There is yet more evidence showing that major U.S. utilities are doing their damnedest to resist climate change mitigation. A recent report from nonpartisan climate crisis think tank InfluenceMap reveals that a majority of utility companies are not positively engaging with climate policy. Instead of using their considerable influence to help hasten a greener future and move closer to net-zero goals, many energy companies have at least mixed records, if not outright hostility toward that transition. InfluenceMap’s findings range from an analysis of social media posts and state hearing testimonies to lobbying and legal action.
Just four out of 25 companies analyzed consistently offered positive engagement: Edison International in California, Exelon in Illinois, PSEG in New Jersey, and PG&E in California. ProPublica notes that Edison International’s lobbying endeavors have included supporting affordable electric vehicles, allocations within the Infrastructure Jobs and Investment Act for wildfire mitigation, and broadening the definition of renewable energy to include hydropower. PG&E has lobbied for similar causes, though not without scrutiny. The utility upped its lobbying spending while declaring bankruptcy and at a time when the worst fire in California history was wreaking havoc on at least five counties. That blaze, the Dixie Fire, was caused by a tree falling onto PG&E’s own electrical distribution lines.
Few states have utilities that positively engage with and advance climate policy.
If looking at the so-called better utility companies that consistently advocate for climate change mitigation gives you pause, just wait until you see what the companies at the bottom of the list have to offer. Rounding out the bottom four are WEC Energy Group in Wisconsin, Ameren Corporation in Missouri, Southern Company in Georgia, and CenterPoint Energy in Texas. All rank extremely low when it comes to energy transition and zero-carbon technologies as well as GHG emission regulation. You may recognize CenterPoint at the bottom of the list as one of a slew of utilities sued in the wake of Winter Storm Uri, which killed dozens in Texas. CenterPoint has also faced lawsuits over a lethal gas explosion and worker injuries, among other suits. The company has also given an inordinate amount to fossil fuel-loving Republicans like Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, lobbied in favor of legislation that keeps oil and gas flowing, and confusingly vowed to reach net-zero by 2035 yet hitched much of its hopes on natural gas production.
Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility Climate and Environmental Justice Director Christina Herman urged utilities to change their ways, especially in the face of shareholder pressure. “With a quarter of U.S. emissions stemming from the power sector, and its potential for decarbonizing the economy, effective climate policies must be enacted to promote a rapid shift away from fossil fuels for power generation,” Herman said in a statement. “Investors are increasingly concerned about the impacts of climate disruption on their portfolios, on the health of the economy and on society broadly… This report makes it clear that most [utilities] are not on the right trajectory, and that needs to change.”
Because of utilities’ downright obstructionist ways when it comes to supporting better climate policies, InfluenceMap found that the U.S. is actually falling behind compared with E.U utilities, which the think tank notes “has made considerably more progress in regulating and reducing emissions from the power sector.” These European utility companies are actively and collectively supporting the same policies, including raising emissions reductions to 55% by 2030.
One of Vladimir Putin’s primary propaganda points when rationalizing his assault on Ukraine as a “denazification” program is to trot out as proof of his claims the Azov Battalion, the Ukrainian fighting unit founded by neo-Nazi nationalists and still reportedly dominated by them. In doing so, he has effectively obfuscated the reality that Russian forces are even more riddled with fascist elements—including forces currently leading their fight in the Donbas region of southeastern Ukraine.
The largest of these is the Russian Imperialist Movement (RIM), a white supremacist paramilitary organization listed by American authorities as a terrorist body, and the Wagner Group, a private military proxy closely linked to Putin with a history of neo-Nazi activity. Russian troops arriving in Donbas have been recorded flying the RIM flag—a combination of historical Russian flags from its imperial era—while Wagner Group’s mercenaries have been sighted in Donetsk and elsewhere; notably, German intelligence has connected them to the atrocities in the Kyiv suburb of Bucha.
Russian soldiers headed toward the Donbass region wave the RIM flag, a combination of two traditional imperial-era Russian banners.
Social-media videos out of the Rostov Oblast have shown Russian troop convoys heading toward the Donbas region with soldiers bearing the RIM flag and other imperialist banners. The same flag flies at RIM marches, where the rhetoric is thick with bigotry directed at Jews and Ukrainians. Denis Valliullovich Gariev, the militant leader of RIM who was one of three RIM leaders sanctioned by the United States, was quoted as saying, “We [RIM] see Ukrainian-ness as rabies … either quarantine or liquidation, or he’ll infect everyone.”
The same flag was seen in mid-March flying with Moscow-backed separatist troops in Donetsk on a Telegram post shared by a pro-Putin channel. Much of the far-right content on these Telegram channels—as well as the Russian social-media platform VKontakte (VK)—is related to a neo-Nazi unit called Rusich that is part of Wagner Group, some of it bearing the Wagner name and logo.
Pentagon authorities estimate that about 1,000 Wagner mercenaries have been deployed in eastern Ukraine, where Russia has refocused its current war effort. Rusich militiamen have been spotted on the Russian-Ukrainian border where the offense is being launched.
Russian officials deny having any connection to the Wagner Group, which does not officially exist. An incredibly secretive organization, its true ownership and funding sources remain unclear. But experts say it has served as a tactical tool for the Kremlin in hot spots where Russia has political and financial interests, and has deep ties to Putin—in fact, it is widely considered his private army.
Putin is reported to have ordered Wagner Group operatives into Kyiv to assassinate Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, who has reportedly survived about a dozen such attempts. About 400 Wagner mercenaries were reported to have entered the Kyiv area from Belarus, and were offered “hefty bonuses” for killing key political and media figures, including the mayor of Kyiv, Zelenskyy, and his entire Cabinet.
According to German intelligence officials, Wagner Group operatives were primarily responsible for spearheading the butchery that has been reported and substantiated in Bucha. Der Spiegel reported that comments from troops intercepted by German intelligence—including flippant remarks about shooting men on bicycles, and orders to first interrogate soldiers and then shoot them—that demonstrate the atrocities in Bucha “were neither random acts nor the product of individual soldiers who got out of hand.”
The Wagner Group mostly comprises retired regular Russian servicemen, typically aged between 35 and 55. The Kremlin has effectively used their mercenaries to wage deniable war and otherwise prop up its interests in places like Syria, Libya, Mozambique, and more recently in the Central African Republic and Mali. They also played a key role in Putin’s long war on Ukraine, with its fighters helping him illegally annex Crimea in 2014.
The group’s founder, Dmitry Utkin, named it after Hitler’s favorite composer, Richard Wagner, and is himself fond of fascist symbols; he has a Nazi eagle, along with swastikas and SS lightning bolts, tattooed on his torso. Reportedly Wagner mercenaries have left behind neo-Nazi propaganda in combat zones, including graffiti with hate symbols.
The Wagner militia unit Rusich has been spotted in southeastern Ukraine as well. It was founded nearly a decade ago in St. Petersburg by a Red Army paratrooper named Aleksei Milchakov and Yan Petrovskiy, a Norwegian neo-Nazi, after the pair met at a white supremacist RIM event.
Milchakov has previously posted horrifying pictures of himself on social media slicing off the ears of dead soldiers, as well as selfies in which he is carving the kolovrat, a Slavic far-right version of the swastika. He also has boasted about being a neo-Nazi and claims he “got high from the smell of burning human flesh.”
Rusich is believed to consist of several hundred soldiers, and their signature uniform patch is a white supremacist valknut insignia. Its idea of humor on social media is a cartoon of a Russian soldier returning home with gifts for his family, stolen from Ukrainians and covered in blood. Its caption reads: “If you are a real man and a Russian, join our ranks. You will spill liters of blood from vile Russophobes, and become rich and cool.”
One of Wagner’s key functions, according to the Soufan Center, a New York-based nonprofit think tank, is that it provides the Kremlin with “a thin veneer of plausible deniability as it engages in the pursuit of finance, influence, and vigilantism not in keeping with international norms.”
The Daily Beast reported in late January that dozens of Wagner mercenaries were pulled from the Central African Republic to join Russian forces massing at the Ukraine border.
The Ukraine war has a broad mix of mercenaries and extremists from all sides participating in both sides of the conflict, as a report from the Soufan Center explores in detail. As the war drags on, active online recruitment suggests that a drawn-out conflict could attract many more volunteer fighters, according to Stephan J. Kramer, the head of the domestic intelligence agency in the German state of Thuringia. An eagerness to take up arms, he noted, reflects the motivations of right-wing extremists, including within the ranks of the German military.
For neo-Nazis and white supremacists, “Ukraine could become their version of what Afghanistan was for the jihadi movement in the 1980s,” said Steven Stalinsky, the executive director of the Washington-based Middle East Media Research Institute. “Being on the ground in a real-world fighting situation will allow them to gain valuable experience, as they further hone their skills in weapons, planning attacks, using technology in war including communications and encryption, and using cryptocurrency for clandestine funding of their activity.”
Outfits like Rusich are the spear tip of a much larger neofascist element within Russia, embodied by the Russian Imperial Movement. Its ideology is much more than simply nostalgic for the Russia of two centuries ago; concerned with fighting against globalization, multiculturalism, and liberalism, RIM is part and parcel of a broader international white supremacist project, which also enjoys Putin’s sponsorship and support. Its “membership is rigid and adheres to the dualistic beliefs that members should be part of the Russian Orthodox Church and conform to the group’s view of the necessity of creating a Russian Imperial state,” according to the Soufan Center.
RIM’s activism now includes running a kind of international “summer camp” for young right-wing extremists called Partisan, a paramilitary training course it sponsors near St. Petersburg. It claims to train civilians for upcoming “global chaos.” It draws participants from around Europe.
