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Category: california

  • Amazon to Pay CA $500K After Being Accused of Breaking COVID Workplace Rules

    Packages move along a conveyor at Amazon fulfillment center in Eastvale, California, on August 31, 2021.

    A California court has approved a settlement between the state attorney general’s office and Amazon, over claims that the company concealed information from workers and local health agencies about coronavirus infections in its warehouses.

    A “right-to-know” law that was passed in September 2020 requires companies in the state to keep workers informed about the spread of the virus among the workforce, and to provide safety plans as well as COVID-related benefits to their employees. According to California Attorney General Rob Bonta, Amazon failed to let tens of thousands of workers in its warehouses know how many of their co-workers were infected with the virus.

    As part of the settlement, Amazon will pay California a sum of $500,000, which will help the state enforce consumer protection laws. The company will also modify its notification systems to inform workers about potential exposures to the virus, and will submit to monitoring from the attorney general’s office.

    The settlement, which was filed and approved within the California Superior Court in Sacramento, allows Amazon to deny any wrongdoing. In a statement from the company, Amazon said that the attorney general “found no substantive issues with the safety measures in our buildings,” and that the settlement simply resolves a “technicality” that they will now abide by.

    However, a press release from Bonta’s office implied that the company had acted improperly, describing Amazon’s failure to follow the year-old law as “harmful” to its workers.

    “Californians have a right to know about potential exposures to the coronavirus to protect themselves, their families, and their communities,” Bonta said in a statement.

    Amazon has frequently faced criticism for its poor treatment of workers. At the beginning of the pandemic, the company faced widespread backlash after it was revealed that workers were having to urinate and defecate in delivery trucks in order to meet productivity demands.

    Previously, the company had publicly and vehemently denied media reports that this ever took place, implying that workers were lying about the matter — but internal documents uncovered by The Intercept in March 2020 contradicted the company’s claims, and made clear that Amazon was aware of the situation.

    The company is also being accused of having poor workplace standards in other parts of the country. Amazon is currently embroiled in a lawsuit against New York State Attorney General Letitia James, attempting to block her office from bringing charges against them over workplace safety concerns at two of the warehouses in New York City.

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Fast-Food Workers Strike Across California

    Fast-food workers say they are fed up with their working conditions, and on Tuesday morning, they’re walking out.

    Thousands of employees in the fast-food industry are going on strike across California, walking out for better working conditions, wages and hours and calling on lawmakers to offer them a bigger say in their futures.

    A McDonald’s location on Floral Drive in Monterey Park, where workers allege sewers recently flooded the kitchen, is the SoCal site of the rally employees planned for 9 a.m.

    Other rallies in the area are planned for 12 p.m. and 3 p.m.

    By and large, fast-food employees are not represented by a union. But they’ve found ways to band together, pushing for change within the industry with previous rallies.

    The post Fast-Food Workers Strike Across California appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  • US citizens v FBI: Will the government face charges for illegal surveillance?

    Muslim citizens are suing the FBI for subjecting them to undercover surveillance after 9/11 in violation of rights

    On Monday, the US supreme court will hear arguments in a case which could determine whether the US government faces accountability for its mass surveillance of Muslim Americans after 9/11.

    The nine justices will be asked to decide on whether Muslim US citizens who were subjected to undercover surveillance by a paid informant at their southern California mosque can receive redress through the courts.

    Continue reading…

    This post was originally published on Human rights | The Guardian.

  • United States: Workers rise up in strike wave

    Thousands of workers are on strike right now in the United States, in what is being dubbed “Striketober”, reports Malik Miah.

    This post was originally published on Green Left.

  • The Oil Spill in California Lends Urgency to Demand for Indigenous Land Stewards

    “Moomat ahiko,” which translates to English as “breath of the ocean,” is a song sung by the Tongva — one of the Indigenous peoples of Southern California — and their relatives. Moomat Ahiko is also the name of the first ti’aat (sewn-plank canoe) built by the Tongva in over a century.

    The word for ocean used by the Acjachemen — another of the coastal Indigenous peoples of the land now known as California — is also moomat, and they honor and respect the ocean as sacred.

    Both the Acjachemen and Tongva hold the ocean in deep respect and continue to honor it through song and ceremony. They live in relationship with their environment and continue to always show respect to their lands and waters. Their traditional territories include the eastern shores of the Pacific Ocean, the West Coast of North America within the state of California, in what is now called Orange County. Historically, they lived in village sites near rivers, streams and springs, including the village of Genga (Banning Ranch) near the Santa Ana River and the coastal cities of Newport and Huntington Beach, where an oil spill is currently threatening an already fragile ecosystem. While some Acjachemen and Tongva community members still live in these ancestral homelands, many have been priced out of their own homelands for generations and now live far away from their ancestral lands and waters after centuries of displacement.

    On October 1, a massive and deadly oil spill began. The cause of the spill is still being confirmed, but evidence from the spill shows that a commercial shipping vessel dragged its anchor, pulling on a pipeline and ripping it open, spilling oil into the ocean. An oil sheen on top of the water was observed that night, but it was 12 hours later that Amplify Energy, the owner of the pipeline, reported it to state and federal officials. The company has estimated that the ruptured pipeline released 126,000 gallons of oil into the ocean, onto the beaches and into the wetlands of Orange County.

    The areas most affected by the spill are within an Acjachemen and Tongva cultural corridor that stretches from what is now known as Huntington Beach down to Crystal Cove. Prior to colonization, this area was highly populated, and multiple Acjachemen and Tongva villages spanned the coast. Now, tribal community members are actively working to reclaim and restore relationships with coastal lands and waters in this cultural corridor.

    California coastal Native nations have spent thousands of years in a direct ceremonial and accountable relationship with the ocean and have respected and cared for the ocean and coastal waters, which provide habitat to a vast array of wildlife, including fish, whales, sea turtles, and birds that depend on a healthy and clean environment, for millennia. These coastal lands and waters are essential to the cultural, spiritual and physical well-being of coastal Native nations. Offshore oil and gas drilling and exploration off the Pacific Coast puts these coastal lands and waters — and the plants, animals, ecosystems, and communities that depend on them — at risk from oil spills and other damage.

    The sustainable, reciprocal relationship these tribes maintained with the coastal lands and waters in their homelands was forever changed with the onslaught of colonization. The first acts of environmental injustice and environmental racism in California occurred when Spanish soldiers and padres (the priests at the missions) landed on the coasts of Southern California in 1769. Indigenous Peoples were often forcibly removed from their ancestral homelands, and traditional ways of living sustainably in right relationship with the local ecosystems were discouraged or outright prohibited by the settler-colonists.

    The introduction of non-native plant and animal species brought from across the ocean to establish and maintain colonial outposts in the “New World” had a devastating impact on the local ecosystems and the Indigenous communities that relied upon these ecosystems for survival. The 150+ Native nations with ancestral territories in California have been fighting since those first acts of violent displacement to protect the lands and waters within their ancestral territories and undo the environmental damage caused by the introduction of new species and systems of agriculture that did not consider local ecologies or long-term principles of sustainability.

    In recent history, extractive industries such as gold mining and oil and gas extraction continue to threaten culturally and environmentally significant lands and waters, and tribal communities continue to respond.

    Huntington Beach
    Huntington Beach, 1926. View up the coast from the Huntington Beach Pier.

    California was first claimed by Europeans in 1542 by Juan Rodríguez Cabrillo and again in 1579 by Francis Drake. Cabrillo would die in California on the Tongva island of Pimu, also known as Catalina. These early European explorations and mappings did not result in the colonization of California until 1769, when the Spanish began forcing California Indians to labor at missions, presidios (forts) and ranchos (where domesticated animals such as cattle were raised).

    The European and U.S. view of California has always been as a resource for extraction in a trans-Pacific global economy. After the settlement of California by non-Indians, the extraction of resources without relationship, consent or care for the environment — whether for ranching and agriculture, gold, oil or water — began at an intense speed. As a resource, California was claimed for European nations, and the wealth of its land and oceans continues to be extracted. The Acjachemen and Tongva are the survivors of colonial and capitalist extraction. Despite their dispossession, they continue to work for the protection of their lands and waters.

    The California missions were the first European effort to extract California Indians through forced labor and incarceration. The goal of the missions was to remove the Indians from their environments and make them useful for colonialism, indoctrinate them in Christianity, and become a labor force that would extend the Spanish empire and protect their claim from other foreign incursions. Spanish colonialism was followed by Mexico’s expansion of ranchos and the privatization of land. The ranchos continued the mission’s project of extracting the labor of California Indians and drastically increased the number of non-native species. The U.S. waged war against Mexico and claimed California as its own in 1848. Americans found gold and commenced in an effort to exterminate the Indians of the state and established laws to enslave their children, all for the purposes of resource extraction.

    Like the billions of dollars of gold that were extracted, billions of dollars’ worth of oil have been extracted from California tribal homelands and waters since colonization. The wealth extracted from tribal homelands comes at great cost not just to California Indian peoples but to the planet. As Tongva and Chumash activist Jessa Calderon explained in an Instagram post, “What our families maintained for thousands upon thousands of years, Western uncivilization has managed to destroy in a couple hundred years.” The devastation to Acjachemen and Tongva homelands since colonialism is beyond explanation.

    Acjachemen and Tongva Peoples have maintained respectful, reciprocal and sustainable relationships with the coastal lands and waters of what is now known as Orange County since time immemorial. The recent oil spill in these tribal homelands makes it clear that the time to end offshore oil drilling and all extractive industries and rematriate (or restore) tribal lands and waters is now.

    In 2019, Gov. Gavin Newsom officially apologized to California Native Americans for the state’s role in the attempted genocide of California Indian peoples and established the California Truth and Healing Council via Executive Order N-15-19. The goal of the Truth and Healing Council is to “bear witness to, record, examine existing documentation of, and receive California Native American narratives regarding the historical relationship between the State of California and California Native Americans in order to clarify the historical record of this relationship in the spirit of truth and healing.”

    It is essential that these narratives include the ways in which California Native Americans have experienced centuries of environmental injustice as a direct result of settler-colonial and state policies dating back to the mission era.

    Last year Governor Newsom announced the 30×30 Initiative and the Native Ancestral Lands Policy. The conservation-oriented 30×30 Initiative is the first of its kind in the nation to establish the goal of conserving 30 percent of the state’s lands and coastal waters by 2030 as a mechanism for addressing climate change and fighting species extinction and ecosystem destruction. The policy acknowledges that “since time immemorial, California Native Americans have stewarded, managed and lived interdependently with the lands that now make up the State of California.”

    The purpose of the Native Ancestral Lands Policy is to encourage state agencies, departments, boards and commissions to “seek opportunities to support California tribes’ co-management of and access to natural lands that are within a California tribe’s ancestral land and under the ownership or control of the State of California, and to work cooperatively with California tribes that are interested in acquiring natural lands in excess of State needs.”

    California must support tribal land rematriation throughout the state as part of the 30×30 Initiative, the Just Transition Roadmap, and any other state policies developed around conservation and climate change. Continuing to prioritize resource extraction from land and people is not the path toward racial and environmental justice.

    A California-based environmental justice organizer known as “mark! Lopez” told Truthout, “When we see the ocean being poisoned, we feel that pain because it is the same poison we have in our lungs and blood and any solutions we move forward must heal us all.”

    Lopez, who is the Eastside Community Organizer and Special Projects Coordinator for the group East Yard Communities for Environmental Justice, added:

    When we look at the oil spill, some may say all the ships backed up in the bay are the reason, so the solution is that cargo needs to move through the region faster to prevent ships from dragging their anchors across oil pipelines on the ocean floor. Others may say this is why we shouldn’t have pipelines on the ocean floor, and instead they should be buried. These are false solutions, and like all false solutions they only serve to reinforce capitalism and the ongoing colonization of the land, water, air, and our peoples here and across the hemisphere. Some may look at the oil spill and be shocked by the disaster, but we know that even without this catastrophic spill the everyday functioning of these systems creates crisis in our communities, from the extraction both on Native land we call our neighborhoods here in LA; to First Nations lands in Canada and Indigenous lands in the Amazon and up and down the coasts; from the everyday “small” leaks that are the collateral damage of a faulty system; to the mega refineries up against our communities; to the burning of fossil fuels to move goods including crude oil on ships, trucks and trains contaminating our communities. The system, and its false solutions, consistently reinforces itself.

    We cannot undo the damage that has already occurred as a result of colonization. But we can collectively work to make sure that it does not continue. We must prioritize the phaseout of fossil fuels on land and water and end offshore drilling in our coastal waters. In terms of the immediate crisis in Orange County, Acjachemen and Tongva leaders must be involved in all stages of the strategic planning and clean-up efforts in our homelands. No one knows these lands and waters like we do, and our voices must be centered in these conversations.

    Long-term strategies and solutions must be developed in collaboration with, and the consent and leadership of, Indigenous peoples and Native nations. There can be no “just transition” without Indigenous voices and values centered in the conversation and leading the way. The link between biodiversity hot spots and Indigenous peoples is clear. As cited by the Sacred Lands Film Project, a 2008 World Bank Report asserted that while Indigenous people make up just 4 percent of global population, “traditional indigenous territories encompass up to 22 percent of the world’s land surface and they coincide with areas that hold 80 percent of the planet’s biodiversity.”

    There were no oil spills on land or water in our homelands prior to colonization and the issuance of the papal bulls known as the Doctrine of Discovery, which legitimized the enslavement, genocide and forced removal of Indigenous peoples from their homelands around the world.

    There were no man camps or people-trafficking rings prior to colonization. There was no massive-scale environmental degradation resulting in the death of thousands of plant and animal relatives in the name of “progress.”

    Land return is a necessary step in the process of reconciliation and healing promoted by California’s governor in his 2019 apology to California Native Americans and his subsequent orders, and an essential component of any Just Transition plan.

    Returning Indigenous lands and waters to the Indigenous peoples who have been in the right relationship with their homelands since time immemorial must be a central component of any long-term strategies for creating a better world for all of us.

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Hospitals Brace For Strikes As California Workers Protest Staff Shortages

    As weary health care workers across California enter the 19th month of the pandemic, thousands are walking off the job and onto the picket line, demanding more staffing. The strikes and rallies threaten to cripple hospital operations that have been inundated by the COVID-19 Delta surge as well as patients seeking long-delayed care. More than two dozen hospitals across the state have experienced strikes by engineers, janitorial staff, respiratory therapists, nurses, midwives, physical therapists and technicians over the past four months.

    The post Hospitals Brace For Strikes As California Workers Protest Staff Shortages appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  • United States: Vaccines, public safety and workers’ rights

    How should the working class respond to a pandemic and protect workers’ interests at the same time? Malik Miah reports on the situation in the United States.

    This post was originally published on Green Left.

  • Environmentalists Demand End to Offshore Drilling as California Faces Oil Spill

    Workers with Patriot Environmental Services clean up oil that flowed into the Talbert Marsh in Huntington Beach on October 3, 2021.

    As cleanup crews on Sunday rushed to contain the damage from one of the largest oil spills in recent Southern California history, environmentalists stressed the necessity of ending offshore drilling — and ultimately, of keeping all fossil fuels in the ground.

    At least 126,000 gallons of crude oil gushed from a ruptured pipeline off the coast of Huntington Beach into ocean waters and local wetlands, the Los Angeles Times reported late Saturday.

    According to the paper:

    By sunrise Sunday, oil had washed ashore in Huntington Beach with slicks visible in the ocean, prompting officials to close a stretch of sand from Seapoint Street to the Newport Beach city line at the Santa Ana River jetty. Dead birds and fish had begun to wash up on the shore, officials said… After sunrise the smell of diesel and tar overwhelmed the shoreline at Huntington State Beach. Crashing waves brought dark oil onto the shore in clumps and rings.

    The city of Huntington Beach said in a statement that “currently, the oil slick plume measures an estimated 5.8 nautical miles long, and runs from the Huntington Beach Pier down into Newport Beach.”

    At a Saturday evening press conference, Huntington Beach Mayor Kim Carr called the spill “a potential ecological disaster.”

    Endangered and threatened species that live in the area include humpback whales, snowy plovers, and California least terns.

    “The coastal areas off of Southern California are just really rich for wildlife, a key biodiversity hot spot,” Center for Biological Diversity oceans program director Miyoko Sakashita told the Associated Press.

    “The oil spill just shows how dirty and dangerous oil drilling is,” she continued. “It’s impossible to clean it up so it ends up washing up on our beaches and people come into contact with it and wildlife comes in contact with it. It has long-lasting effects on the breeding and reproduction of animals.”

