Roanoke Peoples’ Power Network

As COVID-19 continues to spread throughout Virginia and the world, a large network of activists and community organizers have come together to discuss the ramifications of U.S. infrastructure on public health. Outbreaks of the virus are expected to grow exponentially over the coming weeks and will place significant stress on our health system for months to come. While some countries, such as China, were able to respond quickly to COVID-19 and “flatten the curve,” the U.S. response has been much slower. In order to avoid unfathomably tragic consequences, we must act immediately to make up for lost time. Many Americans lack access to healthcare, paid sick leave, and other services that would delay the spread of the virus and mitigate its effects. While this needs to be dealt with on a national level, we as community organizers in Roanoke & Salem, Virginia demand that our elected officials set an example for other cities by adjusting local policy to bring relief immediately to those who are most vulnerable.

#RoanokeMutualAid

We are about to enter new territory, as this pandemic is predicted to be unlike anything we have previously faced in our lifetimes. The choice is clear: ensure that resources are shared and the needs of all are met, or continue to withhold necessities from those who need them most to the ultimate detriment of all. We demand the following five points be adopted to ensure that the people of Roanoke make it through this crisis with the least amount of suffering possible.

A Pandemic Platform for the People of Roanoke: https://bit.ly/3agq7f2

#RoanokeMutualAid

https://bit.ly/2UnZVII

https://fighting-words.net/2020/03/21/elections-2020-democratic-party-leadership-attempts-to-destroy-sanders-campaign-again/

By Abayomi Azikiwe

A series of Democratic primaries in the race for the party nomination has resulted in more victories for former United States Vice-President Joe Biden.

Senator Bernie  Sanders of Vermont, who was leading other candidates in many polls prior to and after the first three contests in Iowa, New Hampshire and Nevada, has since the first southern primary in South Carolina suffered losses in key races such as Michigan, Washington state, Minnesota, Massachusetts, Missouri, among others.

In the state of California after March 3 it took nearly two weeks for the election officials to proclaim Sanders  as the winner despite the fact that he led by a quarter million votes against Biden and other candidates. Even after this admission, the apportionment of the 415 delegates has yet to be decided.

Although in Michigan Sanders had upset former Senator and Secretary of State under the administration of President Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, in 2016 by a narrow margin, in the 2020 primary Biden won over Sanders by a double-digit margin. The Michigan primary was marked by establishment politicians rallying against Sanders….

Unionists at the Sanders rally on March 6, 2020 at TCF Conference Center in Detroit. | Photo: Abayomi Azikiwe

https://bit.ly/2J6r6Th

http://www.prisonforum.org/

This report relies mainly on phone calls with our friend Elijah Prioleau, who is locked up inside Waupun Correctional Institution (WCI) on a 3 year revocation after spending 16 years trapped in Wisconsin prisons. Elijah has health conditions that make him especially vulnerable to COVID-19 and to the hardship of an extended lockdown. We demand that he, and others like him be released immediately and quarantined in a hospital or other facility that cares for people and tries to keep them alive. The Wisconsin prison system does not.

By speaking with us and bringing truth to the outside world, Elijah faces risk of retaliation. We haven’t heard from him since early Saturday morning. Please write him support letters, thanking him for helping raise awareness and protect people held in Wisconsin prisons. Receiving mail demonstrates to staff that Elijah has friends outside who will not stand by if he’s persecuted or silenced.

Write him here:

Leon Elijah Prioleau
420053
Waupun Correctional Institution
PO Box 351
Waupun, WI 53963-0351

Elijah’s testimony is based on what he saw and heard about from the cell block. We researched background information to put his observations into context. We can see two things clearly:

• First, Governor Evers and the DOC could have prevented this exposure if they’d cared to protect incarcerated people’s health and wellness over the last year.

• Second, Warden Brian Foster at WCI and his staff are not taking serious action to prevent the spread of COVID-19 in the facility.

We have received word that Columbia Correctional is also on lockdown after a food service worker tested positive for COVID-19. We expect that Warden Susan Novak’s response will be as bad or worse that the WCI response described here.

We will continue to monitor both of these situations, and any other exposures in the DOC as we learn about them. We will fight for the lives of people held in these prisons. Governor Evers and Secretary Carr will not be allowed to ignore the plight of the incarcerated during this pandemic!

https://bit.ly/2UsuSvj

https://blacklivesmatter.com/

As of this writing, the United States has a population of 329 million people. As of this writing, per the Covid Tracking Project as of March 16th, only 48,284 people have been tested. By comparison, South Korea with a population of 51.47 million, is testing 20,000 people a day¹. The United States is drastically lagging behind the world with access to testing kits and testing citizens. Therefore, the true rate and magnitude of the coronavirus in the United States remain illusory and fragmented at best and a deadly moral and political catastrophe at worst.

