We travelled almost 2,000 km to talk to MeRA25 activists across Greece

Pubblicato Ottobre 9th, 2020 di DiEM25 Communications & inserito in Articles.

A couple of weeks ago we asked for your support to help our team embark on a journey across the Greek mainland.

The first part of our mission: to reconnect with many of the volunteers and organisers who we first met in the heat of the electoral campaign last year.

Because of your generous donations, the journey was a success! From the bottom of our hearts: Thank you. You made it happen!

We travelled almost 2,000 km in 5 days, hopping from city to city, to speak with activists who turned our hope of entering the Greek Parliament into a reality last year.

Your contribution was fundamental for helping us meet with the people who made it all happen and let them tell their story: the challenges they faced, and how they understand the connection between their struggle in Greece and DiEM25’s transnational struggle to transform Europe. You made it happen.

In the words of Venita, one of the activists we interviewed,

“I see no difference between the local work we do here in Patra, the work across Greece, or the fight across Europe. We are all part of the same effort and that’s the greatest asset of DiEM25. An asset we need to strengthen.”

Now, over the next weeks we will be busy working on the second part of our mission: editing the footage and finalising the documentary – the story of what a group of determined DiEMers can achieve and spread their message throughout Europe!

Your help is still needed as much as ever to spread our message and galvanise our activists across Europe — DiEM25 can and must replicate our Greek activists’ success everywhere.

For this documentary to be completed and reach as many DiEMers as possible we need to get the software and licenses, secure professional editing help. Please consider donating to help us complete this mission.

From your brothers and sisters in Greece: Σας ευχαριστούμε από καρδιάς, (we thank you from the bottom of our hearts).

To see what your donations have made possible so far and get a taste of what you would be enabling with your kind help, have a look at our trailer above!

Carpe DiEM25!

Etichette: funding Greece MeRA25 travel

Srećko Horvat: The Belmarsh Tribunal

Pubblicato Ottobre 8th, 2020 di Srecko Horvat & inserito in Articles.

As long as Julian Assange is in prison, the Belmarsh Tribunal will continue its fight for justice.

Etichette: julian assange Srećko Srecko Horvat Tariq Ali the belmarsh tribunal Yanis Varoufakis

Historic verdict against Golden Dawn undermined by police brutality outside courthouse

Pubblicato Ottobre 7th, 2020 di DiEM25 Communications & inserito in Articles.

Riot police attacked the crowds  — including members and MPs of MeRA25 — wanting to celebrate the decision against Golden Dawn outside the court. Cornered, people were vomiting and unable to breathe.

Around 20,000 people, including our own DiEM25 and MeRA25 members & MPs in Greece, were outside of the high court in Athens awaiting the verdict on the neo-nazi criminal organisation Golden Dawn.

A historic verdict was delivered this morning.

The Greek high court has found the highest ranking members and former MPs of Golden Dawn guilty for coordinating a criminal organisation, making them and their abominable neo-nazi organisation illegal! This is a great victory for democracy and justice.

Crowds awaiting the verdict outside of the courthouse in Athens.

The Golden Dawn party attained 18 MPs in 2012. This criminal inquiry began in 2013 after the murder of an antifascist hip-hop artist Pavlos Fyssas was conducted by a self-confessed member of Golden Dawn, with more than 60 people affiliated with the party having been aware of the murder and other criminal offenses such as violent attacks and racketeering. All former 18 MPs of Golden Dawn were found guilty for participating in a criminal organization and 7 of them guilty for directing a criminal organization, which is the graver offence.

But this decision against the neo-nazi criminal organisation Golden Dawn has been undermined by the shocking behaviour of the Greek police.

Earlier, riot police attacked the crowds outside the court that were celebrating the decision. People of MeRA25, among many others, were cornered — with people unable to breathe and vomiting.

“As guilty verdicts against the Nazis were being delivered in the Athens court, DiEM25 members demonstrating outside were attacked by riot police with CS gas. Unable to breathe and vomiting, we succeeded in escaping into a side street. A riot squad followed us and fired more CS canisters. I approached their leader & asked him to stop as people were dispersing “F… off” was his reply. When I showed him my Parliamentary ID card, he said: “Yet another reason to f… you!” So, while some Nazis are imprisoned, Nazism lives on – in the police!””

— Yanis Varoufakis

Thankfully our party members have since managed to run away. But this entire incident highlights that the seeds of fascism have been deeply planted in our society, and it will take much more than a court decision to root them out. Our struggle continues.

Etichette: antifascism fascism Golden Dawn Grassroots Greece Griechenland MeRA25 Nazi Nazis Nazism police police verdict

News from Turkey: The figures are under control, but the pandemic is not

Pubblicato Ottobre 6th, 2020 di DiEM25 in Turkey & inserito in Articles.

The Provisional National Collective in Turkey is pleased to inform DiEM25 members with the third issue of a monthly review on Turkey’s social, economic, and cultural state of affairs.

