https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ruIl1OcfTCI
Monday, July 4, 2022
Sunday, July 3, 2022
Mass Shooters’ Most Common Trait—Their Gender—Gets Little Press Attention
https://fair.org/home/mass-shooters-most-common-trait-their-gender-gets-little-press-attention/
June 30, 2022
Olivia Riggio and Julie Hollar
There were a few things the Buffalo and Uvalde mass shooters who killed a combined 31 people had in common: Both used AR-15-style rifles bought legally. Both were just 18 years old. But perhaps most overlooked in the corporate press as a shared characteristic worthy of commentary: They were both male.
Scholars, activists and even healthcare professionals have long highlighted the gendered nature of mass violence. Since 1982, of 129 mass shootings that killed four or more people, men or boys were perpetrators in 126 of them (Statista, 6/2/22).
Toxic masculinity
Newsweek (5/28/14): “Misogyny—and the sense of entitlement that comes with it—kills.”
The concept of toxic masculinity originated in the pro-feminist men’s movement of the 1980s, and argues that hegemonic ideals of masculinity that promote emotional repression, violence and power are deeply harmful, not only to society at large, but to men themselves (American Psychiatric Association, 9/18).
There’s also a significant connection between mass shootings and other types of misogynistic violence and ideology: Pulse nightclub shooter Omar Mateen allegedly emotionally, financially and physically abused his wife prior to the 2016 massacre (Rolling Stone, 6/13/16). Sandy Hook shooter Adam Lanza had a Word document on his computer explaining “why females are inherently selfish” (New Yorker, 3/10/14). University of California shooter Elliot Rodger posted a YouTube video in which he ranted about women not being attracted to him and swore to seek revenge (BBC, 4/26/18). Virginia Tech shooter Seung-Hui Cho allegedly stalked and harassed two students leading up to the massacre (Newsweek, 5/28/14). Nova Scotia shooter Gabriel Wortman allegedly restrained and beat his partner leading up to—and just hours before—the shooting (Business Insider, 5/16/20). This list is far from exhaustive.
A 2021 study (Injury Epidemiology, 5/21/21) found that in 68% of mass shootings that injured or killed four or more people between 2014–19, the perpetrator either killed at least one partner or family member or had a history of domestic violence.
A 2013 essay by Jackson Katz published in the pro-feminist men’s activist journal Voice Male (Winter/13) argued that news media have repeatedly failed to identify maleness as one of the greatest predictive factors of mass violence. After the Boston Marathon bombing in 2013, the press rushed to blame jihadism and Islamic radicalism, but overlooked
the ideology of a certain type of manhood that links acts of violence to masculine identity. It is the idea that committing an act of violence—whether the precipitating rationale is personal, religious or political—is a legitimate means to assert and prove one’s manhood.
Between the Buffalo shooting on May 14 and June 9, more than two weeks after the shooting in Uvalde, Texas, US newspapers published more than 20,000 articles discussing one or both shootings, according to a search of the Nexis database and the website of the Washington Post (which is not in the Nexis database). But of those thousands of articles, FAIR found only 37 unique pieces that made links to toxic masculinity, misogyny, or differences in socialization of boys and girls. Seven were syndicated columns reprinted in multiple outlets, bringing the total times such pieces appeared to 51.
‘Differences in socialization’ 
The fact that nine of the nine deadliest mass shootings since 2018 were committed by males is apparently a less disturbing pattern to the New York Times (6/2/22).
Only eight of those 51 total pieces were published in the news sections of newspapers; the rest were in the opinion sections. Four of the mentions of masculinity or misogyny in news articles (USA Today, 5/25/22, 5/25/22, 5/26/22; New York Observer, 5/25/22) referenced the successful lawsuit brought by the families of the Sandy Hook victims against Remington, the producer of the semi-automatic rifle used in the assault, which ran ads targeting young men and suggesting the weapon granted them their “man card.”
A front-page New York Times article (6/2/22) sought to investigate why so many mass shooters tend to be young, largely downplaying the question of gender and masculinity, but did quote Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine pediatrics professor Sara Johnson, who pointed out “major differences in socialization for males and females related to aggressive behavior, appropriate ways to seek support, how to display emotions and acceptability of firearm use.”
Notably, the Washington Post referenced misogyny and/or masculinity in three news articles (5/15/22, 5/28/22, 6/3/22)—more than any other paper in our search—and embedded a 2019 Post mini-documentary on American masculinity and gun culture in another (5/24/22), which otherwise did not mention the topic.
In its June 3 news article, the Post described the trend of young men committing acts of gun violence, chalking it up mainly to age and lack of brain development, but also cited a study that noted the role male socialization plays:
Peter Langman, a psychologist who researches school shootings, noted in the Journal of Campus Behavioral Intervention that “the sense of damaged masculinity is common to many shooters and often involves failures and inadequacies.”
The reporters also quoted Eric Madfis, an associate professor of criminal justice at the University of Washington at Tacoma, who said, “We teach boys and men that the only socially acceptable emotion to have is not to be vulnerable and sensitive, but to be tough and macho and aggressive.”
The other two Washington Post articles covered the Uvalde shooter’s history of threatening teen girls online (5/28/22), and a post by the Buffalo shooter using misogynist slurs to complain about New York’s gun laws (5/15/22).
‘Confronting misogyny’ 
Leah Binkovitz (Houston Chronicle, 6/7/22): “Misogyny intertwines and cross-pollinates with a range of extreme ideologies, from white supremacy to anti-Jewish hate, because of the way they appeal to a retrenchment of supposedly threatened identities.”
In opinion sections, most mentions of the gendered nature of mass shootings came in columns or op-eds (35), with an additional eight mentions in editorials.
While most of the opinion pieces (72%) agreed that toxic masculinity and misogyny contribute to mass violence, it was seldom more than a fleeting mention. Out of these 31 opinion pieces that viewed these as factors, only eight (26%) centered their arguments on it. The majority tended to focus on other issues, mentioning pathologies related to masculinity in passing.
