Daily Archives: March 9, 2021

If you could measure a countrys worth by the number of vapid start-ups it has produced, Italy would come up short. While Britain once produced half a million mostly obscure technology companies over the course of a single year, Italy has only just edged nine thousand in total.

So, when new Italian prime minister Mario Draghi promised to expand on his predecessors work of digitalizing Italian infrastructure and encouraging foreign investment, pundits foamed approvingly. Entrepreneur Matteo Berlucchi hailed the premiership of Draghi, the former chief of the European Central Bank, as an incredibly exciting opportunity, while Vittorio Colao, a former Vodafone executive and Italys new minister of innovation, had already spent pretty much the whole year tweeting breathlessly about innovation, or, as he puts it in his imported LinkedIn-ese, #innovation.

But while it is true that much of Italian life is blighted by technological inefficiencies vendors dont accept debit card, bus routes bear no earthly relation to their schedules on Google Maps, local government seems scarcely able to use email the digitalizzazione trope has proven over the years to be an obscenely wasteful canard, a dead horse that has been beaten, exhumed, revived, and then beaten again.

Mostly, when neoliberals talk about digitalization, it means investing in unproven startups. Its a trend that began in earnest in 2012, when Corrado Passera, then the Italian minister of economic innovation under the technocrat Mario Monti, passed legislation to deliver 200 million along with various tax incentives to young, underfunded startups, the aim being to promote social mobility and attract foreign talent and capital.

But the millions spent in an effort to compete with Silicon Valley were apparently millions wasted. While venture funding has grown in the years since, that didnt translate economically: the number of young people leaving the country continued to soar, and Italy is still written off as a technological backwater with the exception, perhaps, of the affluent North, where much of the taxpayer-subsidized Italian tech industry is based.

Meanwhile, as the number of tech workers and available tech jobs increased, youth unemployment rose regardless, reaching 30 percent last year. Nevertheless, the government has continued to hip-spray money in the general direction of tech, especially over the course of the pandemic, during which it was under the influence of a consortium of corporate lobbyists. Since 2019, the National Fund for Innovation, an investment arm of the Cassa Depositi e Prestiti (the Italian government bank), has committed around 245 million, out of over 1 billion under management, to over 480 startups.

But the barest of glances at the sorts of businesses being funded puts the lie to the notion that digitalization produces any social benefit beyond its titillating effect on venture capitalists bottom line. In the portfolios of Italian venture funds themselves often propped up by government funding are businesses that provide such dazzlingly useful services as offer[ing] mobility solutions by turning all kinds of vehicles into connected cars and help[ing] leading enterprises extract actionable insights from any kind of consumer data, saving them 90 percent of the time when doing research about the consumer experience. Tellingly, the funds involved have grown rapidly since their inception; the rest of the economy hasnt.

Digitalization can, of course, entail positive change. There has been a well-intentioned effort to digitize the Italian bureaucracy, primarily by means of the SPID (Public Digital Identity System), which seventeen million Italians have adopted despite the fact that, unhelpfully, the majority of public bodies havent. PagoPA, similarly, performs tax functions online again, though, uptake is wanting.

How much of the EU recovery fund money earmarked for digitalization will go into public rather than private coffers remains unclear. But Draghi heads a coalition which has so marginalized the Italian left that a great deal is certain to end up not only with startups and venture capital funds but incubators and innovation hubs and accelerators.

The previous government, under the dizzying influence of the techno-utopian fantasists of the Five Star Movement the former minister for innovation Paola Pisano was a member grew so infatuated with digitalization that, in focusing much of its energy on building digital super-banks and rolling out credit card cash-back schemes, it managed to leave the pandemic-struck health care system desperately underfunded.

Often, when pundits and politicians talk about digitalization, theyre actually talking about foreign investment. The perennial pleas for American megacorps to annex Italys workforce betray more than a hint of desperation. Recently, there was much adulation upon news that Elon Musks next big Gigafactory the biggest in Europe had been approved to be built in the province of Turin. Amazon, too, has been welcomed into Italy, although far from revitalizing the tech sector, the multinational is more likely to eat into small competitors.

Digitalization, viewed in this way, entails gig-economy wage slavery and unfulfilling work at the fulfillment center.

Such is the disease of the American cultural and economic monopoly. Gazing wistfully at California, countries like Italy feel the need to produce analogous Silicon Valleys of their own. But the real Silicon Valley doesnt care, and the result is a hopeless, sallow knockoff, leeching off the money and energy that could be used to actually make things better.

Read more:

Italy's Masses of Unemployed Can't Live Off Start-Ups Alone - Jacobin magazine

After an eventful 2020 marked by anti-slavery initiatives and a successful crowdfunding campaign, Outland Denim is continuing its goals of expansion in 2021. The B Corp-certified company is making its foray into ready-to-wear with Reset, a Spring/Summer 2021 capsule collection that demonstrates its range.

Reset is defined by luxurious fluid shapes with a subtle edge and Outlands know-how in sustainable and ethical manufacturing.All of the garments are crafted usingThe Maeka Standard, a set of guidelines established by the label that include providing a living wage and education for garment workers, ethical sourcing and more.

Our goal this year was to expand into ready-to-wear and provide more options for our customers who want to wear sustainably made clothes; clothes that match their values, said James Bartle, the companys founding CEO. This collection is about pieces youll look forward to wearing when youre not wearing denimstaples for your closet, and feel good, do good fashion.

