The construction sector employs a huge variety of people, from expert engineers to low-skilled labourers.

Tough competition and tight margins put extreme pressure on costs, tempting some to cut corners and ignore checks on who is actually doing the work. This is exploited by human traffickers, who profit from controlling the movements and wages of their victims.

Slavery is a growing worldwide epidemic with more than 40 million victims, including an estimated 136,000 in Britain.

Human trafficking gangs target vulnerable individuals suffering from homelessness, addictions or family break-up, making empty promises about the fresh start these victims crave and assuring them of work, shelter and an income. Victims are usually trafficked to a different location, often overseas, isolating them from everything they know. Initial promises become a distant memory as they are put to work and paid nothing, or a tiny sliver of what they deserve, with traffickers controlling their finances. Identity theft and benefit fraud is common, with gangs profiting still further from such abuse.

Victims are usually grouped together in atrocious conditions, crammed into squalid houses infested with rats, and fed the minimum required for survival. Traffickers use threats and violence to control their victims, who may be sold on to other gangs if they fail to yield enough profit.

We all have a responsibility to stop this suffering, but rooting it out remains a challenge. Victims are often too frightened to come forward, while the short-term nature of construction labour makes it hard to establish the relationships needed to spot warning signs. There are, however, universal indicators that should ring alarm bells.

There are universal indicators that should ring alarm bells

Labouring jobs are regularly filled by people with limited education or little command of English. This can make it difficult to articulate their needs. As a result, one warning sign of potential slavery is an unofficial, unqualified interpreter, especially one who speaks for a large group of individuals. Where possible, it is best to source an independent interpreter.

Another indicator of slavery is restricted freedom of movement. This may be apparent if an individual, or group of individuals, is always escorted to and from the site. Behaviour and appearance can also be very telling. Forced labourers will often be skittish, paranoid and introverted, avoiding eye contact or interaction while remaining incredibly productive. They may look dishevelled, in worn-out, dirty clothing, and show visible signs of abuse, such as bruising. These signs should never be ignored.

One further indicator, offering absolute certainty of exploitation, is a negotiated rate below the National Minimum Wage. At its very lowest this should be 4.35 an hour for those aged 16 to 18, increasing incrementally to reach 8.21 at 25. No worker can be legally employed at rates below these statutory minimums.

To guard against abuse, every business should implement a robust anti-slavery policy tailored to its own circumstances while reflecting wider industry practices. Compliance should cascade down through all subcontractors, with stringent due diligence when selecting third-party services. This requires a shift in industry thinking, placing ethics above economics. If a price seems too good to be true, it probably is. To wilfully ignore this is to become complicit.

Copies of identity documents should be checked, bearing in mind that legitimate documents can often be held by gangmasters. Knowledge should be tested to verify sector-specific documents, such as CSCS cards. Blindly trusting a supposedly reputable supplier is no guarantee in one of the largest modern slavery cases in the UK, a recruitment agency had been infiltrated by a gang member.

A vital first step is to carry out a gap analysis, to highlight vulnerable areas needing immediate improvement. Experts such as Slave-Free Alliance can offer guidance to ensure the exercise is both thorough and attuned to the psyche of traffickers, who are adapt at exploiting weak points of entry.

Adopting responsible processes will require investment, but the outlay will be cheap compared to the potential consequences of inaction. Irreparable reputational damage can result from the discovery of forced labour, potentially leading to loss of contracts and insolvency.

By taking proactive action, firms can protect not just the victims of forced labour but their own future as well.

Marc Stanton is director of Slave-Free Alliance, which passes all its profit to founding charity Hope for Justice

Go here to see the original:

Spot signs of slavery and do something about it - Construction News

New York Times Magazine reporter Nikole Hannah-Jones spent Monday taking a tour of Charlottesvilles Confederate monuments and visiting Monticello before speaking to two crowds about a major project she leads.

Speaking first at the University of Virginia Rotunda, and later downtown at The Haven, Hannah-Jones discussed the 1619 Project and answered questions from UVa President Jim Ryan, New York Times columnist Jamelle Bouie and community members.

The 1619 Project is an ongoing initiative of The New York Times Magazine that began as a special issue that was published last August, around the time of the 400th anniversary of the arrival of the first Africans in Virginia.

I wanted to force an acknowledgement of this day, as much as I could, to not allow it to be erased or diminished, but also not just acknowledgement of the day, because a lot of organizations did commemorations, Hannah-Jones said. I wanted to force that acknowledgement of what slavery brought, and the centrality of slavery and that this was not going to be a history. We were going to look at the ongoing, everyday legacy that we all live with.

This project is not about making white people feel guilty for something that you did not personally do, but you have to acknowledge that you are beneficiaries of the system, she said. If there is guilt to be felt, it should be about the ways that you continue to uphold these systems and actively partake in these systems.

Hannah-Jones said it was fitting to have the conversation in Charlottesville and at UVa, specifically in the Rotunda.

In some ways, its the perfect place to have this conversation because I feel like all of the hypocrisies and ideas that the project tries to lay bare, much of that begins right here, she said.

When Ryan asked what her recommendations are for universities grappling with their own history, Hannah-Jones said that the least UVa should do is give free tuition to descendants of the enslaved people who built the university.

If youre really uncomfortable with that notion, you really have to ask yourself why, she said. You really have to ask why you think it is a problem that the people who were forced to build this, their ancestors, because just as wealth is passed down, so is this legacy.

Ryan did not respond on the matter.

When asked about those who have criticized the project, Hannah-Jones said their criticism was not legitimate, and she did not sit down one day and decide to make things up, and has sources to back up the questions from historians.

It has also been said that the project is too pessimistic.

Thats a different perspective that you can have when all of this wasnt built on the back of the oppression of your people, she said. I cant have that view.

During a question and answer period, Myra Anderson asked how she can get her voice heard as a descendant of an enslaved laborer at UVa.

I often feel like I dont even have a seat at the table, or my voice doesnt count, she said.

Hannah-Jones said she was not an activist or community organizer, but that Anderson speaking out, like she was doing at the discussion, was a way to get things accomplished.

I also believe that being publicly shamed is the only way that powerful people are motivated to do the right thing, she said.

UVa student and local activist Zyahna Bryant asked how people can stop universities from exploiting black students, such as asking them to appear in photographs, while not supporting them.

Im going to have her hand the mic back to you, and you tell the university what to do, Hannah-Jones said.

Bryant said the university needs to fund the Office of African-American Affairs, have a real conversation about race, support black faculty and support UVas low-wage workers.

If were not going to really do things fully and to the standard of excellence that we like to claim about being the good and great university, then we can just stop it altogether, because in my opinion it does not help to do things halfway, she said.

Read more here:

1619 Project leader calls for UVa to take real action to amend for slavery's legacy - The Daily Progress

When the woman suffrage movement first began in the mid-19th century, its champions had all become human-rights activists in the searing fires of the abolitionist movement. In 1838, Angelina Grimk, renegade daughter of South Carolina slave owners, laid down the basics of womens rights, in her book, Letters to Catherine Beecher: Whatever it is morally right for a man to do, it is morally right for a woman to do. I recognize no rights but human rights.

In the aftermath of Civil War, emancipation and the constitutional enfranchisement of African American men, this expansive alliance on behalf of human rights tragically faltered. Enraged at the exclusion of women from enfranchisement in the 15th Amendment, Elizabeth Cady Stanton insisted that, if political rights were not to be accorded to all citizens, then educated women, descendants of the Founding Fathers, should take precedence. Betraying her underlying elitism, she wrote in the womens rights periodical The Revolution, in December 1868, If woman find it hard to bear the oppressive laws of a few Saxon Fathers, of the best orders of manhood, what may she not be called to endure when all the lower orders, native and foreigners, Dutch, Irish, Chinese and African, legislate for her and her daughters?

From that point on, for the next 50 years, the major suffrage organizations and their most prominent leaders were white, middle-class women and their arguments rested on the allegedly lofty characteristics of women-as-women rather than on universal human rights. Yet by the turn of the century, national woman suffrage had still not been secured, and political realities were making the constitutional enfranchisement of women a distant dream.

The demand for woman suffrage could not succeed unless it came from a mass movement, reflecting the voices of a diverse and large portion of the nations women. Luckily for the generations of American women who followed, even during the frustrating decades when the previous, exclusionary formulation ruled, American suffragism had grown far beyond its origins.

Get your history fix in one place: sign up for the weekly TIME History newsletter

Certainly, once one looks past the top tiers of national suffrage leadership, the suffrage movement was not uniformly white. The determined, eager suffragism of African American women is impressive. The battle that had been fought to win and increasingly to protect the voting rights of African American men had affected them deeply. As early as 1874, African American activist Mary Ann Shadd Cary presented her case, as recorded in the official record of the U.S. House of Representatives Judiciary Committee: The colored women of this country though heretofore silent, in great measure upon the question of the right to vote have neither been indifferent to their own just claims nor to their demand for political representation.

By the late 19th century, just two generations out of slavery, and despite Jim Crow-era racist violence and segregation, many more African American women were realizing that political rights were crucial to their ability to protect their communities and to advance themselves as women. If white American women, with all their natural and acquired advantages, need the ballot, explained, Adele Hunt Logan of Alabama, in the pages of the Colored American Magazine in 1905, how much more do Black Americans, male and female need the strong defense of the vote to help secure them their right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness? At the national level, the southern-controlled Democratic Party was totally closed to African Americans. However, at the state level in the North and West, wherever African Americans had standing in local Republican parties, black women were well organized and politically sophisticated participants in the battle for the vote.

Nor was the movement solely the realm of wealthy, educated women. In the early 20th century, white immigrant working-class women also turned to the suffrage movement in great numbers. Working in factories, joining trade unions, moving freely through major cities, they helped to turn 20th century woman suffragism into a mass movement. First and second-generation Italian, Irish and Eastern European Jewish women were especially prominent in the ranks of the great suffrage parades of the 1910s in New York City; Chicago; San Francisco; Washington, D.C. and elsewhere.

Inspired by the spirit of Progressive Era social change, aware of new protective labor and housing laws, these working-class women recognized the importance of making their own political presence felt and influencing how these laws would be shaped and enforced. In researching my new book, Suffrage: Womens Long Battle for the Vote, I discovered this forceful 1907 statement by a British-born garment worker speaking before the New York legislature: Gentlemen, we need every help in the battle of life . To be left out by the State just sets up a prejudice against us. Bosses think and women come to think themselves that they dont count for so much as men.

The most famous womens labor event of these years, the Triangle Shirtwaist Strike of 1910-1911, highlighted the importance of working-class womens suffrage activism. New York City garment workers wore suffrage pins when they picketed their factories and noted that, if they had the right to vote, police would not be so quick to harass and arrest them. The famous heroine of the strike, garment worker Clara Lemlich, issued this challenge to New York legislatures: We are here Senators. We are 800,000 strong in New York State alone. The name of the organization behind the pamphlet that circulated her words is telling: the Wage Earners Suffrage League.

In the final years of the suffrage movement, this power of this unprecedented mass movement was clear. Though sometimes separated in their own organizations, black and white, rich and poor women were unified by their common exclusion from the political affairs of the nation. When the U.S. Constitution was finally amended to prohibit states from political discrimination on the grounds of sex, all celebrated their victory. Speaking before the final convention of the National American Woman Suffrage Association in 1920, its leader, Carrie Chapman Catt, declared that the suffragists of this country in the last half century, more than any other group of people in this land, have kept the flying flag of the principles of the Declaration of Independence, the principles of the constitution, and have held them before the people of this country.

However, looking back at the victory of the suffrage movement in her 1933 book, Women in the Twentieth Century, sociologist Sophonsiba Breckenridge insightfully observed that, much like at the end of the World War, the demobilization that began after 1920 was followed by the development of a diversification of aims and interest among and between those who had been united in the attack upon a common enemy.

As women of different politics, races and classes sought to make use of their new voting power, their differences reemerged. Many of those divisions are still an important factor in American politics a century later but they have been overcome before, and may be again. After all, the history of woman suffrage is not yet over.

Ellen Carol DuBois is the author of Suffrage: Womens Long Battle for the Vote, available Feb. 25 from Simon & Schuster.

Thank you! For your security, we've sent a confirmation email to the address you entered. Click the link to confirm your subscription and begin receiving our newsletters. If you don't get the confirmation within 10 minutes, please check your spam folder.

Contact us at editors@time.com.

Excerpt from:

American Women Won the Right to Vote After the Suffrage Movement Became More Diverse. Thats No Coincidence - TIME

Key takeaways:

The United Nations is calling on the fashion industry to help it achieve its Sustainable Development Goals, which include relevant topics like ending poverty and climate action.

In addition to lessening its impact, fashion is positioned to serve as an awareness platform for the public, the UN says.

At the core of fashions connection to the SDGs is the promotion of sustainable consumption, which involves moving away from selling more to consumers.

The evening before New York Fashion Week kicked off in February, guests gathered at an art space in Manhattan for an event unrelated to the runway shows. The art exhibition Arcadia Earth and the UN Office for Partnerships hosted representatives from Gucci, Theory and Mara Hoffman, along with influencers like Sierra Quitiquit and Marina Testino to discuss the connections between fashion and the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals.

The UNs main message: Fashion has a responsibility and the creative leadership to help it achieve its sustainability goals, which were laid out in 2015 to benefit the planet and its inhabitants. Also known as the Global Goals or SDGs, they cover areas like ocean health, gender equality and sustainable consumption. While nonprofits and developmental agencies are closely tied to these goals, achieving what the UN has laid out will be impossible without participation from the private sector. Fashion ranks high among the industries that need to take action given its size and impact.

To Arcadia Earth founder Valentino Vettori, who spent two decades in fashion, the many touch points between fashion and the UNs goals are loud and clear. Should we talk about womens rights? Its obviously connected to that. Should we talk about slavery? Its obviously connected to that, he says. The industrys consumption and pollution of water might be the most conspicuous of all. It will become the most precious thing ever and we use 2,000 gallons of it to make a pair of jeans? I dont think so.

