Frito-Lay Kansas worker strike ends after 20 days

By Sara O'Brien, CNN Business
Sat July 24, 2021

(CNN)After a nearly three-week strike, hundreds of Frito-Lay employees in Topeka, Kansas have ratified a revised contract Saturday addressing what union leaders had previously described as a diminished quality of life stemming from work conditions, including long hours, forced overtime, and stagnating wages.

The contract will provide workers with a guaranteed day off each work week, and eliminates so-called "suicide shifts" (or "squeeze shifts" as the company calls it) where workers put in eight-hour days plus four hours of overtime before returning for their next shift, according to a Frito-Lay statement provided to CNN Business.

The news of the agreement was first reported Saturday by The New York Times.

Frito-Lay, owned by PepsiCo, said the union representing the workers will have additional opportunities for input on staffing and overtime. The revised contract also "offers 4% wage increases to employees in all job classifications over the two-year contract," according to the company's statement.

The workers belong to Local 218 of the Bakery, Confectionery, Tobacco Workers and Grain Millers International Union. In a statement Saturday, Anthony Shelton, the union's international president, said the workers "have shown the world that union working people can stand up against the largest food companies in the world and claim victory for themselves, their families and their communities."

Ron Sadler, employee at Frito-Lay for 32 years, puts his fist up as drivers honk their horns to show support for the union strike Tuesday afternoon, July 20. "I'm way too old to be dealing with this," Sadler said.

The 20-day strike marked the first at the plant in its decades of operation.

Earlier this month, Shelton said that "workers do not have enough time to see their family, do chores around the house, run errands, or even get a healthy night's sleep."

Frito-Lay had previously called the union's claims about long hours "grossly exaggerated."

"At all times we have negotiated in good faith with union representatives to address the most pressing concerns raised regarding hours of work and overtime," said Frito-Lay in the statement. "We believe our approach to resolving this strikes demonstrates how we listen to our employees, and when concerns are raised, they are taken seriously and addressed."

CNN's Harmeet Kaur contributed to this report.

Union accepts Frito Lay contract offer, ending strike

This sits outside a Frito-Lay facility in Topeka, Kansas where hundreds of workers are walking picket lines demanding an end to mandatory overtime and 84-hour weeks induced by an increased appetite for snack food during the pandemic.(BCTGM UNION via CBS News)

By Joseph Hennessy
Published: Jul. 24, 2021

TOPEKA, Kan. (WIBW) - The union has voted to accept Frito Lay’s newest contract offer ending the 20-day strike.

According to union leaders, the Bakery, Confectionery, Tobacco Workers and Grain Millers Local 218 members have voted in favor of Frito Lay’s contract offer after weeks of striking across the street from the plant.

We are told the accepted terms have one guaranteed day off and there is a pay increase for the workers.

Union Steward for BCTGM Mark McCarter confirmed the strike is over.

He said Everyone will return to work Monday and the vote tally has not been released. The vote approval occurred overnight, the picket line is being taken down now.

“We are pleased the BCTGM Local 218 members from Frito-Lay’s Topeka site ratified the revised contract offer and we look forward to welcoming all of our employees back to work next week. 

 At all times we have negotiated in good faith with union representatives to address the most pressing concerns raised regarding hours of work and overtime. 

While Frito-Lay believed its fully recommended July 1 offer addressed those concerns appropriately, the new offer from Frito-Lay provides a guaranteed day off during each workweek, eliminates “squeeze shifts,” creates additional opportunities for the union to have input into staffing and overtime and offers 4% wage increases to employees in all job classifications over the two-year contract,” said Frito-Lay. 

“For more than 85 years, Frito-Lay has provided well-paying jobs and benefits to thousands of Americans and made countless contributions to the communities where our teams work and live. 

Today, we are proud to employ more than 66,000 people and are committed to providing a safe and fair workplace for everyone.

 We believe our approach to resolving this strikes demonstrates how we listen to our employees, and when concerns are raised, they are taken seriously and addressed. Looking ahead, we look forward to continuing to build on what we have accomplished together based on mutual trust and respect.”

That is all we can confirm at this time. This is a developing story.

Copyright 2021 WIBW. All rights reserved.

Why hundreds of U.S. Frito-Lay workers have been striking

Harmeet Kaur

CNNDigital
Published Friday, July 23, 2021 


Ron Sadler, a Frito-Lay employee for 32 years, raises a fist as drivers show support for the union strike on July 20. (Evert Nelson/USA Today Network via CNN)

Workers at the Frito-Lay plant in Topeka, Kansas, say it used to be one of the best jobs in town -- a place of shared meals, group outings and community.

In recent years, though, employees and union members say the facility where Doritos, Cheetos and Tostitos are made has become another toxic work environment.

Hundreds of Frito-Lay workers at the Topeka facility are in week three of a strike over what union leaders describe as long hours, forced overtime, stagnating wages and a diminished quality of life. It's the first strike at the plant in its decades of operation.

Members of the Bakery, Confectionery, Tobacco Workers and Grain Millers Local 218 union have called on the snack food company to provide better working conditions and pay. Among their grievances are so-called "suicide shifts," in which employees work a full eight-hour day plus four hours of overtime with little turnaround time before the next shift.

"Workers do not have enough time to see their family, do chores around the house, run errands, or even get a healthy night's sleep," the union's international president Anthony Shelton said in a July 12 statement. "This strike is about working people having a voice in their futures and taking a stand for their families."

Frito-Lay, which is owned by PepsiCo, said in a statement that the claims about long hours were "grossly exaggerated." It also pointed to a contract offer it made prior to the strike that would cap overtime limits at 60 hours and end what it referred to as "squeeze shifts."

Corrina Christensen, communications director for the main Bakery, Confectionery, Tobacco Workers and Grain Millers union told CNN on Thursday that negotiations had concluded and that it would not comment further until after a vote by members. Frito-Lay did not address specific requests for comment by CNN, instead pointing to public statements released this week.

WORKERS FEEL THEY'RE BEING 'PUSHED TO THE EDGE'

As the nation continues to recover from the pandemic, PepsiCo recently reported quarterly earnings that surpassed Wall Street estimates -- Frito-Lay North America saw its organic revenue grow by 6%.

Workers at the Topeka plant, however, feel burned out.

Union leaders said in a podcast interview last week that they had asked management for years to address staffing shortages that resulted in forced overtime and long shifts, but that the issues were not adequately addressed.

"Before we walked out on the strike, they were 100 employees short already, which is where a lot of the overtime comes in," said Paul Klemme, chief steward of Local 218.

Mark McCarter, a Frito-Lay employee and union representative who has been working at the Topeka facility for more than three decades, told VICE that he makes $20.50 an hour despite his long career with the company and hasn't received a proper raise in 10 years.

