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Andrew CuomoCuomo says in farewell address he was victim of ‘political and media stampede’Democrat set to end his term at 11.59pm, making Lt Gov Kathy Hochul the state’s first female governor, defends his record A More

OpinionUS politicsWhy is the US right suddenly interested in Native American adoption law?Nick EstesA 1978 law tried to remedy adoption practices created to forcibly assimilate Native children. Now conservative lawyers are arguing that the law constitutes ‘reverse racism’ Mon 23 Aug 2021 06.23 EDTLast modified on Mon 23 Aug 2021 12.05 EDTGeorge Armstrong Custer of the Seventh Cavalry was infamous during the 19th-century Indian wars for riding into the enemy camp, holding Native women, children and elders hostage at gunpoint, and forcing the surrender of the tribe. He systematically attacked and captured civilians to crush Indigenous resistance, which is partly how he defeated the Cheyenne at the Battle of Washita River in 1868. Cheyenne, Lakota and Arapaho warriors later killed Custer as he fled after trying the same hostage-taking ploy at the Battle of Greasy Grass in 1876.Attacking non-combatants, especially children, to enable the conquest of land by destroying the family, and therefore Indigenous nations, wasn’t unique to Custer or the US military.There’s a reason why “forcibly transferring children” from one group to another is an international legal definition of genocide. Taking children has been one strategy for terrorizing Native families for centuries, from the mass removal of Native children from their communities into boarding schools to their widespread adoption and fostering out to mostly white families. It’s what led to the passage of the Indian Child Welfare Act (ICWA) of 1978, touchstone legislation that aimed to reverse more than a century of state-sponsored family separation.Yet the spirit of Custer still haunts the fate of Native children even today. The fight has shifted from battlefield to courtroom.In the new season of the This Land podcast premiering this Monday, Cherokee journalist Rebecca Nagle shows how corporate lawyers and rightwing thinktanks like the Cato Institute have teamed up with non-Native families to not only dismantle the ICWA but the entire legal structure protecting Native rights. And so far, they’ve made small but important victories.Last April, an appeals court upheld parts of a federal district court decision, in a case called Brackeen v Haaland, that found parts of ICWA “unconstitutional”. The non-Indian plaintiffs contend that federal protections to keep Native children with Native families constitute illegal racial discrimination, and that ICWA’s federal standards “commandeer” state courts and agencies for a federal agenda. Put plainly, the mostly white families wanting to foster and adopt Native children are claiming reverse racism and arguing that federal overreach is trampling states’ rights – two codewords frequently associated with dismantling anti-racist policies.According to this upside-down logic, ICWA – monumental legislation consciously designed to undo genocidal, racist policy – is racist because it prevents mostly non-Indians from adopting Native children. The thinking is as old as the “civilizing” mission of colonialism – saving brown children from brown parents.Native child welfare in practice, however, is quite different, and, as Nagle shows in story after heartbreaking story, it very often works against the interests of Native children and families and in favor of families like the plaintiffs in Brackeen.Court records show that two of the three non-Indian families in Brackeen have successfully fostered or adopted Native children despite ICWA protections and with tribes agreeing to the adoption. But they still claim discrimination.A mountain of evidence suggests that Native families, particularly poor ones, are the real victims.In two studies from 1969 to 1974, the Association on American Indian Affairs found that 25-35% of all Native children had been separated