The Coronavirus Strike Wave Could Shift Power to Workers—for Good

Workers at companies that offer poor pay and unsafe working conditions now know they are essential. And many expect to be treated that way.
By Bryce Covert is a contributor at The Nation and a contributing 

op-ed writer at The New York Times. APRIL 16, 2020

Amazon employees hold a protest and walkout over conditions at the company's Staten Island distribution facility. (Spencer Platt / Getty Images)

Daniel Steinbrook’s job at Whole Foods has changed completely as a result of the coronavirus pandemic. His store is mobbed. Many customers come in wearing masks. Steinbrook, who works at a Whole Foods in Cambridge, Massachusetts, hasn’t been given a mask by his employer and was told he couldn’t wear a scarf over his face for added protection.

“It’s been extremely stressful,” Steinbrook said. “And it’s grown increasingly stressful over time as the pandemic has advanced and the risks have gotten higher.”

On March 31, he and his fellow Whole Foods workers across the country went on strike, orchestrating a mass sick-out to protest what they say is a lack of protections for employees and customers alike. It’s the first national collective action ever staged by Whole Foods employees.

They are one of a number of groups of workers who have gone on strike in recent weeks. Amazon warehouse workers walked off the job in Detroit, Chicago, and New York City; in the latter, they’ve now staged two strikes in as many weeks over safety and pay concerns. Workers at fast-food restaurants such as McDonald’s, Burger King, KFC, Checkers, Domino’s, and Waffle House have gone on strike in California, Florida, Missouri, North Carolina, Tennessee. They’ve been joined by workers at companies where workers have never gone on strike before, such as Family Dollar, Food Lion, and Shell gas stations. Instacart shoppers held a national strike on March 30, refusing to accept orders. Workers for Shipt, Target’s same-day delivery service, organized a walkout on April 7. The unrest has even spread to bus drivers, poultry workers, and painters and construction workers.

The stakes are high. Many of these workers have been deemed essential as their employers stay open. But, striking workers say, their employers are not doing enough to protect their health and keep them financially afloat. Already, grocery workers have started to die from Covid-19.

This marked the first time that Steinbrook took part in workplace activism. “I’m not someone who ever gets involved in things like this,” he said. “I normally just shut up and do my job.”


Finding out that Whole Foods’s paid sick leave policy requires a positive Covid-19 test even though the company isn’t covering the costs of tests galvanized him. “It incentivizes employees to come into work sick,” he explained. And, he pointed out, Whole Foods’s policy runs counter to guidelines issued by the Centers for Disease Control.
CURRENT ISSUE

View our current issue

Meanwhile, Whole Foods has not been closing stores where employees test positive. Instead, they do a deep cleaning overnight and notify employees via voicemail; customers may not have any idea. And there is nothing done to address whether or not other employees were also infected. “This is an extremely dangerous and irresponsible policy [from] Whole Foods meant to preserve their profits,” Steinbrook said. “It’s frankly only a matter of time for a Whole Foods Market employee to die from Covid-19 that they contracted at work.”

Steinbrook is also worried that his employer is putting the rest of his community at risk. “A number of the existing policies are frankly dangerous for employees and customers and the public at large,” he said. “Any transmission within the store will grow exponentially within the community, and it will put people’s lives at risk.”

Grocery store workers and others stage a protest rally outside the Whole Foods Market, in the South End of Boston. (Pat Greenhouse / The Boston Globe via Getty Images)

So Whole Foods employees have issued a set of demands: paid leave for anyone who isolates or self-quarantines, health care for part-time and seasonal employees, company coverage of coronavirus testing and treatment for all workers, double hazard pay, new policies to facilitate social distancing in stores and ensure adequate sanitation, and an immediate shutdown of any store where an employee tests positive with pay for all of its employees.

The company did not respond to a request for comment. In response to the pandemic, it has increased hourly pay by $2 an hour.

Steinbrook doesn’t believe the company will make changes without pressure. It’s already ignoring the CDC recommendations, as well as a letter sent by 14 state attorneys general and the attorney general of Washington, D.C. urging the CEO of Amazon, which owns Whole Foods, and the CEO of Whole Foods Market to change its paid sick leave policy. Executives are “not listening to the government,” Steinbrook noted. “They’re not going to listen to me, just a random employee.” But, he hopes, they might listen to employees banding together.

“Since the entire nation is shut down…and grocery stores are one of the few places open, I think that they have a big responsibility for public health,” he said.

That sentiment—that so many employers are putting their employees in danger by flouting the recommendations of authority figures—is part of what has made this moment such a fertile one for labor activism according to Nelson Lichtenstein, distinguished professor of history at the University of California Santa Barbara. The current swell of strikes comes after two years of a huge uptick in worker unrest: more workers went on strike in 2018 than any time since 1986, and the numbers held steady last year. “People face crises with the ideas and traditions and impulses that have immediately gone before it,” Lichtenstein pointed out. It’s no coincidence that all of these workers have responded to this crisis with walkouts after two years of strikes by teachers, nurses, and Uber drivers—not to mention movements like Occupy Wall Street and the Fight for 15. “We have had a decade where these ideas are floating around,” he noted.

But something vital has shifted. “It’s not just that their [working] conditions are bad—that’s been in existence forever,” he said. Now these workers are being called heroes and told by society “they are part of a larger, important…vital functioning of society.” That makes it even more egregious when their employers then violate the “new set of social norms and moral structures set up by this crisis,” he said. “There demands [have been] legitimized by other people in authority and power and prestige.” Workers feel a sense of empowerment in their new, essential roles—which makes them even more outraged when their employers don’t live up to the moment and take steps to protect and compensate them adequately. “Those things come together and create an explosive situation,” he said. This moment “gives them a sense of moral righteousness.”

The Coronavirus Crisis

THE WORKERS ON THE FRONT LINES OF THE PHILIPPINES’ FIGHT AGAINST CORONAVIRUS
Xyza Cruz Bacani

THE LESSON OF THE CORONAVIRUS? THERE’S NO ONE LEFT TO TRUST.
Elie Mystal

IMMIGRANTS ARE BEARING THE BRUNT OF THE CORONAVIRUS CRISIS
Cinthya Santos Briones, The Nation and Magnum Foundation

UNDERCOUNTING COVID-19 DEATHS IS A DEADLY MISTAKE
Jeet Heer

More in this series

There’s another factor on workers’ side: All of these companies are in high demand right now. Grocery stores can barely keep shelves stocked. Customers are relying on deliveries from Amazon and Instacart so they don’t have to go outside. Workers “have the leverage here,” Lichtenstein said.

