Uber drivers have disrupted the Monday morning commute in protest over cuts to their wages. Drivers across the country held a “log-off strike” for two and a half hours from 7am on Monday, 6 August, in protest against changes in Uber’s fee structure that have led to a drastic cut to their wages. 
Starting in May, Uber shifted to a new “upfront fares” system in which the fee is set before the trip rather than according to the total mileage. This means that, if there is an unexpected detour or heavy traffic, or a passenger requests an extra stop, the driver is not paid for this time. 
Along with other changes, this has resulted in drivers’ wages being cut by as much as half. But because Uber drivers are not considered “employees”, but rather independent contractors using the Uber app, a minimum wage is not guaranteed, nor is the industry standard for casual drivers of $30 an hour. This is the result of a Fair Work ruling last December that confirmed Uber drivers are not Uber employees, absolving Uber of any responsibility to its workers.
The log-off strike was called by Ride Share Drivers United, a group of drivers who advocate to protect drivers’ rights. Not entitled to union rights like normal employees, they organised the action through word of mouth and social media.
A RSDU founder and driver who organised the action, Max, told Red Flag, “We have a multibillion corporation exploiting workers under false pretences: short change, cheat and underpay them”.
A driver from another group, Rideshare Australia, explained, “Uber has been forcing its so called ‘contractors’ to agree with its constantly changing terms, with no option of negotiation. They simply put up a page on in the driver’s app that sets out the new terms, and if you do not accept them, you do not get to drive any more”.
One striker, a full-time Uber driver since June 2017, told Red Flag that the changes have “completely crippled my income. I used to make a living working four hours a day, and now I do unhealthy 12 hour shifts”. She asked not to be named for fear of retribution from Uber, as she can be fired – or “deactivated” – with no right to appeal. She also has to pay GST on top of income tax. “There is no way for us to make enough to put money away into super accounts for our futures”, she said.
While it is hard to confirm how many drivers participated in the action, the publicity surrounding it has led to an investigation of the changes by the Fair Work Ombudsman. Uber has remained silent.
But drivers aren’t willing to wait forever. Max confirmed, “More strikes are coming. Uber has 10 days to respond to our demands before we start the next set of disruptions. Uber is in a race to the bottom, and we are fully committed to forcing them to lift their game”.

Julia Jones

Uber drivers on log-off strike

Thousands of people in across the US are continuing to participate in the once sleepy affairs of town hall meetings to confront Republican politicians, including in Republican stronghold states.
This new phenomenon has opened an avenue for political participation. Meetings have become collective actions in which people can air their grievances and be empowered to keep fighting.
 A number of participants in the events spoke to Red Flag. Most were motivated to attend after calls and emails to politicians went unanswered. As Tricia from Arizona explained of her district representative, “Congressman Schweikert is not voting in a way that represents my district and was unresponsive to my phone calls, so I decided to attend the meeting”.
Megan, 33, from Texas, said, “Trump is undermining the basic tenets of our democracy, and I feel like it’s our moral duty to speak out and urge our representatives to stand up to him”.
Once at a meeting, many people were disappointed to find that their politicians refused to speak to them – or failed even to show up.
In Georgia, two Republican senators and a member of the House of Representatives advertised an “open office” event. More than 400 people showed up, but staffers refused to hold a town hall meeting, then left the building to boos and jeers. A woman took the microphone and proposed that they hold their own meeting, which they did.
In Arizona, Mickey, 66, who had never been involved in politics, organised a packed “citizens’ town hall” when the politicians refused to do so. “I just had to take action with all the terrible things I saw happening to our country. I had to give us a voice”, she said.
She invited Schweikert, who didn’t come. So they set up a chair with his face on it. For hours, people aired their concerns about Trump. One husband spoke about fears for his Muslim wife.
Others spoke about concern for their immigrant neighbours and friends who were afraid of being targeted by the government. One woman said that if the Affordable Care Act were repealed, she would have to choose $5,000 monthly medical bills for medication or death.
Chris, 46, said: “I was proud to be there, and we’re not giving up. If our Congressman won’t agree to meet with us, we will find other ways to apply pressure”.
Across the country, participants reported that health care is one of the most talked about issues. Significantly, this is a common issue even for the retirement-aged Republicans who attend.
For others, the issue is simply the betrayal of the democratic system they had always been taught to be proud of. In Iowa, meeting organisers put up missing posters for their representative David Young.
Sarah initially attended a meeting in Idaho because she was concerned about losing her health care. She now organises “Resist Trump Tuesdays”, in which a group of locals hold actions and meetings at politicians’ offices. “At this point, our goal is to draw attention to the fact that our representatives refuse to meet with us”, she said.
Justin, 34, who attended a town hall meeting to confront Arkansas representative Tom Cotton, said, “You could feel the energy in the crowd like a charge. We were all chanting about democracy. The feeling reminded me of a concert”.
These events have been an important antidote to despair and fear over the last six weeks and are an entry point to activism for many people who oppose Trump.

