22 April 21
Urgent and Immediate Appeal for Donations
It is — very — important to get moving on donations, right here right now.
Yes we do need the money. Yes some people have helped. But we have to have a good month, whatever it takes. As of right now it’s not happening.
With urgency.
Marc Ash
Founder, Reader Supported News
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22 April 21
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Bernie Sanders | How to Raise Trillions Without Hiking Taxes on Working Americans
Bernie Sanders, CNN Business Perspectives
Sanders writes: "The United States of America faces several enormous structural crises that we must address."
We need to fund infrastructure projects and build affordable housing while transitioning our energy system away from fossil fuels toward energy efficiency and renewable energy. We also need to guarantee health care to Americans as a human right, while also expanding Social Security to ensure that 20% of our senior citizens are no longer forced to survive on an income of less than $14,352 a year. Finally, if we are going to be able to compete in a global economy, we need to have the best educated workforce in the world. That means we must make public colleges and universities tuition free and debt free for working families.
These are expensive propositions, no question about it. But paying to fix these problems should not fall on the shoulders of working Americans who already pay the bulk of this nation's taxes.
The good news is that we are living in the wealthiest country in the history of the world. By demanding that the wealthiest people and most profitable corporations in this country begin to pay their fair share of taxes, we can raise more than enough revenue to create a society that works for all of us.
Here are just a few ideas that can raise trillions in new revenue and save the federal government hundreds of billions of dollars, without asking the middle class or working families to pay a nickel more in federal taxes:
Lower prescription drug prices
We can no longer tolerate the pharmaceutical industry ripping off US taxpayers, the elderly and the sick by charging, by far, the highest prices in the world for prescription drugs.
It is way past time for Medicare and the federal government to do what every major country does: Negotiate with pharmaceutical companies to lower the outrageously high price of prescription drugs. Through negotiations we can save about $456 billion over the next decade. This is enough revenue to allow us to expand Medicare to cover dental care, hearing aids and eyeglasses for seniors.
End offshore tax havens
We must end the absurdity of large corporations avoiding hundreds of billions of dollars in taxes by shifting their jobs to China and their profits to the Cayman Islands, Bermuda and other offshore tax havens. According to the most recent estimates, more than half of the foreign profits by US multinational corporations were claimed in just 11 offshore tax haven countries.
By repealing the Trump tax breaks for large corporations, restoring the corporate tax rate to 35%, cracking down on offshore tax shelters and closing tax loopholes, we could generate at least $2.3 trillion in revenue .
Raise taxes on inherited wealth
Instead of giving billionaires a giant estate tax break like many of my Republican colleagues in the Senate have proposed, we must make sure that the wealthiest people in America who inherit massive fortunes pay their fair share of taxes. Enacting a progressive estate tax rate starting at 45% on inherited wealth of more than $3.5 million could raise over $1 trillion in new revenue from the families of America's 724 billionaires alone.
Establish a tax on financial transactions
We need to establish a tax of a fraction of a percent on the financial transactions of Wall Street speculators who nearly destroyed the economy back in 2008. Over 12 years ago, the middle class bailed out Wall Street during their time of need through billions of dollars in virtually zero interest loans from the Federal Reserve and hundreds of billions from the Treasury Department.
Now it's Wall Street's turn to rebuild the struggling middle class through a modest financial transactions tax of 0.5% for stocks, 0.1% for bonds and 0.005% for derivatives, which could raise up to $2.2 trillion over a ten-year period.
End fossil fuel subsidies
If we are going to make sure that our planet is healthy and habitable for future generations, we cannot continue to hand out corporate welfare to the fossil fuel industry. By abolishing dozens of tax loopholes, subsidies and other special interest giveaways to big oil, coal and gas companies we can save taxpayers billions over the next decade.
Despite what some of my Republican colleagues may claim, the reality is that when you take into account federal income taxes, payroll taxes, gas taxes, sales taxes and property taxes, we have, as a nation, an extremely unfair tax system that allows billionaires to pay a lower effective tax rate than many workers.
That must change. We need a progressive tax system based on the ability to pay, not a regressive tax system that rewards the wealthy and the well-connected.
If Congress has the guts to take on large corporations and the billionaire class whose greed is destroying the social fabric of America, we can both reduce income and wealth inequality and create a more egalitarian society.
The law enforcement arm of the U.S. Postal Service has been quietly running a program that tracks and collects Americans' social media posts. (photo: Shutterstock)
The Postal Service Is Running a 'Covert Operations Program' That Monitors Americans' Social Media Posts
Jana Winter, Yahoo! News
Winter writes: "The law enforcement arm of the U.S. Postal Service has been quietly running a program that tracks and collects Americans' social media posts, including those about planned protests, according to a document obtained by Yahoo News."
The details of the surveillance effort, known as iCOP, or Internet Covert Operations Program, have not previously been made public. The work involves having analysts trawl through social media sites to look for what the document describes as “inflammatory” postings and then sharing that information across government agencies.
“Analysts with the United States Postal Inspection Service (USPIS) Internet Covert Operations Program (iCOP) monitored significant activity regarding planned protests occurring internationally and domestically on March 20, 2021,” says the March 16 government bulletin, marked as “law enforcement sensitive” and distributed through the Department of Homeland Security’s fusion centers. “Locations and times have been identified for these protests, which are being distributed online across multiple social media platforms, to include right-wing leaning Parler and Telegram accounts.”
A number of groups were expected to gather in cities around the globe on March 20 as part of a World Wide Rally for Freedom and Democracy, to protest everything from lockdown measures to 5G. “Parler users have commented about their intent to use the rallies to engage in violence. Image 3 on the right is a screenshot from Parler indicating two users discussing the event as an opportunity to engage in a ‘fight’ and to ‘do serious damage,’” says the bulletin.
“No intelligence is available to suggest the legitimacy of these threats,” it adds.
The bulletin includes screenshots of posts about the protests from Facebook, Parler, Telegram and other social media sites. Individuals mentioned by name include one alleged Proud Boy and several others whose identifying details were included but whose posts did not appear to contain anything threatening.
“iCOP analysts are currently monitoring these social media channels for any potential threats stemming from the scheduled protests and will disseminate intelligence updates as needed,” the bulletin says.
The government’s monitoring of Americans’ social media is the subject of ongoing debate inside and outside government, particularly in recent months, following a rise in domestic unrest. While posts on platforms such as Facebook and Parler have allowed law enforcement to track down and arrest rioters who assaulted the Capitol on Jan. 6, such data collection has also sparked concerns about the government surveilling peaceful protesters or those engaged in protected First Amendment activities.
When contacted by Yahoo News, civil liberties experts expressed alarm at the post office’s surveillance program. “It’s a mystery,” said University of Chicago law professor Geoffrey Stone, whom President Barack Obama appointed to review the National Security Agency’s bulk data collection in the wake of the Edward Snowden leaks. “I don’t understand why the government would go to the Postal Service for examining the internet for security issues.”
The Postal Service has had a turbulent year, facing financial insolvency and allegations that its head, Postmaster General Louis DeJoy, who was appointed by President Donald Trump, was slowing down deliveries just as the pandemic vastly increased the number of mail-in ballots for the 2020 election. Why the post office would now move into social media surveillance, which would appear to have little to do with mail deliveries, is unclear.
“This seems a little bizarre,” agreed Rachel Levinson-Waldman, deputy director of the Brennan Center for Justice’s liberty and national security program. “Based on the very minimal information that’s available online, it appears that [iCOP] is meant to root out misuse of the postal system by online actors, which doesn’t seem to encompass what’s going on here. It’s not at all clear why their mandate would include monitoring of social media that’s unrelated to use of the postal system.”
