01 April 22
Live on the homepage now!
Reader Supported News
Calm down, people. So Ginni Thomas urged the White House to dispose of the 2020 election. Her perfect right. She did not, however, personally go to the Capitol on January 6 and bust down doors and go in and attempt to hang Mike Pence. Give the woman credit. Give No. 45 credit. He could’ve marched on the Capitol, leading a convoy of tanks, and seized the electoral ballot boxes and declared himself president for life, and if this had come up before the Supreme Court, would Justice Thomas have recused himself and would the Court have struck down the lifetime appointment and if they did, how many tanks do they command to enforce the decision? No, it was only a show. No, 45 sat in the White House and watched it on TV and two weeks later he went back to Mar-a-Lago.
I once was an alarmist myself and wrung my hands daily and succeeded in becoming miserable, which in Minnesota is an excellent way of making others miserable, so I considered getting a therapist, but then sanity struck: the idea of sitting in a small room with venetian blinds and degree certificates on the walls and telling a young woman with close-cropped hair that my father hadn’t hugged me when I was a boy struck me as a waste of a perfectly good hour so I didn’t.
There are millions of mentally ill in America who desperately need care but it’s hard work and few wish to deal with this. State mental health hospital systems were mostly demolished years ago, because conditions in some were horrendous, and so “deinstitutionalization” took place and now the mentally ill languish in small facilities, some even more horrendous but not so noticeable, and others wander the streets homeless, and a great many wind up in prison. For a country that imagines itself to be Christian, this is bizarre. Jesus wept for the leper, the demon-possessed, the sick and helpless, and in this country we put them where we don’t have to look at them. When I fly into LaGuardia, the plane descends over one of the worst hellholes in America, Rikers Island. New York state finds itself with an enormous budget surplus. Democrats run the state and the city, and will they fix this horror that is staring them in the face? Don’t count on it.
The Christian faith sets high standards, some of which must be ignored: “Ye cannot be my disciples unless you give up all you possess,” Jesus said, which suggests we’re to be nudists, which is not possible in Minnesota. So nuts to that. I cannot live without my coffee maker and my laptop computer. Google will recover in an instant the line from the psalm, “Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies,” and so I’m keeping my table. Google also finds me that great Nichols … May sketch in which he kisses her passionately and while locked in the kiss she opens the corner of her mouth and exhales cigarette smoke. It’s on YouTube.
I don’t put her exhalation up with “preparest a table,” but comedy is a gift, and it’s perishable, like kale, but the computer preserves some of it fresh as can be, and for the pleasure of seeing that kiss and the woman exhaling, I guess I have to accept the twitticization and of course I have to love my enemies and I plan to take on that project as soon as Rikers Island is cleared. Keep me informed as to any progress.
Pennsylvania lieutenant governor and Democratic Senate candidate John Fetterman speaking with the press outside the York County YMCA in York, Pennsylvania, August 13, 2020. (photo: Governor Tom Wolf/Flickr)
Pennsylvania lieutenant governor and US Senate candidate John Fetterman supports Medicare for All. So it was only a matter of time before he drew the ire of the ultrawealthy health care capitalists who benefit from our for-profit system.
The super PAC, Penn Progress, says it is supporting conservative Democratic Representative Conor Lamb in the Pennsylvania race because he represents the party’s “strongest chance to flip the seat” — despite the group’s own polling data finding that Fetterman, the lieutenant governor, is trouncing Lamb in the primary and performing better than Lamb against at least one top Republican candidate, according to reporting by Politico.
While Fetterman might actually be Democrats’ best chance to take the seat, Politico obtained a slide deck prepared for donors showing that Penn Progress is preparing to attack Fetterman as a “socialist” who supports a “government takeover of health care.” These are standard talking points used by Republicans and corporate health care propagandists — which makes sense, given the super PAC’s ties to the industry.
Penn Progress’s executive director, Erik Smith, leads a communications firm that works for Cigna, one the nation’s largest health insurers, according to a corporate financial filing. Smith was previously a spokesperson for a health care industry front group campaign created to oppose Medicare for All — and another Penn Progress consultant also worked for the front group.
“I am a volunteer for this effort because I’m a progressive who believes that maintaining control of the U.S. Senate is critical to the success of the Biden administration,” Smith told us in an email. He rejected the idea that attacking Fetterman could benefit his firm’s clients, calling it “untrue and inaccurate.”
A Fetterman spokesperson characterized the attacks being planned by the super PAC as “a desperate move from a campaign that hasn’t been able to raise the money on its own, and hasn’t broken through with anyone except for some political insiders.”
The Lamb campaign did not respond to a request for comment.
“Voters Don’t Yet See Fetterman as the Liberal He Is”
The Pennsylvania primary is a vital one for Democrats, as they have an opportunity to pick up a Republican seat being vacated by retiring senator Pat Toomey. Biden narrowly defeated former president Donald Trump in the state by 1.8 percentage points in 2020. The primary election takes place on May 17.
So far, Fetterman has outraised Lamb. Fetterman’s campaign ended last year with $5.3 million on hand, while Lamb had raised $3 million.
There hasn’t been any outside spending in the Democratic primary race this year, but that could change soon.
Politico reported last month that Penn Progress has set a fundraising goal of $8 million. While the group only raised $35,000 last year, super PACs can raise money quickly since they are permitted to accept donations of any size.
Veteran Democratic strategist James Carville has started promoting Penn Progress, according to Politico. An email from Carville to potential donors said that Lamb was set to join a call with the super PAC’s supporters.
Penn Progress recently warned donors that Fetterman is leading Lamb by 30 points and even winning among Democrats who want a moderate candidate, according to Politico. The group’s polling also found Fetterman has a stronger lead than Lamb over Republican primary candidate Mehmet Öz, the television personality known as Dr Oz.
A Penn Progress memo explained that “primary voters don’t yet see Fetterman as the liberal he is,” which is why the super PAC recently tested potential attack lines against Fetterman. The group’s proposed negative messages include the claim that “Fetterman supports far-left policies like a $34 trillion-dollar government takeover of health care.”
