Bridger pipeline in Wyoming cracks and spills 45,000 gallons of diesel fuel

AFP
Published August 13, 2022



Gas pipeline under construction. Source - PROJECT_MANAGER, CC SA 2.0.

A diesel pipeline in Wyoming owned by a company that’s being sued by federal prosecutors over previous spills in two other states cracked open and released more than 45,000 gallons (205,000 liters) of fuel, state regulators and a company representative disclosed Friday.

Joe Hunter, Emergency Response Coordinator with the Wyoming Department of Environmental Quality said the cleanup has been an ongoing process since the spill was first discovered on July 27 by the pipeline’s operator.

The fuel spilled into sandy soil on private ranchland near the small community of Sussex in eastern Wyoming and did not spread very far, he said.

The contaminated soil is being excavated and placed in a temporary holding area and it will be spread onto a nearby dirt road where the fuel is expected to largely evaporate, Hunter said.

According ro PBS.org, the line is operated by Bridger Pipeline, a subsidiary of Casper-based True companies, according to an accident report submitted to the U.S. Coast Guard’s National Response Center.

Interestingly, the nitial report on the pipeline break reported only 420 gallons (1,590 liters) had spilled, but later revised its estimate to 45,150 gallons (205,250 liters), according to a National Response Center database.

Truye and its subsidieries have a rather crappy record when it comess to oil spills. One particularly infamous spill took plac in 2015.

In May 2022, federal prosecutors in Montana alleged that representatives of Bridger Pipeline had concealed from regulators problems with a pipeline that broke beneath the Yellowstone River near the city of Glendive in 2015. The break spewed more than 50,000 gallons (240,000 liters) of crude into the river and fouled Glendive’s drinking water supply.

In North Dakota, federal prosecutors and the state Attorney General’s Office are pursuing parallel claims of environmental violations against a second True companies subsidiary responsible for a 2016 spill that released more than 600,000 gallons (2.7 million liters) of crude, contaminating the Little Missouri River and a tributary.

Kenneth Clarkson with the Pipeline Safety Trust, a Bellingham, Washington-based group that advocates for safer pipelines, said a thorough investigation into the spill’s cause needs to conducted.

“It’s frustrating to hear of another spill by Bridger Pipeline LLC,” Clarkson said. “This spill of 45,000-plus gallons of diesel into rural Wyoming negatively impacts the environment, wildlife, and surrounding communities.”

US government in 'direct contact' with Assad regime over Austin Tice: report

The New Arab Staff
13 August, 2022

The revelations follow public calls by the Biden Administration for the Syrian regime to release Tice - who they have never admitted official to holding.

US President Joe Biden met with the Tice family recently to discuss the case [Getty]

The US government has communicated directly with the Syrian government for the first time in years in efforts to secure the release of jailed journalist Austin Tice, CNN reported Friday.

The American government had addressed the Assad regime publicly to call for the journalist’s release, but details of direct communication with Damascus are now emerging for the first time.

Austin Tice has been held hostage by the Assad regime for 10 years, after being captured at a checkpoint while reporting from Damascus.

No government or armed group has ever admitted to holding Tice in their custody.

According to US President Joe Biden, the US government knows “with certainty that he has been held by the Syrian regime” - but has not confirmed that they know his whereabouts.

"The United States has engaged extensively to try to get Austin home, including directly with Syrian officials and through third parties," the senior administration official said to CNN.

"Unlike in other situations where Americans are detained abroad, for many months, the Syrian government has not agreed to senior-level meetings to discuss Austin's case, nor has it ever acknowledged holding him," they added.

Diplomatic ties between Syria and the United States were suspended indefinitely in 2012, after the onset of the Syrian civil war that has left hundreds of thousands dead and forced millions to flee from their homes.

Despite the exceptional communication on the Tice case, a wider resumption of diplomatic communication seems unlikely in the immediate future.

"The United States will not normalise or upgrade our diplomatic relations with the Assad regime nor do we encourage others to do so, given the atrocities inflicted by the Assad regime on the Syrian people," a State Department spokesperson said in an email to Reuters in November 2021.

"Assad has regained no legitimacy in our eyes, and there is no question of the US normalising relations with his government at this time."

MAKES SENSE

Joan of Arc to be portrayed as nonbinary in new production at London's Globe Theatre

“People and communities deserve to be championed, and there’s no limit to the number we can do that for,” actor Isobel Thom told NBC News.

SHE IS THE PATRON SAINT OF ANDROGYNY

A statue of Joan of Arc in Orleans, France.

Guillaume Souvant / AFP 

Aug. 13, 2022, 8:40 AM MDT
By Leila Sackur

Legendary French heroine Joan of Arc will be portrayed as nonbinary in a radical departure from the historic figure's usual depiction at London’s Globe Theatre.

A patron saint of France, who is beloved for her role in the Siege of Orleans between 1428 and 1429 — a major French military victory over the English during the Hundred Years War — the new interpretation of her life will be performed at the theater that was home to famed British playwright William Shakespeare.

Nonbinary actor Isobel Thom will play the role in “I, Joan,” scripted with “they” and “them” pronouns by Charlie Josephine, who is also nonbinary, the Globe said in a news release. It will directed by Ilinca Radulian, who identifies as a woman.

“Our story of Joan is full of joy and love and hope and magic and revolution,” Thom told NBC News by email Saturday.

“Storytelling and art is a platform to share experiences, to stretch imaginations, to excite and inspire, to explore language, and to represent. People and communities deserve to be championed, and there’s no limit to the number we can do that for,” Thom added.

In a separate statement, Michelle Terry, the artistic director of Shakespeare’s Globe, said the theater was “not the first to present Joan in this way, and we will not be the last.”

“Regarding the use of pronouns, ‘they’ to refer to a singular person has been traced by the Oxford English Dictionary to as early as 1375, years before Joan was even born” she added.

The production aims to “question the gender binary” and “offer the possibility of another point of view,” Terry Said.

“Theaters produce plays, and in plays, anything can be possible. Shakespeare did not write historically accurate plays. He took figures of the past to ask questions about the world around him,” she said.

Located on the bank of the River Thames in London, Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre is a modern reconstruction of the famous playwright's original theater, which stood on the same site and was completed in 1599.

Destroyed by fire and then closed by a public order after the English Civil War, today’s Globe is the third reconstruction of the theater, and welcomes 1.25 million visitors a year.

Original performances of Shakespeare’s plays, like “Romeo and Juliet” and “Twelfth Night,” would have included male actors playing women, and male actors playing women playing men.