Everybody knows that the dice are loaded (…)

Everybody knows that the boat is leaking

Everybody knows that the captain lied

— Leonard Cohen

Initiating a COVID-19 Pandemic 6th Month Assessment Report with this quote from Leonard Cohen’s well-known lyrics should mean something to all. This is what the Turkish Medical Association (TMA), the professional organization of physicians, did on September 21, 2020 while sharing this 812-page detailed report written by 85 experts in the field with the community (COVID-19 Pandemic 6th Month Assessment Report from the Turkish Medical Association COVID-19 Monitoring Board).

On 11 March, the day the World Health Organization (WHO) announced COVID-19 as a pandemic, the Turkish Ministry of Health (MoH) reported the first case in Turkey.

According to the data presented in the WHO website on October 3, Turkey is in 4th place in the European region in terms of the disease — after Spain, France and the United Kingdom. Data indicates that there were 320.070 confirmed cases in Turkey, and that 8.262 people lost their lives because of COVID-19. However, as the data on the coronavirus within the entire jurisdiction of the MoH was not shared with the relevant medical associations and the Turkish Medical Association, it is not possible to make an accurate analysis of these figures. Not surprisingly, the country’s health minister admitted on October 1 that they exclude asymptomatic but PCR positive people while reporting, which is obviously not in line with WHO guidance on reporting COVID-19 data. As a result of MoH’s reluctance to share basic data, such as asymptomatic case numbers, repeated test rates, and the sensitivity of the tests used for the same patient, information on the distribution of patients by cities and some definitions such as ‘severe patient’ are still missing or obscure.

There were some admirable steps taken by the authorities in the beginning of the pandemic. These included the establishment of a COVID-19 Scientific Board far earlier than in many other countries, quarantine measures for citizens coming from abroad, transportation restrictions, disease awareness campaigns, the implementation of both public and private hospitals, and full coverage of treatment including early use of drugs. As lesser testing means underdiagnosing COVID-19 patients, increasing the number of daily tests which were extremely low in the beginning phase to an adequate figure was another positive step by MoH. Fortunately, physicians in Turkey have not had to make drastic decisions about which patient to save and which to leave to die during this period.

However, the MoH’s lack of transparency, its reluctance to share basic data, and its refusal to collaborate/work with non-governmental organisations as well as with some dissident municipalities didn’t allow more progress to occur. In Istanbul, they banned some applications of metropolitan municipalities which could have reduced the effects of pandemic, even during the curfew. There were also concerns about the shortage of personal protective equipment (PPE) for health-care workers at the beginning. In short, although MoH was not successful in controlling the spread of the pandemic and contact tracing, they followed a successful policy on the treatment of patients.

The announced ‘normalisation’ process in the beginning of June — the easing/elimination of some restrictions/quarantine measures — didn’t allow for the complete suppression of the disease.

Because of this uncontrolled ‘opening process’ at approximately the 12th week due to economic expectations, case numbers started to increase after the 14th week. In addition, despite dissident movement activities being banned due to COVID-19 restrictions, the same restrictions did not apply to pro-government activities like the opening ceremony of Hagia Sophia. Such crowded rallies could have contributed to increased figures.

It is clear that economy and politics have overridden science in these situations; in this context the ‘COVID-19 does not discriminate’ expression is a hoax that aims to cover up the increasing inequalities at the disadvantage of the working class. As stated by TMA in a press release, transparency, meeting the pandemic in the primary care before hospitals, effectively conducting medical filiation studies, all guided by reason and science, are the prerequisites for success in combating the epidemic, and should be conducted with collective solidarity spirit within the whole society, by taking each member’s individual properties into consideration. Special attention should be given to vulnerable and disadvantageous groups as well as health care providers by all means.

by DiEM25 Turkey | 06/10/2020

Dr. Akif Seval on behalf of DiEM25 PNC in Turkey

Photo Source: Engin Akyurt on Unsplash. 

Etichette: corona virus coronavirus covid COVID-19 news from turkey pandemic quarantine virus

Accounting for ethics: the ‘ill’ logic of neoliberalism 

Pubblicato Ottobre 6th, 2020 di Pam Stavropoulos & inserito in Articles, Member-contributed (English), Opinion.

Unlike economic, social and political challenges which are widely discussed, the ethical and moral issues to which they relate undeservedly receive less attention

In the ‘real’ world of trade-offs and compromise, ethics are often regarded — when they are regarded at all — as a separate domain of secondary concern, remote from how things are actually done (variations of ‘might is right’) and thus even as expendable. Among ‘competing priorities’, moral concerns are readily sacrificed, even if the reasons for this are cause for regret. 

But separating ethical considerations from daily concerns and contexts is not only artificial. It is untenable. It also feeds the politically motivated misperception that the ways in which we are treated and the impacts of deliberately chosen policies are of less importance than the ‘objective’ measures by which policies are claimed to be assessed.

