Category Archives: Wage Slavery

Between 16th and 19th centuries, 12.5 million members of African Diaspora were scattered across the Americas due to the transatlantic slave trade. An additional 6 to 12 million perished at sea due to disease, overcrowding, malnutrition, torture and suicide. In addition to destabilizing independent nation-states for profit and influence, the wealth of continental United States was built on the backs of underpaid and intentionally dehumanized labor force. The call for action to both acknowledge and redress 10 generations of systemic chattel slavery in the United States is justified and long overdue.

What are reparations? Reparations are formal attempts to make amends for crimes against humanity visited upon groups of people. According to The United Nations, there are five types of reparations: cessation/assurance of non-repetition; restitution and repatriation; compensation, satisfaction and rehabilitation.

Why reparations? There is historical precedent for it both globally and in the United States. The United States government has paid reparations to Japanese families who were interned in concentration camps during World War II, Americans formerly held hostage in Iran and most recently families whose loved ones perished in September 11, 2021 attacks. Following the 1862 District of Columbia Compensated Emancipation Act, reparations were also paid to slave owners for loss of both income and property following emancipation, set at $300 per enslaved person approximately 25 million total in todays figures. The individual worth of each enslaved person ranged from $1,000 to $2,000 each which, conservatively, would have amounted to 42 to 84 trillion dollars today.

These numbers, however, exclude 7,500 enslaved persons held captive by the Chickasaw, Seminole, Creek, Choctaw and Cherokee (also known as Five Civilized Tribes) in the 1700s through mid 1800s. In addition to white-identified slaveholder compensation, the 1862 Homestead Acts gave 270 million acres to white-identified homesteaders stolen from First Nations peoples to settle the American West. Black/African American peoples remain the only racial group since Americas founding that has not been formally compensated by the United States government for its original sin of chattel slavery. First Nations/Native American Indians tribes, nations and bands fought for centuries in North American courts for some measure of financial compensation through various federally-funded initiatives as well as formal recognition of territorial sovereignty in order to access limited socioeconomic benefits on and off reservations. Comparatively, only 40,000 formerly enslaved persons have had minimal success in requesting redress, and were given the much famed 40 acres and a mule for their plight. Others were offered $100 each approximately $2,500 in 2022 to leave the United States for Liberia or Haiti.

According to the 1860 census, there were just shy 4 million enslaved persons living throughout the country 12 percent of total population.

Chattel slavery is an intergenerational cultural trauma experienced by all African diasporic communities in the United States that is correlated positively with poor physical and emotional health outcomes, chronic impoverishment, rampant food insecurity and broadened educational achievement gaps.

Coupled with segregation, redlining, lynching, state-sanctioned terror, human-trafficking, forced sterilization, predatory lending practices, eminent domain property seizures and gentrification, chattel slavery represents the single most destructive force undermining the advancement generations of Black identified people anywhere in the known world. There has never been a golden age of wealth and prosperity experienced by a majority of Black-identified persons in the United States because all systems of influence from the federal government down to local jurisdictions have conspired to ensure that it doesnt occur. Ever.

As we await the findings of the most current iteration of HR 40 commission in the coming years, might it be suggested that the following items be included in the final draft:

Declare in person at a convening of the United Nations by the President of the United States offering a formal, televised apology to descendants of African Diasporic communities in the United States and its territories for its formable role in The Maafa (i.e., the great tragedy inflicted on African-descended peoples), complete with a vow to uphold the freedom and integrity of all African-descended peoples in perpetuity (cessation/assurance of non-repetition)

Offer a similar live declaration at a rededication of Lincoln Memorial/The Emancipation Memorial in Washington, DC (cessation/assurance of non-repetition)

Sanction the creation of state-level Community Reparations Commissions or Task Force advised by Black-identified change agents in each state and North American territory (cessation/assurance of non-repetition)

Immediately ratify of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of a Child, the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women, the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD), and the American Convention on Human Rights without the usage of United States treaty mechanism of attaching Reservations, Understandings, and Declarations (RUDs) to its ratifications (cessation/assurance of non-repetition)

Mandate age-appropriate explorations of transatlantic slave trade in tandem with the history the cultural and ethnic groups from whence the enslaved were stolen in all school settings receiving federal aid (satisfaction)

Determine, by federally-funded commission, a nontaxable dollar figure to be given to all Black identified persons based on 2020 census data for the next 155 years the difference between 2020 and 1865 from the day of its institution (restitution and repatriation)

Acknowledge and offer formal remedy all Black-identified veterans of all wars fought at home and abroad for the benefit of the United States previously denied because of exclusionary tactics by previous administrations, institutions, etc (satisfaction)

Funnel hard currency worth approximately 1 percent of Americas total gross domestic product into neighborhoods, towns and cities decimated by successive concept wars (ex. War on Drugs, War on Crime) to build low to moderate income housing, upgrade public infrastructure, add mass transit options, build and maintain accessible community centers, fully fund social justice initiatives led by the communities in which they are housed, etc for the next 155 years (restitution and repatriation)

Derive ten percent of the worth of the New York Stock Exchange, all North American-based banks, all college endowments for higher education institutions that engaged in the slave trade and/or derived income from subprime loans targeting low income Black families and pool it into funds to cover the cost of higher education scholarships as well as to fund memorials, commemorations, retrieval and reburial of remains, etc for the next 155 years (compensation)

Wipe away all medical and educational debt for all Black-identified persons (rehabilitation)

Provide funding for free legal assistance to the bereft for wage claims against lost property and resources (satisfaction)

Return all artifacts to their home countries including those sold without the written, witnessed consent of the originating community held in private collections (restitution, satisfaction and repatriation)

The wealth and achievement achievement gap between Black-identified and white-identified persons will never be narrowed until the United States reckons its own history, the blood at the roots of its foundation. As a nation, we are doomed to fail if the original sin of the past is not reconciled in the present

Bicking is the Green Party of Connecticuts nominee for governor

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As a Nation, We are Doomed to Fail if the 'Original Sin' of the Past is not Reconciled in the Present - CT Examiner

Owners of a Lincolnshire hand car wash have been handed a 10-year slavery order for employing workers with no right to work in the UK. The Spotless Car Wash on Bridge Road, Long Sutton, was also found to have paid workers significantly less than the National Minimum Wage, according to information obtained by the Gangmasters and Labour Abuse Authority (GLAA).

The Slavery and Trafficking Risk Order (STRO) from the GLAA's application was approved by Boston Magistrates' Court on Monday, October 10. Said Ziane, 53, of Little London, Long Sutton, and Sarhad Salari, 33, of Figtree Walk, Peterborough, must now comply with the following restrictions for the next 10 years.

Both must not arrange or assist in helping anyone find employment who has no right to work in the UK and must pay their workers at least the National Minimum Wage and provide them with payslips. They also must not arrange either travel or transport to work for anyone other than immediate family members.

Read more: Police chief claims spiking incidents in Lincoln have 'subsided' following interventions

GLAA Investigating Officer, Dale Walker said: "This is the latest in a number of active Slavery and Trafficking Risk Orders we have secured across Lincolnshire this year with our partners. STROs are civil orders that restrict the activities of individuals that present a real risk of committing a slavery or trafficking offence.

"We are committed to working with our partners to protect vulnerable workers from exploitation and these orders are just one of several valuable tools at our disposal that we use. With the order being granted for such a long period of time, we will be able to regularly monitor the activities of the two defendants to ensure that all the conditions are being fully complied with."

The final restriction placed on Ziane and Salari means they must allow GLAA officers and anyone accompanying them access to their business premises at any reasonable time. This would be to check on the welfare of workers and compliance with the order, with breaching the order being a criminal offence carrying a maximum penalty of five years in prison.

The application was supported by Lincolnshire Police, Lincolnshire Trading Standards and Immigration Enforcement. Detective Superintendent Pete Grayson, Director of Intelligence at Lincolnshire Police said: "In recent months we have worked closely with the GLAA and other partners in Lincolnshire to secure a number of Slavery and Trafficking Risk Orders.

"This latest success is once again the culmination of a lot of hard work by all partners and we will continue to be proactive in our efforts to tackle this criminality and protect the vulnerable. The orders are vital for the protection of vulnerable workers who are at risk of exploitation.

"They act as a deterrent to criminal behaviour by imposing strict restrictions on those we suspect are at risk of committing slavery or trafficking offences. We will robustly police this latest order as we have with others and will not hesitate to take further action if we identify any breaches."

People who are concerned that a car wash near them is exploiting its workers can contact the GLAA's intelligence team by emailing intelligence@gla.gov.uk. Alternatively, call the Modern Slavery and Exploitation Helpline on 08000 121 700 or Crimestoppers anonymously on 0800 555111.

You can also download the Safe Car Wash app developed by the Clewer Initiative and report your concerns there.

