Due to Years of Austerity, Cuts to Public Health Care, And An Anti-Science and Profiteering President, The United States Now Leads the World In Coronavirus Cases and Deaths in the World! And Now the Total Caronavirs Deaths in the United States are Over 20% of the Total Death in the Entire World!
Capitalism Does Not, and Never Has, Worked for the Masses! In Its Death Agony, Capitalism Is Traveling About The World Like The Four Horsemen of the The Apocalypse, Spreading War, Famine, Pestilence, and Death. The very future of Humanity Is Now At stake!
During This Economic Crisis, Capitalism’s Three-Point Political Program: 1.Austerity, 2.Scapegoat Blacks, Minorities, and ‘Illegal’ Immigrants for Unemployment, and 3. The Iron Heel! Always Remember: That President Obama, With a Majority Democrat Legislature Supported the Wall Street Bailout and Remember, That he Established, in writing, the United States Capitalist Austerity Program. — The Race to the Bottom/Pauperization of the 99%!
Democracy?:As the Capitalist Robber Barons Steal from the 99%, Only the 1% Voted For Austerity! The 99% Should Decide On Austerity — Not Just The 1% Who, Profit From Austerity!! Under Austerity, All of the World Will Eventually Be Pauperized, Humbled, and Desecrated Like Greece and Puerto Rico.! Socialism Means True Democracy, that the 99% Will Rule, Not the Few!
The Wall Street Bailout was profitable to our robber baron ‘lawmakers’!
On the same day Paul Pelosi made the purchases, Senator Pelosi criticized Facebook for “schmoozing” with the Trump administration. “I think that they have been very abusive of the great opportunity that technology has given them,” she said in a press conference, adding, “My thought about them is that all they want is their tax cuts and no antitrust action against them.” — Nancy Pelosi Discloses Her Husband Spent $5.52 Million On Amazon, Facebook Stock
It’s ridiculous that the public should even have to wonder if a member’s personal financial interests are playing a role in any public policy, let alone the response to a crisis like Covid-19. — Delaney Marsco, Campaign Legal Center
The United States is not a Democracy (A government in which the supreme power is vested in the people and exercised by them directly)! Only the 1%, through their ownership of the Reublicrats and who profit from war and the war budget, vote for War and the war budget — A policy, which Gore Vidal called a Perpetual War for Perpetual Peace. — The 99% Should Decide On War — Not Just The 1% Who Profit From War! Under a Democracy, The 99% would have the right to vote on the policy of Perpetual War for Perpetual Peace! The United States takes from the poor and gives to the Rich.
Cashing In on Pandemic? Documents Show Lawmakers Made 1,500 Stock Transactions Worth $158 Million as Covid-19 Spread As Covid-19 cases began to increase, senators and representatives from both parties traded securities—many related to the pandemic itself.” A new analysis of financial disclosure documents found that Republican and Democratic members of Congress made nearly 1,500 stock transactions worth up to $158 million between February and April as the coronavirus spread across the U.S., heightening suspicionsthat elected officials in charge of the federal response to the pandemic have opportunistically opportunistically cashed in on it. By Jake Johnson
U.S. Robber Barron Insider TradersFalse Profits: ‘ A Plague Upon Thee’: ‘A Phantom Plague’: Evangelical Fundamentalists Who Openly Defied Social Distancing Guidelines are Dying Of Coronavirus in Frightening Numbers Countless non-fundamentalist churches in the United States, from Catholic to Lutheran and Episcopalian, have embraced social distancing during the coronavirus pandemic and temporarily moved their activities online. But many Christian fundamentalists and evangelicals have been irresponsibly downplaying the dangers of COVID-19 and doing so with deadly results: journalist Alex Woodward, in the U.K.-based Independent, reports that the pandemic has claimed the lives of more than 30 pastors in the Bible Belt. “Dozens of pastors across the Bible Belt have succumbed to coronavirus after churches and televangelists played down the pandemic and actively encouraged churchgoers to flout self-distancing guidelines,” Woodward reports. “As many as 30 church leaders from the nation’s largest African-American Pentecostal denomination have now been confirmed to have died in the outbreak, as members defied public health warnings to avoid large gatherings to prevent transmitting the virus.” By Alex HendersonTrump Says He Might Use Pandemic Relief Funding To Extort So-Called Sanctuary Cities Oh, not this shit again. Impeached president Donald Trump on Tuesday returned to attacking so-called sanctuary cities, but with a pandemic quid pro quo twist (I guess he really learned that lesson, right Susan Collins?): now he’s threatening to condition relief funding on local policies limiting cooperation with federal deportation agents. “Now, if it’s COVID-related, I guess we can talk about it, but we’d want certain things also, including sanctuary city adjustments because we have so many people in sanctuary cities,” Trump claimed.
