Monthly Archives: May 2020

This piece originally appeared in the Summer 2018 issue of Ms.

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Clutching a clear plastic bag of belongings, Lisa Oxendine walks slowly out of the Durham County Detention Facility and into a crowd awaiting her arrival.

Im so glad to meet you, Serena Sebring says, handing her a bouquet of bright flowers. Welcome home.

Sebring is a regional organizer for Southerners On New Ground (SONG) in Durham, N.C. She and about two dozen volunteers are hereto bail women out of the jail as part of the Black Mamas Bail Outa joint campaign that took place across the U.S. ahead of Mothers Day.

Oxendine was the first to emerge over the four-day action in Durham, in which SONG spent $18,900 to free nine women from the jail and convinced judges to remove the bond requirement for two more, allowing them to be released as well.

We wanted to call attention both to the importance and centrality of black women, black mothers and black caregivers to our communities, [as well as] to the particular impact mass incarceration is having on black women, Sebring says.

Her group is part of a swelling national movement to abolish the cash bail system, or at least limit the use of bail to violent casesbecause, as Sebring puts it,the bail system requires legally innocent people to pay a ransom to get out of jail while they await trial. And too many simply cannot afford to pay. Research suggests just a few days in jail pretrial can jeopardize a persons housing, employment and public assistance and raise her likelihood of pleading guilty, being convicted and reoffending.

The cash bail system takes a distinct toll on women awaiting trial. While wives, girlfriends and mothers bear the brunt of bail costs for the men in their lives, women often have little means to buy their own freedom from a system that wasnt designed with them in mind. And the effects of their incarceration radiate outward to their families and communities.

Unable to pay a $1,000 bond, Oxendine spent eight days in jail, accused of breaking into a truck. When a SONG volunteer first came to ask if she wanted to be bailed out, Oxendine thought it was too good to be true.

But they kept coming back to see me, she says.

Taking a break from speaking with SONG about what she needs now that she is out, she said she hoped to visit her sons for Mothers Day.

Across the country, women-led groups like SONG are taking the lead in efforts to reform the bail system. And women policymakers are instigating change including at the federal level. Sen. Kamala Harris (D-Calif.) has introduced legislation that would give grants to states to put alternatives to money bail into place, and require them to collect data on those measures and report back.

Heres the deal: We have gotten to the point where in courtrooms around America, someone is released before their trial based on whether they can afford to write a check or not and not necessarily based on whether they present a risk to their community, Harris, a former prosecutor, told participants at a 2017 conference on womens incarceration. That aint right. Its not fair.

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Many state and local lawmakers agree. In the past year alone, officials in Nebraska, Illinois, Montana, Connecticut, Philadelphia, New Orleans and Atlanta have moved to limit the use of money bail for lower-level offenses, introduce risk assessment tools to try to remove bias from pretrial release decisions, and expand programs for people who are released pretrial. The District of Columbia all but eliminated cash bail except for rare, serious cases in the 1990s, and New Jersey and Alaska more recently followed suit.

Of the nearly 110,000 women in local jails, about 60 percent are awaiting trial and havent been convicted. About 80 percent are mothers, most single moms like Maranda ODonnell, whose arrest in Harris County, Texas, led to one of the most significant legal challenges to the bail system. Her story shows how an arrest can push a person teetering on stability over the edge.

ODonnell was pulled over driving to see her then 4-year-old daughter and didnt have a valid license. Unable to pay bail, she spent two days in jail.

Earlier this year, an appeals court affirmed that the countys bail system violated ODonnells and other plaintiffs rights to due process and equal protection.

Susanne Pringle, interim executive director of the Texas Fair Defense Project, a nonprofit thats part of the lawsuit, says those two days likely cost ODonnell a new waitressing job and jeopardized custody of her child.

[Bail] is not supposed to be a punishment. Its not supposed to be used as a way to detain someone pretrial but when you set bonds that high and for someone who is being arrested for something that is clearly a poverty offense, thats what it isits a detention order, Pringle says.

While men make up 86 percent of the countrys overall jail population, according to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, the number of incarcerated women has grown 14-fold in the past half century, a rate outpacing men.

As communities are increasingly focusing on reducing jail populations, the number of women continues to grow, so that suggests the reform efforts around the country arent reaching women to the same extent theyre reaching men, says Elizabeth Swavola, senior program associate with the Vera Institute of Justice Center on Sentencing and Corrections.

Like ODonnell, most women in jail arent there on violent charges.

More than three-quarters of women being held pretrial are facing property, drug and public order charges such as prostitutioncrimes often driven by poverty, mental illness and substance use. A third of women in jail have a serious mental illness, twice the percentage of men in jail, and six times the rate for women in the general population. The vast majority86 percent per one studyhave experienced sexual violence in their lifetimes.

Women in U.S. jails report high rates of trauma, mental illness, drug use and medical needs that jailsresource-strapped and designed around menare ill-equipped to handle.

Women are less likely than men to have the money to pay, even when assigned very low bonds. During a bailout SONG held in Durham for Black Mamas Day last year, the group posted bail for a woman who couldnt afford even a $150 bond.

A 2015 Prison Policy Initiative analysis found that white men had a median pre-incarceration income of more than $20,000 per year. That compares to white women, who had a median income of just under $16,000; Hispanic women, who earned about $12,000; and black women, with just over that amount.

Andrea Hudson spent 51 days in the Durham County Detention Facility in 2012, unable to post a $30,000 bail or pay about 10 percent to a bondsman.

She missed an appointment to secure an apartment with Section 8 rental assistance and lost her voucher. Her then 7-year-old son and 17-year-old daughter moved between a friends house and the home of estranged relatives. Because of the chargesincluding fraud and exploiting an elderly personshe lost jobs as a home health care worker and school custodian.

