‘Won’t take it any more’: South Korea’s Starbucks baristas rebel

Workers’ novel approach to labour activism holds lessons for old guard in country with a history of spirited protest.

Starbucks workers in South Korea have taken an innovative approach to labour activism [File: Kim Hong-Ji/Reuters]

By Steven Borowiec
Published On 6 Jan 2022

Seoul, South Korea – On weekday afternoons, the Starbucks in southern Seoul’s Yangjae neighbourhood swells with groups of office workers seeking after-lunch refreshments.

A line forms from the counter to the shop’s swinging glass doors as white-collar workers line up to order hot and cold drinks. Among the seasonal specials are the Lavender Beige Oat Latte topped with cornflower leaves and New Year Citrus Tea garnished with lemongrass and a slice of orange.

“We come here with colleagues after lunch because we know that everyone will be able to find something they like,” Yoon Min-ju, who works at a nearby interior design firm, told Al Jazeera.

“At smaller coffee shops, they usually only have basic coffee and tea. At Starbucks, even people who don’t like coffee or are dieting can order comfortably,” she said.

Starbucks is so popular in South Korea that it can appear like there is an outlet on nearly every block. The country is Starbucks’ fourth largest market, with 1,611 stores and almost 20,000 workers, which the company refers to as “partners”.

But despite the popularity of the brand – built on its sprawling menu, association with the American middle class and branded merchandise – the coffee giant is now facing a challenge to its image in South Korea in the form of scrutiny over working conditions at its stores. The way workers are responding could presage an evolution in labour activism in a country with a history of spirited protest.

In October, when the company held an event offering reusable cups with the purchase of a drink, baristas’ fatigue and frustrations boiled over.

On Blind, an app where employees can anonymously vent about workplace conditions, workers complained of low wages and poor conditions. Some recounted horror stories of having as many as 650 drinks on order at a time, while scrambling to pour, mix and serve an endless stream of customers while making no mistakes, smiling and maintaining friendly customer service.

South Korea has a long history of boisterous protests by unions and labour activists 

[File: Ahn Young-joon/AP]

In December, Ryu Ho-jeong, a left-wing politician, released the results of a survey that found 613 Starbucks workers sought mental health treatment due to job stress in 2020, a more than five-fold increase compared with 2015. The survey also found that workplace accidents had tripled over the previous year.

To draw attention to their plight, workers hired a flatbed truck with a massive light-screen to drive from downtown Seoul to the busy Gangnam area in the city’s south, broadcasting their grievances to the hordes of customers that gather at Starbucks locations across the city after lunch. The screen carried text that addressed the company with messages including “‘Partners’ are your biggest asset. Don’t forget that” and “We won’t take it any more”.

The protest made national headlines, and succeeded in getting concessions from Starbucks Korea, which pledged to hire 1,600 more workers to ease conditions in their stores. The company, which entered South Korea in 1999 at a time when brewed coffee was a novelty, also promised to introduce wage increases based on seniority and performance.

While the Starbucks workers were waging their battle, the stalwarts of labour organising in South Korea took notice of how a group of young service industry workers were able to win both attention and material gains.

The Korean Confederation of Trade Unions, a major umbrella labour group that has more than one million members in industries across the country, welcomed the Starbucks workers’ actions and encouraged them to work towards establishing a union.

“Through the formation of a labour union, the workers can address their grievances,” the KCTU said in a statement.

The Starbucks protesters, most of them aged in their 20s and 30s, swiped left on the invitation to unionise, saying that instead of engaging in collective bargaining with Starbucks management, they could more effectively communicate their needs through innovative tactics like the truck protest.

In South Korea, labour unions have for decades been fixtures in shipyards and factories, but recent years have seen efforts towards unionisation at some of the country’s most innovative companies, including tech titans Kakao and Naver.
‘Militant struggle’

Yu Gyu-chang, a professor of human resource management at Hanyang University, told Al Jazeera that South Korean work culture is becoming more mindful of workers’ wellbeing.

“Social pressure has been increasing along with the voice of millennials and generation Z,” Yu said.

The increased labour organisation is coming at a time when inequality is a central topic in South Korea’s public discourse, reflected in the pop culture phenomenon Squid Game, as many in the country seek ways to earn a stable living in an increasingly cutthroat economy.

According to data released in December by the labour ministry, South Korea’s unionisation rate increased in 2020 to 14.2 percent, up from 12.5 percent the previous year.

“Many young people want to work at companies that have unions because they recognise that unions can provide protections and help them get the benefits they want,” Lee Byoung-hoon, an expert on industrial relations at Chung-Ang University, told Al Jazeera.

“What they don’t like is the old style of union activism in Korea, the militant struggle, the fighting and the protesting.”

Ryu, the politician, said in a statement that her survey showed that conditions for Starbucks workers are still in need of improvement.

“There will inevitably be a second and third truck protest,” she said.

While their victory is incomplete, the way the Starbucks workers grabbed their bosses’ – and the country’s – attention could portend an evolution in South Korean labour organising, away from the conventional protests of old and towards an era where workers seek fresh ways to communicate their demands.

“For protests by the young generation, more important than the success, failure or amount of attention they get, is that they don’t want their arguments or intentions to be misrepresented even a little,” said Lim Myung-ho, a professor of psychology at Dankook University.

“They have the confidence they can get their opinion out without outside help,” Lim said. “There will be more cases like Starbucks.”

SOURCE: AL JAZEERA

Companies still aren't hiring Black men, despite 10.6 million open jobs in the US. It's costing the economy $50 billion.

jlalljee@insider.com (Jason Lalljee) 

© MoMo Productions Researchers found the income deficit to be about $50 billion per year for Black men. MoMo Productions

For months, employers have been saying they can't find people to fill open jobs.

One segment of the population — Black men — has persistently high unemployment rates.

By not hiring them to fill the 10.6 million open jobs, companies are partially responsible for $50 billion missing in the economy, a new study says.

Despite a nationwide cry for workers, businesses aren't hiring Black men — and it's costing the country billions of dollars, according to a new study by the Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR).

The unemployment rate for Black men remains high: 7.3% in November, compared to 3.4% among white men looking for work, according to Labor Department data. Roughly 697,000 Black men need employment, even as the country recorded 10.6 million vacant jobs in November.

According to the CEPR study, Black men are excluded from the workforce due to racist hiring practices, as well as being killed and imprisoned at higher rates than other groups. This doesn't just hurt Black men and their families and communities — CEPR estimates that the lost income from racial discrimination costs the overall US economy $50 billion a year.

By focusing on closing the Black-white jobs gap, "we could add about $30 billion annually to Black communities and make a significant reduction in Black poverty," writes Algernon Austin, the author of the CEPR study.

