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Teamsters Union Launches 'Largest Strike Against Amazon in US History'

"We are fighting against a vicious union-busting campaign, and we are going to win," said one Amazon warehouse worker.

Workers picket in front of an Amazon Logistic Station on December 19, 2024 in Skokie Illinois. Workers employed by companies contracted by Amazon and represented by the International Brotherhood of Teamsters went on strike today at seven Amazon facilities across the United States.
(Photo by Scott Olson/Getty Images)

Jake Johnson

Eloise Goldsmith
Dec 19, 2024
COMMON DREAMS

The Teamsters launched what the union described as "the largest strike against Amazon in U.S. history" on Thursday morning to protest the e-commerce behemoth's unlawful refusal to bargain with organized drivers and warehouse workers across the country.

Workers in New York City, Atlanta, San Francisco, and other locations are expected to participate in Thursday's strike, with more facilities prepared to join if Amazon's management doesn't agree to negotiate contracts with unionized employees.

The union said Wednesday that Teamsters locals are also "putting up primary picket lines at hundreds of Amazon Fulfillment Centers nationwide."

"Amazon warehouse workers and drivers without collective bargaining agreements have the legal right to honor these picket lines by withholding their labor," the Teamsters said.

Sean O'Brien, the union's president, said in a statement late Wednesday that "if your package is delayed during the holidays, you can blame Amazon's insatiable greed." The Teamsters had given Amazon until December 15 to agree to contract talks.

"We gave Amazon a clear deadline to come to the table and do right by our members. They ignored it," said O'Brien. "These greedy executives had every chance to show decency and respect for the people who make their obscene profits possible. Instead, they've pushed workers to the limit and now they're paying the price. This strike is on them."

The Teamsters union represents roughly 10,000 workers at 10 facilities across the U.S., at least seven of which are taking part in Thursday's walkout.

Leah Pensler, a warehouse worker at Amazon's DCK6 facility in San Francisco, said that "what we're doing is historic."

"We are fighting against a vicious union-busting campaign, and we are going to win," Pensler added.



(Photo: Eloise Goldsmith/Common Dreams)

Ali Mohammed, who works for an Amazon Delivery Service Partner, told Common Dreams on the picket line at the DBK4 facility in Queens that drivers usually work 10-hour shifts, sometimes more, to handle the large number of packages they receive daily. Mohammed said he drives Uber on the side to make ends meet.

"I'm hoping they can sit down and, you know, strike up a conversation at least… and make a deal," Mohammed said, adding that Amazon should "look out for their workers a lot more instead of just thinking of their own pockets."

Amazon, which has a market cap of over $2 trillion and spends big on anti-union consultants, insists it doesn't have a legal obligation to bargain with the Teamsters and has accused the union of attempting to "coerce Amazon employees and third-party drivers to join them."

But the National Labor Relations Board has said Amazon is a joint employer of some of its delivery drivers, meaning the company must bargain with workers who have joined the Teamsters.

"Amazon is one of the biggest, richest corporations in the world," said Gabriel Irizarry, a driver at DIL7 in Skokie, Illinois. "They talk a big game about taking care of their workers, but when it comes down to it, Amazon does not respect us and our right to negotiate for better working conditions and wages. We can't even afford to pay our bills."

Yuli Lema, a driver for a different Amazon Delivery Service Partner, told Common Dreams that her pay is "not sufficient" and she simply wants Amazon to "sit down with the union and negotiate."

"Why [don't] they want to negotiate with us?" Lema asked.

The strike comes months after the Amazon Labor Union, which successfully organized warehouse workers in Staten Island in 2022, voted to formally affiliate with the Teamsters in an effort to finally secure a contract. The JFK8 fulfillment center in Staten Island is among the facilities that have voted to authorize strikes.

"I've seen the Teamsters win big battles," said Dia Ortiz, a worker at DBK4 in New York. "We're ready to do what it takes to win this one."

Rich Pawlikowski, a United Parcel Service driver who joined Amazon workers on the picket line in Queens on Thursday morning, told Common Dreams that "we're all standing together."

"They're not looking to get rich," Pawlikowski said of striking Amazon workers. "They just want a living wage. You know, New York's expensive. We just want everybody [to have] enough to pay their rents, to pay their bills, to eat, to put a roof over their heads, and for their families to have a decent life."

Amazon workers in US strike days before Christmas

By AFP
December 19, 2024

Workers at several Amazon facilities from southern California to New York are picketing - Copyright AFP/File Benoit PEYRUCQ

Thousands of workers at Amazon facilities across the United States went on strike Thursday, the Teamsters Union said, halting work at the height of the busy holiday gift-giving season.

The union, which says it represents some 10,000 workers at the massive online retailer’s facilities around the country, called the action the “largest strike against Amazon in US history.”

Workers will picket at facilities in New York, Atlanta, southern California, San Francisco and Illinois, with other Amazon Teamsters “prepared to join them,” the union said in a statement.

“The nationwide action follows Amazon’s repeated refusal to follow the law and bargain with the thousands of Amazon workers who organized with the Teamsters,” it said.

Less than a week before the Christmas holiday, the strike threatens a significant disruption of deliveries of Amazon orders as Americans rush to send last-minute gifts.

“If your package is delayed during the holidays, you can blame Amazon’s insatiable greed,” Teamsters boss Sean O’Brien said in the statement.

“We gave Amazon a clear deadline to come to the table and do right by our members. They ignored it.”

Workers at a New York facility became the first Amazon employees to unionize in April 2022, with several other sites since following suit.

Originally an independent union, the Amazon workers voted in June to affiliate with the Teamsters.

Amazon has repeatedly sought to block the unionization efforts, with legal proceedings still ongoing.

The Teamsters represents only a tiny fraction of the 1.5 million employees at Amazon, the nation’s second largest private employer after Walmart.

The union has some 1.3 million members nationwide in sectors ranging from freight delivery to cafeteria employees.

In the 2024 presidential election, the union chose not to endorse either Donald Trump or Kamala Harris, the first time it did not back the Democratic nominee since 2000

'They Are Done With the Disrespect': Atlanta Amazon Drivers Join Strike Threat

Teamsters Union launches 'largest strike against Amazon in U.S. history'

Jake Johnson,

 Common Dreams
December 19, 2024 

Sean O'Brien, President of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, speaks outside of a UPS Distribution Center in Brooklyn, New York, U.S., July 14, 2023. REUTERS/Brendan McDermid

The Teamsters launched what the union described as "the largest strike against Amazon in U.S. history" on Thursday morning to protest the e-commerce behemoth's unlawful refusal to bargain with organized drivers and warehouse workers across the country.

Workers in New York City, Atlanta, San Francisco, and other locations are expected to participate in Thursday's strike, with more facilities prepared to join if Amazon's management doesn't agree to negotiate contracts with unionized employees.

The union said Wednesday that Teamsters locals are also "putting up primary picket lines at hundreds of Amazon Fulfillment Centers nationwide."

"Amazon warehouse workers and drivers without collective bargaining agreements have the legal right to honor these picket lines by withholding their labor," the Teamsters said.

Sean O'Brien, the union's president, said in a statement late Wednesday that "if your package is delayed during the holidays, you can blame Amazon's insatiable greed." The Teamsters had given Amazon until December 15 to agree to contract talks.

