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Fighting bio racism, a feature of capitalist healthcare
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- 08 June 2023 83 hits
CHICAGO, IL, June 7—“Ummm, it looks like there’s a room full of people behind you?” The head boss of the local health system sounded surprised and nervous when they saw the numerous supporters who came to the online meeting with U.S. kidney leaders. Getting rid of racist kidney lab tests had proven to be no easy task!
This meeting was supposed to be just the two leaders of our antiracism group and U.S. kidney leadership to explain the struggle in medicine to change decades of racism in biology. The head boss was not expecting us to bring the whole group! We had to show that the number of people determined to remove biologic racism from medicine was large and ready to act outside the usual standards of academia and business.
A brief history of biologic racism
Capitalism and racism go hand in hand, and at this stage of capitalism are so intertwined that it is impossible to imagine one existing without the other. Because the economic benefits of slavery were so great, the U.S. ruling class (especially slave owners) created and codified the idea of race and racism into laws. As historian Lerone Bennett describes in The Road Not Taken (link), the development of racism in the U.S. can be traced through laws deliberately created to separate and control workers. He notes that when Black and white workers united in an uprising against their masters in 1676 in Virginia (Bacon’s rebellion), the laws separating workers by race were dramatically strengthened. To justify their brutal system, they couldn’t tell the truth: “we need free labor to become rich and it is easy to identify the enslaved workers by the color of their skin.” Racist thinking thus permeated every facet of life including the science of medicine.
And so biologic racism was born. The ideas that there are biologic or genetic differences between races, and that the white race is superior, are lies. Biologic racism was used to justify slavery. Thomas Jefferson said that Black workers had “a difference of structure in the pulmonary apparatus.” This falsehood was used to justify slavery because such forced labor was a way to “vitalize the blood” of supposedly deficient Black workers.
The false idea of biologic racial differences persists despite the fact that the human genome studies show that there are more genetic similarities between racial categories than differences. Antiracist doctors and other health workers including Progressive Labor Party (PLP) members are leading struggles against this biologic racism.
The fight against biologic racism in kidney tests
A PLP member developed a lecture on biologic racism for her coworkers and students. The ensuing discussions led to a proposal to get their hospital to remove race from analyzing laboratory tests for kidney disease. The Covid-19 pandemic put everything on pause--until the George Floyd uprisings by workers against his murder by the kkkops! The ripple effect of militant antiracist struggle moved people at the hospital to form a multiracial antiracism committee that was led by the PLP member.
Race has been included as a component of kidney testing in the United States since 1999. The data to support such inclusion was weak and the biologic claim to support the idea—that Black people have more muscle mass—is racist. Still, this is the way that kidney function has been calculated for over two decades and has resulted in Black patients being diagnosed with kidney disease later than whites and judged not eligible for transplant until they were sicker than their white counterparts.
The PLP member guaranteed that the meetings of this antiracist committee would be more collective than usual staff meetings. Every meeting began with a discussion of an article so that the team built a common base of knowledge. They struggled together to come to mutual understanding and agreement so that all committee members could give leadership to the campaign. The team wrote a paper on removing race from kidney tests, gathered signatures in support, gave lectures on the topic, and emailed their coworkers and friends. By the time this group had started collecting signatures, we knew more about how and why race was included in kidney testing than many kidney specialists!
The local hospital committee voted in support of removing race from kidney function, but this decision was then scrapped by kidney specialists who disagreed and/or wanted to wait for national kidney organizations to okay such a change. The hospital leadership called for a meeting with the two chairs of the committee. Secretly we organized to make sure every member of our antiracist committee and coworkers would attend this meeting. When the camera was turned on at the beginning of the meeting to show 20 people in attendance, the bosses were not happy. When they tried to steer the meeting to the topics they wanted to discuss, we did not let the meeting proceed until our questions were answered. We had to be bold and confrontational backed by our 20 committee members. This meeting was a turning point. It showed the strength we had in numbers and our commitment to this change. When the national guidelines changed to be race-neutral one month later, our hospital was one of the first to apply them due to the work we had done.
Throughout this struggle, the PLP member challenged coworkers to understand the connection between racism and capitalism. There were many times the committee was tested by external forces and internal struggles, but PLP training in prior struggles helped advance this antiracist struggle. The antiracism committee is still fighting today and has gone on to succeed in removing race from lung testing, which previously has kept Black mine workers from getting compensation for Black Lung disease.
