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16 March 21
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ore than two dozen organizations announced Tuesday that they strongly oppose any nomination of former Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel to be a U.S. ambassador. Noting that President Biden is reportedly considering Emanuel as ambassador to Japan or China, a joint statement declared: “Such top diplomatic posts should only go to individuals with ethics, integrity and diplomatic skills. Emanuel possesses none of those qualifications.”
National organizations signing the statement include Black Youth Project 100, Demand Progress Education Fund, Justice Democrats, People’s Action, Progressive Democrats of America, RootsAction.org, Veterans For Peace, and Working Families Party. Several Chicago groups also signed the statement, including the Chicago Committee Against War and Racism, Chicago Democratic Socialists of America, and Indivisible Chicago Alliance.
The statement said that Emanuel “has routinely served elite corporate interests and rarely the interests of the broad public or the causes of racial justice, economic equity or the peaceful resolution of conflicts at home or abroad. And whether in federal or municipal office, he has been known for his abrasive, arrogant style of wielding power.”
The statement added: “Emanuel’s disgraceful behavior as mayor of Chicago cannot be erased or ignored. At a time when the Democratic Party leadership has joined with most Americans in asserting that Black lives matter, it would be a travesty to elevate to an ambassadorship someone who has epitomized the attitude that Black lives do not matter.”
Leaders of some of the organizations augmented the joint statement with individual comments.
“Rahm Emanuel is unfit for elected office and unfit for an appointed position in the Biden administration or any administration,” said Maurice Mitchell, the national director of the Working Families Party. “President Biden pledged to have the back of the Black community that sent him to the White House. Appointing Rahm Emanuel to anything is a broken promise. We don’t ‘build back better’ by rewarding coverups for murder.”
Jeff Cohen, co-founder of RootsAction.org, said that “President Biden should think long and hard before igniting a firestorm of opposition from the Democratic Party base if he selects Emanuel for an ambassador job. Like many other organizations, RootsAction is ready, willing, and able to organize a strong grassroots campaign insisting that the Senate reject an Emanuel nomination if it comes to that.”
An ambassadorial nomination of Emanuel would require Senate confirmation.
“We’ve said it before and we’ll say it again – Rahm Emanuel is a ladder-climbing hack who is unfit to serve anywhere in the Biden administration,” People’s Action Deputy Director Bree Carlson said. “His previous stints in public office were riddled with failures. He covered up the murder of Laquan McDonald, defunded public schools, and attacked benefits for poor people. It would be a slap in the face for many to see President Biden ignore the loud calls of opposition towards him.”
The executive director of Progressive Democrats of America, Alan Minsky, said: “Rahm Emanuel should not be an ambassador for the United States. Emanuel is best known for burying evidence of racist state violence in order to advance his political career; for trying to crush a teachers’ union; and, generally, for having contempt for anyone who opposed him and the powerful interests he represents. That is not the profile of someone who should serve as an ambassador for a democratic republic or an open society.”
Below is the full text of the joint statement and a list of the signing organizations.
Statement in Opposition to Rahm Emanuel for an Ambassador Post
News reports have said that President Biden is likely to name Rahm Emanuel as the U.S. ambassador to China or Japan. Such top diplomatic posts should only go to individuals with ethics, integrity and diplomatic skills. Emanuel possesses none of those qualifications.
As organizations supported by millions of voters and activists, we oppose selecting Emanuel to represent the United States as an ambassador. He has routinely served elite corporate interests and rarely the interests of the broad public or the causes of racial justice, economic equity or the peaceful resolution of conflicts at home or abroad. And whether in federal or municipal office, he has been known for his abrasive, arrogant style of wielding power.
Emanuel’s disgraceful behavior as mayor of Chicago cannot be erased or ignored. At a time when the Democratic Party leadership has joined with most Americans in asserting that Black lives matter, it would be a travesty to elevate to an ambassadorship someone who has epitomized the attitude that Black lives do not matter.
After being elected mayor of Chicago in 2011, Emanuel presided over a scandal-plagued administration that included the closing of 49 public schools, many in Black neighborhoods. As he faced a re-election campaign, for 13 months Emanuel’s administration suppressed a horrific dashcam video showing the death of Laquan McDonald, an African-American teenager who had been shot 16 times by a Chicago police officer as he walked away from the officer. Soon after a judge ordered the city to release the video, polling found that only 17 percent of Chicagoans believed Emanuel when he said he’d never seen the video; most city residents wanted him to resign as mayor. HuffPost has reported that “he became the least popular mayor in modern Chicago history after failing to explain why he blocked the release of a video of the police killing of Laquan McDonald, a 17-year-old Black resident, until after his 2015 reelection.”
When reports emerged last November that President-elect Biden was considering Emanuel for a cabinet post, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez tweeted: “Rahm Emanuel helped cover up the murder of Laquan McDonald. Covering up a murder is disqualifying for public leadership.” Then-Congressman-elect Mondaire Jones weighed in: “Rahm Emanuel covered up the murder of a Black teenager, Laquan McDonald, while he was mayor of Chicago. That he's being considered for a cabinet position is completely outrageous and, honestly, very hurtful.”
Emanuel’s anti-union record includes record-setting closures of Chicago public schools while expanding charter schools and harsh intransigence during the city’s 2012 teachers’ union strike. Sara Nelson, president of the Association of Flight Attendants, has called Emanuel “a union buster.”
National NAACP President Derrick Johnson said: “As the former mayor of Chicago, Rahm Emanuel has shown us that he is not a principled leader or person. His time in public service proved to be burdened with preventable scandal and abandonment of Chicago’s most vulnerable community. How can we expect him to do better on a federal level? His actions and approach to governing are detrimental to the Biden administration and, more importantly, the American people.”
