Category Archives: Abolition Of Work

If you start to scratch away at street names, you can uncover part of Liverpool's fascinating urban history.

Whether it's the commemoration of historical events, honouring prominent figures of the past, or a reminder of long-vanished industries, the names give a clue.

Here are just a few of the stories behind Liverpool's well-known or unusual street names.

The street made famous by The Beatles was named after Liverpool slave ship owner and anti-abolitionist James Penny.

Penny, like the Duke of Clarence, spoke in favour of the slave trade in Parliament, telling MPs that he had invested in 11 voyages of ships carrying slaves from Africa to the West Indies, in what he believed was a humane transaction.

(Between Islington and West Derby Road)

In the early 19th century, Caroline of Brunswick was the popular wife of the rather less popular King George IV.

Folklore has it that Brunswick Road came by its name when a painter repainting street signs left his work, only to return and find Brunswick Place chalked on by a supporter of the Queen.

Thinking it was official, he copied it. "Place" later became "Road."

Both Falkner Street and Falkner Square in the Georgian Quarter were named after Edward Falkner. He was a soldier and the Sheriff of Lancashire who - so the story goes - mustered 1,000 men in one hour to defend Liverpool in 1797 when a French invasion threatened.

The Square dates from 1835 and was one of the first open public spaces. But many of the houses remained vacant as potential buyers feared the houses would sink into the marshy ground on which they were built. It was also unpopular because it was so far outside of town.

As a result, locals nicknamed the square Falkner's Folly, which eventually became Falkner Square.

The Duke of Clarence who became King William IV was honoured in recognition of his campaigning against the abolition of slavery.

Widely travelled, he spent a lot of time in the House of Lords where he was a controversial speaker.

He visited Liverpool in 1790 when Clarence Street was being laid and the naming was a measure of his popularity here.

One of the few places to be named after a woman. Sarah Clayton became a captain of industry in the mid-18th century, taking over her merchant father Alderman William Clayton's business with her mother after his death, when it was unheard of for women to do so.

She was known as a formidable businesswoman and merged the family coal business with her brother-in-law's, meaning she presided over a considerable area of mines situated near to the Sankey Canal and became one of the most important coal dealers in Liverpool.

In 1752 she mapped out a landmark in her family name - Clayton Square - and occupied the largest house in the square.

One of Liverpool's main thoroughfares was originally known as Limekiln Lane. Where the railway station is now, back in the 18th century there were lime kilns used to produce quicklime.

They had to be taken down when doctors from the Infirmary across the street complained that fumes being emitted were detrimental to their patients.

The kilns were moved, but the name stuck and was given to the railway station built on the road in 1851.

Professor Sir John Utting was Mayor of Liverpool from 1917-18, the first Professor of Anaesthetics at Liverpool University and Liverpool's chief medical officer.

He was also Liverpool Football Club's first club doctor. Both Utting Avenue, and Utting Avenue East, were named in recognition of his work.

The Goree Warehouses, built in 1793, were named after a slave embarkation island off Senegal, West Africa.

The warehouses were built 11 years after the courts ruled that every slave became free as soon as their feet touched English soil.

The buildings were demolished in 1958 following extensive bomb damage in World War Two. Their site is now part of the Strand, which was widened in the 1960s as part of an ambitious scheme for an inner motorway around the city centre.

The only part to have been built was from Leeds Street to Parliament Street.

There is an old belief that iron hoops in the walls were used to chain up African slaves, but this is a myth.

The road owed its name to a dispute between its inhabitants and the Inland Revenue. In the days of the window tax (introduced in 1696), residents had to pay tax on each individual pane of glass they owned.

But the residents of this particular Liverpool road came up with a cunning method to evade the tax, making the few window panes they had as large as possible, to reduce their outgoings.

The row with the Inland Revenue was only resolved by means of an agreement known as a "commutation".

The old Victorian buildings on this road - close to William Brown Street - have now sadly been torn down and replaced by an office block.

Welsh builders came to Liverpool in the 19th century, which resulted in a lot of Welsh names. Off High Park Street there are many streets named after Welsh rivers.

And a set of streets off County Road are also part of the Welsh influence on the city - some of them sit just a stone's throw away from Goodison Park.

Welsh builders Owen Elias and his son, William Owen Elias used the first initials of their names in a set of 22 streets in Walton.

The roads, which all still exist, are: Oxton, Winslow, Eton, Neston, Andrew, Nimrod, Dane, Wilburn, Ismay, Lind, Lowell, Index, Arnot, Makin, Olney, Weldon, Euston, Nixon, Elton, Liston, Imrie and Astor streets.

Named after Jonas Bold, who leased land from the Corporation on which St Luke's Church and a ropery owned by James and Jonathon Brookes were built.

This was the name given to the area by the Town Hall on which, until commodity exchanges were built, merchants gathered to transact their business.

The name commemorates William Huskisson, MP who was killed at the official opening of the Liverpool and Manchester Railway in 1830.

One of Liverpool's turnpike roads, it led to Preston via Walton, Burscough and Maghull. Stage coaches from Liverpool followed this route through Lancaster and Kendal to Scotland.

The road later became famous as the childhood home of Cilla Black.

Read more here:

How Liverpool streets earned their famous names - Liverpool Echo

It was not the typical invitation journalist Boyden Sparks found in his mailbox one morning in the spring of 1924.

The correspondent from William Randolph Hearts International and Cosmopolitan magazine, a forebear to the fashion and entertainment publication Cosmopolitan, did not receive an invitation to someones birthday party or wedding. It was not for a childs graduation or baptism.

Instead, Sparks was being asked to come to Sing Sing Prison, about 30 miles north of New York City, at the behest of the prisons warden, Lewis Lawes, on April 10, 1924, to watch someone die in the electric chair.

The invitation read:

In accordance with Section 507 of the Penal Code you are hereby invited to be present as a witness at the execution of Antonio Viandante, which will occur at this prison on Thursday.

The hour of 11 p.m. has been designated by me for such execution and you will arrange to be at my office in this prison not later than 10:45 p.m.

I would thank you to treat this communication as confidential and advise me immediately upon its receipt of your acceptance or otherwise, so that I may make my arrangement accordingly.

Lewis Lawes was the warden at Sing Sing Prison for 21 years, from 1920 to 1941. He oversaw more than 300 executions during his tenure.Library of Congress

Sparks would immediately accept what he called this grisly R.S.V.P.

In the resulting article, Sparks would take readers into Sing Sings death chamber and give an unflinching account of what a condemned persons final moments were like.

The accusing article was entitled, You and I Killed This Man.

For readers from Central New York, this man was a local, the first person convicted from Onondaga County to go to the electric chair since 1894.

Antonio Viandante was a Manlius shoe repairman who, in a jealous rage on Dec. 3, 1922, fatally stabbed his wife Rosa and then the towns local butcher, Frank Vasto, who happened to be the wrong place at the wrong time.

Sparks arrived at the prison on the night of the execution at the appointed time.

He was taken into Lawes double parlor and met some of the other witnesses who would attending Viandantes execution.

It must have been a strange scene, with guests mingling in a room furnished with old-fashioned mantels of white Italian marble and deeply capacious, thickly upholstered chairs.

In the parlor, Sparks met a couple other reporters, Warden Lawes, the prisons physician, Dr. Amos Squire, and Roman Catholic priest Father Cashin, who had visited with condemned men in their final moments for more than a dozen years.

Viandante would not be one of them.

Sparks wondered aloud why Cashin was not dressed in his vestments despite the executions time quickly approaching.

The man next to Sparks filled him in, whispering:

This fellow the one tonight said hed kill Father Cashin if he came near him. Said he didnt want any religious consolation. They think hes faking insanity.

Then the man told Sparks about Viandantes last night.

(He) tried to hang himself in his cell last night, using a spring taken from his bed. A death house guard saw him in time. Tore the skin on one side of his throat, though. Hes a big bird and theyre looking for trouble.

Sparks made his way over to Lawes, the man who would oversee more than 300 executions during his 21-year tenure as warden at Sing Sing and inquired about Viandante.

