Essential workers ruffle the feathers of the Amazon empire
Amazon workers’ righteous indignation against the silicon valley model is galvanising workers to organise at this critical moment in global history.
“What we’ve got right now is bigger than all of us. It’s about saving humanity. It’s life or death. But we also want to keep our jobs. None of us should be retaliated against (…)”
— Chris Smalls
As the deadly effects of the coronavirus in Europe slow, the true extent of an austerity ravaged medical system is revealed. A great unveiling is happening in the economy as finance and work decouple. The Nasdaq’s flagship technocratic surveillance businesses that “treat the humans in the warehouses as fungible units,” capitalise on precarity. But the coronavirus has now revealed the power behind the mass of vulnerable yet ‘essential’ workers, and the shadow of tens of millions of newly unemployed.
Colourful titles and vacuous clapping cannot massage the monthly staple of low pay, no worker rights and zero hours contracts.
Amazon workers subject to the risks that the pandemic brings to their warehouses — such as DiEM25 TV’s recent guest Chris Smalls — are stepping forward to challenge the behemoth that Amazon represents. Their righteous indignation against the silicon valley model has not only captured the media but is galvanising millions to organise at this critical moment in global history. This current jostling between modern titans of capitalism and low wage workers reminds us of a simple yet historical truth: that “our secret superpower is our ability to cooperate.”
As an editorial in the Financial Times suggested on April 3, the lockdown will “shine a glaring light on existing inequalities — and even create new ones.” We are staggering our way into a new normal with doctors demanding adequate PPE, meatpackers ordered to work in infected zones while unemployment skyrockets past Great Depression levels. As this historical moment threatens to shatter the current social contract, world leaders in the West offer distracting ramblings about China, allegations of the World Health Organisation’s politicisation and incoherent government reopening guidelines.
Tasked with the heaviest load to carry, essential workers are subject to a rebranding exercise devoid of substance but full of pomp and spectacle.
The PR infused messages of togetherness have done little to placate the stark dilemma facing many essential workers around the world. Workers are asked to accept without question additional responsibilities whilst being given minimal medical precautions, and to face the virus in their workplace and the uncertainties that this propagates in their personal and family lives. This exposure subjects their friends, colleagues and family to the coronavirus while increasing the stress of their work. Should they conscientiously object, they run the high risk of losing their job, medical benefits — and in some cases becoming homeless — due to low worker protections.
Italian doctors released a statement in March, which NHS workers have echoed, stating that “we have been getting ready, with ‘scientific rigour’, to make sure we wouldn’t have enough resources to deal with a health emergency like the present one.” Medical staff clearly form the backbone of the new ‘essential work’ economy and have been on the front line of the PPE debacle.
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This comes when global markets are propelled higher with liquidity injections of epic proportions to large corporations while essential workers are press ganged into infected workplaces to keep the economy stuttering along. The message couldn’t be clearer. As Chris Smalls said in his recent DiEM25 interview “this pandemic exposed a lot about how we are as humans.” Perhaps as the glaring exploitation becomes too unsustainable, there will be a modern watershed moment mirroring what followed the Triangle Shirtwaist factory fire of 1911.
Former Amazon warehouse manager Chris Smalls made headlines around the world after getting fired following his outspoken criticism concerning the lack of Amazon’s COVID-19 measures.
A targeted campaign by Amazon describing him as “not smart or articulate,” and attempting to isolate him as the “face of the entire union/organising movement.” Furthermore, the leaked documents shown by Vice claim that the issues were raised in a meeting involving CEO Jeff Bezos.
During the interview, he raised awareness about the many employees who resorted to sleeping in cars because they couldn’t pay rent, were putting their families at risk of infection or working while ill. He states that “It ‘absolutely’ makes sense to boycott Amazon.” He expanded by saying that the lack of health and safety measures do not only impact certain employees, but could also impact their customers and other people that handle Amazon packages:
“There are several people put at risk. To get these items to your doorstep it has to go through inbound, outbound, receiving, ship docks, a sort centre — it touches 6,7,8 people including the customer. It lives on cardboard for a number of days, and could be on your item depending if someone touched it: drivers could be positive, asymptomatic or didn’t get a test; you would never know. My advice is: until the company protects the employees, as a consumer, don’t support them.”
He sounds indignant and principled; returning to his care for employees as someone that has been a supervisor at Amazon for many years. Despite the growing international attention he clearly states “I’m not afraid of nothing.” He reaches out to other workers internationally and says: “I’m here for you guys, if you’re afraid to speak, don’t be afraid, I fully support you and I’ll do everything I can to help you guys out.”
They have mobilised with many other gig and essential workers, including from other companies, to form a significant movement planning unprecedented strikes.
An opportunity to ‘take power back’.
Already with a few weeks momentum and many interviews behind him, Chris senses that right now they have ‘an opportunity to take power back’. He notes that “there has been an imbalance of power, possibly all across the world.”
So far, they have created a network of people who assemble a ‘heat map‘ of current outbreaks at Amazon warehouses across the USA. They have currently found more than 600 cases with at least seven known deaths and no answers about overcrowding and infections.
Chris Smalls’ demands are as follows:
- That former employees who were fired for valuing their health be reinstated and retropaid.
- Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) be provided to workers — “no excuses for that.”
- Transparency regarding cases in the buildings, while respecting privacy.
- Take care of your employees with a tiny amount of Amazon’s profits!
Following these actions, the resignation of Vice President Tim Bray amplified international headlines around the issue.
