August 2020 | Hillman Foundation

Clear It With Sidney

The best of the week’s news by Lindsay Beyerstein

August 2020

August 28, 2020

Sidney's Picks: Striking Hoppers, Missing Immigrants

Photo credit: 

Trash bags awaiting pickup on Bourbon Street in New Orleans, where sanitation workers known as hoppers are striking for a living wage. For illustration only.  By Tony Webster, Creative Commons. 

  • The garbage workers of New Orleans continue their strike because Black lives matter. (Discourse Blog) 
     
  • The Trump administration had a naturalization ceremony at the RNC, but they disenfranchised up to 300,000 people by delaying their ceremonies until after the election. (WaPo)
     
  • Unionized professional athletes are striking to protest police brutality and teaching a lesson about the power of labor. (Nation) 
     
  • Armed right-wing extremists stormed the Idaho state legislature, pushing past police and shattering a glass door to pack the gallery. (NPR)
     
  • Detroit’s embattled nursing home workers delay their strike, despite the urgent needs of their membership. (Dissent)
August 21, 2020

Sidney's Picks: Baby Chicks Smother as USPS Cuts Cause Backlog

Photo credit: 

Fui, Creative Commons. 

The Best of the Week’s News:

  • Baby chicks smother and rot in their packages as Trump’s cuts plunge a major USPS sorting facility into chaos and squalor. (LA Times)
     
  • Some Friends: Posh Brooklyn Friends day school claims unions are against their “Quaker values.” (In These Times)
     
  • Meatpacking plants were warned for years to get ready for a pandemic, now they say they couldn’t have known. (ProPublica)
     
  • Kids are being stashed in hotels in a shadow immigration system. (WHYY)
     
  • Millions struggle to survive without their $600/wk pandemic UI supplement. (Guardian) 
August 14, 2020

Sidney's Picks: Trump Vows to Starve Post Office to Win Election

Photo credit: 

Quinn Dombroski, Creative Commons. 

The Best of the Week’s News:

  • Donald Trump announced that he would veto aid to the U.S. Post Office so that we “can’t have universal mail-in voting.” (Vox, WaPo)
     
  • With mail slowing nationwide, the U.S. Postal Service is removing mail sorting machines from facilities around the country without explanation. (ABC7, Vice)
     
  • The USPS says it’s unlikely that it will be able to process mail-in ballots in the critical swing state of Pennsylvania by Election Day. (NBC)
     
  • Postmaster General Louis DeJoy, a major Trump donor with no prior postal experience, is invested in competitors to the Post Office. (Verge, CNN)
     
  • Cherry crush: Undocumented workers struggle to pick 24 billion cherries in 8 weeks (NYT) 
August 7, 2020

Sidney's Picks: Sights on the NRA

Photo credit: 

ArbyReed, Creative Commons. 

The Best of the Week’s News:

  • Top NRA execs accused of multi-million-dollar fraud in lawsuit by NY AG to disband the gun group. (The Trace)
     
  • Target’s delivery workers says tip “glitches” are shorting their pay. (WaPo)
     
  • Civilian sailors known as CIVMARs are  succumbing to despair, trapped on Navy ships without basic hygiene supplies under a sweeping COVID control order, their union warns. (Navy Times)  
     
  • Daisy Coleman, a 23-year-old survivor of the infamous Maryville Rape case, has died by suicide. (NYMag)
     
  • Trump supports housing segregation, unfortunately, many white liberals do, too. (The Nation)

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