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Ending GM’s Two-Tiered Labor System Is UAW Members’ Top Demand — and Part of a Bigger Fight Against Worker Misclassification

“These classification disputes, from my perspective, seem to be growing and tracks on to the same battles over classification in California with Uber and Lyft.”

The post Ending GM’s Two-Tiered Labor System Is UAW Members’ Top Demand — and Part of a Bigger Fight Against Worker Misclassification appeared first on The Intercept.

Bernie Sanders to Chicago Teachers: Worker Militancy Is Key to Fighting the Corporate Elite

When Chicago teachers led a historic strike in 2012, they boasted the critical backing of the public—but high-profile political allies were hard to come by. With then-Mayor Rahm Emanuel as the teachers’ nemesis, national Democrats stayed far away from the fight, and even a number of so-called “progressive” city council members opposed the walkout, including the now-disgraced former 1st Ward Alderman Proco ‘Joe’ Moreno who referred to the strike as “selfish.”

On Tuesday night, a very different scene was on display inside the headquarters of the Chicago Teachers Union (CTU). Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.)—one of the leading contenders for the Democratic nomination in 2020—headlined a raucous rally to support the teachers in their ongoing contract fight with new Mayor Lori Lightfoot’s administration. Sanders was flanked by union leaders, community activists and a number of the city’s newly-elected democratic socialist aldermen, all of whom pledged to back the teachers. As Sanders stated as he took the stage, “I think that the Chicago school board should be very nervous.”

The Chicago visit marked a continuation of Sanders’ unique approach to his second presidential campaign, in which he’s not just supported labor battles, but positioned them front and center—manifestations of the political revolution he aims to foment. He has utilized his vast email and phone lists to turn supporters out to picket lines, and directly targeted bosses such as Amazon’s Jeff Bezos in order to raise workers’ wages. He has joined rallies of striking workers—as he plans to do Wednesday in Detroit to back the UAW’s ongoing strike. And, fundamentally, he has used his campaign as a vehicle to propel the revitalization of a militant U.S. labor movement.

But these aren’t acts of beneficence. To Sanders, an invigorated movement of the working class is the only way to achieve the type of bold redistributive policies that are central to his campaign, from Medicare for All to the cancellation of all student debt.  

As Sanders stated at the teachers’ rally Tuesday, “For the last 45 years there has been a war in this country by the corporate elite against the working class of our nation.” And, he continued, “the only way to win prosperity for working people is when we significantly increase membership in trade unions all across America.” 

“It’s about dignity”

Tuesday marked the first day of voting among CTU members on whether to authorize a strike, which could begin as soon as October 7. The union, which claims over 25,000 members, must reach a threshold of 75% of ‘yes’ votes to ratify a walkout. If recent history is any indication, that won’t be a herculean task. Ahead of the 2012 strike, nearly 90% of all CTU members who cast a ballot voted to walk out. In 2016, the figure was even higher—close to 96%—though that action was ultimately narrowly avoided.

Contract negotiations have reached an impasse over demands by teachers for more wraparound services and classroom resources at city schools. The union claims that there remain far too few librarians, social workers, counselors, nurses and paraprofessionals to adequately staff the district’s 514 schools, and that the Lightfoot administration is refusing to address these shortages in firm contract language. Teachers are also calling for smaller class sizes, investments in special education, and support for undocumented students through a “sanctuary school” program.

“This is about way more than just pay,” said CTU President Jesse Sharkey to the boisterous crowd of teachers and supporters Tuesday night. “It’s about dignity, and the fact that our schools suffer from critical staffing shortages…It’s about the schools that Chicago’s children deserve.”

The rally also featured teachers giving first-hand testimonials of why they are voting to authorize a strike. Jamie Schnall, an educator at Beulah Shoesmith Elementary on Chicago’s South Side, echoed Sharkey’s claims, saying: “Large class sizes aren’t just in my kindergarten classes, it’s the entire building. They take more time to plan, to incorporate into lessons, and more time to get individualized attention. We need class size limits.”

And Adlai E. Stevenson Elementary teacher Norma Noriega highlighted the need for strong contract language guaranteeing safety for undocumented youth. “Our students are terrified of ICE,” she said. “We’re demanding sanctuary for all of our students. We fight for sanctuary because our students deserve to feel—and be—safe in their schools.”

