Opinion | Should Trump Displace Buchanan as the Worst President Ever? – The New York Times

To the Editor:

Re Maybe Trump Wasnt the Worst President Ever?, by Mark K. Updegrove (Opinion guest essay, nytimes.com, July 1):

James Buchanan has long occupied last place in the rankings of U.S. presidents, but thanks to Donald Trump, it looked as if he was on the verge of surrendering that ignominy. After all, Mr. Trump seemed to be the strongest candidate in the last 100 years to displace Buchanan. Unfortunately for Buchanan, the 142 presidential historians who participated in C-SPANs just released 2021 Presidential Historians Survey decided otherwise.

Apparently, Buchanans encouragement of the Supreme Courts decision upholding slavery in the Dred Scott case, endorsement of fraudulent election results in the Kansas territory to support its admittance to the Union as a slave state, and failure to respond to states seceding from the Union were viewed as more egregiously incompetent than Mr. Trumps being the only president to stand in the way of the peaceful transfer of power and mishandling a pandemic that led to more than 600,000 deaths in the United States so far.

For the countrys sake, there will hopefully be no future contenders for the title of Worst President Ever.

Gene HarringtonEllicott City, Md.

To the Editor:

With the passage of time, historians have become more generous in their evaluations of the performance of Republican presidents, such as Dwight Eisenhower and Ronald Reagan. But time will not be as kind to Donald Trump.

Mr. Trump has yet to be held accountable for many of his actions while in office, including the cases of obstruction of justice cited in the Mueller Report, perpetrating the Big Lie relating to the 2020 presidential election, and inciting the deadly insurrection at the Capitol. In addition, the prosecution of the Trump Organization by the Manhattan district attorney is only the start of several criminal cases likely to be filed against Mr. Trump in various states.

When C-SPAN issues its next presidential rankings, Mr. Trump could very well displace James Buchanan at the bottom of the list.

Jack NargundkarGermantown, Md.

To the Editor:

When you attempt to overthrow the United States government, that makes you the worst president ever no matter what else occurred while you were in office.

Patricia WilsonMadison, Wis.

These events were interpreted as a call to report only positive news about China and avoid criticizing the country, prompting some to claim that Snows relations with Mao Zedong were cozy and his independence compromised. In truth, Snow believed in free, independent and factual reporting. He repeatedly resisted efforts by others to dictate, alter or censor what he wrote, be it Chiang Kai-shek, Joseph McCarthy, Stalinist officials in Moscow or Chinese and U.S. officials during the Cold War.

Those who think that Edgar Snow would support the repressive policies of the current Chinese government toward journalists are either ignorant of the real meaning of his work or guilty of using him for their own purposes.

Sian SnowFounex, Switzerland

To the Editor:

Re New York Trails Rest of the U.S. in Virus Rebound (front page, June 21) and The American Renaissance Has Begun, by David Brooks (column, June 18):

The forecast for an uneven economic recovery in New York City sharply contrasts with the bright report of an economic renaissance amid Covid by Mr. Brooks. As he observes, many people have moved out of New York City and San Francisco to more rural areas like Idaho and the Hudson Valley. A sizable number of these urban-to-rural migrants are well-off and are working from home.

If that fortuitous arrangement outlives the pandemic, prospects for an economic boom and social revival will almost certainly leave behind hourly workers and small-business owners who depend on urban commuters.

Work from home is either impractical or simply proscribed for the majority of low-wage workers. It is this large segment of the labor force that seems least likely to burst out of the gate as the economy reopens.

Matthew AuerAthens, Ga.The writer is a professor of public and international affairs at the University of Georgia.

Outdoor Dining? For Me, Not Yet

To the Editor:

Re Outdoor Dinings Next Challenge, by Pete Wells (Critics Notebook, Food, June 30):

The original purpose of building outdoor dining structures this last year was to ensure the air flow and social distancing made necessary by the pandemic. These two qualities are sadly lacking in many of the restaurant structures I had hoped to dine in but could not safely choose.

As someone whose health issues preclude vaccination, I must note and complain that many of these structures do not meet these standards.

Yes, design of these outdoor rooms is becoming more attractive and even impressive. But they really dont meet my needs of adequate ventilation and room for social distancing. I had hopes of easily choosing a place to dine, but sadly, I must wait until we accomplish herd immunity.

Jessica FrommTeaneck, N.J.

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Opinion | Should Trump Displace Buchanan as the Worst President Ever? - The New York Times

Liquor licences approved for Auckland bottle stores that had broken labour laws – RNZ

An alcohol action group is dismayed following news of another South Auckland liquor store being caught out for employment law breaches.

Members of Communities Against Alcohol Harm protesting outside a liquor store in tara. Photo: LDR / Justin Latif

Clevedon Road Liquor store owner Satnam Singh Jador has been fined $20,000 and ordered to repay $97,361.66 to four employees for a range of breaches, including not paying the minimum wage for all the hours staff were working.

The Labour Inspectorate noted this case had all the hallmarks of exploitation, due to the workers needing the job to retain their visa status.

The Employment Relations Authority ruling is the second in South Auckland this year.

Super Liquor Papatoetoe was ordered to pay close to $50,000 for exploiting a migrant worker in February, while over the last 18 months, Thirsty Liquor East Tamaki was fined $1000 and Thirsty Liquor Wickman Way in Mngere was fined $2000, both for failing to comply with employment laws.

Communities Against Alcohol Harm regularly opposes liquor licence applications across South Auckland.

The group's secretary, Grant Hewison, said a number of liquor store applications, including for the Papatoetoe and Wickman Way stores, had been approved despite being the subject of Labour Inspectorate investigations.

"It's modern slavery - straight out."

Auckland Council's licensing inspectors needed to treat worker exploitation more seriously by checking if bottle store owners had been complying with employment law, he said.

"In the case of the stores in Papatoetoe and Mngere, the licensing inspectors did not report any issues about the employment law breaches, although Labour Inspectorate investigations were underway.

"If someone is working exorbitant hours, not being paid fairly and being exploited, then that's modern day slavery in my book.

"And given there's been so much published on how rampant employment law concerns are with bottle stores - you would have thought there would be questions asked of liquor licence applicants about whether there were any negative reports about them from the Labour Inspectorate."

Auckland councillor Fa'anana Efeso Collins, who represented the Manukau ward, agreed that employment law breaches should be factored into licensing decisions.

"If people working for liquor store owners are feeling unsafe, then someone has to step in on their behalf, especially if these owners are being exploitative," he said.

"This is definitely something we have to look at.

"The Sale of Liquor Act is supposed to allow the community to have more say, so fuller information should be available, to give the community a much clearer picture of the type of retailer that they are."

From left, Communities Against Alcohol Harm secretary Grant Hewison, Auckland councillor Fa'anana Efeso Collins and Auckland University associate professor Christina Stringer. Photo: Supplied

Auckland University associate professor Christina Stringer, an expert in modern day slavery, said the issue was widespread in New Zealand.

She knew of numerous cases where employees had been required to work "very long, excessive hours" without breaks, often by themselves, while being monitored by cameras.

As was the case at the Clevedon Liquor store, employers are often keeping two sets of records, with one set designed to look like they are operating legally, while a second set shows employees' actual working hours, Stringer said.

In some instances employers are requiring their staff to pay part of their wages back, with threats of having their visas revoked used as a means of control.

Auckland Council needed to work more closely with the Labour Inspectorate teams inside the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment (MBIE) to curb the practices, she said.

"Many migrants are sold the dream that working in a liquor store is the pathway to residency," she said. "The Labour Inspectorate is the key agency. But central government can't do this alone. Everyone has a part to play."

In a written response, Auckland Council spokesperson Rob Abbott said council could not "cancel alcohol licences" of stores found to be exploiting workers, as such decisions were the responsibility of the Alcohol Regulatory and Licensing Authority.

"However, council alcohol licensing inspectors can apply to the authority to cancel an alcohol licence where there is evidence a licensee is breaching employment laws that warrants cancellation.

"We also have the ability to consider an applicant's history as an employer and take this into account when deciding whether to support or oppose the granting, or renewal, of a licence application."

MBIE said it only shared its labour inspection findings with local authorities' licensing inspectors "if asked".

But it said recently instituted measures, such as creating a visa for migrants to switch to when they leave exploitative situations, and a dedicated helpline to report bad employers, should make it easier to combat these practices.

"These offences are a case of blatant disregard for minimum employment standards," said Loua Ward, of Auckland's Labour Inspectorate.

"We continue to see workers in the liquor industry who are not receiving a fair day's pay for a fair day's work. [But] cases of worker exploitation in New Zealand will not be tolerated."

Local Democracy Reporting is a public interest news service supported by RNZ, the News Publishers' Association and NZ On Air.

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Liquor licences approved for Auckland bottle stores that had broken labour laws - RNZ

‘Nuclear weapons and military budgets’ and more – The River Reporter

Nuclear weapons and military budgets

The recent Green Party Presidential candidate, Howie Hawkins, recently sent a message to the American people. He urged us to join the 54 nations that signed and ratified the Treaty to Ban Nuclear Weapons (607 NGOs (non-government organizations) joined 54 United Nations member nations), pledge no first use of nuclear weapons and reduce the United States military budget by 75 percent.

Here are some other numbers: 32 nations, including the United States, oppose the UN Treaty to Ban Nuclear Weapons. Currently, there are 13,400 nuclear weapons in arsenals. A great majority of Americans support the UN Treaty to Ban Nuclear Weapons. They also support a no-first-use pledge. Regarding the United States military budget, there are more than 800 United States military bases in other countries. The money to maintain them there is a significant part of the military budget.

Let us write, email and call our elected Congress-people and tell them what we think.

Mort MalkinMilanville, PA

It was disappointing to see an echo of the old nobody wants to work canard headlined recently.

Ive probably seen not many more than 100 economics textbooks, but the ones Im familiar with all point to one solution. If there is a labor shortage, the answer is quite simple: raise the wage rate or salary. And presto chango, one has gone from a labor shortage to a labor surplus.

Of course, there are additional barriers to workplace re-entry such as the treatment of workers by a boss with his hand on your behind or the dangers of contracting COVID-19, which, in some cases, can lead to death by suffocation as if by drowning. But even the military provides additional pay for hazardous duty.

An alternative method of dealing with the situation is to remove financial support so that workers become desperate to feed their children or pay medical bills. This doesnt always solve the problem. Back in the day of chattel slavery, people complained about the lazy slaves. Can you imagine?

Larry ShuteCallicoon Center, NY

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'Nuclear weapons and military budgets' and more - The River Reporter

Letters: U.S. history is a mix of good and bad. We can handle it. – Palm Beach Post

When I was in grade school in the1950s, I was taught that three big events all happened in 1619. One was the introduction of Black slaves into the English colonies. One was the start of local representative government in America in Virginias House of Burgesses. And another was the start of the cultivation of tobacco for export.

All 1619. Imagine that. Quite a mix of good and evil. Yet I grew up loving my country. Still do.

Columnist Leonard Pitts ("Sometimes you wonder what's so scary," May 16)pointed out old schoolbooks that fell short of truthfulness about slavery. Other books, and then movies, did too.

There is a 1930s Tarzan movie with this setup: A stuffy old Englishman is leading an expedition. Theyre on a narrow mountain ledge. Local African porters bearing packs. One porter loses his footing and falls to his death. Yaaaah!

The stuffy Englishman says, Myword! What was in that package?

Ouch. And I probably watched that movie as a kid on Saturday morning TV without noticing the dismissal of a human life for a package.

Slavery ended and evolved:the Klans terror, Jim Crow, Civil Rights. All ongoing evolutions. I hope Ive evolved. We can all do better. And will.

Maybe being woke isnt so bad.

Emmett Elrod, West Palm Beach

I have read innumerablelettersin this section, presumably from Republicans, decrying the crisis at the southern border. I have also read many missives, likely from the same group, bemoaning the lack of people wanting to work in low-paying jobs.

Can right-wingers not see that we have lost a half-million people this past year from COVID, many of them minimum-wage workers? Can they notunderstand that a few thousand refugees seeking asylum are a small part of what we need to replenish those ranks?

GOP supporters should make up their minds. Do they want workers in low-wage jobs? If they do, they should stop their incessant yapping about the so-called crisis at the southern border.

