Category Archives: Abolition Of Work

The views and opinions expressed in our letters section are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of Hudson Valley One. You can submit a letter to the editorhere.

Closet misogyny

Once again, I must bring up the irrational behavior of those who smile when they see women suffer. Misogyny, the dislike of, contempt for or ingrained prejudice against women, is the official definition. We already know that many men want to dominate women in various ways. We all know how women have suffered over the years from brutal attacks by men. An unbelievably large number of women walk through life with ugly memories of heinous crimes, perpetrated on them by angry men. Yes, we unfortunately know this.

But what many of us may not be aware of is the deep hatred, conscious or unconscious, that thousands of women have for other women. Closet misogyny is the term that comes to mind when some women smile quietly when other women are suffering. What do you think about that?

In 2016, 52 percent of all white women in America voted for Trump, in spite of him being accused of multiple rapes and sexual indiscretions directed toward women. Was it Trumps charisma and his appeal as a father figure? Maybe. Maybe not. Or maybe it was because many white women may have had an inexplicable, deep-seated hatred for Hillary Clinton. How many times did I hear women telling me that Hilary was too much of something or not enough of something else? Many women were extremely critical of her, and maybe it was simply that she was a woman. How many white women did not vote at all because they believed negative stories about the first female presidential candidate? Well never know that answer.

But we do know that 90 percent of Black women did vote for Hillary. Why were they able to make that decision? What galvanized their votes for Hillary when white women could not figure out how to vote for her? Could it be that Trumps unapologetic racism may have solidified their vote against such a racist, and subsequently made it a no-brainer to vote for Hillary?

But now we have the Supreme Courts decision to overturn Roe v. Wade, and the Republicans doing everything they can to push through horribly oppressive laws against all women, who simply want to retain the right to choose. How could it be, that in 2022, and in the United States of America, there are new laws being passed threatening pregnant women who were raped to either carry the pregnancy to term, or be considered a criminal if they seek an abortion? Its not enough that they had to deal with being raped? Its not enough that they have to handle the fact that the rapists violence and unwanted pregnancy has cause them more pain and confusion from their ongoing nightmare? But now many women will have to sneak around in dark corners of our society to seek relief from the toxic situation. Something is very rotten in our current society.

So, we now are three months away from a very important election in November. Most Republicans are pushing a platform that will enslave women even more in our society. Women have the voting power to comply with this, or to resist such archaic and irrational platforms. Republican women especially have more power than they think. They can vote Yes to oppressing women more. They can either avoid voting altogether, or they can decide that the Republican Party has made a grievous error. They can choose to vote for more humane platforms, even if it is against the partys position. They clearly have the choice.

Women have come so far since over 100 years ago when they successfully fought and won the right to vote. Today they are holding jobs that years ago they had no chance of getting. Women have successfully advanced into positions of leadership in the business world. I am constantly inspired by the progress women have made, as well as their gifts to our society. I am also saddened by the subtle ways they continue to thwart their own efforts to further empower each other.

Closet misogyny is a phrase, but it doesnt have to be a way of life for millions of women. But first looking in the mirror and honestly accepting what may be true today could possibly free many women from a deep-seated belief that holds them back from their own power. But will they take the time to look into that mirror?

Once we accept our limits, then and only then are we able to go beyond them. Albert Einstein

Marty KleinKingston

Born free

No one is born married.

SparrowPhoenicia

Indian Point shutdown

The NYISO, the organization responsible for managing New York States electrical generation and transmission infrastructure, announced that in 2021, downstate New York, including the Hudson Valley, received 89 percent of its electricity from fossil fuels. Compared to 2019, this was a 20 percent increase in the use of fossil fuels to generate electricity.

The shutdown of the Indian Point nuclear power plant, the activation of two new fossil fuel plants, Cricket Valley and CPV Valley, and the intensified use of existing generators resulted in the increased use of fossil fuels for electricity generation.

Each year, the NYISO publishes Power Trends, a report on the previous years operation of New Yorks electrical grid with a discussion about the opportunities and challenges moving to a 100 percent renewable energy supply.

Kenneth PanzaWoodstock Climate Smart

Our partner Trump

Again? Theyre not even hiding it anymore. Is the again modifying help? Help again just like they did in 2016? Huh, I think I might have seen this episode. Theyre doing reruns. They really miss Trump in the White House, and we all know why. Yeah, Kremlin propagandists are openly fantasizing about a second Trump term wrecking America. Wow, whew, SMH. Russia, if youre listening, Installed by Russians. Removed by Americans. No thanks. We already dealt with that issue.

Russian state TV host Evgeny Popov says its time for the Russian people to call on Americans to change the regime in the US before its term expires and to again help our partner, former president Donald Trump, to become president once more. I think that Popov meant to say puppet, not partner.

Popovs continued praise of Trump on Russian state television demonstrates that he is their guy, just like he is regaled on Fox News. Trump was angry that Fox News had been ignoring him recently, adhering to a new memo and focusing on other potential 2024 candidates. I guess Mister Popov was filling in for regular host Tzucker Carlsonocoff. Whoa, whoa, weird flex when Russians on state TV tell the truth, but okay. Im always struck at how similar the sets of Russian state TV and Fox news look. Anyway, it looks like our Tucker has his marching orders.

The partnership is confirmed! Russia says the quiet part out loud: our partner Trump, komrade = partner Trump other synonyms kompanion, kompatriot, krony and/or kolleague. Isnt that interesting? Now that Russia is involved, that Fox memo wont be followed. Sheessh, I never like the term Axis of Evil, but they are on a spindle of their own making, arent they?

Since nothing happens on Russian state TV without Putins approval, I see this as explicitly calling for, or appearing to be, Putins confession to election interference to me. And now, their Fox affiliates are doing their best or will be wanting to spread all the Russian propaganda. It wont matter to MAGATs. They literally prefer Putin over Biden, according to polls. So, theyll gladly accept Putin taking things over.

I may be wrong, but thinking about this, seems like this is almost necessarily out of desperation; everything has gone against Putin and getting Trump back into the White House from Moscow is his best hope. Hes desperate. Russia needs to create a total internal breakdown inside the United States, and he said that Trump was just the man to make it happen.

Im not surprised by this. But I am a bit concerned. And not Susan Collins concerned. Keep calm and Fuck you, Russia! So, whats it gonna be in America? Time to pick a side.

Republicans will never wash off the stench of Trump. Do GOP voters have any idea what its like to live in Russia? Democrats need to use this. Dems need to blast this! If they dont run the shit out of this in the 2022 midterm and 2024 election ads, then I have lost all faith in this political party. This is being teed up on a goddamned silver platter for candidates up and down the ballots. Do not miss this golden opportunity!

Neil JarmelWest Hurley

Rent control hurts renters, landlords, communities

The Common Council through their actions have made Kingston radioactive to any new housing development in the City, having caused the problem in the first place through suffocating zoning and other regulations, making it impossible to build. Any promised future zoning reforms will now prove futile, since individuals and companies who would step in and build, which would actually solve any housing shortage, will avoid the toxic environment like the plague now being telegraphed by City government.

The Common Council is engaging in extremist government overreach by implementing New York City-style rent control and bankrupting mom-and-pop landlords throughout the City. These actions will be ineffective, since it only covers ten percent of Kingston renters. Rent control is proven to make apartments less available and will lead to accelerating rents on the other 90 percent of City renters. Just look 90 miles south. ETPA is targeted at older buildings and perversely puts strict dollar limits on improvements, so the ten percent will suffer living in dilapidated and deteriorating living conditions, frozen in time.

The only way to solve the housing crisis is to construct additional supply, but last night the Common Council might as well as put a large sign at the Thruway circle: Housing Investment Not Welcome Here.

Rent control will not add a single affordable housing unit in the City, will kill the needed building that is actually the solution and therefore self-perpetuate the situation. It is not a step in the right direction, but sadly, as might be expected out of City Hall, decidedly a step in the wrong direction.

Rich LanzaroneExecutive director, Hudson Valley Property Owners Association

Be responsible for your own safety

Responding to the article Sharing the road, I am sorry that the young lady was injured and is suffering, and I applaud her goal to make the roads safer for bicycle riders. She has lots of courage and strength and purpose. Allow me to approach this issue from a different angle. Bicycle riders often repeat the mantra: We have as much right to roads as automobiles. Okay, since no one driving a car has a legal right to drive, since its considered a privilege granted by the state after passing a test, you have no rights to the road; you are allowed the privilege unless you have more rights than others? Maybe rethink that argument.

