16 August 22
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For years, Democrats have promised to raise taxes on such investors, who pay a significantly lower rate on their earnings than ordinary workers. But just as they closed in on that goal last week, Sinema forced a series of changes to her party’s $740 billion election-year spending package, eliminating a proposed “carried interest” tax increase on private equity earnings while securing a $35 billion exemption that will spare much of the industry from a separate tax increase other huge corporations now have to pay.
The bill, with Sinema's alterations intact, was given final approval by Congress on Friday and is expected to be signed by President Joe Biden next week.
Sinema has long aligned herself with the interests of private equity, hedge funds and venture capital, helping her net at least $1.5 million in campaign contributions since she was elected to the House a decade ago. But the $983,000 she has collected since last summer more than doubled what the industry donated to her during all of her preceding years in Congress combined, according to an Associated Press review of campaign finance disclosures.
The donations, which make Sinema one of the industry’s top beneficiaries in Congress, serve a reminder of the way that high-power lobbying campaigns can have dramatic implications for the way legislation is crafted, particularly in the evenly divided Senate where there are no Democratic votes to spare. They also highlight a degree of political risk for Sinema, whose unapologetic defense of the industry's favorable tax treatment is viewed by many in her party as indefensible.
“From their vantage point, it’s a million dollars very well spent,” said Dean Baker, a senior economist at the Center for Economic and Policy Research, a liberal-leaning think tank. “It’s pretty rare you see this direct of a return on your investment. So, I guess I would congratulate them.”
Sinema's office declined to make her available for an interview. Hannah Hurley, a Sinema spokesperson, acknowledged the senator shares some of the industry's views on taxation, but rebuffed any suggestion that the donations influenced her thinking.
“Senator Sinema makes every decision based on one criteria: what’s best for Arizona," Hurley said in a statement. “She has been clear and consistent for over a year that she will only support tax reforms and revenue options that support Arizona’s economic growth and competitiveness.”
The American Investment Council, a trade group that lobbies on behalf of private equity, also defended their push to defeat the tax provisions.
“Our team worked to ensure that members of Congress from both sides of the aisle understand how private equity directly employs workers and supports small businesses throughout their communities," Drew Maloney, the organization's CEO and president, said in a statement.
Sinema's defense of wealthy investors' tax treatment offers a jarring contrast to her background as a Green Party activist and self-styled “Prada socialist” who once likened accepting campaign cash to “bribery" and later called for “big corporations & the rich to pay their fair share” before launching her first campaign for Congress in 2012.
She's been far more magnanimous since, praising private equity in 2016 from the House floor for providing "billions of dollars each year to Main Street businesses.” After her election to the Senate, Sinema interned during the 2020 congressional recess at a private equity mogul's boutique winery in northern California.
The soaring contributions from the industry to Sinema trace back to last summer. That's when she first made clear that she wouldn't support a carried interest tax increase, as well as other corporate and business tax hikes included in an earlier iteration of Biden's agenda.
During a two-week period in September alone, Sinema collected $47,100 in contributions from 16 high-ranking officials from the private equity firm Welsh, Carson, Anderson & Stowe, records show. Employees and executives of KKR, another private equity behemoth, contributed $44,100 to Sinema during a two-month span in late 2021.
In some cases, the families of private equity managers joined in. David Belluck, a partner at the firm Riverside Partners, gave a $5,800 max-out contribution to Sinema one day in late June. So did three of his college-age kids, with the family collectively donating $23,200, records show.
“I generally support centrist Democrats and her seat is important to keep a Democratic Senate majority,” Belluck said, adding that his family has known Sinema since her election to Congress. "She and I have never discussed private equity taxation.”
The donations from the industry coincide with a $26 million lobbying effort spearheaded by the investment firm Blackstone that culminated on the Senate floor last weekend.
By the time the bill was up for debate during a marathon series of votes, Sinema had already forced Democrats to abandon their carried interest tax increase.
“Senator Sinema said she would not vote for the bill .. unless we took it out,” Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer told reporters last week. "We had no choice.”
But after private equity lobbyists discovered a provision in the bill that would have subjected many of them to a separate 15% corporate minimum tax, they urgently pressed Sinema and other centrist Democrats for changes, according to emails as well as four people with direct knowledge of the matter who requested anonymity to discuss internal deliberations.
“Given the breaking nature of this development we need as many offices as possible weighing in with concerns to Leader Schumer’s office,” Blackstone lobbyist Ryan McConaghy wrote in a Saturday afternoon email obtained by the AP, which included proposed language for modifying the bill. “Would you and your boss be willing to raise the alarm on this and express concerns with Schumer and team?”
McConaghy did not respond to a request for comment.
Sinema worked with Republicans on an amendment that stripped the corporate minimum tax on private equity from the bill, which a handful of vulnerable Democrats also voted for.
"Since she has been in Congress, Kyrsten has consistently supported pro-growth policies that encourage job creation across Arizona. Her tax policy positions and focus on growing Arizona’s economy and competitiveness are longstanding and well known,” Hurley, the Sinema spokesperson, said.
But many in her party disagree. They say the favorable tax treatment does little to boost the overall economy and argue there’s little compelling evidence to suggest its benefits are enjoyed beyond some of the wealthiest investors.
Some of Sinema's donors make their case.
Blackstone, a significant source of campaign contributions, owns large tracts of real estate in Sinema's home state, Arizona. The firm was condemned by United Nations experts in 2019 who said Blackstone's financial model was responsible for a “financialization of housing” that has driven up rents and home costs, “pushing low-income, and increasingly middle-income people from their homes.”
Blackstone employees, executives and their family members have given Sinema $44,000 since 2018, records show.
In a statement, Blackstone called the allegations by the U.N. experts “false and misleading” and said all employee contributions are "strictly personal.” The firm added that it was “incredibly proud of its investments in housing.”
Another significant financial services donor is Centerbridge Partners, a New York-based firm that buys up the debt of distressed governments and companies and often uses hardball tactics to extract value. Since 2017, Sinema has collected at least $29,000 from donors associated with the firm, including co-founder Mark Gallogly and his wife, Elizabeth Strickler, records show.
In 2012, Centerbridge Partners purchased Arizona-based restaurant chain P.F. Chang’s for roughly $1 billion. After loading the struggling company up with $675 million of debt, they sold it to another private equity group in 2019, according to Bloomberg News. The company received a $10 million coronavirus aid loan to cover payroll, which the federal government later forgave, but shed jobs and closed locations as it struggled with the pandemic.