Republicans run from town hall protests

Republican congressional representatives are under siege at town hall meetings across the US. Hundreds and in some cases thousands of protesters have descended on what usually are low-key affairs between lawmakers and their constituents.
At a 9 February meeting in the Republican and Mormon heartland of Utah, nearly 3,000 locals voiced their discontent with their representative Jason Chaffetz.
People lined up for hours to get a seat in the town hall meeting. While many were more moderate than Chaffetz’s hardcore base, even conservatives called on him to rein in Trump.
Andrew, 46, was one of several attendees to speak via email to Red Flag. “Trump’s actions run afoul of everything I believe our country is supposed to be about”, he said. “If I couldn’t stand up for this, I couldn’t face myself.”
More than 1,000 people packed the hall. When Chaffetz walked into the building, he was loudly booed. His mocking distain for dissenters only energised the crowd. “He was the only one with a mic”, said Kevin, 33. “But we were there for him to hear us.”
Significantly, even Mormons in the crowd were audibly disagreeing with Chaffetz’s answers to the pointed question he received.
One woman said that Trump should be impeached. The hall chanted, “Do your job!”
Meanwhile, outside, the spillover crowd of more than 1,500 started an impromptu rally. For the next few hours, they chanted, “Chaffetz is a coward!” and “This is what democracy looks like!”
Chaffetz ended the meeting early and was booed off the stage. “Walking out of the building, I felt let down”, said Andrea. “But I was met with the energy from those gathered outside and I was hopeful.”
In true Trump style, Chaffetz later claimed they were all paid protesters and an “angry leftist mob”. But it hasn’t stopped people from continuing to take a stand.
“Many who once felt intimidated are finding outlets to express themselves”, said Hailey, 30. “We are inspiring each other to no longer be silent.”

Town hall turmoil as Republicans targeted

A group of middle and high school students in Oakland, California, recently made international news when they joined San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick’s silent protest against racism and police violence in the United States. The students, members of the Oakland Unified School District’s Honour Band, knelt as they played the national anthem before a professional baseball game. 
The year 7 and 8 students spoke to Red Flag about their decision to “take the knee”. Inspired by Kaepernick, high school members of the district’s school band first proposed the idea. Right away, the middle schoolers knew that it would be controversial. From their first day of school, US children are taught to show extreme reverence for the national flag during the anthem. This includes standing with hats off and hands on their hearts. Anything else is seen as highly disrespectful.
Despite this, some of the students felt so passionately about the need to take a stand against recent police killings that they still wanted to do it.
One student, Mikayla, 14, delivered an impassioned speech to the others about the need to stand up against racism. “I wanted us to kneel because as a country we need to have a conversation about what is going on here”, she said, explaining why she felt so strongly. “We have been turning our backs on murder and racism, and I was tired of not doing anything about it.”
Before the game, band conductor Zack Pitt-Smith made it clear the decision to kneel would be each student’s choice. Even as they took the field, no-one was sure who was going to do it.
Serena, 14, remembers, “I was scared to kneel because I wasn’t sure if anyone else would join me. I was thinking, ‘Should I kneel? I feel very strongly about this – I’m going to do it.’ But I was still shaking because I didn’t know what everyone else would do.”
Nearly all of the 155 band members knelt as they played. Everyone had their own reasons. “I’m learning about human rights in history class, and the number one human right – the right to live – is being violated right here”, Serena said. “I wanted to show my dislike for our country’s recent actions”, Eden, 12, added. “I was trying to say ‘I don’t like our country the way it is right now!’’’
The multiracial nature of their protest was very important to them. Griffin, 13, explained: “[It] shows that both people who are being discriminated against and people who are not are standing up together against mistreatment”.
At the game itself, their action was met with applause. But soon after, they faced an onslaught of criticism in the news and on social media. Although they knew their act would be controversial, most band members were surprised at the number of negative comments accompanying online news stories. Still, most weren’t fazed by the criticism. “Even though we have haters, we know we are fighting for what is right, so I ignore them”, Griffin said.
Many commentators accused Pitt-Smith and other adults of manipulating them, claiming that the students didn’t fully understand what they were doing. “A lot of people think that because we are kids, we aren’t paying attention to what’s happening in the news”, Mikayla said, “but we notice a lot, and see who got shot”.
As a group they discussed how best to defend their actions. “We had lots of debates every week”, said Johnny, 12. One student who isn’t African American was told that she shouldn’t have done it because racism and racist police violence don’t affect her. At the time she didn’t know what to say, so she brought her question to the group. Someone remembered the words of Martin Niemoller’s well-known poem about solidarity, “First they came for the communists”.
Some of the students voiced frustration that the people who were criticising them were avoiding talking about the issue of racism and police violence. “We did this to make a point that bad things are happening”, said Johnny. “People are ignoring what we are trying to say, and only saying it was disrespectful, without having the discussion.”
So, what next? Elijah, 12, responded quickly to say, “My plan is to keep protesting until there is racial equality, and there are consequences for police officers who hurt people”. Olivia, also 12, said, “I hope these protests show the world how much racism there is here. I will definitely continue my protests. I want to show that even though we are young we can still take a stand and change the world”.

