On January 6, health care workers and allies gathered in front of hospitals in cities such as Boston, New York, Minneapolis and San Francisco to demand an end to the destruction of hospitals in Gaza, the arrest and abuse of doctors and other providers, and the ongoing genocide. So far at least 885 healthcare workers in Gaza have been killed and 128 remain in custody. Israel is preparing to kill off as many Gazans as possible with even more urgency, attempting to deny the entry of any food or water or any medical care. Some U.S. health workers called in sick in order to participate. 

In New York City, a few comrades joined with the hundreds gathered outside NYU Tisch hospital, a pro-Zionist institution that has fired and harassed health workers for just mentioning support of Gaza. The demonstrations were organized by Within Our Lifetime, Doctors Against Genocide and Health Care Workers for Palestine.  But there is little hope for Palestinians without a mass movement that calls for class based international unity to rid the world of capitalism and imperialism, an idea that several comrades regularly put forward in these organizations as we join their actions. It is not enough to choose between the collaborators of the Palestinian Authority or the Islamic fundamentalists of Hamas who call for martyrdom. Workers of the world must unite for a society we run for ourselves, a communist world.

This is what solidarity looks like

Under freezing temperatures of 10 to 11 degrees Fahrenheit, several members and friends of the Progressive Labor Party (PLP) spent about four hours outside the migrant refugee camp at  Floyd Bennett Field in Brooklyn. We came to distribute donations of clothes, shoes, suitcases, coats and bedspreads, collected by comrades and friends. We were received with great gratitude by all those who came to meet us during this day, many of them were without coats, women in flip-flops and children with just a sweatshirt, under that temperature that made everyone tremble because of how cold it felt.

It was painful to feel what they told us through their testimonies, all the work they spent in that shelter where the coldness is terrible and more because that shelter is in a broken place near the coast. The bathrooms are outside the tents and the heating is not felt. We also provided a breakfast consisting of latte and hot chocolate, bread, sweets, donuts, biscuits, cream cheese, etc. that they gladly received and that served to warm us up a little.

The children were very happy because many of them received toys, crayons and books. It was a very nice day that despite the cold, the solidarity and gratitude shown among all warmed our hearts.

Many received our newspaper and a special bulletin of CHALLENGE. We also received the telephone number of most of those who came to collect the donations and we agreed to make a group chat on WhatsApp so as not to lose contact, since many of them are being taken out when they are two months at the shelter. The rest of the more than approximately 2,000 that remain will be taken out on January 15 or 16 when the mayor closes this shelter, leaving the uncertainty of where they’re going to end up.

Is communism possible? Yes! It is possible. Today it was demonstrated once again in this small day of solidarity.
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Visiting a concentration camp

Today I visited the Migrant shelter at Floyd Bennett Field for the first time; it was enlightening to say the least. I work for the Department of Education  as a high school counselor in a title one school. The students I serve are predominantly Black and Brown children from all over New York City with many different cultural backgrounds. When people ask me what I do for work, I always like to tell people that “I’m doing the lord’s work” for a living. While I consider being a school counselor in 2024 one of the hardest jobs in America right now, I have developed a brand new respect for people who spend their free time and energy serving the working class and welcoming migrant families who are housed here in NYC.

When I first got to Floyd Bennett Field, the housing establishment immediately gave me the impression that it was a concentration camp, the only difference is that there were no keys and locks on the gates, but there was 24/7 security monitoring the migrants that were allowed to go in and out of the compound. Checking ID’s making sure the people coming in and out were accounted for. When we got to the compound we were only allowed to wait in front, a few hundred feet away from the entrance. Families came pouring out of the compound headed out to the nearest highway to either catch a bus to go run errands or look for work. Most of the families that came to get donations from us just so happened to stumble upon us as they came outside. There were kids and adults without coats and proper winter clothing. I saw people with shorts, skirts, t-shirts, flip flops on a very cold day in November. In Floyd Bennett Field, there aren’t any buildings, just miles of land, so the wind that swept across the field made the temperature feel 10-15 degrees colder than normal. But the look on the faces of the children and members of these families were unbothered, as if their bodies had adapted to living with this discomfort and cold temperature. 

