Covid-19 and disaster capitalism: this is what the class war looks like

            The Covid-19 global pandemic is a window into the looming ecological catastrophes being driven by the global financialized market political economy that may well result in the unviability of global human civilization.  

            The United States’ response to the pandemic is also a transparent window into the class war being waged by the 1% being ratcheted up to further enrich themselves and further impoverish and imperil the precariat as is the modus operandi of the shock doctrine of disaster capitalism.  The coronavirus-corporate bailout is a giant gift to the financial market and myriad corporations while shafting the general populace, yet another iteration of socialism for the rich and market discipline for everyone else.  

            Even the medical workers on the literal front-lines of the response to the pandemic are forced to continue to go to work without the absolutely necessary personal protective equipment (ppe) required to mitigate the continued spread of the virus.  Ludicrously U.S. Customs and Border protection vessel manifests indicate that as recently as mid-late March businesses were shipping medical equipment needed for the pandemic response from the United States to foreign purchasers, profiting themselves while depriving their fellow citizens of protective equipment that the United States is now running out of.  

            While most nonessential businesses remain closed during the pandemic, many “essential” workers remain working, particularly within the massive delivery corporations of Amazon, FedEx, UPS, etc.  These corporations continue business as usual without providing ppe for their workers, means to maintain sanitation and sanitized work-spaces and, even worse, disrupting and firing their employees who have called for safer, sanitized working environments and organized to demand them.  Jeff Bezos is one of the richest persons on the planet and it is more than only correlational that Amazon employees’ working conditions are rather hostile and that the employees’ organizing and calling for better conditions and protections elicited racist and classist assaults rather than improved conditions.  This is what the class war looks like.  

            The United States' foreign policy involving sanction regimes, against Venezuela and Iran for instance, is already under normal circumstances vicious for the populations, but within the pandemic are a tool of mass murder as the sanctions on Iraq of the 90s more than demonstrated.  Alternatively Cuba has sent doctors and medical help to Europe which is in sharp contrast to Germany's inability to help Greece and Washington's decision to enforce the civilian deaths of its sanctioned states.    

            Labor organizing and collective actions are required for the safety of the entire nation’s and, consequently, world’s populace.  The proven means by which to empower the workers and people is to organize and to strike.  The gravity of the pandemic crisis demands mass strike action, wildcat and solidarity strikes, and sit-down (shop occupation) strikes.  The people united will never be defeated.