CANADA
Do you have the right to refuse to return to work? Employment lawyers weigh in

Alexandra Mae Jones CTVNews.ca writer  Thursday, May 7, 2020 

https://www.ctvnews.ca/business/do-you-have-the-right-to-refuse-to-return-to-work-employment-lawyers-weigh-in-1.4930305
Returning to work amid COVID-19

1 NOW PLAYING
Employment lawyers Muneeza Sheikh and Stuart Rudner join CTV News Channel to break down employees' rights when they head back to work.
Returning to work amid COVID-19

2 NOW PLAYING

3 NOW PLAYING

TORONTO -- As some provinces start to show promising signs of having flattened the curve of the pandemic, talk is turning to how we handle a return to the workplace, and what rights workers have in this tumultuous time.

Some provinces are already setting the wheels in motion for reopening non-essential businesses. For example, Manitoba has already reopened retail businesses, salons, museums, libraries and playgrounds; Quebec has allowed retail businesses outside of the Montreal area to open; and Ontario released a list on May 4 of businesses that could open, including golf courses and gardening centres.

Employers and employees across the country are looking ahead to plan what the new normal could look like in the workplace.

CTV News spoke to employment lawyers Muneeza Sheikh and Stuart Rudner in order to sift through some of the complicated questions about worker and employee rights.

MY WORKPLACE HAS REOPENED, BUT I DON’T THINK IT’S SAFE TO RETURN YET. DO I HAVE TO?

Yes, Rudner and Sheikh say. The law is on the employer’s side here, even in a pandemic.

“If work is available, you are expected to be there,” Rudner said. “And failure to attend for your regularly scheduled work hours [will be seen as] basically abandoning your job.”
Newsletter sign-up: Get The COVID-19 Brief sent to your inbox

Employers are required to provide a safe work environment, which means that an employee has grounds to complain if no attempts at implementing physical distancing and cleaning procedures have been made in order to facilitate the return of workers.

Rudner added there may be exceptions to the rule.

“Most provinces have job-protected leaves in place if you have COVID-19-related reasons for not going back into work,” he said. “If you are immunocompromised, you may need the accommodation of your employer. Or if the workplace is unsafe, and you can prove that it is unsafe, then you may not have to go back to work.”

But if a workplace has the proper precautions in place, workers won’t be able to remain home without being penalized by employers.

“If [physical distancing] is not possible, and sometimes it’s not, you’re going to take whatever steps you can,” Rudner advised employers. “Constant cleaning, providing soap, providing hand sanitizer, providing masks potentially, gloves.”

He also pointed out that some areas are releasing guidelines for businesses that are preparing to reopen.

“While [employers] do have a legal obligation to accommodate a valid reason for not being at work, whether it’s medical leave, or whether it’s family status related … what [employers] don’t have an obligation to do is accommodate someone’s fear and anxiety about getting COVID-19 in the workplace,” Sheikh said.

DO I HAVE TO TELL MY EMPLOYER IF I’VE HAD COVID-19?

Under normal circumstances, an employer prying into the personal health of an employee would be considered a serious privacy issue. But Rudner and Sheikh emphasized that this situation is new territory.

“We’re balancing two different rights or obligations,” Rudner said. “There is the right to privacy, there’s an employer obligation to take reasonable steps to provide a safe work environment. And often these two rights or obligations collide.

“When we’re talking about privacy rights, one of the ways that employers are able to infringe upon those rights is in the name of safety.”

Sheikh said that because there has been community spread of this virus, and because the stakes are so high, employers may ask questions they wouldn’t before. And she believes it would be hard for them to “get in trouble” for asking whether an employee had COVID-19.

Rudner added that it will depend on the nature of the workplace and whether the employer has a good reason to ask as well.

Sheikh said that employers should still “tread carefully,” as they are still not entitled to a worker’s diagnosis.

IF I’VE HAD COVID-19, DO I HAVE TO HAVE A DOCTOR’S NOTE TO GO BACK TO WORK?

One pressing question for those who have recovered from COVID-19 is whether or not they will even be allowed to physically return to work if their workplace reopens.

According to Sheikh, it’s not a simple yes or no.

With a common cold or flu in the past, an employer might tell an employee to simply return whenever they feel better.

But with a virus like this, the stakes are higher for infecting other coworkers, particularly if the workplace in question is one where practicing physical distancing on the job isn’t possible. She said that due to these unique situations, her advice would be for employers to require a doctor’s note for an employee who previously had COVID-19 to return to work.

“Because this can be so highly contagious, and unfortunately the implications are so detrimental, I would say get a medical note before you bring them back to work,” she said.

Doctor’s notes have always been a contentious issue, particularly so during the pandemic. Many individuals do not have regular doctors they can procure a note from, or they aren’t able to get a doctor’s note at short notice, meaning that employers who require doctor’s notes are sometimes forcing workers to attend work while sick.

In Ontario, the provincial government introduced legislation to waive all doctor’s note requirements in mid-March, as a response to the severity of the pandemic.

Eliminating medical notes to excuse an absence allowed workers to prioritize their health without losing their jobs. But facilitating the return of workers to a physical workspace while still prioritizing the health of everyone is a different story.

Rudner pointed out that the Ontario Medical Association is strongly against requiring doctor’s notes, but that “this is entirely new and unprecedented and safety is paramount here.

“I would certainly not discourage an employer from asking for a doctor’s note where it’s appropriate,” he said. “In these situations, if someone was diagnosed [with COVID-19] and now they want to come back to work, that’s pretty appropriate in my view.”

I’M FEELING SICK AT WORK. WILL I GET SENT HOME?

“The employer has a right to send you home, perhaps even against your will,” Sheikh said.

An employer sending home a worker on unpaid leave because of one sneeze or cough is “problematic,” she said, but if there’s a genuine concern that a person might have COVID-19, that’s different.

Full-time workers with benefits will be able to get paid leave and then use their sick days if they do contract the virus.

However, contract workers may get left in the dust.

Sheikh called it “very, very difficult, if not almost impossible,” to get things such as paid sick leave from an employer if you are a contract worker who would not normally receive those benefits.

“We have a lot of people out there who are paid as contractors when really they’re employees in all but name,” Rudner said. “And a lot of times they do that because they get better tax treatment, but the reality is they don’t have the protections that [a full-time employee] does.”

