September, 20 2016, 02:15pm EDT
The Southern Poverty Law Center
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Yesterday, authorities in Tulsa, Oklahoma, released dashboard and aerial video capturing the killing by police of Terence Crutcher, an unarmed black man.
Yesterday, authorities in Tulsa, Oklahoma, released dashboard and aerial video capturing the killing by police of Terence Crutcher, an unarmed black man.
Lecia Brooks, Outreach Director at the Southern Poverty Law Center, released the following statement in response to the event:
"The murder of Terence Crutcher, an unarmed black man, by a Tulsa police officer is yet another reminder that our nation's law enforcement departments need radical change. Today, four children are without a father, a mother without a son, a sister without a brother, and a community wondering how many more black lives will be destroyed before America stands up and says 'never again.' As the Department of Justice investigates this case, we must confront the racism embedded so deeply in police practices and demand change now."
"It will be important for Southerners from all backgrounds," one expert wrote, "to stand together and build the coalitions needed to demand policymakers create a new economic development model."
"For at least the last 40 years, pay and job quality for workers across the South has been inferior compared to other regions—thanks to the racist and anti-worker Southern economic development model."
That's according to a Thursday report by Chandra Childers, a senior policy and economic analyst at the Economic Policy Institute (EPI). The new publication is part of her "Rooted in Racism and Economic Exploitation" series.
Previous documents in the series have discussed how "Southern politicians claim that 'business-friendly' policies lead to an abundance of jobs and economic prosperity" but in reality, their failed model is designed "to extract the labor of Black and brown Southerners as cheaply as possible" and has resulted in "economic underperformance."
"Because of the political opposition to unions, when workers try to organize, employers know that they can illegally intimidate them, refuse to recognize the union, or negotiate a contract in bad faith."
Thursday's report dives into various elements of the Southern economic development model, which "is characterized by low wages, limited regulations on businesses, a regressive tax system, subsidies that funnel tax dollars to the wealthy and corporations, a weak safety net, and staunchly anti-union policies and practices."
Childers uses a U.S. Census Bureau definition of the South, which includes: Alabama, Arkansas, Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maryland, Mississippi, North Carolina, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia, West Virginia, and the District of Columbia.
The EPI report highlights that "Southern states have lower median wages than other regions," "low-wage workers make up a larger share of the workforce across the South," and "every state that lacks a state minimum wage" is in the region.
The publication also points out the decline of coverage from employer-provided health insurance and pensions in the South, as well as how workers there "have less access to paid leave than their peers in other regions" and "Southern state lawmakers have also disempowered local communities."
"Across the South, most states have passed so-called right-to-work laws, with the exceptions of Delaware, Maryland, and the District of Columbia," Childers detailed. "Right-to-work laws do not, in any way, guarantee workers will have access to a job if they want one. They simply make it harder for unions to be financially sustainable."
"In addition to right-to-work laws and the overall opposition from political leaders across the region, workers seeking to organize a union typically face intense opposition from employers," she continued. "Further, because of the political opposition to unions, when workers try to organize, employers know that they can illegally intimidate them, refuse to recognize the union, or negotiate a contract in bad faith—with little to no fear of being held accountable by political leaders."
While "there are city and county officials who support higher minimum wages and access to pensions and paid leave for workers" in the South, she explained, their ability to take action is limited by preemption, which "is when state policymakers either block a local ordinance or dismantle an existing ordinance" intended to help the working class.
Childers' report doesn't explicitly point fingers at particular political parties, but the region has been largely dominated by Republican officials during the past four decades covered by the analysis.
While the Republican presidential campaign of former President Donald Trump is clearly making a play for working-class voters by selecting Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio) as the vice presidential candidate and inviting International Brotherhood of Teamsters general president Sean O'Brien to speak at this week's convention—provoking criticism from progressive politicians and labor leaders—Southern GOP leaders continue to display disdain toward efforts to organize workers.
As Volkswagen employees in Tennessee began voting on whether to join the United Auto Workers in April, six Southern GOP governors put out a joint statement saying they were "highly concerned about the unionization campaign driven by misinformation and scare tactics that the UAW has brought into our states."
EPI said at the time that the governors' anti-union statement "clearly shows how scared they are that workers organizing with UAW to improve jobs and wages will upend the highly unequal, failed anti-worker economic development model of Southern states."