Emanuel’s record is also troubling on issues of war and diplomacy. Elected to Congress in November 2002, he endorsed the disastrous Iraq invasion and supported the war long after most Democrats in Congress and most of the public had turned against it. Our country needs ambassadors who seek reconciliation and peace rather than conflict and war.
Signing organizations
American Friends Service Committee, Chicago Office
Arab American Action Network
Black Youth Project 100
Blue America
Chicago Alliance Against Racist and Political Repression
Chicago Area Peace Action
Chicago Committee Against War and Racism
Chicago Democratic Socialists of America
CodePink
Demand Progress Education Fund
If Not Now
Indivisible Chicago Alliance
Indivisible Illinois
Jewish Voice for Peace Action
Just Foreign Policy
Justice Democrats
Muslim Delegates and Allies Coalition
Other98
Peace Action
People's Action
Progressive Democrats of America
RootsAction.org
The People's Lobby
United for Peace and Justice
U.S. Palestinian Community Network
Veterans For Peace
Working Families Party
World Beyond War
Members of the National Guard patrol near the U.S. Capitol on March 3. (photo: Eric Baradat/AFP/Getty Images)
Army Initially Pushed to Deny District's Request for National Guard Before January 6
Paul Sonne, Peter Hermann, Ellen Nakashima and Matt Zapotosky, The Washington Post
he Army initially pushed to reject the D.C. government’s request for a modest National Guard presence ahead of the Jan. 6 rally that led to the Capitol riot, underscoring the deep reluctance of some higher-ups at the Pentagon to involve the military in security arrangements that day.
In an internal draft memo obtained by The Washington Post, the Army said the U.S. military shouldn’t be needed to help police with traffic and crowd management, as city officials had requested, unless more than 100,000 demonstrators were expected.
The draft memo also said the request should be denied because a federal agency hadn’t been identified to run the preparations and on-the-day operations; the resources of other federal agencies hadn’t been exhausted; and law enforcement was “far better suited” for the task.
The Army leadership made its position clear in deliberations at the Pentagon the weekend before the event, citing those reasons among others, according to four people familiar with the discussions, who like others in this report spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal Defense Department matters.
The Army ultimately relented after facing pressure from acting defense secretary Christopher C. Miller and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Mark A. Milley, and realizing that District officials weren’t going to turn to the Justice Department for help instead, as the Army had wanted, the people said.
Army Secretary Ryan D. McCarthy agreed to support the request, so long as a lead agency was identified and all other federal agencies “exhausted their assets to support these events,” according to the recommendation he gave in a revised final memo to Miller, who approved the request.
Still, the Army’s initial impulse to consider refusing military involvement in the security arrangements — even though the Guard is trained to assist law enforcement during large-scale protests and has done so regularly for decades in the District — shows the extraordinary steps officials at the Pentagon were taking to stay away from what was shaping up to be a politically toxic and volatile moment for the nation.
Col. Cathy Wilkinson, a spokeswoman for the Army, said in a statement that the Pentagon provided 340 members of the D.C. Guard to help with street closures and crowd control as asked.
“Clearly, the Mayor’s request was approved and supported,” Wilkinson said. “The draft memo was not signed or approved. It is customary for the Army staff to provide options for Army senior leaders to inform their decision making process.”
The Army’s previously undisclosed draft memo advocating against the deployment ahead of the pro-Trump rally sheds light on the thinking of leaders involved in the security arrangements, which permitted one of the biggest national security failures since the 9/11 attacks.
In the weeks since the riot, top Pentagon officials have emphasized that the Capitol Police and federal agencies didn’t request military backup before the event, leaving the Defense Department unprepared to respond rapidly when the situation got out of control. The draft memo, however, suggests that the Army leadership also had been disinclined to get involved from the start.
Reluctance at the Pentagon about the deployment of the D.C. Guard during the preparations also raises questions about when it is appropriate to use the U.S. military on domestic soil. While top Pentagon officials have emphasized that military force should be used to support domestic law enforcement only as a last resort, that maxim has traditionally been understood to apply to active-duty forces — not the National Guard.
Unlike in the 50 states, where governors control the National Guard, the D.C. Guard answers to the president, who delegates authority to the defense secretary and Army secretary. The mayor of the District of Columbia can only request that the federal government deploy the D.C. Guard.
The thinking of Pentagon leaders before and during the riot is now facing scrutiny from lawmakers who have accused the Defense Department of reacting too slowly to the Capitol Police’s 11th-hour plea for military assistance, as rioters breached the Capitol in a catastrophic security failure.
Despite the unanswered questions, the political appointees and generals who were leading the Pentagon on Jan. 6 haven’t been called to testify publicly on the matter before Congress, as lawmakers attempt to understand how the Capitol could have been left so vulnerable to attack.
Maj. Gen. William J. Walker, the commanding general of the D.C. Guard, told lawmakers on March 3 that after receiving a panicked call from the chief of the Capitol Police, he had to wait three hours and 19 minutes before the Pentagon allowed him to send his available forces to the building.
Even when the situation spiraled out of control, and the Capitol Police pleaded for backup from the military, Army Lt. Gen. Walter E. Piatt and Lt. Gen. Charles A. Flynn, the brother of the former national security adviser, articulated why it would be better for the military not to be directly involved, according to Walker. Piatt and Flynn were not part of the D.C. Guard’s chain of command.
Pentagon officials have denied that their response was delayed, describing the arrival of the D.C. Guard about three hours after the call for help as a quick rollout, considering that the military hadn’t been postured or asked to provide backup to the Capitol Police if needed.
“We were asked to support the Capitol from a cold start after it already had been overrun and are being criticized for how we fast we responded,” said a former Pentagon official involved in the events that day. “We are not like law enforcement units whose job it is to police the streets.”