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The figure jumps to $50 billion when factoring in Black men of prime working age who die or are incarcerated. For that reason, as Austin told Insider, the unemployment rate is only part of the picture since it only captures people who are currently looking for work. The joblessness rate, or those who aren't working at all, is typically three times larger, he says.

"Since we typically focus on the unemployment rate, we are missing the full impact of joblessness for Black men," said Austin.

For Black men, there is never a period of "low" unemployment

The unemployment rate for Black men has never been "low," Austin says. It would be more correct to characterize it as high, very high, or extremely high.

While employers are calling the current labor conditions in the US a "shortage" as they struggle to hire, Black men of working age continue to have the highest unemployment rate of any gender or race. It's been that way for the past two decades, throughout job market ups and downs. Experiments on hiring discrimination stretching back to the 1970s show it happens from entry-level positions to jobs requiring a college degree, S. Michael Gaddis, a UCLA sociologist who studies employment discrimination told Insider.

"Black job-seekers face discrimination even when they have an elite college degree, such as one from Harvard or Stanford," Gaddis said.

The CEPR study found that although there are other groups that typically face high unemployment and labor market discrimination, such as Black women and other genders of color, those groups tend to rebound depending on the jobs climate, while Black men do not. Austin found that when the labor market is tight, for instance, Black women's employment-to-population ratio becomes very similar to that of white women.

Criminal justice and Black employment are inextricably linked

One major reason for Black men not working is that many of them are incarcerated or die at a young age.

Even before the pandemic, Black people saw roughly 74,000 more deaths than their white counterparts between 2016 and 2018, according to a report from last February — for reasons like greater infant mortality, environmental damage to Black communities, and lower-quality healthcare — in an examination of the 30 largest US cities, despite the fact that they make up much less of the country's population.

A Brookings Institute study from last March found that incarcerated Black men account for a third of all Black men excluded from the labor force.

Looking at a statistic like imprisonment for drug use reveals the disparity: Black and white people use drugs at similar rates, according to the National Survey on Drug Use and Health, yet the former are criminalized for it at much higher rates. Black people, who only represent 13% of the US population, account for nearly 40% of those incarcerated for drug law violations.

Amid the COVID-19 pandemic, Black Americans are also getting sick and dying at higher rates due to the pandemic's exacerbation of existing health inequities. But despite the prevalence of vaccines and an apparent market recovery, recent reports show that Black Americans continue to see higher rates of joblessness. The CEPR's report shows there is a wide pool of Black Americans to hire.

It's the "the self-evident discrimination in the labor market revealing itself," Dr. William Spriggs, an economics professor at Howard University and the chief economist for the AFL-CIO told Insider in September. He added: "The numbers this time are just startling."

Groups gather at Arizona capitol to call for environmental action, representation

By Nicholas Gerbis

Published: Wednesday, January 5, 2022 -

Rep. Andrés Cano (D-District 3), the ranking member on the House Natural Resources Energy and Water Committee, said Arizona is "ground zero for the climate crisis."

"We have an urgent and unique opportunity right in front of us. Mitigating the drought that we are in and creating a smarter, more sustainable economy will not only save our state in the long run, but it will spur innovation and strengthen our economy," he said.

The group called for action on climate change, water, and land protection and restoration.

In a statement issued after the press conference, it also asked for bills to measure and limit groundwater pumping in the state, especially outside active management areas and in areas where it can affect river flows. It requested that leaders consider sustainability in policies affecting growth and development, agricultural practices and the reclamation and treatment of wastewater flows.

"We know that these issues may not be on the agenda for the majority at the Legislature or the governor right now. But they should be, and we are committed to making sure these important issues are not ignored," said Sandy Bahr, director of the Arizona chapter of the Sierra Club, which called the press conference and issued the release.  

The speakers also expressed support for President Biden's ambitious plan to protect 30% of U.S. lands and waters by 2030.

But this week, the anniversary week of the January 6th insurrection, remarks also emphasized issues like respect for the will of voters, gerrymandering, treatment of tribal communities and environmental justice. 

"We care not only about being stewards of the Earth. We believe that each person's voice is sacred, and we express our voice through our vote. Further, we believe it is our duty to protect the voices of our neighbors," said Sarah King, chair of the Arizona Faith Network Earth Care Commission and board member of Arizona Interfaith Power and Light.

Cyndi Tuell, the Arizona/New Mexico director of the Western Watersheds Project, said the environmental community needs to  acknowledge the "extremely harsh, genocidal and racist" history of federal publicly managed lands.

"What we need to do is ask the communities that have been impacted, and that will be impacted, what we can do to help and to stop perpetuating the displacement," she said.

Tuell added that she hopes Biden's program will include tribal communities as coequals in the process rather than as "trustees to be managed by the federal government."

"There is no environmental movement except for the environmental justice movement. And our house is on fire; we need to take action and we need to take urgent action," she said.

Cuba’s vaccine success story sails past mark set by rich world’s Covid efforts

People receive booster doses of the Cuban-developed Abdala 

vaccine against Covid-19 in Havana last month.

 Photograph: Reuters

The island nation struggles to keep the lights on but has inoculated 90% of population with home-developed vaccines

Ed Augustin in Havana
Wed 5 Jan 2022 

General Máximo Gómez, a key figure in Cuba’s 19th-century wars of independence against Spain once said: “Cubans either don’t meet the mark – or go way past it.”

A century and a half later, the aphorism rings true. This downtrodden island struggles to keep the lights on, but has now vaccinated more of its citizens against Covid-19 than any of the world’s major nations.

More than 90% of the population has been vaccinated with at least one dose of Cuba’s homegrown vaccines, while 83% have been fully inoculated. Of countries with populations of over a million, only the United Arab Emirates has a stronger vaccination record.

“Cuba is a victim of magical realism,” said John Kirk, professor emeritus of Latin American studies at Dalhousie University, Canada. “The idea that Cuba, with only 11 million people, and limited income, could be a biotech power, might be incomprehensible for someone working at Pfizer, but for Cuba it is possible.”

Like most Latin American countries, Cuba knew it would struggle to buy vaccines on the international market. So in March 2020, with foreign exchange reserves plummeting due to the loss of tourism revenue and ferocious new US sanctions, the island’s scientists got to work.

A nurse shows a dose of the Soberana-02 Covid-19 vaccine during 

clinical trials in March 2021, 

Photograph: Reuters

The gamble paid off: this spring Cuba became the smallest country in the world to successfully develop and produce its own Covid vaccines. Since then its well-staffed, if dilapidating universal health service, has rolled out injections at a fast clip, inoculating even young children (all vaccination on the island is voluntary).

Both vaccines are over 90% effective, according to Cuban-run clinical trials conducted last spring. Successful rollout has brought infection rates down from among the highest in the western hemisphere last summer to low levels today.