“The motives and reasons for mass shootings are varied: disputes, racism, misogyny, festering grievances, work-related issues, mental illness,” wrote Thomas Gabor in a column that focused on the need for stricter gun laws and background checks (Gainesville Sun, 5/29/22; Palm Beach Post, 5/31/22). An op-ed by Rich Elfers (Enumclaw Courier-Herald, 6/8/22; Quincy Valley Post Register, 6/8/22) suggested “de-glamoriz[ing] guns as a symbol of masculinity and coolness” as one way to prevent mass shootings.
In one of the more pointed columns drawing attention to the role of misogyny in mass shootings, Leah Binkovitz (Houston Chronicle, 6/7/22) wrote:
The connection between mass shooters, who are overwhelmingly men, and domestic violence, sexual harassment and misogyny has been made again and again and again. And yet it remains, by and large, a muted part of our response and soul-searching each time. Confronting the full scope of gun violence, however, has to include confronting misogyny.
Two papers (Eagle Times, 5/24/22; Columbian, 5/26/22) published a column by activist Rob Okun, urging Americans to stop ignoring “how these murderous men were socialized as boys and men” and recognize that Buffalo, like countless other mass shootings, was not only racist but also “an affirmation of male supremacy.”
‘Womanish wimps’ 
Cynthia Allen (Fort Worth Star-Telegram, 6/4/22): “Our decades of eschewing gender roles and their associated characteristics in pursuit of equality have had some undesirable effects.”
To compare, all 12 of the opinion pieces arguing against the idea that toxic masculinity leads to mass shootings made it their central argument.
The most-reprinted column, by conservative Tribune News Services columnist Jay Ambrose, appeared in seven different papers, including the Boston Herald (6/1/22) and Pittsburgh Post-Gazette (6/2/22). It attributed teen mass shooters’ behavior to “raggedy families,” arguing that “a missing father can mean missing lessons in masculinity for the boy,” which leads to bullies harassing them as “womanish wimps,” culminating in “supposedly brave, masculine acts” of violence by the fatherless boy. It ended with a call for “helping to rebuild the family in this country” and “restoring certain old norms.”
Another syndicated column, by Cynthia Allen, blamed the poor police response in Uvalde on “decades of eschewing gender roles and their associated characteristics in pursuit of equality,” and the Uvalde shooter’s actions on fatherlessness (Fort Worth Star-Telegram, 6/4/22; Miami Herald, 6/8/22)
In an even more direct attack on the concept of toxic masculinity, Miranda Devine at the New York Post (6/2/22) wrote that the reason for the much-criticized police inaction on the day of the Uvalde shooting was that men are “vilified” and bullied for bravery.
Out of all of the outrageous and horrific details of the shooting, Devine chose to bemoan the fact that heavily armed officers, who opted to handcuff one distraught parent and pepper spray another as a shooter took 21 lives inside, failed to act because “the only acceptable man now is a man who wants to be a woman. We celebrate ‘pregnant men’ and ‘chestfeeding’ men.” 
Miranda Devine (New York Post, 6/2/22): “We pathologize manly virtues and bow to the tyranny of identity politics that seeks power by overthrowing a make-believe patriarchy.”
Eight of the opinion articles were editorials—six agreeing that toxic masculinity contributes to violence, and two disagreeing. One was from the news organ of a right-wing think tank, the Foundation for Economic Education (5/25/22), which argued (citing Jordan Peterson) that blame on toxic masculinity is “misplaced,” because “aggression is an innate part of human nature,” and that it’s incorrect to think boys and girls should be socialized in the same ways. The other was part of a list of “fast takes” compiled by the New York Post editorial board (6/1/22), citing a Spectator World (6/1/22) piece that argued that not all masculinity is toxic, and that “there must be consequences to telling men that…their behavior is wrong, and that all their intentions are tainted by dint of their chromosomes.”
Relegating the bulk of these conversations to the opinion sections of papers presents them as adjacent “culture war” debates between the left and right. If the central role that gender and masculinity play in mass shootings is never acknowledged as a fact, how can it ever be addressed?
The writers who sought to dismiss the significance of toxic masculinity in their columns and editorials demonstrated a deliberate false understanding of the concept, beating a straw man to argue that not all masculine traits are harmful. The “not all men” argument distracts from the very real crisis that a disproportionate number of men are driving.
It’s a bogus way for the right to play the victim in the midst of unspeakable tragedy—a harmful ruse accommodated by an overall lack of coverage, a dearth of news articles, and a shortage of opinion pieces that truly center toxic masculinity’s role in mass shootings.
In the Wake of Abu Akleh’s Murder, Media Continued to Obscure Israeli Violence
https://fair.org/home/in-the-wake-of-abu-aklehs-murder-media-continued-to-obscure-israeli-violence/
Robin Andersen
On May 13, two days after the killing of Al Jazeera journalist Shireen Abu Akleh by Israeli Occupation Forces, as her loss still dominated international news cycles, thousands of Palestinian mourners gathered to pay tribute to the woman who had given them voice for so long. They came to lay her body to rest.
Twitter (5/13/22)
Immediately, as the funeral procession was just starting, images emerged of Israeli forces attacking the pallbearers as they attempted to carry her coffin across the courtyard from the French hospital in East Jerusalem. One of the first reports came from British-Egyptian correspondent Emir Nader with BBC News investigations, who posted footage and said on Twitter (5/13/22): “Horrible scenes as Israeli security forces beat the funeral procession for slain journalist Shireen Abu Akleh and the crowd momentarily lose control of her casket.”
Al Jazeera carried the funeral live on air, and the footage showing the attack was widely shared over social media. One Twitter user (5/13/22) described the video, referring to the IOF, or Israeli Occupation Force:
Everyone switch on to Al Jazeera right now. This is one of the most horrifying things I’ve seen. IOF is attacking mourners carrying Shireen’s body from the hospital right now. They’re using stun grenades and tear gas and charging at them with horses and batons.