Levinson-Waldman also questioned the legal authority of the Postal Service to monitor social media activity. “If the individuals they’re monitoring are carrying out or planning criminal activity, that should be the purview of the FBI,” she said. “If they’re simply engaging in lawfully protected speech, even if it’s odious or objectionable, then monitoring them on that basis raises serious constitutional concerns.”
The U.S. Postal Inspection Service did not respond to specific questions sent by Yahoo News about iCOP, but provided a general statement on its authorities.
“The U.S. Postal Inspection Service is the primary law enforcement, crime prevention, and security arm of the U.S. Postal Service,” the statement said. “As such, the U.S. Postal Inspection Service has federal law enforcement officers, Postal Inspectors, who enforce approximately 200 federal laws to achieve the agency’s mission: protect the U.S. Postal Service and its employees, infrastructure, and customers; enforce the laws that defend the nation's mail system from illegal or dangerous use; and ensure public trust in the mail.”
“The Internet Covert Operations Program is a function within the U.S. Postal Inspection Service, which assesses threats to Postal Service employees and its infrastructure by monitoring publicly available open source information,” the statement said.
“Additionally, the Inspection Service collaborates with federal, state, and local law enforcement agencies to proactively identify and assess potential threats to the Postal Service, its employees and customers, and its overall mail processing and transportation network. In order to preserve operational effectiveness, the U.S. Postal Inspection Service does not discuss its protocols, investigative methods, or tools.”
The Postal Service isn’t the only part of government expanding its monitoring of social media. In a background call with reporters last month, DHS officials spoke about that department’s involvement in monitoring social media for domestic terrorism threats. “We know that this threat is fueled mainly by false narratives, conspiracy theories and extremist rhetoric read through social media and other online platforms,” one of the officials said. “And that's why we're kicking off engagement directly with social media companies.”
DHS is coordinating with “civil rights and civil liberties colleagues, as well as our private colleagues, to ensure that everything we're doing is being done responsibly and in line with civil rights and civil liberties and individual privacy,” the official added.
Stone, the University of Chicago professor, questioned why the post office would be tasked with something like identifying violent protests two months after the Jan. 6 attack, which would appear to have little or nothing to do with the post office’s role in delivering mail. “I just don’t think the Postal Service has the degree of sophistication that you would want if you were dealing with national security issues of this sort,” he said.
“That part is puzzling,” he added. “There are so many other federal agencies that could do this, I don’t understand why the post office would be doing it. There is no need for the post office to do it — you’ve got FBI, Homeland Security and so on, so I don’t know why the post office is doing this.”
People walk by a CVS pharmacy on 3rd Avenue in Manhattan. (photo: Roman Tiraspolsky/Shutterstock)
CVS Health Quietly Made Massive Donation to Dark-Money Group Fighting Access to Care
Lee Fang, The Intercept
Fang writes: "In a year marked by a coronavirus pandemic that has killed millions, CVS Health financed a wave of political advocacy against measures to control health care costs and increase access."
The pharmacy and health insurance giant gave $5 million to Partnership for America’s Health Care Future.
n a year marked by a coronavirus pandemic that has killed millions, CVS Health financed a wave of political advocacy against measures to control health care costs and increase access.
The health care giant, which owns Aetna health insurance and operates thousands of pharmacies and walk-in clinics around the country, provided $5 million to the Partnership for America’s Health Care Future, or PAHCF.
The seven-figure donation from CVS is the largest known contribution to PAHCF, which was formed in 2018 to lobby and advocate against proposals such as Medicare for All, the public option, and similar reforms that have gained growing support in recent years. PAHCF is a 501(c)(4) and is not required to disclose donor information.
Last year, PAHCF swamped voters in Democratic primary states such as South Carolina with ads urging voters to oppose Medicare for All. In states considering the public option, the group hired local lobbyists and aired advertisements designed to discourage state legislators from voting for the plan. And just before the general election, the group again aired ads attacking the public option.
Neither CVS Health nor PAHCF responded to a request for comment. Despite CVS Health’s donation, the company is not listed as a coalition member of PAHCF on the group’s website.
In recent weeks, PAHCF appears to be reprising its role. The group has launched ads that have warned lawmakers against supporting President Joe Biden’s national public option proposal and funneled resources into states to attack state-based proposals for public insurance plans.
Last week, CVS Health chief executive officer Karen S. Lynch co-signed a letter to Connecticut Gov. Ned Lamont, warning that the drive to enact a public health insurance option would drive health insurance businesses out of the state.
The letter, also signed by the chief executives of Anthem, Cigna, Harvard Pilgrim Health Care, and UnitedHealth Group, charged that the effort to lower premiums and expand coverage through a public option “will only further deteriorate the state’s fragile economy.”
The disclosure of the $5 million donation comes as PAHCF has embarked on another round of advertising in the Colorado, Maine, Montana, Connecticut, and the Washington, D.C., markets. The organization also launched an offshoot in Nevada, another state in which legislators are considering a public option proposal.
Last year, PAHCF successfully lobbied to defeat a previous attempt to pass a so-called public option insurance plan in Colorado.
The Colorado program was designed to provide residents with an alternative health insurance plan with premiums that would cost an average of 20 percent less than private insurers. The proposal also contained a number of cost-saving measures, including a requirement that drug companies pass rebates directly to consumers, rather than third-party health care providers or insurers.
The PAHCF ads railed against the proposal, claiming that it would introduce “government-controlled health care” that would insert politicians into decisions that should be left to patients and doctors.
The group, working in concert with the Federation of American Hospitals and the Healthcare Leadership Council, has also lobbied lawmakers directly. Internal documents from the group, previously reported by The Intercept, show that PAHCF and its affiliates directly engaged ghostwriters to author opinion columns, briefed Democratic Party officials on the dangers of embracing health reform, and worked to pressure candidates in the presidential primaries.
But watchdogs such as the Center for Health and Democracy say the group is merely a lobbying front to preserve the profits and market share of private health providers and insurers.
“The story of healthcare in America is about profit-driven corporations versus Americans who need care,” said Wendell Potter, the president of the Center for Health and Democracy.
While the pandemic ravaged the economy and claimed the employer-sponsored health coverage of some 15 million Americans, much of the health care industry thrived. CVS Health collected nearly $13.9 billion in operating income last year. HCA Healthcare, the for-profit hospital chain that also funds PAHCF, paid its chief executive Samuel Hazen $30.4 million last year.
CVS devotes large sums of money on political influence. Last year, the company spent $10.3 million on federal lobbying efforts. The voluntary disclosure that shows the $5 million donation to PAHCF also revealed other donations to political influence groups that do not reveal donor information.
The company donated $1,750,000 to Majority Forward, a group affiliated with Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., that supports Senate Democrats and $1,750,000 to One Nation, a group affiliated with Sen. Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., that supports Senate Republicans. CVS also made donations to a variety of political organizations, including Third Way, the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation, the Congressional Hispanic Caucus Institute, the American Enterprise Institute, Center Forward, and the American Action Forum.
“Make no mistake: As long as their billions in profits are threatened, the front group for the health insurance industry will spend whatever it takes to keep the status quo exactly the way it is,” added Potter.
Medical personnell prepares a Covid 19 vaccine injection. (photo: iStock)
Breakthrough Infections With Coronavirus Variants Reported, but Cases Appear Mild
Akshay Syal, NBC News
Syal writes: "Two reports of so-called coronavirus breakthrough infections - in which fully vaccinated people get the illness anyway - suggest that the vaccines still offer strong protection against severe disease even in the face of variants."
Two patients had "at-home cases of Covid-19," one expert said.
wo reports of so-called coronavirus breakthrough infections — in which fully vaccinated people get the illness anyway — suggest that the vaccines still offer strong protection against severe disease even in the face of variants.
The cases, which were detailed Wednesday in the New England Journal of Medicine, were those of two women out of more than 400 fully vaccinated study participants who were tested for Covid-19 weekly. Both women developed mild cases and recovered quickly.
