COVID-19 GLOBAL PANDEMIC
QUARANTINE NEWS
25 MARCH 2020
We are being confronted with the stark truth that our reality must change if we are going to survive as a species. Some of us have known this for some time, having listened to the scientific community that has been pleading with us to make massive structural changes to our socioeconomic system. But it’s evidently easy for most people to brush that off as not affecting them personally, or not coming in their own lifetime, until faced with systemic collapse and horrifying deaths from a pandemic.
So here we are, and people are panicking. But the last thing the working class should be concerning itself with is how the ruling class elites are going to continue enriching themselves on our backs, and instead seek our own survival through this crisis. Some workers have already been refusing to accept the risks their employers are taking with their lives. I’m seeing more people calling for a General Strike on social media.
The ruling class elites are pushing to restart the economy back to to the status quo. Refuse. The status quo is what led us to this pandemic, and they delayed telling us in order to PROFIT from it. I suspect that covid-19 may be one of the viruses that scientists have been warning us about waking up in the permafrost for years. If we do not stop the exploitative, extractive socioeconomic system of capitalism, we will continue waking up more plagues, and those will become the status quo. Workers will be expected to work until their untimely deaths from a horrifying disease, and that will be normalized. Is that the future you want?
Social distancing has proven to break the infection chain. Our hospitals in the US and elsewhere are beyond capacity, and we are losing vital healthcare workers to the pandemic. They are dying in order to care for other humans, and the capitalists want to burden them even further. This pandemic is causing so many hospitalizations and deaths, our existing healthcare and deathcare facilities are overwhelmed and alternative facilities are being built in parking lots, or existing ones that can be converted commandeered. If we do not keep these measures going and attempt to restart capitalism, it will result in greater deaths and suffering, along with breakdown of healthcare provision, vital supply chains (like food, fuel, and deliveries) and the ability of the working class to fight back will be severely diminished. It will be catastrophic for humanity and our ecosystem if we allow them to restart their death machine. It’s already been demonstrated in history for us. We must listen.
Consider beyond yourself and your own family – realize that prisoners and detainees are in crowded, filthy spaces, and infections are spreading swiftly. Our carceral state is helping to rapidly spread this deadly virus.
Do not look away. It will eventually affect you, even if it does not now.
Do not fall victim to the propaganda all around us conflating capitalism with existence. Capitalism has only existed for 500 years. Human commerce has been around for at least 150,000. We can exist without capitalism, or we can perish within it. Check out yet another article demonstrating how when capitalism is shut down, pollution and greenhouse gas emissions are reduced.
Find a mutual aid group in your community. You can search on Google and Social Media. I have a Facebook page where I am listing the ones that I find and any requests or offers for/of aid here. If you have a group you’d like listed, please email me at thebirb AT comradebirb.com.
Be ready to take a stand with the rest of the working class against this system that regards us all as expendable, disposable, meaningless sacrifices for the ruling class and ALWAYS HAS. They’ve just stop obfuscating their contempt for us during this deadly crisis. Learn from this, and never be their hostage or useful rube again.
WORKING CLASS SOLIDARITY FOR PEOPLE AND PLANET!
