I want to once again share a few paragraphs from a recent article because holy fuck.
In 2020, Robert Kuciemba, a woodworker in San Francisco was infected with covid by a co-worker after his Nevada-based Victory Woodworks transferred a number of sick workers to the San Francisco site for a few months.
Through the proceedings of the case it turns out that the employer knew some employees might be sick but they transferred them anyway and ignored a San Francisco ordinance in place at the time to quarantine suspected covid cases.
The California Supreme Court ruled on Thursday, July 6th, against Kuciemba on the basis that a victory, while, in the court's words, "morally" the right thing to do, would create "dire financial consequences for employers" and cause a "dramatic expansion of liability" to stop the spread of covid.
There’s a few stunning details to note in this case. First, the court agreed that there is no doubt the company had ignored the San Francisco health ordinance. In other words, they accepted the company had broken the law. And then concluded “yeah, but, capitalism.”
Secondly, the case was so obviously important to the struggle between capitalism and mass infection that the US Chamber of Commerce, the largest business lobbying organisation, got involved and helped the company with its defence. Remember, this was a tiny company in a niche industry. The involvement of the biggest business lobbyists in the country tells us a lot about the importance of the principle they knew was at stake.
Thirdly, the defence of the company is very telling. They said “There is simply no limit to how wide the net will be cast: the wife who claims her husband caught COVID-19 from the supermarket checker, the husband who claims his wife caught it while visiting an elder care home.”
Well, exactly. Capitalism couldn’t survive if employers were liable for covid infections contracted in the workplace, and the ripple effect of those infections. And they know it.
This ruling essentially helps codify workplace mass infection and justifies it as necessary for the smooth functioning of capitalism.
There is no "justice system".
The Court is simply another component of the only system: the system that owners use to maintain power.
Read the full article here:
https://donotpanic.substack.com/p/on-covid-californias-supreme-court
Find more work from Nate Bear here:
https://ko-fi.com/natebear
excerpt from Article 2:
"...any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group, as such:
(a) Killing members of the group;
(b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;
(c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;"
this decision is in favor of the genocide of disabled people broadly and each of the various peoples forced by racism-mandated poverty to bear the majority of the death and pain it cannot be separated from, specifically