The racist conditions of transit
In this time of the Covid-19 pandemic, I want to describe what NYC MTA maintainers are facing at our worksite. In our section, there are over 200 workers. The majority are Black immigrants from the Caribbean, and some other immigrants from Eastern Europe.
In the middle of this pandemic where social distancing has been recommended, the superintendent bosses continued to call meetings daily, which cram over 200 of us into a room. Two months ago, a worker started coughing and they called him into the supervisor's office that sent him to a medical facility for testing. After a period of 10 days, we learned that our co-worker was diagnosed positive with coronavirus. Two other workers who were feeling sick in the shop also later tested positive, as well. Ironically, one of the supervisors who came in contact in the office with the first worker, also got the virus.
Since then, our crew of maintenance workers has basically been on their own. We never see any union shop stewards at the worksite. Many supervisors don't even show up. Subsequently, many other workers in our shop have become ill and confirmed to be infected with the virus. One worker told me he was positive and that he had already passed the virus on to his wife and daughter. The saddest and most difficult news for me was learning that one of our crew died from Covid-19. He was a really good guy and we had always looked out for each other when we worked the track together. After that, we really don't know how many of us have gotten sick and who won't make it. Many of us feel that our shop is a death trap.
We at the MTA are facing life-threatening conditions.  At the Long Island Railroad (LIRR), a worker tested positive and they closed the entire shop to make sure everyone else was okay before it was safe to go back. Due to racism we get inferior treatment to our brothers and sisters at the LIRR.  It has become clear that the MTA union leadership will not protect us.  
Rank and file MTA maintainers need to start organizing together to fight back now. Ultimately, we will need to get rid of this entire racist profit system if we want a world that is safe for us and our families.
*****
Beware the wolf in sheep’s clothing
During the Covid 19 Pandemic, the majority of our working students lost their jobs, news comes that City University of New York (CUNY) will address the issue of “food insecurity” for the approximately 1500 students  at community colleges who need help. But when the bosses at CUNY and the state appear to help, watch out, because it’s sure to disappoint. The liberal misleaders in the City Council tried to look like heros by awarding $400 million to expand the CUNY food pantry services to students facing financial need.
However, a closer look at the eligibility criteria revealed that students without satisfactory GPA requirement, who have less than 9 credits, or who are in graduate programs do not qualify for the food pantry. In 2019, the GAO ( Government Accountability Office) released a report about food insecurity in the U.S. According to the report “millions of college students may be going hungry. Knowing this, you can add this sham CUNY food pantry to the long list of attacks on students
Another glaring example of this was when Governor Cuomo offered up the Excelsior Program in 2017, promising there would be” free tuition”, but soon it became clear that the vast majority of our students were ineligible despite demonstrating significant financial need.
This shows that when the bosses offer any kind of assistance it always has racist and fascist conditions attached. So while CUNY will decide “who qualifies “ to eat, we must do the most and the best we can under these circumstances.
This semester, our student club was planning to show the documentary Hungry to Learn on our campuses. We were making plans to unite with other campuses to fight back around different campaigns.
 Progressive Labor Party college students and professors are continuing to reach out to our friends, to discuss the ideas in CHALLENGE. We’ve been doing everything from making our own masks for each other, to joining the Free CUNY movement, and volunteering to help where we can–but most importantly we want to share in this crucial moment that if we don’t kill capitalism it will continue to kill us.
*****
Send a communist care package
Many workers in the U.S. and other countries are being forced to go back to work in the middle of a pandemic, so the almighty engine of the capitalist economy can keep running. More often than not, we are being forced back into service jobs, often overcrowded, with little to any protective equipment to keep us minimally safe from a contagious and deadly virus.
It is overwhelmingly lower-income service workers, especially Black and Latin workers, who are being thrown into these racist and potentially fatal working conditions. Grocery store workers, retail and food service workers, transit and healthcare workers—many times working without any masks or gloves and coming in close proximity to hundreds if not thousands of other workers every shift.
Many workers have refused to let the bosses endanger their lives, and have boldly staged walkouts and strikes; lessons we should all try to learn from and build upon. In our own modest way, comrades in Progressive Labor Party have been finding ways to spread our revolutionary communist ideas to our working-class peers while showing immediate solidarity.
