Boston-area colleges and universities report COVID cases and outbreaks despite testing programs

Andrew Timon & Will McCalliss

On September 1, Boston underwent its annual “move-in day,” when tens of thousands of college students move in from across the United States and world into apartments in advance of the beginning of their fall semesters. Additionally, many students move into on-campus housing shortly before this chaotic day.

On a typical year, the influx of students and vast number of leases ending on August 31 and starting September 1 create immense amounts of traffic and piles of furniture and other discarded belongings on sidewalks. This year, the annual ritual also portends a terrible COVID-19 outbreak.

Boston University College of Arts and Sciences (Credit: Wikimedia Commons)

Despite the ongoing pandemic, colleges and universities across the Greater Boston area have made the reckless, profit-driven decision to reopen their campuses. This has endangered the lives of not only university students, faculty and staff, but residents of the area as well, as cases will inevitably spike and hospitals become at serious risk of becoming overwhelmed by an influx of COVID patients.

COVID-19 outbreaks have taken place across the country as colleges have seen surges in cases after reopening. Over 88,000 new cases have been recorded at nearly 1,200 colleges since the criminal reopenings, according to the New York Times. Of these schools, more than 150 colleges are reporting more than 100 cases, and more than a dozen report 1,000-plus cases.

College websites claim that the health and safety of their students and faculty are of paramount concern and are informing all decision-making. However, at the root of all safety decisions of day-today operations lies the fundamentally deadly one of opening schools in the first place.

A sharp class line is also emerging among schools in their separate and anarchic plans and precautions to allegedly keep students, faculty and the surrounding communities safe. At most state and community colleges, these measures include the paltry addition of hand sanitizer, recommendations on wearing masks, and telling students to stay home if they feel sick. Meanwhile, some elite universities have actually built the infrastructure to test thousands of students per day, are requiring every student to be tested and are conducting internal contract tracing.

Boston University (BU) has developed the ability to give over 5,000 tests per day on campus and is testing more than 4,000 students and faculty daily, having performed 96,499 tests since July 27, with 91 positive tests. They also have in-house contact tracing teams. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology has done nearly 46,000 tests since August, 11,700 of these done in the first week of September, with 22 positive results.

While the elite universities test thousands of students per day, state and community colleges either have bare minimum testing or no testing at all. Bunker Hill Community College has no testing and is allowing students and faculty on campus if they are not feeling sick, requiring check-ins and -outs to assist with contact tracing. Baystate, Massasoit, Northshore, and Roxbury Community Colleges will also have no testing.

At Framingham State University, 1,226 students are taking at least one in-person course, with a total of 52 faculty members and 158 staff working on campus. The university is working in coordination with the state Department of Higher Education and Department of Public Health to implement testing, resulting in an average of only 82 tests per day. As of this writing, a spike in cases has already begun, with 10 out of 429 tests resulting positive on September 8, compared to only 5 positive tests out of all 1,600 tests beginning August 21. Revealing their complete lack of care and preparation for the situation, following the 10 positive results on September 8, as of September 15, they had only tested once, on September 11, conducting just 114 tests.

Salem State University is likewise doing only limited testing, requiring all resident students to be tested at move-in, followed by a rotating segment of the resident students to be tested every other week. It is not clear how large this segment will be. Additionally, commuting students with on-campus classes, jobs or in-person field placements are not required to take tests prior to coming to campus and are given the option to electively take tests on campus, if so desired, only once every two weeks. They have tested only 1,109 students thus far, and 104 employees, resulting in 1 positive case.

Boston College (BC), with medium testing capacity, is already seeing exponential growth in new cases going from 3 positive cases out of 7,681 tests August 16-23, to 8 of 10,127 tests August 24-30, 26 of 4,322 tests August 31-September 6, and 67 out of 2,954 tests on September 9-12. In other words, BC has gone from a >0.1 percent positivity rate to over 2 percent in three weeks. This trend has no reason to slow. Just two weeks after opening, San Diego State University reported 64 positive cases, which spiraled into a staggering 513 cases just one week later.

Northeastern University (NU) has created the infrastructure to test students and staff, requiring students be tested every three days. Even with strict limitations on social interaction and robust testing, early signs of increased rates of transmission are developing at NU. September 8 saw its highest number of positive cases and positivity rate, with 8 cases out of 6,947 tests.

The as-for-now slow burn of on average more than three cases per day at NU, while in itself an unforgivable cost, is an experiment with the potential energy for near spontaneous combustion. Regular testing alone, while important, cannot stop transmission of the deadly virus. If specimen collection is not done perfectly, or if tested at an early stage of infection or partial recovery, test samples may not contain enough viral material for a positive result. This could lead at any time to large spikes, especially since students feeling emboldened with negative results will undoubtedly socialize with each other off-campus.

It is clear that even at schools with state-of-the art testing capacities and facilities, as well as other precautions, viral transmission is taking place at varying degrees, with the potential for large spikes, far-reaching community transmission, and a situation that could easily spiral out of control.

Also made clear from the Boston-area campus testing is the criminality of the state and federal response to the pandemic. A handful of universities with a few tens of thousands of students have surpassed the testing capabilities of the entire state of Massachusetts, one of the wealthiest states in the US, with nearly 7 million people.

In addition, the anarchy of each school developing and following its own protocols is so irrational in stopping the spread of the virus more broadly that the internal contact tracing program at BU, for instance, will only contact close contacts of a positive case if they are a student or faculty member of BU. Any other member of the public at large is of no concern to the BU administration.

Wealthy university testing and tracing programs, isolated from a state, national and global program to fight the pandemic, are not the solution. Even with these programs, the decision to open schools has left students at these campuses at risk. They should never have been opened in the first place. Only a global and coordinated response can stop this virus in its tracks.

The struggle to close schools and implement the proper safety measures to stop the pandemic must be linked to other schools, workplaces and industries, across state and national borders, in rank-and-file safety committees independent of the school administrations and authorities, big business parties and trade unions. The International Youth and Students for Social Equality and the Socialist Equality Party are fighting to build an independent movement and leadership of the working class to support all students, teachers, parents and workers who are taking a stand against the homicidal drive to reopen schools.

Historic US job losses continue with another 860,000 unemployment claims

Jacob Crosse

For the 26th straight week, US unemployment claims remain at levels unseen since the Great Depression as an estimated 860,000 people filed first-time jobless claims for the week ending September 12, according to the latest US Department of Labor report. An additional 658,737 Pandemic Unemployment Assistance claims were also recorded bringing the weekly total to over 1.5 million new claims.

In total, over 61,000,000 jobless claims have been filed in the last six months since COVID-19 lockdown measures and business closures were first mandated to slow the spread of the virus. Over 202,000 people in the US have died due to COVID-19 as of this writing after most of those measures were quickly abandoned at the insistence of the financial oligarchy. Of the over 22 million jobs lost since mid-March, less than half, approximately 10.5 million have “returned,” albeit for many workers at reduced hours and wages.

