Justice

Sen. Joe Manchin (D-West Virginia) recently argued that eliminating the filibuster would lead to “serious problems.” According to Manchin, “the Senate is different” than the House, yet “for some reason, people are trying to make the Senate operate the same as the House,” even though “our founding fathers never intended that.” First of all, eliminating the filibuster will not lead to serious problems. Most U.S. states and most democratic countries around the world don’t allow for legislation to be filibustered. Many such states and countries function just fine. Giving the minority party veto power over widely supported legislation is unnecessary when there are other strong checks and balances in place.

Economy & Labor On May Day, Gig Workers Are Organizing an Intersectional Movement Prisons & Policing My Child Is Incarcerated. One Second in This Unjust System Is Too Much. Prisons & Policing Drug Raids Killed Andrew Brown Jr., Breonna Taylor. Advocates Say: Enough. Politics & Elections No, Joe Manchin, Eliminating the Filibuster Won’t Lead to “Serious Problems” Politics & Elections Biden’s Speech Pointed to a Possible End to Reagan’s Rancid Legacy Prisons & Policing New Report Looks at Strategies to Cut Incarceration of Illinois Women by Half In the United States, Labor Day is celebrated on the first Monday of September, while the rest of the world celebrates it on May 1st. May Day, also known as International Workers’ Day, actually has its origins in the U.S. It is a workers’ holiday celebrating international solidarity, a day of demonstrations and organizing, a day for workers to rise up — but for over a century, this holiday has not been observed in the U.S. However, this lack of formal recognition, intended deliberately by politicians to weaken the labor movement, hasn’t stopped American workers from celebrating on May 1st. Today, thousands of workers are rising up across the country to celebrate, demonstrate and demand change. One particular group of workers — gig workers, who have been disproportionately impacted by COVID-19 — have organized a day of demonstrations and caravans led by rideshare drivers currently or previously working for companies like Uber and Lyft. Oakland is just one of several cities across the country where gig workers are planning a caravan of drivers today. Today’s action is being co-organized by a coalition of over 25 groups, including Rideshare Drivers United, Gig Workers Rising, Workers World and the People’s Strike. “In the last year with this pandemic and all of the things that have come with it, there are people from many different groups that are very angry about the state of our society,” Erica Mighetto, a former Lyft driver and organizer at Rideshare Drivers United, told Truthout. “So, I’m really excited for the action in Oakland, it’s really an uprising that’s happening and it’s really going to be a wonderful show of that solidarity.” Throughout the day there will be pit stops at locations such as Whole Foods and City Hall where Amazon workers and gig-workers will address the crowd, trucks with flatbed trailers will carry floats, and organizers will hand out fliers and petitions. “People are losing their housing, people like ourselves are losing their vehicles, some of us are even living in our vehicles,” Mighetto said. “We have a lot of legislation that’s working against people like me and people struggling for survival — so that’s why this event is so important to us, because there are hundreds, if not thousands of people just in the Bay Area that are in similar situations.” In November of last year, Californians passed Proposition 22, a ballot initiative designed to strip so-called gig workers of many rights traditionally afforded to workers, such as a guaranteed a minimum wage, access to unemployment insurance or overtime pay, and paid sick leave or family leave. The impacts of Prop 22 were only exacerbated as the pandemic hit and countless drivers lost their income because of social distancing mandates. “As it relates to economic exploitation and unsafe working conditions, I know what it’s like to work long hours with no guaranteed wage and no work and no restroom facilities, no overtime,” Cherri Murphy, a former Lyft driver and organizer at Gig Workers Rising, told Truthout. “I know what it’s like to be in the middle of a pandemic and have your corporation refuse to pay unemployment wages and have to wait for three months to get protection.” Although the challenges faced by gig workers are a significant focus of the caravan, the coalition has made sure to broaden its focus to address a wide variety of interlinked struggles faced by marginalized communities across the country. “We’re calling out police violence as well,” Murphy said. “Police violence and economic violence are all connected — they’re all part of the same systems that impact mostly people of color. COVID-19 and Black Lives Matter really pulled the curtain back and showed America’s rooted disease for which there still is no vaccine for.” In addition to elevating the voices of low wage workers and speaking out against police violence, today’s action puts a spotlight on housing issues in the Bay Area — a region which is home to one of the most inaccessible housing markets in the country. “People can’t afford to pay their rent and they need to be provided sustainable housing,” Mighetto, who was herself evicted from her apartment in Sacramento in September of 2019, told Truthout. “We really want to show that these are important issues and it’s not out of laziness that this is our situation — it’s out of social injustice and legislative shortcomings.” Not only is the coalition in solidarity with low wage workers, folks struggling with housing, and communities facing violence from the police, but they’ve also chosen to include a focus on things such as climate change, education and immigration. “We understand that oppression is intersectional,” Murphy said. “The majority of the workers that Uber, Lyft, and Doordash employ happen to be immigrants and people of color. And so we know that economic justice is racial justice.” With surprisingly progressive policy proposals like the PRO Act winning the support of the Biden administration, we may be witnessing the beginning of a shift in how gig workers are treated in the United States. Demonstrations and caravans such as those taking place today are an essential component in bringing about the sweeping structural reforms needed to address the many challenges of our time. The powerbrokers who defanged Labor Day in the United States knew that very well, but fortunately, as we see the beginnings of a broad and intersectional labor movement emerge in the U.S., it seems that their time may be coming to an end. Copyright © Truthout. May not be reprinted without permission.

