ATLANTA, November 8—The annual American Public Health Association (APHA) convention in Atlanta, which drew 12,000 attendees, was again a hotbed of struggle over racism. Led by members of Progressive Labor Party (PLP) and many young public health students and workers, the fight to pass two anti-racist resolutions became headline news.
Five Fightbacks and Counting
One resolution, proposed for the fifth time, called upon the United Nations to take responsibility for causing the massive cholera epidemic in Haiti, and also to take action and pay for public health and sanitation measures to stop it. This resolution had been passed in 2016 by a 94 percent margin, but it was for one year and the goal this year was to fight for it to be a permanent policy.
Despite the overwhelming support by workers last year, the policy board again gave it a negative rating this year. Every year these policy arbiters make new and often contradictory demands for changes to the resolution, but ultimately could never be satisfied because their disagreements are actually political. The racist reality is that they don’t care about workers’ lives in Haiti, and the APHA leadership doesn’t want to ruffle the UN.
Last year another resolution, to declare racist police violence a public health problem, was also passed temporarily, despite a negative review from the APHA leaders. They were forced to suspend their own rules to avoid a floor fight. The arbiters made suggestions for changes, all of which were answered by the ten young authors of the resolution, but they still rejected the end product.
Exposing Racist Hypocrisy
At a well-attended hearing open to all, 95 percent were strongly in favor of the resolution. Still, members of the Medical Care section who had endorsed both resolutions still raised certain objections to the resolution. One member agreed with the statement that “police are agents of social control” but said “you can’t say that.” The PLP member said it was the truth and we should say what is true.
Before the final vote about 75 members demonstrated loudly in front of the convention center, with chants such as “No APHA silence in the face of police violence.” Many then entered the hearing room as the debate proceeded. But this chance to call out the police and seriously attack racism was too much for the timid APHA leaders, who like to maintain cozy relations with Democratic politicians and law enforcement. They cut off debate and engineered a defeat by conservative delegates and many “liberals” who were afraid to take a stand against the police.
Young Anti-Racists Undaunted
Ten young public health students who co-authored the resolutions also presented sessions on police violence, racism, and on the conditions in Haiti. They attended other sessions where they leafleted and raised questions. The defeat did not discourage them because they realized that they had raised the issue of racism with thousands and exposed the cowardice and hypocrisy of the APHA leadership.
PLP members participated actively in writing these resolutions and building the struggle around them. In addition, we distributed 1,000 fliers which supported the resolutions but also explained that equitable and excellent health care is impossible under capitalism, because of the constant drive for profit in this system. We gave out CHALLENGE and held our annual breakfast to discuss our politics, our history of activity in APHA for decades past, and discuss the focus for next year. In many sessions we spoke from the floor about racism and capitalism. In so doing we cemented relationships with our young co-authors and made several new contacts.
Capitalist Healthcare Will Always Fail Working class
The APHA is a typical liberal organization, that claims to represent the interests of its members and be genuinely concerned about the public good. However, the leadership is really most concerned about maintaining its status and funding within the capitalist structure of the U.S. Thus they do not speak up in public for even such reformist measures as single payer health care, which is the official policy, and refuse to deal with such touchy issues as racism. PLP, on the other hand, understands that capitalism only cares about working people as a means to make profits. Maximizing the health and health care of workers cannot be a reality under capitalism, because that cost comes out of profits. Capitalist healthcare is set up to give the minimum needed to keep workers working, if that. What capitalism does do is build racism in order to super-exploit black, Latin and immigrant workers and keep us divided against one another, instead of fighting back against this murderous system. Join PLP and smash the divisions of capitalism.