15 December 20
Fundraising: Hate it, But Don’t Ignore It.
Everyone Hates Fundraising. You hate it and we hate it too. But if you ignore it the organization rapidly becomes destabilized and everything we all value is jeopardized.
The pain and agony related to fundraising are always a result of the appeals being totally ignored. The answer is reasonable support.
When we say we’re in trouble, we are.
Marc Ash
Founder, Reader Supported News
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14 December 20
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Greta Thunberg: 5 Years After Paris Agreement, World Is "Speeding in the Wrong Direction" on Climate
Democracy Now!
Excerpt: "The five years following the Paris Agreement have been the five hottest years ever recorded."
wedish activist Greta Thunberg, who launched the global Fridays for Future youth climate movement, issued a stark warning on the fifth anniversary of the Paris Climate Agreement that the world is not doing enough to keep global heating below 2 degrees Celsius — the target set in the landmark 2015 deal. “The gap between what we need to do and what is actually being done is widening by the minute. We are still speeding in the wrong direction,” Thunberg said in a video message posted on social media.
Transcript
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
AMY GOODMAN: The United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres has urged world leaders to declare a state of emergency over the climate crisis. His call came on Saturday during a virtual climate summit to mark the fifth anniversary of the 2015 Paris climate accord.
SECRETARY-GENERAL ANTÓNIO GUTERRES: Five years after Paris, we are still not going in the right direction. Paris promised to limit temperature rise to as close as to 1.5 degrees as possible. But the commitments made in Paris were far from enough to get there, and even those commitments are not being met. Carbon dioxide levels are at record highs. Today we are 1.2 degrees hotter than before the Industrial Revolution. If we don’t change course, we may be headed for a catastrophic temperature rise of more than 3 degrees this century. …
Can anybody still deny that we are facing a dramatic emergency? That is why today I call on all leaders worldwide to declare a state of climate emergency in their countries until carbon neutrality is reached. Some 38 countries have already done so, recognizing the urgency and the stakes. I urge all others to follow.
AMY GOODMAN: U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres, speaking Saturday at a virtual climate summit to mark the fifth anniversary of the 2015 Paris climate accord. Prior to the summit, the 17-year-old Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg released a video saying much more needs to be done to combat the climate crisis.
GRETA THUNBERG: My name is Greta Thunberg, and I’m inviting you to be a part of the solution.
Five years ago, world leaders signed the Paris Agreement, and they promised to keep the global average temperature rise to well below 2 degrees Celsius and to pursue 1.5 degrees to safeguard future living conditions. Since then, a lot has happened, but the action needed is still nowhere in sight. The gap between what we need to do and what is actually being done is widening by the minute. We are still speeding in the wrong direction.
The five years following the Paris Agreement have been the five hottest years ever recorded. And during that time, the world has also emitted more than 200 gigatons of CO2. Commitments are being made, distant hypothetical targets are being set, and big speeches are being given. Yet when it comes to the immediate action we need, we are still in a state of complete denial, as we waste our time creating new loopholes with empty words and creative accounting.
If you read through the current best available science, you realize that the climate and ecological crisis cannot be solved without system change. That’s no longer an opinion; that’s a fact. The climate crisis is only a part of a bigger sustainability crisis. For too long we have been distancing ourselves from nature, mistreating the planet, our only home, living as if there was no tomorrow. At the current emission rate, our remaining CO2 budget for 1.5 degrees will be completely gone within seven years, long before we will even have a chance to deliver on our 2030 or 2050 targets.
But I’m telling you, there is hope, because the people have not yet been made aware. We cannot solve a crisis without treating it as a crisis, nor can we treat something like a crisis unless we understand the emergency. So let’s make this our main priority. Let’s unite and spread awareness. Once we become aware, then we can act. Then change will come. This is the solution. We are the hope. We, the people.
AMY GOODMAN: Climate activist Greta Thunberg, speaking in a video she released ahead of Saturday’s virtual climate summit to mark the fifth anniversary of the 2015 Paris climate accord. Greta turns 18 on January 3rd.
When we come back, who gets the vaccine? As the first shipments of the federally approved COVID-19 vaccine arrive today across the United States, we’ll speak with longtime doctor and antiracism activist Dr. Camara Phyllis Jones about why communities of color with high COVID-19 death rates should be given priority access to the vaccine. Stay with us.
Joe Biden in South Carolina. (photo: Sean Rayford/Getty Images)
ALSO SEE: Michigan Gov Whitmer Addresses Security Threat
to Electoral College Vote
Electoral College Begins Voting to Make Biden's Victory Official
Rebecca Shabad, Dareh Gregorian and Natalia Abrahams, NBC News
Excerpt: "The Electoral College on Monday began voting to make President-elect Joe Biden's victory in the 2020 presidential election official."
The president-elect is expected to speak in prime time after he has surpassed 270 for the win.
All 538 electors will meet in their respective states to cast their votes for president based on the election results that were recently certified by all 50 states and Washington, D.C.
Most electors, who were chosen by political parties in each state ahead of the November election, are expected to cast their ballots in state Capitol buildings.
The first states to vote Monday were Indiana, New Hampshire, Tennessee and Vermont, which started to vote at 10 a.m. ET. President Donald Trump snagged an early lead after Tennessee and Indiana awarded their 22 total votes to Trump while Vermont's and New Hampshire's electors cast their combined 7 votes for Biden.
Trump's lead evaporated by noon, though, when electors in several other states cast their votes, including three battleground states that were hotly contested by the president - Georgia, Arizona and Pennsylvania. After the noon votes were counted, Biden was leading 146 votes to 79.
In Georgia, the vote was presided over by Stacey Abrams, who helped get out the vote for Democrats and served as an elector on Monday. "I cast my vote for President Joe Biden," Abrams told the assembly.
Abrams was introduced by Rep.-elect Nikema WIlliams, who noted the occasion marked the first time the state had voted for a Democrat for president since 1992. "Now all the nation knows that Georgia is a blue state," Williams said.
In Arizona, Secretary of State Katie Hobbs said the vote normally has much "pomp and circumstance" but this year "unfortunately had an artificial shadow cast over it in the form of baseless accusations of misconduct and fraud, for which no proof has been provided, and which court after court has dismissed as unfounded."