This is a highly misleading spin. Under a single-payer system, the government would insure everyone, but doctors and hospitals would still be privately-owned. Single-payer would save the United States significant money overall — because the current system is enormously wasteful, inefficient, and designed to make investors and corporate executives wealthy.
A recent study by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office found that a single-payer system would radically improve people’s lives: Americans would be paid higher wages, work fewer hours, save on medical expenses, retire earlier, and experience better health outcomes.
While Fetterman’s website doesn’t explicitly mention Medicare for All, he has long been a proponent of single-payer. He says in a video on his website that health care is “a basic, fundamental human right, no different than food or shelter or education.”
Lamb, by contrast, has opposed single-payer proposals.
“My job as a legislator, though, is to think about, practically, how we would ever afford something like that,” Lamb said in 2019. “The estimates and the time that it would take are really tough. No one has specifically figured that out.”
“The last thing I’m going to do is support a big middle-class tax increase,” he added.
“It’s Not About John Fetterman”
The Penn Progress team has close ties to corporate health care interests that oppose single-payer.
The group’s executive director, Smith, is a founding partner and the CEO at the corporate communications firm Seven Letter. His firm bio says he develops comprehensive communication strategies for corporations and nonprofits, including those in the health care sector.
Smith, who advised both of Barack Obama’s presidential campaigns, helped launch the Partnership for America’s Health Care Future (PAHCF), an anti–Medicare for All front group backed by health insurers, drug companies, and investor-owned hospital chains. In 2018, PAHCF paid $140,000 to his firm, then called Blue Engine Message … Media.
A financial document filed late last year shows that Seven Letter counts Cigna as a “key client.” Cigna has opposed Medicare for All and reportedly threatened to leave Connecticut, where it’s headquartered, if the state passed a public health insurance plan.
More than a dozen Seven Letter clients were disclosed in a December 2021 financial filing from Public Policy Holding Company, a consortium of corporate consulting and lobbying firms that includes Seven Letter. The document was filed as part of the Public Policy Holding Company’s application to trade on the Alternative Investment Market of the London Stock Exchange.
The filing says “Seven Letter creates, develops and implements strategic communications and digital engagement plans for Fortune 500 companies, coalitions, nonprofits and national trade associations.” The firm generated $9.9 million in revenue between July 2020 and June 2021.
According to the filing, Seven Letter’s clients include Major League Baseball, Ford, food service company Aramark, and the National Association of Chemical Distributors (NACD), a chemical industry lobbying group. NACD has lobbied against the Protecting the Right to Organize (PRO) Act, Democratic legislation that would make it easier for workers to form unions.
The document indicates Smith owns a 3.4 percent stake in the overall Public Policy Holding Company. Other holding company subsidiaries work for the powerful drug lobby Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America and drugmakers Bayer, Bristol-Myers Squibb, GlaxoSmithKline, Merck, and Sanofi.
According to a memo obtained by the Philadelphia Inquirer, Penn Progress has also hired Impact Research, a polling firm that has worked for Biden’s presidential campaign as well as the party committees that elect House and Senate Democrats. The firm, previously known as Anzalone Liszt Grove Research, conducted polling for PAHCF alongside Smith in 2018.
Smith told HuffPost that he’s working with Penn Progress because Lamb is the “best equipped” candidate to win the statewide race, since he’s won in a swing district three times.
“It’s not about John Fetterman,” Smith said. “It’s about the strength of Conor Lamb.”
A member of Ukraine's military helps a child evacuate. (photo: AFP)
Russia and Ukraine are talking, but huge gulfs remain.
Those negotiations have yielded few firm results so far, especially as Russia continues to bombard Ukrainian cities. Still, the talking matters. Diplomacy is the only way this war will finally end, and the type of agreement that might end the fighting looks a lot clearer than it did even a month ago.
In the early days of the war, the talks made little apparent progress. Ukraine appeared to be demanding an immediate ceasefire, and Russian withdrawal of troops.
Russia, however, had pretty different ideas. It laid out some aggressive demands. Among them were: Ukraine’s neutrality and no membership in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO); so-called “demilitarization and “denazification;” the protection of Russian language within Ukraine; and that Ukraine recognize Crimea as part of Russia and recognize the independence of Donetsk and Luhansk, the two regions in eastern Ukraine that Vladimir Putin had declared as independent on the eve of his full-scale invasion.
In recent days, some glimmers of optimism have emerged. Ukraine has put forward serious proposals, which is centered around a commitment to permanent neutrality and an agreement not to seek NATO membership, in exchange for security guarantees. Russia has also reportedly eased up on some of its previous demands, including “denazification” — a likely ruse for regime change — and “demilitarization,” a sign that Ukraine’s battlefield successes so far have pushed the Kremlin to possibly reconsider some of its most maximalist demands.
Mevlut Cavusoglu, Turkey’s foreign minister, who is helping to broker the talks, described the discussions earlier in the week as “the most meaningful progress since the start of negotiations.”
But these really are just glimmers of progress — and they might not be so long lasting. Russia, this week, promised to “drastically reduce” military activity around Kyiv and Chernihiv, in the name of “mutual trust,” though reports of shelling continued in those areas. Some, including US and NATO officials, have expressed skepticism that Moscow is sincere, and instead using talks to buy time, so it can regroup and refocus its offensive, potentially on areas in eastern and southern Ukraine. Since then, both Russia and Ukraine have downplayed the seriousness of the talks, even as negotiations resumed Friday.
And huge gulfs remain. Perhaps the most intractable problem may be the future of the Crimean peninsula, which Russia annexed in 2014, and Donetsk and Luhansk, which Russia and Russia-backed militias control parts of. Ukraine is unlikely to agree to slice up its country. It is also hard to imagine Russia settling for less territory than it controlled the day before its invasion in February 2022.
Other issues will emerge, and concessions and proposals may shift depending on developments in the battlefield.
The prospect of a quick peace deal between Ukraine and Russia remains unlikely. Perhaps the best case short term is that both sides broker a ceasefire that includes a framework for an agreement, and then work the details out over time. But the war continues.
