Sorry to Bother You: A Spectacle That Teaches [feedly]

Sorry to Bother You: A Spectacle That Teaches
https://workingclassstudies.wordpress.com/2018/08/20/sorry-to-bother-you-a-spectacle-that-teaches/

Sorry to Bother You is set in a world so similar to our own that its dystopian futurism seem familiar. The economy is such that many ordinary people have signed lifetime contracts with a company called Worry Free Living, which guarantees them grueling work, crowded shelter, subpar food, and a modicum of free time. In other words: slavery.

Against this backdrop we meet Cassius "Cash" Green (Lakeith Stanfield), a desperate job seeker who is four months behind on his rent and living with his girl friend Detroit (Tessa Thompson) in his uncle's windowless garage. Eventually Cash finds work as a lowly telemarketer at Regal View. A charismatic union organizer (Steven Yeun) inspires Cash and his co-workers to organize, and they stage an uplifting job action on the telemarketing floor, chanting  "phones down" and "Fuck Regal View."

Cash stands with the union at first. But then, his mentor Langston (Danny Glover) encourages Cash to make his sales calls with a "white voice"—a voice so reassuring that Cash becomes a selling machine. Cash is promoted to "power caller" and moves up to the coveted top floor at Regal View. At the climax of the film Cash crosses the union's picket line to get to work, betraying his friends. When our hero becomes a scab, Sorry to Bother You seems to be peddling Hollywood anti-union politics as usual.

But instead, the film sides with the union organizer Squeeze, Cash's girlfriend Detroit, Cash's best friend Salvador (Jermaine Fowler), and Cash's mentor Langston—who is with the union even though he taught Cash the secret of the "white voice"—rather than Cash. As Detroit tells Cash, "I can't ride with you anymore." Rejected by his pals, Cash finds cold comfort in the palatial home of Regal View CEO Steve Lift (Armie Hammer), where Cash makes a horrific discovery about the sorts of futuristic workers that Regal View is producing in order to further lower its labor costs. Here's a hint: they aren't robots.

I won't give away the extremely bizarre ending, but suffice it to say that Cash returns to his unionizing friends and re-joins their movement. The film's fundamental argument is that solidarity at the point of production is the most effective way to change the world.

As a scholar specializing in labor films, I came away from Sorry to Bother You with two questions: 1) How did a film this radical ever get made? 2) What does it mean that such a pro-union film is being released now, given the state of the labor movement today?

As Boots Riley, the film's writer and director explains it, it was very difficult to get Sorry to Bother You to the big screen. Riley, active in the Occupy Oakland movement and a long time rapper/writer/producer for the group Coup, finished the script in 2012. He put it in front of everyone he knew, and lots of people he didn't know as well. He finally found a fan in Dave Eggers, who saw connections between the dystopian world in Riley's screenplay and the world he was trying to capture in The Circle. Eggers published the script of Sorry to Bother You on McSweeney's in 2014.

According to Wired, Egger's endorsement helped Riley get a grant from the San Francisco Film Society and then an invitation to Sundance's Screenwriters Lab. In 2016, the project caught the attention of Forest Whitaker's company, Significant Productions, where Whitaker's partner Nina Yang Bongiovi started promoting it with investors and agents. Selling Riley, a self-proclaimed communist, wasn't easy, but Bongiovi kept at it, bringing in financing from more than one investor. When Sorry to Bother You premiered at Sundance this year, Annapurna Pictures acquired it for seven figures.

Riley's story reflects the changing economics and politics in Hollywood. As entertainment journalist Sharon Waxman has argued, the Hollywood studio era is finally really and truly dead, replaced by digital media companies like Amazon, Netflix, and Facebook. Add to this the growing power of black-owned production companies and the allegations, firings, and resignations resulting from the #MeToo movement, and suddenly the entertainment landscape is becoming more open to films that feature minority lead characters as well as more politically edgy subjects.

