Daily Archives: November 17, 2021

The podcast, produced by the Detroit Justice Center, highlights how organizers are engaged in the hard work of abolishing police and prisons, and offers a counter-narrative to mainstream media reports.

More than a year after the mass uprisings against racist police brutality that roiled cities across the United States, many media outlets havedistortedor dismissed asunrealistic specific demands by racial justice organizers to divert funding from massive police budgets toward city services. Casey Rocheteau, communications manager at theDetroit Justice Centerand co-host of a new podcastFreedom Dreams, calls it a backlash in mainstream media when it comes to what people are seeing as a new demand to defund police.

In fact, calls to reduce police fundingcan be foundmuch earlier than 2020. One example isthis 2010 reportthat found a correlation between increased police funding and incidents of police brutality in Washington, D.C., that took place at the same time that funds for social services were cut. And, in the wake of the Ferguson uprising in 2014, some advocates for police reformsuggested cutting police fundsas a way to remedy state violence.

To remedy the misinformation in many corporate media outlets, Rocheteau, together with Amanda Alexander, founder and executive director of the Detroit Justice Center, decided to create a platform to share powerful and inspiring stories of how organizers are challenging the way police budgets are determined, demanding an end to state violence, and advocating for a significant reduction in incarceration levels.

When people are calling the police, the police are telling people, We cant help you because weve been defunded, says Rocheteau. Such an absurd claimshared by a Seattle-based organizer in a forthcoming episode ofFreedom Dreamsmakes the case for a podcast that sets the record straight. In fact, neitherSeattlenorDetroitpolice have been defunded.

Watch Rocheteau and Alexander explain why they created their new podcast.[EMBED VIDEO]

Coming at these issues from an abolitionist perspective that aims to dismantle policing and incarceration,Freedom Dreamsfirst episodespotlights an effort to close the Atlanta City Jail. It is an inspiring story of how a coalition of formerly incarcerated women, transgender and queer organizers, and undocumented activists have chipped away at the size of the jailed population from more than a thousand to just a few dozen.

The podcast creators, feeling that the story had not gotten nearly as much attention as it deserved, spoke with organizers Marilynn Winn and Xochitl Bervera about their campaign to replace the jail with a Center for Wellness and Freedom.

Its been important for us to think about not just what were tearing down in terms of policing and jails and prisons, but also focusing on what were building up, says Alexander.

Alexander describes her organizations communications strategy as intentional in spotlighting the problems and, more importantly, the movement builders who are already resisting, that we can be learning from.

Although the podcasts focus is on Detroit, where the hosts are basedprimarily because, as Rocheteau says, Detroit is a very fertile ground for this kind of [abolitionist] work, where social services arechronically underfundedthe creators make a concerted effort to draw connections between similar struggles and solutions in other cities, such as Seattle, New York, Los Angeles, and others.

Alexander hopes to attract young listeners, in particular who took to the streets last summer but have not yet taken the next step beyond protesting what we dont want, to asking the question, What can we learn from people who are building up what we do want?

Find out more about the Freedom Dreams podcasthere.

Not only do most reports of policing and incarceration miss stories like the closing of Atlanta City Jail thatFreedom Dreamshighlights, but Rocheteau worries there are also alternate narratives being presented that do a disservice to communities most directly impacted by policing and mass incarceration.

For example, mainstream media analysis of policing and mass incarceration often serves up dense facts informed by crime statistics and the complexities of city budgeting, all while making the assumption that policing is the only way to tackle crime.

A case in point is this extensive report in TheNew York Timesthat Rocheteau cites about the battle over police funding in Dallas, Texas. The reporters barely scratch the surface of what might becausing crime in the city of 1.3 million residents, and, subsequently, there is no effort to spark a conversation about why the abolition of police is a matter of racial justice. Instead, there are myriad statistics of how the number of homicides and police officers have changed over time.

Yes, its important to know those statistics, says Rocheteau. But presenting people with that information often leaves them in a position of feeling like, What do I do about that?

WithFreedom Dreams, Rocheteau and Alexander hope to inspire action by showcasing how people across the country are engaged in abolition work. In cities across the country, there is this move to say, We need to stop building jails, we need to understand why people are there, says Alexander. We need to start meeting peoples actual needs in other ways besides policing, and prosecuting, and jailing people.

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A New Podcast Aims to Shift the Narrative on Police Abolition by Centering Movement Voices - YES! Magazine

Just as slavery couldnt be reformed and had to be ended, policing cant be reformed and has to be abolished, say leaders of modern-day abolitionist movements.

The mass protests that broke out across the United States in 2020 ushered in a new wave of nationwide activism against state violencespecifically police killings of Black and Brown peoplewith a majority of the public, at least initially, embracing the basic tenet that Black lives matter. Now, a newly awakened generation of activists, incensed by the police killings of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and many others are demanding a change to policing. The efforts theyre exploring range from minor reforms all the way to the abolition of policing and prisons.

By definition, abolition is a rejection of reformist approaches to improving policing. Reforms make police polite managers of inequality, human rights lawyer Derecka Purnell wrote in a 2020 article in The Atlantic, explaining the reason for her recent transformation into an advocate of police abolition. Abolition makes police and inequality obsolete.

And advocates for abolition literally mean just that.

Our charge is to make imagining liberation under oppression completely thinkable

Our charge is to make imagining liberation under oppression completely thinkable, to really push ourselves to think beyond the normal in order for us to be able to address the root causes of peoples suffering, organizer, educator, and author Mariame Kaba writes in her book We Do This Til We Free Us: Abolitionist Organizing and Transforming Justice.

Project NIA, where Kaba is the executive director, is among a growing crop of organizations embracing the tenets of abolition. Project NIA (nia, which means purpose in Swahili) takes aim at youth incarceration and the juvenile justice system. It has adopted the slogan community over confinement and is redefining the idea of justice and security as relying on community-based safety responses rather than policing and incarceration.