Ukrainian neutrality is likely to be the central component of any peace deal
A neutral Ukraine is likely to be central to any peace deal. In broad terms, that would likely mean Ukraine would have to agree to remain a nonnuclear power, abandon its ambitions of ever joining NATO and forego any NATO installations or troops on its territory, in exchange for some sort of security guarantees. Ukraine has indicated that it would put this issue to a referendum, which would propose changing the constitution to remove any NATO aspirations and accepting a status of permanent neutrality.
Both Ukraine and Russia may find something palatable in the idea. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has previously acknowledged that Ukraine will not actually join NATO, but for now Ukraine remains committed to having the right to pursue European Union membership. Russia has what it sees as legitimate security concerns about NATO being on its borders, so a militarily neutral Ukraine may also be something Russia could accept, if keeping NATO out of Ukraine, and away from Russia’s borders, is an outcome Putin could spin at home. Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov has said previously that a deal for a neutral Ukraine could be a “kind of compromise.”
Ukrainian neutrality, said Pascal Lottaz, assistant professor for neutrality studies at the Waseda Institute for Advanced Study, may be the only option “where all the parties — the Russians, the Ukrainians, and the US and NATO — would basically sit down and say, ‘Fine, we can accept that; fine, we can live with that.’”
But it will depend on the details. Ukraine committed to neutrality in the aftermath of the breakup of the Soviet Union; each of its swings away from neutrality was usually in response to Russian threats or aggression. Ukraine formally abandoned its neutral status in 2014, after Russia annexed Crimea and invaded Eastern Ukraine.
Putin has also gone far beyond NATO grievances, essentially denying Ukrainian statehood. At the outset of the war, he demanded the “demilitarization and denazification of Ukraine,” a false attack that is largely code for regime change. In other words, Putin’s maximalist position doesn’t really square with just accepting neutrality.
Battlefield losses and Ukraine’s resistance may have changed Moscow’s calculus. But that doesn’t change the bigger issue: Who trusts Putin now?
“There were probably at least a dozen international agreements that Russia signed with Ukraine that did commit Russia to respecting Ukraine’s December 1991 borders, yet, the Russian government has shown no importance to adhering to those obligations,” said Mark Kramer, director of the Cold War Studies Project at Harvard University’s Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies.
If Ukraine agrees to a neutral status, it is likely to want some guarantees that it will stay that way. That is where the rest of the world comes in, likely the US and its allies. Ukraine has reportedly proposed Russia, Great Britain, China, the United States, France, Turkey, Germany, Canada, Italy, Poland, and Israel, as possible guarantors. A lot depends on what risks these guarantors are willing to tolerate — and whether that would be acceptable to Ukraine or Russia.
How strong these guarantees are matters. If they involve NATO allies committing to defending Ukraine in case Russia launches another full-scale invasion, that would be a lot like NATO’s Article 5 mutual self-defense pact in all but name. “Would the United States or other NATO countries be allowed to use military force if an agreement in the family is violated? That, I think, may be a bridge too far for the Russians at this point,” said P. Terrence Hopmann, a professor of international relations at Johns Hopkins University.
But, Hopmann added, given the bad faith Putin has shown in negotiations, it will be difficult for Ukraine to accept neutrality without some serious security guarantees. Other experts said non-military mechanisms, like automatic sanctions or other penalties, are an option. Adding to the uncertainty: For Ukraine, it’s still risky to put its fate in the promises of outside powers, especially those like the United States, who, under some presidents, have shown their own willingness to break international agreements.
The big issues are going to be Crimea and the Donbas
In 2014, Russia annexed the Crimean peninsula, and Russian troops invaded in support of separatists in the Donbas in eastern Ukraine. Russia has supported those separatists in an eight-year war with Ukrainian forces ever since.
Russia has insisted that Ukraine recognize Crimea as part of Russia. Ahead of Russia’s invasion in February, President Vladimir Putin declared two regions, Donetsk and Luhansk, as independent, and the Kremlin now wants Ukraine to do the same. However, they are asking those “republics” encompass the entire oblasts (basically, administrative regions), which is way more territory than Russia, or Russian-backed militias, currently control.
At least right now, this is an untenable demand for the Ukrainian government.
“No Ukrainian government, I think, would ever be able to do that and survive. And this government shows no indication of being willing to do so. And frankly, Russia hasn’t even won the territorial control piece on the battlefield yet,” Samuel Charap, a senior political scientist at RAND said Tuesday during a discussion hosted by the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft. Ukraine’s foreign affairs minister Dmytro Kuleba has said that Ukraine will not trade “people, land or sovereignty.”
The Ukrainian government, however, countered with some proposals on how to handle these regions. On Crimea, it has proposed that its status be worked out over the next 15 years, with Ukraine vowing not to retake the peninsula by force in the meantime. On the Donbas regions, Ukraine has proposed that Zelenskyy and Putin work out the status in direct talks.
Those aren’t solutions, but Ukraine’s proposals at least suggest a willingness to negotiate. For Ukraine, there are potential political paths to address these territories’ status, including implementing referendums with international backing and observers, to ensure their legitimacy.
Russia, however, may be trying to force the issue on the battlefield, as it has indicated that it will now focus on operations in eastern Ukraine. This may, in part, be a recognition that its efforts to take Kyiv have failed, but it may also be an attempt to try to take more and more territory in this region to try to carve out a slice of Ukraine that extends from the Crimean peninsula up to territories in the east. Whether Russia will be successful — and what kind of devastation it might unleash to attempt to do that — is still unclear. And even if Russia seizes these areas, the citizens left behind after a brutal offensive may not be willing to accept that.
Demilitarization, denazification, and everything else
At the outset of negotiations, Russia put forward some pretty wild demands, specifically the demilitarization and “denazification” of Russia.
Denazification seemed mostly code for regime change, as Putin has sold Russia’s war at home as a “special military operation” to save Russian-speakers, who he claimed were being persecuted. He described the Ukrainian regime as controlled by “drug-addled Nazis.” (Zelenskyy is Jewish and has family who died in the Holocaust.) Exactly what demilitarization means is also unclear, but experts said it could mean limits on Ukraine’s offensive weapons or troop numbers. But the idea that Ukraine would give up its military after being invaded seems unfathomable, and, most neutral countries maintain armies for at least territorial defense.
