Monthly Archives: February 2021

Patricia Lockwood, Lauren Oyler, and the Voices That Get Lost Online – The New Yorker

Posted: February 22, 2021 at 2:42 pm

Patricia Lockwood created a Twitter account in 2011. Right away, she knew what to do with it. Free in the knowledge that no one was listening, I mostly used it to tweet absurdities like Touch it, Mr. Quiddity moaned. Touch Mr. Quidditys thing, she writes, in her memoir Priestdaddy (2017). Back in those days, people tended either to dismiss Twitter as one of the stupider things to have happened in human historythe whole world should care what you had for lunch?or to celebrate it as a revolution that would usher in a golden age of democracy and peace. Tuna-fish sandwiches versus the Arab Spring: that was the crux of the debate. Fewer saw that the form could be a kind of fiction, an exercise in pure persona sprung from the manacles of story, or even sense. All you needed was style, and Lockwood had it. (It helped that she was a poet, a fondler and compressor of language.) Her best tweets were tonally filthy but textually clean, like a clothed flasher, their voice so intrinsic to the new medium, so obviously online, that if you tried to explain to a parent or an offline friend what you were laughing at you ended up sounding like a fool. Tweeting is an art form, Lockwood tells her skeptical mother, in Priestdaddy. Like sculpture, or honking the national anthem under your armpit. She made it seem like it was.

A decade has passed since those happy days. Twitter did not usher in a definitive dawn of democracy abroad. Democracy in America has barely survived it. Meanwhile, much of the mediums fun has gone sour and sharp. Twitter is still a comedy club and a speakers corner, the cozy back booth at an all-night diner. Its also a stoning square, a rave on bad acid, an eternal Wednesday in a high-school cafeteria, an upside-down Tower of Babel pointing straight to human hell. What began as one of the biggest literary experiments since the birth of the world, everyone invited to shoot out words from their fingers at any time, has calcified into a genre clogged with clichs, one of which Lockwood has taken as the title of her first novel, No One Is Talking About This (Riverhead). To translate for the offline: this is what someone says in a clutch of outrage upon discovering a topic or bit of newsone which, it is safe to assume, many people are already talking about.

Why are we still On Here? Twitter users often ask with the desperation of the damned, and the answer that Lockwoods book immediately gives is that we are addicts. What opium did to the minds of the nineteenth century is no different than what the Internetthe portal, as Lockwood calls itis doing to the minds of the twenty-first. We know this from science, some of us from experience, but Lockwood is out to describe that sensation of dependency, the feeling of possessing a screen-suckled brainor of being possessed by it. Thomas De Quincey, plugged full of poppy, reported sitting at a window from sunset to sunrise, motionless, and without wishing to move, and something similar happens to Lockwoods unnamed protagonist when she sits in front of her computer screen:

Her husband would sometimes come up behind her while she was repeatingthe words no, no, no or help, help, help under her breath, and laya hand on the back of her neck like a Victorian nursemaid. Are youlocked in? he would ask, and she would nod and then do the thing thatalways broke her out somehow, which was to google beautiful brownpictures of roast chickensmaybe because thats what women used to dowith their days.

A digital ailment demands a digital cure: this is funny, sad, and right, as is the telling grammatical slip at the end of the paragraph, which implies that women used to Google chickens rather than cook them. Lockwood is sending a bulletin from the future, when, horrifyingly, such things will be said of her generation, and be true.

That historical anxiety, directed both at the past and the future, is acutely felt by Lockwoods protagonist, who, like Lockwood herself, is a married woman in her late thirties who has found real-world eminence by being very online. She is a kind of diplomat from the digital world, paid to travel around the globe to give lectures and appear on panels, at which she tries to explain things like why it was objectively funnier to spell it sneazing. Her public is not always receptive to such meditations. At an appearance in Bristol, an audience member brandishes a printout of the post that shot her to fameCan a dog be twins?and tears it in two. This is your contribution to society? he asks, stomping out.

Here is a reply guy in the flesh, a sneering man who reminds the protagonist that she is silly, unserious, a womana fact that Lockwoods protagonist, in spite of professing no particular attachment to what the portal has taught her to call her pronoun, knows all too well. Digital optimists like to say that social media is just a supercharged update of Enlightenment caf culture, with tweets passed around instead of pamphlets. But Lockwoods protagonist knows that she is excluded from that vision of the past. While the men, class permitting, read and debated, she would have been doing the washing and birthing the children; as recently as the fifties, a friend reminds her, the two of them would likely have been housewives. So what does it mean that she, a woman in the historically anomalous position of determining the course of her own life (notably, she is childless), is choosing to spend her days and nights glued to the portal, looking at a tarantulas compound eyes, a storm like canned peaches on the surface of Jupiter, Van Goghs The Potato Eaters, a chihuahua perched on a mans erection? What is her contribution to society?

The novel itself is one answer. Stream-of consciousness was long ago conquered by a man who wanted his wife to fart all over him, the protagonist tells the audience at one of her events. But what about the stream-of-consciousness that is not entirely your own? One that you participate in, but that also acts upon you? The comparison to Joyce, the man who wanted his wife to fart all over him, is bold, and telling. Lockwood has set out to portray not merely a mind through language, as Joyce did, but what she calls the mind, the molting collective consciousness that has melded with her protagonists singular one. And, as Joyce did, she sets about doing it through form. No One Is Talking About This is structured as a kind of riff on the tweet scroll, discrete paragraphs (many two hundred and eighty characters or less) arranged one after another to simulate, on the fixed page, the rhythm of a digital feed. This methoddense bulletins of text framed by clean white spaceis not revolutionary, or even innovative. It was used in the seventies to great effect by novelists like Renata Adler and Elizabeth Hardwick, and it has become newly popular over the past decade as a way to mimic a fragmented, flitting modern consciousnessoften that of a woman who is harried by competing demands on her attention. It is a permissive form, tempting to use and easy to abuse, since, paradoxically, the arrangement of disconnected beats implies a unity of meaning that the text itself may not do enough to earn.

