained losses in education for school pupils and university students in the wake of the pandemic, with those from lower-income backgrounds particularly suffering. The big danger for pupils is that they suffer permanent educational scarring—missing out on key grades that can shape future life prospects.”

Another study by Kings’ Business School (King’s College London), which questioned 350 entrepreneurs during the height of the initial lockdown, reported that Chancellor Rishi Sunak’s job retention scheme offered no help to many self-employed workers or young people in the gig economy. Half a million workers, many of them young, are forced to eke out a living on miserly welfare benefits.

While the mega-rich increased their fortunes with the government’s bailout schemes and ongoing quantitative easing measures, six million small businesses supporting 16.6 million jobs are floundering.

In a separate survey by the Federation of Small Businesses, two thirds of 1,500 businesses polled thought the prospects for trading was bleak, due to both the pandemic and the looming Brexit deadline.

The Resolution Foundation explained it was the young, black, Asian and minority ethnic workers who were falling into unemployment as the government’s initial furlough scheme ended. Only 43 percent of people who lost jobs in March, when lockdown began, had found new employment by September, reported the think tank. For young people it was tougher—only one in three young people found a new job.

Frances O’Grady, general secretary of the TUC, has appealed to the Conservative government to invest in job creation. “Losing your job is terrible at any time, but it is especially hard now when few employers are recruiting new workers. Stopping the devastation of mass unemployment must be the government’s top priority,” she said.

Her statement is the height of cynicism. The trade unions have not lifted a finger to defend a single job, and along with the Labour party enabled the Johnson government to create this health and economic catastrophe through its policy of herd immunity.

More than 660 parents of separated immigrant children cannot be located by the US government

Harvey Simpkins

The horrors of the Trump administration’s family separation policy are continuing to come to light. After an ACLU lawsuit last month revealed that the parents of 545 immigrant children could not be located, a lawyer tasked with reuniting families disclosed this week that the total has now risen to 666. Almost 20 percent of the children were under the age of 5 when separated.

The Trump administration began separating children from their parents in July 2017 under a “pilot program” in the El Paso, Texas area, which lasted until November of that year. In April 2018, the policy was fully implemented at the US-Mexico border and lasted until June 2018, when a US District Judge issued an injunction limiting family separations and ordering the government to reunite all migrant families.

Under this so-called “zero tolerance” policy, all migrants crossing the border, including asylum seekers, were referred to the Department of Justice for prosecution. Undocumented immigrants were imprisoned, with their children sent to various Office of Refugee Resettlement shelters around the country. The separated children included infants and toddlers.

In October 2018, Amnesty International reported that during the period April-August 2018, 6,022 “family units” were separated. Since the government’s “zero tolerance” policy officially ended in June 2018, the government has acknowledged separating another 1,100 children from their families, with the number undoubtedly far higher.

Detention facility in McAllen, Texas, Sunday, June 17, 2018 (Photo US Customs and Border Protection)

The courts have proved ineffective in putting an end to family separation. On January 13, 2020, Judge Dana Sabraw, the same judge who issued the initial injunction, refused to issue further restrictions on the government’s ability to separate families, allowing immigration officials discretion to continue to separate children where the “parent is unfit or presents a danger to the child.” In fact, immigration officials have used this “discretion” to separate families based on “crimes” such as traffic violations or mere suspicion that an adult is not the actual parent of a child.

Now, more than two years after Judge Sabraw ordered the government to reunite all children, the process of finding parents is still ongoing. About two-thirds of the parents of the initially identified 545 separated children were deported, making reunification extremely difficult, if not impossible. According to Steven Herzog, the attorney leading the effort to reunite the separated children, the new group of 121 children includes those “for whom the government did not provide any phone number.” These additional children were mostly separated during the 2017 pilot program.

The deputy director of the ACLU Immigrants’ Rights Project, Lee Gelernt, told NBC News that the new number “includes individuals in addition to [the] 545 for whom we got no information from [the] government that would allow meaningful searches but [we] are hopeful the government will now provide [us] with that information.”

