Background: Genesis of Zerowork #1
ONE OF THE INFLUENCES ON MY POLITICS

Introduction
The Analysis
Paths to Zerowork
Theoretico-political Roots

Workers’ Autonomy in the Sphere of Production
From the Johnson-Forest Tendency to Facing Reality and Beyond
Socialisme ou Barbarie
Italian Workerism (Operaismo)
From Struggles of the Waged to those of the Unwaged
Housework and the Struggle against It
Schoolwork and the Struggle against It
Peasants and their Struggles
Incipient Differences

Brief Biographies of the Editors of Zerowork #1 (1975)

Introduction

Those who formed the initial collective that published the first issue of Zerowork were a diverse bunch with various intellectual and political backgrounds and, collectively, considerable international experience. George Caffentzis, William (Bill) Cleaver, Leoncio Schaedel and Peter Linebaugh were Americans living in the United States, but George had family in Greece, Leoncio had recently escaped Chile after the overthrow of Allende and Peter had studied in England. While Bill and Peter had both majored in history, during the crafting of Zerowork #1 Bill was working in the library of the New School for Social Research in New York City and active in local union politics, while Peter was teaching history at Franconia College and at New Hampshire State Prison. George had studied philosophy of science and was teaching at Brooklyn College of City University of New York. Leoncio was in the graduate program in political economy at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. Paolo Carpignano, Mario Montano and Bruno Ramirez were Italians who had all studied in Italy before crossing the Atlantic. But while Paolo and Mario came and stayed in the US, Bruno moved on to Toronto, Ontario after completing both a BA and an MA in the US. Peter Taylor was a Canadian living in Toronto working — and not working — in the Post Office. Paolo and Mario had both studied sociology, and Mario was teaching it at Clark University. Bruno was working on his dissertation in history. The two corresponding editors, John Merrington and Ferruccio Gambino lived in Britain and Italy respectively. But John had studied in Italy, translated and circulated political materials from Italy in England and participated in study groups with Peter Linebaugh. Ferruccio was at the Department of Political Science at the University of Padua where Toni Negri was chairman, but his frequent travels in Europe and the United States not only kept everyone up-to-date on what was happening and being discussed elsewhere but wove a web of interpersonal relations vital to all involved. (For more detail on the intersecting trajectories of their lives, see the section below with individual biographical sketches.)
These folks came together in the midst of crises both local and international.
Within major Canadian and U.S. cities, such as Toronto, Montreal and New York City, successful and untamed struggles by both waged and unwaged workers had been undermining capitalist control for some years. Ever since public employees in Canada — spearheaded by Post Office workers — had won collective bargaining rights in 1967 and formed the Common Front in Quebec in 1972 — the ability of city, provincial and national governments to provide popular services with cheap labor had been undermined. In New York City street-level and welfare rights struggles had interacted with those of public employees to so undermine the “business climate” of the city as to provoke business flight and job losses in the private sector and fiscal crisis in city finances. By 1974-75 the banks were beginning to refuse to roll over the city’s debt while city government, with the help of union bureaucrats, were beginning to raid union pension funds — not only to cover city debts but to undermine public employee struggles.(1) These crises were forerunners of others to come — of which the automaker abandonment of Flint, portrayed in Michael Moore's 1989 film "Roger and Me", and the 2013 bankruptcy of Detroit are but two examples.(2)
At the international level, widespread worker struggles in the United States had undermined the ability of the Keynesian state to manage the wage/productivity deals that had been the basis of post-WWII accumulation and had provoked business efforts to compensate by raising prices — causing such an acceleration in inflation as to contribute to the disappearance of the U.S. trade surplus and to provoke President Nixon in 1971 to unhook the dollar from gold and abandon the Bretton Woods system of fixed exchange rates. That ostensible “monetary crisis” was soon followed by a state-engineered food crisis in 1972 and the first “oil shock” of 1973-74 — initiated by the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) but sanctioned by United States policy makers.(3)

READ THE REST HERE http://zerowork.org/GenesisZ1.html

Postdigital Possibilities: Operaismo, Co-research, and Educational Inquiry
Patrick Carmichael