from the families and placed in foster homes or adoptive homes or institutions. Ninety percent were placed in non-Indian homes.ICWA aimed to reverse this trend. Today, Native children are four times more likely to be removed from their families than white children are from theirs. And according to a 2020 study, in many states Native family separation has surpassed rates prior to ICWA. This is mostly due to states ignoring or flouting ICWA requirements.A common cause for removal is “neglect”, a form of abuse and a highly skewed claim especially when the Native families most targeted are poor. Failure to pay rent, for example, can result in eviction and homelessness and the placement of a child in state foster care system because of unstable living conditions. Some state statutes may provide up to several thousands of dollars a child per month to foster parents, depending on the number of children in their care and a child’s special needs.Why doesn’t that money go towards keeping families together by providing homes instead of tearing them apart?And there’s the dark side of foster care.Much like the boarding school system which preceded it, foster care is rife with stories of sexual and physical abuse, neglect and forced assimilation into dominant, white culture. To say nothing of the lifelong trauma of being torn from one’s family and nation during the formative years of childhood.So why are corporate law firms like Gibson Dunn – which has represented Walmart, Amazon, Chevron and Shell and is a former employer of the far-right Arkansas senator Tom Cotton – showing up at custody battles to square off with poor Native families and tribes? Are they really interested in the welfare of Native children?It’s foolish to think Custer had the best interests of Native children in mind when he captured them at gunpoint to slaughter and imprison their parents or that the Indian boarding school system, which disappeared thousands of children and raped, tortured, and traumatized countless more, was about “education”.Powerful conservative forces want to bring Brackeen v Haaland to the supreme court not just to overturn the ICWA but to gut Native tribes’ federal protections and rights. Like their counterparts the anti-critical race crusaders, anti-ICWA advocates use the language of “equality” to target Native nations. The collective tyranny of the tribe, the thinking goes, violates the rights of the individual.It’s the libertarian spin on the genocidal logic of Richard Henry Pratt’s nineteenth century maxim to justify child removal: “Kill the Indian, save the man.” The “Indian” is the tribal consciousness; the collective rights of a nation and its sovereignty must be weakened or destroyed to gain access to its lands and resources.Without the tribe, there is no Indian. When there is no Indian, there’s no one to claim the land.White congressmen from western states used the same reasoning to terminate tribes in the 1950s, making the argument that the collective rights of tribes shouldn’t trump individual rights of US citizens. The results were catastrophic. The legal abolition of dozens of tribes led to the privatization of their lands for the benefit of white settlers and businesses.Indigenous people are trying to drag the people of this land into the twentieth-first century by advocating for the protection of healthy water and land, the very elements necessary for all life, a true universal aspiration for a future on a livable planet that benefits everyone. And Native journalists like Rebecca Nagle reveal how nefarious corporate interests are trying to undermine that project by attacking the most precious among us – our children.
Nick Estes is a citizen of the Lower Brule Sioux Tribe. He is a journalist, historian, and host of The Red Nation Podcast. He is the author of Our History Is the Future: Standing Rock Versus the Dakota Access Pipeline, and the Long Tradition of Indigenous Resistance (Verso, 2019)
TopicsUS politicsOpinionNative AmericansIndigenous peoplesLaw (US)RepublicanscommentReuse this content More

