CANADA 

The coronavirus is costing us more than just our health and economy

May 6, 2020 

An elderly woman looks out from Maison Herron, a long-term care home in the Montréal suburb of Dorval on April 12, 2020. Isolating people in facilities where they are at greater risk of contracting COVID-19 is a violation of their rights. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Graham Hughes

Civil liberties are among the oldest, most recognized human rights. Their contemporary expression as legal claims based on civil and political rights is more recent, dating from the tumultuous period after the Second World War.

Today, we face a very different kind of emergency. And it’s been astonishing how quickly the values we once fought for have been set aside.

In pandemics, rights violations look different. There have been no mass detentions or arrests. No internments of enemy aliens.

But vulnerable seniors have been isolated and subjected to conditions that have sickened or killed them.

Collective agreements have been partially suspended for Québec teachers and for some Ontario health-care workers.

A mandatory Sunday closing order for Québec businesses ignores established case law that permits religious minorities to choose their day of rest based on freedom of religion.

Rights slipping away

Civil liberties are not designed only for times of peace and stability. They assume special, even critical, importance during public emergencies. That is precisely because many of the checks and balances that we take for granted have been pushed aside. New orders emerge daily and the rule of law is taking time to catch up.

Legislative oversight is often the first casualty. In countries like Canada, democratically enacted laws confer the power to issue emergency orders without legislative scrutiny. Sure, citizens can vote out governments that overstep, but democracy should not evaporate between elections. At the time of writing, the legislature of every province in Canada was adjourned, although a few are tentatively aiming to re-opening soon.

There is a risk of overreach when we collectively agree to allow governments to do what is necessary to keep us safe. According to a recent Ipsos poll, Canadians overwhelmingly support stronger government measures to fight COVID-19. But that in turn creates a real risk that courts will show more deference to governments during times of crisis.

The province of Québec in particular offers a striking example of how quickly it can all unravel.

Québec Health Minister Danielle McCann responds to reporters during a news conference on the COVID-19 pandemic on May 4, 2020 at the provincial legislature. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Jacques Boissinot

Since the March 13 declaration of a public health emergency, the province’s minister of health and social services has ruled by decree under Québec’s Public Health Act. My analysis of the eight orders-in-council and 28 ministerial orders shows that two-thirds of these orders limit civil liberties.

Yet, the public supports such measures: politicians are enjoying heightened popularity across the country. This support may be explained by the fact that we are only gradually waking up to the impact of COVID-19, especially on people who are vulnerable or unable to speak out.

On April 20, lawyer Jean-Félix Racicot launched a challenge to Québec’s emergency measures before the province’s Superior Court. Four days later, Justice Louis-Paul Cullen ruled from the bench that social distancing orders are not a form of illegal detention. An appeal of his decision, and a related claim seeking to strike down all the emergency measures, are pending.

Signposts for public emergencies

Canada’s Charter of Rights and Freedoms and the courts provide indications of what measures will be upheld and which ones may fall.

The Supreme Court of Canada has ruled that democratic societies founded on the rule of law require a legal basis for restrictions on rights.

Social distancing is essential, as a recent study in The Lancet has demonstrated. But the validity of bans on assemblies must be “prescribed by law.” Reports from Québec and Ontario indicate that police may be overstepping their bounds.

Toronto Police Mounted Unit officers patrol a city park in Toronto on April 16, 2020. Reports are surfacing that police are overstepping their bounds in enforcing social distancing efforts. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Frank Gunn

Québec’s March 20 order-in-council, for example, mandates that people must stay two metres apart. Police have nonetheless fined people who have maintained those social distances, sometimes without prior warning. Neither scenario is prescribed by law. And yet, a Montréal police spokesperson is on record as suggesting that people are not allowed to “congregate” even if they keep their distance.

It’s no wonder the Canadian Civil Liberties Association has launched a national campaign to monitor who has been detained and fined, and why.

‘Reasonable limits’

The courts have also said that “reasonable limits” on rights must be proportionate responses, with rational connections between measures taken and the problem they aim to solve.

In Québec, the life, liberty and security of seniors have actually worsened. Shuttering seniors in residences, prohibiting them from leaving and then barring entry to family caregivers and loved ones has had devastating albeit unintended consequences.

The son of a woman who died of COVID-19 in Québec’s government-run seniors’ residence in Ste-Dorothée has filed a class-action lawsuit, alleging residents were improperly isolated and infected employees were required to work. A similar lawsuit has been launched in Ontario.

A front-line worker adjusts her protective equipment as she walks past another worker unloading air filters and cleaning equipment at Orchard Villa care home in Pickering, Ont. on April 27, 2020. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Frank Gunn

Public service collective agreements have been suspended. Employees claim they are forced to work in dangerous circumstances, with no training or adequate personal protective equipment. These are major limits on freedom of association.

We need to care more, not less, about civil liberties and all human rights during emergencies. Canadian governments are working to keep us safe, but history has shown that in a clash with a public emergency, rights rarely emerge intact unless we double down on remembering why we needed them in the first place.

Author

1. Pearl Eliadis
   Adjunct Professor, Faculty of Law and Max Bell School of Public Policy, McGill University

Disclosure statement

Pearl Eliadis is affiliated with the McGill Center for Human Rights and Legal Pluralism

CANADA 
Technology threatens human rights in the coronavirus fight 

May 7, 2020

Can human rights survive COVID-19? As it becomes more likely that the virus will affect us in multiple waves in the coming years, governments are grappling with what to do to minimize mortality until a vaccine is created.

