Small businesses worldwide fight for survival amid pandemic

In the mid-19th century, the German economist Karl Marx and other Marxist theorists used the term "petite bourgeoisie" to identify the socio-economic stratum of the bourgeoisie that comprised small-scale capitalists such as shop-keepers and workers who manage the production, distribution and/or exchange of commodities ... Petite bourgeoisie - Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org › wiki › Petite_bourgeoisie

Hour after hour in the dark, Chander Shekhar’s mind raced ahead to morning.

More than three months had dragged by since the coronavirus forced Shekhar to shut down his business — a narrow, second-floor shop racked with vibrantly colored saris, on a block in New York’s Jackson Heights neighborhood once thronged with South Asian immigrant shoppers. Today, finally, he and other merchants were allowed to reopen their doors.

But they were returning to an area where COVID-19 had killed hundreds, leaving sidewalks desolate and storefronts to gather dust. Now fears were fading. But no one knew what lay ahead on this late-June Monday as owners raised the gates at jewelry stores, tandoori restaurants and bridal shops clustered near Roosevelt Avenue’s elevated train line. Overnight, the stress had woken Shekhar nine times.

“You cannot tell everybody it’s safe to come and buy from us. This is an invisible enemy that nobody can see,” said Shekhar, a father of two anxious about the shop’s $6,000 monthly rent. “This is my baby,” he said, of the store, Shopno Fashion. “I have worked hard for this for more than 20 years, then I got my shop. It’s not easy to leave it.”





Amid the deaths of friends and customers, Shekhar is reluctant to complain. And he knows he is not alone. As economies around the world reopen, legions of small businesses that help define and sustain neighborhoods are struggling. The stakes for their survival are high: The U.N. estimates that businesses with fewer than 250 workers account for two-thirds of employment worldwide.

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EDITOR’S NOTE — Small businesses around the world are fighting for survival amid the economic fallout from the coronavirus pandemic. Whether they make it will affect not just local economies but the fabric of communities. Associated Press journalists tell their stories in the series “Small Business Struggles.”

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In New Orleans, the owner of a gallery and lounge that launched just before the pandemic hit reopened it as a takeout eatery, with himself as the lone employee. In Tokyo, a florist grabbed a lifeline from shut-in customers who bought blossoms to keep their spirits up. In Minneapolis, a dentist who refitted his office to protect patients from infection is starting over after it was destroyed in riots.

All acknowledge that reopening is just the beginning. But it is a critical milestone, nonetheless, a testament to their grit, creativity and no small amount of desperation. It’s about finding whatever works, because for now, there is no such thing as business as usual.

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Stephanie Skoglund touches up paint on a giant chalk board where guests can leave messages for the bride and groom at The Vault, the wedding and event center she owns in Tenino, Wash. (AP Photo/Ted S. Warren)

Over the years, Stephanie Skoglund invested countless hours of sweat equity renovating what was once Tenino, Washington’s general store -- replacing the floors, wiring chandeliers, adding a kitchen. Everything to upgrade the old sandstone building in this long-ago frontier town for use as a wedding hall.

With this year’s wedding season approaching, 40 celebrations were already on the calendar at The Vault and its sister facility. Then the coronavirus shut them down.

“We’re basically wiped out,” Skoglund said.

Skoglund turned off the electric circuits and water lines at both venues. She sold a dance floor for $1,000 and a large party tent for $2,600, to help cover her family’s bills. Her husband works for her business, so his income is gone, too.

Skoglund was approved for $3,200 of the nearly $25,000 she sought from the federal Payroll Protection Program before learning even that wouldn’t be coming. Then Washington state halted her unemployment payments as it scrambled to sort out hundreds of millions of dollars in fraudulent claims.

Reopening, if you can call it that, has proved just as tough.

Stephanie Skoglund poses for a photo with her husband, Rick, in the main entrance to The Vault, the wedding and event center she owns in Tenino, Wash. (AP Photo/Ted S. Warren)

In June, Skoglund started getting calls from people looking to rent tables, chairs and tents for outdoor events, her only revenue so far. She’ll host her first wedding in late July, one of three events that remain on the calendar. The hall can seat 299, so with 80 guests expected social distancing rules should not be an issue.

Of 20 couples who had booked weddings through October, eight rescheduled for next year and a dozen canceled. Skoglund wrote letters to say she hopes to refund them eventually; it wouldn’t feel right to keep deposits, regardless of language in the contracts.

