Monthly Archives: February 2022

More than three hundred thousand soldiers deserted their posts during the American Civil War. The Confederate forces saw a greater overall percentage of desertions, the Union a greater overall number. Soldiers left their terms of service early for a variety of reasons, including the pecuniary: some soldiers became bounty men, deserting and then reenlisting elsewhere for the cash bonuses offered to recruits.

Historian Jonathan Lande explores why Colored Troops, as they were then formally called, deserted.

Experiencing freedom for the first time, many black soldiers discovered the discipline and racism of the army reminiscent of bondage and reacted angrily. Sometimes they rebelled as runaways had during enslavementthey ran. They deserted the army and its injustices to forge a freedom worth living.

According to Union Army records, 12,400 of the 200,000-plus Union deserters were Black Americans. Around 180,000 Black men joined the Union Army during the war. 146,000 of these men were from slave states, former slaves who had emancipated themselves and moved towards Union forces.

The Emancipation Proclamation of January 1, 1863, sanctioned the use of Black soldiers by the Union. This was, at the time, of great political controversy because many whites in the Border states as well as in the North feared arming Blacks would inspire slave rebellions and attacks on whites.

The great majority of African American soldiers adjusted to military life and proved courageous, writes Lande, but for many black men military service felt nearer to unfreedom than freedom. Military service was decidedly not emancipatory. It was, in fact, rigorously coercive. The contract of enlistment signaled, in the minds of the white officers of the U.S. Colored Troops (USCT), consent to the conditions of military life, extending to the most draconian forms of army discipline. Former slaves, too familiar with draconian forms of plantation discipline, sometimes had other ideas.

Some questioned their all-white leadership and said that slave masters had been replaced by Union masters. Others protested the lower wages they were paid compared to white soldiers, after being promised the same amount. Others decided their families, living in what we would now call refugee camps, needed them more than the army did: starving children were a stronger draw than the harshness of military discipline.

But under military law, the complexity of resistance was flattened into desertion. Deserters were treated harshly if they were captured, and racism meant Black deserters could be treated more harshly than white onesa tendency repeated in Americas wars in the twentieth century.

Lande notes that most USCT officers were chosen for their abolitionist sympathies. Abolitionists were not necessarily free of racism. Many thought of abolition as a matter of liberalized labor, not social revolution. They assumed that contractual wage labor would replace slavery, in the Army as well as elsewhere in the restored Union. Breaking the contract meant a court-martial, which was, of course, somewhat different from being fired.

Desertion during the Civil War resulted in various punitive sentences. Not uncommon was a drumming out of camp, which was essentially a dishonorable discharge in public, to the tune of The Rogues March. Drumming out could include one side of the head shaved as a mark of shame.

The most extreme sentence for desertion was death. Lande notes that the Army invited two photographers to the June 1864 execution-by-hanging of Private William Johnson, who admitted hed deserted his unit, the 23rd USCT. The execution was in plain view of Union and Confederate lines as shooting across those lines paused for the occasion.

The hanging was of course meant to be an exampleone perhaps taken differently by those who found that military service did not mean existential fulfillment or a place for future black uplift.

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By: Jonathan Lande

Journal of Social History, Vol. 49, No. 3, Changes in Medical Care (Spring 2016), pp. 693-709

Oxford University Press

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Black Soldier Desertion in the Civil War - JSTOR Daily

After working as a bartender in Washington DC for many years, Ifeoma Ezumakis body reached its limit during the pandemic. For Ezumaki and millions of other restaurant employees, working during the pandemic often, in the US, for a sub-minimum wage became a source of immeasurable suffering. Tips went down because sales went down, while customer harassment and hostility went up. Ezumaki and her colleagues had to become public health marshals, in addition to cocktail servers; she was asked to enforce social distancing, mask wearing and even vaccination requirements.

One evening, a customer at the bar asked her to pull down her mask so that he could see her face a request that became so common from male customers during the pandemic that hospitality workers started referring to it as maskual harassment. When Ezumaki refused, he said: Well, I guess youre not going to eat tonight.

The comment exemplified the power that some male customers, managers and even colleagues feel they have over womens bodies in the restaurant industry. While Ezumaki and her colleagues wished to protect their bodies and the bodies of their families by wearing a mask, many male customers made it clear that they believed they had the right to control female waiters bodies, particularly when the waiters were dependent on tips. Many have reported male customers asking them to take off their masks so that they can judge their looks and tip on that basis.

It is not just customers. My campaign group, One Fair Wage, and Survivors Know, an organisation for survivors of workplace sexual misconduct, collaborated on a report that said staff reports of managers requesting sexual favours at US branches of the golf-themed restaurant chain Topgolf had increased in the past two years. Due to the pandemic causing a reduction in tips, workers were more reliant on managers to give them the best shifts and tables, so rejecting such requests or advances could affect their pay.

But the restaurant industry violated womens bodies long before the pandemic. After the emancipation of enslaved people in the US, the restaurant lobby sought the right to hire newly freed Black people, mostly women, and pay them nothing at all, forcing them to live off customer tips. Restaurants are still able to pay tipped workers a federal minimum wage of just $2.13 (1.57) an hour based on the legacy of slavery, forcing them to obtain tips to make up the rest of their wage. Studies have also found that hospitality workers suffer among the highest rates of sexual harassment of any industry because they must tolerate inappropriate customer behaviour in return for essential tips.

