CHICAGO, April 7—Progressive Labor Party (PLP) joined forces with over one hundred antiracist workers for a caravan protest outside of Cook County Jail. Workers are demanding that the Democrat bosses of Chicago free incarcerated workers who are being exposed to COVID-19 at an alarming rate. The liberal misleadership of Chicago now has the blood of three incarcerated workers who have died from COVID-19 at Cook County Jail on their hands.
The disgusting and racist conditions inside of the jail, where incarcerated workers can’t physically distance themselves in the overcrowded facility, have turned it into the number one hotspot in the country for the spread of Covid-19. The population of the jail, mostly Black and Latin workers—many detained for non-violent offenses or being unable to make bail—is the direct result of decades of racist policy by the city’s liberal bosses, and the racist nature of incarceration and capitalism overall.
Capitalism’s only answer for billions of the world’s workers is to lock us up and let many of us die. The liberal capitalist bosses will never solve the problems they created. As they lie, incarcerate and look after their businesses, it is workers everywhere that are putting their lives at risk for each other. That’s a glimpse of a communist society and workers’ power, the only way we can gain any real safety from racist incarceration and deadly pandemics.
Antiracists in a caravan
An hour before the caravan was scheduled to begin, we met in a nearby grocery store parking lot to prepare. Along with members of a pro-working class organization, we collectively made a plan on the route we would take and who would be contact persons if our vehicles got separated or if the racist cops started to make any arrests.We also decorated our vehicles with antiracist signs and revolutionary messages in English and Spanish, such as “Racism Means Fight Back!” and “Communism is the Cure.” We distributed surgical and N95 masks to those who needed them, while others provided water. Most importantly, we distributed out CHALLENGE to arm our class about the racist nature of the pandemic and the importance of a fighting back.
When we arrived in front of the jail, there were already dozens of vehicles with fighters from other organizations, circling in front of the racist concentration camp. Everyone was blowing their horns, and some were giving speeches from megaphones inside their cars. Others even braved to get on foot to wave antiracist signs to workers and get out fliers.
The cops were caught off guard and unable to stop the flow of workers’ power and block our message. We must keep finding creative ways like this physically distant protest to put the bosses on blast in front of other workers. This makes it harder and harder for them to keep hiding the racist time bomb of infection that exists right now in all jails.
Liberal bosses filled jails, won’t empty them
The racist, unhealthy conditions at Cook County Jail have been long in the making. The jail is the largest single-site jail in the United States, keeping anywhere from 4000 to 5000 workers locked up daily. It is also one of the largest mental health facilities in the country, with at least a third of the incarcerated workers diagnosed with a mental illness (Mother Jones, 1/8/19). Many of these workers were incarcerated after former Mayor Rahm Emanuel (formerly Obama’s Chief of Staff) led the charge to close half the city’s mental health clinics in 2012.
With at least 350 cases of Covid-19 traced back to the jail, it’s the largest known source of infections in the U.S. (NYT, 4/8). Currently at least 300 incarcerated workers and over 200 jail staff have tested positive, with at least three confirmed deaths (NBC Chicago, 4/12). Even worse, the city just filed a suit to actively block steps toward decarceration that would save lives (chicagobond.org).
Many well-intentioned organizers in the city got behind Black State’s Attorney Kim Foxx in her campaign to get elected on a platform of criminal justice reform, but predictably she has done little. She is following new racist Mayor Lori Lightfoot claiming to represent “change” in the city but in fact representing the same liberal status quo that is guaranteeing Black and Latin workers suffer most during this pandemic.
Abolish racist incarceration with communism
Capitalism can never provide for all of the world’s workers, so it has to resort to incarceration for social control and a way to super-exploit workers for labor. These attacks fall hardest on Black and Latin workers, who make up the majority of the two million-plus inmates locked up in this racist country.
As communists, our goal is to smash this profit system and racist incarceration completely. Workers around the world will be rehabilitated, not incarcerated, and we will prioritize the public health of the masses at all costs. A communist future is the healthiest future to fight for! Join PLP!

MEXICO, April 9—Under capitalism, workers’ health is important as long as they can be exploited. “Workers: you are on your own.” That is the bosses’ plan of action during this pandemic. Their actions will lead to many preventable deaths from a disease that they refuse to diagnose or from starvation because of the economic devastation. This capitalist system is unfit for the workers and doesn’t deserve to exist.
