25 December 22
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But amid struggle, we can always look for hope, warmth, and a reason to smile. And when we came across this holiday story, we felt it would be wonderful to share with the Steady community.
Let us set the stage: It starts with what has become one of the most beloved Christmas songs of all time, pop star Mariah Carey’s 1994 hit “All I Want For Christmas Is You.” It has seen a recent resurgence and now regularly tops the charts this time of year. It’s currently number one on the Billboard Hot 100 for the 10th consecutive week, making Carey only the third artist and first woman to have three different songs top the charts for double-digit weeks.
“All I Want For Christmas Is You” has become iconic, with many considering its annual renewal the unofficial kickoff to the holiday season. New Yorker music critic Sasha Frere-Jones dubbed it “one of the few worthy modern additions to the holiday canon.” Every year social media is awash with people offering their own performances and memes. But one in particular caught our eye and the eyes of countless more. It has gone viral for the best possible reasons. Perhaps you have seen it already.
It began with this tweet from Jennifer White-Johnson of her fourth grade son, Kevin Johnson III — known as Knox — singing in his school’s winter concert. Knox is autistic, and to see the pure happiness that flows forth as he belts out Mariah Carey’s classic is about as perfect an encapsulation of the hope of the season as you are likely to find.
Timeline cleanse if you need one! Knox tonight at his 4th grade school winter concert singing @MariahCarey ‘All I Want For Christmas Is You’ #AutisticJoy on full display! My kid is everything! I hope Mariah sees this!! pic.twitter.com/D0uLmgNxJl
— Jen White-Johnson (@jtknoxroxs) December 14, 2022
“To see him be so unbridled and to have this unlimited amount of joy was incredible,” his mother told The Washington Post. “I kept telling him to think of something happy when he’s singing, and that’s exactly what he did. He just thought of something joyful, and whatever that was, it just took him to heights.”
Theresa Vargas, writing in the Post, also honed in on another moment in the video.
“Knox was given a solo in the winter concert. The video shows him performing it with vigor. But it also shows him start to sing during another student’s solo. In that moment, music teacher Ryan Stewart can be seen gently patting the fourth-grader’s shoulder and offering him a quiet reminder. In response, Knox stops singing and gestures to his classmate, directing the focus to her. Many people who saw the video were struck by the gentleness of that redirection.”
Knox’s mother added, “We’re just so thankful that the school allows him to be completely and authentically autistic, because he wouldn’t be successful otherwise.”
A big Steady kudos to Knox, and to all who made this possible.
The performance did garner the attention of Carey herself, who tweeted back. “Your kid IS everything!!!!!! Knox, you made my day. Your JOY gives me and everyone watching JOY. THANK YOU for reminding me why I wake up in the morning and do what I do. I love you” (plus five heart emojis)
Your kid IS everything!!!!!! Knox, you made my day. Your JOY gives me and everyone watching JOY. THANK YOU for reminding me why I wake up in the morning and do what I do. I love you ❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️ https://t.co/iW19QQxBOP
— Mariah Carey (@MariahCarey) December 14, 2022
In a follow-up article in Billboard magazine, White-Johnson said that her son’s response was, “She loves me? She loves me? And she doesn’t even know me!”
Carey offered front row tickets to her holiday concert in New York but realized that it might be too late or too loud for Knox. “The fact that she was so caring in paying attention to the fact that he’s autistic and that he would need accommodations? It’s last minute for us and we probably can’t make it, but I love the fact that she invited us,” White-Johnson told Billboard.
Amid all the cynicism, commercialism, and divisiveness we see in abundance, isn’t this a genuine reason to smile?
And for all who want to listen to Mariah’s version, here is the original music video (with its 748 million YouTube views!!!)
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A depressed looking Santa Claus working in a shopping mall opens a candy cane while waiting for photos with shoppers in King of Prussia, Pa., on Dec. 11, 2022. (photo: Getty Images)
Here at The Intercept, we are committed to ruining the holidays.
That’s why, as you celebrate the holidays with your family, snuggling your loved ones close and putting out the cookies for Santa Claus, it’s on brand for us to remind you that capitalism is killing us all.
So let’s get going. (If you’re not ready to dive in immediately, you can limber up by reading our previous yuletide bummer, “Merry Christmas! Remember the Children Who Live in Fear of Our Killer Drones.”)
Ho Ho Ho for Capitalism
Instead of the good news of Jesus, let’s start with the good news of capitalism. Even Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, not known as capitalism’s biggest fans, acknowledged it in “The Communist Manifesto” in 1848:
The bourgeoisie … has been the first to show what man’s activity can bring about. It has accomplished wonders far surpassing Egyptian pyramids, Roman aqueducts, and Gothic cathedrals.