Born a peasant in medieval France, Joan of Arc believed God had chosen her to lead her country to victory in its long-running war with England. She led the French to a stunning victory in the battle of Orleans but was later captured by English forces, who burned her at the stake in 1431 when she was 19.

The gender identity and sexuality of Joan of Arc has been a subject of intense academic debate for decades in France and England. In the 1930s, British writer Vita Sackville West was the first to write a biography in which she hypothesized that Joan might have been a lesbian.

But some lawmakers and activists have criticized the decision to make the saint nonbinary.

British legislator Rosie Duffield called the decision “misogyny,” while Sophie Walker, co-founder of The Activate Collective, which raises money for women to run in elections, also tweeted: “When I was a little girl, Joan of Arc presented thrilling possibilities about what one young girl could do against massed ranks of men. Rewriting her as not female and presenting it as progress is a massive disappointment.”

Thom did not respond to the comments directly, but in a separate tweet, they urged people to watch the play before casting judgement on it.

Others however, praised the decision, including the actor and composer Olivia Mace, who called the idea "interesting" in a Twitter post. "Allow it to be explored. It won’t hurt anyone," she wrote.

“​​Imagining Joan as a they/them is an exercise in placing Joan in the modern day, connecting Joan’s struggles against the forces of oppression with today. A play doing this is not saying ‘I believe Joan was non-binary.’ It is posing a question of ‘what if Joan was?’” non-inary writer Diane Anderson also tweeted.

“This is why things like ‘Hamilton’ work as art — we know that Hamilton and his crew were white men. Aaron Burr and Leslie Odom Jr. look nothing alike. Thomas Jefferson did not have an afro. But we can imagine it because that’s what art does,” Anderson added.

A statement on the Globe’s website also affirmed its commitment to “becoming an inclusive and diverse organisation.” It said the theater "is unequivocally pro-human rights,” and “trans men and women and non-binary identities exist and are valid.”

COINTELPRO

There Are Good Reasons to Defund the FBI. They Have Nothing to Do With Trump.

A member of the Secret Service is seen in front of the home of former President Donald Trump at Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach, Florida, on August 9, 2022.

GIORGIO VIERA / AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES

OP-ED
PRISONS & POLICING

BY Alex S. Vitale, 

Truthout 

August 10, 2022

This week the FBI took the unprecedented step of executing a search warrant on the Mar-a-Lago home of former President Donald Trump. No former president has ever been the subject of such an investigative practice. In response, chief Trump supporter and MAGA cheerleader Marjorie Taylor Greene expressed outrage at the FBI’s actions by tweeting, “DEFUND THE FBI!” Far right Rep. Paul Gosar hit similar notes, tweeting, “We must destroy the FBI. We must save America.” While this about-face on “Back the Blue” is an amusing example of the right-wing ideological confusion that ensues when lawmakers adhere to diehard Trump loyalism, we on the left should use this moment as an opportunity to explore a plan to actually do that. The FBI should indeed be defunded — though the reasons for that have nothing to do with the fact that the agency searched Donald Trump’s home.

The January 6 attack on the Capitol showed us the deep fissures in the Back the Blue concept trotted out by the right in response to the Black Lives Matter protests of recent years. While conservatives claim to support the police, they do so on a very narrow basis. Police authority is desirable to them only as long as it is solely directed at what they perceive to be suspect classes, including poor people, BIPOC communities, trans people, immigrants, anti-fascists, sex workers, and other marginalized groups. Built into right-wing support for the police is an understanding — grounded in history — that police authority should not be exercised against the powerful classes, including the wealthy, the politically dominant — and white nationalists. This understanding is why many on the right do not view images of “Back the Blue” proponents beating Capitol police with their Trump flags as hypocritical.

This seeming contradiction helps us get to a deeper truth about the nature of police power. The FBI in particular, and the police in general, were not created to provide justice. Instead, the history of the FBI is one of repressing movements for liberation and carrying out wars on marginalized communities in the guise of wars on drugs, crime, terrorism, gangs and communism, among other phenomena determined by the state to be threats. The FBI’s long-running stretches of state-sanctioned violence have served to criminalize those that challenge the status quo, either through organized resistance or through survival strategies that interfere with capitalist notions of protecting the private property and individual autonomy of the rich and powerful.

The precursor to the FBI, the Bureau of Investigation, was created in 1908 in large part to investigate political threats to the power of the robber barons. These threats included striking workers, anarchists and communists. Driven initially by fears of communist revolution following the Russian Revolution and then the massive strikes and labor militancy of the 1930s, the Bureau of Investigation became the primary federal tool for surveilling and subverting left organizing. It was taken over by J. Edgar Hoover in 1924 and transformed into the FBI in 1934, when it became a massive domestic intelligence-gathering operation with files on millions of Americans including politicians, celebrities, labor leaders, journalists, religious figures, and anyone suspected of subversive leanings, many of whom were people of color, Jews, and other members of historically oppressed communities. Tim Weiner, in his book, Enemies: A History of the FBI, meticulously documents the political origins of the FBI and its dirty tricks.

In the 1960s, Hoover identified a new subversive threat: the civil rights movement. The Counter Intelligence Program (COINTELPRO), was an FBI-created program that spied on and undermined both socialist leaders and civil rights movement leaders like Martin Luther King Jr., and helped coordinate local attacks on the Black Panthers, the Socialist Workers Party, and many other groups. FBI agents attended activist groups’ meetings, openly photographed license plates of attendees, wiretapped phones, sent fake correspondences, and used informants to plant false rumors about marital infidelities and police cooperation to sow fear and dissension. The FBI was directly involved with local officials in Chicago who conspired to assassinate Black Panther leader Fred Hampton.The history of the FBI is one of repressing movements for liberation and carrying out wars on marginalized communities.

The FBI has long been a tool of political subversion used to suppress threats to the status quo. But, in contrast to the claims of Trump loyalists, the focus of the FBI’s attacks has rarely been the right-wing extremists that now dominate much of the Republican Party. In his book Disrupt, Discredit, and Divide, former FBI agent Michael German points out how federal law enforcement has largely ignored or excused right-wing violence, leaving a focus on Muslim immigrants, environmental activists and the Movement for Black Lives, among other marginalized groups.

Given this history of politically motivated repression, it should be the left calling for defunding and defanging the FBI. Here is a concrete program to begin that process:

1) End the FBI’s role in political policing. The FBI should be forced to shut down the intelligence-gathering activities that make possible the subversion tactics at the center of the agency’s history. Following the revelations of COINTELPRO in the 1970s, the Church Committee attempted this through the power of congressional oversight, but many of the FBI’s harmful practices remained, although they were better hidden from view and protected by language intended to restrict — but not eliminate — their activities.