There was a moment that I stood and looked at all the people who came to help the migrants, and how bundled up we were because of how cold it was, and we were shivering and visually extremely cold, while the migrant workers were unbothered, while wearing half of what we had on. It was disturbing to know that people had to adapt to living like this, just to survive. I could go on for hours pointing out the inequalities I witnessed while being at the shelter, but what really left an impression on me was the smile on the families’ faces I witnessed, after they got a hot cup of coffee or found a winter coat that fit. The smile on the little girl’s face after she sipped her hot cup of cocoa and picked up a Dora the Explorer book. This experience is a must for helping our class see the humanity in the workers who are often derided by Trump and the racist media  as “criminals” and “invaders”and it was humbling to say the least. I can honestly say that I haven’t felt that good about myself in a long time, despite serving our NYC youth everyday. This was different and a must for any person who calls themselves an honorable human being. 
*****

Unity warms up migrant families and me

On a cold and windy Sunday at Floyd Bennett Field, while other volunteers were helping people sort through the clothing donations, I was serving cups of hot chocolate and coffee to migrants on the other side of the fence and inviting them to come look at the donated items. Chocolate? Cafe con leche? I was offering in broken Spanish. People were gracious and grateful for a hot drink and good will. Most were families with young children. Many were native Spanish speakers, some weren’t, although most seemed to understand both Spanish and English.

Just as my feet and hands were starting to get numb from the cold and wind, I felt someone hug my legs. A smiling young girl in a blue jacket with a red bow in her curly dark hair was wrapping her arms around me and saying gracias. I will never forget this warm and sweet gesture. My hope for this child, her family and all other new migrants is that they find a safe and prosperous life here.
*****

Capitalism can’t insure health

The January 15, 2025 editorial of CHALLENGE describes the failures of U.S. healthcare, from Covid-19 deaths to antivax propaganda. It also aptly criticizes the absence of conditions that predict health like housing and income.

For decades, workers have fought for health care for all. During the late 19th Century, German Chancellor Otto von Bismarck instituted a health insurance program to counter the socialists’ demands for reform. Other countries modeled healthcare after a health insurance model but also never achieved equality among different economic groups. Even today, the highly praised systems of France and Sweden maintain differential care for the poor and wealthy.

The U.S. system also maintains multi-level coverage, from employer based and public, to no coverage. COVID benefits increased Medicaid eligibility, but in 2023 the federal government used bureaucratic rules to cut it, and 23 percent are uninsured. Undocumented immigrants and those in the U.S. for less than five years are ineligible for public benefits like Medicaid. Among Black workers, 60 percent had no insurance yet represented only 40 percent of the population. While workers from Asia in the U.S. live, on average, until 84 years of age, Native Americans, on average, only reach 64 years.

Health activists have continued to struggle for single-payer and Medicare For All reforms. Single payer would provide healthcare through workers’ contributions like taxes that the government and the government would pay as does Medicare. Medicare For All would cover everyone, be public, and have no profit.

Such provisions are essential to eliminate the big insurance companies like United HealthCare which restricts providers, denies care, and increases the charges of care from 22-44 percent. Private insurers cut expenses for Medicare with their Medicare Advantage plans that restrict access. Over 200 rural and many urban hospitals have closed, and many surgical hospital patients are kicked out after a day or treated as an outpatient. Meanwhile, funds are plowed into expanding wars and billionaire pockets.

The weaknesses of these reforms include the lack of benefits for the social determinants of health (although some health centers now offer social and legal services to patients). Having everyone in one plan could make it even easier to ration care as England has done with its National Health Service.

Advocates are writing legislation for Congress to implement it, a strategy that has been used for decades. In a period of declining capitalism and increasing threats of World War III, it is unlikely to succeed. However, we can learn from history when the urban rebellions, the Civil Rights movement, and the fight for the Charles Drew hospital in Watts, L.A. won Medicare, Medicaid, and hospital desegregation during the 1960s. Strikes by unions have also secured health insurance for its members. Struggles like these are more likely to succeed than legislation. Ultimately, maintaining good health and health care will require workers to run society. In the early days of the Soviet Union and China, the government wiped out catastrophic diseases and increased life expectancy and infant survival. Until workers run a communist society, we can engage in struggles for benefits, housing, public Medicare, unrestricted Medicaid, better staffing for hospital workers, and safe working conditions for all while building a revolutionary movement.
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Israelis continue to kill thousands of Palestinians

Al Jazeera, 1/12–The Israeli military siege on the northern Gaza Strip has left about 5,000 Palestinians dead or missing after 100 days of brutal attacks that have only intensified amid talks of a potential mediated agreement between Israel and Hamas. Another 9,500 Palestinians were injured as a result of the Israeli military operation in the north that was launched in early October…Gaza’s Government Media Office…described the Israeli siege as “the most horrific form of ethnic cleansing, displacement and destruction” that has affected hundreds of thousands in the war-ravaged area...north Gaza is now a “ghost area” of vast destruction and rubble…

