In the 1940s, the Communist Party of India (Marxist) started a movement to address people’s lack of access to healthcare, especially in rural areas. The first People’s Polyclinic (‘Praja Vaidyasala’) in Nellore was founded on the principle that anyone who needs treatment should be treated, regardless of their ability to pay. The Nellore People’s Polyclinic (PPC) trains doctors and volunteers to provide healthcare to peasants, agricultural workers, and the rural poor, who lack access to healthcare and cannot afford to travel to urban areas for care. The Nellore PPC inspired many more people in the communist movement to start their own polyclinics. Communist polyclinics in India now provide low-cost or free healthcare to thousands of people every day, saving lives that would otherwise be lost to the private healthcare system. The U.S. could use a movement like this. The private healthcare system in the U.S. has left thousands of uninsured, poor, houseless, Black, and Brown people without access to what could be lifesaving medical care. COVID-19 has only made these disparities worse and led to more preventable deaths. We must stand up and say, “Healthcare for the people, not for profit!”
On 2nd Anniversary of People’s Uprising, Sudanese Push Back Against Government Betrayals
On December 19, tens of thousands took to the streets in Sudan’s capital of Khartoum and nearby city Umm Durman on the second anniversary of the Sudan’s December 2018 evolution, which resulted in the removal and criminal prosecution of the Sudanese dictator Omar al-Bashir in 2019. Less than a week later, the streets were filled again following the murder of yet another young activist at the hands of the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), a militia backed by the transitional government. Following this latest assassination, the Sudanese Professionals Association (SPA), a trade union coalition, launched the “Know Your Right” campaign to demand the dissolution of the RSF.
The right wing and the military have formed an alliance in opposition to leftist, union, and people’s forces. Demonstrators want power to be returned to civilian forces and are calling out the slow pace of change following the Revolution and the ruling government’s betrayals. On January 6, the transitional government signed the Zionist “Abraham Accords,” which are debt-forgiveness bribes by the U.S. and World Bank in exchange for Sudan ‘normalizing’ relations with apartheid Israel at the expense of the Palestinian people. Progressive activists as well as political parties within Sudan mobilized to reject the government’s position.
Download the January 2021 Issue of Workers Voice
A Worker Goes to the State Capitol
by Caleb Wassell
On December 18th, I visited the Louisiana state capitol building in Baton Rouge for the first time. The visit was equal parts nauseating and unsettling.
There are about a million steps that lead up to the face of a jutting tower. Carved into the stone walls of the Capitol building are tributes to Louisiana’s most depraved genocidal maniacs and defenders of white supremacy: DeSoto, Claiborne, Bienville, Iberville, Jackson, and E D White. Inside it’s all marble and shiny wood with gold handrails and giant chandeliers. In these gold encrusted chambers, politicians have been quietly defunding the people for decades.
Incarcerated people are the only ones doing any real work in the building. “CORRECTIONS” is boldly marked across the shoulders of the workers’ gray jumpsuits. They’re forced to serve food and clean up after politicians and corporate lobbyists who meet over lunch to scheme against the people of Louisiana.
I learned that you are safer from COVID exposure in your average Walmart than on the floor of the state capitol, as there is no mask mandate. A Black lawmaker wearing a mask and face shield told us as much after the session adjourned. She lost her husband to the disease this year. Another representative that was with her told us that her district suffers “repercussions” when she raises objections or asks too many questions.
The language of the day’s proceedings is boring and legalistic. It’s hard to track what’s really going on through all the jargon. This is by design. I watched millions of dollars of our money get moved around in minutes. Incredibly, public comment was not allowed until the end of session, after the agenda items were already voted on. Online there was an email address to submit comments for those who can’t make the meeting in person. These comments were never read or mentioned. At the seat of our state’s “democratic” government, the people’s voice can barely be heard.
Louisiana Movement for Workers Councils Tells Louisiana Legislature: Bail Out the People!
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!
Pandemic Relief Showered on Anti-LGBTQ Orgs
by Sally Jane Black
The Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) gave $4.3 million to anti-LGBTQ and anti-abortion organizations, including American College of Pediatricians, American Family Association, Center for Family and Human Rights, Church Militant/St. Michael’s Media, Liberty Counsel, Pacific Justice Institute and Ruth Institute.
The American Family Association, which targets not only LGBTQ people, but also women and non-Christians, received $1.4 million alone. They have 200 radio stations across the country that tout their violent and divisive ideology. The Dr. James Dobson Family Institute, which received over $600,000, was foudned and named after a demagogue who promotes child abuse.
These organizations are funded by the same capitalists, such as the Koch Brothers and the DeVos family, that are behind the anti-abortion and anti-LGBTQ laws that have swept through state legislatures in the last few years. Their goal is to pit people in the working class against one another, misusing religious freedom to make religious workers and LGBTQ people blame each other for their oppression instead of the capitalists. The use of PPP loans to fund these hate groups during the pandemic while millions of workers have lost their jobs is not an accident, but the priorities of the super-rich.
