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13 March 21
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Charles Pierce | Those of Us Unaccustomed to Seeing Progressives With Their Act Together Are Getting a Little Dizzy
Charles Pierce, Esquire
Pierce writes:
Organized labor has found renewed strength in Alabama and on Capitol Hill.
his week, as momentum continued to build behind some strategy to get the filibuster out of the way of further improvements in the national condition, the AFL-CIO weighed in on the side of doing away with it entirely, and one of the stated reasons the AFL-CIO gave marked an important moment in plainspoken politics.
The Workers First Agenda—investment, democracy and economic justice—is the agenda that President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris ran on. It is the agenda that working people have fought for. And it is the agenda that our nation voted for. It is an agenda that cannot be delayed or denied. The very survival of our democratic republic is at stake.
And standing in its way is an archaic Senate procedure that allows the minority to block the majority—the filibuster. An artifact of Jim Crow. A creature of white supremacy. A procedure that was said to encourage robust debate but has turned into an instrument of government paralysis. A tool used by those seeking to preserve the social, economic and political status quo, that the AFL-CIO has long opposed, as a matter of principle as undemocratic and rooted in racism.
That the union felt comfortable stating this so baldly is a measure of the moment. In 2015, the AFL-CIO committed itself to confronting the bleaker racial episodes in its history. The fact that the filibuster as a tool of systemic racism is the union’s first rationale for killing it off can be seen as a product of that effort, especially since the precipitating factor for the statement itself is the PRO Act, recently passed in the House, a landmark piece of pro-labor legislation that does for organized labor what the American Rescue Act did for social-welfare law. From NPR:
Here are five provisions in the PRO Act:
1. So-called right-to-work laws in more than two dozen states allow workers in union-represented workplaces to opt out of the union, and not pay union dues. At the same time, such workers are still covered under the wage and benefits provisions of the union contract. The PRO Act would allow unions to override such laws and collect dues from those who opt out, in order to cover the cost of collective bargaining and administration of the contract.
2. Employe[r] interference and influence in union elections would be forbidden. Company-sponsored meetings — with mandatory attendance — are often used to lobby against a union organizing drive. Such meetings would be illegal. Additionally, employees would be able to cast a ballot in union organizing elections at a location away from company property.
3. Often, even successful union organizing drives fail to result in an agreement on a first contract between labor and management. The PRO Act would remedy that by allowing newly certified unions to seek arbitration and mediation to settle such impasses in negotiations.
4. The law would prevent an employer from using its employee's immigration status against them when determining the terms of their employment.
5. It would establish monetary penalties for companies and executives that violate workers' rights. Corporate directors and other officers of the company could also be held liable.
Of course, the filibuster stands in the way of passage in the Senate, just as it stands in the way of the For the People Act, which takes dead aim at voter-suppression laws, many of which are explicitly racist in their application and effect. In its demand for an end to the filibuster, the AFL-CIO’s statement ties these two measures together as twin weapons against intractable racial and economic inequality. And, for the first time in a long while, the President of the United States is staunchly, vocally pro-labor. He already has lined up with the striking Amazon workers in Alabama, the first serious field test of the renewed strength of organized labor. From The New York Times:
Nearly 30 years later, Mr. Richardson’s penchant for agitation has not faded. He’s one of the workers seeking to unionize an Amazon warehouse outside Birmingham, Ala., in a campaign that has targeted one of the world’s most profitable companies and its billionaire chief executive, and that has been invigorated by a wave of support from prominent politicians, including President Biden. “I couldn’t believe he said something,” Mr. Richardson said of Mr. Biden’s video message last week in which he affirmed workers’ rights and warned against corporate intimidation. “It matters. It eased minds that might be worried about losing their job.” Mike Foster, one of the lead organizers for the union, was less surprised. “We’ve been waiting on him,” he said.
That the president is, at the moment, the primary Democratic impediment to doing something about the filibuster has a lot of people waiting, too. Even Joe Manchin is allegedly open to making these guys hold the floor while engaging in this absurd ritual. Those of us unaccustomed to progressive politics having this much of its act together are getting a little dizzy.
Sen. Kyrsten Sinema questions witnesses during a hearing on Capitol Hill in 2019. (photo: Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)
How the Filibuster Became the Biggest Threat to American Democracy
Paul Blest, In These Times
Blest writes:
“Kill Switch” author Adam Jentleson traces the history of the Senate procedure and explains why Democrats preserve it at their peril.
en. Joe Manchin (D‑W.V.) offered a ray of hope for President Joe Biden’s nascent administration March 7 during an interview with Chuck Todd on Meet the Press.
Asked whether he’d be willing to exempt certain forms of legislation from the filibuster — which functionally allows any senator to “veto” a bill that doesn’t have a 60-vote majority of support — the mercurially moderate Manchin answered: “If you want to make [the filibuster] a little bit more painful — make him stand there and talk — I’m willing to look at [it].” (Manchin then reiterated his commitment to the “involvement of the minority [party].”)
Despite winning full control of the federal government for the first time since 2008, Democrats face a firm limit on how much they can accomplish in office. So long as Democratic senators like Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema (Ariz.) cling to the arcane Senate tradition of filibustering, the party is unlikely to pass major legislation on healthcare, immigration, infrastructure and more.
Adam Jentleson knows the stakes all too well. As the deputy chief of staff to former Democratic Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (Nev.), Jentleson had a front-row seat to the Republican Party’s obstructionism during the Obama years, from basic gun reform (which Republican Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (Ky.) helped defeat in the wake of the Sandy Hook massacre) to the nomination of Merrick Garland to the Supreme Court (which McConnell, again, helped defeat).
Now, Jentleson has written a book about the filibuster, “Kill Switch.” In it, he explores the ways in which this parliamentary procedure has been used by reactionaries throughout America’s history as an instrument to bludgeon democracy. Over the phone, Jentleson spoke with In These Times about how Biden’s history in the Senate could inform his presidency, where Democrats went wrong under President Barack Obama and why they must correct course.
The following interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Paul Blest: Part of the reason the filibuster is so dangerous is that few people understand how it works. Can you explain what it is?