That said, there is so much hope. Women are rising up like never before. Restaurant workers are refusing to allow their bodies to be objectified. In response, thousands of restaurants have had to raise wages to recruit staff. Employers are joining forces with those demanding one fair wage a full minimum wage, with tips on top. The question now is whether policymakers will grant Ezumaki and her peers the bodily integrity they have always deserved.

Saru Jayaraman is the president of One Fair Wage and the director of the Food Labor Research Center

Originally posted here:

Living in a womans body: hospitality workers have always suffered abuse. In the pandemic, it got worse - The Guardian

One of the hardest questions to bring to any table in any economy remains the issue of the minimum wages of the average worker, let alone a Papua New Guinean.

Whether it be government, private sector, or the humble wage earner, striking an accepted balance in this regard almost seems an impossibility for all parties.

Here recently we had reports of Public Motor Vehicle (PMV) fares rising, and also of businesses of consumer goods being given leeway on the notion that they have had a hard time during COVID-19 and are being allowed by the consumer watchdog ICCC to move within a five per cent increase threshold.

They seem to be given leeway and in all fairness they provide a service that is dependent on returns by way of profits.

While it is understood, the economy has suffered under the ripple effects of a global pandemic and a global economy prior to it; many argue the social issues of today are a direct reflection of the current earning capacity of the average Papua New Guinean.

Assistant General Secretary for the PNG Trade Union Congress Mr Anton Sekum provided a clear view into the world of deciding the minimum wages debate within the circles of government and the employer.

Even with the recent comments made by the current Acting Governor of the Central Bank of PNG on the affordability has long been the last question asked in the face of pressures for revenue of governments to the survival of employers.

Mr Sekum describes the current wage rate, for workers as Modern Day Slavery. Indicating as a former member of the 2013-2014 Minimum Wages Board (nominated by the PNG Trade Union Congress to represent workers)

He indicated the last review that saw the wage rate increased to K3.50 per hour, with the next review to be in three years time, adding that seven years later nothing has been forthcoming.

Seven years on and workers are still stuck with K3.50 per hour and the government is not concerned about this reality at all, he stated.

Sekum argued that while income tax remains the largest earner for the nations budget, it seemed fair that it should have prominence as well when making the next set of determination.

However, businesses still argue that any increases without proper consultation will result in more job losses rather than an increase. Adding the rise in prices (wages) would decrease the availability of jobs.

We think that the issue should be looked at, even if it means government will have to set up another Minimum Wages Board through the Labour Department with the need now squarely in our faces.

At a time when the rise in cost of living, inflation is on a steady rise it is time now the Government also take into consideration its largest earner of income taxes, the average PNG workers.

Seven years is a long time especially when prices continue to rise in the face of a stagnant minimum wage front, because while we agree with businesses that jobs are needed right now, efficient productivity is also key to maintaining those job numbers in the face of rising costs.

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Is a minimum wage increase the answer? - POST-COURIER

In reading Allyson Johnsons column on the Civil War (Hallowed ground? Jan. 19), it occurred to me that she probably received the same education about the war that I was given in school. That knowledge was adequate for me until our son graduated from college and accepted a job teaching and coaching football at a Catholic high school in Mississippi. I then realized that I should know more and was given a three-set volume of that history written by Shelby Foote, the historian featured in Ken Burns documentary on the war.

Forty pages into the book, my opinion of my teachers, President Abraham Lincoln and the war had changed dramatically. Important things had not been taught to me, and I was either required or encouraged to believe things that were untrue.

Example: The war was fought over slavery. You can Google Lincolns First Inaugural Address. He states, I have no lawful right to ... interfere with the institution of slavery in the states where it exists.

Then, No state upon its own mere motion can lawfully get out of the Union.

Followed by: The power confided in me will be used to ... (wage war), and A husband and wife may be divorced ... but the different parts of the country cannot do this.

Then came Fort Sumter. It was an incident provoked by Lincoln to arouse anger among Northerners. No Union soldiers were killed. At that point, only seven states had seceded, so Lincoln thought he could raise an army and quickly end the Confederacy. He issued a call to raise 75,000 troops among the remaining states. It was a colossal blunder. Congress was not in session. Four states were appalled and joined the Confederacy. The governor of Tennessee told Lincoln, Tennessee will not furnish a single man for the purpose of coercion, but fifty thousand if necessary for the defense of our rights and those of our Southern brothers. The boundary of the war leaped from more than 300 miles away from Washington to just over the Potomac River.

The first serious battle occurred when Lincoln urged a reluctant general to invade Virginia in force and capture the rail junction in Manassas. Fighting began early and went well for the Union into the afternoon. Then a young Virginia general showed up with his troops, routed the Union forces and earned one of historys most famous nicknames. This would not be a short war.

As things were going poorly, Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation. Its very short. I was taught it freed the slaves. It addresses slaves in the Confederacy, over which Lincoln exercised no control. No mention of slaves in the Union. Those slaves needed to await the Thirteenth Amendment after Lincolns death.