Attention to ethics, in the tangible sense of their practical application, is never unwarranted. Rather it is unwelcome to particular stakeholders unwilling to sustain scrutiny of their practice and the benefits they accrue.

Concern for ethics can be unwelcome because it raises questions about the premises of socioeconomic organisation on which ostensibly democratic western societies are based (and which disproportionately advance sectional interests).

The advent of the coronavirus draws attention to moral challenges, ready or not

The structural inequality of the pre-COVID period is not only glaringly revealed but amplified and compounded by responses to the pandemic. Yanis Varoufakis has drawn attention to a startling and seismic occurrence on both sides of the Atlantic on a single day last month following announcement of the worst slump in British economic history — i.e. the rise of the London stock exchange by 2% and increase of the Wall St S&P 500 Index to an all-time high. At a time when millions of people in the US have lost their employment, consequently their health insurance, as well as  risk eviction from their homes, and millions in Britain also face hunger and poverty — i.e. citizens of previously regarded `advanced’ western countries — corporate interests and financiers are reaping exorbitant financial rewards.

The manifest failure of so-called ‘developed’ capitalist economies to safeguard citizens’ health and sustenance needs at a time of public health crisis is not only an indictment of political and economic policy. It reveals moral abrogation of no less seismic proportions.

The catastrophic impacts of neoliberal governments and economies — both in western ‘democratic’ countries and around the world — on the lives and livelihoods of the citizenries they purport to represent constitute ethical breaches of first order magnitude. That some western countries are more successfully addressing the basic needs of their constituents at this time (even as the measures implemented do not apply to all) only underlines the deliberate nature of the selective omissions which determine who is getting what and who misses out altogether. Increasing reference to ‘failed states’ implicitly speaks to the violations which continue to escalate to deadly effect.

Yet the fiction of `free market’ processes as impersonal and objective, of policy makers as enacting the will of the people, and of bureaucrats as simple administrators, continues to reframe and deflect the `duty of care’ transgressions which are unrecognised as such only because we are consistently discouraged from seeing them in this light.

Concern for others is ‘first order’ business: ethics as essential criteria

Key to redressing the grotesque anomalies generated by structural and systemic processes and practices is a revitalised conception of the role of ethics. This includes addressing the methods by which they are undermined. A revitalised conception of the role of ethics is essential to human interaction and constitutes essential criteria according to which the impacts of systemic practices, policies, and processes are assessed.

This involves a persistent and insistent challenge to the myth that moral claims are secondary or inapplicable to the world in which we live (a myth promoted by the associated myths of  ‘neutrality’ and ‘objectivity’ which deflect attention from the interests they serve and conceal). As observed by George Soros in his Central European University lectures: “Behind the invisible hand of markets there is the visible hand of politics, which establishes the rules and conditions in which the market mechanism operates.”

The importance of language and the observation of its misapplication is critical. The ‘free’ market has long ceased to function as described by Adam Smith. Freedom for who to do what to whom is the salient question — as Yanis reminds us — and is answered every day by the monopolistic market capture of companies like Amazon. Yet the sheer and multilayered reach of corporate control fuels the notion that the processes which uphold it are akin to ‘laws of nature’, and that market mechanisms are ‘impersonal’. The reality is that they have become weaponised in neo-liberal economies to a truly horrendous degree at the expense of the workers who are abused by them.

Far from being peripheral, recognising concern for others as fundamental to viable societies and economies is the ‘first order’ of business. It is also a core preliminary step to redressing the current ‘decoupling’ of financialised capitalism from the real economy. The pretensions of economic theory to ‘scientific’ status are exposed by economists like Yanis Varoufakis, Richard Wolff, James Galbraith, and Stephanie Kelton, whose starting points are as far from decontextualized, self-interested individualism as Amazon warehouses from compliance with the most basic requirements of OHS.

Concern for others — the capacity to care about others as well as oneself — is not a weakness but a hallmark of health. The absence of this capacity is rightly regarded as the marker of sociopathy.

The mantra of the pursuit of self-interest detached from social consequences has structured neo-liberal economics. So much is this the case that separation of ‘humankind’ into two words — as on the cover of Rutgers Bregman’s recent book — challenges narrow conceptions of the kind of people we are. It also reads as heretical to standard neoliberal ‘principles’.

It is as unrealistic to deny that concern for the well-being of others influences human behaviour as to contend that human beings are defined by self-interest. Both moral hazard and moral injury are not exceptional aberrations. They are generated by the economic and political processes of a neoliberal economy and polity.

We need to explode the misconception that moral concerns are solely the terrain of human rights advocates, and that ethical considerations are in any sense secondary to ‘other’ concerns

‘Accounting’ relates to more than economics. Both healthy psychological functioning and a functioning democratic society depend on processes which uphold this recognition. While many define consciousness as ‘the quality that defines personhood’, neuroscientist Joseph LeDoux notes in Synaptic Self: How Our Brains Become Who We Are that ‘others demand more, in the form of a moral element’.