"I think people are pushed to the edge," he told the outlet. "COVID created some of this. During COVID, managers got to work from home. People see that and realize they have other options. Everyone's hiring and raising their pay because no one wants to work for $8 an hour anymore."

Cherie Renfro, another worker at the facility, criticized Frito-Lay for giving bonuses instead of raises and accused the company of lowering wages for new employees. She also said workers did not receive hazard pay or other recognition for the risks they took throughout the pandemic.

"You have no problem paying for the drug tests, background checks, orientation and training for 350-plus employees that you hired and lost this past year," Renfro wrote in the Topeka Capital-Journal. "But you have a problem giving decent living wages to keep loyal employees, already trained, already here."

More than 800 workers are affected by the strike.

WHERE THINGS STAND

Union membership voted down a July 1 offer made by Frito-Lay before going on strike.

Negotiations resumed this week, and on Thursday, the two sides concluded their talks.


Frito-Lay said in a statement that the new offer "will better address employee concerns around guaranteed days off and create additional opportunities for the union to have input into staffing and overtime," adding that it would include across-the-board wage increases.

Christensen, the spokesperson for the main union, said members are currently voting on the contract and that results are expected late Friday.

Why are Frito-Lays workers working ‘suicide shifts’ on the job?

Workers are now entering their third week on strike to demand better conditions

Lay’s potato chips. Photograph: Stewart Goldstein/Alamy Stock Photo/Alamy Stock Photo

Indigo Olivier

Fri 23 Jul 2021 

THE GUARDIAN

Since 5 July, hundreds of striking workers at a Frito-Lay plant in Topeka, Kansas, have drawn attention to the Dickensian conditions workers have been subjected to in order to produce some of the biggest brand name chips in the United States, including Fritos, Cheetos, Doritos, Lay’s, Ruffles, Funyuns and Tostitos.

Workers have publicly aired a list of grievances ranging from stagnant wages, high turnover rates and a lack of hazard pay during the pandemic to 84-hour workweeks, warehouses in triple-digit heat with no air conditioning, months on end without a day off, and so-called “suicide shifts” where workers are only off the clock for eight hours before having to come back in.

As one Frito-Lay worker wrote in an op-ed for the Topeka Capital-Journal, “This storm has been brewing for years.” The worker describes “iron-fisted management” that has forced employees to continue working through the smoke and fumes of a fire, the loss of a father, a “deep freeze” cold front, years of inflation with cost-of-living increases as low as 20 cents, and the on-the-job death of a co-worker.

In an interview with Vice, Mark McCarter, a 59-year-old palletizer and union steward who has been working at the facility since he was 19, described one instance a few years ago where a co-worker died on the line and the company had his body moved to the side without stopping production. “It seems like I go to one funeral a year for someone who’s had a heart attack at work or someone who went home to their barn and shot themselves in the head or hung themselves,” said McCarter.

Workers are now entering their third week on strike without pay as a last resort and have asked consumers to stop buying Frito-Lay products until an agreement with the company is reached. “We would rather nobody buy any Frito-Lay products, Fritos, Doritos, Tostitos, Funyuns, Cheetos, all those, while we’re on strike,” McCarter told Vice

“We make all of those in Topeka, Kansas.”

While these shocking conditions (more fitting for an Upton Sinclair novel than the facility of a Fortune 500 company) have been given a human face by the workers organizing against them, they point to an imbalance of power that transcends Frito-Lay.

The movement for an eight-hour workday in the US has been waged by workers since the late 1800s. And wasn’t legally guaranteed until 1938. In the decades that followed, all major federal legislation for workplace health and safety was won through the concerted efforts of organized labor and organized labor alone.

In a country where labor history is all but forgotten, it is all too easy for people to understand the modern workplace as the result of a progressive advancement in thinking over what people consider acceptable terms of employment in a developed nation. But Frito-Lay and the countless other workers that have organized against low wages and poor working conditions under the pandemic have debunked this narrative, revealing a constant tug of war between workers and the boss.

Frito-Lay is a subsidiary of Pepsico, a multinational conglomerate that owns Pepsi, Starbucks, Aquafina, Mountain Dew, Tropicana, Gatorade, Aunt Jemima and a number of other brand-name products we see on supermarket shelves across the country. The company’s tens of billions of dollars in yearly revenue across 23 brands is the outcome of decades of unchecked corporate consolidation hiding behind the appearance of consumer choice through clever marketing tactics and an absence of organized opposition.

If Covid-19 has taught us anything it is that the conditions we work under will be pushed as far as a company can take them while still maximizing its bottom line. That is until workers reach a breaking point.

When bargaining with the ​​Bakery, Confectionery, Tobacco Workers, and Grain Millers Local 218, the union representing Frito-Lay workers, a company negotiator said the quiet part out loud.

“Your negotiator told us that it isn’t that Frito-Lay can’t afford to give us raises, it’s that he is there to protect the stockholder investments,” said Cheri Renfro in an open letter to her employer. “Your threats and bully tactics only fuel our fire. You have pushed us into a corner and we came out swinging. And now you’re ‘shocked’?”


Indigo Olivier is an investigative reporting fellow at In These Times magazine

'Inexplicably frozen': Judge quashes Ottawa's Coalspur order as it failed to consult with Ermineskin Cree Nation

Comes just weeks after a federal policy statement on thermal coal all but sent Coalspur's Vista expansion up in smoke

Author of the article: Kelsey Rolfe
Publishing date: Jul 23, 2021 • 

Environment and Climate Change Minister Jonathan Wilkinson said in June the federal government could not prevent thermal coal miners from bringing projects forward, but “the bar (for approval) would be exceedingly high.” PHOTO BY SHANNON STAPLETON/REUTERS FILES

Coalspur Mines Ltd.’s controversial Vista mine expansion project is no longer subject to the federal impact assessment process, a federal judge ruled this week.

The Federal Court ruling quashed a June 2020 designation order from Environment and Climate Change Minister Jonathan Wilkinson that subjected both Vista’s proposed open-pit expansion and underground test mine to review by the federal impact assessment agency.

It found the minister had failed to consult the Ermineskin Cree Nation, which has an impact benefit agreement with Coalspur, and instead only consulted Indigenous communities who sought the designation order before issuing his decision.

“Not only was there no consultation at all, but I find Ermineskin was inexplicably frozen out of this very one-sided process,” wrote Judge Henry Brown in his decision.

The decision comes just weeks after Wilkinson issued a federal policy statement on thermal coal, saying any new or expanded projects would cause “unacceptable environmental impacts,” at the time all but sending Vista’s expansion up in smoke.t

Wilkinson told the Financial Post in June the federal government could not prevent thermal coal miners from bringing projects forward, but “the bar (for approval) would be exceedingly high.”