The Union could not conquer the Confederate army, so Lincoln decided to eliminate its support by ravaging southern farms and cities. This was dishonorable at the time. Resentment understandably endured after the war.

Even the name we apply to this conflict is suspect. Civil War typically refers to a struggle where both parties vie for total control of one country. Our sons students used more accurate terms: The Second War for Independence and Mr. Lincolns War.

One benefit of ignorance in reading about this sprawling subject is that it unfolds as something new. One becomes fascinated with colorful personalities, letters from soldiers, inventions such as submarines and ironclad warships, the importance of our geography, attitudes of a suffering public, politics and what interest foreign countries had in the outcome. Foote was a novelist before turning to history. He is a wonderful storyteller whose writing flows beautifully.

Jerry Clements is a Los Altos resident.

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Other Voices: Correcting the record on Lincoln and the Civil War - Los Altos Town Crier

Every Christian knows the great commandments: You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength, and with all your mind; and your neighbor as yourself. (Luke 10:27). And in the next verse, the lawyer asks Jesus, And who is my neighbor? Its a question that matters when we think about every aspect of our lives, including what we wear. Clothing is a ubiquitous commodity that almost every culture in the world shares in some form. One of humanitys earliest inventions, it has grown into a massive industry, with pre-pandemic estimates of around $2.5 trillion in global annual revenues.

Lizzy Case

Yet we often have no clue whose hands actually sewed our clothings seams or whose land produced the cotton that goes into even basic garments like t-shirts. In the cotton industry alone, more than 20 million cotton farmers and workers in gins, mills, and garment factories produce the clothing we wear.

This is not only a global problem its a theological one. As followers of Jesus, we aim to observe the two great commandments, love God and love neighbor, with our whole lives. But who is our neighbor when it comes to clothes? Garment workers are the engine driving the global clothing system. Yet they are often dismally compensated for their skilled labor and forced to work in unsafe conditions. If we cannot care for the people producing our clothing, can we truly say we are loving our neighbor?

In many ways, we live in a global village. Through our clothes were connected to cotton-growing fields, wool-producing sheep, farmers harvesting these raw materials, and the many, many hands transforming them into fiber, textiles, then dyeing, cutting, sewing, finishing, and shipping the final garments to the stores we buy from.

In this kind of webbed world, our neighbor is one who is both far and near. According to theologian Larry Rasmussen, our neighbor is, the articulated form of creation to whom justice, as the fullest possible flourishing of creation, is due. Existing in relationship to one another is our primary reality, and in the Christian lens, our neighbor is a person who is, before all else, beloved (by God).

As Jesus-followers, not only are we oriented in love towards our neighbors but we are also called to take action. In Luke 10, Jesus defines the neighbor not in a theological sense, but in a life situation. It is not the person who simply believed they were a neighbor it is the person who, in the words of liberation theologian Gustavo Gutierrez, proved themselves neighbor to the man.

Theologian Sharon Ringe phrases it this way: No one can simply have a neighbor; one must also be a neighbor. The story simply stands as yet another challenge to the transformation of daily life and business as usual, which lies at the heart of the practice of discipleship.

This mandate of our Christian faith stands at stark odds with the current situation of many garment workers. Ongoing research shows that no major brand can prove that all workers in their supply chain earn a living wage, whether fast fashion or luxury apparel. And raising worker wages just $100 per week (about whats needed to reach a living wage in Bangladesh and India), would immediately cut 65.3 million metric tons of CO2 out of the global economy, according to new research. Paying workers more wouldnt break the bank for brands either. One study shows that a living wage in India, for example, only adds 20 cents to the cost of a t-shirt.

Additionally, an estimated 80% of the garment makers in factories are female, compounding the labor violations and gender discrimination these workers face with forced overtime, lack of basic fire and building safety, no maternity leave, and unsafe travel to work. And the Covid-19 pandemic exacerbated these conditions. A new study from Traidcraft Exchange and the Modern Slavery and Human Rights Policy and Evidence Centre shows that in Bangladesh, Covid-19 inflamed existing vulnerabilities for women, including financial and housing insecurity, and increased exploitative practices like sexual and verbal abuse, mainly from line supervisors pushing garment makers to work faster to achieve unrealistic production targets. While many large brands have returned to profitability after the initial hit of the pandemic, their workers still feel the lingering effects.

To love garment makers as our neighbors, we must stop being indifferent to their needs and circumstances. After all, the opposite of loving your neighbor is not always hating them, but just being indifferent to them writes Jim Wallis. We must advocate for systemic change and protections for workers. Movements like this are gaining ground. In California, the historic Garment Workers Protection Act passed in 2021, which ended the piece-rate system of payment for factories producing goods in Los Angeles and holds brands accountable for wage violations in their supply chains.

Small, independent brands often lead by example. My own brand, Arrayed, partners with a women-owned, worker-led garment collective in Manila to bring our t-shirts to life. As a citizen, support locally made, small-batch production, conscious brands as often as possible or turn to thrift and resale. By consuming less and more mindfully, and advocating for garment workers rights, we can live out our faith with integrity.