Yes, of course we all need to be cognizant of bike riders and their safety. However, I never hear about their own responsibility for safety. Past wearing a helmet and wearing special shorts so they dont get chafed, what are they doing as a group? Pushing for mandatory lights, signals, horns, rearview mirrors and safety courses? Nope, never hear it. Pushing to prohibit use of bikes on roads unsafe for bicycle traffic? Nope, never hear that one. How about license and insurance for your bikes? How about urging recreational riders to ride on trails provided all over the Hudson Valley for this very purpose? Limit group riding on roads to two or three people and in single file? Never hear those either.

The Idaho stop proposal is just plain silly. The premise is we break the law all the time by not stopping for lights and stop signs, so just let us do it legally. Also claiming that it reduces the risk of riders being clipped on corners. Interesting. I wonder, how much does it increase the risk of getting run over by a car the rider didnt see coming before pulling into the intersection? Dangerously foolish idea. How about following the laws as written like everyone else?

The fact that bikes got more tickets than trucks in New York City is not a very good argument for your cause. It is astounding that trucks that travel thousands more miles a day than bikes could in a month in New York City get less tickets than people on bikes! That not inequity; thats an example of the of the careless attitude of many bicyclists.

I spent about 40 years on the road as truck driver, and from Day One all I ever saw was Safety begins with you. On posters in dispatch, on mirrors in rest rooms, on the door to get in the truck, on sun visors at every safety meeting, it was pounded into us; and I believe that it is the only way to be safe as possible, no matter what I am doing: working, riding my motorcycle, driving my car or shaving. I cannot depend on those I share the road with to do the right thing or even see me. By the way, I cant tell you how many times someone in a car or on a bike did not see my 102-inch-wide, 70-foot-long, 13-and-a-half-foot-high truck on beautiful sunny days. So, do really think you are very visible on your bike?

Ride your bikes safely; its up to you. Keep fighting for safer roads, but start being responsible for your own safety.

Chuck PaneNew Paltz

Got you last!

In the past, I have played the game Got you last with Peter Fiorentino, writing responses to him because of his misrepresentations of my views. With this in mind, Peter is once again misrepresenting something I wrote. In his letter Vaginal politics and the Bible, Peter states, George Civiles letterargues that the Bible supports this SCOTUS [abortion] decision and is viewed as a source of higher truth by most people. The only problem with Peters relating of what I argued is that I argued no such thing. Nor did I say (if context means anything) that the Bible is viewed as a source of higher truth by most people.

This is what I actually wrote in my letter more complicated, indeed: Funny thing about caring about what the Bible says: When one is combating slavery or fighting for civil rights and social justice, the Bible is viewed as a source of higher truth by most people. However, if one is speaking against sexual immorality or abortion, the Bible becomes irrelevant to many of these same folks. This quote was a play on something similar Steve Massardo wrote about the Constitution, and the letter itself was a response to Steves More complicated than that. The point of the quote was not that most people view the Bible as a higher source of truth, but rather that many people will value what the Bible says and even honor it as a higher source of truth only when it validates their views. Moreover, since the major purpose of my letter was to answer Yes to the question gleaned from Steves letter Should Americans care what the Bible says since we dont live in a theocracyyet? it is obvious that Mr. Fiorentino mischaracterized my letters purpose.

It should be noted that Mr. Massardo had challenged my assertion that the Biblical narrative reflected in Genesis 9:6, of humans having been made in the image of their Creator was responsible for the view that human life was unique and held to be sacred, even in the womb, by the civilization (Western) it helped to form. Regarding Peters other arguments, I again recommend Susan E. Wills non-Biblical article Ten legal reasons to reject Roe.

Because there is a great chance that any response from Mr. Fiorentino to this letter will misrepresent my words again, I submit the parody below of the Platters classic hit The Great Pretender, titled The Misrepresenter, for Peters consideration.

Note to Stephen Massardo: Steve, your letter Salvation history is irrelevant to this discussion was not well taken, because its claim that the point of your letter was unclear to me it wasnt (see my letter More complicated indeed and references to Stephen above), and your statement The Bible is not and should not be a source of law in the United States is untrue. To wit: It contradicts the following quote and many more I could present: Since the first settlements in British North America, Christianity and the Bible have had a significant influence on American jurisprudence. This reflects Christianitys expansive influence on Western legal traditions in general and the English common law in particular. (Christianity and American Law by Daniel L Dreisbach, published online by Cambridge University Press, 24 June 2019.)

Regarding my engaging in rhetorical gymnastics trying to convince people that the Bible doesnt condone slavery, it is true that slaveowners and slave traders used the Bible to protect their economic interests to condone slavery by taking scripture verses out of context and ignoring the very relevant salvation history needed to properly understand the Book. However, the Bible speaks against slavery in no uncertain terms, placing slave traders in the company of those the New Testament asserts will not inherit the kingdom of God: lawbreakers and rebelsthose who kill their fathers or mothers, for murderers, for the sexually immoralfor slave traders and for whatever else is contrary to the sound doctrine. (I Timothy 1:8-14).

It is interesting that the song Amazing Grace was written by a man, John Newton, who engaged in the slave trade, and after his dramatic conversion to genuine Christianity which involved studying the Scriptures spent the rest of his life fighting against slavery, aiding William Wilberforces 20-year campaign to end slavery in England by inspiring and helping him found the Society for Effecting the Abolition of the Slave Trade, more commonly called the Anti-Slavery Society.

There is much more to say on this and other subjects from both of your recent letters, and I will do so in the future. (May I say, God and the editor willing?) In the meantime, readers are encouraged to interchange Stephen and Peter in the parody below. And, Stephen, Id love to read a parody song from you, so go for it!

(Stanza)

Oh, Peters the misrepresenter

He misrepresents what I say

My words it seems come from his dreams

I feel like a pawn in Petes play

(Stanza)

Stephens the misrepresenter

He makes my words seem unsound

His thoughts of me are not mine you see

He must stop his messing around

Lest his Feedback distortions abound

(Bridge)

His words have the feeling of make-believe

His critiques conceal what my real words reveal

(Closing stanza)

Oh-oh-oh-oh-oh-oh Peters the misrepresenter

This missive I will not prolong

My words it seems come from his dreams

So Ill say Got you last with this song

In a game that I hope wont last long

(Wont last lo-o-ng)

George CivileGardiner

Separation of church & state & reproductive rights

Pope Francis has recently joined a growing list of world leaders to apologize for the disastrous impacts of past colonization and forced religious or cultural assimilation. The countries, religions, victimized peoples and legacy of impacts vary from case to case; there is a common theme. Forcing the ideals of one religion or culture onto other people with established culture results in a myriad failure, unrest, strife and disenfranchisement. Although there may not be an outside country invading America, it is affronted by an effort from within our own borders to force the religious beliefs of a few on the established cultural norms and constitutional rights of the many.

The First Amendment prohibits Congress from establishing religion or favoring one religion over another. The recent rash of state laws strictly limiting or prohibiting access to safe abortion caters to a minority of religious zealots (would-be oligarchs) and represents internal religious colonialism. Not all religions or people believe that life begins at conception or that every sperm is sacred (cr. Monty Python it still holds up). Not all Americans practice organized religion, and some dont believe in God, which is their constitutional right. Some of the Founding Fathers werent even sticklers for organized religion and rather opted for deism.

In Thomas Jeffersons own words, the First Amendments prohibition on establishing religion was intended to erect a wall of separation between church and state That wall must be kept high and impregnable. Im no lawyer, but legislation to force the will of one religion across the larger population flies in the face of what Ive learned about the First Amendment over the years, not to mention a slap in the faces of the Founding Fathers, whom were all so supposedly fond of.

In his apology to Canadas Indigenous Peoples, the Pope acknowledged that these problems are not all in the past, warning, Yet today too, there are any number of forms of ideological colonization that clash with the reality of life, stifle the natural attachment of peoples to their values and attempt to uproot their traditions, history and religious ties. America finds itself at a precarious crossroads, with one road continuing the American experiment and maintaining the wall separating state and church as the Founding Fathers prescribed, or a second where the foundations of our democracy are corroded by government-sanctioned internal religious colonialism.

We have an obligation to future generations to keep the ideology of religious oligarchs out of our legislation on the local, state and federal level. We should learn from past mistakes and hopefully avoid the need for another apology for forced religious assimilation.