Government assistance can hopefully fill in the gap, he said.

“The CERB will help a little bit, because the CERB will help out those who are self-employed.”

WHAT ABOUT PART-TIME HEALTH CARE WORKERS WHO HAVE LOST WORK?

Even as workplaces reopen, not everyone will be able to gain back the same amount of jobs as they held before the pandemic. For personal support workers and health-care workers who used to work part-time at multiple institutions, the landscape has changed.

In B.C., Dr. Bonnie Henry issued an order in late March requiring workers at long-term care homes to limit their work to one care home instead of working at several. In Ontario, the government made similar recommendations in March, but stopped short of requiring employees to stay at one facility.

Those who follow the guidelines to work in only one care home to prevent cross-contamination could be losing a significant part of their income.

Sheikh said that the problem is that employers do not technically have to do anything about this.

“Where they’re working the one part-time job, is that specific employer responsible for supplementing the income of the other part-time job? Absolutely not."

If a worker is part of a union, they may have more options, he said. But non-unionized workers can fall through the cracks.

Sheikh said that government funding might be able to fill in the blanks for some PSWs in this situation, but the hope is there will be more avenues soon.

“Because I can appreciate how unfair [this loss of jobs] might be, especially for those health-care workers that are not unionized,” she said.“The last thing you want to do is demoralize our health-care workers.”

Questions surrounding the rights of workers are increasingly complicated right now, Sheikh said.

“I think we’re in sort of the wild, wild west, so to speak, right now, in terms of how this virus and the implications for our workplaces is going to play out in the next few weeks,” she said.

Because of the increased murkiness around when workers can refuse unsafe work, and when employers can ask questions that would violate previous privacy rules, Sheikh anticipates that there could be “a significant amount of litigation and people filing lawsuits … around what was appropriate and what wasn’t appropriate during this time.”

FRANCE 24 takes viewers back to the biggest pandemics in history, which decimated entire populations. From the Plague of Athens in 430 BC to modern-day HIV/AIDS, FRANCE 24 journalist Florence Gaillard takes a look at the deadliest pandemics ever faced by humanity.

Author: Florence Gaillard
Design and development: Creative Department, France Médias Monde
Managing Editor: Ghassan Basile
https://graphics.france24.com/great-pandemics-plague-athens-black-death-cholera-spanish-flu-aids/#haut
All rights reserved France 24 © April 2020

 

THIRD WORLD USA 
Coronavirus is exacerbating America’s hunger crisis

Food banks and SNAP are completely overwhelmed right now.
By Li Zhouli@vox.com May 11, 2020


The images of thousands of cars, lined up bumper-to-bumper on otherwise-empty freeways, capture the shocking scale of the nation’s hunger crisis.

In San Antonio, Texas, 10,000 people waited for hours to receive meal boxes from a regional food bank in April. In Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, hundreds of families have been showing up for weekly food pickups at the PPG Paints Arena. And in Sunrise, Florida, cars stretched for nearly two miles, while people waited at a Feeding South Florida food bank site.

The demand at food banks across the country has skyrocketed in recent weeks — increasing by as much as 600 percent at some — underscoring just how expansive the effects of the economic downturn have been: As of early May, more than 30 million people had filed for unemployment in just six weeks.


Hundreds of cars wait to receive food from the Greater Community Food Bank in Duquesne. Collection begins at noon. @PghFoodBank @PittsburghPG pic.twitter.com/94YFaO7dqX— Andrew Rush (@andrewrush) March 30, 2020

That means growing food insecurity in a nation where millions of people were already struggling to get sufficient food each month.

According to a 2014 Washington Post report, roughly 46 million people — or one in seven US residents — depended on food banks or meal service programs annually prior to the coronavirus pandemic. And in 2019, about 38 million people used the US Department of Agriculture’s Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.

These numbers are now seeing a major uptick.

“The need in our state has gone from 800,000 Washingtonians before Covid to 1.6 million people,” says Christina Wong, the public policy director at Northwest Harvest, a food bank that serves Washington state. States including Texas, New York, and Louisiana have seen applications for SNAP double or more, Yahoo News reports.


RELATED
The current hunger crisis in the US, in photos

It’s a trend apparent across the country — and yet another one that reveals the vast holes in the government safety net. With SNAP unable to cover the overwhelming needs that have emerged, food banks (which have dubious corporate ties of their own) have stepped in to help support those who fall through.

“Food banks are the safety net under the safety net,” Andy Fisher, a food security expert and author of Big Hunger, tells Vox.
SNAP wasn’t providing enough money before the crisis — and it definitely isn’t now

One of the main problems this crisis has emphasized is just how tenuous America’s social safety net really is — and this is certainly the case with SNAP.

Even before the crisis, the amount SNAP was providing to individuals and families receiving benefits was often not enough to cover a month’s worth of groceries. This shortage is by design: the help is intended to be “supplemental” in nature. Because of this, however, many people have had to turn to food banks in the past to make up the difference. According to a 2016 study from the USDA, almost a third of SNAP recipient families visited a food bank every month. Currently, even more must do so.

People wait in line at a pop-up food pantry at the Bayview Opera House in San Francisco, California, on April 20. Scott Strazzante/The San Francisco Chronicle/Getty Images

Cars line up at a drive-thru food bank at the Baldwin Hills Crenshaw shopping center in Los Angeles on April 17. Genaro Molina/Los Angeles Times/Getty Images

“The biggest weakness in SNAP is the amount of benefits — the degree to which they are inadequate,” says Ellen Vollinger, the legal director at the Food Research and Action Center. “It’s why food banks report that they serve a lot of SNAP customers.”

Like other safety net programs, SNAP limits the number of people who can participate in it based on criteria like income and work requirements. To qualify, individuals’ and families’ gross monthly income needs to be at 130 percent of the poverty line or below, coming out to $1,354 for an individual and $2,790 for a family of four.

“Able-bodied” individuals without dependents between the ages of 18 and 49 also need to either participate in a job training program or work 20 hours a week, on average, in order to use the program for more than three months, every three years. There is currently a waiver on the three-month limit previously put on these benefits, in light of the ongoing pandemic. And while the Trump administration has tried to make such restrictions even more stringent, these rule changes remain tied up in court.


Because of its limits on benefits and eligibility, SNAP ends up being insufficient to address the needs of some households, while cutting out others completely. According to a 2018 study from Feeding America, a network of 200 food banks across the country, these nonprofits serve as the only recourse for many families who can’t afford food — but don’t qualify for SNAP.

