U.S. Voters Approve Police Reform and Civilian Oversight

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8fiPtLhdcLc&ab_channel=HardLensMedia

Israel destroys entire Palestinian village in a massive demolition operation

The demolition has left close to 80 Palestinians from the Bedouin herding-farming community displaced and homeless. 41 among them are children, according to the United Nations

November 06, 2020 by Peoples Dispatch




https://peoplesdispatch.org/2020/11/06/israel-destroys-entire-palestinian-village-in-a-massive-demolition-operation/




The Israeli military demolished the entire Palestinian village of Khirbet Humsa in the northern Jordan Valley in the occupied West Bank late night on Tuesday, November 3. It was reportedly one of the largest illegal demolitions carried out by the state of Israel in the occupied Palestinian Territories (oPT) in the last decade. The demolition has left close to 80 Palestinians from the Bedouin herding-farming community displaced and homeless. 41 among them are children, according to the United Nations (UN).

Human rights organizations and Palestinian leaders, including Palestinian Authority prime minister Dr. Mohammed Shtayeeh, have accused Israel of deliberately carrying out the massive demolition operation at a time while the entire international community is preoccupied with the US presidential elections.

As per news sources, Israeli military vehicles, accompanied by six bulldozers and excavators, invaded the Khirbet Humsa village in a sudden night raid on Tuesday. The village residents had received no advance notice by the Israeli military authorities. More than 100 Israeli soldiers were part of the operation which destroyed a total of 76 Palestinian structures, including many which had received financing from the European Union (EU) and other EU governmental and non-governmental organizations.

Israeli human rights organization B’Tselem reported that the demolished structures included 18 makeshift tents and shacks used as living shelters. More than 30 tons of livestock fodder was also destroyed by the Israelis. The Israeli forces took away two tractors and another vehicle belonging to three village residents during the operation. Villagers were seen going through the damaged and mangled wreckage of their property and belongings in the aftermath of the demolitions.

B’Tselem’s international advocacy officer, Sarit Michaeli, tweeted that “The last time Israel demolished an entire herder community was 7 years ago. Clearly, the intention is to force residents off the land by creating a man-made humanitarian disaster. But residents have told us they have nowhere to go.” She also noted in another tweet that more Palestinians in the occupied West Bank have been displaced and rendered homeless by the state of Israel in the first 10 months of 2020 than the annual figure in any year since 2016. 690 Palestinian structures have been demolished by Israel in the first 10 months of 2020, displacing close to 900 Palestinians, including 404 children. This figure stood at 677 in 2019, 387 in 2018, and 521 in 2017.

The UN expressed concern for the displaced Palestinian families, with the UN humanitarian coordinator for the oPTs, Yvonne Helle, calling the nomadic Bedouin Palestinian communities “some of the most vulnerable communities in the West Bank.” She added that this was the largest forced displacement incident in the last four years in terms of the number of Palestinians displaced in just one demolition. It was also the largest in terms of the number of structures destroyed.

The demolished structures were situated in a part of the occupied West Bank demarcated by Israel as Area C, which is under full Israeli military and administrative control. Area C comprises approximately 60% of the occupied West Bank territory, with Area A (18%) and Area B (21%) making up the rest. Palestinians exercise civilian and internal security control only in Area A, while the Israeli military has total external security control over all the three areas.

The Israeli civil administration in Area C, which falls under the Israeli military, has justified the demolitions by claiming that the Bedouin structures were built illegally without obtaining Israeli building permits, and were situated in the Israeli army’s firing zone, purportedly reserved as an army training area.

Israeli authorities have been criticized for making it extremely difficult for Palestinians to obtain Israeli building permits. According to Peace Now, an Israeli human rights group monitoring illegal Israel settlements, less than 2% of over 3,300 building permits applications by the Palestinians in Area C have been approved.

Human rights organizations accuse Israel of using the lack of permits as an excuse to demolish Palestinian structures and confiscate Palestinian land, which is often used towards construction of new illegal settlements or expansion of existing ones. In this manner, Israel has displaced hundreds of Palestinians over the years. The recent normalization deals between Israel and some Arab countries have also not affected Israel’s demolition activity. Repeated appeals by the UN, EU, and others to Israel to cease such activities which are detrimental to the prospects of long term peace and a two-state solution have also been ignored.

How Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib Saved Joe Biden in Minnesota & Michigan

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UTuccjQBYB4&ab_channel=TheHumanistReport

Central America remains on high alert as Hurricane Eta wreaks havoc and kills dozens

Reports state that the devastating storm has claimed more than 70 lives, forced the evacuation of thousands of people and caused significant damage to infrastructure and homes throughout Central America

November 06, 2020 by Peoples Dispatch



https://peoplesdispatch.org/2020/11/06/central-america-remains-on-high-alert-as-hurricane-eta-wreaks-havoc-and-kills-dozens/

Central America has been severely affected by Hurricane Eta that has now weakened into a tropical depression, but heavy rains continue across the region. The governments of Nicaragua, Honduras and Guatemala, the worst hit countries by the tropical storm, have issued a red alert warning about the potential risk of life-threatening flooding and landslides. The devastating storm has already claimed more than 70 lives, forced the evacuation of thousands of people and caused significant damage to infrastructure and homes throughout Central America.

Eta first hit Nicaragua as a Category-4 hurricane with winds of 140mph (225km/h) and torrential rains on November 3. It then weakened into a tropical depression as it moved into neighboring countries Honduras and Guatemala on November 4 and 5.

In Nicaragua, Eta has caused numerous large-scale damages. However, fortunately only 2 fatalities have been reported. Authorities in Nicaragua evacuated over 30,000 people in various departments on the Caribbean coast before the hurricane struck. The hurricane made landfall in Puerto Cabezas municipality, but no casualties were reported.




In Honduras, the National Police and the Fire Department reported that at least 13 people died due to the tropical storm. The state authorities reported that about 400,000 people have been directly affected by the storm. So far, nearly 3,000 were evacuated and another 3,000 headed to shelters. The northern region is the hardest hit and hundreds are stranded and awaiting rescue.







According to the Ministry of Infrastructure and Public Services, over 500 homes have been damaged, about 600 roads have been blocked and 15 bridges have been destroyed. Thousands of hectares of corn, beans, rice and other crops have also been destroyed, and there is also a significant damage to livestock. The government has declared an indefinite red alert in 18 departments of the country.

Likewise, on November 5, Guatemalan president Alejandro Giammattei reported that at least 50 people have been killed by landslides in different parts of the country due to the heavy rains caused by tropical depression Eta. Around half the deaths were in the town of San Cristobal Verapaz where a hillside collapsed, burying some 20 homes and leaving at least 25 dead. At least 1,500 people have been evacuated in the department of Izabal, one of the most affected regions. President Giammattei said a month’s worth of rain had fallen in less than half a day and an additional 48 hours of rain were expected.

Panama is also experiencing heavy rain and around eight people have been reported missing.

Disaster management and security officials in all these countries are carrying out rescue and relief operations. Volunteers from various human rights and social organizations are also distributing relief packages.

The impact of Hurricane Eta on the region is already shaping up to be severe and the longer-term impacts on the economy and people’s survival could be even worse. The storm hits in the middle of an already drastic health and economic crisis, which has been deepened by the COVID-19 pandemic but, in Guatemala and Honduras, has roots in years of neoliberal policies and widespread corruption.

The storm is expected to regain strength this weekend as it moves north-east towards Cuba and Florida, and possibly the Gulf of Mexico by early next week.

After “11 months of pain,” Bolivia returns to democracy

Luis Arce and David Choquehuanca will be sworn in tomorrow as president and vice-president of Bolivia, just one year after the coup d’état. Incoming senator Leonardo Loza speaks about the year of repression, and the steadfast resistance to it

November 07, 2020 by Zoe PC




https://peoplesdispatch.org/2020/11/07/after-11-months-of-pain-bolivia-returns-to-democracy/




On Sunday, November 8, Luis Arce and David Choquehuanca of the Movement Towards Socialism – Political Instrument for People’s Sovereignty (MAS-IPSP) will be sworn in as the president and vice-president of Bolivia. This will mark an end to a tumultuous and painful chapter in the country’s history following the coup of November 2019. Arce and Choquehuanca were elected in a historic election on October 18 which saw over 88% participation of the electorate, and an overwhelming victory for the MAS-IPSP, which won over 55% of the vote share. While far-right groups have attempted to provoke confrontations and violence ahead of the swearing-in and have demanded an audit of the results, the majority of Bolivia is preparing to welcome the change.

Just one year ago, on November 10, 2019, Evo Morales and Álvaro García Linera announced their resignation following a campaign of threats, harassment, violence by right-wing groups, and finally a demand from the military that they step down. What followed was, “11 months of darkness, 11 months of tears, 11 months of pain, 11 months of anguish, 11 months of persecution, 11 months of human rights violations in Bolivia,” recalled Leonardo Loza. Loza is a trade union leader from the Trópico of Cochabamba, a coca growing region where former president Morales also hails from. In a conversation with Peoples Dispatch days after the October 18 elections, Loza pointed out that that in the Trópico, like other militant regions of Bolivia, “with our strength, our conviction and our force, we were able to put up with so much repression and intimidation from the Bolivian right during these 11 months.”