Adam Jentleson: Senate rules technically require only a majority to pass legislation, but the application of the filibuster raises that threshold to 60 votes. In the past, you had to stand on the floor and try to persuade the public to come over to your side. You’d be accountable for your opposition. None of that happens today. All it takes to kill a bill is an email or a conversation in the hallway. This is a recent development that’s only really become the accepted norm in the last few decades and especially under Mitch McConnell.
PB: You trace the origins of the filibuster to the 19th century. How has the very threat of its use become enough to kill legislation?
AJ: Two centuries of power plays and procedural developments with unintended consequences have led us here. It wasn’t a conscious decision. From the very beginning of the Republic, rich, white, reactionary conservatives have sought to increase their power. The filibuster has been their project since the days of John Calhoun, who was the leading advocate for slaveholders in the antebellum Senate and sort of the spiritual godfather of the Confederacy. Calhoun and his ilk thought that the Madisonian system did not give enough power to minority factions to veto the will of the majority. They invented the filibuster to achieve that aim, and it has become more powerful than ever.
PB: The book explores how Sen. Henry Clay valiantly fought the filibuster. When did it gain acceptance from those who weren’t so explicitly reactionary?
AJ: It’s never been fully accepted. There are still a large number of senators fighting against it. But I would say that the filibuster was pursued more frequently after the 1970s. Prior to that, it was used almost exclusively to stop the expansion of civil rights. Then the Senate began experimenting a bit more with other kinds of legislation until it was filibustering a few dozen bills a year by the1990s and early 2000s. Those numbers skyrocketed after McConnell became Senate majority leader.
What I want to underscore is that, at every point in its history, there has been a substantial number of senators who wanted to do away with the filibuster. Henry Clay, the Great Compromiser, was the first, but folks like Henry Cabot Lodge and Nelson Aldrich — Republicans and scions of the moneyed establishment on the East Coast — launched a separate bid in the 1890s. The filibuster has always had its discontents.
PB: “Kill Switch” opens with an emotional anecdote about the filibuster derailing the Manchin-Toomey gun bill that had gained support from the parents of Sandy Hook. Did you realize in that moment how difficult it would make passing any kind of progressive legislation?
AJ: That moment and the 2016 election bookended an awakening of sorts. The Manchin-Toomey amendment showed how Kafkaesque and incapable of responding to basic challenges the Senate had become, but it seemed like things were going to get better, even after Republicans blocked Merrick Garland’s nomination to the Supreme Court. Most people predicted that Hillary would win and that Democrats would retake the Senate — that they’d have the chance to right a lot of those wrongs. Watching Republicans benefit from this gridlock made me realize that things had really gone awry.
PB: Republicans like to say that Democrats were the ones who “ruined the filibuster” because they used the nuclear option for executive orders and judicial nominees under Obama. Did Sen. Harry Reid or anyone else in the Democratic leadership consider nuking the procedure altogether?
AJ: To put it bluntly, we didn’t have the votes and we weren’t even close, so it wasn’t really a topic of conversation. There have always been senators advocating for it, but it was just out of the realm of possibility. It was hard enough to get the votes to go nuclear on nominations, and I don’t think Sen. Reid himself would have supported getting rid of the legislative filibuster in 2013.
I understand why everyone is freaking out about Sens. [Joe] Manchin and [Kyrsten] Sinema now, but we’re in a better spot than we were then. I think that we’re in shouting distance of having the votes to get rid of the filibuster. People realize just how dysfunctional the Republican Party has become. There was a feeling in 2012, after Obama was reelected and Democrats did well in the House and Senate elections, that the fever was going to break and the Tea Party fad was going to pass. It took several years to realize that wasn’t happening, and by then it was too late.
I vividly remember the 2014 midterms. There were a lot of Democrats who believed Harry Reid’s iron-fisted Senate leadership was the reason the body had grown so dysfunctional. Republicans did a good job of gaslighting everybody about it at the time, when in fact [Republicans] were dead set on obstruction.
PB: One of the arguments you hear from even liberal supporters of the filibuster is that it can stop the GOP from carrying out some of the worst parts of its agenda. Why are you less convinced?
AJ: The courts. [Laughs]
There are really two things to consider: There’s not a lot of evidence that the filibuster has played a significant role in slowing the Republican agenda. Republicans simply don’t have the votes to pass a lot of bad stuff that they advocate for. A good example of this is the repeal of Obamacare, which they made their number one priority for seven years. When push came to shove, they were unable to get even a majority of votes to repeal it. They also tried to do it through budget reconciliation, so the filibuster wasn’t any use to Democrats anyway.
I also think that episode showed that benefits are very hard to take away once they’re in place. It’s politically unpopular to repeal those things and to take away people’s rights. The easiest way to do it is through the courts, and most of the things progressive care about are vulnerable to being struck down. The only way to stop that is to pass more and better legislation that can help people solve the challenges they face. If we leave the filibuster in place, we won’t be able to pass the legislation we need, and Republicans will just get rid of it when it suits their purposes in the future. If McConnell is working with a Republican president with whom he’s better aligned, he’ll jettison the filibuster immediately and jam through whatever that president wants, like he did with Amy Coney Barrett a few weeks before the election.
PB: It ’s striking to me that Joe Biden was in the Senate for 36 years, three times as long as Lyndon B. Johnson before him. How do you think his time there and his work as Obama’s vice president will inform his approach to the filibuster? Do you see him evolving?
AJ: I have a lot of hope that he will. If you read some of the things he’s said, he seems open to that conversation if Republicans are obstructionist. Clearly, he would rather get things done on a bipartisan basis, but I think his early actions have shown that he’s more focused on delivering results. And I think that’s the right approach.
As far as Biden’s experience in the Senate goes, we need to remember that he came up during an age defined by politicians like [Mike] Mansfield and [Robert] Byrd. It was a glorious period of bipartisanship, but it was also anomalous — particularly with regard to the filibuster. Both sides used it equally, albeit conservatives more effectively than progressives. It wasn’t like the previous era, when the filibuster was used to block civil rights legislation.