Earlier this month, a Honduran court found David Castillo, a U.S.-trained former Army intelligence officer and the head of an internationally financed hydroelectric company, guilty of the 2016 murder of celebrated Indigenous activist Berta Cáceres. His company was building a dam that threatened the traditional lands and water sources of the Indigenous Lenca people. For years, Cáceres and her organization, the Council of Popular and Indigenous Organizations of Honduras, or COPINH, had led the struggle to halt that project. It turned out, however, that Cáceres’s international recognition — she won the prestigious Goldman Environmental Prize in 2015 — couldn’t protect her from becoming one of the dozens of Latin American Indigenous and environmental activists killed annually.

"A People’s Guide to Capitalism" demystifies and makes accessible the fundamental concepts of Marxist economics.

Bob Moses was a quiet political giant. Sometimes he spoke so softly you could barely hear him. But it was always worth your while to listen carefully to every word. I met and talked with Bob many times over a 30-year period, and was always deeply inspired by his wisdom, his grace, his refusal to be rushed or consumed by the urgencies of the moment, and his love of justice. He was consistent in his practice, committed to a clear set of values and courageous in his choices.

Biolyse Pharma Corp., which makes injectable cancer drugs, was gearing up to start making generic biologic drugs, made from living organisms. Then the pandemic hit. Watching the covid death toll climb, the company decided its new production lines and equipment could be converted to making vaccines for poorer countries without the means to do so.