The Intercept (5/13/22) noted the footage that unfolded on live television, stunned viewers and only “intensified the outrage over her death.” Video was quickly remixed and shared, and the article linked a 45-second video on Twitter (5/13/22) posted by Rushdi Abualouf, a Palestinian journalist working for the BBC. Described as “the closest video” of the attack, it mixed Arab instrumental music over a slowed version that show helmeted, uniformed riot police singling out pallbearers and smashing bare arms with batons as mourners struggled to keep the casket upright.
The language of obfuscation
Mirroring the euphemism-dominated coverage of Abu Akleh’s killing (FAIR.org, 5/20/22), many of the first corporate press reports employed language that mystified what was happening at the funeral.
MintPressNews editor Alan MacLeod recognized the language of obfuscation, posting a series of news headlines on Twitter (5/13/22) that transformed black-clad Israeli riot squads wantonly beating pallbearers into “clashes.” Referring to an article he wrote for FAIR (12/13/19), MacLeod (5/14/22) observed that the word “clash” is used by media “when they have to report on violence, but desperately want to obscure who the perpetrators are.”
Violence comes from nowhere, it simply erupts: CBS‘s headline (5/13/22) was, “Shireen Abu Akleh Funeral Sees Clashes Between Israeli Forces and Palestinian,” updated later that day to report that “Violence Erupts” at the funeral as Israeli forces “Confront” mourners. The Times of Israel (5/13/22) had “Violence Erupts as Journalist’s Casket Emerges From Jerusalem Hospital.” And the BBC (5/13/22) went with “Shireen Abu Akleh: Violence at Al Jazeera Reporter’s Funeral in Jerusalem.”
CBS News (5/13/22)
CBS‘s language prompted one Twitter user (5/13/22) to wonder about
the best term for lies by omission, untruths couched in deliberately obfuscating language. Perhaps “willfully misleading”? Denial of facts, even gaslighting, given the footage circulating of attacks on pallbearers….
An exception was a report from Jerusalem by Atika Shubert for CNN (5/13/22) headlined, “Video Shows Israeli Police Beating Mourners at Palestinian-American Journalist’s Funeral Procession.” It opened:
Israeli police used batons to beat mourners carrying the coffin of Al Jazeera journalist Shireen Abu Akleh…. Tear gas was fired by Israeli forces and at least one flash bomb was used.
Mondoweiss (5/13/22) pointed out that the “White House says it ‘regrets the intrusion’ into Shireen Abu Akleh’s funeral, but it doesn’t condemn Israeli police actions.”
Repression as retaliatory
Reporting went from bad to worse when the Israeli government issued an official statement claiming that police had to respond to Palestinian violence. Many Western news outlets repeated the claims.
Under an early BBC video (5/13/22), after “clashes broke out” and “violence erupted,” the text read, “Projectiles are seen flying towards the police, who also fired tear gas,” and then, “Israeli police said officers at the scene were pelted with stones and ‘were forced to use riot dispersal means.’”
Intercept (5/13/22)
In a later, longer version, the BBC text (5/13/22) opened with, “Police said they acted after being pelted with stones,” and repeated, “Police said officers ‘were forced to use riot dispersal means.’” The body of the text included on-the-ground reporting that accurately described what happened, only to be followed with more back-and-forth accusations.
The descriptive reporting on the funeral attack and Israeli brutality, followed with patched, confused “balance” between Palestinian and Israeli statements–contention often going back decades–began to characterize coverage. This style of journalism presents repression surrounded in a fog of inevitability, rendering even eyewitness accounts inexplicable, without context or solution.
As many reports repeated Israeli justifications for the attacks, presenting Israeli state repression as retaliatory, the Intercept (5/13/22) refuted the official Israeli version, showing how it fabricated Palestinian violence.
On Twitter (5/13/22), activist Rafael Shimunov explained how the Israeli police account used drone video to “prove” that two of the mourners had thrown rocks at police:
But a comparison of that video to ground-level news footage showed that the police video had been edited to remove the initial police charge and slowed down to make it seem as if a man who just waved his arms in frustration had thrown something at the officers.
Shimunov concluded that the mourner had no stone, his “action was putting his body between them and Shireen Abu Akleh’s casket.” He added: “To be clear, no stone justifies attacking mourners at a funeral of a journalist assassinated by your military.”
‘This isn’t a tussle’
All the media techniques come together on a CBS video posted on Twitter (5/13/22), with overlaid text saying police “clashed” with mourners, and that the “tussling” was so bad they almost dropped the coffin. “Projectiles could be seen flying through the air as Palestinians chanted anti-Israeli slogans,” the network declared.
The response on Twitter was outrage. One user (5/13/22) replied:
This isn’t a tussle or push back. This is an occupying force abusing its power. The sooner @CBSNews calls it how it is, the sooner we can pressure change. Do better.
Another “fixed” the headline, changing “clashes” to “attacking,” and switching Abu Akleh being “killed” to “assassinated.” Another Twitter used said, “These are violent occupiers (who killed journalists prior #ShireenAbuAkleh) invading a funeral… not a ‘tussle.'” Yet another asked:
Oh clashing was it? Clashing? Very interesting choice of words for being attacked by armored thugs during a peaceful memorial for a journalist those armored thugs also murdered.
Another tweeter was “imagining the headline ‘Ukrainians left dead in Bucha after clashes with Russian forces.’”
Posting an unedited video in response to CBS, a user asked: “Why was this clip cut?… to falsify the facts of course.”
Al Jazeera (5/12/22)
In fact, the actual footage was stunning for its clear view of one-sided violence—beginning unmistakably when helmeted Israeli forces stormed the crowd and began to beat pallbearers with batons. The pallbearers stumble and are sometimes ripped from their positions, but they never retaliate. One tries to shield his head with his arm. A man wearing jeans, tennis shoes and a sleeveless shirt kicks at the helmeted, uniformed police, trying to stop them from hitting the pallbearers. Those carrying the coffin do all they can to prevent it from falling, ignoring the blows.