As cognition and the capacity to reason also enable the capacity to rationalise, we certainly need to demand more. This is including and especially of neoliberal adherents to whom the following observation by John Kenneth Galbraith would seem to apply: “The modern conservative is engaged in one of man’s oldest exercises in moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness.” The difference between the time at which this comment was made and the current period of impunity is that now even the pretence of a search for justification is abandoned.

In The Political Psyche British psychotherapist Andrew Samuels sees the desire to change social and political reality as innate; it is not a matter of consciously electing to be political when ‘we are ethically involved as part of the human condition’. But as George Soros noted a decade ago, “[t]here has been a remarkable transformation in what behavior is socially acceptable and even desirable due to the rise of market fundamentalism.”

It is now transparently clear that while the capitalist system is unparalleled in its capacity to produce asymmetrical wealth and sophisticated technologies, it also, as Yanis underlines, “creates new forms of depravity.” Yanis explains why “austerity for the many,” which is the hallmark of current economic policy, also leads to, and indeed requires, increased authoritarianism. As Anand Giridharadas elaborates in his bestselling book, elite philanthropy by beneficiaries of this dialectic further entrench the very inequality they purport to reduce.

John Kenneth Galbraith also said ‘in the long run we are all dead’. Due to design flaws of economic and political policy which are deliberate and thus could be otherwise, the era of pandemic reveals what has long been the case but which cannot now be denied — that the run is avoidably much less long for many. 

The depravity of neoliberal economics and the politics that upholds it must be named for what it is

‘Moral accounting’ must be introduced and enshrined- not as an empty slogan or wish, but as an underpinning principle which is invoked and upheld, violations of which are called out, and for which appropriate sanctions are implemented. The calling out is important in and of itself; i.e. additional to, and independent of, the progress of court and institutional bodies in bringing perpetrators to account.

Concepts such as ‘sovereignty’ and ‘security’ also need reconceptualising, in that they routinely justify violations and fail to serve urgent contemporary priorities.

Those who uphold entrenched interests seem impervious to the most basic principles of decency regarding the impacts of current policies on their fellow citizens (and of course the many who are denied the status of citizen). This stance should be revealed for what it is. That is, forfeiture, in our name, of core aspects of our humanity in perpetuation of structural arrangements which deny and degrade that of others. This is a cost of a kind for which oligarchical interests have yet to account and for which they have yet to be held accountable.

We can recall that a watershed moment in ending the 1950s period of McCarthyism in the United States was the question asked of Senator Joseph McCarthy by chief counsel for the US Army Joseph Welch: “Have you no sense of decency sir?” This question, revived and repeated, retains its potency. It is not soft, naïve, or woolly. Rather it serves as a prelude to the transformational change which is now required. Such change is not utopian because DiEM25 has the platform and policies by which the current dystopia can begin to be dismantled.

Photo Source: Burst on Flickr. 

The views and opinions expressed here are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect DiEM25’s official policies or positions.

Etichette: coronavirus COVID-19 economics ethics moral accounting neoliberalism pandemic policy

Chris Smalls: “Now is the time” to confront corporate oligarchy

Pubblicato Ottobre 5th, 2020 di Andeh W & inserito in Articles, Member-contributed (English).

Amazon worker turned organiser Chris Smalls has continued to pressure Jeff Bezos’ Goliath empire Amazon by leading protests across the US.

It has become quite clear now that the benefits of the pandemic have befallen the very wealthy. It’s hard to find a more apt symbol than the recently launched luxury Louis Vuitton PPE face shield selling at $961 to demonstrate the divide. Touting the face shields’ capacity to insulate the wearer from covid and climate change, an Asian fashion magazine commends its practicality by explaining that it ‘protects the wearer from spittle, shared air and UV rays.’ This is a more palatable compromise for the wealthy who haven’t yet rushed to New Zealand or to their expensive mega yachts. But those who cannot fully seclude themselves by either working from home or shielding from others must confront daily insecurity.

Often assembled under a falsely endearing umbrella term, ‘essential workers’  must face the daily financial and viral insecurities delivered by the systems handling of the pandemic. Unfortunately for those deemed ‘essential workers’ goodwill, respect and applause aimed their way cannot be converted into money, wealth or value at this point. Their current options, which haven’t changed much since mid March have been to either protest or acquiesce to ‘market forces’.

Chris Smalls is continuing to protest Amazon’s labour conditions and non-existent safety measures.