Many of us have become familiar with the technique of social distancing and yet some argue it’s not enough. Some analysts point to China, Israel, Singapore, South Korea and Taiwan as models in the push back against the spread of SARS-CoV-2, suggesting a wholesale menu of techniques.

It seems that widespread testing, preparation and properly equipped medical personnel are only the beginning for defeating a disease like COVID-19. Invasive methods, such as tracking apps, facial recognition technology, tracing credit card transactions, using cell phone information, video footage and public posting of detailed information of the afflicted provide additional means for governments to act.

Ontario Premier Doug Ford has called for a contact tracing program.

Yet such techniques violate some of the core values of liberal democratic regimes. Human rights to freedom of movement, the right to privacy, emerging data rights and the right to be forgotten are all threatened with invasive actions taken by governments. Given the challenges of COVID-19, do governments have a choice?

Human rights might be pervasive in the language of global politics, but their persistence depends on actions of individuals and their governments. We saw this when Canada took a costly stand against Saudi Arabia’s jailing of human rights activists in 2018.

Read more: What is the greatest challenge to the future of human rights? We the people are
Power shifts

Cutting-edge technologies are now powered by artificial intelligence (AI) and big data. The technologies are fundamentally shifting the distribution of power between individual people who provide data and entities that can make sense and use of these data. Much ink has been spilled on how Google knows us better than we know ourselves. Less has been made about how AI and big data offer governments opportunities to curtail human rights.

A calamity like COVID-19 forces liberal democracies to confront the tension between protecting individual rights and confronting an existential threat to our collective right to health. Democracies, to be sure, have their pitfalls.

In general, they are better protectors and advocates of human rights than non-democracies. However, the striking speed of COVID-19 has rendered some of democracy’s other strengths — deliberation, representation, accountability — slow, and in some senses, obstructive to responding to the virus.

Existing technologies can be employed in boosting government responses. Tracking cellphone tower pings and GPS locations have already been used by some governments to help enforce quarantine. Apple and Google are working together on an app that uses Bluetooth to alert people that they have been in contact with a positive COVID-19 case. Other similar apps exist in Singapore and Europe.

Read more: How smart city technology can be used to measure social distancing

Some American municipalities are sharing personal medical details of patients affected with COVID-19 between public health and first responder units. AI has also been helpful in many ways in combating COVID-19, from the laboratory to patient settings in the diagnosis, treatment and analysis of the disease itself, to helping epidemiologists model the movement and future of the virus.

These technologies rely on big data, which is a tension for liberal democracies in particular. Taking advantage of technology in the battle against COVID-19 might make government efforts more effective, especially in the case of a pandemic when the stakes are quite high. But their effects on rights post-pandemic might be irreversible.

Even if care is taken to protect the privacy of location data, such provisions are far from perfect. At the end of the day, data has to be stored somewhere, which makes it potentially vulnerable to hacking. Governments must strike a balance between responding to the pandemic and protecting key human rights.
Public policy and privacy

This balancing act is most difficult for democracies because of their values and commitment to privacy rights. However, these concerns are not new developments.

COVID-19 simply put their importance to public policy front and centre. The crisis shows the symbiosis between big data and AI to provide relevant information upon which governments can take action. The utility can be seductive and problematic, given the nature of the technology.

Beyond privacy and data rights, governments haven’t even begun to grapple with the biases and discrimination built into the algorithms that power AI. These problems pose more subtle but no less important threats to human rights going forward. With investment in AI ongoing at remarkable speed even as we self-isolate, its usefulness in this pandemic in still formative stages should give us pause.

Currently, the AI field is mostly controlled by corporate interests. These developments also show governments must act, but they must do so deliberately and carefully, given the nature of the technology.

Author

Wendy H. Wong
Professor of Political Science, University of Toronto

CANADA Coronavirus contact tracing poses serious threats to our privacy

Academic rigour, journalistic flair

Tracing apps will rely on smart devices to log movement and contact as a way of containing the coronavirus pandemic. (Shutterstock)

Coronavirus contact tracing poses serious threats to our privacy

May 10, 2020


We are all wondering how COVID-19 will end. We will not likely return to normal without a broadly distributed vaccine, which is a bracing proposition. It is also becoming increasingly clear that we will have to find a way to trace transmission and maybe even enforce individual quarantines in the interim.

I want to say that I am not an epidemiologist, nor am I a public health official. As a faculty member within the Centre for Digital Humanities at Brock University, my role is to communicate the social and cultural consequences of digital media, including potential privacy and security risks of software used to limit the effects of COVID-19.

In the coming weeks and months, I expect that we will hear a lot about “contact tracing.” Contact tracing involves interviewing patients to collect information on all the people they have had sustained contact with and all the places they have been. It is laborious and error-prone because it is dependent on memory, interviews and detective work.
Digital contact tracing will use people’s mobile devices to track their movements and who they come into contact with.

Because of the scale of contact tracing needed for COVID-19, using cellphones to detect and record proximity appears to be an ideal solution. The Canadian government is exploring contact tracing and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau expressed that “all options are on the table.”
Civil liberties in crisis

Before the Canadian government makes decisions that infringe on civil liberties through widespread digital surveillance, we need to think about the concessions we make during a time of crisis. Crises have long been used as an opportunity by governments and corporations to infringe on civil liberties in the name of public safety.