Centerbridge Partners was also part of a consortium of hedge funds that helped usher in an era of austerity in Puerto Rico after buying up billions of dollars of the island government’s $72 billion debt — and filing legal proceedings to collect. A subsidiary of Centerbridge Partners was among a group of creditors who repeatedly sued one of the U.S. territory’s pension funds. In one 2016 lawsuit, the group of creditors asked a judge to divert money from a Puerto Rican pension fund in order to collect.
A Centerbridge representative could not provide comment.
Liberal activists in Arizona say they plan to make Sinema's reliance on donations from wealthy investors a campaign issue when she is up for reelection in 2024.
"There are many takes on how to win, but there is no universe in which it is politically smart to fight for favorable tax treatment of the wealthiest people in the country," said Emily Kirkland, a political consultant who works for progressive candidates. “It’s absolutely going to be a potent issue.”
Former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo (L), WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange (R). (photo: Jack Taylor/Getty Images (L), Leah Millis/Reuters (R))
Lawyers and journalists sued the CIA and former CIA Director Mike Pompeo Monday for spying on them while they met Julian Assange when he was living in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London, where he had political asylum. The lawsuit is being filed as Britain prepares to extradite the WikiLeaks founder to the United States, where he faces up to 175 years in prison for violating the Espionage Act by publishing classified documents exposing U.S. war crimes in Iraq and Afghanistan. We speak with the lead attorney in the case, Richard Roth, who details how a private security company stationed at the London Embassy unknowingly sent images from Assange’s visitors’ cellphones and laptops as well as streamed video from inside meetings to American intelligence. He says the offenses breach a range of client privileges and could sway a U.S. judge to dismiss the case if Assange is successfully extradited.
The lawsuit filed Monday accuses the Spanish security firm UC Global of spying on Assange and his visitors inside the embassy on behalf of the CIA. UC Global and the company’s director, David Morales, are also named as defendants in the new lawsuit, which comes less than a year after Yahoo News revealed the CIA considered abducting, and possibly assassinating, Assange while he was in the embassy.
On Monday, several plaintiffs in the lawsuit spoke during an online news conference. This is Deborah Hrbek. She’s a media lawyer who visited Assange at the Ecuadorian Embassy in London several times to discuss sensitive legal matters.
DEBORAH HRBEK: On arrival, there was a strict protocol, for the protection of Julian, we were told. Passports, mobile phones, cameras, laptops, recording devices and other electronic equipment were turned over to the security guards in the lobby. We learned much later, through a criminal investigation under the supervision of a court in Spain, that while visitors like me were meeting with Julian in the embassy conference room, the guards next door were taking apart our phones, removing and photographing SIM cards and, we believe, downloading data from our electronic equipment. Their boss, David Morales from UC Global, who appears to have been recruited by the CIA through associates of Sheldon Adelson during a visit to a tech conference, was making regular trips to Washington, D.C., to New York, to Las Vegas, reportedly to hand over thumb drives and to receive further instructions from his U.S. government handlers.
In other words, during our meetings with Julian at the embassy, recordings of our confidential conversations and the contents of our electronic devices were being delivered into the hands of the United States government. I’m a New York lawyer. I have the right to assume that the U.S. government is not listening to my private and privileged conversations with my clients, and that information about other clients and cases I may have on my phone or laptop are secure from illegal government intrusion. This is not just a violation of our constitutional rights. This is an outrage.
AMY GOODMAN: That’s, again, the attorney Deborah Hrbek, who is a plaintiff in the new lawsuit against the CIA and the former CIA director, Mike Pompeo, for spying on her and other visitors when they met with WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London.
We’re joined now by Richard Roth, the lead attorney who filed the lawsuit on Monday.
Lay out the case, Richard.
RICHARD ROTH: Hi, Amy. Thank you for having me.
So, the case is very — it’s very simple and very troubling. Essentially, there are these individuals who work at the embassy who are just there to essentially monitor the traffic that comes in. What we learned was that — through a Spanish court proceeding, we learned that, in fact, UC Global went to a convention and presented at a convention, where Sheldon Adelson, as Deborah Hrbek said, essentially introduced them to — brought them in to the wings of the CIA to not only just monitor who comes to visit Julian Assange in the Ecuadorian Embassy, but to actually take their phones, their cellphone, their laptops, any kind of recording devices, and to image them while they were inside, because when they walked in, they had to leave them with the security company. We also learned that they were streaming, that they actually had streaming microphones and cameras inside the embassy for meetings with Julian Assange.
We learned this in the Spanish court proceeding. And there are witnesses who essentially were employees at UC Global, thinking that they were just doing their job, and learning from Morales that all of this was going back to, quote, “American intelligence.” It was going back to the Americans. It was going back to the “dark side.” And these individuals came forward and told, essentially, the Spanish court and others that they did not understand at the time that they were part of this enterprise that tape-recorded everything that Julian Assange did.
And what’s very troubling about it is not only is it a violation of the Fourth Amendment, your right to privacy, but you have lawyers, you have journalists, you have doctors who went to visit Julian Assange. And if doctors went in, there’s a doctor-patient privilege. There’s an attorney-client privilege. And so, not only did they literally listen in on the conversations, but any client of, for example, Deborah Hrbek’s who had information on her laptop — not even Assange’s — the U.S. government now has privy to. So, it’s very troubling. Deborah’s comment that it’s an outrage is square on point.
And so, what we’ve done is we’ve commenced an action to essentially let the world know and to seek damages for these plaintiffs, who are journalists, who are lawyers, who essentially went to the embassy, unbeknownst to them, had everything of theirs recorded and imaged, and purely, clearly a violation of the Fourth Amendment. So we’ve sued Morales, UC Global, we’ve sued the CIA, and we’ve sued Mike Pompeo for the outrageous conduct.
On top of that, Mike Pompeo, in his very first address when he became CIA director, let it be known he was going to go after Julian Assange. He called —
AMY GOODMAN: I want to actually play that.
RICHARD ROTH: — Julian Assange and WikiLeaks —
AMY GOODMAN: Richard —
RICHARD ROTH: — a nonstate hostile intelligence agency. And he called Julian a fraud. And there’s plenty of evidence, more which we will get through discovery, that essentially will lead one to conclude that the CIA went in, took UC Global and put it under its wing to allow it to record and listen to everything that Julian Assange was saying.
AMY GOODMAN: Richard, I want to go to that clip of then-CIA Director Mike Pompeo in 2017 talking about WikiLeaks in his first address as CIA director in the Trump administration.
