It’s possible that I shall make an ass of myself. But in that case one can always get out of it with a little dialectic. I have, of course, so worded my proposition as to be right either way (K.Marx, Letter to F.Engels on the Indian Mutiny)
Thursday, March 17, 2022
Death toll from Cyclone Gombe in Mozambique rises to 53
More than 400,000 people affected, infrastructure destroyed, official data shows
News Service March 17, 2022 File photo
The death toll from Tropical Cyclone Gombe in Mozambique’s northern Nampula province has risen to 53, authorities said Thursday.
Cyclone Gombe, which also hit Madagascar, the world's second-largest island country in the Indian Ocean, and Malawi, a landlocked country in southeastern Africa, last week, made landfall in Mozambique last Friday, with winds exceeding 200 kilometers (125 miles) per hour.
The deaths recorded in the Nampula province were caused by collapsed houses and other damaged infrastructure, Mety Gondola, a senior provincial official, told reporters.
"At least 31 deaths were confirmed at the Lunga administrative post alone in the Mossuril district," he said, adding that "other deaths were recorded across other affected areas."
"Lunga is still cut off from the rest of the province due to the destruction of access roads. But local authorities are working to determine the final number of casualties," he added.
Officials believe that the death toll could be higher in the hardest-hit districts of Mogincual, Mozambique Island, Monapo, and Mossuril, as damage assessments continue.
At least 400,175 people were affected, corresponding to 77,279 families, and 74,952 houses were partially or totally damaged, according to data provided by Mozambique's National Institute for Disaster Risk Management and Reduction.
Bridges, water installations, 41 health units, 2,714 power stations, and 691 classrooms across 301 schools were also destroyed, affecting 75,607 students.
Meanwhile, the cyclone made its way to Malawi, killing five people, according to Malawi's Department of Disaster Management Affairs.
Four of the victims were from the Machinga district, and the fifth was a 28-year-old man from the Mangochi district who was reportedly washed away by a raging river.
The cyclone unleashed heavy rains on the country, causing floods and destroying several infrastructures.
Earlier last week before moving to Mozambique, the cyclone struck north of Madagascar, leaving two people dead and 935 affected.
InDeath toll from Cyclone Gombe in Mozambique rises to 53
More than 400,000 people affected, infrastructure destroyed, official data shows
Somalia faces severe humanitarian crisis aggravated by climate change, warns UN envoy
Horn of Africa country urgently needs donations at this critical time, says UN's James Swan
News Service March 17, 2022 The Special Representative of the UN Secretary-General
and Head of the United Nations Assistance Mission in Somalia : James Swan
Somalia faces a severe humanitarian crisis that has been aggravated by climate change, the UN envoy to the country told Anadolu Agency in an exclusive interview.
“Somalia has had chronic humanitarian challenges. They are currently being aggravated further by the impact of climate change in a very fragile environment,” James Swan said on the sidelines of Turkiye’s three-day Antalya Diplomacy Forum (ADF), with Anadolu Agency as the global communications partner.
The year 2022 is particularly critical as it is the fourth consecutive year of below-average rainfall and harvest, Swan added, noting that over half of the country’s population of 15 million is in dire need of humanitarian assistance.
Against this background, Somalia and the UN prepared a joint action plan to address this severe crisis, stressed Swan, a former US diplomat with extensive experience in Africa.
The plan, he said, includes “an appeal to the donor community to support Somalia. Donors have historically been very generous in Somalia, and we count on their continuing generosity to help people in need in Somalia.”
- Improvements, yet more still needed
Reiterating that the country urgently needs donations at this critical time, Swan said some $1.45 billion is being sought to cover Somalis’ pressing need for food, shelter, and other kinds of aid.
He added that over 20 UN agencies – including the World Food Program (WHO), UNICEF, and the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) – have been working not only to respond to the humanitarian needs of the population but also to advance the development agenda and build a democratic and stable country.
To this end, the UN is keeping in constant touch with the Turkish ambassador and other ambassadors and friends of Somalia, Swan said.
Ties between Turkiye and Somalia have grown stronger in recent years, helped along by cooperation on issues such as security and considerable aid to the Horn of Africa country.
Citing, in particular, the country’s security apparatus, Swan praised recent improvements in Somalia.
“Somalia has made great progress in recent decades, and particularly over the last 12 years or so, in being able to have institutions that function (including) federal member states that have been created over the last decade, as well as increasingly functional ministries and other administrative services,” he said.
He cautioned, however, that a great deal more institution building and political reform still has to happen, including the conclusion of elections as early as possible, referring to parliamentary elections that started last November and were set to end this month.
“We're at a critical moment in Somalia as it nears the conclusion of its electoral process. It is important that that be completed soon and with a high degree of credibility,” Swan urged.
“It's important for Somalia's leaders to complete this political process and returned to the urgent business of addressing the key priorities of the Somali people in the coming years.”
Thousands protest soaring prices in Sudan Protesters blame military takeover for difficult Living conditions in Sudan
News Service March 17, 2022
Thousands of Sudanese demonstrated in the capital Khartoum on Thursday to protest price hikes and poor living conditions.
Protesters gathered near the presidential palace in Khartoum, raising banners condemning difficult economic conditions, according to an Anadolu Agency reporter on the ground.