Fears of over-militarization
By the time of the riot, Pentagon leaders had become skittish about using the military to support law enforcement on domestic soil.
Last June, Milley and then-defense secretary Mark T. Esper were excoriated by lawmakers and retired military personnel for appearing alongside President Donald Trump as federal law enforcement cleared racial-justice protesters near the White House using force and pepper balls.
They also faced blowback more broadly for militarizing Washington, with more than 5,000 National Guard troops in the city and 1,600 active-duty forces amassed nearby, in response to the unrest that followed the police killing of George Floyd.
The D.C. Guard flew helicopters low over protesters, and the Justice Department put uniformed agents with no insignia from the Bureau of Prisons on the streets, enraging city officials.
The fallout from the Nov. 3 election deepened the reluctance at the Pentagon.
Trump ousted Esper after the vote, raising worries that the president was paving the way for extrajudicial action using the military. Days later, Milley gave a pointed speech, saying members of the U.S. military “do not take an oath to a king or queen, tyrant or dictator,” but rather to the Constitution.
Still, Trump began taking increasingly extreme measures to remain in power. After his former national security adviser, retired Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, suggested that Trump could “rerun” the Nov. 3 vote, all 10 living former defense secretaries penned a letter warning the Pentagon to keep the military out of the presidential transition.
The military as a last resort
On Dec. 31, city officials, also wary of a repeat of June, submitted a narrow request to the Pentagon for help from the D.C. Guard with traffic and crowd control on Jan. 6, which the D.C. Guard determined would require 340 personnel.
The Army thought the proposal was light on details and didn’t want to authorize it after a first-blush review that resulted in the draft memo, a former senior Pentagon official said, noting that the Army and senior leadership were “scarred by the experiences of June” and that the military has long been hesitant to deploy for domestic matters involving law enforcement.
Senior officials were “very cognizant” that sending in the military “could be misconstrued by so many people as a power grab and play into the narrative that the military was on the cusp of overthrowing duly elected officials to redo an election,” the former official said.
Asked to explain the Army’s position, the other former Pentagon official said: “It is customary practice that law enforcement assets have to be utilized and near exhaustion before DoD will support operations. It is not an official policy but is designed to reinforce that military should be used as a last resort.”
But while top Pentagon leaders have stressed since June that active-duty troops should be used to support domestic law enforcement only as a last resort, the National Guard is used regularly for such missions across the nation.
District officials routinely ask for help from the D.C. Guard for major events, mostly to help with traffic control to free up police officers for other duties.
The D.C. Guard, for example, helped with last year’s July 4 event and aided the city in handling a march on Washington led by the Rev. Al Sharpton last August. The Guard even deployed to prevent large crowds from gathering and spreading the coronavirus during the 2020 cherry blossom festivities.
A District official familiar with the security plans on Jan. 6 couldn’t recall any historical example of the Defense Department rejecting the city’s request to deploy the D.C. Guard.
During a preparatory call ahead of the pro-Trump rally, McCarthy suggested that the city get help from the Justice Department’s Bureau of Prisons, according to the District official. District officials refused, citing concerns they had with federal agents last summer.
City officials thought the D.C. Guard was a better fit, calling the force “a tactical ready unit” that was familiar with the area and had worked with local law enforcement regularly during large-scale events, according to the District official.
According to the former senior Pentagon official, top defense officials discussed the request on calls over the holiday weekend before the Jan. 6 event. Miller had “strong inclinations to support the mayor,” the former senior official said, and eventually Pentagon leaders came to a consensus to grant the request.
The Army approved the request because District officials refused to ask for extra help from federal law enforcement as Army officials had wanted, according to the former Pentagon official.
“It was obvious we didn’t want to find ourselves in a situation where [the D.C. police] needed help and we denied it,” the former Pentagon official said.
After the Pentagon approved the Guard mission, D.C. Mayor Muriel E. Bower (D) sent a letter on Jan. 5 confirming that the city had not requested additional personnel from federal law enforcement. She said the D.C. police were “well trained and prepared” for the event.
Demand for a lead federal agency
The Army leadership also felt strongly that the military shouldn’t be used unless a federal agency was designated to lead the activities.
White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows told Miller and acting attorney general Jeffrey Rosen that the Justice Department would serve as the “lead” agency, according to people familiar with the arrangement.
As the “federal lead,” the Justice Department essentially was in charge of coordination for the various agencies, a federal law enforcement official familiar with the preparations said.
The designation pertained only to the Justice Department, the FBI, the Defense Department and the Interior Department, the official said, and did not cover the Capitol, where Capitol Police oversee security.
The designation was so vague that officials in the District government and at the D.C. Guard didn’t even know that the Justice Department was functioning as the “lead agency.” The Justice Department declined to comment.
The arrangement fell far short of what happens when the Department of Homeland Security designates a National Special Security Event. On those occasions, such as during the presidential inauguration or the State of the Union address, there is a clear command structure, in which the Secret Service sits atop all the other federal and local agencies. The Jan. 6 event wasn’t declared an NSSE.
The former Pentagon official said the Army leadership wanted to ensure there was a command-and-control architecture for appropriate decision-making and information sharing before and during the event. The official said the Justice Department fell short of ensuring that.
The D.C. Guard deployment also went ahead, even though federal resources hadn’t been exhausted, as McCarthy had stipulated as a condition in his final memo recommending approval.
Ultimately, the Army leadership approved the Guard mission because it didn’t want to put the District government in a tough place, the former Pentagon official said.
A mother holds her child as they surrender to U.S. Border Patrol agents. (photo: David J. Phillip/AP)
Unaccompanied Immigrant Minors Are Not a "Border Crisis" but a Humanitarian Crisis
Democracy Now!