In his final sermon, Dr. King expounded on the story of the Good Samaritan saying, I can imagine that the first question which the Priest and the Levite asked was: If I stop to help this man, what will happen to me? Then the good Samaritan came by, and by the very nature of his concern reversed the question: If I do not stop to help this man, what will happen to him? Let us follow the example of the Good Samaritan and advocate for our hidden neighbors, the garment workers.

Lizzy Case is a writer, theologian, and founder of Arrayed, a liberative people-first, planet-focused Christian apparel brand. She currently lives in southern California.

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Loving Our Neighbor Means Thinking About the People Behind Our Clothes - Word and Way

Artist Jacob Lawrence, himself the son of Southern migrants, said he wanted to paint "the excitement, the crowds, the tension" of the Great Migration. (Jacob Lawrence, The Migration Series, Panel 1: During World War I there was a great migration north by Southern African Americans., 1940 and 1941, C

Fifty years after Black Americans ended a period of unprecedented movement in the United States, their journeys reverberate through U.S. culture and demographics.

The Great Migration which took place from 1916 to 1970 saw 6 million African Americans move from the South to the North and West. It eclipsed the Gold Rush and the flight from the Dust Bowl in terms of population movement within the U.S., according to Allyson Hobbs, a Stanford University historian. Before this period, 90 percent of Black Americans lived in the South, and after, just 53 percent did, she says.

Black newspapers and other media touted a better life in the North and West. Northern factories were short on labor, and there were new opportunities in the West. Black families were pulled by the lure of higher wages, educational opportunities, and more personal freedom away from the segregation practices of the South.

As Richard Wright wrote: I was leaving the South to fling myself into the unknown respond to the warmth of other suns and, perhaps, to bloom.

A book titled with that quote The Warmth of Other Sunsby Isabel Wilkerson tells the stories of three ordinary individuals who uprooted their lives during the Great Migration (as did both of Wilkersons parents) to explain this time in America.

Wilkerson links the migrants actions to President Abraham Lincolns decades-earlierEmancipation Proclamation, which paved the way for abolishing slavery in the United States. By sheer force of will, they were able to make the Emancipation Proclamation live up to its name in their individual lives to the degree that they could, Wilkerson said in an interview with radio show host Krista Tippett in 2016.

In the South, Black people had been subject to what was essentially a caste system that left them without the chance to reach their potential, Wilkerson says.

The Great Migration was an unleashing of this pent-upcreativity and genius, in many cases, of people miscast in this caste system. Its about freedom and how far people are willing to go to achieve it, she says.

It was not necessarily easy, says Marcia Chatelain, a history professor at Georgetown University. For some, there was a gap between the fantasy of moving and how they were treated when they got to new places.

Discrimination followed them north, with areas outside the South reacting to the influx with racial wage gaps and prohibitions on where Black people could live. Chatelains own book on the topic, South Side Girls: Growing Up in the Great Migration, looks at the impact of the relocations on young females. Girls embodied the poignancy hoping migration would change everything and the reality they still had to deal with racism, Chatelain says.

But connections among family members split between the South and other areas increased the exchange of ideas among regions of the country. And many Northerners and Westerners sent money home to those who remained in the South.

Southern employers, meanwhile, Chatelain says, faced worker shortages and came to depend more heavily on prison convicts to do tasks during the 20th century.

Descendants of those who made the Great Migration include former first lady Michelle Obama, author Toni Morrison, playwright August Wilson, actor Denzel Washington and jazz musician Miles Davis.

Black people brought their music from the rural South to cities with more venues, recording studios and Black consumer markets. A lot of roots of what we call popular culture today are a direct result of the migration, Chatelain says, citing blues, gospel and R&B music, which still influences hip-hop and rap.

The Great Migration brought a flourishing of literature and scholarship too it informed famous novels likeInvisible Manby Ralph Ellison.

The concentrations of Black Americans in the North, where they did not face poll taxes, literacy tests or other obstacles to voting imposed by Southern states, led to more Black elected officials, long before Barack Obama became the first Black U.S. president in 2009.

Chatelain says there are many books about the impacts of the South-to-North/West migration. Writers have found that regardless of the thread you pull on, youll find something new, she says. We can all relate to the desire for change, the desire to help our families and the desire to imagine a better future.

By U.S. Embassy Tbilisi | 16 February, 2022 | Topics: Art & Culture, Culture, Education, Human Rights, News

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What was America's Great Migration? - US Embassy in Georgia

A Liverpool writer reflects on the differences between feeling powerless in the position of receiving charity and empowered when part of a collective effort.

Recently I started using the Walton Vale Community Shop, in North Liverpool. It was set up due to high levels of poverty in the area, and anyone living in Walton can pay 3.50 or 5, for 10 or 15 items. It appears to be run by volunteers, but is funded by a mixture of the council, charities and the GMB union, while also receiving surplus food.

While the food and toiletries they provide are very cheap, there is some discontent from users around it only being open for two hours a week (during typical working hours) and the fact that it is not unusual to have to queue for over an hour. However, I think there are deeper issues with this model, which calls itself a food cooperative, although I am grateful for the volunteers that make it feasible.