2) End the FBI’s role in the “war on terror.” One of the primary tools in waging this war has been the entrapment of people who are lured into fantastical plots invented by FBI agents so that they can be arrested for planning actions they had no intention or ability to ever complete. The goal of these operations, such as the targeting of an intellectually disabled man in New York who was lured into a FBI-created plot to bomb the Herald Square subway station, seem designed to give the FBI the appearance of winning — to garner support for counterterrorism funding for the agency. We should also dismantle fusion centers and Joint Terrorism Task Forces. As Brendan McQuade documents in Pacifying the Homeland, these efforts have had little to do with protecting us from actual violence. Instead, they have morphed into all-purpose “predictive” policing operations that spend much of their time preparing threat assessments for local police and private business interests that both exaggerate the threat of politically motivated violence and use complex algorithms to justify intensive and invasive policing of poor and BIPOC communities.

3) End the FBI’s role in the “war on drugs.” The war on drugs has been an unmitigated failure, if your metric of success is saving lives and improving community safety. If, however, your metric of success is one of criminalizing political enemies and violently targeting the poor and people of color, then the mission has certainly been accomplished. The federal prohibition on many drugs has been a major driver of mass incarceration, the criminalization of non-white communities and the overdose crisis. Susan Phillips’s Operation Flytrap shows how the eponymously named FBI anti-drug sting did nothing to end the flow of drugs into Los Angeles, and instead pointlessly criminalized the most vulnerable people in a community hard hit by poverty, unemployment, and public and private sector disinvestment. In addition, we should abolish the Drug Enforcement Agency, and use the savings to invest in police-free harm reduction projects, high-quality and noncoercive drug treatment, and targeted economic development programs.

4) End the FBI’s role in so-called violence reduction. Presidents have repeatedly used the FBI as a political tool for looking “tough on crime.” “Gang takedowns” and special initiatives have been created to give the appearance of federal action to tackle crime, but have little to show for themselves other than police-perpetrated abuse and mass incarceration. For years the FBI has been using RICO conspiracy laws to target youth violence. As The Policing and Social Justice Project documented in New York City, these takedowns ensnare large numbers of young people based on their associations, rather than direct involvement in violence. City University of New York law professor Babe Howell showed that in one such mass arrest of 120 young people, half of those charged were simply accused of drug-related offenses, despite being called the “worst of the worst” and held without bail for up to two years awaiting dispositions. (However, even if they had been accused of actual violence, there would be no justification for treating them in this way.) Instead of pouring money into “anti-violence” initiatives that are themselves purveyors of violence, we should be looking to community-driven solutions. The New York City G.A.N.G.S. Coalition and others around the U.S. have called instead for investments in community-based anti-violence initiatives and reinvestments in communities devastated by deindustrialization, redlining and austerity.Federal law enforcement has largely ignored or excused right-wing violence.

In 2019, Donald Trump laid out his plan to use the FBI to help with his reelection effort, called Operation Relentless Pursuit. He targeted seven cities run by Democratic mayors to receive infusions of federal agents and money for more local police to engage in intensive policing of “high crime” communities, backed up by intensive federal prosecutions. Local activists in the targeted cities of Memphis, Cleveland, Milwaukee, Baltimore and Albuquerque mobilized against local cooperation with this initiative citing the lack of federal accountability and the need for community investments, not more policing.

These four steps would dramatically shrink the scope and power of the FBI and pave the way toward abolishing an agency that has not provided real justice or protection for large segments of U.S. society. As right-wingers make a bizarre and twisted case for defunding the FBI, we on the left need to make our own case for defunding the FBI’s intrusive and illegitimate political policing. Then we must go further and question the basic function of federal law enforcement in propping up a system of profound inequality, injustice and state violence.

Alex S. Vitale is professor of sociology and coordinator of the Policing and Social Justice Project at Brooklyn College, and author of The End of Policing. Follow him on Twitter: @avitale.

Monkeypox Is Yet Another Global Health Crisis Fueled by Governmental Neglect

Health care and LGBTQ rights activists rally outside the San Francisco Federal Building to demand an increase in Monkeypox vaccines and treatments outside of the San Francisco Federal Building on August 8, 2022, in San Francisco, California.

JUSTIN SULLIVAN / GETTY IMAGES

BY Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore,

  Truthout

August 13, 2022

It’s hard not to think about AIDS when thinking about monkeypox — the media images of otherwise healthy gay men covered in sores, the homophobic anti-sex puritanism from people across the political spectrum, and the widespread culture of blame and shame directed at queer sexual pleasure. And, as always, stigma distracts from the actual cause of the problem, which, in this case, is devastating neglect by the United States government.

Every queer person lives with the ongoing trauma of the AIDS crisis, and this plays out generationally. There is a generation that experienced sexual liberation in the 1970s, and then watched as entire circles of friends died of a mysterious illness while the government did nothing to intervene. There is a generation that grew up in the midst of the AIDS crisis, and internalized the trauma of mass death as part of becoming queer. And there is a generation growing up now, with effective treatment and prevention available, and yet still grappling with the magnitude of the AIDS crisis at the personal, social, intimate and collective levels.

For anyone familiar with the ongoing trauma of the HIV/AIDS crisis, there are brutal parallels in the mishandling of the monkeypox outbreak in the U.S. Unlike the early years of the AIDS crisis, though, when no effective treatments were available until a decade of mass death and public protest forced the government and pharmaceutical industry to action, monkeypox is generally not a deadly disease, and we already have the tools for treatment and prevention: the Jynneos vaccine (a smallpox vaccine that is also effective against monkeypox); tecovirimat (also called Tpoxx), an antiviral medication; and pre-approved tests for rapid diagnosis. The problems are the lack of access and the lack of care.

Three months into the monkeypox outbreak in the U.S., the federal government has finally declared monkeypox a health emergency, and this may direct more resources to helping people in need. But if the government had acted with a sense of urgency right away, and distributed the vaccine immediately to those most at risk, then it’s possible that monkeypox wouldn’t have become such a crisis.

While the spread of monkeypox is a new phenomenon in the United States, the virus has existed in Central and West Africa for decades. In 2017, there was a deadly outbreak. At that time, the U.S. government let 20 million doses of the vaccine in its strategic stockpile expire rather than using those doses to help people suffering from the disease in Nigeria. If those 20 million doses had been sent to Nigeria five years ago, perhaps monkeypox would not have become a global emergency. Even more importantly, the people suffering then would have received the care they so desperately needed. Still, to this day, neither the vaccine nor the medication are available at all in Nigeria, while the outbreak which began in 2017 continues.

