 Hello and welcome to Daily Debrief brought to you by People's Dispatch. Today we take a look at a massive strike by education workers currently under way in Los Angeles. In Sydney, a peaceful demonstration by LGBT activists was attacked by a mob outside a church where they were protesting a speech by right-wing leader Mark Latham. And finally, an investigation by the Guardian and non-profit Watchdog Air Wars has revealed civilian casualties linked to British airstrikes in Iraq, despite government consistently claiming to not have harmed any civilian life. 65,000 workers from Service Employees International Union Local 99 and United Teachers Los Angeles that's UTLA began a three-day strike on Tuesday, March 21. SEIU Local 99 workers are striking amidst contract negotiations around higher salaries, more full-time work schedules, better treatment and more staffing. They represent a broad cross-section of school staff such as bus drivers, custodians, campus aides and cafeteria workers. The union claims that apart from refusing to budge on key workers' demands such as a 30% raise and more full-time hours, the Los Angeles Unified School District is also harassing and threatening workers for participating in union activity. We joined by Natalia from People's Dispatch who has been closely following this story. Thank you for joining us Natalia. So first off, what are the major demands of the strike and those who are protesting? Yeah, well, I would say the two central demands are more full-time hours. Most of the SEIU organized education workers are working part-time and higher salaries. So the average salary is $25,000 a year which is insanely low. It's far below the mean wage in the U.S. But also, especially for Los Angeles, Los Angeles is one of the most expensive cities in the country. A one-bedroom apartment on average costs over $2,000 a month to rent. Food is extremely expensive, cost of living has gone up. So it's $25,000 a year are poverty wages. That's barely enough to make ends meet. And these workers, they work extremely hard and they make the schools run. So these are like cafeteria workers, dining hall, bus drivers, teacher's aides. These are workers that without them, custodial staff, people who clean the schools, without those staff members, the schools wouldn't run at all. These are the type of jobs that keep the school functioning. And so these workers are demanding fair wages and better working hours, working hours that can actually meet the demands of the cost of living in Los Angeles right now because they're so essential to the school. All right, Natalia, can you also tell us a little about what are the working conditions like for education workers? I mean, teachers and other forms of education workers, what are these working conditions look like? Yeah, well, I mean, in Los Angeles, again, people who, you know, education workers who are not teachers are making poverty wages. But also teachers are striking in solidarity with the education workers. Even though they are not, you know, they didn't authorize a strike, they're doing it so in solidarity because they don't want to cross the picket line in front of the schools. And they want to help boost the demands of the education workers. But teachers are also in their own contract negotiations right now. And what they're demanding of the Los Angeles School District is a 20% raise because they also have very low pay for Los Angeles. I think it was about one in four in the city of Los Angeles. One in four teachers that works a second job just to make ends meet. And obviously, you know, teaching hours are very, they're very lengthy. Teachers are in schools from 8am to 3pm, 4pm. So you can imagine what working a second job in those conditions would be like. And you know, this is an uncommon in the United States in general, you know, teachers are leaving the teaching profession and mass, especially public school teaching, because of working conditions. But teachers are actually very highly unionized in the United States, which gives them a few more, a bit more bargaining power or a lot more bargaining power in terms of demanding fair wages, better hours, demanding schools to be closed during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. But increasingly, you know, as the public school system is defunded, more and more teachers are, you know, are not unionized because teachers at private schools and charter schools tend to not be unionized. So those teachers have even less rights in terms of demanding, you know, their worker rights as a collective bargaining power. But in Los Angeles, Los Angeles public schools, like many public school systems in the country are unionized. So they're able to do things like a solidarity strike, which is really historic in the city of Los Angeles, and also just demand, you know, fair conditions, better working conditions. Right. Thank you so much for joining us on this very important story. We'll keep following it up with you and with people's dispatch. Thank you for joining us. Thank you for having me. On March 22, a demonstration by LGBT activists was attacked by a mob outside the church in Sydney. Activists from the LGBTQI plus group community action for rainbow rights were protesting outside Saint Michael's Church against an anti trans speech by right wing leader of one nation NSW party, Mark Latham, when they were attacked by a large mob. Anish from People's Dispatch joins us now with more details on this story. Thanks for joining us, Anish. So can you take us through the sequence of events that took place this week? Yeah, so Tuesday there was supposed to be this speech by a particularly right wing politician called Mark Latham in Australia in Sydney. He's part of the one nation party. Anybody who has followed Australian politics knows the one nation party and its leader Pauline Hansen for their very ridiculously right wing statements and posturing over the past several years now, more than a decade now nearly. And in this event, you had LGBTQI activists holding a massive protest. A very peaceful one, a demonstration showing their very clear opposition to people like him being given platform in public spaces. And this was being done at a Catholic Church run establishment, in fact. And so this definitely is part of like this growing culture we are already seeing of transphobia and homophobia as well. But like transphobia very specifically. Very shortly as the demonstrators came through, we saw counter protesters, right wing counter protesters who turned into a violent mob and attacked these activists. We already have arrests happening right now. But like the violence was something that was, you know, well, most people probably did not expect it to happen at the time. And this was, this definitely shows how, you know, the right wing is not really very, you know, shy in showing its muscle power in Australia at this point in time. We are already seeing a very clear case of, you know, maybe some level of organization behind this violence as well, because with recent revelations showed that there were videos being circulated, which had, you know, people asking other people to join in large numbers to attack these LGBT protesters. And that shows that there was some level of organizing that has happened. Obviously, we need to wait and see where the investigation goes to. But definitely something like this happened at such a massive scale. And this is what is alarming to everybody at this point. Right, Anish. And an incident also recently occurred in Melbourne, according to reports. You referred to how transphobia is increasingly being reported from across the world from different countries. What does this indicate? Yeah, so, especially