Is Participatory Local Democracy the Antidote to Far-Right Populism? Hungarians are About to Find Out

By Ábel BedeO

October 3, 2024

Source: Byline Times

European People's Party - Viktor Orbán. Flickr.

The European Parliamentary elections on 9 June drastically reshaped the Hungarian political landscape. Péter Magyar’s new party, Tisza, received 30% of the votes, the highest percentage an opposition party has ever got in Viktor Orbán’s system.

Magyar, the ex-husband of Fidesz’s former justice minister Judit Varga and the former director of several Hungarian state-owned companies, emerged in February after the so-called clemency scandal.

Magyar’s rise has been meteoric and unprecedented in Hungarian politics. In the span of a few months, Tisza became Orbán’s main challenger for the 2026 General Election which they have a chance of winning. 

Manfred Weber (r), EPP leader, and Viktor Orban’s challenger, Peter Magyar, stand on the roof of the Hilton Hotel and look out over Budapest after holding talks about Magyar’s Tisza party joining the EPP group in the EU Parliament. Photo: Dpa picture alliance / Alamy

While his emergence gives hope that Orbán can be defeated, Magyar’s rise is not necessarily good news for progressive Hungarians who oppose Fidesz’s rule on an ideological basis.

As a former Fidesz member, Magyar is openly a conservative and accepts many of Orbán’s party’s basic tenets. He uses similar rhetorical tropes in his speeches as Orbán, his position regarding the war in Ukraine is not markedly different from that of Fidesz, and he does not propose an overhaul of the tax system. 

Progressive Hungarians should not completely despair, however. The local elections Hungary held alongside the European elections in June show an emerging pattern.

Several progressive voices managed to win mayoral elections with majorities in councils and will commence their term in October.

What many of them had in common was a focus on the idea of their local area being more than just a district or a village and instead interpreting it as a “community” by embracing direct participatory democracy. Their emergence is not a sudden, explosive one like that of Magyar but the result of hard and time-consuming local work and activism. 

One of the major stories of the local elections was the victory of MKKP’s Gergely Kovács in District XII of Budapest (also known as Hegyvidék). Hegyvidék is one of the wealthiest districts in Budapest, which until recently was considered a safe seat for Fidesz.

MKKP (‘Magyar Kétfarkú Kutyapárt’ – The Hungarian Two-Tailed Dog Party) launched as a satirical party in the late 2000s, but by the mid-2010s they started engaging in grassroots campaigns, such as renovating bus stops and painting benches and pavements. By 2019, they had some councillors in Budapest, including Kovács.  

‘More everything, less nothing’ – Gergely Kovács’ campaign poster at the June local elections. Photo: Supplied

MKKP’s main strategy is to use a significant portion of the funds given by the Hungarian state to political parties for campaigning to finance community projects. People can apply to their Sándor Rózsa People’s Public Money Wasting Fund and democratically selected projects get funded. This way, the Dogs have funded the publication of a children’s book, thematic film screenings, public community dinners, infrastructural developments at a dog shelter, and camps for disadvantaged children. 

In their election campaign, the Dogs promised to elevate their voluntary activities to a council level: they pledged to have a Community Budget in the council, similar to their Sándor Rózsa Fund, where individuals or organisations can apply with ideas for projects which the council would fund.

They also pledged to have a warehouse where residents can donate used electrical goods which then can be given to other residents in need. Their council also intends to pay for materials residents can renovate their local environment with. To encourage more interaction between the locals and the council, the Dogs pledged to reform the council’s website. 

“During the campaign, we stressed our philosophy on several platforms: Citizens must act themselves, and, crucially, that they canact themselves to achieve change. This is the idea our party is built on and we intend to organise the district around this philosophy too,” Tekla Kocsik, a newly elected councillor and MKKP’s local campaign manager at the Hegyvidék election, told the Byline Times. 

But doesn’t being elected make the advocacy and popularisation of such a philosophy more difficult? If the individual is responsible for improving their environment and bettering their community, will relying on the council (however participatory it is) not result in the opposite of the desired effect? 

Tekla Kocsik’s in MKKP’s Facebook campaign material from June

Not according to Kocsik: “Our role will be to create the conditions for free participation for everyone who wants to do something for the community. In Hungary, civil organisations are being pushed to the brink and thus there are really no institutions individual action can be channelled through. A participatory local government aims to offer a solution to this problem.” 

Gergely Kovács is not the only newly elected Hungarian mayor who won on a platform heavily influenced by the advocacy of participatory or community-focused politics.

Pócsmegyer is a village on Szentendre-Island between two strands of the Danube. It recently made history by electing Kriszta Mwajas, who became the first-ever Black mayor in Hungarian history.

While Mwajas’ opponent, the incumbent mayor Miklós Németh, was nominally independent, his campaign was aided by the local Fidesz MP and government spokesperson Eszter Vitályos. 

Mwajas started her involvement in local public life when she partook in activities at KÖSZI Önkéntes, a volunteer group that, similarly to the Hungarian Two-Tailed Dog Party, organised regular litter clean-ups and repainted benches. 

When the council ran out of money to fund this year’s edition of the annual village festival, her team, Helyi Erő, and KÖSZI took on a significant part of the organisation and funding. As part of the festival, Gábor Szilvágyi, Mwajas’ soon-to-be deputy mayor, organised a ballot for locals who could directly vote on what species of tree to plant on one of Pócsmegyer’s squares.  

In her mayoral campaign, Mwajas heavily criticised the lack of communication between the council and the residents and pledged to improve it. Similarly to the Dogs in Hegyvidék, she promised to create a new, more accessible, regularly updated website for the residents as well as to develop an app to foster communication.

Helyi Erő ran under the slogan “Together with the community!” and their campaign focused on the idea of transforming the village from a settlement into a communitywhere locals can work and engage in creative activities together. 

“Together with the community!” – Kriszta Mwajas in Helyi Erő’s Facebook campaign material from June

Mwajas also started organising so-called thematic circles; groups consisting of Pócsmegyer residents with different expertise, for example in culture, sports, roads, and environmental protection, which could guide the operations of the council.

“This participatory element was completely missing from our local government. The residents had no communication and no connection with our elected officials. The council must be approachable and cooperative so that it can work together with the locals,” says Mwajas. 

Should the Dog Party or Kriszta Mwajas’ Helyi Erő wish to look for inspiration, there is a precedent for a Hungarian council embracing participatory democracy and community politics successfully. 

Some areas of Józsefváros are amongst the poorest in Budapest. In 2019, the Opposition’s András Pikó pulled off a narrow victory against the incumbent Fidesz mayor in the district. This year, he defended his seat with an increased majority. 

Just like in 2019, Tessza Udvarhelyi was Pikó’s campaign manager for this year’s elections. In the time between, she was the head of the Józsefváros’ newly established Office for Community Participation. An increased focus on participation and a more direct communication between the municipality and the residents were the main policy change the Pikó team introduced. 

Udvarhelyi sees the main role of the Office for Community Participation as teaching the population that they have a say in how their local area is organised and encouraging them to be proactive and initiate change.

Residents should not just expect things from the authorities. They should think that the district is theirs and have a say in how the council is run. If they have an issue with something, they should organise themselves and the council will helpTessza Udvarhelyi

What does this mean in practice? In the past five years, Józsefváros’s website received a significant facelift (similar to what Mwajas and the Dogs are promising) and the council now has customer service, both of which are also available in English (Józsefváros has one of the highest percentage of non-Hungarian residents in Budapest). 

“Pikó again!” – András Pikó’s campaign poster at the June local elections

The flagship feature of the Office of Participation is the Participatory Budget, through which locals can suggest and vote on new projects. Józsefváros residents send in suggestions, municipal staff screen them for feasibility and then a committee of local residents selects the ones which then go on the ballot.

In the end, locals vote directly on which ones they want to implement. As part of these initiatives, the council started to develop a program to neuter stray cats, planted trees on several streets, and built new water fountains and bird feeders. Among the winning ideas in 2024 were free sanitary product machines, the opening of a new park, and improving the accessibility of areas in the district. 