Terms like “vaccine apartheid” and “vaccine hoarding” have been popularized during the COVID pandemic, but vaccine hoarding predates the COVID crisis. What is it called when you stockpile 20 million doses of an expiring vaccine instead of offering it to the people who need it? You can’t blame this on governmental ineptitude. It stems from racist arrogance and the continuing legacy of colonialism.

Every article about monkeypox should state that the U.S. government is a cause of this crisis, instead of shifting the blame onto individual acts and policing people’s sex lives while refusing to challenge the structural violence that continues, along with its devastating consequences.

As virologist Joseph Osmundson says, “Gay sex is not driving this epidemic, this epidemic is being driven by a lack of access to resources globally that could prevent spread. People want to get vaccinated, and they can’t get vaccinated.”Every article about monkeypox should state that the U.S. government is a cause of this crisis, instead of shifting the blame onto individual acts.

Here in the United States, there is an extreme shortage of the Jynneos vaccine, and mass panic among the people most affected by monkeypox in this country — at least 97 percent of the reported cases are among gay and bisexual men, and trans, genderqueer and nonbinary people who are part of their sexual networks. So across the U.S., we see the dystopian spectacle of queer folks desperately waiting in line for hours and hours to get the vaccine — 10 hours outside a bathhouse in Berkeley; five hours in hospital hallways in Seattle and San Francisco; outside in a sweltering New York City heat wave. Sometimes people wait in line for hours, only to be turned away because supplies of the vaccine have run out.

None of this is necessary. It’s been over a year since COVID vaccines were rolled out, when hundreds of people were vaccinated at a time in some locations, thousands of doses a day in many cities, and now most cities don’t even have thousands of doses of the monkeypox vaccine in total. So why couldn’t the same kind of care and attention be directed to administering the monkeypox vaccine quickly and effectively, without adding to risk or vulnerability, while we are still in the midst of the COVID pandemic? This is being done just across the border in Canada, while in the U.S. we’re faced with a top-down model of scarcity and a “while supplies last” mentality of vaccine availability: Get in line, shoppers, the wait is definitely worth it… If you’re still standing.

Meanwhile, people suffering from monkeypox do so in extreme pain, without the financial support necessary for the isolation to prevent the spread of the disease, and most often without the antiviral medication that alleviates the excruciating symptoms, since Tpoxx is only available through a convoluted CDC protocol.

Who has access to this knowledge? Information about where, when, and how to get the vaccine and treatment for monkeypox has been passed on anecdotally through the social and sexual networks of the people most impacted. Again, this echoes the early years of the AIDS crisis. There is a potential in sharing strategies for how to beat the system so the system will actually serve you, but not if you are in unnecessary pain and distress. And, this informal sharing of knowledge prioritizes the people who already have the most access — often wealthy and white — furthering the privatization of a public health system that barely serves the people most in need, including poor people, people of color, and undocumented, disabled and unsheltered people.

The trauma of the AIDS crisis comes to the fore again as queer folks seeking the knowledge, information and access necessary to take care of one another during another health crisis face the brutality of a resurgent sexual moralism, in a country steadily moving backwards. Viruses don’t cause stigma, people do. We already have the tools necessary to treat monkeypox and prevent the spread of the disease, but, as we have seen with the ongoing COVID pandemic, the U.S. government is far more adept at abandoning the people who are most vulnerable than offering care. So, in the midst of the COVID pandemic, and in the shadow of the AIDS crisis, we are faced with yet another unnecessary global health crisis furthered by structural racism and homophobia.

Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore is most recently the editor of Between Certain Death and a Possible Future: Queer Writing on Growing Up with the AIDS Crisis, named one of the “100 Most Influential Queer Books of All Time” by BookRiot, and the author of The Freezer Door, a New York Times Editors’ Choice and a finalist for the PEN/Jean Stein Book Award. Her next book, Touching the Art, will be published by Soft Skull in November 2023.

Tenants Call on Biden to Act as Rent Increases Reach a 35-Year High

Tenants and activists take part in a rally at the Delta Pines apartment complex in Antioch, California, on June 22, 2022.

JANE TYSKA / DIGITAL FIRST MEDIA / EAST BAY TIMES VIA GETTY IMAGES

BY  Mike Ludwig, 

Truthout

August 12, 2022

Inflation cooled off and remained unchanged during the month of July, providing President Joe Biden and vulnerable Democrats a reason to celebrate ahead of the midterms. However, on Wednesday, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics released its consumer price index, which reports that the cost of paying rent inflated by 6.3 percent over the past year, the largest increase in 35 years and a clear signal that the housing crisis enflamed by the COVID pandemic continues.

The rent inflation index reflects landlords raising rents on existing tenants; it does not include the prices of new leases when tenants move. A monthly report from Apartment List, a company that tracks rental data, found that when price hikes in new leases are included, rents actually grew by 12.3 percent over the past 12 months, down from a peak 18 percent in January. Nationally, the median cost of an apartment reached $2,000 for the first time ever in June.



Despite billions of dollars in federal assistance for renters and landlords, eviction rates in cities across the country climbed to pre-pandemic levels in 2022 after moratoriums on kicking people out during a health crisis expired last year.

Housing advocates say corporate landlords are knowingly profiting off the misery of tenants suffering under high prices for food, health care, school supplies, and other essentials, but Congress is not expected to act. The Inflation Reduction Act, passed by Senate Democrats this week, would invest $370 billion in climate, energy and environmental justice programs but notably does not include provisions focused on affordable housing.

Rev. Rhonda Thomas, a faith-based racial justice organizer in Florida, said the housing and climate crises are colliding, and policy makers must consider the “people who have suffered the most” from these intersecting emergencies as the nation transitions to cleaner energy.

“In Florida, the climate emergency has created a housing crisis that, again, adversely impacts communities of color,” Thomas said in a statement released by a coalition of Black women in response to the legislation this week. “Housing prices have skyrocketed even as wages have stagnated.”

Instead of focusing on Congress, many housing advocates are targeting the Biden administration, which they argue can regulate the rental market through a number of federal agencies. Ahead of the latest inflation data on Tuesday, a coalition of more than 220 housing and community organizations demanded Biden declare a national housing emergency and outlined a plan for taking federal action without waiting on Congress.

For example, the Federal Trade Commission could issue a regulation defining excessive rent increases as an unfair business practice and enforce the standard through lawsuits and administrative proceedings, according to the coalition. The Securities and Exchange Commission can impose disclosure requirements when publicly traded corporations raise rent on tenants, and regulators can investigate new bundled securities backed by rent and mortgage payments that are a hot new thing on Wall Street.