Last week, the Sudanese government devaluated the local currency to reach 610 Sudanese pound against dollar. Authorities defended the move as necessary to unify the exchange rate in the country.
“Living conditions are deteriorating every day,” Walid Ahmed, a 51-year-old engineer, told Anadolu Agency.
“Prices in the local market are skyrocketing these days ,” he said. “Living conditions have become too bad and the expenses of the very basic needs are no longer bearable for us as ordinary citizens.”
“The government has lifted the subsidy of fuel, electricity, flour and cooking gas,” Ahmed said. “This all affected the markets amid absence of any kind of monitoring by the authorities.”
Sarah Hussein, 30, blamed the military takeover for the difficult living conditions in Sudan.
“The military coup is responsible for this economic deterioration,” she said.
“There are a lot of sanctions reimposed on the country and international donors and aid organizations have withheld billions of dollars that were supposed to be flown into the country before the coup” Hussein said.
Sudan has been in turmoil since Oct. 25, 2021, when the military dismissed Prime Minister Abdalla Hamdok's transitional government and declared a state of emergency, in a move decried by political groups as a “military coup.”
Prior to the military takeover, Sudan was governed by a sovereign council of military and civilian officials tasked with overseeing the transition period until elections in 2023.
Thousands protest violence against protesters in Sudan
Demonstrators denounce use of force by security forces
News Service March 15, 2022 File photo
Thousands demonstrated in the Sudanese capital, Khartoum, on Tuesday to protest violence against protesters and demand full civilian rule.
Protesters gathered near the presidential palace in Khartoum, amid chants condemning the use of force by security forces against demonstrators, according to an Anadolu Agency reporter on the ground.
Protesters also waved banners demanding full civilian rule and the release of political detainees.
Tuesday’s demonstration was called by the Resistance Committees, a protest group that led demonstrations against the military,.
Similar protests were staged on Monday in Khartoum and other cities, during which 133 protesters were injured, according to the Central Committee of the Sudanese Doctors.
There was no comment from the Sudanese authorities on the report.
Sudan has been in turmoil since Oct. 25, 2021, when the military dismissed Prime Minister Abdalla Hamdok's transitional government and declared a state of emergency, in a move decried by political groups as a “military coup”.
Prior to the military takeover, Sudan was governed by a sovereign council of military and civilian officials tasked with overseeing the transition period until elections in 2023.
Arab Council backs right of Syrians to determine their future
Syria marks 11th year since 2011 protests
News Service March 17, 2022 File photo
The Arab Council on Thursday reiterated full support for the right of the Syrian people to determine their future.
The human rights body made the commitment on the occasion of the 11th anniversary of the Syrian revolution, which began in March 2011 when popular protests demanding the departure of President Bashar al-Assad were repressed militarily, plunging the country into a devastating civil war.
The anniversary comes "amid the continuous collapse of the living, economic and security conditions of the Syrian people,” Moncef Marzouki, the council’s chairman, said in a statement.
Marzouki, a former president of Tunisia, decried the situation of millions of Syrians who remain “scattered in refugee camps, exile, and prisons” and continue to be “exposed to the most dangerous and dirtiest war of extermination during the past decades."
He stressed the council’s “full support for the right of the Syrian people to determine their future, to get rid of dictatorship, and to (their right to) freedom, dignity and sovereignty,” and called on all Syrians to "adhere to the eternal principles and values of their revolution."
The former Tunisian leader also urged the international community "to end the refugee crisis and enable all Syrians to return to their cities and homes without fear of reprisals or vengeance."
*Writing by Ibrahim Mukhtar
ELECTIONS DO NOT MEAN DEMOCRACY Convictions of Cambodian opposition leaders draws criticism from rights groups
Local security personnel try to grab a banner from supporters of the Cambodia National Rescue Party in front of the Phnom Penh Municipal Court Thursday in Phnom Penh, Cambodia.Heng Sinith/AP
A Cambodian court has convicted 19 political opposition leaders of trying to overthrow the government, following a case that one human rights group has described as a "bogus."
The Phnom Penh Municipal Court on Thursday found the members of the now-dissolved Cambodian National Rescue Party (CNRP), and one member's relative, guilty of incitement, attempting to incite military personnel to disobey and conspiracy, the AP reports. Seven defendants, including former CNRP leader Sam Rainsy, currently living abroad were tried in absentia. All face five to 10 years in prison.
The convictions received swift condemnation from Human Rights Watch, one of the many advocacy groups that have long criticized Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen's treatment of political opponents.
"PM Hun Sen and the ruling party are using these bogus trials to shut the door on any possible return of exiled CNRP leaders, and to hack out any remaining roots of the opposition party in the country by imprisoning those politicians and activists who dare remain in Cambodia," Phil Robertson, deputy Asia director of HRW, told NPR.
"This is all about making sure the CNRP networks are thoroughly crushed before the commune elections scheduled in June so there can be no possible political challenges," he said.
The prosecution accused the defendants of conspiring to topple the current government run by Prime Minister Hun Sen on a list of occasions, including using the pandemic to undermine the current regime's credibility by disseminating untrue and inflammatory information.
"This is a sick trick. [They] use rights of freedom of expression but this freedom of expression was hidden behind a trick," deputy prosecutor Seng Heang said during the trial, according to VOD English.