Two of its graduates from Sweden, both members of the neo-Nazi group Nordic Resistance, returned home to Gothenburg and attempted to blow up a home for asylum seekers, as well as a gathering of leftists at an alternative bookstore. (Another bomb was accidentally ignited by a garbage worker who was permanently maimed in the blast.) They likely learned how to construct the bombs at Partisan.
Jonathan Leman, a researcher for the anti-racist pressure group EXPO, explains that the training reflects a tactical shift of consciousness within European neo-Nazi movements like Nordic Resistance that occurred over the course of the Ukraine crisis.
“As the role of the EU and the United States in the war becomes more apparent,” he told us, “you could see that pro-Kremlin propaganda was having a greater impact on far right websites in Sweden.”
The focus of Partisan, its website says, is to prepare civilians for “the collapse of civilization.” RIM’s leader, Stanislav Vorobyov, turned up in uniform at a summit organized by Nordic Resistance in 2015 and warned about “a full-scale war against the traditional values of Western civilization.” He told them his uniform should be regarded as a symbol of their joint fight against the “Jewish oligarchs in Ukraine.”
While the RIM has a long and well-publicized record of sponsoring far-right activities throughout Europe, its presence in North America has been limited. Matthew Heimbach, former leader of the neo-Nazi Traditional Workers Party (TWP), at one time hosted a RIM leader and visited with him at historic sites in Washington, D.C., and Gettysburg, Pennsylvania.
Heimbach continued to cultivate those ties, traveling to Russia to return the favor by meeting with RIM leaders at their annual gathering, the World National Conservative Movement conference. “I see Russia as kind of the axis for nationalists,” said Heimbach. “And that’s not just nationalists that are white—that’s all nationalists.”
It’s true that American extremists have long been attracted to Ukraine’s Azov Battalion as an opportunity for paramilitary training. Members of the California-based Rise Above Movement participated in such training prior to their participation in the deadly and violent 2017 Unite the Right riot in Charlottesville, Virginia, for which several of them have ended up facing federal charges.
The Azov Battalion formed in 2014 and later joined the country’s National Guard after fighting against Russian-backed forces in eastern Ukraine. Experts estimate nationalists comprise about 2% of Ukraine’s population, with the vast majority having very little interest in anything to do with them, but the Azov group is considered to be one of the Ukrainian army’s more potent fighting forces.
Nonetheless, according to the Soufan Center, their extremism in the current context is vastly overstated. It cites experts on the European far right like Anton Shekhovtsov, who say the Azov of 2022 is nothing like the group from eight years ago, since those seeking to fight with Azov today are motivated, for the most part, by Ukrainian nationalism and not far-right extremism. However, it notes: “Despite the evolution of the movement since 2014, its brand still remains popular with far-right extremists, and its future trajectory will bear watching.”
A Washington Post report on the battalion interviewed Azov fighters and one of its founders, as well as experts who have tracked the battalion from its beginnings, and found a more complex and nuanced situation than the Kremlin’s crude characterizations. They concede that while some extremists remain in their ranks, the militia has evolved since 2014 and, under pressure from U.S. and Ukrainian authorities, has toned down its extremist elements.
“You have fighters now coming from all over the world that are energized by what Putin has done,” said Colin P. Clarke, director of research at the Soufan Group, an intelligence and security consulting firm. “And so it’s not even that they’re in favor of one ideology or another — they’re just aghast by what they’ve seen the Russians doing.
“That certainly wasn’t the same in 2014,” he added. “So while the far-right element is still a factor, I think it’s a much smaller part of the overall whole. It’s been diluted, in some respects.”
A recent article in RIA Novosti, the Russian state-owned domestic news agency, titled “What Russia Should Do with Ukraine,” reveals the shallow rhetorical ruse of Putin’s claims. It author, Russian political consultant Timofey Sergeytsev, openly admits that “denazification” has nothing to do with eradicating any far-right ideology, but is simply a euphemism for “de-Ukrainization”—the annihilation of Ukraine as a nation-state and a cultural entity.
Putin has argued since at least last year that Ukraine’s very existence is “anti-Russia.” Sergeytsev follows the logic: Ukrainian national identity, he says, is “an artificial anti-Russian construct that has no civilizational content of its own”; it is a “subordinate element of a foreign and alien civilization.” In a culture long accustomed to considering Nazism anti-Russian, Ukraine is easily translated into “Nazi.”
Adam Hadley, the executive director of Tech Against Terrorism, a London-based counterterrorism initiative, said their analysis indicated that Russian-backed forces in Ukraine, including the Wagner Group, are “almost certainly connected with extreme far-right organizations.”
Hadley added: “Given Putin’s absurd demands for the ‘denazification’ of Ukraine, we suggest he should first root out neo-Nazis in his own ranks before pointing the finger at others.”
For this week’s #BlackMusicSunday, during Jazz Appreciation Month and on Easter Sunday, it’s only fitting that we celebrate with Duke Ellington. Towards the end of his life, Ellington composed what he called “Sacred Concerts,” which he performed in cathedrals in San Francisco, New York, and London. Ellington has been quoted saying that the Sacred compositions were “the most important music he’d ever written.” Though the Duke has passed on, the songs of those spiritual concerts continue to be faithfully performed (and enthusiastically received) to this day around the world.
I’m also having a joyous celebration of my own: It’s the second anniversary of “Black Music Sunday,” which I started here at Daily Kos on April 19, 2020. I first pitched it to Community Contributors editor Jessica Sutherland as a space of musical respite as we faced “stress, fear, tension, grief, boredom, and frustration in the time of COVID-19 quarantines and lockdowns.”
Two years later, the pandemic hasn’t ended and our stress, fear, and frustration persist. Today, we are also surrounded by ugly scenes of war as we continue to face gun violence and vile and open bigotry, as well as attacks on voting rights and reproductive rights. And so we will continue to offer a musical balm each week to help get through our days—one song at a time, one album at a time, and today, one concert at a time.
I want to thank everyone who gathers here each Sunday to share the music we love. You make this series possible.
Gabe Meline, senior editor of KQED Arts & Culture, wrote an in-depth piece in 2015 for the 50th anniversary of Ellington’s first Sacred Concert, staged and performed in San Francisco’s Grace Cathedral on Sept. 16, 1965.
The concert can be attributed to Grace Cathedral’s dean at the time, C. Julian Bartlett, a white reverend who brought with him from his native New Orleans a love of jazz and who approached Ellington with the commission — not for a jazz mass per se, but for an extended liturgical work. After their meeting in North Beach, Ellington enthusiastically got to work.
“I recognized this as an exceptional opportunity,” Ellington wrote, recalling the event in his 1973 autobiography Music Is My Mistress. “’Now I can say openly,’ I said, ‘what I have been saying to myself on my knees.’”
Ellington padded the program with music from his previous piece Black, Brown & Beige (what he described as “a tone parallel to the history of the Negro in America”), and battling what he admitted was “a certain amount of trepidation,” composed new material for Grace Cathedral drawing on the Bible, starting with its first four words. The six-syllable phrase “In the Beginning God” was woven throughout the concert, either sung by the Herman McCoy choir or played; Bunny Briggs tap-danced to a composition titled “David Danced Before the Lord With All His Might;” Jon Hendricks delivered hip spoken word; Ellington sidemen Paul Gonsalves, “Cat” Anderson and Johnny Hodges shined; and a young singer named Esther Marrow sang the Ellington composition “Come Sunday.”
As the San Francisco Chronicle noted at the time, Ellington shared the stage with some 75 other performers.
For the 50th anniversary, the young woman discovered by Ellington, Queen Esther Marrow, would perform again. The Duke first escorts Marrow to the microphone at the 12:40-minute mark above.
Queen Esther Marrow was born in Newport News, Virginia. She began her career at the age of 22, when her talent and vocal gifts were discovered by Duke Ellington and made her debut as a featured artist in his “Sacred Concert” world tour. Marrow and Ellington formed a long-life friendship during the next four years while touring together. Queen has since performed with such musical greats as Lena Horne, Ella Fitzgerald, B.B. King, Ray Charles, Thelonious Monk, Chick Corea and Bob Dylan.
In 1965, Marrow became active in the civil rights movement when she performed in Dr. Martin Luther King’s World Crusade. There she met her lifetime idol Mahalia Jackson, with whom she would later share the stage. Other political activists on the crusade were Jesse Jackson, Sidney Poitier and Dr. Ralph Abernathy.
In this PBS profile, Marrow tells the story of how she met the man who launched her career.
As a major fan of vocalese master Jon Hendricks, I have listened to his interpretation of “In the Beginning God”—found at 15:30 in the KQED broadcast—too many times to count.
In the beginning God
In the beginning God
In the beginning God
No Heaven, no Earth
No nothing
In the beginning
In the beginning
In the beginning God […]
No mountains, no valleys
No main streets and no back alleys
No night, no day, no bills to pay
No glory and no gloom
No poverty, no Cadillacs
No sand traps and no mud packs
No pedestrians, no carriage trade
No body guards, no credit cards
No conference calls, no TV commercials
No headaches and no aspirins
No heroes, no zeros
No naughty, no nice
No limit, no budget
No bottom, no topless
No cows, no bulls
No Barracuda, no buffalo
No birds, no bees, no beetles
No symphony, no jive, no Gemini five
No ten, nine, six or eight
No men trying to fill an inside straight
No applause, no critique
No amateur, no professional
No questions, no answers
No singers and no dancers
No varied and sundry, ranting and raging
Hither and yon from pillar to pot
The second Sacred Concert was held over two years after the first in New York City’s Cathedral of St. John the Divine on Jan. 19, 1968.
