BeckyDem
BeckyDem's JournalHow the Taxi Workers Won
The 45 days of fierce protest, shrewd organizing, and ferocious solidarity that ended the debt nightmare that had engulfed the taxi industry.
By Molly Crabapple
December 13, 2021
On September 19, a group of cab drivers organized by the New York Taxi Workers Alliance rolled up to the corner of Broadway and Murray Street in downtown Manhattan, parked next to City Hall, and declared they would not leave until the city fixed the crushing debt that had driven many of their fellow drivers to suicide. They held a press conference, hung an SOS banner from the nearby Beaux-Arts subway entrance, set up some folding chairs, and sat down to wait.
I stopped by the encampment at midnight to find eight drivers trading jokes on the lonely concrete of the Financial District. Augustine Tang invited me to join them. Thirty-seven years old, with the characteristic swagger of a native New Yorker, Tang had inherited his father’s taxi medallion—the badge that gives cabbies the right to operate—along with $530,000 of debt. He was one of the group’s most eloquent spokespeople and also one of the youngest. His companions were all older, men who had spent decades behind the wheel—like Mohammed Islam, from Bangladesh, who owed $536,000, and “Big John” Asmah, from Ghana, who owed $700,000. At an age when many people are contemplating retirement, these drivers instead faced a future of 14-hour workdays that would bring them no closer to freedom as well as harrowing financial burdens they would pass on to their kids.
But these drivers also knew a way out, which is why they had decided to camp outside the gates of City Hall.
In late September of 2020, the New York Taxi Workers Alliance had drawn up a plan to cap drivers’ loans and limit their monthly payments. The city ignored it, just as, for years, it had brushed off NYTWA’s protests against medallion debt. This sit-in was an escalation—an attempt to force New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio’s hand.
https://www.thenation.com/article/society/taxi-driver-strike/
Amazing resilence!
The Pauli Murray Fellowship: Investing in the Next Generation of Leaders
Part of the ACLU’s broader Systemic Equality Campaign, the Pauli Murray Fellowship is one avenue through which the ACLU is committing to addressing the legacy of systemic racism and inequality in America by investing in and cultivating leadership pathways for recent college graduates.
Launching in fall 2022, the program will sponsor a cohort of three fellows from Black and other historically underrepresented communities as full-time employees of the ACLU for 18-months.
The Pauli Murray Fellowship, founded in honor of activist, legal theorist, author, Episcopal priest, and former ACLU board member the Reverend Dr. Pauli Murray, is a program to identify Black and other historically underrepresented recent college graduates embarking on their first post-graduate endeavors and provide them with meaningful exposure, access, and training to equip them in expanding and deepening their leadership skills.
https://www.aclu.org/news/topic/the-pauli-murray-fellowship-investing-in-the-next-generation-of-leaders?initms_aff=nat&initms_chan=soc&utm_medium=soc&initms=220102_fellowship-application-form_tw&utm_source=tw&utm_campaign=&utm_content=220102_civilliberties_fellowship-application-form&ms_aff=nat&ms_chan=soc&ms=220102_fellowship-ap
Rep. Barbara Lee @RepBarbaraLee: On the first anniversary of the Jan 6th, join myself,
https://twitter.com/RepBarbaraLee/status/1477019024890413059( Save the date. )
Was this beautiful or what? Wow. Watch Carlile perform "River" at the Kennedy Center Honors below.
https://www.advocate.com/music/2021/12/23/brandi-carlile-honors-joni-mitchell-soaring-river-cover
Carlile, a longtime protégé of the 78-year-old Mitchell,was spellbinding as she played piano – backed by the Kennedy Center Orchestra – during “River” (“I love you, Joni, you magical thing!” she yelled toward Mitchell’s honoree box at song’s end). And power-lunged Americana-rocker Brittany Howard showcased a restrained, husky vocal for the devastating “Both Sides Now,” with former Kennedy Center honoree Herbie Hancock accompanying her on piano.
On the red carpet before the ceremony, Judy Collins, who recorded the first version of Mitchell’s “Both Sides Now” in 1967, said the two have remained “friends along the way.” “She’s brought so much beauty into the world,” Collins said.
https://www.advocate.com/music/2021/12/23/brandi-carlile-honors-joni-mitchell-soaring-river-cover
Scroll down at the link and watch her tribute to Joni. Beautiful!