The Reset collection includes 100 percent Tencel slip dresses, cotton button-down shirts and linen A-line skirts. Effortless swing dresses and shirt dresses are made with a blend of organic cotton and linen. Select fabrics were made using handlooms sourced from sustainable clothing manufacturer Five P, which honors the textile weaving heritage in Chennimalai, Southern India and creates an authentic, unique finish that cant be duplicated on modern machines.

Its color palette follows suit, with a collection of neutrals and faded rose punctuated by stripes and blue leopard print.

Though Outland has introduced a new logo T and the Origins T-shirt, which features original artwork by Australian artist Nelson Nokela, Reset is a departure from the number of denim brands venturing into sweats and loungewear. Considered a celebration of getting dressed, the line checks all of the boxes for the post-pandemic consumer looking to invest in fewer but more meaningful pieces for social events.

Denim remains a focus for Outland, however.The brands popular Harriet black jean, as made famous by Meghan Markle, is also back in stock, upgraded with SaveBlack technology that uses 85 percent less water in the dying process.

After learning about the global human trafficking epidemic, Bartle founded the company to employ women at risk and provide them with the skills they need to break out of the cycle of abuse. The brand has since earned recognition for its efforts and was short-listed for the Thomson Reuters Foundation Stop Slavery Award for Small and Medium Enterprises.

The Reset capsule collection is now available exclusively on Outlanddenim.com and retails for $135 to $295.

Read more here:

Outland Denim Ventures into Ready-to-Wear Territory with New Capsule Sourcing Journal - Sourcing Journal

* Any views expressed in this opinion piece are those of the author and not of Thomson Reuters Foundation.

Genevieve LeBaron is a Professor of Politics at the University of Sheffield. Her co-authors -Andrew Crane, Kam Phung, Laya Behbahani & Jean Allain - are academics or doctoral students at various universities worldwide.

When business strategists and consulting firms talk about business model innovation, they emphasise game-changing advances that allows some firms to pull ahead of their rivals. Most of the time, such discussions revolve around positive capacities and win-wins for businesses and customerslike how fresh expertise and new technology can lead to better customer experiences, tailored products and lower prices while boosting company profits.

But business model innovation isnt always this rosy. A dark side exists. Such wholesale changes in practices can also be profoundly negative for both workers and society. In our new article published in Journal of Management Inquiry, we uncover a dark form of business model innovation: how business models have evolved to keep profiting from slave-labour following slaverys legal abolition during the nineteenth century.

Prior to abolition, many businesses were heavily reliant on enslaved labour. As slaverys economic benefits became clear, businesses in the New World and far beyond reconfigured themselves to profit from forced labour. As the economic history of American plantations has demonstrated, using enslaved labour enabled plantation owners and managers to maximise revenue and minimise costs compared to waged labour, facilitating higher profit, though at the cost of dehumanisation and unfathomable suffering.

Fortunately, a world-wide abolitionist movement eventually succeeded in achieving regulatory reforms which ended slave-labour as a legal option for enhancing business profitability.

However, abolition itself did not mean the end of the use of enslaved labour by businesses as rather than letting go of their use of such labour, some businesses moved to further innovation, allowing for the retention of new forms of enslaved labour.

In spite of the fact that slavery is today illegal and carries with it a high risk of reputational damage, some businesses continue to use and profit from such exploitative labour. Unlike the business models from when slavery was legal, today business models configured around modern slavery tend to be more complex and take a variety of different forms, so as to both benefit from forced labour and to avoid detection of their illegal activity.

Drawing from our study of modern slavery in the UKs agriculture, cannabis, and construction sectors, we demonstrate that the business models of modern slavery can be best captured by asking two key questions:

First, is the actor making money from modern slavery a producer (e.g. a farmer or garment manufacturer) or an intermediary (e.g. a labour provider or recruiter)? These groups of actors tend to introduce modern slavery into supply chains and capture value from it in different ways, so differentiating between them is key to mapping business models.

Second, how does that actor create or capture value through modern slavery? Is this by minimising costs, such as by not paying workers and then using coercion to stop them from seeking help? Or is value captured by revenue generation, such as when producers and intermediaries overcharge workers for services like transportation or housing?

The manner in which we identify and analyse business use of modern slavery is by turning to four models: risk reduction, asset leveraging, evading legal minimums, and workers as consumers (see Figure 1). These models tend to materialize in low-waged work, often where workers confront precarious, short-term, and informal conditions.

In a risk reduction model, producers seek to minimize costs as well as risks through illegal labour practices. For instance, an illegal producer such as a cannabis grower may seek to guard against the risk of being reported to the authorities through forced labour. Or a legal producer such as an agricultural or construction firm that is using illegal labour practices such as paying below the minimum wage or requiring forced overtime may use forced labour as a strategy to reduce the risk their illegal practices will be detected through social auditing or labour law enforcement.

Withan asset leveraging model, producers use modern slavery to generate revenue. They do so by leveraging their assets (e.g. housing, transportation owned by the business) to charge workers for using them, often at usurious rates. Furthermore, businesses leverage workers assets, rights, and privileges, such as by enrolling victims of modern slavery in government benefits and then stealing these.

In a model configured to evade legal minimums, labour market intermediaries such as recruitment agents, labour providers, and gangmasters introduce forced labour to compress labour costs below legal minimums.

Regarding a worker as consumers model, the intermediary seeks to generate revenue not only from providing labour to clients at rates compressed below legal minimum wage, but also by charging workers for services such as accommodation and food.

Pinpointing modern slavery as a business model innovation enables scholars as well civil society, industry, policymakers, and regulators to understand where, when, and why modern slavery is used by businesses.