A co-author of the study, Dr. Robert Darnell, a professor and senior physician at Rockefeller University in New York City, said the two cases aren't cause for alarm.
"They certainly didn't need to be hospitalized," he said. "They had at-home cases of Covid-19."
As the number of fully vaccinated people increases in the U.S., so, too, will reports of breakthrough infections rise. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said Friday that it had received reports of around 5,800 breakthrough infections out of more that 77 million fully vaccinated people.
Breakthrough infections can occur because no vaccine is 100 percent effective. Such cases remain very rare.
CDC officials are gathering more data about breakthrough cases to determine whether there are any patterns. Among the questions is whether certain variants are more likely to play a role in breakthrough cases.
Both of the cases in the new report were sequenced, and both were found to share certain mutations with the variants first identified in the U.K. and New York. However, neither included all the mutations to match the previously identified variants. (Variants of the virus can include a number of mutations.)
Experts cautioned that because the report detailed just two cases, it's too early to draw conclusions about which variants are most likely to lead to breakthrough infections.
One of the samples included a mutation called E484K, which is also found in the variants from South Africa, Brazil and New York City. It is thought to help the virus evade the body's immune response to a degree.
Jeremy Kamil, a virologist at LSU Health Shreveport in Louisiana, said he wasn't surprised that the mutation was detected, as lab data suggest it would play a role in breakthrough cases.
"If you ask scientists what mutations you'd expect to see in a breakthrough infection, I think the No. 1 answer you'd get would be E484K," said Kamil, who wasn't involved with the new study.
Two other studies, published Wednesday in the CDC's Weekly Morbidity and Mortality Report, touched on breakthrough infections in nursing homes. One report identified 22 breakthrough infections across 78 Chicago-area nursing homes, which had fully vaccinated nearly 15,000 residents and staff members from December through March. In two-thirds of the breakthrough cases, the infections were asymptomatic, although several people developed mild to moderate symptoms, the report said. Two patients were hospitalized, and one person died.
The second report focused on a Covid-19 outbreak at a nursing home in Kentucky in March. Twenty-six residents and 20 staff members tested positive, including 18 residents and four staff members who had been fully vaccinated. Sequencing of the cases detected the same E484K mutation as in the New York cases.
However, those who had been vaccinated were still 87 percent less likely to develop symptoms than those who were unvaccinated.
"The results from this study are quite telling that vaccination resulted in decreased likelihood of infection and symptomatic disease in a high-risk population" like a nursing home, said Jason Kindrachuk, an assistant professor of medical microbiology and infectious diseases at the University of Manitoba in Winnipeg.
Similarly, the women described in the New England Journal of Medicine report also had mild symptoms, said Kindrachuk, who wasn't involved with the new reports. "The vaccines did exactly what we had assumed based on the clinical trial data and the real world data: They protected from severe disease."
One of the patients in the New England Journal of Medicine report, a healthy 51-year-old woman, tested positive for Covid-19 on March 10, 19 days after her second dose of the Moderna vaccine. She said she followed guidelines, including masking and social distancing, but still developed symptoms, including a sore throat, congestion and a headache. The day after her test, she lost her sense of smell. All of her symptoms went away a week later.
The second patient, a 65-year-old woman with no risk factors for severe Covid-19, tested positive March 17, 36 days after her second dose of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine. She got sick two weeks after her unvaccinated partner was diagnosed with Covid-19.
Her symptoms included fatigue, sinus congestion and a headache. As in the first case, her symptoms went away after just a few days.
While data from the CDC suggest that breakthrough infections are rare, Darnell said it would be prudent for fully vaccinated people to get tested for Covid-19 if they develop symptoms that resemble the illness.
"If you do get sick after vaccination and it looks like, smells like and sounds like Covid-19, it may be Covid-19," he said.
People protest in support of the unionizing efforts of the Alabama Amazon workers, in Los Angeles, California, March 22, 2021. (photo: Lucy Nicholson/Reuters)
The Lead Organizer for the Amazon Union Drive Has No Regrets
Luis Feliz Leon, Jacobin
Leon writes: "In an interview, the lead organizer for the Amazon union campaign in Bessemer says that the drive has built momentum to unionize Amazon despite the defeat - and that 'Bezos had better not get too cocky, because them folks are pretty fired up.'"
In an interview, the lead organizer for the Amazon union campaign in Bessemer says that the drive has built momentum to unionize Amazon despite the defeat — and that “Bezos had better not get too cocky, because them folks are pretty fired up.”
veryone — including us — has published an analysis of the Retail, Wholesale, and Department Store Union’s election loss in a celebrated union drive at an Amazon warehouse in Bessemer, Alabama. But most of us are writing from a distance, and with only a few pieces of the puzzle. What did the campaign look like from the inside?
Luis Feliz Leon of Labor Notes spoke on April 13 with Joshua Brewer, the campaign’s lead organizer, from RWDSU’s Mid-South Council. The transcript has been lightly edited for length and clarity.
LFL: Let’s begin with the workers. Tell me about some of the great interactions with workers and how that informed the decision to launch this campaign.
JB: The initial starting point is that there were workers who said that a large amount of their coworkers needed help, and that they were hurting and confused with COVID season late last summer. That’s where a lot of our campaigns begin, is workers reaching out to the union. They were prepared to put in the work, and then they definitely didn’t let us down. They worked very hard.
LFL: What were some of the barriers to having more of those interactions?
JB: Early on, and continuing throughout the campaign, we had in-person meetings almost daily, and sometimes multiple times a day, with a dozen or so workers and [poultry worker/organizer] Michael “Big Mike” Foster and myself in the union hall. The barrier was with just larger groups, throughout the pandemic. You can’t have two hundred people in the union hall, like I have for a contract fight or for a traditional organizing campaign. With a campaign being run in the pandemic, it was about how often can we have meetings. There was a lot of micro-meeting, a lot of smaller-group meeting, trying to get those things done in a way that was safe and also attractive.
I’ve read some things that said that there wasn’t a lot of in-person meetings [on the campaign]. That’s actually incorrect. There was a ton of in-person meetings, there just wasn’t a lot of large in-person meetings, which certainly hurts any campaign, because so much of that excitement and that movement energy comes from that.
LFL: One follow-up question, on the point of movement energy. One of the things that, as you’re building up your capacity in a campaign, workers [do is] start doing job actions. I heard from individual workers [about] them taking actions during the captive-audience meetings, challenging the union-busters [individually] as they were presenting. But I’m curious what the thinking was around workplace struggles, as the campaign was heating up.
JB: The campaign moved very fast, and in a pandemic, we had to evaluate everything on the fly.
I think there’s two types of campaigns. There’s a campaign where a union says, we think this is important for the sector to focus on, or for our union, and we’re going to launch a campaign at that worksite.
And then there’s campaigns where workers come to the union and say, “Hey, we need help. Our coworkers want to have a union campaign.” And those two campaigns are structured differently from the very beginning — it’s a different ask.
With this campaign, when they reached out and we launched, it did move very fast, and there was the ability to collect a ton of signatures pretty quickly. And with Amazon’s flooding the unit like they did, a lot of employees were hired in December — thousands of employees that were hired while we were already three to four months into this campaign, because Amazon wanted to expand the unit.
So, for us, there was a lot of work just getting this base knowledge, understanding the workers and getting them involved and getting them into the union hall and getting them into committees. There was not really the time, unfortunately, for some of that deeper organizing that we will continue to do now that we have a base of 1,100 workers. Now we’ll really get into a lot of those trainings. People will say, should you have pulled it and waited to file it? No, all those things were on the table, but when you have thousands of employees saying, “We want a union,” this is their campaign.
