Daily Archives: August 22, 2021

This story is part of Parents Are Cool!, the third issue of Image, which explores the myriad ways in which L.A. parents practice the craft of care. See the full package here.

When Melina Abdullah mentions a forebear in the struggle for civil rights and freedom in this country, she often applies a familial honorific Mama Harriet Tubman or Mama Sojourner Truth. This feels apt, given that Abdullah, who was part of the original group that convened to form Black Lives Matter, serves as a kind of matriarch for the current movement in Los Angeles. She is frequently pictured with a microphone in hand, leading crowds in their demand for justice for a victim of police violence or for accountability from elected officials. At the start of these protests shes known to call on her ancestors for guidance and protection, extolling those gathered to claim a lineage that is broader than their own direct bloodlines.

In addition to her organizing work with BLM-LA, Abdullah is a scholar. She works across platforms the way an artist works across disciplines. Shes currently a professor and the former chair of Pan-African studies at Cal State L.A. She also hosts or cohosts three (yes, three) local radio shows: Move the Crowd and Beautiful Struggle on KPFK-FM and This Is Not a Drill on KBLA-AM. She does all of this while single-mothering three children, which is not to say that she raises them alone. In a 2012 essay on womanist mothering, Abdullah ascribes to a style of parenting that challenges the confines of the nuclear family, embracing extended familial and communal bonds, an approach that enables mothers to develop as full and complete human beings.

I caught up with Abdullah to talk about this approach, her intellectual journey and her efforts to challenge the status quo in Los Angeles.

Angela Flournoy: So Im really excited Im able to talk to you. Ive been thinking about finding a reason to speak to you for several years now, probably since I first learned about the Jackie Lacey must go rallies. One thing Im really excited to talk to you about is motherhood. Ive been thinking particularly about my own mothers work and how she described that work to me throughout her life. How do you describe the work that you do to your children?

Melina Abdullah: You know, I dont describe it to my children. Im a single mom. Me and my kids are a team. Were tight. My kids are involved in everything I do. Sometimes Ill say Im one of the original members of Black Lives Matter and theyre like, We are too. And they are they were there from the beginning. Theres not a lot of describing, theyre just present. Who I am as an organizer is also part of who we are as a family of organizers.

(Bethany Mollenkof for The Times)

AF: Thats wonderful. Not just sort of witnessing you and your activism but being a part of it. How do you think that impacts the way that you think about hope and optimism?

MA: I have a lot of hope because of the kids. The kids are much more courageous than adults are. Kids are born into the world, anything is possible. Thats the way that they talk and think. They are audacious and visionary and courageous. And theyre not invested in the system at all. It gives me tremendous faith that they can do anything. The one thing that they my oldest daughter in particular warn me about is that we have faith in them, but they dont want us to give it all to them. They dont want us to offload the movement say, You got it. They want us in the struggle too.

AF: That really seems to be sort of a central kind of tenet of the way you live your life. The concept of Ujamaa everybody in the community sort of having a part.

MA: We talk about it as having a leader-full movement, and that really comes from Mama Ella Bakers concept of groups and leadership. To be a part of the movement, to be an activist or to be an organizer, doesnt mean you have to be the one speaking on the megaphone. It means whatever your gift is, you bring that to the movement. I think its really important that we reconceptualize what movement is so that every talent and gift and resource and passion can be part of movement building. You dont have to develop skill sets that are outside of your comfort zone or interest area, you can bring your passion and thats whats most important.

AF: In the past year, it seems as if a lot of people are using phrases that I never really heard in common parlance before. One of them is the Black Radical Tradition. How would you define the Black Radical Tradition, and how has it influenced your own life?

MA: When we think about the Black Radical Tradition, we traditionally go back to the 60s. But I think that we actually want to go back further we want to go back to the moment that we were stolen from Africa. If we think about the freedom struggle from chattel slavery, Mama Harriet [Tubman] wasnt saying, Just end slavery, she was saying, Lets get to freedom. Thats the Black Radical Tradition, not just freeing ourselves from conditions but freeing ourselves from an entire system thats built on our exploitation and our un-freedom. When you talk about the anti-lynching movement, Ida B. Wells and Mary Church Terrell, they were intent not just on ending lynching but also building a world where Black people could grow and prosper. The Black Radical Tradition is abolitionist. Its about upending unjust systems. But also, theres another side. Angela Davis reminds us you have to upend unjust systems and you have to envision and build towards new ones. You have to have the vision to build towards a new world.