Abandoned healthcare system
After the economic crisis in the 80s, because of the depreciation of its currency due to the nationalization of the banks in 1982, the Mexican government, in order to deal with the crisis, acquired loans with the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund. One of these loans demanded the dismantling of the State’s health services, to implement a system of private health services. Since the 80s, there has been little money put into the healthcare system.
There are 250 abandoned public hospitals. In the last 36 years, deteriorating infrastructure and lack of pro-health policies have lead to an increase in diabetes, heart problems, cancer and more.
Covid-19 unmasks capitalist disregard
Like in other parts of the world, Covid-19 has unmasked the abandonment and inequality of healthcare. While public health care for the masses is nonexistent, healthcare is plenty for who can afford it. The places with the highest number of registered infections are Mexico city, the state of Mexico, Baja California, Sinaloa, Quintana Roo, Puebla and Jalisco.
The health authorities reported 3,181 registered cases of coronavirus and 174 deaths in the first weeks of April, but this is only a representative sample. For each case, there could be eight to 12 more people infected, which means 26,000 cases with Covid-19 (El Universal, 4/8).
Many hospitals are living in this emergency due to the chronic underfunding. In cities like Tijuana and Mexicali in Baja California, the rate of infection and deaths has grown immensely. Doctors are warning in the next weeks, with the increase in infections, the hospitals will collapse. Note that these two cities have the highest concentration of migrants waiting to cross the border.
Healthcare workers protest for protection
The protests of doctors and nurses throughout the country have not stopped. From Baja California to Chiapas, they are demanding protective equipment so they can treat patients. Scores have rallied in Mexico City.
The Mexican Association of Doctors and Residents of April said that 8 of 10 doctors do not have N95 masks, more than half did not have protective goggles and around 30 percent did not have acrylic masks (El Pais, 4/8). There is also the lack of trained staff to face this emergency. The collapse of hospitals and an increase in deaths was preventable.
With a precarious economy where 54 percent of the working population are in the informal sector and don’t have access to social security, the only alternative will be broken public health infrastructure (El Pais, 4/8).
In Mexico City, before the declaration of a national emergency, we had lost 64,000 jobs. and between March 13 and April 6, 346,800 jobs were lost. Also, many workers were forced to accept lower salaries in order to keep their jobs. Many workers who lost their jobs in the formal sector took jobs in supermarkets and delivery services.
AMLO serves big business
If we can see that the working class has been affected the most by this pandemic, so can the labor department. The business coordinating council has requested that the president Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador (AMLO) cut their taxes and add money for their sector, so businesses don’t go under. AMLO refused, saying that his government prioritizes the needs of the poorest population, and a “rescue” of that magnitude will lead to more loans from the IMF. This liberal misleader’s lies knows no bounds. This is the same president that underplayed the pandemic in the first place.
But to be honest, AMLO’s strategy is to rely on the businesses that have always supported him: Carlos Slim from Grupo Carso; Alberto Bailleres, BAL; and Germán Larrea, Grupo México, who have gotten land and projects throughout the country (El Pais, 4/8).
PLP serves workers
The PLP here continues to function. We read and share DESAFIO with co-workers online while maintaining relationships with our base. Our strategy to combat this crisis, we must talk to our base, friends, family, co-workers, developing a communist conscience by sharing real information to create our own analysis. CHALLENGE is the tool that help us see experiences from workers around the world and know that we are all living the same experience; that we are one international working class; that the only way we can change the world is building a revolutionary movement to destroy capitalism and build a dictatorship of the working class.

After a month of school closures due to Covid-19, capitalist education is increasingly exposed as an exercise in racist neglect, where sowing obedience and using grades to sort our children into ‘winners and losers’ are the goals, not learning.
Students, parents and education workers today must reject this regime of schooling.  Now is the time to provide the youth of the working class with an emancipatory and class-conscious education.  Communist teachers in Progressive Labor Party (PLP) are fighting to be at the forefront of such an effort.
Across all subject areas let’s fight for an understanding of this crisis through a more class-conscious program of science, math, history and language so that our young people and their families can see by our example that only we, the working class, hold the key to a healthier future – communism.  
The response of the bosses’ school systems to Covid-19 is a mounting racist disaster.  Segregation and imperialism funnel the worst attacks toward the most exploited members of our class.  By March 4, schools in 188 countries were closed, impacting 1.5 billion students (Washington Post, 4/6), over 90 percent of the world’s students.   