The heavy mediatisation behind the March protest movement ebbs and flows with the 24h media cycle but the protests continue. Chris Smalls continues to lead protests outside all of the houses Jeff Bezos owns, and organised another Sunday 4th October in LA with local Extinction Rebellion, Union for Teachers, Sunrise and backed by the People’s Party. In a recent Jimmy Dore channel appearance Smalls states that the main objective of the protests is the Wealth Tax, citing Bezos’s billions in recent financial gains contrasted by the evictions and unemployment crisis in the USA:

“It’s time to fight back against the oligarchs of this country and Bezos is the top of the food chain, richest man in the world, and the working class people are struggling out here, and the workers have been exploited, small businesses have been exploited (…) these billionaires could absolutely provide (…) relief.”

Smalls’ movement isn’t simply around the notion of a ‘wealth tax’, the list of demands have become more comprehensive and encompass all large companies that often have benefited from Federal liquidity during the pandemic. Amazon recently showed how ‘essential workers’ have contracted coronavirus 20,000 times and that is without including delivery riders who are at perilous risk. Smalls recounts on Jimmy Dore show how “ever since I got fired, 6 months later we are still going through the same thing. (…) We have workers still coming to me on the daily with horrific stories and they are afraid to still speak up against the company.” He continues, “essential workers were deemed it by local officials and government but it’s not the reality of the situation. We don’t have sick leave, child care and amazon is definitely not taking care of their associates right now.”

As a result, Smalls is calling for a US general strike on US election day.

The coronavirus has unmasked our system’s priorities with a natural ‘stress test’. The Institute for Policy Studies recently showed a 32% increase of a massive $970bn billionaire bonanza which is directly linked to Central Bank and fiscal priorities. As the darlings of the tech world and the stock market — Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk both respectively doubled and tripled their wealth since mid March as seen in Forbes’s annual Global Billionaire Survey.

The switch to ‘remote everything‘ pushed an already frothy stock market to incredible juggernaut valuations. Tech stocks, which comprise of over half of the Nasdaq 100’s top valued companies, give the US market a heavy dependence on a small number of internet and software companies. Those stocks skyrocketed during the pandemic as everyone locked-down meanwhile, tens of millions fell into unemployment at the fastest speed ever recorded mirroring the 1930s. Moreover billionaires sold some of their stocks into this roaring market bounce while promised PPE and safety measures to ‘essential workers’ hasn’t materialized. Given the glaring inequalities and inconsistencies of this system, it is now that movements for better working conditions and higher contributions from the monopoly capitalists must be supported. For example, Robert Reich’s tweet suggests Amazon could give 100k to each of its workers and return to the capitalization it had before the pandemic.

The IPS study highlights the inequality stating that American billionaires tax obligations decreased 79% as a percentage of their wealth between 1980 – 2018. Furthermore, as Federal Reserve data shows, the US government’s corporate tax income has come down consistently from 2015 levels to a low entering into 2020. This was only seen before in the middle of previous financial crises.

Since mid march, we have seen the stock market rampant and totally dislodged from the ‘real economy’. We are also seeing a boon for the data economy based stocks, and the only way in which politicians engage with this is through surface value discussions of platform taxation while legal battles are raging causing debates about EU reactions to US platforms and their data. European leaders should press ahead to forbid European flows of data to the USA. A July 2020 ECJ ruling on a case brought by Austrian privacy activist Max Shrems, struck down the ‘Privacy Shield’ agreement between the EU and the USA.

A European order directed at Facebook to stop sharing user data followed and made headlines when Facebook made their empty threat to leave the EU entirely. This is an empty threat because Facebook makes, on average, $13.21 from every European user. What it shows however, is how sensitive US companies are to Data transfer regulations in the EU. Jonathan Kewley, co-head of technology at law firm Clifford Chance stated that “What we are seeing here looks suspiciously like a privacy trade war, where Europe is saying their data standards can be trusted, but those in the U.S. cannot.” Indeed imposing privacy as a top EU value should form the basis for which Europe differentiates itself from other global players.

The major shift in our time is that the digital assets have vastly overtaken the value of physical ones. We currently inhabit the adjustment period which will often be drought with tension. If you compare the major companies by market cap over the past twenty years there has been an undeniable shift from oil/energy and banks to the data economy. The post-COVID world has cemented the position of these data companies which have centralised and capitalised on our internet usage. Today, the knowledge driven economy accounts for 84% of the main markets assets. At a deeper level, this shifts the concept of work in the economy, but it pits the ‘worker’ and the ‘user’ against each other as the data continues to be accumulated by monopoly capitalism.

Source: ‘A Visual History of the Largest Companies by Market Cap (1999-Today)

The issue with workers rights is that it’s a messy affair with many months of unpleasant negotiations. Often it takes energy, community and savings to stomach a long and painful renegotiation of rights. But today besides the now millions of unemployed there is a sense of dread at the prospect of automation seen as a threat management could turn to upon seeing worker agitation.

Yet against this type of financial and economic pressure Chris Smalls and a group of iron willed tech workers have continued to pressure Amazon by leading protests outside Jeff Bezos’ newly bought $16m New York house. The second largest employer in the US with 800,000 employees Amazon recently tapped into the millions of US jobless for 100,000 ‘associates’ as they anticipate a bumper Christmas period for e-commerce. This expansion comes off the back of many brick-and-mortar stores closed due to forced shutdowns and federal loans not being received.