The lack of a public healthcare system and equitable pandemic response infrastructure further handicaps the ability to wage a concerted emergency health campaign to treat the population. In the hands of the private healthcare industry, the results of the tests are uncoordinated and inaccurate. Truthout explains, “Because we have a patchwork medical system whose primary motivating engine is corporate profit, rather than a unified public medical system whose motivating engine is the health of the public, communicable diseases are treated in a mindset of individual outcome. Our system focuses on the immediate needs of insured patients rather than treating the overall disease as a public emergency, thus hampering the containment and treatment of epidemics like these².”

This pandemic has made plain the human cost of a system that is built to maximize profit at the expense of providing care. 45 and his administration has not once mentioned vulnerable communities and has made a concerted effort to mention, repeatedly, that “everyone doesn’t need to be tested”; a result that could prevent early deaths of hundreds, if not thousands, of people. This contrast in priorities is no more clearly made visible than the federal government injecting $1.5 Trillion into financial markets³, money which should have been given toward funding of mass testing, providing relief to the poor and unemployed, funding emergency mass testing sites, providing meals to all homeless and working poor, and wiping out debt!

“Among the working poor, Black workers will be harmed the most. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, Black, and Hispanic workers are more than twice as likely to earn poverty-level wages compared to their white counterparts,” reports Kristin Myers in Yahoo Finance.

We demand the federal government immediately do the following:

1. Immediately remove the blockade against Cuba and allow collaboration with Cuban doctors to enable utilization of their Interferon-alpha 2b antiviral agent which is being used to treat the coronavirus in China and other countries.
2. Immediately pass a coronavirus relief package now that provides emergency funding assistance to all states to cover expenses to massively test the population in the millions and provide emergency food and shelter to all homeless and poor.
3. Providing immediate testing to the most vulnerable including the elderly and folks without healthcare.
4. Provide a protection and testing plan for inmates while in custody and upon release.
5. Expand SNAP and unemployment for the duration of the pandemic; past initial quarantine.
6. Immediately pass Medicare for All with no work requirements.
7. Immediately legislate fully paid sick leave for all workers regardless of wage, skill and time on the job.
8. Release all people in detention, prisons and jails who are elderly or infirm including non violent offenses and juveniles.
9. Implement an immediate moratorium on evictions, foreclosures and utility shut-offs.
10. Free vaccinations and treatment for all.
11. Emergency funding for family and community based childcare for working and cash poor families.
12. Income replacement for small business owners who will not benefit from corporate tax cuts and wealth transfer schemes.
13. Emergency funding for mental health services especially for healthcare workers and sanitation workers.
14. Emergency funding for community based supportive services, community centers and other community options available for families during school closure.
15. Guarantee the immediate and complete restoration of all civil liberties once the national emergency ends.
16. Immediate destruction of all health records held by government as a result of coronavirus testing and treatment once national emergency ends.
17. Immediately temporarily seize all vacant units through eminent domain for usage by the unhoused.

If we can learn anything from our neighbors overseas, we need to take cognisance measures that the coronavirus can be successfully contained only if immediate coordinated government action is implemented. At the current rate, the United States is at risk of experiencing not only a deadly healthcare crisis but one that has the potential to result in massive social, economic and political upheaval as systems reach crisis points and begin to fracture. We have seen the devastating effects of government abandonment that produced human rights failures like Hurricane Katrina, Maria, wildfires and earthquakes. Katrina and Maria showed how government abandonment typified by systemic racism and classism resulted in preventable death and devastation. We do not want to see this repeated with the coronavirus. We can prevent such devastation, if we act now.

Signed by:

Black Lives Matter Global Network, https://blacklivesmatter.com/ 

¹ The New York Times
² Truthout
³ The Wall Street Journal

Photo: Joe Brusky

https://fighting-words.net/2020/03/20/coronavirus-feed-the-people-starve-the-pentagon/

By Chris Fry

As millions of workers and poor are desperately facing a catastrophic loss of income from the Coronavirus pandemic that is sweeping the country and the world, now is the time to examine the various stashes of wealth that we producers have created and that the parasitic capitalist class has appropriated. In short, in this time of crisis, we want that money back!

A first place to look is Trump’s expanding nuclear weapons program. A Feb. 26 Bloomberg article reports that the Pentagon has plans to spend a whopping $167 billion over the next five years to “modernize” its gigantic nuclear arsenal.

