13 February 21
The “Reasonable Support” Principle
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13 February 21
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Robert Reich | Republican Voters Have Disturbing Beliefs
Robert Reich, Robert Reich's Facebook Page
Reich writes: "A new survey reveals disturbing beliefs in major portions of the electorate, particularly Republican voters."
— Over 60 percent of Republicans do not believe Joe Biden was legitimately elected
— 39 percent of Republicans agreed that “If elected leaders will not protect America, the people must do it themselves, even if it requires violent actions”
— 27 percent of white evangelicals said it was mostly or completely accurate to say Trump “has been secretly fighting a group of child sex traffickers that include prominent Democrats and Hollywood elites” (i.e. the QAnon conspiracy)
To be clear, a belief that political violence is necessary doesn’t automatically translate to actually committing political violence. But the fact that nearly 40 percent of Republicans are even open or supportive of it is a dangerous sign for the future of our democracy. Coupled with the finding that a staggering majority believe Joe Biden’s presidency is illegitimate, it’s a recipe for violence to take center stage in our political system for years to come. We must remain vigilant.
House impeachment managers watching the prosecution's display of video from the Jan. 6 assault on the Capitol during the trial on Monday. (photo: Erin Schaff/NYT)
ALSO SEE: Trump's Lawyers Offered an Attack
on Everything but the Evidence
5 Takeaways From the Trump Impeachment Trial as Closing Arguments Begin
Domenico Montanaro, NPR
Montanaro writes: "The second impeachment trial of now-former President Trump is all over but the closing arguments. They take place starting Saturday morning and the Senate could render a verdict as early as today."
Despite a compelling and extensive case made by the Democratic impeachment managers, the outcome still seems pre-determined. Trump is likely to be acquitted because not enough Republicans will side with Democrats for the two-thirds majority needed to convict — though a majority, including a handful of Republicans, are poised to do so.
This week was revealing, however. Here are five things we learned:
1. When the chips are down, grievance and partisanship are still the GOP's go-tos
Trump's defense took aim at Democrats with cries of partisan targeting.
It was, for lack of a better phrase, very Trumpy. Trump's defense largely set aside what was expected to be a narrow constitutional argument that a former president could not be tried for impeachment.
Instead, perhaps predictably, there was a healthy dose of angry whataboutism — with videos repeatedly showing Democrats using the word "fight" (despite its lack of relevance to Trump's culpability to the violence Jan. 6); the First Amendment was leaned on to say Trump had a right to say whatever he wanted (despite an impeachment trial not being a criminal proceeding but one to determine whether a president upheld his oath and a standard of conduct); and they even invoked "cancel culture" four times.
Making the argument this way was a choice. There were enough Republican senators who would have gone along with Trump's acquittal solely based on the narrow constitutional argument. But they still opted to go this route, which may have been an attempt to save and defend Trump's legacy — and to solidify his place as the head of the party.
2. The outcome is what it is, as a former president might say
Despite senators, at times, appearing to be moved by powerful videos they saw, and the praise many of them had for the Democratic impeachment managers, few, if any, additional Republicans (other than the handful expected) seemed moved to convict.
The Trump defense's approach likely worked with the overwhelming majority of Republican senators because they've been down this road before in the Trump years and have muscle memory to dismiss inquiries and criticism of the former president as a hoax or witch hunt or scam.
The outcome has always been somewhat pre-ordained, which is why the Trump team only took a few hours of their allotted 16 hours to make their rebuttal.
3. There are still a lot of questions about what Trump did and didn't do
Regardless of the fact that Trump is likely to be acquitted, there are still open questions about what Trump did or didn't do, knew or didn't know behind the scenes that day that could haunt him beyond this trial.
Trump's defense said Trump didn't know the danger Vice President Mike Pence was in — despite GOP Sen. Tommy Tuberville of Alabama, one of the most pro-Trump states in the country, confirming that he talked to the president on Jan. 6 and told him of the danger before Trump sent a tweet disparaging Pence.
In all of this, Pence was a target — because of Trump — for doing his constitutional duty to preside over the usually ceremonial counting of certified presidential election results from the states.
Trump's team not only denied that happened, it refused to answer what actions Trump took to make the violence stop. One of his lawyers, Michael van der Veen, went so far as to say, "It's not our burden to bring any evidence at all" and blamed Democrats for not doing an investigation to get the information.
Trump's lawyers also denied the impeachment managers' pre-trial request for Trump to testify — under oath.
4. New evidence showed how much danger lawmakers were in
Democrats presented a new, not previously seen before, video that clearly moved and disturbed many senators.
Utah Republican Mitt Romney said he hadn't realized just how close he was to the mob when he was shown on video running after being turned around by Capitol police officer Eugene Goodman.
Sen. Patty Murray gave a harrowing account Friday night of her own close brush. "They were pounding on our door and trying to open it, and my husband sat with his foot against the door, praying that it would not break in," she said on PBS NewsHour. "I was not safe. It was a horrific feeling, and it lasted for a long time."
The outcome may be pre-determined, but what was shown gave a fuller context of what happened Jan. 6 — for history.
5. Americans could have a new standard for their leaders in the future
Trump's behavior as president has grated against what was previously acceptable behavior from a president — belittling, confrontational and stoking cultural and racial division.
Trump used to joke that he could be so presidential, and we'd all be so bored. That was an acknowledgment that the way he was acting wasn't "presidential," it wasn't the accepted view of what a president should be. That lasted throughout his presidency, culminating in his refusal to concede and the lack of a peaceful transfer of power, which had distinguished the United States from far-less-free countries around the world.