Along with finding the right backers, Riley succeeded because he understood the connection between activism and art. All along, Riley knew that he was making art for the kind of people that he was organizing alongside—in migrant farm working communities, in Oakland where he grew up, and in the Occupy movement: "I started out [at the age of 14] in radical movements before I thought that I was an artist. . . .  I think that if you have a passion to have your art be for something more, then what goes along with that is establishing a base, having a community that you answer to, having a community that you represent, having a community that you engage with in a way [other] than through your art."

In many ways, Sorry to Bother You is out of step with our current moment. Union membership is at an historic low, and the labor movement was recently dealt a terrible blow with the Supreme Court's Janus decision—a decision that will make it more difficult for unions to recruit members and collect dues. If Kavanaugh becomes our next Supreme Court judge, some predict that we'll see more catastrophic decisions for labor.

Yet Sorry to Bother You is also the perfect film for the renewed labor radicalism of right now. Earlier this month Missouri voters rejected the anti-labor "right to work laws" in a referendum, numerous red state teachers rose up last spring in multiple massive strikes, and workers across the globe put a small dent in Jeff Bezos's empire with strikes on Amazon Prime Day. On the political front a newly energized left flank of Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) backed candidates have won elections in Pittsburgh, the Bronx, and elsewhere.

This is the kind of activism that Boots Riley would like to see increase.  He advocates strikes, rather than street demonstrations or boycotts, because "that is where the wealth is created." Riley also likes the pedagogical function of strikes, the fact that they "teach the people involved and the onlookers how capitalism works .  . . .  It's a spectacle that teaches."

A spectacle that teaches. I love this notion. If you've ever walked a picket line you know how it changes your relationship with your co-workers, your job, and your street—how being out and loud and proud shows your community that you deserve a better deal, and that everyone else does too. At the end of this month, if it comes to it, I'll be cheering on the on the striking Chicago hotel workers, who just took an overwhelming strike vote, and any other group of workers ready to seize power at the point of production. Don't be sorry. It's no bother. It's the only way we're going to get our country back.

Kathy M. Newman

Kathy M. Newman is Associate Professor of English/Literary and Cultural Studies at Carnegie Mellon University. She is currently finishing a book called How the Fifties Worked: Mass Culture and the Decade the Unions Made. Newman recently curated an art exhibit featuring anti-capitalist art, Marx@200, a portion of which is currently on view at Verso books in Brooklyn, NY.

 -- via my feedly newsfeed

Fwd: A bit of controversy

---------- Forwarded message ---------
From: Samuel Webb <swebb1945@gmail.com>
Date: Mon, Aug 20, 2018 at 11:23 AM
Subject: A bit of controversy
To: Samuel Webb <swebb1945@gmail.com>

Hi ... two new posts on my blog; both probably a little controversial. Have a good day. sam

http://samwebb.org/

--

John Case
Harpers Ferry, WV

The Enlighten Radio Player Stream, 

Sign UP HERE to get the Weekly Program Notes.

Check out Socialist Economics, the Enlighten Radio website

Chinese Cities, Sustainable Development and Global Connectivity: A conversation with GGF 2030 fellow Min Yang [feedly]

Chinese Cities, Sustainable Development and Global Connectivity: A conversation with GGF 2030 fellow Min Yang
https://www.globalpolicyjournal.com/blog/20/08/2018/chinese-cities-sustainable-development-and-global-connectivity-conversation-ggf

This interview was conducted by the Global Governance Futures – Robert Bosch Foundation Multilateral Dialogues, which brings together young professionals to look ahead 10 years and recommend ways to address global challenges.

More than half of China's population now lives in cities. This brings multiple challenges in terms of environment, energy, transportation, and social justice. What efforts do Chinese cities make to meet these challenges?