The group was also accused have having a "secret network" and blamed for the partial suspension of the European Union's "Everything But Arms" trade agreement with Cambodia, which was revoked in 2020 over human and labor rights concerns.
"The justice system has again been used as a blunt political tool in an attempt to quash opposition to Hun Sen's dictatorship. Opposing dictators is a duty, not a crime," Sam Rainsy, the exiled CNRP leader who's lived in France since 2005, tweeted in reaction to Thursday's convictions.
His unsuccessful attempt to return to Cambodia in 2019 was also cited by the prosecutor as an example of the opposition trying to rally the people to overthrow the government. Rainsy blames Prime Minister Hun Sen of blocking him from the country and has since vowed to attempt another homecoming.
This latest trial is just the first of several expected mass trials, following the Cambodian government's 2020 prosecution of hundreds of political dissidents and activists.
Hun Sen, a former Khmer Rouge commander, has been in office for more than three decades. Over the years, human rights groups have accused Hun Sen of cracking down, with increasing pressure, on dissidents, the media and rights organizations that he accuses of trying to topple his government.
In 2017, Cambodia saw the most severe government repression in nearly 20 years, Joshua Kurlantzick, senior fellow for Southeast Asia at the Council on Foreign Relations, told NPR. That year, one of Cambodia's largest English daily newspapers was shuttered for supposedly owing back taxes, main opposition leader Kem Sokah was detained and his opposition CNRP party dissolved. Experts say this was likely all in response to the growing popularity of the opposition movement.
In national elections the following year, Hun Sen's ruling Cambodian People's Party (CPP) won all 125 parliamentary seats. The next election parliamentary elections are slated for 2023.
"Cambodia's politicized courts have facilitated Prime Minister Hun Sen's effort to destroy the last remnants of democratic freedoms and civil and political rights in the country," Robertson said in a separate statement released by HRW. "Concerned governments should do all they can to reverse this assault on the Cambodian people."
Meshwar Siti: Touring Palestine through folksong and tradition
Celebrated Palestinian singer Dalal Abu Amneh is the presenter of the show Meshwar Siti, which pays tribute to Palestine's rich folk music tradition as she takes the audience on a historical, and song-filled, tour of Palestine's cities.
What is unique about Meshwar Siti is that it doesn't use the conventional format for this type of show – where the presenter typically sits in a closed studio, meeting and interviewing guests there. Instead, she invites viewers to join her as she visits an array of Palestinian cities, where she meets with old women living there, who have remembered and preserved the local folk songs.
Some of these traditional songs have lyrics that throw light on the social customs and activities of bygone days, while for others the content is nationalistic, with a focus on the Palestinian homeland.
"She invites viewers to join her as she visits an array of Palestinian cities, where she meets with old women living there, who have remembered and preserved the local folk songs"
Discovering the local history through song
Dalal takes the bus, always accompanied by a troupe of women from her hometown Nazareth, who sing throughout the journey to their destination. In each town, viewers will learn fascinating details of the local history, especially that of the folk singing traditions, through a researcher and a local guide, and the women chat about the stories behind the often little-known songs.
Dalal says to Al-Araby Al-Jadeed, The New Arab's Arabic-language sister publication: "Another project I was doing, Ya Siti, began seven years ago, and met with huge success. We started by visiting countries around the world, like Canada, America, and some European countries. There, we sang on stage with Palestinian women from the diaspora, as well as our team from Nazareth. From here the idea developed to turn into the TV show Meshwar Siti."
Palestine: A prominent cultural centre
She adds: "In Meshwar Siti, we tell the stories of the Palestinian cities through their folk songs, especially picking those which reveal details about the customs and traditions of women. We look at Palestine through the eyes of these women."
When asked if the programme is making a political statement, Dalal explains: "We are working to elevate the status of Palestine and its people in the eyes of the Arab peoples; Palestinians are a people with a rich heritage, history, inheritance, and civilisation.
"Before the Nakba, Palestine was home to a prominent artistic and cultural movement – it was a major centre of culture which many writers and artists visited."
The programme is also aimed at Palestinians in the diaspora, explains Dalal, for helping them maintain a link to their ancestral land - this heritage is shared by every Palestinian. The shared heritage of the Shami region
She continues: "Many elements of Palestine's musical heritage are shared with the other Shami (Levantine) countries, and the fertile crescent region more broadly. We have received letters about this, pointing out the similarity of some of these songs with others from the area. This whole region has a shared civilisation and heritage. As for me, I would define myself as Palestinian, Shami, and Arab."
"Sometimes people look down on traditions, customs and culture which has been passed down – they view these things as inferior and don't value them. However, folk music has a deep power over the human mind"
The singer gives an example: "The song Ya Mima Houshi was originally composed by Dawood Hosni (1870-1937), and Monirah El-Mahdiyyah sang it (both were Egyptian). In Nazareth, they also have this song, but with minor adaptations and changes in the words – which give it a local feel."
The innate power of folk songs
Dalal points to the fact that the simple elements which shape traditional folk songs are highly effective and the genre has an innate and influential power: "Sometimes people look down on traditions, customs and culture which has been passed down, they view these things as inferior and don't value them. However, folk music has a deep power over the human mind – it actually has an impact on the brain".