The Trump administration’s grotesque family separation tactics built upon the foundation laid by the Obama administration. In an inhumane effort to deter families from coming to the United States, Obama’s Department of Homeland Security (DHS) instituted the practice of splitting families apart, sending mothers and their children to one detention location and fathers to a facility in another part of the country.

As another tactic to intimidate immigrants, Obama’s DHS routinely violated a 1997 court settlement agreement, known as the Flores agreement, by frequently keeping children in detention beyond 20 days. The Obama administration also deported about 3 million immigrants, more than any president in US history.

In a related development, an important witness into purported widespread medical neglect at a Georgia Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention center has been threatened with deportation to the Philippines, despite strong evidence that she is a US citizen.

Alma Bowman has been held at Georgia’s Irwin County Detention Center for more than two years. This is the same ICE facility where a nurse recently filed a whistleblower complaint alleging that a number of women were subjected to sterilization through hysterectomies without consent.

On November 1, ICE denied a stay of removal for Bowman, which sets her up for deportation; however, after further intervention by her immigration attorneys that afternoon, the deportation was halted for the time being. According to Priyanka Bhatt, an attorney with Project South, the organization which filed the whistleblower action, Bowman was “a big source of information” for the September 14 complaint into forced sterilizations.

Since her transfer to the Georgia facility in January 2018, Bowman has been trying to raise awareness about medical abuses, along with the general deplorable living conditions at the facility. In an October 2020 letter to Representatives Hank Johnson and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Bowman wrote that “These conditions are not safe for anyone to live in whether they are citizens of the United States or not.”

Bowman was born in the Philippines to a US citizen father and Filipina mother, moving to the US as an adolescent. Under US immigration law at that time, a person born out of wedlock to a US citizen father had to have their father “legitimate” the paternity prior to turning 21. According to The Intercept when she was 11, Bowman’s father filled out an immigration form called a “petition to classify status of alien relative” and submitted it to the US embassy in the Philippines. Bowman’s immigration lawyer argues that the document legitimates her paternity. According to The Intercept , her parents’ 1968 marriage also legitimated her under Georgia law, making her a US citizen.

Despite informing ICE and immigration judges about her citizenship, she remains subject to deportation. Bowman’s situation is far from unique. According to Jacqueline Stevens, founder of the Deportation Research Clinic at Northwestern University, about 1 percent of all ICE detainees and about one-half of 1 percent of deportees are US citizens, resulting in the deportation of thousands of American citizens every year.

MAS inaugurates right-wing government in Bolivia

Tomas Castanheira

Luis Arce, of Movimiento al Socialismo (MAS), assumed the presidency of Bolivia last Sunday. The inauguration ceremony was attended by world leaders, including Spanish King Philip VI and the Podemos vice-president Pablo Iglesias, representatives of the US and Iranian governments, and various Latin American leaders.

The ceremony also brought thousands to Plaza Murillo in the capital La Paz, including delegations of trade unions, social movements and indigenous peoples from different parts of Bolivia.

In his inaugural speech, Arce mentioned those who had died in the Senkata and Sacaba massacres a year ago, who were abandoned by the MAS as they fought against the coup that overthrew President Evo Morales. He also saluted his voters, in his words, the “heroes of the people who have recovered democracy.”

The president-elect, who was the minister of economy in the Morales government from 2006 to 2017, attacked the coup regime of Jeanine Áñez for plunging the Bolivian economy into a “deep recession.” He said she had led Bolivia from the “leadership of economic growth in South America” to “the strongest fall in the economy in the last 40 years.”

He concluded his speech by reiterating his commitment not only to an amnesty for the bourgeois sectors that headed the coup, but to governing together with them:

“Despite our differences, we have an obligation to live up to the people’s demands for unity, peace and certainty ... I believe in and support the strengthening of the state institutions and the creation of a safe and stable environment where the only ones who have to fear are the offenders, the criminals, the violent and those who commit acts of corruption.”

Evo Morales (Credit: www.kremlin.ru)

Vice-president David Choquehuanca evoked the country’s indigenous traditions and employed pseudo-radical phraseology to defend the blunt right-wing orientation of the new government. Affirming that “our revolution is the revolution of ideas, it is the revolution of balances,” he stated: “We are going to promote the coincidence of opposites to look for solutions between the right and the left.”