Postdigital Science and Education volume 2, pages 380–396(2020)Cite this article

Abstract

There are parallels between the post-Marxist traditions of operaismo (workerism) and autonomism and emerging ideas about the ‘postdigital’. Operaist analyses and approaches, and particularly the work of Romano Alquati on co-research, have the potential to contribute to discourses as to what might be involved in postdigital inquiry in educational settings, and to better understand of critical data literacies. For such educational inquiry to evolve into a comprehensive strategy of ‘co-research’, it is argued that what is needed are models of teacher inquiry with the potential to challenge dominant rhetorics, to support emancipatory research and development, and to establish the postdigital as a counter-hegemonic educational programme.

https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s42438-019-00089-0#Sec4

Original Articles
Open Access
Published: 13 December 2019

The crises of capitalism as political crises: from Tronti’sworkerism to Amable and Palombarini’s neo-realism.https://www.eiseverywhere.com/retrieveupload.php?c3VibWlzc2lvbl84ODUzM183NTYyMzIucGRmKmVzZWxlY3Q=

Matteo CAVALLARO11 CERN – PARIS XIII. Matteo.cavallaro@sciencespo.fr

ABSTRACT

The following paper's aim is twofold. First, it wishes to retrace the interaction between the concepts of “crisis” and“political” within Italian workerism. According to Tronti, all crises of the Capitalist mode of production are the results of “real” political crisis, pointing at class conflict as the main source of change during the Capitalist era. This concept of crisis appears to be useful in explaining today’s crisis. This statement is validated by recent works proposed by Amable and Palombarini and the interest raised by their neo-realist approach. The differences between these two models will be underlined over the article and will culminate in a final part that will not aim for an impossible synthesis, rather it will highlight new research paths, so as to keep open the work of repoliticisation of political economy started by Amable and Palombarini.

Keywords: crisis, politics, workerism, classes, social alliances

INTERROGATING THE KNOWLEDGE BASED ECONOMY: FROM KNOWLEDGE AS A PUBLIC GOOD TO ITALIAN POSTWORKERISM

MARCO BOFFO
Thesis submitted for the degree of PhD in Economics
2013
Department of Economics
SOAS, University of London
https://eprints.soas.ac.uk/17843/1/Boffo_3544.pdf
Abstract
This thesis offers a critique of the reception of the Knowledge-Based Economy concept within both mainstream economics and contemporary Marxist debates. The first chapter analyses how this concept and attendant discussions have recently prompted mainstream economists to provide it with foundations within economic theory and advocate the development of an economics of knowledge. Given the fallacious understanding, within mainstream economics, of knowledge, the economy, and their interaction, the chapter demonstrates the flawed nature of the mainstream version of the Knowledge-Based Economy and the economics of knowledge as judged from the standpoint of any contribution holding different views on knowledge, the economy, and their interaction. The second chapter addresses the reinterpretation of the Knowledge-Based Economy as cognitive capitalism elaborated within Italian post-workerist autonomist Marxism. The latter theorises the preponderance of immaterial labour within contemporary capitalism, and has been recently recast in terms of Marxist economic analysis. Following the persistence of capitalism and the continuing relevance of Marxian analytical categories, the chapter demonstrates how the conceptualisation of contemporary capitalism as cognitive capitalism hinges on a misreading of Marxian value theory and its relation to the economy, and weakened links of the analysis with the politics of Marxism itself. The third chapter investigates issues related to the social ubiquity of networked computers, which is increasingly understood as driving new processes of class formation within capitalism and as instantiating new forms of exploitation considered, under the label of “prosumption”, as simultaneously more pervasive and less alienating. The chapter investigates these issues through the prism of recent work of Italian post-workerist Marxists critical of the cognitive capitalism debate. The chapter demonstrates the theoretical flaws
inherent in both understanding technology as a vector of class formation and the concept of
prosumption, while also deepening the critical understanding of Italian post-workerism
elaborated in the second chapter.

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Marxism and the Critique of Value
Edited by
Neil Larsen, Mathias Nilges, Josh Robinson, and Nicholas Brown


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Marxism and the Critique of Value aims to complete the critique of the value-form that was initiated by Marx. While Marx’s “esoteric” critique of value has been rediscovered from time to time by post-Marxists who know they’ve found something interesting but don’t quite know which end is the handle, Anglophone Marxism has tended to bury this esoteric critique beneath a more redistributionist understanding of Marx. The essays in this volume attempt to think the critique of value through to the end, and to draw out its implications for the current economic crisis; for violence, Islamism, gender relations, masculinity, and the concept of class; for revolutionary practice and agency; for the role of the state and the future of the commons; for the concepts that come down to us from Enlightenment thought: indeed, for the manifold phenomena that characterize contemporary society under a capitalism in crisis.


Materialism and the Critique of Energy
Edited by
Brent Ryan Bellamy and Jeff Diamanti



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Materialism and the Critique of Energy brings together twenty-one theorists working in a range of traditions to conceive of a twenty-first century materialism critical of the economic, political, cultural, and environmental impacts of large-scale energy development on collective life. The book reconceives of the inseparable histories of fossil fuels and capital in order to narrate the historical development of the fossil regime, interpret its cultural formations, and develop politics suited to both resist and revolutionize energy-hungry capitalism.

Examples of the new fields of critical research included in the book range from Marxist-feminism and an energy-critique analysis, test cases for a critique of “electroculture,” an analysis of the figurative use of energies in both political struggle and the work of machines, and the intersection of Indigenous labor and the history of extractivism. Materialism and the Critique of Energy lays the foundation for future study at the intersection of history, culture, new materialism, and energy humanities


Energy and Experience: An Essay in NafthologyBy Antti Salminen & Tere Vadén

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If there is reason to believe that material circumstances such as the ownership of the means of production, geography, or levels of technological development shape society, culture, and experience, then there is reason to believe that the continually increasing input of energy in the form of fossil fuels has had a similar, if not greater, impact on human history. Antti Salminen and Tere Vadén’s Energy and Experience: An Essay in Nafthology is the first book of philosophy to directly address the theoretical and conceptual configurations of our oil modernity. Without surplus energy — the non-renewable, non-human energy of coal, oil and gas — modernity would be completely other than it has come it be. Salminen and Vadén argue that modernity constitutes a historical state of exception — one that cannot be sustained. Energy and Experience unearths the blind spot that energy has occupied in the social thought of a modernity that has too long been self-deluded by its own intellectual capacities to render human beings independent from nature.
Advance praise for Energy and Experience:


“Energy and Experience sounds the oily depths of our present human condition. Working the rich reservoirs tapped by thinkers like Mitchell and Negarestani, Salminen and Vadén brilliantly explore how fossil fuels have intoxicated human imagination and warped human knowledge, how they have accelerated time and constituted illusions of distance and separateness not just in popular or political culture but in philosophy as well. Energy and Experience is a nafthological diagnostic manual, a fieldguide to the black sun; it is also a call for rebellion.”

—Dominic Boyer, Director, Center for Energy and Environmental Research in the Human Sciences (Rice University)


“Has God been replaced by oil? Salminen and Vadén argue, yes, in a rousing and provocative manifesto on energy criticism that rereads western oil culture through the philosophies of Marx, Heidegger, Junger, and Bataille. A witty and theoretically challenging book, Energy and Experience examines what it might mean for us to plumb the energetic depths of modern being and knowing while training our eyes on those parts of contemporary culture — those enduring resistances, frictions, and multiplicities — that can provide us with alternatives and focal points to move us beyond the totalizing effects of a culture of global capitalism that rises on and is quite literally fueled by petroleum.”

—Bob Johnson, Associate Professor of History (National University)


MediationsJournal.org

AMERICAN PENTECOSTAL COLONIALISM
God, not masks: Magufuli's Tanzania is an outlier on virus response

TRUMP'S AMERIKA IS MORE LIKE TANZANIA THAN IT IS SWEDEN

AFP•April 20, 2020

A crowded market in Dar es Salaam, pictured last week (AFP Photo)

Dar es Salaam (AFP) - Tanzanian President John Magufuli has called on citizens to turn to God and to keep the economy turning, but as coronavirus cases creep up, calls are rising for the country to take stronger action.

While countries across Africa have imposed curfews, partial and full lockdowns, Tanzania has resisted such measures. Schools and universities have been shut but markets, bus stops and shops bustle as usual.

Magufuli, who called for three days of prayer from last Friday to fight the virus, is one of a handful of world leaders still brushing off the seriousness of the disease.

"This is time to build our faith and continue praying to God and not depending on facemasks. Don't stop going to churches and mosques for prayers. I'm sure this is just a change of wind and it will go like others have gone," Magufuli said at a church in Dodoma last month.

He reiterated his message on Good Friday, last week, saying God would protect Tanzanians from the virus.

Tanzania recorded its first case of coronavirus on March 16 -- and in the past week numbers have leapt from 32 to 147, with five deaths.

African countries have lagged behind the global curve, and many took fast and strict measures to curb movement, however cases are rising across the continent.

"I am not happy about the lack of seriousness by the government, lack of transparency on the data of cases and deaths, and state of denial the president has on the pandemic," an opposition MP, Zitto Kabwe, who is also the leader of the ACT Wazalendo party, told AFP.

- 'Continue producing' -

Kabwe has proposed a partial lockdown of Dar es Salaam, Arusha, Mwanza and the capital Dodoma, and also a total lockdown of the tourist hotspot and semi-autonomous island, Zanzibar.

However, Magufuli has encouraged Tanzanians to continue working as usual, while encouraging them to avoid "unnecessary gatherings".

"Let us continue working hard to build our nation. Coronavirus is not and should not be a reason for us not working. Farmers should utilise the ongoing rains effectively, industrial owners should continue producing and I don't expect any development project to stop," he said.

"Coronavirus should not be a reason to destroy our economy at all."

The country's economy has already been hard hit as tourists who flock to see its wildlife and beaches, have stopped coming. Tourism is the country's top foreign-exchange earner.

On the streets of the commercial capital Dar es Salaam, citizens say they fear the virus and are doing what they can to avoid it while continuing to make ends meet.

"What I normally do is to ensure my passenger washes their hands before getting on the motorcycle. The challenge is that I have only one helmet for passengers, who share it," said Hemedi Masoud, a motorcycle taxi operator.

He and other so-called "boda-boda" drivers park their bikes in a crowded area thronged by petty traders and pedestrians.

"I really fear coronavirus disease and it is risky here but there is no way I can avoid coming. My family needs something to eat and this is where I earn my daily bread," said Masoud.

The government has banned buses from taking more passengers than the number of seats they contain, but this has only created bigger crowds during rush hour.

Like many poor people across the continent -- even in countries which are trying to impose lockdowns -- staying at home would be a grim option for many Tanzanians.

"I don't pray for lockdown in Tanzania because we may escape coronavirus and die from hunger at home. Life has to go on and God will protect us," said Anna John, a food vendor in the city.

Miriam John, who sells shoes, said some of her customers did not want to wash their hands but she has "no option because I need their money."

But opposition leaders say the country needs to take more action to avoid potential disaster.

"No lockdown because he (Magufuli) wants to save the economy and his flagship infrastructure projects. The lives of our people cannot be repaired but the economy can! Lockdown or get locked out!" the chairman of the opposition party Chadema, Freeman Mbowe, posted on Twitter on Saturday.

Some experts have questioned the approach of lockdowns in Africa, where millions of urban poor live hand to mouth, but instead call for solutions such as mass testing or government support to the vulnerable.

Neighbouring Burundi has also allowed life to proceed as normal. Both countries have presidential elections this year, Burundi in May and Tanzania in October.

SEE 
http://plawiuk.blogspot.com/2019/12/evangelical-gangs-in-rio-de-janeiro.html

WHO director says politicians who have 'had an easy ride in life' don't understand the gravity of the coronavirus pandemic

Hilary Brueck,Business Insider•April 20, 2020
 

People hold placards supporting then-candidate for the post of Director General of World Health

 Organization, Tedros Adhanom  Ghebreyesus, during a rally in front of the United Nations offices on May 23, 2017, in Geneva. Fabrice Coffrini/AFP via Getty Images

The director-general of the World Health Organization, audibly near tears, pleaded with world leaders not to use the virus as a political tool to drive a wedge down party lines.


"Whoever has whatever ideology, whether that person is from left or right or center, they should work together to fight this virus, to save these real people," WHO Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said.


Tedros said maybe it's the case that some politicians "don't understand" the deadly implications of their actions: "Maybe they're lucky. They may not understand it. Maybe they had an easy ride in life, so they don't understand what this means."


Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

Well over 165,000 people around the world have died from the novel coronavirus.

But on Monday, World Health Organization Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus urged political leaders around the globe not to forget that each of those numbers stands for a person's life, that they were, "the mother of somebody, the father of somebody, the daughter of somebody, and the son of somebody," before they died of COVID-19, the illness caused by the novel coronavirus.

He suggested any leaders who are dismissing the pandemic must have had "an easy ride in life, so they don't understand what this means."

An emotional Tedros, audibly near tears at moments, once again pleaded with world leaders not to use the virus as a political tool to drive a wedge down party lines.

"Whoever has whatever ideology, whether that person is from left or right or center, they should work together to fight this virus, to save these real people," Tedros told reporters, during a virtual press conference streamed from Geneva.

"Please work together. Don't use this virus as an opportunity to fight against each other or score political points. It's dangerous. It's like playing with fire."

Tedros, who is originally from Eritrea, a country which was at war for 20 years until 2018, looked back on his own experiences dealing with needless death and suffering during the conference.

"When I think about the losses of lives, it reminds me of my own experience," he said. "These are real people dying and I'm just warning people who may think that these are numbers. They're not numbers. These are people."

Director-General of the WHO, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, has his temperature taken as he arrives at Ruhenda airport in Butembo, to visit operations aimed at preventing the spread of Ebola and treating its victims, in eastern Congo, Saturday, June 15, 2019.AP Photo/Al-hadji Kudra Maliro

This isn't the first time the director-general has gotten, by his own telling, "emotional" during a WHO press conference.

Earlier this month, Tedros mentioned he's received death threats while dealing with the COVID-19 pandemic response because he is black, and said "I don't give a damn."

Tedros did not mention Trump by name on Monday, but instead suggested that "cracks between people, between parties, is fueling" COVID-19.

"Without national unity and global solidarity, trust us, the worst is yet ahead of us," he said.

Tedros' comments came just a day after Trump applauded US protesters who formed crowds over the weekend, in fierce opposition to their own state lockdown orders, which are aimed at stopping coronavirus transmission by keeping people far apart.

"I watched a protest and they were all six feet apart. I mean, it was a very orderly group of people," Trump said at the White House on Sunday. "Some governors have gone too far. Some of the things that happened are maybe not so appropriate."

Governors, both Republican and Democratic, vehemently disagreed with the President's statements Sunday, which are not backed by sound public health advice about how to control COVID-19, nor are they consistent with the White House's own advice about how to best control the outbreak, by avoiding social gatherings during this time.

Tedros, who trained as an immunologist before moving on to serve in politics, as an Ethiopian minister of public health and foreign affairs, became the first person from Africa to lead the WHO in 2017.

"I know the tragedy that comes from disease, from pandemics, from war, from hate, equally from poverty," Tedros said. "To keep quiet and not say what I see is wrong."

In a thinly veiled dig at world leaders who are using the crisis to score some political points, like Trump, Tedros said maybe it's the case that politicians simply "don't understand" the implications of their actions.

"I know war. I know poverty. I know how people really are influenced by all this," he said. "Maybe for people who don't know this, maybe they're lucky. They may not understand it. Maybe they had an easy ride in life, so they don't understand what this means."

As Latinos lose jobs, remittances to their relatives in Latin America dry up

TRANSMISSION BELTS*** OF (MOBILE) CAPITAL IN THE AGE OF IMPERIALISM

VITAL TO THIRD WORLD COUNTRIES AND DEVELOPMENT NOW EASILY

SHARED VIA MOBILE PHONE PAYMENTS

Carmen Sesin, NBC News•April 20, 2020


MIAMI — Herminio Rodriguez could not send money to his family in Guatemala this month, after the Miami Beach restaurant where he was working closed several weeks ago.

Now Rodriguez, 41, worries about his parents and his son back home, who depend on the monthly remittance he sends to buy food and medicine.

“I couldn’t even pay rent this month,” Rodriguez said, “and we need to keep a little bit of reserves so we can eat.”

“The economic part is affecting us both here and there,” he said.

As Latinos throughout the U.S. grapple with job losses and lockdowns, many are no longer able to provide for relatives back home. The sudden end in remittances sent to Latin America each year is affecting the well being of families and crippling the economies of developing countries.

Many of those who send remittances often work in the service industry and have been let go or furloughed from their jobs in hotels, restaurants or cleaning companies, without pay. Those who are undocumented cannot apply for unemployment.

According to the World Bank, global remittances reached a record high in 2018, the last year for which figures are available. The flow of money to Latin America and the Caribbean grew by 10 percent to $88 billion in 2018, mostly due to the strong U.S. economy, where most of the money originates.

In many countries, remittances account for a significant portion of their gross domestic product. In Nicaragua and Guatemala they account for around 12 percent, and in El Salvador and Honduras, around 20 percent.

Mexico receives the most remittances in the region, with about $36 billion in 2018, up 11 percent from the previous year.
'How are we going to do this?'

Mexico's president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, asked Mexicans in the United States not to stop supporting their relatives back home. He said February set a record in remittances to Mexico.

“Tell your countrymen to not stop sending help to their families in Mexico, who are also going through a difficult situation,” he said at a recent news conference.

In Miami, Edmundo Tarín, who emigrated from Mexico, heard about López Obrador’s statements and said: “How are we going to do this? I can’t even pay my rent.”

Tarín has always sent money to his brother, who depends on the monthly stipend to pay rent and buy food in Mexico City, where he lives.

Image: Guatemala (Moises Castillo / AP)

“This situation has limited us. We’re doing bad, very badly,” Tarín said, who was laid off from his job as a cook in a restaurant.

Manuel Orozco, an economist with the Inter-American Dialogue, said the drop in remittances is not only from the U.S., but from other Latin American countries as well.

"The distinction is important because in the past four to five years, we have seen significant growth in Latin American migration to other Latin American countries," he said.
'I am everything to my parents, and it's my responsibility'

The Caribbean and Latin American countries that have seen the most emigration are Haiti, Cuba, Venezuela, Nicaragua, Bolivia, El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras.

The dependence on remittances is highest in these countries, which have more fragile economies.

Orozco said there could be a speedier economic recovery than from the 2008 financial crisis and that by June 2021, U.S. immigrant workers may remit similar amounts to February's total.

But for now, Lesbia Granados, 35, is worried after not being able to send money to her parents in Honduras last month.

They depend on her to pay for electricity, food, medicine and doctors’ visits. But the Miami Beach hotel where she worked is closed.

“I am everything to my parents, and it’s my responsibility to take care of them, after they did so much for me," she said.

Granados said she's hoping her coronavirus stimulus check arrives soon.

“Until then, I’m trying to survive with the little I have saved,” she said.

***TRONTI NEGRI WORKERISM TRANSMISSION BELTS OF CAPITALISM

Amazon reportedly tried to shut down a virtual event for workers to speak out about the company's coronavirus response by deleting employees' calendar invites

Tyler Sonnemaker Business Insider•April 20, 2020




Amazon attempted to shut down a virtual event where workers spoke out about warehouse conditions by deleting employees' calendar invites to the event, according to The Seattle Times.


Two organizers of the event, which took place Thursday, were fired by Amazon last week after publicly criticizing the company's coronavirus response.


Amazon has now fired five workers since the pandemic began who were involved in protests or criticized the company's treatment of workers.


A spokesperson told Business Insider that Amazon supports employees' right to criticize working conditions, "but that does not come with blanket immunity against any and all internal policies."
Amazon attempted to shut down a virtual event where workers spoke out about working conditions at the company's warehouses by deleting employees' calendar invites, organizers told The Seattle Times.

Emily Cunningham and Maren Costa, two of the event's organizers who were fired by Amazon last week after publicly criticizing its coronavirus response, told The Seattle Times that the company deleted the invites from its internal calendar, though several hundred employees had already seen and accepted it.

"Amazon has shown they will not allow us to share details for how to join the meeting internally, so we are forced to gather externally," Amazon Employees for Climate Justice, the group behind the event, wrote in a Google form announcing the event.



"We want to tell Amazon that we are sick of all this – sick of the firings, sick of the silencing, sick of pollution, sick of racism, and sick of the climate crisis," Costa said Thursday during the event, which was attended by around 400 Amazon employees, according to Computer Weekly.

Amazon refused to comment on claims by Cunningham and Costa that it deleted calendar invites, but said in a statement to Business Insider: "We support every employee's right to criticize their employer's working conditions, but that does not come with blanket immunity against any and all internal policies. We terminated these employees for repeatedly violating internal policies."

The company has come under fire in recent weeks from workers who say Amazon hasn't done enough to protect them from COVID-19, with people testing positive for the disease in at least 74 of the company's facilities.

An Amazon spokesperson told Business Insider it has implemented a variety of safety measures, such as additional cleaning, social distancing measures, and temperature checks. The company also announced earlier in April that it's building its own lab to begin testing a small number of employees for the coronavirus.

However, workers have said those don't go far enough, citing everything from conditions that make social distancing impossible to the company's limited paid sick leave policies, and have organized strikes in New York, Chicago, and Italy in addition to Thursday's virtual event, where employees called for a "sick out" on April 24.

Amazon has also faced scrutiny from lawmakers over its response to its workers speaking out. In at least four cases since the pandemic began, the company fired workers almost immediately after their involvement in organizing protests. A fifth told The New York Times he was terminated after giving the company notice that he would be resigning because he objected to the company's treatment of warehouse workers.

After Amazon fired warehouse worker Christian Smalls the same day he organized a walkout, New York City's human-rights commissioner opened an investigation into the termination. Later that week, a leaked memo obtained by Vice showed Amazon executives discussing efforts to mount a PR campaign against Smalls, calling him "not smart or articulate." Following news of the memo, Amazon told employees it may fire those who "intentionally violate" social distancing rules at work.

Amazon has been trying to balance the safety of its workers with increased demand for its services as coronavirus lockdowns worldwide fuel a surge in online shopping. The company said last week it will add 75,000 more jobs on top of the 100,000 roles it added last month, which it said are now filled.

NAVAJO NATION
She's a doctor on the front lines of the coronavirus. At home, she has no running water.

Chiara Sottile and Erik Ortiz,NBC News•April 19, 2020

Every third day, someone from Dr. Michelle Tom's family navigates their pickup truck 14 miles over the pothole-pocked dirt roads of the Navajo Nation to a community center. There, for about $95 a week, her family fills their water tank and hauls it back home to the double-wide trailer she shares with seven relatives in northeastern Arizona.

Or at least that's how Tom was getting water before she had to cut off physical contact with her family because of the coronavirus pandemic that has raged across tribal communities. For now, she is living with a co-worker to maintain her distance and prevent spread.

Full coverage of the coronavirus outbreak

"I haven't hugged anyone in weeks," said Tom, who spends her days treating COVID-19 patients at the Winslow Indian Health Care Center urgent care facility in Winslow, Arizona, as well as on the Navajo reservation.
 

IMAGE: Dr. Michelle Tom (Courtesy Dr. Michelle Tom)

Tom is one of the few doctors in her Navajo community on the front lines of the pandemic, and she has taken every precaution to try to stay healthy, including buying her own protective suit, goggles and face shield. But long before the virus started threatening her people, she was already facing a different sort of crisis: limited access to running water, a severely understaffed and underfunded health care system and underlying health conditions among her patients.

Now, a month after the tribe's first confirmed case of the coronavirus, the Navajo Nation, which stretches across parts of Arizona, New Mexico and Utah, has reached a grim milestone. At least 1,197 Navajo residents have tested positive for the coronavirus, while 44 have died, officials said.

With a steady increase in cases, people on the Navajo Nation are testing positive for the coronavirus at a rate more than nine times higher than people in the entire state of Arizona, based on reported cases and 2010 census data.

The coronavirus is exposing underlying fractures in the infrastructure of Indian Country, including health care and basic needs, like water, that have long been underfunded and, some say, ignored by the federal government.

For more on the Navajo Nation, watch "TODAY" on Monday morning.

"You're saying 20 seconds of wash your hands with water," Tom said recently. "We have to haul our water. ... We do not have plumbing. And that's how I grew up."

An estimated 30 percent of homes on the Navajo reservation, which has roughly 175,000 residents, don't have access to clean, reliable drinking water and have to haul it from local utilities, according to the Navajo Nation Department of Water Resources.

"There are times when it is closed for three days," Tom said.

When that happens, her family has to make another trip on another day. That is no small task, as the Navajo Nation is under curfew orders to curb the spread of the coronavirus.

"I feel fortunate that my family can do that," Tom said. "There are some families who don't have a water truck."

IMAGE: Public tap in Thoreau, N.M. (Spencer Platt / Getty Images)

Tom, who practices family medicine, says that even without the strain of the pandemic, she doesn't have the resources she needs to provide adequate medical care and has access to only two ventilators.

"We cater to 17,000 Navajo, and people come from Apache, Hopi, as far as three hours away," Tom said. "Our resources are limited. Rural medicine is hard enough. We've always been short-staffed in general."

As stipulated in treaties with Indian tribes, the U.S. government has an obligation to provide health care to all Native Americans.

"Because of the land that the tribes ceded to the United States, the United States has a trust responsibility to Indian tribes, and health care is one of those," said Rep. Deb Haaland, D-N.M., who fought to include Native American tribes in the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act, a $2 trillion stimulus package passed in March.

The legislation provides $8 billion for Native American and Alaska Native tribes, although the National Congress of American Indians, a public education and advocacy group, estimated that tribes would need $20 billion. Initially, Haaland said, the White House allocated no direct relief for tribes.

Despite the United States' obligation, a 2018 report by the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights found that health care spending per person by the Indian Health Service was $3,332 — only a little over one-third of federal health care spending per person nationwide.

"The scarcity of the things that a lot of people take for granted, like water and electricity, is a true struggle for many, many people here," said Dr. Jarred McAteer, who practices internal medicine at Tuba City Regional Health Care Corporation in Arizona.

McAteer said his hospital has been running at capacity for weeks and has had to repurpose parts of the facility to care for coronavirus patients, many from the Navajo Nation.

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"It's really hard to follow [the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's] recommendations of washing your hands if access to water is a challenge and that water is supposed to be used for drinking, for cooking, for livestock," McAteer said, noting that many Navajo families would typically have to reuse water in a wash basin at home.

Tom and McAteer agree that the lack of infrastructure — from water to electricity to paved roads — coupled with high incidences of underlying health conditions are partly why Indian Country is being hit so hard by the coronavirus.

Moreover, Native Americans require treatment for alcohol and drug use at a rate almost twice the national average, according to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. Last week, after a request from the Navajo Nation government, New Mexico Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham suspended alcohol sales at gas stations, convenience stores and grocery stores near the reservation to reduce the spread of the coronavirus. (Even before the pandemic, alcohol sales were banned on the Navajo Nation itself.)

Navajo officials have been inundated with calls and emails from concerned family members who say their loved ones who battle alcoholism have been drinking during the pandemic, sharing bottles and not practicing social distancing, Navajo Nation Vice President Myron Lizer said in a statement.



It's a struggle Navajo tribe member Allie Young, 30, knows all too well.

After her younger brother died by suicide 11 years ago, her older brother started drinking and now suffers from alcoholism, she said.

"We're constantly on the phone with my brother and uncles who struggle with alcoholism and about why they have to stay away," said Young, standing beside her grandfather's horse pasture. "They have to think about the elders."

Young, who had left the Southwest for Los Angeles to work in the film and entertainment industry, returned home to her family when the coronavirus outbreak worsened. She started a Facebook group called "Protect the Sacred," hosting livestreams and leveraging her network of celebrities, such as actors Paul Rudd and Mark Ruffalo, to share recommendations for staying safe at home and away from tribal elders.

"They carry a lot of the knowledge and ceremonies that we, the young people, are still learning," Young said with her hand on her heart, adding, "Our cultures are in jeopardy right now if we lose our elders."

A big shout out to these amazing Navajo Youth, putting a great spin to the #DontRushChallenge 💚 https://t.co/AdgDWPTMzr
— Mark Ruffalo (@MarkRuffalo) April 7, 2020

Growing up, Young spent her summers at her grandparents' home on the reservation in Arizona, where there was no running water or electricity.

Like many Navajo families, many of Young's relatives live together in a multigenerational home, which makes elders even more vulnerable during the pandemic as people are told to shelter in place and practice social distancing.

"When you have family members struggling with alcoholism and then they come home to a packed household, and then you go to a health facility that doesn't have enough resources, [personal protective equipment] or ventilators to help," Young said, "it's just a recipe for disaster."

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