Daily Archives: June 6, 2020

Published: 6/5/2020 10:00:22 PM

Modified: 6/5/2020 10:00:10 PM

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. said a riot is the language of the unheard. While not condoning violence, much less encouraging it, I am compelled to observe that the sometimes-violent methods recently adopted by protestors seeking redress of long-festering social issues is, sadly, understandable. When a match is tossed into a pile of dry brush, the result is as predictable as it is tragic.

The unrest seen in many parts of our nation this past week following yet another egregious policing overreach that caused the death of a fellow citizen, a black American, is not, in my view, an overreaction.

This unrest rises from a deep foundation: more than four centuries of exclusion, injustice, emotional abuse, lack of basic human decency, and yes violence systematically perpetrated by our establishment institutions and, via our votes, by ourselves upon our fellow American citizens of differing genetic lineage.

Violence begets violence; mistreatment begets mistrust. Slavery. The lack of any meaningful economic justice post-slavery. Lynching. Jim Crow. The unrealized promise of the 13th, 14th and 15th Amendments. Separate but equal. Systemic racism. Mass incarceration. Wage inequality. Opportunity inequity. Rising from all of these, black Americans to this day have a palpable fear of being found suspect based only on the color of their skin, a fear I can never know.

Whatever the recent violence, it falls far short of the cumulative scale of these past sins, sins so long unaddressed as to embed them in the American soul. We reap what we sow, and weve been sowing a crop of racism in this nation for a very long time.

Therefore, the noteworthy news is not the violence but rather, in the face of the past, the praiseworthy restraint exhibited by the vast majority of protestors.

MARK KIRK

Unity

Rising to meat demand (May 24) is another Valley News article fostering animal cruelty. The demand for animal flesh, secretions and dead embryos is a false demand there are no nutritional needs to eat animals and therefore no ethical reasons exist to force-breed and kill animals for consumption. And Vermont Packinghouses claim of humane slaughter is a joke. Unnecessary killing is not humane.

Animal-free diets are not fads; they are the only ones humans can afford if we want a future. Popular Mechanics reported that plant-based diets are healthiest for humans, the planet and animals. The World Health Organization categorizes processed meat as a carcinogen. A number of studies have suggested that dairy products are a risk factor for prostate cancer. These science-based truths are what our family, including the dogs, live by without problems.

Kaiser Permanente, the largest health care management company in the U.S., has a 36-page ebooklet about the advantages of plant diets. Humana, the third-largest insurance company, trains doctors in plant-based health. The U.N. urges everyone to eat plant-based diets as the surest and least destructive way to slow global warming and to end hunger and starvation because 80% of farmland grows monocrops for farmed animals, croplands that in the U.S. alone could feed 800 million people. Worldwide, farmlands could produce ample food to feed all humanity healthful plant-based meals, and reduce the greenhouse gases from the farmed animal industry that drive global warming, and dramatically reduce the poisoning of the land, water and life with runoff from farming animals fed antibiotics and ground up garbage. And it would end the slaughter of 3 trillion animals annually for human food.

Why does the Valley News promote animal-based foods and print articles about slaughterhouses, for example, as if they are necessary? Why take the corporate oppressors side with language like stunning unruly animals instead of writing animals struggling for their lives? To not tell the whole story with compassion is lazy reporting.

MARGARET D. HURLEY

Claremont

My name is Keith Stern and I am announcing my campaign for a Windsor County Senate seat.

Some of you may recognize me as a candidate for governor two years ago. My platform has not changed. I want to see a more responsible budget, end Act 46, and make sure Act 250 goes back to its original goal and not become an excessively restrictive hurdle to responsible development. Above anything, the federal and state constitutions must be followed to avoid an abusive government.

Humorist Dave Barry once said that Democrats are good people with good intentions but are incompetent. They would stop to help someone change a tire and end up setting the car on fire. They have good intentions but they fail to understand how to accomplish their goals, so they end up hurting us with ineffective and restrictive laws. We can see this every day with struggling businesses, low wages and an overall cost of living that exceeds our wages. Affordable housing is a major issue here because of excessive regulations for building, high property taxes, and lack of landlord protection against destructive, disruptive and deadbeat tenants. Ultimately, it isnt the landlords who bear the cost, it is the tenants. I will work to fix these issues to create more affordable housing. At the same time, I will introduce an effective tenant protection bill as well.

The cost of health insurance is very high in comparison to other states, again due to overregulation. I will introduce a bill that will lower health care and health insurance costs.

I hope you visit my Facebook page, Keith Stern for Windsor County, and see how a vote for me will be a vote for lowering taxes, a better, more cost-effective education system, and a stronger economy.

KEITH STERN

North Springfield

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Forum, June 6: America is reaping what it has sown - Valley News

Protesting in New York (Pic: Gabriele Holtermann-Gorden//PA Images)

Sparked by the police murder of George Floyd, mass protests have been sweeping across the US with an intensity not seen since the 1960s.

In over 150 cities, African Americans and their allies have flooded the streets, braving the Covid-19 pandemic, defying police violence, challenging centuries of racial and class inequalities and demanding liberty and justice for all.

Day after day they have confronted a corrupt, racist power structure based on violent repression.

Richard Greeman, a Marxist writer and activist best known for his work on Victor Serge, gives his analysis of the momentous US events

Breaches in the systems defences

After ten consecutive days in the streets, this outpouring of popular indignation against systematic, historic injustice, has opened a number of breaches in the defensive wall of the system.

The legal authorities in the state of Minnesota, where George Floyd was murdered, have been force to arrest and indict as accomplices the three other policemen who aided and abetted the killer, against whom the charges were raised from third to second degree murder.

A split has opened at the summit of power, where the Secretary of Defense and numerous Pentagon officials have broken with their Commander in Chief, Donald Trump, who has attempted to mobilise the U.S. Army against the protesters.

This historic uprising is an outpouring of accumulated black anger over decades of unpunished police murders of unarmed African-Americans. It articulates the accumulated grief of families and communities.

It reflects the sheer outrage over impunity for killer cops in both the North and the South. It reflects anger at capitalist Americas betrayal of Martin Luther Kings dream of non-violent revolution.

It shows the horror at the return to the era of public lynchings cheered on by the president of the US. It impatiently demands that America at long last live up to its proclaimed democratic ideals, here and now.

In the words of one African-American protester, William Achukwu, 28, of San Francisco, Our Declaration of Independence says life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Right now we are only dealing with the life part here.

"This is a first step. But liberty is what a lot of people out here are marching for."

Violence and non-violence

It came as no surprise that local and state officials across the US reacted to largely peaceful, spontaneous mass protests against police brutality and racism by unleashing a maelstrom of militarised police violence.

For a generation, the Federal government has been quietly gifting huge stocks of surplus military equipment, including tanks, to local police forces and sheriffs' offices. Police are eager to play with lethal new toys designed for counter-insurgency in places like Afghanistan.

Under both Democrats (Bill Clinton, Barack Obama) and Republicans (George Bush, Donald Trump) the federal state has been arming law enforcement in preparation for a preventive counter-revolution. This is precisely what President Trump is calling for today.

He demands full dominance by means of military crackdowns, mass arrests and long prison sentences in the name of law and order.

Thanks to the determination of these masses of militant, but largely non-violent protesters, the military is divided and Trump has not had his way.