I find using the Community Shop, like most other forms of charity, is a disempowering feeling for everybody involved. As users we seem to have no input (there have not been any surveys of what food we would like, or minutes from meetings, in fact we have had no contact since joining), while I can only imagine volunteering feels exhausting.

The fact that it is heavily linked to the council also guarantees political neutrality, it has to stick narrowly to its parameters or risk defunding, for example the shop couldnt really be used to distribute literature criticising the council, yet you will see plenty of Labour Party merchandise. Dependency on the council also raises the question of what happens if a different party, or faction of the ruling party itself, wins office. These issues are typical of charities, which address the effects of poverty, rather than challenging its root causes.

I was surprised then, when I attended a talk by Cooperation Town, a group which has helped set up several grassroots food cooperatives. They described food cooperatives as being member-led associations, which they advised do not grow larger than 10-20 households, at which point they risk becoming too large to manage democratically. They can still access surplus food, but also collectively spend their membership fees to buy goods in bulk at wholesale prices. Every household is supposed to help out if and how they can in running the co-op (ideally for less than an hour a week), such as ordering or delivering food.

They can be organised geographically, and then split into smaller localities as they grow. However, they could also be set up around specific dietary requirements or preferences, such as being vegan or gluten free, or preferring chinese food. If there were several food cooperatives in one city, they could still work together, while maintaining their autonomy, for example by forming a federation.

In contrast to my local community shop, this model of neighbourhood food coops enables people to act for themselves. It could give people new skills and also the experience of making decisions in a non-hierarchical manner. If autonomous, these co-ops would have the freedom to support social struggles, for example they could donate surplus food to striking workers, or they could form the basis of local campaigns to resist evictions, protect green spaces or oppose austerity measures. They would also be more resilient, since there would be no risk of defunding.

There are of course risks involved in this model. They could end up being co-opted by politicians or developing a bureaucracy, taking control away from members. Likewise they could become too large, or work might not be shared equally, which could lead to them becoming unwieldy and falling apart. But these are risks with any form of bottom-up organising.

Realistically food co-ops wont solve the underlying problems around capitalism. As well as the fact that people go hungry in one of the worlds richest nations, the production process also poisons our bodies and the earth, and wage slavery subjects us to lives of monotony and cruelty. For this reason, I think its worth fighting for a world where food, and everything else, is distributed freely according to need, and where the people involved in this work do so voluntarily. But in the meantime, setting up food co-ops seems like a worthwhile endeavour.

This article comes from the latest issue of Liverpool Anarchist, a monthly newsletter covering local organising and direct action in the city.

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Food Co-ops and the search for autonomy - Freedom News

The Supreme Court has set itself on a collision course with the forces of change in an inexorably diversifying America.

The six Republican-appointed Supreme Court justices have been nominated and confirmed by GOP presidents and senators representing the voters least exposed, and often most hostile, to the demographic and cultural changes remaking 21st-century American life. Now the GOP Court majority is moving at an accelerating pace to impose that coalitions preferences on issues such as abortion, voting rights, and affirmative action.

On all of these fronts, and others, the Republican justices are siding with what America has beena mostly white, Christian, and heavily rural nationover the urbanized, racially and religiously diverse country America is becoming.

The Court seems to be pulling the United States back into a prior era without regard for changing notions and understandings of equity, equality, and fairness, Sarah Warbelow, the legal director for the Human Rights Campaign, which advocates for LGBTQ rights, told me. It is about almost trying to maintain a 1940s, 1950s view of what the United States is and what its obligations are to its citizens.

In this backward-facing crusade, the majority may be risking the kind of political explosion that rocked the Court at two pivotal earlier moments in American history, the 1850s and 1930s. In each of those decades, a Supreme Court that also was nominated and confirmed primarily by a political coalition reflecting an earlier majority similarly positioned itself as a bulwark against the preferences of the emerging America. In the 1850s, the Court tried to block the new Republican Partys agenda to stop the spread of slavery just as the Abraham Lincolnera GOP was establishing itself as the dominant political force in the free states; in the 1930s, the Court sought to derail newly elected President Franklin D. Roosevelts agenda to manage the economy, regulate business, and expand the social safety net just as his New Deal electoral coalition was beginning decades of electoral dominance.

Read: The revolution will be improvised

Though the legal battles of the 1850s, the 1930s, and today turn on different policies and personalities across three different centuries, they ultimately raise the same question: How long will rising generations allow what Roosevelt called the dead hand of a Court rooted in an earlier time to block their priorities?

No possible revisions to the Courts structurebe they adding members or imposing term limitsnow seem politically viable, but that could change through the 2020s if the GOP majority continues on its aggressive trajectory. Robert P. Jones, the founder and CEO of the nonpartisan Public Religion Research Institute, predicts that the GOP majoritys attempt to wrench this country back to a time when a conservative Christian white hierarchy set societys cultural norms and expectations will eventually ignite rising demands for reform. If it is consistently clearly moving in a trajectory that people know is out of step with the country, then were really in a democratic crisis, he told me. Not because of people assaulting the Capitol but because the institutions have lost their legitimacy and people see them as really exercises in raw power.

Because justices typically serve for long periods, the Court always bears the imprint of earlier presidents (who nominated them) and senators (who confirmed them). But that characteristic can become much more combustible when justices installed by an earlier political majority systematically move to block the agenda of the coalition that succeeds it.