Other groups supporting abolition include 8toAbolition, which centers its work on the idea that, We believe in a world where there are zero police murders because there are zero police; MPD 150, which describes itself as a community-based initiative challenging the narrative that police exist to protect and serve; and No Cop Academy, a campaign endorsed by numerous organizations, targeting a massive police training program.

Critical Resistance is one of the oldest groups embracing the abolition of prisons and police. Co-founded in 1998 by notable abolitionists Angela Davis, Ruthie Gilmore, and Dylan Rodriguez, it has the goal of eliminating imprisonment, policing, and surveillance and creating lasting alternatives to punishment and imprisonment.

In an interview, Rodriguez, a professor of media and cultural studies at the University of California, explains that it is a mistake to see law enforcement as part of a criminal justice and policing apparatus exclusively. Instead, he views carceral and policing systems as tools of warwar against people of color and Black people specifically. Rodriguez maintains that those who are policed by anti-Black state violence are casualties of a generally one-sided structure of normalized warfare.

Parallels between historical movements to abolish slavery and the contemporary struggles to abolish modern-day policing are rooted in the similarities between slavery and policing. Some analysts have reframed the institution of American slavery as a historic state-sponsored war on African Americans just as modern critics like Rodriguez and others have cast policing as a war on Black people.

Viewed through such a lens, the contemporary manifestation of law enforcementwhich stemmed from slave patrolsmight be seen as an extension of this historical state-sponsored war. Indeed, the disproportionate arrest, brutalization and incarceration of African Americans today underscores the parallels between then and now.

Abolitionists of the past were not in universal agreement about how to end the war of slavery, and there were cleavages within the movements along racial lines. The Library of Congress section on The African American Odyssey: A Quest for Full Citizenship, explains that while Black and White abolitionists worked alongside each other to end slavery, their demands differed in significant ways because [B]lack Americans tended to couple anti-slavery activities with demands for racial equality and justice.

Today, there are echoes of those transformative Black-led historic demands in the Movement for Black Lives vision for change, which is an explicitly broad call for justice. That vision includes reparations, economic justice, and political power.

Abolitionist movements against modern policing see a split similar to their historic counterparts between reformist and transformational approaches.

Abolitionist movements against modern policing see a split similar to their historic counterparts between reformist and transformational approaches. Campaigns like #8CantWait are pushing for short-term policy changes, such as bans on chokeholds, which organizers believe will immediately reduce police brutality. But, as veterans of abolition movements of prison and policing have noted, reforms have been tried and have simply not worked.

Although Rodriguez delights in the fact that more people than ever are embracing abolitionist viewpoints on policing, he worries about expropriation by the abolition-curious. Rodriguez says hes even seen some people take to using the term incremental abolitionism, which he sees as ultimately counter-abolitionist.

Rodriguez decries the fact that even among those who have embraced the idea of defunding the police, there is a reformist tendency to see law enforcement as a necessary, if less important, part of society. There is a kind of stubborn loyalty, he says, to viewing law enforcement and incarceration as among those forms of power that actually provide social order.

Like their historic counterparts, Rodriguez and other abolitionists want to broaden the currently accepted mainstream definition of justice and security. There are persistent systems of discrimination in access to food, housing, health, and education along racial lines, and yet governments at every levelfederal, state, and localhave often invested more heavily in policing and incarceration. Those investments only serve to reproduce the historic power dynamics this nation has seen in centuries past between enslavers and those enslaved.

Instead, says Rodriguez, the idea of security, which is what we are told policing and the carceral system provides, needs to be redefined to include basic needs such as housing and food security, health and emotional security, and recreational and educational security.

If you look at the long history of abolitionist movements, he says, thats in part what people were struggling for.

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Abolition Through the Ages: Reform Versus Transformation, Then and Now - YES! Magazine

In the summer of 2020, Boris Johnsons understanding of probity and public ethics was highlighted by his governments nomination of 36 new members of the House of Lords. It remains one of the defining acts of his premiership: there were peerages for such Brexit supporters as the former cricketer Ian Botham, the Johnson friend and former Telegraph editor Charles Moore and the erstwhile Revolutionary Communist Claire Fox, as well as the prime ministers brother Jo, and the Evening Standard proprietor and social gadabout Evgeny Lebedev.

Eighteen months later, one name from that list has renewed significance. Johnsons first tranche of new peers included Michael Spencer, also known as Baron Spencer of Alresford (its in Hampshire), who finally made it to the Lords after David Camerons past efforts to make him a peer had been repeatedly frustrated. Spencer made his fortune through electronic trading on the financial markets, spent three years as the treasurer of the Conservative party, and has donated an estimated 6m to Tory funds. Thanks to work by the Sunday Times and Open Democracy, we now know that he is at the centre of a very vivid political story: the fact that 15 of the last 16 Tory treasurers have been appointed to the Lords, all of whom have donated at least 3m to their party.

Over the last week or so, this revelation has been rather overshadowed by the huge tangle of jobs, interests and questionable financial arrangements woven into the professional lives of Conservative MPs, and stories focused on the tireless former attorney general Geoffrey Cox, transport minister Grant Shapps, Jacob Rees-Mogg, and more besides (over the weekend, all this reached a new peak of awfulness with fresh news about Johnsons involvement in the business interests of his former lover Jennifer Arcuri).

But the Lords is as central as the Commons to the latest outbreak of sleaze headlines, something also highlighted by a prime ministerial spokespersons initial refusal to rule out smoothing the exit from the Commons of the disgraced MP Owen Paterson by making him a peer. The Lords element of the story, moreover, has an even clearer underlying plotline: the survival of a part of the British state that has long been absurd and corrupt and the sense that, as our established institutions are constantly disrupted and disgraced, the public might at last be persuaded to support the idea of doing something about it.