Mario Crippen can’t afford to stay away from his job at an Amazon warehouse in Detroit. He has a three-month-old and a six-year-old to provide for. At the same time, he’s terrified of bringing coronavirus home to his family. At least three of his coworkers have tested positive; employees in 64 Amazon warehouses and shipping facilities have now tested positive. When he arrives at work he goes straight to his station—the company is not doing any screening for Covid, he said—and waits to be given the one bleach wipe per worker to wipe down his entire station. The company has run out of masks for employees and has stationed employees by doors to squirt sanitizer into people’s hands in order to ration it.

Amazon’s current order volumes look like we’re in the midst of the winter holiday frenzy. “I feel like I’m on my last days when I walk in there,” he said. He was at work when he got a call from the company informing him that two of his coworkers had tested positive. “That made me so scared,” he said. “It made me think, ‘Do I already have it, what if I go home and give it to my family, what’s going to happen to them, who’s going to be the breadwinner for the family, who’s going to take care of them, how is my family going to pay for a funeral?’ All those thoughts running through my head.”

“I’m feeling like somebody’s going to have to die for them to take action,” he said. “Nobody is listening to us.” In the face of inaction, he and his coworkers went on strike on April 1, the third strike at an Amazon warehouse in as many days, following actions in New York City and Chicago. The company has since fired three warehouse employees who say they were involved in the labor actions. Employees are demanding that the warehouse be shut down immediately to clean it while ensuring all employees keep being paid, safety measures be implemented and the necessary disinfecting supplies be stocked, the company cover medical care for any employees or their family members who contract the virus, anyone who self-quarantines receive pay, and the company stop processing all nonessential items.

Amazon employees hold a protest and walkout over conditions at the company's Staten Island distribution facility. (Spencer Platt / Getty Images)

“This accusations are simply unfounded [sic]. Nothing is more important than the safety of our teams,” Rachael Lighty, a communications manager for Amazon, said in an e-mail. She pointed to the company’s “preventative health measures” and “enhanced cleaning and sanitation,” as well as the additional $2 per hour pay and paid time off it has offered.

“I’d rather be a part [of the strike] than to lose my life for that job,” Crippen said. “A job can be replaced. But your life cannot be.”

On the morning of March 12, Jordan Backman, who lives in Issaquah, Washington, woke up planning to fulfill shopping orders for Instacart like she does every weekday, but “I just felt off,” she said. By the evening she had a constant, painful cough; then she developed a fever. A few days later her son developed the same symptoms. There was a string of days when she was so sick she could barely get out of bed. The only way she could have been exposed, she said, is working for Instacart.

When she called the hospital, she was told to go into a 14-day quarantine, so she stopped working. When she finally recovered, she figured she would be able to get pay from Instacart for the time that she was sick, given that the company has said it will offer 14 days of paid leave to anyone “who is diagnosed with COVID-19 or placed in individual mandatory isolation or quarantine, as directed by a local, state, or public health authority.” But the company denied her because it said she wasn’t told to quarantine by a public health official and because her test came back negative, even though there is a high rate of false negatives.

“I was really excited to get back to work after not being able to work for two weeks,” she said. But her frustration over the company’s refusal to grant her paid leave pushed her to take part in a national strike on March 30. Organizers say thousands of other Instacart workers joined her, some of whom are refusing to do shopping trips until their demands are met. Backman is also on strike indefinitely. “I’m not working until Instacart decides to pay me,” she said. She also wants the company to commit to at least $5 of hazard pay per order.

“We have been consistently, proactively communicating with the shopper community to ensure they have the support they need,” Instacart said in an e-mail. “We’ve made a number of significant enhancements to our products and offerings over the last few weeks that demonstrate Instacart’s unwavering commitment to prioritizing the health and safety of the entire Instacart community.” That includes providing disinfecting supplies and safety kits for its workers in the wake of the strike, sick pay for all part-time employees, and bonuses ranging from $25 to $200 depending on how many hours were worked. But so far, Instacart has not budged on its requirements for using paid sick leave or increasing hazard pay.

At a Food Lion grocery store in North Carolina, Nyreese Cole can barely keep the shelves stocked. People are buying so much that the store has put limits on certain items, such as meat and toilet paper. And yet the company isn’t giving employees masks and gloves. Cole has bought his own latex gloves. “The only thing that’s available to help is sanitizer at the front door and washing my hands in the bathroom,” he said.

“I know I’m risking myself every day I do go to work,” he said. But he needs all of the hours he can get at work so that he can pay his bills; he’s even been calling to see if he can get extra shifts. “It might sound crazy, but I feel like I don’t have a choice,” he said. “At the end of the day, rent is going to keep coming.”

He currently makes $10.50 an hour as a stocker, and the company has said it will give employees an extra dollar as hazard pay. But he wants hazard pay of at least $15 an hour. He also thinks the company should guarantee paid sick leave. So he joined fast food and retail workers to go on strike across the Raleigh-Durham area on March 27 with, he says, at least one other Food Lion coworker.

Food Lion disputes that any strike took place at its store. “We did not have any widespread absentees,” Matt Harakal, manager of external communications, said in an e-mail. “As a result of the coronavirus outbreak, we have implemented pandemic guidelines, including modified attendance policies, enhanced compensation and other key benefits. We are monitoring this fluid situation, and continue to follow guidance from local, state and national health authorities including the CDC.” He also said the company recently ordered face masks for employees.

Bettie Douglass is also seeking more hours even though she’s worried that her job has left her exposed. She was working a full-time schedule at McDonald’s in Missouri, but when the coronavirus hit and demand dropped, the company reduced her hours to 20 per week. She’s worried that her utilities will be cut off come May 1. Her refrigerator broke and she doesn’t have the money to fix it, but without it it’s hard for her to stock up on food for her family.

So she’s still going to work at McDonald’s, even though she’s 62, and even though the company hasn’t given any of them masks. “All we were told was use the sanitizer and wash hands frequently,” she said. “I have to take a chance everyday because I can’t afford not to go to work.”

As soon as she heard there was a strike brewing, “I knew I was going to do it,” she said. “Because if you don’t stand for something, you don’t stand for anything.” She walked off the job along with more than 100 other fast-food employees in both St. Louis and Tampa, Florida on March 31.

She’s been with McDonald’s for 14 years and has never gotten a raise. “We don’t have any type of retirement, we don’t have any type of benefits, we don’t have any type of sick pay,” she noted. Unlike many of the workers who’ve recently gotten active, Douglass has gone on strike before, with the Fight for 15. “I’m going to continue to do it until we get some better benefits, until they take us into consideration and take us serious,” she added.