Randolph Flint, Boynton Beach

Re theletterBiden victory has been bad for the country (May 17):

It lists a host of complaints about foreign policy, thejob market and no gas.

What President Biden has done is attackthe pandemicand returnto Americans some semblance of normal living. Perhaps the writer needs to reassess hisvalues of what really matters as a human being. Its not a full tank of gas.

Anthony Frigo, Jensen Beach

The last free, fair and peaceful election in America may have been the 2016 election.

Anyone who thinks the American experiment in democracy hasnt been highjacked by the Republican Party is kidding themselves. And ex-President Donald Trump cannot take all the credit for it.

The sneaky and insidious attack on the right to vote started well before Trump, but he was the man who had a huge reality TV following that hung on his every word. So when he said, If I dont win, the election was rigged,that was the magnet that brought it all together.

Lindsay Graham, the senior senator from South Carolina, basically said it on apopular conservative news program:Trump has neither the demeanor nor the character to be the president, but we cant win without him.

What is going on with the secret recount in Arizona and now Michigan is spreading. Can it be stopped likethe mid-stage of a cancer?Or is it terminal?

David Clendining, Loxahatchee

The Palm Beach Post is committed to publishing a diversity of opinions. Please send your views to letters@pbpost.com or by mail to Letters to the Editor, The Palm Beach Post,2751 S. Dixie Highway, West Palm Beach, FL 33405. Letters are subject to editing, must not exceed 200 words and must include your name, address and daytime phone number (we will publish only your name and city).

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Letters: U.S. history is a mix of good and bad. We can handle it. - Palm Beach Post

Why We Need to Distribute and Democratise Wealth – NewsClick

Throughout its historywherever it arrived and settled in as the dominant economic systemcapitalism provoked struggles over the redistribution of wealth. In other words, this system always distributes wealth in a particular way and likewise produces dissatisfaction with that particular distribution. Those dissatisfied then struggle, more or less, consciously or not, peacefully or violently to redistribute wealth. The struggles are socially divisive and sometimes rise to civil war levels.

The French Revolution marked the end of French feudalism and its transition to capitalism. The revolutionaries slogans promised the transition would bring with it libert, galit, fraternit (liberty, equality and fraternity). In other words, equality was to be a key accompaniment to or product of capitalisms establishment, of finally replacing feudalisms lord-serf organisation of production with capitalisms very different employer-employee system.

Transition to capitalism would erase the gross inequalities of French feudalism. The American Revolution likewise broke not only from its British colonial master but also from the feudal monarchy of George III. All men are created equal was a central theme of its profound commitment to equality together with capitalism.

In France, the United States, and beyond, capitalism justified itself by reference to its achievement or at least its targeting of equality in general. This equality included the distribution of wealth and income, at least in theory and rhetoric. Yet from the beginning, all capitalisms wrestled with contradictions between lip service to equality and inequality in their actual practices.

Adam Smith worried about the accumulation of stock (wealth or capital) in some hands but not in others. Thomas Jefferson and Alexander Hamilton had different visions of the future of an independent United States in terms of whether it would or would not secure wealth equality later dubbed Jeffersonian democracy.

There was and always remained in the United States an awkward dissonance between theoretical and rhetorical commitments to equality and the realities of slavery and then systemic racist inequalities. The inequalities of gender likewise contradicted commitments to equality. It took centuries of capitalism to achieve even the merely formal political equality of universal suffrage.

Thus, there should be no surprise that US capitalismlike most other capitalismsprovokes a widely troubling contradiction between the actual wealth inequality it produces and tendentially deepens (as Thomas Piketty has definitively shown) and its repeatedly professed commitment to equality. Efforts to redistribute wealthto thereby move from less to more equal distributionsfollow. Yet, they also disturbingly divide societies where the capitalist economic system prevails.

Wealth redistributions take from those who have and give to those who have not. Those whose wealth is redistributed resent or resist this taking, while those who receive during the redistributions of wealth develop rationales to justify that receipt. Each side of such redistributions often demonises the other. Politics typically becomes the arena where demonisations and conflicts over redistribution occur. Those at risk of being deprived due to redistributions aim either to oppose redistribution or else to escape it. If the opposition is impossible or difficult, escape is the chosen strategy.

Thus, if profits of capitalists are to be taxed to redistribute wealth to the poor, big businesses may escape by moving politically to shift the burden of taxation onto small or medium businesses. Alternatively, all businesses may unite to shift the burden of such redistributive taxation onto higher-paid employees wages and salaries, and away from business profits.

Recipients of redistributions face parallel political problems of whom to target for contributing to wealth redistribution. Will recipients support a tax on all profits or rather a tax just on big business with maybe some redistribution flowing from big to medium and small business? Or might low-wage recipients target high-wage workers for redistributive taxation?

All kinds of other redistributions between regions, races and genders display comparable strategic political choices.

Conflicts over redistributions are thus intrinsic to capitalism and always have been. They reflect but also deepen social divisions. They can and often have become violent and socially disruptive. They may trigger demands for system change. They may function as catalysts for revolutions. Because pre-capitalist economic systems like slavery and feudalism had fewer theoretical and rhetorical commitments to equality in general, they had fewer redistribution struggles. Those finally emerged when inequalities became relatively more extreme than the levels of inequality that more frequently provoked redistribution struggles in capitalism.

No solution to divisive struggles over wealth redistribution in capitalism was ever found. Capitalisms keep reproducing both theoretical and rhetorical appeals to equality as self-celebrations alongside actualities of deep and deepening wealth inequalities. Criticisms of capitalism on grounds of wealth inequality dog the system everywhere. Divisive social conflicts over capitalisms unequal wealth distributions persist. Endless efforts to find and implement a successful redistributive system or mechanism continue. The latest comprises various proposals for universal basic incomes.

To avoid divisive social conflict over redistribution, the solution is not to distribute unequally in the first place. That can remove the cause and impetus for redistributive struggles and thus the need for endless and so far fruitless efforts to find the right redistribution formula or mechanism. The way forward is to democratise the decision about distributing wealth as it emerges from production. This can be accomplished by democratising the enterprise, converting workplaces from their current capitalist organisation (i.e., hierarchical divisions into employerspublic or privateand employees) into worker cooperatives. In the latter, each worker has one vote, and all basic workplace issues are decided by majority vote after a free and open debate. That is when different views on what distribution of output should occur are articulated and democratically decided.

No redistribution is required, necessitated, or provoked. Workplace members are free to reopen, debate and decide anew on initial wealth distributions at any time. The same procedure would apply to workplace decisions governing what to produce, which technology to deploy, and where to locate production. All workers collectively and democratically decide what wage the collective of workers pays to each of them individually. They likewise decide how to dispose of or allocate any surplus, which is above the total individual wage bill and replacement of used-up inputs, that the enterprise might generate.

A parable can illustrate the basic point. Imagine parents taking their twinsMary and Johnto a park where there is an ice-cream vendor. The parents buy two ice creams and give both to Mary. Johns wails provoke a search for an appropriate redistribution of ice creams. The parents take away one of the ice creams from Mary and hand it to John. Anger, resentment, bitterness, envy and rage distress the rest of the day and divide family members. If affection and emotional support are similarly distributed and redistributed, deep and divisive scars result. The lesson: we dont need a better or right redistribution; we need to distribute more equally and democratically in the first place.

Richard D. Wolff is professor of economics emeritus at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, and a visiting professor in the Graduate Program in International Affairs of the New School University, in New York.

This article was produced byEconomy for All, a project of the Independent Media Institute.

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Why We Need to Distribute and Democratise Wealth - NewsClick

A future for everyone or profits for a few Thought-provoking insights into the way the human world works – Digital Journal

Ernst Robert Langlotz challenges the readers of A future for everyone or profits for a few to see the global crisis as the key to a system change.

Human beings have the inherent ability to live their lives in a self-determined and species-appropriate way, meaning oriented towards the conservation of the environment and the resources. When one looks at the current state of the world and the people who live on it, it becomes obvious that a part of humanity does not use this ability nor does it want other humans to use it. It has deliberately been suppressed for thousands of years by the elites that are in power, previously an alliance between throne and altar and currently by corporations and politicians. Power, money and prestige are the only things that count for them, and this elite has always understood how to make other people dependent and to inculcate them to serve with joy and obedience. Thus authoritarian social structures emerged and consequently people are treated like pets or worse: slavery, serfdom and wage-dependency today.

According to A future for everyone or profits for a few by Ernst Robert Langlotz, this development is currently reaching its limits. The global crisis has made clear that those who would like to retain Earths resources for future generations do not have the power to do so because they have relinquished this power to the elites. And the elites are not interested. The aspects of these authoritarian structures and the ramifications thereof on the consciousness of the dependents are examined critically in this book. Strategies to achieve a required change of awareness, changing from heteronomy to self-determination, are introduced to the readers and makes them think about how they could change their own behaviour towards a better future.

A future for everyone or profits for a few by Ernst Robert Langlotz is now available from tredition or can be ordered through retail using ISBN 978-3-347-03199-9. tredition assists young and unknown authors with publishing their own books, but also cooperates with publishers and publishing houses. tredition publishes books in print and digital formats, distributes locally and online, and actively markets all titles.

For more information on this title, click here: https://tredition.com

Media ContactCompany Name: Tredition GmbHContact Person: Nadine Otto-De GiovanniEmail: Send EmailPhone: 1-800-346-8460Address:Halenreie 40-44 City: HamburgCountry: GermanyWebsite: tredition.com

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A future for everyone or profits for a few Thought-provoking insights into the way the human world works - Digital Journal

Jason Stanley on critical race theory and why it matters – The Economist

May 24th 2021

by Jason Stanley

Editors note: Twelve months on from the killing of George Floyd, The Economist is publishing a series of articles, films, podcasts, data visualisations and guest contributions on the theme of race in America. To see them visit our hub

POLITICIANS USE critical race theory (CRT) in much the same way that they use Keynesian economics: as cudgels in a propaganda campaign to advance their cherished political goals, with little regard for the actual philosophies at issue. CRT, a doctrine more caricatured than understood, rests upon the distinctly unradical claim that American institutions have systematically fallen short of the countrys egalitarian ideals due to practices that perpetuate racial hierarchies. It began in the 1970s as a way to analyse the intersection of American law and race; its creators were legal scholars such as Derrick Bell and Kimberl Crenshaw. It has since expanded its purview to analyse American institutions more broadly.

CRT stems from the need to provide a language for what institutions actually do, rather than how people in those institutions describe themselves. CRT thus seeks to explain the fact of persistent racial injustice by analysing the practices of American institutions. Such practices are racist because they perpetuate racial inequality, not because people within them seek deliberately to oppress individual and specific black people. Mortgage lending, for instance, can function in a racist way, even if the lenders themselves harbour no personal bigotry against non-whites.

CRT holds that such institutional practices are difficult to change and endemic to American institutions, and that they, rather than the malice of individual bigots or the supposed pathologies of black American behaviour, are primarily responsible for racial inequality. CRT is thus not about peoples individual characters. It is rather a claim about the structures, practices, and habits that perpetuate racial inequality. Even the most avowed anti-racist can participate in an institution with racist practices.

Martin Delany, a political philosopher and black abolitionist, writing in the year 1852, noted that even in Anti-Slavery establishments, by which he means institutions in Northern cities devoted to the abolition of slavery and the elevation of the colored man, by facilitating his efforts in attaining to equality with the white man, black citizens only occupy a mere secondary, underling position. Even whites most devoted to the cause of the advancement of racial equality hired black Americans for inferior jobs.

Such whites might have argued for a distinction between political and professional inequalitythey might have felt, in other words, that the law should treat everyone equally, but also that American citizens of African descent are best suited for menial work. But this is explicit racism, which no avowed anti-racist could accept. The professions of anti-racism from these whites, whom Delany called the truest friends, might have been sincere, but they coexisted with obviously racist practices. Delany denounces this faux liberal equality, declaring, There is no equality of persons, where there is not an equality of attainments.

Almost 170 years later, how has the American polity done on Delanys measure of equality? Consider the criminal-justice system, decried in W.E.B. Du Bois 1903 book The Souls of Black Folk as a a double system of justice, which erred on the white side by undue leniency and the practical immunity of red-handed criminals, and erred on the black side by undue severity, injustice, and lack of discrimination. As of this writing, the United States has the highest incarceration rate in the world. Black Americans are incarcerated in state and federal prisons at five times the rate of white Americans.