You know, a lot of people also have a misunderstanding that this was a top-down campaign. You can ask the workers if you’d like to know who was running the campaign, right? And it was [Amazon workers] Darryl Richardson, Jennifer Bates, and the committee that made the decisions on a lot of things.
But workplace actions are something we’ll definitely look at, especially as we get these leaders that do stay around, that can begin to build these larger committees.
LFL: In one of our earlier conversations, you told me — I’m going to paraphrase — if workers wanted a union, organizers will stand by them and get them a union. So I think you’ve partly answered the question, but I’d ask you again, why did the union go ahead with an election, especially when you knew that Amazon flooded the bargaining unit? From my conversations with the [RWDSU Mid-South Council] president, Randy [Hadley], he said that you folks were prepared when Amazon basically showed up at the NLRB hearing and said, “This is not the correct unit size.” At that point, you already had more than 1,500 cards signed, right?
JB: Correct. We knew it was expanding like crazy. Amazon was so guarded, in all of their releases and public filings, that the only thing you could find, publicly, was 1,500 workers. We also had to dig around just to find out who we serve the local petition to. They’re so closed off to the community in which they operate that people didn’t know this information. They didn’t really know how to get ahold of them.
So we did know that it was well over 1,500 workers at that point — we had over that amount of cards. When they filed and they returned back with the 5,800, we still had over 50 percent. We were looking at a mail-ballot election, and the committee was telling us it was hot: “Workers want to vote, they want to push, they don’t want to wait.”
We give them guidance, and certainly there’s times where we even tell them, “Listen, we think you’re wrong here,” but at the end of the day, it’s a worker-led campaign.
And we were confident that we had a real shot to win. We knew the union-busting was going to be severe, but we wanted to do our absolute best to make sure that we had one-on-one, long-form conversations with every worker in the facility. That was the goal, to replicate house calls as best we could.
And I know that there’s things written about [Joe] Biden and how they door-knocked on that campaign, but I would just say that we’re not a very large staff of hundreds of people, like a presidential campaign, or thousands of people. We also had to keep in mind the risk of having an infection inside of our organizing team, and if we had to quarantine everyone for multiple weeks, how devastating that would be. We had to keep our team healthy. We had to be smart about how we went around in October, November, and December, especially with COVID roaring in Bessemer. I’ll stand by the decision to keep the organizers out of packed cars together, driving around and knocking on people’s homes. Obviously, outside of COVID, we would have loved to be able to do traditional door-knocking.
Our thing is, we took the fight on for the workers, and we fought it the best we could. Everybody involved inspired the country with their work, because people knew it was David versus Goliath. Amazon absolutely suppressed a solid 400 of our votes, but they’re frivolous challenges. They challenged everything from late March and beyond, simply because they knew that the union had incredible momentum in late March. Our committee says that the warehouse is disappointed, that a lot of people wish they could vote again. And, ultimately, they might get that chance.
And I’ll tell you, man. They showed up at the rally [on April 11, shortly after the loss], and they were fired up. We had some of the best participation that we’ve ever had. I think that tells you something. Like I told [workers] at the rally, we’ve got a small army of over a thousand people that voted union yes on a mail-ballot election. We know there’s significant support to organize in that facility. It’s a large group, and I’m really proud of the work that happened to get that amount of people to take on the richest, most powerful man in the world. And I think drawing a 60/40 split — if you gave us our votes, it’s closer to 60/40 — I think it represented that there’s real promise here, that despite all the odds being stacked against these workers, they were able to put a fight on.
And we’re not going to give up on them. We’re fifteen minutes down the road. I told them to act like they’ve got a union, operate like they want, and we’ll start planning their summer event, having families out, and start organizing, continuing to push the message, because ultimately, we think they’ll get a union in Bessemer.
LFL: What would you say you learned from this campaign?
JB: Man, we’re two days after. There’s going to be a lot of time to reflect and learn. This was a huge undertaking. We gave it our best shot. There’s going to be a ton of time to look at things that we could have done differently, and that’s another reason why I would argue that you take on this fight, because without that, you don’t know the playbook, and you don’t know exactly what Amazon plans to do. We have certainly far more clarity into how Amazon plans to stop unionizing attempts and organizing attempts.
The beauty of being a local union and being here in Bessemer is that we’re not leaving. We’re going to be able to hold Amazon to account for the things that they’ve done and continue to do. From here, having those workers be a part of this local union and fight will be hugely important.
But, you know, every article that’s been written very well could have a true point to it, and I look forward to reading them. I look forward to having real breakdown conversations with the organizers on our team, and then organizers that we trust and people that are actively in this fight that are also trying to organize mass amounts of people in one direction, and really look at what we learned here, and try to move forward with it. But we also saw a lot of things that worked really well, that we look forward to carrying into our next campaign.
LFL: What were some of those things that you think worked really well that you want to carry forward?
JB: I think the overall communication points, the ability to have communication on cell phones, through social media, through video, through Zoom meetings, a lot of the ways that we were able to overcome the challenge of COVID is also similar to having to overcome the challenges of the terrain that we fight in. And the way that we don’t generally have a lot of access to workers, and how you begin to strike up these conversations, especially en masse.
We tried everything — we tried peer-to-peer texting, we did social, we did all kinds of Zoom meetings. And even in-person satellite meetings, like one after the other, every other hour — we learned how that could work, especially when you’re dealing with shift changes.
And we learned a lot of good lessons about how to organize shops with high turnover. This is a challenging thing; there’s a reason why Amazon has not been pushed to the brink yet. It’s because of the turnover. A lot of people don’t put enough credence to that. It’s very different than a lot of industries when you’re talking about 100 percent turnover.
You’ll always have some leaders that you can certainly form into committees and leaders inside of a facility. But having longer conversations consistently with the entire workforce is a very challenging task, simply because you’re going to lose a large portion of the workforce every week with the difficulty of work, and the amount of people that quit every week. All of those things bring lessons for us, and things that worked; the mail-out seems very successful, just a lot of different ways that we were able to engage workers. We think that you mix that in with the more traditional organizing strategies.
In a post-COVID world, which it looks like we’re prayerfully headed into, we feel confident about what the future holds. We won the campaign in Russellville [In 2012, RWDSU won a union election in Russellville, Alabama, to represent 1,200 workers at Pilgrim’s Pride, the US poultry division of Brazilian beef and poultry giant JBS, the largest chicken producer in the United States], which was about 1,500 workers. This is 1,100 or 1,000 workers that voted union yes in all. We don’t feel like we were that far off. We think the numbers are a little inflated because of Amazon’s challenges, and so we’re very positive in our camp — about the work that was done, the lessons that we learned — and very inspired. We’re feeling good down here.
LFL: I want to return to a point that you made. Some people will say that this loss will make organizing at Amazon more difficult. Amazon was able to refine its anti-union effort; they can now point to the loss in Alabama and say workers voted against the union and use that elsewhere. What do you say to them?
JB: I think, even after running probably the most expensive, extensive, and sophisticated anti-union campaign ever run, that over a thousand workers still said, despite that, we’re going to put it on the line — despite the fact that you threatened my job, despite the fact that you made it feel like we’ll have to go on strike to get any kind of gains, and despite the fact that you ridiculed me for two months straight for this being my personal decision, I’m still going to stand up to the person that signs my check on Friday — I think that tells [you] something, especially in the hardest of climates.
To me, when you look at the overall results — and, again, we read the results as about 1,900 to 1,100, when you factor in the challenges. About 100 of them were ours; we felt like there was some management-level workers that voted, so you give them their 100 [or] 150 and give us our 300 that they took. I think it ends up 1,900 to 1,100 or so. When we look at that, if we flipped 450 voters, brother, we beat Amazon. So we don’t feel like this was a thrashing.
