Category Archives: Wage Slavery

How do social movements convince people to identify with and take part in political struggle beyond a particular group or narrow economic interest? In this excerpt from Abolition Geography: Essays Toward Liberation, author Ruth Wilson Gilmore looks at how movements produced innovative answers to this question by taking their efforts across the boundaries of labor and community organizing, paid and unwaged labor, and the private and public spheres. Gilmore also theorizes the organizing practices of Mothers Reclaiming Our Children (ROC), a Los Angeles-based grassroots organization started in 1992 by mothers who fought against the intensified criminalization of their children under the regime of mass incarceration.

Organizing is always constrained by recognition: How do people come to actively identify in and act through a group such that its collective end surpasses reification of characteristics (e.g., identity politics) or protection of a fixed set of interests (e.g., corporatist politics) and, instead, extends toward an evolving, purposeful social movement (e.g., class politics)?[76] This question has particular importance when it comes to the age-old puzzle of organizing unorganized US workers, especially when the fundamental criterion for identification is not limited by a worksite or occupational category. US labor history is dominated by worksite-and occupational-movement building, with group boundaries established by employers or by skills. These boundaries, of course, negatively organize and even disorganize the excluded because US worksites and occupations are historically segregated by both gender and race.[77]

In a few instances, US labor movements have broadened their practices by engaging in a class rather than corporatist approach. Whereas most such efforts resulted in failure crushed by the capitalist states coercive and ideological apparatuses some attempts along this way produced surprising results.[78] When the Communist Party attempted to organize workers in the relatively new steel district of Birmingham, Alabama during the 1930s, it ran into a sturdy wall of racism that prevented the CPUSA from forging a movement in which whites could recognize themselves and Black people as equally exploited workers rather than as properly unequal Americans. However, the organizers who traveled the urban mills and rural mines seeking out industrial laborers discovered an unanticipated audience for their arguments among predominately Black sharecroppers. The Sharecroppers Union adapted the CP analysis to their own precarious conditions, and the group grew rapidly, forming a network of cells in urban and rural locations throughout the region. One needed neither to be a sharecropper, nor employed, nor Black to participate in the union. Upwards of six thousand millworkers and miners, in addition to dispossessed farmers (busy or idle), found common cause in a social movement through their understanding of their collective equality which was, at that time, their individual interchangeability and disposability on northern Alabamas agricultural and industrial production platforms.[79] State forces eventually crushed the movement, yet the submerged remnants of the union, according to its indigenous leadership, formed the already-existing regional foundation for intra-wartime organizing and postwar anti-racist activism.[80]

In the current period, Justice for Janitors (JfJ) is an innovative labor movement in which neither worksite nor occupation has served as a sufficient organizational structure in the low-wage service industry. Learning from history, JfJs strategy is to exploit the otherwise inhibiting features of the labor market by pursuing a geographical approach to organization.[81] In the massive layoffs of the late 1970s and early 1980s, firms broke janitorial unions that African Americans and others had painstakingly built under the aegis of the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) during and after World War II.[82] Industry subcontracted maintenance and, thereby, negated labors hard-won worksite-by- worksite agreements.

The ensuing proliferation of small, easily reorganized janitorial service contractors has made actual employers moving targets and, thus, rendered traditional forms of wage bargaining impossible to carry out and enforce.[83] Further, janitors working under the new arrangements, often at less than minimum wage, are not the same people who fought for wages up to ten dollars or more per hour by 1980.[84] Thus, in addition to pressing employers for contracts, JfJs solution is to organize both the actual market for janitorial services and the potential labor market for janitors. This areal approach limits employers flexibility because it is their actual and potential clients who agree to do business only with unionized contractors. The solution also requires that labor organizing be community organizing as well, as was the case with the CPUSAs work in 1930s greater-Birmingham. To appeal to former janitors in target areas and to potential janitors wherever they may be, JfJ proposes a bottom-up strategy to develop comprehensive regional plans that include but are not reducible to setting minimal standards for wages that employed individuals (janitors or not) can expect to pull down.[85]

The divisions between home and work, private and public, on the stage of capitalist culture constitute for many the normative limits to particular kinds of conflict. When the political dimensions of breaches in those limits become apparent in crises, new possibilities for social movements unfold. As we have seen, Black working-class women politicized the material and ideological distance between their paid and unwaged labor by traversing the streets. More recently, janitors around the US have taken their clandestine exploitation public on a number of fronts, combining community-based organizing with front-line, public sphere militancy led by immigrants who gained experience as oppositional subjects of, for example, Salvadoran state terrorism.[86]

In Argentina, under the fascist military government (1977 1983) the Madres of the Plaza de Mayo defied the expectation that women should not meddle in affairs of the state which is to say the male, or public, sphere by organizing on the basis of a simple and culturally indisputable claim that mothers ought to know where their children are. The fascists nightly raids to kidnap teenage and adult children, most of whom were never seen again, effectively coerced neighbors, who had not yet been touched, to avert their eyes and keep their mouths closed. However, a cadre of mothers, who first encountered each other in the interstices of the terrorist state waiting rooms, courtrooms, and the information desks of jails and detention centers eventually took their quest into the Plaza de Mayo. There, with the eyes of the nation and eventually the world on them, they demanded both the return of their disappeared and the identification and punishment of those who had perpetrated the terror. The mothers dressed for recognition, wearing head scarves made of diapers on which each had written or embroidered the name(s) of her disappeared.[87]

The Madres fundamental position, echoing and echoed by similar movements in such places as South Africa, Palestine, and El Salvador, was and is that children are not alienable.[88] In order to make this position politically material in the face of continuous terror, the Madres permanently drew back the curtain between private and public, making maternal activism on behalf of children a daily job conducted as openly and methodically as possible. The Madres persistence, both before and after the official admission that the children had died horribly, transformed the passion of individual grief into the politics of collective opposition. Betrayed in the early years by state and church officials alike, by military, police, bureaucrats, and priests, the Madres learned to suspect institutions as well as individuals, and as their analysis became enriched by experience, they situated their disappeared in the context of political-economic crisis. Thus, when a re-democratized Argentina emerged, they did not return to hearth and home but rather expanded their political horizons. Currently [1999], their politics focus on the effects of the countrys structural adjustment program, which has widened and deepened poverty and reduced opportunities for young people.[89]

As we have seen, Mothers ROC does its work in a political-economic climate as hostile, and often as bloody, as that which formed each group we have briefly examined. The ROCs solutions to the problems constituting the daily struggle to reclaim their children draw from the structural features of radical self-help, from the strategies of organizing on every platform where conflict is enacted, and from the argument that mothers should extend their techniques as mothers beyond the veil of traditional domestic spheres. In a word, they enact the consciencization of motherhood.[90] The solutions are grounded in, but not bounded by, local conditions. Indeed, the organicism of Mothers ROC has to do precisely with its attention to the specific sites and scales of power that produce prison geographies and to the ways those sites and scales might be exploited for oppositional ends.

A small, poor, multiracial group of working-class people, mostly prisoners mothers, mobilize in the interstices of the politically abandoned, heavily policed, declining welfare state. They come forward, in the first instance, because they will not let their children go. They stay forward, in the spaces created by intensified imprisonment of their loved ones, because they encounter many mothers and others in the same locations eager to join in the reclamation project. And they push further, because from those breaches they can see, and try to occupy, positions from which to collectively challenge the individualized involuntary migration of urban surplus population into rural prisons.

Arrest is the political art of individualizing disorder.[91] Again and again, such individualization produces fragmentation rather than connection for the millions arrested in the US each year, as each person and household, dealing with each arrest, must figure out how to undo the detention which appears to be nothing more than a highly rationalized confrontation between the individual and the state. The larger disorder is then reified in the typologies of wrongdoing such as gang activity; alternatively, the larger disorder is mystified as crime, which, like unemployment, is alleged to have a natural if changing rate in a social formation.[92] ROCers gradually but decisively refuse both the individualized nature of their persons arrests and the naturalness of crime, of poverty, of the power of the state.[93] They arrive at their critique through action. Action crucially includes the difficult work of identification which entails production, not discovery, of a suture or positioning.[94] Through the socially and spatially complex processes of identification that are attentive to racial, class, and gender specificities as well as commonalities, the ROCers transform themselves and the external world.

Footnotes

76. Gramsci, Selections; Hall, Gramscis Relevance, and Cultural Identity and Diaspora, in Jonathan Rutherford (ed.), Identity: Community, Culture and Difference, London: Lawrence and Wishart, 1990; Doracie Zoleta-Nantes, personal conversation with author, 1995.

77. Dorothy Sue Cobble, Making Postindustrial Unionism Possible, in S. Friedman et al. (eds), Restoring the Promise of American Labor Law, Ithaca, NY: ILR Press, 1994, 285302, and Dishing it Out: Waitresses and Their Unions in the Twentieth Century, Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1991; Paul Johnston, Success While Others Fail: Social Movement Unionism and the Public Workplace, New York: ILR Press, 1994; Ruth Milkman, Gender at Work, Champaign-Urbana IL: University of Illinois Press, 1987; David Roediger, The Wages of Whiteness: Race and the Making of the American Working Class, New York: Verso, 1991; Howard Wial, The Emerging Organizational Structure of Unionism in Low-Wage Services, Rutgers Law Review 45 (1993): 671 738; Woods, Development Arrested.

78. Melvyn Dubofsky, We Shall Be All: A History of the IWW, Champaign-Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 1969; Phillip Foner, The IWW and the Negro Worker, Journal of Negro History (1970): 4564; Wial, The Emerging Organizational Structure of Unionism in Low-Wage Services.

79. In the United States, the word equality seems often to connote an upward leveling. In The Arcane of Reproduction, Fortunati helpfully points out that other forms of equality (e.g., slavery) have analytical weight that requires political and organizational attention.

80. C. L. R. James et al., Fighting Racism in World War Two, New York: Monad Press, 1980; Robin D. G. Kelley, Hammer and Hoe: Alabama Communists During the Great Depression, Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1990; Nell Painter, The Narrative of Hosea Hudson, Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1979.

81. Johnston, Success While Others Fail; Wial, The Emerging Organizational Structure of Unionism in Low-Wage Services.

82. See James et al., Fighting Racism.

83. The companies that now hire janitors can disappear overnight, thanks to no fixed capital or other constraints holding them in place. Therefore, labor lacks the leverage it had when, for example, janitors negotiated contracts directly with the former employers (owners of hotels, restaurants, office buildings, factories, and so forth) who are now clients.

