(1891/93-1964) African American fiction writer. Nella Larsen was born in Chicago to a Danish mother and a West Indian father, who died when Nella was two. Her mother then married a man of her own race and nationality, a situation which some have said has informed Larsen's writing. After studies in Nashville and then, in Copenhagen, Larsen studied nursing from 1912-1915 at Lincoln Hospital in New York City. Her love of books led her to take a job as librarian in the Harlem Branch of the New York Public Library first as assistant librarian from 1922-23 and then as children's librarian from 1924-26. Her short story "Correspondence" was published in September of 1926, the same month she quit her job at the library. She fell in with the major Black authors of the Harlem Renaissance including James Weldon Johnson, Jessie Fauset, Jean Toomer, and Langston Hughes. She wrote "Quicksand" (1928), and "Passing" (1929). Larsen was the first black woman to receive a Guggenheim fellowship for creative writing which she got in 1930. Larsen was eventually accused of plagiarism, and after a scandalous divorce, she receded from the literary life. She worked as a nurse in Manhattan from 1941 until her death in 1964.
Nellie Marian Walker was born in Chicago, Illinois in 1891/93.
Nella Larsen died in New York, New York in 1964.
Larsen studied nursing from 1912-1915 at Lincoln Hospital in the Bronx, New York.
Her love of books led her to take a job as librarian in the Harlem Branch of the New York Public Library first as assistant librarian from 1922-23 and then as children's librarian from 1924-26.
Larsen worked as a nurse in Manhattan, New York from 1941 until her death in 1964.


The most important things acting on the comet and its tail are the gravitational field of the sun, the solar wind (which is a flow of fast-moving charged particles such as protons out of the sun), solar radiation (photons from the sun hitting the comet and particles in the comet's tail) and the gravitational field of the comet itself.
The gravitational field of the sun just causes the comet to orbit the sun. The solar wind and solar radiation "blow" the comet's tail so that it always points away from the star. Comets are commonly referred to as "dirty snowballs," meaning that they are mostly ice with some dust and other "dirt" mixed in. The part of the comet's tail that we can see is mostly due to the sun's light reflecting off of dust in the comet's tail.
In principle there could be a stable "atmosphere" around a comet if the comet's gravitational field were strong enough to hold on to water and dust. However, comets are very small (typically a few kilometers in diameter), and it turns out that their gravitational field is just too small to hold on to any material that's not physically stuck to the comet.
Now, an object's temperature is one way of measuring the average speed of the particles that make up that object. Hot objects are made up of very energetic, fast moving particles, while cool objects are made up of sluggish, slowly moving particles. In order to make the average speed of water molecules faster than 1 meter per second, you have to have the gas warmer than about 0.001 degrees Kelvin, very close to absolute zero (this is about -459 degrees Fahrenheit). This is extremely cold, and a comet in the solar system will never get this cold, even when it's far from the sun.
The upshot of all this is that as soon as the sun heats up the comet enough to cause some of the ice to turn to water vapor, these water molecules are moving fast enough to completely overwhelm the gravitational field of the comet and escape. Then the dust and water vapor are blown back by the solar wind and solar radiation so that the comet's tail points away from the sun.
So no, there is no point where the comet's gravitational field balances the sun's radiation pressure. But this is only because comets are typically so small and therefore have weak gravitational fields. If comets were much more massive, there would be such a point. A good example of this is the Earth, with gravity strong enough to hold on to a fairly thick, warm atmosphere.


Google's cloud-based services are rebranding Google Cloud, the Silicon Valley technology giant announced Thursday.
Google has combined its cloud services under the Google Cloud umbrella, including the company's Google Apps for Work suite, machine-learning tools, APIs and Google's product collection of Android devices and Chromebooks.
Google has also renamed its Google Apps for Work product -- a suite of cloud collaboration and productivity tools -- as the G Suite. Gmail, Google Docs, Drive, Sheets, Calendar and Hangouts will all now fall under the G Suite moniker.
In combination with the Google Cloud rebranding, Google also introduced new cloud technologies and machine-learning intelligence solutions to its G Suite on Thursday. The announcement comes a year after the company first introduced artificial intelligence to its Inbox email application with Smart Reply, which the company now says is used in 10% of mobile replies.
Product feature updates include smarter storage and scheduling and presentation capabilities, as well as Natural Language processing on Google Sheets that lets users create detailed spreadsheets without the need to know any formulas.


text:
Never Forget the Time Buzz Aldrin Kicked This Guys A for Saying the Moon Landing is Fake [VIDEO]
Edwin Eugene Aldrin Jr. doesn't suffer fools. Buzz Aldrin, the second man to walk on the moon, was in California in 2002 to do an interview with a Japanese children's television show when a conspiracy theorist making a documentary accosted him. It didn't end well for the aspiring film maker.
When Bart Sibrel persisted in asking him to deny that the moon landing occurred, Buzz had to be restrained. Sibrel's questions were intrusive, for sure, and he used his size to intimidate Aldrin. Or he tried to. It didn't really work.
After asking repeatedly for Aldrin to swear on the Bible that the moon landing happened, Aldrin took a swing at him. The moment is very satisfying.
After the event, Californian authorities declined to prosecute Aldrin, who Sibrel had called "a liar and a coward"
Beverly Hills police investigated the altercation, which happened on September 9, 2002. The decision to drop the charges was made after witness testimony claimed Sibrel had "poked" Aldrin multiple times with the Bible he'd been asking Aldrin to swear on.
There was more to the story. The Japanese television show didn't exist. It was all an attempt to get Aldrin on camera for Sibrel's documentary.
Deputy District Attorney Elizabeth Ratinoff showed no sympathy to Sibrel, and scolded him for attempting to entrap Aldrin under "false pretenses."
The mission to the moon that Sibrel claims was just an elaborate hoax to gain ground in the Cold War era space-race is the 1969 flight of Apollo 11.
Aldrin's punch skyrocketed him to fame as a no-nonsense bada**.

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


Tell the treacherous bugger to stay in Cardiff.
lets start with a few new faces on the park,the coach picks the team. if he has no stars and we dont ,who do we get has our coach who can turn that squad around.whoever has been responsible for recruiting needs the bullet.
That Shaun Wane's a good coach, why do we not try him?
kath quite right,but any decent coach watching the last match must be wondering how do you turn them round and do i need the hassle.people keep telling me george williams is a superstar,he isnt as good as the old man at wakefield who plays in the same position.
recruitment since lenighan abandoned/bought wrl club is not far short of abysmal.
will edwards be snapped up by england ru.
I remember when Wigan were competing for Shaun's signature when he turned pro.
Asked if there had been any developments one Wigan official said " we are waiting for the white smoke to come from Jackie's hat"
if its not edwards, who do you lot think can turn em around.
Lenagan admits no contract signed and it's his fault ! Wales coaching staff shared a million pound bonus for last weeks grand slam - and folk still expect him to come?
Apparently Edwards told Talksport "it's like having five Challenge Cup finals on the bounce being in the Six Nations because of the size of the crowds and the interest in the games. I need time to think and evaluate the situation" . In my opinion, even if he comes it would be because he didn't get a better offer within Union (unlikely). From his Talksport comments it's pretty obvious where he'd rather be and I can accept that, but why even make a verbal agreement ("cemented by a handshake" - hilarious!) if you're not 100% committed? Safety net? If I was Pollard I'd be saying "I'll make the decision for you, sign now or forget it" We do need a solution, Lam doesn't appear to be it and I'm not sure who's available but whoever it is needs to be committed to Wigan and not have one eye on summat else. And a chairman who "didn't realise a contract hadn't been signed"....quite worrying!
Is Maurice Bamford still on the scene?
...What a laugh, eh, Bill?
You're a bigger traitor than Edwards...In more ways than one.