“Our highest priority is to protect the health and well-being of our people,” McDonald’s owner and operator Nicole Enearu said in an e-mail, in a response to a request for comment. She said she has made “an ample supply” of gloves available to employees and is asking sick employees to stay home.

Some of these strikes have been orchestrated by Fight for 15 organizers, who have led larger and larger walkouts among fast-food workers and other low-wage employees for several years, demanding higher pay and the right to form a union, as well as newer groups, such as Working Washington, which has been organizing Instacart and other gig workers. But others have sprung up more organically. Whole Foods employees are not unionized, and the company has a history of aggressive union busting. There, the sick-out emerged from “online organizing of random employees who are concerned,” Steinbrook noted. “It was probably obvious before, but it’s definitely obvious now: the need for employee organizing to protect themselves and stand up for themselves.” These strikes could therefore extend beyond the end of the current crisis, whenever it might subside.

Striking workers have notched a few victories. Instacart said it will provide free health and safety kits to workers. Lawmakers have taken notice; Senator Elizabeth Warren and Representative Ro Khanna unveiled an “Essential Workers Bill of Rights” on Monday that would grant grocery store, food service, warehouse, delivery, and other workers health and safety protections, premium pay, and paid sick and medical leave.

For now, the wave of strikes shows no sign of cresting. Amazon workers in New York and Chicago have staged other one-day walkouts since the one Crippen joined in Detroit. Fast-food strikes have spread to California. After workers at a pizzeria in Chicago learned that a coworker had tested positive, they all walked out of the job on April 11. And the employees who already took part may do so again. Despite Steinbrook’s prior reluctance to join in workplace activism, he’s prepared to do more. “If these things are not changed, if these demands in the petition are not addressed immediately, there absolutely will be more mass actions,” he promised. Whole Foods workers are already planning another sick out for May 1. Steinbrook and his coworkers also hope that their action “will have a cascading effect on other grocery stores and other retail chains.”

As the crisis continues to unfold, a general strike—one that extends across industries and, indeed, possibly engulfs the whole country—“is not inconceivable,” Lichenstein said. If unrest spreads from not just frontline employees but throughout entire companies, those companies would have to shut down until workers’ demands are met. There are budding signs of such solidarity: white-collar Amazon employees sent an internal e-mail in support of the warehouse workers who have gone on strike and protested publicly about their working conditions; in response, Amazon fired two of them on Friday. It would be similar to entire school systems being shut down to support teachers going on strike in 2018.

“There needs to be continuing labor organization to prevent something like this from happening again,” Steinbrook said.

RECYCLE CLOTHING
Cotton demand plummets during coronavirus pandemic

Retail sales for clothing and clothing accessories in March were down more than 50 percent from the same month last year, according to a U.S. Census Bureau report.

Demand for clothing, textiles and raw cotton has fallen sharply

amid the coronavirus pandemic. Photo courtesy of Pixabay

EVANSVILLE, Ind., April 16 (UPI) -- As countries worldwide take measures to slow the spread of coronavirus by quarantining people and closing nonessential businesses, sales of cotton -- and the clothing and textiles made from it -- have declined sharply.

Demand for cotton is so low that even though prices hit their lowest levels in more than a decade, retailers and manufacturing facilities around the world are cancelling orders.

"Every stage of the supply chain is getting hit," said Jon Devine, senior economist for Cotton Incorporated, a nonprofit industry organization based in North Carolina.

"Retailers are suffering," he said. "In between, you've got all the manufacturers that are trying to get their orders cancelled. And then you get all the way back to the field. Farmers are entering their planting time. They have some difficult decisions to make."

RELATED Yeast supplies run low as homebound Americans turn to baking

Retail sales for clothing and clothing accessories in March, many made with cotton, were down more than 50 percent compared with the same month last year, according to a U.S. Census Bureau report released Wednesday.

With roughly 95 percent of the cotton grown in the United States used for clothing and other textiles, such as towels and sheets, reduced sales have a significant impact on the cotton industry, Devine said.

Most of the manufacturing is performed in overseas facilities. And many of those facilities have closed to slow the spread of the virus, leaving exporters with nowhere to send their goods, Devine said.

RELATED Ethanol production plummets as people drive less during pandemic

Cotton prices, as a result, have fallen sharply. Cotton was trading around 52 cents a pound Wednesday, down from about 70 cents a pound at the start of the year -- roughly a 26 percent drop, according to the Chicago Mercantile Exchange.

That price is below the cost of production for most farmers, Devine said. That might prompt some farmers to plant a different crop, he said.

Most farmers have purchased their seed and the equipment for this year. And with roughly six months before the 2020 crop is harvested, a lot of time remains for prices to rebound, Devine said.

RELATED Dairy industry dumps milk as demand drops due to pandemic
DELIBERATE WASTE IS SOCIAL SABOTAGE, MILK AND DAIRY CAN BE USED

BY FOOD BANKS AND FOOD PROGRAMS THIS WASTE IS NOT A PROTEST IT IS AND ATTEMPT TO RAISE THE PRICE OF DAIRY.But that will only occur if cotton sales pick up. And there is no sign of that anytime soon.

"Usually, a drop in price makes people start looking for bargains," said Mark Bagby, a spokesman for Calcot Ltd., a cotton cooperative in Bakersfield, Calif., that markets and sells cotton for growers in California, Arizona, New Mexico and Texas.

"But that's just not happening. There's so much uncertainty. People are afraid to do anything."

According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the worldwide economic slowdown "with little precedent" will, this month, most likely produce one of the largest reductions in American cotton exports ever recorded.

"Consumption is lower for every major country, with total world consumption down 7.6 million bales or 6.4 percent from March," according to the USDA's monthly World Agricultural Supply and Demand Estimates released April 9.

"At 110.6 million bales, world consumption in 2019-20 is now projected to be 8.1 percent lower than in 2018-19. This would be one of the largest annual declines on record."

Meanwhile, overall stocks of stored cotton in the United States are hitting record highs. Concern is mounting that unless cotton starts moving again, sufficient storage for this fall's harvest will not be available.

"We can store about 60,000 bales in our warehouse," said Donna Lane, general manager for Decatur Gin Co. in Bainbridge, Ga. "We need to get our warehouse cleaned out before the new crop comes in this fall. Otherwise, we'll be in a mess. [We'll have] nowhere to put the new crop."

Lane said it's impossible to predict what the market will be like by then. That depends on how long quarantines last, how promptly factories reopen and how quickly consumers start to buy clothing again.

