THIRD WORLD USA
American Children Are Going Hungry in the Coronavirus Pandemic

Rates of food insecurity among kids have reached “an extent unprecedented in modern times.”

By Emma Ockerman May 6 2020


Young children in the U.S. are currently being crushed by an unprecedented hunger crisis during the coronavirus pandemic. Almost one in five households with kids under 12 reported struggling with food insecurity last month, according to a new study out Wednesday.

Utilizing data from two surveys — the COVID Impact Survey and The Hamilton Project/Future of the Middle Class Initiative Survey of Mothers with Young Children — a fellow at the Brookings Institute found that rates of food insecurity among kids have reached “an extent unprecedented in modern times.”

“This is alarming,” Lauren Bauer, a Brookings fellow in economic studies, told the New York Times. “These are households cutting back on portion sizes, having kids skip meals. The numbers are much higher than I expected.”

The Survey of Mothers with Young Children found that 17.4% of mothers with kids younger than 12 reported their kids weren’t eating enough because they couldn’t afford food last month. The rate represents a quadrupling from 2018 data, and it’s nearly three times higher than the level of hunger reported among kids during the Great Recession, Bauer said.

Last month, Feeding America warned that 18 million kids could go hungry during the coronavirus pandemic, given the staggering job loss that’s forced families to enter miles-long lines for food banks. The organization noted that the country’s previous high was during the worst of the recession in 2009, when 17.2 million kids went hungry. Approximately 1 in 4 kids could suffer this time around, Feeding America said, especially since many schools — a lifeline for poor kids — are closed to prevent the virus’ spread.

Before the pandemic hit, 37.2 million Americans dealt with food insecurity, including 11.2 million children. Even in normal times, many affected households struggle to feed themselves with government benefits offered through the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), colloquially referred to as food stamps. The Brookings Institute suggested Wednesday that the government rapidly expand maximum SNAP benefits by at least 15%. Democrats have called for a similar expansion in recent weeks, though they’ve been unsuccessful in clinching it so far.

“New nationally representative surveys fielded since the pandemic began show that rates of food insecurity overall, among households with children, and among children themselves are higher than they have ever been on record,” Bauer wrote in a post about her research Wednesday. “Food insecurity represents an urgent matter for policymakers in the capitol and in statehouses across the country.”

Cover: A woman and her child pick from a selection of donated food at the "Bed-sty Campaign Against Hunger" food pantry in the New York City borough of Brooklyn, NY, April 14, 2020. As millions lose their jobs due to the coronavirus pandemic, food insecurity for many has become a real issue. (Anthony Behar/Sipa USA)(Sipa via AP Images)

This article originally appeared on VICE US.

Nearly 1 in 5 US children left hungry since virus crisis: study

AFP / ANDREW CABALLERO-REYNOLDSChildren pick up free lunch in Arlington, Virginia on March 16, 2020, after schools closed due to coronavirus. Disrupted school lunch programs could be a factor in alarming rises in hunger among US children since the outbreak began, the study says

Nearly a fifth of young children in the United States are not getting enough to eat since the coronavirus pandemic erupted, according to research out Wednesday highlighting the broader health impact of the crisis.

The Brookings Institution report said a survey found that 17.4 percent of mothers with children aged 12 or under reported that their offspring were not eating enough due to lack of money.

"It is clear that young children are experiencing food insecurity to an extent unprecedented in modern times," said lead researcher Lauren Bauer.

"Food insecurity in households with children under 18 has increased by about 130 percent from 2018 to today," she added.

The survey to measure the consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic uncovered figures worse than during the financial crisis of 2008.

Bauer described the results as "alarming," telling the New York Times that households were cutting back on portion sizes and kids were being forced to skip meals.

Disrupted school meal programs could also be factor, she said, with families not collecting meals from distribution sites and older siblings competing for limited supplies at home.

Bauer called for the government to increase food security programs and boost benefit levels.

At least 30 million American workers have lost their jobs in the economic shutdown imposed to thwart the spread of the virus.

The April employment report, due out Friday, is expected to show the jobless rate soaring -- perhaps as high as 20 percent -- reaching levels not seen since the Great Depression last century.

The new coronavirus has infected nearly 1.2 million people in the United States and killed around 72,000, and analysts fear some of the economic damage may be long-term.

Toronto Restaurants Are Boycotting Uber Eats, Saying It Costs Too Much

With dining in a no-go, food delivery apps are an easy way to reach a huge customer base. But a number of restaurants say it’s a deal with the devil.

By Anne Gaviola May 6 2020


IL FORNELLO RESTAURANTS ARE HOLDING A ONE-DAY UBER EATS BOYCOTT OVER "EXORBITANT" FEES THAT CUT INTO ALREADY THIN RESTAURANT MARGINS. PHOTO SUPPLIED.

A handful of Toronto restaurants are boycotting Uber Eats Wednesday saying it charges more than any other delivery app, while marketing itself as a company that is helping the struggling food industry.

According to Ian Sorbie, the president of Il Fornello Restaurants, which operates six Toronto area locations, Uber Eats’ cut from an order over its platform is 30 percent, while DoorDash’s commission is 25 percent, and Canadian startup SkipTheDishes is around 20.

“It’s a huge amount of money that Uber Eats takes while they talk about helping out restaurants. It’s total hypocrisy and false advertising,” said Sorbie. He’s referring to Uber Eats’ move to waive delivery fees to restaurants, which doesn’t apply to his business because it’s a small chain.

In an email to VICE, an Uber spokesperson said the $0 Delivery Fees apply to orders over $20 from independent restaurants. It has also waived activation fees and offers restaurants a reduced 15 percent fee if they choose to use their own delivery people.

Sorbie says when customers are offered free delivery, that saves the consumer money, but doesn’t always mean less cost to the restaurant.

The one-day boycott coincides with a national campaign, created by Takeout Canada, an initiative supported by hundreds of restaurants, encouraging people to order food from local businesses every Wednesday during the coronavirus pandemic.

Rival takeout delivery rates vary between 10 and 25 percent but Uber Eats is the most expensive, with a significant share of the market. According to research by Dalhousie University, it has captured between 30 and 40 percent of the market in Ontario. Rival Foodora, which announced plans to pull out of Canada last week, two months after its workers were granted the right to unionize in Ontario, charged about 20 percent commission.

Sorbie says there’s intense pressure to use these apps because the competition is. Small, independently owned restaurants typically have less of a cushion to get through this massive upheaval to the industry, which has already claimed more than 800,000 food service jobs.

Other restaurants in Toronto have dropped Uber Eats completely. Popular spots such as Craig’s Cookies and Sugo have quit the platform in recent weeks.

A recent survey by Restaurants Canada, a national industry group, shows that 75 percent of restaurants are “very concerned” about their current level of debt. Half of independent restaurants say they will have to close if conditions don’t improve in the next three months.

According to research released Tuesday by Dalhousie University, demand for food delivery services has surged during the coronavirus pandemic. “In 2019 we estimate the food delivery app market was worth $1.5 billion and as a result of the pandemic, it could exceed $2.5 billion by the end of this year,” said Sylvain Charleboix, director of Dalhousie’s agrifood analytics lab.

Delivery apps now offer contactless service and have dropped some fees. UberEats advertised free local delivery, which saves you money but doesn’t reduce what it charges restaurants. SkipTheDishes offers a 10.5 percent commission to restaurants who do their own deliveries and DoorDash is waiving April commission fees for new, independent restaurants.

According to an Abacus Data survey, taken before the pandemic hit, millennials are more likely than older Canadians to use food delivery apps. About sixty percent are frequent users, meaning they use the service at least once a month.

Sorbie says the best way to support your favourite restaurant is to call them directly and place an order for pickup—and cut out the middle man.

Michelle Jobin is a spokesperson for Canada Takeout, a restaurant advocacy group, and she suggests allocating the money you would spend at your favourite places. “Think about the places that bring you joy in your regular life and spend your money there. The big companies will come out of this OK because they have the means but it’s the small places that don’t,” she said.

If you can swing it, Jobin suggests buying gift cards to your favourite place and using those for birthday presents or special occasions (hot tip: Mother’s Day is Sunday). Many places offer different denominations if you don’t have a ton to spend.

According to Jobin, even people who have no extra money right now can still lend support. “If you have zero budget and things are really tough for you, use the power of whatever influence you have to talk about your love for that place,” she said. “On social media, to family and friends, create some hype, and hopefully people who have money will spend money there.”

Follow Anne Gaviola on Twitter.

‘This Is Just Evil’: New Law Would Force Trans Hungarians to Out Themselves

FASCIST REGIMES DEMAND ID FOR EVERYTHING
Showing your ID is required for nearly everything in Hungary. Getting IDs that reflects trans Hungarians' gender identities may become simply impossible.

By Nico Lang May 5 2020

LGBT PRIDE PARADE IN BUDAPEST, HUNGARY IN 2018. | GETTY IMAGES

This was shaping up to be the best year of Katalin Kobak’s life. After getting a long-awaited promotion at her job working for a multinational IT company in Budapest, Hungary, she came out to her coworkers as a transgender woman in January. They immediately accepted Kobak, who asked to use a pseudonym in this story, and began referring to her by her new name and pronouns.

Everything was great for two months, Kobak said, until COVID-19 hit. On March 30, the Hungarian parliament voted 137 to 53 to allow its far-right prime minister, Viktor Orbán, to indefinitely rule by decree as the central European country instituted nationwide lockdowns to prevent the spread of the novel coronavirus. That action effectively suspended elections until further notice and also gave him the power to silence critics of his administration by criminalizing “misinformation” about the government’s response to COVID-19.

The very next day, Orbán’s government introduced an omnibus bill, known as T/9934, that would prevent trans Hungarians from correcting the gender marker listed on their official birth certificates. The legislation, which is likely to pass given the prime minister’s new emergency powers, would amend the Hungarian Registry Act to define an individual’s gender as based on “biological sex,” a status determined by “primary sex characteristics and chromosomes.” In a memo accompanying the bill, the government declared that “completely changing one’s biological sex is impossible” and so it should not “be changed in the civil registry either.”

Kobak recalled she was at work when she learned the legislation was being pushed through parliament, and she “cried for an hour.” One of the things that made the announcement so difficult, she said, is that the plan was introduced on the International Transgender Day of Visibility, an annual event to celebrate the accomplishments and resilience of trans communities around the world.

“I couldn’t think straight,” she told VICE. “I couldn’t believe that they could be so malicious. This is just evil.”

Kobak, who is in her mid-30s, said she has been extraordinarily lucky up until now. Although LGBTQ equality is a divisive issue in a country that has become increasingly conservative under Orbán’s leadership, her coming out was embraced by friends and family members. She lives in a progressive area of Budapest where she says she’s rarely felt unsafe to be herself. However, she worries things will change if the omnibus bill passes because it will give people more “power to openly hate trans people because they will fear less about the consequences.”

“It is a possibility that at some point in the future that it won’t be safe,” Kobak said. “It only takes one angry man or woman who comes after me. I was fortunate so far, but that can’t last forever.”

Trans Hungarians who spoke to VICE said the bill’s passage would make it impossible to go about their daily lives. Although the legislation doesn’t explicitly ban transgender people from updating the name on their birth certificates, names in Hungary are explicitly gendered. The official registry through the Hungarian Academy of Sciences only allows individuals to select a name from one of two lists, and to date, there have been no names approved for both men and women. A trans woman with a male gender marker on her birth records would, consequently, be forced to also have a male name.

On its face, trans advocates said having a birth certificate that doesn’t match an individual’s lived identity could be extremely dangerous in a country where many members of the community are not publicly open about their identities; it could lead to people being outed and potentially harmed. But what makes the government’s decision to deny corrected birth records to its transgender population additionally impactful is that all other forms of identification are tied to birth certificates in Hungary. It’s impossible to get a driver’s license or ID card that reflects a transgender person’s sense of self without having those documents changed first.

“Someone can only have the exact same name on their ID card and on all kinds of documentation,” said Tina Kolos Orban, vice president of the community group Transvanilla Transgender Association. “They can only be registered at the bank under that name. They can only sign contracts under that name.”

Having correct documents is particularly critical in Hungary, where residents are required to show their IDs on a near daily basis. Identification is required for everything from voting and picking up mail at the post office to applying for a bus pass. Ivett Ördög, a 39-year-old transgender woman living in Budapest, said a friend who is a student at a local college was “humiliated in front of the entire class” when she was asked to show “her male ID” while submitting a test.

Many trans Hungarians, including Ördög, have already been forced to live without a corrected birth certificate for years. While transgender people had long been allowed to apply for legal gender recognition under an informal process with few guidelines, the government instituted an official application process in 2018. But since then, federal authorities have delayed nearly all requests or declined to respond without giving any kind of explanation. In 2019, a complaint was filed to the European Court of Human Rights on behalf of 23 individuals who had been unable to apply for a corrected gender marker under the two-year-old regulations.

Ördög said the government’s actions have resulted in “harassment” and “abuse” as countless applicants have been made to wait in limbo. “This leads to situations where we have to explain ourselves and come out to people we don’t want to come out to,” she told VICE. “One time a person wanted to call the police on me because he said that I was using a fake ID.”

Because the omnibus bill is vaguely worded, many are concerned its impacts could be even more far-reaching. Although Hungary is one of 11 European Union member countries that does not recognize full marriage equality, trans people who successfully applied for a corrected gender marker prior to 2018 were permitted to marry someone of the opposite legal sex. If the government rolls back gender recognition for trans people, would their marriages automatically be invalidated?

“A lot of people who get a legal gender change move to a different city, create new friendships, and restart their life,” Ördög said. “All of these people who have in the last 20 to 30 years decided to go stealth, they are all going to be suddenly exposed.”

Trans advocates in Hungary say the omnibus bill will pass if it comes up for a vote in parliament, which is likely to occur next month. Since Orbán came to power in 2010, the ruling party, Fidesz, has likened homosexuality to pedophilia, called to ban LGBTQ Pride marches, and pushed a “family first” policy intended to boost birth rates among heterosexual couples. In 2019, Hungary pulled out of Eurovision amid reports that government ministers opposed the long-running song contest’s embrace of LGBTQ inclusion. A spokesperson for Orbán called the speculation “fake news” on Twitter but did not proffer another reason for the country’s refusal to participate.

Tamás Dombos, a board member of the Hungarian LGBTQ group Háttér Society, noted that the fact is that Orbán’s party has a two-thirds supermajority in parliament and “can adopt whatever legislation they want,” regardless of the impact. Since the omnibus bill was announced, Dombos said the organization has received an influx of calls from people who are considering taking their own lives.

“We've received calls from people saying, ‘My life will never be okay. I will never be able to live the way I want to,’” he told VICE. “The impact of this legislation can be really detrimental on the everyday life of people.”

While advocacy organizations plan to appeal to the Constitutional Court of Hungary and the European Court of Human Rights to strike down the legislation if it passes, some say the damage is already done. Kornélia Fekete, a student in her early 20s who asked to use a pseudonym in this story, plans to leave Hungary as soon as she graduates next semester. She said the omnibus bill has turned her “world upside down” because she suddenly had to start filing residency applications “so that the clock can start ticking and [she] can apply for citizenship as soon as possible.”

The 2020 citizenship application deadline for many countries has already passed and many countries are restricting immigration during the pandemic outright, but Fekete said she will not give up. “I’m not staying here,” she told VICE. “They don’t want me here. Why should I stay? They literally want to rule us out of existence.”

Others, however, who don’t have the means or the finances to move will have no choice but to stay and stick it out, and Kobak is attempting to remain hopeful. Her colleagues at work reached out to express their shock and disbelief regarding the omnibus bill, asking what they can do to help. But as much as she is trying to stay positive, Kobak said she has been in a “downward spiral and a depressed state” over the past few weeks, especially with the country virtually shut down due to COVID-19. She lives alone and has only been going out once a week to buy groceries.

If the omnibus bill has made persisting through an unprecedented global pandemic even worse, Kobak believes that is by design. She said that Orbán’s government has been waiting to do this for years and finally found the “perfect opportunity” with the country’s attention exclusively focused on COVID-19. Because of lockdown orders, Kobak can’t even leave her house to protest the legislation.

“There is no solution in sight,” she said. “I’ve checked the news every day to see if maybe somehow they would forget about this, but so far nothing. I’m beginning to lose hope that I will have my ID changed in the next five years. I don’t know.”

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REIFICATION
'Plague, Inc.' Developer Never Expected Reality to Look Like Its Video Game

The pandemic brought their game back to the top of the charts, and now they're working on an update where you can end a pandemic rather than cause it.

By Gita Jackson May 5 2020
IMAGE: NDEMIC GAMES

Ndemic Games founder James Vaughan made Plague, Inc. in his bedroom as a hobby in 2011. He wasn't expecting the game to be a hit—nor was he expecting to live through a pandemic so reminiscent of it.

After the COVID-19 pandemic truly settled in early this year, the popularity of Plague, Inc. surged. The eight-year-old game was suddenly at the top of the Steam charts again, and featured in The New York Times.

"A lot of players are playing Plague Inc. because it helps them understand our current situation and gives them an element of control during a very scary and worrying time," Vaughan said over email. "The game is very effective at helping players understand the terrifying power of exponential growth and also shows some of the mechanisms that global governments have to stop a pandemic."

In Plague, Inc. the player engineers a virus and then watches it take over the world. The eventual goal is to wipe out humanity. It's a grim premise, but still a compelling strategy game. Alongside the movie Contagion, the game has become symbolic of the dour media diet of this pandemic—so much so that China banned it from its version of Apple's App Store in late February.

"It’s not clear to us if this removal is linked to the ongoing coronavirus outbreak that China is facing," Ndemic games said in a statement at the time. "However, Plague Inc.’s educational importance has been repeatedly recognised by organisations like the CDC and we are currently working with major global health organisations to determine how we can best support their efforts to contain and control COVID-19."

A month later, Ndemic Games donated $250,000 towards fighting COVID-19, and announced that it would be working on a new game mode where players are fighting against a virus rather than spreading it.

"When arranging our donations with the WHO and CEPI, we were repeatedly asked if we could make a game which let the player work to stop an outbreak," Ndemic wrote in a statement. "Therefore, as well as providing financial support, we are accelerating work on a new Plague Inc. game mode which lets players save the world from a deadly disease outbreak."

"A key change to the existing Plague Inc. gameplay will be that it is possible for people to recover from the disease on their own without requiring a cure," Vaughan said. The new game mode is in the early stages of development, but Vaughan was also able to say that it's being made with the support of some of the international organizations fighting to end the pandemic. "We are lucky to have the support of a huge number of experts from places like the WHO and the Global Outbreak Alert and Response Network (GOARN) and we are seeking to incorporate as much of their input as possible into the game whilst still ensuring it is accessible to players."

As they ramp up development, Ndemic games is also facing the same challenges as companies over the world. Vaughan said that in February, Ndemic made the call to start working remotely. In a way, it's a little nostalgic for him.

"Plague Inc. was originally made entirely remotely (I had never met or spoken to the programmer I hired!)," he said. "So in some ways, you could say we are going back to our roots."

RIP USA CORONAVIRUS TASK FORCE 
BORN JANUARY 29, 2020
KILLED BY TRUMP MAY 5, 2020

Politics is why Trump is ending coronavirus task force early ...

https://www.latimes.com › opinion › story › politics-trump-coronavirus-tas...

1 day ago - Opinion: Why shut down his coronavirus task force? Trump wants someone to blame if things get worse. Vice President Mike Pence at a ...

TRUMP DECLARES TO TASK FORCE HE IS LEAVING IT, AND ENDING THEIR DAILY BRIEFINGS, IN NARCISSISTIC SELF PLEASURE HE BLURTS IT OUT AT A MEDIA PRESSER.

White House coronavirus task force to be wound down around ...

https://www.cnn.com › 2020/05/05 › politics › white-house-coronavirus-task... 

1 day ago - News of the plan to phase out the task force comes as the rate of the country's daily new Covid-19 cases and reported deaths plateau, ...

COVID-19 Task Force To End Soon, Scientist Files ... - NPR

https://www.npr.org › 2020/05/06 › covid-19-task-force-to-end-soon-scienti...

16 hours ago - Vice President Pence says the coronavirus task force will wind down in late May or early June. And, a whistleblower alleges the Trump ...

Trump says U.S. coronavirus task force to wind down as focus ...

https://globalnews.ca › news › coronavirus-trump-task-force-wind-down

18 hours ago - Vice President Mike Pence, who leads the task force, told reporters the White ... people in the U.S., including more than 69,000 deaths due to COVID-19. ... doses by the autumn and 300 million doses by the end of the year

OUT CRY LEADS HIM TO DECLARE MAY 6, 2020 THAT THE ZOMBIE TASK FORCE WILL STILL EXIST HAUNTING THE HALLS WHILE HE MOVES ON TO HIS NEW REOPEN AMERICA TASK FORCE

Coronavirus update: Task force stays; 10,000 cases at ...

https://www.usatoday.com › story › news › health › 2020/05/06 › coronav...

5 hours ago - The White House won't wind down the coronavirus task force after all. ... Trumps tweeted his latest vision one day after Vice President Mike ... which ends May 12, the birthday of Florence Nightingale (in 1820). ... If states fully reopened, the death toll would rise to a staggering 466,000 by the same date, the ...

U.S. coronavirus task force will continue, focus on reopening ...

https://globalnews.ca › news › trump-coronavirus-task-force-2

10 hours ago - One day after saying that the COVID-19 task force would be winding ... the factory was “a mask environment,” but in the end he wore only safety ...

Trump: COVID-19 task force not dismantling, just refocusing

https://www.wagmtv.com › content › news › Trump-COVID-19-task-force...

7 hours ago - The Tuesday announcement of ending the task force sparked concerns that they would be sidelined as the outbreak continues amid fears of a ...

Trump clarifies that coronavirus task force will 'continue on ...

https://www.cbc.ca › news › world › trump-coronavirus-task-force-1.5557...

6 hours ago - Dr. Deborah Birx, right, coronavirus task force co-ordinator, and Dr. Anthony ... 3 reasons the COVID-19 death rate is higher in U.S. than Canada ... 100 million doses by the autumn and 300 million doses by the end of the year.

Who the Hell Wants to Buy a Coronavirus Commemorative Coin?

Despite its tactlessness and poor taste, the coronavirus coin seen in the "White House Gift Shop" actually has nothing to do with the President.

By Jelisa Castrodale May 4 2020

IMAGE COURTESY OF WHITEHOUSEGIFTSHOP.COM

Last week, the internet expressed its collective disgust that the White House Gift Shop had just added a terrifically horrible coronavirus-related commemorative coin to its online store. The $125 collectible features an illustration of the coronavirus on one side, has an empty White House press podium on the other, and is engraved with sentence fragments that sound like rejected lines from Starship Troopers. "WORLD Vs. VIRUS," it reads. "Together We FOUGHT The UNSEEN Enemy."

Although it's true that the coin is a real thing, and it's true that it's maybe not great to "commemorate" an ongoing pandemic that is still responsible for thousands of deaths every single day, this piece of on-brand bad taste wasn't commissioned by President Donald Trump. And despite the illustrations of the White House in its header, the $34.95 "Make America Great Again" hats, and the USA.gov logo on its homepage, this White House Gift Shop doesn't actually have anything to do with the president, either—at least not anymore.

First, the White House doesn't even have a gift shop. The White House Historical Association, a nonprofit, non-partisan organization that was established by then-First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy in 1961, runs its own retail store adjacent to the White House. That shop is only accessible to those who take the official tour of the presidential residence and, because of its nonpartisanship, it skips the MAGA merch in favor of $85 dessert plates with gilded Presidential seals, pastel Vineyard Vines bow ties, and plush versions of former First Dogs.

The online White House Gift Shop still calls itself the "only original authorized" White House gift shop, although that may be somewhere between an oversimplification and a slight exaggeration. The White House did once have its own gift shop, selling T-shirts, golf balls, and other eventual yard sale fodder out of its own basement. The shop had been established as a way to provide financial support to the U.S. Secret Service Uniformed Division Benefit Fund (UDBF). For several decades, it was only available to members of the Secret Service or official guests of the White House, but it moved off-site, launched a website, and opened to the public in the late 1990s.

The UDBF started having some unspecified "financial troubles" in 2011, and the Secret Service contracted Giannini Strategic Enterprises in Lititz, Pennsylvania, to operate the White House Gift Shop website on its behalf. Two years later, the UDBF filed for bankruptcy, and it transferred full ownership of the shop and all of its inventory over to Gianni Strategic Enterprises, which is how the White House Gift Shop ended up in the hands of a married couple in their seventies.

Anthony Giannini trademarked the phrase "White House Gift Shop"—although it took him two tries to get the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office to accept it—and now the very-much-for-profit company brags that it "holds all [...] exclusive rights to its names and variants as well as provides unique works for former Presidents of the United States, U.S. Embassies, virtually all Departments of the U.S. Government, film and television studios, and importanty [sic] patriotic Americans and beloved friends of America."

Some of the gift shop's "unique works" include an ongoing collection of coins that have been designed to "Chronicle in Coin and Ornamental Art the Entire Presidency of President Donald J. Trump in World Historic Acts of Peace Making Leadership." The shop has already created coins for Trump's meeting with North Korean Supreme Leader Kim Jong-un, (including the descriptively named "Not the Vietnam Coin") a coin for the Space Force, and one "symbolizing the genius level thinking skills and proven successes of President Donald J. Trump."

"What I’m trying to do—and I’m going to do this for the next president—is tell the story in coins,” Giannini told Lancaster Online last May. “It’s a coin narrative.” It's also a significant moneymaker: He told the outlet that he sold $10 million worth of coins commemorating Trump's summit with Kim Jong-un.

So that brings us to the coronavirus coin, which was released last week in a limited edition of 1,000. As of this writing, the White House Gift Shop says that all proceeds from the sale of the coins will be donated to "COVID and Blood Cancers Research Institutions With No Deductions + Matching Funds by WHGS," although those details have been changed since the item's initial launch.

In an interview earlier this week, Giannini said that the coin was designed as a way to support Johns Hopkins University Hospital, where his wife and business partner, Helen, is being treated for leukemia. "It is for the above reasons that I was moved to create the COVID-19 memorial coin, WORLD vs VIRUS—with every penny of proceeds donated to Johns Hopkins, two other medical research centers, and some donations to [law enforcement] first responders," he told Snopes. "When accounts settle in May, we will donate $100,000.00 of which Johns Hopkins Medical Center will be a principal recipient."

VICE has reached out to Giannini for comment. In the meantime, if you're concerned that you might forget about coronavirus, you can drop $100 for a coin that will be shipped in June by a private company that averages $7 million in annual sales. Or you could send that same amount to an organization that is helping small businesses, restaurants, or local families hang on during this ongoing pandemic. Totally your call.

Why Gen Z Is Turning to Socialism

"It's much more stigmatized to say you're a capitalist, in my experience."

By Marie Solis; illustrated by Hunter French May 4 2020

Thomas Burriel was 13 when he first learned about democratic socialism. It happened on Instagram.

Burriel was scrolling through his feed one day in February after school. At the time—winter 2018—he was still attending Linus Pauling, the middle school in his hometown of Corvallis, which is about two hours outside of Portland, Oregon. Linus Pauling offers a “Human Rights Club” and an “Equal Rights/Safer Space Club” to discuss social justice and world events, but Burriel wasn’t involved in them, or in any political clubs at school. And while he identified as a Democrat, he admitted that he had also sympathized with some Republican talking points “out of ignorance.”

But then Instagram’s algorithm suggested Burriel follow @chs_socialists, the page for Corvallis High School’s Young Democratic Socialists of America chapter. Burriel remembers @chs_socialists only having a couple of posts up at the time, and though he had no mutual followers with the account, it sparked his interest: What exactly was democratic socialism?

“When I looked into the problems, I realized the best solution was democratic socialism.”

Burriel googled the term, and after reading a summary on Wikipedia, he found himself on the official Democratic Socialists of America website, and then on the page for the national YDSA, the youth-oriented arm of the organization. The more he read about the groups’ goals and core principles—which include platforms for Medicare for All, tuition-free college, and a Green New Deal—the more he liked the sound of democratic socialism. For Burriel, it was that simple: He agreed that health care was a human right, that politicians should take action on climate change, and that cost shouldn’t be a barrier to receiving a college education. Here was a political ideology that reflected all those things.

“I’ve also learned about a lot of these problems through Bernie Sanders’s [2020] campaign,” Burriel told me over the phone late last year. When we first spoke, Sanders was still trailing Joe Biden in the polls. “When I looked into the problems, I realized the best solution was democratic socialism.”

Burriel is part of a growing group of young people who say they hate capitalism. They’ve come of age amid the ruins of Obama-era liberalism, and their political icons are members of Congress like Sanders or New York Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. They’ve joined walkouts for gun violence and climate change, and are leading groups like the Sunrise Movement to call out corporations and complacent politicians. And now, as lawmakers scramble to respond to a pandemic that has sent the United States economy into free fall, they see obvious solutions to the crisis we’re in, like single-payer health care, universal basic income, and bailouts for everyday Americans, to name a few.

A2018 Gallup poll found that the majority of Americans ages 18-29—no matter their party affiliation—had a positive view of socialism. Americans in that age group were also far less likely than other age groups to view capitalism favorably. When VICE surveyed a group of its Gen Z readers in 2019, six in 10 predicted that the wealth gap would worsen in the next decade; 20 percent believed the United States would pivot to socialism by that point; and 57 percent identified socialism as an economic solution that would help combat violence against marginalized people.

These young people didn’t all come to anti-capitalist thought the same way. Some heard about democratic socialism for the first time by way of Sanders’ 2016 presidential campaign; some by way of his 2020 one. (In December, in the thick of the Democratic primary, the New York Times reported that Sanders was by far the most recognizable presidential candidate for Gen Z.) Others had their socialist consciousness raised by Ocasio-Cortez, who defeated a 10-term incumbent with a campaign platform in Sanders’ mold. Jacob Keller, a high school senior in New Jersey, told me he started developing socialist views much further back: Watching news coverage of Occupy Wall Street in 2011 “radicalized” him, he said. He was just 10 years old.

Like Burriel, many teenagers initially found an outlet for their burgeoning socialist ideals in their campus YDSA chapters. As a freshman in high school, Burriel is now a member of his—before the coronavirus outbreak, he attended meetings every Monday during his lunch period. (Now they take place more sporadically, over Zoom.) To Burriel, democratic socialism means taking power away from corporations and the elite, and returning it to working people. Sometimes, he uses those exact words. Other times, when he’s hanging out with his socialist friends, he’ll put it more bluntly: “Hating rich people,” Burriel told me when I asked what he talks about with other YDSA members. “It’s mostly stuff like ‘Screw Jeff Bezos.’ He has so much illegitimately acquired wealth. It’s incomprehensible how much wealth he has.”



Though there are about 80 YDSA chapters in total, in 2018 just a few of them were high school organizations. That’s changed over the last year: According to Amelia Blair-Smith, an at-large member of the the YDSA National Coordinating Committee, there are now more than 10, a bit of evidence that the massive boom in DSA membership that followed the 2016 election and Ocasio-Cortez’s historic upset reached not just millennials, but members of Gen Z as well.

“Even people as young as high schoolers are dealing with the realities of capitalism and realizing if they stand up and fight against that, they can secure a better future for the next generation.”

Blair-Smith, who, at 20, is herself a member of Gen Z, said many teenagers have discovered democratic socialism through climate activism and teachers’ strikes, two mass movements that have their origins in grade schools across the country. Not every student left these rallies and walkouts as card-carrying socialists, Blair-Smith said; but for some, they marked the beginning of anti-capitalist thinking: At the 2019 YDSA Winter Conference in February, she heard from a group of Denver, Colorado, teens who said they planned on starting a YDSA chapter at their high school after supporting the teachers striking in their city in 2018. In August, a teen went viral after posting a TikTok calling on students in Nevada’s Clark County school district to protest in solidarity with striking teachers.

“The strikes inspired a resistance to capitalism and solidarity with workers, who were their teachers,” Blair-Smith said. “Even people as young as high schoolers are dealing with the realities of capitalism and realizing if they stand up and fight against that, they can secure a better future for the next generation.”




Though students can no longer gather in person for large demonstrations or weekly meetings, YDSA chapters across the country are continuing to grow, in some cases not in spite of quarantine, but because of it. After attending YDSA’s annual convention in February, Keller, who leads the chapter at Montclair High School, got the idea to build a coalition of high school YDSA organizations, since many of the issues they address are specific to high school students, and the vast majority of YDSA is made up of college students. He began reaching out to chapters across the country, but things didn’t start picking up until schools closed and students went into isolation with their families.

“For the first couple weeks of quarantine, we didn’t get any school work really, so people were bored in their house and wanted something to do,” Keller explained. “It can feel very alienating to be a high schooler [during this time]—we’re not professionals, not all of us can work, and we’ve been told just to stay at home and do homework. But we still want to help, so this is a good way for us to show we want to help and use our voices for good.”

The coalition now has around 30 to 40 people in it, which is big for YDSA—most individual high school chapters have just a handful of loyal members—and they’ve been meeting weekly over Zoom. The group has attracted not only those who are already part of established YDSA chapters, but people who have only begun to get curious about democratic socialism as well. And some who, before, had only toyed with the idea of starting a chapter at their school, have begun the official process for starting one, according to Keller.

“The pandemic is a horrible thing, but it can be very radicalizing for people,” Keller said. “I don’t think we turned any Republicans into socialists, but we’ve definitely moved people who were liberal and didn’t know a lot about socialism to being excited about being organizers and activists in our group.”

Young people who belong to Gen Z, sometimes called “zoomers,” may be more predisposed to socialism than previous generations as a result of the way they see the world. Of the Gen Z readers who responded to VICE’s survey, 86 percent said they think the future will be characterized by worsening climate disasters; 68 percent said they believe economic problems will grow more pronounced; and 63 percent said they expect to see more global conflicts in their lifetimes. And they don’t expect the adults in charge to do anything to help— the majority of Gen Z respondents said they had “zero trust” in the country’s leadership.

“I have students who are worried about paying the debt they’re accruing as they sit in class because their parents are still paying off theirs,” said Stephanie Mudge, an associate professor of sociology at University of California, Davis who focuses on leftist politics.. “Socialism says: ‘We have a whole generation of people who have debt before they even hit the labor market—let’s cancel that.’ I imagine that feels like a sensible, clear, and reasonable response to a pretty obvious problem for a lot of young people.”

Mudge said it’s possible more young people will see socialist policies in this light as the coronavirus pandemic exposes the huge gaps between those who are able to work from home and protect themselves and those who must put themselves at risk to perform essential work.

“Many are probably watching their parents go out and expose themselves [to the virus]. Suddenly something like universal health care starts looking like a necessity.”

“Young people are likely going to be heavily conditioned by the experiences they see their parents going through in a time like this,” she continued. “Many are probably watching their parents go out and expose themselves [to the virus]. Suddenly something like universal health care starts looking like a necessity.”

Some teens have already been moving left of prominent democratic socialist politicians like Sanders, whether or not they call themselves socialists. David Oks, an 18-year-old who helped run former presidential candidate Mike Gravel’s 2020 campaign by turning the 89-year-old’s Twitter page into a socialist meme account, said he and many of the young people he knows support the decriminalization of sex work, a policy Sanders has only said is “something that should be considered.” And in the wake of Sanders’ suspended campaign, young people are already looking forward to the candidates who will follow in his footsteps and propose even bolder policies than he did.

“A lot of young people are interested in issues candidates don't touch: stuff that's seen as politically toxic like sex work decriminalization, but also things that candidates just don't think are important,” Oks said. “And a lot of young people who don't even see themselves as leftists think [the Green New Deal] is the most important issue in politics.”

In his social circles, these beliefs are almost taken for granted, Oks said. Among Gen Z "being solidly leftist is the norm," which means it's rare that he encounters any stigma toward democratic socialism. “It's much more stigmatized to say you're a capitalist, in my experience,” he added. “Since you look like a libertarian/TPUSA goofball.”

Still, there are some zoomers who continue to regard socialism with suspicion. Students’ experiences with this stigma were mixed, even when they attended the same school, and even when those schools were located in progressive pockets of the country. When Keller began petitioning to start a YDSA chapter at Montclair, he found everyone seemed “really open” to learning about democratic socialism. But his co-chair had a different read on their peers: Anahita Foroughi, a junior, said some students still harbored the bias against socialism “that’s been drilled into us since we were young, through the media or through our parents.” When she asked one close friend to attend a YDSA meeting with her, the friend declined, telling Foroughi that she worried it would become a problem if she decided to run for political office one day.  


“A few people think socialism is really interesting and want to learn more, but generally people get surprised and then go silent,” she said, describing her classmates’ reaction to any discussion of socialist politics. “Then it becomes a little awkward because I don’t know if they’re onboard with it.”

At YDSA meetings, as well as in casual conversation, Keller tries his best to put socialism in terms his classmates can relate to. He talks about national issues like Medicare for All—one of the most popular programs in the country, he emphasized—as well as issues directly affecting students and the greater Montclair community. “I’ll say, ‘Hey, Montclair is very gentrified, we need housing justice,’” Keller explained. “And I’ll tell them, ‘Even if you don’t agree with all of what democratic socialism is, we’re fighting for certain issues we can all help with.’” One of these issues was bussing: Last year, the Montclair YDSA organized a campaign to help Black students who are still experiencing the effects of red-lining, and therefore must take public transit to get to school.

“I love Marx, but I don’t think you can hand a freshman The Communist Manifesto and expect them to read it—I mean I did, but maybe I’m an outlier,” Keller said. “We don’t need to dumb anything down for people, but we do need to put socialism in context for them. We can do that by talking about class struggle and tying it to climate change, to college tuition, and showing how it matters in their lives.”

The point is to meet other students where they are, and learn more about socialist organizing together. High school YDSA clubs are led by students who themselves are still in the very early stages of socialist education, and many of these students have different ideas of what socialism means and how to practice it, even if they agree on its basic principles.

Socialism may boil down to a mood, or a structure of feeling, rather than a politics to adopt wholesale, for members of Gen Z.

Ella Morton, who is Keller’s co-chair on the YDSA coalition and the head of Corvallis High School’s YDSA chapter, said she doesn’t strongly identify with the “economic part” of democratic socialism—that is, the “hardcore theory element of socialism,” she explained to me on the phone one evening, on the day she took the PSAT for the first time. Morton said that while she knows socialism is, at its core, about a struggle for economic justice, what resonates for her most about the political ideology is its emphasis on community bonds. She also told me she’s averse to reading Marx, whom she believes would “ruin democratic socialism” for her.

“It’s a lot of white guys who are Marxist socialists,” Morton said. “If I wanted that type of socialism, I would follow Bernie Sanders.” (At the time, Morton supported Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren for president.)

Socialism may boil down to a mood, or a structure of feeling, rather than a politics to adopt wholesale, for members of Gen Z. Though they might hold inconsistent positions—as so many of us do—zoomers grasp the core essence of socialism, and are finding that it provides them with an intuitive way of making sense of the world. Viewed in this light, a 15-year-old who is skeptical of Marx and Sanders but identifies with the socialist label isn’t necessarily evidence of the ideology’s dilution: Instead, she might be proof that socialism has become synonymous with a love of justice, and a desire for positive social change.

Many zoomers may still find individual socialist policies more attractive than the broader socialist politics that lie underneath. And many more will find little attractive about either. But students who belong to the country’s burgeoning YDSA chapters aren’t demanding their peers’ political purity—mostly, they’re asking their classmates to keep an open mind, and learn alongside them.

“What we want is workers to have power and for everyone to be able to live a healthy life without fear of lack of medical care or housing,” Keller said. “Socialism is very popular if you break it down.”