For example, other workers have donated masks and gloves to our collective, which we have in turn used to create “communist care packages” for other workers. We put the gloves in Ziploc bags (the masks are pre-packaged) and we staple custom Party fliers and CHALLENGE to the packaging. We hope to offer basic material assistance to workers on the front lines while we simultaneously offer the type of political ideas that will destroy the capitalist conditions that fuel this crisis.
It is encouraging to see how we as a Party and the working class in general are adapting to this crisis as it unfolds, and pushing the struggle forward. Even in this dangerous and uncertain period, I remain inspired by the capacity of our class to struggle to create a better world.
*****
The Midway Four resist bosses’ racist orders
I have been retired for a couple of years but have been maintaining ties with my friends and former coworkers at the Chicago Transit Authority (CTA). Recently, four car servicers were given a direct order to clean a train that was contaminated with the coronavirus by a coworker. The Midway Four (as they’ve now come to be known) refused to clean the train, stating that they did not have the proper equipment or training. The manager said to clean it or go home - so they walked out and went home! Hundreds of bus and train operators, mechanics, trackmen, and janitors have since become aware of the example they have set and support for the initial walkout has grown.
Amid the Covid-19 pandemic the union has lied to us about how many coworkers have tested positive, but through Facebook and phone calls members are letting each other know as much as we can. The next day, when union officials met with the managers and the Midway Four, one of the union officials announced that they had tested positive for Covid-19. All of the managers who were in that room went home with pay and into quarantine. The union officials closed the office, said it would be deep cleaned and they too went into quarantine with pay. BUT the Midway Four were not allowed to go into quarantine with pay and the union has not stepped up to help them.
In a potentially deadly situation like this, the union hacks are showing more of their true colors as workers are being forced to risk their lives. This creates an opportunity for Progressive Labor Party. We continue to sell CHALLENGE and pass out leaflets to transit workers here in Chicago. The struggle over communist ideas is growing here.
*****
How can 16 million jobless become 32 million?
The phony calculators are at it again. The New York Times (4/4) reported government unemployment figures over a 3-week period in March at 16.6 million. But that omits tens of millions of others out of work and/or seeking work.
Previously the Times had reported “the true number of people newly out of work may be much larger.” It further reported that since March 28 “it’s likely that an additional four million people have lost their jobs. The unemployment offices are so overloaded with claimants and understaffed due to clerks being laid off that millions can’t even file. How many? At least several million? In addition, there are at least five million who the Times calls “hidden unemployed,” that is, those part-timers who sought but could not find full-time jobs.
Yet there are still other uncounted millions of high school and college graduates who are first-time jobseekers and are hard-pressed to find jobs amid millions being laid off but are not counted as unemployed. And finally, there are those classified as “independent contractors”—like Uber and Lyft drivers—who are ineligible for unemployment benefits, not part of the unemployment figures, “job-losers” whom the Times estimates at 1.5 million. So if one adds all that up, it at least doubles those 16.6 million now out of work. How come? That’s capitalism.
*****

New York State Governor Andrew Cuomo has emerged as a national spokesperson for a rational response to the Covid-19 pandemic. But deeds matter more than demeanor. As governor, he gutted the healthcare system and delayed his response to the pandemic. His leadership has led to more deaths in New York than any other state. This was preventable and foreseeable.
But the Wall Street finance capitalists, the imperialist corporations that have a world empire to defend, don’t care about workers’ lives. They care about building an all-class patriotic unity to confront China and other rivals. Cuomo, and politicians like him, are building a liberal nationalist unity that will serve the imperialist wing of the ruling class in the coming wars. When it comes to defending their worldwide imperialist empire the Big Fascist liberal rulers don’t trust a chaotic, self-serving Trump. They prefer someone like Cuomo. Cuomo's burgeoning national popularity is a sneak preview of how the bosses' finance capital main wing will position itself after the Trump disaster to regain control of the state and impose fascism and war on the working class.