It is true that rates of violent crime among black Americans are higher. But just as higher covid-19 death rates among black Americans are best explained by differences in environmental conditions, higher crime rates are also due to racial disparities, such as harsher policing (a racial disparity not explained by differential crime rates), lack of decent job opportunities, homelessness, and poverty. Thus the longstanding American practice of addressing crime spikes through increased policing rather than, say, more job-training programmes is an example of a practice that perpetuates racist outcomes.

Inequalities in the justice system are mirrored, unsurprisingly, in inequalities in wealth. In 2016, the median black family had 10% of the wealth of the median white family. This is an improvement from 1963, when the median non-white family had only 5% of relative wealth. But it is a far cry from equality of attainment, 170 years after Martin Delany set that down as the standard for racial justice.

From sharecropping in the South to predatory lending in the North, white Americans have been materially invested in creating and maintaining racial domination. In addition to these material benefits of racial hierarchy, documented in a justly famous essay of Ta-Nehisi Coates, there is the desire to preserve what Du Bois in 1935 called the public and psychological wage of whiteness.

Jennifer Richeson and Michael Kraus, both psychologists, along with their co-authors, have documented a delusion among white Americans about the racial-wealth gap. They show that Americans estimate that in 2016 the median black family had 90% of the wealth of the median white familyrather than the true figure of 10%. Their research shows a bias towards what Ms Richeson calls a mythology of racial progress. As Ms Richeson writes in a recent article, People are willing to assume that things were at least somewhat bad 50 years ago, but they also assume that things have gotten substantially betterand are approaching parity. This belief that the present has come close to parity is longstandingin a Gallup poll from March 1963, 46% of white Americans agreed with the statement, blacks have as good a chance as whites in your community to get any kind of job for which they are qualified.

Many Americans believe that we are nearing racial equality after a long progression of positive change. That means that any attempt to push for structural change to address inequalities will be met by profound disbelief. Those who argue for such changes get painted as radicals with a devious and destructive hidden agenda. This sort of moral panic helps maintain the status quo.

But such panics might not happen if schools made more efforts to teach students how American institutions fell short of their ideals. Hence, in few arenas does the battle over CRT rage as strongly as in educationwhich fits the historical pattern. The aim of Du Bois 1935 work Black Reconstruction in America was to tell the true story of the end of Reconstruction (the brief period of racial progress that followed the end of the civil war), which is one of violent white backlash against emerging black political power. He denounces the teaching of history for inflating our national ego, and for years his work was overlooked in favour of an interpretation arguing that Reconstruction failed because black Americans were corrupt and incapable of self-governance.

More recently, Nikole Hannah-Joness 1619 Project, which seeks to illuminate how the legacy of slavery has shaped American institutions, was met by fury from the right, as well as demands for patriotic education. The same cycle again: illumination implying the need for structural change produces a moral panic seeking to reinforce a racist status quo.

The targets of the Republican attack on CRT reveal that the issue is not CRT, but something much broader. A recent education bill passed in Tennessee bans promoting division between, or resentment of, a racesubjective language that could easily bar teachers from discussing how race has shaped American institutions. In 1935, Du Bois explicitly argues that American history, properly taught, is divisive, as war and especially civil strife leave terrible wounds. White Americans enslaved black Americans, and shortly after the latter achieved their freedom during the brief period of Reconstruction, excluded them by legislation and force from civic and political life until the 1960s. American democracy is young. These facts are divisive. The Republican attack on CRTs aims is thus a broadside against truth and history in education.

CRT urges America to reform practices in virtually all of its institutions, including criminal-justice, education, housing, banking, and hiring. The United States has attempted this before most notably during Reconstruction, when the federal government poured large resources into empowering a newly free southern black population. That period saw formerly enslaved black legislators elected across the South, and free public education offered to children of all races. The response to these drastic changes was moral panic, widespread racist terrorism and rapid reversal of progress.

Decades later, in the 1960s, the civil-rights movement fought for major legal changes to end the era of legal segregation. During this fight, its leaders were denounced as anti-American communist sympathisers. It should come as no surprise now that the same Republican legislators who want to ban CRT are also advancing voter-suppression laws that target black communities.

Dramatic structural change is hard, and involves missteps. Diversity workshops that involve little more than people sharing feelings, or being told their race is the single most important and determinative thing about them, are no doubt examples. But critics vastly inflate the importance of these missteps, to make such calls, and CRT more broadly, seem outlandish. When such complaints dominate the discussion, they fuel moral panic that is cynically used to halt and reverse progress towards equality.

___________________

Jason Stanley is the Jacob Urowsky Professor of Philosophy at Yale University, and is the author of several books, including How Propaganda Works and How Fascism Works: The Politics of Us and Them. For a contrary argument, please see John McWhorters essay here.

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Jason Stanley on critical race theory and why it matters - The Economist

Ending Poverty in the Richest Country on Earth – Common Dreams

This week, we introduced a congressional resolution asserting that we can end poverty in the richest country on Earth.

We've had the opportunity to study poverty deeply. Rep. Lee has chaired the Congressional Task Force on Poverty and Opportunity since 2013. Rep. Jayapal chairs the Congressional Progressive Caucus. Both of us worked closely with the Poor People's Campaign to produce a "People's Agenda" for pandemic recovery.

Even before the pandemic, more than two in five people in this country were poor or low-income, just $400 or less away from financial ruin. That's 140 million of us. During the pandemic, it got even worse. By the fall of 2020, 8 million more Americans had been pushed into poverty.

We can't end poverty without attacking the interconnected injustices of systemic racism, inequality, militarism and the climate emergency. That's why our resolution calls for a comprehensive response that prioritizes the needs of these 140 million people.

The American Rescue Plan, the Biden administration's COVID-19 relief package, brought crucial relief. But millions of jobs that were lost have not returned. An astounding 30 million people were put at risk of homelessness, and experts warn that the American Rescue Plan will fall short of helping them all.

But being poor in this country means more than going without money, a job or a home. It also means experiencing the brunt of climate disasters. It means mass incarcerationand frequent contact with militarized police forces. And it means ever-increasing restrictions on your right to vote, join a union or see a doctor.

Poverty, in short, intersects with every other injustice in our country.

For instance, poor communitiesespecially Black, Latina/o, Asian and Pacific Islander communitiesare more exposed to air pollution that makes COVID-19 more dangerous. And they're more likely to work the front-line jobs that expose them to the virus.

While vaccines may eventually contain the pandemic, our costly and ineffective health care system will still leave us with the lowest life expectancy and the highest infant and maternal mortality rates among our peer countries. These crises most acutely affect poor and low-income Americans.

Meanwhile, poor people and communities of color are much more likely to be incarcerated or abused by police. Yet ballooning military spending and endless wars have siphoned resources from these same communitieswhile sending billions of dollars' worth of military equipment to civilian law enforcement, bringing the violence of those wars to our own streets.

And finally, with each passing day, new laws make it harder and harder for these impacted communities to vote. Hundreds have been introduced this year alone.

None of these problems stand alone. We can't end poverty without attacking the interconnected injustices of systemic racism, inequality, militarism and the climate emergency. That's why our resolution calls for a comprehensive response that prioritizes the needs of these 140 million people.

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Alongside expanded social welfare programs and unemployment insurance, we're calling for a national, universal single-payer health care program that puts people before profits.

We're calling for a living minimum wage, the right to form unions and a federal jobs guarantee.

We're calling for a housing guarantee that ends evictions and expands affordable housing options and accessible quality education at all levels.

We're calling to transform our climate chaos to a green and renewable futurewith equitable public transit, dramatic reductions in pollution and green jobs and infrastructure.

To root out systemic racism, we're calling on Congress to protect the right to vote, establish commissions on reparations for slavery and genocide and ensure the rights of Native people to their sacred lands. We must also enact comprehensive immigration reform that ends detentions, deportations and family separations. And we must end mass incarceration and the militarization of law enforcement.

Our nation has vast wealth and vaster inequality, which is why we're calling for fair taxation on the wealthyand cuts to our enormous military expenditures. We're calling to end our wars and reconsider the harm done by sanctions and forward military deploymentsand to transfer at least 10 percent of the Pentagon budget to fund community needs.

We call our resolution the "Third Reconstruction." During the First Reconstruction after the Civil War, Black Americans joined hands with white allies to build the power to rewrite state constitutions in most of the former Confederate states, winning the right to public education for all and other measures of progress. Multi-racial fusion coalitions were also key to the victories of the Second Reconstruction of the civil rights era in the 1960s.

Our current moment demands action of similarly historic proportions to heal and transform the nation. We need a Third Reconstruction.

A resolution is just the first step. Actually fulfilling it will require pressure from faith communities, unions, workers, immigrants and the racial justice, climate and peace movements. The Third Reconstruction is backed by the Poor People's Campaign, which will not rest until we achieve this goal.

Let's be clear: poverty exists because we allow it to exist. But in November, the people of this country gave their elected officials a new mandate to change that. With this resolution as a roadmap, we can do what needs to be done and deliver for people across America.

Read more here:

Ending Poverty in the Richest Country on Earth - Common Dreams

A Resolution to End Poverty in the World’s Wealthiest Country | Opinion – Newsweek

This week, we introduced a congressional resolution asserting that we can end poverty in the richest country on Earth.

We've had the opportunity to study poverty deeply. Rep. Lee has chaired the Congressional Task Force on Poverty and Opportunity since 2013. Rep. Jayapal chairs the Congressional Progressive Caucus. Both of us worked closely with the Poor People's Campaign to produce a "People's Agenda" for pandemic recovery.

Even before the pandemic, more than two in five people in this country were poor or low-income, just $400 or less away from financial ruin. That's 140 million of us. During the pandemic, it got even worse. By the fall of 2020, 8 million more Americans had been pushed into poverty.

The American Rescue Plan, the Biden administration's COVID-19 relief package, brought crucial relief. But millions of jobs that were lost have not returned. An astounding 30 million people were put at risk of homelessness, and experts warn that the American Rescue Plan will fall short of helping them all.

But being poor in this country means more than going without money, a job or a home. It also means experiencing the brunt of climate disasters. It means mass incarcerationand frequent contact with militarized police forces. And it means ever-increasing restrictions on your right to vote, join a union or see a doctor.

Poverty, in short, intersects with every other injustice in our country.

For instance, poor communitiesespecially Black, Latina/o, Asian and Pacific Islander communitiesare more exposed to air pollution that makes COVID-19 more dangerous. And they're more likely to work the front-line jobs that expose them to the virus.

While vaccines may eventually contain the pandemic, our costly and ineffective health care system will still leave us with the lowest life expectancy and the highest infant and maternal mortality rates among our peer countries. These crises most acutely affect poor and low-income Americans.

Meanwhile, poor people and communities of color are much more likely to be incarcerated or abused by police. Yet ballooning military spending and endless wars have siphoned resources from these same communitieswhile sending billions of dollars' worth of military equipment to civilian law enforcement, bringing the violence of those wars to our own streets.

And finally, with each passing day, new laws make it harder and harder for these impacted communities to vote. Hundreds have been introduced this year alone.

None of these problems stand alone. We can't end poverty without attacking the interconnected injustices of systemic racism, inequality, militarism and the climate emergency. That's why our resolution calls for a comprehensive response that prioritizes the needs of these 140 million people.

Alongside expanded social welfare programs and unemployment insurance, we're calling for a national, universal single-payer health care program that puts people before profits.

We're calling for a living minimum wage, the right to form unions and a federal jobs guarantee.

We're calling for a housing guarantee that ends evictions and expands affordable housing options and accessible quality education at all levels.

We're calling to transform our climate chaos to a green and renewable futurewith equitable public transit, dramatic reductions in pollution and green jobs and infrastructure.

To root out systemic racism, we're calling on Congress to protect the right to vote, establish commissions on reparations for slavery and genocide and ensure the rights of Native people to their sacred lands. We must also enact comprehensive immigration reform that ends detentions, deportations and family separations. And we must end mass incarceration and the militarization of law enforcement.

Our nation has vast wealth and vaster inequality, which is why we're calling for fair taxation on the wealthyand cuts to our enormous military expenditures. We're calling to end our wars and reconsider the harm done by sanctions and forward military deploymentsand to transfer at least 10 percent of the Pentagon budget to fund community needs.