The announcement of the on Amazon’s blog was couched in language sensitive to safety and worker conditions showing that Smalls’ movement has clearly had an effect on the company. However, Smalls suggests that beyond the PR the realities are more sobering. pointing to a tangible gulf between Amazon marketing and actual safety measures, stating that “I have workers contact me all the time. They’re not protected still.“ . The protest movement should serve to remind people that ‘essential workers‘ and low wage workers are disproportionately exposed to the virus while serving non essential workers and being exploited by large billion dollar companies. Indeed, Amazon exploits their workers and also exposes their families and elderly to catching and ultimately dying from coronavirus especially during the winter months.

The movement decided to set a new comprehensive list of demands;

1. 1. Personal protective equipment (PPE) and sanitation supplies are provided at all times for all employees by the company.
   2. Employees who test positive for COVID-19 are to be placed on paid leave at 100% pay until test results are confirmed negative.
   3. Buildings or locations that have more than one positive case in a week are shut down, professionally sanitized, and remain closed for a minimum of 14 days. During this time, all impacted employees will receive 100% pay.
   4. Hazard pay of a $2 hourly increase and sick time pay is to be provided for the duration of the COVID-19 pandemic.
   5. Transparency must be maintained through daily communication with all employees regarding confirmed COVID cases within their facility.
   6. All employees who were terminated during the COVID-19 pandemic for refusing to work in unsafe conditions must be reinstated.
   7. Next of kin or families of employees who lost their lives during the pandemic will receive an additional $200,000 directly from the company.
   8. All hourly associates are paid a minimum starting wage of $30 per hour.
   9. All employees are made shareholders upon employment and receive annual investments with the company.
   10. Free child care and health care are provided by the company for all full-time employees.
   11. All full-time employees receive 1 hour lunches regardless of facility location.
   12. Monthly bonuses are given for productivity/sweat equity and these bonuses are not subject to a wage cap.
   13. Employees must be notified immediately of any logged feedback, write-ups, disciplinary warnings, and employee reviews. At that time, they must also be given an exact copy of the document being logged, either electronically or physically, to keep for their personal records.
   14. Companies must declare a stance of neutrality on unionization by immediately ending all efforts and campaigns that discourage unionization, in all aspects of the workplace, from hiring to training to policies across the board. Workers must be able to unionize freely without interference, obstruction, or intimidation–directly or indirectly.
   15. Network-wide unlimited unpaid time and all employees are retroactively paid for any unpaid time they have used from March until all of the above demands have been met.
   16. In addition to the demands above, we are also calling on legislators to implement a federal wealth tax on the top 3% of earners in the United States. This wealth tax should be used to support and invest in community enrichment such as universal child care, health care, housing, and quality education.

Many of these demands would represent a significant ease of pressures on working families across the country. Of the more outstanding demands are; a $30/h starting wage; a $200,000 payment for any deceased family member or worker; neutrality against unionisation; and that all employees become shareholders upon employment and receive annual stock investment.

Chris Smalls’ movement is really the result of decades of grinding away at the concept of workers rights generally.

The corporate legal gymnastics since the ‘recovery’ of the 2008 financial crisis was facilitated by the government. Today it is normal to think of workers as ‘associates’ and freelancers while mass collecting users’ information. This simply reduces corporate obligations and exempts them of any notion of data privacy. This total destabilization of the employee means following the Walmart model which enabled managers to become tyrants, become ruthlessly anti-union, and erratic worker schedules.

A Moody’s analyst suggests, for the “lesser skilled and educated, [the coronavirus is] going to be a long, long road back.” They add that “the FED can only take us part way.” What is remarkable about the movement is that a fragile job market would normally dissuade people from actively fighting for better pay and job conditions. But instead, the moral indignation and the inhuman demands from the very companies benefiting from lopsided financial incentives are thriving today. To add insult to injury the FED denies the criticism that it is exacerbating inequalities by pointing at the federal government.

Yet despite the largest debt based wealth transfer from the public ever, ushering a huge rise in cases of fraud, Amazon will likely simply try to quell the rise of workers demands and unionisation. A reminder that Amazon isn’t simply a retail goods company was signalled with the addition of the infamous NSA director Keith Alexander to the board. Alexander’s presence indicates the informational-industrial aspect to Amazon’s global presence, which is a reminder that this is an even more symbolic test case of a flagship American company. It is worth reminding that the workers movement is taking on a pillar of US internet and military infrastructure at a time where they feel threatened by the rise of Chinese data infrastructure technologies.

The crisis year of 2020 is a year where for the first time during a recession big business is coming though virtually unscathed.

