Month: March 2022

The law follows more than 100 years and 200 failed attempts by US lawmakers to pass anti-lynching legislation.

The Emmett Till Antilynching Act is named for the black teenager whose brutal murder in Mississippi in 1955 helped spark the civil rights movement.

Perpetrators of a lynching – death or injury resulting from a hate crime – will face up to 30 years in jail.

Mr Biden said: “Thank you for never giving up, never ever giving up.

“Lynching was pure terror to enforce the lie that not everyone, not everyone, belongs in America, not everyone is created equal.”

He added: “Racial hate isn’t an old problem – it’s a persistent problem. Hate never goes away. It only hides.”

The bill was passed unanimously in the Senate earlier this month. The House had voted overwhelmingly in support of the legislation last month. Three Republicans voted no: Thomas Massie of Kentucky, Chip Roy of Texas and Andrew Clyde of Georgia. They argued that it was already a hate crime to lynch people in the US.

Lynching is murder by a mob with no due process or rule of law. Across the US, thousands of people, mainly African Americans, were lynched by white mobs, often by hanging or torture, in the 19th and 20th Centuries.

Some 4,400 African Americans were lynched between 1877 and 1950, according to the Equal Justice Initiative. Those who participated in lynchings were often celebrated and acted with impunity.

“Lynching is a longstanding and uniquely American weapon of racial terror that has for decades been used to maintain the white hierarchy,” the bill’s sponsor, Illinois Congressman Bobby Rush, said ahead of its passage.

In 2020, following the murder of George Floyd by a police officer in Minneapolis, the House passed an earlier iteration of the bill, but it was blocked in the Senate.

Many racial justice advocates have described the death of Floyd, as well as the murder of Ahmaud Arbery – who was hunted down and shot by three white men in Georgia in 2020 – as modern-day lynchings.

By Chelsea Bailey, BBC News

One would be forgiven for thinking that lynching was already a hate crime in the United States. After all, it’s been decades since Billie Holiday’s haunting ballad, Strange Fruit, told of “black bodies swingin’ in the Southern breeze”, and mobs of white Americans no longer line up to take commemorative photos beneath hanging trees.

But that’s exactly why the Emmett Till Antilynching Act is so significant. Lynchings may not look the same way they did in the past, but that doesn’t mean they don’t happen.

Many regard the murders of black Americans James Byrd Jr, Ahmaud Arbery and George Floyd as modern-day lynchings.

The bill signed into law on Tuesday bears the name of a black teenager whose mother held an open-casket funeral to force the world to see the gruesome effect of racial violence in the US.

For many, the fact that it took Congress more than 65 years to pass the legislation would seem to speak volumes about America’s tacit stance on the subject.

The first anti-lynching bill was introduced in 1900, by George Henry White, the only black man then serving in Congress. The bill failed and continued to fail for more than 120 years.

Lynching is not unique to America, but its use for racial terror and suppression is. According to the Equal Justice Initiative, more than 4,300 black Americans were lynched between the post-Civil War Reconstruction period and 1950. And those are just the murders that were documented.

Confronting America’s gruesome past continues to be a subject of contention. Sometimes, it can take more than a century.

The first minister will update MSPs on whether the requirement to wear masks in shops and on public transport will end as planned on 4 April.

All of Scotland’s other Covid-19 rules have now been converted into guidance.

But ministers decided to keep the rule on face coverings for an extra few weeks due to a spike in new cases.

Ms Sturgeon described this as a “temporary, precautionary” move, and said the expectation was that it would only last until early April.

The opposition Conservatives have urged the government to “trust the public” and bring legal requirements to an end.

Transmission of the virus recently hit record levels in Scotland, with one in 11 Scots estimated to have the virus in the week ending 20 March.

The number of people in hospital with the virus has also hit record highs, with 2,383 being treated for a recently confirmed case of Covid-19 on Monday.

However, the country’s remaining restrictions have continued to be phased out, with ministers pointing to the low number of people in intensive care – currently sitting at 20 – as evidence that vaccines are helping prevent severe illness.

On 21 March, the requirement for businesses to collect customer contact details and follow government guidelines was scrapped, with firms and services instead urged to take “reasonably practical measures” to reduce the spread of the virus.

