Building a collective requires the strong political unity of its members. In the present form of SCORE, all members must struggle around these points of unity that express our political line and practice.
The following points are not simply abstract “universal” principles, but rather points that speak to the specific social situation in which we find ourselves. While the points do not cover all the political questions which this collective must address, they make up the essential principles to which we use to form the basis of initial unity. Acceptance of these principles is considered prerequisite for membership. Continued engagement with and deepening of these principles is required to maintain unity between members. This happens through an ongoing process of struggle and debate involving all members as our combined experience grows.
The founding of an activist organization represents a transformation in the practice of all collective members. The difference between individual action (e.g. participation in study groups, unplanned mass demonstrations, or boycotts) and our collective is this:
Through individual action, we were training ourselves as individuals to become politically aware of the direction and tasks of building a movement. We were developing our individual skillsets.
Our collective, however, is being founded in order to take concrete action in connection with the independent struggle of existing organized forces and mass movements. We can advance our individual abilities more than we ever could do alone through our collective knowledge and experience.
Collective action demands greater discipline and willingness to struggle, and a politically united organization. Our tasks (political, theoretical, ideological, and economic) are ranked in importance and carried out as determined by a collective and democratic process.
This document does not define our tasks or goals or conduct but only our points of political unity. When internal conflict arises, return to this document to center the discussion on struggle against ideas (our principles & points of unity) rather than struggle against each other.
Political leaders and media have declared the end of the pandemic many times since it began. The drive to return workers to offices, tourists to beaches, and patrons to restaurants has been entirely motivated by the desire of the wealthy to hoard more wealth. They would annihilate our bodies and our world for a few dollars more.
The unstoppable push for profit, the defining feature of Capitalism, is the main driving force of the brutal, dehumanizing, and atomizing divisions forced upon us: racism, ableism, sexism, ageism, queerphobia, nationalism, settler-colonialism, and more.
The only antidote for the poison spread by these forced divisions is solidarity with all affected. The only way to permanently end these imposed divisions is Socialism: the emancipation of all people together, through a radical transformation of the economic and social foundation of society. The goal of Socialism is the destruction of the structural and economic roots of oppression in all areas of society.
In the area of health specifically, due to structural and economic conditions, it is not possible for all of us to be doctors, virologists, epidemiologists, statisticians, air quality engineers, and safety equipment specialists. We must rely on each other, but grifters abound. Our compass must be oriented toward actions, policies, people, and theory which put the masses before the individual, solidarity in place of separation, and people before profit.
Wherever there is a threat to human health or the biosphere, precautionary measures should be taken even when some cause and effect relationships are not fully established scientifically. This approach will always be attacked by those who profit more by not enacting these safeguards, and by those embracing individualism, prioritizing only their own short-sighted desires.
This point is three-fold:
We are organizing a socialist response to the ongoing pandemic and to the active attack decimating public health. We aim to unite the fragmented organizing efforts of other socialist and left groups, bring our pandemic organizing vision and political grounding into broader public consciousness, and across national borders.
In the U.S., politics is dominated by a right-wing party and a fascist party, neither of which represent the great masses of people in this country. Instead of choosing policies which help and support the great masses of people in this country, both dominant political parties have chosen the path of social murder and eugenics—the policies favored by the wealthy. Both parties have actively worked to damage the credibility of public health and dismantle existing social support systems. Despite this abandonment, the state still has the large-scale capability to make a difference in this pandemic.
It is systemic oppressions and a lack of protections that make people vulnerable: forcing people to work unprotected, live in crowded housing (or in prisons, shelters, psychiatric facilities, or care facilities), etc. People are at risk not because of inborn characteristics, but because of active choices on the part of business and government decision makers made consciously or unconsciously to reinforce and reproduce the system as it exists. This extends across all national boundaries and so in turn must our solidarity and support.