Workers line up outside the Mississippi Department of Employment Security WIN Job Center in Pearl, Miss. (AP Photo/Rogelio V. Solis, File)

A July study published by the University of Chicago in conjunction with the nation’s largest payroll processor, ADP, found that from March through June, employers froze the wages of 58 percent of their workers, compared to 36 percent during the same period last year. An estimated 40 percent of the 18 million workers who reported that they were furloughed in April have returned to work, according to Gusto, another payroll processing company that services more than 100,000 small businesses in the US.

Of the roughly 7.2 million workers who have returned, Gusto reported that 29 percent have been brought back at a lower wage or with fewer hours. Speaking to USA Today on the figures, Sarah Gustafson, Gusto’s lead data scientist, remarked, “When they come back, it doesn’t mean they’re coming back to a rosy picture, they’re kind of getting a double whammy.” Even among workers who were not laid off or furloughed, Gusto data found 8.8 percent of all workers saw their hours reduced in August, up nearly 3 percent compared to last year.

The Department of Labor reported that the national seasonally adjusted insured unemployment rate was an estimated 8.6 percent for the week ending September 5. However, several states and territories have double-digit unemployment rates, with Hawaii leading the country at 20.3 percent. This was followed by California, 17.3; Nevada, 15.6; New York, 15.0; Puerto Rico, 14.1; Louisiana, 13.6; Connecticut and Georgia at 11.9; District of Columbia, 11.3; and finally, Massachusetts at 11.0 percent.

The number of people receiving some form of unemployment assistance actually increased by nearly 100,000 last week, to 29,768,326. For comparison's sake, during the same week last year, only 1,498,917 people were receiving government assistance. Overall, the weekly unemployment claims report largely mirrored those of the last three weeks, since the department changed its formula for calculating claims, bringing the four-week average claim amount to just under one million a week at 912,000.

With job losses continuing, the $600 federal unemployment aid long expired and no relief in sight, food lines are growing as hunger grips millions. In New York City, an estimated 2 million people are food insecure. Rosanna Robbins, director of food access and capacity at City Harvest, New York City’s largest food rescue organization, reflected on the ongoing crisis.

“It’s never been this tragic for such a sustained period of time. Since COVID hit, the numbers of people in line at food pantries and soup kitchens skyrocketed, and it’s not going down,” she told the Associated Press. “And so, I think for us it’s just adjusting to the fact that we expect there to be a real need for free food for a very long time to come.”

While millions of unemployed workers and their families are queuing in food lines, a report from the Institute for Policy Studies found that from March 18 through September 4, the wealth of US billionaires increased by a whopping $970 billion, “an increase of 32.9 percent over 24 weeks.” Jeff Bezos, CEO of Amazon, has seen his wealth increase from $118 billion to over $206.4 billion, while Tesla CEO Elon Musk’s wealth nearly quadrupled in the same time from $24.6 billion to $93.3 billion.

This is part of an international phenomena; according to data from Forbes, Canada’s richest 20 billionaires have seen their wealth increase by $37 billion since March, with the average gaining nearly $2 billion in the last six months. The Thomson family, which owns media outlets Thomson Reuters and the Globe and Mail, saw their wealth increase by an estimated $8.8 billion. During that same time, 1.1 million workers in Canada lost their jobs while another 713,000 reported losing at least half, if not more, of their work hours due to the pandemic.

As the financial oligarchy gorges itself on trillions of dollars through the artificial inflation of the stock market by the influx of unlimited funds furnished via the Federal Reserve, millions of jobless and destitute workers are left with nothing while the Democrats and Republicans in Congress feign interest in “getting something done” in between extended recesses and half-hearted negotiations that have produced nothing in the last eight weeks.

While a few jobless workers have seen modest relief after President Donald Trump signed an executive memorandum on August 8 that created the Lost Wages Assistance (LWA) program, millions have yet to see anything.

The LWA directed the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) to oversee distributing $44 billion to jobless workers in the form of $300 weekly payments, less than half what workers were receiving before. Only workers who had been receiving at least $100 a week in unemployment benefits are eligible to receive the benefit.

Every single US state except for South Dakota applied for LWA payments with over $30 billion already earmarked for distribution. For many states such as Alaska, which was approved by FEMA to begin sending payments on August 24, entirely new delivery systems needed to be developed, delaying payments for an estimated eight weeks. Meanwhile the unemployed in other states such as New Mexico, which has already distributed five weeks of payments, have already been cut off from the program.

While millions of workers have been left in the lurch as the US Congress, American Airlines CEO Doug Parker, United Airlines CEO Scott Kirby and Southwest Airlines CEO Gary Kelly met with White House chief of Staff Mark Meadows on Thursday to demand another $25 billion in federal aid before the end of the month. The airline companies have warned that without government aid, up to 36,000 workers could be furloughed, including 19,000 at American Airlines and 16,370 at United.

Despite unprecedented joblessness, and the threats of more layoffs coming, no relief package appears to be on the agenda for either party.

Instead, on Thursday the Democratic-controlled House passed a nonbinding resolution condemning “all forms of anti-Asian sentiment as related to COVID-19” in a 243-164 vote. This gave both parties an opportunity to blame the other party for not being sufficiently bellicose against China and Russia as each side took turns sabre rattling over foreign policy.

Jim Jordan (Republican-Ohio) voted against the resolution while falsely claiming that China and the World Health Organization lied to the United States about the severity of the coronavirus. Republican House minority leader Kevin McCarthy chastised Pelosi for being too focused on “impeaching the President” back in January, instead of “focusing on China.”

Pelosi responded: “In terms of China I take second place to no one in this body in my opposition to China for three decades. Sometimes I take pride in being called the most disliked American in China for my opposition to China...trying to stop their proliferation of weapons technology, of mass destruction, to rogue countries and those delivery systems.”

Pelosi continued, “I have been on it [China] every single day for over 30 years.” She then accused House Leader Kevin McCarthy of having “newly arrived at this issue, in order to deflect attention from the fact that the Russian’s trying to once again infiltrate and [unintelligible] the security of our elections. Whoever interferes with our elections must be dealt with. But all of the sudden it’s about China, instead of Russia. I think the American people should decide who the next president of the United States is, not Vladimir Putin.”

Brazilian teachers call strikes against back-to-school drive

Tomas Castanheira

The terrible consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic in Brazil, with more than 135,000 deaths and nearly 4.5 million recorded cases, combined with the significant deterioration of the living conditions of the masses of Brazilian workers, are provoking mounting and explosive social discontent.

Actions by teachers against the homicidal drive to reopen schools has been joined by a month-long strike by postal workers throughout the country along with strikes by bus drivers and ticket collectors in the states of Rio Grande do Sul, Espírito Santo, Minas Gerais, São Paulo and Paraná, just in September.

Classroom at a private school in Manaus. (Credit: Eduardo Cavalcante/ Seduc-AM)

The Brazilian ruling class is not only unable to provide any relief to Brazilian workers, rather, it is campaigning to further aggravate their suffering and anger, promoting a reopening of schools that will further escalate the spread of the pandemic.

