Friday, April 8, 2022

Twitter Thread: Republican vision for America


Twitter thread by Thomas Zimmer who teaches twentieth-century U.S. and International history at Georgetown University’s BMW Center for German and European Studies, with a focus on the Transatlantic history of democracy and its discontents.

Prior to coming to Georgetown in 2021, he was Assistant Professor of Contemporary History at Albert-Ludwigs-University of Freiburg in Germany. His research on the history of global health politics after the Second Word War, the subject of his first book, won the German Historical Association’s Award for the Best Dissertation in the Field of International History in 2015-16.

 

Republicans could not be clearer about what their goal is: 1950s-style white Christian patriarchal dominance - that’s their animating vision for America. All the racial and social progress towards multiracial, pluralistic democracy since the 1950s needs to go.
Some thoughts:

Sen. John Cornyn just doubled down on grouping together Plessy v Ferguson, Roe, & Obergefell as examples of judicial activism under the guise of substantive due process. This isn’t just empty rhetoric. We are seeing a wave of red-state legislation intended to eviscerate the civil rights regime that has been established since the 1960s – and banish, outlaw, and censor anything that threatens white Christian dominance, past or present. 

Last week: DeSantis signed bill easing book bans; GA leg passes a book ban bill; OK Gov signs transgender athlete ban; AZ Gov signs abortion & voting limits & transgender ban; Utah leg overrides gov veto of transgender ban. Red state erasure of post-60s rights revolution rolls on

Debating whether or not Republicans really want to abolish multiracial, pluralistic democracy is pointless. The proof is in the pudding, and the pudding is the state level: Wherever they are in charge, Republicans are openly embracing an authoritarian vision of society. 

The reactionary counter-mobilization against democracy is happening on so many fronts simultaneously that it’s easy to lose sight of how things are connected. But they absolutely are connected, and we need to focus on the big picture. 

  • Ban abortion and contraception; 
  • criminalize LGBTQ people. 
  • Install an authoritarian white nationalist education system, 
  • ban dissent. 
  • Restrict voting rights, 
  • purge election commissions.

These are not disparate actions - it’s one political project.

The overriding concern for conservatives is to maintain traditional political, social, cultural, and economic hierarchies. It’s a vision that serves, first and foremost, a wealthy white elite - and all those who cling to traditional white Christian patriarchal authority. It’s a political project that goes well beyond Congress and state legislatures: This is about restoring and entrenching white Christian patriarchal dominance and authority in the local community, in the public square, in the workplace, in the family.

The American Right is fully committed to this anti-democratic, anti-pluralistic vision – which they understand is a minoritarian project: Conservatives are acutely aware that they don’t have numerical majorities. But they don’t care about democratic legitimacy. 

The Republican Party has a comprehensive strategy to put this vision into practice. In Washington, Republican lawmakers are mainly focused on obstructing efforts to safeguard democracy. It’s at the state level where the reactionary assault is accelerating the most. It all starts with not letting too many of the “wrong” people vote. That’s why Republican lawmakers are introducing bills - have introduced hundreds of bills! - intended to make voting more difficult, and have enacted such laws almost everywhere they are in charge. 

All of these voter suppression laws are ostensibly race-neutral and non-partisan – as they always have been in American history. But look at who is targeted by these laws, and who is supposed to benefit: The political project behind them isn’t exactly hard to figure out.

If too many of the “wrong” people are still voting, you make their electoral choices count less. Gerrymandering is one way Republicans are trying to achieve that goal, and it has been accelerating and radicalizing basically wherever they are in charge.  

As that might still not be enough to keep the “wrong” people from winning, Republicans are trying to put themselves in a position to nullify their win: We’re seeing election subversion efforts up and down the country – an all-out assault on state election systems. Republican-led state legislatures are re-writing the rules so that they will have more influence on future elections, election commissions are being purged, local officials are being harassed, people who are a threat to Republican rule are replaced by Trumpist loyalists.

