This post was originally published on this site

This article was originally published at Prism.

Over 430,000 affirmative asylum-seekers have been subject to a processing policy referred to as “Last In, First Out” (LIFO) that prioritizes recently submitted applications over older cases. A person who applies for affirmative asylum this year should have their interview within 45 days, but the wait is averaging 1,621 days. For those who applied in 2015, 2016, or 2017 when the backlog began, the delay has lasted seven years.

Former President Donald Trump ordered the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), the agency responsible for processing affirmative asylum applications, to reinstate the LIFO system in 2018. According to USCIS, the policy was originally introduced in 1995 by then-President Bill Clinton to reduce the backlog and deter asylum-seekers who apply as a means to obtain work authorization. LIFO was in place for 20 years until December 2014, when then-President Barack Obama’s administration temporarily adopted a “First In, First Out” (FIFO) scheduling system, processing applications as they arrived. However, according to immigration advocates, the policy has failed to reduce the backlog, with the backlog increasing by 450,000 cases from 163,000 in 2017, which was right before LIFO was reinstated, to 614,000 in 2020.

The wait has also forced thousands of asylum-seekers to live in constant uncertainty about their status.

Erez, a Kurdish asylum-seeker from Turkey, applied in 2016 and has been waiting for an interview ever since. Erez was a college student at the time, and police were attacking Kurdish students. Erez fled Turkey and came to the U.S. to find safety. Erez said he has had to reapply for a work permit every two years but has yet to receive his most recent work authorization card because of the backlog. On March 29, Biden announced actions to address the work permit backlog and immigration applications, but the measures do not apply directly to processing affirmative asylum cases.

“There’s uncertainty,” Erez said. “I’m not sure when they will address my application; after all this time, I’m just waiting.”

Andrea Barron, the advocacy program manager for Torture Abolition and Survivors Support Coalition, said asylum-seekers and torture survivors are suffering the most from LIFO. Many applicants are separated from family members who are still in their home countries. According to Barron, applicants report that their children experience ongoing violence and are punished for their parents being known as dissidents. One applicant was a mother with a 14-year-old daughter in Ethiopia. Her daughter was raped as punishment for her mother being a known dissident. According to Barron, had her mother gotten an interview, she could have brought her daughter to the U.S. and prevented the attack.

“Torture survivors have experienced significant trauma and are left in limbo, often separated from their families, and this exacerbates the trauma,” Barron said. “These tragic outcomes could have been avoided had their applications been processed promptly.”

Barron has been advocating for a concrete solution to the problem. She suggests that USCIS hire asylum officers designated to address asylum applications that were filed five or more years ago. While USCIS says they have increased the number of authorized asylum officers from 273 in 2013 to 771 in 2019, Barron said this increase has had hardly any effect on increasing the number of interviews for torture survivors and other asylum-seekers waiting more than five years for an interview.

“The big question is, how are you going to use those asylum officers?” Barron said. “Are any of them going to be able to interview the people who are waiting five years for their interview?

Barron suggests a portion of asylum officers should work back to front. Her suggestion was supported by Rep. Jerry Nadler and 39 other members of Congress, including Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, in a letter they sent to Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas and USCIS Director Ur Jaddou on Sept. 9, 2021.

“USCIS wants to make it look like they’re trying to solve the problem,” Barron said. “It will not solve the problem, the problem will be solved only when there is a designated number of asylum officers to work on these long-term cases.”

Prism is a BIPOC-led nonprofit news outlet that centers the people, places, and issues currently underreported by national media. We’re committed to producing the kind of journalism that treats Black, Indigenous, and people of color, women, the LGBTQ+ community, and other invisibilized groups as the experts on our own lived experiences, our resilience, and our fights for justice. Sign up for our email list to get our stories in your inbox, and follow us on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram.

This post was originally published on this site

Arizona Rep. Paul Gosar, whom God created to conclusively disprove white supremacy, is trying to explain away his video appearance at shrieking anti-Semite Nick Fuentes’ white power-palooza carnival in February, and that explanation is just as craven as you might imagine. 