She said the allegations from the president and his allies have "led to threats of violence against me, my office and those in this room today" despite an "extremely well-run election."
In New York, former President Bill Clinton and 2016 Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton. served as electors. They and 27 others in the state cast their votes for Biden and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris.
Around the same time those states voted, the Wisconsin Supreme Court dismissed the Trump campaign's bid lawsuit to overturn the vote certification in the state. The court ruled against Trump 4-3, finding some of his allegations were meritless and other challenges were brought too late.
Voting in another state where the Trump campaign disputed the results, Michigan, was scheduled to begin at 2 p.m. ET. The state Capitol will be closed during the vote because of threats of violence and anticipated protests.
California, which has 55 Electoral College votes, the most of any state, could put Biden over the top and is set to vote at 5 p.m. ET.
Biden is expected to deliver remarks in prime time about the Electoral College vote around 8 p.m. ET.
Trump and a number of Republican officials tried to overturn the results in battleground states, but the Supreme Court rejected that attempt Friday night. Trump has repeatedly said since the Nov. 3 election that he won by a landslide and that the election was rigged.
Biden, however, was deemed president-elect Nov. 7, four days after the election, once he surpassed the 270 electoral votes needed to win the presidency. Ultimately, Biden received 306 electoral votes, while Trump won 232.
On Jan. 6 at 1 p.m. ET, the Electoral College votes will be counted in a joint session of Congress. Biden and Vice President-elect Kamala Harriswill then be sworn into office Jan. 20.
On Thanksgiving, Trump told reporters it would be a "very hard thing to concede" the election even when the Electoral College finalizes Biden's win. He said, "If they do, they've made a mistake." When asked whether he would leave the White House under that outcome, Trump said, "Certainly I will."
Georgia Republican U.S. Sen. Kelly Loeffler's campaign have insisted that she 'had no idea' who ex Ku Klux Klan leader Chester Doles was when she posed for a photo (pictured) with him at a recent event (photo: Chester Doles)
Georgia Senator Kelly Loeffler Posed for a Photo With a Former KKK Chief - but Says She Didn't Know Who He Was
Bill Bostock, Yahoo! News
Bostock writes: "Sen. Kelly Loeffler has been photographed with Chester Doles, a former head of the Ku Klux Klan and member of the neo-Nazi National Alliance."
Appearing at a campaign event in Dawsonville, Georgia, on Friday - ahead of the state's Senate runoff election - Loeffler posed for a photo with Chester Doles, one of America's most famous white supremacist.
Loeffler, a Wall Street executive who was appointed to fill a vacancy in the Senate last December, currently faces a runoff election on January 5, 2021. The results of both her and fellow Republican Sen. David Perdue's races will decide which party controls the Senate.
Doles spent decades in the KKK, including as its leader and as Maryland's grand klaliff, according to the Atlanta Journal Constitution. He was also a member of the neo-Nazi National Alliance, and was jailed in 1993 after beating a Black man in Maryland.
Doles posted the photo of himself and Loeffler on the Russian social network VKontakte (VK) on Friday.
"Kelly Leoffener [sic] and I. Save America, stop Socialism!," Doles wrote as the caption.
The image was later discovered and reposted to Twitter by the advocacy group Bend the Arc: Jewish Action. The group said Loeffler was "embracing white supremacy."
While the KKK is most well known for its campaign to terrorize Black people, its members have also attacked Jewish people, immigrants, and the LGBTQ community, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center.
A spokesperson for Loeffler's campaign said she had no idea who Doles was.
"Kelly had no idea who that was, and if she had she would have kicked him out immediately because we condemn in the most vociferous terms everything that he stands for," Stephen Lawson, a spokesman for Loeffler's campaign, told the Associated Press on Sunday.
In mid-September this year, Doles was ejected from a campaign rally held by the Republican Congresswoman-elect Marjorie Taylor Greene, where Loeffler was also present.
A spokesman for Loeffler told the Atlanta Journal Constitution at the time that she was not aware that Doles was present, or that he had a history as a racist and white supremacist.
This summer, Loeffler said she was "adamantly" against the Black lives Matter movement, and accused armed Black protesters of practicing "mob rule." But in a debate in early December, she said: "There is not a racist bone in my body."
Despite Doles' long history and association with white supremacist groups, he told the AP on Sunday that he had "publicly renounced racism on several occasions."
Doles also said he has stood "in front of an all-Black congregation and told my story and renounced all racism and asked for God's forgiveness."
In 2019, Doles formed the pro-Trump group American Patriots USA.
Brianna Chandler and Khalea Edwards, activists in St. Louis. 'There is no start date to a movement you've been a part of your entire life,' says Edwards. 'Black existence in this system itself is resistance.' (photo: Vanessa Charlot/Rolling Stone)
How Black Lives Matter Inspired a New Generation of Youth Activists
Ryan Bort and Kimberly Aleah, Rolling Stone
Excerpt: "Young people across America found their voice in 2020, harnessing social media to lead the fight for change in their communities."
halea Edwards didn’t believe it at first. Someone on a text chain of organizers from Occupy City Hall STL, a movement she helped lead this past summer calling for the resignation of St. Louis Mayor Lyda Krewson, informed the group in November that Krewson was retiring. Edwards wanted proof. Then Krewson made the announcement herself. “We spent the whole day in shock,” Edwards says. “We were crying.”
“Protesting works. Pro-tes-ting works,” the 21-year-old says of the bombshell from the mayor, who in June had broadcast the names and addresses of activists calling for the city to defund the police. “Folks said our demands were impossible to meet, but now we’re here and Lyda Krewson is a one-term mayor, which is exactly what we were chanting for in the streets. It’s just beautiful.”
Countless young people of color across the United States learned about the power of protest firsthand following George Floyd’s death in the spring. They organized marches, vigils, sit-ins, and, yes, occupations of government property — and they did so at great personal risk. “You didn’t know what was going to happen, whether you were coming home or whether you were getting arrested,” says Chelsea Miller, co-founder of Freedom March NYC. “I chose that it was worth it to put my life in danger because this movement was far greater than me.”
