Category Archives: Abolition Of Work

Speaking to survivors of Japans 2011 triple disaster, when the country was hit by a devastating mega-earthquake, a tsunami and an incident at a nuclear plant, Pope Francis called for the abolition of nuclear facilities, echoing the voice of the local bishops.

Speaking about the accident at the Daiichi Nuclear Power Station in Fukushima and its aftermath, Francis said that until local communities can again enjoy safe and stable lives, the problem wont be resolved.

This involves, as my brother bishops in Japan have emphasized, concern about the continuing use of nuclear power, he said. For this reason, they have called for the abolition of nuclear power plants.

Francis was speaking to those who, on March 11, 2011, survived the Great East Japan Earthquake that shook the countrys eastern coastal region. As a direct result, a tsunami sent a wave of water 12 stories high rushing toward the shore.

He began his remarks, delivered in the Bellesalle Hanzomon public hall, by asking for a moment of silent prayer for the victims of the disaster. Though he couldnt greet each of the close to 300 people present, he did exchange words with several with the help of his interpreter, an Argentine Jesuit priest who had been his student.

The position of the bishops, which Francis seemed to endorse, is stronger than the one expressed in his 2015 encyclicalLaudato Si. In that text, the pope did not directly call for the abolition of nuclear power, but he does mention atomic energy among various sources of environmental damage.

As of March 1, 2018, the death toll from the triple disaster was 15,895 across 12 regions of Japan. Sixty-two victims remain unidentified, and 2,539 people remain unaccounted for. Tens of thousands are still living in temporary housing.

Entire towns and villages were laid to waste. The widespread damage has been labeled as the worst natural disaster in the countrys recorded history, and the nations worst crisis since the end of World War II.

The slowness of the reconstruction process also took its toll on the health of the people: In the first four years after the disaster, more than 3,200 people, many elderly, died of illnesses exacerbated by their living conditions, while others committed suicide.

In 2016 the Japanese bishops published a comprehensive technical, ethical, and theological call for the abolition of nuclear power generation in a message calledAbolition of Nuclear Power: An Appeal from the Catholic Church in Japan, which was built on a message with the same tone six months after the disaster.

In their message the bishops note that inLaudato SiFrancis points out that technological development, including nuclear technology, gives humankind vast power, but that power is limited to those with the knowledge and economic resources to use it. Their power is increasing continuously, and there is no guarantee that they will use it wisely.

There are various opinions about the rights or wrongs of atomic power generation, the Japanese bishops wrote, yet theres no denying the harm that it has caused. Judgments regarding atomic energy, they wrote, must be made from the point of view of protecting the dignity of all human life, present and future.

Prior to the 2011 disaster, there were 54 nuclear reactors in Japan supplying approximately 30 percent of the countrys electric power. In July 2013, the government set higher standards to withstand earthquakes and tsunamis which will lead to the decommissioning of 21 reactors, including the one in Fukushima.

However, as of June of this year, nine reactors at five plants have met the new standards and resumed operations.

Our age is tempted to make technological progress the measure of human progress, Francis said immediately after talking about nuclear power plants, arguing that a society that is shaped by this technocratic paradigm often has a reductionist view of human and social life.

So it is important at times like this, to pause and reflect upon who we are and, perhaps more critically, who we want to be, he said. What kind of world, what kind of legacy will we leave to those who will come after us?

As he has done many times before, Francis called for a vision shaped by the experience of elders and the enthusiasm of young people that fosters reverence to the gift of life and solidarity with our brothers and sisters in the one multiethnic and multicultural human family.

Franciss words came during the first meeting of the last full day of his Nov. 20-26 Asia tour that took him first to Thailand and now Japan. On Sunday, he visited Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the worlds only two cities to have been decimated by nuclear weapons. From there, he delivered a strong message, calling the use and possession of these weapons immoral.

There were some 300 people in attendance, and Francis was visibly emotional when he entered the room to the tune of one of Argentinas most famous songs, Caminito, a tango originally sung by Carlos Gardel. At the end of the meeting, he greeted several of the young children who were part of the orchestra and choir.

Franciss remarks came as a response to stories shared by three of the disasters survivors. One asked the pontiff how the world can respond to the major issues humanity faces today, which he said cannot be treated separately: Wars, refugees, food, economic disparities and environmental challenges.

It is a serious mistake to think that nowadays these issues can be dealt with in isolation, without viewing them as part of a much larger network, he said. Important decisions will have to be made about the use of natural resources, and future energy sources in particular.

In his opinion, the most important thing is to progress in building a culture capable of combating indifference.

One of our greatest ills has to do with a culture of indifference, Francis said. We need to work together to foster awareness that if one member of our family suffers, we all suffer.

As the pope noted in his remarks, many of those who survived the triple disaster are still suffering the aftershocks, from contaminated land and forests to the long-term effects of radiation. Though forgotten by many, he said, they still need assistance.

The path to a full recovery may still be long, but it can always be undertaken if it counts on the spirit of people capable of mobilizing in order to help one another, Francis said. If we do nothing, the result will be zero. But whenever you take one step, you move one step forward.

Later Monday, Francis was scheduled to meet with Japans youth, and he will also visit the Japanese emperor and government officials, including Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, whose government wants to increase investments in nuclear energy.

Answering questions posed to him by young people in Tokyos Cathedral of Holy Mary later Monday, Francis spoke against the epidemic of bullying; combating spiritual poverty; and the innate goodness and worth of young people.

Regarding bullying, Francis said that for fighting it, school norms and the intervention of adults is not enough. Instead, young people must come together to address this tragedy by saying no.

Child suicide is on the rise in Japan, with 250 children in elementary, middle and high schools committing suicide in 2017, the highest number since 1986. Experts believe school pressures and bullying are the likely triggers.

Though the pope didnt use the word suicide on Monday, he did on Saturday, when headdressed the local bishops, saying that many in the Japanese society are marked by loneliness, despair and isolation, with increasing suicide rates, bullying and various kinds of neediness that create new forms of alienation and spiritual disorientation.

Here, suicide is the largest cause of death among young people, and the Japanese suicide rate is the sixth highest in the world.

Fear is always the enemy of goodness, because it is the enemy of love and peace, he told the youth on Monday. The great religions teach tolerance, harmony and mercy, not fear, division and conflict. Jesus constantly told his followers not to be afraid. Why? Because if we love God and our brothers and sisters, this love casts out fear.

Looking at Jesus life, he said, is a cause of consolation for many, as he himself knew what it was to be despised and rejected - even to the point of being crucified.

He knew too what it was to be a stranger, a migrant, someone who was different, he said. In a sense, Jesus was the ultimate outsider, an outsider who was full of life to give.

Regarding spiritual poverty, he said quoting Mother Teresa of Kolkata, that loneliness and the feeling of being unloved is the most terrible form of poverty.

This is ever truer in a world where society is frenetic and focused on being competitive and productive, he said, leaving little space for God, being highly developed on the outside, but with an impoverished interior life.

Everything bores them; they no longer dream, laugh or play, he said. They have no sense of wonder or surprise. They are like zombies; their hearts have stopped beating because of their inability to celebrate life with others. How many people throughout our world are materially rich, but live as slaves to unparalleled loneliness!

Combating spiritual poverty, Francis told young people, demands a change of priorities, and it means recognizing that the most important things are not those that can be bought, but with the people we share our lives.

Much like breathing is necessary to stay alive physically, he said, there is also a need to breathe spiritually, with an inward movement that is prayer, and an outward one, which is reaching out to others in acts of love and service.

Lastly, Francis said that young people can be helped to discover their worth not by looking at the mirror or by taking a selfie, as its impossible to take a self-picture of the soul.

To be happy, we need to ask others to help us, to have the photo taken by someone else, he said. We need to go out of ourselves towards others, especially those most in need. In a special way, I ask you to extend the hand of friendship to those who come here, often after great sufferings, seeking refuge in your country.

The Catholic Church in Japan has played a key role helping foreign-born Catholics deal with a wide range of challenges, from normalizing their status as migrants and refugees to denouncing slave-like working conditions many foreigners are subjected to in Japan.

Some estimate that of the countrys small Catholic community- which represents 0.3 percent of a total population of 126 million- half are foreigners.

Excerpt from:

Echoing Japanese bishops, Pope backs abolition of nuclear power - Angelus News

Brutal attacks on Labours tax and spending plans are part of the furniture of any election. No surprise at the incoming fire over Labours promise to compensate women born in the 1950s for the state pension entitlements stolen from them. The equalisation of men and womens pension age was accelerated by the Tories, cheating them of firm entitlements.

The Waspi (Women against state pension inequality) group has campaigned for years, dressed as suffragettes with demos all over the country, but they complain that their case has hardly been heard. Now Labour has come up with the goods: there has been plenty of reporting of the cost but none of the jubilation these women feel. Labour long ago promised to compensate them, but has only now spelled it out in a stonking great commitment of nearly 12bn a year for five years.