We need only think of the legislative overreach in the wake of the 9/11 terrorist attacks. In the United States, the extraordinary powers granted by the Patriot Act were revealed by whistleblower Edward Snowden when he disclosed NSA and CIA surveillance. Those disclosures shook the country to the core. In Canada, the omnibus Bill C-36 was passed, which contained the Anti-Terrorism Act.

During the post-9/11 period, Canadians learned a lot about phone tracking. In 2017, the Canadian government introduced Bill C-59, which amended the earlier Anti-terrorism Act and acknowledged past legislative overreach.

Contact tracing using digital technology represents an opportunity to battle COVID-19 and reopen the economy, but its application will create unprecedented surveillance infrastructure beyond anything we have seen before.
There is an app for that

In recent days, the federal government has indicated that the provinces will be responsible for managing their plans to reopen their economies, which will result in a patchwork of contact tracing apps across the country. There are risks that such a network of policies, laws and collection techniques will muddy the data about COVID-19 nationally.

By contrast, many countries have turned to nationally mandated mobile applications to automate contact tracing. South Korea, Singapore, Germany and China have all implemented their own digital tools to assist public health officials and trace the spread of COVID-19.

There are several models that Canadians can think about with regard to contact tracing apps. China dealt with this problem first, and chose some rather extraordinary methods. Citizens were allowed to travel between checkpoints based on an app embedded in online payment systems like Alibaba’s Alipay or Tencent’s WeChat. Without a green QR code, citizens were not allowed to travel and could face detention for violations.

Currently, the Canada COVID-19 app — a partnership between private health-care software company Thrive Health and Health Canada — allows you to volunteer your location data and self-report symptoms. This volunteer approach was led by Singapore’s TraceTogether app, which goes a step further by accessing the Bluetooth radio in smartphones to detect proximity.

The limitations of the TraceTogether app include the difficulty of running an app 24 hours a day, which depletes battery life and results in less reliable data.

The Alberta provincial government has recently released the ABTraceTogether app; it is unclear how effective this system will be in the province.
The Alberta government has launched a contact tracing app.

Because the use of digital contact tracing was meant to correct for the errors of human interviews and memory, the partnership between Google and Apple has drawn a tremendous amount of attention. In this case, our phones would eventually detect proximity and duration using a low level operating system process that would allow for 24/7 tracking.

The security and privacy implications are profound.

Regardless of the optimism of the technology news observers, these systems are too complex and lacking in the transparency necessary for legislators to make adequately informed decisions on their implementation.

There is no reason the general public should trust these corporations to not monetize this system and maintain this surveillance infrastructure after the crisis has passed. While the need for digital contact tracing is clear, Canadians must take steps to protect their personal data.
Non-technical recommendations

It will be important for Canadians to discuss these systems before plans are put in place and laws are passed that may violate the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, particularly with regard to the security of the person. With any luck, the conversation held by Canadians with their provincial leaders and federal counterparts will include the following:
A sunset clause to define when surveillance ends.
A chain of custody agreement for data passed between government, industry and researchers, which includes a process to delete data.
A plan to protect data sovereignty, which ensures that data are subject to Canadian laws and governance structures.
A public use of judicial oversight of government, industry and researchers to ensure the laws we choose as Canadians are followed.
A commitment to corporate accountability if our data are misused, stolen or sold.

Digital contact tracing will likely become central to the government’s approach to stifling the resurgence of the virus and reopening the economy.

The complexity of these systems is a risk for the general public who may agree to something that is not well understood. It is critical to inform the public about these risks before governments take extraordinary powers and infringe on our civil liberties.

Author
 

Aaron Mauro
Assistant Professor of Digital Media, Brock University
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Celebrate Mother’s Day with feminist solidarity

It’s critical to acknowledge that global health of women impacts the health of a nation. Here, Tohono O’odham women lead the Tucson 2019 Women’s March. The sign says: ‘My Mom, Sisters, Aunties and Grandmas are sacred.’ (Dulcey Lima/Unsplash)

Women have been working overtime during COVID-19, as care providers at home, in clinics, hospitals and other spaces. Women constitute the majority of health-care providers, both formally and informally, all over the world.

Unrecognized and ignored, the work of mothers has increased as day cares, schools and workplaces have closed, with more family members at home, increasing demands for in-home meals, care and higher needs for disinfecting.

At the same time, public health mandates to shelter-in-place have created violence traps for those who live with abusers. Male violence against women has tripled in some places during COVID-19. Family members and friends, fearing the virus, are less likely to offer shelter and other supports. So women have decreased capacity to find emergency housing, medical care and emotional assistance.

As a public health scholar, I believe it’s critical to acknowledge both the invisible and visible contributions that mothers and other women are making to public health efforts related to COVID-19 — especially as we approach Mother’s Day.

While the situation is not necessarily celebratory, it bears marking, at the very least.

Canadian feminists have a long tradition of working with international partners for women’s rights. Canada’s current feminist approach to international assistance, with its Feminist International Policy, is one worthy of further development. Created by the Trudeau government in 2017, the policy recognizes that “supporting gender equality and the empowerment of women and girls is the best way to build a more peaceful, more inclusive and more prosperous world.”
Maternal health globally

Here in Canada, government aid programs have lessened the financial burdens of the virus for many mothers. The impacts of COVID-19, however, are not equally spread among mothers, neither here in Canada nor around the globe.

