 For more videos on people's struggles, please subscribe to our YouTube channel. Hello and welcome to People's Dispatch. Today we're joined by Eugene Puriar of Breakthrough News and we're going to be talking about the $900 billion COVID relief package that the U.S. Congress passed recently. This was after a lot of discussion and nonetheless there's still a lot of holes and a lot of issues with it. So Eugene is going to talk about it. Eugene, thank you so much for joining us. And first thing I wanted to ask was regarding the most important aspect which is the fact that there's going to be a $600 check for every American and of course the numbers vary depending on your salary of course. But this comes after the $1,200 check that came many months ago and in between there's been no relief. And at this point finally we are getting a much lesser check. So considering the situation on the ground, what do you say about what people are actually going to get in their hands? I think it's very limited. And there's a lot of back and forth in Congress now, looks like they're going to take this up after Christmas. It could end up, some people are pushing for $2,000 which would be certainly much more significant. But $600 to give people maybe just a sense of it. I would say the vast majority of the country, certainly for all major cities, that is not even enough for one month's rent. So you think about the United States right now where there's about $34 billion in back rent owed by renters already. There are people who are barely making it, maybe they don't have a lot of back rent, but they're struggling figuring things out every single month to try to make it work. So I think for people who are struggling, obviously any money is going to be welcome, but whether or not it's going to be something that can make a material impact in their lives, I think it's very difficult. We've got about 85 million people in the United States right now who week to week are saying they're struggling to meet their basic expenses, which is primarily food, rent, childcare. And so when you have a situation like that, I think the $600 is more likely to benefit, and this is sort of the perverse nature of it, those who have retained employment and may not be doing great, but at least still have some income coming in. So it's a little bit of a boost in troubled times. But I think for many of people who have lost a significant amount of employment, a significant amount of income or lost employment in particular, I think it's a big challenge. And the same thing with the $300 boost for unemployment benefits, which was $600 early in the year, which was supposed to mean everyone got 100% of their paycheck. So it's implicit, at least if this bill goes forward, as it said, that they're going to be leaving people without enough, which pretty much everyone in Congress is essentially admitting and they claim, well, we're going to get back to it next year. So just don't worry. Right. Absolutely. And this context you mentioned unemployment also, which has been one of the biggest issues all countries for that matter have been facing, but especially the United States, because there's been wave after wave of COVID-19. So there's really been no decline in the number of cases, even recently record number of cases and deaths. So has this package actually offered anything to address the unemployment crisis concrete? I think all it's done is kick the can down the road on the unemployment crisis. It's pretty much a status quo situation. I mean, we're seeing now because of the renewed upsurge in the coronavirus that, you know, we're seeing the numbers go back up. I mean, there were some shocking one million people and others filing in the early part of the year. We saw 885,000, I believe was the number recently, but even when you're at 600, 700,000, which was supposedly good in the past few months, that's still higher than any time previously in the past. So we've never actually dropped below record unemployment. And so what we see happening here is there is, you know, 200, almost $300 billion in money in the Paycheck Protection Program, which is designed to basically help small businesses tread water and not close, but a huge number of small businesses have already closed. So for many people that won't get help, it'll just be a handful of people. There'll be the $300 boost in unemployment benefits, but that will only go into the early spring. And there's no guarantee you'll get your job back. And for many people, it'll be a reduced amount of income, as opposed to what they normally make, which means they're going to go deeper and deeper into hardship, be less able to pay their bills, and that a lot and that then thus able to much more difficult to dig out of the situation that they are in. So I think as it concerns unemployment, we haven't seen anything significant to revive employment in this country to push millions of jobs or anything of that, millions of jobs or anything of that nature. But more importantly, we let the hundreds of thousands, if not more jobs, not we, the government, just disappear over the course of the pandemic by not putting out the proper aid in the first place. And of course, this all comes back to the fact that they're giving trillions and trillions of dollars to Wall Street, rather than just giving trillions and trillions of dollars to people to stay home, stay safe, pay their bills and get over this COVID crisis. And maybe we'd be in a situation like say China, which did do that, and it would be over by