Social Distancing Doesn’t Matter When It Comes to Racist, Aggressive Policing Amid the COVID-19 pandemic, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo and New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio have implored New Yorkers to keep respectable distances from one another, with the hopes of stopping the spread of the virus. The state’s and city’s economies were grounded to a halt as all kinds of businesses were ordered to shut their doors. Schools have been closed since March, and de Blasio recently announced that they will remain closed for the remainder of the year. Court affairs are being conducted remotely. Colleges have transitioned to distance learning. Across the state, there has either been a drastic slowing down, or a complete stoppage of almost all operations and activities in the public and private sector. Yet the one organization determined to carry on with business as usual is the New York City Police Department (NYPD). New York City Police Commissioner Dermot Shea declared that the NYPD would not slow down operations during the COVID-19 epidemic. Indeed, the police business of oppressing Black and Brown people cannot stop, not even in the face of an unprecedented crisis. Not even when a fifth of the entire department has been calling out sick for several weeks. Not even when police officers have gotten sick and died from COVID-19. For these officers, arresting a Brown child for selling candy is more important than flattening the curve. By Rigodis Appling
Late-Stage Racial Capitalism Opened the Door to the Killer Virus The white settler state always inflicts excessive mortality on racially subject peoples, and capitalism inflicts death on large sections of its disproportionately non-white working class and poor.“Capitalism is constantly imposing a monstrous, rolling triage on the populations it controls.”People everywhere ask, “When will this Covid-19 crisis be over?” But the question is based on the flawed premise that the nation and world are being ravaged by a health crisis, when in fact the planet is suffering the convulsions of a late-stage capitalist system that cannot cope with the periodic emergence of deadly contagions – just as it cannot possibly confront the climate change that results from the workings of the system, itself. Human health and welfare and planetary climate stability are incompatible with the rule of the rich. Period. By Glen Ford, BAR Executive EditorFreedom Rider: Fighting COVID-19 with Mass Action and a People’s Strike The people’s mass fightback against the system that failed to protect them from the coronavirus and corporate predators begins May 1. “The masses are suffering, but the black misleadership class behaves as it usually does, playing their part as a fake opposition to Trump.”” The passionate debates surrounding the response to the COVID-19 pandemic are useless if they don’t lead to a larger fight against capitalism. The shut downs of business and schools intended to stop the spread of corona virus have created 22 million newly unemployed people. That means those workers have lost their health care. They may not be able to pay rent or mortgages or buy food. All efforts must be directed towards addressing their needs and working towards transformational change. By Margaret Kimberley, BAR senior columnistJoe Biden and Donald Trump’s Anti-China Campaign Strategy is Part of a Broader Imperialist War Against China The people’s mass fightback against the system that failed to protect them from the coronavirus and corporate predators begins May 1. “The masses are suffering, but the black misleadership class behaves as it usually does, playing their part as a fake opposition to Trump.””The passionate debates surrounding the response to the COVID-19 pandemic are useless if they don’t lead to a larger fight against capitalism. The shut downs of business and schools intended to stop the spread of corona virus have created 22 million newly unemployed people. That means those workers have lost their health care. They may not be able to pay rent or mortgages or buy food. All efforts must be directed towards addressing their needs and working towards transformational change. By Danny Haiphong, BAR Contributing EditorDRC’s Virunga: Park, Gorillas, and Rangers All Under Attack Congolese officials are blaming armed Rwandan Hutu refugees for the massacre of twelve rangers and five civilians, but there are any number of other predators that covet the park. “The park is a target for those determined to seize its vast resources without regard for the wildlife or the Congolese.” How can anyone not love gorillas? They look like the world’s meanest