Concerning violence, it was feared at first that the numerous incidences of setting fires, smashing shop fronts, and looting, would in some way spoil the uprising.

It might also be used to provide a pretext for the violent, military suppression of the whole movement, as called for by Trump. He blamed it all on an imaginary terrorist group called ANTIFA (short for anti-fascism, in fact a loose network).

At the same time, reports of gangs of young white racists wearing MAGA (Make America Great Again) hats committing vandalism, of Accellerationists systematically setting fires in black neighbourhoods to provoke revolution, and of violent police provocateurs are not entirely to be discounted.

Such actions play into Trumps hands. But the hundreds of thousands of angry but non-violent protesters, might not have been listened to by the authorities if it had not been for the threat of violence if their voices were ignored.

Instead of burning their own neighbourhoods as has happened in past riots, todays militants are strategically hitting symbols of state repression and capitalism. They are lighting up and destroying police property, trashing the stores of million-dollar corporations, and even pushing against the gates of the White House.

In any case, as far as looting is concerned, as the spokeswomen of BLM argued at George Floyds funeral, white people have been looting Africa and African-Americans for centuries. Payback is long overdue.

Black and white anti-racist convergence

What is remarkable and heartening is the realisation that large numbers of the demonstrators in the crowds proclaiming Black Lives Matter are white people.

Here again, a serious breach has been opened in the wall of systemic, institutionalised racism that has for centuries enabled the US ruling class to divide and conquer the working masses. It has pitted slave labourers and their discriminated descendants against white wage slaves in a competitive race to the bottom.

Today in some places they are uniting in the fight for justice and equality. Equally remarkable is the continuing. leadership role of women, especially African-American women in the founding of both the #BlackLivesMatter movement and the Womens March against Trumps Inauguration.

This convergence of freedom struggles across deeply rooted racial divides promises to open new paths as US social movements emerge from the Covid-19 confinement.

Public officials, like the Mayor of Los Angeles, have been obliged to meet with the protesters and to apologize for previous racist remarks.

Cracks within the regime

After ten days during which the protests have continued to increase numerically and to deepen in radical content, cracks have opened in the defences of the ruling corporate billionaire class and have reached the White House.

ForDonald Trump, the self-deluded, ignorant bully and pathological liar supposedly in charge, has finally been challenged by his own appointed security officials.

It must be said that in Trump, todays billionaire ruling class has the representative it deserves. The Donalds ineptitude, visible to all, is symbolic of its historic incapacity to retain the right to rule.

Trumps flawed, self-centred personality incarnates the narrow class interests of the 0.01 percent who own more than half the wealth of the nation.

His obvious selfishness exemplifies that of the billionaires he represents. Out of his willful ignorance, Trump speaks for a corporate capitalist class indifferent to the global ecological and social consequences of its ruthless drive to accumulate. It is indifferent to truth and justice, indifferent indeed to human life itself.

Trumps clownish misrule has embarrassed the state itself. First came the childish spectacle of the most powerful man in the world hunkering down in his basement bunker and ordering the White House lights turned off.

Then came the order to assault peaceful protesters with chemical weapons so as to clear the way for Trump to walk to the nearby Presidents Churchwhich he never attends and whose pastor he didnt bother to consult. There he had himself photographed brandishing a huge Biblewhich he has most likely never readlike a club.

Trump, whose only earned success in life was his reality TV show The Apprentice, apparently devised this bizarre publicity stunt to rally his political base of right-wing Christians. But it backfired when the Bishop of Washington pointed out that Jesus preached love and peace, not war and vengeance.

The next day, even demagogues like Pat Robinson of the far right Christian Coalition spoke out against him.

Let us pause to note that American Christianity, like every other aspect of American civilization, is a knot of contradictions.

Although the racist, conservative, pro-Israel, Christian right has been the core of Trumps support, liberation theology and the black church have long been the base of the Civil Rights movement for equality.

Indeed, George Floyd the murdered African-American was himself a religiously motivated community peacemaker.

Trumps phoney populist act may have helped catapult him into office in 2016. But as a quotation often ascribed to president Abraham Lincoln says, You can fool some of the people all of the time and all of the people some of the time, but you cant fool all of the people all of the time.

Police: the vicious dogs of the bourgeoisie

As Trump huddledlike Hitlerin his underground bunker, he threatened to unleash vicious dogs on demonstrators. Trump has the Doberman mentality of the junk-yard owner from Queens he incarnates.

He is the spiritual descendant of the slave-catcher Simon Legree chasing the escaped slave Eliza with his dogs in Uncle Toms Cabin.

Vicious dogs of the bourgeoisie. Thats what the police are paid to be.

Their canines are the sharp teeth of the American state. Along with the Army, cops are the essence of the actual deep state which Marx defined as special bodies of armed men, courts, prisons etc.

Although subservient to the bourgeois state, this police apparatus, like the Mafia with which it is sometimes entwined, has a corporate identity of its own. It is based on omerta or strict group loyalty.

This unwritten rule is the notorious Blue Wall of Silence which prevents cops who see their brothers committing graft and violent abuses from speaking out.

The blue wall assures police impunity, and it is organised through police unions which, although affiliated with the AFL-CIO, are violently reactionary, anti-labour and pro-Trump.

The President of the International Police Union has been filmed wearing a red Make America Great Again hat and shaking hands with Trump at a political rally.

The wall of silence extends up the repressive food chain to prosecutors, district attorneys and even progressive mayors. New Yorks Bill de Blasio defended police driving vehicles into a crowd of demonstrators. He did this even though his own daughter was arrested as a Black Lives Matter demonstrator.

Dei Blasio, like his reactionary predecessor, Rudy Giuliani, knows that his political future is dependent on the good will of the police Union. Even junkyard owners are afraid of their own vicious dogs.

A week later, that sacrosanct bluewWall is beginning to crumble. The Minnesota authorities have been forced to escalate the charges against Derek Chauvin, George Floyds killer, to second degree murderwhy not firstand arrest his three police accomplices. And these ex-police have begun to rat each other out.

Race and class in US history

American society has been riddled with contradictions since its beginnings. These contradictions are still being played out in the streets of over 150 U.S. cities.

The uprisings, interracial from the beginning, express popular frustration with the lack of progress. We have seen centuries of struggle against slavery, a bloody civil war in the 1860s and the second American revolution of Reconstruction.

We had the Civil Rights movement and the urban riots of the 1960s. Yet the lives of the descendants of black slaves are still not safe in the land of liberty.

The American Revolution of the 18th Century professed a universal principle. It put forward, as expressed in the 1776 Declaration of Independence, that All men are created equal and endowed with certain inalienable rights.

Yet that promised equality was simultaneously contradicted by the inclusion in the US Constitution of clauses which institutionalised black slavery in the American Republic. It also , assured the permanent predominance in the federal government for the slaveholding Southern states.

The electoral system created by the US Constitution allowed the Southerners to include their slaves as three fifths of a man.

Thus the minority of Southern slave owners could outvote the more populous North and dominate the Union. This hypocritical compromise was the price of national unity in a nation half-free and half-slave.

Accordingly, ten of the first 12 American Presidents were slave owners. More and more such compromises favouring the slave owner interests were introduced as new states were added to the Union.

This rickety, lopsided Federal Union based on Southern domination held until 1860.

