May, 01 2020, 12:00am EDT
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50+ Racial Justice, Civil Liberties, Worker Advocacy Groups Release Joint Statement Calling for Whistleblower Protections for Frontline Workers
Alarm sounded after Amazon fires whistleblowers organizing against dangerous workplace conditions that risk exacerbating the spread of COVID-19.
WASHINGTON
Today on May Day, 50+ racial justice, civil liberties, and worker advocacy organizations release a joint statement condemning the silencing of front line workers blowing the whistle on unsafe corporate practices during COVID-19. The joint statement calls for an expansion and improved enforcement of legal protections for frontline workers who speak out and organize for a healthy and safe workplace, as a matter of public health.
The statement amplifies and supports worker demands for workplace health and safety standards in line with Center for Disease Control guidelines: implementation of six feet of distance between all individuals in the facility, personal protective equipment for all, time for handwashing, temporarily closing and cleaning exposed facilities to allow for quarantine, independent and transparent reporting, and paid leave policies to help exposed and sick workers to stay home.
Since the COVID 19 outbreak, Amazon has fired six workers who spoke out and organized for these basic standards. Rather than implement necessary safeguards, the technology giant expanded their surveillance system to monitor worker interactions, which risks undermining the right of workers to take action on critical public health issues.
The statement also speaks to the disproportionate number of Black and brown people taking enormous risks as frontline workers. It is egregious that all the warehouse workers Amazon fired are Black. Amazon's actions callously add harm at a time when many Black communities face higher COVID-19 death rates and are bearing the brunt of the economic and health impacts.
The current crisis has elevated the necessity for workers to be able to speak out without retaliation to protect themselves, their communities, and the public.
QUOTES:
"People from across the political spectrum can agree on this: essential workers are our first line of defense against corruption, greed, and dangerous conditions that put public health at risk. Now more than ever we need workers to feel safe speaking out when they see their employers engaging in practices that could lead to loss of life, said Evan Greer, Deputy Director of Fight for the Future. "It's essential we put policies in place to ensure all frontline workers are protected and any violations of these protections trigger an automatic investigation. It's the only way we'll stop companies, like Amazon, from retaliating against whistleblowers and using surveillance to clamp down on workers self-organizing. Anything less is a threat to the safety of workers and the public at large."
"Black and brown workers have always been essential for our nation's economy and public health, but their voices are too often silenced. During this crisis, Amazon and other employers are willing to make this 'essential work' a death sentence for Black and brown frontline workers," said Myaisha Hayes, Campaign Director at MediaJustice. "This blatant disregard for the safety and wellbeing of Black and brown bodies is business as usual for Amazon, who already profits from mass surveillance of over-policed communities through their partnerships with ICE and local law enforcement. On May Day, we stand in solidarity with Amazon workers who are striking, organizing, and taking direct action at the risk of their jobs because they understand what is truly at stake: the health and safety of their communities"
"Our public health and societal well-being require that workers have the power to speak up in these moments, to call attention to employer practices that create unsafe working conditions made more dangerous by the current crisis, and to refuse to work in deadly worksites," said Rebecca Dixon, Executive Director of the National Employment Law Project. "We cannot allow Amazon to retaliate against whistleblowers and silence a disproportionately Black, Latinx, and indigenous workforce, which, in the face of hazardous conditions, is courageously declaring 'We will not accept this," defending both worker and public health."
"While many of us get to stay home and wait out the pandemic, thousands of low-wage Amazon workers are showing up every day and risking their lives to keep Jeff Bezos' unsafe facilities running," said Sandra Fulton, government relations director for Free Press. "A great number of these frontline workers are members of Black and Brown communities that have been hardest hit by COVID-19. Amazon must do more to protect its workers of color, and recognize and reward their daily sacrifices. Instead, it's firing them for exercising their legally protected rights to organize and protest for safe and healthy working conditions."
"Black, brown, Muslim, immigrant workers are already heavily surveilled in their neighborhoods and in their homes. Amazon surveilling essential workers and firing whistleblowers who are bringing to light the horrific public health conditions inside Amazon warehouses in the middle of the deadly COVID-19 pandemic is appalling--but unsurprising. Amazon is already a leader in powering surveillance and state violence, as they provide technology for ICE's detention-deportation machine and partner with police departments via their doorbell camera, Ring," said Lau Barrios, Campaign Manager at MPower Change. "Amazon workers are organizing and taking unprecedented direct action to demand the bare minimum safety conditions because they understand and care about the health of our communities--not the richest man in the world's bottom line. This May Day, it's imperative that we stand with Amazon workers. Worker health is community health--and it's absolutely a racial justice issue."
