#Worldwide #Information #Blogger #LucSchrijvers: #Update: #anarchist #information from all over the world - 1.04.2020

Today's Topics:

   
1.  Britain, London Anarchist Communist Group:The current
      situation... support all that those in the NHS... no smoke screen
      for the government's handling of it (a-infos-en@ainfos.ca)
   
2.  Britain, anarchist communist group ACG: No going back!
      (a-infos-en@ainfos.ca)
   
3.  Federazione Anarchica Italiana - FAI: Coronavirus and
      emergency - we don't forget which side of the barricade we are on
      (a-infos-en@ainfos.ca)
   
4.  France, Union Communiste Libertaire AL #303 - Digital,
      Revenge porn: class indignation (fr, it, pt)[machine translation]
      (a-infos-en@ainfos.ca)
   
5.  anarchist communist group ACG - Coronavirus Strikes: Latest
      (a-infos-en@ainfos.ca)
   
6.  [GL Sendero Negredo] Patience, Love and Resistance --
      Traspinedo March 2020 by CNT of Valladolid (ca) 
      (a-infos-en@ainfos.ca)
  
 7.  federacion libertari amadrid Call for Rent Strike - April 1
      (ca) (a-infos-en@ainfos.ca)
   
8.  US, black rose fed - Coronavirus Stories: Crisis, Response,
      Resistance (a-infos-en@ainfos.ca)
   
9.  ait russia: Demands of anarcho-syndicalists of India in
      connection with the epidemic [machine translation]
      (a-infos-en@ainfos.ca)


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Message: 1



We TOTALLY respect, appreciate and support all that those in the NHS are doing and putting themselves through, along with millions of other
essential workers. But, we have concerns that the Clap For Carers gesture will be seen as a smoke screen for the government's handling of
the current situation. ---- Whilst it was a way for ordinary people to show their genuine support for care workers, it also takes the
spotlight off the state for their pathetic attempts at protecting and supporting essential workers, whilst at the same time shoring up the
business sector and donors to their parties. The governments lack of foresight and mismanagement is nothing short of astounding. ---- Our
care workers need more than a two-minute round of applause - as heart felt as it was from all of us. They need us to support their demands
for the tools they need to do the job effectively. They don't have enough personal protective equipment, resulting in staff are being asked
to work in dangerous environments. They don't have enough staff and its bloody criminal that we ask retired NHS staff to cover when we have
known for years we have between 30,000 and 100,000 vacancies in the NHS. NHS staff have been undervalued and under paid for years by
successive governments of all colours. The financial crisis was brought about by the financial sector yet public sector workers and the
poorest in society were made to pay for it.

NHS staff are crying out for support from the state - support that isn't coming. We are told more Intensive Care beds are needed; more
ventilators; more Personal Protective Equipment; and more testing. Yet staff are still waiting for much of this to be delivered, a lot of
which should have been in place already. The private sector is apparently helping but at what cost? Why can't we commandeer all private
hospitals, and NOW? Why does Prince Charles get tested when frontline NHS staff do not? It begs the question, who else is being tested
before the NHS staff? Who should be tested first? So much for "we're all in it together", we've heard this lie before.

Staff are scared that they are returning home to their families and spreading Corona Virus. They need to be protected. We have 1,000's of
empty student accommodation rooms and hotels. Why can't they use these?

NHS staff are telling us on all social and main stream media that they don't have the resources. Politicians say they do. Who do you
believe. Parasites lie in bad times as well as good.

The crisis is bad at the moment. But when we come through this we need to build on the support the general public have for public sector
workers. Don't retire to your normal life when the crisis is over. The NHS (and millions of others) need active support. The odd
demonstration just isn't good enough when we can suddenly find billions now to rescue the economy. After this crisis we need to mobilise and
force any government to adequately staff the NHS; to have huge resources in place (as people die all the time and can be saved if we put
money in the right place); and to pay working class people like health care workers a proper bloody salary.

If we don't mobilise now, it will be business as usual after this crisis. And that means sod all benefits for all those people we/you
clapped for a minute on Thursday and huge sodding profits for the rich, like Virgin boss Branson and Dysons boss James Dyson who will make a
small fortune "helping" produce ventilators.