Cuba’s health system buckles under strain of overwhelming Covid surge

Last August the island reported hundreds of Covid deaths per week; last week there were three.

The vaccine success is all the more striking when set against the parlous state of the healthcare service in other areas. With hard currency inflows cut in half over the last two years, antibiotics are now so scarce that 20 pills of amoxicillin trade on the black market for the equivalent of a month’s minimum state salary. Out of plaster cast, doctors in some provinces now resort to wrapping broken bones in used cardboard.

“Ever since the 1959 revolution, Cubans have embarked on these grand crusades which are quixotic yet often successful,” said Gregory Biniowsky, a Havana-based lawyer.

A prime example, Biniowsky said, was Fidel Castro’s pipe dream of investing one billion dollars in biotech after the Soviet Union disintegrated. “Any rational adviser would have said this was not the time to invest resources in something that might bear fruit in 25 years. And yet here we are now … where these fruits of the biotech investment are saving lives.”

Other quests have dramatically failed: the Ten Million Ton Sugar Harvest of 1970 aimed to produce an unprecedented amount of sugar to spur growth. But to cut the cane, workers were pulled from their regular jobs, paralysing industry and wreaking havoc on the economy.

Last year Cuba harvested seven times less sugar than in 1959.

Parents wait to have their children vaccinated with the

 Soberana-02 Covid-19 vaccine, at a clinic in Havana in September 2021. 

Photograph: Ramón Espinosa/AP

“As a nation there’s a tendency to get really good with the big things, and awful at the everyday things,” said Hal Klepak, professor emeritus of history and strategy at the Royal Military College of Canada.

“The whole idea of electrifying the country [in under a decade], abolishing illiteracy in 2.5 years, and medical internationalism – these were all just mad schemes. And they did it.”

Today, Cuba posts tens of thousands of doctors and nurses doing humanitarian work abroad – but fails to grow enough potatoes for the population.

Cuba’s highly centralized, state planning system – one of the last in the world – goes some way to explaining this paradox. When there is political will from the top, objectives can be driven forward; when there’s a lack of direction, the island’s rigid, Kafkaesque bureaucracy can elevate passing the buck to an art form.

“In capitalism you tend to have, even with very little things, somebody to fill the market,” said Klepak. “The difference with Cuba is that for [most economic] decision-making, there isn’t anyone but the state.”

After registering less than 100 cases a day for weeks, infection rates are now rising due to the highly contagious Omicron variant. Cuban scientists have not released data on the efficacy of their vaccines against Omicron but have begun work to update their vaccine against the variant.

In the meantime, the Cuban ministry of public health has fast-tracked its booster campaign, and aims to give almost the entire population an extra shot of vaccine this month.

England’s farmers to be paid to rewild land

Nature recovery schemes are part of post-Brexit subsidies overhaul, but eco campaigners are sceptical

Farmers in areas such as Dartmoor in Devon, where there is a significant rewilding campaign, will be invited to bid for 10-15 pilot projects. 

Photograph: dpe123/Getty/iStockphoto


Fiona Harvey

THE GUARDIAN

Environment correspondent
Thu 6 Jan 2022 

Farmers in England will be given taxpayers’ cash to rewild their land, under plans for large-scale nature recovery projects announced by the government. These will lead to vast tracts of land being newly managed to conserve species, provide habitats for wildlife and restore health to rivers and streams.

Bids are being invited for 10-15 pilot projects, each covering at least 500 hectares and up to 5,000 hectares, to a total of approximately 10,000 hectares in the first two-year phase – about 10 times the size of Richmond Park in London. These pilots could involve full rewilding or other forms of management that focus on species recovery and wildlife habitats.

Rare fauna such as sand lizards, water voles and curlews will be targeted, with the aim of improving the status of about half of the most threatened species in England.


UK farmers urged to set aside 1% of land for wildlife havens

The exact funding has not been disclosed, as bids will be compared to determine value for money before a final decision on which should go ahead is made this summer. However, the total amount available for such schemes is expected to reach £700m to £800m a year by 2028. By 2042, the government aims to have up to 300,000 hectares of England covered by such “landscape recovery” projects – an area roughly the size of Lancashire.

Ministers also plan to offer English farmers payments for “local nature recovery”. The smaller-scale actions taken on their farms could include planting more trees, restoring peatlands or wetlands and leaving space for wildlife habitats. These payments, which will be revealed later this year, should also reach up to £800m a year by 2028.

George Eustice, the secretary of state for environment, food and rural affairs, said the aim was for wildlife and nature protection to run alongside food production as a matter of course for most farmers. He is expected to tell farmers at the Oxford Farming Conference on Thursday: “We want to see profitable farm businesses producing nutritious food and underpinning a growing rural economy, where nature is recovering and people have better access to it. Through our new schemes, we are going to work with farmers and land managers to halt the decline in species, reduce our greenhouse gas emissions, increase woodland, improve water and air quality and create more space for nature.”

As well as the two new schemes – landscape recovery and local nature recovery – farmers will also be able to apply for payments to help them protect their soil and take other basic environmental protection measures, under plans announced last year. Funding for these measures will also reach about £800m a year, as part of the post-Brexit overhaul of the £2.4bn-a-year farming subsidies into a system of “public money for public goods”. This means farmers are paid for making environmental improvements, rather than the amount of land they farm.

The water vole is one of the rare species to be helped by the schemes. 

Photograph: Mark Smith/Alamy

Green campaigners were sceptical over whether the new payments would be enough to meet the government’s aim of halting the loss of wild species abundance and managing 30% of land for the good of nature by 2030, as well as ensuring that farmers help to solve the climate crisis rather than add to it. The Wildlife Trusts, RSPB and National Trust charities said detail on how the schemes would work was still lacking.

Craig Bennett, the chief executive of The Wildlife Trusts, said: “The real test of this agricultural transition is not whether it is a little bit better or moderately better than what came before, but whether it will be enough to deliver on [the government’s targets]. Anything less than that means that this historic opportunity will have been wasted. While we’re hearing the right noises from the government, the devil will be in the detail and the detail is still not published nearly six years after the EU referendum.”

The schemes would fail unless more was done to help farmers move away from intensive practices, said Jo Lewis, the policy and strategy director at the Soil Association. This could include the introduction of ambitious targets for reducing pesticide and fertiliser use.

“These schemes won’t work in isolation. They risk failure if they are forced to compete with mounting commercial pressures that encourage more intensive farming and cheap food production, for which the environment and our health ultimately pay the price,” she said.

Though some are benefiting from high grain prices, many farmers are facing a difficult outlook, with rising input costs, plummeting exports due to Brexit red tape, and potential new competition from prospective importers after post-Brexit trade deals.