Fashion can improve its practices in all these areas, the UN believes, and it can also be a platform to reach more people regarding the substance of these challenges.

The UN is offering resources as it calls on fashion to do its part, through a combination of brand-specific efforts, cross-industry alliances and public service, to transform production habits while also putting the onus on consumers to make informed and responsible choices.

The fashion industry has incredible potential for us for advocacy, education, creativity. We need to better tell the UNs story on sustainability, and fashion is a great platform, says Lucie Brigham, chief of office, the UN Office for Partnerships. We need to engage the creative industry to help us educate customers.

Established to steer progress toward the UNs 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and designed to build on, and fill in gaps left by, the Millennium Development Goals, the SDGs are made up of calls for action like ending poverty, ocean conservation, climate change mitigation and ensuring quality education and clean water for all. Fashion is arguably most directly related to the no poverty; gender equality; decent work and economic growth; sustainable development and consumption; climate action; and partnerships goals.

The goals have helped some fashion and related companies set their priorities. A Kering spokesperson says the company used the SDGs when developing its 2025 strategy to ensure it was addressing the full suite of global challenges, from climate change to employees wellbeing. Textile Exchange, a nonprofit that works with brands and suppliers to shift to more sustainable fibres, has used the Global Goals as a framework for promoting organic and lower-impact fibres since 2016, saying they can serve not only as a risk management tool but also to drive innovation, and that investors and businesses are increasingly incorporating them into their risk and materiality assessments.

Attendees at Arcadia Earth's New York Fashion Week event in February 2020.

Arcadia Earth

Guidance from the UN can also help brands to set more ambitious goals, rather than simply meet the bare minimum. For brands already focused on issues covered by the goals, looking to the SDGs can help them solidify their priorities or shed light on areas they havent prioritised before.

UK bag and accessories brand Bottletop, founded in 2002, started exploring natural rubber as a material, says co-founder Cameron Saul, in pursuit of meeting Sustainable Development Goal 15: preserve life on land. The brand was chosen last year by the UN to produce bracelets to represent a larger public awareness campaign.

The UN came to us and said, Listen, were not going to achieve these goals unless people on the street are aware and empowered to deliver them, he recalls. According to Saul, the campaign has sold 55,000 bracelets, which are made out of upcycled illegal firearms and ocean plastic, and resulted in 900 million social impressions.

Saul argues that while awareness doesnt necessarily translate into action, it does represent the first step. The industry has enormous impacts on the planet. If you can transform that, were talking about a seismic impact on people and planet, but also fashion can be the cheerleader. It can carry people and voice in a way that nothing else can. We all relate to fashion.

#TOGETHERBAND (the bracelet that works with the UN to further advancing towards the global goals).

Bottletop

The Global Goals are also prompting companies to form partnerships to work collaboratively on an issue. The UN launched its Alliance for Sustainable Fashion last year to promote and coordinate such efforts from within the UN. The UN Office for Partnerships is trying to work with other organisations and sectors of the industry to increase these efforts, recognising that they wont necessarily happen on their own.

One initiative the UN has backed is One X One, led by Swarovski and the Slow Factory Foundation with support from the UN Office for Partnerships, which matches designers with scientists or advocates to explore solutions for various challenges; New York designer Mara Hoffman, for example, is working with workforce development programme Custom Collaborative to build a training programme for renewing garments.

The goals also raise areas to attention where the least progress is getting done. For Ayesha Barenblat, founder of the California nonprofit Remake, gender equality and opportunities for safe and inclusive employment with fair wages for all is where the fashion industry falls most short. Whether youre looking at aspiring designers or garment workers, its very unusual for an industry to be made up predominantly of women but run by men, she says. Were talking about a $3 trillion industry, but for the most part its built on degradation and poverty wages.

These issues have been documented. But Barenblat says large companies typically address them with little more than training sessions, which she calls window dressing rather than substantial change. Its more claiming the empowerment of women rather than getting to the structural issues, says Barenblat.

Some brands, though, are exploring ways to effectively address these issues, which are covered in the UN goals of gender equality, no poverty, and decent work and economic growth. US apparel and footwear brands Able and Nisolo have partnered on a campaign, the Lowest Wage Challenge, to encourage brands to share their lowest wages to boost transparency. Nudie Jeans has committed to paying workers a living wage, while apparel brand Alta Gracia runs a factory in the Dominican Republic certified by the Worker Rights Consortium to pay a living wage.

Ultimately, changing customer behaviour is necessary for many of the other efforts to succeed. Kevin Moss, global director of the nonprofit World Resources Institutes Business Center, says the goal of sustainable consumption sits at the intersection of nearly all the others. That to me is at the nexus of what people do, what people buy and the environment.

The UN describes sustainable consumption as filling peoples basic needs and improving quality of life while minimising emissions, waste, toxic materials and the use of natural resources in order to protect future generations. Its an issue that has been left out of many sustainability and development initiatives in the past. According to the international agency, worldwide material consumption reached 92.1 billion tons in 2017 a 254 per cent jump from 27 billion tons in 1970.

Jode Rodrigo de Araujo aka The Rubber Doctor in #TOGETHERBAND Voices, created by Andrew Morgan.

Andrew Morgan

The solution, he says, lies in finding models of growth that provide jobs and economic wellbeing that dont depend on selling more stuff to more people. That may include sales of more services rather than material goods; and more brands getting into resale and abandoning the model of selling only new items. Such steps will also require behaviour change on the part of consumers, but he thinks thats not unreasonable to expect, with some effort.

I don't think its innate human behaviour to want to possess more and more and more stuff. I think its been brands and industry [pushing] to make us want more, he says. Companies can play a role in shifting consumer behaviour to reverse that mentality while figuring out the business models to accommodate. If you change the model but not the behaviour, it can fail. If you change behaviour but not the business model, youll drive customers elsewhere. The trick for businesses is to be doing both at the same time. Not waiting though theyve got to do it now.

Correction: This article has been updated to reflect that Arcadia Earth is for-profit art exhibition, rather than a non-profit.

To receive the Vogue Business Sustainability Edit, sign up here.

Comments, questions or feedback? Email us at feedback@voguebusiness.com.

More from this author:

The shopping platforms that want to standardise sustainability

Amid climate crisis, fashion rethinks the runway show

How fashion can avoid blowing up the Paris Agreement

Read the original here:

The UN set 17 sustainability goals. It needs fashion's help meeting them - Vogue Business

At Domain comes a freshly uploaded press release from some lobby or other:

The chief executives of two of the nations largest retail employers have blamed incorrectly configured software as a key cause of staff underpayments, arguing this issue also often leads to businesses overpaying workers.

Rob Scott, who heads up Bunnings, Kmart and Target owner Wesfarmers, and Anthony Heraghty, the managing director of Rebel Sports parent, Super Retail Group, both pinpointed software bought from offshore vendors and not configured for Australias relatively complex labour environment as a key factor in staff being underpaid.

Theres more from businomics moraliser, Jennifrer Hewitt, at the AFR:

the furore over what the ACTU likes to call wage theft is a bizarre example of the contradictions in Australias workplace culture and absurdly complicated industrial relations system of awards and entitlements. Now those contradictions are pushing employees and employers way back into last century instead of what was supposed to be a modern era of sensible, flexible work arrangements.

Theres plenty of blame to go around. Unlike New Zealand, Australias peculiar national skill has been to maintain and build on its arcane labyrinth of award classifications, minimum rates, overtime and penalty conditions. Its enough to confuse the sharpest mathematician, let alone a small business owner or even a corporate HR department.

Investment in payroll systems and technology and the human brain cant always keep up. Underpayment in corporate Australia is more often inadvertent than deliberate, insufficiently attentive about detail rather than overly greedy about profit.

Why do the errors always favour the employer? Hmmm

It seems everybody is using the same software, too, given Fair Work has identified one in five businesses are doing it.

This is all rubbish. Wage theft is not even a glitch in the system any more. It is the system.

Academic research finally caught up to this reality late last year. Below are key excepts fromChapter 13entitledTemporary migrant workers (TMWs), underpayment and predatory business models, written by Iain Campbell:

This chapter argues that the expansion of temporary labour migration is a significant development in Australia and that it has implications for wage stagnation

Three main facts about their presence in Australia are relevant to the discussion of wage stagnation. First, there are large numbers of TMWs in Australia, currently around 1.2 million persons. Second, those numbers have increased strongly over the past 15 years. Third, when employed, many TMWs are subject to exploitation, including wage payments that fall below sometimes well below the minimum levels specified in employment regulation

One link to slow wages growth, as highlighted by orthodox economics, stems from the simple fact of increased numbers, which add to labour supply and thereby help to moderate wages growth. This chapter argues, however, that the more salient point concerns the way many TMWs are mistreated within the workplace in industry sectors such as food services, horticulture, construction, personal services and cleaning. TMW underpayments, which appear both widespread in these sectors and systemic, offer insights into labour market dynamics that are also relevant to the general problem of slow wages growth

Official stock data indicate that the visa programmes for international students, temporary skilled workers and working holiday makers have tripled in numbers since the late 1990s In all, the total number of TMWs in Australia is around 1.2 million persons. If we include New Zealand citizens and permanent residents, who can enter Australia under a special subclass 444 visa, without time limits on their stay and with unrestricted work rights (though without access to most social security payments), then the total is close to 2 million persons TMWs now make up around 6% of the total Australian workforce

Decisions by the federal Coalition government under John Howard to introduce easier pathways to permanent residency for temporary visa holders, especially international students and temporary skilled workers, gave a major impetus to TMW visa programmes.

Most international students and temporary skilled workers, together with many working holiday makers, see themselves as involved in a project of staggered or multi-step migration, whereby they hope to leap from their present status into a more long-term visa status, ideally permanent residency. One result, as temporary migration expands while the permanent stream remains effectively capped, is a lengthening queue of onshore applicants for permanent residency

Though standard accounts describe Australian immigration as oriented to skilled labour, this characterisation stands at odds with the abundant evidence on expanding temporary migration and the character of TMW jobs. It is true that many TMWs, like their counterparts in the permanent stream, are highly qualified and in this sense skilled. However, the fact that their work is primarily in lower-skilled jobs suggests that it is more accurate, as several scholars point out, to speak of a shift in Australia towards ade facto low-skilled migration programme

A focus on raw numbers of TMWs may miss the main link to slow wages growth. It is the third point concerning underpayments and predatory business models that seems richest in implications. This point suggests, first and most obviously, added drag on wages growth in sectors where such underpayments and predatory business models have become embedded. If they become more widely practised, underpayments pull down average hourly wages. If a substantial number of firms in a specific labour market intensify strategies of labour cost minimisation by pushing wage rates below the legal floor, it can unleash a dynamic of competition around wage rates that foreshadows wage decline rather than wage growth for employees

Increases in labour supply allow employers in sectors already oriented to flexible and low-wage employment, such as horticulture and food services, to sustain and extend strategies of labour cost minimisation The arguments and evidence cited above suggest a spread of predatory business models within low-wage industries.37 They suggest an unfolding process of degradation in these labour markets

And below are extracts fromChapter 14, entitledIs there a wages crisis facing skilled temporary migrants?, byJoanna Howe:

Scarcely a day goes by without another headline of wage theft involving temporary migrant workers

In this chapter we explore a largely untold story in relation to temporary migrant workersit exposes a very real wages crisis facing workers on the Temporary Skill Shortage (TSS) visa (formerly the 457 visa) in Australia. This crisis has been precipitated by the federal governments decision to freeze the salary floor for temporary skilled migrant workers since 2013the government has chosen to put downward pressure on real wages for temporary skilled migrants, thereby surreptitiously allowing the TSS visa to be used in lower-paid jobs

In Australia, these workers are employed via the TSS visa and they must be paid no less than a salary floor. This salary floor is called the Temporary Skilled Migration Income Threshold (TSMIT). TSMIT was introduced in 2009 in response to widespread concerns during the Howard Government years of migrant worker exploitation. This protection was considered important because an independent review found that many 457 visa workers were not receiving wages equivalent to those received by Australian workers

In effect, TSMIT is intended to act as a proxy for the skill level of a particular occupation. It prevents unscrupulous employers misclassifying an occupation at a higher skill level in order to employ a TSS visa holder at a lower level

TSMITs protective ability is only as strong as the level at which it is set. In its original iteration back in 2009, it was set at A$45 220. This level was determined by reference to average weekly earnings for Australians, with the intention that TSMIT would be pegged to this because the Australian government considered it important that TSMIT keep pace with wage growth across the Australian labour market. This indexation occurred like clockwork for five years. But since 1 July 2013, TSMIT has been frozen at a level of A$53 900. ..

There is now a gap of more than A$26 000 between the salary floor for temporary skilled migrant workers and annual average salaries for Australian workers. This means that the TSS visa can increasingly be used to employ temporary migrant workers in occupations that attract a far lower salary than that earned by the average Australian worker. This begs the question is the erosion of TSMIT allowing the TSS visa to morph into a general labour supply visa rather than a visa restricted to filling labour market gaps in skilled, high-wage occupations?..

But why would employers go to all the effort of hiring a temporary migrant worker on a TSS visa over an Australian worker?