(Despite those statistics, Lawes was one of capital punishments most fierce critics. In 1923, he wrote, I shall ask for the abolition of the Penalty of Death until I have the infallibility of human judgment demonstrated to me. It makes one think that Sparks invitation, and subsequent article, was to help further Lawes anti-death penalty ideas.)

He killed his wife at Manlius, New York, the warden said. He was once a police sergeant in Italy and then spent two years in an insane asylum there. Delusions, Im told.

Sparks asked Lawes if the condemned man would receive any sort of drugs before being taken to the chair.

No, Lawes said, we never dope them. The theory is that they are entitled to be in the full possession of their faculties when it happens.

At that moment, the door opened, and a uniformed guard stuck his head in and addressed Lawes.

They are ready, the guard said.

The assembled visitors left the wardens home and made the short walk to the to a one-story brick building, the death house.

Sparks gave this description of the chamber:

Just inside the door and to the right were half a dozen wooden benches with backs shoulder-high suggestive of church pews into these filed the witnesses, scuffling their feet as awkwardly as so many schoolboys in spite of obvious efforts to be quiet. There were only two other articles of furniture in the chamber. One was a white enamel table used to convey patients to and from the operating room. The other was the electric chair, an armchair, if you please.

The chair, Sparks wrote, stood throne-like and sinister.

The witnesses sat in silence, until 11:09 p.m. when Antonio Viandante made his appearance.

To learn more about Antonio Viandante, his backstory, crimes, trial, and death, please download and subscribe to syracuse.coms new local history/true crime podcast series, The Condemned. The first two episodes, including Viandantes, will be available on Monday, June 1.

The Condemned

If you like true-crime stories, be sure to look for our podcast The Condemned" where we explore the stories of five men from Onondaga County who paid the price for their crimes in the electric chair.

Episodes launch on June 1. Bookmark it on our Acast page or other popular platforms including iTunes, Spotify, Google, and Stitcher. Want to be one of the first to listen? Make sure to subscribe on your preferred platform to get new episodes as they become available.

Read more

'The Condemned: A new true crime podcast by syracuse.com

The Condemned: The first use of the electric chair left many of its witnesses horrified in 1890

1924-1929: Meet Syracuses Death Juror, the farmer who helped send two men to the electric chair

1881: Hundreds watch Onondaga Countys final hanging

1887: The botched hanging of Roxalana Druse helped open the way for the electric chair

This feature is a part of CNY Nostalgia, a section on syracuse.com. Send your ideas and curiosities to Johnathan Croyle at jcroyle@syracuse.com or call 315-427-3958.

Thanks for visiting Syracuse.com. Quality local journalism has never been more important, and your subscription matters. Not a subscriber yet? Please consider supporting our work.

Visit link:

The Condemned: Witnesses gather at Sing Sing prison for the execution of a Manlius shoe repairman in 1924 - syracuse.com

Text Size:A- A+

For South Asians committed to ending state violence against Black people, it has always been clear that our work goes further, that we must also work to undo anti-Blackness within our own communities. The hard conversations with our parents and our uncles and aunties about white supremacy, anti-Black racism, and solidarity are not usually easy or fruitful.

But there are moments of clarity and windows of possibility.

Many people have now heard the story of the Gandhi Mahal Restaurant, located just three doors down from the 3rd precinct which was burned down on May 28th in Minneapolis (read the NY Times storyhere). The restaurant owners are Bangladeshi immigrants and they turned the Gandhi Mahal into a staging area for medics and a resting place for protesters dealing with tear gas during the uprising. According to theNew York Times: As wounds were bandaged and hands were held in the front room, [Ruhel Islam] was in the kitchen, preparing daal, basmati rice and naan for the protesters. Overnight, the fire from the 3rd precinct reached the Gandhi Mahal and it was severely damaged. Still, Mr. Islam said: Let my building burn. Justice needs to be served.

When I heard about the Gandhi Mahal restaurant, it reminded me of a conversation I had in 2014 with employees at the Ferguson Market & Liquor where 18-year-old Michael Brown stopped before his murder at the hands of Darren Wilson, a police officer. An Indian worker Ispokewith there expressed similar support for protesters and criticized the discriminatory policing he regularly observed, noting that the real problem is with cops who stop African-Americans. In an interview withIndia Abroad, Anil Gopal, the president of the St. Louis Asian Indian Business Association and a 21-year resident of Fergusonsaidthat a lot of black people came to help the (desi) community. They came out in droves to help clean up the neighborhood, and helped the victims clean up their stores. Some of them even kept vigil outside the store as long as they could to protect the stores.

These may be small and rare parts of the bigger story around police brutality targeting Black people in this country, but for South Asians, they are meaningful and significant. These stories remind us that it is possible to build bridges, to understand the systemic failures of policing in this country, and to fight for justice for Black lives. While these stories dont reflect the experiences of every desi shop owner in this country, they do provide an alternative to the narrative we often hear: that South Asians and Black communities do not have common cause and that immigrant business owners do not care about Black customers and residents. Mr. Islam, who said he grew up in a traumatic police state in Bangladesh, understood the anger and frustrations of Black people. The Indian store clerk I spoke with in Ferguson understood the class and race connections between communities of color.

More broadly, these stories, even with the complexities underlying them, reflect the foundations of solidarity practice: centering those most affected by inequality, understanding that the systems, institutions, and policies of white supremacy target us all, and taking steps to support and co-conspire for shared liberation.

For those South Asians who are privileged by virtue of class, caste, or immigration status, the stories of South Asian shop owners in Minneapolis and Ferguson may not resonate. Many South Asians take the racial bribe and climb the racial ladder in a futile attempt to reach the status of whiteness. They are the ones calling protesters looters and differentiating themselves as model minorities. Still others remain indifferent to understanding the history of Black liberation struggles that paved the way for their own families to immigrate and enjoy benefits in America. Some are silent and apathetic, seemingly oblivious to the civil unrest happening around them. Getting more South Asians to understand the importance of dismantling the systems of white supremacy is not easy, especially when we see images of Indians filling up a stadium in Houston in support of a Hindu nationalist leader or recognize that there are people from our own communities who activelysupport the current Administration despite its anti-immigrant policies.

But that doesnt mean we can stop. We must continue to amplify the importance of solidarity with Black communities and undo anti-Blackness within our own people. That means explaining how white supremacy and racism are devastating all people of color including South Asians. It means acknowledging that the full liberation of Black communities leads to the freedom of all people. It means explaining that when we perpetuate anti-Blackness, that we are being complicit ourselves in reinforcing systems of oppression that harm our own people too. And it means coming from a place of love and compassion.

We must keep trying, and we can look to the stories of Minneapolis and Ferguson shop owners as starting points and inspiration.

Also read: Indians who support Kapil Mishra are saying #BlackLivesMatter. Let that sink in

Below are 10 action steps that South Asians can take:

Step 1:Donate

To help protesters get out of jail around the country with bail funds > https://www.communityjusticeexchange.org/national-bail-fund-network. Then, donate to Black-led organizations in your area and to South Asian and Asian American organizations with an explicit commitment to be in solidarity with Black communities. Every dollar does count.

Step 2:Show upsafelyon real streets or coordinate South Asian solidarity actions on digital streets.

With digital conversations, plan an agenda to discuss: How can South Asians show up for Black lives? Discuss using the guides in Step 4, and then come up with a plan of action with 1 individual action + 3 collective steps (examples: deepen my own analysis and share it; support a local group; commit to 2 community conversations; ask a place of worship or cultural group to make a statement of solidarity).

Step 3. Sign a letter of solidarity(for Asian American groups and individuals) organized by the Coalition of Asian American Leaders (CAAL) in Minnesota >https://caalmn.org/api4georgefloyd/.

Step 4:Learn about South Asian communities and the imperative for building solidarity with Black communities.

>For a starting point: read Vijay PrashadsKarma of Brown Folk.

>For post 9/11 analysis on solidarity with Black communities: read a chapter frommy book,We Too Sing America, calledFerguson is Everywherethat provides community stories along a framework for discussions and political education (link).