Viewed from any reasonable perspective, the Lords resembles one of those Hogarthian pictures conjured up by the online satirist Cold War Steve. There are 92 hereditaries still sitting in the chamber, and all of them are men. Since Johnson became prime minister, about 100 new life peers have been appointed, taking the total membership of the upper house to about 800 which makes it bigger than the European parliament. If the prime minister really wants to give someone a peerage, his or her patronage powers seem to be basically unfettered: in late 2020, the House of Lords appointments commission objected to the nomination of the Tory donor and former party treasurer Peter Cruddas, who had offered access to Cameron and other ministers in exchange for party donations; but with echoes of his waving away of advice about his involvement in Arcuris business affairs when he was London mayor, Johnson ignored the usual protocol and did it anyway (three days after he took his seat, Cruddas gave the Conservative party another 500,000, taking his total donations to well over 3m).

Involvement in reviewing, amending and delaying legislation thereby extends to tweed-wearing squires, former advisers, MPs and ministers, and a mind-boggling array of bit-part players who take the Lords into the realms of the surreal. Botham and Lebedev are obvious examples, but there are plenty of others. Six years ago, for example, the peers who voted in favour of George Osbornes cuts to tax credits included such experts on the welfare state as Andrew Lloyd Webber, the JCB diggers tycoon Anthony Bamford, the former athlete Sebastian Coe and the lingerie businesswoman Michelle Mone.

After whole centuries of calls for its abolition, plans for change that have gone nowhere, and very occasional spurts of reform, why is such a ridiculous anachronism still here? Prime ministers of both main parties have used the Lords as a convenient human dumping ground and a means of repaying favours, and even a relatively recent splurge of controversy did not end such habits. In 2008, I interviewed Tony Blairs fundraiser Michael Levy onstage at the Hay festival, about a year after the so-called cash for honours scandal had ended with the Crown Prosecution Service deciding not to bring any charges. When a member of the audience asked whether rich people could improve their chances of getting a peerage by making political donations, he did not demur: Look at the facts, he said. They will tell you whats going on. Of course its true. Thats self-evident.

MPs reluctance to radically change the upper house is often traced to a wish to keep the Lords illegitimate and compromised, so that the primacy of the Commons is never questioned. Politicians who could lead calls for the Lords abolition cite the lack of public interest in supposed constitutional issues. But does that really add up? Brexit and Scottish independence are constitutional issues, and they do not exactly leave people cold. The passions those causes have aroused, moreover, have been partly about peoples distance from power and their mistrust of cliques and coteries at the top both things the Lords embodies. Thanks partly to what the internet has done to politics, ours is an age of irreverence and mistrust, and the upper house will surely face similar scandals in the future. And therein lies an opportunity.

Ideas for an alternative have been rattling around for so long that they have become cliches. We could create the kind of senate of the nations and regions the Labour party put in its manifesto in 2015, with members either appointed by the devolved administrations of Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, the new mayoral regions of England and the city and local government, or elected along comparable lines. As the musician and activist Billy Bragg suggested in 2001, seats could be apportioned on the basis of a secondary mandate, whereby votes in elections to the Commons would have two functions: electing an MP to the Commons using the current first-past-the-post system, and being used to proportionally divide seats between parties in the upper house using regional party lists. Or we could just take the simplest option and have a single legislative chamber. The main point, for the time being, is to start talking about abolition, and what it might entail.

As if to prove that such ideas are hardly confined to the political fringes, the last few days have seen loud calls for abolition from such well-known revolutionaries as the Spectator publisher and TV host Andrew Neil, and the ex-Newsnight anchor Jeremy Paxman, who thinks the upper house is like a bad smell that has been left by history. But in Westminster, the signs are not exactly positive.

For obvious reasons, the Conservatives seem perfectly happy with things as they are. During his campaign for the Labour leadership, Keir Starmer seemed to commit himself to abolishing the Lords and replacing it with an elected chamber of regions and nations. But earlier this month, he merely said that the Lords needs change. The state of this swollen, rotten assembly demands a lot more than that. And if not now, with everything in play, then when?

This article was changed on 15 November 2021 after an earlier version was launched in error

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The Lords is a scandal in plain sight. If we wont abolish it now, then when? - The Guardian

Dianne Wiests new TV series is not just another role for her.

Mayor of Kingstown, which premiered Sunday on Paramount+, tackles the subject of incarceration in America, something near and dear to the actress heart for a long time.

Just last month, Wiest was at a rally outside Rikers Island, joining the growing protests against the deteriorating conditions inside the New York City jail.

It was the culmination of years of prison justice activism, working with groups like the California Coalition of Womens Prisoners and Survived and Punished, a grassroots prison abolition organization that works to free imprisoned survivors of domestic violence.

The 73-year-old Oscar winner can rattle off the stats: the number of people incarcerated in the United States, a rate higher than any other country, how much of the furniture used by the University of California college system is built by prisoners.

I had become interested in what in America we do with people who are different or poor, and it seems we put them in jail, Wiest told the Daily News.

Then Taylor Sheridans script for Mayor of Kingstown came across her desk.

The dark drama revolves around the McLusky family of Kingstown, Michigan, a town entirely reliant on its prison. Incarceration is all the McLuskys know. Brothers Mike (Jeremy Renner) and Mitch (Kyle Chandler) work within the system from the outside, fixers who will do anything as long as theres a favor repaid on the other end. A third brother, played by Taylor Handley, is a police officer.

Wiests McLusky matriarch, Miriam, looks over it all with a mixture of disgust and sadness. Locking people up is the family business, but she always hoped for more.

So Miriam teaches history to imprisoned women.

(Miriam) has to believe that shes making a drop of difference, Wiest explained.