The bourgeoisie, during its rule of scarce 100 years, has created more massive and more colossal productive forces than have all preceding generations together. What earlier century had even a presentiment that such productive forces slumbered in the lap of social labor?
The writer William Greider takes the same perspective in “Secrets of the Temple,” his gigantic tome about the Federal Reserve. Capitalism, he contends, was “a Faustian bargain. People surrendered control over their own lives and accepted a smaller role for themselves as cogs in the vast and complicated economic machinery, in exchange for mere material goods.” Nevertheless, you have to admit that “the devil certainly kept his half of the bargain.”
Take a look around where you’re sitting now and consider the huge quantities of crap just in your eyesight that you’ve accumulated, all thanks to capitalism. One of us (Jon) can see his iPad, which helps him understand the amount of grease his thumbs apparently exude. There’s his smoke detector, which is beeping in a vain plea to get him to replace its battery. And there’s the huge bag of chipotle powder that he bought in a burst of misguided enthusiasm in 2018, still four-fifths full. The other one of us (Elise) is sitting in fast-fashion polyurethane pants, made in Vietnam, that are already ruined and will eventually end up in the Great Pacific Trash Vortex. She’ll be spending her Christmas alone, traveling Italy, contributing to the tourist economy of a deeply neofascist government which hates journalists by buying large amounts of burrata, Aperol spritz, and whatever readily available substances she finds from the global market to numb the pain of living in such a society.
OK, those are the good parts of capitalism. Now let’s move on to the ones that risk the obliteration of Homo sapiens.
Covid-19 and Its Sequels
Our response to Covid-19 should make us dubious about our chances if we go up against something even deadlier. Only 5.5 billion people have gotten even one dose of a Covid-19 vaccine, leaving billions more to host a constantly proliferating assortment of mutations. Already vaccines and therapeutics are less effective against new variants.
With some bad rolls of the dice, we could be back to the world of March 2020, or worse. This scenario is increasingly likely considering climate change and globalization. Another accurate point in “The Communist Manifesto” is that “the need of a constantly expanding market for its products chases the bourgeoisie over the entire surface of the globe. It must nestle everywhere, settle everywhere, establish connections everywhere.”
Sure, we could have decided to vaccinate everyone. Last year, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development estimated this would cost $50 billion, or 0.05 percent of the world’s annual gross domestic product. But we didn’t do it for very good reason: This would have hurt the “intellectual” “property” — and hence the profits — of Moderna and Pfizer.
So the downside here is our unending Covid nightmare. The upside is we now have 10 vaccine billionaires! We’d like to believe they’re spending this Christmas Eve together, downing negroni sbagliatos somewhere on the Amalfi coast, toasting the freedom that is capitalism. (If you violate their vaccine patents, the government will crush you like a bug.)
Death Is Profitable
Capitalism also means the proliferation of weapons with no purpose — not that they ever, really, have a purpose. One key reason the U.S. advocated the expansion of NATO was that it would open up new markets for American arms dealers. A little-known but significant figure named Bruce Jackson cofounded an NGO called the Committee to Expand NATO in 1996 — all the while serving as vice president for strategy and planning at Lockheed Martin. He was also co-chair of the finance committee for Bob Dole’s 1996 presidential campaign. Jackson was still at Lockheed in 2002, the year he became chairman of the Committee for the Liberation of Iraq.
This had led to many merry Christmases, indeed. With dividends reinvested, Lockheed’s stock is up over 1,600 percent since the liberation of Iraq commenced on March 19, 2003, It’s up 25 percent just since Russia’s attack on Ukraine last February. Jackson currently owns a chateau and vineyard in the Bordeaux region of France.
Moreover, it’s a fervently held belief at the top of American society that they are doing good by doing well. George W. Bush once told Argentina’s president that “all of the economic growth of the United States has been encouraged by wars.” Way to say the quiet part out loud, again and again.
And it’s not just conventional arms that are profitable. Building nuclear weapons systems is also quite lucrative. With these kinds of financial incentives in place, it’s incredible that human civilization still exists.
But of course, we could go at any moment. The U.S. military is likely to secure $858 billion for its budget next year. At $150,000 apiece, this is enough to fire 57 million Hellfire missiles at Santa’s sleigh as he speeds in terror across the winter sky.
Global Warming, Plus Bigger Problems
This is the one problem of capitalism where we’d really like to beg the Gods — Christian/Jewish/Muslim, Hindu, Norse, Mesopotamian, miscellaneous — for a Christmas miracle. The Earth, as we know it, is fucked. We’re currently at 417 parts per million of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, up from 280 ppm pre-capitalism. And that’s still not enough to satiate the shrieking, sucking mouth of the market.