However, when Northern moderate Abraham Lincoln took office as President in 1861, most of the slave owning states seceded from the Union. They formed a rebellious Confederacy, launched a war on the United States.

They also sought recognition from Great Britain, the Confederacys main customer for slave-grown cotton.

It is often been argued that the bitterly fought U.S. Civil War, which lasted four years and registered higher casualty rates than even WWI, was not really about slavery. But it was.

To hide this ugly truth, the white Southerners still call it the War Between the States. Yet the war was precipitated by white Abolitionists like John Brown, who aided and provoked slave rebellions.

Moreover, the huge numbers of young farmers and mechanics who volunteered and even re-enlisted to fight for the North knew they were fighting for human freedom. The correspondence with their families and hometown newspapers indicated this.

Indeed, the Civil War, long a bloody stalemate, was won by the North only after Lincoln unleashed the fighting power of the black slaves in the South. Slaves escaped from their plantations and flocked to the Union Armies, depriving the white South of much of its black labour force.

The Union Army fed them, immediately put them to work, and later enrolled them in black regiments who fought bravely and effectively to defeat the slaveocracy. Not about slavery?

Meanwhile, in England anti-slavery textile workers were boycotting the cotton-exporting Confederacy.

Karl Marx, speaking for this movement, stressed the class basis for their idealistic expression of inter-racial solidarity. He proclaimed, Labour in the white skin can never be free as long as labor in the black skin is branded.

African-American workers in the US are no longer branded like their enslaved ancestors. But even today the colour of their skin brands them.

It makes them prey to oppressors, like bosses, landlords, discriminatory banks and the violent racist police.

The working masses who face not only a political crisis but also the crisis of an ongoing pandemic, the crisis of poverty and mass unemployment, and the impending climate crisis.

Like the British workers in Marxs day, todays white demonstrators know in their hearts that they can never be free and never be safe from state violence until Black Lives really do matter.

They know that Black and White Unite and Fight is the only possible way to block authoritarian government, prevent fascism, establish democracy, institute class equality and face the future.

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Ten days that may have changed the world - Socialist Worker

People Post is a space for opinion pieces, letters to the editor and guest submissions from members of the Long Beach community. The following is an op-ed submitted by L.S. Pearce, a Long Beach based therapist and clinician, with a lifelong passion for supporting human rights, and does not necessarily reflect the views of the Long Beach Post.

Editors note: This opinion piece contains language some readers may find objectionable.

I was 12 when the Rodney King riots happened. A group of cops was seen on tape beating a black man senseless, and for maybe the first time white America got to witness for itself the disparity between black and white policing and get a glimpse of the divide that not all men are equal in America.

It was something people of color had been saying for 100 years and no one was listening, or maybe nobody cared. And so when the cops were acquitted, the rage bubbled over. I lived in Long Beach at the time and I could feel the tension in the air; I remember understanding in my adolescent way that something important was happening, something I wanted to be a part of, but knowing I was too young to be out in the streets with the adults.

That was almost 30 years ago, and its true what they say that the more things change, the more they stay the same. Were seeing a particular story emerge as the media attempts to control the narrative, the same way they have with BLM, with Occupy, with the WTO. Newscasters keep referring to the protests as violent, which is a dangerous tactic to demonize protesters, in order to legitimize the eventual use of vicious and abhorrent force that the cops and National Guard will visit upon citizens.

Lets get really clear about something: Property damage is not violence. Violence is what you do to another human being, a living thing, not an inanimate object or a bunch of drywall and bricks in the shape of a building.

Violence is kneeling on a mans neck for 9 minutes while he begs for his life until he dies.

Violence is bursting into the wrong apartment in the middle of the night and gunning a sleeping woman down in her bed.

Violence is shooting a young man with a cellphone in his grandmothers backyard, or a little boy playing with a toy gun.

Violence is shooting a man while he livestreams it, and then joking on video that hes going to need a closed casket.

Violence is 400 years of slavery and rape and whippings and public mutilations that were so commonplace and accepted by society that they were the subject of postcard photos, with a hundred white people standing around smiling and taking an ear or toe of the murdered person home as a souvenir.

Violence is a 150 years of Black Codes and lynchings and Jim Crow and a criminal justice system that targets people of color and ruins families and lives.

You cannot do violence to things. Violence is what you do to people. And so far, I have not seen citizens attacking each other; I have seen them attacking the symbols of their own subjugation: police stations, banks, corporations, the media. And when you decry the violence of smashing a window with the sameor moreferocity than youve decried the brutality and murder of your fellow citizens for hundreds of years, you demonstrate to the black community, to your peers, to your family, to God, that you value insured property that isnt even yours more than human life. Personally, I dont give a fuck about a Starbucks. Burn it to the ground in the neighborhood it gentrified.

A few years ago I read about an epidemic of elderly people choosing suicide rather than homelessness when they have to choose between medicine and housing. Unless something major changes financially in my own life within the next 30 years, Ive gotta be honest, suicide is my retirement plan too. Boomers can turn a blind eye as they enter their golden years, but our generation doesnt harbor any illusions about the grim reality and futures we face. We inherited a dying planet and a nation being constantly plundered by politicians and the companies that own them.

Most of the people of my generation will never be able to buy homes or start families, and we will never be able to retire, working to support ourselves until we literally drop dead. Deaths of despairdrug overdose and suiciderun rampant in economically depressed areas; not just urban centers, but rural communities where coal mining or factory jobs have disappeared.

Mental health problems are on the rise even for people doing well by societys standards, with 1 in 6 Americans being prescribed a psychiatric drug. Wages have been stagnant since the 70s, weve been working harder and longer hours for less and less while the CEOs take home ever more astronomical salaries as they bust unions, automate our jobs away or send them overseas.

The fifth of our earnings removed through tax money rarely goes into infrastructure, education, healthcare, taking care of the elderly, homeless, or veterans or building up our communities in any way, but instead to offset an endless parade of tax cuts and bailouts for the rich, to fund the surveillance infrastructure of our own enslavement, and endless wars to dominate and exploit the resources of other nations. Its been getting worse and its only going to keep getting worse for as long as we let it. And if at this point you cant see any of this incredibly large and legible writing on the wall, well, Id have to question your intelligence. And if you can see it but want to continue to champion a dog-eat-dog system of selfishness and murder and environmental degradation and wage-slavery on the hope of that 0.00000001% chance that you will one day join the 1% and get your own turn at the enhanced exploitation of your fellow human beings and the natural world, well, I would certainly have to question your morality and indeed, your humanity.

This system is sick and evil. That is not to say that we as individuals are evil. Nevertheless, we passively participate in evil every day whether we want to or not. We fund the wars, we buy the cellphones containing materials that were mined with child labor and made in sweatshops so terrible that the companies put out suicide nets. We stand by and film the murder of our neighbors by police because we feel powerless to do anything else. But the truth is, there are other ways. Those ways may be uncomfortable to get to, but are we comfortable now?

In reality, nobody with power ever willingly surrenders it; you take it. America was founded on taking what was not given by the British Empire: our independence. Every meager scrap of human rights has had to be fought and scraped and in some cases died for: womens rights, gay rights, labor rights, civil rights, disability rights. And that fighting and scraping and dying has not been pretty; it has not been warm and fuzzy. That is what we are experiencing now: the discomfort of change, of growth. There is enough on this planet for everyone if we distribute it more equitably rather than allowing 1% to hoard almost 50% of the worlds wealth, and it can be had in ways that dont destroy our own habitat. We just have to decide that enough is enough and were willing to fight for it.

