When will we realise that without sick pay the ill must work?
We need people who have – or might have – the coronavirus to stay at home to protect others’ lives. The government’s job is to protect their livelihoods so they’re able to do so. That’s why decent sick pay is so essential in a pandemic.
Unfortunately, the UK came into this crisis firmly at the bottom of the international statutory sick pay league table; 2 million low earners don’t qualify at all. Even those qualifying only get £96 a week, just a quarter of their earnings on average. The government recognised, but didn’t solve these problems, by ensuring people get sick pay more quickly as well as if they need to isolate but aren’t ill. A new £500 track-andtrace support payment was also introduced, but only one in eight workers qualify.
The world of research has warned us repeatedly to deal with this problem. Back in July we learned that care homes paying sick pay were significantly less likely to have Covid cases. Last week, a deep dive into the experiences of US states showed that those introducing sick pay saw huge (up to 30%) reductions in seasonal flu cases, proving that people will do the right thing and stay home if they can afford to do it.
Last March, I didn’t think it was possible we’d get a year through this pandemic without sorting out the UK’s inadequate sick pay system. It turns out I was wrong, providing another reminder that just because a problem is blindingly obvious doesn’t mean it’ll get fixed.
• Torsten Bell is chief executive of the Resolution Foundation. Read more at resolutionfoundation.org
officials moved to removepolicefrom schools, saving an additional $34m.
“Folks might look at $840m as a drop in the bucket of the $100bn we spend on police each year, but it definitely reverses the trend of constantly increasing police budgets over the past many decades,” said Andrea J Ritchie, one of the Barnard researchers, “and it did so in a way that also secured the transfer of funds from policing to community-based safety strategies.”
In some cases, the cuts came from leaving vacant positions unfilled or moving the accounting of certain police functions to other agencies – changes that would likely have minimal immediate impact. Other city leaders said their cuts were due to the Covid-19 economic crisis and not the protests, and in 26 major cities, lawmakers continued to increase police budgets.
But for cities that did intentionally pass cuts, some of the changes were significant. Portland, Oregon, cut $15m from its budget and disbanded a gun violence reduction unit and transit team that had both long been accused of over-policing Black communities. San Francisco officials pledged to divest $120m from police over two years with plans to invest in health programs and workforce training. Minneapolis is using police cuts to launch a mental health team to respond to certain 911 calls.
New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Seattle, Milwaukee, Philadelphia, Baltimore and a dozen other cities have all also reduced police spending. And some of these cities are now demonstrating the impacts of their new budgets.
How Austin is spending police funds
Austin, Texas, has made some of the most dramatic changes in the country, directly cutting roughly$20m from the police department, and moving $80m from the agency by shifting certain services out of law enforcement. The city has gone from spending 40% of its $1.1bn general fund on police to now allocating about 26% to law enforcement.
“Public health and public safety are at the heart of this,” said Chris Harris, the criminal justice director at Texas Appleseed, a local not-for-profit. “When we take policing away, we are actually filling that void with alternatives that we know are going to help.”
The Austin police funds were reallocated to emergency medical services for Covid-19, community medics, mental health first responders, services for homeless people, substance abuse programs, food access, workforce development, abortion services, victim support, parks and more. The city council is using money saved from the police budget to buy two hotels to provide supportive housing for homeless residents.
“For decades, Austin has spent so many dollars policing homelessness, jailing the homeless, and paying for emergency rooms and 911 calls instead of reinvesting those same dollars to finally start reducing homelessness,” said Casar, the local councilmember. “By adjusting the police budget even just a little bit, we are going to beable to house and help hundreds of people with these two hotels … and I hope we’ll be able to buy more.”
Austin has started redirecting certain 911 calls to mental health professionals – a move meant to provide help to those crises instead of a potentially deadly response by police, Casar said: “We know that we can solve the mental health crisis with treatment and care, not with handcuffs and jail.”
The redirected funds are also meant to benefit the crime victims who have been traditionally neglected and mistreated by law enforcement, advocates said.
Marina Garrett, a 25-year-old Austin resident and supporter of the defund efforts, has spoken out about how police mishandled her rape case. After she reported that she was sexually assaulted in 2015 at age 19, she submitted to a forensic exam, but detectives didn’t move forward while awaiting results for her rape kit, which was impacted by a huge backlog.
During that time, the police forensic lab shut down amid claims of misconduct and incompetence, and Garrett’s case dragged on: “It was completely devastating. You wake up every day, and it’s all you can think about. My whole life was on pause for two years. ”
It took two years for the results to come back, and ultimately police and prosecutors did not move forward with a case: “I started to realize that police were no help … and that police were making survivors wish they had not come forward,” said Garrett, who is part of a class-action lawsuit against Austin police.
With reinvested police funds, Austin is now moving forward with a new independent forensic science department. Garrett and other survivors have long pushed for the change. She said it was a small step to reduce some of police’s jurisdiction over sexual assault survivors, but that law enforcement remained largely ill-equipped to support victims.
“We can’t just keep throwing money at police and expect them to change their ways and culture, which is sexist and racist,” she said. “There are groups that are trained to provide support to survivors and help them find healing and justice, separate and apart from police.”
Alicia Dean, a city spokesperson, declined to comment on Garrett’s case, but said the police department supported the change in forensics, adding in a statement, “the city is committed to improving best practices and outcomes of sexual assault reporting, processing, investigations and prosecutions. We want all victims to feel safe, heard and have confidence in every step of the process.”
Fighting the backlash and ‘fear mongering’
One of the greatest obstacles to defunding law enforcement agencies are powerful police unions, which have long opposed reforms and negotiated strong protections in their contracts that typically make it impossible for cities to terminate or lay off officers.
Unions have launched aggressive PR campaigns to counter the movement. In Austin, the Texas Municipal Police Association (TMPA) created highway billboards saying “Warning! Austin Police Defunded, Enter at Your Own Risk” and “Limited Support Next 20 Miles” – and put up the signs in September, before the new budget had gone into effect.
The Republican governor of Texas, Greg Abbott, has also repeatedly threatened to try to force Austin to restore its police budget through legislation, and other state Republicans have spread misinformation about crime rates in the city.
“There are attempts to play up perceived dangers and to associate it with changes in the budget, without evidence,” said Harris. “A lot of the fear mongering that comes out of law enforcement is designed to play up racial tensions and racist myths.”
Cities across the US that have made modest progress on defunding are facing similar resistance. In Seattle, councilmembers initially pledged to meet activists’ demands and cut the police budget by 50%, but ultimately backtracked amid intense police opposition, passing a reduction of around 18% (by leaving vacancies unfilled and moving certain functions, like parking enforcement, out of the police budget).
Councilmember Kshama Sawant, a socialist who supported the 50% defunding, said it was particularly disappointing for the city to maintain high rates of police spending in a budget that made cuts to affordable housing, parks, libraries and transportation. Communities of color hurt by those cuts are the same people most targeted by police violence, she added.
“Tens of thousands of people in our city are reeling from the Covid crisis and the recession,” she told the Guardian, “but we have no hiring freeze for police.”
Sadé A Smith, a Seattle civil rights attorney, said it was hard to see the budget changes get watered down: “While they are playing these bureaucratic games, people are suffering. That’s what’s so frustrating. It took so many days of marching and an unprecedented uprising to even get this little bit.”
While there has been aggressive resistance to defunding from law enforcement associations and elected allies, there are also community organizations and local residents who have expressed doubts or concerns.
Rev Harriet Walden, a Seattle advocate who has long fought for police accountability, said she was worried about rising crime rates and feared defunding efforts could leave some Black communities and victims of violence vulnerable: “Crime is escalating … and people aren’t going to get arrested or charged.”
Walden said she supported reforms that made it easier to fire officers who violate policies or brutalize people, but that she didn’t want fewer police overall.
Sybrina Fulton, the mother of Trayvon Martin, the teenager killed by a neighborhood watch volunteer, also said she would rather see more police officers with better standards, instead of defunded departments. Merchants and business groups, too, have organized against defunding in some cities.
Ritchie, the Barnard researcher, noted that the activists leading the local defunding efforts were survivors of violence themselves and that they have made significant progress doing outreach and education, explaining to residents that “cities have for years been defunding housing, healthcare, job programs, libraries, arts and culture and violence prevention programs”.
People are often supportive once they understand that defunding police is about re-funding those services and making proactive investments in public safety and health. Activists across different cities were also learning from each other and recently launched a national website to pool together resources and put them in a better position to push for changes in the upcoming budget cycle, she said.
“Organizers are better prepared and armed with shared strategies and much bolder and more detailed visions.”
“Folks are getting ready and coming back for much, much more.”
We can’t just keep throwing money at police and expect them to change their ways and culture
Marina Garrett
police and the mantras of the left.
“I’ve always said that these headlines can kill a political effort,” he told NBC. For good measure, Clyburn added: “Sometimes I have real problems trying to figure out what progressive means.”
On the other hand, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama come across as out of sync. We are told that Clinton, the “vampire in the bullpen”, harbored thoughts of another run – until late 2019.
The fact Clinton lost in 2008 and 2016 had not totally dulled her capacity to believe she could unify party and country. Lucky captures Biden in 2016, calling the former secretary of state a “horrible candidate” who failed to communicate what she actually stood for.
Unlike Clinton, Biden understood that simply drawing a contrast with Trump would not be sufficient. Yet Clinton did see that the 2020 Democratic nominee, whoever it was, would be in a fight for “the very soul of the nation”. Charlottesville provided that epiphany to Biden.
Obama too does not fare too well, a fair-weather friend to his vice-president on several occasions, overly concerned with protecting his own legacy. He got some very important stuff wrong. Biden was more attractive and viable than the 44th president and his coterie thought.
In the authors’ telling, Obama was temporarily enamored with Beto O’Rourke. Like Kamala Harris, the former Texas congressman’s candidacy was over before the first primary. For both, stardom did not translate into staying power.
Then, at an event with Black corporate leaders in the fall of 2019, Obama amplified Warren’s chances and trashtalked Pete Buttigieg, then mayor of South Bend, Indiana. Obama reportedly said: “He’s the mayor of a small town. He’s gay, and he’s short.” Unlike Buttigieg, Warren never won a primary. She also finished third in Massachusetts – her own state.
As for Biden, one source describes Obama’s support as “tepid at best”. Obama tacitly backed Biden just days before Super Tuesday in March. Months later, he took his time congratulating Biden on his election win.
Biden’s so-called “brother” failed to call him “on election day, or the next day, or the next, or the next”, according to Allen and Parnes. Obama waited until Saturday 7 November, “the day the networks had finally called the election”. The audacity of caution.
Synchronously, the authors find room for the Biden campaign to unload on Andrew Cuomo and his capacity for fluffing his own ego. The New York governor’s five-minute convention speech devoted only its last eight seconds to the nominee.
“They put his speech on our doorstep, lit it on fire, rang the door-bell and then ran away,” a campaign insider says. To think, in December the press reported Cuomo to be a contender for attorney general.
Lucky is nothing if not clear-eyed. Trump roiled the nation’s waters but failed to bring a decisive shift to its politics. He energized and polarized the electorate along lines of class and education.
College-educated white suburbanites grew more Democratic while the Republicans, once the party of the John Cheever’s country club set, had become home to white voters without four-year degrees. In other words, 3 November delivered an outcome – not resolution.
At Trump’s instigation, our semicivil civil war turned hot and bloody. It wasn’t antifa but a weaponized segment of Trump’s base that stormed the US Capitol. The 6 January insurrection claimed lives, ruined others and brought the Confederate flag into the halls of Congress: a chilling first.
Democracy and process prevailed. The constitutional architecture “held firm”. But for how long?
As Allen and Parnes observe: “Luck, it has been said, is the residue of design. It was for Joe Biden, and for the republic.”
with the other side,” Jong-Fast says.
“Look, there are people on the other side, like Marjorie Taylor Greene, who are not good-faith actors, and you can’t even try. But there are people like Mitt Romney who, while I don’t agree with him on a lot of things, he’s a very goodfaith actor. So I think there’s a real chance.”
If you’re reading, Mitt, if Molly calls
Monday 8 March 2021 … pick up the phone.