text:
require 'spec_helper_acceptance'

describe 'mysql::server::account_security class', :unless => UNSUPPORTED_PLATFORMS.include?(fact('operatingsystem')) do
  describe 'running puppet code' do
    it 'should work with no errors' do
      pp = <<-EOS
        class { 'mysql::server': remove_default_accounts => true }
      EOS

      # Run it twice and test for idempotency
      apply_manifest(pp, :catch_failures => true)
      expect(apply_manifest(pp, :catch_failures => true).exit_code).to be_zero
    end

    describe 'accounts' do
      it 'should delete accounts' do
        shell("mysql -e 'show grants for root@127.0.0.1;'", :acceptable_exit_codes => 1)
      end

      it 'should delete databases' do
        shell("mysql -e 'show databases;' |grep test", :acceptable_exit_codes => 1)
      end
    end
  end
end

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaGithub


Over 400 children from war-torn Syria and Iraq have been taken in by Catholic schools around Sydney, and that number will continue to rise over the coming months.
These incredibly vulnerable children have fled with their families from the terror of ISIS and civil war in their homelands, and have been welcomed into Sydney's Catholic schools as they seek a new life full of hope for the future.
Mary MacKillop College in Wakeley has taken in 25 girls from Syria and Iraq since the beginning of the current school term. Principal Narelle Archer says the school is set to take in more as the stream of refugees continues to flow into Sydney over the next few months. "The girls are very resilient" and "very good at integrating" with the other students, she said, but they face several challenges as they have experienced interrupted schooling and have no English skills.
The school is not yet aware of the specific traumas that each of the girls has endured. "You have to dig a little bit," Ms Archer said, but she is aware that some of the girls' relatives had been killed by ISIS.
Most of the refugees are Christian – either Chaldean Catholic or Syriac Catholics – and the parents want their children to attend Catholic schools. However, Ms Archer referred to a "funding glitch" preventing Catholic schools from accessing support funding.
"A lot of the Catholic schools don't have room for these students but Sydney Catholic Schools are trying to do as much as they can," she said.
Sr Margaret Barclay, who is a Presentation Sister and a Social Worker, has been supporting refugee students and their families at Our Lady of the Rosary Primary school in Fairfield, which has taken 34 students from Syria and Iraq.
The biggest difficulties for the refugee children, according to Sr Barclay, is the language barrier and getting used to a new system where they are in the classroom all day listening to classes in English. It is "exhausting" for them, she said.
Patrician Brothers College, also in Fairfield, has so far taken 12 boys, all from Iraq and mostly from the city of Mosul, which was seized by ISIS in 2014. Some of the boys are over 18 years of age as they missed out on schooling in recent years due to the situation in Iraq.
"Our mission is outreach to the most needy," Principal Peter Wade said. The school has totally refurbished several classrooms for the new students, deliberately located at the centre of the school campus, Mr Wade said, so that the new students don't feel they are on the periphery of the school community but rather at the heart – embraced, supported and included.
The school has a Catholic Intensive English Centre with expert English teachers and bilingual teachers, to get the boys up-to-speed with the English language before they transition into the mainstream school curriculum. The school has also supplied the boys with uniforms and computers and they have already been transitioned into sport and other activities.
Mr Wade said the other students have been "brilliant" in welcoming the new boys. He said the refugee students come from "the most beautiful families" and are highly "aspirational".
Receiving these refugee students is also of great benefit to the school community, he said.
He referred to one of the Iraqi students in Year 9 who was so keen to start playing soccer that he kept his soccer boots on his desk during classes. The teachers noticed that every-so-often he would touch the boots, rearrange them or stroke them. Mr Wade says he instructed staff to involve the boy in soccer matches, even if he had to start off as a water carrier. He now plays for the school on a regular basis. "He was embraced by the coaches and the students," Mr Wade said.
The more direct form of support is also appreciated. "We never turn down donations," Mr Wade added.
Dr Dan White, Executive Director of Sydney Catholic Schools, is "very proud" that Catholic schools in Sydney have taken over 400 refugee students from Syria and Iraq. He said it had involved "a massive joint effort across the system" to accommodate the new students at the three Catholic Intensive English Centres at Fairfield, Wakeley and Lakemba.
Staff from a broad range of schools have given generously of their time, he said, with some giving up holidays and many driving long distances, just to be present so the centres would be ready for the influx of new students.
It has been "humbling to see the generosity and compassionate response from people," Dr White said.
One major challenge for the refugee families, he said, is that the qualifications of the parents – many of whom are "extremely well educated" – are not recognised in Australia, making it difficult for them to find work. He said that culturally this can be a "source of great shame," especially for the fathers, to be unable to support their families.
Some of the refugee students had family members "killed before their eyes," Dr White said. They have suffered continued oppression in their homelands, with no freedom of religion or freedom of movement. They also endured the anxiety of the journey after fleeing the persecution and conflict, staying temporarily in other countries and eventually arriving in Australia.
He hopes that the "hubs" for refugees in Fairfield and Wakeley will become places of great support with advisors and mentors helping new arrivals acquire skills and resources for their new lives in Australia.
The generous response so far from the Catholic school community has been "extraordinary but not surprising," he said.
Previous articleChristians are returning to Aleppo, but to what?


text:
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Companies that have never before exerted influence in this sector are swiftly becoming its major power-brokers. Business models are being redesigned to adapt to the growing influence of data-fueled customers. Unique partnerships are being forged between agile start-ups and established brands to capitalize on this new digital-first world.
The advances in cloud-based technology have also been key. For example, a unique strategic partnership between Philips and Salesforce.com has created a platform that enables medical devices to operate in conjunction with deep sets of data.
The challenge we face is not just in developing these technologies – but making sure we always listen to our customers. Products need to be meaningful if they are to be scalable and they need to be simple to use – no matter the location or demographic in which they're used. This is why we developed Philips Lifeline GoSafe, a mobile personal emergency response system for seniors.
Jeroen Tas is Chief Innovation & Strategy Officer of Royal Philips. Jeroen is an experienced global executive and entrepreneur with a track record of leading innovation in the healthcare, information technology and financial services industries. Leading the company's global Innovation & Strategy organization, he's responsible for creating a pipeline of innovative business propositions that address emerging customer needs and enable a high-growth, profitable health continuum strategy.


text:
Q: WPF chart axis lines I need to create an application where different mathematical functions can be displayed on a canvas. I also need to draw an x- and an y-Axis on my canvas with axis labeling. It should look like this:
https://imgur.com/1Rbjm1Q
I already created the axis lines, so i just need help with the axis labeling.
This is what it looks like so far:
https://imgur.com/3VMHash
Here is the code i have used so far:
<Line X1="0" Y1="200" X2="600" Y2="200" StrokeThickness="1" Stroke="Black"/>
<Line X1="300" Y1="0" X2="300" Y2="400" StrokeThickness="1" Stroke="Black"/>
    <Canvas.Background>
                <DrawingBrush Stretch="None" TileMode="Tile"
                     Viewport="0,0 20,20" ViewportUnits="Absolute">
                    <!-- ^^^^^^^^^^^ set the size of the tile-->
                    <DrawingBrush.Drawing>
                        <GeometryDrawing>
                            <GeometryDrawing.Geometry>
                                <!-- draw a single X -->
                                <GeometryGroup>
                                    <LineGeometry StartPoint="0,0" EndPoint="0,20"/>
                                    <LineGeometry StartPoint="0,0" EndPoint="20,0"/>
                                </GeometryGroup>
                            </GeometryDrawing.Geometry>
                            <GeometryDrawing.Pen>
                                <!-- set color and thickness of lines -->
                                <Pen Thickness="0.1" Brush="Black" />
                            </GeometryDrawing.Pen>
                        </GeometryDrawing>
                    </DrawingBrush.Drawing>
                </DrawingBrush>
     </Canvas.Background>