Essentially, all Chinese cities are facing similar challenges: traffic congestion, resource shortage, the growing material and cultural needs of people, and environmental pollution – especially air pollution. But localized efforts have been made to address these challenges. China has a system of categorizing cities according to their administrative divisions and population density as well as the development of their economy, services and infrastructure, and there are four tiers. I live in Beijing, which is a first-tier city. Beijing is highly developed, overpopulated and home to much more than its fair share of China's politics, economy and culture due to many years of centralized development. To tackle the challenges it faces and avoid uneven development at the regional level, Beijing is currently implementing the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei Coordinated Development Program, which aims to encourage coordinated partnerships among cities, improve public services, relocate resources, and redefine its own function as well as those of the surrounding cities. In the next 15 years, Beijing is set to develop into a political, cultural, innovation, and international exchange center. At the same time, nearby Tianjin is supposed to become a key city for shipping, manufacturing, research, and development while neighboring, Hebei is to be a base for piloting industrial transformation and upgrading. Like other Chinese cities, Beijing has also adopted approaches for achieving a new mode of urbanization that is efficient, inclusive and sustainable, including policies for managing land, giving migrants urban residence permits and equal access to basic public services, enforcing the implementation of environmental laws, and improving local governance, among other things.

Can you tell us about examples of Chinese cities playing a leadership role in sustainable development and global connectivity?

Chinese cities are becoming increasingly well-known at the global level and promote global connectivity through various activities, such as the 2016 G20 summit in Hangzhou, the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) meetings in Shanghai in 2001,and the Bo'ao Forum for Asia, a high-level forum for government, industry and business, and academic circles in Asia and other countries.

The water town of Wuzhen, which is famous for its beautiful scenery, is a good example. Located in the Tongxiang City in Zhe Jiang province, Wuzhen has hosted the World Internet Conference (WIC)every year since 2014. The WIC connects the world through providing an information platform to bridge digital divides, boost the digital economy, enhance virtual cross-country exchanges, and advance emerging information technologies. What's more, Wuzhen has become a site for cultural exchange through the annual Wuzhen Theater Festival.

Chinese cities have also strengthened their cultural and commercial ties with the world, for example by joining sister city or twin town networks. Kunming, a second-tier city located in the southwest of China, is a sister city to19 cities outside China. In addition, Kunming is striving to become more sustainable to earn China's "Civilized City" honor and to improve its environment and the quality of public services. Similarly, the so-called "Ecological City" and "Sponge City" projects have been initiated by the Chinese authorities to encourage new modes of urbanization. Cities' performances will be assessed based on a comprehensive evaluation system of sets of sustainable development indicators and cities that perform well will be granted honorary titles. Many cities are already working towards this goal.

You work as a program assistant at UNESCO in Beijing, where you focus on the realization of the UN Sustainable Development Goals. What role does UNESCO play in fostering cooperation between cities on a global level and advancing their role in global governance processes?

UNESCO plays a crucial role in fostering cooperation between cities on a global level through education, sciences, culture, and communication. UNESCO offers guidance to its member states to help them re-evaluate their dominant models of social and economic development, thus facilitating the process of transferring the global vision for the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development into local action. UNESCO has also launched city networks such as the UNESCO Global Network of Learning Cities (GNLC). The network has the purpose of promoting green and healthy environments, equity and inclusion, and decent work and entrepreneurship. Through GNLC, member cities are increasingly engaging in local and global partnerships, organizing sub-regional meetings, and contributing to a vibrant exchange of knowledge and practice within the network. Created in 2004, the UNESCO Creative Cities Network (UCCN) aims to promote cooperation with and among cities that have identified creativity as a strategic factor for sustainable urban development. To date, 180 cities have joined the UCCN with the common objective of placing creativity and cultural industries at the heart of their development plans at the local level and cooperating actively at the international level.

UNESCO is directly supporting countries in their efforts to implement the SDGs—and helps them promote inclusive, sustainable cities through quality education for all, safeguarding cultural heritage, enabling innovation and creativity, promoting environmental sustainability, and building resilience to the effects of climate change, disasters and conflicts.

What do you think is the most important aspect of the Global Governance Futures program – of which you are a fellow – and particularly your working group on the role of cities in global governance?