MIKE POMPEO: WikiLeaks walks like a hostile intelligence service and talks like a hostile intelligence service. It has encouraged its followers to find jobs at the CIA in order to obtain intelligence. It directed Chelsea Manning in her theft of specific secret information. It overwhelmingly focuses on the United States, while seeking support from anti-democratic countries and organizations. It’s time to call out WikiLeaks for what it really is: a nonstate hostile intelligence service, often abetted by state actors like Russia.
AMY GOODMAN: Julian Assange later responded to Pompeo’s allegation in an interview with journalist Jeremy Scahill on the podcast Intercepted.
JULIAN ASSANGE: Pompeo has stated that WikiLeaks instructed Chelsea Manning to go after certain information. That’s a interesting revelation. And then there is his statement that this, i.e. WikiLeaks and its publications, end now. So, how does he propose to conduct this ending? He didn’t say. But the CIA is only in the business of collecting information, kidnapping people and assassinating people. So, it’s quite a menacing statement that he does need to clarify.
AMY GOODMAN: And again, Richard Roth, Yahoo News last year revealed that the CIA did consider abducting, and possibly assassinating, Julian Assange while he was in political asylum in the embassy. Your comments on this? And, of course, Pompeo could be a presidential candidate in the next presidential election.
RICHARD ROTH: Yeah, Julian Assange and WikiLeaks is a publication. It gets information from sources and publishes it, no different than The New York Times, no different than any newscaster. It does nothing more. There is an indictment alleging more. Certainly the government will have to prove it. But the bottom line is that, thus far, all we’ve seen is publication. It’s no different than the Pentagon Papers, that The New York Times actually published.
So, they are — there is a very clear purpose for the news, and that is if information comes in its possession, and it doesn’t matter which news source, whether it’s Fox or whether it’s CNN, then it has — not only is it right, but it has an obligation to tell the world that this is what I have. There’s no evidence — and we’ll certainly see, if he’s extradited, at this trial — that, actually — that WikiLeaks was actually involved in the hacking of any computers by the NSA. Chelsea Manning is a different story. But if Chelsea Manning gives information to The New York Times, you can bet your bottom dollar The New York Times is going to publish that, because that is its obligation. And that’s all WikiLeaks is.
Why Mike Pompeo went ahead and went so far, so extreme to essentially label WikiLeaks as a hostile nonstate intelligence service is just remarkable. And then what he did was they went ahead, and using a UC Global, they actually went in, and they are the ones that wrongfully took information. There’s a real irony here. While WikiLeaks is being charged of wrongfully taking information, it’s the CIA that wrongfully took information, not only of Assange but of U.S. citizens, of Ms. Hrbek, Margaret Kunstler and other plaintiffs. So, there’s a real irony here that what they’re being accused of is what the CIA was doing, which is very, very troubling.
AMY GOODMAN: And, of course, many journalists. I wanted to go back to 2014. In a Democracy Now! exclusive, we went inside Ecuador’s Embassy in London to interview WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange as he had just entered his third year of political asylum.
AMY GOODMAN: We’re in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London, where Julian Assange took refuge two years ago. He’s been detained in Britain for close now to four years.
Welcome to Democracy Now!, Julian.
JULIAN ASSANGE: Thank you, Amy.
AMY GOODMAN: How are you doing here? It’s been over two years that you have really not seen daylight for any extended period of time.
JULIAN ASSANGE: There’s been nearly four years that I’ve been detained without charge, in one form or another, here in the United Kingdom, first in prison, the solitary confinement, then under house arrest for about 18 months, and now two years here in the embassy. The Ecuadorian government gave me political asylum in relation to the ongoing national security investigation by the DOJ, the Department of Justice, in the United States into our publications and also into sourcing efforts. So, did I enter into a conspiracy with Chelsea Manning, who was sentenced last year to 35 years in prison?
So, the question as to how I’m doing, of course, personally, it’s a difficult situation, in a variety of ways. I would say that when someone’s in this position, what you are most concerned about is the interruption in your family relationships. So, because of the security situation, that’s made it very hard for my children and my parents.
AMY GOODMAN: So, that’s Julian Assange when we interviewed him. And people can go to democracynow.org to see all the interviews we did with Julian Assange in London. But the significance of now him being held for — that was 2014. He had been held for four years, so we’re 12 years now in the maximum-security Belmarsh prison, where Britain is preparing to extradite him to face espionage charges in the United States. What role do you see your lawsuit playing in the possibility of stopping this extradition?
RICHARD ROTH: So, it’s a great question. And let’s just talk for a second about the fact that he’s in a maximum-security prison. A maximum-security prison for a publisher. That, in and of itself, is an outrage.
But the role is the following. If in fact we can prove that the CIA was listening to and taking information — and that includes Julian Assange’s lawyers, criminal lawyers, in the actual extradition proceeding, and in the proceeding which presumably will be tried in the Northern District of Virginia, when, in fact, he — if in fact he is extradited, and if in fact he’s tried. So, think about it. The CIA, years before he’s even tried in Virginia, has tape recordings of the conversations Julian Assange had with his lawyers. We think that that information is so outrageous that if, in fact, we prove our case, when we go to the Virginia court, there could be a federal court judge in Virginia that looks at the CIA’s conduct and says, “I can’t — there’s not a chance I will let you try this case, in light of the fact that you’re the ones that spied on him. You have all his information.”
And the goal with that lawsuit, independent of this one, is to have that lawsuit thrown out, to let the man — let the publisher publish. That’s all we’re asking, is let the publisher publish. I am not a lawyer in that case. I know the lawyer in that case. He’s a highly qualified Washington, D.C., criminal lawyer. But that’s what they’re going to — that’s the goal there. The goal there is to just let the publisher publish. That’s all it is.
And the irony is, yesterday Rand Paul said that the Espionage Act, for which Julian has been essentially indicted, should be repealed. So, on the one hand, you have a major Republican senator saying we should repeal the Espionage Act, and on the other hand, we have a full-court press on Julian to get him convicted for dozens and dozens of years under that same Espionage Act.
AMY GOODMAN: And what further information are you getting from UC Global in terms of the Spanish court case, and its connection to Sheldon Adelson, the late casino magnate, where they apparently met in Las Vegas at a tech conference?
RICHARD ROTH: Correct. They met at a conference called a SHOT conference, S-H-O-T. And what we’ve learned is that’s when Adelson actually introduced Morales to the CIA.
