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I zzy Award Ceremony on April 27
This year’s Izzy Award “for outstanding achievement in independent media” will be shared by a publication and two journalists who undertook trailblazing and intrepid reporting during 2020: Truthout, Liliana Segura, and Tim Schwab.
Attend the Award Ceremony on Tuesday, April 27, at 7:00 p.m. EDT. Register via Zoom here.
The nonprofit news outlet Truthout extensively covered the injustices enmeshed in the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic, highlighting its political, economic, environmental, and racial issues.
Liliana Segura at The Intercept undertook path-breaking reporting that revealed longstanding truths about the unfairness of capital punishment — from its disproportionate impact on people of color to the arbitrariness of how people end up on death row.
And Tim Schwab writing in The Nation uncovered The Gates Foundation’s striking conflicts of interest, complicated web of influence, and troubling monopoly power in the field of global health. |
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A Conversation with Boots Riley: “Democracy at Work!”
PCIM in collaboration with Cornell University’s Industry Labor Relations School presents A Conversation with Boots Riley: “Democracy at Work!”
Join on Thursday, April 15, at 6:30 p.m. EDT. Register via Zoom here.
Boots Riley is a musician, labor activist and director of the critically acclaimed film Sorry to Bother You. At this virtual event, he will discuss organizing, social change, and the connections between art and justice.
Ithaca College journalism major Malick Mercier ’21 will introduce the event and act as one of the moderators, along with colleagues at Cornell.
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Book Launch for Flash Flaherty: Tales From A Film Seminar
Join us for the international launch of Scott MacDonald and Patricia R. Zimmermann’s Flash Flaherty: Tales From A Film Seminar (Indiana, 2021), with readings from the book by the editors and contributors.
Join on Thursday, April 29, at 7:00 p.m. EDT. Register via Zoom here.
Lucius Barre, international film publicist
Portia Cobb, filmmaker
Scott MacDonald, author and scholar
Laura Marks, author and scholar
Susana de Sousa Diaz, filmmaker
Patricia R. Zimmermann, author and scholar
Girish Shambu, Moderator, and editor of Film Quarterly’s Quorum
Hosted by Raza Rumi, Director, Park Center for Independent Media
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Howard Dean Pushes Biden to Oppose Generic COVID-19 Vaccines for Developing Countries
Currently, just a few companies hold the formulas to the COVID-19 vaccines, limiting distribution to many parts of the world. The former progressive champion Howard Dean is calling on Joe Biden to keep it that way, by rejecting a special intellectual property waiver that would allow low-cost, generic coronavirus vaccines to be produced to meet the needs of low-income countries, covers The Intercept.
India and South Africa, along with dozens of other countries, have led a proposal to request a temporary waiver of intellectual property rights over the creation of COVID-19 vaccines. The waiver to the World Trade Organization would allow full access to formulas necessary to ramp up production of vaccines in low-income countries, which are projected not to reach significant vaccination rates until as late as 2024.
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Protests Erupt After Police Kill Black Man During Traffic Stop Near Minneapolis
On Sunday afternoon, police fatally shot Daunte Wright—an unarmed, 20-year-old Black man—during a traffic stop in Brooklyn Center, Minnesota, sparking protests just miles away from where George Floyd was killed by police last May.
Minnesota police on Monday released footage from an officer’s body camera showing the shooting: police attempt to arrest Wright, who tries to re-enter his vehicle. One officer pulls a weapon and yells, “Taser! Taser! Taser!” before shooting Wright.
On Sunday in Virginia, a police officer who pepper-sprayed and threatened Caron Nazario—a uniformed Black and Latinx U.S. Army second lieutenant—during a routine traffic stop was fired after video footage revealed the officer’s “disturbing” escalation. Nazario filed a lawsuit and has been released.
This incident comes as Virginia’s Hampton Roads community mourns the death of Donovan Lynch, who was killed by officers while their body worn cameras were not activated.