On January 19, 1968, 52 years and a day ago, Duke Ellington premiered his Second Sacred Concert at the Cathedral. He called this series of three concerts (the first premiered in 1965 at @gracecathedral and the third at @wabbey in 1973) the most important work of his career. pic.twitter.com/cYv3D3gRPI
— Cathedral of St. John the Divine (@StJohnDivineNYC) January 21, 2020
The second concert was broadcast as well—in color!
Throughout his years with Ellington, and on many occasions under his own name, Cootie consistently displayed a vigorous command of his instrument. Whether playing the muted colourful compositions of Ellington, or playing in the full-throated manner that reflected his admiration for Louis Armstrong, the distinctive trumpet playing of Cootie Williams remains one of the lasting joys of jazz.
He was born Charles Melvin Williams, in Mobile, Alabama, on 10 July 1911. As a small child, he played various instruments in school bands but then took up the trumpet on which he was largely self-taught. He was barely into his teens when he began playing professionally. Among the bands with which he played in these years, the mid 1920s, was the band run by the family of Lester Young. He continued to play in territory bands, mainly in the south, including that led by Alonzo Ross. It was with this band that he played in New York in early 1928, choosing almost at once to quit the band and move on to higher profile engagements. In that same summer, he recorded with James P. Johnson, then with Chick Webb and Fletcher Henderson, and early the following year he was hired by Ellington to replace Bubber Miley. This, Cootie’s first spell in Ellington’s orchestra, was to last for 11 years.
As hinted above, Williams would leave Ellington to form his own band but return to Ellington in 1962 after a 22-year absence, continuing to play with the orchestra even after Ellington’s 1974 death.
Thomas Cunniffe, the founder, editor, and principal writer of Jazz History Online, provides some additional background on the second concert, including the death of Ellington’s composer, pianist, lyricist, arranger, and collaborator Billy Strayhorn.
This concert also brought the introduction of Ellington’s new Swedish vocalist, Alice Babs.
Billy Strayhorn was diagnosed with cancer of the esophagus in early 1964. Even under the supervision of Ellington’s personal physician, Arthur Logan, his health went on a downward spiral. His appearance with Lena Horne at the First Sacred Concert in December 1965 was the last time he played in public. Ellington couldn’t stand to see Strayhorn in the hospital, but called him on the phone every day. Moreover, he encouraged Strayhorn to continue writing for the band. Strayhorn’s emotionally wrenching “Blood Count” was sent to the band from the hospital. It would be his final composition. When Strayhorn died on May 31, 1967, Ellington was on the road in Reno. He rushed back to New York for Strayhorn’s funeral, and wrote an eloquent tribute to his friend which included Strayhorn’s Four Freedoms, a set of moral codes which found a place in Ellington’s Second Sacred Concert. Strayhorn’s passing was an obvious sign to Ellington about his own mortality, and without anyone to take Strayhorn’s place, Ellington knew that he was the only one to write new music for the band. Ellington recorded a tribute album to Strayhorn in September 1967—the extraordinary “…And His Mother Called Him Bill”—and then he set to work writing an entirely original set of new sacred music.
No one could replace Strayhorn, of course, but Ellington built his Second Sacred Concert around the talents of a superb musician who would give new voice to his music. That musician was the vocalist Alice Babs. For those who may be unaware of her, Babs could be considered the Swedish version of Julie Andrews. Like Andrews, Babs first caught the public’s attention as a teenager, she was blessed with an astounding voice and a wide vocal range, and she promoted her sunny and optimistic demeanor through a series of film, radio and television appearances. She performed and recorded classical works, folk songs and pop music, but Babs’ greatest talent was as a jazz singer. She had unerring pitch, perfect English diction, and was an outstanding scat singer. Ellington could put any music in front of her, and she would sight-read it without error.
The two first met in February 1963, when Ellington was booked to film a television show in Sweden. The producers wanted to have a local singer perform with the Ellington band, so they handed Ellington a pile of records by leading Swedish artists for him to audition. All it took was a quick listen to Babs’ 1959 LP “Alice and Wonderband” for Ellington to make his decision. Once the special was completed, Ellington told Babs, “We should make a record together”. Babs was flattered at the offer—she had been an Ellington fan since she was 12 years old—but was completely surprised when Ellington called three weeks later, asking her to fly to Paris in the coming days to record. The resulting album, “Serenade to Sweden” was a rewarding collaboration highlighted by Babs’ exquisite version of “Come Sunday”. Perhaps the memory of that rendition convinced Ellington to hire her to sing his new sacred music. While Babs performed the Second and Third Sacred Concerts many times, she was unable to tour extensively with the band, owing to her own career and family commitments. When she wasn’t available, Ellington said he had to hire three vocalists to take her place.
Watch Babs sing the wordless “T.G.T.T (Too Good To Title).”
Babs would join Ellington for the third Sacred Concert, which was held at London’s Westminster Abbey on Oct. 24, 1973. It was United Nations Day, and so U.N. Chairman Sir Colin Crowe introduced the show, held just seven months before Ellington joined the ancestors. This show opened with “The Lords Prayer, My Love” sung by Babs, and closed with “The Majesty of God.” The concert featured notable performances from the John Alldis Choir, conducted by Roscoe Gill Jr.
The United Kingdom’s National Jazz Archive has a wonderful 1974 interview Ellington did with Les Tomkin for Crescendo, all about his sacred music. The Duke made it clear that writing these concerts did not in any way conflict with his jazz work, discussed his conversations with theologians, and signed off with an entreaty for Tomkin to “tell all your lovely readers that we do love them madly, please. God bless.”
Enjoy the audio of the third Sacred Concert below.
While this weekend brings holidays for many people of multiple faiths, I don’t think you have to be religious to be uplifted by this “sacred” music; as Ellington noted in the opening of the third concert, the theme of the music was “love.”
Join me in the comments for even more Ellington, and orchestras and soloists who are performing his sacred works today. Additionally, to celebrate the second anniversary of “Black Music Sunday,” I’ll also be posting links to previous stories in the series that readers may have missed in the last two years.
As always, please feel free to post music that lifts you up in these trying times. Thanks again for being part of the Black Music Sunday family of listeners.
We begin today with Kiana Cox and Christine Tamir of Pew Research Center reporting on polling that shows that a large majority of Black Americans consider their Blackness to be central to a sense of personal identity.
A majority of non-Hispanic Black Americans (78%) say being Black is very or extremely important to how they think about themselves. This racial group is the largest among Black adults, accounting for 87% of the adult population, according to 2019 Census Bureau estimates. But among other Black Americans, roughly six-in-ten multiracial (57%) and Hispanic (58%) Black adults say this.
Black Americans also differ in key ways in their views about the importance of being Black to personal identity. While majorities of all age groups of Black people say being Black shapes how they think about themselves, younger Black Americans are less likely to say this – Black adults ages 50 and older are more likely than Black adults ages 18 to 29 to say that being Black is very or extremely important to how they think of themselves. Specifically, 76% of Black adults ages 30 to 49, 80% of those 50 to 64 and 83% of those 65 and older hold this view, while only 63% of those under 30 do. […]
Beyond the personal importance of Blackness – that is, the importance of being Black to personal identity – many Black Americans feel connected to each other. About five-in-ten (52%) say everything or most things that happen to Black people in the United States affect what happens in their own lives, with another 30% saying some things that happen nationally to Black people have a personal impact. And 43% say all or most things that happen to Black people in their local community affect what happens in their own lives, while another 35% say only some things in their lives are affected by these events. About four-in-ten Black adults in the U.S. (41%) say they feel their fates are strongly linked to Black people around the world, with 36% indicating that some things that happen to Black people around the world affect what happens in their own lives.
Some of the nuances in this report (i.e. the generation gap) are very interesting.
Errin Haines of The19thNews points out that the Senate confirmation hearings for SCOTUS Justice-Designate Ketanji Brown Jackson was only the latest battle in a partisan strategy to demonize Black women.
Black women are ascendant in American democracy, as politicians and voters, both powerful and pioneering. It’s a shift they have worked toward and that has met resistance, challenging the status quo of what leadership can look like. Many of the Black women I talk to in my reporting point to what they see as an emerging and potent partisan strategy: the weaponization of Black womanhood as a means to dilute their democratic strength and participation.
Aimee Allison, a progressive organizer and founder of She the People, told me there’s a particular disregard and disrespect shown to Black women nominees.
The goal is to wield “an ugly and effective weapon to blunt the power of Black women, to suggest through word and attitude that she will never be enough, that she will never belong in the halls of power,” Allison explained.
With more Black women awaiting confirmation and up for consideration for future historic and consequential nominations under a Democratic administration, is simply being a Black woman disqualifying for the Republicans who keep rejecting them?
Michael Harriot of The Grio breaks down the lyrics of yet another “same ol’ song” in the wake of the the death by cop of Patrick Lyoya in Grand Rapids, Michigan.
The tune has been played since this country created its system of policing as a way to control Black bodies in the most violent way possible. It has been remixed as a theme song for slave catchers; a lullaby for lynchings and a psalm for segregationists. When the band plays the first refrain, everyone stands at attention and places their hands over their hearts. Meanwhile, we kneel, knowing that this is America’s true national anthem.
Instead of examining the protests or joining Patrick Lyoya’s death ritual, we wanted to talk about the song, so we decided to verify the contents of this traditional wypipo spiritual. What could he have done better? We collected the data with specific examples to detail how you, too, can survive a police interaction.
John Stoehr of The Editorial Board thinks that progressive critics of Democrats place too much faith in the (white) voters of swing districts.
Critics of the Democrats fail to think about something the Democrats think about. The voters they need in order to keep the Congress don’t know democracy is in crisis, don’t believe democracy is in crisis or kinda sorta perhaps maybe don’t mind democracy being in crisis.