On Wednesday, Brazil’s fascistic President Jair Bolsonaro presented a sinister public assessment of his government’s response to the pandemic, dismissing its terrible human cost. At a ceremony that crowned Gen. Eduardo Pazuello as the acting health minister, Bolsonaro defended each of his homicidal steps.

He argued that businesses should never have been closed and that health had no priority over economics; he celebrated the doctors who “dared” to treat patients with hydroxychloroquine, “even without scientific proof”; and he attacked measures of social distancing implemented by governors and mayors as driven by “panic” spread by a “catastrophic media.”

To applause from his government team, Bolsonaro declared: “We had no reason to close the schools, but the restrictive measures were no longer in the hands of the presidency. By judicial decision, they were exclusively in the hands of governors and mayors. I regret it. We are the country with the highest number of days of lockdown of schools. This is absurd.”

This barbaric speech given by a mass murderer proud of his performance was received with indifference from the media and the supposed political opposition in the government. They are Bolsonaro’s accomplices and are jointly promoting the criminal reopening of schools in the country against the opposition of the majority of the working class.

The beginning of the week was marked by the government of Amazonas, whose capital Manaus was the first to resume classes in private and public schools, announcing a sudden increase in COVID-19 cases and the filling of ICU beds. The announcement was accompanied by a retreat in the reopening of state elementary schools, which were still closed. Governor Wilson Lima of the Christian Social Party, however, blamed the outbreak of cases on “people in some places forming crowds, especially at private parties.”

Seeking to sustain Lima’s hypocritical claim, the Health Surveillance Foundation of Amazonas (FVS-AM), which is responsible for authorizing the opening of schools, ended up making a terrible confession. “We have noticed contempt for the precautionary measures against the coronavirus, such as social distancing of one and a half meters,” said the president of FVS-AM. “It’s like entering a room on fire. Avoid crowding and continue wearing a mask. There is still no proof that this is not a mutant virus.”

The “rooms on fire,” infested with a possibly mutant virus, are literally the hundreds of classrooms in Manaus attended by 110,000 students, which are kept open by FVS-AM and the government of Wilson Lima. The educators of Manaus, who, unlike the government, do not despise the precautionary measures against the coronavirus, responded to the outbreaks of COVID-19 in dozens of schools with strike action.

To force them into deadly workplaces, the state education secretariat has cut the strikers’ salaries and threatened to replace them with scabs. The government’s attack was endorsed by the Union of Workers in Education of Amazonas (SINTEAM), which called off the strike on the grounds that “the justice system authorizes imposing absences for [strikers], as well as fines against the union.”

In Rio de Janeiro, the state with the second-highest number of recorded COVID-19 infections, some private schools resumed classes on Monday amid contradictory judicial decisions. The Military College of Rio de Janeiro, under federal jurisdiction, had also scheduled a return to classes, but this was preempted by strike action on the part of its teachers.

In Paraná, faced with a possible, but still not scheduled, reopening of schools, some 2,700 teachers from the state gathered in an online rally this weekend and voted for a strike. In other states, such as Espírito Santo, teachers have expressed anger against the unions for failing to call meetings to organize actions.

In São Paulo, the state most impacted by COVID-19, which surpassed 900,000 cases of the disease this week and registered 321 new deaths on Wednesday, the government of Governor João Doria of the Brazilian Social Democratic Party (PSDB) has already allowed the partial reopening of schools. The mayor of the capital, Bruno Covas, also from PSDB, announced yesterday that face-to-face instruction in the schools, as well as regular classes in the universities, will resume on October 7.

A simulation made by researchers from major Brazilian and international universities showed that the reopening of schools in São Paulo, even following the restrictions stipulated by the government, would cause the infection of up to 46 percent of its students and teachers in only three months. The city of São Paulo has, according to 2018 data from the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE), about 2.5 million students. The results of a reopening will be devastating.

Demonstrating the unanimity of the Brazilian political establishment on this homicidal policy, the Workers Party (PT) governor of Bahia, Rui Costa, once again expressed his readiness to reopen schools in his state. On Monday, as he addressed the further opening of inter-municipal transportation, Costa declared: “this stage of transport relaxation is a stage that may include the reopening of schools.”

This campaign is also being pushed by the country’s major media outlets, which are spreading pseudo-scientific arguments that favor the interests of the ruling class. Folha de São Paulo, the most circulated newspaper in the country, highlighted the opinion of Viviane Senna, president of the NGO Ayrton Senna Institute, whom the newspaper lauded as an “education expert,” with an article headlined “It is clear that the reopening of schools does not aggravate the pandemic.”

These statements are completely false. Children are contracting the disease. International data confirm that one in three children admitted to hospitals must receive intensive care, and that 6 percent need respirators. In São Paulo alone, more than 90 young people under the age of 19 have died of COVID-19. And recent large-scale studies in the US, Italy and South Korea have concluded that children are more likely to transmit COVID-19 than adults.

As the World Socialist Web Site has been reporting, the number of cases in Spain, France and other European countries is rapidly escalating. In the United Kingdom, the sinister growth in the number of new cases to the levels recorded in May is directly associated with the reopening of schools.

Opposition to the reopening of schools is growing among educators in Europe, just as in Brazil and on other continents. Meanwhile, unions around the world, bound to their national states and the ruling classes of their respective countries, are seeking to isolate workers, suppress their revolt and herd them into infected schools and workplaces.

In Brazil, the National Confederation of Education Workers (CNTE), to which most Brazilian teachers unions are associated, is publishing advice for governments on how to carry out safe “gradual reopenings,” while blocking the unification of Brazilian educators in struggle.

It is essential that Brazilian educators build rank-and-file committees in schools throughout the country to organize their strikes and other actions politically independent from the unions, directly confronting the interests of the ruling class and its governments.

Over one million UK children kept off school in face of government threats and propaganda

Harvey Thompson & Tania Kent

Around 12 percent of school pupils, over one million children, have not returned since the full reopening of schools imposed by the government from the beginning of this month. The majority of these are families who have no confidence in the government’s claim that “schools are the safest place that children can be.”

Parents’ concerns for the welfare and safety of their children have been confirmed in the exponential growth in the rise of infections in the past two weeks across the UK and especially in England being fuelled by the reopening of schools

By Thursday evening, 1,118 schools had been hit by coronavirus infections, forcing many to close partially or fully. This number is rising rapidly. Up to 25,000 teachers in England have also been forced out of the classroom and into self-isolation amid a national shortage of COVID-19 tests due to the inability to process them.

Headteachers representing more than 16,000 pupils in Gateshead in north-east England, which has now imposed a local lockdown due to its high infection rate, said the lack of COVID-19 testing would “break” some schools and that their plan for returning children to classrooms had “collapsed” due to the crisis.

The government’s test and trace system is in utter shambles. Thousands of anxious applicants to the official website were repeatedly greeted this week with a page informing them, “This service is currently very busy. More tests should be available later.” Others fortunate enough to be granted a test appointment are being forced to travel hundreds of miles to a test centre.