The Vice President and ‘Distinguished Engineer’ at Amazon Web Services announced that there was a ‘vein of toxicity’ running through the company culture, continuing by claiming: “I choose neither to serve nor drink that poison.“ This statement comes in light of the catalogue of retaliatory of firings and internal protests from Amazon tech workers condemning the firings.
Tim Bray retrospectively states that “Amazon’s messaging has been urgent… prioritising this issue and putting massive efforts into warehouse safety.” He adds however that:
“at the end of the day, the big problem isn’t the specifics of COVID-19 response. It’s that Amazon treats the humans in the warehouses as fungible units of pick-and-pack potential. Only that’s not just Amazon, it’s how 21st Century Capitalism is done.”
Bray highlights how:
“it’s all about power balances. The warehouse workers are weak and getting weaker, what with mass unemployment and (in the US) job-linked health insurance. So they’re gonna get treated like crap, because capitalism. Any plausible solution has to start with increasing their collective strength.”
This refreshingly curt take highlights how timely Chris Smalls’ crucial collective action is.
As Smalls says,“start[ing] a revolution… [that] changed the entire Amazon network.”
Stephen Brier, a labour historian at CUNY, states that “these workers were so shamelessly exploited for so long while performing incredibly important but largely invisible labour.” He stresses the importance of this moment for Amazon workers: “all of a sudden, they’re essential workers in a pandemic, giving them tremendous leverage and power if they organise collectively.“ Indeed, essential workers now maintain the edifice of the failed corporate-state economy. They organise and coordinate through encrypted messaging services like Telegram and Signal with workers rights groups like Amazonians United, Target Workers Unite, Whole Worker and the Gig Workers Collective.
Looking Internationally to the UK, Allyson Pollock clarifies how essential workers are used to curb the risks of others. She states: “we are put into lockdown because we have been made individually responsible for making sure other people are not infected, but the government did not play its own part, which is to take responsibility and have foreseen the disaster[s].” Here Pollock illustrates how the individual has been made to bear the burden of the cardinal ineptitude and short-sightedness of governments in the West.
Encouragingly, Chris Smalls’ fate has been picked up by a lot of the media. Recently, nine democratic senators sent a letter to Amazon inquiring “about Amazon’s policies regarding ground for employee discipline and termination.” This follows New York Mayor Bill de Blasio ordering the city’s commission on human rights to look into the matter, and the New York Attorney General calling the firing of Mr. Smalls and at least another four employees “disgraceful.”
As increasing reports show the growing infection numbers of essential workers around the world, they are being thrown into the front line and remain underprotected, underpaid, and under surveillance.
What makes this insidious is that even before scientists give their permission to re-open the economy, politicians are downplaying the risk of work and prioritising the market over human life, just as before the pandemic.
As the essential workers needed to maintain the veneer of normalcy die from the coronavirus, Chris Smalls reiterates in the interview how this is the time act: “its life or death.” He notes how in France, they ‘took their power back’. If anything the current conditions highlight the extreme case for a Universal Basic Dividend. Support for the Universal Basic Dividend (UBD) stretches even to the Financial Times, because coronavirus has made clear that we need this more urgently than ever.
The coronavirus has given internet companies a surge of traffic and stock prices. Instacart hired 300,000 workers in March alone — more than it’s current work force — and in May announced it would hire 250,000 more to meet this historic demand. Amazon, on the other hand, hired 175,000 from March to May primarily to make up for its large workforce taking unpaid leave out of fear of being infected.
According to The Guardian, Jeff Bezos made $11,000-a-second during the coronavirus bonanza. Mike Pence, the Vice President and head of the coronavirus Task Force was quick to thank Amazon for “meet[ing] the needs of the American people as we face this pandemic together.” This pandering to large conglomerates reveals the cosy links between business and government that this virus has solidified. This hides what many business leaders see clearly; namely that a significant reorganisation of the system is needed.
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We cannot wait for the morality penny to drop externally.
This pandemic has shown that governments don’t have the creativity to navigate extreme moments such of crisis. Corporate businesses also subjected to the logics of the shareholder have a colossal limitation to their ‘rational’ actions. This is beyond the figurehead of billionaire tycoons. Amazon is divided up into multiple business entities with masses of shareholders, many of which are key Western companies.
This illustrates a crisis of the imagination. In Sapians, Yuval Noah Harari states that it’s our shared fictions that propelled us to inhabit the world. This notion of shared fiction entails reconfiguring our realities and where better to begin than in finance. Indeed this can begin with finally unwinding the myths of neoliberal capitalism, beginning from the Left. Perhaps the Left did buy into the myth spread from Right economists during the 1970s that globalised finance had circumvented the state’s ability to control labour markets and remain subservient to financial markets.
However, the drum beat of the Universal Basic Dividend grows louder with every passing month. Similarly, financial circles are being acquainted with the ideas of Modern Monetary Theory. We need these to kickstart a reimagining process which includes property rights, limited liability corporations, the nation state, the notion of work and of course money itself. If we collectively decide to alter the myths, we can relatively quickly and dramatically alter behaviour.
Chis Smalls finds himself “catapulted into this position.” He wasn’t a prior activist — but he states that he is being empowered by the ‘love and support’ he is receiving. “That’s all I need,” he says. Similarly, Rutger Bregman’s new book,
‘A Hopeful History’ underlines how “our secret superpower is our ability to cooperate.” In it, he examines how rather than mirroring the dynamic in the popular Lord of the Flies, a real example of island-stranded boys in the Pacific proved that humans tend toward cooperation and mutual aid.
