Everyone's a Socialist in a Crisis

By Tom Bramble

Republished from Red Flag.

One of the most prevalent ideological mantras of Western capitalism is that the market should rule. But as the latest health and economic crises demonstrate, capitalists soon forget their worship of the market when times get tough. They scream for government money, and plenty of it. It turns out that “the market” is fine when it comes to whipping workers to accept lower wages, but when it comes to lower profits, the market can go hang.

Every student with the misfortune to have studied economics at school or university will know that “the market” is the god before which we must all kneel. Markets bring consumers and producers together to ensure an equilibrium of supply and demand, the textbooks tell us. We may all be individuals each pursuing our own private interests, but this selfish endeavour miraculously results in an optimum outcome for all.

You don’t even have to step inside a classroom to have received this lesson. It’s rammed home in normal times in every newspaper, in every news bulletin on the TV, in every politician’s speech. Just listen to them. Governments can’t expand spending on Newstart because “the markets” won’t allow it. Governments shouldn’t ramp up public housing because that will throw property markets into a spin. Competition should be opened between universities because a market in education will sift out the bad providers from the good.

The champions of the market, if challenged to explain how it is that markets consistently result in supplies of goods lurching from shortages to gluts, point to the economic dysfunction of the old Soviet Union as proof that if “planning” replaces the market, a much bigger disaster ensues.

It doesn’t take an Einstein to see what rubbish this is. The last thing any capitalist wants is “free competition”, because that might squeeze their profits. Just look at how the supermarkets have destroyed small shops or how any new industry that emerges is soon dominated by three or four companies globally.

But there’s another angle to this. Capitalists preach “the market” for the working class – stand on your own two feet, don’t rely on the government – but themselves sponge off the public big time. Just look at the billions in subsidies and tax concessions the fossil fuel companies, huge enterprises for the most part, extract from state and federal governments in Australia. The vehicle manufacturers raked in hundreds of millions a year from the Australian government for decades until deciding it wasn’t enough and went overseas. This is why big companies and industry groups hire armies of former politicians to lobby on their behalf in the offices of premiers and prime ministers – there’s money in government coffers and they want it.

And while the capitalists talk about “the market” setting wages for workers, in reality, they don’t really allow the market to do the job. They use the whole apparatus of state repression, the industrial tribunals, the police, the courts to suppress workers’ rights to organise to pursue their demands.

But when a crisis hits all the bullshit about the market is thrown to the winds. And that is just what we are seeing now. Faced with the collapse of the capitalist economy, for the second time in a dozen years, with massive bankruptcies on the table and the stock market plunging by more than 30 percent and more to come, fervent advocates of the free market are now embracing government intervention to save their skins. As the Financial Times put it on 18 March, “World leaders have been forced to tear up the traditional economic playbook in response to the historic jolt to the global economy”.

In the United States, the heart of free market capitalism, capitalists and politicians alike are demanding huge government handouts. As the New York Times explained on 17 March: “Business groups, local and state leaders and a growing chorus of lawmakers and economists begged the federal government to spend trillions of dollars to pay workers to stay home and funnel money to companies struggling with an abrupt end to consumer activity”.

Politicians and their advisers who just a week ago were scorning the idea of “helicopter money”, government payments to businesses and consumers to stimulate the economy, are now trying to outbid each other to push the figure up. The Trump administration, proclaiming a state of war in the fight against coronavirus and the economic crisis, will shortly launch a huge fiscal stimulus program pumping more than US$1 trillion into the economy in two stages, including potentially $1,000 handouts to spur spending. And there will be more to come.

In other times, Trump might have denounced his proposals as “socialism”. Not today. He now boasts that his new package will be “big and bold”. His chief adviser, Larry Kudlow, says that Trump has agreed to do “whatever it takes” to address the crisis. Senator John Cornyn, second highest ranking Republican in the Senate, for whom government intervention is normally anathema, explained: “Our economy, our whole economy is in jeopardy”. Some in the Democratic Party, which in recent years has become the favoured party of Wall Street, are proposing a monthly payment to every American for the duration of the crisis. Alongside this direct injection of funds into the economy, the US Federal Reserve Bank is pumping trillions of dollars into the banks.

As in the US, so too in the rest of the world. The European Commission, which has long insisted that member states keep their budget deficits to 3 percent of GDP, has lifted limits on government borrowing. In 2015, it refused to allow the Greek government to hike spending when faced with unemployment of 20 percent, but is now telling governments it’s open slather. The future of European capitalism is at stake, so nothing is off the table. The Swedish government is allowing businesses to defer tax payments for up to a year at a cost equivalent to 6 percent of GDP. Britain has unveiled a £330 billion package of emergency loan guarantees to business and £20 billion in fiscal support.

Tory chancellor (treasurer) Rishi Sunak, said: “This is not a time for ideology or orthodoxy, this is a time to be bold ... I’ll do whatever it takes”. Pedro Sanchez, Spanish prime minister, triggered what he called “the biggest mobilisation of resources in Spain’s’ democratic history”, including €100 billion in state loan guarantees. French finance minister Bruno Le Maire, who has put up €300 billion in state loans to business, told the press: “I will not hesitate [to use] all the means available to me”.

The European Central Bank, which estimates that the crisis might result in the euro area economy shrinking by more than 4 percent this year, is set to inject more than €1 trillion into the European banks in the next nine months. “Extraordinary times require extraordinary action”, says ECB president Christine Lagarde.

In Australia, the Coalition government which has made “balancing the budget” a central feature of its platform, is now spending $18 billion, three-quarters of which will go to business. It is now lining up a new wave of spending commitments for business, both of a general nature, valued at more billions, and also to specific sectors like tourism, sports, arts and entertainment and the airlines which will total more than $1 billion.

The Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry is urging the federal government to provide wage subsidies to workers, equivalent in value to Newstart to all businesses experiencing a sharp downturn. It is also asking the government to provide concessional loans of up to half a million dollars, with 80 percent of the debt guaranteed by government, as well as wage subsidies to cover sick leave entitlements. Nothing but corporate welfare of a kind that they have long decried when applied to workers themselves.

In the short term, working class households will get some benefits from this cash splash. In Australia welfare beneficiaries will be getting $750 in their bank accounts. In the United States it is likely that Americans will receiving close to $1,000. But this is just short term relief to get the economy moving. The long term benefits will go to the capitalist class in the form of tax cuts and other financial concessions.

The current crisis demonstrates not only that all the ideological nonsense about the virtues of the free market is quickly thrown overboard when capitalist interests are threatened, but also that the idea that governments are essentially powerless in the face of the markets is rubbish.

Governments are not helpless victims who cannot do anything in the face of “economic reality”. In the normal course of events, when we demand things like better welfare, health care or education, governments tell us that it isn’t possible.

Workers every day face their own personal crises – lack of money to pay the rent or the possibility of defaulting on their mortgage because the boss didn’t call them in for work this week, overdue utility bills that must be paid or risk being cut off, expenses for children’s education that fall due, the fear of redundancy. These are crises that are experienced personally but are really a collective crisis of everyday life for working class people. But when we ask for governments to respond, we are told that addressing these things collectively is not possible, and that this is just the way things are.

But when the capitalist system goes into crisis, governments act promptly. It turns out that political decisions about the economy are possible and it is wholly possible for governments to tell the markets to go jump. The president of the eurozone financial ministers committee summed up the prevailing attitude today: “Rest assured that we will defend the euro with everything we have got”. European finance ministers are looking at deploying a firefighting fund set up during the last eurozone crisis, with €410 billion of capacity. In the case of Spain, the Financial Times reports that an inner circle of government has assumed “command economy powers”. The Spanish government will take responsibility for guaranteeing medical, food and energy supplies.

Most of the time we’re told that “the economy” can’t afford a decent standard of living for workers – higher minimum wages, liveable Newstart allowances, a massively expanded public housing program to get people out of the private rental market, free university education. Budgets have to balance. Businesses have to be competitive. Taxes have to be kept low.

And now, all of a sudden, we’re finding that the economy can, apparently, afford things that we have long demanded. Governments around the world are now laying out money on things that just weeks ago they would have attacked as unaffordable.

The Morrison government has been attacked even by the Business Council for not lifting the Newstart allowance. And now it’s spending $4.7 billion on a one-off $750 payment to millions on welfare. State governments too are ramping up health spending. In Western Australia, the government is freezing utility bills and public transport charges, doubling energy assistance payments and making sick and carers’ leave more available for public sector workers who either have the virus themselves or who need to care for others.

The Hong Kong government has handed out $1,000 payments to citizens. The Italian government, faced with one of the worst outbreaks of COVID-19, is suspending mortgage payments. In New Zealand, the government has raised all welfare benefits, permanently, by NZ$25 a week and doubled winter energy payments to beneficiaries and age pensioners. In France also, benefits are being hiked and made more widely available.

It’s not that governments have suddenly discovered a big pot of gold in the basement of the central banks. They say that they are taking these measures to both protect public health and to save the economy. But it’s obvious which takes priority. The new measures constitute the largest bailout bonanza in world history, carried out through state-administered transfers of public wealth and current and future debt to billionaires and big business: socialisation of losses, privatisation of profits. The outcome will be to further transfer, consolidate and concentrate wealth, just as has occurred since the GFC. While there is discussion about small handouts, nothing serious is being proposed to halt the mass layoffs now gathering steam.

In pretty much every spending package, subsidies to business, government loans and tax concessions account for two-thirds or more of the funds outlaid. Things that directly benefit workers – the big majority of the population – account for only one-third of the money. Just think of Australia: $13 billion to business, $4.7 billion to those on welfare.