Gosar, who has the intellectual heft of chilled monkey brains and looks like he cuts his own hair with an intermittent series of controlled burns, seems to think white people are superior to other races. Now, that’s an assertion that might seem slanderous if not for his repeated participation in white supremacist events. And now, more than a month after appearing via video at Fuentes’ America First Political Action Conference, Gosar is addressing the controversy—by blaming his staff. What a standup fella, huh?

What’s the old saying? Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on my underpaid, overworked staff, who should have recalled from my appearance last year that this was a white nationalist event.

POLITICO:

Gosar’s denial — among the first public remarks he’s given on the matter — comes nearly a month after the furor over his appearance at Fuentes’ event consumed the House GOP. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) and Gosar both appeared at Fuentes’ America First Political Action Conference. Greene spoke in person, while Gosar’s office sent in a video.

What he’s saying: “It wasn’t supposed to go to Nick’s group,” Gosar told POLITICO, noting that a staffer “misconstrued” directions from his chief of staff. The tape was intended to go to other groups as a general “welcome video,” he added.

According to Gosar, his staff is currently shorthanded, and “there was a miscommunication.” Which is odd, because after he spoke in person at the same conference in 2021, you’d think he might have put his foot down and removed the white nationalist group from his iPhone or Rolodex or fish pail full of Post-It Notes or whatever the disgraced dentist uses to organize his contact list.

Famously, Gosar claims he “didn’t know anything about the group” before speaking at the event last year;  Rep. Greene made a similar comment following her appearance at the conference this year. That might pass as an explanation if not for this:

The first results when you Google Fuentes’ name identify him as a white nationalist who has compared baking cookies to the Holocaust’s mass murder of Jews, among other incendiary and discriminatory statements.

And Fuentes isn’t just content to marginalize the vast majority of humans. He also managed to slip in some Putin praise at the AFPAC as Greene awaited her turn to speak. Remember, this came shortly after Vladimir Putin launched his unprovoked invasion of Ukraine.

Transcript!

FUENTES: “You know they say about America, they say diversity is our strength. And I look at China, I look at Russia. Can we give a round of applause for Russia? [Crowd cheers and chants ‘Putin, Putin, Putin!’] Absolutely, absolutely.”

And as Tim Wise notes, Greene still came on out.

While House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy has vowed to give both Greene and Gosar (another) stern talking-to, the Republican Party appears unwilling to expose them to censure—an extraordinary disciplinary measure they appear to reserve solely for members who investigate coups against the legitimate government of the United States. 

Listen and subscribe to Daily Kos’ The Brief podcast with Markos Moulitsas and Kerry Eleveld

Meanwhile, according to POLITICO, both Gosar and Greene have apparently lost the benefit of the doubt among most congressional Republicans, who would likely prefer they keep their racism cloaked behind a thin veneer of respectability.

And, of course, Gosar and Greene were among the 63 House members (all Republicans) who on Tuesday voted against a resolution supporting NATO—which is likely the biggest gift they can get away with giving Putin at the moment.

Yes, the GOP is indeed the party of Putin and white nationalism. It’s past time we hang those moldering albatrosses around their treacherous necks, don’t you think?

This post was originally published on this site

Transgender rights are consistently being threatened, with a record number of anti-trans bill being filed in just the first few months of this year alone. According to NBC News, nearly 240 such pieces of legislation have been filed, ranging from bills that target trans athletes and youth to restricting health care access and barring students from learning about LGBTQ issues. As part of Daily Kos’ commitment to better covering trans issues and uplifting the trans experience, the Daily Kos Equity Council on Thursday facilitated a discussion with three panelists about trans rights. Hosted by Trending News writer Marissa Higgins (she/her), staff heard from KB Brookins (they/them), Holiday Simmons (he/him), and S. Leigh Thompson (he/they).

Brookins, whose book of poetry How to Identify Yourself With a Wound delves into intersectional inquiry, expertly answered questions about the trans experience and offered fantastic advice for those looking to be better allies. When the subject of health care arose, Brookins was able to connect the medical system that fails us all with trans-specific issues in that space. Brookins discussed a piece they wrote for the Huffington Post about their experience seeking care from a gynecologist as a Black trans man in Texas and the power imbalance between providers and patients. “If you have someone in front of you who has the power to alter the experience of your body or your mind, that is a large responsibility and I think it’s super important that people are competent around giving health care to trans folks,” Brookins said. “This is a thing that absolutely everybody should care about, because having legislation that hinders how you can support your child is an issue that everyone should care about. And the misconception is, I think, that people think it’s a trans issue. I think it’s a human rights issue.”