Yuval Noah Harari recently stated that “what we are seeing around the world now is not an inevitable natural disaster. It is a human failure. The coronavirus outbreak was no ‘black swan‘ as a catalogue of viruses history have warned. Nassem Taleeb suggests there will be ‘a move to localism.’ He underlines the need to react to events, seek the knowledgeable on the ground not in the institutions. Perhaps the catalogue of ‘essential workers’ form part of Taleeb’s ‘real experts’, on the ground with quality information and able to lift the curtain of lies and PR from both governments and corporates.
An unexpected leader, Chris Small rouses that “it’s time to organise, contribute and get active in your circles.”
He calls on ‘essential workers’, ‘customers’, and all other members of society to contribute to this growing movement that calls for a return of humanity at the center of work. He reminds those that are unsure about their capacity to organise that all he had to do was connect to his employees and other workers. He also calls out to others: “You’re still a part of the fight just by speaking up, if you’re a supportive consumer or an employee, you’re supporting the cause.”
Ken Loach’s film ‘Sorry We Missed You’ shows the destructive power woven into the myth of the ‘self-employed’ worker. A UK MP described the gig economy as a “form of such exploitation that it would be difficult for the supreme court to differentiate between this and other forms of modern slavery.” Indeed, the question of who gets to wear a mask, reveals our common implication in the transnational political economy of protective equipment, which is currently working to distribute the harms of this crisis according to the prerogatives of class power and the profit motive.
Although Amazon has now made steps based on the national media coverage Chris Smalls emphasises all of the workers’ demands haven’t yet been met.
As he continues the fight for the basic set of demands in May he adds: “I’m only afraid of God, I have always been a natural born leader, my entire life, it’s funny they should be afraid of me…”
The demand for ‘personal protection’, done in a collective manner, circumvents the oppression from Amazon management and claims an equality over the value of their life. In other words, the symbolism of the mask points towards a demand to have their lives valued. Warehouse workers protesting with their bandanas, torn shirts and sliced pillowcases have found the courage to not be crushed by their circumstances and use this to energise the fight to hold their bosses accountable.
As Richard Woodall states Here, “the mask acquires a fresh double significance: a necessary condition of survival and the common basis on which vital structures of communal solidarity might be reaffirmed.”
Watch our interview with Amazon whistleblower Chris Smalls on DiEM25 TV.
Have Merkel & Macron just announced a eurobond-funded godsend for the EU?
On Tuesday, May 19 2020, Chancellor Merkel and President Macron announced a joint proposal for a 500 billion euro common fund, to be financed by allowing the European Commission to borrow from the money markets.
The fund will, according to the Merkel-Macron proposal, finance directly businesses across the EU – by means mainly of transfers.
Is this a breakthrough? Here is Yanis Varoufakis’ answer on behalf of DiEM25.
“Even if this latest Merkel-Macron proposal meets the light of day, gets approved, and proceeds exactly as announced (…) it is not a Eurobond. It does not constitute a transfer of debt from member states to the European Union — thus it will not reduce the pressure on Italy on Spain on Greece on France, indeed on Germany, to lessen the austerity wave that’s going to hit our economies next year.”
“It will not end up with small business. It will not end up with those who truly need support in order to survive this huge new recession and the repercussions of the great austerity drive that the European Union’s fiscal stance is going to bring to us next year and the years to come.”
“The European Union will continue to disintegrate as long as these decisions continue to be taken behind closed doors, in castles, in rooms with adults that are not particularly good at even looking after their own interests.”
“DiEM25 is here with our proposals that would be therapeutic for all of Europe, that would unite Europeans and would reverse austerity for the many and socialism for the very few. Carpe Diem.”
What Europe Needs: DiEM25’s 3-Point Plan for the COVID Pandemic
DiEM25’s 3-Point Plan proposes to do what Yanis Varoufakis mentions in his last sentences: to unite Europeans and reverse austerity in Europe.
Step 1: Issue €1 trillion in ECB-Eurobonds
Step 2: Inject a €2000 European Solidarity Cash Payment
Step 3: Introduce a European Green Recovery & Investment Program
A poem for those who have lost the right to speak
This poem has been submitted by playwright and theatre director Maja Pelević, who has featured in two of our DiEM25 TV episodes with Tariq Ali and Boris Buden.
Maja was inspired by Mahmoud Darwish’s poem and the message that Yanis Varoufakis gave on the 72nd Anniversary of Nakba. She remembers all the injustice we have been participating in, all the oppressed that we couldn’t help, and all the inhumanity happening around us while in our backyard it remains business as usual.
IF ONLY WE WERE CANDLES IN THE DARK
As you liberate yourself in metaphor, think of others
(those who have lost the right to speak)
As you think of others far away, think of yourself
(say: “If only I were a candle in the dark”)
from the poem “Think of Others”
by Mahmoud Darwish
As we self-isolate comfortably in our houses staying healthy and safe, we should think of others
(and never forget there are people who can’t afford to stay protected, or don’t even have homes)
As we eat our tasty, oh, so tasty asparagus, we should think of others
(and never forget they are the ones that brought it to our table)
As we put on our nice clothes and look in the mirror, we should think of others
(and never forget the sweatshops, poor working conditions, unfair wages and child labor that contributed to that image)
As we look at the world collapsing before our eyes, we should think of others
(and never forget they are the ones that will be hit hardest)
As we consider ourselves smarter, trying to impose our “freedom”, we should think of others
(and never forget all the wars and killing done for “democracy”)
As we use political correctness in the name of absolute truth, we should think of others
(and never forget that we don’t own the truth)
As we easily use big words thinking we are fighting for a good cause, we should think of others
(and never forget they are at this very moment fighting for their lives)
As we sometimes believe all people are equal, but some are more so, we should think of others
(and never forget the little fascist that lies in all of us)
As we put ourselves above somebody else, we should think of others
(and never forget that what goes up, must come down)
As we are trying to reinvent the world, we should think of others
(and never forget that we are not the only ones who want this change)
by Maja Pelević
Message from Yanis Varoufakis on the 72nd Anniversary of the Nakba
“I feel ashamed that for 72 years, we have collectively failed as humanity to ensure the right of Nakba refugees: their right to return after that May of 1984, as well as to the return of their children.”