"People will still need to buy clothes. That's not going to change," Devine said. "But in the meantime, there could be a lot of economic hurt. A lot of companies may go out of business."

Capitalism and Slavery
Each generation seems condemned to have to prove the obvious anew: slavery created the modern world, and the modern world’s divisions are the product of slavery.

By Greg Grandin MAY 1, 2015

A daguerreotype of fugitive African-Americans fording the Rappahannock River, 186

Last week, Columbia University presented the Bancroft Award to two books that directly address the relationship of capitalism, slavery, expansion, and empire: my The Empire of Necessity: Slavery, Freedom, and Deception in the New World and Sven Beckert’s Empire of Cotton: A Global History. Both are part of a renewed scholarly attention to capitalism and slavery, carried out by historians such Walter Johnson, Edward Baptist, Calvin Schermerhorn, Bonnie Martin, Kathryn Boodry, Seth Rockman, Ada Ferrer, Adam Rothman, and Caitlin Rosenthal (and keep an eye out for Ned Sublette and Constance Sublette’s forthcoming, The American Slave Coast: A History of the Slave Breeding Industry).

The argument that capitalism was dependent on slavery is, of course, not new. In 1944, Eric Williams, in Capitalism and Slavery, made the case. In 1968, the historian Lorenzo Greene wrote that slavery “formed the basis of the economic life of New England: about it revolved, and on it depended, most of her other industries.” Even before the expansion of slave labor in the South and into the West, slavery was already an important source of northern profit, as was the already exploding slave trade in the Caribbean and South America. Banks capitalized the slave trade and insurance companies underwrote it. Covering slave voyages helped start Rhode Island’s insurance industry, while in Connecticut, some of the first policies written by Aetna were on slave lives. In turn, profits made from loans and insurance policies were plowed into other northern businesses. Fathers who “made their fortunes outfitting ships for distant voyages” left their money to sons who “built factories, chartered banks, incorporated canal and railroad enterprises, invested in government securities, and speculated in new financial instruments” and donated to build libraries, lecture halls, universities and botanical gardens. Many of the millions of gallons of rum distilled annually in Massachusetts and Rhode Island were used to obtain slaves, who were then brought to the West Indies and traded for sugar and molasses, boiled to make more rum to be used to acquire more slaves. Haiti’s plantation’s purchased 63 percent of pickled fish from New England. In Massachusetts alone, David Brion Davis writes, the “West Indian trade employed some ten thousand seaman, to say nothing of the workers who built, outfitted, and supplied the ships.”

Starting in the early 1800s, Southerners in the United States began to defend slavery as their “peculiar institution” and northerners didn’t mind, since the phrase suggested that chattel bondage was quarantined from the rest of the nation, that it was, or soon would be, a relic of its past and would not define its future. But, for all the variation that distinguished the Catholic south from the Protestant north, for all the variance in regional intensity, the way the institution spread in different moments in different places, there was nothing peculiar or particular about it. Slavery was the western hemisphere’s universal institution. Centuries of buying and selling human beings, of moving them across oceans and continents, treating humans as property, paying taxes on them, putting them to labor, making profit off of their reproduction, and using them as collateral and capital, brought together the Western Hemisphere’s diverse parts, even those parts that didn’t seem to be directly implicated in the slave trade, into a greater whole. Slavery standardized maritime and commercial jurisprudence, including insurance. Slavery spurred individual regions to develop their comparative advantage—salting of fish in New England, curing of meat in Argentina, for examples (discussed in The Empire of Necessity). Defending slavery, opposing it, or attempting to reform and regulate it led to the transformation of Christianity, moral philosophy, and international law. Research into how to ameliorate the coerced transport of humans, or to make the transport more profitable, led to advances in medicine that today benefit us all. One of the things I tried to show in The Empire of Necessity was how, in Montevideo and Buenos Aires at least, the high mortality rate of the Middle Passage led to the secularization of medical knowledge: Every time a doctor threw back a hatch to reveal the horrors below, it became a little bit more difficult to blame mental illness on demons.


Despite all this scholarly work, each generation—from W.E.B. Du Bois to Robin Blackburn, from Eric Williams to Walter Johnson—seems condemned to have to prove the obvious anew: Slavery created the modern world, and the modern world’s divisions (both abstract and concrete) are the product of slavery. Slavery is both the thing that can’t be transcended but also what can never be remembered. That Catch-22—can’t forget, can’t remember—is the motor contradiction of public discourse, from exalted discussions of American Exceptionalism to the everyday idiocy found on cable, in its coverage, for example, of Baltimore and Ferguson.

In any case, for the award ceremony, the Bancroft folk asked for brief summations of our book. Here’s an excerpt from Sven’s:


Empire of Cotton explains the industrial take off of Europe and North America as a result of the emergence of peculiar kinds of uniquely powerful states, who built peculiar connections to capital owners who then, jointly, succeeded in integrating distant regions of the world into a European dominated world economy. They did so by engaging in violent trade with Asia, by transporting enslaved workers from Africa to the Americas, and by capturing huge expanses of land from native peoples in many regions of the world. In the story that follows from that account, the countryside matters as much as cities, slave labor as much as wage labor, violence as much as the rule of law, and coercion as much as contracts. The history of the United States is central to the ensuing story, because it was there that most of the cotton for world markets was grown, and, until 1865, almost exclusively grown by slaves. The United States matters to this story because it was one of the earliest examples of successful industrialization—in cotton textiles. And the United States matters because it helped pioneer new relations between industry and agriculture with the emergence of sharecropping regimes in the wake of the American Civil War. Just as much as the United States mattered to cotton, cotton mattered to the United States. Cotton reinvigorated slavery, established the young nation’s place in the global economy and eventually helped create the political and economic conflicts that resulted in civil war.