South Korea latest to ponder building nukes

Foreign Affairs, January/February– South Korea has long relied on the United States to keep the North Korean nuclear threat at bay. Pyongyang…today regularly issues nuclear threats against its southern neighbor…North Korea’s capabilities are growing. Pyongyang has developed an intercontinental ballistic missile…North Korea can now strike American cities with a nuclear weapon…Seoul is now considering a step that, until recently, was discussed only on the country’s political fringe: building its own nuclear weapons…this proposal has gone mainstream…71 percent of South Koreans support nuclearization…

Nurses in Michigan prepare to strike

Lansing State Journal, 1/9–A potential strike between nurses and the University of Michigan Health-Sparrow system fits a post-pandemic pattern of nurses asking for more, which may now be a recurring feature of health care…
Nurses have been negotiating, picketing and striking to highlight their changing needs. Nurses were often burned out during the pandemic, cutting into the available workers for a specialized job that can’t be done by artificial intelligence…The five-day strike that Sparrow’s health care workers are planning to start Jan. 20, pending further negotiations, could bring pressure on the hospital to meet the nurses’ demands…

Antiracist protesters in Lisbon fight against anti migrant fascists

Portugal Residents, 1/12–Almost a month on from the police operation in Martim Moniz that so outraged left wing parties and immigrant associations, thousands of people have taken to the streets today in protest...Slogans today included those attributed to ‘activists of the Left Bloc’, who chanted: “Fascists,  fascists, your time has come, the immigrants stay and you go away”...
According to lawyer Ricardo Sá Fernandes, also among the demonstrators:“The Portuguese are sending a signal here that they do not agree with any discrimination. We are all together,” …in spite of the fact that members of far-right groups were holding a counter action nearby, in support of the country’s police forces.

Anti-fascist protest in Germany

France24, 1/12–A key congress of the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party was delayed Saturday as thousands shouting “No to Nazis” protested outside the venue in the eastern town of Riesa. The party’s 600-odd delegates are expected to approve its manifesto. The draft version of the manifesto includes an exit from the euro and a tough immigration policy. An AfD party spokesman told AFP that the programme was delayed by at least an hour due to protests preventing delegates from reaching the venue…”We are filling the streets of Riesa with diversity, solidarity and openness and are gathering in numbers in front of the entrances to the AfD congress”...

Mafia profits off of mass migration

Der Spiegel, 1/3–The Darién Gap between South and Central America is exceedingly dangerous, but hundreds of thousands of migrants try their luck every year in an effort to reach the U.S. Now, a drug cartel has turned the jungle crossing into big business…Within just a few years, the Gulf Clan, Colombia’s most powerful cartel, has transformed one of the world’s most dangerous migration routes into a global refugee highway, which generates millions of dollars each week… And it is a service that people around the world have learned about…Venezuelans…Haitians, Ecuadorians, Mauritanians, Micronesians, Afghans and Iranians. There are people from Angola, Ghana and Nigeria, fleeing from bitter poverty in their homelands, from bloody conflicts or from the effects of climate change.

On December 4, in New York City, UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson was murdered on his way into a shareholders’ meeting. No tears should be shed for Thompson. He was struck down by bullets engraved with the principles he lived by: to maximize his insurance company’s profits by delaying care, denying life saving treatments, and condemning untold thousands to needless suffering and death. Gut-wrenching stories of loved ones lost to insurance denials flooded social media. Doctors confirmed the company’s cruelty. A condolence post for Thompson received more than 70,000 laughing reactions. As one worker wrote: “Sorry, my sympathy is out of network.”

The capitalist media outrage at posts “devaluing” Thompson’s life rings hollow. It’s capitalism—and its accomplices in the healthcare industry—that have cheapened life. In 2023, UnitedHealth Group raked in $22 billion in profits (Forbes.com, 1/12/24). Thompson was richly rewarded for playing his part to ration healthcare, with an annual compensation package of more than $10 million. Under his leadership, his company denied as much as 49 percent of medically necessary care (Forbes.com, 12/6/24). The bosses call this good business; we call it mass murder.  

The overwhelming support for Thompson’s apparent shooter, Luigi Mangione, reflects the raw rage of millions of workers who navigate a healthcare system designed not to heal, but to profit. Globally, capitalism condemns countless people to early graves through racist and sexist inequality, hunger and poor nutrition, environmental poisons, and preventable disease. It kills countless more through healthcare systems that put the profits of hospital, pharmaceutical, and insurance capitalists over human lives. Workers’ fury at Thompson and his ilk is righteous anger.

But vigilante violence and assassinations are not solutions; the bosses can always find another ruthless executive to fill an open slot. What’s needed is organized revolutionary violence, rooted in communist politics. What the ruling class fears most is an international, multiracial, class-conscious working class led into battle by a revolutionary communist party. We need a mass communist movement that will smash all of the bloodsucking bosses and replace the nightmare profit system with a communist world that abolishes money and private property. Only then can our class build a society where good healthcare is a basic human right, not a product to be sold to those who can afford it. Join Progressive Labor Party, and fight for a world where our lives can be lived to their healthiest and fullest!