Russia sees the melting Arctic and has decided this is a wonderful opportunity to extract the region’s hitherto inaccessible oil. Burning this will melt the Arctic further, making more oil available, in a virtuous circle of suicide. While making false promises in the fight against the climate crisis, America took the lead in crude oil production last year. Right behind us are the world’s other oil producers, from the despots of Saudi Arabia to the bland democracy of Canada. It’s like a “Murder on the Orient Express”-style mystery, where humanity is killed by every passenger.
It’s getting pretty close to night-night time for ocean life, most of the insects on Earth, half of the birds, too. Oh, and a third of the trees. When this will take out people is hard to predict, just as you never know which piece you have to remove to cause everything to collapse in a game of Jenga.
If you find this distressing, consider the more distressing fact that even if we develop massive amounts of green energy and stop global warming, capitalism will still probably destroy a livable biosphere.
The Terrifying Politics of Wanting, Wanting, Wanting
You probably don’t fantasize about how to decorate your mansion on Mars. This is because owning a Mars mansion has never seemed like a possibility in your life. But what if you were constantly bombarded with ads showing Matthew McConaughey in his luxurious nine-bedroom Mars home, living it up with all the Powerball winners who also live on the fourth planet from the sun?
While we Americans have spent our entire lives marinating in advertising tempting us with luscious products to consume, the truth is that humans do not have strong inherent desires for material goods. Let’s imagine humans in a world devoid of induced craving: We would probably work enough to have food to eat, live off the land, and spend the rest of the time futzing around (aka leisure).
How, then, could capitalists get people to work hard at extremely unpleasant jobs? For a long time, the answer was simple: slavery. But then, in the 19th century, slavery was driven to extinction in the Western hemisphere. During this time, there was surprisingly frank planning among capitalists about this aspect of human nature. Given this problem, how could they motivate people to do the same awful work enriching others without the threat of force? They decided one important tactic should be to “create wants.”
As a member of the British Parliament put it in 1833:
They [people formerly enslaved by the British Empire] must be gradually taught to desire those objects which could be attained by human labour. There was a regular progress from the possession of necessaries to the desire of luxuries; and what once were luxuries, gradually came, among all classes and conditions of men, to be necessaries. … This was the sort of education to which they ought to be subject.
A United Fruit staffer made the same point in the 1920s about Central Americans:
The mozos or working people have laboured only when forced to and that was not often, for the land would give them what little they needed. … The desire for goods, it may be remarked, is something that has to be cultivated. … Our advertising is slowly having the same effect as in the United States … All of this is having its effect in awakening desires.
By now capitalism has truly perfected the creation of wants. They’re as much a part of those of us in rich countries as our arms or legs. We will resist anyone telling us we should give up these wants, as much as we’d resist someone trying to cut off our limbs.
This is surely a part of the recent rightward lurch in politics in the U.S. and elsewhere. Progressive politics necessarily makes the case that there’s more to life than the money in your individual bank account. It’s inevitable that many people will experience this as psychological violence and respond in kind, or with real violence.
Stay tuned to find out how this dynamic will interact with all the capitalistic crises heading our way.
Now Dasher, Now Prancer, Now Insoluble Dilemma
Traditionally this is the part of the article where we describe the uplifting solution to the aforementioned problem. Here’s what we’ve got for you:
…
…
[faint sound of coughing]
…
The literary critic Fredric Jameson has famously said, “It is easier to imagine the end of the world than to imagine the end of capitalism.” Capitalism isn’t just outside of us, it’s inside too. It’s grown in us like an aggressive tumor, twining around our organs until it’s hard to know where it stops and we begin. It’s killing us, but cutting it out might kill us too.
So, uh, Merry Christmas. No need to thank us for this atrocious conclusion. Here at The Intercept, we don’t need thanks for getting up every day and doing our job. But that Jameson quote reminds us that a big bottle of Jameson whiskey can be ordered online for $56.92 (if you’ve got the money).
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Russia’s invasion has systematically destroyed Ukrainian cultural sites. A Times investigation has identified 339 that sustained substantial damage this year. (photo: NYT)
Since the invasion in February, The New York Times’s Visual Investigations team has been tracking evidence of cultural destruction across Ukraine. By assessing hundreds of photos and videos from social media and Ukrainian government databases, analyzing satellite imagery and speaking to witnesses, we have identified and independently verified 339 sites nationwide that sustained substantial damage. Nearly half are in the mineral-rich eastern region known as the Donbas, where a war has been ongoing since 2014, and where the Ukrainians have recently recaptured villages and towns that fell under Russian occupation. These documented cases represent only a partial picture of the devastation, with much of what is still unaccounted for believed lost.