For me, the key strength of the Global Governance Futures program is that it is a shared learning process. I really appreciate being able to work on this topic with excellent young professionals from different fields, in an environment which considers and fully respects everyone's opinions equally. At the same time, we are encouraged to transcribe common objectives and guidance onto our own local contexts. Even when we have a common goal, and brainstorm plans for cities' future development together, all cities will have different needs and take different paths towards their goal.

 

 

Min Yang is currently working for Social and Human Sciences sector at UNESCO Beijing, and a doctoral candidate specialized in International Communication (at the Communication University of China).  She is a Global Governance Futures 2030 fellow. The views expressed here are her own. 

 -- via my feedly newsfeed

Economists Say Trump's Tariffs Are Unfavorable for US Growth [feedly]

Economists Say Trump's Tariffs Are Unfavorable for US Growth
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-08-20/economists-say-trump-s-tariffs-are-unfavorable-for-u-s-growth

Business economists are sounding some sour notes about Trump administration policies, from trade to immigration to the budget, while expecting the short-term boost to growth from Republican tax cuts to lessen over time.

The National Association for Business Economics survey showed 91 percent of respondents said current tariffs and threats of more to come were having "unfavorable consequential impacts" on the U.S. economy, according to a report released Monday. About two-thirds saw negative effects if the U.S. withdraws from the North American Free Trade Agreement with Mexico and Canada.

In the wake of large tax cuts enacted in late 2017, the share of those saying fiscal policy is too stimulative rose to 71 percent from 52 percent in February, according to the responses of 251 members collected from July 19 to Aug. 2. And 81 percent said the federal deficit's share of gross domestic product should be reduced.

"In general, the panel expects the federal deficit, as a percentage of the economy, to grow in the longer term, with eight out of 10 panelists indicating that fiscal policy should help shrink the deficit as a share of the economy," said survey chair Jim Diffley, an economist at IHS Markit Ltd.

Upbeat Tweets

The cautious views are at odds with the President Donald Trump's upbeat assessment in tweets last week saying the U.S. economy is "better than ever." Trump has also touted low rates of youth unemployment and, recently, falling joblessness among African-American and Hispanic workers.

While survey respondents continued to see deregulation and tax cuts giving a boost to growth in the short term, they also saw the effects diminishing over time as government debt continues to rise.

Almost two-thirds said the U.S. corporate tax system following the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act was an improvement over the previous regime in terms of equity and efficiency, while 25 percent viewed it as "somewhat worse" or "far worse" than before.

Changes to personal income taxes fared worse, with only 31 percent considering the new system better in terms of equity and efficiency and about 54 percent judging it "somewhat worse" or "far worse."

Some 37 percent said the tax cuts would boost 2018 U.S. GDP growth by a quarter to half percentage point, while 24 percent saw gains of a half point to three quarters of a point, the survey showed.

Fed On Point

Forecasters were more upbeat on the Federal Reserve, with 76 percent saying monetary policy is on the right track, the most in the semiannual survey in more than 11 years, according to NABE. Nineteen percent of respondents in the current survey said policy is "too stimulative," while four percent said the central bank's stance is "too restrictive."

"Most panelists believe the Federal Reserve's current inflation target of 2 percent should be maintained. Of the remaining panelists, more favor raising the target than lowering it," said NABE Vice President Kevin Swift, chief economist for the American Chemistry Council.

