Newsletter 9.24.19

Hi all, the return of the Newsletter is here! 

Hope you are well, look out for our new episode tomorrow. 

-- Adam, Marco, Florence, and Nima

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Hospital Plans to “Use the Transferring of Critically-Ill Premature Infants” to Paint Nurses Union as “Shameless,” Secret Strategy Memo Reveals, Aída Chávez, The Intercept (Sept. 19, 2019)

Nurses at the University of Chicago Medical Center are preparing to strike on Friday. The Medical Center sent out a communication strategy that suggests that managers bring up how the one-day strike is already affecting patients. Nurses have filed over 1,500 complaints of unsafe conditions since 2017 and say the center requires them to work overtime and outside their speciality. 

The Strike Against General Motors Is One Front in a Much Larger Class War Maximillian Alvarez, Sean Crawford, In These Times (Sept. 18, 2019)

Nearly 50,000 General Motors workers began striking on Sunday, Sept. 15 after negotiations between GM and the United Auto Workers fell through. The strike is happening while the divide between the union’s leadership and the rank and file is growing due to a corruption investigation into leadership. 

How Dare Samantha Power Scrub the Yemen War From Her Memoir, Shireen Al-Adeimi, In These Times, (Sept. 18, 2019)

Former U.N. Ambassador Samantha Power’s new memoir The Education of an Idealist downplays her role in supporting intervention in Libya and expresses regret for not intervening earlier in Syria, but completely omits her role in promoting U.S. involvement in supporting the Saudi coalition in Yemen.

The Student Debt Problem Is a Family Crisis, Mike Konczal, The Nation (Sept 20, 2019)

Caitlin Zaloom’s, new book Indebted documents how student debt increases inequality. The FAFSA documents for financial aid are also designed with a preconception that a family is a unit with a steady income and not one facing the uncertainty that many families do.  

When It Comes to Bereavement Leave, the U.S. Is Unspeakably Cruel, Julianne Tveten,  In These Times (Sept. 23, 2019)

Bereavement leave is not federally mandated for workers so the length and availability of leave is largely determined by employers. Most policies do not account for the long-lasting psychological toll of loss and exclude people, such as LGBTQ individuals, who have chosen families.   

How Energy Companies Corrupt State Politics, Meaghan Winter, The New Republic (Sept. 19, 2019)

Energy companies, like Dominion Energy in Virginia, have spent money in local races to influence candidates to not pursue aggressive climate policies. Now more candidate in Virginia are pledging to not take money from Dominion Energy while new organizations are pledging money to support these candidates.

A Critical Threat to Sex Discrimination Protections, Melissa Gira Grant, The New Republic (Sept. 19, 2019)

Three Supreme Court cases concerning Title VII of the Civil Rights Act, the clause based on sex discrimination, could set back LGBTQ and women’s protections in the work place. One case could allow employers to fire anyone based on their gender nonconformity. 

Media Omit Context Behind Latest North Korean Missile Tests Joshua Cho, FAIR (Sept. 20, 2019)

Reports about North Korea testing missiles over the past months play into narratives that North Korea is always an unhinged aggressor while the U.S. is simply being defensive. Stories frequently omit that the North Koreans plan out missile tests as a defensive measure to prevent an invasion.

The Incredible Belief That Corporate Ownership Does Not Influence Media Content, Alison Rose Levy, FAIR, (Sept. 16, 2019)

Corporate leaders’ influence on media that they own is usually executed by middle managers who receive orders from up top. The degrees of separation between the CEOs and the managers of news outlets gives an appearance of independence even though the difference in coverage between corporate and independent media is apparent. 

On Homelessness, Trump And Dems Both Look To Police, Sarah Lustbader, The Appeal (Sept. 19, 2019)

Trump has used hatred of the homeless as a scare tactic to drum support for aggressive policing and to attack big-city Democrats as soft on crime. However, while those Democrats like to say that policing the homeless can’t be the solution, many have passed laws that further police homelessness and have increased the numbers of police officers in areas where the homeless often sleep.  

The End of Fukuyama and the Last Book, Adam Rivera, Sean Lambert, Current Affairs (Sept. 20, 2019)

Francis Fukuyama came to prominence as a believer that capitalism had finally won out and as a neoconservative. Now that his assumptions have been proven wrong Fukuyama is trying to rebrand himself for the anti-Trump crowd in his new book where he discusses identity politics. Fukuyama divorces identity from a larger class struggle and tries to pit awareness of identity against class consciousness.

Russia Has ‘Oligarchs,’ the US Has ‘Businessmen’, Alan MacLeod, FAIR (Sept. 14, 2019)

A look at 150 articles from CNN, The New York Times, and Fox News found that the term “oligarch” is mostly used to describe people with Slavic names while western billionaires are not usually called "oligarchs".