    Jacqueline Savitz, chief policy officer at the conservation group Oceana, called the spill “just the latest tragedy of the oil industry.”

    “The reality of our reliance on oil and gas is on full display here,” she said. “This is the legacy of the fossil fuel age, in which the oil and gas industry pushed their product until we were addicted. We need to break that addiction by shifting to clean energy. It’s time for the age of oil and gas to be history.”

    Savitz called on President Joe Biden “to deliver on his campaign promise to end offshore drilling.”

    Kelsey Lamp, director of the Protect Our Oceans campaign at Environment America, warned that “this spill will have long-lasting consequences.”

    “Harm from oil leaks persists for years,” she stressed. “We cannot forget that no matter what stage in the process — from extraction and refining to transportation and its use in cars — oil is dirty and dangerous to both our climate and our ability to simply breathe freely every day.”

    “We ultimately need to keep oil and gas in the ground, end offshore drilling, and require stronger penalties for fossil fuel companies that are responsible for oil spills,” Lamp added.

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • United States: R Kelly’s conviction sends message that Black girls and women matter

    R&B singer R Kelly’s conviction on racketeering and sex trafficking is a victory for Black girls and women, who have not been listened to in sexual assault cases, writes Malik Miah.

    This post was originally published on Green Left.

  • Haitian migrants brutalised at US-Mexico border, deported

    Nearly 15,000 Haitian migrants camped on the Mexico-Texas border were rounded up by US border patrol agents on horseback, reports Malik Miah.

    This post was originally published on Green Left.

  • All Voters in California Will Be Mailed Ballots Automatically Thanks to New Law

    A poll worker puts a mail-in ballot in a security box in the recall election of Gov. Gavin Newsom at a center in San Clemente, California, on September 7, 2021.

    On Monday, California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) signed a bill into law that will ensure registered voters are automatically mailed a ballot whether they request one or not, legislation that will make voting in the state far more accessible.

    The law codifies and makes permanent a policy that was implemented in order to address voting complications during the coronavirus pandemic. California voters were sent their ballots automatically in the 2020 general election, as well as in the recent 2021 gubernatorial recall race.

    “California is now PERMANENTLY a vote-by-mail state,” Newsom wrote in a tweet celebrating the development. “Because we believe in making voting EASIER and for every voice to be heard.”

    California now joins a small handful of states, including Colorado, Hawaii, Oregon, Washington and Utah, that send ballots to voters automatically. However, if Golden State voters wish to cast their vote in person, they’re still able to do so under the new law.

    Voting by mail has been linked to increases in voter participation in places where the option is available. During the 2020 election alone, California saw its voter turnout increase to around 70 percent, the highest rate the state has seen in more than six decades of voting, no doubt due in part to mailing ballots to every eligible voter. Automatically sending ballots out to voters has been particularly beneficial to historically disenfranchised communities.

    Some lauded the policy change as one that should be implemented in other parts of the country as well.

    “Vote by mail allows everyone equal access to our democracy,” Rep. Barbara Lee (D-California) wrote on Twitter. “Time to take it nationwide!”

    The chances of a similar policy being implemented in other states are low, however — Republicans have generally been against such moves, falsely claiming that the practice is linked to higher instances of voter fraud, and that expanding access to voting by mail only benefits Democrats.

    Both ideas have been refuted by several studies.

    “There is no evidence that mail balloting increases electoral fraud as there are several anti-fraud protections built into the process designed to make it difficult to impersonate voters or steal ballots,” the Brookings Institute noted last summer, citing research from the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University.

    A Stanford University study also looked at the impact of universal voting by mail procedures and found that the policy doesn’t give an advantage to either party — in fact, such voting methods produce partisan outcomes that “closely resemble in-person elections,” the study’s authors concluded.

    Polling also reveals that the American people want voting by mail expanded, not limited. A Monmouth University poll from June of this year found that 69 percent of voters across the country supported “establishing national guidelines to allow vote by mail and in-person early voting in federal elections in every state,” while just 25 percent opposed the idea. Half of the respondents in the poll (50 percent) also expressed an eagerness to make voting by mail easier, while only 39 percent said it should be harder to do.

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • In an Era of Record Wildfires, Insurers Have Made Fire Coverage Unaffordable

    A firefighter moves a hose while trying to save houses on Mountain Hawk Drive as the Shady Fire burns in the Skyhawk area of Santa Rosa, California, on September 28, 2020.

    Last week, California’s insurance commissioner, Ricardo Lara, announced that the state would stop insurance companies from dropping customers’ fire coverage in areas hit by 2021’s big wildfire infernos for one year. It builds on a regulatory change the commissioner pushed earlier this year to allow consumers to see their fire insurance “risk scores,” assigned them by insurers, and to force insurers to improve the scores of homeowners who undertake fire mitigation strategies on their properties.

    The moratorium will give roughly 325,000 homeowners, spread across fire-hit regions of 22 counties, a temporary reprieve from what has become an annual nightmare in much of California: finding insurers willing to cover property in parts of the state increasingly vulnerable to fires as the region becomes a global epicenter of climate change impacts.

    But the moratorium alone, and the risk score regulations, while providing breathing space, won’t fix a near-broken insurance system that is increasingly unable to financially navigate the climate change world of more frequent and more intense fires, floods, droughts and hurricanes. Throughout California — and indeed much of the American west — homeowners are struggling not only to find companies willing to insure them against fire, but to find companies who will do so at an affordable rate.

    In October 2020, the office of California’s insurance regulator estimated that in 2019, upwards of 235,000 homeowners lost their fire insurance coverage after their insurers refused to renew their policies. That was a more than 30 percent increase on nonrenewals for homeowners compared to the previous year, although in 2018, the combined number of homeowners and businesses in the state who lost their fire insurance totaled roughly 350,000.

    The numbers haven’t yet been released for 2020, but given that more than 4 million acres of Californian land burned during that year’s apocalyptic fires, and given that insurers have lost tens of billions of dollars as a result of California’s epic fires in recent years, it’s likely the pattern of nonrenewals has intensified. Up and down the Sierra Nevada and the range’s western foothills, entire communities either became involuntarily uninsured or faced staggering premium cost increases. And many businesses, especially in wine country, also found themselves shunned by insurance companies no longer willing to work in areas that are so at risk of destruction.

    Locked out of the private insurance market, a growing number of Californians are having to fall back on the state-run FAIR Plan insurance pool, a last-ditch fire insurance option that costs a lot and comes with high deductibles, but is at least a little bit better than nothing. The Sacramento Bee has reported that hundreds of thousands of Californians now use this plan, which can cost homeowners many thousands of dollars a year to participate in — and which doesn’t cover any non-fire-related issues, meaning customers then also have to purchase separate home insurance policies from individual companies. Seventy-five thousand homeowners were pushed onto the FAIR Plan in 2019 alone.

    Not everyone who loses private insurance qualifies, however: until Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a bill this past summer intended to address the problem, wineries, for example, were reclassified by FAIR as agricultural entities, a designation designed to exclude them from FAIR Plan eligibility. Many farmers are also excluded, as the plan wasn’t designed to cover the risk of a fire taking out large tracts of land. And even today, with the new legislation, crops and farm animal losses are still excluded from coverage. And many homeowners simply can’t afford the high premiums required to buy this last-ditch insurance. As a result, huge numbers of Californians have been left in limbo, living in areas at great risk of destruction from fire, yet unable to access coverage to protect their property and finances in the event of calamity.

    And for the “lucky” ones who do still have fire insurance — sometimes as a result of insurers using artificial intelligence systems to calculate which properties are “insurable” even in high-risk fire zones — bills have sky-rocketed in recent years, in some cases by upwards of 300 percent, meaning that many homeowners in California’s mountains and foothills are now paying more for fire insurance than they are in property taxes. Even the FAIR Plan, which is intended as something of a safety net, has seen enormous year-on-year premium increases.

    Last year, in the teeth of opposition from consumer advocates, legislators pushed to allow insurers to massively jack up their rates in fire-prone areas. It was presented by proponents as a better alternative than insurers simply pulling out of large swaths of the state completely, a risk that is, increasingly, a destabilizing element in the housing market. Opponents, however, argued that it would simply result in even higher insurance bills for consumers, without fundamentally altering the risks of bankruptcy by claims resulting from mega fires.

    In the end, the legislative clock wound down without the bill, AB 2167, being passed and signed into law.

    There is a better option. For two years now, progressive legislators have pushed bills in Sacramento that would require insurance companies to provide coverage, so long as homeowners make a good-faith effort to “harden” their properties against fire. For those same two years, however, the insurance industry has pushed back against the proposals.

    California’s legislators must get behind these and other efforts to mandate insurers keep their customers affordably insured. In an era of brutal climate change emergencies, if insurance companies genuinely can’t stay solvent while maintaining reasonably priced coverage in fire zones, then the state ought to set up a subsidy system to both protect homeowners and also keep insurers afloat. It is, after all, a social good to maintain insurance protections that serve as a buffer against destitution for millions of people, especially in an era where billion-dollar disasters, be they wildfires or hurricanes and floods, are becoming the norm rather than the exception.

    As with the federal bailout of the big car companies after the 2008 financial crisis, such climate change-era subsidies should come with nonnegotiable demands from the state: strict limits on profits; discounts for customers who put in the time and financial effort to “harden” their properties against fires; limits on the year-on-year premium increases that can be imposed, even in the most at-risk regions of the state; and insurance company investments in large-scale fire prevention strategies, as well as in climate change mitigation technologies. The consumer rights’ organization Consumer Watchdog has argued that insurers ought to be legally required to provide insurance services throughout the entire state, rather than cherry-picking which regions they insure, in order to be allowed to do business in California.

    The breakdown of California’s fire insurance system is a red-flag warning about the global vulnerability of insurance markets, and their customers, as climate change intensifies and as “extreme” weather events become the new norm. Dropping hundreds of thousands of homeowners’ fire insurance policies as a way to maintain short-term profits is, in the long-run, deeply counter-productive; it undermines the viability of communities and puts huge numbers of people at risk of homelessness and destitution in the event of fires spreading into their communities. That might protect insurers’ bottom lines, but it sure as hell doesn’t protect ordinary people as they try to survive in a world made inhospitable by global warming.

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • United States: Police, paramedics charged over Elijah McClain’s death

    A mother’s determination, combined with the campaign for racial justice, scored an important victory on September 1, when three police officers and two paramedics were charged over the death of Elijah McClain in Colorado in 2019, reports Malik Miah.

    This post was originally published on Green Left.

  • California Moves To End Recycling Symbols On Non-Recyclable Plastics

    3 Mins Read California has taken steps to stop recycling symbols from appearing on plastics and other items that aren’t actually recyclable.

    The post California Moves To End Recycling Symbols On Non-Recyclable Plastics appeared first on Green Queen.

    This post was originally published on Green Queen.

  • California Attempts To Rein In Exploitation Of Truck Drivers

    Container Connection, which delivers goods to Southern California retailers including Walmart, Ross Dress for Less and for brands Toyota, Whirlpool and Hanes, has a long record of worker misclassification judgments and findings of labor rights violations. It is also the object of an April 14 strike honored by ILWU dockworkers. Giraldo himself was part of a Cal OSHA complaint in March, saying the company failed to protect its workers from COVID-19. Neither Container Connection, nor its parent company, Universal Logistics Holdings, responded to requests for comment.

    The post California Attempts To Rein In Exploitation Of Truck Drivers appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  • In Prison, We Helped Fight Wildfires. Upon Release, We Were Handed Over to ICE.

    Incarcerated persons serving as firefighters from Oak Glen Conservation Camp clear vegetation that could fuel a wildfire near a road under the authority of Cal Fire on September 28, 2017, near Yucaipa, California.

    Phi “Tommy” Pham is currently facing deportation to Vietnam, a country he has no ties to. Pham is a refugee and incarcerated firefighter. His story is ours, too.

    In 2020, after serving as firefighters in the worst fire season in California history, we were handed over to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). While we were recently pardoned, the state prison system continues to detain and deport people like Pham — and like us.

    As the second largest fire in state history rages on, we know that this year’s fire season will be even more destructive than the last. Pham should be home preparing to protect our communities. Instead, he’s now detained in Aurora, Colorado, and facing permanent family separation.

    Like Pham, our families fled the wars in Southeast Asia before arriving in the United States. We survived refugee camps and resettled in impoverished neighborhoods in California. We struggled to make ends meet. Our families didn’t speak English, and we were frequently bullied in school for being Asian and poor. We understand why Pham turned to harmful activity. After experiencing years of trauma, we only understood survival.

    Like many others in prison, our entire lives were changed by a mistake we made as youth. Pham was just 20 when a verbal argument turned into a physical altercation. Feeling scared and outnumbered, Pham drew his gun and shot in the direction of a group, hitting one person. Everyone thankfully survived, but Pham pled to assault and was sentenced to 15 years in prison.

    In prison, Pham confronted the harm he did to his community and decided to make amends. He took anger management classes, joined support groups and completed his college degree. In 2018, Pham saw news of the devastating wildfires in Paradise, California, and decided to volunteer as a firefighter to protect the people of his home state. After months of rigorous training, he became a star firefighter at Folsom State Prison Fire Department, responding to countless life-threatening emergencies in and out of prison.

    On June 16, 2021, Pham became eligible for parole. After his years of hard work, transformation and healing, he should have been able to return home to his family. But instead, upon his release, California’s state prison system directly transferred him into ICE custody.

    In 2020, we were in exactly Pham’s position. We had both turned our lives around in prison and served on the front lines of wildfire season, risking our lives for California communities. Because of our refugee status and California’s collaboration with ICE, we were also immediately detained after paroling. Our own transformation and contributions to defending California were overlooked.

    Being detained was as terrifying as entering prison for the first time. We had already earned our freedom but were doubly punished for no reason other than that we were born outside of this country. We and our families were terrified. Locked up, we had spent years waiting for the day we could finally embrace our siblings and care for our aging parents — only to be severed from them and potentially deported to countries we never called home.

    We were incredibly grateful that this past May, Gov. Gavin Newsom pardoned us both so that we could reunite with our loved ones. But Pham is still in ICE detention, over 1,200 miles from his mother and siblings in Hayward, California.

    No family deserves to be ripped apart by deportation. That’s why we’re asking our state senators and Governor Newsom to pass A.B. 937, the VISION Act, which would protect people like us, who have served their sentences, from being transferred from jails and prisons directly into ICE custody.

    We also urge Governor Newsom to immediately pardon Pham. In detention, Pham is suffering from lung damage and vision problems, while ICE refuses to let him seek treatment. We ask that the governor recognize Pham’s contributions to society and make sure that he comes home to the care of his family.

    In the next few months, California will be devastated by unprecedented wildfires, exacerbated by extreme drought and the climate crisis. The governor must take decisive action by protecting the immigrants and incarcerated firefighters who serve our communities. If our elected officials pardon Phi Pham and sign the VISION Act, they’ll help build a safer, more compassionate society where all families, including families like ours, can thrive.

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Climate Crises Converge as Wildfire Burns West and Hurricane Pummels South

    Kandaysha Harris wipes her face before continuing traveling through the storm of Hurricane Ida on August 29, 2021 in New Orleans, Louisiana.

    Hurricane Ida made landfall in Southern Louisiana on Sunday as one of the most powerful hurricanes to ever hit the U.S. It has knocked out power to the hundreds of thousands of residents of New Orleans and over 1 million in Louisiana and has caused at least one death so far.

    Scientists say that the climate crisis has, without a doubt, made Ida more intense as higher water temperatures offshore act as fuel to a hurricane’s fire. Greenhouse gases resulting from human activity have contributed to a rise in average water temperatures in the Gulf of Mexico by 3 to 5 degrees Fahrenheit since the late 20th century. The category 4 storm has so far blown entire roofs off buildings, devastated the Louisiana town of​ Jean Lafitte, and overwhelmed hospitals already filled with COVID patients.

    Ida’s storm surge was so strong as it made landfall that the hurricane actually reversed the flow of the Mississippi River, something that experts say is extremely rare. With the threat of levee failure hanging over Louisiana, the hurricane, since downgraded to a tropical storm, is headed into Mississippi.

    Though many residents evacuated the region before the storm, many others, unable to evacuate, have been left behind. Some people simply cannot afford the costs associated with seeking shelter out of the storm or may not have reliable access to transportation out of the area, such as a car. Other populations, such as incarcerated people, have no choice either way.

    As Ida blasted through Louisiana, the climate crisis intensified blazes across the country. Wildfire Caldor has engulfed hundreds of homes in its wake as it has moved across eastern California in the past two weeks. It now threatens Lake Tahoe, where residents on the California side have been ordered to evacuate.

