The pandemic is not over. It’s much worse than you’ve been led to believe. And unless you’ve spent the past several years reading scientific studies on the subject, it can be hard to convey just how wrong the public perception of COVID really is. Everything from how it’s spread, to how it’s prevented, to what it does once it’s in your body, is being tragically misunderstood.
Over the 2022 holiday weekend in December, a killing winter storm swept across North America. The death toll currently stands at or above 60 individuals, more than half of them in upstate New York. Power across the worst-affected regions exacerbated the effects of the storm. At its height, the storm left 1.2 million homes and businesses without power. Two-thirds of the U.S. population were under winter warnings or advisories. Overnight temperatures were as low as 9 degrees below zero, and that’s before accounting for wind chill. As always, it is those with the fewest resources and least able to deal with a dire event like this that were most affected.
On 21 December 2022 Volodymyr Zelenskyy, the comedian-president of Ukraine, was flown on a U.S. Air Force jet out of his war-devastated country to beg for alms from his American masters in front of the U.S. Congress. Zelenskyy is the representative of the fascist-infiltrated government in Kiev and serves at the pleasure of a loose coalition of Banderite leaders — men who profess loyalty to the vision of the ultranationalist, antisemite, and murderer Stepan Bandera who organized mass executions during World War II.
José Pedro Castillo Terrones, the democratically elected, legitimate president of Peru, has been ousted by the right-reactionary wing of Peru’s ruling class. President Castillo, a former union leader and school teacher who stood as the candidate of Free Peru, a Marxist party, ran on the most progressive platform in the country’s history, and beat Keiko Fujimori, leader of the right-fascist and neoliberal Popular Force party, in the 2021 elections. Since those elections, every reform put forward by President Castillo’s progressive government has been obstructed by a reactionary-right opposition bloc in the country’s Congress. This obstructionism has earned the opposition-dominated Congress a staggering 10% approval rating from an increasingly disgusted public. Initially, Castillo attempted to reach conciliation with the moderate wing of the opposition; he governed as a moderate left-wing social democrat for 18 months, despite his radically progressive election platform and the clear mandate he received from his political base in Peru’s working classes and peasantry. From the start of his presidency, Castillo lacked the necessary revolutionary infrastructure to see through his ambitious plan. The Castillo government was unable to dislodge Peru’s entrenched political establishment, characterized by right-wing neoliberalism and anti-Indigenismo racism.
Several days ago, Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department illegally arrested abolitionist leader Annie Jump Vicente. Read about the growing people’s movement in LA.
When relatively privileged workers organize and struggle against their bosses to improve their conditions, they must simultaneously extend active solidarity to all oppressed workers of the world.