RELATED STORY: Daily Kos Equity Council presents a panel on trans rights

Thompson, a consultant and facilitator whose creative work offers an inspiring chance for intersectional dialog, was well-equipped to provide a thoughtful answer about trans health care issues. They briefly brought up the trauma of their first OB/GYN visit, further highlighting the fact that seeking out gender-affirming care should only strengthen the argument that trans rights are human rights. “This just underpins that health care for anybody is hard in the United States, right? It’s already hard,” Thompson said. “So, like, who actively desires to engage more in the health care system just for funsies? It’s so, so rare that that happens. People are struggling to actually get any care whatsoever, and so for trans people to take the extra effort to seek out actual care  […] to affirm and to support their experience and their identity in the world, that’s not something that just happens on accident. It’s through great consideration and great deliberation.”

That certainty is something cisgender folks rarely are forced to reckon with, even when those folks choose to seek care that is itself gender-affirming. Both Brookins and Simmons brought up the fact that hormones are prescribed for a variety of reasons for folks across the gender spectrum. “We’re all transitioning, throughout life,” Simmons explained. “A personal story is when I was earlier on in my medical transition, I was not seeing some of the physical changes that I wanted and I asked my doctor, ‘Should I get a higher dose?’ And I go to a queer medical place,” Simmons said. “He’s like, ‘I got big burly bears who have low testosterone levels and little skinny twinks with testosterone through the roof.’ It’s really not correlated, and also, maybe let’s interrogate this.”

Simmons’ work as the Resident in Resilience and Healing at the Campaign for Southern Equality is pivotal in helping LGBTQ+ folks get the medical care they need. The Campaign for Southern Equality maintains a provider directory so those seeking care can do so in a respectful environment that doesn’t pose a danger to them—a very pressing concern Simmons noted in his experience of, say, simply going to urgent care for a COVID test. “Even if it’s the most affirming urgent care place, I still have to do that work to figure out if it’s safe to [out myself] and if I want to do that labor,” Simmons said. “Even if we create the best systems, this is still something trans people have to navigate.”

An unwelcoming environment isn’t just at the doctor’s office, unfortunately, but rather can be felt across many interactions. Panelists provided tips for those who may struggle with misgendering trans and nonbinary folks. Perhaps one of the easiest ways to get better with using different pronouns is a tool any language learner is familiar with: practice. Brookins describes giving one of their plants ze/hir pronouns, while Thompson gave their cat they/them pronouns to not only help them practice but teach their child about pronoun usage. Brookins also brought up mypronouns.org, which offers a collection of resources in one place.

Perhaps the best tools for honoring trans folks and combatting transphobia are cold, hard facts. All three panelists easily tore apart made-up scenarios about one of the most pressing issues trans folks face today: discrimination in sports and through legislative actions. Thompson suggested that, for those who engage in a lot of “what if” questions, it’s about finding out what information that person is truly seeking and helping them get to the heart of why they may have some confusion around trans athlete issues.

“We can ‘what if’ any scenario,” Thompson said. “And, for some people, it’s a helpful thing for them to start to learn the boundaries of an idea or of an issue, and so they’re trying to figure out, ‘What are the edges of this conversation?’ As a person who trains on these issues, I approach it a little bit differently at times. Which is just to remind people, to really help folks understand that, often if people are trying to ‘what if,’ they really are trying to learn where the extremities are of this thing.” Thompson continued:

“Some people are literally trying to ‘what if’ in order to tank the issue. And so trying to lean into the ally space of people who actually really want to support and health. And if that’s really what you want to do, I try to get to what’s at the core of the ‘what if.’ Like, are you really trying to understand this issue more? Because we can come up with a scenario, anybody can actually pretend to be anyone else in order to defraud a sports team. Anybody can pretend to be somebody else in order to do harm, or because they have a whim, or because they have an issue and they really hate all girls in sports and want to screw them over. There are so many possibilities. Those are possible. They’re not likely. We don’t have any experiences of them actually happening. Let’s actually instead of focusing on the one maybe, let’s focus on all of the thousands and thousands of trans young people who are trying to engage in sports and need to do so in a supportive way. […] And so really supporting people and saying, ‘This is the pathway that can actually get to the place that we want to go.’”