    The Caldor fire has been particularly hard to contain. Firefighters have pushed back their estimated date for containment of the fire to September 8. As the Caldor fire blazes on, the Dixie Fire, just 65 miles to the North, is well into its second month of burning. At nearly 50 percent containment and with over 770,000 acres burned so far, the Dixie Fire is the second-largest fire in California history, beaten only by the August Complex fire from last year.

    California’s weather has become drier for longer periods over the past decades as global warming and climate disruption have lengthened the wildfire season and pushed winter rains further and further back in the year. It has wreaked havoc on the state, where six of the seven largest fires in the state, including the Dixie Fire, have occurred over the past year or so.

    It’s unclear if all of these disasters were caused directly by the climate crisis, but they were surely fueled by it. As climate scientists warn of dire consequences if the world continues on its current path, the western part of the U.S. has experienced record heat waves, making July 2021 the hottest month in recorded history on Earth.

    The converging climate disasters come as officials struggle to contain the pandemic scouring the country and contend with massive unrest in Afghanistan: Two crises that may seem unrelated but have actually been exacerbated by the climate crisis. Climate change helps spread infectious diseases, scientists have warned for years. There’s evidence that air pollution, including that of burning fossil fuels, has worsened COVID outcomes for frontline communities living in areas that bear the brunt of increased air pollution. Meanwhile in Afghanistan, the Taliban has exploited the economic devastation and serious resource shortages brought on by the twin effects of drought and flooding caused by climate change to successfully overthrow the government that was propped up by the U.S.

    Climate unrest has been on full display through this year and the last. But nearly all of these problems exacerbate each other, solidifying the so-called threat multiplier effect of the climate crisis.

    California, for instance, cruelly forces incarcerated people to be on the frontline of firefighting when the wildfire season rolls around, paying them such absurdly low rates that it has been likened to slavery. But, with so many prisons ravaged by the pandemic, the state has had fewer incarcerated bodies to help fight the fires, making it harder to contain the blazes as they rage on.

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Don’t Just “Close” Prisons — Demolish Them and Reinvest Their Funding

    People display signs outside of a jail

    As the movement to defund the police and prison has continued to gain steam, more are embracing a key decarceration strategy: closing down prisons and jails. Struggles for prison closures have always been an important organizing tactic for those of us working against the prison-industrial complex. Unfortunately, some state governments have attempted to co-opt the rhetoric of prison closure without truly putting it into practice.

    California Gov. Gavin Newsom’s Legislative Analyst’s Office has announced two prison closures — Deuel Vocational Institution (DVI) in Tracy, and California Correctional Center in Susanville — in the wake of the devastating impacts of COVID-19 as well as the ongoing forest fires endangering vulnerable people across the state.

    But what does the state mean by “prison closure?” Sure, the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) will transfer the people locked within these prisons to other remote locations throughout the state, and there will be some staff shuffling. But what is actually being offered by CDCR is called a “warm shutdown”: The prisons will maintain a skeleton crew of staff, a smaller budget and, in the instance of DVI, will then be used as a training site for corrections officers.

    The problem is, like all prisons, DVI is infamous for its decades of oppressive and harmful tactics and toxic culture. I know this first-hand: I spent two years caged in DVI. It was an experience I’ll never forget, and why I know for sure that DVI should never be used to train any prison staff.

    DVI is known as “gladiator school” to people throughout the prison system because of the history of violence permitted and ignored by staff that took place over the course of this prison’s history. When I was sent there, it took a five-hour bus ride to arrive at the facility from Wasco State Prison, a reception center where many start their sentence. Riding in, I could see the housing wings — dirty clothes piled up outside, debris waiting to be picked up. All of the housing units were clearly dilapidated, but I had no idea how bad it really was until I got inside. We were herded from the receiving and release area led to a tiny, ramshackle building. It was raining and the ceiling was leaking.

    We were pushed through monstrous, pronged cattle turnstiles into cages that were filled far beyond capacity, as if we were animals at a factory farm. We waited for six and a half hours, only then to be ushered through a series of ambivalent nurses and stern interviewing sergeants. We were given a kit called a “bedroll” –– a tattered shirt, one pair of underwear and socks, and some old sheets. As we were escorted through a large corridor, dayroom after dayroom was crammed full of beds and people until we arrived at “fish row.” That’s where they house new intakes to the prison, on the first floor of C-Wing.

    I entered my cell and the guard slammed the door shut behind me. It was completely dark. After several minutes of searching, I discovered an old pull-string light above the top bunk; the lightbulb was missing. It was very cold from the rain outside, and a puddle pooled beneath the grated but open window. Closing the window wasn’t an option — the surrounding window panes were broken. The cell was disgusting; it had a smell that could only be described as “rotten.” The mattress was torn in half.

    I shouted to a person in the cell across from mine: “How do I get a light and a mattress?”

    He answered, “You won’t get anything from them [the prison guards]. They’ll ignore you if you ask.”

    This was my first day in DVI-Tracy.

    One might assume it got better — it didn’t. The truth is, although privileges slightly improved as I made it into the general population of the prison, conditions did not. The shower drains were clogged and the water severely discolored — black and orange most days. The prison guards were dismissive, rude and aggressive. While this is typical within the California prison system, DVI-Tracy seemed to be tinged with a special kind of hatred for imprisoned people that only comes from a longstanding, toxic internal culture built on the idea that we are “less than.”

    Tracy is known to have the largest recreational yard and gym within CDCR, but we only got to go outside once or twice a week at most. Instead of being offered as a space for recreational purposes, the gym was used to cage hundreds of people, specifically putting up to hundreds of triple-stacked bunk beds and ensuring that every bed was full. Sometimes weeks would go by without any “outside time.” Isolated, we made “fishing lines” out of the elastic in our boxer shorts to pass notes to one another. I lived the next two years like this. Others would spend their entire lives under these horrid conditions.

    I was in DVI in 2003 and 2004. During this time, CDCR as a whole was under federal monitor due to reports of severe abuses and mistreatment of incarcerated people in its system. Did any of the federal monitoring change the abhorrent living conditions? My experience of DVI is that no amount of external pressure or monitoring actually changed anything significantly. Windows were left broken; lightbulbs were hard to get; water was left muddy, metallic and orange-black; and drains were left clogged until someone “important” did a walk through. Then things were fixed only to the degree that they appeared “suitable.” Eventually, everything would fall apart again and no one cared — except the people who lived there. This was — and I assert still is — the culture within DVI-Tracy. It’s endemic. It cannot be “trained out.”

    The only way to ensure that the toxic culture at DVI is eliminated is to eliminate the prison as a whole. Tear it to the ground and deactivate the staff positions completely. DVI’s closure will save California $119 million in 2021-22 — and an additional $150.3 million every year after. That savings could be used for reentry programs for formerly imprisoned people and to directly support the economies of the towns that are impacted by DVI’s closure.

    Demolishing DVI will ensure that CDCR can never use this horrid, archaic place for anything ever again. Its demolition could serve as a model for decarceration efforts around the country.

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Far Right Groups Tied to Jan. 6 Attack Reporters and Others at Anti-Mask Rally

    As COVID-19 cases surge in the United States, anti-mask and anti-vaccine protests are continuing nationwide, with some turning violent. In a shocking story out of California, at least one person was stabbed and two journalists were attacked while covering an anti-vaccine, anti-mask demonstration outside Los Angeles City Hall on Saturday, August 14. The protest was attended by members of the Proud Boys and other right-wing groups. A Southern California mortgage broker named Tony Moon, who also participated in the deadly January 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol, was videotaped attacking the independent journalist Tina-Desiree Berg. “He started screaming ‘Unmask them all!’ He ripped my mask off and manhandled me,” says Berg, a reporter at Status Coup News in Los Angeles, who describes how the same people have been involved in violent protests nationwide. “This is a group that has been traveling around … and they instigate violence wherever they go.”

    TRANSCRIPT

    This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.

    AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. I’m Amy Goodman.

    As COVID-19 cases surge in the United States, with the country once again averaging 1,000 daily coronavirus deaths a day, we look now at how anti-mask, anti-vaccine protests are continuing nationwide, with some turning violent.

    In a shocking story out of California, at least one person was stabbed and two journalists attacked while covering an anti-vax, anti-mask demonstration outside Los Angeles City Hall on Saturday, August 14th. That was two Saturdays ago. The protest was attended by members of the Proud Boys and other right-wing groups. KPCC Radio reporter Frank Stoltze was assaulted while doing an interview. He had his glasses ripped off, was repeatedly kicked. He said nothing like that had ever happened to him in his 30 years of reporting.

    The Huffington Post reports a Southern California mortgage broker named Tony Moon was videotaped attacking the independent journalist Tina-Desiree Berg. Moon was also seen screaming, “Unmask them all!” Moon was also in Washington on January 6 during the insurrection at the Capitol.

    Well, last week, I spoke to Tina-Desiree Berg, a reporter at Status Coup News in Los Angeles, and asked her to describe the protest and what happened to her as she covered it.

    TINA–DESIREE BERG: It was a wild day. I got there about 45 minutes before the violence actually started, because I had been — I had just released a story that morning, Saturday, where one of our gubernatorial candidates, Sarah Stephens, she had been involved with another press beating in front of the Wi Spa almost three weeks ago. I had filmed that beating. And coincidentally, the folks that did it had posted bodycam footage of themselves inside the vehicle as they were leaving, and they posted it on social media. So, when I saw that, I knew who had been responsible. But one of the persons in the vehicle was Sarah Stephens. She’s running for governor right now. And we were able to identify her not only through her license plate, but also through video surrounding the incident where you see her on the sidewalk. So my intention that morning was to go down, since she was one of the keynote speakers, and maybe try to talk to her about what happened at Wi Spa two weeks before, because I think that’s a newsworthy conversation to have if you’re running for governor.

    But we never made it that far. So, initially, on the sidewalk, a group of me and other reporters were standing there. There had been some skateboarders that had been going up and down First Street and Spring Street, and they were preteens, kids. Maybe the oldest was 15, it seemed to me. I didn’t videotape much of them because I generally don’t videotape children. But at one point, one of the Proud Boys — his name is Benjamin Patino — came across the street and started harassing one of the skateboarders and calling them antifa. So, these guys, they have a broad brush with what they state to be antifa. They see antifa where there’s no antifa often, in my experience. So, he started harassing one of these skateboarders, and somebody that is in black bloc came to this kid’s defense and pushed Patino away.

    Patino ran back across the street, but then he came back over with Adam Kiefer, who is another Proud Boy, Tony Moon, who is a Capitol insurrectionist, and a group of other folks, and I’m not sure who all of the other ones were. And that’s when you had the incident of one of them came up to me, called me a B-I-T-C-H — I’m not sure if we can say that — and he punched me in the camera. But I kept filming.

    Then Tony Moon came over, and he had been hitting another woman with his water bottle, and I tried to intervene a little bit while I was filming, because I could see she had a bloody head. She had been hit in the head. And so, then he started screaming, “Unmask them all!” He ripped my mask off and manhandled me or shoved me a little bit. But then I kept filming.

    And right after that, you’ll notice in the background of the video there is a counterprotester, who is pro-vaccine, who was — looks like he’s getting beaten by fists, but it turns out that that individual had a shank of some sort in his hand and was actually trying to stab him. So, that’s the second stabbing. The first stabbing had happened earlier. I didn’t catch it on video, but I did see the gentleman coming by from behind, walking towards the police officers, and you can see there’s blood on his shirt. And then he’s collapsed in the street, and they’re giving him aid. So, as far as I know, there’s definitely two stabbings. There might be more that I didn’t quite catch. But it was a very violent scene.

    And it’s interesting to me, because some of these characters, including Tony Moon — he was also, incidentally, at that same Wi Spa event where this other press member was hit on the back of the head with a lead pipe. Tony Moon was there that day also with a water bottle, and he struck a counterprotester with that. So, I think it’s interesting, Amy, that this is a group that has been traveling around Southern California, they’ve also been up in Sacramento, they have also been up in Portland, and they instigate violence wherever they go. And again, these are — they’re right-wingers. They are definitely part of the group that supported Trump, but I don’t think this is solely about Trump anymore, or necessarily anti-vaccine. I think that they are just latching on from one movement to the next, and they’re kind of coalesced around this idea of freedom. And you’ll notice that they all have these gaiters on that are covering their faces. They’re not trying to prevent the spread of COVID; they’re trying to stop themselves from being identified.

    AMY GOODMAN: Tell us more about the direct attack on you and how you know who Tony Moon is and that he was at the insurrection, January 6, at the Capitol.

    TINA–DESIREE BERG: Yeah, so, I know who Tony Moon is because he had been at that Wi Spa event two weeks earlier. After I saw him hit the woman with the water bottle, I got online and started to research who he was, and I saw that he had been at the Capitol January 6th, because he had posted video of himself on his social media showing that he had been. And there was also a clip in the Parler archive, that’s on ProPublica, where you see him in that video. So he was definitely there.

    And I think it also bears mentioning that he identifies himself as “Roof Korean,” and that is a very racist trope that goes back to the beating of Rodney King. So, he’s definitely identifying himself as a group that’s already radical right, racist, doing violence. So, yeah, he was there at Wi Spa. We looked into who he was. And then, when I saw him coming up to me, I said, “Oh, there’s Tony Moon. That’s the Roof Korean guy that was at Wi Spa a couple weeks ago.” But I will say this: He seemed much more violent and radicalized Saturday morning.

    I think also maybe there’s a double meaning to “unmask them,” because we were all wearing masks for protection, so I had my surgical mask on. I think his idea is that not only are we unmasking you because we’re anti-vaxxers and we’re anti-maskers and we see this as an infringement to freedom, but also they’re very vested in this idea of doxxing and exposing anybody that is against, you know, their beliefs. Now, randomly, of course, I use my real name, so there’s not much to dox there, but I do think that’s why he was screaming, “Unmask them all!” It wasn’t solely because of the mask to prevent COVID transmission.

    AMY GOODMAN: I want to throw to a clip of he attack on you, that you yourself filmed.

    PROUD BOY: Hey, bitch!

    TINA–DESIREE BERG: Hey! Yo! Stop it!

    TONY MOON: Unmask them! Unmask them!

    TINA–DESIREE BERG: [bleep] you!

    TONY MOON: Unmask them! Unmask them!

    TINA–DESIREE BERG: Yeah, so, the first guy that came up and punched me was not Tony Moon. It was another gentleman. He came right up to the camera. He called me the B-word and hit me, backed away back where the guys were. So he absolutely targeted me for some reason. I’m not sure why that is.

    And then, you know, maybe 20, 30 seconds later, Tony Moon was right there. So, when he came up to me, you could tell his intention was to pull down — and he did pull it down — my mask. And I had put up my goggles at that point, as well, because somebody had been using bear mace. And, in fact, I believe it was the anti-vaxxer that was stabbed that had used bear mace, because I do have video of him earlier using bear mace and spraying people. This is a tactic that the Proud Boys have deployed for many months now. So we’ve seen it at various different protests, where they pull out bear mace and they mace people. So, he did successfully pull my mask down. He was, like I said, hitting that other woman — you’ll see she has a bloody head — and just kind of escalated from there and started screaming, “Unmask them all!”

    And I also think it’s interesting that if you look at the video, you see that they all have orange armbands on and that their water bottles are all orange. So, obviously, orange is a significant color for them. I don’t know if they’re coordinating with it, but you will see they have orange armbands. And it sort of is reminiscent of January 6 at the Capitol, because, that day, the Proud Boys had been marking themselves with orange gaffer tape or orange beanies on their heads. And they had, at that point — Enrique Tarrio had told everybody to show up dressed not as they normally would in their Proud Boy attire, but into, you know, sort of antifa in disguise, and they had been marking themselves, ergo, with the orange color, whether it was the tape, the gaffer tape, or the beanies. I don’t know that there’s a crossover here with the group that was with Tony Moon, but I do think it’s interesting that they all had orange armbands on.

    AMY GOODMAN: How did you personally feel when this was happening to you? I mean, this was a anti-mask, anti-vax rally. They’re pulling down your mask.

    TINA–DESIREE BERG: I was actually very concerned about — in the moment, because you know that these folks aren’t vaccinated. I am absolutely fully vaccinated, but there’s still a chance of transmission. And that’s actually — I’ve been hit before. You know, when you’re in the field covering things, it’s something that sometimes happens, so this is not the first time I’ve been hit doing my job. But I was really concerned that they were willing to get so close to me and get into my face and pulled down my mask. And they — you know, higher chance, obviously, that they’re infected with COVID since they’re not vaccinated. So, that’s actually more scary to me than being punched. I do not want to get COVID, right? So, it was a violation of personal space. But I was just very focused on getting the video and staying focused on what I was filming in that moment.