Excerpt: "Thousands of migrant children seeking refuge are being held in crowded cells amid an increase in asylum seekers at the U.S.-Mexico border."
s the Biden administration begins its “Help Is Here” tour to promote the Democrats’ $1.9 trillion COVID relief package, a delegation of Republicans, headed by House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, launched their own tour this week at the U.S. southern border, where as many as 4,000 migrant children who sought refuge in the United States are being held in crowded cells, many for longer than the three-day limit. On Monday, McCarthy said they toured an ICE detention center in El Paso and spoke to Fox News about visiting a Border Patrol station to speak with agents.
MINORITY LEADER KEVIN McCARTHY: When you go to Monument Three and you talk to those agents, it’s not just people from Mexico or Honduras or El Salvador. They’re now finding people from Yemen, Iran, Turkey, people on the terrorist watchlist they are catching. And they’re rushing it all at once.
AMY GOODMAN: On Saturday, the Department of Homeland Security ordered the FEMA — that’s Federal Emergency Management Agency — to, quote, “help receive, shelter and transport the children” over the next 90 days. This is a 17-year-old Honduran migrant speaking to Reuters.
HONDURAN MIGRANT: [translated] Thank God we are here at our destination and there will be some opportunities here for us. We came here suffering. We have been on the road for a month suffering, hungry, no sleep.
AMY GOODMAN: Thousands of the unaccompanied minors are being sent to cities across Texas, including the capital of the state, Austin, and to Dallas, where FEMA will hold as many as 3,000 unaccompanied teens, mainly boys.
This comes as Democrats on Capitol Hill could vote this week on bills to protect undocumented immigrants brought to the U.S. as children and provide legal status to farmworkers and also a path to citizenship to DACA recipients.
For more, we go to El Paso, where we’re joined by Fernando García, founding director of the Border Network for Human Rights.
Welcome back to Democracy Now!, Fernando. Describe the scene and what you think needs to happen.
FERNANDO GARCÍA: Listen, what we have seen, what we’re experiencing at the border, yes, is indeed a surge of families and children coming through the border, but by no means this is a crisis or a new situation, as Republicans had actually presented it. Historically, in the last 10 years, we have seen an influx of more families and more children coming through the border. Just to give you an example, in the year of 2015, we had close to 40,000 unaccompanied minors. By 2019, we had — this is a couple of years ago during the Trump administration — 70,000 unaccompanied minors. So, what we are seeing at the border is not new.
I mean, this is part of a larger problem. We had situations in Central America and in Mexico that are expelling not only children, but families. And they continue to come. I mean, they never stopped coming. What happened, for example, in last year, in 2020, instead of detaining these children, and instead of processing them and releasing them in the United States, Trump administration deported, expelled close to 10,000 children, unaccompanied minors.
So, it is not true. I mean, we don’t have the so-called crisis at the border. If anything, we have a humanitarian crisis. But more than anything, we have a crisis of how the government is responding right now. I think Biden administration is not ready, was not ready to deal with a situation like this, and specifically after Trump destroyed the systems, destroyed the infrastructure in the refugee and asylum systems in the last four years.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Fernando, could you talk a little bit in terms of the particular surge, this most recent surge? Are you finding the role of these criminal gangs and the coyotes who actually are stirring up migration because it’s money for them? I’m hearing now it’s $8,000, $9,000, $10,000 to pay coyotes to help people get to the border.
FERNANDO GARCÍA: I mean, that has been true for many, many years here at the border, I mean, but that is not specific for this year. I mean, how — as the border has been militarized since 1994, in the last 20 years, what we have seen is a surge in the business of coyotes and smugglers. I mean, to cross from El Paso to Juárez — or, sorry, from Juárez to El Paso, coyotes are charging thousands of dollars, because they are the ones that actually have the ways and means to bring people across. Obviously, many of them are connected to criminal organizations on the Mexican side. But this is the result — I mean, we need to be very clear about this: This is the result of the militarization of the border. The harder that it becomes to come across, this is more business for some of these smugglers in some of these criminal organizations.
And again, immigration is a historic phenomenon. People continue to come for multiple reasons — crises in Central America, not only in terms of violence, but also economic crises. But then, when they get to the border, they see that there is the construction of border walls, that there is more Border Patrol. The populated areas are sealed so that people cannot cross between Juárez and El Paso, so they have to hire some of these coyotes to actually take them farther away into the deserts, into the mountains, where these immigrants are more exposed. So, this is not new. I mean, this comes first because the border has been militarized in the last 20 years.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And in terms of the potential, now that there is a — the Democrats are in control, or in tenuous control, of both the House and the Senate, as well as the White House, for any kind of legal reform that would bring some order and humanity to immigration policy in the United States, what do the prospects look like right now, from what you can tell?
FERNANDO GARCÍA: Yeah, again, listen, I do believe that this administration has — they had very good intentions. Biden won this election by 70% of the Hispanics voting in this country. And in the top of the agenda of the Hispanic and Latino community, it is immigration reform. I mean, people is demanding legalization of the 11 million people already in the United States and also to establish some kind of processes where we can actually bring workers and families legally so we don’t have to continue experiencing these surges, you know, of people coming through the border. So, again, we’re expecting that to happen.
But, you know, I think I’m very concerned about how this administration, it’s not prepared, or was not prepared, to deal with the situation at the border. I mean, for four years, Trump destroyed everything at the border, I mean, dedicated so much money to the border wall that there’s no asylum officers or even asylum judges that actually can expedite the process of these children and those families. So, if this administration, if they don’t put enough resources in very quickly on the ground here — I mean, we need, like, the creation of welcoming centers, for example, where we can surround these families with services, access to healthcare, access to legal support — if we don’t do that quickly, this can become a problem, a political problem. Apparently it is already a problem for this administration. Then, whenever they’re going to get to Congress to discuss immigration reform, these Republicans will continue to actually use this situation to derail any robust and systemic immigration reform. I mean, again —
AMY GOODMAN: We just have 30 seconds, but, Fernando, can you talk about where exactly this money should go? I mean, the idea of diverting it away from these detention centers and building up that detention infrastructure versus to nonprofits that are used to dealing humanely with migrants?