When you think of the humiliating restrictions imposed on Centrelink clients, business is being showered with money with no strings attached. In Australia, the federal government is offering subsidies to bosses to keep apprentices and trainees. But all that does is encourage bosses to sack the trainee at the end of the six months and take on another one, with another government subsidy. No real jobs created, just a steady flow of money flowing into the bosses’ pockets.

But it’s not just a question of the money being disbursed. Other sacred cows are being slaughtered. The sanctity of private property, for example. The Spanish government has announced that it is requisitioning private hospitals and healthcare providers for the duration and developing plans to house and feed the homeless.

President Trump announced a series of extraordinary measures on 18 March, seizing on the powers vested in him by the Defence Production Act to steer production by private companies to overcome the shortage of masks, ventilators and other health supplies. Playing catchup on testing for COVID-19, Trump is deploying two Navy hospital ships to New York City and the West Coast. Astonishingly for the United States, whose president made his fortune in real estate, the Housing and Urban Development department will suspend foreclosures and evictions until at least the end of April. The federal government is also requiring employers to provide sick leave to workers infected with the virus. In California, the governor has announced plans to buy hotels to house some of the state’s 150,000 homeless people.

In Austria, healthcare workers with children are provided access to free childcare to allow them to continue working. In South Korea, the government is offering emergency child care to parents still at work, with class sizes limited to ten and supervised by trained teachers. In Australia, according to the Guardian, discussions are underway to underwrite home mortgages and even employment guarantees.

It turns out that these things, too, can be done.

So, in an economic emergency, few of the usual rules apply. Governments can marshal the resources and can threaten the narrow interests of private businesses. Hardcore libertarians despise these measures as rampant socialism. From their perspective, they’re right: the very existence of such programs is condemnation of the free market capitalist model that they promote. But they are best seen only as another approach to the management of the capitalist economy.

The fact that governments across the OECD are now prepared to spend trillions of dollar to save the financial system from collapse only confirms that the world economy cannot be left safely in the hands of “the market”. And, the situation clearly confirms that when the capitalist class and governments deem it necessary to save their system, lots of measures they once denounced as “unaffordable”, not permitted by the condition of “the economy”, are actually affordable and permitted. Governments can act when required. The ideological justifications of yesterday are revealed as threadbare. But nor are government interventions of this nature geared towards the interests of the working class, only the interests of the bosses.

Fight the Virus, Not China! The History and Background of Trump’s Racist COVID-19 Rhetoric

(Getty images)

By Derek R. Ford

Many are increasingly and quite justifiably outraged at Trump’s repeated attempts to link the novel coronavirus known as COVID-19 to both the city of Wuhan and the entire country of China.

Meanwhile, others on the right link COVID-19 to China not just geographically but culturally. John Cornyn, a U.S. Senator from Texas said the pandemic stemmed from “the culture where people eat bats and snakes and dogs and things like that.” Some were quick to point out that in the state he represents, “several towns host annual festivals where residents milk rattlesnakes for venom to be used in antivenin and fry up filets of snake flesh as a novelty snack.” Others noted that “Mad Cow” disease originated in England, and the H1N1 flu originated in the U.S. and Mexico.

While mainstream journalists have, to some extent, pushed back against this racism, they’ve quickly backed down when Trump characteristically defends his position or refuses to comment. As Elie Mystal pointed out in The Nation, Philip Wegmann of RealClearPolitics quickly moved away from the topic by noting he was “switching gears to a larger question.” Mystal writes that, “If the media were doing their job, this would be the story: The president of the United States is putting lives at risk during a global pandemic by inciting violence against fellow Americans.”

Trump’s racism and xenophobia is nothing new. Yet neither is the imperialist and racist demonization of China and Chinese people. This history, both recent and stretching back a century ago, is one in which not only are Democrats and Republicans complicit, but so too are the corporate news media.

Coronavirus coverage was anti-China from the beginning

From the earliest coverage, US media and politicians did everything they could to mobilize the Coronavirus as part of a broader anti-China demonization campaign. Sometimes this included outright lies and fabrications, like when the New York Times reported that Dr. Li Wenliang, an early identifier of the novel coronavirus, was arrested by Chinese authorities in the middle of the night for “whistleblowing.”

As K.J. Noh reported for Counterpunch, Dr. Li wasn’t a “whistleblower.” He didn’t report anything to authorities but sent a private message to seven colleagues (that included a confidential medical record). Others had, however, reported early signs of a novel virus to the proper authorities, and they weren’t reprimanded at all. Perhaps the reason that Dr. Li didn’t notify even his own hospital administration was because he had no qualifications on the matter.

Of no small importance was that Dr. Li was never arrested! Instead, he “was called in, lightly reprimanded (talked to, and signed a document not to spread rumors) and went straight back to work.”

The coverage was part of an attempt to portray the government of the People’s Republic of China as ineffective, repressive, and chaotic, willing to do anything to hide the truth.

While China’s response was bound to entail errors, as any response would, the World Health Organization found it worthy of praise, including its transparency.

Indeed, China took extraordinary, coordinated, and swift efforts to contain the virus, including the importation of 20,000 medical workers to Hubei province, the emergency construction of hospitals, the provision of electricity to people even if they couldn’t pay (and not just a deferral of bills), the forbidding of price increases, free treatment of medical expenses, and more.

Instead of learning from and helping China (not to mention preparing for an outbreak in the U.S.), the US establishment focused all of its energy on China bashing. This had devastating consequences. In his important article for Liberation News, Saul Kanowitz documented just a few of them, from stores posting signs that exclude Chinese people from entering and Chinese restaurants being vandalized to high school students in California assaulting a classmate. China towns across the U.S. were empty. Even Asian people who weren’t Chinese were assaulted and harassed.

“Chinese Toy Terror”

In her 2012 book, Animacies, Mel Y. Chen (2012, Duke University Press) documents the racist and imperialist anti-China propaganda that dominated public discourse in the 2007 “lead panic.” The discovery of lead in toys made in China featured prominently in the domestic hysteria. News coverage and warnings, bolstered by the Consumer Product Safety Commission, Fud and Drug Administration, and others, Chen notes, had three things in common:

“First, they pointed to the dangers of lead intoxication as opposed to other toxins. Second, they emphasized the vulnerability of American children to this toxin. Third, they had a common point of origination: China, for decades a major supplier of consumer products to the United States and responsible for various stages in the production stream” (160).

Chen gives a number of blog and news headlines clearly formulating lead as a weapon of China against poor U.S. children, like “Why is China Poisoning Our Babies?” and “Chinese Toy Terror.”

Not coincidentally, Chen observes, this was just one year after China superseded the U.S. in global exports.

This campaign itself drew on previous campaigns demonizing China and its people, perhaps most significantly the “Yellow Peril” of the early 20th century, during which the U.S. barred Asian immigration through the Immigration Act of 1917.

The racism of the anti-Chinese “lead panic” of 2007 is most apparent when contrasted with the long struggles against lead-based paint in the U.S. Grassroots campaigns were largely successful in creating awareness about lead paint and banning its future use. Yet lead poisoning continued in poor and working-class communities, particularly Black communities.

And, of course, lead continues to contaminate drinking water in cities across the U.S. In my own county of Marion, Indiana, school water tested positive for led in more than half of the schools and child care sites in the county. A 2019 health department report found that lead levels were between 20 and 8,630 parts per billion. The Environmental Protection Agency’s threshold is 15 parts per billion. This was included in the internal report obtained by IndyStar journalist Suzette Hackney, not the public report they released.

Fight the virus, not the people!

While it’s true that Trump is anxious for a scapegoat to blame for his administration’s appalling response to the current pandemic, this doesn’t entirely explain his efforts to identify COVID-19 with China.

The Democratic Party and the corporate media are mostly outraged at the blatancy of Trump’s anti-China racism, because when it comes to demonizing China, they play their dutiful role. The entire U.S. political establishment is firm in its orientation toward China: it must be defeated. Since the 1949 revolution that overthrew colonialism and established the People’s Republic of China, the consensus in Washington has been one of counterrevolution in China.

As China strength and importance continues to grow, the U.S. is increasingly in direct confrontation with China on military, economic, and political matters.

The response of progressive people in the U.S. has to be as deep and wide as the ruling class’ anti-China campaign. We must condemn not only the overtly racist rhetoric of Trump, but the entire demonization campaign against China, both right now and after the COVID-19 crisis has passed.

Social Distance with a Vengeance

(Kevin Frayer/Getty Images)

By Werner Lange

Long before the practice of social distancing became the new normal, there was the concept of social distance. Named after its founder, the Bogardus Social Distance Scale was developed within the Chicago School of Sociology during the turbulent 1920s to empirically measure the degree of affinity (or lack thereof) Americans felt for members of various racial and ethnic groups in our highly diverse society. Seven categories of “social distance” were established ranging from willingness to marry a member of specified groups to outright exclusion of all such group members from the USA;  the higher the number on a scale of 1 to 7, the lower the affinity and greater the felt social distance. Not surprising for a white-supremacist society, European-Americans consistently ranked as having the lowest social distance standing in several nationwide surveys over a 40 year period, while Americans of color had the highest.

Particularly instructive for our troubling times is the comparatively high social distance score consistently expressed toward the Chinese, an ethnic group that has  never fully escaped the racist stigmatization of the “Yellow Peril”. In fact, precisely that virulent castigation gained new life with repeated recent presidential denunciations of the coronavirus as the “Chinese virus”. Not satisfied with raising the specter of a new deadly Yellow Peril, Trump used his press conference of March 19 to even evoke the ugly spirit of the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 by congratulating himself for having “called for a ban for people coming in from China”. Such Sinophobia is viciously echoed at increasingly alarming rates in the streets of America and in the halls of Congress, where a US Senator recently blamed the “culture where people eat bats and snakes and dogs” for the coronavirus pandemic.