    AMY GOODMAN: Tina-Desiree Berg, where were the police? You were right in front of LAPD headquarters?

    TINA–DESIREE BERG: Yeah, that’s right. That’s right. So, I think that’s a significant part of the story. So, City Hall is stationed exactly across the street from LAPD headquarters. And where this bully happened is in the sidewalk and the street area right in front of the headquarters. The police had been there all morning. When I got there, there was probably five or six cruisers lined up with officers in them. So they were absolutely present. And I don’t know what the delay was, as far as, you know, not responding to what was going on, but they did not initially respond.

    AMY GOODMAN: And then, track the people, some of the people that you saw there at this protest, along the coast, from California to Oregon to Washington.

    TINA–DESIREE BERG: Right. So, the main guide that you see coming out — OK, so there’s Patino that came across the street, Benjamin Patino, and messed with the skateboarder kid and then went back.

    Then you see another one appear. His name is Adam Kiefer. He is actually part of a more violent group that I’ve seen. And, in fact, related to this, I was covering another anti-vax protest in West Hollywood a couple of weeks ago, and Adam Kiefer came across the street towards me and two other journalists and started threatening us. I have some video of that, and in it, you’ll see him say, “Why are you throwing rocks at me?” — and which nobody was doing. Obviously, none of us were throwing rocks. And I respond to Adam, “I’m not throwing rocks. Nobody here is throwing rocks. We’re just journalists.” And then they ended up getting more aggressive. We ended up running into the Trader Joe’s and seeking refuge in there. They actually had to shut down the store for a few minutes, until they called the sheriff’s department to show up.

    But so, I’ve seen him there. I have seen him in Huntington Beach as part of a group that’s been at the Huntington Beach rallies. Those were happening every week during the run-up to the general election. They were pro-Trump. He’s been in Beverly Hills assaulting people. They also had weekly rallies there at the Beverly Garland Park, which is right off of Wilshire Boulevard. So, I also have filmed him in Sacramento being violent, beating up people. So this is somebody that’s definitely traveled around.

    So, it’s interesting to me, though, that at this point, Amy, that these guys are very dedicated to what they’re doing. And I don’t know that if you had ask them five or six years ago if they were anti-vaccine, that they would respond with an affirmative. I think this is just one more cause that they’ve picked up because they do see it as a violation of their freedoms.

    AMY GOODMAN: Tina, how does this whole protest movement dovetail with the recall Governor Newsom movement?

    TINA–DESIREE BERG: Yeah, that’s an excellent question. So, because this was — they called this a “freedom rally,” and that was part of the equation, was that we’re going to also have candidates that are running for governor here that are against Newsom. So, recall Newsom is definitely gaining speed here in California. You know, Sarah Stephens, which is the candidate that I mentioned earlier, she was involved with another Proud Boy, Aaron Simmons, at this Wi Spa assault. She drove the getaway car. So she’s definitely tied with these guys.

    I was down in San Diego a couple of weeks ago trying to film a — Mike Pompeo was here, and he was doing a rally for Larry Elder, who is actually tracking number one right now to win if Newsom is recalled. It was an event that was hosted by a Christian Zionist group. Jewish Voice for Peace and the Palestinian Youth Movement joined together to do a counterprotest and rally. So I went down to film that. I covered the speeches and part of the march. But when we got to where Mike Pompeo was speaking, where Larry Elder was speaking, there was a group that had set up some sort of a phony barricade in front of the street, so we couldn’t get further. And as you approached them, they were — in much the same way you saw them menacing on Saturday, they were menacing us and egging people on — “Come here” — you know, very angry way.

    I researched some of those guys. There was one named Mike Forzano, who is also a Proud Boy. He is also a member of the American Guard, which is a designated hate group from the Southern Poverty Law Center. He was one of them. He bear-maced me. He hit me, hit my phone out of my hand. And I’m sure that there were others there that I didn’t see that traveled down from Orange County, what have you.

    But this is definitely a widespread thing here in California. And I think it’s probably shocking for a lot of folks outside of the state, because they see California as being a, you know, liberal, progressive state. But we do have an element of very hard-right folks here. And they do — they have become much more vocal under the Trump administration.

    AMY GOODMAN: So, can you also tell us about what happened? I believe it was right at the same time as the insurrectionists were storming the Capitol that there were local protests around the country. And the attack on the Black trans woman in L.A., how this fits into the story? Her name was Berlinda. She was 25 years old.

    TINA–DESIREE BERG: That’s right.

    AMY GOODMAN: She said a large group of pro-Trump supporters attacked her.

    TINA–DESIREE BERG: That is absolutely correct. So, she had — and I filmed this. I was there for that protest. My co-worker, associate Jon Farina was in the Capitol shooting that day. So, he was actually in the tunnel when the police officer had his head squished, filming that. And I remember, at the end of the day, where I was, I called Jordan, and I said, “I just filmed a hate crime.” And Jordan was like, “You obviously haven’t tuned in to what’s happening in D.C. today.” And I’m like, “No, is it worse?” He said, “Yes” — as an aside.

    But Berlinda had just been walking down the street, because she lives in the area. And they came up to her. They held her back. They sprayed her with bear mace. And the worst part of it is a group of them grabbed her weave off of her head, and one of them was holding up the weave and screaming, “This is the first scalping of the new Civil War!” It was one of the most appalling things I’ve ever witnessed. Just appalling. And she was one of two individuals that I saw bear-maced that day. They did bear-mace a second Black individual that was walking through the park.

    But here’s where this ties into the LAPD and where they bring their clear bias to the skirmish line. So, she went up to Stabile, who is one of the commanding officers for that division, and wanted to, you know, say, “Look, I was just assaulted. This is what happened.” And Stabile says to her — and I have all of this on video — Stabile says to her, “Well, you can file a citizen’s arrest.”

    So, at that point, I interrupted, because I thought that was pretty appalling. I said, “Stabile, that’s what you do if there’s no probable cause. There’s clear probable cause here. We have the whole thing on video. How is this not a hate crime?”

    And do you know, to this day, the LAPD has not investigated this particular thing or, at least as far as I know, brought charges in regards to this?

    Now, if you go to Stabile’s personal social media, you will see very clearly that he is pro-Trump, that he talks a lot about antifa and how antifa is bad. He’s definitely, you know, making posts in regards to being anti-mask. And he’s not the only one. There’s another one in this division who’s named Sergeant Helper, and he also has a private — or, separate Instagram and Twitter where he posts some of the same similar sentiments.

    So I think there’s definitely a problem that’s being crossed over here. When you have police officers that are in command and they want to bring their personal bias to the skirmish line, they’re going to, you know, let these guys get away with a certain level of violence before they step in. And we’ve seen it time and time again. And I can say without equivocation, if the reverse was happening, if this was BLM activists, if this was antifa or black bloc, they would be pulling their weapons and making arrests and beating people. That’s just not a controversial statement. So I think it is really a problem inside the LAPD at this point.

    AMY GOODMAN: And finally, if you could elaborate on what happened in July, the Korean spa called Wi Spa becoming a center of attacks? What’s its significance? And what happened?

    TINA–DESIREE BERG: So, this is a very significant part of the story, because it’s, again, part of the same group of individuals, right? So, there had been a customer that had come into Wi Spa, and she was — you see a video that circulated. I think Tucker Carlson at one point picked it up. But she comes out, and she claims that there’s a pedophile, a trans individual, in the dressing room, and that, you know, she’s worried about children, this kind of a thing. So they staged a counterprotest and protest in front of Wi Spa.

    Now, I did talk to the security at Wi Spa. They do have transgender clients that attend Wi Spa. There was no transgender clients present that day when this video was shot, so there’s a general feeling — and this is also coming from the LAPD — that that’s actually not an authentic video. I have not been able to verify that. That’s just what I’m being told by security and what the conclusions have been thus far from the investigation.

    But this — you know, we had a group that have now combined with these other guys, and they’re very religious, right? So, they were — I have video of one gal. She’s screaming, “You’re animals! You’re going to burn in hell!” There was another gentleman that had a weapon sort of fashioned. It just — you have to see the audio or the video of this. It looks like a giant rosary, where instead of the beads being very small, they’re very large. They’re like about an inch, inch and a half, two inches in diameter. And he’s hitting people with this thing and screaming, “You’re an abomination! You’re an abomination! You’re animals!” You know, so very violent and religiously motivated bigotry. And, of course, now you have the second layer of these Proud Boys and these other folks, right-wingers, coming in and joining the fray and banding together with these guys.

    In fact, at the second protest, we saw Based Spartan was there with them. Based Spartan, as you know, is somebody that’s been a subject even of a Vice article. He was up in Portland wearing kind of a Trojan outfit. He lives down here in Southern California. I’ve seen him at many of these protests, as well, hitting people.

    So, yeah. So, the Wi Spa thing is significant, and Tony Moon was there, as well. You know, he was, again, hitting — he hit a woman there with a water bottle, as well. So, the violence — these two violent situations, I think, are conjoined, and also because of the Sarah Stephens element, where she was part of the lead pipe attack against Rocky Romano, who is the press member that was hit on the back of the head. She was driving the getaway car. We’ve confirmed that.

    So, it’s just wild to me, Amy, that this is what 2021 is bringing us. If you had told me six months ago, even, you know, three months ago, that this would be the level of escalation of violence we would be seeing, I probably would have thought, “Mm, maybe not.” But I feel now very strongly that at some point somebody is probably going to get shot, because these are turning into full-blown sort of prison-level street brawls in the street.

    AMY GOODMAN: Let me, finally, ask you: Do you think that women reporters are being particularly targeted, like yourself?

    TINA–DESIREE BERG: Absolutely, I think that’s definitely the case. You know, I think it’s either smaller men or definitely women. And, in fact, I was talking with Adam Rose from the L.A. Press Club about this, because he’s noticed there’s an escalation of violence against female reporters across the board.

    So, I do think that’s true, mainly because they — I was hit twice in that period of two minutes, and the male journalists were not, although they did go up and attack Frank later on in the day while he was doing an interview. In that first initial brawl out in the front of LAPD headquarters, they were not necessarily going after the male reporters at the same level. They were, however, punching all of the counterprotesters, male or female.

    AMY GOODMAN: Well, Tina-Desiree Berg, I want to thank you for being with us. Final question: Does this deter you from going out and covering what’s happening, especially among the Proud Boys?

    TINA–DESIREE BERG: No, it doesn’t. And I’ll tell you why, Amy. People need to see what’s going on. And if I let them control what I do, then they kind of win the conversation. That’s the point of what they’re doing, right? To intimidate, to stop. They don’t want the press. They don’t want people filming them. They don’t want to be exposed for their violent actions. And so, the intention of what they’re doing is to try to silence me and other journalists like me from covering what they’re doing. And I absolutely am not deterred from doing it.

    I will, however, be much more aware, take more, probably, safety precautions. You know, I go out now with a full set of safety precautions now that I never did before. I never used to wear any — a flak vest. I never used to wear a helmet. This just didn’t seem like necessary. I’m not in a war zone, right? But maybe that’s the case. Maybe this is where the United States is heading right now, because I feel that these groups are becoming more radicalized as time goes by.

    And I think the next thing that we’re going to see, at least here in California, is sort of “stop the steal,” California edition, right? Because if Newsom does prevail and he does not get recalled, I think we’re going to see a whole host of these guys coming out and saying that it’s a rigged election, that the election results are false, and it won’t matter whether there’s any underlying evidence to prove that.

    AMY GOODMAN: And, Tina, just to be clear, since you have so much of this video, and have shown it, have tweeted it out — and we’ve been showing it throughout this interview — was anyone arrested for attacking you?

    TINA–DESIREE BERG: No.

    AMY GOODMAN: Was anyone arrested for bloodying the other woman?

    TINA–DESIREE BERG: No.

    AMY GOODMAN: Was anyone arrested for the knifing?

    TINA–DESIREE BERG: No. That’s the thing. Nobody has been arrested. So, I know that the LAPD is now looking for suspects in both stabbings, apparently, which — this is surprising to me. They’re saying yesterday, during the police commissioner’s hearing, that they weren’t aware of the second stabbing, but that they are now, and they’re going to look for the attackers.

    But here’s the thing that’s troublesome about this. The attackers were there present that day, and if they had been arrested, detained or dealt with, we’d know who they are. But now it’s going to be very difficult to chase them down, because they were all covered up. You can’t really — it’s hard to decide who these folks are, because they have the gaiters up over their head. They have hats on, goggles, what have you. It’s going to be very hard to identify them. So, waiting to follow up on these acts of violence is very detrimental to the investigation.

    AMY GOODMAN: Tina-Desiree Berg, reporter at Status Coup News in Los Angeles. On Sunday, members of the Proud Boys attacked anti-fascist activists in Portland, Oregon.

    That does it for the show. Very Happy Birthday to Julie Crosby! I’m Amy Goodman.

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • In Win for Gig Workers, Judge Rules California’s Prop 22 Unconstitutional

    Gig drivers display signs demanding living wages and the passage of the Pro Act

    A California judge ruled Friday that Proposition 22 — a measure that let so-called gig economy companies like Uber and Lyft limit worker protections — is unconstitutional.

    “This is a MAJOR and deserved win for drivers and gig workers,” the California Labor Federation tweeted Friday in response to the ruling.

    Passed last November after over $200 million in campaign spending by major gig companies, Prop 22 let the companies classify workers as independent contractors rather than employees.

    Morgan Harper, senior advisor at the American Economic Liberties Project, previously called Prop 22 “not just the most expensive ballot initiative of all time” but “an egregious display of the ways dominant corporations use ill-won profits to entrench their power, shape public discourse, influence government policy, and avoid accountability.”

    The Service Employees International Union (SEIU) and drivers filed suit, with a February challenge at the Alameda County Superior Court after the California Supreme Court declined to hear their petition. The workers alleged in part that the measure denied the state Legislature the ability to grant workers the right to organize for better working conditions.

    Siding with the workers, Alameda County Superior Court Judge Frank Roesch said Friday that Prop 22 was “unenforceable,” citing in part the law’s “difficult to the point of near impossibility” requirement of the support of seven-eighths of the state Legislature to make any changes.

    “A prohibition on legislation authorizing collective bargaining by app-based drivers does not promote the right to work as an independent contractor, nor does it protect work flexibility, nor does it provide minimum workplace safety and pay standards for those workers,” Roesch wrote. “It appears only to protect the economic interest of the network companies in having a divided, ununionized workforce, which is not a stated goal of the legislation.”

    Bob Schoonover, president of the SEIU California State Council, welcomed the development, saying Friday the “ruling by Judge Roesch striking down Proposition 22 couldn’t be clearer: The gig industry-funded ballot initiative was unconstitutional and is therefore unenforceable.”

    “Companies like Uber and Lyft spent $225 million in an effort to take away rights from workers in a way that violates California’s constitution,” he said, accusing the companies of having “tried to boost their profits by undermining democracy and the state constitution.”

    Veena Dubal, a professor at the University of California Hastings Law School who filed a court brief in support of the workers, previously said Prop 22’s passage amounted to “the most radical undoing of labor legislation since Taft-Hartley in 1947.”

    In a tweet hours after Roesch’s ruling, she pointed to a still-long road ahead for worker rights.

    “We won tonight, but make no mistake,” Dubal wrote. “Victory is never handed by legal edict to working people. To the contrary, our collective struggles are just beginning. May the platform plantation owners lose sleep as we build solidarity and power for equality and justice.”

    The coalition representing the gig economies, meanwhile, has announced its intention to appeal.

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • If California Governor Is Replaced With Republican, Senate Could Swing to GOP

    California Gov. Gavin Newsom meets with Latino leaders and volunteers working to call voters and urge them to vote against the recall at Hecho en Mexico restaurant in East Los Angeles on August 14, 2021.

    There’s a good chance that California — a solidly blue state — will get a right-wing Republican governor as a result of the September 14 recall election. If Gov. Gavin Newsom is recalled, the health, civil rights and future of Californians — and people across the country — will be profoundly threatened. It is also possible that Newsom’s defeat could change the balance of power in the U.S. Senate, since the next California governor may be in a position to appoint a senator.

    In defending his governorship, Newsom emphasizes that a GOP leader would likely roll back progressive reforms.