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Lincolnshire car wash owners handed 10-year slavery order - Lincolnshire Live

Folklore and mythology have always mixed fact and fiction. But we're all fortunate (or not) to exist in a time when our access to folklore and mythology really, our entire cultural presentation of history is most accessible through corporatized media franchises. And corporatism (vis a vis colonialism) means the stories that we're getting the mythologies thrust upon us at impressionable ages are neither fully representative of historical fact, nor rooted in the needs of the common people like other oral traditions.

Now let's talk about some fuckin' pirates.

Under The Banner of King Death is a new graphic novel adaptation of Villains of All Nations: Atlantic Pirates in the Golden Age, a non-fiction pirate history book by acclaimed historian Marcus Rediker. Illustrated by David Lester, Under The Banner of King Death smartly transforms Rediker's history lesson into a tightly-focused, character-driven adventure. I assume it's slightly fictionalized, but it feels accurate to the broader ideas of Rediker's book (or at least, the part I've read of it). Which is to say: what if the real-life pirates of the 18th century Caribbean were actually one of the earliest models of the workers' rights movement?

Building off of Rediker's history, Lester introduces readers to John Gwin, a Black man who escaped slavery in South Carolina; Ruby Decker, a working class white seaman from Amsterdam; and Mark Reed, a white American who mild spoiler for dead people from history is actually a woman who's been living in drag to order to work on ships and have more freedom than she otherwise would have been granted as some man's property. Right of the bat, this is an intriguing cast much more diverse than the pirate stories that you're used to, but in a way that feels natural, and frankly, more realistic, given what we actually know about the Triangle Trade Industry in the Atlantic Ocean.

John, Ruby, and Mark aren't off seeking gold and sunken treasure. They're just sick of being mistreated. They want to put in a hard day's work, and be compensated fairly, without fear of being lashed by the snooty captain of the ship in his stupid wig and frock. Over drinks, they discuss their frustrations with their working conditions, and realize that there's strength in numbers. If they can build solidarity with the rest of crew hell, even those African prisoners in the cargo bay, en route to being sold as property what if they all stood up together, and told the Captain they weren't taking any more of his shit, and also, they wanted better pay?

Emboldened by the barroom rumors of similar working class uprisings, our trio makes their move, staging a mutiny and commandeering the ship. The bulk of the black-and-white graphic novel focuses on what happens next, as they try to build their own anarcho-communist society on the sea. The crew learns how to make decisions through direct democracy which of course, includes some struggles and agrees to split things more evenly. No one's looking for treasure; they just want to survive, and enjoy life, in exchange for some labor. When attack other ships, it's usually for one of two reasons: to liberate Africans who have sold into slavery, or to get some supplies. As far as these pirates are concerned, the captains of these "legitimate" ships are all corrupt, greedy bosses anyway. They abuse their crews and exploit the resources of indigenous people, so it's fair game to treat them just like they treat other people.

This, of course, as an affront to the self-important bureaucrats of European colonizers. These be-wigged bastards believe in rules, you see in law and order, I say! But history has shown, most of those "laws" were just little scraps of paper created specifically to justify horrible atrocities, and punish anyone who tries to push back. Pirates may have a reputation for being these debased, immoral savages but that reputation only exists to help the bosses keep their workers in line. Sure, they engage in wage theft, whipping, and literal slavery but that's different from those savage, race-mixing pirates, reveling in the pleasures of life.

And so, like all workers' rights movements, Under The Banner of King Death is a tale that inevitably heads towards a confrontation between the workers, and the enforcement arm of the bosses and landlords (aka, the cops). This goes about as well as it usually does. But that's what makes this such an interesting story: realizing how much more you and me and every Starbucks worker has in common with these pirates than with the so-called legitimate sea captains, who will whip and lash you 'til the profit's in the black.

Overall, Under The Banner of King Death is a quick, fun read that twists the conventions of pirate stories into some fascinating ways. The ending draws some parallels that are particularly poignant, if you've ever had to fight for rights in the workplace, or in society. Lester's sketchy artwork is simple enough to carry you through the story, while sparking just enough synapses that your mind fills in the bigger, brighter pictures. There a few points where the artwork gets a little muddled, but ultimately, none of it took away from my understanding of the story; even if I couldn't tell who specifically did X thing, I still got enough of the gist to keep going.

Pirate solidarity!

Under the Banner of King Death: Pirates of the Atlantic, a Graphic Novel [David Lester and Marcus Rediker with Peter Buhle / Beacon Press]

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"Under The Banner of King Death" puts pirates in their place in the history of workers' rights - Boing Boing

In Brazil, where Christopher Columbus is not well known, 12 October is a federal holiday in honour of children, as well as an important day in the Brazilian Catholic religious calendar, with a pilgrimage in So Paulo to the sanctuary of Nossa Senhora da Conceio Aparecida. The statue was supposedly discovered in a river in So Paulos interior by three fishermen in 1717, who were blessed by abundant catches thereafter. Though she started out white, the river turned her black; or perhaps it was the smoke from the fishermens votive candles. In any event, she is a powerful symbol of liberty for the Afro-descended majority, in a country where slavery formally ended only in 1888.

In Salvador da Bahia on 12 October, after two consecutive years without it, carnival came early: the bloco Lula, a sea of red T-shirts and flags of many colours, several kilometres long, snaked its way from Ondina to the Farol da Barra, the lighthouse constructed by the Tupi-namb and Portuguese settlers in 1501.

Even before the bloco arrived at the Farol, the area was full of people wearing red, many children among them, with a carnival truck blasting new campaign songs composed by Bahians, 70 per cent of whom voted for Lula in the first round. The number may well go higher in the second round on 30 October, given Bolsonaros racist attacks on north-easterners for their alleged ignorance.

Sonic intelligence was much in evidence; so were police of all stripes. One song punned on Bolsonaros first name, Jair, telling him to leave now (j ir embora). The MC saluted people for giving Lula such a large advantage in the first round, urging them to increase it in the second. An older woman of African descent wearing a straw visor, bathing suit and shorts, turned to me, without interrupting her dancing, and said: What pride, right? I was cheering along with everyone else. It was hard not to. Another song in the latest brega style had a chorus that repeated o treze/Lula na cabea (thirteen is Lulas number on the electoral list).

Bolsonaros rally on Brazils bicentennial Independence Day, 7 July, drew a decent-sized and diverse crowd, thanks to evangelicals, and also featured a truck with (evangelical) music, but it was nothing like carnival. With its emphasis on God, Family and Country (as well as private security guards), the event was grim, heavy and vaguely funereal. Bolsonaro was underwhelming in person. Lulas rally, in contrast, had the air of an evangelical revival, in the best sense of collective enthusiasm and optimism.

The joy and anticipation, particularly noticeable among the elderly (a key demographic that Bolsonaro won on 2 October, though not in Bahia), were palpable and contagious. I have been to PT-MST events at the Farol before including a concert at which Margareth Menezes sang to a full house but nothing compares to last weeks event in terms of size or cathartic release.

In every sense, Lula is the biggest show in town, which is especially remarkable given that hes from Pernambuco, not Bahia. While Bahians are open and welcoming to outsiders, and Salvador is cosmopolitan in its way, their regional and local pride is fierce, with good reason. Lula knows this, and it was clear he was pleased to be there, speaking to one and all, not as the leader of the PT, but as the future president of Brazil (so he and the crowd hope). He remembered his first electoral race in 1989, his visit to the Farol, veteran trade union and party comrades such as Rui Costa, the current governor, and Jernimo Rodrguez, the PTs candidate for governor, but observed that the size of the crowd had grown enormously. He thanked them for their support, and insisted that they need to carry Rodrguez, who received 49 per cent in the first round, over the finish line to victory on 30 October.

Although Bolsonaros rally in July also featured many working-class Brazilians of African and mixed descent, as well as young people, Lulas bloco was largely Afro-descended (pretos) and mixed (pardos), and packed with young people dancing and singing, some of them dressed for carnival, with wigs, make-up, costumes and props. Far more of the poor and indigent who live and work (or not) in the area were included than at Bolsonaros last rally, and they danced and sang with everyone else. When Lula spoke about improving diet, nutrition and health, and reviving domestic agriculture, along with jobs and education, it was with impassioned conviction, and cheers went up. This is what people here, and in the rest of Brazil, desperately need.

The morning after the event, the rubbish collectors, fishmongers, street sweepers, moto-taxi drivers and the many and varied workers on the beach the majority of whom are classified as pretos and pardos commented favourably on the turnout. I tried and failed to mediate a heated dispute in my building between an evangelical bolsonarista doorman and a lulista cleaner. The cleaner was adamant and upset, and the doorman was trying to play innocent, as if he hadnt provoked anyone, even though he had been repeating fake news circulated on WhatsApp to get a rise out of his colleague.

