New War Losses Send Putin’s Stooges Into Frantic Meltdown
Allison Quinn – September 8, 2022
Anadolu Agency via Getty
As Ukrainians celebrated reclaiming a slew of territories, many Russian propagandists went into overdrive to cover the furthest thing they could from the war: the health of Queen Elizabeth II, who died on Thursday afternoon.
The sudden shift came after pro-Kremlin Telegram channels seemed to grow increasingly frantic in recent days as Ukraine launched a surprise counter-offensive in the Kharkiv region, apparently taking advantage of Russia’s reallocation of forces to strike them when they were least expecting it.
The refrain “there’s no panic” flooded social media channels operated by the most staunch supporters of Russia’s war, even as video emerged of Russian forces being captured, the Ukrainian flag being raised in newly retaken towns, and Russian-backed authorities apparently closing up shop in areas now encircled by Ukrainian troops.
The General Staff of the Ukrainian Armed Forces finally revealed the results of its ambitious counter-offensive on Thursday afternoon: more than 270 square miles of land reclaimed in the east and south of the country, and more than 20 villages in the Kharkiv region back under Ukrainian control.
Social media lit up with photos of Ukrainian soldiers proudly posing in front of signs in Shevchenkove, Borshchyvka, and Volokhiv Yar, areas where Russia’s military appeared to be confident they were in full control just a week earlier.
Russian propagandists appeared to melt into some kind of existential tug-of-war as the news trickled out, with one well-known Telegram channel, Novorossiya Z.O.V. Militia Reports, sharing videos of the Ukrainian flag raised above Balakliya before insisting it meant nothing, citing a local resident who said the Russians “left on their own,” and then posting a survey asking followers, “Is Queen Elizabeth still alive?”
Andrei Rudenko, a reporter for Russian state-run media who posts regular updates about the war, suggested perhaps a conspiracy was underway, asking if U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken flew into Kyiv on Thursday because the British queen died.
“Changes in global politics are possible …” he wrote.
Vladimir Rogov, one of the Russian proxy leaders in the Zaporizhzhia region, also appeared to suddenly shift focus, posting on Telegram a lengthy writeup of how, among other things, the queen’s death will temporarily paralyze public transport on the day of her funeral.
Tsargrad TV also joined in, declaring “London bridge is falling down” and posting a slew of reports on the queen’s dire health.
Even as many preferred to shift to the queen, however, some pro-Kremlin channels openly admitted to Russia’s recent defeats on the battlefield—and raged over what they described as Russians being abandoned.
“Millions of Russians from Kherson to Kupyansk are now not in the least bit sure that Russia is with them —forever,” read a post on the Zastavny Telegram channel acknowledging Russian losses.
“I am waiting for the correction of this tragic mistake,” the post read.
“And [Russian news outlets] RIA and Zvezda meanwhile are broadcasting about the British queen,” another channel complained.
Bridge collapses during ribbon-cutting ceremony in Congo
September 7, 2022
KINSHASA, Democratic Republic of Congo (Reuters) – Sharply-suited dignitaries gathered to inaugurate a footbridge in the Congolese capital on Monday only for the structure to collapse beneath their feet to the barely concealed delight of onlookers, video verified by Reuters showed.
Just as an organiser cut the ribbon at the ceremony in Kinshasa’s Mont-Ngafula district, the bridge buckled, both its handrails broke off, and the central section slumped into the stream a couple of metres below.
Spectators shouted in apparent glee as the VIPs struggled to get off the crumpled wreck. Nobody was reported to have been hurt in the incident.
One of the last people to climb free was a man in military fatigues and dark glasses who was clutching an unopened bottle of champagne, other footage shared widely on social media showed.
A pilot who circled above a Mississippi city for hours and threatened to crash into a branch of Walmart has landed the plane safely after talks with police.
State Governor Tate Reeves tweeted that no one had been injured, offering his thanks to law enforcement in Tupelo.
A livestream by a reporter of local television station WTVA appeared to show the vehicle sitting in a field.
The Walmart and another nearby store were earlier evacuated, while citizens were asked to avoid the area.
Details of the conversation between the pilot and police while he was in the air, or his identity, were not immediately made public.
However, local media report the pilot was arrested after landing the plane.
Police were originally notified at around 05:00 local time on Saturday (10:00 GMT) of a plane flying above the city, an earlier statement said.
At the time, police described it as a “dangerous situation”.
The statement added that the plane was possibly a “King Air type” – referring to a small utility plane.
The pilot was said to have made contact with E911 – an emergency number – and proceeded to make their threat to intentionally collide with the Walmart.
Leslie Criss, a local journalist, told The Associated Press news agency she had never seen anything like it in the city, and that it was a “scary way to wake up on a Saturday morning”.