McConnell has conducted an experiment in full view of the public, and we’ve learned that systematic obstruction produces enormous political benefits for Republicans, with virtually no downside. That has fundamentally changed the Senate and how Democratic leadership treats the filibuster. I can see Biden trying to bring things back like the Mansfield era, but it’s just not possible anymore. Senators have learned how effective obstruction can be, and they’re going to continue to pursue it.
PB: It does seem as though the $15 minimum wage is dead on arrival if Democrats don’t ditch the filibuster. Short of killing it outright, is there anything that can be done to break its lock on the Senate?
AJ: There are a number of reforms that we could use as off-ramps. I also think holdouts like Manchin and Sinema will feel the pressure of their colleagues who are up [for re-election] in 2022 and don’t want to go to their voters empty-handed. There are a lot of good things in this reconciliation bill, but you can’t go from April 2021 to November 2022 with a string of failures. I think about somebody like Mark Kelly, Sinema’s fellow senator in Arizona. I seriously doubt that she’s going to leave him empty-handed.
The same is true of the White House. The filibuster is going to prevent it from passing all kinds of legislation. Civil and voting rights are essential for the survival of the Democratic Party, and neither has a chance of passing through budget reconciliation. There’s no way to go over, around or under that issue. You just have to go through it.
PB: So how do you rally public support to change something so arcane and inscrutable to the general public?
AJ: I think you keep it attached to popular issues. You need to explain to people what it’s blocking because most don’t have the luxury of caring about Senate process and procedure. They want to know what their elected representatives are doing to help them with the challenges they face in their daily lives. And that’s where I think the public’s focus on results can be a positive thing for Democrats. If they go to voters and say, “we wanted to raise your minimum wage, but Republicans blocked us,” that’s not an effective message. But if they say, “We wanted to raise the wage and Republicans blocked us, so we reformed our rules in order to pass it. Here’s your higher wage,” voters will respond, “Great, thank you.” And when Republicans yell and scream about reforming the rules, the public will not care.
A demonstrator holds a sign with the image of Breonna Taylor. (photo: Jason Connolly/AFP/Getty Images)
A Year After Breonna Taylor's Killing, Family Says There's 'No Accountability'
Brakkton Booker and Rachel Treisman, NPR
efore Breonna Taylor's name became synonymous with police violence against Black Americans, she was an emergency medical technician in Louisville, Ky.
The 26-year-old Black woman's friends and family say she was beloved, and relished the opportunity to brighten someone else's day.
Exactly one year ago, Louisville police gunned her down in her home. Now, her name is a ubiquitous rallying cry at protests calling for police reforms, and many social justice advocates point to her story as an example of how difficult it can be to hold police accountable for violent acts.
The Louisville incident unfolded during a botched narcotics raid, when officers forced their way into her apartment in the early morning hours of March 13, 2020. Taylor was not the target of the raid and the suspect police were searching for was not at Taylor's home.
A year after Taylor's death, none of the officers who fired their service weapons — a total of 32 rounds — face criminal charges directly over Taylor's killing. At least three officers with connections to the raid have been terminated from the force.
In September, the city of Louisville announced a $12 million settlement in the wrongful death lawsuit filed by Taylor's family, which also included several police reforms.
"Her death has ignited a movement in Louisville and the nation for racial justice, sending thousands into our streets and cities all across the country and the world all crying out for justice for Breonna," Louisville Mayor Greg Fischer said at a press briefing announcing the settlement.
City officials have also banned no-knock warrants.
The push for justice continues
But many advocates believe justice has not been done, citing the lack of criminal charges and saying they want to see broader criminal justice reform.
Demonstrators plan to gather in downtown Louisville on Saturday to mark the anniversary of Taylor's death, member station WFPL reported. Activists say they hope to keep her memory alive and renew calls for justice, after the winter dampened on-the-ground protests.
Some advocates are calling for Kentucky's Republican-controlled legislature to pass "Breonna's Law," which would ban no-knock warrants statewide.
The Kentucky Senate passed a bill late last month restricting such warrants in certain situations, which many activists and Democratic lawmakers say does not go far enough. They had introduced a similar bill in the House in August, called "Breonna's Law," but the House Judiciary Committee voted on Wednesday to move forward with the Republican-sponsored proposal, according to WFPL.
Louisville Democratic Rep. Attica Scott, the primary sponsor of Breonna's Law, told NPR's All Things Considered on Friday that committee officials have said they will consider proposed amendments that would bring the two bills further into alignment.
She also said she had written a letter to newly-confirmed Attorney General Merrick Garland this week, asking him to fully investigate Taylor's killing.
"Justice has not been served," Scott said. "Folks on the front line have been very clear that they're continuing to call for all of the officers involved in Breonna Taylor's murder to be fired, arrested and charged for her murder. They have not wavered from those demands."
She said she will be attending the gathering on Saturday, describing it as one of "love, community and solidarity." Local activists have characterized it similarly.
"To the LMPD and the mayor and everyone involved, we're still going to keep applying pressure," protest leader Rosie Henderson told WFPL. "But as a whole in the movement, we want to unify. That's a day that we're going to come together and unify as one."
A year later, the pain is still fresh for Taylor's loved ones.
Ju'Niyah Palmer, Taylor's sister, wrote on Instagram earlier this year that her heart was "heavy because we are only 2 months away from me not hearing, seeing or cuddling you for a whole year."
Her mother, Tamika Palmer, recently filed complaints with the police department's professional standards unit against six officers for their role in the investigation that included the raid. In an Thursday interview with a Louisville CBS affiliate, Palmer expressed her frustration with the lack of accountability in the case and called on the community to continue demanding justice.
"I can't believe it's a year later and we're still just asking people to do the right thing," she said. "Not to say all officers are bad, but there's no accountability."
No criminal charges in Taylor's death
Last September, after months of protests in and around Louisville, the city was braced to hear whether a grand jury would hand down criminal indictments for LMPD officers Brett Hankison, Jonathan Mattingly and Myles Cosgrove.
At a press briefing Sept. 23, Kentucky Attorney General Daniel Cameron announced no charges directly tied to Taylor's death. The grand jury handed down three criminal counts of wanton endangerment to Hankison, over shooting through Taylor's apartment into a neighboring residence.