These utterly racist mindsets are not far from genocidal ones, patterns of barbaric thought and behavior hardly alien to the American experience as evidenced by the smallpox infestation of blankets given to Mandan Native Americans in 1837. In the midst of this pandemic, depraved visions of genocide once again rear their ugly heads. What else could have motivated the Trump regime to attempt, by a billion dollar bribe, to acquire exclusive rights and use of a developing coronavirus vaccine from German scientists? The prospect of witnessing others succumb by the millions to the pandemic while chosen Americans are safely vaccinated evidently fits the racist, even genocidal, game plan of this criminal regime.

That barbaric game plan is all too evident in regard to Iran. As of mid-March, Iran has suffered over 1,280 fatalities and 17,300 confirmed cases of coronavirus infections, the third highest of any nation in the world. Especially vulnerable are some hundred thousand Iranians who have survived the chemical weapons attacks by Hussein during the Iran-Iraq war but suffer from various lung ailments from that brutal conflict. Rather than lift the onerous sanctions imposed on Iran which deprive the beleaguered Iranian people of urgently needed medications and supplies, the Trump regime resorted to a new round of draconian sanctions on March 17 to intensify its “maximum pressure campaign” illegally implemented in 2018. The sanctions, a clear form of collective punishment, have already imposed enormous suffering upon countless Iranians. With the advent of the coronavirus pandemic, these immoral sanctions are guaranteed to dramatically increase the Iranian body count, something that only a genocidal mindset could wish and seek. Yet with remarkably few exceptions, a roaring silence emanates from our national leaders regarding the calamity caused by these criminal sanctions. And the criminals themselves, ones responsible for the recent assassination of a beloved Iranian leader, likely greet the growing calamity in Iran with glee. There is no room for such barbarism in the greater moral universe to emerge from this crisis.

The social distance scale did not envision genocide as an option, and social distancing in our times is designed to keep people six feet apart to help prevent putting them six feet under. Hopefully we, as a more enlightened human family, will come out of this pandemic with an operative mindset much different than before.  Once this crisis is over we need to practice just the opposite of social distancing physically and massively implement social proximity mentally by finally overcoming the racist legacy manifested and measured by the social distance scale, let alone forever cleanse the world of genocidal thoughts and practices. We must recognize, like never before, that we are one human family united by a common origin and common destiny. Whether that destiny is to be peaceful co-existence or no existence largely depends of the extent to which, we, as one wounded but healed global family, make a paradigm shift from hate to love.

Capitalism is an Incubator for Pandemics. Socialism is the Solution.

[Image: Antonio Calanni/AP]

By Mike Pappas and Tatiana Cozzarelli

Republished from Left Voice.

A new coronavirus called “SARS-CoV-2” — known colloquially by the name of the disease it causes called “coronavirus disease 2019” or “COVID-19” — is wreaking havoc around the world. In Italy, the death toll has risen to 366 today and the country just extended its quarantine measures nationwide. In China, production has shut down at factories across the country. According to the WHO, over 100,000 cases have been confirmed in over 100 countries and the death toll is now up to 3,809 as of this writing. The stock market in the U.S. fell by 7% today and  we may be headed towards another 2008-like recession.

Reports range from 200-400 (213 per WHO and 434 per NBC News) confirmed cases of COVID-19 in the U.S., but there are likely many many more that have not been detected, as health facilities still do not have a readily available rapid test for diagnosis. The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) botched a first response, sending out faulty testing kits that required a recall. At this point in the U.S. the CDC is refusing to report how many have been tested, but we know the number tested in the US is extremely low largely due to the immense hurdles government officials have put in place. The FDA recently announced over 2 million tests should be shipped to labs by Monday with an additional 4 million by the end of the week. This could lead to a great increase in confirmed cases around the country. We are also seeing reproduction of racist, xenophobic tropes and attacks as fear of the epidemic grows. 

The spread of the coronavirus is exposing all of the contradictions of capitalism. It shows why socialism is urgent.

Coronavirus in Capitalism

It is only going to get worse. The spread of the virus is impossible to stop — and this is due to social reasons more than biological ones. While doctors recommend that people stay home when they are feeling sick in order to reduce the possibility of spreading the virus, working-class people just can’t afford to stay home at the first sight of a cough. 

Contrary to Donald Trump’s recent suggestions that many with COVID-19 should “even go to work,” the CDC recommends that those who are infected by the virus should be quarantined. This poses a problem under capitalism for members of the working class who cannot afford to simply take off work unannounced. New York City Mayor, Bill de Blasio recently suggested avoiding crowded subway cars or working from home if possible, but many rely on public transit. Suggestions from government leaders show their disconnect from the working class. 58% Americans have less than $1,000 in their savings and around 40% of Americans could not afford an unexpected bill of $400. So for many, staying home or not using public transit is simply not an option.

Even more people avoid the doctor when we get sick. With or without insurance, a trip to the hospital means racking up massive medical bills. The Guardian reports that 25% of Americans say they or a family member have delayed medical treatment due to the costs of care. In May 2019, The American Cancer Society found that 56% of adults report having at least one medical financial hardship. Medical debt remains the number one cause of bankruptcy in the country. One third of all donations on the fundraising site GoFundMe go to covering healthcare costs. That is the healthcare system of the wealthiest country in the world: GoFundMe.

Clearly, this is a very dangerous scenario. Already, people are being saddled with massive bills if they seek tests for the coronavirus. The Miami Herald wrote a story about Osmel Martinez Azcue who went to the hospital for flu-like symptoms after a work trip to China. While luckily it was found that he had the flu, the hospital visit cost $3,270, according to a notice from his insurance company. Business Insider made a chart of the possible costs associated with going to the hospital for COVID-19:

Of course, these costs will be no problem for some. The three richest Americans own more wealth than the bottom 50% of Americans. The concentration of wealth in the hands of fewer and fewer capitalists is part of capitalism’s DNA. But as Kate Pickett and Richard Wilkson highlight extensively in their book The Spirit Level: Why Greater Equality Makes Societies Stronger, people in more equal societies are healthier. They live longer, have lower infant mortality, and have high self-ratings of health. Inequality leads to poorer overall health.

So how does this relate to COVID-19? The main theory for these outcomes is that inequality of wealth and power in a society leads to a state of chronic stress. This wreaks havoc on bodily systems such as the cardiovascular system and the immune system, leaving individuals more susceptible to health problems. This means as societies become more and more unequal, we will see individuals more and more susceptible to infection. Capitalism’s inequality puts us all at greater risk as COVID-19 spreads.

Coronavirus (COVID-19) In Socialism

COVID-19 highlights the need for socialism to face epidemics like these. And by socialism, we don’t mean Medicare for All or New Deal liberalism. Medicare for All is not enough to face pandemics like the coronavirus. We mean a society in which human needs govern production, not the drive for profit. It’s a society without capitalists, where production and reproduction is democratically planned by the working class and oppressed. In this kind of society, we would be able to respond to the COVID-19 infinitely better than in capitalism. 

In a socialist society, both prevention and responses to outbreaks of illness would change drastically. Supplies such as hand soap, hand sanitizer, and surface sanitizing wipes or sprays are in extremely high demand at this time. We are already seeing shortages of key supplies around the world. The need for profit maximization under capitalism has led companies to drastically raise their prices in this time of high demand. For example, the Washington Post has reported drastic increases in prices of products such as Purell Hand Sanitizer. Under capitalism, scarcity leads to greater profit.

Capitalism has led to a globalized system of production containing industries at disparate ends of the globe that truly depend on each other to function. This allows for a capitalist’s exploitation of a worker in a factory in China producing iPhones that goes unnoticed by an Apple customer here in the U.S.. It also allows corporations to drive down costs in one area of the world that may have weaker protections for workers. While this is beneficial for capitalists, outbreaks of illnesses such as COVID-19 highlight clear weaknesses in this system. A large portion of the basic materials used to make new medicines come from China. Since industry is so affected by viral spread, production of supplies has been drastically cut. This delays the ability for a rapid response in other countries such as the U.S.. 

A central aspect of socialism is a democratically run planned economy: an economy in which all resources are allocated according to need, instead of ability to pay. Need is decided democratically by both producers and consumersWith the means of production under workers’ control, we would be able to quickly increase production of these products in an emergency. 

Furthermore, with the elimination of the barriers between intellectual and manual labor, increasing numbers of workers would be familiarized with the entire production process and ready to jump in where needed. In worker cooperatives within capitalism like MadyGraf in Argentina and Mondragon in Spain, workers already learn all aspects of production. This allows workers to shift to areas where extra effort is needed. 

Socialism cannot exist in only one country, so a global planned economy would be key in these moments. If one country is experiencing a shortage, others would have to make up for it. This is key for reigning in global epidemics like the coronavirus: it will only be stopped if we stop it everywhere. In a global planned economy, this would be a much easier task. 

Staying Home

If one does get sick, making a decision to protect oneself and others by taking time off should never lead them to have to worry about losing their job, paying their rent, putting food on the table, or being able to provide for their children. Under capitalism services such as housing and healthcare are reduced to commodities. This often presents people with the ultimatum: work while sick and potentially expose others, or stay home and risk losing your job.

Under socialism, the increased mechanization of production and the elimination of unnecessary jobs — goodbye advertising industry! goodbye health insurance industry! — would already drastically reduce the number of hours that we would need to work. We would be spending vast hours of the day making art or hanging out with friends and family. 

During disease outbreaks, we would be able to stay home at the first sign of a cold, in addition to getting tested right away. In a planned economy, we could allocate resources where they are most needed, and take into account a decrease in the workforce due to illness. 

Where Are the Coronavirus Therapies?