Trump's defense had argued that convicting Trump would set a new, too-low bar for impeachment — one that Democrats could get caught up in next.
But Democrats warned that if Republicans continued to remain steadfastly against Trump's conviction, it would be essentially giving a "green light" for future odious conduct from presidents.
With Trump's likely acquittal on the horizon, lead Democratic impeachment manager Jamie Raskin summed up the danger this way:
"They [Trump's lawyers] are treating their client like he is a criminal defendant. They are talking about 'beyond a reasonable doubt.' They think we are making a criminal case here. My friends, the former president is not going to spend one hour or one minute in jail, but this is about protecting a Republic and articulating and defining the standards of presidential conduct. And if you want this to be a standard for totally appropriate presidential conduct going forward, be my guest. But we are headed for a very different kind of country at that point."
The fact is American politics is at a volatile moment. Look no further than what's happened in Georgia over the last few months. The same state that gave Congress a conspiracy believer, who harassed a mass-shooting survivor, also saw Democrat Joe Biden win the state in the presidential election and two Democrats win Senate races there that gave Democrats control of Congress.
There's no telling what happens next.
A patient hospitalized with COVID-19. (photo: BioSpace)
Here's How Many COVID Deaths We Can Blame on Trump's Terrible Response
Paul Blest, VICE
Blest writes: "Former President Donald Trump's response to the COVID-19 pandemic was a public health disaster. Now a new report in one of the world's most respected medical journals is attempting to quantify the human cost."
A new report says 40% of total COVID deaths could have been avoided.
The report, published by the Lancet, faults the Trump administration’s lack of preparedness around personal protective equipment (PPE) and its “non-existent oversight of infection control practices” for the deaths of nearly 3,000 healthcare workers alone.
It also says Trump’s decision to designate the meatpacking industry “essential” was a contributor to more than 45,000 COVID-19 cases, and the deaths of at least 239 meatpacking workers.
But perhaps most damning of all, the Lancet found that roughly 40 percent of the nation’s COVID deaths—as many as 188,000 people out of nearly 470,000—could have been avoided, something that the researchers directly blame on Trump’s pandemic response, or lack thereof.
“Even the best of countries have had deep problems with COVID, but we think there’s substantial shortfall because of Trump,” Dr. David Himmelstein, a primary care doctor, professor at the CUNY School of Public Health, and one of the report’s lead authors, told VICE News.
Reasons for that shortfall, according to Himmelstein, include Trump’s well-documented downplaying of COVID, his boosting of unproven crank treatments like hydroxychloroquine, and the Trump administration’s de-emphasis on public health, which included eliminating a pandemic unit within the National Security Council in 2018, less than two years before the COVID-19 pandemic hit the U.S.
The failure to respond effectively to COVID-19 has disproportionately affected people of color, increasing the life expectancy gap between Black and white people by more than 50 percent. Overall COVID mortality rates are as much as 3.6 times higher for people of color than non-Hispanic white people, according to the study.
Aside from the terrible initial response to COVID, Himmelstein also placed blame for the nation’s struggling vaccine rollout at Trump’s feet.
“We had a good eight months warning there would be a vaccine, and there was no planning for how to get it out,” he said. “We have now, in many parts of the country, people desperately looking for appointments... Planning would have averted that kind of waste and scrambling.”
The Lancet report alleges that Trump’s impact on public health was disastrous even before the pandemic. There were 22,000 extra deaths related to environmental and occupational factors in 2019 than there were in the last year of former President Barack Obama’s presidency, which the commission attributes to federal regulatory rollbacks.
But the report’s authors say the problem goes way beyond just the former president.
“We started out really looking at what Trump had done, and he has certainly done a lot wrong,” Dr. Steffie Woolhandler, another lead author on the report and a distinguished professor at the Hunter College School of Public Health, told VICE News. “But we looked at the health of the American people...and what we found is that it’s been four decades of government failure to support policies that support human health.”
The authors suggest an overhaul in the country’s public health infrastructure to fix the problem. In addition to giving the CDC more tools to fight systemic racism, they recommend transitioning to a Medicare for All system like the one championed by Sen. Bernie Sanders. (Himmelstein and Woolhandler are co-founders of the Physicians for a National Health Program, a doctor-led group advocating for Medicare for All.)
President Joe Biden has opposed such a bill, claiming it would cost too much. And until Medicare for All becomes a reality, Himmelstein said the U.S. should try to get to universal coverage regardless.
“At the minimum we need a universal healthcare program,” Himmelstein said. “It would be far more expensive, but if President Biden refuses to do single payer, we think the funding to do it in less efficient ways would be worthwhile.”
'The government estimates there are around 25,000 individuals who are waiting in Mexico under the policy.' (photo: John Moore/Getty Images)
Biden Administration to Allow 25,000 People Seeking Asylum Into US
Rebecca Morin and Rafael Carranza, USA TODAY
Excerpt: "The United States will begin allowing in migrants who sought asylum under the Trump administration but were forced to sit in Mexico as they awaited a hearing before a judge, the Biden administration announced Friday."
It was the latest step by President Joe Biden to roll back some of former President Donald Trump’s hardline immigration policies. But the announcement comes days after the White House said authorities will be turning away a vast majority of migrants seeking asylum at the border.
“As President Biden has made clear, the U.S. government is committed to rebuilding a safe, orderly, and humane immigration system,” Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas said in a statement.
But Mayorkas added that "changes will take time," especially given the pandemic, and he cautioned that those not eligible for coming into the United States under the change should not travel to the border.
"Due to the current pandemic, restrictions at the border remain in place and will be enforced,” he said.