84. In 1980 dollars.

85. Eric Parker and Joel Rodgers, The Wisconsin Regional Training Partnership, 1995 (manuscript in authors possession); Wial, The Emerging Organizational Structure of Unionism in Low-Wage Services; see also Elizabeth Faue, Community of Suffering and Struggle: Women, Men and the Labor Movement in Minneapolis, 19151945, Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1990, and Woods, Development Arrested. According to a presentation given by a JfJ organizing committee in Los Angeles in March 1993, organizing has, in some cases, stretched back to immigrant janitors towns of origin in Mexico and El Salvador. Insofar as it is common for people from a particular region to migrate to both the same area and labor-market niche as their friends and families who precede them, JfJ started to work backward along the migratory path in an attempt to incorporate the wider-than- daily labor market into the movements sphere of influence. During this same presentation, when challenged by a Sandinista cadre who asked an apparently simple question (What became of the people who used to be janitors?), JfJ acknowledged their organizing had not extended to the former workers. JfJ pledged to expand its Southern California scope of activity and reach out to former janitors in the community who are, as noted above, mostly African Americans in a project that might well revive submerged knowledges from earlier labor and anti-racist struggles.

86. Laura Pulido, The Geography of Militant Labor Organizing in Los Angeles, Paper delivered at the meetings of the Association for Economic and Social Analysis, December 7, 1996, University of Massachusetts, Amherst.

87. Martin Anderson, Dossier Secreto: Argentinas Desaparecidos and the Myth of the Dirty War. Boulder, CO: Westview, 1993; Marguerite Guzman Bouvard, Revolutionizing Motherhood: The Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo, Wilmington, DE: Scholarly Resources, Inc., 1994; Nora Amelia Femenia, Argentinas Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo: The Mourning Process from Junta to Democracy, Feminist Studies 13.1 (1987): 918; Jo Fisher, Mothers of the Disappeared, Boston: South End Press, 1989; Matilde Mellibovsky, Circle of Love Over Death: The Story of the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo, Willimantic, CT: Curbstone Press, 1997; Emma Seplveda (ed.), We, Chile: Personal Testimonies of the Chilean Arpilleristas, Falls Church, VA: Azul Editions, 1996.

88. Barbara Harlow, Barred: Women, Writing and Political Detention, Hanover: Wesleyan University Press/University Press of New England, 1992; Maria Teresa Tula, Hear My Testimony, Boston: South End Press, 1994.

89. Fisher, Mothers of the Disappeared; Calvin Sims, The Rock, Unyielding, of the Plaza de Mayo, New York Times, March 2, 1996, 4.

90. Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed, New York: Seabury, 1970.

91. Allen Feldman, Formations of Violence, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991, 109.

92. See, for examples, Peter W. Greenwood et al., Three Strikes and Youre Out; James Q. Wilson and Richard Herrnstein, Crime and Human Nature, New York: Simon and Schuster, 1985.

93. See also David Anderson, Crime and the Politics of Hysteria, New York: Times Books, 1995; Charles Derber, The Wilding of America: How Greed and Violence are Eroding our Nations Character, New York: St. Martins, 1996; Carol Stabile, Medias Crime Wave: Legitimating the Prison Industrial Complex. Paper delivered at Behind Bars: Prisons and Communities in the United States, George Mason University, 1996.

94. Hall, Cultural Identity and Diaspora; see also Peter Jackson, Changing Ourselves: A Geography of Position, in R. J. Johnston (ed.), The Challenge for Geography, Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1993, 198214.

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How Can We Organize in Ways That Challenge Boundaries and Defy Exclusion? - Truthout

Farmworkers near Fresno, Calif., pick paper trays of dried raisins off the ground and heap them onto a trailer in the final step of raisin harvest on Sept. 24, 2013. Gosia Wozniacka/AP hide caption

Farmworkers near Fresno, Calif., pick paper trays of dried raisins off the ground and heap them onto a trailer in the final step of raisin harvest on Sept. 24, 2013.

Federal reforms for farmworkers are in the works following a blockbuster human trafficking case out of Georgia late last year. That case highlighted loopholes for abuse in the federal visa program that provides workers to farms and meat processing plants.

In a letter sent to Sen. Jon Ossoff, D-Ga., earlier this month, Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said the department is preparing to take the first step toward creating a rule reforming the H-2A and H-2B nonimmigrant worker visas.

The letter comes alongside others sent to Ossoff throughout May from the Labor and State Departments in response to his questions about steps the federal government is taking to protect farm and food system workers.

Ossoff wrote to the agencies in March following the indictment of two dozen defendants in a multi-year human trafficking case in Georgia that found the defendants allegedly defrauded the government of over 70,000 H-2A visas forcing hundreds of workers to illegally work on Georgia onion farms. The case reignited advocates' push for increased labor protections among America's essential farmworkers.

In the Georgia case, dubbed Operation Blooming Onion, the working conditions were described as "modern day slavery" as workers faced wage theft and physical abuse and were illegally transported; two died due to heat exposure. According to an indictment, 24 farm labor contractors and recruiters allegedly demanded workers pay illegal fees, held their identification documents hostage, required physically demanding work for little or no pay and housed workers "in crowded, unsanitary, and degrading living conditions." According to the indictment, workers were threatened with deportation and violence while the defendants profited $200 million.

"The commitment that I have received to engage in new rulemaking suggests that in response to my inquiry they are planning to undertake reforms to protect the human rights of migrant farmworkers in the United States," Ossoff told NPR in an interview, adding he still wants to see what specific rulemaking the agency plans to make.

Currently, farmers and ranchers are able to resource the H-2A visa program if they need workers to perform seasonal or temporary agricultural labor so long as they can prove that they were not able to hire a domestic worker, among other requirements. While H-2B visas are considered "nonagricultural," nurseries, meatpacking and seafood processing plants use them across the country.

The demand for agricultural workforce visas has been steadily on the rise as producers face continued labor shortages, even before the pandemic. Most recently, the Labor Department noted the number of H-2A visas has more than tripled since 2012.

Employees with these kinds of agriculture labor visas make up a small portion of the overall agriculture labor force, nearly half which is estimated to be made up of undocumented workers, according to the Labor Department. But abuses still occur even through the legal federal program aimed at providing labor.

Over 70 percent of DOL investigations find workplace violations, with 30 percent of investigations finding employers have committed five or more violations, according to a report from the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute, which analyzed DOL data.

Though the case in Georgia is among the most extreme, since the start of the Biden administration, the DOL's Wage and Hour Division, one of the branches that investigates workplace abuses, has concluded 573 H-2A investigations, resulting in over $9 million in back wages for more than 10,000 workers. Additionally, the agency has assessed over $8.8 million in civil money penalties for H-2A violations, according to the DOL letter written to Ossoff by WHD Acting Administrator Jessica Looman.

According to Mayorkas in the letter, the proposed rulemaking process, which could still take years, would address some of the biggest issues brought to light in Operation Blooming Onion, such as workers being overcharged and issued illegal fees for visas and facing salary shortages.

In addition, Mayorkas said the department is looking for ways to improve oversight of the H-2A program and improve workers' participation in investigations. The move is also in line with President Joe Biden's campaign promises to strengthen protections for farmworkers, while waiting on Congress to move forward with immigration reform.

DHS did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

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DHS tells Sen. Jon Ossoff it will reform the agricultural visa program. - NPR

THE BUZZ: A local prosecutor election in Californias 4th-largest city is among the most nationally consequential races on the ballot Tuesday.

San Francisco District Attorney Chesa Boudin will soon receive the voters verdict on his progressive approach to pursuing criminal cases. If the polls are even somewhat accurate, San Franciscans are ready to oust their top elected law enforcement official less than three years after catapulting the former public defender and son of leftist radicals into office. It would mean a swift reversal for an electorate that not that long ago embraced Boudins message of a new course and defied the citys political establishment.

Three key points:

The anti-Boudin campaign has become a sort of Rorschach test for how San Franciscans and Americans interpret rising anxiety about crime. The recalls supporters see a reckless and incompetent prosecutor who has undermined public safety by prioritizing defendants, seeking lesser charges or avoiding jail time with pretrial diversion programs.

Boudin and his backers warn that entrenched interests are exploiting fear and spreading misinformation to throttle a burgeoning national movement away from harsh sentences and over-incarceration. Heres a deeper look at the context and the stakes in POLITICO's The Fifty.

BUENOS DAS, good Thursday morning. Assembly Democrats are scheduled to return to the floor this morning for the first time since Tuesdays grueling, six-hour speakership standoff. Meanwhile, HUD Secretary Marcia Fudge will be in Los Angeles to survey the homelessness crisis. Fudge will be meeting with Rep. Karen Bass a high-profile convening just days before Bass stands in an L.A. mayoral election.

Got a tip or story idea for California Playbook? Hit us up [emailprotected] and [emailprotected] or follow us on Twitter @JeremyBWhite and @Lara_Korte.

QUOTE OF THE DAY: It is my hope that people in California and across the United States utilize this report as an educational and organizing tool, as this interim report exceeds expectations in substantiating the claim for reparations for the African American/American Freedmen community on the municipal, state and federal level. Reparations Task Force Chair Kamilah Moore on an initial report.

TWEET OF THE DAY: Sen. @Scott_Wiener on the bigger context for Pride Month: Today marks the beginning of Pride Month. Particularly now with so many vicious political attacks against LGBTQ youth around the country California must be a beacon of hope. Pride is a celebration, but also a reminder: we must fight back.

WHERES GAVIN? Nothing official announced.

A message from The Nature Conservancy:

GOV. NEWSOM: CA Needs $1B to Protect Nature.

California is not mobilizing fast enough to protect itself from climate change. A $1 billion investment in the Nature-Based Solutions Budget Package is needed to protect people and nature from climate change. The May Revise funding is not enough -- $200 million more needs to be added with funding directed to the Wildlife Conservation Board and state conservancies. Thats a budget that will deliver results on the ground.

LION ON THE LOOSE Mountain lion found in high school classroom taken to Oakland Zoo, by KRON4s John Ferannini: A mountain lion that entered Pescadero High School on the Peninsula earlier on Wednesday morning has been safely removed and is being taken to the Oakland Zoo, according to a tweet from the San Mateo County Sheriff. KRON4 News spoke to the superintendent of the school district who said the cat, which has been described as a cub, likely entered the classroom before school started and there were no students in the classroom at the time.