The cleaner and I walked out to the patio. I told him wed have victory soon enough. I could of course be wrong, but wed better hope Im not, because the alternative fascist dictatorship, without term limits, backed by a corrupt congress, purged judiciary, evangelical pastors, the military and paramilitary militias is too horrible to contemplate. Not even Washington wants to see that.

On Sunday, 16 October, Bolsonaro went to the Sanctuary of Nossa Senhora Aparecida, wearing a Brazilian football jersey, and press-ganged some poor child wearing the same shirt into a photo op. His supporters were decked out in the same colours and uniform, some of them inebriated. They intimidated, threatened and roughed up people in the church, disrupting the mass.

Nothing like this has ever happened in Brazil before. It was deeply offensive to the countrys Catholics, and not only to them. Lula, meanwhile, has prepared a letter to the evangelicals, and when he was here last Wednesday evening defended the freedom of worship for Catholics, evangelicals, religions with an African matrix and all other creeds. The claim that Lula will persecute non-Catholics has circulated widely, but based on his track record in office, and the response from the crowd in Salvador, almost no one in Bahia believes it. Bolsonaro repeated the lie several times during the televised debate, the first of the second round, on 16 October (which most undecided voters thought Lula won).

Damares Alves, a senator elect, evangelical pastor and Bolsonaros former minister for the family and the rights of women and children, has been making more lurid allegations. At a recent revival, she claimed to know of cases on the island of Maraj of children having their teeth pulled in order to perform oral sex. She also talked about anal sex. Many children were present at the event, and if indeed she knew of cases of sexual abuse of minors, but did not alert the appropriate authorities, then she committed the crime of prevarication. When the Ministerio Pblico demanded she turn over any evidence, Alves walked back her claims, admitting it was just something she heard and had no proof.

The latest polls show Lula on 53.5 per cent and Bolsonaro on 46.5. In Minas Gerais, Bolsonaro is running a full-court press with allied businessmen, Governor Romeu Zema (who imagines he is next in line for the presidency, should Bolsonaro win this month), mayors and evangelical pastors. But polls so far indicate hes unlikely to turn Lulas 600,000 vote lead into a 2.5 million vote defeat, as he promised. Lula still leads by 51.3 to 48.7 per cent, though Bolsonaro has narrowed the gap. In Rio and So Paulo, Bolsonaro is polling almost 54 per cent, though Lula is closing in on him in Rio somewhat.

Bolsonaro has roughly the same advantage among white voters (50 per cent support), who comprise 35 per cent of the electorate as well as most of the middle and ruling class as Lula has among mixed-race people (49 per cent), who make up 40 per cent of voters. Lulas largest lead by far is among Afro-Brazilians (57 per cent), who make up 16 per cent of the electorate. His support among those who earn up to twice the minimum wage half the electorate remains solid, at 58 per cent, though Bolsonaro has made gains here.

Class and religion cut across regional-racial differences, and the middle class may well decide the winner on 30 October. Lula is trying to chip away at Bolsonaros lead among the 38 per cent of the electorate who earn between two and five times the minimum wage (often, ironically, thanks to PT policies), including waged workers and small business owners; or the 8 per cent who earn between five and ten times the minimum wage (skilled industrial workers as well as the professional-managerial class in So Paulo) sectors that favoured Bolsonaro in 2018, and again on 2 October.

Despite Bolsonaros claims that the PT committed fraud in the first round, the army found no evidence of tampering. (Since when has the Brazilian army been the arbiter of fair elections?) There is evidence, however, of voter suppression by Bolsonaro himself, along with the rest of the executive, with long lines at polling stations and tedious biometric procedures, often repeated up to four times. Voters had to prove they were alive before they could vote. The process is so laborious, especially for the poorest, that many give up. If Bolsonaro loses on 30 October, his campaign has admitted that he is preparing a Trump-style assault on federal buildings. He said so on 6 January 2021, and has recently returned to the theme in his public addresses.

The dream of progress, development and uplift for the Brazilian nation is older than the first republic, born in 1889 out of the ashes of nearly four centuries of slavocracy; it does not die easily. For many, perhaps a majority, Lula represents that dream, and for a considerable minority always has. Bolsonaro, by contrast, represents organised crime, endemic corruption, evangelical zealotry, military men in civilian ministries, the extermination of Indigenous peoples and the burning of the Amazon, staggering death tolls and abysmal public health failures during the Covid pandemic, especially for Afro-Brazilians, and spreading darkness in public education. He offers no future to the impoverished majority. A great deal hangs in the balance, for Brazil, the western hemisphere and the world. A Bolsonaro victory remains a possibility, however remote.

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Forrest Hylton | To the Lighthouse LRB 18 October 2022 - London Review of Books

The ninth Ethical Fashion Guide by Baptist World Aid (BWA) has been released, ranking fashion companies around the world on their efforts to eradicate modern slavery and worker exploitation, and minimise their environmental impact.

The annual report takes around 10 months to compile; this years researchers reviewed 120 companies representing 581 brands across the world and the results show theres room for improvement.

The highest-ranking brands include Sydney undies maker Mighty Good Basics, which topped this years report, scoring 86 out of 100. US brand Patagonia, whose founder Yvon Chouinard recently pledged to use the companys profits to fight climate change, came second with 68. NZ-founded AS Colour, and Spanish companies Zara Home and Zara came third, fourth and fifth respectively, each hovering around 60 points.

Disappointingly, though, the average score [across the board] this year was just 29 out of 100. It really shows the fashion industry as a whole has a long way to go, says Sarah Knop, corporate advocacy lead at BWA.

Its probably fashions worst-kept secret that workers are really underpaid, she says. We know that for Australians the cost of living right now is a significant concern, but for most of the worlds garment workers, earning a living wage is a lifelong struggle.

In fact, only 10 per cent of the brands investigated could prove they paid a living wage at their final-stage factories with the percentage even lower in the earlier stages of the supply chain, says Knop.

Alongside paying a living wage, the report spotlights key issues across the industry including tracing materials, labour exploitation, worker empowerment and the use of sustainable fibres and commitment to climate action.

In somewhat good news, eight of the most improved companies in this years report were Australian. Melbourne company Nobody Denim scored 48, up from 34 last year. Kmart and Target improved by nine points; Rip Curl jumped from 38 to 52; and RM Williams jumped by 12 points.

The points system is a change from last years A to F grading system, but the research methodology that sits behind the report remains the same. Weve been working towards really dialling up the transparency because we know that the readers of our report are ready to understand the supply chain with greater transparency, Knop says.

So, how do companies end up in the report?BWA assesses all fashion brands with revenues of over $50 million (which is the threshold for the NSW Modern Slavery act). In about a third of cases, brands are assessed on their publicly available information, though BWA contacts all the companies involved in the report.

Smaller companies can nominate themselves to be included, which is how brands such as Might Good Basics and Nobody Denim are rated.

Its the seventh year Mighty Good Basics has put itself forward for review. Director David Wommelsdorff says they participate in the report to encourage transparency.

[It helps] bring fashion brands together for a frank look at what our industry is and isnt doing well, he tells Broadsheet. We feel huge pride in all the workers and partners across our supply chain who help bring to life our vision of a safer, fairer industry.

Footwear companies scored zero pointsFootwear brands were included in the Ethical Fashion Report for the first time this year and the results are alarming. Australian companies Nine West, Windsor Smith and Novo Shoes scored a zero as did fast-fashion brand Sheike, activewear brand 2XU and New Zealand shoe brand Hannahs.

In fact, all the footwear companies performed below industry average and none of the footwear companies could prove they pay a living wage at any stage of their supply chains. Plus, only eight per cent of footwear companies could show evidence of any processes in their final stage factories for responding to incidents of child and forced labour.

In the past, weve had companies that produce both clothing and footwear, such as Nike, but this year we have 25 footwear companies, says Knop. Overall, footwear had an average score of 22 when compared with clothing companies, which had 32. So theyre really lagging behind.

Aussie companies compared to overseas brandsThough eight of the companies in the most improved rating this year were Australian, its not necessarily a cause for celebration. The average score of Australian companies is lagging behind the global companies, says Knop. Australian companies averaged 24 and overseas companies averaged 35.

Nobody Denim, which operates out of Melbourne, says the report is a good way to see where Australian companies rank against the internationals. CEO and founder John Condilis tells Broadsheet, Its a good way to keep things in check.

Most of Nobody Denims final-stage production is based in Australia, and the brand is accredited through Ethical Clothing Australia, which means their Australian facilities are certified to high standards of worker rights. The company could also show evidence of traceability of its raw materials, good progress in paying living wages, and efforts to reduce its water use.