UPDATE: Mill Fire explodes to 3,921 acres with no containment, Mountain Fire at 600 acres
David Benda, Michele Chandler, Jessica Skropanic and Jenny Espino, Redding Record Searchlight
September 3, 2022
The fast-moving Mill Fire erupted on Friday near the area of the Roseburg Forest Products mill in Weed, a small city just over 50 miles from the Oregon border.
There were reports of burn victims and destroyed homes in a neighborhood. Thousands were forced to leave their homes in the communities of Weed, Lake Shastina and Edgewood.
We’ve made these updates free to readers as an important public service to our North State communities. If you are able, help local journalism thrive by subscribing to your local newspaper, and check back here for updates.
10:20 p.m.: Mill Fire still growing, with no containment
Cal Fire on Friday night said sensor aircraft estimated the size of the Mill Fire to be 3,921 acres, roughly 1,300 acres more than fire officials believed earlier in the evening.
The fire, first reported at 12:49 p.m. on Friday, broke out at Woodridge Court and Woodridge Way, near the area of the Roseburg Forest Products mill in Weed. The Cal Fire-Siskiyou Unit via Twitter said the cause of the fire is under investigation.
Evacuations in Weed, Lake Shastina and Edgewood remain in place and Highway 97 remains closed.
8:40 p.m.: Mountain Fire doubles in size, Mill Fire unstable, Sheriff’s Office said
The Mountain Fire grew to 600 acres, twice its size two hours ago, according to Cal Fire.
Both the Mill Fire and Mountain Fire remain uncontained, according to Cal Fire.
“This incident (Mill Fire) is rapidly changing and our staff and partners are doing everything they can to get everyone to safety,” the Siskiyou County Sheriff’s Office said.
The sheriff’s office posted information to help those unable to reach family and friends in evacuation areas. They can call 530-842-8746.
An evacuation shelter is in use at the Yreka Community Center at 810 North Main St. in Yreka.
For information on evacuation zones go to www.zonehaven.com.
8:15 p.m.: Help available for animals in fire evacuation zones
The Siskiyou County Sheriff’s Office is offering animal welfare checks for people who had to evacuate from Mill and Mountain fire areas without their pets or livestock.
Evacuees can go to the Siskiyou County website at bit.ly/3Qc9Hsf and fill out a form to request a welfare check.
6:50 p.m.: Mill Fire explodes Friday afternoon
The Mill Fire exploded in size to 2,580 acres — up from 900 acres at 3 p.m., according to Cal Fire.
There is no containment on the fire, burning north of Weed near Lake Shastina.
The blaze damaged and destroyed multiple structures, including homes, but Cal Fire has not yet released the total number of structures.
The cause of the fire remains under investigation, Cal Fire said.
6:30 p.m.: Mountain Fire grows to 300 acres
The Mountain Fire burned 300 acres of forest eight miles southeast of the small town of Gazelle, according to Cal Fire.
It is not contained, Cal Fire said.
The fire started before 4 p.m. near China Mountain Road, west of Interstate 5, north of Weed.
5:30 p.m.: Some tankers being sent to nearby Mountain Fire
While firefighters continue to battle the Mill Fire burning in the area of Weed and Lake Shastina, six air tankers are being diverted to a second fire that started about an hour ago in the area of Gazelle.
The Mountain Fire is burning in heavy brush on the west side of Interstate 5 north of Weed. Firefighters there have reported that no structures are threatened.
5 p.m.: Wind pushing fire over dry hot terrain
Firefighters continue to battle strong winds while they fight the Mill and Mountain fires.
Those conditions won’t change until Friday night, said Jay Stockton, meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Medford. Weather conditions are ripe for fires to continue spreading until 11 p.m.
Friday afternoon, strong southeast winds blew up to 24 mph, with 36 mph gusts, Stockton said. Temperatures reached 98 degrees in Weed and brush is incredibly dry: 5% humidity.
“That combination of windy and dry is what’s creates conditions for rapid fire growth,” he said.
A red flag warning is in effect until 11 p.m. Friday, at which time the winds should calm down, Stockton said. Temperatures should cool to the mid-50s, increasing moisture in the air.
All that could help firefighters get a better handle on the fires, he said.
4:14 p.m.: Power outage reported in Weed, Mount Shasta, Lucerne
About 8,300 residents in Weed and Mount Shasta in Siskiyou County and Lucerne in Lake County were hit by a power outage shortly before 1 p.m. on Friday, according to electric power company PacifiCorp.
A cause of the outage is under investigation, said company spokesman Brandon Zero. Crews have been dispatched to the area, he said.
A smoke plume from the Mill Fire rises over downtown Weed on Friday, Sept. 2, 2022.