AF: That is a much more useful framework being accountable to that future we cant yet see.

MA: I also think that when we talk about the Black Radical Tradition, theres an urgency to it. It is thinking about future generations, but its also wanting it now. Im not talking about freedom for my children once Im dead. Im talking about freedom for my children now. Im not talking about abolishing jails, prisons and police in 50 years or 100 years. Im talking about next year.

Angela Flournoy

(Bethany Mollenkof for The Times)

AF: I want to turn toward your scholarly work which, since you have such a large presence here as an activist, people dont really talk about as much. What were some of the seminal texts that shaped you as a scholar?

MA: All of Angela Davis work, especially Women, Race & Class. Robin Kellys work. Freedom Dreams completely transformed me. When we talk about what it is to be an abolitionist and see the world you want to live in and work towards it, Freedom Dreams was really pivotal. The first book I have any student read is Black Power by Kwame Ture and Charles Hamilton. I always warn them, Do not start highlighting because the whole book will be yellow. I love Kimberl Crenshaw, Derrick Bell. My mentor, Michael Preston. He wrote the book The New Black Politics. That was really important for me. I know Im forgetting people who are really important to my work. bell hooks.

AF: Paula Giddings

MA: I love Paula Giddings. When and Where I Enter. There are texts like theory, but theres also the awakenings. Toni Morrison, Alice Walker and Octavia Butler are my three favorite authors.

Embedded in the Black Radical Tradition is the Black radical imagination. Whats in Kindred the text is Black radical imagination. What art has a capacity to do, what fiction has a capacity to do, is bypass. It doesnt start with the intellect; youre drawn in from your soul. You experience it rather than just thinking about it.

AF: Im curious about other formative experiences. How has maturing as an activist in L.A. shaped you?

MA: Ive always had a kind of radical leaning thats core to who I am. When I moved here for my PhD, I was also being groomed by the Black political establishment. I think stepping fully into who I am as a radical organizer made me realize I cant have both. I dont really want both. I think that question is being posed to a lot of Angelenos now. Like, what side are you on? I want to make sure we dont lose the moment. Because it seems as if people are being lured back into finding a comfortable place in oppression. Its important that we realize that. We always say, When we fight, we win. We need everybody in the fight.

There was a moment in 2015. We were protesting outside of Garcettis house for Ezell Ford. And I remember thinking to myself, Well, I guess youll never run for office now! I remember feeling like, thats OK. Because this is my calling. I thought about how Im a completely single mom. I have three kids who are only dependent on my salary. I do have tenure but I also know that its not foolproof. So I said, Well, what if you get fired from your job? That came up. And as quickly as I had that anxiety, God said: So what. Your mama has a couch. We need people to recognize that your mama has a couch. There are some sacrifices that are worth it.

AF: Do you think that comfortability in oppression is a particular temptation in this city? Or do you think that it is just part of being a person trying to navigate capitalism in this country?

MA: I think its everywhere. But I think its more intense here. L.A. is the place where you see everything. You see fancy things, and theyre not that far from reach, just on the other side of the freeway or whatever. If you saw a Lamborghini in Oakland, youd think about it for a year. Here, youre used to seeing celebrities. I dont really know anybody who hasnt ever been on TV. Every other person has been an extra on a show.

AF: That sort of relates to another thing. You do have celebrities who want to be involved in the movement. They know what it is to have the material comfort. How has it been working with them?

MA: Im encouraged by the way in which a lot of celebrities have engaged. Last summer, we had tons of artists at all our stuff. There are artists who are coming out because they feel pulled, but also because it becomes acceptable. There was a time, in 2013 when we were born, nobody would even say Black lives matter. They thought it was too radical to say Black lives matter. But now everybodys like, of course, were gonna say Black lives matter. There are artists who did that. Many of them also gave money. Many of them will post on their platforms. But then theres also the people who were in it before, and who continue to be in it now.

