truthout--2020-11-16--Grad Workers’ Strike Shows Labor Why It Must Become Abolitionist

To many of its organizers , the recent strike by the University of Michigan ’ s Graduate Employees ’ Organization ( GEO ) was a defeat .
The strike , which began on September 8 , had included demands for more transparent COVID-19 testing protocols , the right to teach remotely , and the disarming and partial defunding of campus police .
Yet the university ’ s decision to seek a court injunction led graduate workers to call it off before these demands had been met .
To be sure , GEO had won some gains — increased child care @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a new task force intended to evaluate campus policing .
But the threat of legal retaliation against individuals and the union alike was sufficient to conclude the industrial action .
By a margin of 1,074 to 239 , and with 66 abstentions , GEO voted on September 16 to accept the administration ’ s rather mild set of concessions .
Yet the defeat contains an element of victory for the broader graduate labor movement .
In taking industrial action to demilitarize and defund policing , the GEO strike articulated an abolitionist vision that @ @ @ @ @ @ @ countless struggles to come .
This “ abolitionist strike ” tethered the demand for safe working conditions to that of justice and protection for all community members , especially those Black students and workers who are disproportionately made unsafe by policing .
In demanding that the university cut ties with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Ann Arbor Police Department , and that campus police be disarmed and defunded , GEO showed how the most effective weapon of the labor movement can be simultaneously applied to the fight for racial justice .
GEO @ @ @ @ @ @ @ recent uprising against racist state violence following the police-perpetrated murders of George Floyd , Breonna Taylor , Tony McDade , and too many others .
But it also builds on recent struggles against racist police violence in Ann Arbor , most notably the grassroots campaign for accountability and oversight after the murder of Aura Rosser by Ann Arbor police in 2014 .
Though the long-term goals of the campaign were not achieved , Austin McCoy has drawn attention to its more immediate goals , such as “ perform [ ing ] the intellectual @ @ @ @ @ @ @ or as the late Marxist sociologist Erik Olin Wright called [ it ] , envisioning real utopias and communicating to the public that these alternatives were worth fighting for.
” Without this earlier intellectual and political labor , led primarily by Black women organizers , it is doubtful that the GEO strike would have found the broad community support that was crucial to its strength .
Another precedent was the 2013 Being Black at the University of Michigan ( # BBUM ) campaign , led by the university ’ s Black Student Union @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the racism experienced by Black students from campus and local police .
Ann Arbor ’ s legacy of anti-racist organizing fits into a broader , national history of Black-led neighborhood and campus groups fighting for accountability and , often , to remove police and prisons from their communities entirely .
Recently however , graduate worker unions have entered the abolitionist fray , and have contributed to a new movement of anti-racist graduate worker unionism .
Workers ’ groups at the University of California , Santa Cruz ( UC Santa Cruz ) ; University @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Northwestern University ; University of Chicago ; and the City University of New York , among others , have all recently campaigned and even taken industrial action against policing , often in coalition with Black-led undergraduate and/or local community groups .
GEO pushed this movement another step forward by launching an indefinite strike and thereby introducing a new level of labor militancy in the abolitionist fight .
More than this , GEO showed how the fight for racial justice is itself a labor fight .
Two days into the strike , the university @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ s demands for COVID safety .
Yet the deal refused to budge on GEO ’ s policing demands , and the union voted overwhelmingly to reject it .
In doing so , they made clear that the call for police abolition was not auxiliary to their demand for workplace safety during the pandemic .
Instead , they maintained that the true safety of all graduate workers would only be achieved with the abolition of police on campus .
Indeed , as GEO has shown , abolition is not merely a “ solidarity @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Police abolition is not a program that seeks primarily to benefit individuals or groups outside of a given bargaining unit .
Such a framework typically assumes that graduate workers are all white , privileged and unaffected by the problem of policing , and that racial justice is secondary to economic justice .
While graduate programs are undoubtedly still too white and elite , the fact remains that Black , Brown and Indigenous workers are routinely subjected to the university ’ s regular violence and exclusions , so abolition is a necessary step in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ As the Black feminist Combahee River Collective has argued , not one of us is free until the most marginalized among us is , for this itself would “ necessitate the destruction of all systems of oppression ” ( emphasis added ) .
Failure to fight the threat police pose to racially marginalized workers , then , only reinforces these harmful systems on their own “ shop floor.
” The minimal support that universities provide for these workers , in combination with their maximal racialized policing , surveillance and intimidation , is thus @ @ @ @ @ @ @ graduate worker unions should make central to their organizing efforts .
In addition to inextricably linking abolition to struggles for worker protections , the strike also offered a more expansive vision of what graduate worker organizing can and should fight for .
It showed that the future of graduate worker organizing must be abolitionist not only because the protection of Black and historically marginalized workers is central to a union ’ s task of securing the interests of all its members .
It must also be abolitionist because ending police violence serves the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ fight for the union can not be dissociated from the fight for the safety of the broader community , on campus and in the neighborhoods and cities where universities are located .
GEO ’ s abolitionist strike is historic because it expanded the purview of graduate worker struggles as such and demonstrated that the fight for the safety and economic interests of a bargaining unit can only be pursued through a broader fight against racial capitalism — a capitalism that structurally relies on race and racism to operate .
That the University of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Ann Arbor police chief responsible for defending the officer who murdered Aura Rosser as the head of the university ’ s housing security director further demonstrates the need for graduate worker movements to operate through a community-based lens , and to stay vigilant in disrupting collaboration between universities and municipalities in criminalizing Black community members broadly .
Along with rooting these shifts in local anti-racist struggles across the nation , the crystallization of an abolitionist direction in graduate worker unions should be contextualized within the broader history of the U.S. labor movement .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ University of Michigan ’ s History Department called attention to the strike ’ s parallels in this history and to earlier instances in which unions “ have dared speak on behalf of a broader public , to claim rightfully that their members ’ immediate needs match a public interest in social betterment.
” In addition , we might consider the example of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union , which has fought for anti-racism from its founding in 1937 , and which recently organized a port shutdown in solidarity with the summer ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ GEO ’ s anti-racist organizing within a long tradition of Black communist and trade union organizing which frequently led mass campaigns against lynching and police brutality in the earlier half of the 20th century .
Yet , on the whole , U.S. labor unions have a much poorer history on race .
At best , they have often marginalized or offered only perfunctory support of racial justice ; at worst , they have actively fomented white supremacist shops .
For example , in the 1940s , despite their union ’ s nominal support @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Workers ( UAW ) members frequently went on strike when Black workers won promotions .
Because of the increasing number of Black workers in UAW plants and resentment against their families settling in white working-class neighborhoods , white Detroiters violently attacked Black Detroiters during the Detroit race riot of 1943 .
Making matters worse , as the post-war Cold War consensus hardened , many unions purged their most militant , anti-racist trade union organizers for fear of being branded anti-communist , effectively stunting radical campaigns for racial justice in the workplace .
The @ @ @ @ @ @ @ further compounded the problem .
Even before — but especially after the passage of the anti-labor Taft-Hartley Act — once radical , rank-and-file-driven unions increasingly began to operate through a professionalized collective bargaining process that yields only incremental benefits for a narrow bargaining unit , suppresses militancy , hinders solidarity and refuses to fight for racial justice .
Abolitionist graduate worker unions like GEO , then , are not only relevant to campus politics .
Instead , they help chart a path towards a multiracial , anti-racist labor movement as such .
Their @ @ @ @ @ @ @ “ Bargaining for the Common Good ” approach in which contract demands are determined in coordination with coalitional groups and seek to “ transcend the traditional bargaining frameworks that are written into law.
” This strategy engages all community members in fights to improve collective working and living conditions .
It ’ s typically only by securing community support and broad participation across multiple sectors that a fight can win .
Such engagement thus proves essential for the achievement of demands .
The pioneering success of the 2012 Chicago Teacher Union ( CTU @ @ @ @ @ @ @ strategy : by coordinating with local groups , such as Stand Up !
Chicago , the Grassroots Collaborative , and Parents 4 Teachers , CTU was able to win a major contract fight , bucking the prevailing pattern of concessionary agreements across the country .
What GEO ’ s strike adds is the demand for abolition , and the vision of a unionism responsive to immediate needs of community members , that is able to launch emergency industrial actions untethered from slower contract cycles .
Recent graduate strikes have succeeded in broadening participation @ @ @ @ @ @ @ GEO ’ s strike , for example , was joined by resident advisors on campus , and received further momentum from a solidarity slowdown organized by dining workers .
One lesson to be drawn from the strike is that making abolition central to an action does not alienate allies in the way detractors often fear .
Although the potential for abolitionist demands to sustain coalitions should not be the litmus test for its inclusion in the labor movement , the GEO strike demonstrates that abolition can and must become the norm for worker @ @ @ @ @ @ @ is that even this wide-ranging support wasn ’ t sufficient .
To maintain an indefinite strike against an employer with massive financial and legal resources requires even deeper coalitions and solidarities .
Given the default power asymmetries between unions and employers , and given that workers today face a hostile legal environment , the idea that a strike could win without deep coalitional work seems increasingly far-fetched .
Today , this coalitional work must foreground the fight for racial justice .
As Adom Getachew writes regarding a similar approach among Yale ’ s @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and seeking racial justice at the university could not be separated.
” In tight coalition with a wide range of organized groups and constituencies fighting policing , exploitation and racial injustice on campus , abolitionist graduate worker unions can wield their collective resources ( more precisely , their ability to bargain with and withhold labor from the university ) to further build union power , and to simultaneously issue anti-racist demands that refuse to allow any worker or community member to be subject to racialized state violence .
Yet more political education around @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , multi-decade and Black-led movement for prison-industrial complex abolition — should also be occurring within worker unions and in the labor movement .
In addition to building with groups on their own campuses and in surrounding communities , graduate worker unions ( and unions generally ) could deepen their relationships to , mutual aid for , and solidarity with , imprisoned people — an approach that GEO also modeled by supporting the 2018 prisoner strike .
Another example is given in Strike University , which wildcat strikers at UC Santa Cruz developed as @ @ @ @ @ @ @ organizing trainings , roundtables and events , and which includes a program dedicated to abolition .
Graduate worker unions should embrace abolition for still another reason : as graduate workers escalate their struggles , universities respond with an ever-growing use of campus and/or local police to suppress militant actions .
This was seen last February , when university police arrested and physically attacked picketing graduate workers , in an attempt to break the UC Santa Cruz wildcat strike for a cost of living adjustment .
Using the COVID-19 pandemic as a justification to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ increasingly rely on law enforcement to protect their bottom line from fights against furloughs , layoffs , pay cuts , and other rollbacks .
Universities also often supplement the direct use of law enforcement by deploying community members to take on the role of community policing and surveillance themselves .
One example was the University of Michigan ’ s “ Ambassadors ” program in which students , faculty and staff accompanied by university police patrolled campus to enforce social distancing .
While the strike led to the termination of the program , the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ place crystallized a dominant strategy among university administrators to deflect responsibility for COVID spikes on campuses by not only penalizing students , but by normalizing this surveillance through the use of ostensibly more “ friendly ” community faces .
This strategy allows the university to cynically undercut opposition and accountability for their punitive methods by securing the participation of community members in their own policing .
Thus , as Nick Mitchell has argued , “ universities use cops not only to limit strikes , but to turn diff [ erent ] segments of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ present their own actions — such as surveillance , union-busting and the maintenance of racialized hierarchies — as instead “ efforts to protect the value of students ’ investments.
” Mitchell thus calls attention to a university-specific version of longstanding functions of racialized policing to divide and preempt the possibility of solidarity across racial and social groups .
This history is actualized on campuses today in the punitive measures which are disproportionately taken against the students of color engaged in university struggles .
By rejecting the divisions imposed by policing , graduate workers @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a broad and militantly anti-racist labor movement .
To be sure , graduate workers are not typically considered an integral part of the labor movement , or of a future abolitionist labor movement .
Nonetheless , our conditions mirror those of many other workers across the country : Many of us are poorly remunerated and overworked , indebted , precariously housed , and with minimal chance of ever achieving secure employment .
By providing essential teaching and research , we make universities run and thereby provide the basis for boards of trustees ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the million-dollar salaries of administrators .
Graduate workers are repeatedly instrumentalized by employers to balance budgets through overwork and adjunctivization .
While graduate school was once a fairly good bet for later employment , it now promises nothing of the sort .
On university campuses , as in the economy as a whole , workers are on the defensive .
For Black , Brown and Indigenous graduate workers , such conditions are compounded by systemic racism and endless barriers to entry and advancement in a largely white-supremacist academic guild .
Indeed , universities @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of racial capitalism .
They are premised on the daily reproduction in close quarters of a racialized hierarchy of social groups , with disproportionately white administrators and senior tenured professors at the top and Black and Brown service workers at the bottom .
Poor and racially marginalized graduate workers and undergraduates — along with queer and trans students , immigrants , students with disabilities , student parents , and still others — experience wildly different access to resources and possibilities of advancement .
As employers , universities have aggressively privatized and outsourced services @ @ @ @ @ @ @ developers , they have overseen massive gentrification and racialized displacement in surrounding communities , often in partnership with campus or local police , while receiving substantive tax breaks as allegedly nonprofit organizations .
As investors , universities level huge investments in the prison- and military-industrial complex , in imperialism and fossil capital .
As anti-Black , settler-colonial entities that place property and profits over people , they sustain handsome budgets for campus and local police departments while citing revenue shortfalls to justify the defunding of the humanities and social sciences ( especially African @ @ @ @ @ @ @ student groups and mental health services .
The fight against these conditions is nothing less than the fight against racial capitalism in the country at large .
And given the central role of police in upholding racial capitalism , this fight must be an abolitionist one .
Recent anti-racist labor struggles have shed crucial light on this inextricable link between economic and racial justice .
The most recent , and most radical example of such struggles is GEO ’ s abolitionist strike .
While the strike itself was defeated in Ann Arbor , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ be underestimated .
For it developed a new , militant form of abolitionist unionism , which shows the labor movement where we have to go , and which provides a roadmap for countless struggles to come .

Part of the Series The Road to Abolition
To many of its organizers, the recent strike by the University of Michigan’s Graduate Employees’ Organization (GEO) was a defeat. The strike, which began on September 8, had included demands for more transparent COVID-19 testing protocols, the right to teach remotely, and the disarming and partial defunding of campus police. Yet the university’s decision to seek a court injunction led graduate workers to call it off before these demands had been met. To be sure, GEO had won some gains — increased child care funding, greater COVID testing transparency and a new task force intended to evaluate campus policing. But the threat of legal retaliation against individuals and the union alike was sufficient to conclude the industrial action. By a margin of 1,074 to 239, and with 66 abstentions, GEO voted on September 16 to accept the administration’s rather mild set of concessions.
Yet the defeat contains an element of victory for the broader graduate labor movement. In taking industrial action to demilitarize and defund policing, the GEO strike articulated an abolitionist vision that will inspire and provide the model for countless struggles to come. This “abolitionist strike” tethered the demand for safe working conditions to that of justice and protection for all community members, especially those Black students and workers who are disproportionately made unsafe by policing. In demanding that the university cut ties with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Ann Arbor Police Department, and that campus police be disarmed and defunded, GEO showed how the most effective weapon of the labor movement can be simultaneously applied to the fight for racial justice.
GEO’s abolitionist strike responds to the recent uprising against racist state violence following the police-perpetrated murders of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Tony McDade, and too many others. But it also builds on recent struggles against racist police violence in Ann Arbor, most notably the grassroots campaign for accountability and oversight after the murder of Aura Rosser by Ann Arbor police in 2014. Though the long-term goals of the campaign were not achieved, Austin McCoy has drawn attention to its more immediate goals, such as “perform[ing] the intellectual and political labor of expanding possibilities, or as the late Marxist sociologist Erik Olin Wright called [it], ‘ envisioning real utopias ,’ and communicating to the public that these alternatives were worth fighting for.” Without this earlier intellectual and political labor, led primarily by Black women organizers, it is doubtful that the GEO strike would have found the broad community support that was crucial to its strength. Another precedent was the 2013 Being Black at the University of Michigan (#BBUM) campaign, led by the university’s Black Student Union, which generated greater public awareness of the racism experienced by Black students from campus and local police.
Ann Arbor’s legacy of anti-racist organizing fits into a broader, national history of Black-led neighborhood and campus groups fighting for accountability and, often, to remove police and prisons from their communities entirely. Recently however, graduate worker unions have entered the abolitionist fray, and have contributed to a new movement of anti-racist graduate worker unionism. Workers’ groups at the University of California, Santa Cruz (UC Santa Cruz); University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill; Northwestern University; University of Chicago; and the City University of New York, among others, have all recently campaigned and even taken industrial action against policing, often in coalition with Black-led undergraduate and/or local community groups. GEO pushed this movement another step forward by launching an indefinite strike and thereby introducing a new level of labor militancy in the abolitionist fight.
More than this, GEO showed how the fight for racial justice is itself a labor fight. Two days into the strike, the university proposed a deal that partially met GEO’s demands for COVID safety. Yet the deal refused to budge on GEO’s policing demands, and the union voted overwhelmingly to reject it. In doing so, they made clear that the call for police abolition was not auxiliary to their demand for workplace safety during the pandemic. Instead, they maintained that the true safety of all graduate workers would only be achieved with the abolition of police on campus.
Indeed, as GEO has shown, abolition is not merely a “solidarity” issue for graduate worker unions. Police abolition is not a program that seeks primarily to benefit individuals or groups outside of a given bargaining unit. Such a framework typically assumes that graduate workers are all white, privileged and unaffected by the problem of policing, and that racial justice is secondary to economic justice. While graduate programs are undoubtedly still too white and elite, the fact remains that Black, Brown and Indigenous workers are routinely subjected to the university’s regular violence and exclusions, so abolition is a necessary step in protecting these workers at their workplaces. As the Black feminist Combahee River Collective has argued, not one of us is free until the most marginalized among us is, for this itself would “necessitate the destruction of all systems of oppression” (emphasis added). Failure to fight the threat police pose to racially marginalized workers, then, only reinforces these harmful systems on their own “shop floor.” The minimal support that universities provide for these workers, in combination with their maximal racialized policing, surveillance and intimidation, is thus a workplace issue, and one that graduate worker unions should make central to their organizing efforts.
[University of Michigan’s Graduate Employees’ Organization] showed how the fight for racial justice is itself a labor fight.
In addition to inextricably linking abolition to struggles for worker protections, the strike also offered a more expansive vision of what graduate worker organizing can and should fight for. It showed that the future of graduate worker organizing must be abolitionist not only because the protection of Black and historically marginalized workers is central to a union’s task of securing the interests of all its members. It must also be abolitionist because ending police violence serves the union and community members alike. The fight for the union cannot be dissociated from the fight for the safety of the broader community, on campus and in the neighborhoods and cities where universities are located. GEO’s abolitionist strike is historic because it expanded the purview of graduate worker struggles as such and demonstrated that the fight for the safety and economic interests of a bargaining unit can only be pursued through a broader fight against racial capitalism — a capitalism that structurally relies on race and racism to operate. That the University of Michigan went on to hire the former Ann Arbor police chief responsible for defending the officer who murdered Aura Rosser as the head of the university’s housing security director further demonstrates the need for graduate worker movements to operate through a community-based lens, and to stay vigilant in disrupting collaboration between universities and municipalities in criminalizing Black community members broadly.
Along with rooting these shifts in local anti-racist struggles across the nation, the crystallization of an abolitionist direction in graduate worker unions should be contextualized within the broader history of the U.S. labor movement. A solidarity statement from faculty in the University of Michigan’s History Department called attention to the strike’s parallels in this history and to earlier instances in which unions “have dared speak on behalf of a broader public, to claim rightfully that their members’ immediate needs match a public interest in social betterment.” In addition, we might consider the example of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union, which has fought for anti-racism from its founding in 1937, and which recently organized a port shutdown in solidarity with the summer’s uprising. We might also contextualize GEO’s anti-racist organizing within a long tradition of Black communist and trade union organizing which frequently led mass campaigns against lynching and police brutality in the earlier half of the 20th century.
Yet, on the whole, U.S. labor unions have a much poorer history on race. At best, they have often marginalized or offered only perfunctory support of racial justice; at worst, they have actively fomented white supremacist shops. For example, in the 1940s, despite their union’s nominal support for racial equality, white United Auto Workers (UAW) members frequently went on strike when Black workers won promotions. Because of the increasing number of Black workers in UAW plants and resentment against their families settling in white working-class neighborhoods, white Detroiters violently attacked Black Detroiters during the Detroit race riot of 1943. Making matters worse, as the post-war Cold War consensus hardened, many unions purged their most militant, anti-racist trade union organizers for fear of being branded anti-communist, effectively stunting radical campaigns for racial justice in the workplace. The institutionalization of business unionism in this period further compounded the problem. Even before — but especially after the passage of the anti-labor Taft-Hartley Act — once radical, rank-and-file-driven unions increasingly began to operate through a professionalized collective bargaining process that yields only incremental benefits for a narrow bargaining unit, suppresses militancy, hinders solidarity and refuses to fight for racial justice.
Ending police violence serves the union and community members alike. The fight for the union cannot be dissociated from the fight for the safety of the broader community.
Abolitionist graduate worker unions like GEO, then, are not only relevant to campus politics. Instead, they help chart a path towards a multiracial, anti-racist labor movement as such. Their agenda evokes — and radicalizes — a “Bargaining for the Common Good” approach in which contract demands are determined in coordination with coalitional groups and seek to “transcend the traditional bargaining frameworks that are written into law.” This strategy engages all community members in fights to improve collective working and living conditions. It’s typically only by securing community support and broad participation across multiple sectors that a fight can win. Such engagement thus proves essential for the achievement of demands. The pioneering success of the 2012 Chicago Teacher Union (CTU) strike demonstrates the potential of this strategy: by coordinating with local groups, such as Stand Up! Chicago, the Grassroots Collaborative, and Parents 4 Teachers, CTU was able to win a major contract fight, bucking the prevailing pattern of concessionary agreements across the country. What GEO’s strike adds is the demand for abolition, and the vision of a unionism responsive to immediate needs of community members, that is able to launch emergency industrial actions untethered from slower contract cycles.
Recent graduate strikes have succeeded in broadening participation and support beyond their bargaining units. GEO’s strike, for example, was joined by resident advisors on campus, and received further momentum from a solidarity slowdown organized by dining workers. One lesson to be drawn from the strike is that making abolition central to an action does not alienate allies in the way detractors often fear. Although the potential for abolitionist demands to sustain coalitions should not be the litmus test for its inclusion in the labor movement, the GEO strike demonstrates that abolition can and must become the norm for worker struggles. Another lesson, however, is that even this wide-ranging support wasn’t sufficient. To maintain an indefinite strike against an employer with massive financial and legal resources requires even deeper coalitions and solidarities. Given the default power asymmetries between unions and employers, and given that workers today face a hostile legal environment, the idea that a strike could win without deep coalitional work seems increasingly far-fetched.
Today, this coalitional work must foreground the fight for racial justice. As Adom Getachew writes regarding a similar approach among Yale’s graduate workers, “building union power and seeking racial justice at the university could not be separated.” In tight coalition with a wide range of organized groups and constituencies fighting policing, exploitation and racial injustice on campus, abolitionist graduate worker unions can wield their collective resources (more precisely, their ability to bargain with and withhold labor from the university) to further build union power, and to simultaneously issue anti-racist demands that refuse to allow any worker or community member to be subject to racialized state violence.
One lesson to be drawn from the strike is that making abolition central to an action does not alienate allies in the way detractors often fear.
Yet more political education around abolition — and especially on the long, multi-decade and Black-led movement for prison-industrial complex abolition — should also be occurring within worker unions and in the labor movement. In addition to building with groups on their own campuses and in surrounding communities, graduate worker unions (and unions generally) could deepen their relationships to, mutual aid for, and solidarity with, imprisoned people — an approach that GEO also modeled by supporting the 2018 prisoner strike. Another example is given in Strike University, which wildcat strikers at UC Santa Cruz developed as a free source of political education and organizing trainings, roundtables and events, and which includes a program dedicated to abolition.
Graduate worker unions should embrace abolition for still another reason: as graduate workers escalate their struggles, universities respond with an ever-growing use of campus and/or local police to suppress militant actions. This was seen last February, when university police arrested and physically attacked picketing graduate workers, in an attempt to break the UC Santa Cruz wildcat strike for a cost of living adjustment. Using the COVID-19 pandemic as a justification to inflict even greater austerity, administrators will increasingly rely on law enforcement to protect their bottom line from fights against furloughs, layoffs, pay cuts, and other rollbacks.
Universities also often supplement the direct use of law enforcement by deploying community members to take on the role of community policing and surveillance themselves. One example was the University of Michigan’s “Ambassadors” program in which students, faculty and staff accompanied by university police patrolled campus to enforce social distancing. While the strike led to the termination of the program, the program’s existence in the first place crystallized a dominant strategy among university administrators to deflect responsibility for COVID spikes on campuses by not only penalizing students, but by normalizing this surveillance through the use of ostensibly more “friendly” community faces. This strategy allows the university to cynically undercut opposition and accountability for their punitive methods by securing the participation of community members in their own policing.
Thus, as Nick Mitchell has argued, “universities use cops not only to limit strikes, but to turn diff[erent] segments of the university against each other.” Police present their own actions — such as surveillance, union-busting and the maintenance of racialized hierarchies — as instead “efforts to protect the value of students’ investments.” Mitchell thus calls attention to a university-specific version of longstanding functions of racialized policing to divide and preempt the possibility of solidarity across racial and social groups. This history is actualized on campuses today in the punitive measures which are disproportionately taken against the students of color engaged in university struggles. By rejecting the divisions imposed by policing, graduate workers can help rebuild the solidarity necessary for a broad and militantly anti-racist labor movement.
Given the default power asymmetries between unions and employers, the idea that a strike could win without deep coalitional work seems increasingly far-fetched.
To be sure, graduate workers are not typically considered an integral part of the labor movement, or of a future abolitionist labor movement. Nonetheless, our conditions mirror those of many other workers across the country: Many of us are poorly remunerated and overworked, indebted, precariously housed, and with minimal chance of ever achieving secure employment. By providing essential teaching and research, we make universities run and thereby provide the basis for boards of trustees’ ever-accumulating returns on the stock market and the million-dollar salaries of administrators. Graduate workers are repeatedly instrumentalized by employers to balance budgets through overwork and adjunctivization. While graduate school was once a fairly good bet for later employment, it now promises nothing of the sort. On university campuses, as in the economy as a whole, workers are on the defensive.
For Black, Brown and Indigenous graduate workers, such conditions are compounded by systemic racism and endless barriers to entry and advancement in a largely white-supremacist academic guild. Indeed, universities are laboratories in a particularly pernicious brand of racial capitalism. They are premised on the daily reproduction in close quarters of a racialized hierarchy of social groups, with disproportionately white administrators and senior tenured professors at the top and Black and Brown service workers at the bottom. Poor and racially marginalized graduate workers and undergraduates — along with queer and trans students, immigrants, students with disabilities, student parents, and still others — experience wildly different access to resources and possibilities of advancement.
As employers, universities have aggressively privatized and outsourced services to anti-union corporations. As real estate developers, they have overseen massive gentrification and racialized displacement in surrounding communities, often in partnership with campus or local police, while receiving substantive tax breaks as allegedly nonprofit organizations. As investors, universities level huge investments in the prison- and military-industrial complex, in imperialism and fossil capital. As anti-Black, settler-colonial entities that place property and profits over people, they sustain handsome budgets for campus and local police departments while citing revenue shortfalls to justify the defunding of the humanities and social sciences (especially African American and ethnic studies programs), student groups and mental health services. The fight against these conditions is nothing less than the fight against racial capitalism in the country at large. And given the central role of police in upholding racial capitalism, this fight must be an abolitionist one.
Recent anti-racist labor struggles have shed crucial light on this inextricable link between economic and racial justice. The most recent, and most radical example of such struggles is GEO’s abolitionist strike. While the strike itself was defeated in Ann Arbor, its lasting, national significance should not be underestimated. For it developed a new, militant form of abolitionist unionism, which shows the labor movement where we have to go, and which provides a roadmap for countless struggles to come.
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truthout--2020-11-15--75 Years Later, Victims of Nuclear Bomb Tests on US Soil Still Seek Justice

“ They thought the world was coming to an end , ” Genoveva Peralta Purcella explains .
On July 16 , 1945 , the first-ever nuclear bomb was tested in New Mexico , in the Southwestern United States .
The detonation was code-named “ Trinity.
” It is the day that would seal the fate of many Americans living in the surrounding areas for generations to come .
Seventy miles from what became known as ground zero—the Trinity test site—Genoveva ’ s family lived on a ranch just outside the village of Capitan in New Mexico .
Genoveva was born @ @ @ @ @ @ @ 74 years old , she solemnly recalls how her family remembers the day that would change their lives forever .
Genoveva ’ s sisters had come to visit their father and pregnant mother at the ranch .
At precisely 5:30 a.m. , as dawn broke , the sky suddenly went pitch dark .
Having no other point of reference , they mistook the abnormally loud roaring and rumbling in the sky for thunder .
The entire house began to shake .
Fear-stricken , the family huddled together in a corner .
When the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the house and found himself being showered with a white powder .
The powder was everywhere and covered everything around them .
Nothing escaped it , not the cows the family had raised , or the vegetables in the garden , or the rainwater they stored in the absence of running water .
Like other families who went through this experience , Genoveva ’ s family also dusted off the powder and consumed their vegetables and the stored water .
The blast produced so much energy that it incinerated everything it touched and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ than 12 kilometers into the atmosphere .
The fireball created ash that snowed over the communities surrounding the blast site .
The people did not know it then , but this ash that covered thousands of square miles was the radioactive fallout from the explosion .
Dread gripped the communities in Tularosa Basin who either witnessed or experienced the phenomenon they could not make sense of .
Meanwhile , the immediate reaction of the staff of the Manhattan Project , which created the bomb , was of “ surprise , joy , and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ s cousin , who was born nine years after the Trinity blast , says that his family , which lived 33 miles from the blast site , was one of many who were unaware of what had transpired on that day .
In the days and months leading up to the blast , U.S. government officials did not notify anyone who lived in the region about the imminent nuclear bomb test .
Nobody in the Tularosa Basin was evacuated to safety .
In the aftermath of the nuclear test , officials began to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of the nation ; the region was remote and uninhabited .
Tens of thousands of people , in fact , lived in the Tularosa Basin in 1945 .
For a long time , the people of the basin believed that the blast was an ammunition explosion .
“ We were lied to by the government , ” said Pino .
It takes 24,000 years for half of the radioactive plutonium used in the Trinity bomb to decay .
The people of the region have inhaled and ingested radioactive particles for 75 years because @ @ @ @ @ @ @ refuse to accept responsibility and take any corrective action .
To this day , there have been no cleanup efforts .
Radiation exposure has caused high rates of aggressive cancers , thyroid disease , infant mortality , and other health abnormalities in generations of families in the Tularosa Basin region .
The scale of the health impact can not be determined accurately as long-term epidemiological studies have only been undertaken recently .
The findings of the latest research studies by the National Cancer Institute were published in September 2020 in the journal Health @ @ @ @ @ @ @ us ; now only one is surviving , ” Genoveva says , speaking of herself .
She has lost everyone in her family to cancer .
In a country without universal health care , debt from medical expenses has brought economic ruin to the communities near the Trinity site .
“ All the pain and suffering we have had to endure , and not a speck of help from the government , ” Pino says .
“ Meanwhile , it has spent trillions on thousands of nuclear weapons.
” Genoveva ’ s story @ @ @ @ @ @ @ is the story of tens of thousands of families in the United States .
More than 1,000 nuclear bomb tests have been conducted in the U.S. between 1945 and 1992 .
A total of 100 above-ground tests were conducted at the Nevada test site from 1951 to 1962 .
The winds carried radioactive fallout for thousands of kilometers .
Hundreds of millions of people living in the U.S. have been exposed to varying levels of radiation over the years , unknown to them .
New Mexico was downwind of the Nevada test site @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to be exposed to radioactivity for decades after the initial exposure during the Trinity nuclear test .
People from the impacted communities founded the Tularosa Basin Downwinders Consortium in 2005 to fight for justice for the survivors and their descendants .
Tina Cordova , one of the group ’ s cofounders , was shocked to find out that a few of the impacted states neighboring New Mexico were receiving financial compensation under the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act since 1990 .
The communities in New Mexico , however , were left out of the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ responds with , “ It is the billion-dollar question .
I think we are being left out because we are mainly Mexican Hispanics , Natives , and Latinos .
We are minorities and we are poor.
” Cordova herself is the fourth generation in her family to have cancer .
She has joined with others like her to educate and organize the affected communities , to fight to establish the truth .
“ In their [ the government ’ s ] rush to bomb Japan , we were sacrificed in the process .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ our country , unknowing , unwilling , and remain uncompensated .
”

“They thought the world was coming to an end,” Genoveva Peralta Purcella explains.
On July 16, 1945, the first-ever nuclear bomb was tested in New Mexico, in the Southwestern United States. The detonation was code-named “Trinity.” It is the day that would seal the fate of many Americans living in the surrounding areas for generations to come.
Seventy miles from what became known as ground zero—the Trinity test site—Genoveva’s family lived on a ranch just outside the village of Capitan in New Mexico. Genoveva was born the year after the blast. Now 74 years old, she solemnly recalls how her family remembers the day that would change their lives forever.
Genoveva’s sisters had come to visit their father and pregnant mother at the ranch. At precisely 5:30 a.m., as dawn broke, the sky suddenly went pitch dark. Having no other point of reference, they mistook the abnormally loud roaring and rumbling in the sky for thunder. The entire house began to shake. Fear-stricken, the family huddled together in a corner.
When the sky cleared, her father stepped outside the house and found himself being showered with a white powder. The powder was everywhere and covered everything around them. Nothing escaped it, not the cows the family had raised, or the vegetables in the garden, or the rainwater they stored in the absence of running water. Like other families who went through this experience, Genoveva’s family also dusted off the powder and consumed their vegetables and the stored water.
The blast produced so much energy that it incinerated everything it touched and formed a fireball that rose to more than 12 kilometers into the atmosphere. The fireball created ash that snowed over the communities surrounding the blast site. The people did not know it then, but this ash that covered thousands of square miles was the radioactive fallout from the explosion.
Dread gripped the communities in Tularosa Basin who either witnessed or experienced the phenomenon they could not make sense of. Meanwhile, the immediate reaction of the staff of the Manhattan Project, which created the bomb, was of “surprise, joy, and relief.”
Paul Pino, Genoveva’s cousin, who was born nine years after the Trinity blast, says that his family, which lived 33 miles from the blast site, was one of many who were unaware of what had transpired on that day. In the days and months leading up to the blast, U.S. government officials did not notify anyone who lived in the region about the imminent nuclear bomb test. Nobody in the Tularosa Basin was evacuated to safety.
In the aftermath of the nuclear test, officials began to cement a false narrative into the consciousness of the nation; the region was remote and uninhabited. Tens of thousands of people, in fact, lived in the Tularosa Basin in 1945. For a long time, the people of the basin believed that the blast was an ammunition explosion. “We were lied to by the government,” said Pino.
It takes 24,000 years for half of the radioactive plutonium used in the Trinity bomb to decay. The people of the region have inhaled and ingested radioactive particles for 75 years because of environmental contamination. Those in power refuse to accept responsibility and take any corrective action. To this day, there have been no cleanup efforts.
Radiation exposure has caused high rates of aggressive cancers, thyroid disease, infant mortality, and other health abnormalities in generations of families in the Tularosa Basin region. The scale of the health impact cannot be determined accurately as long-term epidemiological studies have only been undertaken recently. The findings of the latest research studies by the National Cancer Institute were published in September 2020 in the journal Health Physics.
“There were 10 of us; now only one is surviving,” Genoveva says, speaking of herself. She has lost everyone in her family to cancer.
In a country without universal health care, debt from medical expenses has brought economic ruin to the communities near the Trinity site. “All the pain and suffering we have had to endure, and not a speck of help from the government,” Pino says. “Meanwhile, it has spent trillions on thousands of nuclear weapons.”
Genoveva’s story is not an exceptional one. It is the story of tens of thousands of families in the United States.
More than 1,000 nuclear bomb tests have been conducted in the U.S. between 1945 and 1992. A total of 100 above-ground tests were conducted at the Nevada test site from 1951 to 1962. The winds carried radioactive fallout for thousands of kilometers. Hundreds of millions of people living in the U.S. have been exposed to varying levels of radiation over the years, unknown to them.
New Mexico was downwind of the Nevada test site, and the people living there continued to be exposed to radioactivity for decades after the initial exposure during the Trinity nuclear test.
People from the impacted communities founded the Tularosa Basin Downwinders Consortium in 2005 to fight for justice for the survivors and their descendants. Tina Cordova, one of the group’s cofounders, was shocked to find out that a few of the impacted states neighboring New Mexico were receiving financial compensation under the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act since 1990. The communities in New Mexico, however, were left out of the act.
When asked why, Cordova responds with, “It is the billion-dollar question. I think we are being left out because we are mainly Mexican Hispanics, Natives, and Latinos. We are minorities and we are poor.”
Cordova herself is the fourth generation in her family to have cancer. She has joined with others like her to educate and organize the affected communities, to fight to establish the truth. “In their [the government’s] rush to bomb Japan, we were sacrificed in the process. We were enlisted in the service of our country, unknowing, unwilling, and remain uncompensated.”
Tired of reading the same old news from the same old sources? So are we! That’s why we’re on a mission to shake things up and bring you the stories and perspectives that often go untold in mainstream media. But being a radically, unapologetically independent news site isn’t easy (or cheap), and we rely on reader support to keep the lights on.
If you like what you’re reading, please consider making a tax-deductible donation today. We’re not asking for a handout, we’re asking for an investment: Invest in a nonprofit news site that’s not afraid to ruffle a few feathers, not afraid to stand up for what’s right, and not afraid to tell it like it is.
This piece was reprinted by Truthout with permission or license. It may not be reproduced in any form without permission or license from the source.


truthout--2020-11-17--Fauci Calls for Unified, Federal Approach to Tackling COVID

Anthony Fauci , current director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases ( NIAID ) and a member of the White House ’ s coronavirus task force , called on the federal government to take a more uniform approach to combating the pandemic , rather than relying on each state to come up with their own statewide plans or regulations .
“ We need some fundamental public health measures that everyone should be adhering to , not a disjointed , ‘ One state says one thing , the other state says another thing , ' ” Fauci said @ @ @ @ @ @ @ number of different ways in which each state is handling the pandemic .
On the issue of masks alone , less than two-thirds of all states have a rule about wearing them in public places , while 16 states have not yet implemented a mask mandate .
Of those that have a mandate , the rules for when and where masks must be worn also differ from state to state .
Coordinated action from the federal government to deal with COVID-19 is desired by a majority of Americans , particularly on the issue @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Hill/HarrisX poll , 75 percent of Americans — including 59 percent of Republicans — would support a national mask mandate .
Fauci , who was speaking during a virtual conference put on by The New York Times , also said that , beyond a unified federal approach to quelling the virus , a cooperative agreement between the outgoing and incoming administrations was also needed .
Drawing on his own experiences leading NIAID since 1984 , Fauci , without specifically saying his name , appeared to call on President Donald Trump to allow President-elect @ @ @ @ @ @ @ health officials in order to allow for a smooth transition .
“ I ’ ve been through five transitions ; I can say that transitions are extremely important to the smooth continuity of whatever you ’ re doing .
We need to transition to the team that will be doing it , similar to how we ’ re doing it , ” Fauci said .
Political theater would not help in the fight against coronavirus , Fauci said .
“ We ’ ve got to get public health issues out of the realm @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a political issue , ” Fauci added .
“ We ’ ve got to do everything we possibly can to pull together as a nation.
” Biden himself has called on Trump , who has not yet conceded to losing the presidential election , to allow a transition to happen .
By refusing to do so , the president-elect has said , Trump is putting the country at greater risk .
“ More people may die if we don ’ t coordinate , ” Biden said on Monday .
Those sentiments are shared @ @ @ @ @ @ @ American Hospital Association and the American Nurses Association , which on Tuesday sent a letter to Trump urging him to allow Biden ’ s transition team access to federal government health plans and information in order to “ save countless lives.
” “ All information about the capacity of the Strategic National Stockpile , the assets from Operation Warp Speed , and plans for dissemination of therapeutics and vaccines needs to be shared as quickly as possible to ensure that there is continuity in strategic planning so that there is no lapse in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ” the three medical associations wrote in their joint letter .

Anthony Fauci, current director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) and a member of the White House’s coronavirus task force, called on the federal government to take a more uniform approach to combating the pandemic, rather than relying on each state to come up with their own statewide plans or regulations.
“We need some fundamental public health measures that everyone should be adhering to, not a disjointed, ‘One state says one thing, the other state says another thing,'” Fauci said on Tuesday.
There are indeed a number of different ways in which each state is handling the pandemic. On the issue of masks alone, less than two-thirds of all states have a rule about wearing them in public places, while 16 states have not yet implemented a mask mandate. Of those that have a mandate, the rules for when and where masks must be worn also differ from state to state.
Coordinated action from the federal government to deal with COVID-19 is desired by a majority of Americans, particularly on the issue of masks. According to a recent Hill/HarrisX poll, 75 percent of Americans — including 59 percent of Republicans — would support a national mask mandate.
Fauci, who was speaking during a virtual conference put on by The New York Times, also said that, beyond a unified federal approach to quelling the virus, a cooperative agreement between the outgoing and incoming administrations was also needed. Drawing on his own experiences leading NIAID since 1984, Fauci, without specifically saying his name, appeared to call on President Donald Trump to allow President-elect Joe Biden to have access to federal health officials in order to allow for a smooth transition.
“I’ve been through five transitions; I can say that transitions are extremely important to the smooth continuity of whatever you’re doing. We need to transition to the team that will be doing it, similar to how we’re doing it,” Fauci said.
Political theater would not help in the fight against coronavirus, Fauci said.
“We’ve got to get public health issues out of the realm of political divisiveness — this is not a political issue,” Fauci added. “We’ve got to do everything we possibly can to pull together as a nation.”
Biden himself has called on Trump, who has not yet conceded to losing the presidential election, to allow a transition to happen. By refusing to do so, the president-elect has said, Trump is putting the country at greater risk.
“More people may die if we don’t coordinate,” Biden said on Monday.
Those sentiments are shared by the American Medical Association, the American Hospital Association and the American Nurses Association, which on Tuesday sent a letter to Trump urging him to allow Biden’s transition team access to federal government health plans and information in order to “save countless lives.”
“All information about the capacity of the Strategic National Stockpile, the assets from Operation Warp Speed, and plans for dissemination of therapeutics and vaccines needs to be shared as quickly as possible to ensure that there is continuity in strategic planning so that there is no lapse in our ability to care for patients,” the three medical associations wrote in their joint letter.
Tired of reading the same old news from the same old sources? So are we! That’s why we’re on a mission to shake things up and bring you the stories and perspectives that often go untold in mainstream media. But being a radically, unapologetically independent news site isn’t easy (or cheap), and we rely on reader support to keep the lights on.
If you like what you’re reading, please consider making a tax-deductible donation today. We’re not asking for a handout, we’re asking for an investment: Invest in a nonprofit news site that’s not afraid to ruffle a few feathers, not afraid to stand up for what’s right, and not afraid to tell it like it is.
Copyright © Truthout. May not be reprinted without permission.


truthout--2020-11-17--Ted Cruz Calls Fellow Senator an “Ass” for Urging Mask Use During Senate Session

Sen. Ted Cruz ( R-Texas ) issued a scathing tweet against a Democratic colleague on Monday night , deriding him for making a request that individuals on the Senate floor wear masks during deliberations .
Since they were first recommended as a means to prevent the spread of coronavirus , Ohio Sen. Sherrod Brown , a Democrat , has made frequent calls for others in the legislative chamber to wear masks while in session indoors .
He reiterated that request to Sen. Dan Sullivan ( R-Alaska ) , who was presiding over the Senate at the time , during deliberations @ @ @ @ @ @ @ start by asking the presiding officer to please wear a mask as he speaks , ” Brown said .
“ I don ’ t wear a mask when I ’ m speaking like most senators … I don ’ t need your instruction , ” Sullivan responded .
Brown retorted with a condemnation of those who are not taking the pandemic seriously .
“ I know you don ’ t need my instruction , but there clearly isn ’ t much interest in this body in public health , ” Brown said .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ t shown up at the coronavirus task force meetings in months .
We have a majority leader who calls us back here to vote on an unqualified nominee.
” Sen. Tom Carper ( D-Delaware ) later tweeted out support for Brown ’ s cause .
“ Wearing a mask isn ’ t a political statement .
Wearing a mask is about basic human decency and protecting those around us , ” Carper said .
But Cruz took the opposing view , launching into a tirade against Brown on social media and describing @ @ @ @ @ @ @ This is idiotic .
@ SherrodBrown is being a complete ass , ” Cruz tweeted .
“ He wears a mask to speak — when nobody is remotely near him — as an ostentatious sign of fake virtue.
” Cruz mocked Brown further by noting that Sullivan was “ over 50 feet away , presiding.
” “ Last I checked 50 feet is more than 6 feet , ” Cruz said , referring to Centers for Disease Control and Prevention ( CDC ) guidelines on coronavirus .
While making reference to those guidelines @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Cruz may do well to revisit them , as he appears to have misunderstood or is confused by the CDC ’ s recommendations .
While the CDC recommends keeping a distance of at least six feet from others when out in public , it does not say that doing so negates the need to wear a mask .
According to the CDC website , social distancing guidelines “ should be practiced in combination with other everyday preventive actions to reduce the spread of COVID-19 , ” including wearing a mask .
Indeed , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ mention that masks are especially important when among people indoors ( owing to the greater risk of spreading COVID-19 within a space where the air is recirculated ) .
“ Masks should still be worn in addition to staying at least 6 feet apart , ” the CDC recommends on another page discussing mask-wearing .
Masks are considered by many experts as being the best means we have right now to prevent COVID-19 from spreading , particularly from an infected person .
Recent research , however , shows that wearing a mask with @ @ @ @ @ @ @ wearer , with one study finding that facial coverings can reduce by 50 percent the number of respiratory droplets or aerosolized particles that would normally be breathed in .
Cruz has a history of being confused by the CDC guidelines on mask-wearing .
In October , while speaking with reporters in a Capitol Building hallway , the Texas senator refused to wear a mask .
When reporters asked if he ’ d put one on , he answered “ no , ” wrongly arguing that the CDC guidance on masks said it was @ @ @ @ @ @ @ he was more than six feet away from them .

Cruz wrongly believes six feet of social distancing negates the need to wear a mask, but the CDC recommends doing both.
Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) issued a scathing tweet against a Democratic colleague on Monday night, deriding him for making a request that individuals on the Senate floor wear masks during deliberations.
Since they were first recommended as a means to prevent the spread of coronavirus, Ohio Sen. Sherrod Brown, a Democrat, has made frequent calls for others in the legislative chamber to wear masks while in session indoors. He reiterated that request to Sen. Dan Sullivan (R-Alaska), who was presiding over the Senate at the time, during deliberations on Monday.
“I’d start by asking the presiding officer to please wear a mask as he speaks,” Brown said.
“I don’t wear a mask when I’m speaking like most senators … I don’t need your instruction,” Sullivan responded.
Brown retorted with a condemnation of those who are not taking the pandemic seriously.
“I know you don’t need my instruction, but there clearly isn’t much interest in this body in public health,” Brown said. “We have a president who hasn’t shown up at the coronavirus task force meetings in months. We have a majority leader who calls us back here to vote on an unqualified nominee.”
Once again, I asked my Republican colleagues to stop endangering all the Senate workers – and simply wear a mask when presiding over the Senate. Once again, they refused. pic.twitter.com/lykJO8MWmI — Sherrod Brown (@SenSherrodBrown) November 17, 2020
Sen. Tom Carper (D-Delaware) later tweeted out support for Brown’s cause.
“Wearing a mask isn’t a political statement. Wearing a mask is about basic human decency and protecting those around us,” Carper said.
But Cruz took the opposing view, launching into a tirade against Brown on social media and describing his actions in negative terms.
“This is idiotic. @SherrodBrown is being a complete ass,” Cruz tweeted. “He wears a mask to speak — when nobody is remotely near him — as an ostentatious sign of fake virtue.”
Cruz mocked Brown further by noting that Sullivan was “over 50 feet away, presiding.”
“Last I checked 50 feet is more than 6 feet,” Cruz said, referring to Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) guidelines on coronavirus.
While making reference to those guidelines to make his point, however, Cruz may do well to revisit them, as he appears to have misunderstood or is confused by the CDC’s recommendations. While the CDC recommends keeping a distance of at least six feet from others when out in public, it does not say that doing so negates the need to wear a mask.
According to the CDC website, social distancing guidelines “should be practiced in combination with other everyday preventive actions to reduce the spread of COVID-19,” including wearing a mask. Indeed, the CDC makes it a point to mention that masks are especially important when among people indoors (owing to the greater risk of spreading COVID-19 within a space where the air is recirculated).
“Masks should still be worn in addition to staying at least 6 feet apart,” the CDC recommends on another page discussing mask-wearing.
Masks are considered by many experts as being the best means we have right now to prevent COVID-19 from spreading, particularly from an infected person. Recent research, however, shows that wearing a mask with multiple cloth layers can also protect the wearer, with one study finding that facial coverings can reduce by 50 percent the number of respiratory droplets or aerosolized particles that would normally be breathed in.
Cruz has a history of being confused by the CDC guidelines on mask-wearing. In October, while speaking with reporters in a Capitol Building hallway, the Texas senator refused to wear a mask. When reporters asked if he’d put one on, he answered “no,” wrongly arguing that the CDC guidance on masks said it was fine for him to be unmasked if he was more than six feet away from them.
Tired of reading the same old news from the same old sources? So are we! That’s why we’re on a mission to shake things up and bring you the stories and perspectives that often go untold in mainstream media. But being a radically, unapologetically independent news site isn’t easy (or cheap), and we rely on reader support to keep the lights on.
If you like what you’re reading, please consider making a tax-deductible donation today. We’re not asking for a handout, we’re asking for an investment: Invest in a nonprofit news site that’s not afraid to ruffle a few feathers, not afraid to stand up for what’s right, and not afraid to tell it like it is.
Copyright © Truthout. May not be reprinted without permission.


truthout--2020-11-17--Real Economic Recovery Can’t Happen Until COVID Is Under Control, Biden Says

President-elect Joe Biden and I apparently shared some sort of mind meld yesterday .
At around the same time I was writing the words , “ We are on the cusp of what could become the bleakest winter in living memory , ” Mr. Biden was delivering his big press conference on the economy .
“ We ’ re going into a very dark winter , ” he said at the outset of his remarks .
“ Things are going to get much tougher before they get easier.
” Well now .
Am I dreaming , or is someone with @ @ @ @ @ @ @ on the awesome menace posed by COVID-19 ?
Pardon me for my uncertainty , but with nine goddamn months , 11 million U.S. infections and almost 250,000 deaths in the rearview mirror , it ’ s a little shocking to see a major politician actually summon the courage to give the people the bad news they really , really need to hear .
It is almost impossible to explain how difficult a task Biden has before him .
Thanks to the arsonist mayhem of Donald Trump , an enormous segment of the country @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
The Washington Post today carries a report on COVID patients in the Dakotas dying with the words , “ This can ’ t be happening , it ’ s not real ” on their lips .
Trump did that .
Undoing it , at this strange and perilous juncture , feels like it would be a feat akin to “ Lazarus , come forth.
” Finding a way to an economy that no longer disdains the labors of its least-paid , most exposed workers — in other words , a functional and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ — against the headwinds of capitalism represents an equally daunting task .
Biden ’ s economic messaging day was divided into two segments , the first being a fairly unusual coming-together of labor leaders and corporate CEOs from the retail , tech and auto industries .
Doing his best man-for-all-people routine , Biden said after the event that he ’ d told the CEOs , “ I want you to know I ’ m a union guy , that ’ s not anti-business.
” According to the president-elect , the CEOs just nodded @ @ @ @ @ @ @ we ’ re in a pretty dark hole right now , ” said Biden at the beginning of the meeting , where he was joined by VP-elect Kamala Harris .
“ We face a dark winter ahead with COVID .
You all have different perspectives on how we can best deal with the virus .
And how we can make sure workers and small businesses stay safe , and we get back to rolling like we should .
We all agree on common goals .
We ’ re pretty much in lockstep .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ just build back , we need to build back better.
” Biden broadcast his desire for teamwork among the assembled , and not just because his economic plans are dead in the water without it .
He shared that room yesterday with a group of serious heavyweights who brought along their own nigh-implacable agendas — capitalists and unionists who have literally seen and heard everything under the sun from every glad-handing politician who has ever come their way .
He shared the room with the retail unionists specifically , whose people have faced @ @ @ @ @ @ @ break for lunch .
Time will tell if the president-elect brought them on board with his “ COVID First ” agenda .
What they may have discussed away from the cameras is anyone ’ s guess , but again , we ’ ll know when we start seeing promises kept , or not .
The CEOs , by and large , have gotten everything they ’ ve wanted from every president going back even to the age before Reagan .
If COVID has taught us anything at all , it is that workers @ @ @ @ @ @ @ much ballyhooed “ economy ” our leaders spend so much time talking about .
Whatever else the future may hold , greater protections for them are an absolute necessity .
At the Wilmington press conference , where he was again joined by Harris , Biden underscored the point he was making to the union leaders and CEOs : There is no economic plan , none , unless and until COVID-19 is successfully contained .
It sounds so simple , and yet this very simplicity has been blown off by Trump , et al @ @ @ @ @ @ @ which explains why we are currently trapped in a hurricane outbreak of new infections .
“ It ’ s going to be difficult , ” said Biden at Wilmington , “ but it can be done .
And [ the union and corporate leaders at the earlier meeting ] all agreed that means rallying the country behind a national strategy with robust public health measures like mandatory masking , widely available testing with rapid results , scaled up production of life-saving treatments and therapeutics , and safe , equitable , and free distribution @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the folderol of the Trump administration , and grain-of-sand simple .
After emphasizing what has to happen first with COVID , Biden went on to lay out his vision for what can happen after COVID : Once we shut down the virus and deliver economic relief to workers and businesses , then we can start to build back better than before .
We talked about how we have an opportunity to come out of this stronger , more resilient than we were when we went in and I wish you could have heard @ @ @ @ @ @ @ singing from the same hymnal here .
They talked about the need , the business community , talked about the need to invest in HBCUs and community colleges .
Retrofitting 4 million new buildings , our old buildings , retrofitting them and making them new .
Weatherizing 2 million homes .
Building more climate resilient cities and towns .
He added that these investments will specifically happen in communities of color “ so we can break the cycle where in good times they lag , and in a bad times , they get @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a recovery , it ’ s the toughest to bounce back.
” Because it was Joe Biden , the remarks yesterday lacked the rhetorical fireworks of Trump or the eloquent flourishes of former President Obama .
The president-elect was workmanlike , occasionally plodding , and prone on occasion to fall back on the pabulum of political happy talk .
Most of it we ’ ve all heard before , and some of it we desperately needed to hear even though we knew it already .
Yet there was a vibe about Biden , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ me in mind of a strong horse in traces , breath gusting white in the chill November air .
All that horse wants is to take one step forward , then another , and another , with the plow hitched to its back breaking open the earth behind .
Nothing fancy , nothing flashy , just get it done .
Fancy and flashy won ’ t see us to the spring .
Duplicating the plodding strength and patience of a workhorse , however , may just be how this grim story finds resolution @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
Soon enough , they ’ ll have it , and we will see if patience and the relentless truth , combined with hard work in the traces , head down , go forward , one step at a time , will be enough to pull us through .
I think it will be , if we all emulate that horse , too .

President-elect Joe Biden and I apparently shared some sort of mind meld yesterday. At around the same time I was writing the words, “We are on the cusp of what could become the bleakest winter in living memory,” Mr. Biden was delivering his big press conference on the economy. “We’re going into a very dark winter,” he said at the outset of his remarks. “Things are going to get much tougher before they get easier.”
Well now. Am I dreaming, or is someone with an enormous microphone finally playing it straight on the awesome menace posed by COVID-19? Pardon me for my uncertainty, but with nine goddamn months, 11 million U.S. infections and almost 250,000 deaths in the rearview mirror, it’s a little shocking to see a major politician actually summon the courage to give the people the bad news they really, really need to hear.
It is almost impossible to explain how difficult a task Biden has before him. Thanks to the arsonist mayhem of Donald Trump, an enormous segment of the country is wired to dismiss everything Biden says. The Washington Post today carries a report on COVID patients in the Dakotas dying with the words, “This can’t be happening, it’s not real” on their lips.
Trump did that. Undoing it, at this strange and perilous juncture, feels like it would be a feat akin to “Lazarus, come forth.” Finding a way to an economy that no longer disdains the labors of its least-paid, most exposed workers — in other words, a functional and resilient economy in the age of pandemics — against the headwinds of capitalism represents an equally daunting task.
Biden’s economic messaging day was divided into two segments, the first being a fairly unusual coming-together of labor leaders and corporate CEOs from the retail, tech and auto industries. Doing his best man-for-all-people routine, Biden said after the event that he’d told the CEOs, “I want you to know I’m a union guy, that’s not anti-business.” According to the president-elect, the CEOs just nodded.
“To state the obvious, we’re in a pretty dark hole right now,” said Biden at the beginning of the meeting, where he was joined by VP-elect Kamala Harris. “We face a dark winter ahead with COVID. You all have different perspectives on how we can best deal with the virus. And how we can make sure workers and small businesses stay safe, and we get back to rolling like we should. We all agree on common goals. We’re pretty much in lockstep. We agree that we can’t just build back, we need to build back better.”
Biden broadcast his desire for teamwork among the assembled, and not just because his economic plans are dead in the water without it. He shared that room yesterday with a group of serious heavyweights who brought along their own nigh-implacable agendas — capitalists and unionists who have literally seen and heard everything under the sun from every glad-handing politician who has ever come their way. He shared the room with the retail unionists specifically, whose people have faced down COVID for minimum wage and a break for lunch.
If COVID has taught us anything at all, it is that workers are the much ballyhooed “economy” our leaders spend so much time talking about.
Time will tell if the president-elect brought them on board with his “COVID First” agenda. What they may have discussed away from the cameras is anyone’s guess, but again, we’ll know when we start seeing promises kept, or not. The CEOs, by and large, have gotten everything they’ve wanted from every president going back even to the age before Reagan. If COVID has taught us anything at all, it is that workers — union or otherwise — are the much ballyhooed “economy” our leaders spend so much time talking about. Whatever else the future may hold, greater protections for them are an absolute necessity.
At the Wilmington press conference, where he was again joined by Harris, Biden underscored the point he was making to the union leaders and CEOs: There is no economic plan, none, unless and until COVID-19 is successfully contained. It sounds so simple, and yet this very simplicity has been blown off by Trump, et al, for much of the year, which explains why we are currently trapped in a hurricane outbreak of new infections.
“It’s going to be difficult,” said Biden at Wilmington, “but it can be done. And [the union and corporate leaders at the earlier meeting] all agreed that means rallying the country behind a national strategy with robust public health measures like mandatory masking, widely available testing with rapid results, scaled up production of life-saving treatments and therapeutics, and safe, equitable, and free distribution of the vaccine.”
Heady stuff after the folderol of the Trump administration, and grain-of-sand simple. After emphasizing what has to happen first with COVID, Biden went on to lay out his vision for what can happen after COVID:
Once we shut down the virus and deliver economic relief to workers and businesses, then we can start to build back better than before. We talked about how we have an opportunity to come out of this stronger, more resilient than we were when we went in and I wish you could have heard corporate leaders and the major labor leaders singing from the same hymnal here. They talked about the need, the business community, talked about the need to invest in HBCUs and community colleges. Retrofitting 4 million new buildings, our old buildings, retrofitting them and making them new. Weatherizing 2 million homes. Building more climate resilient cities and towns.
He added that these investments will specifically happen in communities of color “so we can break the cycle where in good times they lag, and in a bad times, they get hit first and the hardest and in a recovery, it’s the toughest to bounce back.”
Because it was Joe Biden, the remarks yesterday lacked the rhetorical fireworks of Trump or the eloquent flourishes of former President Obama. The president-elect was workmanlike, occasionally plodding, and prone on occasion to fall back on the pabulum of political happy talk. Most of it we’ve all heard before, and some of it we desperately needed to hear even though we knew it already.
Yet there was a vibe about Biden, and about the VP-elect, that put me in mind of a strong horse in traces, breath gusting white in the chill November air. All that horse wants is to take one step forward, then another, and another, with the plow hitched to its back breaking open the earth behind. Nothing fancy, nothing flashy, just get it done.
Fancy and flashy won’t see us to the spring. Duplicating the plodding strength and patience of a workhorse, however, may just be how this grim story finds resolution. Biden and Harris want the plow. Soon enough, they’ll have it, and we will see if patience and the relentless truth, combined with hard work in the traces, head down, go forward, one step at a time, will be enough to pull us through. I think it will be, if we all emulate that horse, too.
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