"We gave Amazon a clear deadline to come to the table and do right by our members. They ignored it," said O'Brien. "These greedy executives had every chance to show decency and respect for the people who make their obscene profits possible. Instead, they've pushed workers to the limit and now they're paying the price. This strike is on them."

The Teamsters union represents roughly 10,000 workers at 10 facilities across the U.S., at least seven of which are taking part in Thursday's walkout.

Leah Pensler, a warehouse worker at Amazon's DCK6 facility in San Francisco, said that "what we're doing is historic."

"We are fighting against a vicious union-busting campaign, and we are going to win," Pensler added.



Amazon, which has a market cap of over $2 trillion and spends big on anti-union consultants, insists it doesn't have a legal obligation to bargain with the Teamsters and has accused the union of attempting to "coerce Amazon employees and third-party drivers to join them."

But the National Labor Relations Board has said Amazon is a joint employer of its delivery drivers, meaning the company must bargain with workers who have joined the Teamsters.

"Amazon is one of the biggest, richest corporations in the world," said Gabriel Irizarry, a driver at DIL7 in Skokie, Illinois. "They talk a big game about taking care of their workers, but when it comes down to it, Amazon does not respect us and our right to negotiate for better working conditions and wages. We can't even afford to pay our bills."

The strike comes months after the Amazon Labor Union, which successfully organized warehouse workers in Staten Island in 2022, voted to formally affiliate with the Teamsters in an effort to finally secure a contract. The JFK8 fulfillment center in Staten Island is among the facilities that have voted to authorize strikes.

"I've seen the Teamsters win big battles," said Dia Ortiz, a worker at DBK4 in New York. "We're ready to do what it takes to win this one."

Montana Supreme Court Rules in Favor of Youth in Historic Climate Case


The ruling is a victory “for every young person whose future is threatened by climate change,” one petitioner said.

By Chris Walker , 

Truthout

PublishedDecember 19, 2024

On Wednesday, the Montana State Supreme Court ruled to keep intact a lower court’s decision from last year, which found that a law banning state lawmakers from considering greenhouse gas emissions when permitting fossil fuel projects was unconstitutional.

The lower court ruling was made in late 2023, after 16 young petitioners sued the state on the grounds that a state law allowing such permits to be considered violated the Montana constitution’s provision on ensuring a “clean and healthy environment…for present and future generations.” Republican lawmakers sued to have that order rejected, and in July, the state Supreme Court heard oral arguments on the matter.

In a 6-1 decision, the court found that the original ruling was sound, and that the petitioners’ rights had been violated. Chief Justice Mike McGrath authored the opinion of the court, stating that the “right to a clean and healthful environment and environmental life support system includes a stable climate system.”

Notably, within the first trial in 2023, the state refused to present any climate science whatsoever in favor of keeping the Montana law in place.

Rikki Held, one of the young petitioners in the case, lauded the action from the state Supreme Court.

In Major First, Judge Rules in Favor of Montana Youth Suing Over Climate Crisis
A judge has ruled that officials’ failure to address the climate crisis violated constitutional rights. By Sharon Zhang , Truthout August 15, 2023

“This ruling is a victory not just for us, but for every young person whose future is threatened by climate change,” Held said.

Nate Bellinger, a lawyer with Our Children’s Trust, one of the organizations that represented the youth, also celebrated the case’s outcome. The ruling “affirmed the constitutional rights of youth to a safe and livable climate,” Bellinger said.

While the ruling is a huge win for young people and climate advocates, it does not require the state to take proactive steps to address the crisis, such as passing legislation to mitigate the effects of climate change. Still, the Montana Supreme Court’s decision means that the permitting process must take into consideration how a particular project may contribute to the rise in greenhouse gases, providing a mechanism for residents to sue if the state ignores the standard.

While its numbers have lessened somewhat over the past few years, Montana’s output of carbon emissions has more than doubled since 1970. Only 14 states in the U.S. have seen emission rates go down during that time frame, while the remaining 36 states have seen emissions numbers increase.

This article is licensed under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0), and you are free to share and republish under the terms of the license.

Chris Walker is a news writer at Truthout, and is based out of Madison, Wisconsin. Focusing on both national and local topics since the early 2000s, he has produced thousands of articles analyzing the issues of the day and their impact on the American people. He can be found on most social media platforms under the handle @thatchriswalker.

Global warming can’t be ignored, Montana’s top court says, upholding landmark climate case



Youth plaintiffs in the Held v. Montana climate case leave the Montana Supreme Court, on July 10, 2024, in Helena, Mont. (Thom Bridge/Independent Record via AP, File)

Dale Schowengerdt, representing Montana Gov. Greg Gianforte and state environmental agencies, argues before the Montana Supreme Court, on July 10, 2024, in Helena, Mont., in the youth climate lawsuit Held v. Montana. (Thom Bridge/Independent Record via AP, File)

BY AMY BETH HANSON
 December 18, 2024

HELENA, Mont. (AP) — Montana’s Supreme Court on Wednesday upheld a landmark climate ruling that said the state was violating residents’ constitutional right to a clean environment by permitting oil, gas and coal projects without regard for global warming.

The justices, in a 6-1 ruling, rejected the state’s argument that greenhouse gases released from Montana fossil fuel projects are minuscule on a global scale and reducing them would have no effect on climate change, likening it to asking: “If everyone else jumped off a bridge, would you do it too?”

The plaintiffs can enforce their environmental rights “without requiring everyone else to stop jumping off bridges or adding fuel to the fire,” Chief Justice Mike McGrath wrote for the majority. “Otherwise the right to a clean and healthful environment is meaningless.”

Only a few other states, including Hawaii, Illinois, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts and New York, have similar environmental protections enshrined in their constitutions.

The lawsuit filed in 2020 by 16 Montanans —who are now ages 7 to 23 — was considered a breakthrough in attempts by young environmentalists and their attorneys to use the courts to leverage action on climate change.

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“This ruling is a victory not just for us, but for every young person whose future is threatened by climate change,” lead plaintiff Rikki Held said in a statement Wednesday.

During the 2023 trial in state District Court, the young plaintiffs described how climate change profoundly affects their lives: worsening wildfires foul the air they breathe, while drought and decreased snowpack deplete rivers that sustain farming, fish, wildlife and recreation and affect Native traditions.

Going forward, Montana must “carefully assess the greenhouse gas emissions and climate impacts of all future fossil fuel permits,” said Melissa Hornbein, an attorney with the Western Environmental Law Center and attorney for the plaintiffs.

Republican Gov. Greg Gianforte said the state was still reviewing the decision, but warned of “perpetual lawsuits that will waste taxpayer dollars and drive up energy bills for hardworking Montanans.”

“This decision does nothing more than declare open season on Montana’s all-of-the-above approach to energy,” he said, which promotes using both fossil fuels and renewables.

A day earlier, Gianforte held meetings on how the state can increase energy production, which involved energy suppliers, large energy consumers, public utility companies, transmission stakeholders and legislators.

Incoming Senate President Matt Regier and House Speaker Brandon Ler, both Republicans, joined Gianforte in alleging the justices were overstepping their authority and had strayed into making policy.

“Judicial reform was already a top priority for Republican lawmakers,” Regier and Ler said, warning the justices to “buckle up.”

Montana courts have blocked or overturned numerous laws passed by Republicans in the 2021 and 2023 legislative sessions as being unconstitutional, including laws to limit access to abortion.