If the inmates arent with her, then theyre sitting in their cells doing nothing. If its only for an hour or two hours a week, at least theyre getting out of their cells, whether they listen consciously or subconsciously or not at all, something is going in thats going to give them some thought other than am I going to stay alive?

Story continues

Miriam wanted her sons to get out. When they didnt, she stayed in Kingstown to protect them. But shes still sticking around, even though her sons dont need help.

Wiest is keenly aware that while her character can walk out of prison at the end of the day and go home, the reality for those really behind bars is starkly different any term can be a life sentence.

If youve got felon on your resume, good luck. No matter what your sentence is, you cant expect to do anything much with the rest of your life because no employer will go near you, Wiest said.

Its a life sentence regardless.

Mayor of Kingstown has no good guys, Wiest said. There are people who commit crimes and get caught and people who commit crimes and havent been caught and people who look the other way when crimes are being committed. Only some of those groups, though, profit off the system.

We clump, Wiest explained. Throw everybody in prison. Solve the poverty question. Solve the mental health question. Solve the race question. Solve the illegal immigration question. Just lock them up, for heavens sake. And then we dont have to deal with it.

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Prison is the family business in Mayor of Kingstown - Yahoo News

Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., walks past a screen displaying early vote totals at an election party in McLean, Va., Tuesday, Nov. 2, 2021. | Steve Helber / AP

On Nov. 2, Virginia and New Jersey had important state elections. In the case of Virginia, the elections were for a new governor, lieutenant governor, and state attorney general, and for all 100 seats in the House of Delegates, the lower house of the state legislature, or General Assembly.

Under Virginia law, an incumbent governor cannot run for re-election, so the present Democratic Party governor, Ralph Northam, was excluded from the race. Lt. Gov. Justin Fairfax, also a Democrat, decided to run for governor. The Democratic attorney general, Mark Herring, opted to try for re-election.

The House of Delegates went into the election with a majority of 55 Democrats to 45 Republicans. So all three executive positions and the majority of both houses of the General Assembly were held by Democrats. This was the high point of a growing Democratic Party ascendency in this once very conservative state. And in the 2020 presidential election, Virginia went for Biden with a substantial margin of votes over Trump. In 2020s congressional election, the Democrats held on to all seven of their Virginia congressional seats, while the Republicans held all of their four seats.

Within the Democratic Party, there was some friction over some key goals. Although the abolition of Virginias death penalty was a major progressive achievement, only incremental advances were made in some other progressive goals. Once more, the effort to repeal Virginias Right to Work statute was stymied by the opposition not only of the Republicans but also of Gov. Northam and more conservative Democrats in the legislature. Criminal justice and police reform also stalled due to the alignment of the same forces. So the situation was set up for some conflict within the Democratic Partys ranks in this years elections. Yet earlier in 2021, it looked as if the Democrats would retain what they had and perhaps make more electoral advances.

At the outset, the Republican Party appeared to be in disarray. The Trumpite assault on the more traditional Republican Leadership led to a situation wherein primaries were replaced by caucuses. This stymied the gubernatorial aspirations of the most flamingly Trumpite candidate, State Sen. Amanda Chase. In the end, the Republicans named former Carlyle Group mogul Glenn Youngkin for governor, Jamaican-American Evangelical Christian Winsome Sears for lieutenant governor, and right-wing Cuban-American law-and-order hardliner Jason Miyares for state attorney general.

On the Democratic side, the first to announce for governor was progressive African-American delegate Jennifer Carrol Foy, who resigned her legislative seat in order to run. Incumbent Virginia Lt. Gov. Justin Fairfax, also African American, decided to run too, as did Jennifer McClellan, a more centrist African-American state senator from Southern Virginia. And the most left-wing member of the Virginia General Assembly, socialist Lee Carter, decided to run for governor while at the same time trying to retain his seat in the House of Delegates. But the hearts of the supporters of all three of these candidates sank when ex-governor Terry McAuliffe threw his hat into the ring, too. McAuliffes name recognition (plus major campaign support from funders and big-name endorsers) clinched the McAuliffe victory in the June 15 Democratic Primary, with Carroll Foy coming in a distant second, while McClellan, Fairfax, and Carter were further behind.

There was also a third-party candidate, Princess Blanding, who launched her candidacy to protest the lack of action by the major parties in dealing with police brutality. Her brother, Marcus-Davis Peters, was murdered by Richmond police in 2018, and she had participated in efforts to get strong police reform. A watered-down bill was passed, and to add insult to injury, was called the Marcus bill. At the signing ceremony, Blanding denounced the whole charade and thereafter decided to run for governor.

Through most of the ensuing months, it looked as if the Democrats would continue their willing streak in Virginia. But as election day neared, polls began to show Youngkin and the other Republican candidates closing the gap, and by Nov. 2, most polls showed a dead heat.

After the post-election dust settled, it turned out that the Democrats had suffered severe losses. Republican Youngkin defeated Democrat McAuliffe by 50.7% to 48.61% for governor (Blanding got 0.7%). For lieutenant governor, Republican Sears beat Democrat Ayala with numbers almost identical to those in the Youngkin-McAuliffe matchup, and for attorney general, Republican Miyares beat incumbent Democrat Herring 50.36% to 49.55%. Although the results of a couple of challenges in the House of Delegates races are not in yet, it appears the Democrats lost their majority there, too.

This setback set up the usual feeding frenzy of half-baked interpretations by various politicians and pundits. Many voices blamed the progressive wing of the Democratic Party for the results, for being too leftist. The names of right-wing Sens. Kyrsten Sinema, D-Ariz., and Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., were invoked as the kind of politicians the Democrats should support if they ever want to win an election again. Black Lives Matter got blamed for supposedly causing racial division, and so forth.

But there was something off-key about this chorus of howls of woe.