Currently, multiple for-profit companies are attempting to test (sometimes new, sometimes previously rejected and now recycled) therapies to see if they can treat or prevent COVID-19. While there are attempts to produce a COVID-19 vaccine, this vaccine would not be ready for testing in human trials for a few months according to Peter Marks, the director of the FDA’s Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research. Yet even last week, Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar refused to guarantee a newly developed coronavirus vaccine would be affordable to all stating, “we can’t control that price because we need the private sector to invest.” The statement is ironic to say the least coming from the former top lobbyist to Eli Lilly who served at a time when the company’s drug prices went up significantly.

Companies such as Gilead Sciences, Moderna Therapeutics, and GlaxoSmithKline all have various therapies in development. Each company’s interest in maximizing profits around their particular COVID-19 therapy has kept them from being able to pool their resources and data to develop therapies in the most expeditious manner possible. The state of COVID-19 research exposes the lies about capitalism “stimulating innovation.”

It is also important to note that much of the drug development deemed “corporate innovation” could not have been possible without taxpayer-funded government research. Bills such as the Bayh-Dole Act allow for corporations to purchase patents on molecules or substances that have been developed at publicly funded institutions such as the National Institutes of Health (NIH), then jack up the prices to maximize profits. A study conducted by the Center for Integration of Science and Industry (CISI) analyzed the relationship between government funded research and every new drug approved by the FDA between 2010 and 2016. Researchers found “each of the 210 medicines approved for market came out of research supported by the NIH.”

Expropriation of the capitalists would mean the public would no longer have to subsidize private corporate profits. The nationalization of the pharmaceutical industry would allow for both intellectual and financial resources to be pooled to tackle the globe’s challenges, instead of focussing on blockbuster drugs that benefit only a few. In the case of COVID-19, we would see a mass mobilization and coordination of the world’s greatest minds to pool resources and more quickly develop effective therapies. In fact, there would likely be more doctors and scientists as people who want to study these fields are no longer confronted with insurmountable debt

Health Care in Socialism

Under socialism, the entire healthcare industry would be run democratically by doctors, nurses, employees, and patients. This would be drastically different from the current system in which wealthy capitalists make the major decisions in hospitals, pharmaceutical companies, device manufacturing firms, and insurance companies (the key players that make up the “medical industrial complex”). In the case of the COVID-19, health care would be a human right, and not a means to make money. This would allow for every individual concerned to obtain testing and treatment without fear of economic ruin. If hospitalization or quarantine was needed, a patient and family would be able to focus on what was best for their health instead of worrying whether a hospital bill would destroy them economically.

The purview of what is considered “health care” would also need to expand. An individual’s overall living situation and social environment would be key to addressing their health. This would mean a health system under socialism would address issues such as pending climate collapse. While a connection between COVID-19 and climate change has yet to be established, rising global temperatures — largely driven by 100 largest corporations and the military-industrial complex — will increase the emergence of new disease agents in the future. Shorter winters, changes in water cycles, and migration of wildlife closer to humans all increase the risk of new disease exposure.

Capitalism created the conditions of the epidemic. Capitalist “solutions” are insufficient and exacerbate the crisis, meaning more sickness and more death. Capitalism has been an incubator for the continual spread of the coronavirus. Health care under this system will always be woefully inadequate in addressing epidemics. The coronavirus highlights the fact that we must move to a more social analysis of health and well-being. We are all connected to each other, to nature, and to the environment around us. Socialism will restructure society based on those relationships.

At the same time, socialism is not a utopia. There will likely be epidemics or pandemics in socialism as well. However, a socialist society — one in which all production is organized in a planned economy under workers’ control — would best be able to allocate resources and put the creative and scientific energy of people to the task.

Coronavirus: A Potential Disaster of Capitalism's Making

By Ben Hillier

Republished from Red Flag.

What to do if confronted with an extremely contagious virus that medical experts say they have not seen before and don’t understand, and which is fast spreading and killing hundreds of people? a) Take precautionary measures to stop the virus spreading and prepare the health system for a potential shock? Or b) Ignore it, blithely assert – without any evidence – that it is little different from the common flu, accuse your adversaries, who are taking it more seriously, of scaremongering for political gain and then, when a pandemic is imminent and doctors still can’t say exactly how bad the virus is, tell everyone that everything’s under control despite little to nothing having been done to prepare for a local outbreak?

If you are the current president of the United States, it’s been choice “b”. Aside from temporarily denying entry to foreign nationals who visited China prior to their arrival, any talk about the US facing a problem was, in Donald Trump’s mind, a Democratic Party and fake news media conspiracy to undermine his presidency and bring down the stock market. He was backed, of course, by right wing media whose main concern is to overhype the threat of immigration and combat threats to the president rather than threats to national health. For a period, Trump’s position was also echoed by writers in outlets normally critical of the White House. An early February Washington Post headline read: “Get a grippe, America. The flu is a much bigger threat than coronavirus, for now”. “Don’t Worry About the Coronavirus. Worry About the Flu”, offered BuzzFeed a few days earlier.

From the beginning, medical experts were clear that they simply did not know how bad or otherwise the virus was, yet many non-experts seemed to have an opinion. “Why so many journalists must act like propagandists rather than independent thinkers is a question for another time”, Vanity Fair contributor T.A. Frank aptly wrote in a mid-February response, before noting that the mortality rate is believed to be about 20 times that of the flu – about the same as Spanish flu, which killed tens of millions in 1918-20. And, as Frank also noted, unlike the flu, the rate of critical cases is high enough to overwhelm emergency departments.

When the pressure to take action became too great, Trump appointed vice president Mike Pence to oversee the US response, which tells us a lot about the seriousness with which the outbreak was being taken. Pence is known for a certain “anti-alarmism” when it comes to public health crises. When running for Congress in 2000, he wrote such credible lines as: “Despite the hysteria from the political class and the media, smoking doesn’t kill” and “Global warming is a myth ... CO2 is a naturally occurring phenomenon in nature”. As governor of Indiana from 2013 to 2017, he oversaw an HIV epidemic linked to needle sharing among opioid addicts, having cut funding for the last HIV tester in the county where the epidemic exploded, and having resisted calls for needle exchanges. “Sadly, this outbreak was preventable, given all that we know about HIV and its links to opioid addiction, yet adequate treatment resources and public health safeguards were not in place”, the National Institute on Drug Abuse wrote at the time.

The same thing could have been written about the coronavirus, which is reaching pandemic proportions. Adequate treatment resources and public health safeguards were issues in Wuhan, China, where the outbreak began, and will be issues in many places as the virus spreads. According to several witness accounts, and the evaluation of medical observers, the initial response from those in power in China was denial, which led to a failure to prepare an adequate health system response. Authorities in Wuhan were too concerned about an upcoming political conference and celebration to allow doctors’ warnings to spoil the party (sounds eerily like Trump). After several weeks, when the epidemic became too big to ignore, denial was replaced by panic. The largest quarantining experiment in human history followed, but the health system was unprepared and totally swamped. Who knows how different the course of the outbreak would have been if, in those first crucial weeks after the virus was discovered, authorities had acted decisively to contain the outbreak and prepare the medical system?  

The ruling Communist Party imposed a massive lockdown on hundreds of millions of people to stop the contagion. Those in Hubei have suffered enormously for the authorities’ botched response. The World Health Organization’s Bruce Aylward, who led an international mission to China, told Science magazine that the aggressive containment bought time for other provinces to prepare and prevented “probably hundreds of thousands” of cases across the country. Yet, instead of doing all it could to avoid a repeat of Wuhan by using the time to prepare the US health system, the White House was thinking of the economic opportunities China’s crisis was offering. Commerce secretary Wilbur Ross said the outbreak “will help to accelerate the return of jobs to North America”, while the president’s trade adviser Peter Navarro said that there would be no tariff relief even if the Chinese economy began to tank because of the epidemic. Reportedly, officials have been leaning on US companies with operations in China to repatriate them to the US as part of Trump’s “America First” nationalist project.

By the end of February, the virus had breached all of China’s internal containment lines, and the US and most of the world seem ill-prepared. The US opened quarantine sites at Travis Air Force Base and March Air Reserve Base in California for US citizens returning from China. But a whistleblower filed a complaint alleging that protocols were lax and staff were put at risk. “I soon began to field panicked calls from my leadership team and deployed staff members expressing concerns with the lack of ... communication and coordination, staff being sent into quarantined areas without personal protective equipment, training or experience in managing public health emergencies, safety protocols and the potential danger to both themselves and members of the public they come into contact with”, the whistleblower wrote. Soon after, the New York Times reported on the first US case in a patient with “no known contact with hot zones or other coronavirus patients” emerging near Travis Air Force Base.

Jason Schwartz, an assistant professor at Yale School of Public Health, recently told the Atlantic’s James Hamblin that authorities should have been preparing since the SARS outbreak of 2003. “Had we not set the SARS-vaccine-research program aside, we would have had a lot more of this foundational work that we could apply to this new, closely related virus”, he said. A vaccine is at least 12 months away, underlining the point Hamblin, also a lecturer at Yale School of Public Health, went on to make: “Long term government investments matter because creating vaccines, antiviral medications, and other vital tools requires decades of serious investment, even when demand is low. Market-based economies often struggle to develop a product for which there is no immediate demand and to distribute products to the places they’re needed”.

The US health system is the embodiment of market-based capitalist logic: for-profit, user-pays and dominated by the pharmaceutical and private insurance industries. It is the only major developed economy without guaranteed paid sick leave and universal health care. That makes it probably the most ill equipped of all countries in the developed world to deal with an outbreak. How on Earth are infected people to self-isolate for 14 days if they live paycheck to paycheck without leave entitlements? How are they supposed to be diagnosed if they have to pay more than $3,000 to be tested – which is what happened to a Florida man who returned from China in February, according to the Miami Herald. How will an epidemic be contained if half the people infected can’t afford medicines or hospital care?