Once events restart, Skoglund’s older children, aged 16 to 25, will pitch in as her staff. She’s hoping business solidifies by October. But she and her husband have talked about selling their home and businesses and starting over, if it doesn’t.

“I have to start thinking about how to save what I do have and not put myself in a financial position where I lose it,” she said. “Just making that decision: what’s my next step? That’s what keeps me up at night.”

--By Gene Johnson in Tenino, Washington

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After Beirut went into lockdown in March, Walid Ataya returned to his bakery, pizzeria and wine room each morning, perching on a stool at the sidewalk bar to maintain an outpost of commerce and consider his next moves.

Before the pandemic, Lebanon faced an economic crisis rooted in years of government mismanagement and corruption that had sparked nationwide protests. Ataya, who fled when Israel invaded in the mid-1980s, had no intention of leaving again.

“Over here in Lebanon, we can deal with crises,” said Ataya, whose Bread Republic presides over a busy intersection fronting the swanky Furn al-Hayek neighborhood. “We have been through wars and turmoil. ... So the pandemic came and for us it is just another crisis to overcome.”

Bakeries were exempted from closure, so Ataya’s expanded beyond bread to sell fresh pasta. He also kept up a limited flower business, only delivering orders and selling bouquets at the bakery.

Ataya kept on 10 of his 40 employees, sending others home at half-pay. Eventually, he let 10 go, recalling the rest at full wages. He negotiated a rent reduction and cut ties with some suppliers when an 85 percent drop in the nation’s currency left many accepting only dollars.

Walid Ataya, right, speaks with one of his employees at his Bread Republic shop on June 18, 2020. (AP Photo/Hussein Malla)

When rules were eased in May, he reopened the wine bar and pizzeria, albeit at 30 percent of capacity. At first, no one sat indoors and staff circulated among the tables, spraying disinfectant. Police still fined Ataya for overcrowding at his outdoor tables. He is contesting it in court.

Finally, in early June, restrictions were reduced enough for Ataya to reopen his restaurant across the street from the bakery and pizzeria. Protests had resumed and he had his hands full dealing with government paperwork. Then masked men broke into his office and carried out a safe holding thousands of dollars.

In recent days, though, customers filled the tables outside his businesses.

“We are in the stage of surviving day to day now,” Ataya said. “You cannot sit and do nothing. You have to take your chances.”

--By Sarah El Deeb in Beirut

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Shinichiro Hirano walks through his Sun Flower Shop in Tokyo on June 22, 2020. (AP Photo/Eugene Hoshiko)

Shinichiro Hirano walks through his Sun Flower Shop in Tokyo on June 22, 2020. (AP Photo/Eugene Hoshiko)


When Japanese officials asked people to stay home in March, Shinichiro Hirano cut the hours at Sun Flower Shop, but stayed open.

The blossom-filled store, in a central Tokyo neighborhood bordered by the Sumida River, quickly lost its business making arrangements for restaurant openings and job promotions. Tourists disappeared. The area, adjacent to the Athletes Village built for the Tokyo Olympics, had been expecting a boom, only to see it fizzle when the games were postponed.

Hirano placed colored tape on the floor to encourage social distancing. As pandemic fears soared, he found an audience.

“People were working from home and wanted to cheer themselves up,” said Hirano, who estimates 100 customers a day came to the shop. “Some people said they can forget the coronavirus when they come in our store. Flowers can give energy to people.”

Shinichiro Hirano arranges flowers at his Sun Flower Shop in Tokyo on June 22, 2020. (AP Photo/Eugene Hoshiko)

On June 19, Hirano pulled the tape from the shop’s floor, while leaving warning signs up. Officially, the emergency was over, but the challenges continue.

One of the first bouquets he sold in the days afterward was to a customer marking the closing of a nearby restaurant. As other businesses reopen, some have ordered flowers to celebrate. Still, total sales have dropped by up to 20 percent.

Hirano, though, is consistent, returning to the store each day, bowing to customers, donning his favorite New York Yankees cap. Flowers are what he loves, he said.

“As long as you have a store, you have to keep it open,” he said. “I never for a moment thought of closing it.”

--By Yuri Kageyama in Tokyo

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The velvet chairs in DJ Johnson’s new NOLA Art Bar were filled with customers sipping cocktails on a mid-March evening when the announcement came: the city had ordered all bars to close. Johnson, who had moved home to New Orleans and invested his savings, turned up the lights, asked everyone to leave and boarded the door.