So heres the crude question: how many of these more than three million older women will be swung towards Labour?

In Pendle, Lancashire, Sally Lambert was one of the Waspi organisers who met shadow chancellor John McDonnell on Wednesday. All the women in our group were so pleased to have someone listening at last, she said. They support equalisation, but they needed longer to save and this government theft is the only equality they have experienced. Her story is a good example of how working women born in the 1950s have been impoverished.

She didnt know until two years before she was 60 that, once shed reached that age, she would have to work another six years. By then, she had cut back work after cancer treatment left her frail. She was grieving the loss of a son and was caring for her mother. Like most, she was not a high earner. She left school at 15 and worked as a machinist making slippers: There was no equal pay back then, we had a lot less than the men. Later, she made Christmas decorations for shops before doing community work for a disability group.

It is head-in-the-hands-and-weep useless at explaining, selling and persuading those beyond their believers.

This is what happened when women like her found they had no pension and couldnt work more. She had some savings, so didnt qualify for any benefits. After shed exhausted those savings, she spent a very small inheritance when her mother died. Im so lucky I have a husband who has a 10,000 a year pension, so we got by, she says. But others in her group with no partner had to sell their homes to survive. Women who were divorced never had lost years of pension counted in the settlement.

Does she think these 1950s women, the ones Labour calls the Made in Dagenham women, will swing to Labour? My friend just joined the Labour party this week! She feels it will persuade many, as will the partys policies on the NHS and free social care. Those born between 1950 and 1955 will get 100 a week for each week they lost, not as a lump sum: younger ones get less, on a taper.

The plan is attacked on the grounds that Theresa May herself would be due 22,000. But well-off women will be paying higher tax rates and as Lambert says: Its an entitlement we paid for that was stolen, not a benefit. Labour could have means tested this, but cutting out relatively few high earners is unlikely to save much. As for fiscal rashness, the Resolution Foundation says that both Labour and the Conservatives are set to break their budgetary rules, so the mud may not stick.

Take the other assault on Labours tax plans: Jeremy Corbyn made a poor fist of defending the abolition of the absurd marriage allowance. Its a tax relief that was widely ridiculed at the time, brought in to please the Daily Mails clamour for incentivising marriage: Iain Duncan Smiths Centre for Social Justice claimed lack of a marriage licence was a prime cause of poverty. David Cameron brought it in just before the 2015 election. It came as a 1,060 transferable tax allowance, so it only goes to couples where one partner doesnt work (or is earning below the tax threshold). They get nothing, as this 250 is added to the higher earners pay slip.

Here are the absurdities: it goes to civil partners too, displeasing the extreme Christian lobby. If keeping people married for the sake of the children was the aim, only a quarter of recipients had children and only one in six families with children qualify. A third are pensioners, but maybe they need to be kept moral too. Only 31% of couples qualified. It was an administrative burden as, suddenly, PAYE couples had to fill out tax forms to get less than 5 a week.

Heres the real affront: a philanderer on his third wife gets the allowance, but his abandoned wives get nothing. Nor do abused partners escaping their abusers. Ah, Cameron said, its not about the money, its the message. Labour, from day one, always said they it abolish this nonsense.

So does it break its promise not to raise income tax? Barely. In its total spending, those few couples with children losing this allowance will gain over and over, especially in more free childcare. Older couples who lose the allowance will gain massively more from free social care as well as a free 150 TV licence.

The trouble is not with Labours policies, with its manifesto nor most of its tax and spending plans. The problem is that it is head-in-the-hands-and-weep useless at explaining, selling and persuading those beyond the believers: thats meant to be the politicians art. It takes steady ploughing and tilling the land of the voters to sow radical seeds and expect them to thrive: both tactics and strategy have been weak. The inevitable attacks are fiercer this year than ever, in need of better defending than most of the shadow cabinet can muster.

Polly Toynbee is a Guardian columnist

Read more from the original source:

Labours policies will benefit millions, but now it needs to sell them better - The Guardian

The Joint Action Committee of women and transgender organisations and others condemned the oppression faced by women activists agitating for their rights, and demanded implementation of assurances made to them during the Telangana movement.

A round table meeting organised by the women activists JAC here on Thursday said women have been raising their voice and protesting against the anti-people and anti-democratic policies of the Telangana government. It has failed to respond to the 52-day strike by the TSRTC workers, atrocities against women and children and farmers demand for remunerative prices for their crops. The State government has chosen to use the draconian Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act (UAPA) against such womens organisations and activists, who question the government on peoples issues, particularly womens issues, said Sandhya of Progressive Organisation for Women.

The meeting demanded that the government abolish the UAPA and withdraw cases filed against nine members of Chaitanua Mahila Sangham that was raising the issues of womens safety and livelihoods. The round table also called upon the civil society to oppose the autocratic and unilateral administration of the TRS government in the State that was created as a result of peoples efforts with a democratic spirit.

Hymavathi of AIDWA said the Chief Minister would not even give an appointment to listen to peoples issues. The government treated all demands political and womens issues as one and barely responded to any. In the absence of a womens commission, there was no avenue for victims of dowry harassment, domestic violence and sexual harassment to seek redressal for their grievances. The Ministers were equally irresponsible and would not represent to the Chief Minister the issues of their respective departments, she said.

People have watched the harassment that was meted out to 50,000 RTC workers. Several persons have been killed in accidents as temporary drivers were operating the RTC buses, she said and added that the CM should work in the interests of people.

Srujana, JAC member, said the Chief Minister did not even react when women RTC employees were lathi-charged on Tank Bund road. She demanded that UAPA cases filed against activists be withdrawn immediately.

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Women's JAC demands abolition of UAPA - The Hindu

The International Day for the Abolition of Slavery was initiated by the United Nations General Assembly on 2nd December. The Convention for the Suppression of the Traffic in Persons and the Exploitation of the Prostitution of Others was passed by the Assembly on 2nd December, 1949. Likewise, by resolution 57/195 of 18th December 2002, the Assembly notified 2004 the International Year to memorialise the struggle against Slavery and its Abolition.

This day focuses on eliminating present-day forms of slavery, such as trafficking in persons, sexual exploitation, child labour, forced marriage, and the pressurized recruitment of children for use in armed rivalry.

According to the UN, an estimated 40.3 million people are in modern slavery, including 24.9 in forced labour and 15.4 million in forced marriage. Do you know that there are 5.4 victims of modern slavery for every 1,000 people in the world? And 1 in 4 victims of modern slavery are children.

Not only this out of 24.9 million people are trapped in forced labour; 16 million people are exploited in the private sector like domestic work, construction or agriculture; 4.8 million people in forced sexual exploitation, and 4 million people in forced labour imposed by state authorities. Even, women and girls are disproportionately affected by forced labour that accounts for 99% of victims in the commercial sex industry, and 58% in other sectors.

What is the Meaning and Reasons of Human Trafficking?

How is International Day for the Abolition of Slavery celebrated?

During this day, many people take an opportunity to share their views in writings through poetry, essays, interviews, feature articles, stories and other kinds of published material. Sessions are conducted to review the history of the slave trade, its evolution, and changes that occurred in due course of time.

Modern-day slave trade and its effects on human rights are promoted by online, print and broadcast media during this celebration. Some political leaders also participate in this event by conveying their message to work together in eliminating any kind of slavery in modern society. Newsletters, leaflets, flyers, posters and other published materials about abolishing slavery and slave trade are dispensed across the universities and other public areas. It is not a public holiday.

The United Nations (UN) is dedicated to fighting against slavery and sees bonded labour, forced labour, child labour and trafficking people as modern types of slavery. According to the UN, more than 150 million children are subject to child labour, accounting for almost one in ten children around the world. These kinds of slavery are international problems and proceeds against article 4 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which states that no one should be trapped in slavery, and all the forms of slave trades should be prohibited.

Symbols for the International Day for the Abolition of Slavery

The UN emblem consists of a projection of the globe focused on the North Pole, depicting all the continents except Antarctica and four concentric circles representing various degrees of latitude. The projection is covered by images of olive tree branches which represent peace. The emblem is of blue colour, although it is printed in white colour on a blue base on the UN flag.

Important Days and Dates in December 2019

Continue reading here:

International Day for the Abolition of Slavery 2019: All you need to know - Jagran Josh

In Chicano and Mexican families, the grandfathers who came to the United States as braceros (and almost all braceros were men) are mostly gone now. These farmworkers were considered only temporary migrant laborers, yet despite being denied the right to settle in this country and raise families, thousands of them eventually did just that. Their perseverance created homes and communities throughout the Southwest. From the programs inception in 1942 to its abolition in 1964, bracero labor produced enormous wealth for the growers who employed them.