In an emailed statement to the Financial Post, Wilkinson said his office was reviewing the decision to “determine its implications and identify next steps.”

“The continued mining and use of thermal coal for energy production in Canada and around the world runs counter to what is needed to effectively combat climate change.”

He said he would “continue to consider” the thermal coal policy in deciding whether to designate future thermal coal projects under the federal impact assessment act.

Wilkinson had initially declined to designate the Vista expansion under the impact assessment act in December 2019, saying the Alberta Energy Regulator could cover the areas of federal concern in its environmental assessment, but reversed course after mounting pressure from Indigenous people and environmental groups.

Environment and Climate Change Minister Jonathan Wilkinson.

 PHOTO BY JIM WELLS/POSTMEDIA

His decision last June said Vista “may result in adverse effects of greater magnitude to those previously considered.”

The proposed two-part expansion would nearly double Vista’s production capacity, from roughly 6.5 million tonnes per year of thermal coal to between 10 and 15 million tonnes.

Coalspur has been plagued by challenges this year, filing for Companies’ Creditors Arrangement Act protection in late April, roughly four months after a permitting issue with the AER forced it to put Vista on care and maintenance and lay off roughly 300 workers. The temporary mine shutdown coincided with a multi-million dollar hedge obligation to a Singaporean commodity trading firm.

Operations resumed at Vista during the first week of May, after the company secured a US$26-million interim lending facility to recall about 250 employees and restart the mine while it works through restructuring.

Both Coalspur and the Ermineskin Cree Nation sought judicial review of the minister’s order in two separate court filings. The Ermineskin argued Wilkinson had failed to consult the Nation before putting Vista through the impact assessment process. The decision would impact its Aboriginal and treaty rights, the Ermineskin argued, by lessening, delaying or eliminating its economic interest in the expansion.

Wilkinson argued he had no duty to consult the Nation, and disputed that the loss of any economic, social and community benefits laid out in the impact benefit agreement were an infringement on Aboriginal and treaty rights.

Brown disagreed, writing that the Crown’s duty to consult clearly extends to Indigenous communities’ economic rights and benefits.

Wilkinson said in an email the government’s commitment to working with Indigenous peoples to advance reconciliation and respect Indigenous rights, culture and knowledge was “why we delivered on our promise to put in place better rules for major projects that support reconciliation, while restoring public trust, protecting the environment and ensuring good projects get built.””

Financial Post

MORE ON THIS TOPIC

Coalspur: The canary in Canada’s thermal coal mines as Ottawa sets high bar for new projects

Canada will not approve any new thermal coal mining projects or expand existing mines

Coal-fired power plants feel the heat of Alberta’s new carbon tax rules

Enmax and City of Calgary announce $5M fund for solar installations at community halls

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City to decide which community halls receive installations in a matter of weeks

CBC News · Posted: Jul 23, 2021 

The first phase of the community hall installations are expected to be completed by the end of 2021. (Susan Montoya Bryan/The Associated Press)

The city is teaming up with Enmax to launch a $5-million fund for solar-energy installations at designated community halls across Calgary.

The fund is a one-time contribution that will be used to provide solar equipment and hire people to install it, the power company said Friday in a release. 

The City of Calgary, which owns Enmax, will manage the program and select the community halls that will receive the installations. Those decisions are expected in a matter of weeks.

Enmax vice-president Corry Poole told CBC News the project is a way to work with the city toward a lower-carbon future as the energy landscape evolves.

"The great thing about community halls and community centres is they're used by Calgarians," Poole said. "And [this] really allows them to help lower energy costs overall."

• Amazon unveils plan for major solar power project in southern Alberta

• Albertans are hot for solar right now, even with the pandemic pinch

Ward 14 Coun. Peter Demong said in Friday's release that the project will help communities become more sustainable, and Calgary Mayor Naheed Nenshi said it's cost-saving benefits could prompt others to adopt solar installations, themselves.

"This is a great project that will help community associations free up operating funds to serve our neighbourhoods, and serve as an example to similar-sized facilities of the benefits of solar," Nenshi said.

The first phase of the installations are expected to be completed by the end of 2021.

With files from Rick Donkers

Buildings are a bigger contributor to climate change than cars — these start-ups are trying to help

PUBLISHED SAT, JUL 24 2021

Katie Brigham@KATIE_BRIGHAM

This June was the hottest in American history. The 116-degree heat melted power cables in Portland, Oregon, and smashed previous temperature records. Seattle recorded an all-time high of 108 degrees, as did the Canadian province of British Columbia, at a whopping 121 degrees.

As the world warms, more people are installing air conditioning. Global energy demand for cooling has more than tripled since 1990 and could more than double between now and 2040 without stricter efficiency standards.


But air conditioning itself is a major contributor to global warming. Altogether, building operations that include heating, cooling and lighting account for 28% of the world’s total greenhouse gas emissions. That’s more than the entire global transportation sector.

But SkyCool, Gradient and a number of other companies are working on the problem. They’re trying to apply new technologies to the traditionally inflexible heating and cooling industry, finance the upfront costs, communicate the value to property owners and make sure it’s all done equitably.

How Air Conditioning Is Warming The World

Jul 24, 2021

CNBC

Summer 2021 is shaping up to be one of the hottest in history, as the effects of climate change are becoming ever clearer. Naturally, that’s led to an increase in global demand for air conditioning, which itself is a major contributor to global warming. It’s a vicious cycle, but there are a number of companies working to make heating and cooling more energy efficient, and get buildings off of fossil fuels for good.

Tough times ahead for survivors of Hong Kong’s industrial past

Jul 23, 2021

South China Morning Post

Once central to Hong Kong’s identity, local manufacturing is now increasingly seen as a sunset industry for the city. In its heyday, manufacturing comprised 31 per cent of Hong Kong’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP) but today it represents only around 1 per cent of GDP. Only six of nearly two dozen government-subsidised industrial buildings that used to house mini factories are left. And by mid-2022, only two will remain as the Hong Kong Housing Authority converts most industrial spaces into subsidised flats. For the tenants of these factory estates, the government’s plan to close some of the last subsidised industrial spaces may deal the final blow to a dying industry.

OF COURSE TRUMP HAS SCAMMED MILLIONS FROM HIS NOT-VERY-BRIGHT SUPPORTERS

The ex-president has reportedly been using his political PAC as a slush fund for personal expenses.