Reparations could include tuition, housing grants, California task force says, by CalMatters Lil Kalish: Californias reparations task force released its first of two reports detailing the states history of slavery and racism and recommending ways the Legislature might begin a process of redress for Black Californians, including proposals to offer housing grants, free tuition and to raise the minimum wage.

SET FREE Hinckley to get full freedom 41 years after shooting Reagan, by the APs Jessica Gresko: John Hinckley Jr., who shot President Ronald Reagan in 1981, is no longer a danger to himself or others and will be freed from court oversight this month as planned, a federal judge said Wednesday, capping Hinckleys four-decade journey through the legal and mental health systems.

MONEY IN POLITICS Big-spending billionaires are upending politics. The Los Angeles mayor's race is the latest test, by POLITICOs Elena Schneider: That barrage of advertisements on TV sets, on phones and in mailboxes has put Caruso a real estate developer and a former civilian police commissioner whose father was a major Los Angeles-area car dealer in a strong, top-two position in the mayoral primary. His main rival is Democratic Rep. Karen Bass, a longtime congresswoman and state legislative leader who came into the national spotlight during President Joe Bidens 2020 running-mate search.

MORE ON CARUSO The Mall King Who Would Be L.A.s Mayor, by the New York Magazines Alissa Walker.

SWITCH TO RED This blue Central Valley Congressional seat could be GOPs easiest pickup in California, by Sacramento Bees Gillian Brassil: The Hispanic-majority voting-age district that holds Merced County and parts of Modesto and Turlock was formed through redistricting, the once-a-decade redrawing of legislative boundaries based on new census data. And while the race there one is of several in California that leans Democratic meaning the party has a small edge analysts say Republicans have reason to believe they can win.

MONEY MOVES L.A.s police union spending big on city elections, seeking to boost City Hall influence, by the Los Angeles Times David Zahniser: So far, the union has moved nearly $4 million into an independent campaign committee targeting the mayoral bid of Rep. Karen Bass. That committee is running TV ads criticizing Bass for accepting $95,000 in free USC tuition and highlighting her missed votes in Congress. The union has endorsed real estate developer Rick Caruso, a former police commissioner who has made public safety a centerpiece of his campaign.

AFTER 8 YEARS San Jose is Choosing a New Mayor, by KQEDs Ericka Cruz Guevarra, Carlos Cabrera-Lomel, Guy Marzorati, & Alan Montecillo: For the first time since 2014, the race for mayor in San Jose has no incumbent running, since Mayor Sam Liccardo is term-limited. On June 7, San Jose voters will decide between 7 candidates, ranging from current elected officials to complete outsiders. If no candidate wins a majority of the votes in the June primary, the top 2 finishers face a November runoff.

San Diego Race Will Decide New Leadership For Californias Deadliest Jail System, by Bolts Kelly Davis: The next sheriff will inherit dangerous jail conditions after the previous one resigned under a cloud of scandals.

BOUDIN RECALL Op-Ed: If criminal justice reform cant survive in San Francisco, can it survive anywhere?, by the LATimes Miriam Pawel: The recall attempt also illustrates a lesson with national ramifications about the limits of relying solely on reform prosecutors to enact change.

BUDGET PLAN California legislative leaders reach budget agreement, but don't budge on gas, by POLITICOs Lara Korte: With a record $300 billion on the table, leaders in the California Legislature on Wednesday announced a joint budget plan meant to ease the economic woes plaguing Californians and shore up the state's reserves against future economic downturns.

GOING ON STRIKE California fast-food workers plan statewide walkout, demand better workplace standards, by Sac Bees Alexandra Yoon-Hendricks: Announced Wednesday, SEIU organizers said the strikes are part of a rallying effort around Assembly Bill 257, which advocates say would create an unprecedented layer of protection for the states roughly 550,000 fast-food workers.

THE GRASS IS ALWAYS GREENER The death of the American lawn?, by the LATimes Mel Mecon: With many Southern California communities now on limited watering schedules, the lush emerald green grasses, the summery smells of fresh lawn clippings, the cool blades squiggling between our toes all will give way to crispy, dusty lots of dying fescue.

HOW IT WORKS Explainer: How SF Hammers Out Its $27.8 Billion, Two-Year Budget, by SF Standards Mike Ege: The budget$27.8 billion spread over two yearsincludes funding for new police officers, new shelter resources for people experiencing homelessness, economic help for small businesses and families with children, and better pay for city workers and contractors.

CRIME IS UP Sacramento crime stats: Homicide, rape, robberies and gun violence all soared in 2021, by Sac Bees Michael McGough: Reported rapes increased by 31%, robberies by 27%, motor vehicle thefts by 26% and assaults by 16%, department spokesman Officer Chad Lewis said in the video.

A girl fled her war-torn homeland, but found more trauma in San Francisco, by SF Chronicles Heather Knight: The attack was shocking, but only to a degree, in a neighborhood with one of the citys highest assault rates. And it would ripple outward: In November, the episode would become one focus of a letter that Tenderloin families delivered to Mayor London Breed, pleading for help.

A message from The Nature Conservancy:

STUDENT DEBT RELIEF White House to announce widespread relief for former Corinthian Colleges students, by The Hills Hanna Trudo, Amie Parnes, & Alex Gangitano: The Biden administration is planning to administer widespread relief for former Corinthian Colleges students on Thursday, multiple sources told The Hill exclusively, a move that progressives see as inching towards their goal of broader student loan debt forgiveness.

SANDBERG STEPS DOWN How Sheryl Sandberg lost D.C., by POLITICOs Emily Birnbaum & Myah Ward: Sheryl Sandberg is leaving Facebook, and closing out a turbulent relationship with Washington where she both championed social causes and was partially blamed for the platforms role in election misinformation and last years Capitol Hill riots.

Elon Musk lines up growing list of investors to take over Twitter, by the Washington Posts Faiz Siddiqui, Elizabeth Dwoskin, Reed Albergotti, & Gerrit De Vynck: Backers include some of Silicon Valleys most prominent venture capitalists, successful entrepreneurs and small-time investors whove pooled their money together, according to people familiar with the deal, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe sensitive discussions, as well as documents describing the effort to attract investors. Some are forming special purpose vehicles, or syndicates, that aim to steer money to Musks bid through investing via larger firms directly connected to the deal.

MUSK MAKES IT CLEAR Elon Musk tells Tesla staff: return to office or leave, by Reuters Hyunjoo Jin and Tiyashi Datta: Tesla Inc (TSLA.O) Chief Executive Elon Musk has asked employees to return to the office or leave the company, according to an email sent to employees and seen by Reuters.

VERDICT REACHED Johnny Depp Wins Defamation Trial; Jury Sides With Amber Heard In One Counterclaim, by Deadlines Dominic Pattern & Ted Johnson: After less than three days of deliberation, the seven-person panel ruled that the Aquaman star defamed Depp in a late 2018 Washington Post op-ed. In the piece, Heard described herself as the public face of domestic abuse, more than two years after she accused Depp of physical abuse and obtained a restraining order against him.

COMING SOON Space shuttle Endeavour is getting its own grand museum in L.A., displayed in launch position, by the LATimes Rong-Gong Lin II & Andrew Campa.

TURN OF EVENTS A Bay Area bakery sold mochi muffins for years. Then came the cease-and-desist letter, by SF Chronicles Elena Kadvany.

Mothers sue CHP over wreck that killed their children after high-speed pursuit, by the LATimes Nathan Solis.

Airbnbs Chris Lehane Crooked Medias Jon Favreau Ben Zion Kogen

A message from The Nature Conservancy:

GOVERNOR: CA Needs $1B to Protect Nature.

The May Revise proposes an additional $68 million for nature-based solutions including biodiversity, but California needs a bigger down payment on climate resilience to get our state on track. A $1 billion investment is needed in the 2022 Nature-Based Solutions Budget Package to protect people and nature on our warming planet.

To ensure funds are spent efficiently and effectively, investments must be allocated to the Wildlife Conservation Board and state conservancies, which have a longstanding track record of effectively advancing protection and supporting the public use of natural resources.

Invest $1B in the Nature-Based Solutions Budget Package to protect our planet.

CALIFORNIA POLICY IS ALWAYS CHANGING: Know your next move. From Sacramento toSilicon Valley, POLITICO California Pro provides policy professionals with the in-depth reporting and tools they need to get ahead of policy trends and political developments shaping the Golden State. To learn more about the exclusive insight and analysis this subscriber-only service offers, click here.

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Progressive prosecution goes on trial- POLITICO - POLITICO

GENEVA (30 May 2022) A group of UN human rights experts* have welcomed the adoption of the Durban Call to Action on the Elimination of Child Labor on 20 May 2022 by representatives of governments, workers and employers organizations, UN agencies, civil society and regional organizations attending the 5th Global Conference on the Elimination of Child Labour in South Africa. They issue the following joint statement:

The Call emphasizes the need for urgent action because the COVID-19 pandemic, armed conflicts, along with food, humanitarian and climate change threaten to reverse years of progress against child labour. We echo the call for urgent measures to address this tragedy and remain deeply concerned that millions more children will be soon pushed into work, which can seriously jeopardize their physical and mental health. Child labour also produces a structural impact on the enjoyment of other human rights, including rights to adequate housing, education, right to the highest attainable standard of health, right to a healthy environment and often has its root causes in structural, racial and other forms of discrimination.

In 2020, the number of children in child labour around the world rose to 160 million, the first increase recorded in 20 years; today around 79 million children are engaged in hazardous work. Seventy percent of child labour is concentrated in the agriculture sector with an estimated 108 million children working on farms and plantations around the world, which can cause short-term and chronic adverse health effects. The same agricultural system that diminishes biodiversity and increases pollution harms children. Tens of millions of children are engaged in hazardous work, where they are often exposed to toxic chemicals, including highly hazardous pesticides. To this day, children working in agriculture continue to be exposed to hazardous pesticides that are banned in the country of export, resulting in abhorrent double standards and discrimination.

It is often the case that after exposure to toxic pesticides, the violation of a childs right to physical integrity from toxics cannot be undone. In this sense, agricultural workers are often neglected, and there is an urgent need for States and business to address the dramatic increase of child labour in the agricultural sector worldwide.

The Durban Call to Action includes 49 immediate and effective measures governments should take to end child labour with an emphasis on agriculture. Most crucially, this includes adopting an action plan to eliminate obstacles to the establishment, growth and pursuit of lawful activities of rural worker organisations to give agricultural workers a role in economic and social development.