That wealth had a price. Braceros were almost all young men, recruited into a program that held them in labor camps, often fenced behind barbed wire, separate from the population around them. When their contracts ended, they were summarily shipped back to Mexico. Growers used braceros to replace local farmworkers, themselves immigrants from Mexico and the Philippines, in order to keep wages low and often to break strikes. To bring their families here, braceros had to work many seasons for a grower who might finally help them get legal status. Others left the camps and lived without legal status for years.

In 1958, economist Henry Anderson charged in a report, (for which growers got the University of California to fire him) that, "Injustice is built into the present system, and no amount of patching and tinkering will make of it a just system ... Foreign contract labor programs in general will, by their very nature, wreak harm upon the lives of the persons directly and indirectly involved, and upon the human rights our Constitution still holds to be self-evident and inalienable."

Andersons call helped lead to the abolition of the bracero program, but his warning cannot be buried safely in the past. Today, contract labor in agriculture is mushrooming again, with workers brought mostly from Mexico, but also from Central America and the Caribbean. States are beginning to pass laws to deal with its impact, and a new bill in Congress does what Anderson cautioned againstexpand the contract labor program for agricultural laborin exchange for the promise of legal immigration status for some undocumented farmworkers.

Debate over todays contract labor program unfolds in a virulently anti-immigrant atmosphere, much like that of the 1950s. Many supporters of proposals to benefit undocumented migrants believe that only major concessions can give such proposals a realistic chance of enactment. But the bracero programs history, during a similar period of deportations and nativist hysteria, may provide an idea of what the future might look like if such compromises become law.

In the Cold War era of the 1950s and early 1960s, the U.S. government mounted huge immigration raids. Farm labor activists of that era charged they were intended to produce a shortage of workers in the fields. Fay Bennett, executive secretary of the National Sharecroppers Fund, reported that in 1954, the domestic labor force had been driven out ... In a four-month period, 300,000 Mexican illegals [sic] were arrested and deported, or frightened back across the border.

All told, 1.1 million people were deported to Mexico that year, in the infamous Operation Wetback. The bracero program, begun in 1942, was already in place, organizing the recruitment of contract laborers in Mexico for U.S. farmers. As the raids drove undocumented workers back to Mexico, the government then relaxed federal requirements on housing, wages, and food for braceros.

In 1956 alone, 445,197 braceros were brought to work on U.S. farms, 153,000 just in California. They made up almost a quarter of the 2.07 million wage workers on U.S. farms that year, according to the Department of Agriculture. The availability of braceros held down farm worker earnings, says University of California, Davis agricultural economist Philip Martin. In the decade of the 1950s, median farm wages rose from 85 cents an hour to $1.20, while wages in the cities took a bigger jump, from $1.60 to $2.60.

By law, bracero wages were not supposed to undermine wages for resident workers, and growers were supposed to offer jobs to local workers before they were allowed to bring in braceros. But activists accused certain large growers of offering wages lower than domestic migrants will accept, in order to create an artificial labor shortage and justify a request for Mexican nationals, wrote H.B. Shaffer in a 1959 report. The bracero program tends to displace those [resident] workers rather than meet real labor shortages.

Bennett agreed: The alleged domestic labor shortage in the [rural] area is artificially created by pay rates too low for decent living. The activists of those years who protested included future leaders of the United Farm Workers Cesar Chavez, Dolores Huerta, and Larry Itliong, as well as leading community organizers Bert Corona and Ernesto Galarza.

Todays labor picture on U.S. farms has changed surprisingly little from that of the 1950s. Industrial agriculture in the Southwest and along the Pacific coast relies on Mexican labor, as it has for a century. About 2.4 million people presently work for wages in U.S. agriculture, a slight increase from 1956. Mexicans made up the majority of farmworkers then, and today are two-thirds of the workforce. U.S. immigration law and its enforcement have never eliminated Mexicans from the workforce, but indirectly control the conditions under which they live and work. Mexican academic Jorge Bustamante argues that a primary purpose of U.S. immigration law historically has beenand still isto regulate the price of Mexican labor in the United States.

Depending on the period, farmworkers come across the border with visas or without them. Especially since the enactment of the North American Free Trade Agreement in 1994, the economic forces displacing people in Mexico, pushing them across the border, have made migration a necessity for survival for millions of families. During times of heavy enforcement, hundreds die on the border each year. In an earlier similar period, Woody Guthrie sang, We died in your hills, we died in your deserts ... Both sides of the river, we died just the same.

The bracero program channeled that flow of people into a cheap and convenient system for growers. Today the H2-A visa program serves the same function. Although the bracero program was abolished in 1964, the H-2 visa on which it was based was never eliminated. In 1986, Congress again authorized an organized farm labor importation program and created the H-2A visa.

Growers recruiting H-2A workers, mainly from Mexico, must apply to the Department of Labor, specifying the type of work, living conditions, and wages workers will receive. The company must provide transportation and housing. Workers are given contracts for less than one year, and must leave the country when their work is done. While in the U.S., theyre tied to the grower that recruits them. If workers protest mistreatment, they can be legally fired and must leave the country.

In theory, growers must advertise for local workers first, and can only bring in guest workers if too few locals are available. Currently, every state is required to survey wages every year to establish an Adverse Effect Wage Rate (AEWR)a minimum wage for H-2A workers that theoretically wont undercut the wages of local farmworkers.

Legal-service agencies, farmworker unions, and advocates have criticized the program for years, calling it close to slavery, and charging extensive and systematic violations of all of these requirements. A host of articles have documented those violations.

Farmworker Justice, a national farmworker advocacy group, has criticized the H2-A program for creating a captive workforce that is deprived of economic bargaining power and the right to vote. The United Farm Workers has warned against Trump administration proposals to further weaken the regulations that require U.S. citizens and legal residents to be offered these jobs first This drastic move could replace local U.S. workers with foreign H-2A workers.

As was the case in the 1950s, however, U.S. immigration policy today is intended to impede the entry of undocumented migrants, and uses the resulting shortage to force growers into using the H2-A visa program. In one celebrated case, federal immigration authorities used the E-Verify system to identify 550 undocumented workers on the huge Gebbers ranch in eastern Washington. Citing the legal prohibition on employing them, authorities forced Gebbers to fire them all. The company was then required to use the H2-A program to recruit workers from Mexico, and even Jamaica, to replace those whod lost their jobs.

Many immigrant rights activists view the 2010 Gebbers action as a trial run for an enforcement tactic that today has become more common, one that proposed legislation would make mandatory on every U.S. farm. Its purpose is not to deny labor to growers. It is to return to an earlier system for managing it. In this particular, 2019 is beginning to look like 1956. At the same time as H-2A employment is rising, deportations are increasing. The Trump administration deported 256,000 people in 2018, just slightly more than the number of people brought to the U.S. under H-2A visas.

According to the National Agricultural Workers Survey, about half of the countrys 2.4 million farmworkers are undocumented. As the flow of workers across the border was reduced by immigration enforcement under President Obama, and even more under President Trump, finding labor became an increasing problem for growers.

Trumps fulminations against migrants and his drive to build a border wall create the impression that he seeks to restrict immigration across the board. But when growers appeal for workers, his response is different. At a Michigan rally in February 2018, he told supporters, For the farmers its going to get good Were going to have strong borders, but we have to have your workers come in Were going to let them in cause you need them We have to have them.

For many years, the H2-A program saw little use by growers: In 1992, fewer than 10,000 visas were issued. That number had tripled by 2005, and under Obama and now Trump it has mushroomed. Last year, growers were certified to bring in 242,762 H-2A workersa tenth of the total agricultural workforce and an increase of more than 100,000 since 2014, when the number of such workers was 139,832. Georgia brought in the most32,364, compared with its nonH2-A workforce of 48,972, according to the Department of Agriculture. Florida brought in 30,462, compared to 96,247. Californias 18,908 H2-A workers are fewer in comparison to its huge workforce of 377,593, but that was an increase of 70 percent in just two years.

During the bracero program, workers were employed directly by growers, and hired through grower associations. Today, however, the three largest employers of H2-A workers are labor contractors: the North Carolina Growers Association, which accounts for 11,609 workers; the Washington Farm Labor Association (WAFLA) with 5,163; and Fresh Harvest, with 4,237. Some employers with operations in Mexico, like Fresh Harvest and Driscolls (the worlds largest berry company), offer H2-A visas to workers they first employ in fields south of the border. Other large H2-A employers include Washington states Zirkle Fruit Company, which alone brought in 4,169 pickers.

Also unlike the bracero era, when recruitment was jointly managed by the U.S. and Mexican governments, recruitment today is privatized. No one knows for sure who all the recruiters are, how they recruit people in Mexico, or their arrangements with U.S. growers. The largest recruiter may be a company called CSI, formerly Manpower of the Americas, which claimed to have recruited 30,000 Mexican workers in 2017 and is closely tied to WAFLA. In the 1990s, Manpower of the Americas maintained a legal blacklist of workers who would be denied employmentincluding those whod been involved in worker activism, who protested bad conditions, or who just worked too slowly. Today, the CSI website warns, CSI shares candidate [worker] records with companies to select whomever they see fit.

