I started the week wanting to write extensively on the Amazon story here in the Lehigh Valley. What good is writing for the Huffington Post if I can’t shine some light on glaring corporate-sponsored, government-enabled, and consumer-driven sin right here in my back yard?
Then PennEnvironment released their new report, Danger In The Air, and invited me to speak at a press conference along with their representatives and PA Rep. Steve Samuelson this morning in Allentown. The long and the short of it is that by the most current scientific standards (not currently used by the EPA, even Obama’s EPA), the Allentown Metro Area (that is, the Greater Lehigh Valley) ranks as the 13th smoggiest metro-region of similar size in the nation. Pennsylvania ranks 6th worst on the state list.
Both of these stories have me in knots, as does the pending execution of Troy Davis. There are things I can do about the sweatshop in Breingisville and about the state of our air. In the case of Troy Davis, I feel like all I can do is tweet, make phone calls that go unanswered, email, and pray. In the 21st century, this is all part of advocacy, but I know that no matter what I write about today, the life and death of Troy Davis is finally between some [people] in Georgia and God.
Please: email those [people] and pray to that God. Make phone calls. Demonstrate peacefully. Stand up for change. To Pro-life Christians and others who support the death penalty: please connect the gapes in your garment of life and realize that the death penalty is every bit as barbaric is abortion. Even if Troy Davis is guilty, what’s about to happen is wrong. Death-penalty fans: where, philosophically, does your traditional mistrust of government fit with your belief that our social contract somehow invests the state with the right to end life? That’s insane.
Please read the whole thing here. Below are some highlights and commentary.
Amazon’s priority and key competitive edge is quick delivery of products at low prices. Its Lehigh Valley location on Route 100 near Interstate 78 puts one-third of the population of the U.S. and Canada within a one-day haul. And the weak labor market helps keep employment costs down.
“We strive to offer our customers the lowest prices possible through low everyday product pricing and free shipping offers … and to improve our operating efficiencies so that we can continue to lower prices for our customers,” Amazon says about itself in documents filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.
The situation highlights how companies like Amazon can wield their significant leverage over workers in the bleak job market, labor experts say. Large companies such as Amazon can minimize costs for benefits and raises by relying on temporary workers rather than having a larger permanent workforce, those experts say.
“They can get away with it because most workers will take whatever they can get with jobs few and far between,” said Catherine Ruckelshaus, legal co-director of the National Employment Law Project, an advocacy group for low-wage workers. “The temp worker is less likely to complain about it and less likely to push for their labor rights because they feel like they don’t have much pull or sway with the worksite employer.”
Amazon warehouse workers interviewed come from a variety of backgrounds, including construction, small business owners and some with years of experience at other warehouse and shipping operations. Several of them said it was their worst work experience ever.
The Lehigh Valley’s prime location is being leveraged against us. Our community ( let alone our national economic depression and our own desire to work) is being exploited, and a firm called “Integrity” is key to the process. Isn’t it peculiar how the world “Amazon” itself still conjures images of “jungle,” and how the quintessential literary indictment of bullshit like what’s happening in Breinigsville was called The Jungle?
Their accounts stand in sharp contrast to the “fun, fast-paced” atmosphere described in online help wanted ads for the Amazon warehouse. Amazon and ISS both said they take the safety of workers seriously, but declined to discuss specific concerns current and former employees voiced to The Morning Call. Both companies had three weeks to respond to multiple Morning Call inquiries for this story.
Integrity. Got that?
Goris, the Allentown resident who worked as a permanent Amazon employee, said high temperatures were handled differently at other warehouses in which he worked. For instance, loading dock doors on opposite sides of those warehouses were left open to let fresh air circulate and reduce the temperature when it got too hot, he said. When Amazon workers asked in meetings why this wasn’t done at the Amazon warehouse, managers said the company was worried about theft, Goris said.
“Imagine if it’s 98 degrees outside and you’re in a warehouse with every single dock door closed,” Goris said.