Jennifer ArmstrongKingston

Back to the garden

The Woodstock Village Green is a beautiful garden. We have this beautiful garden because there are volunteers who, for years, have tended it. They are retiring. They are the last of their kind: gracious people moved to service by civic pride. There is no one stepping up to take on their work. An untended garden dies. Will Woodstock allow that to happen before something is done?

I suggest that the Woodstock Chamber of Commerce and the Town of Woodstock form a public/private partnership to fund landscaping on the Village Green. We cannot get ourselves back to the garden if the garden is dead from neglect.

William C. ONeillWoodstock

Winston Farm development & the publics role

The Saugerties Farm, LLC proposal to rezone and develop the 840-acre Winston Farm is one of the largest projects to come before our Town Board. As the proposed development of the property is under review, the public can play an important role.

The Conservation Advisory Commission (CAC), an advisory group to the Town Board, is charged with surveying and monitoring area natural resources and is a participant in the review process. The CAC does not advocate for or against this project. It identifies environmental implications and makes recommendations. We encourage the public to become familiar with the process and the publics role.

The State Environmental Quality Review Act (SEQRA) defines the process and procedures by which environmental consequences are identified, investigated and assessed. The Saugerties Farm proposal, classified as a Type 1 project, is subject to an extensive review through the process. The Town Board, as Lead Agency, has reviewed and responded to the Full Environmental Assessment Form (FEAF) prepared by Saugerties Farm, LLC, the applicant. The board issued a Positive Declaration, indicating the potential for adverse environmental effects.

Currently, Saugerties Farms, LLC is preparing a draft scoping document that outlines their plans for responding to the potential environmental issues outlined in the Positive Declaration. Once this draft scoping document is released to the public, there is a public comment period. At this time, concerned citizens and agencies can respond through writings and public hearings with additional comments and suggestions to be considered in the final scoping document.

Saugerties Farm, LLC must then complete a Draft Environmental Impact Statement (DEIS). Any issue not included in the scoping document will not be addressed in the DEIS. When the DEIS is completed, it will be subject to further review and input from the public where additional actions may be called for.

Upon completion of the Final Environmental Impact Statement (FEIS), involved agencies may review and respond to the document. With guidance from its consultants, then and only then will the Town Board vote on the applicants request for a zoning change.

The CAC believes that an informed public is important to ensure that any present and future development within the Town of Saugerties is environmentally sustainable and in the best interest of the community. The CAC encourages the publics full participation as the potential development of the Winston Farm moves through the SEQR process.

Mike HarkavySkip ArthurSaugerties CAC

Bypass zoning

If you want to rent out your house and property to someone for a large wedding or any other type of large gathering (a violation of the Zoning Law), it appears, based upon a recent occurrence, that you do not have to get permission from the building inspector or the Planning Board or get a variance from the Zoning Board of Appeals. All you have to do is fill out an application for a mass gathering permit and get Supervisor McKenna to sign off on it.

Howard HarrisWoodstock

A Kansas moment

In the August 23 Special Election for Congress in the 19th Congressional District, womens rights are on the ballot, and we need a Kansas moment to stop Marc Molinaro from winning.

Go here to read the rest:

Special election, abortion rights, rent control and more letters from readers - Hudson Valley One

Telangana High Court on Monday passed an order staying Government Order (GO) 121 issued by State governments Finance department on July 23 over redeployment of Village Revenue Officers (VROs).

A bench of Chief Justice Ujjal Bhuyan and Justice Chada Vijaya Bhaskar Reddy passed this direction after hearing a writ petition filed by Telangana VROs Association represented by its president G. Satish and others challenging the GO. Earlier, the Telangana government had abolished the posts of 5,138 VROs through the Telangana Abolition of the posts of VROs Act-2020.

The Act stated that persons working in the posts of VROs should be transferred and absorbed in any department as per administrative exigency. On July 23, the government released GO 121 redeploying all the 5,138 VROs. Out of them, 56 VROs chose not to join the other departments to which they were transferred.

With the bench staying the order prospectively, only 56 VROs who had not joined other departments would be continued in Revenue department. These VROs should be allotted work in Revenue department and paid emoluments until further orders, the bench said.

Presenting arguments, petitioners advocate P.V. Krishnaiah said redeployment of VROs was made in blatant violation of different sections of the VROs Abolition Act. The Finance department had no role in re-allocation of VROs and the Chief Secretary had no power to issue such GO, he told the bench.

Mr. Krishnaiah said section 4 (1) of the Act-2020 required the government to make rules for transfer and absorption of VROs into other wings of the government. But no such rules were framed, petitioners counsel said. Moreover, the authorities issued an executive order in the form of GO 121. This was not even placed before the floor of the Assembly as mandated under sub-section 2 of section 5 of the Act, he said.

On hearing counsels contentions, the CJ sought to know from Advocate General B.S. Prasad why the government had not framed the rules for absorption of VROs. He observed the instructions at third paragraph of GO 121 appeared to be beyond the mandate of sub-section 1 of section 5 of the VROs Abolition Act-2020.

Mr. B.S. Prasad told the bench that the government no more required the services of VROs as entire data relating to records of lands in the State was digitised and incorporated in Dharani portal. The AG contended that it was the policy decision of the government to re-allocate VROs to other departments.

Four days ago, the bench passed an interim direction instructing the government to maintain status quo over redeployment of 19 VROs in a separate writ petition they had filed. The bench had then declined to stay the GO 121.

Read this article:

HC stays GO 121 on VROs redeployment - The Hindu

The Service Doctors and Post Graduates Association plans to intensify its agitation if the Tamil Nadu government does not withdraw its order of increasing the work hours of PHCs

The Service Doctors and Post Graduates Association plans to intensify its agitation if the Tamil Nadu government does not withdraw its order of increasing the work hours of PHCs

Doctors in government service, who are objecting to change in the working hours of primary health centres, have decided to intensify their agitation, including boycotting the mass vaccination camps from August 11. A decision to this effect was taken on Sunday after an emergency meeting of the State executive committee of the Service Doctors and Post Graduates Association.

The association has objected to the change of work timings at PHCs. It was earlier 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. The government recently advanced it to 8 a.m. There is no point in asking us to come early as most patients are rural workers who would come in only after finishing their farm work. The OP ward will continue up to 1 p.m. in such centres unlike in urban PHCs, said association president A. Ramalingam.

The doctors have demanded abolition of call duty for medical officers for want of transportation, remuneration and accommodation facilities. Dr. Ramalingam said PHCs were in interior regions and were serviced by buses only at certain hours.

Usually, the doctors, the hospital staff and patients would travel by the same bus. With more than 60% of the doctors being women, they have to tend to their homes and then come to work, he said.

The doctors are irked that the government wanted them to spend from their pocket to organise camps under government schemes such as Makkalai Thedi Maruthuvam and Mobile Medical Units. SDPGA demands to release the funds well in advance to carry out the programmes, he said.

The doctors have demanded that the government recruit sufficient number of pharmacists, staff nurses, lower level staff, security and biomedical waste collection personnel. If their demands are not met, the association has decided to start a series of democratic mode of agitations immediately. The association has urged members to exit from the official WhatsApp groups, stop sending reports and boycott official meetings. It has suggested that the members stop paying from their own pocket and boycott camps, including mega vaccination camps from August 11.

If the government did not withdraw its order despite such agitations, the association warned it would intensify its protest with like-minded associations.

These doctors say the government had surrendered several hundred posts of lower level staff to enable recruitment of more doctors. We need staff to maintain the medical centres. If a toilet is not cleaned, then the patients immediately take a photo and share it. We, doctors and nurses, are pulled up for this as well, said Dr. Ramalingam.

The Tamil Nadu Government Doctors Association has demanded the withdrawal of the Government Order 225. Given that doctors are working longer hours and that they must remain on call even after their duty ends at 4 p.m., the doctors would be working beyond 40 hours, the limit recommended by the Centre.

Go here to see the original:

T.N. doctors threaten to intensify protests against increasing work hours at PHCs - The Hindu

Montgomery Steppe is San Diego City Council president pro tem where she represents District 4 and is one of nine members on the California Reparations Task Force. She lives in Skyline.

In 2020, then-Assemblymember Dr. Shirley Weber championed Assembly Bill 3121, which created the first state-based reparations task force for African Americans in the nation. This task force aims to study the harms of slavery and how the legacy of racism and discrimination uniquely affected African Americans after abolition. Following two years of meetings, in July 2023, the task force will provide a report and recommendations to the California Legislature that consider appropriate remedies to address the lingering impacts of institutional slavery. I was honored to be among the nine members appointed to serve on this task force by Senate President Pro Tempore Toni Atkins.