The demonstrations drew thousands of supporters, thanks largely to the reach of social media. But internet virality is only as good as what you do with it. “It’s important to remember we are more than hashtags,” says Miller. “We live in a popcorn society, where it’s on to the next thing within seconds. We need to think about being able to sustainably support this work, so when the cameras turn off we’re able to do that.”
For many, this involved rallying voters to boot Donald Trump out of office. But now that the president has been handed his walking papers, activists are turning their attention to bringing about change at the local level. Rolling Stone spoke with young organizers from around the country who are parlaying the enthusiasm they generated last summer into providing platforms for the marginalized, kick-starting new awareness initiatives, and pushing lawmakers to enact equitable policies across a wide range of issues — from criminal justice to affordable housing to education. “The fight isn’t over because Donald Trump is out of office,” says Atlanta activist Madison Crenshaw. “That does not mean we stop. We have to keep going until everyone is equal.”
Foyin Dosunmu
Katy4Justice
Foyin Dosunmu still gets excited thinking about the day she helped lead a Black Lives Matter protest through the streets of Katy, Texas. “It was so beautiful,” she says, in awe of how she and the other young activists who founded Katy4Justice last summer were able to use social media to bring more than 1,000 people together to demonstrate for racial equality in the predominantly white Houston suburb.
Though Dosunmu, 17, and many of her fellow activists in Katy are now getting ready for college, Katy4Justice is still holding meetings to organize projects like selling Covid-19 masks to raise money for legal services for immigrants. They’re also continuing to preach intersectionality and provide community members with a place to share their experiences with discrimination. “I feel like I’m doing something that I wish someone would have done for me,” Dosunmu says. “It’s just such an amazing feeling.”
“It doesn’t take much,” she adds of how a few texts in the summer snowballed into a movement. “All you have to do is want to see a change in your community and gather people who want to do the same. It’s power in numbers. From there, you have the world in your hands. You can do anything.”
Madison Crenshaw
Buckhead for Black Lives
“It was a very large group of friends who just really wanted to make a difference,” explains Madison Crenshaw, one of the leaders of Buckhead for Black Lives, a movement founded by recent high school graduates and college students in Atlanta after George Floyd’s death. A few text messages about how they could respond to police violence turned into a few social media posts promoting a demonstration, which turned into 2,000 people showing up to march to the Governor’s Mansion.
Joe Biden turning Georgia blue a few months later emphasized what Buckhead for Black Lives and similar protest movements can accomplish. “It was an eye-opener, because it can be hard to fathom how events can really impact people and drive them to go out and vote,” Crenshaw says. “That’s what we saw with the social unrest in the summer. People want to see change on the legislative level that helps communities of color.”
Crenshaw says Buckhead for Black Lives is now raising awareness for the Senate runoff races in Georgia, and that the group will work to hold the Biden administration accountable. “I think a lot of the time young people are not looked to as leaders,” Crenshaw says. “This really taught me that we can speak up, use our voice, and make a difference.”
Chelsea Miller and Nialah Edari
Freedom March NYC
It took Chelsea Miller and Nialah Edari only a few months to turn a demonstration they led in May into a nationally recognized movement. Hundreds attended, and the two friends who met at Columbia University were soon able to raise more than $50,000 to turn Freedom March NYC into a multipronged advocacy organization. This included Freedom Fall, a digital voter-education-and-registration initiative inspired by the Freedom Summer movement of the Sixties. Miller, 24, and Edari, 26, are now determined to hold Joe Biden accountable for “the promises that were made around police brutality, state-sanctioned violence, and equity and opportunity for the black community,” says Miller. They plan to hold 2021 New York City mayoral candidates to the same standard. “The work isn’t done,” Edari says. “We were out there because black people were being killed by police. From the looks of it, that’s still happening, so we’ll still be outside.”
Taji Chesimet
Raising Justice
Taji Chesimet has been fighting for racial justice in Portland, Oregon, since 2017, when he co-founded the youth-led group Raising Justice. In July, the 19-year-old helped lead its “Last Generation Protest” — so named because they seek to be the last to experience racial oppression. As police violence surged in the city in the summer, so did Raising Justice’s membership, and with it Chesimet’s resolve to continue fighting for measures to hold police accountable. “A lot of conversations from the protest have continued in the policymaking rooms at the legislative level,” says Chesimet, now a freshman at the University of Chicago. “I don’t think the flame from the summer will go out any time soon.”
Armonee Jackson
NAACP Arizona
Armonee Jackson has been organizing protests since she was in middle school. Following Trayvon Martin’s death in 2012, she rallied students to wear hoodies and bring Skittles to classes. The 22-year-old president of the youth and college division of the state’s NAACP scaled up her activism when George Floyd died, organizing demonstrations across Arizona, including a march in mostly white Scottsdale that drew around 1,000 protesters. “I was not surprised,” she says of Joe Biden flipping the state. “I knew that with the amount of people we’ve had on the front lines advocating for change, there was no way we wouldn’t turn Arizona blue.”
Khalea Edwards and Brianna Chandler
Occupy City Hall STL and Rise STL
Khalea Edwards didn’t just take up activism this past summer. As she sees it, her life itself is a form of protest. “There is no start date to a movement you’ve been a part of your entire life,” she says. “Black existence in this system itself is resistance.”
Edwards, 21, grew up poor with 17 siblings on the south side of St. Louis and a mother working multiple jobs. She took an interest in actively fighting against these systems after Trayvon Martin’s death, and later, through her brother’s activism in Ferguson after the police killing of Michael Brown. So when Mayor Lyda Krewson doxed activists who were calling for the city to defund the police, Edwards helped form Occupy City Hall STL. Edwards is now focused on advocating for the homeless. “We need to be investing in each other and our communities,” she says, “because we know the politicians won’t.”
Fellow St. Louis activist Brianna Chandler, 19, began organizing with the Sunrise STL climate group in 2019, and this past spring recentered her focus on racial and indigenous justice, forming Rise STL. “I think change always comes from young people,” she says. “I think adults sometimes get desensitized, and understandably so, because the system wears you down.”
A Boston MBTA station, half-empty due to declining ridership in the pandemic. City transit officials are considering major service cuts to the network, despite public and political outcry. (photo: David L. Ryan/Boston Globe/Getty Image
Public Transit in the US Is Already Underfunded. The Pandemic Has Made It Worse.