She says that although the origin of many of the songs is unknown, a lot of them go back at least 120 years, "passed down the generations through gatherings and get-togethers."
She adds: "Folk songs usually feature a repeating melody, which is a tradition drawn from old religious singing practices. For example, the melody of Hal-Asmar Al-lown ("this brown colour"), is originally from an ancient byzantine song."
Palestinian women: Guardians of this heritage
On the challenges Dalal faced in making the show, like her search for women who had preserved this cultural heritage and knew its secrets and stories, she says: "I had to find women of the older generation. This music was passed down orally and represents a crucial part of our oral history. After I had found these women, we listened to their songs. We don’t make any changes to the songs' basic structure or essence, and keep the same rhythms and flow in singing – we just arrange them a bit differently to give a fresh feel."
As for her female companions from Nazareth, who appear in every episode, she says: "They play a fundamental role in the show; they give credibility and spontaneity to the production. And their presence is crucial, also, in placing Palestinian women in the forefront and demonstrating the unrivalled role they play as guardians of this culture and heritage. The programme has a documentary dimension to which they contribute a great deal, and not only that but a proud Palestinian and Arab dimension."
"Their presence is crucial, also, in placing Palestinian women in the forefront, and demonstrating the unrivalled role they play as guardians of this culture and heritage"
In Meshwar Siti, Dalal doesn't perform the songs on a stage, or in local women's homes. Instead, the songs are filmed in the streets and alleys of each location, to illustrate the crucial part played by these communal spaces in the development of the songs and their performances to the ordinary people.
"I have sung in the streets before, but it was never so central to the performance as it is in Meshwar Siti. By performing these songs in the streets and alleys, we are showing gratitude, and recognising how indebted we are to them, because they also contributed in building our rich heritage."
This is an edited translation from our Arabic edition. To read the original article click here.
Translated by Rose Chacko
This article is taken from our Arabic sister publication, Al-Araby Al Jadeed and mirrors the source's original editorial guidelines and reporting policies. Any requests for correction or comment will be forwarded to the original authors and editors.
Ancient ice reveals scores of gigantic volcanic eruptions
Ice cores drilled in Antarctica and Greenland have revealed gigantic volcanic eruptions during the last ice age. Sixty-nine of these were larger than any eruption in modern history. According to the University of Copenhagen physicists behind the research, these eruptions can teach us about our planet's sensitivity to climate change.
For many people, the mention of a volcanic eruption conjures up doomsday scenarios that include deafening explosions, dark ash billowing into the stratosphere and gloopy lava burying everything in its path as panicked humans run for their lives. While such an eruption could theoretically happen tomorrow, we have had to make do with disaster films and books when it comes to truly massive volcanic eruptions in the modern era.
"We haven't experienced any of history's largest volcanic eruptions. We can see that now. Eyjafjellajökull, which paralyzed European air traffic in 2010, pales in comparison to the eruptions we identified further back in time. Many of these were larger than any eruption over the last 2,500 years," says Associate Professor Anders Svensson of the University of Copenhagen's Niels Bohr Institute.
By comparing ice cores drilled in Antarctica and Greenland, he and his fellow researchers managed to estimate the quantity and intensity of volcanic eruptions over the last 60,000 years. Estimates of volcanic eruptions more than 2,500 years ago have been associated with great uncertainty and a lack of precision, until now.
Sixty-nine eruptions larger than Mount Tambora
Eighty-five of the volcanic eruptions identified by the researchers were large global eruptions. Sixty-nine of these are estimated to be larger than the 1815 eruption of Mount Tambora in Indonesia—the largest volcanic eruption in recorded human history. So much sulfuric acid was ejected into the stratosphere by the Tambora eruption that it blocked sunlight and caused global cooling in the years that followed. The eruption also caused tsunamis, drought, famine and at least 80,000 deaths.
"To reconstruct ancient volcanic eruptions, ice cores offer a few advantages over other methods. Whenever a really large eruption occurs, sulfuric acid is ejected into the upper atmosphere, which is then distributed globally—including onto Greenland and Antarctica. We can estimate the size of an eruption by looking at the amount of sulfuric acid that has fallen," explains Anders Svensson.
In a previous study, the researchers managed to synchronize ice cores from Antarctica and Greenland—i.e., to date the respective core layers on the same time scale. By doing so, they were able to compare sulfur residues in ice and deduce when sulfuric acid spread to both poles after globally significant eruptions.
When will it happen again?
"The new 60,000-year timeline of volcanic eruptions supplies us with better statistics than ever before. Now we can see that many more of these great eruptions occurred during the prehistoric Ice Age than in modern times. Because large eruptions are relatively rare, a long timeline is needed to know when they occur. That is what we now have," says Anders Svensson.
One may be left wondering when the next of these massive eruptions will occur. But Svensson isn't ready to make any concrete predictions:
"Three eruptions of the largest known category occurred during the entire period we studied, so-called VEI-8 eruptions (see fact box). So, we can expect more at some point, but we just don't know if that will be in a hundred or a few thousand years. Tambora sized eruptions appears to erupt once or twice every thousand years, so the wait for that may be shorter."
How was climate affected?