In the absence of any coordinated opposition by the Labour Party and the trade unions, who fully endorse the government’s “back to work” agenda, resistance is taking a more independent form, such as the development of online parent forums. Boycott Return To Unsafe Schools (BRTUS) was formed in May, while schools were still in lockdown. It has sought to draw together and inform all those concerned about the government’s unsafe re-opening of the schools. The group reported outbreaks at schools across the UK during the period August 12 to September 7, when the government propaganda media machine was in overdrive to convince parents that schools were “COVID secure”.

Many thousands of experiences and concerns relating to school/home life under the shadow of COVID-19—generally purged from the media—have been shared on the BRTUS site. It has also acted as a support network, with some teachers offering help and advice to parents struggling to provide their children with an education during school closures.

The BRTUS group also produced the first map of the UK detailing school closures due to outbreaks of COVID-19. In the absence of any official correlation of cases, this was a vital source of information for parents.

In July, following one month of the partial reopening of schools, the World Socialist Web Site spoke to Jennifer Jones, the administrator of the Facebook BRTUS group. Jones had become involved through a friend on Facebook the previous month, due to her sons’ situation at a special school. The BRTUS Facebook page then stood at around 4,000 members. As schools reopened from September, membership has risen to over 11,600 and continues to grow daily.

Many parents have voiced their anxiety about the safety of their children and political opposition to the government’s herd immunity programme and lack of even minimal protection for children and staff.

Heather comments: “The media slandering people and defending the Government—no matter how the Gov lies and misleads and misinforms—the media attacks people who are misled not the one dishing out the lies and confusion.”

Terrie writes: “Just been thinking if people can’t get tests for their children, or school staff then surely there’s going to be many more cases. Children in affected ‘bubble’ aren’t going to be sent home because there’s not gonna be any test results to say that a ‘bubble’ needs to isolate. That’s a scary thought and seems that the government want it this way thinking we’re daft enough to believe schools are safe as none will be sending kids home. I’m genuinely worried for school kids and school staff.”

Ann exposed the class basis of the government’s agenda: “The schools have re-opened so parents can get back to offices, so the property portfolio of rich office block owners can keep rental income. This is nothing to do about public health, about which politicians do not care less. However, politicians are so out of touch, they have not realised that firms big and small have seen that technology has advanced so much that it has made home working efficient, so they are giving up rental altogether. They will not return.”

Fatima revealed the tremendous strain and stress on families whose children are being sent home with symptoms: “Feeling v down my 11-year-old daughter been to school just 2 days and then was poorly for the rest of the week, got covid positive test result today. Please pray she gets well soon I’m vv worried.”

Katy wrote: “How many of you have kept your children off school? I have as I really don’t believe it is safe, our children are being used as guinea pigs! How many fines do you receive before having to go to court? My anxiety is through the roof. My children are currently being homeschooled by myself. I feel pushed to potentially put my children’s lives and my family at risk or be forced to be punished by keeping them off. I feel sick with it all. My husband is at high risk, I’m at high risk due to health issues and my one son has extreme asthma. I’ve already lost my Nan.”

The re-opening of schools, early years settings, colleges, and, from next week, universities, which has been described the “UK’s largest annual migration,” will have devastating consequences.

Under the US Trump administration, data released this week by the American Academy of Pediatrics revealed that 500,000 children have now tested positive for COVID-19.

The Socialist Equality Party has consistently warned of the inevitable resurgence in COVID-19 cases and deaths if the ruling class reopens society amid the ongoing pandemic. In opposition to this homicidal policy, we advance the measures necessary to protect lives and keep society safe: the initiation of independent education rank and file committees.

These committees will unite all parents, teachers and school staff, to demand the closures of unsafe schools and adopt safety measures for those forced to continue to work. These committees will unleash the tremendous power that exists in the working class, behind the call for a general strike against school re-openings.

British government and universities pursue reckless return to higher education under pandemic conditions

Simon Whelan

More than 1 million students are returning to Higher Education (HE) campuses across the UK, including hundreds of thousands from abroad. This migration is occurring under conditions where the COVID-19 virus is resurgent, following the forced return to workplaces and schools under the government’s herd immunity policy.

The return to campus will accelerate the R (reproduction) value, which last week rose to between 1.0 and 1.2. In major cities and conurbations such as London, Greater Manchester and Liverpool, the R rate rose to between 1.1 and 1.3, higher than other UK regions. These last two urban areas alone are home to eight universities with a combined student population exceeding 120,000.

Campuses have been closed since March and the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (SAGE) said earlier this month that the mass return of students posed a “significant risk” and “could amplify local and national transmission.” “It is highly likely that there will be significant outbreaks associated with higher education, and asymptomatic transmission may make these harder to detect,” their report added.

COVID-19 is now spreading amongst the younger population. Leading epidemiologist, Dame Anne Johnson, of University College London (UCL), warned of a “critical moment” in the pandemic, stating “We are now seeing the highest number of infections or at least detected infections in younger people aged 20 to 29 and also going up to 45-year-olds.”

Dr Mike Tildesley, an associate professor at the University of Warwick and expert in infection modelling, told BBC Breakfast that the UK was mostly dealing with “really local” outbreaks, but the movement of students across the country could cause a wave of infection, especially at holidays and Christmas.

Students now face a limit on socialising under the government’s arbitrary limiting of gatherings to six, yet can go to work and to campuses. Government guidance states that universities should only switch to full online learning as a very last resort in a local coronavirus outbreak. Department for Education (DfE) guidance also maintains that universities should use a “blend” of face-to-face and online learning, stating that there is no evidence face-to-face teaching is unsafe, so long as pandemic precautions are “maintained.”

These cannot be maintained, however, as the government is aware. Not only under conditions of a mass migration of students across the country, and their subsequent coalescing in campuses. The ban on groups of more than six does not apply to face-to-face seminar teaching nor on shared student accommodation. In some purpose-built student accommodation this can mean sharing facilities with hundreds of others.

Universities claim they are minimising the risk by moving small face-to-face group teaching to large lecture theatres, but many HE establishments do not have the facilities.

The real reason for pushing students and educators into unsafe conditions is the same as in workplaces and schools: profitability. The so-called “free market” in HE means that universities are dependent on enormous tuition and accommodation fees. Every city centre in the country is also largely reliant on the so-called student economy for survival.

In addition, should an HE institution decide of its own accord not to provide face-to-face teaching, it could face action from the Office for Students for failing to deliver “product” to consumers, meaning having to return tuition fees in full or part.

Dr Eric Lybeck, University of Manchester, explained, “I don’t think anyone would have chosen [blended] learning if it wasn’t necessary to get funding via student fees.”

“If the [online only] Open University charges £6,000 for their course, you can’t really charge £9,000.” Universities were offering face-to-face teaching, he said, to legitimise their high student fees. Consequently, universities are having to handle a surge in undergraduate applicants due to rising unemployment and job insecurity, while saying they will maintain safety. Some universities are facing up to a 200 percent increase in new student numbers.