In seeking to overturn the District Court ruling, the state had argued the plaintiffs should be required to challenge individual fossil fuel development permits as they’re issued — which would have involved trying to challenge even smaller amounts of emissions.

Carbon dioxide, which is released when fossil fuels are burned, traps heat in the atmosphere and is largely responsible for the warming of the climate. June brought record warm global temperatures for the 13th straight month, according to European climate service Copernicus. The streak ended in July.

Montana’s Constitution requires agencies to “maintain and improve” a clean environment. A law signed by Gianforte last year said environmental reviews may not consider climate impacts unless the federal government makes carbon dioxide a regulated pollutant. The Montana Supreme Court’s ruling found that law to be unconstitutional.

Democracy Now!

Alex Gibney on 'The Bibi Files,' Netanyahu’s corruption case and how endless war keeps him in power

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu attends a hearing in his trial on corruption charges at the district court in Tel Aviv on December 10, 2024. 

MENAHEM KAHANA/Pool via REUTERS

Amy Goodman

and

December 18, 2024

As the official death toll in Gaza tops 45,000 and Israel’s wars throughout the Middle East continue, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is in court for a long-awaited corruption trial, making him the country’s first sitting leader to face criminal charges. He is charged with fraud, breach of trust and accepting bribes in three separate cases. For more on this extraordinary case, we speak with acclaimed filmmaker Alex Gibney, whose latest documentary The Bibi Files features leaked behind-the-scenes footage of police interrogations of Netanyahu, his wife and those accused of bribing him.

The film has been banned in Israel, and Netanyahu even tried unsuccessfully to stop it from screening at the Toronto International Film Festival, but Gibney says it is being widely shared inside Israel through unofficial channels. “Strictly speaking, this is a film about corruption,” Gibney tells Democracy Now! “It starts with petty corruption — being bribed with gifts and cigars, champagne, jewelry — but then the ultimate corruption is how he’s tried to elude a reckoning for his misdeeds, and in so doing, he wraps himself in the mantle of prime minister and then wages endless war.”




This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.

AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. I’m Amy Goodman.

The official death toll in Gaza has topped 45,000. Meanwhile, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is fighting a different battle inside Israeli courts. The first sitting Israeli prime minister to face criminal charges, he’s finally taking the stand at his long-running corruption trial. The case has gone on for years. He’s charged with fraud, breach of trust, accepting bribes in three separate cases.

We turn now to an extraordinary new documentary that offers an in-depth look into the charges against Netanyahu, featuring leaked footage of police interrogations of Netanyahu himself, his wife Sara and those accused of bribing him. This is the trailer to The Bibi Files.
INTERROGATOR: [translated] Our first question for you is whether you or any of your family members have received any gifts or favors from wealthy businessmen in the last decade.

PRIME MINISTER BENJAMIN NETANYAHU: [translated] This is preposterous and insane. You’re trying to incriminate the prime minister on nonsense.


RAVIV DRUCKER: In this case, the facts are really simple. The prime minister and his wife are getting gifts.

PRIME MINISTER BENJAMIN NETANYAHU: [translated] It’s a total lie!

RAVIV DRUCKER: And on the other side, Netanyahu did favors.

BENEFACTOR: [translated] We must find a way to reward him.


INTERROGATOR: [translated] What do you need to reward the prime minister for?

NIMROD NOVIK: Government officials are not allowed to take gifts. This is corruption.

RAVIV DRUCKER: The police, they investigated everybody.

BENEFACTOR: [translated] If this comes out, I’m dead.


INTERROGATOR: What did you get?

SARA NETANYAHU: Champagne and cigars. [translated] Necklaces, rings.

NIR HEFETZ: Sara Netanyahu is very important. Both of them never surrendered, never compromised.

SARA NETANYAHU: [translated] My husband is the strongest prime minister we’ve ever had.


NIR HEFETZ: They start to believe that they are untouchable.

PRIME MINISTER BENJAMIN NETANYAHU: [translated] Without shame! Saying things that didn’t happen!

AMI AYALON: After the catastrophe of the 7th of October, the war became another instrument to stay in power.

NIMROD NOVIK: When people serve for too long, it gets into their head.

RAVIV DRUCKER: The indictment made him dependent on the extreme right in Israel. He is now captive to their whims.

PRIME MINISTER BENJAMIN NETANYAHU: [translated] This is nonsense.

RAVIV DRUCKER: Put all Israel in turmoil.

NIMROD NOVIK: Netanyahu is the architect of chaos.

AMI AYALON: He survived in a state of war. He survived in a state of instability. He’s not a crackpot. He tried to kill the system. Nobody is above the law.

PRIME MINISTER BENJAMIN NETANYAHU: [translated] Do you remember that line from The Godfather? [in English] “Keep your friends close. Keep your enemies closer.”


AMY GOODMAN: That’s the trailer for The Bibi Files, leaked secret footage of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. The new documentary The Bibi Files is directed by Alexis Bloom and produced by Alex Gibney. The Bibi Files cannot be legally distributed in Israel due to privacy laws.

For more, we’re joined by filmmaker Alex Gibney. In 2008, he won an Oscar for his film Taxi to the Dark Side about an Afghan man who was tortured in prison at Bagram.

Thanks so much for being with us again, Alex. I went to see this film the other night at the theater. This is powerful. Explain why in this trailer we can’t see Netanyahu’s face in these deposition tapes. And how did you get these deposition tapes, when he, his wife, his son Yair and others are being questioned by police?

ALEX GIBNEY: OK, I’ll answer the — hi, Amy.

AMY GOODMAN: Hi.

ALEX GIBNEY: I’ll answer the questions in reverse. I was leaked these tapes. They’re interrogation videotapes done by the police that were a precursor to the indictment of Netanyahu on corruption charges. And in the tapes, you can see Netanyahu, his wife Sara, his son Yair and many of the people who attempted to bribe Netanyahu. They were — I thought they were explosive and very important. This, by the way, was before 10/7 or the war on Gaza. This when there was a big crisis over the judicial reform attempts by Netanyahu, which, of course, were done in part so he could elude any consequence from, you know, impending bribery charges.

But the key thing to understand about distribution in Israel is, when I got these leaked tapes, I made a promise to the source that I would not distribute the film in Israel, because the source could go to prison. There are privacy laws that make it mandatory that if you are photographed as part of an official proceeding — i.e. a police interrogation — you can’t cause those videotapes to be released, so — unless you get the permission of Netanyahu and Sara, etc., which wasn’t going to happen. So, anyway, that is the occasion of why these things can’t be — this film can’t be released and why we had to, you know, black-bar the trailer in order so that the trailer wouldn’t be freely visible — I couldn’t cause the trailer to be freely visible in Israel. Though I should say that it’s being widely pirated there.

AMY GOODMAN: So, Netanyahu is going after you?

ALEX GIBNEY: Netanyahu, as soon as it was announced that we were going to premiere at the Toronto Film Festival, he went to an Israeli court and tried to stop the screening in Toronto. Now, how that was going to happen, I don’t know. But in any event, it was denied. But he certainly tried to stop us. And I understand the Netanyahu administration, through a number of mechanisms, are trying very hard to go after a guy named Raviv Drucker, who’s one of the producers of the film and is a longtime Israeli journalist who has an expertise in this kind of corruption, has been the bane of a number of prime ministers, but particularly Netanyahu.

