In a historic win for the labor movement, warehouse workers on Staten Island, New York, have voted to form the first union inside an Amazon facility in the U.S.
Employees at the company’s fulfillment center known as JFK8 will be joining a new independent labor group, the Amazon Labor Union, or ALU, following an election conducted by the National Labor Relations Board. The union delivered a stunning upset in the vote count held Thursday and Friday, winning 2,654 to 2,131.
If the labor board certifies the results to make them official, then the world’s largest online retailer will be obligated to bargain with a union representing several thousand of its employees, something it has never had to do except overseas.
Amazon suggested in a statement that it may challenge the results of the election, alleging “inappropriate and undue” influence by the labor board. The company said it was “evaluating our options.”
The result of Russia’s reinvasion of Ukraine and the way it has targeted Ukraine’s agricultural sector is going to cause a massive shortage in grain. The Middle East, which has been suffering an extended drought for over a decade in the parts of Iraq and Syria that are both the region’s breadbasket and considered to be the birthplace of agriculture, as well as parts of Africa like the Maghreb and the Sahel are likely to be the most heavily effected regions. You know, places with a lot of political stability!The ugly:
The agricultural crisis that Russia is causing, and they are going out of their way to exacerbate it beyond just what would have occurred from the reinvasion of Ukraine, is not just going to hit the Middle East and parts of Africa. It will drive up grain prices, as well as other food prices, all over the world. And the people and places that can least afford those increases are going to be in the global south. Domestic and regional political tensions are going to get more inflamed, people are going to starve, there is going to be a lot of damage.
The pastor promised his followers that this church service would be like no other, and the event on a cold Sunday in March did not disappoint.
“Devil, your foot soldiers are coming out tonight, they’re coming all the way out. We will expel them,” Pastor Greg Locke howled from the stage in a crowded white tent. “You gotta leave, Devil,” he shouted, “you gotta get out!” [snip]
To those unfamiliar with charismatic worship style, the scene might be easily dismissed or mocked. Yet Locke, 45, head of the Global Vision Bible Church, boasts millions of followers, many of them online, gaining national attention during the coronavirus crisis when he kept his church open and defied the mask mandates of the “fake pandemic.”
But to his critics, he is spreading a dangerous message of hate that is taking root in some conservative churches. His rising prominence also comes as many mainstream faith leaders and experts on extremism grow increasingly concerned about the spread of White Christian nationalism, the belief that patriotism and love of America are explicitly intertwined with White evangelical Christianity.
Locke is an “ambassador” of a movement where he and other pastors around the country appear at rallies and tent revivals preaching Donald Trump’s fraudulent claims that the election was stolen as a new holy war, according to Amanda Tyler, executive director of the Baptist Joint Committee for Religious Liberty, an organization dedicated to religious freedom.
We have our work cut out for us, folks.