So when I hear people complain about the riots or rather, the REVOLT I hear people crying But why would you burn down your own plantation?! White people, rich people, you are on this same sinking ship, you just have better seats. The poor and the people of color will go under first but it wont be long before you too are thrashing about in the icy sea that will snuff out your life.

Just how long do you think your skin color will protect you when you lose your job in a failing economy, and become one of the desperate dispossessed that the police have free rein to brutalize when you do whatever you need to do to feed your family? Just how long do you think money will isolate you from the ravages of a crumbling society on a dying planetexactly how much money will you need to pay your armed guards to save YOU and YOUR RESOURCES instead of saving their own loved ones?

We can come together, now, while we still have a chance to save ourselves and the whole damn world. Or we can descend over the next two decades into madness and chaos, tearing at ourselves and each other while the world burns around us.

This is nothing new; civilizations have fallen here and there into periods of chaos and destruction throughout time. The only difference is that now we live in a global community and so this time, it will be a global collapse (consider the virus, spreading rapidly around the world and all the shortages and supply chain disruptions it brought, as the dress rehearsal). The only difference is that now the planet is getting hotter and the waters are rising and the land is less farmable and the species we rely on to survive are going extinct.

I am personally very happy and excited that people are rising up and I hope it continues. Because I recognize that Kali is the goddess of both destruction and creation. You cant build a new home until you raze the old one; you cant plant your crops until you till the field. Our society is sick. Burn it all down and lets build something new.

I believe that within the next 30 years, we as individuals will either witness or participate in a fight to the death. Either we will crush this system and crush capitalism, or the system and capitalism will crush us. If we win, we dont know what will happen. Maybe the fault is in our stars and humans are innately terrible and we can never create anything better. We would certainly be stepping into the unknown and that is scary. But if we fail, we do know what will happen: The whole world will perish.

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Opinion: Why the rage? Some words about violence and human rights - Long Beach Post

It is no news that COVID-19 has changed the way we live our lives! In these unprecedented times every organisation has had to adapt. The lucky ones are challenged to keep up with increased demand and the less fortunate are managing decreased revenue, or worse, having to close their doors.

Desperate times call for desperate measures has been proven to ring true with governments and organisations under pressure to perform, cut costs and meet demand, but how is this going to impact quality and ethics?

Nationally and internationally, normal ways of working have been adjusted to comply with government guidelines put in place to ensure the safety of their citizens. Social distancing, border closures and halts on production have all had significant impacts for most Australian workers. And we are still not clear about the long-term consequences of this extraordinary event.

Statistically, low-skilled workers are more likely to be exploited, often due to cost reduction strategies implemented for financial gain. For those on minimum wage, the repercussions of the current working climate can be debilitating particularly when it comes to seeking secure income. Thus, the defenseless may face greater risk of succumbing to modern slavery or exploitation.

Modern slavery describes serious exploitation in the workplace, such as human trafficking, slavery, servitude and forced labour, amongst others. Findings from the Global Slavery Index estimate there were approximately 15,000 people living in conditions of modern slavery in Australia in 2016.

Coronavirus has made it clear that the Western world is certainly not immune to exploitation, with countries such as the USA using prison labour to create medical-grade facemasks and hand sanitiser in exchange for less than minimum wage. Opportunities to exploit Australians are heightened during times of crisis where people may:

The desperate times call for desperate measures mindset is not only relevant to the government and large corporations. Struggling Australians are more likely to be exploited while seeking alternative methods of income in times of crisis, where desperation can often be more powerful than the elusive search for fair and just employment. Often it is too late by the time these workers recognise the unstable and risky circumstances they find themselves in. Thus, the cycle of modern slavery continues.

To avoid subjecting vulnerable Australian workers to mistreatment, organisations of all sizes need to ensure there is transparency across every phase of their supply chain. Transparency from suppliers and third-party operators is key in maintaining an economically, socially, and environmentally sustainable supply chain strategy.

Businesses must maintain supplier relationships and open communication around the Human Rights risks associated with COVID-19 and its carryover effects. Supplier liaison is essential in ensuring organisations support their vulnerable workers through flexibility to the ever-changing situation. It is

crucial to communicate and reinforce the rights and roles of each operational party that is from the CEO down to the line workers. This includes access to sick and carers leave, the correct protective equipment, the availability of grievance mechanisms and whistleblowing options, and availability of increased cleaning and sanitisation in workplaces.

Support network groups such as employee, investor, civil society, peak bodies, and suppliers provide collaboration opportunities to create solutions-based approaches particularly when adapting to industry changes to safeguard ethical workplaces. This includes educating staff around the current situation and identifying what modern slavery is and how it can happen during the existing pandemic.

Lastly, staying up to date with national and international legislation and resources will support operations and assist practical application of any relevant changes in line with the current trading climate. Practicing human rights, fair trade and fair labour guidelines should be an ongoing part of your business strategy and process. If we can learn anything from COVID-19, it is the importance of ethical and transparent trade.

But little has been done yet to look to the future, i.e. what are we learning? How can we better integrate sustainability into all supply chain processes? How can we use this experience as a catalyst for change? It is imperative that we, as a society, move towards a structure that equally promotes ethical economic, social, and environmental sustainability.

Nicholas Bernhardt is the CEO of Informed 365. With a passion for sustainable workplaces and positive world change, Nicholas started Informed 365 after seeing a disconnect in organisations corporate social responsibility and the tools at their disposal to harness and understand data. Informed 365 is now the leading tech solution for over 3,000 Australian companies legally required to report under the Modern Slavery Act with high-profile clients such as the Property Council of Australia, Wesfarmers Industrial & Safety, Origin, Zoos Victoria, and Michael Hill.

Read more:

How COVID-19 can push modern slavery into the Australian supply chain - Anthill online

EDITORS NOTE: The opinions expressed in this piece are solely those of the author and do not reflect the views ofLatino USA.

By Mauricio Sellmann Oliveira, Dartmouth College

Brazil has emerged as one of the worst-hit countries in the coronavirus crisis, with hundreds of thousands of cases affecting people from all backgrounds. But in the early weeks of the pandemic, in March, many victims of the disease had a similar profile: a maid infected by her employer.

The first confirmed COVID-19 patient in Brazils northeastern Bahia state was a woman recently returned from Italy. She infected her maid, who then infected her own 68-year-old mother.

On March 17, a 62-year-old live-in maid died from the novel coronavirus in Rio de Janeiro. Her COVID-19 positive employer had also traveled to Italy.

Domestic workers are central figures in Brazil, a hidden workforce that keeps society running. Most upper- and middle-class Brazilian households and even many lower-middle class homes employ an empregada domstica, or domestic employee. Brazil, with 209 million people, has 6 million maids, according to the government.

COVID-19 is bringing this enormous, often invisible workforce into sharp focus.

Brazilian domestic workers earn US$128 a month on average less than minimum wage though salary and working conditions vary greatly across social strata.

Some domestic employees are live-in maids, who usually work their entire adult lives for one family. Others are paid monthly, and commute daily to work. Then there are daily maids who serve multiple households, akin to U.S. house cleaners.

The tradition of domestic help can be traced back to the abolition of slavery in 1888, as I analyzed in my recent study on the evolution of Brazilian maids and their role in society.

After slavery ended in Brazil, the government left an estimated 1 million newly freed black people to survive with their own resources, which were usually none. Ninety-nine percent of black Brazilians were illiterate, according to Brazils 1890 census. Most took menial jobs, with black women largely relegated to live-in domestic work serving mostly white homes.

Black women still make up the majority of Brazils domsticas63% in 2018. Domestic work is so explicitly racialized in Brazil that, in 1994, soon-to-be Brazilian President Fernando Henrique Cardoso told reporters he had one foot in the kitchen to signal his mixed-race heritage.

These days, having two feet in the kitchen signals a disproportionate COVID-19 risk.

In April, the Health Ministry reported that black Brazilians made up a quarter of those hospitalized with severe COVID-19 but about a third of COVID-19 fatalities. And officials in So Paulo, the epicenter of the pandemic in Brazil, recently reported that black residents were 62% more likely to die of COVID-19 than the general population.

But Brazilian maids of all races are vulnerable in this crisis because most generally lack employment safeguards, commute long distances and are poor, with limited access to quality health care.

All intensive care beds in public hospitals from five states Par, Maranho, Rio de Janeiro, Pernambuco and Cear are either occupied or soon will be, according to states reports. While wealthy COVID-19 patients can pay to be transported to top private hospitals in So Paulo or abroad, poorer Brazilians rely on the overwhelmed public health system.

Brazilian domestic workers exposure to the pandemic is economic as well as physical.

Approximately 4.3 million of Brazils 6 million maids are employed informally, meaning they arent registered with the government. As such, labor rights which include the $178 national minimum monthly wage and 30-day paid vacations do not apply.

Since early March, 39% of daily maids in Brazil have been let go. They are among the estimated 15 to 20 million Brazilians expected to be unemployed by July, according to several projections.

Though the Office of the Federal Labor Attorney officially recommends that maids receive paid leave to stay at home during the pandemic, only 39% of regular maids and 48% of daily maids have been given that benefit, according to the pollster Locomotiva.

Some states in Brazil have listed domestic work as an essential service, allowing them to continue workingassuming their employers will still pay them.

The plight of domestic workers is one of many ways the pandemic is shining a hard light on inequality in Brazil.

Brazils Congress in March passed an aid bill authorizing a monthly $102 emergency basic income payment to the newly unemployed, including informal workers. So far, however, little more than half of the 55 million people whove applied have received funds, due to faulty execution and bureaucratic delays. Lack of internet access and other poverty-related factors may prevent many millions more from even applying.

Brazilian maids are suffering in this pandemic, but not in silence. A federation of domestic workers unions called Fenatrad is challenging the state decrees that established domestic workers as essential service providers, pushing instead for this high-risk population to receive paid leave.

In early May, the Brazilian Supreme Court ruled that COVID-19 qualifies as an occupational illness for the purposes of workers compensation. This decision applies to maids.

Communities have created their own grassroots initiatives to support domestic workers, too. An Adopt a Daily Maid donation campaign is underway in So Paulos Paraispolis favela a slum settlement that abuts an upper-class district urging people with means to support house cleaners in the area.

And in a sign of the remarkable social mobility Brazil fostered in the boom years of the early 21st century, the first-generation college-educated children of maids started a Change.org petition asking employers to give domestic workers paid leave, advance vacation pay and isolate live-in maids who are at high COVID-19 risk. They later added a donations option to support vulnerable maids.

Maids belong to a group of workers that represents Brazil, reads the petition, which urges everyone raised by domestic workers to join their cause. So far, more than 90,000 people have signed on, for the lives of all our mothers.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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In Brazil's Raging Pandemic, Domestic Workers Fear For Their LivesAnd Their Jobs - Latino USA

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Brazil has emerged as one of the worst-hit countries in the coronavirus crisis, with hundreds of thousands of cases affecting people from all backgrounds. But in the early weeks of the pandemic, in March, many victims of the disease had a similar profile: a maid infected by her employer.

The first confirmed COVID-19 patient in Brazils northeastern Bahia state was a woman recently returned from Italy. She infected her maid, who then infected her own 68-year-old mother.

On March 17, a 62-year-old live-in maid died from the novel coronavirus in Rio de Janeiro. Her COVID-19 positive employer had also traveled to Italy.

Domestic workers are central figures in Brazil, a hidden workforce that keeps society running. Most upper- and middle-class Brazilian households and even many lower-middle class homes employ an empregada domstica, or domestic employee. Brazil, with 209 million people, has 6 million maids, according to the government.

COVID-19 is bringing this enormous, often invisible workforce into sharp focus.

High risk, no safety net

Brazilian domestic workers earn US$128 a month on average less than minimum wage though salary and working conditions vary greatly across social strata.

Some domestic employees are live-in maids, who usually work their entire adult lives for one family. Others are paid monthly, and commute daily to work. Then there are daily maids who serve multiple households, akin to U.S. house cleaners.

The tradition of domestic help can be traced back to the abolition of slavery in 1888, as I analyzed in my recent study on the evolution of Brazilian maids and their role in society.

After slavery ended in Brazil, the government left an estimated 1 million newly freed black people to survive with their own resources, which were usually none. Ninety-nine percent of black Brazilians were illiterate, according to Brazils 1890 census. Most took menial jobs, with black women largely relegated to live-in domestic work serving mostly white homes.

Story continues

Black women still make up the majority of Brazils domsticas 63% in 2018. Domestic work is so explicitly racialized in Brazil that, in 1994, soon-to-be Brazilian President Fernando Henrique Cardoso told reporters he had one foot in the kitchen to signal his mixed-race heritage.

These days, having two feet in the kitchen signals a disproportionate COVID-19 risk.

In April, the Health Ministry reported that black Brazilians made up a quarter of those hospitalized with severe COVID-19 but about a third of COVID-19 fatalities. And officials in So Paulo, the epicenter of the pandemic in Brazil, recently reported that black residents were 62% more likely to die of COVID-19 than the general population.

But Brazilian maids of all races are vulnerable in this crisis because most generally lack employment safeguards, commute long distances and are poor, with limited access to quality health care.

All intensive care beds in public hospitals from five states Par, Maranho, Rio de Janeiro, Pernambuco and Cear are either occupied or soon will be, according to states reports. While wealthy COVID-19 patients can pay to be transported to top private hospitals in So Paulo or abroad, poorer Brazilians rely on the overwhelmed public health system.

Economic devastation

Brazilian domestic workers exposure to the pandemic is economic as well as physical.

Approximately 4.3 million of Brazils 6 million maids are employed informally, meaning they arent registered with the government. As such, labor rights which include the $178 national minimum monthly wage and 30-day paid vacations do not apply.

Since early March, 39% of daily maids in Brazil have been let go. They are among the estimated 15 to 20 million Brazilians expected to be unemployed by July, according to several projections.

Though the Office of the Federal Labor Attorney officially recommends that maids receive paid leave to stay at home during the pandemic, only 39% of regular maids and 48% of daily maids have been given that benefit, according to the pollster Locomotiva.

Some states in Brazil have listed domestic work as an essential service, allowing them to continue working assuming their employers will still pay them.

Solidarity networks

The plight of domestic workers is one of many ways the pandemic is shining a hard light on inequality in Brazil.

Brazils Congress in March passed an aid bill authorizing a monthly $102 emergency basic income payment to the newly unemployed, including informal workers. So far, however, little more than half of the 55 million people whove applied have received funds, due to faulty execution and bureaucratic delays. Lack of internet access and other poverty-related factors may prevent many millions more from even applying.

Brazilian maids are suffering in this pandemic, but not in silence. A federation of domestic workers unions called Fenatrad is challenging the state decrees that established domestic workers as essential service providers, pushing instead for this high-risk population to receive paid leave.

In early May, the Brazilian Supreme Court ruled that COVID-19 qualifies as an occupational illness for the purposes of workers compensation. This decision applies to maids.

Communities have created their own grassroots initiatives to support domestic workers, too. An Adopt a Daily Maid donation campaign is underway in So Paulos Paraispolis favela a slum settlement that abuts an upper-class district urging people with means to support house cleaners in the area.

And in a sign of the remarkable social mobility Brazil fostered in the boom years of the early 21st century, the first-generation college-educated children of maids started a Change.org petition asking employers to give domestic workers paid leave, advance vacation pay and isolate live-in maids who are at high COVID-19 risk. They latter added a donations option to support vulnerable maids.

Maids belong to a group of workers that represents Brazil, reads the petition, which urges everyone raised by domestic workers to join their cause. So far, more than 90,000 people have signed on, for the lives of all our mothers.

Mauricio Sellmann Oliveira, Visiting Scholar, Dartmouth College

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Image: Reuters

Click here to read the full article.

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COVID-19 is Threatening Brazil's Domestic Workers and their Jobs - Yahoo News

With a knee to his neck and head against the concrete, George Floyd became the face of one of the largest uprisings in modern American history. His final moments at the hands of four Minneapolis police officers was replayed on social media and television all across a country that was already in crisis.

America is in an economic free fall as a result of the coronavirus pandemic. And it is black Americans who have been disproportionately impacted by mounting deaths and crushing job losses, making up a disproportionate number of the 42 million people left unemployed.

Black Americans, already subjected to generations of systemic racism, were now more likely to die from the coronavirus and also faced losing their jobs in higher numbers as a result of record unemployment.

George Floyd, then, was no exception.

State medical examiners confirmed this week that Floyd had contracted the coronavirus by late-April. He had also lost his job. But that didnt cause his death.

Instead, Floyd died from what historian Carol Anderson called the longest ongoing saga in American history.

We saw racial terror: a cop with a knee in [Floyds] neck, a soulless look and a casual disregard for life, she said. That angst and hurt came before we ever knew that [Floyd] had the virus, because it resonated with us as people.

At his memorial service on Thursday, family attorney Ben Crump said that Floyd had not died from coronavirus but that the pandemic of racism had taken his life.

While his death has come to symbolize the plight of black people navigating the criminal justice system, for many, Floyds life and the timing of his killing underscores the burden of being black in America, and created the spark that lit this weeks uprising.

It was bound to happen here in Minneapolis and all across the country, said Dara Beevas, a restaurateur and activist who has lived in the city for more than 15 years. She said that black communities are rendered nearly invisible, silencing inequality.

When you give people so many signals that their history, culture and humanity does not matter, you will see a rejection, a revolt, Beevas said.

Floyds life is a familiar story of falling or being knocked down and picking yourself back up as a black man in America. Although imperfect, he was a man described as hard-working by his peers in Minneapolis and a community staple and mentor, in his native Houston.

He left Texas for Minnesota in 2014, in search of better opportunities after being released from prison for aggravated robbery. The Great Migration of much of the 20th century saw millions of African Americans make that same journey, mostly attempting to escape racism in the south and in search of upward mobility in the north.

When you give people so many signals that their history, culture and humanity does not matter, you will see a rejection, a revolt

Instead racism violently confronted Floyd in Minnesota, a state in which black residents are more than 13 times more likely to be killed by police.

The states African American residents are only 6.8% of the population, concentrated primarily in the Twin Cities of Minneapolis and St Paul. Like much of black America in densely populated cities, that is also where coronavirus cases have been highest. Black Minnesotans are 16% of the states nearly 25,000 confirmed cases and deaths.

The cardiovascular disease and hypertension cited in Floyds official autopsy are also underlying risk factors that make black Americans more susceptible to contracting and dying from the virus. Other risks factors include obesity and diabetes.

For Beevas, the multiple iniquities that face black Americans fell on deaf ears until they were amplified by screams of I cant breathe as Floyd lay dying on a Minneapolis street.

By standing up for [Floyd], an overlooked, yet over-policed community of people accustomed to not being seen stood up for themselves and that message spread all over, she said.

A report from the Economic Policy Institute unpacks how inequities exacerbated the impact of the coronavirus crisis on black communities.

Black people are twice as likely to lack health insurance and to live in medically underserved communities. They also represent a majority of workers in most essential industries, often putting them at the frontlines of the pandemic.

Elise Gould, lead researcher and senior economist, said when black workers lose their jobs, a history of discrimination and inequality can make rebounding harder.

[Black Americans already] experienced a much higher unemployment rate, larger wage gaps, have lower median household incomes and higher poverty rates, all things that keep them from being able to weather the storm of job loss.

When the restaurant where he worked shut down due to Minnesotas stay-at-home order, Floyd became one of the 44% of Africans Americans to lose their jobs.

Black Americans like him have felt the brunt of the economic spiral. The Federal Reserve found that of households making less than $40,000 a year, nearly 40% of those employed in Februarylost their jobs in Marchor at the beginning of April.

Thats nearly half of all black households.

Author and academic Carole Anderson contends that usually, multiple national crises happening at once sparks unrest. While headlines may describe these as unprecedented times, especially for African Americans, this is nothing new.

Were going to survive and there will be no turning back

Abolitionists were essential to getting America into a Civil War, Anderson noted. They refused to let the US slide by pretending that slavery wasnt a horrific practice.

Still, she acknowledges theres a different energy this time, and not just because Floyds is one of the most egregious modern examples of the contradiction between what [the US] says it stands for versus what it really is.

Anderson places the difference squarely on who is leading a preventable, yet unprecedented crisis: Donald Trump.

She fought back tears as she recalled watching Floyds last moments, weeping in horror as she heard a man call out for his mother who had died two years earlier. For her, it was the cry of a man who had given up.

For others, it was a call to action.

Dionne Smith-Downs traveled from California to attend one of Minneapolis many protests since Floyds death. She lost her own son to police violence in 2010, so when Floyd called out for the mothers, she felt it personally.

When he said Mama, I knew I had to come, she told Breakthrough News. I heard him and that is why Im here.

All four police officers involved in his arrest have been fired. Derek Chauvin, the 19-year veteran seen kneeling on Floyds neck, has been charged with second degree murder and manslaughter while the other three officers were charged as witnesses.

American history is littered with promises of atonement and reform, but theyve been mostly left unfulfilled, even after the police killings that gave rise to the Black Lives Matter movement.

Protests are bigger this time because theres finally more of an understanding that the onus isnt on black people to resolve this, Beevas said. Were no longer questioning the existence of oppression. Our communities have been saying I cannot breathe for centuries.