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaStackExchange


text:
November readings
Brett Gundlock/the Globe and Mail
Don't tune out yet: the year 2020 is still full of great, much-needed analysis. This month, we are featuring work that is deeply challenging: against the idea that providing good jobs and protecting the environment are in opposition to each other; highlighting the moral depravity of for-profit, industrial agriculture; and on the revolutionary demand of giving Indigenous land back. Aside from this, there were several essential analyses of current anti-racist movements, and anti-black racist movements in particular, pieces on the power of Indigenous wisdom, and guides on organizing with tenants.
Work | Work is drudgery for a lot of people, but it can be different and meaningful, if radically reorganised
Political ecology | Like a toolbox to unpack and understand the complexity of the socio-ecological crises we live in, political ecology is dedicated to a more just and inclusive world
Development | For development to truly deliver on its promise—the betterment of life for all—it must engage a multidimensional understanding of poverty
The industrial exploitation of pigs
Exiting the false "jobs versus environment" dilemma
A history of true civilisation is not one of monuments
Recovering antiracism
Traditional skills help people on the tourism-deprived Pacific Islands survive the pandemic
Denmark to cull up to 17 million mink amid coronavirus fears
1% of farms operate 70% of world's farmland
Why are Kashmiri Muslim nomads being evicted?
Africa′s debt crisis grows amid COVID-19 pandemic
Advertisements harm the planet, researchers say
The Maya built the Western Hemisphere's first water filtration system
Hoping for a return to normal after Trump? That's the last thing we need
Joe Biden's garbage career: A timeline, and Biden's corporate cabinet: A breakdown
Let a thousand fiefdoms bloom
No easy answers: a response to Alex Heffron and Kai Heron
Haemorrhaging Zambia: Prequel to the current debt crisis
Europe's Green Deal offshores environmental damage to other nations
Climate populism & its limits
Andreas Malm's corona, climate, chronic emergency
It is time to revolutionise how we talk about the weather
Ecologically and culturally rich deserts, swamps and grasslands must not be labelled 'wastelands'
Carbon dioxide removal sucks
Mixed farming beats intensive agriculture methods
How hundreds of small 'Gardens of Eden' guard against total deforestation in Ethiopia
Lithuania's trade-in program is swapping people's old cars for new e-bikes
Skywoman falling
Cars, riots & Black liberation
Life, war, and politics: After the George Floyd rebellion
Indigenous struggles: #LandBack
What is the Indigenous landback movement — and can it help the climate?
Hunting the hunt
Land Back: The matrilineal descent of modern Indigenous land reclamation
'Land Back' is more than a slogan for a resurgent Indigenous movement
Sufficiency: the missing ingredient for sustainable digitalisation
Outgrowing growth: why quality of life, not GDP, should be our measure of success
Escaping the growth and jobs treadmill
Winning back the Internet by building our own
Why the Green New Deal needs mobility justice
What is libertarian socialism?
An economy that works for everyone
A caring economy: What would it take? The November-December 2020 New Internationalist issue asks: With the world in the midst of a deepening crisis of care, accelerated by Covid-19, what would it mean to have an economy that valued them and the people they care for?
Indigenous languages as cures of the Earth. This article is part of the #CuraDaTerra essay series, focused on Indigenous perspectives and alternatives to industrial capitalism.
Interrelations. Julian Brave NoiseCat has called eight expert witnesses to a tribunal to examine capitalist and colonial relationships to the land and one other. These testimonies endeavor to understand what has gone awry in our human societies, as well as to inquire into what other forms of knowledge, values, and interrelation might form the basis of a more just and reciprocal relationship between land and people.
Barcelona launches 10-year plan to reclaim city streets from cars
Ontario is mass evicting tenants, in as little as 60 seconds
This is what energy transition looks like: L'Amassada eviction one year later
L.A. tenants union rejects legislative compromises, affirms dual power
Barricades, boulders, and how LA's public space became a battleground for the commons
Democracy is in decline. Here's how we can revive it
'Covid created an opportunity': Lisbon to turn tourist flats into homes
New Foundational Infrastructures: economic policies for a radical municipalism?
Joel Salatin's unsustainable myth
When beef testing is surveillance, sacred cows are tools of the state
Incubated futures
Wealth, shown to scale
A copy editor's education in Indigenous style
How to organize your building
Posted in Monthly links, Monthly linksTagged #Landback, animal liberation, anti-racism, black lives matter, degrowth, indigenous movements, industrial agriculture, industrial farming, radical municipalism, workLeave a Comment on November readings
December 8, 2020 March 16, 2021
Source: William Morris
by Ekaterina Chertkovskaya
Work is drudgery for a lot of people, whether physically or mentally, as they have to work a lot to make a living. Despite this, the work we do defines how we are perceived in society, while precarity of work has become the norm. A lot of work in capitalist growth-oriented economies is also environmentally and socially destructive. However, work can be different and meaningful, if radically reorganised. In what follows I will introduce the word, then proceed to addressing the problems with work, and finish by sketching how work could be transformed.
If you look for a general definition of work, it would usually be presented as an activity that involves physical or mental effort. Such a definition includes work of different kinds, for example, wage labor, unpaid care work or subsistence farming. It is the former, however, that we usually associate work with – i.e. work as a means to earn income, taking the form of wage labor. It is this kind of work that many have to do in a capitalist economy, whether they want to or not, and despite other kinds of work co-existing with it.
What work looks like today: from modern slavery to alienation
The etymology of the word 'work' has negative connotations in some languages, including 'torture' (e.g. French) and 'slavery' (e.g. Russian). This is unfortunately the way work is experienced by many, metaphorically and literally.
Work is extremely unjustly distributed within and across societies, defined by class, race, gender and other divisions. The hardest and most dangerous work is today done by people in the Global South – including children – in inhumane conditions. The earnings from this work are often not enough to live on, and yet this work creates wealth for global economies and powerful corporations. Mining for minerals in Congo to make modern technological devices possible, making cheap disposable clothes for renowned brands in Bangladesh or manually recycling plastic waste in Thailand are all examples of such work.
Severe exploitation of people for commercial gain via, for example, forced labor and debt bondage, is called 'modern slavery'. According to the ILO, about 16 million people were in forced labor in the private economy in 2016, with 51% of these being in debt bondage. Modern slavery is particularly present in agriculture, mining and extraction, construction, and some forms of manufacturing, as well as unregulated or poorly regulated service industries. New service-oriented sectors that have been expanding rapidly and relying on digital technology – epitomised by companies like Foodora and Amazon – also come with new forms of extremely tough, controlled, accelerated and low-paid work, some of which can also be characterised as modern slavery.
When work is done in safe environments and in more decent conditions, with better salaries and shorter working hours, it still remains alienating: it leads to deskilling and lacks meaning for many. As David Graeber observed, capitalism has been good at creating a lot of 'bullshit jobs' – the kinds of jobs that do not need to exist. Corporate rhetoric, in turn, has worked hard to promote work as attractive to potential employees. For example, glitzy graduate brochures pay attention to the employer's brand, adventures, consumption and endless training opportunities that will come with work, rather than work itself. However, even the most prestigious and glamorous jobs often turn out to be mundane, boring and complicit in the problems of our times.
Even the most prestigious and glamorous jobs often turn out to be mundane, boring and complicit in the problems of our times.
In response to this, we see a revival of the interest in work as craft, which is laborious but fulfilling – baking, beer brewing, small-scale agriculture, running a zero-waste store. People leave their work in corporate spaces to do something both for themselves and the society. However, these interests are often restricted by the very structure of the capitalist market, with interesting work being difficult to live from.
Work has become precarious over the past thirty years, with job security having been substituted by employability in labor market policies. Zero-hour and short-term contracts become never-ending for some, and even those in permanent positions can be made redundant fairly easily. This is expected to be exacerbated by the rise of new technologies such as artificial intelligence, which will substitute many jobs done by people. Employers today can hire and fire people to adapt to the situation on the market, while state employment agencies help one to search for work, rather than to actually get it. In other words, the responsibility for one's situation with employment has been shifted from governments and employers to people themselves.
Despite this precarity of work and many not identifying with what they do to earn a living, most societies are characterised by a culture of workerism, where people's worth is defined by the status of the work they do. To receive financial support from the state, those who are unemployed have to engage in the often humiliating and disciplining process of proving that they are searching for work, for example, sending a particular number of job applications per week. The kind of work unemployed people have to apply for, however, is often far off from what they want to be doing.