The grand jury did not charge Mattingly, who shot six times, and Cosgrove, who fired a total of 16 rounds, including what federal investigators determined to be the round that ultimately killed Taylor.
Cameron, whose office took over as special prosecutor in the case in May, said at the press conference that both Mattingly and Cosgrove "were justified in their use of force."
After the two officers forced their way into Taylor's apartment, her boyfriend Kenneth Walker fired on them. Walker, a licensed gun owner, has maintained that he did not hear the officers announce themselves before entering and mistook them for intruders. He fired a shot, which hit Mattingly in the leg.
After Mattingly was struck, officers returned fire, according to officials.
Complicating matters is the absence of video evidence in the case.
Cameron, Kentucky's first Black attorney general, told reporters that "evidence shows that officers both knocked and announced their presence at the apartment."
He cited the officers' statements and one additional witness as evidence, but also acknowledged there is no video or body camera footage of the officers executing the search warrant.
Cameron's announcement sparked fresh outrage and demonstrations in Louisville, Atlanta, Denver, and Portland, among other cities.
It added fuel to an already tense period in American society, where national protests focusing on racial justice inequities became a near-daily occurrence following high-profile police incidents with Black Americans, including George Floyd, Rayshard Brooks, Jacob Blake, Daniel Prude and others who were killed or seriously injured.
Days after Cameron's press conference, Taylor's mother, Palmer, said she was "reassured ... of why I have no faith in the legal system, in the police, in the law. ... They are not made to protect us Black and brown people."
"It's kind of ironic when you think about the message that is being sent from this grand jury ruling," Taylor family attorney Benjamin Crump said in September.
"It's like they charged the police for missing shooting bullets into Black bodies. But not charging the police for shooting bullets into Black bodies," Crump said.
In that same press conference, Crump raised questions about what evidence Cameron presented on behalf of Taylor to the grand jury.
He also publicly called for the release of the transcripts of the proceedings, something that is extremely rare in grand jury cases. The court did so several weeks later, after some jurors took issue with Cameron's explanation for why no officer was directly charged in Taylor's death.
Officer says Taylor shooting was "not a race thing"
In October, Mattingly characterized the Taylor incident as tragic, but said it was different from other recent killings of Black Americans.
"It's not a race thing like people try to make it to be," Mattingly said in an interview with the ABC News and Louisville's Courier Journal. "This is not relatable to George Floyd, this is nothing like it. It's not Ahmaud Arbery. It's nothing like it."
"These are two totally different type incidences. This is not us going, hunting somebody down, this is not kneeling on a neck. This is nothing like that," he said.
Mattingly also vehemently denied that he is racist.
Three LMPD officers fired, Mattingly exonerated
Hankison was terminated from LMPD in June, after the department found he fired "wantonly and blindly" into Taylor's apartment.
In January, some nine months after Taylor's killing, the department formally terminated Cosgrove and another officer connected to the incident.
Both Cosgrove and Detective Joshua Jaynes, who secured the warrant for the raid on Taylor's home, were found to have violated department protocols, according to the termination letters made public on Jan. 6.
LMPD officials said that for Jaynes, "the evidence in this case revealed a sustained untruthfulness violation based on information included in an affidavit completed by you and submitted to a judge."
LMPD said Cosgrove violated the department's protocols on use of deadly force and failed to activate his officer-worn body camera.
"The shots you fired went in three different directions, indicating you did not verify a threat or have target acquisition," the letter to Cosgrove stated. "In other words, the evidence shows that you fired wildly at unidentified subjects or targets located within the apartment."
In that same batch of documents, LMPD also said that Mattingly, who was shot during the raid, was exonerated on both counts of violating department procedures on use of deadly force and de-escalation. It added, "no disciplinary action taken and the complaint will be dismissed."
The disciplinary documents were released the same day Fischer, the Louisville mayor, formally announced that Erika Shields would be the city's next permanent police chief.
Shields resigned her post as Atlanta's police chief in the immediate aftermath of the killing of Rayshard Brooks, a Black man who was shot in the back during an encounter with white officers in a Wendy's parking lot in June.
Union workers at a rally. (photo: AP)
The PRO Act Could Do More Than Revive Unions
Sarah Jones, New York Magazine
Jones writes:
mericans like unions, but very few belong to one, a discrepancy that places the U.S. labor movement in a precarious state. In 2017, only 10.7 percent of all Americans belonged to a union, but that same year, a PBS NewsHour poll found that nearly half of all Americans said they’d join a union if they could. Union membership hasn’t budged much since then, even as overall support for unions reached its highest level in a decade — 65 percent of Americans polled by Gallup in 2020 said they approved of unions, up from a low of 48 percent in 2010.
A gap this wide indicates a serious problem. If Americans like unions and want to join them but aren’t, it’s likely because they can’t. Fortunately, a possible fix awaits: The Protecting the Right to Organize (PRO) Act would mark the biggest expansion of collective-bargaining rights in decades. President Biden has said he supports the bill, and he may soon be in a position to make good on that support. The bill passed the House with bipartisan support late on Tuesday evening, and is headed now to the Senate.
Below, a brief outline of the PRO Act. What is it, exactly, and why should it matter to the 90 percent of Americans who don’t belong to a union? The answers, supporters say, are key to President Biden’s “build back better” agenda — and to a more equitable country.
What does the PRO Act do?
The act “modernizes and updates a lot of the loopholes and the brokenness of U.S. labor law,” explained Ryan Kekeris, an organizer for the International Union of Painters and Allied Trades, or IUPAT. Since Franklin Delano Roosevelt signed the National Labor Relations Act in 1935, business groups and conservative lobbyists have worked with great success to hollow out and weaken its provisions. “Right-to-work” laws in various states require unions to represent all workers on a given jobsite, whether or not those workers choose to pay dues. That harms unions financially, drives down union membership, and, according to a handful of studies, depresses wages for all.
