A shout out to @aaup.org, the URI Adjunct faculty union, and the URI Professional Staff Association (PSA), a bargaining unit affiliated with the National Education Association of Rhode Island (NEARI).

You are almost always better off in a union, so join one, start one, or support one!

Promoting labor rights reduces inequality, narrows the racial wealth gap, and serves as a popular policy platform for politicians seeking to win elections. If you expand this to all labor rights, you have a political agenda that motivates a majority of diverse voters and strengthens democracy.

We use CIRIGHTS data, which codes US State Department and @amnesty.org human rights reports to assign numerical scores for two dozen human rights. For this piece, we examined the rights to unionize and engage in collective bargaining. We looked at both protection in law and in practice.

Unions have an incentive to recruit all workers. As a result, they often help to promote racial inequality faster than other parts of society (they tend to be less racist). Where collective labor rights are strong, minorities can also unionize for themselves when they are shut out of other unions

Unions, protected by collective labor rights, negotiate for higher wages, limit corporate power, and lobby for better working conditions for all workers. This is how we got the 40-hour workday, overtime pay, & restrictions on child labor. They also strengthen democracy and act as a check on power.

Building on our scholarly work, we argue that collective labor rights reduce inequality by empowering workers: they reduce the cost of organizing unions, reduce the cost of collective bargaining, create a credible threat for non-union workers to unionize, and protect the right to strike

In Providence & many cities protests stayed peaceful in large part because police did not engage in repression.

In LA police repressed a large number of peaceful protesters exercising their first amendment right to protest & it turned violent.

Before blaming protesters please consider the cause

In LA today police used flash bangs, rubber bullets, tear gas, pepper balls, and kettled protesters. This happened before the curfew.

This was repression & is illegal.

Protesters threw tear gas canisters and rocks in return and this a prime example of how police turned a peaceful protest violent.

In Providence there was little police presence. It was mostly used to direct traffic. Police were not armored with riot gear.

Police stood away from protests and did not behave aggressively.

These actions reduce violence.

Let peaceful protests be and they usually stay peaceful

What about LA?

When police use repression against peaceful protesters it has a few consequences:

It can attract more violent members to the movement

It can lead some people to believe violence is the only thing that will cause change

It can provoke violence as an emotional response or attempt at revenge

Police beating, or pepper spraying peaceful protesters understandably causes anger.

If your friend or family member is the victim of repression, you may get angry enough to fight back.

Violence here is caused by police and entirely preventable. Some violent protests are caused by police action

violent repression of peaceful protesters and journalists includes:

arrests, firing tear gas, firing rubber bullets, beating protesters with batons, kneeling on their neck, or trampling them with horses

When protests are large and people are very angry this often provokes a violent response…

Threats of repression increase the risk of protests turning violent

A heavy police present increases opportunities for confrontations and often leads the public to view protests as violent. Why else would so many police be there?

peaceful protests can end in violence because of these threats