The US coronavirus response is a national disgrace

IN CANADA COVID-19 ON DECLINE
Most developed countries have throttled the coronavirus and are gradually resuming life as usual. But not the United States. The U.S. response to the coronavirus is by far the worst in the G7. And it's still one of the worst in the world.

Germany, Italy, Spain, South Korea, Japan, the UK… all were hit hard by the coronavirus. And all have now reduced their new cases to a small and manageable number.

Meanwhile, after plateauing but never fully declining, cases in the United States have begun growing again.

Here, from Our World in Data, is a chart showing new confirmed cases per day per million people. Yes, confirmed cases are being boosted by increased testing. But testing capacity has increased everywhere. And still the US is an outlier.

Our World in Data CLICK TO ENLARGE

Nearly 120,000 Americans have died from the coronavirus, and about 750 are still dying every day. Meanwhile, our president is just saying more stupid things ("If we stop testing, we'd have very few cases") and pretending the problem no longer exists.


You can believe that the coronavirus is not a serious threat to you, your family, or your community. You can point out that the coronavirus is mostly killing old and sick people. You can observe that "life is risky" and that we choose to live it anyway. You can believe that "lockdowns" were overkill and that the government should have focused on mask-wearing instead.

But you cannot deny that the US has royally screwed this up and that we'll be paying for our incompetence for months if not years.

The US coronavirus response is a national disgrace. — HB

NYPD officers claiming they were 'poisoned' at a Shake Shack shows how broken policing isManny Fidel

A Shake Shack in New York City. Noam Galai/Getty Images


The New York City Detectives' Endowment Association alleged three NYPD officers were "intentionally poisoned" at a Shake Shack in Manhattan, and the president of the organization said police were "under attack."
Soon after, an investigation found there was "no criminality," and the incident was deemed an accident.
The constant presumption of guilt by police officers is just one example of how the policing system in America is broken.
This is an opinion column. The thoughts expressed are those of the author.
Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.


On Tuesday, the Twitter account for the New York City Detectives' Endowment Association — a union representing current and former NYPD detectives — shared an extremely urgent message: Three NYPD officers were "intentionally poisoned" at a Shake Shack in Manhattan.

Twitter/@NYCPDDEA

This "attack" at the hands of sinister essential workers made waves online, even prompting a response from former Democratic presidential candidate Andrew Yang.

To no one's surprise, it was soon determined that there was no criminality involved in the incident. Instead, these workers were guilty of first-degree cleanliness, a felony in the state of foregone conclusions. As it turns out, employees had recently cleaned a milkshake machine, and some residue from the cleaning products accidentally made its way into the milkshake ingredients.

This isn't the first time police have accused workers of messing with their food. Police officers in America have a bizarre relationship with accusations of food tampering, and in a lot of cases, they're either wrong or lying.


Vice's Katie Way wrote that these accusations "don't have to be literally true, because to the law enforcement officers who tell them and the people who share them, they feel true." And so despite these accusations being false, the messaging is already cemented. In this case, Paul DiGiacomo, the president of the Detectives' Endowment Association, sent a message to officers that police were "under attack." It's cops versus the world.
Guilty until proven innocent

All of this is indicative of one of the ways the police system in America is broken: the constant presumption of guilt by police officers.

The first thing the Detectives' Endowment Association did after finding out their officers were sick was accuse Shake Shack employees of intentionally harming the cops. How many steps did the association skip to come to this conclusion?

Like DiGiacomo expressed, there's this notion that cops are constantly under attack. In actuality, officers are a part of one of the most protected classes in society. Government support, in addition to powerful police unions, acts as a social and legislative shield, protecting cops even when they're in the wrong. But the people who are supposedly perpetrating these attacks on police often belong to marginalized groups and are conversely not very protected.


This twisted logic that police — who, by the way, carry firearms at all times — are the ones systemically under attack and need another layer of protection is absurd. And the insistence to jump to conclusions based on that logic has led to many avoidable incidents where police officers kill Americans who weren't doing anything illegal.

Philando Castile was shot and killed after he notified a police officer that he was licensed to carry a firearm. Tamir Rice was shot and killed after he was found playing with a toy gun. John Crawford III was shot and killed at a Walmart because he was holding a BB gun that he was in the act of purchasing from said Walmart.

This is the often deadly thought process that goes into likening Shake Shack employees to jaded "Game of Thrones" characters who poison their enemies.

One can't help but ponder the purpose of an accusation leveled by police in the first place. What is the value of an accusation from the people who are supposed to be investigating said accusation? The public does not need to know that police think they've been poisoned before they find out if they've actually been poisoned.


It's no small task, but if police officers and departments were trained to properly assess a situation before acting recklessly, lives could be saved.


This is an opinion column. The thoughts expressed are those of the author(s).

Former Fed Chairs Ben Bernanke and Janet Yellen signed a letter with 130 top economists imploring Congress to prevent 'prolonged suffering and stunted economic growth'

Joseph Zeballos-Roig

Janet Yellen and Ben Bernanke. Alex Wong/Getty Images

A group of 130 top economists including Ben Bernanke and Janet Yellen signed a letter with 130 top economists calling for Congress to act and prevent "prolonged suffering and stunted economic growth."

"If Congress fails to act, state and local governments face potentially disastrous budget shortfalls, and the Congressional Budget Office estimates the unemployment rate will likely be more than 11 percent at the end of the year," the letter read.

Congress is set to debate relief spending next month, but Democrats and the GOP are far apart on what should be put into the legislation.

Former Federal Reserve Chairs Ben Bernanke and Janet Yellen signed a letter alongside 130 top economists calling on Congress to pass additional relief measures and prevent "prolonged suffering and stunted economic growth."

"Policymakers in Congress and the Federal Reserve responded to this crisis with unprecedented levels of economic support for those affected, but more needs to be done," the letter said. It was published on Tuesday by the Washington Center for Equitable Growth, a think-tank focused on inequality.