Beyond the ways that work is changing today, there is a fundamental problem with how and which work is valued. Wage labor is a key feature of capitalism. Most people have to engage in wage labor to survive. Following Marxist theory, what appears as value created by investors or entrepreneurs is actually built on workers' labor. For example, a worker at a shoe factory makes the shoes, but doesn't own the shoe she ends up making nor does she own the machines she uses to make it with. As a result the owners of "the means of production" (e.g. the shareholders and bosses) cash in on any surplus value created, while she only receives the minimum wage the bosses are required to provide. This separation of workers from the means of production drives both capitalist surplus value and alienation from work. Because of this, Karl Marx calls work the "hidden abode of production", i.e., the source of capitalist value which is often made invisible.
As further stressed by social reproduction theory, workers also need to be sustained in spaces outside production in order to continue working. Thus, capitalist surplus value relies on yet another "hidden abode" – a vast range of reproductive activities, which are, however, invisible and are not recognised in capitalist value creation. These activities, such as domestic labor, can be paid but are largely unpaid, and mostly fall on the shoulders of women.
When products are sold, however, their exchange value comes across as independent from productive and reproductive activities – Marx referred to this as commodity fetishism. Furthermore, the capitalist system is oriented towards financial gain, rather than satisfaction of human needs, and work that brings higher profits is recognised much more than work that contributes to well-being and welfare.
As vividly demonstrated by the COVID-19 pandemic, work that is most essential for the daily functioning of societies – care work, nursing, driving public transport, garbage collection, etc – is valued least. At the same time, economic sectors that are destructive or churning out bullshit jobs – financial and housing market speculation, advertising that pollutes public spaces or creating distractive social media technology – enjoy extreme levels of financial gratification and social status. They are able to create jobs, employ people, and pay them well. Moreover, some industries are directly responsible for environmental destruction and health deterioration. Bue Rübner Hansen calls work in these sectors 'batshit jobs', to denote the madness of the contradiction when making a living is also part of unmaking life. The fossil industry, which some of the world's richest and most powerful companies belong to, is a case in point. It gives jobs to many people, but drives destruction. Such industries have to be phased out, but the workers in those industries would also need to be ensured a just transition to meaningful jobs in sectors that would be needed in the economy of the future – care, repair, and environmental regeneration.
Abolish work or liberate it?
In response to the problems with work, anti-work theses have become popular, arguing, for example, for the abolition of work. Some believe that technology will help to liberate us from work, if only it could be reclaimed from the hands of capital and used in public interest. However, reliance on massive technological interventions requires a lot of energy and materials, and will likely create a lot of waste, too—thus bringing further environmental devastation. It is also likely to come with hierarchical systems of control and, ultimately, its own forms of injustice. For example, as Barbara Muraca and Frederike Neuber argue, complex technologies like BECCS (bio-energy with carbon capture and storage) will not be possible to manage in a decentralised way, while any side effects of these technologies – such as leakage of CO2 – will directly affect local communities. Furthermore, a lot of work, often hard, time-consuming, or unpleasant, is required for the daily life of societies – such as childrearing, caring for the sick, cleaning, and provision of services. Thus, work – done by humans – is here to stay. However, it needs to be transformed.
The problem with work is not confined to 'work' only, but is structural. Capitalist economies are oriented towards continuous capital accumulation, economic growth, and profit by all means. So transformation of work should be part of a general reorganisation of societies and economies away from capitalism and towards socio-ecological transformation. This reorganisation would decentre work from the social pedestal it enjoys today and put life at the centre instead. As part of this transformation, we need to collectively rethink which work is essential for societies and contributes to well-being and environmental regeneration, and how much of it is needed.
We need to liberate ourselves from work, but also liberate work itself.
As Stefania Barca argues, we need to liberate ourselves from work, but also liberate work itself. In general, we should be working less, at a slower pace, and have time for many things outside work – reproductive, social, political, but also rest, idleness and contemplation. There also needs to be a more equal distribution of work within and across societies, with everyone contributing to socially necessary work and also having spaces for more craft-based, creative and intellectual work.
To liberate work itself, it should be organised differently. Collective forms of ownership and organising – such as cooperatives and commons – are key to the transformation of work. So are workplace democracy, non-hierarchical organisational structures and participatory decision-making. With such organisation of work, even work that is not pleasant in itself can acquire a different meaning. There are many ways to push for the transformation of work, starting from grassroots initiatives where work is organised differently, to institutional changes such as reduction of working time, job guarantee, universal basic income, and universal basic services.
Critiques of work
On modern slavery
Crane, A. (2013) 'Modern slavery as a management practice: Exploring the conditions and capabilities for human exploitation', Academy of Management Review, 38: 49-69.
International Labor Office (ILO) (2017) 'Global estimates of modern slavery: Forced labor and forced marriage', Geneva: ILO.
On other problems with work: Boredom, lack of meaning, environmental destruction
Costas J. and D. Kärreman (2016) 'The bored self in knowledge work', Human Relations, 69(1): 61-83.
Graeber, D. (2018) Bullshit jobs. London: Penguin.
Hansen, B.R. (2019) '"Batshit jobs" – no-one should have to destroy the planet to make a living', Open Democracy, 11 June.
Hoffmann, M. and R. Paulsen (2020) 'Resolving the "jobs-environment-dilemma"? The case for critiques of work in sustainability research', Environmental Sociology, doi
On discourses and qualities surrounding work: Consumption, employability, precarity
Chertkovskaya, E., Korczynski, M. and Taylor, S. (2020) 'The consumption of work: Representations and interpretations of the meaning of work at a UK university', Organization, 27(4): 517-536.
Chertkovskaya, E., P. Watt, S. Tramer and S. Spoelstra (2013) 'Giving notice to employability'. ephemera: theory & politics in organization 13(4): 701-716.
Standing, G. (2011) The precariat: The new dangerous class. London: Bloomsbury Academic.
Towards alternatives
Reclaiming work, visibilising social reproduction
Fraser, N. (2014) 'Behind Marx's hidden abode', New Left Review, 86: 55-72.
Schleuning, N. (1995) "The abolition of work and other myths', Kick it Over, 35 (Summer). Libcom.org.
Articulating and doing work differently (from critiques to alternatives)
Barca, S. (2019a) 'An alternative worth fighting for: Degrowth and the liberation of work', in E. Chertkovskaya, A. Paulsson and S. Barca (eds.) Towards a political economy of degrowth. London: Rowman & Littlefield.
Chertkovskaya, E. and K. Stoborod (2018) 'Work', in B. Franks, L. Williams and N. Jun (eds.) Anarchism: A conceptual approach. Routledge.
Kokkinidis G. (2015) 'Spaces of possibilities: workers' self-management in Greece', Organization, 22(6): 847-871.
New roots collective and 2000+ signatories (2020) 'www.degrowth.info/en/open-letter', degrowth.info, 13 May.
On organised labour as a transformative actor
Barca, S. (2019b) 'The labor(s) of degrowth', Capitalism Nature Socialism, 30(2): 207-216.
Barca, S. and E. Leonardi (2018) 'Working-class ecology and union politics: A conceptual topology', Globalizations, 4: 487-503.
Ekaterina Chertkovskaya is a researcher in degrowth and critical organisation studies based at Lund University, with interests in the themes of alternative organising, work and technology. She co-edited Towards a political economy of degrowth (Rowman & Littlefield, 2019) and is a member of the editorial collective of ephemera journal.
Thanks to Aaron Vansintjan for his caring editing of this text.
Posted in Resources for a better future, Resources for a better future, UncategorizedTagged alienation, labor, modern slavery, precarity, workLeave a Comment on Work
Make life, not work: democratizing, decommodifying and remediating existence
Photo by dylan nolte on Unsplash
by Stefanie Gerold, Ernest Aigner, Maja Hoffmann and Louison Cahen-Fourot
In May this year, a group of well-known academics launched an initiative to reform work in light of the Coronavirus pandemic and the environmental crisis. The manifesto, Work: Democratise, Decommodify, Remediate, has so far been published in newspapers around the world, and signed by more than 6,000 people. Referring to the essential contribution of workers to society and the economy – made ever more apparent during the pandemic – the manifesto argues that employees should be involved in decision-making processes in firms. It further raises the problem of leaving key human needs such as health to market forces, and therefore demands publicly funded job guarantees. In light of the environmental crisis, the manifesto calls for conditioning state bail-outs on certain environmental standards and on the presence of democratic principles within firms. It considers democratically governed firms best suited to achieve a transition towards sustainable business.
