Portland State Vanguard Volume 76 Issue 1

VOLUME 76 • ISSUE 1 • MARCH 30, 2021

GOODBYE WINTER, HELLO SPRING NEWS From virus to vaccine: The COVID pandemic so far P. 4–5

ARTS & CULTURE Game Boy Advance turns 20 P. 8

OPINION A new way to halt globalization P. 9

CONTENTS

COVER BY SHANNON STEED

NEWS VIRUS TO VACCINE: A COVID-19 TIMELINE

P. 4–5

ARTS & CULTURE WE OWE IT ALL TO GAME BOY

P. 8

INTERNATIONAL RECORD BREAKING FLOODS RAVAGE AUSTRALIA

P. 6

OPINION WAIT, IT WAS THIS EASY TO CRIPPLE GLOBAL TRADE?

P. 9

SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY SEMICONDUCTOR SHORTAGES SPELL TROUBLE FOR SILICON VALLEY

P. 7

STAFF

EDIT ORI A L EDITOR IN CHIEF Justin Grinnell MANAGING EDITOR Nick Townsend NEWS EDITORS Hanna Anderson Rachel Owen INTERNATIONAL EDITOR Karisa Yuasa SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY EDITOR Béla Kurzenhauser ARTS & CULTURE EDITOR Morgan Troper

OPINION EDITOR Nick Gatlin ONLINE EDITOR Lily Hennings COPY CHIEF Sophie Concannon CONTRIBUTORS Analisa Landeros Sierra Still PHO T O & MULTIMEDI A PHOTO EDITOR Annie Schutz MULTIMEDIA EDITOR Olivia Lee

PRODUC TION & DE SIGN CREATIVE DIRECTOR Sam Person DESIGNERS Farah Alkayed Sam Garcia Shannon Steed T ECHNOL OGY & W EB SIT E TECHNOLOGY ASSISTANTS Juliana Bigelow Kahela Fickle George Olson A DV ISING & ACCOUN TING COORDINATOR OF STUDENT MEDIA Reaz Mahmood STUDENT MEDIA ACCOUNTANT Sheri Pitcher

TECHNOLOGY ADVISOR Corrine Nightingale To contact Portland State Vanguard, email editor@psuvanguard.com MIS SION S TAT EMEN T Vanguard ’s mission is to serve the Portland State community with timely, accurate, comprehensive and critical content while upholding high journalistic standards. In the process, we aim to enrich our staff with quality, hands-on journalism education and a number of skills highly valued in today’s job market.

A BOU T Vanguard, established in 1946, is published weekly as an independent student newspaper governed by the PSU Student Media Board. Views and editorial content expressed herein are those of the staff, contributors and readers and do not necessarily represent the PSU student body, faculty, staff or administration. Find us in print Tuesdays and online 24/7 at psuvanguard.com.

Follow us on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram @psuvanguard for multimedia content and breaking news.

GIVE GIVE FUC FUCK

A

apply online at psuvanguard.com or contact managingeditor@psuvanguard.com

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VIRUS TO VAC TRACKING THE TIMELINE FROM JUNE 2020–MARCH 2021 HANNA ANDERSON

JUNE 1 CASES PSU 1 | OREGON 4,300 | U.S. 1.8 MILLION

OREGON BEGINS REOPENING IN PHASES

On June 19, Multnomah County was the last county in Oregon to move into phase 1 of Governor Kate Brown’s three part reopening plan, allowing bars and restaurants to reopen for indoor dining—with new safety precautions in place—for the first time since the beginning of the lockdown.

JUN

JULY 1 CASES PSU 1 | OREGON 8,900 | U.S. 2.8 MILLION

REMOTE LEARNING CONTINUES

On July 1, PSU President Stephen Percy and Provost Susan Jeffords announced the Fall Flex plan, which includes a limited number of in person courses offered in the upcoming term. A smaller sample of courses would be offered as “Flex” courses, allowing students to choose the format they preferred.

Moderna releases its results of the first vaccine trial tested in humans on July 14, with promising results

JUL

AUGUST 1 CASES PSU 1 | OREGON 18,800 | U.S. 1.8 MILLION

AUG

SEP

OCT

SEPTEMBER 1 CASES PSU 1 | OREGON 18,800 | U.S. 4.8 MILLION

OCTOBER 1 CASES PSU 2 | OREGON 33,900 | U.S. 7.6 MILLION

COVID-19 OUTBREAK AT THE WHITE HOUSE

In early October, a coronavirus outbreak occurred in the White House and the president’s inner circle, and on Oct. 2, then President Donald Trump tested positive. Trump was flown to Walter Reed National Military Medical Center the same day, while the White House insisted the president had “mild symptoms.” Trump later returned to the White House on Oct. 5.