It went on: "If Congress fails to act, state and local governments face potentially disastrous budget shortfalls, and the Congressional Budget Office estimates the unemployment rate will likely be more than 11 percent at the end of the year."

The group of economists included two Nobel laureates and three former heads of the Council of Economic Advisers such as Jason Furman, who led it during the latter half of the Obama administration. Other prominent signatories were Emmanuel Saez, Robert Solow, Heather Boushey, Cecilia Rouse, and Alan Blinder.

The economists warned that the coronavirus pandemic and ensuing economic fallout would be "especially damaging" to communities of color, given Black, Latinx, and Native Americans were both dying and losing their jobs at greater rates compared to white Americans.

"Evidence from the Great Recession indicates that a prolonged economic downturn will seriously damage the economic opportunities and wealth accumulation of all Americans, but especially of families of color," the letter said.

They called for another robust federal response to continue expanded unemployment benefits in some form, as well as aid to cash-strapped states, and "investments in programs that preserve the employer-employee relationship."

"An adequate response must be large," the letter said, "commensurate with the nearly $16 trillion nominal output gap our economy faces over the next decade."

Congress is set to kick off debate for another stimulus package in late July, though Democrats and Republicans are deeply divided over its shape.

Democrats are urging to aid states and extend generous unemployment benefits, while Republicans call to shield businesses from coronavirus-related lawsuits and enact measures to encourage people to head back to work.

Lawmakers have authorized around $3.5 trillion in relief spending so far, including the $2 trillion Cares Act passed in March. But the web of assistance programs put in place four months ago is set to expire over the summer as the $600 federal boost in weekly unemployment benefits phases out on July 31 with no replacement in place.

Many states are finalizing their budgets at the end of June, raising the prospect of another wave of layoffs that have already topped 1.5 million government workers.

On Tuesday, Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell testified to the Senate Banking Committee that a prolonged recession would deepen the economic pain felt by jobless people and throw more businesses into bankruptcy.

"The longer the downturn lasts, the greater the potential for longer-term damage from permanent job loss and business closures," Powell told lawmakers.

FLASHBACK OR DEJA VU ITS UP TOO YOU 

IN 2009 GOP SENATE LEADER MCCONNELL DECLARED OBAMA A ONE TERM PRESIDENT AND SAID NO TO ANY OF HIS LEGISLATION

WHEN IT CAME TO BUSH OBAMA TARP MCCONNELL CUT IT IN HALF, MEANING

IT WAS OF LIMITED EFFECT IN PREVENTING GOVERNMENT LAY OFFS.

Microsoft employees would rather work from physical offices than work remotely, CEO Satya Nadella says

HEY MSWORKERS YOUR BOSS WANTS YOU BACK AT THE OFFICE

Ashley Stewart

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella. Stephen Brashear/Getty Images





Microsoft employees would rather work from dedicated workspaces in physical offices with good network connectivity than work from home, CEO Satya Nadella said Tuesday at a conference for computer vision researchers. 

Companies should always have the option of allowing remote work, Nadella said, but they shouldn't replace "one dogma with another."

Microsoft is one of the biggest winners from the pandemic-forced shift to remote work. Its Teams work chat app, for example, grew from 44 million to 75 million daily active users in less than two months.

Microsoft is one of the biggest winners in the shift to remote work during the coronavirus crisis, but the company's CEO and employees apparently aren't sold on making it permanent.

Microsoft employees, according to CEO Satya Nadella, have made it clear that they want dedicated workspaces in physical offices with good network connectivity.

"In the Seattle region, where we have sent a lot of people home, we're realizing people would rather have workspace at work once the COVID-19 crisis goes away," Nadella said during Tuesday's CVPR 2020, a conference for computer vision researchers.

While employees may be getting fed up with such a long stretch of Wi-Fi and bandwidth issues at home, Nadella envisions a future of more flexibility. Remote work should always be an option, he said.

"At a core level, we will always want to have this capability of remitting every function inside of our enterprise: whether it's remote sales, remote operations, remote support — remote work at scale," Nadella said."It's going to be foundational to business continuity and resilience."

Instead of making the shift to remote work permanent and "replacing one dogma with another," Nadella painted a picture of a post-COVID-19 crisis world in which companies evaluate the effectiveness of remote work for different roles and business functions, and leave physical space for employees.

As of now, Microsoft has told employees they can work from home until October, unless they're required to be on-site. The company is still in the middle of a multibillion-dollar headquarters renovation intended to make space for 8,000 additional employees.

While Microsoft faced some challenges during the pandemic, such as capacity issues for its cloud business and supply chain constraints, the shift to remote work has in many ways become a boon for the company. Microsoft beat Wall Street expectations in its most recent quarter and its work chat app Teams grew from 44 million to 75 million daily active users in less than two months. The crisis also forced Microsoft to speed up projects and make decisions more quickly.

AT&T is laying off thousands of workers and shutting down at least 250 stores

• AT&T is cutting 3,400 jobs and shutting down more than 250 stores, a union representing the company's workers said on Tuesday.
• The job cuts are part of the economic effect of the coronavirus pandemic and the carrier's efforts to focus on growth areas, AT&T said.
• The layoffs come during a period of change for AT&T as chief operating officer John Stankey prepares to take over as CEO in July.

READ MORE

1. Beijing

Poll: Americans are the unhappiest they’ve been in 50 years

By TAMARA LUSH June 16, 2020 
 In this May 10, 2020, file photo, a merchant prepares a floral arrangement on Mother's Day at the Los Angeles Flower Market in Los Angeles. Americans are more unhappy today than they’ve been in nearly 50 years. That's according to the COVID Response Tracking Study, conducted in late May by NORC at the University of Chicago. (AP Photo/Marcio Jose Sanchez, File)

ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. (AP) — It’s been a rough year for the American psyche. Folks in the U.S. are more unhappy today than they’ve been in nearly 50 years.

This bold — yet unsurprising — conclusion comes from the COVID Response Tracking Study, conducted by NORC at the University of Chicago. It finds that just 14% of American adults say they’re very happy, down from 31% who said the same in 2018. That year, 23% said they’d often or sometimes felt isolated in recent weeks. Now, 50% say that.

The survey, conducted in late May, draws on nearly a half-century of research from the General Social Survey, which has collected data on American attitudes and behaviors at least every other year since 1972. No less than 29% of Americans have ever called themselves very happy in that survey.

Most of the new survey’s interviews were completed before the death of George Floyd touched off nationwide protests and a global conversation about race and police brutality, adding to the feelings of stress and loneliness Americans were already facing from the coronavirus outbreak — especially for black Americans.

Lexi Walker, a 47-year-old professional fiduciary who lives near Greenville, South Carolina, has felt anxious and depressed for long stretches of this year. She moved back to South Carolina late in 2019, then her cat died. Her father passed away in February. Just when she thought she’d get out and socialize in an attempt to heal from her grief, the pandemic hit.

“It’s been one thing after another,” Walker said. “This is very hard. The worst thing about this for me, after so much, I don’t know what’s going to happen.”

Among other finding from the new poll about life in the pandemic:

— The public is less optimistic today about the standard of living improving for the next generation than it has been in the past 25 years. Only 42% of Americans believe that when their children reach their age, their standard of living will be better. A solid 57% said that in 2018. Since the question was asked in 1994, the previous low was 45% in 1994.

— Compared with surveys conducted after President John F. Kennedy’s assassination in 1963 and after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, Americans are less likely to report some types of emotional and psychological stress reactions following the COVID-19 outbreak. Fewer report smoking more than usual, crying or feeling dazed now than after those two previous tragedies, though more report having lost their temper or wanting to get drunk.

— About twice as many Americans report being lonely today as in 2018, and not surprisingly given the lockdowns that tried to contain the spread of the coronavirus, there’s also been a drop in satisfaction with social activities and relationships. Compared with 2018, Americans also are about twice as likely to say they sometimes or often have felt a lack of companionship (45% vs. 27%) and felt left out (37% vs. 18%) in the past four weeks.

What is surprising, said Louise Hawkley, a senior research scientist with NORC at the University of Chicago, was that loneliness was not even more prevalent.

“It isn’t as high as it could be,” she said. “People have figured out a way to connect with others. It’s not satisfactory, but people are managing to some extent.”

The new poll found that there haven’t been significant changes in Americans’ assessment of their families’ finances since 2018 and that Americans’ satisfaction with their families’ ability to get along financially was as high as it’s been over nearly five decades.

Jonathan Berney, of Austin, Texas, said that the pandemic — and his resulting layoff as a digital marketing manager for a law firm — caused him to reevaluate everything in his life. While he admits that he’s not exactly happy now, that’s led to another uncomfortable question: Was he truly happy before the pandemic?

“2020 just fast forwarded a spiritual decay. When things are good, you don’t tend to look inwards,” he said, adding that he was living and working in the Miami area before the pandemic hit. As Florida dealt with the virus, his girlfriend left him and he decided to leave for Austin. “I probably just wasn’t a nice guy to be around from all the stress and anxiety. But this forced an existential crisis.”

Berney, who is looking for work, said things have improved from those early, dark days of the pandemic. He’s still job hunting but has a little savings to live on. He said he’s trying to kayak more and center himself so he’s better prepared to deal with any future downturn in events.

Reimagining happiness is almost hard-wired into Americans’ DNA, said Sonja Lyubomirsky, a psychology professor at the University of California, Riverside.

“Human beings are remarkably resilient. There’s lots and lots of evidence that we adapt to everything. We move forward,” she said, adding that she’s done happiness studies since the pandemic started and found that some people are slightly happier than last year.

Melinda Hartline, of Tampa, who was laid off from her job in public relations in March, said she was in a depressed daze those first few weeks of unemployment. Then she started to bike and play tennis and enrolled in a college course on post-crisis leadership.

Today, she’s worried about the state of the world and the economy, and she wonders when she can see her kids and grandkids who live on the West Coast — but she also realizes that things could be a lot worse.

“Anything can happen. And you have to be prepared,” she said. “Whether it’s your health, your finances, whether it’s the world. You have to be prepared. And always maintain that positive mental attitude. It’s going to get you through it.”

___

The survey of 2,279 adults was conducted May 21-29 with funding from the National Science Foundation. It uses a sample drawn from NORC’s probability-based AmeriSpeak Panel, which is designed to be representative of the U.S. population. The margin of sampling error for all respondents is plus or minus 2.9 percentage points.

How Trump Tries to Tar Black Lives Matter Without Seeming Racist

Kelly Weill, The Daily Beast•June 16, 2020

Doug Mills/Getty

If you got all your news from Donald Trump’s Twitter feed, you wouldn’t know that Black Lives Matter marches, some with more than 10,000 attendees, have been taking place across the country for weeks. But you might think anarchists had ended the rule of law in Seattle.

The racial justice protests that emerged nationwide after the killing of George Floyd by Minneapolis police are popular—more so than past movements for Black lives, like the demonstrations that swept the country in 2014 and 2015. Polling by Reuters and Rasmussen this month both put the movement’s popularity at over 60 percent among all Americans.

From the newest movement’s outset, however, Trump and some of his favorite media circles have overlooked the protests’ popularity—and their focus on Black life—in favor of fearmongering about anarchists and anti-fascists associated with the demonstrations.

“It's a distraction technique,” Jennifer Mercieca, a Texas A&M associate professor focusing on political rhetoric, told The Daily Beast. “It's called the red herring.”

Meet the Gun Club Patrolling Seattle’s Leftist Utopia

Mercieca, whose forthcoming book delves into Trump’s rhetorical maneuvers, said the president and commentators on media outlets like Fox News and One America News Network have sought to identify some protesters as an “aggressive, anti-American vanguard,” distinct from the rest of the Black Lives Matter movement.

For Trump, this “vanguard” takes the form of leftists, anarchists, and anti-fascists. Although these movements often overlap with racial justice causes, Trump has tried to cast them as a separate, malignant presence. “It’s ANTIFA and the Radical Left,” Trump tweeted on May 30, apparently in response to property destruction at an early protest. (Arrests so far have overwhelmingly not implicated anti-fascists.) “Don’t lay the blame on others!”

The ploy lets voices on the right tar the Black Lives Matter movement without engaging with the cause’s central demands.

“Instead of focusing on the central concerns of systemic racism, you focus on this insurgency and insurrection,” Mercieca said, protesters whom Trump has characterized as “this terrible group of people who are determined to overthrow the government, who are using Black Lives Matter as cover.”

Writer Zoé Samudzi noted the distracting work of the “outside agitator” narrative in the early days of the protests.

“This paternalistic use of ‘outside agitator’ is doing some impossibly heavy lifting to mask your terror of black people,” Samudzi tweeted in late May. The tactic has previously been used to downplay Black activism, notably by the Ku Klux Klan.

“‘Outside agitator’ is also historically antisemitic,” Samudzi continued, “it suggested naïve, pliable blacks were being led astray into disruptive communistic thought and behaviors under the influence of anti-capitalist Jewish Bolshevism. So there’s that to beware of, too.”

Though Trump has tweeted little about racial justice and police brutality in recent days, he has repeatedly raged against Seattle, where activists (many of them anarchists) have set up shop in approximately six blocks that have been vacated by police. Those six blocks, called the Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone (CHAZ), have dominated conservative media. On Monday, Fox News’s first “hot topic” tab was “Seattle.” “George Floyd” was only the second trending topic, despite inspiring the nationwide protests. Fox also issued an apology last week after it was found to have photoshopped a gunman into less threatening pictures of the CHAZ. (The outlet also used a picture of a fire in Minneapolis as the lead image of a story about the CHAZ, with the headline “Crazy Town”.)

Some of the negative media blitz around antifa fears have grown louder than the Black Lives Matter coverage. An analysis by DFRLab (the Atlantic Council’s digital research shop) found that antifa-related stories were a social media goldmine.

“Many of these stories are alarmist in nature, misrepresenting or fabricating violent incidents in order to maximize their digital traction,” DFRLab found. “Over time, they have begun to claim a larger share of antifa-related content. Indeed, according to Google Trends, total search interest in ‘antifa’ outperformed that in the Black Lives Matter movement between May 25 and June 7.”

Mercieca noted that many Black Lives Matter activists have radical demands, like police abolition, and that trying to pin the movement’s radicalism on anarchists and anti-fascists can make the rest of the movement look misleadingly mild.

“If you're hanging all of that on these antifa radicals, then that means that you're projecting a more moderate resolution than what Black Lives Matter protesters really want,” she said. “And I don't know that that's the case.”

While any attribution of rational political motives to Trump is a dangerous game, the right’s antifa obsession lets its leaders criticize protesters without stoking the ire of a population that seems increasingly supportive of the Black Lives Matter movement. (Neither the Trump campaign nor the White House immediately returned a request for comment for this story.)

In a Monmouth University poll this month, 76 percent of respondents described racial discrimination as “a big problem.” That’s up from 68 percent of respondents in 2016 and 51 percent in 2015. Even 71 percent of white respondents, Trump’s base, agreed that racism was a “big problem.”

The poll also asked Americans’ opinions on the protests that erupted after George Floyd’s death; 57 percent of respondents described protesters’ anger as “fully justified,” with another 21 percent saying the rage after George Floyd’s death was “partially justified.”

A Rasmussen poll this month found that 62 percent of respondents viewed Black Lives Matter favorably, a dramatic upswing from the meager 37 percent who approved of the movement in 2016. A similar Reuters poll conducted early this month found that 64 percent of American adults were “sympathetic to people who are out protesting right now,” with just 27 percent describing themselves as unsympathetic. (By contrast, 49 percent of respondents to a Rasumssen poll this month said they agreed with Trump’s comments that antifa should be labeled a “terrorist organization,” despite it not being an organization, but a political stance in opposition to fascism.)

The Black Lives Matter movement’s surging popularity is all the more astounding given that, in recent years, right-wingers subjected Black Lives Matter to almost-identical “domestic terror” accusations as the anti-fascist movement currently faces. A 2017 petition calling on the White House to “formally recognize black lives matter as a terrorist organization” was later uploaded virtually verbatim to apply to anti-fascists, the blog Defending Rights and Dissent noted.

But shifting overt animosity to the specter of black-clad anarchists likely won’t make Black marchers any safer.

Sanford, Maine, is nowhere near the former Confederacy. Nevertheless, when Black Lives Matter protesters marched down the small city’s streets this weekend, they were greeted by heavily armed men flying the battle flag of the slavery-defending states. The counter-protesters claimed they weren’t trying to threaten Black Lives Matter marchers, but taking up arms against potential anti-fascists. A local urban legend, like many circulating the country, falsely claimed anti-fascists planned on traveling to Sanford en masse to engage in activities like “firebombing businesses.”

Sanford’s police chief cited the rumors, without evidence, and later texted the city’s WMTW that, “apparently antifa and the rest of the anarchists stayed home.”

Either way, Black Lives Matter marchers found themselves staring down semi-automatic rifles and a Confederate flag.

Read more at The Daily Beast.

Man shot after armed group confront protesters attempting to pull down statue in Albuquerque

Verity Bowman, The Telegraph•June 16, 2020

Albuquerque police detain members of the New Mexico Civil Guard, an armed civilian group, following the shooting - The Albuquerque Journal

A man was shot and wounded in the US state of New Mexico after protesters attempting to pull down a statue of a 16th-Century Spanish colonist were confronted by a group of armed men seeking to protect it.

According to local reports, violence erupted in Old Town Albuquerque following a peaceful protest to remove the controversial sculpture, a monument that features conquistador Juan de Oñate.

Monuments linked to colonialism have come under increasing scrutiny in recent weeks amid Black Lives Matter protests around the world.

A number of statues have been pulled down in the US in the wake of African-American George Floyd’s death at the hands of white police officers in Minnesota.

Many protests have been peaceful, but the removal of statues has often faced fierce rebuttal.
Demonstrators climb the statue of Don Juan de Onate in Old Town in Albuquerque - The Albuquerque Journal

In Albuquerque, clashes broke out when protesters took a pick axe to the statue and members of the heavily armed New Mexico Civil Guard, a civilian group, tried to protect the monument.

The Albuquerque Journal reports that a man was pushed to the ground before shooting five rounds at advancing protesters. The man who was shot appears to have been one of the individuals advancing on the man on the ground.

People could be seen sprinting to take cover after the shooter opened fire. Albuquerque Police Department’s Emergency Response Team was deployed following the shooting.

The man was taken to hospital but his current condition is not known.
A confrontation erupted between protesters and a group of armed men who were trying to protect a statue of a Spanish conquerer - The Albuquerque Journal

Mayor Tim Keller tweeted that the city would be “removing the statue until the appropriate civic institutions can determine next steps”.

“The shooting tonight was a tragic, outrageous and unacceptable act of violence and it has no place in our city,” he added in a statement.

“Our diverse community will not be deterred by acts meant to divide or silence us. Our hearts go out to the victim, his family and witnesses whose lives were needlessly threatened tonight.”

George Floyd protests: Man shot in clash over Albuquerque statue

BBC•June 16, 2020

The man was shot after vigilantes and protesters clashed

A man has been shot and wounded in the US state of New Mexico after violence erupted over a statue of a 16th-Century Spanish colonist.

It happened when a second man opened fire after being turned upon by protesters outside Albuquerque Museum, local reports say.

The protesters had been confronted by a group of armed men as they tried to pull the statue down.

It comes amid heightened sensitivities over monuments linked to colonialism.

A number have been pulled down in the US and other countries in the wake of the death in police custody of George Floyd last month.


The stories behind the statues targeted in protests


Why US protests are so powerful this time

The unarmed African American's killing by a white police officer who knelt on his neck for nearly nine minutes in Minneapolis, Minnesota, has spurred global protests led by the Black Lives Matter movement.
Stun grenades

According to the Albuquerque Journal, clashes broke out when protesters took a pick-axe to the statue of Juan de Oñate - part of a monument depicting Oñate leading settlers into what was then a province of New Spain - after a peaceful demonstration on Monday night.

The paper says a man was pushed to the ground and started shooting when protesters moved towards him, "some threatening him".

It says the person who was shot appeared to have been one of those attempting to get to the man. The shooting sent people running for cover.

Albuquerque police spokesman Gilbert Gallegos said officers at the scene fired tear gas and stun grenades as they detained a number of people.

Police later said in a statement that one man arrested in connection with the shooting, 31-year-old Stephen Ray Baca, had been detained on suspicion of aggravated battery with a deadly weapon.

The wounded man was taken to hospital and was later said to be in a critical but stable condition.

Mr Baca is a former candidate for the Albuquerque City Council and the son of a former Bernalillo County sheriff, according to the Associated Press news agency.

According to the Albuquerque Journal, he ran for office in 2019 on the platform that local officials were "complete wimps when it comes to fighting crime".

Albuquerque Mayor Tim Keller described the shooting as "a tragic, outrageous and unacceptable act of violence", adding that the sculpture had become an "urgent matter of public safety".

"In order to contain the public safety risk, the City will be removing the statue until the appropriate civic institutions can determine next steps," the mayor also tweeted.

New Mexico Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham said that all those involved in violence would be investigated and held accountable "to the fullest extent of the law".

In recent days, statues of Confederate leaders - from the slaveholding southern states that fought in the American Civil War of 1861-65 - and the explorer Christopher Columbus have been torn down in the US, as pressure grows on authorities to remove controversial monuments.

Oñate led a group of Spanish settlers - historically known as conquistadors - in 1598. He became the local governor and is known for the massacre of a pueblo - or Native American - tribe.

Protester shot while trying to pull down statue honoring mass murderer
Christopher Wilson Senior Writer, Yahoo News•June 16, 2020


A protester was shot in New Mexico Monday night, in what police say is the latest incident of violence from groups counterprotesting civil rights demonstrations.

The issue was a statue of 16th century Spanish conquistador Juan de Oñate, which stands outside a museum in Old Town Albuquerque. Protesters attempting to remove the statue clashed with armed counterprotesters, including members of a militia group calling itself the New Mexico Civil Guard. After the confrontation escalated, a man identified by police as Stephen Ray Baca allegedly fired shots into a crowd.

Police said the man who was shot was in critical but stable condition.

Baca was charged with aggravated battery with a deadly weapon. He is the son of a former Bernalillo County sheriff and ran for city council last year. During his campaign, Baca said that the community was turning into a “third world country” and said local elected officials were acting like “complete wimps when it comes to fighting crime.” Video from earlier in the protest shows Baca throwing a woman to the ground.

Armed members of the New Mexico Civil Guard have been attending Black Lives Matter protests since the beginning of the month. They were also present at protests against social-distancing guidelines in April. While Baca’s association with the group is unclear, video shows them surrounding him to protect him after he fired the shots.

Protesters use a chain to try to remove the Juan de Oñate statue in Albuquerque. (Anthony Jackson/Albuquerque Journal via Zuma Wire)
Earlier Monday, in the northern part of the state, officials had removed a different statue of Onate, who was responsible for the Acoma Massacre in 1599, in which as many as 1,000 Native Americans were killed and many others maimed by amputation. He was accused and convicted by the Spanish colonial government, not known for its sensitivity to the indigenous population of North America, of using “excessive force” against the Acoma people.

In response to the shooting, Albuquerque Mayor Tim Keller said the statue would be removed “until the appropriate civic institutions can determine next steps.”

"We are receiving reports about vigilante groups possibly instigating this violence. If this is true, we will be holding them accountable to the fullest extent of the law, including federal hate group designation and prosecution," Albuquerque Police Chief Michael Geier said in a news release.

Police in Albuquerque had already faced scrutiny for their contacts with the armed militia groups. Earlier this month, a video caught an officer talking to MMA fighter Jon Jones and a group of men, some armed, outside of an academy where he trains.
Stephen Ray Baca, a 31-year-old man has been arrested in a shooting that happened as protesters in New Mexico’s largest city tried to tear down a bronze statue of a Spanish conquistador outside the Albuquerque Museum (Albuquerque Police Department)More

"I'm sure you guys can deescalate just by talking to them," an officer told Jones. "But, obviously with us in uniform, they treat us a little bit different. So I mean, if you guys can talk to them on that level."

The Albuquerque Police Department said this was not their policy. “It has come to our attention that a couple of our officers met with a group as they prepared to attend Monday’s protest. This was not a Department-sanctioned contact, and we are investigating the incident,” wrote the Albuquerque Police Department on Twitter. Gilbert Gallegos, spokesperson for the APD, said the incident was being investigated but the officer had not been disciplined.

“We want to discourage groups from attempting to engage in a public safety role during protests and large gatherings. They are not trained, and they are more likely to escalate tensions if they are carrying firearms and dressed like military or law enforcement officers,” Gallegos said in a statement to the Santa Fe New Mexican.
June 15, 2020, Albuquerque, NEW MEXICO, USA: 061520 ..Demonstrators climb the statue of Don Juan de Onate Statue in Old Town while an armed member of the New Mexico Civil Guard stands by during a protest .Photographed on Monday June 15, 2020. (Adolphe Pierre-Louis/ Albuquerque Journal via ZUMA Wire)More

Sen. Martin Heinrich, a Democrat, called on the Justice Department to begin an investigation into the shooting.

“This is not the first report of heavily armed civilian militias appearing at protests around New Mexico in recent weeks,” said Heinrich. “These extremists cannot be allowed to silence peaceful protests or inflict violence.”

The violence from counter-protesters is not limited to New Mexico. In Bethel, Ohio over the weekend, peaceful protesters participating in a Solidarity with Black Lives MATTER? demonstration were met with racial slurs and violence by motorcycle groups, Back the Blue pro-police organizations and gun-owners’-rights advocates. In Facebook videos from the event, counter-protesters were recorded repeatedly using a racial slur against blacks while another showed a group of men following a pro-Black Lives Matter demonstrator to her car and warning her she could get hurt if she stayed.

Village Administrator Travis Dotson told the Cincinnati Enquirer that officials received an anonymous call saying busloads of presumed antifa protesters were on their way to Bethel from Columbus. Dotson said the village had received at least one similar call previously and there is no evidence to suggest that this claim is true.

“It’s kind of amazing how quick social media spreads,” Bethel Police Chief Steve Teague said. “We were told this morning they were busing in protestors. We’re given screen shots from social media with some guns saying, ‘We’re going to Bethel, we’ll take care of what they didn’t take care of yesterday.'”

In the early days of the George Floyd protests, President Trump, Attorney General Bill Barr and other administration officials warned that antifa, an umbrella term for radical left-wing activist groups that sometimes engage in street brawls, was responsible for violent protests. Due to misleading information and outright fabrications on social media, communities went on high alert for what turned out to be imaginary buses filled with protesters bent on destroying suburban and rural municipalities. They never showed, and there has been little evidence from the Justice Department to support claims that antifa activists were behind episodes of looting or rioting. There have, however, been multiple arrests tied to the right-wing militia group “boogaloo,” which explicitly seeks to provoke racial conflict leading to a civil war.

Earlier this month in Washington state, a multiracial family on a camping trip was accused of being antifa and were followed by multiple vehicles that carried passengers with rifles. The panic has led to at least one confrontation at gunpoint with innocent bystanders. Scott Gudmundsen faces felony charges in Colorado after police found him dressed in fatigues and holding two men hostage at gunpoint. They were roofing salesman, wearing polo shirts and protective masks as they went door-to-door following a hailstorm.

Officials said that Gudmundsen called police, said there were two “antifa guys” in the neighborhood and that, “I am going out there to confront them.” Arrest documents state that Gudmundsen knelt on the neck of one of the men, who is a Colorado State football player. The name of the victims were not released but an email from CSU referred to the player as “ a young man of color

Albuquerque police arrest right-wing city council candidate whom witnesses identified as protest shooter

Charles Davis Business Insider•June 16, 2020

Alleged gunman, Steven Baca, that shot at protesters is pictured surrounded by armed men in Albuquerque, New Mexico, U.S., June 16, 2020. in this screen grab obtained from a social media video.

TRNAVA via REUTERS

Steven Ray Baca, a former candidate for Albuquerque's city council, was arrested Tuesday morning after witnesses he shot an anti-racist protester the night before, police said.

Protesters had been trying to pull down a statue of Juan de Oñate, a notoriously cruel Spanish conquistador, when shots rang out.

The victim, Scott Williams, was shot several times in the torso and is in critical but stable condition, the Albuquerque Journal reported.

Police in Albuquerque, New Mexico, arrested a right-wing former candidate for city council on Tuesday and accused him of shooting and critically wounding an anti-racist protester the night before, the Albuquerque Journal reported.

Steven Ray Baca, 31, was charged with aggravated battery with a deadly weapon after allegedly shooting one of dozens of protesters who had gathered around a statue of Juan de Oñate, a notoriously cruel Spanish conquistador, that was set to be replaced later this year.

The Oñate statue, outside the Albuquerque Museum in Old Town, was being guarded by members of a volunteer militia, which calls itself the New Mexico Civil Guard. The group has been a regular and heavily armed sight at recent Black Lives Matter protests, the Santa Fe New Mexican reported.

"For weeks our community has been peacefully protesting against racism," Mayor Tim Keller said at a press conference on Tuesday, announcing the statue's immediate removal. "This kind of violence has no place in Albuquerque. Our hearts go out to the victim and his family."
The mayor said that Baca also violently threw a woman to the ground after "agitating" at the protest. The shooting came later, as some in attendance tried to pull down the statue. A police report states that the attack occurred after Baca got in a scuffle with protesters.
—Megan Abundis (@meganrabundis) June 16, 2020

Albuquerque police arrested Baca on Tuesday morning.

On Twitter, Baca, who ran for city council in 2019, identifies himself as a "Conservative-Libertarian millennial who is here to help cure the RC (Ruling-Class) Virus." He follows a number of right-wing politicians, such as President Donald Trump and Senator Rand Paul, and at least one far-right conspiracy theory account that promotes "QAnon."

As The New York Times noted, Oñate was infamous for cruelty, "even by the standards of his time," with Spanish authorities eventually barring him from the territory of New Mexico. Loathed by the large indigenous community, another statue of Oñate was removed Monday in the northern part of the state.

People of color account for majority of coronavirus infections, new CDC study says

Alexander Nazaryan National Correspondent,Yahoo News•June 16, 2020

WASHINGTON — African-Americans and Latinos are vastly overrepresented when it comes to coronavirus infections, according to an analysis released by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on Monday morning.

The findings provide additional confirmation that, as the CDC’s own report says, black and brown communities have been “disproportionately affected” by the pandemic. African-Americans account for only 13.4 percent of the U.S. population, according to the Census Bureau, but the CDC says they accounted for 22 percent of coronavirus infections studied in the new analysis. (A little more than half of all coronavirus cases in the U.S. do not include racial data, making a complete picture of the pandemic’s racial outcomes effectively impossible.)

At a mobile COVID-19 testing station in Compton, Calif. (Robyn Beck/AFP via Getty Images)

Latinos represent 18.3 percent of the population, according to the last census of the American population, conducted a decade ago. But the CDC found that they suffered 33 percent of the coronavirus infections in the cohort covered by the study.

Native Americans account for 1.3 percent of infections across the nation, which is just slightly more than their share of the general population (1.2 percent). The coronavirus has affected the Navajo Nation, a reservation across three Southwestern states, with exceptional force.

White Americans accounted for 36 percent of coronavirus infections, while they make up 76.5 percent of the nation’s population. Asian-Americans, people of Hawaiian-Pacific Islander background and people who identified as biracial or multiracial represented much smaller shares of the infected population.

The new data, the first from the federal government to fully describe the pandemic’s racial impact, comes amid continuing protests against police killings of black men. Those protests have highlighted broader inequalities in American society, including those pertaining to how widely different communities can access proper health care.

“The disproportionate impact that COVID-19 has had on people of color is staggering,” Sen. Kamala Harris, D.-Calif., told Yahoo News. Harris is the author of the COVID-19 Racial and Ethnic Disparities Task Force Act, which would focus federal attention on how race has factored into the nation’s response to the coronavirus, which has killed nearly 120,000 Americans.

Harris explained that poor health outcomes for people of color were “due in large part to disparities in access to health care, systemic barriers to affordable housing, and environmental injustice that existed long before the pandemic. The federal government must be proactive in righting these historical wrongs,” added the junior senator from California, who is also a potential Democratic vice presidential nominee.

Sen. Kamala Harris. (Carolyn Kaster/AP via Getty Images)

Former Vice President Joe Biden, whose prospects during the Democratic primary were bolstered by African-Americans in South Carolina and other states, has spoken in recent weeks more boldly than he has before on issues of racial justice. Writing recently on Medium, Biden said “structural racism” was to blame for the worse health outcomes experienced by people of color in the coronavirus pandemic. He deemed the situation “unconscionable” and, like Harris, called for better data to understand the scope of the problem.

Though health researchers and journalistic outlets have tried to address the lack of data, the CDC’s case surveillance study appears to be the most complete effort to address that shortfall. The report also discusses comorbidities that exacerbate the effect of the coronavirus, such as lung disease and diabetes. It also analyzes coronavirus infections by gender and age.

This trove of new information, including the racial breakdown, comes in the CDC’s Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, commonly used to address and bring attention to emerging matters of public health concern. The report released on Monday was titled “Coronavirus Disease 2019 Case Surveillance — United States, January 22–May 30, 2020.” The survey was conducted by Erin Stokes, a surveillance epidemiologist at the Atlanta-based public health agency.

Stokes and her co-author surveyed the 599,636 coronavirus cases between January 22 and May 30 for which racial data was available. Those cases represent only 45 percent of all coronavirus cases, as discrepancies in reporting mean that racial data were not always disclosed by laboratories or public health offices.

“There are a number of challenges that come up with capturing race and ethnicity data,” Stokes explained to Yahoo News in a telephone interview following her report’s publication. Some people are reluctant to provide such information, and some hospitals and clinics simply may not report it. She did note that she was seeing “really big improvements” in the breadth of data being shared with the CDC.

Among the provisions in the CARES Act, which provided a $2 trillion stimulus fund for small businesses, corporations and people who met income requirements, was a stipulation that laboratories conducting coronavirus tests report ethnic, racial and other data to the federal government. But a recent guidance from the Department of Health and Human Services says that such reporting does not have to begin until Aug. 1.

Adm. Brett Giroir, assistant secretary for health at the Department of Health and Human Services. (Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call via Getty Images)
Testifying on Capitol Hill last week, the White House’s coronavirus testing czar, Adm. Brett Giroir, acknowledged the existence of racial disparities. He also said that trying to address those disparities without a complete picture of who was getting coronavirus tests was tantamount to “flying blind.”