And what we’re getting from the Spanish courts — even though it is technically sealed, there is information coming out. And what we’re getting from the courts is that people that worked at UC Global did not really — that was not the job they took. Their job was to allow people to come in and out of the embassy in a structured manner. And all of a sudden they find out that the tape recordings are going on, and they’re adding recordings here, and they’re adding devices there, and they’re returning it to America. And they’re learning from Morales that this information is going to, quote, “the Americans.” It’s going to, quote, “American intelligence.” Why would information, A, be taped and go to American intelligence?
So, that’s all information that we currently have. We intend on getting a lot more from UC Global. We obviously just started the lawsuit yesterday, so there’s a process that has to take place. We certainly expect resistance on many parts, including Pompeo. But that’s the information that we intend on getting from these UC Global employees, who are going to tell as that they were directed to engage in this conduct and provide it to the Central Intelligence Agency. It’s nothing short of outrageous.
AMY GOODMAN: You’re also alleging that there was an official Ecuadorian rep, Gabriela Paiz, who was bribed with $20,000 in cash a month, according to the Spanish lawsuit?
RICHARD ROTH: That’s correct. That’s correct. The money was being paid to numerous people to allow for this intelligence to take place. It’s obvious that the purpose of putting someone seeking asylum and going in an embassy is essentially to shield them from the law, which was essentially the case for the first four years. But what happened was, not only was he — he was shielded, I guess, physically. But what happened was that whole process reversed when Pompeo became CIA — the head of the CIA, to essentially get from Assange and all the people that had come in there all the information that really should have been confidential. So, we will — we intend on taking depositions. We intend on getting documents. The Spanish proceeding is a little difficult to get information from, because it is sealed. But even the Spanish court has subpoenaed Mike Pompeo to testify.
AMY GOODMAN: And Mike Pompeo is being sued —
RICHARD ROTH: So, the sharks are circling.
AMY GOODMAN: — as a private citizen in your case, as well as the CIA?
RICHARD ROTH: That’s correct. That’s absolutely correct.
AMY GOODMAN: For damages? And has he responded?
RICHARD ROTH: No, he has not responded yet. We just filed it. We will serve it. We don’t know what kind of response we’re going to get. We do know that he’s — that Pompeo — my understanding is that he’s been hesitant and has not been forthright with the subpoena in the Spanish courts. I don’t know if he’ll be forthright or — and will probably have the same hesitancy in New York, but we shall see.
AMY GOODMAN: Well, I want to thank you, Richard Roth, lead attorney representing the lawyers and journalists who have filed a new lawsuit over CIA surveillance of their meetings with WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange while he was in political exile in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London. He has been jailed now for over 12 years, now at the Belmarsh maximum-security prison, as Britain weighs extraditing him to the United States.
Fast-food workers across California plan to walk off the job in a push to expand legal liability beyond individual franchisees to their corporate franchisers. (photo: Associated Press)
The restaurant industry is fighting hard against a labor bill making its way through the California legislature.
The bill, known as AB 257 or the FAST Recovery Act, passed the California Assembly in January, and is coming up for a full vote in the state Senate this month. “There may be no more consequential measure for labor rights in Sacramento this session,” said LA Times columnist Michael Hiltzik. Its impact though, might not be limited to California.
The legislation would establish a new state council with the power to set minimum working standards for fast food restaurants across California. It would also create a means to hold companies like McDonald’s and Pizza Hut legally responsible for any labor violations at individual stores, even if those individual stores are owned by franchisees. Right now, big corporations are generally not liable for their franchisees breaking labor laws.
In many European countries, unions negotiate working standards that apply to workers across an entire industry, not just one company. This approach, known as “sectoral bargaining,” is particularly useful for protecting workers toiling in industries that rely heavily on part-time staff, contractors, and subcontractors. Sectoral bargaining is prohibited by federal labor law in the US, but the bill in California is a similar idea, and a step that a labor-friendly state can take on its own.
Food industry and franchise trade groups certainly recognize the threat the FAST Recovery Act presents to their business model, and the national implications if it becomes law.
“If passed, also expect to see similar legislation in states like New York, Oregon, Washington, Illinois, and more,” warns lobbying materials from the National Restaurant Association. “The greatest chance for defeating this legislation is in the California Senate, making it imperative for the industry to focus its efforts there.”
Unions and labor allies, in turn, have been advocating hard for the bill — organizing worker strikes, petitions, and lobby trips to Sacramento and Washington, DC.
In June, presidents from America’s largest national unions sent a letter to Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom urging him to “support and champion” the FAST Recovery Act. “This bill is an opportunity to connect policy with your progressive values and demonstrate that California knows how to lead the nation with innovative solutions that tackle rising inequality,” they wrote.
Newsom, who is rumored to have 2024 presidential ambitions, vetoed a big labor bill last year that would have made it easier for California farmworkers to unionize. Omar Rodriguez, a spokesperson for Newsom, told Vox they don’t typically comment on pending legislation: “The governor will evaluate the bill on its own merits if it reaches his desk,” he said.
Kate Andrias, a labor law professor at Columbia University who has written about sectoral bargaining, told Vox that she sees the FAST Recovery Act as “a significant step forward.” “There are ways in which workers can influence wages and regulations already, but what this bill does is create a focal point for workers to be a more empowered part of the administrative system,” she said.
How the FAST Recovery Act would work
The law would establish a 13-member council that includes political appointees from state health and labor agencies, as well as food industry officials, fast food workers, and union representatives. The council would “promulgate minimum standards” for things like wages and working conditions for restaurants where workers aren’t unionized. The bill would also clarify joint liability for the franchisor and franchisee, and establish protections for workers who exercise their rights.
The standards would apply to any chain in California that has at least 30 stores nationwide that share a common brand.
Only six votes from the council are required to issue a rule, which means even if all four direct representatives from the business community reject it, the measure could still pass. The California legislature would have an opportunity to reject or change the council’s proposed standards, as would the state’s Occupational Health and Safety Administration.
Advocates say the bill will help prevent wage theft, sexual harassment, and general lack of compliance with existing labor standards
Angelica Hernandez, an activist with the Fight for $15 campaign in California, has worked at McDonald’s for the last 18 years. In that time, she told Vox, she had her wages stolen in the form of unpaid hours for time worked and experienced sexual harassment on the job. When she tried to tell her manager about her harassment, she said she was laughed at and dismissed.
A McDonald’s spokesperson said the company “has been clear that sexual harassment will not be tolerated” and pointed to McDonald’s Global Brand Standards for safe, respectful, and inclusive working environments, which took effect for all restaurants beginning in January 2022.