That’s the question facing the US. As Western governments defund public health systems, give subsidies to the private health sector to move to user- and insurer-pays systems, and attack workers’ rights and conditions of employment, it’s increasingly a question facing even those countries with good public health records, which are likely to be relatively unscathed by this coronavirus. It doesn’t bear thinking about the carnage that could unfold in countries with worse health systems than China if they too are faced with an epidemic. With more than 3,000 people dead, many countries are instituting or extending containment measures.

“At some point the expectation that any area will escape effects of COVID-19 must be abandoned”, Hamblin concluded. “The disease must be seen as everyone’s problem.” Yet it’s reasonable to assume that those with economic resources – multi-millionaires, executives at insurance and pharmaceutical companies, politicians – won’t see it quite that way if the pandemic is particularly vicious. More likely it will be poor and working class people shunted into inadequate, hastily constructed mass quarantines away from the better care of private clinics catering to the wealthy.

And working class people will face stark choices that those with money will not: the choice between poverty and risking infection. Casualisation and short term contract work – precariousness – are a feature of a large section of the workforce in every country. Those people already go to work with the flu and other illnesses every year because they can’t afford not to. Often, they live in apartment blocks or shared accommodation. They don’t have the money to pay for other family members to ship out to a hotel for a week or two if one of them gets sick. By contrast, those with resources have greater flexibility to take time off work. They have the means to sustain themselves in isolation and hire people to do chores for them. They live in large houses rather than cramped apartments, so are naturally more quarantined from human contact when needs be.

Like every other recent health crisis, there is nothing about the coronavirus pandemic that will likely change many establishment minds about the need for workers and the poor to have more rights and more resources – universal and free health care, a month of paid sick leave every year and so on – let alone a world run to satisfy human needs rather than expand the egos of political leaders or the bank accounts of health industry executives.

Revolutionary Struggle With the New Afrikan Black Panther Party: An Interview with Kevin “Rashid” Johnson

Kevin “Rashid” Johnson is Minister of Defense for the New Afrikan Black Panther Party. He carries out his duties while imprisoned in the US. This interview originally appeared on his website.

What can we learn from the history of revolutionary struggles about the transition from bourgeois forms of security and policing to proletarian forms of state security

As a class question, we must of course begin with distinguishing between bourgeois and proletarian forms of state power. The state is nothing but the organization of the armed force of one class over its rival class(es). The bourgeoisie, as a tiny oppressor class that exploits or marginalizes all other classes to its own benefit, organizes its institutions of state power (military, police, prisons), that exist outside and above all other classes, to enforce and preserve its dominance and rule over everyone else.

To seize and exercise state power the proletariat, as the social majority, must in turn arm itself and its class allies to enforce its own power over the bourgeoisie.

Which brings us to the substance of your question concerning what lessons we’ve learned about transitioning from bourgeois state power (the capitalist state) to proletarian state power (the socialist state). In any event it won’t be and has never been a ‘peaceful’ process, simply because the bourgeoisie will never relinquish its power without the most violent resistance; which is the very reason it maintains its armed forces.

Well, we’ve had both urban and rural models of such transition. Russia was the first urban model (although subsumed in a rural society), China was the first successful rural one. There were many other attempts, but few succeeded however.

What proved necessary in the successful cases is foremost there must be a vanguard party organized under the ideological and political line of the revolutionary proletariat. This party must work to educate and organize the masses to recognize the need, and actively take up the struggle, to seize power from the bourgeoisie.

In the urban context, (especially in the advanced capitalist countries), where the bourgeoisie’s armed forces are entrenched, this requires a protracted political approach focused on educating and organizing the masses and creating institutions of dual and alternative collective political and economic power, with armed struggle prepared for but projected into the distant future (likely as civil war).

But in the rural context, where revolutionary forces have room to maneuver because the bourgeoisie’s armed forces are much less concentrated, the masses may resort to relatively immediate armed struggle, with political work operating to keep the masses and the armed forces educated and organized, and revolutionary politics in command of the armed struggle. This was Mao Tse-tung’s contribution to revolutionary armed struggle called Peoples War, and with its mobile armed mass base areas these forces operated like a state on wheels.

But the advances of technology since the 1970s, have seen conditions change that require a reassessing of the earlier methods of revolutionary struggle and transition of state power.

The rural populations (peasantry) of the underdeveloped world who are best suited to Mao’s PW model have been shrinking, as agrobusiness has been steadily pushing them off the land and into urban areas as permanent unemployables and lumpen proletarians, where they must survive by any means possible. Then too, with their traditional role as manual laborers being increasingly replaced by machines, the proletariat in the capitalist countries in also shrinking, and they too are pushed into a mass of permanent unemployables and lumpen.

So the only class, or sub-class, whose numbers are on the rise today are this bulk of marginalized largely urban people who don’t factor into the traditional roles of past struggles, with one exception. That being the struggle waged here in US the urban centers under the leadership of the original BPP, which designated itself a lumpen vanguard party. As such the BPP brought something entirely new and decisive to the table.

As the BPP’s theoretical leader, Huey P. Newton explained this changing social economic reality and accurately predicted their present development in his 1970 theory of “Revolutionary Intercommunalism,” and met the challenge of creating the type of party formation suited to meeting the new challenges of educating and organizing this growing social force for revolutionary struggle.

The BPP was able to create a model for developing institutions of dual and alternative political and economic power through its Serve the People programs creating the basis for transition of power to the marginalized under a revolutionary intercommunalist model instead of the traditional national socialist model.

The challenge in this situation where such work has been met with the most violent repression by bourgeois state forces is developing effective security forces right under their noses to protect the masses and their programs.

This is the work we in the NABPP are building on and seek to advance.

What has your experience of being a hyper-surveilled, incarcerated revolutionary taught you that is broadly applicable to the secure practice of revolutionaries in general

For one, the masses are our best and only real protection against repression. So in all the work we do, we must rely on and actively seek and win the support of the people, which is the basic Maoist method of doing political work and is what the imperialists themselves admit makes it the most effective and feared model of revolutionary struggle.

I’ve also learned that a lot of very important work fails because many people just don’t attempt it, due to policing themselves. Many fear pig repression and think any work that is effective must necessarily be done hidden out of sight, fearing as they do being seen by the state.

Essentially, they don’t know how to do aboveground work, and don’t recognize the importance of it, especially in these advanced countries. They think for work to be ‘revolutionary’ it must be underground and focused on armed struggle. And even those who do political work they stifle it by using an underground style which largely isolates them from the masses.

I think Huey P. Newton summed it up aptly when he stated,

“Many would-be revolutionaries work under the fallacious notion that the vanguard party should be a secret organization which the power structure knows nothing about, and that the masses know nothing about except for occasional letters that come their homes in the night. Underground parties cannot distribute leaflets announcing an underground meeting. Such contradictions and inconsistencies are not recognized by these so-called revolutionaries. They are, in fact, afraid of the very danger they are asking the people to confront. These so-called revolutionaries want the people to say what they themselves are afraid to say, to do what they themselves are afraid to do. That kind of revolutionary is a coward and a hypocrite. A true revolutionary realizes if he is sincere, death is imminent. The things he is saying and doing are extremely dangerous. Without this … realization, it is pointless to proceed as a revolutionary.

“If these impostors would investigate the history of revolution they would see that the vanguard group always starts out aboveground and is driven underground by the oppressor.”

Do you see it as a vulnerability to have our leaders organizing from prison? Some comrades refuse to engage in party/mass organizational work if it is conducted from prison. Don’t we sacrifice our best leadership if we don’t work directly/organizationally with our incarcerated leaders?

It can be a disadvantage, because it slows down development. But it is also an advantage, and our party is an example of this.

Historically, most revolutionary parties began on the outside and ended up targeted with repression, which included imprisonment of its cadre and supporters — fear of repression served as a deterrent for many would be revolutionaries as it was intended to do. For the NABPP, we developed in exactly the opposite direction. We began inside the prisons and are now transitioning to the outside.

Our cadre are getting out and hitting the ground going directly to work for the people. Look at our HQ in Newark, NJ where our chairman got out and has in less than a year led in developing a number of community STP programs, organizing mass protests that have shut down a prison construction project, given publicity and support to the people facing a crisis with lead in the water systems, etc.

So unlike the hothouse flower we’re already used to and steeled against state repression. The threat of prison doesn’t shake us — we’ve been there and done that. Like Huey asked, “Prison Where is Thy Victory?,” and John Sinclair of the original White Panther Party said, “prison ain’t shit to be afraid of.” And it was Malcolm X who was himself transformed into the great leader that he was inside prison who called prisons, “universities of the oppressed.”

All of my own work has been done from behind prison walls, and I have the state’s own reports and reactions of kicking me out of multiple state prison systems to attest to the value of what I’ve been able to contribute.

So, I think that, yes, some of our best leadership is definitely behind these walls.

Consider too that some of our best leaders developed inside prison: Malcolm X, George Jackson and Atiba Shanna aka James Yaki Sayles, for example. Which is something our party has factored into its strategy from day one. We’ve recognized the prisons to be potential revolutionary universities. Since our founding the NABPP has actively advanced the strategy of “transforming the prisons into schools of liberation,” of converting the lumpen (criminal) mentality into a revolutionary mentality.

In fact we can’t overlook remolding prisoners, because if we don’t, the enemy will appeal to and use them as forces of reaction against the revolutionary forces. Lenin, Mao and especially Frantz Fanon and the original BPP recognized this. What’s more, with the opposition’s ongoing strategy of mass imprisonment, massive numbers of our people have been swept up in these modern concentration camps. We must reach them with the politics of liberation. They are in fact a large part of our Party’s mass base.

