The healthcare workers who blocked the anti-lockdown rally in Denver and the General Electric workers in Massachusetts who walked off the job demanding their factories start making ventilators are the beginning of an ongoing nationwide strike. On May Day, in each workplace, neighborhood and home, we join that strike, determining what parts of our lives are indispensable and how we can best meet our needs. From that day on, only the activities that we consider essential will continue.

The crisis created by the coronavirus has put the demands of financial markets directly in conflict with human survival. An ER nurse in New York City works without proper protective gear to pay rent. A nursing home therapist in Utah does the same for her mortgage. A bus driver in Seattle used all his sick time surviving the virus. An immunocompromised cook at a Midwestern soup kitchen waits at home, watching the last days of his paid time off vanish. For some, a stimulus payment and temporary unemployment will cover a portion of the debt they accrue. But the risk is the same with or without a check.

The market has only worsened the devastating effects of the COVID-19 pandemic. Shutting it down has saved countless lives. Over twenty-six million people in the US are now jobless; for the majority who survive paycheck to paycheck, they are suddenly without means to live. Half a million people struggle to shelter in place without homes, while empty hotels light their windows. Thousands of hungry people arrive at food banks before dawn, while farmers destroy their own crops because they have no buyers. Prisoners in county jails and detention centers have no masks and have only cold water to wash their hands. The rate of COVID-19 infection is faster in the federal prison population than in Italy. The number of coronavirus fatalities in the US has taken the global lead. If the economy re-opens, unemployment may go down, but the death toll will go up.

The pandemic began the shutdown, but we will continue it—until we make a world that truly meets all of our needs. 

On May 1st, organize caravan demonstrations to show your love for the nurses, doctors, grocery store clerks, and all other essential workers risking their lives to provide people with the care they need. Hang white sheets out your car windows in solidarity with rent strikers who refuse to impoverish themselves for the sake of their landlord and bank when they are out of work. Join social-distance and car pickets at Whole Foods, Amazon warehouses, and other work sites where employees and contractors are struggling to improve their conditions. 

We make the economy. We can shut it down. We don’t need stay-at-home orders or the false liberty of re-opening the economy: we can decide, together, what is essential, and how to care for everyone. We can open a new world, not the economy.

From now on, we work for ourselves, we live for ourselves. 

This is only the beginning. We will have to create our own way out of this crisis. We’ve got to keep each other alive. No one else is going to do it.