Libraries, architectural treasures, statues, churches, houses of culture, museums, cinemas, sports facilities, theaters and archaeological sites have been damaged or destroyed. About 180 sites have sustained structural damage requiring at least partial reconstruction, including churches with collapsed steeples or statues missing pieces. And in at least 77 cases, cultural buildings, collections and objects have been completely destroyed.
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Rioters head toward the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. (photo: Kent Nishimura/LA Times)
“I don’t [fucking] care that they have weapons,” Trump said. “They’re not here to hurt me.”
The Secret Service confiscated hundreds of knives prior to the riots, picked up by the magnetometers that protesters had to pass through at the Ellipse, where former President Donald Trump held his rally before the riot at the Capitol, according to the final report from the Jan. 6 House Select Committee.
It was remarkable the magnetometers were there at all. Prior to the rally, Trump demanded that they be removed, concerned that they would limit the crowd size. Cindy Hutchinson, a Trump staffer at the time, said that Trump told his staff to get rid of the magnetometers so his armed supporters could get onto the grounds.
At one point Tony Ornato, the Secret Service Deputy Chief of Staff for Operations whose responsibilities included security-related issues told Trump that some followers didn’t want to enter the Ellipse because they “have weapons that they don’t want confiscated by the Secret Service.”
“I don’t [fucking] care that they have weapons,” Trump said angrily to Ornato. “They’re not here to hurt me. They can march to the Capitol from here.”
Despite the president being “effin’ furious,” his staff didn’t listen to him and the magnetometers remained.
In total, the Secret Service confiscated “42 canisters of pepper spray, 269 knives or blades, 18 brass knuckles, 18 tasers, 6 pieces of body armor, 3 gas masks, 30 batons or blunt instruments, and 17 miscellaneous items likes scissors, needles, or screwdrivers'' from the 28,000 people who went through the magnetometers to enter the protest grounds at the Ellipse.
Many others refused to enter or hid their bags so they wouldn’t have their weapons confiscated.
New details on the varied armaments carried by rioters was revealed as part of their 845-page report on the violent riot that took place at the U.S. Capitol almost two years ago. The fact that the mob came armed that day, they say, belies the argument that the riot was a spontaneous eruption of violence.
“The mob President Trump summoned to Washington, DC, on January 6th, was prepared to fight,” they wrote.
Secret Service counter surveillance spotted people openly carrying pepper spray and showing up with military-grade gear like ballistic helmets, radios, and body armor prior to the Ellipse rally. Many of the protesters showed up that fateful day ready for war.
Mark Andre Mazza, a rioter who drove up from Indiana, brought a .45-caliber revolver to the riots. While on the grounds, Mazza assaulted a police officer and somehow along the way dropped his firearm. Mazza later told investigators that he was looking for then Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi and authorities would "be here for a different reason” if he had found her. Mazza was sentenced to 60 months after pleading guilty to assaulting a police officer and carrying a pistol without a license.
D.C. has some of the strictest gun laws in the U.S. Open-carry of firearms, high capacity magazines, silencers, and assault weapons are all illegal. Anyone who wants to have a concealed carried handgun has to obtain a license from D.C. police—permits issued in other jurisdictions are not accepted. Despite these strict local rules on firearms, some attendees clearly took the risk and brought guns anyway.
The Committee noted that many attendees seemed to be aware of D.C. laws regarding firearms and other weapons, and “planned accordingly.” At 6.29 a.m. on Jan. 6, Oath Keeper founder Stewart Rhodes, who was recently found guilty of seditious conspiracy for the Capitol riot, reminded members of his group that local law prohibited them from carrying blades over 3 inches, and encouraged them to “[k]eep [the knives] low profile.”
Some Oath Keepers recently testified the group put together an arsenal of firearms that they stored in cars over the Potomac river in Virginia, and designated some members as a “quick reaction force” who could go and collect those guns should they be needed.
Members of a Three Percenter group called the “California Patriots-DC Brigade” exchanged messages in the weeks prior to Jan. 6, where they discussed bringing gear, including weaponry like hatchets, bats, metal flashlights, and possibly firearms because they needed to be “ready and willing to fight” like it was “1776.”
Another Three Percenter group called the Florida Guardians of Freedom circulated a flier on Dec. 24, 2020, stating that they were “responding to the call from President Donald J. Trump to assist in the security, protection, and support of the people as we all protest the fraudulent election and re-establish liberty for our nation.” The group’s leader, according to the report, published a “safety video” on Facebook explaining to his followers that D.C. law would allow them to carry weapons such as “an expandable metal baton, a walking cane and a folding knife” to the protest on Jan. 6.