Republicans understand that such blatant undermining of democracy might lead to a mobilization of civil society. That’s why they are criminalizing protests, by defining them as “riots,” and by legally sanctioning physical attacks on “rioters.” 

The Right also encourages white militants to use whatever force they please to suppress these “leftwing” protests by celebrating and glorifying those who have engaged in such violent fascistic fantasies – call it the Kyle Rittenhouse dogma. 

Finally, Republicans are flanking all this by a broad-scale offensive against everything and everyone criticizing the legitimacy of white nationalist rule – past, present, and future. They clearly understand the importance of being in control of the national story. Ideally, the Supreme Court would step in and put a stop to the escalating attempts to undermine democracy and roll back civil rights. But the conservative majority on the Court is actually doing the opposite, providing robust cover for the reactionary counter-mobilization. 

That’s the white nationalist vision, these are the authoritarian strategies. And this assault on democracy and the civil rights order is escalating. The long-standing anti-democratic tendencies notwithstanding, the Right has been radicalizing significantly. 

Why now? 

The more structural answer is that America has changed, and the conservative political project has come under enormous pressure as a result. The Republican hold on power has become tenuous, certainly on the federal level, and even in some previously “red” states. The Right is reacting to something real: Due to political, cultural, and most importantly demographic changes, the country has indeed become less white, less conservative, less Christian, more diverse, more multicultural, more liberal. 


And recent political and societal events have dramatically heightened the sense of threat on the Right, of being under siege, that has resulted from these changes. The first one was the election – and re-election – of the first Black president to the White House. 

Nothing symbolized the threat to white dominance like Barack Obama’s presidency - an outrageous subversion of what reactionaries understand as America’s natural order, made worse by the fact that he managed to get re-elected with less than 40 percent of the white vote.  

It’s also impossible to understand the Right’s radicalization without conceptualizing it as a white reactionary counter-mobilization specifically to the anti-racist mobilization of civil society in the summer of 2020. 

In the Black Lives Matter-led protests of 2020 that – at least temporarily – were supported by most white liberals, the Right saw irrefutable proof that radically “Un-American” forces of “woke,” leftist extremism were on the rise, hellbent on destroying “real” America. 

Since then, by portraying the opponent as a fundamentally illegitimate faction that seeks to destroy the country, conservatives have been giving themselves permission to embrace whatever radical measures are deemed necessary to defeat this “Un-American” enemy. 


The white reactionary counter-mobilization against multiracial, pluralistic democracy won’t stop because the people behind it have some sort of epiphany that they shouldn’t go that far. It will either be stopped or succeed in entrenching white Christian patriarchal rule. /end 

Monday, April 4, 2022

War Crimes Notes

 As the Russian assault on Ukraine continues these two links about "war crimes" have come to my attention. The first is a current commentary at Asia Times, Blowbacks from Ukraine war will be deadly serious. The other is four years ago in 1968, THE YEAR THAT SHATTERED AMERICA  A Smithsonian magazine special report.

Two self-explanatory quotes will make my point. The Asia Times critique of current events in Ukraine is an excellent overview critical of the US response which is not receiving the global embrace policy-makers were hoping.

Despite Western media accusations of genocide and war atrocities, Putin has apparently been careful to limit civilian casualties. As former ambassador and US official Chas Freeman has pointed out, the ratio of civilian casualties from the Ukraine conflict to military casualties has been one-tenth of that normally found in a typical war.

Newsweek reported a US Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) analyst as saying, “I know that the news keeps repeating that Putin is targeting civilians, but there is no evidence that Russia is intentionally doing so. In fact, I’d say that Russian could be killing thousands more civilians if it wanted to.”

Yet Blinken had the temerity of wanting to charge Putin with war crimes without any sense of irony. So far, no one has accused Putin of indiscriminate carpet-bombing, drone strikes on wedding parties or waterboarding of prisoners of war. All are war crimes that Americans could have been charged with but have not.

That Newsweek link is extensive, including a video and detailed analysis of the Russian tactical and strategic aims. These are the concluding paragraphs:

Heartbreaking images make it easy for the news to focus on the war's damage to buildings and lives. But in proportion to the intensity of the fighting (or Russia's capacity), things could indeed be much worse.