Some members of Haringey Solidarity Group
London Anarchist Communist Group

please feel free to add your group/organisation endorsement of this statement

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Message: 2




The Excel Centre in East London has been converted into a hospital with a 4,000 capacity for those suffering from Covid19. Some people will
recall that the Excel Centre has been the annual venue for Arms Fairs, where weapons, torture implements and devices and implements to quell
civil disorder are put on sale every year and where some of the world's most repressive regimes come to buy. ---- Health Secretary Matt
Hancock recently called for firms to change at least part of their production to manufacture ventilators, and that especially arms companies
should turn to making ventilators and other vital medical equipment. ---- But why shouldn't the Excel Centre remain a hospital with the end
of the coronavirus crisis and not return to being a market for weapons designed to kill civilians and shut down protest?

Why shouldn't arms firms be completely converted to producing medical equipment after the crisis? Production of goods and services should be
only for useful purposes, to benefit society and weapons production should be stopped.

Why shouldn't the private health sector be requisitioned and merged with the NHS, and the NHS be placed under control of its workers?

In fact, why shouldn't we boot out all of the parasitic ruling class and create a society based on need and not profit?

We repeat, when the coronavirus crisis is over, there should be no going back to the way things were. The boss class will attempt to claw
back the profits they have lost during this crisis and will attack wages and conditions of workers. We, on the other hand, should be calling
for radical changes. Capitalism cannot handle the coronavirus crisis, it created it, it cannot handle climate change, it created it.

Time for change! No going back!

anarchistcommunism.org/2020/03/28/no-going-back/

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Message: 3




Source: Original text in Italian (20/03/2020) https://www.umanitanova.org/?p=11756 English translation
http://afed.org.uk/coronavirus-and-emergency-we-dont-forget-which-side-of-the-barricade-we-are-on-statement-by-fai-italy/ ---- Coronavirus
and emergency: we don't forget which side of the barricade we are on ---- In the face of this crisis, state and capital are showing, with
unprecedented evidence, all their enormous limitations and their structural inability to take into account people's needs and health. ----
In Italy, the political choices of governments have constantly cut public health (more than public, state). Part of the few resources have
been diverted to private healthcare, even during the current emergency. The contemporary "regionalization", according to a
corporate-capitalist model, has then made this service (which in theory should be universal) strongly differentiated between regions and
regions, between rich and poor regions.

Patients have become clients and care services monetized within a general framework of competition and profit.

This approach to the health service reveals its true face at this dramatic moment, leaving us all at the mercy of its philosophy, which is
certainly not that of human piety and the recognition of the other as our fellow human beings, but that of calculating the minimum material
requirements for maximum profit, which now translates into the lack of equipped facilities, the lack of hired staff, the lack of consumables
goods in warehouses.

The result is that the increasingly limited funds and increasingly reduced staff, already exploited to the limit in the ordinary, leave no
margin for emergency situations. Except then to admit that the places in intensive care are running out, the staff is scarce, the
respirators are not there and it will be necessary to make choices on who to treat, because is not possible to treat everyone. And all this
when the State pays 70 million euros a day for military expenses. With the 70 million spent in just one of the 366 days of this leap year,
six new hospitals could be built and equipped and there would be some money left over for masks, analysis laboratories and swabs for real
screening. A respirator costs 4,000 thousand euros, so you could buy 17,500 respirators a day, many more than you need now.

In recent weeks we have witnessed a total quackery of the political class in dealing with the emergency, with exponents from all political
parties who have said everything and the opposite of everything, calling for closure and opening depending on what the opponent was calling
for. We have seen the government appeal against the closure of schools by the Marche regional administration and then close the whole
country a few days later, we have seen repugnant opportunisms and now we are witnessing the rhetoric of "we will make it".

If we do it, it will certainly not be thanks to national and regional governments. It will certainly not be thanks to the massive
militarization of cities and borders. It will certainly not be thanks to the companies that, through Confindustria (association of
industrial employers), have thrown down the mask by explicitly choosing profit. They have stated it clearly and distinctly, without lapses
of words, without shame: let us not close down, production must go ahead. This has led to spontaneous strikes in many companies, with the
big union centers chasing the struggles of workers who did not want to succumb to employers' claims. The pursuit of the regime unions has
reached the goal of the ridiculous protocol signed on March 14, containing only obligations for workers and only recommendations for companies.

This disgusting cynicism, this hunger for profit combined with contempt for the health of those who work, precisely because expressed at
such an exceptional time, must not pass, and they must be held accountable.

This crisis is being paid for, above all, by those who work in health care and are under constant pressure from gruelling shifts and
increasing cases of contagion and deaths among the staff themselves.