A helpful list of resources is below for those interested in learning more about accessible health care for trans folks, pronouns, and more about the panelists themselves.

• KB Brookins’ website
• S. Leigh Thompson’s website
• Holiday Simmons’ website
• mypronouns.org
• How to add your pronouns to Zoom
• Brookins’ article on seeking health care as a Black trans man in Texas
• World Professional Association for Transgender Healthcare
• A trans athlete’s guide to writing about trans athletes
• National Center for Transgender Equality ally guide

This post was originally published on this site

Captive audience meetings are one of the major tools of corporate union-busting efforts, in which management intimidates workers in person, on the clock, with the knowledge that their responses are being watched. Now, Jennifer Abruzzo, the general counsel of the National Labor Relations Board, is asking the board to classify most captive audience meetings as an unfair labor practice based on coercion in violation of workers’ rights.

“I will urge the Board to correct that anomaly and hold that, in two circumstances, employees will understand their presence and attention to employer speech concerning their exercise of Section 7 rights to be required: when employees are (1) forced to convene on paid time or (2) cornered by management while performing their job duties,” Abruzzo wrote in a memo this week. “In both cases, employees constitute a captive audience deprived of their statutory right to refrain, and instead are compelled to listen by threat of discipline, discharge, or other reprisal—a threat that employees will reasonably perceive even if it is not stated explicitly.” 

Workers seeking to unionize are subjected to captive audience meetings in 90% of all organizing drives, according to studies. In recent high-profile cases, that’s included workers at Starbucks and Amazon. And while those union efforts have been successful, it doesn’t mean that the workers don’t feel the effects of the intimidation. Taking away this tool in the union-busting arsenal would be a very big deal.

● More than 50 gig workers have been killed on the job since 2017, according to a report from Gig Workers Rising, and more than 60% of those killed were people of color.

● This is a beautiful video:

● The Senate reached a deal to avert the layoffs of dozens of food service workers in the Senate itself.

● MIT graduate students voted to unionize, 1785 to 912.

● A grocery worker strike was imminent. Then came a 30-hour bargaining marathon.

● 

● Jaya Saxena reports on what Amy’s Kitchen workers are fighting for:

“The primary issue for every worker is workplace injuries,” says Ricardo Hidalgo, the Western Region organizing coordinator for the Teamsters, which is behind the union effort at the Santa Rosa facility. According to the Cal/OSHA complaint, Amy’s employs around 2,000 people at its four production facilities, which, according to the company’s 2019 fact sheet, cook up to 1 million meals a day (160,000 hand-rolled burritos among them). The complaint also says around 550 employees work at its Santa Rosa plant — the company’s first, opened in 1987 — though Hidalgo says the number is now around 700, making it the one of the town’s largest and most reliable employers. “I have never, in my career, seen the level of workplace injuries that I’m seeing now,” Hidalgo says.

● What are the 26 jobs you are most likely to quit?

This post was originally published on this site

In an earlier update by Mark Sumner, a commenter noted, “I do hope you are successful in sussing out the accurate stuff from the propaganda and bot work.” Mark responded:

In spite of attempts to limit the numbers, about half of all the information on Ukraine out there still comes from pro-Russian bots, fake accounts, and propaganda units. There is never a shortage of “Russia is winning!” and “Ukrainian forces have been destroyed!” tweets out there. There seem to be no shortage of Western accounts ready to repeat these statements.

At the other end, there are no end of click-bait accounts trying to draw eyeballs by claiming to have knowledge of troop movements, or breaking news on the next Big Ukrainian Victory! These, of course, can generate hopeful attention from people who definitely want to just see Ukraine roll to Moscow.

To avoid both, we rarely post anything on the basis of a single source, and usually track back along the path to make sure that what appears to be multiple sources are not just quoting the same questionable origin story. We’re rarely first up with Breaking News, but also have to write a lot fewer retractions.

I added my own thoughts in that comment thread, but I’m going to use this opportunity to expand on them, because it can hopefully provide lessons to others as they work to navigate the confusing world of war coverage. 