“Everybody is going on strike”

But CTU members aren’t the only school workers on the verge of striking. Tuesday’s rally was also organized alongside SEIU Local 73, a union representing more than 29,000 workers, over 7,000 of whom who work in education-related positions such as custodians, special education assistants and security guards.

Local 73 members are demanding higher pay, increased staffing and an end to privatization deals that purge their ranks—such as the city’s agreement with contractor Aramark that brought private custodians into public schools, and left them in horrendous conditions. The union’s membership has already voted overwhelmingly to go out on strike, which could begin as soon as next month—potentially coinciding with that of the CTU.

Already in Chicago, thousands of nurses have gone out on strike in the past week at the University of Chicago Medical Center. On Monday, teachers at Passages charter school, who are members of the CTU, voted unanimously to authorize a walkout. And Chicago Park District employees announced at Tuesday’s rally that more than 94% of their members have voted to strike.       

These actions come on the heels of recent strikes by Chicago hotel workers and orchestra musicians, as well as the first charter schools strikes in the country. Taken together, these displays of collective and concerted worker action represent a new approach for the city’s labor movement, moving into offense after years of being on its heels.

Jeanette Taylor, newly-elected alderwoman of the 20th Ward, summed up the newfound state of affairs at Tuesday’s rally, saying: “Everybody is going on strike in this city, and this is the right thing to do. We’re at a time in our lives when we can’t be silent anymore…we’ve got to stand and fight for each other.”

During his speech, Sen. Sanders urged the Chicago school board to “Sign a contract that deals with the desperate shortage of school nurses, of social workers, of librarians and of other critical staff that keep our schools going.”

“When we talk about valuing work, it’s not the hedge fund managers on Wall Street that we should value,” he continued. “It’s the teachers of this country, it’s the staffing, it’s the school nurses and the librarians.”

Supporting unions from the campaign trail

This isn’t the first time Sanders has used his 2020 campaign to lend support to Chicago workers in the midst of a labor dispute. In June, the campaign used its contact lists to call on supporters to join graduate student workers at the University of Chicago on their picket line. The campaign had previously done similar outreach to support striking workers at McDonald’s, University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, and Mercy Health-St. Vincent Medical Center in Toledo, Ohio. This mobilization, conducted through texts and emails, stands as an apparent first in modern presidential politics.

Directly pressuring employers to raise wages has been another strategy employed by Sanders’ campaign. The senator’s “Stop BEZOS Act,” introduced last fall, aimed to rein in corporate welfare and force large companies like Amazon to pay their workers a living wage. Weeks after the legislation was released, Bezos—the richest man in the world and a longtime target of Sanders’—raised his employees’ starting wages across the board to $15 an hour.  

In each of these instances, Sanders did not single-handedly advocate for workers’ rights—he followed the lead of grassroots movements that were already putting forward bold demands. Whether it was grad student union members or the Fight for $15 movement, Sanders merely lent his support and voice to the labor struggles already underway. And the victories, such as Amazon’s wage raise, were made possible by organizers and rank-and-file activists—not simply a presidential candidate. Still, this type of overt worker solidarity has become a trademark of Sanders’ 2020 run.   

The appearance in Chicago came the same day Sanders rolled out his wealth tax proposal, which would hit the top 0.1% of households and raise up to $4.35 trillion over the next ten years. Sanders has said that this money could be directed toward early childhood education, his ambitious housing plan and funding a Medicare for All system. Under the proposal, Jeff Bezos would be forced to pay $9 billion a year in taxes. As Sanders told the New York Times of his plan to target the super-rich, “I don’t think billionaires should exist.”

Sanders isn’t the only major presidential candidate to voice support for the Chicago teachers. On Sunday, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) tweeted, “I stand shoulder to shoulder with the Chicago teachers making their voices heard to demand living wages, smaller class sizes, and all the things teachers need to do their jobs well.” The following day, former Vice President Joe Biden followed suit, tweeting, “I’m proud to support Chicago’s educators as they fight for fair wages, full staffing, and smaller class sizes.”

Seven years ago, Chicago teachers were able to emerge victorious in their strike even without help from the mainstream political class—locally or nationally. But today, following a wave of teacher strikes across the country which have shifted the political terrain decidedly in the direction of rebelling workers, and with all of the top Democratic candidates and an array of left-wing city council members in its corner, the CTU is poised to carry forward what the union initiated in 2012.  