President Donald Trump during a rally in Dalton, Georgia on January 4, 2021

.BY MANDEL NGAN/AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES

One of the more ironic aspects of Donald Trump’s improbable election win in 2016 was that many of his supporters declared they were voting for him because unlike career politicians, he actually told the truth. In reality, of course, he lied about everything all the time. Whether it was a big lie like the one about how Mexico was going to pay for his wall; a weird lie like the one about having been named Michigan’s “Man of the Year”; an insane lie like the one about windmills causing cancer; a sad, pathetic lie like the one about his inauguration crowd being bigger than Barack Obama’s; or a truly WTF lie like the one about the Boy Scouts of America calling to tell him his crazy speech in front of thousands of children was the best one they’d ever heard, the man spent his entire time in office lying through his caps, to the tune of 30,573 lies in four years. (Or 7,643 lies a year, or 21 lies a day.)

Obviously Trump hasn’t stopped lying since he left Washington, with the biggest lie being that he won the 2020 election, but at the same time, his supporters continue not to care. So while it might tick off a normal person to learn that money they’d donated to a (supposedly) important cause had actually gone to funding personal expenses for a guy who never misses a chance to tell everyone how rich he is, we’re pretty sure the ex-president’s followers will not be bothered.

Per The Washington Post:

Former president Donald Trump’s political PAC raised about $75 million in the first half of this year as he trumpeted the false notion that the 2020 election was stolen from him, but the group has not devoted funds to help finance the ongoing ballot review in Arizona or to push for similar endeavors in other states, according to people familiar with the finances.

Instead, the Save America leadership PAC—which has few limits on how it can spend its money—has paid for some of the former president’s travel, legal costs, and staff, along with other expenses, according to the people, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe the group’s inner workings. The PAC has held on to much of its cash.

An extremely charitable, naive way to read this would be to say that Trump is all talk about trying to overturn the results of the 2020 election but actually isn’t putting any real effort into it at all. But of course that’s not what’s going on here. Trump desperately wants to find evidence to support the baseless lie that a second term was stolen from him, but he just wants someone else to pay for it.


Even as he assiduously tracks attempts by his allies to cast doubt on the integrity of last year’s election, Trump has been uninterested in personally bankrolling the efforts, relying on other entities and supporters to fund the endeavors...The tactic allows Trump to build up a war chest to use in the 2022 midterms on behalf of candidates he favors—and to stockpile cash for another potential White House run, an unprecedented maneuver for a former president.

In the meantime, the monthslong audit of Maricopa County’s ballots in Arizona—which is expected to cost millions—is being paid for primarily by nonprofit entities that do not disclose their donors and private individuals such as former Overstock chief executive Patrick Byrne. A lawsuit seeking a similar audit in Fulton County, Georgia, has been financed by small donations, according to the group that brought the claim. A spokeswoman for Trump did not answer questions on whether the group is considering putting money into the ballot review efforts. The group will have to publicly disclose its fundraising and spending for the first half of the year by July 31.

Since leaving office, Trump has repeatedly pushed for various states to overturn the election results, sending out a blizzard of statements with unsubstantiated claims of voter fraud. He has consulted with state officials in Arizona, Pennsylvania, and Georgia, and has described state ballot reviews as the key to prove he won the 2020 election. And his political group has repeatedly urged donors to give by claiming that Trump is working to protect their vote—fundraising pitches that his advisers say remain the most lucrative. “We need you to join the fight to SECURE OUR ELECTIONS!” reads one Facebook ad.... The former president has repeatedly made false claims of irregularities in the Arizona vote, asserting in a statement this month that it amounted “to hundreds of thousands of votes or, many times what is necessary for us to have won.”

The Save America PAC “is probably the most lucrative thing he’s had in terms of cash flow since the Plaza casino in Atlantic City,” Tim O’Brien, a Trump biographer, told the Post. “This is just as lucrative. He has recognized because of what happened after the election—he can make money as a candidate.”


Of course this isn’t the first time Trump has scammed supporters out of money. In April, New York Times reporter Shane Goldmacher revealed that the Trump campaign had ripped off supporters for tens of millions of dollars through a scheme in which when they donated money, the default option authorized the campaign to transfer the pledged amount from people’s bank accounts not once but every single week. Later the campaign introduced a second prechecked box that doubled a person’s contribution and was thus known internally as a “money bomb.” (In order for people to have noticed this, they would have had to wade through “lines of text in bold and capital letters that overwhelmed the opt-out language.”) And the scheme continued after Trump lost the election, with his campaign reportedly “continu[ing] the weekly withdrawals through prechecked boxes all the way through December 14.” Those withdrawals, the Times noted, occurred “as [Trump] raised tens of millions of dollars for his new political action committee, Save America.”

BY BESS LEVIN

JULY 23, 2021

White is not a colour – white is an ideology

The word ‘white’, in the context of talking about racism, is not a signifier for skin colour. In this vital context, ‘white’ is an ideology.


Hamid Dabashi
Hamid Dabashi is the Hagop Kevorkian Professor of Iranian Studies and Comparative Literature at Columbia University.
23 Jul 2021

Opponents of Critical Race Theory protest outside of the Loudoun County School Board headquarters, in Ashburn, Virginia, US June 22, 2021. [Evelyn Hockstein/Reuters]

The rising public conversations about race and racism in the United States have once again confused millions of well-meaning Americans into believing that if they look like what is now socially codified as “a white person” then they must feel guilty about the racist history of their country. This is a false guilt. Looking at any person and judging the content of their character based on the complexion of their skin is blatant racism, predicated on a false and illogical premise. It is only white supremacists who benefit from the confusion of the term “white” as a colour of skin designation with “white” as an ideology of racial supremacy.

A reactionary propagandist named Christopher Rufo is now identified as the chief agent provocateur mobilising racist Americans against a figment of their own imagination they call “Critical Race Theory” by way of conflating racism with the designated colour of a person’s skin. The objective is to frighten people to think that if the colour of their skin is coded as “white” in this country, then they are the targets of their so-called “coloured” compatriots’ demands for racial justice.

But the word “white” in the context of talking about racism is not a signifier for skin colour. In this vital context, “white” is an ideology. You are only “white” in this sense if you think you are entitled to certain privileges that must be denied to others whom you in the same breath call “Black”, “brown”, “red”, “yellow”, etc.

Racism is a construct

“There is no such thing as race, none” – this is how master novelist late Toni Morrison broke it down very simply in a famous interview. “It’s the human race, scientifically, anthropologically. Racism is a construct, a social construct, and it has benefits, money can be made off of it, people who don’t like themselves can feel better because of it … so it has a social function. But race can only be defined as a human being.”