I wanted to say something else about L.A. I think that theres the glamour that, you know, is the lure into comfort. But also, I think theres tremendous potential in L.A. for mass uprising, and thats what you saw in 65 and 92. And this year. Its the reason Black Lives Matter was birthed here. Theres a tremendous potential in Los Angeles because we see the contrast constantly. So in 65, you got the Voting Rights Act passed. Now Black folks are free. But then you got Marquette Frye and his mama and his brother getting beaten in Watts by the police. In 92, you have [the popularity of] Bill Cosby, with all that comes with it, right? But then you have the beating of Rodney King, right after the murder of Latasha Harlins. So these uprisings are always just beneath the surface, because we know that that veneer is also not true.

Melina Abdullah and Angela Flournoy.

(Bethany Mollenkof for The Times)

AF: I wanted to get back to this idea of womanist mothering. Weve covered some of this already: birthing hope, birthing possibility, birthing the promise of revolution. I wonder if youll just let me read a paragraph from this essay you wrote in 2012.

In my moments of exhaustion, overwhelmed by work, home, marriage, and motherhood, I sometimes fantasize of a life of greater freedom. I imagine the world of a public intellectual, who churns out book after book each more brilliant than the last, attends lectures and workshops almost nightly, and appears regularly as a talking-head on television newscasts. I think of how I would indulge my insatiable desire to read ... staying up until the wee hours of the morning devouring each text at the moment of its release. If I werent the mother of three, my strong brown legs (toned from my nightly African dance class) would carry me across the sunlit campus of the most esteemed Historically Black University in the nation, where I was the campus star. Colleagues and students would stop and nod, admiring my meticulously coifed hair and the exquisite jewelry (that I picked up during my seventeenth trip to Ghana, where I was conducting my most recent research). I would spend my weekends running a community program for Black girls, attending concerts, practicing martial arts, and tending my garden where Id grow mangos, tomatoes and avocados ...

MA: Why does that still sound good to me?

AF: Nine years later, Im wondering if a life of greater freedom still sounds like this to you? Or if it sounds different now.

MA: So Im not married anymore. I have greater freedom because of it. After I got divorced, there was one moment when I took my kids out after school on a school night; we went to the Grove. There used to be this Mexican spot on the Farmers Market side: Lotera. They had the best quesadillas. We were there till like 9 oclock. When we got home, it was like 10 oclock on a school night. [I had one of] these moments of revelation. I was like, I get to raise my kids how I want to raise my kids. Theres nobody there to get mad. I think a lot of times like were fed this idea that thats sad. Its not; it was really great.

I have been to Ghana not 17 times but once. Ive been to South Africa. Ive been to Morocco. Ive been to all of these places. Ive had lots of experiences. I dont get nods on campus all the time. But the Black folks love me. Im not in an HBCU because Im not going to leave L.A. right now. But the beauty of it is embracing my kids as my partners. And the point of the essay was also figuring out how to bring in community and make real that African teaching of it takes a village.

I do remember the part in the essay where I talked about Alice Walker and her saying, You should have kids, but just one. More than that and youre a sitting duck. I think that when you raise your kids to be your comrades, to be your crew, you got an army. Youre not a sitting duck. If somebody comes for me, they come for us. And if somebody comes for them, they come for us.

(Bethany Mollenkof for The Times)

AF: What do you want now?

MA: Freedom for my people. But for me, I want a clean house. I havent gotten my hair done since before the pandemic. Little stuff. I love my life. Theres nothing I really want. I feel very fulfilled, like very fulfilled. The movement fulfills me, my kids fulfill me. I have great people around me who I love. I have a lot of laughter. You know? I dont really want anything for me.

Continued here:

Melina Abdullah on BLM, motherhood, and abolition - Los Angeles Times

The best way to keep children safe is to provide their families with the services and supports they need, in the least obtrusive way possible, an Administration for Childrens Services spokesperson wrote in an email. ACS is committed to continuing to expand services and supports to strengthen families, keep children safe, and take steps to reduce the disproportionality in the child welfare system.

