 Across the world, the working class and the poor resist the COVID-19 pandemic. They resist from the front lines, keeping essential services running under lockdown. They resist the bids by the governments to push the financial burden of the disease on them. They resist by demanding proper distribution of relief and seeking accountability for decades of underfunding of the health system and other public services. In this episode of Around the World, 8 Minutes, we take a look at these forms of resistance from across the globe. We begin with Colombia, where protests continue demanding dignified conditions in quarantine. Colombia's urban poor have been mobilizing even as the promise aid from the government has not come and people increasingly are dealing with hunger. On April 23rd, in the neighborhood of Usme, in the south of Bogota, victims of the Colombian armed conflict took to the streets to protest state abandonment and negligence. The community is even more vulnerable as they are victims of forced displacement and have been uprooted from the traditional communities and land. Unlike right-wing protests seen in the US and Brazil, the protests in Colombia have been demanding that amid the necessary quarantine, the government fulfill its responsibility and promises to support vulnerable populations. Oh, one half of Colombia's labour force is in the informal sector. In the absence of daily earnings and support from the government, people's savings are running out after one month of quarantine. In response to the victims' protests in Usme, the city government of Bogota, led by Mayor Claudia Lopez, sent agents of the National Police and the Mobile Anti-Disturbance Squadron or the Esmeralda. The security forces responded violently, pushing with their shields protesters, among whom were elderly people, pregnant women, children, human rights defenders and reporters, including a correspondent of Colombia, informed them. At the same time, city officials claimed that the protests was impeding them from distributing food in the locality. Similar protests have been seen in other cities and towns in the country. On April 22, in the town of Casacara, in the northeast of the country, the community protested on the highway to demand that the government provide food. The government sent police to depress the protest, who fired live ammunition in the air and directly at the protesters. According to the Human Rights Organization, Defender La Libertad, the police shot 17-year-old Heather Antonio Broshiro Hernandez in the back and he died while on the way to the local medical centre. We now look at protests in India, where the world's largest lockdown is in place. On April 21, the leftist Centre of Indian Trade Unions or CITU called for a protest from the rooftops. The union, along with mass organisations of the left, was demanding better government policy on ensuring wages for workers, food for their families, protection of jobs and safety of frontline health workers. Tappan Singh, the general secretary of the CITU, asserted that there is much anger among the workers which has to be conveyed to the ruling Narendra Modi government. Workers and their families gathered on the rooftops, balconies or courtyards, holding placards and flags, and raised slogans for a change in policies. Where workers were on duty, handwritten placards and banners, with these demands were put up. India has entered its fifth week of lockdown. When the lockdown began in the last week of March, Prime Minister Narendra Modi asked the people to be resolute and restraint. However, except for some cash handouts, the government has not addressed the issues of a vast variety of workers. Unemployment has soared, migrants have left the city in hundreds of thousands, and in 13 states, NGOs are giving out far more food than the government. The pandemic has meanwhile continued to spread steadily and with relentless pace as frontline workers, including health workers, continue to work tirelessly without protective gear. Six days after the lockdown was announced, the muddled government considered that spring crop harvesting could be exempted from the lockdown, otherwise the whole crop was going to rot in the fields. Here are some of the key demands. Wages for all, stopping retrenchment of contract, cash will and outsourced workers, stopping any attempts to increase working hours from 8 to 12, providing protective gear for all frontline health and essential service workers, stopping the retrenchment of journalists and IT employees, arranging food and shelter for all migrant workers, ensuring agricultural operations, remunerative price and procurement centres for all crops, providing financial aid for farmers for harvesting, transport, cultivation etc. and a transfer of not less than Rs 7,500 to the bank accounts of all non-income tax-paying families for 3 months. The CITU has also demanded that the government provide financial help to micro, small and medium enterprises, which employ almost two-thirds of India's workforce and who are now facing a mortal danger of complete collapse. CITU has also called for interest-free loans to self-help groups, so that their earnings can be boosted. Measures to check domestic violence have also been included in the demands because the unfortunate rise in such cases after the lockdown began. In our last story, we look at the demands by the European youth regarding the education sector. Students and youth in these countries are particularly in distress due to the shutting down of schools, colleges and universities as part of the lockdown. The majority of institutions, both of secondary and higher education, have turned to online learning. However, students from working-class families who have limited access to internet and devices are often getting left out. Student groups across the continent have launched campaigns demanding that all students be ensured access to the necessary infrastructure to participate in online learning. Another major demand is to waive tuition and other fees and to provide direct allowances to students and their families to pay rent and other expenses. Various groups have asked for the distribution of scholarships without any delay and it places the freezing of rent payment. They have also highlighted that many who are stuck in dormitories and hostels during the lockdown have inadequate access to medical care, food and have called these essential services to be provided. Other demands include the free distribution of study material, loosening up on restrictions regarding course credits and extra semesters to compensate for the loss of working days. In Italy, one of the countries worst hit by COVID-19 in the region, the state has decided to begin mandatory online classes for students starting April 6. The communist youth front pointed out that the move would exclude millions who do not have access to the internet. FGC, which is a communist youth front, had also initiated a petition demanding support and protection for students across the country during the emergency. In Greece, the student struggle front of the MAS has demanded that the government provide a direct housing allowance of 800 euros to all student families who pay rent for the months of March and April in order to relieve financial distress inflicted by the lockdown. In France, the union of communist students has demanded an immediate freezing of rents during the lockdown period, free health services for students and allowances for every student to permit economic survival. In Europe, India and Latin America and the rest of the world, the pandemic has brought to light with greater harshness, the inequalities and injustice of the capitalist system. The working class and its organizations across the world have taken up this battle against these inequalities and injustices. The coming weeks and months are likely to see a fresh wave of struggles in this regard. Keep watching and reading People's Dispatch as we bring you some of these struggles in the midst of a global crisis.