Writing anonymously on Open Democracy, a university staff member described how they were “recently in a meeting in which a member of Senior Management at my institution stated explicitly that the university would be in serious financial trouble if the students did not return. Incredibly, this person also admitted that it was ‘inevitable’ that there would be an outbreak of Covid-19 as a result of campus reopening. It was made clear in the meeting that this information was confidential and should not be shared with the public. The position of universities is publicly to claim that they are safe, but privately to acknowledge that this is impossible.”

Perversely, if a university is forced to close due to a local lockdown, it will not have to reimburse funds. And, if students are locked down after they have returned to campus, they will at least have to pay for their accommodation. In other words, financialisation means it is better for the HE sector if COVID-19 does spread.

In the face of these reckless actions, the University and College Union (UCU) has made only mealy-mouthed statements decrying the health risks, while doing nothing to mobilise its sizable membership in opposition. Indeed, the UCU utilised the pandemic to sell out opposition by HE staff to its rotten deal on pay and pensions. Up to 50,000 lecturers, technicians, librarians and other academic and support staff at more than 70 universities took 14 days of strike action, staggered through February and March, ending just before lockdown. The priority for the UCU is to prevent a resumption of this fight.

The UCU said a statement issued Wednesday that “The evidence suggests that colleges and universities will be hit with further Covid outbreaks…” but offered no more than to “name and shame colleges or universities that were not doing enough to keep staff, students and the wider community safe. Responsibility for this would be down to individual members, with union leader Jo Grady declaring, “We will be monitoring what comes in from members and will name and shame institutions that are not up to scratch.” No mobilization of the union’s 120,000 members to fight the unsafe return to campus is proposed. Instead it declares “if our members are concerned with how their college or university is behaving we will back them if they vote to move into dispute, which could result in ballots for industrial action.” [emphasis added].

Labour’s shadow universities minister, Emma Hardy, has requested only that her government counterpart Michelle Donelan explore the possibility of introducing mass testing on campus to “build confidence in universities and their communities that students are able to return safely.” Labour leader Sir Kier Starmer has been Boris Johnson’s main supporter in insisting on the reopening of schools. While he warns that the government’s “track-and-trace system” is collapsing, he is a willing partner in the charade that schools and HE are COVID-safe.

The fight against this reckless endangerment of lives requires uniting and mobilising workers, students and educators. New forms of working class resistance must be established, including rank-and-file safety committees, to stop the sacrificing of public health to private profit. This requires a conscious political fight against the Johnson government, the Labour Party and the pro-capitalist trade unions.

World Health Organization warns of “alarming” resurgence of COVID-19 in Europe

Alex Lantier

Yesterday, World Health Organization (WHO) regional director for Europe Dr Hans Kluge warned that Europe faces a catastrophic resurgence of COVID-19.

Europe has seen over 228,000 COVID-19 deaths and five million cases, according to the WHO, mostly in a wave that peaked in March. However, as scientists had warned, the premature ending of lockdowns is producing an explosive resurgence of the virus. Even as hospital wards in Madrid and across southern France begin to fill, and death rates mount, European governments continue to loosen social distancing and impose back-to-school and back-to-work policies that spread the virus.

A patient carried on a stretcher in Rome, Italy (Photo: Alessandra Tarantino / AP)

Speaking at a WHO press conference in Copenhagen, Kluge said: “Weekly cases have now exceeded those reported when the pandemic first peaked in Europe in March. Last week, the region’s weekly tally exceeded 300,000 patients. More than half of European countries have reported a greater than 10 per cent increase in cases in the past two weeks. Of those, seven countries have seen newly reported cases increase more than twofold in the same period.”

Kluge called these “alarming rates of transmission across the region.” Yesterday’s figures told a stark picture: Spain saw 11,291 confirmed new cases and 162 deaths, France 10,593 cases and 50 deaths—both surpassing the largest daily infection totals this spring—and Britain 3,395 cases and 21 deaths. The Czech Republic saw 2,136 new cases Wednesday, the first time this figure exceeded 2,000. Daily cases are rising in Germany (2,021), Italy (1,585), the Netherlands (1,753), Romania (1,679), and Belgium (1,153).

The reckless elimination of social distancing in schools and workplaces is having a devastating impact. “In the spring and early summer, we were able to see the impact of strict lockdown measures. Our efforts, our sacrifices, paid off. In June cases hit an all-time low. The September case numbers, however, should serve as a wake-up call for all of us,” Kluge said, adding, “If you lift the pressure from the virus, naturally you're going to see this increase.”

COVID-19 deaths follow the increase in cases with several weeks’ delay, and with deaths already increasingly in Spain, it is only a matter of time before death totals explode across Europe.

WHO officials also warned against calls to slash the amount of time workers are legally allowed to self-isolate after being exposed to the virus. While it takes up to 14 days for an infected person to show symptoms, French officials are cutting quarantines to only 7 days and British officials to only 10. Spain may cut the quarantine to 7 or 10 days. This would ensure that infectious patients would resume normal activities and spread the virus before finally falling ill.

“Knowing the immense individual and societal impact even a slight reduction in the length of quarantine can have ... I encourage countries of the region to make scientific due process with their experts,” Kluge said.

WHO official Catherine Smallwood said the WHO is not changing the recommended quarantine length, indicating that the French and British proposals have no scientific basis: “Our quarantine recommendation of 14 days has been based on our understanding of the incubation period and transmission of the disease. We would only revise that on the basis of a change of our understanding of the science.”

Kluge said “prompt and resolute” action is required to prevent an overwhelming resurgence of COVID-19. Warning that “the virus has been merciless whenever partisanship and disinformation prevailed,” he said, “Where the pandemic goes from here is in our hands. We have fought it back before, and we can fight it back again.”

The main obstacle to adopting a rational, scientifically based policy to fight the pandemic is the conscious hostility of Europe’s governments and financial aristocracy. All echo the positions of French President and investment banker Emmanuel Macron, who ruled out further lockdowns last month, telling Paris Match, “We cannot stop the entire country.”

Lockdowns were adopted this spring only after the collapse of Italy’s medical system under the weight of the COVID-19 pandemic in February and early March triggered a wave of wildcat strikes in Italian auto, steel and machine tool firms that spread across Europe.

The focus of European banks and officials this spring, however, was organizing a massive transfer of wealth to the super-rich. While the euro zone adopted €1.25 trillion in “quantitative easing” (QE) handouts to the banks and a €500 billion European Union (EU) corporate bailout, London adopted £635 billion in QE handouts and at least £110 billion in corporate bailouts. Afterwards, they focused on forcing children back to school so their parents could return to work to produce profits on the massive amounts of capital handed to the banks.

These bailouts have the unions’ enthusiastic support. The German Union Confederation (DGB) and France’s General Confederation of Labor (CGT) signed a joint statement explicitly endorsing the EU bailout negotiated primarily between Berlin and Paris. The union bureaucracies are complicit in the EU’s politically criminal pandemic response, which they play a leading role in organizing.

Only the independent intervention of the working class can impose necessary lockdown policies to halt the pandemic surge and avert a renewed, catastrophic loss of life. For this, however, workers need to organize independently of the union bureaucracies and their political allies, who are complicit in the murderous policies of the capitalist class.