[…]
For these voters, it’s difficult to accept the fact that the Republicans have gone full fascist. It’s so hard it’s easier not to. And that’s easy, because, well, these people are not far from where the Republicans are. That’s what happens in a society organized by white supremacy.
That’s what the Democrats understand.
White supremacy is on the Republicans’ side.
So: What do you say to people who don’t believe the Republicans are dangerous? What do you say to people who believe democracy is fine now that the former president is out of power? What do you say to people who are already leaning toward the Republicans, because, you know, whiteness, but open to giving the Democrats a fair hearing?
Ibram X. Kendi of The Atlantic points out that the Republican Party is “grooming” white children for white supremacist ideology and at a great cost to those children.
The Republican Party is clearly not the party of parents. The Republican Party is certainly not the party of parents of color. But is the Republican Party even the party of white parents? […]
Every great myth is built on a foundational assumption, a fallacy widely assumed to be true. The foundational assumption of this great myth is that Republican politicians care about white children. But if they did, then they would not be ignoring or downplaying or defending or bolstering the principal racial threat facing white youth today. And I am not talking about critical race theory, which Republican propagandists have quite intentionally redefined, as one admitted, remaking it into a threat, and obscuring the real threat.
What are white children being indoctrinated with? What is making them uncomfortable? What is causing them to hate? White-supremacist ideology: the toxic blend of racist, sexist, ableist, homophobic, transphobic, Islamophobic, xenophobic, and anti-Semitic ideas that is harmful to all minds, especially the naive and defenseless minds of youth. Which group is the prime target of white supremacists? White youth.
I’m following up bilboteach’s great news roundup post on the COVID crisis in Shanghai, China with more reporting on the severe COVID outbreak and lockdown in Shanghai by Ellen Ioanes of Vox.
Shanghai’s local government enjoys a degree of relative autonomyin the context of President Xi Jinping’s China; it’s technically directly under the control of the central government, as a province-level city, but enjoys special status as the country’s financial hub and a showpiece for the rest of the world. Until March, the local government had handled the pandemic well, with no major outbreaks. But the rapid onset of the Omicron variant and the corresponding draconian government measures are pushing some citizens to the brink.
“I have no more money … What am I to do? I don’t care anymore,” one man shouts to his whole building in a viral video on Weibo, China’s answer to Twitter. “Just let the Communist Party take me.” […]
“Many Shanghai people blame the local government officials for mishandling the crisis, the coordination problems, lack of contingency planning, these issues. Which might be true,” Huang said. “But it is interesting how, within a month, Shanghai degenerated from a poster child of the pandemic control to a pariah of the Covid response.”
Sitara Noor of Al Jazeera looks at the domestic and foreign policy hot messes that Pakistan’s new prime minister Shehbaz Sharif has inherited.
Sharif’s government will have limited manoeuvring space on the foreign policy front. Since taking office, he has outlined some sound and ambitious foreign policy objectives. But during his one-year term as prime minister, he will likely focus on balancing existing ties rather than scoring any breakthroughs.
The personal rapport Sharif developed with China during his tenure as chief minister of Punjab will allow him to boost the ties between Beijing and Islamabad. However, the growing rivalry between the United States and China will also pressure him to strike a difficult balance between the two global powers.
Historically, foreign policy issues did not have a significant influence over domestic politics in Pakistan. But at the moment, the PTI is building an entire campaign against the new government and for the next election based on allegations of foreign interference in Pakistani politics and an alleged US conspiracy to overthrow the Khan government. The PTI will present to the public any move Sharif may make in the next year to improve relations with Washington, or New Delhi, as corroborating evidence for its foreign interference allegations. Therefore, during Sharif’s short term, foreign policy will have an outsized influence over domestic politics.
I know that Anne Applebaum and Jeffrey Goldberg’s interview with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky for The Atlantic was linked in the comment section of last Thursday’s APR; it really does need to be in the body of an APR.
It was late in the evening when we met Zelensky at his compound. The surrounding streets were barricaded and empty, the building itself almost entirely blacked out. Soldiers with flashlights led us through a maze of sandbagged corridors to a harshly lit, windowless room adorned only with Ukrainian flags. There was no formal protocol, no long wait, and we were not told to sit at the far end of an elongated table. Zelensky, the comedian who has become a global icon of freedom and bravery, entered the room without fanfare.
“Hi!” he said, brightly, and then proceeded to complain about his back. (“I have a back, and that’s why I have some problems, but it’s okay!”) He thanked us for not filming the interview: Even though he’s been a professional television performer for all of his adult life, it’s a relief to occasionally go unfilmed.
On or off camera, Zelensky conducts himself with a deliberate lack of pretense. In a part of the world where leadership usually implies stiff posture and a pompous manner—and where signaling military authority requires, at a minimum, highly visible epaulets—he instead evokes sympathy and feelings of trust precisely because he sounds, in the words of a Ukrainian acquaintance, “like one of us.” He is a kind of anti-Putin: Rather than telegraphing a cold-eyed, murderous superiority, he wants people to understand him as an Everyman, a middle-aged dad with a bad back.
Karen DeYoung and Michael Birnbaum of The Washington Post report that the U.S. and its allies are preparing for a long-term isolation of Russia.
At NATO and the European Union, and at the State Department, the Pentagon and allied ministries, blueprints are being drawn up to enshrine new policies across virtually every aspect of the West’s posture toward Moscow, from defense and finance to trade and international diplomacy.
Outrage is most immediately directed at Putin himself, who President Biden said last month “can’t remain in power.” While “we don’t say regime change,” said a senior E.U. diplomat, “it is difficult to imagine a stable scenario with Putin acting the way he is.”
But the nascent new strategy goes far beyond the Kremlin leader, as planners are continuing to revise seminal documents that are to be presented in the coming months. Biden’s first National Security Strategy, legally required last year but still uncompleted, is likely to be significantly altered from initial expectations it would concentrate almost exclusively on China and domestic renewal. The Pentagon’s new National Defense Strategy, sent last month in classified form to Congress, prioritizes what a brief Pentagon summary called “the Russia challenge in Europe,” as well as the China threat.
While Markos and Mark Sumner have the military battles and strategies of the Russia-Ukraine war covered better than anything that I have read anywhere else, there’s also interesting and even bizarre news on the disinformation/intelligence fronts of the war.
Aleksandar Brezar of Euronews reports on the efforts of a group called The Elves to combat Russian disinformation.
Since the war began, the Lithuanian Elves actively took part in denial-of-service or DDOS attacks on Russian and Belarusian state institutions, propaganda outlets and infrastructure sites.
These attacks, which also saw participation by Anonymous, a notorious activist hacking group, knocked out access to websites ranging from private banks to RT and Sputnik and the Russian Ministry of Defence for days on end.
According to The Hawk, the fight taking place online is a way “to support our brothers in Ukraine”.
“This is additional motivation — to spread information about what is really going on, and to somehow reach Russia, to inform the Russian people that this is a real war, not a bloody ‘special operation’,” he said.
But the task is not simple, and it is an everyday struggle in Lithuania as well as the other 11 countries where The Elves now have a presence.
Matt Burgess of Wired writes about the massive amounts of data about the Russian state that has been “doxed” and then published by Ukrainian authorities, hacktivists, and their allies.
Since Russian troops crossed Ukraine’s borders at the end of February, colossal amounts of information about the Russian state and its activities have been made public. The data offers unparalleled glimpses into closed-off private institutions, and it may be a gold mine for investigators, from journalists to those tasked with investigating war crimes. Broadly, the data comes in two flavors: information published proactively by Ukranian authorities or their allies, and information obtained by hacktivists. Hundreds of gigabytes of files and millions of emails have been made public.
“Both sides in this conflict are very good at information operations,” says Philip Ingram, a former colonel in British military intelligence. “The Russians are quite blatant about the lies that they’ll tell,” he adds. Since the war started, Russian disinformation has been consistently debunked. Ingram says Ukraine has to be more tactical with the information it publishes. “They have to make sure that what they’re putting out is credible and they’re not caught out telling lies in a way that would embarrass them or embarrass their international partners.” […]
Regardless, it appears to be one of the first times a government has doxed thousands of military personnel in one fell swoop. Jack McDonald, a senior lecturer in war studies at King’s College London who has researched privacy in war, says that, throughout history, nations have kept lists of their opponents or tried to create them. But these have often been linked to counterinsurgency efforts and were typically not made public. “Openly publishing such lists of your opponent, particularly at the scale that digital operations appear to allow, that seems very new,” McDonald says.
Aiganysh Aidarbekova of the Netherlands-based investigative group Bellingcat tells the bizarre story of a “niche” Russian QAnon channel on Telegram that was against Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and has been shut down by Russian authorities.
QAnon Russia, one of the most popular channels in this network with close to 90,000 followers, posted a call for “peace and love” a day after the invasion began. It also urged Russian soldiers not to bomb and shoot Ukrainians. A short time later, an emotional anti-war poem featured on the same channel.
Another channel urged their followers to fact check and practice good “mental hygiene” when consuming information they read online.
Many QAnon channels around the world have regularly praised Russia’s war since it began. They see the invasion as an effort to take down the international “Cabal” around which QAnon’s conspiracy theories are centred. They posit different ideas on the war’s goals, whether it’s to destroy US “biolabs” in Ukraine they claim are inventing a new Covid-like disease, or that it is about preventing the ‘Great Reset” which supposedly seeks to use the pandemic to destroy capitalism and install a one world government.
All of this supposedly makes Russia an ally in this fight and the invasion a war against all evil, for all good.