Desperate to be released, she finally agreed to plead guilty to some of the charges in exchange for the rest being dismissed. The dismissed charges were ultimately expunged, but she was jailed again for a subsequent assault she says she didnt commit, and because that charge violated previous probationary terms, bail was set at an even higher amount.

I missed my kids all over again, and once again my son went to school and came home from school and his mothers gone, she recalls.

Her daughter, Josselyn, took 12-hour shifts making light bulbs once she graduated from high school to support herself and her brother and get an apartment. Visits were difficult to arrange and painfully inadequate. They couldnt touch or console each other as they cried, and had to yell through thick glass over the other visitors.

It was hard because there was nothing I could do, says Josselyn, now 23.

In Connecticut, visits between incarcerated mothers and their families are particularly challenging. Here, all womenregardless of conviction statusare held at one facility on the coast.

Beatrice Codianni spent 15 months at the Danbury Federal Prison awaiting trial for her role in the Latin Kings gang. Her three sons struggled to afford rentlet alone gas money to make regular visits. Her youngest, 16 at the time, had to quit school to work.

Mothers Day was the hardest, she recalls.

For those who are lucky enough to get a visit, Codianni says, they beat themselves up. And they shouldnt, because theyre in jail and they dont have to be. Most of them would be home if it wasnt for the bail system.

Codianni now runs Reentry Central, a national website for professionals working in criminal justice and reentry, and serves on the advisory board of the Connecticut Bail Fund. She says women are often stuck in jail on bonds that are so low, the bail agents wont take them because the profits would be too slim.

Youre taking away a crucial piece of a childs life and for reasons that arent really that serious, like drug possession and trespassing, she says.

Hudson, who spent just under two months in the Durham jail, says it took years to put back together what was broken in that time.

She still doesnt have housing of her own. She lives with her daughter, whose name is on the lease because Hudson received an eviction judgment for not paying rent while she was detained.

But her detention revealed her purpose. Instead of becoming a parole officer, as she was studying to do when she was arrested, shes establishing a bail fund at the nonprofit Southern Coalition for Social Justice, and helps defendants and their families advocate for themselves in court.

In Hudsons experience, women tend to be embarrassed by their charges or the circumstances surrounding them. She recalled one woman she met in the Durham jail who had been arrested with her boyfriend when police found drugs in their car. The boyfriend arranged for himself to be bailed out but left her inside.

To Cara Smith, chief policy officer for Sheriff Tom Dart of Cook County, Ill., this sounds similar to what she witnesses in Chicagos jail.

What we find with male detainees is that there are lots of people that want to help them, want to raise money, want to bond them outwhether its girlfriends, wives, mothers, et cetera, she says. The women that come into our custody seemingly are without that band of support on the outside.

This is particularly true for women who experienced abuse, trafficking and drug use in relationships prior to their arrest, says Hanke Gratteau, director of the Cook County Sheriffs Justice Institute.

Under Gratteaus leadership, the Justice Institute identifies people unjustly held in the Cook County jail and advocates for their release. According to Smiths research, last year about 1,200 people served enough time pretrial at the Cook County jail that by the time they were transferred to prison, they had not only satisfied their sentences but had served an additional 321 years collectively.

Because women make up just a fraction of the jails population, not many come before the Justice Institute, but often the most compelling end up being the womens cases, Smith says.

That includes a woman now in her 40s jailed for the first time on a warrant for not completing community service in her 20s, and a pregnant woman brought in after missing court and denied bond, guaranteeing she would give birth in jail before her next court date.

In Texas, the number of women in jail is growing, even though arrest rates are declining, according to a two-part report authored by Lindsey Linder, lead attorney with the Texas Criminal Justice Coalition. She says Texas, like other states, hasnt been intentional about addressing womens incarceration because women comprise the smaller portion of the jail population.

But thats starting to change because of women involved in reform effortsfrom formerly incarcerated women telling their stories; to activists who convinced Austin officials to delay building a new womens jail and spend a year studying alternatives to pretrial incarceration; to the attorney, researcher, designer, sheriff and judges who contributed to the report.

Despite the fact that one in four women (and one in two black women) have an incarcerated family member, womens voices are too often left out of conversations about reform, says Gina Clayton, founder and executive director of the Essie Justice Group. The California-based nonprofit connects and empowers women with incarcerated loved ones to advocate for criminal justice reform. About 30 percent of Essie members have been incarcerated themselves, Clayton says.

When a member of the Essie Justice Group went to the California legislature to speak about the need for bail reform, at least one person questioned why she was speaking and not the men in her life perceived to be more directly impacted by the issue.

Our understanding that mass incarceration impacts male people of color is one that is informed by our own existing biases around what we dont see and what were willing not to see happening to women, and particularly what is happening to black and brown women, Clayton says.

Essie members have lobbied state legislators to restrict the use of money bail in California; a bill passed the state Senate but stalled in the Assembly last year.

Bail is how weve been able to create a conviction machine in this country, and I think thats why bail is a lever for us, Clayton says. Once women are convicted of a felony, their record can disqualify them for jobs, housing or benefits like food stamps.

Lisa Oxendine, bailed out by SONG in May, is caught in the conviction machine. Before she could make that trip to see her boys, she was back in jailthis time under an $11,000 bondfor violating previous probation terms. Last year, SONG freed 14 Durham women in its bailouts. Out of all the tales of homes, jobs and dignity lost to pretrial incarceration, organizer Jade Brooks remembers the story of one woman SONG wrote to asking if she wanted to be bailed out.

She was sleeping with our letter under her pillow, Brooks says. That was, for her, a symbol of freedom.

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Black Mama's Bail Out and the Abolition of Cash Bail - Ms. Magazine

" We are all born ignorant" said Benjamin Franklin, "but one must work hard to remain stupid." And no one is working harder at it these days than the mandarins in Bangalore.