The reprocessing for those who were subject to the Trump administration’s Migrant Protection Protocols will begin on Feb. 19. There will be three ports of entry where people with asylum cases can be reprocessed. DHS officials, who said this is phase one of tackling MPP, noted more ports of entry may be added later.
The government estimates there are around 25,000 individuals who are waiting in Mexico under the policy. Up to 300 people will likely be reprocessed daily at the three ports of entry, DHS officials said.
Although the Biden administration is not accepting most new asylum cases due to concerns with the COVID-19 pandemic, those who are going to be reprocessed from the MPP policy will be tested for COVID-19. The United States is working with Mexico, in addition to several international nonprofits, to identify those who qualify for reprocessing.
The COVID-19 tests will be issued through one of the international nonprofits and funded by the United States government, according to DHS officials.
Migrant Protection Protocols established in 2019
The Department of Homeland Security, in partnership with the Justice Department, rolled out the Migrant Protection Protocols on Jan. 29, 2019, at the San Diego-Tijuana border region. It was one in a series of measures that the Trump administration implemented to restrict asylum and crack down on unauthorized immigration at the U.S.-Mexico border.
On Biden's first day in office, the DHS announced it would immediately stop sending asylum seekers to Mexico under the "Remain in Mexico" policy as of Jan. 21. But the department emphasized that would only apply to new enrollments in the program.
Biden also recently signed an executive order to review the MPP policy.
Top officials like former acting Homeland Security Secretary Chad Wolf described the policy as a "game-changer." An agreement with the Mexican government has allowed U.S. border officials to send back more than 70,000 migrants to Mexico under the program, according to an analysis by the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse at Syracuse University.
TRAC data showed that 27,000 asylum seekers under the program had been regularly attending their hearings before the pandemic restrictions, while 12,000 more are awaiting a first hearing.
As of April, the first full month when COVID-19 restrictions on asylum at the border began, the U.S. government sent back at least 5,493 migrants to Mexico under the Migrant Protection Protocols, U.S. Customs and Border Patrol statistics showed.
In December, the nonprofit group Human Rights First updated its list of documented instances of violence, kidnapping and extortion of asylum seekers sent to Mexico under the Migrant Protection Protocols in the past two years. There are now over 1,300 entries.
Kennji Kizuka, a senior researcher who helped compile the list remotely by reaching out to shelters, attorneys and migrants themselves, said the true number is much higher.
Esmeralda Siu is the executive director for the Coalicion Pro Defense del Migrante, a collective of six migrant shelters in Baja California’s border with California. She welcomed Friday’s announcement about the processing of some asylum seekers under “Remain in Mexico.”
Since the program rolled out in Tijuana, the U.S. government has returned more than 8,100 asylum seekers to there under MPP, and another 6,900 to the neighboring border city of Mexicali, across the border from Calexico, according to TRAC.
“There are people that have been here since 2019, and other people who left or remain waiting. At the shelters we have people waiting for more than a year,” Siu said.
Based on information from DHS officials, these individuals who have had the longest wait will be prioritized for processing and parole into the U.S.
Although the Biden administration has not released the locations of the three ports of entry where processing will begin next week, San Ysidro in San Diego is essentially guaranteed to be one of them. It is the largest land border crossing at the U.S.-Mexico border and is where U.S. border officials first sent migrants under MPP.
Immigration advocates are hopeful
As Siu waits for more details about how processing will work and who will be eligible to go first, she said she hoped it would be well-managed and that the U.S. government would quickly send out accurate information for MPP participants on how to proceed.
“I hope that ... it is controlled and that there is no snowball effect. We have to be very precise and clear so we don’t have any collapses at the border,” she said. “Misinformation has caused a lot of conflict, and in reality some people who are irresponsible will mismanage that info and confuse migrants.”
That is a sentiment echoed by Taylor Levy, an immigration attorney based in El Paso, Texas, who has dedicated much of her time to providing legal advice, as well as accurate information to migrants she encounters, whether at the border bridges of Ciudad Juárez early last year or through WhatsApp messages and Facebook Live, post-pandemic.
“I felt like I could make much more of a difference being somebody who is trying to give honest understandable information to the migrants, because really we are fighting in a way the same marketing that is done by the coyotes and the smugglers, because people are very desperate,” Levy said.
The El Paso-Ciudad Juárez region has the largest concentration of asylum seekers returned to Mexico under the Migrant Protection Protocols.
Levy called Biden’s plan to begin processing some asylum seekers under MPP a “good faith effort.” But she added that more needed to be done.
She noted that Friday’s announcement is limited only to migrants who have “active” MPP cases, numbering about 25,000 migrants. It does not apply to nearly 33,000 migrants who were not present at their hearings or had an absentia ruling against them.
“I’m very eager to see if the administration makes any other announcements in the near future regarding people who have already lost their cases in MPP, because we know that it was fundamentally an unfair process, an unjust process, created by the Trump administration to make sure that asylum seekers did not have a fair day in court,” Levy said. “They were horrific conditions with little to no access to attorneys.”
Osbaldo Estupiñan Garcia, an asylum seeker from Cuba whom the Trump administration sent to Nogales in January 2020, also welcomed the news.
During the past year in Mexico, he has built a life for himself, working temporary jobs — the only type he’s able to find with his temporary humanitarian visa. He has moved in with a girlfriend from Nogales, along with her two children. After Biden’s election, they began having conversations about what they would once it is his turn to be processed.
“The wait is not easy,” he said.
However, he and other asylum seekers under MPP in Nogales might have to wait longer than most for their chance to be processed. The Arizona border was the last stretch where the Trump administration implemented “Remain in Mexico.”
Estupiñan Garcia said he had already seen lots of misinformation in WhatsApp and Facebook groups.
