Remembering Who We Are in the Heart of the Pandemic

Remembering Who We Are in the Heart of the Pandemic

“The dogmas of the quiet past are inadequate to the stormy present. The occasion is piled high with difficulty, and we must rise with the occasion. As our case is new, so we must think anew and act anew. We must disenthrall ourselves, and then we shall save our country.” — Abraham Lincoln, 1862.

Our people are fed up.  The pandemic has shown us that if we do not chart our own path, independent of the ideas and solutions of this country’s ruling class, we may just not survive. In every fight we make today, we are already bringing forth an alternative vision — a world where everyone is safe and secure, where no one goes without, and where we can raise and love our families with hope for the future.

Before the pandemic, we were already living paycheck to paycheck, hanging on to every crumb so we could cover the health insurance, the car payment, the layaway for the kids’ school clothes. Over the last six months, we have been forced to weather the threat of sickness and death. With over five million sick as of now, over 160,000 deaths, and an escalating number of cases throughout the country, many of us have loved ones, friends, and neighbors who have become sick or died.

It is no wonder that a new poll has found that over 70 percent of us are angry, over 65 percent are fearful, and only 17 percent are proud of the country right now. Today, only 42 percent of Americans believe that their standard of living will be better when their children reach their age, compared with 57 percent who said that in 2018.

Across the political spectrum, we are sick of police violence. The nationwide protests against police killings have shifted attitudes toward not only getting the police under control but toward a growing confrontation with the every day, grinding racism the masses of African Americans suffer daily. The fight by Black workers for a safe, healthy life free from police violence, one where equality is the norm, and discrimination banned for everyone, is the cutting edge of a fight for the rights and well-being of all workers. “We’re tired,” Ferguson Missouri activist Rasheen Aldridge told a rally in June against the police murder of George Floyd. “It’s a simple message. It’s not hard to understand. We’re tired of people of all colors being killed in our streets by police brutality.”

Today, the reality is that government is doing practically nothing for the everyday person, while spending trillions in corporate bailouts, tying us up in knots with arguments over every proposed police reform. In the middle of the worst escalation of cases, yet Congress went home on vacation for two weeks (or, as they say, “recess”). Meanwhile, unemployed NYC waitress Emma Craig still has to keep body and soul together. “For the past month, there’s been that sinking feeling of like, ‘oh my god, what am I going to do when this $600 runs out?.. that $380-something a week barely covers my rent.”

Yes, many governors and mayors across the country stepped up. That’s their job. Why are we celebrating them for that? They fell right in line with paying profiteering corporations who ran up the price of PPE 2 to 4 times their costs, pitting one state, or one city, against another. Andrew Cuomo, who so many have lionized, cut $400 million from Medicaid out of the New York budget in the worst of the pandemic in his state. Many other governors are now warning that draconian cuts will be coming to state social services, public education, and health care while refusing to touch the corporations who got even fatter by price gouging and violating the rights of frontline workers.

The focus of the ruling class is on doing anything to stop our class from talking about — or especially doing anything about — the devastation it is wreaking on society, refusing to put the well-being and care of the American people first. They will do anything to cover up how the pandemic reveals the breadth of poverty and suffering in this country across color lines, at the same time exposing the rotten history that has condemned the masses of Black workers to the worst conditions, the poorest health and the most brutal violence. And they will do anything to get our class fighting ourselves instead of fighting them.

We have a right to be angry and tired, but we need to remind ourselves who we are. Who stabilized this country in the midst of the pandemic? It was us—the workers. We were the ones who stayed home, took the hit, and scrambled around to make ends meet. And all those workers that had to keep working, they were us, too—household cleaners, warehouse workers, agricultural workers, and meatpackers joined doctors, nurses and emergency workers as part of a long supply chain that was almost single-handedly responsible for keeping some semblance of stability for our country. We’ve paid a high price, and we keep paying. “It affects your nerves, your mental state, your way of thinking — because you have to be cautious in everything you do now,” says Rosie, an Amazon warehouse worker speaking under a pseudonym, on what it’s like to work at a fulfillment center in the middle of the pandemic. “It’s like I’m risking my life for a dollar. It’s twisted.”

And while many workers are angry and confused about the virus, we should not forget the quiet millions who are now being forced—almost single-handedly in the absence of any coordinated effort to contain the virus—to contain the virus themselves. That we can’t do it alone under current conditions is no surprise, or that people are scared and confused, but that doesn’t stop the ruling class and the media from blaming us workers for problems we didn’t create and over which we have little control.

At such times, we have to remind ourselves we have every right to be angry and tired. And while a sense of powerlessness can set in, we need to remember we are not powerless. We have never been powerless. Our class built this country. Our class fought and died for every step of progress toward the vision of America promised to us. With today’s technology, only our class can make this vision possible for the first time in human history.

We already know what we need. The homeless and tenants across the country are banding together to fight for the most fundamental human rights to survive this pandemic. Students and teachers are fighting for the right to real education. Patients and health care workers are fighting for universal healthcare. More Americans than ever are hitting the streets to protest state-sponsored brutality and murder. In the midst of this pandemic, we are fighting like never before for a society that provides for all regardless of ability to pay, background, color, sex, where we live, or whether someone likes us or not or whether or not we have powerful friends. We are all fighting for a society that puts the well-being of our families and our children above everything in its decision making and its planning for the future.

The ruling class is fighting to maintain control over these uprisings—throwing money to different causes and candidates and playing one struggle against another. We not only don’t need the ruling class’s influence, but we also need to remember their money is really ours. We yearn for the next election and aim to defeat Trump. That is the needed action toward our political independence right now. But no one from the ruling class is going to step in and set things right. After the election, it will be up to us to continue our fight for basic needs. We must continue to put the people’s needs over the power of the dollar and build our intellectual and political independence for the struggle that lies ahead. In doing so, we take the first steps to “disenthrall ourselves” and “save our country,” its dream, and its promise.

July/August 2020. vol.30. Ed4
This article originated in Rally, Comrades!
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