How do you vet leadership and cadre? On what criteria to you make your judgement? Organizationally and personally.

Ideally this is determined by their ideological and political development and practice. But we expect and give space for people to make mistakes, although we also expect them to improve as they go. So we must be patient but also observe closely the correlation between their stated principles and their practice.

How should underground work relate to aboveground? How can the masses identify with the work of underground revolutionaries without compromising the security of the clandestine network?

Underground work serves different purposes and needs. One of which being to protect political cadre and train cadre to replace the fallen. Also to create a protective network and infrastructure for political workers forced to go to ground in the face of violent repression.

In whatever case the aboveground forces should actively educate the masses on the role, function and purpose of underground actions while ensuring that the clandestine forces consist of the most disciplined and politically grounded people. It must also be understood that these elements do not replace the masses in their role as the forces that must seize power.

In your assessment, has the balance of forces between the police and the potential of revolutionary mass action fundamentally shifted over the past 5 decades? How does this affect our ability to form organs of political power among the masses?

What shifted, but I don’t think is generally recognized by many, is the PW theory is today too simplistic. Today we must organize and create base areas under the nose of the bourgeoisie with the growing concentration of marginalized people in impoverished urban settings. As I noted earlier the traditional mass base of rural peasants who feature in the PW strategy is shrinking. And Maoist forces in rural areas have been pushed to the furthest margins of those areas unable to expand.

There is little opportunity for New Democratic revolution in these countries, which calls for alliances with the native national bourgeoisie who are now being rendered obsolete by the rise and normalization of neocolonialism and virtual elimination of nation states.

***

BOOKS BY KEVIN “RASHID” JOHNSON:

PANTHER VISION

Panther Vision: Essential Party Writings and Art of Kevin "Rashid" Johnson, Minister of Defense New Afrikan Black Panther Party

"The original Black Panther Party for Self-Defense challenged the prevailing socio-political and economic relationship between the government and Black people. The New Afrikan Black Panther Party is building on that foundation, and Rashid’s writings embrace the need for a national organization in place of that which had been destroyed by COINTELPRO and racist repression. We can only hope this book reaches many, and serves to herald and light a means for the next generation of revolutionaries to succeed in building a mass and popular movement.” --Jalil Muntaqim, Prisoner of War

Available from leftwingbooks.net, AK Press, and Amazon

DEFYING THE TOMB

Defying the Tomb: Selected Prison Writings and Art of Kevin 'Rashid' Johnson
With Russell 'Maroon' Shoats, Tom Big Warrior & Sundiata Acoli

PLEASE NOTE THAT DEFYING THE TOMB IS NOW AVAILABLE FROM AMAZON AS AN EBOOK

"Your mission (should you decide to accept it) is to buy multiple copies of this book, read it carefully, and then get it into the hands of as many prisoners as possible. I am aware of no prisoner-written book more important than this one, at least not since George Jackson s Blood In My Eye. Revolutionaries and those considering the path of progress will find Kevin Rashid Johnson s Defying The Tomb an important contribution to their political development." --Ed Mead, former political prisoner, George Jackson Brigade

Available from leftwingbooks.net, AK Press, and Amazon

WRITE RASHID

Rashid has been transferred out of state yet again, this time to Indiana. He is currently being held at:

Kevin Johnson
D.O.C. No. 264847
G-20-2C
Pendleton Correctional Facility
4490 W. Reformatory Road
Pendleton, IN 46064

The Queer Complex: Being Black and Queer in Baltimore City

By Aliyah L. Moye

“The master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house. They may allow us temporarily to beat him at his own game, but they will never allow us to bring about genuine change.”

- Audre Lorde 

Mount Vernon is an eclectic area. It is a cultural hub to some, filled with cultural entertainment, culinary diversity, and local businesses, and to others, a National Historic Landmark district - thanks to the Washington Monument. Mount Vernon stands out from other communities in Baltimore, with its steady signs of economic vitality, making it a popular destination for local Baltimoreans and tourists alike. Looking at Mount Vernon today, it is easy to be remiss that this location once hosted a large LGBTQ+ community that was locally known as, the ‘gay’ neighborhood in Baltimore City. This article, unlike most articles about Mount Vernon, presents a unique perspective about being Black and queer in a predominantly Black metropolis while feeling like an ‘outsider within’ among the LGBTQ+ in the Mount Vernon community.

Mount Vernon, during the late 60’s and 70’s, was considered as a safe space for the LGBTQ+ community in Baltimore as it became associated with one of the most pivotal pioneering moments. The 1955 Pepper Hill Club raid by police is considered the largest raid ever in Baltimore, in which 162 men and women arrested on charges of ‘disorderly conduct’ or sexually deviant norms. During this time, there were other gay friendly neighborhoods like: Charles Village, Waverly, and Abell. However, Mount Vernon still remains as the premiere gay neighborhood thanks to its deeply rooted queer heritage.

The Periphery: Black and Queer

Despite Mount Vernon’s rich queer heritage, racism was rampant. Similar to other communities in America, racism plays a role between persons of color and Whites in the LGBTQ+ community. Patricia Hill Collins explains that even within the queer framework there exists a two-ness, separating persons into groups due to their shared experiences. Simply stating, the experiences for one group is not shared by the other group, therefore the narrative of one person cannot serve as the same narrative for another, despite both parties the same sexual orientation. A queer Black woman’s experience will be different from a queer White woman because of the racial benefits of being White in all spaces. 

Queer persons of color are not quick to agree with the “safe space” claims that Mt. Vernon is locally known as. Stories about acts of discrimination against men and women of color in the LGBTQ+ community being ignored speaks to the White, gay centeredness which represents mainstream gay culture, therefore diminishing the Black queer standpoint. Jared Sexton would describe this as people-of-color-blindness, or an unwillingness to see people of color. Baltimore resident Valentino Martinez (not real name) said: “...as a Black Queer male, Mount Vernon does lack now and then on their inclusivity when it comes to Black and Brown people. I don’t talk about it much because I have never felt slighted within the community, but I do have some friends that prefer to go out in Seton Hill because there is a greater community of LGBTQ+ people of color out there,” describing Collins’ outsider-within concept as it relates to being Black and queer. “I will say that I do think that Mount Vernon does lean more towards servicing white gays more than gays of color. But I hate to say that I am not surprised because that happens most places. Most places care more about people’s safety and overall experiences if their white or only when they become a white issue,” Valentino continues.

Seton Hill is a predominantly Black community located in central Baltimore that is historically known as Baltimore’s French Quarter. This lack of inclusivity felt in traditionally White gay spaces has led The Center for Black Equity to create Baltimore Black Pride in Seton Hill. Kevin Clemens, the chair of Baltimore Black Pride, believed this move to Seton Hill was necessary. Clemens explains, “There were issues affecting our community as a whole, but there were some things that were specific to the African-American community. I believe that we as African Americans bring such a wealth of talent, knowledge, and leadership but we spend so much of it just doing it without being recognized or acknowledged. Black Pride is the vehicle for that acknowledgment to happen.” The storyline of Blacks creating their own space due to being pushed out is an all-too-common narrative given the United States’ violent racial past.

Mount Vernon is a thriving community bustling with businesses, culinary diversity, cultural entertainment, and historic sites. Due to its high economic capital, it has become a popular destination for tourists and Baltimoreans alike. Nevertheless, most people would be in disbelief that this area once catered to a large LGBTQ+ community. The focus of this article was to shed light on Mount Vernon’s LGBTQ+ community in a way that it typically has not been talked about previously. I felt it necessary to talk about the lived experiences of the Black queer community within a Black metropolis such as Baltimore. I found that even though Mount Vernon is regarded as a “safe haven” or known as a gay mecca, that is not the case when it comes to the queer people of color. Black queers felt that Mount Vernon catered to White gays and lacked inclusivity. Racism was prominent, like in most other communities in the U.S., in Mount Vernon within the LGBTQ+ community leaving queers of color feeling like “outsiders within.” My hope was to bring attention to this topic and shine light on an important issue so that there could be an opportunity to bring about change.

Works Cited

Case, W. (2017). Baltimore's LGBT hub expands beyond Mount Vernon amid

discussions of inclusion, competition. Baltimore Sun. Retrieved from: https://www.baltimoresun.com/features/bs-ae-lgbt-neighborhoods-20170417-story.html

Evelyn B. Higginbotham. (1993). Righteous Discontent: The Women’s Movement in the Black Baptist Church (1880-1920). Cambridge, MA. Harvard University Press.

Hunter, M.A. and Robinson, Z.F. (2018). Chocolate Cities: The Black Map of American.

Oakland, California. University Press. ISBN: 9780520292833

Kiesling, E. The Missing Colors of the Rainbow: Black Queer Resistance, European

journal of American studies [Online], 11-3 | 2017, document 13, Online since 26 January 2017, connection on 10 December 2019. URL : http://journals.openedition.org/ejas/11830 ; DOI : 10.4000/ejas.11830

Moll, A. (2016). Mount Vernon keeps changing, but can it remain the gayborhood?

Baltimore Sun. Retrieved from: https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.baltimoresun.com/citypaper/bcp-07202016-feature-the-drinkery-20160719-story.html%3foutputType=amp

Rector, K. (2013). Welcome to Gay Matters. Baltimore Sun. Retrieved from:

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.baltimoresun.com/features/bs-gm-welcome-to-gay-matters-story.html%3foutputType=amp

Seton Hill Demographics. Niche. Retrieved from:

https://www.niche.com/places-to-live/n/seton-hill-baltimore-md/residents/

(2012). Baltimore Black Pride: 10 Years of History. GayTravel. Retrieved from:

https://www.gaytravel.com/gay-blog/baltimore-black-pride-10-years-of-history/

“Trump’s America” IS America

It's important for us to understand that "Trump’s America" IS America. There is no differentiating. As a matter of fact, based on the country's history, Trump is about as "American" as it gets - greedy, racist, classist, misogynistic, corrupt, dominating, controlling, sadistic, elitist.