The Chattanooga vote was a success, but the following month organizers faced a tough loss at a pair of Mercedes-Benz plants in Alabama, where the UAW is now seeking a new election. Meanwhile, regional GOP policymakers have ramped up attacks on unions, advancing legislation that makes organizing harder.
"To begin to work toward changing the Southern economic development model," Childers argued, "it will be important for Southerners from all backgrounds—across race, ethnicity, gender, immigrant statuses, and income levels—to stand together and build the coalitions needed to demand policymakers create a new economic development model."
The expert urged people across the South to fight for a model that includes a living wage, guaranteed health insurance, pensions, and paid leave.
"Finally, and perhaps most important, workers must be able to come together in a union to demand fair wages and benefits, a safe working environment, and the ability to have a say about their workplace—even when politicians are intransigent," she stressed. "This is a model that would serve the interests of all Southerners."
"Israel is exterminating life in Gaza, and making the conditions unlivable," said one public health advocate. "Those supporting Israel are supporting genocide."
Since Israel began its bombardment and near-total blockade on humanitarian aid in Gaza almost 10 months ago, accounts of Palestinians spending hours each day searching for clean water and images of young children hauling jugs to fill up have been seen across the world, as aid groups document what Oxfam calls Israel's "water war crimes" in a new report of the same name.
The 66-page report, released Wednesday, documents how since October, Israel has systematically reduced the water available in Gaza by 94%, with just 4.74 liters per resident obtainable each day—less than a third of the recommended minimum amount in emergencies.
With Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant's announcement in October of a "complete siege" on Gaza—home to 2.3 million people, about half of whom are children—Israel began not only blocking humanitarian aid including water deliveries from its national water company, Mekorot, but also commenced air and ground attacks on Gaza's water infrastructure.
An average of five of Gaza's water and sanitation sites have been taken out of service every three days, Oxfam found, reducing water production from sources in the Gaza Strip by 84% by late May.
Gaza City, the enclave's most populous city before it was largely destroyed by the bombardment, has lost 88% of its water wells.
With Israel blocking fuel deliveries as well as food, medical, and other necessary aid, 100% of the city's water desalination plants have been put out of service, making it impossible to treat seawater and brackish water to make it safe to drink.
Seventy percent of sewage pumps and 100% of wastewater treatment plants have also been destroyed throughout the enclave.
In a video accompanying the report, Oxfam showed a worker named Ghada, based in the Gaza Strip, standing in front of polluted water.
"The sanitation situation is really dire," said Ghada. "This is sewage-contaminated water. The smell is overpowering and it is almost impossible for anyone to endure."
🚨 WATER WAR CRIMES: Israel's use of water as a weapon of war in #Gaza has cut water supply by 94%. The UK government has allowed arms sales to Israel, which could be used in targeted destruction of water systems. Sign the petition to #StopArmingIsrael:➡️ https://t.co/ekFBpX8c7N pic.twitter.com/fWwxHqZnLy
— Oxfam (@oxfamgb) July 18, 2024
Israel's "weaponizing of water," said Oxfam water and sanitation specialist Lama Abdul Samad, "is already having deadly consequences" for people in Gaza.
Sewage-contaminated water contains pathogens that can cause cholera, dysentery, hepatitis A, typhoid, and other easily preventable diseases.
By late May, according to the report, 727,909 people had reported cases of water- and sanitation-related diseases, including 485,000 cases of acute diarrhea—the third-leading cause of death among children worldwide.
The number of fatalities from waterborne diseases is not available currently, said Oxfam, but "as the risk of famine persists across Gaza, where more than two million people face dangerous food insecurity, malnourished children under five with diarrheal diseases are at an increased risk of mortality."
Withholding water and forcing people, including young children, to rely on contaminated water supplies, "is what genocide looks like," said Yipeng Ge, a public health practitioner.
"Water is life," said Ge. "Israel is exterminating life in Gaza, and making the conditions unlivable. Those supporting Israel are supporting genocide."
Abdul Samad noted that the Israeli government had been "depriving Palestinians across the West Bank and Gaza of safe and sufficient water for many years" before the IDF's bombardment began in retaliation for a Hamas-led attack on southern Israel in October.
In March 2023, Palestinians had 82.7 liters of water per person, per day—below the World Health Organization's recommended minimum. Groundwater was "severely contaminated due to over-extraction and contamination from seawater intrusion and sewage infiltration, leaving 97% of it polluted."