FERNANDO GARCÍA: No, this is not going to resolve. It will be resolved by nonprofits and community efforts like us. I mean, we are doing a lot. What we need is a robust investment by this government on the creation of what I mentioned, these welcoming centers. These are not detention centers run by ICE or Border Patrol or any private entity. We want institutions of the government to create welcoming centers where actually they can provide enough resources for these families and for these children, and also expand the sponsorship program, specifically having families to sponsor these children that are coming by themselves. And finally — I think we already said it — I mean, we need more resources at the ports of entry. We need more asylum officers and asylum judges. We don’t have that at the border. That’s why we’re experiencing this backlog in these detention centers housing children and families.
Demonstrators take part in a rally to raise awareness of anti-Asian violence in Los Angeles on 13 March. (photo: Ringo Chiu/AFP/Getty Images)
Asian Americans Reported 3,800 Hate-Related Incidents During the Pandemic
Vivian Ho, Guardian UK
Ho writes:
Abuse tracked by Stop AAPI Hate found more than 68% was verbal harassment while 11% was physical
sian Americans reported nearly 3,800 hate-related incidents during the pandemic, a number that experts believe to be just a fraction of the true total.
From 19 March 2020 to 28 February 2021, Asian Americans from all 50 states experienced everything ranging from verbal abuse to physical assaults, from getting coughed on to getting denied services because of their ethnicity, according to a report released on Tuesday by Stop AAPI Hate, a not-for-profit coalition tracking incidents of violence, discrimination and harassment.
More than 68% of the abuse was verbal harassment or name-calling, while 11.1% was physical, the report found.
The report also contains numerous first-person accounts. “I was at the mall with a friend. I was wearing a plumeria clip and was speaking Chamorro when a woman coughed and said, ‘You and your people are the reason why we have corona’,” read one testimonial from Dallas, Texas, in the report. “She then said, ‘Go sail a boat back to your island’.”
“During an Asian American protest, a white man driving a silver Mercedes drove past the first wave of Asian protesters, yelling out of his window at them, ‘Stupid f*cking Asians!’” read one testimonial from Elk Grove, California. “Afterwards, he drove to where the remaining Asian protesters stood and was witnessed by multiple protesters aggressively driving onto the walkway where several protesters were gathered.”
The report come amid growing awareness of anti-Asian violence in the US following several recent attacks. In Oakland, California, a 75-year-old man from Hong Kong died after being robbed and assaulted by a man police said had a history of victimizing elderly Asian people. Earlier this year, an 84-year-old Thai man, Vicha Ratanapakdee, was killed in a seemingly unprovoked attack in San Francisco.
“The number of hate incidents reported to our center represent only a fraction of the number of hate incidents that actually occur, but it does show how vulnerable Asian Americans are to discrimination, and the types of discrimination they face,” the report authors wrote.
The authors noted that before the surge of awareness around anti-Asian attacks, Stop AAPI Hate had documented 2,808 incidents in 2020 but had since received a number of other reports.
In addition to physical and verbal assaults, the report documented incidents of vandalism, online harassment, workplace discrimination, being barred from transportation or establishments, and avoidance or shunning – all because the victims were Asian.
“A [ride-hailing service] driver said to me after I got into his car, ‘Damn, another Asian riding with me today, I hope you don’t have any Covid’,” read one testimonial from the Las Vegas in the report. “After I told him, ‘Have a good day’, he replied back, ‘You shouldn’t be requesting anymore rides from anybody’.”
Women reported hate incidents 2.3 times more than men. California and New York, the two states with the largest Asian American populations, had the most reported hate incidents, with 1,691 reported in California and 517 in New York.
Several of workers participate in a Fight for $15 protest in front of a McDonald's in New York City, 2017. (photo: Erik McGregor/LightRocket/Getty Images)
The Fight for $15: Living on Poverty Wages Means Living on a Razor's Edge
Terrence Wise and Alex N. Press, Jacobin
We spoke with Fight for $15 activist Terrence Wise, who recently testified before the Senate Budget Committee, about life on low wages, the rhythms of collective protest, and why the Biden administration will pay a price if it abandons its pledge to support the movement's central demand of a $15 minimum wage.
ongress has passed a wide-ranging COVID-19 relief package, but one thing that is not included in the bill is an increase of the federal minimum wage. The current minimum is $7.25 an hour, and the last increase was in 2009.
One of the key sources of pressure to raise the wage has been the Fight for $15, which is a project backed by the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) aiming to raise wages and unionize fast-food workers. The movement began in 2012, and while it has won $15 minimum wages in several cities and states, its goal for a national $15 minimum remains unmet, and the prospect of unionizing the fast-food industry is still daunting.
As Congress was considering including a $15 minimum wage in the relief bill, Senate Budget Committee chairman Bernie Sanders held a hearing on wages. He invited CEOs — most of whom declined — and workers to testify before the committee. One person who accepted Sanders’s invitation was Terrence Wise, a McDonald’s worker, father of three, and leader in the Fight for $15. Wise told the committee of his childhood as the son of a fast-food worker: the money wasn’t enough to sustain the family, so he left high school to work full time in fast-food himself. He is still doing so, and still not making enough to get by. Even with his fiancé’s income as a home health care aide, his family was recently evicted, leaving them homeless during the pandemic.
Despite his testimony, and the countless stories of people just like him, the minimum wage remains $7.25. Jacobin’s Alex N. Press spoke to Wise about the Fight for $15, how to move workers into collective action, and what it was like when a small-business owner who testified against a $15 minimum wage at the Senate Budget Committee hearing tried to offer him a job.