Over the past year, we have met virtually and in person to explore the history and extent of atrocities both nationally and across California. We have heard hours of public comment and testimony about the pain, discrimination and terror African American people faced before and after the abolition of slavery. Many testimonies challenged the reality of Californias role in the shameful history, even after California entered the Union in 1850 as a state that banned the practice.

California leads the way in many positive initiatives. Still, unfortunately, it has also led the nation in some of the most racist policies since gaining its statehood. In fact, more than 1,500 enslaved African American people resided in California when the state enacted the Fugitive Slave Act of 1857, which increased the risk of African Americans arrest and deportation to the South.

In 1874, the California Supreme Court exacerbated educational disparities by ruling segregation in public schools legal, 22 years before the U.S. Supreme Courts Plessy v. Ferguson ruling that established the separate but equal doctrine. Homeownership became out of reach through racist restrictive covenants and prohibited African American families from purchasing homes or even renting apartments in areas across the state, including San Diego. And the historically Black town, Lanare, is an infamous rural area with no running water until the 1970s and contaminated water until 2019.

Within all this uncovered information, the task forces objective in designating long-deserved forms of reparations became clear. But a large part of our work became determining how the state should go about dispensing forms of reparations and who would qualify to receive compensation. As part of the eligibility discussion, we voted 54 to recommend reparations be determined by an individual being an African American descendant of a chattel enslaved person or the descendant of a free Black person living in the U.S. prior to the end of the 19th century.

In June 2022, the task force released its preliminary report to the public for review. Among its findings and recommendations was the idea of establishing a California African American Freedmen agency, which would be responsible for oversight and implementation of reparations throughout the state. Within that agency would be an office of genealogy, where professional certified genealogists would assist the most vulnerable populations within the African American community to prove their eligibility for reparations.

Across the world, there is evidence of communities working to repair harm. Part of that involves awakening and acknowledging those wrongs and developing an approach to making things right again. Through the complex web of discrimination, we understand that compensation is just one of five forms of reparations adopted by the United Nations General Assembly. Other forms include rehabilitation, which could look like free legal, social and health care-related services; restitution, which accounts for stolen land, property and intellectual property; satisfaction, which is a symbolic form of reparations; and lastly, the guarantee of non-repetition. Considering the severity of discrimination African Americans have endured, the right approach would include parts of all five of these forms.

From its informative historical research to the implementation proposals, California can right its wrongs by leading our nation as an example of how reparations should occur. As a country built from the labor of enslaved African people, reparations are not a substitution for ending racism or the inequities that plague our society. Theyre only the beginning of how to address them.

The reparations task force itself is a monumental step toward transitional justice for African Americans. The task force represents the first time anyone has created a public space to understand the extent of the history of atrocities against African Americans in the United States. It is also the first time there are research-based recommendations for reparations among African American people.

Reparations are a critical step in righting the wrongs that have stripped African Americans of their promised 40 acres and a mule upon emancipation. By implementing reparations, we are beginning to dismantle the remnants of institutional slavery in our society.

Original post:

Opinion: California is studying reparations for African Americans. Here's how the program might work. - The San Diego Union-Tribune

The Socialist Equality Party (SEP) in Sri Lanka warns that President Ranil Wickremesinghes appeal last week for opposition parties to join an all-party government is aimed at consolidating a capitalist regime that will impose the IMFs savage austerity program and wage an all-out class war against workers and the poor.

Any all-party or interim government will be an instrument for suppressing the opposition of the working class and rural toilers on their democratic and social rights. The SEP is calling instead for the urgent building of a Democratic and Socialist Congress of Workers and Rural Masses based on their own independent action committees as a means of fighting for their class interests against the relentless assault of the crisis-ridden ruling class.

Wickremesinghe, a veteran pro-US political hack and IMF enforcer, was appointed as acting president by former President Gotabhaya Rajapakse on July 14 as he fled the country amid mass protests. He was installed as president on July 20 by an anti-democratic vote in the discredited parliament. In the past month, Wickremesinghe imposed draconian emergency laws giving him sweeping powers to deploy the military to make arbitrary arrests, proscribe parties and organisations, ban strikes, and censor the media.

In one of his first acts as president, Wickremesinghe ordered the military and police to violently evict anti-government protesters from the presidential secretariat and vicinity on July 22. Last week, as police arrests of protest and union leaders intensified, he extended the Essential Public Services Act to ban strikes and industrial action in key economic sectors.

Now Wickremesinghe is seeking the open support of the entire Colombo political establishment for the ruling-class agenda of austerity and repression. In his policy statement to parliament last Wednesday, he declared the country was facing an unprecedented economic crisis. We are in great danger, he said, urging the opposition parties to unite in the formation of an All-Party Government for the sake of the country.

When Wickremesinghe talks of the great danger, he above all means the threat to the capitalist class and its power, privileges and wealth posed by the mass opposition to the present intolerable living conditions. Three months of mass protests and general strikes involving millions of workers on April 28, May 6, 10 and 11 have shaken bourgeois rule to the core and forced the resignation of Gotabhaya Rajapakse.

Now Wickremesinghe is appealing to the political establishment to set aside any tactical differences in order to wage a unified counter-offensive against the working class and the oppressed masses.

The president outlined the unfavourable international economic factors, including the Ukraine war and COVID-19 pandemic, that have created an unprecedented economic crisis in Sri Lanka. The World Bank predicts the Sri Lankan economy will contract by 7.6 percent this year. Imports of essential food, fuel and medicines have been cut to the bone as foreign exchange has dried up. Inflation in July hit 60 percent, while food inflation skyrocketed to 90 percent, creating immense hardships.

In the name of revitalising and modernising the economy, Wickremesinghe is preparing to impose new burdens on working people. His aim of creating a budget surplus by 2025, from a deficit of 12.2 percent last year, can only be achieved through a huge increase in taxes, the destruction of hundreds of thousands of public sector jobs, an end to the remaining meagre price subsidies, the privatisation of all state enterprises and further deep inroads into public services, such as education and health care.

To implement this anti-working-class agenda, Wickremesinghe proposed a new constitution with new attitudes that would establish a National Assembly consisting of political party leaders, and a Peoples Assembly, a mechanism to obtain views of all interested parties, including various organisations.

These proposed mechanisms have no democratic content whatsoever. Rather, the proposals are to rally the corrupt political parties, middle-class civil society groups and trade unions against workers and the rural poor.

The anti-democratic character of this agenda is evident in Wickremesinghes slanderous attacks on anti-government protesters as fascists and terrorists to justify the police crackdown that is underway. While protest and trade union leaders are the ones being arrested at present, his government is preparing far wider repression against any opposition to his austerity agenda, who will likewise be branded fascists and terrorists.

Speaking at a meeting organised by the think tank Advocata, Wickremesinghe challenged anyone to present an alternative to the IMF, warning that the first six months will be difficult [but there is] no other way except to bite the bullet.

None of the parliamentary opposition parties has an alternative to the IMFs austerity program. Virtually all of them praised the presidential policy statement as a positive one.

Samagi Jana Balavegaya (SJB) leader Sajith Premadasa, who had earlier refused to work with Wickremesinghe, did an abrupt about-face on Friday and held talks with the president. Some [points in the discussion] were positive some negative. But all agreed to explore how to help Sri Lanka out of crisis, an SJB leader declared after the discussion and promised further talks.

The Muslim parties allied to the SJB, including the Sri Lanka Muslim Congress, and the plantation-based trade unions that act as political partiesthe National Union of Workers and Democratic Workers Fronthave all expressed their willingness to join Wickremesinghe. The plantation-based Ceylon Workers Congress has also agreed to join the anti-working-class line-up.

The rump Sri Lanka Freedom Party (SLFP) led by former President Maithripala Sirisena has all but agreed to join an all-party regime, attacking other parties for seeking to sabotage the move. The SLFP has just nine parliamentarians because five have already defected to the government and accepted ministerial posts.

The Tamil National Alliance (TNA), which represents the Tamil ruling elites, has also had discussions with Wickremesinghe and agreed to further talks. It has, however, agreed in principle to the all-party proposal.

The Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP) is not opposed to an all-party government as such but declared that it will not take part in the one proposed. JVP Anura Kumara Dissanayake complained that the partys own proposal for an interim all-party government with rights for each party can make contribution had not been considered. The JVP is calling for a snap election in a desperate attempt to give legitimacy to the thoroughly discredited parliament and block any independent action by workers and the rural poor.

Likewise, the pseudo-left Frontline Socialist Party (FSP) is wary about supporting any government headed by widely detested Wickremesinghe. FSP leader Kumar Gunaratnam has declared that the presidents proposal was to suppress mass opposition and called on the parliamentary opposition parties to reject it and join the FSP in mass struggle. In other words, the FSP is seeking to keep workers and rural toilers tied to the bourgeois opposition parties that are committed to implementing the same IMF policies as Wickremesinghe.

The trade unions have played a treacherous role in limiting the mass strikes in April and May in duration and in political scope to the demand for an interim capitalist government. Now sections of the trade union apparatus are openly lining up with Wickremesinghe.

Federation of Health Professionals leader Ravi Kumudesh met with Wickremesinghe on Saturday, making clear that he would do all in his power to prevent further strikes. We cant afford to struggle frequently. This is a time [when], we all should get together and sacrifice and build the country. Only you can make that change happen, he told the president.

Workers should have no confidence in any of these parties and organisations, all of which agree with Wickremesinghe that there is no alternative but to accept the IMFs austerity demands. The SEP alone has outlined an alternative socialist program for which the working class and rural masses can fight against the intensifying hardships that the government is imposing on behalf of the capitalist class and international finance capital.

The SEP has rejected any support or any involvement in an interim capitalist government of any sort. We call on workers and rural toilers to take matters into their own hands and form democratically-elected action committees in every workplace, plantation, suburb, town and village, completely independent of trade unions and every bourgeois party.

In opposition to the IMFs dictates, the SEP has outlined a series of policies to address the pressing needs of working people and for which action committees can take up the fight. These include: working class control of the production and distribution of all essential items, the nationalisation of the banks, major corporations and plantations under democratic public control, the seizure of the colossal wealth of the billionaires and corporations, and the repudiation of all foreign debts.

The fight for the essential social rights of working people is inseperably connected to the struggle for democratic rights. The SEP calls for the immediate abolition of the autocratic executive presidency, repeal of all repressive laws, including the emergency, essential services and anti-terrorism legislation, and release of all political prisoners.

In opposition to any capitalist government, all-party, interim or otherwise, the SEP calls for a Democratic and Socialist Congress of Workers and Rural Masses based on delegates elected by action committees as the necessary political lever for workers and the poor to fight for their social and democratic rights.

In its July 20 statement, the SEP explained that such a congress provides a political strategy for the working class to consolidate its forces, win the active support of the rural masses and lay the basis for its own rule through a workers and peasants government committed to restructuring society on socialist lines. The faster the workers and rural masses take up the political fight to build action committees, the sooner a congress of workers and rural toilers can be convened to oppose the disaster being prepared by the ruling classes. We offer every political assistance to those who want to take up this fight.

The SEP calls on workers to strenuously oppose any attempt to whip up Sinhala chauvinism or Tamil communalism that has repeatedly been used by the ruling class to divide working people and weaken the fight for a socialist solution to crises created by capitalism. The ally of workers and the poor in this struggle is the international working class which is also coming into struggle in country after country against rising inflation and job and wage cuts.

Sri Lankan workers can coordinate and unify their struggles and with those of workers internationally by linking their action committees to the International Workers Alliance of Rank-and-File Committees, initiated by the International Committee of the Fourth International.

We urge workers and youth to join the SEP to fight for this program.

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Reject all-party regime! No to IMF austerity! Fight to build Democratic and Socialist Congress of Workers and Rural Masses! - WSWS

The Commonwealth Games are little more than a PR exercise for Rule Britannia, a friend of mine said during a discussion about the major sporting event.

Although the games are an opportunity for talented athletes from various walks of life to showcase their abilities on a world stage, and potentially change their individual lives, Ill admit that the concept of it sticks in my throat a bit.

I love a good game as much as the next person, but the event is unpalatable because the Commonwealth, as an institution, is rooted in chattel slavery and the brutalisation of African people: people such as my ancestors, who were abducted from Nigeria, brought to Jamaica and forced to work.

Moreover, the fact that so many contemporary socio-economic inequalities experienced by citizens of Commonwealth countries and their families is a direct consequence of the evils of the British Empire is not lost on me. How to celebrate when justice to those affected has been delayed and hence denied?

After the abolition of slavery in 1833, financially prosperous Britain skipped off into the sunset without investing in the economies of its former sources of slaves in any meaningful way and those left behind in the former colonies have grappled with poverty and destitution ever since. Britain paid nothing to the freed slaves in an attempt to redress the injustices they suffered.

Headed by Queen Elizabeth II, the Commonwealth is a voluntary, political association of 56 member states, the vast majority of which are former British Empire colonies. The tangible benefits of the Commonwealth for former colonies are debatable, though its supporters says developmental support and cooperation on international goals are among the benefits.

The long and short of it is that the wealth is not common in these countries, so whats the point of the organisation? How may people living on the breadline in Ghana and Barbados, for example, say they owe a debt of gratitude to the Commonwealth?

Recent reports indicate that Britain controls more than $1 trillion (830bn) worth of Africas most valuable resources. Moreover, more wealth leaves Africa every year than enters it by more than 31bn according to research that contradicts common perceptions of the continent flourishing through foreign aid.

The Commonwealth purports to be about promoting justice and human rights, yet reparatory justice for chattel slavery, a heinous crime perpetrated against African people by colonialists, has not been paid.

On the other hand, British taxpayers finished paying off the debt that the British government incurred in order to compensate British slave owners in 1835 because of the abolition of slavery and the inconvenience of not having free African labourers to make them rich.

Entities that have the ability to pay reparations to former colonies such as the British government and the royal family have, so far, refused to engage with calls for that. Yet Westminster, local government and other stakeholders have managed to fork out at least 778m to cover the costs of the Commonwealth Games in Birmingham. It is clear that the money is there.

The games will open a wealth of new opportunities for people who live and work in the UK specifically Birmingham, which is expected by ministers to contribute millions to the UK economy, lasting far beyond the conclusion of the event. As such, it is revealing that the games have been disproportionately hosted in white-majority Commonwealth nations over the years, even though the Commonwealth comprises mainly Black-majority countries. This essentially means that money and opportunities are being afforded to these locations over and over again.

Despite the opening ceremonys nod to diversity, theres much more that needs to be done to balance out the playing field, so to speak.

No one I know who is from a diverse racial background, Black and Asian mostly, is following the games closely because there are more pressing things to be focusing on such as the disproportionate impact of the cost of living crisis, which sees Black people more likely to go hungry than white people, more likely to face fuel poverty, more likely to face higher living costs and less likely to have substantial savings to fall back on.

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As the song says, aint nothing going on but the rent and Her Majestys government, which continues to implode as I type, stands accused of not doing enough to help people from marginalised groups who are in dire need.

The Commonwealth Games should be scrapped and replaced with a sporting event that isnt bonded by racial trauma against a backdrop of Eurocentric denialism. The end of slavery was marked on Emancipation Day, 1 August, and the UK establishments silence on the matter is a reflection of the anti-Black racism that thrives in this country. The government, by contrast, rightly issued a statement in observation of Roma Holocaust Memorial Day.

When you interrogorate the wider context of the Commonwealth Games, it is difficult in all conscience to celebrate the event while the suffering of African people is the order of the day.

Leading up to the disastrous Royal Caribbean tours and beyond, former colonies have been examining their relationship with the British monarchy. Its time we were all honest about the past. This is the only way we can productively move forward.

Here is the original post:

The Commonwealth Games are rooted in slavery its time to axe them - The Independent

Ive never seen such a bunch of petulant children in charge of Labour in my lifetime, Labours Sam Tarry told me over a coffee in his East London constituency.

The outburst of frustration hardly came as a surprise. The Ilford South MP was sacked as shadow transport minister on 27 July after joining a rail workers picket line and, as Keir Starmer put it, making up policy on the hoof on public sector pay rises during a media interview that was authorised by Labour HQ.

Tarry believes below-inflation pay deals are unacceptable and that Starmer should prepare for further dissent as nurses, barristers and other public sector workers walk out during Britains summer of discontent.The 39-year-old is firmly on Labours left and has never been a fan of Starmers cautious approach to opposition, despite accepting a promotion to the partys front bench.