The Call to Action further includes a commitment to reduce poverty and improve labour conditions of all people working in rural communities including peasants, fishers, forest dwellers, and pastoralists. It recommends ending their functional dependence on child labour, by securing adequate incomes through cooperatives, and representative organizations in line with relevant ILO instruments, reassessing piece-rate wage systems in agriculture; and recognizing the need to guarantee adequate minimum wages for agricultural workers, sufficient to meet their needs. Strengthening social protection is also key in eliminating child labour. It protects households from extreme poverty which could, otherwise, lead to taking children out of school and putting them to work.

While there may be a place for children exceptionally and occasionally helping on family-run farms, childrens place is in school. The Call to Action commits States to realize the right to education, by ensuring universal access to free, compulsory, quality, equitable and inclusive education and training. When prohibiting child labour, Governments must also ensure that the necessary conditions for learning are met, including adequate nutrition, water and sanitation, healthcare, books and uniforms provided free of charge. Poverty cannot be a reason that children are not in schools.

Governments must act rapidly, effectively, and continuously to improve working conditions on farms and plantations to provide decent employment and eliminate child labour. Business enterprises must have due diligence processes in place to ensure that there is no child labour across the supply chains and, where it is found, to hold all their subsidiaries, contractors, and sub-contractors accountable in line with the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights. Governments must ensure that all actors involved in the use of child labour are held accountable.

Governments must promptly implement the instruments already in place. For instance, the ILO Convention on the Right of Association in Agriculture is key to eliminating child labour and achieving decent work for adults in agriculture. We encourage States to ratify, domesticate and implement international labour standards. We also strongly encourage governments to implement the UN Declaration on the Rights of Peasants and Other People Working in Rural Areas.

Finally, we hope to see a conference to follow-up on the Call to Action and the development of strategies for better international coordination and cooperation on eliminating all forms of child labour, especially in the agriculture sector.

ENDS

(*) The experts: Michael Fakhri, Special Rapporteur on the right to food; Ian Fry, Special Rapporteur on the promotion and protection of human rights in the context of climate change; David R. Boyd, Special Rapporteur on human rights and the environment; Koumba Boly Barry, Special Rapporteur on the right to education; Clment Nyaletsossi Voule, Special Rapporteur on the rights to freedom of peaceful assembly and of association; S. Tlaleng Mofokeng, Special Rapporteur on the right of everyone to the enjoyment of the highest attainable standard of physical and mental health; Balakrishnan Rajagopal, Special Rapporteur on adequate housing as a component of the right to an adequate standard of living, and on the right to non-discrimination in this context; Felipe Gonzlez Morales, Special Rapporteur on the human rights of migrants; Olivier De Schutter, Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights; E. Tendayi Achiume, Special Rapporteur on contemporary forms of racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance; Tomoya Obokata, Special Rapporteur on contemporary forms of slavery, including its causes and consequences; Marcos A. Orellana, Special Rapporteur on the implications for human rights of the environmentally sound management and disposal of hazardous substances and wastes; Catherine S. Namakula, current Chair-Rapporteur, Barbara G. Reynolds, Vice-Chairperson, Dominique Day, Miriam Ekiudoko and Sushil Raj Working Group of Experts on People of African Descent; Elbieta Karska (Chair-Rapporteur), Fernanda Hopenhaym (Vice Chairperson), Anita Ramasastry and Pichamon Yeophantong; Working Group on Business and Human Rights

The Independent Experts are part of what is known as the Special Procedures of the Human Rights Council. Special Procedures, the largest body of independent experts in the UN Human Rights system, is the general name of the Councils independent fact-finding and monitoring mechanisms that address either specific country situations or thematic issues in all parts of the world. Special Procedures experts work on a voluntary basis; they are not UN staff and do not receive a salary for their work. They are independent from any government or organization and serve in their individual capacity.

Continue reading here:

UN experts urge action to address alarming increase of child labour in agriculture sector - OHCHR

Polls have suggested the Progressive Conservatives led by Doug Ford are poised to form a second majority government. Ford has campaigned largely on his partys promises to build Ontario highways and hospitals, and other measures hes touted as job-creators, and in recent days has held limited media availabilities.

The New Democrat and Liberal leaders have both been presenting themselves as the only alternative to Fords Tories and havent outright said they will work together in the event of a Progressive Conservative minority.

It could be the last election as NDP leader for Andrea Horwath, whos making a fourth run for the premiers office after her party made gains in 2018 to form the official Opposition in provincial parliament.

Her party has proposed speeding up pharmacare and dental care plans for Ontarians, hiring more nurses and teachers, covering mental health and birth control and raising the minimum wage to $20 in 2026.

The Liberals, meanwhile, are hoping to rebuild after a devastating defeat four years ago that saw their caucus reduced to just seven seats after spending more than a decade in government.

Leader Steven Del Duca, who lost his seat in 2018, is also facing an apparently tight race in his own riding of Vaughan-Woodbridge, though he says he intends to stick around as leader regardless of the result.

The Liberal platform includes plans to make COVID-19 vaccinations compulsory for school attendance, remove provincial HST on prepared foods under $20 and boost the minimum wage to $16 per hour by next year.

The Ontario Greens have proposed free mental health coverage, reaching net zero emissions by 2045 and protecting 30 per cent of Ontario lands and water by 2030.

That party led by Mike Schreiner is hoping to expand its caucus of one seat won by Schreiner in Guelph four years ago and has been eyeing a potential opening in Parry Sound-Muskoka.

Also this

Jurors are to resume deliberations today in the sexual assault trial of Canadian musician Jacob Hoggard.

The jury began deliberating Tuesday afternoon after receiving detailed instructions from the judge on the legal principles it should apply in weighing the evidence.

Hoggard, the lead singer of the band Hedley, has pleaded not guilty to two counts of sexual assault causing bodily harm and one of sexual interference, a charge that refers to the sexual touching of someone under 16.

Prosecutors allege he violently and repeatedly raped a teenage fan and a young Ottawa woman in separate incidents in the fall of 2016.

They also allege he groped the teen after a Hedley show in Toronto in April 2016, when she was 15.

The defence contends the complainants had consensual sex with Hoggard and lied about it later to cover up their embarrassment after being rejected.

What we are watching in the U.S.

FAIRFAX, Va. _ A jurys finding that both Johnny Depp and his ex-wife, Amber Heard, were defamed in a long-running public dispute capped a lurid six-week trial that also raised questions about whether the two actors can overcome tarnished reputations.

The verdict handed down Wednesday in Virginia found that Depp had been defamed by three statements in an op-ed written by Heard in which she said she was an abuse victim. The jury awarded him more than $10 million. But jurors also concluded that Heard was defamed by a lawyer for Depp who accused her of creating a detailed hoax surrounding the abuse allegations. She was awarded $2 million.

Depp had hoped the libel lawsuit would help restore his reputation. However, legal and entertainment experts said that both actors reputations have been damaged by ugly details about their brief marriage that came out during the televised trial watched by millions.

Both of them will work again, but I think it will be a while before a major studio will consider them `safe enough to bet on, said former entertainment lawyer Matthew Belloni, who writes about the business of Hollywood for the newsletter Puck. The personal baggage that was revealed in this trial was just too icky for a studio to want to deal with.

The case captivated viewers who watched gavel-to-gavel television coverage, including impassioned followers on social media who dissected the actors mannerisms, their wardrobe choices and their use of alcohol and drugs.

Both performers emerge with unclear prospects for their careers.

Depp, a three-time best actor Oscar nominee, was a bankable star until recent years, with credits including playing Capt. Jack Sparrow in the Pirates of the Caribbean films. However, he lost that role and was replaced in a Fantastic Beasts spinoff.

Heards acting career has been more modest, and her only two upcoming roles are in a small film and the upcoming Aquaman sequel due out next year.

Eric Rose, a crisis management and communications expert in Los Angeles, called the trial a classic murder-suicide, in terms of damage to both careers.

From a reputation-management perspective, there can be no winners, he said. Theyve bloodied each other up. It becomes more difficult now for studios to hire either actor because youre potentially alienating a large segment of your audience who may not like the fact that you have retained either Johnny or Amber for a specific project because feelings are so strong now.

What we are watching in the rest of the world

PARIS _ Across France, more than 300 people have reported being pricked out of the blue with needles at nightclubs or concerts in recent months. Doctors and multiple prosecutors are on the case, but no one knows whos doing it or why, and whether the victims have been injected with drugs _ or indeed any substance at all.

Club owners and police are trying to raise awareness, and a rapper even interrupted his recent show to warn concertgoers about the risk of surprise needle attacks.

Its not just France: Britains government is studying a spate of needle spiking there, and police in Belgium and the Netherlands are investigating scattered cases too.

People from Paris, Toulouse, Nantes, Nancy, Rennes, and other cities around France have reported being pricked with a needle without their knowledge or permission. The targeted individuals, who are mostly women, show visible marks of injection, often bruises, and report symptoms like feeling groggy.

Frances national police agency says 302 people have filed formal complaints about such needle pricks. Several police investigations are ongoing in different regions, but no suspect has been arrested yet, no needle has been found and the motive remains unclear.

No victims have reported sexual assault; one said he was robbed, in Grenoble in April, according to Le Monde newspaper. Two people tested positive for GHB, and they might have ingested the drug in a drink, according to an official with the national police agency. GHB, a powerful anesthetic used by predators seeking to sexually abuse or assault victims, can be detected in the urine only for 12 hours, the police official said.

In the U.K., Parliament issued a report in April on drink and needle spiking in pubs and nightclubs after a sudden surge in such incidents last year. It said police reported about 1,000 cases of needle injection across the country around October 2021, when droves of students returned to campuses after coronavirus restrictions eased.

A series of similar incidents involving people pricked with needles at nightclubs, a soccer game and during the Belgian Pride parade have been reported in neighbouring Belgium. Last month, the Brussels prosecutors office opened two investigations following complaints from women who said they were jabbed during the pride parade in downtown Brussels. Organizers of the march said in a statement they were informed of several cases and urged potential victims to get checked at hospitals.

On this day in 1917

Fighter pilot Billy Bishop became the first Canadian airman to win a Victoria Cross. The 23-year-old from Owen Sound, Ont., was honoured for a solo attack on a German airfield during the First World War. Bishop was credited with downing 72 German planes during the war.

In entertainment

TORONTO _ Vancouver-raised author Pik-Shuen Fung has won this years Amazon Canada First Novel Award.

Fung was awarded the $60,000 prize for Ghost Forest at a ceremony in Toronto on Wednesday.