"I know that the news keeps repeating that Putin is targeting civilians, but there is no evidence that Russia is intentionally doing so," says the DIA analyst. "In fact, I'd say that Russian (sic) could be killing thousands more civilians if it wanted to."

"I'm no com-symp," the analyst says. "Russia is dead wrong, and Putin needs to be punished. But in terms of concluding the war in a way that both sides can accept and where we don't see Armageddon, the air and missile war provides positive signs."

Every war is unique and awful, and Ukraine is no different. But Russia's choice to modulate its destructiveness is an important counterintuitive element. Vladimir Putin can't easily win; he can't accept loss or retreat; and he can't escalate. He has to keep destruction and pressure at a very careful, just-bad-enough level to keep some advantage.

"I know it's thin consolation that it could be a lot worse," the DIA analyst says, "but to understand how that is the case should really change people's perspectives, even inside the U.S. government, as to how to end this."

As I read and listened to the audio of these links my mind drifted back to my days as a draftee during the Vietnam era when one of the signal moments was the much publicized account of the My Lai Massacre and subsequent trial of Lt. William Calley. 

There are endless references to that terrible moment in our history, but a recent Smithsonian Magazine followup underscores the point I want to note in this post.

January 2018
The Ghosts of My Lai
In the hamlet where U.S. troops killed hundreds of men, women and children, survivors are ready to forgive the most infamous American soldier of the war

The landscape surrounding Son My is still covered with rice paddies, as it was 50 years ago. There are still water buffalo fertilizing the fields and chickens roaming. Most of the roads are still dirt. On a recent Wednesday afternoon, ten young men were drinking beer and smoking cigarettes at the side of one of those roads. A karaoke machine was set up on a motorbike, and the loudspeakers were placed next to a blink-and-you-miss-it plaque with an arrow pointing to a “Mass Grave of 75 Victims.”

Tran Nam was 6 years old when he heard gunshots from inside his mud and straw home in Son My. It was early morning and he was having breakfast with his extended family, 14 people in all. The U.S. Army had come to the village a couple of times previously during the war. Nam’s family thought it would be like before; they’d be gathered and interviewed and then let go. So the family kept on eating. “Then a U.S. soldier stepped in,” Nam told me. “And he aimed into our meal and shot. People collapsed one by one.”

Nam saw the bullet-ridden bodies of his family falling—his grandfather, his parents, his older brother, his younger brother, his aunt and cousins. He ran into a dimly lit bedroom and hid under the bed. He heard more soldiers enter the house, and then more gunshots. He stayed under the bed as long as he could, but that wasn’t long because the Americans set the house on fire. When the heat grew unbearable, Nam ran out the door and hid in a ditch as his village burned. Of the 14 people at breakfast that morning, 13 were shot and 11 killed. Only Nam made it out physically unscathed.

The six U.S. Army platoons that swept through Son My that day included 100 men from Charlie Company and 100 from Bravo Company. They killed some civilians straight off—shooting them point blank or tossing grenades into their homes. In the words of Varnado Simpson, a member of Second Platoon who was interviewed for the book Four Hours in My Lai, “I cut their throats, cut off their hands, cut out their tongue, their hair, scalped them. I did it. A lot of people were doing it, and I just followed. I lost all sense of direction.” Simpson went on to commit suicide.

Soldiers gathered together villagers along a trail going through the village and also along an irrigation ditch to the east. Calley and 21-year-old Pvt. First Class Paul Meadlo mowed the people down with M-16s, burning through several clips in the process. The soldiers killed as many as 200 people in those two areas of Son My, including 79 children. Witnesses said Calley also shot a praying Buddhist monk and a young Vietnamese woman with her hands up. When he saw a 2-year-old boy who had crawled out of the ditch, Calley threw the child back in and shot him.

