Italy: The communists’ efforts in the coronavirus outbreak

Fight Back News Service is circulating the following statement from Italian communists.

Joint declaration of the Popular Front, the Italian Communist Party and the collective of “La Città Futura”

Italy, like many other countries, is facing a severe health emergency in these weeks. Many people are in deadly danger and suffering from coronavirus infection. Others are in isolation in their homes, waiting for a complete recovery. There have been hundreds of deaths so far. We wish to express our warmth and closeness to the families and communities affected.

We address our sincerest thanks to all those who work in health care facilities as elsewhere. Every day they expose themselves and commit themselves to protect public health and the functioning of services to the citizens. We extend our sincere solidarity to the many who continue to work in the current challenging conditions.

Our National Health System, our economy and our society face unprecedented pressure from the post-war period to the present. We shall not underestimate the commitment by the whole country to cope with the emergency: it is indeed a proof of the vitality of the Italian society that we shall be proud of.

As communists, we carry now more than ever the responsibility to play a leading role, which means primarily to participate in the collective effort to face the emergency and overcome it.

Our militant community is at the forefront in helping to spread awareness of individual responsibility; in making the containment measures ordered by the authorities effective; and in carefully following the hygienic instructions necessary to avoid the further spread of the contagion. Each one of us feels the responsibility of participating in the prevention, and we must discourage any irrational behavior. The non-compliance to the measures opens the way to dangerous mass psychosis that multiplies the infection.

In recent decades, communists have been among the very few to fight against cutbacks in public health care. We have called to fight against the model of ‘differentiated autonomy’, which promotes a de facto privatization by fostering ‘subsidiarity’ with local and regional authorities. The events of these days dramatically show the validity of our concerns. Two dramatic examples are the institutional disorder created by Regions-State overlapping competences, and the rush to mobilize the best energies of the country to recover the lost ground in the medical garrison of the territory.