As Sanders said of the newfound labor insurgency on Tuesday night, “What we are seeing is teachers standing up and fighting for justice.”

What the Media Gets Wrong About Antifa

an • ti • fa

noun

1. A protest movement that opposes fascist groups through direct action

Where does the word come from?

Antifa groups first arose in Italy and Germany in the 1930s as violent fascist organizations grew in those countries. Antifaschistische Aktion, for instance, was a wing of the German Communist Party. After World War II, “anti-fascist committees” re-formed with thousands of members and organized around demands like the removal of Nazis from administrative bodies, prosecution of local fascists and the reestablishment of a public healthcare system.

How did we get from there to throwing milkshakes at right-wing journalists?

According to author and activist Mark Bray, North American antifascism most directly emerged from the punk music scene of the 1980s as Anti-Racist Action groups forced out neo-Nazi skinheads. In fact, anti-fascist actions worldwide have been linked to music and cultural movements. Events like the British Anti-Nazi League’s Rock Against Racism drew thousands to anti-fascist demonstrations. 

Today, antifa groups are generally organized independently, consisting of various socialist, communist, anarchist and other anti-racist activists. While some actions have seen physical attacks on right-wing figures, it’s notable that these are often fabricated or exaggerated. Right-wing speculation claimed, for example, that the neo-fascist Proud Boys group had been attacked with cement in Portland, Ore., this summer; it was actually vegan milkshakes.

So is punching Nazis good or bad?

Many liberals and some leftists argue that hurling milkshakes and punches runs counter to free-speech principles and offers a PR gift to the Right. Most antifa activists would likely concede that fighting a few local Nazis in the street will not single-handedly stop fascism.

But, antifa advocates maintain, the far-right groups organizing rallies aren’t merely interested in practicing free speech; their marches are intended as stress tests to see how far they can push their rhetoric and, eventually, actions. With a growing fascist movement in the United States and Europe fueling hate-filled violence and racist political parties, they say, it’s vital these groups be marginalized before gaining power.

Defending Immigrants When Their Landlords Use ICE Against Them

While the Trump administration has orchestrated a brutal crackdown on immigrant rights, Democratic politicians have passed laws that provide some manner of protection to undocumented immigrants. In Illinois, Governor J.B. Pritzker recently signed the Immigrant Tenant Protection Act (ITPA), which makes it illegal for landlords to retaliate against tenants on the basis of their immigration status and allows tenants to sue if landlords discriminate against them on those grounds. The law, passed in late August, went into effect immediately, making Illinois the second state after California to pass a law protecting undocumented renters.

The law states that “the immigration or citizenship status of any person is irrelevant to any issue of liability or remedy in a civil action involving a tenant’s housing rights.” If a tenant makes a complaint about their housing in good faith, the law says landlords may not use a tenant’s immigration status to evict the tenant or carry out any backlash against them. The law also allows tenants to sue landlords if they violate the ITPA.

The law is an acknowledgement of the ways that some landlords see immigrant tenants, especially those who are undocumented, as easily exploitable because of how vulnerable they are to state violence.

Many immigrants in Chicago have reported that their landlords have harassed or otherwise discriminated against them over their immigration status. Rocio Velazquez Kato is the senior immigration policy analyst for the Latino Policy Forum (LPF), one of the organizations that advocated for the Illinois ITPA, along with the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund and the Shriver Center on Poverty Law. She says that she has heard of numerous cases of discrimination against immigrant tenants in her work. Most of these incidents involve the landlord blackmailing tenants while alluding to their immigration status, or the status of their family members, according to Velazquez Kato.

“A lot of people think it's because the Trump admin has stirred things up and emboldened people in general and landlords would be susceptible to being emboldened about their dislike of immigrants,” says Velazquez Kato. “But the truth is what we've seen is this has been happening for years and years well before the Trump admin."

In one case, Velazquez Kato says a woman called the LPF’s hotline to report that her landlord effectively threatened to call immigration agents on her family after the woman requested to add her teenage daughter to her lease. After the tenant asked to amend the lease to include her child, who was coming from the family’s home country to live in the apartment, “The landlord asked for a lot more money per month,” Velazquez Kato says. “And [the landlord] alluded to calling immigration officials, and brought up a suspicion that some of the family members may be undocumented.”

Velazquez Kato calls this behavior “blackmail,” and says that it is the “sort of harassment we've seen happen a lot.”