It shows you where the opportunities lie as well, says Condilis. To be honest, I wanted to get [a better score] than that, but any increase is from a great effort internally. Weve been building our relationships for 20 years and we control our supply chain at final-stage production. The fact its being recognised is a huge improvement. Our key focus is being transparent.

Good enough?Last year, Gold Coast-based label Outland Denim topped the Ethical Fashion Report with a score of A+, but CEO James Bartle felt the report was misleading shoppers; he wrote an opinion piece for Broadsheet saying, How is it possible that certain brands can score so highly, and yet have a reputation of social and environmental exploitation?

We reached out to Bartle to find out what he thought about the changes to the report in 2022. Though Outland Denim wasnt featured this year, Bartle sees significant improvement.

I have to commend BWA by grading brands out of 100, removing the confusing A to F grading system, and removing the use of a bell curve to compare industry performance we are presented with a much stronger, clearer and fairer report, he says.

As BWAs social media tiles are shared each year, I would still like to see some kind of symbol displayed on these tiles indicating which brands are not showing progress in paying living wages It still concerns me that brands that score under 50 per cent in supplier relationships and human rights and worker empowerment can still find themselves in the top blue tier.

Comparing large fashion brands with smaller ethical brands is a matter of chalk and cheese, he says. But the best way to convert consumers to ethical consumerism is to paint a very realistic picture of the human and environmental deficiencies of larger brands built on flawed business models.

baptistworldaid.org.au/resources/ethical-fashion-guide/

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Aussie Brands Among Most Improved in 2022's Ethical Fashion Report But There's Still a Long Way To Go - Broadsheet

D.C. voters have a lot to consider during the 2022 Midterm Elections, with races for the city's next mayor, attorney general, members of the D.C. Council and more.

Election season is here. D.C. voters have a lot to consider during the 2022 Midterm Elections, with races for the citys next mayor, members of the D.C. Council and more.

Mark your calendar: Election Day 2022 falls on Tuesday, Nov. 8.

From how to vote early, deadlines to be aware of, to whats on the ballot, heres what you need to know.

The city started mailing ballots to all registered voters at their D.C. addresses in early October so unless youre voting from outside the District, theres no need to request one. Because mail-in ballots are going out automatically, its critical that you make sure everything is in order with your voter registration. Click here to check your registration information.

If youre not registered to vote yet, you have until Tuesday, Oct. 18 to do so, with online, mail, email or fax options. Click here to find out how. If youll be away from your D.C. residence during the election, you can request an absentee ballot before Monday, Oct. 24.

Like the last election, voters will be able to deposit their completed ballots in drop boxes placed throughout the city starting Friday, Oct. 14, until 8 p.m. on Election Day. See here for where to find a drop box near you, or use D.C.s interactive map.

You can mail in your vote, as long as its postmarked no later than Nov. 8. Keep in mind that the D.C. Board of Elections wont count mailed-in ballots it receives after Nov. 15. Concerns? You can reach the board at 202-727-2525.

Voted already? Kudos for being an upstanding citizen! Track your mail-in ballots status.

If youd rather vote in person this year, D.C.s early voting centers swing open from 8:30 a.m. to 7 p.m. on Monday, Oct. 31 through Sunday, Nov. 6. See a list of early voting centers and their current status; there are at least a couple in every ward.

Polls are open from 7 a.m. through 8 p.m. on Election Day. Voters can cast their ballot at any of the citys 65 day-of voting centers, regardless of which ward they live in.

Names are shown below in the order theyll appear on the ballot, along with a link to each candidates campaign website if available. For reference, current officeholders are listed in bold. Heres where you find sample ballots specific to your neighborhood.

Voters may select up to two candidates.

Candidates have no listed party affiliation. There are no incumbents on the ballot.

Voters will get their say on Initiative 82, also known as the Increase Minimum Wage for Tipped Employees Measure, which would incrementally up the sub-minimum wage for the Districts tipped workers from its current rate $5.35 per hour, as of this July until it matches the base wage for non-tipped workers by 2027, with tips on top.

Initiative 82 seeks to phase out the so-called tip credit, which lets employers count a portion of a workers tips earned every hour toward D.C.s minimum wage of $16.10. In other words, if your tip puts a workers pay rate at or above the minimum wage, their employer isnt obligated to pay them anything further.

The measures chief proponent is the D.C. Committee to Build a Better Restaurant Industry, which describes itself as being organized by current and former tipped workers as well as concerned citizens who believe in eliminating the archaic tip credit. The campaign argues that the tip credit hurts the Districts tipped workers at bars, restaurants, salons and more by providing a legal route for wage theft, and calls the system a relic of slavery.

Critics, including the Restaurant Association of Metropolitan Washington, assert that passing the measure would place an undue burden on small businesses, reduce take-home pay for workers and result in higher prices. The Vote No on 82 campaign claims Initiative 82 would dramatically change the way D.C. restaurants and bars do business.

If all this sounds familiar, youd be right voters passed a similar measure, Initiative 77, in 2018, only for it to be overturned months later by the D.C. Council, which deemed its wording deceptive. But with a different council in charge now, Initiative 82s supporters say thats unlikely to happen again.

You can read Initiative 82 in the form itll appear on the ballot here.

See the article here:

DC voter guide: 2022 election what you need to know - WTOP

Justin Karter is a staff psychologist at Boston College University Counseling Services. He is a recent graduate of the doctoral program in Counseling Psychology at the University of Massachusetts Boston, where he completed his dissertation research on the experiences of psychosocial disability activists in the Global South.

He has served as the editor of the research news section of the Mad in America website since 2015. In addition, he has held executive board positions with the Society for Humanistic Psychology and the Society for Theoretical and Philosophical Psychology. Despite being a recent graduate and early career psychologist, he has published over 25 papers and textbook chapters on topics in critical psychology, critical psychiatry, and philosophy of psychology.

The transcript below has been edited for length and clarity. Listen to the audio of the interview here.

Justin Karter: I didnt have an interest in psychology until I finished my first masters in journalism. Instead, I have always been interested in storieshow they shape our experience of the world, and I also had an interest in politics and activism. In journalism, I learned how to listen for whats not being said in stories, to pay attention to whose stories are being told and when, and what interests they serve. While completing my degree in journalism, I was introduced to a different kind of psychology.

I took a class in Humanistic and Phenomenological Psychology with Dr. Brent Robbins. I was hooked from the start. It offered a new way of thinking about myself and the world, of articulating and exploring the sort of malaise I felt at the time. Humanistic psychology offered vitality, imagination, and possibility at a time when I was starting to worry that the world was pretty stultifying, robotic, and algorithmic.

I was also involved with student activists across Pittsburgh who were organizing and trying to make our universities more just by divesting from fossil fuels and resisting student debt structures. We also supported adjunct instructors as they unionized. But it brought us into conflict with our university administration.

When I started participating in Society for Humanistic Psychology, the APA was coming to terms with their involvement in developing torture procedures for Guantanamo Bay. Many humanistic psychologists had been calling attention to that for years. I was lucky enough to meet Dr. Lisa Cosgrove, who later introduced me to Robert Whitaker of Mad in America.

All of that reading and editing research has shaped me. First, I became aware of the fault lines in the field. There is so much we dont know about the brain, consciousness, or how people in their relational and environmental niches become who they are. These big questions and looking at all the fights kept me humble and also in awe at the complexity of our existence. They were fertile ground for different models and narratives major disagreements among experts about what it means to have mental distress or mental illness or a mental disorder and how best to treat that. Thats been its own sort of education.

My very first research review for Mad in America had a critique of Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy. I received comments and emails from people who were happy or unhappy with the piece for a variety of reasons, everything from how dare you critique a form of therapy when its the only viable alternative we have to Big Pharma to CBT and exposure is a form of thought control or emotional abuse, and your summary didnt go far enough.

Its been a lesson from the start and a constant reminder that these theories and the research we cover here have very real impacts on peoples lives. Often people are in the midst of extreme suffering, and its not just intellectually interestingthese debates have real and immediate impacts on people. As the research news team, we break down the wall between the public and service users on one side and academic writing on the otherwhats in the Ivory Tower, locked behind pay walls. We provide plain language summaries of the research so they may be useful to people when theyre evaluating treatments or trying to make sense of why theyre feeling what theyre feeling.

We emphasize research that is critical of these prevailing theories and treatments, which are often ignored in the mainstream press. We emphasize the connection between people and their environments, which sadly is radical these days. We focus on social determinants, peoples life experiences, their identities, and how that shapes their mental health. We broaden the perspective that people might bring when they think about themselves and others and why they might be suffering.

Karter: Its a sort of fault line. All these big questions like: What does it mean to have a mental illness? What is a mental disorder? What does it mean to be in distress? How do we conceptualize that? How do we understand the causes and precipitants? Most debates in the mental health field take a position on diagnosis because you have to.