“We can’t develop a national strategy to reach the underserved, or know how well we’re doing, till we have the data that shows us whether we’re reaching them or not,” Giroir said.

A spokesperson for the federal health department told Yahoo News that the agency has “made sure that the majority of federally associated community-based COVID-19 testing sites are located in sites of high social vulnerabilities, as well as relied on increasing testing at federally qualified health centers,” which the spokesperson said treat a total of 30 million people annually.

The spokesperson pointed out that the Office of Minority Health at the Department of Health and Human Service was investing $40 million to create a “strategic network of national, state, territorial, tribal and local organizations to deliver important COVID-19-related information to racial and ethnic minority, rural and socially vulnerable communities hardest hit by the pandemic.”

Critics say that such efforts should have been undertaken months if not years ago. In another congressional hearing, this one conducted before the House Ways and Means Committee last month, antiracism scholar Ibram X. Kendi described a “racial pandemic” in which the devastation of the coronavirus was compounded by racial prejudice and governmental indifference to communities of color.

Kendi has worked with the COVID Tracking Project, a data-collection initiative started by the Atlantic magazine, to create the COVID Racial Data Tracker. According to the data displayed there, the coronavirus has killed 24,427 people of African-American background.

The new CDC case surveillance data seems to confirm what was apparent to anyone who has watched the havoc wreaked by the coronavirus in African-American communities like the seventh and eighth wards of Washington, D.C., as well as the boroughs of Brooklyn and Queens in New York City. The coronavirus has also ravaged the Latino population in Chicago, as well as meatpacking plants across the Midwest, where many immigrants from Latin America work.

Rep. Adriano Espaillat, a Democrat who represents a heavily Latino section of upper Manhattan, told Yahoo News that “metabolic health disparities in the Hispanic community” only worsened the impact of the coronavirus. He said ailments like diabetes and asthma are especially prevalent in his district, which also includes parts of the Bronx.

Espaillat, a leader in the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, explained that the Trump administration’s restrictive immigration policies have made some of his constituents hesitant to cooperate with public health authorities because of deportation fears. He said that was especially the case with contact tracing, in which “disease detectives” try to figure out how a pathogen is spreading through a community. Epidemiologists believe contact tracing is critical to breaking the chain of disease transmission.

“I know many members of the Hispanic community in my district are in mixed-status multigenerational households,” Espaillat told Yahoo News. People living in such arrangements “may be reticent to share information with a public health worker or volunteer who in absolute earnest wants to help. It is incumbent on myself and other Hispanic leaders to communicate that these tracing efforts are part of a larger public health intervention and assuage the fears that this information may be used in some way to harm or break up a family.”

For many elected officials in Washington who represent communities of color, the new CDC study only confirms what they have known for months. Rep. Karen Bass, D-Calif., who chairs the Congressional Black Caucus, told Yahoo News that, in her view, it was “absolutely shameful” that black and brown communities were bearing the brunt of the pandemic. She added that the CDC’s statistics put “health disparities in this country on full display.”

Bass called for “concentrated testing in communities that are being disproportionately impacted by this pandemic.”

Some communities have decided not to wait for the federal government’s help. African-American churches in Dallas set up test sites of their own, and the Bilingual Christian Church in Baltimore, which caters to a Latino population, offered coronavirus testing earlier this week. Echoing the concerns voiced by Espaillat, the church’s pastor promised that nobody who came in for a coronavirus test would be reported to immigration authorities.

AHF Applauds UN Human Rights Council for Adding Urgent Debate on Racism to Session Agenda

Business WireJune 16, 2020




World’s largest AIDS organization, AHF, applauds United Nations Human Rights Council decision to #StandAgainstHate by holding urgent debate on racism and police brutality at its 43rd session this week.

AIDS Healthcare Foundation (AHF) and its #StandAgainstHate campaign applauds the United Nations Human Rights Council for agreeing to hold an urgent debate this week on racism and police brutality amid the ongoing civil unrest across the U.S. and globally.

"AHF was founded to fight the injustices people living with HIV/AIDS were facing thirty-three years ago—and today we’re standing with the millions of people across the country and world who are fighting against the acts of hatred, violence and murder that are profoundly affecting the African American community throughout the United States," said Terri Ford, AHF Chief of Global Advocacy & Policy. "We applaud the UN Human Rights Council for putting the urgent debate on racism, police brutality and the violence being used to stop peaceful protests on the agenda of its 43rd session this week. And we hope that the debate concludes with some positive solutions for eliminating racial injustice both in the U.S. and around the world."

In response to the murders of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery and many other Black citizens at the hands of police, AHF re-launched its #StandAgainstHate initiative to stand in solidarity with Black activists. The campaign aims to raise awareness, share resources and elevate Black voices across various platforms.

"In addition to fighting for equality and against injustice, our #StandAgainstHate campaign also seeks to open the world’s eyes to the fact that racism, along with it obviously being a civil and human rights issue, is also a critical public health issue," added Samantha Granberry, Vice President, AHF Strategic Partnerships & Sales. "Whether you’re talking about housing, employment or education – racism impacts it all – and creates obstacles for people being able to remain healthy and thrive. AHF commends the UN Human Rights Council for hearing the millions of voices of Black America and advocates from around the world and having the courage to take on this vital issue!"

For more information, please contact Ged Kenslea at gedk@aidshealth.org or (323) 791-5526.

About AIDS Healthcare Foundation (AHF)

AIDS Healthcare Foundation (AHF), the largest global AIDS organization, currently provides medical care and/or services to over 1.4 million people in 45 countries worldwide in the US, Africa, Latin America/Caribbean, the Asia/Pacific Region and Eastern Europe. To learn more about AHF, please visit our website: www.aidshealth.org, find us on Facebook: www.facebook.com/aidshealth and follow us on Twitter: @aidshealthcare and Instagram: @aidshealthcare.

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