We call our resolution the "Third Reconstruction." During the First Reconstruction after the Civil War, Black Americans joined hands with white allies to build the power to rewrite state constitutions in most of the former Confederate states, winning the right to public education for all and other measures of progress. Multi-racial fusion coalitions were also key to the victories of the Second Reconstruction of the civil rights era in the 1960s.

Our current moment demands action of similarly historic proportions to heal and transform the nation. We need a Third Reconstruction.

A resolution is just the first step. Actually fulfilling it will require pressure from faith communities, unions, workers, immigrants and the racial justice, climate and peace movements. The Third Reconstruction is backed by the Poor People's Campaign, which will not rest until we achieve this goal.

Let's be clear: poverty exists because we allow it to exist. But in November, the people of this country gave their elected officials a new mandate to change that. With this resolution as a roadmap, we can do what needs to be done and deliver for people across America.

Rep. Barbara Lee (D-Calif.) is chair of the Congressional Task Force on Poverty and Opportunity. Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.) is chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus.

The views expressed in this article are the writers' own.

The rest is here:

A Resolution to End Poverty in the World's Wealthiest Country | Opinion - Newsweek

‘We need help, too. We need a break, too.’ Mothers, people of color face unseen challenges – The Columbus Dispatch

Prior to the pandemic, Stevi Knighton had found a rhythm, juggling single parenthood, work and her passion for poetry and performance.

But by the summer of 2020, shed been laid off from her job as a grants and services coordinator. The gig she lined up on the main stage at the Columbus Arts Festival was canceled. To earn income, she delivered groceries, sold custom T-shirts and performed virtually all while caring for her two sons, 10 and 12, who were forced to attend school online.

Knighton collected unemployment, but shes still trying to track down a much-needed stimulus payment. She has a new job working from home for an education solutions company but it pays a low wage.

Divided Economy: 'Were doing everything we can do to scrape by.' COVID-19 put some families on the edge while the wealthy thrive

My T-shirts say, Hope is powerful, said Knighton, 37, of the Near East Side. Its the thing that keeps you going. I have a lot of hope that everything will work out. But, full disclosure, Im definitely nervous.

One year after the pandemic, studies show that women particularly mothers and people of color have an uphill battle to economic recovery. The higher rates at which they were pushed out of the labor market exposed longstanding systemic inequalities.

Stevi Knighton makes ramen noodles for her two sons, 10-year-old Ari, left, and 12-year-old Hayden, right, and their friend, Michael Hughes, after school.Courtney Hergesheimer/Columbus Dispatch

In January, about 10 million, or a third, of women living with their school-age children, were not working, according to a report by the U.S. Census Bureau. This was 1.4 million more than January 2020.

By contrast, the number offathers of school-age children who were not workingwas 3.8 million.

Stevi Knighton lets her dog Sammy out in the early hours of the morning before getting her oldest child up and off to school.Courtney Hergesheimer/Columbus Dispatch

Not only are women more likely to work in service positions or other jobs impacted by pandemic closures, but they are also responsible for a larger share of childcare and unpaid domestic laborincluding managing their childrens schooling according to a report by The Hamilton Project economic policy initiative.

While all single mothers had greater declines in active work, women of color suffered the most. For example, the rate at which Black, non-Hispanic single mothers lost jobs was 7.5 percentage points higher in January 2021 than in January 2020, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. For white, non-Hispanic single mothers the increase was 5 percentage points.

The bureau also reported the percentage of unemployed single mothers by race, showing Asian, non-Hispanic women at 9.5%, followed by Black, non-Hispanic women at 9.3%, Hispanic women at 8.8% and white, non-Hispanic women at 5%.

In Columbus, the nonprofit organization Motherful focuses on providing resources, community and education to single mothers. Executive Director Heidi Howes said the pandemic highlighted just how much care work mothers do at home, now compounded by schoolingand the increased risk of burnout.

This is the invisible work of women and moms that we dont pay for and we dont acknowledge, said Howes, who co-founded Motherful in 2018 with Lisa Woodward. For some of the moms weve been in contact with, it has been disastrous.

Responding to reports of food insecurity, Motherful supplements groceries for up to 30 families per week, due in part to a collaboration with Trader Joes.

South Side mom Ciera Shanks takes advantage of this service, which is helping her save money to improve life for her 10-year-old daughter.

I only make $15 an hour, and I still dont have food assistance, said Shanks, who is 30. I make too much. Its only because of (Motherful) that Im able to follow this financial plan.

Last year, Shanks was making ends meet by working part-time at the YMCA, studying early childhood education at Columbus State Community College and driving for Uber. She was laid off amid the pandemic and stopped working for Uber to avoid exposure to the virus.

She eventually found a job working from home for an addiction and behavioral health facility, but the stress of the new position, along with managing her daughters education, took a toll. She decided to take a break from school.

I got depressed and had to go into counseling for myself and have my daughter go into counseling when COVID first hit, because it was a really hard transition, she said. I felt like I had finally gotten on my feet emotionally doing what I love, and it was taken away.

According to survey data analyzed by The Hamilton Project, women with a lower rating on the mental health index are associated with poor economic outcomes. And multiple women benefitting from Motherfuls resources have reported some mental health struggles.

Shanks is not the only one experiencing a detour in her education and career paths. Mothers often experience V-shaped employment patterns, or up-and-down work cycles. Brought on pay disparity and unequal access to promotions and advancement, this trend may be prolonged by the pandemic, according to the U.S. Census Bureau report.

As a result, women could see a decrease in total lifetime earnings.

Access to affordable childcare could help mothers return to the labor force, but some still fear their children will be exposed to the coronavirus.

At the onset of the pandemic, Nyshia Gentry put her 3-year-old son in daycare, but had to pull him out and get him tested when one of the teachers came down with COVID-19. Additionally, her 7-year-old had to transition to virtual learning following an outbreak in his classroom.

Gentry, who has since been laid off from her job at a warehouse, is looking for work-from-home opportunities.

I'm scared if anything happens at school again, Id have to quit, said Gentry, 26, of the South Side. (But work-from-home employers) expect you to be a lot more flexible. Its like, No, I have kids. They think because you're at home, you should be able to work any time.

Divided economy:He opened a restaurant mid-pandemic, then had to sell his house to make ends meet

Divided economy:Survival mode: Case manager sees clients pushed to the edge

Divided economy:Dispatch reporter considers himself one of the lucky ones during the pandemic

Gentry said she is often frustrated by the strong single woman stereotype, which can be harmful.

We need help, too, she said. We need a break, too.

In Howes opinion, that help should come in the form of a mothering wage.

Motherhood is a very difficult job, she said. We dont recognize or value mothering skills. We think about it as a personal choice, but were raising workers to be part of this capitalistic society. Its all on mothers who dont get paid to raise them.

When it comes to race, the coronavirus pandemic has shed light on major economic and health disparities.

There was already a large racial wealth gap brought about by the legacy of slavery, segregation and housing discrimination. For instance, in 2019, the median Black household wealth in the country was 13 cents for every $1 of wealth for median white households, according to the Urban Institute, a Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit research organization.

Stevi Knighton gets ready to take her youngest son, Ari, 10 to the bus stop on April 13, 2021.Courtney Hergesheimer/Columbus Dispatch

Given the correlation between poor living conditions and poor health, people of color had the highest COVID-19 mortality rates. More likely to be employed in frontline positions, they had greater exposure, and were forced to take more time away from work due to coronavirus symptoms, as outlined in a report by the National Partnership for Women & Families.

However, there were many people of color who could not afford to take time off during the pandemic. For shorter leaves (10 days or less), half of Latino workers and one third of Black workers had no form of paid time off, according to the report. And compared to white workers, Black workers were 83% more likely to be unable to take unpaid leave.

(The percentages for Latino and Native American, Pacific Islander and multiracial workers were 66% and 100%, respectively.)

To meet FMLA requirements for unpaid leave, employees have to be on the job for a certain period of time. Research shows that people of color have less access to full-time work, and are more likely to experience discrimination in the labor market. Furthermore, if they do have access to paid leave, they are less likely to have enough savings or resources to make ends meet.

Keisha Riley knows some of the economic struggles all too well. Prior to the pandemic, the South Side mother of four was making money by cooking, cleaning, selling items at flea markets and working as an independent home health aide.

For several years, she was providing building maintenance for a community center, but chose to leave.

I had an issue with some of the treatment there and the pay, said Riley, 48, of the South Side. I just didnt feel like they were in my corner as an employee.

She also began caring for her 79-year-old mother, who struggledwith rheumatoid arthritis. Unsurprisingly, the pandemic made matters worse.

Everything came to a halt, she said.

Riley said she has been frustrated by the time-consuming application for unemployment and food assistance.

She said she has been grateful for programs that helped her lower utility bills and access internet service at home. But she has seen other people of color struggling even more.

I've known people that have lost people, she said. They don't have access to certain things. Just in general, people are losing their homes.

Riley's mother died in April.

Keisha Riley, 48, who is a mother of four, was also caring for her mother, who died in April.Courtney Hergesheimer/Columbus Dispatch

On top of health and economic struggles, Black people have also had to contend with the psychological impact of last years social justice uprising not to mention the everyday fear of police violence in their neighborhoods. Columbus has seen its fair share of high-profile police killings of Black people, including the deaths of Casey Goodson, Jr. and Andre Hill in December alone.

Communities of color may also be waiting a while for true economic recovery. For instance, although the national unemployment rate dropped to 6% in March, it is 13.4% for Black workers and 11.5% for Latino workers.

In the meantime, Riley said she registered her food-delivery business with the state.

My goal is to buy property this year and to get my business off the ground, she said. I definitely don't want to depend on anybody else. And I feel like the pandemic has shown us that you really need something of your own.

Top photo:Keisha Riley, 48, who is a mother of four, is in the process of getting her mother into hospice care, Monday, April 19, 2021.

Produced by Joe Harrington

ethompson@dispatch.com

@miss_ethompson

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'We need help, too. We need a break, too.' Mothers, people of color face unseen challenges - The Columbus Dispatch

Pay cuts and forced overtime: COVID-19 takes heavy toll on Ethiopia’s garment workers – Thomson Reuters Foundation

By Emeline Wuilbercq

HAWASSA, Ethiopia, Dec 22 (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - Even before COVID-19 struck, the women stitching clothes at Ethiopia's Hawassa industrial park were among the world's worst-paid garment workers - many making less than $30 per month.

Today, pay cuts and forced overtime have become common in short-staffed factories abandoned by hundreds of former employees - some too scared of catching the coronavirus to return, several workers told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

Tigist, a 20-year-old seamstress, said some of her colleagues had not come back to Hawassa after they were furloughed in the early months of the pandemic, as the global garment industry was hammered by cancelled orders.

In recent months, bosses eager to recover lost business have been forcing the remaining workers to pick up the slack, Tigist - whose name has been changed to protect her identity - and other workers said.

"We had to work (more) to fill in the gap," Tigist said in the tiny, bare room she rents with another worker for 275 birr (about $7) per month each - eating up almost half her monthly salary of 650 birr.

"We fear catching the virus too but we must continue because we don't have any other option," she said, adding that she had to work to avoid being a "burden" to her poor family who live in a southern village.

Since coming back from furlough, she said she has been working an extra six hours per week - work for which she has not been paid, instead being given occasional $0.13 top-up cards for her mobile phone.

At least five other women reported similar experiences since factories reopened.

They said they worked for manufacturers including KGG Garments PLC and Indochine Apparel PLC, which supply big brands such as The Children's Place and Levi Strauss & Co.

A manager at KGG Garments PLC and the head of human resources at Indochine Apparel PLC denied the workers' allegations of unpaid, forced overtime and said their factories had not closed during the pandemic.

Fitsum Ketema, general manager of the Hawassa Industrial Park, said "there are no such practices in our park".

"Our companies are running their business respecting the law of the country," Ketema said in a text message.

The Children's Place and Levi Strauss & Co did not respond to requests for comment.

LOWEST PAID

More than a dozen industrial parks were built in Ethiopia in recent years as part of ambitious plans to turn the poor, mainly agrarian nation into a manufacturing powerhouse, attracting investors with tax breaks, cheap loans and labour costs.

The Hawassa industrial park, which lies some 275 km (170 miles) south of the capital, Addis Ababa, was inaugurated in 2016 and employed about28,000 workers before the outbreak.