If it becomes law, the PRO Act would also prevent employers from misclassifying workers either as independent contractors or as supervisors, which excludes them from many protections of the National Labor Relations Act. That provision worries some freelancers, who believe they’ll be forced to unionize, or that companies will stop working with them. Those doomsday scenarios aren’t likely to occur, as labor lawyer Brandon Magner recently pointed out in his newsletter, Labor Law Lite. The PRO Act concerns itself with a narrow question: “whether certain workers possess rights” under the National Labor Relations Act, including “the right to strike, collectively bargain, and engage in various other ‘concerted activities’ for ‘mutual aid or protection.’” That doesn’t mean a freelancer writer will automatically lose work. Nor would they suddenly find themselves forced into a union overnight; Magner writes that “a demonstrated majority of their freelancing-colleagues at a website” would have to push for it.
Employers would also have a harder time pressuring workers against forming a union, because, as matters stand now, employers “can make you spend more or less all day long sitting in captive audience meetings with an anti-union consultant, or a manager or supervisor, where they never stop telling you how this is a bad decision that could adversely affect the company,” Kekeris said. The PRO Act bans such meetings. It would also prohibit employers from permanently replacing striking workers with non-union labor, thus removing another key source of pressure on unionized labor. Employers that violate existing legal provisions by coercing or retaliating against workers who organize would also face stiffer penalties for doing so.
Can it pass?
The PRO Act passed the House with bipartisan support. But it may face a harder road in the Senate, where a virtually certain Republican filibuster could block its passage. Though moderate senators, including Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona, have both said they don’t want to abolish the filibuster, some voices within labor are urging them to reconsider.
Kekeris says his union, IUPAT, believes it’s time for the filibuster to go. “The Democratic Party controls the chambers. They control the presidency. If they cannot get the PRO Act passed with a simple majority then it is up to them to figure out how to do it,” he said. “We consider the end of the filibuster to be vital.” IUPAT isn’t alone, either. In a press release, the Communication Workers of America urged senators “to stop hiding behind outdated rules and procedures like the filibuster.” The executive council of the AFL-CIO also released a statement, saying that if the PRO Act proves impossible to pass with the current Senate rules in place, it will call for “swift and necessary changes.”
Should any of this matter to non-union workers?
If the business of getting the PRO Act passed knocks a hole in the filibuster, it’ll remove a substantial obstacle to the democratization of the Senate. That possibility reveals another, under-considered consequence of the PRO Act: It’s good for democracy. Democracy is an expansive idea, encompassing more than electoral politics or arcane Senate procedure. Unions don’t exist to elect Democrats. They exist so that workers can bargain better conditions for themselves — an act of workplace democracy that reinforces the right to free association and the right to free speech.
“I would say that America’s workplaces, absent a union contract, are probably the least democratic spaces we have in our society,” said Lane Windham, a Georgetown University professor and the author of Knocking on Labor’s Door: Union Organizing in the 1970s and the Roots of a New Economic Divide.
The bill will also have other, far-reaching ramifications. Unions, after all, are simply made up of workers; bills that are good for the former tend to be good for the latter. Workers who face racial and gender discrimination on the job could benefit the most from the PRO Act’s provisions. In unions, said Celine McNicholas of the Economic Policy Institute, “workers of color are not experiencing the same sort of wage suppression that they are in other, non-unionized settings.” Union membership thus correlates to lower racial wealth gaps. “The PRO Act promotes greater racial economic justice because unions allow for collective bargaining, essentially shrinks Black-white wage gaps, and brings greater fairness in terms of hiring opportunities,” she added.
As long as employers have the broad right to wear workers down for trying to organize, the First Amendment might as well stop at the office or factory doors. Employers can even block workers from speaking during anti-union, captive audience meetings. “People think that they have a right to their job and they actually don’t,” Windham said. “Employers, with a few exceptions like discrimination issues, can generally fire people at will and can limit your free speech at any time.”
To date, President Biden hasn’t endorsed calls to end the filibuster. But if he wants to build America back better, as he’s promised, advocates say the PRO Act is nonnegotiable. “In order to build an economy that is more just, that promotes greater equality, working people need a voice. They need access to unions,” said McNicholas.
A predator drone. (photo: Veronique de Viguerie/Getty Images)
Not Targeted or Bloodless: Why We Need an International Convention on Drones
Conn M. Hallinan, Informed Comment
Hallinan writes:
n the aftermath of the recent war between Armenia and Azerbaijan over the Nagorno-Karabakh region, drone warfare is being touted as the latest breakthrough in military technology, a “magic bullet” that makes armored vehicles obsolete, defeats sophisticated anti-aircraft systems, and routs entrenched infantry.
While there is some truth in the hype, one needs to be especially wary of military “game changers,” since there is always a seller at the end of the pitch.
In his examination of the two major books on drones — Christian Brose’s The Kill Chain: Defending America in the Future of High-Tech Warfare, and Michael Boyle’s The Drone Age — analyst Andrew Cockburn points out that the victims of drones are mostly civilians, not soldiers.
While drones can take out military targets, they are more commonly used to assassinate people one doesn’t approve of. A case in point was former President Trump’s drone strike that killed Qasem Solemani, a top Iranian general, a country we are not at war with.
In just the first year of his administration, Trump killed more people — including 250 children — with drones in Yemen and Pakistan than President Barack Obama did in eight years. And Obama was no slouch in this department, increasing the use of drone attacks by a factor of 10 over the administration of George W. Bush.
Getting a handle on drone — their pluses and minuses and the moral issues such weapons of war raise — is essential if the world wants to hold off yet another round of massive military spending and the tensions and instabilities such a course will create.
There Are No Bloodless Wars
That drones have the power to alter a battlefield is a given, but they may not be all they are advertised. Azerbaijan’s drones — mostly Turkish Bayraktar TB2s and Israeli Harpys, Orbiter-1Ks, and Harops — did indeed make hash of Armenian tanks and armored vehicles and largely silenced anti-aircraft systems. They also helped Azeri artillery target Armenians positions. But the Azerbaijanis won the recent war by slugging it out on the ground, with heavy casualties on both sides.
As military historian and editor of the Small Wars Journal, Lt. Col Robert Bateman (ret.) points out, drones were effective because of the Armenians’ stunning incompetence in their use of armor, making no effort to spread their tanks out or camouflage them. Instead, they bunched them up in the open, making them sitting ducks for Turkish missile-firing drones and Israeli “suicide” drones. “While drones will be hailed as the straw that broke the camel’s back in this war,” he writes, “Azerbaijani success is also attributed to good ol’ fashioned mechanized infantry operations that took territory, one square kilometer at a time.”
