• Le #compostage manuel de grande capacité : Red Hook Compost à #New_York
    https://metropolitiques.eu/Le-compostage-manuel-de-grande-capacite-Red-Hook-Compost-a-New-York.

    A travers l’exemple de Red Hook Compost, le site de compostage manuel le plus important des États-Unis, Stéphane Tonnelat montre que le compostage collectif peut être un levier d’apprentissage tout en traitant de grandes quantités de matières organiques. Il est aussi source de fierté pour ses usagers qui reconnectent leur alimentation aux sols agricoles. Le site de compostage de Red Hook, dans le district de Brooklyn, à New York, transforme plus de 200 tonnes de #déchets organiques par an avec des #Terrains

    / New York, compostage, déchets, #déchets_organiques, #insertion_sociale, #bénévoles, #prévention

    https://metropolitiques.eu/IMG/pdf/met_tonnelat5.pdf

  • « Outside the box »

    An Unbound Trump Pushes an Improbable Plan for Gaza - The New York Times
    https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/05/us/politics/trump-gaza-netanyahu-takeover.html

    President Trump basked as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel praised his “willingness to think outside the box.” But when it came to Gaza, Mr. Trump’s thinking on Tuesday was so far outside the box that it was not clear he even knew there was a box.

  • #New_York_Times rejects Quaker ad for calling Israel’s actions “#genocide” | American Friends Service Committee
    https://afsc.org/newsroom/new-york-times-rejects-quaker-ad-calling-israels-actions-genocide

    After receiving the text for the ad quoted above, a representative from the advertising team suggested AFSC use the word “war” instead of “genocide” – a word with an entirely different meaning both colloquially and under international law. When AFSC rejected this approach, the New York Times Ad Acceptability Team sent an email that read in part: “Various international bodies, human rights organizations, and governments have differing views on the situation. In line with our commitment to factual accuracy and adherence to legal standards, we must ensure that all advertising content complies with these widely applied definitions.” 

    Many human rights organizations, legal scholars, genocide and holocaust scholars, and UN bodies have determined that Israel is committing genocide or genocidal acts in Gaza. This includes U.S.-based organizations like the Center for Constitutional Rights and the University Network for Human Rights, international human rights organizations Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, and several Palestinian human rights groups. The New York Times regularly looks to several of these organizations as sources for its own reporting.

  • « Les nazis sont entrés dans un territoire précédemment sous contrôle polonais. »

    Assal Rad sur X :
    https://x.com/AssalRad/status/1870295099416219958

    #New_York_Times calls Israel’s bombardment, invasion and occupation of a sovereign country “Moves,” and then calls Syrian land “territory formerly under Syrian control.”

    I don’t even know what to say anymore, but this is not journalism.

    Et ce n’est pas un territoire volé, c’est une zone tampon.

    #sans_vergogne

  • Les trajets les moins surveillés à Manhattan aux environs de 2001
    https://www.visionscarto.net/manhattan-video-surveillance

    Titre Les trajets les moins surveillés à Manhattan aux environs de 2001 Mots-clés #cartographie_radicale #cartographie_expérimentale #États-unis #New_York #contrôle Source Institute of Applied Autonomy (IAA) with Site-R Apparition(s) An Atlas of Radical Cartography, Journal of Aesthetics and Protest Press, 2007 (Edited by Lize Mogel et Alex Baghat) Auteur Steve Rowell Date de création 2001 #Cartothèque

  • Eric Adams Never Had a Mandate
    https://jacobin.com/2024/09/eric-adams-nyc-corruption-election

    Le maire de New York est accusé de corruption et de fraude électorale, soit. Le point intéressant dans l’histoire est que la mafia islamiste au pouvoir en Turquie arrive à étendre son influence aux milieux politiques de la plus grande démocratie pas si démocratique occidentale. C’est une histoire à te faire perdre le dernier reste de confiance dans la puissance à l’origine des trente glorieuses en Europe.

    Il est grand temps que la gauche européenne bâtisse des liens solidaires avec la gauche citoyenne aux USA et cesse d’accepter l’influence qu’exerce l’impérialisme états-unien sur ses gouvernements nationaux et les dirigeants de l’UE.

    27.9.2024 by Susan Kang - The federal corruption indictment against New York mayor Eric Adams suggests his victory didn’t reflect a popular consensus on law and order and austerity — it was a product of alleged straw donor fraud that gave him a huge cash advantage in a tight primary.

    Eric Adams, once hailed by observers and himself as the future of the Democratic Party, now faces multiple federal indictments as the result of a ten-month-long corruption investigation. Adams also now faces snowballing calls for his resignation, a move that started with New York City Democratic Socialist of America (NYC-DSA) elected officials, first state assembly member Emily Gallagher and then city council member Tiffany Cabán. The allegations state that Adams knowingly broke fundraising rules leading up to his narrow primary election victory in June 2021.

    We can see now that the victory of the proudly centrist, law-and-order, pro-business candidate to run the United States’ largest city wasn’t a reflection of a popular consensus but an extremely close election, funded and made possible by alleged straw donor fraud that gave him a huge money advantage in a tight primary election.

    New York City’s public financing matching program is intended to incentivize candidates to draw on a wide network of smaller donors rather than large corporate donors. Candidates who accept public matching funds can receive donations from New York City residents up to $2,000, and the first $250 from an individual will be matched eight-to-one with public funds (up to $2,000 in public matching funds per donor). Taking public matching funds is a commitment not to take money from special interests and to gain a wider base of support among average New Yorkers. The candidate who raises the most money with matching funds also demonstrates the widest base of support.

    In a crowded Democratic mayoral primary in June 2021, the first mayoral election with ranked-choice voting in NYC history, Adams won but with a very narrow margin. After eight rounds of counting ranked-choice ballots, Adams defeated Kathryn Garcia (when all other candidates were eliminated) by less than 1 percent of the final tally, about 7,000 votes out of about 930,000 in the Democratic primary. Notably, 139,000 votes were exhausted by the eighth round of voting, meaning that they did not rank Adams or Garcia at all. This means that over 10 percent of voters did not have a say in the final “round” of votes, which could have changed the final outcome had these 139,000 voters ranked all of the candidates.

    While this moment is satisfying for his political opponents, we should remember that at the foundation of these allegations is Adams’s defrauding the public of funds. Despite his blessing by the business community and its giant spigot of cash, this fraud was necessary to create the fundraising advantage that narrowly produced his victory in the 2021 Democratic mayoral primary.

    The indictment includes the figure of $10 million in matching funds that Adams gained through the use of illegal “straw donors.” To win the 2021 primary election, Adams spent $10.2 million, according to campaign finance reporting — more than any other citywide candidate that year. As stated on page twenty-seven of the indictment, “the 2021 Campaign reaped over $10 million in Matching Funds based on the false certifications that the campaign complied with the law when in fact ERIC ADAMS, the defendant, knowingly and repeatedly relied on illegal contributions.”

    Illegal straw donor bundling involves large contributions being illegally funneled through numerous New York City residents who donated to Adams under their names. Such illicit donations were then matched with public funds — a scheme that runs completely counter to the spirit behind matching funds, which is about counteracting the corrosive effects of precisely such large donors.

    Mayor Adams came to power by leaning on his working-class bona fides, decades of experiences as a public servant working the police force and holding various elected positions including Brooklyn borough president, while expressing pride in his modest personal background and strong connection to politically moderate working-class voters in New York City. Yet while candidate Adams espoused certain populist policies, Adams also openly disdained “fancy candidates” (a dig at his progressive opponent, elite-educated Maya Wiley) and repeatedly placed himself in direct opposition to the growing socialist movement in New York City.

    As he began to govern, it became clear that Eric Adams was not the “idiosyncratic” quirky modern Democrat that defied clear categorization; instead, he was simply pro-business, austerity-oriented, punitive, and police-obsessed in his governing, with combative stances toward his progressive and diverse city council. Adams also revealed his ego, claiming to be divinely called to serve as the city’s mayor. He quickly alienated former allies in dealing with issues like the migrant crisis; angering a diverse, cross-class constituency by playing chicken with the city’s beloved library budgets; choosing austerity in abandoning his universal early childhood education commitments; mismanagement of the humanitarian crisis at the city’s jail Rikers Island; and blocking the city council’s ban on solitary confinement in city jails.

    His combative style of governing led to some of the lowest approval ratings of a NYC mayor since such data has been recorded. An April 2024 poll showed that only 16 percent of likely voters would vote for Adams.

    The forty-seven-page full text of the mayor’s indictment shows the extent of Adams’s alleged corruption and illegal activities. But perhaps most striking is that the direct personal benefits to Adams resulting from the alleged behavior are rather modest. The total estimated value of the illicit benefits was $123,000 in airline tickets, luxury flight upgrades, free hotel stays, meals, and other recreational holiday activities such as boat rides. There was a general understanding that these alleged travel-related perks would translate into favors to benefit Adams’s Turkish connections, a clear quid pro quo.

    These benefits included Adams’s demands that the Fire Department of New York approve the newly built Turkish Consular Building by the United Nations, which Turkish officials wanted opened in time for Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s visit to New York City. Adams, not yet mayor, pressured Fire Department officials to fast track a temporary certificate of occupation for the thirty-five-story building’s approval (ahead of other buildings, which faced delays because of COVID) in September 2021, despite the FDNY’s Fire Prevention Chief’s concerns about fire safety defects in the building (which included problems with fans, smoke detectors, and elevators). Both the FDNY Chief of Department and Fire Prevent Chief were threatened with termination if they did not comply. In addition to the building safety scandal, Adams also agreed, via a staffer, to not make a statement about the Armenian genocide on Armenian Genocide Remembrance Day.

    Adams’s scandals, indictment, and likely criminal trial are a stark reminder that his much-touted political mandate appears fabricated — the result of public fraud. The current federal allegations are also likely just the tip of the iceberg of Adams’s campaign financing fraud in exchange for business influence.

    Adams’s victory was hailed at the time as a defeat of the socialist and progressive left. But now, New Yorkers wading through the details of the allegations of wire fraud, bribery, and criminal conspiracy can see how their tax dollars were used to artificially prop up the candidacy of an elected official who has failed on almost every conceivable metric to meet the needs of New York City residents. Whether Adams is removed from office, resigns, or faces electoral defeat, the Left in New York must seize this moment reassert the popularity of our policies and our base of support, and challenge the false capitalist narrative that a rule-breaking, fraudulent, austerity-obsessed mayor like Eric Adams represents the will of the people.