The son of a Church of England clergyman, Tarry was raised in Ilford and became a cleaner at Redbridge College at the age of 15.He went on to work at the anti-racism charity Hope Not Hate, the transport union TSSA and was president of the left-leaning Class think tank. Tarry served as a Labour councillor in Barking and Dagenham from 2010 to 2018, before being elected MP for Ilford South in 2019, defeating Mike Gapes, who had left Labour to join Change UK.

Now, Tarry is embroiled in a fierce selection battle to remain Labours candidate in Ilford South after local members voted for an open contest. He is likely to face Jas Athwal, the leader of Redbridge Council, who stood to contest the seat in 2019 but was suspended from the Labour Party on the eve of the vote following sexual harassment allegations. He was later cleared by the party of wrongdoing and reinstated.

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The timing of the complaint was openly questioned at the time by Athwals allies, including the shadow health secretary and Ilford North MP, Wes Streeting. The selection contest, likely to be held in September, will be something of a flashpoint between the partys left and right; Tarry has alleged that rule-breaking and voter fraud took place during the process to trigger the ballot. He has the backing of some shadow cabinet members, including Ed Miliband and Tulip Siddiq, and insists he has no plan to stand in Jon Cruddass Dagenham and Rainham seat (Cruddas is stepping down from parliament and Tarry ran his 2007 deputy leadership campaign).

Ive shredded a lot of my political credibility over the last three years with the wider movement and trade union movement by being on the front bench through some very difficult times, Tarry said.

And actually, in some ways, it probably helps if a lot more people dont just throw themselves under the bus when theres an opportunity for left-leaning MPs. My view has always been that we should occupy as many positions in the shadow ministerial team as possible. We shouldnt cede everything to the right.

In the Sky News interview that triggered his firing, Tarry said that every worker should get a pay rise in line with inflation, which the Bank of England has predicted will reach 13 per cent by the end of this year. Labours policy is that workers deserve fair rises agreed through negotiations rather than political interventions.

Ive been sacked for going on telly and saying I think British workers deserve to be paid in line with inflation, Tarry said.I said that for each organisation, each business and in each industry or sector of course it needs to be negotiated around the table.

But we have no position. So that means our position, essentially, if you read between the lines, is that we are actually committed to having a below-inflation pay rise for British workers, which means the Labour Partys position, you can infer, is that were committed to a pay cut in real terms for people.

That is totally unacceptable to me. I believe its totally unacceptable to a number of people in the shadow cabinet. I believe it will totally break down over the next few months. We are going to see a situation where, say, low-paid nurses or government workers are going on strike, like cleaners. Are we really going to be saying to them they cant be brought up to the current level to survive?

After a lost decade for living standards, Tarry believes building pressure will make Labours annual conference in September a dangerous moment for Starmer. The left-wing activist group Momentum is preparing motions calling for Labour to back inflation-proof pay rises.

I think its going to be very difficult for Keir, and if the leadership double down and basically try to say, Oh, this is about the continuation of this completely fanciful thing about smashing the left, attacking the trade unions, thats not going to win us the election.

Quite frankly, its petulant, and real grown-ups would actually get everyone back around the table, unite the party, pull the trade unions back on board, build up our war chest and then go on to win the general election.

Tarry is a formidable campaigner in internal Labour elections: he ran his now partner Angela Rayners successful deputy leadership campaign in 2020, and Jeremy Corbyns victorious 2016 leadership campaign.

He acknowledged that any pay deals must be sustainable, and said he believes Starmer can win a general election, but maintains that the lowest-paid workers should receive inflation-level pay rises.

The ban on shadow ministers visiting striking workers, he argued, created a false dividing line in the Labour Party and its shadow cabinet that is also splitting the trade union movement.

That is not about being serious about government, thats about serious political misjudgement, he said. Were making catastrophic errors, creating a punch-up with our own side. How the dickens are we actually going to get into government with this lack of political foresight, this lack of political strategy. I find it deeply, deeply frustrating, because it is completely avoidable.

New policy is key, he said: There is a pathway to power that isnt basically aping the Conservatives. I think its almost like we need to get back to the basics.

Weve got to come out really clear with key policies that every single person understands are fully costed, Tarry said. We are not going to win just by cosying up to big businesses in the Square Mile. We win big business over by speaking about our investment strategy.

Tarry also believes there is room for Labour to be more radical on electoral reform. The Liberal Democrats would reportedly insist on the introduction of proportional representation without a referendum in return for a deal with Labour in a hung parliament. And Tarry will be among the voices pressuring Starmer to back the abolition of first-past-the-post.

The Tories have an agenda that is to stay in power, he said. Lets make some tough decisions on keeping Labour in power.

The Tories are basically gerrymandering [constituency] boundaries. They are attacking trade union funding. They are attacking rights at work. And there are things like mandatory voter ID, these voter suppression tactics, which are lifted straight out of the Trumpian rulebook.

We ought to be saying: theres not a majority of people in this country who support this Conservative agenda and there is not a majority of people in this country that are for an extreme immigration strategy.

If we actually had an electoral system that reflected that, it would mean we could have progressive forces governing this country far more than they do at the moment.

[See also: Keir Starmer: picket lines U-turn shows Lisa Nandys strength]

Original post:

Sam Tarry: Starmer's position on public sector pay will totally break down - The New Statesman

During an early scene in Crimes of the Future, David Cronenbergs latest film, the performance artist Saul Tenser (Viggo Mortensen) reclines on a chaise longue as Timlin (Kristen Stewart) questions him.

Surgery is sex, isnt it?

Is it?

Mhm. You know it is. Surgery is the new sex.

Saul, like a large segment of the population, is experiencing Accelerated Evolution Syndrome, which makes its victims grow novel organs that seem to serve no purpose other than cluttering up ones abdominal cavity. He has just been vivisected inside a sarcophagal machine designed to perform autopsies, operated by the ravishing Caprice (La Seydoux) as the main attraction of her and Sauls world-famous performance art show. A former trauma surgeon, Caprice laparoscopically tattoos the superfluous organs that Saul grows so prolifically, and then removes them in front of audiences of dour arterati. She is protective of Saul and distrusts Timlin, a National Organ Registry bureaucrat tasked with cataloguing the strange new organs people are growing.

Does there have to be new sex? asks Saul. Yes. Its time, says Timlin. When I was watching Caprice cut into you, I wanted you to be cutting into me. Thats when I knew.

Timlin is far from the first to reach this conclusion. In Cronenbergs future, humans no longer feel painexcept sometimes in their sleepand have discovered a narcotizing pleasure in mutual mutilation. The films many images of characters carving sensuously into one another with surgical instruments are uncanny, grotesque, and brimming with meaning.

Although full-fledged pain is rare, discomfort is rampant. Crimes is set in a future not of technological marvels but of rust, decay, pollution, and creative exhaustion. Similar to the Tangiers/Interzone of Cronenbergs Naked Lunch (1991), the unnamed city where the action takes place feels dusty and poisoned. Worse, a mysterious digestive tract disorder is pervasive among those afflicted with Accelerated Evolution Syndrome. No longer capable of eating normal food without gagging, sufferers like Saul keep their food down by taking their meals in animate breakfast chairs that move in response to their discomfort.

As it turns out, the organs grown by Saul and others are part of a nascent organ system that will enable humans to consume plastics. The governments New Vice unit, for which Saul is an undercover informant, is dead-set on keeping this a secretdead-set, that is, on halting human evolution. Meanwhile, a cell of plastic-eating accelerationists are working against the government. Their leader, Lang Dotrice (Scott Speedman), wants Saul to perform an autopsy on his young son during his and Caprices show, thereby revealing to the world the fully evolved, plastic-digesting organ system the boy was born with.

LifeFormWare, the nebulous company that produces Sauls chair and his similarly animate bed, is maybe the Cronenbergiest feature of the film. The companys agentsa pair of femme fatale repairwomen (Tanaya Beatty and Nadia Litz)are underdeveloped as characters, but their actions ultimately provide rich thematic fodder. LifeFormWare has cornered the market on ameliorating the effects of Accelerated Evolution Syndrome; if the accelerationists succeed in their mission, their products will become obsolete. Brand-loyal to the point of erotic fixation, LifeFormWares agents will stop at nothing to safeguard its future.