AMY GOODMAN: Let’s go to another clip from The Bibi Files. It begins with Ami Ayalon, the former head of Israel’s internal security service, Shin Bet.
AMI AYALON: And after the catastrophe of the 7th of October, the war became another instrument to stay in power. He survived in a state of war. He survived in a state of instability. He survived when we fight each other. He survived when our enemies fight each other.

GILI SCHWARTZ: A forever war is beneficial to Netanyahu. This makes people feel like they are always in danger, like they always need him. There is always some huge threat. I think that that helps him remain prime minister.


AMY GOODMAN: That last voice, the young Israeli woman, Gili Schwartz, is from Kibbutz Be’eri, where more than a hundred people were killed on October 7th last year. Alex, if you can elaborate on what they are saying? I mean, as we speak, Netanyahu is in court in Israel right now. What this means? They say he wants to wage wider war because, otherwise, he’s no longer going to be protected by the prime ministership, by being prime minister.

ALEX GIBNEY: That’s right. I mean, I think, strictly speaking, this is a film about corruption. And it starts with petty corruption, being bribed with gifts and cigars, champagne, jewelry. But then, the ultimate corruption is how he’s tried to elude a reckoning for his misdeeds, and in so doing, he wraps himself in the mantle of prime minister and then wages endless war. Now, I can’t think of really anything more corrupt than somebody who is administering the killing of women and children in order to be able to stay in power. But that is what they are alleging, and that is what the film is about.

AMY GOODMAN: Let’s go to another clip from The Bibi Files. This one begins with Prime Minister Netanyahu addressing the U.S. Congress this past July.
PRIME MINISTER BENJAMIN NETANYAHU: Together, we shall defend our common civilization. Together, we shall secure a brilliant future for both our nations.

NIMROD NOVIK: Well, I would say that, tragically, the Americans don’t know how to call him out. There was no plan for ending the war of Gaza, bringing the hostages home and changing dynamics in the region. And things only got worse. Netanyahu is the architect of chaos. And as we speak, when all eyes are on the front in Gaza and the front in Lebanon, he is implementing his plan in the West Bank with the extreme right. He may create a situation where it’s irreversible.


AMY GOODMAN: And that’s Nimrod Novik, former adviser to Shimon Peres, in The Bibi Files, the documentary produced by Alex Gibney, who’s with us now. So, talk about how this trial plays out right now. I think most people in the United States aren’t even aware. I mean, you have the horror in Gaza. You have what’s now taking place in Syria, what’s happening in Lebanon. Explain how this all fits in.

ALEX GIBNEY: Well, this is a trial that’s been going on for four years. And Netanyahu has been trying to elude a reckoning related to these charges for that much time. And what he constantly does is to wrap himself in the mantle of leadership. And so, what better way to do that? And this is a tried and true political formula, as grisly and as grotesque as it is, is to wage war, is to continue to use weapons and say, “We’re in danger of being annihilated, so we must strike back.” But, I mean, the destruction that’s going on in Gaza, for example, is a kind of wanton destruction at this point that is just beyond any kind of moral reckoning. And, you know, I think that also the United States bears some responsibility for this. That’s why we included those clips of him in the Congress. You know, we supply Israel with so much aid and so much —

AMY GOODMAN: And to be clear, Sara, his wife, and when she’s being questioned, she yells at the police and says, “Do you know how he’s treated in the United States when he addresses a joint session of Congress?” Alex Gibney, we’re going to have to leave it there, Academy Award-winning filmmaker and producer of The Bibi Files. His next film is about Luigi Mangione and the shooting of the UnitedHealthcare CEO. I’m Amy Goodman. Happy birthday, Jeff Stauch!

The story of one Mississippi county shows how private schools are exacerbating segregation

Photo by Emma Fabbri on Unsplash

Pro Publica

December 19, 2024

Reporting Highlights

Widespread Divisions: A new ProPublica analysis shows how much private schools segregate students by race. Across the South, many of these schools are segregation academies.

Huge Chasms in Mississippi: In Amite County, Mississippi, the divide is especially stark. Just 16% of public school students are white, but 96% of students at local segregation academies are white.

White Leaders at Black Schools: Although 82% of Amite public school students are Black, their schools are largely controlled by white leaders who didn’t send their children to the local public schools.

These highlights were written by the reporters and editors who worked on this story.

The scoreboard glowed with the promise of another Friday night football game in Liberty, Mississippi, a small town near the Louisiana border. The Trojans, in black and gold, sprinted onto the field to hollers from friends and families who filled barely half the bleachers.

The fans were almost all Black, as is the student body at the county’s lone public high school. Scanning the field and the stands would give you little indication that more than half the county’s residents are white.

In some swaths of the South, a big event like high school football unites people. But not in Amite County.

Just beyond the Trojans’ scoreboard, past a stand of trees, another scoreboard lit up. At Amite School Center, a small Christian private school, cars and pickup trucks crammed every inch of space on the front lawn and in its parking lots. A charter bus for the visiting team, another private school, rumbled near the entrance to the field.

A good 500 people, nearly all of them white, filled the bleachers and flowed across the hill overlooking the field. They cheered from lawn chairs and waggled cowbells as cheerleaders in red-and-white uniforms performed a daring pyramid routine.

A child waved a handmade white poster that read, “Go Rebels.”

Amite School Center, like many private schools across the Deep South, opened during desegregation to serve families fleeing the arrival of Black children at the once all-white public schools. ProPublica has been examining how these schools, called “segregation academies,” often continue to act as divisive forces in their communities even now, five decades later.

In Amite County, about 900 children attend the local public schools — which, as of 2021, were 16% white. More than 600 children attend two private schools — which were 96% white. Other, mostly white students go to a larger segregation academy in a neighboring county.

“It’s staggering,” said Warren Eyster, principal of Amite County High until this school year. “It does create a divide.”

The difference between those figures, 80 percentage points, is one way to understand the segregating effect of private schools — it shows how much more racially isolated students are when they attend these schools.

Considerable research has examined public school segregation. Academics have found that everything from school attendance zones to the presence of charter schools can worsen segregation in local public schools.

But the ways in which private schools exacerbate segregation are tough to measure. Unlike their public brethren, they don’t have to release much information about themselves. That means few people on the outside know many details about these schools, including the racial makeup of their student bodies — at a time when legislatures across the South are rapidly expanding voucher-style programs that will send private schools hundreds of millions more taxpayer dollars.

But a new ProPublica analysis shows the extent to which private schools segregate students. We dug into decades of private and public school data kept by the U.S. Department of Education, including a survey of the nation’s private schools conducted every other year by its National Center for Education Statistics. Outside of academia, few people know about this data.

The surveys are imperfect measures. Schools self-report their information, and about 1 in 4 didn’t respond to the most recent round in 2021. But the surveys are the only national measure of this kind. ProPublica used them to determine how often students attended schools with peers of the same race in tens of thousands of private schools nationwide and compared that to public schools.

A stark pattern emerged across states in the Deep South — Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, South Carolina and North Carolina — where about 200 majority-Black school districts educate 1.3 million students. Alongside those districts, a separate web of schools operates: private academies filled almost entirely with white students. Across the majority-Black districts in those states, private schools are 72% white and public schools are 19% white.