US unions‘We’re peons to them’: Nabisco factory workers on why they’re strikingWhile the CEO of Nabisco’s parent company is paid nearly $17m a year, plants are closing, jobs outsourced to Mexico, and older workers are unable to retire on weakened pension benefits Michael SainatoMon 23 Aug 2021 06.00 EDTLast modified on Mon 23 Aug 2021 06.01 EDTThe pandemic drove many people to the cookie jar and helped Nabisco, maker of Oreos, Chips Ahoy!, Fig Newtons and other sweet treats weather the worst of the outbreak. But as the company’s profits continue to recover, workers at its US plants are striking over the outsourcing of jobs to Mexico and concessions demanded by their employer in new union contract negotiations.On 10 August, about 200 workers in Portland, Oregon, represented by the Bakery, Confectionery, Tobacco Workers and Grain Millers (BCTGM) went on strike. Union workers in Aurora, Colorado, began their strike on 12 August, followed by those in Richmond, Virginia, on 16 August and Chicago, Illinois on 19 August.Through the pandemic, Nabisco’s parent company, Mondelēz International, has recorded billions in profits; in the second quarter of 2021, the company reported more than $5.5bn in profits and spent $1.5bn on stock buybacks in the first half of 2021. The CEO of Mondelez International received $16.8m in total compensation in 2020, 544 times the company’s median employee annual compensation of $31,000.“It’s greed. They don’t have any respect for their workers that gave them the opportunity to make that kind of money. We’re peons to them, and everyone is at the point where enough is enough,” said Darlene Carpenter, business agent of BCTGM local 358 in Richmond and a former employee at the plant. “We’re at the point where we’re saying this is how the cookie is going to crumble now because we can’t do this.”According to Keith Bragg, president of BCTGM local 358 who has worked at the Nabisco plant in Richmond for 45 years, during a discussion about contract negotiations with management, the company said that when the company does well, employees do well.He took offence to this notion, citing his concerns about the treatment of workers over the past few years and the recent concessions being asked of them. During the pandemic, many workers had to work 12-hour shifts, six to seven days a week for several months and were praised as “heroes” for their roles as essential workers. But now workers are being asked to give up overtime pay and concede to a two-tier healthcare system, Bragg said, which would downgrade benefits for new employees and cut overall wages.“They’re doing well, we’re losing all the way around,” said Bragg. “They shut down two plants this year, they’re cutting overtime, they’re making profits, but we lost half of our union membership. How is it that we’re doing well?”In 2012, Kraft Foods split into two companies, with Mondelēz International formed as the parent company of Nabisco. Since the split, the union has been pressed to accept concessions during drawn-out contract negotiations, such as eliminating union pension contributions in May 2018 and switching to 401 retirement plans.“A lot of folks were very close to retirement, and were able to do so under the old plan, but when the company pulled out that basically meant that they had to continue working, they were no longer eligible to retire,” said Mike Burlingham, who has worked at the Nabisco plant in Portland since 2007 and serves as vice-president of local 364. “It impacted all of us in a way that we can no longer count on this as being a place we can retire comfortably from.”Mondelēz International has shuttered several Nabisco plants in the US over the past several years, offshoring much of the work to Mexico. The plight of its workers briefly became a campaign issue during the 2016 election cycle, with both Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump attacking plans to shift jobs overseas. “I’m not eating Oreos any more,” Trump told voters in New Hampshire.But despite the political heat the trend has continued. In 2021, Nabisco plants in Fairlawn, New Jersey, and Atlanta were closed, resulting in the loss of about 1,000 jobs. Mondelēz International denied that jobs from the two plants shut down in 2021 were offshored to Mexico, but a petition for trade adjustment assistance alleging outsourcing by the union at one of the plants is under review by the Department of Labor. In 2016, hundreds of workers were laid off at the Nabisco plant in Chicago and a plant in Philadelphia was shut down in 2015.“We can’t compete with the Mexican workers,” said Cameron Taylor, business agent at Local 364 in Portland. “They just want to exploit cheap labor. If we were to accept all of what they want us to, accept all the working conditions and the two- tiered system of healthcare, this job would turn into a job not even worth fighting for.”In 2016, the union launched a “check the label” boycott campaign that was endorsed by the AFL-CIO, asking consumers to refuse to buy Nabisco products that are made in Mexico. Workers have frequently reported finding Nabisco products for sale near their plants that were produced in Mexico.“We are disappointed by the decision of the local BCTGM unions in Portland (OR), Richmond (VA) and Aurora (CO) to go on strike,” said a spokesperson for Mondelēz International, noting the company has a continuity plan in place at the facilities where workers are on strike. “Our goal has been – and continues to be – to bargain in good faith with the BCTGM leadership across our US bakeries and sales distribution facilities to reach new contracts that continue to provide our employees with good wages and competitive benefits, including quality, affordable healthcare, and company-sponsored Enhanced Thrift Investment 401(k) Plan, while also taking steps to modernize some contract aspects which were written several decades ago.”TopicsUS unionsUS politicsCoronavirusMondelēznewsReuse this content More

