Category Archives: Abolition Of Work

According to 2019 figures, on any given day, roughly 48,000 American youth are confined within detention centers, long-term facilities, adult prisons and jails, and other settings. Some of the children are 12 or younger, and many arent getting the rehabilitative help they need.

Its because of this, a family law expert at the University of Florida writes, that the juvenile justice system should be abolished and replaced with a system that supports cultural and systemic change.

In a forthcoming research paper, Nancy E. Dowd, the David H. Levin Chair in Family Law at the University of Florida Levin College of Law, argues that when a system is too far gone, reform isnt possible.

Burning down the house, she asserts, is the only response.

The current juvenile justice system is a failure for virtually all who come in contact with it,writes Dowd, who is also the Emeritus Director for the Center on Children and Families.

It does not serve the well-being of the children and youth committed to its care, reflected particularly in high rates of recidivism, subsequent involvement as adults with the criminal justice system, and negative educational and employment outcomes.

And she adds: It does not rehabilitate or correct, nor does it problem solve, and it does not increase societal well-being or safety.

Dowd begins by pointing out that, even though the incarcerated juvenile population has slowly begun to decline, the U.S. still has the highest juvenile incarceration rate in the world.

The paper observes that most children and youth in the system are not serious offenders; only one fourth of those incarcerated committed violent offenses.

Many of the adolescents have been detain for offenses relating to sex and substance use, but Dowd said this still raises the question about whether such behavior can be cured through punishment, when many ultimately mature and outgrow the anti-social behavior that got them involved with the criminal justice system in the first place.

Studies that have shown that juvenile incarceration increases the risk of recidivism later in life, and that it has contributed to adverse public and personal outcomes rather than community safety, the paper notes.

(But) rather than redirect adolescents toward positive development, the juvenile justice system prepares kids for the adult criminal justice system, Dowd writes.

Moreover, Dowd explains, the pandemic has added additional complexity, noting that incarceration doesnt help young people cope with the stresses created by the virus.

Dowd explicitly writes that there can be no discussion about abolishing the juvenile justice system without addressing the clear racial and ethnic disparities in Black youths treatment.

Even though general youth population rates have declined, the racial, ethnic and gender disproportionality of the juvenile incarcerated population has become even more pronounced, studies have shown.

This is visible every day in juvenile courts, Dowd writes. Black youth are 16 percent of the population aged ten to 17, but constitute 52 percent of juvenile violent crime index arrest rates, and 33 percent of juvenile property crime index arrest rates.

Dowd asserts that its important to remember that the Black Lives Matter movement is concerned as much with the treatment of young people in the system as adults. She cites the case of 17-year-old Trayvon Martin, whose 2012 murder contributed to the formation of the movement.

Martin was fatally shot by George Zimmerman, a neighborhood watch captain in Sanford, Fla. He had been visiting his father in the community after receiving a ten-day suspension from his high school. Zimmerman believed Martin was a suspicious character, and following an altercation between the two, Zimmerman fatally shot Martin, a high school junior, in the chest.

The trope of the dangerous Black boy/man is at the heart of the ongoing murders of Black men and women, boys and girls, as perceived threats to white supremacy, Dowd wrote.

Trayvons death is linked to the history of violence against African Americans and has been repeated this year in the Georgia case of Ahmaud Arbery, circumstances that are eerily reminiscent of the slave patrols designed to control Black bodies and the complicity of communities and authorities in the violence of lynching.

This legacy makes it even more important to do away with a system that is especially damaging to Black youth, Dowd writes.

Dowd notes that abolition requires the elimination and replacement of what exists, rather than recasting or reforming the system.

This exposes the lack of resources and support, the need to create robust supports, and that those supports must be part of a broad commitment to deal with the overarching factors of poverty and race.

To accomplish this, Dowd writes, there should be a comprehensive New Deal for Children that would include healthcare, education, parental support, adolescent services, well-being and crisis support, as well as anti-poverty support through housing and public safety.

Not only would this help the people who are currently incarcerated get back on track with their lives, but it addresses the root causes of many forms of criminality.

Put simply, the framework that would replace current incarceration would be one that supports with resources, and helps take care of what a child needs, therefore never needing a carceral system, according to Dowd.

She writes that the failures of youth justice parallel the challenges faced by adults in the modern U.S. system of punishment, and both should be addressed simultaneously.

As we approach nearly a decade since Trayvons death, that anniversary should not be met with more lives sacrificed, but with significant, sustained, systemic, widespread change at the local, state, and federal levels to achieve racial justice and equality that values the lives of Black children and youth as well and guarantees to them that their lives matter as adults, Dowd writes.

The goal of abolition is not simply to dismantle the structure and culture of harm, but also to replace harm with support.

Nancy E. Dowd is the David H. Levin Chair in Family law at the University of Florida Levin College of Law. Prof. Dowd is also the Emeritus Director for the Center on Children and Families, and teaches and researches critical theory, childrens rights, social justice, juvenile justice, family law, work/family policy, and nontraditional families.