Most factories at the park are now running at pre-pandemic capacity again.

Crowds of women - many not wearing facemasks - could be seen walking arm-in-arm out of the park at the end of their shift one day last month.

Some were new recruits, recently hired to replace those who did not come back from furlough - some fearing the virus, others deterred by the harsh working conditions.

Campaigners have denounced slavery-like conditions and low wages in parks where garment workers, mostly women, are the lowest paid in the world, according to a 2019 report by the New York University Stern Center for Business and Human Rights.

"The fact that these workers are being paid such miserable wages ... really enhances their vulnerability to hunger, to other forms of labour abuses," said

Penelope Kyritsis, strategic research director at the U.S.-based Worker Rights Consortium monitoring group.

BASIC NEEDS

Workers who were in Hawassa when the coronavirus crisis began said they have been struggling to meet their basic needs for most of the year - despite government measures aimed at protecting them.

Ethiopia declared a five-month state of emergency in April to fight the coronavirus and mitigate its impact,prohibiting companies including clothing factories from laying off workers despite significant sales and order reductions.

Hundreds of workers employed in Hawassa in January 2020 were furloughed or terminated during the pandemic, according to a phone survey of 3,896 female garment workers which was conducted between April 28 and July 1.

Workers interviewed by the Thomson Reuters Foundation said they were furloughed on reduced pay, forcing some to skip meals or take on loans to buy food. Most live in slums near the park, sharing small rooms often without access to safe water.

Tigist said she received 450 birr ($11.65) per month - two thirds of her normal wage - and struggled to make ends meet so went home to her village until her factory reopened.

Others, like Birtukan, 24, told of having their wages docked since they returned from a 21-day layoff.

She said her employer had deducted a monthly food allowance from pay packets - equivalent to a 20% pay cut. They also decreased the incentive pay that workers earned when they hit the target output.

When she and colleagues complained, managers told them they could leave if they were unsatisfied - a common practice to discourage workers from complaining.

"We were told that we should be patient," Birtukan, whose name has also been changed to protect her identity, said as she breastfed her baby.

Campaigners and unionists said establishing a statutory minimum wage would help protect workers from such abuses, though the government's reluctance and COVID-19 have halted the process.

The pandemic has also made it more urgent to establish trade unions, which are long overdue in Hawassa and other industrial parks, according to campaigners.

"The more workers are organized, the more chances they can get to solve problems that arose because of the pandemic," said Angesom Gebre Yohannes, head of the Industrial Federation of Ethiopian Textile, Leather and Garment Worker Trade Unions.

Yet for some garment workers such as Birtukan, the possibility of quick improvements appear slim for as long as the pandemic drags on.

"I'm not sure when it will be back to normal," she said. "If the pandemic persists and the company doesn't get profit, what do you expect?"

Related stories:

Will Cambodia's garment sector rebound after 'horror year'?

Ethiopia's war risks leaving manufacturing dreams in tatters

'Going hungry'; garment workers cut back on food as pandemic hits wages

($1 = 38.6286 birr)

(Reporting by Emeline Wuilbercq; Editing by Helen Popper. Please credit the Thomson Reuters Foundation, the charitable arm of Thomson Reuters, that covers the lives of people around the world who struggle to live freely or fairly. Visit http://news.trust.org)

Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

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Pay cuts and forced overtime: COVID-19 takes heavy toll on Ethiopia's garment workers - Thomson Reuters Foundation

Brazilian woman forced into domestic slavery and marriage freed after 40 years – The Guardian

A Brazilian woman enslaved as a maid from the age of eight for almost four decades and forced into marriage has been rescued in a rare crackdown on domestic slavery.

The 46-year-old was found living in a small room in an apartment in Patos de Minas, in the south eastern state of Minas Gerais. She had worked for the family for most of her life without pay or any time off, according to labour inspectors.

The victim was given up as a child by her destitute parents to a professor at Patos de Minas University, Unipam, and raised by his mother, inspectors said.

They gave her food when she was hungry, but all other rights were taken from her, Humberto Camasmie, the inspector in charge of the rescue, told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

The womans name has been withheld to protect her identity.

Domestic servitude in Brazil is difficult to identify and tackle because victims rarely see themselves as modern slaves, officials said. Of 3,513 workers found in slavery-like conditions between 2017 and 2019, only 21 were held in domestic servitude.

A lawyer representing the professors family said that they had been presented as guilty before their case was heard in court. A spokesman for Unipam said the professor had been suspended by the university and that all legal measures are being taken.

Labour prosecutors said they were trying to strike a deal with the family to pay compensation to the victim. If charged by criminal prosecutors of employing slave labour and found guilty in court, the professor faces up to eight years in jail.

While labour inspectors can visit workplaces at will to check for slavery, they must obtain permission from a judge to enter a home and said evidence of abuse from victims was a prerequisite.

Neighbours alerted authorities after receiving notes from the 46-year-old asking them to buy food and hygiene products since she had no money, according to labour inspectors.

During her captivity, the woman was forced to marry an elderly relative of the family so that it could continue to receive his pension after he died, authorities said.

Following her rescue at the end of November, the woman was taken to a shelter where she is being assisted by psychologists and social workers. Officials said they were trying to reunite the woman with her biological family.

The woman is now keeping the monthly pension of about R$8,000 ($1,560) which is seven times higher than Brazils minimum wage according to labour inspector Camasmie.

She did not know what a minimum wage was, he said. Now shes learning how to use a credit card. She knows that every month she will be paid a substantial amount (from the pension).

Domestic servitude hit the headlines in Brazil in June when authorities rescued a 61-year-old maid who they judged to have been enslaved by a woman working for beauty company Avon.

Avon fired the executive and said it would support the victim. The ex-Avon employee, who along with her husband and mother was charged with enslaving a worker, denied the charges.

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Brazilian woman forced into domestic slavery and marriage freed after 40 years - The Guardian

Sen. Merkley Co-Sponsors Bill to Close ‘Slavery Loophole’ in 13th Amendment – tntribune.com

Oregons U.S. Sen. Jeff Merkley and U.S. Rep. William Lacy Clay (D-MO) introduced theAbolition Amendment, which would strike the punishment clause of the 13th Amendment and abolish forced prison labor.

That amendment is known, when we are in high school, as the amendment that ended slavery in America, Merkley said during a press conference Monday. The problem with that story is that slavery continued under the (punishment) clause of the 13th Amendment. That clause specifically says that slavery cant continue except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted.

Merkley argued that the 14-word exception has allowed the U.S. to replace legal slavery with coerced labor in the prison system, and allowed the government to essentially outlaw being Black in America by disproportionately arresting citizens of color and renting them out as a workforce.

We think about the impact of slavery on the financial foundation for families, Merkley said during a virtual press conference on Monday.

Obviously a family under slavery built no financial foundation.

Well, when you broke apart a family and arrested the adults and rented them into slavery, there was no financial foundation there. People lost what they had.

In Oregon, inmates are paid far below the minimum wage to do work that often puts them at risk, like performing laundry services for hospitals at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. In September, 150 prisoners fought wildfires alongside professionals. In Texas, inmates have been drafted to work in morgues overwhelmed by victims of COVID-19.

These laws started to have the state profit directly off slavery because the state governments who rented people back into slavery helped finance their state governments with the money, Merkley said. This whole process led to a theme that Black Americans are criminals. It led to dehumanization, it led to unequal treatment under the law. It was the first wave of mass incarceration, which continues to this day.

This is the first effort of its kind to be made at the federal level, although Merkley pointed out three other states have already passed laws striking such exceptional language from their state constitutions: Colorado, Nebraska and Utah.

Im encouraging the Oregon Legislature to send a constitutional referral out to the people during this coming session, so the people of Oregon can vote to take this out of our Oregon Constitution, Merkley said.

During the press conference, Sen. James Manning (D-Eugene) said the late Sen. Jackie Winters (R-Salem) had introduced such a bill in 2019, but that it was a casualty of the Republican congressional walk-out.

I have redrafted that resolution and plan to bring it back, Manning told Merkley. I am so happy to hear that youre doing this, but I want to make sure I mirror the work that youre doing. Maybe we can tag-team and call it the Merkley-Winters resolution.

Merkley admitted that he was first made aware of this form of legalized slavery, and its continuation of systemic racism, by the 2016 Ava DuVernay documentaryThe 13th, which served as a crash-course of sorts about systems of racial control and ways governments and private prison companies are financially incentivized to create targeted legislation to increase the carceral population, specifically among people of color.

Following the ratification of the 13th Amendment in 1865, southern jurisdictions arrested Black Americans in large numbers for minor crimes, like loitering or vagrancy, codified in new Black Codes which were only applied to Black Americans. The punishment clause was then used by sheriffs to lease out imprisoned individuals to work landowners fields, which in some cases included the very same plantations where they had been enslaved. The practice grew in prevalence and scope to the point that, by 1898, 73% of Alabamas state revenue came from renting out the forced labor of Black Americans.

The Punishment Clauses facilitating and incentivizing of minor crime convictions continued to drive the over-incarceration of Black Americans throughout the Jim Crow era. Ultimately, by creating a financial incentive for mass incarceration, it also continued to fan the flames of the War on Drugs and the proliferation of three-strike laws, severe plea deals, and harsh mandatory minimum policies, which have had a disproportionate impact on communities of color in America for generations.

Those policies have driven an $80 billion detention industry. More than two million prisoners reside in the U.S., comprising 20% of the worlds incarcerated population.

By making it a choice, it means that there could be more accountability for work programs because a lot of them absolutely dodge the health and safety provisions, Merkley said.

Our Abolition Amendment seeks to finish the job that President Lincoln started by ending the punishment clause in the 13th Amendment to eliminate the dehumanizing and discriminatory forced labor of prisoners for profit and that has been used to drive the over-incarceration of African Americans since the end of the Civil War, Rep. Clay said in announcing the resolution.

No American should ever be subject to involuntary servitude, even if they are incarcerated.

We want to thank Sen. Merkley and Rep. Clay for their leadership on this important racial justice issue, and for shining a light on something that is not just about a symbol or a vestige of the past, but something that reverberates and has consequences today, Clint Odom, senior vice president for policy and advocacy at the National Urban League, said.

The Abolition Amendment is supported by The Sentencing Project, Polaris, the Abolish Slavery National Network, the Constitutional Accountability Center, Amnesty International, the Anti-Recidivism Coalition, Human Rights Watch, Color of Change, the Justice Round Table Coalition, Indivisible, Democracy For America, International CURE, Dream Corps, and Alliance of Families for Justice.

Merkley and Clay were joined in the introduction by U.S. Senators Chris Van Hollen (D-MD), Edward J. Markey (D-MA), and Bernard Sanders (I-VT), and by U.S. Representatives Cedric Richmond (D-LA-2), Katherine Clark (D-MA-5), Andr Carson (D-IN-7), Danny K. Davis (D-IL-7), Marc Veasey (D-TX-33), Alcee Hastings (D-FL-20), Ral Grijalva (D-AZ-3), Sylvia Garcia (D-TX-29), Frederica Wilson (D-FL-24), Nanette Diaz Barragn (D-CA-44), David Trone (D-MD-6), Abigail Spanberger (D-VA-7), Deb Haaland (D-NM-1), and Gwen Moore (D-WI-4).

The full text of the legislation is availablehere. A summary can be foundhere

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Sen. Merkley Co-Sponsors Bill to Close 'Slavery Loophole' in 13th Amendment - tntribune.com

Political will needed to end slavery – The News International

LAHORE: There is nearly 6 million labour force in the brick kiln sector alone in the country out of which at least 3 million are in Punjab. They do not get the minimum wage which is Rs 1,295 per 1,000 bricks. Kiln workers are paid Rs 650-700 on average, says Mahr Safdar of the Bonded Labour Liberation Front (BLLF).

One brick kiln engages 35-50 families which produce 50,000 raw bricks daily. If we assume that 40 families work on average at a brick kiln, the owners are paying them Rs 24,000 less every month and there are 30 thousand brick kilns in Punjab alone, he goes on to say. There is no social protection for brick kiln workers, no social security card which means no health cover. In 2013 the Supreme Court in a decision ordered all the chief secretaries to inform how many social security cards were made every month, he recalls.

In 2016, the government for the first time admitted that Bhatta labour and child labour is bonded labour, he said. "Political will is needed to put an end to such exploitation," he said. How does the labour make its ends meet in this scenario, keeps one wondering.