Al Jazeera (5/12/22) interviewed Marc Owen Jones, an assistant professor of Middle East Studies at Hamad Bin Khalifa University, who said that Israel has a track record of creating ambiguity over social media as a strategy to “muddy the waters,” knowing that many press accounts will repeat their claims.
‘Incitement’ or expression?
Explaining the funeral attacks, the Intercept (5/13/22) reported, Israeli police “said they attacked the procession because mourners waved Palestinian flags and chanted nationalist slogans.”
NPR (5/13/22) also reported, “Police said the crowd at the hospital was chanting ‘nationalist incitement,’ ignored calls to stop and threw stones at police.” It added, citing police, that “the policemen were forced to act.” NPR went on to explain why police raided Shireen’s family home, saying they “went” there “the day she was killed and have shown up at other mourning events in the city to remove Palestinian flags.”
The CBS video (5/13/22) posted on Twitter overlaid with text also read, “Al Jazeera said Israel had warned her brother to limit the size of the funeral and told him no Palestinian flags should be displayed and no slogans chanted.” They followed with, “The network said he neglected to take that guidance given the outpouring of grief and anger over the reporter’s killing.”
Slate (5/22/21)
No comment is made about Israeli repression of Palestinian freedom of expression. “Neglected” and “guidance” are unlikely choices of words from Al Jazeera, given that the network published a scathing piece (5/12/22) slamming Western media coverage for obscuring and denying Israel’s murder of its journalist, calling it a “whitewash.” Al Jazeera has assigned a legal team to refer the killing of Shireen Abu Akleh by Israeli forces to the International Criminal Court (Al Jazeera, 5/27/22).
Though CNN journalist Atika Shubert (5/13/22), reporting from the funeral, acknowledged Israeli attacks, she ended by saying that the family was “told not to display the Palestinian flag, that was a special request, but as you can imagine, it’s very difficult to control these crowds,” and the flags were flying. The “request” was a raid on Abu Akleh’s family home, where flags were forcibly removed. Restrictions on flying the Palestinian flag are normalized within these stories, not exposed as violations of human rights and freedom of expression.
When US media routinely repeat without comment Israeli “reasons” for “clamping down” on any display of support for Palestinian statehood, or that Palestinians were “chanting nationalistic slogans,” amounting to “incitement,” they condone the repression of Palestinian rights, which would cause other countries to be called dictatorships, or at least authoritarian regimes. Yet Israel is still listed as a democracy. As Nolan Higdon (5/28/22) pointed out, “You Can Kill and Censor Journalists or You Can have Democracy—You Can’t Have Both!” Such attitudes toward Israeli repression of Palestinian expression are a major contradiction by US media institutions, which themselves enjoy press freedoms and should be able to recognize when those freedoms are being violated.
Rashid Khalidi, Palestinian American and Columbia University professor, told FAIR that US media are “terrified of being attacked if they don’t repeat the Israeli versions of events. They live in constant fear. This happens on the ground, and during editing.” These practices were confirmed in an article published in Slate (5/22/21) last year, when a journalist admitted having trouble “reporting the truth” from Gaza.
‘System of domination’
There are rules for occupying forces articulated by the International Committee of the Red Cross on Occupation and International Humanitarian Law (4/8/04); these prohibit the collective punishment of occupied peoples. Violent repression of nationalist slogans and the Palestinian flag violates the International Declaration of Human Rights, rights which are established for those living under occupation.
Twitter (5/13/22)
Writing for Common Dreams (5/23/22), the Institute for Policy Studies’ Phyllis Bennis and Princeton’s Richard Falk noted that Israeli forces “threw Palestinian flags to the ground and violently beat mourners—including the pallbearers.” They placed the attacks into a context of “the structural nature of Israeli violence against Palestinians,” citing an Amnesty International report on Israeli violence in the Occupied Territories characterizing it as a “Cruel System of Domination and Crime Against Humanity.”
The killing of Shireen Abu Akleh and the supposedly defensive attacks on mourners are part of a “pattern of repression…far more pervasive,” and in fact codified in the country’s Law of 2018, which grants only Jewish citizens the right of self-determination. Along with Amnesty, Human Rights Watch and B’tselem, Bennis and Falk concluded that this “constitutes the crime of apartheid.”
This point was made visually online by Tony Karon (Twitter, 5/13/22) , a lead editorial writer at Al Jazeera, who set pictures of South African apartheid next to Israeli attacks on the funeral with the text:
African police in ‘87 attacking the coffin of Ashley Kriel to seize the ANC flag that draped it: Israeli police attacked the coffin of #ShireenAbuAkleh today, trying to seize Palestinian flags. Apartheid regimes waging war on their victims, even after death.
US responsibility
For decades, the United States has unconditionally provided Israel with “political, diplomatic, economic and military support,” Bennis and Falk wrote. Military subsidies alone amount to about $3.8 billion every year, “most of it used to purchase US-made weapons systems, ammunition and more. This makes the US complicit in Israel’s criminal wrongdoing.”
With 20% of Israeli’s military budget supplied by the US, “the bullet or the gun used to kill Shireen could have even been purchased from US weapons manufacturers with our own money.” The use of US military aid for repression is a violation of US law:
CNN (5/26/22)
The Leahy Law’s restriction on military aid is unequivocal: “No assistance shall be furnished,” it says, “to any unit of the security forces of a foreign country if the Secretary of State has credible information that such unit has committed a gross violation of human rights.”
To date, there have been six investigations into the killing of Abu Akleh, all that find conclusive evidence that the journalist was killed by Israeli Forces. “A reconstruction by the Associated Press lends support to assertions” from both the Palestinian Authority and Abu Akleh’s colleagues, the news service (5/24/22) reported, “that the bullet that cut her down came from an Israeli gun.” CNN (5/26/22) explained, “There were no armed clashes in the vicinity,” and the text over a map reads, “Footage from the scene showed a direct line of sight towards the Israeli convoy.”