“There are a lot of people on social networks speculating that the border is open, and at the end of the day it’s a lie,” he said.
'The Fight for $15 movement now stands perilously close to winning one of the biggest worker-led rights victories in decades.' (photo: Kira Page/CoCo)
'Hopefully It Makes History': Fight for $15 Closes In on Mighty Win for US Workers
Dominic Rushe, Guardian UK
Rushe writes: "Fear was the overwhelming emotion Alvin Major felt when, on a chilly November morning in 2012, he went on strike at the Brooklyn KFC where he worked."
Fast-food workers will walk out on Tuesday, hoping to push through a minimum-wage raise to benefit tens of millions
“Everybody was scared,” said Major. He may have been fearful, but what Major didn’t know was that he was about to make American history – an early leader in a labor movement that some historians now see as the most successful in the US in 50 years.
Major was paid just $7.25 an hour as a cook at KFC, but the consequences of losing his job were dire, as his family was already struggling to make the next month’s rent. “Everybody was scared about going back to work,” he said. “Nobody visualized what this movement would come to.”
The New York strike by hundreds of majority Black and brown New York fast-food workers was, at the time, the largest in US history – but it would be dwarfed by what was to come. Two years later, strikes had spread across America, and fast-food workers in 33 countries across six continents had joined a growing global movement for better pay and stronger rights on the job.
In eight years, what became the Fight for $15 movement has grown into an international organization that has successfully fought for a rise in minimum wage in states across the US, redefined the political agenda in the US, and acted as a springboard for other movements, including Black Lives Matter. It now stands perilously close to winning one of the biggest worker-led rights victories in decades.
This Tuesday, fast-food workers will walk out again, hoping to push through a change that will affect tens of millions of American workers.
For Major, now 55, it all began in a hall in Brooklyn, where union and community activists had convened a meeting of fast-food workers to see what pressure they could bring on an industry notorious for its low wages and poor conditions, and a state that had shown those workers little interest.
With a platform to speak, the workers talked about “how you had to be on food stamps, get rent assistance, all these kinds of things, and we’re working for these companies that are making billions”, said Major.
At one point, a worker showed the burns on his arm he had suffered at work. In a show of solidarity, workers across the room others rolled up their sleeves to show their scars too. Even when injured on the job, workers said, they were too scared to take time off.
This was not how Major imagined America to be when he moved to the US from Guyana in 2000. “In our family, with 14 kids, my dad’s wife never worked a day. My dad used to work, he took care of us, we had a roof over our head, we went to school, we had meals every day, he had his own transportation.”
In America, “the greatest, most powerful and richest country in the history of the world”, he found “[that] you have to work, your wife has to work, when your kids reach an age they have to work – and still you could barely make it”.
Industry lobbying allied to Republican and – until relatively recently – Democratic opposition has locked the US’s minimum wage at $7.25 since the last raise in 2009. Now a raise to $15 looks set to be included in Joe Biden’s $1.9tn Covid relief package – although it will still face fierce opposition.
Even Biden, who campaigned on the raise, has expressed doubt about whether it can pass. But more progressive Democrats including longtime champion Senator Bernie Sanders are determined to push it through, and it remains in the House Covid relief bill.
The stakes are huge. The Congressional Budget Office said this week that 27 million Americans would be affected by the increase, and that 900,000 would be lifted out of poverty at a time when low-wage workers – and especially people of color – have suffered most during the pandemic. The CBO also said the increase would lead to 1.4m job losses and increase the federal budget deficit by $54bn over the next 10 years.
Other economists have disputed the CBO’s job-loss predictions – the Economic Policy Institute called them “wrong, and inappropriately inflated”. The long-running debate about the real cost of raising the minimum age will no doubt continue. What is certain is that Biden will face enormous political blowback if his campaign promise to raise the minimum wage falls so early in his presidency – a promise that during his campaign he argued was central to his plans to address racial inequality.
That backlash will also cross party lines – at least outside Washington. The US may be as politically divided as it has been since the civil war, but polling shows the majority of Americans support increasing the minimum wage no matter their chosen party. In November 60% of voters approved a ballot initiative to increase the minimum wage to $15 by 2026 even as they voted to re-elect Donald Trump.
More people voted for that ballot initiative than voted for either presidential candidate in the state. With Florida, seven states plus the District of Columbia have now pledged to increase their minimum wage to $15 or higher, according to the National Employment Law Project (Nelp) and a record 74, cities, counties and states will raise their minimum wages in 2021.
The movement, and this widespread support, has changed the political landscape, pushing Democratic politicians, including Biden, Hillary Clinton and the New York governor, Andrew Cuomo, to back a $15 minimum wage, against their earlier qualms.
Cuomo called a $13 minimum wage a “non-starter” in February 2015. By July, he was racing California to get it into law.
In the 2016 Democratic presidential primaries, Clinton went from supporting a raise to $12 an hour to $15 as Sanders made ground on the issue. Even Saturday Night Live parodied the pair arguing about who was most for a $15 higher wage.
Big companies including Amazon, Target and Disney have all moved to $15, or pledged to do so. One of Biden’s first executive orders called for federal contractors to pay employees a $15 minimum wage. The federal holdout would be the movement’s biggest win to date, but there is little arguing that they have made significant progress without it – not least for Alvin Major, who now has a union job earning over $17 an hour working at JFK airport and who says he is no longer worried about his bills.
For Mary Kay Henry, president of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), this is “the David and Goliath story of our time”. She puts the public support down to the “pervasiveness of underpaid, low-wage work”.