But several mothers countered that when help comes attached to the same system, it wont be effective. Many activists say they are now aiming for the kind of sweeping revamping of child safety endorsed by Dorothy Roberts, a University of Pennsylvania professor. Twenty years ago, Roberts wrote a groundbreaking book critiquing child welfare policies and practices, which she links to slavery. In a June keynote speechat Columbia University, Roberts said she had since moved from hoping for child welfare reform to wanting abolition. The family policing system cant be fixed, she said, urging the audience of parents, policymakers, academics, and advocates to work collectively to dismantle the system and replace it with a radically reimagined way of caring for children and their families.

During the early months of the pandemic, Jeanette Vega, co-executive director of Rise,caught glimpses of a radically compassionate agenda for child safety. She saw it in the mutual aid networks sprouting across the city, as well as in her own Bronx neighborhood, where, pre-pandemic, people generally kept to themselves, but during lockdowns neighbors came togethertaking turns with homeschooling, sharing washing machines, and, for material needs, turning to the local grassroots groups manned not by a government agency but by each other. In New York City, we were there for each other. We connected with our friends and our neighbors, and from that our families have been safe, and our children have been safe, says Vega. We dont need system involvement.

See the original post here:

How the Pandemic Became an Unplanned Experiment in Abolishing the Child Welfare System - The New Republic

Tiffany Cabn (photo: cabanforqueens.com)

Tiffany Cabn, one of the citys most prominent leftist leaders and the recently-victorious Democratic nominee for City Council in Queens 22nd District, says that no other profession could have prepared her for politics more than her seven years as a public defender.

And as Cabn, who must still win the general election in which she is heavily favored given the districts overwhelming Democratic voter enrollment advantage, eyes joining the City Council and making an impact there, she is reflecting on her strengths and priorities, and outlining some of the strategies she is employing.

We may not have agreed on much of anything on one side of the aisle, between me being the defense attorney and their being a prosecutor, or even the person on the bench, but you trusted me, Cabn said in an August 3 appearance on the Max Politics podcast. You respected me. You knew I was going to communicate with you.

Cabn joined the podcast, hosted by Ben Max of Gotham Gazette, to discuss her political journey and primary win, her policy and budget priorities as a likely future City Council member, how shes working to build leftist political power in the city, and more.

Cabn surged into the public eye two years ago in the 2019 Queens District Attorney Democratic primary race, where she nearly upset eventual winner Melinda Katz, who prevailed in a recount. The near-win and shockingly strong performance helped turn Cabn into a leading figure of the citys Democratic Socialists of America branch and fueled speculation about what she would run for next, which turned out to be City Council, in a district including Astoria and Long Island City that has become a hotbed of leftist activity.

After the district attorney race, Cabn went on to engage in political organizing on the national, state, and city levels with the Working Families Party, before launching her campaign for City Council. The relationship building never stopped, she said on the podcast. I remained very present, involved in my community, continuing to do the work that I didI am really proud of the fact that actually, in a lot of ways, we performed better than we did in the DA race and it showed a progression of how many more folks we were connecting with and having conversations with.

Cabn said that she knocked on an average of 800 to 1,000 doors a week during the campaign. My philosophy in all of the work that I do is that Im going to come in at it from a place of genuinely wanting to work hard with and for folks, she said. And that nobody is going to out-work me. Period.

Cabn went on to win over 93% of the election districts in the Democratic primary race. Her victory gave her a clear mandate from her community, she said, on what they want her to fight for at City Hall, assuming she wins the general election. With that major Democratic enrollment advantage in the district, Cabn is expected to best Republican nominee Felicia Kalan and independent candidate Edwin DeJesus Jr. The district is home to 101,328 enrolled voters including 65,612 Democrats, 9,763 Republicans, and 22,609 party-unaffiliated voters.

In conversations with voters during the primary, Cabn said she emphasized public safety and climate above all else, but that many other issues are of clear importance and interconnected. Her one takeaway from these door-to-door conversations was the falsity of the notion that average people cannot understand and engage in conversations about environmental justice, she said.