Precisely in that sense, the word “white” is a signifier of that racism, its ideological register, its coded symbol. That is all. No human being at birth is “white”, “Black”, “brown”, “red”, “yellow” or any other colour. They are all eventually coded with these colours to divide and rule them better. East Asians are called “yellow”, West Asians and Latinx “brown”, Native Americans “red”, Africans “Black”, all of them set against the fictive centrality of the Caucasian “white”, which Europeans have racialised and reserved for themselves and gave to their settler colonial extensions in North America or Australia as a signifier of superiority. The historical origin of all such racist designations come to full “scientific” blooming during the period Europeans call – without the slightest sense of irony – their “Enlightenment”.

Racism is the colour codification of the relation of power and abuse, precisely as sexism is the gendered codification of the selfsame social malaise. Racism is a byproduct of the colonial conquest of the world for economic exploitations that needed a cultural alibi and ideological justification. If you think you are superior to other human beings because you are “white”, or you come from a superior civilisation because you are “white” then you are a racist – namely, you assume you come from a fictitious race that is superior to other races, whom you therefore feel entitled to abuse and exploit.

This is how the British ruled India, the French Algeria, the Belgians Congo, etc. When Germans slaughtered tens of thousands of Africans in Namibia between 1904 and 1908, that was predicated on their sense of racial superiority. When they brought that genocide home and perpetrated it on Jews a couple of decades later, that was based on a sense of racial superiority.

In yet another interview, Toni Morrison was asked, if she would ever change and write books that “incorporate white lives into them substantially”. She looked at her interlocutor with a look of not contempt but pity. “You can’t understand how powerfully racist that question is,” she said, “because you could never ask a white author when they are going to write about white people.”

Morrison is here turning the racist question thrown at her against itself. The question is asked from the presumed epicentre of a position of power so assured of itself that is unconscious of itself. Morrison unveils that centre, makes it conscious of itself, and exposes it for the sham that it is.

No races before racism

Such encounters abound in the ideas of Toni Morrison, James Baldwin, and others, where the ideological foregrounding of the very supposition of being “white” is questioned and exposed. But it is in her novel A Marcy (2008) that Morrison went back to a point in American history when there was no American history, namely a time of fluidity in the continental social life before the racial codification of power surfaces in a manner that would be sustained for the rest of American history.

Set in the late 17th century, A Marcy maps out the continental domain where the Portuguese, the Spanish, the British, and all other Europeans had come to overrun the natives and begin importing African slaves, before slavery and the coded colour “Black” had become intertwined. In the book, the gathering destinies of Jacob Vaark, an Anglo-Dutch trader, his wife Rebekka, slave girl Florens, Native American farm worker Lina, and a free African blacksmith whom Florens loves, details a whole different America before the rise of racism as the defining moment of American history.

Similarly, though through critical thinking rather than creative writing, in The History of White People (2010), Nell Irvin Painter details the prolonged and twisted history of how the very idea of “white people” has gone through successive changes throughout history and how the European “Enlightenment” period is chiefly responsible for the invention of racial categories.

During this so-called “Age of Reason”, scholars like Johann Friedrich Blumenbach (1752-1840) began dividing people by measuring their skulls. As Painter puts it in a recent follow-up essay:

“At the two extremities Blumenbach placed the skulls he considered ugly, the African and the Asian. Next to the African was the Tahitian. Next to the Asian was the Native American,” Painter explained in a recent follow-up essay. “In the middle was Blumenbach’s ‘most beautiful skull’ — of a young Georgian woman who had been a sex slave in Moscow, where she died of venereal disease. Her beautiful skull became the basis for the name given to white people; a native of the South Caucasus [between the Black and Caspian Seas], she inspired the label ‘Caucasian’.”

Predicated on this illustrious past, being “white” is today an ideological conviction people acquire as they ignore such histories and are indoctrinated not just into racism but even more basically into racialised thinking. Being “white” is not a biological predicate by virtue of which one is condemned to hatred and bigotry. No one is. Being “white” is an ideological conviction by virtue of which you are convinced you are a superior human being.

The overcoming of the disease of racism is to begin with the undoing of the social construction of races that is the premise of racism. Given its long and murderous history of racial hatred, which was fully on display during the four years of the Trump presidency, the US has a very long road ahead before this simple fact is fully perceived and understood. There are powerful interests, institutionalised in the Republican Party in particular, vested in sustaining the bloody history of racism in this country.

To overcome that we must realise “white” is an ideology, a false racialised consciousness that is used by those in power to divide people to rule them better. It is the rich and the powerful who are the beneficiaries of this false consciousness. It is the poor and the powerless who are divided into white and Black and yellow and red. The rich and the powerful use these fictitious racial categories to get people to despise each other and thus conceal the real battlefront – the one between classes. Race is the colour codification of that relation of power, not that relation of power itself. What has a poor person branded as “white” in common with a rich manipulator of such racist ideologies? Nothing but the delusion that he or she belongs to a superior race while they share identical economic hardship with equally disenfranchised people they have been told to hate as Black, brown, yellow, or red?

If you are not racist you are not “white”, no matter what you have been assigned as in that colour codification of power. In the same vein, if you do not feel a victim of the very same colour codification then you are not Black, brown, yellow, red, or any other colour thus designated by the same code. You are a human being. WEB Du Bois’s assumption that “the problem of the Twentieth century is the problem of the colour-line” is only valid if we remain confined within that colour codification of power. “The colour-line” would not be a problem if we understand, dismantle, and overcome it. On that day, MLK is waiting for us: “I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.”

The metaphor of a “rainbow” usually used to bring these colours harmoniously together is a flawed liberal metaphor. Far superior is Rumi’s metaphor where in a story in Masnavi he says colours are like shades of clouds covering the bright shining light of the moon. We do not need the false colouring of our troubled imagination. We need the polishing sparkle of our peaceful souls.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.



Hamid Dabashi received a dual PhD in Sociology of Culture and Islamic Studies from the University of Pennsylvania in 1984, followed by a postdoctoral fellowship at Harvard University. He wrote his dissertation on Max Weber's theory of charismatic authority with Philip Rieff (1922-2006), the most distinguished Freudian cultural critic of his time. Professor Dabashi has taught and delivered lectures in many North American, European, Arab, and Iranian universities. Professor Dabashi has written twenty-five books, edited four, and contributed chapters to many more. He is also the author of over 100 essays, articles and book reviews on subjects ranging from Iranian Studies, medieval and modern Islam, and comparative literature to world cinema and the philosophy of art (trans-aesthetics). His books and articles have been translated into numerous languages, including Japanese, German, French, Spanish, Danish, Russian, Hebrew, Italian, Arabic, Korean, Persian, Portuguese, Polish, Turkish, Urdu and Catalan. His books include Authority in Islam [1989]; Theology of Discontent [1993]; Truth and Narrative [1999]; Close Up: Iranian Cinema, Past, Present, Future [2001]; Staging a Revolution: The Art of Persuasion in the Islamic Republic of Iran [2000]; Masters and Masterpieces of Iranian Cinema [2007]; Iran: A People Interrupted [2007]; and an edited volume, Dreams of a Nation: On Palestinian Cinema[2006]. His most recent work includes Shi’ism: A Religion of Protest (2011), The Arab Spring: The End of Postcolonialism (2012), Corpus Anarchicum: Political Protest, Suicidal Violence, and the Making of the Posthuman Body (2012), The World of Persian Literary Humanism (2012) and Being A Muslim in the World (2013).