Benefits vary based on income and household size; according to CBPP, individuals received an average of $127 per month in 2018, and households overall received an average of $256 per month. The maximum amount individuals can currently receive is $194 per month, and the maximum amount a family of four can receive is $646 per month. On average, people on SNAP in 2018 had just $1.40 to spend per meal, CBPP estimates.

Currently, because of a provision lawmakers approved in the Families First Coronavirus Response Act, states are working on automatically providing the maximum benefit to all individuals and families as one way to address income shortfalls they may be experiencing.

Vehicles line up at the Feeding South Florida food bank in Sunrise, Florida, on April 6. Joe Raedle/Getty Images

Experts tell Vox that SNAP benefits overall have not kept pace with increased living costs — and that this gap is even more evident during the pandemic, when individuals may be relying on SNAP more and people are being told to stockpile groceries for longer periods.

“It’s real hard by the end of the month,” Joseph, a 59-year-old SNAP recipient in Baltimore, Maryland, told Vox. “By the time the check comes, it goes. ... I’m usually always broke.” In 80 percent of cases, the SNAP benefits households receive are spent in two weeks.

“We and many economists and policymakers recommend raising SNAP benefits and modestly expanding eligibility to address the effects of COVID-19 until the economy shows solid signs of recovering from the downturn,” CBPP senior fellow Dottie Rosenbaum writes in a blog post.


During the pandemic, applications for SNAP have gone more smoothly for many people than similar processes for unemployment insurance, though there have still been delays. Typically, states have to let people know if they qualify for the program within 30 days, and send them an Electronic Benefit Transfer card — which can be used to buy groceries — within seven to 10 days. But, as with other overwhelmed safety net programs, many places are seeing a logjam.

Jennifer, a SNAP applicant in Newark, New Jersey who’d been recently laid off, told Vox she was increasingly anxious while waiting for her EBT card, as she also tried to apply for unemployment. “In the richest country in the world, are we only going to hand out 1,200 [dollars] and assure everything is going to be okay? It is unfair,” she said.
Food banks are completely slammed right now

Because SNAP isn’t accessible to all households affected by the economic downturn — and doesn’t provide enough money even for those who can use it — food banks are now trying to fill in a much bigger gap than they usually have to deal with. As millions of people grapple with unemployment and business closures, they’re using food banks in order to address shortfalls.

“What’s been so challenging for food banks is that we’ve had this really dramatic and heartbreaking increase in need,” says Leslie Bacho, CEO of Second Harvest of Silicon Valley. “Fifty percent of people haven’t gotten help before.”

Jose Lopreto is directed by Cinthya Torres at a pop-up food pantry in Chelsea, Massachusetts, on April 14. Erin Clark/Boston Globe/Getty Images

Volunteers in Miami, Florida, organize groceries to be distributed at a drive-thru site on April 15. Eva Marie Uzcategui Trinkl/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images

PennDOT workers pack boxes of emergency food at Helping Harvest in Sinking Spring, Pennsylvania, on April 30. Lauren A. Little/MediaNews Group/Reading Eagle/Getty Images
People line up at a food bank in Waltham, Massachusetts, on April 11. Many people who use food banks are also SNAP recipients; however, the benefits rarely cover a full month of groceries. Erin Clark/Boston Globe/Getty Images

Those increases have been staggering at many organizations. Bacho says the group is serving roughly 100,000 more people than before the pandemic. Eric Cooper, president of the San Antonio Food Bank, notes the organization’s sites went from serving 60,000 people a week to 120,000 a week. And Anna Kurian, senior communications director at the North Texas Food Banks, says they’ve distributed 6 million pounds of food in about a month, compared to 1.5 million pounds in the prior two months.

Such huge amounts of need mean food banks have had to significantly increase the supply of food they have, and purchase much more than they normally would — leading to a massive uptick in their costs.


Wong, of Northwest Harvest, estimates that the food bank went from purchasing 10 percent of its food to 90 percent. This additional cost is putting pressure on food bank budgets, and for some, an uptick in donations isn’t enough to cover it. Feeding America expects to see a shortfall of $1.4 billion in the next six months, according to the New York Times.
What policy changes would help

There are several proposals in Congress aimed at improving the existing SNAP program — by making it more comprehensive and flexible. They likely face a roadblock from Republicans, who have expressed little interest in them, and even if they do make it into the next stimulus, that bill could be weeks away. If approved, though, these proposals could provide more comprehensive food aid and relieve some of the demand food banks are encountering.

Boosting SNAP also has noticeable economic impacts, since this money not only helps people afford food they need, but the spending goes right back to retailers, and has a multiplier effect as a result. Moody’s Analytics has found that every additional dollar of SNAP funding that people can access translates to a $1.70 boost in the economy.

A whiteboard displays what to include as volunteers pack up boxes of food to be distributed at the Capital Area Food Bank in Washington, DC, on April 9. Drew Angerer/Getty Images

The changes lawmakers are pushing include a 15 percent expansion in the maximum SNAP benefit, which would be a direct and quick way to offer more support to millions of people.

“During the Great Recession, Congress made SNAP more generous” using the Recovery Act of 2009, says Duke University public policy professor Anna Gassman-Pines. “The evidence is that this helped a lot of people weather the recession and the same thing could be done now.”

That 13.6 percent increase on the maximum monthly benefit in 2009 was found to have a tangible effect on reducing food insecurity for households near the poverty line. According to FRAC, data also shows that families receiving the expanded benefit didn’t use them up until later in the month.


There’s a push, too, for more flexibility around how SNAP benefits can be used. Only a few states enable recipients to use SNAP at restaurants, or for online delivery, for example. Expanding both of these options could greatly widen how the program can help families during the pandemic, especially when shopping in person at stores can prove challenging for people who are more vulnerable to the coronavirus.

Democrats have made the expansion of SNAP a key priority for the upcoming stimulus package, though they’ve yet to pick up Republican support. If they can, it could prove to be one of the quickest ways to get stimulus help directly to people who sorely need it.