Rewilding 5% of England could create 20,000 rural jobs

Martin Lines, the UK chair of the Nature Friendly Farming Network, said that farmers who already take environmental measures were “left in limbo” before the schemes start in 2024. “Government has been running similar environmental stewardship schemes voluntarily for farmers for 20 or 30 years, yet we still have seen huge declines in wildlife. We need these schemes to be bolder and more ambitious, not just delivering more of the same with minor improvements,” he said.

Tenant farmers, who work on about a third of farmed land in the UK, are concerned over how they can access the new schemes. They also fear that their landlords may take advantage of large-scale rewilding to remove their tenancies.

George Dunn, of the Tenant Farmers Association, said: “It is alarming that, after at least three years of discussions with the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, it has no clear plan for access to these schemes by tenant farmers. [Current payments] are being removed while we have a vague commitment for further work to be undertaken on how tenants, and those who use common land, can access schemes. It does feel like we are pushing water uphill.”

Mark Tufnell, the president of the Country Land and Business Association, which represents 28,000 farmers, landowners and rural businesses, said: “The government must also ensure that policy changes look towards domestic food production and security. Britain is already at the forefront of agricultural innovation and animal welfare standards, and we must do more to make certain that our great produce is supported here and abroad. We need to guarantee that profitable agriculture remains a core part of the rural economy and feeds the nation sustainably.”

CRIMINAL CAPITALI$M
Top UK law firm fined record sum for breaching money-laundering rules

Mishcon de Reya agrees to pay fine of £232,500 after investigation by Solicitors Regulation Authority

The entrance to Mishcon de Reya’s offices in London. 

Photograph: Vindice/Alamy


Haroon Siddique and Harry Davies
Thu 6 Jan 2022 

Mishcon de Reya, one of the UK’s most prestigious law firms, has been fined a record amount for committing “serious breaches” of money-laundering rules.

The London-based firm has agreed to pay a fine of £232,500, plus a further £50,000 towards the costs of the investigation, which was carried out by the Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA).

In its decision, published on Wednesday, the regulator said Mishcon de Reya’s conduct had “potential to cause significant harm by facilitating transactions that gave rise to a risk of facilitating money laundering”.

The SRA investigation concerned work the firm carried out for two unnamed individual clients between September 2015 and April 2017, and corporate vehicles connected with the same two individuals.
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The work included the proposed acquisition of two separate entities that had “higher risk of money laundering or terrorist financing” under relevant money-laundering legislation, because they involved companies in high-risk jurisdictions.

The regulator found Mishcon de Reya failed to carry out the required level of due diligence or ongoing monitoring.

Additionally, between 22 July and 28 July 2016, a payment of £965,000 was made into Mishcon de Reya’s client account and three payments – the highest of $1,099,015, equivalent to £810,000 – were made out of it, none of which related to the delivery of services by the firm, contrary to SRA rules that forbid client accounts being used “as a banking facility”.

The firm accepted the SRA’s decision and fine, which is is almost double the previous highest of £124,436, imposed by the regulator on Find My Claims in 2019, for sending six million unsolicited marketing letters to members of the public in respect of mis-sold payment protection insurance (PPI).

A spokesperson for Mishcon de Reya disputed that the fine was the largest imposed by the SRA because the penalty covered two separate investigations rather than one.

The settlement will prevent the investigation looming over the firm as it prepares to float on the London Stock Exchange. The company is expected to seek a value of about £750m, based on typical valuations in the legal sector, a price tag that would make it the largest London-listed law firm, with every member of staff becoming a shareholder.

The firm is known for representing the wealthy, famous and powerful. High-profile cases include acting for Diana, Princess of Wales, during her divorce from Prince Charles and for Gina Miller when she took on the government over whether parliament had to approve the triggering of article 50 after the Brexit vote. Keir Starmer advised the firm while in parliament but ended the relationship when he became shadow Brexit secretary in 2016, subsequently turning down the offer of a lucrative second job with the firm.

The level of the SRA fine was based on 0.25% of turnover, in the middle of the band of up to 0.5%, because the SRA said “the breaches were serious but the risks did not crystallise into causing harm to clients or the wider public interest”. Based on Mishcon de Reya’s turnover of £155m, that would have been equivalent to £387,500 but it was reduced by the maximum allowable 40% discount to reflect mitigating circumstances.

A Mishcon de Reya spokesperson said: “We are pleased to have come to a settlement with the SRA relating to two separate and historic investigations in relation to which we have made appropriate admissions. Mitigating factors such as our cooperation with the SRA throughout the investigations and the corrective action we have taken since to prevent a recurrence have been recognised by the SRA in reaching this outcome.”

Mary Alice Thatch, Publisher Who Won Pardon for the Wilmington 10, Dies at 78

At the helm of The Wilmington Journal, she pushed to cover issues affecting the Black community that had been ignored by the mainstream press.


When Mary Alice Thatch took over the reins of The Wilmington Journal, she saw the Black-owned newspaper as a vital source of information for the city’s Black population and a force that spoke truth to power.

Credit...Paul R. Jervay Jr., via Associated Press

By Clay Risen
Jan. 5, 2022


Mary Alice Thatch, a crusading, third-generation newspaper publisher in North Carolina who led the fight to exonerate 10 civil rights activists wrongly convicted of arson in the 1970s, died on Dec. 28 at a hospital in Durham, N.C. She was 78.

Her daughter Johanna Thatch-Briggs confirmed the death but did not provide a cause.

Ms. Thatch had already had a long career in education when she took over the reins of The Wilmington Journal from her father, Thomas C. Jervay. Like him, she saw the Black-owned newspaper as a vital source of information for the city’s Black population and a force that spoke truth to power, white or otherwise.

“She was particularly committed to making sure that news that often is not represented in the mainstream media was always represented in The Wilmington Journal,” the Rev. Dr. William J. Barber II, a civil-rights leader, said in a phone interview.

Ms. Thatch’s reporters uncovered corruption and took on unchecked gentrification, while The Journal’s editorials pushed for voting rights and education reform. But her greatest achievement came in the early 2010s, when she took up the cause of the so-called Wilmington 10.

A group of nine Black men and one white woman, the Wilmington 10 were convicted in 1971 of dynamiting a white-owned grocery store, then shooting at the firefighters who responded. Although the case against them was flimsy — among other things, three key witnesses for the prosecution recanted their accounts — their appeal failed, and the U.S. Supreme Court declined to review it.

The Wilmington 10 became a cause célèbre. Some 10,000 people joined a protest march in 1977 in Washington, D.C., calling for their release. That same year, Amnesty International embraced them as a cause, and Andrew Young, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, cited them in an interview as an example of domestic political prisoners.