“I feel ashamed that instead new crimes are added to Nakba’s original crime, with new Palestinian refugees being created, systematically, constantly, as the powerful turn a blind eye or are involved in the new ethnic cleansing.”
“I feel ashamed that Greek governments, even the so-called Left, like the previous one, signed agreements aimed at mining and military coalitions. And with whom did they sign these agreements: serving only war and the destruction of the planet? With Mr. Netanyahu.”
English subtitles available in the video message.
Manchester’s Quarantined Music Scene: The Hazards of Precarious Employment
A major consequence of the 2008 economic crisis and the era of devastating austerity imposed in the UK by the Tory Government since 2010 has been an attack on workers rights.
This has profoundly weakened them and fuelled a rise in self-employment, zero hours contracts and the gig economy. Those gaining their livelihood from these precarious avenues in the UK and all over the world have been left in tenuous financial situations by the necessary shutdown. In many cases, the pandemic caused workers’ incomes to completely evaporate overnight. The COVID-19 pandemic and the omnipresent threat of climate change have illustrated that we cannot return to business as usual.
In the UK music industry, 72% of all workers are self-employed, leaving them devoid of any job security, sick pay or holiday pay. A common feature of self-employment is that people do not take time off when they are ill, as they will lose income. Paulette Constable (known as DJ Paulette) stated, “Most self-employed people will work through World War 3”. She continues, “I never take time off; I’ve never taken time off as a child either, I was never encouraged to take time off. I’ve worked through broken legs, broken bones, everything, car accidents, the lot.”
It is not just those working in the music industry that are suffering hardship as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Those working in the gig economy, on zero hours contracts and in other self-employed professions are also suffering. There are many companies utilising zero-hours contracts, to offer casual and insecure employment. According to the UK’s Office of National Statistics, between October and December 2019, 974,402 people in the UK were employed on a zero hours contract, 73,664 were aged 65 or over. Workers in these groups are already vulnerable due to their insecure working conditions.
On March 20, the Conservative government announced their Coronavirus job retention scheme. The government will pay businesses to pay their employees, covering up to 80% of employees’ wages with a cap of £2500 per employee, per month. On Thursday March 26, Rishi Sunak, the Chancellor of the Exchequer introduced the same policy for self-employed people, but stating that the funds would only be made available by June 2020 and would be based upon an average of the previous three years taxable profits.
The UK’s Institute for Fiscal Studies has stated that 2 Million self-employed people will not qualify for assistance from the Chancellor’s stimulus package because, they earn too little from self-employment and have not made a profit, earn over the £50,000 per year threshold, or only began working for themselves in the past year.
Afonso Vaz, a lighting engineer, commented on the government scheme for the self-employed:
“I have to admit that the government seems to have put help in place for everyone, or at first glance before going through the small print. But money is simply never, enough right? I think the help scheme for the self-employed is by far the most complex, as there are many factors to consider in the formula the government has put out.”
The future does not bode well for musicians and engineers.
As Chris Whitty the UK’s Chief Medical officer has stated that until a vaccine or a highly effective antiretroviral treatment that prevents people dying from COVID-19 is found, social distancing measures may remain in place until the end of the calendar year. These social distancing measures are necessary but will leave workers in the entertainment industry, and other industries, out of work for the foreseeable future.
Since the onset of the pandemic, unemployment claims in the U.S have soared to a catastrophic, ever rising figure of more than 36 million and there are currently 1.8 million new Universal Credit claims in the UK, creating hardship and insecurity for millions of people.
In times of financial crisis, radical measures are required such as, Universal Basic Income (UBI). In Stockton, California, Universal Basic Income has been trialled with 125 local residents, who have been given $500 per month. As part of the $2 Trillion stimulus package in the USA every American adult will receive a one-off payment of $1,200 and every child will receive $500. Bernie Sanders, the former Democratic Presidential candidate has proposed that every person in America should receive $2,000 per month for the duration of the crisis.
People who work in the music industry are enthusiastic about the concept of Universal Basic Income.
Daniel Walker, who works as a lighting engineer added on Universal Basic Income, “They should bring forward Universal Basic Income and that should be the way to go, because then it’s a level playing field and it’s not linked to universal credit”.
Universal Basic Income could offer workers trapped in the gig economy and zero hours contracts the ability to seek more secure, higher paid employment. This would allow workers more time for relaxation and disposable income, which could then be spent within the local economy. DiEM-25 has set out their three-point plan to stimulate the European economy, which includes a call to the ECB to offer €1 Trillion in Eurobonds, giving every EU citizen €2,000 immediately and calling upon the EU to create a European green recovery and investment programme. DiEM-25 has also proposed Universal Basic Dividend as an alternative to UBI. UBD would be based upon a “public” percentage of companies’ profits, instead of the taxpayer or government funding UBI.