Republicans have introduced a number of bills in recent years to make the H2-A program more grower-friendly. But the most far-reaching bill dealing with H2-A workers was introduced in Congress at the end of October by Zoe Lofgren, a Democrat from Silicon Valley, and Dan Newhouse, a conservative Republican from Washingtons Yakima Valley. Newhouse receives more campaign contributions from agribusiness than any other industry. The Farm Workforce Modernization Act of 2019 essentially ties legalization for undocumented farmworkers and guest worker programs together. This compromise bill guarantees growers a labor supply at a price they want to pay, while at the same time providing a pathway to legal residence for many undocumented farmworkers.

Last Thursday, the House Judiciary Committee approved the bill and sent it to the House floor.

Today, about half the agricultural workforce, or 1.25 million people, are undocumented, and would be able to apply for legal immigration status (the green card) if theyve done farmwork for two years before the bills passage. Those whove lived in the U.S. more than ten years would have to wait four years before getting a green card, and those with less than ten years would have to wait eight years. Other requirements include fines, fees, and record checks.

Applicants, while they could get jobs outside of farm labor, would have to put in a minimum of 100 days a year in the fields while they wait to be accepted into the program. That might not be easy, since many farmworkers struggle to find that much work in the course of a year.

The bill makes it mandatory that growers use the E-Verify database to detect and turn away future job applicants who might not have legal status. That database has been criticized for many years for inaccuracy, and for providing a pretext for refusing to hire people based on race and nationality. The bill includes language barring such discrimination. Employers, however, also have a long history of accusing workers of lacking immigration status as a pretext for firing them because of union and workplace activism.

Since half of current workers have no legal status, an even more predictable impact of the mandatory use of E-Verify would be to make it harder for employers to find workers they can legally hire. The half of the workforce thats currently undocumented would eventually shrink as people applied for green cards, gained legal status, and found better-paying jobs elsewhere. The other half of the workforcepeople who are citizens or have legal immigration statuswill shrink as well over time, particularly because the average age of farmworkers has increased from 28 in 2000 to 38the average age today.

With the mandatory use of E-Verify, growers would have two choices. They could increase wages and encourage direct, year-round employment to make their jobs attractive to workers living in rural communities. Or they could use the H2-A program much more extensively to fill their labor needs.

The Farm Workforce Modernization Act has several provisions to make the second alternative attractive. It suspends for one year the increase in the Adverse Effect Wage Rate, which would otherwise increase with inflation, and changes how it is calculated. After ten years, the AEWR would be evaluated, and could be abolished altogether. The net effect would be to bring down H2-A wages, so theyre closer to the minimum wage. That could not only affect H2-A workers directly, but also make it more difficult for resident farmworkers to raise their own wages.

The bill would allow growers to use federal programs for farmworker housing to build barracks for guest workers. Growers historically have complained that requiring them to provide housing adds to the cost of hiring H2-A workers. Subsidizing H2-A housing encourages the program to expand, while limiting those subsidies restrains it. Washington states Department of Commerce ruled that growers could use state farmworker housing funds for barracks, and subsidizing that cost is a significant factor of the programs rapid growth there.

In California, this year the United Farm Workers sponsored AB 1783, a bill preventing growers from using state farmworker housing funds for guest worker dormitories. The California bills author, Assemblymember Roberto Rivas (a son and grandson of UFW members) argued that his bill phases out state support of the federal H-2A program. These types of programssuch as the Bracero programs, which aimed to secure a temporary agricultural workforcehave historically limited farmworker rights and been criticized for abuse. The bill passed and was signed by Governor Gavin Newsom in October.

While the bill now in Congress wouldnt invalidate the new California law, it would allow growers to tap federal funds instead, with some restrictions.

The old justification for both the bracero and H2-A programs was that growers needed workers on a temporary basis to fill transitory labor needs, and therefore didnt threaten the more permanent jobs of local workers. The Farm Workforce Modernization Act alters this assumption by setting a three-year duration for the H2-A visa, moving it more toward a visa for longer-term employment. (Currently, the H2-A visa is good for one year only. Some 60,000 H2-A visas would be available over three years for permanent employment, which dairies in particular want, and this cap could eventually be removed.)

The bill does contain some pro-worker changes in the H2-A program. Ten thousand holders of H2-A visas per year would be able to transfer from the employer that recruited them to another employer, which is presently not allowed. H2-A workers would be covered by the Migrant and Seasonal Agricultural Workers Protection Act (AWPA), offering some protection from abuses.

Employers could sponsor 40,000 farmworkers, including both undocumented and H2-A workers, for green cards each year. Many workers want residence status badly, but giving employers the power to petition also makes workers more vulnerable to them. H2-A workers could petition themselves, but would have to have worked for ten years in the program firstnot a requirement for employer petitions.

Predicting all the long-term impacts of the bill is impossible, but some effects are very likely. The pressure on people in Mexico to migrate will still push people to come, since the conditions that displace people are very deep, and changing them would require reordering the relationship between the U.S. and Mexico. As early as 1949, Ernesto Galarza, pioneering farmworker organizer, author, and scholar, argued that the Mexican migrant is forced to seek better conditions north of the border by the slow but relentless pressure of United States agricultural, financial and oil corporate interests on the entire economic and social evolution of the Mexican nation. That pressure has only grown stronger in the past 70 years.

Increasing wages substantially in U.S. fields would make jobs more attractive to resident farmworkers, and perhaps lead to a mixed workforce of both local residents and migrants. The federal bill, however, would effectively keep farmworker wages close to the minimum. That, together with the impact of E-Verify and turnover in the workforce, is a recipe for pressing employers, willingly or unwillingly, to use the H2-A system. Last years total number of certified H2-A applications was almost a quarter of a million, which could easily increase at the rate seen in the last ten years. In addition, the number of permanent jobs held by H2-A workers will increase.

An agricultural system in which half the workforce would eventually consist of H2-A workers is not unlikely. Florida, Georgia, and Washington are already approaching this situation.

Competition for housing in farmworker communities would also become more intense. Soledad, in the Salinas Valley, put a moratorium on H-2A housing last September, after the local Motel 8 was converted into living quarters for contract workers. At the same time, residents complained that they were evicted from a rental complex when owners found it preferable to rent the apartments to H-2A contractors. In Santa Maria, farmworkers say rents increased drastically as growers outbid residents to house the 800 workers they brought into the valley. According to the University of Californias Philip Martin, fair-market rent for a two-bedroom house in Salinas is $1,433, while the current state minimum wage only produces $1,920 a month.

What makes the likely expansion of the H2-A program a risk worth taking for some farmworker advocates is the prospect that more than one million people could gain legal status from the bills legalization provisions. For many farmworkers living in fear of taking their kids to school or making a trip to the grocery store, the need for legal status is overwhelming and immediate.

Farmworker Justice and the United Farm Workers, which both criticized the program when the Trump administration announced prospective rule changes, helped negotiate the Farm Workforce Modernization Act with growers and Republicans.

According to Farmworker Justice, If enacted, this legislation would alleviate that fear [of deportation] by providing farmworkers and their families with an opportunity to earn legal immigration status. With legal status and a path to citizenship, farmworkers would be better able to improve their wages and working conditions and challenge serious labor abuses.

The UFW says, The bill addresses the pervasive fear faced every day by the immigrant farm workers who perform one of the toughest jobs in America. The bill also includes significant new protections and rights for groups of farm workers previously excluded from basic rights.

Farmworker unions and advocates are divided over support, however. Rosalinda Guillen, director of Community to Community, a farmworker advocacy organization in Bellingham, Washington, argues that this bill doesnt address the needs of most farmworkers who are already here. It shifts agriculture in the wrong direction, which will lead to the eventual replacement of domestic workers and create even more of a crisis than currently exists for their families and communities.

Ramon Torres, president of Familias Unidas por la Justicia, the new independent union for farmworkers in Washington state, says his experience helping H2-A workers protest labor violations makes him doubt the bill will change their situation. Employers will continue to have the power to punish and deport these workers if they resist, he says. We know theyll do this because its what theyre doing now. Growers complain they cant find enough workers, but the reason they cant is that conditions and wages are so bad we have people living in garages and sleeping under trees. Organizing the union is the only thing that has worked to change conditions here for the better, but there is no protection for the right to organize in this bill.

Agribusiness is also divided, chiefly over whether the bill provides enough change in the H2-A program. California Farm Bureau Federation President Jamie Johansson told AgNet West, This comprehensive legislation contains key elements that address current and future workforce needs Improvements to the H-2A program would make it much more flexible and valuable to California farm employers and employees.