Its such nonsense, Cabn said. At every single door, we talked about the high asthma rates here, people connecting them to the power plants in our district. If they didnt know that another power plant was about to come, and we were the ones to tell them, they immediately wanted to know what we could do to stop it and what the alternatives were.

Discussions about public safety, according to Cabn, were strongly focused on how disproportionate resources are for those workers who hope to create substantial change in communities. The conversation around public safety was very firmly rooted in budget justice and having meaningful conversations about what actually produces safety in our communities, Cabn said.

Cabn has been an ardent advocate of the Defund the NYPD movement and describes herself as a police abolitionist. But, even if not everyone readily supports divesting from the police budget and removing NYPD from certain responsibilities, Cabn hopes to fight for policies that most people can agree on, such as building up more community resources or altering some of the response to certain public safety issues.

That building up, that creation, most folks agree with, she said. If you dont really support defunding the police but you do believe that mental health issues shouldnt be criminalized, that we need to expand health and hospitals, that we have to have more clinics that can provide comprehensive care, all those things, thats part of my public safety plan, right? In my mind, we are successful if the order, or the trajectory of progress, is that we build up those systems of support.

Though Cabn pledges that her ultimate goal is abolishing the police, she made clear that this is a long-term vision and portrayed herself as pragmatic.

According to Cabn, since there cannot realistically be a world of complete nonviolence, there must be infrastructure and processes available to respond to, prevent, and change violent behavior and exponentially reduce the chances that perpetrators will harm again and victims will harm others. Incarceration, she said, does not achieve this goal.

What I like to remind people is that abolition is both a noun and a verb, so abolition the noun is that world without the prison industrial complex, right, without police and prosecutors and prisons, she said on the podcast. But abolition the verb is about taking steps towards creating a health infrastructure. Its about taking steps towards creating systems of accountability, not systems of punishment.

The answer to combating violent crime without police, Cabn said, lies in violence interruption programs. These programs, such as Cure Violence and 696 Build Queensbridge, are incredibly effective at reducing gun violence, she said, but they need to be fully invested in.

There comes a point when they make the case in their catchment area that you cannot deny these results, she said. Its so much more effective than policing ever was, ever could be, at interrupting and preventing the gun violence. And theyll ask for more money because they want to expand their catchment area. They, consistently, will never get a proper amount of money.

She said that the next city budget, which she hopes to help negotiate in the Council, should cut upwards of $2 or $3 billion from the police department. She said that the movement should not be so focused on a number, but making the argument around what works and what doesnt, and funding for the best public health and public safety outcomes.

Though other Council members and the likely incoming mayor, Democratic nominee Eric Adams, may disagree with her on a variety of issues, Cabn said she understands the importance of finding common ground.

Eric Adams has made it clear, for example, that his goal is to make sure that we have an equitable recovery from the pandemic, she said. There is no doubt about the fact that Eric Adams cares for Black and brown and low-income New Yorkers. We may disagree on strategies for how to better care for our neighbors, right, for our constituents. But I think its pretty clear that the desire is there.

Cabn pointed out potential areas of concern about a Mayor Adams when it comes to policing, saying she wants to ensure theres no return of the plainclothes anti-crime unit or increase in the use of stop-and-frisk.

The characterization that she is some kind of political bomb-thrower, Cabn said, couldnt be further from the truth, and she is always ready to listen to people, meet them where they are at, and try to find common ground.

One policy that Cabn indicates she has no intention of compromising on, however, is the construction of new jails in the city. In 2019, the City Council passed a plan to close the jails on Rikers Island and build four borough-based jails, one in each borough but Staten Island, with some replacing current jail facilities.

No new jails, Cabn said. That is firmly where I stand. I think that every penny we put into our prison industrial complex is one that absolutely should be spent on providing care and support in our community. Again, they produce better outcomes.

Something that people may not know about District 22, Cabn said, is that it includes Rikers Island.

We have spent a lot of time debunking a lot of the myths around whos on Rikers Island and who isnt, she said. We know that the majority of people on Rikers Island are people who are there because they cant afford their bail. And, you know, if they had enough money, theyd be able to fight their case from the outsidetheyre presumed innocent.