> Check out Anirvan ChatterjeesThe Secret History of South Asian and African American Solidarityfor historical examples of cross-racial solidarity.

>For courageous conversations with family, use this guide with exercises developed by the Queer South Asian National Network (link).

Step 5. Take a stand.

Share your commitment to dismantling anti-Black racism and the demands of Black communities (step 7) with friends, networks, and on social media.

Also read: Taylor Swift calls out Trump for stoking fires of white supremacy over Minneapolis protests

Step 6. Then ask others to take a stand.

Ask your networks, organizations, places of worship, and campus groups to make solidarity statements. Check out @SouthAsians4BlackLives on Instagram for visuals and messages.

Step 7:Understand and Support the Demands from Black Communities.

Insist on investments in communities and divestment from law enforcement. Heres a report from MPD_150 (link)and a mini-syllabus on prison & police abolition (link). You can take an Abolition in Policing workshop from Critical Resistancehere, and see demands from Color of Change (link) that address use-of-force, profit motives in policing and more in the wake of the murders of Ahmaud Arbery, George Floyd, Tony McDade, Sean Reed, and Breonna Taylor.

Step 8:Support the Gandhi Mahal in Minneapolis >

https://www.facebook.com/donate/624114434980787

Step 9.Ensure that South Asian solidarity struggles also include confronting casteism, Hindutva, and Islamophobia.

Learn more from South Asian groupshereand read about caste abolition from Equality Labshere. In fact, in communities advocated for the passage of a city council resolution in St. Paul against the human rights violations in India (link).

Step 10. When the urgency stops, dont stop acting:

Dismantling white supremacy is a long-term commitment. Even when its not on the news, we need to show up for each other. Practice self-care and community care, and build your daily plan for transformative solidarity.

This article was first published at Medium.com

ThePrint is now on Telegram. For the best reports & opinion on politics, governance and more, subscribe to ThePrint on Telegram.

Subscribe to our YouTube channel.

Link:

South Asians in the US must support #BlackLivesMatter, but first undo your own anti-Blackness - ThePrint

The death of Balbir Singh Sr -- three-time Olympic gold medallist between 1948 and 1956 -- on Monday put Indian hockey's golden era, when they won six consecutive gold medals, top of the mind again. After 1956, there have been only two more hockey golds, in 1964 and then from a depleted field in 1980, plus one World Cup win. India had legacy, heritage, a bubbling talent pool; where did it all go?

2 Related

Pay half-attention to the idea and random words will float into millennial consciousness: Artificial turf, fitness, coach sackings, bickerings. Better to set those vague notions aside and talk freely. From the beginning.

What's the first question in your mind?

Did anyone see this decline coming? When did the slide start?

Slowly at first, marked by a depleting talent pool.

At the height of the country's hockey success, the national team represented all of India. The first teams after independence had a generous mix of regions and communities within the squad, who came from everywhere. The central provinces, where Dhyan Chand and his family came from. The Kodavas of Karnataka played it, the Goans on the west coast played it. The Parsis. Even the Anglo-Indian community provided several impact players to Indian Olympic-winning teams from 1928 right up to 1948. Post-independence, they migrated to countries like Australia, Canada and Spain and continue playing and coaching there.

Hockey was as much a sport for the masses in India as football, both in cities as well as in smaller urban centres. India international Ashok Kumar, Dhyan Chand's son, remembers kids playing hockey on the road, gravel, alleyways and even inside their homes. Former India captain Viren Rasquinha has noticed that traditional supply centres of the sport like Bengal, Mumbai, Tamil Nadu, Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh have stopped producing players with the regularity they once did. Punjab today dominates the core of national team players.

Where did the rest of the players go?

The Anglo-Indians of course left the country, their representation reducing drastically with each Olympic cycle from 1948 onwards. The Parsis stopped playing as they too migrated or went into business. The Kodavas turned to their coffee estates, a more profitable venture than full-time sport. The others moved to different sports with better opportunities. Post-1983, when India won the cricket World Cup, those from centres like Calcutta and Bangalore migrated to cricket. Post-1991, when the country's economy began opening up, people in general found better employment opportunities and stopped playing sport on the scale they once did. Hockey has stopped being the first-choice sport for the best athletes in the country.

Did artificial turf really kill Indian hockey?

In the first 10-15 years, the surface was a factor, but after that it was something else. In Montreal '76, for the first time in the Olympics, the organisers put down an artificial surface that was easier to maintain than grass. The ball zips around more on turf as compared to grass, rendering skills, which teams like India and Pakistan were known for, less important than speed and fitness. Ashok remembers the Indians going to Montreal 'with zero exposure to the turf'. They played with wooden sticks against opposition nations that had moved on to fibreglass and carbon sticks, which are the norm now.

Surely you're joking?

Unfortunately, no. Remember this was the 1970s, India didn't have any artificial turfs. In preparation, Ashok says, the National Institute of Sport (NIS), Patiala, tried to simulate an artificial surface by shaving off the grass and covering it with cowdung because it was believed this was how turf would behave. The Indians played with leather balls, and they didn't have the right shoes or the right sticks. For the first time in their Olympic history, India finished outside the podium, at seventh.

This is terrible, but it's been a long time since 1976. Couldn't we adjust?

Obviously not. Look at Rasquinha's international career a quarter of a century later. He too began playing on mud and grass in Mumbai. He first played on turf at the age of 16. He retired from international hockey in 2008, by when, he reckons, India would have had 35-40 artificial turf grounds, barely half of them in prime condition. His club in Stuttgart alone had four such grounds in a better state. The number of artificial surfaces in India has now risen to about 200 over the past decade, but it's still not comparable with the biggest hockey centres in countries like Australia, Netherlands and Germany.

Logically, our standards should have improved once more kids began playing on turf, shouldn't they?

Yes, but there was also another factor coming into play at the time: Rule changes. Indian hockey, Pakistan's hockey and from there the rest of Asian hockey, was always identifiable for the emphasis on individual flair, artistry, dribbling, dodging and feints. It was the crowd-puller at international matches. A raft of rule changes in world hockey by the International Hockey Federation (FIH) ended up blunting that advantage. The most significant of those was the abolition of offside in 1992, which gave foreign teams that didn't always have good dribblers new avenues to scoring. It introduced a level of parity in attack, which India again took time to adapt to.

Between then and now, only Pakistan won a bronze medal in Barcelona 1992 and gold at the 1994 World Cup. India haven't even been to the semi-finals of either a World Cup or an Olympics since 1980. Asia's success has come through the fast, physical hockey of the South Koreans, who were originally coached by a South Korean who'd learnt his stuff at NIS Patiala.

Seems like Indian hockey was doomed from the start..

Wait, there's more. India's best performances came in an era when teams were required to field their starting XI throughout the 70 minutes. It meant India's quality could make the opposition suffer. Not the rolling substitutions of today, which keeps players fresher and lets coaches adjust tactics. The emphasis and requirement of quality dribbling was further reduced due to the abolition of the offside rule and by allowing overhead balls, previously considered dangerous play, as long as the receiver was five yards from his/her opponents. Ashok says modern hockey has become a 25-yard game, where you need only bother about your own 25 yards and that of the opponent; the 50-yard space in the middle is wasted completely in modern hockey.

But it's not like it was done overnight. Why didn't we keep in step?

We were fretting about the surface and rules for too long. India stagnated, while the rest of the world kept improving. Rasquinha puts it down to the absence of quality coaching. It may have improved in the last five years, but he says the coaching dished out to talented Indian teenagers is about 15-20 years behind the times. A 14-year-old from India might be at par with the best in the world in his age group. When he steps into the senior team, he quickly realises that the best teams will punish each of his mistakes in a match with a goal. Plus, he suggests, we also take into account nutrition, fitness, recovery and intelligent usage of rolling substitution. Even if we consider ourselves just one percent behind the rest of the world in these factors, Rasquinha says, it becomes four-five percent per player.

"Multiply that by 16 players. In a team sport, those gaps are harder to bridge."

Wow. This looks like people sleeping on their job for about, what, fifty years now? Okay let's look at post-liberalisation, let's make it, three decades or so?