An eight-reporter team for Der Spiegel reports on the increasingly acute global food shortage caused by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
Already, every second person living in sub-Saharan Africa has trouble securing sufficient food each day. According to a report by the International Committee of the Red Cross, it wouldn’t take much for the situation to turn into a full-blown catastrophe.
Thus far, though, the calls for help have largely gone unheeded. There are no shocking images making the rounds and no bodies lying in the streets – as there are in Ukraine. And there are no African heads of state regularly appealing to parliaments in the West as Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has been doing. Hunger is not a war crime, and it doesn’t arrive as suddenly as a shell bursting in one of Lissitsa’s grain silos.
Rather, it kills more slowly. But it has arrived.
It can be seen when a Lebanese school has to suspend meals for its students because no more wheat is arriving in the country. Or when Egypt announces fixed prices for non-subsidized bread in order to slow inflation.
Moving on to the upcoming second round of the presidential election in France, France 24 interviewed Ipsos account executive Mathieu Gallard about the overwhelming support that President Emmanuel Macron has among voters aged 60 and over.
FRANCE 24: Why was Macron so much more popular among voters aged 60 and over – and especially 70 and over – than his two biggest first-round rivals Le Pen and Mélenchon?
GALLARD: It’s not a great surprise because the surveys we did for the second round in 2017 showed that Macron got 78 percent of the vote among people aged 70 – so even then it was an enormous majority.
Towards the start of his mandate some of his measures didn’t go down brilliantly with pensioners. But then the various crises Macron has had to deal with – and we’ve had a lot of crises, from the Yellow Vests to Covid-19 to the war in Ukraine – all of them reinforced Macron’s stature in the eyes of this section of the electorate. And traditionally these age groups have demonstrated a tendency to back the incumbent president.
So from a historical perspective it’s not surprising to see this play out – and in Macron’s case it seems very much linked to the crises he faced. Older voters generally judge him to have managed quite well, they’re much more inclined to think this than the median voter.
It’s a section of the electorate that doesn’t want to take risks and ergo they’re thinking: Macron’s managed things fairly well so let’s keep him for another five years.
The youngest president of the 5th Republic is elected by its oldest voters. Macron is a distant third among 18 to 34-year-olds, but sweeps the 70+ category. (via @mathieugallard) pic.twitter.com/YKCmlvPxJu
Lara Marlowe of The Irish Times reports that far left party leader Jean-Luc Mélenchon and his voters will be a “kingmaker” in the April 24 contest between President Emmanuel Macron and the far-right’s Marine Le Pen.
If Fabien Roussel, the Communist, had heeded Mr Mélenchon’s appeals to abandon his candidacy, Mr Roussel’s 2.28 per cent would have gone to Mr Mélenchon and he – not extreme right-wing leader Marine Le Pen – would have faced President Emmanuel Macron in the April 24th run-off.
Mr Mélenchon had lost for the fourth time, by 421,420 votes. The left was yet again the victim of its own fragmentation. The 70-year-old had said he would not stand again. The dream was over.
But in the hours that followed, a different narrative took hold. Defeat started to look like a kind of victory. Mr Mélenchon had moved from fourth place in 2017 to third place. He had increased his vote by more than 2 per cent.
Now Mr Mélenchon, the third man, is relishing the role of arbiter and kingmaker. Neither Mr Macron nor Ms Le Pen can win without some of his 7.7 million votes.
Finally today, I can’t get enough of this April 5 story in The Washington Post by Jessica Contrera about the hyperpolyglot carpet cleaner, Vaughn Smith.
In a city where diplomats and embassies abound, where interpreterscan command six-figure salaries at the State Department or the International Monetary Fund, where language proficiency is résumé rocket fuel, Vaughn was a savant with a secret.
“A real, live polyglot,” Kelly said.
I’d never heard of that word — meaning, a person who can speak several languages — before meeting Vaughn. But Kelly, who dabbles in Cantonese, Mandarin and “beer in most languages,” had seen polyglots on YouTube, promising that anyone can become multilingual if they try.
Far more unusual are the world’s “hyperpolyglots,”people who, by one expert’s definition, can speak 11 languages or more. The higher the number, the rarer the person. But there have been many documented cases of such linguistic legends, each one raising questions about the limits of human potential — the same questions I had about Vaughn.
On March 7, the United States announced that it would send 400 troops to Lithuania to compliment 600 already there. On April 7, we saw American artillery passing through Poland.
A train of military equipment straining towards the border with Ukraine was seen at the railway station Gniezno (Poland) The following equipment can be seen on the platforms: ▪️American tracked command and staff machine M577 ▪️American self-propelled artillery 155mm pic.twitter.com/iHZ6zpfIFO
At the time, people wondered if that was equipment headed to Ukraine, but nope, it was part of that American reinforcement of NATO’s eastern flank.
Around 100 additional US troops with Paladin artillery systems arrived in Lithuania on Thursday, the Lithuanian Armed Forces have said.https://t.co/iFk92U51SF
That unit was around 100 Pennsylvania National Guard soldiers with 10 M109 Paladin howitzers and supporting equipment. So not a particularly big column. Yet from the announcement of the new deployment to arrival, it took five weeks. Moving heavy equipment, its logistical support, and tons of ammunition takes time. This isn’t Amazon Prime. Russia’s pre-invasion buildup itself took at least five months, and they have a robust rail system to internally move material.
That’s why it’s a little frustrating seeing things like this:
We can concede that material isn’t getting there fast enough. But that has nothing to do with a “lack of urgency.” Logistical challenges don’t disappear just because Ukraine is one of the good guys. Moving enough material to equip and sustain an Army that has grown to half a million strong takes time. Take a look at the latest $800 million aid package from the United States:
18 155mm Howitzers and 40,000 artillery rounds;
Ten AN/TPQ-36 counter-artillery radars;
Two AN/MPQ-64 Sentinel air surveillance radars;
300 Switchblade Tactical Unmanned Aerial Systems;
500 Javelin missiles and thousands of other anti-armor systems;
200 M113 Armored Personnel Carriers;
100 Armored High Mobility Multipurpose Wheeled Vehicles;
C-4 explosives and demolition equipment for obstacle clearing; and
M18A1 Claymore anti-personnel munitions configured to be consistent with the Ottawa Convention.
An M113 weights 12 tons. So we’re talking about moving 2,400 tons of armored personnel carriers. A Hummer is 3 tons, so another 300 tons. Those howitzers are around eight tons. There’s only 18 of them, but the ammo? Around 2,000 tons. The rest of this stuff adds up to thousands of additional tons. There is only so much transport capacity available. The fact that the United States can move this much material in a month is incredible. Remember, the last $800 million aid package was announced on March 16, while this latest one was announced April 13. Pentagon delivers the aid as quickly as it can, after which the next package is announced.
The Open Source Intelligence (OSINT) community tracks every flight to Rzeszów-Jasionka Airport in Poland, the global hub for the Ukraine equip and resupply effort, about 90 miles from the Ukrainian border. It is a never-ending parade of American, British, Canadian, Ukrainian, and other allied planes planes delivering goodies for the war effort. Here is a Ukrainian cargo plan flying in new TB2 drones from Turkey on Friday.
Another Ukrainian Antonov An-12 flying from 🇹🇷Tekirdag Corlu Airport in Turkey to 🇵🇱Rzeszów-Jasionka Airport in Poland: 🇺🇦UR-CAJ as #MEM3014. I should and will soon make an overview of recent flight activities of Ukrainian Antonovs An-12, focusing on Rzeszów-Jasionka Airport. https://t.co/fKGfqcZOLPpic.twitter.com/0Qc62dthKv
For fun, I looked up that plane to see what it was up to Saturday, and it made a run from Romania to Rzeszów. Weird, given that Romania shares a border with Ukraine, but a clear sign that logistically, it’s simply easier to manage everything out of the Rzeszów hub. You can see all the Ukrainian cargo runs to Rzeszów since the war began here.
On Friday, Rzeszów hosted two Canadian cargo planes (one from Macedonia, the other from Prestwick, England), one American cargo flight from Dover Air Force base, one charter cargo flight from Sweden, that Ukrainian flight from Tekirdag, Turkey, with the TB2 drones, one MEDAVAC flight likely shuttling war wounded to Oslo, Norway, and assorted smaller craft from several NATO militaries, perhaps bringing in trainers and other VIPs aiding in the war effort.
The day prior, on Thursday, the airport hosted three American cargo flights, and one each from Spain, France, the Czech Republic, Ireland, and Turkey.
10 of these Bushmasters headed toward Ukraine.
On Saturday, this Australian Air Force cargo plane brought Bushmaster armored cars to Rzeszów. Australia announced this donation of 10 Bushmasters on April 4, arriving on the 16th. Moving heavy equipment takes time, and this was just 10 vehicles, not several hundred.
Meanwhile, NATO is rubbing Russia’s nose in these shipments. Those planes could turn off their transponders and arrive in secret, but they’re actively broadcasting their presence, their source, and their destination. They want Russia to know what they’re up to, repeatedly reminding them of Western resolve, perhaps hoping it erodes Russia’s own. Russia is certainly helpless to do anything about it.
Meanwhile, we haven’t talked about ammo yet. Vehicles and killer drones and aircraft are the sexy big-ticket items. But an army runs on its stomach … and on ammunition.
A Note on Munitions Consumption:
Much discussion is currently happening on the level of support given to Ukraine in terms of munitions and ordinance. Often we will see support discussed in dollar amounts, or it number of rounds. Rarely is the rate of consumption addressed.
I believe some context would be beneficial here. The basic load for a rifleman when I was deployed was 210 rounds—7 mags of 30. Many of us carried more depending on circumstances & expectations. Add 2 pistol mags for another 30 (2×15). So 240 rounds at bare minimum.