America is a settler-colonial nation that was built on the backs of Native genocide and African enslavement, continuing into modern times through intricate systems of institutional white supremacy. The founders of this country were elitists and aristocrats who used their wealth to dominate others while arranging a system of immense privilege for those like them. It is a capitalist country that has been built from the toil of the working majority for centuries - masses of people who have received very little (and continue to receive very little) in return. It is an imperialist country that has bombed, colonized, and obstructed democratic movements throughout the global south and middle east for over a century. It is a misogynistic country that waited 150 years before allowing women to vote, confined women to second-class status after, and continues to breed patriarchal values that are dangerous to working women in everyday life.

"Trump's America" IS America.

Trump has continued to oversee the corporate coup started under Reagan and carried forward under the Bushs, Clinton, and Obama - a coup that is merely an inevitable late stage of capitalism, whereas wealth and power have been concentrated into a fusion of corporate governance and creeping fascism.

Trump has continued America's illegal and immoral wars abroad, same as his predecessors.

Trump has continued "starving the beast," following the neoliberal blueprint of the last 40 years by siphoning public funds into private hands.

Trump has continued the mass deportation policies implemented under Obama.

Trump has continued the attack on civil liberties started under W. Bush in the wake of 9/11.

Trump, in his role as president, carries the torch of draconian, racist, classist criminal justice policies created under Reagan.

Trump carries the torch of mass incarceration and austerity policies created under Clinton.

Trump has continued serving Wall St. and his pals/donors in the profit industries, like all of his modern predecessors.

Trump, like all presidents before, SERVES CAPITAL - not people.

He may not be the polished statesman that we've become accustomed to - those who exhibit "stability" and "civility" while acting as the figureheads of systemic brutality - but make no mistake: Trump is as American as it gets. However, "America" is largely a myth in itself, something fed to the masses from above by the wealthy and powerful few who have always demanded our loyalty despite their everyday crimes against us and our class counterparts the world over. Most Americans are despised by those who run the country from their pedestals, those who benefit from its brutality, those who gouge us at every turn, those protected by an ever-thinning, reactionary, "middle-class" buffer.

To rid ourselves of Trump and all he represents, we must rid ourselves of "America" as we know it - the myth, the systems it facilitates (capitalism/imperialism, colonialism, white supremacy, patriarchy), and all of the severity that comes with it. This is a hard truth to accept, especially since it goes against everything we have been conditioned to believe. But it is a truth that must be understood and dealt with if we are to ever win a just world.

All power to the people.

A Mad World: Capitalism and the Rise of Mental Illness

By Rod Tweedy

Originally published at Red Pepper.

Mental illness is now recognised as one of the biggest causes of individual distress and misery in our societies and cities, comparable to poverty and unemployment. One in four adults in the UK today has been diagnosed with a mental illness, and four million people take antidepressants every year. ‘What greater indictment of a system could there be,’ George Monbiot has asked, ‘than an epidemic of mental illness?’

The shocking extent of this ‘epidemic’ is made all the more disturbing by the knowledge that so much of it is preventable. This is due to the significant correlation between social and environmental conditions and the prevalence of mental disorders. Richard Bentall, professor of clinical psychology at the University of Liverpool, and Peter Kinderman, president of the British Psychological Society, have written compellingly about this connection in recent years, drawing powerful attention to ‘the social determinants of our psychological wellbeing’. ‘The evidence is overwhelming,’ notes Kinderman, ‘it’s not just that there exist social determinants, they are overwhelmingly important.’

A sick society

Experiences of social isolation, inequality, feelings of alienation and dissociation, and even the basic assumptions and ideology of materialism and neoliberalism itself are seen today to be significant drivers – reflected in the titles of a number of recent articles and talks on this subject, such as those of consultant psychotherapist David Morgan’s groundbreaking Frontier Psychoanalyst podcasts, which have included discussions on whether ‘Neoliberalism is dangerous for your mental health’, and ‘Is neoliberalism making us sick?’

Clinical psychologist and psychotherapist Jay Watts observes in the Guardian that ‘psychological and social factors are at least as significant and, for many, the main cause of suffering. Poverty, relative inequality, being subject to racism, sexism, displacement and a competitive culture all increase the likelihood of mental suffering. Governments and pharmaceutical companies are not as interested in these results, throwing funding at studies looking at genetics and physical biomarkers as opposed to the environmental causes of distress. Similarly, there is little political will to combine increasing mental distress with structural inequalities, though the association is robust and many professionals think this would be the best way to tackle the current mental health epidemic’.

There are clearly very powerful and entrenched interests and agendas here, which consciously or unconsciously act to conceal or try to deny this relationship, and which also makes the recent willingness amongst so many psychoanalysts and therapists to embrace this wider context so exciting and moving.

Commentators often talk about society, social context, group thinking, and environmental determinants in connection with mental distress and disorders, but we can I think actually be a bit more precise about what aspect of society is mainly driving it, is mainly responsible for it. And in this context it’s probably time we talk about the c word – capitalism.

Many of the contemporary forms of illness and individual distress that we treat and engage with certainly seem to be correlated with and amplified by the processes and byproducts of capitalism. In fact, you might say that capitalism is in many respects a mental illness generating system – and if we are serious about tackling not only the effects of mental distress and illness, but also their causes and origins, we need to look more closely, more precisely, and more analytically at the nature of the political and economic womb out of which they emerge, and how psychology is fundamentally interwoven with every aspect of it.

Ubiquitous neurosis

Perhaps one of the most obvious examples of this intimate connection between capitalism and mental distress is the prevalence of neurosis. As Joel Kovel, a former psychiatrist and professor of political science, notes: ‘A most striking feature of neurosis within capitalism is its ubiquity.’ In his classic essay ‘Therapy in late capitalism’ (reprinted in The Political Self), Kovel refers to the ‘colossal burden of neurotic misery in the population, a weight that continually and palpably betrays the capitalist ideology, which maintains that commodity civilization promotes human happiness’:

‘If, given all this rationalization, comfort, fun and choice, people are still wretched, unable to love, believe or feel some integrity to their lives, they might also begin to draw the conclusion that something was seriously wrong with their social order.’

There’s also been some fascinating work done on this more recently by Eli Zaretsky (Political Freud), and Bruce Cohen (author of Psychiatric Hegemony), who have both written on the relations between the family, sexuality, and capitalism in the generation of neuroses.

It is significant, for example, that one of the most prominent features of the psychological landscape that Freud encountered in late nineteenth-century Vienna were the neuroses – which, as Kovel notes, Freud saw as being entirely continuous with ‘normal’ development in modern societies – with much of these, he adds, being rooted in our modern experience of alienation. ‘Neurosis,’ Kovel says, ‘is the self-alienation of a subject who has been readied for freedom but runs afoul of personal history.’

It was of course Marx who was the great analyst of alienation, showing how capitalist economics generates alienation as part of its very fabric or structure – showing how, for instance, alienation gets ‘lost’ or ‘trapped’, embodied, in products, commodities – from the obvious examples (such as Nikes made in sweatshops, and sweatshops embodied in Nikes) – to a wider and much more pervasive sense that the whole system of production and creation is somehow alienating.

As Pavon Cuellar remarks, ‘Marx was the first to realise that this alienation actually gets contained and incarnated in things – in “commodities”‘ (Marxism and Psychoanalysis). These ‘fetishised’ commodities, he adds, seem to retain and promise to return, when consumed, the subjective-social part lost by those alienated while producing them: ‘the alienated have lost what they imagine [or hope] to find in what is fetishised.’

This understanding of alienation is really the core issue for Marx. People probably know him today for his theories of capital – how issues of exploitation, profit, and control continually characterise and resurface in capitalism – but for me the key concern of Marx, and one that is constantly neglected, or misunderstood, is his view on the centrality and importance of human creativity and productivity – man’s ‘colossal productive power’ as he calls it – exactly as it was in fact for William Blake, slightly earlier in the century.

Marx refers to this extraordinary world-transformative energy and agency as our ‘active species-life’, our ‘species-being’ – our ‘physical and spiritual energies’. But these immense creative energies and transformative capacities are, he notes, under the present system, immediately taken from us and converted into something alien, objective, enslaving, fetishised.

Restructuring desire

The image he evokes is of mothers giving birth – another form of labour perhaps – with the baby immediately being taken away and converted into something alien, something doll-like — a commodity. He considers what effect that must have on the mother’s spirit. This, for Marx, is the source of the alienation and unease, the sort of profound dislocation of the human spirit that characterises industrial capitalism. And as Pavon Cuellar shows, we can’t buy our way out of this alienation – by producing more toys, more dolls – because that’s where the alienation occurs, and is embodied and generated.

Indeed, consumerism and materialism are themselves widely recognised today as key drivers of a whole raft of mental health problems, from addiction to depression. As George Monbiot notes, ‘Buying more stuff is associated with depression, anxiety and broken relationships. It is socially destructive and self-destructive’. Psychoanalytic psychotherapist Sue Gerhardt has written very compellingly on this association, suggesting that in modern societies we often ‘confuse material well-being with psychological well-being’. In her book The Selfish Society she shows how successfully and relentlessly consumer capitalism reshapes our brains and reworks our nervous systems in its own image. For ‘we would miss much of what capitalism is about,’ she notes, ‘if we overlook its role in restructuring and marketing desire and impulse themselves.’