    “The recall is an attempt by national Republican and Trump supporters to force an election and grab power in California,” Newsom’s ballot statement in the Official Voter Information Guide says. “The leaders of the Republican recall seek to repeal California’s clean air protections, roll back gun safety laws and take away health care from those who need it.”

    Newsom cited his efforts to fight racism and police violence in an interview with the San Diego Union-Tribune:

    California has fought systemic racism and fought to infuse our justice system with more safety and equality…. I’ve signed into law the nation’s strongest police use-of-force standard; outlawed private, for-profit prisons and immigration detention centers; banned all chokeholds in California; passed the nation’s first bill requiring independent investigations by the attorney general of all police shootings of unarmed individuals; and passed legislation to reform California’s juvenile justice system, break the school to prison pipeline, and phase out state-operated youth prisons.

    Right-wing forces behind the recall were aided by the pandemic, gaining more time than usual to collect signatures to place the recall election, estimated to cost taxpayers $276 million, on the ballot. Newsom is also suffering from a self-inflicted wound stemming from the pandemic. Although he was the first governor to issue a mask mandate, which was popular with most Californians, he attended a dinner in November at the upscale French Laundry restaurant with no masks or social distancing, giving rise to charges of hypocrisy.

    Although Republicans make up just 24 percent of registered California voters, a CBS News poll released on August 15 indicated that Newsom has only a slim lead, within the margin of error, among likely voters. Republicans will probably vote at a greater rate than Democrats because California Democratic Party leaders didn’t initially take the recall seriously and dragged their feet while Republicans were mobilizing.

    Right-Wing Republican Larry Elder Leads the GOP Pack to Replace Newsom

    Trumpster radio talk-show host Republican Larry Elder is the front-runner among the 46 candidates vying to replace Newsom if the latter is recalled. Elder — who mentored Trump’s anti-immigrant adviser Stephen Miller — denies the existence of systemic racism, inaccurately describes Black people as crime-prone, and opposes sanctuary laws and citizenship for Dreamers. He is against vaccine and mask mandates and doesn’t take the climate crisis seriously. Elder opposes gun control, any minimum wage, paid family leave and has called Roe v. Wade “one of the worst decisions that the Supreme Court ever handed down.”

    California is a national leader in moving away from fossil fuels, which drive global warming and exacerbate wildfires. But Elder said he would end the “war on oil and gas,” reduce regulation of fracking, and de-emphasize solar and wind power.

    Meanwhile, if Elder is elected, “[t]he threat to immigrants in this state and racial justice for all would be catastrophic,” Jean Guerrero wrote in the Los Angeles Times.

    Little-known Democrat Kevin Paffrath is running neck-in-neck with Elder. His “grab bag of ideas includes a few that appeal to Democrats (like marriage equality, higher teacher pay and promotion of solar and wind farms),” according to Norman Solomon. But Paffrath “features a lot of pseudo-populist notions that would do tremendous damage if implemented.” Indeed, Brooke Staggs writes that Paffrath wants “to make all coronavirus safety measures optional, to ditch income tax for anyone making less than $250,000, to use the National Guard to get all unhoused Californians off the streets and to give trained gun owners more rights.”

    A GOP Governor Could Replace Senator Feinstein With a Republican

    The Democrats have a razor-thin majority in the U.S. Senate. There are 50 Republicans, 48 Democrats and two Independents who caucus with the Democrats. If they are split 50-50 on a vote, Vice President Kamala Harris breaks the tie. A simple majority can confirm judicial nominations and enact funding legislation.

    In the event that 88-year-old Sen. Dianne Feinstein dies or cannot continue to serve, the governor of California could replace her with an appointee of their choice for at least 14 months following the certification of the recall election. A new GOP governor could appoint a new senator from California, resulting in a Republican majority in the Senate. Solomon suggests that Feinstein resign to enable Governor Newsom to replace her with a Democrat, but admits that is “highly unlikely.”

    California’s Recall System Is Unfair and Unconstitutional

    California’s recall system is unfair and unconstitutional, as Berkeley Law School Dean Erwin Chemerinsky and Berkeley law and economics professor Aaron S. Edlin explain in a New York Times op-ed on August 11. “Mr. Newsom can receive far more votes than any other candidate but still be removed from office,” they wrote. “Many focus on how unfair this structure is to the governor, but consider instead how unfair it is to the voters who support him.”

    If Newsom doesn’t defeat the recall by a majority, he can be replaced by a candidate who receives only a plurality. For example, if 49 percent of voters vote against the recall, Newsom is out and a candidate such as Elder could win the governorship with just 20 percent of the vote or even less.

    That’s because Article II, Section 15(c) of the California Constitution reads: “If the majority vote on the question is to recall, the officer is removed and, if there is a candidate, the candidate who receives a plurality is the successor. The officer may not be a candidate.”

    “Based on virtually every opinion poll, Mr. Newsom seems likely to have more votes to keep him in office than any other candidate will receive to replace him,” Chemerinsky and Edlin noted. “But he may well lose the first question on the recall, effectively disenfranchising his supporters on the second question.”

    They wrote, “Every voter should have an equal ability to influence the outcome of the election.” Chemerinsky and Edlin advocate the filing of a state or federal lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of California’s recall election. They propose, “The court could declare the recall election procedure unconstitutional and leave it to California to devise a constitutional alternative. Or it could simply add Mr. Newsom’s name on the ballot to the list of those running to replace him.”

    Three days after the op-ed was published, on August 14, two California voters filed a lawsuit in U.S. District Court, Central District of California challenging the constitutionality of the recall process. Plaintiffs R.J. Beaber and A.W. Clark are claiming that Article II, Section 15(c) violates the Equal Protection and Due Process Clauses of the U.S. Constitution because it does not comply with the federal legal principle of “one person, one vote.”

    The plaintiffs are asking the court to declare that Section 15(c) is unconstitutional. They also request a preliminary injunction to either stop the election entirely or suspend it until Newsom’s name is added to the list of candidates who seek to replace him.

    “Undoing an unconstitutional election after the fact would be considerably messier than fixing the process beforehand,” according to Chemerinsky and Edlin.

    In order to obtain a preliminary injunction, the plaintiffs must demonstrate that they are likely to succeed on the merits, that they will likely suffer irreparable harm without preliminary relief, and that the injunction would be in the public interest.

    All three conditions are met in this case. The plaintiffs will likely prevail on the constitutional issues they raise; they would be deprived of their rights to have their votes count and be given equal weight with all of the votes that favor the recall and a candidate other than Newsom; and it is always in the public interest to have constitutional elections.

    The federal court should declare California’s recall system unconstitutional and/or issue a preliminary injunction to stop the election unless and until Newsom is listed as a candidate in part two of the ballot.

    Meanwhile, we must recognize what is at stake if a right-wing minority succeeds in recalling Newsom. He would likely be replaced by someone who would make Californians more vulnerable to the deadly pandemic, violate the rights of immigrants and people of color, and imperil the future of the planet by refusing to take action to combat climate change.

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Greed and Consumption: Why the World is Burning

    Rome is scorching hot. This beautiful city is becoming unbearable for other reasons, too. Though every corner of the beaming metropolis is a monument to historical grandeur, from the Colosseum in Rione Monti to the Basilica of Saint John Lateran in San Giovanni, it is now struggling under the weight of its own contradictions.

    In Via Appia, bins are overflowing with garbage, often spilling over into the streets. The smell, especially during Italy’s increasingly sweltering summers, is suffocating.

    Meanwhile, many parts of the country are literally on fire. Since June 15, firefighters have reportedly responded to 37,000 fire-related emergencies, 1,500 of them on July 18 alone. A week later, I drove between Campania, in southern Italy, and Abruzzo, in the center. Throughout the journey, I was accompanied by fire and smoke. On that day, many towns were evacuated, and thousands of acres of forests were destroyed. It will take months to assess the cost of the ongoing destruction, but it will certainly be measured in hundreds of millions of euros.

    Additionally, the entire southern Europe is ablaze, as the region is experiencing its worst heat waves in many years. Greece, Spain, Turkey, and the Balkans are fighting fires that continue to rage on.

    Across the Atlantic, the US and Canada, too, are desperately trying to battle their own wildfires, mostly direct outcomes of unprecedented heat waves that struck North America from Vancouver to California, along with the whole of the American northwest region. In June, Vancouver, Portland and Seattle all set new heat records, 118, 116 and 108 Fahrenheit, respectively.

    While it is true that not all fires are a direct result of global warming — many in Italy, for example, are man-made — unprecedented increases in temperature, coupled with changes in weather patterns, are the main culprits of these unmitigated disasters.

    The solution is more complex than simply having the resources and proper equipment to contain these fires. The impact of the crises continues to be felt for years, even if temperatures somehow stabilize. In California, for example, which is bracing for another horrific season, the devastation of the previous years can still be felt.

    “After two years of drought, the soil moisture is depleted, drying out vegetation and making it more prone to combustion,” The New York Times reported on July 16. The problem, then, is neither temporary nor can be dealt with through easy fixes.

    As I sat with my large bottle of water outside Caffettiamo Cafe, struggling with heat, humidity and the pungent smell of garbage, I thought about who is truly responsible for what seems to be our new, irreversible reality. Here in Italy, the conversation is often streamlined through the same, predictable and polarized political discourse. Each party points finger at the others, in the hope of gaining some capital prior to the upcoming October municipal elections.

    Again, Italy is not the exception. Political polarization in Europe and the US constantly steers the conversation somewhere else entirely. Rarely is the problem addressed at a macro-level, independent from political calculations. The impact of global warming cannot and must not be held hostage to the ambitions of politicians. Millions of people are suffering, livelihoods are destroyed, the fate of future generations is at risk. In the grand scheme of things, whether the current mayor of Rome, Virginia Raggi, is elected for another term or not, is insignificant.

    Writing in the Columbia Climate School website, Renee Cho highlights the obvious, the relationship between our insatiable appetite for consumption and climate change. “Did you know that Americans produce 25 percent more waste than usual between Thanksgiving and New Year’s Day, sending an additional one million tons a week to landfills?” Cho asks.

    This leads us to think about the existential relationship between our insatiable consumption habits and the irreparable damage we have inflicted upon mother earth.

    Here in Via Appia, the contradictions are unmistakable. This is the summer sales season in Italy. Signs reading “Saldi” – or “Sale” – are everywhere. For many shoppers, it is impossible to fight the temptation. This unhinged consumerism – the backbone and the fault line of capitalism – comes at a high price. People are encouraged to consume more, as if such consumption has no repercussions for the environment whatsoever. Indeed, Via Appia is the perfect microcosm of this global schizophrenia: people complaining about the heat and the garbage, while simultaneously consuming beyond their need, thus creating yet more garbage and, eventually, worsening the plight of the environment.

    Collective problems require collective solutions. Italy’s heat cannot be pinned down on a few arsonists and California’s wildfires are not simply the fault of an ineffectual mayor. Global warming is, in large part, the outcome of a destructive pattern instigated and sustained by capitalism. The latter can only survive through unhindered consumption, inequality, greed and, when necessary, war. If we continue to talk about global warming without confronting the capitalist menace that generated much of the crisis in the first place, the conversation will continue to amount to nil.

    In the final analysis, all the conferences, pledges and politicking will not put out a single fire, neither in Italy nor anywhere else in the world.

    The post Greed and Consumption: Why the World is Burning first appeared on Dissident Voice.


    This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Ramzy Baroud.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • California Gubernatorial Recall Could See Newsom Replaced by a Republican

    Gavin Newsome

    California stands on the cusp of an absurdity.

    In 2018, Gavin Newsom received 61.9 percent of the vote, a higher percentage than any Democratic candidate for governor had ever received in California. In 2021, in a state where more than 46 percent of registered voters register as Democrats and less than a quarter as Republicans and where Joe Biden beat Donald Trump by a two-to-one margin, about 60 percent of the electorate oppose recalling the governor.

    Given that, Newsom’s job ought to be secure until the next regularly scheduled election, in 2022. And yet, despite these raw numbers, because of the bizarre nature of California’s recall system, there is instead a distinct possibility that he will be replaced next month by a conservative who garners a small fraction of the support that Newsom has.

    The process for recalling was created in the early 20th century, at the height of the Progressive era. A recall election for the governor has to be put to voters if petition signature gatherers reap enough signatures to equal 12 percent of the total number who voted in the last gubernatorial election. Newsom’s opponents managed that feat during a signature gathering period elongated by the courts because of the pandemic.

    The recall ballot has two questions. The first is simple: Should the governor be recalled? The second question is if he is recalled, who should replace him? Whether or not one votes to recall Newsom, confusingly, everyone should still vote for his replacement on the second side of the ballot.

    Yet on that second part of the ballot, there are no high-profile Democrats, since early in the process, Newsom and his allies muscled out all possible Democratic candidates in a high-stakes gamble that a my-way-or-the-highway election choice was Newsom’s best chance of defeating the recall and keeping the state blue.

    That strategy comes, of course, with a huge, almost existential risk, one that looked like a winning bet months ago, but looks increasingly dubious today. Unless 50 percent of voters oppose the recall on the first question, Newsom is out. And in that case, on a fractured ballot with dozens of largely low-profile candidates vying to replace Newsom, and with no Democrats running as a fallback option, it’s entirely possible that Newsom could fail to muster 50 percent support and could then end up being replaced by a conservative Republican who only has the support of between 10 and 20 percent of the electorate.

    At the moment, polls show that Newson’s successor could be Larry Elder, an extreme-right radio talk show host from Los Angeles, who is currently polling at 18 percent. Elder stridently opposed Newsom’s public health measures issued in response to COVID; he is hostile to LGBTQ+ rights; is fiercely opposed to Black Lives Matter; opposes Roe v. Wade; and believes both the state and federal governments should scrap the minimum wage. His politics make him a perfect fit among politicians in Mississippi or Texas. But they put him far out of step with a majority of Californians.

    Elder is facing competition from a range of other Republicans — chief amongst them ex-San Diego Mayor Kevin Faulconer, who is polling at about 10 percent; ex-gubernatorial candidate John Cox, who lost to Newsom by nearly 24 points in 2018, and who is also polling at about 10 percent; and reality TV star Caitlyn Jenner, who was initially marketed as the celebrity candidate, the Schwarzenegger candidate, of 2021, but who is polling at around 3 percent.

    None of these Republicans has a snowball’s chance in hell of getting anywhere close to a majority of the popular vote; or of equaling the vote total that Newsom will get on the first round of the ballot. But because of the vagaries of the recall process, and the difficulties of mobilizing a Democratic base in a recall election that few are paying attention to, all have a reasonable chance of becoming California’s next governor.

    In October 2003, Democratic Gov. Gray Davis lost a recall election — the only time, out of 55 attempts over the last 100-plus years, that a California governor has been successfully recalled. But in that instance, the defeated governor won 45 percent of the vote and the man who replaced him, the movie star Arnold Schwarzenegger, won 48 percent on the second ballot. The process was jagged, but the end result at least made some sense from a democratic standpoint. In 2021, it’s entirely possible that, if Newsom’s political career is destroyed by the first question of the recall ballot, he will still end up with between three and four times as many votes as the person who ultimately wins via the second question on that ballot. That would trigger a crisis of legitimacy starker than any California has faced in its political history.

    Two weeks ago, a poll by the Berkeley Institute of Governmental Studies found that California’s electorate as a whole was both woefully unaware of how the recall process works and also dismally unengaged in the recall election itself. But the disengagement wasn’t across the board; conservatives, who ginned up enough signatures in late 2020 and early 2021 to force a recall vote, are, not surprisingly, far more enthusiastic about the election, and the prospect of liberal California departing and, almost by accident, electing a GOP governor. By contrast, many others who, in a high-turnout year, would come out and support the Democratic candidate, are sitting the process out, perhaps unaware of what is at stake, or, simply, burned out from the non-stop high-octane politicking of the past several years.

    As a result, amongst the all-important category of likely voters, the poll found that only 50 percent opposed the recall and 47 percent were in favor. Since Newsom needs 50 percent to survive, that means, with only weeks until the election, that he quite literally has no margin for error, no margin for scandal, no margin for increased voter dissatisfaction due to the new COVID spike, and so on.

    Ballots will start arriving in Californians’ mailboxes in mid-August. Election Day is set for September 14. In the intervening period, in a state being pummeled by the new COVID wave and acrimonious debates over renewed mask mandates and compulsory vaccination orders, and in a state with huge wildfires raging, the air once again choked with smoke and ash in many regions, and with spiraling crises of homelessness and drug overdoses, Newsom and his allies somehow have to inject enthusiasm and awareness of the recall process into the non-conservative parts of the electorate.