At Mad in America, I was constantly exposed to different ways of making sense of mental distress. In my scholarship, I tried to find a concise way of putting together all these debates so professionals could use it to think through their position and strive for consistency. They could develop humility about these disorder categories, about what we know and dont know, and have critical consciousness about the institutions and historical factors that influence the development of these categories.

Also, it could help in thinking through how we could talk with clients in ways that honor their experience and aid them in coming to their own narrative for understanding their experience.

What is not part of the public discourse is thinking about how the presentation and the experience of different types of mental distress change cross-culturally and historically, as your work, Ayurdhi, shows. The narratives we have available to us profoundly shape our experience, and over time or cross-culturally, we have different ways of thinking and different concepts available to us. So its not just how we think about ourselves but how we experience ourselves and our world in an embodied waywhats salient to us, what we attend to, and what we dont.

If we think about disorders as discrete categories that exist in nature and were just naming them, we miss the opportunity to think about how people are making sense of themselves, of their own story, which is at the heart of psychotherapy.

Lisa Cosgrove and Robert Whitakers book, Psychiatry Under the Influence, looks at the institutional players that play a role in shaping how disorders get defined in the DSM. I mean pharma funding, physician pressures, and special interest groups. For instance, PTSD diagnosis has a lot to do with post-Vietnam War veterans advocating for their own best interest to ensure that the symptoms they were experiencing would be treated by the country that sent them to war. So it had to be defined in a way so that PTSD could be a long-standing condition.

We take for granted that symptoms that are listed in the DSM are somehow core symptoms to the experience of that disorder. But network research suggests otherwise. For instance, with major depressive disorder, symptoms in the DSM-5 have more to do with what historically has been defined as depression in the DSM than whats consistently reported by people as their experience of depression.

Karter: The idea was to produce a way of thinking about diagnoses that could train professionals and help them think critically about when and how theyre using it. What that actually looks like with a patient depends on who that person is, what theyre bringing in, etc. Culturally, there are a lot of models of madness circulating rapidly. People talk about mental health on TikTok, Instagram, and Twitter. People are learning about the neurodiversity movement, DSM definitions, and psychotherapeutic and psychoanalytic ideas.

Were cobbling together a model for ourselves to understand our own behavior and the behavior of others, drawing more than ever from the psy-disciplines. Its confusing for a lot of people, and rightfully so. Amid all the uncertainty, we tend to cling to something that seems the most concrete.

But this is also an opportunity to think creatively. Without an obvious answer, were forced to get creative in combining and creating a new language to understand ourselves and others. When somebody brings up a diagnosis, I hope to work through it, talk it through, and get to a place where we create a new language for that person. It should make sense to them or help them explain something theyve been wondering about, providing a way forward.

Karter: I did this work with Dr. Cosgrove. In 2016, the United States Preventive Services Task Force recommended screening everybody above 13 for major depressive disorder, especially in the postpartum period for women. This sounds pretty benignits one more piece of paper to fill out. Its a great thing. You catch people who would have fallen through the cracks.

Unfortunately, thats not what the evidence suggested. We found Canada and the UK had decided not to implement mandated screening for depression because there wasnt sufficient evidence that it would improve care. But the US decided to do it. So we reviewed the available research for screening collaboration with Dr. Brett Thombs, an expert on this topic. We found, as others had seen, that there wasnt evidence that implementing these screenings would lead to improved patient outcomes.

And there are risks. Other countries might have made a different decision because, with government healthcare, youre cautious about wasting resources. You pay more attention to the false positive problem and identify people at risk who arent actually at risk. In the US, the system is quite different.

So, one risk is that we treat people who otherwise wouldnt need treatment, which diverts resources away from others. Also, through diagnostic overshadowing, it distracts from other things that might be going on. We are not denying that people, especially in the postpartum period, struggle or have depressive symptoms.

We didnt find evidence that a questionnaire will lead to more support than having a skillful clinician check up on a struggling patient. In fact, a screening instrument makes it less likely that a clinician will have that conversation in a human way because it has been outsourced to the piece of paper which makes the decision for you.

It provides concreteness that isnt always justified. If somebody scores above the threshold on a PHQ-9, which was developed by Pfizer and has a high false positive rate, were likely to think, this person has depression, and this is what we do for depression. If we have a clinical interview with somebody and they tell us how theyre struggling, not feeling how they thought they would after birth, not getting social support, nervous about their relationship, having trouble finding foodthen that points us to other solutions that might be more supportive. Screening lets the system off the hook.

We wanted to attend to womens distress in a way that allowed for a broader conceptualization of what might be happening to them and provided a broader menu of support.

Karter: A number of studies find that the groups screened for the mental disorder have worse outcomes than the control group. That raises the question of the Nocebo Effect. Is it helpful or harmful to think about ourselves in terms of I might have a mental health problem?

Karter: Theres the movement for Global Mental Health and then the emerging movement for a global human rights-based approach to mental health. This one has a different identity category, Psychosocial Disability, with different assumptions about mental distress. I was curious about how people under this identity or advocating under it thought differently about what it meant to have mental distress or madness and how people with lived experience participated in research, policy, and practice in the movement for Global Mental Health.

The movement for Global Mental Health was a call to scale up services for mental disorders worldwide, especially in the low- and middle-income countries or Global South. It has been criticized widely for assuming that we can take the conceptual, diagnostic, and treatment approaches to mental health from the West and apply them in a top-down way in the Global South. This is without any critical reflexive analysis about what works and what doesnt, about how we think about mental health here in the Westlike our outcomes are wonderful!

That was being critiqued by service users. The consumer/survivor/ex-patient body of literature is remarkable and often ignored by mainstream psychology and psychiatry, but thats slowly changing. Because of the move towards psychosocial disability, therere now legal frameworks on the rights of people with disabilities. Rights-based organizations demand that people with lived experience be part of the process of developing research, practice, and policy in the psy-disciplines.

Suddenly, because of the Nothing About Us Without Us pressure, the movement for Global Mental Health was pressured to include people with lived experience. My participants were leaders in different psychosocial disability movements, had been involved in activism, and were from other countries and cultures. The majority identified at some point as having what was labeled a psychotic experience by mental health professionals, but they had come to make sense of it differently over time.

People journeyed through different models of mental health and initially thought about themselves through a biomedical approach which they found initially sometimes helpful. It connected them to resources and provided a narrative for making sense of their experience, but over time felt like it was missing things or was actively harmful. In addition, it justified having their rights restrictedthey suffered inhumane treatment. Over time they became reformers of the field and became aware of the UNs Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities.

The psychosocial model suggests that disability emerges in an interaction between a person and their environment. The environment does not make accommodations, and that lack of ability to make room for that person in the world leads to a disability. This changed the frame and led them to push for more social determinants approaches to mental health.

Also, participants talked about having an a-ha moment where they started to think of themselves less as somebody who is suffering a deficit, but instead as somebody who was a rights holderthat I am a person who has rights that need to be respected, who can make certain demands, and speak about my needs, which I found empowering.

Karter: Participants spoke about being stuck between a rock and a hard place where they would be invited to participate in a project. Sometimes theyd be invited from the beginning, which is whats recommended, that you include people in even the brainstorming and study design process. Sometimes theyd be called at the end to rubber stamp a problematic policy.

They felt they were being asked to provide their testimony or rubber stamp a policy so that the researchers or the policymakers could say they had lived experience input. They were aware if they turned that down, if they said, no, this is not CRPD compliant, or Im not going to participate in this process, that some researchers and policymakers would shop around for somebody who would rubber stamp it. Theres a diversity of perspectives among people with lived experience. You could shop around and find somebody who was more friendly to forced treatment and still claim to have lived experience input.

Karter: Participants in the Global South were aware that most of the researchers they interacted with in the movement for Global Mental Health were western-based researchers with institutional power, often White, from the US, Canada, the UK. They saw this as an extension of colonialismthe idea that we, the West, know the answers, the objective truth, and were going to advance the rest of the world and force them to use what we use.

One of my participants brilliantly said this is the grandchild of the colonialism of 500 years ago. She explained, In Latin America, weve had dictatorship after dictatorship, extractivism, free trade agreements where workers are paid under minimum wage, have no rights, they count the times they go to the bathroom. She said that the movement for Global Mental Health operates from the same logic as these other policies brought to the Global South by the Global North: Its a newer manifestation of that White supremacism, egocentric view.

She made an explicit link between the Global North extraction of resources through slavery, mining, ongoing exploitation of labor in her country, and the way the movement for global mental health was treating her (a person with lived experience)coming to mine data from her to pursue their donor funding and support their academic careers on her back.