Other portions of the population on Rikers include those who are serving short jail sentences for technical offenses and misdemeanors that are rooted in public health issues, she said. These offenses are grounded in the criminalization of poverty, mental health, and substance use, according to Cabn.

When you build jail cells, you fill them, she said. The more that we allow this system to catch all of our societal problems and ills, the less reason or room there is to create real, long-lasting solutions.

No, Cabn said when asked if she is running to be the next City Council speaker, an internal race among the next class of 51 Council members to lead the legislative body, but that she is working to get to know her likely future colleagues and build political power to help select a leftist speaker.

She also noted that because the District 22 seat is currently vacant after the resignation of former Council Member Costa Constantinides, who took a nonprofit executive job, she could be seated in November or December if she wins the general election and once the results are certified.

[Listen to the full conversation on Max Politics: Tiffany Cabn Heads Toward the City Council]

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'Budget Justice': Tiffany Cabn Looks to Shape the Next City Council - Gotham Gazette

U.S. Rep. Ayanna Soyini Presley (D-MA) was the featured guest in an event held by the Marthas Vineyard Social Justice Leadership Foundation at the Tabernacle in Oak Bluffs. Lisette Williams, a core member of the Marthas Vineyard chapter of Black Lives Matter, was the facilitator of the event on Friday afternoon.

New York Attorney General Letitia James and Bronx Borough Presidential candidate Vanessa Gibson were also present to show support for Pressley.

The event began with introductions, one by the foundations vice president Joseph Carter for the event overall and another by Williams for Pressley.

Throughout her career as a public servant, Congresswoman Pressley has fought to make sure those closest to the pain are closest to the power, driving and informing policymaking, said Williams. When I think of Congresswoman Pressley, two words come to mind: authentic and transparent.

Pressley described her improbable journey into public service, which began with an unpaid internship under former Massachusetts congressman U.S. Rep. Joseph P. Kennedy II. She later earned her first elected position as the first Black woman on the Boston City Council. Her speech also touched on a variety of topics such as immigration issues, racial justice, and the changing electorate landscape of America, among other issues.

Pressleys mother was a super voter and had an impact on the congresswomans life. Pressley was read speeches, like ones by former Texas state senator Barbara Jordan, rather than traditional bedtime stories because her mother wanted her to be aware of the pride in being Black and wanted Pressley to do her part in uplifting the community. Before she passed, the words Pressley heard from her mother was Ayanna Solyini, never forget that we are powerful.

I believed her then, and I still believe her today, said Pressley.

Pressley also brought up the difficulties Americans faced with the COVID pandemic. She made a call to use this as a chance to make an active, engaged movement toward an improved, more equitable American society rather than just going back to normal. At this moment you are still confronting crises of public health, of economic inequality, of systemic racism. These are not new challenges or injustices, but theyve certainly been laid bare and exacerbated during this pandemic. So the task before all of us now, in this moment of transformation not of our choosing, is to take and seize this opportunity to reimagine and rebuild, with intention, with our policies and our budgets, more equitable communities. It is not enough to recover to a pre-COVID, status quo, insufficient, unjust normal, said Pressley.

Pressley herself plans to work toward the improvement of society and the lot of marginalized communities through Congress. I always say that policy is my love language, as evidenced by the 91 bills Ive introduced, said Pressley. It is bold, precise, and intentional policy and advocacy that will undo the violence, what I would call, the policy violence that has been inflicted for generations.

White supremacy is still a living force in America, she said The Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol is evidence of this, which was addressed by Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD) at Old Whaling Church in Edgartown on Tuesday.

Pressley is not on the United States House Select Committee on the January 6 Attack, but she is working to make sure something like that doesnt occur again. I serve on the Oversights and Reform Committee, and within hours of the January 6th events, which caused great terror and trauma to all that were in proximity with it, emboldened white supremacists wearing anti-Semetic T-shirts, and brandishing the Confederate flag and Trump flags, and they even erected a noose on the West Lawn of the Capitol. So, within hours of that, I called for a thorough and independent investigation to ensure that all persons, including members of Congress, who aided and abetted this insurrection which sought to interrupt the peaceful transfer of power, that they be held accountable. Just yesterday [Thursday] we had another imminent threat and it just goes to show we have a lot of work to do to dismantle and root out white supremacy. Its a threat to our democracy, it is a threat to our lives and my staff, and the food service workers, the custodians, and other members deserve to go to work to do the work they are compelled to do on behalf of the American people without imminent threats. So, it just goes to show how important the select committee is, Pressley told the Times.