One example came in the 1850s when the Supreme Court led by Chief Justice Roger Taney regularly sided with the South in legal disputes over slavery. That struggle peaked in 1857 when the Court issued the notorious Dred Scott decision, declaring that freed Black people could never be citizens and that Congress could not prohibit slavery in the western territories.

Democrats had dominated the White House for roughly three decades before the decision, and the South had dominated the partys view toward slavery in that era. That was reflected in the Courts composition when it ruled on Dred Scott: At that point, seven of its nine members had been appointed by Democratic presidents who were either southerners (Andrew Jackson, James K. Polk) or northerners committed to protecting slavery (Martin Van Buren, Franklin Pierce.)

But the ruling came as the free states were largely outstripping the South in both population and economic output, and the new Republican Party was emerging as their dominant political voice.

Precisely as the GOP was rising in influence, the Dred Scott decision essentially declared unconstitutional its platform, which was grounded on a promise to block the expansion of slavery into the territories.

Events overran the Taney Courts efforts to defend slavery when Lincoln, as the GOPs second nominee ever, won the presidency in 1860, and the South seceded before he took office. After the Civil War, the GOP congressional majorities settled their prewar struggle with the Supreme Court by approving the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments that ended slavery, established citizenship for the freed people, and sought to guarantee them civil and voting rights. (It was both ironic and tragic when Supreme Court justices chosen mostly by Lincolns Republican successors allowed white southerners to undermine those protections through a procession of late-19th-century rulings that opened the door to separate but equal segregation.)

The conservative justices appointed mostly by Republican presidents from Lincoln through Herbert Hoovera period when the GOP controlled the White House for 56 of 72 yearsprecipitated the next confrontation between an emerging political majority and a Court rooted in an older era. When FDR took office in 1933, seven of the Courts nine members had been appointed by those earlier Republican presidents. The justices ideological leanings did not align with their partisan pedigree as completely then as they do todayDemocratic President Woodrow Wilson appointed one of the Courts staunch conservatives and Hoover one of its top liberalsbut GOP choices dominated the right-leaning bloc that controlled the Court.

Starting in the 1890s, that conservative Court majority steadily invalidated progressive-era state and federal laws to limit working hours, ban child labor, impose a federal income tax, break up monopolies, and establish a minimum wage. As radical and reform movements sprang up to combat the injustices of the industrial era, conservative judges saw themselves as fighting a holy war to protect American traditions of individual liberty, as the historian Jeff Shesol wrote in Supreme Power, his 2010 book about FDRs confrontations with the Court.

Read: The bitter origins of the fight over big government

The crusading zeal of the Courts conservative majority crashed directly into the agenda of Roosevelt and the massive Democratic congressional majorities elected in 1932. Through FDRs first years, the Supreme Court overturned a succession of his New Deal laws.

Roosevelt and his contemporaries viewed his confrontations with the Court as a battle against the lingering influence of a defeated and displaced political coalition. Robert Jackson, who served FDR as attorney general and later was a Supreme Court justice himself, flatly described the judiciary as the check of a preceding generation on the current one and nearly always the check of a rejected regime on the one in being.

This extended struggle (which peaked in the 193536 Court session) inspired Roosevelts 1937 proposal to pack the Court by adding more members. That legislation famously failed, but as Congress weighed it, two of the Courts conservatives tilted toward support of key New Deal laws in a new round of casesthe heralded switch in time that saved nine. This confrontation ended when deaths and retirement allowed FDR to appoint a liberal majority on the Court, which Democrats reinforced while holding the White House and the Senate for most of the period from 1932 to 1968.

Its unlikely that todays Democratseven though they have won the popular vote in an unprecedented seven of the past eight presidential electionscan establish anything near the lasting political dominance of the Lincoln-era Republicans or the FDR-era Democrats. Yet the rising conflict between the party and the GOP Court majority parallels these earlier episodes in one key respect.

In both the 1850s and the 1930s, the conservative Court majority spoke for the forces most resistant to a changing Americain the first instance, the southerners alarmed about the growing population advantage of the industrializing North; in the second, both the small-town and rural conservatives hostile to big cities swelling with immigrants and the Gilded Age business tycoons fighting new demands from workers and consumers.

Now, as then, a conservative Court majority rooted in the places least affected by change is asserting a central role in the political struggle between Americas past and future. Consider religion. White Christians, who constituted a majority of Americans for most of the nations history, have fallen to about 44 percent of the total as the nation has grown more demographically and religiously diverse, according to the latest PRRI national data. But in PRRI surveys, about two-thirds of Republicans still identify as white Christians (a level last reached for the country overall in the mid-1990s). In 25 states, white Christians now constitute 49 percent of the population or more, per the PRRIs findings. In 2020, Donald Trump won 18 of them. Those same states elected 37 of the 50 Republican senators.

Immigration tells a similar story. The share of Americans born abroad has been steadily rising toward its highest level since the Melting Pot era at the turn of the 20th century. But Trump in 2020 won only two of the 20 states with the highest percentage of foreign-born residents, according to census figures, and Republicans hold only four of their 40 Senate seats. The GOP tilts toward the places least affected by immigration: Trump won 17 of the 20 states with the lowest share of foreign-born residents, and those same states elected 33 of the 50 GOP senators. Combined, those 20 low-immigration states account for only a little more than one-fifth of the nations total population.