in the Anglo-Saxon nations like Australia, New Zealand, Canada, United States, we're seeing a very specific kind of attack being conducted on transgender people and transgender people through, you know, drag queens and other sort of very, you know, queer spaces that has increased quite recently, you know, quite prominently in the recent past. The United States, some of the United States are actually leading laws right now. They're even, they have already created laws that not only ban drag races for some, you know, unknown reason, but they're also adding laws that will hamper, you know, gender affirming therapy for teenagers and not just prevent them from actually getting gender affirming therapy, but also it will be preventing adults from accessing it. And also in some cases, there are instances where laws are being made to reverse such therapy, HRP especially. And that is even more dangerous than what some of these, you know, gender essentialist arguments are making about how, you know, changing, you know, receiving gender affirming therapy is bad for your body and whatever. This is actually going to put them in greater risk. So there is a very clear attempt and a wave of transphobia that is actually pushing, you know, lawmakers and, you know, it is obviously being led by the right wing, but you already also have certain sections within the civil society, which is using, you know, the mask of women's rights as an excuse to attack transgender people and the community as a whole and also their access to different spaces. So all of these factors are definitely, this is a very, you know, transnational sort of phenomena. We obviously, obviously, whatever happens in the United States, there is some level of reflection of that happening in Australia and, you know, very similar Anglo-Saxon countries as well. And this is very similar to how it is happening. We're seeing very similar kind of dog whistles, very similar kind of narratives being painted by the right wing to attack queer spaces and the transgender people are receiving at least at the front lines of these attacks. And that is, this is a very disturbing trend, obviously. We have, fortunately in Australia, a government that is not really keen on, you know, cracking down on transgenders or, you know, creating laws that will hamper their rights. But obviously, the fact that such a group is growing and becoming violent by the day is what is concerning everybody. Thank you so much for joining us, Anish, for this story. A joint investigation by the UK-based The Guardian and non-profit Watchdog Air Wars claims that multiple airstrikes carried out by the UK's Royal Air Force in the Iraqi city in 2016 to 2017 were responsible for killing dozens of civilians. The findings of the investigation published on March 22 directly contradict claims by the UK government and its armed forces that the airstrikes they conducted in Iraq targeting terrorist groups such as the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria were precision strikes and did not harm or kill a single non-combatant. Abdul from People's Dispatch joins us now with latest updates on this issue. Welcome to the show, Abdul. Can you first off tell us what are the findings of this investigation by Guardian and Air Wars? The finding clearly states that the UK governments claim that their air forces were not responsible for killing any civilian during the almost a decade long operation against the ISIS in Iraq and Syria is false. They claim that their investigation at least in some specific cities, so for example Mosul, they claim that six airstrikes they investigated and the impact of it based on the reports and the ground field work meeting with the families of the victims and other finding the archives of the air force, the coalition air forces establishes that dozens of people if not 26 as claimed by the US coalition were killed and in Mosul itself and it was the British air force which was involved in those airstrikes. So the investigation establishes that the claims made by the UK government so far has been all those claims have been false and it says that it doesn't it is there is no rational ground for such claims. For example, the claim says that more than 3000 quote-unquote terrorists were killed in Iraq in the airstrikes carried out by the British air force and over 1000 such terrorists were killed in Syria and in all those operations in which more than 4000 ammunition were dropped only one civilian was killed in Syria. So it is clear that there is a deliberate attempt to hide the figures of the civilian skilled in operations and also that there is an attempt to portray the operation in Iraq and Syria as a success a perfect operation. Right and there's also like the consistency with which the UK government has been denying that there have been no civilian casualties despite the coalition accepting at several times that there were civilian casualties. Why is the UK government denying? Well, there is a very strong anti-war sentiment in UK. It has been there ever since at least in the recent time since 2003 when the UK forces became part of the US-led coalition in the invasion of Iraq. There was a huge public mobilization on the streets of London and different parts of the country and the governments know that a large section of the UK population do not accept their claims of kind of intervention in the name of democracy and so on and so forth in Iraq in Syria in Afghanistan and other in Libya. So this is one major reason that they want to avoid because the moment you published we admit that hundreds of civilians were killed in their so-called operation to establish democracy in these countries or fighting for civilization and so on and so forth that protest that opposition to the war will further gain ground. Of course, that is one major reason but apart from that there are also material consideration. For example, the UK forces denied the number of actual number of civilians killed by its forces in Afghanistan and the investigation by different organizations came out and said that those figures are of course conservative. There is a deliberate manipulation and so on and so forth. Then it came out in the public that the primary reason for that of course was the amount of compensation paid. Millions of dollars need to be paid as compensation to those who were killed by the British or any forces. So that is also a part of it. Apart from that the reason quoted more often than not is that these countries want to preserve quote-unquote the morale of their armed forces and to kind of minimize any kind of effect on the larger questioning on their the legitimacy of such interventions in Iraq or in different parts of the world. One should understand that such operations whatever operations have been undertaken by the UK forces or the US forces or any of the NATO forces in Iraq in Afghanistan in Syria in other parts of the world have been all of them are illegal interventions not sanctioned by any international law not sanctioned by the UN and therefore there is a high level of sensitivity involved when you have to admit that these operations these airstrikes these military interventions which were carried out to save quote-unquote democracy and people ultimately results in destruction of those country killing of innocent civilians and basically destroying the the larger fabric social fabric so of course one can understand why these there has been consistent denial to accept such civilian casualties. Right thank you so much for joining us Abdul and that's all we have for today for more such stories keep following people's dispatch dot org you can also follow us on twitter facebook and instagram