The full paper can be accessed here.

Andrea Cipriano is a TCR staff writer.

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'Burn Down the House': An Expert Calls for Abolishing the Youth Justice System - Crime Report

SALEM, Mass. In a far corner of Howard Street Cemetery, in a little bump-out area off the side of the burial site, three gravestones memorialize three Black residents of Salem who played a role in the abolitionist movement.

Two are broken into pieces. Shards of stone are receding into the earth. A project to restore the markers is evolving into a larger effort to find and restore the final resting places for other African American families who were buried and long forgotten.

The three stones for Venus Chew, Prince Farmer (with unnamed wife Mary A. Farmer) and Samuel Payne all date to 1851 and 1852.

Rachel Meyer, a conservator whos worked in area cemeteries for years, said destroying the stones will also destroy history.

Apart from a few recently named parks, she said, no well-established streets or houses in this seaport settled in 1626 are named after members of the African American community.

The Howard Street Cemetery was established in 1801, originally called the Branch Street Cemetery, after an adjacent church, which dissolved in the mid-19th century.

There is ample evidence that the Howard Street Church served as a hub for abolitionist activities in Salem over the first half of the 19th century, but its hard to pay tribute to a site that is no longer there, local historian and blogger Donna Seger wrote at streetsofsalem.com this past spring.

I cant even come up with a photograph ... which is really frustrating as the church was the creation of Samuel McIntire, a famed woodworker with an entire historic district named after him.

The graves to be restored are in a corner of the cemetery. They occupy a square piece of land the city donated to expand the cemetery to bury African Americans and strangers, she said.

The stones in question have fallen over in time and were sinking into the ground when an area resident contacted Meyer.

It isnt like people dont know theyre there, she said. There are certainly people who know. Theyre all there together, broken and lying down in a way that grass keeps accumulating over them. Theyre being claimed by the earth.

On Wednesday, Meyer presented to the Massachusetts Archaeological Society, describing the stories represented under each gravestone and what she found when beginning the project.

When lifting portions of Chews headstone, she discovered fragments for another underneath. Some feet away, portions of another broken stone are well concealed by the grass.

Its kind of a muddled history at this point, and Im trying to piece it together, Meyer said in an interview. But the more I look, the more I find, and the more confused I get. Then I get off track because there are other stories in here that dont have anything to do with abolition.

Toward the end of the Society presentation, Meyer listed ways to help the project and ended on ground-penetrating radar, which she said would uncover some of the lost graves we have the names for but havent found yet.

Doreen Wade, president of Salem United, a group dedicated to preserving Black history and culture, said shes enthusiastically behind the project.

More than just repairing fragmented gravestones, she said, its repairing a fragmented story of Salems past.

To Wade, its clear the graves were segregated in the cemetery. Another issue is that many people were buried without any indication of their race, she said, meaning it was effectively buried with them.

In the Quaker cemetery, theres supposed to be African American headstones, she said, and were going to start looking into that as well.

For now, theres more immediate work to do. The restoration in Howard Street Cemetery begins Sept. 1, Meyer said, because the stone repairs cant wait.

As that plays out, research will endeavor toward identifying other graves.

Dustin Luca writes for The Salem News. Contact him at DLuca@salemnews.com.

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Work in historic cemetery will restore abolitionists' graves - Moultrie Observer

In the dystopian novel The Sleeper Awakes, by British author H. G. Wells, a character called Graham, a Victorian man, falls asleep. When he opens his eyes again, 200 years have passed. He sees nurseries everywhere. But so many orphans, he thinks to himself. Then he realizes that these children are not actually orphans; They are there, at the nurseries, because their mothers are working. And he remembers the old world, longingly: In our time, a woman was supposed not only to bear children, but to cherish them, to devote herself to them, to educate them all the essentials of moral and mental education a child owed its mother ... Only there was an ideal that figure of a grave, patient woman, silently and serenely mistress of a home, mother and maker of men to love her was a sort of worship ...

It is said that Hermeticism, derived from Batiniyya (Esotericism), emerged in Egypt thousands of years ago. This belief system was based on various treatises, known as Hermetica, attributed to a person called Hermes. It is believed that the Hermetica were written by members of the order of Serapis, headquartered in Alexandria. With the reprinting of these treatises in 15th century Venice, Hermeticism was revived, fueling the Age of Enlightenment.

The utopia of Hermetics is Novus Ordo Seclorum (New Order of the Ages). This is a vision of a socialist world state where property ownership, gender differences and the institution of family don't exist. Adherents of Batiniyya believe that God is hermaphroditic, both male and female. According to them, when the human was first created, it was immortal and bore traces of both genders. It became mortal when it was separated into two sexes, male and female. Consequently, in order to become immortal again, the gender difference has to disappear.