The critic Lauren Oyler, a skeptic of the fragmented method, parodies it in a long section of her own novel, Fake Accounts, another recent dbut about life lived in the shadow of the Internet. Why would I want to make my book like Twitter? Oylers narrator asks. If I wanted a book that resembled Twitter, I wouldnt write a book; I would just spend even more time on Twitter. The question of how to represent the digital world in language has become only more interesting, and more urgent, as it has become clearer that the Internet is not just a device but an atmosphere, a state of being. Were always online, even when were off, our profiles standing sentry for us at all hours, our minds helplessly tuned to the ironic, mocking register of well-defended Internet speak. That is exactly the voice of Oylers narrator, who, like Lockwoods protagonist, is a young white millennial woman who resembles her author in sundry particulars, as a digital avatar might. Oylers narrator is entertainingly critical of digital life even as she is formed by it; it is her milieu, and the novel confronts its artifice, in part, by confessing its own. Sections of the book are labelled with the equivalent of highway signage (MIDDLE (Something Happens)); its title, which is seemingly descriptivethe novels nominal plot is launched by the narrators discovery that her boyfriend has an alt-right persona on Instagramdoubles, usefully, as a definition of fiction itself. When she is feeling cheeky, the narrator addresses her presumed readers, a silent gaggle of ex-boyfriends: the same audience that she might imagine checking out her social media accounts, keeping tabs.

Lockwood is up to something more sincere. She embraces the fragment because she has set herself the challenge of depiction; the medium becomes the message, the very point. Thoughts about fatbergs, videos of police brutality (the protagonist is trying to hate the policenot easy, given that her father is a retired cop), baby Hitler, the word normalize, and on and on and on, all of it sluiced together and left to lodge in the hive mind: that is what Lockwood wants to show us, and wants to see more clearly for herself. Someone could write it, Lockwoods protagonist tells a fellow panellist, a man who has earned fame by posting increasing amounts of his balls online. It would have to be done, she thinks, as a social novel, a documentation of the mores and habits of the portal collective. Already when people are writing about it, theyre getting it all wrong, she says. But Lockwood gets it right, mimicking the medium while shrewdly parodying its ethos:

P-p-p-perfect p-p-p-politics! She hooted into a hot microphone at apublic library. She had been lightly criticized for her incompleteunderstanding of the Spanish Civil War that week, and the memory of itstill smarted. P-p-p-perfect p-p-p-politics will manifest on earth asa racoon with a scab for a face!

Every day we were seeing new evidence that suggested it was the portal that had allowed the dictator to rise to power. This was humiliating. It would be like discovering that the Vietnam War was secretly caused by ham radios, or that Napoleon was operating exclusively on the advice of a parrot named Brian.

Some people were very excited to care about Russia again. Others were not going to do it no matter what. Because above all else, the Cold War had been embarrassing.

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The global roots of democracy matter if it is to flourish in the future Monash Lens – Monash Lens

Posted: at 2:42 pm

Over the past month, the world has watched the United States in the throes of a struggle over a democratic system that they thought was invincible. Then more recently, in Myanmar we saw the borrowed false accusations of a corrupted election succeed in overthrowing a democracy, at least temporarily.

It's felt for many of us as if the foundations of democratic processes are on trial, and democracys source in the ancient world has been looked to for answers. But the widely accepted story that democracy was a brilliant, even miraculous, invention of 5th-century BCE Athens, and that the West is the heir to that moment in time, has obscured the universal hard work that's required to make democracy work well.

My research, among others', suggests that the struggle to create social and political systems that serve the wider populace existed long before, and in regions far distant, from classical Athens.

From armed mobs descending on the US Capitol, to the cleansing installation of a new American president, the world peered with a mixture of horror and bemusement as the self-professed greatest democracy in the world played out its internal battles. Democrats'Twitter was awash with teary American exceptionalism citing the victory and drawbacks of the worlds greatest deliberative body.

People around the world wanted to rejoice, but felt themselves balking at the only-in-America stance of the rhetoric.

At the same time, another more bizarre thread ran through all of this: The mobs descending on the Capitol wore the insignia of a variety of Greek and Roman fictionalised histories, and on the other side a Democratic senator condemned the chaos by citing Roman history, only minutes after regaining the Senate floor from the mob attack.

This equivalence between American democracy and the ancient world has a very long and problematic history the so-called founders evoked the Roman republic in defence of both their representative democracy and their adherence to slavery. By and large, the academic world has been willing to concede the parallels if Athens and Rome were the progenitors of democracy, the US was their most prominent heir.

The discipline of classics the study of ancient Greece and Rome has been undergoing some serious soul-searching in the past few years, just as classical history was increasingly picked up and distorted by the alt-right. The events of the past few months have brought this scholarly argument into the public forum, with the increasingly heated debate coming to a head in the past week.

Scholars have pointed out the huge fault lines in Athenian democracy (most of the population of Athens could not participate), and the largely manipulated history of the early Roman republic.

Many (but not all) classicists have balked at the myth of a legacy of an exclusive Western civilisation, but the origins of democracy have remained fairly stubbornly rooted in classical soil. That ultimate arbiter of history and culture, Wikipedia, tells us that the concepts of democracy originated in ancient Athens circa 508 BC. There's been surprisingly little push-back in classics to challenge that idea.

American exceptionalism has been uncannily mirrored by ancient Athenian exceptionalism.

A large part of this is definitional the Greek historian Herodotus first calls the political system of the 5th century BCE a democracy, and anything that doesnt fit that exact pattern is dismissed. (In fact, Herodotus puts the earliest use of the term democracy not in the mouths of Athenians, but in a speech debating the merits of different political systems by that notorious Persian, Darius I but thats another story).

Pedants will tell you that the US is a republic (after Rome) and not a democracy (following Athens), but that's a rhetorical ploy.When we say democracy, we mean a political system where decisions are made by the majority of its populace, or their elected representatives, in some kind of formalised way.

And that the practice of democracy plays out in a variety of ways across the world. Dont tell the protestors in the Republic of Myanmar that their stolen parliamentary system was not a democracy because it doesnt fit the Athenian model; they know better.

In large part, the legacy of Athens and Rome is the result of documentation. They're the models because they recorded what they did (or at least others wrote about them later). But if we look harder at the traces of world history, other examples emerge that indicate that the practice of democracy has wider roots and more diverse branches.

If the debate around the validity of the classical tradition goes anywhere, it will be to acknowledge that democracy wasnt the brilliant invention of an elite group of men in Iron-Age Greece.

