The last few days of March are upon us and April is on the horizon. Spring is in the air but winter’s chill hasn’t quite left. Most of the Southeast is still getting over a weekend rainstorm pounding and dreading the next one. Let’s do this.
Speaking of that rainy weekend, once again we here at Enon Holler World Headquarters missed the bulk of it. We just got rained on good and hard. Unfortunately, other folks weren’t so lucky. The state of Tennessee saw seven deaths due to this weekend’s record-breaking rain, six of which were in Nashville. North Alabama saw five deaths from eight recorded tornadoes and massive amounts of property damage.
We’ve had this sort of weather for two weeks hand-running, now, so this weekend’s foulness was on top of all that. Right now, the country’s free of any serious rain but we’re already getting calls for something Tuesday night-Wednesday morning. I don’t know yet how nasty or widespread it’ll be, but there you go. Springtime in the South, it’s best to be prepared for anything.
Moving on, the trial of Officer Derek Chauvin started in earnest today. The former Minneapolis cop is charged with the murder of George Floyd for suspicion of passing a fake twenty-dollar bill by kneeling on the victim’s throat for almost ten minutes. This kicked off the latest round of nationwide protests against police brutality and racial inequities in legal systems across the country. Turns out the twenty was real and none of this was necessary.
After two weeks of choosing a jury, opening remarks were made on both sides and the full, uncut video of what happened that day was shown. The defense is going with the argument that Floyd was going through a fentanyl overdose and the cops were being distracted by the crowd telling them to stop kneeling on Floyd’s neck.
The prosecution is saying someone overdosing on fentanyl wouldn’t be crying for his mother. A witness who does that MMA stuff who was at the scene called what Chauvin did a “blood choke” and witnesses describe him “grinding” his knee on Floyd’s neck. A 911 dispatcher testified that Chauvin kneeled on Floyd’s neck for so long she thought her video feed had frozen up.
Chauvin faces up to 40 years in jail on counts of second-and third-degree murder. Along with the three other cops at the scene who stood around and watched, he’s been fired from the Minneapolis PD. The prosecution continues its case tomorrow while the defense maintains Chauvin did just what he was trained to do, which really doesn’t make the situation look that much better.
Elsewhere, workers at an Amazon factory in Bessemer, Alabama, are holding a vote this week on whether or not to unionize. This is pretty unprecedented, as Amazon has strongly discouraged anyone who works for them to unionize. What’s more, the South has historically been very anti-union, which is one reason so many American businesses have factories and warehouses down here.
Amazon’s become something of a bad word in the last few years due to allegations of destroying local businesses and exploiting their workers, among other things. Supposedly, work in shipping factories is the worst with employees’ rights, up to and including charges of workers having to pee in bottles because otherwise it’d be considered “wage-stealing” to go to the bathroom off break time.
It’s being said this whole effort is getting up CEO Jeff Bezos’ nose. The multi-billionaire is said to be so outraged by the peons mouthing off he’s ordered actions being taken against them. One of the more amusing outlets has been the activation of Twitter accounts, some official and some “personal,” denying the charges and slamming the organizers, going so far as to accuse them of lying about the abuses.
It’s a pretty contentious back-and-forth, with Amazon claiming workers don’t want unions and workers pointing out that a company that made over $125 billion last year could pay folks a little better. Amazon workers were considered essential workers during the early days of the pandemic and got a two-dollar raise that Amazon decided was no longer necessary by the end of the year.
It remains to be seen how the 5,800 workers at the Bessemer warehouse will vote but we should know something by the end of the work. Again, unions have never been popular in the South and there’s plenty of anti-union sentiment across the whole country. However, last year’s COVID pandemic and the ongoing mess have caused many people to rethink such seemingly axiomatic notions. As for me, this is why I work for myself.
Dear Y'all 