Economy & Labor On May Day, Gig Workers Are Organizing an Intersectional Movement Prisons & Policing My Child Is Incarcerated. One Second in This Unjust System Is Too Much. Prisons & Policing Drug Raids Killed Andrew Brown Jr., Breonna Taylor. Advocates Say: Enough. Politics & Elections No, Joe Manchin, Eliminating the Filibuster Won’t Lead to “Serious Problems” Politics & Elections Biden’s Speech Pointed to a Possible End to Reagan’s Rancid Legacy Prisons & Policing New Report Looks at Strategies to Cut Incarceration of Illinois Women by Half U.S. Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia bolstered his impedimentary pedigree on Friday by becoming the first Democratic senator to publicly oppose legislation that would make Washington, D.C. the nation’s 51st state. D.C. statehood would not only end “taxation without representation” for the capital’s approximately 700,000 residents, it would also boost Manchin’s own party’s political fortunes as the city’s residents overwhelmingly vote Democratic. Following last week’s passage of the Washington, D.C. Admissions Act (H.R. 51) by the House of Representatives, voting rights advocates demanded the Senate follow suit. However, despite having 51 votes in the upper chamber, the faltering foursome of Democratic caucus members — Mark Kelly and Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona, Independent Angus King of Maine, and Manchin — who oppose or have yet to signal their support for statehood-by-legislation pose a potentially mortal threat to D.C.’s hopes. From opposing the $15 federal minimum wage, higher corporate taxes, and the pro-democracy reforms of the For the People Act, to preserving the filibuster and the fossil fuel industry, Manchin has earned a reputation among progressives as an obstructionist to rival the most intransigent Republican. Y’know there are constitutional scholars who argue West Virginia was improperly admitted, if Manchin wants to go to war over thishttps://t.co/BKQmteVvdt — dylan matthews (@dylanmatt) April 30, 2021 During a Friday morning press call, Manchin told reporters in his home state that he believes making the nation’s capital a state would require a constitutional amendment. Discussing H.R. 51, Manchin invoked former Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy in saying that the measure “complicates D.C.’s pathway to statehood.” The senator said: Congress had three options to choose from back in 1961. They could either have D.C. statehood, they could have retrocession to Maryland… or they could have granted electoral votes to D.C…. Congress selected, at that time, option three… Kennedy said in 1963 that Congress and the states embodied this choice in the form of a constitutional amendment. Hence, it is arguable that the choice can now be reconsidered only by means of another constitutional amendment. He said that we are a government of the people, by the people, and for the people, and it seems to me that’s who should be answering this question. Let the American people decide. The people, according to a March poll by Data for Progress and Democracy for All 2021, support D.C. statehood. Over half (54%) of all survey respondents said they favored statehood, including 74% of Democrats, 51% of Independents, and 34% of Republicans. That is the highest level of support for the policy recorded to date. Over the course of US history, we've added 37 states. Not a single one required a constitutional amendment. And yet: DC requires a constitutional amendment to become a state? https://t.co/9rzUrtX2um — Lee Drutman (@leedrutman) April 30, 2021 “The people who elected President [Joe] Biden and Democrats in Congress recognize that making D.C. a state is critical to the fight for racial justice and civil rights in this country,” Derrick Johnson, president and CEO of the NAACP, said in a statement after the poll’s publication. Last week, the White House formally endorsed D.C. statehood, with its Office of Management and Budget declaring the move “will make our union stronger and more just.” In a Friday Chicago Sun-Times opinion piece, civil rights icon, two-time Democratic presidential candidate, and longtime D.C. statehood supporter Rev. Jesse Jackson Sr. argued that racism and Republican fear of losing power are behind opposition to making the district a state, and that doing so is a matter of fundamental fairness. “The case for D.C. statehood is clear,” he wrote. “The nation was founded in protest against taxation without representation. D.C. residents are denied voting representation in the House and Senate.” “The nation is shamed by military service without representation,” Jackson added. “D.C. residents have fought in wars going back to the Revolutionary War and yet have no representatives to vote in favor or against those wars. America, which claims to lead democracies across the world, denies the foundation of democracy to more than 700,000 citizens in the nation’s capital.” This piece was reprinted by Truthout with permission or license. It may not be reproduced in any form without permission or license from the source.

In legalizing racial profiling, the Supreme Court has fueled a racist cycle of traffic stops and police killings.

Senate Budget chairman Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont) sharply criticized the country’s abnormally large defense budget and the “fraud” and “misconduct” of defense contractors in a hearing on Pentagon spending on Wednesday. The Pentagon has a budget of a whopping $740 billion this year. That makes up more than half of the discretionary spending authorized by Congress. This figure would be a lot on its own, but, as Sanders pointed out in the hearing, the Department of Defense is often wasteful in its spending and often racks up cost overruns despite a staggeringly large budget.

City officials spent weeks disparaging Adam Toledo before releasing the body camera footage.