There are trade unions that cater for the music industry in the UK, such as the Musicians Union and the Bectu branch of Prospect. James Cole, who works as a sound engineer states, “All the other engineers are not unionised.” He continues, “I think one thing that could come out of this is we may get some kind of trade union for people like us. Sound Engineers have no voice, we’re not united in any way”. Daniel adds:
“There’s going to be a desire for all of the musicians who have gone through this to not want it to happen again. We need to get together and organise”.
This crisis has revealed the fragile nature of many people’s employment status.
In order to combat this insecurity, trade union membership needs to be vastly expanded across the music industry, in order to protect and expand the rights of workers.
During the pandemic musicians have turned to performing via live streams, but for the vast majority of artists streaming does not provide a stable income. Sound charts blog has calculated that rights holders receive £2.74 ($3.18) per 1000 streams on Spotify. For smaller bands starting out, playing live is an essential way to connect with audiences and now acts as the main source of revenue for all artists. The Musicians Union and the Ivor’s Academy have launched the Keep Music Alive campaign, which calls for industry stakeholders to come together to agree an equitable and sustainable model for royalty distribution. The Keep Music Alive campaign launched a petition calling on the UK government to immediately commence a review of streaming.
Going to see live music is a communal experience and a cross section of different sized venues is required to sustain the music industry. If no small venues exist, then there is no training ground for the musicians and engineers of the future. Where will the next Rage Against the Machine, Public Enemy, Roger Waters, Manic Street Preachers or Sons of Kemet rise from?
The paramount concern in the pandemic is rightly on those falling victim to COVID-19 and the valiant health care professionals battling the pandemic. They are forced to care for the sick and dying in often inadequate circumstances, without even enough Personal Protective Equipment (PPE). Paul Farmer, one of the founders of Partners In Health, said in an interview regarding the current pandemic with NPR in March, in relation to the findings from the Ebola epidemic in 2014: “Flattening the curve through social distancing and containment is a good thing as long as people have a way to get to professional care if they need IV fluids or oxygen. We need to integrate containment and care. That’s a big lesson.”
The UK now has the horrifying distinction of having the highest death toll in Europe. From the outset of the pandemic the Tory government failed to adopt the viral pandemic practices to suppress and control the virus, of testing, isolating confirmed cases, treating infected patients and contact tracing those they had been in contact with. The Tory government is now attempting to rush out of lockdown in England without adequate PPE or health and safety measures implemented in public spaces or the workplace, with workers left to choose between risking their lives or their livelihoods.
The Bank of England currently predicts a 14% contraction in the UK economy, which will cause an unprecedented recession across all sectors of the economy. The UK economy has already shrunk by 2% in the first three months of the year. Rishi Sunak has stated: “It is now very likely that the UK economy will face a significant recession this year, and we’re already in the middle of that as we speak.”
Lessons should be learned from the 2008 economic crash.
Workers should not allow their fundamental rights to be eroded in times of crisis, particularly in relation to health and safety, an area that needs to be strengthened in the face of the pandemic.
We must demand fully funded health care systems and public services — this is reinforced in the Green New Deal for Europe. Workers should seize the opportunity, as this calamity can create a flourishing of ideas and action to create a more just, equitable and sustainable world. As Patti Smith said, “People have the power/the power to dream to rule/to wrestle the Earth from fools.”
Kieran and Shona Fairweather are in a band, Altered Archipelago: www.musicglue.com/alteredarchipelago their new EP, Push Forward is out now, from which 10% of all sales will go to Partners in Health: www.PIH.org
MeRA25 Statement: Unity and struggle against the 5th Memorandum
The spectre of the 5th Memorandum [austerity program] is haunting Greece, bringing salary and pension cuts, further impoverishment of the already poor and enslavement of the middle and working classes.
At the same time, it surrenders to the oligarchy-without-borders whatever is left of the country’s public and private wealth (predatory funds, predatory extraction companies, predatory entanglement of commercial and political interests).
In the Times of Coronavirus, faced with the spectrum of renewed economic collapse and Debt derailment, the apparent ownership by Mr. Mitsotakis [Greek PM] of the demand for a Eurobond was his “Last Bluff”. No sooner was it rejected than he “forgot” about it, paving the way for the inhumane New Austerity that the 5th Memorandum will bring in mid-2021 and for many years to come.
As of today, all government moves aim solely at electoral victory, which they will try to snatch from the people before citizens realize their plan of plunder on behalf of the parasitic oligarchy.
The post-coronavirus age requires Unity and Struggle.
That is why MeRA25 is rallying citizens to a people-wide commitment on the basis of an agreement including seven points:
- PUBLIC DEBT: Veto in every Eurogroup and European Summit, until the profound restructuring of Greek public debt and material progress is made in Europe-wide sharing of the Crisis burdens.
- RED LOANS: Establishment of a Public Company for Restructuring and Management of Private Debts which puts an end to plan “Heracles” [legislation to remove non-performing loans from banks’ balance sheets by selling them to offshore funds, resulting in foreclosures and evictions], abolishing the predator funds’ vital space and thus ensuring just protection for peoples’ homes and the middle and working classes.
- BANKS-PAYMENTS SYSTEM: Greek banks have gone bankrupt once again. This time round we will not allow public money to be handed to them, unless: (a) they are nationalized and (b) the banks’ monopoly on electronic payments is broken, with the founding of a Public Electronic Payments System, which allows for transactions free of charge without the banks’ intermediation.