Now, said Abdul Samad, "the widespread destruction and significant restrictions on aid delivery in Gaza impacting access to water and other essentials for survival underscores the urgent need for the international community to take decisive action to prevent further suffering by upholding justice and human rights, including those enshrined in the Geneva and Genocide Conventions."
"Pestilence, starvation, drought. To know one's product may bring that about, and bury the evidence, is unspeakable,” an expert said.
A Marathon Oil Company magazine from 1977 predicted that rising temperatures caused by industrial activity could one day lead to "widespread starvation and other social and economic calamities," The Guardianreported on Thursday.
The revelation comes as Big Oil faces a number of lawsuits for covering up its knowledge about climate change, propagating disinformation, and blocking a green transition.
Marathon Petroleum, the largest oil refinery company in the U.S. and a major spin-off of Marathon Oil Company, is among the defendants in one of the most prominent of those cases, City and County of Honolulu v. Sunoco et al. The city of Honolulu alleges that Big Oil engaged in a coordinated effort to "conceal and deny their own knowledge" of the impact of burning fossil fuels.
The company magazine, Marathon World, featured the 1977 article, titled "World Weather Watch." Summarizing the work of federal climate scientists, the unnamed author suggested that "industrial expansion during the last century may be affecting the weather through carbon dioxide pollution."
Observers of the fossil fuel industry on Wednesday indicated that the 1977 article fit with a larger pattern of Big Oil's early knowledge of climate change.
"I'm not surprised that Marathon would have documents that shed light on its awareness," Bryant Sewell, a research analyst at the corporate watchdog Majority Action, told The Guardian. "Whether it's Marathon, Exxon, or electric utilities, we have seen a longstanding strategy from these companies of climate denial, disinformation, and delay."
Timmons Roberts, a climate disinformation expert based at Brown University, reacted strongly to the article when The Guardian shared a copy with him.
"Pestilence, starvation, drought," he said. "To know one's product may bring that about, and bury the evidence, is unspeakable.”
It wasn't just Exxon and Shell tracking climate science decades ago.
I found a 1977 company mag from Marathon Oil predicting the climate crisis could cause 'widespread starvation.'
Marathon is now largest oil refiner in US.
My latest in @guardian https://t.co/Y6whc3q2Vd
— Geoff Dembicki (@GeoffDembicki) July 18, 2024
The 1977 article was uncovered by Guardian contributor Geoff Dembicki, an investigative journalist and author of the 2022 book The Petroleum Papers: Inside the Far-Right Conspiracy to Cover Up Climate Change. Dembicki told Common Dreams that he found the article in an archive and it's not available online.
The Marathon article quotes J. Murray Mitchell, a leading climatologist at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration who warned in the 1970s that carbon dioxide levels could threaten the polar ice caps and have devastating consequences for humankind, as well as other climate experts. However, it also puts forth other possible causes for changes in climate and weather patterns which have since been debunked, according to Dembicki.
Marathon Petroleum, which is in the process of merging with rival ConocoPhillips, hasn't received as much scrutiny for its historical role in climate denialism as Exxon and Shell, two companies that, as Dembicki put it, "privately studied catastrophic climate risks starting in the 1970s and then led public relations and advertising campaigns to undermine the science."
Yet the company, which owns 13 oil refineries and more than 6,000 gas stations in the U.S. and had a net income of nearly $10 billion in 2023, has received scrutiny for more recent events. It was the subject of a 2019-2020 Congressional investigation into a covert industry effort to push the Trump administration to roll back vehicle efficiency standards, following a New York Timesexposé. A group of senators, including Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.), called Marathon "one of the most anti-climate companies" in an open letter at the time.
Whitehouse is among the lawmakers pushing the Department of Justice to investigate Big Oil disinformation, which could potentially lead to a federal lawsuit akin to the one previously brought against Big Tobacco. Dozens of cities and states, including Honolulu, have already filed such suits.
The lawsuits face bitter opposition from Big Oil. Industry interests have mounted an unusually public campaign to get the U.S. Supreme Court to dismiss the Honolulu case, which could be the first climate lawsuit against Big Oil to reach a jury trial.
The majority of Americans support legal accountability for Big Oil for its role in creating the climate crisis, a Data for Progress poll from May showed. Roughly half of Americans even support criminal charges, which have not yet been pursued anywhere in the world, though a case file has been opened in France.