We hope that this initiative stimulates the much-needed public debate on the role of work in society. We fully share the demands to democratize firms, decommodify work, and remediate the environment in principle. However, certain suggestions point in the wrong direction and fall short of the progressive potential in current debates on work. The authors also draw an uncritically positive picture of work and are surprisingly silent about the many problems associated with work.
Democratization. The letter rightly points to the exclusion of workers from most decision-making processes in firms. Extending the principle of democracy into the realm of work is long overdue, and implementing co-determination in firms is therefore important. This does not, however, change the major purpose of privately-owned businesses: generating profit for capital owners. Placing workers' interests at centre stage requires different business models altogether, such as cooperatives that are owned and self-managed by their workers.
Nonetheless, the implied vision of a future where you need a job in order to have a say in economic decision-making is exclusionary and fundamentally undemocratic. It leaves out large parts of the population and continues to marginalize unemployed persons and unpaid (care) activities. A true democratization of work needs to go much further and encompass the democratization of the entire economy, whereby society as a whole decides on what is being produced, how and for whose benefit.
Collective deliberation about, for example, the purpose of the financial sector, or the necessity of jobs in the weapons industry, might also question the rising number of 'bullshit jobs' that are considered useless, or even destructive, for society. The Coronavirus pandemic has clearly revealed the rather limited list of jobs and sectors that are essential for meeting society's basic needs.
Decommodification. The second claim of the letter demands that work be partly exempted from market mechanisms. We fully agree that essential areas of life should be taken out of the realm of markets.
However, "ensuring that all people have access to work" would potentially exacerbate, rather than solve, the problem. The pandemic has clearly shown our dependency on work in order to make a living. Regardless of whether our job is useful to society or grants dignity, we are required to sell our labour in order to earn money to meet our needs.
A "right to work" scheme, as proposed by the letter, might indeed tackle the unemployment issue, and it might also help to ensure that basic social needs are met. However, implemented in a society equating work with personal achievement and access to social rights, it would also reinforce people's material and cultural dependency on work. To be truly emancipatory, a "right to work" scheme needs to be mirrored by a "right to live well" that is granted to all – independent of one's capacity to work, and independent of economic or health crises setting large parts of the labour force free. A "right to live well" scheme would make access to social welfare institutions independent from work and provide the necessary infrastructure to live a meaningful life independent of work. Such a scheme could take the form of an in-kind universal basic income providing health, education, housing, energy, transportation and food through full socialization of these sectors.
Moreover, the idea of grounding "citizenship in firms" because "one's mind and body, one's health – one's very life" is invested in work, seems a rather dystopian vision of the future, whereby the wage relation becomes ever more central to social life. We believe an emancipatory and desirable vision would instead limit the personal and societal relevance of work, so that it is one aspect of life but does not determine life entirely.
Environmental remediation. The letter rightly argues that any response to the Coronavirus-induced economic crisis needs to include environmental considerations. It finds that democratically led firms are best able to achieve such a transition.
Although this is true in some cases, fractions of organized labour have also repeatedly opposed needed changes. Especially in inherently unsustainable industries, such as coal, steel, or aviation, workers' rights for participation would most likely not result in the required changes – namely a significant downsizing of these industries and therefore the phasing out of most jobs.
It is important to understand that work, whether in industry or services, is always a process that consumes energy and resources, and currently at clearly unsustainable levels. As scientific studies have pointed out, we need to reduce the overall amount of work in order to stay on trajectories compatible with ecological limits. Why should we try to come up with new tasks to keep everyone busy? Instead, we could reduce work hours and redistribute the remaining necessary work more evenly across society, accompanied by a broad, democratic debate about the usefulness and harmfulness of work.
Democratizing and decommodifying work, and remediating the environment are essential to sustain life on this planet. However, this cannot be done through limiting ourselves to well-worn social democratic thinking. Nor can it be done through uncritically considering work as inherently positive, or without reflecting on the role of work in contemporary capitalism. Societies, rather than markets or firms, should decide what kind of work is done and considered useful and valuable. Emancipation from labour requires us to democratize and decommodify the economy as a whole, to transform it to become sustainable, and to enable us to live well independent of work. It requires us to democratize, decommodify and remediate our very existence.
The Work: Democratise, Decommodify, Remediate manifesto was further developed into a book. The French version of this book was released on October 1, 2020.
Note: a French version of this commentary on the manifesto was published on May 23, 2020 in Le Monde online. A German version was published on July 24, 2020 as a blog article in Der Freitag.
Stefanie Gerold is a researcher at Technical University of Berlin (TU Berlin), Ernest Aigner, Maja Hoffmann and Louison Cahen-Fourot are researchers at Vienna University of Economics and Business (WU Vienna).
Posted in FuturesTagged cooperatives, decommodification, democracy, labour, work, worker autonomyLeave a Comment on Make life, not work: democratizing, decommodifying and remediating existence
June readings
July 8, 2019 March 6, 2020
A Latvian ecovillage based on The Ringing Cedars of Russia. (Santa Zembaha/Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA)
Once a month, we put together a list of stories we've been reading: things you might've missed or crucial conversations going on around the web. We focus on environmental and social justice, cities, science fiction, current events, and political theory.
Not Afraid of the Ruins is back! In June, we launched the second season of our series of science fiction with an environmental justice twist. And we have two excellent new articles for you, one on women's organizing against extractivism in southern Africa, another continuing the debate on utopia and science, by Max Ajl. We also highlight more articles criticizing Fully Automated Luxury Communism, and feature a discussion on the merits of and problems with utopian thinking. Finally, we are featuring an older article by Peter Staudenmaier on fascist environmentalism—something every ecologist should be aware of.
The right to say no | Link | Women organizing against extractivism in southern Africa
All the water | Link | "Everything was on autopilot; the only thing the operator had to do was push a virtual button to engage the missiles."
Dispatch from the Isthmus of Tehuantepec | Link | What it will take to build alliances with our neighbors to the South
How much will the US Way of Life © have to change? | Link | On the future of farming, socialist science, and utopia
Ecofascism / fascist ideology: the "green wing" of the Nazi Party and its historical antecedents
Social collapse and climate breakdown
Climate change, dust bowls, and fishery collapse: metabolic rifts of capitalism and the need for socialism
"Batshit jobs" – no-one should have to destroy the planet to make a living
Why a hipster, vegan, green tech economy is not sustainable
State projects leave tens of thousands of lives in the balance in Ethiopia
Dam in Ethiopia has wiped out indigenous livelihoods, report finds
Only 60 years of farming left if soil degradation continues
Climate change-fueled valley fever is hitting farmworkers hard
340+ organisations call on the EU to immediately halt trade negotiations with Brazil on the grounds of deteriorating human rights and environmental conditions.
Faces of war: Kurdistan's armed struggle against Islamic State
Carbon emissions from energy industry rise at fastest rate since 2011
African city heat is set to grow intolerably
To stop destruction of Liberia's rainforest, he put his life on the line. Alfred Brownell had to flee Liberia after challenging the powerful palm oil and other extractive industries that were clearing its forests. But he remains committed to seeing that the West African nation's biodiverse lands be developed sustainably and the rights of its indigenous peoples respected.
Public concern over climate crisis reaches record high in UK
Old neighbors, new battles
White allies, let's be honest about decolonization
The shoreline still provides dinner, despite climate change and private property
Utopia, sci-fi, and the apocalypse
Change is divine: How sci-fi visionary Octavia Butler influenced this Detroit revolutionary
Utopia isn't just idealistic fantasy – it inspires people to change the world
The end of the world will be a non-event
The empty radicalism of the climate apocalypse
The Great Wheel. A 2015 article debating accelerationism vs. autonomism.
The dictatorship of the present
Touted as 'development,' land grabs hurt local communities, and women most of all
Largest animal epidemic in history is due to industrial farming
US military is a bigger polluter than as many as 140 countries – shrinking this war machine is a must
The significance of the Sudanese revolution
One hundred years after World War I, are we heading back to the abyss?
Connecting the dots: Insane trade and climate chaos
The roots of the French far right's rise
The European far right's environmental turn
How to truly decolonise the study of Africa
A Chernobyl guide to the future
Who owns tomorrow?
Will climate change kill everyone — or just lots and lots of people?
Ancient water-saving can help modern Peru