Everyone moans about cricket, but administratively hockey has been damaged at every level -- grassroots to elite -- by short-sighted administration. For example, the men's team have had seven different coaches since the 2014 Asian Games, the last time they won a major medal. In fact, cricket makes for an excellent example of going in the opposite direction. Crowds of the same numbers used to turn up at cricket and hockey. If you're looking for a parallel for Indian hockey, Rasquinha reminds us, think of West Indian cricket and how its supply line of talent dried up. Like their cricketers went into football and basketball, India's best athletes went into cricket and now sports like badminton, boxing, wrestling. Sport is cyclical, but professional sport punishes those waiting for cycles to pass.

In real terms, both Ashok and Rasquinha, players from two generations, believe a weakened domestic structure has only added to the problem. Rasquinha says the absence of strong state units of the central governing body is holding the game back from being spread to more centres across the nation.

Fortunately, there appears to be a drive to professionalise the sport in India at the moment. The head of the FIH is an Indian, no other country still can generate numbers and excitement of the sport as India can. But there's a lot of work to be done on the ground. The more the ego-based decision-making, the further away we go from international hockey success.

So, no Olympic gold medals in the near future then?

Let's be reasonable and look at an Olympic semi-final spot to start with.

(With inputs from Sharda Ugra)

Link:

Chak de, no more: What went wrong with Indian hockey? - ESPN India

This piece originally appeared in the Summer 2018 issue of Ms.

Become a member today and youll receive every issue of Ms.and fuel our feminist reporting, rebelling and truth-telling!

Clutching a clear plastic bag of belongings, Lisa Oxendine walks slowly out of the Durham County Detention Facility and into a crowd awaiting her arrival.

Im so glad to meet you, Serena Sebring says, handing her a bouquet of bright flowers. Welcome home.

Sebring is a regional organizer for Southerners On New Ground (SONG) in Durham, N.C. She and about two dozen volunteers are hereto bail women out of the jail as part of the Black Mamas Bail Outa joint campaign that took place across the U.S. ahead of Mothers Day.

Oxendine was the first to emerge over the four-day action in Durham, in which SONG spent $18,900 to free nine women from the jail and convinced judges to remove the bond requirement for two more, allowing them to be released as well.

We wanted to call attention both to the importance and centrality of black women, black mothers and black caregivers to our communities, [as well as] to the particular impact mass incarceration is having on black women, Sebring says.

Her group is part of a swelling national movement to abolish the cash bail system, or at least limit the use of bail to violent casesbecause, as Sebring puts it,the bail system requires legally innocent people to pay a ransom to get out of jail while they await trial. And too many simply cannot afford to pay. Research suggests just a few days in jail pretrial can jeopardize a persons housing, employment and public assistance and raise her likelihood of pleading guilty, being convicted and reoffending.

The cash bail system takes a distinct toll on women awaiting trial. While wives, girlfriends and mothers bear the brunt of bail costs for the men in their lives, women often have little means to buy their own freedom from a system that wasnt designed with them in mind. And the effects of their incarceration radiate outward to their families and communities.

Unable to pay a $1,000 bond, Oxendine spent eight days in jail, accused of breaking into a truck. When a SONG volunteer first came to ask if she wanted to be bailed out, Oxendine thought it was too good to be true.

But they kept coming back to see me, she says.

Taking a break from speaking with SONG about what she needs now that she is out, she said she hoped to visit her sons for Mothers Day.

Across the country, women-led groups like SONG are taking the lead in efforts to reform the bail system. And women policymakers are instigating change including at the federal level. Sen. Kamala Harris (D-Calif.) has introduced legislation that would give grants to states to put alternatives to money bail into place, and require them to collect data on those measures and report back.

Heres the deal: We have gotten to the point where in courtrooms around America, someone is released before their trial based on whether they can afford to write a check or not and not necessarily based on whether they present a risk to their community, Harris, a former prosecutor, told participants at a 2017 conference on womens incarceration. That aint right. Its not fair.

Here atMs., our team is continuing to report throughthis global health crisisdoing what we can to keep you informed andup-to-date on some of the most underreported issues of thispandemic.Weask that you consider supporting our work to bring you substantive, uniquereportingwe cant do it without you. Support our independent reporting and truth-telling for as little as $5 per month.

Many state and local lawmakers agree. In the past year alone, officials in Nebraska, Illinois, Montana, Connecticut, Philadelphia, New Orleans and Atlanta have moved to limit the use of money bail for lower-level offenses, introduce risk assessment tools to try to remove bias from pretrial release decisions, and expand programs for people who are released pretrial. The District of Columbia all but eliminated cash bail except for rare, serious cases in the 1990s, and New Jersey and Alaska more recently followed suit.

Of the nearly 110,000 women in local jails, about 60 percent are awaiting trial and havent been convicted. About 80 percent are mothers, most single moms like Maranda ODonnell, whose arrest in Harris County, Texas, led to one of the most significant legal challenges to the bail system. Her story shows how an arrest can push a person teetering on stability over the edge.

ODonnell was pulled over driving to see her then 4-year-old daughter and didnt have a valid license. Unable to pay bail, she spent two days in jail.

Earlier this year, an appeals court affirmed that the countys bail system violated ODonnells and other plaintiffs rights to due process and equal protection.

Susanne Pringle, interim executive director of the Texas Fair Defense Project, a nonprofit thats part of the lawsuit, says those two days likely cost ODonnell a new waitressing job and jeopardized custody of her child.

[Bail] is not supposed to be a punishment. Its not supposed to be used as a way to detain someone pretrial but when you set bonds that high and for someone who is being arrested for something that is clearly a poverty offense, thats what it isits a detention order, Pringle says.

While men make up 86 percent of the countrys overall jail population, according to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, the number of incarcerated women has grown 14-fold in the past half century, a rate outpacing men.

As communities are increasingly focusing on reducing jail populations, the number of women continues to grow, so that suggests the reform efforts around the country arent reaching women to the same extent theyre reaching men, says Elizabeth Swavola, senior program associate with the Vera Institute of Justice Center on Sentencing and Corrections.

Like ODonnell, most women in jail arent there on violent charges.

More than three-quarters of women being held pretrial are facing property, drug and public order charges such as prostitutioncrimes often driven by poverty, mental illness and substance use. A third of women in jail have a serious mental illness, twice the percentage of men in jail, and six times the rate for women in the general population. The vast majority86 percent per one studyhave experienced sexual violence in their lifetimes.

Women in U.S. jails report high rates of trauma, mental illness, drug use and medical needs that jailsresource-strapped and designed around menare ill-equipped to handle.

Women are less likely than men to have the money to pay, even when assigned very low bonds. During a bailout SONG held in Durham for Black Mamas Day last year, the group posted bail for a woman who couldnt afford even a $150 bond.

A 2015 Prison Policy Initiative analysis found that white men had a median pre-incarceration income of more than $20,000 per year. That compares to white women, who had a median income of just under $16,000; Hispanic women, who earned about $12,000; and black women, with just over that amount.

Andrea Hudson spent 51 days in the Durham County Detention Facility in 2012, unable to post a $30,000 bail or pay about 10 percent to a bondsman.

She missed an appointment to secure an apartment with Section 8 rental assistance and lost her voucher. Her then 7-year-old son and 17-year-old daughter moved between a friends house and the home of estranged relatives. Because of the chargesincluding fraud and exploiting an elderly personshe lost jobs as a home health care worker and school custodian.

Desperate to be released, she finally agreed to plead guilty to some of the charges in exchange for the rest being dismissed. The dismissed charges were ultimately expunged, but she was jailed again for a subsequent assault she says she didnt commit, and because that charge violated previous probationary terms, bail was set at an even higher amount.

I missed my kids all over again, and once again my son went to school and came home from school and his mothers gone, she recalls.

Her daughter, Josselyn, took 12-hour shifts making light bulbs once she graduated from high school to support herself and her brother and get an apartment. Visits were difficult to arrange and painfully inadequate. They couldnt touch or console each other as they cried, and had to yell through thick glass over the other visitors.