mofos but in fact they’re family-oriented vegetarians who love to play and swing from trees when they’re not munching on stems, bamboo shoots, and fruits, or maybe ants and termites or their larvae. By Ann Garrison, BAR Contributing EditorMay 1st General Strike: Claiming People(s)-Centered Human Rights for the Working Class The failure of the capitalist state to provide the people with elementary protections of their fundamental human rights renders the capitalist state illegitimate. “The people are defining and taking up the struggle for their human rights.” From the perspective of the People(s)-Centered Human Rights framework – “if society is structured and organized to degrade and dehumanize the individual and collectives, the demand for human rights, with its full spectrum of possibilities, is in essence a call for revolutionary transformation… If oppressive relationships are reflected in the organization of society and the State, the task for human rights activists, in order to realize human rights, is to build alternative structures of power in order to transform those relationships –nothing short of this is acceptable from the view of the oppressed.” By Ajamu Baraka, BAR editor and columnistCOVID-19 and the War Against Black Detroit Corporate America and white supremacists have waged merciless war against the Black megapolis that dared to nurture revolutionaries and great music. “For more than 15 years mass water shutoffs were contributing to the spread of a variety of illnesses in largely black neighborhoods.” After COVID-19 ripped open one of capitalism’s infected scars, both horrific death and mass awareness of the abject failure of the U.S. health-care system oozed dialectically from the wound. Detroit in particular suffered extraordinary agony when the coronavirus beast charged through a gate opened by government officials, and after baring its fangs embarked on a seemingly endless rampage of infection, death and destruction of people with dark skin. By Mark P. FancherBAR Abolition & Mutual Aid Spotlight: Timmy Châu We need to understand mutual aid work as part and parcel to the work of all radical organizing. “Policing is a necessarily white supremacist and violent system weaponized by the ruling class to contain, maim and murder communities deemed disposable by the state.”In this feature, we ask organizers involved in mutual aid projects to share a little bit about their work. We understand mutual aid work as the part of social movement organizing that meets people’s direct needs. Unlike charity work, however, mutual aid is part of a broader strategy to address the root causes of injustice by mobilizing people to dismantle structures of domination and build the world we want. We need to understand mutual aid work as part and parcel to the work of all radical organizing. By Dean Spade and Roberto Sirvent, BAR ContributorsBlack Oakland Demands in Light of COVID-19 and Rates of Black Death Unless Black people are healthy and safe then no community is healthy and safe. “The descendants of slaves, Black, African and African-Americans are most impacted by this virus through a racial and class lens.” Across the country, Black People are being infected and dying at disproportionate rates from COVID-19. In order to respond effectively to the needs of the Black community our elected officials, health experts, advocates and organizers must take a look at the ways in which the descendants of slaves, Black, African and African-Americans are most impacted by this virus through a racial and class lens. By Black Oakland Leaders and AlliesAs Coronavirus Spreads Through Prisons, States Are Failing Incarcerated People Although prisons have become hot spots of the pandemic, most of the penal overseers have taken only token measures, if any, to evacuate inmates. “If COVID-19 comes into this prison, there is no safe place for anyone.” By Victoria LawCuban-Trained Doctor Fights Pandemic in The Bronx In the South Bronx, Dr Melissa Barber battles COVID-19, putting into practice the lessons she learned in Cuba, at the Latin American School of Medicine. “Dr. Barber has identified the most vulnerable in the neighborhood.” The United States has not been able to control COVID-19. The Donald Trump administration did not react in time, played down the reality, and as a result more than 34,000 people have died. Yet the government finds time to attack Cuba.By Granma International Staff
Cuban-Trained Doctor Fights Pandemic in The Bronx / above: US graduates from the Latin American School of Medicine in Cuba