You’ll notice we’re leaving out machine guns, SAWs, and other platforms for the moment. Ukraine has mobilized reserves, territorials, militia, and has increasing numbers of volunteers joining its ranks. For ease of math, let’s ballpark their forces at 100K combat personnel operating in an infantry capacity. Just to give those personnel a SINGLE basic combat load is 24 million rounds of ammo. In heavy fighting, especially in urban areas, infantry can burn through that basic load in less than a day.
Now let’s talk artillery. The UAF uses a similar organization to the Russians when it comes to artillery, on paper. [Self-propelled] Artillery Battalions (for example) consist of 3 companies of 6 self-propelled guns—18 total. This is easy math, 1 battalion firing a measly 11 rounds/gun eats 198 rounds. In a prolonged or support fire intensive engagement, a single battalion can easily burn a thousand rounds in a day.
Just two 75mm howitzers in action in Burma, outside Myitkyina, mid-1944.
24 million rounds weighs around 11 tons. And remember, that’s a single combat load! A thousand 152mm artillery rounds weighs around 48 tons. And that doesn’t include machine gun ammo, anti-tank and anti-air missiles, grenade launchers, tank rounds, Infantry Fighting Vehicle cannon rounds, and mortar rounds. In WWII, an estimated 45,000 rounds of small-arms munitions were fired for each enemy kill. It was 50,000 in Vietnam. A lot of ammo is fired in combat. A LOT.
Bottom line, fighting a conventional war eats ungodly amounts of ammunition, and Ukraine can’t manufacture it for itself. Some of it gets captured from the Russians, but most of it has to come from outside, eating into the logistical chain feeding Ukraine’s war effort. There is only so much Ukraine can pick up from Poland and shuttle back home at any given time, and how do you even begin to prioritize this stuff? Ukraine desperately needs it all and more, and it needs it yesterday!
That’s why NATO has prioritized certain shipments over others, like anti-tank, anti-aircraft missiles, and small arms munitions the first month of the war. Ukraine was demanding aircraft, but the logistical footprint could’ve displaced the missiles that turned the tide in the Battle of Kyiv. Indeed, the Pentagon has repeatedly referred to logistics as the reason for holding back certain weapons. For example, it’s great we’re finally sending artillery howitzers to Ukraine, but NATO artillery uses 155mm rounds, which are incompatible with the 152mm Soviet-era guns Ukraine already has in service. Now Ukraine has to make sure the right caliber rounds get to the right units, and god forbid Russia takes out the storage depot they’re stored at, Ukraine can’t grab existing stock from elsewhere to feed their American-sourced guns.
However paternalistic it may sound, American logistical prowess is the best in the world. And there’s something to be said about dispassionate decision making, as callous as that sounds. One might not make the best calls while in fight-or-flight mode. I trust the Pentagon to make the right calls, just like I trust their decision to green light NATO-standard 155mm artillery guns. Hopefully it means other NATO nations are emptying their stocks of similar guns and ammunition.
Anyway, I wrote this because I was triggered by people who think big, heavy, and voluminous military gear and ammunition magically show up after pressing an order button on a phone app. There are people around the globe busting their asses to get gear to Ukraine as quickly as humanely possible. Could “more” be done? Perhaps, but people need to stop acting like nothing is being done. When the story of this war is written, this massive international logistical effort will be a major reason Ukraine triumphed against the Russian bear.
This was before the Moskva sinking, but ummm, are we sure they’re telling him what’s really going on in Ukraine?
Austrian Chancellor Karl Nehammer: Putin “believes he is winning the war” The chancellor met with the Russian president on 11 April in Moscow on ‘not a friendly visit’https://t.co/5m4QfnL18T
A state secret comes into the open: how inflation targets the poor.
When I met Amparo Ramirez in March of 2020, our conversation was very much of the moment. The pandemic was in its early days and the fear factor was high, but Ramirez, who works in food service at the Los Angeles International Airport, was explaining that even if she felt ill, she would most likely report for her shift—and so would her colleagues.
“If you miss work, they look at you differently,” she told me through a translator, speaking of her supervisors at LSG Sky Chefs, one of the world’s largest airline food catering services. “I cannot afford to miss.”
Ramirez was making $15.25 per hour at the time. Two years later, having survived a protracted layoff by using stimulus and unemployment money to pay the rent on her apartment, she is back on the job. Not only that, but her wages with Sky Chefs have risen to $17 an hour, an increase of nearly 12%. Is she feeling relieved?
“I am incredibly worried, and I really don’t feel prepared,” Ramirez, 50, said. “I’ve been thinking that I might have to try to get a second job. I’m living at the margin.”
Among the more pernicious aspects of inflation is that, although it happens to everyone at the same time, it doesn’t affect everyone equally. Higher-income individuals and families may tighten their belts. But at the end of the economic scale where Ramirez lives, the working poor get hammered by prices spiking on the basic necessities of life—food, shelter, power, fuel—with little choice but to pay.
Economists have long recognized this effect, known as inflation inequality. Now, amid the worst inflationary cycle in 40 years, California is seeing it play out in real-time. Despite wages rising significantly as understaffed companies try to lure people back to work (or into the job market at all), most lower-income families have realized virtually no gain in purchasing power.
“As of last December, you needed to have seen about an 8% increase in wages over the past two years to keep up with inflation, and that was before anything that has happened here in 2022,” said Sarah Bohn, a senior fellow at the Public Policy Institute of California.
The PPIC’s research shows that since December of 2020, wages in California have increased 5% overall—but when inflation is factored in, they’ve actually decreased by 2%. “It became obvious that we had to look at this, because it really impacts so many people in the state, particularly the lower-wage earners,” Bohn said.
The Consumer Price Index shows that food costs shot up nearly 8% over a 12-month period that ended in February, the latest month on record.
It’s a huge number of people. By most estimates, about a third of California’s labor force, roughly 6 million workers, earns less than $15 an hour, a figure that has held fairly steady over the past two decades. Some of the state’s most potent economic engines, including agriculture, manufacturing, and the leisure/hospitality industry, are built on low-wage jobs.
These are full-time employees, many of them with years of service and families to support. Ramirez, a native of Sinaloa, Mexico, has worked in the U.S. for more than 30 years and is a lawful permanent resident here. She raised her daughter as a single parent, paying $1,700 a month for their one-bedroom unit in Culver City—a rent that did not rise over the past two years, which Ramirez described as a near-lifesaving turn of events. (Her current base pay comes out to $2,720 a month before taxes.)
Now, “I got a message from the landlords that they’re considering raising it,” Ramirez said. Her food and gas costs have skyrocketed. The Consumer Price Index shows that food costs shot up nearly 8% over a 12-month period that ended in February, the latest month on record. Average gas prices in Los Angeles County, meanwhile, increased by more than a dollar per gallon in a month and have been near $6 a gallon for weeks. A year ago, the average was $3.80.
Ramirez was also hit by a critical change in her company’s approach to health care. Previously, Sky Chefs offered employees an additional $5.67 per hour in lieu of using its health care plan. Ramirez took the money—about $900 extra per month—and bought subsidized insurance through Covered California for far less than that, using the difference to meet her budget.
But beginning April 1, Sky Chefs changed its policy. Now, workers are offered what the company calls “no premium” health insurance, and they no longer have the choice to take the supplemental $5.67 per hour. Ramirez’s workers’ organization, Unite Here Local 11, has protested the change, saying it was not collectively bargained, carries a high deductible and will hurt workers at the worst possible time. (Disclosure: Unite Here Local 11 is a financial supporter of Capital & Main.)
Ramirez needs a car to get to work, so she shoulders both a car payment and the gas price hikes. The $900 monthly reduction in pay, she said, eliminates any cushion against rising prices. She is trying to help her daughter, now in her second semester at West Los Angeles College, to pay for school, “but I’m barely able to make ends meet.”
* * *
When those at higher income levels encounter soaring prices, they may choose to cut back or skip on luxuries, but they won’t feel dramatic effects nearly as quickly because they don’t need to devote as much of their total income to the basics. A 2019 study found that higher-income households spend 64% of their monthly budget on necessities like food, shelter, clothing, transportation and health care. Lower-income households, meanwhile, must use 83% of their income to cover those same essentials.
During the pandemic, the state and federal governments rushed out stimulus payments and raised unemployment benefits, and California enacted rent relief and tenant protection policies. With those programs ending, and with enhanced federal child tax credit payments from last year also phased out, lower-income families may quickly find themselves in desperate circumstances when their costs rise.
The median cost of rent is expected to rise 10% this year and health care costs will go up 9.6%, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.
“With inflation kicking in, the disappearance of these income supports is being doubly felt by many families,” Chris Wimer, co-director of the Center on Poverty & Social Policy at Columbia University, said via email. When the enhanced tax credit payments ended in December, Wimer explained, “We saw a big spike in child poverty of 3 million to 4 million children. Absolutely, child poverty has increased.”
And the screws are being tightened. According to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, the median cost of rent is expected to rise 10% this year, and health care costs will go up 9.6%. Meanwhile, a survey of companies by the compensation software giant Payscale found that fewer than one in 10 employers plan to hike pay more than 5%, meaning most raises won’t keep pace with inflation.
Higher-income individuals and households in California will withstand that. In most cases, especially among the top 20% of earners, they have savings and investment funds that could be tapped in an emergency, and they often own homes and have fixed mortgages. Since they spend less of their overall income on necessities, they’re better positioned to maintain those hedges against inflation.