Truong Thi Le, then a rice farmer, told me she was hiding in her home with her 6-year-old son and 17-year-old daughter when the Americans found them and dragged them out. When the soldiers fired an M-16 into their group, most died then and there. Le fell on top of her son and two bodies fell on top of her. Hours later, they emerged from the pile alive. “When I noticed that it was quiet, I pushed the dead bodies above me aside,” she told me. “Blood was all over my head, my clothes.” She dragged her son to the edge of a field and covered him with rice and cloth. “I told him not to cry or they would come to kill us.”

When I asked about her daughter, Le, who had maintained her composure up till that point, covered her face with her hands and broke down in tears. She told me that Thu was killed along with 104 people at the trail but didn’t die right away. When it was safe to move, Le found Thu sitting and holding her grandmother, who was already dead. “Mom, I’m bleeding a lot,” Le remembers her daughter saying. “I have to leave you.”

Nguyen Hong Man, 13 at the time of the massacre, told me he went into an underground tunnel with his 5-year-old niece to hide, only to watch her get shot right in front of him. “I lay there, horrified,” he said. “Blood from the nearby bodies splashed onto my body. People who were covered with a lot of blood and stayed still got the chance to survive, while kids did not. Many of them died as they cried for their parents in terror.”

Initially, the U.S. Army portrayed the massacre as a great victory over Viet Cong forces, and that story might never have been challenged had it not been for a helicopter gunner named Ronald Ridenhour. He wasn’t there himself, but a few weeks after the operation, his friends from Charlie Company told him about the mass killing of civilians. He did some investigating on his own and then waited until he finished his service. Just over a year after the massacre, Ridenhour sent a letter to about two dozen members of Congress, the secretaries of state and defense, the secretary of the Army, and the chairman of the Joints Chiefs of Staff, telling them about a “2nd Lieutenant Kally” who had machine-gunned groups of unarmed civilians.

This is a devastating reminder that atrocities are a universal product of war. The victors win not only the military and political objectives, they also write the official historic accounts. Somewhere in that messy aftermath the horrible details usually lie hidden, often for generations, before they are revealed. Here are a few of those details.

The six U.S. Army platoons that swept through Son My that day included 100 men from Charlie Company and 100 from Bravo Company. They killed some civilians straight off—shooting them point blank or tossing grenades into their homes. In the words of Varnado Simpson, a member of Second Platoon who was interviewed for the book Four Hours in My Lai, “I cut their throats, cut off their hands, cut out their tongue, their hair, scalped them. I did it. A lot of people were doing it, and I just followed. I lost all sense of direction.” Simpson went on to commit suicide.

Soldiers gathered together villagers along a trail going through the village and also along an irrigation ditch to the east. Calley and 21-year-old Pvt. First Class Paul Meadlo mowed the people down with M-16s, burning through several clips in the process. The soldiers killed as many as 200 people in those two areas of Son My, including 79 children. Witnesses said Calley also shot a praying Buddhist monk and a young Vietnamese woman with her hands up. When he saw a 2-year-old boy who had crawled out of the ditch, Calley threw the child back in and shot him.

Here is another link via BBC underscoring the point. More at the link but this is the core of the main point.

Was My Lai just one of many massacres in Vietnam War?

Researching post-traumatic stress disorder among Vietnam veterans, in 2001 I stumbled across a collection of war crimes investigations carried out by the military at the US National Archives.

Box after box of criminal investigation reports and day-to-day paperwork had been long buried away and almost totally forgotten. Some detailed the most nightmarish descriptions. Others hinted at terrible events that had not been followed up.

At that time the US military had at its disposal more killing power, destructive force, and advanced technology than any military in the history of the world.

The amount of ammunition fired per soldier was 26 times greater in Vietnam than during World War II. By the end of the conflict, America had unleashed the equivalent of 640 Hiroshima-sized atomic bombs on Vietnam.

Vast areas dotted with villages were blasted with artillery, bombed from the air and strafed by helicopter gunships before ground troops went in on search-and-destroy missions.

The phrase "kill anything that moves" became an order on the lips of some American commanders whose troops carried out massacres across their area of operations.