NLRB Invites Briefs Regarding Independent Contractor Standard
Office of Public Affairs
202-273-1991
publicinfo@nlrb.gov
www.nlrb.gov
December 27, 2021
In a notice issued today in The Atlanta Opera, Inc. 371 NLRB No. 45 (2021), the National Labor Relations Board invited parties and amici to submit briefs addressing whether the Board should reconsider its standard for determining the independent contractor status of workers.
In 2019, in SuperShuttle DFW, Inc., the Board overruled the prior standard for determining independent contractor status which was set forth in FedEx Home Delivery in 2014. In today’s notice, the Board invites the filing of briefs to afford the parties and interested amici the opportunity to address the following questions:
https://www.nlrb.gov/news-outreach/news-story/nlrb-invites-briefs-regarding-independent-contractor-standard
(Indicators are very good that Biden's National Labor Board will NOT define Lyft, Uber, and DoorDash drivers
as independent contractors, meaning they will have the legal right to unionize. Potentially huge win..huge. )
Fingers crossed and all that.
AOC: Here's our 21 wins for 2021 ( Tweet )
https://twitter.com/AOC/status/1473693773196632072( Smart, as usual! )
A Key Founder of Critical Race Theory Discusses the Right-Wing Panic Over It
Proponents and opponents of critical race theory demonstrate as the Placentia Yorba Linda School Board in Yorba Linda, California, discusses a proposed resolution to ban it from being taught in schools, on November 16, 2021.
By
C.J. Polychroniou,
Truthout
Published
December 11, 2021
Critical race theory (CRT) has become a new bogeyman in conservative circles in the United States. Right-wing groups are applying the term indiscriminately, using it inaccurately as a catch-all buzzword to stand in for everything they oppose, including any discussion of systemic racism in the classroom.
Excerpt:
For a better understanding of what CRT is and what it is not, Truthout reached out to one of the key founders of CRT, Richard Delgado, the John J. Sparkman Chair of Law at the University of Alabama. Professor Delgado — the author of 30 books and one of the most-cited legal scholars on race and the law in the country — has become a target of numerous threats by racist and neo-fascist elements since the recent right-wing campaign against CRT began.
C.J. Polychroniou: Professor Delgado, I would like to ask you to describe to us where CRT comes from, and then to discuss in some detail what CRT is and what it is not.
https://truthout.org/articles/a-key-founder-of-critical-race-theory-discusses-the-right-wing-panic-over-it/
Barbara Arnwine, Esq.: are at US Capitol w @UniteThePoor demanding US Senate #ProtectOurVote
https://twitter.com/barbs73/status/1470446368904912899 
Trump's Next Coup Has Already Begun
January 6 was practice. Donald Trump’s GOP is much better positioned to subvert the next election.
By Barton Gellman
Excerpt: “The democratic emergency is already here,” Richard L. Hasen, a professor of law and political science at UC Irvine, told me in late October. Hasen prides himself on a judicious temperament. Only a year ago he was cautioning me against hyperbole. Now he speaks matter-of-factly about the death of our body politic. “We face a serious risk that American democracy as we know it will come to an end in 2024,” he said, “but urgent action is not happening.”
For more than a year now, with tacit and explicit support from their party’s national leaders, state Republican operatives have been building an apparatus of election theft. Elected officials in Arizona, Texas, Georgia, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Michigan, and other states have studied Donald Trump’s crusade to overturn the 2020 election. They have noted the points of failure and have taken concrete steps to avoid failure next time. Some of them have rewritten statutes to seize partisan control of decisions about which ballots to count and which to discard, which results to certify and which to reject. They are driving out or stripping power from election officials who refused to go along with the plot last November, aiming to replace them with exponents of the Big Lie. They are fine-tuning a legal argument that purports to allow state legislators to override the choice of the voters.
Excerpt: Georgia Governor Brian Kemp, excommunicated and primaried at Trump’s behest for certifying Biden’s victory, nonetheless signed a new law in March that undercuts the power of the county authorities who normally manage elections. Now a GOP-dominated state board, beholden to the legislature, may overrule and take control of voting tallies in any jurisdiction—for example, a heavily Black and Democratic one like Fulton County. The State Election Board can suspend a county board if it deems the board to be “underperforming” and replace it with a handpicked administrator. The administrator, in turn, will have final say on disqualifying voters and declaring ballots null and void. Instead of complaining about balls and strikes, Team Trump will now own the referee.
“The best-case scenario is [that in] the next session this law is overturned,” Nuriddin said. “The worst case is they start just pulling election directors across the state.”
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2022/01/january-6-insurrection-trump-coup-2024-election/620843/
( Excellent journalism, long, detailed and comes with a critical warning. )
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