In the Gospel of Thomas, found in Egypt in 1945 and featuring an esoteric (Batini) style, and in the treatise of Clement of Alexandria, it is claimed that it was asked of Jesus when his kingdom would come. And he said: When the two will be one, and the outside as the inside, and the male with the female neither male or female.

Since there would be gender equality in this world under the rule of the Batinis, the concept of family would also be unnecessary. As such, Plato, one of the Hermetic Greek philosophers, desired the abolition of the nuclear family in his work Republic, in which he described his dream state. Thus, individuals that is, citizens would reach unity as a society. In this ideal, the children that the community needed were best obtained by men and women coming together, making women a means of reproduction, rather than falling in love with them.

The Batini project to abolish the family was founded on the most critical part of this institution, the woman. This is probably why the first person to use the term "feminism" was a socialist French philosopher Charles Fourier, who died in 1837. According to this French socialist, who wanted the nuclear family to disappear and children to be raised collectively rather than by their parents, a dictatorship of feminism and socialism would be established in the world and the dictator would reside in Istanbul.

Dialectic is explained in Kabbalah via the terms Chesed and Gevurah (Kabbalah is an esoteric discipline in Jewish mysticism, while Chesed and Gevurah are sefirots or attributes in Kabbalah). The sculptor's right hand, Chesed, carves the stone, while his left hand, Gevurah, holds the stone still. The right and left hands actually serve the same purpose while exerting power in opposite directions.

Adherents of Batiniyya are advancing towards the goal of the socialist New World Order with this method.

For example, just as the activities of radical religious people feed inter-religious dialogue; capitalism and communism, which are seen as thesis and antithesis, actually support each other for the synthesis of socialism. Therefore, both communism and capitalism have tried to pull the woman to business life by separating her from home and family.

Friedrich Engels, one of the authors of "The Communist Manifesto," states in his work "Origin of the Family": The first condition for the liberation of the wife is to bring the whole female sex back into public industry, and that this in turn demands the abolition of the monogamous family as the economic unit of society.

He continues: 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; society looks after all children alike, whether they are legitimate or not.

International Women's Day, March 8, which is celebrated all over the world today, was first started as a communist holiday by Vladimir Lenin, former Premier of the Soviet Union in 1922 with the help of German feminist Clara Zetkin. However, capitalists, did not lag far behind them in appealing to women's feelings. In fact, they do not force women to work in factories and collective farms, as in communism. Instead, they resort to sweet propaganda methods, with slogans like "Strong Women" and "We Can Do It!"

As the French philosopher Frederic Lordon said in his book Capitalisme, desir et servitude ("Capitalism, desire and servitude"), in which he criticizes capitalism, that business systems capture the employee with passionate phrases such as self-actualization and empowerment.

The Hermetics started working, following revolutions around the globe, to reach the ideal of a new life, with new women in the New World. After all, if the nationalist movement could divide multi-national empires into states, feminism could divide the family into individuals. If the kings, who were considered the fathers of the people, could be deposed and the nations under their rule could be liberated, the father of the family could also be deposed and women could be liberated.

What happened to the Ottoman Empire was an example of this. The Young Turks, a political reform movement organized in Batini lodges, put an end to the Ottoman Empire by overthrowing Sultan Abdlhamid II in 1909, and established the New Turkey under the rule of Ittihat Terakki (Union and Progress Party). However, changing people was much more difficult than changing the regime.

Ziya Gkalp, one of the ideologists of the Young Turks, wrote about this: "After we made the political revolution, we were left with a second task: to prepare the social revolution!" The women's branches of Ittihat Terakki immediately started working. Women's congresses were being organized, and feminism propaganda was rampant with the removal of the control over the press.

In the Ikinci Merutiyyet Devri (Second Constitutional Era), where slogans of "freedom" and "equality" filled the air, clothing became the main indicator of women's freedom. Wide-skirted burqas began to be replaced by the "constitutional burqa," which revealed body lines. But even that was not enough for the Young Turks; Ittihat Terakki's media outlet Yeni Mecmua and Abdullah Cevdet's Ictihad magazine declared war against the veil. They claimed that there was no veiling in Islam, that this custom acquired from the Greeks.

Halide Edip, who was described by a 1917 British report as "a Jew defending Turkish women's right to vote," was the most famous feminist of the new Turkey. She wrote novels and gave speeches to change the role of women in society. Since men were at the front during World War I, women had to enter business life.

In one of her articles, Halide Edip said about this: Turkish women not only shed their veils but also took the place of men. They worked to feed their families and occupied vacant places. Turkish women entered banks, shops, and ministries. As such, Turkish women gained such freedom that their husbands, who returned from the war, could not put an end to it.

Halide Edip, who puts forth feminist messages in all her novels, also dealt with gender equality in her novel "Yeni Turan" ("New Crescent"). Ouz, the protagonist of the novel, was told by a woman, You will make us feel like women, his response was: Women? God forbid, I invented a new policy just to remove you from the guise of women.