Renowned Australian demographer Graeme Hugo observed that employers will always have a demand for foreign workers if it results in a lowering of their costs. The simplistic notion that employers will only go to the trouble and expense of making a TSS visa application when they want to meet a skill shortage skims over a range of motives an employer may have for using the TSS visa. These could be a reluctance to invest in training for existing or prospective staff, or a desire to move towards a deunionised workforce. Additionally, for some employers, there could be a belief that, despite the requirement that TSS visa workers be employed on equivalent terms to locals, it is easier to avoid paying market salary rates and conditions for temporary migrant workers who have been recognised as being in a vulnerable labour market position. A recent example of this is the massive underpayments of chefs and cooks employed by Australias largest high-end restaurant business, Rockpool Dining Group, which found that visa holders were being paid at levels just above TSMIT but well below the award when taking into account the amount of overtime being done

Put simply,temporarydemand for migrant workers often creates apermanentneed for them in the labour market. Research shows that in industries whereemployers have turned to temporary migrants en masse, it erodes wages and conditions in these industries over time, making them less attractive to locals

A national survey of temporary migrant workers found that 24% of 457 visa holders who responded to the survey were paid less than A$18 an hour. Not only are these workers not being paid in according with TSMIT, but they are also receiving less than the minimum wage. A number of cases also expose creative attempts by employers to subvert TSMIT. Given the challenges many temporary migrants face in accessing legal remedies, these cases are likely only scratching the surface in terms of employer non-compliance with TSMIT

Combined, then, with the problems with enforcement and compliance, it is not hard to conclude that the failure to index TSMIT is contributing to a wages crisis for skilled temporary migrant workers So the failure to index the salary floor for skilled migrant workers is likely to affect wages growth for these workers, as well as to have broader implications for all workers in the Australian labour market.

The micro-economic evidence has been overwhelming for years:

I gave up listing is all eventually.

What we are seeing is the systemic rorting of Australian workers thanks to an out of control immigration system that has rendered industrial relations ungovernable.

It is loved by the Right because it delivers fat rentiers easier profits. It is loved by the Left because its not racist. It is loved by the media because it drives property listings. It is loved by Treasury because more warm bodies boost tax receipts. It is loved by the RBA because it doesnt have to account for its housing bubble.

Australias migrant slavery economy is the core of broader weak wages growth but that doesnt matter either. The macro-economic enabler is running mass immigration into material economic slack for the first time ever:

Its not just temporary visas. It is the entire mass immigration model:

These problems have been documented by MB for years (e.g.here,hereandhere).

The first best solution to Australias wage stagnation and theft is simple: cut-off the supply to cheap foreign labour by halving immigration.

He is also a former gold trader and economic commentator at The Sydney Morning Herald, The Age, the ABC and Business Spectator. He is the co-author of The Great Crash of 2008 with Ross Garnaut and was the editor of the second Garnaut Climate Change Review.

Here is the original post:

Wage theft turns to truth theft - MacroBusiness

Tuesday, 18 February 2020, 9:25 amOpinion: Dr Nayvin Gordon

Class domination has not alwaysexisted in human society, but once established, socialhierarchy has deeply penetrated and permeated culture tocreate both implicit and explicit biases for social status,for hierarchy. Returning to an egalitarian society requiresboth systemic-institutional change and change in ourconscious and unconscious minds.

As long as classsociety has existed, it has been a social dominancehierarchy. Hierarchy is a social construct, used to justifydomination and exploitation. Myths have always been used tojustify the rule of the few over the many. Kings and Lordsmaintained that God gave them the authority to rule overpeasants. Slave-owners declared that non Christians could beenslaved. Today capitalists say that they are smarter andworked harder and thus have the right to privately ownproduction and pay workers wages. They made themselvesrulers, and then they sought to divide those whom theyruled.

The brutal economic system of slavery inAmerica required social control to prevent the unity ofblack and white labor. The slave-owners created the lies andlaws of racism. Frederick Douglas, the famous abolitionist,wrote: The hostility between the Whites and the Blacks ofthe South is easily explained. It has its root and sap inthe relation of slavery, and was incited on both sides bythe cunning of the slave masters. Those masters securedtheir ascendancy over both the poor White and the Blacks byputting enmity between them. They divided both to conquereach. The demonizing myths of racism created aculture of race hierarchy in the general population. Whenindustrial capitalism began to expand it used the racistideology to divide black and white to exploit and profitfrom the wage worker.

Today we live in a capitalisteconomy where the 1% owns controlling interest incorporations, industry, finance and land, while the 99% areexploited. A few thousand years of social hierarchy hascreated a cultural environment where it is largely acceptedas natural. It is in the air, consciously andunconsciously embedded in our culture. We generally acceptthe oppressive system of social dominance. Children as youngas six are implicitly (unconsciously) awareof status.

Social status is widely acceptedimplicitly even among those whohold egalitarian world views. Studies have shownthat status is more important thanmoney.

Significantly, social status isstrongly linked to fear in our brains emotional center.The 1% use their power to deflect and divide the 99% bypromoting stereotypes and mass propaganda to dehumanizecertain groups which impact the limbic system, theprimitive brain, with the powerful emotions of fear andhate When status is threatened the emotion offear is generated leading to hatred and violence.History reveals that when the 99% begin to organize forprogressive social change that could create more socialequality, the ruling class feels threatened.Confrontation is inevitablesince it is invariablyinitiated by the forces of reaction whosee their power threatened. A famous economist oncewrote: the most violent, mean and malignant passionsof the human breast, the Furiesof private interest.

The top down dominance ofcorporate capitalism continue to divide and subdivide the99% into those who are considered worthy and those who areless worthy --race, nation, religion, sex, immigrant, tribeand more, ad infinitum. The power systems of dominancehierarchy are built into the major institutions andorganizations of society- corporations, the state, thepolice and the military for example. It is not a few badapples, but the rotten barrel of the barrelmakers .

There are those who maintain that itis in human nature to dominate and exploitthey sayit has always been so. Nothing could be further fromthe truth. Anthropologists have repeatedlydemonstrated that humans have lived for thousands of yearsin egalitarian societies. In fact many have practicedreverse hierarchythose who sought to dominate asdespots were punished,banished or killed.

Social hierarchy is acreated oppressive social construct as isracism. It can be abolished. Socialdominance hierarchy and the fear of losing status are notinevitable. We have the potential to unite the worlds 99%and create a society of equals. It is crucial that thoseseeking to transform the political and economic systemacknowledge not only must they build a movement foreconomic, social and political equality but also struggle toovercome their own implicit hierarchical biases. If not,social hierarchy will be carried into the futurewhere leaders will become rulers whoundermine and corrupt the egalitarian world view. Historyhas clearly shown that only eternal vigilance of the rankand file mobilized against social hierarchy has thepotential to win and maintain the solidarity of anegalitarian society. We must change ourselveswhile also seeking to changesociety.

Scoop Media

Scoop Citizen Membership ScoopPro for Organisations

Continue reading here:

Class Domination, Social Hierarchy And The Fight For Equality - Scoop.co.nz

New York, NY The instigators behind the massive anti-cop subway fare protest in New York City on Jan. 31 are professors at New York University and the University of Buffalo.

The antifa group Decolonize This Place launched a social media campaign encouraging disruptive demonstrations in the New York City transit system on Jan. 31 as a reaction to the swearing in of 500 new subway cops who were sworn into the Metropolitan Transit Authority (MTA) earlier in the month.

The streets are ours. The trains our ours. The walls are ours. This moment is ours. How will you and your crew build and f--k shit up for #FTP3 on #J31 (THIS FRIDAY)? Issa mothaf--kin' movement, @decolonize_this tweeted on Jan. 28.

At the urging of Decolonize This Place, the protesters vandalized subway turnstiles and bus windows, causing more than $100,000 in damage to city property, according to the New York Post.

Campus Reform recently reported that Decolonize This Place, the group behind the violent protests, was founded in 2016 by New York University (NYU) Professor Amin Husain and University of Buffalo Professor Nitasha Dhillon.

NYUs website said that Husain teaches a class on militant activism at the university, the New York Post reported.

Husain and Dhillon were both actively involved in the Occupy Wall Street movement.

In 2012, Husain spoke at an Al-Quds Day celebration in New York City and said he was from Palestine and had fought to free Gaza.

He talked about throwing rocks and Molotov cocktails at Israeli settlers and said that hed moved to the United States for an American Dream that didnt exist.

Husain talked about the same sort of violent uprisings in 2016 at a Pro-Palestinian rally in Times Square, the New York Post reported.

The Decolonize This Place website features revolutionary manuals and a diagram that explains how to How to Shut Down the City.

The guides discuss how to overpower an opponent and have thought bubbles with the words nails, glass bottles, and masks, the New York Post reported.

"For us, decolonization necessitates abolition, the Decolonize This Place website explained. But what does abolition demand? Not only does it demand the abolition of prisons and police, bosses and borders, but as Fred Moten and Stefano Harney write, its the abolition of a society that could have prisons, that could have slavery, that could have the wage, and therefore not abolition as the elimination of anything but abolition as the founding of a new society.

Husain led a protest in 2018 and 2019 that forced the resignation of a board member of the Whitney Museum of American Art after it was revealed that a company he owned manufactured the tear gas being used at the U.S.-Mexico border, the New York Post reported.

The NYU professor uses movements such as Occupy Wall Street and the Direct Action Front for Palestine as case studies for the course he teaches at NYU.

NYU appeared not to want a close association with Husain, the New York Post reported.

Our records reflect that he is one of the thousands of part-time faculty that are hired each year by schools and academic departments, NYU Spokesman John Beckman said when asked about the militant instructor.

Husains contact information was removed from the NYU website shortly after the New York Post contacted the university for comment.

The New York Post also reported that Husain had recently scrubbed his Twitter account and removed any references to his role in the incident on Jan. 31.

Read the rest here:

NYU Professor Involved With Anti-Police Protests That Caused $100K In Damage - Blue Lives Matter

MOUNT PLEASANT, S.C. (WCBD) Democratic presidentialcandidate Tom Steyer spoke one-on-one with News 2s Brad Franko to discuss hiscampaign and performance in the Palmetto State.

Recent polls from Real Clear Politics shows Steyer is now among the top three democratic candidates for president in South Carolina.

But is South Carolina the end-all-be-all for his campaign? Steyer says diversity is key and feels his campaign is appealing to everybody across the spectrum.

Nevada and South Carolina are the first two states that arediverse, he said. There are a lot of black people and there are a lot of Latinos,a lot of Asian Americans, Native Americans as well as white people. I know thatanybody, who wants to put together a coalition of democrats needs to appeal to everybodyacross the spectrum and if anybody wants to beat Donald Trump in November of2020, then they have got to be able to relate to those people and have everyoneshow up to the polls in November.

Steyer admitted that South Carolina has special importance. Itabsolutely does, and Ive said that for a long time.

Running for president is a cutthroat process. Recently in South Carolina, a newspaper talked about Steyers financial investment in the state and a former party chairman said what he is doing isnt investing but paying people off.

What were doing in South Carolina, we have the most peopleon the ground of anybody in South Carolina. If you call hiring people andpaying them for doing work, paying people off I think thats what they callthe American way in fact, we have a diverse group of people, take a lookwhose working for us, who is endorsing me, if youre asking people to do workfor you, to do community organizing Im a community organizer, I know thebest way to do community organizing the only really effective way is havepeople go into those communities that they are a part of and that they know.So, the idea of paying people off; people are doing work and so they getpaid. Thats entirely appropriate andthats the way community organizing works.

He went on to say, My wife moved to South Carolina for goodness sakes. My being on the ground more than any other candidate, our having a bigger group of people working on the ground than anyone else, the fact that Im the only candidate that will say he or she is for reparations for slavery, the fact that Im talking honestly about race, willing to take on Mr. Trump on the economy, saying I think his economic policies stink for working people and I can show it. Im talking about a completely different kind of economy with a much higher minimum wage; a tax cut of 10% for everybody who makes less than $250K and the creation of over four and a half million good-paying union jobs across the county to rebuild it in a climate-smart way I think what Im doing in South Carolina is resonating because in fact people can get a chance to see me, see who I am, see who my family is, they can listen to me and know that what I am talking about is a real-world and its much better than this kind of Mar-a-Lago economy that Mr. Trump has been promoting.

The South Carolina Democratic Primary will be held on Saturday,February 29th.

Read more:

Democratic presidential candidate Tom Steyer speaks one-on-one with News 2 - WCBD News 2

Donald Trump addresses supporters at a rally in central Pennsylvania in May 2019. (Drew Angerer / Getty Images)

Subscribe now for as little as $2 a month!

The Democratic nomination contest is at a pivotal point, especially for the left. Progressive issues are ascendant, moderate candidates are vote-splitting, Bernie Sanders tops the polls, and Elizabeth Warren just had a very strong debate performance in Nevada. And yet despite the tantalizing proximity of progressive victory, there remains a glaring hole at the heart of the lefts strategy: the failure to prioritize the fight against white nationalism and racial resentmentthe sources of this presidents power, and the cornerstones of capitalisms structural inequality.Ad Policy

If the structural change that Warren espouses and the political revolution that Sanders champions dont explicitly address the racial realities that lie at the heart of this country, then their movements could fail to inspire the kind of transformation the candidates say they want. My research has found thatnearly half of Democratic voters are people of color, and a dramatic drop-off in African American turnout in 2016 was a principal factor in Hillary Clintons defeat. Conveying the urgency of the fight against white supremacy could be critical to propelling the kind of turnout that will help Democrats win in November.

Donald Trump is obviously unlike any president we have seen in a long time. Trump, who famously said he could shoot somebody on New Yorks Fifth Avenue and not lose any voters, seems to defy the laws of political gravity. But many fail to appreciate what has kept him afloat.

White identity politics are at the foundation of the United Statesenshrined in slavery starting in 1619 and codified at the nations conception, with the passage of the 1790 Naturalization Act restricting citizenship to free white persons. Typically, political appeals to white racial resentment have come in more implicit and coded dog whistles, such as Ronald Reagans demonization of black welfare queens. It has been a long time since someone with Trumps stature openly and unapologetically embraced the racist right wing; many might have assumed it would be political suicide to brand Mexican immigrants rapists, enact bans on Muslim immigration, or whip up a xenophobic mob chanting, Build the wall! Trumps speech and policies have unleashed deep wells of racial resentment, and myriad academic studiesmost of them ignored by Democratic consultants and leadershave shown that this is a motivating factor for many of his supporters. (I have started a list of these studies here.) The engine driving the Trump machine is white supremacy.Related Article

Despite this, the most progressive candidates in this race have spent far more time critiquing other, more moderate candidates and supposedly race-neutral aspects of Trumps time in office, such as his tax cuts for the rich, than they have fighting white nationalism. (Ironically, moderate Joe Biden may be the only one who has directly refuted Trump on this point: One of his early campaign ads challenged the presidents 2017 defense of the white supremacists in Charlottesville, Virginia.) Warren and Sanders are correct to decry the rise of corporate interests within the Democratic Party. Its admirable to fight for a higher minimum wage, universal health care, and aggressive action to save the planet from climate catastrophe. But in doing so, both progressive voting groups and candidates like Warren and Sanders are missing the strategic and moral imperative of reframing this election.

