May 30, 2021 7 min read

Weekend Picks: Attacks on Workers and Palestinians

The latest news from OptOut's network of exclusively independent media outlets.

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I hope everyone is having a relaxing holiday weekend.

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This week, OptOut's participating outlets examine corporate attacks on U.S. workers and the plight of Palestinians. Plus, racist politicians, the filibuster, and "Uber for police."

News

In my home state of North Carolina, rightwing members of the state university system's board of governors, who were appointed by the extremist legislature, attempted to deny tenure to Nikole Hannah-Jones, the creator of the 1619 Project.

This is part of a national push by Republicans to oppose critical race theory and anything that critiques the white supremacy that founded the United States and is still alive and well. The aim is both to do damage control for white conservatives and to inflame their increasingly radical base.

But the Republicans’ obsession with whitewashing history to frame a new battle in the culture wars and to mollify their own discomfort with the abomination that was America’s peculiar institution has the markings of a backlash that will further damage UNC’s tattered reputation.

The Daily Poster exposes The Washington Post for a day of glaring conflicts of interest. These financial conflicts of interest are what you often see in the corporate and legacy media, but you won't find any on the forthcoming OptOut app!

Speaking of Amazon, economist Matt Stoller writes about the monopoly's "free shipping" lie and a new anti-trust lawsuit in his newsletter, BIG.

Related content from The Majority Report:

Carlos Ballesteros has this report on immigrant detention in Illinois for Injustice Watch.

🤨 Huh?

This is one of those things that you're not surprised about but is still quite remarkable. Obama's labor secretary Tom Perez, who went on to run the Democratic National Committee, is now working at a union-busting law firm. Sludge has the details.

Related content: Get The Humanist Report's take on this...

...and read The Daily Poster's coverage written by Andrew Perez and OptOut co-founder Walker Bragman.

Progressives Everywhere creator Jordan Zakarin has the goods on Uber's anti-worker campaign in New York.

In Africa Is a Country, three academics write that Uganda has now fully transformed into a neoliberal nation.

Israel and Palestine

There's a ceasefire now, but there's plenty to report on and analyze. I'm sticking with OptOut's participating outlets to educate myself.

Mari Cohen of Jewish Currents looks at the claims of an uptick in antisemitic hate crimes and finds that the ADL's tally is inconsistent and includes incidents that many don't consider antisemitic.

WhoWhatWhy has a piece on how Israeli police sparked the current crisis and helped out Netanyahu.

RIFT Radio has an interview with Palestinian journalist Budour Hassan.

“Israel worked tirelessly to erase their identity,” she says of her elders, describing the history of Israeli’s hierarchical apartheid citizenship structure.

Asad Haider uses the work of Palestinian novelist and militant Ghassan Kanafani and Karl Marx to understand the crisis in Gaza for Viewpoint Magazine.

Analysis

Luke Savage of Jacobin has an astute analysis of centrist Democrats' refusal to abolish a Senate procedural rule created to empower white supremacists and currently allowing today's white supremacists to protect Jim Crow 2.0, which is occurring as you read this.

The Laura Flanders Show has an important episode this week.

"BIPOC journalists reflect on what it is to be veterans of two of the most devastating wars in recent history: the coronavirus pandemic and the centuries-long war on Black bodies through systemic racism and police brutality. In this media roundtable—a collaboration between The Laura Flanders Show and URL Media—we take a different approach to Memorial Day. One that centers the work of BIPOC journalists from the front lines. How are they responding to the needs of their communities, and where do we go from here?"

Listen to the episode.

Nonprofit digital art and literature magazine Triple Canopy launched a new podcast called Medium Rotation this year. In a recent episode, artist and composer Jeremy Toussaint-Baptiste "speaks about bass as a way to repulse people or bring them together, cause aggravation or collective pleasure."

Listen on bass-heavy speakers!

Reply Guys hosts Kate and Julia have something to say to NYC mayoral candidate Andrew Yang, who has gotten some major support from rightwing billionaires.

Listen on Soundcloud.

It's worth noting that Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams, who is also among the mayoral race's frontrunners, is a product of the corporate Democratic machine, and the super PAC backing him has also received large sums from the same GOP megadonors.

Now here's an extremely troubling yet not entirely unpredictable development with the Citizen app.