But lying politicians promoting this liberal fascism are not the solution. It’s the healthcare workers, transit, Amazon, service, delivery, and many others who have gone all out during this crisis. We need a system where these workers run society, not for the capitalists’ profits but for the needs of the world’s working class. That’s communism. That means a revolution where the billionaires and their puppet politicians like Cuomo are out and the working class rules the world.
Response to pandemic: racist and late
On March 1 a woman was the first in New York City to test positive for Covid-19, having recently arrived from Iran. The next day Cuomo promised to track everyone from the woman’s flight. It did not happen. The next day a suburban lawyer who worked in Manhattan tested positive. State officials focused their efforts on the suburb, not New York City. Not only was that not very smart, as Cuomo likes to portray himself, it was racist. The focus was on a mainly white enclave, not a mainly Black and Latin city.
“Dr. Frieden [former head of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention] said that if the state and city had adopted widespread social-distancing measures a week or two earlier, including closing schools, stores and restaurants, then the estimated death toll from the outbreak might have been reduced by 50 to 80 percent” (NYT, 4/8).
Stay-at-home orders were also late in New York State. Cuomo is owned by real estate and construction billionaires and even declared construction workers “essential” until forced to retreat. On March 19, Gavin Newsome issued a statewide shelter-in-place order, though California had only a small fraction of the confirmed cases in New York.
Cuomo said, “We’re fighting the virus and we’re fighting fear and panic. The fear and panic is, if anything, worse than the virus” (The Today Show, 3/19). Maybe he was talking about the fear and panic of his developer buddies who were terrified about losing profits.
After initially dismissing Mayor Bill De Blasio's call for a shelter-in-place for NYC, Cuomo ordered a statewide lockdown on the evening of March 22. At a time when the number of Covid-19 cases was doubling every two days or so, a delay of three or six days translates to thousands of unnecessary deaths for the sake of capitalist profit.
Pre-pandemic: racist cuts
In January 2011 Cuomo started as governor making racist cuts to Medicaid and school aid and used his political skills to protect the wealth of his billionaire donors. During the last 20 years New York State has lost 20,000 hospital beds. Cuomo was governor almost half that time. He personally helped negotiate the closing of Long Island College Hospital in Brooklyn and its sale to a real estate developer. He also held back court ordered money to inner city schools that was to reverse some of the racist inequality in state school funding. He also cut funding to localities forcing cuts in health care, housing and education (Gotham Gazette, 1/16).
Meanwhile Cuomo has eliminated a bank tax, has cut taxes on yachts, private jets and mansions and stopped a proposed tax on non-primary apartments (public-accountability.org, 12-4-2019). Now New York faces a total racist collapse of its healthcare system. Desperately ill workers are being turned away from hospitals, many are dying in their homes, and hundreds are being buried “unclaimed” in mass graves in Potter’s field. It’s criminal, racist murder.
More racist attacks on workers
During the crisis, he proposed more cuts to Medicaid. He was criticized, as this would cost the state $6.7 billion in federal aid. He didn’t back down. He just delayed the cuts of $2.5 billion, including $400 million to hospitals. And he conveniently forgot about rent reform, which many workers fought for.
But he did remember to undo aspects of recently passed bail reform. This would have “allowed people accused of crimes to keep their jobs… instead of suffering in jail … the most dangerous place in America as far as the coronavirus is concerned.
On Wednesday… almost 180 people incarcerated at Rikers and 141 corrections staff were infected with the coronavirus” (Slate , 4/1). Cuomo’s proposal would allow judges to revoke bail even for misdemeanor.
The cop leaders were happy. It was probable that incarceration would increase, adding to the jail population and increasing the spread of Covid-19.    
Tax breaks for the capitalists
But racist attacks on the working class are only half the story. Then there are massive giveaways to Cuomo’s billionaire friends. One such friend is James Dolan, owner of Madison Square Garden and a big Cuomo donor. MSG has not paid taxes for 37 years. Cuomo has blocked all attempts to stop this giveaway (gothamist.com, 1-22). “New York Gives Corporations More in Tax Breaks Than Any Other State” reads a headline (Gothamist, 4/10/2017). The latest scam was the attempted tax exemption for Amazon and billionaire owner Jeff Bezos. More jobs were promised, but the research says that’s false. Corporations reap billions, taxpayers pay, and no extra jobs are created (NY Post, 1/8). That’s how capitalism works. The government serves the capitalist class and either scams the working class with lying politicians or attacks the working class with racist cops. It’s not an accident that of the New York billionaires that made the Forbes Top 400 list over half are donors to Cuomo’s campaigns (public-accountability.org, 12/4/2019).