ANP: Congress has so far failed to raise the federal minimum wage to $15. What do you think about how that process has transpired?
TW: I reflect on how we got to the point where we’re discussing a $15-an-hour minimum wage bill. Eight years ago, when the Fight for $15 got started, people would laugh at you if you proposed that. This was during the Obama administration, when we had a “friendly” administration in office. So to even be at the point where we can feel the disappointment still gives me hope: we started from the bottom and now we’re here. The working class is going to keep fighting; we knew it wasn’t going to be easy when we started.
This isn’t the first setback that I’ve seen in the life of the movement either. We’ve fought, organized, and struck to nearly double the minimum wage here in my hometown, Kansas City. We won a landslide vote here at City Hall — it was twelve to one — to nearly double the minimum wage, only to see legislation passed in our state capitol, Jefferson City, to take it away. Setbacks just motivate us to fight harder, to keep pushing until we get $15.
ANP: You mentioned that despite not yet having $15, there’s been progress: localities have passed $15 minimums, and the idea no longer gets you laughed out of a room. What explains that progress, and how will $15 an hour be won?
TW: It’s important to remember that it’s not only a fight for $15, but for a union too. When we look at labor organizing in the past, or even when we look at the Civil Rights Movement or the women’s movement, the Fight for $15 is a new model of organization. We’ve got some of the lowest-paid workers in the country stepping up and sparking something. Since the Fight for $15 ignited, we’ve seen protests on historic levels across the country: student walkouts, teachers on wildcat strikes — where they don’t even have the legal ability to go on strike — and so on. The working class is awakening as a whole. We rarely toot our own horn, but I think that’s because of fast-food workers walking off the job in New York City in 2012.
We know that we can’t wait on our employers or folks that we elect into office to make change and hear our voices, but that we have to take action. That’s what we’ve seen over the last eight years, after the Obama administration, and even when we had the Trump administration, which we know wasn’t worker friendly. We were still able to fight for $15, flip seats that have never been flipped before across the country, and we’ve still been able to make progress even when it didn’t look good for the working class.
ANP: You mentioned it’s not just a fight for $15 an hour, but for a union as well. That often gets glosses over, especially in recent months with so much focus on the federal minimum wage. There’s been progress toward $15, but very little progress toward unions for fast-food workers.
TW: That’s the most needed part. We need a union. You can’t pay us a living wage but then some of my coworkers are sexually harassed or discriminated against at work; or we’re faced with a lack of protection at work, no voice at work, and a lack of democracy at work. It’s one thing to make a living wage but still not have the protections of a union: health care, paid sick leave, and paid time off.
McDonald’s? We’ve said it from day one: not only do they not have to wait on legislation to give us $15, they can give us a seat at the table today, they can. We’re ready today. I’m off today, and if I got the call, we could sit at the table today, not only to negotiate our wages, but life in the workplace too. We have to act like a union before we win a union. We’ve won paid sick days off. We’ve won protective gear. So we’ve been acting like a union. But it’s not only time for McDonald’s to give us a seat at the table, it’s also our elected leaders’ job to create an environment where we can create unions. They play a role in this as well.
ANP: What can elected officials do toward that end?
TW: We talk about trickle-down economics, tax breaks for big corporations that are supposed to trickle down to the worker somehow. We’ve seen companies given incentives to do all types of things, but when it’s a discussion about doing what is right for your workers, we need to talk about penalizing corporations for not doing that, for not giving us a seat at the table, for not paying a living wage. We’ve seen our elected leaders act in favor of major corporations. It’s time for them to start doing what’s right for their constituents.
ANP: What has working through the pandemic been like, and what have you and your coworkers done to improve the conditions on the job?
TW: We’ve been fighting hard for $15 and a union, but early on in the pandemic, the fight was about life and death. We had to organize, not only locally but across the country, to win masks, sneeze guards, gloves. We were just demanding personal protective equipment (PPE) in our shops. Then there were the issues of the new mental aspect of being called an “essential worker,” being called a “hero,” and being treated like a second-class citizen: not having a living wage, paid sick leave, hazard pay, or any of those things. We forced McDonald’s to start offering paid sick days, and Wendy’s workers delivered petitions and demands and won protective equipment and sneeze guards. We’ve seen our work bear fruit.
ANP: The Fight for $15 is a national campaign, there have been walkouts and so on. But for you, in your store, as a leader, how do these organizing conversations go? How do you move people into actions when they feel so beaten down?
TW: The key word is agitation. When you think about the working class as a whole — whether you work at McDonald’s, in a hospital, as a teacher, whatever — you do it for your family. And you think about someone hurting your kids, taking money out of your pocket, showing a lack of remorse toward your family. That’s what these corporations do, and they do it in plain sight. They do it by refusing to give health care or a living wage. They create the environment for my family, which has been homeless even during the pandemic.
It’s not the working class’s fault: we work forty hours a week, some of us multiple jobs. We’re doing what we’re supposed to do as American citizens. If it’s not a failure on our part, it has to be on the folks who sign our paychecks, and the folks we put into office.
In my workplace, that’s where it starts. We look around, we see the money coming in — I count it every night. And we talk. We ask, “Do you think McDonald’s can afford to give us gloves, sneeze guards?” You’re damn right they can. They can afford to give us health care and paid sick leave. Our store makes more than $1 million. So at my shop, we know damn well they can do better for us.
So what do we have to do? If we sit and be quiet, nothing will happen. If we keep coming to work and clocking in, nothing will change. So we have to be united. There is no solution for an individual to this problem that doesn’t require collective action. That’s how you win hazard pay and protective equipment. You have to ask questions, agitate, and listen.