People wait in line to receive food at a food bank in Brooklyn, New York, on April 28. Spencer Platt/Getty Images

Commemorating the abolition of slavery in France: ‘This is our history’

10/05/2020

A "memorial" sculpture, decorated with a ribbon in the colours of the French flag, was unveiled in the gardens of Bordeaux's town hall on December 2, 2019. © Georges Gobet, AFP

Text by:Stéphanie TROUILLARD

The commemorations of the abolition of slavery in France scheduled for May 10 will take place despite the coronavirus pandemic, but in small groups or virtually. A Facebook Live is being organised by the Foundation for the Memory of Slavery, in partnership with FRANCE 24.

Due to the coronavirus pandemic, celebration of the National Day of Remembrance of the Slave Trade, Slavery and Its Abolition, held every year in France on May 10, has been disrupted.

A ceremony presided over by Prime Minister Édouard Philippe was held on Sunday, but on a small scale. "We will not put this commemoration on hold, despite the health requirements," former prime minister Jean-Marc Ayrault, now president of the Foundation for the Memory of Slavery, told FRANCE 24.

Ayrault’s foundation was charged with overseeing the remembrances this year. In addition, regional prefects were asked by the Prime Minister to organise commemorative ceremonies for the public in each department, while respecting the rules of social distancing.

"There will be modest national ceremonies, in Paris with the Prime Minister, but also in provincial and overseas communes with the help of associations," Ayrault said. "A lot of things are going to happen on May 10, including the organisation of a live broadcast on Facebook.


The live broadcast, in partnership with FRANCE 24, will bring together politicians, artists and historians for discussion.

"This is not about creating division"

The theme of this year's commemorations is 'The Missing Page'.

"We don't know how the existing framework was established. We know that there was slavery and abolition, but we know less about the fact that it took three revolutions to achieve abolition," Ayrault said.

For the former mayor of the city of Nantes, a hub in the slave trade, the occasion provides an opportunity to recall the place that slavery occupies in our national history. "It leaves deep traces and wounds. They must be repaired. It is not a question of creating division nor of setting memories against each other," Ayrault stressed, referring to critics, who complain of an excess of repentance. "This is our history. And for us to share it, we must make it known.

"The aim is not to make people feel guilty, but to provide keys to understanding and to a way of living together based on justice, equality, the fight against all forms of discrimination and racism, but also fraternity," Ayrault said, adding that it was "a contemporary struggle".

An estimated 12 to 18 million slaves were taken from sub-Saharan Africa to the Americas during the transatlantic slave trade. Under the impetus of the philosophers of the Enlightenment, a critique of slavery and the slave trade began to emerge in France in the 18th century. In his 1748 book "The Spirit of the Laws ", Charles de Montesquieu is sarcastic about "those who call themselves Christians and who practice slavery". In 1788, the Society of Friends of Blacks was created in Paris and campaigned for abolition.

A long road to abolition

The Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen of 1789 abolished slavery but had no impact in the French West Indies. It was not until February 1794 that the Society of Friends of Blacks succeeded in winning abolition. Napoléon Bonaparte, however, very quickly re-established slavery and the slave trade in 1802.

It was not until 27 April 1848 that a decree by the provisional government of the Second Republic definitively abolished slavery in all the French colonies. The abolition of slavery was enshrined in the Constitution on November 4, 1848.

This article was translated from the original in French.

SLAVERY
FRANCE

Native American tribes reject coronavirus checkpoint threat

Two Sioux nations in South Dakota have said that Governor Kristi Noem is undermining both their sovereignty and their health. Indigenous populations have been especially hard-hit by the pandemic.

Harold Frazier, chairman of the Cheyenne River Sioux, said he would not apologize for tribal land being an "island of safety"

The Ogala Sioux and Cheyenne River Sioux nations in the US state of South Dakota continued on Monday to reject attempts by Republican Governor Kristi Noem to force the tribes to take down coronavirus health checkpoints on their land.

On Friday, Noem had threated legal action if the checkpoints on federal and state highways were not removed within two days, a move that would violate both tribal sovereignty as well as existing agreements between the state and Sioux governments. The checkpoints are part of the measures the tribes have put in place to stop the spread of the pandemic in their territory.

Harold Frazier, chairman of the Cheyenne River Sioux, said "we will not apologize for being an island of safety in a sea of uncertainty and death…You continuing to interfere in our efforts to do what science and facts dictate seriously undermine our ability to protect everyone on the reservation."

Read more: US blocks UN vote on coronavirus pandemic

His sentiments were echoes by Ogala Sioux President Julian Bear Runner, who said in a video posted to Facebook that "we have an inherent and sovereign right to protect the health of our people, and no one, man or woman, can dispute that right.

"Your threats of legal action are not helpful and do not intimidate us. The only way we can get through this is to work together as a nation."

State lawmakers call on Noem to back down

The governor had claimed that the tribes were defying a deal not to close or restrict highways without consulting the state government first.


Noem has tracked close to the president in her policy regarding the pandemic

However, as Frazier pointed out, the tribes have met with several state bodies to discuss the checkpoints, and the health controls are not restricting commercial trade, as Noem claims.

Over the weekend, 17 state lawmakers signed a letter requesting Noem seek a diplomatic solution and not a legal one, adding that a lawsuit would "cost the people of South Dakota more money." Despite the letter, Noem reiterated her intention to sue on Sunday.

Noem is one of many Republican governors analysts have accused of trying to restart their state economies too early under pressure from the party and the White House. South Dakota is the site of the Smithfield pork processing plant, the site of a major COVID-19 outbreak after US President Donald Trump forced meat factories to remain open throughout the crisis.

Data from several state with large Native American populations have shown that Indigenous groups, along with African American and Latino communities, are being hit especially hard by the pandemic. In Arizona, for example, Native people account for 16% of deaths despite being only 4.6% of the population.

Last week, more than a dozen tribes across the US announced they were suing the federal government over a delay in federal pandemic relief funding. According to the stimulus package agreed to by the US Congress and signed by President Trump, $8 billion was to be allocated to hard-hit Indigenous nations. However, lawyers for the tribes say they have not received any of the funding due a dispute with the Trump administration, which is arguing that for-profit businesses run by Native Americans in Alaska, a state valuable to US oil interests, should be allocated some of the funds. 