The signing organizations include: Access Now, Action Center on Race and the Economy, AI Now, Alternate ROOTS, Athena Coalition, Black Alliance for Just Immigration, Center on Privacy & Technology at Georgetown Law, Color of Change, Community Justice Exchange, Constitutional Alliance, Defending Rights & Dissent, Demand Progress Education Fund, Ella Baker Center, Fight for the Future, Free Press, Freedom of the Press Foundation, Global Action Project, Government Accountability Project, Instituto de Educacion Popular del Sur de California, Just Futures Law, Line Break Media,Make the Road New Jersey, Make the Road New York, Media Mobilizing Project, MediaJustice, MPower Change, Muslim Advocates, National Employment Law Project (NELP), National Immigration Law Center, New America Center on Education and Labor, New America's Open Technology Institute, New York Communities for Change, Ohio Valley Environmental Coalition, Open Markets Institute, Open MIC (Open Media and Information Companies Initiative), Partnership for Working Families, People Demanding Action, People For the American Way, PeoplesHub, Project Censored, Project On Government Oversight, Public Citizen, RootsAction.org, RYSE Center, Secure Justice, Surveillance Technology Oversight Project (STOP). The Awood Center, The Civil Liberties Defense Center, The Tully Center for Free Speech, United for Respect, United We Dream, Warehouse Worker Resource Center, Whistleblower & Source Protection, Program at ExposeFacts, Woodhull Freedom Foundation, XLab.
Fight for the Future is a group of artists, engineers, activists, and technologists who have been behind the largest online protests in human history, channeling Internet outrage into political power to win public interest victories previously thought to be impossible. We fight for a future where technology liberates -- not oppresses -- us.
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US Voter Registrations Surge as Republicans Try to Limit Ballot Access
One group said it has registered over 100,000 new voters since U.S. President Joe Biden dropped out of the 2024 race.
Jul 26, 2024
The group behind a popular get-out-the-vote technology platform said Friday that it's registered more than 100,000 new U.S. voters since President Joe Biden withdrew from the 2024 presidential race, a surge that came amid mounting Republican efforts to make it harder to register and vote.
Vote.org said that 84% of voters registered in the new wave are under age 35. Nearly 1 in 5 new registrees is 18 years old. Andrea Hailey, the group's CEO, said that "since 2020, we have led the largest voter registration drive in U.S. history," with more than 7.8 million people registered.
After dropping out, Biden endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris to face former Republican President Donald Trump and Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio) in the November election. The new presumptive Democratic candidate has already earned endorsements from many Democrats in Congress and groups advocating on issues including climate, labor, and reproductive rights.
Vote.org's success comes as Republicans at the federal level are proposing and passing legislation creating obstacles to the ballot box.
Earlier this month, U.S. House Republicans passed Rep. Chip Roy's (R-Texas)
Safeguard American Voter Eligibility (SAVE) Act, which would require proof of American citizenship to vote in federal elections. Republicans claim the bill is meant to fix the virtually nonexistent "problem" of noncitizen voter fraud.
However, Rep. Summer Lee (D-Pa.)
slammed the bill as a "xenophobic attack" meant to silence "Black voices, brown voices, LBGTQIA+ voices, [and] young voices."
Lee said the SAVE Act underscores the need to pass her recently introduced Right to Vote Act, "which would establish the first-ever affirmative federal voting rights guarantee, ensuring every citizen may exercise their fundamental right to cast a ballot."
Earlier this year, U.S. Senate Democrats also reintroduced the John R. Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act, legislation its sponsors say will "update and restore critical safeguards of the original Voting Rights Act."
Meanwhile, Republican-controlled state legislatures and red-state governors are enacting laws imposing tough restrictions on voter registration, with violations punishable by stiff fines that critics say are meant to dissuade people from registration drives and similar efforts.
Again under the guise of preventing fraud, Republican Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis last year signed legislation limiting voter registration drives, with fines of up to $250,000 for violators.
"These draconian laws and rules are like taking a sledgehammer to hit a flea," Cecile Scoon, an attorney and president of the Florida chapter of the League of Women Voters,
toldThe New York Times in an article published Friday.
Three years after Kansas passed a law making "false representation" of an election official a crime, campaigners say it's become extremely difficult to sign up new voters.