So it goes in the capitalist USA. If you want a better world, don’t rely on politicians. Join the Progressive Labor Party and fight for an egalitarian communist world run by and for the working class.

Even with social distancing, we can see all too clearly the horrors created by the disease of capitalism. In a matter of weeks, Covid-19 has taken down the bosses’ economies and exposed their health care system for the racist travesty it is. The pandemic has revealed—once again—the capitalists’ criminal negligence and total incompetence. In a moment where workers are most vulnerable, they have perverted the practice of medicine into a rationed commodity. They have nothing to offer us but death panels and euthanasia.  
Only the international working class has the capacity and humanity to rebuild a decent world out of this cataclysm. Only communism, a society run by and for workers, can meet the vital needs of our class.
As workers fight for their lives and their families and their safety and their jobs, the capitalist rulers are speeding their plans for fascism and inter-imperialist war. More openly fascist states like China and Russia are seizing the opportunity to line up new allies and possibly supplant the U.S. as the world’s number-one superpower. Meanwhile, U.S. and European Union (EU) bosses are plagued by infighting and division. Regardless of which group of these blood-sucking monsters prevail, and no matter when the pandemic subsides, workers will still be sickened by the contagion of capitalist exploitation. Our class will still be plagued by racist and sexist inequality, by poverty and homelessness. The most deadly infection by far is the profit system itself.
But the bosses aren’t the only ones who can advance in this period. So can the working class. Progressive Labor Party, though small and limited today, will continue to organize and grow until we are leading millions to turn the bosses’ wars into communist revolution.
Bosses’ crumbs won’t cut it
As the virus exposes the fragility of life under capitalism, U.S. bosses are trying to mask the horror. Frozen student loans, expanded unemployment insurance, suspended evictions, and $1,200 checks are so many crumbs to keep the rulers’ consumer economy limping along—and to stave off rebellions in the streets. Soon enough, when the worst of this latest crisis has passed, the crushing debt payments and evictions will resume. Under capitalism, the law of the land is maximum profit—no matter how many are suffering in their homes or hospital death camps.
The rulers’ response to Covid-19 has been muddled by internal divisions, a lack of discipline, and the anarchy of their system. In the U.S., the main split is between the imperialist Big Fascists of finance capital, represented by the Democratic Party, and the isolationist Small Fascists led by the Koch family and fronted by President Donald Trump. The Big Fascists, though struggling with their own disunity, are focused on building a broad, patriotic movement for their coming war with China—and demanding “sacrifice” from capitalists and workers alike. Behind House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, they are pressing Trump to use the Defense Production Act to compel private-sector production of millions of respirator masks and tens of thousands of ventilators, the equipment needed to save Coronavius patients with life-threatening lung injuries.
It’s not just Trump, it’s capitalism
Trump reluctantly backed off his deranged plan to “get America back to work” by Easter Sunday, which would have guaranteed the slaughter of additional millions and hurt his chances for reelection in November. But he is following the Small Fascists’ playbook to limit the federal government’s role and protect “free enterprise”—the bosses’ freedom to steal all the short-term profits they can, and workers’ lives be damned. After attacking state-imposed shelter-in-place restrictions, the Koch-controlled Americans for Prosperity urged Pelosi and Republican Senate leader Mitch McConnell to “avoid approving measures that inappropriately usurp the roles that can be more effectively played by state and local governments, the private sector, and our communities” (americansforprosperity.org, 3/17).
Trump has complied by refusing to centralize purchasing and distribution of medical equipment, and by allowing six states—including Florida and Texas—to defy the urgent recommendations of every honest scientist to shut down public gatherings. Untold thousands of workers will die as a result.