It was hard because there was nothing I could do, says Josselyn, now 23.

In Connecticut, visits between incarcerated mothers and their families are particularly challenging. Here, all womenregardless of conviction statusare held at one facility on the coast.

Beatrice Codianni spent 15 months at the Danbury Federal Prison awaiting trial for her role in the Latin Kings gang. Her three sons struggled to afford rentlet alone gas money to make regular visits. Her youngest, 16 at the time, had to quit school to work.

Mothers Day was the hardest, she recalls.

For those who are lucky enough to get a visit, Codianni says, they beat themselves up. And they shouldnt, because theyre in jail and they dont have to be. Most of them would be home if it wasnt for the bail system.

Codianni now runs Reentry Central, a national website for professionals working in criminal justice and reentry, and serves on the advisory board of the Connecticut Bail Fund. She says women are often stuck in jail on bonds that are so low, the bail agents wont take them because the profits would be too slim.

Youre taking away a crucial piece of a childs life and for reasons that arent really that serious, like drug possession and trespassing, she says.

Hudson, who spent just under two months in the Durham jail, says it took years to put back together what was broken in that time.

She still doesnt have housing of her own. She lives with her daughter, whose name is on the lease because Hudson received an eviction judgment for not paying rent while she was detained.

But her detention revealed her purpose. Instead of becoming a parole officer, as she was studying to do when she was arrested, shes establishing a bail fund at the nonprofit Southern Coalition for Social Justice, and helps defendants and their families advocate for themselves in court.

In Hudsons experience, women tend to be embarrassed by their charges or the circumstances surrounding them. She recalled one woman she met in the Durham jail who had been arrested with her boyfriend when police found drugs in their car. The boyfriend arranged for himself to be bailed out but left her inside.

To Cara Smith, chief policy officer for Sheriff Tom Dart of Cook County, Ill., this sounds similar to what she witnesses in Chicagos jail.

What we find with male detainees is that there are lots of people that want to help them, want to raise money, want to bond them outwhether its girlfriends, wives, mothers, et cetera, she says. The women that come into our custody seemingly are without that band of support on the outside.

This is particularly true for women who experienced abuse, trafficking and drug use in relationships prior to their arrest, says Hanke Gratteau, director of the Cook County Sheriffs Justice Institute.

Under Gratteaus leadership, the Justice Institute identifies people unjustly held in the Cook County jail and advocates for their release. According to Smiths research, last year about 1,200 people served enough time pretrial at the Cook County jail that by the time they were transferred to prison, they had not only satisfied their sentences but had served an additional 321 years collectively.

Because women make up just a fraction of the jails population, not many come before the Justice Institute, but often the most compelling end up being the womens cases, Smith says.

That includes a woman now in her 40s jailed for the first time on a warrant for not completing community service in her 20s, and a pregnant woman brought in after missing court and denied bond, guaranteeing she would give birth in jail before her next court date.

In Texas, the number of women in jail is growing, even though arrest rates are declining, according to a two-part report authored by Lindsey Linder, lead attorney with the Texas Criminal Justice Coalition. She says Texas, like other states, hasnt been intentional about addressing womens incarceration because women comprise the smaller portion of the jail population.

But thats starting to change because of women involved in reform effortsfrom formerly incarcerated women telling their stories; to activists who convinced Austin officials to delay building a new womens jail and spend a year studying alternatives to pretrial incarceration; to the attorney, researcher, designer, sheriff and judges who contributed to the report.

Despite the fact that one in four women (and one in two black women) have an incarcerated family member, womens voices are too often left out of conversations about reform, says Gina Clayton, founder and executive director of the Essie Justice Group. The California-based nonprofit connects and empowers women with incarcerated loved ones to advocate for criminal justice reform. About 30 percent of Essie members have been incarcerated themselves, Clayton says.

When a member of the Essie Justice Group went to the California legislature to speak about the need for bail reform, at least one person questioned why she was speaking and not the men in her life perceived to be more directly impacted by the issue.

Our understanding that mass incarceration impacts male people of color is one that is informed by our own existing biases around what we dont see and what were willing not to see happening to women, and particularly what is happening to black and brown women, Clayton says.

Essie members have lobbied state legislators to restrict the use of money bail in California; a bill passed the state Senate but stalled in the Assembly last year.

Bail is how weve been able to create a conviction machine in this country, and I think thats why bail is a lever for us, Clayton says. Once women are convicted of a felony, their record can disqualify them for jobs, housing or benefits like food stamps.

Lisa Oxendine, bailed out by SONG in May, is caught in the conviction machine. Before she could make that trip to see her boys, she was back in jailthis time under an $11,000 bondfor violating previous probation terms. Last year, SONG freed 14 Durham women in its bailouts. Out of all the tales of homes, jobs and dignity lost to pretrial incarceration, organizer Jade Brooks remembers the story of one woman SONG wrote to asking if she wanted to be bailed out.

She was sleeping with our letter under her pillow, Brooks says. That was, for her, a symbol of freedom.

The coronavirus pandemic and the response by federal, state and local authorities is fast-moving.During this time,Ms. is keeping a focus on aspects of the crisisespecially as it impacts women and their familiesoften not reported by mainstream media.If you found this article helpful,please consider supporting our independent reporting and truth-telling for as little as $5 per month.

View original post here:

Black Mama's Bail Out and the Abolition of Cash Bail - Ms. Magazine

" We are all born ignorant" said Benjamin Franklin, "but one must work hard to remain stupid." And no one is working harder at it these days than the mandarins in Bangalore.

There is no other explanation for the sudden order on the 5th of May cancelling the trains which were supposed to take tens of thousands of migrant labour back to their home states as per the new GOI guidelines. (After a massive public outrage the order was withdrawn on May 7) But maybe I'm being too harsh because Karnataka Chief Minister B.S. Yediyurappa generally knows which side of his bread is buttered ( it is usually both sides).

It is a remarkable coincidence that the order was issued immediately after his meeting with the builder's lobby- Real Estate Development Association of India. It is self evident that, if the labour left, all construction activity would grind to a halt. Profits would plummet and that would have spin offs for the politics of Karnataka too, for it's money that makes the mare go round, after all. Other states, including Tamil Nadu, appear to be following his lead.

It goes without saying that this is hostage taking, and a clear violation of the Abolition of Bonded Labour Act 1976- the labour is being held against their will, not because of the pandemic, since the GOI (Government of India) has allowed them to be repatriated and other states are sending them back; they are being denied their basic freedom and right to choose because the state wants them to serve the purpose of corporate profits, which is the classic definition of bonded labour.

Or, as Yogendra Yadav put it correctly, modern slavery. No doubt someone, living in hope, will approach the Supreme Court but that too would be a vain hope. The court, in a petition by Harsh Mander, has already laid down a spanking new definition of right to life and dignity- two meals a day, take it or leave it. Man lives by bread alone.

But, really, we should not be surprised: Yediyurappa's order is consistent with the approach of the central government towards the 130 million migrant labour in India, all of whom are representative of rural India, part time kisans, part time labour. Which in turn accurately reflects policy making in India since 1990: focus almost exclusively on urban India and industries, Gandhi's villages and agriculture can take care of themselves.

After all, they do not generate the rupee surpluses needed to grease the wheels of neo liberal capitalism and politics; their function is to deliver the votes every five years on cunningly devised caste algorithms. All the fruits of development have gone to urban India- 400 million people there produce 84% of the country's GDP, the 800 million in Bharat only 16%.

All industries, educational institutions, hospitals, corporate offices are in the towns and cities. To be fair, Congress governments in the past did make some feeble attempts to empower our villages and extend the charter of rights to their populations: the Panchayati Raj Act, Right to Education, Right to Food, MNREGA, Mid day meals, Sarv Shiksha Abhiyan, stringent environmental regulations. Though much was found lacking in their implementation, at least the intention showed some realisation of the desperate plight of rural India. But the present government, in its pathological quest for "ease of business" and brownie points at Davos, has turned the clock back.

