By Grace Blakeley
Read the full article from Tribune, here.
Across the West, governments are plotting pandemic recoveries which will enrich asset-owners and squeeze workers – it’s time to build coalitions that can fight back against the next phase of capitalist inequality.
By Rachel Elbaum and Caroline Radnofsky
Read the full article from NBCBLK here.
“The Minnesota branch of the American Civil Liberties Union called in a statement for an ‘immediate, transparent and independent investigation by an outside agency’ and for the quick release of any body camera video. It said it has ‘deep concerns that police here appear to have used dangling air fresheners as an excuse for making a pretextual stop, something police do all too often to target Black people.'”
By Marina Pitofsky
Read the full article from The Hill, here.
Law enforcement declared the unlawful assembly shortly before 3 p.m. “in order to disperse an unruly crowd,” the Huntington Beach Police Department confirmed in a statement on Sunday asking residents to vacate the area around the demonstration.
By Dave Zirin
Read the full story from The Nation here.
“[T]he state passed a set of Jim Crow laws buttressed by a set of Jim Crow lies. It’s brazen as hell. Instead of competing for votes, the GOP has gone full white authoritarian in a manner that would make Bull Connor blush. Kemp is serving up these oppressive laws with a hearty helping of slop-Orwellian disinformation: It’s Orwell for people who didn’t do the reading.”
By Justine Coleman
Read the full article from The Hill, here.
Johns Hopkins data typically show a dip in coronavirus deaths on Saturdays and Sundays amid different reporting patterns of state and county COVID-19 statistics, a situation that may have been exacerbated by the Easter holiday.
By Tracy Jeanne Rosenthal
Read the full article from The New Republic here.
“The strategic myopia of offering technical solutions to political problems, valorizing the expertise of financiers and economists over that of residents, and situating the private real estate market as the cure rather than cause of the housing crisis, is baked into the Affordable Housing project.”
By Luke Savage
Read the full article from Jacobin, here.
The pandemic has been taking the existing injustices of capitalism and exaggerating them to the point of cartoonishness. A case in point is a recent study that finds Wall Street bonuses have grown by more than 1,200% since the 1980s — while the federal minimum wage hasn’t been raised in over a decade.
By Kendra Pierre-Louis
Read the full article from Slate, here.
Shame is a form of punishment that derives its power from depriving you of your reputation within the society. When people make blanket proclamations that we should not shame others, what they are criticizing, in a very real way, is the ability to make and enforce social norms. Many of those articles that warn against shame, do so partly because COVID-19 is a systemic issue, but that ignores that even in the presence of clear rules and support, it still requires a bit of social cohesion. And as one popular meme points out: Wearing a mask is a lot like wearing pants. The reason many of us don’t stroll through town naked is not because we fear arrest but because we fear shame. It’s worth noting that early research suggests that collectivist cultures—which tend to employ shame more—better contained COVID early on in their outbreaks.
By Erika Edwards
Read the full article from NBC News, here.
People who are fully vaccinated against Covid-19 can travel freely in the U.S., as long as they remain masked on planes, buses and trains, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced Friday.
By Alex Samuels, Elena Mejía, and Nathaniel Rakich
Read the full article from FiveThirtyEight, here.
But the push to restrict voting rights expands beyond just a few states. According to the Brennan Center for Justice, a voting rights advocacy group, 253 bills to restrict voting access had been introduced in 43 state legislatures as of Feb. 19. And according to our own tracking, at least 53 additional bills have been introduced since then. 1 Of these 306 bills, 89 percent were sponsored entirely or primarily by Republicans, according to the bill-tracking service LegiScan.