Its just a matter of America listening now, she said. Floyds life and death resonated because, for many, the story of struggle, triumph, and perseverance only to fall victim to an unequal system is that of black history in America.

Georgia congressman John Lewis, one of the original Freedom Riders who was notoriously beaten by mobs during the civil rights movement, remarked on the NBCs Today Show Thursday that while he been down this road before, this time gives [him] hope as a nation, and as a people.

Were going to get there. Were going to make it, he said, signaling to a new generation of leaders combating a generational struggle. Were going to survive and there will be no turning back.

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In life and death, George Floyd's plight reflected the burden of being black in America - The Guardian

The issue of reparation for slavery has been raised by descendants of slaves in the Americas and the Caribbean for several years now. The belief that white Americans owe black Americans amoral debtfor compensation for slavery, Jim Crow and long-standing racism has been ongoing since emancipation.

Critics of reparation say that it would be difficult to make fair calculations as to how much victims would take and in what form, considering the years involved. And though attitudes towards reparations for slavery tend to polarize the U.S., BET founder Robert Johnsonbelieves that now is the time to go big on reparations to help prevent the country from splitting into separate and unequal societies.

In an interview with CNBC on Monday, Johnson said the U.S. government should provide $14 trillion of reparations for slavery to help reduce inequality.

His comments come on the back of protests across the U.S. that have largely focused on racial injustice, the wealth divide and police brutality following the death of unarmed black man George Floyd at the hands of a white police officer.

Wealth transfer is whats needed, said Johnson. Think about this. Since 200-plus-years or so of slavery, labor taken with no compensation, is a wealth transfer. Denial of access to education, which is a primary driver of accumulation of income and wealth, is a wealth transfer, said the entrepreneur and media mogul, who became Americas first black billionaire when he sold BET toViacomin 2001.

The 74-year-old philanthropist argued that paying reparations or what he calls the affirmative action program of all time, would demonstrate that white Americans acknowledge damages that are owed for the injustices slavery created.

Damages is a normal factor in a capitalist society for when you have been deprived for certain rights, he said. If this money goes into pockets like the [coronavirus] stimulus checks that money is going to return back to the economy in the form of consumption, adding that there will also be more black-owned businesses.

Federal Reserve data show that Black and Hispanic families have considerably less wealth than white families. Black families median and mean net worth is less than 15 percent that of white families, at $17,600 and $138,200, respectively.

Johnson, who has been supporting reparations for some time now, said hes not advocating more bureaucratic programs that dont deliver and dont perform, adding Im talking about cash. We are a society based on wealth. Thats the foundation of capitalism.

The topic of reparations made headlines last year when Democratic presidential hopefuls began throwing their weight behind the idea.

U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren, who announced her full support for reparations for black Americans affected by slavery, said last February: We must confront the dark history of slavery and government-sanctioned discrimination in this country that has had many consequences including undermining the ability of Black families to build wealth in America for generations.

Over the years, those who have supported reparations say it is necessary to help redress the wrongs of slavery and racial discrimination. It would also help to resolve the continuing troubles of Americas black community. It is documented thatblack Americans continuing poverty is a result of America deliberately frustrating the efforts of black Americans to accumulate and retain wealth until the 1980s.

Nationwide polling shows, however, that compensation for those affected by slavery is an unpopular policy.

In the journalSocial Science Quarterly, a University of Connecticut researcher, Thomas Craemer estimated that it would cost between $5.9 trillion and $14.2 trillion to give historical reparations.

The journal, cited byNewsweek, said Craemer came up with those figures by tabulating how many hours all slaves worked in the United States from when the country was officially established in 1776 until 1865 when slavery was officially abolished.

He subsequently multiplied the amount of time they worked by average wage prices at the time, and then a compounding interest rate of 3 percent per year to calculate the reparation figure.

Reparations will never bring one life back, and its totally inadequate to the terror of the [past], but having a meaningful symbol of reparations is a good thing, not just for recipients but for the people who provide it,Craemersaid.

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'Now is the time' - BET founder Robert Johnson wants US to pay $14 trillion in slavery reparations - Face2Face Africa

Mass protests and rioting following the killing of yet another African-American by a white police officer have compounded multiplying crises in the United States. Between the COVID-19 pandemic, a looming economic depression, and persistent racism, the American social contract has never been in more need of reform.

MEXICO CITY The wave of anger and indignation sweeping the United States in response to George Floyds death at the hands of a Minneapolis policeman exposes the myriad contradictions of American society. With a presidential election less than six months away, the US is gripped by despair and violent polarization. Yet if one looks through the triple crisis of COVID-19, economic depression, and mass protests and rioting, one can glimpse enormous potential opportunities.

As I show in my new book, America Through Foreign Eyes, since the US ceased to be a middle-class society, starting in the early 1980s, it has been incapable of thriving. Without a full-fledged welfare state, it has consistently failed to adapt to a fundamental shift in its founding paradigm. Its Athenian-inspired political system was built for a society that treated everyone within the circle of enfranchisement as roughly equal, while excluding many others whom it deemed less equal (to borrow from George Orwells biting description of Bolshevism). The out-groups included women, Native Americans, African-Americans, Hispanics, Asian Americans, and many others.

As a result of these founding conditions, the US political system has long proved ill-equipped to retool its safety net, let alone its broader social contract. To take the most recent example, consider then-President Barack Obamas attempts to fix the US deeply flawed and dysfunctional health-care system. Though the Affordable Care Act was signed into law in 2010, it contained many loopholes and half-measures, and has since been systematically undermined by Donald Trumps administration.

Race is a central flashpoint in Americas political evolution. Racial disparities have always underscored why the social contract needs to be expanded to beyond the fully employed white males of yesteryear. But the persistence of these disparities indicates that there are immense hurdles standing in the way of change. Trumps cynical effort to stoke racial resentment in response to the current protests is emblematic of the deeper problem. But so, too, was the Democratic Partys primary, which quickly winnowed out all candidates of color.

Race is a key factor not just in demands for reparations for slavery, but also in debates about universal health insurance and childcare, tuition-free public higher education, the minimum wage, immigration, gun control, and Electoral College reform. All of these issues touch on the fundamental question at the heart of Americas political identity: Can the countrys original sin (slavery, followed by Jim Crow) be expiated without a proper welfare state?

The outpouring of frustration and anger following Floyds death has once again brought these questions into sharper focus. Over the past year, polls have consistently shown that Americans support proposals to expand the safety net, tighten gun control, and provide tuition-free college. The public also increasingly accepts the idea that African-Americans continue to bear the costs of systemic racism, from red-lining of neighborhoods and workplace discrimination to mass incarceration and abuse at the hands of police. The current explosion of rage will solidify these shifts in sentiment, whatever the electoral consequences.

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The same is true of the COVID-19 pandemic and the broader economic collapse. The racial and socioeconomic disparities revealed by both crises have led political leaders, experts, and commentators from left to moderate right to agree that Americas safety net is in tatters.

From insufficient testing and inadequate supplies of personal protective equipment to the disproportionately higher mortality rate among African-Americans, the pandemic has laid bare the weaknesses of the US health-care system. And at the same time, the economic debacle has highlighted the shortcomings of US unemployment insurance and other social programs, as well as a lack of coordination between federal, state, and local governments. Just as the pandemic has demonstrated the efficiency of the German, Scandinavian, and even French safety nets, it has exposed the gaping holes in the US system.