Globally, the extreme measures that some nations have adopted are negatively impacting maternal mental and physical health. The list of ways in which the COVID-19 crisis has been used to veil state and corporate control is long: for example, enforcing curfews with police violence in Kenya, quarantining people in dog cages in the Philippines, granting authoritarian regimes unlimited powers in Hungary, using tracking technologies to erode human rights in Israel, weaponizing personal protective equipment by deciding who gets it along ideological lines in the United States.

Worry about uncertainties related to COVID-19 and the economy has increased rates of anxiety and depression that disproportionately impact women.
Poverty

In some lower- and middle-income countries, the secondary effects of COVID-19 may cause higher mortality than COVID-19 itself. This includes hunger, disease and violence.

Poverty is a major obstacle in achieving improved maternal health status. Now, and in non-pandemic times, poor socioeconomic conditions are responsible for key maternity-related complications such as hemorrhage, sepsis, hypertensive disorders, unsafe abortion and obstructed labour, which lead to an increase in maternal death worldwide.

These problems include inaccessible clean drinking water and sanitation facilities, inadequate calories and nutrition, poor housing conditions, illiteracy, precarious working conditions and a lack of transportation to access life-saving health care facilities and places of work.

Lack of access to clean drinking water is a significant threat to maternal health. (Ibrahim Rifath/Unsplash)

The inability to pay for clinical care is a significant cause of maternal death in many lower- and middle-income countries where universal health care systems are not established.

Poverty contributes to delayed decisions to seek medical care, increased time to reach health care facilities, and impediments in receiving appropriate care. Eliminating poverty and increasing literacy of women in lower and middle income countries improves maternal health.

Making a difference

Canadian social justice initiatives, in support of global strong feminist movements aim to alter social structures and perceptions about women’s value and worth. The initiatives hold great promise to reduce poverty, sexism, discrimination, illiteracy and other barriers to good health.

Canadian organizations such as Maternal and Infant Health Canada collaborate with sister organizations in lower and middle income countries to strengthen women and children’s human and health rights. Working across borders like this moves us towards a better day for all mothers.

Women’s autonomy, buttressed by education and employment, contributes to achieving better general and maternal health. Improvements in women’s socioeconomic status thus decrease maternal mortality rates.

Feminist solidarity can save lives. Here, a mother and baby, cassava farming in Sierra Leone. (Annie Spratt/Unsplash)

Women with more freedom access greater levels of antenatal care and opt for safe delivery care, which in turn leads to less maternal death. This begins to explain how feminist initiatives improve maternal health.

For many years, Canada has committed to spending 0.7 per cent of GDP to international development and not met this target. In 2019, the federal government devoted only 0.28 per cent of GDP to this vital form of international support.

Canada’s commitment to the allocation of 0.7 per cent of the country’s GDP to international development would help reduce maternal deaths in lower- and middle-income countries. Spending these dollars wisely will make all the difference.

Physical distancing, isolation and other measures that are in place to slow the spread of COVID-19 will necessitate the creation of new ways to honour mothers without actual hugs and breakfast in bed.

Feminist solidarity can save lives. On Mother’s Day, let’s dream about and create a more just world for all women and girls.

MAY 6, 2020

Author

Farah Shroff

Adjunct professor, School of Population and Public Health, University of British Columbia
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“If Not Now, When?”


Queer and Trans People Reclaim
their Power in Lebanon’s Revolution

By Rasha Younes

Videos by Amanda Bailly

https://www.hrw.org/video-photos/interactive/2020/05/07/if-not-now-when-queer-and-trans-people-reclaim-their-power




At the main protest site in downtown Beirut, a unified plea for change carries the crowd forward.

“We want to topple sectarianism; it must go!” a queer woman chants, as the crowd repeats the refrain.

“We want to topple patriarchy; it must go!” she says, and the crowd roars its approval.

“We want to topple homophobia; it must go!” she’s screaming now, and voices of the protesters reverberate, a mixture of cheering and emphatic agreement.

Topple “Transphobia, classism, racism…’’ the chant continues, as thousands of protesters repeat.

To the right of the crowd, the phrase ‘faggot is not an insult’ is etched on the wall. To the left, graffiti declaring ‘homophobia is a crime’ is spray-painted above the slogan ‘down with sectarianism.’ Words and images celebrating sexual and gender diversity fill the walls of central Beirut.

The October 17 uprising in Lebanon - fueled by rampant corruption and the country’s worst economic crisis since the end of the civil war in 1990 - has sparked a newfound collective consciousness where the rights and identities of marginalized groups are part and parcel of the protests. Lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) rights, once considered taboo and excluded from the political terrain, have entered the mainstream as a pillar of resistance for the first time. They have become part of Lebanon’s revolution.



1 Coexistence Horizontal English





Marwan Tahtah for Human Rights Watch
https://www.hrw.org/sites/default/files/supporting_resources/2019_08_lebanonresponse_lgbt.pdf

Indeed, there should be no going back – but even if Lebanon continues to deny LGBT people their basic human rights and chooses to silence their voice in public discourse, the streets and walls of Beirut will remember.

“Right before the revolution, I had tweeted that I am part of a generation that has nothing to wake up for and no one to go home to,” says Malak, 26. “On October 17, I felt for the first time that we had something to look forward to, and we are going home to the beautiful people we met on the streets. I want to look at the two queer young women who shyly asked me to take their picture at the protest and tell them that we had done everything for them to live a better life than we did.”