The title from publisher Strange Light follows the story of an unnamed protagonist grappling with the death of her father.

Fung was born in Hong Kong and raised in Vancouver, but she now lives in New York City.

Established in 1976, previous winners of the First Novel Award include Michael Ondaatje, W.P. Kinsella, Nino Ricci, David Bezmozgis, Andre Alexis and Madeleine Thien.

The prize is co-presented by Amazon and The Walrus.

The runners-up, who each receive $6,000, are:

Everyone in This Room Will Someday Be Dead by Emily Austin, published by Atria

Probably Ruby by Lisa Bird-Wilson, published by Doubleday Canada

All the Quiet Places by Brian Thomas Isaac, published by Brindle & Glass

Avenue of Champions by Conor Kerr, published by Nightwood Editions

We, Jane by Aimee Wall, published by Book*hug Press

Did you see this?

OTTAWA _ Members of Parliament unanimously voted Wednesday to clamp down on modern slavery by backing a bill requiring Canadian companies to ensure they are not using forced labour or exploiting child workers overseas.

Labour Minister Seamus ORegan ensured government backing for the private members bill that would make Canadian firms and government departments scrutinize supply chains with the aim of protecting workers.

ORegan said the Liberals want the bill, introduced by a senator, to go to committee where it may be strengthened further with government amendments.

In a vote in the House of Commons at the bills second reading, it was backed unanimously by MPs, including the Conservatives, Bloc Quebecois, NDP and Greens.

Most private members bills _ introduced by individuals rather than the government _ do not receive ministerial backing, parliamentary time or proceed through all the parliamentary stages needed to become law.

The bill, tabled in the Senate by Sen. Julie Miville-Dechene, would make Canadian firms check that none of their products or components are made in sweatshops employing children or adults forced to work excessive hours for free or for paltry pay.

The senator has warned that a number of products sold in Canada, including coffee, cocoa and sugarcane, may be linked to child or forced labour. She has also warned about imports of products made in factories in the Xinjiang region of China where members of the Uyghur community have been forced to work.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published June 2, 2022.

The Canadian Press

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Ontario election day, waiting for Hoggard verdict : In The News for June 2 - EverythingGP

Focus on children first

Following the 2008 Heller Supreme Court ruling, a pro-gun family member agreed some gun controls were warranted, but if we give an inch, theyll take a mile. Unfortunately, we pro-choice Americans did not heed the warning. A recent conservative policy letter I received indicated 15-week abortion bans are the beginning; not the end.

If so, where is the conservative judicial support for children and mothers health care, preschool for all, and daycare standard in most civilized countries? How many young parents are imprisoned due to the death of a child they were unable to care for? How many children are raised by grandparents because their children are in prison, died of overdose, or unable to work because of a failed background / drug test? A recent trip to my home state of Indiana showed there are many.

Ranking near the bottom of 30 industrial nations in all categories of childhood well-being, we should focus on living children first.

People are also reading

Ridiculous use of taxpayer money

After reading about Gov. Doug Ducey sending undocumented people to Washington D.C., this is not only a waste of Arizona funds, it is a copycat move, and a really dumb one at that (in my opinion). The government has sent a large amount of money to help with undocumented people issues (including busing) but no, Ducey uses state funds, from taxpayers like you and me.

These funds could be used for schools and teachers, much better for future generations of Arizonans.

This is an embarrassing waste.

Federal government continues the escapade

We read of a baby formula shortage because Abbott, a large producer of formula, closed one of their plants in Michigan. The FDA brought about the decision for plant closure because of two infant deaths suspected to be caused by the formula. Tests have produced no causal relationship. Millions of babies are without formula due to the decision. Who is responsible the government or Abbott? President Biden urged other producing companies to produce more. This is reminiscent of the Energy Department telling the oil industry to curtail investment in drilling, and the president then urging the Saudis to increase oil production as prices skyrocketed at the pump because of the shortage, just like baby formula. And the president pouring money into the economy, while the Fed increases the interest rates to reduce the money trying to curb inflation. Maybe a good Independent will run in the next election.

Responsibility is critical

The abortion issue has sparked very strong opinions on both sides of the discussion. However, an immutable fact is that a woman cannot get pregnant if she does not have sex. A variety of birth control methods are widely available. Therefore, if a woman becomes unintentionally pregnant, barring rape or incest, the woman is either unlucky because the birth control method failed, is careless, is reckless, or has chosen to use abortion as the preferred method of birth control. Like many areas of our life, responsibility is still a critical value.

Protecting lives the priority

Re: the May 27 article Police taking heat over school shooting response.

I currently work at a Pima County retail store. We have automatic door locks that are engaged at the beginning and end of each shift. The doors are locked on the exterior side and can only be opened by pushing the push bar on the interior side of each door. Congress should pass legislation to install this technology on all school doors, except one main door. This entrance could be supervised by a security guard. Enacting this legislation might raise the abysmal approval rating of Congress. We all want to protect the lives of our children, school staff and their teachers, regardless of political persuasion.

Irony

Twenty-one years of age to buy alcohol in most states, 21 to buy cigarettes, 18 to join the military (supervised firearms training), 18 to vote (supposedly old enough to make wise decisions), 18 to buy firearms.

Lets change things

What is it going to take to make the changes that the majority of us want? Addressing gun safety, climate change, abortion rights and the ability to make a living wage.

We need the help of Independents. We need the help of young voters, there is a large army of young voters 18-and-up.

Now is the time to make changes in legislatures in Arizona and the U.S. Congress who are not addressing the issues or do not have the votes to get it done.

You young voters can and must make your presence felt.

Independents represent approximately one-third of voters. Step up, make your vote count. Lets all vote for candidates who have committed to addressing the above issues.

I am 75 years old, I will not see all of these changes happen in my lifetime. But I would love for it to happen for my children and grandchildren.

Congratulations

Marys Mission Development Center recognizes the achievement of young adults graduating from high school this year. The commitment and strength, both mental and physical, to complete high school will help you prepare for your future life endeavors.

We want to extend a special congratulation to two outstanding youth that spent their senior year as residents at MMDC and were able to graduate high school. The ability to navigate, manage and better ones personal well-being and maintain and progress in ones education showed exceptional fortitude and progress that can significantly help successful living in todays society. Therefore, learning to manage and be successful in todays society, both in behavior and knowledge, is the primary focus of MMDC.

Marys Mission is always willing to work with any volunteers who would like to be a positive influence in youths lives.

Gary Peterson, clinical administrator, Marys Mission

Guns for protection

Re: the May 30 article Americas gun problem dates back to Founders.

Leonard Pitts tries to convince us that the Founders adopted the Second Amendment guaranteeing Americans the right to bear arms only to keep slaves suppressed, but any reading of the Founders discredits this claim. The Founders wanted to make sure that Americans could own guns in order to protect themselves from predatory individuals and from oppressive government. The Revolutionary War guaranteeing the freedom that Mr. Pitts enjoys today could not have been won without the use of firearms by the colonists.

Further, Mr. Pitts never mentions the fact that 620,000 soldiers, most of them white, died in the Civil War in order to end slavery in this country.

Finally, Mr. Pitts never addresses the problem of Black-on-Black crime today. In 2020, almost 10,000 Blacks died in homicides.

So, Mr. Pitts, what are your answers here?

Leftist extremists? The rabid right?

It sure seems every commercial the GOP is running on Arizona TV talks about leftist extremists. It sounds like every Democrat running is a communist who hates God and country. How sad that so many think so simplistically. I abhor these commercials and mute immediately. No substance offered, just slogans and hate.

Am I supposed to hate all who disagree with me? Are all members of the GOP monsters? Is every Republican a member of the rabid right? God, I hope not. Its gotten harder to really hear the voices of people when the level of vitriol we hear is repeated constantly. The next time a political ad comes on, stop and ask yourself are these things really true? For instance, how can Sen. Mark Kelly be a leftie, when he votes against things others in his party might want? Think! Engage your brain. Look for the truth.

Cannot trust Biden and Democrats on gun control

After recent mass shootings in New York and Texas, Biden and Democrats have come out demanding a ban on assault rifles (AR). Some Republicans in Congress have reportedly signaled a willingness to discuss some gun control measures. But then came President Biden over the weekend declaring that the Second Amendment is not absolute and that 9mm handguns and 9mm ammunition are high caliber and have no rational basis for self defense. Does Biden know that the 9mm ammo round is considered by many ballistic experts as the minimal for self defense with more potent pistol calibers being the .45 ACP, .357 magnum and .44 magnum? The most popular handgun in America is the 9mm, carried by millions of law-abiding citizens for home and self protection. Does Biden know that in D.C. v. Heller, SCOTUS ruled that states can place reasonable limitations on firearms? Bidens progressive protg Canadian PM Justin Trudeau just proposed a mandatory government buyback of citizens ARs and a halt to all future handgun sales and transfers.

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Letters to the Editor: June 3 - Arizona Daily Star

A third of migrant workers on UK fishing vessels who responded to a research survey work 20-hour shifts, and 35% reported regular physical violence, according to a new study that concludes there is rampant exploitation and abuse on British ships.

Leaving is not possible because Im not allowed off the vessel to ask for help, one migrant worker told researchers at the University of Nottingham Rights Lab, which focuses on modern slavery. They found fishers reported working excessive hours, with few breaks, on an average salary of 3.51 an hour.

Interviews with migrant workers on fishing boats across the UK revealed experiences of racism and many accounts of extreme violence, including two reported incidents of graphic and sexually violent acts, it said.

Workers from the Philippines, Indonesia, Ghana, Sri Lanka and India are recruited into the UK fishing industry on transit visas, a loophole that legalises their exploitation, according to the report, Letting Exploitation Off the Hook. Seafarers transit visas are intended to allow crew to join ships leaving UK ports for international waters, such as a container ship to China, for example.

These visas tie workers to a single employer. This leaves them dependent on the ships captains for their working and living conditions, such as access to food and other essentials, and prevents them changing jobs. Workers can then potentially be abused and controlled by rogue shipowners.

The research could not be generalised across the industry, the report said, due to the self-selection of fishermen involved in the survey, the data for which was collected via an anonymous questionnaire distributed online by NGOs, charities and other communities trusted by migrant workers.

In a separate briefing published this week, the International Transport Workers Federation (ITF) outlined its own findings on the use of transit visas, suggesting it was leading to systematic labour exploitation of migrants on UK vessels. It called for the closure of the loophole that allows the visas to be used on fishing vessels.

