Only the Rank and File Can Save Us Now

We are proud to have a strong analytical focus on social reproduction at Spectre. The current pandemic is tragically proving that which social reproduction theorists have long emphasized: that work needed to sustain life and life-making, such as nursing, teaching, cleaning – in other words, care work – is essential for any society to function. Indeed, it is care work that makes all other work possible.

A social reproduction focus, however, is not simply a philosophical position. It is simultaneously a political project. This is why during this time of crisis, we want our readers to hear the voices of workers fighting on the frontlines of care. The work of nurses, refuse workers, teachers, and farmworkers, among others, is sustaining us through this crisis. Our series Dispatches from the Frontlines of Care is designed to remind ourselves that it is the stockbroker and the corporate executive who are disposable, and we want a world where they remain so.

If you have story for us please write to the series editor Tithi Bhattacharya at tithi@spectrejournal.com.

I’m a nurse working in the ICU at one of the largest, highest-grossing healthcare systems in New York City. There, I’m a shop steward and member of the New York State Nurses’ Association (NYSNA). I’m also a revolutionary socialist and part of the Left Voice editorial board.

Last year, I was deeply involved in my union’s multi-facility contract fight that brought 10,000 nurses on the verge of striking at Montefiore, New York Presbyterian, and Mount Sinai. The powerful battle for safe staffing ratios devolved in the hands of a bureaucratic leadership that responded to members’ demands for strike action with delay and inaction. When bargaining committees touted a tentative agreement that left out our primary demand of nurse-to-patient ratios, I helped organize a rank-and-file opposition (“vote no”) at my hospital, out of which consolidated a core of militant shop stewards dedicated to democratizing the union and advancing shop-floor struggles. Despite members’ outcry, union officers were able to pass a contract and shut down strike action. It is difficult, now, not to dwell on the fact that a strike then might have better prepared us for this disaster with more nurses already integrated into our units when the crisis hit.

Soon after the contract was signed, I became pregnant. I gave birth in January and planned to take leave for several months to adjust to parenting and revel in my baby’s firsts. However, in early March, it became quickly clear that the Covid-19 virus would not spare the center of imperialism. After some deliberation, I started picking up shifts in the ICU and taking my 11-week-old to the city’s childcare for emergency frontline workers. My 14-bed ICU expanded to fit double the number of patients. Today it is an entirely Covid-19 unit, with newly-constructed negative pressure doors and whirring isolation motors in every room.

The United States is now the country with the most deaths due to coronavirus and we’re still not past the peak. The federal government’s response has been disastrous. After several weeks of denial, the White House changed its rhetoric, but never launched an effective, nationally-coordinated response. The scarcity of tests precluded the rapid containment of community spread. State governments were left to decide whether to implement restrictions on activity. Protective equipment and ventilators purportedly coordinated by the federal government were funneled through private vendors who, true to their speculative natures, are selling N95 masks and life-saving supplies to the highest bidders.

At the pandemic’s epicenter, millionaire Governor Andrew Cuomo has emerged as a sort of people’s champion. In widely televised news briefings, he’s displayed at the helm with Trump on speed dial. He swings from reprimanding to beseeching New Yorkers with hollow mantras like, “Do your part,” and, “We need to come together,” throwing chips to frontline workers. The crisis unfolding in New York can not be divorced from the profit-first, neoliberal policies Cuomo’s administration has rammed through since he took office in 2011. Even in the throes of a public health crisis hitting poor, immigrant, working-class and Black and Brown people the hardest, Cuomo insists on a $2.5 billion cut to Medicaid in New York State; he insists on moving forward with the cut when it means forgoing $6.7 billion in federal aid.

Back in the ICU, I immediately felt the toll the pandemic was taking on nurses. We’re being drained by the constant donning-on and donning-off of protective gear, by the desperate calls from family members who can’t visit, by the shortage of monitoring equipment and trained staff, by the harsh rationing of ventilators, by the wrapping bodies to send off to freezer-truck morgues.