But the divergences between the real economy and the financial have accelerated. The American Bankruptcy Institute said that U.S Chapter 11 bankruptcies in May ballooned by 48% when compared to last year. Small businesses and service businesses have been hit and affected the livelihoods of the most vulnerable and minorities in US society.

As Time Magazine states inequality has been unequally dealt out. “Low wage workers and their families, disproportionately people of colour, suffer from far higher rates of asthma, hypertension, diabetes, and other COVID-19 co-morbidities; yet they are also far less likely to have health insurance, and far more likely to work in ‘essential’ industries with higher exposure to the virus”. There is a substantial racial and minority organizational energy behind this industrial action which is shaking up traditional models of worker dissent. This has influenced and been influenced by communication media affecting the randomness, speed and intensity of strikes themselves. But the cracks in the system go deep.

The upward redistribution of income, wealth, and power wasn’t inevitable but a choice.

The major finding in the recently released RAND report found that the $50 trillion transfer of wealth happened within the American economy and not between trading partners. Deregulating the financial industry and cutting taxes on billionaires ushered a heavily financialized economy. This in turn enabled CEOs to facilitate mergers and allowed them to acquire vast monopolies of power to dictate prices and wages. The speed of the growth in digital assets and the pervasiveness of financialization has allowed the system to morph into oligarchy at breathtaking speed.

Smalls stumbled into the position of being a leading protest organiser globally taking on the richest man in the world in his continuing pursuit of more wealth, influence and power. Smalls and the movement have expanded as we have seen clearly this past week again. Despite  Amazon’s best efforts to distract and conceal. The position that Amazon represents in the US today and more globally is a type of Techno-Security state. The stakes are high, but that is the time to collect people power.

Smalls states that “now is the time” to confront corporate oligarchy in this post pandemic crisis of imagination which ultimately benefits nobody.

Today, as the flagrant exploitation Amazon’s practices show, the system’s logics are crushing western concepts of human dignity and basic human/worker rights. Given the outrageous inequalities today, some wealthy people are casually asking to be taxed at a higher level. Make no mistake, this movement is important as it is doused in a righteous and moral indignation. Mark Blyth describes Angrynomics, his new book “like the old joke about Bill Gates walking into a bar and everyone — on average — becoming millionaires in a world where the returns are absurdly skewed, you can expect people to get angry about it.“

We cannot expect to be UBI’ed into accepting the status of corporate monopolies in our societies, we must demand their break down into more palatable structures and incorporate more stakeholders in the decision making mechanisms of the broken down corporate entities.

Photo Source: Still from video by Status Coup. 

Watch our DiEMTV episode with Chris Smalls on our YouTube channel!

Etichette: Amazon chris smalls jeff bezos Labour united states US workers rights

Last Month in DiEM25: September 2020

Pubblicato Ottobre 5th, 2020 di DiEM25 Communications & inserito in Articles.

External Actions

This month:

The Progressive International (PI) held its inaugural summit on the 18-20 September! Since May, the PI’s coalition has grown to include unions, parties, and movements that represent millions of people around the world such as the National Alliance of People’s Movements in India, and the Congreso de los Pueblos in Colombia. This summit included a panel discussion between Yanis Varoufakis, Vijay Prashad, Ece Temelkuran, Nick Estes, and Lyn Ossome, and host speakers Noam Chomsky, Naomi Klein, amongst others. We hope you enjoyed it! If you still haven’t watched the summit, you can do so here. You can also become a member and donate.

Julian Assange’s trial has started once more in September. Several DSCs across Europe, such as in Brussels Belgium, Bonn Germany, and Copenhagen Denmark, have held protests in support of Julian Assange, calling for his liberation and the protection of the freedom of the press.

Two members of our DiEM25 Brussels Office, Davide and Erik, finished a tour of Greece that took them to 8 cities, covering 1600kms and interviewing 12 members of DiEM25. The footage they collected will be presented in a short documentary about the first year of our DiEM25 party, MeRA25, in parliament: the challenges they faced, the successes, and the road ahead. Watch the trailer above!

Internal Actions

We updated our processes for translation and subtitling. Groups for translation into English, German, Greece, French, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, Turkish, Dutch, Czech and Bosnian/Croatian/Serbian working to take our message even further! Contact us via [email protected] and help with this tremendous task!

On the ground: new DiEM25 Spontaneous Collectives (DSCs) were founded in the Rhein-Main area in Germany, as well as in Brno in the Czech Republic! Find the latest DSC news here!

Built on our citizen engagement campaign and developed the methodology in order to talk to Europeans on the ground and build national programmes for DiEM25! We have received the input from close to 600 DiEMers from across Europe which will be the foundation for the questionnaire we will use to inspire citizens to start building a new world with us, and are continuing to collaborate with volunteers across Europe (and the world!) to shape our methodology for this project.

Next Month in DiEM25: October!