In response to Hernandez’s allegations specifically, McDonald’s says it investigated her harassment concerns, and “matters [were] closed in alliance with our company policies.” With regard to the wage theft, the spokesperson noted that over the last few years the restaurant Hernandez works at “has implemented safeguards that further ensure employees are properly paid for their work.” The spokesperson said they also “conduct routine wage and hour audits” at this particular restaurant.
“With AB 257, we would have a more dignified job,” Hernandez said. “We would finally have a voice and have a place where we can make sure that we are setting better standards. It’s sad because we work in a free country but we’re not free in our job to speak out.”
The vast majority of fast food workers in California are women and people of color, and many report similar experiences as Hernandez. In one survey of California fast food workers, released in May by the Fight for $15, 85 percent said they experienced wage theft on the job. Another recent survey, commissioned by the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health and conducted by the UCLA Labor Center, found 43 percent of workers experienced workplace injury or illness, nearly half experienced verbal abuse, and a quarter said they were retaliated against by their managers for reporting workplace issues.
This month, in a joint study between University of California San Francisco and Harvard’s Shift Project, researchers found California fast food workers are paid nearly $3 per hour less — almost $6,000 less annually — than workers in comparable service-sector jobs across the state, and are more likely to have unpredictable schedules and work part-time involuntarily.
While California already has some of the most robust labor laws on the books, advocates say those rules are often flouted in part because franchisees have little legal authority to make changes to their businesses aside from cutting corners on worker pay. (The bill was introduced by Assembly member Chris Holden, a former Subway franchise owner in Pasadena.)
“Franchises can’t control pricing, hours of operation, or their suppliers,” said Brian Callaci, the chief economist at the Open Markets Institute, an anti-monopoly think tank. “All they can do is drive down labor costs, so the franchising model is really designed to put the interest of local employers and their workers at odds.”
Matthew Haller, president of the International Franchise Association, told Vox that franchise brands ensure their franchisees comply with the law “by virtue of their franchise agreements, and have an incentive to ensure compliance to protect the brand.”
The restaurant industry warns the bill would hurt businesses and consumers
One of the main arguments put forth by opponents of the FAST Recovery Act is that the bill would make it harder and more costly for stores to operate and that lawmakers would be better off dedicating more resources to California’s labor department to enforce existing rules.
Sean Redmond, the vice president of labor policy at the US Chamber of Commerce, called AB 257 “a radical proposal to micromanage the fast food industry” and said consumers would bear the consequences through higher prices. Other business leaders are warning of reductions in jobs and working hours.
Jeff Hanscom, vice president of state and local government affairs for the International Franchise Association, called the bill “one of the most damaging pieces of legislation to ever impact the franchise business model.” The business-backed Campaign to Stop AB 257 has blasted the idea as “11 unelected political appointees to run California’s entire counter service restaurant industry from Sacramento.”
Still, supporters of the bill push back on this framing. “Exploiting your workers is not a socially permissive competitive strategy,” Callaci said. “I think it’s that blunt.”
It’s not clear how lawmakers will proceed. On Thursday, the bill passed out of the Senate appropriations committee, but California’s Department of Finance has come out against the legislation, saying it “could lead to a fragmented regulatory and legal environment for employers and raise long-term costs across industries.”
A step toward sectoral bargaining
Labor advocates believe the FAST Recovery Act would represent a meaningful step toward sectoral bargaining, as right now states are barred from passing their own collective bargaining law for private-sector workers. To do so would be what’s known as an illegal preemption of the National Labor Relations Act, which governs unions for private employees.
The big labor reform bill known as the Protecting the Right to Organize Act (PRO) that unions are advocating for in Congress would not legalize sectoral bargaining, but it includes measures that would also move things closer to that point. Andrias, of Columbia University, said the PRO Act would clarify the standard for joint-employment between franchisors and franchisees, and require the GAO to study sectoral bargaining. The bill would also make it generally easier for workers to unionize and strike.
National labor advocates say while the FAST Recovery Act would be an innovative solution, it also does not represent a radical departure from past models. “It is based in well-settled principles of law,” wrote Berkeley law professors Catherine Fisk and Amy Reavis. “It is akin to existing appointed bodies, such as the California Energy Commission and California Coastal Commission, that are designed to tackle difficult issues and ensure input from stakeholders.”
And there are similar experiments happening elsewhere across the country. In 2015, then-New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo convened a wage board to evaluate compensation in the state’s fast food industry. This led to an increase in the minimum wage for New York fast food workers, phased in over six years. In 2018, Seattle established a labor standards board to make recommendations for domestic workers, and Detroit followed suit with a multi-industry board in 2021.
Thinking about labor organizing across broad industries, advocates say, is a helpful shift in perspective, and it can also take different forms from these aforementioned models. In 2018, for example, public school educators mobilized through the new #RedforEd movement, and right now there’s a wave of national grassroots organizing with Starbucks and Amazon workers.
“Sometimes the term ‘sectoral bargaining’ can be a distraction,” said Andrias. “What we’re really talking about is broader-base bargaining, and that could look different in different contexts.”
Amazon workers walk out at a major west coast air hub over pay and safety. (photo: Getty)
The workers, who are demanding higher pay and improved safety, are organizing within the e-commerce behemoth’s essential air logistics arm
The walkout in Southern California marks the first coordinated labor action in Amazon’s growing airfreight division, which uses Prime-branded planes to fly packages and goods around the country much like UPS or FedEx. The employees, who are independently organized, said they didn’t plan to return to work on Monday, in an effort to pressure Amazon to raise wages and improve safety.
Organizers said more than 150 people walked out Monday afternoon, and managers had already slowed some operations in anticipation of the action. While a small fraction of the 1,500 employees who work at the hub in various shifts walked out, such a work stoppage can create logistical headaches and disruptions.
Amazon spokesman Paul Flaningan contested that number, saying the company’s tally of workers who participated was approximately 74.
Monday’s walkout is the latest sign that pro-union sentiment is spreading throughout Amazon’s ranks — this time at a uniquely vulnerable point in its logistics network. Amazon depends heavily on a few air hubs to keep millions of packages moving every day, which means the effect of a strike or work stoppage at any of those facilities would have a greater impact than a similar action at a regional warehouse.
Even as Amazon, the nation’s second-largest private employer, pits its weight against organized labor — trying, for example, to get the results of the Amazon Labor Union’s historic election victory in Staten Island thrown out — the walkout in California demonstrates how workers are continuing to independently organize around the country.
Anna Ortega, 23, said she hopes the San Bernardino walkout that she participated in forces Amazon to “stop and think about what they’re doing and why.”