The committee also found evidence suggesting that militia groups “like the Three Percenters” coordinated with other groups leading up to and during Jan. 6. They cite testimony from Josh Ellis, who founded the MyMilitia website (a forum that, at the time, was popular among anti-government extremists). Ellis said that he used the Zello walkie-talkie app while he was in DC on Jan. 6, as did others including members of the Proud Boys, Oath Keepers.
The Committee recalled how three men in fatigues “brandished AR-15s” in front of police officers. Other reports of attendees armed with glocks and rifles crackled over D.C. Metropolitan police radios. One rioter who drove from Alabama stashed a handgun, a rifle, a shotgun, hundreds of rounds of ammo, large-capacity magazines, machetes, smoke bombs, and the ingredients to make molotov cocktails in his car, parked by the Capitol building.
A Three Percenter from Texas brought a loaded gun onto Capitol grounds. Another rioter lost his gun in the chaos on the Capitol steps after he assaulted a police officer.
On the Donald.win, one of the most rabid pro-Trump websites on the internet, followers openly discussed what kind of weapons would best aid their quest to overturn the election. They discussed plans to cut off access to tunnels used by politicians and even discussed building gallows so the “traitors know the stakes.” Shortly thereafter a poster shared a diagram showing how to tie a hangman’s knot.
“Let’s construct a gallows outside the Capitol building next Wednesday so the Congressmen watching from their office windows shit their pants,” one wrote.
The January 6 committee placed the blame for the day's actions squarely on the shoulders of the former president and recommended that Trump and those in his orbit should be barred from holding office. Trump, predictably, responded with an all caps post on his social media website Truth Social, once again spreading conspiracies that the election was stolen from him.
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Workers taped signs to the windows of a closed Starbucks location on the chains annual Red Cup Day. (photo: Lane Turner/Getty Images)
A look back at our coverage of 2022’s highest-profile union drive.
Despite Starbucks’ documented pattern of retaliation, workers at more than 345 stores filed union petitions in 2022, 264 of which have won. It’s a story In These Times has followed closely. Here, we look back at some of the movement’s victories and challenges along the way.
In November 2021, a month before the first Starbucks store unionized, Derek Seidman profiled members of Starbucks’ board of directors and their history with unions. Seidman’s reporting on the nascent organizing campaign at Starbucks anticipated the company’s frenzied attempts to stifle the movement over the coming months. “At least eight of the 11 members of Starbucks’ board of directors… have represented companies with records of resisting unions or worked with groups and companies that have faced serious allegations of workers rights’ violations,” Seidman wrote.
When Hannah Faris profiled Starbucks worker-organizers in March, she found the prevailing mood to be anger. Workers told her of a set of shared grievances, from widespread staffing shortages to unlivable pay. The company’s alleged refusal to provide adequate sick leave during the pandemic spurred further organizing, as workers faced a dilemma organizer Nikki Taylor captured with the question: “[Do] I not get paid and be at home and try to be safe — and then not be paying my bills? Or go to work and continue to be exposed?”
Following a wave of Starbucks unionization across the country, workers said the company was targeting union leaders for violating minor rules that would previously go unenforced, like the policy against wearing certain pins on their aprons. “How we got fired is not why we got fired,” one worker told In These Times. While these anti-union tactics haven’t stopped the movement, organizer Richard Bensinger noted that, for every store with a successful union drive, there are several that Starbucks has crushed by firing labor leaders or simply shuttering stores.
In April, Jake Johnson covered a string of Starbucks union victories across the country amid CEO Howard Schultz’s apparent attempt to exclude unionized workers from newly instituted benefits.
Schultz announced the company was considering new benefits only for nonunion stores, saying that federal law prevented employers from changing unionized workers’ benefits without first negotiating with the union. But even after Workers United waived their right to negotiate over Schultz’s proposed changes to benefits a few weeks later, the company did not change its stance. At the time, one labor lawyer told Johnson that Schultz’s differential roll-out of benefits could “amount to evidence of an intent to bargain in bad faith by seeking to give union employees a worse deal than nonunion employees.”
The National Labor Relations Board seemed to concur: In August, Schultz was ordered to record a video apology to workers detailing his alleged violations of labor law and explaining their union rights.
In May, Maxwell Parrott covered the challenges Workers United faced in bringing Starbucks to task for what they argue are widespread violations of labor law. Starbucks worker-organizers were fighting on uneven ground: Labor law litigation, already a years-long process, was taking even longer due to understaffing at the NLRB.