There are some signs that Russia may be easing off those requests. The Financial Times reported Monday that a draft ceasefire document did not address those issues, and Zelenskyy previously said he would not discuss those terms with Russia.
Russia has also objected to policies that it sees as deliberately targeting Russian language, and wanted protection for Russian language. Zelenskyy has said that Ukraine is willing to discuss questions of the Russian language.
The hope is that some of these more extreme and unspecific demands will fall away, or Russia and Ukraine can work out some superficial solutions — like condemning Nazis — that would suffice. That would leave the still-thorny questions of neutrality and territorial control as the key facets of any deal.
Here, perhaps, is where the United States, Europe, and other allies come in. The West has imposed unprecedented sanctions on Russia, and the pain is likely to deepen in time. The US has signaled that it is willing to support Ukraine in its negotiations, but sanctions relief may also be necessary leverage against Russia, the longer this war grinds on.
But any deal will be shaped, at least in part, by what happens on the battlefield. And Russia has not stopped waging war against Ukraine — but neither has it won.
Workers and organizers from an Amazon distribution center on Staten Island rally in front of the field office of the National Labor Relations Board in Brooklyn. (photo: Lev Radin Getty)
As of early Friday afternoon, the union was poised for victory with a margin of nearly 500 votes. The National Labor Relations board said on Friday that the union and Amazon had challenged 66 ballots, suggesting that the margin of victory would exceed the number of challenged ballots and conclude the election without further dispute.
After decades of decline for U.S. unions, the improbable victory carried out by a crowdfunded, independent union at the nation's second largest employer serves as a wake-up call for the labor movement as well as a potential blueprint for making inroads into the rapidly growing tech sector and its massive corporations.
Meanwhile, the outcome deals a significant blow to Amazon, exposing the limitations of the e-commerce giant's aggressive anti-union opposition and affirming years-long concern over working conditions at the company's vast warehouse network.
"A win is potentially world-changing," Erik Loomis, a labor historian and professor at the University of Rhode Island, told Yahoo Finance prior to the vote. "It would set a precedent that there is a big demand out there to organize this new economy."
Amazon released a statement on Friday afternoon expressing their disapproval with the results and potential plans to challenge them. In the statement, the company alleged misconduct on the part of the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), the federal agency that carried out the election.
"We’re disappointed with the outcome of the election in Staten Island because we believe having a direct relationship with the company is best for our employees," the company said.
"We’re evaluating our options, including filing objections based on the inappropriate and undue influence by the NLRB that we and others (including the National Retail Federation and U.S. Chamber of Commerce) witnessed in this election," Amazon added.
The 6,000-employee Staten Island warehouse marks the second site of a union election among a large group of Amazon warehouse workers, arriving roughly one year after the overwhelming defeat of a labor drive at an Amazon warehouse in Bessemer, Alabama.
A federal agency later nullified those results, ruling that Amazon had illegally interfered; the counting of ballots in a revote at the warehouse in Bessemer also took place on Thursday. The union finished with 875 "yes" votes versus 993 "no" votes, suggesting the union maybe headed for a narrow defeat at the facility. But a final result depends on 416 challenged ballots, which may not be tallied for weeks.
The union drive on Staten Island was conducted by the Amazon Labor Union, an independent labor organization led by a former warehouse worker at the Amazon facility on Staten Island, Chris Smalls.
Prior to the vote, Smalls voiced optimism about the potential for a victory at the Staten Island facility, saying workers were fed up with the company’s grueling demands, lack of safety precautions, and aggressive union-busting campaign. Plus, the central role played by workers in ALU has helped the union win the trust of employees, he said.
The union victory at Amazon coincides with a nationwide wave of organizing. Starbucks workers in recent months have unionized nine stores, with more likely to come as over 100 stores across more than 25 states have filed for union elections; and employees at Disney captured attention last week with a walkout to protest the company's posture toward a controversial Florida law.
For its part, Amazon opposed the union drive, questioning the competence of the ALU and telling workers that a labor organization would bring onerous dues payments.
Amazon spokesperson Kelly Nantel previously told Yahoo Finance the company eagerly awaited the results of this week's union elections: “We look forward to having our employees’ voices heard. Our focus remains on working directly with our team to continue making Amazon a great place to work.”
The union drive on Staten Island emerged from an escalation in worker organizing at Amazon that converged with the COVID-19 pandemic, which drove record sales for the e-commerce giant but exposed some of its warehouse employees to the potentially lethal virus.
Smalls, who was fired from his Staten Island warehouse job in March 2021, the same day he participated in a walkout, led a series of protests against the company before launching the union campaign in May of last year.
Grievances voiced by Amazon workers on Staten Island resembled those made by warehouse employees at the company for years. Workers say they've endured grueling and dangerous conditions enforced by digital devices that track them every minute. Some workers also say these devices fuel high turnover as the company fires employees who fail to keep up with performance quotas.
"The conditions are unsafe at the facility," says Derrick Palmer, a warehouse worker on Staten Island who voted "yes" and helped organize coworkers. "A lot of the workers feel like they're disposable."
Nantel, the Amazon spokesperson, emphasized the company's commitment to worker safety in a statement to Yahoo Finance prior to the union election results: “The safety and well-being of our employees is always a top priority. We recognize that helping employees stay safe in physical roles takes a lot of focus and investment, which is why we’re investing hundreds of millions in safety in many different ways."
"Like most companies, we have performance expectations for all our employees," the statement continues. "When setting those expectations, we take into account things like time in role, experience and their safety and well-being. We support people who are not performing to the levels expected with dedicated coaching to help them improve.”
Palmer, the worker at the Staten Island facility, said a union would protect employees from firings and give them an advocate at the workplace.
"If you have a union in place, that secures your job," he said. "Also, right now there's no voice for workers — that's where we come in."
In this Sept. 6, 1955 file photo, Mamie Till Mobley weeps at her son's funeral in Chicago. (photo: Chicago Sun-Times)
Transcript
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. I’m Amy Goodman.