Terry Nguyen, Vox
Excerpt: "Transit officials in Boston, New York, and DC are reducing service, eliminating routes, and laying off employees to shrink budgets."
n the early days of the pandemic, public transit ridership dropped precipitously. Americans were urged to stay home, which prompted transit agencies to swiftly implement service cuts to match this declining demand.
Transit networks needed a financial lifeline. Fare money was drying up, and existing budget gaps were further exacerbated. Through the CARES Act in March, local agencies received $25 billion in aid — bailout money that was crucial to keep networks operating through the summer despite steep declines in revenue from riders, advertisers, and taxes as people stayed home.
The good news for mass transit is that the next round of coronavirus relief is probably coming. Under the latest bipartisan Senate proposal, the transportation industry would receive $45 billion in aid, distributed between airlines, airports, private buses, and transit agencies, for whom $15 billion has been earmarked. The bad news is, according to transportation experts and transit advocates, $15 billion won’t be nearly enough. Agencies will still have to reduce service, eliminate routes, and lay off employees to make ends meet.
That’s cause for concern, as economic recovery in major cities and their encompassing regions depend on mass transit to shuttle around office workers, students, tourists, and local residents. Once a vaccine is distributed, people’s old commuting patterns will ideally resume, and businesses are expecting to grow from the reactivation of social activity. What happens, then, when a transit network doesn’t have the budget to boost their service or accommodate an influx of passengers?
“All sources of transit revenue are down this year, and in some of the larger cities, this budget crisis is not only seen in devastating service cuts, but deferred maintenance, layoffs, and cutbacks that can have long-term problems,” said Ben Fried of Transit Center, a research and advocacy organization.
The American Public Transportation Association originally called for at least $32 billion in emergency transit funding, but as Mitch McConnell and his fellow Senate Republicans mull over the bipartisan proposal, it’s uncertain whether transit networks will receive any money at all: The Republican counterproposal doesn’t appear to allocate any funding for mass transit. That’s concerning to transit officials, who believe there’s no adequate substitute for federal action.
“Transit is going through a catastrophic moment, and it’s hard to overstate how challenging the threats are,” said Robert Puentes, president and CEO of the Eno Center for Transportation, an independent nonprofit think tank. “Federal money is urgently needed right now. The CARES Act money helped keep agencies afloat through the summer, and while the $15 billion in the current package is helpful, it’s not nearly enough.”
Transit advocates have reason to worry: Significant service cuts could trap agencies in a downward spiral. With less reliable service and shortened routes, more people will simply stop taking transit, which means less fare money will be brought in. As Matthew Yglesias previously wrote for Vox, “agencies will have no alternative but to respond to financial pressure by scaling back service … but cutting frequency makes a transit network much less useful, ensuring that ridership doesn’t bounce back even when restrictions on activity fade away.”
If emergency aid doesn’t arrive, it’s likely that transit networks will be stuck in a cycle of decline. “Once these cuts are triggered, it’s not an easy thing to bring back, at least in the next year,” Fried told me.
Raising fares significantly won’t solve the budget gap, either. Most major networks depend on ridership fares for a large chunk of their annual earnings, but higher prices can drive away commuters, many of whom would rather invest in cars or turn to ride-sharing. Local budgets are built around how much money officials think they can bring in every year, and the pandemic’s unpredictability has thrown projections off course.
For New York City’s MTA system, fares account for about 38 percent, or $6.2 billion, of its annual revenue. And while the system also earns money from tolls, taxes, government subsidies, and advertisements, the pandemic has similarly decimated those income streams as well. Los Angeles officials are projecting an 11 percent decline in sales tax receipts and about a 27 percent drop in grants from gas tax revenue since Californians are driving less overall, the LA Times reported.
These setbacks are arriving at a time when it’s actually politically popular to invest in transit services. Voters in the Bay Area overwhelmingly supported a measure that enacted a sales tax that goes toward funding the Caltrain system. In Austin, residents similarly backed a property tax hike to build and operate a new rail system, a transit tunnel, and expanded bus service.
Local agencies are proposing major service reductions in next year’s budgets. In cities like DC, New York, Los Angeles, and Boston, officials are prepared to slash service, lay off workers, and delay maintenance projects. These measures coincide with America’s vaccine rollout timeline. By the spring, a sizable portion of the US population is expecting to be vaccinated. But transportation officials in places like Los Angeles aren’t sure when a full recovery to pre-pandemic ridership levels will resume and are planning for the possibility of further cuts.
One of the few exceptions is Chicago, which has yet to consider cuts or layoffs because officials are still operating under the assumption that stimulus money will arrive. However, the president of the Chicago Transit Authority maintains that the agency “absolutely must receive additional funding from Congress.”
These preemptive budget cuts could be devastating for economic recovery, experts say. “Transit and cities are so fundamentally interwoven together, and neither one can survive without the other,” Puentes said. “If we’re going to see national economic recovery in this country, we’re going to need public transit.”
Service reductions will likely drive away riders who can afford other means of transportation or who can avoid travel altogether. The drop in ridership has affected rail service more than bus and subway service. According to the American Public Transportation Association, rail line ridership is down 87 percent in New York City and Chicago and 93 percent in the Washington, DC, metro area — jurisdictions with a high number of white-collar workers. Meanwhile, total bus ridership has declined by 65 percent.
“These numbers show that people who do not have the ability to work from home are dependent on the bus,” said Puentes of the Eno Center for Transportation. “Before the pandemic hit, buses were going through a bit of a renaissance, where transit networks were modernizing them and cities were putting in lanes and traffic signals.”
These service cuts will predominantly hurt essential workers and low-income communities, who are reliant on mass transit. It’s crucial that cities understand there are choice riders and dependent riders, Puentes added, which are represented in the rail versus bus dichotomy. Transit is a lifeline not just for city residents and workers, but the business districts and social hubs that depend on foot traffic to bring customers to their doors.
“Some agencies have been better than others about where to reallocate service during the pandemic,” said Fried of the Transit Center. “They’ve taken steps to ensure that bus routes with high ridership are not seeing the worst of these cuts, and while that’s good, it only goes so far.”