A review by the Department of Justice persuaded Gov. Jim Hunt of North Carolina in 1978 to commute the rest of their sentences, and in 1980, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit overturned the convictions. What remained was for the state to formally exonerate and compensate them through what, in North Carolina, is called a pardon of innocence.

At a 2011 meeting in Washington, Black newspaper publishers, including Ms. Thatch, listened to one of the 10, Dr. Benjamin F. Chavis, plead for their help in publicizing their case.

A few days later, Ms. Thatch called her lead reporter, Cash Michaels, and asked him to oversee a campaign to uncover the truth about the Wilmington 10, and make the case for a formal pardon.

“Being a part of the Black press and knowing that there’s strength in the press, knowing that there’s strength in that pen, I was compelled to fight for justice,” she said in an interview with her husband’s church.

Over several months, Mr. Michaels and his team re-interviewed witnesses and lawyers from the trial, and uncovered damning documents that showed how, for example, the prosecutor, faced with a Black-majority jury, faked illness to get a mistrial, then connived to get a white-majority jury when the case restarted.

Their reporting appeared in The Journal, and it was reprinted in Black newspapers around the country. Other news outlets, including The New York Times, published editorials in support.

What had seemed like history was once again news, and by the end of 2012, pressure was building on Gov. Bev Perdue of North Carolina to issue a pardon of innocence — which she did on Dec. 31, her final day in office.

“Without Ms. Thatch, there would have been a lot less pressure on the governor to do something,” said Kenneth Janken, a historian at Duke University and the author of “The Wilmington Ten: Violence, Injustice, and the Rise of Black Politics in the 1970s” (2016). “I wouldn’t underestimate the power of the press.”



This Jan. 21, 1976, file photo shows the Wilmington 10 at a news conference in Raleigh, North Carolina. From left, front row, they are Chavis, William (Joe) Wright, Connie Tindall and Jerry Jacobs. In the back row are Wayne Moore, Ann Shepard, James McKoy, Willie Vereen, Marvin Patrick and Reginald Epps. 

Credit...Associated Press

Mary Alice Jervay was born on July 6, 1943, in Wilmington. Her family lived in an apartment above The Journal’s offices, and during the day her mother, Willie (DeVane) Jervay, would help with production, as would Mary Alice, before she could even walk.

“My daddy used to say that I started at 3 or 4 months old, when I started crawling around on the floor,” she said in a 2013 interview. “I was hired as the janitor to clean the floor — with my diaper.”

Remembering Hank Aaron, Colin Powell, Stephen Sondheim, Beverly Cleary, DMX, Cicely Tyson, Larry King, Olympia Dukakis, Chuck Close, Michael K. Williams, Bob Dole, Janet Malcolm and many others who died this year.

Her grandfather, R.S. Jervay, had founded the newspaper as The Cape Fear Journal in 1927. It was Wilmington’s first Black-owned paper since The Daily Record, whose offices, once located across the street from where The Journal now stands, were burned down in 1898 when a white supremacist coup overthrew the biracial City Council and killed 24 Black and white residents.

Despite that legacy, Ms. Thatch did not initially pursue journalism as a career. She received a bachelor’s degree in business education from Elizabeth City State University and a master’s degree in the same subject from the University of North Carolina Greensboro. She then worked as a high school teacher in North Carolina and Ohio and as a consultant for the North Carolina State government.

She married John L. Thatch in 1970. Along with him and her daughter, she is survived by two other daughters, Shawn Thatch and Robin Thatch Johnson; seven grandchildren; and seven great-grandchildren.

By the time Ms. Thatch took over from her father in 1996, The Journal had become one of the best-known Black newspapers in the South, widely regarded for its fearlessness in the face of racist violence. A white supremacist had blown up The Journal’s offices in 1973, a calamity that her father quickly brushed off.

“She never forgot how even though the paper’s building was destroyed, he still made sure a paper came out that week,” Mr. Michaels said in an interview. “That’s the sort of strength and resilience she embodied.”

She was honored as publisher of the year in 2013 by the National Newspaper Publishers Association. And she continued to crusade for the Black community in Wilmington: Starting in 2016, she ran a weekly photo of Ebonee Spears, a Wilmington girl who had gone missing, on The Journal’s cover, according to The Charlotte News Observer.

Like most newspapers, The Wilmington Journal has recently faced financial challenges. A campaign in early 2021 raised $95,000, enough for the paper to keep its office building. Where it will go without its indomitable publisher at the helm remains an open question.


Clay Risen is an obituaries reporter for The New York Times. Previously, he was a senior editor on the Politics desk and a deputy op-ed editor on the Opinion desk. He is the author, most recently, of "Bourbon: The Story of Kentucky Whiskey." @risenc

There is nothing wrong with Critical Race Theory… except the name

The term should never have escaped the halls of academe. But, a more appropriate name for it would be the truth.

BONNIE GREER

Children in Virginia protest against Critical Race Theory claiming it teaches white people to see themselves oppressors of Black Americans. 

Photo: ANDREW CABALLERO-REYNOLDS/ AFP via Getty Images.

Critical Race Theory is one of those terms you would be given a promotion for coming up with at some Far Right think tank.

Its beauty, in terms of scaring Republican Party deserters away from the Democrats, is exquisite.

CRT even comes with a bonus for Rightists. Since it is an approach to education, they argue, the Left will end up teaching it to very young children.

That last bit is, of course, nonsense. A Big Scare. But the urban myth is strong enough to have given the Republicans the governor’s mansion in Virginia in November, a state Joe Biden won in 2020 by a comfortable margin.

The Democratic Party candidate made the mistake of saying that parents should not dictate to schools. This triggered a huge backlash built on a fraught year of home-schooling, Covid fatigue, and fear of CRT.

Downstate Virginia was no surprise, but the fact that the suburbs just outside Washington D.C. voted Republican is a real big, fat shock – as well as being really bad news for the midterms next November.

In midterms, the President’s party usually loses the House and Senate, or is handed a reduced majority because the elections are a referendum on the White House.

Some members of the press are already comparing Biden’s administration to Jimmy Carter’s in the 1970s, a near-death experience for the Democrats until another Southerner came to the rescue years later: William Jefferson Clinton.

Recently, I suggested, over a meal with a bunch of friends, that the name of CRT should be changed to something less ominous. I got yelled at. “Why should we have to accommodate them,” I was asked.

Why indeed? Well, there is the little matter of votes. Of winning. Of keeping the Republican Party, now almost feral at its grassroots, away from the levers of federal power.

Because the USA is not a great place right now.

Critical Race Theory emerged from legal studies, borrowing analysis of what lay at the foundation of the United States. These legal studies consider race to be at the core of the American experience, and of course, this is correct.