President Biden signed the Emmett Till Antilynching Act into law Tuesday, culminating efforts to make lynching a federal crime that started over a century ago. The legislation was named after Emmett Till, the 14-year-old Black teenager who was abducted, tortured and murdered in Mississippi in 1955 after he was accused of whistling at a white woman in a store. Speakers at Tuesday’s bill signing included Michelle Duster, the great-granddaughter of Ida B. Wells, the legendary anti-lynching journalist.
MICHELLE DUSTER: Dan and I are honored to be here and represent our great-grandmother, Ida B. Wells-Barnett, who once said, “Our country’s national crime is lynching.” She was born enslaved in 1862 Holly Springs, Mississippi, the same state where 14-year-old Emmett Till was lynched 93 years later. … And in 1898, in response to the lynching of Postmaster Frazier Baker in Lake City, South Carolina, she visited President William S. McKinley right here in Washington to urge him to make lynching a federal crime. Since my great-grandmother’s visit to the White House 124 years ago, there have been over 200 attempts to get legislation enacted. … But we finally stand here today, generations later, to witness this historic moment of President Biden signing the Emmett Till anti-lynching bill into law.
AMY GOODMAN: Fourteen-year-old Emmett Till was brutally murdered August 28th, 1955. He had been accused of wolf-whistling at a white woman, Carolyn Bryant, and dragged out of his great-uncle’s home in Money, Mississippi, in the middle of the night, where his mother, Mamie Till-Mobley, had sent him from Chicago for the summer. Several days later, his brutally beaten, disfigured body, weighted down with a 75-pound cotton gin fan tied to his body with barbed wire, was pulled out of the Tallahatchie River. The Leflore County sheriff attempted to force the immediate burial of Emmett Till, but Mamie Till intervened and paid almost a year’s salary for his body to be shipped back to Chicago. There, the funeral director refused to open the box for her to view her son’s corpse. “Give me a hammer,” Mamie Till demanded. He relented and allowed her to view Emmett’s mutilated remains. By then, the murder had sparked outrage across the nation. Mamie Till-Mobley insisted Emmett receive an open-casket funeral. “Let the world see what I’ve seen,” she said.
This is Mamie Till-Mobley speaking in the documentary The Untold Story of Emmett Louis Till about what she had seen. Her description is extremely graphic. A warning to our listeners and viewers: At the end of the excerpt, you see what Mamie Till wanted the world to see: Emmett Till’s mutilated face.
MAMIE TILL-MOBLEY: I saw his tongue had been choked out, and it was lying down on his chin. I saw that this eye was out, and it was lying about midway the cheek. I looked at this eye, and it was gone. I looked at the bridge of his nose, and it looked like someone had taken a meat chopper. …
Well, I looked at Mr. Rayner, and Mr. Rayner wanted to know: Was I going to have the casket opened? I said, “Oh, yes, we’re going to open the casket.” He said, “Well, Ms. Bradley, do you want me to do something for the face? Want me to try to fix it up?” I said, “No. Let the people see what I’ve seen.” I said, “I want the world to see this, because there’s no way I can tell this story and give them the visual picture of what my son looked like.”
AMY GOODMAN: That’s Mamie Till-Mobley, the mother of Emmett Till, speaking in the documentary The Untold Story of Emmett Louis Till. Mamie Till’s decision helped draw attention to lynching. Last November would have been her 100th birthday.
For more, we’re joined by two guests in Chicago. The Reverend Wheeler Parker Jr. is Emmett Till’s cousin, his best friend. Reverend Parker was 16 years old when he witnessed Emmett Till’s abduction from his great-uncle’s home in Money, Mississippi. Also with us, Michelle Duster, the great-granddaughter of the pioneering investigative journalist Ida B. Wells, who in 2020 was recognized with a posthumous Pulitzer Prize for her, quote, “outstanding and courageous reporting on the horrific and vicious violence against African Americans during the era of lynching.” Michelle Duster is an author, professor, public historian, an advocate for racial and gender justice.
We welcome you both to Democracy Now! Reverend Wheeler Parker Jr., I mean, to have the two of you here together is historic. And I wanted to go to the reverend as we just listened to your aunt, to Mamie Till-Mobley, describe what happened to your best friend, your cousin, who was two years younger than you. If you could go back to that night in 1955, still so vivid with you — and I apologize for asking you to do this — to talk about what took place, and the impact, not only on your family but on the world?
REV. WHEELER PARKER JR.: Yes, it’s kind of hard to understand what it was like in Mississippi at that time; if you didn’t live there and experience it, it just seemed unreal. After the incident at the store, which is on a Wednesday, early Sunday morning, about 2:30, I heard the people talking about what happened at the store: “I see you’ve got two kids — two guys here from Chicago, and want to talk to the fat boy that did the talk at the store.” And right away, having been raised — my formative years were spent in the South, and I was well entrenched in the ways and mores of the South. I started praying. I said, “God, we’re getting ready to die. These people are fixing to kill us.” I know people that had been killed before. People had been hung down the street from where my uncle lived. My daddy had to sleep with his gun overnight. Nobody came. Nothing came of it. And I knew where I was, and I just said, “I’m getting ready to die.” So I just started praying. And when death is imminent, you just think of all the bad things you’ve ever done, and I knew I was not in good standing with God, so I just started saying, “God, if you just let me live, I’m going to do right.” I didn’t call my grandfather; I knew he could not help me in Mississippi in 1955.
So, they didn’t know what room I was in. It’s dark as a thousand midnights. You couldn’t see your hand before your face. And it’s large landowner’s home, former landowner’s home. And I heard them coming my way, and in they walked with a pistol in one hand and a flashlight in the other. I’m shaking like a leaf on a tree. And I close my eyes, just thinking, “This is it. I’m going to be shot.” And, of course, they went by me. And I woke up. They were passing by me. They went to the third room, found Emmett in bed with my Uncle Simeon, who was 12 years old. And they aroused him up. And I think he went to put his socks on. It was just pure hell in that room, and just the atmosphere was just thick with terror and fear. And I think he finally got his shoes on, and they left with him. My grandmother tried to pay them, and my grandfather begged them not to take him. And that was the last time we saw him alive.