Velazquez Kato adds that, generally speaking, undocumented immigrants who contact the LPF because they need help with issues of housing discrimination do not want many details of the incidents shared publicly. This is because they fear that any additional attention that is brought to the fact that they are living in the U.S. without documents may bring about government reprisal, which could lead to deportation. Fear of repercussion for speaking out publicly regarding injustices is a common fear for undocumented immigrants that adds further barriers to seeking justice.

Landlord neglect makes tenants vulnerable

Antonio Gutiérrez, a co-founder of the Autonomous Tenants Union (ATU), an all-volunteer Chicago collective that organizes tenants largely in the Albany Park neighborhood, says that undocumented community members in the neighborhood can be more vulnerable to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) arrests in their apartments due to landlord neglect. The organizer says that there have been multiple occasions when ICE agents have gained access to buildings where undocumented immigrants live because landlords have failed to put proper locks on outside gates or front doors.

This is a serious concern in Albany Park, which is home to one of the largest populations of undocumented immigrants in the city and has historically been the site of apartment raids. For example, between late 2013 and early 2014, ICE agents raided one Albany Park building “at least four times,” according to a 2014 press release from Organized Communities Against Deportations (OCAD), an anti-deportation organization in Chicago. Once inside on one occasion, the agents approached a number of apartments, leading to the detention of one man from Guatemala, a father named Anibal Fuentes Aguilar. Gutiérrez, who is also a member of OCAD, says that neither the doors nor the outer gate for the apartment complex where Aguilar lived at the time actually locked. Neither the name of the landlord or building manager for the apartment complex nor the specific address of the complex were never made public, and OCAD could not share that information­.

Scenarios such as this one are potentially easier for ICE agents to accomplish if main entrances to apartment buildings lack adequate locks because they can gain access to the buildings without being let in by residents.

As such, main entrance locks are a practical issue that the ATU is organizing around. Gutiérrez says that the ATU is currently working with immigrant tenants in an Albany Park building where there have been major security breaches, including robberies due to inadequate locks, According to Gutiérrez, the landlord has been unresponsive to the tenants’ requests for security improvements, likely because the tenants are immigrants.

The tenant’s burden to fight discrimination

The ATU welcomed the news of the ITPA’s passage in Illinois. But Gutiérrez says that while the ITPA allows undocumented tenants to take action against discriminatory landlords, the burden of correcting the discrimination still falls entirely on the tenants.

“If you’re undocumented and low-income, how are you going to get the money to sue your landlord?” Gutiérrez says. “We need to have a dialogue around how [these policies] get implemented and how tenants can make those grievances.”

The fact that many undocumented people do not want to call any additional attention to themselves for fear of being detained and deported could be a barrier to pursuing legal action against a landlord under the ITPA. Velazquez Kato says that, hopefully, the ITPA will act as a deterrent that discourages landlords from discriminating against undocumented renters in the first place.

In terms of further policy, ATU organizers advocate for a “just cause” law for the city of Chicago. Presently, Chicago landlords are legally permitted to evict tenants for any reason—or no reason at all. This presents obvious issues for many tenants, and for immigrant tenants, it means they would only be able to demonstrate the type of discrimination that would be suable under the ITPA if the landlord is explicit about their bias. Under a just cause law, landlords would be required to prove that their tenants are in violation of their lease agreement in order to evict them.

While the ATU works with tenants to build and leverage their collective power, some progressive local politicians are working on policies that would make undocumented tenants safer in their homes.

Democratic Socialist alderman for the 35th Ward, Carlos Ramirez-Rosa, says that undocumented community members in his ward have reported discrimination on the part of landlords. In particular, Ramirez-Rosa tells In These Times that he’s heard from undocumented immigrants that potential landlords have requested a social security number on apartment applications, and some have said that landlords have refused to rent apartments to them on the basis of their immigration status.

To help remedy issues of safety in apartment buildings where immigrants live, Ramirez-Rosa says that he wants to pass an ordinance that would require landlords to install self-locking doors at the entrances to apartment buildings. He further says that his office wants to “build a deep working relationship with members of the undocumented community” so that undocumented immigrants in the ward feel safe coming to his office for help regarding housing discrimination.