With upcoming primaries in the more diverse states of the South and Southwest, candidates are starting to bump up issues pertaining to voters of color. Yet none of the remaining candidates have made Trumps drive to make America white again a centerpiece of their campaign. This would go beyond talking about issues that resonate with communities of color. It would require ably and enthusiastically countering Trumps vision of a white America with what it really is: a proudly multiracial country. When progressive candidates fail to call out Trumps appeals to white racial resentmentor to match the force with which he makes themtheyre allowing him to reap the benefits, without paying the price.

The default playbook for too many Democrats is to talk around white supremacy, usually for fear of turning off white voters. But there is compelling evidence that the best way to blunt racist dog-whistling is to call it out. In her 2001 book The Race Card, Princeton political scientist Tali Mendelberg revealed how Republicans use of coded racial messages, and their impact on voters, lost power when the implicit was made explicit. In studying voluminous survey data on the 1988 presidential elections when George H. W. Bush used ads about Willie Hortonan African American who committed a crime after being released from prisonMendelberg noted that Democrats feared that if they [spoke] explicitly about race they [would] lose crucial white votes. But her research found the opposite to be true: when campaign discourse is clearly about racewhen it is explicitly racialit has the fewest racial consequences for white opinion. Even Trump usually prefers to talk about a border wall than about the pro-white immigration agenda advanced by Stephen Miller, one the White Houses most enthusiastic white supremacists.Current Issue

Subscribe today and Save up to $129.

The through line between this Novembers election and the long-term goal of transforming this unequal nation should be an agenda that speaks to the pain so many Americans feel: the pain rooted in the racial wealth gap. The average white family now has more than 10 times the wealth of the average black family, and 7.5 times that of the average Latino family. That is a direct consequence of centuries of public policies that have sanctioned white wealth creation by seizing land from indigenous people, importing Africans to do backbreaking unpaid labor, and exploiting Mexican and Central American farm workerstopped off by government-sanctioned racial discrimination in housing and hiring.

Although its not widely discussed, Republicans are, in fact, experiencing some blowback from Trumps actionsespecially from white-collar suburban voters who gave Trump a chance in 2016 but defected to the Democrats in 2018, contributing to the Democratic takeover of the House and seven previously Republican-held governors offices. Groups and leaders on the left have an opportunity, and an obligation, to push their preferred candidates to lead on the fight over Americas racial identity. Warrens and Sanderss speeches are replete with references to Wall Street, big corporations, and corruption in Washington, DC. Although both have been critical of Trumps deportation policies and ICE, they have not distinguished themselves in a field of candidates who tiptoe around the issue of immigrationeven though children are still in cages at our nations borderand dance away from reparations, ignoring the gargantuan racial wealth gap that cleaves the fabric of our society. None of the candidates onstage in Las Vegas on Wednesday even mentioned immigration until late in the evening. It was clearly not top of mind, even in a state as Latino as Nevada.

It is still not too late for these candidates to course-correct. There are at least three concrete steps that progressives could take to make a meaningful difference:

Forge a united front to demand that the Democratic nominee choose a person of color as their vice presidential pick. For all the appeal of hoping Sanders and Warren would team up, an all-white ticket is not what will inspire and mobilize the most racially diverse electorate in the history of this country. None of the current candidates have been willing to make this commitment, and a chorus of voices from the left on this issue could push them do so.

If you like this article, please give today to help fund The Nations work.

Create a common war room to drive the narrative about this administration and its enablers white-supremacist priorities. Progressive and left groups could each dedicate staffers to this joint effort, which could provide tools, information, and coordination for activists. This could lead to creative, attention-getting actions in cities across the country, exposing both the presidential reelection campaign and key Senate elections as the referendums on whiteness that they are.

Launch a joint petition to demand a Democratic campaign budget and plan that reflect the actual demographics of the voters they need to reach. The default focus of much Democratic spending remains on running television or digital ads targeting white swing voters. The organizations and committees in the Democratic ecosystem typically spend significantly more than $1 billion in a presidential election year; a coalition of progressive groups could demand that half of those funds go toward organizing and turning out the vote in communities of color.

The black Marxist author Manning Marable wrote in 1985 that at the heart of the American experience is a series of crimes: the violent theft of the land itself, the violent theft of millions of people from Africa and their subsequent bondage as chattel, the bloody conquest of the Southwest from Mexico, and the government-sponsored war on Native Americans. That series of crimes has created the conditions which the left is now working to transform. But during this campaign, they have done it wearing racial blinders. That could lead them to failure. The resurgent progressive movement could both win this electionand lay the foundations for a better societyby tackling the existential threat that white supremacy poses to this countrys social contract and democratic institutions. It is not too late, but the clock is ticking.

Visit link:

If Progressives Want to Win, They'll Have to Talk About White Supremacy - The Nation

The competition for the Democratic presidential nomination has become a focus of political life in the United States. For revolutionaries debating how to view this campaign, we must answer the following questions: What is the class character of the Sanders movement? What is the potential impact of the Sanders movement on the worldwide interests of the working class and the oppressed? How can this development lead to a broader revolutionary upsurge in the heart of the U.S. empire? From there we must chart a plan of action.

Character and context of Sanders movement

The rejuvenation of social democracy and liberal reformism, most notably in the rise of the left in the Democratic Party, comes as a response to the decline of the U.S. empire and the inability of the U.S. capitalist economy to provide decent, well-paying jobs to a majority of the working class.

On one hand, the Peoples Republic of China has risen as a clear economic and geopolitical challenge to U.S. imperialist world domination. On the other, the U.S. remains plagued by endless imperialist war, mass incarceration, low wages, enormous debt, underemployment, sexual and gender-based violence, and outbursts of racist, fascist terror. A major financial collapse looms, threatening to finally reveal the weaknesses of the real economy and then unleash a deeper ruling-class assault on workers quality of life.

In struggle against neoliberal economic terrorism by U.S. banks and corporations and their client states, our class has taken to the streets across the world. Tens of millions have fought against austerity and the capitalist ruling class in Chile, Ecuador, Haiti, France, Colombia and elsewhere; hundreds of millions if India is included. The desperate attempts of the U.S. empire to maintain its stranglehold on the world economy have caused anti-imperialist reactions in Iraq, Iran, Venezuela and Palestine.

The unifying issue of this global struggle is the declining prospects for working-class youth who live in capitalist societies. A multinational youth movement has identified neoliberal capitalism as its primary enemy. In some ways, the second presidential campaign of Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders gets its popular energy from and provides a voice for part of the U.S. wing of this working-class youth movement.

The viability of any reformist movement like the Sanders campaign, in the face of a weakening global capitalist system, can be debated. Can social democracy and progressive reformism be revived? Insecure about maintaining its profits in a capitalist economy that is declining relative to other world powers, the U.S. ruling class has increased its exploitation of the working class, taking an ever larger proportion of the wealth the workers produce.

Without the material basis provided by the expansion of U.S. imperialism and its reaping of superprofits, any rebirth of social democracy would find it difficult to deliver meaningful benefits to the workers, even should it win an election. What is needed instead is a movement that seeks nothing short of the end of capitalism.

Ruling class attacks Sanders

Earlier this month, Sanders said: In many respects, we are a socialist society today. Donald Trump, before he was president, as a private businessperson, he received $800 million in tax breaks and subsidies to build luxury housing in New York. The difference between my socialism and Trumps socialism is I believe the government should help working families, not billionaires. (Axios, Feb. 9)

As communists, we are well aware that Sanders holds political positions we cant support: his lack of solidarity with international anti-imperialist struggles, his lack of support for reparations for slavery along with Black Lives Matter, his vitriolic attack on pro-socialist leaders like Hugo Chvez and Nicols Maduro in Venezuela, his support for laws criminalizing sex workers and much more.

Sanders program is more like Lyndon Johnsons War on Poverty in the mid-1960s or Franklin Roosevelts New Deal in the 1930s. Sanders social democracy is only seen as a radical socialist project because the U.S. ruling class has imposed such right-wing, pro-capitalist ideology and programs on the population.

The U.S. ruling class may own finance capital, oil, pharmaceutical giants and the health profit industry, be landlords or real estate investors, own big data, agriculture and/or other sectors. Their slightly different specific interests are reflected by the two parties, the Democrats and the Republicans.

Most big capitalists, however, are overjoyed with Trumps transfer of wealth to their pockets. Others may see Trump as a loose cannon and consider Joe Biden, Michael Bloomberg or another politician as more competent to protect and expand their interests. Yet they all unite against Sanders, not just because of the potential impact on their profits, but because they fear a greater social movement could develop that will call into question the elites plunder and profit.

Thus, we can expect anti-communist attacks against Sanders to continue to escalate if his campaign continues to gain steam. This red-baiting must be met with an active campaign to popularize real socialism, one that goes beyond Sanders deflective statement (in the Axios quote) about how socialism already exists for the rich.

Our movement must unequivocally defend the necessity of socialism and the obvious, documented superiority of workers ownership of the means of production, paired with planning that prioritizes human needs and the life of the Earth over profits.

Internationalism is a necessity, not an inconvenience

Along with the red-baiting, the attacks on Sanders from pro-Israeli forces similar to the outrageous attacks on former Labor Party leader Jeremy Corbyn by the British media will continue. This is even though Sanders limits his statements on Palestine to support for basic human rights.

Sanders himself is Jewish. Yet this will not stop the attacks on him for alleged anti-Semitism simply because he doesnt give full backing to Israels murderous campaign to annihilate the Palestinian people. These attacks must be met by a strong, anti-racist movement in defense of the Palestinian peoples right to exist, from the river to the sea.

Sanders claims to be against U.S. wars in Iraq and beyond, yet his voting record doesnt reflect that. Sanders support for U.S. imperialism must be fought by those who wish to see his domestic program be successful. The domestic and foreign policies of the empire are directly connected. Both policies are about the balance of power between the oppressed and the oppressor.

While liberal politicians may fear taking anti-war positions, socialists must expose the foreign policy of the empire as directed by the needs of capitalism. Ruthless sanctions and murder must be contested in the name of international solidarity and the survival of the more than 7.5 billion people in the world threatened by the most violent ruling elite ever, based in Wall Street and Washington.

Our struggle, that of the working class in the U.S., is primarily against the U.S. billionaires, not against other countries. The strategy of revolutionary defeatism to defeat our own ruling class as expressed by V.I. Lenin during World War I, should be elementary for revolutionaries and must be learned by a resurgent left that, for too long, has been infected by bourgeois pro-war propaganda.

We must also learn how to resist the imperialist attacks on China, Venezuela, Iran, Cuba, the Democratic Peoples Republic of Korea and beyond. Working-class internationalism and solidarity with the oppressed are central to our long-term goal of socialist revolution.

Allies of the U.S. working class abroad may view the election of Sanders as a victory against the empire. A Sanders victory could open serious struggles over the need to dismantle the U.S. empire in order to save the planet, to rebuild the global economy and to pay reparations to those dispossessed by the U.S.

To the extent, however, that Sanders gives public support for closed borders, sanctions, U.S. air strikes and other measures, this would alienate his popular base a base he would have to rely upon to beat back the inevitable attacks from the right. This contradiction could give rise to a greater level of struggle.

Elections: A barometer or an organizing tool?

As revolutionaries, we know that socialist transformation is necessary for humanity and to sustain life on Earth, and we know this transformation cannot come about by using the masters tools described in the U.S. Constitution. Rather, we view capitalist elections as a limited survey of the attitudes of the multinational working class and the other classes in U.S. society. Every four years, about 55 percent of the voting-age population with a greater proportion of voters from the less oppressed and older sectors of the working class choose a president from either of the two major parties, both of which are owned and operated by the capitalists.

Sanders campaign has attempted to use the Democratic Party to raise issues in the interests of the working class. Many Democratic Socialists of America members view the Sanders campaign, and electoral politics more generally, as the primary channel to engage and radicalize the working class. This is unlike the period from the 1930s to the 1970s when the left looked toward the labor movement or other social movements as the centers of politicization and class identity development.

The argument of DSA and other left groups that have worked alongside the Sanders campaign is that the campaign a shortcut to building mass consciousness. Many young activists have hit the streets in the name of the Sanders campaign to promote classwide solidarity against the billionaire ruling class and to try to win supporters to their socialist organization.

Ruling-class ideology insists that the primary arena of politics is bourgeois elections, particularly national elections for president. Thus, when the left plans a political strategy, the question of whether to run in elections is a question of what is the most effective type of mass organizing that can build revolutionary socialist consciousness.

The Sanders campaign has prioritized the central tenet of the Occupy movement from the last decade: the struggle of the 99% versus the 1%. Sanders has put forth stronger positions on racial justice, migrant rights and many other policies that reflect the hard work of organizers in peoples movements.

Sanders 2016 primary campaign took on the right-wing establishment Democratic Party and had a major impact in winning thousands of new people to socialist organizations. The DSA and others have joined this years campaign with the goal of recruiting new members and pushing the campaign to the left, riding the wave and seeing where they will end up.

What happens when or if the DNC steals the nomination from Sanders? Will organizations to the left of the Democratic Party still insist on voting Blue no matter who? Will there be a political fracture in which the Sanders movement, even despite the refusal of Sanders himself, decides to make a dirty break from the Democratic Party and form a new socialist electoral third party?