Seeing modern slavery as a component of a business model deployed by enterprises, instead of a practice that appears randomly and sporadically within the economy is key to focusing on those portions of supply chains where exploitative labour is most likely to take place, and which types of businesses are most likely benefiting from modern slavery.

Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

See the article here:

Business models have evolved to profit from slave labour - Thomson Reuters Foundation

Workers across the world are looking forward to the day capitalism takes the road of human equity with universal basic income (UBI), whichwould give them much-needed succor after the trial by fire of the Covid-19 pandemic.

Pope Francis is among the worlds economists, thinkers and billionaires who support UBIas a way of altering the relationship between capital and labor, the two main pillars of the laissez-faire system that wants to keep the government outside all capitalist activities.

The relation between capital and labor cannot be the same once UBI becomes a policy, promising every adult rich and poor, working and non-working a regular income from the state.

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High-profile policymakers have concluded that after disruptive digital technologies become part of and parcel of social life in the new norm of the post-Covid-19 world, privatization of profit and socialization of loss will not go in tandem in the long run.

In the coming years, artificial intelligence, robotics and automation will render the toiling human capital redundant worldwide.

Cars and truckswithout drivers will reduce millions of jobs in transportation,while national armies will be replaced by a sea of autonomous drones and, eventually, actors will be shown the doorand movie production will thrive without much human labor.

By 2030, the talk of the town will be the automation of operations.

Warren Buffett and Bill Gates, among the elites of the world, Milton Friedman and Thomas Paine, among thinkers, and Pope Francis, among spiritual leaders, have put their trust in UBI.

Other fans of UBI include Nobel economics laureates Peter Diamond and Christopher Pissarides, tech czars like Mark Zuckerberg and billionaire oligarchs like Elon Musk.

Inhis recently published book, the pope renewed his pledge to UBI after the pandemic exacerbated the rift between people and technology and between the haves and the have-nots.

In Let Us Dream: The Path to a Better Future, co-written with Briton Austen Ivereigh, Pope Francis strongly advocatesa basic income.

The UBI could reshape relations in the labor market, guaranteeing people the dignity of refusing employment terms that trap them in poverty, Pope Francis wrote.

Those who citeUBI as the key catalyst to the technology-driven transition go to the extent of saying that if the top 1,000 transnational companies are fairly taxed, a modest UBI for people across the world is a possibility.

In Western cities where UBI has successfully been implemented, the working population has welcomed the modern version of Englands Poor Law.

They see UBI paving the way for the abolition of wage slavery to which the working professionals are unknowingly tied to.

Now that the pandemic has disrupted the global economy, UBI has returned from the fringes to the mainstream.

Pope Francis is actively pushing it because the poor are at the center of his pontificate. For him, a Catholic Church that does not speak and act for the poor of the world is no church at all.

Social protection in Asia

Decades of unequal economic growth, marked by severe exploitation, recurring financial crises and the launch of disruptive digital technologies and ecological disasters, have exhausted the Asian workforceas their bargaining power has diminished.

Due to this, Asia perennially remains the hub for cheap labor for the world economy. The pandemic has added salt to these wounds.

Experts say that welfare schemes and subsidies rolled out by Asian governments can be converted into UBI. According to them, these sops currently end up in the hands of the relatively rich or are pilfered by middlemen.

They put forth UBI as an effective poverty-eradication tool in Asia, where about 60 percent of inhabitants do not fall under any form of social protection.

Since the pandemic has further drained their resources, the economic toll is expected to be astronomically high in post-pandemic Asia.

According to the World Bank, over 20 million people in Asiahave been pushed into poverty and 100 million dislocated due to the Covid-19 pandemic.

The Human Development Index measuring income, health and education has reached an all-time low in Asia since records began in 1990.

According to the United Nations Development Programme, 80 percent of students in Asia do not have access to education as a result of the pandemic.

While mooting UBI for Asia as a panacea, a few tips can be obtained from Spain, which has launched the largest test yet of UBI.

On June 15 last year, hit by the coronavirus crisis and its economic fallout, the EU member state offered monthly payments of up to 1,015 (US$1,145) toSpain's 850,000 poorest households. It will cost the state exchequer at least 3 billion per year.

Before the Spanish rollout, the biggest trial was done in Kenya, which allocated 2,250 Kenyan shillings ($21) to 2,100 adults.

Many nations have experimented with UBI. But the schemes were limited to a few thousands of people. Scotland and Canada are mulling the possibility of UBI to tide over hardships caused by the pandemic.

It is not that UBI is a novel concept in Asia. UBI has already gained momentum in South Korea and has become a major poll plank among politicians.

Championed first by Gyeonggi province governor and presidential hopeful Lee Jae-Myung, UBI was quickly hijacked by presidential contenders from all sides.

India tried UBI in small projects with encouraging results in the central state of Madhya Pradesh. A limited version of UBI came up in India when main opposition leader Rahul Gandhi pledged to create "the world's largest minimum income scheme" if his party triumphed in elections.

Gandhi promised the poorest 20 percent of households 72,000 rupees ($1,050) per year as part of the proposed Nyay (justice) scheme.

The post-pandemic world calls for a new social contract to rebalance deep economic inequalities and build a sustainable future across societies.

For the upcoming fourth industrial revolution to take root in the largest continent, which is home to 60 percent of humanity, those rendered jobless by disrupting technologies would have to be given an economic chance to get on with their lives.