She told the story of a psychologist who opened up a peer support group that they led and charged money for people to enter. This was infuriating, a travesty for her. It was a sort of perversion of her goals, of what she was trying to offer the community. This co-option is doing the same thing that people with lived experience are doing, which is offering peer support or group psychotherapy, but doing it from a Western researchers perspectivecharging money to get in and spreading their own narratives about psychosis to the groupchanging how safe people feel to explore different explanations.

Karter: There are also many possibilities right now because there are so many shifting narratives around mental health. There are some big cracks that the public is becoming more aware ofas in the narrow chemical imbalance theory and the DSM.

But as narratives shift, the forces and systems were operating within are trying to take advantagefor example, the right-wing authoritarian pickup of the chemical imbalance theory. Critics have pointed out that the chemical imbalance theory served neoliberalism and the right-wing political agenda because it depoliticized stress. Now that were seeing the serotonin hypothesis fall away, the right will try to use it as justification for defunding mental health treatments. As were questioning these narratives, they are going to be used to justify existing injustices.

Karter: The field of psychotherapy is under threat by the neoliberal culture that wants to turn it into an AI chatbota set of flowchart responses that will lead to a corrective thought. Whats fundamentally countercultural is also whats healing about psychotherapy, and thats the experience of being a version of yourself that can come forward because of another person. Thats the process of psychotherapy for me.

Its hard even to articulate this because our language is built in a culture that thinks about people as individual beings. But in therapy, thoughts, feelings, or embodied sensations emerge in an inter-subjective space because the other person is contacting something within themselves thats powerful that you also feel. Theyre also reaching that because of something that youre able to put into the room. So you get to experience yourself as a relational and open being over time. So if a good psychotherapy process is allowed to unfold, you get to be a different kind of self that our culture keeps telling us we cant be.

Karter: Its seductive because its challenging to get to the edge of what you can be certain about yourself and step over it because were under pressure from others to be consistent. It requires a lot of energy and vulnerabilityto be open to being a different version of yourself.

Karter: I think we need different types of stories. I love finding a good piece of literature that captures a different way of being a selfseeing people who carry multiple selves with them or have their ancestors voices in their heads. Hopefully, these stories will help us think about ourselves differently, with the ultimate goal of not just feeling better but of being the kind of subject that is unruly and ungovernable.

Read more:

Exploring the Fault Lines in Mental Health Discourse: An Interview with Psychologist Justin Karter - Mad in America

The scale and scope of the protests that have been shaking Iran for more than one month have shocked many outside observers. However, for the array of Irans socialist and left-wing forces that all have to operate clandestinely, this moment of reckoning for the countrys clerical leadership has been a long time coming.

One of the political forces that has thrown its weight behind this important moment in the struggle against the Islamic Republic is the Communist Party of Iran (CPI).

Formed in 1983, four years after the establishment of the theocratic regime, the Communist Party was a merger of several leftist forces including the armed Iranian Kurdish group known as Komala. To this day, Komala continues to maintain a military wing known as the Peshmerga that is based on the Iran-Iraq border, and it functions as the Communist Partys Kurdish section.

Marcel Cartier spoke to Marzieh Nazeri and Abbas Mansouran, two prominent members of the CPIs leadership regarding the current uprising, including how to characterise it, whether it could lead to the overthrow of the Islamic Republic, whether the United States and Israel are behind the protests as Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei has asserted and how significant a role national oppression plays in Iranian society.

* * *

Protests have been shaking the Islamic Republic of Iran for more than one month now. How do you characterise this historic moment?

Our party calls the current uprising the Mahsa uprising, referring to Mahsa (Zhina) Amini, the 22-year-old Iranian-Kurdish woman who was arrested in Tehran by morality police for allegedly wearing her hijab loosely, and killed in police custody after receiving a traumatic brain injury. Her murder shocked and ignited the rage of the society. In fact, Iranian society was like a storehouse of gunpowder and Zhinas state murder was a spark.

This uprising is not just a protest or response to Mahsas death, but also a continuation of historical demands. Its due to the acceleration of neoliberal policies, privatisations and deregulations that have been imposed on society. This is in addition to the double oppression imposed on women by the Islamic Republics legislation. The imposition of the hijab was actually a symbol of subjugation, slavery and ownership over the body and soul of women. This time the uprising entered a new phase in a more widespread and more united and determined way for the revolutionary overthrow of the Islamic Republic.

The second prominent aspect of this uprising is the leadership of women in the demonstrations. Although women have always been at the forefront of protests and uprisings in Iran, this time the presence of women has been impressive and glorious.

The third feature of this uprising is that it removes political Islam from the private and social life of the society.

The fourth feature is the solidarity and unity of the ethnic groups all over Iran, which is unprecedented in the history of the country.

The fifth characteristic of this movement is the leadership of students, especially schoolgirls. It is the solidarity and support of hundreds of thousands of Iranians outside of Iran as well as freedom-lovers around the world that has made this uprising a global uprising.

How is this current uprising different from previous protest movements, such as the Green Movement in 2009 or the fuel protests of 2019?

During the Green Movement protests that took place in 2009, people took to the streets under the pretext of the presidential elections and were massacred by the regime. When the reformists saw that the people had targeted the entire regime and election was just a spark, they forced people to go home, and this caused the failure of the 2009 uprising.

In 2017, protests were orchestrated by the poorest layers of the society, known as the protest of the hungry. It didnt achieve its goals because of the crackdown by the Islamic regime and the absence of a revolutionary alternative. During the uprising in 2019, people occupied the streets again when the masses all over the country protested against the sudden increase in the price of fuel. It ended in a short time with the killing of more than 1500 people and thousands of arrests over just a few days.

The biggest difference between this time and the previous uprisings is that people's illusions of the regime have disappeared, and the protests continue every day and night; young people, especially women, play a leading role and their goal is to bring down the capitalist Islamic regime.

Undoubtedly, this magnificent revolutionary movement will change the balance of power in favor of labour and mass struggles. Also, the Iranian womens movement will enter a new stage in the fight against gender oppression, compulsory hijab and anti-women laws and regulations of the Islamic regime.

Despite the brutality and violence of the military forces against the protests and despite internet shutdowns, the uprising continues and is advancing both in quality and quantity. Also, people are hopeful after workers in oil and petrochemical industries in Asaloye and Abadan joined the uprising by going on strike from October 10.

The scope and duration of these protests seem to provide a major historical challenge for the clerical regime. However, the Islamic Republic has withstood previous challenges to its rule. Is it actually possible is it that the regime will fall?

The ongoing revolutionary uprising has caused such tremendous changes in Iranian society that no one can hide that the process of overthrowing the Islamic Republic is irreversible. For 43 years, we have never seen the regime's oppressive forces escaping and hiding from protesters. Now this is an everyday scene! Even school children now talk politics and are taking part in the protests and chanting "We don't want an Islamic Republic!", Death to the dictator, death to the tyrant, whether shah or a leader.

Also, protesters have no choice but to move forward. If women are to be freed from captivity; If the society is supposed to get out of the captivity of capital; If religion is to be separated from government and education; If unconditional political freedoms are to be established; If the death penalty is to be abolished and the doors of prisons to be broken; If we no longer want to see the phenomenon of working children, and if we want to achieve our dozens of other hopes and dreams, the first step is to throw the Islamic Republic into the dustbin of history. All these tragedies, all these calamities, all this poverty and misery, the marginalisation of millions, the enslavement of wage earners, the embezzlement of thousands of billions are the result of a predatory capitalist Islamic system in our society.

Much evidence shows that the pro-Islamic Republic forces are falling. The top officials of the regime have become frustrated and confused. The prospect of the collapse of the ruling regime is ahead.

The Iranian revolution of 1979 led to the overthrow of the Shah, but did not lead to a workers government. If the Islamic Republic falls, what will replace it?

The overthrow of this regime does not mean the victory of the revolution. Currently, there is a conflict between alternatives. The bourgeois opposition forces of Iran are trying to get power from the top and to replace the Islamic government of the capitalists with a nonreligious authoritarian capitalist government.

If the demands of workers, women and the oppressed masses of the people are to be realised by overthrowing the regime of the Islamic Republic, we must have a clear picture of what it means to have a revolutionary overthrow of the Islamic Republic. The victory of the workers, women, the poor and the oppressed masses of the society depends on the fact that the working women and men, the main producers of the wealth of this society and the toilers, who are now the fighters on the street, take political power in form of councils, have a direct role in the administration and management of the society and act both as legislators and as enforcers of the law.

Now that we are witnessing workers, revolutionary students and youth having a more active and radical participation in the uprising and they have shown how class aware they are in their statements and slogans there is more hope for a revolutionary overthrow of the Islamic regime, which means the victory of the labour revolution and the continuation of this revolution for the realisation of socialism.