“Every family in America knows somebody that’s trying to make ends meet through a minimum-wage job. And the pandemic has revealed that essential work in a way that many people hadn’t noticed before, and they now understand how grocery store clerks, nursing home workers, janitors, airport workers, security officers, delivery drivers [and] fast-food workers are all people trying to do the very best job they can, and provide for their families.”
The SEIU has been a longtime funder and supporter of Fight For $15 and for Henry, the first woman to lead the SEIU, the fight for a higher minimum wage is just the beginning of a greater push for workers’ rights – not least the right to join unions, in a service sector where women and people of color make up a disproportionate number of workers.
“Eighty per cent of our economy is driven by consumer spending. Service and care jobs are the dominant sectors in the US economy, and we have to create the ability of those workers to join together in unions in this century, just like auto, rubber and steel were the foundation in the last century,” she said.
“If the US Congress can’t see what the American people are demanding, in terms of ‘Respect us, protect us, pay us’, then they’re going to have a political price to pay in 2022,” she added. “Our nation’s leaders need to get this done. Congress has used its rules to pass trillions of dollars in tax cuts for billionaires and massive corporations, so now it’s time for our nation’s leaders to give tens of millions of essential workers a raise.”
Backing Henry will be a younger generation of activists who cut their teeth in the Fight for $15 movement and have used it as a springboard into a political debate that is now centered around racial and economic justice. One of those leaders is Rasheen Aldridge, one of the first to take action when the Fight for $15 spread to St Louis, who was elected to Missouri state assembly last November.
Aldridge was working at a Jimmy John’s restaurant in 2013 when he was approached by a community organizer asking him about his pay and conditions. Aldridge had recently been humiliated by a manager who took pictures of him and a co-worker holding signs they were forced to make, saying they had made sandwiches incorrectly and had been 15 seconds late with a drive-through order. “It was so dehumanizing and just a complete embarrassment,” said Aldridge.
The organizer talked about the strikes in New York, Chicago and elsewhere, and suggested the same could happen in conservative Missouri.
“I thought he was crazy,” said Aldridge. But he also thought: “I have to do something. The worst thing that can happen is what? I get fired. And, it’s unfortunate, but I can find another job, another low-wage job, because there’s just so many of them unfortunately that exist in our country and our city.”
By 2014, Aldridge was a leader in the local minimum wage movement and building a network of contacts. Some of them were working in a nearby McDonald’s in Ferguson that was next to the Ferguson Market and Liquor store where Michael Brown, an 18-year-old who had graduated from high school eight days earlier, was shot dead by the police after leaving the store with an allegedly un-bought package of cigarillos.
Aldridge heard the police cars rushing to the scene. The shooting led to months of unrest and, coming after the high-profile killing of other Black people, was a turning point for the Black Lives Matter movement. “I remember I was in high school and I was wearing a hoodie and said, ‘I’m Trayvon,’” said Aldridge, referencing the 2012 killing of Trayvon Martin, a 17-year-old shot dead by a neighborhood watch guard in Sanford, Florida.
“I think after Ferguson, it really took off in a different way. I think the way we resisted in Ferguson was like no other,” said Aldridge. Aldridge became an early BLM organizer in Ferguson. “If it wasn’t for the Fight for $15, though, I’m not sure if I would have went out to Ferguson as quick as I did and would have been out there as long as I did.”
For the freshman representative, Fight for $15 and BLM are the same fight.
“You can’t really talk racial injustice without talking economic injustice,” he said. “You can’t forget that those same black workers still live in the same community that is oppressed, that is over-policed. Those workers were the same workers that also went to the streets of Ferguson, have protested, because they feel like Mike Brown could have been them, regardless if they was working at McDonald’s or if they was working at a healthcare facility,” said Aldridge. “It’s all connected.”
“Hopefully President Biden really follows through and does it, and makes it possible for everyone all across the state, all across this country, to make a livable wage. To not have so much burden on their back, especially in the midst of a pandemic.”
For labor historian Erik Loomis, a history professor at the University of Rhode Island and author of A History of America in Ten Strikes, the Fight for $15 is one of the most significant victories for workers in 50 years. Although he has caveats.
“It has been a huge success in conjunction with other issues in reshaping narratives around economic equality in America,” he said. From Occupy Wall Street to the Fight for $15 to the #MeToo movement to BLM, Loomis sees a building movement for greater equality. “For the first time in a half-century we are beginning to move in the right direction on this, in a way that, forget about Republicans, did not exist not only under Obama but under Clinton or Carter,” said Loomis. “This is the farthest left economic platform than anything you have seen since the 60s.”
But, as he points out, the $15-an-hour wage Major and others were fighting for in 2012 is worth less than it was back then due to inflation, and will be worth even less in 2025, when a lot of states aim to hit that level. Nor has the campaign managed to establish unions in many fast-food outlets – at least not yet. “The answer is you just keep pressuring,” said Loomis. “In other words, don’t be satisfied with $15. It is time for 20.”
Many workers caught up in the movement are exhausted. While their hard-fought successes have made a big difference, many have been hit hard by the pandemic. Now they are worried that some have made gains, others will be left behind.
Back in 2010, Adriana Alvarez was earning $8.50 an hour at McDonald’s in Chicago. The city voted to increase its minimum wage to $15 an hour by July this year and Alvarez is now on $15.15.
Like many restaurant workers, she has seen her hours cut during the pandemic. But she is hopeful about the future. Before Covid-19, when her wages went up, “I was able to fill up the fridge a little more,” she said. She took her son to Winter Wonderfest, a gigantic annual event where Chicagoans can temporarily forget the city’s bitterly cold winter and go ice skating and take carnival rides. “It was something I had never been to. He had a blast. He’s scared of heights. He said, mummy, I have to try it. I have to get rid of my fear.”