When powerful enough, volcanic eruptions can affect global climate, where there is typically a 5-10- year period of cooling. As such, there is great interest in mapping the major eruptions of the past—as they can help us look into the future.
"Ice cores contain information about temperatures before and after the eruptions, which allows us to calculate the effect on climate. As large eruptions tell us a lot about how sensitive our planet is to changes in the climate system, they can be useful for climate predictions," explains Anders Svensson.
Determining Earth's climate sensitivity is an Achilles heel of current climate models. Svensson concludes:
"The current IPCC models do not have a firm grasp of climate sensitivity—i.e., what the effect of a doubling of CO2 in the atmosphere will be. Vulcanism can supply us with answers as to how much temperature changes when Earths atmospheric radiation budget changes, whether due to CO2 or a blanket of sulfur particles. So, when we have estimated the effects of large volcanic eruptions on climate, we will be able to use the result to improve climate models."
More information:Jiamei Lin et al, Magnitude, frequency and climate forcing of global volcanism during the last glacial period as seen in Greenland and Antarctic ice cores (60–9 ka),Climate of the Past(2022).DOI: 10.5194/cp-18-485-2022\Journal information:Climate of the Past
TEHRAN, Mar. 17 (MNA) – Personal photos, videos, and documents belonging to Mossad chief David Barnea and his wife have been hacked and published on an anonymous Telegram channel, grabbing media attention.
An anonymous Telegram channel published a video on Wednesday that included personal photos and documents seemingly belonging to Mossad chief David Barnea, a Zionist media reported.
The video published on the “Open Hands” channel — which was created on Tuesday — alleged the information it had obtained was from a lengthy intelligence operation conducted against Barnea, which began in 2014.
“We’ve got a small gift for the Mossad; ‘With LOVE for David’. Happy Purim,” a post on the channel read, referring to the Jewish holiday that begins Wednesday night.
The video — with translations in English, Hebrew, and Arabic — showed several personal photos, flight tickets under Barnea’s name, his ID card, tax documents addressed to his wife, and satellite imagery of what it claimed to be his private home in the central city of Hod Hasharon in Occupied Lands of Palestine.
A clip of Barnea making silly faces, apparently during a private video chat, is also seen in the video.
RHM/PR
Do Today’s Unions Have a Fighting Chance Against Corporate America?
For the workers who haven’t joined the Great Resignation, this moment has inspired a new wave of organizing — and a brutal pushback.
Credit...Illustration by MarÃa Jesús Contreras
THE FUTURE OF WORK ISSUE By E. Tammy Kim Feb. 17, 2022
In 1996, Manuel Miranda, a second-generation Filipino American from Kent, Wash., graduated from Evergreen State College. He had majored in literature and got a job in Seattle, taking care of people with cerebral palsy for $9 an hour. The city was “post-grunge” but being transformed by tech, Miranda told me. There was a lot of excitement about Amazon, the online bookseller.
Miranda applied to work there and started out in the warehouse, packing books and CDs. He then went into customer service, where he responded to questions and complaints. Some people saw the call-center job as a way to fund arty outside ambitions, Miranda said; others wanted an inroad into tech. Miranda earned just a dollar more per hour than he had in caregiving but got stock options, health insurance and the pride of working for a cool, homegrown company.
Yet he recalled that “the mood was pretty demoralized. There was this emphasis on productivity, getting nudged or monitored for how many emails you’re answering per hour.” Everyone had to work 50 hours a week. A couple of his co-workers told him that they wanted to organize. They were in touch with the Washington Alliance of Technology Workers (WashTech), a community group affiliated with a large union, the Communications Workers of America.
Miranda joined them, surveying colleagues about their demands (more money, fewer quotas, job mobility) and figuring out how to confront management. In 2000, a majority of the customer-service department, which had stretched to some 400 employees, joined WashTech. But in 2001, just before the dot-com bubble burst, Amazon shut down the Seattle call center and relocated the work to sites in Tacoma, West Virginia and India.
Miranda left Amazon in 1999 but kept in touch with his former co-workers. He saw the closure of the call center as a business decision but also as union-busting, which Amazon denies. Nevertheless, “I didn’t feel like the union failed,” Miranda, who now works as a designer in New York, told me. When his co-workers lost their jobs, WashTech helped negotiate a better severance package. What’s more, “It wasn’t clear how to organize a tech worker at the time,” he said. “Now it’s something people talk about.”
I was reminded of Miranda’s campaign over the holidays, as I spoke with Amazon warehouse workers protesting the conditions of mandatory overtime during the worsening pandemic. In New York, New Jersey and Washington, D.C., members of Amazonians United, an informal union, signed petitions demanding a permanent $3 raise, access to cellphones on the job and protection from firing. Their bosses did not respond. Members at two warehouses near Chicago walked off their shifts when management failed to acknowledge similar petitions.
Only a tiny number of the nation’s packers and sorters took part, but I admired their nerve. All these years after Miranda and his colleagues’ efforts, the methods for organizing at Amazon are still in flux; there simply isn’t a single correct way to confront one of the largest, richest corporations in the world.
Amazon workers have had some success. In January, the company raised full-time rates by $2 per hour in the Chicago area and agreed to send a notice of the right to organize to all United States employees as part of a settlement with the National Labor Relations Board, which enforces labor laws in the private sector. In warehouses in New York and Maryland, Amazon posted its own fliers as well, warning workers not to talk to Amazonians United.