No mainstream media has taken up the complaint of the lawyers of the nurses' association, an institution that has nothing subversive about
it. In the dominant narrative nurses and nurses are described as heroes, as long as they get sick and die in silence, without telling what
happens in hospitals. Nurses who tell the truth are threatened with dismissal. Those who are infected are not recognised as having a
workplace accident, so that the hospital company is not obliged to pay compensation to those who find themselves working every day without
protection or with totally inadequate protection.

This crisis is being paid for by those who have an occasional or precarious job, currently without income and without any certainty of
getting their jobs back after the epidemic has ended.

It is being paid for by those who find themselves at home in telework having to reconcile an often very complex home presence with children
or people to look after and contemporary productive obligations.

It is being paid for by those who are forced to go to their workplace without any guarantee of health.

Those who are poor, homeless, those who survive on the street or in a nomad camp are paying for it.

Workers are paying for it. Workers went on spontaneous strikes against the risk of contagion and were reported by the police for violating
government edicts because they were demonstrating on the streets for their health.

The prisoners of the democratic state are paying for it. Prisoners have given rise to riots in 30 prisons in defense of their own health.
During the riots there were fourteen dead. Fourteen people who - they tell us - would all have died from an overdose from self-induced
drugs. Fourteen people subjected to the responsibility of a system to which perhaps it did not seem true to be able to apply other
containment measures with an iron fist, not so much of the infection but of the prisoners themselves.

In an explosive situation due to the already unworthy conditions that have been living inside prisons for years - in a structural and not
exceptional way - the government has thought well to stop all visits without taking effective measures to protect the health of the prisoners.

Unfortunately, we are well aware that once this emergency phase is over, it will always be the same people who will lose out in terms of
impoverishment and further exploitation. Because even if none of us have the crystal ball, it can already be predicted that they will use
the excuse of "recovery", "economic recovery", "overcoming the crisis", to increasingly compress the spaces for struggle in the workplace
and civil and political freedoms. It will not be a surprise if the rhetoric of "responsibility" will be used to further refine the
disciplinary and social control mechanisms, to further restrict freedom of movement, to further restrict the freedom to strike and
demonstrate, which is now in fact suspended. Already now the number of those reported for violation of the decrees exceeds that of those
infected. On this we will be called upon to proactively monitor and act without hesitation.

We are in solidarity with all those who at this moment are risking their lives to save others, with all the personnel working in hospitals,
with those who work and strike to guarantee safety conditions for themselves for others, with all those who cannot afford to #restareacasa
(stay at home) because they don't have a home. We are in solidarity with those who are afraid because they fear for themselves and their
loved ones. We sympathize with all those who have fallen ill and have been torn away from home without being able to have contact with their
loved ones because of the absence of protective equipment, we sympathize with all those who are dying with palliative care because of the
absence of adequate emergency facilities and we sympathize with those who have had to make decisions about the lives of others on who to
intubate and who not in a desperate attempt to reduce the damage to a minimum when the damage is certain.

We will not forget who is responsible for what happens today: governments and states have sacrificed the health of us all by choosing
profit, war and strengthening their power.

Governments and states must not delude themselves: the struggles will not go into quarantine.

Correspondence Commission of the Italian Anarchist Federation - FAI

http://www.i-f-a.org.gridhosted.co.uk/2020/03/27/coronavirus-and-emergency-we-dont-forget-which-side-of-the-barricade-we-are-on-coronavirus-ed-emergenza-non-ci-dimentichiamo-da-quale-parte-della-barricata-siamo/

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Message: 4



The withdrawal of Benjamin Griveaux's candidacy conceals the real issues concerning the over-regulation of the Internet, among other things
the coping of data and the stacking of liberticide laws. ---- Last episode in date in the race for mayor of Paris: the withdrawal of the
candidacy of Benjamin Griveaux, following the broadcast of a video where he shows his genitals. This pathetic sequence, which is nothing
extraordinary in the liberal variant of the electoral system, is an opportunity to recall hypocrisy and front politics on digital issues.
Men, especially if they are heterosexual, are obviously not the main victims of "revenge porn", Defined by the penal code (article 226-2-1)
like the diffusion of images presenting a sexual character, without the agreement of the people concerned. This practice primarily targets
women, often young and even adolescent girls. And the consequences are obviously not the same. Here it disrupts the quest for power of a
macronie kingpin, which enjoys indignant and unanimous support from the political class. For women, a video that circulates - especially if
they express their sexual freedom there - will generally be worth insults and threats that will not necessarily be limited to the digital
sphere. The resilience of this kind of data, copied over and over again, from site to site, making these situations particularly complex.