Six weeks later, though, he adapted to rules that allowed food service businesses to stay open for takeout. His bar hadn’t done food. But he started making New Orleans staples like boiled shrimp and oysters, taking orders at a table set up in the gallery’s door on St. Claude Avenue. The first day he made $35.

DJ Johnson poses for a portrait on June 25, 2020, inside his new NOLA Art Bar in New Orleans, which opened just before the coronavirus pandemic. (AP Photo/Gerald Herbert)

Patrons relax over cocktails in the velvet chairs of DJ Johnson’s NOLA Art Bar in New Orleans on June 23, 2020. (AP Photo/Gerald Herbert)

By late June, he was still not making enough to cover his costs. But he tapped income from rental units he owns to cover bills and to show residents of the Marigny neighborhood that he was there to stay.

“The more I can get the word out, the better it will be for me when things are able to reopen, post-COVID,” he said. “So just weather the storm. Stay open. Let as many people as possible see that you’re open.”

On June 13, Johnson started seating diners inside the gallery at half capacity. A week later, he restarted construction on a bookstore and coffee shop next door. He’s still trying to figure out how to respond to a recent decision by Louisiana’s governor to close bars for on-site service, after coronavirus cases spiked. But he’s determined to keep going, even if it means going back to selling to passersby at his gallery’s door. For motivation, he thinks back to biographies of people like Nelson Mandela, as models for overcoming adversity.

“It’s discouraging. But the only thing that kept me going is, there is no quit,” he said. “You go until you can’t go anymore.”

--By Rebecca Santana in New Orleans

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Shao Lin Tia, left, and her husband, Christophe Tia, look out from the window of their second Thai restaurant on Rue Daguerre in Paris on May 2, 2020, as they wait for takeout customers. (AP Photo/Francois Mori)

For the first few weeks, the hush that settled over Paris as restrictions known as “The Confinement” took hold, provided Shao Lin Tia with some much-prized rest.

Up until then, Tia had been working feverishly at Ginza, the pan-Asian restaurant she and her husband run, filling in for a chef who had left a few months earlier. That came not long after the couple opened a Thai restaurant next door on Rue Daguerre, a street near the city’s famed catacombs that hosts a classic Paris market district of cheese shops, florists and cafes.

With both restaurants closed, the Tias had unexpected time to spend with their three children. The family worked their way through the restaurants’ food stocks to limit household spending. And the couple took the government at its word that commercial rents would be frozen and stopped payments.

France exempted small businesses in the restaurant, tourism, sports and culture sectors from social security contributions and reimbursed employers about 84% of net salaries. But with no money coming in and expenses looming, the time off began to weigh on the couple’s peace of mind.

“The government doesn’t give anything for free,” Tia said.

Finally, in late April, the rules relaxed enough for the Tias to set up a takeout window. But with Parisians limited to a single outing a day, each requiring a timestamped authorization form, Daguerre emptied early, limiting the dinner trade to just two hours.

In recent weeks, Tia has added a few outdoor tables. But sales remain 30 percent lower than at this time last year, despite unusually beautiful weather. Many neighborhood residents left the city for second homes when the lockdown began and likely will not return until September.

Tia worries that as the government stops covering salaries in coming months, a wave of layoffs could increase pressure on businesses like hers.

“We’ll never catch up, never in our lives,” she said. “And the hardest is yet to come.”

