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NEWS & LETTERS, March 2003
Workshop Talks
Weapons of mass destruction at work
by Htun Lin Bush's war department releases daily visions of horror
that become our top news story. They project different versions of a kind of
technological "apocalypse now" where, for example, Iraq will be hit
with 800 cruise missiles all at once to shock and awe the enemy into submission.
"Shock and awe" is what our government has come to, obsessing over war
above all else. On the domestic front, they instruct us to be on continued alert
for nuclear, biological or chemical weapons of mass destruction. After September
11, does anybody really think that it takes high technology to wreak havoc and
cause mass destruction? A veteran African-American nurse at Kaiser HMO shared
her view of the impending war on Iraq. She is a resident of the mostly working
class and minority community of Richmond, Cal. "Once the war starts,"
she said, "none of us in the Bay Area is going to be safe. “It doesn't take a lot of imagination or fancy
technology to cause mass destruction. All they have to do is to blow up the oil
refineries in Richmond and the whole area will be in trouble. Our neighborhood
already has a lot of chronic problems, for example, with asthma in children and
old people caused by the refineries." She also worried that healthcare cutbacks mean our
hospital resources are not adequate to handle even a non-terrorist disaster like
a flu epidemic or a major refinery accident. We face little disasters everyday
because of these cutbacks. For example, chemical leaks periodically cause local
crises where thousands line up for emergency care. Even without a catastrophic
incident, the Richmond refineries spew out record levels of pollutants. Such
"collateral damage" is deemed part of doing business. It's no accident
that refineries are located in poor and minority areas. The biggest known threat to the Bay Area is a massive
earthquake for which experts say we are woefully unprepared. It could cause
unimaginable destruction and loss of life. After the last big earthquake those
responsible for preparedness in health care recognized that all the different
hospitals and clinics would have to work together in an emergency. They created
a computerized data link among all the health care providers for disasters like
a TB epidemic, or now, the possibility of a terrorist attack. EVERYDAY CRISES However, restructuring has made it impossible to deal
with a disaster. Because we have spent the last decade reducing the number of
critical care beds to a bare minimum, in a real disaster we wouldn't be able to
do much more than watch it unfold. Before the chief of "Homeland
Security" told us to buy "duct tape and plastic," we already knew
the reality of homeland insecurity means just waiting for the inevitable. Our shortage of beds also means little everyday
festering crises. People routinely walk in with health problems from industrial
pollution and chronic diseases. By design we don't have room to accommodate
them. We warehouse them in the ER, where they must be admitted or released after
24 hours. Once a patient is admitted they have to be taken care of
until they are fit for discharge whether they have insurance or not. That is why
HMOs routinely dump uninsured patients on other hospitals. We are forced to play
this game every day. To Bush health care is merely overhead expenses to be
sacrificed for his expanding war budget. Workers built everything and we are not in awe of high
tech. Instead we realize that we are all interdependent in a way that is very
fragile. What we resent is capital's usurpation of our cooperative nature for
its needs, especially the need to feed its war machine. WORKPLACE OPPOSITION For us workers the war is not "just about oil"
but it represents the dominance of capital over all aspects of human life. There
is a lot more to opposing war than meets the eye. When I go out to anti-war
marches, I come home feeling a little empty. I hear a lot of rhetoric about
opposing U.S. imperialism. That's OK, but what about the every day struggle in
the war against workers at home? A lot of people express their anxiety that the
war is a fait accompli. They say they had to be out there anyway to express
their opposition but don't really feel it will change Bush's mind. Even if we "won" and stopped Bush from going
to war with Iraq, the war against workers will continue. We need a deeper way to
collectively express not only our opposition to war but also a positive vision
of a new society. What the nurse from Richmond said shows a total opposition to
war that is inseparable from our struggles in the workplace where we experience
the daily ravages of capital on our lives. This war is merely a new chapter in capital’s drive for total domination. Workers know that reconstructing society with a new form of cooperation is not easy. However, it is the true opposite to capital's obsession with war. |
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