But make no mistake. The Big Fascists and their political stooges, from Barack Obama to Joe Biden to Andrew Cuomo, are the mass murderers who placed workers at such grave risk in the first place.  For decades, finance capitalists worldwide have gutted the health care infrastructure, a disinvestment that accelerated after the financial crisis of 2008. These main-wing liberals have closed unprofitable hospitals, slashed Medicaid, and purposely plotted the “triaging” of critical care—to enable the state to pull the plug on workers deemed expendable. Several besieged hospitals in New York City have already “taken the unprecedented step of allowing doctors not to resuscitate people with covid-19 to avoid exposing health-care workers to the highly contagious virus” (Washington Post, 3/31).  
U.S. and EU in retreat
The U.S. bosses’ are no longer able to lead on the international stage. They couldn’t convince their Saudi allies to end an oil war with Russia that has devastated prices and threatened the U.S. fracking industry (CNBC, 3/25). At the recent G7 Summit, after the U.S. State Department crafted a joint statement calling Covid-19 the “Wuhan virus,” European leaders refused to sign off—a reflection of China’s growing influence.
Meanwhile, the EU is fracturing internally. German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s hesitance in helping poorer European countries was slammed by French President Emmanuel Macron (Reuters, 3/27). Italy, a country that last year defied the European Union by joining China’s Belt and Road Initiative, received thousands of masks and the services of nine Chinese doctors (FP, 3/31). After getting its own pandemic aid package from China, Serbia claimed that “European Solidarity does not exist. It was a fairy tale” (Wall Street Journal, 3/18).
China’s bosses move in
For the last half of the 20th century, U.S. imperialism dominated the globe and controlled world events. But after defeats in Vietnam and more recently the Middle East, and now hobbled by Trump and his Fortress America disengagement, its alpha dog status is in jeopardy. China’s more unified ruling class enabled its bosses to contain Covid-19 with a brutal lockdown of 60 million workers. As a result, they’ve gotten a jump in restarting their own struggling economy.
China has exported thousands of ventilators to Europe (South China Morning Post, 3/31). It produces half of the world’s face masks; billionaire Jack Ma sent testing kits and masks to over 50 African countries, and 50,000 testing kits to Mexico alone (El Universal, 3/31). The Council on Foreign Relations, U.S. finance capital’s leading think tank, sounded the alarm: “As Washington falters, Beijing is moving quickly and adeptly to [fill] the vacuum to position itself as the global leader in pandemic response” (3/18).
Workers’ fightback rising
The pandemic has both widened the inequalities of capitalism and awakened working-class consciousness. Workers are fighting back! In Italy, they effectively shut down the country with a call for a national strike of non-essential workers (Politico, 3/15). In the U.S., Instacart and Whole Foods workers have struck against deadly working conditions. Auto workers in Michigan, bus drivers in Alabama, sanitation workers in Pittsburgh, chicken factory workers in Georgia, Amazon workers in New York—all have walked off the job to protest the bosses’ callous disregard for their health and safety.
Mutual aid organizations have spontaneously sprung up in solidarity with workers whom the bosses have left to starve or die. In Paterson, New Jersey, activists delivered meals to more than 100 older people. Tenant rent strikes are brewing. PLP members are active in these groups, which evoke the old Communist Party’s monumental mass work during the Great Depression of the 1930s. These actions give workers both confidence in our class and tangible support as the bosses’ infrastructure crumbles around us.
There is no higher duty or privilege than serving fellow workers in need. But we must also advance politically beyond the old CP by winning masses of workers all the way to communism. In a communist society, workers will take collective responsibility for our class—out of commitment, not threats or coercion. Fight for communism! Smash the bosses! Join PLP!

LOS ANGELES, April 1—As General Motors and General Electric bosses attempt to lead our class in the domestic war efforts to build all-class unity (aka fascism) under the guise of fighting Covid-19, the family of murdered-by-police Alex Flores continues to inspire some glimmers of working-class power.
There are constant calls from the bosses, appealing to our humanity, to donate blood to the Red Cross and give money to the numerous underfunded agencies that provide food and clothing to our class. Like World War II, the bosses aim to mobilize every aspect of society to move from donating blood and money to sacrificing “blood and treasure” in the name of U.S. imperialism and future World War III.