My research on the Medes of the Zagros Mountains in Iran suggests that a few hundred years before Athens, Median communities responded to the encroaching Assyrian Empire by formalising their consensus decision-making; we dont have written confirmation for this transition, because the Medes probably purposefully avoided the record-keeping that would have made it easier for the Assyrians to extort taxes and tribute from them.

But archaeological excavations revealed a new Median form of columned meeting house that seems designed specifically for communal gatherings not unlike the famous Athenian hillslope meeting ground. My research team is now undertaking further analyses of the pottery and animal bones from these sites to find out just how far people were willing to travel to participate in these deliberations.

Early states in Africa also seem to have shared many components with the democratic tribal system of 5th-century BCE Athens, although, again, oral histories silenced by colonialism make it difficult to confirm details.

Larissa Behrendt has argued that Indigenous Australian communities used a variety of institutionalised democratic principles in their governance before colonialism imposed its own structure on them.

Jettisoning the exceptionalism of Athenian democracy isnt about rejecting that heritage. Athenian democracy, deeply flawed as it was, nonetheless provided a model for the benefits of a political system where decision-making was widely (but not widely enough) distributed. The fact that Athenians and later Romans wrote so convincingly of their reservations about this system may have been the best thing about it.

But if the debate regarding the validity of the classical tradition goes anywhere, it will be to acknowledge that democracy wasnt the brilliant invention of an elite group of men in Iron-Age Greece.

Democracy is an answer to an ancient question:How can communities serve all their members? Answering this question is an essential part of the functioning of human societies, and democracy is one solution that has both flourished and been quashed across history and around the world.

Greece and Rome are notable, but not exclusive, examples of the merits and failures of these systems. The false origin story of a democracy born in Athens with the West as its heir creates a barrier between democratic ideals and the establishment of enduring systems of governance around the world.

Its time to look more carefully for the democratic impulse in all our communities.

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Raise the Minimum Wage? Yeah, and the $2.13 Subminimum Wage for Servers, Too. – Phoenix New Times

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It felt good to be heard at last weeks One Fair Wage rally, Haley Holland said.

It was empowering to stand up for those whose stories dont get told, Holland, who spoke at the eventheld at Senator Kyrsten Sinemas office on East Camelback Road, said.

An organizer of the rally, she was there to demand that Sinema commit to advocating for adding service workers to the Fair Wage act. This isnt just about raising minimum wage, she clarified. Its about including the sub-minimum wage, which is what servers in bars and restaurants are paid. People living off of tips are not being included in this recovery bill, and thats why we held the rally.

Raising the sub-minimum wage would level the playing field for service workers, Holland said. Right now, the federal wage for tipped workers is $2.13. (In Arizona, the minimum wage for such workers is significantly higher, though: $9.15.)

If we can get Sinema to commit to raising it to $15 an hour, with tips on top, we can bring respect and dignity to the service industry, Holland said. That would mean I dont have to tolerate the atrocious behavior of some patrons, where Im thinking, Wow, this guy is being rude, he isnt going to tip me, and without his tip, Ive already got a lousy paycheck.

Holland sees a connection between slavery and the fact that some people don't view service work as a real job. Southern slaves freed in the nineteenth century often took food service jobs, but restaurant owners didnt want to pay black people, who came to rely on tip money as a wage. Part of that money went back to the employer.

People of color were paying restaurant owners for the privilege of working, Holland said. The work we do in this industry remains linked to that kind of thinking. Thats why were paid sub wages.

Holland has had enough of lousy pay. She's also sick of sidestepping COVID-19 "of sanitizing, of changing into gloves and a mask and wondering if I was still going to end up infecting a patron or would wind up on a ventilator myself in two weeks.

Before the pandemic, she worked 65-hour weeks, bartending nights and weekends and as a hostess/server at a local restaurant. Now, Im doing the same work, but my hours are super minimal.

As a One Fair Wage organizer, Holland phone-banks for seven hours a day, calling people to encourage them to tell their stories of being underpaid, to write letters to congresspeople demanding fair treatment.

She's hopeful things can change. Although President Biden has been vocal about raising minimum wage, the response from Sinemas office has been silence. That could change, too, she said. For all I know, she could be in a meeting right now, discussing this.

Either way, she knew things wont change overnight. All of us who were at the rally, we knew those mom-and-pop businesses cant afford to go from paying sub-minimum wage to paying $15 an hour. But Arizona is blue! she exclaimed. So anything can happen.

Ultimately, raising lousy wages isn't about money, Holland insisted. It's about dignity.

You show respect when you pay a worker a livable wage, she pointed out. You give them the freedom not to tolerate bad behavior from patrons and employers. A decent wage is symbolic of something bigger than how much cash we take home at the end of the day.

This story was updated to include the state's minimum wage for tipped workers.

Keep Phoenix New Times Free... Since we started Phoenix New Times, it has been defined as the free, independent voice of Phoenix, and we would like to keep it that way. Offering our readers free access to incisive coverage of local news, food and culture. Producing stories on everything from political scandals to the hottest new bands, with gutsy reporting, stylish writing, and staffers who've won everything from the Society of Professional Journalists' Sigma Delta Chi feature-writing award to the Casey Medal for Meritorious Journalism. But with local journalism's existence under siege and advertising revenue setbacks having a larger impact, it is important now more than ever for us to rally support behind funding our local journalism. You can help by participating in our "I Support" membership program, allowing us to keep covering Phoenix with no paywalls.

Robrt L. Pela has been a weekly contributor to Phoenix New Times since 1991, primarily as a cultural critic. His radio essays air on National Public Radio affiliate KJZZ's Morning Edition.

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Zhao’s ‘Nomadland’ is a masterpiece exploring life on the road – The Spokesman-Review

Posted: at 2:41 pm

In Nomadland, filmmaker Chlo Zhaos vision of life on the road in the postmodern American West, van life isnt quite what youd see under that Instagram hashtag. Instead of young folks posing among carefully designed decor, Zhao turns to the practical details, like the lack of indoor plumbing.

No nuance of life on the road goes unexamined by Zhaos attentive gaze, regarding each detail the same way she regards her heroine Fern (Frances McDormand), observing without judgment. Ferns a great listener, and Zhao, as a filmmaker, listens to her in return even when shes not speaking, yet saying everything, about grief, loss, work and the value of her own human, American life.