The Defense Department’s five-year plan on nuclear programs calls for $29 billion for fiscal 2021, $30 billion in 2022 and $33 billion in 2023, before jumping to $37 billion in 2024 and $38 billion in 2025.

The plan includes $25 billion for research and procurement — but not support and operations for — the new Columbia-class intercontinental ballistic missile submarine that begins construction this year, $24 billion for improved nuclear command and control and $23 billion for the Air Force’s B-21 bomber.

The Bloomberg article states that this weapons program has wide support among both Democratic and Republican legislators. These horrendous weapons are designed to terrorize the population of the world into quiet submission to slavery by U.S. imperialism, even while a deadly disease threatens the lives millions of people around the globe.

Trump calls COVID-19 the “China virus” ….

http://en.granma.cu/cuba/2020-03-17/cuban-international-medical-brigades-focused-on-solidarity-and-caution

All 28,268 members of Cuba’s 61 medical brigades working abroad are free of the coronavirus, reports Dr. Jorge Hidalgo Bustillo, director of the Medical Collaboration Central Unit

Author: Abel Reyes Montero | informacion@granmai.cu

march 17, 2020 08:03:07

For those who love their family members and their compatriots, the spreading Covid-19 pandemic is cause for alarm, given the risk faced by the more than 28,000 Cuban health workers serving on missions around the world.

But it seems that their solidarity and internationalist vocation has been, thus far, a moral repellent.

According to information provided by Dr. Jorge Hidalgo Bustillo, director of the Central Unit for Medical Collaboration (UCCM), all 28,268 members of Cuba’s medical brigades working in 61countries, around the world, remain free of the virus, to date.

Given the situation, the center is maintaining close contact with brigade leaders via video conferences, and provides a report on the health of doctors and technicians which is updated daily. “There is permanent communication, as has historically been done, and we have here, at the UCCM, a command post that works 24 hours a day,” Dr. Hidalgo reported.

Of the countries where Cuban medical brigades are present, he said, Qatar, Algeria, China, South Africa and Kuwait have cases of infection within their populations, but added, “Our personnel is well protected, and has not had contact with the sick patients.”

He said that communication is also maintained with health directorates in brigade members’ home provinces, to keep family and loved ones informed of their health….

Cuba’s Central Unit of Medical Collaboration reports that our medical professionals working around the world remain free of Covid-19. Photo: Nuria Barbosa

Wisconsin AFL-CIO Joins United Food and Commercial Workers Union Local 1473 in Encouraging Governor Evers to Classify Wisconsin Grocery Store Workers and Food Processing Workers as Emergency Responders During Coronavirus State of Emergency

CLICK HERE:  Send a letter to Governor Tony Evers encouraging him to classify grocery store, retail, and food processing workers as emergency responders during the COVID-19 crisis.

First responder status will help workers get two weeks paid leave and allow for grocery and food processing workers’ children to be prioritized in childcare facilities. These workers must also have the appropriate personal protective equipment to keep them safe on the job.

TAKE ACTION:  Encourage Governor Evers to designate grocery store and food processing workers as first responder status.

John Eiden, President of the United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW) Local 1473 union, representing over 11,000 grocery store and food processing workers throughout the state of Wisconsin, recently sent a letter to Governor Tony Evers requesting that Governor Evers use an executive order to classify grocery store and food processing workers as first responders and guarantee these workers two weeks paid leave during the coronavirus public health state of emergency.

“Keeping our communities healthy and safe is our first priority,” wrote UFCW Local 1473 President John Eiden in a March 18 letter to Governor Tony Evers. “Our members need strong worker protections like paid leave to continue to do these vital jobs. Our UFCW members in grocery stores, retail establishments, and food processing plants are on the front lines of the coronavirus outbreak working around the clock to keep these businesses open and ensure that families in our communities have the essential food and supplies they need. These workers help power Wisconsin’s economy every day and their courage and dedication is needed now more than ever.”

As this novel virus spreads through our communities, a novel group of frontline responders are stepping up. Grocery stores workers and food processing workers, many represented across the country by the United Food and Commercial Workers union, are risking their own personal health and safety on the frontlines of the COVID-19 crisis to stock shelves with needed food and supplies like toilet paper and hand sanitizer and soap, that families across Wisconsin need during this pandemic.

Americans deeply understand the vital and essential work UFCW members in grocery, retail stores, and food processing facilities are doing every day to support and sustain our families during the COVID-19 crisis. They deserve first responder status.

A list of UFCW Local 1473 union grocery stores can be found here.

In Solidarity,

Stephanie Bloomingdale, President

Dennis Delie, Secretary-Treasurer