Dr Jessica Sparks, associate director of the Rights Lab and author of the report, said: Exploitative practices are widespread and endemic on vessels. Long hours for poor wages are endemic. It is well known that you can pay migrants less.

Interviews with the migrant workers revealed traumatic experiences of physical violence and racism, she said. There were very traumatic reports of being physically beaten by captains. Most of the migrants reported being discriminated against, especially Ghanaians, [and] racial slurs while being beaten by captains. The amount of physical violence was surprising to me.

The report also found evidence of forced or compulsory labour among migrant workers in the UK fishing industry.

One worker told researchers that leaving is not possible because Im not allowed off the vessel to ask for help, adding: There is no way to contact anyone. The captain keeps my phone, and when he gives it to me he supervises my calls.

Sparks interviewed 16 migrant workers, and conducted surveys with 108 crew members of vessels registered in England, Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales.

More than 60% of migrant fishers interviewed reported hearing about or seeing their fellow workers being threatened or actually abused, whether physically, sexually or psychologically. About 75% said they felt discriminated against by their captain. One in three said they would be unlikely to leave their job because of debts.

The report found that the migrant workers did not know who to trust, with more than 60% saying they would never report a grievance out of fear of reprisals either against themselves or their families being blacklisted. Many owed debts to recruitment agencies.

The report also contrasted the situation of migrant workers, who were poorly paid on a fixed wage, to local crews, who were paid a crew share a percentage of the value of the fish landed or of the profit.

The UK relies on fishers from non-EU countries including the Philippines, Ghana and Indonesia but people from these countries have no automatic legal entitlement to work in the UK. Fishing boat owners apply for transit visas on the basis that their vessel operates wholly or mainly outside UK territorial waters, defined as more than 12 nautical miles from shore.

Migrant fishers using those visas are required to work a majority of their time beyond territorial waters, and have no legal authority to enter the UK when returning to port. As a result, they are forced to live onboard the vessels for up to a year, despite accommodation on fishing boats usually being unsuitable for long-term stays.

The ITF said the current transit visa scheme created a two-tier labour system onboard UK boats and that the misuse of the visa scheme had become a tool to traffic Ghanaians and Filipinos from the UK to the Republic of Ireland.

In response to the findings, the Fishermens Welfare Alliance, made up of national fishing federations in the UK, welcomed the ITFs conclusions that the transit worker visa was unfit for purpose and said it did not meet the requirements of a modern fishing industry. The parts of the industry that employed non-UK fishermen through the transit visa system had long lobbied the government for improvements, including having fishermen recognised as skilled workers, it said.

The FWA said it was still studying the University of Nottingham report but added: At first reading, it contains much that fishing industry representatives dont recognise and is not representative of the situation across the UK, as the report itself states.

As industry representatives, we deplore and condemn bad practice and crew members being badly or unfairly treated, regardless of their nationality or immigration status.

Aoife Martin, director of operations at Seafish, a non-departmental government body supporting the seafood industry, said the findings were concerning and showed there was still work to do, though she disagreed with the suggestion that the UK industry had made use of the transit visa system to exploit non-UK workers.

Martin said: We are aware of previous issues with poor treatment of crew amongst certain vessel operators, but we also know that the industry as a collective has made inroads in identifying and addressing the factors that lead to this type of behaviour.

Read the original here:

Migrant workers exploited and beaten on UK fishing boats - The Guardian

A group of researchers and activists from across Asia gathered during the first week of April in Thailand to discuss the impact of the pandemic on the regions marginalized communities and how peoples movements are putting forward an alternative model of development.

The gathering was organized by the Asia Pacific Research Network as part of its biennial research conference.

During the first day of the conference, keynote presentations provided a comprehensive historical background of the peoples engagement with key stakeholders and institutions like the UN on the measures adopted to mitigate the harmful impact of monopoly capitalism. The discussions highlighted that peoples resistance is the only path we should embark on if we want to truly make a difference in the lives of the people.

The panels and workshops during the succeeding days tackled how unfair trade agreements and imperialist funded projects were implemented to extract super profits while exacerbating the suffering of the working people. The workshops also identified the violent legacy of imperialism, how it remains the biggest threat to humanity and why the popular call for world peace is a futile appeal as long as imperialism is not defeated.

I was invited in the conference to give an input about the role of the peoples struggle in redefining development as the world continues to deal with the disruptions of the new normal.

I first talked about the social and political ramifications of what it really means to live in the so-called COVID-19 era.

At the global level, we are aware that recovery from COVID is uneven. The world is not flat, especially when it comes to vaccine distribution and recovery from the debilitating consequences of the two-year pandemic. Some suffered more because some were too greedy to hoard vaccines and other resources needed to deal with the pandemic.

Despite the differences in how we experienced real existing pandemic, we detected an alarming pattern of how repressive or authoritarian governments adopted even more repressive and authoritarian measures under the guise of addressing the pandemic.

The pandemic response of governments featured extreme restrictions which included militarized lockdowns and harsh punishment for quarantine violators. It allowed some governments to weaponize laws in the fight against COVID-19 misinformation but was in fact used to spread fear and persecute activists, journalists, and critics. Even if mass vaccine rollouts are already in place, the lingering devastating impact of the pandemic will remain a convenient excuse for authorities who seek to enforce strict social controls such as intensified technological surveillance, broader internet regulation, institutionalized media censorship, and faster prosecution and detention of individuals. After the surge and as citizens adjust to the new normal, authorities wont willingly give up the coercive powers they gained during the state of emergency. They will appropriate the language of the pandemic lockdown to demand uncritical compliance from citizens while tagging the efforts of the independent media, civil society, and other public institutions as potential threats to public safety

During the second part of my presentation, I talked about reclaiming the right to shape our future by challenging the dominance of imperialist powers and big corporations. We are not nave to believe that their actions are motivated by good and charitable intentions. When they invoke the new normal, they define it according to their selfish interest. For imperialist powers, it means the continuing right to exploit the resources of the world and meddle in the affairs of poor nations under a new set of circumstances caused by the pandemic. For big corporations, it is the inviolable right to demand reforms, concessions, and privileges for them to earn super profits even if the pandemic has caused unprecedented suffering for most of the working classes in the world. They want to continue shaping the world according to their self-serving agenda despite the wars, the mass famine and starvation, the wage slavery, and inequality they caused in the world. They have no credibility to talk about the new normal if they merely want to reinforce or boost the privileges they already enjoy.

Therefore, the task of shaping the new normal should come from the actions of the people; it should be the outcome of our political organizing. We should claim the narrative of the new normal in order to reclaim our right to enjoy a better future.

In pursuing this task, I cited several promising trends that peoples movements should endeavor to harness. For example, we have young people at the forefront of renewed climate activism. There is increasing public awareness of climate issues and the role of community resistance in putting a spotlight on climate issues. We saw the emergence of community care and citizen-led initiatives during the pandemic in response to the slow and inadequate relief efforts of incompetent governments. Despite the heightened state repression, citizen pushback achieved varying levels of success in building democracy movements and resisting authoritarian regimes. Finally, there is increasing realization that no less than a system change is needed today.

Group discussions were followed up by more enriching conversations during coffee breaks and informal meetings. We learned about how theories of development and social change are creatively applied by peoples organizations across the region. Most participants are not laptop researchers but members of civil society networks actively working in the grassroots. They shared valuable insight about how imperialism wreaks havoc in the lives of the communities they serve and how this engenders local resistance and political engagement. This kind of interaction and in-person solidarity is what we missed during the first two years of the pandemic.

The conference took place at a time when the regions civic space was recovering from the prolonged pandemic lockdowns. It also became a venue to explain the unfolding crisis in Pakistan, Sri Lanka, the farmers protests in India, the democracy movements in Thailand and Indonesia, and the bewildering return to power of the Marcoses in the Philippines. We went back to our respective countries carrying not just a broader knowledge of the peoples struggles in Asia but also testimonies of solidarity from fellow activists and peoples researchers. Indeed, our local struggles are linked to the peoples movements in other countries as we build a stronger resistance against imperialism.

Mong Palatino is a Filipino activist and former legislator. Email: mongpalatino@gmail.com

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Question Everything | Affirming solidarity and redefining development during the pandemic - Bulatlat

Rights expansion plays a big role in left-wing policymaking. President Franklin Roosevelt called for a Second Bill of Rights in 1944. He hoped to include rights to employment, adequate income, decent housing, adequate medical care, social security, and education. But Roosevelt died the following year, and the Democratic Party abandoned the proposal. Now, Bernie Sanders calls for a 21st Century Economic Bill of Rights that closely mirrors Roosevelts proposal. It includes the right to a job that pays a living wage, the right to quality healthcare, the right to a complete education, the right to affordable housing, the right to a clean environment, and the right to a secure retirement. Sanderss proposed policieslike Medicare-For-All, tuition-free college, and the jobs guaranteehave been designed to help secure these rights.

Conservatives often oppose rights expansion by appealing to natural rights theory. Corporations and the richwho possess concentrated political power and access to a media that serves themwill also wage a campaign to discredit the idea of these rights. Obtaining them will not be easy. To make a start, we need to anticipate the rhetorical strategies of our opponents. In what follows, Ill lay out how natural rights theories work, identify some of their weaknesses, and consider alternative frameworks.

For conservatives, rights are not something we can expand or contract, because they are natural or God-given. Natural rights have their roots in natural law theory. Natural law theoristslike Thomas Aquinasargue that human beings exist for a specific purpose. Drawing on Aristotle, Aquinas argued that it is our purpose to develop our reason, and to use our reason to develop our character, to acquire moral virtues. These virtuesincluding, most famously, prudence, justice, fortitude, temperance, charity, faith, hope, and loveare meant to enable us to live a good life, in service of traditional institutions, like the family, the state, and the church. They are also meant to help us develop ourselves intellectually and spiritually. Taken together, all of this is meant to make us happy, and a truly happy life ends in a full view of God in the afterlife. This, for Aquinas, is our ultimate end, and we are morally obligated to fulfill it. Any human law which conflicts with this purpose conflicts with our nature and is therefore potentially unnatural.

But how do we know what gets in the way of happiness and spiritual fulfillment? Natural law theorists try to answer this question by observing human behavior. If the law asks people to behave in a way which sharply conflicts with our natural behavior, the law can be said to make unrealistic, unnatural demandsand presumably ought to be rejected.

