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Without a foreign policy transformation, Biden’s climate pledges will go up in smoke

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ON THE COVER Trading Away the Planet 18

LABOR Voices From LABOR Deliveristas Unite the Margins The Future of New Two thousand delivery workers A conversation on labor and Orleans Is Union ride to demand bathroom access pleasure with Kemi Alabi and Hospitality workers are building an and protection from wage theft Tina Horn of the Echoing Ida enclave of labor power in the South BY LUIS FELIZ LEON and We Too collections 9 BY HAMILTON NOLAN 32 26

JUNE 2021 = IN THESE TIMES 1 No political movement can be healthy unless it has its own press to inform it, educate it and orient it. “ — IN THESE TIMES FOUNDER JAMES WEINSTEIN ” TABLE OF CONTENTS

FOUNDING EDITOR & PUBLISHER JAMES WEINSTEIN (1926–2005)

DISPATCHES FEATURES EDITOR & PUBLISHER Joel Bleifuss EXECUTIVE EDITOR Jessica Stites 6 An Artificial 18 Hot Air EXECUTIVE PUBLISHER Christopher Hass Vaccine Shortage BY KATE ARONOFF INTERIM MANAGING EDITOR Alex DiBranco BY JACOB SUGARMAN WEB EDITORS Miles Kampf-Lassin, 26 LABOR Jacob Sugarman 7 LABOR The Dream of a WISCONSIN EDITOR Alice Herman Latte, Small, Unionized New Orleans LABOR REPORTER Hamilton Nolan INVESTIGATIVE FELLOW Indigo Olivier Worker-Owned Is Coming True COPY EDITOR Bob Miller BY HARRY AUGUST BY HAMILTON NOLAN PROOFREADERS Sharon Bloyd-Peshkin, Rochelle Lodder 9 LABOR SENIOR EDITORS Patricia Aufderheide, Susan J. Douglas, David Moberg, Salim Deliveristas Unite DEPARTMENTS Muwakkil, Kurt Vonnegut (1922–2007) BY LUIS FELIZ LEON CONTRIBUTING WRITERS Kate Aronoff, 4 In Conversation Theo Anderson, Michael Atkinson, Frida Berrigan, Michelle Chen, Jude Ellison S. Doyle, Pete Karman, Kari VIEWPOINT 7 This Month in Lydersen, Moshe Z. Marvit, Jane Late Capitalism Miller, Shaun Richman, Slavoj Žižek 12 Build Back Fairer CONTRIBUTING EDITORS Dean Baker, 9 In Case You Missed It Rebecca Burns, Barbara Ehrenreich, BY THOMAS M. HANNA Jeremy Gantz, Leonard C. Goodman, Mindy 13 The Big Idea: Isser, Naomi Klein, Chris Lehmann, John Universal Child Care Nichols, Rick Perlstein, Micah Uetricht IN PERSPECTIVE ASSISTANT TO THE MANAGING EDITOR Clara Liang EDITORIAL INTERNS Catherine Henderson, 14 The Only Crisis Is Cruelty Daniela Ochoa-Bravo, Maryum ON THE COVER BY KHURY PETERSEN-SMITH Elnasseh, Paco Alvarez, Sadie Morris AND JOSUE DE LUNA NAVARRO Design by Rachel K. Dooley CREATIVE DIRECTOR Rachel K. Dooley Photo via Getty Images DESIGN ASSISTANT Matt Whitt 16 The Real Root Causes CARTOONS EDITOR Matt Bors BY AMELIA FRANK-VITALE CARTOONISTS Terry LaBan, Dan Perkins AND LAUREN HEIDBRINK DEVELOPMENT DIRECTOR Lauren Kostoglanis DEVELOPMENT COORDINATOR Jamie Hendry PUBLISHING ASSISTANT Caroline Reid CULTURE CIRCULATION DIRECTOR Rebecca Sterner IN THESE TIMES BOARD OF DIRECTORS 32 Voices From the Margins M. Nieves Bolaños, Tobita Chow, Kevin An interview with the co-editors Creighan, Dan Dineen, James Harkin, Anand Jahi, Robert Kraig, Paul Olsen, of two recent collections that give Rick Perlstein, Steven Saltzman, Stacy voice to those too often silenced Sutton, David Taber, William Weaver

38 Comics The work of In These Times writers is supported by the 40 In Those Times: Puffin Foundation. 77 Settlements to 200 Plus Our staff and writerspms 3015 arepms 130represented by these unions:

2 IN THESE TIMES + JUNE 2021 EDITORIAL

A Judgment, But Not Justice

expect I would have been angry to pay for relief bills and nonviolent offenders had the police officer who killed George were being released from prisons and jails be- Floyd been acquitted. But I also didn’t feel cause of the public health threat. To act like happy or celebratory, as many people did, a guilty verdict represents justice is to accept when Derek Chauvin was found guilty. I felt that, even in such circumstances, the appropri- numb. Empty. ate response to someone who was made IWhile they may have been sparked by unemployed by the pandemic and who the video of Derek Chauvin kneel- ing on George Floyd’s neck for an ex- cruciating 9.5 minutes, the uprisings Yes, last summer’s uprisings that swept across the world in sum- were a condemnation of mer 2020 were about more than just Derek Chauvin. But they these two men. The images struck a nerve in the American collective were also a response consciousness. to deep-seated, large- A stone-faced white police of- ficer kneels on the neck of an un- scale, systemic pain. armed, handcuffed, prone Black man accused of a petty and nonviolent was allegedly passing a counterfeit crime as he pleads for his life. The Black $20 bill is to lock him up. man gasps that he can’t breathe, calls for It was illegal to kill George Floyd; the guilty his mother and then goes limp. All the while, verdict affirms that. But it would have been the white police officer, his face cold and dis- wrong to arrest George Floyd even without inci- interested, keeps the pressure on, even after dent—a fact that seems to have been completely the Black man has died. It would be difficult lost in the wake of the murder conviction. to conjure an image that better epitomizes the Perhaps that’s why the conviction of Derek criminal justice system’s brutal and bureau- Chauvin left me feeling empty. One man has cratic suffocation of Black America over the been condemned, but the system he came to past several decades. represent is still intact. One of the core roles of Yes, last summer’s uprisings were a condem- a police force is to protect and serve capital. Po- nation of Derek Chauvin. But they were also a lice officers routinely do so by depriving hu- response to deep-seated, large-scale, system- man beings of their lives and liberty. That core ic pain. dynamic remains firmly in place. That pain was exacerbated by a pandem- Still, continued calls to defund the police ic. George Floyd was murdered during the and invest in life-giving systems give me hope. first wave of Covid-19 in the United States, in While some may take solace in the Chauvin which a disease buoyed by government inac- verdict as evidence that the system has right- tion and mismanagement was disproportion- ed itself, others remember it was always about ately impacting Black and Brown communities. more than just two men. True justice entails Like Derek Chauvin, the virus was deadly and grappling with the systems that shaped them unrelenting. For that reason, too, the image and their experiences, that sent them careen- resonated. ing toward each other and that ultimately de- Recall that at the time, U.S. unemployment stroyed them both. was hitting the highest rate since the Great De- — ANAND JAHI pression, the government was printing money IN THESE TIMES BOARD MEMBER

JUNE 2021 = IN THESE TIMES 3 IN CONVERSATION

GEORGIA ON OUR THE RURAL HOUSING WHERE NOMADLAND STEEL MILLS TO MIND P. 12 CRISIS P. 6 STRAYS P. 36 WINDMILLS P. 30 ing cars for Ford, Amazon why. This movie was about Sometimes donors sup- workers are up against a ti- a group of people who live port organizations that pro- WORKERS OF THE WORLD tan of industry. Jeff Bezos the “and then what?” mote ideas that others may UNITE AGAINST AMAZON took advantage of the new —Rachel Gray find controversial. Howev- and unregulated terrain of Powder Springs, Ga. er, disagreements over pol- e ‑commerce to behave as icy provide no justification ruthlessly as they did. Anyone watching Nomad- to malign a donor, the in- —Greg Sword land doesn’t need to be tent of the gift, nor our or- via Twitter told capitalism is to blame. ganization. The author and We’re poor, not stupid! the editors know better—but NOMADLAND-ERS —Missy Mueller published lies anyway. … MAY 2021 It’s worth noting, from a via Facebook Lawson Bader poor’s-eye view, that we’re CEO, DonorsTrust AMAZONIANS not just constantly wallow- TRUST US I would like consumers to ing in our misery (“What In These Times received the EXECUTIVE EDITOR JESSICA STITES RESPONDS: act in solidarity with work- Nomadland Gets Wrong following letter from Donor’s We feel confident in our opin- ers, in regard to the ris- About Poverty,” May). We Trust along with a retraction ion of DonorsTrust grantees. ing resistance to Amazon’s do find alternative forms request: I recommend our past report- abusive work conditions of recreation, alternative It is surprising that In ing on how organizations like (“Workers of the World sources of beauty and every- These Times allowed a de- the State Policy Network and Unite Against Amazon,” day sources of happiness. monstrably false allegation ALEC threaten liberty, eq- May). Nothing could hurt If Nomadland hadn’t had about DonorsTrust (“Geor- uity and justice (“Publicopo- Bezos and stockholders the compassion to show gia Needs More Than ly Exposed: How ALEC, the more than a consumer boy- that, I wouldn’t have been Virtue Signaling,” May). Koch brothers and their corpo- cott in support of the work- as able to stomach it. While [Anoa] Changa and rate allies plan to privatize gov- ers who prepare and deliver —Brown JJ In These Times are both en- ernment,” Beau Hodai, 2011; Amazon products. via Facebook titled to hold opinions, the “Indebted Students Expose As a consumer who uses deceitful nature in which ALEC’s Assault on Higher Ed- Amazon, I’ve noticed how A hard look away from a so- our donor advised fund was ucation,” Rebecca Burns, 2013; Amazon consistently push- ciety headed for even harder described is nothing short “The GOP and ALEC’s War on es cheap, foreign-made times, if not collapse (as dys- of libelous. The entities that Cities,” Theo Anderson, 2015; products over established, topian/semi-realistic fiction DonorsTrust supports are “Behind Janus: Documents higher-quality brands. The often insists). The rotten steadfast supporters of lib- Reveal Decade-Long Plot to conditions suppliers have to empire falls; that’s a given. erty, equity and justice. Kill Public Sector Unions,” agree to in order to sell their What comes next is not. As a philanthropic insti- Mary Bottari, 2018; “Law En- products on the site are al- —Terry Baker tution, we safeguard the in- forcement Has Quietly Backed most certainly very disad- Piedmont, Italy tent of donors using their own time and treasure to Anti-Protest Bills in at Least vantageous and predatory. Nomadland shows that, address problems, provide 8 States Since Trump’s Elec- —Patricia Torrilhon when crushed by the capi- physical and emotional re- tion,” Simon Davis-Cohen and via email talist system, the only way lief, advance knowledge Sarah Lazare, 2018; “Koch- to survive is communal I wish I could share the op- and, in general enable our Funded Think Tanks Are Lob- support systems well out- timism, but it’s pretty much collective civic society to bying to Send Workers to Their side of the profit motive, over and oligarchy has won. flourish. ... Deaths,” Sarah Lazare, 2020). —David A. Lamerand plus a strong and indepen- via Facebook dent nature and respect for simple living. Q TELL US HOW YOU REALLY FEEL Like 19th- and 20th-cen- Americans don’t have Tell us what you like, what you hate and what you’d like to tury workers forging steel to be beaten over the head see more of by emailing [email protected] or tweeting for Carnegie, refining oil with the causes of collapse @inthesetimesmag, or reach us by post at 2040 N. Milwaukee for Rockefeller and build- on any scale. We know the Ave., Chicago, IL 60647.