The fight against COVID-19 cannot be won inside the borders of a single country. The examples of China, Cuba, Vietnam, and other nations prove this. Their implementation was constrained by existing laws, policies, and procedures, and the pressure imposed externally by geopolitical forces and internally by the needs of their people, yet they held out for years despite astounding increases in viral fitness due to uncontrolled transmission elsewhere in the world. There are significant improvements which can be made on their efforts, so we do believe the battle can still be joined and won. Through the cooperation of the people of all nations, we can end the pandemic.
We stand firmly against all forms of oppression and discrimination in the here and now, against all divisive and discriminatory attitudes. Our organizing begins with the recognition that we are united in struggle against the multiplicity of oppressions rooted in the exploitation of all for the benefit of a few.
We center those most vulnerable to emerging threats to public health. We value life and people above domestic capital interests such as profit, and above imperial interests such as global conquest and neo-colonial wealth extraction. This Disability Solidarity begins outside of the individual, and the framework of Disability Justice guides us. We reject both the individualistic medical model and the self-limiting social model of disability, both of which only serve the interests of Capitalism.
Finally, it is essential to a socialist politic that our interdependence with all living systems and the land are intertwined with all our shared struggles. Sustainable metabolism with the earth is part and parcel with the emancipation of all people.
We share clarity on the reality of the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome, the novel coronavirus discovered in 2019.
COVID denial and gaslighting in the ongoing information war is targeted at maximizing commercial rent, restaurant and retail profit, and other forms of wealth extraction, including every vehicle for the financialization and warehousing of human bodies toward profit (e.g. prisons, detention centers, nursing facilities, and psychiatric institutions).
We tolerate no COVID minimization. There is a path to living a safe and fulfilling life despite the ongoing pandemic without ignoring that it is occurring. COVID's effects are minimized ad nauseam in public messaging. These include, but are not limited to, its continually increasing transmissibility, its sharp, negative impact on life expectancy, its unpredictable, potentially life-changing long term consequences, and the increase in risk that comes with each subsequent infection.
COVID’s mode of transmission is also deliberately muddled in public messaging, but in reality it is straightforward: airborne and aerosol—only fomite in rare cases. Consequently, its mitigations are also straightforward.
The U.S. and most other countries are moving in exactly the wrong direction in their response, abandoning prevention and yielding to market forces. When the pandemic first hit, even the U.S. provided many aspects of COVID care freely, and other wealthy nations did much more. Meanwhile, at the grassroots, many people mobilized to help one another. We have seen that we have the power to unite together against profit-driven oppression and social murder.
By every means materially justified we are ethically compelled to fight for the health and safety of ourselves and those we love, for public health and safety, for an end to the global suffering and mass death and disability which COVID is continuing to inflict.
A universally uptaken vaccine which totally prevents infection or a top-down, global, comprehensive, multi-layered prevention policy (i.e. dynamic COVID ZERO) could effectively end this pandemic. Dynamic COVID ZERO and a system of public health based in scientific understanding and compassion are achievable even if they require revolutionary change. COVID-19 aka SARS-2 has unmasked the forces against which any struggle for systemic change will be pitted; whether it is the present struggle for public health under capitalism or for human survival in the face of climate catastrophe.
We must leave no one behind. Proactively, we need clean air for all (by all means—respirators, air filters, UV), and vaccines for all. Reactively, we need universal healthcare more than ever because great masses of people have already been infected and as infections continue unabated, health crises will grow and multiply. We need to address the historic and contemporary abuses inside the medical system against minority and working class people so that all get the care they need. We need support for people with Long COVID both economically and socially. Families have lost income earners, children have lost parents, so many lives have been and still are being drastically changed by this ongoing, pandemic, mass disabling event.
We put forward these points of unity to announce our political line, to raise up our struggle, and to help others who are battling inside other organizations to compel action to end the global suffering and mass death and disability which COVID is continuing to inflict. We welcome all comments, questions, and criticisms about these points.
Last updated September 20, 2023