Decentralized microgridding can provide 90% of a neighborhood's energy needs, study finds
Carmageddon: it's killing urban life. We must reclaim our cities before it's too late
Why 'Game of Thrones' was about ecomodernism
The mindfulness conspiracy. It is sold as a force that can help us cope with the ravages of capitalism, but with its inward focus, mindful meditation may be the enemy of activism.
Training a single AI model can emit as much carbon as five cars in their lifetimes
The easy way out: How the pursuit of convenience produces new forms of inconvenience
How a 'repair economy' creates a kinder, more caring community
How 'maintainers', not 'innovators', make the world turn. "The vast majority of technologies that surround us and underpin our lives are not innovations, and the vast majority of labor in our culture is not focused on introducing or adopting new things, but on keeping things going."
The Chinese government should support small scale agriculture for a green China
Think prairie grasslands are just "boring grass"? Think again
As climate change worsens, some people might decide to DIY a solution
The reason Australia doesn't have nuclear power: the workers fought back
Steven Pinker is selling Reason™, not reason
Fully automated luxury communism—and its critics
Fully Automated Luxury Communism
Artificial stupidity
Gee Whiz! Communism is sure gonna be keen!
A utopian vision of communism's techno-future
To free ourselves, we must feed ourselves. Leah Penniman on bringing people of color back to the land.
Building the new left economics: public-commons partnerships and new circuits of ownership
We don't just need a Universal Basic Income, we need a Universal Basic Services System. Here's what it would look like.
Agroecology: a systems approach. How scientists propose that we feed the future… and solve a host of other problems at the same time.
Modern Monetary Theory: meet the economists fighting the economy
Paper straws won't save the planet – we need a four-day week
I work in the environmental movement. I don't care if you recycle. Fight the oil and gas industry instead.
The new left economics: how a network of thinkers is transforming capitalism
Why I'm no longer Vegan™. A video essay on why vegan activism needs to be anti-capitalist.
Radical municipalism
Is Strong Towns NIMBY, YIMBY, or what?
Every NIMBY's speech at a public hearing
What if a city decides it can live without a freeway?
How a Montreal working-class neighbourhood's activists changed Quebec and Canada
Tenants won this round
From green gentrification to resilience gentrification: An example from Brooklyn
Berlin senate approves a five-year rent freeze
Follow the carbon. The case for neighborhood-level carbon footprints.
Degrowth and the Green New Deal
Is it time to end our fixation with GDP and growth?
Economic growth: a short history of a controversial idea
The Green New Deal: whither capitalism?
10 pillars of the Green New Deal for Europe
New study dismisses green growth policies as a route out of ecological emergency
Degrowth: a call for radical socio-ecological transformation
The "do more" mindset is ruining the planet. A video explainer.
Plastics and waste
We might not have enough materials for all the solar panels and wind turbines we need
The economy of wastefulness: the biology of the commons
The feminist, anti-colonialist scientific approach to micro-plastics and pollution
Where does your plastic go? Global investigation reveals America's dirty secret
Boom goes the plastics industry
Humans have made 8.3bn tons of plastic since 1950. This is the illustrated story of where it's gone
An alternative economics summer reading list
Against militarism on Mother Earth. A collection of readings.
Caring labor. An archive of resources.
Posted in Monthly links, Monthly linksTagged degrowth, ecofascism, ecomodernism, fully automated luxury communism, green new deal, indigenous movements, radical municipalism, science fiction, workLeave a Comment on June readings
May readings
June 6, 2019 March 6, 2020
Illustration by Annie Xing Zhao
This month, we're highlighting a few articles on the work of activist organizing, the work of gestation, and… on doing less work. There's also been a flurry of conversation about futurism on the left, spurred on by the release of Aaron Bastani's new book, Fully Automated Luxury Communism. We highlight several critiques. From the recent setback to the municipal movement in Barcelona, to urban environmental justice struggles, we once again feature lots of pieces on radical municipalism. And, our section on the Green New Deal and Degrowth has basically become permanent, as the debate between them rages on.
Spadework. On political organizing.
The radical plan to save the planet by working less
Aaron Bastani just released his book, Fully Automated Luxury Communism. Read two critical reviews of the book: Cookshops of the future and Climate, communism and the Age of Affluence?. And two previous articles on the subject by our co-editors Aaron Vansintjan and Rut Elliot Blomqvist here: The shitty new communist futurism, Where's the 'eco' in ecomodernism?, and Pulling the magical lever.
How a beloved Bay Area bakery is tackling the housing crisis
Labor does you
Let's be clear, says Mexico environment minister, 'parasitic and predatory neoliberalism' to blame for climate crisis
The rise of the superbugs – and why industrial farming is to blame
Sudan protesters plan general strike as talks falter. And an update. And another (bad news).
The Yellow Vests of France: six months of struggle
MPs make history by passing Commons motion to declare 'environment and climate change emergency'
New Zealand's world-first 'wellbeing' budget to focus on poverty and mental health
Why the Guardian is changing the language it uses about the environment
Corporate trade tribunals used by mining companies against communities and governments
The West has been dumping tens of millions of tons of trash in Southeast Asian countries for more than 25 years – now they want to send it back
The long read: bullet ants and stolen land
The Yurok nation just established the rights of the Klamath river
Brazilian Indigenous peoples propose boycott
Native knowledge: What ecologists are learning from Indigenous people
Dam violence against environmental defenders
The Zapatista women's revolutionary law as it is lived today
The ruin of the digital town square
The price of meat. And Two amputations a week: the cost of working in a US meat plant.
Far-right identity politics and the task for the Left
Time's up for capitalism. But what comes next?
The problem of the Left is its reactive position in politics
It may not be fully visible, but we're in the final years of the American Empire
The reason renewables can't power modern civilization is because they were never meant to
Favelado's diary. "The criminalization of poverty is the strategy to keep the system functioning against black populations in Brazil and in the world, because if the favela exists and is marked by the stigma of social violence, it does not come free or without interest."
The Blackfoot/Maslow connection. How Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs was stolen from Indigenous Blackfoot spirituality.
New Yorkers' poop will soon be used to fuel their own homes
How to make wind power sustainable again
Psychedelic socialism
Loving a vanishing world. I want to move this away from the instrumental question of what you can do about climate change, important though that is, and back to the intrinsic value of what it means to love the world.
Why green pledges will not create the natural forests we need
International Relations Theory and 'Game of Thrones' are both fantasies
AirPods are a tragedy. If AirPods are anything, they're future fossils of capitalism.
Could you give up flying? Meet the no-plane pioneers
When climate change starts wars. Rising temperatures are bringing ethnic tensions to a boil in Central Asia.
For the love of winning: An open letter to Extinction Rebellion
How to build a sustainable food system
Solidarity economy: Case studies from Rojava and Jackson, Mississippi
Cymru burns, but Northern Syria may help us douse the flames
'Now is the time of monsters': The future at a crossroads in Rojava
Inside the growing Indonesian anarchist movement
Water democracy. Farmers in New Mexico have banded together to protect scarce water resources from developments that could end their way of life. Their collective activity is a model for grassroots politics in the age of climate change.
Can Barcelona rekindle its radical imagination? Barcelona En Comú narrowly lost the popular vote, and possibly the city government. But there is much more to life than governance.
Why America can't solve homelessness
NYC's segregation was carefully planned. Its integration must also be.
Dozens died from heat in Montreal, yet zero in Ontario. Here's why
How parks help cities adapt to climate change
How communities are contesting green inequities
Rebel Cities 24: How Catalonia's CUP party is helping reclaim towns, cities and nation
Mobile home residents are trying to save affordable housing
Why councils are bringing millions of pounds worth of services back in-house
Which US cities have concrete strategies for environmental justice?
A 'Green New Deal' needs to be global, not local
Plan, mood, battlefield – reflections on the Green New Deal
A Green New Deal beyond growth (II) – Some steps forward
How the Green New Deal happened: the view from 2030
Our obsession with growth is ruining the planet. A Green New Deal can save us
An Indigenous critique of the Green New Deal
The 'green new deal' supported by Ocasio-Cortez and Corbyn is just a new form of colonialism. And a prior companion piece: A Green New Deal must deliver global justice.
Between ecosocialism, extractivism, the future and the Left in power
Time for Europe to stop growing and grow up
Debate between Giorgos Kallis (Degrowth) and Ted Nordhaus (Ecomodernism)
Elements of the democratic economy
History from below: a reading list with Marcus Rediker
Global tapestry of alternatives. An initiative seeking to create solidarity networks and strategic alliances amongst radical alternatives to the dominant capitalist, patriarchal, racist, statist, and anthropocentric regime on local, regional and global levels.
Posted in Monthly links, Monthly linksTagged Barcelona, degrowth, environmental justice, fully automated luxury communism, green new deal, indigenous movements, radical municipalism, workLeave a Comment on May readings