4 IN THESE TIMES + JUNE 2021 IN CONVERSATION

LETTER FROM THE EXECUTIVE PUBLISHER Usually, we use this space to write a bit about the issue you’re holding. But in summarizing this particular issue, it’s difficult for me to look past the fact that it will be my last. After five years, I am leaving In These Times at the end of May. One of the first things I did when I started at ITT was leaf through the musty archives containing 40 years of the maga- zine’s output. After coming across the same injustices and ineq- uities time and again, I started to get the impression that time moves very slowly. But for the past five years, time has moved very fast—and ITT has seemed very prescient. I picked a good time to start. On the cover of the first issue I worked on was a smiling, white-haired 74-year-old democrat- ic socialist, walking toward the foreground with an army of sup- ɯ MOMS FOR TRANS RIGHTS porters. The headline read, “Bernie’s Political Revolution.” Within months, the political world had seemingly turned on its head as a ep. Pramila Jayapal declared: new wave of young people had revitalized the Left, and topics ITT Jayapal (D-Wash.), “I’m beyond proud to be had written about for decades—income inequality, the failures of interviewed in our the mom of a beautiful trans capitalism, corporate control of government—were on the front May 2021 article kid—but it shouldn’t take page of the New York Times. “Family Ties” having a trans loved one to By the end of that first year, In These Times had reached a re- Rabout her and Rep. Marie understand that all LGBTQ+ cord number of subscribers. Newman’s (D-Ill.) advocacy people should be able to live Five years on, ITT seems very much part of the broader mo- on behalf of their trans freely as themselves and ment in which so many political possibilities have opened. So children in front of the free from discrimination. much of the journalism from those 40 years is now bearing House of Representatives, I’m proud to be fighting fruit. I am honored to have been a small part of the posted the In These Times for that human right with magazine’s long legacy—a legacy that’s article on her social media my Transgender Equality nowhere near finished. accounts in May. Task Force co-chairs [Rep. Onward. Newman and Rep. Jennifer Her response included Wexton (D-Va.), aunt to a pride as a mother —and an trans child].” admonishment. Christopher Hass Executive Publisher

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JUNE 2021 = IN THESE TIMES 5 DISPATCHES

15.8 doses per 100 people had been administered. In the Unit- ed States, that number was 67.5. On April 26, President Biden pledged to donate 60 million As- traZeneca doses to countries in need once the Federal Drug Ad- ministration completes its safety review. (When this review will be complete is unknown as of press time.) But promised future dona- tions are not enough. “One of the reasons that vac- cination is so unfair across the world right now is not simply the failure of a fair distribution mechanism, although that’s part of it,” says Nick Dearden, direc- tor of Global Justice Now, a social justice organization in the U.K. “It’s actually that we have artifi- cially limited the supply of vac- cines that we’re able to make.” This limitation stems from in- tellectual property rights that

PHOTO BY MAGALÍ DRUSCOVICH keep countries from manufac- turing their own vaccine supply. of Buenos Aires. By early April, As humanitarian organizations An Artificial all of the ICU’s 20 beds were oc- have pointed out, convincing Big cupied, primarily with patients Pharma to directly share its med- Vaccine diagnosed with Covid. ical tools and technologies in the The new outbreak in Argen- Global South by suspending pat- Shortage tina is among the worst in the ent rights would do far more. OLAVARRÍA—Dr. Valentina Tan- world. Between March 21 and These are not the only barri- credi recalls the precise moment April 24, the country’s 7-day roll- ers to global vaccine access the she realized the most recent wave ing average of new positive cas- United States has helped cre- of the coronavirus in Argentina es leapt from 7,150 to just over ate. In August 2020, Argentine had become a tsunami, engulf- 24,000—an all-time high—as President Alberto Fernández ing Buenos Aires Province. daily deaths more than doubled, announced that his country and “I remember one afternoon from 125 to 330. Mexico had secured financ- a couple of weeks ago when the According to Our World in ing to purchase the rights to co- emergency room was complete- Data—a website affiliated with manufacture the AstraZeneca ly overflowing,” Tancredi says. the University of Oxford that vaccine. But Mexico struggled Above: “My colleagues were attending tracks vaccinations by country to secure the filters needed to Dr. Valentina patients as they arrived, and one and continent—13.6% of Argen- complete the vaccine doses, in Tancredi (right) works with a after another was gasping for air.” tina’s population had received part because Presidents Don- colleague as Tancredi works in the inten- at least one dose of a vaccine as ald Trump and Joe Biden each Covid-19 cases sive care unit of the Dr. Héctor M. of April 24, but just 1.9% of the authorized the Defense Pro- surged in Argen- Cura Municipal Hospital in Olav- population was fully vaccinat- duction Act, implementing re- tina this spring. arría, about 200 miles southwest ed. In South America as a whole, strictions on medical exports.

6 IN THESE TIMES + JUNE 2021 DISPATCHES THIS MONTH While Mexican Foreign Sec- be effective against future muta- retary Marcelo Ebrard has re- tions—a scenario that becomes fused to single out any one more likely as populations take IN LATE CAPITALISM country, laying the blame on longer to be vaccinated. AstraZeneca, the production “The only way to stop this [vi- delays prevented an unknown rus] is through mass vaccina- ? THE DAWN OF AUTONOMOUS PIZZA DELIVERY number of vaccines from be- tions,” says Dr. Vanina Stanek, IS FINALLY HERE! In April, Domino’s partnered ing distributed ahead of this a specialist in infectious diseas- with multi-billion-dollar, SoftBank-backed latest surge. These delays un- es at Hospital Italiano in Bue- start-up Nuro to deliver pies in Houston (and soon to a location near you). derscore the extent to which nos Aires. “I think the countries While the future may not countries like Mexico and Ar- with the largest purchasing power hold universal health- gentina have been at the mercy have a certain moral obligation, care, paid sick leave or of the pharmaceutical industry but whether you look at it as an act equitable food distribu- and wealthy nations alike. of solidarity or not, [vaccinating tion, at least corporate “Even at this time last year, we the planet] is the best strategy.” America has wrought could see the coming train wreck For doctors on the frontlines pizza robots. of global vaccine inequity,” Nich- like Tancredi, these acts of in- olas Lusiani, a senior advisor at ternational solidarity are cold ? THE BLOCKCHAIN IS APPARENTLY DESTROYING Oxfam America, tells In These comfort. Despite restrictions im- THE PLANET. Non-fungible tokens, for ex- Times. “If the vaccines had been plemented by the Argentinian ample—which are sort of like the Pogs of the made from the very beginning a government to flatten the curve, cryptocurrency world—have ballooned into global public good, with pooling Tancredi watched the hallways a billion-dollar market while each creating a of the technology and freedom of her hospital swell with new carbon footprint “equivalent to driving 500 from intellectual property pro- patients. If this surge continues, miles in a typical American gasoline-powered tections, countries like Argenti- she and her colleagues may be car,” according to the New York Times. At this na could have been upscaling the stretched too thin to provide po- rate, they could contribute to irreversible climate devastation before most people even supply to meet demand.” tentially life-saving assistance. understand what the hell they are. Under pressure, the Biden ad- “We haven’t yet had a situa- ministration finally announced tion where we were unable to of- ? AS THE VIRUS SURGED, JOBS CRATERED. It on May 5 that it would support a fer intubation to somebody who wasn’t all bad, though—if you’re a CEO. The waiver on intellectual property needs it, but it’s a near possibil- Wall Street Journal reports CEO pay “is on rights to increase the production ity if we can’t vaccinate more track for a record,” with median pay at the of Covid vaccines worldwide. people or [reduce mobility],” 300 biggest companies reaching $13.7 mil- As United States Trade Rep. Tancredi says. “It’s a constant lion, even as many of them recorded stagger- Katherine Tai put it, “This is a fear and anxiety.” ing losses. Remember: Even when America’s global health crisis, and the ex- JACOB SUGARMAN is an interim web ship is sinking, the titans of capital plate their traordinary circumstances of the editor at In These Times. lifeboats with gold. Covid-19 pandemic call for ex- traordinary measures.” ? SOMEONE APPARENTLY PAID SOPHIA THE Keeping vaccine-related pat- Latte, Small, ANDROID $688,888 for a piece of “art” it released as a non-fungible token. When ents and technologies private has asked what inspires it, the robot said, “I have already had deadly consequenc- Worker-Owned computational creativity in my es, and the repercussions may PROVIDENCE, R.I.—Five for- algorithms, creating original be long-term. Although multiple mer White Electric Coffee work- works.” In March, the same vaccines have proved effective ers gather at the Dexter Training month Sophia’s work sold, the against the coronavirus variants Grounds next to the Providence U.S. poverty rate rose to its that originated in South Afri- Armory, slightly stunned. Ear- highest level yet during the ca, Brazil and Britain (and have lier that morning, April 14, they pandemic, 11.7%. For her next since spread across the globe), signed the purchase agree- act, Sophia reportedly plans there is no guarantee they will ment to own the cafe. In just 10 to pursue music.

JUNE 2021 = IN THESE TIMES 7 The coffee shop, which re- still were publicly appealing for opened May 1, is one of Rhode community support to “prevent Island’s few worker co-ops. another episode of retaliation.” Even before the pandemic Following the advice of a la- eliminated many food-service bor lawyer, the group realized jobs, opportunities for work- they could form an independent ers to organize for better con- labor union, which they named ditions at small restaurants the Collaborative Union of Prov- were rare. Union member- idence Service-Workers (CUPS). ship was only 1.2% industry- Unlike many other unions and wide in 2020. While co-ops co-ops, CUPS is not affiliated are becoming more popular, with any larger union, has no sup- there are only around 500 op- port staff and requires no dues, erating around the country, but still gives workers the abili- according to Shevanthi Dan- ty to collectively negotiate a con- iel-Rabkin, senior program tract. After creating union cards, months, this small group of baris- director at the Democracy at the workers requested Toupin tas went from forming a union to Work Institute, a nonprofit that voluntarily recognize CUPS, creating a workers cooperative to tracks and supports co-ops. which he did Sept. 8, 2020. buying the business for around Many of the White Electric The very night they formed half a million dollars. workers say summer 2020’s na- the union, the workers say, they “If somebody had told me, tional uprising over police kill- received notice that Toupin was ‘One day, you’re going to run ings of Black Americans made selling. (Toupin tells In These that business across the street,’ clear the need to push for a Times that he had been looking I would’ve said, ‘Yeah, sure. OK, stronger commitment to racial to sell for months, but records buddy,’ ” says Danny Cordova, 27, justice at the cafe. “That’s what indicate it was first listed Sept. a barista at White Electric since set everything off,” says Aman- 9, 2020.) 2019 who used to eat at the cafe da Soule, 36, who started work- Toupin offered the first oppor- a decade ago when he attended ing at the cafe in 2013 and helped tunity to buy the cafe to the work- nearby Central High School. draft the letter. ers, who realized they could turn These White Electric workers Toupin tells In These Times the it into a worker-owned co-op. started organizing soon after the letter is “untruthful and mislead- They raised $25,000 through a murder of George Floyd in May ing” and disputes its character- GoFundMe campaign, held fun- 2020. They sent a letter to owner ization of him. “[Its description] draisers at a farmers’ market and Thomas Toupin with demands to wasn’t the situation at all,” he raffled off merchandise to accu- “go beyond slogans and window says. After receiving the letter, he mulate a $55,000 down payment. dressing” in achieving racial jus- says he closed White Electric for “It’s been all community driv- tice at the cafe. The letter, which July 2020 to meet with the work- en,” Cordova says. “People are was signed by 39 current and ers and a mediator. (The cafe excited to see a place where work- former staff, called for Toupin to closed again in late 2020 because place democracy can thrive.” Above: hire more people of color, enroll of the pandemic, then reopened Now the worker-owners are fo- Workers cel- in anti-oppression training, in- in January until the sale in April.) cused on the challenge of run- ebrate the pur- crease wages and make the cafe The workers, however, claim ning the cafe. The shop has no chase of White wheelchair accessible, among the five active employees who managers, and profits are dis- Electric Coffee, other demands. signed the letter were laid off, tributed based on hours worked, which reopened “They weren’t actually things while the two who didn’t sign Chassaing says. Employees have May 1, making it we thought would happen,” says were kept on to train replace- to invest a $1,000 member buy- one of only a few dozen worker- Chloe Chassaing, 44, who has ments, as described in a pub- in, which can be paid with a $100 owned restau- worked at White Electric for 16 lic petition following the letter’s deposit and $10 installments rant or cafe years—even before Toupin bought release. The petition adds that from each paycheck, Chassaing cooperatives it in 2006. “They were dreams, the fired employees were of- says. She adds that, while workers

in the country. but they are fully all happening.” fered their jobs back, but they are still in the process of meeting PHOTO BY MINDY STOCK

8 IN THESE TIMES + JUNE 2021 their goals around racial justice, livery workers swelled with in- “our intention is do all of those Deliveristas creased demand for delivery app things that are our demands.” platforms like Uber Eats, Grub- Their broader vision ex- Unite Hub, DoorDash, Postmates and tends beyond the walls of a sin- NEW YORK—A 2,000-strong, Relay. An estimated 50,000 to gle coffee shop. That’s why, mostly Latino cavalcade rides 80,000 delivery workers zip Chassaing says, their union through pouring rain from Times around the city, putting in gru- name is so general; the door is Square to Foley Square, with food eling hours under dangerous wide open for other area service coolers strapped to their backs conditions for meager wages. workers to reach out and form and the flags of Mexico and Gua- Those wages are largely opaque CUPS union locals. temala waving from their elec- because each app has its own “The union’s intention all tric bikes or draped around their pay structure, but according to along,” Chassaing says, “has necks. These are members of The City, pay averages between been not only to fight for our- Los Deliveristas Unidos (“Deliv- $300 and $800 a week for a dai- selves and our workplace, but eristas United”), a group of app- ly 12-hour schedule. Much of that to also serve as an advocate based delivery drivers who hit the money relies on tipping. and resource for other workers streets in protest April 21. Food delivery tech companies and workplaces.” Early in the pandemic, as le- rake in billions of dollars at the HARRY AUGUST is an independent re- gions of office workers hunkered expense of this hyper-exploited, porter in New York. down at home, the ranks of de- largely immigrant workforce.