If bus frequency and reliability decrease over the next year, it will be challenging to win riders back once they’ve bought a car, for example.
Dwindling transit service in the United States is not a new problem. The coronavirus has only made the cracks more visible by worsening its finances. For years, local agencies have been under stress to reduce costs.
Federal, state, and local governments have spent decades failing to build good, useful public transit, according to Vice transportation reporter Aaron Gordon. It’s a result of many converging factors — poor transportation and housing policy, highway construction, political roadblock, urban sprawl — and the solution isn’t necessarily simple. Funneling money into a broken system might not resolve its most pressing problems, but without federal investment in public transit, America will further cement itself as a car-dependent society. It will be difficult to reverse track, while these policies continue to inconvenience low-income, essential workers who depend on mass transit.
Still, transit advocates think there’s cause for optimism under the Biden administration. “There will be a window coming up for a transportation and infrastructure package,” Fried said. “One of the precedents in the CARES Act was that transit agencies received operating funds from the federal government. If this becomes a precedent, we can use that money moving forward to invest in extra service.”
Teachers and government employees protesting in Kurdistan against the delay in disbursal of their salaries. (photo: Left Voice)
Security Forces Kill Eight Workers Protesting for Their Wages in Iraqi Kurdistan
Philippe Alcoy, Left Voice
Alcoy writes: "In Iraqi Kurdistan, public sector workers, especially teachers, demand their unpaid salaries and denounce government corruption."
ince December 3, public sector workers, including teachers, from Iraqi Kurdistan, a semi-autonomous region in the north of the country, have been demonstrating for the payment of their salaries and against corruption. Some denounce that they have only been paid four months since the start of the year. The largely peaceful protests in the town of Sulaymaniyah took a dramatic turn last Monday when security forces in the region opened fire on protesters leaving several injured and at least 8 dead. Protesters responded by burning the premises of ruling and opposition parties, police stations, and the mayor’s office.
Following these mobilizations, the local government reduced the speed of the Internet, and even closed a television channel linked to an opposition party. Protesters denounced assaults and live ammunition attacks by security forces linked to ruling political parties. Others denounced the use of tear gas, the power of which caused breathing problems to many protesters, including children.
This brutal repression only fueled popular anger. Anger that resembles the mobilizations that have been taking place for over a year in the south of the country (mainly populated by Shiites) against government corruption, unemployment and poverty. Indeed, as explained by Adil Hassan , a teacher who took part in the Sulaymaniyah mobilizations, “the Kurdish authorities (…) know that if peaceful demonstrations erupt there, the provinces of Erbil and Duhok will soon follow. People live in difficult financial situations.”
The regional government still has to pay the October salaries of nearly 1.3 million of its employees. The critical economic situation in this territory dependent on hydrocarbon exports is partly due to the fall in international oil prices following the measures taken to deal with the Covid-19 pandemic. In this sense, it is possible to affirm that this revolt is a consequence of the economic crisis accelerated by the new coronavirus.
But another reason pointed out by several media is a budgetary dispute between Erbil, capital of the Kurdish region, and the central power in Baghdad. Indeed, the Kurdish government refuses to pass part of the oil revenues through Baghdad and for its part the federal government refuses to pay the budgetary part which corresponds to Erbil. However, some denounce that the oil revenues would be enough to pay the salaries of regional employees but that this delay is mainly due to the corruption of senior officials of the ruling Kurdish parties.
Either way, it is not the living conditions and wages of workers hard hit by the crisis and years of war that matter to federal and regional governments. Remember that for over a year the demonstrators in the south of the country have suffered the same repression. In this sense, faced with this deeply corrupt and reactionary regime, young people and workers from the north and south of the country, beyond religious or ethnic differences, would gain from fighting together.
Farmer Will Glazik. (photo: Midwest Center for Investigative Reporting)
'Buy It or Else': Inside Monsanto and BASF's Moves to Force Herbicide on Farmers
Johnathan Hettinger, The Midwest Center for Investigative Reporting
Hettinger writes: "Internal company records show the companies knew crop damage from their weed killer would be extensive. They sold it anyway."
et poisoned or get on board.
That’s the choice soybean farmers such as Will Glazik face. The past few summers, farmers near Glazik’s central Illinois farm have sprayed so much of the weed killer dicamba at the same time that it has polluted the air for hours and sometimes days.
As Glazik puts it, there are two types of soybeans: Monsanto’s, which are genetically engineered to withstand dicamba, and everyone else’s.
Glazik’s soybeans have been the damaged ones. His soybean leaves will curl up, then the plants will become smaller and weaker. He’s lost as much as 40 bushels an acre in some fields, a huge loss when organic soybeans are $20 a bushel. He has to hold his breath every year to see if the damage will cause him to lose his organic certification.
His neighbors who spray dicamba are frustrated with him, he said. There’s an easy solution to avoid damage, they tell him: Buy Monsanto’s seeds.
This reality is what Monsanto was counting on when it launched dicamba-tolerant crops, an investigation by the Midwest Center for Investigative Reporting found.
Monsanto’s new system was supposed to be the future of farming, providing farmers with a suite of seeds and chemicals that could combat more and more weeds that were becoming harder to kill.
Instead, the system’s rollout has led to millions of acres of crop damage across the Midwest and South; widespread tree death in many rural communities, state parks and nature preserves; and an unprecedented level of strife in the farming world.
Executives from Monsanto and BASF, a German chemical company that worked with Monsanto to launch the system, knew their dicamba weed killers would cause large-scale damage to fields across the United States but decided to push them on unsuspecting farmers anyway, in a bid to corner the soybean and cotton markets.
Monsanto and BASF have denied for years that dicamba is responsible for damage, blaming farmers making illegal applications, weather events and disease. The companies insist that when applied according to the label, dicamba stays on target and is an effective tool for farmers.
Monsanto, BASF and dicamba: An interactive timeline
Over the past year, the Midwest Center reviewed thousands of pages of government and internal company documents released through lawsuits, sat in the courtroom for weeks of deliberation, interviewed farmers affected by dicamba and weed scientists dealing with the issue up close. This story provides the most comprehensive picture of what Monsanto and BASF knew about dicamba’s propensity to harm farmers’ livelihoods and the environment before releasing the weed killer.