A look at the life of George Floyd, for example, makes this easy to see. Floyd was a descendant of enslaved people who were then allowed to be sharecroppers. He was raised by a single mother who did her best in a neighbourhood from which the white people had fled and therefore the investment, the services, the whole nine yards had disappeared.

He grew up on a decaying Houston housing estate where the young were used to the cops showing up to harass, not to help. His secondary school was underfunded and underperforming, not able to prepare him for the world.

His minor offences got him serious jail time, and his record kept him from being hired. He spent a quarter of his life incarcerated in a criminal justice system that, CRT rightly points out, targets African-Americans and other people of colour.

His longest time inside was spent in a private prison in a predominately white town that got a third of its revenue from having that prison in its midst. That state and federal cash gave plenty of incentive for keeping that prison full to the brim.

He was a victim of several of the ailments that afflict the poor, and poor African-Americans, and he had Covid-19, too. He committed robbery and had a drug problem. He admitted in a video that he was not perfect. But that he was trying.

What Critical Race Theory explains is that the United States is a white settler country. That it is a country settled by Europeans fleeing oppression of all kinds, many just looking for an opportunity and a new start.

The United States favoured, and still does favour, people with white skin. James Baldwin, for example, said that the Irish did not know that they were white until they came to America.

Now, with the nation inevitably and irreversibly becoming a minority/ majority country whose main religion may be “other”, we are witnessing the death of a demographic.

The Unite the Right march in Charlottesville in 2017, where white men chanted: “Jews will not replace us. You will not replace us, ” and the sack of the Capitol in January 2021 are evidence of the death throes of what Trump labels MAGA: Make America Great Again.

The not-so-subtle subtext is “Make America White Again.”

CRT names and nails all of this, but as a producer once told a robust, young, male star-in-the-making: “Look, I know what your real name is. But you can’t use it. You can’t call yourself Marion.”

So the star-to-be renamed himself John Wayne. The package is still the same, you just don’t get put off by the handle.

But I’m afraid that the name Critical Race Theory will stay because there are people out there who believe that to change it would be capitulation and worse.

Yet, unless we listen to those women who call themselves “suburban housewives” and say it with pride, the Far Right will continue to be the political Covid of the Republican Party and maybe of the Conservatives here in the UK. That spells big trouble.

This all matters because the Conservatives are in power here and the Republicans will probably be back in power over there. I have no alternative name to replace Critical Race Theory, a term that should never have escaped the halls of academe.

But when I think of it, it should just be called “The Truth”.

The collapse of American democracy is the greatest threat of our times

The storming of Capitol Hill a year ago has changed how the rest of the century will pan out. Make no mistake, it was an insurrection.

 

A pro-Trump protester carries the lectern of U.S. Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi through the Roturnda of the U.S. Capitol Building. Photo; Win McNamee/Getty Images

PAUL MASON

A year after the storming of Capitol Hill it’s now clear: this was an event that will shape the rest of the century, not just for Americans but for everyone else on earth. Because this was no mere riot. It was an insurrection.

And though it failed, it has opened the prospect of a permanently fragile US democracy. America is now a state where, every four years, two bitterly hostile political tribes will contest the legitimacy of the elected leader, until something breaks.

Most people are still unaware of how close Trump came to cancelling the result of the election he lost. But the details are coming thick and fast, through memoirs, court documents and a Congressional investigation.

We are certain that Trump’s strategy was to force Mike Pence to enact a vice-presidential coup on 6 January. The plan was set out by his advisor, John Eastman, and co-ordinated from a “command centre” in the historic Willard Hotel by Trump’s close aides Rudy Giuliani and Steve Bannon.

Seven Republican-controlled states, where the Democrats had won, would submit “alternative” results; Pence would set those states’ results aside, leaving Trump with a 10-vote majority in the electoral college. In the ensuing furore the whole election would be thrown back to state legislatures – leaving Trump as President.

---

You only need to imagine the outrage that would have triggered to understand why Trump needed an angry mass of people on hand.

Trump’s campaign organisations funnelled money into the mobilisation on the day; Trump himself – in an unscripted departure from his speech – urged people to march on Congress and “fight like hell”.

Evidence against the 52 rioters facing conspiracy charges – from the far-right Proud Boys organisation and from the Oath Keepers militia – shows they thought they were there to storm the legislature and take hostages.

No-one knows the motives of the masked man who left two pipe bombs at the two party HQs on the day, because – despite extensive video footage of his actions – he has not been found.

The question remains: was there a direct chain of command between Trump’s people and the insurrectionists? But it’s a secondary question.

It is already clear that, while the violence unfolded, Trump and Giuliani made calls to at least one Republican senator, urging him to delay ratification of Biden as president. That suggests Trump was actively using the pressure of the mob – who at this very moment were roaming the corridors of Congress looking for lawmakers to attack – to achieve his plan.

That is the issue the Congressional 6 January Committee is homing in on: “conspiracy to prevent, hinder or delay the execution of any law” is a criminal offence in the USA.

In response, both Bannon and Trump’s chief of staff Mark Meadows have refused to testify before it – placing themselves legally at risk of prosecution. Meanwhile there have been no prosecutions, nor even announcements of investigations, into the political figures who designed and implemented the attempted coup.

And that is the potential democracy killer. Trump’s allies have wasted no time during 2021, passing laws to deter voting, to gerrymander electoral districts and to politicise the vote-counting mechanisms at the next election. They are determined to engineer a victory for Trump, or a surrogate candidate in 2024, even as his electoral base of elderly white racists shrinks due to demographic change.

At state level, meanwhile, they are mounting blatant challenges – to abortion rights and to anti-racist teaching in schools – designed to neuter the power of the federal government to uphold the civil rights guaranteed in The Constitution. In response, the US state has merely prosecuted the small fry from January 6th. So, in effect, the insurrection continues.

And this is no elite pastime. There is now a mass movement in America engaged in what I’ve called “performative self-deception” – people determined to believe and act upon the myths of white supremacy, anti-feminism, science denial over Covid and climate change; and addicted to disinformation. This was the movement lampooned to cruelly, and so scarily, in the Netflix movie Don’t Look Up.

In the long-term it’s a question of dissuading them. In the short term they have to be defeated – politically, legally and where necessary using law enforcement. That’s what the German-American legal scholar Karl Loewenstein meant in the 1930s when he urged Western leaders to adopt a “militant democracy” in the face of fascism.

Until we take insurrection decisively off the American political agenda, the instability of USA will go on destabilising the world. The Afghan fiasco happened, ultimately, because Joe Biden needs to be more concerned with defending Washington against men with guns, than defending Kabul. Likewise, Russia’s threat to invade Ukraine is strengthened by the fact that a divided USA cannot project meaningful geopolitical power.