We will continue developing our citizen engagement campaign that aims to reach out to our grassroots members in line with our working plan. If you have already registered to be a volunteer for the project to develop national programmes for DiEM25, get ready — we will contact you soon!

On 2 October, the Progressive International hosted The Belmarsh Tribunal, which will investigate and evaluate US war crimes in the 21st century, and defend Julian Assange’s right to reveal them. The live-streamed event included voices such as M.I.A., Jeremy Corbyn, Rafael Correa, Pamela Anderson, Lula da Silva, Rafael Correa, Roger Waters, Yanis Varoufakis, Slavoj Žižek and others. Watch it here!

On 9 October, Yanis Varoufakis will be answering questions about the Green New Deal for Europe (GNDE), starting at 18h30. Register here.

On 10 October, at 14h, DiEMers are organising a protest in Luxembourg: Manifestation nationale pour l’accès au logement digne et abordable (National mobilisation for the access of dignified and affordable housing) as part of our Rent-volution campaign. You can sign the petition ‘Free low-income Europeans from rent burden’ here!

We will be holding Coordination Calls with our movement to discuss the burning issues of the month in each country, and crowdsource these issues from members, in Italy, Spain, Germany, France, the UK, Greece, BENELUX, Portugal, Turkey, Eastern Europe, Accession Countries, and also Countries without NCs. Check the forum for details!

Stay tuned and keep an eye on the announcements of the new series of Movement Coordination Calls! If you have joined DiEM25 in the last three months you can expect an invitation for the teleconference where we will get to know each other and the way DiEM25 operates.

If you wish to send a point to be included in the next newsletter, or want to help to draft it, please contact us at [email protected].

Etichette: 2020 last month in DiEM25 september

A guilty verdict for Golden Dawn is only the beginning

Pubblicato Ottobre 4th, 2020 di MeRA25 Comms & inserito in Articles, MeRA25.

As we await with bated breath the court’s verdict (due on October 7) in the interminable trial of Golden Dawn’s members, we refuse to forget their political success.

Yes, thankfully, we no longer see them occupy seats in Greece’s Parliament. However, the ideology they infected our Parliament with not only lingers in our Parliament but, in fact, it features prominently in the establishment’s dominant narrative.

If Golden Dawn had not succeeded in appealing to chauvinist middle class men, would former socialist ministers have dared in 2012 to violate the basic human rights of HIV women carriers so as, supposedly, to protect the men who might have used them for paid sex?

If Golden Dawn had not successfully targeted migrants in our neighbourhoods, would the current Prime Minister have dared order our Coastguard to violate International Law by pushing flimsy boats loaded with helpless refugees back into tempestuous seas?

We, members of MeRA25, will be outside the Courthouse awaiting, along with many other antifascists, the guilty verdict. When it is, hopefully, announced, we shall celebrate for a short whole but then we shall quickly return to the struggle to erase from our political terrain the ideas that they infected our society with.

Etichette: Golden Dawn Greece MeRA25 politics

MeRA25 files motion to declare Julian Assange’s extradition case null and void

Pubblicato Ottobre 4th, 2020 di DiEM25 Communications & inserito in Articles, MeRA25.

Athens (Greece): This morning, DiEM25’s political party in Greece filed a motion to request that the British government ends the ludicrous prosecution of our movement’s Advisory Panel member and WikiLeaks editor Julian Assange.

A DiEMer since our pan-European movement was founded in 2016, Assange has been under severe persecution and prosecution. Charged with espionage last year by the US government, Assange is now undergoing a trial that seeks to imprison him for life.

While Assange tries to defend himself in dire health and worse incarceration conditions at HM Prison Belmarsh, journalists and media organisations across the world have denounced Assange’s case as an assault on freedom of the press and a dangerous infringement to human rights.

DiEM25 has joined the Progressive International’s “Belmarsh Tribunal” to put on symbolic trial every single individual participating in Julian’s illegal, immoral and utterly illegitimate persecution.

Here is the statement from MeRA25:

Solidarity with Julian Assange, a guilty verdict for his persecutors

MeRA25’s Central Committee Motion regarding the Julian Assange extradition case

MeRA25 calls upon the British government to declare null and void, on the basis that it constitutes political persecution, the US government’s request to extradite on espionage charges Julian Assange to the US.

Given the British and American governments’ continued incarceration of Julian under conditions that jeopardise his already weakened health, MeRA25 is joining forces with the Progressive International’s Belmarsh Tribunal to put on symbolic trial every single individual participating in Julian’s illegal, immoral and utterly illegitimate persecution.

The time for defending an innocent man for leaking power’s guilty secrets is over. Now is the time to deliver a guilty verdict on the criminals who ordered young soldiers to kill civilians, to maim and to murder journalists, to shroud whole communities in tears and in pain – the same people who, for a decade now, are plotting the legalised murder of the man who exposed their crimes: Julian Assange.

Etichette: Assange democracy DiEM25 journalism MeRA25 Transparency wikileaks

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