Prison Struggle Is Class Struggle: Incarcerated Workers Rise up Against COVID-19 Exploitation

In the midst of the COVID-19 outbreak, workers from all sectors around the world have been fighting back against the capitalist conditions that have worsened the situation. Workers in Italy have gone on general strike, Amazon employees have walked off the job, nurses have protested, and Whole Foods workers have staged mass sick-outs. These actions haven’t just been limited to the general population of working-class people; there have also been actions by incarcerated workers.

Police are Not Essential Workers

As most facets of daily life in NYC grind to a halt due to COVID-19, racist police violence against Black and brown New Yorkers on the subway continues. MTA workers who are organizing for their own safety in the face of high rates of infection could join those necessary calls to demands that would keep all New Yorkers safe. The NYPD is inessential during a pandemic and at all times. 

Racism Is a Preexisting Condition

From increased violent attacks against Asian people to the disproportionately high COVID-19 fatality rates for Black and Brown people, racism is a preexisting condition. Workers and oppressed people must fight back.

Masking Up in a Racist Country 

Black people in the United States face a dilemma. They can wear masks and be harassed — or they can not wear masks and still be harassed on top of the possibility of catching coronavirus. In the end, there’s no protection against racism in America except for organizing and fighting back. 

The Coronavirus Pandemic is Ravaging Black Communities

The data confirms it: although political leaders talk of the coronavirus as the great equalizer, Black people are getting sick and dying of COVID-19 in higher numbers than others.

ADOS: Right-Wing Cooptation of the Reparations Movement

ADOS, or American Descendants of Slavery, is an organization that differentiates itself from non-American Black people, including more recent immigrants who have suffered and resisted for generations. ADOS is co-opting the demand for reparations and making it serve the very systems we should fight against.

Radical Reads: Black No More by George S. Schuyler

In Black No More, George S. Schuyler imagines a near-future dystopia in which Black people can undergo a procedure to become indistinguishable from whites. This work, written in the midst of the Harlem Renaissance, is a searing satire of racism in the United States as well as of the limitations of Black capitalism in the fight for liberation.

Multidimensional Class Struggles and the U.S. Civil War

In the Americas, capitalism was established on the basis of slavery. The struggle against slavery was part of the class struggle.

Langston Hughes Reflects on the Promise of The Soviet Union

Not only one of America’s preeminent poets, Langston Hughes was also firmly committed to the liberation of Black people and the working class. His accounts of his journey to the USSR in 1933 provide a powerful insight into the Revolution’s advances in fighting the oppression of religious and ethnic minorities.