EAST AFRICA, April 29— Progressive Labor Party (PLP) here blames capitalist government misleaders for the criminal management of the pandemic. They insist that people continue to work, minimizing the danger of the disease while the infections continue on a daily basis. Initially, they closed the schools and universities but, illogically, told people to go to church, and kept the borders and airports open.
In some countries like Tanzania, President John Magafuli called for three days of national prayers to defeat the coronavirus which he described as a very small disease. Since April 22, when he talked with the head of the military, no new updates of cases or deaths have been reported. The government is covering up the numbers of infected and dead and where the disease has spread. Tanzania has only one laboratory in the country and only Arusha and Dar es Salaam have the capacity to test and treat Covid-19 patients. Officials in those cities are burying the victims at night, to maintain the cover up.
 Electoral false hope won’t beat disease
While Covid-19 spreads, the government is actively organizing for the general elections in October. The ruling party is warning people that areas that vote for the opposition will not get development funds. They formed a fake opposition party to fool people into thinking that it will be a free and fair election. The masses are not fooled by this and have been refusing to register to vote.  The working class has been passive in response to the criminal deceit and mismanagement of the pandemic.
Witch doctors are telling people they have a cure, so many people with symptoms are not going to hospitals. We cannot rely on the government or non-scientific witch doctors to keep us safe. Where we live, PLP members are going house to house to educate people about how to protect themselves against the virus, especially the elderly and people with pre-existing conditions. Workers need science, not lies that prey on workers.
In addition, we condemned the racism  in the U.S. and China and want to join with others in doing so. PLP is at the forefront of the fight against capitalism and we express our class solidarity with the workers of the world who are facing this disease because of capitalism’s failure to provide decent healthcare and protect us in health emergencies.

COLOMBIA, April 30—As everywhere else in the world, workers are sufferings amidst the pandemic. Those of us who still have a job do not get any guarantees from the government or the boss, no minimal safety measures or protective equipment. The bosses fire, suspend or lower our wages. Making our already slaving working conditions more precarious.
Crushing unemployment
Workers are facing unemployment. If we don’t have a job, we can’t feed our families, we become isolated from our coworkers. We cannot unite against the bosses’ attacks. Along with these harsh conditions, we are exposed to infection, to sexist and racist attacks and the bosses’ arrogance. The sharpening economic crisis created by the bosses push for war. This has been accelerated by the Covid-19 pandemic (see page 2). These conditions are the reality for millions of workers around the world. Unemployment and hunger have increase worldwide. While small businesses fire their workforce, big businesses are doing it too, even with their millions in profits. In the U.S., Mexico, Brazil, Chile, Peru, Haiti, and worldwide, millions of workers have been laid off, many are confined to their homes, some are dying without healthcare or money for food.
Long-brewing crisis
Since 1970 we have seen the sharpening of the bosses’ attacks and working conditions. Since then, we have seen the politicians, judges, and bosses’ treachery and theft, under the umbrella of their fascist laws that deny social services, wage raises and pensions. Laws that give us sanctions, fines, firings, and the reduction of salaries, as if the salary we get was enough to cover our basic necessities.
To sum up, the contradictions arising from the pandemic deepens the crisis of the capitalist system, not only the savage capitalism, as the liberals and opportunist want us to believe.  Throughout history, capitalism has never been able to give the working-class stability; it has only given us disasters, death, hunger, unemployment, and misery.  There can be no good capitalism, nor good bosses, they take our labor, because it is the only thing we have to sell.
The victories from past struggles are taken away. Every time capitalism is in crisis, like today, it is the workers who pay the price. That is why PLP is saying that our class can’t keep trying to reform this murderous system of profit. Only a communist revolution can destroy it once and for all.
Danger and opportunity
In Colombia, some cities, towns, groups of women, men, and children of the working class, students, farm workers, indigenous workers, construction workers, health and transportation workers are in a constant struggle, sometimes still isolated and dispersed. They protest, strike, block, and ransack cars and supermarkets. In the face of uncertainty, hunger, and the assassination of social leaders, they are angry, justifiably so.  They see the corruption, the decay of all these ruling-class institutions.
Yet in these hard conditions of the period are opportunities to organize and end the dark night of capitalism. PLP is calling for unity of the international working class, our newspaper CHALLENGE, and to all communists, friend, readers, and members, to keep on fighting, do not get demoralized by the brutal attacks of the bosses or the apparent depoliticization of the masses. Our job is to create a revolutionary communist movement.
The working class produces everything of value that exists in our society, we have to organize as a revolutionary party to enjoy the fruits of our labor, no more misery or crumbs from the bosses.  We must end the dictatorship of the bosses, which will continue to oppress us until an organized working class with our revolutionary Party violently destroy the capitalists and their racist wage slavery. We will build a new society where we will share everything we produce, collectively, to satisfy our own needs.