Recognizing that drawn-out enforcement can have a chilling impact on organizing campaigns, NLRB general counsel Jennifer Abruzzo pushed regional offices to “aggressively seek” injunctions against employers trying to game the system. Despite the wait, some workers were holding out hope. Angel Krempa, a Starbucks employee in Buffalo, N.Y., said: “I’m fighting for reinstatement because I wanna fight for this contract…I’m not gonna just abandon them.”
“When the whirlwind comes,” wrote In These Times regular Chris Brooks in his analysis of an electrifying moment in labor organizing, “what was once seen as a risky long-shot action or fringe idea…suddenly snowballs into a series of independent, self-organized actions.” Brooks showed how organizing campaigns at stores like Starbucks and Amazon were rewriting the rules of labor struggle through worker-led militancy.
“People getting fired during a union organizing campaign isn’t having the same impact it had in the past,” said Alan Hanson, organizing director for United Food and Commercial Workers Local 400. “Most of these workers are moving from one shitty job to another anyway, so they figure that they might as well organize to make them better while they are there.”
In the aftermath of the fall of Roe v. Wade, Sarah Lazare covered Starbucks’ promise to assist workers in accessing reproductive healthcare. Within days, the company proclaimed they couldn’t “make promises” that workers at union shops would be able to access the benefit.
“To think of having to add protection of one’s ability to get an abortion to the list of things employers provide, and can therefore take away, is terrifying”, wrote Sarah. “Routine, day-to-day matters — like asking for time off, or asking a boss not to sexually harass you, or even banding together with your coworkers to organize a union — have higher stakes under this system.
In August, Zane McNeill spoke to trans Starbucks workers who reported having their gender-affirming care threatened. “You’re here for the gender-affirming surgeries and I’m worried about you [losing that benefit],” one manager told Maddie Doran, a Starbucks employee at a unionized store in Overland Park, Kan.
“Starbucks will posture that they care about queer people,” said Doran, “and they will posture that they care about any minority group, but the second you try to have a democratic workplace or speak up for yourself or don’t let them bully you — suddenly, you’re public enemy number one, and they completely shut you out.”
August marked a stunning escalation in Starbucks’ anti-union campaign. Saurav Sarkar reported on how, following a march on the boss (a popular union tactic in which workers take demands to management as a unified group), South Carolina store manager Melissa Morris filed a police report claiming she was kidnapped and assaulted by union organizers.
“We didn’t make any moves toward her, we didn’t touch her,” said Jon Hudson, a 22-year-old worker in the store.
Once a viral video emerged depicting the exchange — which lacked any aggression—cops shut down the investigation. Though the charges were dropped, the incident spoke to the lengths Starbucks goes to intimidate organizers.
In October, Starbucks employee Will Westlake told Jeff Schuhrke he was fired for wearing a suicide awareness pin.
Westlake wore the pin to honor a friend and coworker who died by suicide. Management allegedly said it was a violation of the company’s dress code, and sent him home for refusing to remove it. For Westlake, Starbucks’ opposition to the pin was rooted in anti-union animus: his deceased coworker supported unionization (the pin itself simply read, “You are not alone”). Days after firing Westlake, Starbucks invited workers to observe World Mental Health Day.
“I’ve worn non-Starbucks-related pins and gotten complimented on them by my manager,” one worker said. “And I’m talking about pins about TV shows and favorite characters. So, something as meaningful as a suicide awareness pin in a store where you’ve had a coworker pass away, that’s clearly just targeting in the most cruel and disgusting way.”
As they celebrate the one year anniversary of their union, Workers United members have made one simple request from their supporters: Don’t buy Starbucks gift cards this holiday season. They want to make it clear to Starbucks that customers want it to bargain in good faith. Workers have gained significant community support, with teachers (who frequently receive Starbucks gift cards as year-end gifts) seen as a key ally.
“[Starbucks is] trying to intimidate and bully us [and] it’s not gonna work,” said Sarah Wayment, a San Antonio-based shift supervisor. “The community has our backs.”
Just over a year after the movement’s first successful union vote, Starbucks workers raised the stakes with a three-day strike across the country in mid-December — the largest job action in the movement’s history. “We’re demanding fair staffing, an end to store closures and that Starbucks bargain with us in good faith,” said Michelle Eisen, a barista and SBWU organizer in Buffalo, N.Y.
Mere months after being ordered to apologize to workers for unlawfully denying new benefits to union stores, Starbucks is rolling out the option for customers to leave a tip with their credit card — a core union demand — at nonunion stores only.
“They’re doubling down on their union-busting, so we’re doubling down too,” said Eisen. Starbucks workers will be the first to tell you that the union campaign hasn’t been an easy one. But workers aren’t wavering.