Synthesizing the corrupt political line of the MAS, Choquehuanca declared: “Our truth is very simple, the condor takes flight only when its right wing is in perfect balance with its left wing.”

Since Arce’s election victory, the return to Bolivia of ousted president Evo Morales, criminalized by the coup regime, was a controversial question. Significantly, the deposed president was not invited to participate in his successor’s inauguration ceremony, and he was not mentioned in the speech given by Arce.

Morales returned to Bolivia on Monday, a day after Arce’s inauguration. He left Argentina, where he had been in exile since last December, in the company of Argentine President Alberto Fernandez, who accompanied him to the Bolivian border. There, Morales was received by hundreds of Argentines and Bolivians, and joined a caravan around the country together with former vice president Alvaro Garcia.

The same day Morales entered Bolivia, the new government introduced its ministerial cabinet. The 16 ministers chosen by Arce were praised by the Bolivian press as a group of technocrats who shared little in common with Morales.

Arce’s choices revealed his commitment to advancing the interests of Bolivia’s capitalist ruling class. In a brief speech, he pointed out: “This will be an extremely austere government.”

The cabinet choices have generated criticism and protests within MAS itself. David Apaza, a MAS representative from El Alto—a city with a record of major working class struggles, and an important center for the party—said the party’s base was taken completely by surprise by the choice of Arce’s ministers.

Apaza stated, according to Página Siete: “Unfortunately, the list wasn’t closed in consensus nor with consultation.” The MAS leader also warned: “El Alto won’t serve as a staircase [for the government to step over] again. If anything happens, they will be the ones to blame for not attending to the people of El Alto.”

The relatives of the murdered miners’ union leader Orlando Gutierrez also protested the appointment as minister of mining of Ramiro Guzmán, a former general manager of the Vinto Metallurgical Company, demanding that the ministry be handed over to Gutierrez’s brother. According to Mario Cruz, a rank-and-file delegate of the Colquiri miners, the population supports the family’s request and may march to the government headquarters if the demand is not met.

The Bolivian Workers Union (COB), which committed itself to the election of Arce, also criticized the cabinet. Its president, Carlos Huarachi, stated: “The people had an expectation of seeing a man in a poncho, a chulo, a guartatojo or a woman in a pollera skirt. That is the request of the people, of people who have fought, ordinary people who have been in the streets, on the highways, fighting to recover democracy.”

Weeks before his inauguration, Arce had already signaled that he would go against the interests of sectors of his own party and allied organizations in handing out control over slices of the state machinery. He had stated: “I have met with several social organizations and have calculated that I would have needed 149 ministries, [because] they all ask for ministries.”

Beside their petty interests, these organizations’ protests against the new ministers expresses the strong pressure they are feeling from the masses. Over the last few months, they have engaged in a betrayal of the mass struggles against the Áñez coup regime. The MAS, the unions, and the social movements of the Unity Pact have worked to divert the revolt of Bolivian workers and peasants into an electoral channel, which resulted in the bourgeois “national unity” government headed by Arce.

The right-wing character of the new government is already emerging within the first few days of the Arce administration. The leaders of the MAS and its affiliated organizations have every reason to believe that they will soon be confronted with a new upsurge in the revolutionary movement of the Bolivian working class.

US Supreme Court justices signal support for upholding Affordable Care Act

Kate Randall

On Tuesday, key justices on the US Supreme Court appeared ready to uphold the Affordable Care Act (ACA) against the latest challenge from Republican Party opponents of the legislation.

In the course of oral arguments, most of the justices gave a skeptical hearing to Texas Republicans and President Trump’s lawyers, who argued that the ACA, also known as Obamacare, should be struck down in its entirety because Congress had eliminated the tax penalty for those who did not have insurance.

The ACA, which was signed into law by President Obama in 2010 and took effect in 2014, required those who do not have insurance through their employer or a government program such as Medicare or Medicaid to obtain coverage from a private insurer under threat of a financial penalty—the so-called “individual mandate.”