Leonardo Loza, who is the executive secretary of the Federation of Intercultural Communities of Chimoré and the former vice-president of the Six Federations of the Tropic of Cochabamba, will now take his place in the country’s Senate. He took the spot of Evo Morales in the candidacy for senator of Cochabamba in September after the Supreme Electoral Court disqualified the latter. The MAS-IPSP received 65% of the votes in Cochabamba, indicating the extent of support for both the presidential ticket and legislators like Loza.

Loza is one of three popular leaders from Cochabamba who will represent the MAS-IPSP in the Senate. Accompanying him will be Andrónico Rodríguez, the current vice-president of the Six Federations of the Tropic of Cochabamba, and Patricia Arce, the former mayor of Vinto, who suffered a brutal fascistic attack during the coup d’état last year. The three were on the frontlines of the resistance to the coup, organizing mass mobilizations, strikes, road blockades and legal challenges, and for this, paid a heavy price.




Loza is currently facing 12 different legal cases against him in Bolivia and one in the Hague, initiated by members of the de facto regime. The charges range from sedition, terrorism, drug trafficking, armed uprising and others. He knows that the reason they brought these charges was purely political. None of these charges have any basis, he said. On October 22, one of the cases against him and Patricia Arce was dropped, and he expects more to follow.

“I believe that it should not be a crime to be a leader, to be the spokesperson of the people. This is why they have brought charges against me,” Loza said, adding, “one day I would speak, and the next day they would present a new case against me, but I never stayed silent.”

In Loza’s case, the threats and repression he faced escalated to such a point that Evo Morales himself called him and suggested he head to exile in Argentina. He responded, “I am going to stay here with my people. If they want to kill me, then they can kill me here. If they want to put me in prison, then they can come here and put me in prison.”

Loza, when addressing a crowd of trade unionists and MAS-IPSP militants in the Trópico days after the election, said that this resilience comes from his upbringing. As the son of a woman who was not allowed to go to school and receive formal education because she was Indigenous and poor, he imbibed dignity and the spirit of resistance from a very young age. Today, he “does not let his guard down, even as much as they try to humiliate me, persecute me, threaten me, and blackmail me.”

He also said that the support of the people, in response to all of these charges, has been vital. “My people have protected me, taken care of me and sheltered me until now.”

From Sunday, Loza and the incoming government will take on new challenges. The coup regime did not just persecute popular leaders and repress protests. During its 11 months in power, it pushed through a series of neoliberal measures, embezzled millions of dollars through corrupt schemes amid the pandemic, and paralyzed Bolivia’s national industries. The attacks on the national economy coupled, with the challenges imposed due to the pandemic, have had a catastrophic impact on Bolivia’s working class that has been pushed further into instability and informality. Economic recovery is going to be one of the key focus areas of the MAS-IPSP.

Loza has pledged that he will work not only for his department of Cochabamba, but for all Bolivian people to “resolve the social problems in Bolivia, so that no one is discriminated against. So that in Bolivia, extreme poverty is diminished, and that we all have basic services guaranteed, whether you live in the city or in the countryside, like a mobile phone, clean water, sewage and many other things.”

“During the next five years, we are going to build up this country that unfortunately has been destroyed in such little time by the Bolivian right,” he vowed.

Sunday will be a historic day for Bolivia and for the world. According to Loza, in the elections on October 18, “the fate of the most humble, poorest, most humiliated, most marginalized people, not only in the past year but historically, was at stake. But we, these same people, we have won.”

Three days after the swearing in, Evo Morales is set to arrive in Chimoré in the Trópico, where one year ago he boarded a plane to Mexico amid the escalation of violence and threats to him and his family. While Morales does not have an official post in the government, his presence and political guidance will be of great importance in the transition process.

This Is Their Post-Election Plan — We Can & Must Stop Them NOW

David Sirota
Nov 7




The election is over and the good news is that Donald Trump will soon be gone — but mere hours after the election was called, we are already seeing signs that Republican operatives are trying to infiltrate the Democratic Party, invalidate the election mandate and push a Biden administration to the right. This would be a disaster — and the best way to stop it is to expose them and shame them.

[...]

This past week, The Daily Poster exposed how GOP operatives at the Lincoln Project set $67 million of liberals’ money on fire — now the group’s top GOP leader is publicly attacking us, all while they reportedly plan to launch a media empire that will likely try to push Biden to the right.