--By Lori Hinnant in Paris

 Petty Bourgeoisie and Middle Class. The lower middle class or the petty (petite) bourgeoisie (the bourgeoisie was sometimes called the middle class in this era), constitutes "the small manufacturer, the shopkeeper, the artisan, the peasant" (Giddens and Held, p. 24). The characteristic of this class is that it does own some property, but not sufficient to have all work done by employees or workers. Members of this class must also work in order to survive, so they have a dual existence – as (small scale) property owners and as workers. Because of this dual role, members of this class have divided interests, usually wishing to preserve private property and property rights, but with interests often opposed to those of the capitalist class. This class is split internally as well, being geographically, industrially, and politically dispersed, so that it is difficult for it to act as a class. Marx expected that this class would disappear as capitalism developed, with members moving into the bourgeoisie or into the working class, depending on whether or not they were successful. Many in this class have done this, but at the same time, this class seems to keep recreating itself in different forms.
Marx considers the petite bourgeoisie to be politically conservative or reactionary, preferring to return to an older order. This class has been considered by some Marxists to have been the base of fascism in the 1920s and 1930s. At other times, when it is acting in opposition to the interests of large capital, it may have a more radical or reformist bent to it (anti-monopoly).
Note on the Middle Class. The issue of the middle class or classes appears to be a major issue within Marxian theory, one often addressed by later Marxists. Many Marxists attempt to show that the middle class is declining, and polarization of society into two classes is a strong tendency within capitalism. Marx's view was that the successful members of the middle class would become members of the bourgeoisie, while the unsuccessful would be forced into the proletariat. In the last few years, many have argued that in North America, and perhaps on a world scale, there is an increasing gap between rich and poor and there is a declining middle.
While there have been tendencies in this direction, especially among the farmers and peasantry, there has been no clear long run trend toward decline of the middle class. At the same time as there has been polarization of classes, there have been new middle groupings created. Some of these are small business people, shopkeepers, and small producers while others are professional and managerial personnel, and some intellectual personnel. Well paid working class members and independent trades people might consider themselves to be members of the middle class. Some segments of this grouping have expanded in number in recent years. While it is not clear that these groups hold together and constitute a class in any Marxian sense of being combined in opposition to other classes, they do form a middle grouping. Since Marx's prediction has not come true, sociologists and other writers have devoted much attention to explaining this middle grouping – what is its basis, what are the causes of its stability or growth, how it fits into the class structure, and what are the effects of its existence on proletariat and bourgeoisie.
http://uregina.ca/~gingrich/s28f99.htm

House approves bill to create Latino museum on National Mall

FILE - In this June 4, 2020 file photo, Rep. Jaime Herrera Beutler, R-Wash., speaks during a Labor, Health and Human Services, Education, and Related Agencies Appropriations Subcommittee hearing on Capitol Hill in Washington. The House has passed a bill to establish a Smithsonian museum for American Latinos that would showcase Latino history, art and culture. The bill was approved Monday by a voice vote and now goes to the Senate, where it has bipartisan support. (Al Drago/Pool via AP)


WASHINGTON (AP) — The House has passed a bill to establish a Smithsonian museum for American Latinos that would showcase Latino history, art and culture.

The bill was approved Monday by a voice vote and now goes to the Senate, where it has bipartisan support.

The Congressional Hispanic Caucus hailed the bill’s passage, noting that a museum honoring Latinos has been under consideration for more than 15 years.

“The Latino story is an American story, and our history is a central thread in the history of our nation,” said Rep. Joaquin Castro, D-Texas, the group’s chairman.

“Latinos have fought in every U.S. war. Food and music from Latin America are enjoyed in every American city. American Latinos are parents, veterans, teachers, activists, innovators, artists, scientists, business owners ... and so much more,″ Castro said. ”Now, more than ever, America’s Latinos deserve to have our story told and our voices to be heard.″

A 23-member commission was established in 2008 to study the viability of a museum, and the commission said in a 2011 report that creation of a museum on the National Mall was feasible.

The museum would be similar to the National Museum of African American History and Culture, which opened on the mall in 2016.

“The National Mall is the most visited national park with over 25 million visitors each year. It’s nicknamed ‘America’s Front Yard.’ It’s a testament to the accomplishments, history and diversity of the people that make up these United States of America,″ said Rep. Jaime Herrera Beutler, R-Wash. “However, there are almost 60 million Americans whose stories, contributions and traditions do not have a platform or spotlight″ on the mall, which stretches from the Capitol to the Lincoln Memorial in downtown Washington.

Millions of people, “both Mexican Americans like me and people of other heritages, value those contributions to our union and want to see that platform become part of our country’s message,” said Herrera Beutler, the first Hispanic member of Congress from Washington state.

Sen. John Cornyn, a Texas Republican who co-sponsored the Senate bill, urged his colleagues to approve the bill and send it to the White House.

“Close to 40 percent of all Texans identify as Hispanic, and their history is an integral part of Texas history that must be recognized and remembered,” Cornyn said in a statement. “By creating a new museum in the Smithsonian Institution, we can honor American Latino contributions and highlight their stories for future generations.”

If such a measure is approved by Congress and signed by President Donald Trump, the Smithsonian Institution would have two years to appoint a board of directors and locate a site for the museum.