Other findings included:

• 60 percent said economic policy should do more to mitigate climate change
• 74 percent said economic policy should do more to alleviate income inequality
• 63 percent saw less than a 25 percent chance of a meaningful infrastructure package in 2019
• 45 percent said the Trump administration's deregulation drive has positively affected the economy so far, while 35 percent saw it as a near-term plus that turns negative in the long run

 -- via my feedly newsfeed

Asia Times: China’s ‘Private Army’ prowls the ‘New Silk Road’ [feedly]

Asia Times is not a 'left' publication -- nor a socialist one of any flavor. But the weight of China's industrial policies on the entire Asia-Pacific continent(s) is abundantly clear in its stories, but largely missing in the Western Press.  Internationalism of a (hopefully) different kind  is a key feature of CPC leader Xi Xinping's  'Belt and Road' and other initiatives. Building a labyrinth of infrastructures spanning 60 nations and billions of people will appear as another version of imperialism to many acquainted with role of economic and political domination in the World Wars of the 20th century.Centuries. But the macro economic impact of Chinese foreign investment strategies in Africa belies the 

Western model in important ways: Most deals included trading raw materials for infrastructure (ports, airports, roads, etc), but do not appear to involve political domination or payoffs to militaries as the price of extracting as much as possible with the least investment. The Chinese have a surplus of labor, so they employ as many as possible directly in overseas ventures. Botswanna is a good example of An African economy that benefited from the infrastructure investments, and its incentives for general economic development, not just natural resource development -- as the dominant labor market.. Despite warnings from the Western press Botswanna's indebtedness to China has not resulted in Chinese political domination, or demands that Botswanna only trade with China. However, it is also clear that the Chinese Belt and Road initiative is aimed directly at creating a strikingly different kind of global network of economic alliance than that  favored by the IMF and Western-US led interests.  There is a lot more to come from these developments, especially if Trump succeeds in running Western alliances off the rails.

China's 'Private Army' prowls the 'New Silk Road'
http://www.atimes.com/article/chinas-private-army-prowls-the-new-silk-road/

t has been described as China's 'Private Army.' Fueled by growing demand from domestic companies involved in the multi-trillion-dollar Belt and Road Initiative, independent security groups are expanding in the country.

In 2103, there were 4,000-registered firms, employing more than 4.3 million personnel. By 2017, the figure had jumped to 5,000 with staff numbers hovering around the five-million mark.

Many of these operatives are former People's Liberation Army veterans, who have been recruited by security companies closely linked to 'New Silk Road' projects.

"Like their Western counterparts, most Chinese PSCs employ former soldiers or former police officers, a fact that blurs the line between China's security forces and private security providers," a report by the Mercator Institute for China Studies, or MERICS, a leading German think tank, and the International Institute for Strategic Studies in the United Kingdom stated.

"Beijing keeps the People's Liberation Army and paramilitary groups such as the People's Armed Police under the tight and exclusive control of the Chinese Communist Party. However, a booming domestic private security sector has developed since the legalization of PSCs in September 2009," the study, entitled China Security Project, added.

At the heart of this expansion has been President Xi Jinping's grandiose Belt and Road Initiative. These 'New Silk Road' superhighways will connect China with 68 countries and 4.4 billion people across Asia, Africa, the Middle East and Europe in a labyrinth of infrastructure developments.

Launched in a fanfare of publicity, the ambitious program has become an extension of Beijing's global aspirations and the centerpiece of its economic foreign policy.

'Investment projects'

"Following the build-up of infrastructure and investment projects along [the] BRI, private security companies from China are also increasingly going global – to protect Chinese assets and the growing number of Chinese nationals living and working in countries along the BRI, in sometimes unstable regions," the report compiled by MERICSand IISS revealed.

"[At least] 20 provide international services, employing 3,200 security personnel, in countries like Iraq, Sudan and Pakistan," it added.

Yet most of these groups operate in a "legal gray zone" caught between Chinese, international and host country laws, where they "exist."

Operatives are officially barred under China's legal system, and in many countries they work in, from carrying or using weapons.

For companies such as the Chinese Overseas Security Group, or COSG, this means organizing training for local staff, while focusing on logistics and planning.

A consortium of security firms, COSG was sent up in 2016 and operates in Pakistan, Turkey, Mozambique, Cambodia, Malaysia and Thailand.

"In eight years' time, we want to run a business that can cover 50-60 countries, which fits with the [BRI] coverage," John Jiang, the managing director of COSG, said.