3:55 p.m.: Fire threatening Carrick outside Weed
Firefighters are communicating to each that the fire is threatening to jump Highway 97 and burn into the small community of Carrick just outside Weed.
3:20 p.m.: Mill Fire balloons to 900 acres
The Mill Fire burning north of Weed toward Lake Shastina is now more than 900 acres, Cal Fire reports.
Firefighters are asking for all strike teams to come to the Jackson Ranch Road area. Earlier, the fire jumped Jackson Ranch Road and started burning into Lake Shastina.
Currently, there is no containment.
All zones east of Interstate 5 from Weed to county road A12, south of county road A12 from Grenada to Highway 97, west of Highway 97 from A12 to I-5, Cal Fire said.
There is an evacuation Shelter at the Karuk wellness center in Yreka at 1403 Kahtishraam.
Meanwhile, all remaining Weed High School students were bussed to Mt. Shasta High School for pick up, officials said.
2:50 p.m.: Fire burning into Lake Shastina
The Mill Fire has jumped Jackson Ranch Road and is burning into the community of Lake Shastina, which is north of Weed, crews battling the blaze report. Firefighters also have asked for at least five more strike teams to help fight the fire.
Meanwhile, a temporary evacuation center is being set up at the Siskiyou County Fairgrounds in Yreka, according to scanner reports.
2:45 p.m.: Mill Fire grows to 555 acres
The communities of Weed, Lake Shastina and Edgewood are under evacuation orders as of 2 p.m. Friday due to the Mill Fire, according to the Siskiyou County Sheriff Office’s Facebook page.
Residents in those areas are asked to leave immediately.
Use caution, as emergency vehicles are assisting with evacuations, structure protection and fire suppression efforts. For more information, call 2 1 1. Real-time evacuation zone statuses are available on aware.zonehaven.com.
The Mill Fire near Weed has grown to 555 acres since first being reported on Friday afternoon, officials said.
The wildfire broke out the same day that the area was under a red flag warning due to high temperatures, gusty winds and low humidity. The chance of rain in the area remains in the single digits through Tuesday.
The wind was blowing north at 20 mph in the Weed and Lake Shastina areas on Friday afternoon, according to Windfinder.com.
Southerly winds of about 20 mph, with gusts as high as 30 mph, could emerge through Friday night, according to the National Weather Service.
The Mill Fire as seen from Interstate 5. The fire started on Friday afternoon, Sept. 2, 2022.
Saturday’s forecast calls for sun with widespread haze and a high near 89. Calmer winds becoming northwest at between 5 to 8 mph are expected in the afternoon, according to the weather service.
Pacific Power had not reported any outages in greater Weed as of mid-afternoon on Friday.
1:55 p.m.: Students to stay on campus
Firefighters battling the Mill Fire are recommending not to release students at Weed High School. They are asking the students to stay on campus for now, according to scanner reports.
Meanwhile, mandatory evacuations are being called for all residents east of Interstate 5 to Jackson Ranch Road. Firefighters say the blaze has reached Jackson Ranch Road.
Also, all of Lake Shastina is under a mandatory evacuation order.
Evacuation warnings are in place along Highway 97 in the Mt. Shasta Vista neighborhood.
1:49 p.m.: Evacuations ordered
Evacuation orders have been issued in the community of Weed due to a fire that started Friday afternoon in the area of Roseburg Forest Products mill.
Highway 97 is closed from the junction of Highway 265 in Weed to south of Macdoel due the Mill Fire, the California Department of Transportation said.
Firefighters are also asking for Jackson Ranch Road to be closed so residents who are evacuating in that area have a clear route out of the neighborhood, according to emergency scanner reports.
The fire also has reached Hoy Road.
Firefighters report that traffic in the area is backed up due to all the evacuations.
At least one ambulance has been dispatched to treat a burn victim and a medical triage has been set up to treat other burn victims, scanner reports said.
Barbara Ehrenreich, Explorer of Prosperity’s Dark Side, Dies at 81
By Natalie Schachar –September 2, 2022
Her book “Nickel and Dimed,” an undercover account of the indignities of being a low-wage worker in the United States, is considered a classic in social justice literature.
The author Barbara Ehrenreich in 2020. She tackled a variety of themes: the myth of the American dream, the labor market, health care, poverty and women’s rights.Credit…Jared Soares
It was a casual meeting.
Over salmon and field greens, Barbara Ehrenreich was discussing future articles with her editor at Harper’s Magazine. Then, as she recalled, the conversation drifted.
How could anyone survive on minimum wage? She mused. A tenacious journalist should find out.
Her editor, Lewis Lapham, offered a half smile and a single word reply: “You.”
The result was the book “Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America” (2001), an undercover account of the indignities, miseries and toil of being a low-wage worker in the United States. It became a best seller and a classic in social justice literature.