And here’s a bit from mine:


My first thought, when I learned that Sven’s Empire of Cotton and my book, The Empire of Necessity won the Bancroft Award, was to wonder whether cotton was a necessity or a freedom. And then I thought, of course, they are both, the wealth created from the trade and the labor needed to create the wealth. The two books complement each other well. Where The Empire of Cotton focuses on the material, institutional, and economic foundations and legacies of slavery, state formation, and market expansion, The Empire of Necessity (though describing in detail the labor and environmental processes associated with a range of free and unfree labor) is concerned more with the psychic and imaginative structure of slavery.… Capitalism is, among other things, a massive process of ego formation, the creation of modern selves, the illusion of individual autonomy, the cultivation of distinction and preference, the idea that individuals had their own moral conscience, based on individual reason and virtue. The wealth created by slavery generalized these ideals of self-creation, allowing more and more people, mostly men, to imagine themselves as autonomous and integral beings, with inherent rights and self-interests not subject to the jurisdiction of others. This process of individuation creates a schism between inner and outer, in which self-interest, self-cultivation, and personal moral authority drive a wedge between seeming and being. My point is that slavery was central to capitalist individuation, to the schism between inner and outer, which I believe accounts for the endurance of racism in American society, its quicksilver nature, as well as for its deniability. This is a dinner, not a conference. So I’ll end by cutting to the chase: I think the story at the center of The Empire of Necessity—revolving around the New Englander Amasa Delano’s complete and utter blindness to the social world around him—captures the power of a new kind of racism, based not on theological or philosophical doctrine but rather on the emotional need to measure one’s absolute freedom in inverse relation to another’s absolute slavishness. This was a racism that was born in chattel slavery but didn’t die with chattel slavery, instead evolving into today’s cult of individual supremacy, which, try as it might, can’t seem to shake off its white supremacist roots.

Greg Grandin, a Nation editorial board member, teaches history at Yale University. His most recent book, The End of the Myth: From the Frontier to the Border Wall, was just published in paperback.


[PDF]
Cotton, slavery, and the new history of capitalism - UCI Sites
https://sites.uci.edu › capitalismandslavery › files › 2019/10
by AL Olmstead - ‎2018 - ‎Cited by 38 - ‎Related articles

Dec 19, 2017 - In Empire of Cotton, Sven Beckert relates how cotton capitalists and their willing political allies repeatedly reshaped the global cotton countryside ...

(PDF) Capitalism and Slavery - ResearchGate
https://www.researchgate.net › publication › 283670502_Capi...
Nov 16, 2017 - (New York: Basic, 2014); Sven Beckert, Empire of Cotton: A Global History (New York: Knopf, 2014). 2. The new history of American capitalism ...

Cotton, Slavery, and the New History of Capitalism - Columbia ...
https://www.law.columbia.edu › files › law-economics-studies
by AL Olmstead - ‎2016 - ‎Cited by 37 - ‎Related articlesOct 3, 2016 - Abstract: The "New History of Capitalism" grounds the rise of industrial capitalism on the production of raw cotton by American slaves. Recent ..

Capitalist slavery in the great Caribbean?
Charles Post
  Review of The reinvention of Atlantic slavery: technology, labor, race and capitalism in the Greater Caribbean. ROOD, Daniel B.
New York: Oxford University Press, 2017. xiii + 272 p. $74.00 cloth.

American Capitalism Is Brutal. You Can Trace That to the ...

https://www.nytimes.com › interactive › 2019/08/14 › magazine

Aug 14, 2019 - Slavery helped turn America into a financial colossus. ... What made the cotton economy boom in the United States, and not in all the other ... Affleck's book was a one-stop-shop accounting manual, complete with rows and ...

HEY KENNEY
Federal judge cancels Keystone pipeline permit

Demonstrators protest after President Donald Trump announced two executive orders to advance the Keystone XL and Dakota Access pipelines. The protest, hosted by organizations, took place on the north side of the White House on January 24, 2017. File Photo by Leigh Vogel/UPI | License Photo
April 16 (UPI) -- A federal judge has canceled a key permit for the construction of the controversial Keystone pipeline, stating it was issued without proper assessment of the project's environmental impact.

U.S. Chief District Judge Brian Morris ruled Wednesday that the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers failed to properly analyze the project's effects on endangered species when it approved a key water crossing permit for TC Energy's 1,210-mile tar sands pipeline that is to run from Steele City, Neb., into the Canadian province of Alberta.

When completed, the project is expected to deliver 830,000 barrels of crude oil a day from Hardisty, Alberta, to Steele City, where it will connect with TC Energy's existing infrastructure that will carry it to Gulf Coast refiners, the company said on its website.

However, Wednesday's ruling could block construction over hundreds of water crossings along the pipeline's projected route, the Sierra Club said in a statement.

"The Trump administration has repeatedly violated the law in their relentless pursuit of seeing this dirty tar sands pipeline built," Sierra Club attorney Doug Hayes said in a statement. "Today's ruling confirms, once again, that there's just no getting around the fact that Keystone XL would devastate communities, wildlife and clean drinking water."

The decision came in a legal challenge by a coalition of conservation and landowner groups against the U.S. Army Corps, TC Energy, the state of Montana and American Gas Association filed in November over the Trump administration's approval of the Nationwide Permit 12.

Wednesday's decision could also block similar pipelines that have been issued under this permit, the Sierra Club said.

"Whether they like it or not, the Corps cannot skirt foundational environmental laws," said Natural Resources Defense Council attorney Cecilia Segal. "And projects like the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline will remain stalled as long as the administration keeps trying to illegally fast-track them."

Terry Cunha, an official with TC Energy, told The Hill in a statement that the company will be reviewing the court's decision.

"We remain committed to building this important energy infrastructure project," Cunha said.

House bill would pay $2,000 per month per person until economy improves

MAKE IT PERMANENT AS UNIVERSAL BASIC INCOME

Rep. Tim Ryan, D-Ohio, pictured, and Rep. Ro Khanna, D-Calif., introduced 

legislation Tuesday to provide $2,000 per person over 16 until the economy improves. 

File Photo by Mike Theiler/UPI. | License Photo

April 15 (UPI) -- Two House Democrats introduced a bill calling for payments of $2,000 per month to Americans until unemployment falls to pre-pandemic levels.

Legislation sponsored by Rep. Ro Khanna, D-Calif., and Rep. Tim Ryan, D-Ohio, would make Americans older than 16 and making less than $130,000 per year eligible for payments for at least six months. It also offers $500 per child per month to qualifying families.

The bill, introduced Tuesday, has 17 other co-sponsors. Called the "Emergency Money for the People Act," it is an expansion of one-time checks of up to $1,200 sent to people through the $2 trillion CARES Act, passed in March.

It also ensures that college students and adults with disabilities can receive payments even if claimed by parents or others as dependents, a feature not found in the CARES Act.

More than 6.6 million people filed for unemployment benefits in a week, the Labor Department said on April 9, as 43 states issued stay-at-home orders because of the COVID-19 pandemic. The figures came atop nearly 10 million unemployment claims in the final two weeks of March.

"A one-time, $1,200 check isn't going to cut it," Khanna said. "Americans need sustained cash infusions for the duration of this crisis in order to come out on the other side alive, healthy, and ready to get back to work. Members on both sides of the aisle are finally coming together around the idea of sending money out to people. Rep. Ryan and I are urging leadership to include this bill in the fourth COVID relief package to truly support the American working class."