But the journey to her – somewhat – better life has been hard for Alvarez. Before the Fight for $15, she said managers regularly asked workers to work off the clock to finish jobs they hadn’t completed on their shift for no pay. There was more shouting, more hostility. That has stopped now. “They know we can show up with 50 people in a store,” she laughed.
Along the way, she has met senators, she has a picture with Sanders, been on a call with Biden, welcomed the pope to the US and met workers from different industries, from teachers to airport and healthcare workers, who are also fighting for a better deal. She too has been surprised that the fight has been so successful. When people first started telling her they wanted $15 an hour, she said she told them they were “crazy.”
“Management just has a way of knocking you down, making you feel useless, you are not worth $15,” she said.
Now, hopefully, she said “finally these politicians are doing what they should be doing. Last time it [the minimum wage] was raised was 2009. It’s about time. Everything else has been going up. People have to work two or three jobs just to get by.”
Does she feel like part of history?
“Hopefully it makes history,” said Alvarez. “But I don’t think I’m part of history. I’m tired, I’m tired of being mistreated, of being underpaid and overworked. We want that $15 and a union. I guess you don’t think about the whole history part until after it’s been done.”
Anger has grown in Myanmar since the coup that overthrew the country's civilian leaders. (photo: AFP)
How Myanmar's Popular Uprising Aims to Topple Military Rulers
Joshua Carroll, Al Jazeera
Carroll writes: "Starve the government of legitimacy and recognition; stop it from functioning by staging strikes; and cut off its sources of funding. That is the strategy emerging from a mass movement in Myanmar aimed at toppling the new military dictatorship."
Amid crackdown, protesters aim is to take away the coup leaders’ power by stopping all governance mechanisms from working.
As protesters defying the February 1 coup brave beatings, arrests, water cannon, and even live ammunition, activists hope a “no recognition, no participation” approach can sustain pressure even if demonstrations are stamped out with violence.
“The immediate aim is to take away the military’s power by stopping all of its governance mechanisms from working,” said Thinzar Shunlei Yi, who like many activists is now in hiding to avoid arrest.
“It will disable the military’s ability to rule.”
Myanmar’s fragile 10-year experiment in democracy was snuffed out in early February when soldiers arrested civilian leader Aung San Suu Kyi, President Win Myint, and other top officials in early morning raids as military chief Min Aung Hlaing seized power.
A civil disobedience movement began almost immediately and amassed support from broad swaths of society. Trains have ground to a halt, hospitals have closed, and ministries in the capital, Naypyidaw, are believed to be straining amid mass walkouts.
Many thousands including nurses, doctors, lawyers, teachers, engineers, farmers, railway staff, civil servants, factory workers and even some police officers, have gone on strike or defected in a bid to cripple the new military government.
Disrupting military’s business empire
In a statement published on a military Facebook page on Thursday, Min Aung Hlaing said “unscrupulous” people were inciting civil servants to leave work.
“Those who are away from their duties are requested to return to their duties immediately for the interests of the country and people,” he said.
The strikes are also disrupting parts of the military’s vast business empire. A copper mine in northern Sagaing region, jointly owned by the military and a Chinese company, has ceased operations after more than 2,000 workers walked out.
And hundreds of engineers and other staff working for Mytel, a telecoms operator part-owned by the military, have stopped work.
Calls for a boycott of products produced by army-owned companies have also gained momentum. Local business owners have destroyed cartons of cigarettes produced by the Virginia Tobacco Company, which is part-owned by Myanmar Economic Holdings Ltd, a military conglomerate.
Lim Kaling, a major Singaporean shareholder in the venture, announced he was divesting this week after facing pressure from activists at Justice For Myanmar and elsewhere.
Japanese brewer Kirin, meanwhile, has said it will withdraw from a joint venture with a military-owned beer company.
New connectivity
The movement’s tactics go further than a similar uprising did in 2007, when there were widespread street protests similar to those seen in recent days, but no coordinated efforts to hobble the military government with industrial action.
One difference today compared with 2007 is that many people in the formerly isolated country own smartphones and are online, allowing calls for civil disobedience to spread rapidly in the aftermath of the coup, even amid sporadic internet shutdowns.
Another is that, after a ban on trade unions was lifted in 2011, Myanmar has a young but tenacious workers’ rights movement with years of experience organising strikes.
Approximately 5,000 workers in Hlaing Tharyar, an industrial zone in the main city of Yangon, have joined the general strike, a union organiser who requested anonymity told Al Jazeera.
“I can’t say how long we’ll be on strike, but it will be until the abolition of the dictatorship,” she said.
Workers’ rights groups, joined by student activists, were among the first to protest in the streets on February 6, galvanising others who had been reluctant to march because of the military’s history of shooting protesters.
Civil servants risk jobs
Trade unions took the lead because they had no other option, the organiser said.
“Even under the democratically elected government, we didn’t have our rights, so under a dictatorship, we don’t have a chance.”
Myanmar’s civil servants, who have spent the last five years working for the only credibly elected government most people in the country have ever known, are also risking their livelihoods and their freedom to avoid a return to the dark days.
Than Toe Aung, deputy permanent secretary at the Ministry of Construction, announced he was joining the strike on Monday.
“I call on my colleagues to follow suit to help bring down the dictatorship,” he said in a statement posted to Facebook.
Staff from the ministries of investment, transport, energy and social welfare, among others, have also pledged not to return to work until power is handed back to Aung San Suu Kyi’s government.
Myanmar’s ambassador to the United States, Maung Maung Latt, said last week he is seeking asylum in the US to protest the coup, and urged other diplomats to follow suit.