Turkey has made widespread use of drones in Syria, Iraq, and Libya, and they again have played a role on the battlefield. But Turkish drones have mainly been used to assassinate Kurdish leaders in Iraq and Syria. Last April a Turkish drone killed two Iraqi generals in the Kurdish autonomous zone of northern Iraq.
In July 2020, Turkey deployed drones in Syria to block an offense by the Damascus government against Turkey’s allies in Idlib Province, but failed to stop President Bashar al-Assad’s forces from reclaiming large hunks of territory. In short, they are not always “game changers.”
The selling point for drones is that they are precise, cheap — or relatively so — and you don’t have a stream of body bags returning home. But drones are not all- seeing, unless they are flying at low altitudes, thus making it easier to shoot them down. The weather also needs to be clear, and the area smokeless.
Otherwise what drones see are vague images. In 2010 a U.S. drone took out what its operators thought was a caravan of Taliban trucks carrying weapons. But the trucks were filled with local peasants and the “weapons” were turkeys. The drones incinerated 23 civilians.
Nor do they always live up to their reputation for accuracy. In a 2012 test, the Air Force compared a photo of a base taken by the highly touted Gorgon Stare cameras mounted on a Predator drone and the one on Google Earth. The images were essentially identical, except Gorgon Stare cost half a trillion dollars and Google Earth was free. “In neither,” says Cockburn, “were humans distinguishable from bushes.”
Drones have killed insurgent leaders in Syria, Somalia, Iraq, and Afghanistan — with virtually no effect on those wars. Indeed, in the case of Afghanistan, the assassination of first-tier Taliban leaders led to their replacement by far more radical elements. The widespread use of drones in the U.S. war on drugs has also been largely a failure. Drug cartels are bigger and more dangerous than ever, and there has been no reduction in the flow of drugs into the United States.
They do keep the body bag count down, but that raises an uncomfortable moral dilemma: If wars don’t produce casualties, except among the targeted, isn’t it more tempting to fight them?
Drone pilots in their air-conditioned trailers in southern Nevada will never go down with their aircraft, but the people on the receiving end will eventually figure out some way to strike back. As the attack on the World Trade towers and recent terrorist attacks in France demonstrate, that is not all that hard to do — and it is almost inevitable that the targets will be civilians.
Bloodless war is a dangerous illusion.
The Global Drones Arms Race
Drones certainly present problems for any military. For one thing, they are damned hard to spot. Most are composed of non-metallic substances, like Kevlar, and they have low heat signatures because their small motors run on batteries. Radar doesn’t pick them up and neither do infrared detectors. The Yemen-based Houthis drones that hit Saudi Arabian oil facilities at Abqaiq and Khurais in 2019 slipped right through the radar systems of three anti-aircraft networks: the U.S. Patriot system, the French-supplied Shashine surface-to-air-missile system, and the Swiss Oerlikon 35mm radar directed cannons.
Those drones were produced on a 3-D printer supplied to the Houthis by Iran.
Drones also raised havoc with Armenia’s far more capable Russian-made S-300 air defense system, plus several other short and medium range systems. Apparently the drones were not detected until they struck, essentially obilerating Armenia’s anti-aircraft system.
The Russians claim that they beat off drone attacks on their two bases in Syria, Khmeimim Air Base and the naval base at Tartus, with their Pantsir air defense system. But those drones were rather primitive. Some were even made of plywood. Pantsir systems were destroyed in Nagorno Karabakh, and Turkish drones apparently destroyed Pantsirs in Libya.
The problem is that even if you do detect them, a large number of drones — a so-called “swarming attack” similar to the one that struck the Saudis — will eventually exhaust your ammunition supply, leaving you vulnerable while reloading.
The U.S. is working on a way to counter drones with directed energy weapons, including the High Energy Laser Weapons System 2, and a microwave system. At a cost of $30 million, Raytheon is building prototypes of both. President Biden’s Defense Secretary, Gen. Lloyd Austin (ret.), formerly served on the company’s board of directors.
If drones rely on GPS systems to navigate, they can be jammed or hacked, as the Iranians successfully did to a large U.S. surveillance drone in 2010. Some drones rely on internal maps, like the one used in the U.S. Tomahawk cruise missile. It appears that the drones and cruises that hit Saudi Arabia were running on a guidance system similar to the Tomahawk.
Of course that makes your drone or cruise missile autonomous, something that raises its own moral dilemmas. The U.S. is currently working on weapons that use artificial intelligence and will essentially be able to “decide” on their own what to attack.
Maybe not “Terminator,” but headed in that direction.
We Need an International Convention
Drones are enormously useful for a range of tasks, from monitoring forest fires to finding lost hikers. They are cheap to run and commercial prices are coming down. Turning them into weapons, however, is not only destabilizing, it puts civilians at risk, raises serious moral issues about who bears the cost of war, and in the long run will be very expensive. Drones may be cheap, but anti-aircraft systems are not.
India and Pakistan are in the middle of a drone race. Germany is debating whether it should arm its drones. Mexican drug cartels are waging war against one another using drones.
An international convention on drone use should be on any future arms control agenda.
Protesters rallying in support of Brazil's Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, in Sao Paulo, Brazil. (photo: Andre Penner/AP)
Lula's Return Could Save Brazilian Democracy
Hugo Albuquerque and Nicolas Allen, Jacobin
With former Brazilian president Lula da Silva now eligible to run in next year’s election, Jair Bolsonaro’s grip on power is looking weaker than ever before. Amid the tide of reaction, Lula’s return means there is finally some hope for democracy and social justice in Brazil.
n March 8, Brazil was greeted with the unexpected news that Supreme Federal Court justice Edson Fachin had annulled all convictions of former president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. Prior to that decision, Lula was still facing indictment and minor offense convictions, making him ineligible for political office under Brazilian law. The court’s enormously significant decision makes Lula eligible to run in the 2022 presidential race, though it still remains for the indictments to be definitively withdrawn.