And in Staten Island, a rank-and-file group called the Amazon Labor Union collected enough union cards to be approved for an election at two warehouses. The N.L.R.B. also issued a complaint stating that Amazon retaliated against several workers there for participating in union organizing. (An Amazon spokeswoman said the company is “skeptical that there are a sufficient number of legitimate signatures” in Staten Island. She added, “We don’t think unions are the best answer for our employees.”)
Large unions are experimenting, too. This month, thousands of workers at an Amazon warehouse in Bessemer, Ala., will begin voting on whether to join the Retail Wholesale and Department Store Union. The International Brotherhood of Teamsters wants to help Amazon’s warehouse and transportation workers win a union contract.
There’s an urgency today that didn’t exist when Miranda assisted customers by phone: Amazon is now the avatar of a monopoly economy. That economy has made the world’s 10 wealthiest men twice as rich in the grisly months since March 2020. It’s an economy that makes me feel like the zillionth scampering fleck in some global ant farm. The days I don’t, it’s because of the workers I talk to and the small mutinies I see — at Amazon and in nursing homes, truck yards, schools, factories and grocery stores. “We’re definitely not gonna have a more favorable time to have a union,” Daniel Gross, a longtime organizer, recently told me. Which felt like his way of saying, The jig is up; we all know the score.
Workers have always organized in various ways, formal and informal. Since the beginning of the American labor movement, in the 19th century, there have been unions, as well as more ad hoc worker groups. Around the time of the Amazon call-center campaign, organizations like WashTech were much in vogue. They were called “worker centers” and tended to focus on communities (like Nepalese immigrants) or types of jobs (like restaurant-delivery workers) that traditional unions had failed to reach.
I got to know these groups in the mid-aughts, when, as a lawyer, I joined a legal-services agency representing worker centers in New York City. The centers’ offices were welcoming and low on red tape. They had limited resources and small memberships but, in the years that followed, attained goals well beyond their means: domestic workers’ bills of rights, new regulations for nail-salon techs and food-delivery cyclists, debt relief for taxi drivers.
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I was impressed by their holistic approach: A construction day laborer wasn’t defined by his wages and hours — he also needed an affordable apartment and help applying for a green card. People at progressive unions thought this way, too, especially as the Great Recession and Occupy Wall Street highlighted the larger context for struggles in the workplace. And over the past decade, as a journalist and no longer a lawyer, I’ve seen the progressives’ influence grow.
In 2020, I thought that this increased enthusiasm for organizing, combined with mass death and financial hardship, might bring about a broad working-class movement. There were hints of ferment in the walkouts of essential workers and the record turnout at protests following the murder of George Floyd. After that, things quieted down — because, I think, of the temporary lift of an enlarged welfare state.
But then, between August and November of 2021, more than four million employees quit their jobs every month — individual actions that expressed a rebellious impulse. I noticed the same confident discontent in organized labor: Last fall, thousands of unionized workers went on strike or were on the verge of striking at John Deere, Kellogg’s, Kaiser Permanente hospitals and clinics and on the sets of Hollywood films. The wave of people leaving their jobs was named the Great Resignation; the agitation from within felt more like a great refusal, a commitment to reject the status quo and demand transformation.
I’ve watched a lot of new campaigns as well (including at The New York Times, where tech workers are fighting to join the union that represents other newspaper employees). For instance, since December, hundreds of Starbucks baristas — many of them young and influenced by Bernie Sanders-style democratic socialism — have announced their intention to join Workers United, an affiliate of the Service Employees International Union. (It’s not the first attempt: The United Food and Commercial Workers and the Culinary Union already represent thousands of baristas in unionized grocery stores, hotels and airports, and the U.F.C.W. and the Industrial Workers of the World organized stand-alone stores in the past.)
So far, workers at two Starbucks locations in Buffalo have formed a union and will eventually bargain for a contract. At least 64 other stores in 20 states are trying to do the same, despite resistance from management. (A company spokesman told me: “We don’t oppose unions. We don’t believe they are necessary at Starbucks.”)
For all the energy around unionizing, it is a daunting time to organize, especially in the private sector. Unions have been weak for decades — and corporations have only become stronger. In 2000, 13.5 percent of the United States work force was unionized; now, only 10.3 percent is. Over the past 20 years, meanwhile, the average revenue of the world’s biggest publicly traded companies has tripled, according to a recent study in the Review of Finance.
‘It’s a story of endless disappointments, and it seems like that’s where we are now, too.’
Companies are willing and able to pay for union-busting consultants and lobbyists pushing favorable changes to laws and regulations. Since the apex of union membership in the 1950s, the bulk of economic policy has cut against the interests of the poor and working class: tax breaks for the rich; rules favoring large corporations; slashed wages; reduced social services; narrowed opportunities to sue employers for discrimination or fraud.
At the same time, the 1935 National Labor Relations Act — the government’s main tool to make sure workers can effectively organize — has been compromised by subsequent legislation and court decisions. Fewer categories of people can unionize or can do so as quickly or en masse across workplaces. Enforcement of the law has become weaker.