There is no other explanation for the sudden order on the 5th of May cancelling the trains which were supposed to take tens of thousands of migrant labour back to their home states as per the new GOI guidelines. (After a massive public outrage the order was withdrawn on May 7) But maybe I'm being too harsh because Karnataka Chief Minister B.S. Yediyurappa generally knows which side of his bread is buttered ( it is usually both sides).

It is a remarkable coincidence that the order was issued immediately after his meeting with the builder's lobby- Real Estate Development Association of India. It is self evident that, if the labour left, all construction activity would grind to a halt. Profits would plummet and that would have spin offs for the politics of Karnataka too, for it's money that makes the mare go round, after all. Other states, including Tamil Nadu, appear to be following his lead.

It goes without saying that this is hostage taking, and a clear violation of the Abolition of Bonded Labour Act 1976- the labour is being held against their will, not because of the pandemic, since the GOI (Government of India) has allowed them to be repatriated and other states are sending them back; they are being denied their basic freedom and right to choose because the state wants them to serve the purpose of corporate profits, which is the classic definition of bonded labour.

Or, as Yogendra Yadav put it correctly, modern slavery. No doubt someone, living in hope, will approach the Supreme Court but that too would be a vain hope. The court, in a petition by Harsh Mander, has already laid down a spanking new definition of right to life and dignity- two meals a day, take it or leave it. Man lives by bread alone.

But, really, we should not be surprised: Yediyurappa's order is consistent with the approach of the central government towards the 130 million migrant labour in India, all of whom are representative of rural India, part time kisans, part time labour. Which in turn accurately reflects policy making in India since 1990: focus almost exclusively on urban India and industries, Gandhi's villages and agriculture can take care of themselves.

After all, they do not generate the rupee surpluses needed to grease the wheels of neo liberal capitalism and politics; their function is to deliver the votes every five years on cunningly devised caste algorithms. All the fruits of development have gone to urban India- 400 million people there produce 84% of the country's GDP, the 800 million in Bharat only 16%.

All industries, educational institutions, hospitals, corporate offices are in the towns and cities. To be fair, Congress governments in the past did make some feeble attempts to empower our villages and extend the charter of rights to their populations: the Panchayati Raj Act, Right to Education, Right to Food, MNREGA, Mid day meals, Sarv Shiksha Abhiyan, stringent environmental regulations. Though much was found lacking in their implementation, at least the intention showed some realisation of the desperate plight of rural India. But the present government, in its pathological quest for "ease of business" and brownie points at Davos, has turned the clock back.

Enforced digitalisation has deprived millions of their dues, welfare schemes are grossly under funded, retrograde agriculture policies, failure to reform APMCs and obsession to keep food prices low have ensured that while urban India prospers the rural sector remains more or less exploited, with 12000 farmers committing suicide every year.

While India grew at 7% ( before the pandemic) agriculture grew at an average of about 2.5% only. We will spend Rs. 100,000 crores to build Smart Cities but will do nothing to upgrade our villages, other than providing a few toilets which don't work because there is no water, and LPG cylinders which 80 % of the village households cannot afford. We will increase prices of petrol and diesel, liquor and cars, charge all kinds of cesses and tolls,but keep a tight rein on agricultural produce because inflation has to be kept under check. On every front the rural sector has been short changed.

For decades now we have been exploiting the natural resources of the villages to fatten industries and cities: appropriating their rivers, chopping down their forests, acquiring their lands, displacing 50 million people since 1947. Environmental protection laws have been diluted to make these depredations easier.

The PESA ( Panchayat Extension to Scheduled Areas Act, 1996) which was meant to give self governance to, and empower, Gram Sabhas remains more or less on paper because both the central and state govts are unwilling to give village units the power to decide on projects coming up in their areas. The 130 million migrant labour is the cumulative result of these distorted policies. But at least these economic refugees had jobs in cities, SMEs, construction projects to support their families back home- till 2016.

Two monumental surgical strikes took care of that: demonetisation and GST. And now the military style implementation of the lock down. But this time India's pampered, gated- colony middle classes too made common cause with a callous government to expel the migrants from their cities.

Those who had literally built a modern India with their own hands were now treated like pariahs, like the Typhoid Mary- reviled, beaten up by police, branded as carriers of the virus, hosed down with disinfectants like cattle, confined in unhygienic camps, denied the means to travel back to their villages.

Our rulers and elite would have done well to have listened to Bob Dylan- " when you have nothing, you have nothing to lose." And those who had lost everything- except their dignity, a concept alien to a capitalist society and a callous government- started WALKING back.

In small groups first, then in droves, then in their lakhs, back to an uncertain future but a milieu that at least cared, proving wrong an increasingly disconnected Supreme Court that equates the right to life to a loaf of bread. How many have died/ will die on this journey will never be told to us.

But, with economic activity now set to resume, the tables have now turned, the tube light in the PMO has started flickering- how will industry return to normal without these wretches?

The largest number of migrant labour used to be employed in the five most industrialised states- Maharashtra, Gujarat, Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu. How will the kulaks of Punjab and the orchardists of Himachal harvest their crops without labour?

How will the real estate sector in Gurgaon, Noida and Bangalore now build its over priced buildings?

How will our cities run without maids, drivers, rehri-wallahs, security guards, delivery boys?

In short, how do you sustain this capitalist bubble without the millions you have just thrown out?

It is this late realisation which had prompted Yediyurappa, and other opportunists of his ilk, to cancel the trains and create other impediments to their return. The boot is now on the other foot however, and this boot is headed away from our cities and their industrial heartlands.

Neo liberal India is now desperate for them to come back, but continues to repeat its mistakes, focusing on the importance of capital rather than on the welfare of labour. Beginning with Uttar Pradesh, where most undesirable things originate, states have now started suspending laws made by previous governments to ensure the welfare and non-exploitation of labour.