The bill specifies that money would be transferred through checks, direct deposit or mobile apps (THE BEST METHOD FOR THE POOR)

RELATED Federal Reserve details $2.3T worth of programs to stabilize economy

"The economic impact of this virus is unprecedented for our country. As millions of Americans file for unemployment week over week, we have to work quickly to patch the dam -- and that means putting cash in the hands of hard-working families," Ryan said on his website. "Many Ohioans are just receiving, or about to receive, the first cash payment we passed in the CARES Act. Now it's time for Congress to get to work on the next step to provide relief for those who have been hardest hit in this pandemic."

Bronski Beat - Smalltown Boy ( Extreme Long Version)

Chinese economy contracts for first time in decades: AFP survey

STATE CAPITALISM WITH CHINESE CHARACTERISTICS 

AFP / STRChina's economy tanked in the first three months of the year

China's economy contracted for the first time in around three decades in the first quarter as the coronavirus crisis brought the country to a standstill, according to an AFP poll of economists.

The world's second-largest economy tanked in the first three months of the year as factories closed, consumers were compelled to stay home and the virus spread to other countries.

Analysts from 14 institutions expect China's economy to have shrunk 8.2 percent from a year ago in the first quarter -- the first contraction since quarterly data started to be reported in the early 1990s.

They also forecast that full-year gross domestic product (GDP) growth will come in at 1.7 percent, a dramatic drop from the 6.1 percent expansion logged last year and well below the pre-coronavirus prediction.

If the forecast is accurate, it would represent the worst annual growth since 1976, the year Communist Party Chairman Mao Zedong died.

The International Monetary Fund on Tuesday gave an even more dire estimate of 1.2 percent growth in 2020.

While many businesses in China have resumed work, the coronavirus pandemic has brought other economies to their knees around the world with many key trading partners under lockdown.

The IMF said the pandemic will cut world output by three percent this year.

Economists differed on the impact of the coronavirus on China's economy, with first-quarter contraction estimates ranging from 4.6 percent to 15 percent.

- Larger fall than expected -

China's downturn is "more disappointing than anyone expected", said Moody's Analytics economist Xu Xiaochun.

AFP/File / STRA Chinese pork processing factory pictured last week. Experts predict China's GDP will be 1.7 percent -- a large drop from last year

He also noted that China's workforce returned to work slower than anticipated, pointing to a significant contraction in the first quarter.

While labour supply will not be an issue in April and greater fiscal and monetary support for the economy is expected, "it will not be enough to overcome the heavy drag from suppressed world demand for the remainder of the year", he added.

The slow return to work also bodes badly for jobs, and the unemployment rate has already risen from last December.

Economists at ANZ Research noted in a recent report that double-digit contractions in economic indicators for the first two months had not been followed by a strong bounce-back in March.

Labour flows were also not back to pre-virus levels, especially in major production bases, they said.

"This is despite the central government's efforts in encouraging workers to return to the cities where they work, such as the relaxation of travel restrictions," they added.

- Difficult recovery -

Although the virus situation in China has largely improved, JP Morgan chief China economist Zhu Haibin said: "External risks will likely restrain the expected second-quarter recovery in China's export-related manufacturing activity."

AFP/File / STRChina's workforce is back on the job slower than expected after the coronavirus outbreak

Lockdowns in other countries could disrupt global supply chains, while fears over imported cases will probably cause a slower return to normal life, delaying the recovery of China's service consumption and domestic demand, Zhu added.

Raphie Hayat, senior economist at Rabobank, added that the short-term impact of COVID-19 is expected to be "greater than the Great Financial Crisis of 2008/2009", with the fallout hurting China's growth.

HSBC chief China economist Qu Hongbin warned that the shock to external demand should not be seen as a mere trade contraction.

"US-China trade tensions last year showed us that an external demand shock can rapidly lead to a material deterioration in domestic demand growth," he said.

The hit to supply chains is "deeper and more sprawling" this time, he added.

"As we are now forecasting a contraction or very weak growth in almost all Asian countries this year, the impact of the headwinds this year for China could be much deeper and more broad-based compared with last year."

Japan's homeless 'net cafe refugees' seek shelter amid virus woe

AFP / CHARLY TRIBALLEAU

Activists estimate there are around 6,000 homeless people and net cafe refugees in Tokyo

Thousands of homeless "net cafe refugees" in Japan risk being turfed out onto the streets as the coronavirus pandemic forces the sudden closure of their uniquely Japanese 24/7 comic book havens.

The ubiquitous all-night internet and "manga" comic cafes offer couches, computers, comics, soft drinks and shower facilities for an overnight stay typically priced around 2,000 yen ($18).

An estimated 4,000 people down on their luck make their home in such cafes in Tokyo alone, and activists worry that shutting them down could lead to suicides and a spike in rough sleepers.

Some local authorities are now opening shelters to accommodate "net cafe refugees" and keep them from sleeping out in the open.

One 58-year-old occasional construction-site worker told AFP his main aim was "avoiding getting wet", as he found a roof over his head at a shelter converted from a martial arts centre in Yokohama near Tokyo.

AFP / CHARLY TRIBALLEAU

Some local authorities are now opening shelters to accommodate

 'net cafe refugees' and keep them from sleeping out in the open

"I thought of sleeping on a bench at a train station... or subway stairs going underground," said the grey-haired man, who declined to give his name.

His net cafe informed him at the weekend it would be closing due to state of emergency measures in Japan to stem the spread of the coronavirus.

"I used to go to work from net cafes... now I sometimes have a job, sometimes not, due to the coronavirus," he said, adding that it was nearly impossible to find a permanent job at his age.

Renting an apartment in Japan requires a very expensive deposit and presents tricky administrative hurdles, leaving net cafes a convenient option for many of the country's hidden poor.

"I have nowhere to go to, few acquaintances," said the man.

- 'Discreet and quiet' -

The temporary shelters at the judo hall in Yokohama, operated by the local Kanagawa authorities, have been designed by a team led by award-winning Japanese architect Shigeru Ban to offer privacy and prevent infections.

AFP / CHARLY TRIBALLEAU

A team led by award-winning Japanese architect Shigeru Ban

 designed the beds and cubicles made from paper and cardboard

Residents sleep on camp-style cots or cardboard beds partitioned off by a frame of sturdy paper tubes with cloth hanging from the top of the cubicle to the floor.

Ban is famed for other emergency shelters and buildings, including the Cardboard Cathedral for Christchurch in New Zealand after the 2011 earthquake.