Such federal action could hold landlords accountable to the public but would not provide direct relief to struggling renters. The administration could consider rent controls for landlords working with federal housing programs, but these types of regulations would only help some of the lowest-income tenants.

Rent is often the largest line item on most household budgets, with families spending an average 35 percent of their income on housing in 2020, according to federal data.

For households on low or fixed incomes, rent increases mean choosing between paying the landlord and buying essentials, according to Michael Mitchell, a director of policy and research at the Groundwork Collaborative, a Washington, D.C.-based think tank.

“For the median tenant in one of the 50 largest American cities, you are paying $200 more now than you were last year, and that’s money people can’t spend on groceries and school supplies,” Mitchell told reporters on Thursday. “When the alternative is homelessness, it really puts tenants in a bind.”

Vanessa Armour knows this story all too well. An activist and retired postal worker living in Las Vegas, Nevada, Armour was excited about the prospect of spending her retirement in her current apartment when she moved in. However, her landlord has tacked on fees for “assessments,” Armour said, effectively raising her $1,100 rent by more than $200 per month. So, Armour said, she was forced to leave retirement and take a part-time job; her fixed income was no longer enough to afford basics such as food and medication.

“Should I live in the dark, skip my medications, or do I just not eat?” Armour said during a Zoom call on Thursday. “I worked so damn hard for 38 years. I should be able to enjoy my retirement.”

Armour, a leader of the Progressive Leadership Alliance of Nevada, said she and other advocates held a meeting this week with Sandra Thompson, the deputy director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency. Like millions of other people, Armour lives in a property benefiting from federal loans under the Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac programs created by Congress, and Thompson is the top regulator overseeing the programs, which are designed to allow liquidity in the housing market and keep prices down.

Thompson pledged to investigate her agency’s power to tie federal financing for landlords and property managers to new protection for tenants against harmful rent increases, according to Armour. The White House announced a plan in May to bolster the housing supply with new infrastructure funding and zoning reforms. Yet the question of whether federal agencies will muster their regulatory power to challenge landlords and tackle rising rents — which are undoubtedly on the minds of voters — remains to be answered.

SEE https://plawiuk.blogspot.com/2022/08/median-rent-in-u.html

Haiti: “If this is life, what is hell?”

Haiti is on the edge of collapse as gang violence has erupted all over the capital leaving hundreds of dead and wounded in recent weeks and a population living in perpetual terror. The United States has a history of intervention in Haiti, so what is holding back President Biden?

POR::J.P. SLAVIN

PUBLICADO 13 AGO 2022 – 

Ariel Henry, Prime Minister of the Republic of Haiti, left, arrives for the opening ceremony of the Summit of the Americas, Wednesday, June 8, 2022, in Los Angeles. Crédito: Marcio Jose Sanchez/AP

For the third time in 30 years, is it time for the United States to fuel up its C-130 military transport planes and set the aircraft navigation systems for the Caribbean nation of Haiti? U.S. soldiers stand ready for deployment, locked and loaded.

All that is needed is for President Joe Biden, the reluctant interventionist, to issue the orders. The American military is ready, the military strategy drafted, and arguably justified under the asserted right of humanitarian intervention in halting fundamental violations of human rights and to protect individuals from imminent harm.

To gain the endorsement of the Organization of American States (OAS), consent is also needed from the Government of Haiti. But that is only a diplomatic formality as Haiti’s current Prime Minister, Ariel Henry, can literally hear the approaching gunfire of heavily armed street gangs which only last month were on the verge of overrunning the heart of the Haitian state, including the national palace and treasury.

Haiti with its proud 19 th century history as the only nation founded by a slave uprising may soon be the first country to record a c oup d’etat not of mutinous soldiers, but of drug addicted, poorly educated, and highly dangerous street gangsters. Haiti today is a disaster with a plethora of heavily armed gangs, kidnappings, inhumane hunger, and collapsing infrastructure.

In recent weeks, gangs burned and looted the national cathedral and two court houses in the capital. Due to gang violence, thousands of Haitian children are at risk of dying from acute malnutrition if adequate therapeutic care is not provided, UNICEF warned last week. Reduced access to basic health, nutrition and water and sanitation services as a result of escalating violence, coupled with soaring food prices, inflation and food insecurity in Cité Soleil, leave one in five children suffering from acute malnutrition

The United Nations confirmed that more than 470 desperately poor people – including children -- have been killed, injured, or disappeared in less than a week during recent gang turf wars in the Cite Soleil slum. The New York Times reported a Cite Soleil mother, Jona Pierre, buried the bullet-ridden remains of her one-month old daughter in an empty crackers box. This was her only option. Jona’s sister, Wislande Pierre, told the newspaper; “If this is life, what is hell?”

One of Biden’s all-time gaffes came in 1994 when he said, “If Haiti just quietly sunk into the Caribbean or rose up 300 feet, it wouldn’t matter a whole lot in terms of our interest.” After a U.S. military intervention of overwhelming force in 1994, a massive U.N. peacekeeping mission 10 years later led by Brazil, plus billions wasted in foreign aid in the aftermath of the 2010 earthquake, almost no one in power – in Washington, Paris, or Brasilia – wants to deploy boots on the ground again.

That includes some Haitians who mock U.N. peacekeepers as “tourists” and grew contemptuous of foreign aid workers driving reinforced Landcruisers and sun bathing on Haiti’s beaches while the country becomes poorer, hungrier, and even more dangerous.

Haiti hosted a massive U.N. peacekeeping force from 2004-2019, which was an utter failure, including bringing an unforgivable cholera outbreak to the country through poor sanitation at a U.N. military base and widespread sexual misconduct by peacekeepers.

In a blistering attack on peacekeeping efforts, the OAS Secretary General, Luis Almagro, released an unprecedented, nearly 2,000-word statement this week in which he admitted that the last 20 years of the international community's presence in Haiti "has amounted to one of the worst and clearest failures implemented and executed within the framework of any international cooperation." He added: "After 20 years, not a single institution is stronger than it was before.”

Given the failure of the international community, others argue that it's time for Haitians to solve their own problems. Sadly, the Haitian state today, for many reasons - some historical - has proven itself incapable of protecting its own people, even its police officers.

While Haiti does not carry the strategic heft that Biden clearly values when making tough national security decisions, the graphic barbarism which is now part of daily life in Port-au-Prince may influence the president’s Jesuit heart to risk the lives of brave American servicemen and women – one more time. In so doing, he could argue it is justified to save hundreds of thousands of Haitians whose daily lives mirror the unspeakable decisions that Jona Pierre faced.