Enforced digitalisation has deprived millions of their dues, welfare schemes are grossly under funded, retrograde agriculture policies, failure to reform APMCs and obsession to keep food prices low have ensured that while urban India prospers the rural sector remains more or less exploited, with 12000 farmers committing suicide every year.

While India grew at 7% ( before the pandemic) agriculture grew at an average of about 2.5% only. We will spend Rs. 100,000 crores to build Smart Cities but will do nothing to upgrade our villages, other than providing a few toilets which don't work because there is no water, and LPG cylinders which 80 % of the village households cannot afford. We will increase prices of petrol and diesel, liquor and cars, charge all kinds of cesses and tolls,but keep a tight rein on agricultural produce because inflation has to be kept under check. On every front the rural sector has been short changed.

For decades now we have been exploiting the natural resources of the villages to fatten industries and cities: appropriating their rivers, chopping down their forests, acquiring their lands, displacing 50 million people since 1947. Environmental protection laws have been diluted to make these depredations easier.

The PESA ( Panchayat Extension to Scheduled Areas Act, 1996) which was meant to give self governance to, and empower, Gram Sabhas remains more or less on paper because both the central and state govts are unwilling to give village units the power to decide on projects coming up in their areas. The 130 million migrant labour is the cumulative result of these distorted policies. But at least these economic refugees had jobs in cities, SMEs, construction projects to support their families back home- till 2016.

Two monumental surgical strikes took care of that: demonetisation and GST. And now the military style implementation of the lock down. But this time India's pampered, gated- colony middle classes too made common cause with a callous government to expel the migrants from their cities.

Those who had literally built a modern India with their own hands were now treated like pariahs, like the Typhoid Mary- reviled, beaten up by police, branded as carriers of the virus, hosed down with disinfectants like cattle, confined in unhygienic camps, denied the means to travel back to their villages.

Our rulers and elite would have done well to have listened to Bob Dylan- " when you have nothing, you have nothing to lose." And those who had lost everything- except their dignity, a concept alien to a capitalist society and a callous government- started WALKING back.

In small groups first, then in droves, then in their lakhs, back to an uncertain future but a milieu that at least cared, proving wrong an increasingly disconnected Supreme Court that equates the right to life to a loaf of bread. How many have died/ will die on this journey will never be told to us.

But, with economic activity now set to resume, the tables have now turned, the tube light in the PMO has started flickering- how will industry return to normal without these wretches?

The largest number of migrant labour used to be employed in the five most industrialised states- Maharashtra, Gujarat, Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu. How will the kulaks of Punjab and the orchardists of Himachal harvest their crops without labour?

How will the real estate sector in Gurgaon, Noida and Bangalore now build its over priced buildings?

How will our cities run without maids, drivers, rehri-wallahs, security guards, delivery boys?

In short, how do you sustain this capitalist bubble without the millions you have just thrown out?

It is this late realisation which had prompted Yediyurappa, and other opportunists of his ilk, to cancel the trains and create other impediments to their return. The boot is now on the other foot however, and this boot is headed away from our cities and their industrial heartlands.

Neo liberal India is now desperate for them to come back, but continues to repeat its mistakes, focusing on the importance of capital rather than on the welfare of labour. Beginning with Uttar Pradesh, where most undesirable things originate, states have now started suspending laws made by previous governments to ensure the welfare and non-exploitation of labour.

But the migrants are not coming back, at least not for the next six months or a year, deferring indefinitely our promised tryst with a five trillion dollar economy. The battle is truly on between Bharat and India, but, for the first time since independence, the terms of trade are in favour of the former.

The latest employment figures for April released by CMIE bear this out in no uncertain terms. It states that since February 114 million have lost their jobs, one of every four Indians. Every sector has been bleeding jobs- SMEs, entrepreneurs, salaried class. But there has been an increase of 5.8 million jobs in the agricultural sector ! Even the Niti Ayog should be able to grasp the significance of this.

In a contrarian way, it appears to me that COVID and the forced exodus of the migrants may just be the best thing to have happened to our rural India, if only our policy makers would read the writing on the wall. As the well known economist Ila Patnaik recently said in an interview, businesses will now relocate and go where it is safer- our metros are no longer safe, they are hot spots of contagion and will remain so for some years; their abundant labour force is no longer available.

Our villages are safer, have the natural resources needed for industry, and 430 million workers( 2011 census) who now want jobs closer to home. It's a no-brainer for industry, even if its incomprehensible to the govt.

But there are signs that things may be changing- Punjab and Madhya Pradesh have started allowing private mandis in rural areas and small towns. If the mandis come then so will the infrastructure- food processing units, warehouses, cold storages, transport companies, Big Basket and Grofers.

If our villages finally become the units for planning and development, this would be a more environmentally sustainable and socially equitable model than the avaricious one we have today.

Then the migrants of today would finally occupy their rightful place in the scheme of things. And nobody would have to to die on railway tracks in the middle of the night in their quest for a little humanity and dignity- and a piece of bread:

The remnants of a dream on the rail tracks of Aurangabad

The family which was carrying the sorry chapati above was not the migrant, actually. As Ravish Kumar put it so expressively, we, who also came from these villages just a couple of generations ago, are the real migrants, stuck in our heartless gated colonies in decaying cities, our roots severed. The real Bharat has gone back to its home- and perhaps a better life- in the villages. One wishes them well.

View original post here:

The Worker's Torturous Walk Away From Cities Set to Become a Point of 'No Return' - The Citizen

In his famous essay The Hedgehog and the Fox, the British philosopher, Isiah Berlin, observed that unlike foxes in Greek lore which know many things, the hedgehogs know only one big thing, since they relate everything to a single central vision, one system, less or more coherent or articulate, in terms of which they understand, think and feel...

The French economist, Thomas Piketty, is clearly the hedgehog of Berlins essay, having made the study of inequality the centrality of his professional life. In so doing, he has locked onto the flavour of the decade worldwide and for good reason. It has been identified as the principal economic issue of our time.

Inequality today stands at unprecedented levels. A 2012 survey by The Economist noted that the numbers of the ultra-wealthy have soared around the globe, and that the world is witnessing a dramatic concentration of incomes over the past 30 years, on a scale that matches, or even exceeds, the first Gilded Age with the share of national income going to the richest 1 per cent of Americans, doubling since 1980, from 10 per cent to 20 per cent.

Gabriel Zucman from the University of California, according to Bloomberg Businessweek, , has computed that at least $7.6 trillion has been stashed away by the worlds richest in offshore accounts. That is the kind of transformational money more that what America has expended in all its wars since 1950 that could have created a better and fairer world. It is the injustice of such inequality and its debilitating impact on the less fortunate in society that engages Piketty. His 2013-14 best-seller Capital in the 21st Century, which focussed on inequality, now has a weightier and longer sequel in Capital and Ideology. It is dauntingly massive, comprising 17 chapters, nearly 1,100 pages and is chock-full with graphs and tables. Is this overkill? Hardly, for not even such a voluminous study is enough to cover so vast a topic.

Pikettys book is in parts a compelling read. It melds history with economics and literature, even pulling in Jane Austen and Balzac, to better illustrate the social and economic inequalities of a time and an age. Piketty classifies his book as the history and evolution of inequality regimes. Through it he seeks to establish that Inequality is neither economic nor technological; it is ideological and political, with rich and powerful minorities invariably laying the rules of coexistence for everyone to follow. He covers a lot of ground.

In the four parts the book is partitioned, Piketty gives us a detailed account of the evolution of inequality through history, from slave and colonial societies to ternary systems (pre-French Revolution social hierarchy) in which clerical and religious classes combined with nobles and warriors to constitute powerful special interest groups everywhere.

The shift from ternary to ownership societies Karl Polanyis Great Transformation saw new elites owning much of a countrys wealth and property, which even the French Revolution standing for liberty equality and fraternity, could neither abolish nor circumscribe. Pikettys contention that historically the rules of engagement in society have always been loaded against the small man is spot on. It is common knowledge that it is the hard-working grossly under-compensated masses who suffer the consequences of inequalities of wealth.

