"It doesn’t seem that long ago that young people were being lectured to ‘stop being so disengaged’ and ‘start getting involved.’ Now they get told ‘no, not like that.’ Discussions in newspapers and news studios, whether about Black Lives Matter, essential workers striking over poor safety and low pay, or young climate justice campaigners, involve ‘friendly advice’ to activists to ‘tone it down’ and ‘be less demanding’ - to be less in the way. Such complaints often include references to history: ‘why can’t they be more like the protestors of yesteryear - you know, the uncontroversial ones?’"

https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/transformation/history-gives-us-reason-hope-inequality-can-be-beaten/

"Consider Johnson & Johnson. Internal company documents have revealed that the company knew since at least 1957 that its talc-based powders could be contaminated with asbestos, a possible carcinogen, for which there is no known safe level of exposure. Despite these concerns, the company pushed these products in the United States and beyond, specifically targeting Black and Brown women. The company’s marketing plans included a race-based distribution model, moving baby powder samples through churches and beauty salons in African American and Latino neighborhoods, and seeking marketing agencies specializing in promotions to “ethnic consumers.”"

https://truthout.org/articles/decoding-corporate-spin-of-black-lives-matter/

CW: suicide.

If you've ever had suicidal thoughts, this might help a bit. Also, therapy.

currentaffairs.org/2020/09/why-you-matter/

"QAnon can be the only logical outcome of the growth of right-wing populism, affective networks of paranoia, and the laissez-faire approach to content moderation"

"In some way, the QAnon conspiracy isn’t appealing because it’s a coherent narrative but because it’s a grab-bag of moral panics that have all been squashed together to create a rat-king conspiracy that contains multitudes"

https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/countering-radical-right/qanon-has-gone-fringe-conspiracy-full-blown-cult/

"Kooper Caraway, the newly elected president of the South Dakota AFL-CIO, sees his stated duty to improve the lot of the American working class as more of a calling. Born in Alabama and raised in Texas, the 29-year-old son of a German-American truck driver and a Native American retail worker became aware of the inequities of social class at an early age. Caraway knows all too well what it’s like to suffer for lack of basic resources, let alone luxuries. He’s “been to jail a lot,” he notes, thanks to his years of political activism. When he was still a boy and his family’s water got cut off, he’d be forced to sneak over to a neighbor’s yard to surreptitiously fill up empty milk jugs so he could shower in the morning before school. Now he is the country’s youngest state federation president within the AFL-CIO, and he aims to shake up the nation’s creaking labor bureaucracy in a big way."

https://newrepublic.com/article/159194/future-labor-growing-south-dakota

OPINION: The United States needs a powerful, intersectional labor movement - Indiana Daily Student
https://www.idsnews.com/article/2020/09/opinion-the-united-states-needs-a-powerful-intersectional-labor-movement

The 10 proposals are quite interesting. (Also, this is not an endorsement of Biden)

https://theintercept.com/2020/09/01/biden-economic-policy-us-economy/

"The €1.8 trillion pledged to ”save Europe” sounds like an ambitious promise. But €1.074 trillion of this is the normal EU budget framework for 2021 to 2027, representing 1.1 percent per year of the EU’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP) as of 2019. And this seven-year budget is based on austerity. Compared with the previous budget for 2014–2020, the funds for agricultural policy have been cut by €46 billion (but still remain the biggest item). There is also a 10 percent reduction for cohesion policy. Significantly less goes to the European Social Fund, the Erasmus program (education and training), for research, or for combating child poverty."

https://jacobinmag.com/2020/09/european-union-coronavirus-recovery-program/

"Perhaps the pursuit of status and the feeling of importance, or the pleasure of exercising power over others, is just as important in determining the structure of the workplace as the pursuit of financial profit."

"Astra Taylor reports that, when she complimented his writing, he told her he believed in “being nice to the reader,” and said it was an “extension of politics.” Be nice to the reader is one of the best pieces of writing advice I’ve ever heard."

"Oh, and she gave his signature method of dealing with cops: “Agree with anything they say, and then do what you’re going to do anyway.”"

currentaffairs.org/2020/09/what-david-graeber-noticed/

"Trump’s worldview allows for the unapologetic declaration of capitalist interests as correct, no longer constrained by the pretense that human life or human dignity have value. There are implications of carrying this pure Social Darwinism through to its conclusions. If a billion people die as a result of Trump’s policy, they are losers by definition. There is something undeniably fascist about the underlying ethic: strength is virtue, weakness is pathetic. It is no wonder Trump wants to eliminate any and all emissions standards, as well as protections on endangered wildlife."

currentaffairs.org/2020/09/trumps-corrosive-values-will-spread/