Cécile Rol-Tanguy obituary

One of the great figures of the French resistanceRobert Gildea THE GUARDIAN Mon 11 May 2020
 

Cécile and Henri Rol-Tanguy. They worked in tandem and he led the irregular French forces in the Paris insurrection of August 1944

Cécile Rol-Tanguy, who has died aged 101, was one of the great figures of the French resistance. She came from a communist family and worked in tandem with her husband, Henri Rol-Tanguy, who led the irregular French forces in the Paris insurrection of August 1944. Long in his shadow, she came into her own as a veteran and voice of the resistance in the years after his death in 2002.

Her father, François Le Bihan, a Breton who had worked in Les Halles market in Paris, joined the navy, trained as a radio electrician and met his wife, Germaine Jaganet, while based at Royan in the south-west of France at the end of the first world war. Returning to Paris, he joined the French Communist party (PCF) as soon as it was founded in 1920.

Cécile, who was born in Royan, was brought up in an environment dedicated to international communism. Her family’s home sheltered political exiles from Italy, Germany, Hungary, Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia, and as a girl Cécile joined the Jeunes Filles de France, set up by the PCF. In 1936, aged 17, she found a job as a shorthand typist in the engineers union of the Confédération Générale du Travail. There she met Henri Tanguy, a Breton like herself, who had been repeatedly sacked from car factories for fomenting strikes and now worked as a permanent official for the union.

Cécile Rol-Tanguy at the the ceremony marking the 65th anniversary of the liberation of Paris from Nazi occupation in 2009. Photograph: Horacio Villalobos/EPA

Cécile and Henri were soon plunged into the maelstrom of what they saw as a war between fascism and communism. When the Spanish civil war broke out in 1936, Henri went to fight in the International Brigades while Cécile worked with the Aid for Spain Committee and wrote him letters as his “war godmother”. Henri claimed to be a revolutionary who would never marry, but they wed in 1939. When the second world war broke out Henri was sent to the front at Sarrebourg, then to a factory in the Pyrenees as a skilled worker.

Cécile’s father was arrested as a communist in 1940 and her first child, Françoise, died as a baby in the same year, just as the German army closed in on Paris. Instead of collapsing, she decided to resist. “I had nothing left,” she said in a 2012 interview. “My father had been arrested, I didn’t know where my husband was, and I had lost my little girl. What could hold me back?”

Henri became an underground communist resister, first for the Organisation Spéciale, then the Franc-Tireurs et Partisans (FTP). Cécile typed flyers and acted as his liaison agent, keeping the resistance network together and replacing those who were arrested.

Resistance was extremely dangerous. Those who fell into the hands of the Vichy or German authorities risked deportation or execution. Cécile’s father escaped after his arrest but was recaptured in 1941 and deported the following year to Auschwitz, where he died.

After two comrades were arrested in the autumn of 1942, Henri was sent away to the Poitiers area for six months. Cécile stayed in Paris with her mother, who, when necessary, cared for their two children, Hélène and Jean. Henri returned to Paris in the spring of 1943 and was appointed FTP chief in the Paris region, working with the Polish-Jewish resister Joseph Epstein. Cécile liaised between them and also with Boris Holban, the Romanian-Jewish leader of the Paris FTP-MOI, which mobilised communists of foreign origin. Epstein was arrested and executed on 11 April 1944.

In June 1944 Henri became Paris head of the Forces Françaises de l’Intérieur (FFI), which brought together communist and non-communist irregulars. He adopted the nom de guerre of Rol after a comrade killed in Spain.

On 14 August 1944, Cécile took Henri’s machine gun from one part of Paris to another, avoiding German road blocks, while her mother took flyers in Jean’s pram and Hélène danced along the pavement. At dawn on 19 August the insurrection order signed by Henri was posted across Paris.

The liberation of Paris covered Henri in glory but General Charles de Gaulle was determined to reassert his own power and to prioritise the role of the Free French forces, which he had founded and which had fought outside France until they entered Paris under General Philippe Leclerc on 24 August 1944.

On 27 August, the day after he walked down the Champs-Élysées to rapturous crowds, De Gaulle invited 20 leaders of the internal resistance to the War Ministry. Each was tersely thanked before the general dismissed him with “Good. Next!” Cécile was the only woman present. “Personally, I did not find it very welcoming,” she recalled. “It was a very small reception, without even a glass of wine to finish with.”

The internal resistance was humiliated because it had a large communist contingent and because it detracted from De Gaulle’s personal glory. Henri continued in the army proper and fought his way to Germany, but he was then given a military desk job in Versailles.


Commemorations always celebrated the role of the Free French and of Leclerc in particular. On one occasion Cécile told the mayor of Paris, Jacques Chirac, that not giving her husband a seat in the front row of such commemorations was “an affront to history”.

In recent years Cécile enjoyed greater recognition. She became co-president of the Friends of the Spanish Republican Fighters, set up in 1996, of which her daughter Claire was general secretary. Frequently she gave talks in schools about the resistance, becoming the star turn after the death of Lucie Aubrac in 2007. In May 2014 she spoke at a conference to mark the 70th anniversary of the Liberation at the French Institute in London. She was made a Grand Officier de la Légion d’Honneur in 2014 and was awarded the Grande Croix de l’Ordre National du Mérite in 2017.

She is survived by her four children, Hélène, Jean, Claire and Francis.

• Cécile Rol-Tanguy, French resistance agent, born 10 April 1919; died 8 May 2020

South Korea struggles to contain new outbreak amid anti-gay backlash

Fears people will fail to get tested out of fear after new cases linked to Seoul gay district

Nemo Kim in Seoul THE GUARDIAN Mon 11 May 202

Quarantine workers spray disinfectant in Itaewon neighbourhood on Monday. Photograph: YONHAP/Reuters


Authorities in South Korea are struggling to contain a new coronavirus outbreak linked to the capital’s nightclub district as a backlash against the country’s gay community increases, prompting fears LGBT people will fail to get tested out of fear of being outed.

South Korea had been praised for its innovative efforts to contain the pandemic, going from the second most infected region outside China to having just a handful of cases before the latest outbreak a week ago.

But the increasing number of cases related to nightclubs in Seoul is raising concerns about a possible second wave as well as over the high level of deeply entrenched homophobic attitudes in the conservative society.

Of 35 new cases, 29 were found to be linked to Itaewon, the capital’s gay district, according to officials from the Korean Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (KCDC), bringing the total number of cases related to the clubs to 86.

The emergence of the cluster prompted officials to push back the re-opening of schools by one week, with students initially set to return to classes in stages starting Wednesday.

Vice-education minister Park Baeg-beom said the delay was “inevitable” in order to guarantee the safety of students.


After Kookmin Ilbo, a local media outlet with links to an evangelical church, reported that businesses visited by an infected man over the long weekend were gay clubs, many other South Korean media followed suit, revealing not only the identity of clientele but also some of their ages and the names of their workplaces.

The media frenzy reached a new level when another infected man was found to have been to an LGBT sauna in Gangnam, prompting a slew of homophobic content in newspapers and online.

Lurid reporting, along with South Korea’s use of the trace and test method, has led to members of the gay community reporting feeling scared to get tested and even suicidal. Officials said 3,112 people who were in the nightclubs were currently not contactable.

“I admit it was a huge mistake to visit the gay district when the corona situation was not fully over,” Lee Youngwu , a gay man in his30s, told the Guardian “But visiting the area is the only time when I can be myself and hang out with others similar to me. During the week, I have to pretend to like women.

“My credit card company told me that they passed on my payment information in the district to the authorities. I feel so trapped and hunted down. If I get tested, my company will most likely find out I’m gay. I’ll lose my job and face a public humiliation. I feel as if my whole life is about to collapse. I have never felt suicidal before and never thought I would, but I am feeling suicidal now.”


On Saturday the prime minister, Chung Sye-kyun, urged the public to “refrain from criticising a certain community as it will not help efforts to contain the coronavirus spread”.

Lee Jong-geol, the general director of Korean gay men’s human rights group Chingusai, told the Guardian that the group had begun counselling and legal aid services for those affected by the crisis, adding that Seoul city officials asked the group to encourage gay men who had visited the clubs to come forward to get tested.

“I understand that civil servants want to find a convenient way to do their jobs but they should realise that South Korea’s gay people do not all belong to one, single group. Civil servants are handling the situation in the same way as the Shincheonji cult situation, but we’re not a cult.”

Lee Jae-myung, governor of Gyeonggi province near Seoul, where many of the infected people live, said it would be possible for people to get tested free of charge by only saying they had been to the outbreak area and not having to mention the names of businesses they visited.

“It took me a whole week to get up the courage to get tested,” Min Jaeyoung, 27, told the Guardian, “I had to practise saying ‘oh, of course I’m not gay’ and even recorded myself several times to sound natural. I even put up photos of footballers and Korean hip-hop artists on my [social media accounts] to try to seem straight. I even got ready to look for another job. As it turned out, I was not infected but I cried when I got that text not because I was happy not to be infected but because I really hate being a gay man in this country.”

The mayor of Seoul, Park Won-soon, said on Monday that while he would guarantee anonymity when people got tested, there would be a fine of 2m Korean won (£1,320) for those who did not get tested . He also said anyone who did not come forward would be visited at home by officials accompanied by police.

Scientists concerned that coronavirus is adapting to humans

Researchers have observed mutations in some strains that may help the virus spread

Ian Sample Science editor Sun 10 May 2020

Scientists are keeping a close eye on genome mutations to prevent a coronavirus vaccine that only works against some strains. Photograph: David Cheskin/PA


Scientists have found evidence for mutations in some strains of the coronavirus that suggest the pathogen may be adapting to humans after spilling over from bats.

The analysis of more than 5,300 coronavirus genomes from 62 countries shows that while the virus is fairly stable, some have gained mutations, including two genetic changes that alter the critical “spike protein” the virus uses to infect human cells.

Researchers at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine stress that it is unclear how the mutations affects the virus, but since the changes arose independently in different countries they may help the virus spread more easily.

The spike mutations are rare at the moment but Martin Hibberd, professor of emerging infectious diseases and a senior author on the study, said their emergence highlights the need for global surveillance of the virus so that more worrying changes are picked up fast.


When will a coronavirus vaccine be ready?


“This is exactly what we need to look out for,” Hibberd said. “People are making vaccines and other therapies against this spike protein because it seems a very good target. We need to keep an eye on it and make sure that any mutations don’t invalidate any of these approaches.”

Studies of the virus revealed early on that the shape of its spike protein allowed it to bind to human cells more efficiently than Sars, a related virus that sparked an outbreak in 2002. The difference may have helped the latest coronavirus infect more people and spread rapidly around the world.

Scientists will be concerned if more extensive mutations in the spike protein arise, not only because they may alter how the virus behaves. The spike protein is the main target of leading vaccines around the world, and if it changes too much those vaccines may no longer work. Other potential therapies, such as synthetic antibodies that home in on the spike protein, could be less effective, too.

“This is an early warning,” Hibberd said. “Even if these mutations are not important for vaccines, other mutations might be and we need to maintain our surveillance so we are not caught out by deploying a vaccine that only works against some strains.”

The scientists analysed 5,349 coronavirus genomes that have been uploaded to two major genetics databases since the outbreak began. By studying the genetic makeup of the viruses, the scientists worked out how it has diversified into different strains and looked for signs that it was adapting to its human host.

In an unpublished study that has yet to be peer reviewed, the researchers identified two broad groups of coronavirus that have now spread globally. Of the two spike mutations, one was found in 788 viruses around the world, with the other present in only 32.

The study shows that, until January, one group of coronaviruses in China escaped detection because they had a mutation in the genetic region that early tests relied on. More recent tests detect all of the known types of the virus.

Last month, an international team of scientists used genetic analyses to show that the coronavirus likely originated in bats and was not made in a lab as some conspiracy theorists have claimed.

The whiteness of anti-lockdown protests

How ignorance, privilege, and anti-black racism is driving white protesters to risk their lives.

By Maia Niguel Hoskin

Protesters demonstrate outside the Orange County Administration Building demanding the end of stay-at-home orders and the reopening of Florida businesses. Paul Hennessy/SOPA Images/LightRocket/Getty Images

This story is part of a group of stories called

First-person essays and interviews with unique perspectives on complicated issues.


Last weekend, thousands gathered in Washington, Michigan, Texas, Maryland, and California to protest lockdown orders resulting from the coronavirus pandemic. Some marched with rifles draped across their backs and handguns resting on their hips, while others shared conspiracy theories about Bill Gates and his involvement with the Covid-19 vaccine.

Even in larger, less-rural cities in California, groups waved “Trump 2020” flags and marched the streets with signs that read, “No Liberty. No Life.” And these protests only seem to be picking up steam: On Friday, thousands stormed the Wisconsin State Capitol, carrying flags and wearing Tea Party regalia.

But what has been most glaringly obvious about these protests isn’t the far-right theatrics. It’s that almost everyone marching to end stay-at-home orders is white. And if they do return to “regular life” and refuse to distance themselves, their overt disregard will impact the population most vulnerable to the virus — black people.

It’s easy to dismiss the anti-lockdown protests as business per usual in the land of right-wing Trumpism. But there is a much larger issue at play that existed long before President Donald Trump took office, and that he has learned to artfully exploit. It’s why it’s not surprising that in some areas, protesters waved Confederate flags or held signs that read, “Give me liberty or give me Covid-19.” The protests are symptomatic of the profound presence of whiteness and white supremacy in America.

On the surface, the protests are about the contentious debate over reopening the economy during a pandemic, when more commerce risks more infections and the overwhelming of our hospital systems. Trump and other Republicans who have pushed to scrap lockdown orders sooner rather than later argue that doing so will prevent the country from going into economic collapse.


“You’re going to lose more people by putting a country into a massive recession or depression,” said Trump during a press conference on March 24, when he first began pushing the idea of reopening the economy, only one week into the lockdown. “You can’t just come in and say let’s close up the United States of America, the biggest, the most successful country in the world by far.”

But if states open back up, it will come at whose expense? In the US, black Americans are dying of Covid-19 at disproportionate rates to other racial and ethnic groups. According to an American Public Media Research Lab report published this week, almost 50,000 people have died of Covid-19 in the country. Data for about three-fourths of those deaths reveals that the mortality rate for blacks is 2.7 times higher than for whites. Although blacks make up only 13 percent of the population, they represent 30 percent of Covid-19 patients in the US. The data continues to reveal which Americans face the greatest risk if the country is reopened.

To be fair, some protesters have expressed a deep financial need to return to work, to keep their lights on and a roof over their heads, which is understandable given that 26 million Americans have lost their jobs — skyrocketing the unemployment rate. As the first of the month quickly approaches, many Americans are wondering how they’ll pay their rent and only 80 million of 171 million Americans have received their CARES act stimulus checks so far.

But these protests are also attended by Trump supporters who have been convinced by conservative media pundits like Fox News contributor Bill Bennett, who during an April 13 interview on Fox, argued that the virus is actually less deadly than the seasonal flu and that “this was not and is not a pandemic.” Before Covid-19 began to ravage our country in February, the Trump administration doubled down on claims that the virus was no more deadly than the seasonal flu, and that containment was “airtight.” These claims were made despite the CDC warning that community spread was inevitable and the country would most likely experience severe interruptions in daily life.

Admittedly, I might also be eager to return to swapping germs, if I thought the virus was nothing worse than a cold and if I lived far away from the cities experiencing widespread infection, as many of the protesters do.


RELATED
What the anti-stay-at-home protests are really about

But this isn’t just happening in rural areas. Protests are also happening in wealthy, elite, and yes, very white cities and suburbs too. Residents of Newport Beach and Huntington Beach, two Southern California coastal cities in Orange County, aired their grievances by the hundreds last week. Protesters were seen socializing and laughing, wearing pro-Trump baseball caps while standing far less than the advised six feet apart.

Huntington Beach and Newport Beach have some of the highest numbers of confirmed cases in Orange County, yet the residents’ eagerness to end social distancing orders feels informed and motivated by the reality of who is most impacted by Covid-19 — black communities. Both of these cities are predominantly white and affluent; Newport Beach’s median income hovers around $123,000 while Huntington Beach’s is about $88,000, compared to the national median income of $62,000.

While it might seem ludicrous that whiteness and income level would somehow make people immune to infection, there is some truth to such beliefs. In the event that these rich white folks find themselves with a cough and fever, they are more likely to have the reassurance and privilege of access to local testing centers and quality, unbiased health care. Meanwhile, black people do not have access to quality and racially unbiased health care. Between 2010 and 2018, blacks were 1.5 times more likely to be uninsured compared to whites.

Black people also have a higher prevalence of heart disease and high blood pressure, and black men have the shortest life expectancy of all other racial and gender groups — and racism and discrimination are the drivers of these poor health outcomes and inequities. In fact, disparities such as these have never been more apparent than in this pandemic: Doctors have expressed concern that Covid-19 testing is not as accessible to black communities. Meanwhile, blacks and Latinos also make up the largest number of essential workers, who are most at risk of infection.


RELATED
Covid-19 is disproportionately taking lives of black people

Race and socioeconomics do absolutely play into who is most vulnerable to getting Covid-19 — and who is most likely to die.
Oppression 101

On Twitter earlier this week, I saw a meme about whites feeling oppressed by the current lockdown order, which I knew had to be a joke (boy, was I wrong). During an interview on Fox & Friends, Michigan Conservative Coalition Chair Meshawn Maddock shared that residents of Michigan “feel oppressed” and “there are certain businesses and workers that should be able to safely get back to work right now.”


Oppressed is an interesting word choice. Let’s start first with what racist oppression is. Oppression is not getting a job, a promotion, a business loan, or approved for your dream home solely based on your race — things black people deal with regularly. On the other hand, oppression is not staying in the comfort of your home, with a full fridge, health care, and a 401k. Oppression is also not a term that should be used willy-nilly, at the first feeling of discomfort, crying it to get your way — putting other people’s health and lives at risk. Many of us are uncomfortable right now. But please do not conflate discomfort with oppression.

Being white is the default identity in America. Whiteness is our cultural tapestry. It’s America’s norm, against which all others are measured, and there is a special kind of security that comes along with being the norm. So when you suddenly do not have free rein to go about your business unchecked, it can feel like a massive threat. And in turn, protesters have taken to the streets to fight to keep that security. That feeling of “oppression” these white protesters have voiced is the residual effect of living in a country that has been shaped to cater to their racial majority status, and consequently, their perceived loss of power and privilege.

Ironically, some of these same conservative white groups that want to be liberated now also vehemently fought tooth and nail against movements such as Black Lives Matter and did not understand the value nor the need for blacks to speak out against their actual oppression. Some of these whites fear the same oppression they have inflicted on people of color, and we’re seeing a glimpse of that fear, without any self-awareness, in the pandemic.

To be clear, most Americans, white people included, are sitting tight at home and obeying social distancing and shelter-in-place orders. But as anti-lockdown protests become more politicized, outrage might begin to grow and others may inevitably join the chorus. This could prove to benefit Trump come election time as he plays to his base, targeting states with Democratic governors who have imposed social distancing orders.

But while it’s natural to marvel at how reckless Trump’s tweets are — like the ones that called for residents of Michigan, Minnesota, and Virginia to “LIBERATE” themselves — the discussion about the president’s Twitter fingers inciting social and racial upheaval is low-hanging fruit. Trump is not the root cause of America’s ongoing saga with racism and white privilege. His rhetoric simply brings to life white supremacist and racially privileged perspectives that have existed for centuries — and have been given the opportunity, in a deeply stressful time, to surface loudly, donning MAGA hats, and exercising their right to bear arms.

Dr. Maia Niguel Hoskin is a college professor of graduate-level counseling, freelance writer, public speaker, and a researcher of all things race, mental health, and social media.

Trump dismantles environmental protections under cover of coronavirus

Administration is weakening protections ahead of the election, making changes that could take years for a Democratic president to undo


Emily Holden in Washington THE GUARDIAN Mon 11 May 2020

The Trump administration is diligently weakening US environment protections even amid a global pandemic, continuing its rollback as the November election approaches.

During the Covid-19 lockdown, US federal agencies have eased fuel-efficiency standards for new cars; frozen rules for soot air pollution; proposed to drop review requirements for liquefied natural gas terminals; continued to lease public property to oil and gas companies; sought to speed up permitting for offshore fish farms; and advanced a proposal on mercury pollution from power plants that could make it easier for the government to conclude regulations are too costly to justify their benefits.

The government has also relaxed reporting rules for polluters during the pandemic.

Trump’s ambitions reach even to the moon, which he has announced he wants the US to mine.

Trump seizes on pandemic to speed up opening of public lands to industry
Read more

Gina McCarthy, formerly Barack Obama’s environment chief, now runs the Natural Resources Defense Council. She said the Trump administration was acting to cut public health protections while the American public is distracted by a public health crisis.

“People right now are hunkered down trying to put food on the table, take care of people who are sick, worry about educating their children at home,” McCarthy said. “How many people are going to really be able to sit down and scrutinize these things in any way?”

McCarthy said the government was “literally not interested in the law or science”, and that “is going to become strikingly clear as people look at how the administration is handling Covid-19”.

The Trump administration is playing both offense and defense, rescinding and rewriting some rules and crafting others that would be time-consuming for a Democratic president to reverse.

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has written what critics say will be a weak proposal for climate pollution from airplanes, a placeholder that will hinder stricter regulation.

Trump officials have been attempting to create a coronavirus relief program for oil and gas corporations, a new move in his campaign to back the industry and stymie global climate action. The president has sown distrust of climate science and vowed to exit the Paris climate agreement, which the US can do after the election.

Historians say Trump’s presidency has forced a pendulum swing back from the environmental awakening of the 1960s and 70s, when there was bipartisan support for conservation. Protecting the environment – and particularly the climate – is an issue that has become embroiled in political ideology.

FacebookTwitterPinterest The gas-powered Valley Generating Station in the San Fernando Valley on 10 March 2017. Trump officials have been attempting to create a coronavirus relief program for oil and gas corporations. Photograph: David McNew/Getty Images

“What Trump’s done is create a blitzkrieg against the environment … trying to dismantle not just Obama’s environmental achievements but turn back the clock to a pre-Richard Nixon day,” said Douglas Brinkley, a history professor at Rice University who is writing a book on the subject.

“It’s just death by a thousand cuts. It’s not one issue, it’s just across the board.”

The administration is under a tight deadline to secure changes before the election. A US law, the Congressional Review Act, allows lawmakers to more easily rescind regulations or rollbacks issued later in an election year.


“They’re hitting a now or never timeline,” said Christine Tezak, the managing director at the analysis firm ClearView Energy Partners. “There’s a lot they want to get done before the election, just in case.”

Some trends are working against Trump – including states advancing environmental goals, and low-cost renewable power and natural gas helping reduce the climate footprint of the electricity sector. Even Houston, an energy hub, has issued a climate action plan. Yet such contributions are not expected to be enough to fulfill America’s role in stalling the global crisis.

Environmental advocates have challenged many of the Trump changes in court – and won. The Natural Resources Defense Council has sued 110 times and says it has prevailed in about 90% of lawsuits resolved.

Recently, judges tossed out a permit for the Keystone XL oil sands pipeline and decided the EPA cannot bar scientists who receive federal grants from serving as agency advisers.

Jeff Holmstead, a lawyer with the firm Bracewell who represents regulated industries and was a deputy EPA administrator under George W Bush, argued that many of the changes characterized as “rollbacks” are actually “sensible, reasonable regulatory reforms” or fixes to problems.

“It’s impossible to understand the Trump administration’s EPA unless you go back and look at the Obama administration,” he said. “In many groups there was a sense that there really had been a great deal of regulatory overreach. And even if you disagree with that, the regulatory programs created problems that they didn’t come back and fix.”
‘This is about who we’re protecting’

Trump’s deregulatory agenda has addressed some issues industry would rather were left alone. The agency is changing the way it calculates the benefits of mercury controls for power plants. Companies had already complied with the rule and most didn’t want it changed. But the revision is meant to set a precedent for the government to ignore some positive health outcomes of regulation.

Trump’s weakened standards often go against science too, critics say.

Last month, for example, the EPA decided not to tighten rules for soot pollution, refuting rebutting guidance from experts that more stringent standards would save lives. The EPA has also repopulated advisory boards with representatives from industry and conservative states and is trying to change what science it can consider when developing health protections.

If a Democrat takes the White House, it will take years to reverse some changes. Moving faster would require Democrats holding both chambers of Congress. Even then, industry would fight hard.

Christopher Cook, the environment chief for Boston, said Trump’s efforts had been “incongruous with all the actions that major cities are taking”.

“The thing I would ask most Americans to consider when they’re supporting stronger regulation is that this isn’t about what we’re protecting against, this is about who we’re protecting,” Cook said, noting that places with more pollution are faring worse under the coronavirus pandemic.

“Covid has been a dry run for the climate crisis. We’ve seen the populations that Covid affects because it attacks the respiratory system. We can’t continue with bad air in America.”