The lost time and learning that working class youth are suffering will never be made up. Like those uncounted dying at home in NYC (NYT, 4/10), the losses suffered by the children of our class will never be fully accounted for.  Worldwide, many of our class brothers and sisters who are refugees and internally displaced persons (especially teenage girls who attend school at lower rates than boys) will never return to school (UNESCO.org, 4/10).
Even as their education system, like their health care system has collapsed, the bosses still seek to sort children into categories that will shape their lives. In a survey of education bosses from 84 countries, 22 replied that their educational systems were moving forward with high-stakes exams as planned, while 11 canceled them and 23 moved forward with modified/online versions.  Population sorting remains an essential function of capitalist schooling.
Bosses abandon working class children
In the Los Angeles Unified School District schools were closed with no provision made for any type of distance learning to be put in place, and PLP is organizing teachers to serve the working class in the face of the bosses’ racist neglect.
Instead of figuring out how to give each student a chance to learn, the ruling class in Philadelphia cynically cancelled distance learning citing ‘equity concerns’ (Philadelphia Tribune, 3/18).  Posing as anti-racists, liberal school bosses in Boston and the Seattle area have made similar racist decisions (Time, 3/15), cutting off access which disproportionately affect working class youth.  
In New York City, the viral epicenter of decaying U.S. capitalism, the ruling class has adopted a program of laptop distribution and shipment of iPads by mail but only AFTER leaving the schools open so long that known viral hotspots developed in school buildings across the city (Gothamist.com, 3/29).  A determined cover-up of the spread of Covid-19 in schools is underway.  Meanwhile, the technology shipment has failed to reach some 240,000 students (DeBlasio press conference, 4/11).  Since closure we have seen anti-student principals pressure teachers to simply pump out assignments, while making ZERO effort to see how students are actually doing during this crisis.  All teachers, especially newer teachers with fewer job protections, must turn to the working class by reaching out to students and parents to ensure that schoolwork does not become a new source of oppression and stress.  
The bosses failed system tries to shift blame to parents
The vast majority of our students are Black and Latin youth. A survey generated by PLP teachers shows that their obligations to care for younger siblings have grown, that many live-in cramped apartments and take turns on a single laptop over weak internet service with no good quiet place to work.  A provider’s job loss haunts nearly half our students, while the other half with a parent still working endure the stress of seeing their mother or father leave home and risk exposure daily in order to earn their pay.
Assignments related to what is happening all around us and which point to ways students, parents and teachers can fight our way through this crisis together will help all of us.
High school student engagement with distance learning in NYC has declined every week, reflecting mass discontent with canned lessons not relevant to the urgent problems of the present.  For younger students stuck at home, the situation is no better.  Workers must reject hollow calls for ‘parent accountability’ for distance learning which is divorced from reality as millions of jobs evaporate and the remaining ones become virus-plagued death traps.  
The working class can educate our children
Class-conscious education workers and parents must fight for the attention of every young mind and focus youth inquiry on using language, science, history and math to discover the truth about how capitalism brought the Covid-19 crisis into being and how ruling classes will resort to intensified fascism in the response they cobble together, while loved ones grow sick and die all around us.   
As ruling classes squabble over which working class lives matter and which do not, students, parents and teachers must hold fast to the only political program which makes the survival of the international working class the only priority – communist revolution.  “Red Medicine: Socialized Health Care in Soviet Russia” is available online and provides a glimpse of the kinds of advances in health care and education that are possible when the working class holds power.  We see health care and education being organized in an anti-sexist way where the well-being of every single worker and child comes first.  Readings from this 1933 book and discussion questions for distance learning and study group use will be posted on the PLP website in the coming period.
We call on education workers and parents drafted into the work of educating their children at home to send to Challenge all lessons that build a materialist understanding of Covid-19.  The bosses' media reeks of the stench of the profit system and many workers have the good sense to keep it at arms-length.  Yet our class cannot be left at the mercy of superstition and rumor which fill the gap in the search for answers. J
Every class-conscious worker must become knowledgeable about health care, and more concerned than ever with the ideas our children absorb.  With the cancellation of state exams in New York and elsewhere, education workers have an increased opportunity to teach what really matters.  The latest NYC decision to leave schools closed through the end of the year in June is a challenge and an opportunity to build multi-racial unity with our students and their families on the basis of class struggle for a decent education and a communist future.