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Working Internationally to Help Locally: World War II Tracing Continues
January 29, 2014 / Family Links
Lisa Ghali and Claire Schocher-Doring, Head of Tracing Services at the Austrian Red Cross.
Story by Lisa Ghali, National Headquarters, International Caseworker for Europe and Asia
In November 2012 the work of the Holocaust and War Victims Tracing Center transitioned into my portfolio of Restoring Family Links (RFL) cases. I had worked on World War II cases at a Chapter before moving to National Headquarters and was excited to conduct this casework from a national level. After coordinating with colleagues at the Center for many months, I learned the intricacies of this detailed work and went about creating new protocols so that our team at National Headquarters would be able to incorporate the new work into our daily processes. I have been fortunate to work with a dedicated team of staff, volunteers and interns, who spent, and continue to spend, time and resources helping those who had been affected by World War II.
One of those dedicated members is Leslie Cartier, who has been remotely volunteering with the RFL program on the Europe and Asia caseload since the transition and who is an expert researcher on finding the fate of those who came to the United States after WWII. She has been instrumental to the success of many cases and has been a wonderful example of how it is possible to work on RFL cases from a national standpoint while also being a volunteer at her local chapter.
Communications between the American Red Cross and the Austrian Red Cross from 1947.
Oftentimes WWII casework can be quite detailed, and it is important to learn all the resources available to clients. Most cases involving Holocaust survivors are sent to the International Tracing Service in Germany, but many other National Societies have archival information as well. After a year of conducting the casework from the national level, I found myself asking more questions about the information available to the various National Societies and which clients would be able to benefit from these resources. Therefore, I went to Germany and Austria to learn about their casework processes and how this could aid our work at the American Red Cross.
The Austrian Red Cross has a Tracing staff of six with two people responsible for handling the majority of cases. It was amazing to finally meet Astrid Simmet, the person with whom I spent so much time communicating on cases. She showed me the archives they had at the office and even pulled a case we had worked on together and showed me where she found the documentation. I had gone to our National Archives in Washington, DC and brought copies of cases that our National Societies had worked on in the 1940s. Seeing our work, how it is conducted today and how this has been a continued partnership for so long, reminds me of the truly global nature of the Red Cross' reach.
Mike Farrar and Heinrich Rehberg, Head of Division WWII at German Red Cross Tracing Service, Munich office.
After being in Austria, I traveled to Germany, where I met with RFL Advocate, Mentor, and Long Beach Chapter Volunteer Mike Farrar, so we could learn more about conducting WWII casework from both a chapter and national perspective. From the German Red Cross we learned how they research their archives to find information on civilians who were affected by WWII, people who were in labor and refugee camps in Germany and unaccompanied children who were displaced during the war. From there, we went to the International Tracing Service, where we learned details about their newly formed methodologies on using working groups of experts trained in various capacities of research to find information on victims of Nazi persecution. Learning details about how information is processed and on what information is available, such as death certificates issued by ITS, leads to greater access for our clients who have been searching for the fate of their family members for a long time.
During this day of remembrance, I think of all those who suffered through such a cruel time, and my heart goes out to them, their families and all those who encountered such needless loss. But, as we continue to find the fate of those affected, I think of my colleagues here in the United States and overseas and know that they are passionately dedicated to doing everything in their power to provide answers.
January 29, 2014 / Family Links/ 1 Comment
Holocaust Remembrance Day, Outreach, WWII Tracing
Lisa Ghali National Headquarters
WWII Tracing Casework Continues
July 03, 2013 / Family Links
Lisa Ghali and Santa Braza at the offices of the Latvian Red Cross
Eight years ago I started working for the Restoring Family Links program in the NYC Chapter of the American Red Cross. Many of our clients were Holocaust survivors, tragically separated from their families during the war, coming to the Red Cross to find out what had happened to them. I worked in close coordination with the Holocaust and War Victims Tracing Center in Baltimore, Maryland, attempting to locate family members and provide documentation on their fate.
After a few years of directly working with separated families, I moved to Washington DC and began providing services on a national level. While the Holocaust Center in Baltimore recently closed, the work has been continuing with our headquarters in Washington. To ensure the best possible transition, I visited the International Tracing Service (ITS) in Bad Arolsen, Germany with our colleagues from Baltimore in November of last year. We learned more about how cases are processed at ITS and coordinated on specific cases. The value of meeting our colleagues and understanding how the work continues with our partners strengthens our collaboration, which is crucial to our work.
Searching for missing people at the Russian Red Cross Tracing and Information Center
As we continued to work on World War II cases, we found that it would be beneficial to have a deeper understanding about archives and how the Red Cross conducts searches through these records. As many of our cases are sent to the Russian Red Cross and the Latvian Red Cross, we coordinated a trip to the region. The Russian Red Cross has a Holocaust and Tracing Information Center with archives that contain information on people who were evacuated from the Soviet Union during the war, cards on children who had been separated from their families, and documentation on the fate of Soviet soldiers who were killed or declared missing during the war. Our colleagues at the Center guided us through the casework process, from receiving a search request, to looking up information in their card catalogues, documenting the information found, and finally sending out the information located. Understanding the nature of how cases are processed, the different methods of searching for missing family members, and meeting our colleagues face-to-face, ensures that we have the relationship needed to best serve our clients.
Ghali giving a presentation at The Second International Conference "Holocaust Museums and Memorial Places in Post-Communist Countries: Challenges and Opportunities" in Latvia
Having our colleague from the Latvian Red Cross join the meeting in Russia enabled us to coordinate with cases for both our offices, as well as understand more about the tracing process in other countries. After Russia, we went to Latvia, where we attended a conference on Holocaust Museums and Memorial Places in Post- Communist Societies and visited the archives there. By learning more about information available to our clients, we have a greater likelihood of connecting separated families.
I have been fortunate to have the opportunity to work with our colleagues on various levels and appreciate the chance to serve clients who have suffered tremendous losses. I look forward to continuing our collaboration and ensuring this casework continues.
July 03, 2013 / Family Links/ Comment