Interview: Students join US anthem protest

In bed recovering from major surgery, 60-year-old Cairns resident Myra Gold was jolted awake at 7:30am on a Sunday by pounding on her front door. It was the police, with a warrant to search her home. They took her phone, rifled through her stuff and searched her car.
What sort of serious criminal activity did the police say called for an early morning raid by a whole team? Wilful damage. Of a pole. With a sticker. “I was thinking, ‘This is like a scene from 1984’”, Myra explained to Red Flag. Myra “had to learn to stop putting up stickers”, the police said as they stood in her house.
The slogan printed on the stickers – which are slightly larger than a 50 cent piece – give a clue as to why they met this response: “G20 benefits the 1%.”
The G20 Summit is an annual meeting of leaders of the world’s richest 20 countries. And Myra’s sticker is spot on – it exists only to protect the profits of the super rich, while stomping on everyone else. Brisbane will host the main summit in November, but G20 finance ministers met in Cairns in September to get discussions started. An army of police also landed in the small regional centre to prevent any disruption and stamp out dissent. 
Already outraged by the onslaught from Abbott’s budget, when Myra heard G20 was coming, she knew she had to do something. “We’re facing huge cuts, while the profits of the rich just keep going up”, she says.
With a few friends, she printed anti-G20 stickers and put them up around the local shopping centre. Almost immediately her two friends were arrested as they wrote the same slogan in chalk on the footpath. Myra was called in for questioning about the “incident” but wasn’t charged.
The political nature of their arrests became clear when the lead officer snapped that they would do whatever it took to “avoid the violence of Toronto” – a reference to large protests held against the 2010 G20 summit.
Shortly after, the local Officeworks refused to print any of Myra’s stickers because of the “political nature” of her message. It was later reported that the police had directed the company to censor material customers wanted printed.
Myra’s case will be in court in October, but she is adamant that she will continue to exercise her right to free speech.
“Everyone is going to start hurting from these policies”, she says. “It’s about time people act and get involved in civil disobedience.”

Tropical Cairns a hothouse of police control

On a recent visit to the US, I mentioned to my friend Amy that she was looking worn and should come visit me in Australia. She looked at the ground and started to tear up. “I’d love to but I can’t”, she said. “I’m trapped here.”
Taking out government loans for her undergraduate and master’s degrees, Amy accumulated a staggering $92,000 debt. She cannot even keep up with the interest payments of $500 per month. A new scheme will wipe her debt if she works at a government or not-for-profit job for 10 years.
Her current government job was meant to be temporary. She’s overworked and underpaid in a crowded legal aid office. But because she is unable to pay off the debt, she decided to stay on for the remaining eight years.
Total outstanding student debt in the US is now more than $1 trillion – second only to mortgage debt. With skyrocketing tuition and even the cheapest degrees costing $15,000, most students cannot attend without some kind of loan.
Amy’s situation may seem extreme, but it’s not uncommon. One in 10 graduates have debts of between $50,000 and $99,000.
When we were growing up, we were told over and over how much better our lives would be with a university degree. US citizens with a degree will earn on average $17,000 more a year than those without. But rising costs, crippling debt and an unpromising job market make those figures less appealing.
Since the 1980s, US universities, both private and public, have been prioritising business over learning. They said that market competition would improve the quality of education. But the real result of the privatisation of services and even entire campuses is decreased public funding and ever-increasing tuition and fees.
As the price of higher education climbed, the number of students needing loans rose with it. Student loans became a lucrative business. By the late 1990s, predatory loan schemes and laws allowing draconian debt collection methods became the norm.
The crisis has now reached fever pitch, with students drowning under enormous debts that most cannot pay back. The stress of these loans is a prominent feature of the lives of most people under 35.
“It’s a sick joke”, says Madilyn, a recent graduate from Massachusetts. “Every time I’m in a big group of friends, someone gets a call from a debt collector to harass them about their payments. They’ll say ‘Uh oh, a 1-800 number from Florida. I’m not answering that one.’ We all just laugh because we understand. We don’t have the money to pay.”
Despite having four-year degrees, most of her friends are still working the jobs they had before they began study. The only difference is that now they have $30,000 debts. One friend even gave all her friends How to avoid paying your debt for dummies books for Christmas.
“You just feel so trapped … They get you in this loan, then it just keeps getting worse and worse and there’s no way you can ever catch up to it”, Madilyn tells me. “Student debt is a dark cloud that hangs over this generation.”
Entrenching the class divide
The most prominent feature of the US higher education system is how it maintains the gap between rich and poor.
Wealthy students go to the best schools, like Harvard and Yale, pay fees upfront, graduate debt-free and work in high paying jobs. Working class students have three choices: take on huge debt to go to a good school, choose a cheaper but low quality school or skip uni altogether.
Wealthy students are free to concentrate on their work; working class students must juggle study with work, typically working 20 hours or more to make ends meet.
Understandably, many students are wondering what the point is of attending university at all.
My friend Brian worked for a year after high school to save for uni. But in the end he decided not to go. “I know people with degrees earn more, but you end up having to spend your youth paying it back. That part doesn’t seem worth it, so I figured I should just skip it and work.”
The Australian government is right that we should learn from the US university system. But the lesson is that a deregulated education system is a nightmare for students.