At no point since 1945 have Western democracies faced a threat as bleak as this. The threat lies not in the rise of China or the belligerence of Russia: the emergence of great power rivalries is now a fact, and we can deal with it.

The threat is the collapse of democracy in America, with all the domino-effects that would create for ourselves and our European neighbours.

Paul’s latest book How To Stop Fascism is published by Penguin.

How disinformation around Jan. 6 riot has downplayed violence, divided Americans

Jan 5, 2022 
By —Amna Nawaz
By —Courtney Norris

NPR

The attack on the U.S. Capitol was based on a “Big Lie” about election fraud in 2020, and the hope of supporters of former President Donald Trump that they could stop the certification of electoral vote results. But in the year since, there's been a new misinformation campaign to recast, downplay, and misrepresent the events that unfolded at the capitol. Amna Nawaz reports.

Read the Full Transcript


Judy Woodruff:

The attack on the U.S. Capitol nearly one year ago was based on a big lie about election fraud in 2020 and the hope of supporters for former President Trump that they could stop the certification of electoral vote results.

But starting that day, there's been a new misinformation campaign to recast, downplay, and misrepresent the events that unfolded at the Capitol.

Amna Nawaz reports.


Amna Nawaz:

They broke through barricades, assaulted police, smashed their way into the Capitol, and sent lawmakers into hiding.

Yet, even as the attack was playing out, there were already alternative narratives being spun about who was to blame.

Laura Ingraham, FOX News:

There are some reports that Antifa sympathizers may have been sprinkled throughout the crowd.

Drew Hernandez, Investigative Reporter:

Possibly Antifa insurrectionists possibly could have infiltrated some of these movements and maybe instigated some of this.

Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL):

The Washington Times has just reported some pretty compelling evidence from a facial recognition company showing that some of the people who breached the Capitol today were not Trump supporters. They were masquerading as Trump supporters and, in fact, were members of the violent terrorist group Antifa.

David Graham, Staff Writer, "The Atlantic": In the first hours and days afterward, you could see Trump and his allies and supporters sort of groping for what the appropriate narrative was.


Amna Nawaz:

David Graham is a staff writer at "The Atlantic" magazine.


David Graham:

So, on the one hand, you had Trump coming out with his video on the day of saying: We love you, but now go home.

But you also saw people saying, oh, this is agitators, it was Antifa, it was Black Lives Matter.


Amna Nawaz:

That despite contemporaneous texts between pundits on FOX and the White House showing they thought Trump supporters were responsible.

When subsequent arrests confirmed that publicly, the narrative on the right shifted to downplay the violence that day.

Here's former President Trump on FOX in March.

Donald Trump, Former President of the United States: Right from the start, it was zero threat. Look, they went in. They shouldn't have done it. Some of them went in and they're hugging and kissing the police and the guards.


Rep. Andrew Clyde (R-GA):

There was no insurrection. And to call it an insurrection, in my opinion, is a bold-faced lie.


Amna Nawaz:

Republican Congressman Andrew Clyde at a hearing in May.


Rep. Andrew Clyde:

You know, if you didn't know the TV footage was a video from January the 6th, you would actually think it was a normal tourist visit.


David Graham:

It was strange to see somebody like Congressman Andrew Clyde, who — of Georgia, who we saw in videos and footage from January 6 helping to bar the doors, suddenly saying, well, these were just tourists, they were walking through.


Amna Nawaz:

Another recurrent theme, shifting focus away from January 6 and towards protests for Black Lives Matter the year before.

Republican Congressman Clay Higgins of Louisiana:


Rep. Clay Higgins (R-LA):

Nineteen people died during BLM riots last year. Hundreds and hundreds were injured; 2,000 police officers were injured from BLM riots last year.


Amna Nawaz:

Voices on the right have also recast those awaiting trial for their part in the attack as political prisoners.

Here's Republican Congressman Paul Gosar of Arizona last month:


Rep. Paul Gosar (R-AZ):

These are dads, brothers, veterans, teachers, all political prisoners who continue to be persecuted and endure the pain of unjust suffering.


Amna Nawaz:

So too with the death of Ashli Babbitt, the Air Force veteran shot by Capitol Police as she attempted to breach the speaker's lobby.

Here's Republican Representative Jody Hice of Georgia in May:


Rep. Jody Hice (R-GA):

In fact, it was Trump supporters who lost their lives that day, not Trump supporters who were taking the lives of others.


Amna Nawaz:

Former President Trump reinforced that in a July interview on FOX.


Donald Trump:

Who was the person who shot an innocent, wonderful, incredible woman, a military woman?


David Graham:

The idea that they were all motivated by these good intentions, they believed the election was stolen, which, of course, was false — it was a lie that had been peddled to them by the president and many of his allies — but they were going in and they wanted to stand up for what was right, that they were sort of like the American revolutionaries or like the Confederate rebels, who wanted to really uphold the best of the Constitution.


Amna Nawaz:

In an October piece in "The Atlantic," Graham explored this idea, how those who committed criminal acts to stop a democratic process have been recast by the far right as heroes, patriots and martyrs for a just cause, much like the Confederate soldiers celebrated by the mythology of the Lost Cause.

The fact that those people are referred to by some in these circles as patriots, what does that do to the narrative?


David Graham:

It makes them into the heirs of what was right. It turns something that was one of the darker moments in American history into one of the brighter ones, into a moment of unity and rebellion against what's wrong and standing up for what's right, which I think is really dangerous.

If we can turn that something that's an assault on a constitutional process into a moment of triumph and a moment of — a sort of lodestar for what's to come, I think that doesn't bode well for American democracy.


Amna Nawaz:

These efforts could be working.

An NPR/"NewsHour"/Marist poll conducted last month showed a sharp partisan divide over how Americans view what happened on January 6, the legitimacy of investigations into it, and decreasing blame for President Trump, even as the former president continues to push the lie at the heart of January 6.

The durability of that lie, where does that fit into sort of the larger misinformation campaign, the very thing that brought people out on January 6 in the first place?


David Graham:

Well, it's essential to the legitimacy of Trump as a political actor today.

If he's somebody who had the election stolen from him, that makes him still a sort of heroic figure and a more legitimate leader perhaps than Joe Biden, in the eyes of his supporters. And that makes it — that enables a lot of other information.


Amna Nawaz:

Information or, more accurately, misinformation questioning or undermining everything from measures to stop the spread of COVID-19, to the safety and efficacy of vaccines, from bogus stories about vaccines tracking and controlling Americans, to campaigns to stop teachers from talking about race or racism in schools.


David Graham:

So, when people in the Trumpist orbit spread misinformation about Joe Biden, or they spread misinformation about vaccines or about COVID, all of these spring from his legitimacy as the real elected leader, which depends on the lie of the election being stolen.