    Unless they do so, California could easily end up twisted in political knots. It could have a far right governor having to somehow co-exist with a Democratic super-majority in the state legislature, one that has more liberal credentials and has pushed more liberal policies than any other legislature in the country. It would have Democrats in every major statewide elected office except the governorship; would have Democratic mayors in all its major cities; would have a public with more liberal views on the environment, on access to abortion, on racial justice issues and so on than the population in a vast majority of states — and yet would have a GOP governor, with only a sliver of the public supporting them, who was elected more in a fit of absence-of-mind than because of a sea change in popular opinion.

    At a national level, Trump’s election in 2016 by a minority of voters unleashed a vast political crisis. In 2021, California could find itself facing even greater political stresses because of the entirely dysfunctional and counter-intuitive nature of its recall process.

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Taking Action Against 5G:  Advice from a People’s Lobbyist

    Perhaps you have been already convinced by reading articles on this site about the devastating effects of the ongoing rollout of massive numbers of 4G/5G so-called small cells (short for cell towers) throughout cities in the U.S. If you’re not up to speed about why you should be extremely, extremely alarmed, you can read my previous article on the subject  (“The 5G Juggernaut, Coming Soon to a Utility Pole Outside Your Home“)

    Assuming you are now aware that this rollout will have devastating impacts on our quality of life, and the-well being of the planet, how can you take action to fight it? Two bills have been introduced in the CA legislature to essentially remove any local government oversight of the telecoms, and will be catastrophic if passed.  These are AB 537 and SB 556.  This article explains how you can be effective in convincing legislators to oppose these bills, but this same advice applies to lobbying legislators in any state.

    My advice is based on my past experience as a lobbyist representing a statewide human rights organization when, on more than one occasion, a tiny group of us were able to win extraordinary victories against bills being strongly pushed by powerful corporate interests. I also worked as a legislative assistant to a city council person, giving me an inside look at the dynamics of local government, and was very involved in the successful 2017 campaign in California to defeat a similar 5G greenlighting bill.

    Mindset is important. If your mindset is “The government is totally against us, we live in a corporatocracy and I just need to register my outrage, but I know we’re not going to win,” your lobbying efforts are unlikely to succeed. If your mindset is “Legislators definitely don’t share my values, but maybe I can trick them into supporting us, by greatly watering down what I believe into a more palatable ‘mainstream’ message,” No, this is not going to convince them to take the action you’re hoping for. Or “What if I come up with an assertion that is so powerful that the person I’m talking to will be absolutely overwhelmed, and whether or not I provide them with supporting arguments and documentation is not really important?”– Uh, no.

    There is no question that anti-5G lobbyists are up against huge forces that have almost unlimited funds to bribe legislators with donations, and pay full time lobbyists to perpetuate their propaganda.

    In my opinion, there is only one way to win when the odds are so stacked against us, and that is to connect with the person that you’re communicating with as a fellow human being, who is trying to make sense of a world where all our usual assumptions about normality have been turned upside down. A fellow/sister human who cares as deeply as you do about the health and well-being of their children, family, and friends, and who has a strong interest in the future of California, and does not want the state destroyed by catastrophic wildfires which could result from this massive, unregulated cell tower rollout.

    Ask yourself what argument is going to overcome all the years of telecom and mainstream propaganda they’ve been programmed with? Maybe explaining that their child could get a brain tumor — or they might not even be able to have children

    — as a result of the ever-increasing close proximity radiation that this legislation would create? Or perhaps giving them documented information about the extreme fire risks posed by locating these very powerful small cell towers everywhere.  (You can see a lot of the documented evidence of 5G fire dangers in this article I wrote, which describes the woeful lack of fire protection provided by Berkeley lawmakers when they crafted their city’s small cell ordinance.)

    Although the industry likes to describe them as “small” cells, the equipment can be quite large, adding greatly to the aesthetic deterioration of California cities and towns. And the radiation can often be just as powerful as the traditional 3G/4G macro towers, now with the added very strong EMF (electromagnetic field) pollution that is caused by the 5G antennas. 5G is not replacing 4G, it is adding on to it.

    It’s important to do your homework, so you are familiar with what the bill you are lobbying about says, and can provide backup documentation for your assertions.

    It should go without saying that you need to adhere to the truth 100% of the time. The truth about the planned rollout of thousands of 5G cell towers directly outside our homes is so horrendous that we don’t have to exaggerate anything, or slant the truth to get a desired effect.

    An example of activists of being less than accurate was the flyer, posted on many webpages, which noted that for many years, telecoms had not been able to get insurance for small cells.  They could only get insurance if there was an exclusion for “EMF pollution” (i.e., all the people that can be expected to get deathly ill as a result of having powerful 4G/5G antennas outside their bedroom windows). Then there’s other information indicating that small cells present very serious fire risks. Somehow these two arguments got combined  into one shorter message, that telecoms can’t get insurance for small cells due to extreme fire dangers. Since many legislators might not even know what EMF pollution is, that makes for a much more impressive message, since everyone who lives in California is worried about wildfires. The only small problem is that that argument is not true.

    If you’re going to contact legislators, it’s essential to make sure that your arguments relate to the particular bill that you’re contacting them about. Do not use a generic “5G is terrible” message. Telecoms have full-time lobbyists that will be sure to point out any factual errors in your arguments. Legislative aides and committee staff will also note errors. No point in your trying to give them information that can’t be backed up — aside from the fact that some readers of this kind of messaging will just have an intuitive sense that there’s something off about your argument.

    Activists may have read somewhere that they should be certain to avoid mentioning health impacts, or even ANY harmful impacts caused by close-proximity cell towers, when talking to legislators. There is a huge amount of scientific evidence showing extremely harmful health impacts of living near a cell tower and/or being exposed to wireless radiation — cancer clusters, strokes, heart disease, Alzheimer’s, etc. That is one of the most effective arguments you can use, since small cells will increase the level of radiation exponentially.

    Because this dictum has gone out so widely to anti 5G activists, that any mention of health should be strenuously avoided, I reached out to several of the top anti-5G attorneys regarding this issue. They all said there is no reason for activists to censor themselves about detrimental heath impacts of cell towers when contacting state legislators.

    As one of these attorneys explained it, according to federal law, the only time you cannot talk publicly about health and environmental impacts is before a local governing body that is deciding whether or not a particular cell tower is going to be placed. (You can feel free to say whatever you want when speaking to city council members privately.) If the telecom applicant can show in court that the denial of their permit was based on health concerns, the telecom wins the right to put in their tower.

    Please don’t confuse that nuanced issue of local zoning procedure with what kind of issues you can and should bring up when lobbying state legislators.

    Aside from the federal law which restricts local siting decisions based on health, there are other federal laws and court decisions that require governments to ensure the safety of communities from harmful effects of cell tower radiation, such as the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) and Fair Housing Act, which do not allow laws or regulations that deny access by EMF-disabled people to their own homes or services in their community. There is a DC Court of Appeals decision (Keetoowah Tribes vs FCC) that said national environmental laws also must be considered in the siting of all small cells.

    Even the California Supreme Court issued an opinion (T Mobile West vs. City and County of SF) that cities cannot evade their responsibility to protect public safety regarding cell tower placement. Here’s a relevant quote from that opinion:

    Under the California Constitution, cities and counties “may make and enforce within [their] limits all local, police, sanitary, and other ordinances and regulations not in conflict with general laws…. local police power includes broad authority to determine, for purposes of public health, safety, and welfare, the appropriate uses of land within a local jurisdiction’s borders.”

    As a people’s lobbyist, you are not required to be able to debate the finer points of all these laws, regulations, and court decisions. Even though all the attorneys consulted agreed that none of these laws or court opinions represent a gag order for lobbyists, for strategic reasons, it’s always a good idea to bring up other issues, in addition to health and environmental impacts, when opposing 5G legislation. There are many other crucially important reasons to oppose this uncontrolled rollout, some of which I’ve described in my article which I linked to previously. More can be found here and here.

    You will be on very strong ground legally and ethically if you base your discussion of health impacts on how these bills violate the ADA, that is, the rights of people who have electro-sensitivity (sometimes abbreviated to ES). However I believe it’s a mistake to make the whole issue of health impacts solely related to people who are already disabled by this condition. Many legislators probably don’t believe that such a thing exists, and even if they believe it does, that is a very small segment of the population, compared to the huge number who are being deprived of adequate high-speed internet access — the problem these bills claim to fix.

    It’s excellent to bring up the ADA, but cell tower health impacts affect everyone, not just this small group who are already experiencing ES. As the former President of Microsoft Canada, Frank Clegg, explains it:

    Everyone can develop ES. People are not born with ES but develop it as a result of exposure to radiation from wireless sources…. As with other conditions, a person may have a disposition towards a certain condition and therefore may develop it sooner than another person with the same exposure. The increasingly high prevalence of ES makes it clear that the attempts to suggest that those who suffer from the condition are a small fraction of the population that is ‘sensitive’ or that their response to radiation deviates from that of the general population, are false.

    (Frank Clegg is now devoting much of his time to countering telecoms’ lies about the safety of 5G as you can see here.)

    Even the former Prime Minister of Denmark, who is also the former Director-General of the World Health Organization, Dr. Gro Harlem Brundtland, developed very strong sensitivity to EMFs.

    The health impacts are not just the numerous discomforts experienced by those who are EMF sensitive — such as severe head pain and pressure, heart pain and palpitations, sleep disturbances, dizziness, ear pressure or ringing, brain fog, burning skin, constant nose bleeds, etc. The health impacts the legislators need to know about, in addition to the symptoms of EMF sensitivity, are the ones documented in peer-reviewed journals, showing serious diseases like cancer resulting from wireless radiation.

    You may be thinking, I don’t have time to track down all these scientific articles about the health impacts of wireless radiation. Luckily, Environmental Health Trust has done an exhaustive job of collecting all the documentation about health impacts, and many other issues related to stopping 5G, which you can find here.

    The health effects of cell tower radiation was probably the winning argument (among many) that was used in 2017, when opponents of SB 649 kept bringing up the fact that firefighters were exempted in the bill from having a cell tower near their station, resulting from their fierce objections due to their past experiences of major neurological deterioration as a result of such towers.  There is a similar exemption for fire stations in this current 5G streamlining bill, AB 537. If firefighters are protected, what about children, the elderly, and all the rest of us? In what upside down universe does that make sense?

    So, no, it’s not true that you have to avoid any mention of health impacts when lobbying state representatives.

    You may have been told legislators have short attention spans, so you need to make your message very short and catchy. They are not going to read a long letter with a lot of research attached.

    Not true. They might not read every long letter, especially if it’s filled with rambling thoughts and unsupported assertions, but if your letter is well organized and accurately addresses what the bill says, their aides/staff will look it over, since it’s their job to know all the facts related to the bill. Some even appreciate that you are helping them do their job, and activists’ research will influence how they write up the bill.

    Your task as a lobbyist is to explain all the reasons why the bill will be extremely bad for California. Yes, it’s good to choose your words carefully, but if it takes you more than one page to explain all the reasons, that’s OK.  It’s also totally fine to focus on one or two key points, as long as you can back up your arguments with some form of documentation, and can explain how they relate to the bill.

    As far as choosing which issues to focus on, don’t limit yourself to a neutral and non-controversial argument; e.g., local control by the cities is an important principle that should be upheld, or 5G next to people’s houses will reduce property values. Legislators are already aware that these bills greatly restrict or eliminate local control, and many cities will be writing to strongly remind them of that fact.

    You are trying to transform the legislator’s entire worldview about the supposed miraculous benefits of saturating our lives with wireless radiation. A neutral message like “someone’s property values could go down” is not likely to convince them. (Is it even true that someone’s property values will go down from having a small cell tower in front of their house, if every third house in that community has a small cell in front of it, as the authors of these bills intend?)

    This brings me to the very prevalent use of “talking points,” which are very condensed messages that can be used by members of groups to attempt to sway legislators. There is a school of thought which says the main goal in lobbying the legislator is to get the largest number of people possible to call into their office and/or wait in line at a hearing to give a “me too” statement. The “me too” statement only allows them to present name, organization, if any, and a yes or no position on the bill. And since the main goal is to get large numbers of people to call in, you don’t want to burden potential citizen-lobbyists with a lot of details about the bill. It’s better, this theory goes, to just give them some sound bites that then can be repeated endlessly by everyone who calls in.

    There is some truth in this approach, which is if you can get a large enough number of people from the legislator’s own district to call in, they might be responsive to the sentiments of their constituents — but probably not responsive enough to overcome the power of the telecoms to establish the discussion parameters about why this bill is so necessary.

    If there is a group of activists who all live in the same legislator’s district, they should set up a meeting with the legislator, or if that’s not possible, the top aide working on the bill. That would have a much greater impact, as opposed to all the activists in that district calling in with the same few, identical talking points.

    One problem with talking points is that they make it less likely you will be able to make an authentic connection with the aide. They’ve heard it all before, maybe ten or twenty times before, and their goal will be to get you off the phone as quickly as possible.

    Another problem with talking points is that they’re not always true. What?? I saw it on a flyer or I saw it on a website, so it must be true! I’ve already talked about the issue of wrong information being widely circulated. I think it’s like the game of telephone we played as kids. The first person in the circle whispers something to the next person, who whispers it to the next person, and by the time it reaches the last person, the original message has been changed into something totally different.

    You need to ask yourself, does this argument make sense? Can I find any information to back it up?

    Regarding what I described as the telecoms setting the “parameters of discussion,” they claim that due to the Covid-19 crisis, when people in low income and rural communities are unable to receive high-speed internet access, their ability to access government programs, education for their kids, and to earn money for their survival, is severely threatened. Providing high-speed access to these groups should be the main concern of legislators who are trying to help their constituents.

    All other arguments seem to pale against that urgent need — unless you can get into a real conversation with the aide, and explain the fallacy of that position.  Of course, we agree that all under-served communities need to have high-speed internet. However, corded internet connections (such as Ethernet, DSL and cable) are just as fast or faster, and they don’t have the downsides of EMF pollution and extreme fire risks. Point out that there’s nothing in the bill that requires telecoms to actually serve under-served communities.

    The much-touted promise of 5G to provide faster connections and download speeds has not held up in practice, according to investigators from PC Mag, who did tests of 5G vs. 4G speeds.  5G also does not work in very hot weather.  You can explain that by removing local control, the bill also removes the ability of the local government to negotiate with telecoms to provide access for everyone.

    Instead of trying to manipulate, or bombard with robo-calls, the person you’re trying to convince, what if you just tried to educate them? As I previously noted, humanity right now is facing unprecedented threats. Rather than this piece of proposed legislation providing a solution, you can tell them how this bill will increase environmental and public health disasters a hundredfold.

    What is the point of giving everyone in California internet access (not that we’re saying these bills WILL do that) — if at the same time you are putting in thousands of extremely fire-prone installations throughout neighborhoods? To put it another way, what good is it for a family to have fast home internet, if they don’t have a home?

    These fires can be caused by overloading utility poles, frequent use of smart meters (which are a documented fire hazard) on the small cells, lack of built-in fire safety features, lack of state-required fire safety inspections and reports, and the temporary or permanent use of backup generators containing fire-prone substances, such as diesel fuel or lithium batteries.

    Thousands and thousands of these terribly risky installations will be put in right next to people’s homes, or kids’ schools, or facilities for the elderly, so there will be no time for people to escape in a disaster.

    On April 19. 2021, fire safety consultant Susan Dana Foster was the first opposition witness regarding SB 556, a 5G bill to greatly reduce the involvement of local governments in the 5G rollout, in a hearing of the Senate Committee on Energy, Utilities, and Communications. She was providing refutation to the testimony of the Verizon representative. She explained that firefighters cannot put out electrical fires, such as would occur at a 4G/5G small cell, because putting water on those fires would cause electrocution.

    All they can do is wet the ground next to the fire in short bursts. They have to wait for the power to be shut off, which for various reasons that she explained, could take from ten minutes to up to two hours. She also describes how the telecoms have been successful in evading the usual government electrical codes at the federal, state, and county level.

    During that hands-off period for firefighters, that could last up to two hours, strong winds could spread the original electrical fire much, much further. In a state like California, where massive wildfires are already causing immense destruction to life and property, these provisions seem like a recipe for unimaginable disaster.

    One thing I would strongly urge when trying to find out accurate info about a bill, is to read the official analysis and summary of the bill you are going to be speaking or writing to legislators about. These official analyses are a gold mine of information, and sometimes sound like they could have been written by a fellow activist.  (Of course, sometimes they also sound like they could have been written by telecom spokesperson.)

    You need to familiarize yourself with the lingo. The term “deemed approved” is one you will see over and over again in these bills. It means if the city is unable to respond to a telecom application within a very short time period (called a shotclock), then their application is automatically accepted without the need for city approval.

    Another important term is collocations. This refers to the telecoms’ ability to keep adding more and more antennas, which they would prefer to do without local government oversight. You can find all the information you need about each bill, including what committee it’s headed to, here.

    Another good site to know about is the California Legislature Position Letter Portal, which allows you to send a letter to the entire committee where the bill is headed, by just going through their easy registration steps. It’s also helpful to send a copy to your representatives in the Assembly and Senate.

    In a few committees, the letters sent through the official portal do not reach the individual committee members, which is why it is good to also send it to them individually. You might even consider using snail mail if you are unable to reach individual legislators through their email.

    Sometimes when calling their office you may be told that the legislator only wants to hear from district constituents. You can tell them that as a resident of California, you are a constituent, since their decisions on this committee will affect everyone in the state.

    To sum up, while I’m not saying that large numbers of people calling legislators’ offices with talking points is never of benefit, in my experience, the only truly effective way to win the legislator’s or aides support is to get them to understand the deeper reasons this bill will be devastating to so many people.  It actually only takes one citizen-lobbyist to have that kind of conversation.

    Your underlying message should be: Don’t vote against this bill because we’re asking you to. Vote against it because you care about the well-being and safety of your family and community, and about the people of California, and will do whatever is necessary to protect them from the catastrophic impacts of this technology that is running amok.

    The post Taking Action Against 5G:  Advice from a People’s Lobbyist first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • Out to Lunch: The Atrophying of Western Minds

    Interrogate the devil; he will tell you that beauty is a pair of horns, four claws and a tail.

    — Voltaire’s Philosophical Dictionary

    This is what real education looks like — Evo Organizes Anti-Imperialist Day School For Youth

    Iris Varela spoke about the history of the Bolivarian Revolution and explained in detail how the economic blockade in her country works. The PSUV lawmaker concluded with an invitation for participants to visit Venezuela for the inauguration of a similar project in Caracas; “we’re opening a university to teach people reporting and social media skills, we’re cordially inviting the youth of the union federations in Chapare to come and coordinate an exchange with the Juventud PSUV, maybe in August a group can come here, and a group from here can go there. Our Bolivian brothers will always be welcome to the country of father liberator, Simon Bolivar. We need to strengthen education and build cadres who can defend revolutionary processes.”

    Nieves Colque, one of the young members at the school today said of the classes, “This school of ideology and anti-imperialism helps us to grow, it’s nourishing. The economics session was especially important, learning and analyzing the principles of Bolivia’s social communitarian economic model so we can work in this new term to recover the country’s GDP”.

    Go to any of the corporate Un-News outlets, like Bing, and this is what fascism looks like —

    German Chancellor Angela Merkel, gestures, as she holds her annual summer news conference in Berlin, Germany, Thursday, July 22, 2021. Merkel said Thursday that new coronavirus infections in Germany are once again rising at worrying speed. She appealed to her compatriots to get vaccinated and persuade others to do so. (Wolfgang Kumm/dpa via AP)
    The Latest: Germany considers restrictions for unvaccinated

    Chief of staff Helge Braun told the newspaper Bild am Sonntag that he doesn’t expect another coronavirus-related lockdown in Germany. But Braun said that unvaccinated people may be barred from entering venues like restaurants, movie theaters or sports stadiums “because the residual risk is too high.”

    Braun said getting vaccinated is important to protect against severe disease and because “vaccinated people will definitely have more freedoms than unvaccinated people.” He said such policies would be legal because “the state has the responsibility to protect the health of its citizens.”

    More of the same dirty White Western Culture (sic), AKA, White Civilization (Sic) —Report: UK military failing to protect women from abuse

    British soldiers evaluate coordinates at the Tapa Training Grounds, Estonia.

    Around two-thirds of female veterans in the British armed forces have experienced bullying, harassment or discrimination in their careers, a parliamentary report said Sunday.

    The report also said that women who reported serious sexual offences are “denied justice” by an inadequate military court system and complaints process.

    And, the pigs trained and outfitted in “Israel,” for the most part, treating citizens like Palestinians — 9 arrested in violent clashes between Paris police, anti-vaccine protesters

    a group of people wearing military uniforms: 9 arrested in violent clashes between Paris police, anti-vaccine protesters

    Ah, the Aussies too, having their pig moments — Anti-lockdown protest: two men charged with allegedly striking police horse in Sydney

    A police strike force has been established after an anti-lockdown rally on Saturday.

    Ahh, islands on fire, Sardinia — Fires ravage Italian island of Sardinia, forcing evacuations

    Cars are parked by the road as fires have been raging through the countryside in Cuglieri, near Oristano, Sardinia, Italy, early Sunday, July 25, 2021. Hundreds of people were evacuated from their homes in many small towns in the province of Oristano

    Then, of course, water, fire, flood, death by a million safety net cuts, and then the Olympians are the networks, getting — how many billions does NBCV get for these absurdities, the Olympics, by 2023? $7.7 BILLION!

    What we’re witnessing right now play out in Tokyo is unparalleled in the political history of the Olympics. And you’re pointing the finger in the right direction, when we think about the International Olympic Committee. The saga in Tokyo has exposed an International Olympic Committee that openly disrespects the will of locals, that brushes off inconvenient facts from experts, like medical experts, who have long been saying these games are a terrible idea. And the IOC tends to prioritize its profits over all else.

    Meanwhile, the Olympics tend to kneecap democracy, undercut democracy, in ways that you describe, with the very prime minister essentially reduced to a contractual supplicant to the International Olympic Committee, with no power to decide whether to cancel or not. And you’re seeing also that everything is very vulnerable to things like COVID-19 and also, I think, climate change. So, when the International Olympic Committee arrives in the host city, it’s this parastate-type organization. But what we’ve seen time and time again, and now in Technicolor in Tokyo, is that it’s also a parasite on the host city.

    There is a lot of money sloshing through the Olympic system. It just tends to slosh upwards into pockets that are already filled. NBC gives about 40% of the International Olympic Committee’s revenues. And overall, in terms of the Olympics, 73% of the revenues for the International Olympic Committee come from broadcaster fees. And I think that helps explain why they’re perfectly content to have a made-for-TV event without all those people in the stands. Of course, they’d prefer to have them in the stands, but even if they don’t, the money continues to flow into their coffers. NBC has announced that even though these games are hit with the pandemic and people won’t be in the seats, this could well be the most profitable Olympics ever for NBC because of ad sales and other measures.

    The corporate sponsors provide another 18% of the revenues for the International Olympic Committee. And I think we’re seeing a really interesting divide between the corporate sponsors right now. On one hand, the sort of long-term, worldwide partners that fork over these nine-figure fees to be associated with the five rings, they’re basically playing the long game, with the exception of Toyota, which of course has strong base in Japan. The local sponsors, domestic sponsors — by which, by the way, they raised more than $3 billion from local corporate sponsors in Japan, more than ever before — they’re in a much trickier position. And I think that’s why you’re seeing Toyota basically say out loud that the Olympics have become a toxic property inside of Japan.

    So, there’s plenty of money to be had. It just tends to shuffle to the International Olympic Committee, to broadcasters, to the corporate partners, as well as to real estate interests in the Olympic city. — Jules Boykoff

     

    PHOTO: Water levels at Great Salt Lake are shown at its record in 1986, average in 2000 and new record low this weekend. (Utah Department of Natural Resources)

    Oh, the great dysfunctional USA, Capitalism, etc. Think: Nazi Merkel and others in her cabinet blame the deaths of hundreds in Germany as a result of recent flooding on, oh well, “climate change and climate unpredictability . . . .”

    Imagine that, the mayor of the town said:

    We have had floods in this area for centuries. We have asked for help to mitigate the floods. We have had governments not responsive to the needs of people. Blaming climate change on incompetent and heartless neoliberal governments, on the excessive hording of money, the waste and corruption of trillions, stolen, given to billionaires, to the military complex, and other Corporate and Financial Complexes, then stating these German lives could not be saved because ‘climate change is so unpredictable, and just get used to it” serves the people the words from which to raise pitchforks, juice up the Molotov cocktails, grease the shotguns, tie the ropes and sharpen the guillotines for hanging and beheading deservedly so against the elite and their bed-fellows, the Eichmann Mentality, and the fascist leanings of Capitalism. This is the response of these people who go to climate change talks, who shuttling around the world in jets for Davos and World Economic Forums, for the bootlicking foisted upon us all to the murderers, the BlackRocks’s and Blackstone’s and World Bank and Goldman Sachs. You dictate those who did not get the chemical jab of Corona Capitalism will have lesser value in society, and then those smug ones who have succumbed to the pressure for yearly or twice-yearly boosters, they too will allow the rich and fascistic governments to make excuse after excuse as governments and towns go bankrupt, and all life saving services and community rights, vanish.

    Well, he didn’t say that, of course, because I made it up and politicians do not speak about capitalism as the ultimate evil. However, one German mayor was in tears about the loss of life, and said it could have been prevented with a government and localities working together to mitigate floods. Whether once in a hundred years, or otherwise.

    a person that is on fire

    Dixie Fire rips through Sierra communities, with ‘extreme’ conditions likely to worsen

    Hochwasser Dresden

    Then, more of the 80-year-olds drilling down on destroying the young, the unborn, the middle aged — Some Americans could need COVID-19 vaccine booster – Fauci

    a group of people walking down the street: People wear masks around Times Square, as cases of the infectious coronavirus Delta variant continue to rise in New York City, New York

    So, we follow the way of “Israel” — We have given up as people, this unending multi-billions in profits, mercenary, war profiteering profits these companies are stealing from the taxpayers. Like the Military industrial complex, the Big Pharma and Private Medicine industrial complexes are eating our souls. And the rot-gut corporate media and those that echo the prevailing narratives, well, they too eat our souls.

    “It’s a dynamic situation. It’s a work in progress, it evolves like in so many other areas of the pandemic,” said Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. “You’ve got to look at the data.”

    Last week, Israel’s health ministry reported a decrease in the effectiveness of the Pfizer vaccine in preventing infections and symptomatic illness. But it added that the two-dose COVID-19 vaccine developed by Pfizer with partner BioNTech still remained highly effective in preventing severe illness.

    The decline in efficacy coincided with the spread of the Delta variant, now the dominant strain in Israel.

    Israel is administering third doses of the vaccine to immunocompromised people, including those who have had heart, lung, kidney or liver transplants and cancer patients receiving chemotherapy.

    Pfizer and BioNTech said on Friday that the United States had purchased 200 million more doses of their vaccine to help with pediatric vaccination as well as possible booster shots.

    No deep stories on that, uh? How and why so much money is being thrown at companies with histories of felonies? Here, this headline, censored everywhere — CDC “Panel Signals Support for Booster Shots, as Reports of Injuries, Deaths After COVID Vaccines Near 500,000“

    Oh, they salute the money makers, and we are a society going down down down because of the rich, the millionaires, the billionaires, and these fascists, saluting what?

    FILE PHOTO: Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee hearing on federal government coronavirus disease (COVID-19) response in Washington

    Here a local older woman, trying to make sense of the lock-step pro-lockdown, pro-mask, pro-anticivil liberties mentality of Oregonians, and their editorial boards:

    Copy of my Letter to the Editor of the Eugene Register-Guard; it has been received but not published — I usually get pleasure from wordsmith Don Kahle’s clever articles. However, in his July 16 column he encouraged incentives to get more citizens injected with an unlicensed, unapproved experimental gene procedure to lessen symptoms from a viral disease with a better than 99% recovery rate for most age groups.

    A review of history is needed. In 1986, Congress passed a law that allowed pharmaceutical companies ZERO liability from damages from their vaccine products. The PREP act is the latest iteration which gives drug companies immunity from damages caused by their vaccines.

    The Vaccine Adverse Effects Reporting System was established in 1990 by the CDC and FDA to monitor damages and deaths caused by vaccines. Although the system is voluntary and underreported, as of this writing, VAERS data showed a total of 463,457 adverse events from all age groups following COVID vaccines, including 10,991 deaths and 48,385 serious injuries since Dec. 14, 2020. Serious injuries include myocarditis, pericarditis, paralysis, neurological disorders, blood clots, irregular menstrual bleeding, and more.

    Drug companies are poised to earn billions of dollars from vaccine sales, mostly paid for by our taxes. “Safe and effective” is a marketing slogan and is inaccurate. Mr. Kahle, I urge you to do investigative journalism regarding germ theory vs. terrain theory. Rather than promoting pills and injections, it makes sense that public health funds should be spent on improved sanitation, hygiene, nutrition and exercise guidance for individuals and communities and to promote decentralized, regenerative, organic agriculture on a global scale.

    It’s easy to say to this person that this opinion letter to the editor will not be published since the newspaper (sic) will deem the information as faux, false, and dangerous. This is the way of the present, and no matter how “alternative” or “left” the rag, those old hippies are indeed fascists, one and all, in many cases, in this case, with the Corona Capitalism. Sick stuff, capitalism crunched all up in Big Media, Big Lies, Big Propaganda:

    Fireworks explode during the opening ceremony in the Olympic Stadium at the 2020 Summer Olympics, Friday, July 23, 2021, in Tokyo, Japan. (AP Photo/David J. Phillip)
    [The opening ceremony is being held in Tokyo’s National Stadium, but the 80,000-seat arena, built for this purpose, is largely empty. Fewer than 1,000 VIP guests have been invited to attend. Spectators have also been barred from sporting events throughout the games. The 2020 Olympic Games were originally scheduled to take place a year ago but were postponed due to the pandemic.]

    Ahh, we can go on and on about how we got here, 2021, but a great thing is we saw it in the history books.

    [The blacklisted mathematics instructor Chandler Davis, after serving six months in the Danbury federal penitentiary for refusing to cooperate with the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC), warned the universities that ousted him and thousands of other professors that the purges would decimate the country’s intellectual life.]

    Chandler Davis — 1995 talk!

    “Shooting Rats in a Barrel”: Did the Red-hunt Win?

    These years, 1947-1950, established the ground rules that remained in force for the decade that followed. Most institutions, from the government through the unions and universities to the American Civil Liberties Union (yes, I said the American Civil Liberties Union), declared Communists unwelcome. Among the means used to exclude them were loyalty oaths, often including the phrase “I am not a member of the Communist Party or any other organization which…” It became glaringly obvious, that employers, in particular universities, would shy away from hiring anyone who might be attacked as a Communist; a reputation as a student radical was thus enough to make one a bad bet for an academic job; so student radicals became (in a few short years) very scarce. University administrators would occasionally say, if asked, that there were no Communists on the staff; but they hoped they wouldn’t be asked. The FBI and the Red Squads of state and some local police forces kept files on thousands. They had a reputation for exceeding legal restraints in interrogation and for keeping very dubious material in their files; later research bears this out. They cooperated (when it suited their own agenda) with employers who were cleansing their staffs. This put them in an ambivalent relation to the federal government in particular. The FBI’s J. Edgar Hoover, while nominally responsible to the Attorney General, sometimes cooperated covertly with Congressional exposés of government agencies.

    Most universities wouldn’t even let left-wingers speak on campus under auspices of a student group! Paul Robeson, Howard Fast, and Dirk J. Struik are among those banned by administrations in the early 50s. By the late 50s, the invitations had dried up.

    It was further established that one could be imprisoned for Communist Party activity itself, at least if one were a leader: the Supreme Court upheld in 1951 the conspiracy convictions against the CP officers under the Smith Act. The government maintained concentration camps in which it could incarcerate thousands of dangerous people if it declared a national emergency to exist, and everyone knew whom they considered dangerous. (These camps were invented by the “liberal” senators in 1952 in an attempt to show voters that they were just as security-conscious as the Right. But though they originated as a mere tactic, they were not merely on paper, they existed physically. I was told this in casual conversation in 1955 by an acquaintance who was employed at a federal prison — a prison, it happens, where I became an inmate five years later. The story would be better if the guard had looked me up and said hello to me then, but — sorry — we were no longer in touch.)