The mandatory wearing of face coverings in enclosed public places was also to be converted to guidance at this stage, but Ms Sturgeon said it was prudent to keep it in place for “a further short period”.

She said this would “provide some additional protection – particularly for the most vulnerable – at a time when the risk of infection is very high”.

Ms Sturgeon’s cabinet discussed the latest data on Tuesday, but no announcement was made in parliament with Ms Sturgeon attending the Duke of Edinburgh’s memorial service in London.

A decision is expected this week, with Holyrood due to be in recess for the first two weeks of April.

Consideration is also being given to reviewing Covid-related restrictions in hospitals, such as isolation and distancing requirements, in order to increase capacity.

There had been calls for changes to help ease pressure on services, with waiting times at accident and emergency rooms hitting a record high on Tuesday.

On Monday, Ms Sturgeon said “these things are being looked at very actively”.

She said: “We have all along got a balance to strike – and its not always an easy balance – between controlling the virus and minimising the harm that is caused by the measures to control the virus, and that has been a recurring theme throughout the pandemic.

“In broader society we have taken away all of the legal measures with the exception of the continued requirement to wear face coverings, and in the health and care sector we want to continue to protect patients and staff from the risks of transmission, but we do recognise that that results in reduced capacity in our hospitals.”

Covid rules are being phased out across the UK, with masks now only compulsory in health and social care settings in Wales.

The legal requirement to wear face coverings was dropped in England on 16 March, while from Friday lateral flow tests will only be free for over-75s and those with weakened immune systems.

Testing is being wound down more gradually in Scotland, but the population-wide testing and contact tracing system will shut down by the end of April.

The Scottish Conservatives have called on the Scottish government to “give up control” of Covid restrictions.

Leader Douglas Ross said Ms Sturgeon “can’t use the higher case rates that she has completely failed to reduce as an excuse to delay or backtrack on lifting the remaining restrictions”.

Scottish Labour meanwhile has called for more support to be given to hospitals, saying that lives were being put at risk despite the “tireless” work of staff.

The Glasgow slavery audit found that gifts inherited from those linked to the slave trade were valued to be worth £30m today.

Glasgow is yet to apologise for its role in slavery and still has streets named after 18th Century slave owners.

Councillor Susan Aitken said the report showed Glasgow’s complicity and said an apology was needed.

The report, commissioned by Glasgow City Council, focused on people who lived in Glasgow and elsewhere between 1603 and 1838 and found historic connections and modern legacies between the Atlantic slave trade and Glasgow.

“When the pandemic came, employees underneath me were getting sick,” he says. “I realised that something was wrong.”

Amazon fired him, citing quarantine violations. But his concerns caught the world’s attention – an early sign of a much bigger labour battle brewing at the e-commerce giant.

In the following months, as its business surged thanks to the pandemic, Amazon faced accusations around the world that it neglected staff welfare – claims it denied.

In the US, the company now faces its most serious labour unrest in decades.

After walkouts and protests across the country, workers at three warehouses in New York and Alabama are deciding whether to join a labour union – which would be a first for Amazon in the US.

Mr Smalls is one of the leaders in the fight.

He says he’s embracing a role the shopping giant set out in a leaked memo from 2020, which described Mr Smalls as “not smart or articulate” and argued that if he became “the face of the entire union/organising movement” it would help to undermine it.

Mr Smalls, who worked at Amazon for more than four years, starting as an entry-level worker before getting promoted, said he was blindsided by the memo, which some saw as racist, though Amazon told reporters at the time the author wasn’t aware Mr Smalls was black.

“My whole life changed in one minute,” the father-of-two says. “From there, I started to pretty much try to make them eat their words.”

For 11 months, the 33-year-old and his team have staked out a spot opposite his former workplace, the JFK8 warehouse on Staten Island, intercepting staff on their way home to make the case that they need a union to fight for them in negotiations with the e-commerce giant.

His team are seeking higher pay, longer breaks, more paid time off and paid medical leave, among other changes. They want to convince workers that a union will be a more effective way to raise complaints over rules like one that requires staff to work unscheduled overtime shifts.

Voting on the question began 25 March and the result will be announced in coming days. Amazon faces a second election at a smaller warehouse in the same industrial park next month.