Today, statistics show that in countries where women's employment is increasing, divorces are also increasing. While getting married and starting a family is getting more difficult every day, extramarital (or nonmarital) affairs are encouraged from a young age. Moreover, unlike in the Old World, men and women are no longer seen as two different parts that complement, complete and need each other.

Women, because they are removed from the guise of women as per Edip's phrasing, are considered to be a part that is the same and equal to men. So, has this Hermetic New World brought happiness to women? Are women happier now? It is unfortunately very difficult to claim this. Studies show that in countries where gender equality is highest in education and income, like Denmark, Finland, Sweden and Norway, rates of rape, violence and abuse are much higher.

In the film All About Eve, Broadway star Margo says: Funny business, a woman's career the things you drop on your way up the ladder so you can move faster. You forget you'll need them again when you get back to being a woman. That's one career all females have in common, whether we like it or not: Being a woman. Sooner or later, we've got to work at it, no matter what other careers we've had or wanted. And in the last analysis, nothing is any good unless you can look up just before dinner or turn around in bed and there he is. Without that, you're not a woman.

Who knows, maybe the strong woman is not actually the one standing on her own feet, but as in the Old World the woman who raises, nurtures and educates her children herself at home, and supports her man.

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New women of the New World Order | Daily Sabah - Daily Sabah

Election strategist James Carville famously told workers on Bill Clintons 1992 presidential election campaign that when it came to what voters cared about, there was only one right answer: Its the economy, stupid.

In the same year, the UK university sector underwent a historic change: the abolition of the binary divide between universities and polytechnics. This allowed the latter to compete for research funds, greatly elevating the stakes surrounding the research assessment exercise (RAE), conceived a few years previously as a transparent way to distribute research block grants. Ever since, when it came to giving early career academics advice about what would sway the votes of appointment and promotion committee members, there was only one answer: Its the RAE, stupid.

Thirty years on, though, there are signs that things are changing and not only in US politics, where culture and identity have long (ahem) trumped economics as drivers of voter preferences.

What is now known as the research excellence framework is no longer the only show in the academic town. As a marker of institutional prestige, it vies with its recently spawned siblings the knowledge exchange and, much more visibly, the teaching excellence frameworks as well as both national and international league tables (the latest iteration of the Times Higher Education World University Rankings is out today: see our news pages for details).

The REF itself is also at something of a crossroads, as our cover feature sets out, with a major international review under way even before the results of the latest exercise have been announced. Of course, agonising over the REFs accuracy, fairness and purview is nothing new, but some observers foresee a revision even more significant than the controversial adoption of an impact measure in 2014. With funders increasingly focused on team science and a government opposed to bureaucracy and focused on innovation, might we see the abolition of the REFs already reduced focus on individuals, peer review swapped for metrics and the impact element supersized?

Perhaps. But before any decisions are made, it is worth taking a step back and asking what the REF is for in the modern era.

Its funding purpose remains, but the government has shown itself extremely reluctant to raise the quality-related (QR) budget that the REF distributes; former universities and science minister Chris Skidmore saw it as a triumph when he succeeded in extracting a minor rise a couple of years ago. With most ministers much more inclined to allocate new funding to specific, announceable projects than to put it into a general fund over which universities have full discretion, it seems highly unlikely that much of the promised doubling of the research budget if it ever materialises will find its way into the QR stream. In financial terms, then, the REF stakes are in relative decline although the bill (250 million in 2014, according to the official estimate) is not.

University managers still value the REFs capacity to semi-officially identify areas of research that it would make sense for their institution to expand or contract. But many other countries manage their universities effectively without any comparable exercise.

This brings us to the key issue of quality. Early RAEs are widely credited for boosting the UKs research performance; administrators and politicians may fear that if the REF were abolished or underplayed, progress would start to unravel. After all, many UK institutions are already struggling to hold their ground in international rankings.

But that has more to do with other countries increased investments; no one seriously doubts the quality of UK research (and rankings are informed by more than just research, after all). Moreover, the modern academic world is very different from the one in which the RAE arose, replete with academics who had walked into a rapidly expanding sector during the 1960s and 1970s, often without so much as a PhD.

Competition for jobs is now such that the work ethic required for success is almost superhuman and probably achievable only by those for whom hard graft is the habit of a lifetime. Successful candidates are not the sort to put their feet up once they are in the door particularly as tenure in the UK was abolished shortly after the first RAE.

As one academic recently noted in THE, would-be academics have not only to publish well and extensively but also to win grants, do outreach, have impact and be good departmental citizens. We might also mention achieving top student satisfaction scores. Underperformance in any of those areas can be enough for an application to be rejected.

Its everything now, stupid.

paul.jump@timeshighereducation.com

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Is the REF still useful? - Times Higher Education (THE)

Following the Black Lives Matter protests last year, the British central bank had said it would review its art collection.

The Bank of England has removed 10 oil paintings and busts of seven governors and directors who had known connections to the slave trade in the 18th and 19th centuries, it said on Friday.