Meanwhile, former GOP Gov. John Kasich — who was given a speaking slot at the Democratic convention — is already insisting that Democrats shouldn’t first and foremost deliver results for the majority of voters who elected them, but instead “listen to what the other half of the country has to say.”

The best way to fight back against this propaganda — and prevent Biden from ignoring his progressive promises and cutting bad deals with a GOP Senate — is to build grassroots-funded media that does accountability journalism day in, day out.

[...]

Trump is gone and that is a big reason to celebrate. However, we cannot keep doing the same thing and expecting different results — we cannot keep holding elections, then going back to brunch and expecting corporate- and billionaire-owned media to fix the situation.

To actually make change and make progress, we have to build our own new media ecosystem that informs and empowers people to hold their elected officials accountable. That is what we’ve been doing at The Daily Poster — and we can make an even bigger impact with your help.

Thanks for considering this request.

Rock the boat,

Sirota

P.S. If you want to see the kind of impactful investigative reporting The Daily Poster has already done, click here, here, here and here for just a few examples. We hold both parties’ feet to the fire — and this is the kind of reporting your subscription will support.

Washington Supreme Court Decision Grants Farmworkers Overtime Pay

The decision offers more compensation for those laboring in hazardous conditions during the pandemic.




November 6, 2020 by Gabe Guarente EATER SEATTLE




https://portside.org/2020-11-06/washington-supreme-court-decision-grants-farmworkers-overtime-pay




In a huge victory for farm labor across Washington, the state’s Supreme Court (in a 5-4 decision) ruled Thursday, November 5, that dairy workers are eligible for overtime pay. This reverses a decades-old law that exempted agriculture workers in general from overtime pay and makes Washington the sixth state in the U.S. that allows such benefits to farmworkers. The ruling will, indeed, apply across the board, not just to the dairy industry, says Elizabeth Strater, director of alternative organizing for the United Farm Workers union. Washington is also the first state to enact such overtime pay through the courts.

The specific case concerned a 2016 class action lawsuit by around 300 milkers for DeRuyter Brothers Dairy in Outlet, Washington, led by Jose Martinez-Cuevas and Patricia Aguilar. The plaintiffs — who milk close to 3,000 cows per shift, 24/7, with three shifts a day — said that DeRuyter failed to pay minimum wage to its employees, did not provide adequate rest and meal breaks, failed to compensate pre- and post-shift duties, and failed to pay overtime. “The workers claimed that the agricultural industry was powerful while the agricultural workers were poor, and the exemption was racially motivated to impact the Latinx population, which constitutes nearly 100 percent of Washington dairy workers,” the case summary read. “Consequently, the workers argued, the agricultural exemption for overtime pay violates article I, section 12 of the Washington State Constitution because it grants a privilege or immunity to the agricultural industry pursuant to a law implicating a fundamental right of state citizenship — the right of all workers in dangerous industries to receive workplace health and safety protections.”

While the two parties agreed to a settlement on most of the main complaints, the overtime pay issue remained unresolved. In 2018, an appeal was filed and the Washington Supreme Court began considering the remaining claim. The defense, which included the Washington State Dairy Federation and Washington Farm Bureau, argued that instituting overtime pay would put too much economic burden on businesses. But, after an impassioned hearing in October 2019, the court eventually sided with the workers, citing Washington’s Minimum Wage Act and the promise of equal protection under the law.

“The [overtime] exemption denies an important right to a vulnerable class, and defendants have not demonstrated it serves important governmental objectives,” wrote Justice Steve Gonzalez (the full case brief can be found here). “The exclusion of farmworkers from overtime pay deprives them of an important health and safety protection that is afforded to other workers.”

The ruling could be a landmark decision for the agriculture industry in Washington, where scrutiny over working conditions has only increased during the pandemic. In April, several labor organizations filed a lawsuit in Skagit County, urging officials to immediately update its health and safety standards in the agriculture industry after reports emerged of unsanitary practices at farms and warehouses in Central Washington.

A month after that lawsuit was filed, Gov. Jay Inslee issued a proclamation meant to address the COVID concerns. Among the announced safety standards: employers must provide four times as many handwashing stations on work sites, supply masks for employees who aren’t working alone at no cost to workers, and improve transportation safety by sanitizing vehicles properly and promoting social distancing.

Now, it seems that compensation has been addressed to some degree, and it could provide a path for similar legal action in other states where overtime protections for agriculture workers have not yet been issued. “This ruling shows that when farmworkers refuse to accept the racist exclusions in labor protections, they can win,” says Strater. ‘Workers across the country will be looking at this. Where will this historic injustice be resolved next?”