Wealthy donors pour millions into fight over mail-in voting

FILE - In this May 27, 2020 file photo, a worker processes mail-in ballots at the Bucks County Board of Elections office prior to the primary election in Doylestown, Pa. Deep-pocketed and often anonymous donors are pouring over $100 million into an intensifying dispute about whether it should be easier to vote by mail, a fight that could determine President Donald Trump's fate in the November election. (AP Photo/Matt Slocum, File)


WASHINGTON (AP) — Deep-pocketed and often anonymous donors are pouring over $100 million into an intensifying dispute about whether it should be easier to vote by mail, a fight that could determine President Donald Trump’s fate in the November election.

In the battleground of Wisconsin, cash-strapped cities have received $6.3 million from an organization with ties to left-wing philanthropy to help expand vote by mail. Meanwhile, a well-funded conservative group best known for its focus on judicial appointments is spending heavily to fight cases related to mail-in balloting procedures in court.

And that’s just a small slice of the overall spending, which is likely to swell far higher as the election nears.

The massive effort by political parties, super PACs and other organizations to fight over whether Americans can vote by mail is remarkable considering the practice has long been noncontroversial. But the coronavirus is forcing changes to the way states conduct elections and prompting activists across the political spectrum to seek an advantage, recognizing the contest between Trump and Democrat Joe Biden could hinge on whether voters have an alternative to standing in lines at polling places during a public health crisis.

Some groups are even raising money to prepare for election-related violence.

“The pandemic has created a state of emergency,” said Laleh Ispahani, the U.S. managing director for Open Society, a network of nonprofits founded by billionaire progressive donor George Soros. “Donors who haven’t typically taken on these issues now have an interest.”
How much will be spent is unclear because many of the organizations are nonprofits that won’t disclose those details to the IRS until well after the election. Even then, many sources of money will remain unknown because such groups don’t have to disclose their donors, commonly referred to as “dark money.”

Tax filings, business records and campaign finance disclosures offer some clues. They reveal vast infrastructure that funnels money from wealthy donors, through philanthropic organizations and political groups, which eventually trickles down to smaller nonprofits, many of which operate under murky circumstances.

ONE GEORGE SOROS FOUNDATION VS DOZENS OF CONSERVATIVE LOBBYISTS

On the conservative side, organizations including Judicial Watch, the Honest Elections Project, True the Vote and the Public Interest Legal Foundation are litigating cases related to voting procedures across the U.S.

A substantial portion of the financing comes from Donors Trust, a nonprofit often referred to as the “dark money ATM” of the conservative movement. The organization helps wealthy patrons invest in causes they care about while sheltering their identities from the public.

In other instances, funding comes from charitable foundations built by the fortunes of Gilded Age industrialists.

Litigation is a primary focus. Democrats and good government organizations are pushing to eliminate hurdles to absentee voting, like requiring a witness’s signature or allowing third parties to collect ballots.

Conservatives say that amounts to an invitation to commit voter fraud. As these issues wind their way through courts, they say judges could decide complex policy matters that often were already debated by state legislatures.

“The wrong way to go about this is to run to court, particularly a week or two before an election, trying to get judges to intervene and second-guess decisions legislatures have made,” said Jason Snead, the executive director of the Honest Elections Project.

His organization is a newly formed offshoot of the Judicial Education Project, a group that previously focused on judicial appointments and received more than $25.3 million between 2016 and 2018 from the Donors Trust, records show. They are deeply intertwined with the conservative Catholic legal movement and share an attorney, William Consovoy, with the Republican National Committee, which has pledged $20 million for voting litigation.

Leonard Leo, a Trump confidant who was instrumental in the confirmations of the president’s Supreme Court nominees, plays a leading role. He’s now chairman of a public relations firm called CRC Advisors, which is overseeing a new effort to establish a clearinghouse for anonymous donors to fund conservative causes, including the fight over vote by mail.

The firm played a significant role in the 2004 election by publicizing unfounded claims made by a group called Swift Boat Veterans for the Truth, which questioned Democratic nominee John Kerry’s record as a Vietnam War hero, records show.

The group’s involvement in vote by mail marks a sea change for Republicans. Claims of widespread voter fraud have long energized segments of the party’s base. But it did not elicit much interest from donors, and the handful of groups devoted to the issue operated on minuscule budgets.

But in recent years, Democrats have mounted legal challenges that threatened voting laws championed by conservatives. And Trump’s repeated focus on “rigged elections” has made the issue part of a broader culture war.