As Mark notes, there are several kinds of misinformation:

• Hostile mis- and disinformation (Russian trolls, bots, etc, Scott Ritter and the tankies)
• Friendly mis- and disinformation (Ukrainian “information warfare” efforts to shape the world community’s perception of the war)
• Click-bait confirmation bias material (Example below)
• Honest mistakes (e.g. calling artillery gun a “tank”)
• War-splainin’ bloviating (You know, the pundits who have all the answers)

The truth is out there, but in the fog of war, it drips out in bits and pieces, all the while all the crap above muddies the water. Our job is to piece together all confirmed facts to try and paint a picture of what is actually happening on the ground, all the while acknowledging holes in our knowledge. For example, we can take what we know to be a credible on-the-ground source, this Canadian volunteer fighting in the Ukrainian foreign legion, and understand what even he admits—that his own operational security (OpSec) means he can’t be too detailed in his information: 

Yet he notes that he’s near Kherson, and occasionally mentions town names, so we can get an idea of how far Ukrainians have advanced. That gives us something to work on, that Ukraine is on the attack, but that the exposed, desert-like open terrain prevents them from holding some of that territory, and thus they are being strategic and fluid in where they move. (Note, careful of clicking on his Twitter timeline. He posts graphic war dead photos that are literally some of the worst shit I’ve seen and I wish I never had.) 

Still, we would never use one random guy who seems to be in Ukraine, but could be a big scam, as our source. It’s always cross checked with other information from the area, culled from Twitter, Telegram, and Ukraine’s Facebook pages (where its military general staff release regular war updates). We’ve sat on a lot of really exciting information because we couldn’t get multiple credible confirmation, and we didn’t want to fall into the “confirmation bias” trap—believing something simply because it’s something we want to believe.

The opposite is true, we don’t reject information because we don’t want to believe it. It was okay to be skeptical of Russian reports that several hundred Ukrainian marines had surrendered in Mariupol. There was a big effort to “debunk” the video evidence, some of it which was genuinely intriguing. Ukraine general staff contributed to the confusion by denying it was true. But real confirmation soon came from other Ukrainian soldiers on the ground, saying “yup, that’s some of ours.” We didn’t want to believe it was true, but unfortunately, it was. 

Here’s another example of confirmation bias: 

We all want to see the Russian Black Sea Fleet on the ocean floor, so exciting! Nearly 11,000 people liked that tweet! But digging in, it was clear that there was zero evidence to support it. For one, no credible Twitter accounts reported it. This one is a British photographer with like 700 followers. And not to say the number of followers is everything, but “photographer” isn’t the kind of person that would have insight into, well, the covert shipment of a major offensive weapon, already deployed to Odesa. 

So we dug deeper, looking for credible media reports, and nothing. This tweet and photo made the rounds, reposted by many over-eager excited Ukraine boosters, but there was no credible source at the end of the line. Now, that doesn’t mean the tweet is wrong! It just means there is no evidence, and so we couldn’t report on it, or build entire narratives around its presence. Quite the opposite, in fact: The Harpoon has a 75-mile range. If Ukrainians had it, they could deploy the missile at Zaporizhia, and hit Russian ships at Berdiansk (where that landing ship was sunk, either by missile attack or accident). If Ukrainians had those missiles, they could deploy at Odesa and have sunk the Russian ships that were shelling the city just two days ago. 

Today, the UK announced that they were, indeed, delivering anti-ship missiles to Ukraine. However, they haven’t said which ones. Everyone assumes Harpoons, but the only country with shore-fired Harpoons are Taiwan, and they’re the other country in the world that most needs them. They ain’t giving those launchers up. The UK has a helicopter version, the Sea Venom, but that’s also a no-go, as Ukraine doesn’t have the right kind of helicopters specially outfitted to carry the missile. 

After more digging, we found that the UK actually has three “land-based reference systems” of Harpoons, so is that it? While we haven’t confirmed, those appear to be launchers used to develop and test the Harpoons, and are around 30-40 years old. Do they even work, as they’re not fielded? Maybe! But again, we don’t know. A Politico writer “confirmed” that Britain was sending Harpoons, but we still don’t consider it confirmed, because reporters make mistakes and misunderstand things. What would make most sense would be short-range anti-ship missiles that Odesa could use against an amphibious assault that will never come (as I’ve been saying since the first week). That would be defensive, which is a thing that NATO is still seemingly hung up on. Harpoon’s range and punch makes it a potent offensive weapon. 