    #USA #Turquie #New_York #corruption

  • En 1972 il avait tout compris : Fritz The Cat
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AmK3PrGAdxk


    Attention aux niouze de radio :-)

    Fritz the Cat (film)
    https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fritz_the_Cat_(film)

    Fritz the Cat is a 1972 American adult animated black comedy film written and directed by Ralph Bakshi in his directorial debut. Based on the comic strip of the same name by Robert Crumb, the film focuses on its Skip Hinnant-portrayed titular character, a glib, womanizing and fraudulent cat in an anthropomorphic animal version of New York City during the mid-to-late 1960s. Fritz decides on a whim to drop out of college, interacts with inner city African American crows, unintentionally starts a race riot and becomes a leftist revolutionary. The film is a satire focusing on American college life of the era, race relations, and the free love movement, as well as serving as a criticism of the countercultural political revolution and dishonest political activists.

    #USA #Israel #New_York #Los_Angeles #cinéma #animation #bande_dessinée

  • A New York Taxi Driver Took 20 Years 30 Years Ago To Photograph His Passengers
    https://www.demilked.com/in-my-taxi-new-york-after-hours-ryan-weideman

    A lot of things happen in the back seat of a taxi – people fall asleep after a long day at work, they make out after a date, or throw up after a wild night. Ryan Weiderman got to see it all and much more. The photographer moved to the New York City in the 80’s to fulfill his artistic dreams but was forced to take up driving a cab in order to pay his bills. Yet even then he didn’t give up on his dream. He attached his camera on the taxi meter with some rubber bands and started taking pictures of his passengers.

    He chose to drive around from 5pm to 5am on weekends because of the easy traffic, but it also allowed him to take pictures of the most colorful New York crowd of the 80’s and 90’s. He started by taking pictures of each passenger that got into his taxi, but soon he started to understand what he’s looking for exactly – “something awkward. powerful, idiosyncratic or bizarre” that inspires his vision.

    “I encounter people from all over the world, the ones battered by life in New York, others who exude the City’s aura,” said the photographer in the book In My Taxi: New York After Hours he released after the first 10 years of photographing his passengers.

    Take a look at his work that captured the essence of the 80’s and 90’s New York down below.

    Ryan Weideman | Bruce Silverstein Gallery | photography
    https://brucesilverstein.com/artists/67-ryan-weideman

    #New_York #Taxi #Fotografie

  • Scarsdale Is What We Thought It Was
    https://jacobin.com/2024/06/jamaal-bowman-defeat-class-politics

    Suite à un investissement massif du lobby israëlien dans sa circonscription électorale, un élu socialiste de New York perd son siège au congrès. Dans les parties pauvres de sa circonscription il obtient toujours 80 pour cent des votes contre huit dans les parties riches.

    26.6.2024 by Matt Karp - Jamaal Bowman’s defeat is another reminder that left-wing politics cannot live or die in the rich suburbs.

    The most expensive House primary in US history has ended in defeat for democratic socialist Jamaal Bowman, soundly beaten by Westchester county executive George Latimer.

    According to the New York Times and much of the national media, the winners and losers here are fairly straightforward. Bowman’s defeat was a victory for the pro-Israel lobby, which spent $14 million to oust a major critic of the war in Gaza, and for leading centrist Democrats, from Hillary Clinton to Josh Gottheimer, who had endorsed Latimer. “The outcome in this race,” said an American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) spokesman quoted by the Times, “once again shows that the pro-Israel position is both good policy and good politics.”

    Meanwhile, the paper called the election “an excruciating blow for the left,” including Bernie Sanders, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and “the Squad” in Congress. They had rallied behind Bowman but could not save the gaffe-prone representative from his own voters, who ultimately rejected him as “too extreme to help solve the nation’s problems.”

    Every single element of this fable is perfectly accurate — if only the entire district, the national Democratic coalition, and the whole of the American body politic resided in the village of Scarsdale, New York.

    This elite Westchester suburb, with its manicured lawns, seven-figure mansions, and an average income of over $500,000 a year, had given Bowman nearly 40 percent of its vote in his upset victory four years ago. But this year Scarsdale decided it could not abide the congressman’s “far-left views,” on Israel or anything else: in the early vote there, Latimer led Bowman by the astonishing margin of 92 to 8 percent.

    This was the pattern across wealthy Westchester suburbs, like Rye, Harrison, and Mamaroneck, where the early vote showed Latimer winning over 80 percent support. Residents there may have indeed rejected what the Times suggested were Bowman’s “extreme viewpoints,” including support for a cease-fire in Gaza, where Israel’s war has killed nearly fifteen thousand children.

    Yet in most working-class portions of the district, Bowman’s far-left views seem to have held up just fine. He took 84 percent of the vote in the Bronx. Analysts looking to find a popular repudiation of pro-Palestine politics will have to look somewhere beyond working-class Yonkers and Mount Vernon, where the congressman led the early vote by margins similar to his victory in 2020.

    Unfortunately for Bowman, too much of his district did, in fact, reside in Scarsdale or somewhere similar. Though Times reporters did not see fit to mention it, last year NY-16 was redrawn so that the Westchester share of its primary vote jumped from about 60 percent to over 90 percent. This was of course the story of the entire election. The new and wealthy suburban areas in the district — including parts of Tarrytown and at least five additional country clubs north of Rye — all voted heavily against Bowman.

    The good news for Bowman’s national supporters is that losing Westchester to an AIPAC-funded centrist is not a meaningful defeat for the American left. Any real challenge to corporate Democrats or the pro-Israel lobby will have to come from somewhere else. Scarsdale is what we thought it was — a tiny, eccentric sliver of an enormous, diverse, and largely working-class country.

    The bad news is that the American left has not managed to make many inroads into that giant country, either. Perhaps the brand of politics that gave us the Squad in the first place — nine members in a Congress of four hundred and thirty-five — has run its course. If Bowman’s defeat is a wake-up call, it is not because he lost the neighborhoods around the Horseshoe Harbor Yacht Club and Blind Brook Country Club, but because the Left found itself fighting a battle there in the first place.

    Matt Karp is an associate professor of history at Princeton University and a Jacobin contributing editor .

    Westchester county
    https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Westchester_County,_New_York

    The annual per capita income for Westchester was $67,813 in 2011. The 2011 median household income of $77,006 was the fifth-highest in New York (after Nassau, Putnam, Suffolk, and Rockland counties) and the 47th highest in the United States.[9] By 2021, the county’s median household income had risen to $105,387. Westchester County ranks second in the state after New York County for median income per person, with a higher concentration of incomes in smaller households. Simultaneously, Westchester County had the highest property taxes of any county in the United States in 2013.

    Westchester County is one of the centrally located counties within the New York metropolitan area. The county is positioned with New York City, plus Nassau and Suffolk counties (on Long Island, across the Long Island Sound), to its south; Putnam County to its north; Fairfield County, Connecticut, to its east; and Rockland County and Bergen County, New Jersey, across the Hudson River to its west. Westchester was the first suburban area of its scale in the world to develop, due mostly to the upper-middle-class development of entire communities in the late 19th century and the subsequent rapid population growth.

    Westchester County has numerous road and mass transit connections to New York City, and the county is home to the headquarters of large multinational corporations including IBM, Mastercard, PepsiCo, and Regeneron Pharmaceuticals. Westchester County high school students often feature prominently as winners of the International Science and Engineering Fair and similar STEM-based academic

    #USA #élections #gauche #découpage_électoral #gerrymanderung #racisme #ségrégation #New_York #banlieues

  • What New Yorkers Can Learn From London’s Congestion Pricing
    https://jacobin.com/2024/06/congestion-pricing-london-new-york

    Wann kommt die Anti-Stau-Maut für Berlin?

    16.6.2024 by Gareth Dennis -New York’s governor is refusing to implement congestion pricing out of fear of alienating businesses and suburban voters. But in London, tying congestion pricing to a massive expansion of public transit has built enduring cross-class support for it.

    At the start of June, New York governor Kathy Hochul made an about-turn on the promised congestion pricing scheme that had been intended for rollout later the same month, delaying it “indefinitely.” Despite the hard-won agreement of city officials, residents, and business groups, she cited the vulnerability of New York businesses as a reason for her reversal.

    Perhaps more than any other congestion pricing plan, New York’s “congestion relief zone” would have directly tied toll revenues to improvements to the suburban reaches of its mass transit systems. Indeed, the funding arrangements for the Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) have placed an increasing burden on state authorities. This has lent urgency to calls to get the program ready for its June launch.

    Hochul’s U-turn will significantly set back the cause of improving air quality and urban space in New York, losing a moment of political consensus that will be challenging to replicate. More pressingly, it leaves a billion-dollar-plus hole in the MTA’s annual budget as aging trains and infrastructure hit reliability and capacity limits. Hochul suggested following questioning that a levy on New York City businesses could make up the shortfall – businesses that she had just claimed would be hard-hit by the congestion charge. It is reasonable to assume, with the November election approaching fast, that her decision was largely motivated by electoral considerations, rather than any practical need for delay.

    Her decision is made even more indefensible by the fact that the arguments against congestion pricing rely on mistaken assumptions. Opponents of congestion pricing often fixate on the potentially regressive impacts it will have on low-income city dwellers. Hochul herself implored New Yorkers to “be real: A $15 charge may not seem like a lot to someone who has the means, but it can break the budget of a hard-working middle-class household.” But this claim is itself out of touch with reality. Across most of the world, car ownership generally correlates with higher income. This is true in the UK, where less than half of households own cars, but also in New York, where the average income of households with vehicles is almost twice that of those without.

    New York is far from the first city to realize that restricting car traffic requires active controls. Back in 1975, Singapore became the first city to introduce congestion pricing. But by the turn of the millennium, the city was joined by four others: London, Stockholm, Milan, and Gothenburg. In each case, charges have succeeded in reducing congestion as well as pollution and the average cost of cross-city travel.

    Despite the success of these schemes in other cities, congestion pricing remains deeply contentious in New York. Why? London’s regime of congestion pricing, introduced by the left-wing Labour Party major Ken Livingstone in 2003, offers some answers to these questions. There, congestion pricing helped to make the city more livable, but only in combination with a broad wave of reforms aimed at expanding the size of the city and making urban centers accessible to all inhabitants.

    Study after study has shown that congestion pricing alone is a blunt tool when attempting to deal with overcrowded roads. A 2022 Lund University analysis of this topic found that, while some measures are significantly more effective than others at targeting congestion, none can stand alone. Congestion pricing can only be effectively deployed as part of a systemic, strategic approach to considering urban mobility for both people and commerce.

    London’s congestion charge, which has been in place for over two decades, was not introduced in isolation. The charge coincided with a massive expansion of public service infrastructure. In 2003, improvements and extensions to the Underground and Docklands Light Railway were paired with enhancements to bus services across the Greater London area. Traffic-calming measures within the city center — narrower streets, chicanes, and additional bus lanes – also applied a downward pressure on the average speed of private vehicles. Oyster, London’s pay-as-you-go smart card system, was also introduced in 2003, shortly after the congestion charge, making it much easier for commuters to integrate journeys using public transit.

    These changes have led directly to the shift of commuters away from cars. In 2000, around half of journeys were made by private car. Today, the figure is close to one-third. Perhaps most importantly, around a third of trips are now made on foot, a likely effect of quieter and more pedestrian-friendly roads.

    All of these changes were coordinated through the city’s devolved body Transport for London (TfL), under the jurisdiction of the capital’s elected mayor. More than any other authority in the UK, including the national government, TfL chooses to take a long-term, strategic view, completing ambitious infrastructure projects like the recent Elizabeth Line connecting the city’s core and suburbs. TfL regularly announces its future plans, which can be viewed online as a mapped vision of the future network that will change the spatial layout of the city.

    Given that London’s public transit system has made the city more livable for its residents, rich and poor, what should be made of Hochul’s supposed reasoning for withdrawing from NYC’s scheme? Despite the flimsiness of Hochul’s case against congestion pricing, it is true that without reform to the MTA congestion pricing would have been limited in its ability to improve the lives of average New Yorkers. But other claims, such as that congestion charging will have a negative impact on business, a refrain often repeated by critics, rely on circular reasoning. It is because we have built our urban environments over the last hundred years to prioritize private car traffic above all else that changes to the way we move around in cities are potentially harmful to workers. But these criticisms do point to the limitations of the plans that Hochul ended up rejecting at the last minute.

    Congestion pricing alone will do little to counteract the fact that many people’s jobs rely on inefficient private transit. The benefits of congestion pricing can only really be unlocked through investment in changes to the urban layout of cities and expansion of other forms of public transit — a systemic view has to be taken. But London shows that achieving this aim is not impossible and that these reforms, once implemented, create a deep-seated sense of investment in local government and public transit.

    Thanks to the perceived poor state of the alternatives to driving, congestion pricing remains broadly unpopular among residents of New York’s suburbs, with recent polling suggesting as much as two-thirds of people are against it. London shows how to overcome this: politicians must be bold. When it comes to proven but potentially unpopular changes, trials and pilots are far superior to consultations, which can be slow, expensive, and vulnerable to hijacking by opposition groups. People, rich and poor, quickly become used to the benefits that expanded public transit and well-designed traffic-reduction measures unlock, and within a remarkably short time will fight to retain them.

    In London, only a small minority of reactionaries would now reverse the congestion charge, which has contributed to a significant shift away from private car traffic in favor of walking, cycling, and public transit. Central London is a happier, healthier, safer place to be for everyone as a result of the charge. At the same time, the outer reaches of London continue to be better fed by public transit, with the success of the newly built Elizabeth Line allowing plans for further new infrastructure to be accelerated. As part of the total-system improvement in sustainable mobility across London, congestion charging combined with investment in transit has helped to create a cross-class coalition in favor of maintaining public infrastructure. This could also happen in New York.

    #Verkehr #New_York #London

  • Why Are New York Taxi Drivers Killing Themselves?
    https://www.wired.com/story/why-are-new-york-taxi-drivers-committing-suicide

    28.3.2018 by Miranda Katz - Drivers say competition from Uber and Lyft is lowering their incomes, contributing to four recent driver suicides.

    It was a somber scene outside New York’s City Hall on Wednesday afternoon. Four coffins sat at the foot of the steps; one by one, taxi drivers covered them with white flowers, before assembling on the steps and shouting for the city to “stop Uber’s greed” and “stop making us slaves.” It was the second such gathering in two months, as drivers and their advocates mourned another suicide that they attribute to the rise of ride-hailing services like Uber and Lyft. That sudden increase in the number of for-hire vehicles on the city’s streets, they claim, has made it impossible for drivers to earn a decent living.

    On March 16, Nicanor Ochisor, a 65-year-old yellow cab driver, took his own life in his Queens home. According to his family and friends, he had been drowning financially as his prized taxi medallion, on which he had hoped to retire, plummeted in value. The circumstances surrounding Ochisor’s death were upsettingly familiar: In February, driver Douglas Schifter shot himself outside City Hall after posting a lengthy statement to Facebook blaming politicians for letting the streets get so saturated. According to the New York Taxi Workers Alliance, a nonprofit group that advocates for drivers, at least two other drivers have killed themselves since December in response to mounting financial pressures.

    At Wednesday’s rally, Bhairavi Desai, the executive director of NYTWA, described the situation as “a living nightmare.” The assembled drivers echoed her sentiment. Noureddine Afsi said he began driving a yellow cab in 2001 when a friend said it would be easier money than his job in retail. “You could work nine hours and easily make $200 in a day,” he recalled. “Now, you’re lucky if you make $50 or $60.” Beresford Simmons, who has been driving a yellow cab for more than 50 years, expressed a similar frustration: At 71 years old, he said, he had just had heart surgery and was on dialysis—and he was in no financial position to take a break from driving. “We have guys at home who are losing their houses,” he said. “I know cab drivers who are homeless today.”

    The anguish and anger on display at City Hall offer an unsettling look at the cost of disrupting long-standing industries. Until recently, driving a cab in New York was a gateway to the middle class, especially if drivers could get their hands on a coveted medallion (essentially a permit to operate their own cabs, rather than leasing cars from others). With the number of medallions fixed, prices generally rose, peaking in 2014 at over $1 million—well outside the budget of many drivers, but good news for medallion owners who sometimes borrowed against them. Since then, though, prices have fallen sharply, as competition from ride-hailing services intensified. In January, seven medallions sold for under $200,000 each. Many drivers are deeply in debt—and a long way from the stable lifestyle they once expected.

    “To call it an engine of social mobility would be overstating it, but [driving a taxi] is definitely a way that men without college educations have found to raise families, to provide family wages, for a long time,” says Julia Ticona, a sociologist studying technologies of work, emotions, and inequality at the Data & Society research institute in New York. For taxi drivers, disruption is not only financially destabilizing, but also demoralizing, as it recasts their careers as gig work. A longtime taxi driver who prides himself on knowing the ins and outs of the city’s streets is now competing with tens of thousands of newcomers, some of whom may only be driving as a part-time side hustle. “There’s this tension between older sets of professional norms and the ways that labor platforms are encouraging workers to promote themselves and be entrepreneurial,” Ticona says.

    Though New York City caps the number of yellow cabs at just over 13,600, it doesn’t limit the number of drivers for Uber, Lyft, or other services. (It does, unlike most US cities, require that ride-share drivers be licensed by the Taxi and Limousine Commission.) The lack of regulation has led to rapid growth: Uber launched in the city in 2011 with just 105 cars on the road; by 2015, that had ballooned to 20,000, and today, there are more than 63,000 black cars providing rides through various ride-hailing apps, 60,000 of which are affiliated with Uber. Those rallying on Wednesday argued that growth is affecting all drivers—including those for Uber and Lyft. “The business model of Uber and Lyft…is destroying every driver across the sector,” said Desai. “They are destroying the full-time jobs of professional yellow [cab], green [cab], livery, and black car drivers, and replacing them with poverty-paid gigs where Uber and Lyft drivers themselves cannot survive.” A 2017 survey of drivers by the Independent Drivers Guild, which represents app-based drivers, found that 57 percent of respondents earn less than $50,000 per year, and 22 percent earn less than $30,000 per year.

    As much as some taxi and app-based drivers may see each other as competition, they also are united on several fronts. They all want more money: The IDG is petitioning the city to require apps to raise driver pay by 37 percent, and the NYTWA is demanding that the city raise yellow cab rates and make them the minimum for all app-based services. Both groups also want the city to cap the number of new entrants, as they worry that demand isn’t keeping pace with increasing supply of drivers. Uber and Lyft bring on hundreds of new drivers per week—though some quickly quit. A recent analysis by Bruce Schaller, a former NYC traffic and planning commissioner, showed that the hours that taxis and ride-share vehicles spend unoccupied in central Manhattan increased by 81 percent between 2013 and 2017. Without passengers, drivers don’t earn money. “We don’t care about competition,” said Afsi, who began driving for Uber after leasing a yellow cab for nine years. “When you work 14, 15 hours and go home with $50, it’s not good. It’s not about competition. It’s about survival.”

    Drivers and their advocates hope that, if anything, the recent string of suicides will compel New York City to further regulate the industry and avoid a full-throttled race to the bottom. The city last considered capping the number of for-hire vehicles on the road in 2015; however, Uber campaigned against the cap, and the City Council did not pass the legislation. Now, City Council Member Stephen Levin is again proposing a temporary freeze on new for-hire vehicle licenses while the city studies on the impact of the industry’s growth.

    That’s one of several proposals for mitigating the effects of more ride hailing. Last fall, Council Member Ydanis Rodriguez introduced a bill that would allow medallion owners to operate two vehicles under a single medallion, helping boost the value of medallions. Rodriguez has previously suggested that the city bail out medallion owners, saying that “we should find a form of restitution to those who have invested in our city’s future through the purchase of medallions.” Another Council Member, Ruben Diaz Sr. introduced a bill last month meant to slow the growth of app-based for-hire services with, among other things, a $2,000 annual fee on every vehicle affiliated with an app-based service. And the TLC is considering piloting a program that would let taxi drivers offer up-front cost estimates. In theory, that could help them attract passengers who currently prefer the cost predictability of Uber to the traffic-dependent price of yellow cabs.

    All those proposals share one critical element: They place the burden for change on the city, rather than the ride-share companies. And perhaps for good reason. Though app-based companies could theoretically raise wages or cap their pool of drivers on their own, they have no incentive to curb their growth. “The only place [a solution] will possibly come from is from public policy,” says Schaller, the former NYC traffic and planning commissioner. “The [app-based services] are hellbent on growth, and if I were the CEO at Uber and had announced that I planned to take the company public next year, I would be, too.” In a statement, Uber pointed to steps it has taken recently to win back its drivers’ trust, such as introducing in-app tipping and allowing drivers to earn more while waiting to pick up riders. “Drivers told us we needed to do better and we have been working hard to earn back their trust and improve the driver experience,” a spokesperson said. A Lyft spokesperson said that the company is “in ongoing conversations to find solutions to complex challenges in New York in order to provide the best transportation for passengers and earning opportunity for those who drive with Lyft.”

    The New York City Council created a new committee on for-hire vehicles in 2018, and that committee had its first hearing shortly after Schifter’s suicide in February. For several hours, drivers and advocates delivered emotional testimony and asked for a cap on the number of vehicles on city streets. TLC Commissioner Meera Joshi appeared receptive to the idea of stricter regulation, acknowledging at the hearing that “the expanding industry will continue to make driving a very stressful career without any growth-control mechanism.”

    Some sort of “growth-control mechanism” would likely ease the impact that the ride sharing boom has had on drivers across the industry. But the days of being able to retire on a yellow cab medallion might be a thing of the past. “People are frozen in place, dreaming of the idea that the medallion system is about to recover,” says Schaller. “This can turn out perfectly fine for yellow cab drivers. It’s very difficult to see how it could be fine for yellow cab medallion owners.” In other words, it may not be possible to protect every worker from the negative effects of disruption—but there is hope that new regulations might keep drivers from going to the desperate extremes that the city has seen in recent months.

    #Taxi #Uber #New_York

  • Why Is Uber Über Alles ? Public Platform Infrastructure for the ‘Gig Economy’
    Robert Hockett
    https://www.forbes.com/sites/rhockett/2023/01/15/why-is-uber-ber-alles--public-platform-infrastructure-for-the-gig-economy

    15.1.2023 by Robert Hockett - Two needs of cardinal interest to all major metropolitan areas, if not indeed all towns and cities, seem to go under-appreciated these days: First, the need for readily available livery and delivery services, which have amounted to a species of essential infrastructure since the earliest days of our republic. And second, the need of a decent quality of life for local residents who provide such services, which amounts among other things to a prerequisite to the sustainability of any means of satisfying the first need.

    A city like New York, for example, benefits immensely from, and could hardly get on without, readily available and affordable livery for persons and delivery of things (letters, documents, medicines, groceries, meals, etc.), hence also from arrangements that sustainably attract and retain local providers of such services. That’s why you see taxis, busses, small trucks and other delivery vehicles everywhere, and indeed always have.

    It is quite troubling, then, after multiple taxi driver suicides in recent years, to learn now that Uber UBER and Lyft LYFT drivers as well have begun finding it difficult to live and hence operate in and around New York City. New York needs its drivers, and cannot afford to see them go. Mindful of that fact, the City’s Taxi Commission announced plans to require greater pay for Uber and Lyft drivers this past November. Yet in a near miracle of expedition on behalf of the wrong side, a court halted New York’s move one month later at the behest of Uber. (Lyft didn’t take part in the suit, but its owners like Uber’s gain by the decision.)

    The Court’s unfortunate decision invites an obvious query: if New York cannot ‘beat’ Uber and Lyft, why doesn’t it ‘join’ them – join them, that is, as a competitor? Why not, in other words, offer a ‘public option’ where livery and delivery services in and around New York are concerned?

    To see why this question is worth posing, note that the typical Uber driver receives only between 40 and 60% of each fare charged to riders, about 52% on average. The lion’s share of the remainder – between 25 and 43%, depending on ride length – goes to Uber itself, while the remaining 15% goes to the City. The figures for Lyft, which employs the same platform model as Uber, are comparable.

    Yet what do Uber, Lyft, and the City contribute to the ride? Uber and Lyft provide no more than technically simple, easily replicated ‘two-sided marketplace’ platforms, while the City oversees operations to maintain safety.

    Given how little is involved in maintaining the platforms themselves, which utilize an age-old and very simple model, New York and other cities should be able quite readily to establish and maintain safe platforms of their own with the 15% cut of ride fees that New York and other cities already take, allowing all licensed drivers to pocket the remaining 85% of ride charges. Meanwhile, allowing drivers to compete on vehicle comfort and even price within some reasonable range could help lower costs to riders, while allowing the City to add congestion surcharges at certain times of day (as Uber and Lyft themselves do) could help manage volume.

    Of course firms like Uber and Lyft and the politicians to whom they ‘contribute’ will argue that this sounds like ‘socialism,’ that ‘capitalism’ is more efficient and inexpensive, and so on. But there is no reason to credit such clichés in the present, infrastructural context. All that Uber and Lyft are ‘efficient’ at now that a city would not be is gratuitously extracting high fees from riders and profits from drivers. They add no value in return for these forms of extraction that cities couldn’t provide just as well on a not-for-profit basis, again given how old, familiar, and inexpensive the matching-technology used by their algorithms are.

    Uber and its ilk are, in other words, mere rent-extractors at this point. And where public goods and essential infrastructures like livery and delivery are concerned, we have long as a nation viewed rent-extraction as no more than a form of extortion or piracy. Those who invented the relevant technologies were paid handsomely for the intellectual property long ago, and all that such companies as Uber and Lyft now trade on is broad public ignorance of how readily available and usable the technology now is.

    What New York and other cities should do, then, is provide their own platforms to their own livery and delivery drivers. Cut out the literally now-parasitic middlemen, and you’ll have both cheaper rides and deliveries and better-paid drivers and deliverers. That will in turn better the quality of life of all New Yorkers, not merely a few rent-extractors way over in Silicon Valley. And because the rideshare industry is still growing rapidly in response to still-growing demand, acting now will also preempt more extraction in future even than now.

    It might be thought that New York and other cities already are doing this via the Curb taxi-hailing app, which are now as available for download on smartphones as the Uber and Lyft apps. That would be a mistake. Curb simply functions as an easier way to hail a taxi than is the old wave-in-the-street method. It doesn’t augment the taxi fleet with additional cars and drivers as Uber and Lyft do, but rather makes hailing existing cabs easier. As such, it leaves in place most of the disadvantages of taxi rides – long waits, sometimes unpredictable fares, etc. – that have spurred the demand for Uber and Lyft in the first place, while adding app user fees.

    One further, more general point: The so-called ‘platform’ and ‘gig’ economies, we now know, include far more than livery and delivery services. They include sales of all sorts, temp work and handyman work, hotel and apartment rentals, and all manner of other markets requiring no more than easy means by which buyers and sellers can find one another – that is, two-sided matching platforms. The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) reports that over 55 million Americans, or 36% of the workforce, work in the gig economy, while 33% of American companies use gig workers extensively.

    Platforms like Facebook Marketplace make clear that such services can be made available at virtually no extra cost to sellers or buyers. Why don’t all cities, then, make such platforms freely available in all realms where they’re not already available? For that matter, why doesn’t the US Department of Labor do so for the entire American economy? If a large part of the American economy is ‘the gig economy,’ why not cheaply and publicly provide that economy’s infrastructure just as we do for the non-gig economy?

    Let us then literally cut out superfluous private intermediaries, and mediate all our ‘gig’ relations through that original form of mediacy that we discovered thousands of years ago on a civic, not profit-extracting, basis: the polis, the civitas, the ‘public sector’ – that which we establish to work for all of us, not extract from most of us. This will amount to gains not only along the fairness and efficiency dimensions, but along the productivity dimension as well, forcing as it does those who now extract rents to start adding value instead.

    Start with our cities, then move up higher and higher to our state and federal governments, making them truly the servants of all rather than recognizing Silicon Valley firms as masters of us all.

    #Uber #Stadtentwicklung #Arbeit #New_York

  • AHMED | أحمد sur X :
    https://twitter.com/ASE/status/1761800577359430031

    At the age of 23, after graduating from Columbia University and working briefly for PBS, I went through 7 rounds of interviews and finally landed a job at the NYT as a news producer.

    On my 3rd day on the job, on the graveyard shift which was from 5pm-2am I had to fill out some HR paperwork, so I went by the head of HR’s office (her name was Barbara) before 5pm to ask if I could fill it out and return it to her later or leave it on her desk.

    She stared at me and said, and I quote verbatim: “How do I know you are not gonna leave a bomb under my desk?”

    At the time I was so startled and shocked. I didn’t know how to react. But I happened to not be alone in the room, as she had already been meeting with the new young business reporter who was Jewish, and who had happened to also hear her offensive retort, and had a look on his face of complete confusion and horror.

    To this day, I tried to believe that maybe she just had a bad sense of humor, but her tone and delivery was not that of someone who is making a joke, but of someone who wanted to prove some sort of point.

    Horrified, I remember going to a mentor at the New York Times, who had once been one of my adjuncts at Columbia University and I told her something very horrible just happened to me and I didn’t want to tell her the details because I was so startled and worried for how it could potentially impact this new great gig that I had landed .

    I will never forget what my mentor said to me who had been at the NYT for over a decade, she said, “Ahmed there are people here who will want you to succeed, and there are more people here who will want you to fail.”

    Ultimately, I decided not to confront or report what the head of HR said at the time, as it was a very strange time given the Iraq war, and the climate in the newsroom was already very politically charged.

    I share this experience now, in light of the misinformation being published by the New York Times, that is masquerading as journalism.

    I only lasted six months at the #New_York_Times, and there are many reasons for that and while I have good friends who still work there, it is an indisputable fact that the #NYT is manufacturing consent for #genocide.

  • ☀️👀 sur X :
    https://twitter.com/zei_squirrel/status/1761249450998022442

    oh my god. One of the three authors of the New York Times’ “mass rape” atrocity propaganda hoax is Anat Schwartz. She liked posts calling for Gaza to be turned into a “slaughterhouse”. This the person the #NYT hired to write about Palestinians and frame them as sub-human monsters

    she also liked posts repeating the 40 beheaded babies hoax. This is unbelievable. The #New_York_Times got Anat Schwartz along with Adam Sella and Jeffrey Gettleman, both of whom are also rabid Zionist maniacs, to freely express their deep racist contempt of Palestinians. Holy shit

    • https://mondoweiss.net/2024/02/extraordinary-charges-of-bias-emerge-against-nytimes-reporter-anat-schwa

      The latest questions are centered around Anat Schwartz, an Israeli who co-authored several of the paper’s most widely circulated reports, including the now well-known and scrutinized December 28 article headlined: “‘Screams Without Words’’ How Hamas Weaponized Sexual Violence on Oct. 7.”

      Independent researchers scrutinized the online record, and raised serious questions about Schwartz. First, she has apparently never been a reporter but is actually a filmmaker, who the Times suddenly hired in October. You would expect the paper to look for someone with actual journalistic experience, especially for a story as sensitive as this one, written during the fog of war. Surely the paper had enough of its own correspondents on staff who could have been assigned to it.

      Next, the researchers found that Schwartz had not hidden her strong feelings online. There are screenshots of her “liking” certain posts that repeated the “40 beheaded baby” hoax, and that endorsed another hysterical post that urged the Israeli army to “turn Gaza into a slaughterhouse,” and called Palestinians “human animals.”

      Etc., etc.

  • Le #New_York_Times dans ses très basses œuvres (encore une fois).
    https://www.nytimes.com/2024/01/22/briefing/israel-gaza-war-death-toll.html

    Il faut présenter les chose non pas telles qu’elles sont, mais comme Biden avait annoncé qu’elles le seront.

    #obscène effectivement

    Adam Johnson sur X 
    https://twitter.com/adamjohnsonCHI/status/1749425455864729606

    Truly the most evil and misleading thing Leonhardt has written and this is saying something. No mention of deaths caused by disease, birth complications or starvation. Also ignores limits of Gaza officials’ count since every hospital, and thus their capacity, has been destroyed

    Leonhardt is a craven partisan hatchet man and the genocide-lite narrative is the only one the White House can plausibly try and push and here he is carrying out his disagreeable task. Absolutely shameful, intellectually and morally dishonest

    Coincidentally episode on Leonhardt and his bullshit “data driven” schtick dropping Wednesday

    This is beyond obscene. Again,

    (A) the death count is incomplete due to Israel destroying nearly every hospital in Gaza.

    (B) starvation and disease are currently the preferred weapon of mass death which are not included in these totals

    (C) the evidence of maximizing civilian deaths wasn’t parsing relative reported deaths (?) it was based on Israeli officials own genocidal comments, explicit policy of collective punishment, and reporting that showed deliberate targeting of civilians and civilian infrastructure

    #génocide #Gaza #états-unis #délire #post_vérité

  • Coop ou pas coop de trouver une alternative à la grande distribution ?

    Un #magasin sans client, sans salarié, sans marge, sans contrôle, sans espace de pouvoir où la confiance règne vous y croyez ? Difficile, tant le modèle et les valeurs de la grande distribution, et plus largement capitalistes et bourgeoises ont façonnés nos habitus. Néanmoins, parmi nous certains cherchent l’alternative : supermarchés coopératifs, collaboratifs, épiceries participatives, citoyennes, etc. Des alternatives qui pourtant reprennent nombre des promesses de la grande distribution et de ses valeurs. Les épiceries “autogérées”, “libres” ou encore en “gestion directe” tranchent dans ce paysage. Lieux d’apprentissage de nouvelles habitudes, de remise en cause frontale du pouvoir pyramidal et pseudo-horizontal. Ce modèle sera évidemment à dépasser après la révolution, mais d’ici-là il fait figure de favori pour une #émancipation collective et individuelle.

    Le supermarché : une #utopie_capitaliste désirable pour les tenants de la croyance au mérite

    Le supermarché est le modèle hégémonique de #distribution_alimentaire. #Modèle apparu seulement en 1961 en région parisienne il s’est imposé en quelques décennies en colonisant nos vies, nos corps, nos désirs et nos paysages. Cette utopie capitaliste est devenue réalité à coup de #propagande mais également d’adhésion résonnant toujours avec les promesses de l’époque : travaille, obéis, consomme ; triptyque infernal où le 3e pilier permet l’acceptation voire l’adhésion aux deux autres à la mesure du mérite individuel fantasmé.

    Malgré le succès et l’hégémonie de ce modèle, il a parallèlement toujours suscité du rejet : son ambiance aseptisée et criarde, industrielle et déshumanisante, la relation de prédation sur les fournisseurs et les délocalisations qui en découlent, sa privatisation par les bourgeois, la volonté de manipuler pour faire acheter plus ou plus différenciant et cher, le greenwashing (le fait de servir de l’écologie de manière opportuniste pour des raisons commerciales), etc., tout ceci alimente les critiques et le rejet chez une frange de la population pour qui la recherche d’alternative devient motrice.

    C’est donc contre ce modèle que se (re)créent des #alternatives se réclamant d’une démarche plus démocratique, plus inclusive, ou de réappropriation par le citoyen… Or, ces alternatives se réalisent en partant du #modèle_dominant, jouent sur son terrain selon ses règles et finalement tendent à reproduire souvent coûte que coûte, parfois inconsciemment, les promesses et les côtés désirables du supermarché.
    Comme le dit Alain Accardo dans De Notre Servitude Involontaire “ce qu’il faut se résoudre à remettre en question – et c’est sans doute la pire difficulté dans la lutte contre le système capitaliste -, c’est l’#art_de_vivre qu’il a rendu possible et désirable aux yeux du plus grand nombre.”
    Le supermarché “coopératif”, l’épicerie participative : des pseudo alternatives au discours trompeur

    Un supermarché dit “coopératif” est… un supermarché ! Le projet est de reproduire la promesse mais en supprimant la part dévolue habituellement aux bourgeois : l’appellation “coopératif” fait référence à la structure juridique où les #salariés ont le #pouvoir et ne reversent pas de dividende à des actionnaires. Mais les salariés ont tendance à se comporter collectivement comme un bourgeois propriétaire d’un “moyen de production” et le recrutement est souvent affinitaire : un bourgeois à plusieurs. La valeur captée sur le #travail_bénévole est redistribuée essentiellement à quelques salariés. Dans ce type de supermarché, les consommateurs doivent être sociétaires et “donner” du temps pour faire tourner la boutique, en plus du travail salarié qui y a lieu. Cette “#coopération” ou “#participation” ou “#collaboration” c’est 3h de travail obligatoire tous les mois sous peine de sanctions (contrôles à l’entrée du magasin pour éventuellement vous en interdire l’accès). Ces heures obligatoires sont cyniquement là pour créer un attachement des #bénévoles au supermarché, comme l’explique aux futurs lanceurs de projet le fondateur de Park Slope Food le supermarché New-Yorkais qui a inspiré tous les autres. Dans le documentaire FoodCoop réalisé par le fondateur de la Louve pour promouvoir ce modèle :”Si vous demandez à quelqu’un l’une des choses les plus précieuses de sa vie, c’est-à-dire un peu de son temps sur terre (…), la connexion est établie.”

    L’autre spécificité de ce modèle est l’#assemblée_générale annuelle pour la #démocratie, guère mobilisatrice et non propice à la délibération collective. Pour information, La Louve en 2021 obtient, par voie électronique 449 participations à son AG pour plus de 4000 membres, soit 11%. Presque trois fois moins avant la mise en place de cette solution, en 2019 : 188 présents et représentés soit 4,7%. À Scopeli l’AG se tiendra en 2022 avec 208 sur 2600 membres, soit 8% et enfin à la Cagette sur 3200 membres actifs il y aura 143 présents et 119 représentés soit 8,2%

    Pour le reste, vous ne serez pas dépaysés, votre parcours ressemblera à celui dans un supermarché traditionnel. Bien loin des promesses de solidarité, de convivialité, de résistance qui n’ont su aboutir. Les militants voient de plus en plus clairement les impasses de ce modèle mais il fleurit néanmoins dans de nouvelles grandes villes, souvent récupéré comme plan de carrière par des entrepreneurs de l’#ESS qui y voient l’occasion de se créer un poste à terme ou de développer un business model autour de la vente de logiciel de gestion d’épicerie en utilisant ce souhait de milliers de gens de trouver une alternative à la grande distribution.

    #La_Louve, le premier supermarché de ce genre, a ouvert à Paris en 2016. Plus de 4000 membres, pour plus d’1,5 million d’euros d’investissement au départ, 3 années de lancement et 7,7 millions de chiffre d’affaires en 2021. À la création il revendiquait des produits moins chers, de fonctionner ensemble autrement, ne pas verser de dividende et de choisir ses produits. Cette dernière est toujours mise en avant sur la page d’accueil de leur site web : “Nous n’étions pas satisfaits de l’offre alimentaire qui nous était proposée, alors nous avons décidé de créer notre propre supermarché.” L’ambition est faible et le bilan moins flatteur encore : vous retrouverez la plupart des produits présents dans les grandes enseignes (loin derrière la spécificité d’une Biocoop, c’est pour dire…), à des #prix toujours relativement élevés (application d’un taux de 20% de marge).

    À plus petite échelle existent les épiceries “participatives”. La filiation avec le #supermarché_collaboratif est directe, avec d’une cinquantaine à quelques centaines de personnes. Elles ne peuvent généralement pas soutenir de #salariat et amènent des relations moins impersonnelles grâce à leur taille “plus humaine”. Pour autant, certaines épiceries sont des tremplins vers le modèle de supermarché et de création d’emploi pour les initiateurs. Il en existe donc avec salariés. Les marges, selon la motivation à la croissance varient entre 0 et 30%.

    #MonEpi, startup et marque leader sur un segment de marché qu’ils s’efforcent de créer, souhaite faire tourner son “modèle économique” en margeant sur les producteurs (marges arrières de 3% sur les producteurs qui font annuellement plus de 10 000 euros via la plateforme). Ce modèle très conforme aux idées du moment est largement subventionné et soutenu par des collectivités rurales ou d’autres acteurs de l’ESS et de la start-up nation comme Bouge ton Coq qui propose de partager vos données avec Airbnb lorsque vous souhaitez en savoir plus sur les épiceries, surfant sur la “transition” ou la “résilience”.

    Pour attirer le citoyen dynamique, on utilise un discours confus voire trompeur. Le fondateur de MonEpi vante volontiers un modèle “autogéré”, sans #hiérarchie, sans chef : “On a enlevé le pouvoir et le profit” . L’informatique serait, en plus d’être incontournable (“pour faire ce que l’on ne saurait pas faire autrement”), salvatrice car elle réduit les espaces de pouvoir en prenant les décisions complexes à la place des humains. Pourtant cette gestion informatisée met toutes les fonctions dans les mains de quelques sachant, le tout centralisé par la SAS MonEpi. De surcroit, ces épiceries se dotent généralement (et sont incitées à le faire via les modèles de statut fournis par MonEpi) d’une #organisation pyramidale où le simple membre “participe” obligatoirement à 2-3h de travail par mois tandis que la plupart des décisions sont prises par un bureau ou autre “comité de pilotage”, secondé par des commissions permanentes sur des sujets précis (hygiène, choix des produits, accès au local, etc.). Dans certains collectifs, le fait de participer à ces prises de décision dispense du travail obligatoire d’intendance qui incombe aux simples membres…

    Pour finir, nous pouvons nous demander si ces initiatives ne produisent pas des effets plus insidieux encore, comme la possibilité pour la sous-bourgeoisie qui se pense de gauche de se différencier à bon compte : un lieu d’entre-soi privilégié où on te vend, en plus de tes produits, de l’engagement citoyen bas de gamme, une sorte d’ubérisation de la BA citoyenne, où beaucoup semblent se satisfaire d’un énième avatar de la consom’action en se persuadant de lutter contre la grande distribution. De plus, bien que cela soit inconscient ou de bonne foi chez certains, nous observons dans les discours de nombre de ces initiatives ce que l’on pourrait appeler de l’#autogestion-washing, où les #inégalités_de_pouvoir sont masqués derrière des mots-clés et des slogans (Cf. “Le test de l’Autogestion” en fin d’article).

    L’enfer est souvent pavé de bonnes intentions. Et on pourrait s’en contenter et même y adhérer faute de mieux. Mais ne peut-on pas s’interroger sur les raisons de poursuivre dans des voies qui ont clairement démontré leurs limites alors même qu’un modèle semble apporter des réponses ?

    L’épicerie autogérée et autogouvernée / libre : une #utopie_libertaire qui a fait ses preuves

    Parfois nommé épicerie autogérée, #coopérative_alimentaire_autogérée, #épicerie_libre ou encore #épicerie_en_gestion_directe, ce modèle de #commun rompt nettement avec nombre des logiques décrites précédemment. Il est hélas largement invisibilisé par la communication des modèles sus-nommés et paradoxalement par son caractère incroyable au sens premier du terme : ça n’est pas croyable, ça remet en question trop de pratiques culturelles, il est difficile d’en tirer un bénéfice personnel, c’est trop beau pour être vrai…Car de loin, cela ressemble à une épicerie, il y a bien des produits en rayon mais ce n’est pas un commerce, c’est un commun basé sur l’#égalité et la #confiance. L’autogestion dont il est question ici se rapproche de sa définition : la suppression de toute distinction entre dirigeants et dirigés.

    Mais commençons par du concret ? À #Cocoricoop , épicerie autogérée à Villers-Cotterêts (02), toute personne qui le souhaite peut devenir membre, moyennant une participation libre aux frais annuels (en moyenne 45€ par foyer couvrant loyer, assurance, banque, électricité) et le pré-paiement de ses futures courses (le 1er versement est en général compris entre 50€ et 150€, montant qui est reporté au crédit d’une fiche individuelle de compte). À partir de là, chacun.e a accès aux clés, au local 24h/24 et 7 jours/7, à la trésorerie et peut passer commande seul ou à plusieurs. Les 120 foyers membres actuels peuvent venir faire leurs courses pendant et hors des permanences. Ces permanences sont tenues par d’autres membres, bénévolement, sans obligation. Sur place, des étagères de diverses formes et tailles, de récup ou construites sur place sont alignées contre les murs et plus ou moins généreusement remplies de produits. On y fait ses courses, pèse ses aliments si besoin puis on se dirige vers la caisse… Pour constater qu’il n’y en a pas. Il faut sortir une calculatrice et calculer soi-même le montant de ses courses. Puis, ouvrir le classeur contenant sa fiche personnelle de suivi et déduire ce montant de son solde (somme des pré-paiements moins somme des achats). Personne ne surveille par dessus son épaule, la confiance règne.

    Côté “courses”, c’est aussi simple que cela, mais on peut y ajouter tout un tas d’étapes, comme discuter, accueillir un nouveau membre, récupérer une débroussailleuse, participer à un atelier banderoles pour la prochaine manif (etc.). Qu’en est-il de l’organisation et l’approvisionnement ?

    Ce modèle de #commun dont la forme épicerie est le prétexte, cherche avant tout, à instituer fondamentalement et structurellement au sein d’un collectif les règles établissant une égalité politique réelle. Toutes les personnes ont le droit de décider et prendre toutes les initiatives qu’elles souhaitent. “#Chez_Louise” dans le Périgord (Les Salles-Lavauguyon, 87) ou encore à #Dionycoop (St-Denis, 93), comme dans toutes les épiceries libres, tout le monde peut, sans consultation ou délibération, décider d’une permanence, réorganiser le local, organiser une soirée, etc. Mieux encore, toute personne est de la même manière légitime pour passer commande au nom du collectif en engageant les fonds disponibles dans la trésorerie commune auprès de tout fournisseur ou distributeur de son choix. La trésorerie est constituée de la somme des dépôts de chaque membre. Les membres sont incités à laisser immobilisé sur leur fiche individuelle une partie de leurs dépôts. Au #Champ_Libre (Preuilly-Sur-Claise, 37), 85 membres disposent de dépôts moyens de 40-50€ permettant de remplir les étagères de 3500€ selon l’adage, “les dépôts font les stocks”. La personne qui passe la commande s’assure que les produits arrivent à bon port et peut faire appel pour cela au collectif.

    D’une manière générale, les décisions n’ont pas à être prises collectivement mais chacun.e peut solliciter des avis.

    Côté finances, à #Haricocoop (Soissons, 02), quelques règles de bonne gestion ont été instituées. Une #créditomancienne (personne qui lit dans les comptes bancaires) vérifie que le compte est toujours en positif et un “arroseur” paye les factures. La “crédito” n’a aucun droit de regard sur les prises de décision individuelle, elle peut seulement mettre en attente une commande si la trésorerie est insuffisante. Il n’y a pas de bon ou de mauvais arroseur : il voit une facture, il paye. Une autre personne enfin vérifie que chacun a payé une participation annuelle aux frais, sans juger du montant. Ces rôles et d’une manière générale, toute tâche, tournent, par tirage au sort, tous les ans afin d’éviter l’effet “fonction” et impliquer de nouvelles personnes.

    Tout repose donc sur les libres initiatives des membres, sans obligations : “ce qui sera fait sera fait, ce qui ne sera pas fait ne sera pas fait”. Ainsi, si des besoins apparaissent, toute personne peut se saisir de la chose et tenter d’y apporter une réponse. Le corolaire étant que si personne ne décide d’agir alors rien ne sera fait et les rayons pourraient être vides, le local fermé, les produits dans les cartons, (etc.). Il devient naturel d’accepter ces ‘manques’ s’il se produisent, comme conséquence de notre inaction collective et individuelle ou l’émanation de notre niveau d’exigence du moment.

    Toute personne peut décider et faire, mais… osera-t-elle ? L’épicerie libre ne cherche pas à proposer de beaux rayons, tous les produits, un maximum de membres et de chiffre d’affaires, contrairement à ce qui peut être mis en avant par d’autres initiatives. Certes cela peut se produire mais comme une simple conséquence, si la gestion directe et le commun sont bien institués ou que cela correspond au niveau d’exigence du groupe. C’est à l’aune du sentiment de #légitimité, que chacun s’empare du pouvoir de décider, de faire, d’expérimenter ou non, que se mesure selon nous, le succès d’une épicerie de ce type. La pierre angulaire de ces initiatives d’épiceries libres et autogouvernées repose sur la conscience et la volonté d’instituer un commun en le soulageant de tous les espaces de pouvoir que l’on rencontre habituellement, sans lequel l’émancipation s’avèrera mensongère ou élitiste. Une méfiance vis-à-vis de certains de nos réflexes culturels est de mise afin de “s’affranchir de deux fléaux également abominables : l’habitude d’obéir et le désir de commander.” (Manuel Gonzáles Prada) .

    L’autogestion, l’#autogouvernement, la gestion directe, est une pratique humaine qui a l’air utopique parce que marginalisée ou réprimée dans notre société : nous apprenons pendant toute notre vie à fonctionner de manière autoritaire, individualiste et capitaliste. Aussi, l’autogestion de l’épicerie ne pourra que bénéficier d’une vigilance de chaque instant de chacun et chacune et d’une modestie vis-à-vis de cette pratique collective et individuelle. Autrement, parce que les habitudes culturelles de domination/soumission reviennent au galop, le modèle risque de basculer vers l’épicerie participative par exemple. Il convient donc de se poser la question de “qu’est-ce qui en moi/nous a déjà été “acheté”, approprié par le système, et fait de moi/nous un complice qui s’ignore ?” ^9 (ACCARDO) et qui pourrait mettre à mal ce bien commun.

    S’affranchir de nos habitus capitalistes ne vient pas sans effort. Ce modèle-là ne fait pas mine de les ignorer, ni d’ignorer le pouvoir qu’ont les structures et les institutions pour conditionner nos comportements. C’est ainsi qu’il institue des “règles du jeu” particulières pour nous soutenir dans notre quête de #confiance_mutuelle et d’#égalité_politique. Elles se résument ainsi :

    Ce modèle d’épicerie libre diffère ainsi très largement des modèles que nous avons pu voir plus tôt. Là où la Louve cherche l’attachement via la contrainte, les épiceries autogérées cherchent l’#appropriation et l’émancipation par ses membres en leur donnant toutes les cartes. Nous soulignons ci-dessous quelques unes de ces différences majeures :

    Peut-on trouver une alternative vraiment anticapitaliste de distribution alimentaire ?

    Reste que quelque soit le modèle, il s’insère parfaitement dans la #société_de_consommation, parlementant avec les distributeurs et fournisseurs. Il ne remet pas en cause frontalement la logique de l’#économie_libérale qui a crée une séparation entre #consommateur et #producteur, qui donne une valeur comptable aux personnes et justifie les inégalités d’accès aux ressources sur l’échelle de la croyance au mérite. Il ne règle pas non plus par magie les oppressions systémiques.

    Ainsi, tout libertaire qu’il soit, ce modèle d’épicerie libre pourrait quand même n’être qu’un énième moyen de distinction sociale petit-bourgeois et ce, même si une épicerie de ce type a ouvert dans un des quartiers les plus défavorisés du département de l’Aisne (réservée aux personnes du quartier qui s’autogouvernent) et que ce modèle génère très peu de barrière à l’entrée (peu d’administratif, peu d’informatique,…).

    On pourrait aussi légitimement se poser la question de la priorité à créer ce type d’épicerie par rapport à toutes les choses militantes que l’on a besoin de mettre en place ou des luttes quotidiennes à mener. Mais nous avons besoin de lieux d’émancipation qui ne recréent pas sans cesse notre soumission aux logiques bourgeoises et à leurs intérêts et institutions. Une telle épicerie permet d’apprendre à mieux s’organiser collectivement en diminuant notre dépendance aux magasins capitalistes pour s’approvisionner (y compris sur le non alimentaire). C’est d’autant plus valable en période de grève puisqu’on a tendance à enrichir le supermarché à chaque barbecue ou pour approvisionner nos cantines et nos moyens de lutte.

    Au-delà de l’intérêt organisationnel, c’est un modèle de commun qui remet en question concrètement et quotidiennement les promesses et les croyances liées à la grande distribution. C’est très simple et très rapide à monter. Aucune raison de s’en priver d’ici la révolution !
    Le Test de l’Autogestion : un outil rapide et puissant pour tester les organisations qui s’en réclament

    À la manière du test de Bechdel qui permet en trois critères de mettre en lumière la sous-représentation des femmes et la sur-représentation des hommes dans des films, nous vous proposons un nouvel outil pour dénicher les embuscades tendues par l’autogestion-washing, en toute simplicité : “le test de l’Autogestion” :

    Les critères sont :

    - Pas d’AGs ;

    - Pas de salarié ;

    - Pas de gestion informatisée.

    Ces 3 critères ne sont pas respectés ? Le collectif ou l’organisme n’est pas autogéré.

    Il les coche tous ? C’est prometteur, vous tenez peut être là une initiative sans donneur d’ordre individuel ni collectif, humain comme machine ! Attention, le test de l’autogestion permet d’éliminer la plupart des faux prétendants au titre, mais il n’est pas une garantie à 100% d’un modèle autogéré, il faudra pousser l’analyse plus loin. Comme le test de Bechdel ne vous garantit pas un film respectant l’égalité femme-homme.

    Il faut parfois adapter les termes, peut être le collectif testé n’a pas d’Assemblée Générale mais est doté de Réunions de pilotage, n’a pas de salarié mais des services civiques, n’a pas de bureau mais des commissions/groupe de travail permanents, n’a pas de logiciel informatique de gestion mais les documents de gestion ne sont pas accessibles sur place ?
    Pour aller plus loin :

    Le collectif Cooplib fait un travail de documentation de ce modèle de commun et d’autogestion. Ses membres accompagnent de manière militante les personnes ou collectifs qui veulent se lancer (= gratuit).

    Sur Cooplib.fr, vous trouverez des informations et des documents plus détaillés :

    – La brochure Cocoricoop

    – Un modèle de Statuts associatif adapté à l’autogestion

    – La carte des épiceries autogérées

    – Le Référentiel (règles du jeu détaillées)

    – Le manuel d’autogestion appliqué aux épiceries est en cours d’édition et en précommande sur Hello Asso

    Ces outils sont adaptés à la situation particulière des épiceries mais ils sont transposables au moins en partie à la plupart de nos autres projets militants qui se voudraient vraiment autogérés (bar, librairie, laverie, cantine, camping,…). Pour des expérimentations plus techniques (ex : garage, ferme, festival,…), une montée en compétence des membres semble nécessaire.

    D’autres ressources :

    – Quelques capsules vidéos : http://fede-coop.org/faq-en-videos

    – “Les consommateurs ouvrent leur épiceries, quel modèle choisir pour votre ville ou votre village ?”, les éditions libertaires.

    https://www.frustrationmagazine.fr/coop-grande-distribution
    #alternative #grande_distribution #supermarchés #capitalisme #épiceries #auto-gestion #autogestion #gestion_directe #distribution_alimentaire

    sur seenthis :
    https://seenthis.net/messages/1014023

  • How the Personal Becomes Political - Or You Can Fight City Hall
    https://tomdispatch.com/how-the-personal-becomes-political

    Sur l’importance de la lecture et des bibliothèques publiques pour la découverte du monde, le courage et la capacité de lutter pour ses propres intérêts.

    Beverly Gologorsky est auteure de romans. Vous pouvez acheter son dernier livre par la page référencée.

    2.7.2023 by Beverly Gologorsky - Looking into the long reflecting pool of the past, I find myself wondering what it was that made me an activist against injustice. I was born in New York City’s poor, rundown, and at times dangerous South Bronx, where blacks, whites, and Latinos (as well as recent immigrants from Ireland, Italy, and Eastern Europe) lived side by side or, perhaps more accurately, crowded together.

    I was the middle child of four siblings, not counting the foster children my mother often cared for. My father worked six days a week in a leather factory where the rat-tat-tatting of sewing machines never stopped and layoffs were a constant reality. I grew up after World War II in the basement of a six-story building at a time when jobs were still hard to find and scary to lose. Many young men (really boys) joined the military then for the same reason so many young men and women volunteer today, one that, however clichéd, remains a reality of our moment: the promise of some kind of concrete future instead of a wavy unknown or the otherwise expectable dead-end jobs. Unfortunately, many of them, my brother included, returned home with little or nothing “concrete” to show for the turmoil they endured.

    At the time, there was another path left open for girls, the one my parents anticipated for me: early marriage. And there was also the constant fear, until the introduction of the birth-control pill in the 1960s, of unplanned pregnancies with no chance of a legal abortion before Roe v. Wade. After all, dangerous “kitchen-table” abortions — whether or not they were actually performed on a kitchen table — were all too commonplace then.

    Poverty, Burned-out Buildings, Illness, and Crime

    Yet growing up in the South Bronx wasn’t an entirely negative experience. Being part of a neighborhood, a place where people knew you and you knew them, was reassuring. Not surprisingly, we understood each other’s similar circumstances, which allowed for both empathy and a deep sense of community. Though poverty was anything but fun, I remain grateful that I had the opportunity to grow up among such a diversity of people. No formal education could ever give you the true power and depth of such an experience.

    The borough of the Bronx was always divided by money. In its northern reaches, including Riverdale, there were plenty of people who had money, none of whom I knew. Those living in its eastern and western neighborhoods were generally aiming upward, even if they were mostly living paycheck to paycheck. (At least the checks were there!) However, the South Bronx was little more than an afterthought, a scenario of poverty, burned-out buildings, illness, and crime. Even today, people living there continue to struggle to eke out a decent living and pay the constantly rising rents on buildings that remain as dangerously uncared for as the broken sidewalks beneath them. Rumor has it that, in the last decade, there’s been new construction and more investments made in the area. However, I recently watched an online photo exhibit of the South Bronx and it was startling to see just how recognizable it still was.

    Poverty invites illness. Growing up, I saw all too many people afflicted by sicknesses that kept them homebound or only able to work between bouts of symptoms. All of us are somewhat powerless when sickness strikes or an accident occurs, but the poor and those working low-paying jobs suffer not just the illness itself but also its economic aftereffects. And in the South Bronx, preventive care remained a luxury, as did dental care, and missing teeth and/or dentures affected both nutrition and the comfort of eating. Doctor’s visits were rare then, so in dire situations people went to the closest hospital emergency room.

    Knowledge Is Power

    Being a sensitive and curious child, I became a reader at a very early age. We had no books at home, so I went to the library as often as possible. Finding the children’s books then available less than interesting, I began reading ones from the adult section — and it was my good fortune that the librarian turned a blind eye, checking out whatever I chose without comment.

    Books made me more deeply aware of the indignities all around me as well as in much of a world that was then beyond me. As I got older, I couldn’t help but see the hypocrisy of a country that loudly proclaimed its love of equality (as taught from the kindergarten pledge of allegiance on) and espoused everywhere values that turned out to be largely unrealized for millions of people. Why, I began to wonder, did so many of us accept the misery, why weren’t we fighting to change such unlivable conditions?

    Of course, what I observed growing up wasn’t limited to the South Bronx. Today, such realities continue to be experienced in communities nationwide. Poor and working-class people often have to labor at two or more jobs just to make ends meet (if they’re “lucky” enough to have jobs at all). Many experience persistent anxiety about having enough food, paying the rent, purchasing clothing for their children, or — heaven forbid — getting sick. Such never-ending worries can rob you of the strength even to pay attention to anything more than the present moment. You fret instead about what’s to be on your plate for dinner, how to make it through the day, the week, the month, never mind the year. And add to all of this the energy-sapping systemic racism that people of color face.

    During the Vietnam War years, I began organizing against poverty, racism, sexism, and that war in poor white working-class neighborhoods. I asked people then why living in such awful situations wasn’t creating more of a hue and cry for change. You can undoubtedly imagine some of the responses: “You can’t fight city hall!” “I’m too exhausted!” “What can one person do?” “It’s a waste of the time I don’t have.” “It is what it is.”

    Many of those I talked to complained about how few politicians who promise change while running for office actually deliver. I did then and do now understand the difficulties of those who have little and struggle to get by. Yet there have been people from poor and working-class communities who refused to accept such situations, who felt compelled to struggle to change a distinctly unjust society.

    In the late 1960s and early 1970s, though not myself a student, I became a member of Students for a Democratic Society, better known in those years as SDS. I also got the opportunity to work with members of the New York chapter of the Black Panther Party who came together thanks to direct experiences of racism and poverty that had kept so many of them from worthwhile lives. The Panthers were set on doing whatever they could to change the system and were remarkably clear-eyed in their belief that only struggle could bring about such a development.

    Mostly young, and mostly from poor backgrounds, their members defied what convention taught: that the leaders of movements usually come from the middle and upper-middle classes. Of course, many then did and still do. Many grew up well-fed, well-sheltered, and safe from hunger or future homelessness. Many also grew up in families where social-justice values were a part of everyday life.

    However, there is also a long history of poor and working-class people becoming leaders of struggles against injustice. The Black Panthers were one such group. As I write this, many safety-net programs are under assault from reactionary Republicans who wish to slash away at food stamps and other programs that offer at least modest support for the poor. They have been eager to add work provisions to safety-net programs, reviving the old trope that the poor are lazy or shirkers living off the dole, which couldn’t be further from the truth. They insist on believing that people should lift themselves out of poverty by their own bootstraps, whether they have boots or not.

    But poverty isn’t inevitable, as they would have us believe. Strengthening and expanding the safety net would help so many — like those I grew up with in the South Bronx — move into better situations. However, count on one thing: the reactionary Republicans now serving in government and their MAGA followers will never stop pushing to further weaken that net. They only grow more reactionary with every passing year, championing white nationalism, while attempting to ban books and stop the teaching of the real history of people of color. In short, they’re intent on denying people the power of knowledge. And as history has repeatedly shown, knowledge is indeed power.

    Which Way This Country?

    As the rich grow richer, they remain remarkably indifferent to suffering or any sort of sharing. Even allowing their increasingly staggering incomes to be taxed at a slightly higher rate is a complete no-no. Poor and working-class people who are Black, Latino, white, Asian, LGBTQ, or indigenous continue to battle discrimination, inflation, soaring rents, pitiless evictions, poor health, inadequate healthcare, and distinctly insecure futures.

    Like my parents and many others I knew in the South Bronx, they scrabble to hang on and perhaps wonder if anyone sees or hears their distress. Is it a surprise, then, that so many people, when polled today, say they’re unhappy? However, an unhappy, divided, increasingly unequal society filling with hate is also the definition of a frightening society that’s failing its people.

    Still, in just such a world, groups and organizations struggling for social justice have begun to take hold, as they work to change the inequities of the system. They should be considered harbingers of what’s still possible. National groups like Black Lives Matter or the Brotherhood Sister Sol in New York’s Harlem organize against inequities while training younger generations of social-justice activists. And those are but two of many civil-rights groups. Reproductive rights organizations are similarly proliferating, strengthened by women angry at the decisions of the Supreme Court and of state courts to overturn the right to an abortion. Climate change is here, and as more and more communities experience increasingly brutal temperatures and ever less containable wildfires (not to speak of the smoke they emit), groups are forming and the young, in particular, are beginning to demand a more green-centered society, an end to the use of fossil fuels and other detriments to the preservation of our planet. Newly empowered union organizing is also occurring and hopefully will spread across the country. All such activities make us hopeful, as they should.

    But here’s a truly worrisome thing: we’re also living in a moment in history when the clamor of reactionary organizing and the conspiratorial thinking that goes with it seem to be gathering strength in a step-by-step fashion, lending a growing power to the most reactionary forces in our society. Politicians like Donald Trump and Ron DeSantis, as well as anti-woke pundits, use all too many platforms to preach hatred while working to erase whatever progress has been made. Scary as well is the fantastical rightwing theory of white replacement which preaches (in a country that once enslaved so many) that whites are endangered by the proliferation of people of color.

    This march toward a more reactionary society could be stemmed by a strong counteroffensive led by progressives in and out of government. In fact, what other choice is there if we wish to live in a society that holds a promise for peace, equality, and justice?

    My political involvement taught me many lessons of victory and defeat but has never erased my faith in what is possible. Consider this sharing of my experiences a way to help others take heart that things don’t have to remain as they are.

    I haven’t been back to the South Bronx since my parents died, but as a writer and novelist I still visit there often.

    #USA #New_York #South_Bronx #pauvres #enfance #bibliothèque #censure #lutte_des_classe #politique

  • Des journalistes demandent aux soldats ukrainiens de cacher leurs écussons nazis, admet le New York Times Tyler Durden

    Le New York Times a été contraint de traiter très, très tardivement de quelque chose qui était depuis longtemps évident et connu de nombreux analystes et médias indépendants, mais qui a été soigneusement caché aux masses dominantes en Occident pour des raisons évidentes.


    Le titre surprenant de l’article du New York Times publié le lundi 5 juin (lien de l’article en anglais : https://www.nytimes.com/2023/06/05/world/europe/nazi-symbols-ukraine.html) dit que « les symboles nazis sur les lignes de front de l’Ukraine mettent en lumière les problèmes épineux de l’histoire ». Cette reconnaissance intervient après des années que des journalistes principalement indépendants et des commentateurs géopolitiques soulignaient que oui, en effet… Les groupes militaires et paramilitaires ukrainiens, en particulier ceux opérant dans l’est depuis au moins 2014, ont un sérieux problème d’idéologie nazie. Cela a été documenté de manière exhaustive, encore une fois, depuis des années. Mais le rapport, qui essaie simplement de le minimiser comme une « question épineuse » de « l’histoire unique » de l’Ukraine – suggère que le vrai problème pour les relations publiques occidentales est fondamentalement qu’il soit affiché si ouvertement. On demande aux troupes ukrainiennes de cacher ces symboles nazis, s’il vous plaît ! — comme Matt Taibbi a sarcastiquement plaisanté en commentant le rapport.


    Reportage de NBC News en 2014 : « Les Allemands ont été confrontés à des images du sombre passé de leur pays lorsque la télévision publique allemande ZDF a montré une vidéo de soldats ukrainiens avec des symboles nazis sur leurs casques dans son journal télévisé du soir. »

    Les auteurs du rapport du NYT commencent par exprimer leur frustration face à l’apparence des symboles nazis affichés si fièrement sur les uniformes de nombreux soldats ukrainiens. Suggérant que de nombreuses photographies journalistiques qui ont dans certains cas été présentées dans des journaux et des médias du monde entier (généralement associées à des articles généralement positifs sur l’armée ukrainienne) sont simplement « malheureuses » ou trompeuses, le rapport du NYT indique : « Sur chaque photographie, des Ukrainiens en uniforme portaient des écussons avec des symboles qui ont été rendus notoires par l’Allemagne nazie et qui font depuis partie de l’iconographie des groupes haineux d’extrême droite. »

    Le rapport admet que cela a conduit à une controverse dans laquelle les salles de presse doivent en fait supprimer certaines photos de soldats et de militants ukrainiens. « Les photographies et leurs suppressions mettent en évidence la relation compliquée de l’armée ukrainienne avec l’imagerie nazie, une relation forgée sous l’occupation soviétique et allemande pendant la Seconde Guerre mondiale », poursuit le rapport.

    C’est donc simplement « épineux » et « compliqué » nous dit-on. Vous trouverez ci-dessous un petit échantillon des types de patchs qui apparaissent sur les uniformes militaires ukrainiens avec « une certaine régularité » – selon les termes du New York Times :


    Voici un petit échantillon des types de patchs qui apparaissent sur les uniformes militaires ukrainiens avec « une certaine régularité » – selon les termes du New York Times

    Même l’Otan a récemment été forcée de supprimer des images sur ses comptes officiels de médias sociaux en raison de la présence de symboles nazis parmi les troupes ukrainiennes lors de séances photo.

    La ligne suivante du rapport dit tout ce que vous devez savoir sur le soi-disant « papier officiel » et sa couverture unilatérale et ultra-simpliste tandis que beaucoup se réveillent enfin pour réaliser qu’il s’agit d’une guerre avec une réalité profondément complexe (c’est le moins qu’on puisse dire), et loin du récit hollywoodien des bons contre les méchants des MSM de Putler contre le monde libre qui est typique des réseaux de CNN à Fox en passant par NBC…

    Citation de l’article du New York Times :
    « En novembre, lors d’une réunion avec des journalistes du Times près de la ligne de front, un attaché de presse ukrainien portait une variante de Totenkopf fabriquée par une société appelée R3ICH (prononcé « Reich »). Il a déclaré qu’il ne croyait pas que le patch était affilié aux nazis. Un deuxième attaché de presse présent a déclaré que d’autres journalistes avaient demandé aux soldats d’enlever le patch avant de prendre des photos ».

    Oups !

    Et maintenant, nous pouvons nous attendre à des efforts importants pour limiter les dégâts, ou même peut-être assistons-nous aux débuts de l’évolution des définitions et du déplacement des poteaux de but. On cite encore l’article du New York Times :

    « Mais certains membres de ces groupes combattent la Russie depuis que le Kremlin a annexé illégalement une partie de la région de Crimée en Ukraine en 2014 et font désormais partie de la structure militaire plus large. Certains sont considérés comme des héros nationaux, alors même que l’extrême droite reste marginalisée politiquement.

    L’iconographie de ces groupes, y compris un écusson en forme de tête de mort porté par les gardiens des camps de concentration et un symbole connu sous le nom de Soleil noir, apparaît désormais avec une certaine régularité sur les uniformes des soldats combattant en première ligne, y compris les soldats qui disent que cette imagerie symbolise la souveraineté et la fierté de l’Ukraine, pas le nazisme. »


    En 2019, le New York Times décrivait avec précision le bataillon Azov comme une « organisation paramilitaire néo-nazie ukrainienne » (image du dessus). Maintenant, selon ce même journal, c’est juste une « unité de la Garde nationale ukrainienne » (image du dessous)

    Ce n’est que très récemment que le ministère ukrainien de la Défense et même le bureau du président Zelensky ont été pris en flagrant délit :

    En avril, le ministère ukrainien de la Défense a publié sur son compte Twitter une photo d’un soldat portant un écusson représentant un crâne et des os croisés connu sous le nom de Totenkopf, ou tête de mort. Le symbole spécifique sur l’image a été rendu célèbre par une unité nazie qui a commis des crimes de guerre et gardé des camps de concentration pendant la Seconde Guerre mondiale.

    L’écusson sur la photo place le Totenkopf au sommet d’un drapeau ukrainien avec un petit numéro 6 en dessous. Ce patch est le logo officiel de Death in June, un groupe néo-folk britannique qui, selon le Southern Poverty Law Center, produit un « discours de haine » qui « exploite des thèmes et des images du fascisme et du nazisme ».

    Comme on pouvait s’y attendre, le Times essaie toujours de se cacher tout en cherchant désespérément à « rassurer » son public en écrivant que « à court terme, cela menace de renforcer la propagande de Poutine et d’alimenter ses fausses affirmations selon lesquelles l’Ukraine doit être » dénazifiée ‘ – une position qui ignore le fait que le président ukrainien Volodymyr Zelenskyy est juif. »

    De nouveaux niveaux de copulation en effet…

    Mais encore, le NYT concède maladroitement : « Plus largement, l’ambivalence de l’Ukraine à propos de ces symboles, et parfois même son acceptation de ceux-ci, risque de donner une nouvelle vie à des icônes que l’Occident a passé plus d’un demi-siècle à essayer d’éliminer. »

    Source : https://www.investigaction.net/fr/des-journalistes-demandent-aux-soldats-ukrainiens-de-cacher-leurs-ec
    Lien de l’article en anglais :
    https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/journalists-are-asking-ukrainian-soldiers-hide-their-nazi-patches-nyt-adm

    traduction : http://lagazetteducitoyen.over-blog.com/2023/06/des-journalistes-demandent-aux-soldats-ukrainiens-de-c

    #ukraine #nazisme #nazis #New_York_Times #NYT #symboles #néo-nazis #guerre

  • La ville de #New_York s’enfonce sous son propre poids, révèle une étude | La Presse
    https://www.lapresse.ca/international/etats-unis/2023-05-31/la-ville-de-new-york-s-enfonce-sous-son-propre-poids-revele-une-etude.php

    Des géologues ont calculé que le million de bâtiments, tours, gratte-ciel de New York représentent une masse totale de 762 millions de tonnes qui exercent une extraordinaire pression sur les sols. Soit l’équivalent de plus de 75 000 tours Eiffel.

    Sous cette force, la capitale culturelle et économique des États-Unis, peuplée de 8,5 millions d’âmes, s’enfonce en moyenne de un à deux millimètres par an.

    Dans certains quartiers où les immeubles ont été construits sur des terrains plus meubles ou artificiels, l’affaissement pourrait même atteindre 4,5 mm par an, selon l’étude.

    Mais construire moins de tours en béton, verre et acier n’y changera rien, prévient le principal auteur de l’étude, Tom Parsons.

    « La cause première de l’affaissement de New York et de la côte Est est tectonique et ne peut pas être endiguée », explique ce géophysicien américain.

    Et cet affaissement devrait accélérer l’impact de la montée des eaux provoquée par le réchauffement climatique et la fonte des glaciers.