Still, some activists question the GOP establishment’s commitment to the cause.

“They aren’t going to take on Republicans like we have,” said Catherine Engelbrecht, the founder of True the Vote.

While Republicans are focused on the courts and raising doubts about vote by mail, the challenge faced by Democrats is far more daunting.

In addition to litigation, they must mobilize their base during a pandemic. That includes educating the public about vote by mail, a difficult task when door-to-door canvasing isn’t an option.

Some groups are donating directly to local governments. In Wisconsin, the Center for Tech and Civic Life, a nonprofit with ties to left-leaning philanthropy, has donated $6.3 million to the state’s five largest cities to set up ballot drop boxes, help voters file absentee ballot requests and expand in-person early voting.Even before the pandemic, government funding for elections was limited. Since then, the outbreak has escalated costs while cratering tax revenue.

“Due to COVID, there definitely has been a higher cost,” said Mayor John Antaramian, of Kenosha, which received $863,000 through the grant — roughly four times what the city budgeted for the election. “Is there a financial shortfall on that basis? Of course.”




Much of the untraceable money on the left is likely to come from a series of nonprofit funds managed by the consulting firm Arabella Advisors, which typically route upwards of $500 million a year to causes supported by liberal donors. The firm was founded by Eric Kessler, who served in Bill Clinton’s White House.

The operation has been instrumental in financing so-called resistance groups following Trump’s election. And some nonprofits they’ve provided seed money were responsible for millions of dollars in TV advertising that blistered Republicans during the 2018 midterms.

They’ve also pioneered the practice of creating “pop-up” organizations: groups that appear to be grassroots-driven efforts to influence public policy, which use trade names that obscure a deep pool of resources from those with ideological or financial motivations.

The firm recently registered a handful of trade names for groups that appear to be focused on voting rights, records show.

Another effort Arabella Advisors are involved in, the Trusted Elections Fund, aims to raise between $8 million and $10 million in case the pandemic leads to chaos in November.

The group is preparing for potential foreign hacking of state voting systems, “election day or post-election day violence,” as well as contested results.

A Trusted Elections Fund representative declined to comment. But a two-page summary available online elaborated on their aims.

“Philanthropy has a responsibility to make sure that we are prepared for emergencies that could threaten our democracy,” it read.

PHILANTHROPY IS THE 1% SPENDING MY SURPLUS VALUE AS PROFIT AND GETTING A TAX RECEIPT FOR IT. ALL THE TIME TELLING ME ITS FOR MY OWN GOOD

Police and protesters clash in violent weekend across the US

VANDALISM IS NOT VIOLENCE, 

BODILY ASSAULT IS VIOLENCE
LIKE TEARGAS CANISTERS, 

PEPPER BOMBS, RUBBER AND WOODEN BULLETS
THUNDER FLASH
VS.
PLASTIC BOTTLES OF WATER, CANS AND FIREWORKS

PHOTOS 18 https://apnews.com/4e6c60018ec531c889b1f6b963ff1d56


ATLANTA (AP) — Protests took a violent turn in several U.S. cities over the weekend with demonstrators squaring off against federal agents outside a courthouse in Portland, Oregon, forcing police in Seattle to retreat into a station house and setting fire to vehicles in California and Virginia.

A protest against police violence in Austin, Texas, turned deadly when police said a protester was shot and killed by a person who drove through a crowd of marchers. And someone was shot and wounded in Aurora, Colorado, after a car drove through a protest there, authorities said.

The unrest Saturday and early Sunday stemmed from the weeks of protests over racial injustice and the police treatment of people of color that flared up after the May 25 death of George Floyd in Minneapolis. Floyd, who was Black and handcuffed, died after a white police officer used his knee to pin down Floyd’s neck for nearly eight minutes while Floyd begged for air.