What if Sanders were to get the nomination and then win the election against Trump? Who will defend him from the wrath of the capitalists and a stock market that could be in free fall? Will a mass movement emerge and move in a more radical direction, emboldened by the results?

Will the mirage of capitalist democracy be revealed as a fraud? Will that demoralize the masses or radicalize them?

While the fate of the Sanders movement is yet to unfold, the most pressing question for revolutionary socialists may be: What is the most effective way to agitate, educate and organize this Sanders movement into an anti-imperialist, anti-capitalist, revolutionary movement?

Which road to socialism?

Workers World Party believes that the goal of revolutionary parties when entering capitalist electoral politics should be to advance a revolutionary program in order to shatter illusions of capitalist democracy and win broad working-class support. The Democratic Party in the past has been the graveyard of social movements. Still, bourgeois political campaigns can reflect and show the significance of peoples movements.

The question of critical support for or independence from the Sanders movement is one we plan to answer through action. We will attend Sanders campaign rallies in order to meet this movement and push for revolutionary socialism. We will be in the streets with this movement, raising demands that speak to young people looking for revolutionary change. We look at this development with revolutionary optimism and we will study it closely.

WWP is still considering how to intervene in the 2020 presidential campaign. We will definitely run a major ideological campaign, entitled Which road to socialism? With this effort, we will put forth our revolutionary socialist perspective in a wide variety of ways. We will organize regular discussion groups in our branches across the country to engage these questions, all the while reaching out to the Sanders movement and those to its left to discuss the contradictions of social democracy and attempt to win people to fight for revolutionary socialism.

We will challenge the weaknesses of Sanders movement and push it in a revolutionary direction, not by being sectarian or opportunist, but by waging an honest ideological and mass struggle that speaks to the needs of the working class and the oppressed to go further.

Even moderate social reforms can take place only under the pressure of mass movements in the streets and in our workplaces. Real revolutionary socialism, including the seizure and liberation of private property in the means of production, cannot occur by amending the U.S. Constitution. It must be the result of a worldwide mass movement that uses various tactics and strategies to defeat capitalist rule.

With this in mind, we will launch a series of mobilizations to fight the racist, anti-worker policies of the Trump administration. That the Democratic Party has enabled these policies for example, the U.S. sanctions that have terrorized hundreds of millions of people on the planet will expose the imperialist character of both parties.

Currently we are working with hundreds of organizations to launch an international campaign against U.S. sanctions, entitled Sanctions Kill. Campaigns like this allow us to connect with those directly impacted by U.S. sanctions passed by Democrats and Republicans. We will mobilize on May Day to unite the movements against capitalism, imperialism, racism and all the crimes of this system with a show of solidarity on this socialist-inspired, international day of struggle.

We will continue to mobilize against U.S. imperialism in all its manifestations, as part of our devotion to our worldwide class. We will continue to organize for the most oppressed of our class for incarcerated workers, for political prisoners, for low-wage workers, for people with disabilities, for the homeless, for those oppressed because of gender or gender expression or national origin, and for migrants and refugees all with the goal of building a broadly popular communist party steeled in combat and the day-to-day struggles of our class.

Finally, we will use this election to push for real democracy. While this election may be seen as a referendum on Trumps social and economic policies, we will push to make this election a referendum on the crimes of capitalism. Imagine, a peoples referendum in which we vote with our feet, by withholding our labor and by fighting for a real future, a socialist society.

More here:

A revolutionary view of the Sanders campaign - Workers World

Like you do, perhaps. Our societies means Anglo ones: America, Britain, Australia perhaps. You can judge for yourself if your society is on the list. What underlies all this? How did we get here? To things like today: a fresh-faced new government advisor supports eugenics, because he thinks minorities are genetically inferiorall of which, of course, isa literal form of genocide as defined by the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court. He was hired.by the wayfor hisblog comments. What the? What on earth?Genocide stalking the halls of powerby way of the comments section?

Such stuff isnt just horrific. Its surreal and absurd.It makes the jaw drop like a stone and the head spin in whiplash. Its now just as if we now live in a dystopia written by pedophiles, wannabe basement-dwelling fascists, militant authoritarians, men who put kids in camps, silent majorities who shrug at it all, elites who wonder what the problem is, billionaires who profit in glee at all the above, and other assorted forms of human failurewe do. But I digress.

When I look at our societies, I see three obvious patterns. They tell me our societies arent going to make it. Not just because, well, those patterns are therebut also because as societies we dont seem capable of understanding or acknowledging theyre therewe wont own up, confront, recognize, admit them. All that put together is the stuff of something very much like an inevitable social collapse. How do you treat a patient who wont admit how sick he really is? My patterns link the hard stuff to the soft stuff economics, politics, society, to values, priorities, what we genuinely consider worthy. They are subtle things. Theyre aboutwhywe make and go on making the astonishingly foolish choices we do.

The first thing I see when I look at our societies is a pattern of staggering economic mismanagement.How is it that we had endless money for wars, for aggression, for intelligence agencies to launch covert plots to install dictators (Im not making that up), for rage, for violence? For bank bailout? But none to bail outthe working class, the middle class, the average family? How is it that hedge funds get endless free money from the government, every single nanosecond of every single day but literally a full half of American work low-wage jobs? What the? You see what I mean by staggering economic mismanagement.

And yet elites, as a whole, refuse to own up to this.Just today I saw Barack Obama tweeting how successful his economic policies were. Sorry, reality says the opposite: 75% of Americans struggle to pay the bills, 80% cant raise a tiny amount for an emergency, incomes have stagnated for decades. Hardly the stuff of an economic miracle. But when Barack says it, you probably believe it. I get it. Hes a nice guy. His heart is in the right place. But thats not enough to create a working society, much less economy. Every pattern Ill speak about is a hidden one we refuse, as a society, to own up to it. And so what can we do about it?

Underlying that pattern of staggering economic mismanagement is a set of values.We value, as a society, violence, cruelty, aggression, hostility, over and above everything else, especially their opposites: kindness, decency, gentleness. What kind of society do those values build? Can they yield anything but the dystopia we live in?

The second pattern I see when I look at our societies is a history of shocking institutional failure, built on moral degradation.Were the societies who built an international slave trade. We literally plundered a continent for its people, and made them our slaves. We then put them to work, and created the kind of society so horrific that escapees were hunted down by informers and police. Can you imagine? Or have you blocked it all out?

(Go ahead and tell me what moral atrocity ranks up there with building a centuries long slave trade that engulfed the planet. But morality isnt, as we think, a thing of no consequences, a thing to have on a Sunday, and then forget about on Monday. That is our big mistake, perhaps our biggest.)

That history of horror shapes us to this very day: it deprived us of ever being able to build the institutions of a functioning modern democracy.Why are we literally the only societies in the rich world without working healthcare, education, retirement, and so on? Why do what of those we have degrade by the day? Because the residue of slavery haunts us: too many (white) people think: I wont invest in them! Theyre dirty, filthy subhumans! Why, their grandparents were my grandparents slaves! Maybe they dont say it. But they certainly think it. Its hardly a coincidence the societies which pioneered the global slave trade and then segregation are today the ones without decent public goods, which require a whole society to cooperate, and accept one another as equals. Its a relationship. Slavery and segregation were to mean that America would never develop any functioning modern social systems, really.

And yet that thread of institutional failure, too, we refuse to accept and own up to.When have you seen the obvious link above discussed seriously that a) public healthcare, retirement, college, childcare etc are what make a society civilized, and b) our barbarisms long hangover is what prevented us ever becoming a civilized society? I havent ever, really. Maybe its hinted at, or intimated. Maybe we go so far as condemning our brutal and sordid past. But we dont really own up to the social consequences of our history of horrific immorality: that such immorality had profound real-world effects. It left us institutionally stunted, underdeveloped, broken, unable to treat each other like human beings.But societies who cant build institutions to treat each other like human beings can scarcely ever progress beyond exploitation, abuse, authoritarianism, tribalism, and hate. Wait isnt that exactly where were trapped?

The third pattern I see is a kind of shattering mismanagement of social norms and expectations. Who else in the world denies their neighbors things like healthcare, education, and retirement? Nobody especially nobody in societies that have the means. Yet we do. Why is that? Why are we so indifferent to each other? So cruel, so aggressive, so hostile?

Probably because we are too busy teaching our kids, and each other, that the only point in life is something like this: to be more competitive than the next person, so you can accumulate more stuff than them, so you can make them envious, so you can feel supreme. The point of life isnt to care for your neighbour, to do great and beautiful things, to write a world-changing book or make a life-changing discovery its to make more money. Why? Because thats how you show you are strong. And weakness is death. Because only the strong deserve to survive, after all.Capitalism and patriarchy and supremacy intertwine to make the survival of the fittest our deepest and only true moral law.

Thats what I mean by a kind of shattering mismanagement of social norms and expectations. Weve internalized that value, most of us: that the weak deserve to perish, and the strong survive. We might not think we have, and we might not say we do, but our actions belie us. We grin at our reality shows and long for our perfect pecs and boobs and sigh wistfully over this billionaire or that celebrity. My God! Arent they a perfect person? Well happily spend a small fortune on the plastic stuff of self-aggrandization. But invest in healthcare or retirement for all? LOL.

So we go on dehumanizing ourselves, and everyone around us, as a necessary consequence. We buy into the systems of our own undoing. Sorry, you arent good enough, pretty enough, tough enough, mean enough, selfish enough. Youre just not competitive enough to make it, son. We dont value things like gentleness and humanity and decency not really. Theyre a sure way to get fired or demeaned or picked on or bullied, if you dare to show them, really. The storys the same, from grade school to working life.

Weve become societies of bullies, in other words. But societies of bullies are also societies of cowards.And that cowardice is easy to see. Were happy to call out celebrities for using the wrong pronoun. But calling men who puts kids in cages fasciststhats over the line. Were happy to spend hours a day on Facebookwhich makes us feel miserable and unhappyand who do we take our fury out on? Each other and ourselves, mostly. We dont stick up for people much. We dont put ourselves on the line. Why bother, when the stakes or life or death? Ah, but that is the precise moment we accept that rule of the strong over the weak, too. Cowards and bullies, united in predation.

Were the worlds great materialists, and materialist individualism of this kind has been our downfall.It has led us, through greed and selfishness, to settle for the moral law that the strong should survive, and the weak perish. What other destination can materialist individualism yield? When enough of us say: the only that counts in life is my happiness, and my happiness is a function of how much stuff I havethen by definition, our society cant be a place that has things like healthcare, retirement, education. We cant really have a democracy, in which equality, freedom, and justice are valued. We cant have a society in which things like inherent self-worth exist and are given by all to all.Societies of bullies and cowards, competing to accumulate more things they cant afford in the first place, like the ones weve become, are doomed to exploit and abuse and prey on each other all the way down the abyss. And that is where we are self-evidently heading, fast.

Let me sum up my thre patterns.We mismanaged our economies, because we valued violence and aggression and cruelty over simply, gently, wisely, investing in each other. We mismanaged our institutions and moral possibilities because we valued comfortable denial and numbing complicity and dim-witted pleasure over growth, forgiveness, self-understanding, the struggle of becoming something truer and better, the test of maturity. We mismanaged our societies because we chose individualism and competitiveness and greed over cooperation and fellowship and generosity. Those choices have now caught up with us. How are we to unmake them?

Those patterns outlive any one leader.Or party. Or institution. They are so, so deep in us its hard to see what could excise or extricate them. They are inoperable tumours of the soul, not just little flaws in the mind. They arent simple or easy or straightforward to understand much less transcend. Is there a blade sharp enough to cut them out of us?

That is why I dont think our societies have much of a future, my friends.Societies dont often rise to the challenge of reinventing their foundational values, their defining sets of priorities. Rome was brought down by its callousness and hunger for empire in the end. Soviet Russia, by its craving for power and control.

What about us?I dont think that we are going to transcend what by now are so visibly our foundational values: hostility, aggression, cruelty, violence, selfishness, greed, individualism, materialism, pleasure-seeking over truth-telling. They seem to be the only things we really, genuinely care about as societies, cultures, people. Give enough of us enough of those and there is no level of degradation and despair we wont settle for. And so I think the real story of our collapse is that those old, old values are toppling us, eroding our foundations, while corroding our pinnacles. And we are becoming dust in historys wind. Perhaps, in the end, that is all we deserved.

(Umair Haque writes for Eudaimonia and Co where this perspective was first posted.)

-cw

See more here:

This is What a Society Without a Future Looks Like - City Watch

Kentucky is known for its bourbon, but whats often forgotten is the long history of black distillers in the state. Husband and wife Sean and Tia Edwards plan to put black-owned distilleries back on the map.

Growing up in Kentucky, Sean helped his uncle and grandfather bootleg alcohol by collecting and cleaning bottles on the weekends. He told the story at a gathering to announce the new distillery in remembrance of his uncle, who died a few months earlier.

I was always fascinated about the making of alcohol, he said to the crowd.

Sean registered Fresh Bourbon Distilling Co. in 2017 as a premier, African-American-owned Bourbon brand. The companys products are mashed, fermented, distilled, matured and later bottled entirely in Kentucky. For now, their recipes are being produced under a contract with Hartfield & Co. Distillery, in Paris, Ky.

For nearly three years, we have been diligently developing an authentic and unique Bourbon and spirits line. We chose not to buy Bourbon from someone else and just place our name on a bottle, Sean Edwards said in a release. We have been very intentional and deliberate in crafting our spirits from the mash bills up and also our Fresh Bourbon team, including in selecting our master distiller. We are excited to share with the world what we have created with the world.

The master distiller, whose name has not been announced, will reportedly be the first black master distiller in Kentucky after slavery.