BALTIMORE, April 6—The West Wednesday weekly protests in Baltimore against police terror are not derailed by Covid-19. Named in honor of Tyrone West, the rallies have moved from the streets to the screens, streaming to Facebook Live. This shows the creative and resilient spirit of the working class in the face of crisis. The struggle also shows the growing anti-racist movement open to communist ideas.
Nationwide protest on Facebook
People on Facebook have created “Watch Parties,” with more than 200 people watching the most recent West Wednesday including people from far away.
Stevante Clark from Sacramento, California talked about the ongoing struggle to win accountability for the police murder of his 23-year-old brother, Stephon, who was murdered in his grandmother’s back yard by cops Terrence Mercadal and Jared Robinet in 2018.
Those cops first claimed they thought Stephon was holding a crowbar. In their re-telling, it morphed into a gun, then a cell phone. The truth: Stephon was killed for nothing less than racism!
Also joining in was David Harrison, cousin of Willie McCoy, who was executed by six cops shortly after he fell asleep in his car while waiting in a drive-thru lane at a Taco Bell in Vallejo, California in February of 2019. Workers who couldn’t wake up Willie called 911 for a wellness check. Instead of medics, seven cops arrived only to execute Willie: another example of deadly systemic racism.
Tawanda Jones was the host. She is the sister of unarmed Tyrone West, a young Black worker beaten to death by up to 15 kkkops in July of 2013.
She contrasted the ruthless killing of Willie McCoy to the soft handling of white supremacist Dylann Roof who, once in police custody, was given a cheeseburger and a bullet-proof vest, right after he murdered nine Black parishioners in cold blood in Charleston.
West Wednesday Live also discussed COVID-19. A member of Progressive Labor Party explained that the government is enforcing quarantines, but none of them are saying, “Call out the capitalists bosses who allowed us to get here.” How could they when the government serves the capitalists.
Capitalism here in the U.S. has less hospital beds—and we’re the richest nation in the world - per person than in 11  other countries, including] South Korea, China, and Italy.”
She talked about how New York closed 20 hospitals that mostly served Black and Latin working class neighborhoods in the past 20 years, based on what’s profitable for the rich, not what’s needed to preserve life.
Capitalism driven by logic of profit
Thirteen years ago in the wake of near-pandemics (SARS, bird flu, swine flu), the U.S. government had launched a project for 70,000 additional ventilators.  However, “because of corporations putting money over mankind,” those ventilators never got manufactured.
A company, which had contracted with the federal government to build smaller, more mobile, less costly ventilators, actually did produce three working prototypes, but that company got bought by a larger company that was already producing and selling ventilators at higher prices (NYT, 3/29).
Like all capitalists, those profit-driven business owners were focused on maintaining the highest possible profits and, not wanting to undercut sales of their more expensive machines, intentionally sidelined and buried the project that would have created an emergency stockpile of 70,000 life-saving ventilators. The result is the racist and criminal loss of lives and disproportionately these are the most exploited, Black, Latin workers.(NYT, 4/8)
Michigan has kept track—in 70 percent of the cases—of the racial background of people who have gotten sick with COVID-19. While Black folks make up just 14 percent of the state’s population, they have accounted for more than 33 percent of the cases, and 40 percent of the deaths.
The PLP speaker then said, “The real enemy is capitalism. It ain’t Donald Trump. It ain’t the corona. It’s capitalism...We can defeat the corona, but we should also dismantle and destroy this sick system because it’s really killing us!”
How to serve the working class
Another speaker was a fighter, here in Baltimore, who talked about how people with low incomes, when picking up food distributed free at sites run by the City, often have to wait in lines without a reliable capability for physical distancing, forcing low-income families to be at higher risk for getting Covid-19.
So he has organized a food pantry where contributing volunteers stock and drive the food directly to the homes of families in need.  
We expect online West Wednesday to grow, and to include more and more of the fighters against racism and against police brutality, in Baltimore, and from all over!

CHALLENGE readers from the Midwest, Minneapolis, Chicago, and Detroit and also NYC and LA joined in mourning the untimely death of Harry Mcallister on April 19, 2020. Harry died of the coronavirus and was on a respirator in Minneapolis. It is especially tragic that he died of the capitalist scourge of Covid-19; it is capitalism that Harry fought against his entire life.
We salute him as we remember his activities in the International Committee Against Racism (INCAR), Minneapolis Chapter, from the ‘70s through ‘90s. INCAR was then a mass organization of the Progressive Labor Party. Together we rallied, marched, had panels, and partied. Harry was a great dancer. Harry was in the action when the temperature was sub-zero and we protested the University’s involvement in South Africa’s Apartheid and we stood on the picket line at Hormel’s meat packing plant supporting the P-9 workers.
Harry’s international historic knowledge was immense. When we produced a South Africa Apartheid pamphlet, we didn’t need Google, because he knew every notable person and date of every country in Africa. Rest in power, Harry!