Ms. Ehrenreich, the journalist, activist and author, died at 81 on Thursday at a hospice facility in Alexandria, Va., where she also had a home. Her daughter, Rosa Brooks, said the cause was a stroke.
Working as a waitress near Key West, Fla., in her reporting for “Nickel and Dimed,” Ms. Ehrenreich quickly found that it took two jobs to make ends meet. After repeating her journalistic experiment in other places as a hotel housekeeper, cleaning lady, nursing home aide and Wal-Mart associate, she still found it nearly impossible to subsist on an average of $7 an hour.
Every job takes skill and intelligence, she concluded, and should be paid accordingly.
One of more than 20 books written by Ms. Ehrenreich, “Nickel and Dimed” bolstered the movement for higher wages just as the consequences of the dot-com bubble snaked through the economy in 2001.
“Many people praised me for my bravery for having done this — to which I could only say: Millions of people do this kind of work every day for their entire lives — haven’t you noticed them?” she said in 2018 in an acceptance speech after receiving the Erasmus Prize, given to a person or institution that has made an exceptional contribution to the humanities, the social sciences or the arts.
Ms. Ehrenreich noticed those millions throughout a writing career in which she tackled a variety of themes: the myth of the American dream, the labor market, health care, poverty and women’s rights. Her motivation came from a desire to shed light on ordinary people as well as the “overlooked and the forgotten,” her editor, Sara Bershtel, said in an email.
“Nickel and Dimed,” one of more than 20 books Ms. Ehrenreich wrote, xCredit…
Barbara Alexander was born on Aug. 26, 1941, in Butte, Mont., into a working-class family. Her mother, Isabelle Oxley, was a homemaker; her father, Benjamin Howes Alexander, was a copper miner who later earned a Ph.D. in metallurgy at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh and became director of research at Gillette.
Having grown up steeped in family lore about the mines, Ms. Ehrenreich recalled thinking it was normal for a man over 40 to do dangerous work and be missing at least a finger.
“So to me, sitting at a desk all day was not only a privilege but a duty: something I owed to all those people in my life, living and dead, who’d had so much more to say than anyone ever got to hear,” she wrote in the introduction to “Nickel and Dimed.”
Both of her parents were heavy drinkers. In a 2014 memoir, she described her mother’s wrath as the “central force field” of her childhood home. She believed that her mother’s death, from a heart attack, had been induced by an intentional overdose of pills.
Ms. Ehrenreich graduated from Reed College in Portland, Ore., in 1963. She received a Ph.D. in cell biology in 1968 from Rockefeller University in New York, where she met her first husband, John Ehrenreich.
After her studies, she became a budget analyst for New York City and then a staff member at the New York-based (and now defunct) nonprofit Health Policy Advisory Center in 1969. In 1971 she began working as an assistant professor in the Health Sciences Program at the State University of New York, Old Westbury. But the social and political upheaval of the 1960s awakened her anger and fueled her desire to write.
Her first book, “Long March, Short Spring: The Student Uprising at Home and Abroad” (1969), co-written with Mr. Ehrenreich, grew out of her anti-Vietnam War activism. Their second book, “The American Health Empire: Power, Profits and Politics,” was published the next year.
Ms. Ehrenreich quit her teaching job in 1974 to become a full-time writer, selling a number of articles to Ms. magazine in the 1970s.
Numerous critically acclaimed books followed, including “The Hearts of Men: American Dreams and the Flight from Commitment” (1983), “Fear of Falling: The Inner Life of the Middle Class” (1989), “The Worst Years of Our Lives: Irreverent Notes from a Decade of Greed” (1990) and “Blood Rites: Origins and History of the Passions of War” (1997).
It was her firsthand reporting in “Nickel and Dimed,” however, that resonated with working Americans and became a turning point in her career.
Ms. Ehrenreich in 2006. Her firsthand reporting in “Nickel and Dimed” became a turning point in her career.Credit…David Scull for The New York Times
Following the book’s success, Ms. Ehrenreich applied her immersive journalism technique to works about the dysfunctional side of the American social order. Those included “Bait and Switch: The (Futile) Pursuit of the American Dream” (2005) and “Smile or Die” (2009), about the dangers of “positive thinking” amid inadequate health care.
In her memoir, “Living With a Wild God” (2014), she focused on her troubling, unconventional experiences as a teenager.
She also wrote articles and essays for The New York Times, The Washington Post Magazine, The Atlantic, Harper’s, The Nation and The New Republic and held academic posts, teaching women’s studies at Brandeis and essay writing at the Graduate School of Journalism at the University of California, Berkeley.
