Members of the Louisiana Movement for Workers Councils held a press conference at the State Capitol in Baton Rouge on December 18 before a hearing on CARES Act money the State has withheld from workers.
On December 18 members of the Louisiana Movement for Workers Councils (LMWC) held a press conference at the Louisiana state Capitol to demand that state legislators use the tens of millions of unspent federal relief dollars to bail out workers suffering hardship because of the COVID pandemic.
The state of Louisiana received $1.8 billion in federal relief (CARES Act) funds to supposedly cope with the fallout from the pandemic. Around $525 million of those funds were used to reimburse local governments for “pandemic related expenses.” Yet many of the poorest parishes were excluded from relief because they couldn’t afford the expenses in the first place.
Tens of millions of dollars were used to pay off sheriff’s departments instead of going to food, housing assistance, health services, or economic relief.
Of the $50 million dollars set aside for (pitifully low) $250 payments to essential workers, $11 million never made it into the hands of workers.
$362 million in CARES Act funds are simply unaccounted for.
LMWC demands that these funds go directly to low income households who are bearing the brunt of the crisis. 200,000 Louisianans are jobless. At least 1 in 6 Louisiana households is struggling to put food on the table. Around 30,000 households are on the verge of eviction in Orleans Parish alone.
We refuse to go hungry and die as our tax dollars are used to bail out big corporations or buy arms for the police. We need jobs, income, housing, and healthcare. The LMWC is prepared to fight to get what we deserve. Join us!
Dr. Susan Moore died from COVID-19 as racism deprived her of care. A still from a video she shared to expose the treatment
“Of all the forms of inequality, injustice in health is the most shocking and the most inhumane.”
-Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
by Z Petrosian
In the U.S. COVID-19 has infected Indigenous, Black, Latinx, and Asian people at rates higher than whites, and the disparity is even greater when it comes to the severity of illness and death from COVID-19. Centuries of racism in the U.S. healthcare system are to blame. We don’t need more studies. We need action to demand expanded access to healthcare for all, especially people of color and very poor people, through national Medicaid for all. We must also create independent community-based boards that have the power to accept complaints, implement changes, and review materials and practices.
Centuries of racist abuses call for reparations
Racism in healthcare can be traced to the foundations of the U.S., which is based on the genocide of Native peoples and chattel enslavement of Africans. For centuries, non-white, particularly Black, people were treated as less than human, only to be kept healthy enough to work or to be experimented on without consent, as in the case of gynecological experimentation carried out by James Marion Sims on enslaved Black women. This abuse and experimentation continued long after slavery was abolished, most infamously in the Tuskegee Syphilis Study wherein Black men were deliberately infected with syphilis and denied treatment.
This abuse is not just in the past but continues to exist in healthcare, particularly in the lack of equal access to quality medical care. Studies show that, overall, Blacks who report medical problems receive less timely and lower quality treatment than whites; illness and disease is more likely to be found and addressed later in its course, resulting in worse outcomes and preventable deaths.
Dr. Susan Moore, 52, dies of COVID-19 while fighting for equal care
The quality of care routinely given to rich whites and politicians is denied to the working class and people of color. Recently Susan Moore, a dedicated Black family medicine doctor, called out racism at the hands of a white doctor and staff who were treating her for COVID-19 at a hospital in suburban Indianapolis. Being a medical professional, Dr. Moore was able to make detailed demands about the specific treatments she knew she needed even as her reported symptoms went unheeded.
Despite her objections, Dr. Moore was sent home prematurely while her condition deteriorated. “This is how Black people get killed, when you them home and they don’t know how to fight for themselves,” Dr. Moore said. Just hours later, she was transported in an ambulance to another hospital where she died from COVID-19.
This most horrible outcome was compounded by a lifetime of unequal access to medicine due to the racism of the system. Income, housing access, geography, and education all play a major role in the health outcomes of U.S. residents. But Black people are sicker and die younger even when their education levels and incomes are the same as whites. Racism kills.
An image of Dr. Susan Moore and her son.
Affected communities should have the final say on care and equal access to medical education, research, & healthcare delivery
One way to address racism in healthcare is to guarantee free medical coverage and high-quality care to everyone through national improved Medicaid for all. There should be no red tape and no medical bills; this system should cover all necessary medical care for every person in the U.S. for their entire lifetime.
Socialist countries, such as Cuba, provide excellent healthcare at no cost to patients, keeping their populations healthy through a focus on equal access to both prevention and treatment. We can also look here at home to the Veterans Administration (VA) health system to see evidence that guaranteeing health coverage improves health outcomes, especially for Black people. The VA is a health system in need of improvements – long demanded by veterans – still, while Black people in the general population have higher rates of heart disease and death than whites, a study of three million people guaranteed care through the VA showed Blacks were 37% less likely than white men to develop heart disease and had a 24% lower death rate than white patients.
Calls for improved Medicaid for all are urgent during pandemic
It should not have taken a global pandemic for racism to be more broadly recognized as a pervasive and insidious public health issue affecting all aspects of U.S. society, including the healthcare system. However, the current crises give urgency to demands for consistent, free, and equal access to healthcare.
All medical knowledge, treatments, medicines, and therapies are produced by the global working class. It is wrong to allow governments and corporations – including pharmaceutical, insurance, and hospital corporations – to hoard healthcare for the privileged few and make profits. We must take up the fight for Medicaid for all. Equal, quality healthcare is a right!
With great fanfare, as if announcing a miracle, the state proudly declared the vaccine was now available to those 70 and above and those with problems that put them at higher risk. It made a good photo-op for the politicians, who receive vaccines, have healthcare, fat pay checks and are allowed to take bribes and get rich at taxpayers’ expense.
Monday, Jan 4, arrived with 7 pharmacies in New Orleans each getting 107 shots to give out. You had to have known about it and have internet access and time to sit waiting for the list to go online. After pharmacies were listed, the phones were instantly busy, and people spent all day calling, even though the appointments were gone in minutes. Hundreds ran to pharmacies, desperate, only to be turned away without a future appointment. Three hours after all appointments were gone, Mayor Cantrell’s reelection PAC announced the vaccinations were available. Anything to look good, except for those who know better.
With only 749 shots available, a disgrace in itself, the most hard-hit Black seniors and at-risk people should have been offered it first. The vaccines should have been made available at community centers within walking distance, not at far-flung pharmacies.
Once again, capitalist medicine has failed to provide real care, given huge profits to the rich, and resulted in lots of inequality. They probably want us to fight each other for the shot, but we won’t; we’ll fight the capitalists instead.
Musicians in New Orleans are outraged over the decision from the city to spend money on Dick Clark’s ‘New Year’s Rockin’ Eve’ concert production. Initially Lieutenant Governor Billy Nungesser pushed for the state’s involvement in the even to the tune of $500,000 only if singer Lauren Daigle was to be the representative for Louisiana. This caused outrage amongst the community because Lauren Daigle was also partially responsible for the super spreader event in November that Sean Feucht hosted and the city police and leaders failed to shut down. Mayor Cantrell requested to the event promoters that they remove Daigle from the concert, which caused the outrage of Nungesser and the removal of state funds from the project. Mayor Cantrell should have used this opportunity to vilify Nungesser, who is more aligned with Daigle than the needs of the people of New Orleans. However, the Mayor was insistent on the event happening, so she funded the spot in the concert through the New Orleans Culture and Heritage Fund (NOTCF) and used it to keep the event in New Orleans, but with the New Orleans artists PJ Morton and Big Freedia.
The funds were pulled from this account because the slot in the NYE production was to be an advertisement for tourism to New Orleans. This is despite the current spike in COVID-19 cases. “New Orleans cannot market itself out of the situation it is in,” said a representative of Music and Culture Coalition of New Orleanse.
City’s misuse of Culture Fund benefits tourism companies, not artists
The biggest issue of the misuse of these funds is that the board of the NOTCF has been unable to pivot the use of these funds to help the community, but instead goes ahead with an advertisement to promote tourism. Even Kristin Palmer of the City Council who also sits on the NOTCF board said, “NOTCF is not in the business of promotion, but to invest in our people,” according to meeting minutes from an NOTCF meeting on December 18th. Kristin Palmer was also the only dissenting vote on the measure to allow the use of the funds for the concert. The NOTCF is out of touch with the community and actively digging itself into a hole as it fund projects not related to helping the community through a pandemic that has left people out of work for 9 months.
