LA Coalition Campaigns for COVID Safety Measures
Los Angeles County continues to report tens of thousands of new COVID-19 cases and hundreds daily, the highest infection and death count since the start of the pandemic. That is why a coalition of labor leaders, health experts and community organizations are demanding that the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors urgently enact a “circuit breaker” — a strict fourweek lockdown in January to bring the virus under control.
At the same time, on the other side of the spectrum, restaurant owners in many parts of the state have been flouting state regulations prohibiting sitdown dining by claiming outdoor seating are recreational parks. Even more extreme are the anti-science, often racist and anti-vaxxer demonstrations primarily by white residents of Orange County and cities like Beverly Hills against mask-wearing mandates and other collective measures that local, state and national health leaders have suggested to reduce exposure to infection and thus death rates.
The Los Angeles coalition includes more than a dozen healthcare, labor and community organizations that represent tens of thousands of Los Angeles workers, including frontline healthcare workers, pre-K to 12th grade teachers and university educators, grocery store workers, hospitality workers, educational, housing and racial justice advocates.
The coalition sent a letter to the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors Dec. 16, 2020 and posted a public petition demanding the board to urgently plan for the four-week lockdown and to provide immediate safety nets for businesses, workers and families so they can safely stay home.
“Healthcare workers throughout Los Angeles are reaching their breaking point,” said Sal Rosselli, president of the National Union of Healthcare Workers. “They are understaffed, overworked and inundated with patients fighting for their lives. COVID-19 cannot be allowed to spread following the December holidays the way it spread after Thanksgiving. We all have to work together to keep this from getting worse, and that starts with people having the financial security to stay home.”
The victims of COVID-19 are overwhelmingly essential workers, poor people, and people of color. According to the Los Angeles County Public Health, more than twice the number of Latinos in Los Angeles than whites have died from COVID-19. A
Washington Post poll found that one in three Black Americans personally know someone who has died of COVID. Asians who become infected with COVID-19 are over four times as likely to die compared to other Angelenos. Residents of high poverty areas are dying at nearly twice the rate of wealthier residents.
As a signer of the letter, Kurt Petersen, co-president of Unite Here Local 11 added: “COVID-19 has devastated the lives of hotel and food service workers — 90% remain unemployed. Having lost $600-a-week unemployment benefit four months ago, they have fallen behind in rent and risk homelessness. As the virus rages through our membership, whose 20% positivity testing is double that of LA County’s rate, we are having difficulty keeping track of who has perished. Bold leadership is necessary. Incremental safety orders merely rearrange the deck chairs on the Titanic. Opening up outdoor dining again will neither make people safe nor put more than a handful of hotel workers back to work. Nothing short of massive direct economic relief — including the extending and increasing unemployment insurance and spending the state’s $26 billion surplus on relief — will save workers from illness and evictions.”
The state of California, like many other areas, has few intensive care unit beds, shortages of oxygen and personal protective equipment available and is burning out nursing staff.
As a solution, a national coalition of political, medical personnel (National Nurses union members and doctors), union leaders, Hollywood figures, Black Lives Matter and Native people’s leaders launched a Saving Lives campaign to demand that the U.S. government allow CubaUnited States collaboration on a vaccine, as well as to allow Cuban medical personnel entry into the United States to help those areas hardest hit by the virus — such as Native peoples’ nations, Black and Latino communities.
A caravan that urged Mayor Eric Garcetti and Gov. Gavin Newsom to invite Cubans to come help took place on Dec. 27, 2020 from the West Los Angeles Federal Building to Echo Park. It received extensive media coverage on Telemundo and NBC given the dire and deteriorating circumstances.
Cuba has an expertise unlike any other country in the world and successfully led the fight against Ebola in Western Africa. By contrast, Los Angeles County, with a similar population to Cuba, has had more than 10,000 deaths while Cuba has had less than 150 because of a stronger healthcare system not based on profits, but human needs.