Space travel for the masses? Don’t be ridiculous

Space ‘tourism’ as performed by a pair of billionaires is, for now, merely an overpriced joyride for the ultra-rich.

Johnny Luk
22 Jul 2021
The side of a building in Van Horn, Texas, is adorned with a mural of Blue Origin founder Jeff Bezos on Saturday, July 17, 2021, just days before Bezos launched into space [AP Photo/Sean Murphy]

Earlier this month, the British billionaire entrepreneur, Sir Richard Branson, successfully flew to outer space, trailblazing his brand, Virgin Galactic, to the edge of the outer hemisphere. This week, his fellow billionaire, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, took his own Blue Origin spacecraft for a spin to the outer limits, managing to get a whole 10 miles (16km) higher than Sir Richard.

The journeys were heralded as marking a new era of “space tourism”, in which untrained people could become astronauts, a title previously reserved for highly trained professional scientists and pilots, to see the earth’s curvature and enjoy a few minutes of weightlessness. Perfect for that viral Instagram photo for one’s millions of followers.

But could the idea of space tourism really become anything more than just an overpriced joyride for the rich?

The idea of travelling into space has fascinated human beings for millennia. Humanity has looked to the stars as a tool for navigation and as a source of spiritual fulfilment. Even now, research from the US think-tank, the Pew Research Center, suggests 29 percent of Americans believe in horoscopes.

In the 20th Century, as scientific discovery advanced, space travel became a symbol of political and ideological prestige, with the superpowers of that era, the US and the former Soviet Union, battling it out for space supremacy.

Both sides poured billions of dollars into a series of space programmes that created new rockets, satellites and most famously, led to humans touching the surface of the moon. It also spun a range of inventions that were commercialised for wider use, such as scratch-resistant lenses for glasses, memory foam and LASIK eye surgery.

These days, with the Cold War long over, political pressure to push forward state-funded space programmes has diminished, with governments even more reluctant to spend after the global financial crisis crippled government budgets in 2007. Thus, a gap has emerged for the private sector to step into.

For Branson, this month’s venture was the culmination of a long-held dream to embark on space tourism, having first promised to build a spaceship in 2004, with the hope of starting a commercial service by 2007. The programme faced years of delays due to, unsurprisingly, having to battle huge technical challenges, including a fatal crash during a development flight in 2014. The current pandemic has made it harder too, having forced Branson to sell $650m worth of Virgin Galactic shares over the past two years to shore up his wider Virgin business empire.

Yet despite delays, Virgin Galactic succeeded in its quest and has pushed space science forwards as a consequence. It developed a unique flight path, with a “mothership” carrying the main vehicle, VSS Unity, up 15km (9 miles) in the air before Unity was released and then activated its rockets to fly an additional 70km (43 miles) above the surface of the earth, to reach the edge of space. Unity then re-entered earth’s atmosphere with rotating wings – a technology known as feathering – to smoothly glide back down to earth without the need for a parachute. This meant no parts needed to be discarded, making it fully reusable, with the plane landing at the same location at Spaceport America in New Mexico, US, making it hassle-free for space tourists to get on and off, just like on a commercial flight.

Similarly, Bezos’s Blue Origin, which flew higher than its archrival Virgin Galactic, also utilises advanced science with a fully automated two-part rocket system, requiring no pilots at all. The launcher, which houses the rocket engine and propellant, separates after launch, flying back by itself to return to the launch pad, while the top part of the craft – the crew capsule – safely lands using parachutes. It is also equipped with a crew ejection system for added safety if any part of the launch goes wrong. Thankfully, there was no need for that on this occasion.

Both companies, after years of research and development and sustaining losses, are now finally poised to make money, with a reported 8,000 individuals already reserving tickets for Virgin Galactic flights, costing at least $250,000 each. Tickets to fly on Blue Origin are speculated to be priced at similar levels. Some 7,600 people with a lot of spare cash had registered for the auction of tickets for this week’s flight, with the winner paying $28m, suggesting there will be strong demand too, at least from the ultra-rich. Indeed, analysts at the investment bank, Bank of America estimate the total value of the space industry will balloon from $350bn to as much as $2.7tn by 2040.

However, before we get too excited, we must call this out for what it is. This is an entertainment business for the super-rich, backed by a formidable PR operation.

Virgin Galactic and Blue Origin are suborbital space vehicles. They do not yet fly high enough to orbit earth and are therefore in a wholly different category to – say, NASA or SpaceX – founded by another very successful billionaire entrepreneur, Elon Musk – which has become NASA’s preferred launch vehicle, able to resupply the International Space Station or deploy new satellites.

Virgin Galactic has confirmed as much, recently replacing its first CEO, the former NASA Chief of Staff George Whitesides, who led much of the research development phase of Virgin Galactic, with Michael Colglazier, who has no space background and was previously head of Disneyland parks.

The new space tourist companies are marketing these joy rides as “bringing space to the masses”. It is true that, before this, if you wanted to fly as a space tourist, you had to broker with the Russians to pay for a seat on the Soviet-era Soyuz class spacecraft for a cool $25m, as seven people did between 2001 and 2009.

But ticket prices for Virgin Galactic and Blue Origin flights will still be sky-high, which makes the claim absurd. There is no doubt that seeing the earth’s curvature could be a life-changing experience but who are we really inspiring here? Emerging scientists or the children of the billionaire set? Meanwhile, despite these new crafts being relatively energy-efficient compared with older space rockets, they still burn tonnes of fuel to go up and down through the atmosphere – hardly in the spirit of tackling climate change.

Perhaps it does not matter. After all, compared with state-funded programmes, private companies have the political cover of not – overtly – spending taxpayers’ money. Virgin Galactic has funding from the Virgin Group, the Abu Dhabi sovereign wealth fund, Aabar Investment group and Boeing, alongside being publicly traded in the New York stock market. Blue Origin was funded by the sale of Amazon stock.

In contrast, the NASA Apollo programme, which launched humans to the moon in the late 60s and early 70s and the more recent Space Shuttle programme, which retired in 2011, cost US taxpayers an eye-watering $415bn in today’s money.