The senior vice president for public policy for the United Fresh Produce Association, Robert Guenther, favored the bill because it would keep workers tied to agricultural jobs. The legalization program requires them to keep working in agriculture for a period of time which actually increases depending on the number of years they have been working in agriculture, he claimed. Because there is no cap on the numbers of H2-A workers, he added, past issues with getting enough workers in during various growing seasons will be mitigated.

The American Farm Bureau Federation, however, was not satisfied. Produce Blue Book reported that Will Rodger, director of policy communications, complained that the bill did not have enough work visas for agriculture, and that E-Verify use would make too few workers available. We want the bill to correspond to reality, and theres no way the H2-A numbers will work, he said.

The most radical pro-immigrant and pro-worker proposals are being made outside of Congress, however. Two Democratic presidential candidates want changes that go far beyond the bills legalization provisions. For months, Julin Castro has advocated for an inclusive roadmap to citizenship for undocumented individuals and families who do not have a current pathway to legal status. He has many recommendations for taking down current barriers to immigration, including strengthening the family reunification program. (Restrictionists and some employers have argued for years that family reunification visas should be replaced by ones that allow people to enter the country based only on their ability to work and the need for their labor.)

Castro supports changes to strengthen labor protections for guest workers and end exploitative practices which hurt residents and guest workers, provide work authorization to spouses of participating individuals, and ensure guest workers have a fair opportunity to become residents and citizens. He would reconstitute the U.S. Immigration and Custom Enforcement (ICE) and begin examining the roots of forced displacement and migration.

Bernie Sanders released his immigration program on November 7, which calls for a path to legal residency or citizenship for most undocumented immigrants in the country today. Of all the candidates, he is the most critical of guest worker programs, saying he rejects the exploitation of workers and the use of visas for cheap, foreign labor. We must increase opportunities for qualified individuals to take steps towards permanent residency.

Sanders asserts that guest workers have been routinely cheated out of wages, held virtually captive by employers who have seized their documents, forced to live in unspeakable inhumane conditions and denied medical benefits for on-the-job injuries, in programs he calls close to slavery. He notes he voted against creating ICE, and against the Comprehensive Immigration Reform Act of 2007 because it expanded guest worker programs.

In the end, the fate of the Farm Workforce Modernization Act may be overtaken by election politics. Since the original comprehensive immigration bills were introduced under President George W. Bush, common wisdom in Washington holds that passing an immigration bill is practically impossible during a presidential campaign.

The differences between Donald Trump and his supporters, and the progressive wing of the Democratic Party are so great that the election, rather than legislation, will basically decide the direction for U.S. immigration policy. The flow of many Mexican and Central American migrants across the border will either be increasingly imprisoned in a system of cheap and disposable labor by growers, or it will be integrated into families and communities able to fight for rights, legal status, unions, and a better standard of living.

Read more:

'Close to Slavery' or Legalization? The Farmworkers' Hard Choice - The American Prospect

In his speech to launch the Labour arts manifesto at the Theatre Royal Stratford East, Jeremy Corbyn spoke about the importance to him of music, literature, theatre and poetry. He cited approvingly Maya Angelou, Joan Littlewood, Ken Loach and William Morris, among others.

All pretty much standard stuff for a leftwing crowd in the run-up to a general election. But then, right at the end, came something I havent heard before from a political leader. He wanted, he said, to build a society in which there was decency and love.

Love is not a word you often hear from party leaders. Maybe Barack Obama? But in this country? Try putting those words in the mouth of Boris Johnson, even in Latin. And then try not to laugh.

Cards on the table: I first met Jeremy 35 years ago when, as a backbench Labour MP, he took me on as a researcher into the case of the Guildford Four, one of several shocking cases of miscarriage of justice involving Irish people being jailed for crimes they did not commit. At the time, anti-Irish feeling was rife and, although the innocence of the Guildford Four was privately conceded by many, politicians preferred to steer clear of Irish issues. There were no votes in it; in fact, it was a vote loser. Jeremy was undaunted. Innocent people were in prison. For him, it was simple, a matter of principle. He didnt care that he would get criticism.

He got a lot more criticism than he bargained for. The Sunday Times, the News of the World and other rightwing media outlets ran a series of front-page scare stories about Corbyns researcher. I had had experience of miscarriages of justice myself, which Jeremy thought useful for the work I was undertaking. But the Speaker demanded the return of my Commons pass, sparking a debate in parliament about the right of MPs to have researchers of their choice. Jeremy was confident we would win.

During that time, I got to know him quite well. I never thought he was, to quote Jos Mourinho, the special one. Jeremy, unlike Boris Johnson, never wanted to be world king. He is a humble man. He doesnt brag. He deflects compliments by directing the praise to others. He is polite and considerate. When Labour activists booed BBC political editor Laura Kuenssberg at a recent event, Jeremy asked them to stop. We dont do that, he said. In contrast, when Channel 4 refused to have Michael Gove stand in for Boris Johnson at a leaders debate, the Tories briefed that the channels remit would have to be examined. Jeremy was more, to quote Jrgen Klopp, the ordinary one.

Always interested in other people, he would ask questions of those he met. He was warm, throwing an arm around you to cheer you up or celebrate some minor achievement. He was a little chaotic, always running from meeting to meeting. He read widely. He was interested in the developing world. He had a young family (he and his children are very close). And in all that time I never once heard Jeremy say a harsh thing about anyone, even about those with whom he disagreed politically.

And in all that time I never once heard Jeremy say a harsh thing about anyone

His detractors portray him during those years as a head-in-the-clouds idealist. But all you have to do is look on YouTube at his interventions on behalf of the homeless and poor. They are prescient and moving.

Among Jeremys critics is Tony Blair, but just after Blair became leader he sang Jeremys praises to me and asked me to reach out to him. Weve tried, Blair went on, but he wont meet us and all we want to do is explain what were trying to do. I duly passed on the message. No need for a meeting, Jeremy said, I know exactly what theyre trying to do.

The Jeremy I knew then could get things wrong. He confidently predicted that MPs would vote with him when it came to the contentious issue of my Commons pass. (Its a matter of principle, Ronan.) We lost by, from memory, 17 to 200 or so. But a year or so later, the Guildford Four were exonerated in a spectacular court of appeal ruling. Jeremy had called the big thing right. He can still get things wrong. Baffled that anyone would call him antisemitic, he initially batted away the criticism without fully understanding the hurt many Jews felt.

Johnson wants to make the election all about Brexit, deploying Get Brexit done as a get-out-of-jail-free card when pressed on the appalling state of the NHS, homelessness or austerity. Get Brexit done is nothing more than the tiniest tweak to Theresa Mays Brexit means Brexit, and equally meaningless. Labours Brexit policy has been criticised as unclear and complicated. Really? One, go back to Brussels and renegotiate. Two, put the renegotiated deal to the people in a referendum along with a Remain option. Three, implement whatever the people decide. How is that complicated?

Brexit should not be allowed to suck the oxygen out of the campaign. If you are a student, or the parent of a student, the abolition of tuition fees will make a dramatic difference to your lives. If you are a private tenant, you will have security and a fair rent. If you are a woman who has had your pension robbed, you will have that money returned. There will be funds for schools and the NHS. There will be free, high-speed broadband and transformative climate policy initiatives.

The Jeremy Corbyn I met 35 years ago was all about solidarity. He was the ordinary one who has grown as a leader despite everything that has been thrown at him. He is asking us to join in building a society full of decency and love. Those two words alone do it for me.

Ronan Bennett is a novelist and screenwriter

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The Corbyn I know is a rare thing warm, decent and interested in justice - The Guardian

LONDON In a British election dominated by Brexit, young voters who had no say in the country's decision to leave the European Union could hold the key to victory. That is, if they can be bothered to vote.

It has long been a truth in British politics that young people vote in lower numbers than older ones. In the last election in 2017, just over half of under-35s voted, compared to more than 70% of those over 60.

But that may be changing. According to official figures, 3.85 million people registered to vote between the day the election was called on Oct. 29 and Tuesday's registration deadline two-thirds of them under 35. The number of new registrations is almost a third higher than in 2017.

Amy Heley of Vote for your Future, a group working to increase youth participation, says the figure is "really encouraging, and shows that politics has been so high profile recently that it is encouraging more young people to vote."

That doesn't mean, however, that young voters like what they see. Many appear unimpressed with the choice between Prime Minister Boris Johnson's Conservatives, the main opposition Labour Party under Jeremy Corbyn and a handful of smaller parties.

"I think they're all unlikeable," said Callum Nelson, a 21-year-old law student attending a question session with local candidates at his London college. "I'm tempted to exercise my right to spoil my ballot."

About 46 million people are eligible to vote in the Dec. 12 election to fill all 650 seats in the House of Commons, including hundreds of thousands who were too young take part in the U.K.'s 2016 Brexit referendum. Britain's voting age is 18, although Labour and other parties, including the centrist Liberal Democrats and environmentalist Greens, want it lowered to 16.

The current election campaign is a product of that 2016 vote, in which Britons decided by 52%-48% to leave the European Union after more than four decades of membership.