In Spain, currently the pandemic’s European epicenter, health officials are urgently demanding lockdowns. In Madrid, the worst-hit region, Dr Miguel Sanchez told ABC emergency rooms are once again on the verge of collapse. With 24.4 percent of COVID-19 tests coming back positive, Dr Cesar Carballo told Telemadrid: “It is already too late. … It is no longer sufficient to lock down neighborhoods, we will have to put all of Madrid on lockdown.”

State-organized polls found that 56.8 percent of Spaniards do not trust the state’s response, while 58.3 percent want “more demanding” isolation measures.

The Spanish Health Ministry said, however, that regional authorities alone now set policy. Madrid’s right-wing regional premier Isabel Ayuso has refused even “selective lockdowns” in the worst-hit neighborhoods. Ayuso, who has said she believes “practically all children, one way or another, will be infected” with COVID-19, appealed instead to fascistic sentiment, blaming the spread of the virus on “the lifestyles of our immigrants.”

In France, where hospitals in the Marseille and Bordeaux regions are beginning to overflow with severe COVID-19 patients, Health Minister Olivier Véran announced yesterday that France would maintain its unscientific seven-day quarantine policy, despite WHO warnings. This came after Prime Minister Jean Castex again insisted that there will be no “all-out lockdown policy,” and that his government wants France to “live with the virus.”

The French government, which stepped up army deployments to major cities as the lockdown began this spring, is terrified of working-class anger and is doubtless preparing repression of mass protests. Dr Mathias Wargon, head of emergency care at Delafontaine hospital in Saint Denis, near Paris, said, “I have noticed that the Interior Ministry is taking back control from the Health Ministry. The Health Ministry no longer controls what happens, but the police prefects and state officials.”

IFOP pollster Frédéric Dabi told Le Monde that “public opinion is tired and worried. … In this explosive and unpredictable context, the government is trying to ensure that the pressure cooker does not explode.”

The way forward for workers and students to protect themselves against the pandemic is to form independent safety committees in workplaces and schools across Europe and beyond. These committees can prepare a general strike against back-to-school policies and continued nonessential economic activity, and for the right to shelter at home in decent conditions. This requires above all a political struggle for the socialist reorganization of society and the abolition of the capitalist social order that is the root the disastrous response to the pandemic.

Trump’s Middle East deal and the dead end of bourgeois nationalism

Bill Van Auken

The obscene spectacle staged by the Trump administration on the South Lawn of the White House on Tuesday, bringing together the two monarchical Arab dictatorships, the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain, and Israel for the signing of what were pretentiously labeled as the “Abraham Accords” represents yet one more link in the decades-long chain of betrayals carried out by the Arab bourgeoisie.

The “Abraham Accords,” all of five paragraphs in length, manage to repeat the name “Donald J. Trump” four times, lest anyone should forget who is the champion of Middle East peace in the midst of his reelection bid, which threatens to bring the US itself to the brink of civil war.

For Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the trip to Washington served as a welcome diversion from a spiraling crisis in Israel, which is gripped by soaring coronavirus infections, a deepening economic crisis and mass protests, even as he himself faces imminent indictment on fraud and bribery charges.

As for the royal Arab signatories, the bowing and scraping before Trump was a price they were more than willing to pay for increased US security aid and the chance to buy advanced military hardware, including F-35 fighter jets.

The “Accords” proclaim that they will “commence a new chapter of peace” in the Middle East. What a farce! The formalization of ties between the Sunni Gulf oil sheikdoms and Israel is part of Washington’s strategy of forging an anti-Iranian axis in preparation for a potentially world-catastrophic war aimed at regime change in Tehran and the rolling back of both Chinese and Russian influence in the region.

As for the quest for Middle East peace, historically it has been predicated, at least formally, on resolving the plight of the Palestinians, including the 4.75 million living under Israeli occupation, the nearly two million living as second-class citizens in Israel itself and the millions more scattered among refugee camps in neighboring Arab countries and in a wider diaspora.

What the Israeli-Emirati-Bahraini deal made clear is that for world imperialism and the Arab bourgeois regimes, the Palestinian issue is no longer considered an issue at all. It has done away with the fiction, codified in the so-called Arab Peace Plan drafted by Saudi Arabia, that “normalization” of relations between the Arab states and Tel Aviv was dependent upon Israel withdrawing from territories it occupied in the 1967 war and allowing the formation of a Palestinian state: the so-called “two state solution.” Indeed, when Palestinian representatives proposed that the Arab League adopt a resolution condemning the UAE’s deal with Israel, they were dismissed out of hand.

This “normalization” process has a long and bitter history. Trump’s “peace” farce on Tuesday was meant to evoke previous US-brokered deals, including the September 1978 Camp David Accords, signed by Egyptian President Anwar al-Sadat and Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin, which assured Israel the neutrality and outright collaboration of the Arab world’s largest nation in its conflicts with the Palestinians.

This was followed 15 years later by the Oslo Accords, signed on the White House lawn by Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) leader Yasser Arafat and Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin in September 1993, in which Arafat agreed to recognize Israel and guarantee its security, while renouncing the armed struggle for Palestinian liberation with which the PLO had long been identified.

This inaugurated the nearly three-decade “peace process,” which has served as a cover for the vast expansion of Israeli settlements and theft of Palestinian land in the West Bank and successive bloody wars and a punishing blockade against the 1.8 million Palestinians trapped in the open-air prison of Gaza.

Under the Oslo Accords, the PLO took charge of the political monstrosity known as the Palestinian Authority (PA) in a process that involved the unexplained death of Arafat in 2004. His successor, Mahmoud Abbas, has served as the unelected president of the PA for 15 years, running a regime that serves to enrich a thin layer of the Palestinian bourgeoisie off of aid kickbacks, while providing a vital auxiliary police force to suppress the population of the West Bank in the interests of Israel and imperialism.

This transformation of the PLO, the most radical of the bourgeois nationalist movements, which enlisted tens of thousands of Palestinians in the unequal combat with Israel, underwent countless sacrifices and assassinations of its leaders and inspired masses of the oppressed throughout the Middle East, was part of a universal process.

All of the national movements that gained prominence from the 1950s to 1970s—from Nasserism and Ba’athism in the Middle East, to Pan-Africanism and Peronism, Castroism and Sandinismo in Latin America—advancing national liberation as some separate stage of development, achievable through the suppression of any independent revolutionary intervention of the working class for socialism, have proven bankrupt. So too have the Stalinist, Maoist and Pabloite revisionist proponents of national liberation movements based upon the petty bourgeoisie and the peasantry as a substitute for resolving the crisis of revolutionary leadership in the working class.

The surrender and transformation of the PLO was prepared over a protracted period of bloody betrayals produced by the Faustian bargains struck by its leadership with various Arab bourgeois regimes as well as the Moscow Stalinist bureaucracy. Their limited and highly unreliable support was conditioned on the PLO’s foreswearing any revolutionary appeal to the masses of workers and oppressed of the Arab world.