Bourbon is a mainstay of Kentuckys economy, and I am thrilled to see this step toward greater inclusivity in this iconic industry, said Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear in the release. Creating opportunities for all Kentuckians is essential, and our administration aims to pave the way for progress. I sincerely thank Fresh Bourbon Distilling Co. for choosing to build its distillery in our state.

The Kentucky Economic Development Finance Authority (KEDFA) approved a 10-year incentive agreement in December with Fresh Bourbon. In exchange for creating and maintaining 15 full-time jobs for Kentucky residents over 10 years with benefits and an hourly wage of $18, the company will receive up to $200,000 in tax incentives.

Customers can taste the spirits from the distillery planned for Lexington's Distillery District in late 2020.

Read more from the original source:

Meet the husband and wife team behind Kentucky's first black-owned distillery - The Hill

The government is in the dark about the scale of worker exploitation across the UK, Britains employment tsar has warned.

We are to a certain extent in the dark about the scale of these issues, Matthew Taylor said. We dont know enough about whats going on.

Speaking exclusively to Yahoo Finance UK, he said he hoped to launch one of the most far-reaching studies on the issue later this year. If it happens, it really will be a game-changer, he said.

Read more: Taylor warns EU migration curbs could fuel people smuggling

Taylor was appointed as the governments interim director of labour market enforcement last year, after carrying out the Taylor Review of the gig economy.

The role involves overseeing several UK agencies that enforce workers rights covering everything from minimum wage payment to modern slavery cases.

His comments come as the government confirmed on Tuesday it will continue naming and shaming employers who under-pay the minimum wage, though only for sums above 500.

While more data is needed, official research suggests workers are particularly at risk of exploitation in sectors such as agriculture, care, construction and car washes.

Taylor told Yahoo Finance UK he wants the government to do more to educate workers on their rights, rather than focusing mainly on punishing badly behaved employers.

The former adviser to ex-prime minister Tony Blair said employment rights were a job for society as a whole and hopes workers can be empowered to speak up when they see violations.

The comments come after research last month suggested hundreds of thousands of people were being paid below minimum wage. A study by the Resolution Foundation think tank said calculating the exact number was difficult if not impossible, but estimated it was more than 350,000 people.

Read more: High earners and wealthy face tax hikes in UK budget

In an interview in his government office in London last month, Taylor said he welcomed the research and admitted the government need to be more proactive in enforcing rights. The think tanks analysis of a single month suggested HMRC caught only 1,500 out of around 11,000 underpaying firms.

However, Taylor said many were unintentional, very small-scale breaches, such as employers failing to immediately increase pay when minimum wage rates rise.

People need to be aware thats not 11,000 bosses rubbing their hands going, How can I not pay poor people the minimum wage.

Enforcement has also improved and budgets increased, Taylor argued, saying an awful lot more firms would breach minimum wage law without HMRCs investigations. Employers were fined a record 17m ($22m) in 2018-19.

Taylor backed reforms to help workers know their rights. (PA)

Taylor noted government agencies look at an enormously wide spectrum of labour issues, from workers buying their own uniforms to forced labour by organised crime gangs.

The slightly depressing thing is some of these problems have been around for quite a long time, Taylor said.

The jobs tsar said he would welcome stronger penalties for companies that break the rules, and backed the revived naming-and-shaming scheme. However, he admitted current resources were not commensurate with the problem, but said they could be better used through wider reform.

Taylor, also chief executive of the RSA charity, backs current government plans to roll different enforcement teams into a new employment body. Its focus should be not just...catching bad people doing bad things, but also empowering workers and encouraging firms to do the right thing.

More government guidance could have an enormous impact, Taylor said. Officials should educate workers, firms, unions and trade bodies on common issues, such as pay entitlements for carers when traveling between jobs or security guards expected to arrive early for shifts.

Story continues

His approach appears to be gaining traction. The government vowed on Tuesday to make its online advice more accessible, provide thematic guidance and even visit new firms to educate them on minimum wage law.

From April, employers will also have to give contractors a statement of their rights on day one in a reform proposed by Taylor, encouraging workers to highlight issues themselves.

Taylor also welcomed a government advertising campaign to raise awareness over holiday pay, a major issue in the UK. About 1.8 million people do not receive holiday pay owed, and a recent survey found widespread confusion over the entitlements of temporary, shift, agency and zero-hour workers.

Non-payment of holidays should be seen as minimum wage infringement for the lowest-paid, Taylor said, allowing HMRCs 500-strong minimum wage enforcement team to tackle the issue.

Ultimately though, Taylor thinks public support and awareness is needed to successfully enforce workers rights.

Taylor pointed to the smoking ban, introduced in 2007 when he was part of Blairs government. The ban worked because everyone accepted the principle, Taylor said.

Similarly, employment rights are a job for society as a whole, not just for enforcement agencies.

I cant ever envisage a world where there are enough people to visit every single business every single year, he said.

Read the rest here:

Jobs tsar: Government 'in the dark' on exploitation at work - Yahoo Finance UK

May 9 marks the 220th anniversary of this great abolitionists birth. This article was originally published in Workers World on Sept. 14, 2006.

Many historians agree that the Civil War really started on a flat patch of land known as Bloody Kansas 150 years ago, in the spring, summer and on into the autumn of 1856.

A depiction of John Brown moments before execution, Dec. 2, 1859.

This area of land covering some 82,000 square miles now sits at the geographic center of the continental United States. It rarely gets national attention these days, and when it does its usually for reactionary developments, like the effort to ban evolution from the public schools science curriculum.

Yet this was once the hub of the most important political conflict of its day, indeed of all U.S. history: the struggle over slavery. This was where diametrically opposed forces abolitionists and pro-slavers clashed.

When 1856 began, the pro-slavery forces had looked to be ascendant. Congress had passed the Kansas-Nebraska Act on May 30, 1854. The law provided for popular sovereignty voting by white male landowners, that is to decide whether Kansas and Nebraska would be free or slave states. Kansas had since been the scene of a violent terror campaign, based across the border in Missouri.

Death squads, known as Border Ruffians, aimed to kill or drive out those who opposed the spread of slavery to Kansas, and to flood the territory with their own numbers. Jesse and Frank James, glorified as rebellious outlaws in the movies and folklore, were the most well-known of these ruffians.

The Border Ruffians hunted down and murdered African Americans who had escaped slavery and were heading north to Canada. They brazenly assassinated Underground Railway station operators and anti-slavery newspaper editors.

It had started to seem like a foregone conclusion that Kansas would enter the union as a slave state. Then John Brown arrived.

With a small, brave band of stalwarts, he took on the slave owners death squads in direct combat, and bested them. He revived and rallied the anti-slavery forces.

At the Battle of Osawatomie, on Aug. 30, 1856, his brilliant tactical maneuvers led to the defeat of a pro-slavery force of 300 soldiers by his group of under 20 and from then on he was affectionately known as Old Osawatomie by admirers around the country.

In Lawrence, Kanasas, in the first two weeks of September, he led the military defense of the state capital against a pro-slavery assault and ever after was respectfully called Captain Brown by those who fought alongside him.

But before Osawatomie, before Lawrence, John Brown had already become a legend. That happened at Pottawatomie Creek.

A daring raid

At Pottawatomie on the night of May 24-25, 1856, John Brown led an armed band in a lightning raid against an encampment where he knew hed find several of the worst of the Border Ruffians who were terrorizing the territory.

When Brown and company rode off, they left the dead bodies of five racist thugs. The criminals Brown and his band killed had been responsible for many assaults and murders; they were also known for capturing Native women and forcing them into prostitution and sexually assaulting Free State women.

Until Brown acted, the slavocracy had been waging an undeclared war with what seemed like impunity. And not just in the fields and towns of Kansas. On May 22, two days before Brown rode to Pottawatomie, Preston Brooks, a member of Congress from South Carolina, had strode onto the floor of the U.S. Senate and beaten anti-slavery Sen. Charles Sumner of Massachusetts nearly to death as retaliation for Sumners speech The Crime against Kansas.

After Pottawatomie, all this changed. The slaveocracy did not surrender it would take the Civil War for that. But from Pottawatomie word went out.

No longer would the racist death squads have free rein in Kansas. A new force, a force for freedom, was fighting back.

For years afterward, in fact to this very day, bourgeois historians have misrepresented what happened at Pottawatomie. It has been portrayed as an insane, isolated event, as a senseless, inexplicable act of violence and its perpetrator as a wild-eyed, crazed, fanatical maniac. The official bourgeois version removes the Pottawatomie raid from its historic context the bloody terrorist war the Border Ruffians were waging and omits the fact that the men Browns troops killed were racist murderers.

John Brown was no lunatic. He was a hero. By first frost in the fall of 1856, he had accomplished what six months earlier no one thought possible. The territory had been secured. Kansas would enter the union as a free state.

The victory came at a high personal cost for Brown. His son Frederick died at the Battle of Osawatomie. Another son, John Brown Jr., was captured by the pro-slavery forces and tortured horribly while held prisoner, which led to many years of illness and anguish.

Brown himself was now a wanted man. A price on his head, he went underground, leaving Kansas. He headed toward the Northeast.

There he would spend the next three years raising funds, recruiting troops, writing, speaking and planning. His goal was nothing less than to launch a guerrilla war, whose leadership would be taken up by African Americans, to end slavery and establish full freedom and equality for all.

On to Harpers Ferry

Before, during and after his time in Kansas, John Brown was keen to learn how to wage the kind of guerrilla warfare he believed would be necessary to destroy slavery. To whom did he look as his teachers?

To Nat Turner, Denmark Vesey and other enslaved African American leaders of U.S. slave revolts; to the Seminole nation that had resisted domination by colonial settlers; to the Maroons of the South and of Jamaica and Surinam, escaped slaves who fought the settler states forces in daring raids from bases in the hills and mountains; and to Toussaint LOuverture, one of the great liberators of Haiti.

Most well-meaning whites, including abolitionists, were under the sway of racism to varying degrees. In contrast, Brown not only admired but sought to learn from and emulate Black and Native leaders. He was that free of the taint of racism.

In Kansas, Brown worked closely with a Native ally, Ottawa Jones, who sheltered, fed and helped arm Browns group at several points during the months of conflict. Although he himself was a fiercely devout Christian, Brown counted Jews and atheists among his troops.

For three years after leaving Kansas, Brown was based in North Elba, N.Y. [in upstate New York].There he established a cooperative farming community, the first ever where Black and white families lived and worked as equals.

Along with farming and guiding escaped slaves along an Underground Railroad route across the border to Canada, Brown would spend those three years preparing for the action he was determined would give rise to a generalized mass uprising by enslaved Black people. He would write a new constitution for the United States which first and foremost proclaimed race and sex equality.

He would travel to Canada and recruit several African Americans, including Osborne P. Anderson, who would fight alongside Brown at Harpers Ferry, Va. (now W.Va.), and live to write about it. He would meet often with the great organizer and orator, Frederick Douglass, and the two would become close friends. Douglass had escaped from slavery as a young man.

He would confer with the Moses of the Underground Railroad, Harriet Tubman, whom he always respectfully referred to as Gen. Tubman. Some believe that Tubman helped plan the raid on the U.S. Army arsenal at Harpers Ferry and would have taken part in it had she not fallen ill.

African-American freedom fighters Dangerfield Newby, Lewis S. Leary, John Browns sons Watson and Oliver, and six others of their number would die at Harpers Ferry in October 1859. Five would escape and survive. Seven, including John Brown, would be captured and hanged.

Gen. Robert E. Lee, who scant months later would lead the secessionist Confederate army, led the opposing force that captured John Brown at Harpers Ferry. John Wilkes Booth, who would assassinate President Abraham Lincoln in 1865, was among the troops guarding the scaffolding on the day they hanged John Brown.

On that day, Dec. 2, 1859, just before they led him from his cell to the gallows, this great soldier for human liberation would write, I, John Brown, am now quite certain that the crimes of this guilty land will never be purged away but with blood. Brown was buried in the majority Black cemetery in North Elba, a fitting tribute indeed.

In April 1861 the Civil War would begin.

See the original post here:

160 years since Bloody Kansas/The legacy of John Brown - Workers World

The Democratic primaries are in full swing. This years presidential contest will be the highest-stakes election for the Democratic party and American democracy in a long time. There has been much talk of deeply divided Democrats and fights for the soul of the Democratic party. But from the other side of the Atlantic it may be difficult to understand what the most important differences are among the Democratic candidates and their implications for the future of the left and democracy.

Normally, intra-party differences pivot around policy disputes. There are indeed policy differences between the progressives, Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders, and the moderates, Pete Buttigieg, Joe Biden and Amy Klobucharbut on economic policy these are less than one might think. Indeed, on economic issues all the candidates favour policies further left, and closer to traditional European social-democratic policies, than any field of Democratic candidates in recent memory.

For example, with regard to health care, all the candidates support moving beyond the reforms introduced under Barack Obamas presidency towards universal coverage. Where they differ is on how to get there: Sanders and Warren favour a rapid transition to a single-payer, public (Medicare for all) system, while the moderates favour gradual change, beginning with the expansion of a public option (Medicare) to those lacking private insurance.

Similarly, all the candidates advocate higher taxes on the wealthy, fighting inequality, more business regulation, increased spending on social programmes and infrastructure, making college more affordable and devoting greater attention to environmental issues and climate change. As with health care, on these issues the candidates differ more on how they favour achieving these goals than on the goals themselves.

Policy differences between progressives and moderates appear more clearly with regard to non-economic issues, with the former calling for decriminalising border crossing, providing health care to illegal immigrants, abolishing the Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency, offering reparations for slavery, prioritising transgender rights and other policies far to the left of the American mainstream and even most Democratic voters.

These are not, however, normal times. More important and consequential, therefore, than the candidates policy differences are deeper disputes about how to win elections and what the future of the left should be.

