Author: Tom Sullivan

The failure of human rights
by Tom Sullivan

Eric Posner of the University of Chicago Law School looks at how the human rights agenda crafted in the latter 20th century has foundered in the 21st. Nine “core” treaties with weak enforcement and loose interpretation. Idealistic perhaps, but too impractical. Inauspiciously, given this week in the U.S., Posner begins his long examination in the Guardian with examples of extrajudicial killings (summary executions) by police in Brazil, “not as a matter of official policy, but as a matter of practice.” (We can relate.) Posner writes:

The central problem with human rights law is that it is hopelessly ambiguous. The ambiguity, which allows governments to rationalise almost anything they do, is not a result of sloppy draftsmanship but of the deliberate choice to overload the treaties with hundreds of poorly defined obligations. In most countries people formally have as many as 400 international human rights – rights to work and leisure, to freedom of expression and religious worship, to nondiscrimination, to privacy, to pretty much anything you might think is worth protecting. The sheer quantity and variety of rights, which protect virtually all human interests, can provide no guidance to governments. Given that all governments have limited budgets, protecting one human right might prevent a government from protecting another.

Everybody gets to pick and choose. The Americans focused on political rights. The Soviets on social and economic ones. But even if enforcement is lax, the effort at least requires governments to take human rights seriously.

But while governments all use the idiom of human rights, they use it to make radically different arguments about how countries should behave. China cites “the right to development” to explain why the Chinese government gives priority to economic growth over political liberalisation. Many countries cite the “right to security,” a catch-all idea that protection from crime justifies harsh enforcement methods. Vladimir Putin cited the rights of ethnic minorities in Ukraine in order to justify his military intervention there, just as the United States cited Saddam Hussein’s suppression of human rights in order to build support for the Iraq war. Certain Islamic countries cite the right to religious freedom in order to explain why women must be subordinated, arguing that women must play the role set out for them in Islamic law. The right of “self‑determination” can be invoked to convert foreign pressure against a human-rights violating country into a violation of that country’s right to determine its destiny. The language of rights, untethered to specific legal interpretations, is too spongy to prevent governments from committing abuses and can easily be used to clothe illiberal agendas in words soothing to the western ear.

The result of NGO efforts to expand and secure human rights, says Posner, has been too top down, and more directed to satisfy the psychology of donors than the needs in individual cultures we fail at understanding. It is the same failure in top-down development economics. He suggests an approach to promoting well being in other countries that is “empirical rather than ideological.”

But given the turmoil of the last few weeks, perhaps America should get started by removing the beam from its own eye.

“There’s a history we have to overcome”
by Tom Sullivan

So, by now you know that the New York grand jury we wrote about on Tuesday returned its decision yesterday not to indict NYPD’s Officer Daniel Pantaleo for the July 17 chokehold death of Eric Garner. The 43 year-old black man died gasping “I can’t breathe” while in the custody of white officers outside a Staten Island convenience store after being accused of selling untaxed, loose cigarettes. The death was ruled a homicide by a New York medical examiner in August.

Oh, but the grand jury did indict the man who videoed the whole thing on his cellphone, so there’s that.

Protests broke out over the grand jury’s non-indictment, as expected, disrupting the Christmas tree lighting at Rockefeller Plaza. Police made about 30 arrests.

Arrests going down at 47th and 6th Avenue. Massive standoff between police and protesters. pic.twitter.com/b9Xcgqhuzo— ANIMALNewYork (@ANIMALNewYork) December 4, 2014

Reacting to the grand jury decision, the New York Times’ Charles Blow wrote that biases are pervasive and sometimes unnoticed, just beyond our awareness:

I would love to live in a world where that wasn’t the case. Even more, I would love my children to inherit a world where that wasn’t the case, where the margin for error for them was the same as the margin for error for everyone else’s children, where I could rest assured that police treatment would be unbiased. But I don’t. Reality doesn’t bend under the weight of wishes. Truth doesn’t grow dim because we squint.

We must acknowledge — with eyes and minds wide open — the world as it is if we want to change it.

But New York Mayor Bill de Blasio’s statement went to the heart of the matter. De Blasio has had to have “the talk” with his own son about how to behave in encounters with police:

This is profoundly personal to me. I was at the White House the other day, and the president of the United States turned to me, and he met Dante a few months ago, and he said that Dante reminded him of what he looked like as a teenager. And he said I know you see this crisis through a very personal lens. And I said to him, I did.

Because Chirlane and I have had to talk to Dante for years about the dangers that he may face. A good young man, law-abiding young man who would never think to do anything wrong. And yet, because of a history that still hangs over us, the dangers he may face, we’ve had to literally train him—as families have all over this city for decades—in how to take special care in any encounter he has with the police officers who are there to protect him.

And that painful sense of contradiction that our young people see first, that our police are here to protect us, and we honor that, and at the same time, there’s a history we have to overcome, because for so many of our young people, there’s a fear. And for so many of our families, there’s a fear.

So I’ve had to worry over the years. Chirlane’s had to worry. Is Dante safe each night? There are so many families in this city who feel that each and every night. Is my child safe? And not just from some of the painful realities—crime and violence in some of our neighborhoods—but is safe from the very people they want to have faith in as their protectors.

Bloomberg reports that the U.S. Justice Department will conduct a civil rights probe into the episode.

“We are dealing with centuries of racism that has brought us to this day,” the mayor said. “That is how fundamental the task at hand is: to turn from that history and make a change that is profound and lasting.”

Eric Garner didn’t get a chance to hold his breath waiting for that.

Bracing for Thursday
by Tom Sullivan

This is getting to be a Buffalo Springfield kind of thing, ain’t it?

Fast food workers in at least 150 cities nationwide will walk off the job on Dec. 4, demanding an industry-wide base wage of $15 per hour and the right to form a union. Workers unanimously voted on the date for the new strike during a Nov. 25 conference call, held shortly before the second anniversary of the movement’s first strike.

The first of the recent fast food strikes took place on Nov. 29, 2012, in New York City. Two hundred workers from various fast food restaurants around the city participated in that strike, making it the largest work stoppage to ever hit the fast food industry. Since then, the size of the movement has ballooned several times over: With the backing of the powerful service sector labor union SEIU, the campaign has come to include thousands of workers in the U.S.

Laura Clawson for Daily Kos Labor:

The fast food strikes and other actions by low-wage workers have been a major source of momentum behind increasing the minimum wage. No one was talking about $15 an hour until fast food workers started fighting for it in late 2012. The Democratic proposal of a $10.10 federal minimum was generally portrayed in the media as a reach, the grounds for a compromise to something lower. $15 sounded impossible, yet now two major American cities—Seattle and San Francisco—are on their way there, while Chicago is about to pass a $13 an hour minimum wage, Oakland has approved a $12.25 wage, Washington, DC, and neighboring counties in Maryland are on their way to $11.50, and Massachusetts is going to $11. Doubtless some or all of these cities and states would have done something about the minimum wage without this level of worker organizing, but there’s no way we’d be seeing so many places going above $10.10.

Chicago passed its $13 an hour measure yesterday.

Rev. William Barber, president of the North Carolina NAACP and Moral Mondays organizer, spoke on the conference call, saying, “The battle for fair wages is as critical as the battle that young people waged in the 1960s when they came into the sit-in movement.”

San Diego Free Press:

The particulars of these events are not as important as what they represent: a growing sense of frustration with economic and social conditions. These actions are symbolic, intended to break through the “everybody knows” noise generated by the mass media.

Philly.com:

Millions of people make $8 to $10 an hour working as cashiers or in restaurants, or providing elder or child care – a far cry from a living wage. Despite working hard, many of these people live in poverty or on the edge of poverty.

This isn’t what America is about, and it can’t be reconciled with political rhetoric that says if you work hard and play by the rules, you will succeed in the United States.

In a season when the western world empathizes with Bob Cratchit’s struggles – with no heat for his office – to feed his fictional family, real families working for miserly wages and hours must choose between buying food and heating their homes. Food banks are sorely taxed. With every succeeding year, Dickens’ morality tale looks more and more like a quintessentially American story.

“Little techie brats”
by Tom Sullivan

Up Next: Staten Island.

Protests continued across the country (and on the floor of the House) over a St. Louis County, MO grand jury’s decision not to indict former officer Darren Wilson for the Michael Brown shooting in Ferguson. But in Staten Island, police are bracing this week for a local grand jury’s decision in another case involving a police officer and the death of an unarmed black man:

With a grand jury expected to come to a decision in the in-custody death of Eric Garner this week, Police Commissioner Bill Bratton met with Staten Island leaders Monday to discuss community concerns and new NYPD initiatives.

The grand jury is to decide whether Officer Daniel Pantaleo will face criminal charges in Garner’s July 17 death outside a Staten Island convenience store. Garner died after being placed in an apparent chokehold during an arrest attempt. Police suspected Garner of selling illegal cigarettes.

Cigarettes? Cigarillos? Perhaps the Surgeon General should add a health warning on tobacco products about the risk of death by summary execution. You don’t even have to smoke them.

The NYPD is already frustrated over Ferguson-related protests in the city last week. The New York Post reports that protesters “ran rings around the NYPD.” Protesters’ secret weapon (according to Gawker)? “[t]he cutting edge of 2006 technology: Twitter and disposable cell phones.” Per the Post:

“They wore me out,” said one counterterror expert who monitored the protests. “Their ability to strategize on the fly is something we haven’t dealt with before to this degree.”

Clearly a situation that requires a really futile and stupid gesture be done on somebody’s part. Involving deployment of surplus military hardware, perhaps?

“A lot of these anarchists are from the Occupy Wall Street group. They are little rich kids, little techie brats,” a source said.

“They get their money from Mommy and Daddy. And they travel from the West Coast to the East Coast and everywhere in between to disrupt events that involve corporate America, world summits, civil rights and especially those that involve law enforcement.”

“They have their little MacBook Air computers, their Wi-Fi, their smartphones, and they’re off to the races. We’re reacting to these situations, which means we are not fully in control of them,” the source said.

The “little techie brats” just won’t play fair. All the police have are Glocks, tasers, pepper spray, shotguns, assault rifles, sniper rifles, up-armored Humvees, armored personnel carriers, sound cannons, and heat rays. Somebody has “not fully in control” issues.

Are libertarians the real hippies?
by Tom Sullivan

John Edward Terrell explores “Evolution and the American Myth of the Individual” in today’s New York Times. It’s an interesting read, as much as anything, for the comments section. He contrasts what he knows of Man from his background in anthropology with Enlightenment philosophy as it has spun out over the last couple of centuries:

Philosophers from Aristotle to Hegel have emphasized that human beings are essentially social creatures, that the idea of an isolated individual is a misleading abstraction. So it is not just ironic but instructive that modern evolutionary research, anthropology, cognitive psychology and neuroscience have come down on the side of the philosophers who have argued that the basic unit of human social life is not and never has been the selfish, self-serving individual. Contrary to libertarian and Tea Party rhetoric, evolution has made us a powerfully social species, so much so that the essential precondition of human survival is and always has been the individual plus his or her relationships with others.

Not either/or. Both/and. Terrell argues that Rousseau and others did not mean their speculations about Man’s natural state to be taken literally:

As he remarked in his discourse “On the Origin of Inequality,” “philosophers, who have inquired into the foundations of society, have all felt the necessity of going back to a state of nature; but not one of them has got there.” Why then did Rousseau and others make up stories about human history if they didn’t really believe them? The simple answer, at least during the Enlightenment, was that they wanted people to accept their claim that civilized life is based on social conventions, or contracts, drawn up at least figuratively speaking by free, sane and equal human beings — contracts that could and should be extended to cover the moral and working relationships that ought to pertain between rulers and the ruled. In short, their aims were political, not historical, scientific or religious.

The rest is well worth your time.

But what’s fascinating are the left/right arguments in the comments. Libertarians, especially, feel their position is maligned and mischaracterized (even as they mischaracterize the left). Many of the libertarian comments echo this one:

“No one denies that human survival depends on cooperation with others. Libertarians ask only that such relationships not be imposed by others.”

Freedom, baby. Or this one:

Libertarians generally believe that :
– In the pursuit of happiness, individuals will value communities.
– Left to their own devices with minimal Government intervention individuals will create good communities.
– These communities will be imperfect.
– Communities will compete with one another for allegiance by individuals.
– Different individuals will choose to live in different types of communities.
– Government is the enemy of communities that choose to cater to individual preferences.

So which way to the commune? I’m trying to imagine a peace symbol atop the Cato Institute and the Koch brothers with long hair, love beads, and fringe. They want to freely establish their own communes without interference from The Man. But they’d like to use His interstates to freely drive their VW buses from one to another. You know, to explore different experiments in communal living.

That’s not kool-aid they’re drinking, it’s grain alcohol and branch water.

Both left and right reduce each other to stereotypes, but the lefties and righties commenting online at the New York Times are as typical of the left and right as the Koch brothers are of your neighborhood libertarian online shouter in the local newspaper. There’s what your side believes in theory and then there’s street-level practice. It reminds me of an old Catholic joke:

A workman is up on a ladder replacing a light bulb up behind the big crucifix in a Catholic church. He sees a little old lady get down in front of a statue of Mary and start to pray.

The workman decides to have a little fun. He whispers, “Little old lady.” No response. Then louder, “Little old lady.” No response. Even louder, “Little old lady.”

Finally the woman looks up at the statue of Jesus and says, “Shutup your mouth, I’m talking to your mother!”

Now if you ask a Jesuit theologian, he’ll tell you that Catholics don’t worship saints, they venerate them. But that distinction is easily lost outside the dusty archives of the Vatican. So it is with libertarian theory and practice.

This is community without responsibility for the well-heeled; it’s the Poors who are the Irresponsibles. Margaret Thatcher famously said regarding social safety net programs, there is no such thing as society, but also that “life is a reciprocal business” in which people have obligations. The trouble is, the “reciprocal business” part gets lost on the streets where people vote. Plus, on Brickbat Mountain, old Cold Warriors just cannot quit The Bear. You say society, they hear socialism. You say community, they hear communism. Plus, they’d like to pick and choose their communities. They don’t like many of those they have to share a country with.

And that’s odd for a country that so venerates its soldier class. I once wrote this for a 30-second radio spot:

Think no child left behind is a goal everyone can embrace?
Then why not no worker left behind, no family left behind, no American left behind?
We train our soldiers, never leave a team member behind. It’s a code of honor.
Why is that good enough for our troops, but not the rest of us?
Been struggling as an army of one?
Don’t stand alone. Register. Vote. Volunteer.

Why does that esprit de corps end at the base fence line?

Finally (just for fun), note that John Terrell is a curator at the Field Museum of Natural History and professor of anthropology at the University of Illinois in Chicago. There’s a video from the Field Museum that’s both ironic and amusing here.

Let’s talk
by Tom Sullivan

Nicholas Kristof this morning calls for an American Truth and Reconciliation Commission in “When Whites Just Don’t Get It, Part 5.” He cites most of the articles I had collected to write about race anyway, so as he says, let’s talk.

We had an experience recently that showed us just how much we don’t get it. Commenting on Ta-Nehisi Coates’ stunning “The Case for Reparations,” I wrote:

On a long drive in the last year or so, we were trading notes with a friend about where we were born, how long we had lived in North Carolina, and something about our family history. It was all pretty light conversation until our friend remarked that her knowledge of family history went back only as far as her great-grandparents in the Caribbean. She didn’t have to explain why. Because before that was Africa.

In white America many take pride or at least an interest in family history. We mostly take it for granted. I certainly did. What jerked us up short was realizing that our friend didn’t have one and why.

Three-quarters of whites have only white friends, Kristof begins, one big reason “we are often clueless.” Then there is the everyday racial profiling we never see. Like being followed around by security in a department store, as our friend experiences, or the professor falsely accused of shoplifting in a chain store here last year. Kristof writes:

“In the jewelry store, they lock the case when I walk in,” a 23-year-old black man wrote in May 1992. “In the shoe store, they help the white man who walks in after me. In the shopping mall, they follow me.”

He described an incident when he was stopped by six police officers who detained him, with guns at the ready, and treated him for 30 minutes as a dangerous suspect.

That young man was future Senator Cory Booker, who had been a senior class president at Stanford University and was a newly selected Rhodes Scholar. Yet our law enforcement system reduced him to a stereotype — so young Booker sat trembling and praying that he wouldn’t be shot by the police.

This kind of underground railroading is invisible to a white America where “racism is over” is the new “I have a black friend.” This is the era of racism without racists.

Yet ProPublica reports that young black men are 21 times more likely to be killed by police than young whites. And we can watch as police seconds after arriving gun down 12 year-old Tamir Rice, but merely chase down a large, white adult who fights with two officers even after being tased.

Kristof continues:

White Americans may protest that our racial problems are not like South Africa’s. No, but the United States incarcerates a higher proportion of blacks than apartheid South Africa did. In America, the black-white wealth gap today is greater than it was in South Africa in 1970 at the peak of apartheid.

Most troubling, America’s racial wealth gap, pay gap and college education gap have all widened in the last few decades.

This country needs to address the problem with something more than categorical claims of color blindness, and more self-aware and coherent than Chief Justice John Roberts‘, “the way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race.” Somebody is in denial and that somebody is us.

Damn, she’s good
by Tom Sullivan

Just last night we were breathing a sigh of relief to hear that Notorious R.B.G. had left the hospital after a stent procedure. I still remember watching Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s Senate confirmation hearings and thinking, damn, she’s good.

But these are more troubled times. It is odd to think the fate of the nation may hang on the 81 year-old Ginsburg staying for now right where she is.

During this fall’s campaign, we had a time convincing people to get off their couches to vote because the Supreme Court was at stake in the Senate race. The workings of the unelected court are that much more removed from the way people think about issue- and personality-driven electoral politics. The Washington Post’s Paul Waldman might agree.

Ordinarily, the Supreme Court is brought up almost as an afterthought in presidential campaigns. The potential for a swing in the court is used to motivate activists to volunteer and work hard, and the candidates usually have to answer a debate question or two about it, which they do in utterly predictable ways (“I’m just going to look for the best person for the job”). We don’t usually spend a great deal of time talking about what a change in the court is likely to mean. But the next president is highly likely to have the chance to engineer a swing in the court. The consequences for Americans’ lives will probably be more consequential and far-reaching than any other issue the candidates will be arguing about.

After Democrats lost ground in this fall’s election, the prospects for getting any remotely progressive SCOTUS nominee approved by a Republican Senate during Obama’s tenure are slim. (Not that Obama would nominate anyone remotely progressive.) However long Ginsburg remains, Waldman believes the next change of personnel on the conservative 5-4 court “could be an earthquake.”

Consider this scenario: Hillary Clinton becomes president in 2017, and sometime later one of the conservative justices retires. Now there would be a liberal majority on the court, a complete transformation in its balance. A court that now consistently favors those with power, whether corporations or the government, would become much more likely to rule in favor of workers, criminal defendants and those with civil rights claims. Or alternately: The Republican nominee wins, and one of the liberal justices retires. With conservatives in control not by 5-4 but 6-3, there would be a cascade of even more conservative decisions. The overturning of Roe v. Wade would be just the beginning.

Unless state Democrats can get their act together soon, it could take more than a 2016 presidential win to ensure SCOTUS replacements for Ginsburg and others that will tilt the balance more to the left. They also have to reclaim the Senate state-by-state. But a big presidential win in 2016 could help. Take it with a grain of salt, but one GOP columnist thinks 2016 prospects look better for Democrats:

Democrats in 2014 were up against a particularly tough climate because they had to defend 13 Senate seats in red or purple states. In 2016 Republicans will be defending 24 Senate seats and at least 18 of them are likely to be competitive based on geography and demographics. Democrats will be defending precisely one seat that could possibly be competitive. One.

As Republican South Carolina Sen. Lindsay Graham said about geography and demographics, “We’re not generating enough angry white guys to stay in business for the long term.” Still, I’m sure we all want to know where that one seat is.

In the meantime, good health to you, Notorious R.B.G.

The #Ferguson #fail
by Tom Sullivan

Eugene Robinson this morning does more criticism of the #Ferguson #fail. Robinson calls out the police, for treating the citizens of Ferguson more like “subjects,” and Prosecuting Attorney Robert McCulloch for not acting like one:

The way McCulloch conducted the grand jury probe was anything but ordinary. Evidence is usually presented in the light most favorable to the prosecution; the idea is to seek an indictment and then figure out guilt or innocence later at trial. McCulloch presented both sides of the case in great detail, essentially asking grand jurors — not trial jurors — to be adjudicators of the facts. He put Brown on trial, not Wilson.

In his rambling, self-justifying news conference announcing the no-indictment decision, McCulloch made clear that he believed the eyewitnesses who supported Wilson’s version of events and disbelieved those who did not. Moreover, he questioned the motives of those who disputed Wilson’s story, as if they could not be relied on to participate in an honest search for the truth.

Indeed, during Ferguson grand jury eye witness testimony, prosecutors ask witnesses to back up and clarify where they were, what they saw, and how they saw it, etc. The questions weren’t especially probing, but prosecutors at least challenged witnesses’ stories somewhat. But not Officer Darren Wilson’s account of events.

Two things stand out.

First, prosecutors made a point of asking witnesses (with variations) if after Michael Brown, wounded and bleeding, stopped running and turned to face Wilson, “Did you ever see Michael Brown charging at the officer?” Was he a threat at that point? Several said no. A couple said yes. (Including Witness 10, as Lawrence O’Donnell reported.) The jury believed the latter.

Second, prosecutors walked Wilson through his account, mostly just prompting him to continue. They asked few, if any, probing, challenging, or clarifying questions. His account went unchallenged.

The Guardian weighed in yesterday on the conduct of Ferguson-area officials in the aftermath of the Michael Brown shooting in The five leaders who failed Ferguson: St Louis County prosecuting attorney Bob McCulloch; Governor Jay Nixon of Missouri; Ferguson police chief Thomas Jackson; Ferguson mayor James Knowles and St Louis County police chief Jon Belmar. From the grand jury to the governor, these officials appear out of their depth.

I had to scratch my head to think if I’d even heard of Knowles in all this mess. Did I miss it or has he been MIA as his city burned? Jon Swaine writes:

Ferguson’s 35-year-old, part-time mayor was almost invisible as his city was engulfed by chaotic protests. Sometimes he popped up in TV interviews to defend the actions of the police. Since then he has proved unable to insert himself into the crisis in any meaningful way, choosing instead to make a series of unfortunate comments.

While other officials were conceding that they had a problem, Knowles told MSNBC in late August: “There’s not a racial divide in the city of Ferguson. That is the perspective of all residents in our city. Absolutely.” He would later say in November that he “absolutely” regretted the remarks, which were roundly dismissed by residents and protesters.

BTW: The photo atop Robinson’s column shows a friend, a Navy vet from the local “Veterans For Peace” chapter, being carried away from a demonstration in front of City Hall in St. Louis. Police dislocated his shoulder during the arrest Wednesday. But he joined more than 100 other protesters for a Thanksgiving meal yesterday:

“You know how at halftime during a football game you get to rest,” he said. “You get that motivational speech. Then you come out stronger for the second half.”

I’ll have a Black Friday without you
by Tom Sullivan

Traditional anti-consumerism boycotts of Black Friday have company this year.

In the wake of the grand jury decision not to charge Officer Darren Wilson in the killing of 18-year-old Michael Brown, activists are encouraging black consumers to turn to economic activism and boycott the busiest shopping day of the year.

Under the title “No Justice, No Profit,” the boycott aims to capitalize on the purchasing power of the black community, which Al Jazeera points out is about $1 trillion, and prove, in a language businesses will understand—money—that injustice doesn’t come without consequence.

Dacia Polk of the Justice for Michael Brown Leadership Coalition explained the boycott to St. Louis Public Radio, saying:

“There will be no business as usual while those who are supposed to protect and serve us,” she said. “Until this nation begins to place value on black lives, there will be no value placed on this business because black lives matter.”

Protesters are urged to avoid large retailers and to support instead local, black-owned businesses. Hashtags: #BoycottBlackFriday, #BlackOutBlackFriday #HandsUpDontSpend, #NotOneDime, and #BrownFriday.

Walmart, the crown jewel of the low-wage economy, is still in the running for “worst corporation in the world.” Again this year, the home of low, low wages faces Thanksgiving and Black Friday protests from community activists and its own employees — I’m sorry Associates:

OUR Walmart first burst onto the scene two years ago, when it used Black Friday, the biggest shopping day of the year, to launch an unprecedented, nationwide strike against Walmart. The group originally demanded that Walmart pay all employees a base salary of at least $25,000 per year, but has since joined with striking fast food workers in demanding at least $15 per hour.

[snip]

As with OUR Walmart’s first major action in 2012, this year’s Black Friday protests will not be a typical strike. Many of those picketing Walmart — perhaps even most — will be outside supporters of the OUR Walmart campaign, not store employees themselves. Those employees who do walk off the job will likely do so for just one day. Yet OUR Walmart has said that their prior work stoppages are legally protected strikes, and the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) has agreed. Strikes over wages and working conditions, or over an alleged ULP (unfair labor practice), such as illegally retaliating against workers, are protected by federal law.

Besides fringe benefits like missing Thanksgiving and Christmas with families, Associates also miss meals:

This year’s protests by Walmart workers will kick off on Thanksgiving with a 24-hour fast by 12 protesters. The fast, which is protesting the hunger suffered by some Walmart workers who can’t afford food, will be staged outside a Los Angeles store.

One of the workers participating in the fast is Richard Reynoso, an overnight stocker at the Duarte, California store. Reynoso is one of those workers who cannot afford to purchase three meals a day. As a result, he only eats once a day on his lunch break.

“Sometimes all I have money for is a can of tuna and crackers,” he said.

But progressives need to be careful. Even as living wage advocates demand higher wages from big-box retailers, such protests can pit them against the very communities they hope to help. Those everyday low prices enable the Waltons’ clientele in poorer neighborhoods to stretch their limited incomes. Perhaps a new slogan?

Walmart: We make poor affordable

Shift minions getting all uppity
by Tom Sullivan

So, what? Do these uppity, chronically stressed workers think The Economy exists to serve people instead of the other way around? Employees — I’m sorry, Associates — are supposed to genuflect and cross themselves at the sound of their master’s voice, and ask how high when Job Creators says jump. What are those Left Coast socialists smoking?

Politico:

Meet your new union reps: the statehouse and City Hall.

San Francisco’s new law, which its Board of Supervisors passed Tuesday by unanimous vote, will require any “formula retailer” (retail chain) with 20 or more locations worldwide that employs 20 or more people within the city to provide two weeks’ advance notice for any change in a worker’s schedule. An employer that alters working hours without two weeks’ notice — or fails to notify workers two weeks ahead of time that their schedules won’t change — will be required to provide additional “predictability pay.“ Property service contractors that provide janitorial or security services for these retailers will also need to abide by the new rule.

What’s worse, these subversive notions have a way of spreading east from the Left Coast like viruses. Call out the dragoons.

Speaking of predictability, the San Francisco Chamber of Commerce is predictably miffed about the “Retail Workers Bill of Rights.” For struggling hourly workers, taking classes, caring for families, and raising children (and managing day care logistics) is something The Economy expects you to fit in between work shifts at multiple, part-time, low-paying, no-benefits service jobs where shift schedules vary a lot. But that’s just the way it is and the way The Economy likes it. With labor unions weakened and workers disempowered, setting working conditions once governed by collective bargaining agreements now falls to local Democrats. That is, if you can find any that aren’t Republican lite.

And go figure, labor-friendly measures such as the Retail Workers Bill of Rights are popular. HuffPost:

With Congressional Republicans opposing a minimum wage hike and other legislation aimed at low-wage work, labor unions and their progressive allies have found much more success on the local level. Despite the drubbing that Democrats took in the midterm elections earlier this month, binding ballot initiatives on the minimum wage passed easily in four red states. A measure that will require many employers to provide their workers with paid sick days also passed in Massachusetts.

Politico continues:

Increased unpredictability in work schedules is driven by technology. When store foot traffic had to be measured manually and work schedules were typed out, employers found it cumbersome to alter work schedules too frequently. But just as computers created vast new producer efficiencies through just-in-time store inventories, so, too, did they create vast new staffing efficiencies through just-in-time work scheduling. Trouble is, getting moved around at the click of a mouse is more disruptive to human beings than it is to refrigerators and automobiles.

“Efficiency” is like “shareholder value” that way. When they start hearing it, flesh-and-blood consumable resources better update their resumes, stock up on antacid, and learn to get by with even less sleep.

Earlier this year, 32-year-old Maria Fernandes of Newark, NJ died of asphyxiation while catnapping in her car between shifts of her four part-time jobs. The Economy did not attend her funeral.