'A dark cloud that hangs over a generation'

Debbie Kilroy’s first encounter with the state came at an early age. At 14 years old, she was put in a youth facility for wagging school. “They thought locking me up would teach me a lesson. Well, it did, but not the one they thought.”
It was a brutal environment, in which the young people were powerless and without voice. “I spent a lot of time in isolation because the matron didn’t like me that much. I didn’t like her either.”
Kilroy stood up for herself as best she could. “They would tell us we were bad, then lock us in isolation. In my head I’d go, ‘Yeah, I’m bad, so I’ll show you how bad it can get.’ So we rose to the occasion.”
After being in and out of youth detention throughout her teens, she eventually landed in Brisbane’s notorious Boggo Road adult prison. While there, a friend and fellow inmate was murdered. After that, prison management experimented with a system of prisoner consultation. Kilroy became the convener of a prisoners’ committee dealing with young people at risk of being criminalised.
“Most of the women that I was in there with, I had also been in youth prison with – we knew it was a fast track to adult prison. We wanted to stop that”, she explains.
After her release in 1992, she established Sisters Inside to continue the work she started in prison. Sisters Inside, based in Brisbane, advocates for the rights of women in the criminal justice system. Importantly, it does so alongside women in prison.
What’s the number one issue facing women in prison?
“Well”, Kilroy says, “being behind bars, first and foremost”. A large part of what Sisters Inside does is about trying to keep people out of prison – defence lawyers, assistance with parole and working on alternatives to prison.
But Kilroy says things are getting worse. “Two decades ago, there were about 100 women in Queensland prisons. Now there are over 600. But there’s less crime in Queensland being committed than 20 years ago.”
If it’s not, in fact, about community safety, what is the expanding prison system about?
“It’s fear-mongering that allows the government to supposedly remove the rights of just a specific group – asylum seekers, bikies, sex offenders. But it’s really about eroding everyone’s rights.”
Despite being a lawyer herself, she often warns clients not to think the law will bring them justice. “Laws are implemented to target certain people. The law does not protect you – the law protects certain people”, she says.
There’s no clearer expression of this than the gross over-representation of Aboriginal women in prison. “Prisons in Darwin and north Queensland are predominantly full of Aboriginal women. They’re clearly targeted because of poverty, reactive violence and mental health issues”, Kilroy argues.
Many of these women cannot read or write. Kilroy explains that many women in prison are on remand and have no idea why they’re there, if they’ve been sentenced or for how long. “So what are we doing here? We’re actually locking up children, who are now adults that have had an education system that fundamentally failed them.”
Kilroy speaks a lot about the impact of criminalisation on children. The majority of female prisoners in Australia have children, with most being younger than 16.
“It’s children that pay the most – the stigma because they have a mother in prison. They’re taken into care, moved from home to home. And these children are criminalised; the cops are called on them all the time.”
She tells the story of the young Aboriginal girl who died trying to see her mother in prison. The residential care facility where she lived had promised that she could visit her mother that day, then abruptly refused to take her in.
Upset, she took the keys to the car and tried to drive herself there. The cops were called, and came racing down the street towards her with sirens blaring. The 13-year-old jammed on the accelerator, lost control of the car and smashed into a tree.
Kilroy speaks often in public about abolishing the prison system completely. But until that day, she says: “The priority is that we do not lose voice. The way we see it at Sisters Inside is that as long as there’s women in prison that have no voice, absolutely no voice at all, that we will never stop speaking up. We’re not going anywhere, we are not going to be quiet.”

Uber drivers on log-off strike

Republicans run from town hall protests

Town hall turmoil as Republicans targeted

Interview: Students join US anthem protest

Tropical Cairns a hothouse of police control

'A dark cloud that hangs over a generation'

Speaking up for the sisters inside

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