While the US suffered more than 58,000 dead in the war, an estimated two million Vietnamese civilians were killed, another 5.3 million injured and about 11 million, by US government figures, became refugees in their own country.

Today, if people remember anything about American atrocities in Vietnam, they recall the March 1968 My Lai massacre in which more than 500 civilians were killed over the course of four hours, during which US troops even took time out to eat lunch.

Far bloodier operations, like one codenamed Speedy Express, should be remembered as well, but thanks to cover-ups at the highest levels of the US military, few are.

In late 1968, the 9th Infantry Division, under the command of Gen Julian Ewell, kicked off a large-scale operation in the Mekong Delta, the densely populated deep south of Vietnam.

In an already body count-obsessed environment, Ewell, who became known as the Butcher of the Delta, was especially notorious. He sacked subordinates who killed insufficient numbers and unleashed heavy firepower on a countryside packed with civilians.

A whistle-blower in the division wrote to the US Army Chief of Staff William Westmoreland, pleading for an investigation. Artillery called in on villages, he reported, had killed women and children. Helicopter gunships had frightened farmers into running and then cut them down. Troops on the ground had done the same thing.

The result was industrial-scale slaughter, the equivalent, he said, to a "My Lai each month".

Just look at the ratio of Viet Cong reportedly killed to weapons captured, he told Westmoreland.

Indeed, by the end of the operation Ewell's division claimed an enemy body count of close to 11,000, but turned in fewer than 750 captured weapons.

Westmoreland ignored the whistle-blower, scuttled a nascent inquiry, and buried the files, but not before an internal Pentagon report endorsed some of the whistle-blower's most damning allegations.

The secret investigation into Speedy Express remained classified for decades before I found it in buried in the National Archives.

The military estimated that as many as 7,000 civilians were killed during the operation. More damning still, the analysis admitted that the "US command, in its extensive experience with large-scale combat operations in South East Asia, appreciated the inevitability of significant civilian casualties in the conduct of large operations in densely populated areas such as the Delta."

Indeed, what the military admitted in this long secret report confirmed exactly what I also discovered in hundreds of talks and formal interviews with American veterans, in tens of thousands of pages of formerly classified military documents, and, most of all, in the heavily populated areas of Vietnam where Americans expended massive firepower.

Survivors of a massacre by US Marines in Quang Tri Province told me what it was like to huddle together in an underground bomb shelter as shots rang out and grenades exploded above.

Fearing that one of those grenades would soon roll into their bunker, a mother grabbed her young children, took a chance and bolted.

"Racing from our bunker, we saw the shelter opposite ours being shot up," Nguyen Van Phuoc, one of those youngsters, told me. One of the Americans then wheeled around and fired at his mother, killing her.

Many more were killed on that October day in 1967. Two of the soldiers involved were later court martialled but cleared of murder.

About the author: Nick Turse has been researching US military atrocities in the Vietnam War for more than a decade and has detailed his findings in a book Kill Anything That Moves: The Real American War in Vietnam.

A Pentagon spokesman, when asked for a statement about the evidence presented, said he doubted that more than 50 years after the US went to war in Vietnam, it would be possible for the military to provide an official statement in "a timely manner." 

Saturday, April 2, 2022

Twitter Thread: How Amazon treats workers

Because Twitter threads are not user-friendly for many readers I have curated this one to the best of my ability for easier reading. This one is from Dan Price. 

It was six years ago when CEO Dan Price raised the salary of everyone at his Seattle-based credit card processing company Gravity Payments to at least $70,000 a year. Price slashed his own salary by $1 million to be able to give his employees a pay raise. He was hailed a hero by some and met with predictions of bankruptcy from his critics. But that has not happened; instead, the company is thriving. 

Every tweet includes a hyperlink supporting the message which I transcribed when I began putting this post together, but I got tired and stopped linking. But all can be found by going to the original thread and tracking down to the number. 

Thread on how Amazon treats its workers
Context: Amazon full-time warehouse employees make $31,200 a year.
Jeff Bezos makes that every 12 seconds.
Cost to give warehouse workers 2 weeks paid sick leave + pay bumps so they don't qualify for food stamps = 0.9% of Bezos' fortune.