The aim is to provide a safe place to those driven out by the coronavirus crisis, said Yuji Miyakoshi, an official at the municipal government.

The free shelter has hosted nearly 40 people since opening on April 11 and one resident said it had been proved invaluable after his "capsule hotel" accommodation closed two days ago.

"I went to work, slept at the hotel and went back to work. I moved to this place but nothing has changed so much," said the man in his 30s who works in construction.

Miyakoshi said the people in the shelter were "quite discreet and quiet... My feeling is that many of them are obviously not good at asserting themselves."

- 'Unsafe housing conditions' -

On the surface, Japan appears a wealthy and prosperous society and visitors to Tokyo and other major cities are often struck by the relative lack of homeless people seen in other world capitals.

AFP / CHARLY TRIBALLEAU

A judo hall in Yokohama has been repurposed as a shelter for

 homeless people whose usual net cafe refuges have been closed 

due to the coronavirus pandemic

The Japanese economy bounced back from a recession in the 1990s, creating millions of new jobs, but critics said many of them were temporary and created a new class of urban poverty.

The manga cafes were initially a haven for late-working -- or late-drinking -- business people from far-flung suburbs who missed the last train home, but eventually became a shelter for Japan's working poor.

Coronavirus has driven these people into a corner, said Tsuyoshi Inaba, who has long been involved in helping homeless people.

AFP / CHARLY TRIBALLEAU

The Kanagawa Prefectural Budokan in Yokohama now hosts a shelter

 for people who cannot afford other accommodation after the internet 

cafes closed due to the pandemic

Inaba estimates there are already 2,000 homeless in Tokyo -- double the official figure -- as public surveys conducted during the day often miss people sleeping rough at night after a day's work.

Combined with 4,000 net cafe refugees, "some 6,000 people are in unstable, unsafe housing situations" in Tokyo alone, Inaba told AFP.

The Tokyo Metropolitan Government, which ordered establishments such as net cafes closed amid a spike of coronavirus cases in the capital, is trying to find a solution for the hundreds abruptly made homeless.

AFP / CHARLY TRIBALLEAU

Activists say authorities are not doing enough to provide accommodation

 for all those suddenly left homeless
But activists say not enough accommodation is being provided and that the conditions are too onerous -- such as requiring applicants to prove they have been in Tokyo for six months or longer.

Many kicked out of net cafes have no option but to sleep on the street if they can't find a proper shelter, Inaba said, adding: "This could cause social confusion and suicides are feared to increase."

If official aid remains inadequate, Inaba foresees a "big problem" that could even contribute to a further spreading of coronavirus.

Some people could move to provincial cities despite the possibility that they may have the virus," he warned.

15APR2020

Jacinda Ardern has taken a 20 per cent pay cut – and she’s showing up other world leaders

New Zealand’s popular prime minister clearly hasn’t read the guide on how to be a modern world leader in a time of crisis

James Moore,Wednesday 15 April 2020 THE INDEPENDENT.UK

Straight to the back of the class with you Jacinda Ardern – and see me afterwards to discuss your detention.

Taking a 20 per cent pay cut in “solidarity” with your people? And having all your ministers and top officials do the same? I’ve never heard the likes of it from this generation of World Leader School pupils and frankly I’m beyond outraged.

When your health minister took it upon himself to break your lockdown you duffed him up in front of everyone on the playground, didn’t you? Yes, we need to talk about that too

You need to re-read the syllabus we sent you when the people of New Zealand handed you the top job. It’s clear that we need to set you up with some private tutoring, like the kids of most of your peers while they’re in lockdown.

Now see young Michael Gove over there in Britain. Never heard of him? He’s the bloke with the specs and the smug grin. That’s right, the one who’s about to stick that carving knife into the boy in front of him. I know he’s not in the top job yet, but he got a place as the top wannabe and he’s an example you should follow. He did what today’s leaders do and put himself and his family first by getting his daughter a coronavirus test when Britain’s healthcare workers have to catch Harry Potter’s Golden Snitch after a 12-hour shift to get so much as a sniff of one.

But when Boris Johnson – I’m sorry he can’t be with us because he’s recuperating in comfort at his country pile, as he should – saw what Michael did, he had his people steam in to defend his pal’s indefensible conduct. It’s because he’s a world leader and that’s what world leaders are supposed to do!

I think I need to have you shadow Donald Trump here. No, no, no, I won’t hear another word about how embarrassing it is to be seen in public with someone who uses cosmetic treatments to make themselves look like a space hopper. See all those gold stars on his desk? They’re there because Donald knows how to do the leadership thing. They’re there because he blows his own trumpet until it sounds like a cat being strangled, throws the sort of hissy fits that even movie stars would find embarrassing, and then makes other people take the rap for all his cock-ups. Like dumping on the World Health Organisation and cutting its funding for issuing clear warnings and advice in plain English he and most of the other students ignored.

Because that’s what a modern world leader does. Calling Covid-19 a “Chinese virus”? That’s what a modern world leader does too.

You’re not supposed to be showing solidarity with your people, you’re supposed to be setting them against each other. You’re supposed to be having them beat up on each other, and especially you country’s minorities, now that everything’s going pear-shaped. For homework, I want you to read some of Boris’s old Daily Telegraph columns.

Now I know the planes aren’t flying at the moment, and America’s a long way to go. And you’d probably embarrass the school by doing something like flying economy class so you could talk to the real people your fellow pupils prefer to talk about.

So if we can’t get you to shadow Donald, you should at least be able to find a donor somewhere to lend you a private jet so you can get to Australia. Young Scott Morrison – he’s next to Donald there – could then show you all about the three Ds he made use of when the bushfires were burning his country. Deflect! Deceive! And if that fails: Dammit, run away from the angry little people and take a holiday in Hawaii!

Jacinda, if you carry on like this you’re going to be replacing Tom Hanks as the people’s top choice to be President of the World, and our training school just can’t have that. You’re letting the side down. Goodness me, you’re even succeeding where the other pupils have failed in the battle against the spread of coronavirus itself.

At this rate you’re going to have voters looking at what they’ve got and asking why they can’t find anything even half as good from among their much larger populations. You’re going to have them asking whether they can’t do better than electing people who behave like entitled flatulent arseholes.

New Zealand PM takes pay cut as virus hits economy

AFP/File / Marty MELVILLE 

New Zealand PM Jacinda Ardern will take a 20 percent pay cut in an act of solidarity with people struggling financially during the COVID-19 pandemic


New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern announced Wednesday she will take a 20 percent pay cut in a symbolic act of solidarity with people struggling financially during the coronavirus pandemic.