Private space companies are following market forces, competing against each other in a new market. The ego contest has also begun, with Bezos taunting Branson that his ship can fly higher.

This is good. Competition drives creativity, efficiencies and the development of new safety procedures, given that a launch failure would cause fatal loss of confidence for prospective customers. Having highly driven, charismatic entrepreneurs being the face of private space companies also gives it a sexiness that has galvanised the entire space sector.

However, this masks the reality that these companies have still benefitted from a sector that has been financed with taxpayers’ support. For example, the New Mexico government has invested nearly $200m in the Spaceport America facility, with Virgin Galactic as the anchor tenant. Jeff Bezos, the world’s richest man who founded Amazon, runs a multinational technology firm that pays very little tax.

For example, in Europe, Amazon made record sales of 44 billion euros ($51.9bn) in 2020 but tax filings suggest it did not pay any corporation tax in Luxembourg, where it filed tax paperwork. And while Bezos generously thanked the workers of Amazon for helping to realise his dream of reaching space, warehouse workers on just $15 an hour might be wondering whether those profits – $8bn in net income this past quarter, a record – might be better reinvested elsewhere?

While it is a bit cringe-worthy that rich people can now call themselves “astronauts”, no doubt raising eyebrows among professionally trained, actual astronauts, we should not underestimate the science behind flying people safely under such hostile environments. Normalising space travel could provide opportunities. With Virgin Galactic aspiring to near-daily flights in the future, these suborbital journeys will provide a new platform for science, for example by providing a relatively accessible way to carry out testing in micro-gravity environments. Blue Origin is also developing larger rockets, dubbed New Glen, which aspires to compete with SpaceX on longer distance space flights and Blue Moon, to create lunar landers in partnership with NASA.

Cynics may despair at the waste of money, given there are so many other pressing issues to deal with down here on planet earth, such as human poverty. Yet perhaps space travel is a way of capturing the imagination and acting as a symbol of human advancement. Perhaps, as refinements continue and economies of scale further reduce costs, space flight might indeed become accessible to everyone, with space flights changing how people view our precious earth and provide a new way to advance science that leads to new inventions that benefit all of humanity. One can only wonder.


The views expressed in this article are the authors’ own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.



Johnny Luk is a strategic advisor, a university governor and ran for parliament in the UK as a Conservative candidate in 2019. He formerly worked on Brexit negotiations as part of the UK government and was a former junior British champion in rowing.

Canada is deporting its ‘guardian angels’

Many asylum seekers in Canada, who served as essential workers at the peak of the COVID-19 pandemic, are now facing the threat of deportation.


Stefan Christoff
23 Jul 2021

Asylum seeker Mamadou Konaté, who worked as a janitor at three elderly care homes in Montreal at the peak of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, is now facing the threat of deportation. On July 6, Konaté addressed a crowd gathered in front of Prime Minister Trudeau's constituency office in Montreal to protest essential worker deportations [Stacy Lee]

In 2017, in response to then-United States President Donald Trump’s so-called “Muslim ban”, Canadian President Justin Trudeau tweeted: “To those fleeing persecution, terror & war, Canadians will welcome you, regardless of your faith. Diversity is our strength #WelcomeToCanada.” Four years on, many across the world continue to believe Trudeau’s assertion that his country’s doors are open to refugees.

The reality on the ground, however, is very different. While routinely being praised for its extraordinary generosity towards refugees, Trudeau’s Canada is deporting asylum seekers en masse, amid a deadly pandemic.

According to the latest data published by the Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA), Trudeau’s government deported some 12,122 people in 2020. This was the highest number of deportations in a year since 2015, when Stephen Harper’s Conservative government was in power. Thousands more face the risk of being forcefully removed from the country before the end of 2021.

Many asylum seekers currently facing the threat of deportation have served as essential front-line workers in Canada during the most difficult and deadly months of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Mamadou Konaté, who fled his home country of Côte d’Ivoire (Ivory Coast) in the aftermath of its bloody civil war and arrived in Canada as an asylum seeker in 2016, is one of them.

In 2020, at the peak of the COVID-19 pandemic, Konaté worked as a janitor in three different long-term care homes (CHSLDs) in Montreal, Quebec. At the time, like most care homes in Canada, these facilities were devastated by the pandemic and were in desperate need of essential workers. Konaté tended to and cleaned the rooms of COVID-positive patients and contracted the virus while doing so. He quickly returned to work after surviving the illness.

Despite his service, however, he is now facing deportation as soon as the Canadian government arranges for Konaté’s travel documents for Ivory Coast to be issued.

“After years of working in this country, along with many, many others, contributing a lot, paying taxes, working in difficult jobs, during this pandemic, now the government is going to remove us? Now the Canadian government is planning to deport us? This is injustice,” Konaté told a crowd gathered in front of Prime Minister Trudeau’s constituency office in Montreal on July 6 to protest deportations.

“During the pandemic,” Konaté said “many key jobs were performed by immigrants, by refugees. I am one of those people, who stepped up, now, I face removal. I worked hard in the CHSLDs, cleaning many times, even on the night shift. Today, it is hard for people to know, to understand, the pain that we are going through, while facing deportation from Canada, after working in essential posts during this pandemic.”

Konaté’s case is only one of many that illustrate the ever-widening gap between the liberal Trudeau government’s rhetoric of “embracing refugees” and the reality on the ground.

Abandoning the ‘guardian angels’

Since the beginning of the pandemic, Canadian politicians from across the political spectrum have been publicly celebrating essential workers, especially those working in healthcare settings.

For example, in April 2020, Quebec’s Premier François Legault, of the conservative Coalition Avenir Québec, described essential workers on the COVID-19 front lines – including asylum seekers – as “guardian angels” and voiced his government’s support for them.

A few months later, in December 2020, his government specifically acknowledged the contributions asylum seekers have made to the pandemic effort, and initiated the “guardian angel” programme ostensibly to provide essential workers with precarious immigration status a direct path to permanent residency.

On the surface, the programme (accompanied by a similar Ottawa-led initiative for essential workers outside Quebec) appeared to provide further proof that Canada is a refugee-friendly country. But in reality, it was yet another demonstration of the hypocrisy of Canada’s leaders.

The so-called “guardian angel” programme, limited in scope to some essential workers in the healthcare sector who provided direct care to patients, left asylum seekers who laboured as front-line workers in other sectors, such as food packing and delivery, out in the cold. Moreover, it excludes many others, like Konaté, who worked as janitors, cooks or security guards in healthcare facilities.

The limitations of this programme show not only that Canada is not as welcoming of refugees as Trudeau likes us to believe, but also that the selective nature of the country’s immigration policies has changed very little since the British colonial era.