But the migrants are not coming back, at least not for the next six months or a year, deferring indefinitely our promised tryst with a five trillion dollar economy. The battle is truly on between Bharat and India, but, for the first time since independence, the terms of trade are in favour of the former.

The latest employment figures for April released by CMIE bear this out in no uncertain terms. It states that since February 114 million have lost their jobs, one of every four Indians. Every sector has been bleeding jobs- SMEs, entrepreneurs, salaried class. But there has been an increase of 5.8 million jobs in the agricultural sector ! Even the Niti Ayog should be able to grasp the significance of this.

In a contrarian way, it appears to me that COVID and the forced exodus of the migrants may just be the best thing to have happened to our rural India, if only our policy makers would read the writing on the wall. As the well known economist Ila Patnaik recently said in an interview, businesses will now relocate and go where it is safer- our metros are no longer safe, they are hot spots of contagion and will remain so for some years; their abundant labour force is no longer available.

Our villages are safer, have the natural resources needed for industry, and 430 million workers( 2011 census) who now want jobs closer to home. It's a no-brainer for industry, even if its incomprehensible to the govt.

But there are signs that things may be changing- Punjab and Madhya Pradesh have started allowing private mandis in rural areas and small towns. If the mandis come then so will the infrastructure- food processing units, warehouses, cold storages, transport companies, Big Basket and Grofers.

If our villages finally become the units for planning and development, this would be a more environmentally sustainable and socially equitable model than the avaricious one we have today.

Then the migrants of today would finally occupy their rightful place in the scheme of things. And nobody would have to to die on railway tracks in the middle of the night in their quest for a little humanity and dignity- and a piece of bread:

The remnants of a dream on the rail tracks of Aurangabad

The family which was carrying the sorry chapati above was not the migrant, actually. As Ravish Kumar put it so expressively, we, who also came from these villages just a couple of generations ago, are the real migrants, stuck in our heartless gated colonies in decaying cities, our roots severed. The real Bharat has gone back to its home- and perhaps a better life- in the villages. One wishes them well.

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The Worker's Torturous Walk Away From Cities Set to Become a Point of 'No Return' - The Citizen

In his famous essay The Hedgehog and the Fox, the British philosopher, Isiah Berlin, observed that unlike foxes in Greek lore which know many things, the hedgehogs know only one big thing, since they relate everything to a single central vision, one system, less or more coherent or articulate, in terms of which they understand, think and feel...

The French economist, Thomas Piketty, is clearly the hedgehog of Berlins essay, having made the study of inequality the centrality of his professional life. In so doing, he has locked onto the flavour of the decade worldwide and for good reason. It has been identified as the principal economic issue of our time.

Inequality today stands at unprecedented levels. A 2012 survey by The Economist noted that the numbers of the ultra-wealthy have soared around the globe, and that the world is witnessing a dramatic concentration of incomes over the past 30 years, on a scale that matches, or even exceeds, the first Gilded Age with the share of national income going to the richest 1 per cent of Americans, doubling since 1980, from 10 per cent to 20 per cent.

Gabriel Zucman from the University of California, according to Bloomberg Businessweek, , has computed that at least $7.6 trillion has been stashed away by the worlds richest in offshore accounts. That is the kind of transformational money more that what America has expended in all its wars since 1950 that could have created a better and fairer world. It is the injustice of such inequality and its debilitating impact on the less fortunate in society that engages Piketty. His 2013-14 best-seller Capital in the 21st Century, which focussed on inequality, now has a weightier and longer sequel in Capital and Ideology. It is dauntingly massive, comprising 17 chapters, nearly 1,100 pages and is chock-full with graphs and tables. Is this overkill? Hardly, for not even such a voluminous study is enough to cover so vast a topic.

Pikettys book is in parts a compelling read. It melds history with economics and literature, even pulling in Jane Austen and Balzac, to better illustrate the social and economic inequalities of a time and an age. Piketty classifies his book as the history and evolution of inequality regimes. Through it he seeks to establish that Inequality is neither economic nor technological; it is ideological and political, with rich and powerful minorities invariably laying the rules of coexistence for everyone to follow. He covers a lot of ground.

In the four parts the book is partitioned, Piketty gives us a detailed account of the evolution of inequality through history, from slave and colonial societies to ternary systems (pre-French Revolution social hierarchy) in which clerical and religious classes combined with nobles and warriors to constitute powerful special interest groups everywhere.

The shift from ternary to ownership societies Karl Polanyis Great Transformation saw new elites owning much of a countrys wealth and property, which even the French Revolution standing for liberty equality and fraternity, could neither abolish nor circumscribe. Pikettys contention that historically the rules of engagement in society have always been loaded against the small man is spot on. It is common knowledge that it is the hard-working grossly under-compensated masses who suffer the consequences of inequalities of wealth.

However, to Piketty this condition is not so hopeless as to necessitate a Marxian revolution. Peaceful transitions are possible as in the case of Sweden which went from being one of the most unequal regimes in Europe in the early 20th century to emerge as one of the most egalitarian later. Other European nations too achieved similar transformations, not the least aided by huge transfers of wealth from their colonies as in the case of England, France as well as Belgium, the Netherlands and Japan.

Pikettys preferred means of reducing inequality is through taxing the rich heavily. The US is a case in point. It cut its robber barons to size in early 20th century, boosted public spending on education and laid the foundations of a great state that continues to dominate the world. More recently, between 1950 and 1980, the rich were again taxed heavily yet it was also a period of high growth for America. In Capital and Ideology, Piketty attempts to recast himself as the global authority on inequality, up from being merely a western-centric one. He does not wholly succeed in this. He gives us a passable but never profound account of the depredations Western nations wrought on India, China, and other parts of the world they colonised and pillaged. Piketty comes close to, but stops short of, demanding that France and England amongst others, pay up for having devastated and traumatised whole continents.