Take the case of humans and food. Everybody needs to eat to survive, and everybody needs to survive to develop their reason and character. In this sense, we might be said to have a natural right to the food we need to survive. But food is not just handed out in our society (although it could be), so we must pay for it. Those who do not have money to pay for food may consider stealing the food. If you can only survive by stealing, its unrealistic to expect you not to steal. Therefore, if the government passes a law prohibiting the poor from stealing food to survive, the government asks people to behave in a way that is unrealistic. If human laws conflict with the natural right to food, the right of nature may entitle us to break the law. Aquinas himself argued that its okay to steal in cases of extreme need:

It is not theft, properly speaking, to take secretly and use anothers property in a case of extreme need: because that which he takes for the support of his life becomes his own property by reason of that need.

The trouble is that human behavior varies across contexts, and natural law theorists tend to naturalize whatever they see around them. In Aristotles time, slavery was common and women were widely denied political rights. Aristotle observed this and concluded that slavery was natural and that women were naturally inferior to men. Obedient slaves and hard-working spouses make free time for men, enabling them to do philosophy. Without them, men might be less able to develop their reason and acquire the virtues. For Aristotle, laws that abolish slavery or enfranchise women would conflict with the ability of men to realize their purpose. A free man might even have a natural right to own slaves and dominate his spouse.

Things can get disturbing very quickly. To make matters worse, its hard to get everyone to agree on what human nature is. The Catholic Church made Thomas Aquinas a saint, and helped spread his views about what was natural throughout Western Europe. But as Protestants and humanists challenged the church, new debates sprung up about what counts as natural. Thomas Hobbes argued that its natural for us to try to kill other people if theres no king around to intimidate us. David Hume argued that its natural for us to steal from strangers to give to our family and friendsunless somebody stops us. Immanuel Kant argued that its natural for us to submit ourselves to a universal moral law. Jeremy Bentham argued that its natural for us to pursue pleasure and avoid pain.

As the debate about whats natural got more intense, it became harder and harder to use natural laws and natural rights politically. Political theorists increasingly abandoned the natural law tradition. Bentham dismissed natural rights as anarchical fallacies and nonsense upon stilts. When conservatives criticize the Enlightenment, they criticize it in part because they feel that Enlightenment theorists badly butchered the concept of the natural. Many conservative theorists have deep affection for Thomas Aquinas and want us to start the conversation over, returning to his theory as a jumping off point. But the concept of the natural was too vague to begin with. It was too easy to redefine, and that made it too hard to establish a consensus on what it meant, even when the Catholic Church was ready and able to defend its ideas. Today, the splintering of Christianity into large numbers of denominations and the rise of secularism makes that consensus completely impossible.

In any case, the enforcement of a religious consensus cuts against Aquinass own argument. Aquinas is the one who argued that its natural for us to develop our reason. If we dont have the liberty to use our reason to dispute what the natural means, we are being prevented from fulfilling our natural purpose as Aquinas understood it. A consensus on the natural can only be enforced by unnaturally restricting the development of human reason, and therefore Thomist natural rights theory can only be politically instantiated by systematically violating it.

Increasingly, political theorists moved away from the language of natural rights toward a language of human rights. But this is a sleight of hand; human rights are themselves a spinoff of natural law theory. Human rights are grounded on international law, and the first theories of international law grounded international law on natural law. Dutch philosopher Hugo Grotius argued that states that violate natural law forfeit their claims to sovereignty. This quickly developed into a convenient moral justification for colonialism. Grotius argued that human beings are entitled by nature to seize uncultivated land. Many Indigenous peoples were hunter-gatherers, or used farming techniques that Europeans considered primitive or inefficient. For Grotius, these peoples had no right to keep lands they were not efficiently farming, and the Europeans had a natural right to take these lands away from them. Its ironic, isnt it? The idea of the natural so easily allows some people to do things other people consider to be unnatural. Many of the practices that strike most of us as deeply unnaturallike slavery and imperialismwere excused with the help of natural rights arguments.

It is difficult to find an alternative basis for international law, and therefore an alternative basis for human rights. If human rights come from being human, that implies that there must be something in particular that is fundamental about the human experience. How can we have human rights without a theory of human nature? And once we try to define human nature, were back in the same old definitions swamp. We cant agree on what human nature is, and therefore we cant agree on which rights are specific to the human experience.

The ambiguity of the concept of human nature allows powerful vested interests to dictate the definition of human nature for the purposes of determining the content of human rights laws. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights was written in 1948, at the peak of American power, and it reflects mid-20th century American liberal values. It does not include most of the economic rights Bernie Sanders lays out, and those that are included are heavily watered down. Theres a right to work, but no right to a job. Theres a right to an adequate standard of living, but no detail about what counts as adequate housing or healthcare. The right to education extends only to the elementary and fundamental stages. There is no mention of retirement, just a fleeting reference to securityin the event of old age. There is no discussion of the environment, or even of access to clean air and water. By contrast, the right to own property is explicitly protected, and the family is declared the natural and fundamental group unit of society.

Just as Grotiuss arguments were used to justify colonialism, contemporary human rights law is frequently used to justify American military interventions in post-colonial countries. Unsurprisingly, many post-colonial governments understandably feel that the system of international law lacks democratic legitimacy. The UN Charter was signed in 1945, a month after the end of World War II. It structured international power in a deeply unbalanced way. The UN General Assemblywhich includes all the member statescan only issue non-binding resolutions. Only the UN Security Council can issue binding resolutions, and the permanent members of the Security Council have the power to veto any resolution they dislike. The permanent members are the countries that were most powerful at the end of the war: the United States, UK, France, China, and the Soviet Union. Post-colonial states enjoy a majority in the General Assembly, but they can only pass resolutions through the Security Council, where their old colonial masters exercise veto power. A few years before he was deposed and murdered in a U.S.-led intervention, Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi expressed the resentment felt by so many people in post-colonial states:

We are not committed to obeying the rules or the resolutions of the United Nations Security Council in its present form because it is undemocratic, dictatorial and unjust. No one can force us to join the Security Council or to obey or comply with resolutions or orders given by the Security Council in its present composition. Furthermore, there is no respect for the United Nations and no regard for the General Assembly, which is actually the true United Nations, but whose resolutions are non-binding. The decisions of the International Court of Justice, the international judicial body, take aim only at small countries and Third World nations. Powerful countries escape the notice of the Court. Or, if judicial decisions are taken against these powerful countries, they are not enforced.

There are, then, three key issues with natural and human rights:

Therefore, we need a different way of substantiating rights that is harder to abuse.

We might instead argue that what really secures rights is not some universal theory of human nature, but the fact that those rights have been instantiated through a legitimate political process. When Bernie Sanders proposes these new economic rights, he doesnt need to argue that they are universal, fundamental rights that apply to all people in all places. He can instead argue that, as citizens of a democracy, we can and should use our democratic political institutions to create new rights for ourselves. Bernie Sanders does not have to revise the definition of human naturehe can encourage us to revise what it means to be an American. He can ask us to use our power as Americans to increase the set of rights we as Americans enjoy. His rights are civil rights, rights that would shape the fundamental character of being American.

Good Americans need to be able to participate in civil society organizations. They need to be able to participate in democratic political institutions. Participation in civic life, however, requires a basic level of economic security. When people dont enjoy these basic economic rightslike the right to a good-paying job, to food, to housing, and so forththey have to spend too much of their time and energy desperately treading water (in the case of many Americans, working multiple jobs to make ends meet). Treading water means less time and energy to participate in things outside of ones immediate life. Its hard to think about the common good when you have to worry that you might lose your home or your access to quality healthcare. Even when Americans do participate in politics, they participate from a place of fear and anxiety. Politicians and the media easily play on these feelings, and it becomes easy to encourage Americans to blame and fear one another. They vote for lesser evil candidates, for candidates who promise to protect them.

Centrists worry constantly about polarization, a lack of civility, and a collapse of democratic norms. Well, Americans are scared because we lack security. Were upset because were worried about our future. In an era of free markets and free trade, weve been plunged into a competitive global economy and forced to work longer hours for lower wages as the costs of healthcare, housing, and education skyrocket. Were worried about paying the bills, about paying our debts, about a world where technology advances while ordinary people are left behind. Increasingly, its hard to be civil to each other without economic civil rights. People are under too much stress. If centrists want civility, they need to relieve the economic stressors that drive so many to frustration and despair.

We can argue for economic civil rights even if we disagree strongly with one another about human nature. Whatever you think the purpose of life is, it should be compatible with ensuring each and every American citizen is in an economic position that allows them to effectively exercise their citizenship. Whats more, economic civil rights make it easier for people to do a lot of other things. If you agree with Aquinas and think the purpose of life is the cultivation of reason and virtue, its a lot easier to do those things if youre economically secure. You cant study philosophy or religion or participate in civil society if you have to spend all of your time desperately trying to get by. Many ancient and medieval writers politically excluded the poor precisely because they did not feel the poor were in a strong enough economic position to participate effectively in public life. These economic rights directly address that traditionally conservative concern. Insofar as conservatives value democracy, economic rights make democracy work better.

Some people dont like civil rights because they apply specifically to Americans. They argue that by tying these rights to being American instead of our common human nature, we are implicitly denying them to non-Americans. But there is currently no set of legitimate political institutions that can democratically instantiate rights at the global level. The global institutions constructed after World War II marginalized the citizens of poorer, weaker countries. These institutions have no direct democratic connection to ordinary people. Even people living in rich countries often feel alienated from the United Nations, the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, and the World Trade Organization. These institutions dont consult ordinary people about anything. The people who run them are drawn overwhelmingly from the upper classes of the richest states. They simply do not have the political legitimacy necessary to effectively determine what rights poor and working people should or shouldnt have. To instantiate economic rights at a global level, wed need an entirely new set of institutions.

Instead of trying to foist a 20th century liberal worldview on the worlds people through a slanted conception of human rights, we might try offering American citizenship to people we feel have been wrongfully excluded from its benefits. Ive previously written for Current Affairs about how we might incorporate people who have been excluded from citizenship. It has to be done carefully, but it can be done.

Other people dont like civil rights because theres no guarantee that they wont be repealed. Natural rights and human rights are thought to be timeless (even though no one agrees on their content, and in practice international organizations and powerful states decide what they mean). By contrast, proponents of civil rights openly acknowledge that rights only last as long as the civil institutions that enacted them continue to back them up. It is true that civil rights are subject to politics and can always be revised by political means, but this cuts both ways. When rights are considered timeless, they are politically hard to repeal, but they are also politically hard to expand. By acknowledging that rights are civil, we leave open the possibility that in the future, Americans may decide that they need even stronger rights than we can presently imagine. American civil rights belong to Americans, and it is up to us to decide what they mean. If we prevent future generations of American citizens from having the chance to revise the set of rights associated with being American, we prevent them from exercising their rights as Americans.