Her marriage to Mr. Ehrenreich in 1966 ended in divorce in 1982. In addition to their daughter, Ms. Brooks, a law professor, she is survived by their son, Ben Ehrenreich, a journalist; two siblings, Benjamin Alexander Jr. and Diane Alexander; and three grandchildren. Her second marriage, to Gary Stevenson in 1983, ended in divorce in 1993.
In recent years Ms. Ehrenreich came to believe that many people living at or near the poverty level didn’t need someone else to give voice to their struggles.
Instead, she thought that individuals could tell their own stories if they had greater support. She created the Economic Hardship Reporting Project, which focused on helping the work of underrepresented people get published and providing economic assistance to factory workers, house cleaners, professional journalists and others who had fallen on hard times.
Her most recent book, “Had I Known: Collected Essays” (2020), compiles four decades of her articles on sexism, health, the economy, science, religion and other topics. Almost all of them shared repeated warnings about growing poverty and worsening inequality.
Ms. Ehrenreich’s anger at inequity remained unabated late in her life. In a 2020 interview with The New Yorker, she said a lack of paid sick-leave and the declining well-being of the working class still gave her “grim and rageful thoughts.”
“We turn out to be so vulnerable in the United States,” she said. “Not only because we have no safety net, or very little of one, but because we have no emergency preparedness, no social infrastructure.”
In 2018, she published “Natural Causes,” which addressed the topic of growing old and bluntly excoriated the wellness movement.
“Every death can now be understood as suicide,” she wrote. “We persist in subjecting anyone who dies at a seemingly untimely age to a kind of bio-moral autopsy: Did she smoke? Drink excessively? Eat too much fat and not enough fiber? Can she, in other words, be blamed for her own death?”
Ms. Ehrenreich continued writing into her 80s and at her death had begun work on a book about the evolution of narcissism, her daughter said.
Ms. Ehrenreich said she believed that her job as a journalist was to shed light on the unnecessary pain in the world.
“The idea is not that we will win in our own lifetimes and that’s the measure of us,” she told The New Yorker, “but that we will die trying.”
Amazon Closes, Abandons Plans for Dozens of US Warehouses
Matt Day and Spencer Soper – September 2, 2022
(Bloomberg) — Amazon.com Inc., determined to reduce the size of its sprawling delivery operation amid slowing sales growth, has abandoned dozens of existing and planned facilities around the US, according to a closely watched consulting firm.
MWPVL International Inc., which tracks Amazon’s real-estate footprint, estimates the company has either shuttered or killed plans to open 42 facilities totaling almost 25 million square feet of usable space. The company has delayed opening an additional 21 locations, totaling nearly 28 million square feet, according to MWPVL. The e-commerce giant also has canceled a handful of European projects, mostly in Spain, the firm said.
Just this week Amazon warned officials in Maryland that it plans to close two delivery stations next month in Hanover and Essex, near Baltimore, that employ more than 300 people. The moves are a striking contrast with previous years, when the world’s largest e-commerce company typically entered the fall rushing to open new facilities and hire thousands of workers to prepare for the holiday shopping season. Amazon continues to open facilities where it requires more space to meet customer demand.
“There remains some serious cutting to do before year-end — in North America and the rest of the world,” said Marc Wulfraat, MWPVL’s founder and president. “Having said this, they continue to go live with new facilities this year at an astonishing pace.”
Maria Boschetti, an Amazon spokesperson, said it’s common for the company to explore multiple locations at once and make adjustments “based upon needs across the network.”
“We weigh a variety of factors when deciding where to develop future sites to best serve customers,” she said in an emailed statement. “We have dozens of fulfillment centers, sortation centers and delivery stations under construction and evolving around the world.”
The Maryland closings are part of an initiative to shift work to more modern buildings, Amazon says. “We regularly look at how we can improve the experience for our employees, partners, drivers and customers, and that includes upgrading our facilities,” Boschetti said. “As part of that effort, we’ll be closing our delivery stations in Hanover and Essex and offering all employees the opportunity to transfer to several different delivery stations close by.”
Chief Executive Officer Andy Jassy has pledged to unwind part of a pandemic-era expansion that saddled Amazon with a surfeit of warehouse space and too many employees. The company has typically weaned its ranks of hourly workers by leaving vacant positions open, slowing hiring and tightening disciplinary or productivity standards. But warehouse closings are also part of the mix, and workers are bracing for more. During the second quarter, Amazon’s workforce shrank by roughly 100,000 jobs to 1.52 million, the biggest quarter-to-quarter contraction in the company’s history.
The Seattle company has also been seeking to sub-lease at least 10 million square feet of warehouse space, Bloomberg reported in May.