ANP: You mentioned during the recent Senate Budget Committee hearing that you’d recently been homeless, even with your job and your fiancé’s work as a home health care aide. The two incomes weren’t enough to stay on top of rent.
TW: I’m a full-time McDonald’s worker, and she’s a certified nursing assistant, taking care of some of the most vulnerable citizens on the planet. My mom told me that if you work hard, are a law-abiding citizen, then everything will work out. That’s the American way. But we’ve done that. Folks hear that my family has been homeless and they think, “Hold on, something is wrong here. These folks are working full time. They must be on drugs, they must be making bad decisions.” No, we’re not. We want what’s best for our three little girls. We work hard and we try to provide for our family. It’s not a failure of ours, it’s these low wages.
At the beginning of the pandemic, they shut down our kids’ school, and my daughters were sick — thank God it wasn’t COVID-19 — but my fiancé missed days of work because of sickness, and I missed a few days helping take care of the family. But when you miss a few days, there goes rent, there goes the gas bill, there goes the car payment. You don’t have paid sick leave or paid time off, so every day, every hour missed from work is truly felt. You’re trying to juggle bills, pay half of rent here, make a promissory note there, and you fall in a tumble. Eventually, we faced eviction right around last February or March, at the start of the pandemic.
We moved in with my brother-in-law and his family of five. Add my family of five and that’s ten folks in a three-bedroom, one-bathroom house, so social distancing goes out the window. There’s a mental aspect too: my kids have to live through it. We’re trying to keep their lives in as high a quality we can in the midst of a pandemic and being homeless. It’s a real rough journey. But I know it’s through no fault of mine, my fiancé, or my children. We do the best we can to avoid these situations, but there’s something terribly wrong with the system. It’s a broken system.
ANP: You were also raised by a fast-food worker. Your mom worked at Hardee’s, and as you testified at the hearing, you started working in fast food at age sixteen to contribute money to the family, and that led you to leave school at seventeen to work full time.
TW: My mom worked at Hardee’s for thirty years. And that’s why I know that all labor has dignity. I saw my mom get up every morning, get dolled up, and go do great work for this company. She gave thirty years of her life, and had nothing to show for it: no pension, no retirement plan, no health care, nothing. Fast-forward to me working for decades in fast food; and I can say, I enjoy my work. I work for a billion-dollar corporation who is very profitable. They can afford to pay me and my coworkers $15 and give us a seat at the table. Like I said, all labor has dignity, and folks are going to serve our burgers, clean our toilets, work in our hospitals, work in our schools, be our janitors, and they all deserve $15. They all deserve a living wage.
ANP: I want to ask you about a moment during the Senate Budget Committee hearing. Carl Sobocinski, who owns the 301 Restaurant Group in Greenville, South Carolina, also testified at the hearing, and at one point, as he was answering one of the committee members’ questions, he pivoted to addressing you.
He told you he wanted to hire you at one of his restaurants if you’d move back to South Carolina, where you’re originally from. This is someone who was there to testify in opposition to the $15 minimum wage, offering to hire you, a leader in the Fight for $15. It was one of the weirdest things I’ve ever seen. What did you think of that situation?
TW: He said I was “underutilized.” My thinking is that I don’t know the guy personally, I don’t know his view on the working class as a whole, but he doesn’t understand that it’s not only me who is being underutilized. His workers are being underutilized as well. They’re being underpaid. Their inability to have a seat at the table is not only harmful to me, but it’s harmful to small businesses, including his, as well.
As I said in the hearing, if I had higher wages, I’d be able to take my family out to restaurants like his. I’d be able to go back home and visit South Carolina, where my mother still is. I’d be able to eat out, visit our local flower shops, go to shoe stores, and so on. Until he wraps his mind around that and pays his workers a livable wage, he won’t truly value them.
ANP: The last thing I want to ask you about is the Fight for $15 campaign. You’ve been part of it for years, and a commitment like that isn’t made lightly. How did you join the organizing?
TW: When I started, eight years ago, I was working at Burger King and Pizza Hut — I started working at McDonald’s shortly after. But back then, I was working two jobs at once, and I remember the day when I met organizers very clearly. It was a spring day, a Sunday, and I was at work at Burger King. We were behind on bills, I was sad and stressed out, and I was mopping the lobby. I heard the door and three people came in. When folks come in, you have to put the smile on and get back to work. So I put my smile on quickly and greeted them. And then I noticed it was three workers: one of them had a subway uniform on, one was from Domino’s, and one was a McDonald’s worker.
They came up to the counter and they asked me some questions. They asked, “Do you think fast-food workers deserve a living wage?” I didn’t know what a living wage was eight years ago, I just thought, “living” and “wage” are two good words together so I said, “Yeah, whatever that is, that sounds good.” They asked, “Do you think fast-food workers deserve vacation time, paid sick time, health care benefits?” I said, “Yeah, shoot, not only fast-food workers but every worker should have that.” And they said, “We’re coming together here in Kansas City to fight to win those things.
My first thought was: You can win those things? But I said sure, I’m down. I didn’t just sign up that day, I called six of my coworkers to the front to listen to what these folks were talking about, about how we can get a living wage, health care benefits, and so on. That was the first day. Now, I’ll be honest, I didn’t know it was going to be this kind of ride. I didn’t know what a strike was, or a rally, or a protest, but it’s special.
We aren’t reinventing the wheel. We look back at movements that came before us, and we follow the blueprint, and it doesn’t win overnight. It took a long time to end slavery, a long time for woman to win the right to vote, years to end segregation. And America has some of the bloodiest labor history of any country on the planet. So we know where we come from. That’s something we remind ourselves of when we’re on the strike line: we follow in the footsteps of those who came before us. Folks have lost their lives to give us an eight-hour workday. If folks hadn’t stood up in protest, my kids might be working at seven, eight, nine years old. You have to know what cloth you’re cut from, and the tradition, when you’re building a movement.