In his book, Piketty brings out something not commonly known, that there was nothing altruistic about the abolition of slavery considering how generously western slave owners were compensated for giving up their slaves. Pikettys shocking account of how France forced Haiti to compensate it financially over decades for the freedom it achieved through reparations, right up to 1950 constitute some of the most engaging portions of Capital and Ideology.

Piketty dwells on India at length in his book, sadly superficially. His take on caste and inequality (blame it all on the British) borders on tripe. On the positive side, unlike his other western colleagues, Piketty generously acknowledges that there is much for the European Union to learn on state building from Indias integration experience.

Piketty is also clearly impressed by how India has sought to mitigate inequalities by bringing to the fore its historically disadvantaged communities through affirmative action programmes which were the biggest in scale and intent in human history. Unlike most of his Western counterparts, Indias political process impresses Piketty. His admiration for the countrys democracy especially universal adult franchise is not the least bit condescending.

While the book has been gushingly received in the West, some well-known economists have not missed its serious shortcomings. Raghuram Rajan observed in his Financial Times review that Piketty while calling for greater democratic participation actually pushes for grand elite-devised centralised schemes that suggest a tin ear to the protest movements that have roiled the world.

Most of those who would have read his last chapter Elements for a Participatory Socialism for the Twenty-First Century will agree. It is not enough for Piketty to say, Tax the rich to the bone and pare down inheritances. He needs to come up with something practical to make that work.

Paul Krugman, one of Pikettys admirers, is sadly disappointed by Capital and Ideology. Reviewing the book in The New York Times, he wryly observes: There are interesting ideas and analyses scattered through the book, but they get lost in the sheer volume of dubiously related material. In the end, Im not even sure what the books message is.

Capital and Ideology is indeed a bit of a waffle. It lacks the succinct brilliance of similar works by the likes of John Kenneth Galbraith and Amartya Sen. With the kind of data he has amassed one would have expected Piketty to have done a lot better. Disappointingly he does not.

The reviewer, a former civil servant and visiting fellow at NIAS, CEU and CCS-IISc, teaches at IISc Bengaluru.

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Persistent inequality through the ages - BusinessLine

May 10, 2020 The third phase of relaxed measures brings the greatest normalization of life to date, according to Jutarnji List. Starting Monday morning, citizens can go to their favorite cafe, order coffee and leaf through the newspaper. Or go to a restaurant for lunch, and some children will return to school.

Shopping malls will reopen and inter-county transportation and domestic flights will resume. National parks will open for excursionists, and groups can increase from five to ten people.

Besides these already-announced concessions, driving schools can start working. Quarantine and self-isolation for international transport drivers will also cease.

Also, after May 11, it is possible that there will be a complete abolition of e-passes, allowing Croats to roam the country unabated.

Croatian officials decided catering businesses such as restaurants and cafes can use indoor spaces under certain conditions. Previous rules locked out businesses without terraces or limited space.

Also, working hours can go until 11 p.m., two hours more than originally planned. But the extra time will go as much towards meeting new hygiene standards as it will to serving guests. The rules sound nearly militaristic.

All tables must be empty by the time guests arrive. Utensils arrive after guests sit. Presumably, theyll already know their orders. The menus should stand out prominently at the entrance or other visible place in an appropriately plasticized cover.

Croatias Civil Protection Directorate suggests guests enter only after when a previous group leaves the premises. The physical distance between individual groups of visitors must be at least one-and-a-half meters.

Social distancing rules will limit the number of visitors and leave vast chunks of unused space. The tables should sit one-and-a-half meters apart. Larger groups of guests can sit together at tables, and the distance between them and other groups must be at least one-and-a-half meters.

Visitors can also order a meal or drink in the restaurant to-go. When ordering, the physical distance of at least one-and-a-half meters between customers waiting in line still applies.

It is also possible to serve standing guests if they keep a physical distance.

After the departure of each group of guests, the table, chairs, and other surfaces that the guests touched must be wiped with disinfectant. Snacks cannot sit in communal bowls, nor can salt, pepper, oil, vinegar, and other spices stay on the tables.

As for employees, they must adhere to all measures, hand-washing, and disinfection rules. They must notify the employer of any signs of illness or fever and not come to work.

As for schools, lower grades start on Monday, and kindergartens are opening as well. The distance between the children should be two meters. There should be up to nine children in a class and one educator or teacher, or some other configuration limited to ten people.

Here is a full list of new, loosened restrictions:

Cafes and Restaurants

Can work from 6 a.m. to 11 p.m.

Not limited to terrace-only businesses

Tables must be 1.5 meters apart

No limit to the number of people who can sit at one table

Sitting at the bar is prohibited

The waiter should disinfect his hands before serving each new table

Authorities recommend air conditioners remain off

After the departure of each group of guests, the tables should be disinfected, and the tablecloths changed

No snacks on the tables

Salt and pepper containers must not be on the table, but new, disinfected ones are brought for each group of guests

Employees must take their temperature every morning before coming to work

It is recommended that employees wear protective masks and gloves

Schools and Kindergartens

Classes start for students from 1st to 4th grade

A limit of 9 students in a class

Parents who can still keep their kids home should do so

Employees must maintain a distance of 2 meters from each other and try to do the same in relation to children

In the class and kindergarten group, the maximum number of persons can be 10 (nine students and a teacher, eight children and two educators, etc. ...)