"In 2020, even with the pandemic, we had registered nearly 10,000 Kansans to vote. Now, we haven't been able to register anyone," Davis Hammet, president of the youth voter mobilization group Loud Light, told the Times.
In Louisiana, Republican state lawmakers quietly passed legislation making it easier for election officials to toss out absentee ballots with missing details, limiting how people can mail in other voters' ballots, and restricting the ability to assist people with disabilities with their ballots.
"What we've found is that these measures have a disproportionate impact on voters with disabilities, both Black and white," NAACP Legal Defense Fund senior policy counsel Jared Evans
toldNola.com earlier this week.
"It's clear that their goal is to make it harder to vote, harder for specific communities to vote especially," Evans added. "What they don't realize is that these laws hurt white voters, too."
In Nebraska, Republican Secretary of State Bob Evnen last week
ordered county election offices to stop registering voters with past felony convictions who have not received official pardons. The move came after the state's unicameral Legislature passed a bill granting voting eligibility to felons immediately after they have completed their sentences instead of waiting two years.
"We refuse to accept thousands of Nebraskans having their voting rights stripped away," ACLU of Nebraska legal and policy fellow Jane Seu said in a statement. "We are confident in the constitutionality of these laws, and we are exploring every option to ensure that Nebraskans who have done their time can vote."
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Critics Warn Manchin-Barrasso Permitting Bill 'Is Taken Straight From Project 2025'
"You thought Project 2025 was just a threat after the election? It's actually happening *right now,*" said one climate campaigner.
Jul 26, 2024
Climate and environmental defenders on this week implored U.S. senators to block a permitting reform bill introduced this week by Sens. Joe Manchin and John Barrasso that campaigners linked to Project 2025, a conservative coalition's agenda for a far-right overhaul of the federal government.
Common Dreamsreported Monday that Manchin (I-W.Va.) and Barrasso (R-Wyo.)—respectively the chair and ranking member of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee—introduced the Energy Permitting Reform Act of 2024.
The Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) noted that although the proposal "includes several positive reforms for the accelerated development of transmission projects," it also advocates "limiting opportunities for communities to challenge projects, loosening oversight for drilling and mining projects, extending drilling permits and fast-tracking [liquified natural gas] permits, and several other provisions friendly to fossil fuel giants."
"This dangerous bill doesn't deserve a floor vote."
These are nearly identical policies to what's proposed in Project 2025's Mandate for Leadership. The plan, which was spearheaded by the Heritage Foundation, calls for "unleashing all of America's energy resources," including by ending federal restrictions on fossil fuel drilling on public lands; limiting investments in renewable energy; and rolling back environmental permitting restrictions for new oil, gas, and coal projects, including power plants.
While Manchin has been trying—and failing—to pass fossil fuel-friendly permitting reform legislation for years, Brett Hartl, director of public affairs at the Center for Biological Diversity, said that his "Frankenstein legislation is taken straight from Project 2025, and it's the biggest giveaway in decades to the fossil fuel industry."
Hartl said the bill "deprives communities of the power to defend themselves and gives that power to Big Oil by making it harder for communities to challenge polluting projects in court," and "prioritizes the profits of coal barons over public health."
"And it mandates oil and gas extraction in our oceans," he continued. "The insignificant crumbs thrown at renewable energy do nothing to address the climate emergency."
"Monday was the hottest day in recorded history," Hartl noted. "It's shocking that as the climate emergency continues to break records around us, the Senate continues to fast-track the fossil fuel expansion that is killing us. This dangerous bill doesn't deserve a floor vote."
Hartl added that "to preserve a livable planet," Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) "must squash this legislation now."
Manchin—who has said this will be his last term in office—has been a steadfast supporter of the fossil fuel industry, partly because his family owns a coal company. The senator says his permitting reform bill "will advance American energy once again to bring down prices, create domestic jobs, and allow us to continue in our role as a global energy leader."
However, Allie Rosenbluth, Oil Change International's U.S. manager, warned Thursday that "this bill is yet another dangerous attempt by Sen. Manchin to line the pockets of his fossil fuel donors, sacrificing communities and our climate along the way."
"Don't be fooled: The Energy Permitting Reform Act is another dirty deal to fast-track fossil fuels above all else," she continued. "It would unleash more drilling on federal lands and waters, unnecessarily rush the review of proposed oil and gas export projects, and lift the Biden administration's pause on new LNG exports."
"We urge Congress to reject this proposal and commit to action that protects frontline communities from the impacts of fossil fuel development and the climate crisis," Rosenbluth added.