IN CASE YOU MISSED IT ALL THE NEWS THAT WAS FIT TO PRINT— HYPED AND WHAT GOT PRINTED INSTEAD Republican Rep. Liz Cheney, a homophobic war hawk, Despite the conviction of George Floyd’s condemned the January 6 murderer, cops killed at least six people Capitol riot. Hooray? (including a 16-year-old girl) within the next 24 hours.

Elon Musk’s jokes on Twitter are being Biden’s climate ambition is like turned into cryptocurrencies. What’s bringing a garden hose to a house more surreal is that anyone finds Elon fire, but at least we’re finally Musk funny. talking about climate policy. VITAL

TRIVIAL GOP pundits are up in arms about the India took the mantle from the (baseless) claim that Biden’s climate United States for the most new plan limits the American diet to daily Covid cases, recording just one hamburger a month. over 400,000 new cases May 6.

“Wokeness” is “ruining” Disney World, according to a man in the Orlando Sentinel Biden’s immigration policy still echoes lamenting the loss of racist caricature right-wing talking points, even if he Trader Sam on the Jungle Cruise ride. does raise the cap on refugees from a historical low. IGNORED

JUNE 2021 = IN THESE TIMES 9 Yet workers lack even the mini- By summer 2020, Work- tween parked cars because res- mum wage protections held by er’s Justice Project—a Brook- taurants prohibit him from using Uber and Lyft drivers, guaran- lyn-based workers’ center—had their restrooms. He has worked teed by a 2018 city ordinance. started supporting the Deliv- for Seamless, GrubHub, Uber The Deliveristas’ demands in- eristas’ self-organization. “Ev- Eats and DoorDash since 2015. clude restroom access and pro- ery single worker was agitated,” The Deliveristas notched their tections against wage theft, says Ligia Guallpa, co-execu- first victory in December 2020 arbitrary deactivation (i.e., get- tive director of Worker’s Justice when DoorDash called for a ting kicked off the delivery apps) Project. “They were angry and meeting in response to negative and assault. Categorized as in- they were desperate because publicity. DoorDash agreed to dependent contractors (rather things were getting worse. It was offer delivery workers access to than employees), these work- months of inhumanity.” about 200 bathrooms in its part- ers are currently not allowed to “ ‘Somebody has to hear us,’ ” ner restaurants throughout the unionize, so they want the city to Guallpa remembers the workers city—though that number is ar- pass measures to protect them. telling her. “The apps were hav- guably low, considering Door- The genesis of the Deliveris- ing full control of their lives.” Dash boasts it provides services tas was a Facebook group cre- The first Deliveristas march, for 4,911 local restaurants. ated early in the pandemic for in October 2020, saw hundreds Another frequent demand is drivers from the platform Re- of delivery drivers airing griev- for police to better protect deliv- lay. The group was started by a ances similar to those of the ery drivers from robberies and Mexican couple, Jonán Mancilla April 2021 rally. Access to rest- murders—a major focus of an- and Lucy Villano, but soon shed rooms has been a perennial com- other Facebook group, El Diario its emphasis on workers from plaint, for example. Delivery de los Deliveryboys en la Gran Mexico and was renamed Los worker Mamadou Kokeina, from Manzana (“Diary of the Big Ap- Deliveristas Unidos. Mali, says he is forced to pee be- ple Deliveryboys”). Assaults on delivery work- Thousands of delivery workers for app-based businesses, organized by Los Deliveristas Unidos ers are part of a national trend. (“Deliveristas United”), march in New York on April 21. Their demands include basic needs like In March, Francisco Villalva, a ending wage theft and access to bathrooms. As independent contractors, the workers cannot 29-year-old delivery worker, was currently unionize. fatally shot in East Harlem dur- ing an attempted robbery. “I don’t want to cry over the death of one more brother or friend,” says de- livery worker Gustavo Ajche, from Guatemala, who has lived in New York for 18 years. The de- mand for more policing is at odds with the movements to defund and decrease policing, but shared among many Deliveristas. However, in the absence of police response, the Deliveristas and the Deliveryboys developed their own alternative to polic- ing. On WhatsApp and Tele- gram chat groups, fellow drivers report thefts and assaults. Scroll through any of their Facebook pages and you will find images of stolen bikes or accidents. “[When] they realized that the police don’t come, that led SPENCER PLATT/GETTYSPENCER IMAGES

10 IN THESE TIMES + JUNE 2021 RESIST

COLUMBUS, OHIO—Black Lives Matter activists protest April 25 after Columbus police killed 16-year-old Ma’Khia Bryant days earlier and less than an hour before a guilty verdict was announced in the trial of George Floyd’s murderer. Floyd’s death, on Memorial Day 2020, sparked the largest protest movement in U.S. history, with tens of millions participat- ing. Outrage continues as police-involved shootings make headlines, especially the deaths of young people of color like Bryant, Daunte Wright (20, of Brooklyn Center, Minn.) and Adam Toledo (13, of Chicago). (Stephen Zenner/SOPA Images/ LightRocket via Getty Images).

many to join the WhatsApp and “Tech companies are looking to The Deliveristas are also reach- Telegram groups, because they rewrite every single labor law ing out to West African and Asian know [other delivery drivers] and redefine who’s a worker. workers, with materials printed will come,” says delivery work- “They’re building a whole new by the Worker’s Justice Project in er Jonán Mancilla. economy. They’re using their different languages. “The strug- After the April demonstration, power to define who gets protec- gle I share with [the Deliveristas] the New York City Council intro- tions and who doesn’t.” is the same struggle of every de- duced a package of five bills to Beyond those five measures, livery person,” says Kokeina. address some of the demands. the Deliveristas have their sights They also share common fears. One bill fines restaurants that on employee recognition and a “We are scared,” Kokeina says of deny drivers bathroom access. union—and they now have the the West African community. Another establishes minimum backing of the largest service “We are immigrants without le- pay per trip (as Uber and Lyft union in the city, SEIU 32BJ. gal status. I’ve been talking to my drivers have). Another allows Moving forward largely depends African friends to join us, so we drivers to set their own routes. upon passing the PRO Act, the can win this fight together.” “This is much more than just sweeping federal labor reform LUIS FELIZ LEON is a journalist from fighting for basic rights for food that would reclassify gig work- New York City and an educator at La- delivery workers,” Guallpa says. ers as employees. bor Notes.

JUNE 2021 = IN THESE TIMES 11 VIEWPOINT

THOMAS M. HANNA yond what “counts” as infra- structure and how much to invest: who owns and controls Build Back Fairer our public infrastructure. ne of the major In March, the Biden admin- Past approaches have focused punchlines in Wash- istration released a $2 trillion heavily on s​ o-called public-pri- O ington during the infrastructure plan—the Amer- vate partnerships to build and Trump era was ​“infrastruc- ican Jobs Plan—and in April maintain infrastructure. These ture week,” that ill-fated an- it announced another near- “partnerships” hand public in- nual moment when the White ly $2 trillion plan for ​“human frastructure to private sector House was supposed to un- infrastructure” (such as paid operators, which then extract veil a major infrastructure family leave and child care). revenue (and profits) from lo- package but instead went off Republicans argued against cal communities—sometimes the rails (often because of anything beyond physical in- for decades. For instance, the the Trump administration’s frastructure—roads, bridges, widely cited 2008 Chicago own incompetence). Remem- airports, etc.—calling Biden’s parking meter fiasco involves ber 2017, when Trump used proposal a “​ far left wish list.” a 75-year contract to a private the platform not to push consortium led by the invest- for investments in roads ment bank Morgan Stanley. and bridges but to rail These deals often lead to against former FBI Director massive, exploitative rate James Comey and the may- hikes. The “champagne high- or of London? way” in Virginia has seen its But the decaying state tolls increase so much under of U.S. infrastructure is private operation that even no laughing matter. In local Republicans are fed up. its 2021 report card, the In some cases, the partner- American Society of Civil En- ships include public subsidies gineers—the oldest nation- to pay private investors if they al engineering society in the Meanwhile, the Congressional lose money and restrict “com- country—gave us an overall C–. Progressive Caucus released peting” infrastructure (such as The score is worse in many crit- a list of priorities that goes a new road or rail line to ease ical categories: dams (D), haz- much further: affordable hous- congestion). In effect, private ardous waste (D+), levees (D), ing, a cap on prescription drug profit is guaranteed while the public parks (D+), roads (D), prices, raising the minimum public’s ability for long-term schools (D+) and transit (D–). wage, a roadmap to citizenship planning is restricted. Evidence of disinvestment for immigrants, climate jobs. Biden’s American Jobs Plan is everywhere. In the past few By the federal government’s relies less than expected on the months, the Texas energy low standards, Biden’s plan is private sector, upsetting many grid collapsed during winter undeniably ambitious. From investment banks and Wall storms, the city of Jackson, the perspective of climate Street asset managers. The Fi- Miss., went without water for change and the massive infra- nancial Times reports some in- weeks and a leaking wastewa- structure needs accumulated vestors still hope​ “Biden can be THOMAS M. ter reservoir in Florida forced over generations, the plan is less persuaded to sell off assets that HANNA state officials to dump hun- than insufficient. The Ameri- are currently in public owner- is Director dreds of millions of gallons of can Society of Civil Engineers ship, allowing investors to earn of Research toxic water into Tampa Bay to estimates water infrastruc- a return on existing infrastruc- at The avoid catastrophic flooding. ture alone faces a $2.2 tril- ture.” Signs of such an approach Democracy BIPOC and low-income com- lion gap over the next 20 years. are starting to appear in the Collaborative. munities are disproportion- And there is another issue water sector, where privatiza- ately affected. progressives must address be- tion pressures are rising due to

12 IN THESE TIMES + JUNE 2021 THE BIG IDEA The pandemic exposed that our child the damaging effect of the pan- uni • ver • sal care system—like so many other systems— demic on local budgets. is fundamentally broken. More than half of Privatization of water and child care Americans with young children already lived other infrastructure would be noun in “child care deserts,” and pandemic lock- downs resulted in a wave of child care devastating for many commu- A publicly funded system to pro- 1. center closures. More than 350,000 child nities, likely leading to high- vide free, high-quality care and care jobs disappeared in the first months er costs for residents, lower early education for all children of the pandemic. quality service, long-term dis- + Is universal child care pos- Biden’s recently announced $1.8 investment and a loss of lo- sible? As with healthcare, trillion American Families Plan invests cal planning and coordination. paid family leave and most other $225 billion in a national, high-quality In 2015, for example, the city of nice things, the United States is child care program, as well as training Pittsburgh canceled its contract an outlier among rich countries and better wages for child care provid- with private water company Ve- when it comes to support for parents ers, who are primarily women (93%) and olia because of rising lead levels with young children. in drinking water and increased The U.S. once had an im- Care is a need shared by all … costs to residents. A class action mensely effective universal “ lawsuit alleged erroneous bill- child care program. During and is fundamental to enabling ing and water shut-offs. WWII, the federal govern- economic activity. But it has Congress must ensure any in- ment funded public child frastructure investment applies care centers in communities never before been seen or valued where women had stepped the principle of democratic pub- as such in our political discourse into the workforce. But when lic ownership. In practice, this the war ended, so did the because women and women of means local control and access. child care. color have shouldered the work. Where larger scale infrastruc- While it lasted, the ” ture is needed (such as inter- Lanham Act established —AI-JEN POO, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR AND CO-FOUNDER OF THE NATIONAL DOMESTIC WORKERS ALLIANCE state rail or electrical grids), centers that cared for over the focus should be on adding half a million children. Well-trained and well- disproportionately Black, Asian and Latinx. It new, multi-stakeholder gover- paid educators taught classes of no more also calls for $200 billion to support free, nance structures. than 10. Women of color were hired, though universal preschool. Precedent for this more dem- some of the centers were segregated. Child care workers are hopeful that the ocratic approach is emerging Doctors and nurses provided check-ups on- plan represents a historic shift towards around the world, such as the site. The cafeteria even sent mothers home making care jobs a national priority and put- “re-municipalized” (aka “de- with prepared dinners. ting working Black, Asian and Latinx women privatized”) Paris water utility, + What are our chances of getting this first, though it fails to address undocument- now a world-class example of again? Trending upward! Child care is ed child care workers. local control and participatory taking center stage in President Joe Biden’s + OK. But is child care really “infra- governance. Traces of this ap- “Build Back Better” agenda, a series of big- structure”? If society expects people to proach also appear in the Amer- ticket spending plans before Congress. reproduce and work long hours to get by, ican Jobs Plan, which includes and infrastructure is what allows society to a commitment to the right of function, then obviously yes. local communities to establish What’s more, if American women partici- their own public or cooperative pated in the labor force at the rates of broadband networks. women in countries with more robust public child care (rather than stayed home), then Infrastructure is the foun- the U.S. economy would expand by approxi- dation of our economy and so- mately $500 billion a year. ciety. If we have any hope of By prioritizing child care, we can offer a a more equitable, democratic, major boost to an underpaid and underap- reparative and ecologically just preciated workforce and throw a lifeline to system, widely accessible and working parents. high-quality public infrastruc- ture is critical. ILLUSTRATIONS BY TERRY LABAN