Computers monitored the heat index in the building and Amazon employees received notification about the heat index by email. Goris said one day the heat index, a measure that considers humidity, exceeded 110 degrees on the third floor.
“I remember going up there to check the location of an item,” Goris said. “I lasted two minutes, because I could not breathe up there.”
Allentown resident Robert Rivas, 38, said he left his permanent Amazon warehouse job after about 13 months to take another job. He said he intensified his job search in May after the warehouse started getting very hot.
“We got emails about the heat, and the heat index got to really outrageous numbers,” he said, recalling that the index during one of his shifts hit 114 degrees on the ground floor in the receiving area.
Rivas said he received Amazon email notifications at his work station when employees needed assistance due to heat-related symptoms. He estimated he received between 20 and 30 such emails within a two-hour period one day. Some people pushed themselves to work in the heat because they did not want to get disciplinary points, he said.
This is an 11-page story in the paper and 9-page story online. You get this gist, but you need to read the whole thing if you haven’t already.
Act.ly enables twitter petitions and follows responses from petition targets. My mark is @CNN. Sign the petition asking them to report the truth about the war in Burma here: http://act.ly/490
The .ly ccTLD (country code Top-Level Domain) is from Libya. I know. There’s something delicious about using it to promote peace, but I’m still not 100% sure about to think about that. Thoughts?
Even though they have labeled themselves a ‘democracy’, Burma’s rulers are up to their same old tricks – playing another round of their favorite game – the ‘wait and see’ game.
They have become very skilled at this game. When Burma’s rulers want something from the international community, they make a few cosmetic changes and make vague promises of ‘reform’ to charm the world into not imposing stronger measures. The international community then says ‘let’s wait and see if the generals will keep their promises, this time is different.’ We want to finally have the international community hold the regime accountable and we need your help to demand real change not phony promises.
We don’t want any more ‘wait and see’ diplomatic games. The international community has been calling for the unconditional release of ALL political prisoners, and end to attacks against civilians, and genuine inclusive political dialogue for years. Instead of hoping for this, it is time the world gave Burma’s regime a deadline and say NOW is the time. Burma’s regime must meet these basic benchmarks needed for true democratic change by October 15th or the international community will respond with strong measures.
It doesn’t take much to see how what the regime says about democratic change is different than what they do:
– President Thein Sein announced that exiled activists could now return back to Burma. While he has not released the nearly 2,000 political prisoners who remain locked up. When an exiled journalist did return, once he landed at the airport he was detained and interrogated.
– The regime announced it would create a human rights commission. At the same time troops are being ordered to commit atrocities in ethnic areas. Even chief ministers are ordering forced labor. There are 30,000 newly displaced in Shan State and 40,000 newly displaced in Kachin State. The militarization in Burma is increasing in ethnic states, and many communities are facing forced labor, forced relocation, sexual violence, and more.
– While officials make speeches about helping the economy and alleviating poverty they sell off Burma’s natural resources to other countries. Dams and pipelines will ship energy to China and other countries, while local populations face displacement, abuses, and still no electricity.
Join our new campaign to demand a deadline for the regime to take action or face the consequences. Help demand real change not phony promises. It starts with you – we must change the game.
It starts with waging war against the regime’s information machine – Sign up today to host an event at your school or community that tells the true stories of what is happening in Burma. The regime doesn’t want the world to hear the stories of refugees, child soldiers, activists and more – so stand up, tell the stories, and break the regime’s propaganda! Find out more here.
You will be hearing more from us as we work to break the lies of the regime and hold them accountable. Stay tuned.
I know, I know. Another comic book post. But I refer you to the title, which is basically The Daily Cocca’s micro-bio. Sometimes it’s my email signature, depending on recipient.
So today’s the day, right? Justice League #1 launches the DC relaunch. Have you read it yet? Are you buying, selling, holding? I just added Action Comics and Detective Comics to my pull list.
Don’t post any spoilers. Just impressions. Have it, fan-folk!
Sadly, no, DC’s relaunch does NOT include a new line of He-Man books in the classic continuity. DC did do a He-Man miniseries in 1983, which I now proudly own in its entirely thanks to my LCS (local comic store) and one Alexander Hamilton.