    These words from Davis to Chris Hedges are just the same today, for MANY of us, who have been marginalized, Google Searched into the Poor House:

    Though you see the remnants of the former academic left still, though some of us were never fired, though I return to the United States from my exile frequently, we are gone,” he said. “We did not survive as we were. Some of us saved our skins without betraying others or ourselves. But almost all of the targets either did crumble or were fired and blacklisted. David Bohm and Moses Finley and Jules Dassin and many less celebrated people were forced into exile. Most of the rest had to leave the academic world. A few suffered suicide or other premature death. There weren’t the sort of wholesale casualties you saw in Argentina or El Salvador, but the Red-hunt did succeed in axing a lot of those it went after, and cowing most of the rest. We were out, and we were kept out. — “The Origin of America’s Intellectual Vacuum”

    See the source image
    See the source image

    Finally, read David Rovics’ blog, and he is now in Denmark playing live crowds. I feel badly for him, he being accused of antisemitism, and he is being doxxed, and his Wikipedia has been changed but “crowd-souring” folk.

    Blog —

    Confessions of an Ecumenical Leftist

    It seems a ridiculous thing to have to say, but I think intellectual discourse is generally a very good thing, rather than something to be stopped at all costs.

    I’m realizing that most people who come across something I wrote don’t seem to have read anything else I’ve ever written, and haven’t listened to my music.  This post is going to be especially personal, so it’s important that you have some idea who I am first.

    I’m 54 years old, and I’ve been some kind of an activist since I was 12.  I learn a little more with each passing year on Earth, but lately the pace has accelerated, along with everything else.  I was raised by musicians, and I became one myself early on.  When I started writing songs about different social movement activities and notable moments in history from around the US and the world, I started meeting more and more people from everywhere, and touring everywhere, too.  As a songwriter and performer I’ve been able to participate in social movements on an ongoing basis in a dozen or so countries, spending most of my adult life on the road, doing that.

    Although the campaigners may be few, I have seen these campaigns work again and again.  You spread enough rumors, they dominate the narrative.  There are already people updating my Wikipedia entry to inform people that accusations of my alleged antisemitism are “in the news.”  Of course, they’re “in the news” because there have been news stories written about the campaign against me — not because any serious person has ever accused me of antisemitism, with any basis for their claim, aside from failing to find the anti-Semitic bits in a book, and wanting to talk to people with disparate viewpoints who may have deep insight into how we might prevent a fascist future in America, regardless of anything else.

    Of course, Wikipedia and Google and the rest are propaganda and government run and ZIonist outfits, for sure:

    Indeed, already in 2007, researchers found that CIA and FBI employees were editing Wikipedia articles on controversial topics including the Iraq war and the Guantanamo military prison.

    Also in 2007, researchers found that one of the most active and influential English Wikipedia administrators, called “Slim Virgin”, was in fact a former British intelligence informer.

    More recently, another highly prolific Wikipedia editor going by the false name of “Philip Cross” turned out to be linked to UK intelligence as well as several mainstream media journalists.

    In Germany, one of the most aggressive Wikipedia editors was exposed, after a two-year legal battle, as a political operative formerly serving in the Israeli army as a foreign volunteer.

    Even in Switzerland, unidentified government employees were caught whitewashing Wikipedia entries about the Swiss secret service just prior to a public referendum about the agency.

    Many of these Wikipedia personae are editing articles almost all day and every day, indicating that they are either highly dedicated individuals, or in fact, operated by a group of people.

    In addition, articles edited by these personae cannot easily be revised, since the above-mentioned administrators can always revert changes or simply block disagreeing users altogether. (Source)

    There you have it, on a Sunday, just cruising through the shit-storm news of the shit-hole Mass Murdering Media!

    See the source image
    The post Out to Lunch: The Atrophying of Western Minds first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • United States: Protests continue against voter suppression

    Not content to wait for US President Joe Biden’s government to act, more marches and rallies are planned to defend the right to vote, reports Malik Miah.

    This post was originally published on Green Left.

  • Stopping The Logging Of Redwoods in Jackson State Forest

    The once overwhelming culture of work in the woods and the mills of our counties is greatly diminished, as is the number of jobs and mills. The Trail Stewards circulated a petition that in a very short period of time was signed by more than five thousand supporters. It called for a moratorium on logging, for cultural & tribal sovereignty, unified ecosystem restoration, climate change mitigation and environmentally sustainable economics.

    The post Stopping The Logging Of Redwoods in Jackson State Forest appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  • Scheer Intelligence: What Has Silicon Valley Done To Our Food?

    Companies such as Beyond Meat and Impossible Foods have started to become household names, producing meat substitutes that taste as close to meat as their scientists have been able to engineer. In the midst of a climate crisis that threatens our very existence, plenty of scientists have been recommending that we all look for ways to cut down on our meat intake because cows produce large amounts of methane that has a significant negative environmental impact. Eating animal products also brings up animal rights questions. One of the main selling points of these Silicon Valley companies is essentially that we can save the planet and eat ethically without sacrificing taste. Yet, there is a key question few people seem to be asking about these new products: Are these meat substitutes good for our health?

    The post Scheer Intelligence: What Has Silicon Valley Done To Our Food? appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  • State Lawmakers Are Using a Powerful Tool to Mandate Renewable Energy Use

    Wind turbines operate on a wind farm in Marshalltown, Iowa. As of 2020, wind energy powers 57 percent of Iowa's net electricity generation -- a bigger share than any other state.

    As we work to combat the climate crisis, it’s clear that electricity providers must shift toward using more renewable energy to generate power. Clearly, more regulations are needed. But depending on where you are in the country, the word “regulation” is met with heavy resistance. So, why not try a reframe?

    Some clever folks did just that. They came up with the label “Renewable Portfolio Standard,” also called “Renewable Energy Standards,” a policy approach that has spread rapidly with real impact.

    The Renewable Portfolio Standard (RPS) is a public mandate, typically initiated by a state legislature with the purpose of increasing energy from renewable sources — wind, solar, and other alternatives to fossil fuel and nuclear power. Another purpose has been to drive renewable innovation by signaling a predictable, growing market. The law sets renewable energy production targets for utilities — either in the amount of energy they produce or as a share of their energy output — along with consequences for not meeting them, usually a fine.

    Way back in 1983, Iowa became the first state to try this type of renewable energy mandate. The state’s Renewable Portfolio Standard mandated that Iowa’s two main utility companies own or secure by contract a total of 105 megawatts (MW) of renewables, or enough to power several hundred homes. Not a terribly impressive requirement … but a start. From this baby step came a big leap. By 2019, Iowa was the second largest wind power producer, after Texas. And by 2020, wind energy from more than 5,100 turbines powered 57 percent of Iowa’s net electricity generation — a bigger share than any other state.

    As of early 2021 the state was generating around 11,500 megawatts of renewable-based energy, nearly 110 times the energy potential of Iowa’s original 105 megawatt renewables target.

    Iowa’s success has played a pivotal role in moving others to use the Renewable Portfolio Standard. Now, 30 states, plus Washington, D.C., and three territories have adopted the policy or a similar approach to mandate a shift in electricity generation.

    In 2004, as the most oil-dependent state in the nation, Hawaii changed its renewable portfolio “goal” to an enforceable standard. In a 2015 update to the standard, Hawaii became the first state to set a target of using 100 percent renewable energy by 2045. Gov. David Ige explained: “Hawaii spends roughly $5 billion a year on foreign oil to meet its energy needs. Making the transition to renewable, indigenous resources for power generation will allow us to keep more of that money at home, thereby improving our economy, environment, and energy security.”

    In 2018, California took the same step, setting a 100 percent renewable energy production goal by 2045. Understanding the urgency of this act, then-Gov. Jerry Brown declared to the press, “It will not be easy. It will not be immediate. But it must be done.”

    The results are impressive: Clearly, lack of federal leadership did not stop significant state action.

    If you thought Iowa’s use of renewable portfolio standards was unexpected, consider that even in Texas — where we know ideas like “big government” and “regulations” sound unpopular — lawmakers were willing to pass a renewable energy requirement when it was framed as a “Renewable Portfolio Standard.”

    In 2002, after much give-and-take, the Texas legislature enacted Senate Bill 7, amending the state’s utility code and allowing for competition in the state’s retail electricity market. The Lone Star State put in place a Renewable Portfolio Standard. It required that by 2009 electricity providers collectively supply consumers with 2,000 megawatts of renewable power, enough to power about a third of a million homes.

    When it became clear that this goal would be met three years early in Texas, the state legislature more than doubled the requirement to just over 5,000 megawatts by 2015. As before, wind development blew past forecasts. This achievement was possible because Texas had approved construction of transmission lines to route electricity from remote wind farms to large urban markets. As of May 2021, the state’s installed wind capacity had reached nearly 40,000 megawatts — more than six times the goal mandated just four years earlier. Now leading the nation in wind energy, Texas currently generates 20 percent of U.S. wind-powered electricity.

    Meanwhile, in less than a decade, Virginia has become a renewable energy powerhouse. It’s on track to produce more than half of its electricity from renewables by 2035, and all of it a decade later.

    In March, the 2020 Virginia Clean Economy Act went into effect. It’s got real teeth: mandated benchmarks over 15 years for solar and wind investment and a Renewable Portfolio Standard requiring the state’s utilities to provide fully renewable electricity by 2045.

    If the entire U.S. were to adopt similar policies to these state-wide initiatives and enact a national goal of a 50 percent renewable energy standard by 2035, potentially we could cut CO2 emissions in the nation’s power sector by over 45 percent and reduce national natural gas generation by 38 percent over the next 15 years. These reductions—although falling slightly short of national efforts by President Biden to halve our current CO2 emissions within the next decade — would put us on track to achieve net-zero emissions by 2050.

    Almost half the growth of U.S. renewable energy from 2000 to 2019 can be linked to state Renewable Portfolio Standards — with more expected over the next decade. But that’s about the only blanket statement one can make about them. This reminds us of Justice Brandeis’s observation nearly 90 years ago, perhaps no more important today: “It is one of the happy incidents of the federal system that a single courageous state may, if its citizens choose, serve as a laboratory; and try novel social and economic experiments …”

    States have implemented differing approaches. Standards range from Washington, D.C.’s call for 100 percent renewable energy by 2032 to Iowa’s modest, but long-surpassed, 1983 renewables goal. Many states mandate that renewables comprise a minimum share of retail electric sales — generally between 10 and 45 percent, though 14 states require 50 percent or greater. Rather than mandating that a particular share of energy be renewable, two national leaders, Iowa and Texas, require specific amounts of renewable energy capacity.

    In creating investment certainty, states’ “standards” mandates have been astonishingly successful in driving the growth of renewable energy and advancing renewable energy technology, all the while driving down our reliance and generation of fossil fuel source production, which has been steadily declining in the past several years. In fact, the U.S. now generates more than double the total renewable energy that was called for in the 29 states’ standards put together.

    While this statistic is extremely impressive, we must also note that individual states can’t fight this national effort alone. These regional efforts constitute only a fraction, albeit a powerful one, of the necessary measures our nation must take in order to foster renewable energy systems that aren’t reliant on detrimental fossil fuels.

    Let us all support the efforts of organizations and leaders rewriting our nation’s energy story. The youth-led Sunrise Movement as well as 350.org are leading the charge for renewable energy, fossil fuel emitter accountability, and just, equitable and sustainable energy grids — all the while upgrading the most crucial element of American infrastructure, democracy itself. They, among others, deserve praise and support for advancing the Green New Deal and President Biden’s Plan for a Clean Energy Revolution and Environmental Justice. Renewable Portfolio Standards are just one tool in what must become a broad, transformative strategy for how we power our society — a strategy that, I’m thrilled to say, is already significantly underway.

    Note: If you want to discover where your state stands on renewable energy mandates, here is a handy interactive site from the U.S. Energy Information Administration. The author would like to thank Nina Larbi, Olivia Smith and Rachel Madison for their assistance on earlier drafts.

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • California Rent Forgiveness Shows It’s Possible to Shift Our National Priorities

    Renters and housing advocates attend a protest to cancel rent and avoid evictions in front of a court house on August 21, 2020, in Los Angeles, California.

    Since the onset of the coronavirus pandemic, millions of people have found themselves out of work, clinging to credit cards or a savings account, making use of the local food bank, and worrying about making the rent each month as the cash dried up.

    The relief packages passed by Congress were a lifeline for many, from the checks to the extended unemployment benefits and, perhaps most importantly, the eviction protections for those who simply couldn’t make rent because there was no work. The peril was ever-present, even with that help; if that firewall fell and landlords were allowed to evict for unpaid rent, the avalanche of immediate homelessness could have quite possibly been a country-killing event. Untold thousands put out on the street in the middle of a lethal pandemic? Unspeakable.

    Every time the nation has come to the expiration deadline for the last set of eviction protections, landlord coalitions pushed to have them end and renter’s groups pleaded to have them extended. To this point, they have been extended each time, but protecting people from the collapse of the economy has become another conservative plaything; a number of Republican governors have moved to slash unemployment benefits under the long-running racist, classist lie that relief money makes people not want to work. How soon until they try to apply that argument to rent?

    On Monday, however, the state of California, responding to sustained pressure from organizers and activists, showed the country a whole new way to go:

    Gov. Gavin Newsom says California will pay off all the past-due rent that accumulated in the nation’s most populated state because of the fallout from the coronavirus pandemic, a promise to make landlords whole while giving renters a clean slate…. California has $5.2 billion to pay off people’s rent, money from multiple aid packages approved by Congress. That appears to be more than enough to cover all of the unpaid rent in the state, according to Jason Elliott, senior counselor to Newsom on housing and homelessness.

    While employment among middle- and high-wage jobs has exceeded pre-pandemic levels, employment rates for people earning less than $27,000 a year are down more than 38% since January 2020, according to Opportunity Insights, an economic tracker based at Harvard University. “The stock market may be fine, we may be technically reopened, but people in low-wage jobs — which are disproportionately people of color — are not back yet,” said Madeline Howard, senior attorney for the Western Center on Law and Poverty.

    How deeply embedded into the national psyche is the capitalist ethos? If an announcement like this came under the headline, “Spaceship From Planet XQ41 Appears Above Sacramento, Pays All Rent, Departs Through Hole in Sky,” my level of surprise would have been pretty much the same. How long was I asleep last night? What country is this?

    Bless my heart, it’s the United States of America, where government — local, state and federal — can actually help people if we choose to make doing so a priority. The federal government did so with the relief bills, states like California took their own necessary steps like this, and local governments along with activists labored mightily to keep as many people afloat as possible. Cries of “socialism” were muted for much of the pandemic, because even a Republican knows a boat with no bottom is going to sink no matter what Ronald Reagan or Grover Norquist has to say about it.

    To be sure, California’s historically robust economy is one of the main reasons why this action was possible. “The most trusted measure of economic strength says California is the world-beater among democracies,” reports Bloomberg News. “The state’s gross domestic product increased 21 percent during the past five years, dwarfing No. 2 New York (14 percent) and No. 3 Texas (12 percent), according to data compiled by Bloomberg. The gains added $530 billion to the Golden State, 30 percent more than the increase for New York and Texas combined and equivalent to the entire economy of Sweden. Among the five largest economies, California outperforms the U.S., Japan and Germany with a growth rate exceeded only by China.”

    Again, we return to the idea of priorities. President Bill Clinton amassed a huge budget surplus at the end of his second term, but it was all but gone by April 2001 because the Bush administration gave it away to its rich friends in the form of tax breaks. The rest of us — many of us, anyway — got $300 and a suddenly fragile national economy that was almost immediately knocked reeling by September 11. The rest of those funds, along with trillions more, were squandered on two failed wars that stole the economic future from a generation of Americans.

    In 2001 and 2002, Congress passed Authorizations for the Use of Military Force (AUMF) to lay the groundwork for the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq. The economic damage done by the money wasted on these bloody endeavors is almost impossible to quantify, but real enough to make California’s statewide rent amnesty seem a laughable fantasy, until it happened.

    Last week, almost 20 years after its inception, the repeal of the 2002 AUMF regarding Iraq was passed by the House. Its ultimate demise will be voted on by the Senate on June 22. The far more muscular 2001 AUMF remains intact, but there is a groundswell of support for ending it, as well. Congress has to deal with its little brother first, and then we shall see.

    Among many other shabby things, the combined 39 years given to those two authorizations were the sign and signal of our national priorities. The money spent on those wars left us uniquely vulnerable to COVID-19, as all the social and medical infrastructure needed to combat it was revealed to be cash-starved and withered to the point of collapse. Only when we embraced some “socialist” policy priorities were we able to pull back from the brink. Note well: Rep. Barbara Lee was right.

    Newsom could have argle-bargled about “job creators” and pulled a Bush, using his state’s budget surplus as an ATM for the wealthy and corporations. Instead, thanks to pressure from progressives, he paid the rent and delivered billions in tax relief to small businesses affected by the pandemic. The fact that this is remarkable tells us all we need to know about how far gone our priorities have become, but more importantly, it tells us what we can accomplish if we choose to change them.

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.