Another key aspect of capitalism and its impact on mental illness we could talk about of course is inequality. Capitalism is as much an inequality-generating system as it is a mental illness producing system. As a Royal College of Psychiatrists report noted: ‘Inequality is a major determinant of mental illness: the greater the level of inequality, the worse the health outcomes. Children from the poorest households have a three-fold greater risk of mental ill health than children from the richest households. Mental illness is consistently associated with deprivation, low income, unemployment, poor education, poorer physical health and increased health-risk behaviour.’

Some commentators have even suggested that capitalism itself, as a way of being or way of thinking about the world, might be seen as a rather ‘psychopathic’ or pathological system. There are certainly some striking correspondences between modern financial and corporate systems and individuals diagnosed with clinical psychopathy, as a number of analysts have noticed.

Robert Hare for instance, one of the world’s leading authorities into psychopathy and the originator of the widely accepted ‘Hare Checklist’ used to test for psychopathy, remarked to Jon Ronson: ‘I shouldn’t have done my research just in prisons. I should have spent some time inside the Stock Exchange as well.’ ‘But surely stock-market psychopaths can’t be as bad as serial-killer psychopaths?’ the interviewer asks. ‘”Serial killers ruin families,” shrugged Bob. “Corporate and political … psychopaths ruin economies. They ruin societies.”‘

Pathological institutions

These traits, as Joel Bakan brilliantly suggested in his book The Corporation, are encrypted into the very fabric of modern corporations – part of its basic DNA and modus operandi. ‘The corporation’s legally defined mandate,’ he notes, ‘is to pursue, relentlessly and without exception, its own self-interest, regardless of the often harmful consequences it might cause to others.’ By its own legal definition, therefore, the corporation is ‘a pathological institution’, and Bakan helpfully lists the diagnostic features of its default pathology (lack of empathy, pursuit of self-interest, grandiosity, shallow affect, aggression, social indifference) to show what a reliably disturbed patient the corporation is.

Why should all of these contemporary social and economic practices and processes generate so much illness, so many disorders? To answer this I think we need to look back at the wider Enlightenment project, and the psychological models of human nature out of which they emerged. Modern capitalism grew out of seventeenth century concepts of man as some sort of disconnected, discontinuous, disengaged self – one driven by competition and a narrow, ‘rational’ self-interest – the concept of homo economicus that drove and underwrote much of the whole Enlightenment project, including its economic models. As Iain McGilchrist notes, ‘Capitalism and consumerism, ways of conceiving human relationships based on little more than utility, greed, and competition, came to supplant those based on felt connection and cultural continuity.’

We now know how mistaken, and destructive, this model of the self is. Recent neuroscientific research into the ‘social brain’, together with exciting developments in modern attachment theory, developmental psychology, and interpersonal neurobiology, are significantly revising, and upgrading, this rather quaint, old-fashioned view of the isolated, ‘rational’ individual – and also revealing a far richer and more sophisticated understanding of human development and identity, through increased knowledge of ‘right hemisphere’ intersubjectivity, unconscious processes, group behaviour, the role of empathy and mentalisation in brain development, and the significance of context and socialisation in emotional and cognitive development.

As neuroscientist David Eagleman observes, the human brain itself relies on other brains for its very existence and growth—the concept of ‘me’, he notes, is dependent on the reality of ‘we’:

We are a single vast superorganism, a neural network embedded in a far larger web of neural networks. Our brains are so fundamentally wired to interact that it’s not even clear where each of us begins and ends. Who you are has everything to do with who we are. There’s no avoiding the truth that’s etched into our neural circuitry: we need each other.

Dependency is therefore built into the fabric of who we are as social and biological beings, hardwired into our mainframe: it is ‘how love becomes flesh’, in Louis Cozolino’s striking phrase. ‘There are no single brains,’ Cozolino observes, echoing Winnicott, ‘brains only exist within networks of other brains.’ Some people have termed this new neurological and scientific understanding of the deep patterns of interdependency, mutual cooperation, and the social brain ‘neuro-Marxism’ because of the implications involved.

Capitalism is, it seems, rooted in a fundamentally flawed, naive, and old-fashioned seventeenth-century model of who we are – it tries to make us think that we’re isolated, autonomous, disengaged, competitive, decontextualised – an ultimately rather ruthless and dissociated entity. The harm that this view of the self has done to us, and our children, is incalculable.

Many people believe, and are encouraged to believe, that these problems and disorders – psychosis, schizophrenia, anxiety, depression, self-harm – these symptoms of a ‘sick world’ (to use James Hillman’s terrific description) are theirs, rather than the world’s. ‘But what if your emotional problems weren’t merely your own?’, asks Tom Syverson. ‘What if they were our problems? What if the real problem is that we’re living in wrong society? Perhaps Adorno was correct when he said, “wrong life cannot be lived rightly”.’

The root of this ‘living wrongly’ seems to be because we live in a social and economic system at odds with both our psychology and our neurology, with who we are as social beings. As I suggest in my book, we need to realise that our inner and outer worlds constantly and profoundly interact and shape each other, and that therefore rather than separating our understanding of economic and social practices from our understanding of psychology and human development, we need to bring them together, to align them. And for this to happen, we need a new dialogue between the political and personal worlds, a new integrated model for mental health, and a new politics.

Rod Tweedy is an author and editor of Karnac Books, a leading independent publisher of books on mental health and therapy. His edited collection, The Political Self: Understanding the Social Context for Mental Illness, is published by Karnac.

A Tale of Two Cities: The Struggle to Build Generational Wealth Within Baltimore's Black Community

By Valecia Hanna

According to Michael Harriot, from as early as the 1910s minorities have been faced with the challenge of experiencing the downside of segregated housing (2019). Baltimore, one of the most historically black cities, was plagued by this institutionalized inequity which served as one of the main reasons of continued disadvantages for black residents. Redlining was essentially developed by the Home Owner’s Loan Corporations (HOLC) during the Great Depression as a solution to relieve America from its economic drought (Harriot 2019). However, as the government attempted to reconstruct the economy, redlining created disproportionate housing opportunities between whites and minorities. This practice resulted in the biased behaviors by realtors, who instead of concentrating on assessing the value of one’s property, selected to focus their attention on the race of the population of a given area.

Gentrification, which is usually sold as a “beacon of hope,” is now mirroring patterns of segregated housing that blacks thought they had overcome decades ago. As new developments begin to occupy low-income neighborhoods, black renters are not only being displaced by whites, but so are black homeowners. Homeowners are seeing the cultural and historic values of their neighborhood changing, leading to the feeling of being alienated from one’s own home and community. As a result, black homeowners in Baltimore are now searching for new ways to protect their home values in the midst of gentrification.

Shedding light on the systemic racism in housing is critical in the discussion of homeownership disadvantages experienced by blacks. Property values, both historically and currently, are calculated based on the concentration of blacks and whites in a geographical area, rather than the quality of the structure itself. Danyelle Solomon concluded in his 2019 study that the disproportionate rate of property values between blacks and whites is so severe that if the pattern continues the average black family would need over 200 years to match their white counterparts’ value of wealth. These findings are not surprising in light of the decades-long practice of redlining and other discriminatory practices.

In comparing two Baltimore neighborhoods, the relationship between property value and race is evident and shows that blacks are still haunted by the effects of redlining. According to the Baltimore Neighborhood Indicators Alliance (2017), the Druid Hill area, which is predominantly black, has home values averaging around $127,000, whereas Bolton Hill, adjacent to Druid Hill and predominantly white, has homes averaging at $270,000. Homes in each neighborhood are similar in features, size, and structure; however, presumably, Druid Hill’s racial identity makes it disproportionately less valued. Over time, as values stay low, so too does the potential equity, which pales in comparison to homes in the white Bolton Hill neighborhood. These circumstances are barriers for blacks to move upward in their socioeconomic status and to establish generational wealth for those behind them. And as new development projects begin to flood black neighborhoods, the wealth gap between blacks and whites will remain disproportionate.

Some black homeowners recognize the inequality and are finding ways to beat the system. One unconventional trend that recently developed is anticipating new developments in the community for the sole purpose of increased property value to generate a profit from their home. Longtime resident of Druid Hill, Afrikiia Robertson, reflects on her family’s experience of living in a gentrified area: “I think with the influx of gentrification activities, it has made my family and others in my neighborhood hopeful that with the influx of white residents, [We don’t have a lot, but we have enough], they would help to raise the property value.’

Most news stories about gentrification focus on the impact, ignoring the factors that lead some Black homeowners to sell their homes. “I think my mom’s hope is that she will be able to see a return on a generational investment.” Robertson said, as she describes the tough decision her family plans to make. However, if more black homeowners follow this trend, black neighborhoods will lose both their cultural value and social importance. Unfortunately, the selling of homes provides greater opportunities to some who want to improve their social and economic situation at the expense of something perhaps even more valuable - history.

In city after city, the effects of redlining, and now gentrification, steadily perpetuates racial and ethnic inequality in homeownership. These practices, along with other social factors, devalues the cultural and historical importance of black spaces in major metropolitan areas. This issue is not deemed as a priority because the people impacted often have few options, little influence, and do not realize the extremity of this issue, which is the impact it has on black generational wealth. It can also be that the presence of inequality within neighborhoods limits the opportunity for minorities to have the platform for their voice to be heard. Nevertheless, this issue should be at the forefront of Baltimore’s efforts to defeat institutionalized racism.

Works Cited

Harriot, Michael. 2019. “Redlining: The Origin Story of Institutional Racism.” The Root, 25        April 2019.

Solomon, Danyelle, et al. “Systemic Inequality: Displacement, Exclusion, and       Segregation.” Center for American Progress, 7 Aug. 2019.