A question and answer session was held after the speech, led by Williams. Pressley gave answers addressing the need for police reform and decriminalization of mental health, the lasting detrimental legacy from the exclusion of Black service members from the G.I. Bill after World War II, calling for the cancellation of student debt through executive order, womens and minorities evolving roles in politics and society, the voting rights bill currently going through Congress, abolition of the filibuster, climate change crisis, and a need to give people affected by issues a voice at the decision making table, among other answers.

Government is stronger when it reflects the citizenry that it serves, said Pressley.

The event concluded with a picture session with Pressley for the event goers.

Excerpt from:

'Never forget that we are powerful' - Martha's Vineyard Times

Lucknow:Contractual workers working with Uttar Pradesh Power Corporation Ltd (UPPCL) resorted to protest yet again as they have not received salaries for the past two months for the second time in a row.

The workers held demonstrations in several districts - Bareilly, Piliphit, Agra, Bulandshahr, and Lucknow - outside the powerhouse offices against the UPPCL authorities after a long deadlock over their demands for equal pay. The demonstrations were held under the banner of Uttar Pradesh Bijli Karamchari Sangh.

Apart from equal pay for equal work, their other demands are regularisation of service, compensation to the employees injured on duty, appointment on compassionate ground to the family members of employees who died while serving the company. With no salary for the past two months amid the pandemic, workers are left in the lurch.

Fed up with the government apathy towards them, the union threatened that if the government did not concede soon to their demands, including regularisation of jobs and hike in salaries, they would be forced to boycott work, and the entire state would face "blackouts".

"The contractual workers in the Power sector are not getting salaries on time and other benefits that are given to a government employee for the same work. For the past 10-15 years, we have been demanding that our jobs must be regularised by providing us with the same benefits, but it fell on deaf ears," Amit Pandey, a union leader, toldNewsClick. He added that due to the salary delay, the poor and needy were forced to suffer unnecessarily.

For years, the contractual workers of Uttar Pradesh Power Corporation Limited have been making the same demands equal pay for equal work, an increase in allowances and regularisation of contractual employees. When nothing came out of talks with the government, they started protests.

Last year, during the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic, the linesmen and other staffhad gone on strikeagainst salary payment delays.

A lineman had toldNewsClickthat Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath highlighted his government's achievements of providing 24-hour electricity supply in the state. At the same time, he neglected the genuine demands directly connected with the livelihood of thousands of contractual electricity employees working round the clock for the government.

"We have been working 16 hours per day so that people can get better electricity supply, but when we raise our issue of increasing our wages, we either receive abuse or termination letter. Is this what we deserve for the hard work? How can one survive with Rs 8,000 when a permanent employee gets Rs 25,000 salary and other government benefits for the same work?" asked Jitendra Saini, a contractual worker with UPPCL, while speaking toNewsClick.

Demanding the abolition of contractor system and the implementation of the equal pay for equal work order of the Supreme Court, he said they had nothing in the name of dress or identity card. When the contractual workers approach concerned officers, they are asked to keep their mouths shut and work or look for other jobs.

The power sector workers demanded that the government should give power employees an insurance cover of Rs 50 lakh each as they have been working through the COVID-19 crisis and the lockdown periods. The workers felt that just as the state government had offered insurance coverage to health workers and police personnel, power employees should also be covered for risking their lives during the pandemic.

"During the second wave of the pandemic, we lost many of our workers working on duty but no one got the attention of the government. We are facing financial distress but have not received any compensation from the government," a worker alleged.

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Contractual Workers of UP Power Sector Not Paid for 2 Months, Threaten to Boycott Work - NewsClick

Before about 1970, academics made many unpredicted transformational scientific discoveries. These include Max Planck (quantisation), Albert Einstein (photo-electric effect), Paul Dirac (who predicted antimatter) and some 500 others: roughly the number of Nobel prizewinners in that time.