Nomadland, which has earned a slew of film festival and critics groups awards, is based on the book by Jessica Bruder but feels of a piece with Zhaos previous film, The Rider, a poetic portrait of a young, injured rodeo rider, which blurred the lines of documentary and fiction. In Nomadland, Zhao immerses her characters in the real world, buttressing their stories with nonfiction.

The end is the beginning and the beginning is the end in this journey called Nomadland, as Fern circles round and round the American West. Shes a refugee from a town called Empire, in Nevada.

Introductory text onscreen informs us that this company town ceased to exist when the plant closed, discontinuing even the ZIP code. A widow, Fern takes to her van working seasonal gigs and adapting to this lifestyle with the help of her new friends. Shes not homeless but houseless, finding her home on the road and in the vast great beauty of the wilderness.

This is a film about work, its personal importance and its declining value. McDormand isnt so much acting as she is existing in this role, and when it comes to the work Fern manages to scrape up, she puts her back into it. Fern is focused and intense on the job. She thrives in action taping Amazon boxes, scrubbing toilets, slicing deli meats and shoveling potatoes.

She likes work, any kind of good, honest work. She hates when work ends. But its difficult, rough and dehumanizing labor. And the seasons change. The parking lots become too cold for sleeping in a van.

Relationships on the road are temporary but deeply felt. She connects with Linda (Linda May), Swankie (Swankie) and Dave (David Strathairn), the only one for whom she comes close to giving up the nomad life. But Zhao carefully sidesteps every sentimental story choice in Ferns friendships because Fern is not sentimental.

Shes a crystalline version of the American bootstraps attitude, mostly refusing help and affection from others. In her, some might see freedom, some might see pain and loss, some might see her as trapped. Shes all of that, which demonstrates the sheer thematic magnitude of the film.

Zhao, who wrote, directed, produced and edited the film, is a master at subtle, deft filmmaking rich with complexity. Conversations allude to the housing financial crisis, the casual bourgeois greed Fern runs from into the arms of van life proselytizers who are a collective on the margins sharing resources and who promise a life free from property and wage slavery and imagine a new way of life.

But is it utopian? Lyrical montages set to the gorgeous piano compositions of Ludovico Einaudi contain all the beauty, pain, ugliness and exhilaration of Ferns journey.

As Fern wanders through the crumbling remnants of Empire, it strikes you that Nomadland feels simultaneously like both a memory and a prophecy. Zhao has managed to marry these juxtaposing ideas in her film, which is the essence of bittersweet distilled into an arrow and shot straight through the heart. And Zhao doesnt miss.

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Bill would create commission to study reparations for descendants of slaves – KGBT-TV

Posted: at 2:41 pm

WASHINGTON (NEXSTAR) Democrats in the House are again looking at the idea of reparations for African Americans.

They have reintroduced a bill that would create a federal commission to study of the effects of slavery and develop solutions to bridge the economic, educational and health disparities between descendants of slaves and white Americans.

The government must account for its ongoing role in perpetuating, supporting and upholding white supremacy, Rep. Cori Bush, D-Mo., said during a Wednesday hearing on the matter, the second one in two years.

She said for generations, Black families have been systematically disenfranchised.

When white soldiers came back from fighting abroad, they were given housing preferences and education subsidies, Bush said. My grandfathers Ulysses and Clifton Blakney were denied those benefits.

Civil rights scholar Kathy Masaoka said reparations are long overdue, arguing descendants of slaves deserve the same as Japanese Americans who were granted reparations after being forced into internment camps during World War II.

This is a chance for many Black voices to be heard and for the Black community to discuss what kind of reparations it is owed, Masaoka said.

Republicans do not support the bill.

I cant imagine a more divisive, polarizing or unjust measure, Rep. Tom McClintock, R-Calif., said, saying it would be unfair to punish white Americans today for their ancestors mistakes.

Herschel Walker, a retired athlete and support of President Donald Trump, agreed that reparations would be counterproductive and promote division.

Who is Black? What percentage of Black must you be to receive reparations? he wondered.

White House press secretary Jen Psaki on Wednesday said President Joe Biden supports the idea of a commission but stopped short of backing the bill.

Democrats are also introducing a plan to forgive up to $50,000 in student loan debt, a move that Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., said will help Black people and could help close the wage gap. Biden has supported $10,000 in student loan forgiveness.

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Eight Children Say Chocolate Companies Like Nestl Aided and Abetted Slavery in Ivory Coast – Legal Reader

Posted: at 2:41 pm

The U.S. Supreme Court has previously refused to hear cases filed against chocolate companies overseas.

Eight children have launched a lawsuit against several of the worlds biggest chocolate companies, accusing brands such as Nestl, Hershey, and Mars of profiting from slave labor used on Ivory Coast cocoa plantations.

According to The Guardian, the lawsuit states that a number of highly-profitable, globally-recognized brands have aided and abetted the enslavement of thousands of children in the West African nation.

The defendants include Nestl, Cargill, Barry Callebaut, Olam, Hershey, and Mondelz.

The Guardian notes that the lawsuit was filed in federal court in Washington, D.C., earlier this week. The child-plaintiffs are being represented by International Rights Advocates, an organization which sponsors litigation against U.S.-based corporations accused of committing human rights abuses abroad.

While other slavery-related lawsuits have been filed against Hershey and its counterparts, this attempt marks the first time the cocoa industry has been taken to account in American courts.

The Guardian observes that, while all of the minor plaintiffs are from Mali, they were purportedly abducted and forced to work on cocoa plantations in Ivory Coast, while produces 45% of all cocoa worldwide.

The childrens story of abduction and exploitation is neither unique nor particularly uncommonthe lawsuit states that thousands of minors from other parts of West Africa have endured similar ordeals.

In the past, chocolate companiesalong with other enterprises which use cocoa in their productshave protested allegations they profit from slavery. Nestl, for instance, says that it has rigorous supply-chain controls, which blacklist local firms suspected of using child slavery.

However, this lawsuits claims that, even if companies like Hershey and Nestl do not own or control plantations which use slave labor, they nonetheless knowingly profited from child exploitation.