Dropped in on the LCS yesterday to ask if they were anticipating an increase in sales with the re-launch. Was told that many regular customers are adding many of the new books to their lists. And then I did something I’ve never done in all my years of comic-book-nerdiness and narrative obsession.
I set up my own list.
JLA, Batman, Superman, Flash. I’m hook, line, and sinkered on the idea that this is a really cool time to start collecting or, in my case, to start collecting again. Comic sales live and die by big events (The Death of Superman is what got me collecting seriously in the first place. It did not have the same effect on my 13-year-old love life, but whatevs.), and companies succeed when initial interest from casual fans can be sustained. So I hope the relaunch isn’t something that gets undone in 18 months.
Did I mention that I got a DC He-Man mini-series from the 80s? You have no idea how pumped I am about this (is what I also said to the cashier).
Will the relaunch mean more sales in the short term? I think so. We’ll see if that can be sustained, and let’s not forget that people adding the titles to already established lists are not casual fans crossing over into collecting. They’re a captive audience already. The degree to which DC gets more people like me excited remains to be seen, but I expect them to lead in sales at least through Christmas.
You want to see pictures from the He-Man books, don’t you? I know, I know. But they’re in the car and it’s pouring. I’ll do better next time, I promise.
In the relatively short course of my 31 years, I’ve learned quite a few things from John Cusack. Just now, via Twitter, he turned me on to a new piece by Cornel West in yesterday’s New York Times: Martin Luther King Jr. Would Want a Revolution, Not a Memorial .
About 95% of this resonated with me. I paused here:
“In concrete terms, this means…extensive community and media organizing; civil disobedience; and life and death confrontations with the powers that be. Like King, we need to put on our cemetery clothes and be coffin-ready for the next great democratic battle.”
Is being, in West’s words, “coffin-ready,” a condition for participation in this kind of revolution? It’s true we’re talking about life and death stakes: healthcare, poverty, justice, peace — every day, people live or die in this country and abroad because of policy decisions around these issues. People live and die because of campaign donations, kickbacks, deals. West is calling for civil disobedience while telling us, like King before him, that even the most civil of disobedience could get free people killed right here in America. That’s chilling, sobering, and believable, isn’t it?
West is a masterful communicator and rhetorician. For that reason, I wish he’d been more clear about those “life and death confrontations with the powers that be” required in the “next great democratic battle.” It’s clear to me that in West’s view, the threat of violent force in these struggles is from the side of established Power. I hope we’re all reading that the same way.
West notes:
“King’s response to our crisis can be put in one word: revolution. A revolution in our priorities, a re-evaluation of our values, a reinvigoration of our public life and a fundamental transformation of our way of thinking and living that promotes a transfer of power from oligarchs and plutocrats to everyday people and ordinary citizens.”
The 12th chapter of the Apostle Paul’s letter to Roman Christians in the first century CE deals with similar themes of transformative agency. In Pauline terms, the renewal of our minds transforms our inner lives an enables us to test and see the will of God in and for our communities. “Do not conformed to the pattern of this world,” Paul tells the Roman community, “but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will. ” The “pattern of the world” (also translated as “age”) in first century Rome was one of anti-Judaism at the highest imperial levels. Jewish Christians, who had established the city’s earliest Christian gatherings, had been exiled along with all other Jewish people by the Emperor Claudius, and by the time of Paul’s writing had only recently been able to return under Nero. Leadership tensions seem to have risen up between the returning Jewish Christians and the Gentile Christians who’d assumed responsibility for the community during the Jewish exile. In a larger historical context, the persecution of Jews in Alexandria as attested by Philo occurred just 20 years before the writing of this missive, and the persecution of Christians under Nero in Rome on the horizon. Issues of justice, access, and economics are pressing.
