CHICAGO, November 24—Over 35 multiracial workers and community members braved the wind and the rain today to protest the bosses’ racist proposal to close Mercy Hospital. Members of the communist Progressive Labor Party (PLP) spread revolutionary politics to help build the struggle against this racist attack. While distributing CHALLENGE and making conversation with workers, PLP asserted that a health industry under capitalism will always sacrifice workers’ lives for profit.
Workers around the world are facing another deadly surge in coronavirus cases, with thousands dying daily. Despite this, the billion-dollar Trinity Health system is looking to shut down this safety-net hospital whose patients are 72 percent Black and Latin.
We shouldn’t be surprised that the racist and sexist bosses want to close a hospital during a pandemic; they choose their profits over workers’ lives every day. That’s the logic of capitalism. But we should be angry over these attacks and organize a mass, militant fightback.
The international PLP is committed not just to keeping Mercy Hospital open, but building a communist revolution to destroy this racist capitalist system that has no regard for our lives. We fight for a world where workers run society collectively in our own interests, and where pandemics, racist police terror, unemployment and evictions are relics of the past.
We are who we need!
What had been promoted as a rally and car caravan by various unions was little more than a press conference. Religious leaders and politicians blew a lot of hot air for the media under a protected canopy while workers huddled in the rain.
Lifelong misleader Jesse Jackson Sr never one to refuse a photo opportunity – gave his standard hollow speech, then jumped in his truck to drive away. Likely he didn’t want to be called out on his opportunism, like when antiracist rebels in Ferguson, Missouri ran him out of town after he tried to quash the fightback there! As workers we must not be blinded by the bosses’ manipulation of identity politics and race. A Black manager of oppression is still a manager of oppression.
While the misleaders babbled on, PLP members talked with other workers about keeping Mercy open. We distributed copies of CHALLENGE newspaper, along with a Party flyer specifically about Mercy and the pandemic.
Workers agreed that the fight needed to grow, not just to include more healthcare workers, but also other workers and students. Many agreed that an attack on any worker is an attack on all workers.
Those of us in PLP here have been organizing to make this a bigger campaign in our other mass organizations and workplaces. We have given speeches, gotten signatures for petitions, and testified at the state review board that ultimately will decide whether the hospital can close.
We build this fight because ultimately it’s the masses of workers and students that move society forward, not politicians. Throughout this pandemic, it’s been the workers in hospitals, transport, and other industries who have saved workers’ lives and kept society from collapsing. Why do we need to accept living under these capitalist bosses’ awful system when we clearly have the interest and ability to run a far better society on our own?
Capitalist “healthcare” will never meet workers’ needs
Right on Trinity Health website’s main page, there’s a link to a video where CEO Mike Slubowski states, “eliminating racism is essential to our Mission.” Meanwhile, his company threatens to close a hospital in a city where the majority of Covid-19 deaths have been Black and Latin workers.
In fact, the bosses have treated hospitals and clinics as places of profit for decades. This has led to a major reduction in overall hospital beds and staff (Truthout, 3/31). In mostly Black and Latin working-class neighborhoods and rural areas, hospitals were closing at a rate of almost 30 per year prior to the pandemic (Bloomberg, 8/21/18). The bosses’ racist cost-cutting guaranteed that when disaster eventually struck, the system was overwhelmed and workers died unnecessarily.
Under capitalism, racist and sexist inequalities in workers’ health prevail . Racist and sexist unemployment and toxic pollution lead to average life expectancies that are at least four years less for Black workers than white workers in the U.S. (The Balance, 3/8/19).
These racist inequalities serve as the tip of the spear to then attack and drag down the standard of health for all workers. They can only be fought by mass, multiracial, working-class unity, ultimately with the goal of crushing capitalism and replacing it with a communist society that’s organized to put our needs first.
A revolutionary shot in the arm
As the pandemic rages on, the struggle over Mercy Hospital is critical. If we workers can keep it open, it’ll be a shot in the arm to lead more class struggle to improve all workers’ lives. And as communists in PLP, we can win more workers to understanding that this system will never serve our needs, and that it will take a revolution to create one that will. Save Mercy Hospital! Join PLP!