Puerto Rico, Protest, Prison: Johanna Fernández and Jose Saldaña on The Young Lords “There’s something profoundly liberating for people who’ve been told all their lives that they ain’t shit to stand up.” “The Young Lords saved me from a meaningless death.” Johanna Fernández, child of immigrants from the Dominican Republic and professor at New York’s Baruch College, has just published The Young Lords: A Radical History , a book about the 1960s Puerto Rican activist group. The Young Lords began as a Chicago street gang; then, inspired by the Black Panther Party, morphed into a militant rights organization that caught fire in New York City, where Jose Saldaña, child of Puerto Rican immigrants, was born. Raised in impoverished East Harlem, Jose spent 38 years in NY prisons. On his release in 2018, he became the Director of Release Aging People in Prison Campaign (RAPP) and a compelling critic of our criminal justice system. Johanna, for her part, has devoted years to the prison abolition movement, championing the release of imprisoned journalist Mumia Abu-Jamal. By Susie DayMichael Jordan’s Sad Legacy as the Plutocrats’ Champ, and the Anti-Ali Ali, the People’s Champ, hurtled into the breach to come to the aid of his community while Jordan did all he could to distance himself.“Jordan turned his back on his tribe, his community and the working class into which he was born.”Five years ago on a bitterly cold day in February, I walked into a Bohemian coffee bar on Chicago’s Westside to interview Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn, the husband-and-wife couple who helped found the Leftist organization of young white militants known as the Weather Underground. For the two-and-a half hours that followed, I sat in rapt astonishment while these two regaled me with stories of their days on-the-run, of the Black Panthers and Emmet Till and their thoughts on everything from Ferguson to Occupy and immigrants’ rights. About halfway through, Bernardine recalled how she got her start in the movement as a young law student helping to organize rent strikes in black neighborhoods on Chicago’s Southside. By Jon JeterIt’s capitalism, baby… / 1 %-Funded Rally Actors / Solidarity By Raymond Nat Turner, BAR poet-in-residence
It’s capitalism, baby… Gravediggers feed hungry Hart
Island trenches plain pine coffins;
stacked three-high, they rest side by side in solidarity.
For now, they share island real estate with AIDS and1918 Flu fallen.
New York is not new to this. Ask African Burial Ground
Ancestors—It’s capitalism, baby…
Labor:
Why I Do Not Celebrate Labor Day But I celebrate May Day! By RolandSheppard Retired Business Agent Painters Local # 4 San Francisco I celebrate May Day, but I don’t celebrate Labor Day — I just observe it. To me, Labor Day means the codification of the labor bureaucracy’s subservience to the capitalist class. That was the original purpose for the United States capitalist class when it made labor day a holiday. It was organized as such in opposition to the Labor Day that was/is celebrated everywhere else in the world — a demonstration class solidarity! — May Day! May Day was celebrated, in memory of the martyrs of the Haymarket Massacre in 1886 Chicago and the unending struggle of the world working class for their “unalienable rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”
Live: Europe Crumbles Before Covid-19 Join us on tonight (6PM BST) as we interview Josh Holroyd, writer for the British Marxist paper Socialist Appeal, about the impact of the coronavirus pandemic on Europe. The myth of European Unity has been shattered by this outbreak. The fraternity of EU member states has been replaced with new borders, hoarding of medical resources and mutual recriminations. Caught in the middle are the European workers, who are suffering the consequences of this emergency while their national leaders squabble. Strikes have already erupted in Spain, Italy etc., and the next period will see renewed class struggle sweep the continent.Brazil: Bolsonaro Intensifies The Crisis Of Bourgeois Institutions Bolsonaro’s goverment in Brazil is wracked with splits and crises. The ruling class is hopelessly divided over the coronavirus pandemic and the economic calamity facing the country. By Evandro Colzani
Health, Science, Education, and Welfare:
The government of the United States can pass laws in a few days to spend tens of trillions of dollars for war and the bailout of Wall Street and the bankers. Yet, those who ‘governn’, pass universal healthcare for themselves, but they cannot spend even one trillion dollars for universal health for those who are ‘governed’! This is what is considered, by the powers to be, a democracy and part of the democratic way. — Roland Sheppard, Let the People Vote on Healthcare!