International Rights Advocates noted in their filing that plantations which use slave labor are able to provide cocoa at unusually low pricesprices that any firm paying adults a local wage could not likely afford.

One of the plaintiffs, says The Guardian, claims to have been only 11 years old when he was promised a job in Ivory Coast. A contractor approached the child, telling him he could earn about $40 per month working on a plantation.

He agreed, and was soon transported to Ivory Coast. Once there, however, the boy was forced to work for two years without ever being paid. On the plantation, he was often required to handle pesticides and other hazardous chemicals without safety training or protective equipment.

He, like many of the other plaintiffs, says plantation oversees promised to pay him after harvestbut the promised payment never came, and he was compelled to stay put for yet another season.

The lawsuit, was reported by The Guardian, charges that such abuses are not only morally repugnant, but that they contribute to Ivory Coasts rampant poverty by depressing wages and decreasing economic opportunities for qualified adults.

All of the companies named in the suit told The Guardian that they are not aware of potential child abuse within their supply chain and make active, ongoing efforts to disavow any plantations which profit from the same.

Children sue Nestl, Mars and Hershey for child slavery in Ivory Coast

Mars, Nestl and Hershey to face child slavery lawsuit in US

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4 Policy Steps Biden and Harris Can Take to Protect Garment Workers, Environment – Sourcing Journal

Posted: at 2:41 pm

As the Biden-Harris administration settles into office, some corners of the greater fashion industry urge the new leaders to prioritize policies that champion a new chapter in the sectors sustainability and environmental responsibility:

President Biden and Madame Vice-President Harris,

Your inauguration was a showcase of fashion and creativity, from the presidents sharp, tailored suit, to Madame Vice Presidents bold suffragette hues and Bernie Sanders meek, hand-made mittens.

Yet at the start of your administration in 2021, the United States fashion industry and its global supply chain are under pressure from social justice movements globally and egregious corporate practices that threaten their very future, compromising consumer trust and safety, and detrimentally impacting the livelihoods of the workers that support them. Your newly established administration has the opportunity to support a policy environment that incentivizes and rewards sustainability and ethical practices and should urge the private sector to adopt a risk lens and multi-stakeholder approach rather than lower costs and maximize profits.

Inauguration breakout star Amanda Gormans poem The Hill We Climb could also double as a metaphor for the apparel industry, which has a lot of work to do. The nations youngest poet laureate is a major public advocate for sustainable fashion. She has argued that whether you shop at Prada and/or your local thrift shop, each dollar we spend on a sustainable product is an investment in the future we stand for.

Gorman is speaking on behalf of a new generation of consumers demanding fair trade and ethically produced goods. The time is now for international retailers to act and focus efforts on helping to establish supply chain transparency, better environmental practices, fair working conditions, living wages for workers, safeguard freedom of association and enshrine anti-harassment, abuse and gender-based violence policies across their supply chains. From farmers protests in India to garment workers demonstrations in Bangladesh and beyond, there is clear evidence that many millions of workers involved in the garment supply chain believe that they are neither being represented nor treated fairly by the corporations they work for and the governments entrusted to protect them.

Your future work must encompass and prioritize garment workers and the environment. We summarize four policy ideas and steps to drive positive change, from consumers to corporations to cotton farmers.

1. Improve labor laws and necessary company disclosures in support of garment workers in the United States.

The U.S. Labor Department has found that 90 percent of garment workers in Los Angeles do not receive overtime pay for working more than 40 hours a week, and 60 percent are paid less than minimum wage. Fast fashion is characterised by unethical practices, and whilst most production is overseas, it occurs onshore, too.

Similar to what garment workers experience offshore, wages are squeezed downward for workers who are already vulnerable, considering 60 percent of workers in regions like the New York City metro area are immigrants. Apparel and textile factories in the United States have traditionally been the most consistent offenders when it comes to minimum wage violations compared to other industries employing low-wage workers.

In response to abuses by local retailers like Forever 21, the 2020 Garment Worker Protection Act sought to tackle exploitation issues and importantly force retailers and brands whose manufacturers and subcontractors engage in wage theft, to be held liable. The bill ultimately never made it to the Senate in part due to the pandemic, and the new administration must prioritize its review and enactment in 2021.

2. Scale green tax incentives for companies and consumers who take action on driving more responsible garment supply chains.

Market incentives like taxes can drive changes in behavior from corporates to customers. Companies that invest in solar power plants can claim a credit of up to 26 percent of their capital costs against their corporate tax liability. The new administration should now incentivize supply chain partnerships globally, where U.S. retailers can co-invest in green factories initiatives that upscale suppliers and facilities technology globally to better mitigate water pollution, enact better dyeing practices and restrictions on chemical pollutants.

Focus should particularly be around the production of cotton, which is the most widely used natural fiber in the world and consumers large amounts of water during production. Whats more, 90 percent of the worlds cotton is produced in low-income countries where capital investment is sparse at the supplier level.

Multi-stakeholder initiatives can play an important role in battling climate issues. For example, European fashion house Kering has partnered with a wildlife and conservation focussed NGO to help farmers globally (including the United States) to transition to more regenerative agricultural practices. Additional tax incentives for U.S. companies could bring momentum for these types of collaborations with non-profit organizations and manufacturers.

There should also be incentives for consumers with income tax relief on sustainable practices like recycling, upcycling and repairing garments. At the federal level, finally implementing a fast-fashion tax where taxes imposed per item could help catalyze slower production practices or encourage retailers to implement resale schemes where used clothing is sold alongside new lines.

3. Push for the California supply-chain transparency laws at the federal level and increase their scope.

It was then-Attorney General Kamala D. Harris who passed the California Transparency and Supply Chains Act in 2010, among the first supply chain transparency laws in the world. She emphasized how human trafficking and modern slavery are often hidden in plain sight where unsuspecting consumers across the United States unwittingly perpetuate these practices through their purchasing and business choices. While the laws advocate for transparency, they have fallen short on actionthey are self-certified by corporates, need to be expanded federally, and do not require corporates to implement better practices.

The new administration should now take steps to strengthen the SECs role in mandatory due diligence and require all U.S. public companies with annual worldwide revenue over $100 million to disclose all policies and measures a company is taking to identify, address, and remedy human trafficking, forced labor, and child exploitation occurring within its supply chain. This encompasses how they verify downstream and upstream contractors to attest that materials and labor used are in compliance with laws and corporate standards, and timelines are in place to implement better practices with the aim of raising standards.