With the rollout of UBI worldwide, human capitalism that is inclusive of the poor will take birth in the world.

The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official editorial position of UCA News.

Original post:

Why Pope Francis is pushing for universal basic income - Union of Catholic Asian News

We're delighted to present an extract from The Great Leviathan: The Life of Howe Peter Browne, 2nd Marquess ofSligo1788-1845, published by New Island Books.

From Ireland, England, France, Austria, Greece, Turkey and Italy to America and the West Indies, overflowing with historic events, from the French Revolution to the Great Irish Famine, with a cast of the famous and infamous, Howe Peter Browne, 2nd Marquess ofSligo, lived life to the absolute limits.

From a youth of hedonistic self-indulgence in Regency England to a reforming, responsible, well-intentioned legislator and landlord, Sligo became enshrined in the history of Jamaica as 'Emancipator of the Slaves and in Ireland as The Poor Mans Friend during the most difficult of times...

Slavery has divided society into two classes:

to the one it has given power, but to the other it has not

extended protection. One of those classes is above public

opinion and the other below it; neither one therefore is

under its influence.

-Lord Sligo, Governor General of Jamaica.

In view of the present struggle for racial equality worldwide, the above observation seems as relevant today as when first written in 1836.

Lord Sligo, from Westport House, County Mayo, on Irelands west coast, was appointed Governor General of Jamaica and the Cayman Islands in April 1834. While the importation of slaves from Africa had been abolished in 1807 slavery, the cornerstone of sugar production and profit, continued. Evangelical missionaries conveyed the horrors of slavery to the British public and in 1833 the British Government passed an Emancipation Act which Sligo was entrusted to implement in Jamaica.

The Emancipation Act, however, did not give immediate freedom to the slaves, who merely became apprenticed to their masters for a further six years, with the plantation owners (including Sligo) being compensated for the changes by the British Government. Described as slavery under another name the controversial Apprenticeship System was nonetheless resisted by the Jamaican Plantocracy and by powerful commercial and political vested interests in Britain.

As the owner of two plantations Kellys and Cocoa Walk which he had inherited from his grandmother, Elizabeth Kelly, daughter of Denis Kelly from Co. Galway, former Chief Justice of Jamaica, the Jamaican planters expected Sligo to be on their side. His objective, however, as he told them on his arrival as Governor General in April 1834, to establish a social system absolved forever from the reproach of Slavery set them on a bitter collision course.

Sligo found the savagery of the slavery system he encountered on the island personally abhorrent. From the flogging of field workers with cart whips, branding with hot iron, to the whipping of female slaves the cruelties are past all idea, he told the Jamaican Assembly. I call on you to put an end to conduct so repugnant to humanity.

To counteract the worst excesses he maintained personal contact and control over the sixty Special Magistrates appointed to oversee the implementation of the new Apprenticeship System in the nine hundred plantations throughout the island. As he wrote to a friend:

It is treason in Jamaica to talk of a Negro as a free man

or to speak to him or to give him any knowledge of the

extent to which the law protects him

Much to the derision and indignation of their masters, and unprecedented in the colonies, to alleviate such inequality he personally gave a patient hearing to the poorest Negro which might carry his grievance to Government House

Against opposition from the Jamaican parliament, he advocated the education of the black population so they might extract maximum benefit from their future freedom.

He supported the building of the first schools on the island, two of which he established on his own property. He was the first plantation owner to initiate a wage system for black workers on his own plantations and later, after emancipation, to divide his lands into small farms which were leased to the former slaves. His efforts to improve Jamaicas infrastructure, land reclamation and better husbandry practices, as well as to steer the economy away from its dependence on sugar, lead to the establishment of Agricultural Societies of which he became patron. He was the first Governor on record to employ people of colour in his political administration on the island.

His endeavours on behalf of the majority black population were bitterly opposed by the planter-dominated Jamaican Assembly who accused him of interpreting the laws in favour of the negro and who, as Sligo wrote set out to make Jamaica too hot to hold me. Derisorily referring to him as The Great Leviathan of Black Humanity they withdrew his salary and commenced a campaign of vilification against him in the Jamaican and British press. With the connivance of powerful commercial vested interests in Britain whose fortunes depended on slavery from plantation owners, agents, merchants, ship owners, provisioners, manufacturers, importers etc - it resulted in his removal from office in 1836.

To the Jamaican black population, however, Sligo was their champion and protector as the pro-emancipation press on the island recorded:

The shout of fiendish triumph that sends Lord Sligo from

the shores of the colony is the prelude to the acclamations

that will hail him a DELIVERER of the human race, as a

friend of suffering humanity, as one of the truest champions

of liberty

In an unprecedented gesture the black population presented him with a magnificent silver candelabra inscribed:

in grateful remembrance they entertain of his

unremitting efforts to alleviate their suffering and

to redress their wrongs during his just and enlightened

administration of the Government of the Island

Lord Sligos personal experience in Jamaica turned him from being a supporter of the Apprenticeship System into, as he wrote, the warmest advocate for full and immediate emancipation. On his return he became active in the anti-slavery movement.

One of his published pamphlets Jamaica Under the Apprenticeship System which outlines in vivid detail the atrocities and inequalities of slavery as he experienced them first-hand, influenced the Great Debate on Emancipation held in the British parliament in February 1838. The pamphlet was also presented to Queen Victoria by the Prime Minister, Lord Melbourne.