Pakistan ranks 8th on the global slavery index. Earlier this month, the world observed the International Day for the abolition of slavery on December 2.

Hina Jilani, chairperson, Human Rights Commission of Pakistan, who is on the UN Board for Abolition of Slavery, said brick kiln workers are certainly doing forced labour. The way they are held in debt bondage and their movement restricted is all illegal. We have proposed that brick kiln labour must be recognised as industrial labour. In agriculture sector too, families are forced into servitude, she said. She recalled the Arshad Masih case in which the Supreme Court took a suo motu notice. Then there is the issue of forced marriage which is a contemporary form of slavery. These issues are the reason why Pakistan ranks 8th on the global slavery index. Even where legislation is there, implementation of laws is weak, she said.

Then there is the 36 million labour force in the province according to the last Pakistan Labour Survey in 2018, which is suffering in the absence of inspection. They are labour from all sectors including agriculture. Many feel their situation is that of slaves. Labour leaders demand that the government lift the ban on inspection and ensure that the labourers get their due rights.

The Muttahida Labour Federation (MLF) Pakistan has called a labour conference on December 23 in Faisalabad. The MLF Pakistans Senior Vice President Muhammad Akbar views the workers situation as particularly bleak in the absence of labour inspection which the Punjab government banned last September.

There is no way to ensure that the labourers get even minimum wage and humane working conditions in the absence of inspection, said Akbar. He condemned third party contracts in industries which rob the labourers of their rights. You work for someone and they say you dont work for us. We have hired you through a contractor, this must come to an end. This amounts to enslaving labour, Akbar said.

The ban on labour inspection was slammed by the government in 2003, lifted after nine years in 2012 when a factory on the Multan Road, Lahore, caught fire. It was again banned in September 2019.

DG Labour Headquarters Punjab Daud Abdullah said: The government inspection is going on. It hasnt stopped as Pakistan has GSP Plus status which it cannot afford to lose. To the sufferings of workers hired through a third party, he said: For us, all workers are the same.

To a question of what the government is doing for the nearly 6 million bonded labour in brick kilns, he said: There is Bonded Labour Act and a district vigilance committee in every district headed by the DC to see the labour is not exploited. Whenever a case is reported to them, they take action and settle the dispute. On lack of social security and problems in getting EOBI, he said: The government is trying to simplify the process of getting social security and EOBI cards.

Originally posted here:

Political will needed to end slavery - The News International

Our future as slaves – The Conservative Woman

PICKING up onTCWeditor Kathy Gyngells postyesterdayabout Sky News Australias Rowan Deans sideways look at The Great Reset,Id like to share some more future vision.

Germanwould-beworld-re-shaperKlaus Schwabhas been making waves via his World Economic Forum (usually held at Davos wasnt that the ol feller who created the Daleks?)on the subject of a sweeping, ecologically sound and economically crippling restructuring. This is allegedly an appropriate response to a panoply of global systemic problems.To me it looks more like another example of centralising power-seekers not wasting a crisis.

So, what would Schwabs Utopia look like?

In 2017, Danish MP and WEF attendee Ida Auken sketched a millennarian future of a passive, possessionless citizenry in 2030:

I dont own anything. I dont own a car. I dont own a house. I dont own any appliances or any clothes . . .

When AI and robots took over so much of our work, we suddenly had time to eat well, sleep well and spend time with other people. The concept of rush hour makes no sense any more, since the work that we do can be done at any time. I dont really know if I would call it work any more. It is more like thinking-time, creation-time and development-time.

Question: What exactly will you think about? Or create? Or develop? This velvet-lined dystopia is designed so that you will change nothing of any importance; the first priority of a successful revolution is to ensure that there will not be another one. Aukens tamed human says:

Once in a while I get annoyed about the fact that I have no real privacy. Nowhere I can go and not be registered. I know that, somewhere, everything I do, think and dream of is recorded. I just hope that nobody will use it against me.

So, no dreams: they could get you into trouble maybe Schwabs flying Dalekswill re-educate you as he watches from his life-support mobility scooter.

The rigid social control I can believe; but the effortless wealth? Not so much.

With a certain brutal clarity, US-Mex billionaire Hugo Salinas Price has envisaged a different but parallel scenario: turning the clock back a century or more, to a time when even lowly suburban clerks like Charles Pooterhad domestic servants.

Here is a selection from Prices 2013 essay:

If it were not for US government subsidies to unemployment, in the numerous ways in which they are offered, those in more comfortable circumstances in the US might be relieving poverty by taking on numbers of quasi-slaves into their households to do the cooking, the washing, the cleaning, the gardening, the driving, the taking care of the children . . .

If there werent so many rules that make hiring quasi-slaves for domestic work so expensive, no doubt a large number of unemployed Americans, amenable to accepting the facts of life, would find working in homes more agreeable than eating in food-kitchens . . .

As the century wears on, realities will undoubtedly bring back slavery, at first in the very mild version of the present, but as life becomes harsher, out-and-out slavery will make its reappearance in the world. The imperatives of life will have their way: food, clothing and lodging in return for total obedience and work. This is an aspect of Peak Prosperity that has not been examined so far . . .

The Democracy of Athens at the time of its greatness, when it became the impossible model for our times, consisted of all of 21,000 Athenians who were free citizens. It did not include 400,000 slaves of said democratic Athenians.

The shape of future history is changing. The French Revolution was a welter of blood, a suicidal revolt by middle-class lawyers against an elite that pushed its foreign war-making and demands for money too far; but the Industrial Revolution that made it possible to defeat Napoleon made history look as though it had a progressive direction, one without swords and guillotines, a path towards increasing prosperity, rights and individual freedom for the lower classes.

This accelerated with the century of super-cheap energy in the form of oil; and in the aftermath of two world wars, the massive transfers of wealth from the British Empire to the United States plus the developing markets in ruined Europe and the East made it possible to believe the Fred Flintstonemodel of civic life: a working-class (Americans would say middle-class) man able to support his family on his industrial wage, own a car and a detached house in the suburbs, have evenings and weekends off, join a Rotarian-type club, go bowling and so on.

But then the rich and powerful becoming as controlling and remote from the rest of us as Doctor Whos Time Lords sucked up the increases in wealth by giving away the economy to foreigners, and despite attempts to reverse the flow, much of the re-onshored production that occurs will be performed by robots and Artificial Intelligence white-collar middle class, look out. And the internet Amazon etc is breaking the retail-outlet ladder to self-employment and personal independence.

History is turning back from linear to cyclic: work, feed, breed. Chances are, your descendants will own nothing and be happy; as a servant in a rich mans house, or a wage-slave in a multinational company. Money has allowed the emergence of emperors without lands to defend.

And yet what happened to the rich Mayans? Where are they? The wind blows over the rubble.

Spare us your old mans dreams, Herr Schwab. And the flying Daleks.

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Our future as slaves - The Conservative Woman

Opinion: The United States prison system is deeply flawed and demands reform – Los Angeles Times

On January 31, 1865, the Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution was passed, abolishing slavery and involuntary servitude. But there was a loophole.

Slavery and involuntary servitude were abolished, except as a punishment for a crime. Once you are arrested and convicted of a crime, you become a slave to the state. From slavery to the Jim Crow era to mass incarceration, the machine of the oppressor continues.

As reported by the National Research Council, a 2011 study done by the International Centre for Prison Studies found that approximately 10.1 million people are incarcerated worldwide. In 2009, the United States had an incarcerated population of 2.29 million.

The population of Earth is about seven billion people, while the United States only has around 330 million. The United States is around five percent of the worlds population, but it holds a quarter of the worlds total incarcerated population.

Thats a lot.

It puts the United States at the top of the list as the country with the highest incarcerated population, as well as the country with the most prisoners per 100,000 people, according to the NRC.

Inside the prison, inmates work for meager to no pay, suffer through inhumane practices and dont receive proper healthcare. After prison, former inmates are turned away from job opportunities and are poverty-stricken. Our criminal justice system emphasizes crime to gain support for punishment.

The NRC has also reported on the abominable conditions inside prisons. For men, the degrading, violent and predatory culture of prisons creates an environment that harms inmates and makes it more difficult to succeed in a society outside of prison.

Deprived of personal property, dignity and privacy, inmates are mentally and physically abused without repercussions. In addition to the many problems already faced by male inmates, female inmates face threats of sexual assault and under-resourced treatments.

According to the Detroit Metro Times, food provided for inmates has been reported to be infested by maggots. The NRC also reports that prison guards arent trained in empathy and can be overly aggressive. Extreme problems like overcrowding and long-term isolation can cause hallucinations, depression, psychological regression and even cognitive dysfunction.

Along with poor living conditions, many inmates are part of the penal labor system. Thought to be rehabilitative, prison labor is common. It is seen as a way to pay back the costs of incarceration as well as the cost of the crimes committed by the inmates, as reported by The Atlantic.

However, prison laborers arent protected under the Fair Labor Standards Act or the Labor Relations Act, two acts that protect laborers from being exploited and overworked. Prisoners are often paid between nothing to cents an hour, much lower than the minimum wage. Inmates are, under the 13th Amendment, able to be forced into involuntary servitude.

While you may think that those in prison are deserving of these terrible conditions, I would ask you to reconsider.

I am not trying to be lenient on our inmates. People who commit crimes should go to prison for a justified length of time. The victims of crimes deserve justice. Inmates should be punished for their crimes, but a loss of freedom is enough.

The loss of other human rights reduces our prison system from an institution of change to a lawless and corrupt establishment. As explained by Business Insider, our prison system based on punishment and torture has never been proven to work, with one of the highest recidivism rates in the world.

Furthermore, while the punishment heavy prison system of America has been proven to cause mental health problems as well as pathways back into criminality, rehabilitative prison systems like those of Denmark and Norway have some of the lowest recidivism rates in the world, according to the Washington Post.

In these Scandinavian countries, inmates are treated like people. That means no bars on windows, choice in clothing, no barbed wire fences and opportunities to pursue interests. According to the BBC, inmates still have their human rights; they have access to education, good healthcare and even their voting rights.

As reported by Newsweek, in 2013, there were only eight total deaths throughout the Danish prison system, while there were 4,446 deaths in American jails and prisons. If you treat inmates with little respect, you can then expect little respect back. The Scandinavian prison system is not perfect, but it provides an alternative model for punishment heavy systems like ours in America.

The inhumanity of our current prison system is exacerbated by the inequality within the system. There are major funding differences for womens prisons compared to mens prisons, as well as acute racial disparities.

Many of the racial problems faced by the American prison system stem from the dramatic rise of incarceration that started in the 1970s. Started by President Nixon, the war on drugs was purportedly meant to eradicate illicit drug use in the United States, but it instead increased racial divides in prison and created a disconnect between citizens and the police.

Nixon established and increased federal drug control agencies and pushed for policies like mandatory minimum sentencing and no-knock warrants. These policies disproportionately attacked Black and Hispanic communities, racially profiling innocent people of color, according to the American Bar Association.

Policies set by Nixon were the foundation of the drug hysteria of the Reagan era. From 1980 to 1997, people convicted of nonviolent drug offenses increased from 50,000 to 400,000, according to the Drug Policy Alliance. With the introduction of crack cocaine into mainstream media, the war on drugs exploded.

While cocaine was mostly found in rich suburban white areas, crack was associated with urban areas and was used mostly by people of color who couldnt afford cocaine.

According to 13th, a documentary by Ava DuVernay, after Congress passed mandatory sentences for crack that were much harsher than the sentences for powder cocaine, one ounce of crack could get you the same amount of time as one hundred ounces of cocaine. In doing so, they knowingly targeted Black and Hispanic communities while being lax on white communities. For the same drug, Black and Hispanic communities were punished more severely.

Racial divides in prison were exacerbated by the war on drugs. Most crack dealers and people in possession of crack were Black and Hispanic people living in the inner-city. Just like most cocaine dealers and people in possession of powder cocaine were white and lived in more suburban areas.

But because of deliberate messaging, we are trained to believe that only the Black and Hispanic dealers deserve what they get. Yes, drug dealing is criminal, but disproportionately attacking one subsection of drug dealers is not and can never be justified. And when the group that is being attacked is Black and Hispanic dealers, just because they are Black or Hispanic, its racist, pure and simple.