Cronenberg has never shied from stating his themes explicitly, often incarnating abstract critiques of power and technology in deformations of human flesh. Crimes of the Future is no exception. Like Videodrome (1983) before it, Crimes exposes our tendency to create tools that pervert our humanity, as well as our tendency to rebel against their perverting force with yet more perversion. For venturing these insights Cronenberg has been accused of making reactionary art. Cronenbergs work has value, for me, wrote Robin Wood, his most vehement critic, precisely in that it crystallizes some of our societys most negative attitudesto physicality, to sexuality, to women, to all ideas of progress. Other film critics, including those sharing Woods radical sexual politics, have defended Cronenberg; after all, how could work so obviously transgressive be reactionary? But Wood was correct: Cronenbergs art, if not the man himself, is ineluctably reactionary, and Crimes may well be his most reactionary film to date.

Within the logic of the story-world, Accelerated Evolution Syndrome constitutes a heretofore unknown dynamism native to humanity; nothing essential to human nature is compromised. The villains intent on snuffing out evolutionary adaptation through technocratic means are battling against nature itself. They are, in the name of preserving human nature, redefining it according to arbitrary will. The films opening scene reveals just how morally disfiguring such redefining can be: a mother, believing her plastic-eating child to be an inhuman aberration, smothers him with a pillow.

Cronenbergs depiction of a conspiracy between government and corporate interests to halt a natural human process will be familiar to observers of the transgender revolution. The Biden administration has promised to direct the full force of the federal government to protect childrens access to cross-sex hormones and puberty blockers originally designed to chemically castrate rapists. Pharmaceutical companies donate lavishly to gender activism, salivating at the prospect of untold thousands of children becoming dependent for life on the expensive drugs needed to tame their bodies recalcitrance. And business is booming for professional flesh-carvers thanks to the demand for gender affirming surgeriesincluding surgeries meant to nullify ones gender entirely.

While ensuring the film will appeal to only a limited audience, the shock-and-awe grotesquery of Crimes of the Future is essential to the films reactionary heart, its transgression of transgression. But it also serves to mask the films eschewal of narrative tension. In a world so numbed by decadence and deadened nerve endings, the stakes for individual characters are often difficult to discern. Despite this aesthetic failure,Crimes succeeds as a complex meditation on the abolition of human nature and the eclipse of embodied sexuality. Cronenberg has given us a film that, like Kristen Stewarts character Timlin, all but begs to be dissected.

Justin Lee is associateeditor atFirst Things.

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Surgery is the New Sex | Justin Lee - First Things

by Jen James and Tamanika Ferguson, The Fire Inside

The recent US Supreme Court decision overturning Roe v. Wade has been shocking to people across the country who have witnessed the reversal of a fundamental constitutional protection. This decision comes at a time when California is grappling with its own recent history of forced sterilizations, an example of reproductive oppression inflicted by the state prisons system.

In 2021, after decades of activism led by currently and formerly incarcerated women, survivors won the right to apply for reparations from the state for this harm and the first survivors have been granted approval for compensation this summer. The Dobbs v. Jackson Womens Health Organization decision raises several questions: First, what will this decision mean for people incarcerated in womens prisons?

Even in California, a state with the right to abortion written into the state constitution, many reproductive health decisions for incarcerated people are available based only on the gatekeeping of prison healthcare staff who impose their own beliefs on incarcerated people regardless of what the law says.

Second, how will the expanded criminalization of womens bodies and healthcare lead to increased imprisonment and lack of bodily control for women, trans and non-binary people? Across the country, pregnant and birthing people continue to be shackled during pregnancy, labor and delivery.

Policing and regulating womens bodies is a form of control and punishment used to strip women of their agency and self-determination and to silence their voices.

Chelsea Becker, a woman from Kings County, Calif., spent 16 months in jail after enduring the trauma of a stillbirth. There is growing fear that this will become the norm; her case is a clear example of the limits of reproductive rights in California.

Policing and regulating womens bodies is a form of control and punishment used to strip women of their agency and self-determination and to silence their voices. For many people, the overturning of Roe v. Wade is one of the first times they have been confronted with this possibility; yet, for people incarcerated in womens prisons, who are predominantly Black and other women of color, it is an everyday reality.

Reproductive oppression has been a constant in the lives of many BIPOC dating back to slavery, when reproduction was controlled for the econmic gain of white slave owners. Once incarcerated, people are denied the same rights as those on the outside. Sexual and medical violence in prison is not about isolated cases, but rather is systematic oppression where prison staff has unfettered power over imprisoned people.

Both physical abuse from correctional staff and forced or coercive medical care, including the sterilizations that were performed on hundreds or even thousands of people incarcerated in Central California Womens Facility (CCWF), California Institution for Women (CIW) and Valley State Prison for Women (VSPW) without proper informed consent, are crimes that usually remain hidden from the public eye.

Reporting or speaking out about sexual and medical violence is often met with retaliation. Yet incarcerated survivors continue to lead efforts to expose the forced sterilizations occurring inside California prisons. They continue to sound the alarm about violence and abuse faced inside on a daily basis.

The overturning of Roe v. Wade means that thousands of people may face criminal charges for seeking an abortion, having a miscarriage or stillbirth, or assisting a patient or loved one in seeking necessary healthcare. California Coalition for Women Prisoners (CCWP) is committed to engaging in participatory defense, policy work, and political education and action to support the rights of all people to bodily autonomy and self-determination. Prison abolition must include the fight for reproductive justice for all.

CCWP is a grassroots abolitionist organization with members inside and outside prison challenging the institutional violence imposed on women, transgender people, and communities of color by the prison industrial complex (PIC). Please contact info@womenprisoners.org for more information.

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Fighting for reproductive justice and self-determination in post-Roe America - San Francisco Bay View

Lately it feels like there are just a lot of overlapping crises repeals of civil rights, legislative attacks on trans people, mass shootings, police violence against Black and brown people, the climate catastrophe not to mention the pandemic, which is not at all over. I dont know about you, but its easy to feel exhausted and hopeless, wondering what I can do just as one small person moving through the world.

Brea Baker is a writer and activist whose work is focused on action. For over a decade, Brea has been a student organizer, an activist, and a strategist for national progressive movements. As she tells it, the death of Trayvon Martin when she was graduating high school was the radicalizing event that guided her into organizing. At Yale, Brea created reading lists to help educate her fellow students, and in 2017 she was one of the organizers of the Womens March in Washington, DC.

I wanted to talk to Brea about finding small ways to bring organizing or activism into your life, wherever youre at.

This is a conversation rooted in writing that has come before. It takes lessons from bell hooks about radical love and from Mariame Kaba about digging deep for hope. But fundamentally, the thing I want anyone to take away from it is that there are achievable, concrete things that you can do right now, in the community youre a part of.

This conversation has been edited for clarity and condensed. As always, theres much more in the full podcast, so listen and follow Vox Conversations on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, or wherever you listen to podcasts.

I want to start this conversation by asking you: What have you been doing lately to combat any existential dread you may be feeling about being here in 2022?

I think Ive had a lot of practice feeling a lot of dread over the last 10 years as an activist. To be honest, it just feels like a constant state that has definitely gotten worse.

And it just feels like an onslaught. So, unplugging in general and finding some time in nature and grounding yourself is so important.

Wait, scrolling on your phone 18 or so hours a day thats not recommended? So weird.

Heres the funny part. We convince ourselves that by staying tapped in, we are better serving the movement, and then what is actually happening is that were exhausted, were desensitized, and we know a lot of whats happening, but it doesnt make us any more strategic at disrupting it.

When we think about the state of the world, or we think about the things that are really hard to hold and hard to carry, its very easy to forget about the people who came before us, like for example, bell hooks. Youve written about bell hookss theory on radical love. How do you define radical love and how do you perform it? How do you bring that into your life?

I think for me, radical love gives me something to fight for versus being constantly in opposition to, or in defense against, something. I think that sometimes in being defensive, we have no vision for what we are trying to build.

If I was defining radical love, I would say it is care as a politic; sometimes the word love and the word care can be used so often that it loses its meaning for us. But [bell hooks] really grounds us in the fact that if we lived our lives not in the way that the world and our society looks now, but in the way we want our society and our world to look in the future, then we would have to be more loving.

I love that because that doesnt make me feel jaded. It reminds me that we all have inherent worth and value that is worth loving and caring for, even if that person is not as tapped into that part of themselves.

In reminding yourself that people have the capacity to love and to care for themselves and for their community, how do you connect that to action?

I think that is where a lot of people get lost, because they have these beautiful values that they are espousing, and then their day-to-day lives dont match up with it.