“With the rising cost of everything in our lives, it’s getting tough to make ends meet,” said Ortega, who makes $17.30 an hour. “It doesn’t make any sense that people who work here should be on food stamps or struggling financially.”
Workers are also asking for better heat safety measures as the temperature has often reached above 100 degrees this summer, causing heat-related illness in particular for workers who are outdoors loading and unloading planes. Federal workplace health and safety officials have recently investigated the deaths of three Amazon workers in New Jersey and expanded a probe into safety issues at Amazon warehouses nationally.
“We appreciate and respect the direct relationship we have with our employees to discuss and address feedback,” said Amazon’s Flaningan before the walkout. “Through this open-door policy we have many communication channels we use, including All Hands meetings, which help us address employee concerns.”
Flaningan added that full-time employees at the San Bernardino hub and throughout the region have a minimum wage floor of $17 an hour and can earn up to $19.25 and receive health care, retirement benefits and up to 20 weeks of parental leave. Asked about the walkout Monday afternoon, Flaningan said the company respects the workers’ right to walk out.
Amazon founder Jeff Bezos owns The Washington Post.
The San Bernardino work stoppage is part of a broader wave of labor organizing campaigns across the country at Amazon warehouses — marked so far by a union election victory in Staten Island. Results at a warehouse in Bessemer, Ala., are too close to call, and they are being contested. A warehouse in Albany, N.Y., is also close to filing for a vote.
The coordinated work stoppage in San Bernardino is the culmination of months of organizing by an independent group of workers, which calls itself Inland Empire Amazon Workers United, that formed early this year. Workers said they have been meeting in air hub break rooms, workers’ homes, restaurants, and at a community center in San Bernardino in recent months to discuss working conditions.
The seeds for the group were planted this year during a facility-wide meeting when a handful of workers at the air hub spoke out and circulated a petition about the hardships caused by hundreds of dollars in lost pay for individual workers during unexpected holiday closures in late 2021.
In response, Amazon’s Flaningan said the company changed its global policy for temporary closures — limiting any impact to one unpaid shift per holiday period.
After months of organizing in and outside of the warehouse, the group delivered a petition to warehouse management in July with more than 800 signatures from workers at the facility. They demanded $5-an-hour pay increases and a series of smaller raises for workers with specific job titles and night shifts.
“We as Amazon Associates work hard to ensure that the building hits the numbers it strives for and work together in order to provide satisfaction to all of our customers,” the petition said. “[But] we can barely afford to live in today’s economy.”
According to the workers’ petition, the average rent in San Bernardino is $1,650 a month, which means full-time Amazon air hub workers earning a starting wage of $17 an hour must pay about 75 percent of their monthly income after taxes on rent. The legal minimum wage in California is $15 an hour; according to researchers at MIT, a living wage in the San Bernardino area would be closer to $18.10 for someone without children.
“We’re not making enough to save anything,” said Sara Fee, a lead organizer of Inland Empire Amazon Workers United who sorts packages at the air hub. “If something goes wrong with my car, I don’t have savings. I can’t afford to eat healthy food. I have to buy chicken nuggets or noodles.”
Amazon called all-hands meetings at the facility on Aug. 3 and 5 to address the petition. Managers suggested that workers save money by using public transit and enrolling in a carpooling benefits program. They also offered a $1.50-an-hour raise on the weekday night shifts and a $2-an-hour raise on weekend night shifts.
Four workers involved in organizing at the facility described grueling working conditions to The Washington Post. Two workers said they had experienced heat-induced nosebleeds this summer and another described hitting her head on a shipping container and getting a concussion.
“It’s been really hot every day this summer,” said Daniel Rivera, a leader of the walkout who unloads freight from aircraft. “They say there is air conditioning, but you can only feel it in some sections.”
Amazon’s Flaningan said the entire air hub campus has indoor AC, and that to date no heat-related illnesses have been reported from active loading areas.
Marc Wulfraat, an industry consultant who tracks Amazon’s facilities globally, said the air hub in San Bernardino is one of the most logistically significant in the nation for Amazon. The facility is a regional hub that funnels customers’ orders from across the country to outposts on the West Coast. Recent data shows that the facility oversees about seven flights a day to and from the East Coast, Midwest, Texas and the Pacific Northwest.
San Bernardino and neighboring Riverside County have more than 35 Amazon facilities. The company is the region’s largest private employer.
Air hubs are more significant to Amazon for entire regions, compared with one warehouse the company could route around in case of disruptions, Wulfraat said.
The workers at the San Bernardino air hub have received organizing assistance and space to hold meetings from local labor organizations, including the Warehouse Worker Resource Center and Teamsters Local 1932, but they prefer to remain independent.
Workers who walked out of the Amazon facility on Monday don’t have immediate plans to file for a union election with the National Labor Relations Board, but they said they would consider filing for a formal election in the future.
“Staten Island was absolutely inspiring,” Fee said. “Unionizing is not off the table for us.”
Protesters demonstrate outside the Texas Capitol in Austin in late May in response to a bill that outlaws abortions after a fetal heartbeat is detected. (photo: Sergio Flores/Getty Images)
At least 61 people were criminalized for alleged self-managed abortions between 2000 and 2020.
Between 2000 and 2020, law enforcement in 26 states investigated or arrested at least 61 people for allegedly aborting their own pregnancy or helping someone else do so, according to a report released earlier this week by the legal advocacy group group If/When/How. And in 45 percent of those cases, it was healthcare providers or social workers who tipped off police.
In another 26 percent of the cases, people “entrusted with information”—like partners, parents, and friends—reported their ostensible loved one to police.
“The research really clearly confirms that the biggest threat to the privacy of abortion seekers is other people,” said Laura Huss, senior researcher for If/When/How. “That breakdown of trust and ethics and the patient-doctor relationship is really alarming.”
The report, which examined the criminalization of self-managed abortions while Roe v. Wade was still the law of the land, offers a stunning glimpse at how people who get abortions in this post-Roe era may be targeted and threatened by law enforcement. Although abortion opponents often insist that they do not want to punish pregnant people for abortions, abortion rights supporters have long pointed out that pregnant people have already faced criminal consequences—and there’s no way to ensure they’ll be kept out of an anti-abortion dragnet.
Indeed, that future is already coming to pass: Earlier this week, Nebraska law enforcement charged a 17-year-old and her mother with a litany of misdemeanors and felonies after they allegedly sought to end the 17-year-old’s pregnancy through a medication abortion.