Demanding the fatal bullet
Much has been made of the bullet that killed Abu Akleh, and the Israeli demands that it must be turned over to them (New York Times, 5/12/22). This offers a last talking point for Israeli’s claim that Palestinian fighters are responsible for shooting her.
Committee to Protect Journalists (5/26/22)
For example, when Reuters (5/26/22) reported on the investigations into her killing, it added Israeli Defense Minister Benny Gantz’s response on Twitter (5/26/22): “Any claim that the IDF intentionally harms journalists or uninvolved civilians is a blatant lie.” Reuters also included his demand that the Palestinian Authority hand over the bullet for ballistic tests to see if it matched an Israeli military gun.
Palestinian tests, noted by Reuters (5/27/22), have determined that the bullet that killed Abu Akleh “was a 5.56 mm round fired from a Ruger Mini-14 semiautomatic rifle, which is used by the Israeli military.” But Reuters followed that with the Defense minister’s claim that the “same 5.56 caliber can also be fired from M-16 rifles that are carried by many Palestinian militants,” adding: “Al-Khatib did not say how he was sure it had come from an Israeli rifle.”
As Khalidi pointed out, “Anything the Israelis say, even about an investigation, will be repeated, you will still get the Israeli version—that in the name of balance.”
The Committee to Protect Journalists (5/26/22) cited the numerous reports, including the findings of the Dutch-based Bellingcat Investigative Team, confirming Israeli culpability, and joined 33 other press freedom and human rights groups calling for an independent investigation into Abu Akleh’s killing.
‘The world knows very little’
Yet on June 3, 2022, the New York Times’ editorial board wrote, “The world still knows very little about who is responsible for her death.” The wordy piece repeated every Israeli talking point, including the justification of the funeral attack, saying Israeli police “appeared to want to prevent” the funeral from becoming a “nationalist rally,” and said the officers had acted against a mob “in violation of a previously approved plan.” In other words, pallbearers and mourners were attacked for expressing political opinions and allowing Palestinian society to participate in the burial of Abu Akleh.
The Middle East Eye (6/8/22) reported that when Abby Martin, host of the Empire Files, confronted Secretary of State Anthony Blinken at the Summit of the Americas in Los Angeles, she asked why there has been “absolutely no repercussions” for Israel over Abu Akleh’s killing. Blinken responded that the facts had “not been established” in the killing of the veteran Al Jazeera journalist, yet no independent investigation has been started.
Twitter (6/7/22)
Washington Post reporters (6/12/22) reviewed the audio, video, social media and witness testimony of Abu Akleh’s killing, and confirmed that an Israeli soldier likely shot and killed her. Mondoweiss (6/12/22) reported the findings, expressing hope that the report would “add pressure on Secretary of State Antony Blinken to actually demand an independent investigation and accountability.”
Yet even though the Post’s editorial board (6/13/22) referred its its own reporter’s investigation as “impressive,” it still called on the Palestinian Authority to agree to a joint investigation with Israel, with US participation. In what amounts to an attempt to control the narrative about Abu Akleh’s killing, the Post editorial cited “emotional” reasons for refusing to back calls for an international investigation, saying, “We’re skeptical such an impartial inquiry is possible given the high emotions, and low trust, that permeate global discussion of the Middle East.”
On June 14, 2022, journalist Dalia Hatuqa, who covers Israeli/Palestinian affairs, told Slate’s Mary Harris (6/14/22) that Blinken had promised Shireen’s famliy that there would be a full investigation, then she continued: “But honestly, nothing’s happened. It’s been a month. It’s not that hard: There’s footage, eyewitnesses, all kinds of stuff. This isn’t a mystery.”
Valedictorian Rips Into Erosion Of Public Education In Graduation Speech
https://popularresistance.org/lausd-high-school-valedictorian-rips-into-the-erosion-of-public-education-in-graduation-speech-sparking-mass-support/
By Renae Cassimeda and Kimie Saito, WSWS. July 2, 2022
Los Angeles, CA – On June 6, Axel Brito, Hollywood High School Class of 2022 valedictorian, gave a powerful speech during his senior graduation ceremony at the Hollywood Bowl in Los Angeles. His speech is an indictment of the entrenched corruption within the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) at the expense of quality education and services for students and the working conditions of teachers and school workers.
Video footage of Axel’s speech has gone viral on social media, having been viewed over 2.6 million times on TikTok, over 24,000 times on YouTube and over 11,000 times on Instagram. Social media posts have been flooded with statements of support for Axel and the content of his remarks, showcasing the overall discontent among students, teachers and parents to not only LAUSD but the present dire state of K-12 public education.
During the speech, the school administration cut Axel’s mic. Immediately the crowd chanted, “Let him speak! Let him speak!” Axel waited on stage, took the microphone off the stand and moved away from the administrator who had come onto the stage. Fearing the opposition brewing in the crowd, the sound to Brito’s mic was switched back on, allowing him to finish.
Reporters with the World Socialist Web Site spoke with Axel about his speech and the conditions in the district, including the negative impacts of privatization and charter schools, the pandemic, racial politics, lowering standards for graduation, overworked teachers, and low quality education.
Axel began the interview by laying out the impact of school privatization efforts in the district: “Corruption is just rampant. Either by LAUSD inflating graduation rates to keep schools open and get better funding; or in the school board of education, where we have people like Nick Melvoin and others such as Monica Garcia, who are elected by having super PACs that centrally funnel millions of dollars into their campaigns.
“There is no way that a teacher or even a parent who actually cares about the kids can win against them in running for school board member, because they are always going to be out-funded by multimillion-dollar entities. And in some instances, it is multi-billion, like Eli Broad…
“We have very few entities that are manipulating our school system. Broad has passed away, but his foundation still lives on, and it’s still funding and churning out superintendents and principals who are ready to have a pro-charter stance. It’s more of the problem of the illusion of free choice because they are funneling money and taking the cream of the crop of the student population and transferring them to other schools.”