The result was an endless succession of stabs in the back at the hands of the Palestinians’ Arab patrons and “brothers.” This extended from the 1970 “Black September” massacre of Palestinians by the Jordanian monarchy, to the Syrian backing of the Lebanese Falangist slaughter of Palestinians at the Karantina and Tel al-Zaatar camps in 1975, to the complicity of Syria and all of the Arab regimes in allowing the US-backed Israeli invasion of 1982 to expel the PLO from Lebanon.

The PLO’s attempts to base its survival on maneuvers between the different Arab regimes and by exploiting the Cold War conflicts between Washington and the Moscow Stalinist bureaucracy were fatally undermined by the profound changes in world capitalism that coincided with its military defeat.

The 1982 Lebanon invasion was part of a global counteroffensive made possible by the betrayals and defeats of the worldwide mass struggles of the 1960s and 1970s. The growing global integration of capitalist production, meanwhile, eliminated the relationship of forces upon which the PLO had depended. The Stalinist bureaucracy’s capitalist restorationist policy and ultimate liquidation of the Soviet Union was accompanied by the sharp turn by supposedly nationalist Arab regimes toward ever closer collaboration with imperialism, consummated in the support given by many of them to the 1991 US war against Iraq.

This process was accompanied by the outbreak of the first intifada, a spontaneous rebellion among workers and youth in the occupied territories. This revolt developed independently and over the opposition of the PLO leadership, which feared that such a struggle from below would fatally undermine its project of establishing an independent bourgeois state in collaboration with imperialism.

This bourgeois nationalist project has reached a complete dead end. Israeli “facts on the ground” in the years since the signing of the Oslo Accords have included a relentless growth of settlements in the occupied territories, the division of what little remained of the West Bank outside of direct Israeli control by walls, security roads and countless checkpoints and its separation from Gaza and Jerusalem. The conception that the carving out of a Bantustan-style “independent” state will improve the desperate conditions of the masses of Palestinians is today patently absurd.

In July 1939, little more than a year before his death at the hands of a Stalinist assassin, the great Russian revolutionary Leon Trotsky wrote presciently about the premier nationalist movement, the Indian Congress Party (from which the African National Congress of Nelson Mandela in South Africa would take its name):

The Indian bourgeoisie is incapable of leading a revolutionary struggle. They are closely bound up with and dependent upon British capitalism. They tremble for their own property. They stand in fear of the masses. They seek compromises with British imperialism no matter what the price and lull the Indian masses with hopes of reforms from above. The leader and prophet of this bourgeoisie is Gandhi. A fake leader and a false prophet.

This characteristic of the bourgeois nationalist movements in the colonial countries exposed by Trotsky in the 1930s has been fully borne out by the subsequent, and in many cases tragic, developments in the Middle East, Asia, Africa and Latin America.

Historical experience—including the latest betrayals of the Arab bourgeoisie—has provided the irrefutable vindication of Trotsky’s theory of permanent revolution, which guided the Russian Revolution of October 1917. It established that in the oppressed countries and those with a belated capitalist development, the democratic and national tasks that in an earlier historical epoch were associated with the rise of the bourgeoisie can, in the epoch of imperialism, be achieved only through the independent revolutionary mobilization of the working class based on a socialist and internationalist perspective.

The liberation of the Palestinian people and an end to the imperialist wars that have killed and maimed millions in the Middle East will never be achieved through imperialist-brokered “peace” negotiations or the fantasy of a “two-state solution.” The only way forward lies in the independent mobilization and unification of Arab, Jewish and Iranian workers in a common struggle for a Socialist Federation of the Middle East as part of the fight to put an end to capitalism all over the world.

Fact Checking Democratic and Republican Conventions

Jeff Mackler

When capitalism’s billionaire twin parties convene every four years to select their would–be head-of-state, it’s important to get the facts straight. Critical readers in my near-octogenarian generation – the same as Donald Trump’s and Joseph Biden’s – should have a basic familiarity with historically established facts. I leave it to younger observers of these two historic parties of the ruling rich to research for themselves.

The Democrats nominated Donald Trump as their presidential candidate; the Republicans nominated Joseph Biden, or was it the other way around?

The Republicans are known as the billionaire party of war, racism, sexism, poverty, tax cuts for the rich, climate catastrophe, environmental destruction, the COVID-19 pandemic, mass deportation of immigrants and big capital, while the Democrats are the billionaire party of war, racism, sexism, poverty, tax cuts for the rich, climate catastrophe, environmental destruction, the COVID-19 pandemic, mass deportation of immigrants and big capital. The differences are important!

The facts are important! Here some fact checking is in order, lest my “lesser evil” friends charge me with misrepresentation.

War

Trump touted a long list of generals as his ardent campaign supporters in the run up to the 2016 elections. In the run up to the 2020 elections Biden cites a long list of former Trump-supporting generals as his own. Biden is clearly the leader in this prestigious category of military-industrial complex contractors and Pentagon tops.

Both parties nearly unanimously approved the 2019-2020 war budget of $1 trillion annually, counting the unmentioned extra money for the CIA’s secret wars. To be more fact-checking precise, the Democrats upped Trump’s original war budget request by some $40 billion which the Republicans graciously accepted. Trump’s war party continued in slightly different forms all seven U.S. wars, most of them initiated by Barack Obama.

Afghanistan War

Said Obama in Jan. 2014: “With Afghan forces now in the lead for their own security, our troops have moved to a support role. Together with our allies, we will complete our mission there by the end of this year, and America’s longest war will finally be over.” Yet Obama had upped U.S. troops in Afghanistan to 100,000, half of them the privatized mercenary troops of the Erik Prince-led Blackwater Worldwide type, the largest privatized mercenary army in U.S. history. Trump, on the other hand, employed a renamed Blackwater operation for the similar reasons. After 19 years, under Democrats and Republicans, U.S. troops, covert and overt, remain in Afghanistan.

Yet Obama declared he was a man of peace and was accordingly awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. Trump has declared that he is a man of peace and will bring some troops home from Afghanistan. He has been nominated by a two Norwegian parliamentarians for the Nobel Peace Prize.

Obama maintained the largest nuclear weapons arsenal in the world. Trump, a “fucking moron,” according to his former Secretary of State and former ExxonMobil chief Rex Tillerson, proposed to a private National Security Council meeting that the U.S. increase its tactical nuclear weapons capacity “one hundred fold.” Trump proposed to the Congress a sixth arm of the U.S. military, the Space Force, to weaponize outer space. By a vote of 377–48 the Democratic Party-controlled House of Representatives approved the bill creating the Space Force, passing it on to the Senate. Trump signed this largest bi-partisan war budget to date.