Another factor that must be weighing on Biden is the increase in Haitian boat people trying to enter the U.S. or any other country they can get to. A few days ago, a boat with an estimated 300 Haitian refugees reached Key Largo, less than 75 miles from Miami, followed soon after by another refugee boat with more than 100 people which ran aground near the Middle Florida Keys-- part of a maritime exodus from Haiti that is the largest since 2004.

If U.S. forces intervene, they will have a different battle plan than in 1994 when a U.S. military intervention began with an assault force from the carrier USS Dwight D. Eisenhower of 54 helicopters and almost 2,000 soldiers.

This time the Haitian government will not be the target. Instead, it will be the 300 to 400 gang members in five neighborhoods of Port-au-Prince, including Cite Soleil , who will need to be swept up, detained, or bought off. Senior OAS officials have recently participated in Haiti planning briefings at Central Intelligence Agency Headquarters in Langley, Virginia, according to my sources. A beefed-up law enforcement team at the U.S. Embassy in Haiti’s capital is working with assets to identify and track the gang targets using facial recognition technology.

While short-term military success is nearly guaranteed, the longer term forecast for Biden is not.

A key component of U.S. planning is to keep the Henry government in power, as it nominally controls much of the country beyond the capital, and to use foreign military forces to patrol Port-au-Prince and re-establish law and order. In that event, the Henry government should be encouraged to continue its negotiations with civil society through the so-called Montana Accords.

The U.N., which is largely untrusted by U.S. intelligence, will not be called on by Washington to fill a power vacuum even though the OAS has called for massive foreign aid investment to rebuild Haiti’s governance, economy and security. “Right now, it is absurd to think that in this context of destruction, the Haitians—left completely alone, polarized, and with very few resources—would be able to rebuild or build the kind of security, deinstitutionalization, and development project that could enable its 12 million inhabitants to once again live in peaceful coexistence," Almagro said in his statement.

He added: “We should be clear that what we are facing is, more or less, a failed State and a weak and vulnerable society…This must be resolved by Haitians, there is no question about that. But the international community has a role to play."

As the Washington Post argued in an editorial this week, “without muscular international intervention, the country’s suffering will deepen. To ignore that reality is to be complicit in the world’s disregard for Haiti’s anguish.

J.P. Slavin worked as a resident foreign correspondent in Haiti from 1990-94; later serving as an editorial consultant with the National Coalition for Haitian Rights in New York City. He currently lives in Lusaka, Zambia. @slavinjp

Medical marijuana industry flourishing in Uruguay

Online News EditorAugust 13, 2022

 

Montevideo, Aug 13 (EFE).- A global pioneer in regulating marijuana recreational use, Uruguay’s medicinal cannabis industry is also flourishing, which, despite the barriers, is growing “exponentially” with a “wide range” of products.

Despite critics’ predictions of a chaotic scenario of insecurity and “narcotourism”, the then President of Uruguay José Mujica (2010-2015) in 2013 launched an unprecedented “socio-political experiment” by becoming the first country in the world to legalize cannabis.

That route, first drawn up as part of the fight against drug trafficking, has evolved in the decade since to reach a horizon with real commercial potential: the export of medicinal cannabis.

The cannabis industry is growing “exponentially” in Uruguay, where 199 business licenses have been issued, co-founder of the business platform Cannabis Business Hub, Mercedes Ponce de Leon, tells Efe.

“Over $70 million has been invested in the sector and, for example, of the 12 industrialization licenses that exist, 50% are from foreign capital and 50% from Uruguayan capital,” she says.

“If we add the exports of medical cannabis and industrial hemp, in 2020, $7 million were exported, in 2021, $8 million and so far in 2022 already over four and a half million; and it is expected to continue growing,” she adds.

The entrepreneur projects that the global cannabis market will reach 200 billion by 2028, compared to close to $30 billion in 2020.

General secretary of the Chamber of Medicinal Cannabis Companies Daniel Macchi, however, stresses that the prohibitionist barriers still exist.

Besides the temporary problems for international trade derived from the war between Russia and Ukraine, cannabis faces a “complicated” outlook of conforming to strict global standards, Macchi says.

“We are governed by the United Nations in this business, so there are certain international treaties that must be taken into account when it comes to the drug trade,” he adds.

But despite the persistent barriers, interest in these medicinal products, prescribed for ailments linked to chemotherapy, epilepsy or amyotrophic multilateral sclerosis is steadily growing, according to Macchi.

“We can basically find Germany as the main market in the world in terms of money and number of patients who demand cannabis-based products; Israel as second (…) Then there is Japan, that is being added; there are Australia and New Zealand,” he adds.

Although Uruguay has regional competition from Colombia, Mexico and Ecuador, its agriculture tradition and experience in handling “delicate” horticultural productions make it stand out, he explains.

It also has a “wide range” of products to offer, ranging from industrial hemp – biomass for non-medical use – and cannabis oils to dried flowers for medicinal use. EFE

apf/ta/ks

Pharma Claims Drug Price Reform Hurts Innovation. Experts Say That’s “Bullshit.”

The U.S. Capitol Building is seen before the passage of Inflation Reduction Act on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C., on August 6, 2022.

SHURAN HUANG FOR THE WASHINGTON POST VIA GETTY IMAGES

BY Arthur Allen,

Kaiser Health News

August 12, 2022

For decades, the drug industry has yelled bloody murder each time Congress considered a regulatory measure that threatened its profits. But the hyperbole reached a new pitch in recent weeks as the Senate moved to adopt modest drug pricing negotiation measures in the Inflation Reduction Act.

The bill “could propel us light-years back into the dark ages of biomedical research,” Dr. Michelle McMurry-Heath, president of the Biotechnology Innovation Organization, said last month. Venture capitalists and other opponents of the bill said that it “immediately will halt private funding of drug discovery and development.”

Steve Ubl, leader of the ubiquitous Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, or PhRMA, called the bill’s Senate passage on Aug. 7 a “tragic loss for patients.” He threatened in an interview with Politico to make politicians suffer if they voted for the measure, adding that “few associations have all the tools of modern political advocacy at their disposal in the way that PhRMA does.”

In the past 12 months, PhRMA and closely allied groups spent at least $57 million — $19 million of it since July — on TV, cable, radio, and social media ads opposing price negotiations, according to monitoring by the advocacy group Patients for Affordable Drugs. PhRMA spent over $100 million this year to unleash a massive team of 1,500 lobbyists on Capitol Hill.