Currently, just three states have laws on the books that explicitly target self-managed abortions. But if prosecutors want to pursue charges, abortion rights experts say they’ll find a way to do so. In the Nebraska case, both individuals are facing charges that apparently refer to the 17-year-old’s fetus as a “dead human body”—language that elevates the fetus to the status of personhood, suggesting that it deserves the same rights and protections as people who can get pregnant.
In 43 percent of the cases uncovered in the If/When/How report, law enforcement weighed applying homicide or murder charges to people who sought to end their pregnancies or helped others of so. People of color were twice as likely as white people to face the possibility of those charges.
Out of the 61 cases, 43 continued through the criminal court process. Of those, 4 ended with a guilty verdict after a trial, 19 ended with a guilty plea, and 23 were dismissed or dropped. But just because someone may have avoided jail doesn’t mean that they walked away without consequences.
“In several cases, people lost custody of their existing children temporarily or permanently,” the report found. “In one case in which local authorities declined to prosecute after acknowledging the self-managed abortion was not unlawful, the woman was still turned over to immigration authorities for deportation.”
Most of those 43 cases also involved people living in poverty.
Throughout Roe’s slow collapse and ultimate overturn, reporting has often focused on how data from tech companies and, in particular, period tracking apps may be used to surveil people looking to end their pregnancies. But Huss said that, in all 61 cases, If/When/How found zero examples of authorities using data from period tracking apps.
People’s electronic records are, however, far from safe. In some cases, Huss said, police would get tipped off to a potential self-managed abortion and then then use someone’s texts and search history to build a case against them. (In the Nebraska case, Facebook turned over private chats.)
If/When/How is not aware of a single law that requires health care providers to alert police to self-managed abortions, according to Lauren Paulk, who studies this issue as If/When/How’s senior research counsel. In fact, Paulk said, revealing a patient’s potential self-managed abortion may violate that patient’s privacy rights.
Sometimes, providers get confused about their legal obligations, since they’re subject to other mandatory reporting requirements. But, Paulk added, “There have been cases where health care providers were anti-abortion and so reported the patient to law enforcement.”
Paulk is convinced that that, as abortion foes consider avenues to further limit the procedure in the wake of Roe’s devastation, they will try to change health care providers’ obligations to include reporting people for abortions.
“It’s clear that they either actively want to criminalize pregnant folks or don’t care that they are criminalized,” Paulk said. “I don’t put anything past them. They’ve really tried everything.”
John Wayne and Sacheen Littlefeather at the Oscars, 1973. (photo: AP)
Sacheen Littlefeather endured racism and insults after taking a stand against insulting portrayals of Native Americans.
The US film academy said in a statement on Monday that it will host Littlefeather, now 75, for an evening of conversation and healing on September 17.
Littlefeather received a formal letter of apology from the head of the academy in June, nearly 50 years after taking the stage at the 1973 Oscar awards ceremony to denounce stereotypical portrayals of Native Americans in film.
She became the target of racist abuse after she announced that actor Marlon Brando would not accept an award for his performance in “The Godfather” in protest of the poor treatment that Native Americans received in the film industry.
“The emotional burden you have lived through and the cost to your own career in our industry are irreparable. For too long the courage you showed has been unacknowledged. For this, we offer both our deepest apologies and our sincere admiration,” then-Academy President David Rubin said in the letter, which was released on Monday.
“This is a dream come true,” Littlefeather said in the statement shared by the academy. “It is profoundly heartening to see how much has changed since I did not accept the Academy Award 50 years ago.”
The 1973 Oscars took place during a period of mounting Indigenous activism in the US, including the American Indian Movement’s occupation of Wounded Knee in South Dakota in protest of the country’s legacy of anti-Indigenous violence and discrimination.
Wounded Knee was the site of a massacre of Indigenous people by the US military in 1890 that left hundreds of men, women, and children dead.
Wearing a buckskin dress and moccasins, Littlefeather skewered the industry in a 60-second speech on the 1973 Oscars stage that brought attention to the insulting portrayal of Native Americans in US films and television shows.
As she spoke the audience booed her, and actor John Wayne is said to have been restrained from attempting to attack her on stage. Littlefeather also said that she endured personal attacks, discrimination, and insults for her stand for Indigenous rights.
In the letter, Rubin called her speech “a powerful statement that continues to remind us of the necessity of respect and the importance of human dignity”.
The academy has attempted to reckon with accusations of a lack of racial diversity in recent years.
Littlefeather welcomed the change, saying that “regarding the Academy’s apology to me, we Indians are very patient people—it’s only been 50 years! We need to keep our sense of humor about this at all times. It’s our method of survival.”
"People don't realize what my experience was. They had absolutely no idea – none – of what my experience was, what I went through." - Sacheen Littlefeather
— The Academy (@TheAcademy) August 15, 2022
Sacheen Littlefeather's oral history: the Oscars, Marlon Brando and a legacy of activism. https://t.co/d5yC8hHc8n
At the September event in Los Angeles, Littlefeather will join producer Bird Runningwater, co-chair of the academy’s Indigenous Alliance, for a conversation.
Littlefeather elaborated on her decision to speak out against discrimination in an interview earlier this year.
“I felt that there should be Native people, Black people, Asian people, Chicano people — I felt there should be an inclusion of everyone,” Littlefeather said. “A rainbow of people that should be involved in creating their own image.”
Elephants at a water pan in Hwange National Park in north western Zimbabwe. (photo: Tendai Marima/NPR)
he season of searing temperatures will soon begin in northwestern Zimbabwe as the chilly months fade away. But for the villagers of Silewad the return of summer, storms and a new planting season increase the risk of elephants invading their land.
Silewad is near Hwange National Park, the country's premier game reserve which is roughly half the size of Belgium. Zimbabwe is home to Africa's second largest pachyderm population. It's growing at about 5% a year, and that means competition for water and land between humans and the world's largest land mammal is increasing in and around Hwange.
During these last weeks of the cool months, the villagers rely on homemade remedies to keep elephants away from people, crops and water. In Silewad, not far from seasonal streams which attract elephants, five gloved and masked villagers use a large wooden pestle to pound a fermented mixture of chilis, garlic, ginger, neem leaves and elephant dung into a paste designed to keep the animals at bay.
Masaloni Ndlovu, 67, hangs plastic bottles of the ground chili paste on his fence to deter elephants that often wander through his homestead. Elephants hate the smell of the paste. But faced with another dry season forecast of patchy rains and poor harvests, people fear that the homemade remedies won't be enough to keep desperately thirsty elephants within the national park and out of village gardens.