4. Drive industry coalitions and stricter policy interventions to support women in the apparel supply chain.

Vice President Harris is a woman of South Asian ancestry who can use her influence to call for marginalized workers rights internationally. South Asian women dominate production in the textile and apparel supply chains and have been historically disenfranchised via gender-based violence, sexual harassment and low wages. In India, the Sumangali system imposes slavery on women and girls in spinning mills, and in Uzbekistan and the Xinjiang region in China, children and women are forced to work by an authoritarian government.

More than 50 percent of consumers in the United States say fair labor practices are very important to them and can catalyze a shift in a retailers purchasing practices. The recent boycott of imports from the Xinjiang region is an important step, despite reports of retailers like Nike reportedly lobbying against the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act.

Jag Gill is an entrepreneur working at the intersection of technology, supply chains and sustainability, and Liv Simpliciano is an academic in sustainability and modern slavery.

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Was industrial espionage behind creation of world’s oldest factory the Silk Mill? – Derbyshire Live

Posted: at 2:41 pm

While it has been modernised in recent years through a refurbishment, it is easy to overlook just how old the site of Derby's Silk Mill actually is.

In fact, the factories that originally formed what was first callled Lombe's Mill are considered the oldest in the world and were built between 1702 and 1717, as a series of industrial projects that began to shape Derby as we now know it.

Also considered the first successful silk factory in Britain, the Mill was built on an island across the River Derwent in the earliest periods of the industrial revolution.

John Lombe (1693 - 1722) visited Piedmont in northwest Italy and returned to the UK with details of the Italian silk throwing machines, and experienced Italian craftsmen, to begin a production process in the UK.

This was an act considered by some to be an early example of industrial espionage and reaction further soured when Lombe managed to gain a 14-year patent to protect the design of the throwing machines.

Derby was seen as a ideal location to build the factory as its river had a fast flow and it was near the London to Carlisle road - today known as the A6.

A statement from Derby Museums - who today manage the site - said: "Derby Silk Mill widely regarded as the site of the worlds first modern factory, built in the valley that changed the world.

"Industry brought prosperity to some and poverty and wage slavery to others. Yet it shaped Derby as a city of making and creativity.

"Industrial society led to the creation of civic institutions and stimulated a civil society in which people campaigned for social and political rights."

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The architect was George Sorocold and the original building is said to be of Italian design, five stories high, and featuring 26 Italian winding engines that spun the raw silk.

Lombe aimed to improve production quantities compared to less effective mills in Italy and not only did his efforts result in the first fully mechanical factory in the UK, it also meant his business could now provide serious competition to Italian counterparts.

The machines required a power source which came from a water wheel turned by the River Derwent that drove the large spinning circular machines - the factory's greatest innovation.

At its height, the mill employed around 300 people. After John Lombe's unexpected death in 1722 aged just 29, the business was taken over by his half-brother, before the 14-year patent expired in 1732.

After this, other mills were built in Stockport and Macclesfield and seven years later the mill was sold to Thomas Wilson in 1739.

The heavily-modified structure continued to produce silk until about 1908, when chemists F.W. Hampshire and Company took over the site to manufacture fly papers and cough medicines.

Ashley Waterhouse, chairman of Derby Civic Society, said: "The mill was an innovation of its time.

"There are stories of John Lombe going to Italy to research the whole process and jotting down drawings of cotton spinning machines in the night.

"The mill had its own power source as the River Derwent and the building was a lot bigger back then.

"There was a workhouse nearby where the children who worked at the factory would stay. It was even visited by Benjamin Franklin once when he came to Derby.

"Unfortunately not much of the original building remains, but it's still a site where Derby can embrace its industrial history and that's what the plan is with the new museum.

"We can champion our industrial history there because the site is of international importance."

On December 5, 1910, a significant fire broke out in an adjacent flour mill and engulfed the Silk Mill, which led to the mill's east wall falling into the river.

The building was subsequently rebuilt to the same height, with much of the original structure lost, although parts of its original tower from 1717 and its foundations are still visible.

During the 1920s, ownership passed to the Electricity Authority when it was used as stores, workshops and a canteen.

It was then adapted for use as Derbys Industrial Museum, known as Derby Silk Mill, which opened on November 29, 1974 after a large-scale refurbishment.

Derby Silk Mill - today a UNESCO World Heritage site - is due to reopen later this year as the Museum of Making with a new caf, shop and venue hire space.

The Museum of Making added: "At Derby Silk Mill, the Museum of Making is currently under construction and will be opening in 2021.

"Celebrating the areas rich history of innovation, the Museum of Making in the Derwent Valley Mills UNESCO World Heritage Site will be a contemporary space space telling Derbys 300-year history of making to inspire new creativity.

"Designed and made by the people and industries of Derby with exhibits, workshops, activities and events, there will be something here for everyone."

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Ron Paul: Unintended Consequences And The Texas ‘Big Freeze’ Energy Disaster – OpEd – Eurasia Review

Posted: at 2:40 pm

Last week Texas experienced a cold snap that resulted in serious statewide damage, death, and destruction. The collapse of the states energy grid left millions of Texans in the dark and freezing for days at a time. Tragically, at least 30 people died.

There are many reasons why Texas became like a Third World country, and we should be careful not to pin all the blame on just one factor. But it seems clear that the disaster was to a large degree caused by political decisions to shift toward green energy generated from solar and wind and by Governor Abbotts authoritarian Covid restrictions.

Abbott, who won a wind leadership award just this month, oversaw the near-collapse of wind energy generation last week. Yet the politicization of energy generation in favor of green alternatives over natural gas and other fossil fuels has led to the unintended consequences of freezing Texans facing multiple millions of dollars in property damage and worse.

Additionally, federal emissions and other restrictions forced Texas to beg Washington for permission to generate power at higher levels in anticipation of unprecedented demand. Governor Abbott finally received permission from the Department of Energy on February 14th, but by then many facilities found themselves off-line due to freezing conditions.

Why should the Federal government be allowed to freeze Texans to death in the name of controlling emissions from energy generation plants? Its a classic example of politics over people. I guess if you want to make a Green New Deal omelet, you have to break a few eggs.