OAKLAND

Black Lives Matter protesters march through downtown Oakland on Saturday, July 25, 2020, in Oakland, Calif. Protesters in California set fire to a courthouse, damaged a police station and assaulted officers after a peaceful demonstration intensified late Saturday, Oakland police said. (AP Photo/ Christian Monterrosa)

Protesters light fireworks in the middle of downtown Oakland during a protest on Saturday, July 25, 2020, in Oakland, Calif. Protesters in California set fire to a courthouse, damaged a police station and assaulted officers after a peaceful demonstration intensified late Saturday, Oakland police said. (AP Photo/Christian Monterrosa)

A road sign warns protesters of the use of chemical agents for failure to disperse after a protest was declared unlawful on Saturday, July 25, 2020, in Oakland, Calif. Protesters in California set fire to a courthouse, damaged a police station and assaulted officers after a peaceful demonstration intensified late Saturday, Oakland police said. (AP Photo/Christian Monterrosa)

A protester holds a burnt flag in front of a mural during a protest on Saturday, July 25, 2020, in Oakland, Calif. Protesters in California set fire to a courthouse, damaged a police station and assaulted officers after a peaceful demonstration intensified late Saturday, Oakland police said. (AP Photo/Christian Monterrosa) In Seattle, police officers retreated into a precinct station early Sunday, hours after large demonstrations in the city’s Capitol Hill neighborhood. Some demonstrators lingered after officers filed into the department’s East Precinct around 1 a.m., but most cleared out a short time later, according to video posted online.

At a late-night news conference, Seattle police Chief Carmen Best called for peace. Rocks, bottles, fireworks and mortars were fired at police during the weekend unrest, and police said they arrested at least 45 people for assaults on officers, obstruction and failure to disperse. Twenty-one officers were hurt, with most of their injuries considered minor, police said.

In Portland, thousands of people gathered Saturday evening for another night of protests over George Floyd’s killing and the presence of federal agents recently sent to the city by President Donald Trump. Protesters breached a fence surrounding the city’s federal courthouse building where the agents have been stationed.

Police declared the situation to be a riot and at around 1:20 a.m., they began ordering people to leave the area surrounding the courthouse or risk arrest, saying on Twitter that the violence had created “a grave risk” to the public. About 20 minutes later, federal officers and local police could be seen attempting to clear the area and deploying tear gas, however protesters remained past 2:30 a.m., forming lines across intersections and holding makeshift shields as police patrolled and closed blocks abutting the area. Multiple arrests were made, but it wasn’t immediately clear how many.



PORTLAND



Federal officers launch tear gas at a group of demonstrators during a Black Lives Matter protest at the Mark O. Hatfield United States Courthouse Sunday, July 26, 2020, in Portland, Ore. (AP Photo/Marcio Jose Sanchez)




In the Texas capital of Austin, 28-year-old Garrett Foster was shot and killed Saturday night by a person who had driven through the march against police violence.

Austin Police Chief Brian Manley said a car turned onto the block where protesters stood and honked its horn. The driver and several witnesses told police that Foster approached the driver and pointed an assault rifle at them.

In video streamed live on Facebook, a car can be heard honking before several shots ring out and protesters start screaming and scattering for cover. Police could then be seen tending to someone lying in the street.

Manley said the driver called 911 to report the incident and was later taken into custody and released. Police didn’t immediately identify the driver.

Sheila Foster, Garrett’s mother, said she was told her son was pushing his fiancée, who uses a wheelchair, through an intersection when the suspect was driving “erratically” through the crowd. She said she was told the driver shot her son three times.

In the Denver suburb of Aurora, Colorado, meanwhile, a protester shot and wounded someone after a car drove through a crowd marching on an interstate highway, police said. The wounded person was taken to a hospital in stable condition. Police didn’t release many details about the shooting, including whether the person who was shot had been in the car. Police said on Twitter that demonstrators also caused “major damage” to a courthouse.

Protesters in Oakland, California, set fire to a courthouse, damaged a police station, broke windows, spray-painted graffiti, shot fireworks and pointed lasers at officers after a peaceful demonstration Saturday evening turned to unrest, police said.

NOTICE THE PUBLIC SERVANTS, BUT NOT CIVIL, STANDING AROUND DOING NOTHING IN THE BACKGROUND WHAT DO THEY GET PAID FOR?
q
In Virginia’s capital, Richmond, a dump truck was torched as several hundred protesters and police faced off late Saturday during a demonstration of support for the protesters in Portland. Police declared it to be an “unlawful assembly” at around 11 p.m. and used what appeared to be tear gas to disperse the group. Five people were arrested in the incident and charged with unlawful assembly. A sixth person was also arrested and charged with rioting and assault on a law enforcement officer.



In downtown Atlanta on Sunday, federal agents examined damage to an Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility where windows were shattered late Saturday. The FBI and the Department of Homeland Security, FBI spokesman Kevin Rowson said in an email. No arrests had been announced.