For me, the world that I want to live in requires me to spend my money in certain strategic ways, as a reflection of radical love. So I cant spend money with people and companies that dont match my values and then wonder why companies like that exist. I am keeping them alive, even if I think some people convince themselves, Oh well, my $15 isnt gonna stop anything.

But your $15 is keeping it going. So its not just, Im boycotting Amazon. Its also, I am now spending my money with a bunch of small family-owned businesses that are way more grateful for my little $15 than Jeff Bezos ever would be.

I want to unpack love as a politic. What does that mean?

One example of what love as a politic feels like for me is that even when I dont know enough about an issue, I dont need a masters in environmental justice and climate change to feel love for this planet, to feel awe when I look at nature, and to want better for it than what we are currently doing.

It has freed me a lot to not feel like I need to know everything, but to trust what love is directing me to do. Sometimes Ill get into arguments with people and theyre like, well, you cant even fully explain all of these things to me. And its like, I dont have to. Love is telling me that I shouldnt do that to someone that I love, or something that I love, or some place that I love.

Youre touching on something that I wanted to ask about, because its something that I come up against a lot. And thats the question of how to respond when someone else is judging you, or mocking you for your values. I have someone in my life who loves to push my buttons about the things I believe and the ways in which I aspire to live my life. People can take the fact that you care deeply as an opportunity to belittle you. How do you respond with love to that sort of thing?

I think recently Ive gotten better at sifting through and understanding peoples intentions. My first step: why are you pushing back?

I do think a lot of people do want to debate. Im not here to debate you. I am open to a conversation.

I think its a lot easier when the conversation is happening digitally, because you can quite literally walk away from the phone. And I think that is something that a lot of people lose sight of when they just respond immediately to something. You do not owe that person an immediate response at all, and you dont have to be that keyboard warrior person whos sending paragraphs. It is both that I recognize that persons humanity and that I recognize my own humanity enough to say, I dont have to put up with the way that theyre treating me. I can walk away.

I want to ask one question about how you acknowledge privilege and power as you engage with social justice.

Because sometimes someone arrives in a movement, with all this privilege and power, and they dont know how to recognize it, or they dont know how to bring that context into their struggle. And you dont want to lose them, you know, like their intentions are good. I wonder how you acknowledge privilege and power when youre engaging with social justice.

You just described my entire experience with the Womens March. I was a national organizer with the 2017 Womens March and some of the subsequent actions as well. And I was actually the youngest national organizer.

And that was definitely a description of that moment, not just with the attendees of the march, because there were a lot of people who attended and said, This is my first protest, or This past election was the first time I voted, and they were two and three and four times my age. And I was like, huh?

Youve lived through so many things, and none of that shocked you or enraged you enough?

So, that was one thing. It was mind-blowing to sit in rooms of people who were being elevated and who were being given a lot of microphones to speak and who thought a lot of themselves. And I understood it, because they really felt the need to really affirm and validate themselves after this election where a very sexist man was elected. But at the same time, I think its about welcoming people and not settling for that entry point, because the reality was a lot of those women who we were co-organizing with wanted Womens March to only speak about gender and not touch on race, not touch on ability, not touch on sexuality.

Well, Im a queer Black woman, so I cant be in this space and not talk about sexuality and race. Its not gonna happen, because actually I feel deepest about racism and addressing white supremacy, because if we do that, then wed have to address patriarchy and everything else.

And so, how I deal with it is that I think you cant coddle people. And I think people who want to be coddled are not ready to be in the movement yet. And I think thats important, to recognize that sometimes we need to have prerequisites for the spaces that were coming into, and we need to have a standard of what it means to be in this movement.

The Black Panther Party, for example, is a political organization that I have so much admiration for. I have a tattoo for them on my shoulder, and every single person who entered that organization had to read certain texts, and had to go through certain trainings. And sometimes we want to make things too easy for people, that they come in with all their baggage, with all their preconceived notions. And theyre actually hurting people in spaces theyre supposed to be in. And its like, no, we have to have a higher standard for people and say: Welcome! Im so glad that this activated you. And if you care about feminism, you have to care about these things too.

And you have to be willing to hear that: were willing to let you come as you are, but you cant leave in the same way that you came, you have to be transformed.

And if youre not willing to be transformed, then you are actually only interested in power for you, not redistributing power for all. And thats not okay.

You are an abolitionist and that is a fundamental part of the activism that you do, and it informs all of the values that come before it.

But not everyone who is going to be a part of the movement that youre a part of is a believer in abolition. I wonder, when people have different objectives, but they want to be shoulder to shoulder with you, how do you square that?

This is something I learned from Mariame Kaba, who is the abolitionist I learned the most from. If you have not read We Do This Til We Free Us, you must go get it now.

You gotta.

You have to go get it right now.

One of the best to ever do it.

Oh, like, quite literally. And something that she said a while back Im gonna butcher it, so Im just gonna paraphrase As long as you are not standing in the way of my long-term goals towards abolition, we can still work together.

Right. You dont have to be the perfect organizer, and you dont have to know everything. But it is really important that you acknowledge your privilege and power and think about the ways that what you believe interacts with the things that other people believe.

Yeah, one million percent. And I think sometimes I like to level-set with people and remind them that I also still dont have all the answers, but certainly did not at other points. And so in helping people acknowledge their own privilege, I sometimes start by acknowledging my own, and kind of model for them.

I have a question about the practical things that you recommend people do.

I think its very easy to feel very overwhelmed. There are a lot of different issues that are radicalizing or that are going to push people towards wanting to organize.

Whats one thing that you recommend people do? And, furthermore, how can we think sustainably about the things that were capable of doing?

Yeah. I love that you brought up sustainability already, because I had my one action and it is, in my opinion, what will allow our movements to really be withstanding and to survive the attention span of the media, which is to join a local organization specifically, a local progressive organization.

But Im purposely being vague because I want you to find whatever organization is connected to that issue for you, but a local one. I say that because a lot of people, when they become activated, they go through this phase of wanting to change the world. And they believe that the only way to do that is if they have a huge following, or if they are part of national politics. And it never works that way.

I have to tell you that local organizers get shit done way more frequently than national organizers do. That is not to say that national organizers are not needed, because I do believe that we need people who can focus on national policy and who can thread together the things that are happening across the country. But local organizers do it.

National organizers cannot follow up with every single person who makes one donation and say, Hey, we havent heard from you since. A local organizer will say, Hey, you came to that first meeting. We havent seen you in a while. Were not just planning these activities and these protests and these rallies, which are the exciting and sexy things that people want to be a part of. Were also reading books together. Were planning film screenings together. Were canvassing our community and having conversations with elders. Youre able to have so much more of an impact because you know the community you live in, and youre surrounded by people who also know the community that they live in.

One thing that has really helped me, especially when Ive been feeling overwhelmed and this is something that I learned from my good pal Sally Tamarkin I was feeling really overwhelmed. Then I started delivering meals for the local food collaborative. I started, whenever we went to the grocery store, stocking the community fridge, you know, buying a bunch of perishable food and putting it in the community fridge. I didnt think that it was going to help, and it really helped.

And looking left and right, and seeing who in your community is already doing work that you care about and getting involved in that particular way can be a really helpful first step.

Oh yeah. I think for people who really engage, it becomes way more than their first step. It actually leads to a deeper radicalization.

If you put that same energy into local politics and you got your mayor out of office and got someone new and exciting in office, youd actually feel a huge difference, because it would be more immediate and youd also be able to see on the ground.

So I think it gives people more inspiration when theyre able to have local wins and then they can turn around and be like, wait, this isnt all gloom and doom. Like, we are able to really build the world we want to live in. If I could just leave with a quote: on the note of inspiration, Arundhati Roy said, Another world is not only possible. Shes on her way. On a quiet day. I can hear her breathing.

And I love that quote because it reminds us that it is not inherent, and it is not inevitable, that the world is going to be shitty and difficult and challenging. Weve survived more challenging things in the past. We will continue to survive the challenging moments that were in. And if we think of the world in that personification way, like, shes on her way. Like, shes literally in the Lyft. Were just waiting for her to send the ETA. Lets just prepare for her arrival. When this other world gets here, lets be ready.

And if everyone acted like that and spoke to their family members and their colleagues and their neighbors in that way and organized locally in that way, by the time she got here, wed realized she arrived because we had prepared for her, not the other way around.

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How to get started with activism when you dont know how - Vox.com