Following the Black Lives Matter protests last year, the British central bank had said it would review its art collection.

The review is now complete and artworks depicting former Governors and Directors, where we have been able to establish links to the slave trade, have been removed from display, a BoE spokesperson said, adding the central bank has also hired a researcher on slavery for its museum.

We have also appointed a researcher to work in our museum to explore the banks historic links with the transatlantic slave trade in detail. This work will inform future museum displays interpreting these connections.

The portraits and busts depicted Gilbert Heathcote, the banks founding director and governor, James Bateman, Robert Bristow, Robert Clayton, William Dawsonne, William Manning and John Pearse. They had been on display within the BoEs headquarters and adjoining museum.

Announcing the review in June 2020, the BoE said it had never itself been directly involved in the slave trade, but that it was aware of some inexcusable connections involving former governors and directors, and apologised for them.

The 330-year-old Lloyds of London insurance market advertised in February for an archivist whose tasks would include researching artefacts related to the African and Caribbean history of slavery and abolition.

The City of London, where both financial institutions are located, is itself reviewing what to do about the statue of William Beckford in its ancient Guildhall home.

Beckford was twice lord mayor of London in the 18th century and had plantations in Jamaica with slaves.

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Bank of England removes paintings of governors linked to slavery - Al Jazeera English

Opponents of "critical race theory" protest June 22 outside of the Loudoun County School Board headquarters in Ashburn, Virginia. (CNS/Reuters/Evelyn Hockstein)

To hear some describe it, critical race theory is Marxism, a threat to the American way of life, reverse racism and a scheme to indoctrinate children.

The reality is less sensationalistic.

"It's a legal theory that started in the early 1970s, after the civil rights movement, that comes mostly out of graduate and law school work," said Sam Rocha, a professor of education philosophy at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, who has studied and written on the subject.

Critical race theory is primarily an academic legal framework centered on the idea that racism is systemic; that it's embedded in institutions, culture, values and laws, and not just a manifestation of personal bigotry or animus.

The theory holds that racial inequality, because of the country's history of chattel slavery, Jim Crow and other overt racist practices such as redlining, continues to be seen in many facets of American society, including lower educational attainment and home ownership for minority communities, income inequality, and disproportionate arrest and incarceration rates for Black men.

Protesters are seen near Capitol Hill May 21, 2018, in Washington to demand elected officials take immediate steps to confront systemic racism. (CNS/Tyler Orsburn)

"Critical race theory compels us to confront critically the most explosive issue in American civilization: the historical centrality and complicity of law in upholding white supremacy," the scholar Cornel West wrote in 1995 inCritical Race Theory: The Key Writings that Formed the Movement.

Rocha told NCR that critical race theory can be understood as "post-civil rights abolition."

"A lot of times I think people assume that critical race theory is a moral theory of anti-racism, but it's really not," he said. "It's a legal theory that helps itself to a broad and wide tradition, from Black Reconstruction to the founding of the NAACP all the way into the civil rights movement."

In analyzing racism through an institutional lens, critical race theory aligns with the understanding in Catholic social teaching that sin transcends the individual. For example, Pope John Paul II referred to "structures of sin" more than a dozen times in his 1987 encyclical,Sollicitudo Rei Socialis.

"On the face of it, there's nothing in the entire deposit of Catholic Social Teaching, from Leo XIII'sRerum Novarumin 1891 to Pope Francis'Fratelli Tuttiin 2020, that is antagonistic to the principles of abolitionism," said Rocha, who will be presenting on critical race theory and Catholic social teaching at the University of Dallas on Oct. 27.

Tia Noelle Pratt, director of mission engagement and strategic initiatives and a sociology professor at Villanova University, told NCR that critical race theory challenges the effects of racial inequality.

"When the law does not work in the same way for everyone, the Dignity of the Human Person is not fully realized," Pratt told NCR in an email. "This is a particular concern for the poor and vulnerable. Racial inequality makes BIPOC [Black, Indigenous, and people of color] vulnerable to all manner of harm. This is exacerbated for those who are also low-income."

Critical race theory's legal academic roots date to the 1960s and '70s in its precursor, critical legal studies, which examined how the law and legal institutions served the interests of wealthy and powerful people at the expense of the poor and marginalized. Scholars say some of its concepts originate further back to the work of earlier 20th-century civil rights activists like W.E.B. Du Bois, Fannie Lou Hamer and Pauli Murray.

In the 1970s, the late Harvard Law School professor Derrick Bell expressed frustration with what he saw as the limitations of the civil rights movement. Bell and other legal scholars such as Kimberl Crenshaw and Richard Delgado argued that civil rights legislation and court victories had not totally eradicated racial injustice, and that racial progress in many respects had stalled.

"In the decade after the civil rights movement, you had these Black scholars in law schools, studying the very laws that had justified the enslavement and oppression of their own families and ancestors," Rocha said.