Despite the fact that Lula was released from prison in 2019 on the heels of the Vaza Jato (Car Wash) leaks, the decision that freed him was not based on The Intercept’s revelations of legal conspiracy. Instead, he was released after 580 days thanks to a Supreme Federal Court (STF) ruling that anyone in the process of a legal appeal should remain free during trial proceedings (a ruling that reversed the STF’s previous decision in the run-up to the 2018 elections, made under duress from the military and in violation of the Constitution).
The decision to release Lula resolved, as it were, two issues. On the one hand, it freed the Brazilian justice from the embarrassment of keeping Lula in prison, after it was revealed by the actions of a hacker that then-judge Sérgio Moro arranged the conviction with the accusers. On the other hand, it spared Moro, who at that time was Bolsonaro’s minister of justice, the biggest beneficiary of Lula’s arrest, since the judicial plot, although it served as a backdrop, was not the reason for Lula’s release.
While the most recent turn of events is certainly a victory for Lula, the decision represents yet another attempt by the STF to avoid further investigation into the abuses committed during Operation Car Wash. Its decision rested on the technical ruling that Lula could not be tried in the city of Curitiba — not on the fact that he was the victim of collusion between Moro and federal prosecutors. As if to prove that point, efforts led by Justice Gilmar Mendes to reach a decision on alleged collusion were blocked on March 9 by Justice Kassio Nunes Marques, Bolsonaro’s appointee to the Brazilian supreme court.
A Ruling for Freedom, and a Half-Truth
The rationale for Justice Edson Fachin’s decision is simple: Lula’s defense filed a habeas corpus and the justice — alone, as is allowed in such circumstances — decided that a Federal Court of Curitiba was not competent to judge the case. The decision is absolutely correct, but also ironic, since the famous 13th Court of the Federal Judiciary in Curitiba has presided over every type of indictment with only the remotest — and often dubious — connection to corruption in the state-owned Petrobras corporation. These corruption trials have been treated as one enormous, monolithic scheme — even though Petrobras itself is not based in Curitiba but in Rio de Janeiro.
On the other hand, the bribes that Lula allegedly received — in exchange for what, Sérgio Moro himself claims to have no knowledge — had nothing to do with Curitiba, and Lula has never lived nor done business in the capital city of Paraná. As jurist Lênio Streck reminds us, the Curitiba court, then under Moro’s control, was always incompetent to judge Lula.
Before even getting to the question of possible — some would say blatantly evident —abuses of legal conduct, the most absurd part of the Lava Jato proceedings has always been that the 13th Court in Curitiba has freely determined what it deems to be linked to the Petrobras case.
This goes against the constitutional guarantee of court jurisdiction, whereby Brazilian criminal procedural law establishes a determinate place where a certain indictment can be filed and accordingly judged.
Following Justice Fachin’s decision, any cases involving Lula’s alleged misfeasance —concerning the Guarujá apartment, the Atibaia ranch, or the Lula Institute — would have to be sent to the Federal Court in BrasÃlia, where the cases would again be subject to review. That is, unless the attorney general of the republic decides to appeal and forces Fachin’s decision to be sent back for retrial by the other eleven STF justices.
But the central issue is still being avoided: then-judge Moro and the federal prosecutors were regularly comparing notes, combining investigations, planning convictions, and pressuring defendants and witnesses with the ultimate goal of arresting Lula.
An Inconclusive Leak
In 2019, Brazil’s top story was the “Vaza Jato.” In that report, leaks initially published on The Intercept Brasil’s website revealed how judges and prosecutors of the Car Wash investigation had held private conversations on Telegram, arranging convictions, settling plea bargains, and engaging in other conspiratorial activity.
It was clear that the driving obsession for the investigation had nothing to do with putting an end to bribes. Instead, their sole intent was to imprison Lula and bar him from competing in the 2018 elections (where he had been leading in the polls). Lula was ultimately convicted in appeals courts, imprisoned, declared ineligible for political office, and even banned from giving interviews. Jair Bolsonaro went on to win that race and appointed Moro, the main judge of the Car Wash operation, as his minister of justice.
Vaza Jato changed everything in Brazil. However, following the leaks, Brazilian politics became a laboratory for Orwellian exercises in misinformation (foreshadowing similar practices of disinformation during the pandemic). Throughout 2019, Moro, then acting as Bolsonaro’s minister and ally, regularly attacked The Intercept and cast doubt on the veracity of the leaked material while claiming himself to be the victim of hacking.
At the same time, journalist Glenn Greenwald, then editor-in-chief of The Intercept Brazil, became the victim of a widespread smear campaign. It was only through the intervention of the STF itself that Greenwald was not indicted for publishing the reports.
Walter Delgatti, the hacker responsible for leaking the material to the media, was also arrested. Delgatti’s illegal arrest was especially outrageous: while it was deemed a crime to divulge clandestinely held conversations in the midst of a public trial, the actual content of those conversations was conveniently overlooked. The scandal quickly escalated, making it virtually impossible to keep Lula in prison.
Bolsonaro and his networks protected Moro, launching attacks against Lava Jato whistleblowers. However, behind the scenes there was growing friction between the two figures: Moro had his own presidential ambitions and was jostling with Bolsonaro for leadership of the radical right. Moro conveniently parted ways with Boslonaro over his mismanagement of the pandemic, cutting the umbilical cord that had once linked the Car Wash investigations and the Bolsonaro-led far right.
The material discovered by Delgatti did, however, end up in the hands of the STF, which recently granted Lula’s lawyers access to all excerpts pertaining to his case; the principle of law holds that illegal evidence cannot serve for conviction, but it can absolve the accused.
It is also worth noting that the STF’s sudden about-face conceals other issues. According to recent interviews given by Delgatti, the Car Wash scandal was used to coerce STF justices, potentially even leading to their arrest. These embarrassing revelations led to a new threat of arrest for the hacker, who remains to this day under house arrest.
In truth, the scope of the leaks is even worse than what was revealed in the press in 2019: they contain proof of illegal collaboration between Brazilian prosecutors and foreign authorities, including the US State Department.