Electoral College

The Republicans stole the 2016 election with resort to the anti-democratic Electoral College system, wherein the Southern states of the old segregationist slaveocracy can garner enough delegates for a candidate to win the presidency without winning the majority of all votes cast in the nation. The Democrats, on the other hand, held sway in the Electoral College for 75 years by resort to their control of the racist segregationist former slaveocracy Dixiecrat states up until the Nixon era. Before Nixon, the Democrats held sway by running a Northern “liberal” for president and a Southern racist bigot in the V.P. spot to “balance the ticket.” When the overtly racist Southern Democrats jumped ship to the Republicans in the 1960s, the Democrats looked to the heirs of the “Old South” to win elections and ran former Georgia segregationist-turned-liberal Jimmy Carter for president. Al Gore Jr. — son of Al Gore Sr., a historic Tennessee racist bigot — was also slated for the Democrats’ top spot as was Arkansas’s Bill Clinton, whose Southern roots were touted to win the white racist Southern vote.

Complicated? Yes, but the end result is that both parties maneuver to govern in the interests of the billionaire elite. The Democrats are the party of these billionaire elites while the Republicans are the party of these billionaire elites. My fact-checking here is more precise. According to Forbes Magazine, Biden’s billionaire supporters total 131 while Trump’s total a mere 99.

Climate crisis/Global warming

Trump is the candidate of the oil monopolies while Biden is the candidate of the oil monopolies. Trump, the Republican, is a climate crisis denier. He withdrew from the UN’s COP-25 in Madrid, Spain. With regard to the U.S. imperialist war against Syria he bragged, “We got the oil.” Obama-Biden were the world’s greatest frackers. They granted the oil monopolies unprecedented rights for offshore drilling. They drilled the Arctic Circle. They killed 500,000 people in Syria to control the oil. They supported the fascist-led coup in Ukraine to secure fracking and pipeline rights in Eastern Ukraine.

Immigration

Trump is a racist bigot, demanding a wall to keep immigrants out while banning Muslim immigrants. Obama-Biden deported three million immigrants, more than any president in U.S. history before or since.

Criminal Justice

Trump and his Republicans are openly racist bigots. Obama, Biden and Clinton orchestrated “criminal justice” legislation that created the present-day near slave labor prison-industrial complex wherein the U.S. ranks first in the world in the number and percentage of its people in jail – the majority Black, Latinx and Native American.

Tax cuts and “economic stimulus packages”

During 2008-9 recession Obama’s Democrats, allied with the Republicans, engineered the largest corporate bailout and corporate economic stimulus package in U.S. history. During 2020 recession, Trump’s Republicans, joined at the hip with the Democrats, engineered the largest corporate bailout and corporate economic stimulus package in U.S. history. Again, the differences are important!

Unemployment

Using the U.S. Department of Labor’s “Labor Force Participation Rate,” under the Obama-Biden Democrats, the percentage of eligible workers without jobs stood at 35 percent. Under Trump’s Republicans, the figure today stands at 39 percent. Under both parties, today’s “employed” are increasingly part-time, low wage, “gig” or “casual” workers with few benefits or positive future prospects.

Labor rights

Under the Obama-Biden Democrats, labor rights, pensions, overall social services and the percentage of unionized workers declined to historic lows. Under Trump’s Republicans labor rights, pensions, overall social services and the percentage of unionized workers declined to historic lows.

Tax cuts for the rich

Under the Democrats, tax cut legislation for the rich reached new heights. Under the Republicans, tax cut legislation for the rich reached new heights.

Civil liberties

President Obama signed the National Defense Authorization Act that allowed the military to indefinitely detain without charges terrorist suspects, including American citizens arrested in the United States. Trump, using Obama’s legislation, threatened to deploy the military to do the same in Portland and other cities.

Top Democrats support Biden: Top Republicans support Biden

On August 20 a group of 73 former Republican national security officials and former Republican members of Congress issued a statement in support Joe Biden. Two weeks later, a group of nearly 100 former lawmakers called “Republicans and Independents for Biden” followed suit. The same for super PAC “43 Alumni for Biden,” which consists strictly of former members of the George W. Bush administration. Former NSA and CIA Director and Four Star Air Force General Michael Hayden, who authorized dragnet surveillance of millions of Americans under the rationale that the “unreasonable search and seizure” criteria of the 4^thamendment had fluid meaning, and who misled Congress about the extent of the CIA’s torture of “terrorist” suspects, also joined the Biden team. John Negroponte, who served Republican administrations in various capacities including Deputy Secretary of State, Director of National Intelligence, Ambassador to Mexico, Honduras, and the U.N., also declared allegiance to Biden’s campaign. Negroponte served as Reagan’s Ambassador to Honduras (Nov. 1981-May 1985), where he helped orchestrate the covert and illegal funding of the Contra War against Nicaragua’s Sandinista government as well as the notorious Honduran death-squad Battalion 3-16 trained by both the CIA and FBI. My fact-checking arithmetic here tells me that Biden is a couple of points ahead of Trump in the warmongering supporter count. Just a detail!

Personality

Here the Democrats have a distinct advantage; Trump is an openly racist, sexist, anti-abortion, homophobic, warmongering, science-denying bigot. While Obama-Biden-Clinton were closeted racist, sexist, anti-abortion, homophobic, warmongering, science-denying bigots. My “lesser evil” friends might take issue with these last categorical assertions. I would respond that any serious fact checker will find that the rights of the oppressed, the rights of women, including the right to abortion, have been substantially diminished regardless of which billionaire party is in office. The same with warmongering and climate catastrophe, with the Democrats, a Cheshire cat grin always in place to beguile unwary observers, usually in lock step with the scowling Republicans.

Break with the twin parties of capital!

Today, and especially during capitalism’s election-time charade, as witnessed during the DNC and RNC orchestrated online hoopla, we see the drive to impose a Potemkin Village world, a “Truman Show” reality, a happy world of compliant citizens accepting the status quo without question. This charade is running on empty. The COVID-19 pandemic and the mass mobilizations of the nation’s most oppressed — often multi-racial mobilizations of youth — have exposed the horror of systemic U.S. racist brutality for all to see. The DNC media hucksters for four days posed themselves as the instant caring cure to remedy centuries of monstrous slavery and across-the-board capitalist racism and social oppression. The Republicans too had their cure, showcasing Trump’s family entourage and for a few minutes his one Black administration official, while blaming “violence” on “outside agitators” on the far left, socialists and antifa. Both parties lied with impunity to advance their wing of their predatory system into the White House.

That rapacious capitalism has no solutions to the multiple crises confronting humanity is testified to by the unprecedented millions in the streets crying out for justice, affirming Black Lives Matter, while denouncing capitalism’s systemic racism and its myriad inherent evils. The central task confronting socialists today is how best to win the confidence of and unify this newly-radicalizing generation toward a fundamental break with the twin racist-imperialist capitalist parties. For the first time in a long, long while, the fighting forces to do so are in motion as never before. They have appeared in the streets in unprecedented number – estimated at 15-26 million – and won the hearts and minds of tens of millions more. They carry with them the potential to achieve wondrous victories that can be coalesced in new and independent forms of struggle aimed at a direct challenge to capitalist rule, including the organization of a mass, independent Black political party and the rebirth of a fighting labor movement free from its current stifling bureaucracy and advancing on the class struggle road.