These right-wing organizations should be shut down and their leaders jailed, not funded by money that should be spent supporting workers during these crises.
Racism in Healthcare: A Disease We Must Eradicate!
“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.
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!
FRANCE: Following Massive Protests, France Withdraws ‘Security’ Bill (International Briefs)
More than half a million people across France took to the streets to protest of the so-called Global Security Bill, which was passed in late November. The bill would have forbidden the publication of images where a police officer can be identified and expanded the ability of the “security forces” to film ordinary citizens without their consent using bodycams and drones. Although the bill has been withdrawn as of December, right wing lawmakers say they will return with a new version.
Images of police brutality particularly against Muslims, Black people, and migrants in France have galvanized opposition to President Macron’s repressive, racist, and anti-worker policies. In addition to the ‘security’ bill, Macron has promoted a bill called Supporting Republican Principles. THis bill seeks further restrictions of Muslim life by banning home-schooling, expanding surveillance of Muslims, and subjecting publicly funded organizations to tests of their French nationalism. Protesters must stay in the streets to ensure this racist bill is also withdrawn.
INDIA: Indian Farmers Surround Delhi in Protest of Pro-Corporate Laws (International Briefs)
On November 26, over 500 farmer’s organizations cutting across religion and caste came together to begin a nationwide struggle against the right wing BJP government’s anti-farmer, pro-corporate Farm Acts. These laws would condemn millions in India to poverty and hunger by allowing domestic and foreign corporations total control over Indian agricultural production as well as the ability to hoard and sell essential food stuffs on the black market to maximize corporate profits.
More than sixty percent of Indians are agricultural workers. Their struggle has been joined by labor unions, students, women, youth, workers, and peasants. Recently, on December 30, the Center of Indian Trade Unions (CITU) held a countrywide strike at over 100,000 workplaces.
This is the longest and most powerful farmers’ protest in India’s history. This militant struggle has been brutally repressed by government forces who have already killed more than 60 people. But the farmers are steadfast. Thousands have camped out for weeks on the outskirts of Delhi and plan to hold a parade into Delhi on January 26 if the government does not address their demands, including the total withdrawal of the Farm Acts and provision of pandemic relief.
Colombian People Charge U.S. Puppet Government with Mass Murder
by Adam Pedesclaux
On September 9, 2020, the Colombian police brutally murdered father and engineer Javier Ordonez on the street for violating a coronavirus curfew. They tased and beat him with clubs as he lay pinned on the ground, begging them to stop. At the hospital, Javier was pronounced dead.
Like the protests that erupted after the death of George Floyd, the people of Colombia had had enough. While the people were on the streets denouncing the fascist government of Ivan Duque Marquez, the police shot live rounds into the crowds, injuring many and killing several. The police continued to terrorize citizens throughout the month, shooting people down in the street, even going as far as to throw bombs at people and into open windows. At one point, the military killed a trans woman in a moving car, ignoring her lover begging for an explanation as to why they would do such a monstrous thing.
As dead protesters were being buried, spineless coward Ivan Duque commended the police for their work and even visited the police station.
For those unfamiliar with Colombia, such a story that parallels that of our own in America may come as a surprise. Being an Amerikkkan puppet state comes with all the racism, misogyny and homophobia that the U.S. has. The two governments work hand in hand to run the dehumanizing capitalist machine that has run people into the ground for short term gain for the wealthy in both countries, from massacring over a thousand striking banana harvesters to stealing land from working class people and having one of the largest disparities in land ownership between the rich and the poor. It only makes sense then that the people who get tired of the bullshit pick up rifles and fight against the enemy that kills them. Therefore, the people created guerrilla militias such as the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) and the National Liberation Army (ELN), which would survive in the jungles while fighting the state.
After many years of fighting a desperate war against the state, the guerrillas were promised peace in a deal brokered by Hugo Chavez and Cuba. In 2016, the deal came with agreements for certain requirements to be met, such as honoring the victims of the war between factions as well as reparation. One of the major factors of the agreement, however, was the disarming of FARC. With this came an agreement of peace in Colombia and the promise of no more violence that both sides were supposed to adhere to.
Fast forward four years and the Colombian state is still enacting violence against working people. Thousands of former FARC members and activists, trade unionists, women’s and community group members have been killed by the government and government sponsored paramilitaries while the capitalist machine goes on. The recent rampage by the police left dozens of people dead.
It is up to the Colombian people to drive their struggle forward, but it is up to us in the U.S. to stop the boot that crushes all in its wake. As working people, we must stand up to all oppression if the death and despair is to stop.