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TODAY'S HEADLINES:

With businesses and residents struggling, states are getting impatient waiting for pandemic aid from the federal government. Some passing their own relief packages before Congress acts.

Meanwhile, McDonald’s reportedly and illegally spies on workers it suspects of activism and labor union support. Inside sources say the company even created fake social media accounts to infiltrate employee networks.

And lastly, Illinois will become the first state to eliminate cash bail under a new law passed following a grassroots campaign. The law also includes police reforms such as a ban on chokeholds and increased protections for people detained by the police.

THESE ARE THE STORIES YOU NEED TO KNOW:

Joe Biden’s $1.9 trillion coronavirus relief plan is working its way through Congress this week. Not waiting for more federal help, states have been approving their own coronavirus aid packages, the Associated Press reports. They are spending hundreds of millions of dollars to help residents and business owners. Maryland and California recently moved forward with help for the poor, the jobless, small businesses and those needing child care. New Mexico and Pennsylvania are funneling grants directly to cash-starved businesses. North Carolina’s governor wants additional state aid for such things as bonus pay for teachers and boosting rural internet speeds.

Other states are considering significant spending to provide more relief, according to the AP. Governors and lawmakers have said they are concerned the economy and job prospects will deteriorate even further before Congress acts on the Biden plan. A slow start to the nationwide vaccination program also has tempered expectations that inoculations will be widespread soon enough to rescue businesses that have struggled with shutdown orders.

In Pennsylvania, Governor Tom Wolf, a Democrat, signed legislation using $145 million in reserves from a worker’s compensation fund for grants of up to $50,000 to owners of hard-hit bars, restaurants and hotels. Susan Williams, who with her sister owns a bar in Pittsburgh

and another just outside the city, told the AP she plans to apply for the grants. Her businesses remain under restrictions that include serving at twenty five percent capacity. The bars are closed part of the week to keep from losing money, and there’s nothing left over to pay tax bills that arrived this week. Williams said QUOTE They know damn well we haven’t been open. They basically choked our income, but they’re still sending our tax bills. It’s insane ENDQUOTE. Welcome to Pandemic Year Two.

McDonald's Spies On Workers

Would you like spies with that? For years, McDonald's has internally labeled activists and employees working with the Fight for $15 campaign a security threat and has spied on them, Vice News reports. The fast food giant's secretive intelligence unit has monitored its own workers’ activities with the movement, which seeks to increase the minimum wage to $15 per hour, including by using social media monitoring tools. A team of intelligence analysts in the Chicago and London offices keep an eye on the activities of Fight for $15 labor organizers across the world, figure out which McDonald's workers are active in the movement, and who they are working with to organize strikes, protests, or attempt to form unions.

As Vice explains, the surveillance is particularly notable given the current political battle being fought over a $15 minimum wage, which has been proposed in Joe Biden's pandemic relief package. Specifically, McDonald's was worried about tracking workers who may be involved in activist groups advocating for higher wages, better working conditions, and the right to join unions.

Two former McDonald's corporate employees, who asked to remain anonymous, told Vice details of the intelligence program. As part of this program, since at least last year, McDonald's intelligence analysts have used a social media monitoring tool to collect and scrape data. The sources told Motherboard that the company's intelligence analysts have attempted to use the tool to reconstruct the friends lists and networks of workers involved in the labor movement using fake Facebook personas. McDonald's denies this specific aspect of the program. Matthew Finkin, a professor at the University of Illinois College of Law, said spying on workers with the purpose of learning about their labor organizing is a violation of federal labor law. No wonder they deny it!

Illinois Ends Cash Bail

Here’s an example worth following. Illinois Governor JB Pritzker has signed off on a new law that not only institutes major police reforms, but also makes the state the first in the nation to completely abolish cash bail, according to NBC News. House Bill 3653 aims to make sweeping changes to the state’s existing policies on policing and adjudication. The legislation, which was signed Monday, comes as nationwide calls to address racial bias in the justice system have intensified, Pritzker said after signing the law.

The law came together through a grassroots mobilization of more than one hundred reform organizations, as well as the Illinois Legislative Black Caucus, NBC reports. Democratic state Senator Elgie Sims Junior, who sponsored the bill, said QUOTE History will judge how we responded in this moment, which called for big, bold, transformative changes. This is not a moment for incrementalism ENDQUOTE.

Among the most notable facets of the law is the abolishment of the cash bail system, per NBC. The new law eliminates wealth-based detention and instead gives judges a more strictly defined decisionmaking process based on a real risk of present threat or willful flight. This will not go fully in effect until 2023, while other parts of the law will go into effect as early as July. The law also includes a requirement that all police officers wear body cameras by 2025, a ban on all police chokeholds, and new guidelines for decertification of police officers. Detainee rights have also been expanded to include the right to make three free phone calls within three hours of arrival at the police station and before questioning occurs, and the ability to retrieve phone numbers contained in their cellphone’s contact list prior to the phone being placed in inventory. Sounds like a good start.

AND NOW FOR SOME QUICKER QUICKIES:

A Food and Drug Administration review released yesterday of the single-shot coronavirus vaccine made by pharmaceutical giant Johnson and Johnson found it was safe and effective and completely prevented hospitalizations and deaths in a large clinical trial, according to the Washington Post. The review sets the stage for a third coronavirus vaccine to be authorized as soon as this weekend. The more the merrier.

A former aide to Governor Andrew Cuomo published an essay yesterday accusing the governor of sexual harassment and outlining several unsettling episodes, including an unsolicited kiss in his Manhattan office, the New York Times reports. The aide, Lindsey Boylan, described several years of uncomfortable interactions with Cuomo, including an invitation to play strip poker on a government airplane. Cuomo’s press secretary calls Boylan’s claims false. Maybe Cuomo should use his own words.

A US Navy veteran who was experiencing a mental health crisis died after a police officer called out to help him knelt on his neck for several minutes, asphyxiating him, the Guardian reports. Angelo Quinto, thirty, was suffering a bout of paranoia, anxiety and depression in his family home in Antioch, California, when his sister called police on December 23rd. According to the family, the responding officer grabbed Quinto from the arms of his mother, then knelt on his neck for almost five minutes. Terrible.

The Daily Beast reports that Christopher Cantwell, dubbed the Crying Nazi after recording a tearful video about his violent role in the 2017 Unite the Right march in Charlottesville, cried in court yesterday as he was sentenced to forty-one months in prison. Cantwell, who was convicted last fall of threatening another neo-Nazi, had already spent thirteen months in jail since his arrest. Please pass the Kleenex.

FEB 25, 2021 - AM QUICKIE

HOSTS - Sam Seder & Lucie Steiner

WRITER - Corey Pein

PRODUCER - Dorsey Shaw

EXECUTIVE PRODUCER - Brendan Finn