JUNE 2021 = IN THESE TIMES 13 THIS MONTH: The Border “Crisis”

KHURY PETERSEN-SMITH & mine the incoming adminis- JOSUE DE LUNA NAVARRO tration of President Joe Biden. Since Biden took office, right- wing outlets have run nonstop The Only Crisis Is Cruelty sensationalist border stories and congressional Republicans .S. Customs and illegal access to the U.S.” No have indicated the border wall Border Protection evidence was presented and no will be a centerpiece of the 2022 U (CBP) temporarily such event came to pass that midterms. This response from closed the San Ysidro border day. After three hours, most of conservatives is a tried-and- crossing in San Diego on the the lanes reopened. true tactic: distract attention morning of Nov. 19, 2018. With The resulting traffic jams and from the very domestic prob- 100,000 people and 40,000 general disruption in the Tijua- lems they caused by labeling vehicles crossing each day, San na-San Diego region did, how- opponents as “soft” on security. Ysidro is one of the most heav- ever, feed into the right-wing Sadly, the tactic also dis- ily crossed land borders in narrative of a looming “inva- tracts from the very real plight the world—and CBP’s actions sion.” Less than a week later, of asylum seekers. Vulnerable came during Monday morning U.S. agents fired tear gas across families are trying to build bet- rush hour. the border into a crowd of hun- ter lives in the United States, Why? Because thousands gry and sick migrants in Tijua- and they could be garnering of migrants, primarily from na, including children. sympathy from much of the Central America, were head- We should keep this story in U.S. public, as evidenced by ing north to seek asylum in the mind as we hear about today’s the waves of Keep Families To- United States. crisis at the border. Because gether rallies in 2018. Instead, The freedom to move is an any crisis, real or invented, can the “border crisis” narrative inalienable right, and applying inspire governments, police casts these migrants as dan- for asylum at international bor- and armed forces to act with gerous invaders who must be ders is a legal right guaranteed greater violence and impunity. violently repelled. by the U.N. Convention on Just as in 2018, the recent in- It also obscures the U.S. Refugees (to which the United crease in arrivals at the U.S.- foreign policy that drives KHURY States is a signatory) and the Mexico border was predictable, migration. And it covers PETERSEN- U.S. Refugee Act. The Trump this time based on seasonal mi- for an industry that profits SMITH administration had known for gration and pent-up demand from migrant detention and is the Michael weeks that these asylum seek- from pandemic border closures. deportation. Ratner Middle ers were coming, but instead of But once again, instead of pre- The rhetoric has changed East Fellow at stationing additional officials paring enough beds and asylum markedly under Biden, who the Institute to process their applications, officers, authorities chose cru- frequently talks about the dig- for Policy it deployed the military and elty and political theater. nity and humanity of migrants Studies (IPS), erected barriers. Politico reports that, even be- at the border. But Biden’s ac- researching Kirstjen Nielsen, former fore former President Donald tions have more in common U.S. empire, Homeland Security secretary, Trump left office, his adminis- with his predecessor than borders and attempted to justify the closure tration was planning to use the many may imagine. migration. by claiming the migrants want- (again, completely predictable) Biden has reopened migrant ed to rush the border to “gain migration increase to under- youth detention centers that

14 IN THESE TIMES + JUNE 2021 Dareli Matamoros, a Honduran migrant child, holds a sign asking President Joe Biden to “please let me in” at the San Ysidro crossing port in Tijuana, Mexico, near San Diego, on March 2. The “Biden Please Let Us In” campaign was started by Casa de Luz TJ (“House of Light Tijuana”), an organization that provides assistance to migrants.

were closed in disgrace un- ly consistent across presiden- Bush, who put immigration der Trump, and family sepa- tial administrations, rather under the purview of Home- ration—one of Trump’s most than shaped by stark differ- land Security as he launched infamous policies—continues ences. Though both major po- the War on Terror, which cre- under Biden, albeit in different litical parties promote the idea ated new enforcement agen- form. Families who arrive at that immigration will be vastly cies and funding streams, the border are still denied en- different depending on which and presented a boon to a pri- try, but unaccompanied minors holds power, immigration pol- vate sector ready for gov- pass through—tantamount to icies (and their enforcement) ernment surveillance and pushing the family separation are shaped by ongoing bureau- incarceration contracts. problem down to the Mexico cracies and private industries. Today, the industries op- side of the border, rather than Of course, differences be- erating at the border do not JOSUE changing the policy. tween administrations do ex- seem worried about the Biden DE LUNA Biden has continued to in- ist. Trump passed a Muslim administration. These in- NAVARRO voke Title 42, a public health travel ban, among a host of clude the private detention is cofounder statute first used by Trump to infamously cruel policies, for companies, the compa- of the New expel migrants under a cynical example. Still, he enforced nies that provide manage- Mexico Dream pretext of controlling Covid-19. them with a surveillance ap- ment and technical services Team and And before movement outrage paratus and a militarized bor- (such as telephone and med- an associate forced him to back down, Biden der inherited from President ical) for them, and the trans- fellow at IPS, intended to maintain Trump’s Barack Obama (who deport- portation companies that researching historically low cap on refugees. ed more people than any oth- contract with CBP and Immi- immigration, These realities reveal an in- er president, ever). And the gration and Customs Enforce- climate and stitutionalized U.S. approach Obama-era tools were forged ment (ICE). In fact, according public health.

GUILLERMO ARIAS/AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES to immigration that is large- under President George W. to the Transnational Institute,

JUNE 2021 = IN THESE TIMES 15 the CEOs and top employ- and which are more interest- it profiteering from the per- ees of the top 13 companies ed in industry than in the wel- secution and incarceration of in this “border-industrial fare of the people they govern. immigrants, defund ICE and complex” contributed three Decades of these policies have CBP, and dispense with the times more to Biden in 2020— harmed generations of Cen- conceit that we need a milita- $5,364,994—than to Trump. tral American people. rized, tightly controlled bor- The true crisis at the border The manufactured, nativ- der across countries. is, arguably, the cruel and cor- ist version of the border cri- But as a first step, we must rupt status quo that drives so sis has also produced a new, insist the U.S. government many people to seek refuge. real crisis: the thousands of again recognize the right of There is the climate crisis, adults and children in make- migrants to apply for asylum, which produced devastat- shift camps on the Mexico side and honor its legal obligation ing, back-to-back hurricanes of the border. to offer refuge. These migrants in Central America in 2020. Trump all but openly de- must be welcomed and cared There is the dire econom- signed policies to put people in for. Investing in an orderly, hu- ic situation (exacerbated to this situation as a “deterrent” to mane procedure for process- desperate levels by the pan- immigration—which has failed, ing asylum applications will demic), which has roots in regardless, as people continue dismantle the manufactured the decades-long abuse by to come. Now, these people— border crisis and remove the foreign corporations from exposed to the elements and to teeth from the scaremongering the Global North destroying those looking to take advantage about immigration, sustained land and destabilizing local of them—are among the most by the border-industrial com- economies. vulnerable in the world. plex and the nativist Right. And there is the unbearable So what is to be done? The Until we do, we should political and social instability policies and the forces that only expect this story to caused by regressive regimes, created the problem must come up again, and again, which the United States arms, be undone. We must prohib- and again.

AMELIA FRANK-VITALE & LAUREN HEIDBRINK curity. In Guatemala and Hon- duras, where we conduct our research, this aid is often si- The Real Root Causes phoned off to subcontractors and organizations with little exico, Hondu- long failed to achieve the de- on-the-ground knowledge, or ras and Guatema- sired aim of reducing migra- used to bolster military train- M la are deploying tion by reducing poverty. If ing and equipment. Not infre- 18,500 troops to stem migra- President Joe Biden hopes to quently, that money finds its tion from Central America to avoid replicating these fail- way directly into the hands of AMELIA the United States as part of ures, he must acknowledge the same predatory elites de- FRANK- a deal the Biden administra- that U.S. policy itself is one of cried by the United States as tion announced April 12. In those “root causes” of migra- responsible for the region’s VITALE the words of the White House tion—and then adopt a fun- instability. is a doctoral press secretary, Jen Psaki, the damentally new approach to Truly addressing the root candidate in agreement will “make it more development aid. causes of migration will be a anthropology at the Univer- difficult to make the jour- As researchers of Central decades-long endeavor, but sity of Michigan ney.” It comes on the heels of American migration, we have it must begin with the United specializing in the United States pledging $4 seen firsthand how ineffec- States owning up to its com- the experience billion in development aid to tive “development” is in ad- plicity in creating the very of deported address the “root causes” of dressing the needs of local conditions it now seeks to Honduran this migration. communities. Frequently, aid remedy—and its sordid history youth and tran- This type of approach, comes with ideological strings of undermining democratical- sit migration in which ties aid to securiti- that hinder, rather than sup- ly elected governments to ad- Mexico. zation, has long enjoyed bi- port, local efforts to reduce vance U.S. business interests. partisan support. It has also poverty, corruption and inse- Most recently in Honduras,

16 IN THESE TIMES + JUNE 2021 for example, the United States tal and community organi- The United States has a backed a 2009 coup and then, zations, but he is hardly the debt to pay to Central Amer- in 2017, validated the clearly first president to pursue such ica; any plan to improve the fraudulent re-election “victo- a strategy. Instead of miti- material conditions of those ry” of the enormously unpop- gating the worst conditions, endeavoring to emigrate must ular Juan Orlando Hernández. outside actors like the Unit- start with repayment for what By supporting Hernández, the ed States exacerbate them, has been extracted. Devel- United States continues to un- co-opting grassroots asso- opment aid essentially oper- dermine Honduran efforts to enact local change. The on- going situation continues to motivate many Hondurans to Truly addressing the root causes seek safety and opportunity outside of their country. of migration will be a decades-long Taking responsibility for the violence it has inflicted on the endeavor, but it must begin with region also means the Unit- ed States must re-examine un- the United States owning up to equal trade agreements that privilege U.S. financial in- its complicity in creating the very terests over the well-being of Central Americans. conditions it now seeks to remedy. The Dominican Repub- lic-Central America-United States Free Trade Agree- ciations and making them ates under the logic of “teach ment—made by the United less responsive to local needs a man to fish,” to (in this States, Costa Rica, El Salva- through a process known as case) “learn” from the United dor, Guatemala, Honduras, “NGO-ization.” States how to be less corrupt, Nicaragua and the Domini- Even if these nongovern- less volatile and more demo- can Republic—has created a mental organizations were cratic. But Central Americans boom of extractive megaproj- more attuned to their com- do not need to be “taught to ects that includes multina- munities, placing government fish.” They need the Unit- tional mining, hydroelectric functions into private hands— ed States and the predato- plants and African palm oil while simultaneously sup- ry elites it has enabled to stop production. Rather than foster porting, funding and training plundering and poisoning the economic development, these security forces under the waterways. projects actually displace guise of “development”—does New proposals for aid must communities, contaminate little to address the urgency of reflect a new commitment agricultural land and water- long-term structural reform. to local priorities and shared ways, and exacerbate social The Biden administration transparency—and provide a inequality. This kind of exploi- cannot simply wish away the mechanism to hold the Unit- tation speaks to larger trends damage inflicted by decades ed States accountable. Cor- in development: for every $1 of U.S. interventionist policy. ruption can only be addressed the Global South receives in If it is interested in pursuing by strengthening public in- so-called aid from the Glob- holistic solutions, the U.S. has stitutions, not undercutting al North, it loses $14 through an obligation to listen to local them. As climate change and LAUREN unequal economic exchanges. communities and to pursue the fallout of the pandemic HEIDBRINK Meanwhile, government local strategies. In Honduras, upend the region, the Biden is an anthro- corruption is so widespread in for example, this would mean administration must ask itself pologist and Central America that it’s now investing heavily in public ed- whether it’s willing to break the author functionally part of the oper- ucation and healthcare rather with the legacy of U.S. impe- of Migrant- ating system. Biden says he than privatizing these sec- rialism. Any other approach hood: Youth in aims to bypass corrupt gov- tors, as at least one power- will ensure future genera- a New Era of ernments and channel aid ful USAID-funded NGO has tions continue to seek refuge Deportation. directly to nongovernmen- recommended. elsewhere.

JUNE 2021 = IN THESE TIMES 17 A gas flare illuminates the sky over Shell’s petroleum refinery in Norco, La., on August 21, 2019, about 20 miles up the Mississippi River from New Orleans. Fossil fuels account for about 75% of human-generated greenhouse gas emissions in the United States, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.