For Paul and West, the alternative to transformative renewal is continued conformity to dominant social paradigms, and it’s no coincidence that in both cases, the call is from these destructive patterns and to new ways of being, thinking, doing. West says “King weeps from his grave. He never confused substance with symbolism. He never conflated a flesh and blood sacrifice with a stone and mortar edifice. We rightly celebrate his substance and sacrifice because he loved us all so deeply. Let us not remain satisfied with symbolism because we too often fear the challenge he embraced.” Paul said “Therefore, I urge you, brothers and sisters, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God—this is your true and proper worship.”
In his own way, Paul continually challenges the Church to be “coffin-ready.” We are to present ourselves as living sacrifices. To live, Paul says, “is Christ, and to die is gain.” (Philippians 1:21). “Dying to self” is one of the most revisited Christian tropes across denominations, precisely because it’s what we believe Christ modeled in his ministry and teaching. Dr. West, like Dr. King, draws from the deep well of Christian tradition, pulling succor from a source that has been used in other hands to poison.
What enables transformation? For Paul and West, the process beings somewhere near renewal. West calls us to re-evaluate, re-align, and re-prioritize. Paul says that the ability to so will come by the grace given to us, and that we might start on our end by reorienting ourselves towards others: “Do not think of yourself more highly than you ought, but rather think of yourself with sober judgment, in accordance with the faith God has distributed to each of you.” The Apostle prefaces this charge with an important recognition: “For by the grace given me I say to every one of you: Do not think of yourself more highly than you ought…” The reorientation of self vis-a-vis the Other, or what West calls “a fundamental transformation of our way of thinking and living,” follows grace. As Chapter 12 progresses, Paul claims that any giftedness any of us have is afforded to us only by God’s grace. It must also be true that the ability to be transformed by the renewing of the mind starts, itself, with grace, and it is grace that invites us to see and treat each other graciously.
Transformation and renewal, of our minds and of our bodies politic, start and end with the kind of good will we can’t earn. We must lean into already-present grace, and it’s only by grace that we begin to see past the end of our own lives and to locate grace in others. Grace, as Paul would have it, follows grace. “Twas grace,” the great American spiritual says, “that taught my heart to fear, and grace my fears reliev’d.” It is grace in us that sees grace in others. It is goodness in us that finds goodness in others. It is God in us who recognizes God in others, who makes us care about the lives and fates of others, who never stops trying to wash the word “others” from our renewal-needing, imperfectly transformed minds and points of view.
If grace is, like Paul suggests, the starting point for personal and communal transformation, how are we to live graciously in the midst of revolution, should it come? Paul offers a provisional ethic of life within the hostile empire of his day, to the very people in its center:
9 Love must be sincere. Hate what is evil; cling to what is good. 10 Be devoted to one another in love. Honor one another above yourselves. 11 Never be lacking in zeal, but keep your spiritual fervor, serving the Lord. 12 Be joyful in hope, patient in affliction, faithful in prayer. 13Share with the Lord’s people who are in need. Practice hospitality.
14 Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse. 15 Rejoice with those who rejoice; mourn with those who mourn. 16 Live in harmony with one another. Do not be proud, but be willing to associate with people of low position. Do not be conceited.
17 Do not repay anyone evil for evil. Be careful to do what is right in the eyes of everyone. 18 If it is possible, as far as it depends on you, live at peace with everyone. 19 Do not take revenge, my dear friends, but leave room for God’s wrath, for it is written: “It is mine to avenge; I will repay,” says the Lord. 20 On the contrary:
“If your enemy is hungry, feed him;
if he is thirsty, give him something to drink.
In doing this, you will heap burning coals on his head.”
21 Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.
That’s a fairly civil, and maybe even holy, disobedience. It turns out that grace isn’t just the author and perfecter of our transformations, but is also the essential Christian ethic in crisis and upheaval. How fitting, then, that Romans 12 came up as a lectionary reading for millions of Christians across the world last Sunday and that in the days before and since, Christians from all perspectives and experiences have wrestled with it. I can’t know for sure that Romans 12 was part of Dr. West’s Christian practice Sunday past, but I’m glad John Cusack got me thinking about it.
Chris Cocca 