At some point, a British Ministry of Defence official will confirm Harpoon, or we will see pictures of one in Ukraine, but until then, we consider that bit of information “rumor,” and will treat it as such if and when we write about it. The amount of time we’ve spent on this Harpoon issue the last several days is … more than I’d like to admit. But it’s important that the information you guys get is as reality-based as possible. No one is served by simply regurgitating information that makes us feel better. 

The best information is objective information, like the NASA FIRMS satellite imagery. Next up is commercial satellite imagery, like the stuff that confirmed that the dead civilians lying in the street had been there before the Russians retreated from Bucha. Next up is geolocated video from Twitter and Telegram. That is, Ukrainian and Russians post video of their attacks, and an army of volunteers in the Open Source Intelligence (OSINT) community use satellite and Google maps imagery to find the precise location.

Then there’s on-the-ground sources, but only when multiple individual accounts corroborate the information. Ukrainian Ministry of Defence is actually shockingly reliable when it comes to who holds what territory (oftentimes a day late, presumably for confirmation or OPSEC), but terrible when it comes to the number of tanks, aircraft, etc destroyed. (And I know there have been efforts to demonstrate how their numbers might not be so far off, but the counter evidence is stronger.) The Russian Ministry of Defense lies, but at least it gives us an idea of where Russia intends to go. If they claim they’ve captured Mariupol’s port areas in the southwest, then that’s where they’re currently focused in the fight. 

The Pentagon, UK, and French ministries of defense are sparse in details, and oftentimes a day or two late, but they’re nice to confirm some details. But when the Pentagon says things like “29 Russian BTGs are combat ineffective,” we understand that those are general estimates, and no one knows the real truth, not even Russia. (You think commanders are sending accurate reports up their chain of command? That’d be one way to get shot. Better to say all is great!) 

Finally, we rely on or experiences and expertise. Remember when everyone was screaming that Belarus was going to directly enter the war? It was obvious from the beginning, given my knowledge of military logistics, that it was literally impossible for Belarus to open up a new front all the way out in Western Ukraine. There was no way it was ever going to happen. So while Ukraine, the Pentagon, and everyone with satellite pictures of Belarusian forces gathered in Western Belarus were convinced it would happen, I was confident it never would. Same thing with an amphibious assault of Odesa. How was a couple of thousand Russian naval infantry going to make a contested amphibious assault against a well-defended city of 1 million? Yes, Russia has been stupid. Suicidal at times. But amphibious landings are some of the most difficult military maneuvers to pull off, and Russia has never pulled one off in its history. The loss of men? Russia doesn’t care. The loss of a big chunk of its navy, which would’ve inevitably happened? Russia cares about that. 

That doesn’t mean we can’t be wrong, but understanding the logistical (always first!), strategic and tactical pictures is key to properly covering the war. Understanding how weapons systems work (a Mark Sumner specialty), how they are supplied and maintained and operated, and their operational details, further inform the situation on the ground. 

Anyway, I write this not out of defensiveness. The community has been incredibly appreciative of our war coverage, and we truly appreciate all the sincere and warm thanks. My favorite part is how so many great, smart commenters add rich details, historical context, and other great information to the topics at hand. I write this to confirm that yes, we take our jobs seriously, and work really hard to ensure no one is misled, and that we are always 100% reality based. And just as importantly, I write this to remind all of you to consume war information (and all information, really) responsibly. Always check sourcing and your own propensity for confirmation bias. If something is too good to be true, spend extra time trying to confirm it. And never be afraid to wait for more official confirmation (if it is, indeed, true). 

And lastly, I’ll just say that I love you guys. All of you. I’m tired, emotionally drained, and often triggered given my own personal story (as a war refugee from El Salvador). But your warm embrace of our work gives me energy and motivation when it otherwise might flag. So I appreciate you all. 

