The United States in the World: Making Sense of the Past Forty Years (1981-2023)-Part 2
The United States in the World: Making Sense of the Past Forty Years (1981-2023)-Part 2
Stories about Labor and Economics.
The United States in the World: Making Sense of the Past Forty Years (1981-2023)-Part 2
The United States in the World: Making Sense of the Past Forty Years (1981-2023)-Part 1
--Kim Scipes
In San Bernardino, California, where retail giant Amazon has a massive warehouse and fulfillment center, daily temperatures reached triple digits for the majority of days in July and have been dangerously hot all summer. Workers with the Inland Empire Amazon Workers United (IEAWU) protested the dangerous conditions and complained to CAL-OSHA, the state’s Division of Occupational Safety and Health. One worker, Daniel Rivera, told Fox11, “Amazon’s main focus is production. Safety is not the priority until it’s too late.”
What we are witnessing with such increasingly common instances is capitalism-induced climate change intersecting with capitalism-induced labor exploitation. It’s a deadly combination and one that is being discussed in ways that obscure its causes and solutions.
The true point of production has been hidden from Africans and other colonized peoples of the world. And the white left is guilty of hiding it.
Uruguayan President Luis Lacalle Pou recently declared a state of emergency in the capital, Montevideo, due to water shortages. (1) Among the measures announced to address the country’s longest recorded drought in 74 years are the construction of a reservoir and tax exemption for bottled water