If we are to believe the classic refrain of dominant discourses, the internet, and especially social networks, would thus be "areas of
lawlessness". This catchphrase, invalidated by the facts, produces two self-nourishing effects. On the one hand, it avoids identifying the
real systemic challenges: centralization of networks around a handful of platforms, culture of rape, derisory means of justice, etc. And on
the other hand it justifies a stack of liberticidal laws which continue to restrict the areas of freedom online.

Internet, over-legislated area
Since 2013, there have thus been more than a dozen laws, often under the pretext of anti-terrorism, ranging from the administrative blocking
of websites[1]to an ever closer control of what is expressed online, like the catastrophic "hate online" bill . It also happens that the
fact of using the Internet is considered as an aggravating circumstance, or is in itself qualifiable criminally. This is particularly the
case of "revenge pornWhere dissemination, ie sharing a link, is specifically sanctioned. Superfluous precision, this already fell within the
general framework of the law, which is part of this pernicious dynamic. Finally, it is caricatured to hear the incantations to respect for
private life even as the government is experimenting with the coping of personal data to control fiscal behavior[2], that facial recognition
continues to be sold as a security panacea, or that anonymity online, and this is still the case here, is constantly being questioned.

Etienne (UCL Saint-Denis)

Validate
[1] Law of 13 November 2014 strengthening the provisions relating to the fight against terrorism.

[2] "Big Brother Bercy", Alternative Libertaire , February 2020.

https://www.unioncommunistelibertaire.org/?Revenge-porn-indignation-de-classe

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Message: 5



France ---- French workers are increasingly angry about the way they are being treated with the coronavirus crisis. They are appalled about
the way they are forced to work in non-essential production in close proximity to each other whilst bosses are able to get away with
teleworking. This has set off a number of strikes including at the Dassault aviation factory at Argenteuil, which makes fighter planes. 300
workers went out on strike there, and the employers were forced to close the factory.---- Several hundred Amazon warehouse workers walked
out over concerns about their health and safety over coronavirus. At the warehouse at Saran, near Orleans, 250-300 workers went out on
strike and called for the closure of the warehouse on March 18th.
Patrick Martin, the head of Medef, the French bosses' organisation, commented that "There has been an extremely brutal change in the
attitude of employees in all sectors of activity".

Britain

Workers at ten public libraries in Lambeth, South London walked out on Friday March 21st after they were told to keep working whilst other
boroughs had closed their libraries. Now all public libraries have been closed by the Johnson regime.

USA

Forty workers at a plant processing chicken and pork in Georgia went on strike over sanitary conditions and sick pay after several workers
were exposed to the virus. As we have already reported, thousands of car workers went out on wildcat strikes in Michigan and Ohio.

Italy

Metalworkers in Lombardy in northern Italy promised on Monday March 23rd that they would go out on strike unless more plants were closed
down because of the coronavirus.

Zimbabwe

Hospital doctors in Zimbabwe went out on strike on Wednesday March 25th because of a lack of protective gear.

New Zealand

Workers at the Sistema plastics company plant in Auckland walked out because of a lack of protective gear and lack of social distancing on
25th March.
https://www.anarchistcommunism.org/2020/03/27/coronavirus-strikes-latest/

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Message: 6



 From the land of Pinares, the Sendero Negredo libertarian group wants to send a word of encouragement to all the working people who are
proving once again (with generosity and dedication beyond any doubt) to be the heart of this world . ---- As in other times, it was the
workers from other productive sectors, at the moment it is the male and female health partners (among others) who with their professionalism
are the shield and the guarantee that this pandemic has no consequences. more terrible than it already has today. A virus that does not
understand borders, flags or ideologies, but feeds on human weakness, which amplifies good works and also the selfish mud that has been
running through our towns and cities for months protected under a false patriotism of fascist roots. We want to send all our encouragement
to those who go through the difficult trance of the disease in a collapsed healthcare, to those who have suffered the loss of a loved one,
to people who live alone, to those who live with mental illnesses (who in this type of situations worsen), women who suffer any type of
abuse (who have to be sharing space with their abuser), also all our elders (who after a hard existence of work have to face a threat that
puts the last stage of his life is in danger).