When you look at mail-in voting numbers, it was a very large turnout. We’re very proud of the fact that over a thousand workers voted yes. That’s a small army. I would say that if you are discouraged from the union campaign that pushed the largest entity in the world to the brink and got pretty damn close and really put up a hell of a fight, then I think you’re looking at the wrong things. Us on the ground, we’re incredibly inspired to move forward and incredibly inspired to fight.
I would just tell people to make sure that they talk to organizers on the ground. I think reaching out to the people that were in the campaign to ask their opinions and assessments of the campaign is probably important before you write up a debrief of that campaign, especially when you’re very far away from that campaign. I appreciate the work you did, that a lot of the labor writers did, coming down just to be a part of it. [Ed. Note: Luis Feliz Leon visited Bessemer twice during the campaign.]
I think a lot of people were a little surprised by the results. And I think a lot of that was because when you came, when people came down in March, they saw a new campaign that had had a little bit of time to get its feet underneath it and get its legs underneath it and was really beginning to explode with committees, and workers taking very bold stands.
We just didn’t get there fast enough — and we fought like hell to get it there fast enough. But at the end of the day, there was too much early vote, too much pressure from Amazon and coercion to get those ballots out before their workers could figure out any better or any differently. Ultimately, that’s what cost the campaign.
I think workers felt like Amazon made them feel small. They couldn’t “outsider” our union. They couldn’t say that this is outside agitation, this big international from wherever — they couldn’t do that, because we were in Birmingham. So what Amazon did instead was try to make us look very small, like we were incapable of moving them, and all of their workers’ efforts were going to be in vain.
And, so as counter to that, we began reaching out to larger groups and larger solidarity networks, so that we could show these workers that, you know what? Amazon was big, Amazon has a ton of money and a ton of power over their life, but you know what else is big? NFL Players Association, and the movie writers, and your local church, and Black Lives Matter, and the social justice movement, and all of these things that support your right to organize.
And that, for workers, was instrumental, because they realize, “Man, we’re not alone in this fight. We’ve got the country with us. We’ve got the government with us. We’ve got people that will fight alongside of us.” And so, no, it was not weak or empty endorsements by celebrities — excuse me, it was a fucking movement, all right? And it was real.
And the LA Fed [Los Angeles County Federation of Labor] protest outside Morgan Lewis’s offices [union and community members rallied on March 22 at the LA headquarters of the union-busting firm that Amazon was using in Bessemer], that’s part of the movement. And that was real. And when workers saw that, workers got inspired. It wasn’t a national celebrity endorsement campaign, it was everybody from the local teachers’ association to the local coal miners to the local churches to local Black Lives Matter, all the way up to left organizations, politically, locally, nationally, and then it was Democrats, Young Democrats, it was freaking Republicans that tried to get their hat in there, to get their piece of it. It was a national recognition that we need to do better.
It ultimately happened a little after a lot of the early votes turned in, and that’s unfortunate. We’ll look at how we could have made it happen faster next time, and we’ll look at ways that we could have done some deeper organizing next time, and we’ll look at whether we should have held onto the petition. But none of that takes away from the work, and none of that takes away from over a thousand brave bodies that took on this guy. So we don’t feel any regret about running the campaign.
One of these days, I’m going to get my voice back, and I’m going to get some rest. And we’re going to get ready for the next one. Maybe that’s Bessemer, maybe it’s Georgia, or Tennessee, or Northeast, who knows, right? We’ll take an assessment of all that, and we’ll keep moving.
We didn’t start organizing at Amazon. We’ve been organizing and winning, long before here, and we’re going to continue to fight. And I’ll tell you, brother, if you’d have been at that rally, man. It was powerful. The workers came up out from the union hall into the parking lot, chanting, “When workers’ rights are under attack, what do we do? Stand up, fight back!” There were dozens and dozens and dozens of committee people that floated out of that union hall, and they were hyped. And so, I would just say, like, [Jeff] Bezos had better not get too cocky, because them folks are pretty fired up.
You ask our committee if we should have taken this fight up. Ask the people that just came up the stairs Sunday night, saying they’re not done, they’re ready to fight. That’s who we deal with. We’ve got to deal with those souls, we’ve got to deal with the tears on the shoulder when we lost the campaign. We’ve got to deal with the lives that are impacted, and the people that now have to wonder what’s next, but also are saying, “No, we want to fight.” And we also know that we can win this thing. We’ll be accountable to those thousand-plus people.
LFL: Are you afraid of any of the more visible worker leaders in the campaign being retaliated against? What’s the plan to keep organizing with them, moving forward?
JB: I would just say that any retaliation from Amazon will be met with the same amount of intense publicity and fight that the campaign took on, and that’s just how we do our business.
We have a nucleus of likely 1,500 or so people, at a minimum, that want a union. And we need to get them to the union hall. We need to get them vaccinated, and we need to get them meeting and rallying and pushing. And so that Amazon understands that, you come after one, you’re coming after 1,500 or so people, and we’ve got to mobilize those 1,500 workers. We’ve got to get them talking to other workers, and it’s like church: bring a friend. If everybody brings a friend, we smoke ’em.
We don’t feel like we’re that far off. We feel like we got a heck of a start, and we’re proud of it, and we’re proud of the workers that are willing to continue that fight. I’ll tell you, we haven’t lost a single committee person that I’m aware of, not one. I haven’t spoken to one person that said, “I’m ready to walk away.”
LFL: Can you tell me a little bit about the organizing committee? How you’re going to build on what you’ve already built?
JB: By organizing, by continuing to build, continuing to train. Ultimately, there’s no better training than going through it, so workers who just went through the union-busting are experts on union-busting at this point, right?
You’ve got to get them together, you’ve got to get ’em mobilized — whether that includes workplace actions or just simply meeting this spring and having an outdoor event, if COVID is still pushing us out of meeting spaces. We’re going to get the organizing team together, and we’re going to figure out what the best opportunities are to move forward. What’s the court case looking like, what does the time frame look like? And decide, are we getting ready for a second vote, or are we getting ready for a season of deeper organizing with the committee, really training?
Workers are still there. And so, you know, [we’re going to do] the organizing that we always do, which is a mix of just getting everybody together to eat pizza, getting everybody together to watch a ball game, getting everybody together to take on a protest, getting everybody together to take training. Or simply mapping and getting ready for the second round.
LFL: I’m curious what the inoculation plan was. Amazon definitely was spooked by this campaign, but to a large extent, it also followed the usual union-busting playbook.
JB: The committee was well trained on what to expect. But how do you train up 1,500 workers, with this massive turnover, 100 workers a week? Think about the challenges that that poses, when Amazon is able to manipulate the hiring numbers to such extremes that they can bring in 3,000 workers in a month, but they can also fire 1,000 workers a month.
In a COVID world, you don’t have workers going to people’s houses, you don’t have committee people going to work parties with their friends after work. You don’t have workers hanging out in break rooms, places that you can normally have these larger discussions.
The way we attempted to do it was to inoculate digitally, in addition to doing it in our committee, and micro-meetings where we had ten to fifteen workers every hour coming in to meet with committee people and be inoculated about the boss’s tricks and how they’re going to say things, how they try to third-party the union, and how they’re going to make you feel like everything’s on the line.
The problem was the scale of it. How do you get people to engage in these trainings, when they’re coming and going so fast? And the access to worker information [the list of eligible voters] doesn’t come until late January, so it didn’t leave us with a lot of time. After much debrief, we may come to some agreement that we could have held [the petition] for two to four weeks, or six weeks or something — because we feel like the workers did finally get that true understanding of what they were doing and what the company was lying to them about, but it came a little too late.
I think what it’s going to take is a whole lot of 1,100-worker campaigns, a whole lot of pushing Amazon to spend these resources and expose themselves for who they are, and pushing them to crack the public consciousness of what it means to be a warehouse worker or a factory worker in today’s economy, because a lot of people forget. You ask politicians — they no longer are with these people, so they struggle to understand them. To get the stories out is very important.