- LABOUR: Establishment of a Decent Basic Income for all, immediate abolition of the regime of “rented” employees, and Collective Bargaining Agreements for all.
- TAXATION: Immediate abolition of tax prepayments and deep haircuts in the taxes of households and small and medium enterprises, especially those hit by the lockdown.
- AN END TO EXTRACTION: Fossil fuels to remain in the depths of the earth. [earlier this month the government passed a bill opening the door to exploratory oil and gas drilling in protected areas].
- INTERNMENT CAMPS: Immediate abolition of all “closed camps” in which migrants are concentrated.
In 2010 our society was unprepared. Caught by surprise, citizens succumbed to the orchestrated attack of the troika and their instrument of torture, the 1st Memorandum. In 2020 we know better.
This time “ignorance” is not forgiven. United and in time, we ought to prepare the struggle to prevent the 5th Memorandum.
Progressive International Inaugural Event: "Internationalism or Extinction!"
At 17.00 UTC [19.00 CEST] on 15 May, Katrín Jakobsdóttir, Yanis Varoufakis, Nanjala Nyabola, Vanessa Nakate, and Renata Ávila will host the inaugural event of the Progressive International.
On 11 May — in the midst of the Covid-19 pandemic —the Progressive International launched with a mission to unite progressive forces in a common planetary front.
Now, we are kicking off the PI Forum with its inaugural event featuring five members of the PI Council: Prime Minister of Iceland Katrín Jakobsdóttir; Ugandan climate activist Vanessa Nakate; Greek MP and DiEM25 co-founder Yanis Varoufakis; Guatemalan human rights & tech lawyer Renata Ávila; and writer and political analyst Nanjala Nyabola from Kenya.
At this historic juncture, we face a clear choice — a choice that PI Council member Noam Chomsky has described as “Internationalism or Extinction.” Either we bind our local struggles at the planetary scale. Or we surrender to an authoritarian capitalism that is grinding our species to extinction.
There is no return to normal. It was the normalization of a heating planet, of resource extraction and of labour exploitation that has led directly to the present crisis. In face of this existential challenge, we have the moral and political duty to organise a planetary front that can transcend borders and confront the capitalist logic of expansion. Bringing together PI Council members from around the world, this inaugural event aims to chart the course.
We will be live on Youtube, Facebook, and Twitter, so tune in! Register HERE!
Greek Tragedy and the first days of COVID-19 in Sicily
The limits of earthly survival are the limits of good character.
PALERMO—Bumping into other people during the first weeks of lockdown felt a lot like meeting people in a hospital hallway. Everybody appeared slightly ungroomed, tired of doing nothing and looking to behave as aseptic — free from contagion — as possible. Still, nobody is to be touched or come close which is an irritating new feature of a life yet to apprehend. Speaking face to face, passing items from one hand to another, negotiating space in a supermarket aisle, taking the elevator or holding open a door—all awkward dances from an arm-length apart. At minimum.
Even though the possibility of contagion is real, we who meet on the street seem to still be visitors in this new scenario. Patients with COVID-19 in real hospitals are gasping for air, possibly lying on their bellies connected to a machine that breathes for them. It is not only the elderly or weak but, as voices of Italian doctors on the frontline have been telling us since the virus hit the Southern European country, also people in their 20s, 30s and 40s who require intensive care.
While infections and fatalities continue to rise daily—from three on 18 January to more than 285,145 at the time of writing—the measures now increasingly taken in overcrowded hospitals across various continents are those practised in times of war. Medical staff must decide whose lives are sensible to save as they face a lack of medical supplies to meet the soaring demand for personnel and equipment.
Meanwhile, the countrywide lockdown imposed by the Italian government on March 10 2020 and other governments thereafter, continued to be described as ‘draconian measures’ by news outlets all over the world. In the past month, the word has become journalists’ lazy favourite to illustrate the desperate but life-saving attempt of limiting contagion. Apart from suffering the total absence of eloquence, we — the reader — also suffer a severe loss of context. The example sentence to define the word draconian in Google’s dictionary is “the Nazis destroyed the independence of the press by a series of draconian laws” which is in itself a sensible statement, yet one wouldn’t say “the patient’s life was saved by a draconian operation on the open heart.”
The use of these words — by which we understand the world — is not a serendipitous mistake on repeat. It is a direct reflection of the current crisis of political leadership, which became the first and foremost victim of the Coronavirus. Leaders have not reacted fast enough. Often, economic reasoning has been put before people’s wellbeing. Subsequently, the severe actions taken in China and Italy have been understood as arbitrary, oppressive and harsh because they were compared against the long absence of measures across other countries in Europe and the US.
Varying degrees of inadequacy and utter unpreparedness have been reflected in the tardy responses of Western leaders: President Trump belittled the threat before erratically jumping from one unscientific solution to another — first hydroxychloroquine then simple bleach — in a desperate quest to reopen the economy; Boris Johnson first presented ‘herd-immunity’ without a back-up plan for an NHS that is on the brink of collapse on every regular weekday due to years of structural underfunding and continues to confuse the public with half-baked strategies; even chancellor Angela Merkel reacted rather late though decisively enough to direct Germany’s resources towards massively increasing testing capacities.
Like in a classical Greek tragedy, there is an unfortunate lack of desirable options when it comes to dealing with this global public health emergency.
No matter which route is taken, something will take a hit — whether it be the economy, the population or the leading party’s reputation. Unfortunately, this is exactly what leaders are supposed to do; taking tough decisions and navigating crises falls within the responsibility of a chancellor, president or leader.
In Poetics, Aristotle lays out the basic pillars of tragedy. Among them, pity aroused by unmerited misfortune, fear from seeing the misfortune of a man like ourselves, and character through which moral purpose can be expressed. “Character is that which reveals moral purpose, showing what kind of things a man chooses or avoids,” he writes.
While the pandemic aroused pity and fear, the display of good character with a moral quality has been rather rare. Under the premise, that the soul is divided in rational and non-rational, Aristotle defines a good or virtuous character as the skilful balance between the two:
“Anyone can get angry — that is easy — or give or spend money; but to do this to the right person, to the right extent, at the right time, with the right aim, and in the right way, that is not for everyone, nor is it easy. That is why goodness is praiseworthy and fine.”
For the Greek moralists, the moral wasn’t a chastising duty or obligation but an opportunity to flourish and live well.
The hesitant reaction of many leaders, stemming from failing to prioritise between saving lives or the economy, is in and of itself immoral; money doesn’t make for a great purpose when the consequence is death. We may not dare to expect morality but resolute action, factual communication and swift reaction must be demanded. Instead, lies, ignorance, and irresponsibility have allowed the virus to claim thousands of lives up until now, and as Boris Johnson reassured prolifically early on, it will cost us many more.
It is not just the virus that is killing us, it is our inability to deal with it.
Beyond leadership, most health systems in Europe are ill-equipped to respond to this crisis, missing the necessary number of beds or ventilators, medical personnel and protective gear. As similar problems arise across the world, it becomes clear that capitalism is economically unfit for purpose.
Wealth extraction has been prioritised over wealth creation. As Brené Brown explains in Dare To Lead, political and personal priorities are based upon values such as kindness, compassion, and accountability. To a certain degree, the inadequate leaders we have seen emerge in the second decade of the most unpredictable millennium in human history have been chosen by us, the citizens. This says something about the fear and uncertainty most of us are living with and the enormous impact it has on our values. Uncontested fear leads to isolation, which voluntarily gives away the power of connection and alliance with others, and favours binary solutions or unilateral myths of strength.
Instead of building literal or metaphorical walls, leaders ought to act beyond those for no arbitrary lines will ever truly separate us.
We share a planetary sphere. It brings to mind one of Gillian Wearing’s photographs from the series Signs that say what you want them to say and not Signs that say what someone else wants you to say (1992-1993). In it, one of London’s passers-by participants, a middle-aged man, holds up a self-written sign saying “Everything in life is connected. The point is to know it and understand it.” The reason is not altruism but connection — we and the other are inseparable. This includes non-human species if there were any doubts left. Long after Donna Haraway, Timothy Morton and Anna Tsing have told us so we begin to understand what this means.
From our confinement in Palermo, Lorenzo Marsili wrote about the transformative possibility of this breakdown, the biggest disruptive event since WWII. By now, most of us have moved past the state of emergency and realised that this crisis will stay with us. For months, the global population has been confined to their homes (those who are lucky enough have them). Forced to sit with the desperation within and without us, we excavate faded ideals and re-establish what we hold important.
In conversations with friends and discussions witnessed on channels like DiEMTV, old bonds are revived and new alliances are formed around shared values. Though there is a lack of optimism, there is no lack of hope. We may not have realised, but we are already living in the future.
Photograph © Izabela Anna Moren.
Applause as a form of social distancing
“Just as we would clap our soldiers into war, risking their lives, we do it now with our health care workers. The applause is a sort of recognition of their sacrifice on our behalf.”
All over the world people have made it to their balconies or doorsteps to overcome the restrictions of their new-found quarantine. What started in Italy first with spontaneous singing, has now found its dominant expression as formalized applause for health care personnel in many countries. This has been hailed as a “beautiful gesture” to pay tribute to their efforts on the ground. Despite the welcome, I will argue that the emergence of this regular exercise is best understood as a form of social distancing.
Seeing pictures of people clapping their hands from their balconies evokes images of theatre audiences approving of the actors’ performances from their loges. Indeed, the applause has its home in theatre going back to antiquity and has been highly standardized in the European classical period to most commonly mark the end of a performance. We see similar applause to honour achievements in the world of sports. Here we already have a key: applause is rooted in the extraordinary, in fiction, the performed, the world of play. Just as we applaud our actors, sports stars, speakers and performing artists, we honour our health workers – with a significant difference, however.
In his seminal Homo ludens, examining the nature of playing and games, Johan Huizinga points out, that “first and foremost … all play is a voluntary activity.” While there are some volunteers in the health system, these are in a minority and overall it would be difficult to argue that health workers are voluntarily doing their job in a dangerous environment. Quite the opposite has been unfolding. In numerous countries, health workers were the first to be banned from international travel. As essential workers they have had to postpone holidays, work extra-hours and have even been pressured to work when sick or be afraid of not getting sick leaves. Rather then, are we applauding the gladiator entering the arena to fight the lion?
War has often been used as a model for the measures against the pandemic. Indeed this strikes me as a much better analogy. Just as we would clap our soldiers into war, risking their lives, we do it now with our health care workers. The applause is a sort of recognition of their sacrifice on our behalf. But soldiers do not fight wars voluntarily either. Consider the fact that until recently most countries have had general conscription and today ́s professional armies focus their draft activities on low-income and even immigrant neighbourhoods (offering economic security and fast-track naturalisations). Likewise, the high percentage of immigrant workers in the care sector and other essential work is apparent.
