/leftypol/ - Leftist Politically Incorrect

Starbucks to pay $35M to NYC workers after city alleges years of abuses
The department began looking into dozens of complaints against Starbucks locations in 2022, eventually expanding its investigation to the hundreds of stores throughout the city. Mayuga said investigators documented more than half a million alleged violations of the city’s Fair Workweek Law, which requires retail and fast-food companies to give employees predictable schedules and advance notice of changes.
https://gothamist.com/news/starbucks-to-pay-35m-to-nyc-workers-after-city-alleges-years-of-abuses
https://archive.ph/62sZo

Zillow deletes climate risk data from listings after complaints it harms sales
In September last year, the online real estate marketplace introduced a tool showing the individual risk of wildfire, flood, extreme heat, wind and poor air quality for one million properties it lists, explaining that “climate risks are now a critical factor in home-buying decisions” for many Americans. But Zillow has now deleted this climate index in the wake of complaints from real estate agents and some homeowners that the rankings appeared arbitrary, could not be challenged and harmed house sales. The
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2025/dec/01/zillow-removes-climate-risk-data-home-listings

‘Shamelessly Corrupt’: Trump Frees Private Equity Executive Convicted of Defrauding 10,000+ Investors
David Gentile, the founder and former CEO of GPB Capital, was convicted of securities and wire fraud last year and sentenced to prison in May, but he ended up serving just days behind bars. The New York Times reported over the weekend that the White House “argued that prosecutors had falsely characterized the business as a Ponzi scheme.”
https://www.commondreams.org/news/donald-trump-david-gentile

Idaho prison system reopens sexual abuse case, reverses finding after InvestigateWest reporting
She had sexually explicit texts, Facebook messages and emails from correction officers and a prison delivery man, Weiskircher told investigators. Any sexual contact between an inmate and prison staff — even voyeurism and harassment — is prohibited by federal standards designed to protect people in custody who are vulnerable to sexual extortion by workers.
https://apnews.com/article/crime-general-news-prisons-idaho-brad-little-bd235cec0387bc3d5baffce4c43a6477

‘Bathroom bill’ targeting trans Texans takes effect this week. It’s unclear how it'll be enforced.
The measure, Senate Bill 8, only applies to publicly owned buildings like libraries, government facilities, public schools and prisons. Private businesses can choose their own bathroom policies. When Gov. Greg Abbott signed the measure earlier this year, he called it “common sense,” adding that it would allow “no men in women’s restrooms.” Opponents say the new law, also referred to as the “Women’s Privacy Act” by supporters, is actually a thinly veiled attack on transgender Texans.
https://www.kut.org/2025-12-01/texas-bathroom-bill-enforcement-starts-thursday

Baltimore landlords found liable for hiring a sex offender who set tenants on fire
The same man murdered a tech CEO just days after attacking April Hurley and Jonte Gilmore in their home in 2023, which he was able to enter by misrepresenting himself as building maintenance. The lawsuit argued the companies neglected basic background vetting for Jason Billingsley, who was allowed to live on the companies’ property and to perform paid upkeep tasks.
https://apnews.com/article/baltimore-jason-billingsley-apartment-attack-survivors-lawsuit-e133ab174b20299e43aa88288a600540

Indiana House Unveils New Map Rigged for GOP After Months of Trump Threats
Republicans won 58% of the vote across Indiana’s US House elections in 2024, granting them an already overrepresentative seven of the state’s nine congressional seats. The new map, published Monday, would eliminate the remaining two seats in the state held by Democrats.
https://www.commondreams.org/news/indiana-redistricting-house-map

CP of Greece, The KKE salutes the mass uprising of toiling farmers and condemns government repression
On Sunday 30 November, Greek farmers began blocking major highways with tractors and other agricultural machinery. The government responded with repression, using chemicals, riot police and arrests to suppress the farmers’ mobilization, but these efforts proved futile in the face of the toiling farmers’ mass participation, determination and organized disobedience. The farmers are fighting for their future, to prevent their eventual extermination and to secure the chance to earn a decent living from their work in their villages. They are demanding support for their shrinking income, which has been eroded by the policies pursued by all governments that have consistently served the interests of business groups and implemented the guidelines of the EU’s Common Agricultural Policy (CAP).
https://www.solidnet.org/article/CP-of-Greece-The-KKE-salutes-the-mass-uprising-of-toiling-farmers-and-condemns-government-repression/

Inside Your Party Conference: Is This Farewell to Corbynism?
With the two-day founding conference for Your Party (and that is now the official name) concluded in Liverpool, Zarah Sultana has triumphed in a drawn out battle with former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn. To rapturous applause from members, she’s staked out a new approach to leftwing politics in this country: socialist, democratic, decentralised and absolutely furious. But will it work? One of the more enjoyable features of attending Your Party’s founding conference in Liverpool was watching representatives of the mainstream press struggle to grasp the idea of a party under democratic control. One of the least enjoyable was watching them roll their eyes and sneer at the views of the 2,500 Your Party members sortitioned (selected by lottery) to attend. For many in the media and probably across the country too, democracy is framed by big figureheads whose pronouncements either do or do not attract voters. The relevance of the electorate lies not in voters’ opinions, but rather how they namelessly distribute across pie charts when the figureheads seek their endorsement once every few years. “What do you mean, what do you mean?” asked a broadsheet journalist repeatedly when told on the second day of the Your Party conference that members, not MPs, will lead the party. That’s just not how it’s done. Until now.
https://novaramedia.com/2025/12/01/inside-your-party-conference-is-this-farewell-to-corbynism/

From Beirut to Gaza: Disarmament, Mediation, and Regional Order
Forty-three years ago, on the evening of September 16, 1982, Israeli forces besieged the Sabra and Shatila camps in Beirut. What unfolded over the next 48 hours was a harrowing episode in our protracted struggle against zionism, Western imperialism, and Arab reactionary powers. This atrocity, far from an isolated act of barbarism, epitomized the structural logic of US imperialism and the Zionist colonial project: where the elimination of the native is not incidental but central to maintaining political and economic dominance. Just weeks earlier, the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) had been expelled from Lebanon under US orchestration. Washington guaranteed “safety” for the camps while quietly green-lighting the Zionist army and their Phalangist allies to move in after the Palestinian fighters departed. The civil war in Lebanon, with its colonial baggage, sectarian militias, and externally-backed factions, provided ideal conditions for this strategy. When Bashir Gemayel, the CIA- and Mossad-backed Phalangist president, was assassinated, zionist officials were quick to blame Palestinians, offering a pretext for the massacre. What made the massacre possible was not just Israeli–Phalangist collusion, but the absence of the PLO itself. For years the PLO had protected and mobilized the refugee camps in Lebanon, acting both as a shield and political horizon for Palestinian liberation. Its expulsion was not only the work of Israel or the US alone; it was also enabled by Arab reactionary regimes. In 1982, for instance, Hafez al‑Assad’s Syria positioned itself as champion of the Palestinian cause while simultaneously working to contain and weaken the PLO, refusing to confront Israel directly during the siege of Beirut, and thus leaving the camps exposed to massacre. The lessons of 1982 reverberate today. We are witnessing the same regional project, driven by the same constellation of US, Gulf, and allied powers, to isolate and dismantle liberation fronts and maintain the neocolonial order. This project centers on disarming anti-systemic movements and reshaping state institutions to pacify popular demands for self-determination.
https://abolitionmedia.noblogs.org/24662/