The final bill is weaker than earlier versions, which would have extended negotiations to more drugs and included private insurance plans. The bill would enable only Medicare to negotiate prices beginning in 2026, initially for just 10 drugs.

It would save the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services about $102 billion over a decade, the Congressional Budget Office estimates. In 2021 alone, the top U.S. pharmaceutical companies booked tens of billions of dollars in revenue: Johnson & Johnson ($94 billion), Pfizer ($81 billion), AbbVie ($56 billion), Merck & Co. ($49 billion), and Bristol Myers Squibb ($46 billion).

The bill authorizes hundreds of millions of dollars for CMS to create a drug negotiation program, setting in motion a system of cost-benefit evaluations like those used in Europe to guide price negotiations with the industry. Americans pay, on average, four times what many Europeans do — and sometimes far, far more — for the same drugs.

The bill does not affect the list prices companies charge for new drugs, which increased from a median price of $2,115 in 2008 to a staggering $180,007 in 2021, according to recent research.

The bill’s champions say that PhRMA’s gloomy prophecies are overblown, and that history is on their side.

“It’s complete bullshit and a scare tactic,” Andy Slavitt told KHN. As a leading federal health official in 2016, he tried to change part of a Medicare program that pays doctors a fixed 6% of the cost of a drug each time they administer it, creating an incentive to use the most expensive infusion drugs. PhRMA funded most of the loud campaign that defeated his efforts, Slavitt said.

Another scare tactic: The drug industry warns that any price negotiation will kill innovation. Such warnings “constitute the pharma response in literally every instance since 1906,” the year the first drug regulation agency was created, said Dr. Aaron Kesselheim, who leads the Program on Regulation, Therapeutics, and Law at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston. And yet, he said, regulatory changes rarely choked out investment in new drugs.

For example, the drug industry bemoaned a bill to boost generic drugs sponsored by Rep. Henry Waxman (D-Calif.) in 1984. Yet while 50% of prescribed drugs were generics in 2000 — up from 15% in 1980 — approvals of important new drugs also soared during the period, Kesselheim noted. The threat of losing market share to generics, he said, may have induced manufacturers to invest in innovation.

In 1993, Thomas Copmann, then a PhRMA vice president, charged that President Bill Clinton’s Vaccines for Children program, which funded vaccinations for any kid whose parents couldn’t afford them, “would just kill innovation because the government would control the market.” Over the next 16 years, childhood vaccination rates climbed — from 72% to around 93% for polio vaccine, for example. Over the same period, new vaccines against hepatitis A and B, pneumonia, chickenpox, human papillomavirus, and rotavirus were added to the schedule.

The drug industry’s attacks on regulation have a rich and florid history. In the early 1900s, the Proprietary Association of America warned newspapers that their advertising revenue would dry up if the industry had to list its ingredients (mostly alcohol). The law passed in 1906, but newspapers — and the drug industry — survived it.

Sometimes the industry’s breast-beating is a negotiating tactic, one that has led to concessions from Congress and the federal government.

In the 1990s, when discussions began about requiring drug companies to pay user fees to have their drugs reviewed, the industry described the fees as a “tax on innovation.” Eventually, it agreed to pay the fees if the FDA set deadlines for the reviews. The resulting boost in FDA staffing levels ushered in an increase in drug approvals over the ensuing five years.

Yet “killing innovation” remains a go-to trope. Drug imports, efforts to rein in “pay-for-delay” agreements between brand and generic companies, investigations of price gouging by drugmakers — all, according to conservatives and pharmaceutical executives, “kill innovation.” Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich in 2009 said the same about the Affordable Care Act. A golden decade for new drugs followed, with FDA approvals increasing from 21 in 2010 to 50 in 2021.

Critics of the current bill argue that history and economic research show that drug investment will lag when markets shrink, which they say will be the case if price controls lead corporations to earn less money on their blockbuster drugs.

If Medicare negotiations cut into the profits of the biggest earners, investors in risky biotech companies, whose drugs rarely strike it rich, will shift some of their portfolios from pharmaceuticals into other sectors, said Craig Garthwaite, director of health care at Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management. “There’s a fair argument as to how much,” he said.

He noted that after Medicare’s drug program was created in 2003 — the drug industry initially opposed it — an increase in federal spending on medicines inspired pharmaceutical companies to spend more on drugs aimed at older people. “Once you invest in clinical trials, that money never comes back unless it’s in revenue for products sold,” he said.

The moribund antibiotics industry demonstrates how shrinking markets — hospitals and doctors intentionally limit the use of new drugs to reduce microbial resistance — lead to lower investment, Garthwaite said.

Yet some experts argue that Medicare drug pricing negotiations could hasten innovation if they steer companies away from drugs that modestly improve outcomes but can earn massive amounts of cash in the current system of unchecked prices.

In the cancer field, most investment is in drugs that provide incremental benefits at a high price, said Dr. Vincent Rajkumar, a Mayo Clinic oncologist. He was a principal investigator on two large trials testing Ninlaro (ixazomib), a pill for multiple myeloma that is very similar to the injected drug Velcade (bortezomib). While more convenient, Ninlaro is no more effective, he said, and it costs about eight times as much as generic bortezomib. A newer multiple myeloma drug, Xpovio (selinexor), keeps patients progression-free for about four additional months; it costs $22,000 a month.

Most new cancer drugs extend life for only a short time, said Rajkumar, who helped organize a 2015 letter signed by 118 oncologists that called for giving Medicare the power to bargain. If forced to negotiate, “maybe the companies would spend their research and development funds on something more meaningful,” he said.

In other high-income countries, drug price negotiations are the norm. “Right now, we are the odd man out,” Rajkumar said. “Are we really that brainy that we are right and everyone else is wrong? Are we really looking out for our public better than everyone else?”

Large patient groups such as the American Cancer Society, American Heart Association, and American Diabetes Association, all of which have significant drug industry support, stayed on the sidelines of the debate over the language in the drug price negotiation bill.

Some other patient groups, fearful that the industry will lose interest in drugs for smaller populations should prices decline, opposed the bill — and successfully won exceptions that would prevent Medicare from negotiating prices on drugs for rare diseases.

David Mitchell, a multiple myeloma patient who founded Patients for Affordable Drugs in 2017, said he’s sure the bill won’t discourage innovation — and his life may depend on it. The 68-year-old said he’s on a four-drug regimen but “cancer is very clever and finds a way to get around drugs.”

“The idea that taking a small bite out of pharma revenue is going to stop them from creating new drugs is bullshit,” he said.

KHN (Kaiser Health News) is a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about health issues. Together with Policy Analysis and Polling, KHN is one of the three major operating programs at KFF (Kaiser Family Foundation). KFF is an endowed nonprofit organization providing information on health issues to the nation.