1. Amazon workers in Staten Island just won a vote to unionize. During the union drive, the company held 20 mandatory anti-union meetings per day and had pro-union workers arrested.

2. Amazon paid a 6% tax rate last year, which is up from 0% a few years prior. So one of the richest companies in the world pays a lower tax rate than their warehouse workers making $31k a year. Were those saved taxes used to help workers or profits?

3. Amazon pays its workers so little that they often qualify for food stamps. It is among the top 3 employers (along with Walmart and McDonald's) whose employees are on public assistance in virtually every state

4. Amazon just flat-out stole $60 million in tips from drivers. For real.
Its punishment:

  • No one goes to jail
  • No fine
  • Just pay back the $60 million - which Amazon makes every hour and 15 minutes
5. After Amazon announced a $15 min wage, it came out later (to much less fanfare) that it ended worker bonuses and stock options.
Altogether, a lot of workers actually got a pay cut.
Yet Amazon still touts its $15/wage to this day as if it was a gift

6. In July, Jeff Bezos went to space and added $1.745 billion to his net worth.
So he literally could have dumped a billion dollars out of his space ship and still gained more money than 23,000 Amazon warehouse workers will make all year combined. 

7. Amazon's turnover rate is 150% a year. Seriously. 150%.

8. 6% of Amazon workers are injured on the job each year, double the U.S. average for warehouses. Workers blame brutal quotas that push them to their limit.
The company's churn-and-burn model prices this in; they just replace whoever gets hurt

9. In response to worker burnout during the pandemic, did Amazon give them paid sick leave or a raise?

10. After 3 years on the job, Amazon stops worker raises and offers employees $1,000 to quit so they can be replaced by fresher bodies willing to make $15. This also thwarts labor movements since employees aren't allowed long enough to organize

11. In last year's Alabama union vote, the company successfully pushed the USPS to install an unmarked postal box on warehouse grounds so it could see who voted in the union election. It was so unfair the government forced a re-do election.

12. Amazon, which spends millions on commercials touting itself as a green company, illegally fired workers who spoke out publicly against the company's environmental policies

13. Workers have filed 3x more labor complaints against Amazon than Walmart, which is not exactly a bastion of worker love.
Amazon workers who promote better working conditions are interrogated for 90 minutes by ex-FBI company security, then disciplined

14. A year ago, Amazon denied its workers' quotas are so punishing that they have to pee in bottles.
The next day, documents showed that not only do workers regularly have to urinate in bottles, they also defecate in bags, and Amazon is well aware of this

15. Amazon has received $3.8 billion in public subsidies to open warehouses.
The typical transition: a factory that paid $35 an hour with good union benefits like pensions is replaced by Amazon, which pays $15 an hour and aggressively breaks unions

16. Amazon tracks workers' every moment to make sure they aren't slacking for even seconds at a time.
But they also hire Pinkerton spies to monitor workers to make sure they aren't talking about unionizing or griping about their working conditions

17. Amazon offered pro-union workers $2,000 to quit, so they can be replaced with workers who would vote against the union in Alabama.
That year Jeff Bezos made $9.4 million per hour, every hour

18. Amazon noticed pro-union workers were passing out information to employees stopped at red lights outside a warehouse.
So Amazon literally got the traffic light changed to make sure workers wouldn't be stopped long enough to talk with organizers.

19. Amazon warehouse workers in Chicago have been moving to unionize & staged a walkout over working conditions.
Amazon closed the warehouse and offered displaced workers one shift at a nearby facility: from 1am to lunch, called a "megacycle," or be fired

20. Life in an Amazon warehouse voting on a union. Management:
*Sends 5 texts/day warning them not to unionize
*Put anti-union flyers in bathrooms
*Takes photos of employee IDs when they make pro-union comments in meetings
*Fired outspoken pro-union worker

21. Amazon had workers spend up to 25 minutes a day - unpaid - going through security to make sure they don't steal anything. Collectively, this has cost workers hundreds of millions of dollars in unpaid time at work.