According to The New York Times, more than two dozen other positive cases were tied to the White House or Trump during this time.

REMOTE LEARNING CONTINUES

PSU announced on Oct. 13 that remote learning, with similar limited in-person options as fall term, would continue into the winter term.

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NEWS

PSU Vanguard • MARCH 30, 2021 • psuvanguard.com

CCINE: FEBRUARY 1 CASES

PSU 41 | OREGON 143,400 | U.S. 27 MILLION

OREGON RELEASES VACCINE TIMELINE

Brown and the OHA released a long term timeline for statewide vaccine eligibility Feb. 26, initially promising to have all Oregonians over the age of 16 eligible before July 1. Frontline workers, including university workers, would be eligible before May 1.

CONGRESS PASSES ANOTHER STIMULUS PACKAGE

The $1.9 trillion relief legislation was passed

by Congress and signed into law by Biden, beginning the allocation of stimulus checks nationwide—$1,400 for individuals and $2,800

MARCH 1 CASES PSU 46 | OREGON 164,000 | U.S. 30 MILLION

MULTNOMAH COUNTY MOVES TO MODERATE RISK

Multnomah officially moved to a moderate risk level for COVID-19 on March 9, further reducing restrictions on indoor services. As of March 29, only two counties—Douglas and Coos—are left in the extreme risk category. Six are at high risk, 14 are at moderate risk and 14 are at lower risk.

CONGRESS PASSES ANOTHER STIMULUS PACKAGE

for married couples, with an additional $1,400 per dependent.

The legislation also provided additional money for schools—$130 billion to K-12 schools and $40 billion to colleges and universities. As part of the bill, at least half of the money allocated to higher education must be used on emergency grants for students, according to Inside Higher Ed.

Biden announced in early March all American adults would be eligible to receive the vaccine before May 1, as part of the president’s plan to have the country return to normal by the Fourth of July. However, initially, Oregon’s eligibility timeline would not change to match. Brown announced shortly after the president’s pledge that Oregon’s timeline would only change once Oregon received more shipments of vaccines from the federal government—enough to make the adjustment possible.

FDA AUTHORIZES THIRD VACCINE

On Feb. 27, the FDA granted emergency authorization to a third vaccine, this time by the Johnson & Johnson company—the first to be administered in a single dose.

On March 26, Oregon’s eligibility timeline changed, after direction from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Service and a promise that more shipments would be made available, according to AP News.

According to the new timeline, all Oregon adults—still 16 years old or older—would be eligible for the vaccine by May 1.

The next group, group 6, could be eligible for vaccinations as early as March 29, which includes adults over 45 with underlying conditions, migrants and seasonal farm workers, Oregonians displaced by wildfires and the houseless, among others.

Group 7, which includes frontline workers and adults over 16 with underlying conditions, will be eligible on April 5. Frontline workers, as defined by the CDC, also includes university workers.

PSU released a statement regarding the accelerated timeline for university workers in particular. Included in the email was the announcement that the Center for Student Health and Counseling (SHAC) has been approved as a vaccination site; However, it is still awaiting vaccination supplies.

February 28 marks one year since the first coronavirus case was found in Oregon.

2020 -› 2021

NOV

DEC

JAN

FEB

MAR

DECEMBER 1 CASES PSU 23 | OREGON 76,600 | U.S. 14.2 MILLION

A NEW VARIANT OF THE VIRUS IS DISCOVERED

NOVEMBER 1 CASES PSU 6 | OREGON 45,400 | U.S. 9.6 MILLION

OREGON’S REOPENING EFFORT HALTS AMID RISING CASE NUMBERS

A new, mutated variant of COVID-19 was discovered in the United Kingdom in midDecember. The World Health Organization announced the new strain appeared to be more infectious, but didn’t anticipate it affecting the vaccination effort.

On November 13, in response to rising cases in Oregon, Brown announced a two-week, statewide “freeze” to slow the spread.

After the freeze, certain counties were designated “extreme risk counties” and continue to face stricter restrictions than lower risk counties. In November, the majority of Oregon counties fell in the extreme risk categories, while others fell into “high,” “moderate” or “low” risk categories.

THE FIRST TWO VACCINES ARE GRANTED AUTHORIZATION BY THE FDA

VACCINE TRIALS CONCLUDE WITH POSITIVE RESULTS

Nationwide distribution of the vaccines began in late December with healthcare workers and long-term care facility residents, after the CDC recommended those groups to be the first.

Moderna and Pfizer released the phase three trial results of their vaccines two days apart, on Nov. 16 and 18 respectively. Both vaccines were administered in two doses weeks apart, and were found to be 94.5% effective from Moderna, and 95% effective from Pfizer.

On Dec. 11, the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine became the first to be granted emergency use authorization (EUA) by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), allowing the vaccine to be distributed to the public. The Moderna vaccines received this authorization shortly after on Dec. 18.

JANUARY 1 CASES PSU 33 | OREGON 115,300 | U.S. 20.8 MILLION

ANOTHER NEW VARIANT OF THE VIRUS

Another new variant of COVID-19 was found in Brazil, called the P.1 variant. The variant, similar to the one first found the UK, was also found to be more infectious, and has infected those previously immune to the virus.

January 21 marks one year since the first coronavirus case was found in the U.S.

VACCINE DISTRIBUTION BEGINS

PSU Vanguard • MARCH 30, 2021 • psuvanguard.com

NEWS

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RECORD-BREAKING FLOODS RAVAGE AUSTRALIA AN AUSTRALIAN CREW ON A RESCUE BOAT. RICK RYCROFT/AP PHOTO

KARISA YUASA A little over a year after wildfires devastated the country, torrential rain led to Australia’s worst flooding in nearly 60 years, according to Al Jazeera.

NPR reported approximately 40,000 people have been forced to evacuate and at least two people have died due to the flooding.

When the Warragamba Dam, which provides much of the drinking water for Sydney, overflowed for the first time in five years on March 20, people predicted record-breaking flooding to occur.

“Major flooding is occurring along the Hawkesbury River at North Richmond where the river level is rising. Flooding is likely to be higher than any floods since Nov 1961,” New South Wales (NSW) Emergency Services wrote in a tweet.

“It is one of the biggest floods we are likely to see for a very long time,” Bureau of Meteorology Flood Operations Manager Justin Robinson said.

20 inches of rain fell in one day in one area of Queensland, according to the Australian government. In coastal areas of NSW, daily rainfall exceeded 3.9 inches.

The flooding subjected approximately 40% of Australia’s population and 25 million

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INTERNATIONAL

acres of land to weather warnings, according to Reuters.

On March 20, a disaster was declared in 16 local government areas of NSW. By March 24, it was declared in 47 of the 128 areas. The declarations allow people in the areas to apply for emergency funds for damages caused by the flooding.

“This is a serious event with heavy rainfall, severe winds and widespread flooding, resulting in a high number of flood rescues, damage to roads and properties and a large scale, multi-agency response led by the NSW SES,” said Minister for Agriculture, Drought and Emergency Management David Littleproud.

“Through the [Disaster Recovery Funding Arrangements], a range of practical assistance measures are now available to help people get back on their feet and help councils get on with the clean-up and repairs to infrastructure.”

As of March 22, 2,527 claims were approved and as of March 23, over 10,000 payments were made by the Australian government.

“10,287 payments of $1000 for adults and $400 for children, totalling $13.5m, have been made by the Federal Government to date to support people affected by flooding. In most cases those payments are being paid within

an hour of making a claim,” wrote Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison on Twitter.

As the water level rose, humans were not the only ones searching for dry land.

“I grew up here on the farm so I have always been around snakes, spiders and all the other animals so they don’t bother me and usually we don’t cross paths too often, but when the flood comes they have to find somewhere to get dry,” said Matt Lovenfosse, a resident of NSW. “The trees are full of snakes. If you take the boat out over the paddock they swim towards it trying to get on something dry, same with the spiders.”

Mice were also seen in large quantities fleeing the floods. According to BBC, locals from Gilgandra, NSW called it “their worst mouse infestation in decades” as a video from the area showed hundreds of mice at a farm.

Australia and its inhabitants are no stranger to weather extremes and natural disasters.

“These events are expected,” said Sarah Perkins-Kirkpatrick, a climate scientist at the University of New South Wales, according to AP News. “But climate change has put them on steroids.”

According to BBC, NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian said that much of the land areas af-

fected by the flooding were also affected by the wildfires last summer.

“I think it’s because they’ve just got their strength back from the fires. It’s hard to fight back from that, and now this one’s hitting them even harder,” said Lisa Farrawell, a NSW resident who was trapped for hours due to the wildfires.

“I don’t know any time in state history where we have had these extreme weather conditions in such quick succession in the middle of a pandemic,” Berejiklian said.

According to AP News, Rob Costigan, a farm owner just north of Sydney spent days during the wildfires of 2019 and 2020 stomping out embers and running his sprinklers to save his home from burning before the recent floods lifted and destroyed his home.

“Just disbelief,” Costigan said. “It feels like the world’s against us. You work your guts out and then to have it all just washed away in the blink of an eye.”

Despite the setbacks, Costigan remains hopeful for the future.

“The fire and the drought haven’t beaten us and we’re slowly getting through this pandemic,” Costigan said. “This isn’t going to stop me from moving forward.”

PSU Vanguard • MARCH 30, 2021 • psuvanguard.com

SEMICONDUCTOR SHORTAGES SPELL TROUBLE FOR SILICON VALLEY

LACK OF SUPPLY HURTS EVERYTHING FROM ELECTRIC CARS TO GAME CONSOLES SEMICONDUCTOR. COURTESY OF IQS

BÉLA KURZENHAUSER Intel recently pledged to spend $20 billion on two new chip manufacturing plants in Arizona as part of the ongoing effort to stem the semiconductor industry’s manufacturing shortages. Recently-appointed Intel CEO Patrick Gelsinger announced the strategy during a virtual business update on Tuesday, March 23.

The establishment of these two new plants is just one of many recent business decisions made in Silicon Valley as a result of the pandemic-induced semiconductor shortages that have affected the supply chains for everything from electric automobiles to the newest game consoles like the Playstation 5 or the Xbox Series X. Last month, United States President Joe Biden announced his intention to snag $37 billion in legislative funding in order to amp up chip manufacturing both in the U.S. and around the globe.

“We need to make sure these supply chains are secure and reliable,” Biden said in a Feb. 24 White House statement. “I’m directing senior officials in my administration to work with industrial leaders and identify solutions to this semiconductor shortfall. In the meantime, we’re reaching out to our allies— semiconductor companies and others in the supply chain to ramp up production and help us resolve the bottlenecks we face now.”

The semiconductor shortage has come as a result of both the increasing demand for semiconductors and the COVID-19 pandemic. During the beginning of the pandemic, many chip manufacturers were forced to temporarily shut down their factories, causing a backlog of orders from larger tech companies

PSU Vanguard • MARCH 30, 2021 • psuvanguard.com

seeking semiconductor supply for their products. At the same time, at-home isolation drove purchases of electronic devices up greatly, as people shopped for items like game consoles and new computers in order to bide their time while waiting for the pandemic to subside.

The result was a supply that could not sufficiently meet the demands of Silicon Valley, causing manufacturers to struggle with their backlogs when factories opened again. The booming electric car industry and cryptocurrency scene have also vastly increased the demand for semiconductor devices. General Motors and Ford were both forced to reduce automobile production due to a lack of chips, resulting in reduced hours for factory workers.

According to Reuters, U.S. semiconductor companies account for 47% of global chip sales despite only making up 12% of global chip manufacturing, indicating a massive disparity between global supply and demand for semiconductor devices.

Intel has sought to outsource chip manufacturing to Asiabased companies like Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing (TSMC) and Samsung for the past several months, although its chances of catching up with either company are slim.

Additionally, while Intel’s new factories will help put a bandaid on the semiconductor crisis in the future, the time it will take to get the factories off the ground and running means that its impact in the present is minimal.

Production issues don’t just preside over Intel. Taiwan’s ongoing drought has affected water supply for semiconductor factories, which require massive amounts of water to main-

tain production. Taiwanese authorities recently announced measures that will cut industrial water supplies by 15% starting April 6, which could further put a dent in the global chip supply chain. Additionally, multiple semiconductor plants in Japan have been hurt recently by factory fires, delaying chip production for several weeks.

Cars and game consoles aren’t the only devices whose supply is being threatened by chip shortages. Samsung cochief executive Koh Dong-jin noted the potential delay of Samsung’s new Galaxy Note to 2022 in a shareholder meeting earlier this month.

“There’s a serious imbalance in supply and demand of chips,” Koh said. “It’s hard to say the shortage issue has been solved 100%.”

The semiconductor shortage is unlikely to stop anytime soon, and a fix will require more than just new factories. Intel CEO Gelsinger pointed to the industry’s lack of geographically-balanced manufacturing capacity as a key contributor to the semiconductor supply chain’s failures. According to The New York Times, Biden has spoken to members of Congress in both parties on the issue, with Democrats and Republicans both addressing not just the symptoms, but the causes of the shortage.

“Right now, semiconductor manufacturing is a dangerous weak spot in our economy and our national security,” said Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer. “This is a technology the United States created; we ought to be leading the world in it. There is bipartisan interest on both these issues.”

SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY

7

MORGAN TROPER When the original Game Boy was in development in the late 1980s, everyone at Nintendo of Japan thought it was a piece of shit. Internally, it was given the disparaging nickname “Dame Boy,” which translates roughly to “hopeless boy.”

Development of the handheld console was spearheaded by Gunpei Yokoi, Nintendo’s hotshot inventor who cut his teeth designing a range of strange-yet-imaginative toys for the company before its pivot to the games market. A signature of Yokoi’s design philosophy was the repurposing of cheap, mundane technology. Tellingly, he was inspired to create the “Game & Watch”—a series of rudimentary LCD handheld games that preceded the Game Boy and were the first Nintendo products to feature the now ubiquitous “D-pad”—while watching a businessman fiddle with a calculator on a bullet train. The Game Boy, too, was fairly rudimentary, even for its time. It lacked a backlight or color display, the sounds it made were uniquely sharp and brittle and the earliest games for the system were, in many ways, inferior versions of games that were already available on home consoles.

Of course, the Game Boy would go on to become Nintendo’s most iconic brand, at least until the introduction of the Nintendo DS in 2004. True to the spirit of Nintendo, these initial, technological weaknesses are strengths in hindsight. The lack of power allowed the Game Boy to be relatively compact, and its battery life was superior to that of the Sega Game Gear or Atari Lynx, two competing, overly precocious handheld systems that boasted full-color displays. Its chirpy synthesizer has been exploited by innumerable chiptune composers and producers within the last 10-plus

years, and the Game Boy sound chip is arguably responsible for the most quintessentially “game-y” music in existence. Most of all, the Game Boy’s portability made it the console of choice for Pokémon, a game that never would have become such a huge phenomenon if not for the ability to play it on the go.

Yokoi’s career and life post-Game Boy are marred by immense tragedy. After designing a disastrous, first draft virtual reality console for Nintendo in 1995—the monstrous, bipedal Virtual Boy—Yokoi resigned and formed his own company called Koto, which designed a Japan-only Game Boy competitor called the WonderSwan. In 1997, Yokoi was hit and killed by an automobile on a Japanese freeway while inspecting damage from a fender bender. Yokoi’s legacy lives on through the countless iterations of Game Boys that Nintendo released after his passing. 2001’s Game Boy Advance is the most noteworthy of these, and it turns 20 this month.

There are many things that make the Game Boy Advance special, and you could make a strong case for it being the greatest system Nintendo ever designed. It delivered on the promise made by Yokoi’s original Game Boy, despite his lack of personal involvement. Its technological capacities fell somewhere between the Super Nintendo and the Nintendo 64; this was the first time an inexpensive portable system didn’t just seem like a worse version of something you could play at home.

The Game Boy Advance’s release also coincided with one of the strangest

chapters in Nintendo’s history—its GameCube home console was getting decimated in America by Sony’s PlayStation 2 and Microsoft’s Xbox, but it still dominated the handheld market. It was as if Nintendo adopted a “nothing to lose” philosophy, as the company’s games and products from this era were characterized by formula shakeups and bold experimentation.

It seemed like every six months there was some new peripheral for the Game Boy Advance or GameCube—there was a link cable that allowed you to connect the Game Boy Advance to the GameCube, best utilized by The Legend of Zelda: Four Swords Adventures, which required four Game Boy Advances, four of these link cables, three other friends as nerdy as you and several rich parents; there was the official Game Boy Player, a plastic base that attached to the bottom of the GameCube that allowed you to play Game Boy and Game Boy Advance games on the TV; then there was the horrendous e-Reader, an LED card scanner for the Game Boy Advance that could convert collectible cards into mini-games.

The Game Boy Advance spawned several iterations of its own—the original, taco-esque model was supplanted by the Game Boy Advance SP in 2003, which was followed by the Game Boy Micro in 2005. The line of consoles were gradually phased out in favor of the Nintendo DS. With its latest system, the Nintendo Switch, Nintendo consolidated its home and portable console lines. You can finally play all the same games at home or portably. It’s not a Game Boy in name, but the Switch certainly feels like a successor to the Game Boy Advance in spirit—the fully portable Nintendo Switch Lite even features Yokoi’s instantly recognizable, cross-shaped D-pad. Still, I’m sentimental for the days when there was a hard divide between home and console gaming, and when playing games on the go meant constantly wrestling with glare or having to hold your non-backlit Game Boy at just the right angle in that specific part of the bus. As they say, kids today will never understand the struggle.