Since COVID-19 erupted in New Orleans in mid-March, library workers have been fighting for workplace and community safety. We’re very aware of our vital place in the community, and also the enormous potential to contribute to community spread of the virus. Because of our unique position as a public resource and a potential site of infection, we want to do our part to serve the enormous needs of the public as safely as possible. There is so much we can do while mitigating the risk to ourselves and those we serve. This crisis presents an opportunity to reinvent our library system (and our city) as a more tech-savvy and flexible organization that responds to the changing needs of the citizens of New Orleans — if our administration and city government give us the resources and trust to do so. So far, they have lacked the imagination to build a true “City of Yes” or to listen to those of us with the most experience and investment in New Orleans, especially city workers.
Now, Mayor Cantrell and CAO Montano, with the complicity of the City Council, are attempting to kill the library’s independent millage, rolling it into a larger city millage that will cut 40% of the library system’s budget while siphoning our designated tax funds into unspecified “economic development” projects. If this proposal to combine dedicated millages succeeds, they will dole out tax funds to the library, but only what they think we need, and only as long as we comply with their agenda for us and for the City.
Make no mistake – this cut isn’t because the library is overfunded, but because the library has access to dedicated tax funds that the City can’t easily access. These are funds that the citizens of New Orleans overwhelmingly voted to dedicate to the library in 1987 and 2015. The Mayor’s ballot proposal is demanding you say that your own judgement about where your money should go was wrong, that the Mayor and CAO know better how to spend your tax dollars. At meetings last month, City Council members ignored over 900 public comments, most saying “we want our money to go to the library, don’t do this” in order to approve this proposal. Many public comments invoked the global demands of the BLM movement and protests, reminding Councilmembers that the public has called for cuts to the New Orleans Police Department, not the library system. If the proposal passes the Bond Commission, it will be on the ballot December 5, 2020 and your only option will be to VOTE NO to the proposal to kill the library’s dedicated millage. After the public defeats the Mayor’s agenda, we will seek to encourage her to put a true millage renewal on the ballot in 2021.
There is so much we can do before December 5th – contact your Councilmember, the Mayor and CAO and tell them you do not support this proposal to kill the library’s independent millage. Promise everyone you contact that you won’t vote to re-elect them if they support this rampant misappropriation of both city funds and public trust. When you tell others about what they’re attempting, make sure to point out that this is about controlling tax funds the public designated to specific departments, because that’s the part they’re counting on the public not to recognize. They’re using the cover of the COVID-19 pandemic to talk about austerity and budget shortfalls, but this combined millage was proposed to the City Council in 2019, before COVID-19 had affected the City. Their agenda is to kill the dedicated budget of one of the only institutions in New Orleans that exists only to serve the people of New Orleans – each and every one.
They’re coming for the library’s budget now, but it won’t stop there. Please join us. You can email us nolacityworkers@gmail.com and follow our fight on Facebook at facebook.com/cityworkersnola
As education workers and students all across Louisiana are embarking on this unique school year, we have all been confronted by the sad, devastating, and maddening realities of teaching in 2020. After years of our education system experiencing neglect, poor leadership, and inequitable investment resulting from the disastrous “school choice” and charter movement, many of us are truly suffering and struggling to teach and to learn in the time of Covid-19.
In just a couple weeks of being back in the classroom, the digital divide that exists throughout the Greater New Orleans area has never been more evident. Many of my kids do not have reliable internet access in their homes. This has resulted in students struggling to simply log on to our virtual classrooms. If they are lucky enough to be able to, many of them find themselves only getting removed several times throughout the class due to the lack of connectivity. As I am expected to teach from my brick and mortar building, I am also at the mercy of our district’s poor technology infrastructure and have been kicked out of my own classroom on several occasions due to a “poor connection.”
In my Social Studies classroom, where discussion, laughter, and peer-to-peer engagement is the norm, this year we are all just trying to “make it.” “Make it” through the virtual learning model while dealing with sub-standard technology access and, for the kids who are physically in the buildings, the ever-present reality that we can be infected at any moment from Covid-19. Our school buildings are old, filled with mold, falling apart, and do not have proper ventilation. Having faulty temperature guns pointed to our foreheads as we enter our campuses each day does not provide any of us with a sense of comfort.