We intentionally kept media away, because we knew what would happen when media got involved — and it’s no fault to the media — we knew it would be a very explosive campaign. We didn’t pick it; it picked us, and we were okay with that. But we thought, very early on, and we definitely still believe that it was the right decision, to keep the media out for as long as possible.
It’s funny, there’s a critique that we used media. But then there was a critique that we waited, that we didn’t start earlier. And I’m not really sure how we could have done both. We either exploded it into the national scene, or we didn’t, but there was no in the middle. Once we took the top off, it did exactly as we expected: it exploded, and we didn’t control that. I’m trying to have a meeting with my committee, and I walk out, and there’s dozens of foreign press from all over the world in my hallway waiting for the comments. None of us asked for that.
LFL: I can attest to that, Josh, I can attest to that. [laughs]
JB: Exactly. Whether intended or unintended, that was just one of those parts of having a campaign with Amazon. And I think if you talk to the workers that voted yes, I’ve never found a worker that didn’t feel incredibly empowered by the whole country coming behind them. And I’ll tell you, seeing the responses from workers getting Danny Glover down there to support them . . . You’ll never convince me that those weren’t great decisions, and that we’re not super grateful for those people showing solidarity.
The socialist organizations canvassing in the park to get the ball games and football games, the local organizations, the ice cream trucks putting our signs on their stuff, the local churches getting involved, the work of Black Lives Matter Birmingham, as well as Greater Birmingham Ministries, SWEET Alabama, Democratic Socialists of America, all of these groups that took on this fight with us — I think it all mattered. It all pushed the needle, as they say.
At the end of the day, I wish we could have cranked it up a little faster, and that means got the president a little faster, got to the whole package a little faster. But it’s not easy. We did the best we could. My voice being gone — it’s been gone for months, you know that, you can hear it. I don’t know what else we can do. But we know there’s definitely things that we’ll do differently next time, and that’s part of every single campaign I’ve ever been a part of.
LFL: What would you say was the relationship between your region and the international throughout the campaign, and how did it evolve?
JB: It was great. You’ve got a council [the Mid-South Council of RWDSU] that’s approached and begins a campaign. And that’s October, and it’s like, “Oh my god, this is not just a lot of angry employees — this is a very real campaign now, this isn’t a ‘gather cards and get information later’ campaign. There’s thousands of people that want to organize a union in this moment.”
From that point on, as soon as we identified that, the International jumped in, our organizers at the union jumped in. And then, as that continued to grow, we reached out to the AFL-CIO and we reached out to the United Food and Commercial Workers [RWDSU’s parent union], and everybody began pitching in. The solidarity was great, the local help was great. It all builds to something.
I just think, when you’re talking about a campaign of 5,800 workers, four to five months was not quite enough time. We just needed a little more time. I really do think there’s [a] deeper debrief to be had, where we’ll pull a lot of lessons out of this. I think this campaign is winnable if voting starts March 1. I really believe that, with all my heart, and I believe it actually was winnable up until it wasn’t. If there wasn’t as huge early turnout in early February, before we can really get the messaging out, once we had contact information, then we could win.
Unfortunately, as soon as the ballots started coming in, we saw a very, very, very, very large percentage of early ballots, all within two days, which we know what those were [a reference to the mailbox that Amazon installed outside the warehouse]. And whether the Board deems that illegal enough to rerun an election — we believe they will, but we’ll see. There were nearly 1,000 ballots turned in in the first week of voting, and we knew we lost that vote pretty heavily. But we also knew, as did Amazon, that we smoked them in March, and that’s why Amazon challenged 500 ballots that were all March ballots — because they knew.
When you see “Blowout in Bessemer” [the title of a critical article by Jane McAlevey in the Nation], when you look at what we saw through our charts and our organizing blocks, that we have half, if not more than that, of the warehouse in this moment supporting the union, and that with challenges, this was about a 60/40 vote, and we have a very strong committee — you know, naturally there is going to be a little bit of offense to an article that was written without calling us and without any intimate knowledge of the campaign.
I’ll read it again, because there are certain things she’s correct on, and I also understand she mentioned that union-busting is disgusting and that workers all over the country would organize if it wasn’t for these slimy labor laws. But she also made a lot of assumptions — and I felt like, if those assumptions were going to be made, having taken the time to speak to anyone on the ground, or even workers, is important.
But we appreciate everyone that talks about it, because I firmly believe you’ve got to crack the social consciousness of America. You’ve got to get these conversations into the fabric of the discussion. And I think that we’ve done a lot to do that. I think we’ve taught 5,800 workers at Amazon Bessemer what a union is. We taught them about union-busting, you know that much. They know that their employer forever doesn’t want them to organize, so they also understand there must be something to it.
I think the biggest thing that went wrong, ultimately, is that there wasn’t enough time to have committee people prepare the masses for the union-busting campaign. I think Amazon making workers feel like all of their pay and benefits would be given up and started fresh if they went union, and the potential of plant closure, as in most campaigns — that’s what swung it. Workers have got bad working conditions, and they want more money, but they also don’t want to lose the job. That’s why we’re supposed to have laws that make it where they don’t have to feel like that’s the decision they’re making, but we all know that Amazon’s goal is to make them feel like that’s the decision they’re making. That’s always going to be tough to overcome.
I am not prepared to worry too much about legislation, because my job now is to organize workers on the ground. We’d love to have legislation that would help us, but we’re not concerned about that right now. Our concern is, how do we get these 1,500 workers or so, how do we make that 4,000? That’s the goal. We’ve doubled a group many times before, and we’ve just got to start down the journey of doing that.
LFL: In our previous conversations, you’ve mentioned labor history. As a student of labor history, I have to ask you, who will form the equivalent of the Steel Workers Organizing Committee in the 1930s for Amazon in 2021, and did Bessemer move us closer to or further from that?
JB: I think we moved us much closer. If you can, watch the speech that Jennifer Bates gave at that rally that Sunday. If you listen to what she said in that speech, and how powerful that woman was in speaking — I would do it all over again, just to set a leader on fire like Jennifer Bates.
The only way this campaign is a negative thing is if the Left and labor make it a negative thing. Any time that you can move and inspire thousands of people to action, and they can feel the energy of a rally, and understand why Black Lives Matter is involved in a labor campaign; getting the president to give organizers a video that will likely be used tens of thousands of times in all sorts of organizing campaigns; to begin conversations about how we move large masses of people in a way that’s a little different than before — all that stuff matters.
If you talk to the workers on the ground, there’s nobody that’s defeated. There’s people that are upset. But there’s people that also go, “Holy crap, despite all of that, we still got over a thousand people to fight with us!” Let’s go. Let’s get these 1,000 people to move — because I’m not sure that there’s any organizations throughout the country that have 1,000 Amazon employees at any location, ready to mobilize and fight the boss.
And so, if you ask me, do we run it again? Hell yeah, we run it again, for a million reasons. That’s coming from the workers, the organizers, and from our union. We would do this over and over again. We will certainly look at it and grow and adapt, just like we grew and adapted when we finally beat Pilgrim’s [Pride] after our union took a couple shots, and there were other unions that had tried to organize it before. Most every great labor struggle, especially a large bargaining unit, took a few shots. They took deeper organizing, a little longer time. And that’s what we’re going to do here.
LFL: On that point, are there any other warehouses, especially in the Mid-South region, that you are organizing? When I was down there, people were coming up to organizers and telling them they were interested in organizing. Are you going to follow up on any of those inquiries?
JB: Of course. Does a bear shit in the woods? We’re organizers.
LFL: Give me some details, though!