After the formation of the group, no new children are admitted to the groups/classes for the next 14 days

As much time as possible is spent outdoors

Parents hand over their children in front of the kindergarten building and do not enter the facility

Classes for children begin at different times to meet as little as possible

Recess is also staggered to avoid overlap between classes

Children have lunch in the classroom, food is delivered to them at the classroom door and the teacher shares it

Teachers should have their temperature measured when arriving at work and keep special records

Children should not wear masks

Shopping Centers

Maximum 15 customers for every 100 square meters

The distance between customers should be strictly observed

15 customers can enter the store for every 100 square meters of net area

If it is difficult to determine the total area, the maximum number of customers allowed in the store is obtained by dividing the total area by 10

In textile shops, it is recommended to sell without trying on clothes, especially those worn over the head

If the clothing is tried on, it must be quarantined for five days before it can be put back on sale

The number of baskets in the store must be equal to the maximum number of customers allowed

Staff must wear protective masks

Customers are advised to wear a mask

Disinfectants must be placed at the entrances to the center and each store, the use of which is mandatory

Employees must measure their temperature before coming to work

Inter-county public transport

Plexiglas should be placed between the driver and the passenger or the first row of seats should be left empty

One person should sit in a row in buses, in such a way that they sit alternately on the left and right seats

In trains that have seats in rows as a bus, one person should sit in a row in such a way that they sit alternately on the left and right seats.

It is recommended that passengers wear masks

The conductor must wear a mask and gloves

The driver is recommended to wear a mask

Hygiene of the driver's cab should be maintained

Vehicles should be regularly ventilated and surfaces that are frequently touched should be disinfected

Drivers must disinfect their hands after placing their luggage in the luggage compartment

Contactless payment should be encouraged

National Parks

Mandatory distance between visitors

Adapt the park program to the new conditions (abolish panoramic rides during which it is not possible to ensure a distance, etc.)

Driving Schools

First aid courses without artificial respiration

Provide disinfectant in the car

It is recommended that both the candidate and the instructor wear masks

There should be a 15-minute break between classes and the driver's and front passenger's areas should be disinfected

Hold theoretical classes with strict adherence to the physical distance of 1.5 meters between students

Keep records of the presence of participants

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Croatia's Phase 3 Starts Monday, Balancing Health, Economics and Coffee - Total Croatia News

Today, Piketty proposes, we live in a neo-proprietarian inequality regime, which takes the logic of the inviolable right to property and extends it to wealth and income (which was, by the way, Carnegies argument in 1889). The extraordinarily high incomes of tech executives, corporate lawyers, and unicorn entrepreneurs, their defenders argue, are theirs to keep, because they are earned in a dispassionate meritocratic system, largely emanating from our countrys higher-education institutions. Of course, we know now the dispassionate meritocracy is a lie; its a system that allows people with a head start to stay ahead. The ruling class is defined and legitimized by educational credentials; our last five presidents have all had Ivy League degrees, a fact that shows only a weak correlation between education and competence. The meritocracy, in fact, is quite similar to the purportedly dispassionate system of contracts and rational government that legitimized the concentrated wealth in France and the United States after their revolutions.

Pikettys solution is that we move beyond private ownership to some blend of private, public, and temporary ownership. (Total abolition of private property, la Soviet Union, for Piketty, was an ill-advised failure.) Since many societal goods are often already owned publicly, like electrical grids, highways, or parks, and some are owned communally, like worker cooperatives, it is easy to imagine this realm expanding. Temporary ownership is different, and would require permanently high levels of taxation (perhaps written into a countrys constitution) to ensure that any number of temporarily private goods return to the community on a regular basis. Homes, wealth, real estate, patents, and financial assets like stocks and bonds would all benefit the community if they were owned only temporarily.

A steep wealth tax could also pay for a onetime capital grant that everyone would receive in their twenties, at 60 percent of the national average wealth (something like $120,000 if the average wealth is $200,000). Piketty also believes that a singular faith in the power of central government to bring big business under control, whether through nationalization or regulation, is mistaken. The reliance on state ownership of major industrieslike that in France and Britain up to the 1980sleads to a neglect of taxes on private enterprise. Taxes, Piketty stresses, are some of the only tools that can perpetually protect the society against developing unconscionable inequalities of wealth and incomes.

The weakest parts ofCapital and Ideologyrail against identity politics, which Piketty believes have stymied the project of egalitarian reform, by splintering the larger coalition that is required to make egalitarian change. Yet with both sides of the political divide practicing some form of identity politicsoften along the lines of race, gender, or religionits not convincing to dismiss this trend in politics out of hand. In the United States, history has proved how difficult it is to redistribute wealth and property when confronted by sexism, xenophobia, and extreme racism, along with the legacies of slavery and Jim Crow. Which should we resolve first? Redistribution through reparations for slavery? Land grants to Native Americans whose lands were stolen? Or what about unpaid wages for care work? Piketty has little to say about the order in which we approach these problems, crucial for a country struggling to come to terms with its past.

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Thomas Pikettys Plan to Fix the Economy - The New Republic

Nursing and midwifery students must be recognised for the significant contribution they have made and the disruption they have faced during the coronavirus pandemic, according to unions who are calling for the abolition of tuition fees and reimbursement of those already paid.

The move comes as the Nursing and Midwifery Council said over 25,000 students from across the UK had chosen to join NHS frontline staff via extended clinical placements, in the response to the Covid 19 crisis.

We ask that you acknowledge their selfless service

Union letter

The Royal College of Nursing, the Royal College of Midwives, Unison and National Union of Students (NUS) have today written to health and social care secretary Matt Hancock urging him to acknowledge students selfless service, not only with words, but in a tangible and quantifiable way.

Their aim is to see the government wipe tuition fees for healthcare students in England and reimburse those already paid.

Student nurses in England formerly did not have to pay tuition fees because these were covered by the government through the bursary. Butthis offer was cut by the government for all nursing students starting after 1 August 2017.

While the government has recently pledged to introduce new yearly maintenance grants to cover living costs, starting from September 2020, students will still be paying around 9,000 a year for tuition.

Related news on student funding

The unions said the coronavirus pandemic meant now was the time for minister to recognise the contribution of students by dropping the debt, abolishing tuition fees and building a workforce fit for the present, and the future.