The same contrast extends to measures of economic change. Republicans dominate the states with the fewest college graduates but struggle in those with the most, as well as in the states where the highest share of the workforce is employed in science, engineering, and computer occupations, all defining industries of the new knowledge economy. The 22 states with the biggest share of such workers have elected just six Republican senators, while fully 31 of the GOPs Senate caucus represent the 20 states with the smallest share of such employment, according to census figures. Republicans are much stronger in states that rely on the powerhouse industries of the 20th century: agriculture, energy extraction, and manufacturing.

Centered in these places least affected by all the transitions remaking 21st-century America, what Ive called the Republican coalition of restoration has developed a much more critical view of social and demographic change than the rest of society. In PRRI polling, for instance, although two-thirds of Republicans say abortion should be illegal in all or most circumstances, 70 percent of all other Americans say it should remain legal in all or most cases. While a 55 percent majority of Republicans say small-business owners should be permitted to deny service to same-sex couples on religious grounds, almost three-fourths of everyone else disagrees. And while about three-fourths of Republicans say discrimination against white people is now as big a problem as bias against Black people, more than two-thirds of everyone else rejects that idea.

Yet on these fronts and others, the GOP-appointed Court majority appears ready to tilt the law sharply toward the coalition of restorations preferences. Warbelow, of the Human Rights Campaign, said that by declaring its intention to reconsider earlier rulings on abortion, affirmative action, and perhaps other fronts such as public prayer, the GOP majority is inverting the Courts usual motivation for revisiting precedent. Historically when the Court has done so, she said, it has been to rectify past wrongs in a way that creates greater rights for all Americans. But the cases that the Court is now considering are not about expanding rights; they are about restricting rights [and] perpetuating a very narrow view of who should be able to operate fully within the world.

Compounding that tension is another dynamic: The Republican Court majority is growing more aggressive as the groups most threatened by its direction are growing in numbers.

The 2020 census, for instance, was the first time that kids of color constituted a majority of the nations under-18 population, and the class that enters school in September is projected to be the last one ever in which white students will compose a majority of the nations public-high-school graduates, according to federal projections. Yet precisely at this moment, the GOP majority appears ready to further constrain, or perhaps eliminate entirely, the affirmative-action programs for minority admissions to colleges and universities that the Court has authorized in one form or another since a landmark 1978 ruling. Similarly, the Court majority has repeatedly retrenched federal voting-rights protections for minorities even as kids of color compose the majority of citizens turning 18 in many of the red states moving most forcefully to limit voter access.

Read: The Republican axis reversing the rights revolution

The Courts upcoming rulings on abortion could trigger similar conflict with generations of younger women who have grown up assuming that right would be perennially available. And though the Court has generally favored expanding rights for same-sex couples, an overturning of Roe that weakens the right to privacy could eventually threaten some of their gains as well, even as far more young people than ever before openly identify in polls as part of the LGBTQ community. A Roe reversal, in fact, could be just the first domino threatening other rulings that have allowed for greater personal freedom in many areas of family life and intimate relationships.

Most Court watchers believe the fear of losing legitimacy led Chief Justice John Roberts to sand down some of the sharpest edges from rulings while the GOP Justices held only a 54 majority, until Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburgs death in 2020. But with Republicans now holding a 63 advantageand five justices clearly to his rightwhatever restraining influence Roberts once had has been attenuated, as demonstrated by the willingness of those five to outvote him and the three Democratic appointees on this weeks case on voting rights in Alabama. Now a wide array of groups rooted in the changing Americaparticularly organizations that advocate for greater equity on grounds of race, gender, and sexual orientationare openly wondering what boundaries, if any, will constrain the GOP majority.

Shesol, the historian, thinks the answer is: very few. Hes dubious that the conservative majority will moderate over time, or that even a big public backlash against its decisions will deter it. If you look back over the centuries, he said, Court majorities have been pretty good at riding it out when they face public criticism. They are very insulated by design.

The 1930s confrontation between a conservative Court and President Roosevelt that Shesol chronicled might be the most visible exception to that rule. But, he noted, the majority that backed down before FDR had been blocking progressive legislation for decades and may have lost some of its energy for the fight. To Shesol, this Court looks more like the conservative Court majorities at the height of their power around the turn of the 20th century than the depleted version Roosevelt ultimately conquered.

The 1930s was the end game, Shesol told me. Given the youth of these justices, given the scale of their majority on the Court, and given their zealousness, I worry we are in a similar situation as the 1890sthat we are in the beginning stages of a decades-long struggle.

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The Supreme Court Is on a Doomed Crusade - The Atlantic

Aramex drivers have been watching protest action taken by their counterparts in Australia in recent weeks, and say something needs to be done about the culture on this side of the Tasman, too.

More than100 Aramex courier drivers went on a 24-hour strike in Sydney last week to protest low pay rates and a working conditions the drivers union described as modern slavery.