The U.S. Supreme Court's 1954 decision in Brown v. Board of Education, which declared racial public school segregation to be unconstitutional, the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Emancipation Proclamation and other moments of racial progress for Black people in the country's history generated ferocious backlashes from white Americans.

"After Brown v. Board of Education, you can look at the pictures that journalists took then of protests and signs and the demographics of protesters, and those same identical protests are happening now with respect to critical race theory," Rocha said.

Concerned with what would be the backlash to the civil rights movement, Rocha said Bell and his fellow scholars created a way to read case law that was "attentive to race in a way that had never been seen before." By 1989, critical race theory had emerged as its own organized field of study when academics attended the first annual Workshop on Critical Race Theory.

In 2001, Delgado, who is recognized as one of the founders of critical race theory, and fellow legal scholar Jean Stefancic, published, "Critical Race Theory: An Introduction," where they outlined several tenets that they said most critical race theorists would accept:

Notions of race "correspond to no biological or genetic reality; rather, races are categories that society invents, manipulates, or retires when convenient," Delgado and Stefancic wrote.

Because it argues that racism is codified in laws, embedded in structures and woven into public policy, critical race theory rejects the idea that racism can be eradicated through meritocracy or "colorblindness." In critical race theory, it is not individual bigotry that causes widespread racial inequality, but rather the systemic nature of racism.

Critics would say that the theory finds racism too present and that it echoes a Marxist class struggle, zero-sum battle of oppressors and victims.

Angry parents and community members in Ashburn, Virginia, protest after the Loudoun County School Board halted its meeting because the crowd refused to quiet down June 22. Many at the meeting objected to critical race theory being part of the curriculum. It is an academic framework examining various issues as they relate to race and racism. Opponents say it discriminates against white people and rejects fundamental tenets of U.S. history. (CNS/Reuters/Evelyn Hockstein)

"I wonder if those who expound that rhetoric know what CRT is," said Pratt, who curatesthe #BlackCatholics Syllabus, a collection of resources related to Black Catholics in the United States.

In recent months,several Republican-led state legislatureshave passed laws to ban the teaching of critical race theory or similar topics in public schools. Conservativesin other statesare pressing similar bills andlobbying local school boardsto impose their own bans. Teachers nationwidehave protested against those measuresfor having a chilling effect on their classrooms.

Pratt said white Catholics should learn what critical race theory is, and what it isn't.

"CRT is taught to law students and sometimes to graduate students. It's not taught in elementary schools," she said. "Second, those who are truly committed to living out the principles of [Catholic social teaching] should want to support ways to challenge racial inequality in the law and society more broadly. That's what CRT does."

Rocha said critical race theory has shortcomings when it's used outside of its legal academic context.

"Critical race theory is designed to analyze the law, so anything that's not law or policy or really close to something like a statute, it's not really an appropriate object of investigation," he said. "So at the end of the day, critical race theory is a sophisticated tool of analysis of legal harms, but it assumes and it works on the foundations of a larger tradition of abolitionism for its moral apparatus."

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Explainer: What critical race theory is and is not - National Catholic Reporter

ST-HYACINTHE, QC Olymels management is pleased with the result of the vote by the members of the Olymel workers union in Valle-Jonction (CSN) ratifying the agreement in principle and the return-to-work protocol reached onAugust 29. The vote was held earlier today and puts an end to the strike that began onApril 28at its hog slaughterhouse and cutting plant in Valle-Jonction, in Beauce. The new six-year collective agreement will expire inMarch 2027.

Olymel has already taken steps to resume operations as soon as possible, but must first ensure that all equipment is in working order, that the plant is sanitary, and that workers are available to form teams for the day and evening shifts. The employee recall is expected to begin tonight and normal resumption of operations should therefore extend over a few days. The company believes, however, that it could, in the best scenario, resume slaughtering as early asFriday, September 3.

Under these circumstances and in the context of a rapid resumption of operations, Olymels management decided to maintain the evening shift at this plant and to renounce its abolition as previously announced in the event that the strike could have gone on longer. The 1050 employees will therefore all be called back to work.

Olymel is relieved to have been able to reach a common ground with union members at the Valle-Jonction plant. Working conditions and employee compensation will thus be improved, while maintaining the companys ability to operate in a highly competitive market. Olymels management would like to salute the work and efforts of its negotiating team who spared no effort to resolve this conflict and meet the conditions for a settlement, as well as the professionalism of the Qubec ministry of Labours conciliation teams which accompanied the parties throughout most of the negotiations. Such a long strike is still to be deplored and lessons will have to be learned. The management of Olymel, for its part, will do everything in its power to ensure that plant operations resume in a calm and constructive atmosphere. Furthermore, I would like to highlight the great resilience of the pork producers heavily affected by this conflict, said Olymel 1stVice-President, Mr.Paul Beauchamp.