TRUMP'S BROWN SHIRTS 

The private militias providing “security” for anti-lockdown protests, explained

Militia groups asked to provide “security” are being decried by Republicans as “a bunch of jackasses.”

By Jane Coastonjane.coaston@vox.com May 11, 2020

Armed protesters provide security as demonstrators take part in an “American Patriot Rally,” organized on April 30, 2020, by Michigan United for Liberty on the steps of the Michigan State Capitol in Lansing, demanding the reopening of businesses. Jeff Kowalski/AFP

The anti-social distancing and anti-stay-at-home order rallies that have taken place in state capitals across the country haven’t yet changed public views on state-level shutdown orders meant to slow the novel coronavirus pandemic. Recent national polling indicates that Americans largely oppose efforts to reopen private businesses and may even support stricter shutdown protocols.

But the rallies have attracted a host of fringe actors and attendees, including anti-vaccination activists and believers in conspiracy theories like QAnon, as well as armed members of militia groups.

Many protests aimed at a specific policy or entity (no matter their politics) attract a host of groups with their own interests, or people more interested in self-promotion.

The militia members, though, are different. They aren’t just showing up to the protests. In at least one case, they were invited by organizers: In Michigan on April 30, militia members were expressly invited by organizers of the “American Patriot Rally” to provide “security.”

The response to their presence came fast and furious, even from supporters of the shutdown protests more generally. In a tweet praising the overall protest, Michigan Republican state Senate Majority Leader Mike Shirkey said of the armed members of the protests (including militia members): “They do not represent the Senate Republicans. At best, those so-called protestors are a bunch of jackasses.”

Fox News host Sean Hannity said of the “show of force” in Michigan that while “everyone has the right to protest, protect themselves and try to get the country open,” “This, with the militia look here, and these long guns, uh ... no. Show of force is dangerous. That puts our police at risk. And by the way, your message will never be heard, whoever you people are.”


Echoing Sean Hannity, Fox & Friends scolds reopen protestors in Michigan who brought long guns and confederate & nazi flags to their rallies, saying "it puts our police in danger" and "squelches your message." pic.twitter.com/MgKw7kb5hr— Bobby Lewis (@revrrlewis) May 6, 2020

The militia movement in America is broad, with groups varying widely in their purported goals. Michigan alone has dozens of militia groups with hundreds of members, with varying political and cultural objectives.

“Different groups have different aims,” said Jared Yates Sexton, author of The People Are Going to Rise Like the Waters Upon Your Shore: A Story of American Rage. “Some are only interested in protecting themselves and their families from societal collapse, others are looking to battle the New World Order, some are explicitly interested in creating a white ethnostate for white Americans, others are angling for that second civil war that would start with a race war.”

But he argues that militia groups are using anti-shutdown order protests as cover — some for recruiting more people to their cause, but others looking to bring down the state and local government entirely.

Militia groups are “always searching for moments of cultural and political vulnerability” to exploit, Sexton said. And in the midst of a pandemic, they may have found it.

The militia movement, briefly explained

While militia groups differ widely, they also have important similarities, particularly regarding their perceived role. (Private militias are very different from state militias. Under federal law, 22 states and Puerto Rico have state-level militias regulated by the National Guard.)

Private militias are “armed paramilitary groups who take on extralegal law enforcement roles,” said Nicole Hemmer, assistant professor at the Miller Center of Public Affairs at the University of Virginia. “They often have uniforms or insignias, and some engage in training exercises modeled after military exercises. That sense of having law enforcement responsibilities generally separates them from other fringe groups.”

Hemmer added that private militias tend to lean to the right, but not always: “In the modern movement, [militias are] primarily but not exclusively right-wing — Redneck Revolt and the Socialist Rifle Association are two anti-racist militias present at the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville in 2017.” And the political views of even conservative-leaning militia groups can be complex — back in 2016, one right-leaning militia in Michigan took part in protests aimed at the state government’s handling of the Flint water crisis.

But in general, Hemmer told me, private militia groups staunchly oppose regulations on guns and believe that “individuals and groups have inherent law enforcement powers deriving both from common law and the Second Amendment.” And in response to what they view as the excessive power of the federal government, many militia members “believe that armed resistance to state power is necessary.”

The militia movement has waxed and waned in prominence since the 1970s, but experts largely cite the disastrous 1992 Ruby Ridge standoff between federal authorities and a far-right activist as a launch point. In a 2016 interview with my colleague Libby Nelson, former Homeland Security analyst Daryl Johnson said:

We had a lot of anti-government reaction to that event because of the government’s overzealous, heavy-handed tactics that were used that resulted in the death of civilians.

And so in 1992, a group of people gathered together in Estes Park, Colorado, to discuss that standoff and what their response would be to another type of standoff. John Trochmann, out of Montana, was at this conference and introduced the idea of forming private citizen armies or militia groups.

It wasn’t until the Waco standoff in 1993, in February, which culminated in the fire at the Branch Davidian compound, that we actually saw this idea that John Trochmann had introduced put into action. And the first two modern-day militias were the Michigan Militia and the Militia of Montana. 