Under emergency plans put in place by the NMC and its partners, all student nurses apart from first years are able to take up paid clinical placements to support frontline colleagues during the pandemic.

Third-year students in the last six months of their course are also able to extend their final three-month placement into a six-month placement and still get the chance to qualify at the end of it. The NMC may also introduce a temporary register for students, but this has not happened yet.

The letter (see PDFattached below)from the unions called on the health secretary to reimburse tuition fees or forgive current debt for all current nursing, midwifery, and allied healthcare students and abolish student-funded tuition fees those starting in 2020-21 and beyond.

In addition, the unions have asked the government to introduce universal living maintenance grants that reflect actual student need.

Now is the time for the government to recognise the ongoing contribution of student nurses

Dame Donna Kinnair

The unions also reminded Mr Hancock ofthe concerns they raised when the policy of tuition fees was first suggested and how those concerns, including a shortfall in nurses and financial hardship for students, have been borne out.

But they said the current crisis and its impact on students who had either joined the workforce, or were continuing with their education, placed the unfairness of tuition fees for students in England into even starker focus.

Thousands of healthcare students have joined the NHS and social care frontline since this pandemic began, eager to support their qualified colleagues, it said.

The letter added: We ask that you acknowledge their selfless service, not only with words, but in a tangible and quantifiable way.

Dame Donna Kinnair, chief executive and general secretary of the RCN, highlighted how there had been a 31% reduction in university applications for nursing courses since 2016 when the bursary was axed.

Dame Donna Kinnair

She said this was a major reason why the nursing workforce in England entered the Covid-19 crisis with almost 40,000 unfilled posts and with one arm effectively tied behind its back.

Many student nurses have elected to become an invaluable part of the workforce at a time when the country needs them most, but they are still paying tuition fees, and this is simply not right, added Dame Donna.

Now is the time for the government to recognise the ongoing contribution of student nurses by dropping the debt, abolishing tuition fees and building a workforce fit for the present, and the future.

These views were echoed by Gill Walton, chief executive and general secretary of the RCM, who said: Our students make an invaluable contribution to the health of our country, both during and after their training.

Never has that been more apparent than during this current crisis, not only with those formally entering the workforce but many others volunteering in health and care settings.

The policy of tuition fees for those in studying for healthcare degrees is, and always has been, a flawed one, as it does not take into account the considerable time spent on clinical placements, said Ms Walton. Now is the time to put right this wrong.

The government can show the depth of its gratitude by writing off their student fees

Dave Prentis

In addition, general secretary of Unison, Dave Prentis, praised healthcare students who had stepped up to the plat to help the NHS through the current crisis.

Having racked up thousands of pounds of debt while learning the skills we so desperately need, many are now working alongside their more senior colleagues, said Mr Prentis.

The government can show the depth of its gratitude by writing off their student fees. When the pandemic has passed, it must scrap them for all healthcare students in future and introduce proper maintenance support.

Meanwhile, NUS vice-president welfare Eva Crossan Jory said the contribution of healthcare students had for too long not been adequately recognised.

The very cohorts of healthcare students currently experiencing unparalleled disruption to their education and volunteering to work on the frontline against coronavirus are those who were also forced by the government to pay tuition fees and study without an NHS bursary, she said.

We urge the government to commit to a radical new financial settlement for these students and all those to come.

A government spokesperson said: "We are grateful to all students who choose to support out NHS during this extremely difficult time and will be ensuring all students who do opt-in are rewarded fairly for their hard work."

See more here:

Calls to recognise student nursing response to Covid-19 by wiping fees - Nursing Times

Republicans are on the wrong side of historyand everything elseand conservatism is a dead end.

So-called conservatives are actually regressives and reactionaries, pushing us down to a worse state of being. Republicans are conserving little beyond their own wealth, racism, sexism, and homophobia, while eroding American democracy, health, and the environment. Progressives, in contrast, have brought us forward to a better world and continue to do so. Progressive ideology and action is what makes America as great, civilized, and advanced as it is, despite its continuing shortcomings, which progressives seek to repair.

Progressive ideology and action is what makes America as great, civilized, and advanced as it is, despite its continuing shortcomings, which progressives seek to repair.Progressivism has brought us independence from England, slave abolitionism, racial desegregation, womens suffrage, minimum wages and maximum hours, Social Security and Medicare, civil rights and civil liberties, clean air and clean water laws, pure food laws, public education, public libraries, public parks, public transportation, public health, public housing, pay equity, net neutrality, consumer, worker, health, and environmental protections, womens rights, human rights, welfare, food programs, unemployment insurance, birth control and abortion rights, unions, paid vacation and sick leave, separation of church and state, anti-discrimination laws, racial and sexual marriage equality, a reduction in poverty, gun reform and protections, protections against corporate monopolies, medical and recreational marijuana, freedom of expression, the Peace Corps and AmeriCorps, and most of the rest of the public sphere that civilizes and enhances our society. Conservatives have opposed all these and other vital achievements throughout our history.

And when the U.S. finally achieves universal single-payer health care (expanded Medicare For All or Berniecare); a Green New Deal; tuition-free public education from daycare through university and graduate school; an Equal Rights Amendment for women and sexual minorities; a living minimum wage; money out of politics; higher taxes on the wealthy and corporations; tough regulations on the financial sector; a Wall Street sales tax; Universal Basic Income; the end of homelessness; the end of child marriages; full reproductive freedom; a carbon price; a wealth tax; a society based on renewable energies; meaningful gun reform; expanded animal welfare and a stronger Endangered Species Act; an end to private prisons, money bail, and mass incarceration; universal suffrage including for inmates; abolition of capital punishment; marijuana legalization; paid parental and sick leave; doctor-assisted suicide; a national high-speed rail system; free public transit; Post Office banking; a smart electrical grid; free nationwide wi-fi; automatic voter registration and better election protection; and so on, it will be because of the hard work of progressives over the objections of conservatives.