So, rather than marking an extraordinary achievement or quality as in the world of entertainment, we applaud the fact that they are representing us in life-threatening circumstances. It is not, in our minds, that some unique skill would merit this distinction. After all, no remedy to the virus has been found. Note, for example, that nurses have been graduated early to fight the pandemic. In principle, almost anyone could have been conscripted to provide such a service, as indeed has been the case in the army. Just as Bloomberg considers that he could teach anybody to be a farmer, the applause is ultimately directed towards us being spared from having to do this.
In an interview with the German newspaper FAZ early this year musicologist Jutta Toelle from the Max Planck Institute for empirical aesthetics, who has examined the phenomenon of applause, makes this crucial point:
“Applause separates between active and passive members of a society, those that perform and those that watch. In cultures, where participation is a central element, where, as it were, everybody is on the stage, applause plays a minor role.”
In other words, applause marks a social distinction.
As we struggle with the realisation of our apparent uselessness for society in our confinement, the institutionalised separation of active and passive members enacted in the applause suddenly provides us with meaning.
By taking on the role of the audience, we have found a place that accounts for and naturalises our passivity.
Even more, we can actively take the stage again as the spectator who has been contributing their share in the division of labour and approves of the efforts. It thus makes perfect sense that the focus of media reports on the initiative has been foregrounded on those applauding, particularly the organisers of the event, prime ministers, and prominent figures such as David Beckham being “proud of you guys”. (In India, a shortcut has been making the rounds by doing without the carers altogether: the vibrations of the clapping they believe may in themselves kill the virus.)
Those in the immediate surroundings of their heroes have found it harder to assert such a distinction. Family members of returning soldiers, sometimes crippled by the war, often suffering post-traumatic stress or other disorders, find it difficult to applaud. At the same time as the accolades of clapping are being exhibited, health workers in many countries around the world have been blocked from returning to their apartments in their neighbourhoods, prevented from boarding buses and been assaulted on the streets for fear of infection, while many others worry for their loved ones being at risk at work.
Despite the extreme circumstances of their work during this pandemic, its nature has mainly changed in degree, not essence. To draw a parallel to applauding them with the nowadays almost ubiquitous habit of thanking, David Graeber observed in his bestselling book on debt that “to thank someone suggests that he or she might not have acted that way”, which is why, in some communities people actually find it insulting as it implies the possibility of not meeting the expectations of their jobs. In a context of near certainty such a presumption becomes absurd.
Consider that until not long ago it was customary in some countries to applaud pilots after each successful landing. Airplane pilots were elected for this distinction, not because we could ascertain that it required some extraordinary skills, but because we could not quite believe in the magic of our invention and were proud each time it actually worked out (this habit has now largely faded away as the laws of physics have proven reliable). Given the involuntary context of their work, it is not that health workers would have much of an alternative, as we have seen, but we are amazed that they really go on doing the inhuman things they are asked to as if by sleight of an invisible hand. The system works!
What is more, if we pay tribute by applauding, this comes with a value attached. Not without reason Barbara Streisand once observed: “What does it mean when people applaud? … Should I give ‘em money? Say thank you? Lift my dress?” Applause is not the only symbolic means of giving credit to someone: military decorations and other titles of honour fulfill that function too and they typically do not involve any material benefits. Just as we cover our war veterans in military “favours”, so we favour our health workers with an applauding incentive. That this is a very abstract form of compensation, is illustrated when every now and then the many cases of these decorated veterans struggling in their post-service lives come to the fore. The mere need for NGOs to collect donations on Remembrance Day to support veterans financially, proves this point too.
It becomes clear the applause is not concerned with the actual human beings, but has to do with how well they perform their role or the fact that they carry it out at all.
An actor breaking with the rules of play by instead expressing his personal feelings and thoughts is an unlikely addressee of ovations. When soldiers speak of their personal struggles or even criticise wars, they violate the code of conduct and it takes little for them to be maligned. In recent history, the case of Bowe Bergdahl, with his realisation that “the US army is the biggest joke” and that he is “ashamed to even be American”, who was subsequently accused of all sorts of things, despite formally being entitled to a number of military decorations, comes to mind. Health-workers, too, have been facing threats and warned not to speak out about their inadequate and life-threatening working conditions during the pandemic. The show must go on.
Nowhere has the ultimate meaning of applauding care workers been summarized more succinctly than in the words of the British Queen. During her speech on the coronavirus she said:
“The pride in who we are is not a part of our past, it defines our present and our future. The moments when the United Kingdom has come together to applaud its care and essential workers will be remembered as an expression of our national spirit.”
This bears repeating: it will be remembered as an expression of our national spirit. Once the curtain has fallen, the essential workers are out of the picture altogether. The applause is not about them, it is about us after all. It is in this sense no different than the patriotic songs from the balconies that preceded it.
Far from being a gesture of solidarity with the workers, as has been suggested, the act of applauding is in reality a form of social distancing from them.
Whereas solidarity is a recognition of human communality, applause distinguishes the inhuman. In the applause we unite with the other passive members of society as spectators to an active audience, but we divide from the essential workers to different ends of the equation and thereby aim to naturalize our inequality. By clapping our workers into sacrifice, we can realize the pride in who we are again. It is the fate of heroes that they pay for their deeds with their lives and that their bodies are being used to climb to the heights of national glory.
This article was originally published on openDemocracy, and can be found here.