The investigation found:
- Monsanto and BASF released their products knowing that dicamba would cause widespread damage to soybean and cotton crops that weren’t resistant to dicamba. They used “protection from your neighbors” as a way to sell more of their products. In doing so, the companies ignored years of warnings from independent academics, specialty crop growers and their own employees.
- Monsanto limited testing that could potentially delay or deny regulatory approval of dicamba. For years, Monsanto struggled to keep dicamba from drifting in its own tests. In regulatory tests submitted to the EPA, the company sprayed the product in locations and under weather conditions that did not mirror how farmers would actually spray it. Midway through the approval process, with the EPA paying close attention, the company decided to stop its researchers from conducting tests.
- Even after submitting data that the EPA used to approve dicamba in 2016, Monsanto scientists knew that many questions remained. The company’s own research showed dicamba mixed with other herbicides was more likely to cause damage. The company also prevented independent scientists from conducting their own tests and declined to pay for studies that would potentially give them more information about dicamba’s real-world impact.
- Although advertised as helping out customers, the companies’ investigations of drift incidents were designed to limit their liability, find other reasons for the damage and never end with payouts to farmers. For example, BASF told pesticide applicators that sometimes it is not safe to spray even if following the label to the letter, placing liability squarely on the applicators.
- The two companies were in lockstep for years. Executives from Monsanto and BASF met at least 19 times from 2010 on to focus on the dicamba-tolerant cropping system, including working together on the development of the technology, achieving regulatory approval for the crops and herbicides and the commercialization of crops.
- Monsanto released seeds resistant to dicamba in 2015 and 2016 without an accompanying weed killer, knowing that off-label spraying of dicamba, which is illegal, would be “rampant.” At the same time, BASF ramped up production of older versions of dicamba that were illegal to apply to the crops and made tens of millions of dollars selling the older versions, which were more likely to cause move off of where they were applied.
Bayer, which bought Monsanto in 2018, refused to grant an interview with the Midwest Center. Company officials did not respond to requests for comment, instead issuing a statement.
Spokesman Kyel Richard said the company “has seen an outpouring of support from grower organizations and our customers.”
“We continue to stand with the thousands of farmers who rely on this technology as part of their integrated weed management program,” Richard said.
BASF also did not respond to requests for comment, instead issuing a statement.
BASF spokeswoman Odessa Patricia Hines said that the company’s version of dicamba has “different physical properties and compositions” than Monsanto’s. Hines said the company is continuing to improve its dicamba technology.
A federal court banned the herbicide earlier this year, but the EPA reinstated dicamba for five more years in October.
Earlier this year, a federal jury sided with a Missouri peach farmer who sued the companies for driving his orchard out of business. The jury awarded Bill Bader $15 million for his losses and $250 million in punitive damages designed to punish Bayer. Bayer and BASF are appealing the verdict. The punitive damages were later reduced to $60 million.
Hines of BASF pointed out that in the Missouri trial: “The jury’s verdict found that only Monsanto’s conduct warranted punitive damages.”
Following the trial, Bayer announced a $400 million settlement with farmers harmed by dicamba, including $300 million to soybean farmers. Bayer said they expect BASF to pay for part of the settlement.
An attorney for Bader called the companies’ conduct “a conspiracy to create an ecological disaster in order to increase their profits” in court filings. The case largely revolved around showing the companies knew dicamba would harm thousands of farmers.
According to court exhibits, in October 2015, Monsanto projected it would receive nearly 2,800 complaints from farmers during the 2017 growing season, a figure based on one-in-10 farmers having a complaint.
However, even one Monsanto executive knew these projections might be low, according to court records. In late August 2016, Boyd Carey, a Ph.D. crop scientist overseeing the claims process for Monsanto, realized it might be more like one-in-five and asked for a budget increase from $2.4 million to $6.5 million to investigate claims. Carey testified that he was awarded the increase.
The projected number of complaints rose to more than 3,200 for 2018, before going down. After 2018, Monsanto figured that fewer farmers would be harmed because more farmers would switch to Monsanto’s crops to avoid being damaged, Carey testified in the Bader trial.
Dicamba affects all parts of Glazik’s operation. He grows organic soybeans to avoid exposure to toxic pesticides. He also likes the higher premiums and the improved soil quality. But with dicamba in the air, he’s less likely to be successful.
He now has to plant his soybeans later each year. Soybeans are less likely to be severely damaged when they're small, and planting them later than usual means they’ll be smaller when the inevitable cloud of weed killer envelops his crops. Later planting typically means a bit of yield loss. It also means a later harvest, which limits planting of cover crops Glazik uses to improve his soil.
“All crop damage aside,” he said, the weed killer is everywhere. Oaks, hickories and other trees are damaged near his farm, both in the country and in town, he said. “The fact is that the chemical can volatilize and move with the wind and in the air. We're breathing it.”
A ‘potential disaster’
For two decades, Monsanto made billions of dollars with Roundup Ready crops, which had been genetically engineered to withstand being sprayed by the weed killer and adopted by nearly every American soybean farmer. But by the mid-to-late 2000s, Roundup was starting to fail. Farmer’s fields were overwhelmed with “superweeds” that had developed resistance to Roundup’s active ingredient, glyphosate.
In response, Monsanto developed new soybean and cotton seeds that were genetically engineered to withstand being sprayed by both glyphosate and dicamba, a very effective weed killer used since the 1960s. It was also touted as the company’s largest biotechnology rollout in company history. In just three years, Monsanto’s dicamba-tolerant system was able to capture up to three-fourths of total soybean acreage, an area the size of Michigan.
Dicamba was not widely used during the growing season because of its propensity to move off-target and harm other plants. Because of its limited use, fewer weeds were resistant to it, making it an effective replacement for Roundup. Monsanto even dubbed the crops as its money-maker’s next generation, calling them Roundup Ready 2 Xtend.
But the company faced a problem with dicamba: The weed killer drifted onto non-resistant plants, some as far as miles away. In its own testing over the years, Monsanto had accidentally harmed its own crops dozens of times.
As far back as 2009, Monsanto and BASF received warnings about dicamba from several sources — one company called it a “potential disaster,” according to court records — but they decided to plow ahead anyway.