While Governor Abbott was quick to blame energy generators and even the state Electric Reliability Council of Texas, NBC News in Dallas reported that ERCOT did not conduct any on-site inspections of the states power plants to see if they were ready for this winter season. Due to COVID-19 they conducted virtual tabletop exercises instead but only with 16 percent of the states power generating facilities.

Governor Abbotts authoritarian Covid executive orders at least indirectly led to lax inspection, maintenance, and winterization of wind and other energy generation plants.

But Texas did not only freeze because of Abbotts Covid restrictions. For the better part of a year thousands of businesses have been destroyed. Recovering drug addicts and alcoholics have relapsed. Depression and suicides have skyrocketed. Children have been deprived of education.

And for what? Texas with Abbotts restrictions fared no better than Florida with no restrictions when it comes to Covid cases and deaths. The Texas governor knew that months ago when the data from Florida proved that lockdowns, masks, and other restrictions had no effect. But he refused to change course. He refused to follow the brave lead of Florida Governor Ron DeSantis and open Texas completely.

Politicians too stubborn or fearful to change course when facts dictate otherwise do not deserve to remain in office. Governors Gavin Newsom in California and Andrew Cuomo in New York are finally facing consequences for their Covid authoritarianism. When the smoke clears and it is rapidly clearing many more of these petty tyrants will fall. That list of deposed Covid tyrants may well include Texas Governor Greg Abbott and the slumbering Texas state legislature as well.

Lets hope Texans and all Americans will learn from this and more forcefully demand their God-given liberty!

This article was published by RonPaul Institute.

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Update: Elections 2021 – Kevin Pazmino on Community, the Economy & Policing – Norwood News

Posted: at 2:40 pm

By SLE MOLONEY

Freelance filmmaker, business owner, and father, Kevin Pazmino describes himself as someone who has worked hard, evolved, and taken some chances to get to where hes at right now, in life. He acknowledges having availed of government programs which have facilitated his career progression, yet he is opposed to big government. A supporter of former President Donald Trump, he is the latest candidate to join the District 11 City Council race to fill the seat vacated on Dec. 31 by former City Councilman, Andrew Cohen, and his platform is based around community-based solutions, and community integration.

The thing is, my campaign is a very, very small campaign, he said. Its pretty much just me running it, and Im not taking any cash donations because Im just really against money in politics. Im a little different from the other candidates, [who] I believe, are all registered Democrats. I actually am a registered conservative. Ideologically speaking, I lean more right, so I believe in fiscal responsibility.

In this sense, Pazmino advocates for empowering people through lower taxes, and said he doesnt believe putting more people dependent on the system is the answer. Nonetheless, referring to his own career path into the film business, he said, Im the sole provider for our family of six. I have four children. I came up in an industry that isnt very easy to break into, so in the beginnings of my career, we definitely lived paycheck to paycheck.

He added, We definitely knew how to utilize social services and food stamps to get to the place where I am now, so I completely understand the need for that. I grew up in low-income housing so, I understand the need for a lot of these social programs that we have, but I also have gone through it, coming out the other side of it, and learning a trade.

Pazmino said he understands what it means to be empowered, knowing your worth, and having a skillset that can be transferable. Being a gig worker, after you get through it and establish yourself, its very empowering, he said. I think a lot of people out there do have those skillsets, who already are community leaders, but just dont realize it yet.

Indeed, he reveres those with an entrepreneurial spirit, citing one example of a local woman he knows who seemingly, recently saw an opportunity to start a childcare business out of her home. Pazmino did not elaborate on whether the woman was registered, qualified, or had been vetted to take care of children.

On the other hand, he is skeptical of large corporate entities and large nonprofits, saying he believes there is a lot of mismanagement that takes place within them. When asked if he could share the name of a nonprofit that is being mismanaged, he said, I cant point to one non for profit directly. I wouldnt know. I dont have access to their budgets, and access to see the scale of what theyre doing with the funds that theyre receiving, how much the funds are actually just donations.

He added that some nonprofits do great work. I would want to keep those businesses. I want to basically work with those people as well, in order to see where they need more help in terms of logistics, and help streamline those issues that theyre facing, he said.

The Norwood News mentioned that 501 nonprofits have to file regular reports to the authorities to demonstrate how they use and spend their funding, and asked if this provides some level of comfort regarding the mismanagement concerns. Pazmino concurred but suggested there were also alternative ways and means to report on finances.

I want people to be able to utilize a lot of the same things that the 1 percent utilizes, he said, explaining that while many large corporates donate to philanthropic causes, they do so as a way to write it off against their taxes. Pazmino favors a similar model for smaller businesses, saying communities know their districts needs best.

Taking the example of food insecurity, he said he believes only a small percentage of tax subsidies [received by nonprofits] actually go toward feeding the hungry, and suggested that the larger percentage goes towards the managements salaries.

Referring to such tax subsidies, he favored instead allocating, for example, $100,000 among ten community restaurants and delis so they could lower their prices for the people in the community. Pazmino added that such businesses could then also provide food for the homeless in the area. They know who our homeless community are. Id rather give them those subsidies and then just work out free meals for the homeless and for lower income families, he said.

The Norwood News mentioned that the primary aim of every business is, nonetheless, to make a profit, and to rely on businesses to ensure the homeless are fed may not be a very pro-active approach to the issue and may be more reliant on luck, chance and goodwill.

Thats just kind of a broad perspective, Pazmino said of his proposals. Obviously, once elected, I would have to really scrutinize what monies are in the budget, and then figure out the proper way of distribution, figure out how were currently dealing with these issues, and the ones that are working.

He also advocates for pooling existing resources like educational facilities and other spaces to address the wealth imbalance across District 11, cutting out what he sees as traditional, bottom-down, government intervention and bureaucracy. I dont really believe in this one system for the general population living on a welfare system, and then one system for the 1 percent to live a completely different lifestyle, he said.

Im basically trying to empower people to go towards incorporating themselves, becoming their own business, becoming entrepreneurs, so that opens them up to the subsidies as well. Having started his own business two years ago, Pazmino wants to help others realize their potential. We can understand getting too caught up in the grind of life to be able to have time to put towards community activism, because I havent had that time either, he said.