And we’ve won raises for millions of people in the Fight for $15. Most recently, Florida, a state that Trump dominated at the polls, voted overwhelmingly for $15 an hour. We’ve seen that across the country. You take solace in the victories. On any television news outlet, even the right-wing ones, they talk about $15 an hour, whether they like it or not. So we’ve changed the narrative in this country too, and that’s no small feat.
ANP: Is there anything else you want people to know about your job, the pandemic, the Fight for $15 and a union, or anything else?
TW: If you’re working right now, and you go to work every day and life is horrible, it’s not going to change. Nothing just happens. So if you truly care about your family, your community, you have to stand up and make your voices heard. You have to take action if you want change. A union is simply workers coming together, using their strength in numbers, to get things done that you can’t get done on your own.
From day one, we’ve been clear that McDonald’s, for example, can give us a seat at the table today. But there is also something to say about elected leaders. They’ve marched with us, they’ve raised their voices on media platforms, but we have a message for not only the Biden administration, but for all Democrats and Republicans: it’s time for you to feel the pain of your constituents.
We went to the ballot box, we flipped Georgia, we put you in office, and if you want to continue to hold your office, you need to start doing what’s right for the working class. You need to make $15 a reality. You need to pass a 365-days-a-year stimulus plan, and you have to do it right. We will remember next election cycle those who oppose the working class and workers and doing what’s right — whether that’s in Alabama, California, New York, Alaska, Wyoming, or North Dakota, it doesn’t matter. Folks need $15.
ANP: Have you been following the union election taking place at an Amazon warehouse in Alabama?
TW: Amazon workers are rising up just like teachers, just like truck drivers, just like Walmart workers, and there’s no one way to get it done. Long ago, auto workers at the Ford plant had to sit in to win their rights, and it wasn’t only the workers that were sitting in, it was the community outside too. You don’t only need to continue to take action, but you need to bring your coworkers and your community as well. Build your union, organize, and strike — don’t be afraid to strike if you need to. And vote “union: yes.”
A street market in Xepon, a town on the main east-west highway between the South China Sea and the Mekong River in Laos. The town was destroyed during the 1971 invasion of Laos by South Vietnamese forces backed by U.S. airpower. (photo: Christopher Anderson/NYT)
The Victims of Agent Orange the US Has Never Acknowledged
George Black, The New York Times
Black writes:
America has never taken responsibility for spraying the herbicide over Laos during the Vietnam War. But generations of ethnic minorities have endured the consequences.
t was a blazing-hot morning in October 2019 on the old Ho Chi Minh Trail, an intricate web of truck roads and secret paths that wove its way across the densely forested and mountainous border between Vietnam and Laos. Susan Hammond, Jacquelyn Chagnon and Niphaphone Sengthong forded a rocky stream along the trail and came to a village of about 400 people called Labeng-Khok, once the site of a logistics base inside Laos used by the North Vietnamese Army to infiltrate troops into the South. In one of the bamboo-and-thatch stilt houses, the ladder to the living quarters was made from metal tubes that formerly held American cluster bombs. The family had a 4-year-old boy named Suk, who had difficulty sitting, standing and walking — one of three children in the extended family with birth defects. A cousin was born mute and did not learn to walk until he was 7. A third child, a girl, died at the age of 2. “That one could not sit up,” their great-uncle said. “The whole body was soft, as if there were no bones.” The women added Suk to the list of people with disabilities they have compiled on their intermittent treks through Laos’s sparsely populated border districts.
Hammond, Chagnon and Sengthong make up the core of the staff of a nongovernmental organization called the War Legacies Project. Hammond, a self-described Army brat whose father was a senior military officer in the war in Vietnam, founded the group in 2008. Chagnon, who is almost a generation older, was one of the first foreigners allowed to work in Laos after the conflict, representing a Quaker organization, the American Friends Service Committee. Sengthong, a retired schoolteacher who is Chagnon’s neighbor in the country’s capital, Vientiane, is responsible for the record-keeping and local coordination.
The main focus of the War Legacies Project is to document the long-term effects of the defoliant known as Agent Orange and provide humanitarian aid to its victims. Named for the colored stripe painted on its barrels, Agent Orange — best known for its widespread use by the U.S. military to clear vegetation during the Vietnam War — is notorious for being laced with a chemical contaminant called 2,3,7,8-Tetrachlorodibenzo-P-dioxin, or TCDD, regarded as one of the most toxic substances ever created.
A humpback whale breaches at sunset during a whale watching tour off Manly Beach in Sydney, Australia. (photo: Mark Wong/Getty Images)
Climate Change Is Affecting Humpback Whale Migration - and Tourism
Yale Climate Connections
very year, humpback whales migrate from polar regions to warmer waters, where they mate, give birth, raise their calves, and amaze whale watchers.
"It's about just seeing a whale, seeing some of the acrobatic surface activity, from breaching and tail slapping … to bulls chasing females, even calves being born in the area," says Olaf Meynecke of Australia's Griffith University Whales and Climate Research Program.
He says eastern Australia is a hotspot for seeing the majestic animals.
But as the climate warms, migration timing is changing. For example, in Queensland's Hervey Bay, humpbacks often arrive and leave earlier than in the past.
At the end of the season, tour boats sometimes have trouble even finding a whale.
"On top of that, we also of course have higher uncertainty in terms of weather," Maynecke says. "We actually started to get a lot more rain in the dry season because the ocean is still so warm."
That can make for a wet, uncomfortable day at sea.
Meynecke says whale-watching businesses will need to find ways to adapt – for example, by shifting the season dates or offering flexible bookings – so they can keep satisfying their customers, even as the climate warms.
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