capitalism

A health care worker treats another person in a space with signs reading "Welcome to Chiparawe Rapid Testing Center, on a pink background.

Posted March 29, 2023 Article

Fatal abstractions

Disease, death, and capitalist abstraction

by Sam Friedman

There are effective vaccines for COVID-19 and effective treatments for HIV/AIDS, but both remain global epidemics. Medical researcher Sam Friedman explains how the profit system is limiting the reach of life-saving medicines.

$Two illustrations sit side-by-side. The left illustration shows a punctured pipeline, with oil spilling out and covering grassy land and plants. Two workers' helmets float at the edges of the oil spill. Smoke arises from three oil frackers lining the horizon. In one of the smoke clouds, it reads ‘CAPITALISM.’ And in the oil spill, it reads ‘HURTS THE WORKER. HURTS THE PLANET.’ The right illustration shows a collage of imagery representing things harming the world with things that could help the world. This includes a sunflower plant destroying a bomb, plants growing out of a police car, mushrooms growing out of a spilled bucket of toxic liquid, a person holding a sword and wearing a t-shirt that says DEMILITARIZE.$

Posted March 19, 2023 Article

Anti-lamentation

A poem by Sam Friedman

by Sam Friedman

In this poem, Tempest member Sam Friedman considers how, through collective work, we can resist the apocalyptic threats of capitalism.