AMY GOODMAN: I wanted to go to a clip of Emmett Till’s great-uncle. This is the Reverend Mose Wright speaking about Emmett’s abduction. It’s from that same documentary, The Untold Story of Emmett Till, directed by Keith Beauchamp.
REV. MOSE WRIGHT: This is Mose Wright. I am the uncle of Emmett Louis Till. Sunday morning, about 2:30, someone called at the door. And I said, “Who is it?” And he said, “This is Mr. Bryant. I want to talk with you and the boy.” And when I opened the door, there was a man standing with a pistol in one hand and a flashlight in the other hand. And he asked me: Did I have two boys there from Chicago? I told him, “I have.” And he said, “I wants the boy that done all that talk.”
AMY GOODMAN: That was, again, the great-uncle of Emmett Till, from that documentary, The Untold Story of Emmett Louis Till. The story is so horrifying. The two suspects brought to trial were Roy Bryant, the husband of Carolyn Bryant, who claimed she had been whistled at in the store, and the brother-in-law, J.W. Milam. Now, the amazing story that isn’t often told, two brave activists from the Mississippi NAACP, Medgar Evers and Amzie Moore, had been involved since Till was reported missing, first looking for the lost boy, then seeking eyewitnesses to the murder. Despite the eyewitnesses, an all-white, all-male jury acquitted the suspects. One member of the jury said they had reached the decision within minutes but held off for an hour to appear as if they had actually deliberated. Medgar Evers, of course, would later be assassinated. After the acquittal, Bryant and Milam sold their story to Look magazine for $4,000, about the same amount that Mamie Till paid to ship her dead son home, equivalent of over $40,000 in 2022. And they admitted that they had murdered him. Reverend Wheeler Parker Jr., your response to the Emmett Till Antilynching Act that has now been signed into law, 70 years later? This is after over 200 attempts at getting an anti-lynching law over the last century. Your thoughts?
REV. WHEELER PARKER JR.: I have great commendations for those who had the courage and the fire and the guts in their belly to do what’s right. Over 200 times these guys have stood up and did it. It speaks volumes, not only for them but for America. Let us know that the wheels of justice grind, but they grind slow. They got the job done. And sometimes you’re tempted to have bitterness: Why did it take so long? And it shouldn’t have taken that long. But we appreciate it, and we’re thankful for what was done and when it was done.
AMY GOODMAN: I want to bring Michelle Duster into this conversation. I mean, again, today we’re joined by two historic figures. Yes, we’re joined by Reverend Wheeler Parker, the best friend and cousin of Emmett Till, and Michelle Duster, the great-granddaughter of Ida B. Wells, the pioneering anti-lynching journalist who won a posthumous Pulitzer Prize two years ago, in 2020. That was you we just watched at the White House speaking at the signing of the act. Your thoughts today?
MICHELLE DUSTER: I echo what Reverend Wheeler said. I mean, it’s just amazing — Reverend Parker — just the fact that, you know, finally, in 2022, we have justice; we have laws put in place that were fought for so long ago. But, you know, better late than never. And hopefully, going forward, there will be more justice for crimes that are hate-based and racially based.
AMY GOODMAN: So, let’s talk about your great-grandmother, Ida B. Wells, this remarkable figure in U.S. history. And talk about how lynching — what the original lynching that motivated her more than 100 years ago, of her three friends. Talk about what happened.
MICHELLE DUSTER: Right. Well, in 1892, three of my great-grandmother’s friends owned a grocery store, which rivaled a white-owned grocery store. And they were lynched because they were so successful that the other person decided to eliminate the competition. And she knew that they were not guilty of any crime, and so she wanted to — it started her investigating other lynchings to see how many other innocent people were being killed.
AMY GOODMAN: In 1898, over 120 years ago, in response to the lynching of another man, of the postmaster, Frazier Baker, in Lake City, South Carolina, your great-grandmother visited President William McKinley in Washington to urge him to make lynching a federal crime. This is in 1898. Can you talk to us about that moment and your great-grandmother’s life before and after that moment? What was McKinley’s response? I mean, it is hard to believe it is 2022 where the anti-lynching law was signed, after 200 attempts.
MICHELLE DUSTER: Right. Well, when Frazier Baker — he was the postmaster in Lake City, South Carolina, which meant he was a federal employee. And at that time, that was a very prestigious job for an African American man to have. And for him to be lynched, because the white people in that community had a problem with an African American being in that type of position, my great-grandmother went to William S. McKinley and implored him to create legislation making lynching a federal crime, because the person who was killed was a federal employee, and she felt he needed to be protected by federal law.
AMY GOODMAN: And can you explain what exactly this law means? I mean, if someone is murdered and they are tried and found guilty, they’re found guilty of murder. Talk about what the law does.
MICHELLE DUSTER: Well, by making it a federal hate crime, what it does is make it so that when a crime happens that would fall under this category, it would be investigated by the federal government and not just state and local government. And that’s significant, because there have been plenty of cases and examples — when only local officials investigate a crime, then sometimes justice is not meted out appropriately.
AMY GOODMAN: I wanted to ask if you have a message for the three Republicans in the House — Andrew Clyde of Georgia, Thomas Massie of Kentucky and Chip Roy of Texas — who voted against the bill?
MICHELLE DUSTER: Well, hopefully, history will take care of that, and their names will be known as those who opposed this law.
AMY GOODMAN: And, Reverend Wheeler Parker Jr., do you have a message for them, 67 years after your best friend and cousin was lynched, was murdered and brutalized?
REV. WHEELER PARKER JR.: I think history will remember them, and they will be remembered in history. And I don’t — tried to understand. I haven’t heard why they voted against it. I would like to know why. But, of course, we have to pray for people like that. And the results, with the percentage we got to turn out, almost 100%, they don’t even really count.
AMY GOODMAN: What does this anti-lynching law mean for police killings, for example, of George Floyd, of other killings, like Ahmaud Arbery? One of the people involved with his murder was also a former police officer. Reverend Wheeler Parker?