However, to Piketty this condition is not so hopeless as to necessitate a Marxian revolution. Peaceful transitions are possible as in the case of Sweden which went from being one of the most unequal regimes in Europe in the early 20th century to emerge as one of the most egalitarian later. Other European nations too achieved similar transformations, not the least aided by huge transfers of wealth from their colonies as in the case of England, France as well as Belgium, the Netherlands and Japan.

Pikettys preferred means of reducing inequality is through taxing the rich heavily. The US is a case in point. It cut its robber barons to size in early 20th century, boosted public spending on education and laid the foundations of a great state that continues to dominate the world. More recently, between 1950 and 1980, the rich were again taxed heavily yet it was also a period of high growth for America. In Capital and Ideology, Piketty attempts to recast himself as the global authority on inequality, up from being merely a western-centric one. He does not wholly succeed in this. He gives us a passable but never profound account of the depredations Western nations wrought on India, China, and other parts of the world they colonised and pillaged. Piketty comes close to, but stops short of, demanding that France and England amongst others, pay up for having devastated and traumatised whole continents.

In his book, Piketty brings out something not commonly known, that there was nothing altruistic about the abolition of slavery considering how generously western slave owners were compensated for giving up their slaves. Pikettys shocking account of how France forced Haiti to compensate it financially over decades for the freedom it achieved through reparations, right up to 1950 constitute some of the most engaging portions of Capital and Ideology.

Piketty dwells on India at length in his book, sadly superficially. His take on caste and inequality (blame it all on the British) borders on tripe. On the positive side, unlike his other western colleagues, Piketty generously acknowledges that there is much for the European Union to learn on state building from Indias integration experience.

Piketty is also clearly impressed by how India has sought to mitigate inequalities by bringing to the fore its historically disadvantaged communities through affirmative action programmes which were the biggest in scale and intent in human history. Unlike most of his Western counterparts, Indias political process impresses Piketty. His admiration for the countrys democracy especially universal adult franchise is not the least bit condescending.

While the book has been gushingly received in the West, some well-known economists have not missed its serious shortcomings. Raghuram Rajan observed in his Financial Times review that Piketty while calling for greater democratic participation actually pushes for grand elite-devised centralised schemes that suggest a tin ear to the protest movements that have roiled the world.

Most of those who would have read his last chapter Elements for a Participatory Socialism for the Twenty-First Century will agree. It is not enough for Piketty to say, Tax the rich to the bone and pare down inheritances. He needs to come up with something practical to make that work.

Paul Krugman, one of Pikettys admirers, is sadly disappointed by Capital and Ideology. Reviewing the book in The New York Times, he wryly observes: There are interesting ideas and analyses scattered through the book, but they get lost in the sheer volume of dubiously related material. In the end, Im not even sure what the books message is.

Capital and Ideology is indeed a bit of a waffle. It lacks the succinct brilliance of similar works by the likes of John Kenneth Galbraith and Amartya Sen. With the kind of data he has amassed one would have expected Piketty to have done a lot better. Disappointingly he does not.

The reviewer, a former civil servant and visiting fellow at NIAS, CEU and CCS-IISc, teaches at IISc Bengaluru.

Originally posted here:

Persistent inequality through the ages - BusinessLine

May 10, 2020 The third phase of relaxed measures brings the greatest normalization of life to date, according to Jutarnji List. Starting Monday morning, citizens can go to their favorite cafe, order coffee and leaf through the newspaper. Or go to a restaurant for lunch, and some children will return to school.

Shopping malls will reopen and inter-county transportation and domestic flights will resume. National parks will open for excursionists, and groups can increase from five to ten people.

Besides these already-announced concessions, driving schools can start working. Quarantine and self-isolation for international transport drivers will also cease.

Also, after May 11, it is possible that there will be a complete abolition of e-passes, allowing Croats to roam the country unabated.

Croatian officials decided catering businesses such as restaurants and cafes can use indoor spaces under certain conditions. Previous rules locked out businesses without terraces or limited space.

Also, working hours can go until 11 p.m., two hours more than originally planned. But the extra time will go as much towards meeting new hygiene standards as it will to serving guests. The rules sound nearly militaristic.

All tables must be empty by the time guests arrive. Utensils arrive after guests sit. Presumably, theyll already know their orders. The menus should stand out prominently at the entrance or other visible place in an appropriately plasticized cover.

Croatias Civil Protection Directorate suggests guests enter only after when a previous group leaves the premises. The physical distance between individual groups of visitors must be at least one-and-a-half meters.

Social distancing rules will limit the number of visitors and leave vast chunks of unused space. The tables should sit one-and-a-half meters apart. Larger groups of guests can sit together at tables, and the distance between them and other groups must be at least one-and-a-half meters.

Visitors can also order a meal or drink in the restaurant to-go. When ordering, the physical distance of at least one-and-a-half meters between customers waiting in line still applies.

It is also possible to serve standing guests if they keep a physical distance.

After the departure of each group of guests, the table, chairs, and other surfaces that the guests touched must be wiped with disinfectant. Snacks cannot sit in communal bowls, nor can salt, pepper, oil, vinegar, and other spices stay on the tables.

As for employees, they must adhere to all measures, hand-washing, and disinfection rules. They must notify the employer of any signs of illness or fever and not come to work.

As for schools, lower grades start on Monday, and kindergartens are opening as well. The distance between the children should be two meters. There should be up to nine children in a class and one educator or teacher, or some other configuration limited to ten people.

Here is a full list of new, loosened restrictions:

Cafes and Restaurants

Can work from 6 a.m. to 11 p.m.

Not limited to terrace-only businesses

Tables must be 1.5 meters apart

No limit to the number of people who can sit at one table

Sitting at the bar is prohibited

The waiter should disinfect his hands before serving each new table

Authorities recommend air conditioners remain off

After the departure of each group of guests, the tables should be disinfected, and the tablecloths changed

No snacks on the tables

Salt and pepper containers must not be on the table, but new, disinfected ones are brought for each group of guests

Employees must take their temperature every morning before coming to work

It is recommended that employees wear protective masks and gloves

Schools and Kindergartens

Classes start for students from 1st to 4th grade

A limit of 9 students in a class

Parents who can still keep their kids home should do so

Employees must maintain a distance of 2 meters from each other and try to do the same in relation to children

In the class and kindergarten group, the maximum number of persons can be 10 (nine students and a teacher, eight children and two educators, etc. ...)

After the formation of the group, no new children are admitted to the groups/classes for the next 14 days

As much time as possible is spent outdoors

Parents hand over their children in front of the kindergarten building and do not enter the facility

Classes for children begin at different times to meet as little as possible

Recess is also staggered to avoid overlap between classes

Children have lunch in the classroom, food is delivered to them at the classroom door and the teacher shares it

Teachers should have their temperature measured when arriving at work and keep special records

Children should not wear masks

Shopping Centers

Maximum 15 customers for every 100 square meters

The distance between customers should be strictly observed

15 customers can enter the store for every 100 square meters of net area

If it is difficult to determine the total area, the maximum number of customers allowed in the store is obtained by dividing the total area by 10

In textile shops, it is recommended to sell without trying on clothes, especially those worn over the head

If the clothing is tried on, it must be quarantined for five days before it can be put back on sale

The number of baskets in the store must be equal to the maximum number of customers allowed

Staff must wear protective masks

Customers are advised to wear a mask

Disinfectants must be placed at the entrances to the center and each store, the use of which is mandatory

Employees must measure their temperature before coming to work

Inter-county public transport

Plexiglas should be placed between the driver and the passenger or the first row of seats should be left empty

One person should sit in a row in buses, in such a way that they sit alternately on the left and right seats

In trains that have seats in rows as a bus, one person should sit in a row in such a way that they sit alternately on the left and right seats.

It is recommended that passengers wear masks

The conductor must wear a mask and gloves

The driver is recommended to wear a mask

Hygiene of the driver's cab should be maintained

Vehicles should be regularly ventilated and surfaces that are frequently touched should be disinfected

Drivers must disinfect their hands after placing their luggage in the luggage compartment

Contactless payment should be encouraged

National Parks

Mandatory distance between visitors

Adapt the park program to the new conditions (abolish panoramic rides during which it is not possible to ensure a distance, etc.)