This racism wasnt subconscious or unintentional; Nixon was trying to target Black and Hispanic communities.

A top Nixon aide named John Ehrlichman admitted that they Knew [they] couldnt make it illegal to be either against the [Vietnam] war or black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin, and then criminalizing both heavily, [they] could disrupt those communities,according to the Drug Policy Alliance.

With the public easily convinced that every Black or Hispanic man was a drug dealer, the prejudices they faced were written off as justified because they could be dangerous.

The idea that any race of humans can be inherently dangerous is a racist view in it of itself, but because that sentiment was now present throughout society, police officers could easily detain members of these communities using stop-and-frisk laws and traffic stops. This greatly increased the power of police officers, giving them the ability to act on their racial biases.

Mass incarceration has been and still is a large problem in America. The United States still has the highest incarcerated population in the world, as well as one of the highest recidivism rates in the world.

Our prison system hasnt been proven to be better than the rehabilitative prison systems of Scandinavia or other parts of the world; in fact, it has actually been proven to be quite worse.

This isnt a problem that can be easily fixed with a couple of laws and policies; it is deeply embedded in our society.But this is no longer a problem hidden behind curtains; mainstream media has been exposing the prison system for what it is, a legal form of oppression.

The United States of America has never been the land of the free, not when millions of our own people are stripped of their human rights behind bars.

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Opinion: The United States prison system is deeply flawed and demands reform - Los Angeles Times

A woman was enslaved as a servant for nearly 40 years – Aviation Analysis Wing

Officials say domestic slavery is hard to define and address in Brazil because victims rarely see themselves as modern slaves. Of the 3,513 workers found in slave-like conditions between 2017 and 2019, only 21 were detained for domestic service.

A lawyer representing the Reguera family said that a high-profile news program presented them as comets Gorgeous, Which revealed the rescue operation on Sunday, before their case was heard in court.

The early and irresponsible disclosure by state inspectors and agents before the lawsuit recognizes their guilt and violates the rights and sensitive data of the family and threatens their safety, the lawyer said in a statement.

Madalena Gordiano in a windowless room where she lived while working without pay. credit:Screengrab / Globe / Fantastico

The program aired an interview with the woman, photos of the small windowless room where she lived, as well as Regiras statement to the police, and interviews with experts and human rights activists.

The woman, Madalena Gordiano, told the program that she had come to the eight-year-old family to order bread. The owner of the house decided to receive her and agreed to adopt her. Her mother admitted that she had eight other children to take care of. But the adoption was not formalized.

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The show says her mother gave her to Reguera after repeated quarrels with his father.

A Unipam spokesman said Regera had been suspended from work and that all legal measures are being taken.

Labor prosecutors said they were trying to cut a deal with the Regera family to pay the victim. If criminal prosecutors bring charges of forced labor and are found guilty in court, Reguera faces up to eight years in prison.

While labor inspectors can visit workplaces whenever they want to check slavery in Brazil, they must obtain permission from a judge to enter the home and said evidence of abuse from victims is a prerequisite.

Regueras neighbors alerted authorities after receiving notes from the 46-year-old asking them to buy food and hygiene products because she had no money, according to inspectors.

There is a misspelled note shown by Globos Fantastico that Madalena Giordano, who did not complete her education, was said to a neighbor wrote it. It read in Portuguese: Give me the soap to take a shower. You will pray. Madalenacredit:Screengrab / Globe / Fantastico

Authorities said that while in captivity, the woman was forced to marry an elderly relative of the family so that they could continue receiving his pension after his death.

After being rescued at the end of November, the woman is taken to a shelter where she is receiving help from psychologists and social workers. Officials said they were trying to reunite the woman with her biological family.

According to Camasme, women now maintain a monthly pension of around 8,000 reais (US $ 2,064) more than seven times the minimum wage in Brazil.

She did not know what the minimum wage was, he said. Now she is learning how to use a credit card. She knows hes going to charge a lot every month [from the pension].

Domestic slavery made headlines in Brazil in June when authorities rescued a 61-year-old maid who believed she was enslaved by a woman who worked for an Avon beauty company.

Avon fired the CEO and said he would support the victim. The former Avon employee, who, along with her husband and mother was accused of enslaving a worker, denied the charges.

Thomson Reuters Foundation, Staff Correspondents

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A woman was enslaved as a servant for nearly 40 years - Aviation Analysis Wing

20 Minutes With: Artsy CMO Everette Taylor – Barron’s

Everette Taylor has been finding creative ways to make money since he was a teenager, starting his first businessEZ Eventswhen he had to drop out of college to ensure that he and his family wouldnt become homeless again, as they were when he was in high school.

Taylor, 31, quickly became a serial entrepreneur, starting six marketing and marketing-adjacent businesses, often in the tech realm, including PopSocial, a social media software company, MilliSense, a marketing firm, and ArtX, a platform to elevate independent artists. He also held chief marketing officer positions at start-ups, including Skurt, a car rental company bought by Fair in 2018.

Just three years after buying his first piece of art through a charity raffle, Taylor is now an avid collector of works by Black artists, owning more than 70 pieces. He was named chief marketing officer at Artsy, the digital arts platform, last December.

Penta recently spoke with Taylor about how his life led to a position in the art world. An edited version of the conversation follows.

PENTA: Tell me about your background. Where did you grow up?

Everette Taylor: I grew up in Southside, Richmond, Va. There are not a lot of people who make it out of Richmond, but especially Southside Richmond. I grew up in a lower socio-economic area, with a single mother, who did everything she could to provide for us. Sometimes that still wasnt enough. To see her struggle, and to see the people around me struggle and go through the things they went through, really motivated me and pushed me to want more for myself.

I didnt have a lot of male influences, because the men in my family, the majority of them were dead, or in jail, or addicted to drugs. I saw that path and saw other friends of mine going down that path and I realized I wanted something different for myself. [But] when I was 14, I started to get involved in the streets and things I shouldn't have been getting involved with, and my mother caught me. She told me: Do you want to end up like your uncles, your cousins, or other people in your life? I had a cousin Ricky who was shot and paralyzed, dealing in the streets.

She forced me to get a real job, and the first I was able to get at 14 was a junior marketing associate role. That completely changed my life. When I went into the interview, they actually thought I was a grown man, and they offered me the job, and asked me if I could start that next week, Monday, at 9 a.m. They assumed I went to the local college because I said I had class. In actuality, I was a freshman in high school. But I had that drive, and I knew that I really wanted to do something positive with my life, and so I would go in before and after school and work weekends to get the job done. Ive always been motivated. Thats always been in my DNA. That opened my eyes to marketing.

You became an entrepreneur at an early age. Why?

No. 1survival. Its as simple as that. I started my first company because my family was struggling. I had to drop out of college, and come home and help my family. I was working a minimum wage job and knew I needed more for myself. I knew that if I didnt act fast, my family would be in trouble, and I did not want to be homeless again. Survival has always been a strong element to this day.

No. 2Im a natural creative. Thats something thats not necessarily embraced in the world of tech. I thrive off of creativity and innovation. I thrive off making changes and doing things that Im passionate about. That has guided me through my career. The roles and jobs Ive taken, and companies Ive started, intrinsically have been things that inspired, motivated me, or [where] I saw an opportunity to grow. I dont take jobs just to take jobs.

For instance, Artsy. I come from an entrepreneurial background [but] the reason I took the job is, one, Im thankful for the opportunity. But two, Im waking up everyday to do something I genuinely love, to work with people who I care about and love working with. We are doing something thats changing a space that needs so much innovation, needs so much change, thats not completely equitable yet. Im thankful to be in a position where I can work on things that Im passionate about, and I have that option to choose. I never take that for granted.

How did you become interested in art?

I loved art and I was a voracious reader when I was younger. I was reading about street art and artists like [ Jean-Michel ] Basquiat and Keith Haring when I was very young. In my seventh grade art class I got a C. Its the first C I ever received in my life. I mostly got As and Bs. [The teacher] had a very Bob Ross approach: Paint the trees like this, draw your faces like that. I was doing street art, very abstract. I didnt want to fit in this box in which my art teacher was trying to teach in. Instead of cultivating my interest in art, for my own self preservation I stopped taking it.

Years laterand I tell my ex-girlfriend thank you for thiswhile in Los Angeles, the first time I went to her apartment, she had original works of art. I wasnt used to seeing people under the age of 30 having original works. She only had a few pieces, but I was blown away. One thing we would do is go to art museums, and talk about art, and different artists. That became my escape and my version of self-care, [going to] The Underground Museum, MOCA Los Angeles, the California African American Museum.

In 2017, I was speaking at this event, and there was an Afro-Latino artist, Jon Hen. They were raffling off one of his pieces (The Red Whisperer). I actually won.

I received that piece and brought it back home. For the first time I realized how blank my walls are, and how much cultural significance [there was in] having something like this in my home and how great that felt. I bought another piece from him. Then I started to want to collect more artists, but I wanted to collect artists who meant something, that I felt something from. A lot of times that is from Black and brown artists. The problem was I didnt know where to go to find these artists. Thats why [Artsys Black-owned galleries] collection is important. So many people out there who want to be able to support under-represented artists, or Black-owned galleries, but they dont have the resources to do so.

Who are the artists you are particularly interested in?

One is Kevin Beasley, represented by Casey Kaplan gallery. Hes from Virginia, like me. Im very much a history buff. Im drawn to things that are tied to history and have cultural and historical significance. Hes an abstract artist. He uses polyurethane foam and resin, and like old Virginia cotton, and T-shirts and things that draw back to slavery, and the heritage that is in Virginia. What Kevin Beasley is doing by creating these sculptural works that are made of house dresses, and du-rags, and cotton T-shirts, and creating these powerful images, but deep down, theres a lot of history to that.

Another is Genesis Tramaine, represented by Richard Beavers Gallery and Almine Rech. Her paintings really look at her relationship with religion, her relationship with God, and her own take with that, and its abstract figurative work. I have a piece called Mama Gave me Change for Offering. It takes me back to the days I was going to church, every Sunday. That was meaningful to me.

You have a dream to create a museum in Richmond. Why is that?

Im not in the art world for commercial reasons. Im in it for the preservation of history, the preservation of culture, especially during a time where there has been the commodification of so many artists, especially Black artists. The dream for me is to bring a museum, using my collection, and potentially having other curated shows as well, to Southside Richmond, or, say, North Side, in Jackson Ward, a historically black neighborhood where Black and brown boys and girls can see art and be introduced to the art world. To introduce them to contemporary Black art, and also [for them] to see that theres actually a career path here.

This museum will serve as a place to introduce people to art and the love of art from a young age to old age. There are a lot of people in Richmond who havent left the city, or who havent left the block, and to give them an opportunity to see art, and to see Black art comes in so many forms and facets. I remember going to my first art fair and this person pointing out, thats a Black artist, thats a Black artist. It opened my eyes. I want to open so many peoples eyes to the beauty and culture and history of art, and specifically Black art in this museum in my hometown.

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20 Minutes With: Artsy CMO Everette Taylor - Barron's

After 39 Vietnamese trafficking victims died in UK, has anything changed? – The Guardian

The 39 Vietnamese travellers embarked on their journey to the UK full of hope. Many planned to work in Britains nail bars and restaurants; some hoped to get work as bricklayers. They told relatives they were leaving Vietnam so they could provide for a better future for their families.

Their optimism vanished sometime during the crossing from Zeebrugge to the UK on 22 October last year, as the temperature inside the container began to rise and the oxygen levels plummeted.

Some of the migrants tried to smash their way out with a metal post left inside the container. At 6.59pm one of the victims tried to call the emergency services in Vietnam, but there was no signal inside the trailer and the call did not connect.

Recordings found on the 50 phones recovered by police revealed several goodbye messages for relatives. At 7.37pm, Nguyen Tho Tuan recorded an audio file on his phone: Its Tuan. I am sorry. I cannot take care of you. I am sorry. I am sorry. I cannot breathe. I want to come back to my family. Have a good life.

A selfie taken by one passenger hours before she died shows her sweating in the extreme heat; many of the passengers stripped down to their underwear inside the freight container. They were discovered with cuts and bruises on their arms, which relatives were told arose from their desperate attempts to break down the door to the container, locked from the outside.