REV. WHEELER PARKER JR.: OK. You want to know what does this mean?
AMY GOODMAN: Yes.
REV. WHEELER PARKER JR.: Well, we know they were found guilty prior to the signing of this law. And what we see there, in America, how far we’ve come and how much work we’ve got to do, because that spirit is still out there. Law will make you behave better, but it does not legislate the heart. And I was just so appreciative of the outcome in George Floyd’s case. The next day, we had diversity protesting. And Arbery down in Georgia, I could not believe that those men got life. It’s not the South that I know. So we’ve made a lot of progress. And I want to encourage everyone: Don’t give up. Continue to pursue, using the law, not violence, not taking the law into your own hands.
AMY GOODMAN: And can you talk about your hope to create an Emmett Till and Mamie Till-Mobley National Historic Park to honor their memories?
REV. WHEELER PARKER JR.: Yes. We are looking forward to that. We’ve met and we’ve talked with people. And I think that will happen. I think we need those things. Some people say, “We’re doing better. Why bring it up? Why do those kind of things?” If we don’t do it, if we forget, we’re subject to repeat and do the same thing we did before. So we need these benchmarks or signs, kind of like on the highway when you’re driving. They need to post that sign every now and then and let you know what’s going on. So we definitely need to get that, and I think it will be done, because we are progressing. Like I said, the wheels of justice grind, but they grind very slow. So don’t get impatient. Don’t get discouraged. Hang in there. Ida B. Wells started it. She didn’t get to see it, but her great-granddaughter got to see it. So we have to be in for the long haul.
AMY GOODMAN: Well, I want to thank you both for being with us. And I don’t know how many people realize that A. Philip Randolph, the renowned African American labor organizer, civil rights activist, chose the eighth anniversary of Emmett Till’s murder, August 28th, 1963, for the March on Washington, where Dr. Martin Luther King would deliver his famous “I Have a Dream” speech. Thank you so much, both, for being with us, Reverend Wheeler Parker Jr., Emmett Till’s cousin, best friend, and Michelle Duster, the great-granddaughter of Ida B. Wells. The author, professor, public historian, advocate for racial and gender justice, Michelle Duster, spoke at the signing of the Emmett Till Antilynching Act.
Next up, YouTube has deleted the entire archive of Chris Hedges’ Emmy-nominated television show On Contact, which he hosted on RT America, a news channel funded by the Russian government. We’ll get an update from the Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist about what happened. Chris Hedges is also just back from the wedding of the imprisoned WikiLeaks founder, Julian Assange, in the maximum-security prison Belmarsh. Stay with us.
The Biden administration has allowed them to be converted into immigration detention facilities. (photo: John Moore/Getty)
The Biden administration promised to end private prisons. Instead, it has allowed them to be converted into immigration detention facilities.
This is an appalling reversal from the administration’s earlier promises. After all, Biden came into office with bold pledges to scale back the use of for-profit incarceration of all kinds. Within days of the president’s inauguration, he appeared to follow through on this promise by issuing an executive order purporting to end the use of private prisons to hold people in federal criminal custody.
However, Biden’s order left at least one major loophole: It was silent on the use of private contractors to detain immigrants in civil custody. There was reason to hope a similar order barring privatized immigration detention might follow, as Biden pledged on the campaign trail to “end for-profit detention centers,” as part of his immigration platform. And last April, he claimed that he would make good on this commitment within five days.
In the roughly 300 days that have passed since then, however, private detention has not ended — it has metastasized. In many ways, immigration detention is filling the gap in the federal incarcerated population left by Biden’s order. The expansion of the Folkston facility, for instance, would make it one of the largest such immigration detention facilities in the country.
The Biden administration has taken a few positive steps to address the particularly harmful forms of immigration detention, such as the confinement of asylum-seeking families. But for each step forward, there have been several steps back. In the case of family detention, for example, the sites where family units were confined haven’t closed down, but merely been repurposed. One of them — a facility in Berks County Pennsylvania, which for years held asylum-seeking mothers and children — has now reopened as a facility for detaining single adult women.
This is part of a pattern. If a facility is emptied for a time, but never shuttered, it is almost certain to eventually be refilled by another detained population. After Louisiana took positive steps to reduce the number of incarcerated people in its parish jails, for instance, many of these facilities simply switched over to detaining immigrants. The availability of such detention sites creates a powerful incentive to find ways to fill them, regardless of the stated rationale.
Far from reducing the use of immigration detention, Biden’s order on private prisons left an opening to expand it — and the statistics bear this out. The number of people in Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) custody has climbed since Biden took office. This is especially concerning in the midst of a public health crisis known to spread in detention settings. During the most recent wave of Covid-19 infections, diagnoses surged in ICE custody, causing at least 11 deaths.
Medical neglect was among the concerns that prompted Biden’s original executive order barring privatized facilities in a federal criminal context. If members of the administration knew these dangers, why would they allow tens of thousands of people to remain in privatized immigration lock-ups during a pandemic?
The administration would undoubtedly claim that it’s making efforts to reduce immigration detention over time. A recently-announced pilot program, for instance, would essentially confine people at home instead of in crowded detention centers.
Yet such a policy is merely detention by another name. According to the latest reporting, the contract to implement the pilot has been awarded to none other than GEO Group — one of the nation’s largest for-profit prison contractors operating immigration detention sites, including the one in Folkston.
Even under a policy that confines asylum-seekers at home instead of in traditional detention complexes, corporate actors will continue to “profit from the suffering of desperate people fleeing violence,” as Biden promised to prevent in his campaign pledge to end for-profit detention centers.
Ending the use of private prisons in the criminal legal system must be paired with vigilant efforts to combat their use against immigrants. Otherwise, taking on the prison-industrial complex will be like fighting the hydra: cut off one of its heads and two more will arise.
READ MORE
An Arara indigenous boy plays with a stick at the Laranjal tribal camp, in Arara indigenous land, Para state, in the northern Brazilian Amazon rainforest, on March 15, 2019. (photo: Mauro Pimentel/Getty)
Tribal lands studied sequester far more carbon than non-Indigenous regions. Yet Indigenous’ rights are often ignored and the forests the tribes protect are exploited or lost.