BACKLOG OF HOGS READY FOR SLAUGHTER

The Valle-Jonction plant should gradually regain its weekly slaughter capacity of approximately 35,000 hogs and the company should resume winning over and serving clients accustomed to quality products from this facility. Incidentally, a significant portion of the production volume of the Valle-Jonction plant is shipped to the Japanese market. The strike called onApril 28is the main cause of the increase in waiting pigs and the resumption of activities should gradually reduce the pressure on hog producers. However, thanks to the rapid adoption by Olymel, in collaboration with its partners, Les leveurs de porcs du Qubec, of various measures such as the sale of pigs and piglets inthe United Statesand the movement of market pigs elsewhere inCanada, Olymel and its partners have to date succeeded in preventing humanitarian slaughter and its consequence, food waste.

ABOUT OLYMEL

Olymel isCanadasleader in the production, processing and distribution of pork and poultry meats. The company has made feeding the world its mission, which it pursues passionately with products of impeccable quality. It employs near 15,000 people and has production and processing facilities inQuebec,Ontario,Alberta,SaskatchewanandNew Brunswick. Olymel exports nearly a third of its total sales. Its annual sales reach$4.5billion. The company markets its products mainly under the Olymel, Lafleur, Flamingo, Pintys, Tour Eiffel and F.Mnard brands.

Excerpt from:

Olymel Announces the Resumption of Operations at its Valle-Jonction Hog Slaughterhouse and Cutting Plant in Beauce - PerishableNews

For many of us, leaded gasoline is a relic of a long-ago motoring past that never touched our driving experience. In 1996, leaded gasoline was banned in the U.S. and many other countries. However, some poorer countries have been forced to hang on to leaded gasoline for a while longer. Now that Algeria the last nation using the stuff has run out, the United Nations Environmental Programme (UNEP) announced that the extra-nasty fuel has now been universally outlawed.

Leaded gasoline was created by GM in 1921. According to CarScoops, adding tetraethyl lead to fuel was first seen as a major breakthrough in eliminating engine knock. This knocking occurs when fuel is prematurely ignited in the engines cylinder, which degrades efficiency and can be damaging to the engine.

Fuels ability to remain un-ignited longer is indicated by the octane rating you see at the fuel pump. If you are unfamiliar with this term, it is because modern fuel has eliminated knock by adding higher octane ratings (i.e., 87, 89, 93.)

As of 1975, leaded fuel was widely available in the U.S., which greatly decreased engine knock. However, heart disease, various cancers, and underdeveloped children followed where leaded fuel gasoline was used. Leaded gasolines toxic exhaust led to its abolition in 1996.

Now that Algeria has finally run dry of its leaded gasoline supply, the world can finally fully outlaw the nasty stuff.

The successful enforcement of the ban on leaded petrol is a huge milestone for global health and our environment, said UNEP Executive Director Inger Andersen.

The fact that this fuel has finally been phased out everywhere on earth is, UNEP says, the result of a 20-year-long campaign that employed a mix of science, public education, and policy work. CarScoops reports that the ban on leaded fuel saves 1.2 million lives while sparing the world $2.4 trillion in healthcare expenses and other costs. Numbers like that make the UNEPs win really hit with some force.

This quote from the EPA is a hearting word in a time where we almost only hear stories of doom and gloom on the environmental front; I think this may be the single biggest success story in the environmental field, said Michael Walsh, the former head of motor vehicle pollution control programs with the United States Environmental Protection Agency.

The eradication of leaded fuel has been a hard-fought battle. Given the varied infrastructure challenges across the globe, it took a while for certain regions to make the switch from leaded fuels to fuel with Ethanol and other chemicals to help boost octane.

According to the Environmental and Energy Study Institute (EESI), ethanol has a higher volatility than gasoline, meaning it vaporizes more quickly; it is a cleaner-burning alternative to petroleum-based octane boosters. This octane booster is also more effective and cheaper than other ways to boost fuels octane. But how does it affect our cars?

Like everything, it depends on the application. Most modern cars wont see much if any abnormal degradation from ethanol, according to Bell Performance. However, many small motors manufacturers in the marine industry do not recommend using blended fuel. It can also hurt older vintage cars engines if used for a long time. However, the short and easy answer is no; ethanol is plenty safe for most cars.

This is a great step for the population of the world and environmental health. As Walsh goes on to say, Im certainly not a Pollyanna about climate change, but at least we can say We solved (the leaded fuel) problem. Lets do something similar. It gives me hope.

This is a win for the planet and people everywhere.

RELATED: How Long Can Gasoline Last in Your Tank?

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Leaded Gasoline Is Officially Illegal Everywhere On Earth After Last Country Ran Out | MotorBiscuit - - Todayuknews

(Representational Image)  |  Photo Credit: iStock Images

New Delhi:Riding two-wheelers dressed in t-shirts of solid colours, app-based delivery personnel are the most visible testimony to the growth of food and goods delivery business in India.