Impatient with the lack of progress on 22 March 1838 being, as he wrote, well aware that it would put and end to the [slavery] system Sligo rose in the House of Lords and announced that regardless of the outcome of the Governments deliberations, he would free all Apprentices on his own plantations in Jamaica on 1 August 1838.

I am confident that no person who is acquainted with the

state of the West Indian colonies and at the same time

uninfected with colonial prejudices will deny that the time

is now come when it is important to effect a final

arrangement of this question.'

His public pronouncement left the British Government with no alternative but to implement full and immediate emancipation on the same date.

Sligos efforts in Jamaica also influenced the struggle for emancipation in America. In September 1836 he travelled to New York and Philadelphia to meet with members of the newly-formed American Anti-Slavery Society, as well as with individual clergymen at the forefront of the emancipation struggle there and, as was recorded, all who met him formed an exalted opinion of his integrity and friendship for the poor.

The ending of slavery brought with it financial ruin for most plantation owners, especially in Jamaica which in the early 1840s also experienced a severe and lengthy drought, as well as a reluctance of the newly-emancipated black population to work on the plantations, albeit for a wage, and which consequently made sugar production on the island uneconomic. Sligos own plantations fell into ruin. Thus the partial fulfilment of Sligos ambitions for the Apprentices was won at the cost of the dismemberment of his Jamaican inheritance.

Lord Sligo earned an honoured and respected place in the history of Jamaica, where he is acknowledged as Champion of the Slaves and where Sligoville, the first free slave village in the world, is named in his honour. In 1838 his name, together with those of Wilberforce and Buxton, leading figures in the anti-slavery movement, was commemorated in an emancipation memorial medal.

That many of the racially-motivated inequalities and injustices that Sligo sought to eradicate during his lifetime still exist one hundred and seventy-five years after his death he could undoubtedly not have envisaged.

As the statues of those implicated in the slavery system in the past are today being pulled from their plinthsperhaps one should be erected to this man from the west of Ireland who helped to dismantle it.

The Great Leviathan The Life of Howe Peter Browne 2nd Marquess of Sligo, 1788-1845 by Anne Chambers, is published by New Island Books

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Lord Sligo - the true tale of the Irish 'champion of the slaves' - RTE.ie

The following piece is a follow-up to my earliercolumn: Why it's time to fully abolish slavery in Tennessee. Now.

In a previouscolumn in support ofState Sen.Raumesh Akbarisbillto abolish slavery in the state of Tennessee, I gave my best attempt at a description of Americas remaining and thriving slave labor industry. Ive attempted to expand on this description here, but I still recommend that those who are seeking more information seek out the mountains ofacademic workon the topic, particularly that of BIPOCauthorsandresearchers.

While an understanding of what Michelle Alexander dubbed The New Jim Crow in her brilliant book of the same name is more prevalent today, the mechanics of just how it works and to what scale are often still obscure to the average citizen.

The entire forced labor market, a multi-billion dollar a year industry which includes more than4,000 national corporationsand thousands of state and private prisons, is balanced precariously upon a single loophole within the 13th amendment of the United States Constitution. Though your high school civics teacher may have glossed over the 13th in its full wording, calling it the one that banned slavery, its actually the amendment which banned most of the common forms of slavery at the time and left one glaring opening, which quickly came to define private industry and public policy for years to come. See if you can spot it:

Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.

So, you see, owning another human being and forcing them to work for little to no pay is wrong and evil, unless theyve committed a crime. Then, as Theeda Murphy of TennesseesNo Exceptions Prison Collectiveput it to merecently, They become property of the state. They become legally slaves. They can force them to work and they do not have to pay them.

This opening, having existed since the mid 19th century, has become an integral element to the modern penal system. Both state and private prisons are heavily staffed by their own inmates, with Tennessee inmates making between 17 and 59 cents per hour.Yes, you read that correctly.

While prisons themselves are themain usersof this labor, many prisons also make large sums of money sending their inmates to work for private corporations who, in turn, can save on labor costs by paying cents per hour.

The obvious question must arise: why have prisons chosen to pay inmates at all? If they can be legally enslaved, why has the penal system chosen to give them any wages? Not allprison laborersare paid, but in general, the answer points to the remarkably insidious nature of the American penal system.

Since the 1980s,with the popularization of tough on crime language and policies like mandatory minimum sentencing and expanded police presence in lower-income neighborhoods, we have seen the number of incarcerated citizens grow exponentially. This leads to eye-popping costs for the American public, with American criminal justice costs rising more than 600 percent since 1980. Eventually, the publics appetite for retributive justice was going to clash with their distaste for taxation or public debt. How was this crisis of values averted? By shifting the cost of this growing malignancy onto its victims, forcing incarcerated people to pay larger and larger portions of the cost of their own detention.

Today, many prisoners are asked to pay hundreds in probation fees, cover the cost of electronic monitoring, drug treatment, and other services, and even pay for their own public defender, a charge which is legal in 44 states. This is to say nothing of the costs of necessities like medical care and clothing. Many inmates are also charged rent for the time spent behind bars. Additionally, services which were once free, like phone calls to family and reading books from the library are now tied to constantly rising costs. Many prisoners finish their sentence with a mountain of debt and, thanks to being marked with a criminal record, little to no ability to gain employment which pays a decent wage.

And so, by placing this tremendous financial burden upon inmates, the U.S.penal system has achieved two key developments. First, they have shifted the financial burden of mass incarceration away from the general public, allowing them to continue lobbying for tough on crime legislation while hiding many of its consequences from the view of voters. Second, they have created sufficient demand for some form of income within the prison walls, making it possible to drive inmates to work for the only wages theyre able to achieve. The wages are set low enough, and the costs high enough, that inmates are rarely able to truly work their way out of from under this pressure.