The fight continues but needs to be broadened and sharpened
The embedded nature of racism in healthcare will not be eliminated by making every medical test race-neutral. The structural racism built into capitalism to keep the working class divided and weakened is a much larger contributor to worse health outcomes for Black and brown workers. White workers suffer because a working class divided by race cannot fight back effectively for the health and health care they need.
The only way to end structural racism is to destroy capitalism. The billionaire bosses will never give up their wealth to create an equal society. They use structural racism and state violence to grow and maintain their wealth by any means necessary. We need to build a mass communist movement to lead a revolution to seize state power, also by any means necessary. Through communist revolution, we can end the structural racism and poverty that keeps the working class sick. Join PLP!
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Abolition Conference: Need a party to smash bosses & their state
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- 25 May 2023 68 hits
Washington, DC, May 6-8–PLers met with antiracist fighters from across the U.S. at The University of California Washington Center for a 3-day abolitionist conference. Conference organizers brought together theorists, students and organizers working to abolish police, prisons, ICE, racist child “protective” services, and other institutional structures that capitalism has built to attack and repress the working class.
Progressive Labor Party (PLP) members led a panel on abolishing capitalism, the undergirding of all repressive institutions of the capitalist state. We do not just want to abolish or outlaw capitalism, we want the system fully smashed and guaranteed to never be introduced back into existence. In order to crush capitalism and its state, we need many of these serious organizers in attendance to join a revolutionary fighting party, the PLP, in order for it to grow and lead class struggle against the ruling class. This strategy is really the only way to achieve the abolitionist goals they so fervently desire.
To abolish cops, we must abolish capitalism
Participants in the conference were extremely open to a revolutionary perspective. Many already had this idea, but were not sure how to develop it further. Even two of the keynote speakers agreed, when questioned from the audience by a PLP member, that a revolutionary party was needed to achieve abolitionist goals. You just cannot abolish capitalist institutions without abolishing capitalism!
PLP maintained a literature table throughout the conference. In addition to CHALLENGE, the table featured flyers and information about many of the mass organizations in which PLP is active. The fight for justice for William Green and other Black workers murdered by the police and numerous public health struggles were featured.
Over 40 participants received CHALLENGE from the table and from other comrades throughout the conference and many connections were made. Many of these fighters are already engaged in various forms of class struggle.We will continue to make ongoing connections with these fighters, and try to win them to our radical abolitionist vision of society– a communist world rid of the capitalist ruler’s racist and sexist kkkops, kkkourts, and prisons.
Pro-U.S. generals in Pakistan move to sideline Khan from elections
Foreign Policy, 5/17–A week after his arrest on corruption charges, former Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan faces an escalating confrontation with the country’s political establishment. Recent developments suggest Pakistan’s military leadership is going full throttle to sideline Khan and his Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) party from politics. National elections, currently scheduled for October, loom. Khan blamed Pakistan Army chief Asim Munir for ordering his arrest by paramilitary forces last Tuesday; he was released a few days later. Just before his arrest, Khan repeated allegations that a senior military officer was behind a November assassination attempt against him, which the military denies.
U.S. decline and China’s rise in Middle East– a review
Foreign Affairs, May/June 2023–In March 2023, China’s announcement that it had brokered renewed diplomatic relations between Saudi Arabia and Iran threw into sharp relief the United States’ rapidly diminishing role in the Middle East…the United States completed its inept withdrawal from Afghanistan, a country that Washington had spent 20 years trying and failing to bring into the Western fold. Then the president [Joe Biden]…soon found the Saudis rebuffing a U.S. request to increase oil production during the war in Ukraine. Meanwhile, U.S. diplomatic efforts to revive the Iran nuclear deal faltered…And the administration looked on helplessly as the most far-right government in Israeli history came to power, threatening the country’s claims to democracy, fueling a new wave of violence, and jeopardizing the Washington-backed Abraham Accords. Observers may be forgiven for wondering whether U.S. influence in the region has declined permanently.
Workers in U.S. and around the world are becoming poorer
Brookings, 5/16–Current inequality levels are high. Contemporary global inequalities are close to the peak levels observed in the early 20th century, at the end of the prewar era (variously described as the Belle Époque or the Gilded Age) that saw sharp increases in global inequality. Over the past four decades, there has been a broad trend of rising income inequality across countries. Income inequality has risen in most advanced economies and major emerging economies, which together account for about two-thirds of the world’s population and 85 percent of global GDP. The increase has been particularly large in the United States, among advanced economies, and in China, India, and Russia, among major emerging economies.