The question is, can store-by-store campaigns “match the scale of corporate power in today’s American capitalism?” a U.F.C.W. official, who wasn’t authorized by the union to speak on the record, told me. Every industry now seems to be dominated by monopolies and global chains. And the United States, unlike much of Asia and Europe, doesn’t have sector-wide bargaining where workers can organize across whole industries. “Walmart, Target, Starbucks — they have immense national and international resources,” the official said. “The National Labor Relations Board isn’t built to help organize workers by the thousands, in many locations, all at once.”
When I asked the labor sociologist Ruth Milkman when she last felt hopeful about the working class, she laughed. “I remember when Obama was elected and I made a fool of myself predicting a big labor resurgence,” she said. But that didn’t materialize: Many workers felt ignored during the Great Recession, and promised labor-law reforms never came to pass. “It’s a story of endless disappointments,” Milkman told me, “and it seems like that’s where we are now, too.”
Short of upending capitalism, shrinking the distance between chief executives and the rank and file would require two fundamental changes: a reduction of corporate power and an expansion of worker power.
The Biden administration could start by using antitrust and tax law to dismantle huge corporations. In a universe of smaller companies, workers would have more options and a better chance at organizing. Requiring better pay and benefits would give people the security they need to seek change; Mindy Isser, a friend who used to organize fast-food workers, said that their poverty wages made long-term campaigns nearly impossible. Fighting misclassification is also critical. Independent contractors like me are excluded from traditional unions.
Workers need to know, too, that they can report unsafe conditions or underpayment and can organize without fear of being fired. The N.L.R.B.’s new general counsel has proposed extending the right to organize to millions more workers and increasing the board’s power to stop union-busting. The Protecting the Right to Organize Act (PRO Act), the most significant omnibus labor bill since the New Deal, would go much further, speeding up the process of union elections, protecting strikers, penalizing bad employers and getting rid of state “right to work” laws that inhibit organizing. The bill passed the House but is marooned in the Senate.
All these changes would require a politics borne of a mass workers’ movement. But they are also prerequisites for expanding that movement. Hence, the temperament of the labor world: always hopeful, always disappointed. In January, a labor-studies professor published an opinion essay that compared the nascent Starbucks campaign (hundreds of workers at scattered sites) to the sit-down strikes of the 1930s that forced the Big Three automakers to the table (hundreds of thousands of workers in a few factories). Similarly, journalists on the Amazon-organizing beat have sometimes offered overly buoyant accounts of workers’ prospects. I empathize with this tendency toward grandiosity. Collective action is incredible to witness.
Over the past decade, I have not only covered the labor movement as a journalist but have also participated in it directly, in campaigns at several nonprofit groups and news outlets and now as a member of a nontraditional union of freelancers. The thing about organizing at work is that, because everyone who isn’t in management is in the union, you have to get over your differences — or at least set them on a high shelf. I have learned to organize with people who don’t especially like me and witnessed great tenderness among co-workers with vastly different views of race and gender and electoral politics. That’s why, I think, businesses fight even small unions from the jump. Imagine multiplying such unity, office to store to factory to hospital, in every city and state. What couldn’t we win?
E. Tammy Kim is a contributing Opinion writer for The New York Times and a co-author and co-editor of “Punk Ethnography,” a book about the politics of contemporary world music.
A version of this article appears in print on Feb. 20, 2022, Page 60 of the Sunday Magazine with the headline: Get Rid of the Bad Bosses.
Working Remotely, Some Transgender People Saw an Opportunity to Change
After transitioning in private, they are preparing to return to the workplace at a time when gender identity itself is a politically divisive issue.
Deke Wilson, photographed at home in Parma, Ohio, weeks before returning to the office later this month after two years of working remotely. Mr. Wilson used the time away from the office to undergo five gender transition surgeries.Credit...Daniel Lozada for The New York Times
For years, Deke Wilson, 41, was ambivalent about undergoing a medical transition to male. He felt it was critical for his happiness, but there were plenty of reasons to put it off: the expense, the difficult recovery, the potential medical complications.
But while sitting at home during the early weeks of the coronavirus pandemic, Mr. Wilson said he felt the urgency. “You’re trying so hard to avoid getting this one sickness,” he said. “Why? Because you want to live — you want to experience life fully to the best you can. For me, that means being comfortable in my skin.”
Mr. Wilson, who works at a logistics company in Cleveland, underwent five surgeries from March through December last year at University Hospitals Cleveland Medical Center, recovering while working from home. He expects to return to in-person work this month.
For some transgender people, the era of remote work during the pandemic provided an opportunity to take the next steps in their transitions, according to interviews with more than 30 transgender people, their doctors and advocates.
Data on medical transitions during the pandemic remains hard to come by, although anecdotal evidence from the interviews suggests an increase in surgeries compared to previous years. No database tracks the total number of people in the United States who undergo medical transitions each year, but seven regional and local health care providers reported stronger demand for transition operations in 2021, compared to 2020, when many surgeries were paused because of the pandemic. Demand was also higher in 2021 compared to 2019, before the pandemic.
While some of the increase can be attributed to operations that were postponed while hospitals were overwhelmed by Covid-19 patients, doctors in the field offered other explanations as well.