The pressure is increasing as well, with costs of healthcare, rent, and contact with family rising at an alarming rate while studies show that prison wages are lower today than they were at the turn of the 21st century.

While larger reforms to and the possible abolition of our prison system in its current form may eventually be necessary, the abolition of slavery in each and every form must be an immediate moral imperative.

Beginning in Tennessee and hopefully expanding from there, it is time to end slavery once and for all.

Original post:

Slavery Has Never Been Abolished in the United States. In Tennessee, It Could Be Soon. - Murfreesboro Voice

Behind the Bar is The Nevada Independents newsletter devoted to comprehensive and accessible coverage of the 2021 Legislature.

In this edition: Can either Assemblywoman Annie Black or a federal lawsuit open the Legislature to the public? Plus, details on a bill to pay inmates the minimum wage, a proposed esports commission and legislative Democrats plan to offset educational losses during a year of COVID. Carson City Restaurant Spotlight makes a triumphant return.

Check this link to manage your newsletter subscriptions. The newsletter is published on Mondays and Thursdays.

I want to hear from you! Questions, comments, observations, jokes, what you think we should be covering or paying attention to. Email me at [emailprotected]

The effort to reopen the doors of the Legislature to the public has finally moved beyond rhetoric and press releases.

After giving a floor speech denouncing the continued closure of the building on Tuesday, Assemblywoman Annie Black (R-Mesquite) made a motion on the Assembly floor to open the Legislative Building under the same safety procedures of Walmart, bars, casinos and other businesses.

After a short recess to discuss legislative rules, the motion wasnt recognized the motion came under the wrong order of business (Remarks from the Floor and not Motions, Resolutions and Notices). Speaker Pro Tempore Steve Yeager (D-Las Vegas) told my colleague Michelle Rindels after the session on Tuesday that it was an inappropriate motion.

Black nonetheless wrote in her newsletter that she plans to bring up similar motions during floor sessions. But Black a freshman in the minority party who opted to not join the Assembly Republican Caucus has relatively few cards to play under Assembly procedural rules.

In essence, theres no realistic pathway for a motion like the one Black brought to pass unless shes able to get the support of a majority of the Assembly an impossible task in the Democratic-controlled body. If shes able to get her procedural ducks in a row, make the motion at the right time and is recognized by the Assembly speaker, Black could in theory force a roll call vote related to the buildings closure.

Such a vote would likely be on a motion to table Blacks initial motion, so not a direct vote on opening the building. Itd also default to a voice vote, but shed need support from only two colleagues to force a roll call vote (fellow Republicans Jim Wheeler (R-Minden) and John Ellison (R-Elko) spoke in favor of her motion on Tuesday).

Even if all the pieces fall into place and a roll call vote is taken, any victory would be symbolic I dont think any Assembly Democrats would publicly move away from leaderships position that a limited reopening should come in mid-April, after building staff are fully vaccinated.

Outside of that fight, there have also been more developments in the legal effort to open up the Legislative Building. The federal lawsuit filed by four conservative lobbyists last month has now been appealed to the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, after the case was not granted an expedited briefing schedule by Judge Miranda Du.

Du issued a minute order (essentially a judges abbreviated decision thats less formal than a written order) stating that the plaintiffs failed to request expedited briefing in their motion and did not otherwise establish they are entitled to an expedited briefing schedule.

The plaintiffs appealed that minute order to the 9th Circuit on Tuesday (you can read a copy of the filing here). It largely recaps arguments from the initial filing, and says that Dus order on the expedited briefing schedule is inaccurate because the lawsuit was filed as an emergency motion and because there are only 90 or so days left in the legislative session.

A 9th Circuit clerks order (also filed on Wednesday) stated that the appeals court may lack jurisdiction over this appeal because the minute order filed by Du does not appear to be a final or appealable order. It ordered plaintiffs to either voluntarily dismiss the appeal or to show cause as to why it should not be dismissed for lack of jurisdiction sometime before March 8.

Im not an attorney, and I havent owned a Magic 8 Ball since I was 9, so Im hesitant to predict what the future might hold in terms of the timeline for re-opening the Legislative Building.

But I think actually kicking off the vaccinations for building staff, legislators and press last week (plus the mid-April tentative date for a limited re-opening) helps quell at least some of the concerns that Ive seen and heard expressed about the plan, or lack thereof, to safely open the building while still protecting staff.

Addendum: This is the tenth edition of the newsletter that weve published, and were hovering around the 900-subscriber milestone. Thank you to everyone who continues to subscribe and read this newsletter every week. Its listed at the top every week, but if you have any feedback or things you would like to see, please send me an email at [emailprotected].

Riley Snyder

Should inmates get paid minimum wage?

In December 2015, Darrell White fractured a finger bone while on the job as a firefighter for the state Division of Forestry, leaving him temporarily disabled for 144 days.

White filed a workers compensation claim, but there was a problem: His job came through an inmate work program hosted by the Nevada Department of Corrections, and his workers compensation amount was tied to the miniscule wage ($18 to $22 a month, or $0.50 a day) paid to inmate workers in the state.

White lost a court case in 2019 challenging his workers compensation amount, but the issue of state correctional institutions paying inmates subminimum wage has drawn national attention.