So why has participatory local democracy become so popular in Hungary? A straightforward answer is that after 14 years of authoritarian rule dismantling most democratic institutions in the country, Hungarians don’t have many other options to exercise democratic rights than at the local level. 

“I think this is a necessity. If you wanted to do politics or just simply participate in public life in the past 15 years, you were completely shut out from the national level,” Udvarhelyi explained.

But we also realised that we can do cool and important things locally. András Pikó always says that Józsefváros is our political home because, at the moment, for many of us, our country is unable to serve that needTessza Udvarhelyi

That participatory democracy is a response to Fidesz’s takeover of the Hungarian state is also apparent in Mwajas’ plans for Pócsmergyer. Perhaps her most radical idea for the village – and what might prove to be the most controversial – is community-funded road renovations.

“Our roads are in a terrible condition. They are shit basically,” she says. To solve the problem, in their manifesto, Helyi Erő pitched the idea that in case the residents on a street put together funds to pay for a road renovation project, the council will handle the administration and commence the work that requires specialist expertise.

The idea seems astonishing at first glance: after all, isn’t funding the maintenance of roads one of the basic duties of a local council?

Mwajas does not think so. “We must be realistic about our current situation. It is just not possible to do this in any other way. There is no money and a significant part of the population know this. Our situation is a given and we need to make the most out of it. What we have to do now is survive.” 

The clue to why this idea is not completely far-fetched lies in the particularities of local councils in Hungary under Orbánism. Before coming to power in 2010, Orbán’s Fidesz made significant gains at local elections in 2006, which played a huge role in establishing a successful network and electoral machine which contributes to his continuous successes. 

As a result, Orbán is wary of non-Fidesz-controlled local councils and has significantly curtailed their room for manoeuvre by changing the law so that councils have significantly less power and income. Local councils are more reliant on the state, therefore mayors are less likely to openly criticise the government. 

As such, embracing participatory democracy is a response to the systemic destruction of the Hungarian state. When the state does not do its job, individuals and local communities step up instead. 

This solution, however also shows the limitations of participatory local government; if the average Pócsmegyer resident was less well off, such a proposal would be bound to fail at the ballot box.

In a sense, with the community-funded road renovations, the council replaces taxes that the government takes away from it or spends on illicit purposes. However, in this scenario, the Pócsmegyer citizens who want to renovate their roads essentially pay twice. 

Individuals reaching in their pockets to counter Fidesz-generated problems with the Hungarian state is not entirely unique phenomenon in local government. After Fidesz turned the Hungarian public media into a propaganda machine and forced others to close, several independent media outlets are now funded through a quirk of the Hungarian tax system that lets individuals give 1% of their taxes to a foundation. 

The current affairs YouTube channel Partizán was the largest beneficiary of the scheme this year in the entire country, but investigative portal Direkt36 and the conservative (but Fidesz critical) magazine Válasz Online also received a significant amount of its funding through it. 

Udvarhelyi seems to agree that the biggest challenge for participatory local governments is to also reach out to those on lower incomes who perhaps pay less attention to politics.

According to Udvarhelyi, the Józsefváros council does this by engaging in community organising with socially disadvantaged groups and by surveying which areas were more active in participatory processes and targeting the newer ones at areas where activity was lacking. 

Tessza Udvarhelyi at a Józsefváros bar in August. Photo: Supplied

Its proponents agree that participatory democracy is also an answer to alienation, plaguing so many people in Western societies. “Communities are the future,” declares Mwajas.

“Individuals are turning further and further away from each other. Collaborative action or work can be a remedy for this as it is much more difficult to be hateful to people if you work together at the same desk the next day.”

In the words of MKKP’s Kocsik, “a lot of political parties throughout Europe are unable to make people interested in maintaining democratic standards. People believe that political parties are too distant from their problems and authoritarian populist forces are able to capitalise on this.”

By embracing participatory democracy, local councils can bring people together by helping them realise that if they don’t turn away from each other, they get to know people with whom they can cooperate and build things. This solves the problem of alienation and divisionTekla Kocsik, MKKP

Kocsik might be onto something. Anrdás Pikó’s team in 2019 and MKKP this year both took over Fidesz-controlled districts.

Kriszta Mwajas, a Black woman with blue hair, managed to win in a village where the combined vote share of far-right parties (Fidesz and Mi Hazánk) at a parallel election reached 64%.

With the election of Orbán, the rise of authoritarian populism started in Hungary. But if these councils’ experiment with participatory democracy works out, the country may also have found its antidote.

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 Finally Free, Assange Receives a Measure of Justice From the Council of Europe

In his first public statement since his release, Assange said, “I’m free today … because I pled guilty to journalism.”

By Marjorie Cohn

October 5, 2024

Source: Truthout


Source: Council of Europe

The Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE), Europe’s foremost human rights body, overwhelmingly adopted a resolution on October 2 formally declaring WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange a political prisoner. The Council of Europe, which represents 64 nations, expressed deep concern at the harsh treatment suffered by Assange, which has had a “chilling effect” on journalists and whistleblowers around the world.

In the resolution, PACE notes that many of the leaked files WikiLeaks published “provide credible evidence of war crimes, human rights abuses, and government misconduct.” The revelations also “confirmed the existence of secret prisons, kidnappings and illegal transfers of prisoners by the United States on European soil.”

According to the terms of a plea deal with the U.S. Department of Justice, Assange pled guilty on June 25 to one count of conspiracy to obtain documents, writings and notes connected with the national defense under the U.S. Espionage Act. Without the deal, he was facing 175 years in prison for 18 charges in an indictment filed by the Trump administration and pursued by the Biden administration, stemming from WikiLeaks’ publication of evidence of war crimes committed by the U.S. in Iraq, Afghanistan and Guantánamo Bay. After his plea, Assange was released from custody with credit for the five years he had spent in London’s maximum-security Belmarsh Prison.

The day before PACE passed its resolution, Assange delivered a powerful testimony to the Council of Europe’s Committee on Legal Affairs and Human Rights. This was his first public statement since his release from custody four months ago, after 14 years in confinement – nine in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London and five in Belmarsh. “Freedom of expression and all that flows from it is at a dark crossroads,” Assange told the parliamentarians.
A “Chilling Effect and a Climate of Self-Censorship”

The resolution says that “the disproportionately harsh charges” the U.S. filed against Assange under the Espionage Act, “which expose him to a risk of de facto life imprisonment,” together with his conviction “for — what was essentially — the gathering and publication of information,” justify classifying him as a political prisoner, under the definition set forth in a PACE resolution from 2012 defining the term. Assange’s five-year incarceration in Belmarsh Prison was “disproportionate to the alleged offence.”

Noting that Assange is “the first publisher to be prosecuted under [the Espionage Act] for leaking classified information obtained from a whistleblower,” the resolution expresses concern about the “chilling effect and a climate of self-censorship for all journalists, editors and others who raise the alarm on issues that are essential to the functioning of democratic societies.” The resolution also notes that “information gathering is an essential preparatory step in journalism” which is protected by the right to freedom of expression guaranteed by the European Court of Human Rights.

The resolution cites the conclusion of Nils Melzer, UN Special Rapporteur on torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment, that Assange had been exposed to “increasingly severe forms of cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment, the cumulative effects of which can only be described as psychological torture.”

Condemning “transnational repression,” PACE was “alarmed by reports that the CIA was discreetly monitoring Mr. Assange in the Ecuadorian embassy in London and that it was allegedly planning to poison or even assassinate him on British soil.” The CIA has raised the “state secrets” privilege in a civil lawsuit filed by two attorneys and two journalists over that illegal surveillance.

In the U.S., “the concept of state secrets is used to shield executive officials from criminal prosecution for crimes such as kidnapping and torture, or to prevent victims from claiming damages,” the resolution notes. But “the responsibility of State agents for war crimes or serious human rights violations, such as assassinations, enforced disappearances, torture or abductions, does not constitute a secret that must be protected.”