First of all, the margins by which the Republicans won were razor thin, as the reader can see by the statistics cited above. Secondly, most of the progressive Democratic delegates won their seats again, and at least one outstanding new one was added.

The main explanation for the Republican advance lies in a very high turnout from the most conservative white and rural areas of the state, compared to similar off-year elections in the past (by off-year is meant that there was no federal election to jazz things up in 2021). These are voters who, for whatever reason, like Donald J. Trump very much. The weaponization of school board controversies and discontent with vaccines and face masks was a key tactic in Republican agitation, and it bore fruit.

The Republican candidate for governor, Youngkin, tried to appeal to the Trumpite extremist base while also trying to behave like a responsible statesman toward voters in the suburbs.

And what did the Democrats do? They heavily emphasized a Youngkin equals Trump campaign strategy and talked very little about what actual policies McAuliffe would enact as governor. One could find McAuliffes actual policy plans if one looked hard enough online, but the average voter statewide only heard the message that Youngkin had been endorsed by Trump, coming both from the Trump promotors and from the Democrats!

A large percentage of the vote for Youngkin came from counties which include many very poor white households, which are suffering from scarce jobs, low pay, and lack of services, such as health care. The Democrats did not really try to challenge the idea among such rural and small-town white workers that Trump and the Republicans are their true friends; instead, they wrote them off completely. They did not effectively challenge the racist and other backward ideas which are such a big part of the mix in those communities (even in Appalachia, by the way, most of the cities voted for McAuliffe).

One of the most revealing pieces of McAuliffe campaign literature illustrates this mistake. The Democratic Party repeated announcements that Trump had endorsed Youngkin very likely served to bring out droves of Trump followers to vote for the latter. So clumsy was this tactic that many people seeing the piece probably thought it was Republican campaign literature. The idea was to shock Trumps detractors into voting for McAuliffe, but it is likely this backfired.

In addition, through several campaign cycles, it appears that the Virginia Democratic Party has forgotten to have a ground game. The emphasis is often on raising money from well-off individuals and corporate supporters so that expensive television and online advertising can be paid for, instead of canvassing and shoe leather. This marginalizes blue-collar and especially lower-income voters, who have nobody to explain their concerns to in the campaign context.

Whether the Democrats can learn from this mistake will soon be seen, in the context of the 2022 midterm federal elections. Will they continue to scapegoat progressives and marginalize eloquent voices for justice like those of Princess Blanding?

At any rate, for the left, the lesson is clear: Dont rely on the wisdom of the Democratic Party leadership to defend working-class interests; get out there and organize, in every workplace and in every community, and build the base for a far better politics than either of the bourgeois parties currently offers.

MORE ON THE VIRGINIA ELECTIONS AND THEIR IMPORTANCE FOR 2022:

> Democrats can avoid midterm election disaster by running on their actual agenda

> Things Youngkin didnt mention about the history of education in Virginia

> Election 2021: Republicans make some major gains but not everywhere

Excerpt from:

Virginia elections: The spin vs. the reality - People's World

Thousands of health employees, teachers, development officers and other sections of the working class, including railway workshop employees and private sector workers, held protests and strikes across Sri Lanka on Monday and Tuesday over wages and conditions. The action follows anti-privatisation demonstrations last week by electricity, port and petroleum employees.

The mass walkouts are another indication of rising social anger against the Rajapakse government and its big business program which is ruthlessly driving up the cost of living and eliminating meagre social support, while forcing teachers and other employees to return to work amid the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.

* On Monday, an estimated 50,000 development officers held a national sicknote protest over seven demands, including the abolition of salary anomalies, a monthly salary increase of around 15,000 rupees ($US75) and the establishment of a proper promotion scheme. There are about 100,000 development officers employed at different state departments across the country. Media reports indicated that more than half were involved in the campaign.

* On Tuesday, public hospital nurses and paramedics walked out in a one-day sicknote action. Union officials told the media that nearly 50,000 health employees were involved in the strike. The hospital workers want rectification of salary anomalies, a special duty allowance increase of 3,000 rupees and higher overtime payments.

The strike was called by the Collective of Health Professionals (CHP), an alliance of 16 unions. While the CHP has called a series of protests and strikes over the same demands in recent months, it has limited the walkouts and then shut them down following bogus promises by the government that it would resolve workers demands.

Health employees blamed the unions for not fully mobilising their members for Tuesdays strike, resulting in lesser numbers participating.

A nurse from Kandy national hospital told the WSWS that union officials had discouraged members from participating and that only about 500 of the 2,000 nurses at the hospital joined the walkout. There was no discussion with members before the strike. Workers cant be mobilised by just distributing a leaflet, they said.

The health unions, like their counterparts across the island, have deliberately divided workers. The Public Services United Nurses Union (PSUNU), led by Buddhist monk Muruththetuwe Ananda who backs the Rajapakse government, and the All Ceylon Health Services Union (ACHSU), which is controlled by the opposition Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP), did not participate in Tuesdays action. Instead, the ACHSU called a separate lunch-hour demonstration.

While health workers are determined to fight for their longstanding demands, the unions are desperate to prevent any political confrontation with the government. This weeks one-day protest was called to dissipate the rising anger of health workers, who for almost two years have been working extended hours attempting to treat COVID-19 patients in the countrys dangerously under-staffed and underfunded hospitals.

* Also on Tuesday, thousands of public-school teachers and principals demonstrated in several parts of the island. This included about 3,000 teachers in central Colombo and over 1,000 in Kandy with a similar number mobilising at Hatton in the Central Hill Districts. The protests were called by an alliance of some 30 teachers and principals unions, including the Ceylon Teachers Union (CTU) and Ceylon Teachers Services Union controlled by the JVP.