Organisers say the stakes are nothing short of the future of the American worker, pointing to Amazon’s rank as the second largest employer in the US.

“We need to take down Amazon. We need these workers to organise,” says Derrick Palmer, who helped Mr Smalls organise his 2020 protest and was also disciplined (but not fired) by Amazon, which cited social distancing violations. “We need them to know they have the power.”

Amazon saw off a similar unionisation effort in Alabama last year, convincing workers to vote 2-1 against the idea.

The vote – the first the company had faced in the US since it was founded in 1994 – looked decisive. But regulators later called for a re-run, saying Amazon had violated rules that protect the right to organise during the campaign.

Officials started counting the results of that vote on 28 March.

John Logan, professor of labour and employment studies at San Francisco State University, says it’s remarkable that activists have even got to the point of an election, given how much American laws favour employers.

Last year, union membership in the US sank again, continuing a decades-long decline despite a surge of activism leading to successful campaigns at Starbucks, media outlets and some smaller retailers.

“Something has definitely changed in the last two years, when it comes to the labour landscape in the United States, and… the Amazon union votes are a reflection of that change,” Prof Logan says.

“It would be a monumental event if either of the unions [in New York] were to win. But even if they were to lose, if the results are close I still think it will result in more union activity at Amazon warehouses across the country.”

Last year, in the aftermath of the Alabama election, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos pledged that the company would do better by its workers, including addressing the firm’s high injury rate.

“Despite what we’ve accomplished, it’s clear to me that we need a better vision for our employees’ success,” he wrote in his final letter to shareholders before stepping down as chief executive.

Amazon – which US regulators have accused of retaliating illegally against labour organisers on their staff – remains staunchly anti-union.

The firm says it offers competitive pay and benefits and a union will only add a new layer of bureaucracy, while membership fees eat into workers’ wages.

To fight the campaigns, the firm has inundated staff with texts, fliers and other materials and held repeated mandatory training meetings about the issue, where they cast doubt on the union’s ability to secure improvements for its members.

“Our employees have the choice of whether or not to join a union,” says spokeswoman Kelly Nantel. “As a company we don’t think unions are the best answer for our employees. Our focus remains on working directly with our team to continue making Amazon a great place to work.”

Amazon has been urging workers to vote, warning that if the election is dominated by pro-union forces and the union emerges victorious, it will represent everyone at the warehouses in question.

“Negotiations are always a give and take,” an Amazon representative warns in audio of a meeting in New York supplied by organisers. “What’s important to the [Amazon Labor Union] may not be important to you. They will be willing to trade your priorities for one of theirs.”

A union victory in New York is far from assured.

Leroy Hairston, 22, who has worked at the JFK8 warehouse in New York for about two months – not unusual at a place with high turnover – tells the BBC he is leaning against the union. He thinks it is inexperienced and would struggle to make changes, making resolving staff issues more complicated,

“I don’t see the point,” he says. “Everything is prolonged instead of just going to HR.”

Mr Smalls says he is hopeful that New York – where one in five workers belong to a union – offers better conditions for victory than Alabama, a notoriously anti-union state.

He also has contacts in more than a dozen other warehouses around the country that he hopes to unionise should he prove victorious.

“Once we get established here, we want to spread like wildfire,” Mr Smalls says.

Over the last month, Amazon Labor Union volunteers have made a concerted final push to convince undecided workers.

Julian Mitchell-Israel, a 22-year-old community activist who took a job with Amazon to join the union effort, estimates their odds of winning at just over 50%.

At a blustery cold rally in the Staten Island industrial park this month, Mr Smalls, in a red hoodie and trainers, seemed undaunted. Surrounded by workers, union activists and politicians he led the small crowd in a chant of: “We will win! We will win!”

Mickie Garson, 50, who has worked at Amazon for three years and drove in on her day off to hear the union make its pitch, surveyed the scene from the Amazon parking lot, divided from the speakers by several lanes of traffic.

She said she remained “on the fence” despite experience at previous jobs that made her confident a unionised workplace would be better.

“It’s the pressure of knowing that we could make history,” she says. “We’re excited with the fact that it could happen but also, then what happens after that?”