now. So we're seeing all up and down the chain here, the impact of the lack of the effort really, and will from the US government to spend the money it has in the early part of the pandemic to make this worse. And I think for those who are unemployed, it's going to continue to get worse, especially in states like Tennessee, like California that are seeing huge surges right now. And there's going to be some help, but not enough. And it kicks the can down the road, maybe worst case scenario of total collapse of employment, not going to happen. But there's not going to be any big boost or any big push. Absolutely. Right. And one of the things, at least we hear from the Democrats is that, you know, this is kind of a placeholder, you know, when Biden finally takes a CM's power, there's going to be much more effort. And at the same time, we really don't see anything from the part of the Democrats in terms of big thinking, in terms of big spending, like you suggested, to create jobs to, you know, protect people. There's not really been too much ambitious plans or any kind of reassurance from the upcoming government either. So it's not like the coming months look very hopeful either. Yeah, I think that the Democrats have been extremely underwhelming. I mean, the deal we're talking about right now, I mean, they had quite a bit of leverage since the government was set to shut down, among some other things, the military needed to get funded. And of course, in imperialist United States, that's like the most important factor. So they could have pushed for any range of things. They made their big stopgap push over last weekend be, well, don't limit the ability of the Federal Reserve to give more money to Wall Street, rather than, say, increase money for stimulus checks like $1,200, like what Senator Bernie Sanders is asking for, or $2,000, like what Donald Trump has now claimed that he has for the claim that he is for. And then I think when you look forward into the future, we're seeing that there is a talk of things happening, but there's so many different eddies and currents, even amongst the Democrats, that the idea that what they're going to do is going to be huge transformative, you know, multi, multi trillions of dollars. None of that is assured at all. It's not clear where all the money will go. I mean, you look at what happened in the CARES Act, a lot of that money doesn't go to average everyday people. It goes to big corporations. And so the Democrats haven't really shown a true commitment to the types of transformative policies that over the medium term can really revive employment in this country, revive wages in this country. And it's been talked about quite a bit, obviously, from the Green New Deal to full employment, to the need for universal basic income, to universal healthcare. I mean, there's a huge conversation in the country about how there needs to be transformative changes and how COVID has just revealed how the system was already broken and that moving forward, we can't just return to normal, but move forward. But it does seem the Biden administration is very committed to a return to normal. And all of their talk about the response, their response to the pandemic is essentially emergency based response. So not necessarily things that are going to lay the foundation moving forward. So it's going to be interesting to see what happens here. Pretty much everything in terms of what happens, the contours of it, not the actual details, but the contours of it will be determined by the January 5th Senate runoff election in Georgia, which will determine who controls the Senate, and that will determine the contours of what the debate is going to be. But I would say into early February, there is not a lot to give hope to people who are struggling over the holidays here in the United States. Absolutely. And Eugene, in this context, I also wanted to ask you about the pandemic itself, because like you said, the number of cases increasing hugely, of course, and the question of the vaccine is now very central in terms of how what kind of distribution mechanisms are there any at all? And how is it likely to be skewed, especially in the coming months? So what do you see as a scenario happening there? I think that the vaccine rollout is going to be pretty slow. My own feeling is that it may be until March, until when it's really sort of mass produced, we'll see the way it's being distributed. It's sort of a patchwork of what's happening here, which in and of itself tells you some of the challenges that could be happening. Some of it is being done through basically convenience stores, pharmacies, CVS is a big brand here that have these private contracts to go into nursing homes and to do the first round of inoculations there and then have some roll later on with the public. And there have been some back and forth. Some people don't know, well, is this supposed to happen? Is that supposed to happen? But basically it's worked okay. But then there's a separate distribution mechanism for the Moderna vaccine. The first one I was talking about was Pfizer. And that involves the military. That involves more governments. I believe that one is a little easier. One of them is a little bit more easier to move around. But there's a patchwork of public and of private. And then there's a question of who gets the vaccine. And that is basically being determined state by state, sometimes city by city in some of the major cities in the US. And there are big debates over what's going to happen and where