Thousands of teachers, principals and parents also demonstrated outside the Mawanella police station, about 25 kilometres west of Kandy. They were demanding that police arrest a local Sri Lanka Podujana Peramuna politician who is alleged to have physically assaulted a parent during a protest the previous week. While police later arrested the politician, and three others involved in the attack, they were bailed by a local magistrate.

The teachers demonstrations followed the unions shutdown on October 25 of a determined 100-day strike and boycott of online education services by 250,000 teachers demanding higher salaries. Teachers have been fighting for increased wages for over 20 years.

The Rajapakse government refused to grant the teachers pay claim but later offered one third of the amount being demanded to be paid in instalments over the next three years. Desperate to end the dispute, the unions accepted the reduced amount, demanding that it be paid in one instalment, and then shut down the strike, ordering teachers to return to work. This weeks protests, and similar demonstrations the previous week, were a cynical attempt by the unions to dissipate members anger.

On Wednesday, Prime Minister Mahinda Rajapakse and Finance Minister Basil Rajapakse met with the teachers unions and said the government would pay its reduced salary offer in one instalment. The unions readily agreed to the meagre rise, ditching teachers longstanding pay claims. Finance Minister Basil Rajapakse later told the media that Colombos deal should not be seen as a salary increase.

This weeks union-controlled protests were timed to coincide with Finance Minister Rajapakses annual budget proposals, which will be presented to parliament today, and were aimed at promoting the illusion that the government can be pressured. The JVP-controlled unions are demanding the government budget increase workers monthly wages by 10,000 rupees.

Finance Minister Rajapakse, who confronts a collapse in export earnings, a falling currency and massive foreign debt repayments has made it abundantly clear that he will be unveiling a ruthless austerity budget. The people will not gain anything. Instead, we will be taking from them, he told journalists last week. He plans to cut the fiscal deficit by two-thirds to 4.55 percent of gross domestic product, down from last years 14.7 percent.

Confronted with this crisis, which has been exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic, the Rajapakse government is prioritising profits over lives and implementing herd immunity policies. This criminal agenda has been fully backed by the unions and has seen the health unions abandon their members demands for increased work safety.

The reactionary role of the trade unions is bringing Sri Lankan workers into conflict with these organisations, which defend the Rajapakse government, and are hostile to any independent political mobilisation of the working class against the capitalist profit system.

Alongside the increase in workers struggles, farmers are continuing their protests, calling for fertiliser and other necessities for cultivation. On Tuesday, hundreds of housewives demonstrated in Colombo and other parts of the island demanding a reduction in the price of essentials and an end to food shortages.

Contrary to the union claims that the Rajapakse government can be forced to grant concessions, Colombo has passed an essential public services act, which covers nearly one million state sector workers and criminalises all industrial action and strikes in these institutions. At the same time, it is moving to whip up communalist tensions to try and divide the working class.

The unions, which function as industrial police, have not opposed the governments anti-strike laws and its racialist moves. Workers cannot develop a genuine struggle for their social and democratic rights through these organisations.

What is required is the establishment of rank-and-file action committees, independent of the unions and controlled by workers to defend jobs, wages and to fight for improved social conditions. These committees must unite workers across the island and turn to the international working class, as part of the struggle for socialist policies and a workers and peasants government.

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Over 100000 Sri Lankan workers walk out to demand higher wages and better conditions - WSWS

By order of the Greek Police, for the celebration of the anniversary of the Polytechnic, the metro station "Megaro Mousikis" will close today from 15:00, while the stations "Syntagma" and "Evangelismos" from 16:30.

As STASY announced, the trains will pass through these stations without making stops.

At the same time, employees announced work stoppages on buses and trolleybuses on Thursday, November 18th. According to the relevant announcements, the employees will carry out the work stops from the beginning of the shift until 9 in the morning, and from 9 in the evening until the end of the shift.

The mobilizations were announced by the OASA Workers 'Union and the ILPAP Workers' Union, demanding immediate responsibility for the tragic accident on line 1 of the Metro and maintenance of the infrastructure at work.

The ILPAP Workers' Union emphasizes in its announcement: "We express our sincere condolences to the family of our late ISAP employee colleague. Another worker does not return to his family due to the intensification of work, the choice of the employer not to take protection measures in the workplace. We demand: immediate responsibility for the tragic accident. Prevention and Maintenance of infrastructure in the workplace ". The OASA Workers' Union demands "the transfer of responsibilities and the abolition of contractors in the workplace".

Isidore Roussos

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Closed metro stations and modifications to bus and trolley routes, tomorrow due to the events for the anniversary of the Polytechnic - 9.84

The abolition of indirect primaries is a positive legislative action against executive arrogance, writes Bolaji Adebiyi

Now, technical glitches witnessed during the Anambra State governorship election last Saturday are thought to have weaponised political opponents of the electronic electoral system, which makes the case for technology-driven accreditation, voting, collation and transmission of election results. The election, which the Independent National Electoral Commission used to test-run its innovative Bimodal Voter Accreditation System, suffered the usual drawbacks and more. But the one of interest to the opponents of technology has been the hitches with BVAS. This, at best, is subterfuge.

Coming while the nation awaited the National Assemblys adoption and passage of the report of its harmonisation committee on 2010 Electoral Act Amendment Bill 2021 that resolved to grant INEC power to determine mode of electoral process, the antagonists saw a ray of hope. However, the approval of this recommendation on Tuesday by the Senate and the House of Representatives circumscribed that hope. Meanwhile, the National Assembly added insult to their injury when it approved direct primaries as the sole mode of selection of parties candidates for elective offices. As it is their nature to be optimistic even when the issues are as visible to the blind as they are audible to the deaf, the adversaries, largely led by governors, are not giving up. They, it is reported, have taken their battle to the presidency, hoping to convince President Muhammadu Buhari, who is a beneficiary of direct primaries, to withhold accent. Again, this at best, is reckless optimism.