The working class in Iran has taken part in thousands of protests and strikes in recent years, and they have gained valuable experience and training. We hope that they will use these experiences and paralyse the military machine of the Islamic regime with their nationwide strikes. Without the organised, class consciousness and independent presence of the working class, the revolutionary victory of this movement is not possible.

Workers in the oil industry and workers from Haft Tappeh Cane Sugar Company have during many of their strikes and rallies announced that their only alternative to break free from slavery is council management. These days the same alternative is voiced from different parts of Iran by revolutionary youth and students. The realisation of this demand is related to the active, intelligent and revolutionary intervention of the workers.

The Islamic Republic asserts that these protests have been orchestrated by the United States and Israel. How do you assess these statements?

This is government propaganda. This regime has always used this kind of propaganda and imaginary enemies to suppress people and to maintain its backward and reactionary forces and base. In Iran, nobody really believes these claims and it is only for the consumption of a handful of government supporters.

Five years ago, Ahvaz Steel Complex workers and protesting masses in some Iranian cities chanted, "Our enemy is right here!" The nearly 55 million workers, and nearly 15 million high school students, and the magnificent and historic uprising of millions of women in Iran, have all risen to achieve their historical demands and rights. The masses do not accept the intervention of anti-revolutionary forces, including imperialists, in this revolutionary uprising, and the only request they have is to end the support of global imperialism to this collapsing government.

Let's not forget that all authoritarian and fascist regimes have used imaginary enemies and fabricated crises for maintaining their rule, and make the claim that the masses support them until their last moments.

The politics of the United States and the West is still to save this criminal regime. Of course, these world powers are at the same thinking of the preparation and formation of an alternative to the regime among the bourgeois opposition. If we look at the history of the past 40 years, the Islamic government was established at the Guadalupe Summit in 1978 with the support of the West. The Islamic Republic led the 8-year war against Iraq by buying weapons from Israel, the United States and other western capitalist countries, and the bombing of Iraq was carried out by Israeli warplanes.

Imperialism is trying to organise its counter-revolutionary alternative to bring its bourgeois alternative to power in the event of the overthrow of the regime, just like the previous revolution of 1979, where after the Guadalupe meeting, the Islamic regime lead by Khomeini was brought to power.

But repeating 1978 is not easily possible. A more organised, experienced, and politically conscious working class has emerged in Iran, and the socialist and radical left political organisations will not easily allow the right-wing and bourgeoisie to be put in power in an imperialistic regime change policy.

Mahsa Aminis murder highlighted the double oppression of both women and Kurds in Iran. How important of a role does national oppression of Kurds and other national minorities play in Iranian society?

The double oppression of capitalism and nationalism on Kurds, Baloch, Arabs, Azeri, Turkmen and others since the formation of the nation state in Iran has played an important role in suppressing mass movements in Iran. Imperialism and the Islamic regime have used the tactic and accusation of separatism, trying to create hatred and discord between Iran's ethnic groups as a tactic to suppress movements all over the country.

Removing the oppression of nationalities and recognising the right to secession is one and the same. Taken together with the proposal to maintain the voluntary alliance between the workers and the oppressed masses all over Iran, it is a part of our programmatic principles. Guaranteeing the elimination of oppression of ethnic groups and women and establishing equality and freedom and emancipation from the oppression of the nation-state and capitalism, is part of the victory of the labour revolution and the rule of the councils.

One of the achievements of the current nationwide movement has been the creation of nationwide solidarity among all the ethnicities of Iran. Indeed, the name and blood of Zhina (Mahsa) has been the code of this historical solidarity. This magnificent unity, solidarity and resistance in Kurdistan and Khuzestan and from the north, east, west and south of Iran, has destroyed all the efforts of imperialism and the Islamic regime to divide and rule.

The society has risen to overthrow the Islamic Republic. Our target is to continue to march forward towards the workers revolution.

Read the rest here:

Iran: 'Society has risen to overthrow the Islamic Republic' - Green Left

When prison reformer Johnny Perez was incarcerated he made sheets, underwear and pillowcases working for Corcraft, a manufacturing division of New York State Correctional Services that uses prisoners to manufacture products for state and local agencies. His pay ranged between 17 cents and 36 cents an hour.

We have a system that forces people to work and not only forces them to work but does not give them an adequate living wage, said Perez. Slavery by any name is wrong. Slavery in any shape or form is wrong.

Perez is now part of a nationwide movement that hopes to reform what some have called the slavery loophole that allows incarcerated people to be paid tiny sums for jobs that if they refuse to do them can have dire consequences.

The 13th amendment of the US constitution, ratified in 1865, abolished slavery and involuntary servitude. But it contained an exception for a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted.

This exception clause has been used to exploit prisoners in the US as workers, paying them nothing to a few dollars a day to perform jobs ranging from prison services to manufacturing or working for private employers where the majority of their pay is deducted for room and board and other expenses by the jurisdictions where they are incarcerated.

A report published by the American Civil Liberties Union in June 2022 found about 800,000 prisoners out of the 1.2 million in state and federal prisons are forced to work, generating a conservative estimate of $11bn annually in goods and services while average wages range from 13 cents to 52 cents per hour. Five states Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Mississippi and Texas force prisoners to work without pay. The report concluded that the labor conditions of US prisoners violate fundamental human rights to life and dignity.

A campaign to amend the constitution at the federal level and end the exception of the 13th amendment is being promoted by the US representative Nikema Williams and the senator Jeff Merkley. The bill has 175 co-sponsors in the House, 170 Democrats and 5 Republicans, and 14 co-sponsors in the US Senate, but has yet to leave committee for a floor vote in either the House or Senate.

In the meantime the #EndTheException coalition, consisting of more than 80 national organizations, including criminal justice reform, civil rights and labor groups, is leading efforts to pass the abolition amendment at the federal level and there are several local organizers fighting to pass ballot initiatives at the state level.

In November voters will decide on whether to remove exception clauses from their state constitutions in Alabama, Louisiana, Oregon, Tennessee and Vermont. An abolition amendment passed in the California assembly, but failed to receive a Senate vote this year so that it could be on the ballot for voters this November.

The reality is that it is 2022 and in the United States, slavery is still legal, said Bianca Tylek, founder and executive director of the non-profit Worth Rises. These five states would join Colorado, Utah and Nebraska, states that have already ended the exception of their states constitutions. And so that would be exciting, that would bring that number to eight, with five out the eight being red states and I think that bodes well for where the campaign can go at the federal level.

It is time for change, said Johnny Perez. He emphasized that in prison, individuals arent provided adequate basic necessities such as food, toiletries, clothing and office supplies, and that the measly wages paid by these jobs dont cover these extra expenses.

Refusing a work assignment can also have adverse consequences, he said, ranging from being placed in solitary confinement to having any work issues placed on your record which affects parole and status within a prison that determines what privileges you receive. Workers in prison do not get any paid time off and are often forced to work even when sick unless an infirmary affirms they are not able to work.

Despite having five years full-time experience manufacturing textiles while in prison, that experience isnt included on Perezs rsum; incarcerated people, rather than have educational programs available to better support them upon release, are forced to do arduous manual labor jobs and often arent able to find work in the same industry when they are released.

Its still continuing to happen and it disproportionately impacts Black, brown and Indigenous people in this country, said Perez. So long as the exception clause exists, we will always have an underclass in this society that is going to be the dumping ground for our problems and our shortcomings.

This month the #EndTheException coalition launched the Except For Me digital campaign to raise awareness of the issues, ending with the delivery of a petition to Congress in support of the abolition amendment and an art installation in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

This exception is about people and its about people for whom the 13th amendment doesnt apply, added Tylek. We really want people to see those people and see the people that society has successfully otherwise hidden away.

Among those featured in the campaign is Britt White, who worked at a Burger King franchise in Alabama while in community status until 2014; about 60% of her wages were taken by the state of Alabama to cover fees, room and board or restitution.

Prison itself is expensive, said White. I can only speak for the state of Alabama where I was incarcerated, so providing hygiene, trying to supplement the lack of nourishment is very expensive, and my family had their own bills and financial responsibilities they had to take care of. I still had more support than most people did and it was still very difficult to survive in prison because everything has a cost associated with it.

White explained there were medical fees associated with received medical care and sometimes the food provided was not fit for human consumption.

I just cant emphasize enough the lack of agency that you have, added White. If we are going to allow people who are incarcerated to work jobs, we need to pay them a livable wage and we need to center their dignity. We dont need to place them in positions where there are hostile environments where they can be retaliated against and lose their agency.

Her experience in the Alabama department of corrections drove her to work as an organizer in criminal justice reform to address the corruption and despair she witnessed and experienced in the prison system.

We cannot condemn people, and then say that you deserve to be put away or you cant come back to society, youre not trustworthy enough to live in the community with other people, but you are still good enough for us to make a profit. That is unforgivable, White said. And that is the part that is still very reminiscent of slavery that my ancestors went through is that they were not good enough to be viewed as 100% as human beings, but they werent substantial enough to make a profit off of. That is the exception that has to be ended in our communities.