Driving Schools

First aid courses without artificial respiration

Provide disinfectant in the car

It is recommended that both the candidate and the instructor wear masks

There should be a 15-minute break between classes and the driver's and front passenger's areas should be disinfected

Hold theoretical classes with strict adherence to the physical distance of 1.5 meters between students

Keep records of the presence of participants

See the article here:

Croatia's Phase 3 Starts Monday, Balancing Health, Economics and Coffee - Total Croatia News

Today, Piketty proposes, we live in a neo-proprietarian inequality regime, which takes the logic of the inviolable right to property and extends it to wealth and income (which was, by the way, Carnegies argument in 1889). The extraordinarily high incomes of tech executives, corporate lawyers, and unicorn entrepreneurs, their defenders argue, are theirs to keep, because they are earned in a dispassionate meritocratic system, largely emanating from our countrys higher-education institutions. Of course, we know now the dispassionate meritocracy is a lie; its a system that allows people with a head start to stay ahead. The ruling class is defined and legitimized by educational credentials; our last five presidents have all had Ivy League degrees, a fact that shows only a weak correlation between education and competence. The meritocracy, in fact, is quite similar to the purportedly dispassionate system of contracts and rational government that legitimized the concentrated wealth in France and the United States after their revolutions.

Pikettys solution is that we move beyond private ownership to some blend of private, public, and temporary ownership. (Total abolition of private property, la Soviet Union, for Piketty, was an ill-advised failure.) Since many societal goods are often already owned publicly, like electrical grids, highways, or parks, and some are owned communally, like worker cooperatives, it is easy to imagine this realm expanding. Temporary ownership is different, and would require permanently high levels of taxation (perhaps written into a countrys constitution) to ensure that any number of temporarily private goods return to the community on a regular basis. Homes, wealth, real estate, patents, and financial assets like stocks and bonds would all benefit the community if they were owned only temporarily.

A steep wealth tax could also pay for a onetime capital grant that everyone would receive in their twenties, at 60 percent of the national average wealth (something like $120,000 if the average wealth is $200,000). Piketty also believes that a singular faith in the power of central government to bring big business under control, whether through nationalization or regulation, is mistaken. The reliance on state ownership of major industrieslike that in France and Britain up to the 1980sleads to a neglect of taxes on private enterprise. Taxes, Piketty stresses, are some of the only tools that can perpetually protect the society against developing unconscionable inequalities of wealth and incomes.

The weakest parts ofCapital and Ideologyrail against identity politics, which Piketty believes have stymied the project of egalitarian reform, by splintering the larger coalition that is required to make egalitarian change. Yet with both sides of the political divide practicing some form of identity politicsoften along the lines of race, gender, or religionits not convincing to dismiss this trend in politics out of hand. In the United States, history has proved how difficult it is to redistribute wealth and property when confronted by sexism, xenophobia, and extreme racism, along with the legacies of slavery and Jim Crow. Which should we resolve first? Redistribution through reparations for slavery? Land grants to Native Americans whose lands were stolen? Or what about unpaid wages for care work? Piketty has little to say about the order in which we approach these problems, crucial for a country struggling to come to terms with its past.

Visit link:

Thomas Pikettys Plan to Fix the Economy - The New Republic

Nursing and midwifery students must be recognised for the significant contribution they have made and the disruption they have faced during the coronavirus pandemic, according to unions who are calling for the abolition of tuition fees and reimbursement of those already paid.

The move comes as the Nursing and Midwifery Council said over 25,000 students from across the UK had chosen to join NHS frontline staff via extended clinical placements, in the response to the Covid 19 crisis.

We ask that you acknowledge their selfless service

Union letter

The Royal College of Nursing, the Royal College of Midwives, Unison and National Union of Students (NUS) have today written to health and social care secretary Matt Hancock urging him to acknowledge students selfless service, not only with words, but in a tangible and quantifiable way.

Their aim is to see the government wipe tuition fees for healthcare students in England and reimburse those already paid.

Student nurses in England formerly did not have to pay tuition fees because these were covered by the government through the bursary. Butthis offer was cut by the government for all nursing students starting after 1 August 2017.

While the government has recently pledged to introduce new yearly maintenance grants to cover living costs, starting from September 2020, students will still be paying around 9,000 a year for tuition.

Related news on student funding

The unions said the coronavirus pandemic meant now was the time for minister to recognise the contribution of students by dropping the debt, abolishing tuition fees and building a workforce fit for the present, and the future.

Under emergency plans put in place by the NMC and its partners, all student nurses apart from first years are able to take up paid clinical placements to support frontline colleagues during the pandemic.

Third-year students in the last six months of their course are also able to extend their final three-month placement into a six-month placement and still get the chance to qualify at the end of it. The NMC may also introduce a temporary register for students, but this has not happened yet.

The letter (see PDFattached below)from the unions called on the health secretary to reimburse tuition fees or forgive current debt for all current nursing, midwifery, and allied healthcare students and abolish student-funded tuition fees those starting in 2020-21 and beyond.

In addition, the unions have asked the government to introduce universal living maintenance grants that reflect actual student need.

Now is the time for the government to recognise the ongoing contribution of student nurses

Dame Donna Kinnair

The unions also reminded Mr Hancock ofthe concerns they raised when the policy of tuition fees was first suggested and how those concerns, including a shortfall in nurses and financial hardship for students, have been borne out.

But they said the current crisis and its impact on students who had either joined the workforce, or were continuing with their education, placed the unfairness of tuition fees for students in England into even starker focus.

Thousands of healthcare students have joined the NHS and social care frontline since this pandemic began, eager to support their qualified colleagues, it said.

The letter added: We ask that you acknowledge their selfless service, not only with words, but in a tangible and quantifiable way.

Dame Donna Kinnair, chief executive and general secretary of the RCN, highlighted how there had been a 31% reduction in university applications for nursing courses since 2016 when the bursary was axed.

Dame Donna Kinnair

She said this was a major reason why the nursing workforce in England entered the Covid-19 crisis with almost 40,000 unfilled posts and with one arm effectively tied behind its back.

Many student nurses have elected to become an invaluable part of the workforce at a time when the country needs them most, but they are still paying tuition fees, and this is simply not right, added Dame Donna.

Now is the time for the government to recognise the ongoing contribution of student nurses by dropping the debt, abolishing tuition fees and building a workforce fit for the present, and the future.

These views were echoed by Gill Walton, chief executive and general secretary of the RCM, who said: Our students make an invaluable contribution to the health of our country, both during and after their training.

Never has that been more apparent than during this current crisis, not only with those formally entering the workforce but many others volunteering in health and care settings.

The policy of tuition fees for those in studying for healthcare degrees is, and always has been, a flawed one, as it does not take into account the considerable time spent on clinical placements, said Ms Walton. Now is the time to put right this wrong.

The government can show the depth of its gratitude by writing off their student fees

Dave Prentis

In addition, general secretary of Unison, Dave Prentis, praised healthcare students who had stepped up to the plat to help the NHS through the current crisis.

Having racked up thousands of pounds of debt while learning the skills we so desperately need, many are now working alongside their more senior colleagues, said Mr Prentis.

The government can show the depth of its gratitude by writing off their student fees. When the pandemic has passed, it must scrap them for all healthcare students in future and introduce proper maintenance support.

Meanwhile, NUS vice-president welfare Eva Crossan Jory said the contribution of healthcare students had for too long not been adequately recognised.

The very cohorts of healthcare students currently experiencing unparalleled disruption to their education and volunteering to work on the frontline against coronavirus are those who were also forced by the government to pay tuition fees and study without an NHS bursary, she said.

We urge the government to commit to a radical new financial settlement for these students and all those to come.

A government spokesperson said: "We are grateful to all students who choose to support out NHS during this extremely difficult time and will be ensuring all students who do opt-in are rewarded fairly for their hard work."

See more here:

Calls to recognise student nursing response to Covid-19 by wiping fees - Nursing Times