JB: Prayerfully, the daily union election Twitter will be tweeting about something in a few months. In seriousness, you’re correct. There are massive amounts of organizing opportunities, and I think every union is experiencing that. I think that’s where the question “Do you run this campaign?” is ridiculous — because it has already spawned so much interest in organizing that we’ve got to form a group to just download it all, print it all off, and get them appointed to organizers on the ground. We’re looking at them geographically — we’ve got campaigns, and people reached out all over the world.
All of that is absolutely on the table. We’ve got to organize to win. Our council went from five thousand members six years ago to ten thousand members today. We’re going to organize like crazy. There’s plenty of bigger warehouses in these areas that have reached out. Most of the time, we’ll go where we’re called.
LFL: There have been a couple of postmortem pieces, not just Jane McAlevey’s piece. I want to give you an opportunity to respond. What did you agree with, what do you disagree with, with any of the postmortem pieces? (And sorry for using the word.)
JB: I think that alone is a slightly offensive term. But I would say some of her points had some merit. We were using worker-organizers, so when you talk about using verbiage that third-parties the union, there was a little bit of that. But I also don’t want that to get in the head of these worker-organizers that are fighting their head off to inspire and get workers moving. Those are conversations and training that’ll happen as we go, right? A lot of this was new for a lot of people. I heard us being third-partied by our own folks a few times, and I cringed a little bit, but it’s not always going to be perfect. So that’s one point that stands out to me that I wouldn’t necessarily disagree with.
But I think anyone, whether it’s the Left or academic or just regular media reporting on this campaign, or any future campaign — if you’re going to write a detailed account of what went wrong or right, it’s very important to, at a minimum, reach out to the people on the ground of the campaign that you’re writing about from very far away. At least use workers’ attitudes and opinions, or organizers’ attitudes and opinions. Do not cherry-pick quotes from other people’s articles to make a take on a campaign that you’re not very involved with. That would be my overall response to it.
Now there’s other people that were involved, and then did come down, that do also have takes. I have a lot more respect for their work. I don’t mind what you write. That’s your opinion, it’s a free country and freedom of the press, I respect it. I’m not going to Donald-Trump it, you know what I mean? I’m not going to get all mad and obsessed. If people write negative things about my campaign, people have the right to do that.
I just think, when you say things like “union said,” talk to the union. But I also absolutely appreciate all opinions and all debriefs on the campaign, even if I don’t agree with them. Because maybe they’ll raise something that I didn’t see. This is my fifth year organizing — I’m far from a woolly old vet. I’m definitely humble enough to realize we lost. So, of course, I’m excited to see what we could have done better, and to see what you’ve got when you get your head out of it, get some rest, let your emotions calm down, and get your voice back. I look forward to doing that. But that’s hard to do in the morning after the campaign. I was just incredibly inspired by Sunday.
LFL: Tell me a little bit more about what’s next for the campaign.
JB: We continue. We organize. We’ve got a team that’s going to be down following some leads today, and they’re already there, while we head off to court for a little bit with the Amazon campaign. We’ve got a team that’s going to continue every day to talk with the committee and focus on the future with this Bessemer campaign and keeping workers engaged. We’ve got workers that support us continuing to call and set up meetings.
Like I said, and I’ll continue to say it, if enough workers want to have a union, we’ll get it. We’ve done that on the second and third try before. I’m going to take a week off and then get back at it.
LFL: You want to share a little bit about the Russellville contract campaign?
JB: Sure. We continue to push a lot of these factories and warehouses to wages that far exceed Amazon’s $15 an hour. I’m proud to say that a company in which we organized and won an election of 1,500 workers some years back, their wages increased from around $9 an hour to be well over $15 or $16 an hour. We’re proud of those people in Russellville that took them in and have taken this fight on for the last six, seven years, and organized a hell of a strong union. We’re bargaining this week, and we’ll get them a good contract and get them to where, in a rural town, a smaller manufacturing facility or production facility than Amazon, obviously, will be providing higher wages with better benefits.
We believe in what we do. I’ve got a lot of calls from my shop stewards and people that I represent, to say, “Sorry about the vote, man, but we’ll get it next time,” because they understand. That’s the spirit around here.
US Navy personnel exit a P-8 maritime patrol plane after arriving in Andøya, Norway, for an exercise, March 4, 2020. (photo: Royal Norwegian Air Force)
A New Deal With Norway Allows the US to Keep an Eye on Russian Subs Closer to Russia's Home Turf
Christopher Woody, Business Insider
Woody writes: "A recent deal between the US and Norway will expand the two countries' defense cooperation, allowing the US to build facilities on Norwegian bases to support operations in a region where Russia's military is increasingly active."
It's hard not to see this as an escalation of tensions with Russia and the Putin Government. Norway like all of Russia's neighbors has deep misgivings about what it sees as the threat of Russian expansion. In much the same way countries in the shadow of the US or China do. In the short term, that can create a climate for cooperation between the US and Norway. In the long term it can put Norway at risk of conflict with Russia. A problem the US might not be able to solve at that time. - MA/RSN
recent deal between the US and Norway will expand the two countries' defense cooperation, allowing the US to build facilities on Norwegian bases to support operations in a region where Russia's military is increasingly active.
The Supplementary Defense Cooperation Agreement, signed Friday by US and Norwegian officials, allows "unimpeded access to and use of" agreed-upon facilities by US forces for training, refueling, and maintenance, among other activities, according to an English-language version of the agreement released by Norway.
It would also allow "construction activities on" and "alterations and improvements to" those facilities, which are Rygge and Sola air stations, both near Norway's southern coast, and Evenes air station and Ramsund naval station, both of which are above the Arctic Circle in northern Norway.
"These locations have been selected with the aim of strengthening cooperation with the US in the air defence and maritime domains in years to come," the Norwegian government said.
The agreement will "facilitate further development of opportunities for US forces to train and exercise in Norway, promoting improved interoperability with Norwegian and other allied forces," the US State Department said.
The agreement still has to be ratified by Norway's parliament, which will take it up later this year, and it stipulates that new facilities must be built in consultation with Norway and funded by the US.
The expansion of the two countries' longstanding defense cooperation comes amid broader tensions with Russia in Europe, particularly in the European Arctic.
Russia and Norway share land and sea borders, and while Norwegian officials stress that there is cooperation on issues such as fisheries management and that tensions remain low, concerns about Russian military activity are rising.
"The Russian activities, now more complex, take place in our areas farther west and south than before, demonstrating Russia's ability to project force far into the Atlantic," Norwegian Defense Minister Frank Bakke-Jensen said at a think-tank event in March.
Russia's powerful Northern Fleet is based on the Arctic coast near the border with Norway. Nearby waters are part of the "bastion" where Russia emphasizes the defense of its ballistic-missile submarines.
Russian submarines have also increased training to reach the North Atlantic in large numbers, where their ability to strike targets farther inland in the US and Europe concerns NATO commanders.
The "animating security threat" for the US in the European Arctic "is subsurface, because of Russia's bastion naval strategy and the US's desire to operate maritime forces in the region," said Joshua Tallis, a research scientist and expert on naval operations at CNA, a nonprofit research and analysis group.
"The US has moved to expand infrastructure and access with European Arctic allies because all parties see the need for increased maritime surveillance in the face of increased Northern Fleet ... submarine activity," Tallis told Insider on Wednesday.
The US and other NATO member navies have also increased their activity in the Arctic. In May 2020, US Navy surface ships conducted their first exercise in the Barents Sea, north of Russia, in more than 30 years.
Such operations often make use of Norwegian bases, and Bakke-Jensen told The Barents Observer that fuel-supply systems will be built at Ramsund, which would be the second northern Norwegian base to support US ships.
The US Navy already visits Tromso, which is farther north, including an unusually public appearance by an advanced US submarine in late 2020.