Capitalist healthcare: a racist, sexist, imperialist horror

The capitalist healthcare system is a death machine. It thrives on neglect, lack of access, and routinely terrible care to profit from workers’ suffering. Healthcare is a commodity, designed to keep workers alive just long enough for the bosses to extract their labor before discarding them. Despite being the richest imperialist nation, the U.S. has one of the lowest life expectancy rates among industrialized countries. Current life expectancy is estimated at barely 79 years—six years less than in Japan, five years less than in Italy and Spain, even less than in relatively poor countries like Barbados, Poland, or Estonia (macrotrends.net). 

Each year, more than 40,000 working-age people in the U.S. die from a lack of coverage, more than those who die from kidney disease (Physicians for a National Program, 9/17/2024). Racism and sexism fuel this death machine. Black workers have the highest rates of premature deaths from heart disease, cancer, Covid-19, and infant mortality (Peterson-KFF, 04/24/23). Black women are three to four times more likely to die during childbirth than white women (Centers for Disease Control, 4/8/2023). In predominantly Black Cleveland zip codes, life expectancy is up to 20 years shorter than for nearby white neighborhoods (Cleveland News, 12/19/2024). But while Black workers suffer most, the profit system is deadly for all workers. Life expectancy among non-college educated white men in the U.S., especially in rural poor areas, is declining due to “deaths of despair”: suicide, alcoholism, and opioid overdoses (Vox, 10/4/2023).

Capitalist healthcare is even deadlier in most places outside the U.S. The World Health Organization reports an 18-year life expectancy gap between the wealthiest and poorest countries (WHO, 04/04/2019). Infectious diseases like Mpox and Ebola are devastating the global working class from Africa and Asia to Latin America. Over 40 percent of child deaths under 5 are linked to preventable diseases (WHO, 06/29/2024).

Twenty-nine countries are reporting cholera outbreaks, with one billion workers and children at risk (UNOCHA, 1/15/24).  More than 1.2 million workers in the U.S., and nearly 15 million globally, have been needlessly killed by Covid-19 (Newsweek, 12/19/24).

Even in model countries with so-called “universal” healthcare, capitalist exploitation and inequality remains. In Denmark, patients must pay additional fees for mental health care and other services, the equivalent of three hours of labor for someone earning the minimum wage (DW, 03/10/21). While Europe provides broader access to healthcare than the U.S., it still puts profit over people.

Communism—the only solution!

Under capitalism, the bosses hold individuals responsible to change their lifestyles, prevent disease, and bear the burden of the cost of treatment and medicines. This ensures that healthcare remains a commodity and never a public good, while the working class shoulders the cost.

Communism, by contrast, is built on collective responsibility and makes the health of all a priority. After the great communist revolutions in the Soviet Union and China, when the working class briefly held state power, we saw what healthcare for people—instead of profit—can achieve. In the 1960s, the Communist Party of China launched campaigns to educate the masses and improve their health. It mobilized millions to improve public hygiene and eradicate diseases like schistosomiasis, which led to liver damage, kidney failure, bladder cancer, and infertility. Life expectancy soared, infectious diseases were eliminated, and safe abortions were made accessible. 

The return of capitalist rule in the Soviet Union and China has devastated the lives and health of the working class worldwide. Workers are now stuck in an era of rising fascism, racism, sexism, and weak class-consciousness. Disillusionment with failed reforms and dead-end electoral politics has left many more cynical about our collective power and vulnerable to the appeal of lone-wolf vigilante types.

But adventurist violence is far from revolutionary. In fact, it emboldens rulers to repress us even more. Vigilantism shows a lack of confidence in the working class as the essential gravediggers of capitalism. As Lenin wrote in Iskra: “Shots fired by the ‘elusive individuals’ who are losing faith in the possibility of marching in formation, working hand in hand with the masses, always end in smoke.” History proves that only the collective force of millions, led by a disciplined communist party, can crush the capitalist rulers and build a society that puts people first.

Communism—a society without money, exploitation, racism, or sexism—will be run by workers to meet the needs of the entire working class. We’ll need both revolutionary urgency and revolutionary patience to achieve this vision.

The killing of Brian Thompson exposes the brutality of the system he served. While we don’t condone such isolated acts, they point to the seething anger of our class—and to the opportunity before us. The Progressive Labor Party calls on workers to channel their rage into building a mass movement for communist revolution. Every picket line, protest, and direct action will help prepare us for the inevitable destruction of capitalism. Every worker that joins our Party is another nail in the bosses’ coffin. Together, we can build the world we deserve. Join us!