* * *
For lower-income Californians, this inflationary cycle may both prolong their economic standstill and further a wealth gap in the state. With rising prices snapping up every available dollar, low-wage workers have less (or no) money to save or invest. And rents, unlike gas or food prices, rarely go down once they’ve been raised.
The price of groceries continue to go up.
“Typically, inflation is viewed as a significant tax on the poor,” said Manuel Pastor, who directs the Equity Research Institute at the University of Southern California. Pastor noted that it is highly unusual during a period of inflation for “wages at the bottom to be rising pretty rapidly,” as they are now, the result of market forces and the Great Resignation. Again, though, the escalating cost of basic goods and services is wiping out most of those wage gains for lower-income families.
Californians may yet see another round of financial relief. Gov. Gavin Newsom’s initial proposed state budget for the coming fiscal year projected a $45.7 billion surplus due to tax collections from the very wealthy, who enjoyed massive run-ups during the pandemic. Updated estimates from the Legislative Analyst’s Office say the surplus could rise to $23 billion more than Newsom’s original estimate, and that likely will trigger rules that mandate rebates to taxpayers. The governor has suggested that his revised budget plan in May will reflect that reality.
Beyond quick payouts, though, “We need to look at what structural impediments are in place that prevent employers from being encouraged or incentivized to offer better jobs,” said the PPIC’s Bohn. “We have to ask: Why is it that a third of our workforce in California is in low-wage jobs? Because this is difficult for them and ultimately for our society.”
In the meantime, the work goes on—and so does the struggle. When Amparo Ramirez was informed last year that Sky Chefs was recalling her, “I ran right back to work,” she said. “To have full-time hours, it was everything.” She just wants to be able to live on what she earns, and in a state roiled by inflation inequality, that is no sure thing.
Five years ago, the only full-service grocery store in the Walnut Hills neighborhood in Cincinnati, Ohio, closed.
It was a blow to the neighborhood, which was home mostly to Black residents. Community activists, including Mona Jenkins, asked grocery chains to bring a new store to their area, but she says they weren’t interested.
“They felt like there wasn’t enough economic stability within our neighborhood,” said Jenkins, a cooperative food justice coordinator for Co-Op Cincy. “The next thing was, ‘Okay, if no one wants to come in, what’s our next solution?’”
After a series of community meetings with Walnut Hills residents, Jenkins and her two co-founders decided they’d open their own grocery store, and opted to design it as a worker cooperative. The trio, all three of whom are Black women, launched a fundraiser in March for the brick-and-mortar grocery store they named Queen Mother’s Market Cooperative. Their efforts built upon an interim food delivery program Jenkins and her co-founders helped launch in the wake of the closure.
“We evolved out of the need [for] healthy food access being denied in our neighborhood,” Jenkins said. “It evolved out of the need [for] jobs in our neighborhoods that were paying a wage where we could still be able to live within that particular neighborhood.”
Nationwide, grocery store employees and other retail workers are notoriously underpaid. The hourly mean wage among cashiers at food and beverage stores in the U.S. is $13.18 an hour, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. But for Jenkins, the co-op structure would ensure more than just living wages.
In a cooperative, “you are building a collective of people who are working together to ensure that everyone succeeds, that everyone has opportunities,” she said. “It’s about economic benefits, it’s about social benefits, and specifically with a grocery store, it’s about health benefits.”
How we work and how we think of labor has drastically shifted during the pandemic. The need for more power and agency in the workplace is why so many workers are unionizing and, at least in part, why millions have quit their jobs. Another often overlooked option for creating structural change is a worker cooperative. The business structure gives workers authority over their workplace, allowing them to set their own rules and, importantly, share in the profits. Prism spoke to worker co-op experts around the country to learn more about how they operate.
What is a worker cooperative?
A worker cooperative is a business where workers manage the company through democratic decision-making processes, as determined by the members.
“It allows us to use our skills in order to change the power dynamic,” said Kristin Forde, a cooperative development specialist at the University of Wisconsin’s Center for Cooperatives. “Profit is shared in a way that is somewhat of an equalizer.”
Some experts argue cooperatives are ideal when recovering from economic crises. Over 600 cooperatives have been identified in the U.S., consisting of 6,000 workers, according to the most recent report from the U.S. Federation of Worker Cooperatives’ Democracy at Work Institute (DAWI)—though the organization estimates that in reality the numbers are closer to 1,000 co-ops and 10,000 workers.
Among the 180 co-ops that responded to the group’s survey, 53% of workers were white, 25% were Latinx, 13% were Black, and 4% were Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI). In a separate 2015 report, DAWI found that the bulk of co-ops were in retail, professional services, manufacturing, waste management such as cleaning firms, and the food services industry, though co-ops exist in a wide variety of businesses.
It may not appear different to customers, even in daily operations.
“It looks a lot like a normal business,” said Andrew Delmonte, the executive director of Cooperation Buffalo. The difference is that workers collectively make decisions and have the final say over operations.
There’s no boss?
Not exactly. Many cooperatives still delineate roles in the running of the business, such as in a restaurant, where the head chef leads kitchen operations or a floor manager oversees the front of house.
Hierarchy can exist, but the worker-owner model allows for transparency.
“You still need to turn a profit so you can have that manager role to ensure that happens,” said Charity Schmidt, also a cooperative development specialist at UW. “But the key [is] that there is oversight of that manager. Not just one person, but through the board of directors.”
Board of directors? Isn’t that for nonprofits?
Nonprofits often have a board of directors. But worker cooperatives aren’t nonprofits.
Cooperatives are set up the same way a business would be created: through a limited liability company, or, in some states, a cooperative corporation. These entities are how the state categorizes your business.
In a co-op, the board of directors is a part of the cooperative made up of either all the worker-owners or a subset elected to represent everyone. Not all the workers necessarily have to be owners.
Members vote on how the business is run—including wages, hiring decisions, and conflict resolution—by setting up bylaws. Some decision-making power may be delegated to committees to oversee specific responsibilities that don’t require board approval. Who decides what and how those decisions are made is ultimately determined by the workers: one worker, one vote.
Mo Manklang, the policy director at the U.S. Federation of Worker Cooperatives, said that smaller co-ops may make decisions between the entire group of member-owners or set up a committee that runs human resources or other administrative duties. In larger cooperatives, like the 2,000-member Cooperative Home Care Associates based in the Bronx, there might be a more traditional HR or administrative department.
Do co-ops pay higher wages?
They can, though the jobs still operate within what the market will pay for certain jobs. In a 2021 report from DAWI, more than half of respondents to the organization’s survey reported that pay was “somewhat better or much better” at the cooperative than a previous job. The wage boosts were an average of $3.52 an hour.
However, pay gaps still exist in co-ops. On average, men and white worker-owners made $24.56 and $22.63 an hour, respectively, compared to $15.15 an hour for women and $14.75 for people of color, the survey found.
Large pay gaps exist across different sectors; in professional, scientific, and technical services the mean hourly pay is $30.76, while workers in health care and social services make $11.67 per hour. Because of this, DAWI suggests pay gaps could be the result of “occupational segregation, which occurs when demographic groups are not equally represented in all occupations,” according to the 2021 report.
Profit-sharing is another element of equalizing pay among worker-owners; DAWI found in 2018 that 86% of co-ops had a pay ratio of either a 2 to 1 or 1 to 1 ratio between the highest paid and lowest paid worker-owners. For comparison, CEOs at the top 350 American firms were paid 351 times that of their workers in 2020.
Does this change workplace conditions for workers compared to a typical business?
The principles of cooperatives are intended to lay the groundwork to do so. “What cooperatives do is they provide a pathway to economic justice,” said Cynthia Pinchback-Hines, a racial justice educator and co-op developer with Co-op Cincy.
The underlying goals of putting people before profits, creating a one-worker one-vote system, and opportunities for empowerment within the workplace are “three areas where historically we’ve been marginalized or kept from actualizing those things in our lives,” said Pinchback-Hines, who runs a training program specifically for Black workers to launch their own co-op.
The International Cooperative Alliance lists seven principles adopted in 1995. The Mondragon principles—named for a group of 96 cooperatives based in Spain founded in the 1950s—are another frequently used standard. These include values around equity, democratic operations, and commitment to the sustainable development of the community they operate within.
To fully attend to the needs of workers from historically excluded groups, including Black workers, cooperatives have to be structured in a way that attend to social and cultural needs, not just fiscal ones, according to Assata-Nicole Richards, the founding director of the recently launched home care co-op, Houston-based Community Care Cooperative.
“We’re not just designing good businesses,” said Richards, who is also the founding director of the Sankofa Research Institute. “We’re designing cooperatives that have the potential, based on how they’re structured, to address these issues.”
This could mean setting representation requirements for the board of directors, setting a holiday structure that allows for people to take off culturally relevant holidays, or creating a pay system based on need to allow for true equity and account for historic disadvantages, she said. The social and cultural elements of creating a more equitable workplace by and for Black workers are critical.
“It is being valued, being seen, being heard, being protected, being connected,” said Richards. “We know that if you don’t attend to those pieces, then you may be making a little bit more money, but the other pieces that you need around dignity, respect, value are not being met.”
What does ownership offer workers?
Jeanette Webster, chief investment officer of Cleveland-based Evergreen Cooperative Corporation, said that a cooperative structure can affect a worker-owner’s mindset toward their job—taking ownership both literally and mentally.
Because worker-owners share profits, they “have a vested interest in how well the organization’s doing,” Webster said. “At the end of the day, no matter what industry the business is operating in, you want to have a stable business for the employees [and] you want to be able to wealth-build among the employees.”
Ownership also creates opportunities to learn new skills that workers may not have been able to acquire before—like management, leadership, and business operations.