Amna Nawaz:

For more on the misinformation surrounding January 6 and how it's spread and evolved, I'm joined by two people who track and study just that.

Jennifer Kavanagh is a senior political strategist at the RAND Corporation. She co-authored the book "Truth Decay" about the rise of misinformation. And Claire Wardle is the U.S. director of First Draft. That's a nonprofit that tracks misinformation online.

Welcome to you both, and thank you for being here.

Claire, I will begin with you.

As we just saw, immediately after the Capitol attack, there were already alternative narratives being spun, despite live pictures, live reports, people seeing it in real time.

In our latest "NewsHour"/NPR/Marist poll, it shows a divide on how Americans saw that day; 89 percent of Democrats say January 6 was an insurrection, was a threat to democracy, but only 10 percent of Republicans agree with that.

How does that happen, Claire?


Claire Wardle, U.S. Director, First Draft:

Because there was a foundation being laid all the way through 2020, and then from Election Day onwards.

This Stop the Steal narrative was emerging, this idea that the election was not safe, that the election was stolen. There was this drip, drip, drip throughout November and December. And so, when we had the events of January, very quickly, very smart people began shaping these narratives that already had a foundation that made sense to people who wanted to believe a certain world view.


Amna Nawaz:

Jennifer, talk to me about the role of news and journalism in all this, because you have studied this about the declining trust in news, Americans' skepticism around news.

How much do you think that contributed to people being willing to say, what you're reporting, what you're showing me, I don't believe?


Jennifer Kavanagh, RAND Corporation:

I think it played a big role.

I mean, people get their information from specific sources. And when they see information coming to them from sources that they don't trust, they tend to discard that information.

It's also really hard to change people's minds once they have made it up. So, when people see additional information coming at them that contradicts that, they're not ready to discard what they have been believing for months or what they have been hearing from their trusted figures.

So, the fact that people have such low trust in media plays a big role in their lack of — their lack of ability to change their mind, and the difficulty that we face in trying to spread accurate information after the fact.


Amna Nawaz:

Claire, we know one of the main ways in which that information was spread even well before the Capitol attack was on social media, right?

We saw even leading up to that day the whole Stop the Steal narrative, how those groups not only organized online, but then mobilized online, got people to show up in real life to commit criminal acts after that organization.

What responsibility lies with the companies behind those social media platforms?


Claire Wardle:

When you look back at the timeline, it was only September of 2020 when Twitter started marking as false tweets from the president, for example, saying that the votes couldn't be trusted.

So, I think the platforms were — absolutely weren't ready for this. And then, as we saw on essentially January 7 and 8, they panicked and, like dominoes, they all started changing their policies and deplatforming.

But the disinformation ecosystem is really participatory and engaging. And that's what's happening on these platforms. Not that much has changed in a year. And that's what we should be more worried about, not to see it as a one-off, and what changes have the platforms made? And I would say, not enough.


Amna Nawaz:

So, Jennifer, you have used this phrase truth decay in your work, and nowhere have we seen that more potently than when it comes to the pandemic and disinformation on social media and other places around the efficacy of vaccines and the efficacy of mitigation measures.

And these are all things that are backed by science. They're backed by data. But, as you lay out, there's declining trust in those two things. So, can that decay, as you lay it out, can it be reversed?


Jennifer Kavanagh:

Well, the challenge is that disinformation tends to have an emotional component. As Claire described, it's participatory. It becomes part of the believer's identity.

And so, trying to reverse the decay, as you described, is not simple. It's very, very challenging, because you're actually having to break into people's world view and change how they see the world. This is a challenge for a whole range of stakeholders.

Social media companies are one. Researchers and scientists are another. How do we make data, whether it's about vaccines or COVID or election integrity, how we do make that data, that narrative compelling to people who are not inclined to believe it?

One piece of that is thinking about who provides the messages. There's a concept of strategic messengers, trusted people within communities that are vulnerable or at risk for believing conspiracies and disinformation.

I think election integrity is one of those cases where identifying allies within the communities that are vulnerable to that information is a challenge. And I don't think it's a challenge that has been addressed yet, which is why this — the conspiracies and disinformation around the 2020 election continue to thrive.


Amna Nawaz:

Claire, you have also done some work on this about how people can arm themselves, right, how they can outsmart misinformation or disinformation campaigns, whether it is around elections or political candidates or vaccines or the pandemic.

What are some of those tactics? What should people know?


Claire Wardle:

What the research shows is, whilst it's important to have fact-checking, what we should be doing is actually, rather than focusing on the individual rumor or conspiracy, teaching people the tactics of those who are trying to manipulate them, because what the research shows is, whoever you are, whatever your political persuasion or even education level, nobody wants to believe that they're being hoaxed or fooled.

So, the more that communities can work with each other to teach them, well, if you see a text message that says, my brother works for the government and he's telling me, dot, dot, dot, an anecdote, as Jennifer just said, that, in itself, teaching people, well, just be a little bit more savvy about that, because that's a known tactic.

So, the more we can teach people tactics and techniques, rather than waiting for the rumor and then kind of playing Whac-A-Mole, we're actually seeing the research show that's a much more effective way of building the resilience that means that, when they see misinformation, they're more likely to identify it as that.


Amna Nawaz:

Claire, I have to ask, after all the work you have done — and, Jennifer, I will ask the same thing of you — with misinformation and disinformation so prolific, now being pronounced and perpetuated from even the highest office in the land at times, do you have hope that that can be brought back under control?


Claire Wardle:

I still have hope. Otherwise, I wouldn't get up every day.

But I think what we have to realize is, this is a very long game. I'd say, this is the battle of our lives for the next 20 to 30 years around climate, elections, vaccines, health. And we need to start thinking that this is a long game. There's no quick fix. We can't just shift the Facebook algorithm and make it all go away.


Amna Nawaz:

Jennifer, what about you?


Jennifer Kavanagh:

I agree with Claire.

I think it's important to recognize that this — that the challenge that we face now has evolved over several decades. And it's going to take just as long to figure out a way to manage the situation, so really thinking about this as a — from a holistic perspective, and understanding that, whatever future we work to, that's hopefully better than what than what we face today.

It's not going to look the same as 20 or 30 years ago. The goal isn't to put the cat back in the bag. The goal is to figure out sort of what we want online spaces to look like, what we want our society to look like, and how we want to interact in that way.

I guess that's what gives me hope, is thinking that we can — we can work towards that better future, rather than thinking about how we make things go back to the way they were.


Amna Nawaz:

That is Jennifer Kavanagh and Claire Wardle.

Thank you so much to both of you for joining us.


Claire Wardle:

Thank you.


Jennifer Kavanagh:

Thanks for having me.