(RUBY RIDGE WAS BEFORE WACO AND WAS THE ORIGIN OF THE CALL TO RESISTANCE THAT  LED TO THE OKLAHOMA GOVERNMENT BUILDING BOMBING BY WHITE MILITIA) 

Ruby Ridge, 1992: the day the American militia movement ...

https://www.theguardian.com › us-news › aug › ruby-ridge-1992-modern-a...

Aug 26, 2017 - Ruby Ridge, 1992: the day the American militia movement was born. A firefight between six US marshals and two boys and their dog began a

While militia membership dropped during the George W. Bush administration, Hemmer said, “with the election of Barack Obama, militias in the US surged. That’s when some of the more well-known militia groups, like the Oath Keepers and the Three Percenters, were born.”

The growth of these groups in the 1990s was fueled by fears of gun restrictions instigated by the passage of the Brady Handgun Violence Prevention Act, and in the 2000s by the election of a Democratic (and black) president, she said.

And she said that militia groups have differing views on the presidency of Donald Trump. “Some militias do not support Donald Trump — they feel he wields too much power, and they oppose nationalism as a threat to individual rights,” Hemmer said. “Some militias do support Trump, which makes their opposition to the federal government tricky — which is, I suspect, the reason so much attention has been trained on statehouses.”
Some militia groups see anti-shutdown protests as recruiting events

Private militias may have their own reasons for attending right-leaning political rallies and protests.


“Militias often see right-leaning rallies and organizations as ways to build alliances and legitimization,” Hemmer told me. “They were present at some Tea Party rallies in places like Oklahoma and Michigan, and are commonly involved with pro-gun and anti-tax groups. They’ve been present at the lockdown protests, of course, and before that had been very visible at protests against new laws coming out of the Democratic state house in Virginia.”

For example, militia groups were present at the Unite the Right rally in 2017, causing then-Gov. Terry McAuliffe to say, “You saw the militia walking down the street. You would have thought they were an army. … [The militia members] had better equipment than our state police had.” (Three of the militias present at UTR have been banned from the city of Charlottesville.)

Right-leaning militia groups have also “volunteered” to provide security in Ferguson, Missouri, in 2014, at pro-Trump rallies, and at the US-Mexico border:


In March and April 2019, a spokesperson for [a militia group], Jim Benvie, regularly posted livestream videos on Facebook showing militia members chasing and capturing migrants while armed with assault rifles, and detaining them until they could be turned over to U.S. officials. In other posts, the United Constitutional Patriots described themselves as combatants in a “war” raging along the border due to migrants’ “invasion” of the country and actively sought to recruit people with military or law enforcement experience to join them. One such recruit, upon observing migrants while on “patrol” at the border, reportedly grabbed his AR-15 and asked his fellow militia member, “Why are we just apprehending them and not lining them up and shooting them?”

Even the use of private militia groups for “security” purposes by right-leaning organizations is not new. In 2017, the Oregon-based Multnomah County Republican Party passed a resolution stating that the party “may utilize volunteers from the Oregon Three Percenters, Oath Keepers, and other security groups.”

For militia members, serving as “security” at the anti-shutdown protests doesn’t just provide more visibility but also offers a useful networking opportunity — one that allows them to share their message by arguing that the coronavirus shutdowns prove their point about government overreach.

These protests were “a great opportunity for them because they see people who are fearful and angry and their anger is directed toward the government,” said Alex Friedfeld, a researcher from the Anti-Defamation League’s Center on Extremism. “That is something that they have always been advocating for, and this is a great opportunity for them to keep expanding.”

He added that militias that are supportive of President Trump are using these protests to “have it both ways,” attacking state government officials while avoiding targeting the federal government, despite federal coronavirus efforts encouraging the same policies as the states. “The lockdown protest created this opportunity where they can kind of resolve that dissonance by shifting their focus away from the federal government and targeting instead state government officials, particularly if they’re Democratic.”

He noted that some groups have targeted Republican governors as well — but not Trump, despite Trump and the federal government providing markedly similar coronavirus mitigation guidelines.

But the presence and use of militia groups for security purposes raises major questions. As Hemmer told me, some militia groups “rely on the threat of political violence (and sometimes engage in political violence),” meaning that they may be more likely to attempt to foment unrest than stop it.

ARBEIT MACHT FREI
Meet the woman who spearheaded California’s recent back-to-work protests

Anti-lockdown protesters rally in downtown San Diego on May 1, 2020, calling on state and local officials to fully reopen the economy. Many in attendance waved branded signs provided by a new group called We Have Rights.
(Joshua Emerson Smith / The San Diego Union-Tribune)

Anti-lockdown protests have simultaneously erupted all over California using the website wehaverights.com

By JOSHUA EMERSON SMITH MAY 10, 2020

A group calling itself We Have Rights has recently started organizing large back-to-work protests throughout California, calling on state and local leaders to end social-distancing orders aimed at slowing the spread of the coronavirus.

The group, which popped up in just the last two weeks, has a professional-looking website and growing social media presence, which provide details for upcoming events, instructions for dealing with the media, highly produced Instagram videos, as well as T-shirts and other branded merchandise for sale.

The campaign — which turned out hundreds of anti-lockdown protesters from San Diego to Sacramento starting May 1 and continuing through this weekend — also has had a charismatic front woman with something of a controversial past: 38-year-old Vivienne Nicole Reign.