The youngest member of Nintendo’s Game Boy family—the Game Boy Advance—turns 20

GAMEBOY ADVANCE. COURTESY OF GOD OF GAMING

We owe it all

TO GAME BOY 8

ARTS & CULTURE

PSU Vanguard • MARCH 30, 2021 • psuvanguard.com

NICK GATLIN On Tuesday, March 23, a giant container ship by the name of the Ever Given got itself lodged sideways in the Suez Canal, a vital shipping waterway. According to the Suez Canal Authority, the ship ran aground after getting caught in a sandstorm and 40-knot winds, causing low visibility for the ship’s operators. The Ever Given, a 224,000-ton, 400 meter-long ship, is currently blocking a shipping canal that services about 30% of the world’s shipping container volume and 12% of all global trade. It could take weeks to get it free, while about 50 ships per day become stuck in a traffic jam on either side of the ship.

Was it seriously always this easy to cripple the global trade network? Apparently the Ever Given only has a crew of 25 people— they’re all safe, don’t worry—and that single ship could force hundreds of other ships to take the long way around the Cape of Good Hope, a journey that takes two weeks longer than going through the Suez Canal.

A wonderful article in The Atlantic by staff writer Amanda Mull examines the history of “containerization” after World War II, while also making many colorful metaphors regarding the Ever Given and hangovers. “I’m obsessed with the dang boat,” she writes, “because people like me and you are not really supposed to be aware of what boats like her are up to.” The grounding of this big, dumb ship has made the infrastructure of global capital “cartoonishly

noticeable,” leading to an explosion of memes about the incident.

Simply put, we’re not supposed to notice stuff like this. Our entire system of global shipping and finance is, despite appearances to the contrary, extremely vulnerable to crises. Even if those crises come by way of a giant boat.

We’re all treating this like a joke, and rightly so. I mean, the boat drew a penis and a butt in the water before lodging itself sideways in a tiny canal! It’s objectively funny. But don’t let the cartoonishness of this moment distract from its genuinely revolutionary potential.

My first reaction when hearing this story was: “Wait a minute.

Are you telling me all it took to devastate 12% of all global trade was a big ship with 25 people on it?” Well, my first reaction was actually to giggle like a little kid at the absurdity of everything, but you know, that was my second reaction.

Imagine the potential in a moment like this. The battle of Seattle?

Cute. The 2000 Prague anti-IMF protests? Child’s play. To quote Portland-based journalist Robert Evans from Twitter, “[I]t’s probably worth noting that whoever stuck that boat in the suez canal probably did more damage to capitalism than the last couple decades of anti-capitalist protests.”

What would the ramifications be if a group of workers—say, from the Seafarers International Union or the International Longshore

WAIT, IT WAS THIS EASY TO CRIPPLE GLOBAL TRADE?

& Warehouse Union (ILWU)—decided to strike, perhaps by using similar tactics to disrupt the global maritime trade? If 12% of global trade passes through the Suez Canal alone, imagine what would happen if workers similarly blocked the Panama Canal; that canal accounts for 6% of global trade, the vast majority of which is either destined for or exported from the United States.

In fact, what if maritime workers around the world demanded better working conditions and a slowdown of globalization? After all, it only took 25 people and one massive ship to block the Suez Canal, so how hard would it be to block other naval passageways at the same time? Workers around the world could bring the global economy to a halt in minutes.

Of course, I, the author of this article, am not suggesting that this should happen. I would never advocate for the near-total shutdown of the world economy in service of international workers’ rights and revolutionary struggle. All I’m saying is that we should look much more closely at the Suez Canal incident. It may seem like a joke now, and a pretty funny one at that. But it also reveals the possibilities of the future. Militant labor action often succeeds, like in the case of the 1937 maritime strike that led to the formation of the ILWU. If the workers of the world today were to “unite,” as it were, they could bring the foundation of global capital crumbling down in an instant. All it would take is a little push.

THE EVER GIVEN, LODGED ACROSS THE SUEZ CANAL. SUEZ CANAL AUTHORITY VIA AP NEWS

THE REVOLUTIONARY POTENTIAL OF A GLOBAL SHIPPING CANAL AND A BIG, DUMB BOAT PSU Vanguard • MARCH 30, 2021 • psuvanguard.com

OPINION

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