Forensics experts told the court that after about nine hours, the atmosphere inside the trailer would have become toxic. Temperature gauges within the sealed unit showed the temperature reaching a peak of 38.5C at around 10pm on 22 October 2019, after which it began to fall again, suggesting that that was the moment when the passengers stopped breathing.

When the lorry driver, Maurice Robinson, was instructed by his boss, the Irish haulier Ronan Hughes, to open the back doors of the lorry, shortly after he picked up the load in Purfleet, Essex, at around midnight, the passengers had been inside for more than 14 hours.

Hughes was clearly worried about the length of time they had been inside, and sent Robinson a message telling him: Give them air quickly, but dont let them out. Robinson responded with the thumbs-up emoji. The passengers were already long dead. Robinson was so horrified at what he saw inside that he couldnt bring himself to take a second look when the 999 operator asked for details of the victims. I dont really want to look in, to be honest with you.

But detectives described a calm scene within the trailer. Tran Hai Loc, 35, died lying next to his wife, Nguyen Thi Van, also 35, holding her hands. They died in a horrendous way, but I think they died with dignity and respect for each other, said the officer responsible for the identification process, DCI Martin Pasmore.

Following a lengthy trial, Eamonn Harrison, 23, a lorry driver from Northern Ireland, and Gheorghe Nica, 43, the coordinator of the operation, from Romania, were found guilty of manslaughter. Another Northern Irish lorry driver, Christopher Kennedy, 24, and Valentin Calota, 38, a pick-up driver from Romania, were both convicted of conspiring to smuggle people into the country unlawfully.

The investigation and trial has provided unprecedented insights into a smuggling route taken by thousands of Vietnamese people over the past 20 years.

The journey from Vietnam to London would have cost most of them around 30,000; some had sold their family homes or mortgaged their land to fund the trip. Others had asked their parents to take out enormous loans to pay the people smugglers.

Some of the 39 travelled first to Russia, where they worked for a while, before deciding that they would try to continue onwards to the UK, where they believed they could earn better money in the Vietnamese-run nail bars found in almost every town.

Some flew initially to Germany, Hungary or Romania, their journeys arranged by employment agents who had found them work as fruit pickers or dishwashers in restaurants. Some flew to Poland, legitimately, on student visas, with the intention of travelling on to join friends or relatives in the UK once they had saved up enough money to pay for the final leg of the journey. A trained hairdresser, Nguyen Huy Hung, 15, one of the youngest of 10 teenagers who died in the lorry, was travelling to Britain to join his parents who are already based here; he told his brother in Vietnam that the final crossing to Britain would cost 12,000.

Cao Huy Thanh, 33, paid 6,680 to travel legally to Romania to work in a chicken factory in May 2019. He later met a childhood friend who persuaded him to travel to the UK. He didnt tell his wife what he planned to do there; she told the Guardian that whenever he called home he spoke mostly to his four children, aged between one and eight, and would sing with them over the phone. On 22 October last year he called his wife to tell her he was in his way to the UK. He asked me to burn incense to pray to his deceased father and ancestor so they would bless him for his safe journey, his wife said.

The victims told their families in Vietnam that they were minimising the risks involved by paying extra to people smugglers for a VIP service, whereby the lorry driver was aware that they were in the back of vehicle (rather than the riskier method of breaking into a lorry parked in a car park near the port and stowing themselves away in the back).

DCI Daniel Stoten said that although all 39 had travelled voluntary, it was still likely that most would have been exploited. There is massive organised crime behind this. They are then placed into different bars throughout the UK. Most would have gone on to work in nail bars for less than the minimum wage, getting just a couple of pounds an hour. That is modern-day slavery, even if they were signing up to it, he said.

Relatives in Vietnam told the Guardian that their lives had been shattered by the tragedy. Pictures of Pham Thi Tram My were published around the world when her mother received a text message saying: Im sorry, Mum. My journey abroad hasnt succeeded. Mum, I love you so much! Im dying because I cant breathe.

Her father, Pham Van Thin, a security guard, said the family remained around 18,000 in debt, despite some charitable donations, because they had mortgaged both their house and their nephews land to finance Mys journey. Like many parents, he opposed her decision to make the trip, but she wanted to join cousins who had opened nail salons in Britain.

My wife and I discouraged her from going, saying she should stay home and get married. Yet she insisted and, to be honest, many people have gone without any danger. She told me its going to be the VIP package, the safer route. I thought she would go by car, by plane. I never expected she would go inside a container. If wed thought there was even 1% of danger, we wouldnt have let her go, he said. I havent stopped thinking about her. Its extremely painful.

Mimi Vu, an independent anti-trafficking and slavery expert based in Vietnam, said the smuggling of people from Vietnam to the UK continued in the months after the tragedy. The prices just went up, she said, basing her observations on interviews conducted with Vietnamese migrants in northern France earlier this year. It didnt dampen peoples enthusiasm for leaving. People tended to view this as an anomaly. They saw the people who died as just very unlucky. Smugglers marketing tactics changed and they told people they needed to pay more to guarantee the safest passage.

She had little expectation that the trial would do much to stem the continued smuggling of large numbers of people from Vietnam to the UK. Its like cutting off a fingernail, when to really address the problem we need to cut off the heads, which are sitting in Prague, Berlin, Moscow, and other European cities where the ethnic Vietnamese organised crime groups that direct the smuggling and trafficking trade are based, she said.

You have to go for the leaders at the top, and they will never be the ones to get their hands dirty.

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After 39 Vietnamese trafficking victims died in UK, has anything changed? - The Guardian

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Good morning! This is our daily news roundupwith everything you need to know in one concise read. Sign up here to get this delivered to your inbox every morning.

This story is part of The Big Spend, a CBC News investigation examining the unprecedented $240 billion the federal government handed out during the first eight months of the pandemic.

An exclusive Ottawa-area golf course has booked a $1-million surplus due mostly to the help of federal COVID-19 relief. CBC News has obtained the club's audited financial statements, and a recording of its annual general meeting, in which its board told members about the club's "very strong financial position" due to the Canada emergency wage subsidy (CEWS) windfall.Royal Ottawa, which is located in Gatineau, Que., a 12-minute drive from Parliament Hill, was founded in 1891 and has long been a playground for the capital's elite. The club offers what it calls "privileged" status to cabinet ministers, the leader of the Official Opposition, accredited high commissioners and ambassadors to Canada and their respective spouses.But faced with lockdown restrictions that kept its facilities shut from mid-March through mid-May, the club sought and received $1.019 million in federal wage support over the spring and summer, and as a result, ended its fiscal year with an $825,000 surplus in its operating fund 19 times more than the $43,883 operating gain the club reported for 2019. Some healthy investment returns and cost-savings pushed the non-profit organization's surplus to over $1 million.

Members were told that the Royal Ottawa board decided to keep the entire amount in order to "provide a cushion against unanticipated future expenses." Club representatives declined the CBC's requests for an interview about their record surplus and how they plan to use it. But a letter issued in response to a list of detailed questions maintains that the club is under no obligation to refund the money to the federal government.

WATCH | Club treasurer Doug McLarty explains to members the impact of CEWS funding on Royal Ottawa's bottom line:

The government says that CEWS may only be used for employees' wages, and employers who misuse CEWS money may face a penalty equal to 25 per cent of the amount of help they applied for, and can also be required to pay back any money they received.Richard Leblanc, a professor of governance, law and ethics at York University, said all organizations who are receiving government pandemic funds need to be sure they are using them for their intended purpose. "It's not intended to be a windfall, or for ulterior, or any other purpose other than employee wages," Leblanc said. Otherwise the risks of owing the money, plus the penalty and interest, are significant. "Not to mention the reputational hit," he said.

The federal Liberals have more support today than they did one year ago, while the opposition parties are no further ahead, polls suggest. CBC polls analyst ric Grenier reports that if an election were held today, the Liberals almost certainly would win it and perhaps capture a majority of the seats up for grabs, too. According to the CBC's Canada Poll Tracker, an aggregation of all publicly available polling data, the Liberals are up 4.2 percentage points since December 2019. The Conservatives, New Democrats and Bloc Qubcois have hardly budged, while the Greens are down nearly three points. A year ago, the Liberals held a narrow lead over the Conservatives and were solidly in minority territory. But today's numbers would deliver around 167 seats to the Liberals, three seats short of a majority, with about 111 seats going to the Conservatives, 32 to the Bloc, 27 to the NDP and one to the Greens. Read Grenier's full analysis here.

Those who are pregnant or breastfeeding will have to weigh their own risks when deciding whether to be vaccinated against COVID-19 because it hasn't been studied in clinical trials, Canadian doctors say. Without data on the safety of the vaccines during pregnancy and breastfeeding, there's a grey area for people looking for answers to how the risk of COVID-19 compares with that of the immunizations. Dr. Noni MacDonald, a professor of pediatrics at Dalhousie University in Halifax, said there were some women who received coronavirus vaccines during the clinical trials who got pregnant immediately afterward and haven't yet delivered. "We will have pretty soon babies being born to those women and we expect them to be perfectly normal but we don't know that yet," MacDonald said. Meanwhile, research has shown that pregnant women are at higher risk of severe outcomes if they do get COVID-19. Read more about the issue here.

WATCH | Pregnant front-line workers to weigh risks, benefits of COVID-19 vaccine:

Work on the Trans Mountain pipeline expansion project is shutting down temporarily. Trans Mountain said yesterday it is enacting "a voluntary project-wide safety stand down" from today until Jan. 4 due to safety concerns. "Over the past two months, we have seen safety incidents at our worksites that are unacceptable to Trans Mountain. This is inconsistent with Trans Mountain's proud safety culture," said Ian Anderson, president and CEO of Trans Mountain, in a release. The statement didn't specify what those safety incidents were, but the Canada Energy Regulator says a contractor was seriously injured Tuesday at a Trans Mountain construction site in British Columbia. Finance Canada said it supports Trans Mountain's decision to suspend construction and it expects the incident to be thoroughly investigated and addressed. Read more about the pause here.

Five holiday films that feature LGBTQ main characters are being released in 2020, representing a dramatic shift in the film industry. U.S.-based holiday flicks such as Dashing in December, The Christmas House and I Hate New Years all cast gay couples in the lead roles of light-hearted stories. Canadians have been getting in on the action as well: Schitt's Creek star Dan Levy plays a supporting role in Hulu's recent Happiest Season, while Lifetime's first ever LGBTQ holiday film, The Christmas Setup, stars Toronto-born Ben Lewis alongside his real-life husband, Blake Lee. Read more about the trend, and some criticism of its content, here.

WATCH | Why there's a new wave of LGBTQ holiday movies this year:

Now here's some good news to start your Friday: An elementary school in Charlottetown has gotten around the restrictions on singing during the pandemic by teaching the children O Canada and Happy Birthday in American Sign Language. "I think it's wonderful for children to be able to communicate in another language and to be aware that there are children who can't hear and that they now know a little bit of sign," said Sandy Zinck, a music teacher at West Royalty Elementary. Read more about the school's approach here.

WATCH | The students sign O Canada:

As the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine rolls out across the country, and other vaccines await imminent regulatory approval, many public health experts are focusing on the issue of vaccine hesitancy.

Canada's Chief Public Health Officer Dr. Theresa Tam has spoken out about the "moveable middle" and says it is critical that as many people get vaccinated as possible to protect themselves and others from risk.

But because conversations about vaccines can be hard, today we're bringing in an expert to explain how to have more meaningful and productive discussions with people who have questions or fears. Maria Sundaram is an infectious disease epidemiologist who studies vaccines.

Front Burner31:38Vaccine hesitancy, the next pandemic hurdle

1865: The 13th amendment to the U.S. Constitution, abolishing slavery, goes into effect.

1950: The 2nd Battalion, Princess Patricia's Canadian Light Infantry, lands in Pusan, South Korea. It is the first Canadian combat unit to reach the peninsula during the Korean War.

1958: The world's first communications satellite is launched by the United States aboard an Atlas rocket.

1969: The British Parliament votes for the permanent abolition of the death penalty.

1979: Pierre Trudeau announces he is postponing his retirement from politics.

2003: Lee Boyd Malvo is found guilty of murder and terrorism charges in connection with sniper attacks in the Washington, D.C., area.

2010: The U.S. Senate agrees to do away with the military's 17-year ban on openly gay troops, overturning the Clinton-era policy of "don't ask, don't tell."

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Get informed on the top stories of the day in one quick scan - CBC.ca