Peaceful change in Sudan transforms into bloody war
Der Spiegel, 4/22–Starting in December 2018, Sudanese author Shadin Al Fadil wrote one of the most impressive chapters of the Arab democracy movements for their country - one which has been ravaged by massacres, famine and crises over the years. They managed to achieve what no one had believed possible: They protested until they drove dictator Omar al-Bashir from office. After 30 years of dictatorship, democracy suddenly seemed within reach. Sudan had become emblematic of what can be achieved through peaceful resistance.
Since then, though, hopes for democracy have been further and further destroyed by the country’s powerful military. And now, those dreams could be buried for good in a hail of bombs. Since the early hours of Saturday morning, Africa’s third-largest country has been in a state of war. There is fighting in almost all parts of the country, with two rival generals and their armies facing off against each other. On one side is Sudan’s regular armed forces, commanded by the de facto president, General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan. On the other is the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF), under the command of his deputy Lieutenant General Mohamed Hamdan Daglo, known as Hemeti.
The work of Carolyn’s life speaks for her
I met Carolyn in Tupelo, Mississippi in the summer of 1979. David Duke, leader of the KKK, had declared that Tupelo would become the national headquarters of the Klan. Progressive Labor Party and INCAR, an organization we were building at the time, refused to accept this and launched a campaign to make Tupelo the headquarters of antiracism and the fight for communism. Over 40 volunteers joined the Project at various times. Carolyn was there the entire summer.
The Project dug deep roots in the Black working class of Tupelo. We organized public CHALLENGE sales, rallies and lots of visiting to make and consolidate friends who joined the Project. Carolyn was involved in it all.
I actually met her when she was sitting on the balcony of the apartment where volunteers were living. She was making “sun tea.” She had a gallon jar filled with tea bags, sugar and lemon slices. We had a long talk as the hot summer sun brewed the tea. I realized later that she was lounging there because she was recovering from her gunshot wounds.
Mid-way through the Project a march was organized from the Black worker’s housing project where we had a base to downtown Tupelo, where there was a rally. Carolyn and Findley Campbell were standing at the sound truck giving speeches when a racist, who we later learned had been released from jail that morning and given the shotgun, opened fire into the crowd.
Carolyn and Findley were sprayed with birdshot. Our security team leaped into action, tackling the shooter and keeping him from firing again. Suddenly the police, who had not been visible before, swarmed over our team, arresting many. Birdshot, used for shooting birds, sprays small pellets. Carolyn was shot down one leg. Although the doctors were able to find and remove some of the pellets, many remained in her leg the rest of her life.
Our comrade, Floyd, was charged with attempted murder and held without bail. I arrived in Tupelo at that point to work on the legal case. No defense attorney in the state of Mississippi would take the case. The district attorney called Carolyn and Findley to appear before a Grand Jury conniving to get them to testify against our comrade charged with murder! I warned them that we were all probably going to jail for what we were going to do. There was no hesitation. Carolyn and Findley were each called into the room and refused to say a word. Ranting and raving, the prosecutor called me into the room. I told the whole story, since I was not a witness to any of it. As Carolyn had come out she whispered to me that she recognized some of our CHALLENGE readers on the Grand Jury! The workers of Tupelo were on our side. The charges were dismissed.
The Project immediately organized a second march. Walking in the first row as we headed downtown was Carolyn proudly waving a red flag. That’s how I will always remember her–proudly waving the red flag!!
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It’s good to see the big picture
I was disappointed that I could not attend Progressive Labor Party’s May Day march in Brooklyn on Saturday, April 29. However, on Monday, May 1, I accompanied a comrade to a march in Trenton, NJ being led by Cosecha. Cosecha is an organization that struggles to improve the conditions of undocumented workers. They fight for driver’s licenses, paths to citizenship, etc. My comrade has worked with that organization for a few years. On the drive down, he was expressing his frustration about how little he thought he had accomplished with them in all that time.
When we arrived, there was a lot of evidence to the contrary. The members of Cosecha had adopted several of PLP’s chants – “La clase Obrera, No Tienen Fronteras” and “Obreros, Unidos, Jamas Seran Vencidos” (The working class has no borders, and Workers, united, will never be defeated). Although my Spanish is intermediate, I could tell there was much more class analysis in the speeches.
I congratulated my comrade on the impact he has had over the years. It pays to be in it for the long haul.