22. Amazon's actions also have led to untold job cuts at small businesses it forced out - including those that use Amazon.com
  1.  A small business began selling camera tripods on Amazon
  2.  It reached $3.5 million in sales, 0.001% of Amazon's revenue
  3.  Amazon copied the tripods exactly and sold them as AmazonBasics tripods
  4.  Amazon banned the tripod company from Amazon
23. After Amazon opens a warehouse, local industry wages drop 6% as it becomes an employer monopoly.
At Amazon, only 3% of workers get promotions, one-third the industry average.

24. In 2020, Amazon tripled profits. Instead of giving workers hero pay or increasing wages, it gave holiday bonuses of $150 for part-time workers and $300 for full-time. The cost equaled 2.9% of its profit.
My small business gave more than that.

25. Amazon could have quadrupled worker pay and still grown its profits in 2020. Instead, it kept its minimum wage at $15 an hour, which is below the median wage for a U.S. warehouse employee.
Profits continued to soar unabated since then. 

26. Amazon increased prices for essential items like hand sanitizer and cleaners by up to 1,000% in the pandemic - including items sold directly by Amazon.
At the same time it canceled $2/hour hero pay for workers less than two months into the pandemic.

27. Amazon banned employees from even talking about which coworkers have covid, making it harder to know the health risks of working.
Months into the pandemic, the company revealed 20,000 of its workers had tested positive for covid.

28. Amazon warehouse workers face covid infection rates that are 4x the risk for the local community.
But with strict productivity standards and no paid sick leave, workers were forced to choose between their job and their health

29. The local organizer who led the successful Staten Island union vote?
Amazon fired him after he was outspoken about working conditions.
Documents later showed Amazon execs discussed a PR campaign to smear him

30. Amazon CEO and founder Jeff Bezos is worth $188 billion.
A worker making the company's $15 minimum wage would need to work full-time for 6 million years and never spend a dime to have that.
 
31. Amazon is spending big to open grocery stores and convenience stores with no cashiers and is leading the charge to push the technology into stores everywhere, which would make cashiers extinct.
Cashier is the No. 2 most common job in America

32. Amazon has arranged unusual tax deals as "incentives" to open warehouses in town.
A Kentucky county forced Amazon workers to pay 5% of their paychecks to Amazon (instead of taxes going to local public needs)


34. In Baltimore, GM paid workers $100k a year with good union benefits. It was replaced by an Amazon warehouse where people make under $40k a year, 800 workers are fired by algorithm a year and 600 get food stamps

35. Amazon touts itself as a great job creator.
For every $1 in wages it pays, taxpayers dole out 24 cents in public assistance because so many workers are in poverty.
In Southern California, half of its warehouse workers live in substandard housing

36. Amazon has a gig economy website called Mechanical Turk that paid workers a median of $1.77 an hour.
Full-time, that's $3,681 a year. Bezos made more than that in the time in took to read this tweet.

37. In a 4-year span, reporters found accidents involving Amazon delivery drivers caused 60 serious injuries and 10 deaths, a fraction of the likely total. Many drivers said they were running late and cut corners to meet Amazon's 99.9% arrival time quota

38. Warehouse workers have reported exhaustion and dehydration at hot facilities without air conditioning, which is especially hard for workers fasting during Ramadan
“I got so thirsty, I couldn’t even swallow my saliva."

39. Amazon's anti-union stance is not new. It produced a 45-minute union-busting training video for Whole Foods, years ago.

40. Voter suppression: Amazon tried (and failed) to block its workers from voting by mail on whether to unionize (in a pandemic, when 90% of U.S. union votes have been done by mail)

41. Amazon tracks workers and logs a "time off task" whenever they take a break. Too many of these will lead to a warning, and eventually you could be fired

42. Amazon has AI-enabled cameras in delivery vans, which produces a score for every movement a driver makes. Drivers say things like unanswered incoming calls can ding their score for alleged distracted driving.

43. that's just a small sampling
/end