Nor can we be left out of the tremendous drama that involves the loss of thousands and thousands of jobs, either temporarily or indefinitely
. We cannot be left out of the fact that again the benefits of large companies and multinationals are rescued with public money to the
detriment of the rights of the working class and seeing how we see, that the people who live from their small business and who support
services (especially at rural level and in the neighborhoods of our cities), are affected in such a way that they have to dismantle their
source of income.

We understand that this situation, are the big commercial surfaces (that apart from basic necessities they sell everything) and the abrupt
speculation , the beneficiaries of the state of alarm . The first ones until today, they have not taken any measures so that these benefits
have an impact on customers and especially on the workload of their staff. We already know how it is spent by commerce and the
precariousness of the sector, which in many cases are the lowest-paid workers. Investment funds and banks qualify this moment as opportune
to get their liquidity (their greed) to work.

Nor do we share (in accordance with related groups and unions) that the streets or our houses become a prison (guarded by the various
branches of the state security forces), under the prohibition of sanction or detention at the discretion of law enforcement officers that
without any hindrance they abuse their authority with total impunity (leaving us completely Dantesque images). We could understand that
certain uncivil behaviors were pursued when the state machinery prohibits these same agglomerations and socialize at the time of consumption
and especially in the labor world , where thousands of workers crowd in small spaces (in transport or where they carry out their activity
professional) andwhere all the risk prevention protocols in situations of exceptionality such as the one in question are bleedingly violated .

 From this libertarian collective, we therefore call for the same people to protect themselves, for the same people to demand more measures
at the social level of containment and to block production where their right to health is being trampled. Anarchist morality requires us to
be fully responsible for the common good , we have defended it in times of social or labor cuts, in times of repression, and this is what we
do when it comes to staying at home. We do not need the guardianship of any authority for itWe know that they use these tragedies to justify
and paint their entire repressive apparatus as a social good. Take good care of all of you, we will already settle accounts with Real
corruption and the treason of the parties when this is over. Health and freedom are the most precious assets.

Only the people save the people

Libertarian Group Sendero Negredo

https://www.cntvalladolid.es/g-l-sendero-negredo-paciencia-amor-y-resistencia/

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Message: 7



The Union of Tenants of Gran Canariawe call on the entire working class and tenant to support theGeneral and Indefinite Rentals Strikethat
we declare from this April 1, 2020 . ---- The current situation could not be more alarming, and not only at health but also economic and
social levels. The measures adopted by the executive in relation to the "State of Alama" decreed by Covid-19, are markedly anti-worker
measures (easing of the ERTE) and that touch the surface (limited moratorium on mortgages) ignoring the basics: thousands families living
daily, surviving on payroll jobs, who have been fraudulently fired and whose houses do not receive any income due to confinement, are
exposed to the inability to meet the rent.
The most impoverished sectors of the population, such as tenants, migrants, homeless people, domestic workers, and precarious workers, have
been completely relegated and ignored, as always.

For all this, we invite all collectives, platforms and unions to support this Strike of Rentals, also called internationally (from the
United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Sweden, Chile and those who will be joining).

Our basic requirements are clear:

1ºImmediate suspension of rent payment, especially for vulnerable tenants and for landlords who are multi-tenant or legal persons (the
minority that does not meet these requirements claiming a Universal Basic Income). Until this measure is adopted, without sufficient and
regular income, we will not pay.

2ºThat the houses abandoned in the hands of funds, financial and banking entities (especially those that have been rescued with public
money) be socialized and made available to the thousands of people and families who today are homeless.

We have plenty of reasons to proclaim as of this 1-A: General and Indefinite Rentals Strike!

WE DON'T CHARGE, WE DON'T PAY.

Union of Tenants of Gran Canaria

Source: https://www.lahaine.org/mm_ss_est_esp.php/convocatoria-de-huelga-de-alquiler

https://federacionlibertariamadrid.home.blog/2020/03/27/convocatoria-de-huelga-de-alquileres-1-de-abril/

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Message: 8



We include here personal accounts from members and allies of Black Rose/Rosa Negra across the U.S. speaking on the direct impacts and
responses to the coronavirus crisis underway. Some have been directly affected as healthcare workers, laid off service workers, or having to
undergo self-quarantine. Others are on front the lines of the responses through organizing tenants or mutual-aid efforts. ---- Stay Tuned:
We will soon be posting a page of recommended organizing resources. ---- Compiled by Adam Weaver ---- Chrysanthe, Los Angeles ---- So far
five of the dozen neighborhood based chapters of the Los Angeles Tenants Union (LATU), including the Vermont Beverly chapter that I organize
with, have endorsed a list of demands which includes an immediate moratorium on evictions, an immediate suspension of rent collection,
demand for housing to the unhoused, and suspension of ICE enforcement. The demands originated last week when the Hollywood chapter drafting
a statement responding to the situation with other chapters signing on and suggesting amendments.