Moreover, the resolution expresses deep concern that, according to publicly available evidence, no one has been held to account for the war crimes and human rights violations committed by U.S. state agents and decries the “culture of impunity.”

The resolution says there is no evidence anyone has been harmed by WikiLeaks’ publications and “regrets that despite Mr Assange’s disclosure of thousands of confirmed — previously unreported — deaths by U.S. and coalition forces in Iraq and Afghanistan, he has been the one accused of endangering lives.”
Assange’s Testimony

The testimony Assange provided to the committee was poignant. “I eventually chose freedom over realizable justice … Justice for me is now precluded,” Assange testified. “I am not free today because the system worked. I am free today after years of incarceration because I pled guilty to journalism.” He added, “I pled guilty to seeking information from a source. I pled guilty to obtaining information from a source. And I pled guilty to informing the public what that information was.” His source was whistleblower Chelsea Manning, who provided the documents and reports to WikiLeaks. “Journalism is not a crime,” Assange said. “It is a pillar of a free and informed society.”

Assange described the transition from the years he spent in a maximum-security prison to testifying before the European parliamentarians as a “profound and surreal shift.” Speaking of his isolation for years in a small cell, he said “it strips away one’s sense of self, leaving only the raw essence of existence.” Assange said, “I’m yet not fully equipped to speak about what I have endured. The relentless struggle to stay alive, both physically and mentally. Nor can I speak yet about the death by hanging, murder and medical neglect of my fellow prisoners.”

Perhaps the most infamous publication by WikiLeaks was the 2007 “Collateral Murder” video, which depicts a U.S. Army Apache attack helicopter crew targeting and killing 12 unarmed civilians in Baghdad, including two Reuters journalists, as well as a man who came to rescue the wounded. The release of that video “stirred public debate,” Assange testified. “Now, every day there are live streaming horrors from the wars in Ukraine and the war in Gaza.” He cited “hundreds of journalists” killed in those wars.

Addressing the danger journalists face, Assange declared, “The criminalization of news-gathering activities is a threat to investigative journalism everywhere. I was formally convicted by a foreign power for asking, for receiving and publishing truthful information about that power.” He noted, “The fundamental issue is simple. Journalists should not be prosecuted for doing their jobs.”

Assange predicted “more impunity, more secrecy, more retaliation for telling the truth and more self-censorship” in the future. “Journalists must be activists for the truth,” he said, mentioning the importance of “journalistic solidarity.”

Although Assange expected some sort of legal harassment as a result of WikiLeaks’ publications and was ready “to fight for that,” he said “my naivete was believing in the law. When push comes to shove, laws are just pieces of paper, and they can be reinterpreted for political expediency.”

Assange observed that laws are made by the ruling class, who simply reinterpret them when the rules don’t serve their ends. Describing the legal process in his case, Assange noted that “all judges, whether they were finding in my favor or not in the United Kingdom, showed extraordinary deference to the United States.”
PACE Urges US to Investigate War Crimes

The resolution calls on the U.S., the U.K., the member and observer States of the Council of Europe, and media outlets to take actions to address its concerns.

It calls on the U.S., an observer State, to reform the Espionage Act of 1917 to exclude from its operation journalists, editors and whistleblowers who disclose classified information with the aim of informing the public of serious crimes, such as torture or murder. In order to obtain a conviction for violation of the Act, the government should be required to prove a malicious intent to harm national security. It also calls on the U.S. to investigate the allegations of war crimes and other human rights violations exposed by Assange and Wikileaks.

PACE called on the U.K. to review its extradition laws to exclude extradition for political offenses, as well as conduct an independent review of the conditions of Assange’s treatment while at Belmarsh, to see if it constituted torture, or inhuman or degrading treatment.

In addition, the resolution urges the States of the Council of Europe to further improve their protections for whistleblowers, and to adopt strict guidelines to prevent governments from classifying documents as defense secrets when not warranted.

Finally, the resolution urges media outlets to establish rigorous protocols for handling and verifying classified information, to ensure responsible reporting and avoid any risk to national security and the safety of informants and sources.

Although PACE doesn’t have the authority to make laws, it can urge the States of the Council of Europe to take action. Since Assange never had the opportunity to litigate the denial of his right to freedom of expression, the resolution of the Council of Europe is particularly significant as he seeks a pardon from U.S. President Joe Biden.


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Marjorie Cohn is professor emerita at Thomas Jefferson School of Law, dean of the People’s Academy of International Law, and past president of the National Lawyers Guild. She sits on the national advisory boards of Assange Defense and Veterans For Peace. A member of the bureau of the International Association of Democratic Lawyers, she is the U.S. representative to the continental advisory council of the Association of American Jurists. Her books include Drones and Targeted Killing: Legal, Moral and Geopolitical Issues.

Assange Was A Political Prisoner, Council Of Europe Parliamentarians Declare In Vote

By Kevin Gosztola

October 3, 2024

Source: The Dissenter


Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (Source)

The Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, or PACE, approved a resolution that states WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange was prosecuted and detained in the United Kingdom as a political prisoner.

Þórhildur Sunna Ævarsdóttir, the general rapporteur for political prisoners and an Icelandic parliamentarian who serves on the Committee on Legal Affairs and Human Rights, drafted the resolution, which passed by a vote of 88-13.

The resolution urged the United States to reform the Espionage Act and “make its application conditional to the presence of a malicious intent to harm the national security of the United States or to aid a foreign power” and “exclude the application of the Espionage Act to publishers, journalists and whistleblowers,” especially those who try to inform the public about war crimes, torture, and illegal surveillance.

Assange, his wife Stella Assange, and WikiLeaks editor-in-chief Kristinn Hrafnsson were present for the debate and vote on the resolution. They cheered, clapped, and thanked the assembly.

The debate and vote on the resolution came after Assange testified before PACE’s Committee on Legal Affairs and Human Rights on October 1. It was his first public testimony since he accepted a plea deal that ended the United States Justice Department’s political case against him.

PACE’s consideration of Assange’s case was part of a wider examination by the assembly of the increased threats that journalists and whistleblowers face in Europe. A fact-finding visit to the U.K. by Ævarsdóttir occurred while Assange was still detained at Belmarsh.

“If you look at the definition of a political prisoner, Julian Assange and his case fulfills this definition,” Ævarsdóttir told the assembly. “He was convicted for engaging in acts of journalism. This is a clear instance of a politically motivated incarceration.”

She continued, “If it were any other country, if it were one of the countries that we are happy to point to having political prisoners on a regular basis here in the Parliamentary Assembly, I don’t think that there would be much of a question on whether or not this assembly is fit to determine whether someone is or is not a political prisoner. We did indeed ourselves create this definition.”

“What does this case say to those who risk their lives to report on corruption, war crimes, and human rights abuses? It says that if you dare to publish the truth you may face the full wrath of the law, however archaic and unjust the law is,” Ævarsdóttir stated. “It says that in the struggle between power and truth, power will prevail.”

Lesia Vasylenko, a parliamentarian from Ukraine, supported the resolution and agreed that the “biggest threat” presented by the Assange case was that journalists may now be prosecuted under the U.S. Espionage Act.

“Editors and publishers will start discussing whether they can publish classified information that contributes to public debate,” Vasylenko said. “The climate of self-censorship must be avoided at all costs so that our societies can remain free and hold their governments to account.”

Anna-Kristiina Mikkonen, a parliamentarian from Finland, recalled how the WikiLeaks publications had helped confirm “the existence of secret prisons as well as secret and illegal kidnapping transfers carried out by the United States [the CIA] on European territory.”

“The Assange case, and in particular the role of [Chelsea] Manning, is very good reason to try and achieve better protection for whistleblowers throughout the world,” Mikkonen said.

A “dotted line” could be drawn from the Assange case to impunity for the Spanish government “spying on dissident voices, lawyers, journalists, and politicians” in Catalonia, “destroying democracy and not addressing the WikiLeaks revelations on 125 German officials including [German Chancellor Angela] Merkel,” declared Spanish parliamentarian Laura Castel.

Castel also called out the illegal surveillance by the United States of Assange’s “privileged legal and medical conversations inside a sovereign embassy.” The CIA reportedly relied upon a Spanish security firm called UC Global to target Assange, his family, his lawyers, and associates that regularly visited him in Ecuador’s London embassy while he lived under political asylum.

Paul Gavan, a parliamentarian from Ireland, did not mince words in his remarks. “This week we saw the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe at its worst and at its best. Its worst moment was the continuing refusal to take a stand against a genocide being prosecuted against the Palestinian people. Its best moment was the powerful testimony of Julian Assange at the Committee for Legal Affairs yesterday.”

“I believe it was truly significant that Julian made a number of references both to Ukraine and Gaza and the deliberate murder of journalists in both locations.”

“One of the most frustrating things over the last five years is that a large chunk of the body politic both here and across Europe chose to bury their heads in the sand,” Gavan declared. “They chose to be silent in relation to this outrageous series of acts against this fine man. And it’s disappointing to note that this is the shortest list of political speakers for any debate this week.

“What does that tell us about the continuing silence? So the least we can do today is endorse this excellent report because our job is to defend media freedom.”

Stella Assange, Julian Assange, and Kristinn Hrafnsson applaud the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (Source: WikiLeaks)

“Yes, Julian Assange has worked for human rights,” said French parliamentarian Emmanuel Fernandes. Assange revealed that the National Security Agency in the U.S. had “wiretapped three French presidents between 2006 and 2013.”

Fernandes linked the Assange case to the French government’s targeting of journalists. Particularly, Fernandes recalled, in 2023, Ariane Lavrilleux was “incarcerated for 39 hours.” French authorities seized her phone and computer. The attack on freedom of the press came two years after she revealed that “France was an accomplice in the extrajudicial killing of hundreds of people in Egypt.”

“What I do regret is that his release was not underpinned by a legal verdict. I think it would have been very important to have some kind of legal ruling, which would have provided greater legal certainty who dare to denounce illegal actions,” Austrian parliamentarian Petra Bayr argued. “So without a ruling from either a U.K. court or the European Court of Human Rights, this does leave something of a void. Which means that there’s a justified fear that such goings on will continue, and journalists won’t necessarily benefit from protection.”

Julian Pahlke, a parliamentarian from Germany, said that the case had ended with a deal that helped the United States “maintain their image.” It was crucial for PACE to advocate for an “umbrella of protection” against Espionage Act prosecutions against journalists, publishers, and civil society organizations in Council of Europe member states.

Multiple amendments were put forward by Richard Keen, a Conservative parliamentarian from the U.K. who formally dissented against the resolution. He complained that the resolution belittled the “fate of true political prisoners,” like those detained in Russia and insisted Assange was not tortured while he was held at Belmarsh.

As the time came for Keen to present his amendments for a vote, he meekly withdrew several of them. It was emblematic of how political elites in the Western world have quickly moved on from their campaign against Assange and WikiLeaks now that the case has ended and the media organization’s founder is free.

Keen was particularly annoyed by an amendment that condemned Assange’s detention at Belmarsh. “He was not detained as a political prisoner. That’s a simple matter of legal fact, and if we ignore that, I think we devalue the report.”

The assembly disregarded the U.K. parliamentarian’s griping and adopted the amendment.

Thirteen European parliamentarians voted against the resolution:

Altogether, the passage of a resolution recognizing that Assange was a political prisoner was an overdue act of solidarity with a journalist and an acknowledgment that another prosecution like it could easily happen if European countries do not stand up for media freedom and freedom of expression.

Anthony Bellanger, secretary general for the International Federation of Journalists praised the vote. “It’s a victory for press freedom, for all journalists across the world and for Assange after 12 years deprived of freedom. The fight for truth has never been so necessary.”

The names of the 13 European parliamentarians, who voted against the resolution and still apparently believe that the persecution against Assange was acceptable: Keen (U.K.), David Blencathra (U.K.), Sally-Ann Hart (U.K.), David Morris (U.K.), Katarzyna Sójka (Poland), Paweł Jabłoński (Poland), Hannes Germann (Switzerland), Martin Graf (Austria), Ricardo Dias Pinto (Spain), Vladimir Dordevic (Serbia), and Arminas Lydeka (Lithuania).

Unrealisable Justice: Julian Assange in Strasbourg

by Binoy Kampmark / October 2nd, 2024

It was good to hear that voice again. A voice of provoking interest that pitter patters, feline across a parquet, followed by the usual devastating conclusion. Julian Assange’s last public address was made in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London. There, he was a guest vulnerable to the capricious wishes of changing governments. At Belmarsh Prison in London, he was rendered silent, his views conveyed through visitors, legal emissaries and his family.

The hearing in Strasbourg on October 1, organised by the Committee on Legal Affairs and Human Rights of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE), arose from concerns raised in a report by Iceland’s Thórhildur Sunna Ævarsdóttir, in which she expressed the view that Assange’s case was “a classic example of ‘shooting the messenger’.” She found it “appalling that Mr Assange’s prosecution was portrayed as if it was supposed to bring justice to some unnamed victims the existence of whom has never been proven, whereas perpetrators of torture or arbitrary detention enjoy absolute impunity.”

His prosecution, Ævarsdóttir went onto explain, had been designed to obscure and deflect the revelations found in WikiLeaks’ disclosures, among them abundant evidence of war crimes committed by US and coalition forces in Iraq and Afghanistan, instances of torture and arbitrary detention in the infamous Guantánamo Bay camp facility, illegal rendition programs implicating member states of the Council of Europe and unlawful mass surveillance, among others.

A draft resolution was accordingly formulated, expressing, among other things, alarm at Assange’s treatment and disproportionate punishment “for engaging in activities that journalists perform on a daily basis” which made him, effectively, a political prisoner; the importance of holding state security and intelligence services accountable; the need to “urgently reform the 1917 Espionage Act” to include conditional maliciousness to cause harm to the security of the US or aid a foreign power and exclude its application to publishers, journalists and whistleblowers.

Assange’s full testimony began with reflection and foreboding: the stripping away of his self in incarceration, the search, as yet, for words to convey that experience, and the fate of various prisoners who died through hanging, murder and medical neglect. While filled with gratitude by the efforts made by PACE and the Legal Affairs and Human Rights Committee, not to mention innumerable parliamentarians, presidents, prime ministers, even the Pope, none of their interventions “should have been necessary.” But they proved invaluable, as “the legal protections that did exist, many existed only on paper or were not effective in any remotely reasonable time frame.”

The legal system facing Assange was described as encouraging an “unrealisable justice”. Choosing freedom instead of purgatorial process, he could not seek it, the plea deal with the US government effectively barring his filing of a case at the European Court of Human Rights or a freedom of information request. “I am not free today because the system worked,” he insisted. “I am free today because after years of incarceration because I plead guilty to journalism. I plead guilty to seeking information from a source. I plead guilty to informing the public what that information was. I did not plead guilty to anything else.”

When founded, WikiLeaks was intended to enlighten people about the workings of the world. “Having a map of where we are lets us understand where we might go.” Power can be held to account by those informed, justice sought where there is none. The organisation did not just expose assassinations, torture, rendition and mass surveillance, but “the policies, the agreements and the structures behind them.”

Since leaving Belmarsh prison, Assange rued the abstracting of truth. It seemed “less discernible”. Much ground had been “lost” in the interim; truth had been battered, “undermined, attacked, weakened and diminished. I see more impunity, more secrecy, more retaliation for telling the truth and more self-censorship.”

Much of the critique offered by Assange focused on the source of power behind any legal actions. Laws, in themselves, “are just pieces of paper and they can be reinterpreted for political expedience”. The ruling class dictates them and reinterprets or changes them depending on circumstances.

In his case, the security state “was powerful enough to push for a reinterpretation of the US constitution,” thereby denuding the expansive, “black and white” effect of the First Amendment. Mike Pompeo, when director of the Central Intelligence Agency, simply lent on Attorney General William Barr, himself a former CIA officer, to seek the publisher’s extradition and re-arrest of Chelsea Manning. Along the way, Pompeo directed the agency to draw up plans of abduction and assassination while targeting Assange’s European colleagues and his family.

The US Department of Justice, Assange could only reflect, cared little for moderating tonic of legalities – that was something to be postponed to a later date. “In the meantime, the deterrent effect that it seeks, the retributive actions that it seeks, have had their effect.” A “dangerous new global legal position” had been established as a result: “Only US citizens have free speech rights. Europeans and other nationalities do not have free speech rights.”

PACE had, before it, an opportunity to set norms, that “the freedom to speak and the freedom to publish the truth are not privileges enjoyed by a few but rights guaranteed to all”. “The criminalisation of newsgathering activities is a threat to investigative journalism everywhere. I was formally convicted, by a foreign power, for asking for, receiving, and publishing truthful information about that power while I was in Europe.”

A spectator, reader or listener might leave such an address deflated. But it is fitting that a man subjected to the labyrinthine, life-draining nature of several legal systems should be the one to exhort to a commitment: that all do their part to keep the light bright, “that the pursuit of truth will live on, and the voices of the many are not silenced by the interests of the few.”

Handmaiden to the Establishment

Peter Greste’s Register of Journalists

by Binoy Kampmark / October 4th, 2024

When established, well fed and fattened, a credible professional tires from the pursuit. One can get complacent, flatulently confident, self-assured. From that summit, the inner lecturer emerges, along with a disease: false expertise.

The Australian journalist Peter Greste has faithfully replicated the pattern. At one point in his life, he was lean, hungry and determined to get the story. He seemed to avoid the perils of mahogany ridge, where many alcohol-soaked hacks scribble copy sensational or otherwise. There were stints as a freelancer covering the civil wars in Yugoslavia, elections in post-apartheid South Africa. On joining the BBC in 1995, Afghanistan, Latin America, the Middle East and Africa fell within his investigative orbit. To his list of employers could also be added Reuters, CNN and Al Jazeera English.

During his tenure with Al Jazeera, for a time one of the funkiest outfits on the media scene, Greste was arrested along with two colleagues in Egypt accused of aiding the Muslim Brotherhood. He spent 400 days in jail before deportation. Prison in Egypt gave him cover, armour and padding for journalistic publicity. It also gave him the smugness of a failed martyr.

Greste then did what many hacks do: become an academic. It is telling about the ailing nature of universities that professorial chairs are being doled out with ease to members of the Fourth Estate, a measure that does little to encourage the fierce independence one hopes from either. Such are the temptations of establishment living: you become the very thing you should be suspicious of.

With little wonder, Greste soon began exhibiting the symptoms of establishment fever, lecturing the world as UNESCO Chair of Journalism and Communication at the University of Queensland on what he thought journalism ought to be. Hubris struck. Like so many of his craft, he exuded envy at WikiLeaks and its gold reserves of classified information. He derided its founder, Julian Assange, for not being a journalist. This was stunningly petty, schoolyard scrapping in the wake of the publisher’s forced exit from the Ecuadorian Embassy in London in 2019. It ignored that most obvious point: journalism, especially when it documents power and its abuses, thrives or dies on leaks and often illegal disclosures.

It is for this reason that Assange was convicted under the US Espionage Act of 1917, intended as a warning to all who dare publish and discuss national security documents of the United States.

In June this year, while celebrating Assange’s release (“a man who has suffered enormously for exposing the truth of abuses of power”) evidence of that ongoing fixation remained. Lazily avoiding the redaction efforts that WikiLeaks had used prior to Cablegate, Greste still felt that WikiLeaks had not met that standard of journalism that “comes with it the responsibility to process and present information in line with a set of ethical and professional standards.” It had released “raw, unredacted and unprocessed information online,” thereby posing “enormous risks for people in the field, including sources.”

It was precisely this very same view that formed the US prosecution case against Assange. Greste might have at least acknowledged that not one single study examining the effects of WikiLeaks’ disclosures, a point also made in the plea-deal itself, found instances where any source or informant for the US was compromised.

Greste now wishes, with dictatorial sensibility, to further impress his views on journalism through Journalism Australia, a body he hopes will set “professional” standards for the craft and, problematically, define press freedom in Australia. Journalism Australia Limited was formerly placed on the Australian corporate register in July, listing Greste, lobbyist Peter Wilkinson and executive director of The Ethics Centre, Simon Longstaff, as directors.

Members would be afforded the standing of journalists on paying a registration fee and being assessed. They would also, in theory, be offered the protections under a Media Reform Act (MFA) being proposed by the Alliance for Journalists’ Freedom, where Greste holds the position of Executive Director.

A closer look at the MFA shows its deferential nature to state authorities. As the Alliance for Journalists’ Freedom explains, “The law should not be protecting a particular class of self-appointed individual, but rather the role that journalism plays in our democracy.” So much for independent journalists and those of the Assange-hue, a point well spotted by Mary Kostakidis, no mean journalist herself and not one keen on being straitjacketed by yet another proposed code.

Rather disturbingly, the MFA is intended to aid “law enforcement agencies and the courts identify who is producing journalism”. How will this be done? By showing accreditation – the seal of approval, as it were – from Journalism Australia. In fact, Greste and his crew will go so far as to give the approved journalist a “badge” for authenticity on any published work. How utterly noble of them.

Such a body becomes, in effect, a handmaiden to state power, separating acceptable wheat from rebellious chaff. Even Greste had to admit that two classes of journalist would emerge under this proposal, “in the sense that we’ve got a definition for what we call a member journalist and non-member journalists, but I certainly feel comfortable with the idea of providing upward pressure on people to make sure their work falls on the right side of that line.”

This is a shoddy business that should cause chronic discomfort, and demonstrates, yet again, the moribund nature of the Fourth Estate. Instead of detaching itself from establishment power, Greste and bodies such as the Alliance for Journalists’ Freedom merely wish to clarify the attachment

Binoy Kampmark was a Commonwealth Scholar at Selwyn College, Cambridge. He lectures at RMIT University, Melbourne. Email: bkampmark@gmail.com. Read other articles by Binoy.

UAW Reformers Muster Forces to Hold Bosses to Their Word

By Keith Brower Brown, Jane Slaughter 

October 3, 2024

Source: Labor Notes
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Auto Workers President Shawn Fain addressed the convention of the union’s Unite All Workers for Democracy caucus near Detroit. He spoke of his pride in being a caucus member, saying that the transformation of the UAW thus far “began with the people in this room.” Photo: Luis Feliz Leon


A year after the United Auto Workers’ Stand-Up Strike, the union caucus that helped make it possible is setting out to transform locals still stuck in the mud. Their first step is to fight a new onslaught of layoffs, broken promises, and retaliation from CEOs.

The reform caucus Unite All Workers for Democracy (UAWD) held its first convention last weekend outside Detroit, with 150 UAW members, mostly auto workers but also from higher ed, legal services, and heavy equipment manufacturing.

Shafarrah Hill, a Stellantis transport driver from a Detroit local, said she joined the convention after local officers did nothing about bullying by her supervisors. “My union steward has been telling me for two years,” she said, “that if I want to do something about it, I need to come to UAWD.”

The caucus was formed in 2019 to campaign for one-member-one-vote elections for top offices. After winning that right, it had to put up or shut up, and backed candidates on the Members United slate for seven seats on the UAW executive board, winning a sweep in 2022-23 and electing Shawn Fain president. That victory was quickly followed by the Stand-Up Strike at the Big 3 automakers last fall, which won contract gains worth the previous four contracts combined.

But all has not been smooth sailing since then, for either the union or the caucus. UAW Vice President Mike Booth said, “We’re passing; it’s not straight A’s.”

Stellantis, in particular, has laid off hundreds of temporary workers, refused to honor its contractual commitment to reopen a closed plant (in Belvidere, Illinois), and said it will move certain assembly work from Detroit across the river to Canada.

The Stellantis contract, it turned out, actually contained an ugly concession on the attendance policy, supported by UAW Vice President Rich Boyer, that has made it much harder for workers to get time off, with heavy overtime still required. That has contributed to widespread disillusionment with the union among Stellantis workers—egged on by the old-guard officials heading the locals.

ENFORCING THE CONTRACT

In May, Fain removed Boyer as head of the Stellantis Department, citing “dereliction of duty” (he remains a vice president) and noting, among other factors, Boyer’s holding of a March meeting for UAW-Stellantis reps in sunny Puerto Rico (there are no Stellantis locals on the island).

Fain then began an aggressive campaign to enforce the contract, using new language that gives the union the right to strike over investment decisions. He alerted the nation to the union’s new fight when he spoke at the Democratic National Convention. On September 26, the union’s Stellantis Council authorized a strike. The International will agitate for strike votes in the locals.

“We have a strike vote coming up in October,” said Paul Davidson, a steward in Local 212 in Detroit. “You have a lot of people who are scared. You have a lot of people that are from the other group sowing seeds of doubt and fear.” But when old-guard local leaders gin up fear, Davidson said, he responds by bringing up their side’s 80-year stranglehold on power and sell-out contracts.

“You bring that history back up,” he said, “especially if you’re two-tier. I’m two-tier. I still don’t have a pension. It’s not what it’s supposed to be. But everything is better: no $20,000 fountain pens, no steak dinners, no bribes.” The exposure, starting in 2017, of scandalous corruption at the union’s highest levels—including top UAW officers embezzling and misusing funds, and taking bribes from Fiat Chrysler, now Stellantis—propelled the movement for direct elections.

“You remind these people in your union, brothers and sisters, who have this doubt and this fear, especially with the October strike vote coming, how we got here before, and what you gained,” Davidson said.

The union’s General Motors Department also angered members after last year’s strike when it was slow to clarify when early retirements would be available, and for how many workers. At some GM plants, members are still working heavy forced overtime to make up for production lost during the strike.

Another roadblock has come from old-guard staff of the union, who were rarely expected before to organize members against their bosses. A cozy relationship with the companies and a culture of rising in the union to cushy jobs at headquarters had existed for decades.

Old-guard UAW staffers at the International and in the regions, often using their staff union, have dug in their heels against the new expectations, filing dozens of grievances—and griping about new staff who came on with a different attitude. A strict staff contract limits elected leaders’ ability to dismiss holdovers standing in the way.

In February, the executive board reassigned many of the duties of Secretary-Treasurer Margaret Mock, citing her unwillingness to approve basic expenditures. Mock and Boyer had both been part of the UAWD-backed slate, and the caucus has supported the shake-up. “Our slate didn’t stay together,” Region 9 Director Daniel Vicente told the UAWD convention. “And we didn’t have a deep bench.”

TAKING ROOT IN LOCALS

Vicente told members that the reasons UAWD was formed—to fight tiers, corruption, and concessions—were still there. “You have to run [for office] in the locals,” he said, “and put in the infrastructure that puts the members at the heart of the organization.”

Across 15 workshops, the UAWD convention prepped members to organize shop floor fights with management and to run for office in locals still administered by adherents of the old regime—the vast majority of local officials.

Big delegations came from the huge locals at Stellantis’s Toledo Jeep and Ford’s Chicago Assembly plant, where UAWD members have been organizing actions from the bottom up. At Ford, they started an unofficial contract action committee in April 2023, when local officials said it was “too early.” A recent petition campaign forced management to boost parking lot security. At Jeep, members organized a first-ever march on the boss to protest the layoffs of temp employees.

In workshops, members talked about how to become better stewards and turn grievances into collective action, along with organizing the unorganized, enforcing contracts, winning union officer elections, and building UAWD chapters. They discussed the transition to electric vehicles, the UAW’s earlier reform movements, solidarity with Mexican auto workers, cross-racial solidarity, and an assessment of the Big 3 contracts.

In a contract campaigns workshop, Ben Smith of Local 5287 told of the union’s victory at Daimler Truck in North Carolina. He said four UAWD members from four Daimler plants coordinated to make cross-local T-shirts, a popular Facebook group called “DTNA for a Strong Contract,” and “Will Strike If Provoked” signs that members pasted to truck windows and the plant time-clock. With strong support from the International and raucous support from the rank and file, the union won 25 percent wage increases and “broke two-tier,” Smith said.

“Some union leaders are afraid of open discussion on Facebook,” he said. “They’re afraid of anti-union comments or anti-unity. But discussion is how you resolve that.” The Daimler contract is set to expire just two months before May 1, 2028, when the Big 3 auto contracts expire.

Alex Bruns-Smith talked about a recent contract campaign in her unit of 150 legal services workers. When reformers were elected to the bargaining committee, they practiced “extreme transparency,” she said, along with practice pickets. Besides open bargaining, they brought management’s counter-proposals back to members, asking “Is this enough?” “Then we could tell management it wasn’t,” Bruns-Smith said.

In the Organizing 101 workshop, staff organizer Mara Rafferty, fresh from a slew of winning campaigns in higher education in the Pacific Northwest, advised listeners that “humans are like bears—they can smell fear.” She urged budding organizers, therefore, to “be normal. Be yourself. Start with what you know and just tell people what you know.” Veteran GM leader Bill Bagwell added, “We’re also like cavemen—and we’re the ones with the fire: the knowledge.”

Most attendees were veterans of at least one of UAWD’s campaigns: for one-member-one-vote, for convention delegate, to win the Stand-Up Strike and other strikes, sometimes to organize new shops. Some were local officials, but few newbies had run for local office.

John Monkovic, a cook at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, was part of a winning strike of service and maintenance employees this August. Local 2300 had been “a sleepy local,” he told Labor Notes, but with help from reform Region 9 leaders, members started an education committee and mapped the 200 buildings on campus to build a strong strike. “It took a push from below and from above,” he said.

ELECTING TO ORGANIZE

UAWD had its own election at the convention: two slates vied for six open slots on the UAWD steering committee, out of 11 total. The slate headed by founder and committee chair Scott Houldieson, an electrician at Chicago Assembly, won with nearly two-thirds of the vote, which included members watching on Zoom.

The other slate, “Call to Action,” emphasized “unendorsing” UAWD candidates who had gone astray. “It’s necessary to have sincere candidates,” said Mike Cannon, running for retiree representative. The winning “UAWD Strong” candidates spoke of their organizing successes in their locals, and a need for more agitation on the shop floor.

The caucus also heard how their breakthroughs to date had reshaped new organizing. Rob Lett, a member-leader in the drive to unionize Mercedes in Alabama, said that previous efforts at the plant had faded out when staff organizers shot down workers’ ideas. “In the fall of 2023 when we saw the Stand-Up Strike,” he said, “it was clear that the philosophy of the union had changed.”

Though the Mercedes workers narrowly lost their vote last May, they’ve benefited greatly from the “UAW bump” as management ponied up to keep the union out. Their top pay will rise to $37 an hour this month.

Wearing his iconic “Eat the Rich” T-shirt, Shawn Fain opened his talk with his pride in being a caucus member, given that the transformation of the UAW thus far “began with the people in this room.” Holding up strike placards from the heady past year and a half, Fain said, “A better world is possible, but only if we have the labor movement leading the way… for the whole working class.”

Luis Feliz Leon contributed reporting.

Israel’s Secret Campaign to Combat Boycotts in Britain

By John McEvoyOctober 3, 2024

Source: Declassified UK


claudia gabriela marques vieira 

- HANDS OFF GAZA: STOP THE BOMBING: FREE PALESTINE - UK NATIONAL DEMONSTRATION. Flickr.

Benjamin Netanyahu’s government waged a secret campaign to stop Britain boycotting trade with Israel, Declassified can reveal.

Leaked files show Israeli officials held a high-level “sensitive” meeting about the issue with Conservative politician Michael Gove when he was justice secretary in 2015.

The discussion focussed on how to combat the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement, which targets products made on illegally occupied Palestinian land.

It was part of a series of Israeli steps that included attempts to defund British charities and commission advice from powerhouse law firms.

The leaked emails and memos originate from a hack of the Israeli ministry of justice by a group called “Anonymous for Justice”. The dataset was subsequently published by Distributed Denial of Secrets.

Palestine Solidarity Campaign director Ben Jamal told Declassified: “The revelation that Israeli ministers secretly lobbied Michael Gove is deeply concerning both in confirming the willingness of UK governments to support Israel’s attempts to avoid accountability for its violations of international humanitarian law, and to subvert British democratic processes”.
‘Unusual window of opportunity’

Israel’s lobbying campaign was led by its justice minister Ayelet Shaked, who met Gove in London in November 2015.

Shaked, from the far-right Jewish Home party, was alarmed by a European Commission plan to label goods produced on illegally occupied Palestinian land as originating from an “Israeli settlement”.

The issue was consequently high on Shaked’s agenda, with the Israeli government fearing that the labels would help pro-Palestine boycott campaigns.

Gove “enjoyed” meeting Shaked and specifically requested “more information” from the Israeli embassy on the labelling issue, the leaked emails show.

Israel’s foreign ministry then arranged for an analysis to be prepared for Gove “as soon as possible” on the imminent EU measures.

“I am aware of the workload, but there is an unusual window of opportunity here”, noted one Israeli official, apparently referring to Gove’s openness to guidance.

Gove, already a “proud friend of Israel” at the time of the meetings with Shaked, last year tried unsuccessfully to push a bill through parliament banning public bodies from boycotting Israel.
‘Unnecessary and discriminatory’

Within days of the meeting, the Israeli authorities had prepared a paper for Gove on the implications of the EU’s labelling guidelines.

The paper sought to provide Britain’s justice secretary with potential avenues for contesting or circumventing the measures, referring to recent jurisprudence on related matters in British and European courts.

Shaked also penned a personal letter to Gove about the guidelines, arguing that “this action is… clearly a political measure whose main objective is to exert pressure on Israel”.

The labelling of Israeli settlement products, she claimed, was “being advanced by BDS groups” and any implementation of the guidelines “might encourage activity against the State of Israel”.

“In light of the above”, Shaked declared, “I respectfully request that… you advocate for the UK to exercise prudence and restraint if your country chooses to implement what we deem to be a politically motivated, unnecessary and discriminatory” labelling policy.

In an earlier draft of the same letter, Shaked was even more forthcoming about the Israeli government’s desire to block the new measures.

“I respectfully request that as a senior legal official you advocate for the UK to refrain from implementing” the labels, she wrote.

The UK government published voluntary guidelines for labelling products from illegal Israeli settlements in 2009.

It continues to provide guidance on “accurate labelling of settlement goods so as not to mislead the consumer” but has “no plans to ban imports from the Occupied Palestinian Territories”.
Anti-Israel agenda

While meeting with Gove, Shaked also raised concerns about “a list of NGOs” being funded by the UK government.

The complaint was apparently linked to an Israeli memo which noted how Britain was “providing significant funds, directly and indirectly, to NGOs that promote and participate in BDS campaigns against Israel”.

These organisations, the memo continued, “often employ rhetoric accusing Israel of ‘apartheid’, ‘ethnic cleansing’ and ‘war crimes’”.

They were therefore pursuing “highly divisive agendas that may undermine the UK’s longstanding policy” of supporting “a two state solution” as well as Britain’s “repeated declarations denouncing BDS”.

UK funding was even suspected to have “enabled several NGOs to act against the State of Israel in the International Criminal Court” such as the Palestinian human rights organisation, Al-Haq.

The memo consequently recommended that Britain “consider initiating an independent review of UK funding to NGOs” which could investigate whether these funds were being used “to support an anti-Israel agenda”.

Among the twelve NGOs on Israel’s hit list were Christian Aid, Islamic Relief Worldwide and Rabbis for Human Rights.

Whether the Israeli government succeeded in convincing the British authorities to defund these NGOs remains unclear.
UN database

The Israeli government’s effort to counter boycotts in Britain continued into 2019.

That year, Israel’s ministry of justice commissioned advice from powerhouse law firm Crowell & Moring on how to “mitigate or reverse the impact” of “a [UN] database of companies undertaking activities in the settlements”.

The database, which had been requested by the UN Human Rights Council in 2016, would go on to identify 112 businesses complicit in illegal Israeli settlements. They included several UK-based firms such as digger manufacturer JCB.

The move once again drew the ire of the Israeli government, with Netanyahu declaring his administration would “fight” it “with all our strength”.

As part of this counter-attack, the Israeli authorities commissioned expert legal advice on how to mitigate the impact of the database both in Britain and elsewhere.

Finalised in 2019, the legal review noted how there were no “defined vehicles… to require UK individuals and companies to refuse to participate in or cooperate with foreign boycotts… not sanctioned by the UK government”.

There were, however, “ways in which pressure can be brought to bear and/or action that could potentially be taken in the event [… that] entities take steps to boycott particular countries, companies or products”.

These measures included “lobbying the UK government” given it “traditionally has been supportive of action to prevent boycotts against Israel and anti-Semitic behaviour is in the forefront of our current news agenda”.

To this end, Crowell & Moring suggested that the Conservative Friends of Israel (CFI) and Labour Friends of Israel (LFI) lobby groups could be used to exert the required pressure on the UK government.

The law firm also suggested that the Israeli authorities could seek a judicial review of any measures implemented in support of establishing or promoting the database.

The UK government has always opposed the UN’s database, despite regarding Israeli settlements as illegal under international law.

Palestine Solidarity Campaign’s Ben Jamal commented: “The advice to the Israeli government to use groups like LFI and CFI raises further questions about the role such groups play in shaping UK policy in support of Israel regardless of its abuses of human rights and international humanitarian law”.

The Conservative Party, which denied Declassified access to its annual conference this week, did not respond to a request for comment.

Israel’s embassy in London and its justice ministry were also approached for comment.

ECONOMIC DEMOCRACY

How Can We Make Employee Ownership the Norm Rather Than the Exception?

By Michael Zakaras

October 3, 2024

Source: Non Profit Quarterly

Image Credit: Ketut Subiyanto on Pexels

Changing how the world operates is hard. Consider Muhammad Yunus, founder of the Grameen Bank (and leader of Bangladesh’s interim government), who brought the idea for lending to the poor to mainstream banks in the early 1980s. The banks challenged Yunus to prove it could work, and he did—first in one town, then five. But still, that wasn’t enough for banks to offer the loans. So, what did Yunus do? He launched the Grameen Bank, and a generation later microfinance—a system of providing small loans to people who otherwise do not have access to conventional banking—has reached every corner of the world, lifting millions out of poverty.

Having a good idea—even with proof that it works—does not guarantee adoption. Shifting what people consider “normal” takes persistence, creativity, storytelling, and perhaps above all, a community of aligned partners who learn and build together to drive momentum and adoption. In early August, such a community gathered in the United Kingdom for the third installment of the Oxford Symposium on Employee Ownership. People joined from more than 15 countries, representing business, government, and civil society. For two days, attendees were immersed in rich conversation and case studies to accelerate a good idea—employee ownership—so that it can take root.
Why Employee Ownership

So, what is employee ownership? At its heart, it’s when all employees have a significant financial stake in a company. Ideally, it involves meaningful participation in company decision-making as well. It’s different from traditional ownership structures because company profit, usually paid as dividends to shareholders, is available to employees. This money can make a transformative difference to working families—for example, to pay for education or as a home down payment.

Shifting what people consider “normal” takes persistence, creativity, storytelling, and perhaps above all, a community of aligned partners.

Employee ownership can take various forms, and it is not a new idea. In fact, some worker cooperatives have been around for half a century. Perhaps the most famous is the Mondragon Corporation, founded in 1956, a network of 95 autonomous cooperatives that dominate the economy in the Basque region in northern Spain.

But today, employee ownership is gaining attention. Why? First, people are deeply concerned about rising levels of economic inequality—and they understand the potential for employee ownership of businesses to reverse rising inequality by giving workers avenues to grow wealth and assets over time. If just 10 percent of every US business were employee-owned, the wealth share of the poorest 50 percent would more than double, as would the median wealth of Black households.