Many of those districts are home to segregation academies, which siphon off large numbers of white students. In many areas, particularly rural ones, these academies are the reason that public school districts scarcely resemble their communities — and the reason that public schools are more Black than the population of children in the surrounding county.

Which county has the largest chasm? Amite.

Along the two-lane country roads through Amite County, fear still mingles with the red clay. Civil rights violence scarred the place just a few generations ago. At least 14 lynchings and other terrifying acts of racist violence took place here, including one of the nation’s most infamous unsolved civil rights murders. In neighboring Pike County, the town of McComb became known as the “bombing capital of the world” for its violent resistance to civil rights.

“You can’t forget things like that,” said Jackie Robinson, chair of the Amite County Democratic Committee. A Black woman, she remembers going to the neighborhood store with her grandmother and being called a racial slur. Her mother told stories of crosses burning.

Robinson said she encounters Black residents who won’t put campaign signs for Black candidates in their yards. They fear that white residents, who own most of the local businesses, might shut them out if they do.

White adults outnumber Black ones, and white elected officials control the school district that educates mostly Black children.

Only one school trustee is Black. She sent her children to the local public schools, but few, if any, of the white trustees did. One longtime white board member, whose children attended Amite School Center, has as his Facebook profile picture a photo of the private school’s football team. ProPublica reached out to all of the school board members multiple times, but none responded.

That school board hired a superintendent who is white. It selected high school and middle school principals who are white. And all of the people collecting $7 cash from each spectator at the football game appeared to be white.

Janice Jackson-Lyons, a Black woman, ran for a school board seat in 2020 against the white incumbent with the private school Facebook photo. She described her campaign message as: “I’m reaching for all children. I’d love to see all the kids go to school together because all the kids in Amite County are going to compete for jobs with people from all over the world.” She lost by 60 votes.

Woran Griffin, who volunteers with Amite County High School’s football team, ran for a board seat in November. He and another Black resident, an educator in a neighboring school district, both lost to white candidates. “There are too many whites running kids they don’t know nothing about,” he said.

They are among the Black residents who wonder: Why do white people who never sent their kids to the public schools keep challenging Black candidates who have? Many Black residents figure it comes down to control — over property tax rates, district spending contracts and hiring.

“I call that a plantation-style school,” said local resident Bettie Patterson, a Black woman who served on the school board years ago.

Amite County has one of the lowest property tax rates for funding schools in Mississippi. And when the board consolidated schools in 2010, it shuttered the elementary school in Gloster, a mostly Black town in the county, and moved all students to Liberty, a mostly white one. The only school left in Gloster is a Head Start for preschoolers.

Superintendent Don Cuevas wouldn’t comment on the racial dynamic of the board. “We have a good school system,” he said. “We have a safe school system. Everybody’s treated equal.”

Several Amite public school teachers and parents described watching the PTA, the booster club and a parent liaison position disappear. They said they don’t feel their input is welcome. But Cuevas said the district wants to be selective about when it asks for money from its families, many of whom have very low incomes, when the district doesn’t need it.

“Financially, we’re set,” Cuevas said. “We handle money very well.” He pointed to renovations at the elementary school, including improvements to the parking lot and plumbing, a new iron fence around the entire property and a guard shack. The superintendent said it was to ensure safety and order, but Griffin said the fence felt “like a prison wall.”

Multiple Black educators told ProPublica that the district had passed over qualified Black teachers with local roots for jobs and promotions.

Jeffery Gibson, who grew up in Gloster, was a PE teacher and Amite County High School’s head football and a track coach last year when, he said, he applied for two open administrative positions. Given he had coached multiple state championship teams, received his administrator license and worked as a lead teacher, he figured he’d be a strong candidate.

“I know the kids,” Gibson said. “I can motivate them. I can get them to do what I ask. I can get them to reach their full potential. I’m from there.” But he said the district didn’t respond to his applications, so he took a job as the athletic director of a larger district.

ProPublica identified 155 counties across the Deep South with private schools that likely opened as segregation academies. Roughly three dozen of those schools are in Mississippi. One in Amite County has never — over nearly 30 years of responding to a federal survey — reported enrolling more than one Black student at a time.

The other, Amite School Center, began reporting enrollment of Black students in the past decade, but not enough to come close to reflecting the population of children in Amite County, where almost half of school-age kids are Black. In the 2021 federal survey, Amite School Center reported student enrollment was 3.5% Black. It employs no Black teachers.

When asked if his school still creates divisions in the community, ASC’s Head of School Jay Watts said no: “I haven’t seen it here.” The school has a policy that says it doesn’t discriminate based on race.

The nonprofit Christian academy, home of the Rebels, opened hastily in 1970 “in the wake of court ordered all-out racial desegregation of the Amite County Schools,” a local Enterprise-Journal story said a few months beforehand.

Back then, A.R. Lee Jr., a doctor and congressional candidate from Liberty, was president of the nonprofit Amite School Corp. As violence erupted in other Southern towns, Lee told a Mississippi newspaper reporter, “The fact that we have a private school here is the reason everything is calm. If we didn’t have it, it wouldn’t be calm in Amite County.”

In the front office of the modest one-story school, which educates just over 300 students across all grade levels, a Confederate flag with “ASC” emblazoned in the center is tacked to a cabinet. Down a hallway, Watts sat at a desk beneath an impressive deer mount, a wooden paddle perched against the office’s doorframe. He welcomed questions from a reporter who showed up without an appointment.

Watts seemed eager to share what his school offers: a Christian-based education that eschews government interference.

“We are charged with educating academically, physically, spiritually, emotionally,” Watts said. “I’m not sure that that’s the mission of the public schools. They’re there to educate academically. I think our mission is broader.”

Because ASC is private, it can operate without the government dictating whether teachers can lead prayer, what tests they administer — and whether or not that paddle gets used. Watts said many of its families think the broader culture is changing in ways they don’t agree with.

“We don’t have to let a girl go to the boys’ bathroom or a boy go to the girls’ bathroom,” he said.

Josh Bass, the school’s athletic director and basketball coach, worked at public schools earlier in his career, then came to ASC from a larger academy in neighboring Pike County. He said he and his wife enrolled their three children at ASC primarily due to their Christian faith: “If it’s not biblical leadership, then I don’t want it for my child.”

He insisted that racial segregation isn’t the school’s goal today. “That might have been at one time, 100 years ago, and some people hang on to that,” Bass said. “We want all to have an opportunity to go to these schools and be a part of what we’re trying to lead them to be.”

The men also recognized that even though ASC’s tuition is relatively low compared to many other private schools — under $6,000 a year per child — disparities in resources still create barriers. The median white household income in Amite County is $54,688, compared to $21,680 for a Black household, the U.S. Census Bureau estimates.

ASC has received $459,000 in donations over the past three years through a state tax credit program for certain educational charities, including private schools. But Watts said the school still lacks the money to offer financial aid.

Across the tree line at the public school’s district office, Cuevas said in terse tones that he had no comment about anything related to the private schools or the parents who choose them. He knew nothing about what ASC offers and therefore could not — and would not — compare the public schools to it.

“I don’t even know those answers,” Cuevas said. “I don’t know anything about the private schools. I don’t ask.”

He said he didn’t go out into the community to promote the schools he leads. Instead, he opened the schools’ doors and tried to educate whoever walked in. He’s unclear why so many white students don’t come.

“We don’t know why. We offer a good education,” Cuevas said.