So, I would love to try to encourage people to do it, and whether its incentivizing, and doing tax mitigation, or a straight-up payment for time volunteered, the key is getting people involved, and me knowing what each constituent in every area needs.

If elected, Pazmino sees his role as a community liaison, expanding on the role of the community boards, and connecting people with resources in a type of self-sufficient neighborhood model. He uses the example of business owners making their premises available during closed hours to community groups to give classes, for example, so that the community, as a whole, benefits. He said he also wants to make sure that all the seats are filled at community board level, and that every block is represented.

On the subject of law enforcement and crime, Pazmino is opposed to defunding the police. I believe that we need to make sure that our police, fire and EMFs are all funded properly, and support those agencies, because in cases of emergency, those are your first responders, he said.

It has been reported that Pazmino has historically retweeted posts by conspiracy theorist and Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene, who was recently stripped of her congressional committee duties, and that he, himself, has had his Twitter account suspended.

A review of Pazminos Facebook account reveals, among other posts, one from September 2016 which links to a now-deactivated YouTube link with the title, Wikileaks Julian Assange TPP Not Only Trade, 83% is Facists Trying to Controlling Our Daily Lives.

Another from Aug. 30, 2016, links to an article about singer, Beyonc, published on The Vigilant Citizen, a site which peddles conspiracy theories, and how her performance at the 2016 VMAs was an twisted occult ritual. A description of the site itself reads, To understand the world we live in, we must understand the symbols surrounding us. To understand these symbols, we must dig up their origin, which is often deeply hidden in occult mysteries. In short, this site aims to go beyond the face value of symbols found in pop culture to reveal their esoteric meaning.

Pazmino does not add any commentary to the posts as to whether he supports the content or not. We reached out to him to ask if he believes the 2020 presidential election was stolen, if he believes in conspiracy theories, if his Twitter account was suspended and if so, what the reason was. Pazmino replied, saying he follows a wide array of people of all walks of life and opinions. Some of them even identify as extraterrestrials. I have found many great ideas that I have used as plot lines in some of the scripts I have written.

He added, Since social media is about supporting the people you are friends with on Facebook or follow on Twitter. I tend to like and retweet as I scroll. Sometimes, I will retweet without even reading the tweet just to help people gain a following or visibility.

We asked if he does not feel he has a civic and social obligation not to retweet content that is not checked in order to prevent the spread of misinformation. He said, No I believe it is up to each individual to do their own research on what they read, and use their own discernment on what they feel is the truth.

He added, At one point in history people believed that Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated by a lone gun man. Anyone who thought otherwise was considered a conspiracy theorist. Today, we know that his death was not caused by some[one] who acted alone.

He said he does believe that there was evidence of election fraud. All throughout November and December, many of the swing states own legislative bodies held hours of hearings, where they heard the testimonies of many individuals who have signed affidavits to what they witnessed. None of the courts which investigated the issue found any credible evidence of election fraud.

Pazmino went on to say that he believes nonetheless that America is a country of laws, and that he is not a fair weather patriot. I considered Obama my president even though I voted for Cynthia McKinney in 2008 and Ron Paul in 2012, he said.

He said his Twitter account was suspended because of retweets dealing with the Reddit/game stop saga which dealt with retail investors versus hedge funds. As I mentioned, I retweet and like as I scroll. The Twitter app sees the rate of my retweets as spamming and suspends people for this reason. At times, the app will check to see if I am a real person because of the rate that I retweet. I disagree with Twitters policies of censorship.

He added that he no longer uses the app and did not try to fight the judgement when he was suspended. I am a strong proponent of the first amendment, he said.

When asked about the topic of police brutality and the mass demonstrations seen throughout the world last year, he said, Obviously, Im against some of those bad apples, but I dont believe that we should punish the whole institution as a whole because of a few bad apples.

In the context of the most recent CCRB hearing (Civilian Complaints Review Board public hearing) on the NYPDs new disciplinary matrix, and the topic of accountability at the top levels of the NYPD, we asked Pazmino if he could see why there is justifiable criticism of the agencys leadership for not taking the disciplining of such bad apples seriously enough in the past.

Im a manager myself in terms of what my vocation is, and anytime something happens on my watch, I take full responsibility, even if its not something that I directly did, he said. I feel the current mayor, it starts with him and the people that he elected, who he decides to be the commissioner. Im against jumping to conclusions, and every situation is a particular situation, so if an investigation finds wrongdoing, then there needs to be firm and strict punishment.

He added, But, in terms of just automatically demonizing the police department before investigating, thats where I just feel like you need to support the police department. Pazmino brought up talks of future legislation which may curtail the power of the commissioner, and put the City Council in charge of disciplining officers.

I get a little nervous about that, he said, adding that there needs to be control within the police department as a whole, or no one will listen. If the officers as a whole feel that their boss really isnt their boss, its just a figurehead, you lose control, and the ability to actually plan a proper department, he said.

Pazmino said having talked to retired police officers in confidence, he feels a lot of times cops may just stay in their cars, going forward, especially at a certain time of the night, and ignore situations they would previously have addressed, because now, they dont want to put themselves in a scenario where their lives are at risk if something goes wrong, or something unexpected happens.

Its a very difficult job, he said. Theyre more worried about what could happen to them if the situation goes awry. He added, You have to react to the best of your ability but if someone pulls a gun, at that point, you have to defend yourself. Acknowledging that police work is dangerous, we ask if that is not what police officers signed up for.

He said the officers he talked to would be the first to agree. But its when you dont feel supported by the mayor, or forget the mayor, if you dont feel supported by your own superiors, or if you feel like your superiors arent the ones who are going to be doing the disciplinary action, then that even allows them to kind of detach from whatever [the] superior tells [them] to do, he said.

He said he fears if all disciplinary action falls to the City Council, it will lead to a situation where the superiors wont be able to run a proper department, and drive a rift between police management, and the officers in the field. I feel like its going to cause more disorganization, he said.

If elected, Pazmino said hes also looking to take a hands-on approach to the role of council member. Im looking to be in peoples neighborhoods. Im not going to be the type of councilman who is only out there during election season. he said, adding that it seemed to him that the country was heading in a particular direction. There are people, like myself, who dont believe in full blown socialism, and I know that the left will disagree with me in terms of saying, Were not really trying to do that, but its slow and steady.

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