Transport Workers Union president Tony Matthews, told Australias Channel 7 Aramex couriers worked more than 50 hours a week and took home just a few hundred dollars after costs.

Chief executive of Pro Drive, a group that represents New Zealand drivers, Peter Gallagher says the situation here was as bad if not worse than Sydney, and he was closely observing the situation.

READ MORE:* Aramex offers $600 a week subsidy to courier drivers revealed to be earning less than minimum wage* NZ Couriers claim drivers' Covid-19 wage subsidy: 'They're rorting everyone'* Employment Court rules contract courier driver was an employee

We are certainly not ruling out collective action. A strike in New Zealand is definitely on the cards, Gallagher says.

Pro Drive has made multiple attempts to talk with Aramex NZ over issues of working conditions and fair pay, but the company had yet to respond, he says.

The impact of the Aramex NZ business model on worker mental health is severe, he says.

LAWRENCE SMITH/Stuff

Brian Cossey bought an Aramex Couriers franchise only to find out within months that the workload and pay were well below his expectations. The strain severely impacted his mental health.

Former Aramex driver Brian Cossey says the financial strain, and bullying work culture at Aramex led him to consider suicide.

I had been working 16-hour days, seven days a week for a laughable amount of take home pay. The stress and overwork was leading to me having near-misses on the road, and collapsing in the depot.

I begged management for help, but they did nothing, Cossey says.

Aramex NZ chief executive Scott Jenyns says he is unaware of any drivers reporting suicidal thoughts and such an incident would be treated seriously.

He says the company intends to investigate the matter immediately, and for courier franchisees to contact him directly if they wish to raise any concerns.

Aramex also has a whistleblower code of conduct which allows employees to raise issues anonymously, he says.

LAWRENCE SMITH/Stuff

Cossey is now working in construction a job he says earns him 50 per cent more money and not face mental health issues due to stress and overwork.

Aramex franchisees are classed as contractors, meaning each driver is an individual business owner, rather than employees who would have minimum wage protections.

Aramex markets the courier run as having uncapped earning potential, and drivers cover their own operating costs, and are paid per packaged delivery at a rate set by Aramex.

Cossey says his after-cost take home pay was between $12.68 and $11.72 an hour.

Jenyns says it is not accurate to speak in terms of wages becuase drivers are owner operators, not employees.

But Gallagher says to get caught up in the semantics of payment was disingenuous.

We have done the research using Aramexs own numbers and found that drivers are earning significantly less than the minimum wage after costs. I have spoken to over 40 drivers across the North Island and I am yet to find a single one earning above the minimum wage, he says.

Supplied

Aramex courier drivers sort through freight every morning before they started their run. They say they are not paid for this time, and it often adds hours to their workday.

Drivers buy their franchisee businesses from Aramex for between $15,000 to $30,000, so handing back a round often comes with significant financial loss, he says.

Cossey now works in construction.

I am making 50 per cent more money and I dont wake up every morning wanting to kill myself.

A current Aramex courier driver in Wellington says the culture of bullying and overwork has continued to grow.

Upper management used intimidation when drivers questioned the financial arrangement of the business, she says.

I dont think Aramex actually knows how much toll this takes on us. I have reached a point where I have just had enough. I get up each morning and I dont want to wake up. she says.

Supplied

Aramex NZ chief executive Scott Jenyns says the company has an employee assistance program in place for drivers in mental distress, but driver advocate group Pro Drive say this is an ambulance at the bottom of the cliff.

It was a regular occurrence at the Wellington depot to see drivers crying when they see their payslips, she says.

The way they treat us is just ridiculous. There is no toilet paper at the depot, no clean facilities for us to use when we get back at the end of our run. They treat us worse than animals.

Jenyns says that Aramex has an employee assistance program in place for any driver in mental distress or their family to access counselling.

But Gallagher says this was an ambulance at the bottom of the cliff.

Supplied

Pro Drive chief executive, Peter Gallagher says he hopes that the Sydney strike causes public, and regulatory pressure to be put on Aramex courier company.

The testimony we have seen from drivers across the North Island tells us that Aramex has a model that works people to the point of exhaustion.

The ultimate indignity is when these drivers collapse, Aramex is able to swoop in, recapture the business and resell it, Gallagher says.

Gallagher hopes the strike in Sydney will highlight the issues facing Aramex courier drivers in New Zealand, and put public and regulatory pressure on the company.

Jenyns resigned on Friday after 21 years with the company, A spokeswoman says. A departure date is yet to be announced.

WHERE TO GET HELP:

Suicide Crisis Helpline: 0508 828 865

Lifeline: 0800 543 354

Depression Helpline, open 24/7: 0800 111 757.

Whakatau Mai/ The Wellbeing Sessions http://www.wellbeingsessions.nz

Healthline: 0800 611 116

Youthline: 0800 376633, free text 234 or email talk@youthline.co.nz

What's Up (for 5-18 year olds; 1pm-11pm): 0800 942 8787

Kidsline (aimed at children up to age 14; 4pm-6pm weekdays): 0800 54 37 54 (0800 kidsline)

Rainbow youth (LGBTQ youth helpline): (09) 3764155

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Stressed Aramex courier drivers say strike action is on the cards - Stuff.co.nz