In stark contrast, conservatives supported British colonialism in opposition to American independence; supported slavery and racial segregation; supported discrimination against religious minorities and atheists; opposed womens right to vote, equal pay, and the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA); opposed protections against racial and sexual harassment and discrimination; oppose contraception, abortion, and reproductive freedom; support child labor; opposed the National Park System; opposed seat belts and airbags in cars as well as higher fuel efficiency standards; blocked marriage equality and block full LGBT+ rights; block expansion and extension of healthcare; blocked civil rights; block full voter access while supporting voter suppression; block higher minimum wages; blocked desegregation of the military based on race, sex, and sexuality; opposed interracial marriage; opposed same-sex marriage; opposed Social Security and Medicare; opposed expanding the voting franchise to women, African Americans, Native Americans, Latinos, Asian Americans, the poor, and 18-year-olds; opposed reducing work to the 8-hour day and the 40-hour work week; oppose labor unions; oppose job security; opposed family leave laws, sick leave, and paid vacations; oppose anti-trust laws and consumer protections; oppose regulations to rein in Wall Street; oppose unemployment insurance and workers compensation; blocked health, worker, consumer, and safety laws; opposed the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA); oppose DACA (Obamas Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals) and block comprehensive immigration reform; do not welcome or protect refugees; oppose net neutrality; undermine health and safety measures for workers, consumers, and students; oppose any meaningful gun reforms and the banning of assault weapons; block environmental protections; oppose the Endangered Species Act; oppose more national parks and monuments; oppose tackling the climate crisis; support private prisons and mass incarceration; support privatization and corporate deregulation; support tax cuts for the wealthy and corporations; and so on.

Conservatives blocked the great artist Pablo Picasso from entering the U.S. and tried to do likewise with the great scientist Albert Einstein, who was escaping Nazis during the Holocaust. Similarly, conservatives were against Susan B. Anthony, Ida B. Wells, Helen Keller, Saul Alinsky, Rosa Parks, Martin Luther King, Cesar Chavez, Dolores Huerta, Ralph Nader, Harvey Milk, Lois Gibbs, Emma Gonzalez, David Hogg, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and many other progressive American heroes who nonviolently struggled for a better and fairer America. A conservative is one who admires radicals, Leo Rosten once remarked, centuries after theyre dead. Republicans selfishly only want what they think is best for themselves (focusing on the greed of me), while progressives want what they know is best for society (focusing on the need of we).

Our most populous and richest state of Californiathe 5th largest economy in the world!has no Republicans in any statewide office and Democrats dominate its Legislature. California erased its budget deficit and had a healthy budget surplus of several billion dollars for 2019 and a rainy day fund of $20 billion, some of which will likely be deployed during this pandemic-induced recession, even as California fosters innovation and creativity, has the most start-up businesses of any state, grows richer, and was creating more jobs. California also taxes the rich; raises the minimum wage; expands social services; makes community colleges free to all; advances womens rights; protects womens right to choose and reproductive freedom; reduces maternal mortality; expands protections for the LGBT+ community; celebrates diversity; protects immigrants and refugees; feeds more children at school; increases solar power; fights climate change; raises fuel efficiency standards; reduces air pollution; reforms the criminal justice system; enacts gun control measures; expands the Earned Income Tax Credit for poor Californians; legalized medical and then recreational marijuana; put a moratorium on the death penalty; supports privacy in its Constitution; institutes net neutrality; provides healthcare to more residents; increases protections for animals; extends rights; increases election security; begins public banking; and actively resists regressive Trumpism.

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There has been substantially more job creation and economic growthas well as social, racial, sexual, religious, and economic equityunder Democratic administrations.

In contrast, Mississippi and Alabama are the most thoroughly conservative states by most metrics. For some mysterious reason according to Jacob Hoss, theyre also the poorest, least educated, fattest, and have the lowest life expectancies. Similarly with Kentucky and West Virginia. The ten poorest counties (and more than 90 of the poorest 100 counties), as well as the ten counties with the highest rate of poverty, are in Republican-led states, while nine out of the ten poorest states in America are Republican-led red states. The top ten states with the highest obesity rate are also Republican-led states, even as they oppose expanded healthcare. Its as if Republicans dont want to make peoples lives better. Democrat Bill Clinton is the only president since 1970 to report a budget surplus, instead of a deficit, and did so for four years.

There has been substantially more job creation and economic growthas well as social, racial, sexual, religious, and economic equityunder Democratic administrations. Recessions tend to occur under Republican leadership, then get cleaned up under Democratic leadership. Republicans are socially, politically, and fiscally irresponsible with deadly consequences, while their party continues to get older, whiter, more male, and more Christian, yet less compassionate. Faux News and the greedy GOP wouldnt tell you these things, but its the truth.

Its not that Democrats are always good or that California has solved all its problemsof course, thats not nearly the case, especially with corporate Democratsbut Republicans are always destructive and regressive, both aggressively anti-people and anti-planet, if not individually, then certainly as a party. Even the most moderate and seemingly-reasonable Republican in Congress is giving the GOP its majority, protecting Trump despite his treason and conflicts of interest, and supporting nearly all of Trumps destructive policies and abominable nominations, while eviscerating our democracy, increasing inequality, weakening our alliances, violating domestic and international law, eroding civil rights and liberties, and degrading our health and environment. It is for these kinds of reasons that Noam Chomsky has called the Republican Party the most dangerous organization in world history.

Of course we need to conserve enough of what is societally going on to maintain cultural continuity, yet we need to continually include, innovate, invent, democratize, and change for positive progress. Republicans have outlived their usefulnessindeed, are complicit in undermining democracyand are obsolete. Republicans are on the wrong side of history and conservatism is a dead end. Progressivism is for the people and the planet!

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Republicans Are On the Wrong Side of Historyand Everything Else! - Common Dreams