February 2, 2021 |
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ImpactAlpha Editor
ImpactAlpha, Feb. 2 – A contested election. A political deal. An historic sellout.
Screech… halt… stop. The presidential election just finished had a decidedly different outcome than the previously most fiercely contested election.
The outcome of the 1876 election between Samuel Tilden and Rutherford B. Hayes actually was thrown in Congress, which gave the electoral votes of Florida, Louisiana and South Carolina and to Hayes in a deal to withdraw federal troops from their deployments in those states.
That signaled the end of Reconstruction, the decade-long experiment in multiracial democracy and inclusive prosperity that spurred small-town vitality and the flourishing of Black businesses and professionals across the South in the decade after the Civil War. The white supremacist backlash that followed ushered in decades of Jim Crow.
The JBS Greeley Beef Plant on Friday April 3, 2020. Image courtesy CPR News.
The coronavirus pandemic has rapidly altered the way many people live their lives. While millions of workers across the country have begun to work remotely from their homes to prevent the spread of the disease, there are still millions of essential workers who do not have that luxury. In Greeley, nearly 300 of these essential workers became victims of the largest single-workplace coronavirus outbreak in Colorado.
More than eight months after the first confirmed case of COVID-19 in Colorado, the Brazilian-owned meat processing company, JBS USA, is still under fire for its alleged failure to prevent the spread of the disease in its Greeley beef production site.
(Photo: iStock)
As many provinces struggle through a second wave of COVID-19, the economic disparity among Canadian workers is becoming more evident than ever. A report by the Decent Work and Health Network (DWHN), an Ontario-based group of healthcare workers and advocates calling for better health through improved working conditions, found that 58 percent of workers in Canada don’t have access to paid sick leave, and this number jumps to 70 percent for low-wage workers. With the pandemic forcing more people to take time off work for health reasons, the topic of paid sick leave has become increasingly urgent. Recently, mayors from big cities all over Ontario called on the provincial and federal governments to implement paid sick leave, but Ontario premier Doug Ford has responded to these calls by saying that there is “no reason” the province should do so. The call for paid sick leave has also been echoed by Theresa Tam, Canada’s Chief Public Health Officer, who released a