When will this company cease to exist? #deletefacebook

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2019/09/facebook-confirms-its-standards-dont-apply-to-politicians/

Donald Trump’s Gag Rule from August Is Already Costing Women in These States Their Health Care

Since 1970, Title X has been the nation’s only comprehensive reproductive health care program, aimed at providing “contraceptive services, supplies, and information to all who want and need them.” In 2018 it served over over four million patients, mostly low-income women who relied on the program for everything from pap smears to IUD’s. But in […]

Studies link air pollution to mental health issues in children

Three new studies highlight the relationship between air pollution and mental health in children.

Plastic teabags release microscopic particles into tea

Many people are trying to reduce their plastic use, but some tea manufacturers are moving in the opposite direction: replacing traditional paper teabags with plastic ones. Now, researchers have discovered that a soothing cup of the brewed beverage may come with a dose of micro- and nano-sized plastics shed from the bags. Possible health effects of ingesting these particles are currently unknown, the researchers say.

Public Retirement Funds and Universities Are Financing Empower Texans, a Far-Right Lobbying Group, New Report Reveals

Empower Texans, which receives most of its funding from oil and gas billionaire Tim Dunn, has put over $9 million into Texas electoral politics.

The post Public Retirement Funds and Universities Are Financing Empower Texans, a Far-Right Lobbying Group, New Report Reveals appeared first on The Intercept.

I Wrote About the Bidens and Ukraine Years Ago. Then the Right-Wing Spin Machine Turned the Story Upside Down.

Many observers now seem to think this suddenly hot story came out of nowhere this year, but that is not true.

The post I Wrote About the Bidens and Ukraine Years Ago. Then the Right-Wing Spin Machine Turned the Story Upside Down. appeared first on The Intercept.

The Moderate Middle Is A Myth | FiveThirtyEight https://prismo.xyz/posts/0a576828-c392-46da-bdd9-322a11a8dbad

More U.S. Commandos Are Fighting Invisible Wars in the Middle East

“We’re not getting answers to basic questions, like who the U.S. has killed and why it hasn’t better protected civilians."

The post More U.S. Commandos Are Fighting Invisible Wars in the Middle East appeared first on The Intercept.

We Were Warned: The Climate Emergency and the Surveillance State

Betsy Reed hosts this week's Intercepted. Guests include whistleblower Edward Snowden, The Intercept's Naomi Klein, Sharon Lerner, and more.

The post We Were Warned: The Climate Emergency and the Surveillance State appeared first on The Intercept.

Four Cartoonists on Decolonizing Their Lives

In our Empire issue, we asked four artists how they’re re-claiming their own identities

You CAN Take It With You

We’ve Been Getting Along So Well

Rep. Tulsi Gabbard says impeachment of Trump would be “terribly divisive” for country

Why the House Democratic Caucus Was Able to Move So Rapidly Toward Impeachment

“We spent all summer getting the shit kicked out of us back home,” said one Democrat who received such treatment.

The post Why the House Democratic Caucus Was Able to Move So Rapidly Toward Impeachment appeared first on The Intercept.

Pelosi Just Launched an Impeachment Probe

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi on Tuesday announced plans to launch formal impeachment proceedings against President Donald Trump. In recent days, a growing number of Democrats have argued that Trump’s efforts to pressure Ukrainian leaders to investigate former Vice President Joe Biden and his son could be grounds for removing the president from office. “This is […]

At this point, understanding computers isn't even about understanding the difference between GOTO and GOSUB or knowing what TCP/IP stands for - or even *is*. It's about understanding power. If you buy a laptop off Amazon, boot into Windows, log into Facebook, and check your Gmail, you're entering into exploitative power relationships where you - like the workers who made the laptop, sold you the laptop, delivered the laptop, the workers who manually moderate your Facebook feed, like the miners who dug up the copper and cobalt - are at the bottom.

Much like a job where you exchange your time and labor for capital, you are exchanging your personal relationships for convenience.

In order to get out from under this, you *do* need to educate yourself somewhat. You gotta know how certain things work. You don't have to become a programmer or hacker though. It's not the fucking Matrix. You just have to understand things enough to manipulate them and know where you stand.

The first Librem 5 smartphones are shipping https://puri.sm/posts/first-librem-5-smartphones-are-shipping/ “This is a big moment, not just for us as a company, but for everyone concerned about issues of privacy, security, and user freedom. The Librem 5 represents years of work, building the software and hardware required to make this phone a reality.” - Todd Weaver, founder and CEO of #Purism #Librem5 #Librem5Aspen #Linux #LinuxPhone #LinuxMobile #GNOME #FOSS