Still, overseas nationals in leading state-owned enterprises have come under fire in some of the world's major hot spots. Armed Chinese security contractors helped the Sundanese army rescue personnel in Al-Abbasiya village in South Kordofan state in 2012.

More than 300 workers were then evacuated from South Sudan in 2016, while 1,000 Chinese contractors were forced to flee Samarra in Iraq two years earlier after a Baghdad government stand-off with the terrorist group Islamic State.

Headline-grabbing incidents such as these finally prompted Beijing to beef up its overseas security.

By 2016, China had about 3,200 security operatives protecting domestic personnel from 16,000 companies operating abroad, data from the Overseas Security and Defense Research Center in Beijing highlighted.

"Because China doesn't have a strong military presence in foreign countries, and most foreign governments prohibit security service companies from carrying guns, it is crucial for Chinese security companies to build close communication channels with local police and army bases," Li Jiang, the head of the overseas department of China Security and Protection, said.

One area of concern is the US$62 billion China-Pakistan Economic Corridor, or CPEC, which is a strand of the 'New Silk Road' superhighways.

Based on a 3,000-kilometer network of roads, railways and pipelines, the development will transport oil and gas from Gwadar on the Arabian Sea to the Chinese city of Kashgar in north-western Xinjiang.

'Notoriously unstable'

Roughly, 30,000 Chinese workers are employed on different projects in Pakistan. "The CPEC runs through notoriously unstable and insecure parts of Pakistan," the MERICS and IISS report, said.

"Security concerns are therefore significant, particularly in those parts of Pakistan where Chinese nationals have been targeted by extremists, such as in Quetta and Karachi. In December 2017, Beijing even warned Chinese nationals in Pakistan that more attacks on Chinese targets could be imminent," it continued.

"[While] foreign PSCs are barred from working in Pakistan, companies such as China Overseas Security Group, Frontier Services Group and HuaXin ZhongAn have evidently found loopholes around this and continue to offer consulting and hands-on security services," the report added.

Indeed, the expansion of independent Chinese security companies along key Belt and Road routes is posing some serious questions about accountability.

Alessandro Arduino, who is the co-director of the Security & Crisis Management International Center at the Shanghai Academy of Social Science, has charted the rise of the sector in his book China's Private Army: Protecting the New Silk Road.

"Further important questions that must be answered include whether the Chinese PSCs will take orders from the government and whether Beijing is going to frame a clear code of conduct and related rules of engagement," he pointed out in an opinion piece for The Diplomat.

Transparency is not exactly a buzzword in China's corridors of power, but it would force this 'Private Army' to emerge from the shadows.

 -- via my feedly newsfeed

Mark Thoma Links (8/18/18) [feedly]

Links (8/18/18)
http://economistsview.typepad.com/economistsview/2018/08/links-81818.html

• Something Not Rotten in Denmark - Paul Krugman
• Measuring global economic activity - Jim Hamilton
• For automatic stabilizers - Stumbling and Mumbling
• Parental Assistance after Job Loss - FRB Cleveland
• Inflation targeting and large shocks - VoxEU
• Reskilling over a Lifetime - Tim Taylor
• Nominal price stickiness and real exchange rate fluctuations - VoxEU

 -- via my feedly newsfeed

A Rundown of All the Ways Trump Is Overseeing an All Out, Under-the-Radar Attack on Workers

----
A Rundown of All the Ways Trump Is Overseeing an All Out, Under-the-Radar Attack on Workers // Working In These Times
http://inthesetimes.com/working/entry/21391/trump_workers_labor_unions_nlrb/

Amidst headlines about porn stars and bromance with Russian President Vladimir Putin, it can be hard to track the many ways the Trump administration is hurting workers in the United States. The Supreme Court's Janus ruling that struck a blow to unions' ability to collect membership dues held a brief spotlight in the national news churn. But in a more-quiet fashion, the Trump administration already has been slowly dismantling worker protections, especially those enacted under the Obama administration.     


----

Read in my feedly.com