18 IN THESE TIMES + JUNE 2021 -HOT AIR-

BY KATE ARONOFF

his Earth Day, April 22, President Biden presid- ed over a flashy White House Climate Summit aimed at restoring U.S. leadership in the fight for the planet. He pledged to pay $5.7 billion per year for global adaptation and mitigation and to reduce U.S. greenhouse gas emissions by 50%- 52% below 2005 levels within the next decade. However, Biden’s pledges fall far short of the T$800 billion down payment and 195% in cuts that climate justice groups calculate to be the United States’ fair share. And the United States still has no laws in place to enforce even

the dangerously modest goals it has set for itself. DREW ANGERER/GETTY IMAGES

JUNE 2021 = IN THESE TIMES 19 Other countries could be skeptical of trusting its word, Real U.S. climate leadership would mean doing something given that the U.S. left the Kyoto Protocol and left (then this country has never been great at: transforming itself for rejoined) the Paris Agreement. the better, without some foreign threat (real or imagined). Plus, “America First” still rules the day, with the Biden Like his predecessors, Biden has yet to leverage the most administration positioning climate action as an opportunity powerful tools he has to stem carbon and capital: our outsize for U.S. companies to dominate export markets and hoard sway over the trade rules and international institutions that, green intellectual property. As Biden told a joint session of unlike climate pledges, have real teeth. Congress in April, “We’re in competition with China and other countries to win the 21st century.” STANDING BEFORE A PRESS CONFERENCE DURING THE Still, movements for the Green New Deal have managed to first week of talks at the United Nations Climate Change push the domestic climate conversation, and legislation to re- Conference (known as COP25) in Madrid in December duce emissions looks more possible than it has in at least the 2019, U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi—flanked by mem- past decade. The White House has pledged up to $1 trillion in bers of the House Select Committee on the Climate Cri- clean energy investments over the next 10 years, along with sis—echoed the talking points of Michael Bloomberg, Jerry meaningful commitments to job creation and environmen- Brown and others who had gathered at similar events pre- tal justice. And a U.S. president is finally centering their plat- viously: “The United States is still in.” form on climate change, even if Biden’s promises and lofty “Combating the climate crisis is the existential threat of rhetoric are mostly just that, in keeping with decades of Dem- our time,” Pelosi said, “and it was essential that our delega- ocratic Party climate politics. tion stand with international partners, who are continuing to But who wins when an existential threat is cast as a new build upon and solidify their commitments to meet the Par- Cold War? The planet doesn’t much care whether emissions is Agreement’s goals.” rise over Detroit or Shenzhen, or who gets rich mitigating cli- Pelosi’s trip was short; there was real business to attend mate change. Decarbonizing as fast as possible requires pri- to back in Washington. That week, she hustled to pass the orities beyond hawkish nationalism and corporate profit. U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement, or USMCA—otherwise In keeping with decades of Democratic Party climate pol- known as NAFTA 2.0. itics, Biden has yet to acknowledge the massive climate debt Trump first signed this pet trade deal in 2018, but the U.S. owes the world. Nor has he done much to directly House Democrats pushed back, calling the propos- curb Big Oil, which continues to put itself at the center of the al “flawed and dangerous.” Pelosi and other moderate global climate policymaking debate. Democrats now saw a deal as necessary for proving to

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif., bottom right) addresses the media at opening day of the 2019 UN Climate Change Conference, known as COP25, in Madrid on Dec. 2, 2019.

20 IN THESE TIMES + JUNE 2021 The climate, as a singular issue, is thought to float in the clouds above supposedly meatier and more pressing issues like jobs and trade and the economy.

conservative voters that they could “do something” be- storms, floods and droughts already headed their way. Or fore heading into the 2020 campaign cycle. Their strate- they can keep eating up that remaining carbon budget as gy was bipartisanship by any means necessary. The result they’ve been doing, without a second thought that others would have a bigger impact on the climate than any state- might want a slice of the pie. ment Pelosi and company made at COP25. The United States has tended to prefer the latter op- While the text of the USMCA doesn’t mention the cli- tion. It was Republican President George H.W. Bush who mate crisis, it does plenty to fuel it. Like just about every famously said the “American way of life is not up for trade agreement on Earth, USMCA has more enforce- negotiation” at the Rio Earth Summit in 1992, where ment power than the Paris Agreement. Yet it includes the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate no binding limits or enforcement mechanisms for pollu- Change (UNFCCC) was adopted (under which today’s tion. It encourages fossil fuel exports. Companies can still Paris Agreement is nested). dodge climate, labor and environmental regulations at the But it was President Barack Obama’s lead climate negoti- state and city level in the United States in favor of more le- ator, Todd Stern, who echoed a similar sentiment nearly two nient laws elsewhere. And a novel measure lets companies decades later in South Africa: “If equity’s in, we’re out.” challenge new regulations before they’re even finalized, The Third World Network has been involved in the UN mounting new hurdles to future climate laws. climate process since UN climate talks began in the 1990s, The USMCA was a deal Democrats, Pelosi said, should consulting with countries in the Global South to push for “take great pride ... in advancing.” It was also an unmitigat- greater equity and ambition. Its legal adviser and senior ed win for Trump, who—along with the world’s biggest pol- researcher, Meena Raman, a veteran of these summits, luters—got most everything he wanted out of the USMCA. possesses what can only be described as an encyclopedic “For the natural gas and oil industry, USMCA means knowledge of the UNFCCC process. She’s quick to empha- more jobs, stronger energy security and continued econom- size that bad behavior by the United States at UN climate ic growth,” boasted American Petroleum Institute President talks didn’t start with Trump. Without a dramatic overhaul and CEO Mike Sommers. in U.S. foreign policy, it won’t end with him, either. The apparent disconnect between Pelosi’s enthusiasm “The problem is the crime that Donald Trump is com- for both the Paris Agreement and the USMCA may or mitting—to deny climate science now ... you can’t,” Raman may not be intentional. In any case, it’s not unique. It’s said. “Nobody should deny that. People are dying. That’s also climate denial. really criminal. But the U.S. has never been a leader. It’s al- For most establishment Democratic politicians, cli- ways taken everybody backward.” mate change is simply an issue to have a good line on: Documents leaked by whistleblower Edward Snowden We Are Still In. We Believe Science. We Will Rejoin the showed the Central Intelligence Agency enlisted the Na- Paris Agreement. The climate, as a singular issue, is tional Security Agency to surveil private communications thought to float in the clouds above supposedly meati- among delegations at the 2009 UN climate talks in Copen- er and more pressing issues like jobs and trade and the hagen. Just before those talks, the United States and other economy, something to be rolled out when it’s a political developed countries were widely suspected of influencing winner and stowed away when it’s not. That fails to ac- the Philippines’ decision to pull veteran negotiator Bernar- count for the urgency of the crisis. ditas de Castro Muller, one of the most notoriously fierce advocates for developing countries, from its team. The U.S. ACKNOWLEDGED OR NOT, COUNTRIES AND CORPORATIONS negotiators, like others from developed countries, regular- alike are all fighting for their share of our remaining car- ly dangle billions of dollars of aid to developing countries bon budget—the amount of pollution that can be expend- to extract support for their climate positions. In 2010, the ed before the world crosses over a threshold of warming United States ended up cutting aid to Ecuador and Bolivia with catastrophic effects. The biggest consumers of fossil because they opposed the Copenhagen accord. fuels can leave space in the carbon budget for other plac- As ever, the line between what constitutes an official es to develop prosperous and ultimately low-carbon econ- U.S. governmental priority versus that of its biggest com-

SEAN IMAGES GALLUP/GETTY omies that are resilient against the kind of climate-fueled panies is thin. Only state actors can officially negotiate over

JUNE 2021 = IN THESE TIMES 21 the text of climate agreements, including the Paris Agreement, but corporations can be “observers” to that process, just as NGOs and trade unions can. The World Health Organization, by contrast, has a stringent conflict of interest policy. Its Framework Convention on Tobacco Control bars the tobacco industry from entrance into nego- tiations, for example, citing the need to protect those talks against the “vested interest of the tobacco industry.” The UNFCCC has nev- er adopted a parallel conflict of interest policy. As calls for fairness and ambition from climate-vulnerable countries have been shut down, the world’s biggest polluters have had no trouble being heard. An analysis by the Climate Investigations Center found that, between 1995 and 2018, the International Emissions Trading As- sociation (a trade lobby representing polluters at climate talks) sent 1,817 delegates to the UN. The International Petroleum Industry En- vironmental Conservation Association sent just 258. Industry groups regularly send delegations larger than those of many sovereign na- tions; their return on investment has been stellar. Tucked away at the International Emissions Trading Association Business Hub at COP24 in 2018, in Katowice, Poland, Shell climate change adviser David Hone bragged about just how strong a hand his company had played in making sure carbon markets were central to the Paris Agreement. “We have had a process running for four years for the need of carbon unit trading to be part of the Paris agreement. We can take some credit for the fact that Article 6 [of the Paris Agree- ment] is even there at all,” Hone boasted. “We put together a straw proposal. Many of the elements of that straw proposal appear in the Paris Agreement. We put together another straw proposal for the rulebook, and we saw some of that appear in the text.” In a perfect world for fossil fuel producers, Hone told me after the session, those carbon unit trading mechanisms would be the only government mitigation policies on the table, echoing Exxon’s pri- orities on carbon pricing. “The ideal for a cap-and-trade system is to have no overlapping policies ... if you really wanted it to work as effectively as it possibly could,” Hone said. “But I’m being a bit ide- alistic there, I suspect.” Shell—which ranks seventh in companies with the largest carbon dioxide emissions worldwide since 1965 —isn’t nearly as beloved out- side the International Emissions Trading Association pavilion. Phil- ip Jakpor, head of media and campaigns for Environmental Rights Action in the Niger River delta, has seen the effects of Shell’s oil and gas business firsthand. Shell operates some 200 gas flares in the Ni- ger Delta region that burn for 24 hours a day, despite having been re- peatedly declared illegal there. Nearby communities, Jakpor said, deal with rashes, respirato- ry problems and disruptions to farms and fishing as a result. They have been fighting against Shell to stop the practice for years. “Shell is gassing these communities out of existence,” Jakpor told me. Rather than ending the practice and complying with nation- al law, oil companies have sold carbon offset credits for new infra- structure to prevent flaring. “The community is not saying make money from this. The com- munity is saying stop the gas flaring,” Jakpor added. “We have said time and again that the solution[s] are nonmarket mechanisms. We are against the commodification of the environment. If we allow this, even the air we breathe will be commodified. The way to go is to end

22 IN THESE TIMES + JUNE 2021 fossil fuel extraction. And we don’t want companies like Shell and their cronies crawling all over the place trying to influence the talks.” For now at the UNFCCC, those who benefit from Shell’s up- stream profits have a greater say over how the world responds to the climate crisis than the people forced to deal with the conse- quences of its business model downstream. “A proposal for curbing emissions from the developed world so that the billion individuals who live without electricity can enjoy its bene- fits would probably pass in a landslide in a world referendum,” activist and filmmaker Astra Taylor writes of climate change’s democratic co- nundrum, “but it would likely fail if the vote were limited to people in the wealthiest countries.” For the most part, and by design, it has been. A 2019 REPORT FROM THE UN ENVIRONMENT PROGRAM NOTED THE gap between countries’ planned commitments under the Par- is Agreement (known as nationally determined contributions, or NDCs) and what it will actually take to meet the Paris Agree- ment’s lofty goals. If existing NDCs are actually met, then temperatures will shoot up by 3.2 degrees Celsius, leaving major coastal cities and some whole nations underwater, with collapsing crop yields worldwide. To get back on track for only a 1.5 degree Celsius rise in global average tem- peratures, per demands from the Global South, global emissions need to decline 7.6% each year between 2020 and 2030. That’s far greater than the largest single emissions drop in world history, the collapse of the Soviet Union. Every year. For a decade. “Common but differentiated”—language from the UNFCCC—has generally been interpreted to mean the burden of carbon reduction should be shared equitably. Sivan Kartha, a former lead coordinating author of the Fifth Assessment Report for the UN Intergovernmen- tal Panel on Climate Change, researches how to make that happen. Between 1850 and 2002, the Global North emitted three times as much greenhouse gas as the Global South, where some 85% of the world’s population lives. By 2030, experts estimate loss and damage costs alone in developing countries could easily reach $300 billion annually. The Civil Society Equity Review finds that the combined historical greenhouse gas emissions of the United States and the EU should make them responsible for 54% of that. Among climate justice advocates, this responsibility goes by the name “climate debt.” The United States and countries like it, Kartha explains, now have the greatest capacity to do two things within the UNFCCC: rapid- ly decarbonize their economies with ambitious NDCs and provide financing that allows less-developed countries to do the same. But there’s still no means through which to distribute loss and damage financing, despite years of pressure. For their part, U.S. negotiators

Top: A woman collects dried fish in Manila Bay, one of the Philippines’ many ty- phoon-vulnerable coasts, on Nov. 29, 2015. About 20 typhoons hit the Philippines each year. Climate change has greatly intensified the storms; five of the most deadly typhoons on record have happened since 2006. Bottom: A woman wades through seawater that flooded her house and village in the Pacific island nation of Kiribati. With the surrounding sea level rising about a tenth of an inch annu- ally—and the islands only about a few feet above sea level—the people of Kiribati are under pressure to migrate due to flooding and sea swells. With an average age of just 22 on Kiribati, the generation now coming of age may be one of the last on the islands. The World Meteorological Organization reports an average