Local chapters are assessing the current and projected impact on members and community, such employment, evictions, food, medical care
access, isolations, and general well being. In my chapter each organizer is following up with the tenant associations and members that
they've worked with.

Lynn, Rochester, NY

I work in an auto parts plant that's organized with the UAW or United Auto Workers union and I'm a former steward and last year was active
with the strike auto worker at my plant. Last week the governor ordered that 50-75% of the workforce needed to stay home and the day the
plant manager sent out a letter saying our plant would stay open until the 27th[of March]. I was at home self-quarantining because I had
recently travelled abroad so I started posting in our plant's Facebook group about taking action and I posted articles about wildcat walks
out that were happening in other UAW plants. On other union Facebook pages I saw that whole departments were announcing they were walking out.

People were of course pissed and started commenting in the Facebook group while on shift. We also started calling local media and
politicians to see if that might add the pressure. Management rolled over and announced the plant closure within three hours!

Greg, Detroit, MI
I work in a restaurant at one of the local hotels. Before each shift, the managers hold a meeting with staff to give us information about
the night's food and drink specials and reservations. When panic around the coronavirus started escalating, upper management attended one of
these meetings and let us know that at the end of the week, the hotel was going to be closing until early April. They were having meetings
with our union reps (HERE) and had come to an agreement that we would get paid for the first week off, since the schedule was already posted
but everything else was up in the air.

The next day, my wife was discussing with other tenants in the laundry room all of our losses of income and how that would affect our
ability to pay rent and other bills. She had looked up our house on Zillow and found that the rent our landlord collects in one year is more
than the total cost of what he paid for the house in 2013. So in the seven years he's owned this property, he has collected 9 times what he
paid for it through our rent and the value of the home has increased by more than $150,000. He definitely hasn't put that much money into
repairs and we are responsible for raking the leaves, cutting the grass and shoveling the snow. We are working on a plan to petition him
with the other folks who live in our house, and possibly working out a strategy to speak with other people who rent from this same landlord
to see if they'd be interested in joining us.

A few days later, we got word that the union had negotiated with hotel management that we would be continuing to get paid based on the hours
we normally worked, pre-shut down. This is an amazing victory for the union! There's still a lot of work to be done though, so I'm going to
continue to keep in touch with our reps and to build relationships with my coworkers. There's always work to be done to build stronger and
more militant unions.

Eli M, Durham, NC
So far, I've been organizing locally for mutual aid with my neighbors on my block and in my wider neighborhood. We're taking a "neighborhood
pods" approach. We've shared a document with info and a flier template.

We also started a Durham citywide public Facebook group for mutual aid organizing here. Within less than a day, we already had over 300
members and active discussions going. Since then we've formed a dozen neighborhood committees, or pods, that are surveying residents using
google forms and organizing responses.

Local news coverage of a Miami nurse hospitalized with COVID-19 after exposure from treating infected patients.
Luz Sierra, Miami, FL
It's been crazy in our hospital since everything happened with the coronavirus. Our hospital removed all surgical and N-95 masks[a higher
level mask used in healthcare]from the floor. We used to easily have access near "contact rooms"[rooms where infected patients are
isolated]and a supply room. But now they are all gone and we can only request them when we have what's called a "droplet" or "airborne"
patient - meaning they are actively infected and have respiratory issues. Because of shortages they are making us enter contact rooms
without any masks which is part of the protective equipment we typically use.

But yesterday at work we have a possibly COVID-19 infected patient in isolation but he was sent home before getting his full lab results
from the CDC test kit. And then they were sending in another patient showing symptoms into the same room with them. Several nurses
confronted the infection control doctors about this.

Many of the workers are pressuring management to give them masks but only a few have been successful.