Its why Sen. Dina Neal (D-Las Vegas) is sponsoring SB140, a bill that would require the Nevada Department of Corrections to pay inmate workers a salary equal to the states minimum wage, and change deduction programs to ensure that more dollars are given to inmates once released from prison. The bill was introduced last week and is scheduled for a hearing on Wednesday.

In an interview, Neal said that paying inmates less than the minimum wage was a counterintuitive policy the state already pays millions of dollars to prepare and support inmates for reentry into society, but once released, inmates (especially those who previously worked for in a skilled industry) have to essentially start from scratch because their previous jobs in a prison industry paid so little.

It doesn't make sense to push them out onto welfare, when they've worked for a private corporation inside the prison, she said in an interview on Monday.

Nevada inmates work in both regular jobs and in correctional industries, which covers a wide variety of programs including sewing clothes, welding, horse raising, printing, sorting hangers and auto restoration. The states correctional industry program is called Silver State Industries and employs around 4 percent of the state prison population at any given time, or about 400 to 600 individuals.

Inmates employed in Silver State Industries can make anywhere from $0.25 to $5.15 an hour, according to a 2017 survey of inmate wages by Prison Policy Initiative.

The legislation would also eliminate all deductions currently taken out of incarcerated worker salaries, save for those required for familial support or restitution for victims. Any wages left over after those deductions would be placed in the newly-created Offenders Release Fund, which would house inmate income and distribute aggregate wages to inmates once released from prison.

Inmates employed through Silver State Industries remit a significant portion of their wages nearly a quarter go to room and board, 5 percent goes to a statewide account to compensate victims of crime, and another 5 percent goes to a fund for capital projects to house new or expanded Prison Industry programs.

Neal said she expects pushback from the state Department of Corrections, as the remitted inmate wages help with the agencys usual budget woes. The agency filed a fiscal note on the bill, saying it would require the agency to significantly increase pay to inmates, and that another portion of state law prohibits inmates from entering into normal employment contracts with the state prison system.

But Neal said the current system was too reminiscent of convict leasing a post-slavery practice of forcing mostly-Black prisoners to work on railways, mines or plantations for no wages.

Now, whether or not the bill gets passed out of committee. I mean, at least I have a hearing to discuss what I think is a legitimate issue on how we are not really serving (inmates), she said.

Riley Snyder

Getting Nevadas students back on track

The pandemic and the move to virtual learning over the past year has led to an ongoing academic achievement gap that Democratic lawmakers hope to address through an education policy aimed at at-risk students.

Legislators unveiled details of the policy proposal, which will provide school districts with funding for summer school programs and other resources, during a virtual press conference on Wednesday afternoon.

"Learning loss because of the pandemic is a crisis that threatens to set many of our kids back with the potential of leaving behind a widened achievement gap," Sen. Marilyn Dondero Loop (D-Las Vegas) said. "If we don't work now to correct it, it will have implications for their educational development for years to come."

Under the "Back on Track Act," school districts would:

To fund the program, lawmakers are banking on federal aid that the state would receive as part of the $1.9 trillion federal stimulus package under consideration in the Senate. Parents will not pay any additional costs for the program, lawmakers said.

Tameka Henry, the mother of two children attending schools in the Las Vegas area, said that her children have struggled with their studies and mental health throughout the pandemic.

"We cannot afford to leave one child behind," Henry said. "Parents should have the options at their disposal, as these summer schools, and other resources, especially counselors, and those dealing with our children's mental health. These should be free options that will help get us back on track."

Tabitha Mueller

Could video games be Nevadas latest pillar of economic development?

Sen. Ben Kieckhefer (R-Reno) has denied to this newsletter that hes a gamer in real life.

But thats not stopping the lawmaker from banking on large-scale Fortnite and League of Legends tournaments as a brave new world in Nevada economic development.

Kieckhefers bill, SB165, dropped Tuesday and would create a three-member Nevada Esports Commission. Duties would be something similar to those of the Nevada Athletic Commission that regulates boxing Esports regulators would register events with purses larger than $1,000, enforce integrity of video game tournaments and even set drug-testing requirements for players.

Its not a new idea for Nevada to explore the professional gaming realm. In 2016, then-Gov. Brian Sandoval entertained the idea and heard from professional cyberathletes during a meeting of his Nevada Gaming Policy Committee.

Kieckhefer said it may have been premature five years ago, but since then, Las Vegas has unveiled venues including the Hyperx Esports Arena. Its a 30,000-foot, self-described gamers paradise at the Luxor complete with a gamer-inspired menu heavy on Red Bull cocktails to fuel those all-night LAN parties.

They fill stadiums all over the world ... for big tournaments of $20, $30 million. So the prospect of bringing these types of events to Las Vegas, I think, is a no-brainer, Kieckhefer said. Couple that with, sort of, the fact that a lot of these participants and fans are in their 20s it's an opportunity to bring a young new audience to Las Vegas.

Michelle Rindels

Carson City Restaurant Spotlight: Pok Beach

Trying poke (pronounce poh-kay) was a bit of a last food frontier for me I have some lingering fish-hesitance from my childhood.

But since trying Pok Beach a few Nevada Days ago, Ive been absolutely hooked on this place and the Hawaiian-inspired dish as a whole.

Think of it as deconstructed sushi, with all sorts of tasty fresh seafood heaped on a base of rice and topped with an abundance of veggies and sauces. What you lose in perfect sushi roll presentation, you gain in quantity, speed, and portability.

One of my favorite lunches is a Lava Bowl with half rice, half Fritos as a base, plus mango, jalapeo, avocado and a generous supply of sriracha. Itll set you back $12 to $14, but itll power you through hours of afternoon committees and spare you both a carb coma and fried-food guilt.