Another reason is demographic: many members of the so-called “baby boomer” generation will be retiring over the next decade, and will be looking to sell companies they own. Linking employee ownership to succession planning offers the opportunity to convert millions of businesses to a more equitable ownership structure.

Will employee ownership fill this gap? It depends on where you look. In the United Kingdom, the data are encouraging. The number of employee-owned businesses has grown tenfold since 2017, and the rate of growth continues to accelerate, with a 40 percent increase between 2022 and 2023. This is in part because of the simplicity of the UK tax code: when you sell to an employee ownership trust, a form of business in which the business is a trust operated in the benefit of workers, you are fully exempt from capital gains tax. The trust model safeguards the workers’ ownership of a firm in perpetuity.

If just 10 percent of every US business were employee-owned, the wealth share of the poorest 50 percent would more than double.

In the United States, however, the number of employee stock ownership plans (ESOPs)—the dominant US employee ownership form involving more than 10 million Americans—has flatlined since 2014 at about 6,500 businesses, in part because tax benefits are less significant and more complex. ESOPs are being bought (including by private equity) at about the same rate as they are being created, roughly 260 a year. Worker co-ops in the United States are growing, but from a much lower base: just hundreds of total businesses and roughly 10,000 worker-owners.

Employee ownership trusts are starting to emerge in the United States as a third form, but the overall numbers are discouraging for advocates. By contrast, as the graph below illustrates, the United Kingdom’s growth pattern is stunning:

Source: WPI Economics, Exploring the potential of the Employee Ownership business model

Against that backdrop, the community gathered in Oxford to ask: How do we move employee ownership from the periphery to the mainstream across more countries? How do we simulate the kind of meteoric rise we are seeing in the United Kingdom in other places?
Learning from Peers

Making the case for the high-level benefits of employee ownership continues to be a priority, attendees agreed. Employee-owned businesses are more profitable and productive. This is, in part, why employee-owners have higher wages on average. They also benefit from significantly better job stability. During COVID, ESOPs in the United States were four times less likely to experience layoffs than non-ESOP businesses.

The conference also showed that countries share similar needs around employee ownership. For example, towns in Wales and the United States alike aim to keep profits in local communities as opposed to being exported to absentee owners in London or Silicon Valley. This kind of economic development can rebuild the middle class rather than increase the wealth divide. That suggests employee ownership could be one of those rare ideas that can garner support across the political spectrum.

In some countries, governments are starting to promote employee ownership. Canada, for instance, passed its first national legislation to encourage employee ownership in 2024. It offers an income tax exemption for the first $10 million of capital gains from sales to employee ownership trusts. At the Oxford Symposium, attendees heard directly from those involved in getting Canada’s bill across the finish line. To qualify under the new Canadian law, sellers must sell a majority (minimum of 51 percent) of the company to workers, and the trust must hold shares on behalf of all employees—current and future. But it’s only a pilot. The incentive expires in 2026. This creates an urgency to build momentum over the next 18 months and get the pilot made permanent.

Jon Shell of Toronto-based Social Capital Partners walked through the ups and downs of passing the legislation over two years. He shared how disappointing the first draft was­­­­­—so much so, that he and his team felt it would be worse than none. But they persisted through better drafts, benefiting from an internal public sector champion who kept the issue front and center.

Representatives from other countries like Slovenia and Denmark, where efforts are underway to create tax incentives with an emphasis on democratic governance, were paying especially close attention.

Not everything at the symposium centered around policy. Participants shared stories that speak to the personal nature of this work. For example, Dan Kenary, founder of Harpoon Brewery in Massachusetts, described the day the employee ownership announcement was made at an all-staff meeting. “I want you to meet the new owners of the company,” he said before telling them to shake hands with the people to their left and right.

But Dan’s story wasn’t all roses. The brewery transitioned in 2014, which coincided with an explosion of new craft breweries eating steadily into the company’s market share. Not all the founding partners were aligned on the employee ownership transition, which complicated the financing and meant that the company continues to service more debt today than it would have otherwise.

It was refreshing to hear these honest, unvarnished stories—it is important to understand the real challenges of company owners and policy advocates.

Several sessions got into the weeds of counteracting the potential abuses of tax measures, and best practices for achieving fairness in corporate valuations—which obviously matters a great deal to both sellers (who want to get as much as they can) and buyers (who don’t want to overpay). There’s also a real risk of bad actors, leading to overregulation and lost political support, so the conversation emphasized the importance of diligent self-policing and establishing sector-wide best practices.
Overcoming Challenges Together

The three most significant challenges that emerged across the symposium were financing transitions, the complexity of transitions, and building public awareness. Let’s start with the money. If employees are going to buy their company, they need to finance that purchase, ideally without getting saddled with too much debt.

Seller financing is a common way to facilitate sales. With seller financing, the current business owners agree to a long-term, multiyear payment plan with workers who repay the loan via future company cash flow. But not all retiring business owners can afford to wait as many as seven to 10 years to get their full payout. One solution is to provide employee-led buyout funds, essentially pools of capital that can make the purchases up front. An example is Apis & Heritage Capital Partners, which will soon invest in its seventh business transition. We need dozens of funds like that.

A second major challenge is transition complexity. This complexity involves not only the sale itself (including the valuation and financing) but also governance and decision-making post-sale. When there is outside support for new worker-owners before, during, and after the transition, it makes employee ownership more appealing and less scary. In the United States, nonprofits like Project Equity take on this role, but more support is needed.

An added layer of complexity is that the ESOP is categorized by law as a retirement benefit, subject to regulatory oversight by the US Department of Labor (DOL). This is clunky at best. Presently, DOL has a seven-year period in which it can adjust the valuation of a business. This introduces deep uncertainty into the transition process, especially for those managing buyout funds. Industry leaders like Jim Bonham of the ESOP Association are pushing to adjust this seven-year window. More than one person in Oxford felt strongly that “complexity overhangs” were the main barrier to US growth.

The final challenge symposium goers named was the need to popularize employee ownership so that more owners consider selling companies to their workers. This means continuing to collect and share the data and policy advocacy; and briefing lawyers, accountants, tax professionals, and advisors to current owners on the benefits of employee ownership. When business owners’ advisors express skepticism about employee ownership, it can stop the owner’s sale of the company to workers.

We have a fantastic idea and many powerful ingredients, but we need to act as producers to bring all the parts together into a cohesive whole
A Truly Global Learning Community

Over two days in Oxford, 120 people participated in what might be called field building with a deep spirit of mutualism and generosity—and a desire to create a tide that lifts all boats. That means not protecting intellectual property but rather giving it away. After all, the goal is replication. For example, a Northern Ireland business owner noticed that both Scotland and Wales were ahead—nearly 300 employee ownership trusts in Scotland, 63 in Wales, just a handful in Northern Ireland. He asked, “What can I do about that?”

Woven throughout was this commitment to the collective good. This work is gaining momentum, especially in Europe. There’s a window of opportunity with the enormous transition of wealth upcoming. As Campbell McDonald, the CEO of the UK think tank Ownership at Work predicted, “We are on the cusp of something big.”

While demand for employee ownership seems to be growing in the United States, with new organizations like Ownership Capital Lab and Common Trust popping up—and major networks like Ashoka and the Aspen Institute ramping up participation—most at the symposium would acknowledge that growth is still slower than desired.

Still, all must play a part in accelerating it. McDonald likened the work ahead to making a film. As he put it, we have a fantastic idea and many powerful ingredients, but we need to act as producers to bring all the parts together into a cohesive whole.

This conference was the third (and largest) installment of the Oxford Symposium on Employee Ownership, organized in large part by Jim Bonham of the Employee Ownership Foundation, Graeme Nuttall of the Employee Ownership Association, and John Hoffmire of the University of Oxford.


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Michael Zakaras is the director of US Programs at Ashoka, the world’s largest network of social entrepreneurs.