Our kids and colleagues are frustrated, stressed out and overworked. Teaching students both virtually and physically is a juggling act that is not ideal for even the most seasoned educator. Between creating new lessons to accommodate the virtual system, to ensuring that we are providing digital feedback to every student on every assignment, our work hours have only continued to increase.
The joy of teaching is all but gone this year. I hope it will come back at some point. The frustration and anxiety that I and many others feel over the conditions briefly described here is just further proof that Covid-19 has lifted the veil on the inequities we experience as public education workers and students across Greater New Orleans.
Angola Inmate Targeted for Organizing to Contain COVID-19
Quierza Lewis (center) with family.
by Z Petrosian
As COVID-19 infected and killed men at Louisiana State Penitentiary in Angola, Quierza Lewis knew he had to do something to protect himself and other inmates. Denied adequate testing, proper medical care, PPE, sanitizer, and unable to physically distance, Lewis and two other inmates began to seek legal advice and discuss the possibility of a peaceful protest aimed at improving living conditions at the prison.
For this organizing, Quierza was charged with the intent to initiate a work stoppage and moved to solitary confinement. In an even more absurd move, Angola officials charged him with bribery, citing a GoFundMe a friend set up to help with his case. Quierza was denied a lawyer to fight these charges.
“I just couldn’t let them railroad Quierza like that,” said Tanisha Lewis, Quierza’s older sister. Taking matters into their own hands, Tanisha was joined by other activists in contacting the prison on Quierza’s behalf: “I let them know that the calling wasn’t going to stop.” As more people called and help publicize the situation, the prison was pressured into dropping the bribery charge, and on September 14, Quierza was sent back to general population after 34 days in solitary.
Pandemic conditions at Angola warrant immediate action
The organizing Quierza and the two other inmates were trying to initiate is desperately needed at Angola where COVID-19 has sickened hundreds and claimed the lives of at least 16 inmates and 3 staff. “They know they are not doing what they need to,” Tanisha remarked. “They hate that the inmates are getting [that information] out.”
Still, as illnesses and deaths mount, the Department of Corrections itself claims they have only tested 1,365 inmates, roughly one quarter Angola’s incarcerated population of around 5,500.
Making matters worse, Angola inmates generally have to pay for their own medical care. Though these fees have been waived during the pandemic, Quierza, who suffers from asthma, has been unable to obtain an inhaler. Frequent punitive chemical sprays in solitary aggravated his condition, and the next call to action is to advocate for Quierza’s access to an inhaler.
“We are fighting for him.”
Tanisha is worried but steadfastly fighting for her brother: “My mom died fighting for her baby. She died fighting for him, and I’ve gotta continue.” That fight began nearly 16 years ago when Quierza, then 25, was convicted of cocaine distribution by a non-unanimous jury relying on testimony that three co-defendants gave in exchange for lighter charges. Quierza was sentenced to life without parole even though no drugs or paraphernalia were found on him or in his home.
Quierza Lewis is one of thousands of incarcerated people who have made efforts to organize behind bars to fight for their lives in the face of the pandemic and the broader system of injustice. When their jailers try to silence their voices, those on the outside must make them heard because none of us is free while our siblings remain in cages. For Quierza and all other non-violent offenders, we demand the state #FreeThemAll!
Know the facts. Beware of phony eviction notices, harassment, fees, and lying landlords.
Eviction Court reopens October 5th.
Courts will be demanding CDC declaration and proof.
The CDC declaration is a big problem. It makes us swear we will pay all back rent and fees on January 1st. It must be downloaded, filled out, copied, and served to your landlord. The court says we will need proof.
We are fighting against this unnecessary obstacle and want a clear-cut ban on evictions and foreclosures and a ban on back rent or federal relief to pay it. But you may need the form to stop an eviction. We have copies of the declaration, just give the Louisiana Movement for Workers Councils a call at (504)-671-7853.
Trump sides with pharmaceutical companies and private profit instead of world’s people.
by Jennifer Lin
Trump has announced that the US won’t participate in the WHO-backed COVID-19 Vaccine Global Access Facility (COVAX), a global initiative of 156 countries working together to develop a safe and effective Covid-19 vaccine and distribute it globally. Trump has already withdrawn funding from the WHO, which he falsely accuses of being controlled by China.