Cutting School: Privatization, Segregation, and the End of Public Education A “powerful analysis of racism, segregation, poverty” (Diane Ravitch) and a timely indictment of the privatization—and profitability—of separate and unequal schools “An astounding look at America’s segregated school system, weaving together historical dynamics of race, class, and growing inequality into one concise and commanding story. Cutting School puts our schools at the center of the fight for a new commons.” —Naomi Klein, author of No Is Not Enough and This Changes Everything In an era characterized by levels of school segregation the country has not seen since the mid-twentieth century, cultural critic and American studies professor Noliwe Rooks provides a trenchant analysis of our separate and unequal schools and argues that profiting from our nation’s failure to provide a high-quality education to all children has become a very big business.
Quotes of the Day:
False Profits: ‘ A Plague Upon Thee’: ‘A Phantom Plague’: Evangelical Fundamentalists Who Openly Defied Social Distancing Guidelines are Dying Of Coronavirus in Frightening Numbers Countless non-fundamentalist churches in the United States, from Catholic to Lutheran and Episcopalian, have embraced social distancing during the coronavirus pandemic and temporarily moved their activities online. But many Christian fundamentalists and evangelicals have been irresponsibly downplaying the dangers of COVID-19 and doing so with deadly results: journalist Alex Woodward, in the U.K.-based Independent, reports that the pandemic has claimed the lives of more than 30 pastors in the Bible Belt. “Dozens of pastors across the Bible Belt have succumbed to coronavirus after churches and televangelists played down the pandemic and actively encouraged churchgoers to flout self-distancing guidelines,” Woodward reports. “As many as 30 church leaders from the nation’s largest African-American Pentecostal denomination have now been confirmed to have died in the outbreak, as members defied public health warnings to avoid large gatherings to prevent transmitting the virus.” By Alex Henderson
Trump Says He Might Use Pandemic Relief Funding To Extort So-Called Sanctuary Cities Oh, not this shit again. Impeached president Donald Trump on Tuesday returned to attacking so-called sanctuary cities, but with a pandemic quid pro quo twist (I guess he really learned that lesson, right Susan Collins?): now he’s threatening to condition relief funding on local policies limiting cooperation with federal deportation agents. “Now, if it’s COVID-related, I guess we can talk about it, but we’d want certain things also, including sanctuary city adjustments because we have so many people in sanctuary cities,” Trump claimed.
Freedom Rider: Fighting COVID-19 with Mass Action and a People’s Strike The people’s mass fightback against the system that failed to protect them from the coronavirus and corporate predators begins May 1. “The masses are suffering, but the black misleadership class behaves as it usually does, playing their part as a fake opposition to Trump.”” The passionate debates surrounding the response to the COVID-19 pandemic are useless if they don’t lead to a larger fight against capitalism. The shut downs of business and schools intended to stop the spread of corona virus have created 22 million newly unemployed people. That means those workers have lost their health care. They may not be able to pay rent or mortgages or buy food. All efforts must be directed towards addressing their needs and working towards transformational change. By Margaret Kimberley, BAR senior columnist
Joe Biden and Donald Trump’s Anti-China Campaign Strategy is Part of a Broader Imperialist War Against China The people’s mass fightback against the system that failed to protect them from the coronavirus and corporate predators begins May 1. “The masses are suffering, but the black misleadership class behaves as it usually does, playing their part as a fake opposition to Trump.””The passionate debates surrounding the response to the COVID-19 pandemic are useless if they don’t lead to a larger fight against capitalism. The shut downs of business and schools intended to stop the spread of corona virus have created 22 million newly unemployed people. That means those workers have lost their health care. They may not be able to pay rent or mortgages or buy food. All efforts must be directed towards addressing their needs and working towards transformational change. By Danny Haiphong, BAR Contributing Editor