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The Union Campaign at Amazon Was Just the Beginning
Workers at an Amazon fulfillment center in Bessemer, Alabama, have lost their bid to seek union representation in a National Labor Relations Board election, in what would have been the first of the company’s U.S. facilities to unionize.
Despite the campaign led by the Retail Wholesale and Department Store Union (of which the Amazon workers would’ve become members), the election results turned to favor Amazon on April 9, with a tally of 738 votes for unionizing and 1,798 against it, writes The Progressive.
The Retail Wholesale and Department Store Union filed a legal challenge with the NLRB to contest the results, alleging that Amazon had created an “atmosphere of confusion, coercion, and/or fear” in order to dissuade workers from unionizing.”
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A New Union of Musicians Is Taking on Spotify
On March 15, a crowd of musicians gathered near a Spotify office in Los Angeles’s Arts District. Most of the attendees were members of the recently founded Union of Musicians and Allied Workers.
In October, UMAW launched its Justice at Spotify campaign, demanding that the company pay artists a penny per stream (up from what is currently about a fourth of a cent), provide a more transparent business model, user-centric streaming, and to appropriately credit all those who worked on a recording, writes Jacobin.
Most recorded music income is from streaming, but artists don’t see most of that money. Musicians then need to tour for income, which has been impossible during the pandemic, making the inequity clear.
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| Biden’s Domestic Spending Plan Is Welcome, But More Military Spending Isn’t
Last week, the Biden administration published its “skinny budget” proposals—essentially a wish list of the most important discretionary expenditures for the coming year. It’s divided about evenly between military and nonmilitary spending.
Nonmilitary spending is listed as $769 billion, marking a 16% increase over Trump-era expenditures on items including environmental investments and public health infrastructure. It also envisions a 40% increase in funding for the Department of Education and billions to address climate change.
The defense request comes in at $753 billion, a slight increase over Trump-era spending. In some instances, the administration is locked into spending commitments made long before Biden entered office. But also, as Truthout writes, “Biden’s team in key ways buys into the ideology of the U.S. as the indispensable global policeman.” |
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Living Through the Climate Emergency
Thousands of scientists, across peer-reviewed journals and interviews, have said that humanity faces a climate emergency. Preserving a livable planet requires immediate far-reaching action. “It’s time for journalism to recognize that the climate emergency is here—and to emphasize that this is a statement of science, not of politics.”
Covering Climate Now, a global consortium of over 400 news outlets, organized the release of a Climate Emergency Statement by news sites including Scientific American, The Guardian, The Nation, Al Jazeera, Columbia Journalism Review, and others. The consortium recognizes the skills journalists used to cover the coronavirus pandemic and calls for reporting with the same level of urgency to address the burning planet.
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Driven by Industry, More States Are Passing Tough Laws Aimed at Pipeline Protesters
Minnesota environmental advocates are protesting the replacement and expansion of Line 3, a major oil pipeline that carries oil from Canada’s tar sands to the U.S. But a bill in the Minnesota state legislature, backed by the oil and gas industry, threatens their right to protest.
The Minnesota legislation would impose a felony offense carrying up to five years in prison for anyone who enters a pipeline construction site with “intent to disrupt” operations, writes Inside Climate News. This bill is one of a growing number, backed by the oil and gas industry, that are pending in at least five states and have been enacted in 15 others over the last four years.
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In Other News
1. Daunte Wright news – latest: Officer and police chief quit as family make emotional plea for justice (The Independent)
2. Zoom Court Is Changing How Justice Is Served (The Atlantic)
3. Joe Biden Aims To Withdraw U.S. Troops From Afghanistan By Sept. 11, 2021 (HuffPost)
4. Covid-19: US agencies call for pause in Johnson & Johnson vaccine (BBC)
5. Wisconsin poised for devastating wildfire season as hundreds of blazes rage (The Guardian)
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