Dungeon Fighter Online Global (DFO) may have just recently found its way to Steam but that is by no means the extent of the game's Western release history. Through a failed release and death to a full-on and delightfully active revival, DFO has become one of the most open and friendly-managed free to play MMOs on the market.
Initially published in North America by Nexon for a total of four years between closed beta and eventual closure, Dungeon Fighter Online was once known for its poor servers, lack of overall publisher support, and minimal content updates despite its tight (albeit grindy) gameplay. This original release closed its doors in June of 2013.
A year after its closure Korean developer Neople decided to test whether they could make their Asia-region hit actually survive in the West, publisher or no.
Dungeon Fighter Online is a very popular game in Asia and has been for years. It must have been confusing to Neople that the game would do so disastrously outside of the region during its 2009 to 2013 stint. Sure, it's grindy -- but it's the only MMO with gameplay so close to fighting games. There's a small but immensely dedicated niche demographic for these types of games in any region, so what was going on? Why did their biggest game die so pitifully in North America under a publisher?
Probably all you need to know.
There were a lot of things wrong with the original Nexon-run DFO. Cash shop prices were high, there were stringent IP blocks forcing those not in North America to play via VPN, the huge amount of unique events seen in other regions never made it over, and the base game was never truly updated to keep with the times.
All of those issues are pretty big deals, but the last one was the real clincher. Nexon's DFO content never evolved. You did the same low to medium-level dungeons in 2013 as you did in 2009 and they were exactly the same. You can't expect to retain a playerbase like that, especially since high level content and class updates took an eternity to find their way over. The writing was on the wall well before 2013 but no one could have guessed what was in store for the game a mere year later.
This is where things truly deviate from the norm. There have been plenty of failed Korean MMO imports over the years but not many attempts to try again post-closure, much less attempts by the original developer.
In May 2014, 11 months after Dungeon Fighter Online closed, Neople announced it was going into alpha under their oversight. Alpha came and used the same build as the game closed with under Nexon, and during that time Neople was hard at work gauging global interest via Facebook.
Maybe gauging interest isn't the right term, or at least not entirely what they were doing. From the very start Neople was very up front about their expectations for Dungeon Fighter Online Global, the game's new iteration: they weren't confident it would survive. Neople's then-CEO In Lee No stated on a preview stream the game had a very low chance of survival. They weren't optimistic but they were going to try.
Plenty of people wanted to get in on the second launch.
Part of their very unique way of trying was putting a number of Neople's employees on the forefront for Western audiences on Facebook since the beginning to talk to players about the state of the game, directly address account issues, and have more than a bit of fun sharing photos of themselves and the game, meanwhile staying active replying to inquiries and comments.
I don't remember how disappointed I was Jerry, one of the English community team, couldn't stick to a diet and exercise regimen and lose weight initially. But I remember how glad I was when he finally made notable progress, and how I genuinely wished him well when he got sick.
Neople's English community management team has continued this more personal trend over the past two years and even now with the game finally released on Steam they are as active as ever addressing the community on Facebook. This is exactly what sets Dungeon Fighter Online Global apart from most other MMO games and is no small part of its continued survival.
It's certainly amazing an MMO can die under a publisher and be revived by its developer based in a different country entirely. It's even more surprising that the people behind its revival would go so far out of their way to connect with their game's community despite the timezone and cultural differences.
The current state of DFO is better than it ever could have been under its previous management. Not only is the game flooded with events to keep players interested and coming back despite the normally detrimental fatigue system and dungeon grind, but the same faces the community dealt with in 2014 are here in 2016 doling out the info and keeping in touch.
Anyone who has been following Dungeon Fighter Online Global since its return will be hard-pressed not to point to Neople's community management as one of the reasons the game has continued to survive. You want to support publishers and developers who treat their customers well and Neople are doing just that. You want to play their game, you want to spend money, and you want to keep up with updates.
How often do you see posts like this for any game?
The sense of friendship and community between service delivery and consumer is rarely seen in every gaming market. It's hard not to look away at how bizarre it is that a slice of a Korean company would put their necks out for a small piece of the global market. They fess up to every big problem, over-compensate with freebies when there are issues, and make it very clear they are on the side of the players.
Every game has its problems and Dungeon Fighter Online is no different, but its publisher-community relations are probably some of the best in the gaming industry. That's really saying something when you consider the terrible reputations so many free to play and Korean MMO publishers are known to have, and it's even more surprising when you consider DFO's previous publisher and the game's overall history.
It's clear Neople love their game, which is a mainstay in internet cafes all over Asia. It's no surprise they want the West to love it at least half as much as they themselves do, and that's what has made Dungeon Fighter Online Global survive, thrive, and finally have the Steam release it so deserved.
Is Dragon Nest Going the Way of DFO Global Under Nexon?