Ardern said her personal salary, those of her fellow ministers and of top public servants would be slashed by a fifth for six months.

The move will see Ardern's annual pay fall from around NZ$470,000 (US$285,000) to NZ$376,000, costing her about NZ$47,000 over the six-month period.

"While it in itself won't shift the government's overall fiscal position, it is about leadership," she told reporters.

"This was always just going to be an acknowledgement of the hit that many New Zealanders will be taking at the moment."

UNLIKE KENNEY IN ALBERTA

The centre-left leader said the cut would not be implemented across the public service.

"Many people in our public sector are frontline essential workers -- nurses, police, healthcare professionals," Ardern said.

"We are not suggesting pay cuts here, nor would New Zealanders find that appropriate."

New Zealand is in the midst of a four-week COVID-19 lockdown that has paralysed the economy, with thousands of jobs losses already announced.

Economic modelling released by the Treasury department this week predicted unemployment -- currently about 4.0 percent -- could soar to almost 26 percent in a worst-case scenario.

Ardern said her wage cut was a small contribution to easing pay inequalities in society.

"If ever there was a time to close the gap between different positions, it's now," she said.

"This is where we can take action which is why we have."

Opposition leader Simon Bridges said that he would also take a 20 percent pay cut.

IEA predicts 'worst year in the history' of oil sector

HEY KENNEY QUIT WASTING OUR MONEY ON BIG OIL

AFP/File / Fayez NureldineThe IEA said measures taken to bolster the global economy and to reduce oil supply should allow a "gradual" recovery in the second half of the year

The coronavirus outbreak will slash global oil demand in 2020 to erase a decade of growth and set up "the worst year in the history" of the sector, the International Energy Agency (IEA) said Wednesday.

Demand is projected to plummet by a record 9.3 million barrels per day (mbd) for the year as a whole, with 29 mbd in the month of April, and 26 mbd in May -- "staggering numbers", according to the agency's executive director Fatih Birol.

"I believe in a few years' time, when you look at 2020 we may well see that it was the worst year in the history of global oil markets," he told reporters on a teleconference.

"During this terrible year, the second quarter may very well be the worst of the lot and... April may very well be the worst month."

The projected figures for this month were last seen in 1995, said Birol, describing this as "Black April in the history of the oil industry."

The global economy has been hard hit by the coronavirus outbreak, with many industries brought to their knees and air, rail and road traffic slashed as non-essential businesses were closed and hundreds of millions of people around the world placed in lockdown.

The epidemic has killed more than 123,000 people since it first emerged in China in December.

The IEA said measures taken by the OPEC+ group and other oil producing nations to cut output should allow demand to start exceeding supply again by the second half of 2020, assuming population lockdowns to curb virus spread are lifted.

"Once the declines in oil demand start to reduce and once the impact of the production cuts from the OPEC+ agreement and non-OPEC producers start to bite, we start to see a recovery in the second half of the year," Neil Atkinson, head of the agency's oil division, told the briefing.

"But obviously there's still a long way to go before we reach that point."

- Decade of growth lost -

In total, producers have undertaken to cut supply by about 12 million barrels a day in May, Atkinson said, including 9.7 million mbd pledged by the OPEC+ group.

G20 countries have agreed to support the OPEC+ cuts.

The combined effort "takes us right back to below 90 mbd a day which is a level of production for the world which we haven't seen since back in 2011," said Atkinson.

On Tuesday, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) said the coronavirus pandemic was pushing the world into its deepest recession in a century, with economic output expected to shrink three percent.

This means that "COVID-19 results in one year of growth lost of the global economy and almost a decade of growth lost in global oil markets," said Birol.

"The volatility we are seeing in oil markets is detrimental to the global economy at a time that we can least afford it."

Oil prices extended their slump Wednesday, with WTI hitting the lowest level since 2002 as the output cuts were deemed not enough.

The benchmark WTI contract tumbled to $19.20 per barrel, it lowest level in 18 years.

The IEA report said the OPEC+ and G20 actions "won't rebalance the market immediately.

"But by lowering the peak of the supply overhang and flattening the curve of the build-up in stocks, they help a complex system absorb the worst of this crisis, whose consequences for the oil market remain very uncertain in the short term."

- 'Economic meltdown' -

Birol said the oil price crash would likely to cause a "huge decline" in global emissions of planet-warming carbon emissions this year.

"But in my view this is not a reason to celebrate because this decline is happening because there is an economic meltdown, the energy industry is in many parts almost collapsing and many people are losing their lives.

"We shouldn't forget that if there is a rebound of the economy... we may well see a big rebound of emissions as well."

In 2009, after the global economic crisis, emissions declined by 0.4 gigatonnes only to rise again by 1.7 gigatonnes the following year -- the highest increase in the last 50 years, said Birol.

Hungry S.Africans clash with police over food aid in Cape Town

AFP / RODGER BOSCH

South African police clashed with Cape Town township residents protesting over access to food aid during a coronavirus lockdown

South African police on Tuesday fired rubber bullets and teargas in clashes with Cape Town township residents protesting over access to food aid during a coronavirus lockdown.

Hundreds of angry people fought running battles with the police, hurling rocks and setting up barricades on the streets with burning tyres in Mitchells Plain over undelivered food parcels.

"We have small children. We want to eat. They must also eat," said resident and mother Nazile Bobbs.

"They said we are going to get parcels, where (are) the parcels? How long are we (going to be) in the lockdown?"

South Africa is currently in the middle of a five-week lockdown to curb the spread of coronavirus which has so far infected more than 2,400 people.

President Cyril Ramaphosa has promised to provide basics such as water and food supplies to the poorest South Africans.

Many people, especially those working in the informal economy, are unable to ply their trade and have lost income due to the lockdown which came into effect on March 27.

Community leader Liezl Manual said people came out of their homes "frustrated wanting to know" where the food parcels were.

"I don't think Ramaphosa is doing something," said another resident Denise Martin, adding that people would "rather die of coronavirus than to die in our homes of hunger".

Some government officials were starting to become overwhelmed by the surging needs in a country ranked among one of the world's most unequal.

"People are so desperate for aid such that even those people that would not be provided by us think they can get support from us," Busisiwe Memela-Khambula CEO of SA Social Security Agency (Sassa), a government department responsible for distributing food aid.

The department normally helps people with disability, those who failed to access their social security grants or those generally experiencing hardships, she said.

"But unfortunately now everybody is experiencing hardships," she said on local television.

15APR2020