More than three years on, the country remains an EU member. Johnson pushed for the December election, which is taking place more than two years early, in hopes of winning a majority and breaking Britain's political impasse over Brexit. He says that if the Conservatives win a majority, he will get Parliament to ratify his Brexit divorce deal and take the U.K. out of the EU by the current Jan. 31 deadline.

Labour says it will negotiate a new Brexit deal, then give voters a choice between leaving on those terms and remaining in the bloc. It also has a radical domestic agenda, promising to nationalize key industries and utilities, hike the minimum wage and give free internet access to all.

While most opinion polls give Johnson's Conservatives a substantial lead overall, the surge in new young voters is good news for Labour, which is seeking to defy the odds and win a general election for the first time since 2005.

Young voters are more likely than their older compatriots to oppose Brexit, which will end Britons' right to work and live in 27 other European nations and will have a major though as yet unknown economic impact.

Matt Walsh, a senior lecturer in journalism at the University of Cardiff, said young voters also strongly back abolition of tuition fees and stronger action against climate change both policies "at the center of the offer that the Labour Party is putting forward to young people."

Labour's strategy "is to try and grab those missing voters, get them registered and get them to vote and support Labour policies," he said.

Labour is spending more than its main rival on social media ads, churning out a stream of memes and messages on Facebook and Instagram. It is also outspending the Conservatives on Snapchat, whose users tend to be younger than those on the other networks. Twitter has banned all political advertising.

Labour also pushed to get young people to register to vote before the Nov. 26 deadline, spreading the message through tweets from celebrity supporters, including grime artist Stormzy. Corbyn posted a link to the government's voter registration website 26 times on Twitter and 31 times on Facebook in the month before the deadline. Johnson, in contrast, didn't post the link or the word "register" at all on Twitter, and just once on Facebook.

While some analysts are forecasting an electoral "youthquake," others are cautious. This is a rare winter election, and turnout could suffer if Dec. 12 is a wet, cold day. It's also difficult to know how much the voters' decision will be motivated by Brexit and how much by domestic issues.

"At this point, I'm kind of sick of Brexit," said Susie Chilver, a first-year politics student at the University of Bristol, in southwest England. "So, the things that are swaying it for me are things like social housing, and things like health care, more about social issues than foreign policy."

Konstantinos Matakos, senior lecturer in the department of political economy at King's College London, said there is an assumption that young voters are "leaning more Labour." But he says their geographical spread and whether they show up on polling day will ultimately determine their impact on the outcome.

"It's not a straightforward assumption to say that this surge in the registration rates will undoubtedly benefit Labour in terms of gaining electoral seats," he said.

Some young voters agree that Labour shouldn't take their support for granted.

"People think that students will definitely vote for Labour," said Molly Jones, a 19-year-old student at London's Westminster Kingsway College. "But a lot of them who I've spoken to, it's not like that. They will vote for the Liberal Democrats, or the Greens, or even the Conservatives.

"All the parties are just a mess at the moment, and all the leaders are terrible," she said. "It makes it really hard to vote for someone you just hold your nose and vote."

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Surge in new voters sparks talk of UK election 'youthquake' - Minneapolis Star Tribune

John Rawls, surely the most relevant philosopher of justice in the 20th Century, was aware of this problemand notoriously asked if the family should be abolished, with no clear answers.

Most Democrats try hard to avoid the word Socialism. But, the fact that a serious contender for the 2020 presidential race, such as Bernie Sanders, feels no qualms whatsoever with using that word, is indicative that, as Marx wrote of Europe in 1848, perhaps now the spectre of communism is coming to haunt the United States. Some might be quick to assert that Socialism and Communism are different things, but this is just playing with words. Socialism is just a lighter form of Communism, and, ultimately, both have two basic goals: to limit (or abolish) private property, and to reduce (or eliminate) class distinctions. If anything, Socialism is just the milk served before the meat, or as Lenin himself clearly stated it, the goal of Socialism is Communism.

Socialism has always been a Big Bad Wolf in the American ethos. And, very much as in Aesops fable about the boy who cried Wolf!, anti-Communists have long engaged in fear-mongering tactics. One common trope in these tactics is to put forward the idea that Communists are out to destroy your family. It, therefore, comes as no surprise that ultra-conservative Paul Kengor would write something like this: [My work] details the far lefts quest to redefine, and in some cases outright abolish, the traditional family and marriage from the 1800s to today. It notes that gay marriage is serving as a Trojan horse for the far left to secure the takedown of marriage it has long wanted. It is hard to take people like Kengor seriously, but, even cooler heads, such as the eminent Jordan Peterson, every once in a while brag about Cultural Marxism and its alleged intention to abolish the family.

So, should we worry? Will people like Bernie Sanders take your kids away and dissolve your marriage? Does universal healthcare pave the way for abhorrent sexual promiscuity and the neglect of children? Needless to say, the whole idea of Cultural Marxism does sound like a conspiracy theory. But, at least in the case of arguments about the impending abolition of the family, there might be some truth behind it.

As early as 1848, Marx and Engels had to address this fear-mongering in The Communist Manifesto: But you Communists would introduce community of women, screams the bourgeoisie in chorus. The bourgeois sees his wife a mere instrument of production. He hears that the instruments of production are to be exploited in common, and, naturally, can come to no other conclusion that the lot of being common to all will likewise fall to the women. Marx and Engels were eager to assure their readers that Communism will leave the family alone. The bourgeois fear that the family will be abolished is only a projection of their own obsession with property. They think of women and children as property, and, therefore, they erroneously think that Communists will collectivize them as well. Marx and Engels point is that, once we think of women and children as free agents (and not as mere merchandise), these irrational fears go away.

But, the bourgeois fear did not come out of the blue. Marx and Engels were not the first Communists in History. Long before them, there had already been many attempts to collectivize property. And, in some of those attempts, women and children were also collectivized, i.e., the family was to be abolished.

Consider Plato. Describing the guardian class of his utopian society in The Republic, he envisioned that, these women shall all be commonto all the men, and that none shall cohabit with any privately; and that the children shall be common, and that no parent shall know its own offspring nor any child its parent. His rationale for such a seemingly bizarre proposal was quite simple: [A] city, then, is best ordered in which the greatest number use the expression mine and not mine of the same things in the same way. In marriage, the use of mine is quite frequent. The marriage vow in Game of Thrones encapsulates it quite well: I am yours and you are mine, from this day till the end of my days. If, as Plato hoped, everyone is to use mine and not mine in the same wayand for the same thingsthen ultimately, this also applies to spouses and children.

For more than twenty centuries, nobody took Platos idea seriously. Aristotle famously criticized the idea on the grounds that, whatever belongs to everyone, actually belongs to no oneand is, ultimately, neglected. But, the 19th Century changed that. Utopian thinking came back with a vengeance, and, once again, the prospect of wife-sharing and communal raising of children reappeared. Charles Fourier advocated free love in his proposed phalansteries: there would be no monogamous pair bonding but, rather, everyone would be free (and perhaps even encouraged) to copulate with any other sexual partner. All the adults of the phalansteries would be parents to all the children, and, consequently, children would grow up without the concept of private property.

Unlike Plato, Fourier was more listened to, and some community organizers did put his theories into effect. Perhaps the most notorious of all was the Oneida community, founded in New York in 1848 (the same year the Communist Manifesto was published). Under the leadership of John Humphrey Noyes, this community made a strange appeal to Christianity and urged the complete abolition of private property. As Noyes would have it, the grand distinction between the Christian and the unbeliever, between heaven and the word, is, that in one reigns the We-spirit, and in the other the I-spirit. And, thus, in order to truly have this We-spirit, complex marriage was necessary. This was an arrangement in which sexual partners would not form pair bondsbut would actually be free to copulate with many other people, and children would be raised communally. In other words, promiscuity facilitated collectivism.

So, it is not hard to see why devoted spouses and parents would shiver upon hearing Communists in 1848 talk about the seizure of property. But, then again, there was a great deal of hypocrisy going on, and Marx and Engels were smart enough to point it out in the Communist Manifesto: nothing is more ridiculous than the virtuous indignation of our bourgeois at the community of women which, they pretend, is to be openly and officially established by the Communists. The Communists have no need to introduce community of women; it has existed almost from time immemorial. Our bourgeois, not content with having wives and daughters of their proletarians at their disposal, not to speak of common prostitutes, take the greatest pleasure in seducing each others wives. Bourgeois marriage is, in reality, a system of wives in common. Mind you, Marx himself had an illegitimate child with the family maid, but he did have a point in arguing that the inequalities of Capitalism allow the bourgeois to sexually exploit lower-class women at their will.