When homebound shoppers stampeded online during the pandemic, Amazon responded by doubling the size of its logistics network over a two-year period, a rapid buildout that exceeded that of rivals and partners like Walmart Inc., United Parcel Service Inc. and FedEx Corp. For a time, Amazon was opening a new warehouse somewhere in the U.S. roughly every 24 hours. Jassy told Bloomberg in June that the company had decided in early 2021 to build toward the high end of its forecasts for shopper demand, erring on the side of having too much warehouse space rather than too little.
Wulfraat said that most of the closings announced this year are delivery stations, smaller buildings that hand off already packaged items to drivers. Facilities that have been canceled include several planned fulfillment centers, giant warehouses containing millions of items. MWPVL estimates that Amazon operates more than 1,200 logistics facilities, large and small, around the US.
More belt-tightening could complicate Amazon’s already fraught relations with organized labor. Earlier this year, an upstart labor union started by a fired Amazon worker won a historic victory at a company warehouse in Staten Island, New York. A federal labor official on Thursday rejected Amazon’s bid to overturn the result. Last month, workers at an Amazon facility near Albany, New York, filed a petition to hold a union election there.
How much overcapacity Amazon needs to work through is hard to gauge, and some analysts believe the extra space will come in handy during the Christmas holiday season.
(Updated with additional Amazon comment beginning in the fifth paragraph.)
Barbara Ehrenreich, activist and groundbreaking ‘Nickel and Dimed’ author, dies at 81
Nardine Saad, Dorany Pineda – September2, 2022
Author Barbara Ehrenreich at her home in Charlottesville, Va., in August 2005. (Andrew Shurtleff / Associated Press)
Barbara Ehrenreich, the author, journalist and political activist whose groundbreaking work of immersive journalism, “Nickel and Dimed,” presaged and arguably helped spark the resurgence of the American labor movement, has died. She was 81.
Ehrenreich died Thursday in Alexandria, Va., after recently suffering a stroke, the Associated Press reported Friday.
“Sad news. Barbara Ehrenreich, my one and only mother, died on September 1, a few days after her 81st birthday,” her son, author and journalist Ben Ehrenreich, tweeted Friday.
“She was, she made clear, ready to go. She was never much for thoughts and prayers, but you can honor her memory by loving one another, and by fighting like hell,” he wrote.
Following news of her death, writers, journalists and activists took to social media to pay their respects.
“Heartland” author Sarah Smarsh called Ehrenreich’s contributions to U.S. discourse around class and injustice “immeasurable. … May she rest in peace, & may we include class in every conversation about justice.”
Robert Reich, former U.S. secretary of Labor, called her “inimitable. … Our abiding thanks to her for her contributions to the labor, progressive and women’s movements, her brilliant literary journalism, and her tenacious appeals to common sense. She will be sorely missed.”
“Barbara Ehrenreich changed my life in many ways,” tweeted New York state Rep. Emily Gallagher. “Not only was I forever inspired by ‘Nickel and Dimed,’ I recently took a deeper dive into her earlier feminist pamphlets and felt kinship by her relentless pursuit of socialist feminism. Thank you Barbara [heart emoji] we continue your work.”
The Montana-born writer, also known for “Bait and Switch: The (Futile) Pursuit of the American Dream” and “Natural Causes: An Epidemic of Wellness, the Certainty of Dying and Killing Ourselves to Live Longer,” rallied for higher minimum wage, pushed against white privilege and challenged conventional thinking about race, religion, class, American exceptionalism, gender politics, the mechanics of joy and the gap between rich and poor.
A proponent of liberal causes such as economic equality and abortion rights, Ehrenreich wrote 20 books and was also the founding editor of the Economic Hardship Reporting Project. She frequently contributed to the Los Angeles Times and other publications such as Mother Jones and the Nation.
Her 1989 book, “Fear of Falling: The Inner Life of the Middle Class,” was nominated for a National Book Critics Circle Award. Her 2001 bestseller, “Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America,” traced her own journey as a waitress and hotel housekeeper, among other low-income jobs, and became one of her best-known works.
In that book, she wrote “to be a member of the working poor is to be an anonymous donor, a nameless benefactor, to everyone.” She learned — and wrote — that living on $7 an hour was not a way to live at all.
In a 2001 review for The Times, Stephen Metcalf called the book “thoroughly enjoyable, written with an affable, up-your-nose brio throughout. Ehrenreich is a superb and relaxed stylist, and she has a tremendous sense of rueful humor. … Social critics often sting but just as often lack real antiseptic power. Not so Ehrenreich, an old-time southpaw, a leftie without a trace of the apologetic squeak that’s recently crept into the voice of the left — and crept in while conservatives have stertorously monopolized phrases like ‘civilized society.'”