John Slavin, Richmond, VA
I help run a non-profit community science lab called Indie Lab which is being used for sterilization of materials before they go out to
people. We're working on getting things like mass produced face masks, ventilators, oxygen concentrator etc. We printed our first prototype
3D printed masks and got resources centralized to get them to medical personal in different parts of the state. We are also doing support
work to help with the development of a COVID19 rapid test through performing testing validations.

I'm also part of an international collaborative research team of scientists and coders which includes high level scientists, including from
MIT. There are hundreds in different working groups creating open source technology around designing face masks, creating test kits and
following all the data and information on the outbreak. One thing is clear is that Trump has been intentionally holding back on the supply
of testing as a way to suppress the numbers of confirmed cases.Disaster recovery team enter the Life Care Center near Seattle, WA to begin
disinfecting the facility.
Kara, Seattle, WA
I started coming down with a cough and shortness of breath two weeks ago. I still don't know if I was actually exposed to COVID-19 but my
symptoms aligned. I do have insurance through the Affordable Care Act but since testing isn't available I decided to stay at home and self
quarantine. I mostly relied on friends dropping off groceries because my quarantine started ahead of the forming mutual aid networks but now
I'm getting plugged in and hoping to help from home and then eventually do more direct service delivery.

It's been over 15 days and I've recovered, but all the uncertainty around information and how slow the state responded was hard. The most
difficult part though was feeling useless while being quarantined but also knowing the ethics of potentially exposing someone. I had the
ability to to stay home to protect others, so I did.

Antonio, Boston, MA
Working in the building trades I have a lot of experience filing for unemployment when jobs come to an end as it did for me right before the
outbreak of Coronavirus. So I made my focus on helping neighbors file for unemployment via the newly formed mutual aid network. What's been
interesting with this work is I'm connecting with tenants of large landlords who can't and won't pay rent on April 1st. I really think
mutual aid work that reaches outside left activists and non-profit staff could help build resistance and organization if we go into it with
that mindset and intent.

The network seems to have been set up largely by local Non-Profit Industrial Complex staff. There will be lots to challenge within the
network but I think it makes sense. Already I've seen the non-profit staff folks in the network kind of "blank stare" me when I asked who is
taking on housing issues. The local movement just went through about 5 years of pushing for municipal and state policy to slow down
displacement of tenants. They focused lots of energy on this, and from what I could tell, also largely stepped back from building tenant
organizing in favor of recruiting "ally" volunteers to help them lobby. But guess what? They lost. Only in the last year or so have there
been some more grassroots attempts to build tenant power. We could have been doing that all along but now we can do it in the middle of a
pandemic

Adam Weaver is member of Black Rose/Rosa Negra in Miami, FL.

https://blackrosefed.org/coronavirus-stories-crisis-response-resistance/

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Message: 9





STATEMENT BY THE LIBERTARY FRONT OF SOLIDARITY (MEM), a friendly organization of the International Workers Association in India ---- The
spread of coronavirus and the consequences of quarantine without proper adequate planning are detrimental to the working class. In Delhi
alone, one hundred thousand workers have to stay home because of quarantine without getting paid. Moreover, due to the shutdown of public
transport (railways and intercity buses), many workers have to return to their villages on foot for hundreds of kilometers. The state of
Madhya Pradesh is also in crisis. ---- Health workers are at the forefront of this crisis. Due to the inattention of the government machine,
they do not even have adequate means of protection against infection. In addition, constant danger threatens workers involved in the
delivery and provision of all vital services to people.

"Muktivadi ekta morcha", together with other workers, demands from the central government and the government of Madhya Pradesh special
protection and care for these brave and unprotected workers.

Our requirements:

1. Firms and the government must ensure that informal sector workers are paid (regardless of whether their firm granted them "worker" status
or not) monthly compensation of 7,000 rupees.

2. Delivery workers, cleaners and workers in all vital services should be provided with high-quality protective equipment (masks, gloves, etc.)

3. For the duration of the epidemic and after it, such workers as those involved in cleaning and delivery should be given the official
status of "employee", their wages should be increased, and standards for delivery and collection of garbage should be set so that people I
didn't have to work 12 hours to feed myself.

4. Irregularly employed and unemployed should be paid a minimum guaranteed monthly allowance.

5. All working families and their dependents should be provided with free food, fuel, medicine and care.

Muktivadi ecta morcha (Libertarian Front of Solidarity)

https://iwa-ait.org/es/node/819https://iwa-ait.org/es/node/819

https://aitrus.info/node/5423

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