It would be wrong to dominate future generations in this way, just as it is wrong for us to allow previous generations to prevent us from expanding our rights. The Supreme Court often gets in the way of rights expansion. Constitutionalists and originalists leave us trapped in the political concepts they associate with the founding. For Justice Samuel Alito, we only have the rights explicitly enumerated in the constitution, those that are deeply rooted in this nations history and tradition, or those that are implicit in the concept of ordered liberty. Every generation should have the opportunity to contribute to the development of the political concepts that constitute the society it has to live in. President Roosevelt considered using the amendment mechanism to force the judiciary to accept the validity of economic rights. If we can build broad enough support for these rights by addressing working people in both red states and blue states, we might be able to use the justices commitment to the amendment mechanism to our advantage.

For some conservatives, the dynamic character of civil rights is a problem. If civil rights remain open to redefinition, could Sanderss economic rights be a slippery slope? But the idea that rights can be grounded on a political process rather than a single theory of human nature is not especially radical. The Republican Party is itself named for republicanism, a political tradition rooted in the idea that being a member of a polity and exercising the rights associated with political membership is an important part of life. Aristotle advanced a concept of human nature, but he also argued that we are political animals, and that a citizen is one who has the right to participate in deliberative or judicial office. We should ask conservatives whether they really feel a person who doesnt enjoy Sanderss economic rights can participate effectively in public deliberations. What kind of republicans would they be, if they leave these citizens out in the cold? If Americans are to have the time and energy to do politics, and the peace of mind necessary to do it well, they need, at the very least, the right to quality healthcare, the right to a complete education, the right to affordable housing, the right to a clean environment, and the right to a secure retirement. If we do not fight for these rights and see them granted, political discourse will become steadily more debased. Fear and anxiety will continue to spread and intensify, until Americans are driven to despair. Can democracy run on despair? Do we really want to find out?

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Thinking More Clearly About the Idea of Rights Current Affairs - Current Affairs

The Supreme Court is, and always has been, a political institution. That would be self-evident if not for the mystique that has been built up around America's most important judicial body. That aura has started to dissipate a recent Monmouth University poll found that more than half of Americans disapproved of the court's recent performance but it remains powerful enough that people take Chief Justice John Roberts seriously when he bemoans the supposed politicization of the Supreme Court. Before his retirement, Justice Stephen Breyer even published a book urging Americans to return the high court to its supposedly august and apolitical roots.

Now that the justices are evidently poised to overturnRoe v. Wade,those who insist (or imagine) that the Supreme Court must somehow remain above politics have become even more strident: Pro-choice advocates argue that the impending decision proves that that the high court has strayed from its constitutional mission, while the anti-abortion contingent insists that since judges are above politics their reasoning is unassailable and the presumed leaker has immeasurably damaged the institution.

RELATED:The fall of Roe v. Wade will only embolden the fascists: How will America respond?

These arguments are almost stunning in their historical ignorance. For one thing, the framers of the Constitution basically said nothing about the Supreme Court's mission, describing it simply as "one supreme Court." The Judiciary Act of 1789, passed during the first year of George Washington's presidency, fleshed out what the court would do, including assigning it six members (a chief justice and five associate justices; that number was officially expanded to nine in 1869). For more than a decade, however, the court took on few cases and had very little to do. The executive branch had proved strong under Washington and Congress quickly took on various legislative roles, but the judicial branch was initially unclear about exactly how much power it really had.

Chief Justice John Marshall understood something important: the appearance of putting partisanship aside would serve to legitimize more partisan decisions in the future.

Politics changed that. After John Adams lost to Thomas Jefferson in the 1800 presidential election, he decided to stack the judiciary with members of his Federalist Party so that Jefferson's Democratic-Republicans couldn't implement their agenda. Yet some of the justices' commissions were delivered prior to Jefferson's inauguration, and since the new president believed that nullified their appointments, he instructed Secretary of State James Madison not to deliver them. One such appointee, Maryland businessman William Marbury, sued Madison, claiming that his appointment was legal and the government should be required to follow through with it.

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Marbury likely believed that Chief Justice John Marshall, who was also a Federalist, would be sympathetic to his case; if so, he miscalculated Marshall's ability to play the long game. Apparently more intent on increasing his own power than aiding his political party, Marshall authored the landmark 1803 decision which agreed with Marbury that Madison's actions were contrary to law, but added that since the law involved was itself unconstitutional, it was not valid. So the precedent was established that the Supreme Court could strike down laws that it determined were in violation of the Constitution which also launched the notion that the court was above politics.

Except it totally wasn't. What Marshall understood was that the appearance of putting partisanship aside would help legitimize the court's future decisions even when they were blatantly partisan. (Arguably, the Roberts court's ruling that preserved the Affordable Care Act, while disappointing many conservatives, played a similar function.) In Marshall's case, this meant that the Federalist Party's remained relevant long after the party of Washington and Adams had faded away. Future justices sought to preserve the mantle of legitimacy Marshall had bestowed, even when they used it for very different causes.

Consider the most infamous Supreme Court decisions of the 19th century:Dred Scott v. Sanfordin 1857 andPlessy v. Fergusonin 1896. In the first of those, the court ruled that an enslaved man in Missouri named Dred Scott could not claim to have been freed when his owners took him to Illinois and the Wisconsin territory, jurisdictions where slavery was illegal. In ruling against Scott, Chief Justice Roger Taney, an avowed white supremacist, found that people with African descent "are not included, and were not intended to be included, under the word 'citizens' in the Constitution," and as such had no legal rights. (As Salon'sKeith Spencer recently noted, it is conceivable that people seeking abortions will face similar states' rights issues after Roe is overturned.)

Going one step further, the court ruled that the Missouri Compromise an 1820 legislative agreement that sought to limit the expansion of slavery in newly-added states or territories was unconstitutional. Of course the justices claimed this decision was based purely on legal issues, but the historical consensus holds that it was politically motivated. Incoming President James Buchanan, who supported the Southern slave-owner aristocracy even though he was from Pennsylvania, exerted pressure on the court to side with the pro-slavery faction, and probably heard about the decision from Taney in advance.

AfterFranklin D. Roosevelt was elected, the politically-motivated tendency to "find" reasons why laws regulating business were unconstitutional went into overdrive.

Politics again trumped the law inPlessy v.Ferguson,which required the court to rule on whether Louisiana had violated the 14th Amendment by segregating railroad cars. Since the amendment held that whites and Black Americans were equal under the law, this created a logical conundrum. Yet the justices, clearly motivated by a desire to avoid alienating white supremacists, evaded that common-sense argument and found that accommodations could be "separate but equal." The lone dissenter, John Marshall Harlan, called out the blatant political logic at play:

Everyone knows that the statute in question had its origin in the purpose not so much to exclude white persons from railroad cars occupied by blacks as to exclude colored people from coaches occupied by or assigned to white persons. Railroad corporations of Louisiana did not make discrimination among whites in the matter of accommodation for travelers. The thing to accomplish was, under the guise of giving equal accommodation for whites and blacks, to compel the latter to keep to themselves while traveling in railroad passenger coaches. No one would be so wanting in candor as to assert the contrary.

While those decisions upholding racial discrimination are the most obvious examples, politics has influenced numerous other Supreme Court decisions as well. While the Republican and Democraticparties have in many respects traded places as "liberal" or "conservative" formations since the 19th century, both have largely supported a social consensus favoring the interests of business over those of workers. It appears clear that when judges are appointed by politicians (in this case, nominated by the president and confirmed by the Senate), their philosophies are likely to be shaped by politics. The Supreme Court has a long history of handing out decisions unfavorable to labor organizing or working people, even if they are presented in neutral-sounding legal language.

For instance, the 1899 decisionLochner v. New Yorkoverturned a law setting maximum working hours for bakers on the grounds that it violated the right to freedom of contract; that supposed right came up again in 1923, when the court overturned a minimum wage for women inAdkins v. Children's Hospital. (That ruling, by the way, came under Chief Justice William Howard Taft, a former president. That's the only time a former president has been on the Supreme Court, although Taft's successor as Chief Justice, Charles Evans Hughes, was a former Republican presidential nominee.)

AfterFranklin D. Roosevelt was electedin 1932, the politically-motivated tendency to find reasons why laws regulating business operations were unconstitutional went into overdrive. There were four justices on the Supreme Court who clearly loathed FDR's policies, and were determined to short-circuit his agenda however they could. Nicknamed "the Four Horsemen," Justices Pierce Butler, James Clark McReynolds, George Sutherland and Willis Van Devanter viewed themselves as ideological crusaders on a mission to take down a president they perceived as a dangerous socialist.

Roosevelt tried to solve the problem in 1937 through what is now called "court-packing" specifically, by adding a new justice each time a current one passed the age of 70 but refused to retire. We'll never know whether that might actually have made the Supreme Court less political, but in the event the plan blew up in Roosevelt's face. His only consolation came in the form of an unexplained change of heart by Justice Owen Roberts, who had previously opposed the New Deal but voted to uphold Washington state's minimum wage in the case West Coast Hotel Co. v. Parrish. That deflated Roosevelt's court-packing plan and solidified the entirely fictional notion that the high court was above politics, or at least was supposed to be.

Yet not much the court has done since Roosevelt's era has made that notion more plausible than it was before 1937. In 2000, it installed George W. Bush as president in a 5-4 ruling that could not possibly have been more nakedly partisan. A decade later, inCitizens United v. FEC, the high court's conservative justices managed both to side against Hillary Clinton and assert that corporate campaign expenditures were effectively political speech, and could not be regulated under the First Amendment.

More recently, of course, the Supreme Court confirmation process has become the focus of Machiavellian politics, largely because of Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell, who refused to consider Barack Obama's nominee in 2016, arguing that it was an election year, but pushed through Amy Coney Barrett's 2020 nomination just days before Joe Biden was elected. Add to that the firestorm that surrounded Brett Kavanaugh's confirmation in 2018, and it's almost bizarre that anyone can pretend the court is not infused with politics. Those three justices nominated by Donald Trump, of course, have created the conservative supermajority that has led to the near-certain downfall of Roe. That makes the court appear more political than ever before, perhaps but appearance is not the same thing as historical reality.

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Did the Supreme Court just become "political"? God, no it's always been that way - Salon