PRISON NATION U$A

Detained Immigrants in California Strike Over $1 a Day Pay, Working Conditions

Immigrant detainees eat lunch at the GEO Group-managed Adelanto Detention Facility on November 15, 2013, in Adelanto, California.

JOHN MOORE / GETTY IMAGES

BY Alejandra Quintero,

 Labor Notes 

August 12, 2022

At two federal detention centers in California, more than 50 immigrant workers are on strike over unsafe working conditions and low wages.

“We are being exploited for our labor and are being paid $1 per day to clean the dormitories,” said strikers at a central California detention center in a June statement received by public radio station KQED.

Detained workers, known as “housing porters,” participate in a supposedly volunteer working program while locked up. They use their earnings to pay for the exorbitant cost of phone calls and commissary items like dental floss and tortillas.

“They are compelled to do this,” says Alan Benjamin, a delegate to the San Francisco Labor Council who heard directly from striking workers during a call with the labor council. “It’s not voluntary; it’s compulsory work, without proper sanitation and equipment.”

“The mold is terrible,” adds Benjamin. “People are getting sick, one after the other.”

California’s Division of Occupational Safety and Health, or Cal/OSHA, is currently investigating working conditions at the Golden State Annex U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) facility, near Bakersfield, where workers have been on strike since June 6.

The California Collaborative for Immigrant Justice along with other organizations filed a complaint with Cal/OSHA back in May on behalf of seven detainees. The complaint charges that detained workers live in unsafe conditions, with black mold patches crawling up shower walls and black fibrous dust particles emitted into the dormitories through HVAC vents. Last year California enacted a bill, SB 334, requiring private operators of immigrant detention facilities to follow all state occupation and health and safety regulations.

Mold spores can lead to asthma, respiratory infections, and more. “I’m afraid because my lung has been impacted,” a father of four held in detention at Golden State Annex told KQED. “The dust and mold are bad for our health and unfortunately, we are in a place where it feels that they don’t care about our health.”

Detainees at a second ICE facility, Mesa Verde, have been on strike since April 28. The facilities are operated by the GEO Group, one of the largest for-profit prison companies in the U.S. GEO also operates facilities in the United Kingdom, Australia, and South Africa. The company brought in $2.26 billion in revenue last year.

A Dollar a Day

Raul is in his late 20s and has been detained at Golden State Annex since December 2021. [Raul is a pseudonym, which Labor Notes has used to protect the identity of a worker who may face retaliation while in detention for speaking with the press. —Editors] He came to the United States from Mexico at the age of five along with his parents and siblings. He told Labor Notes from behind bars that he’s striking over the paltry pay of $1 a day for eight-hour shifts and hazardous working conditions.

“The $1-a-day pay isn’t enough to eat,” he said, adding his earnings total $5 a week, which are used for commissary items and phone calls. “A video call costs about $2.50 for 15 minutes and a bag of beans is about $2.”

A 149-page research report published by the ACLU last month states that inmates are paid an average minimum of 13 cents an hour and average maximum of 52 cents an hour for jobs like laundry or cleaning bathrooms. Jobs in California’s state-owned correctional facilities pay between 35 cents an hour to $1 an hour, according to the report.

Raul said the prices in immigration facilities are higher — and wages lower — than those of federally run prisons too.

At an ICE detention center, Raul said, they’re getting paid $20 a month while at a federally-run prison they could get paid about $200 a month for their labor. “They have the same vendor for the commissary for prison and ICE, but food is cheaper in prison,” he says. “A pack of beef is $4.50, and here it’s almost $6. We want them to drop the commissary prices.”

When detainee workers asked the GEO Group to drop prices, Raul said they began pointing fingers and putting responsibility on the unit supply vendor. “They both keep blaming each other,” said Raul. “They don’t give us a direct answer.”

Boss Says No Strike

A GEO Group spokesperson denies the workers are on strike. “Our ICE Processing Centers, including the Golden State Annex, are maintained in accordance with all applicable federal sanitation standards, with or without the contributions of Voluntary Work Program participants. Choosing not to participate in a voluntary program cannot constitute a labor strike.”

Raul said there are three dorms that are participating in the strike with about 27 workers involved and about 50 to 60 detainees who are standing in solidarity. “We all got together because this ain’t right.” He said they took their complaints to the warden and assistant warden. “Right now, this is only affecting 27 workers, but it’s going to be more than 27 because people are coming through here. In a period of a year, hundreds or even thousands are detained.”

The detainees are fighting to stay in the U.S. by seeking asylum or visas for victims of certain crimes (U visa). Some are also seeking relief through family-based petitions, said Lisa Knox, legal director at the California Collaborative for Immigrant Justice.

The detainees come from Central American, African, and Asian countries. Many of them are long-time residents of Los Angeles and Kern County, according to Benjamin.

The pitifully low pay in the detention centers “depresses everybody’s wages,” said Benjamin. “In the case of these two facilities, it’s just outrageous because they’ve eliminated jobs of cleaning personnel, and said, ‘well, we have free labor from these people. Let them do it. And [the detainees] said, no, we’re not a free labor pool.”

Last year, a jury in a U.S District Court in Washington unanimously found GEO Group responsible for violating the state’s minimum wage laws; the judge ordered back pay to 100,000 detainees. Last month, a complaint was filed against GEO Group in a federal court in California stating the for-profit company fails to maintain a minimum standards of sanitation and that detainees are forced to work or be subjected to discipline.

“We All Speak Up”

As the strike continues, GEO is retaliating against the detained workers. Two strikers have been placed in solitary confinement for engaging in a group demonstration, according to Knox.

The prison is also limiting the days the commissary delivers purchased food to the detained workers. “You used to purchase your food and the vendor would come on Wednesdays and Fridays,” says Raul. “Now, they only come on Fridays and tell us they do not know the schedule.”

Another common scare tactic is threatening detained workers about how their behavior while in lock up will look before a judge ruling on their pending immmigration cases. “The judge will find out you aren’t obeying rules and if you’re not obeying rules in here what will make them think you’ll obey rules out there?” said Raul, recounting a common fear-mongering tactic used by prison guards. To combat these tactics, he and the other detainees do everything as a group to ensure no one is singled out as a ring-leader. “We all speak up and when we speak to the officers we go as a group.”

A fundraiser has been launched to support the labor strikers’ efforts as well as an open-letter to Governor Newsom to pass the California Mandela Act, a bill that “defines solitary confinement as any period of confinement that exceeds 17 hours a day in a cell.”