In 2009, Ehrenreich asked in The Times if feminism had “been replaced by the pink-ribbon breast cancer cult,” hoping to ignite a new women’s health movement. In 2014, she asked “how do we reconcile the mystical experience with daily life” for a memoir that she never set out to write, thinking the form was too self-involved.
Nonetheless, she crafted “Living With a Wild God: A Nonbeliever’s Search for the Truth About Everything,” a personal history and spiritual inquiry that pulled from journals she wrote between the ages of 14 and 24.
In a 2014 review of the book, David L. Ulin, a former Times books editor and critic, emphasized that the memoir was “not a book of faith. Educated as a scientist, trained as a reporter, Ehrenreich does not believe in what she cannot see. As such, she turns to philosophy, chemistry and physics; she traces the influence of her home life, which was dysfunctional (both parents were alcoholics) but encouraged asking questions and thinking for oneself.”
Barbara Alexander was born in Butte, Mont., in 1941, to a mother who was a homemaker and a father who was a copper miner before earning a PhD from Carnegie Mellon University and becoming the director of research at Gillette.
According to the Associated Press, she was raised in a union household where family rules included “never cross a picket line and never vote Republican.”
She also said she was born and raised into atheism “by people who had derived their own atheism from a proud tradition of working-class rejection of authority in all its forms, whether vested in bosses or priests, gods or demons.” She was a student activist, was educated as a scientist — she studied physics at Reed College and earned a PhD in cellular biology from Rockefeller University in 1968 — but trained as a teacher and reporter.
After getting her doctorate, she joined a group of activists trying to improve healthcare for poor New Yorkers, which cemented her love of reporting and writing. “Health seemed related to biology,” she told the Washington Post in 2005.
Her 1983 book, “The Hearts of Men: American Dreams and the Flight From Commitment,” helped her get assignments at the New York Times and launched her journalism career. She wrote a regular column for Time from 1990 to 1997. Her most notable books from that period include “Fear of Falling” and “Blood Rites: Origins and History of the Passions of War.”
Barbara Ehrenreich in New York in 2007. (Andrew Harrer / Bloomberg via Getty Images)
In 2019, after the release of “Natural Causes,” she explored “Silicon Valley syndrome,” or “towering hubris,” the pursuit of not just extending the quality of life but living forever.
The prolific author told The Times that once she realized she was old enough to die, she decided she would put up with no more “suffering, annoyance and boredom” in pursuit of a longer life. Instead, she opted to choose the foods she liked, the exercise that sufficed and the doctor visits that addressed the pains she actually felt. At the time, she had just released “Natural Causes.”
Ehrenreich was motivated by a desire to shed light on ordinary people as well as the “overlooked and the forgotten,” her editor, Sara Bershtel, told the New York Times.
She is survived by her son and her daughter, Rosa Brooks.
Barbara Ehrenreich, muckraking writer and activist, dies
Associated Press –September 2, 2022
Barbara Ehrenreich, the muckraking author, activist and journalist who in such notable works as “Nickel and Dimed” and “Bait and Switch” challenged conventional thinking about class, religion and the very idea of an American dream, has died at age 81.
Ehrenreich died Thursday morning in Alexandria, Virginia, according to her son, the author and journalist Ben Ehrenreich. She had recently suffered a stroke.
Barbara Ehrenreich, author of Dancing in the Streets, poses in New York on Wednesday, January 10, 2007.Andrew Harrer | Bloomberg | Getty Images
Barbara Ehrenreich, the muckraking author, activist and journalist who in such notable works as “Nickel and Dimed” and “Bait and Switch” challenged conventional thinking about class, religion and the very idea of an American dream, has died at age 81.
Ehrenreich died Thursday morning in Alexandria, Virginia, according to her son, the author and journalist Ben Ehrenreich. She had recently suffered a stroke.
“She was, she made clear, ready to go,” Ben Ehrenreich tweeted Friday. “She was never much for thoughts and prayers, but you can honor her memory by loving one another, and by fighting like hell.”
Barbara Ehrenreich was a Montana native, raised in a union household where family rules included “never cross a picket line and never vote Republican.” A prolific author who regularly turned out books and newspaper and magazine articles, she was a longtime proponent of liberal causes from economic equality to abortion rights. For “Nickel and Dimed,” one of her best known books, she worked in minimum wage jobs so she could learn firsthand the struggles of the working poor, whom she called “the major philanthropists of our society.”
“They neglect their own children so that the children of others will be cared for; they live in substandard housing so that other homes will be shiny and perfect; they endure privation so that inflation will be low and stock prices high,” she wrote. “To be a member of the working poor is to be an anonymous donor, a nameless benefactor, to everyone.”
Barbara Ehrenreich, author who resisted injustice, dies aged 81
Ed Pilkington – September 2, 2022
Barbara Ehrenreich in 2018. Photograph: Stephen Voss/The Guardian
Writer of the 2001 bestseller Nickel and Dimed died on 1 September, her son announced
Barbara Ehrenreich, the author of more than 20 books on social justice themes ranging from women’s rights to inequality and the inequities of the American healthcare system, has died at the age of 81.
The news that Ehrenreich had died on 1 September was released by her son, Ben Ehrenreich, on Friday. He accompanied the announcement with a comment redolent of his mother’s spirit: “She was never much for thoughts and prayers, but you can honor her memory by loving one another, and by fighting like hell.”
Ehrenreich battled over a half a century as a writer committed to resisting injustice and giving a voice to those who were typically unheard.
Her first book, published in 1969, Long March, Short Song, was an account of the student uprising against the Vietnam war.
In Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America, her 2001 bestseller, she wrote an immersive experience of living as a low-waged worker in Key West, Florida.
The book helped spread awareness of an economy in which it was necessary to work two or three jobs to survive, and acted as a catalyst of the minimum wage movement.
Later, she used her name and energy to try to give low-income and other disadvantaged groups a direct voice to tell their own stories.
She founded the Economic Hardship Reporting Project which supports independent journalists to write about their lives including in poor rural areas of the US.
Ehrenreich, who acquired a doctorate in cell biology before she turned to social activism and writing, was diagnosed in 2000 with breast cancer. She wrote an award-winning essay Welcome to Cancerland about the experience.
She brought her trademark clear-eyed reporting to the subject of her own mortality. In 2018 she published Natural Causes: An Epidemic of Wellness, the Certainty of Dying, and Killing Ourselves to Live Longer, in which she described coming to the realization that she had lived long enough to die.
“That thought had been forming in my mind for some time,” she told the Guardian at the time. “I really have no hard evidence about when exactly one gets old enough to die, but I notice in obituaries if the person is over 70 there’s not a big mystery, there’s no investigation called for. It’s usually not called tragic because we do die at some age. I found that rather refreshing.”
Announcing his mother’s death on Twitter, Ben Ehrenreich echoed that point. “She was, she made clear, ready to go,” he said.
Positive Views of the Supreme Court Drop Sharply After Abortion Ruling
Madeleine Carlisle – September 1, 2022
Texas Challenges Elecetion Results at Supreme Court
The U.S. Supreme Court stands on December 11, 2020 in Washington, DC. Credit – Getty Images—Stefani Reynolds/Getty Images
Favorable views of the Supreme Court have dropped since the ruling overturning Roe v. Wade, a new Pew Research Center survey found, driven largely by a steep drop in approval among Democrats.
In its 35 years of polling on the court, Pew has never documented a wider partisan gap in views of the institution. In August, just 28% of Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents said they view the Supreme Court favorably. That’s the lowest rating Democrats have ever given the court in the poll’s history—18 percentage points lower than in January before the court gutted abortion rights, and almost 40 points lower than in 2020.
Favorable opinions of the court among Republicans, on the other hand, have moderately increased. In January, 65% of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents viewed the court favorably, while 73% said the same in August.
Overall, Pew found the American public is split over the Supreme Court: 48% of the public views the court favorably, while 49% holds an unfavorable view. Jocelyn Kiley, associate director of research at Pew Research Center, says this is the highest percentage of Americans sharing unfavorable views of the Supreme Court that Pew has documented in more than three decades. In August 2020, for example, Pew found that 70% of Americans held favorable views of the high court.
The survey released Thursday was conducted among 7,647 U.S. adults, including 5,681 registered voters, between August 1 and 14. Nonpartisan Pew Research Center said the intention of the survey was to understand the public view of the high court after its term concluded in June with several high-profile rulings along largely ideological lines, including the overturning of the constitutional right to an abortion in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization.
The portion of Democrats who believe the U.S. Supreme Court has too much power has almost tripled since 2020, and increased by more than 20 points this year alone: 64% percent of Democrats said the court has too much power, compared to 40% in January. The survey found that 45% of U.S. adults overall said the court has too much power, which is 15 points higher than in January. 48% of the public said the court has the “right amount of power” and only 5% said the court does not have enough power.
“We are seeing a shift in a lot of different components of how Americans view the court,” says Kiley. “We see a growing share of Americans saying that the court has too much power. A growing share of Americans also say that they see the court as conservative.”
Pew found Americans’ favorability ratings of the Supreme Court is similar to what it was in 2015, when the high court issued another controversial landmark decision: Obergefell v. Hodges, which extended same-sex couples the right to marriage. In July 2015 after the ruling, Pew found that 48% of Americans had a favorable opinion of the court, while 43% viewed it unfavorably, and 61% of Republicans viewed the court unfavorably. The partisan divide over the Supreme Court is even starker today.