On one side are those who believe the path to victory in 2020 lies in reaching out to independent voters and maybe even Republicans who support some of Donald Trumps policies as president but are disgusted by his corrupt and polarising behaviour. Supporters of this strategy point to extensive research showing that moderates outperform extremists and to the 2018 mid-term congressional elections, when the Democrats retook the House of Representatives by capturing wavering and previously Republican-leaning districts. From this perspective, some of Warrens and Sanders stances appear nothing short of insanity, since they are far to the left of even what many Democratic much less independent or Republican voters prefer.

Disputes about electability are closely tied to debates about the future of the Democratic party and these debates mirror those occurring on the European left as well.

In addition, many worry that Sanders past makes him unelectable. Although he and Warren do not differ much on policy, Warren is less rabble-rouser than wonky technocrat: she claims to have a plan to solve any problem a phrase so associated with her that her campaign sells T-shirts with that printed on it. In addition, before serving in Democratic administrations and as a Democratic senator, she was even a Republican. (In the European context Warren would easily fit in the social-democratic category: she has called herself a capitalist to her bones and presents the policies she favours as designed to save capitalism rather than bury it.)

Sanders, on the other hand, wasnt even a member of the Democratic party until he ran for president. His past is littered with positions with which Republicans will have a field day: his support for non-democratic but self-proclaimed socialists, such as Fidel Castro in Cuba and the Nicaraguan Sandinistas, as well as the Iranian revolution; his honeymoon trip to the Soviet Union; his campaigning for the Socialist Workers party; his argument that (particularly low) wage labour is akin to slavery, and more.

Moreover, Sanders calls himself a democratic socialist, rather than a social democrat, and is clearly sceptical of the possibility or even desirability of reforming capitalism views with which, despite the purported rise of interest in socialism among the young, most Americans do not agree. (In Europe, Sanders would probably find himself in the company of far-left figures such as Jean-Luc Mlenchon or Jeremy Corbyn.)

On the other side of the electability debate are those who believe the path to victory lies not in trying to attract independent and wavering voters but in mobilising the partys base. Supporters of this strategy point to research arguing that voters generally dont know much about policy and the intense polarisation of the American electorate, which makes them care even less. In this view, Democrats and Republicans are so committed to their own team technically, negative partisanship has become so strong that they will vote for any candidate their party puts up.

From this perspective, there are hardly any real independent or wavering voters, so any strategy based on trying to attract them is fundamentally flawed. Instead, the key to victory lies in getting as much of ones own team to the polls as possible. If this is true, then Sanders has advantages over Warren, since his passion, authenticity, values-driven politics and anti-establishment appeal is most likely to motivate disaffected and alienated Democrats to vote. (Reflecting this, Politico recently reported, for example, that the Sanders campaign was instructing volunteers to attack Warren by noting that the people who support her are highly-educated, more affluent people who are going to show up and vote Democratic no matter what.)

Sanders does draw more support, than Warren for example, from young people and disaffected particularly male disaffected voters, who do indeed tend to vote less than other Democratic constituencies. Sanders also enjoys disproportionate support among committed far-left activists, who say they are less likely to vote for another Democrat if Sanders does not win the nomination. (Sanders, to be clear, has said he will support whoever wins it.)

Disputes about electability are closely tied to debates about the future of the Democratic party and these debates mirror those occurring on the European left as well.

On one side are those who believe the lefts path lies in countering right-wing populism with a left-wing version. Chantal Mouffe is probably this views most influential advocate but echoes of this strategy can be found in the approaches of left leaders like Corbyn and Mlenchon. In this view, the left needs to turn its back on its centrist, social-democratic past and recognise that the reigning political and economic order is corrupt and perhaps irredeemable.

Those in this camp believe that a mass of disaffected voters are waiting to flock to their revolution and view the lefts job as injecting passion back into politics, which will mobilise these voters as well as revitalise democracy. The best way to do this, in turn, is by openly acknowledging the antagonistic dimension of politics and that society is indeed divided into friends and foes with the real foes being not minorities and immigrants but rather the rich and the establishment.

How the Democratic primaries play out is thus set to have an immense impact not only on the 2020 elections but on the future of the left and democracy, in the US and beyond.

Although Sanders fits uneasily into the populist category, he does believe in the need for a political revolution and views the economic and political status quo, as well as the Democratic establishment, as more fundamentally flawed than do the other Democratic candidates. Moreover, many of his most vocal supporters revel in an aggressive and antagonistic approach to politics and view moderation and compromise as anathema. (This was also true in 2016, of course, when so-called Bernie Bros caused much hand-wringing. In these primaries a small but vocal subset of Sanders supporters have also engaged in persistent, nasty social-media attacks on other candidates and the Democratic party, which to be fair to Sanders he has not openly encouraged.)

On the other side lie those who believe the future of the left lies in a revitalised social-democratic approach to politics, which would focus on reforming the existing political and economic orders, rather than calling for a fundamental transformation of them. This approach is also comfortable with moderation and compromise and views polarisation and antagonistic, ideological politics as a threat to both the left and democracy.

Those in this camp recognise that swing voters are repelled by the ideological and divisive appeals which spur on the faithful. They believe that the lefts future and the health of democracy requires at least diminishing the antagonism of such voters, if not winning them over. The examples of countries such as Hungary and Turkey, where divisions among the opposition facilitated the ability of populist leaders to undermine democracy, may be worth considering in this regard.

In the United States these views about the left and democracy have led to a recent outpouring of fear among moderates and many members of the Democratic establishment about the possibility of a Sanders victory. If the lefts strategy consists of whipping up the already dissatisfied with harsh critiques of the status quo, which are not accompanied by viable plans for gaining power, implementing policies once in power and healing societal divisions, these concerned Democrats believe that not only is Trump likely to win but that faith in democracy is likely to erode further.

How the Democratic primaries play out is thus set to have an immense impact not only on the 2020 elections but on the future of the left and democracy, in the US and beyond.

This article is a joint publication by Social Europe and IPS-Journal.

View original post here:

What's at stake in the Democratic primaries Democracy - IPS Journal

A smartphone with the Huawei and 5G network logo is seen on a PC motherboard in this illustration taken on Jan. 29, 2020.

DADO RUVIC/Reuters

Letters to the Editor should be exclusive to The Globe and Mail. Include your name, address and daytime phone number. Try to keep letters to fewer than 150 words. Letters may be edited for length and clarity. To submit a letter by e-mail, click here: letters@globeandmail.com

Re Ottawa Should Ban Huawei From 5G: Military (Feb. 10): While pondering Huaweis role in forthcoming 5G networks, shouldnt the government cast the net of circumspection wider? Western companies, it seems to me, havent always been paragons of virtue when dealing with our digital information. Misuse and abuse should not be defined solely by geography or politics.

Eric LeGresley Ottawa

Story continues below advertisement

Where is the dialogue on the potential health risks of new 5G technology? These networks use extremely high-frequency, never-used-before bandwidths in the electromagnetic spectrum, and we dont yet know the potential health effects.

In the 1950s, it was common for shoe stores to employ X-ray machines to show how well a shoe fit. It was fun to wiggle ones toes and see the bones dance. We learned that this was not wise, after the fact. We shouldnt make these mistakes again.

Governments and scientists should pursue further risk analyses before going down the 5G path.

Laurie Kochen Toronto

Re The Omar Khadr Saga Is A Testament To Canadian Principles Of Justice (Opinion, Feb. 8): Columnist Robyn Urback writes that Omar Khadrs story is an example of the principles of Canadian freedom and justice in action. I suggest it is another example of a justice system that too often puts the rights of criminals before those of victims.

When I read of violent criminals offered parole after serving only one-third of a sentence, only to reoffend, or alleged murderers released because rights to a speedy trial were violated, were the rights of victims really considered? I think the proper phrase might better be justice inaction.

John Donly Pickering, Ont.

Story continues below advertisement

I have followed the Omar Khadr case for many years. To me, he has consistently displayed a peaceful, non-violent demeanour, both in and out of prison; expressed remorse for the tragic situation that occurred; shown compassion and concern for his captors and torturers, as well as a positive regard toward all with whom he interacts.

I am happy to hear that Mr. Khadr will deliver a keynote address at Dalhousie University, and I wish him well in all his future endeavours.

Jim Thompson Ramara, Ont.

Re Tracking Safety (Letters, Feb. 10): While Transport Minister Marc Garneaus 30-day slow-order for trains carrying dangerous goods is a welcome development, I believe it is a short-term Band-Aid response to deeper problems in Ottawas approach to regulating railway safety.

The Guernsey derailment and fire is the latest in a long string of precisely the kinds of accidents that Transport Canadas regulatory regime is supposed to prevent. There should be less emphasis on letting the railways regulate themselves, and a stronger focus on direct and effective oversight and enforcement by federal regulators.

Mark Winfield PhD, Faculty of Environmental Studies, York University; Toronto

Story continues below advertisement

Re Just How Bad Are The Jobs Numbers, Really? (Report on Business, Feb. 6): Every month, 56,000 households, or 110,000 Canadians, take part in the Labour Force Survey (LFS). The LFS and three other data sources the Survey of Employment, Payrolls and Hours; Employment Insurance Statistics; and the Job Vacancy and Wage Survey provide a comprehensive dashboard of labour information. Policy makers use this dashboard to make decisions that affect Canadians, from determining employment insurance rates to developing training and skills programs, and more. And with every LFS release, Statistics Canada provides data quality statements: Users should be careful in drawing trends from a single months data or relying exclusively on one instrument. This would be like driving a car using only one of the gauges on the dashboard.

We thank Canadians who participate in the LFS every month, our interviewers who work hard to ensure high response rates and quality, and our users who understand the value and proper use of the LFS.

Anil Arora Chief Statistician of Canada; Ottawa

Re The Liberals Want A Happiness Budget (Feb. 5): In my view, GDP economics are about maximizing how fast we can convert resources to money, using the cheapest possible labour, with no consideration to people or planet. The biggest challenge with GDP, however, seems not so much the metric itself, but rather its supremacy in the various processes that guide societys governance. Our addiction to its quantitative qualities has left us believing in what Greta Thunberg calls fairy tales of eternal economic growth. But what do we want to grow, if not happiness and well-being?

A successful economy could indeed be judged by a flat-lining GDP, accompanied by a much more desired increase in happiness and well-being, in whatever way a diverse society chooses to measure it. I see that places such as Bhutan, Scotland and New Zealand are already on their way.

As Nobel-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz said: If we measure the wrong thing, we will do the wrong thing.

Story continues below advertisement

Yannick Beaudoin Director General, Ontario and Northern Canada, David Suzuki Foundation; Toronto

Re Photo Project Curated By Kaepernick On Display At Toronto Festival (Feb. 5): As a black female Canadian, my wish for Black History Month in Canada is that we acknowledge the 200-plus years of slavery in Canada, and the Canadian civil-rights leaders who ended centuries-long segregation. Black History Month shouldnt just be about feeling good while listening to black musicians, or putting black artists on subway walls. We should educate more and strive to be truthful about the full scope of black history.

Since moving to the United States a few years ago, Ive noticed a stark difference in how Black History Month is celebrated and how black history, in general, is acknowledged. References to the African-American slave trade and U.S. civil-rights leaders are a consistent part of popular culture and education. But in Canada, I never saw references to either of those. I was never taught about the Canadian slave trade. I had to teach myself.

This year, I would ask that people take some time to learn about the African-Canadian slave trade that helped build the colonial empire we call Canada, and that important figures such as Hugh Burnett and Marisse Scott become commonplace, alongside names such as Viola Desmond, in the celebration of black history.

Sinead Bovell Brooklyn, N.Y.

Re Adding This Plant Compound To Your Diet Could Help Keep Alzheimers At Bay (Feb. 10): Dietitian Leslie Beck is my hero. She describes a study that has identified three flavonols critical to the prevention of Alzheimers disease. Two of these, myricetin and isorhamnetin, are found in wine. Great news cheers to that! And I forget what the third one is

Story continues below advertisement

Vic Bornell Niagara-on-the-Lake, Ont.

Keep your Opinions sharp and informed. Get the Opinion newsletter. Sign up today.

See the article here:

Feb. 11: I was never taught about the Canadian slave trade. I had to teach myself. Readers respond to Black History Month, Omar Khadr, Huaweis 5G...

Buying sustainable products is a challenge when synthetics are everywhere and packaging is plastic, but there is a growing business sector taking on the problem with success, writes Carol OCallaghan

In this day and age, who isnt making at least some effort to be environmentally conscious?

But beyond recycling and avoiding plastic packaging at the supermarket, finding necessities for the home which are eco-worthy can turn a shopping expedition into a chore rather than a pleasure.

Happily, among a growing sustainability sector are three Irish businesses thriving on their commitment to quality, the planet and a focus on sourcing materials ethically, while avoiding plastic at the same time.

White & Greens Peace silk pillowcase (79) from http://www.whiteandgreenhome.com

First up is White & Green run by Rebecca Winckworth, her mother, Sari, and sister, Danielle, in Co Wicklow. As Irelands only 100% organic Fairtrade bed linen brand, they make bed sheets and home accessories such as throws, towels and silk pillowcases.

We use only natural, organic processes which are healthier for the environment and our producers, Rebecca explains. It also creates softer, longer-lasting products. Our production ensures that everyone involved with us from farmers through to factory workers are paid a living wage, are treated well in the workplace and that there is never, ever any child labour nor slavery, something which is still commonplace today in the fashion and textiles industries.

Among the ranges the company sells, Rebecca says, Our two most popular items are our organic Peace silk pillowcase which is incredibly great for your skin and hair. It means you wont wake up with fuzzy hair or sleep lines anymore. It feels like a dream to sleep on. Our organic cotton Bed Bundle has four pillowcases, one duvet cover and one deep fitted sheet in the silkiest, softest sateen cotton at 258 for a double.

The Bed Bundle from White & Green (258) includes four pillowcases, one duvet cover and one deep fitted sheet in sateen cotton from http://www.whiteandgreenhome.com

Such worthy credentials have now been extended to their packaging systems and what Rebecca describes as guilt-free shopping.

