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Mar 31, 2020: Workers Walk Out All Over
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Welcome to Majority.FM's AM QUICKIE! Brought to you by justcoffee.coop

TODAY'S HEADLINES:

The working people of America have enough of the craven corporate response to the coronavirus panic. Machinists at GM demand to make ventilators, Amazon workers walk out on the job, and gig workers quit delivering groceries until their bosses show them some respect.

Meanwhile, new data suggests that the social restrictions recommended by experts and derided by Trump are working. Who would have thought? Besides nearly every expert, that is.

And lastly, social networks may finally be growing a spine when it comes to banning conspiracies and lies, even when they come from top government officials. But will Trump ever get the block he deserves?

THESE ARE THE STORIES YOU NEED TO KNOW:

Something is happening in America, and it’s starting in warehouse aisles, customer service cubicles and factory floors.

Workers at Amazon, Instacart, General Motors and more all staged strikes, protests, sick-outs or work-stoppages on Monday to fight back against their corporate bosses’ negligent response to the coronavirus.

On Monday, many of Instacart’s nationwide network of grocery delivery drivers, who are classified as contractors for the company and not employees, walked off the job. They’re asking for hazard pay on deliveries and free safety equipment.

The same day, workers at Staten Island’s Amazon Fulfillment center joined them, walking out of their warehouse into the rain to protest the lack of protective measures for workers.

In a despicable turn of corporate evil, Amazon fired the worker who organized the impromptu walkout, Chris Smalls, alleging that he repeatedly violated social distancing guidelines. They couldn’t even bother to make up a good excuse for giving him the boot!

Elsewhere in the Bezos empire, workers at Whole Foods are planning a sick-out on Tuesday, calling out of work en masse to pressure the company for better sick leave, hazard pay, and more.

In Pittsburgh last week, a group of mostly black garbage workers went on a wildcat strike to protest unsafe working conditions.

Workers at General Motors’s aviation facility in Massachusettes staged a silent protest on Monday, asking the company to let them convert their machines to produce ventilators, not jet engines, and distributing a list of other GM facilities that could be converted to do the same. General Motors has signed on with Ford to produce at least 50,000 ventilators over the next 100 days, but for some employees, that’s not good enough.

What this says is clear: working people are trying to save the country. If the CEOs at the top don’t let it happen, they’ve got blood on their hands.

Well after all that, it turns out the experts might have known what they were talking about.

According to data collected by medical technology company Kinsa Health, harsh containment measures like social distancing, business closures, and stay-at-home orders are contributing to a rapid drop in the number of fevers

The results aren’t exactly hard science -- Kinsa makes online-compatible thermometers that it tracks data for, so it’s basically just saying fewer people have fevers in areas where these measures have been enacted. But the company uses similar models to track the spread of the flu every year, and experts told the New York Times that Kinsa’s research is pretty solid.

The Times also reports that public health data from New York and Washington State, the two biggest epicenters of the virus in the U.S., seems to support the conclusion that containment measures are working.

Some of this data may have influenced Trump’s decision to put off relaxing the federal guidelines on social distancing until the end of April. It’s clear at this point that at least some people in the room with him are making sense.

We can only hope that they last a long time.

Twitter, Instagram and Facebook have cracked down on false, misleading, and medically dangerous content in the past few days, even if it’s coming from heads of state.

For the past week or so, Twitter has been cracking down on tweets from Rudy Giuliani and other conservative fever-swamp denizens as they attempt to flog the president’s pet theory that the coronavirus can be stopped by a drug called hydroxychloroquine.

But on Monday, the platform took it even further -- banning Brazilian President Jair [JAI-EER] Bolsonaro for posting similar content, saying that his live video violated new global standards on contradicting public health information.

Facebook and Instagram also took down the video shortly after. Last week, Twitter also deleted a post by Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, who claimed that a quote “brew” unquote could cure coronavirus.

The elephant in the room, of course, is that Trump is basically promoting the same kind of stuff. And yet, his account’s still up! Funny how that works out.

AND NOW FOR SOME QUICKER QUICKIES:

A new FBI analysis reported by ABC News warns that a surge in hate crimes against Asian Americans is possible due to the spread of the coronavirus. Gee, I wonder where the violent racists are getting their cues from?

The Massachusetts Democratic Party announced that it will cancel its statewide convention this summer due to the risk of the coronavirus, which is big news for a key Senate primary race. Incumbent Senator Ed Markey, a loyal progressive, will be considered the winner of the convention and get the party’s endorsement, although his rival, Rep. Joe Kennedy III will still get on the Democratic ballot.

A pentacostal megachurch pastor was arrested in Tampa, Florida on Monday for holding regular services on Sunday despite the statewide rulings against large gatherings. Rev. Rodney Howard-Browne has encouraged his parish to flaunt social distancing and shake hands anway, because quote: “we are raising revivalists, not pansies.” Yikes.

Sen. Elizabeth Warren and Rep. Ayanna Pressley petitioned Trump’s Health and Human Services department to collect and release further demographic data on coronavirus infection, arguing that without it, the government could not adequately protect communities of color or low-income citizens who may be hit harder by the disease.

That’s it for the Majority Report’s AM Quickie. Stay tuned for the full show later today!

#AMQuickie March 31, 2020

HOSTS - Sam Seder & Lucie Steiner

WRITER - Jack Crosbie

PRODUCER - Dorsey Shaw

EXECUTIVE PRODUCER - Brendan Finn