In the early 20th century, exclusionist and white supremacist immigration policies led Canada to turn away countless thousands of immigrants from across the world who endured long and arduous journeys to reach the country’s shores. Since then, Canada has made itself a name as a liberal safe haven for refugees. But as ongoing mass deportations and the state’s refusal to give permanent residency to all asylum seekers who served as essential workers illustrates, Canada’s immigration policies are still neither just nor inclusive.

Moreover, as Trudeau continues with his rhetoric of welcoming all those fleeing persecution, terror and war, Canada is rapidly militarising its borders. The 2019 federal budget, for example, promised a strategy costing 1.18 billion Canadian dollars ($940m) over five years to beef up border security and to detect, intercept and remove migrants.

Today, Trudeau continues to act as if Canada’s doors are open to refugees and the country is committed to protecting those in need. This, however, cannot be further from the truth. The country is actually allowing only a select few, who meet specific criteria, to settle within its borders, and shamelessly deporting many, like Konaté, who risked their lives to keep the country running at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic.

So, no – all those “fleeing persecution, terror and war” are not welcome in Canada. And Trudeau should stop pretending they are.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.


Stefan Christoff  is a writer, musician and community activist living in Montréal

The US embargo on Cuba has failed

If Biden truly wants to put principles, and effectiveness, ahead of politics, he should make a bold choice and end the embargo.

Christopher Rhodes
21 Jul 2021

Police scuffle and detain an anti-government demonstrator during a protest in Havana, Cuba, Sunday July 11, 2021. Hundreds of demonstrators went out to the streets in several cities in Cuba to protest against ongoing food shortages and high prices of foodstuffs, amid the new coronavirus crisis. [Ramon Espinosa/AP Photo]

For nearly 60 years, the United States has enforced an embargo against Cuba, severely restricting the flow of goods to the island. Most US companies are forbidden from dealing with Cuba, and various US laws punish foreign companies that do business in Cuba. The restrictions are meant to economically squeeze the island and create enough discontent within Cuba to force the ruling Communist Party to either significantly reform or step down.

The Obama administration, with then-Vice President Biden’s support, sought to rethink the policy and pursue re-engagement with Cuba. Barack Obama relaxed sanctions, allowed direct flights between the two countries, and eased restrictions on Americans doing business in Cuba. Donald Trump reversed Obama’s strategy. He placed Cuba back on the US list of state sponsors of international terrorism, cut off travel between Cuba and the US, and barred Americans from sending remittances to their relatives in Cuba, cutting off a major economic lifeline for many Cubans.

Joe Biden promised to move away from this Trump strategy of “maximum pressures” against Cuba, but has so far not altered any of the Trump restrictions. The White House admitted earlier this year that “a Cuba policy shift is not currently among President Biden’s top priorities.”

However, the protests that have been rocking Cuba for the past week – some of the largest since the Revolution – have forced the issue. Many Cuban American activists and Republicans are urging Biden to keep up or even increase pressure on Cuba, and Democrats are divided on whether to maintain or ease the embargo.

The strongest reason to end the embargo against Cuba is the massive toll that the policy continues to enact on the Cuban population. Both the Cuban government and the United Nations have estimated that the embargo has cost the Cuban economy $130 billion over six decades. It’s also worth noting that the US Chamber of Commerce estimates that the embargo costs the US economy billions of dollars each year, as well. The human toll is harder to quantify, but has clearly been significant. Human rights experts at the UN have urged the US to ease sanctions during the COVID-19 pandemic, arguing that such a change will save lives by allowing Cuba greater access to medical supplies and equipment.

Cuba-policy hardliners have implicitly accepted the human and economic costs of the embargo as acceptable in order to achieve the goal of undermining the communist regime. They will point towards the unprecedented level of protests currently going on in Cuba as evidence that the embargo is working. It’s not. Yes, Cubans are angry at the economic hardships and pandemic suffering happening amongst their population. But as Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel uses repression and anti-US rhetoric to contain the protests, there’s little indication that the regime is in immediate danger.

The communist regime has already survived the fall of its Soviet sponsor, the death of Fidel Castro, and the handover of power from his younger brother Raul to Díaz-Canel, who is not a Castro and was born after the Revolution took power. Sixty years of sanctions have only created hardships for the Cuban people while providing the regime with a convenient scapegoat to blame for all of their country’s economic woes and societal discontent.

Counterintuitively, ending the embargo and promoting ties between the US and Cuba is the greatest weapon that America can deploy against the oppressive regime in Cuba. President Obama laid out the strategy when he opened up travel between the two countries: “Nobody represents America’s values better than the American people,” Obama said in 2014, “and I believe this contact will ultimately do more to empower the Cuban people.”

Exposing Cubans to the freedoms and opportunities available to their American relatives will increase outrage and pressure towards the Cuban government for failing to provide these things. And removing the ability of the Communist Party to blame the United States for its own failures will lay bare the consequences of the Cuban government’s unwillingness to shift away from Soviet-era economic policies and political repression.

Hardliners will argue that easing the embargo now will lessen the pressure on the Cuban government by lessening the societal desperation that has fuelled these protests. And while economic crises can lead to collective outrage, spontaneous protests against authoritarian regimes usually ends in renewed repression rather than regime change. Many experts believe that movements for social change are most effective when people and organisations gain the resources that are necessary for sustained political and social activism. Loosening the economic vice grip on Cuba will help to empower its citizens and civil society to stand up to their government.

The administration should be thoughtful about how it rethinks the embargo policy. It need not eliminate the policy all at once, nor should it relent on pressuring Cuba when it comes to democracy or human rights. But being thoughtful should not be an excuse for inaction. For example, rather than dismissing the idea of renewing remittances to Cuba, Biden should seriously explore ways to allow Americans to securely transfer money to their Cuban relatives.

Relaxing the embargo will be a risky political move for the president. Biden lost Florida in the 2020 election after underperforming among Latino voters, and a radical change in policy towards Cuba could risk alienating parts of the Cuban American population in the state.

Republicans will no doubt accuse the president of being soft on communism or caving in to progressive demands. But if Biden truly wants to put principles, and effectiveness, ahead of politics, he should make a bold choice and end six decades of US failure and Cuban suffering.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.



Christopher Rhodes
Lecturer in Government at Harvard University and lecturer in Social Sciences at Boston University.
Dr Christopher Rhodes is a lecturer in Government at Harvard University and lecturer in Social Sciences at Boston University. He is the author of the upcoming book Evangelical Violence: Christian Nationalism, the Great Commission and a Millennium of "Holy" Warfare and co-editor of the volume Conflict, Politics, and the Christian East: Assessing Contemporary Developments.