Obamacare survived two earlier challenges in the Supreme Court. In a 5-4 ruling in June 2012, Chief Justice John Roberts joined with the nominally liberal wing of the high court at the time to uphold the individual mandate to purchase insurance. The court also ruled that the federal government could not withdraw existing Medicaid funding from states that decided not to participate in an expansion of eligibility for the program under the ACA.

Clouds roll over the Supreme Court at dusk on Capitol Hill in Washington, Sunday, May 3, 2020. (AP Photo/Patrick Semansky)

In June 2015, the high court ruled 6-3 that the federal government could provide nationwide tax subsidies to help lower-income people buy health insurance, rejecting the argument that the subsidies should be available only in states that had set up insurance exchanges, or market places, for people who lacked insurance to buy coverage.

In 2017, the Republican-led Congress cut the tax penalty to zero for those who lacked insurance as part of a year-end tax overhaul.

In the oral arguments on Tuesday, several justices said that while this “zeroing out” of the penalty effectively ended the mandate, removal of this provision did not invalidate the rest of the ACA, including its insurance premium subsidies for 20 million people and its coverage for tens of millions more with preexisting medical conditions.

Chief Justice Roberts said Congress did nothing more in 2017 than eliminate the tax penalty for those who did not have insurance. “Here, Congress left the rest of the law intact,” he said. “That seems to be compelling evidence on the question” that the rest of the law should stand.

Justice Brett Kavanaugh, one of three justices appointed by President Trump, said that while he felt the mandate was unconstitutional, that should not affect the rest of the law. “It seems very clear the proper remedy is to sever the mandate provision and leave the rest,” he said.

Justices Roberts and Kavanaugh, joined by the three liberal justices on the court, could form a majority to uphold the law when a decision is handed down in the spring of 2021.

A Wall Street Journal column on the ACA’s return to the Supreme Court gives an indication of the ruling elite’s attitude toward the ACA. The Journal writes: “The Court has a chance to make clear that Congress can’t use its taxing power as a constitutional end-run to impose other mandates on individuals.”

It continues: “At the same time, there’s no valid legal argument for overturning the entire ACA. The GOP Congress surgically zeroed out the penalty, thereby severing from the law. Premiums and enrollment in the exchanges have since been stable, so the mandate is clearly not essential to insurance markets. The economic reliance interests on the ACA have also grown since 2012, as amicus briefs from hospitals, physician groups and insurers attest.”

In other words, hospital chains and insurers continue to profit from the insurance premiums paid on the Obamacare exchanges.

The Democratic presidential campaign of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris placed emphasis on their pledge to defend and expand the ACA against any threats by the Republicans to undermine it. At the Senate confirmation hearing last month for Amy Coney Barrett, Trump’s most recent appointee to the Supreme Court, Senator Harris repeatedly questioned her about the impact her appointment would have on the ACA.

Other Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee followed a similar line of questioning of Barrett, making no mention of Trump’s effort to stack the court with right-wing justices who would uphold any attempts on his part to challenge the legitimacy of the election, which is precisely what he is now doing.

In remarks Tuesday following the oral arguments before the Supreme Court on the ACA, President-elect Biden called the Trump administration’s call for the law to be struck down “simply cruel and needlessly divisive,” saying it would lead to 20 million Americans seeing their health coverage “ripped away in the middle of the nation’s worst pandemic.”

The reality is that Biden-Harris’ transition plan to confront the COVID-19 crisis offers only vague and wholly inadequate proposals. In particular, there is no explanation of where the funding will come from for increased testing and adequate personal protective equipment for health care workers. Nor is there any proposal for a new stimulus plan to provide the resources needed by the millions of families, schools and small businesses that are facing a catastrophic situation, which will only worsen as the pandemic grows in the coming winter months.

All Biden is offering are hollow calls for unity with the Republicans. Answering reporters’ questions about the Trump administration’s refusal to concede the election and the General Services Administration’s failure to recognize him as president-elect, stopping the release of millions in funding for his transition to the White House, Biden downplayed the very real threat of a Trump election coup.