I call this glorious assembly the Planck Club. Their brilliant work inspired such technologies as the laserand myriad spin-offs, the electronic and telecommunications revolutions, nuclear power, biotechnology, and medical diagnostics and techniques galore. The value of these over the century might be 100 trillion in todays money.

The US National Science Foundation is poised to see its budget more than double (to $18 billion (13 billion)) by 2026, as the US seeks to out-innovate the rest of the world. The UK government has also pledged to more than double research spending by 2024-25.However, spending increases are not enough. Science policymakers must also recognise and act upon the fact that the primary source of Western innovation has historically stemmed mainly from free, iconoclastic academics.

To be fair, the UKs plans do include the 800 million Advanced Research and Invention Agency. Deliberately constituted outside UK Research and Innovation, Aria is intended to be a high-risk, high-reward agency that bypasses standard funding procedures. Its godfather, Dominic Cummings who also oversaw the abolition of UKRIs requirement for grant applicants to predict the impact of their work told MPs in March that the agency should be run by an entirely independent director, with good taste in scientific ideas and in scientific researchers, alongside up to four trustees. Without peer review, they may be able to identify future members of the Planck Club while they are still in their twenties.

Whether that structural vision survives Cummings acrimonious departure from government remains to be seen. But even if it does, there is still the question of how the rest of the UKs promised 22 billion should it be forthcoming in the autumn spending review will be spent.

Ways must be found to support the few whose research transforms understanding and leads to radical change. However, Western governments and funding agencies including Aria are increasingly focusing on technologies and problems that urgently need solution; essential work, of course: in the short term, nations must compete. But few Planck Club members were driven initially by humanitys perceived problems.

My experience with Venture Research, an initiative that ran from 1980 to 1990, sponsored by British Petroleum (BP), is relevant. It gave the freedom enjoyed by Planck Club members to a few scientists whose proposals we considered to have the potential to radically change the way we think about something important.

Instead of using peer review, we spoke to some applicants face-to-face, fostering mutual trust and facilitating feedback in real time. We received some 10,000 proposals from European and North American scientists and supported about 40, almost all of which had been previously rejected by mainstream funding agencies.

This low-cost initiative the budget was some 20 million over the decade was successful and has so far led to some 14 breakthroughs. Many have won major prizes and honours. One was Steve Davies, now emeritus professor of chemistry at the University of Oxford. His Understanding Molecular Architecture project discovered small artificial enzymes for efficient chiral selection. In 1990, he set up a company, Oxford Asymmetry, to exploit them, selling it a decade later for 316 million.

Based on this experience, in 2009 UCL created a Venture Research initiative using its own resources. So far, it has identified one scientist, Nick Lane, from about 50 applicants, without using peer review. Lane proposed a theoretical study of the role of mitochondria in cells costing some 150,000 over three years. His project has since expanded to study the origin of life. Its growing scientific potential has attracted over 5 million in external funding, more than 30 times UCLs initial outlay. That shows that conventional agencies now grasp the importance of his approach but he would never have got off the ground without UCLs start-up funding.

The problem of how to reconstitute the Planck Club could be partially solved if some universities were to follow UCLs lead. I calculate that 20th-century levels of academic creativity could be restored by supporting about a thousand scientists globally over the 21st century in this unusual way. However, it is essential that the small team of selectors (one or two people) appointed by each participating university should have no preconceived ideas about what is going to be important.

These initiatives will be highly unusual. They should not have a budget: there will be no spend in a typical year as standards are so high. When a candidate is found, the university should fund them from a contingency fund.

But it need not fear for its budget. Absurd though it may sound, this approach could accurately be described as low risk, high reward. Early stage venture research is remarkably cheap. But history teaches that unpredicted, transformational, game-changing research is done by individuals: they must not be constrained by third parties as no one knows which direction they should take.

Donald Braben is an honorary professor in the office of the vice-provost for research, UCL. He is author of Scientific Freedom: The Elixir of Civilisation (Stripe Press, 2020).

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Peer review is not the best way to promote major breakthroughs - Times Higher Education (THE)