Today in Focus: Reopening Mississippi: America's poorest state begins lifting lockdown

The US southern state of Mississippi is the country’s poorest. It went into the coronavirus crisis with high levels of poverty and poor health outcomes. But following the period of lockdown and orders for residents to stay at home, the state’s governor Tate Reeves has eased restrictions - despite evidence that the rate of infections has not yet hit its peak.

The Guardian’s Oliver Laughland travelled to the Mississippi coastal resort of Biloxi where he tells Mythili Rao he found the lockdown has hit hardest those working in low paid jobs in the tourism industry. One restaurant worker describes how the loss of work meant he has had to rely on the charity of his neighbours and local food banks. But despite growing numbers of cases, people are flocking back to the beach and increasingly breaching recommendations of minimum social distancing. The state is reopening, but at what cost?

listen to the podcast

Vox: Teaching in the US vs. the rest of the world

Teachers in America have a uniquely tough job. But it doesn't have to be that way.

From hours worked to pay rates, countries like Finland, Japan, and South Korea make teaching a more respected and sustainable profession.

The New York Review of Books: Memories of Mississippi

In a few days, with advice and contacts from John, I went on to Nashville, Tennessee, then to the SNCC headquarters in Atlanta, Georgia, only to be told by the woman who opened the door that “everybody” was down in Albany. Rather than take a segregated seat on the Atlanta-Albany bus, with whites sitting in front, blacks in the rear, I stood. The only other person standing was a nattily dressed black man who suggested I not try to reach the colored half of town at night. That turned out to be Wyatt Tee Walker, one of Dr. King’s lieutenants. It was a hot and humid night, with bugs flying in the bright lights of the Albany Greyhound station. An overweight policeman stood in front of me as I stepped off the bus. [...]

Then I made one walk downtown too many. As I passed the small cinderblock Cleveland police station, an officer stepped out from the parking lot and pulled me inside. I sat across from the chief as he politely explained to me that “in order to engage in the practice of photography” in Cleveland I needed to post a $1,000 bond. He opened a book of ordinances and pointed to the line. Outside in the parking lot, the policeman who had pulled me in was waiting. Clearly agitated, he explained with deep emotion that “we don’t mix the races down here.” He was sweating and rocking back and forth. Bizarre as it sounds, Frank Smith had told me that if I got into trouble I should just say I was black. This was apparently a common SNCC ruse, but it escaped me that I was supposed to say that it was a black woman who numbered among my recent ancestors. “As a matter of fact,” I said, “my grandfather was colored.” The policeman went completely crazy, reached for the gun on his belt, and said he would kill me right there on the spot. I thought he meant it. [...]

When the summer project of 1964 started, bringing a thousand mostly white Northern college students into Mississippi, I didn’t particularly want to go. For one thing, there were now many other people photographing the movement. For another, I thought voter registration was a bore. I found direct action, sit-ins, and marches, all of which often led to arrests, more exciting to photograph. Then, on June 21, a week before the project started, two workers and a summer volunteer were spotted changing a flat tire outside of Philadelphia, Mississippi, and taken to jail while the sheriff gathered the Klan to plan their murder. James Chaney was a black Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) worker from Meridian. He died, along with his best friend, a professional organizer with CORE from New York City named Mickey Schwerner, and Andy Goodman, a Queens College student and summer volunteer who had been in the South two days. A black Southerner and two Jewish boys from New York were lynched for trying to register African Americans to vote in a state that had lost the Civil War—but won back the power over their former slaves twenty years later by denying the right to vote through terror.

read the article

CityLab: City vs. State: The Story So Far

The “Fight For 15” movement is really about cities. By November 2016, Riverstone-Newell writes that nearly forty cities and counties had agreed to local increases in the minimum wage ranging from $8.50 to $15.75 an hour in states such as Arizona, California, Florida, Illinois, New Mexico, Maryland, Washington, and Maine (plus Washington, D.C.). Right now, 29 states set a higher minimum wage than the federal government and Arizona, Colorado, Maine, and Washington passed statewide raises in 2016. [...]

The fight over sanctuary cities has pitted federal, state, and city officials against each other and is about to come to a head this year as federal funding is in jeopardy. The most prominent example of preemption might be Texas, where Governor Greg Abbott has already blocked $1.8 million in grant funding to Travis County over its sanctuary policy and signed a “super preemption” law last month aimed at punishing local officials who do not cooperate with immigration authorities. It is set to go into effect in September. A Florida bill would impose a $5,000 per day fine on sanctuary cities (and Miami-Dade County has already voted to end its status as a sanctuary city) and North Carolina has a bill pending to strip cities of a variety of revenue sources if they operate as a sanctuary city. Other states that enacted restrictions this year include Mississippi, Georgia, and Indiana. [...]

Cities are up against more than Trump. The GOP controls 33 governorships and both chambers in 32 state legislatures. State preemption laws seek to strip cities of their abilities not just to oppose the White House agenda but to forge policies that reflect the desires, beliefs and concerns of their own residents. State legislatures in the U.S. have long had an anti-urban bias—in 2013, a study I wrote about in CityLab found that bills sponsored by legislators from small or medium-sized cities were overall twice as likely to pass as those that originated in big cities like Chicago or New York.

Another hurdle for cities is the constitutional challenge that they are legally considered “creatures of the state.” Republicans narrowly advocate for states’ rights in the face of federal power, arguing that cities don’t have the right to challenge the state. But this misremembers the origin of rights—they belong to people. Here’s how an Ohio Republican state senator summed up his opposition to Cleveland’s minimum wage hike: “[W]hen we talk about local control, we mean state control.”

read the article