This post was originally published on this site

What is there to say about Fox News and the right-wing-o-sphere that hasn’t been scratched by the nails of demons into the toilet stall walls of hell? Every day, every hour, every minute, Fox News and the propaganda machines it has birthed are either selling their audience lies, misinformation, and disinformation about the world, or selling them pillows, telling them to sell their gold, and saying that the way out of debt is to give Magnum P.I. your home in a reverse mortgage. 

These days it is hard to keep up with the avalanche (maybe tidal wave as we go into the warmer months?) of right-wing “news” media hooey. Grabbing every single moment of misinformation or disinformation off of just Tucker Carlson’s show would be a full-time job for three well-paid masochists. But there are a few conservative tropes that perennially emanate from the putrid hate stew of right-wing media.

You know what “perennially” means, right?

Fox News spends most of its resources sifting through a decades-old, burnt-out box of ideas, repackaging  them, and throwing them against the wall to see what sticks. Racism by way of South American immigration? Check.

Of course, in the face of the conservative movement to condone-while-not-condoning Russian dictator Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, the conservative media-sphere keeps having to eat this kind of crow.

On top of that, while the new “go low” rallying cry of conservatives is that everybody is a pedophile with loose sexual boundaries, the harsh reality is that the only proof of any of these accusations seem to involve GOP operatives and Republican officials. So, if you guys had plans in the D.C. area that included partying with the GOP…

Don’t believe me? Here’s how that Eyes Wide Shut/QAnon world Venn-diagram has begun to eclipse the entire Grand Old Party.

[Note to self: Spray eyes and ears with Windex]

How’s Fox & Friends and Tuckey doing with all of the Ukraine and Russia blowback?

One way to squash dissent is kill your audience. If they’re dead they cannot complain, amiright? But Tucker and Laura Ingraham haven’t had the easiest time making conspiracies of Muslim Socialism stick to Biden as easily as some others, so it’s time to begin manufacturing video of the previous, darker-skinned president, that they were able to direct their audience’s “anxiety” towards.

And just because I’m 100% willing to “go low” with some facts. Here’s a reminder of how Tucker Carlson has always been, and will always be, a truly mediocre intellect, with the moral compass of a gold bar.

But let us all remember that Tucker and the rest of these Christian conservatives are just doing God’s work.

But no worries, Sean Hannity is here to clean everything up by projecting it all away.

Listen and subscribe to Daily Kos’ The Brief podcast with Markos Moulitsas and Kerry Eleveld

This post was originally published on this site

This article was originally published at Prism.

Janet Barcenas has been working at Amy’s Kitchen in Santa Rosa, California, since 1993. She’s worked in the food production line, packaging, and as a team leader, now she has joined a group of workers from the organic frozen food company calling for safe working conditions, higher pay, and a union.

“No matter how much we talk to the supervisors, to the managers, accidents keep happening,” Barcenas said. “They don’t take our opinions into account.”

Amy’s Kitchen, which has been in business for 35 years, has long held a reputation for being a socially responsible brand that uses organic ingredients and has said they “always cook [their] food with love.” But over the last decade, the Department of Labor’s Office of Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) has fined the company more than $100,000 to settle federal health and safety violations at the California location, with additional incidents at the Oregon and Idaho locations. Complaints have detailed workers getting their fingers or pieces of their fingers amputated by machinery, and others detail an employee fracturing their hip while tripping over a forklift. Most recently, workers filed a safety complaint that was opened by Cal/OSHA on Jan. 26 of this year saying they have not been given access to the bathroom or drinking water during shifts. After multiple attempts at asking their managers for better working conditions went unheeded, they filed the complaint.

“You get tired of asking for changes when they don’t pay attention to you,” Barcenas said. “We have continued in this struggle even though they don’t want to pay attention to us.”

Barcenas, who is 54, was diagnosed with cancer in 2005. At the time, she was a team leader in the packaging line. She was allowed four months off for rest, but after six rounds of chemotherapy and 33 rounds of radiation, she had to take off a total of seven months. When she returned, her body was not the same and could not stand for the eight-to-nine-hour days. Her manager refused to let her maintain her position as team leader since she was no longer physically able to stand all day. She had to return to her previous position as a line worker in packaging, making less money than she did before.

“I liked being the team leader very much,” Barcenas said.

