Bill Gates asked by city council in Massachusetts to help end Republic Services trash strike
The Peabody City Council sent a letter to Gates on Monday, asking him to use his influence "to take immediate and constructive action" to help end the strike. Gates controls Cascade Investment LLC, which is a major shareholder in the Republic Services waste collection company.
The city councilors praised Gates for his charitable contributions in the field of global health, and then said overflowing dumpsters and trash cans in Massachusetts pose "urgent" health concerns.
"Time is of the essence," the letter states. "With summer heat intensifying and trash piling up, the consequences of inaction are not just political or financial - they are human and urgent."
Specifically, the letter calls on Gates to urge Republic Services leadership to negotiate in good faith and to encourage a deal that addresses workers' "legitimate demands."
"We hope you will rise to this occasion with the same thoughtfulness and sense of global responsibility that have defined much of your public life," the councilors said.
The trash strike is affecting Boston businesses that use Republic Services as well as residents in 14 Massachusetts communities: Beverly, Canton, Danvers, Gloucester, Ipswich, Lynnfield, Malden, Manchester-By-The-Sea, Marblehead, North Reading, Peabody, Swampscott, Wakefield and Watertown.
The union said both sides met for more than 12 hours on Tuesday. Employees are fighting for better pay and benefits, but Republic Services said in a statement this week that Teamsters "are not taking negotiations seriously."
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
USA Today
4 minutes ago
- USA Today
WNBA-to-Boston celebrations premature? League pushes back on CT Sun move after Pagliuca deal
Fans celebrating the arrival of the WNBA to the City of Boston might want to temper their expectations in the short term. Recent reporting from the Boston Globe's Gary Washburn relates that the WNBA itself is throwing cold water on ta potential move of the recently-purchased Connecticut Sun to a new location. Former Boston Celtics minority owner and Bain Capital executive Steve Pagliuca recently purchased the team for a record $325 million, with another $100 million earmarked to build a dedicated practice facility for the team in Boston. But per Washburn, after news of the sale broke this week, the league sent the reporter a release pushing back on a potential move out of the Nutmeg state. "Relocation decisions are made by the WNBA Board of Governors and not by individual teams," related the WNBA to Washburn, also noting that "no groups from Boston applied for a team." This could put a bit of a damper on things, given Pagliuca would be one of the first names for an expansion team in the area, yet the former Celtics owner now finds himself the new owner (pending league approval) of a team the WNBA appears determined to keep in Connecticut. "Nine additional cities also applied for WNBA teams and remain under active consideration. Those other cities remain under consideration based on the extensive work they did as part of the expansion process and currently have priority over Boston," added the league. This course of action may have actually put the city behind the proverbial eight ball, as the WNBA may be looking to avoid following in the footsteps of the NBA with the highly unpopular move of the Seattle SuperSonics to Oklahoma City in the aughts. Interestingly, the release tendered to Washburn also notes that a "prospective Celtics owner has also reached out to the league office and asked that Boston receive strong consideration for a WNBA franchise at the appropriate time." Does this mean the ownership group helmed by Bill Chisholm currently in the process of securing final NBA approval to buy the Boston-based NBA ball club is also the leading group to secure a WNBA team in the same city? At present, details on all of the above are murky, but will likely continue to develop in the coming weeks. Listen to "Havlicek Stole the Pod" on: Spotify: iTunes: YouTube:
Yahoo
22 minutes ago
- Yahoo
What happened downtown was racial violence, and we must say it
This has been a long week for Cincinnati. We all know why. We've all seen it. You can't unsee it. You can't unsee a woman being knocked out like that, her head jerking back, her body lying motionless on the pavement, her eyes staring up in lifeless, mute horror. And in our city. Like many people, I'm trying to process this event and find it difficult. When I first saw the video on July 27, I found it horrifying. It's so bad you might as well say it was choreographed by the devil. And yet I also thought it would receive brief local attention before people moved on. News cycles are very short these days. But as the week has gone by, as this story has been picked up by the national news, especially conservative news outlets, I'm starting to think this will not be a short ordeal for our city. It's starting to feel like an event that will force a reckoning. But what should that reckoning be? More: 'There are 2 sides to every story': Cincinnati grapples with image after brawl | Letters Certain things must be said. For one, this was clearly racially motivated violence in an extreme form. Anybody who balks at that admission is not being honest. The crowd of Black people who beat up the white people engaged in racial violence. It must also be said that the white guy at the center of the fight is culpable for drunkenly contributing to the fight and potentially committing the first aggression. That must be acknowledged and condemned. How does a city come to terms with racially motivated violence? It's a hard conversation to have. Vivek Ramaswamy evidently feels up to the task and is coming to town to try. I'm skeptical whether a politician in the middle of an election can bring the nuance and honesty necessary to have a productive conversation on such a fraught topic. There's a possibility he's just coming to make political hay of violence in an all-Democrat-run city. More: Ramaswamy has chosen Jim & Jack's for his town hall But I'm encouraged that Ramaswamy is teaming up with former Cincinnati councilman Christopher Smitherman for the town hall, a man with an admirable record as a moderate local politician. I'm hoping Ramaswamy makes an honest effort to move the conversation forward. One local politician who is not helping to move the conversation forward is Councilwoman Victoria Parks. After the video of the fight circulated, Parks tagged it with the response, "They begged for that beat down! I am grateful for the whole story."Let's be plain. That is a nasty, racist statement. There is no excuse for that kind of behavior, least of all by someone in a place of authority. Parks is not fit to be on City Council. She is not seeking re-election and plans to leave office at the end of the year, but she shouldn't be allowed on the council for another day, let alone another five months. Parks must resign now. More: Victoria Parks stands by controversial post as fellow council members condemn comments As a Cincinnatian, I am saddened by everything having to do with this fight. It's painful to see Cincinnati getting the worst national press in a generation. This should not be what America thinks when it thinks about our city. The city will be facing significant national scrutiny. Some are calling for Justice Department intervention. It would be unfortunate if we became a scapegoat for the Trump administration's campaign against local Democratic control, but that should not prevent us from admitting we have a real problem. This fight was not something that occurred in isolation. It was a lurid reminder of the stubbornly high rates of violence Cincinnati has experienced, even as most major metro areas have seen significant declines in the last two years. More: City leaders say crime is 'stabilizing' as criminals take notice of new police task force It's up to city leaders to find solutions. The biggest deterrent against violent crime is policing, and the Cincinnati Police Department's ranks have grown perilously thin recently. City Council has made a real financial commitment to increasing the number of police, but only time will tell if this is enough. Despite all this, I take encouragement from the conviction that the vast majority of us, regardless of race, would never act like the people in that video. Cincinnati is still a great city, with great people. I hope that we emerge from this reckoning with stronger unity and a commitment to making our city safer and more welcoming than ever before. That is the Cincinnati I know and love. Christopher Wood is a neurologist who lives in Clifton. This article originally appeared on Cincinnati Enquirer: Cincinnati is facing a reckoning after the Downtown brawl | Opinion
Fox News
2 hours ago
- Fox News
DAVID MARCUS: Bring back the Redskins, and everything else torn down by wokeness
There was a rare bit of good news out of the nation's capital this week with a report that the owners of Washington's NFL team are seriously considering President Donald Trump's demand to restore the name "Redskins." It was back in 2020, a year of abject and bizarre societal madness, that the Redskins became the Washington Football Team, and eventually the Commanders, out of concern that "Redskin" is an offensive term. Never mind that poll after poll shows actual American Indians do not object to it. It wasn't just the Redskins. In the wake of the woke madness of 2020, statues were toppled all over the country. Of course, it started with Confederate monuments, which were low-hanging fruit, but soon statues of Christopher Columbus and Teddy Roosevelt were also falling. Perhaps the best, or worst, example was the removal of the Emancipation Memorial in Boston. This was a statue of Abraham Lincoln freeing a slave, erected in 1879, the design of which was literally paid for by freed slaves. The intergalactic hubris of the officials in Boston, who thought they knew better how to celebrate the end of slavery than actual slaves, shows exactly why the memorials and names excised by wokeness must all return. The Left believes firmly that the arc of history bends towards their preferences, and that "social justice" is a one-way ratchet, that their victories cannot be undone. But in fact, there is no reason we have to accept that. What 2020 showed us was that the iconoclastic impulse to destroy the images and symbols of a society is insatiable. No sooner do they ruin one sacred idol than they move onto the next one and the next one, until mothers are called birthing people. Had there been any kind of rational process in 2020 to determine what monuments should stay or go, we might have been able to reach considered compromises on the most questionable: The Cleveland Indians and Nathan Bedford Forrest are not the same. But that didn't happen. Instead, we saw mass hysteria, from the mob, the state, and corporations. Pull down the statues first, ask questions never, was the order of the day. This is why, for Americans to truly heal from the wound that was 2020, not just its avalanche of wokeness, but also the draconian COVID lockdowns that accompanied it, we need to hit the reset button and bring back what we so carelessly destroyed. Five years from now, on a chilly Sunday, with their team losing to the Eagles, Washington fans should be able to say, "Remember how we stopped calling them the Redskins? That was stupid," and know that a wrong has been righted. Likewise, if on a spring day in Gotham, New Yorkers can once again tip their hat to the once-toppled Teddy Roosevelt statue, then they too will know that we are the makers of history, not just passengers along for the inevitable Marxist ride. The urge to destroy monuments and names is nothing new. In Ancient Egypt we call it damnatio memoriae when one Pharoah scratched off the name of a predecessor. In the Middle Ages, we call it Iconoclasm, and it tore apart the Christian faith. Troves of knowledge and artistic treasure have been destroyed by well-intentioned people of the past, who just knew deep down, that they had to protect not just their contemporaries, but all of humanity to come, by destroying what they saw as offensive. Today, we have a choice. 2020 was only 5 years ago. We can still restore what was lost, yes, even the General Lee statue in Richmond, and then, perhaps, enter into some rational process to decide what, if any, history we wish to deprive future generations of. The message needs to be clear that when mistakes are made, our society can and will go back. Just as we went back from the "progressive" policy of letting men play in women's sports, we can go back to a time when we respected the past, instead of abhorring and eviscerating it. 2020 was a year of almost unfathomable destruction, loss of life, loss of liberty, and loss of historical monuments and names, but often, out of destruction grows renewal, and the owners of, as Trump currently puts it, the Washington Whatevers have a chance to bring that renewal to fruition. So Hail to the Redskins, and the Roosevelts and Lincolns too. Hail to Columbus and his oceans blue. This is our history, and it is time for us to reclaim it.