CHICAGO, April 4—A group of Progressive Labor Party (PLP) comrades enthusiastically rallied with Amazon workers who organized another walkout at a distribution center on the city’s southwest side today. The distribution workers here are connecting with similar actions at Amazon facilities across the country, from Seattle to New York. They are protesting the criminal neglect of their billionaire bosses who have largely failed to provide basic sanitation and protection against coronavirus in their overcrowded centers.
As the capitalist economic system begins to feel the damage from Covid-19, we can only expect that the bosses are going to throw us workers more and more into harm’s way in order to protect their profits. That is, unless we continue to organize to fight back and make immediate demands to protect ourselves, our loved ones, and the entire working class.
These immediate demands are necessary, and will definitely save workers’ lives. But as long as capitalism remains in place, profits will always come before workers’ safety. Also, like all things under capitalism, these attacks will take on a racist essence, harming Black, Latin, Asian and immigrant workers the worst.
The bloodsucking capitalists have no real plan to protect us. It’s essential that we continue to build the growing fightback happening across the world, boldly advocating for international, multi-racial working-class unity and communist politics. Only communist revolution led by a mass PLP will guarantee safety for the world’s workers from pandemics, unemployment, racism, and war.
Honk for workers’ power
Today’s action started at dawn. At least two dozen cars lined up in a nearby parking lot, and at the designated time, we drove over to the Amazon distribution center. Our caravan came upon at least a dozen multi-racial Amazon workers already leading a picket near one of the facility’s front entrances.
All the drivers inside their vehicles enthusiastically honked in support of the workers on the picket, making laps throughout the sprawling parking lots around the facility. Many drivers had signs in their windows, such as “Capitalism Kills” and “Workers’ Power.” Others rolled down their windows and used bullhorns to join the chants on the front lines.
Not more than fifteen minutes after starting our solidarity caravan we got some unwanted company from the local racists-in-blue, the Chicago Police Department (CPD). The cops immediately started flashing their lights and blocking the path of the driving cars. They began to create bottlenecks and prevented any more cars from driving in the narrow streets leading into the facility.
Although capitalist propaganda likes to push the myth that the cops exist to “protect and serve” workers, the reality is far different. Their main function is social control and to protect the capitalist bosses’ property and profits. While serving this role, they commit all sorts of racist violence, gunning down hundreds of workers every year, the majority of those killed in the U.S. being Black and Latin. It’s only fitting that they be here during this pandemic, protecting the profits of one of the wealthiest companies in the history of the world.
‘Shut it down! Clean it up!’
Although the killer cops had effectively shut down the caravan, we weren’t about to let this derail our efforts to support the brave Amazon workers. We simply parked, walked up to their picket and joined their ranks. Wearing masks and maintaining safe physical distances, we joined in chants of “Shut it Down! Clean it Up!” referring to the demand of the workers that Amazon shut down the facility long enough to deeply sanitize all equipment after confirmed Covid-19 cases.
Many of the delivery workers, who were not officially a part of the walkout, soon came out to support. It was clear that they were inspired at the sight of their co-workers’ action, and the fact that the bosses had been caught off guard. We quickly got out over 20 CHALLENGEs and had some good conversations before the cops dispersed the rally.
Amazon, world-class exploiters
Amazon can serve as the poster child for the injustice of capitalism. Its CEO and founder, Jeff Bezos, is worth over $100 billion dollars, the richest man on the planet. Through tax loopholes, the company paid nothing in federal taxes in 2018 despite having profits of more than $11 billion that year (CNBC, 4/4/19).
Even with such obscene amounts of wealth gained from our labor, this massive corporation cannot be bothered to suspend operations even for a brief period to disinfect facilities after more and more workers turn up positive for Covid-19. But workers are obviously fighting back nationwide, even in the face of harassment, disinformation, and retaliation from the bosses (Buzzfeed News, 3/31).
Capitalism is a sick system
As the coronavirus pandemic continues to unfold, millions more workers are bound to grasp more deeply the murderous nature of this capitalist profit system. As communists, we need to find more ways to safely connect with workers during the crisis and offer the revolutionary leadership needed to win them away from this deadly sick system, and instead to our collective liberation through an international, revolutionary, communist Progressive Labor Party.