Owing to the triple crisis posed by the pandemic, depression, and civil unrest, there is a growing awareness among Democrats that beating Trump in November will not be enough. The focus groups that Joe Biden, the partys presumptive nominee, has set up, and his campaigns ongoing discussions with potential running mates, all point to a realization that the crisis is even deeper than originally anticipated, and will require radical change.

Biden may not be the ideal candidate to mobilize and excite young black and Hispanic voters, but he is certainly capable of leading the kind of coalition needed to defeat Trump and launch a New Deal-like overhaul of US social, economic, and political structures. Americans may not want socialism, but they will no longer be content with a return to normalcy (Bidens primary-season slogan, which he will now have to discard).

Winston Churchills aphorism about not letting a good crisis go to waste is relevant once again. With the COVID-19 death toll above 100,000, 40 million unemployed, and another black man killed by a white cop, Americas crises are multiplying. For now, the country is beset not just by protests and rioting over police abuses, but also by a resurgent white-supremacist alt-right. The underlying crises will come to a head politically on Election Day. Not since 1932 has America been more in need of radical change and sound leadership than it is today.

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From Riots to Reform in America by Jorge G. Castaeda - Project Syndicate

George Floyds death at the hands of Minneapolis police has become emblematic of the potentially deadly risk of being black in America. But its not just his death that illustrates the countrys racial disparities. His life, especially amid the coronavirus, did as well.

Floyd, 46, had lost his job as a restaurant bouncer due to stay-at-home orders in his state. Of the millions of Americans laid off or furloughed during the coronavirus crisis, black workers are likelier to be affected than white workers.

The medical examiner who examined Floyds body said that underlying conditions likely contributed to his death, which came after now-former police officer Derek Chauvin pinned Floyd to the ground with his knee for several minutes. They are among the underlying health conditions that black Americans disproportionately suffer from and that have contributed to higher rates of illness and death from Covid-19.

Centuries of racism and systemic inequality continuously disadvantage, disrupt, and cut short black lives in the United States. Currently, black Americans are experiencing multiple crises layered on top of one another. Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery, and, most recently, Floyd have lost their lives to white violence and police in recent weeks. Now mass protests are sweeping the country as a pandemic is wreaking havoc on black communities, in terms of both health and economics.

A new report from the Economic Policy Institute delves into the myriad ways racial and economic inequality have exacerbated the impact of the coronavirus crisis on black communities.

Millions of black workers have lost their jobs during the pandemic, putting them at a high degree of economic insecurity, in part because theyve had lower incomes and less savings already.

Of those whove kept their jobs, many more are putting their health at risk black workers are less likely to have jobs that allow them to work from home a risk magnified by inequalities in the health care system and a higher prevalence of underlying health conditions.

Yes, people are dying across the country, but it is concentrated among certain areas, said Elise Gould, a senior economist at the Economic Policy Institute, who produced the report with Valerie Wilson, director of EPIs program on race, ethnicity, and the economy. This is not some sort of great equalizer.

These many inequalities work in tandem, and centuries and decades of systemic racism and disadvantages play out in multiple damaging and tragic ways. The Covid-19 mortality rate for black Americans is 2.4 times the rate it is for white Americans. Black people are nearly three times likelier to be killed by police than whites.

The coronavirus story is one about both health and the economy, and EPIs report delves into both to look at how black workers and their families have been impacted.

Although the current strain of the coronavirus is one that humans have never experienced before, the disparate racial impact of the virus is deeply rooted in historic and ongoing social and economic injustices, the researchers write. Persistent racial disparities in health status, access to health care, wealth, employment, wages, housing, income, and poverty all contribute to greater susceptibility to the virus both economically and physically.

Covid-19 has sort of split workers into different groups: people who have lost their jobs, people who have been deemed essential workers, and people who have kept their jobs and have been able to work from home. Black workers are likelier to find themselves in the first two groups than the third.

The unemployment rate for black workers was higher than whites pre-pandemic and now. From February to April, more than one in six black workers lost their jobs, and as of April, less than half of the adult black population had jobs. Black workers unemployment rates are higher than white workers at every level of education.

And because of longstanding inequities, when black households lose incomes, the situation for them is extra precarious.

There is a wage gap between black workers and white workers that holds across gender, wage percentile, and education. The overall average wage for black workers in 2019 was $21.05; for white workers, it was $28.66.

Black households have lower incomes and higher poverty rates than white households, theyre less likely to have multiple earners, and they have less cash reserves to draw on in times of need.

As of 2016, black households had on average $8,762 in reserves, and white households had $49,529, five times that amount.

According to one recent University of Chicago study, 55 percent of black households say they dont have savings for unexpected shocks, compared to 38 percent of white households, and black families struggle more to be able to spend on the goods and services they need in moments of crisis.

Where black workers havent lost their jobs, many of them have been deemed essential during the pandemic. According to EPI, black workers generally make up one in nine workers, but theyre one in six front-line workers right now. And theyre disproportionately in essential jobs that are also low-wage ones at grocery stores and pharmacies, in public transit, in health care, and in child care.

That leaves them at greater exposure to the virus and contributes to higher rates of illness and death from Covid-19 among black communities. Per EPI:

African Americans share of those who have died from COVID-19 nationally is nearly double (1.8 times higher than) their share of the U.S. population. The ratios are even higher in some states: in Wisconsin and Kansas, the rate of African American deaths is more than four times as high as their share of the population in those states. ... By comparison, whites account for a smaller share of deaths than their share of the population.

Black workers are less likely to have paid sick leave than whites, theyre less likely to be insured, and they have higher rates of chronic illnesses that may make them more vulnerable to coronavirus. EPI notes that black workers and their families are also likelier to live in densely populated housing, and they often live in multigenerational households. Younger members of the family who go to work then risk coming home and making older members sick.

As Fabiola Cineas wrote in April for Vox, just a smidgen of Covid-19 data on race tells the story of systemic oppression of black people in the United States. Hundreds of years of slavery, racism, and discrimination have compounded to deliver poor health and economic outcomes for black people heart disease, diabetes, and poverty, for starters that are only being magnified under the unforgiving lens of the coronavirus pandemic. And negligible efforts to redress black communities are being agitated like a bees nest prodded with a stick, she wrote.

In Minnesota, the epicenter of the Floyd protests, black people make up 7 percent of the states population but 16 percent of its confirmed coronavirus cases, my colleague Dylan Scott notes, though its not clear whether theyre dying at a higher rate. And nonwhite Minnesotans have experienced more economic pain during the pandemic as well.

On Monday, former President Barack Obama penned a Medium post on the Floyd protests. He outlined his thoughts on how to transform the moment into meaningful change and also acknowledged the anguish of the current moment. I recognize that these past few months have been hard and dispiriting that the fear, sorrow, uncertainty, and hardship of a pandemic have been compounded by tragic reminders that prejudice and inequality still shape so much of American life, he wrote.

The country is experiencing a cascade of compounding crises and the weight of the moment is falling on the shoulders of black Americans in countless ways.

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George Floyd, coronavirus, and the cascade of crises in black America - Vox.com