"Don't be fooled: The Energy Permitting Reform Act is another dirty deal to fast-track fossil fuels above all else."
NRDC managing director of government affairs Alexandra Adams said Wednesday that "this bill is a giveaway for the oil and gas industry that will ramp up drilling and environmental destruction at a time when we need to be putting a hard stop to fossil fuels."
"We cannot afford to roll back so many of our bedrock environmental and community legal protections and offer a blank check to the oil and gas industry," she stressed. "We need new solutions for permitting if we are going to meet our clean energy potential and address the climate challenge. But this is not it."
"This bill would altogether be a leap backward on climate, health, and justice if passed into law," Adams added. "The Senate should reject it and look toward alternative solutions already being considered."
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'Nothing To Eat': War-Torn Sudan Faces Mass Famine as Military Delays Aid
Both parties in Sudan's civil war are to blame for a looming mass famine, experts say, and the military's blocking of U.N. aid at a border crossing with Chad exacerbates the problem.
Jul 26, 2024
Sudan's military is blocking United Nations aid trucks from entering at a key border crossing, causing severe disruptions in aid in a country that experts fear may be on the brink of one of the worst famines the world has seen in decades, The New York Timesreported Friday.
The border city of Adré in eastern Chad is the main international crossing into the Darfur region of Sudan, but the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF), the state's official military, which is engaged in a civil war with a paramilitary group called the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), has refused to issue permits for U.N. trucks to enter there, as it's an RSF-controlled area.
U.S. and international officials have issued increasingly alarmed calls for steady aid access to help feed the millions of severely malnourished people in Darfur and other areas of Sudan.
Last week, Linda Thomas-Greenfield, the United States ambassador to the U.N., said that the SAF's obstruction of the border was "completely unacceptable."
Both warring parties in Sudan continue to perpetrate brazen atrocities, including starvation of civilians as a method of warfare. This piece focuses on the SAF's ongoing obstruction of essential aid. The situation is catastrophic. The policy is criminal. https://t.co/FKhqQh3EI9.
— Tom Dannenbaum (@tomdannenbaum) July 26, 2024
The Sudanese who've made it out of the country and into Adré reported dire and unsafe conditions in their home country.
"We had nothing to eat," Bahja Muhakar, a Sudenese mother of three, told the Times after she crossed into Chad, following a harrowing six-day journey from Al-Fashir, a major city in Darfur. She said the family often had to live off of one shared pancake per day.
Another mother, Dahabaya Ibet, said that her 20-month-old boy had to bear witness to his grandfather being shot and killed in front of his eyes when the family home in Darfur was attacked by gunmen late last year.
Now the mothers and their families are refugees in Adré, where 200,000 Sudanese are living in an overcrowded, under-resourced transit camp.
In addition to those that have made it out of the country, there are 11 million people internally displaced within Sudan, most of whom have become displaced since the civil war began in April 2023.
An unnamed senior American official told the Times that the looming famine in Sudan could be as bad as the 2011 famine in Somalia or even the great Ethiopian famine of the 1980s.
In April, Reutersreported that people in Sudan were eating soil and leaves to survive, and The Washington Postcalled it a nation in "chaos," reporting that World Food Program trucks had been "blocked, hijacked, attacked, looted, and detained."
In late June, a coalition of U.N. agencies, aid groups, and governments warned that 755,000 people in Sudan faced famine in the coming months.
The U.S. last week announced $203 million in additional aid to Sudan—part of a $2.1 billion pledge that world leaders made in April, which some countries have not yet delivered on.
Some officials including Thomas-Greenfield, who has dubbed the situation in Sudan "the worst humanitarian crisis in the world," have called for the U.N. Security Council to allow aid delivery into the country even in the absence of SAF approval; it's believed that Russia would veto such a measure.
Sudan's civil war has seen a great deal of international interference. Amnesty International on Thursday published an investigatory briefing showing that weapons from Russia, China, Serbia, Turkey, Yemen, and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) had been identified in the country. And The Guardian on Friday reported that the passports of Emirati citizens had been found among wreckage in Sudan, indicating the UAE may have troops or intelligence officers on the ground, though the UAE denied the accusation.
The International Service for Human Rights on Friday warned that both the SAF and RSF were engaged in wrongful killings and arrests, especially targeted at lawyers, doctors, and activists. The group called for an immediate cease-fire.
The SAF and Sudanese government figures have cast doubt on international experts' claims about famine in the country.
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