The main argument for technological intervention is that it would reduce human interference in the electoral system and make the process more transparent and credible. The expected corollary is that it would reduce post-election contestation and make the nations electoral outcomes more acceptable to the generality of contestants and the people. This is essentially why the civil society and opposition politicians supported the idea and were up in arms against the federal legislators when they attempted to expunge the provisions in the electoral amendment bill a couple of months ago.

In proposing the introduction of technology, neither INEC nor its supporters beat their chest and vouched that all would be smooth without itches. First, BVAS is an innovative improvement over its predecessor, the Smart Card Reader. It aims to increase the commissions capacity to make the accreditation process faster and more credible. It offers a voter whose thumbprint is not recognised by the accreditation devise a second chance through facial recognition. If both fail the voter, then he would not be accredited as the device has eliminated the notorious incidence form that was in the past used to compromise the accreditation process. It would also send its information to the commissions central server, thereby making padding at any stage impossible.

That some of the gadgets of the new device had technical itches on its first deployment is obviously a none-issue because being a new innovation it would only be perfected through a learning process. In any case, this was the experience with the card reader when it was introduced in 2015. But by the general election of that year, it had been sufficiently mastered to render one of the most acceptable electoral exercises in the country to date. So, as the text-run continues with other stand-alone elections, including the governorship polls for Ekiti and Osun States next year, INECs electronics engineers have ample time to deal with the noticed challenges.

Secondly, it is necessary to point out that BVAS is only a leg of the electoral process that is billed for transition from analogue to digital (technology) mode. The others, voting, collation and transmission of results are outstanding, and their transition is in the offing. Already, INEC has more or less perfected the art of electronic transmission of results with the last Osun and Edo States governorship and some state constituency elections. Therefore, the partial failure of one leg at first deployment cannot be a sufficient argument for the abandonment of the push for an electronic electoral system.

The opposition to direct primaries is even more repugnant to the noble quest for entrenchment of internal democracy in the political parties, which the 1999 Constitution as altered insists are the only entities that can present candidates for elective offices in the country. It is obvious to all discernible observers of the nations politics that the delegate system has not only been fraught with fraud but has also enhanced the capacity of state governors to dominate their parties and politics.

Had the governors been effective in the delivery of services to the people, their control would have been appreciated. Unfortunately, their political control has been largely detrimental to national development. Having subdued the legislative and judicial arms of government in the states, the governors govern almost without restraint so much so they have become so emboldened to neglect their basic responsibilities of providing good governance.

The governors thirst for political dominance would have been ignored if it did not have the possibility of extending their gross incompetence to the federal level. Everyone knows that with their dominance of political power in the states no one could aspire successfully to any elective office at the federal level without their support. This, no doubt, has made many of them so arrogant that not a few non-executive actors, including legislators and other aspirants think they are the main source of instability in the political parties.

If this is the case, there can be no sustainable argument against the need to clip their wings. The abolition of the delegate system by the federal legislature is a right move in this direction and it should be supported largely because, as argued quite correctly last week, resisting the executives bully must go beyond belly-aching and threat issuing from the other arms. Both aggrieved arms must come together to take concrete actions to abate its arrogance and hostility. This, therefore, is a positive legislative action to begin to rid the polity of the armful influence of a segment of the executive that has over exploited the advantages of the functions donated to it by the constitution to the detriment of not only the other arms of government but also the very people for which it was entrusted with power.

Adebiyi, managing editor of THISDAY Newspapers, writes from bolaji.adebiyi@thisdaylive.com

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DIRECTING PRIMARIES THAT WORK FOR THE PEOPLETHISDAYLIVE - THISDAY Newspapers

Almost two years into a pandemic that has claimed the lives of close to 30,000 Canadians, Canadas Liberal government has admitted what scientific experts have long insistedaerosols play a major role in the transmission of COVID-19.

Indeed, research has conclusively demonstrated that aerosols are the virus principal means of transmission.

Yet up until late last week, the Public Health Agency of Canada (PHAC), which is overseen by the federal Liberal government, stubbornly insisted that respiratory droplets are far and away the most important means by which COVID-19 is transmitted. This is because highlighting the key role aerosols play in spreading the virus points to the dangers people face when they congregate in workplaces, schools, buses and subway cars, and thus cuts across the ruling elites drive to corral working people to return to work amid the pandemic.

Chief Public Health Officer Theresa Tam tweeted the new public health advice concerning aerosols late Friday afternoon. Since the outset of the pandemic, weve learned a lot about the SARS2 virus that causes COVID-19, the tweet read. Importantly, weve learned how the virus can linger in fine aerosols and remain suspended in the air we breathe. Much like expelled smoke lingers in poorly ventilated spaces, the SARS2 virus can remain suspended in the air, with those in close proximity to the infected person inhaling more aerosols, especially in indoor and poorly ventilated spaces.

The PHAC has not followed up Tams tweets, which appear to have been timed to minimize their impact, with a public information offensive to alert the population as to the dangers of aerosol transmission. Nor is it advocating any policy changes to prevent a surge of infections, as people increasingly congregate indoors during the cold winter months.

The PHACs belated admission constitutes a devastating indictment of the political establishments prioritization of corporate profits over human life, which has gone hand-in-hand with a systematic repudiation of a science-based response to the virus.

Until Tams tweet, the federal government had treated aerosol transmission of COVID-19 as little more than an afterthought. Not until November 2020, long after scientific investigations had demonstrated the centrality of airborne spread, did the PHAC even admit that aerosol transmission was possible. Moreover, as the CBC noted at the time, this change to the PHACs COVID-19 guidance was done quietly, and was not accompanied by any campaign to warn the public of the danger of aerosol transmission, let alone any changes in government policy.