“If you’re coming in and you’re a cashier, it’s not about just understanding how to ring up products, but what are the other aspects of the business that you can learn?” said Jenkins, the Cincinnati market cooperative co-founder. At Queen Mother’s, she hopes that regardless of how long someone works at the market, that they learn skills that can help them reach their aspirations.
“It’s not about making profits,” Jenkins said. “It’s about individuals’ and a community’s wellbeing and health.”
Starting a business sounds expensive. And risky. How do workers pay for it?
“The beautiful thing about a cooperative is that you’ve got many people shouldering the risk together,” said Delmonte, from the Buffalo group. “Many small businesses will fail, but the financial risk to each individual when you’ve got a group is quite small.”
Conversions—when workers purchase and convert an existing business into a co-op—are another option when owners are looking to sell the business. In those cases, workers can band together and finance the purchase through a loan with a lender that specializes in cooperatives, or work directly with the seller to determine a payment plan.
“There are many, many, many businesses that are at this turning point that need a succession plan,” said Forde. Worker co-op advocates argue conversions can solve the looming crisis of small business closures. Sometimes, workers will present the idea to an owner. But an owner can also propose it to their employees. “It’s essential to have an owner who’s friendly to the idea.”
Other options include crowdfunding through direct donations, community investment shares, or requiring worker-owners to purchase a share of the company they would later sell back upon retirement or exit.
What are the challenges current cooperatives face?
Manklang said that low awareness among lending institutions about how co-ops work is one obstacle in getting new co-ops up and running. A quirk in federal law currently blocks cooperatives from accessing certain Small Business Administration (SBA) loans by requiring one personal guarantor on the loan, which doesn’t align with the collective operations of a co-op. Colorado lawmakers introduced a bill last year that would get rid of that requirement as well as open the door for the SBA to create new development pathways for co-ops.
Businesses surveyed in DAWI’s most recent report also noted providing health insurance or other benefits and tackling administrative tasks were challenges.
How do I start?
For workers interested in starting a cooperative, Webster suggested contacting existing ones in their own communities to see who they worked with, like lawyers who specialize in cooperative development or organizations that assist with logistics.
Taking the time to develop the bylaws—the rules of the business—will determine long-term success. Richards said a part of creating good bylaws is understanding member-owners’ past experiences in the workplace in order to create a better business culture.
“I think a part of that is listening,” Richards said. “How you structure the bylaws will really dictate how you deal with those historical, systemic issues.”
Sydney Pereira is a journalist based in Brooklyn. She covers the intersection between social justice and health, labor, and climate change. Her work has been published in Gothamist/WNYC, Newsweek, Patch, The Miami Herald, and others.
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 onTwitter, Facebook, andInstagram.
Following the Amazon Labor Union’s huge win in Staten Island, they’re going for it again. Workers at another, smaller warehouse—called LDJ5—will begin voting on April 25, and Amazon is once again going hard with its union-busting campaign.
“All those union-busters that were there to union-bust 8,000 workers at JFK8 have walked across the street and are in our little building of 1,600 people,” LDJ5 worker Madeline Wesley told reporters at a press conference last week. “They’re really fighting us, and they’re playing really dirty.”
The union has filed a complaint with the National Labor Relations Board over captive audience meetings being conducted by veteran union-buster Rebecca Smith. The workers at LDJ5 will face enormous intimidation in the coming 10 days, but they can also look at JFK8 and take their inspiration.
“I can’t believe the building across from us, JFK8, got a union,” 18-year-old Ursula Tomaszuk told Labor Notes. “I thought it wasn’t doable until now.”
● National Labor Relations Board General Counsel Jennifer Abruzzo made another big move this week, calling for the reinstatement of the Joy Silk doctrine, which allows the board to order an employer to recognize a union and bargain in good faith. Dave Jamieson has background on Cemex, the union-busting company spurring Abruzzo’s move, which committed “extraordinary violations” of labor law according to a judge.
● Being good at your job can make heroism possible:
Quick thinking transit workers helped riders escape after gunfire erupted on an N train pulling into the 36th Station. Riders were whisked away on an R train that was across the platform. Shout out to the Conductors and Train Operators on both trains.
NEW: Your fries at McDonald’s, Wendy’s & Burger King are all made by one conglomerate, Lamb Weston. Workers there say they’re treated horrifically, worse than machines. One worker was killed in 2020. Another had a mini-stroke and was assigned a 12-hour shift the next day. pic.twitter.com/vAfO68ZmUY
Connect! Unite! Act! is a weekly series that seeks to create face-to-face networks in each congressional district. Groups meet regularly to socialize, get out the vote, support candidates, and engage in other local political actions that help our progressive movement grow and exert influence on the powers that be. Visit us every week to see how you can get involved!
The confirmation of Ketanji Brown Jackson to the U.S. Supreme Court makes history. It is a watershed moment that puts someone on the bench who can stay for, we hope, a long time, bringing a strong legal mind to the court. It certainly deserves to be celebrated. Just because history was made this week, though, does not mean that we should throw up our hands and say: “Welp, look at what happened! We can all go home now!” Midterm elections often come down to complacency. Did we accomplish everything we needed to accomplish? The answer to this question is always no. History is made every day in big and small ways. The question will be, “Do we allow history to be written by those who see a dark future that lives on nostalgia over reality, or do we want a forward-looking effort to build a history better than anything in the past?”
The problem with nostalgia
If you know me and this series, you know that I really do love and enjoy the thoughts of Brene Brown, and I have no shame at all in admitting that several moments in her new series Atlas of the Heart, streaming now on HBO Max, brought me to tears. One of the items she touched upon is something that I think we don’t address enough in the way it’s tearing apart America, and that is nostalgia.
During the series, her thought on the issue is so simple and so obvious at the same time: “Nostalgia is also a dangerous form of comparison. Think about how often we compare our lives to a memory that nostalgia has so completely edited that it never really existed.”
Think about that and how it manifests itself in the MAGA movement and in so many areas of our culture. When people look back at the past and they toss out “Make America great again,” they are using nostalgia. When they look back at the past, it’s so scrubbed clean of any problems that all they see is what they want to see, and that is what’s both attractive and dangerous.
It’s easy to forget things in the past and focus on good memories. As an example, we can remember all of the best times in our lives, but we often forget the parts that went along with those moments that were terrible.
It is the highs and the lows that help us build the people we are today. I think back to moments in my childhood and I can have some moments of nostalgia. Then I have to remind myself: “Oh yeah, remember, there were a lot of things going around in my life I didn’t like and that I wish could have been different.”
This is the danger of nostalgia. We want something that never existed in reality.
We can use this moment to create reality
So, most who read me know I love science fiction books. If you ask me for recommendations in the comments, I have several good ones right now. Many of them focus on how we create a solution to a problem we face in the future. They do not act as a function of looking backward. The vast majority of science fiction books look at the future because the author knows it’s something that can be changed. It is malleable. It can be changed for good or bad, depending on the acts of the protagonist. Evil could win if bad decisions are made. Good characters can win if they do certain things.
When we look at the confirmation of Jackson to the Supreme Court, we see a moment in history occur. The nostalgic view of it says: “So fantastic! What a moment in history!” The reality is that there was an awful, hateful, racist, out of control hearing on her merits. Her being placed on the court does not undo the events that happened in that committee room.
So in two years or in a few months, will we look back with nostalgia and say: “Look at what was accomplished”? Or will we say: “Look at how far we have yet to go”? The second one is the answer we need.
We cannot find ourselves living in the past. We have to look forward to the future we want, the future we know that we deserve and that our country deserves. It is the only way we stay focused enough to elect the leaders with a clear vision of the future rather than only a desire to make things better.
Activism opportunities!.
TUE 19 APRIL 3:30 pm PDT — “DEEP CANVASSING” TRAINING: HELP US HOLD THE HOUSE!Deep canvassing is a voter communication strategy with proven results in red and purple districts. Active non-judgmental listening in deep canvassing conversations has been shown to change people’s minds and votes on controversial candidates and issues. Indivisible PA is offering an event that will train you on how to ask questions, share your story, and connect with voters more deeply than electoral voter contact normally allows. Then you will actually make “deep canvassing” calls for a progressive candidate in a key PA seat we MUST hold in November. Make a difference in an important swing state, and at the same time add a valuable skill to your political toolbox that will be transferable to any other phone banking or live canvass campaign. Click here for details
TUE 19 APRIL 3:00 pm PDT — FIGHT VOTER SUPPRESSION WITH CFCGThe Center for Common Ground (CFCG) is a voting rights organization led by people of color. CFCG is offering a series of training days on how to encourage higher turnout by talking to eligible PoC voters facing voter suppression and voter discouragement. After you have completed this virtual event you will call voters in North Carolina. Then, if you choose, you can continue phone banking on your own schedule to reach voters in North Carolina, Georgia, and other targeted CFCG states. Early voting for the May 17 NC primary begins in less than two weeks, on April 28. Early voting for the May 24 Georgia primary begins in less than three weeks on May 2! These primaries are critical and NOW is the time to connect with these voters. Each one reach one! Click here for details.
Guess whose back, back again … with the cutest stuff you’ll see this week. Be sure to keep an eye out on Fridays for some fun videos to give you a welcome change in what you digest online.
Social media is filled with funny moments and stories. Sometimes we just need to step away from the seriousness and take some time to relax; lighter posts allow us to mentally recharge.
As part of a weekly series that aims to make you laugh, Daily Kos will be compiling and sharing viral funny videos from across social media platforms. The news cycle can be a bit much at times. Self-care is needed.
Share your videos and your favorites with us for the next roundup!
We all need balance, so let’s have some joy where we are able.
Starting off with the iconic video of a toddler justifying to his mom why he stole cupcakes.