District Half Composed Of Charters
During his speech, Axel also criticized former superintendents John Deasy and Austin Beutner, who “were put into power by the late billionaire Eli Broad and his heavily charter-centered foundation. … Both of these men were put there with no experience in education and left amid controversy and successfully paved the way towards privatizing LAUSD. Broad disrupted our education to achieve a district half-composed of charters. He, alongside the Gates Foundation and the Walton Foundation, wormed their way through this district to privatize our human right to an education.”
The recently-elected LAUSD Superintendent Alberto Carvalho will continue this process. As former superintendent of Miami-Dade County Public Schools in Florida, he oversaw $2 billion in school cuts in 2008-09. Now, Carvalho will divert even more money to charters and other school privatization schemes in LAUSD.
For his part, Superintendent Carvalho rakes in $440,000 per year. Showcasing the level of corruption in the district, LAUSD board members make the highest salaries of any school board in the US, with each board member taking in over $125,000 annually. Significantly, LAUSD school board member Nick Melvoin, who was present during Axel’s speech, walked off the stage.
Speaking with the WSWS, Axel detailed the impact of school closures on students and families. Regarding a middle school closing in his neighborhood to be replaced by a new charter school, he said, “They say the school is ‘underperforming,’ but now they are replacing all the students with people that don’t even live in this community. They are not serving the community. Parents who used to walk a block to take their kids to school now have to go two or three miles or more. It doesn’t make sense to me.
Education Is A Human Right
“Why are we burdening parents and students to get an education? Education is a human right, isn’t it? They are privatizing education, making it more difficult for parents and students to get a quality education. We [students] are treated as commodities; we are just data points so that schools can remain open. They don’t care about us. We are being taught to take standardized tests and Advanced Placement tests. At the end of the day, it’s not about us, it’s not about an education.”
Axel also spoke about the hypocrisy of the school district when it came to keeping students and staff safe from contracting COVID-19 as well as the overall impacts of the pandemic on teachers and students. “The district was heavily hyping the fact that our classes would be smaller, and we would be six feet apart. But then you walk in the first day, there’s no COVID protocols, nothing. It’s just 32 students crammed into a room, sometimes 40. That’s not right, that’s not COVID safety.
“My girlfriend had a lot of health issues after she contracted COVID, and she still had to go to school because it wasn’t an excused absence. She no longer had COVID, but she still felt sick like she had some of the underlying conditions, and she had to go to school or else she wouldn’t be able to graduate. That’s not fair at all!
“There are a lot of students still coping with the pandemic. They don’t have access to counselors, therapists, psychologists. [The district] should have thought everything out, but they didn’t. Every aspect of LAUSD was so poorly planned out. We also were not given any heads-up or support—either emotional or academic.”
Axel has been researching charter schools and following conditions in the district for years as he saw the quality of education in the district changing. On the 2019 LAUSD teacher strike, he noted that teachers’ demands for better wages, lower class sizes, more nurses and psychologists, etc., were not met under the new terms of their contract and that the pandemic only exacerbated these issues.
“It was a lie. Yeah, it was all a lie. … From my experience from what I’ve seen is class sizes went down by maybe one or two students. That’s still ridiculous. But when you compare it to a private school, which is like one teacher for 12 or 20 students, that’s what education should be. We shouldn’t be like all huddled into a room and have one teacher catering to 32 students, sometimes even more; like sometimes they go against the new set regulations. Like that shouldn’t be the case.
“In my senior year of high school, I had a teacher—an amazing teacher—who was teaching 14 classes at the same time because there weren’t enough math teachers. The average teacher was teaching six classes. He was teaching two classes simultaneously, where he would be teaching a specific class and then he’d run across the hall and teach a different class. That’s what our education became. Teachers are just not paid enough…”
The UTLA Accomplished Nothing
“The [United Teachers of Los Angeles union] accomplished nothing. It was a sham. Class sizes didn’t go down significantly. Teachers got paid such a small fragment of what they should be paid. And even with nurses and psychiatrists, there are only enough in the district to have on site two times a week, at best.
“The teacher shortage is still an ongoing thing. We had three counselors in the span of one year: Our first counselor retired. The second was anti-vax, so she just left when vaccines became mandatory for staff.
“And then we had a third counselor step in. She was amazing! She was an intern, working a job that was not meant for an intern. She was overworked, chewed up, and spit out by our school system. She was an amazing person who helped me get into Brown University and helped other people get into prestigious universities. She wasn’t supposed to be a college counselor, but she worked as a college counselor and sometimes became a therapist, and she was amazing. It’s people like that, that keep our schools open, and yet they chew them up, spit them out, and that’s not right. It’s not right at all.
“We need more funding. The district does fund but they do it in the form of virtue signaling. For example, during the pandemic, we had the BLM movement in the summer of 2020. There was a movement calling for defunding school police. Okay, I’m fine with that. But where did that money go to? It went to black students, only black students. Yes, who cares about Hispanics, or you know, Middle Easterners that are coming who don’t know how to speak English. It’s always about virtue signaling.
“At Hollywood High School, we had $1 million for Title I funding, the general funding for the school, and then there was $833,000 that was used just for 11.6 percent of the school, which was black. That was how it was arranged because it’s always about virtue signaling. They don’t care about us.”
Programs Should Be For All Races, Not Just One Race
“So white students are always held up as the metric, like everyone wants to use that metric. … Before, the disparity between Hispanics and blacks was minuscule. It was like a 5 percent difference. Then black students were performing 17 percent worse than white students, I believe on average. And then Hispanic students were performing 12 percent worse, but Hispanic students aren’t given any additional support at LAUSD. They’re just ignored, sidelined. I think the Black Student Achievement Plan (BSAP), the program that funds all this, is a great idea. It is a great idea! Honestly, I love it. But I feel it should be implemented across the board to all races, not just to one race because of virtue signaling.