Barcenas wrote a detailed letter to her manager expressing her interest in returning to the team leader position. She explained that she was still a detail-oriented person who liked to help her team workers. But she was still denied because of her disability.

“I felt very bad, I felt discriminated against,” Barcenas said. “They didn’t want to give me the position because I really couldn’t do it anymore. Now, I make less money.”

It was not until 2020 that Barcenas’ doctor eventually wrote a note asking to allow her to use a chair while on the line. Her supervisor rejected the request, but after a second request they allowed the chair, and added more for other workers. But there are never enough chairs for the 600 workers. Last year, Barcenas also successfully organized with her colleagues for a salary raise. Barcenas and some other workers previously made $20 an hour, but after a brief labor stoppage, it was raised to $22 an hour. However, immediately after the raise was granted, their health insurance premiums increased, canceling out any salary increase.

According to a statement from Amy’s Kitchen spokesperson Paul Schiefer, they spend $17,500 per employee per year in health care benefits, which is $45 million a year. Amy’s Kitchen did not confirm or deny that insurance premiums were raised in 2021.

“Every year, they are changing the insurance,” Barcenas said. “That is why we need them to  value our work. We want good salaries and good insurance. We also want them to be respectful of us. We do our work with so much effort, dedication, and responsibility, but they still do not want to pay attention to us.”

Ever since the January 2022 OSHA complaint was filed and workers began sharing their concerns publicly, Amy’s Kitchen has brought in union-busters in an attempt to scare the workers away from unionizing. Outside the plant, anti-union protestors have been seen chanting against forming a union. Inside, union-busters have given meetings on the “dangers” of unions, and they lurk around the production line and in the break rooms. According to Barcenas, the union-busters have created a misinformation campaign to scare workers away from organizing.

“They just come to intimidate people,” Barcenas said. “But, I’m not scared. I know what the truth is.”

Amy’s Kitchen has denied all allegations. According to spokesperson Schiefer, Amy’s Kitchen reviewed the allegations, reached out to Cal/OSHA, and fully cooperated in the audit process. They say they have a good working relationship with Cal/OSHA, conducted their own internal audit, and completed a three-day audit by an outside firm that analyzed the safety record, disability programs, and employee experience. They say the results show the allegations are false.

“We respect our employees’ choice in a free and fair secret election,” Schiefer said in a statement. “However, this union is not the chosen voice of our employees. Amy’s respects our employees’ rights to vote for or against union representation through a free and fair secret election.”

Since filing the complaint, the Teamsters Local 665 union has been helping the workers with unionization efforts. According to Barcenas, the pressure to maintain line speed has gone down slightly since filing the complaint in January, but that’s not enough. They want a guarantee of safe conditions and comparable pay.

Grocers and co-ops have been showing solidarity with the workers and are boycotting Amy’s Kitchen products. Barcenas said her manager has since held meetings intimidating the workers, saying that if nobody is buying Amy’s products, then there will be no more work for them.

“He put that fear into them,” Barcenas said. “It made me very angry because we are there listening to everything he is talking about, and you feel like, ‘How come we can’t have an opinion on anything? How come we can’t say anything?’”

Lauren Ornelas, the founder and president of the board for Food Empowerment Project, said it is important that vegans, to whom the company caters, stand in solidarity with Amy’s Kitchen workers. Food Empowerment Project, along with Veggie Mijas, amplified the workers’ call for a boycott on Amy’s Kitchen products.  

“If they’re doing what they do for the sake of non-human animals, they certainly aren’t treating the women who work for their company with any amount of decency or respect,” Ornelas said. “Amy’s Kitchen is a symbol of suffering right now.”

Ornelas says that customers should continue to boycott their products and, more importantly, reach out to the company and let the company know via email, phone calls, and social media that they aren’t going to buy their products until the workers get the respect, pay, and protection that they deserve. Barcenas says they will continue with their organizing efforts until an agreement is reached.

Prism is a BIPOC-led nonprofit news outlet that centers the people, places, and issues currently underreported by national media. We’re committed to producing the kind of journalism that treats Black, Indigenous, and people of color, women, the LGBTQ+ community, and other invisibilized groups as the experts on our own lived experiences, our resilience, and our fights for justice. Sign up for our email list to get our stories in your inbox, and follow us on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram.