#also the unions big thing is 25 by 25 ($25 an hour by 2025) and i’m still getting 14.25 (exactly minimum wage…..) hope my professor and her | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

orbemnews · 3 years

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Were the Airline Bailouts Really Needed? A year ago this week, Doug Parker, the chief executive of American Airlines, flew to Washington to begin what became a yearlong lobbying campaign for a series of taxpayer-funded bailouts during the pandemic. He wasn’t alone. The campaign also included leaders from Alaska Airlines, Allegiant Air, Delta Air Lines, Frontier Airlines, Hawaiian Airlines, JetBlue Airways, United Airlines, SkyWest Airlines and Southwest Airlines — all with their hands extended. The flight attendant and pilot unions were also part of the lobbying. A year later, as the stock market cruises to new heights, questions should be asked about the $50 billion in grants that were used to prop up the airline industry. Was it worth it? And was it necessary? The good news is that the rescue money likely saved as many as 75,000 jobs, most remaining at full pay. And that money also kept the airlines from filing for bankruptcy, and in a position to ferry passengers all over the country to jump start economic growth as the health crisis subsides. The bad news is that it is also likely that taxpayers massively overpaid: The original grant of $25 billion in April meant that each of the 75,000 jobs saved cost the equivalent of more than $300,000. And with each additional round of bailout money, that price has grown. The truth is that shareholders of the airlines have been the biggest beneficiaries. That includes airline executives, many of whom have been paid in stock for years and stood to lose millions of dollars if their holdings were wiped out. Airline chiefs collected tens of millions per year in compensation before the pandemic, in part by boosting their companies’ share prices by regularly buying back tens of billions in shares. That meant setting aside less money for a rainy day — or, in this case, a pandemic. But here we are: Shares of United traded below $20 in May; today they are above $60. The patterns are similar for the other major carriers. Airline stocks — lifted by taxpayers — are up nearly 200 percent from their pandemic trough and have almost recovered their losses. It is fair to say that we socialized the airline industry’s losses and largely privatized the gains. No other industry affected by the pandemic received more from the government. There was no special program for hotels or restaurants or travel agencies. Companies in those industries had to line up for the small business-focused Paycheck Protection Program and pray. The largest loan the program could make was $10 million. The question isn’t whether airline employees should have been helped, it’s whether airline shareholders should have been. The airline bailouts weren’t simply a job-protection program, as advertised. In case you’re not convinced, there’s this: United invested $20 million into an electric helicopter company last month that went public through a special purpose acquisition company, or SPAC. Does that sound like a company that is in such dire straits that it requires a taxpayer-funded bailout? It received a third rescue payment after it made the investment. With the stock market now soaring, it is worth considering whether the airlines needed taxpayer money at all. Private investors seem to be willing to throw money at everything these days, from celebrity-backed blank-check companies with no profits to troubled video game retailers, Bitcoin and digital art. Why not airlines? Even during the depths of the pandemic, in April last year, Carnival Cruise Line managed to raise $4 billion in debt from private investors, just as the airlines were still negotiating their first rescue deal with the government. That said, Carnival had to pay dearly for the money, with an interest rate of around 12 percent. Frequently Asked Questions About the New Stimulus Package How big are the stimulus payments in the bill, and who is eligible? The stimulus payments would be $1,400 for most recipients. Those who are eligible would also receive an identical payment for each of their children. To qualify for the full $1,400, a single person would need an adjusted gross income of $75,000 or below. For heads of household, adjusted gross income would need to be $112,500 or below, and for married couples filing jointly that number would need to be $150,000 or below. To be eligible for a payment, a person must have a Social Security number. Read more. What would the relief bill do about health insurance? Buying insurance through the government program known as COBRA would temporarily become a lot cheaper. COBRA, for the Consolidated Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act, generally lets someone who loses a job buy coverage via the former employer. But it’s expensive: Under normal circumstances, a person may have to pay at least 102 percent of the cost of the premium. Under the relief bill, the government would pay the entire COBRA premium from April 1 through Sept. 30. A person who qualified for new, employer-based health insurance someplace else before Sept. 30 would lose eligibility for the no-cost coverage. And someone who left a job voluntarily would not be eligible, either. Read more What would the bill change about the child and dependent care tax credit? This credit, which helps working families offset the cost of care for children under 13 and other dependents, would be significantly expanded for a single year. More people would be eligible, and many recipients would get a bigger break. The bill would also make the credit fully refundable, which means you could collect the money as a refund even if your tax bill was zero. “That will be helpful to people at the lower end” of the income scale, said Mark Luscombe, principal federal tax analyst at Wolters Kluwer Tax & Accounting. Read more. What student loan changes are included in the bill? There would be a big one for people who already have debt. You wouldn’t have to pay income taxes on forgiven debt if you qualify for loan forgiveness or cancellation — for example, if you’ve been in an income-driven repayment plan for the requisite number of years, if your school defrauded you or if Congress or the president wipes away $10,000 of debt for large numbers of people. This would be the case for debt forgiven between Jan. 1, 2021, and the end of 2025. Read more. What would the bill do to help people with housing? The bill would provide billions of dollars in rental and utility assistance to people who are struggling and in danger of being evicted from their homes. About $27 billion would go toward emergency rental assistance. The vast majority of it would replenish the so-called Coronavirus Relief Fund, created by the CARES Act and distributed through state, local and tribal governments, according to the National Low Income Housing Coalition. That’s on top of the $25 billion in assistance provided by the relief package passed in December. To receive financial assistance — which could be used for rent, utilities and other housing expenses — households would have to meet several conditions. Household income could not exceed 80 percent of the area median income, at least one household member must be at risk of homelessness or housing instability, and individuals would have to qualify for unemployment benefits or have experienced financial hardship (directly or indirectly) because of the pandemic. Assistance could be provided for up to 18 months, according to the National Low Income Housing Coalition. Lower-income families that have been unemployed for three months or more would be given priority for assistance. Read more. Airline chiefs and labor union bosses convinced Congress that the industry was different — and more indispensable. They made the case that if airlines were to fall into bankruptcy, there would be no planes ready to help revive the economy when the time came. They argued that pilots couldn’t be laid off and quickly rehired, since they need to be in flight regularly or training on simulators to be certified to fly. Would airlines have stopped flying in bankruptcy? Nope. In previous airline bankruptcies — and there have been dozens — the companies kept operating. The government could have provided financing under that scenario, similar to the way it did when it rescued General Motors in 2009, taking a major equity stake in the company so that taxpayers could share in the upside when it recovered. The airlines, in exchange for the taxpayer money, agreed to some conditions, including halting stock buybacks, reducing executive pay and agreeing to issue stock warrants to the government. But the warrants are tiny. In the case of American Airlines, the company will issue warrants that are worth about $230 million today — a small fraction of the $4 billion that the taxpayers bequeathed the carrier’s shareholders in the first round of bailouts. Of course, we’ll never know what would have happened to the industry had it been forced to raise money on its own. “Congress has saved thousands of airline jobs, preserved the livelihoods of our hard-working team members and helped position the industry to play a central role in the nation’s recovery from Covid-19,” Mr. Parker and a top lieutenant at American Airlines said in a statement after the latest round of bailouts last week. “Lawmakers from both parties have backed legislation that recognizes the dedication of airline professionals and the importance of the essential work they do.” After the banking crisis of 2008 led to bailouts, the recriminations began when firms like Goldman Sachs had a banner year in the aftermath — and paid bankers record bonuses. Will the same thing happen to the airlines? Under the terms of their bailouts, the chief executives’ compensation this year and last was capped at about half what they received before the pandemic. Delta has already begun to issue special payments to some other managers. It says this is to compensate them in part for extra hours worked during the pandemic. “The payment of special bonuses to management while the airline is still burning cash is premature and inappropriate,” said Chris Riggins, a spokesman for the Air Line Pilots Association, in a statement this month. The worst for the airline industry may be over, but the debate about the appropriateness of the pandemic bailouts is just getting started. Source link Orbem News #airline #Bailouts #needed

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deniscollins · 4 years

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Here’s What Companies Are Promising to Do to Fight Racism

In response to racism and racial inequities some companies are being proactive, such as hiring preferences, product and service amendments, banned racist symbols, and new investments. What, if any, changes can your organization make to address racial inequities?

Friday will be a paid company holiday for employees at Nike. The same goes for workers at Twitter, Target, General Motors, the National Football League and a variety of other businesses. JPMorgan Chase, Capital One and other banks will close branches early.

Companies big and small decided to recognize Juneteenth, a holiday that commemorates the end of slavery, after the killing of George Floyd set off an urgent national conversation about race.

Companies are usually quiet at moments of public upheaval and hesitant to take a political stand for fear of alienating customers. But since Mr. Floyd’s killing late last month, businesses of all kinds have expressed their solidarity with protesters, donated millions of dollars to organizations dedicated to racial justice or vowed to change their office cultures to be more inclusive.

But some have gone further, announcing intentions to make concrete changes inside their own institutions or in how they do business. Here is a list of some of the promises made.

Adidas

The sportswear giant said it would fill at least 30 percent of all open positions at Adidas and Reebok, which it also owns, with black or Latinx candidates.

Amazon and IBM

Amazon has placed a one-year moratorium on police use of Rekognition, its facial recognition technology, which has come under fire for its unfair treatment of African-Americans. Similarly, IBM said it would no longer offer, develop or research facial recognition technology, citing potential human rights and privacy abuses.

Andreessen Horowitz

The investment firm donated $2.2 million to start the Talent x Opportunity fund, a program designed to support entrepreneurs from underserved communities. The company will provide entrepreneurs with seed capital and training to help start their businesses.

Apple

The technology company is creating an entrepreneurship camp for black software developers to promote their best work and ideas, and said it would increase the number of black-owned suppliers that provide materials for its operations.

Estée Lauder

The cosmetics brand said it would make sure the percentage of black employees at all levels in the company would mirror the percentage of black people that make up the United States population within the next five years. It also committed to doubling recruits from historically black colleges and universities in the next two years. Over the next three years, the company committed to doubling the amount it currently spends on sourcing ingredients, packing materials and supplies from black-owned businesses.

FitBit

The company behind the fitness app said it would support research projects to address health conditions that disproportionately affect black people, including Covid-19. FitBit also pledged to offer more workouts from black fitness influencers on its app and feature them on its social media channels.

NASCAR

The motorsports organization has barred confederate flags from its events and properties. NASCAR had begun asking fans to stop bringing Confederate battle flags to its races in 2015, but many have brought the flag anyway, hoisting it atop campers and R.V.s on fields around racetracks. NASCAR said it would set protocols for how the ban will be enforced at its tracks.

PayPal

The payment platform created a $500 million fund to support black and minority businesses by strengthening ties with community banks and credit unions serving underrepresented communities as well as investing directly in black and minority-led startups. Another $10 million was set aside for grants to assist black-owned businesses affected by Covid-19, with an extra $5 million to fund program grants and employee matching gifts for nonprofits working with black business owners. Paypal also pledged to put $15 million into efforts to create more robust internal diversity and inclusion programs.

PepsiCo

The beverage giant said it would increase the number of black managers at the company by 30 percent by 2025. It committed to adding more than 250 black employees to its managerial positions, including a minimum of 100 black employees to their executive ranks.

It said it would double spending with black-owned suppliers and create more jobs for black people at the company’s marketing agencies.

It said it would work to showcase content about racial justice on their platform and remove all ads from Black Lives matter search results so users can focus on learning about the movement.

Sephora and Rent the Runway

The beauty chain took the 15 Percent Pledge, which means it will look to increase the amount of shelf space given over to products from black-owned businesses to 15 percent. Rent the Runway also committed to the 15 Percent Pledge.

SoftBank

The Japanese conglomerate said it would start a $100 million fund to invest in companies led by minority entrepreneurs in the United States.

Target

The retailer, which has its headquarters in Minneapolis, is donating 10,000 hours of consulting services for small businesses owned by black people in the Twin Cities to help with rebuilding efforts.

Trek

The bicycle manufacturer plans to create 1,000 cycling industry jobs for black people by investing $2.5 million over 10 years in a new retail management and bicycle training scholarship program. It also pledged to invest $5 million over the next three years to establish new bike shops in underserved communities, with the goal of building 50 stores in 10 years.

To help make competitive cycling more diverse, Trek pledged to establish a scholarship fund to equip 25 National Interscholastic Cycling Association teams made up of children of diverse ethic backgrounds for the next 10 years.

Viacom CBS

One of Viacom’s subsidiaries, BET, launched a $25 million social justice initiative called Content for Change. Beginning on Friday, it will air original short-form programming and a slate of films including “Selma” and “Do the Right Thing.”

Walmart

The retail giant said it would end the practice of storing “multicultural cosmetic products” in locked cases in its stores. CVS and Walgreens followed suit.

Walmart also said it would invest $100 million over the next five years to create a Center on Racial Equity. The center’s mission will be to support philanthropic initiatives that address systemic racism in American society, including job training and criminal justice reform.

Warner Media

Committed on June 4 to providing on-air advertising to Color of Change, a nonprofit civil rights advocacy organization, and the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund. The company also announced it was giving $500,000 to its content innovation program, OneFifty, to support the development of issue-focused shows from underrepresented communities.

HBO Max, owned by WarnerMedia, temporarily removed “Gone With the Wind” from its library in the wake of the George Floyd protests, but later said the film would return to the platform, accompanied by an introduction that puts the film into historical context.

YouTube

The Google-owned platform invested in a $100 million fund to support and promote the work of black creators and artists. It also pledged to re-examine its policies to ensure that black users and artists are protected from white supremacist and bullying content.

#Racism

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theinvinciblenoob · 6 years

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Uber is in court in the UK today to try to overturn a decision by London’s transport regulator last fall to withdraw its license to operate in the city — where it claims to have some 3.5 million regular users.

Its appeal is being heard in Westminster Magistrates Court from today, with the hearing expected to last for several days. The company can continue to operate its service in London while it appeals the decision.

Transport for London (TfL) sent shockwaves through the ride-hailing giant last September when it rejected Uber’s application to renew its license on the grounds the company is “not fit and proper to hold a private hire operator licence” — a long history of rule-defying behavior finally catching up with the company.

TfL criticized the company’s approach and conduct, saying it demonstrated “a lack of corporate responsibility in relation to a number of issues which have potential public safety and security implications” — including how it reported serious criminal offenses, and explanations it gave for its use of proprietary software (called Greyball) which it had developed internally to try to prevent officials from undertaking regulatory or law enforcement duties.

Notably, the court will be deciding whether Uber is fit and proper to hold an operator license at the time of the appeal hearing — rather than determining whether TfL made the right call to refuse a renewal last year.

So operational changes Uber has made since then will be taken into consideration.

In its favored media mouthpiece — the London Evening Standard newspaper, whose editor, George Osborne, consults for major Uber investor, BlackRock — Uber’s UK general manager Tom Elvidge has been given space for a lengthy op-ed where he admits the company “got things wrong along the way” before setting out the case for Uber having turned over a new leaf.

“Over the past year we’ve been working hard to put right past mistakes as we’ve gone through a much-needed period of reflection and change,” he writes. “Our new global CEO, Dara Khosrowshahi, is establishing a new culture and direction for the company from the top, while in the UK we’ve brought in three experienced independent directors to help us stay on the right track. If there are times when we fall short, we are committed to being open, taking responsibility for the problem, and fixing it.”

Talking to Politico last month, Khosrowshahi — the Uber outsider tasked last summer with cleaning up its problematic legacy under founder and former CEO Travis Kalanick — said technology companies need to take greater responsibility or prepare to have responsibility imposed upon them by more regulation.

“We’re open to doing business with cities in the way in which cities want to do business,” he told the publication. “We’re not going to be absolutist in our approach, we will adjust on a local basis.”

“This was a company that had a very particular culture that worked for it during the unbelievable growth years, during the startup phase. But it was time for the culture to change,” Khosrowshahi also added.

Among the changes Elvidge flags up are a cap on driver hours that Uber brought in in January (this after rising political pressure — including explicit scrutiny of gig economy practices by UK MPs); an incoming 24/7 phone support line for the UK (a measure that the Uber of three-years-ago was lobbying against, along with a raft of other rule changes TfL was considering and which that Uber railed against as “bureaucratic”… how times change!); and the launch of insurance products for drivers and couriers in Europe — including a big expansion of cover to 21 European countries from this month.

Although — on the latter front — Uber continues to face criticism over how its business model classifies service providers on its platforms (i.e. as self-employed contractors, rather than workers). And a 2016 decision by UK employment tribunal judged a group of Uber drivers to be workers — a decision Uber continues to appeal.

At the end of last year Europe’s top court also ruled against Uber’s regulation-swerving claim to be just a technology platform — judging it a transport provider service instead — a decision that firmly closed the door on the old Uber playbook of claiming local taxi regulations don’t apply to its business.

Meaning Uber really does have to work with cities and play nice if it wants to grow its business. (And it has been selectively expanding in Europe, at the same time as parking its service in other markets where regulatory conditions remain unfavorable — so the company is generally abiding by political traffic lights.)

Elvidge also claims that Uber has improved its working relationship with the Met Police — whose criticisms of its conduct were core to TfL’s license decision last year — saying it now “proactively” reports “any serious incident related to an Uber trip in London”.

Another operational evolution he flags up is that Uber is sharing “anonymised and aggregated data” from millions of trips — via its Movement tool — to help transport planners “identify bottlenecks and make informed decisions”.

In February TfL published a policy statement setting out its intentions for adopting transport regulations that could mesh well with the fast-changing sector — and the statement called for operators to share “travel pattern data” with it. So Uber has clearly responded positively to that.

In its policy statement TfL also said it was looking at expanding accessibility by requiring a minimum percentage of private hire vehicles to be wheelchair accessible. And again Uber looks to be trying to show it’s listening, with Elvidge saying it’s “working to make wait times for wheelchair-accessible vehicles even shorter and an extra 1,000 drivers will soon go through disability equality training”.

He also lays out Uber’s intention to go multi-modal in time — including by adding “public transport and cycling options to our app, so we help more people ditch their own cars and tackle congestion too”.

Uber does now have its own e-bike division, Jump, so this is a natural step for the company to take — and the direction of travel generally for urban mobility. But air quality and traffic congestion have been key areas of policy concern for TfL and London’s mayor, Sadiq Khan — so there’s a clear underlying political pull to this Uber gear change too.

Elvidge says the company will go fully electric in London by 2025, adding that it will be setting out more details on the “plan to get thousands of diesel cars off the road” in the coming weeks. “We are… determined to help the Mayor with one of his biggest priorities: tackling air pollution in the capital,” he adds.

Another change Uber is keen to spotlight going into the court hearing is the recent launch of Uber driver advisory groups in the UK — as a mechanism for it to take and respond to their feedback, with Elvidge claiming Uber is “acting on what they tell us”.

Although — also today — the IWGB Union has put out the results of a survey it conducted with around 500 private hire vehicle drivers in the UK and which it claims shows there’s an “epidemic of violence in the trade”.

The survey found that 55% of all private hire drivers have been physically assaulted at work; 78% have been threatened with violence; and 80% have been victims of hate crime.

For Uber driver specifically just under half (49%) said they have been assaulted, but the percentages for threats of violence and hate crime were the same.

While 75% of Uber drivers surveyed said the firm “rarely or never” supports them with police complaints including disclosure of the identity of the offending passengers; 67% said the firm “rare or never takes responsibility for their safety”; and 68% said they rarely or never receive training on safeguarding or vulnerable passengers.

Uber declined to comment on the IWGB survey results when we asked.

via TechCrunch

#IFTTT #TechCrunch

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omginstantpaperbouquetblr · 7 years

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By Miguel Guevara.

In the year 2042, an oral history of the then 25 year-old ongoing Revolutionary Participatory Society organization/project in the U.S. will be published. The book’s fifteen chapters will excerpt and arrange insights culled from eighteen interviews to present events and ideas in a sequential, encompassing way.

By unknown dynamics, the book’s introduction, its 18 source interviews, and even drafts of its chapters, have begun to appear via email in the present. The web site at http://rps2044.org presents more about the project, its aims, and ways to relate to it, and offers more of its currently available substance as well.

In any event, the interviewer is named Miguel Guevara and the interviewee in this article is named Juliet Berkman. The year they meet is 2041. The interview is a virtually verbatim transcription. Also, as there are 18 interviews and since Guevara seeks to avoid undue overlap, no one interview addresses more than a facet of the larger whole.

–Michael Albert

Juliet Berkman, you are a militant feminist, born in 1993 who became politically engaged roughly in parallel with the emergence of RPS. You have been a workplace and union organizer and are known for your effective advocacy of non violent tactics and your outreach to people holding seriously contrary views. You have been centrally involved with RPS from its earliest days and a shadow Secretary of Labor. Thank you for welcoming this interview. To start, I wonder, do you remember how you first became radical?

I was brought up in a family with radical parents. When I entered college, I had radical insights and beliefs, but I didn’t have the drive that propels action.

When Donald Trump was elected I got ill and almost bottomed out. I was upset by Trump but also by my community of radicals many of whom seemed bent more on preserving some kind of radical status than on moving forward. It was the first and last time I ever got fall down drunk and my dissolution lasted for many weeks.

Thankfully, the resistance that emerged from countless directions restored my hope. I knew Trump was a product of our society and an aberration only in being as uncouth and extreme as he was, and that scared the hell out of me and gave me drive.

To provide some additional personal context, can you tell us the highpoint events of RPS over the past twenty years, not for others, or for history, but for you?

It’s a hard question. I would say, certainly the first two conventions and the campaign for balanced jobs beginning in 2024 and for the 30 hour week starting in 2025. But for me more personally, here are two that aren’t on the map of RPS history for many other people.

One was negative. It was a meeting RPS arranged with workers in a defense plant that was associated with a campus where the students were fighting against military ties and research. It was the early days of that struggle and I spoke in a large room to protesting students and defense oriented employees.

I called for closing the worker’s workplace. I offered no concern for their future livelihoods. I rightly had on my mind warfare, but wrongly did not have on my mind the situation of those sucked into its maws. I railed at them as if they were war mongering enemies of peace because they weren’t rushing out to join the student protests that would, as formulated, end their employment.

Even as I was doing it, even caught up in the moment and offering the workers a suicidal notion of what solidarity with the students required, I began to feel incredibly ill at ease. Later I saw a video of it and I was seriously depressed at what I had done and violently angry at myself for doing it.

It was the kind of thing radicals and revolutionaries often get caught up in due to having eyes on “being radical” but not on the conditions and feelings of those we were ostensibly trying to reach. It was the kind of thing that repeatedly made working people so angry as to completely dismiss our substance due to our apparent disdain for them. Thinking about my ugly behavior greatly affected my priorities, too late for that event, but in time for much more. And of course, movements against war making learned the lesson as well.

And the second?

I was at a memorial service held for civil rights activists from past years. The music, the solidarity, all of it combined to transport me until I had, I guess, a bit of a psychotic break. It was as if I was in Birmingham, as if I could see Bull Conner in action, as if I could see the activists literally risking life and limb for change.

After that I reread Martin Luther King Jr.’s letter from a Birmingham Jail and his more famous Mountaintop speech. I was incredibly inspired. I even memorized them. Later, when in jail or risking jail or even choosing to not risk it, I would repeat the speeches to myself. Even absent, MLK was a guide and mentor for me.

What can you tell us about the first signs of RPS?

This is difficult because we can trace aspects back decades and longer. But I think people began to have what became RPS type unity in their minds nearly 25 years ago.

I remember my first such feeling at a rally in Detroit about minimum wage and also police violence. I went with my young daughter. It was a nice day, a calm crowd, and everyone enjoyed the camaraderie. It appeared typical, yet I felt something was happening beyond the two stated priorities.

Many speakers explained how the low minimum wage and police violence were part of a larger dynamic of oppression and denigration. Speakers joined class, race, gender, and sexuality to the wage and the police violence issues, and vice versa.

I had heard such linkages before, but this time the speakers added that everything had to be renovated for anything to comprehensively change. A few speakers called what they were seeking revolution and called for organizational continuity and coherence. Some offered ideas for what an organization needed to do to raise wages, reduce violence, and especially win new social relations.

I had attended many prior rallies and demonstrations but I had always felt that despite people’s passionate rhetoric what we were doing was time bound, issue bound, and place bound. I had heard the most powerful, uplifting, and inspiring rhetoric, but when sobriety returned, I had always felt the words lacked follow-up substance.

When Trump was elected, the activist priority, even while many were starting to ask for more, became largely to stop him from bludgeoning us into the past. Thinking about that, I realized that for decades activism had typically emphasized thwarting horrible plans. But the rally in Detroit didn’t say the same old things to sound radical. It said new things to be radical. And I wanted in.

That was my turning point toward what would become RPS. Even more than the ideas circulating that day, what attracted me was a no surrender feeling in the air. It transcended verbal artistry. It urged winning fundamental gains tether than preventing imminent losses. Maybe my memory embroidered the event, but I don’t think so.

Many have said that the great 2020 March on Wall Street was their jumping off place for RPS. Not you?

My personal turning point was the earlier, smaller rally, but yes, the March on Wall Street, with 300,000 people, had that same feeling. And the march certainly inspired many more people than the earlier rally.

I remember at the Wall Street march feeling part of something much bigger. The march addressed income distribution and corporations. It displayed an emergent community defining itself. Connections were diversifying. We were inside a young but growing organism.

On the surface, the Wall Street march delivered focused dissent and excellent demands. Underneath, we were defining our connection to each other and our attitude to society.

A rousing speech called “We Are the Future,” was given. Have you heard it?

“We are a movement for dignity and justice. We support one another even as we seek change for all.

We are not solely against impoverished budgets, cavernous inequality, racist repression, gender subjugation, sexual predation, schools as factories, corrupt pharmaceutical drug dealing, corporate profiteering, disempowering work relations, war, repression, OR global warming.

No. We are against impoverished budgets, cavernous inequality, racist repression, gender subjugation, sexual predation, schools as factories, corrupt pharmaceutical drug dealing, corporate profiteering, disempowering work relations, war, repression, AND global warming.

We don’t seek racial solidarity and integrity, gender equity and dignity, sexual diversity and liberation, political freedom and self management, OR economic equity, diversity, and classlessness.

No. We seek racial solidarity and integrity, gender equity and dignity, sexual diversity and liberation, political freedom and self management, AND economic equity, diversity, and classlessness.

The speech continued but even those few words reveal how folks were traveling toward the encompassing ethos of RPS. I knew the Wall Street March was a big and confident gathering. I was optimistic, but if you had told me that thirteen years later I would be Secretary of Labor in a Shadow Government created by an organization that would be fully transforming society by 2045, I would have laughed. Luckily, I would have been wrong.

I think my initial mentality, getting into RPS, was simple. I believed when a highwayman points a gun at your head and demands your money or your life, you hand him your wallet. You ‘consent’ because his gun makes dissent suicide. Similarly, I believed when you work for a capitalist employer, his owning the job and demanding your subservience or you get no income, makes dissent suicide. That had to stop. But I didn’t realize how fast that view could spread.

Juliet, others I have interviewed have told me cynicism was a big problem at the outset. Did you also encounter resistance based on cynicism? If so, how did you reply to it? And what impact did encountering this have on you and RPS?

We all encountered it – including inside our own feelings. When Trump became President virtually everyone had moments of desperate depression or denial. And while resistance to Trump grew quickly, and while in helping with that we had to address various intermediate obstacles, once blocking Trump was accomplished, to go any further we almost always encountered skeptical defeatism about human potentials. It sometimes reared up in ourselves, as well.

My way of replying, and of overcoming my own backsliding was indirect. I would ask people, can you think of even one person who is not evil? Perhaps your grandmother, some personage, maybe yourself? I could get everyone to say “yes, I have someone in mind.”

Then I would say, okay, place that person on the social side of a ledger. Now list as many folks as you want on the anti social side, Hitler, Trump, the Clintons, the rest of your friends and family and yourself, or whoever comes to mind as evidencing your idea that people are just too evil and too anti social to attain desirable social institutions.

Now consider, I would say to them, that if evil was inevitably wired into human nature – like having kidneys, eyes, or a heart – everyone would be on the evil side of the ledger. Evil is not inevitable. On the other hand, we know evil is possible because anti social folks certainly exist. We know evil can lie and manipulate and fear monger its way into major office. So we know human nature allows people to become evil. To deny that would be ridiculous. It happens, therefore it is possible. But it is only possible. It is not inevitable. Otherwise you, your grandmother, or whoever you indicated was nice, would be evil.

So we have to ask, if anti sociality isn’t wired in, why are so many people so seriously greedy and violent or at least callous toward others, not just in Trumpian moments, but all the time?

For the answer, I would urge whoever I was addressing to look around at the institutional setting we all operate in. Together we would note how it produces the anti social and even the evil traits and tendencies they were calling part of human nature. We would see that our institutional setting rewards and even requires greed, insecurity, and violence while it punishes the more social and caring inclinations we also find in people. Since the latter persist, widely, it must be because the better traits are in our natures, albeit able to be muted. Our better sides have nowhere else to come from since institutions don’t foster them. The anti social aspects, can be – and I would say they are – mostly produced by circumstances that impose them.

Sometimes it would have to end there. For example. I remember many times giving talks, offering that viewpoint, and then moving on. But other times, discussions went longer. Maybe it was me and one other person. Or maybe it was talking with a group in an open ended discussion in a dorm or workplace, or meeting with a group and going on as long as possible.

Longer discussions would consider how our social roles mute our social inclinations and impose anti social ones. And this would be a very pertinent matter bearing on people’s deepest beliefs. The reasoning was trivial, even obvious, yet the discussions were hard. People could not hear it at first. They would find my claims opaque. This was not a logical difficulty. It was a difficulty accepting that one had taken false things for granted.

Did you have other ways of addressing the cynicism?

Sometimes I would borrow an approach from Noam Chomsky. Imagine you are looking out a window on a really hot summer day. There is a child with an ice cream cone. Along comes a big adult. The hulking figure takes the cone, swats the kid into the gutter, and walks on. Do you say to yourself about the guying walking off with the ice cream, there goes a fine specimen of humanity? Do you think to yourself, that guy’s human nature is freely expressing itself? “Gimme that ice cream and get out of my way” is in our genes like having a liver is in our genes? Do you think to yourself, I wish I could be as true to my real self as the ice cream grabber is being to himself? Or do you think, there goes a pathological deviant who has been warped by his history or was perhaps born seriously messed up?

Chomsky had another way of dealing that I did not like as much. He would say, look, I know that if we do nothing, the result will be dismal or worse. If we work hard to win change, the result may be better. Surely we should try.

The logic was solid but at least when I tried using it, it was often ineffective. The problem was that people have difficult personal lives, jobs, overtime, families. To give time, energy, and emotional focus to fighting for change incurs emotional, social, and sometimes material costs. A person hearing that to not fight for change is suicide but to do so may accomplish something would often ask themselves, but will my personally fighting for social change offset losses for those I care about better than my choosing to directly benefit them? For their answer to be yes required informed hope and a broader sense of solidarity. Inspiration often needed more then an entreaty to hedge against disaster.

I first reached this perception with my own parents and some close friends. I was on my activist path. They were very progressive, very liberal, but in no sense trying to affect change. And while the above approaches to inspiring involvement had some modest effect on some people I talked with, any significant shift in their actual choices had to wait for them to gain a sense of efficacy and hope.

So, yes, I agree with cynicism being a big problem. The root factor causing many to resist seeking change was hopelessness. Events that would spontaneously generate hope such as massive outpourings of dissent that betokened more outpourings to come were kryptonite for cynicism. Wide dissent like that against Trump momentarily struck at cynicism’s foundations. But you couldn’t provide that kind of jolt as an individual in a one on one discussion. Operating one to one, you had to resort to thought experiments like those about a loving grandma or an ice cream grabbing brute. And even socially sparked involvement needed something more to persist through slow times. Writ larger, the effect of encountering so much cynicism on me and on many others was to eventually make us see that while we had to accurately criticize unjust relations and show their roots and catastrophic implications – doing that would rarely if ever alone generate sustained forward looking activism.

So then what more did you need to provide?

Beyond overcoming imposed ignorance and willful rationalization, we had to address people’s emotional resistance to becoming radically active. We had to overcome peoples’ view that we cannot win a better world because the enemy is too powerful for us to beat or because our natures are so anti social that any seeming victory would eventually devolve into new oppression and deprivation. Even further, we had to provide hope that each person could personally contribute to such an undertaking in a meaningful and worthwhile way.

Generating compelling vision and strategy had to become a priority. Yet that was hard to do. We had to change the balance of our intellectual and organizing efforts from overwhelmingly emphasizing what is wrong with current society and detailing the oncoming dangers that we had to ward off while saying nearly nothing about what we want, to doing some critique of current society, of course, and warding off disastrous oncoming possibilities, of course, but mostly clarifying what a good society would look like and why it would be viable, worthy, and stable, as well as how we might help win it.

I went from constantly saying war kills, poverty starves, diminishment stifles, racism subjugates, bad is bad – and constantly demonstrating how tenacious profit seeking, gender hierarchy, market competition, racial segregation, and political exclusion are – to showing what justice could mean in the shape of new fulfillment and new institutions and to showing how people’s choices could lead to justice in the shape of new ways of organizing and struggling. And I had to make that change not only because it was required to win, but because I really believed it and truly believing it was critical because otherwise no one would believe me. I think that is what RPS mainly gave me in those early days.

Juliet, feminist insights had been front and center in left activism for over fifty years at the time RPS was born. Yet, RPS made dealing with gender and sexuality in society and internally a core priority. Why was that necessary?

We had certainly made huge gains over those decades. We can see countless indicators. For example, in 1960 women doctors didn’t just have a hard time at work, rather, they were nearly as rare as black swans. Women had mainly household roles like nurturing and cleaning. Fully participating in social and economic life was largely precluded. Showing initiative more likely yielded women ostracism and even psychiatric confinement or brutal beatings than fulfillment. So, yes, we had won immense changes.

But, there is a difference between winning lots of change and winning all needed change. And there is also a difference between winning permanent change and winning change that is constantly under assault to revert.

As long as very basic causes of male dominance persisted, including the exploitation of women’s bodies and infantilization of women, then even if many sexist symptoms were reduced or even wiped out for a time, the still operative underlying causes would keep pushing for a return to old ways. High heels were rejected. High heels came back. Rape declined. Rape escalated.

Feminists changed peoples’ thinking and choices over the years leading up to RPS, and also changed many habits and laws. Nonetheless, something continued to cause sexism to continually reappear with each new generation. Something about society continually tossed up new pressures for males dominating and women suffering. We won very real and meaningful gains, for sure, massively, but they were always at risk of reversal. Progress was unstable. In response, RPS felt we had to overcome not only lots of manifestations of sexism, but also the deeper factors continually calling sexism back into existence against gains like abortion rights, access to jobs, and income independence.

But when we looked at our own activism, organizing, and projects, if we were going to be honest about it, we had to acknowledge the same tendency existed. The most blatant manifestations of sexism inside movements had been reduced or even largely eliminated over the pre RPS decades. Violence against women inside movements, complete dismissal of opinions offered by movement women, exclusion of movement women from responsibility, and vile sexual objectification of movement women had all diminished and during some periods even nearly disappeared. And yet everyone knew that the gains were unstable and that some of the ills were coming back. It was not surprising that some people, women included, at times slipped into thinking that it was just the way things are. We sometimes fell into thinking that instead of the natural order being what we were fighting for, the natural order was sexual hierarchy and we were fighting for an unnatural situation against which “nature” kept reacting. I think even most feminists had such thoughts or fears at times, I know I did.

As Hilary Clinton seemed about to win the presidency, and many women were celebrating that milestone not long before RPS emerged, the incredible misogyny that surfaced from the woebegone Donald Trump revealed that sexism was still powerful albeit subterranean in polite society. It could return to all sides of life. It was an ironic situation. Woman nearly president. Women under siege.

If there wasn’t an answer for this, feminism would dissipate. I can tell you for myself, at that moment I was very scared that would be the outcome.

So even on the left, even fifty years on from mid twentieth century feminism, there was still more to do about gender and the saving grace was that RPS didn’t shy away from it.

Juliet, others have described The RPS view of class division arising not only from property differences, but from the corporate division of labor. Did RPS efforts to challenge class division work? What was the turning point toward real success?

It isn’t finished, but yes, I think it all worked incredibly well when you consider it was challenging hundreds of years of uninterrupted class division and regimentation, and it was doing so not in a comparable number of centuries but in just a few decades. As to the turning point, I doubt there was only one, and perhaps there was not even one, but rather only countless trends and events merging into the processes we have all seen – but, okay, I will offer up a possibility, two, actually.

The first I would offer, at least without a lot of time to think about it, was the firestorm of strikes for a shorter work week, and indeed the whole package of related demands that emerged just a few years after the first convention. I guess the key moment was when almost all Amazon workers sat down at their posts and declared that they would not move and would not allow anyone else to take their places, and would not cease their sit down strike until Amazon changed its policies in accord with their demands. That was monumental. I can still remember hearing reports of it, seeing videos on the news, and then going there and lending my support. It may be the most exciting moment I enjoyed up to that time.

How did people react?

At first, people throughout the country were flabbergasted. These workers, after all, were effectively invisible beyond Amazon’s doors. How many were there? It turns out there were almost 300,000. We who had bought our books and indeed goods of all kinds from Amazon simply clicked a link and our package arrived. There appeared to be nothing human about it, much less 300,000 people working in harsh conditions for long hours at low pay. So, Amazon users wondered, what the hell is this all about? We didn’t realize at first the huge workforces involved. And most of us had no inkling how powerful their action would turn out.

But after a few days it became clear this was a massive escalation of militance and innovation in labor activism. Family and friends brought food and tents so the Amazon workers could make good on their threat to stay until victory. Students from nearby campuses turned out in force to bring needed supplies and stand outside, providing a buffer against police intervention. Everyone was watching, and then came the turning point, or points, if you will.

First off, the owners, the stock holders, said clean this up to the police. And first attempts to do so were made, but the workers said no. You come in these warehouses you won’t go back out again with any of us in tow. We will die first. The warehouses will be ravaged. And you will suffer in the chaos, as well. That was a hell of a message. And at the same time, tens of thousands of supporters, depending on the city, rallied outside, and also pledged to ward off attempts at violent suppression. I remember that well. I was there. The spirit was incredible. Here we were, in the streets, truly ready to be bashed mercilessly, but hell bent on staying. And the workers were inside, set to remain. With such an atmosphere of resistance and solidarity emanating from Amazon workers, what could the owners and the police do? It became clear to Amazon, the police, and everyone else, that force would breed more resistance. And right there and then a lot of people learned the way to prevent the state or private police or anyone else from using force to suppress dissent was to create a situation where the use of force would do more damage to the interests of those employing it than would not using force. The trick was to make violence counter productive for those being violent. And it became clear, as well, that what could accomplish that, in this case, and it seemed in all cases, was having so much support and so much clarity about what was at stake and what was going on, and so much willingness to not succumb, that forceful intervention would totally backfire, both on the immediate scene, and, even more so, in the larger public reaction.

Amazon workers and their supporters, myself included, learned from our daily experience of the sit down not only about warding off repression but also about the ins and outs of collectivity and struggle. Even more important, every day others were learning similar things all across the country from what they were seeing and hearing about the events. And after just a week, seemingly spontaneously but actually after much discussion and reflecting a considerable history of their own strikes, UPS workers stopped delivering, and then Fed Ex workers did so too, and by that point, society was reeling, and the companies had to give in. Just like that. Bam. New work hours. New payment schemes. And now as the campaign spread and workers in other firms raised similar demands, everyone knew what was next. Say no, and we will sit in our workplaces and you will lose.

The owners were hog tied. Not least because police departments were of mixed mind. Police felt officially responsible to follow orders, but personally a great many of them sympathized with the workers. Hell, they wanted normalized work hours too. And in response to that, another lesson emerged. Instead of regarding police as spawns from hell, we realized they are citizens, workers, like us, and we began to reach out and talk with them, meet with them, rally them, make it in their interest to listen and understand and, finally, to refuse to repress us.

A second but related turning point, I think, was about a change in underlying ideas, assumptions, and habits bearing on work relations. It started with a small group at Harvard medical school, of all places. There had been a campaign on campus to raise the wages of Harvard’s low income kitchen and custodial workers. Initially this was undertaken by the workers with some undergraduate student allies, but it then became a broader movement. The students were, in many cases, RPS influenced or RPS members, and they were engaging in the campaign not as an end in itself, but to improve the conditions of the workers while also trying to educate the whole campus and even more widely about what incomes really ought to be and even about class relations writ larger.

While the demands were for very specific wage increases, as they had been just a few years earlier in a prior similar but not nearly as aggressive and broad struggle, in this second attempt at change the rhetoric altered and began asking why those who clean classrooms should earn less than those who stand in front of them comfortably talking to students. And sure enough, after who knows how many dorm and classroom discussions occurring alongside work stoppages and teach ins, a group of med students, some in RPS, started to raise a ruckus about admissions policies, training methods, and the culture of the profession they were supposed to enter.

You can’t know these things for sure, but my guess is that students in the “raise wages” campaign talking with one another not only about the immediate wage demand, but also about what wages really ought to be, which they argued was more for rote workers than for professors, morphed into an evaluation of their own futures.

From its start among medical students at Harvard there exploded into visibility groups like doctors for the people, lawyers for the people, accountants for the people, engineers, architects, university faculty for the people, and so on. And in every case, not without some flaws and residual bad habits operating obstructively, and of course always encountering intense resistance from folks not wanting such radical change, the mood was sincerely about redefining the relations between each profession and the population, and even about redefining the responsibility of the profession, and its tasks, remuneration, and social responsibilities.

So I think these two examples pretty much sealed the deal – though I am sure many other folks, from elsewhere in the country, would just as confidently propose other “turning points.” Not that the battle was over once these events occurred, much less alone due to them. It still isn’t over, even now, of course. But I do think the final outcome became evident for all with eyes to see. Society was changing. Class difference had to be and would be not merely attenuated – a good first step – but eliminated.

When I later became Shadow Labor Secretary I had no doubts that the future was classlessness. This was not about a nicer new boss in place of the old nastier boss. It was going to take time and work, of course. But you know how sometimes you are trying to do something really difficult, and you are not sure at the outset that you will even succeed, and then there comes a moment when your evaluation reverses, after which you can no longer even conceive of not succeeding? That is what I think finding “turning points” is about. When we get past a turning point, it is not easy but it is all down hill from there.

Juliet, please excuse the change of topic stemming from the overall needs of the oral history, to let me ask, as a pacifist, I wonder if you have felt fully satisfied by the RPS approach to violence.

I believe in non violence as a principle, with no caveats. But I also understand that there is a gargantuan difference between violence to enforce domination and extract advantage, and violence in self defense to ward off oppression. That is why I have no trouble respecting and working even with people who have far more violence imbued beliefs than RPS, which itself very strongly favors non violence save in very limited circumstances.

I feel zero hostility toward strikers blocking scabs, even though I wouldn’t do it or recommend it. And I would extend that to a population violently defending against invasion, even though, again, I think such choices are ultimately counter productive.

Living in a world bequeathed by the past with much that is human and beautiful, but also much that is vile and ugly, is not easy. I think RPS has hammered out a politically, socially, strategically, and tactically wise stance. In fact, being honest, given the world we live in, I think it is probably a wiser stance than if RPS were to say no violence, period. Which is why in the discussions about RPS and violence, I never played much of a role. And yet, personally, for myself, I admit that no violence at all is my personal stance.

Is there a contradiction between my personal credo and my organizational credo? Perhaps. But sometimes in horrible circumstances what would be both ethical and sound in more desirable circumstances simply no longer works – at least until desirable circumstances are achieved. I have taken as a model in these matters Dave Dellinger, who was a pacifist, but very militant and open minded activist in the 1960s. His example of being a pacifist yet supporting the Black Panther Party and the Vietnamese fighting against the U.S. invasion, inspired me greatly as I understood it steadily more. I wish more people knew of his courageous acts and views.

RPS is not pacifist in the ethical sense that I favor. Its anti-violence owes overwhelmingly to believing violence is suicidal for trying to win a better society. I think RPS is right about that. But I also have this overarching moral pressure that I feel, though I admit that for history and for humanity it is probably just as well that RPS doesn’t feel that overarching pressure as strongly as I do.

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