DRC’s Virunga: Park, Gorillas, and Rangers All Under Attack Congolese officials are blaming armed Rwandan Hutu refugees for the massacre of twelve rangers and five civilians, but there are any number of other predators that covet the park. “The park is a target for those determined to seize its vast resources without regard for the wildlife or the Congolese.” How can anyone not love gorillas? They look like the world’s meanest mofos but in fact they’re family-oriented vegetarians who love to play and swing from trees when they’re not munching on stems, bamboo shoots, and fruits, or maybe ants and termites or their larvae. By Ann Garrison, BAR Contributing Editor
May 1st General Strike: Claiming People(s)-Centered Human Rights for the Working Class The failure of the capitalist state to provide the people with elementary protections of their fundamental human rights renders the capitalist state illegitimate. “The people are defining and taking up the struggle for their human rights.” From the perspective of the People(s)-Centered Human Rights framework – “if society is structured and organized to degrade and dehumanize the individual and collectives, the demand for human rights, with its full spectrum of possibilities, is in essence a call for revolutionary transformation… If oppressive relationships are reflected in the organization of society and the State, the task for human rights activists, in order to realize human rights, is to build alternative structures of power in order to transform those relationships –nothing short of this is acceptable from the view of the oppressed.” By Ajamu Baraka, BAR editor and columnist
COVID-19 and the War Against Black Detroit Corporate America and white supremacists have waged merciless war against the Black megapolis that dared to nurture revolutionaries and great music. “For more than 15 years mass water shutoffs were contributing to the spread of a variety of illnesses in largely black neighborhoods.” After COVID-19 ripped open one of capitalism’s infected scars, both horrific death and mass awareness of the abject failure of the U.S. health-care system oozed dialectically from the wound. Detroit in particular suffered extraordinary agony when the coronavirus beast charged through a gate opened by government officials, and after baring its fangs embarked on a seemingly endless rampage of infection, death and destruction of people with dark skin. By Mark P. Fancher
BAR Abolition & Mutual Aid Spotlight: Timmy Châu We need to understand mutual aid work as part and parcel to the work of all radical organizing. “Policing is a necessarily white supremacist and violent system weaponized by the ruling class to contain, maim and murder communities deemed disposable by the state.”In this feature, we ask organizers involved in mutual aid projects to share a little bit about their work. We understand mutual aid work as the part of social movement organizing that meets people’s direct needs. Unlike charity work, however, mutual aid is part of a broader strategy to address the root causes of injustice by mobilizing people to dismantle structures of domination and build the world we want. We need to understand mutual aid work as part and parcel to the work of all radical organizing. By Dean Spade and Roberto Sirvent, BAR Contributors
Black Oakland Demands in Light of COVID-19 and Rates of Black Death Unless Black people are healthy and safe then no community is healthy and safe. “The descendants of slaves, Black, African and African-Americans are most impacted by this virus through a racial and class lens.” Across the country, Black People are being infected and dying at disproportionate rates from COVID-19. In order to respond effectively to the needs of the Black community our elected officials, health experts, advocates and organizers must take a look at the ways in which the descendants of slaves, Black, African and African-Americans are most impacted by this virus through a racial and class lens. By Black Oakland Leaders and Allies
As Coronavirus Spreads Through Prisons, States Are Failing Incarcerated People Although prisons have become hot spots of the pandemic, most of the penal overseers have taken only token measures, if any, to evacuate inmates. “If COVID-19 comes into this prison, there is no safe place for anyone.” By Victoria Law
Cuban-Trained Doctor Fights Pandemic in The Bronx In the South Bronx, Dr Melissa Barber battles COVID-19, putting into practice the lessons she learned in Cuba, at the Latin American School of Medicine. “Dr. Barber has identified the most vulnerable in the neighborhood.” The United States has not been able to control COVID-19. The Donald Trump administration did not react in time, played down the reality, and as a result more than 34,000 people have died. Yet the government finds time to attack Cuba.By Granma International Staff
World:
