Category Archives: Wage Slavery

Amazon has been hit by walk-outs and strike action across the globe in protest at poor pay and conditions, as inflation hits economies everywhere.

After wildcat strikes in the UK following a pay offer that amounted to a real-terms pay cut, workers in the US, Turkey and Germany have staged strike action and protests over the last fortnight.

Workers walked off the job at a warehouse in San Bernardino in southern California in the heart of the companys US supply chain on Monday.

Inland Empire Amazon Workers United said 160 workers walked out in a dispute over pay and sweltering working conditions. Amazon said 74 workers walked out.

The walk-out came after about 900 workers signed a petition demanding that the base rate of pay be increased from $17 an hour to $22, saying: Over 75% of our income is going into rent alone [] We can barely afford to live in todays economy.

Workers are also demanding additional protections from the heat. The temperature hit 35C in San Bernardino on 24 days in July.

Melissa Ojeda, who has worked at the facility for more than a year, said: Working in the heat feels like you are suffocating. You need to take breaks and you can overheat really easily. They dont make it easy to take breaks to allow your body to cool down.

The facility, known as KSBD, opened in 2021 amid opposition over air pollution and concerns about job quality. It is one of only three Amazon air-hubs in the USA, according to the Warehouse Workers Resource Centre. Amazons air freight division uses Prime-branded planes to fly packages around the country. While a small proportion of the 1,500 workers at the facility walked out, these walkouts can cause significant disruption.

Paul Flaningan, Amazon spokesperson, said: We are proud to provide full-time employees at our San Bernardino Air Hub and throughout the region a minimum starting wage of $17 an hour.

Full-time employees can earn up to $19.25 an hour and receive benefits including health care and paid parental leave, Flaningan said.

While were always listening and looking at ways to improve, we remain proud of the competitive pay, comprehensive benefits, and engaging, safe work experience we provide our teams in the region.

While there are many established ways of ensuring we hear the opinions of our employees inside our business, we also respect their right to make their opinions known externally, said Flaningan.

Those established ways apparently arent doing it for workers at the ALB1 warehouse in upstate New York, who filed a petition for a union election on Tuesday. The workers are organising with the Amazon Labor Union (ALU), which successfully won the first union election at a US Amazon warehouse in Staten Island, New York in April.

ALU is currently battling against a legal onslaught from Amazon, which has appealed the election in Staten Island on the grounds of alleged illegal tactics from the union such as handing out marajuana to workers.

Amazon workers in the US are now getting solidarity from an unusual source TikTok influencers. The People Over Prime Coalition is a group of 70 content creators boasting a combined following of 51 million. The group has pledged to stop Amazon monetising TikTok until the demands of the Amazon Labor Union which include a $30 an hour minimum wage are met.

A statement from the People Over Prime Coalition says: Amazons widespread mistreatment of their workers and blatant use of union busting tactics will no longer be tolerated by the TikTok Community or TikTok Creators.

Amazon has tried to cosy up to content creators over recent years. With the Amazon Influencer Program, creators can make money by recommending products in personalised Amazon storefronts. People Over Prime will refuse sponsorship deals and will not sell products on Amazon Storefront.

Amazon, which has long been criticised for its working conditions and alleged union busting tactics, is also facing headaches elsewhere.

In Germany Amazons second biggest market after the US workers struck at a warehouse in Bad Hersfeld on Friday 12 August. Mechthild Middeke, secretary for the Verdi trade union, said the cost of living is a heavy burden for many employees.

If Amazon makes Prime membership 28% more expensive and justifies this with rising costs, then we have these rising costs too and want compensation for it, she said.

Amazon has resisted calls from Verdi to sign up to a collective bargaining agreement.

Amazon has said logistics workers in Germany receive at least 12 per hour, rising to at least 12.50 by autumn.

Workers also staged a sit-in protest at Amazons main warehouse in Turkey, where inflation recently hit a 24-year-high of 79.6%, on 8 August.

Around 600 workers at the facility in the western province of Kocaeli had signed a letter demanding higher wages, health and security measures, worker transport services and meal services.

Local media reports that Amazon transferred disgruntled workers to a distant warehouse and those who refused were dismissed.

Dismissed workers staged a sit in protest with the help of DGD-Sen, the warehouse, port, shipyard and marine workers union.

A statement from trade union Umut-Sen said: The workers didnt let the heat, dust and smoke get in the way of fighting for their friends and their rights.

Commenting on working conditions in Turkey generally, Peoples Democratic Party (HDP) MP Zuleyha Gulum said: We have always been exploited, but its now slavery that is imposed upon us. The employers are now trying to lower the price of labour more than ever. And were actually living in a country where the government calls on the foreign capitalists and says, Labour is cheap here, come and exploit these workers as much as you wish.

The news follows wildcat strikes in the UK, where protests broke out at several warehouses in August following a pay offer that would amount to a real-terms pay-cut amid sky-rocketting inflation.

The strikes come as Amazon faces pressure from consumers because of inflation. In the UK 600,000 customers left Amazon Prime in the second quarter of 2022, according to Ofcom. But at least Amazon doesnt have to worry about paying too much tax in the UK. Tax breaks brought in when Rishi Sunak was chancellor will let the company off the hook for at least another two years, according to a report from the Fair Tax Foundation.

Meanwhile in the States, Amazon is being investigated over concerns that it manipulates users into signing up for Prime accounts. The company accused the Federal Trade Commission of harassing chairman Jeff Bezos and CEO Andy Jassy by asking them to testify in the investigation.

Simon Childs is a commissioning editor and reporter for Novara Media.

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Amazon Hit by Strikes Across the Globe - Novara Media

Our relationship with work can be summed up in two words: Its complicated.

Here in the United States (and elsewhere, too), work dominates our lives. Upon meeting someone new, our standard first question is What do you do for a living? Our identities, even our names, often reflect an occupation.

And yet, for too many people, their work is a thankless task for which they are undercompensated. It provides just enough sustenance to get through the day, so they can wake up the next and start over. And the countless hours take a toll on physical and mental health, relationships, and families.

Ill sleep when Im dead is a common refrain. Earlier generations said, Idle hands are the devils tools, a phrase that may have come from a 4th-century letter written by St. Jerome, in which he captured the essence of the ancient workaholic: fac et aliquid operis, ut semper te diabolus inveniat occupatum. Or, Engage in some occupation, so that the devil may always find you busy.

Theres nothing like the threat of eternal damnation to motivate you to drag yourself out the door for another day in the trenches.

Some people may like, or even love, the work they do. But for many others, work is a compendium of indignitieslow pay, inadequate benefits, toxic and abusive environments, to say nothing of the disrespect, discrimination, and exclusion that greets many people of color and other historically excluded groups.

But what if it wasnt? What if work were a thing we chose to do with our time because we wanted to do it and not because we needed to keep destitution at bay? What if our worth as people in society was measured by something other than where we punch a clock? What if work was something that lifted up and supported our whole lives, instead of something that we endure just so that we may live?

A straight line can be drawn through the history of work in Western societies, from the slavery of the Roman Empire (scholars estimate as much as 10% of the population of the empire was enslaved), to the feudalism of medieval Europe, to the Industrial Revolution in the 18th and 19th centuries. That line is ownershipthe wealthy could buy and sell people, land, or labor to accrue more wealth, all at the expense of the poor.

Whether one places the beginning of capitalism in the heart of industrializing England or in the merchant classes of the Renaissance, by the time Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels wrote about the problems of capitalism in 1848, the economic system was rooted firmly in place across Europe and the Americas.

Marxs point (one of many) was that slavery, feudalism, and capitalism have something very similar in common. In all of those systems, a very small number of people are in the catbird seat, says Richard Wolff, professor emeritus of economics at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst and a visiting professor at the New School in New York City.

Capitalisms initial promise, Wolff contends, was that it would replace slavery and feudalism, which is what formed the intellectual backdrop of the American and French revolutions. Many workers and even elites saw the end of these oppressive systems to be a step toward freedom. But deposing monarchies and freeing serfs often just resulted in the replacement of one overlord with another, as wealth transferred from the landed gentry to a new moneyed elite (who in some cases were the same people), and businesses were incentivized to keep their workers poor and powerless.

Capitalism is its own obstacle to achieving the very things capitalism promised in overthrowing feudalism and slavery, Wolff says.

Today, the workplace remains dehumanizing, even with more labor protections in place than in eras past.

The 40-hour work week was itself a compromise. Enacted in U.S. law in 1940, it was intended not to prevent laborers from working 16 hours a day, six or seven days a week, but to reduce unemployment by preventing one person from holding what is now the equivalent of two or more full-time jobs. Even today, there are enough loopholes in federal law that many employees simply cant clock out at 5 p.m. if they want to remain employed.

Pair this with a widespread societal notion that we must love our jobs, or find them fulfilling, and were set up with a disconnect, given that so many jobs are grinding, exhausting, demeaning, and even dangerous. Or they serve no purpose other than to perpetuate work. But we do them because we need the money.

As the COVID-19 pandemic ravaged our communities and upended the world economy, it became clear there was a demand for something new. Unregulated capitalism was shown to be broken: Supply chains shattered, workplaces became disease vectors, and relationships with families and friends were severed by death, chronic illness, and polarization.

The unemployment rate peaked at nearly 15% in April 2020, the highest recorded level since 1948, according to the Congressional Research Service. Between January and April of that year, more than 22 million non-farm jobs were lost. Other people found themselves labeled essential workers, forced to continue working in person in order to keep the meatpacking plants producing and the deliveries of food, toilet paper, and cleaning products dashing to the doors of middle-class people now working from the relative safety of their homes.

Frontline workers, especially in health care, child care, education, and public safetymany of whom are women, people of color, or bothhad to make significant adaptations to how they performed their jobs, and many health care workers experienced significantly higher levels of risk of infection, anxiety, depression, and burnout. Lacking government mandates, only some businesses offered hazard pay for those forced to work in close quarters, and even that meager benefit quickly expired.

One notable effect of this radical societal reordering has come to be termed the Great Resignation. More than 47 million people in the U.S. voluntarily quit their jobs in 2021, according to the Society for Human Resource Management. And while many of those workers quit because theyre fed up with an unrewarding job, others are rethinking the overall role of work in their lives, or fighting to improve their working conditions by forming labor unions at companies like Amazon and Starbucks, or even staging walkouts at non-unionized workplaces.

The pandemic proved to be the tipping point. Many of the people who died during the early stages of the pandemic were the essential workers in the service, health care, and manufacturing sectors: Those who kept the world moving while others had the privilege of staying home, says Angelica Geter, the chief strategy officer of the Black Womens Health Imperative in Atlanta.

Geter, who also holds a doctorate of public health, says that this was mostly Black and Brown workers, and especially women.

Most workers who died from COVID in 2020, before vaccines became available, were in retail, service, or blue-collar jobs that offered no opportunities for remote work.

According to one 2022 study published in the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, most workers who died from COVID in 2020, before vaccines became available, were in retail, service, or blue-collar jobs that offered no opportunities for remote work. Nearly 45% of non-White women in low-wage jobs worked in the service industry, and about 60% of men of any race in low-wage jobs worked in blue-collar professions.

Another study documented the death rate of Black workers being higher than any other racial group and found that among essential workers, those higher rates were also because Black people are disproportionately represented among many jobs that expose them to higher risks of infection.

The decision for many of those people was simple: go to work and risk illness, or stay at home with their families and risk impoverishment. The pandemic exposed the inequalities that we already knew about but seldom saw in such stark terms.

Thats exactly what COVID did, Geter says. It painted the whole picture and brought it forth.

The Black Womens Health Imperative was founded in 1983 to target the most pressing issues facing Black women and girls in the U.S. Its long-running initiatives include programs in diabetes prevention, HIV prevention and care, a network at historically Black colleges and universities, and distributing menstrual products in Black communities.

Frustration with discrimination, racism, and workplace toxicity, along with the cumulative negative health effects, boiled over when COVID exerted maximum pressure on the workplace and brought many people outside into the streets.

It was not a coincidence that years of frustration with discrimination, racism, and workplace toxicity, along with the cumulative negative health effects, boiled over when COVID exerted maximum pressure on the workplace and brought many people outside into the streets, first protesting poor working conditions, and then racism and police brutality.

Enough was enough, Geter says.

Most people dont make the connection between being overworked and the impact on your health, Geter adds. Recovery from burnout can take years, because it often has been compounded by the experience of discrimination. Even the expectation of discrimination or microaggressions in the workplace takes a mental and emotional toll, which can lead to precursors of heart disease, breast cancer, and other health conditions that disproportionately affect Black women.

When I go into an office of other people, I represent the entire Black community, Geter says. The stress of anticipation of thatit just wears on you.

Many companies tried to meet that need for their own workers with enhanced benefits during the pandemic and new diversity, equity, and inclusion programs.

During 2020 we saw Fortune 500, Fortune 1,000 companies allocate billions of dollars to promote equity in their workplaces, Geter says. They needed tools and information and resources to know what to do with them.

But DEI programs alone arent enough to make sustainable changes. There are still too many barriers that keep people of color out of promotions, hiring opportunities, pay increases, and retention. Education is needed, but so is accountability, and the funding to pay for both.

If we dont create change that empowers the people who have the least amount of privilege and experience discrimination the most, we will see the same issues over and over again, Geter says.

The Health Imperatives answer to that was to develop a multipart initiative, including an employee-centered wellness toolkit for businesses that highlights workplace culture, training, hiring, and research that centers the voices of Black womenin an effort to reduce the physical, mental, and emotional harm that so many experience in their workplace environments.

Tiffany Jana, a writer, speaker, and pleasure activist who has consulted with businesses for nearly 20 years to create more human-centered workplaces, also says its necessary that businesses recognize what their employees are going through in the present day, not just as employees, but as full human beings.

What I think is missing from the workplace is the acknowledgement and the honoring of, essentially, the sanctity of humanity, Jana says. Everyone who chooses to raise their hand and then come and work for your company, thats a deeply sacred gift, thats an incredibly special, beautiful thing that we have failed to honor appropriately.

Another consideration for businesses in creating a more people-centered workplace lies in their structure as profit-making enterprises. Jana has incorporated two of their three companies as B Corps that adhere to triple-bottom-line accounting: focusing as much on social and environmental concerns as profits.

Over the last, say, eight, nine years, the pressure has been coming up from the bottom. [People] within organizations and institutions are saying, Wait a minute, you know, we really love the work, we really love the company, but we dont feel like were being valued, Jana says. And theyve been demanding culture-based work to help create an environment that is more gracious and welcoming and human-centered.

If the current trend in workplace evolution is toward a more human-centered environment, the question then becomes whether that evolution is possible in businesses whose only goal is to maximize profits for their shareholders. Wolff, who has studied and written extensively about the history of capitalism and socialism, says it isnt. But what can support a human-centered future is more worker-owned co-ops and democratic governance structures, and not just in small shops or artisan manufacturers.

Im not sure that scaling is all that big a deal, he says. If making big units is going to cost us the ability to have a democratic system, we should at least question the size, and if thats necessary.

The world already has seen how a smaller co-op can evolve into a larger but still democratic organization. Mondragn, a diversified corporation founded in 1956 in Spains Basque region, is the worlds largest worker-owned cooperative, with 80,000 employees, and incorporates democratic decision-making at all levels of the company.

It is arguably one of Spains most successful companies, with branches in 31 countries. It incorporates 96 self-governing cooperatives in sectors as wide-ranging as industry, retail, finance, and education.

Mondragn is only the largest example. About two-thirds of the 4.5 million people in the Italian region of Emilia Romagna, one of the wealthiest areas in the European Union, are co-op members, and they produce 30% of the regions gross domestic product.

Its a society in which co-ops and top-down businesses coexist peacefully.

Its a real laboratory for the question How could a society be a mixed society? Wolff says. Theyve normalized it.

In the U.S., examples of thriving co-ops include S Se Puede Womens Cooperative, a house- and office-cleaning cooperative run largely by Hispanic immigrant women. Founded in Brooklyn, New York, in 2006, the organization is now one of several immigrant-run cleaning cooperatives in the city.

The history of co-ops in the U.S. extends back to pre-colonization Indigenous communities, and practices created in the Black community after the Civil War, rooted in African traditions.

Indigenous societies were and still are much more communitarian. Strong ties to families and tribes keep many Native Americans in close proximity to their communities. That makes for some difficult choices: If forced to choose between having a job and building a career in a distant city, or returning to a rural reservation to care for family and participate in their culture, many choose the latter.

That also contributes to the level of unemployment in Indigenous societies, which is already the highest in the nation.

In one study, in which several members of Native reservations were interviewed about their work lives, the lead researcher, Ahmed Al-Asfour, then a professor at Oglala Lakota College and now the director of the Center for Workforce Development at Southern Illinois University, found that strong community ties often took priority in decisions about work.

As one participant said, it is all about we not I and this is a core belief for individuals living in collectivistic societies, Al-Asfour wrote.

Thats led to a mismatch between those ties and the expectations of the non-Native economy.

The discrimination highlighted in the interviews stresses the cultural tensions between Natives and non-Natives as the Natives culture, values, and traditions continue to be undermined and underscored by non-Natives, Al-Asfour wrote.

A wholesale evolution of capitalism into a more democratic system is possible, but it has to start with a shift in ideology, Wolff says.

Human beings have come to adapt to capitalism by thinking there is something necessary or logical or socially efficient by having the nature of work defined by and governed by profitability, he says.

In other words, we have bought into the idea that pay is equivalent to worth.

But that ideology doesnt measure all of the consequences of a human being who works: The effort of performing labor changes the body and mind of the worker, it changes people who interact with the worker, and it changes the natural environment.

If work were to be truly fully compensated, youd have to do what hasnt ever been done: Figure out all the effects, Wolff says.

That means structural change becomes as important as an ideological shift. If a business that makes a product loses its market, the business usually cuts workforce to preserve its profits. A democratically run co-op that prioritizes worker well-being might take a different actionchange products being made, retrain workers, or cut hours of work so production meets the existing demand.

This kind of structural changewhich is anathema in capitalismthis also would have to be in place. That would make this a much easier conversation, Wolff says.

Another key development would be a society that disassociates value from the workplace. Policies like universal health care or basic income would reduce the need for people to remain in dehumanizing jobs and allow them to pursue endeavors more in line with their value system.

Thats something Tiffany Jana has tried to pursue in their own life, designing their work to be fulfilling and complementary to their life, and encouraging others to follow that example.

When I meet people, I dont ask them, What do you do? or Where do you work? Jana says. I ask them, How do you spend your time? And it confuses the crap out of them.

Each of us has a beautiful opportunity, in this season, to decide how we want to define ourselves, how we want to contribute to this new societal structure, this new way of being, and then work diligently towards creating that change, Jana says.

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The Past, Present, and Future of Work - YES! Magazine

Both Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak are currently promoting the benefits of the deregulated special economic zones known as freeports, despite evidence that they encourage organised crime, money-laundering, drug-trafficking and terrorist finance, though admittedly the first three of these supposed problems appear to be common leisure activities for most Tory MPs. Im here all week! Try the Colombian!!

Joined-up thinking, or paranoia depending on your point of view, suggests the next logical step from freeports is charter cities, allowing whole regions to be run as corporate fiefs by big business, stripped of tiresome regulations in the pursuit of profit. As long ago as 2010, the rightwing Tufton Street-based Taxpayers Alliance thinktank proposed that Hull became our own version of a charter city [with] minimum wage, working-hours regulations, social benefits for working-age citizens, and central government planning regulations abolished. Businesses that have made themselves useful to the Tories will doubtless be the beneficiaries here, just as they were when the PPE billions were doled out with due diligence.

Could Boris Johnsons wedding venue donors at Daylesford Organic be given a south Devon section incorporating the whole of Dartmoor and the entire South Hams region? Could Ultimo, the lingerie company formerly owned by the Tory peer Michelle Mone, be handed the entire east Midlands from Burton upon Trent to Upper Broughton? Will the Tory-adjacent businesswoman Jacqueline Golds Ann Summers organisation be left to run the Humber sector from Spurn Head to Howden, including Hull? Can Matt Handcocks local pub landlord be allowed to do whatever he wants with both Needham Market and Clacton-on-Sea? And if this is the case, can these companies be trusted to respect the rights of the citizens of whom they will have dominion, when there are no regulations to protect them?

Should the people of Chagford and Yelverton be made to eat deregulated Daylesford Organic pork pies, which could possibly fuse with their genes at a subatomic level and turn them into half-human pig creatures? Should the people of Corby and Kettering be forced to wear untested Ultimo corsets, which could explode on contact with back sweat? Should people from Hull, and their orifices, be used as guinea pigs for untried, and potentially unsafe, Ann Summers sex toys, such as a turbo-charged, post-Brexit version of the Ann Summers bestseller the Anal Training Kit? As if Brexit wasnt enough of a disaster as it is, are these some of the new Brexit benefits currently rolling down the sewage outlet of post-Brexit Tory deregulation?

Its fun, isnt it, to joke about the Brexit Tories attempts to turn Britain into a horrible dystopia designed to make money for their friends at the expense of the environment, the arts, education, human rights and so forth. Ha! Ha! Ha! But, here at the Edinburgh fringe, I popped out between my own shows to see two Ukrainian standups in From Ukraine With Laughs. Pavlo Voytovych presented a slick club set with cosmopolitan, pan-European reference points that would chime in his adopted Berlin; Dima Watermelons deadpan absurdity was darkened by attempts to deal with the systematic stealing of his homeland, the militarised erasure of the culture he grew up in. It made me think about what it would be like to lose the country you loved. And I realised I was.

Its hysterical, of course, to compare the Brexit Tories stealthy but determined dismantling of the Britain we cherish with Putins physical assault on Ukraine. But if youve ever shown an interest in architecture, gardening or nature, doubtless the infiltrated algorithms of your social media feeds are steering you towards the respectable-looking Restore Trust organisation, which is reminding National Trust members to renew their memberships before 26 August, so they can vote in the charitys autumn AGM. All well and good, surely?

Nominally a forum where members and friends of the National Trust can discuss their concerns about the charitys future, the innocuous-sounding Restore Trust is in fact designed to stem the National Trusts drift towards wokeness (by addressing links between its sites and slavery, for example). Restore Trust backer Neil Record, for one, is a financier and sometime Tory donor who has funded the climate-denial lobby group the Global Warming Policy Foundation, also based on Tufton Street, and chairs Net Zero Watch, a thinktank spin-off on the same street lobbying to scrap net zero commitments. This is a worrying development given the vast tracts of land the National Trust manages and the millions of non-politically affiliated invertebrates in its keep. Butterflies dont care about unisex toilets. They just want the plants they lay their eggs on to flower when they are supposed to.

In last years National Trust board member elections, one of the six preferred candidates that Restore Trusts supporters hoped to vote into a position of influence was the self-styled reverend Stephen Green, who has supported the death penalty for gay sex in Uganda, believes all Muslims are going to hell and, when he was campaigning against a theatre piece I worked on decades ago, refused to shake the hand of a gay journalist because he knew where it had been. It is not known if Green believes garden design in National Trust properties should reflect one specific period in the houses history or attempt to illustrate many simultaneously. We do know, however, that he thinks it is impossible for a husband to rape his wife.

It seems bizarre that it is suddenly necessary for reasonable people, who probably only joined the National Trust because they like carrot cake and a firm hanging buttress, to make sure they vote in the organisations 5 November AGM to prevent fun days out in historic locations becoming weaponised as yet another front in the far rights culture war against everything nice. But we are where we are.

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National Trust members: get ready to choke on your carrot cake - The Guardian

No, because the face of a little girl in Bangladesh, or a little boy in Cambodia, and the thought of a nuclear blast going off close enough to them for them to lose their life, is enough. Again, this is a love letter. This is a love letter to all the civilians of the planet. Philipos Melaku-Bello, in response to a question from Jacob Morgan of Slate Plus about whether he had ever thought about ending his now-41-year-old antinuclear vigil outside the White House gates.

In conjunction with Stan Coxs In Real Time monthly dispatches with City Lights Books, I am working on an artwork titled Its Time, starting with a central image and adding drawings that expand the work outward, in concentric ovals, tracking the pivotal events of the next two years, month by month. As part of Its Time, I am also including images that portray people and events that have been either deliberately or lazily almost lost to the popular historical imagination but are still very much part of and connected to the existential kismet of the inhabitants of this heating Earth.

These portraits of human persistence are not actually lost, of course; rather, they serve as connecting threads to the present state of things. Both Tariq Ali and Gore Vidal wrote about this hole-in-history phenomenon and gave it their own labels: respectively, The Extreme Center and The United States of Amnesia.

These threads, frayed and forgotten as they are, must be acknowledged for their timeless place in history, and repaired. Because if we fail to do that, we cant move forward in creating a fairer, more just world. Reparations and justice are part of the same tapestry. Justice for the past goes hand in hand with justice for the present and future.

The first five portraits that Ive placed in this dark center of the Its Time series are those of John Brown, Leonard Peltier, Philipos Melaku-Bello, Mumia Abu-Jamal, and Julian Assange.

If you notice, all of these five men, aside from having been thorns in the side of a state machinery that would rather they disappear from the annals of a dark, white-elitist history, happen to also have long gorgeous hair and/or beards. As if now theres physically more of these five men for the state to disappear. In this age of unrestrained, ecologically destructive growth, the one kind of growth I can wholeheartedly support is this nonviolent, defiant growth on the face and scalp!

Stan and I live in the heart of the conterminous United States. And as we all know, this heart was beating fast and hard on August 2nd when Kansans flocked to the polls and voted no on an amendment that would have stripped women of their right to an abortion. All eyes and ears of the country and the world were on Kansas that evening as the results were coming in, and we demonstrated via the ballot box that womens rights are human rights.

But this wasnt the first time that Kansas voted No on a moral issue of great consequence. On August 2, 1858, 164 years to the day before the abortion referendum, Kansans voted down a ballot initiative that would have legalized slavery in our then-territory. Which brings us to the first of these portraits, that of John Brown, who carried out his militant abolitionist action in Kansas in the three years leading up to the slavery vote, the era of Bleeding Kansas. Brown said No! to slavery and was hanged for it in December, 1859, a year before his vision was partially achieved and Kansas was finally admitted to the Union as a free state.

We all know of Leonard Peltier, Americas longest-held Indigenous political prisoner, who was wrongly convicted of the deaths of two FBI agents in June 1975 on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota. Peltier, a member of the American Indian Movement, was there that day protecting his people against the white supremacists of the time and was handed two consecutive life sentences for it. Many witnesses whose testimony was used to convict him later admitted that FBI agents had coerced them into lying. In 2000, then-President Bill Clinton considered granting clemency to Peltier, but he was hounded by hundreds of FBI agents marching pathetically around the White House, so that put a stop to that.

It is quite possible that Philipos Melaku-Bello was present at the north side of the White House that December day as the agents marched. But how many of us have heard of him? I certainly did not know of him until this past Juneteenth weekend when Stan and I went to DC to join the Poor Peoples and Low-Wage Workers Assembly and Moral March on Washington and to the Polls. After the march, we saw Mr. Melaku-Bello and what he calls his makeshift tent outside the White House fence. He sat in a wheelchair wearing a Rasta cap and Freedom Bus Riders t-shirt, surrounded by human-rights and earth-rights photos, posters, and mementos going back decades. He had a needle and thread and was darning a black pouch adorned with pink and white hearts.

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Just beside him was a poster on which the number 40 had the 0 whited out and replaced with a 1, thereby announcing, 41 YEARS 24/7 ANTI-NUCLEAR PEACE VIGIL. Surviving thru: Rain or Shine; thru Hurricanes; Sleet; Hail; Blizzards; Tornados; H1N1; Coronavirus; 3 BLM Closures. Holders of the 24-Hour Permit for the Black Lives Memorial Fence.

Philipos told us that hes been sitting there since 1984, manning the William Thomas Memorial Peace Vigil, which was established in 1981. He has volunteers that help him maintain the vigil day and night. But the Feds are waiting, he emphasized in an interview with Slate Plus. Theyre waiting for it to be abandoned by way of snowfall, blizzard, hurricaneThats the way it can be taken away, by abandonment.

To me that 4-by-4 foot area that Philipos legally occupies holds within it everything that the moneyed elite of the post-industrial world have had a hand in perpetuating, to the point of no return. Everywhere I looked in that small square I saw messages and images seeking justice for the earth, the civilians of the planet, for Peltier, for Indigenous, and Black and Brown people, for Palestinians, for the poor, for the countless victims of war and displacement, and yes, for Mumia Abu-Jamal and Julian Assange. They were there too.

We know that Mumia will be free. We just want to delay Mumias release as long as possible. Maureen Faulkner, wife of Daniel Faulkner speaking at the Fraternal Order of Police Lodge 5.

Mumias fight for justice has been going on since 1981, the year Philipos anti-nuclear peace vigil was established. He has been appealing for a new trial in the shooting of Philadelphia Police officer Daniel Faulkner since then. Just a couple of days ago I got a newsletter from Mumia supporters at Prison Radio, which read that the current delays are a tactic designed to prevent justice and delay accountability Fighting to keep Mumia in prison is all about limiting exposure. It is all about preserving the fiction that decades of mass incarceration prosecuted by former Philadelphia police chief and mayor Frank Rizzo and former governor of Pennsylvania Ed Rendell are not tainted by police and prosecutorial misconduct. The goal is to prevent the white hot spotlight on Philadelphias long sordid racist history. Having had double bypass surgery in 2021, Mumia has a life-expectancy of 5 years. He will be back in court on October 19.

The United States uses the whole earth as a petri dish for its bottomless extractive and exploitative pursuits and leaves people like Brown, Peltier, Melaku-Bello, Abu-Jamal and Julian Assange, respectively, with a noose; 45 years behind bars and counting; a 4x4 not-to-be-abandoned liberated space; 41 years behind bars and counting; and a possible jail term of 175 years for exposing U.S. war crimes to the world.

What they couldnt tolerate was when Julian Assange was sent video footage which showed an Apache helicopter in Baghdad killing civilians. Ordinary people. That is the principal reason, the exposure of war crimes that caused outrage especially in the intelligence agencies of the United States. Tariq Ali, AlJazeera, August 15.

Was it any coincidence that Assange was clutching a book titled 'Gore Vidal: History of the National Security State in his hand as he was being physically dragged out of the Ecuadorian embassy in London and into a police van in April, 2019? He was trying to send a message. Is it a coincidence that Melaku-Bello was sitting there like a cuddly Rasta Buddha repairing an old pouch? Maybe it was a subconscious message telling us that we need to repair the present and the past for a fairer, more just future.

Whether its criminalization of abolitionism or criminalization of abortion, it isnt hard for one to connect the dots of time to see a pattern emerge. A pattern extinguishing any sparks of accountability for the status quo.

Death by hanging for being an abolitionist; 45 years and counting for being Indigenous; an open air jail cell for a non-violent civil disobedience vigil; 41 years and counting for being Black; and possibly 175 years for exposing war crimes. Thats American justice for you. And how many years does the state give the earth for exposing climate crimes? Well know in less than two years wont we?

Read more here:

Lost Yet Connected in Time: Brown, Peltier, Melaku-Bello, Abu-Jamal, and Assange - LA Progressive

The release of its annual Human Rights Due Diligence and Modern Slavery report for 2021 demonstrates the results of Cocoa Life, its 10-year-old signature cocoa sourcing programme.

Mondelz International said it partners with almost 210,000 farmers in over 2,500 communities and has invested over $400 million to support farmers livelihoods.

In 2021, the company claimed to have doubled its progress towards its goal to establish Child Labour Monitoring and Remediation Systems (CLMRS) in all its Cocoa Life communities in West Africa by 2025. The programme expanded coverage to 1,548 communities, reaching 61% coverage in West Africa.

Preventing and addressing child labour across the West African cocoa sector requires cross-sector collaboration. In 2021, the umbrella International Cocoa Initiative (ICI) composed of Mondelz International and peer companies, suppliers and NGOs reached 590,000 households across Cote dIvoire and Ghana with systems that help prevent and address child labour, the report highlighted.

Mondelz International is also investing CHF3 million ($3 million) towards improving childrens access to quality education in cocoa-growing regions. Lack of access to schooling is a key root cause of child labour, which can only be addressed systemically, it stated.

Along with its progress in supporting human rights across the cocoa supply chain, the 2021 report demonstrates Mondelz Internationals progress in promoting human rights due diligence practices in the sourcing of additional commodities, such as palm oil and hazelnuts.

Through our flagship ingredient sourcing program Cocoa Life, we are learning from our decade of experience on the ground in cocoa communities about the importance of living income, said Laura Stein, Executive Vice President for Corporate & Legal Affairs and General Counsel, Mondelz International. Building on our ongoing focus on promoting human rights, we joined the Sustainable Trade Initiative (IDH) Living Wage roadmap to help advance living wage and income in global supply chains. We will also work with our suppliers with the goal of having all our strategic suppliers engaged on a living wage roadmap by 2030.

Read more from the original source:

Mondelz commits to living wage for cocoa farmers and invests in education programmes for children - ConfectioneryNews.com

Lets be clear: The Court does not have the last word on the Constitution. The text does not say it. Our precedents from the early republic do not support it. American presidents Andrew Jackson, Abraham Lincoln and Franklin Roosevelt have contested it. Distinguished liberal and conservative attorney generals from Robert H. Jackson to Ed Meese have opposed it. Many of the framers, though supportive of the idea of judicial review, would be shocked by the Courts more extreme insistence that it has the final say on the Constitution as opposed to playing a co-equal role in interpreting the document along with the elected branches.

Judicial supremacy has its origins in one of the Courts most shameful decisions. In Dred Scott v. Sandford in 1857, the Court tried to settle the debate about slavery in the territories by declaring that Black people were not citizens under the Constitution. Rather than stop there, the Court declared the Missouri Compromise of 1820 which forbid slavery in northern territories was unconstitutional. It was the second time in American history the Court had struck down a federal law. During the Lincoln-Douglas debates a year later, then-U.S. Senate candidate Abraham Lincoln railed against the Dred Scott decision, called on Congress to overrule it, and rejected the idea the Court had the last word on the constitution.

Even after the post-Civil War amendments, particularly the Fourteenth Amendments first sentence overruling Dred Scott by declaring everyone born in the United States was a citizen, the Court continued to claim to have the last word on the Constitution. As scholars Nikolas Bowie and Daphna Renan have shown, the Court undermined the Fourteenth Amendments promise of equal citizenship during Reconstruction and the late 19th century and usurped the Reconstruction Congresss power to enforce the amendment through legislation.

During the first few decades of the 20th century, liberals opposed judicial supremacy for economic reasons. The Court struck down state and federal laws establishing minimum wages and maximum hours, outlawing child labor, and protecting the right to unionize. Liberal hostility to the judiciary reached a fever pitch in 1935 and 1936 when an extremely conservative Court invalidated Franklin Roosevelts New Deal programs cabining Congresss power to regulate interstate commerce and Congresss granting of power to administrative agencies. The Court also struck down state minimum wage laws by insisting that the Fourteenth Amendments Due Process Clause included a liberty of contract. Everything changed in 1937 when Roosevelt proposed his court-packing plan, the Court stopped invalidating federal and state economic legislation, and Roosevelt began nominating new justices. Attorney General (and future Supreme Court justice) Robert H. Jackson chronicled the clash with the Court in a 1941 bestselling book, The Struggle for Judicial Supremacy.

Liberals, however, seemed to forget their hard-fought victory over judicial supremacy. During the 1950s and 1960s, the Warren Court revived judicial supremacy as it attempted to fulfill the Fourteenth Amendments promise of equal citizenship. The Courts landmark 1954 decision in Brown v. Board of Education, however, is not an example of judicial overreach. Brown was limited to racially separate but equal public schools because of the increasing importance of public education in American life. It did not overrule the Courts infamous 1896 decision in Plessy v. Ferguson permitting racially separate railroad cars. Moreover, Brown was based on twelve years of NAACP legal victories and Supreme Court precedent about graduate and professional schools. If anything, Brown was a modest and minimalist decision.

The Warren Courts efforts to enforce Brown, however, led to its claims of judicial supremacy. In Cooper v. Aaron, a 1958 school desegregation case, Arkansas governor Orval Faubus flouted a federal court order and ordered the Arkansas National Guard to block nine Black students from desegregating Little Rocks Central High School. Rather than simply uphold the rule of law, the Court unanimously declared that it was supreme in the exposition of the law of the Constitution.

The Warren Courts support for judicial supremacy was the say what the law is line in Marbury. Although Marbury declared an insignificant federal jurisdictional provision unconstitutional, Chief Justice John Marshall bent over backwards to avoid a showdown with President Thomas Jefferson and Secretary of State James Madison over whether William Marbury was entitled to his commission as a District of Columbia justice of the peace. (Marshall held that Marbury was entitled to his commission, but ruled against him on the technicality that he had filed his lawsuit in the wrong court.) In fact, Marbury was part of the Marshall Courts efforts to avoid a showdown with the more powerful legislative and executive branches; Marbury, as Larry Kramer explained to Ezra Klein, certainly wasnt an example of judicial supremacy.

Despite its misreading of Marbury, the Warren Court doubled down on judicial supremacy. In its 1962 decision in Baker v. Carr, ordering Tennessee to reapportion its state legislative districts favoring rural over urban voters, the Court declared itself the ultimate constitutional interpreter. In Baker, the Court also eviscerated the political question doctrine the idea that the Court should stay out of inherently political disputes better decided by elected officials, not unelected judges.

Once it seized the power from the legislative and executive branches to have the final say over the Constitution, the Supreme Court was loath to give it back. Liberal and conservative justices invoked Marburys say what the law is line to justify a whole host of decisions weakening the other branches. The other branches and the public, moreover, have to come to accept the idea that nine unelected and unaccountable justices should have the last word on the Constitution. Larry Kramer describes it as the rise of the cult of the court.

What can liberals do to end judicial supremacy?

Many people on the left have focused on increasing the number of Supreme Court justices. Liberal and conservative legal scholars have endorsed limiting their life tenure to unrenewable 18-year terms. There is, however, a third way. The Constitution grants Congress the power to determine the types of appeals the Supreme Court (and all federal courts) can hear. Congress could pass a law preventing the Court from hearing appeals about abortion, affirmative action, campaign finance, gun rights and voting rights. Instead, Congress could make the more liberal D.C. Circuit the court of last resort on these issues. In fact, Congress has done it before, designating the D.C. Circuit to hear the final appeals about the detention of suspected terrorists at Guantanamo Bay.

If the idea of stripping the Supreme Courts jurisdiction to hear certain appeals seems too extreme, there are more everyday solutions. Congress and the Executive branch can challenge the Courts unfounded assertions of judicial supremacy, exercise their co-equal roles in interpreting the Constitution, and override some of the Courts decisions by passing new legislation.

It is not too late to put the genie of judicial supremacy back in the bottle and to return policymaking and constitutional enforcement where it belongs with the American people and their elected representatives. Our democracy depends upon it.

Read more:

Opinion | The Supreme Court Has Too Much Power and Liberals Are to Blame - POLITICO

By Brendon Harre*

It is the taking by the community, for the use of the community, of that value which is the creation of the community Henry George,Progress and Poverty (1879),Chapter 33

For someone like myself who didnt grow up with homeless people living on the streets and knowing families live in cars it is easy to conclude the housing crisis is a result of a chronic, misguided belief that market forces will answer societys needs like Rosemary McLeod did in her We need to look at the world were making for our children article.

Yet where does this take us? Attempts at replacing capitalism havent been successful.

The challenge is to think deeper because poverty induced by the housing crisis is a genuine problem. Deliverable solutions need to be found.

New Zealand has a low-road form of capitalism that increases poverty and inefficiently allocates workers and investment capital. A new approach that improves New Zealands underlying ruleset is required.

A very large proportion of New Zealands poorest households pay housing costs that takes more than 40% of their disposable income. This figure is the highest in the OECD. Not only is the rent too high too often our housing is ofinhumane standard. It is obvious that high house prices and high rents is one of the reasons for why poverty is such a problem in New Zealand.

We knowwhatthe long-term causal factors are for high house prices.

Research and modelling analysisfrom New Zealands Infrastructure Commission Te Waihanga shows that if Auckland had not been downzoned from the 1970s and had made timely infrastructure investments to avoid the decline in average travel speeds from 1990, then house prices would have only increased 80% between 1978 and 2018, rather than the 262% they did.

City transport speed has affected housing supply. Rising travel speeds between the 1930s and 1970s facilitated housing supply by increasing the area where new homes could be built. Aucklands built-up area expanded rapidly during this period. When growth in travel speeds slowed in the 1970s and then began to reverse in the 1990s, urban expansion also slowed down as it became harder to build at the edge of the city.

Te Waihanga estimate that when demand for housing increases (from factors like population growth, rising incomes, lower interest rates), we have built one-quarter to one-third fewer homes (both public and private) than our grandparents did.

The chief economist of the Reserve Bank of New Zealand (RBNZ) confirms the importance of housing supply responsiveness to demand shocks in a speech titled Housing (Still) Matters The Big Picture.

The Reserve Bank have a concept of sustainable house prices that reflects the long-term supply and demand factors (note the RBNZ does not believe sustainable is the same as affordable house prices). The bank eases or contracts monetary policy to produce a wealth effect of above or below sustainable house prices as a tool to meet its inflationary and employment targets.

Speculating on housing has been New Zealands primary form of financial asset investment.New Reserve Bank researchshows that New Zealand investors could from a strict risk-return portfolio perspective have actually allocated all of their portfolio investments into housing, as investment property has averaged 10.9% annual growth over the period from 20002020, which was higher than any other asset returns in their sample.

Our understanding of the supply and demand factors influencing the housing market is quite well developed. What is not clear is why barriers to building more houses were created? Why was the required infrastructure not built? And why has the speculation gravy train been allowed to continue? What were people thinking? What have we forgotten?

To better understand thewhyof it it is useful to look atHenry Georges writings to understand what a better form of capitalism might look like.

Henry George was a giant of the 19th century, his influence is hard to overstate, yet now in the 21st century he is barely known.

George was an ordinary American man who left school early to become a seaman, then a typesetter and a journalist. Despite his limited education he was a perceptive observer who wrote insightfully about the nature of poverty and society. Fortunately, he was able to witness the formation of new communities and cities for instance, the transformation of San Francisco from a shanty town to a great city. His bookPoverty and Progress sold millions of copies its 1890s sale figures in the United States were higher than all other books except for the Bible. During his lifetime, he became the third most famous man in the US, only surpassed in public acclaim by Thomas Edison and Mark Twain.

an enormous number of men and women, strikingly different people, men and women who were to lead 20th century America in a dozen fields of humane activity, wrote or told someone that their whole thinking had been redirected by readingProgress and Povertyin their formative years. In this respect no other book came anywhere near comparable influence Princeton historian Eric F. Goldman

George was concerned about social justice but he wasnt a communist or even a believer in a socialist class struggle. George was interested in why in times of plenty poverty was so prevalent.

He believed in a form of capitalism he believed that what a person produced from their own labour morally belonged to them even if it was a capital asset, such as, a building, a vehicle, or the planting of Egyptian date trees. George gives the example where a tax on date trees led to them being cut down yet a tax on land that generated twice the revenue did not.

Henry George believed that the trade in the products of labour was a beneficial way of organising society.

Politically, George had a mix ofprogressiveandpopulistbeliefs. In particular he believed that increasing the amount of contact or association as he termed it between free and equal people was a good thing.

He refuted environmental limit Malthusian arguments he believed they did not explain poverty which he was most concerned about several chapters in his bookdetailed his criticism. In particular, George disagreed with Malthusians on the issue of population. He argued that as a local population grew this increased rather than decreased productivity what we would now callagglomeration economics.

George described the power of agglomeration clearly in his The Unbounded Savannah story about new people arriving in an uninhabited fertile plain. Initially, no location is more valuable than any other. But as soon as one settler arrives, then the next settler finds an advantage in locating themselves nearby so that neighbourly assistance can be exchanged. As the settlement grows, so does specialisation, trade, the spread of knowledge, economies of scale and productivity. As a result of this community growth process, land close to the settlement is more valuable compared to other parts of the plain.

Of interest to New Zealanders, George wrote, no one who has seen Melbourne or San Francisco can doubt that if the population of England were transported to New Zealand leaving all accumulated wealth behind it would soon be as rich as England is now.

George believed that site monopolies were created by the private land ownership arrangements of his time. He believed if desirable locations were withheld from its best use for speculative price reasons, then landowners were imposing a lockout on the market, which they could do because exclusive property titles created a locational site monopoly.

George unlike contemporary communists or socialists took aim at landowners rather than at the struggle between labour and capital. He believed institutional legal arrangements gave excessive advantages to unproductive landowners creating a root cause for inequality and economic ills.

Three things unite in production: land, labor, and capital. Three parties divide the output: landowner, laborer, and capitalist. If the laborer and capitalist get no more as production increases, it is a necessary inference that the landowner takes the gain. Henry George,Progress and Poverty,Chapter 17

From Georges writings it is clear the value of real estate property has three components.

In the century following Henry George writingPoverty and Progress(1879) competition between expansion opportunities reduced the extractive land rent problem, yet in recent decades this problem has reappeared meaning his work has renewed relevance.

From the 1890s a series of transport and construction innovations including the modern safety bicycle, electrified trains and trams, elevators, steel framing and reinforced concrete, and the internal combustion engine allowed cities to expand massively in size both up and out. There were also inter-city technological and institutional changes supporting trade, the flow of labour, and investment capital.

These urban, inter-regional and international factors created a competitive network effect which reduced extractive rents.

Improvements in this competitive network seems to have reached a limit at least in New Zealand by the 1990s.

I think it was unfortunate the focus of Georgism has been the proposed solution land value taxation rather than keeping the focus on Henry Georges identified problems.

The issue with focusing on land value taxation is Georges underlying rationale is easily forgotten especially the moral wrong of allowing the interests of landowners to usurp the interests of labour and capital and the wrong of giving private landowners the right to take the value which communities create. I think these two things were forgotten towards the end of the 20th century especially in New Zealand. I think this loss of focus helps explain why New Zealand made the mistake of downzoning and why there is a lack of community rent funding mechanisms which could help pay for missing transport infrastructure. I think it helps explain why New Zealand allowed property speculation to get so out of control.

I believe it is important to not only understand what happened. But to consider why it happened. What were people thinking? Because it is only when we truly internalise our understanding of a problem that a lasting solution will be found.

Freeing people from the oppression of monopoly power in any form was Henry Georges great dream.

George wanted to break the stranglehold of speculative property ownership that reduces so many citizens to wage slavery and poverty. George wrote there would be no difference between two islands one where a single person owned all the people and another where a single person owned all the land. Slavery would exist on both islands. His ideas were far broader than simply reforming taxation policy.

I would encourage people to readPoverty and Progress. There is amodernised edition onlinethat keeps the original content but has shorter more succinct sentences and paragraphs. For those who like to listen that is also an option with each podcast-chapter being between 5 and 25 minutes long.

ReadingPoverty and Progressis a thoughtful process. Even after 140 years it provides insights into the problems New Zealand and the world is going through.

For instance;

1/ The RBNZ reports household net worth surged by around $600 billion through the pandemic not because of any human exertion from homeowners but because of the wealth effect from monetary policy easing combined with fear of missing out by first home buyers.

With the benefit of hindsight the RBNZ probably overcooked its stimulus monetary policy in 2020 and 2021. About a third of New Zealands current high inflation rate (7.3%) is being attributed to their least regrets money printing & LVR removal package, with the remainder being the global food, energy, and supply chain disruption situation.

Some New Zealand business commentators have said that New Zealands institutional arrangements are such thatspeculating on house prices is a one-way bet and that successive governments and its agencies have been unwilling to face the political costs of changing these settings.

The Reserve Bank for their part would presumably reply to this criticism by saying they are now contracting monetary policy causing a negative wealth effect therefore it is the other institutional settings, especially those to do with the supply of new housing and the taxation of property, that is the problem.

A Georgian economic analysis indicates if housing really is a one-way bet this will have a profoundly negative effect on workers and commerce. Hopefully the economic settings that led to housing being a one-way bet will change. The Reserve Bank thinks it may well have.

For several decades, we have traded houses among ourselves at ever-increasing prices in the belief that we were creating prosperity. But the tide may well have turned against housing being a one-way bet for a generation of Kiwis. We need to keep building a new approach to housing and economic prosperity in Aotearoa-New Zealand. From thespeechPaul Conway chief economist to the RBNZ gave to the National Property Conference

Personally, I think it is way too early to congratulate ourselves that New Zealands one-way housing bet is over. Reforms to the planning system that have bilateral agreement at the central government level are beingresisted by local government. There is no clear system of infrastructure funding and financing and certainly no bilateral agreement the main opposition party the National Party opposes the governments water infrastructure reforms for instance. On the building materials front the construction industry is clearly far from being competitive. The cost ofbuilding entry level social housing is about $3800 per square metre in New Zealand, but should be about $1200/square-metre according to international best practice.

2/ Clearly house prices do respond to a variety of institutional settings so I think it is possible and it would be beneficial if New Zealand made agovernance commitment to achieving housing cost targetslike the country has done with general price inflation. This could have a powerful signaling effect to reduce property speculation and for lowering house price and rent increase expectations.

Targeting rental affordability for low-income earners (i.e. trying not to be the worst in the OECD) by the government instituting a large-scale build programme would be a good strategy for improving the performance of the housing market.

Monopoly Watchs submissionsaid well-capitalised, institutional international scalable-sized integrated builders, could roll-back the margin-on-margin culture and resolve the death by a thousand cuts conundrum that small builders suffered, Edwards said. The construction industrys ability to deliver affordable housing fell apart in the late 1980s and early 1990s, when builders shifted to bespoke and premium builds, he said.

Rising interest rates and escalating construction costs are causing a slow-down in the construction industry. A building industry leader saysinquiries for residential new builds have plummeted between 70 and 80 per cent. Classic Builders director Peter Cooney has been through four property cycles he reports sales are falling down to levels last seen in 2008. Preparing to expand the governments build programme and instituting the long-term policy reforms needed to tackle the housing crisis would be timely.

3/ When cities and local governmentsstymie the removal of barriers making it easier to build housesI think this is landowners lobbying lawmakers to prevent any reduction in their ability to earn without toil. It is an example of monopoly rent seeking behaviour in action. New Zealand would do well if it policed detrimental rent seeking behaviour more vigorously.

4/ In a global environment wherelabour shortagesand supply constraints are prevalent shouldnt the interests of labour and capital be prioritised over those of land? Wouldnt that be a better way for New Zealand to compete for skilled workers and innovative businesses? The political representatives of labour and capital should come to bipartisan agreements so that the required infrastructure is provided, that community rent funding mechanisms are used, and planning rules are not restrictive.

In particular immigration and infrastructure funding need to be tied together. Becauseonly pulling the immigration leverwithout addressing the infrastructure deficit estimated to be around $200 billion will worsen the high-population-growth, low-productivity-growth, low-wage, low-investment and high-house-price model NZ Inc has used.

Of course, even if New Zealand post-Covid pulls the immigration lever we may not get much of a population gain as the international media has said the country is a100% pure rip-off. Going forward the only viable lever might be the reform lever that corrects the underlying distortions in the economy.

5/ Finally, I worry that if somehow New Zealand avoids the turmoil ofenvironmental limits, the geopolitics ofrising and falling empires, or the onset ofde-globalisation, then Henry Georges warning ofcivilisation going into declinedue to rising inequality could be our end. That not giving communities what is rightfully theirs and allowing land to be monopolised by the few will lead to the collapse of the middle class and wage slavery for the many.

Like agame of monopolyNew Zealands underlying ruleset could lead to the ownership of property residing in fewer and fewer players hands. That a landed gentry class will resist social mobility regardless of effort, skill, or innovation.

It does not surprise me that Labours 2020 election campaign manager is writing thatthe housing crisis could get worse. The warning is timely, and I agree more should be done. Yet in a sea of troubles, I am not confident more will be done.

Extra for economic nerds

In the background of public debates about New Zealands housing crisis there have been some policy experts and government officials who have reassessed Henry Georges work to better understand urban land values.

This is best illustrated by the urbanism part of Eric CramptonsOp-Ed discussing the recent New Zealand Association of Economists conference.

The best session of the conference covered urban land-use policy.

Treasurys Chris Parker presented theoretical work showing how urban land prices become unhinged, and housing overall becomes severely unaffordable, when cities are constrained against growing...

Infrastructure Commission economist Peter Nunnschallenged some prevailing views about underinvestment in infrastructure. The problem may be less about the quantity of spending, and more about what we get out of it.

In some sectors, such as wind-farm projects, New Zealand matches international cost trends. For large horizontal infrastructure projects, we fare more poorly. For projects such as rail tunnels, country-level learning-by-doing seems to matter. Countries that have already built a lot of rail tunnels seem to be able to deliver more of them at lower cost per kilometre. New Zealand may have some distance to go on that learning curve and may yet need some enabling reform to consenting processes.

Finally, the consultant economist Stuart Donovan provided some estimates ofagglomeration effects across New Zealand towns and cities. Agglomeration effects reflect the increase, or decrease, in productivity that a city enjoys through scale if it grows a bit, by how much does overall productivity change? Satellite cities within commuting distance of larger centres seem to over-perform. Allowing more of them to emerge may not be a bad idea.

Chris Parkers piece in particular is most relevant to this paper (see the 3.30pm sessionhere). He proposes a simple, yet powerful theory that links a key component of city urban land values with a citys benefit premium when people are free to relocate. It is not yet published in peer review journals, but it is highly promising.

His definition of differential land rents (DLR) is most similar to the community rent concept this paper discusses.

Insights from Chris Parkers work include:

1/ More scale economies increase differential land rents (DLRs)

2/ Diseconomies of scale decrease DLRs

3/ Better local government performance increases DLRs

4/ The equivalence is so tight municipal local governments could be defined as economic vehicles to maximise DLRs

5/ This analysis can be used to update cost-benefit analysis (CBA) for local infrastructure and planning and regulation

And some economic history

A depression induced by excessive land speculation occurred in New Zealand around the time of Henry George publishingPoverty and Progress(1879) when the 1870s boom ofVogels rail investmentcombined with decades of land and immigration speculation busted into a 15-yearLong Depression. The political economy of the 1860s involved somepretty unsavoury war-mongeringto gain access to Maori land (i.e. they stole it notice a pattern?). In the 1870s Premier Vogel hadnt been able to negotiate land value capture for his rail building schemes because at that time provincial government had that right. Canterbury for instancesold provincial land at a higher price to pay for the 2.6km long Lyttelton tunnel. Vogel and his supporters in return plotted revenge the abolition of provincial government which occurred in 1876.

All of this scheming immigration boosterism, provincial rivalry, warmongering property speculation, and the central government plotting, busted in 1878 in a large debt crunch. Fortunes were lost. Confidence in New Zealand flowed away. Population growth which had been doubling and doubling again has never grown as fast since. New Zealand desperately searched for a new political economy.

Eventually refrigerated shipping allowed New Zealand to diversify away from declining extractive industries (whaling, sealing, gold mining, native timber felling, kauri gum harvesting etc.) and away from the price fluctuating wool industry, as rapidly expanding dairy and lamb exports came to the rescue. This revived New Zealands economy in the 1890s.

The newly elected Liberal party instigated a land value tax and a policy of sub-dividing large wool estates into smaller blocks suitable for dairy or lamb farming. Allocation of these affordable farms was by ballot based on aNew Zealand agrarian version of populist politics of the time. These factors combined with the earlier discussed extractive rent reducing network effect meant that the value of refrigeration didnt exclusively capitalise into higher land prices. Landowners were not the only beneficiaries of the economic revival labour and capital also benefited, as did the wider New Zealand community. Progress did not induce poverty and for a while at least New Zealand was known for its strong economy and reforming social policies.

This is a repost of an article here. It is here with permission.

Original post:

Breaking the stranglehold of speculative property ownership | interest.co.nz - Interest.co.nz

On Tuesday, non-profit organisation Fashion Revolution launched the Good Clothes, Fair Pay campaign calling for the European Commission to pass legislation protecting living wages for garment workers.

If enacted, the legislation would require brands and retailers which have garments passing through the EU to assess wages in their own supply chains, put in place plans to close the gap between actual and living wages and publicly disclose their progress. Although no longer part of the EU, the legislation would still apply to UK retailers exporting to the EU - the bloc is still the UK's largest trading partner, accounting for almost half (46%) of the UK's total trade.

Last week, Fashion Revolutionslatest Fashion Transparency Index found that, despite more brands than ever before in the indexs history disclosing their first-tier suppliers (48%), only 4% of major fashion brands agreed to publish the number of workers in their supply chain paid a living wage. Although the underpayment of textile workers is most often seen as endemic to textile factories in South-East Asia, the problem also exists in the UK, with more than half (56%) of Leicesters garment workers being paid below minimum wage, according to research by the Garment & Textile Workers Trust.

As a European Citizens Initiative (ECI), Good Clothes, Fair Pay requires one million signatures from EU citizens by 19 July 2023 in order to be considered by EU policymakers. Every two months over the 12-month period, Fashion Revolution will be focusing on different themes affecting garment factory workers in order to educate people through its social media and communications channels on topics ranging from the need for better purchasing practices to the fashion industry's colonial past.

Drapers spoke to Fashion Revolution policy and research coordinators Ciara Barry and Delphine Williot on the impact of garment worker wages on climate change, child labour and the cost of living crisis.

Ciara Barry: Most of the people who make our clothes do not earn enough to meet their basic needs. Some recent research shows us about 45% gap between what they take home and what would constitute a living wage [source: The Industry We Want, February 2022]. Overtime is paid at a slight premium but still not at a living wage rate. That's where they make their money. These workers are working 60+ hour weeks often, and despite that, they're not able to meet their basic needs: have access to decent food, decent housing, healthcare. Some even struggle to send their children to school. Theyre not only money-poor but they're also time-poor. What that means is they then can't participate as citizens and can't protest [their conditions] they just dont have the capacity to do so.

Fashion Revolution policy and research coordinators Ciara Barry (far left) and Delphine Williot (far right) at 2021 United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP26) in Glasgow, Scotland.

Delphine Williot: Paying living wage is also an incredibly important tool to stop child labour. If a family, [whether it be] two parents or a single mother, are working gruelling hours cannot even afford to provide for the family, thats going to be a massive push for putting their children into work as well. I don't think any parent would want to take their kids out of school and make them work instead of providing them with an education. But when it comes down to it, ultimately, it's a question of survival.

CB: The EU is largest importer of clothes in the world and one the biggest fashion consumer markets [source: WTO, World Statistical Review 2021]. It has absolutely the scope and the responsibility to make changes. If we're going to make a serious impact on this national legislation, doing it country by country is not the best way to go [because] global supply chains cross borders [and] continents. Legislating in one region of a country or just one country can actually sometimes incentivise this race to the bottom where [the businesses move to] the deregulated neighbouring countries that doesn't help the workers. If we do at EU level, where clothes are imported, we think this is a really ground breaking way to do it. Sadly, the UK is not in the EU. However, basically all UK brands want to sell into the EU market and therefore they have to comply [with EU laws].

DW: When doing the research [for the Good Clothes, Fair Pay campaign], no matter the political party, we're seeing conservatives, liberals, any type of party or any type of politician supporting the abolition of child labour. We really want to highlight the connection between child labour and poverty wages because we've been waiting and waiting and waiting for voluntary measures to actually translate into action. But as you can tell from our data, voluntary measures are simply not enough.

DW: For the first time in years, we're finally seeing legislation trying to regulate the fashion industry: [such as] the EU Minimum Wage Directive [the first EU legislation that aims to directly ensure adequate minimum wages, as well as strengthen collective bargaining of workers, expected to be adopted in September 2022] and the EU Textile Strategy [which aims to stop overproduction and overconsumption of textiles, adopted in March 2022]. We're seeing that there is, for the first time, a greater interest to legislate the fashion industry. And so we thought it was a perfect time to launch a living wage campaign. We've been waiting for so long for voluntary measures [from retailers and brands]. We absolutely need to regulate the fashion industry when it comes to wages.

CB: We are also in a climate crisis. It's 40 degrees celsius in London at the moment and we have less than eight years until we reach climate tipping points that are irreversible. Paying workers living wages in the fashion supply chain is one of the most effective things you can do to slow down the fashion industry.

DW: Suppliers are pressured to produce more with less time and less money, ultimately leading to overproduction and the waste crisis we're seeing today.

CB:Oxfam research shows that the labour cost is such a minority makeup - in the cost of a T-shirt, its [between] 1-3% [of the final retail price].

DW: We need to make sure that brands are absorbing this cost because ultimately, brands are already contributing to a massive wealth gap [between] CEO, executive and garment workers' pay within the fashion industry. Ultimately, we really want to showcase that the fashion industry is a huge contributor to wealth inequality and this needs to stop and be addressed now. We need to reconsider the way the fashion industry is built, and we need to ensure that there is no sustainable business without fair pay. Ultimately, if a business tells you that they can't afford to increase the wages of their garment workers, then ultimately this business should not be in existence. It doesn't make sense to build up an entire mechanism where you're not paying your garment workers fairly while asking them to produce and churn out so many clothes.

CB: [Good Clothes, Fair Pay] is a 12-month campaign and we have to get one million signatures [from EU citizens during that time period]. In July, our theme is Money, Fashion, Power: the inequality and the power dynamics in fashion that put workers at the bottom, [beneath] suppliers and fashion brands that hold all the power and profits. In August, we're going to focus on living wages, women's rights and why this legislation is particularly empowering to women. In September, we're going to talk about the impacts workers saw during Covid, which are obviously horrific, but also debunking the myths of minimum pay. During COP27 [the 27th United Nations Climate Change conference scheduled to take place on 7-18 November 2022], we'll be talking about living wages, purchasing practices and overproduction [coinciding] with Black Friday and Cyber Monday. In January, we're going to really focus on poverty wages and colonialism [that the] fashion industry is built on. In March, we're going to talk about protecting at-risk groups: migrant workers who are obviously at most at risk of modern day slavery, debt bondage and recruitment fees. In May, were going to pass the mic to the affected stakeholders: [garment] worker testimony, basically.

DW: Anyone who has an EU ID or passport - they don't need to be EU residents. For instance, I'm Belgian, but I don't actually need to live in Belgium in order to sign my name.

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Why fashion should act now to legislate living wages in the supply chain - Drapers

Originally posted on Breaking the Chains.

Georgias HB 481, which bans abortion in the state at approximately six weeks, is now in effect. The misleadingly described fetal heartbeat ban prohibits abortion after electrical activity can be detected by an ultrasound; an embryo does not have a heart at six weeks. Georgias restrictive abortion ban had been tied up in court since 2019, but the Supreme Courts June ruling to overturn Roe v. Wade emboldened the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals to act. Chief Justice Bill Pryor, writing for the appeals court, made the unprecedented move to stay the lower courts injunction. Instead of a standard 28-day waiting period before the bill took effect, the politically motivated restriction of Georgians right to abortion immediately became the law of the land on July 20.

On July 22, protesters rallied outside Georgias Federal Court of Appeals, demanding that this unscientific, misogynist bill be repealed immediately. Rain began to pour, but the community still yelled, We wont go back! We will fight back! Jermaine Stubbs of the Party for Socialism and Liberation emphasized that the overturn of Roe is part of a wave of right-wing, anti-people decisions by the Supreme Court. Stubbs reminded the crowd, Were fighting for democracy, OUR version of democracy!

In addition to restricting abortion to the first six weeks of pregnancy, when many dont even know they are pregnant, HB 481 has significant implications for the future of fetal-personhood laws. The bill reclassifies fetuses and embryos as natural persons, counting them in population-based determinations. Fetal personhood laws are unscientific and by design put the rights of an embryo or fetus before those of a pregnant woman. The implications of legally establishing that a fetus is a person are wide-ranging and horrifying. Women and others who miscarry or self-induce abortions will be at risk of criminal prosecution. A state could conceivably apply child endangerment laws to a fetus and criminalize those who are pregnant on the basis of what they eat or drink, what kind of prenatal care they do or do not access, the activities in which they engage, or even for being the victims of domestic violence. Fetal personhood laws could also impact contraception access.

Georgias HB 481 also provides that the right to recover for the full value of a child begins at the point when a detectable human heartbeat exists. There are no stated guidelines for determining such value. Terminology such as this harkens back to slavery, wherein Black women were not only exploited as forced laborers but also as the reproducers of the enslaved workforce. Those in power seek to preserve these relations, creating a legal right for men to seek compensation for a lack of return on their investment. Additionally, Georgia courts are now given the power to order child support for a fetus, and fetuses will be considered dependents for tax purposes. There is also mention of the right to civil action by women against abortion providers who provide care that results in the termination of a pregnancy, with some exceptions for unviable fetuses and pregnancies that would result in the death of the mother.

These attacks on women and all child bearers are occurring in a state that was one of the first to cut unemployment benefits during the pandemic, where the income eligibility cutoff for welfare assistance is the lowest in the nation, and where there is no Medicaid eligibility for able-bodied individuals without children at all. The state is 47th in health outcomes and has the 3rd highest rate of uninsured residents. With a state minimum wage of $5.15, it is clear that the lawmakers and the governor are completely uninterested in whether working-class families have a healthy life in which basic necessities can be met.

That Chief Judge William Pryor, calling the original plaintiffs abortionists, would take the unprecedented step of refusing Georgians the standard 28 days to prepare for the law to go into effect reveals the undemocratic, aggressive nature of the right-wing attack on womens lives and rights. Appointments at Georgia clinics were unceremoniously canceled within minutes of the courts ruling and patients were sent home without receiving a planned abortion, a basic medical procedure. Georgias far-right lawmakers and judges have proven they will bend and break established rules in order to completely control womens bodies and to further incite and reward their far-right base. Meanwhile, Biden and the Democrats, currently in power at the federal level, hem and haw about possible court challenges to actions they have yet to take. This Georgia bill was passed in 2019 with lawmakers full knowledge that it was unconstitutional at the time, because there was understanding that the Republican Party would continue to prod and push until the Supreme Court took up a case that would overturn Roe vs Wade.

Working people in this country need a party and a movement that will go to bat for our interests. The Democratic Party has proven that they have neither the will nor the ability to stand up for even the most basic democratic rights. This moment in American politics signals that many difficult battles lie ahead, battles that the Democrats are not equipped to fight. Only a militant, independent movement can act with the urgency needed to protect millions of people from reactionary attacks on our most basic rights.

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Georgia's six-week abortion ban goes Into effect, an attack on... - Liberation

The burst of national pride at the London 2012 Olympic Games is continuing to echo through the years (Picture: Metro.co.uk/Getty/PA)

The blaze of glory provided some of British sports most electrifying moments in history.

Ten years on, and even in dark times, the feelgood factor from the London 2012 Olympics cant be dimmed.

The unforgettable host year reaped 185 gold medals for Team GBs Olympians and Paralympians, gave birth to the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park and involved 70,000 Games Makers, half of whom continued to volunteer after the event.

Waves were made on Super Saturday when Mo Farah, Jessica Ennis-Hill and Greg Rutherford won gold, while Alistair and Johnny Brownlee took gold and bronze respectively in Hyde Park.

After the torch was handed over to Rio 2016, the legacy and funding, including through the Spirit of 2012 trust, has lived on in numerous sporting, educational and community projects.

A million people continue to visit the park every year, with 110,000 more jobs being created in the host boroughs over the decade, according to the International Olympic Committee.

Yet not everyone buys the notion of a glorious post-Games world.

Promises over affordable housing development in and around the park are said to have fallen short, with some residents saying they have been priced out of the market for new homes.

One citizens group wants more to be done to stop the neighbourhood being an exclusive oasis of wealth, while a London charity said few inroads have been made in tackling poverty and inequality in the city.

A decade on from the day of the opening ceremony, Metro.co.uk has given the2012figureheads and those whobrought it to lifeon the ground the chance tosharetheir thoughts in their own words.

Lord Seb Coe took a pivotal role in the host year as chair of the London Organising Committee of the Olympic Games and Paralympic Games.

He gave a rousing speech at the spectacular opening ceremony, saying London 2012 will inspire a generation and those involved would be able to tell their grandchildren, we got it right.

Lord Coe, now World Athletics president, hailed an impressive legacy that continues to benefit British sport.

I cant believe that we are already celebrating the10-year anniversary of the London 2012 Games an Olympic Games which is now largely considered as one of the best in history.

Those Games truly brought Great Britain together. Who can forget Super Saturday, that remarkable day when 80,000 spectators in Londons Olympic stadium witnessed the pinnacle of British sport?

That night, Mo Farah, Jessica Ennis-Hill and Greg Rutherford became household names across the world and showed dominant sporting nations that Team GB was a force to be reckoned with. To this day, Britons agree it was our countrys greatest moment in a summer Olympic Games.

London 2012 gave Britain a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to inspire a nation to enjoy sport, but that is not the only positive outcome of those Games. Indeed, they left behind an impressive legacy something that very few host nations enjoy.

From residential development to school PE programmes and public-private sector partnerships, it is no wonder that 75% of Britons would welcome another Games.

This is but one of the reasons most local organising committees use London 2012 as a template.

It showed them that the Olympic Games could, in fact, deliver long-lasting value for their money, and as the chairman of the London 2012 Organising Committee, this makes me very proud. I am also proud that we continue to see the value of hosting those Games 10 years on.

All one has to do is look at the state-of-the-art sporting venues scattered across London not to mention the new district in the heart of East London that was built at lightning speed.

But one of the things I am most proud of from these Games is the cross-government legacy project that ringfenced 150 millionper annum for sport in primary schools across the country. We need to do more of this.

Every country should be looking at bringing sport, education, health and community services together to deliver better solutions to its people and communities. After all, they all overlap.

I will never forget seeing the BBC pan the Olympic stadium on the first morning and seeing that it was full. I remember thinking in that moment that what we delivered as a country was nothing short of remarkable.

We worked hard on these Games, and everyone did their part.

