Resolution of the Political Bureau of ΕΕΚ
STRUGGLE FOR LIFE!
The struggle for Life, against the corona virus pandemic, in the hands of the workers and people and not in those of the destroyers of Health and their police state!
The Workers Revolutionary Party in these times of crisis and threatening spread of the corona virus pandemic calls the working class and the people, against any complacency, to active mobilization:
1. Take collectively in your own hands the defense of your life and health, the health of your beloved ones, relatives, friends, neighbors, every helpless and oppressed, of the suffering society.
Follow thoroughly the precautionary measures recommended by medical experts. Don’t give in neither to the spirit of panic spread by the systemic media and cannibalistic press, nor to the obscurantist irrational rhetoric of the church, the reactionary and fascists who are speculating shamelessly on ignorance and confusion.
We don’t give up, we don’t kneel. We are not closing into ourselves, we don’t accept to be confined in our safe corners, even though we are temporarily obliged to stay home.
We are staying at home, we are not staying alone. We are not alone. We are part of the wider social group of the oppressed, our class, the working class and the working people.
We are in solidarity with those who suffer, the uprooted, the oppressed.
We don’t lock ourselves up, we don’t self-isolate, we don’t lose our humanity; we keep thinking, critical to the decisions of authority, fighting for health, for life against death, for a life of dignity and social solidarity.
2. The spread of the virus makes it clear that in a large epidemic, social or natural phenomena there is no individual solution, there is only a common social solution. It is obvious that, while the virus itself may not discriminate, its treatment is discriminated over class, condemning the many for the benefit of the few who have the wealth and the means of production in their hands. And it’s even clearer that the epidemic can be fought not individually but collectively with a free high quality public health system, for all the people, under the control of the workers.
In this regard, and in view of the risk of uncontrolled spread of the disease, the EEK demands:
MONEY FOR THE LIFE AND HEALTH OF THE PEOPLE, NOT FOR THE BANKS, THE EU, THE ROBBERS WHO WITH THE MEMORANDA OF ECONOMIC AUSTERITY SMASHED THE NATIONAL HEALTH SYSTEM!
Immediate health measures for the whole population, for the locals, the refugees, the immigrants, for the homeless, for the prisoners.
Permanent employment of medical, nursing and other personnel in all public hospitals and Intensive Care Units (ICUs). Currently over 100 ICU beds are closed for lack of staff. The recruitment of medical and nursing staff should have been done, neither today, nor tomorrow, but YESTERDAY. The Hellenic Association of Hospital Doctors of Greece (OENGE) has denounced the mockery of Minister of Health Kikilia’s fake “calls” for non-existent hiring of doctors.
Staff and operate immediately the primary health care centers (H.C.) – the local EOPY (IKA) per area which since the previous period of the memoranda (with Adonis Georgiadis in charge) have been totally discredited.
We call for an immediate REQUISITION of private sector beds and ICUs, seizure of pharmaceuticals, nationalization without compensation and under labor control of pharmaceutical storage rooms, pharmaceutical industries and the immediate launch of a National Pharmaceutical Industry.
3. Care for the survival of the most vulnerable population, especially the unemployed and the poor, protection of the workers from closure of businesses and the mandatory stay at home. Prohibition of dismissals and assurance of all labor and insurance rights of all workers. NO HOUSE IN THE HANDS OF BANKERS! Provision of coupons for all employed, unemployed and economically weak to be supplied with the necessary goods freely from the super markets.
4. We denounce the police regime established by the government and the State in the pretext of the pandemic. We need doctors and nurses, not prison guards.
NO to the “Artemis Plan” which will allow spying on everyone from the police headquarters and the other “operation centers” headed by the utterly failed Chrisochoidis.
They neither can nor want to control the corona virus but the people, both now, during the pandemic, as well as in the immediate aftermath, in the ruins that are piled up on the ruins of an unprecedented global capitalist crisis that is already accelerating to spread chaos everywhere. They don’t shut down the Parliament, only to pass one after another reactionary laws (against protests, retirement, etc.) during this chaos, keeping people away from action and mobilization.
Against their own fake “state of exception” we shall proclaim our own real emergency situation with collective solidarity and action, targeting the needs of the many, not the profits of the few.
5. We denounce the brutality of the government, the fascists and their associates in the treatment of refugees and immigrants.
Mitsotakis’ original, ridiculous and at the same time barbaric attempt to put the blame for the corona virus on refugees and immigrants failed miserably. The state under the refugees and immigrants are living in concentration camps, such as the living hell of Moria on Lesvos island or the closed centers under construction (Malakasa, Serres etc.), consists of a crime against humanity.
Freedom of movement for the refugees, provision of documents to travel within Greece and abroad. Bring down the wall of shame in Evros! No to Fortress Europe. IN NO PLACE, NEVER OR NOWHERE, WE SAY NO TO THE CONSTRUCTION OF CONCENTRATION CAMPS – CLOSED OR “OPEN”!
6. Measures for the protection from corona virus of the thousands of prisoners crowded in Greek prisons. Greece is the country with the largest population of prisoners serving a life sentence across Europe. Relieve congestion of prisons by releasing those sentenced to short sentences and those who have served the most of their sentence. Create social conditions for a society without guards, prisons and prisoners.
7. The aggravation of the financial crisis worldwide, the global recession that leads to the crash of stock and bond markets, is a process that began long before the outbreak of corona virus. EEK has warned since 2018, and especially in 2019, for the failure of the measures to contain the 2007-08 global crisis and for the slide into a deeply worse global chaos. The uncontrollable course of the pandemic so far is not the cause but the terrifying accelerator of the crisis, demonstrating in the most dramatic way that the existence of life is now incompatible with the aging system of declining capitalism.
The Nero Trump in USA, Johnson and the “herd immunity” in Britain, the destructive and incapable of any effective measure EU, the neoliberal Mitsotakis and the fascistoid Adonis who close hospitals and dismiss doctors, express the world of capital which is dying. WE WILL NOT BE BURIED UNDER THEIR RUINS._
Our future is not the living nightmare to which their system condemns us to live in. It is the overthrow of capitalism and the reorganization of economy and society into new, socialist foundations, with workers’ power and the perspective of universal human emancipation, libertarian communism for all humanity!
WORKERS REVOLUTIONARY PARTY
3-16-2020