They note that more employers are covering transgender health care in insurance plans, that surgical techniques are becoming safer and resulting in better cosmetic outcomes, and that more hospitals are offering these services to patients.
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For example, Mount Sinai, which has the biggest transgender care program in New York City — the Center for Transgender Medicine and Surgery — has also seen an increase. It performed 938 surgeries in 2021, 60 percent more than the previous year and 43 percent more than 2019.
“We’ve been scrambling to have the bandwidth for the people who are feeling comfortable who are coming in for care,” said Dr. Joshua Safer, the center’s executive director.
At Northwell Health’s Center for Transgender Care in New York, which was founded in 2016, the number of transition procedures roughly doubled in 2021, compared with the number of surgeries in 2020, which was similar to the number in 2019, according to Dr. David W. Rosenthal, the center’s medical director.
Many transgender people do not feel that costly surgery is necessary. For those who do seek medical transitions, common surgeries include chest reconstructions, genital reconstructions, hairline lifts, lip lifts and removing or adding Adam’s apples.
Even as access to transgender medical care has increased, the subject remains a political and cultural flashpoint in the United States, where Americans are roughly evenly split over whether they believe others should be allowed to legally switch their sex, according to a YouGov poll published in September.
These tensions also play out in the workplace, despite efforts at greater inclusion by some employers, although research into the experiences of the estimated 1.4 million transgender people in the United States is limited.
A McKinsey report published in November found that transgender employees earn 32 percent less than the rest of the population, even when they have similar or higher levels of education. Nearly two-thirds of transgender employees in the United States remain in the closet in some or all professional interactions with clients or customers, out of fears that they will experience hostility, harassment or discomfort. Transgender adults are twice as likely as other adults to be unemployed, the report found.
Erica Mack, a 59-year-old living in Grand Rapids, Mich., underwent two facial feminization surgeries during the pandemic. Her company added coverage for transgender care last year.Credit...Emily Rose Bennett for The New York Times
Even if a workplace is inclusive, many transgender people are reluctant to come out fully. Erica Mack, a 59-year-old field sales manager for Samsung Electronics America in Grand Rapids, Mich., said that she has felt supported by her colleagues since coming out as a transgender woman about three years ago. But at times, she said, she overheard mocking comments from customers, such as, “Is that a guy or a girl?”
Working from home during the pandemic was a welcome reprieve. She had time to herself to think about what changes she wanted to make to her life, and what was stopping her from undergoing facial feminization surgery. When Samsung added coverage for transition surgeries in 2021, she said she was overjoyed.
Ms. Mack said she had struggled all her life with gender dysphoria, a medical term that refers to the distress or discomfort that occurs when one’s gender identity does not align with the sex assigned at birth. She recovered from her two facial feminization surgeries at Northwell Health in 2021 while working from home, turning her camera off during some calls. Her angst has since lifted, she said.
Now, she said, “I can, without makeup on, just be grubbing it — not wearing earrings, not wearing jewelry — and just walk into a women’s bathroom and not worry, and that has been the most freeing thing on this planet.”
Even in the most liberal cities and workplaces, many people are clearly perplexed or feel threatened by efforts at inclusiveness focused on identity, as well as by changes in culture and language, from acronyms to preferred pronouns.
David Baboolall, an associate partner at McKinsey who co-wrote its transgender report and who, as a transgender person, uses the pronoun “they,” said that corporate diversity training programs sometimes focus on the experiences of gay people while glossing over the experiences of transgender or nonbinary people, they said.
“Our experience gets erased or ignored because people simply don’t have the vocabulary to talk about it, or they’re afraid they’ll cause offense by getting the words they do actually know wrong,” they said. “To craft more inclusive policies, it’s important to understand that education is so important here.”
Part of creating an inclusive working environment means investing in employee affinity groups and creating guides for managers, several transgender and gender-fluid people said in interviews.
Rae Lee, a 31-year-old teacher from Kentucky who works abroad at a school where she fears she would be fired if she came out to senior administrators, said that remote work during the pandemic gave her space to take the next steps in her transition. She grew out her hair, experimented with makeup and started feminizing hormone therapy.
“Going back into work now feels really difficult,” said Ms. Lee, who has returned to in-person teaching and still presents as masculine at work. She said she sometimes wonders why it took her so long to come out to those closest to her. “All those fears I had, everything that was holding me back about transitioning, it doesn’t make sense anymore,” she said. “I didn’t know I could be happy like this.”
Mr. Wilson, the man who underwent five transition surgeries while working remotely, said he was somewhat nervous about going back to the office, but also thrilled about feeling comfortable in his own body. He expected his colleagues to be supportive, as they were when he came out to them in December 2019, but he anticipated questions about his new facial hair and increased muscle mass.
“I’m a little excited for people to see the changes,” he said.
Breaking the Binary June 25, 2021 Jenny Gross is a general assignment reporter. Before joining The Times, she covered British politics for the The Wall Street Journal. @jggross
Alyssa Lukpat is a reporter covering breaking news for the Express desk. She is also a member of the 2021-22 New York Times fellowship class. @AlyssaLukpat
Erica Mack, a 59-year-old living in Grand Rapids, Mich., underwent two facial feminization surgeries during the pandemic. Her company added coverage for transgender care last year.Credit...Emily Rose Bennett for The New York Times