From theprimeminister to the volunteers, everyone came together to deliver a truly British product from start to finish and that is something we can all be proud of.

The Mayor revealed last week that his office is working on a plan to bring the Olympics back to the capital with a bid for 2036.

Sadiq Khan wants the greenest Games ever to build on 2012, which he hailed for driving billions of pounds worth of investment into the city.

Mr Khan, whose predecessor Boris Johnson parachuted into the opening ceremony, also acknowledged the errors made in the past as he pledged to provide more affordable housing in the park.

The 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games breathed new life into east London and helped to drive billions of pounds of additional investment in the area for new, truly affordable homes, transport links, business districts and entertainment.

As a result of the investment sparked by the Games, five world-class institutions including the V&A, BBC, UniversityCollegeLondon, University of theArtsLondonand Sadlers Wells will form the new East Bank the largest culture and education district for a generation.

The creation of Barking Riverside and the Elizabeth line have also transformed transport links in east London and I will continue to correct the errors made in the past by delivering on my commitments to provide 50% affordable housing across all new developments on the park.

The Olympic legacy is not just about celebrating the success of the last 10 years but looking forward to the next 10 and the years beyond that in order to build a better, fairer, more prosperous London for everyone.

Liz Stainthorpe, manager of The Games Maker Choir, volunteered at an accreditation desk in Heathrow but still found herself swept up in what would be a life-changing summer of sport.

Liz, 56, from York, has been volunteering ever since, including at the UEFA Womens Euros, with the choir continuing to perform. She had worked in advertising but as a result of the Games moved into the music industry in a marketing role.

The spirit of the Olympic Games invaded London 2012 and was felt by so many people who were there.

So much had gone on beforehand with 7/7 marring the announcement and the bad press that inevitably comes before Olympic Games about whether they would be ready on time.

Then there was a fantastic swell of pride which just got bigger and bigger and bigger until Super Saturday when it exploded in glory.

There was a sense of team spirit and national pride, we all felt like an extension of Team GB.

Im a big sports fan, which is why I volunteered, and I felt part of something bigger than just me in my uniform laminating passes at Heathrow.

Volunteering at the Games changed the direction of my life.

It led to a complete change of career and I have spent the last 10 years managing the choir.

The wider legacy is that the nation has changed its attitude to volunteering. Its not just for retired people working at the local charity shop any more.

The Games made it cool to volunteer, galvanising that lovely can we help spirit and sharing it among people of all ages.

Susie Dye is grants manager and housing work lead at Trust for London, a registered charity which tackles poverty and inequality in the city. The trust has funded Citizens UK, Anti-Slavery International and Toynbee Hall for work connected to the 2012 Olympics.

Ten years ago the Olympic Games came to London, with an image of a city coming together to celebrate the diverse teams achievements.

The six Olympic boroughs of Barking & Dagenham, Greenwich, Hackney, Newham, Tower Hamlets and Waltham Forest saw physical transformation, and in some cases people losing their homes and workplaces, to make way for a promised legacy of jobs, investment and homes.

But the data shows that this isnt the case: the Olympic boroughs still have above-average unemployment, with 18% of residents in Barking and Dagenham on out-of-work benefits* and one in five Londoners still being paid below the London Living Wage, which isnow 11.05, and trying to keep pace with the rising cost of living in the capital. The figure rises to 24% in Newham, which saw the biggest transformations and the opening of the huge Westfield shopping centre at Stratford.

Child poverty numbers are particularly striking: 39% of people in Tower Hamlets and 56% of children are living in poverty. Seventy-six per cent of children in poverty in London are in working families.

London also continues to be the most unequal region in the country and the Olympic boroughs are among the most unequal, with Hackney having 2.8 times Londons average pay ratio of the highest to lowest 20% of earners.

It shows whats needed is a renewed and sustained commitment, with London and national government coming together to tackle poverty, really levelling up the country for those on low incomes and fulfilling the promise and hope we shared in 2012.

*Source:Londons Poverty Profile 2021

Penny Bernstock is co-chair of the Olympic Strategy Group at the Citizens UK chapter of East London Citizens, an umbrella group of organisations acting for social justice and the common good.

She is also visiting senior research fellow at University College London and has written a book on the wider impact of the Games entitled Olympic Housing: A Critical Review of London 2012s Legacy.

I was really excited and emotional when we won the bid, but the legacy has been disappointing.

Its been delivered in a very top-down way and theres scope for working more closely with local communities in order to make the legacy work.

There are some good things; London 2012 has been the first Living Wage Olympics, theres a Good Growth Hub and they are beginning to build more affordable housing.

If you had asked me about the legacy four years ago I would have been much more despondent, but these things dont compensate for a project that has mainly benefited professional groups from outside Stratford.

Given it was a public project, the question remains of why an area at the epicentre of Britains housing crisis has so much market housing.

The promise to regenerate the area for everyone that lives there hasnt done this for everyone that lives there. Its provided an oasis of wealth that could be so much better.

There is affordable housing on the park but they havent delivered on the 50% ratio that was promised. Then there is the problem that a substantial chunk of what is described as affordable is no such thing.

To give the policymakers their due, they have increased the amount of genuinely affordable housing at Chobham, East Wick and Sweetwater, but it needs to go further.

In 2005 it was agreed that community land trusthousingwould be developed on the park, this ishousingthat is genuinely affordable and mapped to median incomes and remains affordable in perpetuity.

Ten years on not a single one of these homes has been built on the park.

Another disappointing feature of thehousinglegacy is the lack of genuinely affordable housing and community involvement.

We would like to see a housing inclusion zone on the last neighbourhood on the park. This would provide an opportunity topilot new forms of community-led, genuinely affordablehousing,including land trust housing, that would create a meaningful and lasting legacy for east Londoners.

Theres still a future to play for in the Olympic park and more affordable housing could be added to the last neighbourhoods to compensate for whats missing. New jobs are also being created on the park and its important to make sure local people benefit from those opportunities.

When we won the bid, they talked about the world in one city, and its as important as ever to make sure the legacy of the Olympic park reflects the full diversity of east London.

Rachel Flenley was a dancer in the Frankie and June say Thanks Tim segment of Danny Boyles mesmerising opening ceremony.

The PR account director, 32, from Surrey, performed in a best of British-scored tribute to World Wide Web father Tim Berners-Lee.

When describing it to people, I say do you remember the bit with the inflatable house? and that tends to help them place me. It was a celebration of music through the decades, and my specific section was the 80s and 90s.

A lot of neon, some excellent pyrotechnics and a lot of fun.

My abiding memories are a real blend of just having the absolute best time and also it feeling like the most surreal experience Ill probably ever have.

I remember there being such a great atmosphere in London in the run-up to the ceremony; a real buzz and sense of excited anticipation.

The event itself went by in a bit of a blur. There were so many performers and so much colour and noise it was just so surreal. And once we were called for our section it was absolute game faces on from everyone.

Our incredible choreographers hyped us over our in-ears, getting us ready and then bam. We were out and the music was playing and we were all just dancing our hearts out. It was such a bizarre combination of being super focused on getting everything right but also wanting to absorb the enormity of the moment and take it all in.

I have always danced and always loved performing, and to do it on a stage like that was just incredible and something I will never forget.

For a few years afterwards, I got really stuck into choreography, creating routines for a few local musicals, which I really loved. I think my London 2012 experience definitely helped me realise just how much I enjoy it and gave me the confidence to get involved with theatre groups and choreograph for them.

I feel like London 2012 was the last time we were all really happy.

There was such an amazing bond when we hosted the Olympics.

The tour of the torch, the thousands of volunteers, the gold postboxes it was all just such a wonderful celebration of Great Britain, which feels like a bit of a distant memory now.

I do however think that it has had a lasting impact on our love of sport beyond football as a nation.

I love thinking that there are people who might have had London 2012 as their first Olympics that inspired them into a career in sport, who well then be seeing on Olympic podiums in years to come.

Rebecca Adlington won two bronze medals at the 2012 Olympics. Although she was unable to match her two golds at Beijing 2008, the first time in a century that a British swimmer had taken top honours more than once, it was London that proved life-changing.

Rebecca retired in 2013 and set up her Swim Stars programme aimed at teaching every child in Britain to swim.

I have so many amazing memories; I think about the legacy, the venues, Super Saturday, all the brilliant volunteersandthe GamesMakers.

London was a different place, the country was; everyone was in high spirits it was just an amazing place to be.

On a personal level, my first race was the 400m and I only just scraped into the final in 8th place so to come away with a bronze medal was just not expected. I felt incredibly proud of that achievement.

And then the 800m the time was just not there for me so to get another bronze medal was actually a highlight of my whole career. I got so emotional on the podium, to have so many people chanting my name and knowing it was my last Games. It really was extra special and something I will remember for the rest of my life.

London 2012is why I started my learn to swim programme. It has completely defined my business life and the past 10 years.

After 2012, I was inspired to do something myself and to be here now teaching 15,000 kids a week to swim is just incredible.

The legacy of the Games has been a huge influence for me had it not been for London I wouldnt have been so inspired and would be unlikely to be in the position Im in now.

Ifeel the Games has had wider success, definitely in the immediate period afterwards in terms of participation in and awareness of all Olympic sports.

It was great to see so many people taking up netball, hockey etc. And that increased participation expands to more jobs so everyone benefits.

Covid obviously had a big impact and put things on pause but its good to be getting back on track with live sport, a home Commonwealth Games and the Euros etc. There is so much to take inspiration from.

The community aspect was also huge its where sport has to start, at grassroots level. And with swimming as a life skill we need to get that right. With facilities closing and accessibility an issue for schools, we need to be investing at grassroots level. Its so important.

Looking forward another 10 years, I think the tremendous spirit and success of the Games can be equalled and bettered by British sport.

You see it from each Olympics, particularly from a swimming perspective. Tokyo was the best ever games for us as a swimming team in terms of our results. London played a big part in that, these things dont happen overnight it takes time, people are inspired, momentum builds and then we have to continue building.

Covid hit the younger generation at grassroots and community level but at the same time we are seeing womens sport having more visibility. There is a long way to go of course, plenty more to be done.

The rest is here:

10 years on, what is the true legacy of the London 2012 Olympics? - Metro.co.uk