On Thursday, staff from the Myanmar Economic Bank, which disburses government salaries, also joined the strike.
Threat of defections
But perhaps most worrying for the generals is the threat of defections from the military-controlled police force.
During a rally in Naypyidaw on Tuesday, a police lieutenant named Khun Aung Ko Ko broke ranks to join protesters.
“I am aware I will be put in jail with a long prison sentence if our fight for democracy does not succeed,” he wrote in a statement handed out at the demonstration afterwards.
“My sacrifice for the people and members of the police force, to fight for democracy and the fall of dictator Min Aung Hlaing, will be worth it.”
Another officer joined protesters in the coastal town of Myeik, while dramatic footage from Magwe in central Myanmar showed three riot officers leaving their lines to defend protesters from water cannon with their shields.
Then on Wednesday, 49 uniformed officers from the police department in Loikaw, the capital of eastern Kayah state, joined a march there with a banner that read, “No military dictatorship.”
The officers are now in hiding and the remaining members of the department are looking to arrest them, The Kantarawaddy Times reported.
Thinzar Shunlei Yi said she believed that not just police officers but also rank and file soldiers want to join the movement.
“I hope this is possible,” she said. “In the past few years, I’ve been contacted by different soldiers asking for help because their rights have been violated. They’ve been bullied, they’ve been harassed, they’ve been tortured. It’s brutal inside the military.”
Military crackdown
One of the key demands from protesters has been for the military to return power to Aung San Suu Kyi and her National League for Democracy party. But many activists, especially those from often ethnic minority groups who feel betrayed by the party, are pushing for more radical demands.
“Some people are demanding the military accept the 2020 election result and restore democracy,” said Maung Saungkha, a prominent freedom of expression activist, referring to a November 8 poll, which the NLD won in a landslide.
“If we accept the 2020 election, then we will still be under the military’s 2008 constitution, and with that constitution, coups will happen again and again,” he added.
“So, we need to negotiate with protesters about the strategy and a set of common demands.”
The military government’s crackdown has already begun. Dozens of protesters have been arrested and one young woman is on life support after police shot her in the head on Tuesday.
The military government is also making plans to impose a so-called “cybersecurity law” that would mean three-year prison sentences for speaking out against the government online.
Activists said the movement’s best hope of survival is solidarity.
“For this revolution to be successful, everyone needs to participate,” said the union organiser.
“Workers, students, even soldiers and the police. Everyone.”
A sea turtle. (photo: Lee Gillinwater/Pew Charitable Trusts)
If We Want to Clean Up the Oceans, We Have to Confront the Fossil Fuel Giants
Stuart Trew, Jacobin
Trew writes: "Plastic pollution is choking up the oceans and killing wildlife. It's the fossil fuel giants who are driving the growth of plastics, not demand from consumers."
We need a new approach to environmental regulation that reins in corporate polluters instead of enabling them.
hroughout 2019, we saw multiple variations on the same grim headline: “Dead Whale Found With 48 Pounds of Plastic in Belly.” “Dead Whale Found With 88 Pounds of Plastic in Belly.” “Dead Whale Found With 220 Pounds of Plastic in Belly.”
Every time, it served as a reminder of our government’s failure to do anything about disastrous levels of plastic pollution. Plastic bags, cups, straws, food containers, and consumer packages are choking up the world’s oceans and waterways.
Virtually all seabirds consume degraded microplastic, while discarded plastic goods relentlessly build up on our shores and in our landfills. In Canada, only 9 percent of plastic waste is recycled. What doesn’t get thrown out or end up as litter is exported in vast quantities to Asia, where it is often dumped or burned instead of recycled.
We need bold collective action to address this burgeoning environmental crisis. But that will mean breaking the cozy relationship between government regulators and big business so we can rein in the fossil fuel giants who are responsible for the growth of plastics.
Reusable Straws Are Not the Answer
A majority of Canadians recognize the plastic pollution crisis for what it is: a massive economic failure. It’s obvious that many of the products currently made out of plastic don’t have to be. Yet the stuff is unavoidable, even for the most informed and self-actualized consumer — the bedrock of the self-regulating global market.
In the case of plastic, this was a carefully planned outcome. The reusable-bag-toting locavores at your favorite farmer’s market are not actually making a dent in plastic consumption. In fact, they may even be making things worse. Plastic use is not going to decrease in a meaningful way if it is left up to individual consumer choice.
According to the Center for International Environmental Law, the plastics boom is a classic case of supply driving demand, not the other way around. Almost all plastic derives from fossil fuels. In the United States, the shale oil boom has fed into a plastics bonanza that oil and gas companies desperately want to draw out.
As countries finally attempt to decarbonize energy production and transportation systems, Big Oil companies such as Shell and ExxonMobil are doubling down on the production of plastics. If we want to solve this problem, we will have to stanch the flow of supply by banning the production, importation, and sale of unnecessary plastics.
The War on Red Tape (and the Planet)
Unfortunately, any attempt to ban production will run afoul of the regulatory regime that oversees international trade. Canada and the United States both crafted their strongest environmental protection legislation in the 1970s and ’80s, just before the neoliberal era got started.
In fact, this governmental activism played a significant part in motivating Reaganite transformations of the state. A whole science of “good regulatory practice” has grown up since then, founded on a paranoid fear that all forms of government action, no matter how well-intentioned, will either fail or end up leading society on a one-way path to Stalinism.
To this way of thinking, “good” regulation facilitates trade, growth, and business profits, while meeting limited and measurable environmental or public health objectives. In essence, regulation should only be put in place to meet changing market demands and drive innovation. “Good” regulation makes the global economy run more efficiently.