Reign, who has been living with her husband in a $3 million home in Newport Beach, according to legal documents, is currently embroiled in legal challenges concerning several neuropathy treatment clinics she owns and operates with a chiropractor. The defendants have maintained their innocence, denying claims brought by former clients of medical negligence, financial elder abuse and fraud.

The Orange County-based entrepreneur recently told The San Diego Union-Tribune in a lengthy phone interview Thursday that she created the website wehaverights.com after having to layoff members of her staff as a result of the pandemic lockdown.

“I’ve had to let go of people that have worked with me for 10 years, and it happened overnight,” she said. “I’ll find a way to make it through this, but there are people who depend on me, and I feel a great sense of responsibility to provide them a paycheck.”

Reign did not cite political reasons as the driving force behind the campaign, however the rallies have overtly promoted President Donald Trump and conservative talking points.

Reign said the campaign has a wealthy backer but would not identify the person.

“Yes, we do have people who have contributed and we do have a benefactor who has contributed, and my husband and I have put money out of our own pocket,” she said.

The New York Times has reported that many of the anti-lockdown protests happening throughout the country are being bankrolled by wealthy conservative leaders and groups, including FreedomWorks and Tea Party Patriots.

Members of the Michigan Liberty Militia, including Phil Robinson, right, join protesters at a rally at the state Capitol in Lansing, Mich., Thursday, April 30, 2020.
(Matthew Dae Smith / Lansing State Journal)

However, Reign’s campaign stands out compared to similar efforts in other parts of the country, said Jared Holt, an investigator with the Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit Right Wing Watch.

“If something like this is happening in other states,” he said, “it’s certainly not as slick and well-produced as it seems to be in California where this shadowy source of money is coming in with a very branded effort.”

In something of a twist, Reign sent an email to the Union-Tribune on Friday, a day after her interview, saying that she had decided to donate the website and social-media accounts to a unnamed nonprofit.

“I will let them decide when they would like to announce who they are,” she said in the email.

“We are happy to have contributed to helping all of the grassroots groups organize and get their message of preserving and protecting our rights out across California,” she added. “We have confidence the group we are handing it over to will do wonderfully at continuing the efforts even better than we did!”

Reign’s recent organizing efforts don’t appear to be directly connected to those of San Diego resident Naomi Israel Soria, who promoted similar rallies on Facebook.

The 27-year-old Soria is facing misdemeanor criminal charges, including up to six months in jail, for putting together protests in San Diego that law enforcement officials have said violated county public health orders around social distancing. She’s being represented by the high-profile conservative attorney Harmeet Dhillon, who has filed multiple lawsuits against the state of California over its stay-home orders.

Who is Thomas Paine?

Until recently, Dan Summers had never heard of We Have Rights or Vivienne Reign.

Summers, a 70-year-old resident of Ramona, has long been plugged in to conservative politics and activism in the San Diego region. He’s served on the Republican Party’s local central committee and currently heads up an umbrella group called The Circle, which coordinates efforts between prominent conservative and libertarian groups throughout the region.

So it didn’t surprise Summers when an organizer from We Have Rights contacted him out of the blue looking for his help, and his access to mailing lists of about 6,000 people across the region, to boost turnout at a rally that was planned for May 1 in downtown San Diego. The group was also organizing events for that day in Huntington Beach, Los Angeles and Sacramento.

“I got a phone call from the guy who organized these four rallies who wanted to know if I could help him in San Diego, and I said, ‘Yes, I can,’” Summers recently told the Union-Tribune.

The group’s representative called himself “Thomas Paine,” Summers explained, noting that this was also the name of the famous American revolutionary.

“They’ve got a very good website,” he added.

The website’s homepage urges: “Be part of the biggest movement in California.” It demands the ability to worship at church, earn a living and assemble freely at sporting events, conferences and other gatherings.

“The elderly, sick, and high risk are encouraged to quarantine while the healthy and the able have a right to live their lives,” the website states.

Protests gathered on May 1, 2020 in downtown San Diego demanding local and state officials fully reopen the economy despite the ongoing coronavirus pandemic.
(Joshua Emerson Smith / The San Diego Union-Tribune)

LIKE THE NAZI LABOUR FRONT THIS ARBEIT MACHT FREI REVIVAL UNDERMINES MAYDAY AS A WORKERS DAY OF REVOLT AGAINST CAPITALISM TO ONE OF SUPPLICATION TO RETURN TO WAGE SLAVERY

The back-to-work rally in downtown San Diego ended up drawing hundreds of people, many waving American flags and few wearing face masks. Some flew “Trump 2020" flags and many wore the iconic red hats.

While many protesters cited financial hardship as a reason for coming out, those in attendance also criticized everything from vaccines to Gov. Gavin Newsom to socialism.

Summers addressed the boisterous crowd with a bullhorn, as cars and trucks circled the block honking.

During the event, a person dressed in We Have Rights-branded merchandise passed out dozens of signs, declaring slogans such as “Freedom is essential” and “Open CA now.”

A woman dressed in branded merchandise from the group We Have Rights hands out signs at a rally in downtown San Diego.
(Joshua Emerson Smith / The San Diego Union-Tribune)

Other We Have Rights rallies that day across the state drew even larger crowds, including more than 1,000 people on the capitol steps in Sacramento.

“Over 40,000 Patriots took a stand against the lockdown to demand Newsom fully open California and restore our rights!” the website said of the May 1 actions.

While Summers was pleased with the turnout, he still didn’t know much about Paine. Although, the phone number he used to communicate with Paine traced back to a Thomas Knight Reign, 46, of Newport Beach, according to multiple legal and business records.

Reign, according to his IMDb profile, appeared to be a once-aspiring movie producer and director. Over the years, he started several film-production businesses, including Red Horizon Films LLC, Xposure Entertainment LLC and the still operative Agency X LLC.

However, he has almost no professional or personal online presence that the Union-Tribune could find.

When the Union-Tribune reached out to Reign, he declined to comment and directed all questions to fullyopenca@gmail.com, which used the display name Thomas Paine.

According to court records, Thomas Reign and Vivienne Reign were married in 2011 — although at the time their legal names were Thomas John Wozny and Nicole Melanie Anderson.

She adopted the last name Wozny, but then in 2018, they both legally changed their monikers to Reign.

Vivienne Reign said her husband changed his last name as part of his writing business, and at that point she, too, decided to change both her first and last names. She would not elaborate on what her husband does for work, other than to say he’s a “surfer” and “creative artist.”

“I thought Vivienne was just a pretty name,” she explained. “I thought it was a little timeless, and so I left Nicole as my middle name.

“I go by Viv now, unless it’s my father, and then it’s still Niki,” she added.

From entrepreneur to activist

Vivienne Reign grew up Nicole Melanie Ackermann in the Orange County city of Cypress. She said her mother still lives in her childhood home and her father lives in Redondo Beach.

Her parents were in the aerospace industry and worked hard to give her an education at a private high school, she said. That’s where, at 16, she met her first husband, Darren Anderson.

Anderson, who lives in Mission Viejo, said he and Reign have remained good friends over the years.

“She’s great,” he said. “She’s a hard charger. She’s highly ethical. She’s one of the people in my life that I respect the most.

After graduating high school in 1999, Reign started classes at Fresno City College. However, she said she quickly dropped out to work full time and eventually start her own business.

“I did attend college for a short time, but to be honest, the entrepreneurial bug kept getting at me,” she said.

She said that before joining We Have Rights, she had never been an activist or even attended a protest. In 2016, she donated $250 to help Rand Paul’s presidential run.

Today, Reign has at least eight active companies operating under 17 different business names. Her companies largely focus on medical procedures not covered by health insurance, from stem cell injections to treatments for neuropathy.

Most notably, she owns a company with Orange County chiropractor Philip Straw called Neuropathy Solutions, which has been the subject of at least one patient lawsuit alleging fraud and financial elder abuse.

Reign and Straw have worked together for years, including with his previous business Optimal Health Straw Chiropractic, which has been the subject of about a half-dozen similar lawsuits. Straw was cited by the Board of Chiropractic Examiners in 2012 for falsely portraying himself as a neuropathy expert and advertising his services in a potentially deceptive way.

The businesses have also been bombarded by angry online reviews and drawn the attention of the local media.

The company’s clinics currently go by the name Superior Health Centers, with locations in Corona, Gardena, Glendale and Placentia.

According to court records, Reign is in charge of handling front-office staffing and other administrative tasks, including organizing free dinners used to market the company’s neuropathy treatments to seniors.

Senior citizens Harvey and Donna Stone attended one of those dinners in 2016 where the married couple watched a presentation on peripheral neuropathy, a type of nerve damage that can cause weakness and numbness in hands and feet.

They were told at the dinner that if the condition was not properly treated, it could lead to gangrene and amputation, according to an ongoing lawsuit brought by the couple. When they followed-up with a free medical evaluation at one of the company’s clinics, they were told they both had the condition.

To pay for the treatment, which wasn’t covered by their insurance, they agreed to take out a line of credit and make monthly payments at nearly 15 percent interest for a final sum of $18,655, according to the complaint.

The plaintiffs’ lawyers have argued that the staff at the businesses were not trained or licensed to treat peripheral neuropathy and deceived the couple into thinking otherwise. The treatments included massages and exposure to light and electrical stimulation.

At one point, Harvey Stone was badly burned when staff used administered electrical shocks to his legs using a device dubbed the “HAKO-MED,” according to the lawsuit.

“It’s like the old West salesman setting up shop in a town and selling bottles of snake oil,” said Arnold Gross, senior trial attorney with State Law Firm, who is handling the couple’s case. “This is not a recognized treatment.”

After the Stones took out the high-interest loan, Donna’s primary care physician told her that she didn’t have neuropathy, Gross said.

Lawyer for the defendants Christopher R. Clark declined to comment on the ongoing litigation, other than to say in an email: “We are looking forward to prevailing in this case at trial on behalf of our client.”

According to the defense’s court filings, Harvey Stone received more than two dozen electro-stimulation treatments from the business, and he had acknowledged that “progress was being made and his symptoms were improving.”

Reign also wouldn’t talk about the lawsuit in detail, but said of the court battle: “Unfortunately, it is part of business in today’s age that those things do occur.”

Reign, who traveled to Sacramento for a big rally on May 1, said as recently as Thursday that she planned to focus her efforts on reopening the economy.

However, she has now changed her mind, according to the email she sent the Union-Tribune on Friday.

“I have enjoyed my time working on this, and I feel we made great strides in a short time,” she wrote. “However, as I mentioned, I have many demands on my time with various business investments and wanted to pass this to people who have this as a full time passion and can do the movement justice.”

Staff researcher Merrie Monteagudo contributed to this report.