Other projects at Norwegian bases could include hangars for US aircraft, such US Navy P-8 maritime patrol aircraft, Bakke-Jensen said. Norway plans to buy five of its own P-8s, which are widely regarded as the best sub-hunting aircraft in operation.
Norway's air force regularly trains with US Air Force fighters and bombers, and US bombers recently deployed to Norway for the first time. Future facilities could support more of those operations.
"Expanded facilities in Norway will help keep US fixed-wing aviation, surface vessels, and attack submarines on station higher north for longer," Tallis said Wednesday.
US personnel would rotate through the new facilities to support operations by the US and NATO militaries, as the new deal doesn't change Norway's policy barring the permanent stationing of foreign forces. The agreement also doesn't change Norway's prohibition on storing or deploying nuclear weapons to its territory.
The deal does underscore Norway's close relationship with the US and its "key position on the northern flank of NATO," Norwegian Minister of Foreign Affairs Ine Eriksen Søreide said in the release.
"To ensure that Norway and our Allies can operate together in a crisis situation under difficult conditions, we must be able to hold exercises and train regularly here in Norway," Søreide added.
A new initiative aims to protect vast tracts of ocean with the world's seas increasingly under pressure from people and pollution. (photo: Steve de Neef/Greenpeace)
A New Global Initiative Aims to Protect a Section of Ocean Larger Than the South American Continent
Kate Walton, Al Jazeera
Walton writes: "A new global marine initiative has been launched to protect and conserve 18 million square kilometres of the ocean (seven million square miles) over the next five years, an area larger than the continent of South America."
Ambitious initiative to protect area larger than South American continent aims to ensure the world’s seas will no longer be ‘out of sight, out of mind’.
new global marine initiative has been launched to protect and conserve 18 million square kilometres of the ocean (seven million square miles) over the next five years, an area larger than the continent of South America.
The collaboration, known as Blue Nature Alliance, established on Wednesday is led by several philanthropic organisations and plans to work with national governments, local communities, Indigenous peoples, scientists, and academics.
The Alliance’s initial protection work will cover 4.8 million sq km (1.9 million sq miles) across three marine locations: Fiji’s Lau Seascape, Antarctica’s Southern Ocean and the volcanic archipelago of Tristan da Cunha in the southern Atlantic Ocean.
“The ocean is in crisis,” said Karen Sack, the president and CEO of Ocean Unite, one of the organisations joining the Blue Nature Alliance. “The threats it is facing are many.”
The Blue Nature Alliance could significantly assist marine conservation and increase ecosystems’ resilience, especially as it aims to work closely with the local communities most affected by climate change, its supporters say.
“This is a partnership that will help us take a big step in the right direction,” said Tony Worby, the CEO of the Flourishing Oceans programme at Minderoo Foundation.
“Quite often we think of the oceans as ‘out of sight, out of mind’ … but oceans are absolutely fundamental to our society and our economy.”
Blue Nature Alliance is led by Conservation International, The Pew Charitable Trusts, the Global Environment Facility, Minderoo Foundation, and the Rob and Melani Walton Foundation.
Critical resource
Oceans cover more than two-thirds of Earth’s surface and their health greatly affects the wellbeing of humanity, especially among communities living in coastal or small island areas.
Across the world, oceans are under severe stress. Marine pollution such as plastic waste and chemical runoff has long been recognised as responsible for killing off large populations of marine species.
Abandoned fishing gear – more than 640,000 tonnes are dumped into the ocean annually – is a particular problem, ensnaring everything from turtles to whales and in the Pacific Ocean, the 1.6 million sq km (618,000 sq miles) Great Pacific Garbage Patch continues to grow.
“A healthy ocean is key to our existence,” said Aulani Wilhelm, the senior vice president of oceans for Conservation International. “It provides nutrition and employment for a majority of people around the world and half of the oxygen each of us breathes.”
Warming oceans as a result of climate change could lead to the collapse of crucial coral reefs such as Australia’s Great Barrier Reef and more frequent extreme weather events at sea are causing severe coastal erosion, threatening homes and livelihoods.
It is now widely agreed that at least 30 percent of coastal and marine areas will need to be protected to maintain a functioning and resilient ocean. This goal is expected to be adopted at the UN Biodiversity Conference later this year.
Marine-protected areas (MPAs) are oceanic areas that are set aside for long-term conservation. The world adopted its first international targets on marine protection in 2004 through the UN Convention on Biological Diversity.
One of the Convention’s targets was to protect at least 10 percent of coastal and marine areas by 2020. The latest data shows this target was missed by a substantial margin, with just 7.65 percent of the world’s oceans protected today.
This is despite the enormous growth in the number of MPAs, which grew from 430 in 1985 to more than 18,500 in 2021, according to the UN’s Protected Planet initiative.
Debate over protection
There remains some debate about whether marine protected areas actually help conserve and restore the world’s oceans.
While the size of marine areas covered by protection agreements has increased significantly over the past few decades, many are actually located in remote regions with low levels of biodiversity.
Additionally, two-thirds of the world’s MPAs are what are known as large-scale MPAs, or areas measuring more than 100,000 sq km (38,610 sq miles), and most still allow fishing, mining and drilling.
Some critics argue that the effect of protecting large and remote marine areas is minimal, as these regions were not under significant threat anyway, or that MPAs only protect against one type of threat: overfishing. Another concern is that many MPAs are created without particular aims in mind.
The Great Barrier Reef is one case where being designated a protected area has not brought significant conservation benefits. Despite being one of the best-protected marine parks in the world, its corals are regularly experiencing severe bleaching and death.
Supporters say that if marine protected areas are well-governed and effectively managed, they safeguard habitats and marine species. This sort of protection is particularly critical for areas such as sea-grass beds, coral reefs, and mangroves, which represent breeding grounds for many species and help protect coastal lands from extreme weather.
MPAs also store significant amounts of carbon, meaning they can assist in the fight against climate change. UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres told a press conference on Monday that the lack of action on climate change had placed the world “on the verge of the abyss”.
Initiative welcomed
Most scientists and academics believe that establishing marine protected areas is worthwhile.
Bethan O’Leary, a marine scientist at the University of York, says research indicates that all marine-protected areas are valuable, no matter their size, classification, or objective.
“Larger MPAs offer economies of scale being less expensive to manage per unit area than smaller MPAs,” she wrote. “Protecting areas before degradation occurs also helps insure against needing costly restoration measures.”
What is most important, O’Leary says, is that the limited resources for environmental protection are invested wisely.
Large-scale efforts such as the Blue Nature Alliance are generally welcomed by the island communities who rely most heavily on healthy marine ecosystems.
One of the leading organisations of the Alliance, Conservation International, is already working with Fiji’s Lau Province to conserve marine resources. The organisation supported the development of a seascape strategy and helped communities from more than 30 percent of the province ban night-time spearfishing. The ban ensures that fish can breed and restock naturally.
Roko Josefa Cinavilakeba is the “roko sau” (head chief) of Totoya in Lau Province and community and government relations director for Pacific Blue Foundation. He says the limited resources of communities like his means they need support from regional and international initiatives.
“We are small remote islands scattered over the vast ocean with limited resources,” Cinavilakeba said. “Our traditional leaders have developed unique qualities through generations for leading our people in a sustainable way.”
“The Blue Nature Alliance has provided the much-needed support to integrate scientific conservation efforts with our own, propelling us to the future as a more resilient community.”
James Glass, the chief islander of Tristan da Cunha in the south Atlantic Ocean, agrees, saying that “long-term financial mechanism[s] … will help us protect our island home and our waters for generations to come.”
In addition to its initial commitments, the Blue Nature Alliance plans to engage in marine conservation efforts across two million sq km (772,204 sq miles) of the ocean in Canada, Palau, Seychelles, and the Western Indian Ocean.
