Category: Public health

Puerto Rico Faces Crises: COVID, Hurricanes, Earthquakes, Drought

The United States has suffered 135,000 deaths from COVID-19 and has tens of millions of unemployed and both crises continue now into the fifth month, but nowhere has the economic crisis been greater than in the U.S. colony of Puerto Rico.

The Movement for Black Lives Is Different This Time

An assessment of the ongoing protests and developing movement following the murder of George Floyd.

We Are the Saviors We’ve Been Waiting for

Moving on from Bernie

The effort of the media, the DNC, and the Dem establishment to bring Bernie’s campaign to a grinding halt highlights the limits of electoral politics.

Austerity’s Future: Higher Education and COVID-19

The process of neoliberal reforms has been well-established long before COVID-19 hit the nation. The global pandemic has only further entrenched this model, and countless thousands of staff in smaller colleges throughout the U.S. will now suffer its ramifications.

The Border’s COVID-19 Pandemic: Crisis Upon Crisis

Ciudad Juarez has a long history of crises—foreign invasions, revolutions, economic recessions tied to the United States, the 9-11 border constriction and transnational gangland wars. Now it grapples with the COVID-19 pandemic.

Mexican President AMLO to Visit Trump, both Hope for a Boost Amid Crises

Failing at home, Mexico’s president Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO) will visit U.S. President Donald Trump this week to celebrate the new North American trade pact. Each hopes to get a political boost from the visit. That seems unlikely, especially for AMLO.

Protests Against Racism; LBGTQ Pride; Continuing Crisis; Trump’s Decline

Throughout June hundreds of thousands of Americans in hundreds of cities and towns protested the killing of George Floyd who had been murdered by police in Minneapolis. But there were also LGBTQ Pride Marches in support of the protests against racism.

Trump Rallies for Reopening as Biden Strengthens His Position

Donald Trump held his first campaign rally in months on June 20 in an indoor arena in Tulsa, Oklahoma where speaking to a smaller than expected crowd of only 13,000 he minimized the seriousness of the coronavirus pandemic still spreading across the country and failed to address the police racism and violence that have led to protests by hundreds of thousands.

Breaking Immigration Norms Towards Refugees in the Age of COVID-19

Capitalism and white supremacy, together the axes around which most of our contemporary existence has revolved, appear to have been dealt a rattling blow with the arrival of COVID-19.

Protests over George Floyd’s Murder Open National Debates on Racism

Polls show that 80 percent of Americans support the protests that took place in 700 cities in all 50 states and which have fostered in virtually every institution, from public agencies to private businesses, a national discussion about racism.

Notes on the Black Lives Matter Uprising in Historical and Global Context

The Black Lives Matter uprising in the USA, the working-class resistance to unsafe conditions in Italy, and the fight by Hong Kong youth against the repressive Chinese regime exemplify a new generation on the move for radical change.

Covid-19: Aiding the Socially Vulnerable & Preventing a Second Wave in the UK

Increasing the financial support available to migrants – including asylum seekers and those with insecure immigration status — would not only protect their lives but those of the wider public.

Ecology, Democracy and Development: Capitalist Crises and Covid-19

For the past four months Covid-19 has revealed the contradictions and unsustainability of global capitalism perhaps in a manner that no other single phenomenon has ever done in history.

The American Working Class on Unfamiliar and Dangerous Terrain: A Fightback Begins

The pandemic and the shutdown have taken a toll, but they now provide an opportunity to rebuild the American labor movement from the bottom up.

Ten Aphorisms on Capitalism, Covid-19, and the Climate Crisis

The climate crisis, and by extension, the COVID-19 crisis, is a prolonged act of violence perpetrated on the 99% by capitalism’s accumulation for accumulation’s sake.

Where Do We Stand? Reasons for Optimism

In 2008-9 a common slogan was “The banks got bailed out. We got sold out!” This populist attitude has persisted since then and re-emerged even more strongly in this Crisis.

“The situation is very disgraceful for all” – An Interview with Omar Vázquez Heredia

The quarantine has sharpened the hunger ailing the Venezuelan people, as evidenced by the latest report of the UN World Food Program, and this has produced food riots. This is troubling because it further shows the despair of the working class over the level of misery it is enduring.

Class Struggle and Social Protest in the Coronavirus Pandemic

The pandemic and the shutdown have taken a toll, but they now provide an opportunity to rebuild the American labor movement from the bottom up. While the challenges will be great, working class resistance is growing and socialists with a rank-and-file strategy and class struggle perspective are involved in the fight.

Socialist Organizing in the Era of COVID-19

A socialist movement is being revived, and people are watching in real time how the capitalist system drives their lives into chaos again and again.

Coronavirus and Racism

This crisis is exposing all the problems of capitalism—especially racism. In our fights for personal protective equipment, unemployment benefits, healthcare for all, safe work environments, rent relief, etc., we should link these issues together with the systems which produced it.

Trump Will Sacrifice Tens of Thousands to Reopen Economy, Win Reelection

President Donald Trump is driving the United States toward complete loss of control of the coronavirus pandemic, a development that will lead to tens or even hundreds of thousands of deaths and further devastation of the economy.

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