Workday Magazine (https://workdaymagazine.org/category/commentary/page/3/)
The fight to win the charter amendment will also be stronger if our movement calls for demilitarizing the police, banning chemical weapons, firing all cops with repeated abuse complaints, and creating an elected oversight board with full powers over the new department.
The COVID-19 crisis hit airline workers with speed and devastation. Passenger flow through TSA checkpoints fell 97 percent in March compared to a year earlier. In the months since, travel demand has only barely recovered, to 20 percent of a year ago.
George Floyd was not simply murdered by a knee on his neck, but by generations of open wounds worn raw from Black men and women and people of color being killed for simply existing.
The exploitation of poor and working-class people is also coming at the hands of people who believe they’re doing good.
‘To me, addressing the harm of policing is certainly a labor issue and we should be fighting for a labor movement free from jobs that harm and dehumanize us as workers as well as those with whom we interact. We have that opportunity in Minnesota right now.’
The calls to separate the labor movement from police unions are now coming from inside the house of labor.
On May 6th I tested positive for COVID-19. All the weeks of fear, anger and grief that I had suppressed–in order to keep working, keep my loved ones calm, keep helping neighbors who had it even worse–it all came crashing in. And with it, an odd sense of relief.
An empowered workforce is a safe workforce, pure and simple. Governor Walz should give workers – not their bosses – the right to decide if they feel their workplace is safe. Nothing else will do more to keep Minnesotans alive in this crisis.
The current situation has led us to reconsider the Minneapolis Teamsters strikes of 1934. Their dramatic story shows that the labor movement is strongest when unions boldly organize workers on the job and in the community around a shared vision of fairness and justice.
‘No Matter How Much We Flatten The Curve These Workers Are Most at Risk.’