Deliveries arrive on our customers doorstep in biodegradable bags or cardboard boxes only. Its a lovely shopping experience as our clients simply buy online with one click and their order arrives the next day in a totally sustainable way.

Starting the business before sustainability was even fashionable, Rebecca says, People questioned whether it was possible to be sustainable and offer high-quality products, and be affordable at the same time. Now, we have proven that it is possible with over 10,000 customers.

Pat Kane, owner of Reuzi in Dublins Foxrock, offers everything in one place she considers we need to live a minimal waste lifestyle.

We believe that it should be easy to make choices that positively benefit the planet, she explains, and that no matter who you are, where you come from, what you believe in, we can all take small yet meaningful steps to reduce our waste.

Reuzis essential oil diffuser by Kotanicals (89.99) from Reuzi.ie

Focusing on products to help us avoid single-use materials, Reuzi sells everything from bamboo toothbrushes, to wax alternatives to cling film, and runs an educational programme of talks and workshops to help schools and businesses understand sustainability while offering practical advice on how to get there.

With over 600 products to choose from, Pat picks out two favourites the affordable bamboo Spork (3.15) which is half spoon, half fork to keep in your bag and eliminate the need to use plastic cutlery while on the go. Another choice is the Way Cap reusable Nespresso capsule. It costs 38, she says. You can always have your favourite ground coffee instead of going with the single-use capsule.

Business partners Francie Duff and Sonia Reynolds also took the sustainability route when they set up shop to focus on Irish textiles including linens, wool and cashmere.

Stable's Irish linen napkins (20) from http://www.stableofireland.com

Called Stable of Ireland, it started as a successful pop-up shop four years ago and then established itself permanently in premises located on Grafton Street, selling scarves, blankets, cushions, throws and table linens.

Theres so much quality in this country, says Francie. We work with manufacturers using ethically sourced materials. Theyre all Irish dyed yarns made from natural fibres so theres no processing.

Customers can expect to find Irish linen handkerchiefs (12), napkins (20), and linen towels (40), countering a belief that this sort of quality can be excessively pricey.

The people who come into the shop are seeking out beautiful Irish products and are aware of environmentally sourced fibres, Francie says.

They are well educated about this so they are aware of the benefits of sustainable products. Its something were seeing across the age groups where their attitude is buy better, buy less.

Go here to see the original:

Growing business sector is taking on the challenge of supplying us with sustainable products - Irish Examiner

ANALYSIS/OPINION:

We were the first in our knowledge to use the term Blue Collar Boom to describe President Trumps record-setting economic recovery, on this very page.

Mr. Trumps record shows that he is making America great again, in part with the lowest unemployment since 1969, 50 years ago (during President Kennedys 1960s boom). That includes the lowest unemployment among African-Americans, Hispanic-Americans, and Asian-Americans in American history. With the lowest unemployment rate for women in 70 years as well, Mr. Trump is leading the most inclusive recovery in American history.

Moreover, what Mr. Trump rightly called at Davos his blue-collar boom includes an all-time record in median family incomes at over $65,000. Indeed, rank-and-file workers have gotten the biggest pay raises in more than a decade, more than their bosses, with the bottom 25 percent of wage earners salaries rising 4.5 percent last year.

Employed Americans have reached new records nearly 150 million working people, with 1.85 million jobs added in 2019 (145,000 in December alone). Indeed, there are more unfilled job openings in America today than unemployed Americans. Since Mr. Trump was elected, more than 7 million jobs have been created, three-fourths of them going to women.

With such spectacular job and wage growth, 7.7 million fewer families are receiving food stamps than when Mr. Trump became president. Unemployment insurance claims are also the lowest in 50 years.

The stock market has also boomed since Mr. Trump was elected in 2016, with all three major stock indices recently setting all-time records, the Dow, S&P 500 and NASDAQ.

This has resulted in part from the Trump/Republican tax reform passed in 2017, which Democratic presidential candidates are proposing to repeal. Say hello to renewed recession, and goodbye to your jobs and pay raises, if they get to make good on that, which would be the largest tax increase in American history.

Such a tax increase would also crash the stock market, reversing Mr. Trumps stock records. Say goodbye to your retirement savings as well.

Mr. Trumps deregulation, particularly regarding energy, has made America energy independent for the first time in 75 years. Under Mr. Trumps policies, America is now the worlds number one producer of oil and natural gas.

Mr. Trump has also recently won historic trade deals, signing phase one of the China trade deal. And Congress finally approved the USMCA between the United States, Mexico and Canada to replace NAFTA. Next, Mr. Trump will be on to phase II with China, and also a new trade deal with the EU. And with Great Britain and new Prime Minister Boris Johnson just having finalized Brexit, we will negotiate a new trade deal with the U.K.

Mr. Trump is also completing most of the southern border wall this year, with drastic reductions in illegal border crossings. The resulting decline in the supply of competing unskilled workers probably explains the sudden rise in wages for lower-income workers.

Additionally, the administration is straightening out the mess the federal government created by the Obama over-reach on the Waters of the United States regulation. Meanwhile, quietly and consistently, judicial appointments are restoring order to the much-neglected federal judiciary.

After Mr. Trumps celebratory State of the Union address Tuesday night, he was greeted on Wednesday with Senate acquittal on impeachment charges. House Democrats should have understood that their impeachment articles did not remotely reach the constitutional standard of treason, bribery, and high crimes and misdemeanors, as retired Harvard Law School professor and Democrat Alan Dershowitz explained. Funding went to Ukraine without any investigation of Hunter Biden after all. These are historical facts.

Indeed, the House impeachment articles do not even allege that Mr. Trump committed any crimes. Obstruction of Congress is not a crime, nor is abuse of power. As Mr. Dershowitz explained, maladministration or policy disagreements were explicitly rejected by the framers to justify removing a duly-elected president from office. Democrats are actually trying to shut down democracy, as Adam Schiff openly sought to rationalize.

Bottom line, 2020 is already shaping up to be a fundamental realignment election landslide, much like Ronald Reagans 1984 landslide over Walter Mondale, who ran promising to reverse Reagans historic tax cuts. Blue collar workers, once the backbone of the Democratic Party, now scorned by Democrats as deplorables, will gleefully switch to Republicans, proud to have them.

African-Americans will begin their realignment back to the Republicans as well, the party that literally fought in the Civil War to free African-Americans from slavery. Not to mention Jim Crow segregation, and the Ku Klux Klan, further Democratic depredations.

Indeed, Hispanics benefitting from jobs and soaring wages will also begin their realignment to Republican this year. Americans will look back to 2020 as the year that Mr. Trump finally brought Americans together, in the Republican Party.

Lewis K. Uhler is founder and chairman of the National Tax Limitation Committee and Foundation. Peter J. Ferrara is a senior policy adviser for the foundation and teaches economics at Kings College in New York.

Read the rest here:

The Trump and Republican election realignment landslide in 2020 - Washington Times

NEW DELHI: At the mere age of 16, Simon, who is now 18, had realised that his father could barely eke out a living, and the attitude Being the eldest son, I have to be the financial aid of my family had already taken shape in his mind.

Simon, a Gond Adivasi, hails from Golaghat, Assam.

Four days ago on the evening of January 14 he was rescued by associates from the Human Rights Law Network and the National Campaign Committee for the Eradication of Bonded Labour along with administration officials in Patiala, Punjab, where he had been working as an agricultural worker for a promised wage of 6000 per month, for three years.

Daniel lured me here saying, You wont have much to do, its an easy job and you will have 6000 every month in your pocket Simon recalls, referring to his friend Daniel Tete, the alleged trafficker in this case.

Little did he know that he would end up working more than he was told, wageless and forcibly trapped in modern-day slavery.

According to ActionAid, a non-government rights organisation, over 50 crore workers in India employed in the unorganised sector struggle every day to be paid the minimum wage.

These labourers work on nominal wages or remain begar (wageless) for years on end, a practice which clearly violates the Supreme Courts historic verdict in the case of Bandhua Mukti Morcha vs. Union of India and Others, 1984.

These 50 crore workers fall under the category of bonded labour.

According to Sushila Prajapati, who works with ActionAid in Gujarat, The highest number of bonded labourers is in the agricultural sector. Children constitute most of the labourers, because they are easily recruited and exploited without being resilient to the employer and the agents involved.

Prajapati adds that local administrations deny the agricultural areas in villages vigilance and scrutiny in the form of regular visits by administration officials.

Simon recalls, I used to work in their farms, household, and cattle rearing for which my employer absolutely paid nothing and never provided me any leave to visit my hometown.

After incessant pleading to be given food on time and perpetual begging for his salary, Simon eventually decided to run away. But he found himself trapped.

They had handed me a mobile phone through which they tracked my location. I felt nothing but helpless because I knew I was trapped forever, he says in tears.

These are elements of new-age slavery and a clear violation of Bonded Labour System (Abolition) Act, 1976.

I was made to sleep with the cattle for three years, says Simon.

Like many, Simon is not only a victim of trafficking and bonded labour but also of poverty and a casteist society. According to T.C.Suresh of the Working Peoples Charter, more than 80% of bonded labourers belong to Scheduled Caste or Scheduled Tribe communities.

The majority of bonded labourers from such weaker communities are landless, therefore, they easily get trapped in this system, which is a rampant practice in villages, and live in continuous fear of violence from their employers, he says.

My life was restricted to a buffalo shed, which was not even separated by walls, filled with cattle excreta and heavy machinery which always smelled noxious, Simon recalls.

Besides the unhygienic living conditions, he was also denied access to proper sanitation facilities.

I would defecate in the vicinity of the woods nearby and had to bathe and drink from the tank where water was collected for the cattle, he says.

Human rights activist Nirmal Gorana says that violations of fundamental rights are seldom recognised in such cases.

Historic casteism is a subtle but significant form of slavery where upper-caste people, even in contemporary times, treat the minorities as cattle, he says.

The lethargic work system and cursory attitude of government officials worsens the situation even further.

The subdivisional magistrate in Patran told Simon, You have had a nice haircut, and you have an expensive mobile phone, how can you be a bonded labourer?

He also alleges that he felt constant intimidation while recording his statements, and his signatures were taken in a hurry without informing him what he was signing.

The act of hampering the process of investigation was condemned by the Supreme Court in the case of Neerja Chauadhary vs. State of Madhya Pradesh, 1984.

So far the SDM has not released even a single statement in regard to Simons release certificate.

According to the Central Sector Scheme for Rehabilitation of Bonded Labour 2016, state authorities must socially and economically rehabilitate survivors of bonded labour. The aspect of psychological rehabilitation hasnt yet been taken into regard.

According to Gorana, In the case of minors, the rehabilitation process is not done on the basis of release certificates, which largely amplifies afresh the cases of rebondage slavery.

Meanwhile, Simon lives his life in intimidation, often succumbing to numbness or despair. He carries with him deep mental and emotional scars.

Go here to see the original:

Casteist Slavery: 'I Was Made to Sleep With Cattle for Three Years' - The Citizen

The chocolate industry is worth almost 10 billion dollars annually. Surprisingly, cocoa traders source most of the cacao supply from just two countries, Ghana and Cote dIvoire. Millions of farmers grow cacao on small farms. The three largest cocoa traders buy almost all of the beans.

However, before the beans are sold to these traders, the cocoa meanders its way through the extremely complicated cocoa supply chain. Most farmers cannot transport their cocoa to the port, so they sell their cocoa to a pisteur. The pisteur buys cocoa from farmers and then transports it closer to the port. Along the way, the cocoa could be sold to coops of differing sizes or other third parties before it finally arrives at the port. There, the cocoa is sold to exporters who sell the cocoa to cocoa traders who effectively control the market.

The cocoa supply chain systematically keeps farmers in poverty. Unfortunately, farmers have no control over the price of their cocoa. Because of this, many farmers live in poverty and have to resort to extreme measures to feed their families. Many farmers will illegally grow cocoa on protected forest lands. As a result, Cote dIvoire has lost 85% of its protected forests since 1990.

The cocoa industry also supports slavery. It is estimated that over 30,000 children are being trafficked to work in the cocoa industry. Farmers are poor, and growing cocoa is labor-intensive. Even today, methods for harvesting and processing cocoa at the farms have not evolved. Surprisingly, farmers still harvest cocoa using only a machete. Farmers have no money to invest in machinery or more sustainable growing practices. Unfortunately, this results in slavery, deforestation, and systematic poverty.

Regulations to keep the price of beans higher usually fail. The cocoa board of the Ivoirian government sets the price of cocoa beans. This price is called the farm gate price and fluctuates depending on the market supply and demand. Unfortunately, the farm gate price is not regulated. Often the pisteur buys cocoa at a discount since they serve as a middle man and the farmer has no way of transporting the cocoa to get a better price. Even if the farm gate price was regulated, it is still not a living wage.

The biggest problem with the chocolate industry is the supply chain. Thankfully, blockchain is a proven solution to supply chain management. Fortunately, companies in the cocoa industry now have the ability to track their cocoa beans from farm to chocolate bar using blockchain technology. Unfortunately, very few players control the chocolate industry, so new technology is not easy to introduce.

One company is striving to put an end to slavery in the chocolate industry. Tonys Chocolonely is using blockchain technology to track each batch of beans. To heal the supply chain, Tonys pays 40% on top of the farm gate price. Because Tonys knows from which farmers they get their beans, they can pay extra to reward those farmers using sustainable and safe business practices. The blockchain technology manages the supply chain by assigning a unique batch number to each batch of beans, and tracks those beans all the way through the supply chain. For now, the blockchain technology is not quite ready for use.

Tonys anticipates it will take another three to five years before the blockchain aspect of their Beantracker will be business operations viable. In 2012, the company partnered with Barry Cellebaut, the largest chocolate manufacturer. Hopefully, with this serious partner, Tonys and their blockchain technology can begin to transform the chocolate industrys broken supply chain.

Read more:

Blockchain Revolutionizing The Chocolate Industry - Business Blockchain HQ