“DON’T DO IT; expect lawsuits,” wrote one Monsanto employee, summarizing academic surveys the company commissioned about dicamba’s use.
In order to commercialize dicamba, both Monsanto and BASF worked to develop new formulations with low volatility.
Off-target movement from dicamba can happen in two main ways: drift and volatilization. Drift is when the chemical’s particles move off the field when they are sprayed, generally by wind in the seconds or minutes after it is applied. Volatilization is when dicamba particles turn from a liquid to a gas in the hours or days after the herbicide is applied.
Damage from volatilization frequently occurs through a process called “atmospheric loading,” which is when so much dicamba is sprayed at the same time that it is unable to dissipate and persists in the air for hours or days poisoning whatever it comes into contact with.
Volatilization is particularly concerning because dicamba can move for miles and harm non-target crops, especially soybeans, and even lawns and gardens. Tomatoes, grapes and other specialty crops are also at-risk of being damaged.
Despite being touted as less volatile, the new versions — Monsanto’s XtendiMax with VaporGrip Technology and BASF’s Engenia — were unable to stop the movement entirely.
During its 2012-2014 testing of an older version of XtendiMax, Monsanto had at least 73 off-target incidents, according to court documents.
In 2014, Monsanto had significant dicamba damage at a training facility in Portageville, Missouri. Even in its own promotional videos, Monsanto couldn’t prevent non-dicamba tolerant soybeans from showing symptoms of damage.
The EPA took note of an incident where, through volatilization, dicamba turned into a gas and apparently floated more than 2 miles away, much farther than it was supposed to. During that incident, no one had measured how badly the crops had been damaged and the EPA was unable to definitively determine the symptoms were caused by dicamba. The EPA decided that was an “uncertainty” and approved the use of the weed killer with a 110-foot buffer zone.
In 2015, knowing the EPA was keeping an eye on off-target movement, Monsanto decided to halt all testing of XtendiMax with VaporGrip Technology. According to court records, it kept its own employees who were interested in developing recommendations for farmers from testing, and it limited trials by independent academics in order to maintain a “clean slate.” It asked BASF to halt its dicamba testing as well.
When a weed science professor at the University of Arkansas asked Monsanto for a little bit of Xtendimax to test its volatility, the company told him it would have difficulty producing enough dicamba for both him and its independent tests.
A Monsanto employee, who worked at the company for 35 years, didn’t think much of that explanation when he forwarded the email to a colleague.
“Hahaha difficulty in producing enough product for field testing,” he wrote. “Hahaha bullshit.”
Illegal spraying a ‘ticking time bomb’
Weeds cut into farmers’ profits. With low profit margins, farmers will use any tool they can to control weeds.
Monsanto recognized this in 2015 and 2016 when they released dicamba-tolerant crops without their new versions of dicamba. An internal Monsanto slide shows the company knew that many farmers would likely illegally spray older, more volatile versions and harm other farmers’ crops.
But the company decided the benefits of establishing a market share outweighed the risks and launched the cotton crops in 2015. The EPA allowed farmers to spray other weed killers on the crops, and Monsanto decided to launch the seeds with "a robust communication plan that dicamba cannot be used."
When the seeds were sold, Monsanto put a pink sticker on each bag to indicate it was illegal to spray dicamba on the crops in 2015. The company also sent letters to all growers and retailers, among other tactics, to limit illegal applications of dicamba.
However, in internal communications in April 2015, members of Monsanto’s cotton team joked about this risky strategy.
“One sticker is going to keep us out of jail,” one wrote.
In Oct. 2015, a BASF employee reported hearing that growers sprayed older versions of dicamba on the cotton that year.
Monsanto doubled down on this risky strategy in 2016, releasing dicamba-tolerant soybean crops without a weed killer, too. Meanwhile, Monsanto also declined to investigate drift incidents in 2015 and 2016.
At a February 2016 meeting in Puerto Rico, a BASF executive expressed concerns to Monsanto that the “widespread” illegal spraying would likely become “rampant” due to the decision.
BASF also benefited from Monsanto’s decision. The company’s sales of older versions of dicamba spiked in 2016. Retailers sold $100 million worth of its older versions of the weed killer, compared to about $60 million annually in 2014 and 2015, according to internal documents. BASF documents indicated the sales increased because of dicamba-tolerant seeds.
In the summer of 2016, BASF sales representatives in the field were reporting older versions of dicamba causing damage, hinting the problem was predictable.
“The one thing most acres of beans have in common is dicamba damage. There must be a huge cloud of dicamba blanketing the Missouri Bootheel,” a BASF employee wrote in a July 4, 2016, report. “That ticking time bomb finally exploded.”
Drift expected to drive sales
Dicamba drift led to widespread news coverage. Monsanto and BASF expected to turn it all into more money.
In an internal document, Monsanto told its sales teams to target growers that weren’t interested in dicamba and dicamba-resistant crops. The sales pitch? Purchasing Monsanto’s products would protect them from their neighbors.
In April 2017, a market research document prepared by Bank of America found many farmers were doing just that.
"Interesting assessment that much of the Xtend acreage was planted to protect themselves from neighbors who might be using dicamba? Gotta admit I would not have expected this in a market research document," a Monsanto executive wrote.
In internal slides from a September 2016 meeting, BASF identified “defensive planting” as a potential market opportunity. BASF also had a market research document that found defensive planting was driving sales.
However, a “tough questions” memo distributed to BASF employees in November 2017 told employees the opposite: "We have not considered 'defensive planting' in our sales projections."
Even as thousands of farms across millions of acres of cropland were being damaged, Monsanto officials were touting the damage as a sales opportunity.
"I think we can significantly grow business and have a positive effect on the outcome of 2017 if we reach out to all the driftee people,” another Monsanto sales employee wrote in an email that year.
One of those customers was Bill Bader, the peach farmer who sued Monsanto for destroying his orchard. Bader testified that while he could not protect his peach trees, in 2019 he planted dicamba-tolerant soybeans to help protect his soybean crops from getting damaged.
“This is the first product in American history that literally destroys the competition,” Bader’s attorney, Billy Randles, said. “You buy it or else.”