Gibson, the public school’s former football coach, turned his pickup truck onto ASC’s jam-packed campus and found a slip of empty grass on the front lawn where he could park amid the football crowd. He had never set foot on this property even though he had worked and attended the nearby public schools.

Halftime approached as he headed toward the football field. A peal of parents’ yells — “Way to go!” and “Keep pushing!” — burst from the entrance. Once inside, Gibson scanned a sea of white people who filled the bleachers and packed together in lawn chairs, most of them strangers to him except for a few who worked at the public school district. The public schools pay more and offer better benefits.

Gibson had come to see one of his favorite players, a gifted senior who was on his team last year — and who was now the only Black player he saw on ASC’s team. It wasn’t hard to find the teen’s father. Nobody said anything unfriendly to him, but Gibson felt hundreds of eyes watching as he strolled over to the man, who stood front and center against the fence.

The player he came to see had transferred to ASC after Gibson left the public high school. Gibson had barely said hello to the teen’s father before the player scored a touchdown. Cheers cascaded from the crowd, and Gibson joined them.

But it felt strange standing there with so many white people at the “white school.” Back when he was growing up, he couldn’t have imagined such a thing. In college and after, while coaching in Oklahoma, Gibson made good friends who are white. As he cheered with the crowd at ASC, he wondered how many white friends he might have made here in Amite had the local kids all gone to school together.

He found an empty seat in the front row of the metal bleachers and took in the manicured field before him. It was so close to the one where he’d been a student and coach. Yet it felt like stepping into another world.

'Prone to crises': Trump’s 'sweeping policy changes' could make economy dangerously unstable

New York City's financial district in 2012 (Wikimedia Commons)

Alex Henderson

December 18, 2024
ALTERNET

During his 2024 presidential campaign, Donald Trump repeatedly blamed President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris for inflation in the United States. His messaging worked: Trump pulled off a narrow victory, defeating Harris in both the electoral and popular votes.

Trump didn't win by a "landslide," as "War Room" host Steve Bannon, Rep. Rick Scott (R-Florida) and other far-right Trump supporters have been claiming. The president-elect, according to the Cook Political Report, won the popular vote by roughly 1.5 percent. But he successfully used voters' anxiety over inflation to his advantage.

Nonetheless, the U.S. has had low unemployment rates under Biden's presidency. According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), unemployment was only 4.2 percent in November.

READ MORE:'Not going to cooperate': Border state sheriffs vow to defy Trump’s mass deportations plan

In an article published on December 18, the New York Times' Ben Casselman emphasizes that Trump is inheriting a "stable" economy from Biden/Harris — and addresses fears that the stability coud disappear.

"After five years of uncertainty and turmoil," Casselman explains, "the U.S. economy is ending 2024 in arguably its most stable condition since the start of the coronavirus pandemic. Inflation has cooled. Unemployment is low. The Federal Reserve is cutting interest rates. The recession that many forecasters once warned was inevitable hasn’t materialized."

The Times reporter continues, "Yet the economic outlook for 2025 is as murky as ever, for one major reason: President-elect Donald J. Trump. On the campaign trail and in the weeks since his election, Mr. Trump has proposed sweeping policy changes that could have profound — and complicated — implications for the economy."

Possible Causes for concern, according to Casselman, include new tariffs, mass deportations, and regulation changes that could "make the financial system more prone to crises over the long run."

Michael Gapen, chief U.S. economist for Morgan Stanley, told the Times, "It is a very uncertain outlook, and most of that uncertainty comes from potential changes in policy…. There's a wide range of potential outcomes, and a base-line outlook isn't quite as useful as it is in normal times."

Economist Michael Strain of the American Enterprise Institute warns that changes in "trade and immigration policy could be extremely disruptive to the economy" and lead to slow growth combined with high inflation.

Strain told the Times, "In this scenario, the price of imported goods, the price of groceries, the price of restaurant meals, the price of homes all shoot up dramatically."


Read Ben Casselman's full New York Times article at this link (subscription required).

Robert Reich: The last tariff increase 'ended up worsening the Great Depression'

Image via Albaum/Creative Commons.

Maya Boddie

November 27, 2024

ALTERNET

Former Labor Secretary Robert Reich on Tuesday explained the impact Donald Trump's new tariff plan could have on American families, predicting the countries that fall under the president-elect's tariff enforcements will likely retaliate.

Speaking with Reich on the latest episode of MSNBC's The ReidOut, host Joy Reid noted that some economists say under Trump's tariff plan, "The average American household is going to spend $2600 a year."

However, Reich corrected the MSNBC host, saying: "That $2600 family estimate was made in August, before we knew how large the tariffs are going to be." The ex-labor secretary added, "I think the actual per family estimated cost is probably closer now to $4000."

Reid then noted that America's largest trading partners include China, Canada, Mexico — all of which fall under the MAGA leader's tariff plan.

"If we slap a massive tariff, Robert, on those countries, what would they do? What might they do in return?" Reid asked.

"Well, they will do exactly what countries did in 1930," the ex-President Bill Clinton administration official replied. "1930 was the last time we had a big, across-the-board tariff increase, and that was from Herbert Hoover. Remember President Herbert Hoover?" he asked.

Reich continued, "That resulted in retaliatory tariffs — other countries retaliating against us for putting tariffs on their goods. And those retaliations — those tariff wars — ended up worsening the Great Depression."

Watch the video below or at this link.

Warning: YouTube populists are driving South Korea’s political instability

Photo by Bundo Kim on Unsplash

The Conversation

December 19, 2024

In the space of three weeks, South Korea has seen a brief declaration of martial law, its sudden repeal and the impeachment of its president, Yoon Suk Yeol.


One underappreciated driver of the recent drama is the rise of YouTube-based agitators, activists and influencers, who both benefit from and fuel a new brand of populism. The effects in South Korea are stark – but the trend is global.
An extremely online constituency

In South Korea’s 2022 election, Yoon trailed his opponent for much of the campaign. His aggressive populist politics drew some support, but he looked set to fail.

Then he found a new constituency – a group of active and partisan young men focused on abolishing the Ministry of Gender Equality and Family. These agitators used YouTube and other platforms to broadcast their message.

Along with traditional conservative voters, this crowd enabled Yoon to achieve a narrow win and control of South Korea’s most powerful political position. He then duly abolished the gender ministry, saying structural sexism was “a thing of the past”.

After gaining power, Yoon issued arrest orders for several of his perceived political opponents. Among these was Kim Eo-Jun, a critical and inflammatory YouTube journalist, and a polarising populist figure tied to liberal politics. Kim’s weekly videos broadcast news, guest interviews and caustic commentary to millions of active followers.

We have grown used to the idea that social media platforms influence democratic processes by spreading news and analysis and directing users’ attention by recommending particular content. However, the increasing political visibility of platform actors such as Kim suggests the influence is becoming more direct.
Platforms for populist news and views

Social media platforms provide access to a wide range of news and media producers, from legacy outlets to independent commentators at the furthest edges of the political spectrum. However, not all of the news gets equal attention.

Research shows, at least in South Korea, false news gets more likes and interactions than verifiable news. “Real news” tends to receive dislikes and derision.

More South Korean research shows citizens may use platforms to seek out conspiracy theories and pour scorn on disliked political groups or decisions. Users also notoriously direct hate towards issues such as women’s rights.

These problems are not limited to South Korea. Polarising and populist news and analysis is a global phenomenon.

Trust in traditional news media is declining, in part due to fears it is aligned with elite and powerful figures. These fears are often confirmed by social media influencers who are seeking to become the new opinion leaders.

Online influencers are great vehicles for populist politics. They have intimate connections with their viewers, tend to suggest simplistic solutions, and usually resist accountability and fact checking.

Platforms are often more likely to recommend polarising and even radicalising content to viewers, crowding out more balanced content.
Platforms for journalism?

However, these polarising figures are not alone in these spaces. Veteran journalists and newcomers are adjusting to platforms while still providing reliable information.

On YouTube, former mainstream journalists, such as Australia’s Michael West and the American Phil Edwards, have amassed followings while blending personal and casual content with more traditional journalism.

Non-journalists, such as Money & Macro and the English Tom Nicholas, have expanded their influence through adopting some core journalistic practices. They produce content that investigates, explores and explains current affairs news and analysis with the support of their many viewers.

These YouTube news influencers show journalistic content can contribute to the new news media ecosystem and attract large audiences without relying on populist and polarising content.

“Newsfluencers” producing journalism on platforms, such as YouTube, tailor their content to the conventions of the platforms.
Newsfluencers and the future

Newsfluencers often film in informal settings rather than traditional sets, and build a casual rapport with their audience. They leverage “authenticity”, going out of their way to “avoid looking like polished corporate media”.

Their multiple revenue streams include ads, sponsors, merchandise and, most importantly, direct audience contributions. These contributions may come via memberships or via third-party platforms such as Patreon and Substack.

Even major news organisations such as Australia’s ABC have begun adopting YouTuber norms. While produced under the aegis of the national broadcaster, the current affairs podcast If You’re Listening, for example, significantly out-performs traditionally formatted content with its casual style and focus on giving the audience what it wants.

In South Korea, YouTube channels such as VoiceOfSeoul make similar moves, combining street coverage with informal talk-show panels and investigative journalism. OhMyTV weaves together YouTuber and breaking news styles, and carries hyperlinks for personal contributions and sponsorships.

At the same time, legacy media such as KBS maintains a strong following through TV and portal sites like Naver. However, KBS’s conventional format struggles to achieve comparable viewership on these increasingly dominant platforms where these unconventional journalists have managed to thrive.

There is a clear space for journalism on YouTube and similar platforms. However, it will need to adapt.

As the South Korean experience shows, the time may be coming when platform journalism is vital for democracy.

Timothy Koskie, Postdoctoral Researcher, School of Media and Communications, University of Sydney and Christopher James Hall, PhD Researcher, Centre for Media Transition, University of Technology Sydney

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

CRT

For enslaved people, the holiday season was a time for revelry – and a brief window to fight back

Slaves of General Thomas F. Drayton Henry P. Moore (American, 1835 - 1911) (1835 - 1911) – photographer (American)

The Conversation

December 19, 2024


During the era of slavery in the Americas, enslaved men, women and children also enjoyed the holidays. Slave owners usually gave them bigger portions of food, gifted them alcohol and provided extra days of rest.


Those gestures, however, were not made out of generosity.

As abolitionist, orator and diplomat Frederick Douglass explained, slave owners were trying to keep enslaved people under control by plying them with better meals and more downtime, in the hopes of preventing escapes and rebellions.

Most of the time, it worked.

But as I discuss in my recent book, “Humans in Shackles: An Atlantic History of Slavery,” many enslaved people were onto their owners and used this brief period of respite to plan escapes and start revolts.
Feasting, frolicking and fiddling

Most enslaved people in the Americas adhered to the Christian calendar – and celebrated Christmas – since either Catholicism or Protestantism predominated, from Birmingham, Alabama, to Brazil.

Consider the example of Solomon Northup, whose tragic story became widely known in the film “12 Years A Slave.” Northup was born free in the state of New York but was kidnapped and sold into slavery in Louisiana in 1841.

In his narrative, Northup explained that his owner and their neighbors gave their slaves between three and six days off during the holidays. He described this period as “carnival season with the children of bondage,” a time for “feasting, frolicking, and fiddling.”

According to Northup, each year a slave owner in central Louisiana’s Bayou Boeuf offered a Christmas dinner attended by as many as 500 enslaved people from neighboring plantations. After spending the entire year consuming meager meals, this marked a rare opportunity to indulge in several kinds of meats, vegetables, fruits, pies and tarts. 

Isaac Mendes Belisario’s ‘Band of the Jaw-Bone John-Canoe’ (1837). Slavery Images

There’s evidence of holiday celebrations since the early days of slavery in the Americas. In the British colony of Jamaica, a Christmas masquerade called Jonkonnu has taken place since the 17th century. One 19th-century artist depicted the celebration, painting four enslaved men playing musical instruments, including a container covered with animal skin, along with an instrument made from an animal’s jawbone.

In the 1861 narrative of her life in slavery, abolitionist Harriet Jacobs described a similar masquerade in North Carolina.

“Every child rises early on Christmas morning to see the Johnkannaus,” she wrote. “Without them, Christmas would be shorn of its greatest attraction.”

On Christmas Day, she continued, nearly 100 enslaved men paraded through the plantation wearing colorful costumes with cows’ tails fastened to their backs and horns decorating their heads. They went door to door, asking for donations to buy food, drinks and gifts. They sang, danced and played musical instruments they had fashioned themselves – drums made of sheepskin, metal triangles and an instrument fashioned from the jawbone of a horse, mule or donkey.
It’s the most wonderful time to escape

Yet beneath the revelry, there was an undercurrent of angst during the holidays for enslaved men, women and children.

In the American South, enslavers often sold or hired out their slaves in the first days of the year to pay their debts. During the week between Christmas and New Year’s Day, many enslaved men, women and children were consumed with worry over the possibility of being separated from their loved ones.

At the same time, slave owners and their overseers were often distracted – if not drunk – during the holidays. It was a prime opportunity to plan an escape.

John Andrew Jackson was owned by a Quaker family of planters in South Carolina. After being separated from his wife and child, he planned to escape during the Christmas holiday of 1846. He managed to flee to Charleston. From there, he went north and eventually reached New Brunswick in Canada. Sadly, he was never able to reunite with his enslaved relatives.

Even Harriet Tubman took advantage of the holiday respite. Five years after she successfully escaped from the Maryland plantation where she was enslaved, she returned on Christmas Day in 1854 to save her three brothers from a life of bondage.
‘Tis the season for rebellion

Across the Americas, the holiday break also offered a good opportunity to plot rebellions.

In 1811, enslaved and free people of color planned a series of revolts in Cuba, in what became known as the Aponte Rebellion. The scheming and preparations took place between Christmas Day and the Day of Kings, a Jan. 6 Catholic holiday commemorating the three magi who visited the infant Jesus. Inspired by the Haitian Revolution, free people of color and enslaved people joined forces to try to end slavery on the island.

In April, the Cuban government eventually smashed the rebellion.

In Jamaica, enslaved people followed suit. Samuel Sharpe, an enslaved Baptist lay deacon, called a general strike on Christmas Day 1831 to demand wages and better working conditions for the enslaved population.

Two nights later, a group of enslaved people set fire to a trash house at an estate in Montego Bay. The fire spread, and what was supposed to be a strike instead snowballed into a violent insurrection. The Christmas Rebellion – or Baptist War, as it became known – was the largest slave revolt in Jamaica’s history. For nearly two months, thousands of slaves battled British forces until they were eventually subdued. Sharpe was hanged in Montego Bay on May 23, 1832.

After news of the Christmas Rebellion and its violent repression reached Britain, antislavery activists ramped up their calls to ban slavery. The following year, Parliament passed the Slavery Abolition Act, which prohibited slavery in the British Empire.

Yes, the week between Christmas Day and New Year’s Day offered a chance to feast or plot rebellions.

But more importantly, it served as a rare window of opportunity for enslaved men, women and children to reclaim their humanity.

Ana Lucia Araujo, Professor of History, Howard University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Infectious diseases killed Victorian children at alarming rates — their novels highlight the fragility of public health today

Worth’s 1872 illustration for the Household Edition of The Old Curiosity Shop highlights her grandfather’s grief at losing Little Nell.

Thomas Worth via George P. Landow/Victorian Web

The Conversation

December 19, 2024

Modern medicine has enabled citizens of wealthy, industrialized nations to forget that children once routinely died in shocking numbers. Teaching 19th-century English literature, I regularly encounter gutting depictions of losing a child, and I am reminded that not knowing the emotional cost of widespread child mortality is a luxury.


In the first half of the 19th century, between 40% and 50% of children in the U.S. didn’t live past the age of 5. While overall child mortality was somewhat lower in the U.K., the rate remained near 50% through the early 20th century for children living in the poorest slums.

Threats from disease were extensive. Tuberculosis killed an estimated 1 in 7 people in the U.S. and Europe, and it was the leading cause of death in the U.S. in the early decades of the 19th century. Smallpox killed 80% of the children it infected. The high fatality rate of diphtheria and the apparent randomness of its onset caused panic in the press when the disease emerged in the U.K. in the late 1850s.

Multiple technologies now prevent epidemic spread of these and other once-common childhood illnesses, including polio, tetanus, whooping cough, measles, scarlet fever and cholera.

Closed sewers protect drinking water from fecal contamination. Pasteurization kills tuberculosis, diphtheria, typhoid and other disease-causing organisms in milk. Federal regulations stopped purveyors from adulterating foods with the chalk, lead, alum, plaster and even arsenic once used to improve the color, texture or density of inferior products. Vaccines created herd immunity to slow disease spread, and antibiotics offer cures to many bacterial illnesses.

As a result of these sanitary, regulatory and medical advances, child mortality rates have sat below 1% in the U.S. and U.K. for the last 30 years.

Victorian novels chronicle the terrible grief of losing children. Depicting the cruelty of diseases largely unfamiliar today, they also warn against being lulled into thinking that child deaths can never be inevitable again.
Routine death meant relentless grief

Novels tapped into communal fears as they mourned fictional children.

Little Nell, the angelic figure at the center of Charles Dickens’ wildly popular “The Old Curiosity Shop,” fades away from an unnamed illness over the last few installments of this serialized novel. When the ship carrying the printed pages with the final part of the story pulled into New York, people apparently shouted from the docks, asking if she had survived. The public investment in, and grief over, her death reflects a shared experience of helplessness: No amount of love can save a child’s life.

Eleven-year-old Anne Shirley of “Green Gables” fame became a hero for pulling 3-year-old Minnie May through a dramatic battle with diphtheria. Readers knew this as a horrendous illness in which a membrane blocks the throat so effectively that a child will gasp to death.

Children were familiar with disease risks. While typhus runs rampant in “Jane Eyre,” killing nearly half the girls at their charity school, 13-year-old Helen Burns is struggling against tuberculosis. Ten-year-old Jane is filled with horror at the possible loss of the only person who has ever truly cared for her

. 

A.D. Webster, ‘young girl and her deceased sister; Anderson siblings,’ carte-de-visite, Constantine, Michigan: ca. 1860s-1870. 

Mark A. Anderson Collection of Post-Mortem Photography/William L. Clements Library, University of Michigan

An entire chapter deals frankly and emotionally with all this dying. Jane cannot bear separation from quarantined Helen and seeks her out one night, filled with “the dread of seeing a corpse.” In the chill of a Victorian bedroom, she slips under Helen’s blankets and tries to stifle her own sobs as Helen is overtaken with coughing. A teacher discovers them the next morning: “my face against Helen Burns’s shoulder, my arms round her neck. I was asleep, and Helen was – dead.”

The disconcerting image of a child nestled in sleep against another child’s corpse may seem unrealistic. But it is very like the mid-19th-century memento photographs taken of deceased children surrounded by their living siblings. The specter of death, such scenes remind us, lay at the center of Victorian childhood.
Fiction was not worse than fact

Victorian periodicals and personal writings remind us that death being common did not make it less tragic.

Darwin agonized at losing “the joy of the Household,” when his 10-year-old daughter Annie succumbed to tuberculosis in 1851.

The weekly magazine “Household Words” reported the 1853 death of a 3-year-old from typhoid fever in a London slum contaminated by an open cesspool. But better housing was no guarantee against waterborne infection. President Abraham Lincoln was “convulsed” and “unnerved,” his wife “inconsolable,” watching their son Willie, 11, die of typhoid in the White House

. 

This ‘Household Words’ report on the coroner’s inquest into the child’s death from typhoid fever gives a grim picture of the lack of sanitation in the neighborhood. Household Words, January 1853, p.10, CC BY-SA

In 1856, Archibald Tait, then headmaster of Rugby and later Archbishop of Canterbury, lost five of his seven children in just over a month to scarlet fever. At the time, according to historians of medicine, this was the most common pediatric infectious disease in the U.S. and Europe, killing 10,000 children per year in England and Wales alone.

Scarlet fever is now generally curable with a 10-day course of antibiotics. However, researchers warn that recent outbreaks demonstrate we cannot relax our vigilance against contagion.
Forgetting at our peril

Victorian fictions linger on child deathbeds. Modern readers, unused to earnest evocations of communal grief, may mock such sentimental scenes because it is easier to laugh at perceived exaggeration than to frankly confront the specter of a dying child.

“She was dead. Dear, gentle, patient, noble Nell was dead,” Dickens wrote in 1841, at a time when a quarter of all the children he knew might die before adulthood. For a reader whose own child could easily trade places with Little Nell, becoming “mute and motionless forever,” the sentence is an outpouring of parental anguish.

These Victorian stories commemorate a profound, culturally shared grief. To dismiss them as old-fashioned is to assume they are outdated because of the passage of time. But the collective pain of a high child mortality rate was eradicated not by time, but by effort. Rigorous sanitation reform, food and water safety standards, and widespread use of disease-fighting tools like vaccines, quarantine, hygiene and antibiotics are choices.

And the successes born of these choices can unravel if people begin choosing differently about health precautions.

While tipping points differ by illness, epidemiologists agree that even small drops in vaccine rates can compromise herd immunity. Infectious disease experts and public health officials are already warning of the dangerous uptick of diseases whose horrors 20th century advances helped wealthy societies forget.

People who want to dismantle a century of resolute public health measures, like vaccination, invite those horrors to return.

Article updated to clarify that child mortality rates have remained below 1% for the last 30 years, not since the 1930s.

Andrea Kaston Tange, Professor of English, Macalester College

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.