“Black students at my school, only black students, were given access to a full-time psychiatrist, a full-time counselor—we didn’t have one, most of our school didn’t have one. They had a special coordinator. They had a school climate advocate, they had tutors, they had all this extra stuff.
“And we didn’t. It’s like, why aren’t we given any of this?
“I’ve been labeled racist by a lot of students at my school because I wrote an article about this, how no one else is getting funding, how this is not fair at all. This is just virtue signaling because they did this immediately after the BLM movement. They could have done this at any other moment. They could have helped the black community; they could have helped the Hispanic community at any other moment in time. But they chose to do it right after the BLM movement. They don’t care about us. They were just virtue signaling. They were like, ‘Oh, students have always had a problem with school police. Oh, man, there’s a protest about police being violent. I guess we have to defund the police now. Oh, okay. Now we’ll do it.’”
A WSWS reporter ended the interview by asking, “What if the working class, if the teachers and students could run society and run the schools, what do you think it would be like?” Axel responded, “It definitely would not be like what we have now—it would be ideal. It would be ideal to have students and teachers leading. … And I really hope that someday we do accomplish that.
“Whenever I push towards anything like this happening, no one really cares in my community. No one really notices it. And that’s why I had to use my, you know, my right as the valedictorian of Hollywood High School. … I needed to use this to make at least one final stance against the system we have in place, and hopefully at the very least, inspire someone to lead a revolution against what we have now.
“You’re right. It is capitalism that is deeply entrenched in our system, and it is affecting us. It does have its benefits, right? We have all this amazing technology and whatnot, but at the end of day it doesn’t really matter if we have all these issues from health care all the way down to education.”
Recent Wins Inspire Organizing At Trader Joe’s, REI, Target, And Apple
https://popularresistance.org/a-new-sense-of-possibility-starbucks-and-amazon-wins-inspire-organizing-at-trader-joes-rei-target-and-apple/
By Dan Dimaggio and Angela Bunay, Labor Notes. July 2, 2022
A New Sense of Possibility.
“Seven months ago if you asked me about a union I would’ve said, ‘I don’t know, cops have them?’” says Sarah Pappin, a shift supervisor at a Seattle Starbucks. But on June 6, she and her co-workers voted unanimously to join Starbucks Workers United, part of an upsurge of organizing by younger workers with little union experience that is breathing new life into the labor movement.
Now they’re dreaming even bigger. “We want to not just open the door for the rest of the food service industry, we want to kick it down,” said Pappin, who’s worked full-time at Starbucks for eight years. “Eventually you get tired of jumping to the next job and praying it’s gonna be better. You realize you should just take a stand where you have some good ground.”
The union wave at Starbucks and the Amazon Labor Union (ALU) victory on Staten Island have sparked a new sense of possibility among workers at some of the country’s biggest nonunion employers, where unions have struggled for decades to establish any sort of foothold.
Since their April win, ALU organizers say they’ve heard from workers at another 100 Amazon facilities across the country who want to unionize. And in recent months workers have filed for union elections at Trader Joe’s stores in Massachusetts and Minneapolis, an REI in Manhattan, a Target in Virginia, and Apple stores in Atlanta and Towson, Maryland.
Workers in other largely non-union sectors are also organizing, with workers at an Activision Blizzard subsidiary forming the first union at a major video game company in May and tech workers at The New York Times becoming the largest bargaining unit in tech in March.
A Cascading Effect
The organizing wave is turning the labor movement’s prevailing wisdom on its head. Until now unions have mostly avoided filing for election at single workplaces that are part of big chains, like fast food restaurants or Amazon warehouses, not seeing a viable route to a first contract.
But the worker-organizers behind the current upsurge have relied on grassroots organizing to produce a cascading effect.
“The most beautiful thing about this whole movement is that we only have to win one to show what’s possible,” says Casey Moore, a barista at a Starbucks in Buffalo, the city that was home to the union’s first victory last year.
After the December vote count, Moore said, “we just started getting flooded with emails and direct messages on social media saying ‘We’re so inspired, how can we do it here?’”
Boston barista Kylah Clay was among those inspired. “We started talking about our working conditions in this new light—that we can actually change them,” she said. Clay is now helping Starbucks workers throughout New England to organize.
As we went to press, the upstart union had won elections at 177 Starbucks stores in 30 states, and lost just 30; 98 more stores had filed for elections. Workers have also struck over issues ranging from leaky ceilings and malfunctioning grease traps to cuts in hours and retaliatory firings.
Starbucks baristas have a tight workplace culture that helps explain their success. Many of the workers are younger, queer, and work there in part for the gender-affirming health benefits. “We work shoulder to shoulder in very frustrating conditions,” says Pappin. “We already know what the power of working together is.”
Directed From Below
The level of self-direction is a novel aspect of these recent campaigns. While Starbucks Workers United is getting advice and legal help from the SEIU affiliate Workers United, most of the organizing is being done by Starbucks workers. ALU is independent.
“What strikes me about what’s going on now is that it’s not being done by professional organizers,” says Labor Notes co-founder Kim Moody. “A lot of these campaigns are being initiated by the workers themselves, much as auto workers did in the 1930s.”
“It’s different from anything I’ve seen in the worker arena,” said Stephanie Luce, a professor at the CUNY School of Labor and Urban Studies. “It feels like elements of what we saw around other upsurges of protest—the globalization moment, the Occupy moment, the George Floyd moment. What those had in common was that they were not directed from above.”
When ALU filed at the Staten Island warehouse with signatures from just 30 percent of the workforce—the bare minimum to get a union election—most labor organizers scoffed at their chances. The general rule is that you have to file with at least 60 percent support (and preferably more) to withstand management’s anti-union campaign.
But ALU shocked the world and won. “It caused me to rethink the old rules of organizing,” said Peter Olney, former organizing director for the Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU). “You start to think: what about the churn at Amazon? You’re never gonna get to 70 or 80 percent with the churn [the high rate of turnover –Eds]. If you have the organization to get to 30 percent, then you may have the organization to win an election.”