Research designed to downplay harm
For years, the EPA told Monsanto it needed to address volatility in its dicamba studies when applying for regulatory approval. But the tests Monsanto conducted did not reflect real-world conditions.
Dicamba would primarily be sprayed on soybeans, but 2015 studies submitted to the EPA were conducted at a cotton field in Texas and a dirt field in Georgia. Neither state has a large amount of soybeans. This guidance followed directives from Monsanto lobbyists that incorporated earlier Monsanto research showing that higher volatility was detected on fields with soybeans.
In addition, Monsanto did not follow the rules that would eventually be codified on the label.
During the testing in Texas, wind speeds were 1.9 to 4.9 miles per hour. In Georgia, wind speeds were 1.5 to 3 miles per hour. According to the label the EPA approved, dicamba can only be sprayed with wind speeds between 3 and 10 miles per hour. Spraying at low wind speeds is more likely to lead to volatilization because there is increased risk of a temperature inversion, which is when cooler air is caught beneath a layer of warmer air making gases more likely to persist near the ground.
After Monsanto submitted the tests to the EPA, the company still had a lot of unknowns about its product’s volatility, according to internal emails.
A Monsanto researcher wrote an email in February 2016 to his coworkers that underscored how little the company knew about the propensity of dicamba to damage crops.
“We don't know how long a sensitive plant needs in a natural setting to show volatility damage. We don't know what concentration in the air causes a response, either," he wrote. "There is a big difference for plants exposed to dicamba vapor for 24 vs. 48 hours. Be careful using this externally."
Despite the design of the studies, and the EPA’s own studies that showed dicamba posed a risk to 322 protected species of animals and plants, the agency conditionally approved the herbicide in 2016. The agency determined that mitigation measures — such as not spraying near specialty crops and endangered species habitats, wind speed restrictions, and a ban on aerial applications — would keep spray droplets on target.
It was only approved for two years, when the agency would review its approval again.
After the conditional approval, BASF knew dicamba still posed risks. While BASF told farmers dicamba drift wouldn’t hurt their bottom lines, the company privately told pesticide applicators that any drift they caused could decrease farmers’ harvests, according to internal BASF documents. A BASF executive said “from a practical standpoint” Engenia was not different from older dicamba versions.
Even Monsanto’s sales teams were having problems with dicamba’s reputation after the EPA approved the weed killer.
In an internal email, a Monsanto salesman took issue with BASF changing how it publicly discussed its dicamba product: It used to say volatility was not a problem, but now it said it was. Another chemical company saying volatility was bad could hurt Monsanto’s sales.
“We need to get on this right now!” the salesman emailed his colleagues. “Deny! Deny! DENY!”
‘Never admit guilt’
In 2017, the first season that the new versions of dicamba were approved, damage reached unprecedented levels. Around 3.6 million acres of soybeans were damaged, according to an estimate from the University of Missouri.
In July of that year, Monsanto executives scheduled a meeting to discuss how to combat coverage of complaints.
"We need REAL scientific support for our product to counteract the supposition happening in the market today," a Monsanto executive wrote in an email. "To be frank, dealers and growers are losing confidence in Xtendimax."
In late summer 2017, Monsanto had started to blame damage on a BASF weed killer, which is used on the main competitor to Monsanto’s own soybeans. In December 2017, Monsanto agreed to drop that argument as part of a defense strategy with BASF against farmers.
Both Monsanto and BASF took steps to shield themselves from lawsuits.
The form Monsanto told its investigators to use when examining farmer complaints was "developed to gather data that could defend Monsanto,” according to an internal company presentation. Later, Monsanto said that 91% of applicators using the form self-reported errors in spraying dicamba.
A BASF executive also edited his company's drift investigation Q&A.
"I was always told to never admit guilt,” he said.
On top of the investigations, the label left pesticide applicators liable for damage because it was nearly impossible to follow. A 2017 survey of applicators found that most trained sprayers had issues with dicamba even when spraying in good conditions and while following the label.
With damage being reported in 2017, Monsanto also declined to pursue a study that would have given the company more information about how dicamba caused damage on real farms. A Monsanto off-target movement researcher sent a request for a project proposal to Exponent, which helped analyze the data Monsanto submitted to the EPA. The study could be done in less than two weeks and cost $6,000.
The researcher forwarded the proposal to two Monsanto executives.
The company never acted on it, one testified in the trial.
‘The problems have not gone away’
In order to combat the damage, the EPA developed new restrictions on dicamba. In doing so, the EPA dropped an idea that Monsanto opposed, and Monsanto dictated the new restrictions that were adopted.
State officials warned the EPA the changes wouldn’t work. They were right. In 2018, at least 4.1 million acres were damaged, according to EPA documents.
Still, the EPA re-approved dicamba for the 2019 and 2020 growing seasons with new restrictions, some of which ignored agency scientists’ recommendations.
States also increasingly took measures into their own hands, implementing spraying cut-off dates and temperature restrictions.
The damage continued. Illinois, the nation’s largest soybean producing state, had more complaints than ever in 2019. Iowa had “landscape level” damage in 2020.
Aaron Hager, an associate professor of weed science at the University of Illinois, said it is clear the changes haven’t worked.
“We have revised the label and revised it again,” Hager said. “The problems have not gone away.”
The EPA’s decision was eventually voided by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals for failing to properly consider the impacts on farmers and the environment. The court ruled the agency gave too much deference to Bayer and also was lacking necessary data to show too much harm wouldn’t be done.
Dicamba was recently reapproved, and Bayer continues to invest in it. The company will release new soybean seeds designed to be resistant to dicamba and glufosinate, another BASF herbicide, to fill 20 million acres in 2021. The company also continues to work toward approval of other seeds that are resistant to dicamba and other herbicides.
Glazik, the organic Illinois soybean farmer, works as a crops consultant advising other farmers on what to plant. As the damage has continued, he said, more and more of his clients are “feeling bullied into” buying the dicamba-tolerant crops. Others tell him, they have to spray dicamba or else they can’t control the weeds.
But as an organic farmer, Glazik said, no single herbicide is necessary. Instead, farmers have a choice. Well-managed fields can be weed-free without using toxic chemicals, he said.
"You don't have to have the dicamba spray to control weeds in a field,” he said.
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