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Slavery by any name is wrong: the push to end forced labor in prisons - The Guardian US

Ballot measures related to abortion, marijuana, and slavery are among a diverse array of issues that voters in 37 states will decide at the polls this fall.

Taxes, infrastructure bonds, crime, minimum wage, elections, and the structure of state governments are also among common themes on Nov. 8 ballots nationwide.

An expected flurry of measures related to sports betting and ranked voting failed to qualify for the midterm elections, and there are relatively few related to firearms and Medicaid expansion, which have been common ballot issues over the past decade.

Five abortion-related measures, five that seek to legalize recreational marijuana, and four formally banning slavery as punishment are among 129 proposed constitutional amendments to be decided.

Voters in four states have already cast ballots on five proposals in 2022, with Louisianans to see three in a Dec. 10 special election.

Of the 37 states with proposals on Nov. 8 ballots, voters in 14 will see at least four.

Alabamas and Colorados ballots both have 11 proposals, while 10 will go before Arizonans. Eight proposals are on tap in Louisianawith the three extra being set for Decemberand seven are certified for the polls in California.

Iowans will see a Right to Keep and Bear Arms Amendment, Californians will decide on a proposed flavored tobacco products ban, Alabamans will see a Broadband Internet Infrastructure Funding Amendment, and Nevadans will decide on a request to become the third state to adopt a total Top-Five Ranked Choice Voting system.

South Dakotans will see a proposed Medicaid expansion initiative, Oregon voters will see a Right to Healthcare Amendment, and Massachusetts residents will be asked if they want to remove proof of citizenship or immigration status when applying for a drivers license.

Heres a roundup of 11 prominent Nov. 8 ballot measure themes:

On Nov. 8, abortion will be on the ballot in five states, with California, Vermont, and Michigan voters seeing proposals to enshrine abortion access and those in Montana and Kentucky seeing proposals to curb it.Kansans rejected a proposal on Aug. 2 to remove abortion access from their state constitution.

The Michigan and Kentucky measures will be the most-watched.

The proposed Michigan Right to Reproductive Freedom measure would create a state constitutional right to make and effectuate decisions about all matters relating to pregnancy, including but not limited to contraception, sterilization, [and] abortion care.

Kentuckys Yes for Life Amendment 2 asks voters to vote yes or no to a proposed amendment that states, To protect human life, nothing in this Constitution shall be construed to secure or protect a right to abortion or require the funding of abortion.

If voters in five statesArkansas, Maryland, Missouri,North Dakota, and South Dakotalegalize adult recreational use of marijuana on Nov. 8, it will be legal in nearly half of the 50 states.

According to the National Conference of State Legislatures, adult use of marijuana is currently legal in 19 states, while 37 states have legal medical marijuana programs.

New Hampshire became the 19th state to legalize recreational marijuana when lawmakers adopted a 2022 measure allowing cannabis use by those aged 21 and older.

Legalization ballot measures are planned for Mississippi in 2023, and two such measures are collecting signatures for Wyomings 2024 ballot.

Earlier this year, as many as 15 legalization proposals across nine states were vying for the ballot, including as many as five in Arkansas.

In Colorado, where voters approved recreational marijuana in 2012, theyll now vote on Proposition 122, the Decriminalization and Regulated Access Program for Certain Psychedelic Plants and Fungi Initiative.

Slavery may be banned under the U.S. Constitution but apparently not in some state constitutions.

To clear that up, voters in Louisiana, Oregon, Tennessee, and Vermont will be asked to remove involuntary servitude (Louisiana) and slavery (Oregon, Tennessee, and Vermont) as punishment for a crime in theirconstitutions.

Alabamas Amendment 1 and Ohios Issue 1 both propose tightening bail requirements. Missouris Amendment 4 would allow the state Legislature to require that cities increase police funding without state reimbursement.

Among varied proposals, three Louisiana and two Georgia measures seek property tax exemptions for the elderly, disabled, and veterans, for timber equipment, and in disaster areas.

Idaho voters will see proposed income and corporate tax changes, and in Colorado, two proposed income tax reductions are on the ballot, including Proposition 121: the State Income Tax Rate Reduction Initiative.

Californias Proposition 30 would impose a tax on income of more than $2 million for a Zero-Emissions Vehicles and Wildfire Prevention Initiative, while Massachusettss Question 1 asks voters to approve a tax on income of more than $1 million for education and transportation improvements.

Arizonas Proposition 132 seeks to require a 60 percent supermajority to approve any ballot measure that increases taxes.

Nebraska and Nevada voters will see proposed constitutional amendments addressing minimum wages.

Nebraska Initiative 433 would increase the states current $9 per hour minimum wage to $15 per hour by Jan. 1, 2026. Nevadas Question 2 would increase the states current $9.50 per hour minimum wage to$12 per hour by July 1, 2024.

In Illinois, voters will see Amendment 1, a Right to Collective Bargaining Measure, while for voters in Tennessee, a Right-to-Work Amendment is on the ballot.

Seven measures across six states address elections and campaign funding.

Michigans Proposal 2, the Right to Voting Policies Amendment, would reduce the requirements for legal voting, and Connecticuts proposed Allow for Early Voting Amendment would allow for early voting in the state, if approved.

There are three election integrity measures on tap: Arizonas Proposition 309, the Voter Identification Requirements for Mail-In Ballots and In-Person Voting Measure; Nebraskas Initiative 432, the Photo Voter Identification Initiative; andOhios Issue 2, aCitizenship Voting Requirement Amendment.

Voters in three states will see four proposals seeking to impose restrictions on the citizen initiative process.

Arkansass Issue 2 would require a 60 percent supermajority to adopt ballot measures, Colorados Proposition GG would require that income tax effects be included in initiative analyses, and Arizonas propositions 128 and 129 would tighten language and title requirements.

Voters in three states will be asked if they want to appoint delegates to a convention to revise and amend their states constitution.

Theyre among 14 states in which the states constitution mandates the measure be presented to voters at stipulated intervals. In Alaska and New Hampshire, the Constitutional Convention Question must be asked every 10 years; in Missouri, it must be asked every 20 years.

Arizona voters will decide if they want to create a lieutenant governor office. In Arkansas and Idaho, proposals would allow the state legislature to call special sessions without the governors assent.

Michigan and North Dakota voters will be asked if they want to impose term limits on state lawmakers and, in North Dakota, the governor. A measure tightening residency requirements for state legislators is on the Maryland ballot.

According to the American Gaming Association (AGA), 33 states have legalized sports betting since the U.S. Supreme Court gave states the authority to regulate such wagering in 2018.

With the boom in online and mobile betting, sports gaming revenue topped $4.3 billion in 2021, the AGA reported. Goldman Sachs projects that the market will top $40 billion per year in the United States by 2033.

California voters will see two proposed constitutional amendments seeking to legalize sports wagering, with tax revenues from betting being put toward addressing homelessness and mental illness.

The Tribal Sports Wagering Act is sponsored by a 40-tribe coalition that spent about $25 million promoting the policy, and the California Solutions to Homelessness and Mental Health Support Act is backed by seven sportsbooks, including FanDuel and DraftKings, which staked the campaign $100 million.

Gaming in Californian tribal casinos has been legal for more than 20 years, while gambling at horse tracks has been legal since the 1930s. But online and mobile sports bettingan estimated $3 billion annual marketis illegal in California.

Florida voters wont see a measure related to gaming or sports wagering on their ballot, at least not in 2024, until numerous lawsuits are resolved.

Florida lawmakers legalized sports betting when they approved a 30-year gaming compact with the Seminole Tribe of Florida in May 2021.

In exchange for at least $500 million per year, the pact gives the Seminoles Hard Rock Digital platform exclusive control of blackjack, craps, fantasy, and sports betting at its seven casinos and on nontribal parimutuels.

The Seminoles launched the site in late 2021, but it has been offline for most of 2022 because of lawsuits.

Several prospective constitutional amendments related to gaming vied for Floridas 2022 ballot, including one asking voters to approve non-Seminole casinos and one sponsored by a committee supported by DraftKings and FanDuel to legalize sports gaming beyond Seminole casinos.

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John Haughey has been a working journalist since 1978 with an extensive background in local government, state legislatures, and growth and development. A graduate of the University of Wyoming, he is a Navy veteran who fought fires at sea during three deployments aboard USS Constellation. Hes been a reporter for daily newspapers in California, Washington, Wyoming, New York, and Florida; a staff writer for Manhattan-based business trade publications.

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Abortion, Marijuana, Slavery: 11 Themes to 2022 Ballot Measures - The Epoch Times