The study, by the World Resources Institute and Climate Focus, two non-profit global research organizations focused on alleviating climate change, supports a growing body of research emphasizing the important role Indigenous peoples and other local communities play in mitigating greenhouse gas emissions and protecting biodiversity.
In Brazil, for instance, the government would need to take 80 percent of vehicles off the roads to account for the carbon dioxide kept in the forests on Indigenous and local communities’ lands, the report said.
But instead of including Indigenous communities when devising plans to meet goals under the Paris Agreement, governments have largely ignored the role those communities play in meeting emission reductions targets, according to the report.
Worse, the report said, governments have carried out policies that make it more difficult for Indigenous communities to obtain title over their land, and have enabled harassment and assaults against those communities by failing to protect Indigenous peoples’ rights.
Juan-Carlos Altamirano, an economist at WRI and one of the report’s authors, said safeguarding the rights of Indigenous peoples and local communities is critical to averting the climate crisis. Each additional degree of global warming—accelerated by the loss of Indigenous lands—increases the risk of floods, drought, sea level rise and other extreme weather events.
“The challenge of meeting the Paris Agreement will be enormous if Indigenous and local communities’ lands are lost,” Altamirano said.
Indigenous-Held Forests Absorb Twice As Much Carbon
Scientists have long been aware that forests trap carbon dioxide within trees’ leaves, branches, trunks and roots. That’s why keeping forests intact has been part of global plans to combat climate change. When trees are destroyed through fires or clear cutting, forests can become a source of climate-warming greenhouse gas emissions as once-sequestered carbon is released into the atmosphere.
But when it comes to capturing and keeping carbon in the ground, not all forests are equal.
Using data from Global Forest Watch, a forest monitoring website, and Landmark, a Lima-based organization that monitors and maps Indigenous-held land, the study’s authors looked the forests in Peru, Brazil, Colombia and Mexico to find out how well forests on Indigenous and local communities’ land sequestered carbon compared to other forested lands. Those countries are home to some of the most biologically diverse forests in the world.
The researchers compared the net amounts of carbon dioxide released and stored on Indigenous and local communities’ lands against other forested lands from 2000 to 2020. They found that, on average, Indigenous-held forests absorbed over twice as much carbon dioxide as other forested lands, such as land owned by governments or private parties.
The country with the biggest difference was Brazil, where, on average, non-Indigenous land emits about 10 metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent per hectare while Indigenous land sequesters about 30 metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent per hectare.
The researchers also found that 92 percent of Indigenous and local communities’ land in the countries studied were “net sinks,” meaning they absorb more carbon dioxide than they emit. Without those contributions, governments would have to make up the emissions reductions elsewhere.
“Brazil and Colombia would have to retire 80 percent of their vehicle fleet and Mexico would need to retire 35 percent of its vehicle fleet to account for the loss of carbon sequestration services provided by Indigenous peoples and local communities’ lands, whereas Peru would have to retire their entire vehicle fleet to make up for just half of the loss of Indigenous peoples and local communities’ contributions,” the report said.
Governments Leave Indigenous Communities Out of Paris Plans
Despite the outsized role Indigenous and local communities play in sequestering carbon emissions, Peru, Colombia, Mexico and Brazil have largely excluded those communities from their emission reduction plans, the researchers found.
A misnomer about the Paris Agreement is that, on the whole, it is not binding. Countries that have ratified the agreement are required to prepare successive “nationally determined contribution” plans (NDCs) that outline how they will achieve their emission and adaptation goals. The idea is that by requiring countries to increase their commitments over time, the world can meet its long term goal to limit global warming.
But, in each of the four countries studied, laws and policies towards Indigenous peoples falls far short of protecting Indigenous lands and in some cases, actively works against it.
In Brazil, President Jair Bolsonaro put a hold on demarcations, or identification, of Indigenous lands and has supported legislation that would open up Indigenous lands to extractive industries.
In Mexico and Colombia, the government can permit extractive activity on Indigenous lands without obtaining the approval of those Indigenous communities.
And in Peru, the process for identifying Indigenous lands is so administratively cumbersome that it can take up to 20 years to complete. About a third of Indigenous and local communities’ land in the country is still unrecognized, leaving those groups vulnerable to wild cat miners and other land invasions.
The researchers said these and other harmful policies have contributed to illegal deforestation on Indigenous lands and the murders and harassment of Indigenous peoples. In 2020, 65 environmental defenders were killed in Colombia, 30 in Mexico, 20 in Brazil and six in Peru, according to data from the nonprofit Global Witness. The vast majority of those alleged crimes have gone unpunished.
The Road Ahead
Altamirano said that while the report focuses on Indigenous and local communities’ land, a larger message is that humans must protect all forests, regardless of who manages them, to achieve goals under the Paris Agreement.
The problem of “leakage,” when a policy to stop deforestation in one place leads to deforestation elsewhere, is a concern. If deforestation on Indigenous lands stops, it could lead to greater rates of deforestation in other woodlands.
Altamirano said to prevent leakage, policy makers should aim to protect forests in a way that recognizes communities that depend on them for their livelihoods and promote sustainable forest management—something Indigenous communities have effectively done for thousands of years.
By bringing Indigenous communities into climate policy making at local, national and international levels, he said, there is a greater chance that their knowledge can be shared and expanded to non-indigenous land management.
For the international community and wealthy countries like the United States, ensuring that forest-protection funding goes to Indigenous and local communities is key, Altamirano and his co-author, Darragh Conway, said.
“Living in harmony with nature is essentially written into these communities’ DNA,” Conway, a lawyer with WRI, said. “When donors are funding forest protection, they need to make sure that money comes down to the local level because ultimately, these communities that live there are the ones best placed to protect forests.”
Special Coverage: Ukraine, A Historic Resistance
READ MORE
Follow us on facebook and twitter!
PO Box 2043 / Citrus Heights, CA 95611
No comments:
Post a Comment
Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.