While international organizations including the WHO have praised China for its pandemic response and for assisting countries worldwide in curbing the pandemic, Trump insists on blaming China for Covid-19 in order to distract us from just how horrible the situation is in the US. Trump, who doesn’t believe in wearing masks and wants everyone to go back to work even though 200,000+ people in the US have died from Covid-19, once again shows he has zero commitment to public health.
Rather than being on the side of the people, Trump and his cronies are siding with pharmaceutical companies that have been profiting off the pandemic. One of these companies, Gilead, was given $99 million of US taxpayer money to develop remdesivir, a potential treatment for Covid-19. Gilead plans to sell remdesivir at $3120 per patient.
Pharmaceutical companies like Gilead see the pandemic as a giant cash cow, where the people fund research and development for lifesaving resources that Big Pharma hoards to secure billion-dollar profits. That’s why pharmaceutical companies are racing to produce vaccines as part of Trump’s Operation Warp Speed, which aims to sell vaccines by January 2021.
The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) has already granted companies like Johnson & Johnson, Moderna, AstraZeneca, and Pfizer over 6 billion of our tax dollars to develop vaccines. When he was head of Eli Lilly, current HHS Secretary Alex Azar tripled the price of insulin. When asked if HHS plans to make COVID-19 vaccines affordable for all, he replied, “We would want to ensure that we’d work to make it affordable, but we can’t control that price because we need the private sector to invest.” In other words, the U.S. ruling class sees healthcare as nothing but a commodity and is willing to let people die so the rich can profit.
Trump is continuing with the same policy of mass murder we’ve seen since the pandemic began. Corporations have received bailouts totaling $500 billion while workers have lost their livelihoods and lives because of cuts to Social Security, Medicaid, and SNAP, mass unemployment, evictions, and being forced to return to unsafe jobs. How will we workers be expected to pay whatever outrageous prices Big Pharma charges for a vaccine when we’re already bankrupt trying to stay alive?
The WHO says another $35 billion will be needed for COVAX to succeed. Trump’s decision not to join this global effort is a threat not to just our safety, but to the safety of people worldwide. The only way out of the pandemic requires countries working together to develop a vaccine that everyone has equal access to, with an emphasis on protecting the most vulnerable populations. Countries like Cuba and China understand this; they are committed to offering vaccines to other countries rather than hoarding them for profit. We must oppose U.S. capitalists by championing global solidarity and organizing to secure healthcare as a right.
There is a sense of impending doom hanging over the company. The fourth positive COVID test sends rumors through the staff, but there’s no word from management except to a select few. No one is given a chance to decide for themselves whether they’ve been exposed.
Everyone is confused and upset: “Why are they making us come in when it’s not safe? Why won’t they let us work from home? Who’s going to be next?”
The lack of information only makes the terror worse. The bosses want the company to remain open no matter what danger it brings to workers. The measures taken to protect the workers are the bare minimum and clearly not adequate. When someone gets sick, the managers insist the exposure didn’t happen at the company. “We don’t know what they do in their free time” is a mantra they repeat, as if it will wash the blood off their hands.
“This is the new normal,” they claim, despite many other countries getting the pandemic under control. “We’re following the guidelines,” they insist, despite multiple people being sick.
They pass the blame onto workers while putting a metaphorical gun to our head, forcing us to work or be fired. As eviction courts reopen and the unemployment rate skyrockets, the alternative is to find another job in a dead job market or risk quitting and becoming homeless.
They twist every word to keep the company open. They ignore the fact that the guidelines have failed to stop the pandemic, that there are more than a thousand deaths per day around the country. They have the ability to make the workers safer, but they refuse, all in the name of making money. They don’t care that their excuses don’t make sense. To call them “irresponsible” is to suggest they don’t know exactly what they’re doing. They have prioritized profits over people.
Workers have little choice, unless we’re organized. In many places, management has kept people isolated, disorganized, and terrified of causing trouble. Throughout the city, the infection rate increases as workers are forced into danger. Workers feel powerless to stand up for themselves against manipulative bosses. But the truth is, the bosses are scared. They got a glimpse of what the world would look like if workers took back their power, organized, and refused to work when the pandemic forced them to shut down initially. They have called people back in a desperate attempt to save their businesses, knowing that if we unite and fight back, there’s nothing they can do.