In addition, we distributed many DESAFIOS (spanish version CHALLENGE), not only to the marchers, but to the residents of the largely immigrant neighborhood where we marched.
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A Neighbor’s story with CHALLENGE
This past Saturday a couple of comrades, including an awesome high school student, came to do another CHALLENGE newspaper sale at the 15 floor building where my partner and I live. A neighbor had the following to say after we asked him what he thought about it. The first time he saw the newspaper outside his door he did not pay it much attention. Eventually, he grabbed it and left it in his car. Then, during his lunch break he began looking through it and even started to discuss some of the ideas with a coworker. He told us, “When I read the paper I feel strongly. By now I know I’m going to get another. And look forward to it.”
He also spoke about how challenging life as an immigrant father and husband from Ghana is in the U.S. How supervisors at his job have used his ideas in a way that has discouraged him from wanting to contribute further. How he wishes we lived in a world where people were encouraged to freely contribute our naturally endowed gifts to provide for each other. We responded by saying, “That’s communism!” He shared how more recently a bill collector called him to get their money for a Covid test his family had received way back when the pandemic was more intense. He was trying to say how backwards capitalist society is in that it puts profits first over people’s wellbeing. He also expressed that what the paper is communicating reminds him of parts of his life where he has been vocal about what is wrong with this system. We told him that the fact that the paper’s ideas have hit this key cord within him to the extent that he felt compelled to share it with a coworker is a really powerful thing! We asked him if he would be open to coming over to our apartment in the near future to talk more about these communist politics. To which he said definitely!
Our neighbor’s growing confidence in our ideas and willingness to get closer to us represent another nail in the coffin of a profit system that depends on keeping us divided in order to keep exploiting us. This new development - one of many recently in our building - is the product of becoming more disciplined and committed about distributing CHALLENGE where we have lived over the last 4+ years and fighting to be more communist in the way that we live, share with our neighbors, and respond to each other’s needs.
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I protested: rent is too damn high!
I attended a protest in Jersey City titled The Rent is Too High put on by a local chapter of Democratic Socialists of America (DSA). While the march attracted some vocal young workers, the majority of the downtown crowd they were speaking to seemed indifferent.
Maybe it is due to their call to action, which involves passing a measure before the city council for a right to counsel for tenants paid for by developer taxes in the future. If that sounds far off to you as well, you are right. While local agitation and engagement is good, without a permanent solution of communist hope and revolution, the struggle will continue.
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Remember: it was the reds who smashed the Nazis
May 9th is the day that the Soviet Union celebrates the defeat of Nazi Germany and its allies. In the largest land war in history with 27 million dead, the Soviet people, led by the Communist Party of the Soviet Union led by Joseph Stalin, smashed, at least for a time, the most evil doctrine yet to appear on our planet. Had the Nazis defeated the Soviet Union, many if not most of us would not be here to talk about it.
Even though Germany and other countries banned the flying of Russian and Soviet flags during the demonstrations there, people all over the world celebrated the Soviet victory.
Today the PLP is attempting to learn from and advance upon the lessons of the USSR. Visit the PLP.org website for more information.
In early January of this year Comrade Russell Phillips died. He was a longtime member of The Progressive Labor Party. Russell worked at Lenox Hill Hospital for about 5 years in the late 70’s to early 80’s.
Along with other Party members he consistently fought the management of that hospital around racism. He also combined bread and butter issues (he worked in the engineering department) with broader international issues.
He would leaflet and sell CHALLENGE consistently both in the hospital and outside at the entrance.
In 1983, when Russell was leafleting against the Reagan invasion of Lebanon, the hospital bosses instigated a backward worker to violently attack him with a 2 by 4. That worker was suspended and Russell was fired.
The sellout hospital workers union 1199 to whom Russell had been a thorn in the side of, did not defend him and he ultimately lost his job but over the course of those years had brought many communist ideas to the hospital workers.
In 1979, he was involved in PLP’s activities in Tupelo, Mississippi when the Party violently fought back the attacks of the Klan.
Russell soon after moved to NYC and organized at Lenox Hill Hospital against the hospital bosses and sellout 1199 leaders.
Eventually moving to Philadelphia, Russell did political work in a small church.
Russell was always reading the Party literature and many other sources. He called me a week before he died to discuss a podcast he had just seen criticizing NATO’s instigation of The Ukrainian War.
Russell was just shy of 91. He had good innings but will be missed by his close friend in Philadelphia Jean and the many comrades and workers who knew him. Rest in power.