While ride apps, goods delivery and food delivery apps app have surely provided employment and flexibility in work timings to a large chunk of unskilled workforce in India; there have been concerns over lack of social security raised by gig workers working for these apps.

Shaik Salauddin, National General Secretary of Indian Federation Of App Based Transport Workers (IFAT), says that commissions to app-based delivery personnel have declined from around Rs50 per delivery to Rs20 per delivery, with an equally gruesome picture for cab drivers.

But one of the biggest challenges according to him is the revised daily targets for gig workers, which he claims makes it practically impossible for riders to claim daily bonuses of Rs. 500 or above. Stating that the pinch of absence of social security is hitting even harder with reducing commissions, he is of the view that rising daily delivery targets often deny a delivery bonus to the gig workers, leave alone an opportunity or time to work with another delivery app side-by-side.

Gig workers are outside the ambit of Contract Labour (Regulation and Abolition) Act, 1970 and The Employment Compensation Act, 1923. Technically, a gig worker engaged with a company can also work with another company as none of the contract binds him/her.

Former Additional Solicitor General (ASG) of India, senior lawyer Sidharth Luthra clarifies that what gig workers enter into is traditionally called a job work contract, though it's an e-contract.

This implies that whatever norms apply to other job workers should be applicable to them, with a clarification that those working with multiple service providers will need to be specifically protected in law.

Last year, the Centre had released a code on social security for workers of the unorganised sector along with a National Social Security Board. Even various states have started forming similar boards, but gig workers claim that they haven't been included as part of possible beneficiaries, which is denying them an opportunity to access the government's social welfare schemes.

Rituparna Chakraborty, Co-founder and Executive Vice-President at Teamlease Services, clarifies that gig workers don't share an employer-employee relationship and hence they are not and should not be a part of employment labour regulations.

She feels that the social security code will provide benefits like medical coverage for gig workers in case of exigencies, through the social security fund proposed to be set up by the Union Government with contributions from platform operators.

However, the social security code or its associated benefits won't designate gig workers as employees or give them job security, as Chakraborty terms job security and a gig as two different planes taking off from two different runaways. She opines that while the regulations will take care of the long term perspective, the key now is to push the Centre to regulate and notify the rules of labour codes for on ground implementation.

Apart from lack of implementation, gig workers have been complaining about unclear laws and varying statements by apps on insurance policies for them.

Protesting exclusion from the recently launched E-Shram card for unorganized sector workers, IFAT has sought individual insurance instead of bulk insurance for all gig workers, claiming that compensation for deceased or critically injured workers is often determined by social media outrage instead of a fair and uniform policy.

Manish Sabharwal, Vice-Chairman of Teamlease Services, offers a word of caution for the world's biggest gig economy in India, where 50% of labour force is self-employed, as he terms many of the self-employed unviable entrepreneurs as self-exploiting.

He feels that the productivity of gig workers connected to tech platforms and their capacity utilization is higher, and they also learn important digital and soft skills. He cautions that it would be premature to start rebadging self-employed people as wage workers and bring down the regulatory cholesterol of our labour laws onto them.

More:

What kind of regulations are needed for gig workers? - Times Now

This weekend, Ethan Hawke accepted the Presidents Award for career achievement at the Karlovy Vary Film Festival in Czech Republic. As the award is intended to honor Hawkes entire, Oscar-nominated body of work, it was only natural that questions about his breakout role in the 1989 prep school drama Dead Poets Society would come up.

As reported by Variety, Hawke took the opportunity to talk about his experience working with co-star Robin Williams.

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I thought Robin hated me, Hawke admitted. He had a habit of making a ton of jokes on set. At 18, I found that incredibly irritating. He wouldnt stop and I wouldnt laugh at anything he did.

But Hawke also added that it was Williams who helped him get his first agent.

He called, saying, Robin Williams says you are going to do really well. There was this scene in the film when he makes me spontaneously make up a poem in front of the class. He made this joke at the end of it, saying that he found me intimidating. I thought it was a joke. As I get older, I realize there is something intimidating about young peoples earnestness, their intensity. It is intimidating to be the person they think you are. Robin was that for me, he said.

Hawke also talked about his upcoming projects, including a possible new collaboration with Boyhood and Before Sunrise director Richard Linklater centered on transcendentalists in the 19th century.

They were the first leaders of the abolition movement; they were vegetarians; they fought for womens rights. [Richard Linklater] is obsessed with how their ideas are still very radical. This could be a super cool movie and Rick is writing it right now. He is mad at me [for coming to Karlovy Vary], he thinks I should be at his house, he said.

Story continues

Regarding his prior work with Linklater, Hawke said you could look at the films as if theyre all connected. I could make a case that Boyhood is a prequel to Before Sunrise Ellar Coltrane is playing Richard Linklaters surrogate and then I start playing Richard Linklaters surrogate. Its like the Marvel universe!

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Ethan Hawke Thought Robin Williams Hated Him on Dead Poets Society Set - Yahoo Entertainment