The federal governments insistence that droplets were the main mode of transmission, a claim followed by provincial governments across the country, was driven by political motives. The ruling elites profits before life pandemic policy, based on forcing workers back into unsafe workplaces so they could churn out profits for corporate Canada, required that airborne transmission be denied or at least downplayed. This enabled governments to avoid imposing any responsibilities on employers for taking adequate precautions to stop the airborne spread of COVID-19, while at the same time removing any obligation from governments to fund basic upgrades to improve ventilation and air quality in schools, colleges and other public buildings.

Speaking at the October 24 webinar How to end the pandemic organized by the World Socialist Web Site, Prof. Jose Luis Jimenez, a chemistry professor at the University of Colorado (Boulder), addressed this issue directly. Noting that governments and public health authorities around the world have concentrated above all on transmission via droplets that are inhaled at close proximity or transferred via contact with surfaces, he remarked, Droplets and surfaces are more convenient for governments, organizations and companies. If you get infected, you didnt wash your hands, you didnt keep your distance, you didnt wear your mask well, so the responsibility is mostly yours. But if it was airborne, your employer or your government didnt provide you with good ventilation, and they have a horror of that.

One of the most notorious examples of this outlook in practice came in the fall of 2020, when provincial governments across the country reopened schools with virtually no protections against virus transmission. Campaigners who pushed for the use of HEPA filters and other ventilation devices in overcrowded and poorly ventilated classrooms were contemptuously dismissed by the authorities, while the education trade unions connived with provincial governments to suppress opposition among teachers and education workers to the reckless return to in-person learning. The back-to-school drive, as a study carried out in Montreal later demonstrated, played a crucial role in fuelling Canadas second pandemic wave, which claimed over 10,000 lives last fall and winter.

Similar devastating scenarios played out at numerous workplaces. Over 600 Amazon employees at the companys massive Heritage Road facility in Bramptonmore than 10 percent of the workforcewere infected by COVID-19 in a massive outbreak last winter. Thousands of workers crammed elbow-to-elbow in meatpacking plants also got infected in Quebec and Alberta, with several losing their lives.

There is no indication that the Trudeau Liberal government, or any of its provincial counterparts, intend to pull back in the slightest from their back-to-work/back-to-school drive in response to Tams admission about the dangers of aerosols. On the contrary, Tams statement came as governments move to dismantle all remaining public health measures aimed at limiting the virus spread. Despite resurgent infections, the Ontario Progressive Conservative government led by Doug Ford is pressing ahead with a timeline that will see the abolition of all public health measures, including mask-wearing, by March.

In Quebec, the hard-right Coalition Avenir Quebec government lifted a mask mandate for high school students on Monday and eliminated restrictions on karaoke bars and dance venues. COVID-STOP, a group of health care experts, attacked the government for refusing to acknowledge aerosol transmission, which it says accounts for between 85 and 100 percent of all COVID-19 transmission. Nima Machouf, an epidemiologist and member of COVID-STOP, said in response to the lifting of the mask mandate in high schools, Its like replaying last years movie. We were expecting that the government would have learned from it. The timing is not right.

In fact, the situation being provoked by the ruling elite this winter is arguably even worse than a year ago. Under conditions in which the significantly more infectious Delta variant is dominant, and the immunity provided by vaccines is beginning to wane, even the inadequate protective measures deployed earlier in the pandemic are being tossed aside. The health care system, which has operated at the breaking point for close to two years, is even less equipped to deal with an influx of patients than it was 12 months ago, with thousands of overworked, mentally-exhausted health care workers having left the profession.

Nonetheless, the ruling elite is determined to resist taking even the most basic public health measures to reduce COVID-19s further spread. Tams admission that the virus is transmitted by aerosols was itself somewhat contradictory, with the Chief Public Health Officer unable to even bring herself to recommend high-quality N95 masks or equivalents for workplaces and other indoor settings. Instead, she merely suggested that a well-fitted and well-constructed mask should be worn.

Nicolas Smit, an Ontario-based engineer and scientist who has been a strong advocate for better access to personal protective equipment (PPE) throughout the pandemic, told the WSWS in an interview that protections for workers must be strengthened following the governments admission that COVID-19 is transmitted primarily through the air. There have been a lot of outbreaks at Canada Post facilities, for example, he said. Federal workers should get N95 masks at a minimum.

Smit added that the revised PHAC guidance makes a big difference to how the threat of infection in schools should be viewed. Classrooms now become a danger zone, he continued. As we enter the winter, it will be harder to open windows. Theyre going to have to use other methods of protection and technology, like N95 masks and elastomeric respirators, he said. But in Ontario, you have teachers getting suspended for wearing N95 masks.

Workers who have based themselves on the science ignored by the ruling elite and fought for improved PPE over recent weeks have been met with intimidation and reprisals from their employers and trade unions. In Ontario, a campaign initiated by the biostatistician and educator Ryan Imgrund, and supported by hundreds of teachers, calling for only N95 masks to be worn in schools was viciously denounced by the teachers trade unions. Teachers who wore N95s to school were suspended by their school boards, including some with immunocompromised children at home.

These events underscore that if science-based policies to combat the pandemic are to be implemented, they must be enforced through a mass movement led by the working class. This movement must be guided by the understanding that the only way to prevent an airborne virus like COVID-19 from inflicting further mass infection and death on workers across Canada and internationally is to fight for its elimination.

This requires the immediate closure of all nonessential production and in-person learning in schools, with full compensation paid to all workers from the vast wealth being hoarded by the pandemic profiteers. It also requires the development of a comprehensive program of testing, isolation of infected people, contact tracing and vaccinations, to bring community transmission down to zero.

COVID-19 can be eliminated.

We gathered a panel of scientists to explain how.

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Canada admits aerosols are major source of COVID-19 transmission after nearly two years of denying it - WSWS