But, if Marx and Engels wanted to calm their readers nerves regarding the abolition of the family and the community of women, they did a clumsy job in another famous passage of the Communist Manifesto: Bourgeois marriage is, in reality, a system of wives in common and thus, at the most, what the Communists might possibly be reproached with is that they desire to introduce, in substitution for a hypocritically concealed, an openly legalised community of women. So, inadvertently, Marx and Engels finally take off the sheeps clothing and reveal themselves as the big bad wolves. They point out the sexual hypocrisy of bourgeois marriage, but, by doing so, they admit that Communists do want the community of women and that, ultimately, abolition of the family is a Communist goal.

Perhaps because of his own secret sexual escapade with the maid, after the Communist Manifesto,Marx was not overly concerned with sexual or family issues in his writings. But, being a voracious reader, he did keep a keen interest in what anthropologists had to say about sexual behavior in primitive societies. So, after his death, Engels picked up Marxs notes on Lewis Henry Morgans work and, in 1884, published The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State. Along with many other anthropologists of his time, Morgan believed that monogamy to be a recent invention in the human species. Originally, human beings were polyamorous and knew no restrictions in sexual encounters. They formed what in Victorian times was called a promiscuous horde. Naturally, men would not be able to identify their offspring, and, thus, children would be raised communally. But then, agriculture changed all that. Men would now have surplus property and would want to pass their property along to their children as inheritance. They thus restricted sexual relationships, and monogamy was born.

This theory was very appealing to Engels because it confirmed one of Marxs pet theories: material conditions determine institutions. So, according to this view, monogamy was born because there were material changes in the production of food. As opposed to the Utopian Communists that Marx and Engels so vehemently criticized, Engels was not particularly nostalgic about a Golden Age before the advent of capitalism. Engels was no Rousseauian eager to run naked in the forest. But, he did consider monogamy an unnatural and oppressive institution and preserved the hope of going back to the type of family organization that prevailed before the introduction of private property. He did not advocate a promiscuous horde, but he did hope for a society of unconstrained sexual intercourse and with it a more tolerant public opinion in regard to a maidens honour and a womans shamein other words: free love. Likewise, with the transfer of the means of production into common ownership, the single family ceases to be the economic unit of society. Private housekeeping is transformed into a social industry. The care and education of the children becomes a public affair. So, in addition to free love, Engels advocated for the communal raising of children.

Marx and Engels did not live long enough to see their ideas put into practice. But, the moment finally came in 1917, when Lenin and the Bolsheviks took power in Russia. They collectivized major chunks of property and followed many of the guidelines of the Communist Manifesto; but when it came to the abolition of the family, they had second thoughts. In the first years of the revolution, there was great excitement about sexual liberation, to the point that, as in the words attributed to Soviet leader Alexandra Kollontai, sex would be as natural as drinking a glass of water, which implied that in the same manner that you would not deny a glass of water to a thirsty person, you should not refuse intercourse to someone who requests it.

However, Lenin himself was not impressed with this promiscuous Soviet Woodstock (as one clever blogger calls it), and, by the 1920s, thousands of fatherless and neglected infants were becoming a problem. By the time of Stalin, many aspects of Czarist morality would return (only this time under a thin red veil), and the conventional bourgeois family was once again reinstated, all but in name. Ever since, very much as Marx, Communists like to believe they have bigger fish to fry, so, at least for now, no one waving the Hammer and Sickle flag thinks much about the abolition of the family.

But, the seeds of the idea remain there. There are always hippies who think that Lennons Imagine would also include, Imagine theres no family. Indeed, some join sex communes and become fathers and mothers to all the children of the commune. Most hippies eventually become yuppies, so ultimately, they all revert back to being Mr. and Ms. Jones, with their three beautiful children, all clean and tidy. But, the idea of the commune has been taken more seriously in other contexts. Although they have consistently been losing numbers over the last few decades, Israeli kibbutzim are something to reckon with. Being under the influence of conventional Jewish morality, they never went as far as to propose free love or a community of wives la Plato, but the kibbutzim did put into practice the communal raising of children, to the point that parents would no longer bond exclusively with them. Rather, parents would be required to bond with all children of the commune on an equal basis.

Although no politician (at least in the United States, anyway) will ever dare open a conversation about it, proposals to abolish the family will probably not disappear completely becauseif you think about itit isnt necessarily an absurd idea.

First, lets admit that Morgan and Engels were dead wrong about what humanitys sexual behavior was like prior to the advent of agriculture. Morgan reached his conclusion about non-monogamy on the basis of kinship terms; he was intrigued by the fact that in some tribes (such as the Iroquois), all males of the same generation are called father, and all females are called mother. He concluded that this reflected an earlier age in which a group of men freely mated with a group of women, and, thus, men were not able to distinguish their offspring; so they were all fathers to the children of the community.

While reasonable, Morgans conclusion was too hasty. We know now that the human species has been mostly monogamous, at least socially. This is because jealousy is enshrined in human nature, for good evolutionary reasons. If you are not jealous about your wife flirting with another guy, you run the risk of being cuckolded and providing resources for offspring that do not carry your genes. Eventually, you, being non-jealous, die without passing your genes. Clearly, jealousy paid off evolutionarily, and it is an adaptation deeply hardwired into our brains. Nevertheless, women will, as a whole, be less jealous than men because they have parental certainty (they can always identify their offspring), whereas men do not. That is why it is not difficult to find polygynous societies (in which one man is allowed to have many wives), but it is extremely hard to find polyandrous societies (in which one woman is allowed to have many husbands).

But, the fact that the monogamous family seems the most natural form of organization for our species does not imply that it must continue. This would be to commit the naturalistic fallacy. Lots of bad things are natural, but they can still be changed. So, Communists may have been wrong about what sex and the raising of children was like in the early days of humanity, but they are not necessarily wrong about what the human family should be like.

In fact, Communists who propose the abolition of the family are quite logical and consistent with their ideas. If your goal is to eliminate private property and bring forth a classless society (as Marx himself envisioned), then you do have to hope for the abolition of the family. Communism and the family are inevitably at odds. The family atomizes the individual, thus disconnecting him from society at large. The family is the ultimate bastion of the private sphere, and, as long as there is a private sphere, collectivization will be resisted. This was Platos main concern, and one can begin to understand why that in his collectivist paradise, the family has no place.

Furthermore, as long as families exist, there will be class distinctions. The family is at the root of all sorts of unfairness and exclusion in society. To have a family is to direct more attention to some people than to others; i.e., to exclude other people from your own affections. There are good and bad parents, good and bad spouses. The family unfairly gives head starts to some peopleand holds back others. So, even if, ultimately, all property is collectivized and distributed according to some new standard of justice, some people will unfairly receive more love than others, on the basis of what family they belong to, and this will ultimately reflect on how they finish the race. John Rawls, surely the most relevant philosopher of justice in the 20th Century, was aware of this problemand notoriously asked if the family should be abolished, with no clear answers.

So, Communists who wish to abolish the family dont just hate God (as not-so-bright conservatives would phrase it); they actually have sensible motivations and, in fact, are more consistent and analytical than those Communists who somehow want to do away with unfairness yet want to preserve the one institution that is the source of much of the unfairness in the world.

So, free college tuition (or whatever other socialist idea people like Bernie Sanders may have) will not necessarily end in some bureaucrat taking your children away and urging you to have sex with strangers, all in name of collective interest. But, it is a matter of degree, and there are collectivists who have indeed proposed such things (from Plato to the hippies). They are only taking their premises to their logical extremes.

Hopefully, these more consistent Communists will remain marginal. It is hard to argue against the idea that the family is the source of all sorts of unfairnesses. But, this sort of unfairness is what Thomas Sowell calls cosmic injustices, and there is little we can do to fix that kind of injustice. In fact, whenever politicians try to correct these cosmic injustices, things end up becoming far worse. At most, we can question whether God exists (for, how can a cosmic administrator allow for such cosmic injustices?), but we can do little else. The abolition of the family would be an insane project because, even if it is the basis of great unfairness, the family is still a greater good. Family life offers the intimate attachment (a fundamental human need, as psychologists have long demonstrated) that the commune or the State will never provide. Ultimately, all attempts at abolishing the family have failedand will predictably continue to do so. Human beings always revert back to jealousy in sexual relations, along with individual attachment to their offspring. So, while not all natural things are good, the family is so powerfully enshrined in our nature that we cannot dispose of it, and, fortunately, the Socialist political candidates of today seem to be aware of this.

Dr. Gabriel Andrade teaches ethics and behavioral science at Ajman University, United Arab Emirates. He has previously contributed to Areo Magazine and DePauw Universitys The Prindle Post.

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What Share of Socialists Want to Abolish Families? - Merion West

Australias greenhouse gas emissions have flatlined due to the effects of the drought, which has caused a large drop in carbon dioxide from the agriculture sector.

The governments quarterly greenhouse data for the year to June 2019, published on Friday, shows Australias emissions fell by 0.1% on the previous year equivalent to 0.4m tonnes of carbon dioxide.