it's going to be in Salt Lake City, for instance, they just announced that teachers will now all get it hopefully by the end of January. And certainly that's very good for teachers, very good for students in Salt Lake City. But then that puts us at the end of January. And we still have every single other person that lives there. So I think that there's also capacity issues in terms of what can be produced and how quickly. So I think that there's a real fear in my mind of a false dawn of people thinking, hey, it's about to be over in just a few weeks and not taking the crisis very seriously. And there isn't a lot of public education going on to promote that. In fact, there's kind of all just vaccine boosterism coming, especially in the past week, where all these famous people are getting it to say, oh, it's safe. So even from those who are saying, yes, still be safe, it's still heavily promotion. Dr. Fauci, other heavily promoting vaccines, vaccines, it's good, it's working, it's all going to work out. And I think that that's creating a complicated consciousness here that is putting us in a lot of danger. And yet again, here we are without solid public health guidance in the United States. And from the very beginning, that's been one of the main Achilles heels of this entire thing is you don't really know who to believe or what to do, or you want to believe the science, because what does it really say? You're hearing all these other things. Huge challenge here in the United States. And I think a clear challenge that having this capitalist patchwork healthcare public health system, when you have a crisis, it has no ability to be flexible, no ability to move like an accordion. And it makes everything so much more worse. Absolutely. And finally, this is an issue in all of our conversations we've regularly talked about, which is about what social movements at this point of time, what people's movements at this point of time, how they're responding to the crisis. So especially ever since May, there's been this resurgence of mobilization. So right now, what are some of the key aspects that the movements are pushing? You know, I think rinse is the absolute key. I mean, you know, I was just looking very recently at an apartment complex in San Diego, where they're trying to, you know, evict a bunch of people in the midst of this pandemic, there's a big car caravan of people coming there to support them. Now, it's sort of an interesting reality, because there has been a lot of mobilization over the past few months around the issue of rents. When there was a brief lapse in an eviction moratorium, there was a lot of attempts in New Orleans and Kansas City and other places where rent courts were just completely shut down. We're seeing things happen all around the country, quite frankly, it was maybe most notably in California, but it's happening in different places. People putting pressure on governments and publicly on buildings by just moving people back into the homes themselves. In Portland, just about a week ago, we saw some significant resistance there where hundreds of people fought back against sheriff's deputies trying to evict a family in the midst of a pandemic. And it's like a wild catch 22, where like in a way, they shouldn't be eligible to be evicted, but there's some loophole that they are. So anyway, I say all that just to say that is I think what is becoming one of the cruxes of the struggle here, because it's of all the issues, it's the one that's being dealt with the least. And of course, in the middle of wintertime and huge parts of the country, it's one of the most important, having a roof over your head, having shelters, obviously one of the critical human rights that there is. But it's the one area of the pandemic where I would say or the response to the pandemic, the least amount has been done. So I'd say that's the main crux of what we're seeing now. We're seeing a lot of that. We're seeing an increase in that. There are many, many, I don't even know the number, but large numbers of people all over the country. I mean, I think in Brooklyn, not that far from where I am right now, there's that I know of like 15 rent strikes happening right now. So all over people are refusing to pay rent. They're fighting back. They're demanding the cancellation of rent. And that's why we see the month long extension of the eviction moratorium in this bill. That's why we've seen eviction moratoriums from the CDC. That's why we've seen them from the CARES Act, is that they know in Congress that this issue is very potent and that there are a lot of people who will not accept a total collapse of rents in this country and will fight very hard against that. And they're trying to prevent really what could be a social struggle of tens of millions of people because there's 40 million people facing eviction. So I'd say that's the tip of the spear of what we are seeing here right now. But of course, going into the new administration, there's also a lot of focus around the need for more sustainable, longer term planning on how to improve the lives of working class and poor people. So that's a lot of, there's less happening there, but there's a lot of conversations about what do we do, how do we do it, and how do we hit the ground running as soon as Biden shows up and not give him any breathing space not to help the working class. Absolutely. Thank you so much, Eugene, for speaking to us. Oh, thank you so much for having me. That's all your time for today. Keep watching People's Dispatch.