Dear Progressive Reader,
Yesterday was May Day, known outside the United States as International Workers’ Day. The holiday had its start with a huge multi-ethnic, multi-lingual workers’ march for the eight-hour-day in Chicago, Illinois in 1886. Today, as more than thirty million have filed for unemployment due to the coronavirus, and workers now termed “essential” are being asked to risk daily health hazards on the job, the holiday has new meaning and offers new opportunities for organizing. As Sarah Jaffe notes, “The COVID-19 pandemic also makes it easier for workers to understand themselves as interconnected, for unions to understand that if they think small, they will be crushed.” This historical moment, she continues, may make it possible for workers to “come together to push for things like more funding for schools and hospitals, and safety equipment for postal workers and warehouse workers.”
This year’s labor actions on May Day coincide with a national call for rent relief in this time of economic crisis. The campaign, which uses the slogan “Can’t Pay, Won’t Pay” (taken from the title of a 1974 political comedy by leftwing Italian playwright Dario Fo), is based in a very urgent reality. As Alice Herman writes, “All told, about 50 percent of renters in the United States say they are now unable to pay their rent in full. . . . And even in states with eviction freezes in place, these new rules are temporary and do not account for the missed payments that will balloon after the COVID-19 closures have ended.”
Meanwhile, beginning earlier this week, a joint operation of the U.S. Navy and Air Force began flying over American cities in “Operation America Strong” to “honor front-line health care workers.” These flights cost at least $60,000 per hour, but no worries, the Defense Department says, the costs were “already in the Pentagon budget.” This expenditure comes at a time when health care workers and those in other essential jobs don’t have enough personal protective equipment to do their jobs. As Michael Felsen, a former U.S. Department of Labor attorney, writes for our website this week, “Bus drivers across the country are dying from COVID-19. We need to do more to protect them.” Marcia Brown reports on the situation in a county jail housing ICE detainees in Ohio where “there are still no soap dispensers, and not all guards are wearing masks or gloves.” And Adam Briones of the Greenlining Institute says, in an op-ed for our Progressive Media Project, “Even before the COVID-19 pandemic, the United States was already suffering from a pandemic of inequality. How is it that in the world’s richest country, the people we call ‘essential workers’ often have no paid sick leave or access to health care?”
In spite of an increase in sanctions and pressure by the U.S. government, Pablo Vivanco tells us, “Cuba advocates international solidarity as the only way to overcome this pandemic.” Vivanco quotes one Cuban diplomat who urges, “Health should not be a business, and access to medical care is a human right.” But, as U.S. confirmed cases of the virus topped one million this week, and deaths now exceed the number of soldiers killed in ten years of war against Vietnam, “Dr. Donald J. Trump” has another idea—as illustrated by award-winning cartoonist Mark Fiore. What else is there to say?
We have been gathering all of our coverage of COVID-19 under one tab on our website for quick access. Keep reading, and we will keep bringing you important articles on these and other issues of our time.
Sincerely,
Norman Stockwell
Publisher
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