Olney said he’s now encouraging unions to take more seriously the idea of filing for election sooner: “Shouldn’t we be viewing this as a moment to engage in mass filings to stress management and their union-busters? Say you’ve been building out a committee, done actions, marched on the boss—couldn’t you win an election? And wouldn’t winning an election put you on the map?
“Yes, we’ll lose some, but if we were to win at an Amazon facility in Southern California, imagine the media and public reverberations of such a victory.”
Why Now?
Why is this uptick in organizing happening now, instead of 10 or 20 years ago? “It’s like Murder on the Orient Express—you can find at least 10 good suspects,” says Elaine Bernard of the Harvard Labor and Worklife Program.
The tight labor market is one. Another is the flat-out indignation of a generation that grew up in the Great Recession and has just watched its employers rack up record profits during a brutal pandemic.
Another factor is the recent movements that young people have participated in, from Black Lives Matter to LGBTQ rights to climate justice to the push for stricter gun laws in the wake of school shootings.
“Any of the rights campaigns have taught a lesson—that you have to stand up for yourself and you need your coworkers to stand with you, that nobody’s coming to rescue us, that the system is not just,” says Bernard.
“So many people who work at Starbucks were out on the streets for the Black Lives Matter uprising,” says Moore. “I think so many people have seen collective action happening outside the workplace and are saying, ‘Hey, we can do that inside the workplace too.”
“We grew up in this world that is literally on fire and there’s so many things that you can’t do anything about,” says Pappin, who just turned 31. “For me this was the first time in my life that I felt there was something wrong and I could actually take steps that would right them.”
Those sections of the labor movement that have kept the organizing flame alive also deserve credit, says Kate Bronfenbrenner of Cornell’s School of Industrial and Labor Relations; she named SEIU, UNITE HERE, and the Communications Workers in particular.
“We don’t have this moment because of politics,” she said. “It’s because of the Kellogg’s workers, the Mineworkers, all the workers that went out on strike. And frankly because U.S. employers were so outrageous during Covid and before.”
Still A Challenge
Moody urges workers to organize now, before an eventual recession makes things harder: “you’re not gonna get a much better time to do it.”
But even with comparatively favorable conditions, wins are far from guaranteed. At a second Staten Island Amazon facility, for instance, workers lost their vote in April.
The outcome of the March rerun election at an Amazon warehouse in Bessemer, Alabama, is still hanging on hundreds of challenged ballots—though in the initial count, the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union did much better than the vote last year, winning 875 yes votes against 993 no. That shows that even if you lose or make mistakes, “you can come back and do better,” says Bronfenbrenner. “You just have to do the work.”
RWDSU is asking the Labor Board to once again set the election aside for employer misconduct.
Workers at a Target store in Christiansburg, Virginia, recently pulled their election petition after the Labor Board said they hadn’t met the 30 percent threshold. As Target Workers Unite, an independent union, they’ve been organizing for years for Covid-19 safety protocols and against a racist, sexist manager.
The group is keeping at it despite the setback. “If we could just get one win at one store, I think that will be the catalyst for other stores,” said Adam Ryan, who has worked there for five years. “A lot of people are just waiting for a breakthrough.”
At an Apple store in Atlanta, workers who had filed with 70 percent support withdrew their petition, too, in the face of an anti-union campaign.
New York City Apple store workers say the company ramped up its anti-union campaign against their own organizing after the Atlanta store filed. Their advice: Don’t rush things. “When you’re in that stage of talking to your co-workers, make sure you take as much time as you need,” said a worker at the Grand Central Terminal store who asked to remain anonymous. “Everybody needs to be involved, and have everybody heard.”
On June 18, Apple workers in Towson, Maryland, became the first to successfully form a union at the company, voting 65 to 33 to join the Machinists. Kevin Gallagher, one of the Towson workers involved in the campaign, said that since their win he’s gotten direct messages on social media from dozens of other Apple employees interested in unionizing around the country.
Path To A Contract
None of these upstart unions has won a contract yet. So we don’t know yet whether their gamble will pay off.
Workers at the outdoor equipment and clothing store REI in New York City are facing threats and retaliation from management since they voted 88 to 14 to unionize in March. “I’m anticipating REI will fight us every step of the way,” said Graham Gale, a technical specialist at the store.
Since ALU’s election win, Amazon has filed 25 challenges to the outcome and fired two of the organizers and several managers at the Staten Island warehouse. Similarly, Starbucks Workers United has accused the coffee chain of retaliating against organizing efforts by firing union leaders and cutting hours at numerous stores.
“I don’t think any of us is under the illusion that it’s going to be easy,” says Moore.
One challenge for Starbucks workers, Bronfenbrenner points out, is that they’ll have to negotiate with the company’s founder, Howard Schultz, who returned as CEO in April. In the 1930s auto workers organizing drives, Ford was a tougher nut to crack than General Motors because it was still run by Henry Ford. “It’s hard for Starbucks to settle because it’s [Schultz] giving up control over his baby,” Bronfenbrenner said. “It’s much more of a control issue.”
Still, “I sense that Starbucks is vulnerable—it’s hurting because of the organizing campaign, its investors are uncomfortable,” says Bronfenbrenner. “As long as the number of Starbucks stores keeps growing, then the union has power.
“There’s a tipping point where a certain number of stores are organized. The question is: what is that tipping point? At some point they’re going to have to bargain, is my feeling.”
Summer Of Solidarity
Starbucks Workers United is ramping up for a summer of solidarity that includes spreading the organizing to more stores as well as deepening the community and labor support for the campaign.
“It’s gonna be all hands on deck,” said Moore. “We’re gonna need the whole labor movement to come out.”
Workers United announced it has created a $1 million strike fund.
“A lot of us are ready to do whatever it takes to put the pressure on,” Clay said. “I hope we’ve organized at least 1,000 stores by Labor Day.”
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