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Unsheltered migrants wait for bed space to open for the evening in the gymnasium at Sacred Heart Church after crossing the Rio Grande into the United States in El Paso, Texas, on Thursday. (photo: Jim Urquhart/NPR)
As the Christmas story goes, there was no room at the inn for Mary and Joseph. It's what thousands of migrants who've recently crossed the U.S.-Mexico border now face — no place to sleep or stay.
Just a few blocks away from the Christmas festivities, a young mother cradles her 4-month-old baby on the sidewalk outside the bus station.
Lisba, who is Venezuelan and whose last name we are not using because she and her family slipped into the country without documents, says she's afraid to seek shelter. "I'm scared because of all we've been through and that they'll send us back," she says in Spanish. Only people who turned themselves into the Border Patrol and now have immigration paperwork can sleep in the thousand cots at the city's convention center. The city says that's a rule of the federal government, which is helping to cover the shelter's costs.
Over the last few days, some churches have opened their doors to all migrants, regardless of their immigration status, bringing them in from the bitter cold. David Carrero, from Venezuela, has been spending nights at Sacred Heart Church with his wife and baby boy.
"They've supported us and given us food, and people have dropped off food, clothes and toys for the children," Carrero says, in Spanish.
Back at the bus station, local residents Adan Amezaga, his wife and two young daughters have given out gallons of coffee and more than a thousand sandwiches to migrants during the last several days.
"For Christmas every year we like to sponsor a family," says Amezaga.
They passed out beanies, scarves and gloves.
While migrants had been hoping for the biggest Christmas gift of all, the lifting of pandemic border restrictions that would allow them to seek asylum in the United States, which did not happen, they are grateful for the kindness of strangers this holiday season.
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The Yukon River’s salmon runs, once abundant with fish, have declined by a catastrophic 95% (photo: Peter Mather/Guardian UK)
As chinook numbers migrating to Canada fall 95% to record lows, communities are resorting to importing fish to keep their traditions alive
The creek itself, in Canada’s far-flung Yukon territory, is named after the fin on a salmon’s back that sticks out of the water as the fish fights its way upstream. Tatchun empties into the Yukon River, home to the world’s longest run of chinook salmon. Elders say the fish used to be so plentiful they could have walked across the water on their backs.
But when Yukon First Nations gathered at Tatchun this summer, it wasn’t to fish. It was, in the words of the Little Salmon Carmacks chief, Nicole Tom, to “call the salmon back”.
A sacred fire burned and there was traditional dancing, drumming, prayers and a feast. “It is very traditional that you make a big pot of fish soup and share the first salmon,” says Tom.
Only now, there is no first salmon. Instead, they had to boil a frozen one, shipped in from Alaska.
This year marks the lowest run of chinook ever recorded in the Yukon River – down a catastrophic 95% from previous levels, according to experts. Communities throughout the Yukon that have the fish at the heart of their culture are relying on expensive frozen salmon.
Many here fear an integral part of their traditional lifestyle and spiritual identity is about to disappear for ever. “Our name, culture, language, ways of knowing and doing, our intergenerational teaching, storytelling, ceremony – everything surrounds salmon,” says Tom. “Even our vitamins.”
As many as 450,000 chinook once entered the mouth of the Yukon River each summer, after spending five years in the Bering Sea, says Teslin Tlingit elder Carl Sidney, who attended the Tatchun salmon ceremony. Once in the river, salmon stop eating and rely on their fat reserves to get them through one of the longest, most formidable freshwater migrations on the planet. The Yukon River stretches 3,200km (2,000 miles) across Alaska, into the Yukon territory and south to its headwaters. About 200,000 chinook would push upriver to Canada each year, darting past predators and fishing nets to spawn in the streams where they once hatched.
Then, after dwindling for decades, salmon stocks suddenly plummeted. Last year, little more than 32,000 chinook made it upriver to Canada. This year, it was fewer than 12,000. No one knows precisely what caused the crash, though a number of factors are likely at play, from problems in the ocean, including commercial overfishing and bycatch, to climate breakdown, disease and competition from hatchery fish.
The impact of growing up without salmon is affecting a whole generation, says Sidney. As a boy, his family caught 100lb (45kg) chinook that weighed twice as much as he did. In a week, they’d harvest enough fish to feed five families for a year. “I was pretty much raised on the land, by the land, and salmon were one of the staple diets of our people.”
Sidney’s people still rely on salmon, even though it’s flown in. His First Nation has set up workshops to teach young people traditional ways of cutting and drying salmon. Other Yukon First Nations are even trying to keep fish camps alive using frozen salmon, but it’s not the same, he says.
As chinook numbers have declined, many local families have turned to plentiful chum salmon for sustenance – a fish that was historically used to feed dog teams. “We’ve been working to change the perception of chum,” says David Curtis, a fisher based in Dawson City.