Our small fight alongside the Flores family offer not only a short-term solution but provides lessons on how we should be creatively fighting back in this period of pandemics, fascism, and future wars.
Workers collectively make a plan…
Around the same time that U.S. President Trump invoked the fascist Stafford Act, Progressive Labor Party and antiracist organizers were intending to meet with the Flores family for a BBQ and banner-making party.  After a brief discussion with the family, the BBQ turned into an emergency planning meeting to discuss the nature of our fightback should conditions make it more difficult to meet in large groups.
Many workers are understandably frightened by the current situation.  Nevertheless, the Flores family decided that day regardless of how the bosses try to restrict movement in the coming period, they wanted to find creative ways to continue the fight back!  
We had a rich discussion on operating under fascist conditions, importance of public health precautions like hand hygiene and social distancing. We still didn’t know at this point what the ruling class would implement in response to the virus, so we made three levels of plans based on how limiting the situation would become.  Not only did the family want to continue the weekly protests, they agreed on expanding the struggle to weekly petitioning at neighborhood grocery stores and of course, and finishing the banner we didn’t do that day!
And boldly carry it out
A couple of days later, the governor of California, Gavin Newsome, followed by Los Angeles Mayor Garcetti, announced the “Safer at Home” restrictions. This meant that you were only supposed to leave the house for “essential business,” maintain six feet of distance and not be in groups larger than ten. But based on our planning, we were ready!
Organize safety for workers’ fightback
For the next Flores Friday march, we had a handwashing station and made a large circle spaced out to maintain adequate distance.  We asked our veteran comrades of older age and/or with other underlying health conditions to stay home. We also had a bit more discipline at the march itself with one family member and one Party member discussing the plan with the larger group and leading the march.  
We carried a printout of the “Safer at Home” order with someone designated to interact with the police should they approach us.  We then marched in two lines staying six feet apart, seizing the southbound traffic, showing the community that we take their health seriously, but also that the fight against police terror and the larger system of capitalism cannot wait. Throughout it all, working-class support did not waver!  
Petition at grocery stores
Since, we have petitioned at two different grocery stores in the neighborhood.  We washed our hands and wore latex medical gloves and did our best to have brief but moving discussions with workers and asking them to sign a petition with demands for justice for Alex (getting the autopsy report and indicting racist KKKop Steven Ruiz) but also with broader demands calling for an end to racist police murders and attacks on our class.  
Even with the lesser foot traffic from the fear around Covid-19, shoppers, grocery store workers and their security engaged as well, collecting over 150 signatures in just two visits.  One grocery store worker shared with us that her brother was killed by the police in the city of Gardena in front of his son last year. We introduced her to the sister, brother and father of Alex Flores.  She signed our petition, but also asked to be contacted.  We are hoping to unite these two families and two struggles and hopefully strengthen our one fight against this whole racist capitalist system.  
Capitalism is the virus, communism is the cure
Whether it be the Covid-19 or police murder, workers know that capitalism is not here to serve our class. Every day this system exposes its true nature, killing people because of lack of ventilators in a hospital or by the hand of the killer cops. The Flores family’s urgency to fight this rotten system exists in every member of our class when cultivated through the ideas of PLP.
As the bosses ramp up fascism, we must continue to learn to push the limits they set while also operating in new ways. With the Covid-19 crisis nowhere near its end, we must be ready to adjust tactics if orders for more serious lockdowns are put in place.
We value the health and welfare of every single worker. We cannot be reckless and put workers lives at risk. But when this health crisis subsides, capitalism will still be killing members of our class, so we can’t go into hiding at this time either. No one is safe at home if bosses run the world! Workers need communism now more than ever! Join the fight!
As scientific communists, it’s evident that social distancing and quarantining as it relates to halting the spread of disease is important. However, we also understand that the bosses’ concerns for our collective health are only motivated by their own desire to make profit.
Not only that, we know that if we were running society, we would greatly reduce the possibility of pandemics we will arrange society completely different, with elimination of exploitation and profit.  But if a pandemic were to develop under communism, a quarantine would not consist of weaponized technology or militarized camps, but it would be carried out with international camaraderie and compassion for our class sisters and brothers impacted around the world.