I'm saying it right the fuck now.
Healthcare staff need to go on strike, consequences be damned. Imagine how fucking fast Washington would have to act if several state hospitals suddenly had to shut down because of major staff strikes. They would have to IMMEDIATELY stop what they were doing and address the crisis. They would have to buckle down.
The alternative would be a worst case scenario that would be dangerous even for Washington, and it would especially piss off or scare the Administrators of these for-profit hospitals.
Strikes are extremely effective. The pro-corporate side of America doesn't want people to realize that, but they are. Corporations are scared to death of people using their right to protest unlivable conditions that endangered people's lives because it pressures the politicians to do something. Elections go on and on. Even regardless of elections, we know some would be shamed or shaken up outside in the public space.
I think it's never been more important that the healthcare staff send this message NOW before there is no one left to care for the sick. They deserve better.
https://reddit.com/r/collapse/comments/k9nizs/the_worst_disaster_in_us_history_is_about_to/
The good news is surprisingly they were all insurgents, every single one
The bad news is some of the insurgents were as young as 4. Smdh they corrupt them so young
Its cool how an enemy combatant is legally not a human being!
the move is to treat people, but not accept payment, or even keep official records. put it on the hospital to cut off treatment
I wonder if there is a way to keep accurate medical records without keeping billing records. Maybe?
long term, probably not. but for the few weeks of the strike, give everyone that comes in a fake name if they need to have a follow up appointment, or just give them back their records (so they can bring them in on their own), but if you are just coming in for a one-off, just don't write it down.
Because we all know the people who chose to work in Health Admin are surely the people to rise up.
The middle managers and probably a chunk of the front line people would have to get thrown out, but I bet there some radicalized people in there. But, yeah, this whole thing would need to be Autonomous Zones/John Q level of disruption
I think projecting people with faceless jobs to stick it to their employer as we're staring deep into a long recession is a little too fantastic. The reality is scabs are probably gonna be the norm from here on out, if they weren't already.
little too fantastic
I'm talking golden path here. I'm not putting money down that this is gonna happen or anything, just what it would have to look like if it did.
Medical billing would 100% just get appified if it hasn't already.
they just need to strike like the Japanese bus drivers do and not charge anybody anything.
I mean, they could do the weaker japanese bus driver strike of not accepting payments. As long as they had the front desk people in on it.
Everything rung up as an asprin until they need to order more supplies basically.
It was extremely halfcocked, i'll admit.
My second comment sorta meant to illustrate supply lines would fall apart if a no-payment strike were to happen.
Basically, healthcare workers are gotten by the balls in this scenario because they don't want to refuse care, a strike would worsen the pandemic, and there's no responsible way to handle working conditions for healthcare workers without also hurting the living conditions of the patients. A strike should generally be a sacrifice by workers as a whole in order to hurt capital. In this case, the people needing care will literally be hurt and capital could mostly rebound.
I know people don't like comparing this year to 1902 or 1905, but if anything it is demonstrated that every leftist organization in the US is tailing the masses which is exactly what those years proved to the Russians. If any organization actually had any aspirations of leadership they would be calling for and organizing shit like this.
Portland, after months of angry protests, figured it out. People came out to fight off the cops at the red house, they put out a call, and enough people came together to beat Ted Wheeler.
But it took months of those protests to build people up to this point, and Portland already had a lot of the pieces thanks to the fucking nazis invading constantly over the past several years.
Ted Wheeler is still in power. The city is still under military occupation. It was good to see Portland fight back, but it was not a win.
He lost and he's pissed off about it. https://twitter.com/MacSmiff/status/1338644069933715456
Preventing an eviction is good. This doesn't seem much different than the protestors who chained themselves to city court houses to prevent evictions.
Fighting off cops and declaring your intent to keep doing it is different.
I don't think that would have happened befor ethe protests. Portland is facing 45k evictions, things like this are gonna keep happening.
I'm not saaying it's revolution I'm just saying I agree with the idea that the people are way ahead of the left. So far ahead.
It is the same situation. The protestors "fought back" the police when they showed up and tried to remove the protestors. You just agree with the aesthetics of the Portland protest more.
In actuality, the police could just massacre the people in both situations and continue normal operations. They have significantly more tools available to them. We are not even at the "fire-bombing anarchists in major city centers" part yet.
They decided that a day of eviction court processes or single eviction, respectively, was not worth further use of force.
Again, the events in Portland are good. But we need to be honest about where we are at right now. Your comment makes it sound like Portland is anarchist-controlled territory.
I’m not saaying it’s revolution I’m just saying I agree with the idea that the people are way ahead of the left. So far ahead
I agree with your edit. My only additional comment is that the Left is leading these operations. But our political discourse does not seriously reckon with the conditions we are in, though.
the Left is leading these operations.
What does this mean?
I don't understand how people are deciding which of these events are spontaneous self-organized responses and which are "organized by the Left." Are those one and the same?
What does this mean?
It means that the people carrying out these actions are Leftists.
That should be blatantly obvious from symbols & language they have been using, both in media correspondence & on signs surrounding the barricade.
spontaneous self-organized responses and which are “organized by the Left.”
There's no centralized Left-wing project in the country, so these are functionally the same thing.
Gotcha. I hear a lot of complaining in some leftist circles about any action that wasn't "organized" enough for their tastes being "anarchist lifestylism" or "commie larping" so I'm curious where people on here land.
Personally, I feel we're still in the early days of cultivating anti-capitalist sentiment and I'll take any kind of liberatory action I can get. As we have more successes like the one at the Red House we inspire more people to recognize both where they stand in relation to capital and the power they can wield with their neighbors and comrades.
The Red House project is good. They are clearly fighting for peoples' immediate material needs, and they are demonstrating to the neighborhood whose side they are on.
This is much better than, say, CHOP - which I would call "anarchist lifestyleism" and "commie larping."
calling for and organizing
a lot of folks (like the quoted OP) doing the former, not enough doing the latter
If hospital workers went on strike the military would immediately deploy to crush them. Do y'all realize how many people that would radicalize? Not saying this strike is neccasarily a great idea, but holy shit could it open people's eyes to the true nature of American capitalism.
You don't know anything about the American public. The reaction would be:
"Those lazy nurses quit in the middle of a pandemic and killed thousands out of neglect. They were so lazy that we had to send in Army doctors and leave OUR TROOPS vulnerable.
They were so greedy and entitled that they put patients and United States solders at risk. They should be permanently blacklisted! "
It's not the 1970s anymore. Class solidarity does not exist in the US. We get things done and "work hard". We don't "complain" about things like safety!
Ah, that's probably why you don't realize yet how spiteful we are. Just wait around 8-10 years until the next crisis, and you'll be chuckling too yourself as young people repeat the same tropes.
The idea that the military would crush them becomes a lot less plausible if there are no picket lines to beat people.
Hospital staff don't have to go out and picket. If they stay home that's good enough because they aren't replaceable.
Realistically all that's stopping them is their own desire to not let countless people die.
Yeah, that's only gonna be broken by the endless endless misery this country is piling on them.
thank god we have a vaccine rolling out for them. That's at least one silver lining.
lets just say things would get messy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_air_traffic_controllers_strike
I totally thought this was about Israel bombing a Palestinian covid hospital, and was going to say, "again?"
Been seeing talk of going to Pelosi’s and McConnell’s and making their lives a living hell. No partisan lines. :pingu-horny:
I think it would be useful, but do no harm prevents this, letting those who don’t want to have an excuse and those who actually care feel too conflicted to let patients suffer.