Now, chum numbers are also plummeting. This year’s run is the second lowest on record, surpassed only in 2021. “This is red-alert time,” says Curtis. “This is not just about human needs; it’s about the whole ecosystem and the nutrients from the salmon that go to the bears, wolves, trees, berry plants – the whole riparian zone.”
“I am living through the extirpation of these species,” says the Yukon Salmon Subcommittee chair, James MacDonald. “In my lifetime, I can see that happening.” MacDonald has photos of himself as a little boy holding 42lb salmon at his family’s fish camp. He can’t recall the last time he fished.
“We’ve got all these resources for salmon,” says MacDonald, who sits on the Yukon River Panel, established to co-manage salmon under the Pacific salmon treaty’s Yukon River salmon agreement. “We’ve got a treaty to prescribe how we are going to manage salmon, and what we can expect for salmon returns – we just don’t have any salmon.”
Until recently, Alaska’s commercial fisheries, as well as subsistence fishers along the Yukon River, harvested unlimited numbers of chinook destined for Yukon spawning grounds. “They were so bountiful we never considered net-size restrictions, or windows of when to fish or not fish, or how many fish you could take,” says MacDonald.
A moratorium on Yukon River chinook fishing was finally put in place in 2021. Many believe it is too little, too late. “We could have pumped the brakes a lot sooner,” says MacDonald. “It’s no longer about conservation. We are fighting for survival of these species.”
Still, he isn’t giving up hope. Some Yukon First Nations have started in-stream incubation programmes and are considering fully fledged egg-rearing facilities, as well as hatcheries. Hatchery salmon are not the same as wild stocks, but it it better than nothing, he says. “I just can’t imagine a world without salmon. To me, that is unimaginable poverty. It’s a poverty of the ecosystem; it’s a poverty of culture; it’s a poverty of spirit.”
Despite the moratorium, chinook destined for the Yukon are still being caught as bycatch. In 2021, pollack fisheries in the Bering Sea and Aleutian Islands caught more than half a million chum and chinook. Bycatch has always occurred, but with runs so critically low it could now have a biological effect, says Holly Carroll, an Alaska biologist and manager of the Yukon River federal subsistence fisheries.
She doesn’t blame bycatch alone. Overfishing, as well as commercial fisheries’ practice of catching the largest and most fertile females, has resulted in smaller chinook that lay fewer eggs and have lower reproductive success.
Climate breakdown, too, is causing marine heatwaves and algae blooms in the Bering Sea, affecting salmon and their marine food web. The Yukon River’s average temperature is increasing and salmon do not do well in warm water, says Carroll. Fluctuating river levels and turbidity from higher than normal snowpack, melting glaciers and permafrost are messing with salmon migration. There has been a resurgence of a parasite called ichthyophonus, which is fatal for fish, while pollutants and invasive species are all playing a role.
Across the Pacific as a whole, commercial fisheries harvest close to 2m tonnes of salmon and steelhead annually – the equivalent weight of six Empire State Buildings – while in Alaska’s Bristol Bay, fishers broke records this summer, harvesting 46.6 million sockeye salmon.
“We have original agreements with the salmon,” Tom says. “Before land-claim agreements, our first agreements were with the animals, the land, the plants, the trees, the air and the water. If we look after and respect them, they will look after and respect us.”
Indeed, First Nations along the river used to spend late summer and early fall at fish camps, where families, including aunts and uncles, elders and children, would gather to catch a year’s worth of food. Crimson fillets of salmon were cut and hung like drying laundry over rows of poles to preserve the fish for the cold months ahead.
Fish camp was hard work, says Tom, but also a time for stories, laughter, celebration and learning traditional ways of respecting the fish and one another. Whenever Tom passes the Yukon River, she gives thanks. So do her children.
Now her seven-year-old daughter, who went to fish camp as a little girl, keeps asking when they can go again: she wants to learn how to cut fish. “That’s heartbreaking,” says Tom. “It’s a soul wound, not to be able to practise your culture.”
This year, Tom decided not to buy frozen salmon to help feed her First Nation. “We brought in a bunch of frozen salmon last year, but are unsure of how to deal with that piece because you are buying it from the fisheries who are part of the problem in the ocean,” she says. “It’s contributing to the problem without actually figuring out what the issue is and how we solve it.”
Yukon First Nations are grieving, she says. “We have traditional teachings about not dragging nets, or messing with salmon, or having fish farms, and that speaks to what is happening in the ocean. It’s against traditional law.” But they don’t need that traditional knowledge preserved for posterity, says Tom: “We need it instilled in power-making decisions.”
Sidney says: “It’s almost the end of the salmon.”
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