Republicans‘I’m a citizen with no country:’ Mark Sanford on turning against Trump and his party Former South Carolina governor talks about his memoir that links his decision to lessons learned from an extramarital affair in 2009 and his attempt to cover it upDavid Smith in Washington@ More

The evacuation of thousands of Americans and their Afghan allies from Kabul would have been ‘hard and painful no matter when it started or when we began’, Joe Biden said on Sunday, amid fierce criticism of his administration’s handling of the US withdrawal.
Answering questions, he said it was possible that his deadline for the completion of the evacuation, 31 August, would be extended

Biden: Afghanistan evacuations would always have been ‘hard and painful’ More

Joe BidenBiden: Afghanistan evacuations would always have been ‘hard and painful’President defends US exit but makes changes to airlift effort at Kabul airport after criticism over deaths and chaotic scenes

Civil war ‘unavoidable’ if Taliban won’t talk – opposition leader
Martin Pengelly in New York and agencies@ More

OpinionUS gun controlThe Guardian view on soaring US gun violence: America must face the problemEditorialThe US already had more guns than people when sales began rising a few years ago. It is now set for its highest number of gun killings in 20 years Sun 22 Aug 2021 13.30 EDTLast modified on Sun 22 Aug 2021 14.05 EDTAs Covid cases surge once more in the US, another public health crisis is pummelling the country too. Last year, gun killings soared by around 4,000, to almost 20,000 in total – the worst single-year increase on record. So far, 2021 looks even worse. In the first five months alone, more than 8,100 people died. America is set for the deadliest toll in nearly two decades.Alarmingly, there is also a surge in gun purchases. The US already had more guns than people when sales began rising a few years ago. But last year saw a 64% jump compared with the previous year, to an estimated 20m guns. Around a fifth of buyers were first-time owners. The pandemic sparked a rush to purchase firearms, and some bought because so many others were doing so. The backlash against Black Lives Matter protests may have played a part. Black Americans saw the highest increase in gun ownership and, reportedly, Asian Americans also bought more guns, as hate crimes have risen. Sales have continued to grow this year, with manufacturers struggling to produce enough ammunition.Research so far does not suggest a direct correlation between the rises in gun sales and violence. Experts point instead to economic desperation, isolation and the loss of social structure with the closure of schools and community organisations by the pandemic, and the disruption to prevention initiatives – such as the work of violence interruptors, who help to mediate when conflict develops. But the increase in ownership is nonetheless disturbing, and one study – not yet peer-reviewed – suggests that states with lower levels of violent crime pre-Covid saw a stronger connection between additional gun purchases and more gun violence.Though mass shootings this spring helped to push gun violence up the political agenda, they account for fewer than 1% of firearms deaths. Shootings make headlines when they happen somewhere unexpected or there are large numbers of fatalities; the reality is a daily toll of violence, concentrated in disadvantaged neighbourhoods of colour. Joe Biden, in talking of two mass killings that sparked huge attention, noted: “You probably didn’t hear it, but between those two incidents, less than one week apart, there were more than 850 additional shootings that took the lives of more than 250 people, and left 500 injured.”The president’s response includes predictable, if welcome, measures such as tightening regulations on the sale of “ghost guns” assembled from kits. The striking and overdue change was the $5bn earmarked in the infrastructure bill for prevention funding, though that may not survive congressional politicking. Community intervention programmes have been proven to work. The administration is to be applauded for recognising that while gun controls are essential, they cannot be sufficient in a country already awash with firearms. Nor will simply pouring more money into the police when those disproportionately hurt by gun violence – young black men – are also disproportionately targeted by law enforcement.The amount of weaponry in the US potentially destabilises its neighbours. The Mexican government is taking gunmakers to court in Boston, arguing that lax controls add to the flow of illegal arms across the border. About 70% of the weapons seized in Mexico came from its northern neighbour. With gun violence costing America an estimated $280bn a year, a much bigger investment in prevention is both necessary and affordable. Other items on the administration’s list – such as bans on assault weapons and improved background checks – require congressional action that is unlikely. The National Rifle Association maintains significant political clout despite its disarray. It has also achieved what it wanted in exchange for its investment in Donald Trump: a strongly pro-gun supreme court, which is likely to hear a second amendment case soon, reviewing a New York law that strictly limits the carrying of guns outside the owner’s home. Legislative progress, however limited, could soon be unwound. In the face of such developments, and the fast-rising human toll, never have concerted efforts to tackle gun violence been more necessary.TopicsUS gun controlOpinionNRABlack Lives Matter movementGun crimeDonald TrumpJoe BidenRaceeditorialsReuse this content More

Donald TrumpTrump booed after telling supporters to get Covid vaccine Former president held rally in Cullman, Alabama, a city struggling to cope with cases and hospitalisations

Full FDA approval of Pfizer shot will enable requirements
Martin Pengelly and agencies@ More