Previous government reports showed emissions had risen year-on-year since 2015. The latest report uses newly adjusted numbers for some sectors and instead suggests emissions have increased in some years, slightly dropped in others, but mostly been flat since the abolition of the carbon price scheme in 2014.

The small drop is the result of declining emissions from the agriculture and electricity sectors, which fell by 5.9% and 1.2% respectively. Emissions from transport decreased by 0.5%. But these decreases have been almost entirely offset by large increases from other parts of the economy.

Emissions from stationary energy, including manufacturing, construction and commercial sectors, rose by 3.6% and fugitive emissions are up by 4.4%. Both increases are largely due to the growth in the liquified natural gas (LNG) industry.

The sharp drop in emissions from agriculture shows the effect of widespread drought in NSW and Queensland and the impact of the Queensland floods in February. Both have led to significant drops in the amount of cattle on properties.

Tim Baxter, a senior climate solutions researcher at the Climate Council, said there were two stories beneath the data.

Farmers are suffering. Thats part of the drop, he said. The other part of the drop is renewables deployment as a result of a whole bunch of projects coming online for the end of the renewable energy target.

The drought is not something to celebrate, nor is the renewables sector at the moment which is facing a fairly big slump in investment.

Baxter said the growth in the LNG sector was almost enough on its own to offset the fall in agricultural emissions and the good work of the renewables sector.

This is a blip in our emissions that isnt long for this world [due to] plans we have for gas in this country. It will go back up, he said.

The emissions reduction minister, Angus Taylor, said the data emissions from electricity had fallen for the third consecutive year. He said emissions from producing Australias exports had increased as a share of total emissions from 30.1% to 37.5% over the past five years, largely due to the growth of the LNG industry.

Labors climate spokesman, Mark Butler, said the accounts showed that, on a seasonally adjusted and weather normalised basis, emissions continued to rise.

Adam Bandt, the Greens climate spokesman, said drought was not an acceptable pollution reduction strategy.

The sad irony in these figures is that this small drop in pollution is itself due to climate inaction, he said.

The decline in emissions from electricity was confirmed by the The Australia Institutes monthly national energy emissions audit, which found pollution from the national grid continues to decline due to sharp decrease in coal-fired power.

Hugh Saddler, an energy expert who compiles the report for the institute, said Australias coal fleet was ageing, and increasingly requiring sick leave for repairs. Power stations like Loy Yang A in Victoria are continually out of action, he said.

Annual generation from coal peaked in January 2009. Since then, black coal generation has fallen 9%, brown coal electricity slumped by 41% and gas-fired power risen by 3%.

The decline in coal has been almost entirely replaced by an increase in wind power, rooftop solar panels, large-scale solar farms and hydro electricity.

Richie Merzian, the Australia Institutes climate and energy program director, said with the Bureau of Meteorology warning of a hot summer it was likely the coal fleet would struggle to provide reliable generation.

The latest emissions data was released ahead of Taylors scheduled trip to United Nations climate talks in Madrid, where Australia is expected to come under pressure over a lack of policy to curb emissions. Several analyses have found Australia is not on track to meet its 2030 target of a 26-28% emissions cut below 2005 levels.

The Morrison government has also drawn criticism from other nations for planning to use what are known as carryover credits from the Kyoto Protocol, which some countries consider a loophole to avoid actual reductions. Australia is the only country proposing to use the carryover credits to help meet its Paris target.

The climate talks start on Monday and run for two weeks, with ministers mostly attending the second week. Labor has said it will deny Taylor a pair to attend an International Energy Agency conference in Paris next week, on the way to the climate summit, arguing it is inappropriate that he leave parliament while there is a live police investigation into the origins of a doctored document the minister used to attack the lord mayor of Sydney, Clover Moore.

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'Not something to celebrate': drought and flood cause drop in emissions - The Guardian

The advent of government-organized gambling, in the form of state lotteries, is one of our ages most unnoticed social transformations. Before 1964, America had no such lotteries. Today, only five states dont run their own, and most others permit interstate games such as Powerball, which jack up prizes to extravagant levels. Lottery participation has skyrocketed. Overall revenues total some $80 billion; New York is the state leader, with $10 billion in ticket sales. The spread of lotteries has played a leading role in the normalization of gambling, once considered a vice akin to drug use or prostitution and lottery sales are boosted by publicly funded advertising campaigns that prey on the weakness of gambling addicts while encouraging non-gamblers to get involved, too.

Many states use lotteries to help fill their coffers. A 2016 Rockefeller Institute of Government study found that, on average, state lotteries provide 2 percent of overall state revenues. In New York, its 2.9 percent; in South Dakota, Oregon, and Georgia, the share exceeds 5 percent.

Since reliance on gambling as a source of government revenue is bipartisan, urging lotteries outright abolition is politically unpromising. Individual lottery participation, however, is not nearly so entrenched. States have long varied the types of games they offer in order to maintain interest, and they spend more than $600 million on advertising, especially on television. As the National Council on State Legislatures puts it, States have been looking to boost awareness of games and increase opportunities to play by adding to advertising budgets and expanding lottery ticket retail locations developing a sound marketing strategy seems to be key. The poor may believe that lottery dreams can come true, but they apparently need regular reminders.

Its common for states to frame lotteries as being for a good cause for public education, say. The claim is meaningless, though: All state money is fungible. The lottery proceeds go into the states general fund; one could just as easily say that theyre used to pay down interest on debt.

Lottery advertising goes well beyond such virtue branding. States sell dreams of leisure and luxury. Illinois took out billboard ads in low-income neighborhoods advertising your ticket out: a lottery. The most common form of lottery advertisement encourages magical thinking by highlighting potentially life-changing effects of winning the lottery, writes Andrew Clott, a Chicago attorney who has served as managing editor of the Loyola University Chicago Consumer Law Journal. Typical advertisements focus on hard-working, blue-collar individuals who took a chance on buying a ticket and won big. These messages downplay or avoid discussion of the long odds. Someones gotta win, a Massachusetts ad declares.

New Yorks campaigns are more subtle. An award-winning campaign titled How Would You Spend It?, part of the lotterys Cash4Life promotion, emphasizes the virtuous activities in which a lottery winner, freed from the drudgery of work, could engage. In Have Fun for Life, close-ups show a man inside a house, building a tower for a child with couch pillows, boards, books and sheets. A soundtrack intones, Ill take very good care of you. Superimposed is the sentence Id Spend More Time with My Kids . . . Michael L., Long Island. Its the answer to the campaigns recurring question: If You Won $1,000 a Day for Life, How Would You Spend It?

No qualifying statements accompany such ads because state lotteries are exempt from Federal Trade Commission truth-in-advertising regulation. Washington cant regulate the actions of state governments. If the lottery were run purely by private industry instead of by state governments, it is likely the FTC guidelines would prohibit much of the current lottery advertising, observes Clott. Without this baseline of protection, consumers fall prey to sophisticated, deceptive marketing strategies which are backed by massive financial resources.

Lottery ads also help reinforce problem gambling, medically recognized as a behavioral addiction that afflicts, by some estimates, 10 million Americans. The National Institute of Mental Health, moreover, finds that the percentage of adult Americans who meet its criteria for pathological gambling has risen from 3.5 percent in 2000 to 4.6 percent more recently. The Harvard Review of Psychiatry notes that behavioral addictions like compulsive gambling have effects including dysfunction within the family unit, incarceration, early school dropouts, financial troubles, which are often overlooked despite tremendous implications for public health.

In a culture rife with gambling opportunities, casino advertising and Internet betting, one cant blame state lottery advertising alone for problem gambling. But the states seal of approval carries special weight: Here, the government is not offering help in solving problems as it typically does but actively promoting an activity that causes problems. State lottery advertising also has a corrosive effect on social norms. The ads promote the theme that work is not a source of purpose but an obstacle standing in the way of happiness. One is better off making a one-in-a-million bet than saving his money. These messages not only undermine the work ethic but also misrepresent how one finds fulfillment through healthy personal habits, thrift and striking a balance between work and family. Instead, millions hear that theyre chumps for taking such a path and would be wiser to play games of chance.

Its time for states to ban lottery advertising. Sure, let people play, post the winning numbers but stop selling the dream. Weaning government from our addiction to promoting lotteries wouldnt be easy. An adjustment period would be necessary as lottery revenues fell though perhaps the adjustment would not be dramatic. Massachusetts, among the first states to mount a lottery, later moved to limit advertising at one point, cutting it from $12 million to just $400,000 a year but the state has not seen lottery revenues crater. On the positive side, tax revenues might even increase as citizens, freed from such dispiriting messages, re-embrace working and saving. In any case, though, getting states out of lottery advertising is the right thing to do.

Howard Husock, a City Journal contributing editor, is the author of Who Killed Civil Society?: The Rise of Big Government and Decline of Bourgeois Norms.

This piece originally appeared in City Journal.

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We need to stop selling the lottery as the path to the good life - New York Post