Once a worker at a nearby railway station, Ndlovu recalls that elephants rarely wandered through the hamlet when he was younger, but now they are increasingly a common sight.
"We call the rangers to deal with the animals, but they don't do anything. We hardly saw elephants when I was younger but today they are everywhere and they eat everything we plant," he says.
Zimbabwe's elephant population is growing as climate change is making rainfall unpredictable. Depleting levels of groundwater in the Hwange game reserve are forcing animals to travel farther in search of replenishment during the hot season. Villagers and conservationists fear that the competition for shrinking water resources could lead to deaths of local people and elephants. Already this year, at least 20 people have been killed in confrontations with elephants, according to Zimbabwe's National Parks and Wildlife Management Authority (ZimParks).
Growing, thirsty herds roam a drying earth
Elephants are especially vulnerable to rising temperatures. They need to drink up to 200 liters [50 gallons] per day, but during the summer they can lose up to 10 percent of body water daily. Research shows elephants migrate seasonally depending on the availability of water in Hwange National Park.
Between 1928 and 2005, during drought years with erratic rainfall, herbivore populations tended to migrate more frequently, according to another study. ZimParks has partnered with local and international donor conservation groups to drill more than 65 boreholes that create artificial watering holes throughout the year for more than 45,000 elephants that trek through Hwange. But the changing climate has raised concern among scholars and conservationists over the future sustainability of the animal sanctuary.
Dr. Simon Chamaillé-Jammes, deputy director of Hwange LTSER, the Long-Term Socio-Ecological Research center, has observed that droughts have intensified in sections of the game reserve.
"[W]e did publish a study showing that annual rainfall did not change that much on average over the 1940 - 2005 period, but that droughts, when they occurred, where much more severe than they used to be, with 50% reduction of rainfall during drought years in some areas of the park," he wrote in an email.
On the routes elephants typically take that wind through Zimbabwe, Angola, Botswana, Namibia and Botswana, an aerial survey was launched by the Kavango Transfrontier Conservation Area (KAZA TFCA) to count the wildlife roaming the Kavango Zambezi basin over the next four months. (Hwange Park is within the Kavango Zambezi basin.) Counting the large herds which roam this rich biodiverse area will help to determine animal numbers and the water needs of Southern Africa's mammals.
This is the first survey of its kind in this region, according to Teofilus Nghitila, executive director general of Namibia's wildlife and national parks management authority. The information gathered from the survey will also help in shaping elephant management policies, Nghitila said.
Climate change pushes elephants closer to people
Over the years, Southern Africa's climate has become increasingly vulnerable to weather patterns like El Nino, making rainfall patterns highly unpredictable, according to Narcisa Pricope, a professor of geography at the University of North Carolina Wilmington in the United States.
Some research has shown an increase in the occurrence and intensity of drought over many parts of Southern Africa, Pricope says. Rainy seasons have gotten more unreliable, with implications for humans and animals alike.
"So, local communities not only have to contend with unreliable precipitation patterns that make them food insecure in the first place," Pricope said in an email, "but on top of that, they have to live with wildlife in very close proximity as a result of the shrinking of water availability throughout the landscape in Hwange national park."
In 2019, hundreds of people were killed when Cyclone Idai struck eastern Zimbabwe. The same year, a drought in the western provinces resulted in the death of more than 200 elephants in Hwange National Park over just two months.
Pricope predicts if water scarcity persists it is likely to "amplify human wildlife conflicts especially in the areas adjacent to national parks where humans cohabit". Less water within the national park could drive animals closer to perennial water sources which are also close to human settlements.
A desperate solution to a deadly conflict
To manage the dilemmas of a changing climate and growing wildlife populations, regional governments are currently lobbying for the one-off sale of ivory stockpiles in order to finance human-wildlife conflict programs. But under a global treaty called the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES), trade in ivory is strictly prohibited. CITES has previously allowed ivory sales on two occasions, but global resistance against the trade has grown stronger.
After the push to sell African stockpiles was chastised by international conservation groups, the Southern African states convened the African Elephant Conference in May and declared their intention to collectively lobby for permission to trade. The Southern African states, which includes Zimbabwe, hope to present their united position at the CITES Summit in Panama later this year.
Zimbabwe alone claims it is sitting on a 123 tonne stockpile worth an estimated $600 million, a figure questioned by environmental accountants.
Better water drilling to save people and elephants
But far from the high-powered summit and drawn out debates over the sale of tusks, villagers live with an impending crisis.
Hangani Dube, 79, bears the scars of this conflict. Dube was injured while trying to scare off a pair of intruding elephants in his vegetable garden one afternoon in May. The elephants, instead, charged and gored him with their tusks.
Writhing in pain, Dube dragged himself on his hips to the main highway, where he found help to get to the nearest medical center. After a month in the infirmary, a frail Dube hobbles from place to place, unable to walk easily because of the steel plate implanted to keep his bones together. Feeling robbed of life, the old man wishes for more action to reduce the elephant herds in his area.
"I feel useless. I can't do anything for my family since I was injured. I used to take out my plough and plant with my cattle, but now I can't," he says. "I rely on my wife and sons to do everything I used to do."
He says bitterly: "The government has to cull these elephants before they hurt us all."
Zimbabwe has recently considered culling. In the past, more than 50,000 elephants were killed during culls between 1965 and 1988. However, this controversial control method would require significant financing, which the government lacks.
While the government weighs the sale of ivory or culling herds, villagers still live with the daily risk of elephants searching for water and food. When the rainy season begins in November, farmers will plant their crops, and Ndlovu will have to apply the chili fixative more regularly as his only defense against the marauding mammals. Other homegrown methods such as burning chili bricks and making chili bombs are used in other areas, but they too have limited effectiveness in keeping elephants away.
Hwange's intermittent rain and persistent heat also harm vegetation. The elephants have to travel farther in search of food as well as water. While there is no available research on Hwange's groundwater recharge rates, Chamaillé-Jammes cautions against drilling further boreholes near human settlements. His joint research has shown that more water holes tend to attract more elephants.
Chamaillé-Jammes recommends closing watering holes on the eastern section of Hwange to steer elephants away from villages and instead, drilling boreholes in the center of the game reserve with some only operating during periods of extreme drought. These "safety pans" might be one way of ensuring elephants are more likely to stay within the perimeter of the park.
As rising global temperatures signal more extreme droughts in the future, a more sustainable intervention than chili concoctions and one-off ivory sales is needed to halt Zimbabwe's deadly battle for resources in a parched land.
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