The Canadian proposal for managing plastic waste is a case in point. The Justin Trudeau government could have passed circular economy legislation that would include a rapid phaseout of unnecessary and harmful plastic goods and packaging, combined with strict enforcement to make sure companies aren’t skirting the rules.
Instead, it is merely proposing to add certain single-use plastics to a list of controlled toxic substances under the existing Canadian Environmental Protection Act, claiming that this designation will enable the government to act more quickly than a long legislative process would allow.
But as environmentalists have pointed out, this regulatory process still takes a long time, and the proposed plastics strategy will only affect a very limited number of products. The government chose this route in defiance of its own scientific assessment that found precautionary emergency measures to be justified.
A discussion paper outlining Canada’s “integrated management approach to plastic products” highlights the “important part” that plastics play in our lives. The paper notes that the non-recycling of plastic waste “burdens our economy,” but it is quick to point out that this waste represents “a $7.8 billion lost opportunity.” The goal is to achieve zero plastic waste — not by reducing plastic production, but by recapturing this lost value.
Rulemaking in Canada’s federal power structure can be complicated. The provinces are responsible for recycling programs and don’t like the federal government edging in on their jurisdictional turf.
However, this does not explain the market-oriented approach of Canada’s plastics management strategy. In fact, the federal strategy appears to complement oil-friendly Alberta’s plan to “lock in” its petro-industries by becoming a key North American plastics recycling hub.
Capturing Regulation
Canada’s plan to address the plastic pollution crisis while wearing kid gloves and clasping the hand of the fossil fuel industry is still too bold for some industry players. The Chemistry Industry Association of Canada says it understands that the toxics label is “just a designation for rulemaking, but it will be used as a reason by some campaigners to encourage people to stop using plastics.” Heaven forbid!
A week before Canada published its integrated management plan, a large group of mostly American oil, gas, and chemicals makers sent a letter to Mary Ng, minister of international trade, threatening a trade challenge under the recently minted North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) replacement deal, the United States–Mexico–Canada Agreement (USMCA, or CUSMA in Canada). They claimed that Canada’s plastics plan violates a USMCA chemicals annex tacked onto the chapter on technical barriers to trade. They requested the Canadian government not to release the discussion paper until further consultations with business had taken place.
In the chemicals annex, Canada, the United States, and Mexico agree that “the principal objective of regulating chemical substances and chemical mixtures is the protection of human health and the environment.” So far, so good. But the agreement qualifies that statement by adding that protective measures should not create “unnecessary economic barriers or impediments to technological innovation.”
However, Canada’s plastics plan aims to create new private-sector opportunities and encourage innovation in plastic products. While industry has no firm legal case under the USMCA, they can find added leverage in the agreement’s “good regulatory practices” chapter. All three countries are committed to removing “burdensome” rules as a precursor “to effective regulatory cooperation.”
In December, another chemicals industry letter to Canadian, Mexican, and US trade officials requested the development of a continental approach to chemicals management. The letter argues that while the USMCA environment chapter does call on each party to “take measures to prevent and reduce marine litter” (Article 24.12.2), it does not condone unilateral actions inconsistent with other parts of the agreement. It states further that
Regulatory approaches taken by one party — without consultation with the other Parties — can directly threaten valuable materials, material inputs, and products traded every day in North America, causing unintended consequences and commercial impacts across virtually every value chain.
These letters reveal what industry has in mind as the optimum harmonized regulatory space for chemicals and chemical products such as plastics — a set of rules that expands profit-making opportunities for the private sector. But these rules would most likely kill off regulatory leadership on plastic pollution from progressive federal or local governments.
To put it another way, this continental regulatory space would indeed be regulated, but that regulation would prove to be a dead letter when it comes to environmental hazards. When industry stands to benefit, on the other hand, it will be forceful and effective.
Making Regulation Effective
It will be important to see how both the Joe Biden administration and Trudeau’s government respond to this lobbying for standardized regulation of chemicals and plastic management across North America. However, even without that kind of international coordination, the current regulatory outlook in both countries is a serious problem.
Canada is currently drafting legislation that could integrate “regulatory efficiency and economic growth” into departmental and agency mandates. At a summit in Washington in 2018, Scott Brison, Canada’s then top regulatory official, explained that the goal of such legislation would be to “change the DNA” of government officials.
There are some areas, of course, where there is broad political agreement on the benefits of government action to foster efficient, fair markets in some products and services. But when it comes to the plastics industry, the government should be in the business of destroying markets instead.
In December, a prominent group of Senate Democrats sent a letter to then US trade representative, Robert Lighthizer, defending Canada’s right to reduce plastic waste. With the right pressure, and with a little bilateral goodwill, we can hope for the Biden administration to make some headway in rolling back regulatory capture.
By pooling their strength, Canadian and US environmental scientists, municipal and state-level governments, and other advocates of environmental protection could help produce a well-crafted, precautionary US-Canadian plan. As it happens, such a plan would also lower trade costs — albeit not in the way industry groups would like to see.
In both countries, domestic and bilateral approaches to regulation currently put business in the driver’s seat. One of Biden’s first executive orders seems like it might be a step in the right direction, but it is too early (and too vague) to tell. The Obama administration in which the new president served was deeply committed to regulatory “efficiency” and the international spread of OECD-backed “good regulatory practices.”
After decades in which big business and its political functionaries have equated all government regulation with “red tape,” it’s hard work making the case for these kinds of reforms. This field is also something of a blind spot for much of the Left. Even a modest step toward stronger environmental protections on plastics could set a strong positive example on both sides of the border.
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