Place your order at (775) 434-7066, get their app or order from the site at http://www.thepokebeach.com. The restaurant is located at 1442 E. Williams St. #2 in Carson City.

Have a restaurant suggestion for the Spotlight? Tell me at [emailprotected]. FYI: Were not accepting free food in order to preserve the integrity of the reviews.

What were reading

Storey County and the county water district are not so keen on the idea of letting a major tech company form their own separate autonomous governing structure, Daniel Rothberg reports.

Details on the effort to create the first statewide human trafficking task force, via Sean Golonka.

Another excellent installment of our Freshman Orientation profiles takes a look at Democratic Assemblywoman Natha Anderson, Michelle Rindels reports.

There are a handful of people in Nevada public life who you can read a quote from and hear it exactly in their voice. Legislative Counsel Bureau General Counsel Kevin Powers, who argued for the Legislature in the Opportunity Scholarship program lawsuit oral arguments, is one of those people (via Jazmin Orozco Rodriguez).

Real estate, home builders and developers were the largest overall donors to lawmakers in the 2020 election cycle, Jacob Solis reports.

A hearing on a bill from the state Division of Water Resources to limit judicial review on decisions made by the states top water official almost (Im so sorry for this) drowned in opposition (Nevada Current).

Nevada Department of Wildlife vs. Pete Goicoechea vs. the Center for Biological Diversity (Nevada Current)

Details on the bill to count house arrest toward times served (Las Vegas Review-Journal)

Washoe ZIP codes with the highest infection rates have a higher proportion of lower-income residents and a larger share of minorities Hispanics in particular. (Reno Gazette-Journal)

UPCOMING DEADLINES

Days to take action on Initiative Petitions before they go to the 2022 ballot: 8 (March 12, 2021)

Days Until Legislator Bill Introduction Deadline: 11 (March 15, 2021)

Days Until Sine Die: 88 (May 31, 2021)

Go here to read the rest:

Behind the Bar: Should inmates get minimum wage? Plus plans to address learning loss, an esports commission and Carson City Restaurant Spotlight - The...

Photo: Diana Lee Zadlo

If your band plays raw, heavy music marked by full-tilt tempos and throat-peeling screams, it can be hard to set yourself apart from more than 40 years of music in that vein. While many of their ultra-fast punk peers stay well within the trails blazed by bands like crossover thrash standard-bearers D.R.I., hardcore punks Infest or grindcore progenitors Napalm Death, Nashvilles Thirdface has thoughtfully crafted a sound they can proudly call their own. Abandoning formulaic norms, the Nashville foursome has spent the past several years finding new ways to create music that shows the influence of titans in the genre without regurgitating their work.

I think Ive heard us described as a metal band before, and that kind of makes me laugh, says bassist Maddy Madeira, because we kind of went into this band thinking about punk and hardcore. I think it feels easier to just say, Yeah, its like a hardcore punk band, even if it kind of has more metallic moments.

Theres a lot going on in the bands debut LP Do It With a Smile, out Friday. Where musicality isnt really a priority for a lot of groups in this part of the heavy spectrum, it definitely is for Thirdface. Their outrageous thrash is centered on unorthodox riffs with discernible melodies. While Madeira notes that the whole group including drummer Shibby Poole (also of Yautja) and vocalist Kathryn Edwards (also a co-founder of venue Drkmttr) has an interest in a broad spectrum of sounds, she credits guitarist David Reichley with leading the charge to push the boundaries.

He just has such an interesting style thats really influenced from all different genres, she says. Going into writing music together without putting ourselves in a box I think leaves a lot of room for cool melodies and weird melodic parts.

Album art: Thirdface, 'Do It With a Smile'

Thirdface doesnt question genre norms with their sound alone they step over boundaries at every opportunity. While the stereotypical aesthetics of thrash and powerviolence call for illegibly scrawled fonts, horror movie samples or black-and-white photos of nuclear aftermath, the group throws a curveball. The new albums artwork and layout were done by Reichley and Edwards, who put together hues of periwinkle and violet on a cover that looks like something from 80s New York street art. The bands promo photos were taken in the house where Madeira and Poole live, showing off their rosy-toned hallways, photos of pups and an impressive collection of VHS tapes. You might expect the LP to be coming out on a label deeply entrenched in the world of DIY hardcore, but Do It With a Smile is being released in partnership with Brooklyns Exploding in Sound Records, an imprint best known for bands that draw on old-school indie rock, like fellow Nashville bands Pile and Shell of a Shell.

We stick out like a sore thumb on that label, Madeira says with a shrug. But I think that the press photos and the artwork reflect who we are as people as a group and as individuals pretty well, because were just trying to do our thing, not really trying to be anything or, like, look extra tough.

Ensuring that the album would feel like a finished work that purely belongs to Thirdface, Poole recorded and mixed all of it above the garage in the backyard. The title of the record comes from a line in the lead single Villains!, a nasty three-minute track that morphs from a slog through the sludge to a wretched full-speed run across scorched earth. Madeira explains the songs focus on the all-too-familiar expectation that workers should accept their working conditions with a grin, forced or not something that punks and metal bands have been good at screaming about.

Its a song about wage slavery, and just how much it sucks to work a job that exploits your labor for pennies, Madeira says. I think that line from that song specifically is a really good indicator of what were about.

Read more:

Thirdface Shreds Heavy-Music Norms on 'Do It With a Smile' - Nashville Scene