More recently, the STF has come under attack from Bolsonaro himself. Even so, the corporatist spirit of the Brazilian justice system — one of the most expensive and elitist in the world — has carried the day, and, as suggested by the mocking comments of conservative president of the House of Representatives Arthur Lira, it has ultimately served to protect Moro.
The Arc of Justice Is Long
The decision of Justice Fachin to annul Lula’s convictions is more than just a lesson in how the legal system operates. It is a symptom of the country’s political predicament. The STF is on the ropes and forced to take radical measures (see, for example, the decision to arrest a Bolsonaro-loyal congressman who issued public threats against STF justices). Bolsonaro, for his part, makes no effort to conceal his resentment of the Supreme Court justices who have managed to restrain his power.
The growing severity of COVID-19, the federal government’s disregard for the thousands of lives lost, delays in vaccinations, and the harbinger of economic collapse make Lula an increasingly attractive option for president. (Over the course of just three months in 2009, Lula managed to get eighty million people vaccinated — more than in any other country — against the H1N1 virus, and all through a public health system.)
It may be too early to tell, but the rapid advance of the Brazilian crisis could very well augur a new outlook among the country’s oligarchy. As the health crisis reaches a tipping point where even elite hospitals are collapsing, the ruling class may begin to revise the wisdom of its longstanding anything-but-the-Workers-Party stance. Public statements like that of former president Fernando Henrique Cardoso — who expressed regret for remaining neutral during the 2018 run-off elections — are part of this changing picture in Brazilian politics.
It should also be stressed that Lula’s 2019 release and his most recent victory are, at least in part, products of an intense international solidarity movement, as well as a broad Brazilian leftist movement. There is a growing consensus among progressives that the Brazilian justice system is unreliable and that the Car Wash scandal is akin to a McCarthyist campaign with international repercussions throughout South America, where similar legal tactics have been used against current and former progressive leaders.
It is still too soon to predict outcomes with any certainty, but it should be noted that the Brazilian crisis and Lula’s release have occurred while the broader region is seeing a new progressive wave, with left-wing electoral victories being registered across the continent. Lula will still have to face many new battles, and victory will ultimately depend on whether popular forces can be mobilized to put pressure on opaque and undemocratic institutions. But his struggle is a collective one and will be of central importance for the Brazilian working class — and the world — in the fight against new and even deadlier forms of far-right ascendency.
A manatee eating seagrass. (photo: Vicky Hager)
Climate Change: 'Forever Plant' Seagrass Faces Uncertain Future
Matt McGrath, BBC
McGrath writes:
The green, underwater meadows of Posidonia seagrass that surround the Balearic Islands are one of the world's most powerful, natural defences against climate change.
hectare of this ancient, delicate plant can soak up 15 times more carbon dioxide every year than a similar sized piece of the Amazon rainforest.
But this global treasure is now under extreme pressure from tourists, from development and ironically from climate change.
Posidonia oceanica is found all over the Mediterranean but the area between Mallorca and Formentera is of special interest, having been designated a world heritage site by Unesco over 20 years ago.
Here you'll find around 55,000 hectares of the plant, which helps prevent coastal erosion, acts as a nursery for fish, but also plays a globally significant role in soaking up CO2.
"These seagrass meadows are the champion of carbon sequestration for the biosphere," said Prof Carlos Duarte, of the King Abdullah University of Science and Technology in Saudi Arabia.
"Posidonia acts as a very intensive sediment trap and captures carbon into these sediments. It is also very resistant to microbial degradation, so the carbon is not degraded when it's deposited on the sea floor. And much of that stays unaltered during decades to millennia."
Depending on the water temperature, the species reproduces either sexually through flowering or asexually by cloning itself. This ability to clone itself means it can live an extremely long time.
"It's a remarkable plant not only in the capacity to sequester carbon, but also because it's one of the longest-lived organisms on the planet," said Prof Duarte.
"In the marine protected areas of Ibiza we documented one clone where we estimated that the seed that produced that clone was released into the seafloor and sprouted 200,000 years ago."
"A clone could be eternal, kind of," says Dr Núria Marbà , from the Mediterranean Institute for Advanced Studies in Mallorca.
"If there are no damages that disturb it, it could last for forever - well maybe not forever but for an incredibly long time."
But despite its ability to live almost infinitely, Posidonia is finding the modern world increasingly treacherous.
This vivid green carpet that extends under the seas in the Balearics faces an ongoing threat from boats dropping their anchors which crush, tear and destroy the meadows.
One study showed that between 2008 and 2012, Posidonia meadows in Formentera were reduced by 44% because of the impact of anchoring.
The plant also grows extremely slowly.
The damage caused by one yacht's anchor in a single day several years ago would take almost 1,000 years to restore.
Another threat comes from too many nutrients in the waters, caused by effluent released from water treatment sites across the islands.
But perhaps the biggest and most difficult challenge for Posidonia is climate change.
"Posidonia has an upper thermal limit of about 28C," says Dr Marbà .
"I think it's about half of the summers since 2000 that we have exceeded this temperature in the water in the Balearic Islands.
"It doesn't cause massive mortality. But it's excessive for the slow growth of the plant."
So what can be done to help protect this amazingly powerful seagrass?
Government action to protect Posidonia in the Balearics has been ramped up in recent years and public awareness of the importance of the species is rising.
But some researchers believe that putting a financial value on the carbon that's locked up by Posidonia could release the funds to save it.
"As countries try and reach the goals of the Paris agreement, the forecast is that carbon credits are going to see a tenfold increase in value," said Prof Carlos Duarte.
"Therefore, there's likely to be an increase in investment in habitats like Posidonia that can lock up carbon and generate these credits."
This would be welcome news in Ibiza and Formentera. If the carbon that's already been sequestered by the seagrass increases in value, then it will pay to protect and even attempt to restore the Posidonia meadows.
But time and rising temperatures are the key challenge, as Dr Núria Marbà explains.
"The whole thing of planting seagrasses is that you have to do a massive effort at the beginning to start the process. And then you just wait for the plant itself to grow.
"If we are in a hurry, at human timescales, it's impossible.
"But if we don't mind, and we can wait for a few centuries, it will be okay."
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