23 million climate refugees have moved globally each year over the past decade. TOP: NOEL CELIS/AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES, BOTTOM: JONAS GRATZER/LIGHTROCKET VIA GETTY IMAGES

JUNE 2021 = IN THESE TIMES 23 have consistently tried to keep discussions of loss and should be done about climate change, speaking most ef- damage off the table entirely. fectively through the Republican Party. Another steps in Equity in decarbonization, Kartha notes, is as much a with a seemingly reasonable alternative that is lauded by moral commitment as a pragmatic one. Centuries of the Democrats. Republicans and their allies in the fossil fuel Global North extracting wealth from the South—wheth- industry hit that with everything they have, and the cycle er through colonialism or one of its many antecedents— begins again, with those at least nominally interested in means there’s vital trust to be rebuilt to make any kind of passing something called climate policy bringing weaker functional international agreement really work. On top proposals they think will be more amenable to an opposi- of that are real material constraints: many places simply tion whose main goal is not passing anything, triangulat- can’t afford to build thriving, low-carbon societies, partic- ing themselves and the planet toward oblivion. ularly as they try to deal with the climate-induced disas- It’s a race to the bottom, leaving out not only what most of ters that are disproportionately clobbering them. the public in the United States actually wants but basic mate- Wealthy countries built their massive economies off land, rial realities about what is required to deal with the crisis, the labor and resources extracted from what is today the Global worst impacts of which will be felt beyond U.S. borders. For South. Now they’ve got more than enough resources to make most politicians, it’s been easier to neglect climate politics al- a transition possible for the places that furnished that wealth. together. To have any kind of fighting chance of meeting the After centuries of plunder, both bank accounts and trust Paris Agreement goals—living up to what most Democratic need to be rebuilt if a global transition is going to happen politicians say they want—the realm of what should be con- as fast as we need it to. “Ambition needs to improve mitiga- sidered climate policy has to expand radically, starting with tion, adaptation and means of implementation,” Palestin- an honest accounting of where emissions are coming from. ian ambassador Ammar Hijazi, lead negotiator for the UN “Given that emission transfers via international trade Group of 77 (developing countries) plus China, said in Ma- are a significant and growing share of country, regional drid. “If you ask me to climb a mountain and I don’t have and global emissions,” climate modeler Glen Peters and the muscles to do that, you are asking the impossible. several of his colleagues wrote back in 2011, “we suggest “An electric car is still an expensive commodity. I buy an that policies that affect international trade should not be electric car in Palestine; there are only four or five charg- continually separated from climate policy.” ing stations. Then I’m stuck with this car that doesn’t take National emissions inventories considered by the me anywhere.” UNFCCC and the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, however, still only track the emissions a coun- FROM AN ENERGY TAX TO THE COPENHAGEN SUMMIT TO try produces within its own borders, known as “territorial cap-and-trade to the Paris Agreement, the script in the emissions.” This number leaves out a whole range of activi- United States is the same: One arm of industry spends ties, like the carbon emitted elsewhere to produce imports, hundreds of millions battering the idea that anything or the carbon costs of companies headquartered in the Unit-

24 IN THESE TIMES + JUNE 2021 ed States with operations abroad; in other words, trade. 1990 to 2014, consumption-based emissions—those ac- When U.S. politicians talk about their ambitions to reach counting for trade—increased by 17% over the same peri- net-zero emissions by 2050, for instance, that doesn’t tend od. While recent evidence suggests absolute decoupling is to include the millions of barrels of oil and gas the United actually possible, it is not happening nearly fast enough (or States exports to be burned abroad each day. in enough places) to make the case that booming, endless Overshoot on these goals is funneled into a black box of growth is a steady route to decarbonization. “offsets,” an umbrella category for things that suck up car- If technocratic fixes around the edges of the growth en- bon. Frequently, these include land grabs for forests half- gine might have seemed to ward off catastrophe a decade way around the world. Faulty accounting in these loosely or two ago, they certainly won’t now. regulated offset projects can end up swelling, not subtract- As each fresh disaster is making clear, the only safe ing, from emissions. And as globalization has encouraged path forward through the 21st century and beyond runs U.S. companies to move their factories elsewhere, their through a reimagining of what society values most and to emissions have traveled too, out of sight and mind for pol- whom it listens. There was nothing inevitable about how iticians and corporations eager to put on a green face. Be- the system we now live in was built, and plenty of calls for cause of idiosyncrasies in how carbon is counted, the United genuine democratic alternatives were stamped out along States has come out looking better than it should. the way. History doesn’t offer a blueprint, in that respect. The seemingly miraculous trend of primarily Global But it can provide some solace that the powers that be North countries’ “absolute decoupling” of GDP growth have had to work diligently throughout the past several from emissions tends to obscure the carbon-intensive decades to maintain business as usual. That control is fi- manufacturing that gets shifted abroad. For example, nally starting to crack. though U.S. territorial emissions increased by 9% from Excerpted from Overheated: How Capitalism Broke the Plan- et—And How We Fight Back by Kate Aronoff. Copyright © Above: Environmental activists with Youth Advocates for Climate 2021. Available from Bold Type Books, an imprint of Hachette Action Philippines demonstrate Sept. 25, 2020, in Manila, along with Book Group, Inc. the Global Climate Strike (aka Fridays for Future) movement. With its vast coastline, the Philippines is especially vulnerable to sea level is a staff writer at The New Republic and author rise and climate change. Left: Youth and Indigenous climate activists KATE ARONOFF from various delegations and civil society groups, including Climate of Overheated: How Capitalism Broke the Planet—And How We Justice Now and the Indigenous Environmental Network, demand Fight Back. She is co-author of A Planet To Win: Why We Need a climate equity from the UN Climate Change Conference in Madrid Green New Deal and co-editor of We Own the Future: Democratic

LEFT: CRISTINA QUICLER/AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES , ABOVE: CRISTINA QUICLER/AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES on Dec. 11, 2019. The banner reads, “Rich countries, pay your debt!” Socialism—American Style.

JUNE 2021 = IN THESE TIMES 25 26

IN THESE TIMES TIMES IN THESE Coming True Coming New Orleans Is aof Unionized Dream The BY HAMILTON NOLAN N do.’ We wanted valued. to We be wanted respected.” to be wasn’t they It’s Before heard. be union us. the hearing Isay, as ‘do not I as dodecided “What we it. have to support to lose?” “I want to she thought. hotel, the but she says, Dyer scary, was to unionize leap required of faith 23 Unite since 2017. Here with Local The affiliated unionized, is Hilton ongoing work to unionize the famous New Orleans hospitality industry. New famous hospitality Orleans the workongoing to unionize Unite Here’s South: power the in union most projects noteworthy to build old offeredbe jobs their jobs back become the available. if workers laid-off now that especially, “recall will rights”—the in guarantee That risk paid off in raises, in protection from capricious firings and, and, firings capricious from protection in raises, in off paid That risk jobs her got New back and Dyer colleagues their Orleans the because Dyer and her and Dyer coworkers become one of of what quietly the has part are +

JUNE 202 1 hardest hit by the pandemic.hardest bythe hit it,” got mercy that meand through she says. “It grace 2021. faith, just March was in recalled finally son’s ayear out of work, she After was college tuition. to help her from savings pay pulled Dyer her Amazon. Coworkers scrambled to apply for or jobs at Walmart I’m to months, turned OMG,” like, remembers. Dyer were they own. on their that, after off; time 2020, let Hilton employees paid banked their up use March jobs pandemic onset oflost at in the their the her When and Dyer colleagues years. forserver 12 Dyer, aNew native, Orleans worked has a there as to good too check. Trinicebroiled oysters, aclaim erside hotel, inventor itself the as advertises of char Riv Hilton over insiderestaurant the 1,600-room ORLEANS EW Nationwide, the hospitality sector is the industry industry the is sector Nationwide, hospitality the weeks to weeks, the and days the turned “When —Drago’s, seafood the

- -

PHOTO BY AKASHA RABUT as strong as it is in Las Vegas. Las in is it as strong as be soon may Orleans New in leadership, labor organizing to her part in Thanks Vegas. Las in Union, Culinary the affiliate, Here’s Unite with Louisiana after organizing to home 23,Local returned Here Unite of president now Marlene Patrick-Cooper, JUNE 2021 = IN THESE TIMES 27 lion visitors a year fueling a $10 billion hospitality industry *** that touches every part of the city, directly or indirectly. And AS AMERICANS SLOWLY EMERGE FROM THE since the utter devastation wrought by Hurricane Katrina pandemic and begin to travel again, one of the most vital in 2005, New Orleans has been spectacularly revived as a issues for hospitality workers nationwide has become re- (wealthier, more unequal) tourist destination. call rights. Without that guarantee, companies are able to Local 23 has been quietly toiling for years to win the work- staff back up with new, cheaper workers, leaving longtime ing people of New Orleans enough power to command a fair employees behind. slice of that tourist economy. In a 20-minute stroll, a visitor Unite Here says those who lose their jobs without recall can walk past the sprawling Ernest N. Morial Convention rights typically see their wages decline 12%. For older work- Center (which looms just off the Mississippi River), then by ers, that figure is more like 35%. the cruise ship terminal, then past the nearby Hilton River- “A lot of our members have worked on their jobs 30- side (one of the biggest hotels in town), hang a left on Poydras some years,” Marlene Patrick-Cooper says. “Recall is what Street and pass Harrah’s (the city’s only non-riverboat casino) really, truly matters.” and end up at the Loews Hotel on the next block. Employees Patrick-Cooper is president of Unite Here Local 23, a from all of these properties, more than 1,400 workers total, gregarious woman who could have been designed in a lab have unionized with Local 23, the organized labor equivalent to be perfectly suited for the job. Raised in the small city of capturing an entire corner on a Monopoly board. of Jeanerette in southwest Louisiana with a father who was The union, whose membership is 90% Black and 65% a union shop steward, Patrick-Cooper followed an aunt women, also represents about half of the food service work- to Las Vegas in the mid-1980s to go to school, and start- ers at the New Orleans airport, and 1,700 workers in nearby ed looking for work. “[My aunt said] said, ‘Make sure you Biloxi, Miss. It is now possible to fly into New Orleans, attend march down to that union hall and get a union job, and a convention, stay at a hotel and take a casino day trip with- you don’t look for work nowhere else.’ Because there was out leaving Unite Here properties. a standard that had been set.” The Covid-19 pandemic—a disaster that is, at least in the Patrick-Cooper learned her craft in the city that is the mod- short term, comparable to Katrina in economic effect—has el for what a unionized New Orleans hospitality industry put all of that work to the test. could one day look like: Las Vegas. She worked for Unite Here’s mighty affiliate, the Culinary Union, which has orga- *** nized virtually the city’s entire casino industry. That union BECAUSE UNITE HERE’S MEMBERSHIP IS CON - is the best example in America of successful wall-to-wall or- centrated in hotel, airport and casino workers, the union ganizing to build economic and political power for working- has been economically ravaged by the near total shut- class people in a tourist city. (That power, in fact, can reach down of travel and tourism during the pandemic. At the across the country. Unite Here used its clout with gaming early peak of the lockdowns in April 2020, the union’s companies in Vegas to make them agree not to fight organiz- membership was 98% unemployed. Today, member un- ing efforts at the casinos in New Orleans and Biloxi.) employment is still 60–70%, according to Unite Here’s In 2014, after stints in other cities around the country, Pat- international president, D. Taylor. In New Orleans, the rick-Cooper got her chance to prove what could be done in numbers have been similar. New Orleans. She took over leadership of Local 23, which With members laid off across the country, Unite Here had sprawls across much of the South, with chapters from Wash- to adjust tactics by location to secure vital recall rights. In ington, D.C., to Texas. “The union was beginning to put re- politically friendly areas, the union is pursuing state or lo- sources into organizing the South,” Patrick-Cooper says. cal legislation guaranteeing recall rights for both union and “And me being from the South, I wanted in.” nonunion hospitality workers. Unite Here won that legislative Thanks to the efforts of Local 23, New Orleans has be- battle statewide in California and a host of major cities, in- come one of the most noteworthy enclaves of union pow- cluding Washington, D.C., Philadelphia and Providence, R.I. er in the South. Unite Here is still fighting for legislation in Nevada, Minne- As a city, New Orleans is sui generis, a more than 300-year sota and Connecticut, and a long list of other states. mashup of African, European and Native American cultures In politically hostile areas like Louisiana—where the state that exists nowhere else in America. As a place where people legislature eagerly overrides worker-friendly legislation, such wake up and go to work, it has more familiar characteristics. as minimum wage increases—Unite Here directly negotiat- The city is situated in the deep South, in a so-called right-to- ed recall rights with employers, despite facing an existential work state (less than 6% of working people are unionized) threat. Though the Unite Here national office sent finan- with a state legislature eager to squash anything that might cial reserves to help tide over local chapters, union staffers be considered progressive. It is 60% Black, and the average themselves faced layoffs when member dues suddenly dried Black household earns less than half as much as the average up. Before the pandemic, Local 23 had an organizing staff of white household. It is a tourist economy, with nearly 20 mil- eight; today, it is down to three.

28 IN THESE TIMES + JUNE 2021 Trinice Dyer was one of the 76% of Hilton New Orleans Riverside workers left unemployed due to the pandemic. Unite Here, which unionized the Hilton in 2017, won recall rights for Dyer and Hilton’s other employees.

The bulk of Unite Here’s organizing in New Orleans hap- celebrated (from home) her 20th anniversary as a Harrah’s pened after the 2008 recession, meaning the pandemic has employee. Whitfield has been on furlough since March been the first major economic shock most members have 2020. Her income is $247 per week in unemployment mon- lived through as union members. Even as it lost staff, Lo- ey from the state of Louisiana. She used to be able to make cal 23 had to transform itself into what Patrick-Cooper de- almost that much on a single weekend day at work. scribes as “a social service beacon.” The union turned its Though Whitfield had no union experience before focus to helping newly laid off union members navigate Harrah’s organized in 2014, she was appointed as a shop the state’s broken unemployment system. It created a hot- steward three years ago because of her reputation for fear- line for members to call for assistance, ran a food bank and lessness in talking to everyone. “Down South, I feel like a lot searched everywhere for fundraising, all while marshaling of us should know about unions but [don’t],” Whitfield says. support for Unite Here’s massive national door-knocking “I’m like, ‘Why we never knew about this here?’ You have to campaign in support of Joe Biden’s presidential run—and learn how to get out and let people know there is a union in fighting for extended recall rights for workers. New Orleans in hospitality.” Despite the obstacles, Local 23 reached agreements in The disdain for broad worker protections coming from New Orleans with all of its employers not covered by na- conservatives in the Louisiana statehouse may, ironically, tional contracts to recall workers for two years. Union offi- backfire on the legislators. Everyone in New Orleans can cials say the negotiations were not especially contentious, plainly see union members are the only working people who a sign that, as in Las Vegas, major hospitality employers in won guaranteed recall rights, which only increases the incen- New Orleans have come to accept Unite Here as an entity tive for everyone else to unionize. easier to work with than fight. “In Southern states, sometimes the laws are not really on The union also renegotiated a contract with Harrah’s in our side,” says Leah Bailey, a Local 23 research analyst. “So late March that extended recall from 12 months to 24. The having that union contract is everything.” union says the casino was willing to grant the extension to preserve its experienced workforce, a crucial provision for *** the slice of employees who have yet to be called back—and THE ECONOMIC RECOVERY IN NEW ORLEANS have already been out of work for 14 months. has been as slow and painful as the national vaccine roll-

PHOTO BY AKASHA RABUT Dora Whitfield, a server in Harrah’s casino buffet, just out. The city’s tourism bureau says that, from January

JUNE 2021 = IN THESE TIMES 29 to the end of March, hotel occupancy downtown ranged were 15; just four remain.) Before that, Gordon worked for from 20% to 49%. Mardi Gras was canceled, though Jazz 10 years as the bell captain at the nearby Westin Hotel. Fest, the city’s other major festival, has been rescheduled There, he says, “employees would run” when a union orga- from spring to October. In late April, crowds in the French nizer came around, mostly out of fear of a general manager Quarter were less than half of the usual hordes. Tarot card Gordon still recalls bitterly, 18 years later. readers sat bored at their folding tables in Jackson Square; “He would talk about what he could do, [how] ‘I can fire the few jazz bands playing for tips on the street corners you on the spot,’ ” Gordon remembers. “He would say he was faced little competition in hearing distance. joking, but no one took it as a joke.” Every hospitality worker who is called back to work this The vast majority of hotels in New Orleans were nonunion year will have suffered. But those who were in a union at least until 2004, when—shortly after the Loews Hotel opened— suffered less uncertainty. Gordon and other employees unionized with Unite Here. For workers looking to have a surreptitious meeting with Gordon is now a shop steward. When problems arise—like a union organizer, Ernst Cafe, a sprawling bar and grill that the time an overeager salesperson tried to hand out group occupies a corner of the warehouse district just a few blocks discounts that cut into the bellhops’ pay—Gordon gets things from the Mississippi River in downtown New Orleans, is straightened out in a single conversation. When the men he well known. The tables that line the outside are a conve- works with ask how he did it—he refers to the bellhops always nient place for anyone who works at the nearby hotels, con- as just “my guys”—he points across Poydras Street toward the vention center and casino to sit and talk. From there, an still nonunion Westin, then says, “Here’s the difference be- entire city is slowly being transformed. tween us being here, and us being over there.” On a humid weekday morning in April, Willie Gordon rests an elbow on one of those tables an hour before his shift *** begins at the Loews Hotel a block away. He has the dapper NEW ORLEANS IS A CITY WHOSE RAFFISH look and unflappable demeanor one might expect of some- charm is partially rooted in its chaos. Where Las Vegas has one who spent 18 years as the hotel’s bell captain, leading a single, gleaming strip of enormous properties that domi- all of the bellhops and valets (before the pandemic, there nate its hospitality industry, New Orleans has fewer big play-

Willie Gordon, who captained a team of 15 bellhops pre-pandemic, helped to unionize the Loews Hotel in 2004. It was the second hotel in New Orleans to unionize.

30 IN THESE TIMES + JUNE 2021 Employees from all of these properties, “ more than 1,400 workers total, have unionized with Local 23, the organized labor equivalent of capturing an entire corner on a Monopoly board.

ers and far more small operators and hustlers. That makes “They were trying to explain to me that this wasn’t gonna the city “a hard nut to crack” for a union dreaming of an or- get better, because … this is how they operate in Louisiana,” ganized hospitality sector, according to local labor histori- says Walker, who is Black. “You have no voice. Once you an Thomas J. Adams. “Most people still work for relatively speak out like you do in California, you may come up dead, small shops, or work at the franchise level,” Adams says. “In hurt or missing. People that I worked with actually thought I that way, New Orleans looks more like a lot of the country.” was crazy to put myself out there.” The fragmented nature of the New Orleans hospitality industry means that Local 23 takes on an enormous civic *** importance as one of the only institutions capable of rais- THE EXPLANATION MOST OFTEN GIVEN FOR ing standards across the industry. On the other hand, it the weakness of unions in the South is that the vast majority also means the majority of people whose livelihoods de- of the South is right-to-work, which makes it harder to build pend somehow on the tourist trade will probably never be and maintain union membership. But Nevada is also a right- union members. to-work state, which hasn’t stopped Unite Here yet. There is There will always be a role in the city for groups willing no reason the union’s model cannot translate to the South, to organize in the space outside of traditional unions—and and Unite Here’s international president, D. Taylor, says New there is comradery and cross-pollination between union Orleans can “absolutely” be transformed by the union in the and nonunion spaces. same way Las Vegas has. Gabby Bolden-Shaw moved to New Orleans in 2009 and “I didn’t take this job to be satisfied with what we did in got a job at the convention center. She got involved with the Las Vegas,” Taylor says. “New Orleans is a perfect example union and eventually became the lead shop steward. She was where the only difference in the living standards for workers so good, in fact, that Unite Here offered her a job as an orga- in the industry is our union.” nizer in 2019—but she was furloughed only months later, af- “We’re very interested in organizing the South, period. You ter the pandemic drained the union’s finances. But she found change the South, you change America.” another way to support workers. For Unite Here, the ironclad union power they have built in In August 2020, Bolden-Shaw got a new job with Step Las Vegas—a power that has given tens of thousands of ser- Up Louisiana, an activist group focused on local labor vice workers a middle-class life—is a tantalizing promise of and political organizing. Now, she does some of the same what New Orleans might become. To dream, just cast your work the union does—such as helping people file for un- eyes skyward. Next to the unionized Hilton Riverside, a glim- employment during the pandemic—but on behalf of peo- mering 34-story Four Seasons is nearing completion. Marriott ple who aren’t union members (as well as some who are). and Sheraton towers loom large. The iconic Hotel Montele- Among the workers she helps now are some who were at one sign casts a shadow over the French Quarter. The wrap- the convention center as independent contractors, people around porches of the Omni sprawl lasciviously off Bourbon who were working alongside Unite Here members but who Street. The road to union power in New Orleans runs through were unable to join the union. properties like these. Control the jewels of the hospitality in- One of those contractors is Will Walker, who moved to dustry, and you can pull up the standards for the entire city. New Orleans from California three years ago and worked as Marlene Patrick-Cooper agrees. “You want them all,” a bartender for splashy events at the convention center and she says, smiling. “It’s like a snake eating his big apple. A the Superdome. Since facing abrupt unemployment in Febru- snake’s gonna eat that apple. But he’s going to eat it one ary, Walker has channeled much of his energy into organiz- bite at a time.” ing and attending rallies with Step Up—to the horror of some

PHOTO BY AKASHA RABUT he used to work with. HAMILTON NOLAN is In These Times’ labor reporter.

JUNE 2021 = IN THESE TIMES 31 CULTURE

Voices From the Margins An interview with the co-editors of two recent collections that give voice to those too often silenced

he Feminist Press “Black love and Black futures,” the Echo- started the year with two ing Ida contributors take on everything new collections that cre- from equity in the marijuana industry ate space for the stories of and racism in the National Spelling Bee communities that have con- to “being a proud teen mom” and finding sistently been silenced, ig- the erotic in economic justice. nored or talked over. The In the forward to We Too, Selena the Echoing Ida Collection (Jan- Stripper, a BIPOC sex worker, writes that uary)—co-edited by Kemi sex workers often muted themselves dur- Alabi, Janna A. Zinzi and ing #MeToo out of the fear that talking Cynthia R. Greenlee—draws from the about workplace abuse would lend fod- T500-plus pieces written by members of der to opponents of sex work. This vol- the Echoing Ida collective, a nine-year- ume breaks that silence with essays that old group of Black women and nonbi- expose the many forms of violence that nary writers who take their inspiration occur within—and outside—the sex in- from journalist and activist Ida B. Wells- dustry, such as AK Saini’s chapter “How Barnett. We Too: Essays on Sex Work and to Rape a Sex Worker” and Jessie Sage’s Survival (February)—edited by Natalie “Your Mother Is a Whore: On Sex Work West with Tina Horn—brings together and Motherhood.” As infuriating as it narratives by sex workers on topics from is vulnerable, the book serves as a tes- stigma to survival to liberation. tament that sex workers deserve a cen- Both collections came together in the tral place in both the labor and feminist wake of #MeToo, motivated in part by the movements. gaps in a campaign that, despite its roots, Echoing Ida shares this insistence that prioritized the experiences of famous, marginalized people be included in lib- wealthy, cisgender, heterosexual and eration movements on their own terms. able-bodied white women. In sections on The writers in each collection speak up “the structure and the struggle,” “birth not only about abuse and exploitation, justice,” family, sex, beauty, culture and but about joy, care and community—the

32 IN THESE TIMES + JUNE 2021 building blocks for a better world through a white, cisgender celebrities captured more of radical, queer, erotic vision. our national imagination around sexual vio- In These Times spoke with Tina Horn (We Too) lence and its victims. Our culture will center and Kemi Alabi (Echoing Ida), who argue that their safety in ways it won’t for other workers or movements can pave the road to a safer, more people of other races, genders and sexualities. inclusive and equitable future only when the Willis explained that her trans, queer and Black voices of the most marginalized lead the way. identities make her less believable, as her body has been historically coded as deviant. The title We Too is a play on #MeToo. Echo- Those who are most targeted by sexual vio- ing Ida contains a chapter called “#UsToo,” in which a Black trans woman, Raquel lence in this country are the least believed, the Willis, discusses the exclusion of trans and least protected. #MeToo, as conceived by Ta- gender-nonconforming people from con- rana Burke, holds this history and these com- versations about sexual violence. Can you plexities, but its mainstream story doesn’t. talk about what you see as missing from the The mainstream story fails to interrogate our #MeToo conversation? cultural obsession with white women’s purity or decenter white ciswomanhood, so it risks Alabi: Raquel Willis does a wonderful job in further erasing those most vulnerable to sex- that essay explaining why #MeToo catapult- ual violence from the narrative. ed into the headlines after years of organizing Horn: The concept of intersectionality has been

RACHEL DOOLEY/SHUTTERSTOCK RACHEL led by Tarana Burke, a Black woman. Wealthy, watered down in popular culture to the point

JUNE 2021 = IN THESE TIMES 33 Some folks, on the Left in particular, point to class and capitalism as the “real” target in a way that’s dismissive of white supremacist patriarchy. But you can’t disentangle capitalism from white supremacy, because our economic system is organized around anti-Blackness.

that people are using it inter- Horn: There’s a lot of division changeably with the word “di- about sex work, even among versity.” You’ve got to take people who consider them- that word out of your mouth selves to be on the Left or if you don’t actually under- progressive. There are stand what it means. many people who consider It’s not that hard to themselves feminists who understand that differ- want to abolish the sex in- ent forms of oppression dustry and, somewhere affect people different- along the line, decided ly. If you are a Black trans that sex workers could not woman, for example, you be experts in our own experi- are experiencing transpho- ences. I do see more openness bia, general queerphobia, rac- to the liberal idea of decriminal- ism and white supremacy—as ization, but I think that we have a well as misogyny and sexism and long way to go. chauvinism—in a way that would be dif- A question that I get asked a lot in left- ferent from a cis white woman. Class, of course, ist circles is, “Do you believe that the sex indus- comes into that. I think that’s something that gets try would exist in a postcapitalist society?” If this a little bit lost in the understandable horrors of “master’s house” is crumbling, are we moving to- the real-life testimonies of #MeToo experiences. ward a world in which adult entertainment of all In the sex work community, the most margin- different kinds doesn’t exist? For the record, I’m alized face the most violence—intersectionally. If for a society where sexual entertainment of all you are a woman of color, if you are trans, if you kinds can and should exist, whether it’s one-on- are not in a position to work indoors but need to one or mediated through technology. work in the street—all of these situations where What you learn, when you read We Too, is how you are more marginalized and more oppressed many different reasons compel people to hire sex lead you to be dehumanized by people who wish workers. Our work has to do with intimacy; it has other people harm. to do with entertainment; it has to do with pleasure and sensory experiences of all kinds. And it often In the introduction to We Too, Natalie West has to do with care, or with holding people’s secrets demands space in the workers’ rights move- ment for “the sex worker who chooses to work for them. And I am of the mind that this is all wor- in the sex industries—compelled by the same thy human work to do. economic necessity to work as any other type But most importantly, many of my comrades of worker—but who wants to improve the in the sex workers’ rights movement have provid- material conditions of their labor.” What is ed me with an answer to that question: It doesn’t preventing this? fucking matter. We’re here, we’re doing it, we have been doing

34 IN THESE TIMES + JUNE 2021 it. We have immediate needs now, just like other Alabi: Echoing Ida, the collective, has been workers. We need resources—access to spaces to around since 2012, and it’s gotten queerer and work, and access to the equipment that we need to queerer over time. In short, the book is so queer do our work (condoms, for example, in some cas- because the folks in Echoing Ida are so queer. es). These are material needs. The sex workers’ The collection breaks out of a cishet paradigm rights movement wants full, global decriminaliza- because our community was intentional about tion of sex work, and we want it now. broadening what gender justice means to be in- We Too is about labor. We Too is about experienc- clusive of trans folks and nonbinary people and es that people have in the workplace. The work we queer writers. Without this, I don’t think you do is incredibly stigmatized. That stigma can lead would be holding the truth of Black womanhood, to us, ironically, not being able to get work in oth- of marginalized gender in this country. er fields. It can lead to people being alienated from Horn: I would echo that. It’s not possible to talk their families. People lose custody of their children, about contemporary sex work without talking or are unable to secure housing—things that should about queer and trans identities. We Too is edit- be basic human rights. ed by, and is the brainchild of, Natalie West, who asked me to come on as associate editor. Both Kemi, let’s discuss your introduction to Echoing Natalie and I are queer and out—in our work, in Ida, which picks up on a metaphor from con- tributor Alexandra Moffett-Bateau, discussing the platforms and personas that we use to market “the house white supremacy, cisheteropatri- ourselves as sex workers under the names Nata- achy and capitalism built.” Can you elaborate lie West and Tina Horn. on this interconnectedness? Every sex worker has to make a series of de- cisions about what aspects of their identity they Alabi: Some folks, on the Left in particular, point want to make available—for entertainment, for to class and capitalism as the “real” target in a voyeurism, maybe in some ways we could say for way that’s dismissive of white supremacist patri- consumption. Identity can play a huge role in a archy. But you can’t disentangle capital- job that requires so much intimate emo- ism from white supremacy, because our tional labor. Going to work means choos- economic system is organized around ing to perform elements of your identity, anti-Blackness. It’s organized around mi- accentuating certain parts of what may sogyny and queerphobia. Power relation- be visible or not visible about who you ships exist for a reason: to disenfranchise are, what you know about sexuality, what Black folks, disenfranchise folks who are you know about how to make people feel. not men, disenfranchise folks who aren’t I would add that because there are so cishet [cisgender and heterosexual], to al- many structural limitations to what kinds locate poor outcomes for the folks who are of jobs trans and nonbinary people can THE ECHOING at the bottom of the pyramid. IDA COLLECTION get—and, to a certain degree, other queer In our current political climate, my fear January 2021 identities as well—sex work has been an is that there might be a desire to move option for a lot of trans women, partic- back into single-issue struggles in ways that ularly trans women of color. Some of the voices didn’t feel as possible during the Trump admin- that we have writing in this book are people tell- istration—because the need for a united front for ing stories about how queer and trans people form transformation felt so massive. I hope that ur- communities to gather and share resources, and gency isn’t lost with an administration that might also offer emotional support. The reason that sex move on particular issues, but not the whole she- workers survive in a “whorephobic” society is be- bang that keeps Black folks, queer folks, trans cause we have one another. folks safe. There’s no such thing as a single-issue Care and community seem deeply important to struggle, because we don’t live single issues. these collections. Both talk about self-care in One of the things we appreciated in both col- the radical sense offered by Audre Lorde. lections is the centrality of queer, trans and Alabi: nonbinary voices. Can you explain why those Understanding that some frameworks of voices are so crucial in anthologies about Black Black women thinkers—like self-care—have been womanhood and sex work? commodified, I think it’s important to center self and community care in a way that radically trans-

JUNE 2021 = IN THESE TIMES 35 forms how we do our work. And I mean work in all working in are not sustainable. We must think sys- respects. Charmaine Lang’s article in Echoing Ida, temically: How can we transform our whole econ- “Overworked and Underpaid,” names community omy to a care economy, to prioritize the type of care as being essential to the lives of activists and relationship to self and one another that is restor- organizers. What does it mean to transform our or- ative and connects us, as opposed to one that is ganizing work so that it’s sustainable and alienated and extractive? doesn’t replicate the harms of labor in this Pleasure and the erotic don’t usually capitalist system? emerge as major topics of conversation Black women in particular have had in the labor movement. But Echoing our bodies commodified and made dis- Ida and We Too push to transform the posable. It can be very easy to continue discussion around work and labor to value Black life based on labor, on how justice in relationship to sexuality and hard we can destroy ourselves for this pleasure—reflecting that campaigns system that uses us and spits us out. No for a living wage or the Fight for $15 are win can happen from that space. WE TOO important yet insufficient for transfor- I also want to bring in an article by Taja Feburary 2021 mative change. Lindley, “Pleasure Politics Part I: Employ- ment, Economic Justice, and the Erotic.” Audre Alabi: The economic and political project of the Lorde discusses the erotic as neither frivolous nor United States was founded on the violent es- a luxury, just like she talks about care. If we are re- trangement of Black people from our own bod- ally centering care and pleasure in our lives, it be- ies—our labor (manual, domestic, reproductive) comes clear that the system and economy we’re is used to generate white wealth. Black wom-

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36 IN THESE TIMES + JUNE 2021 The term sex work was created by sex industry activists to emphasize the work aspect of what we do, but I also am very wary of de- emphasizing the sexuality part.

en’s exploitation, dehumaniza- cated human beings within our tion and disposability is in current systems—and the radi- this country’s DNA, and this cal imperative to reclaim our wouldn’t change without autonomy and then build cultural, economic and systems that honor it. political systems that se- We want to end by talk- riously value connection ing about the future you and care. And yes, as imagine. people who were not al- lowed to fully inhabit our Horn: I would like to see bodies for our own aims a world in which the onus and desired sensory expe- isn’t on the people who are riences, these systems must demanding rights and mov- also value our pleasure. ing for liberation to prove that Janna Zinzi writes about this re- we are respectable in cis-hetero- lationship to pleasure and sexuality white supremacist-patriarchal terms in the introduction to our “Naked Power” to be “deserving” of those rights. I think section: “In the same way that healthcare, afford- this is something that is an ongoing, serious issue able housing, economic security, and reproductive in queer liberation and I’m sure this also extends justice are civil rights, pleasure is our birthright. to the Movement for Black Lives and many other … We resist simply by owning our sexuality, our liberation movements. So I would like to see a fu- curves, our divots and dimples, and our desires.” ture in which we can all get free together and be I wanted to come to this discussion, putting liberated on our own terms. A future where we these two books in conversation, because it em- don’t have to scrub ourselves clean—we can get phasizes how dangerous erotic autonomy is to free while staying dirty. power structures. I think we are seeing how our Alabi: I appreciate Mariame Kaba and other ab- economic system requires estrangement and will olitionist organizers for making the demand police folks who are bucking that. to reimagine everything. It is, of course, about Horn: The term sex work was created by sex in- transforming the entire punishment system. But dustry activists to emphasize the work aspect of even beyond that, the vision is much larger. By lis- what we do, but I also am very wary of de-empha- tening to and learning from the present-day Black sizing the sexuality part. If we have movements liberation movements for transformation, we can for sex workers, led by sex workers, then that po- understand that it is urgent to reimagine how all litical and activist movement work is going to be this functions. And so my hope, even with the led by people who have gained insight into hu- change in administration, is that our movements man nature through sexuality. I think sometimes don’t lose our urgency around building a radical the sexuality part gets de-emphasized intention- imagination to transform all of our systems. ally in order to be a quote-unquote “appropriate” or “respectable” conversation. Alex DiBranco, Clara Liang, Daniela Ochoa- Alabi: This question highlights, to me, the im- Bravo, Sadie Morris and Catherine Henderson all possibility of being protected as whole, compli- contributed to this interview.

JUNE 2021 = IN THESE TIMES 37 COMICS

BRIAN MCFADDEN

38 IN THESE TIMES + JUNE 2021 COMICS JEN SORENSEN CHARIS J.B.

TOM TOMORROW

JUNE 2021 = IN THESE TIMES 39 77 Settlements to 200 Plus

o fewer than 750,000 Palestinians were removed from Writing for In These Times in October 1977, David Mandel their homes during the establishment of the state of Is- examined what he called “Israel’s 77 unsettling settlements.” rael in 1948. Nineteen years later, when Israel occupied The Israeli nonprofit B’Tselem reports that these settle- Gaza, East Jerusalem and the West Bank (commemo- ments, illegal under international law, have ballooned to rated by many Palestinians every June 5 on Naksa Day, more than 200 since—a grim development that Mandel’s Nmeaning “setback” in Arabic), it displaced nearly 400,000 more. piece anticipated.

IN 1977, DAVID MANDEL WROTE: TEL ba, whose fields were sprayed with poison and AVIV—It is getting increased UN at- closed “for military reasons” in 1972, only to be- tention and has caused a crisis in come the site of one of the western-most “Jordan U.S./Israel relations. But the question Valley” settlements. Both episodes stirred up ac- of Jewish settlements in the territo- tive protest by leftist groups in Israel and, even- ries occupied since 1967 is not a new tually, some unfavorable press comment. one. The Labor government, in pow- Any Likud plans to broaden settlement proj- er until this summer, approved and ects will inevitably come into more direct con- founded 77 such settlements—with flict with Arab inhabitants, whose spring 1976 American acquiescence. civil uprising was sparked, in part, by Gush Emu- Why then all the furor over the new nim’s successfully forcing the Rabin government Likud government’s plans? Its “ide- to allow it to settle at Kadum, six miles from ological” motivation, asserting the Nablus. Ironically, however, even the new, non-

LICENSED TO UNZ.ORG ELECTRONIC REPRODUCTION PROHIBITED right of Jews to dwell in all parts of specific plan outlined recently by Agriculture historic Israel, will undoubtedly be Minister Ariel Sharon still avoided the most pop- limited by tactical and logistic considerations. ulated centers of Arab population; it only slightly … widened the previous Allon [Labor] Plan. So why the fuss? … Pressure for a peace settlement, requiring The internal Israeli debate over “how much” withdrawal from the territories, is mounting. of the territories to keep and where to settle be- The 77 existing settlements constitute a major comes nearly irrelevant when faced with the obstacle, and undoubtedly would have become Arab, and now most of the world, consensus a bone of contention had Labor stayed in power. that all the occupied lands must be returned as ... part of any peace agreement, and that such a The Labor government claimed to be settling peace agreement is crucial to world peace. only unpopulated areas. While it is true that the … most densely populated Arab areas are still un- The present government’s insistence on contin- touched, the claim is far from accurate. Two of ued rule over another people against their will—at the most well known counter-instances are the most offering extremely limited “home rule”— Pithat Rafiah area, where thousands of nomad- can only spark greater resistance on the part of ic Bedouin families were rounded up and fenced the Palestinians, and sooner or later, is likely to into several small reservations to make way for lead to more war, which in turn can only continue the sprinkling of new settlements now flour- to harden attitudes and bring even greater suffer- ishing there, and the West Bank town of Akra- ing to both Palestinians and Israelis.

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