And in Baltimore, people from a group of nearly 100 demonstrators spray-painted anti-police messages on a Fraternal Order of Police building and adjacent sidewalks on Saturday night, The Baltimore Sun reported.
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Associated Press writers Gillian Flaccus and Sara Cline in Portland, Oregon, and Sally Ho and Chris Grygiel in Seattle contributed to this report.

PORTLAND FEDERAL POLICE ALL SINGING, ALL DANCING TROUPE PERFORMS I AM A LUMBERJACK

On Portland's streets: Anger, fear, and a fence that divides


By MIKE BALSAMO and GILLIAN FLACCUS

PHOTO ESSAY




PORTLAND, Ore. (AP) — The party at the Salmon Street Springs fountain, a riverfront landmark in the heart of Portland, was just getting started.

Dozens of drummers beat out entrancing rhythms and a crowd of hundreds danced joyfully as the setting sun cast a soft pink glow on distant Mount Hood. Poster boards bearing the names of dozens of Black men and women killed by police stirred in a gentle breeze as the energy built to fever pitch and more and more people poured into the square.

Suddenly, 10-year-old Xavier Minor jumped into the center of the circle and started dancing with abandon. The emcee took note.

“Yo, Black kids are the future! Black kids are the future!” he shouted, until a beaming Xavier finally stepped out and into his father’s proud embrace.

A few minutes later, as night fell, the music stopped — and the march to the federal courthouse began.

Xavier Minor, 10; his mother, Barbie Minor; Kali Minor, 14; and father, Kamon Minor, from left, participate in a protest in Portland, Ore., Friday evening, July 24, 2020. (AP Photo/Gillian Flaccus)

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Two blocks west and one block south, the several dozen federal law enforcement agents guarding the Mark O. Hatfield Federal Courthouse could hear the protesters coming.

Under orders to protect the courthouse — federal property that has been increasingly targeted as the city’s protests against racial injustice march on — the agents were accustomed to the drill. But tonight, the crowd was huge, estimated at 4,000 people at its peak and the largest they had seen.

A top commander with the U.S. Marshals Service peered out a window facing the Willamette River and watched the sea of humanity sweep toward him. It was going to be another long night.

The courthouse, a stately building with large windows and a white marble interior, looked like a feudal castle under siege. The outside was boarded up with thick plywood; narrow slits at the top of the plywood, accessed by a mechanized scaffolding, gave the agents inside a view of the crowd and an opening through which to fire pepper balls.

A federal officer holds a tear gas rifle during a Black Lives Matter protest at the Mark O. Hatfield U.S. Courthouse early Sunday, July 26, 2020, in Portland, Ore. (AP Photo/Marcio Jose Sanchez)

As protesters gather behind a fence, federal officers work to maintain a perimeter in front of the Mark O. Hatfield U.S. Courthouse on Friday, July 24, 2020, in Portland, Ore. (AP Photo/Noah Berger)


A federal officer stands in front of the Mark O. Hatfield U.S. Courthouse during a Black Lives Matter protest Friday, July 24, 2020, in Portland, Ore. (AP Photo/Marcio Jose Sanchez)

The terrace outside the front door was littered with garbage, the steps leading to the courthouse splattered with paint. A mixture of anti-police and Black Lives Matter graffiti covered the building’s outer walls and columns to a height of about 10 feet (3 meters).

Tear gas from the previous nights’ protests still hung in the air and coated the floor with a slime that had been hurriedly mopped up by custodians earlier that day. A few sickly looking potted plants still decorated the lobby, a reminder of a time before the courthouse was a battlefield.

In the no-mans-land outside stood the fence: A thick, black iron installation, erected six days before, a dividing line between protester and protector, a stark separation between two radically different world views.

To the protesters, the men inside the battened down courthouse are at best thoughtless political minions, at worst murderous henchmen. To the agents inside, the demonstrators that pack the downtown each night are violent anarchists, an angry sea of humanity bent on hurting — or even killing — federal agents doing their job.

“It’s scary. You open those doors out, when the crowd is shaking the fence, and ... on the other side of that fence are people that want to kill you because of the job we chose to do and what we represent,” said a Deputy U.S. Marshal who has been protecting the courthouse for weeks. He requested anonymity because protesters have identified him and posted his personal information online.

“I can’t walk outside without being in fear for my life,” he said. “I am worried for my life, every time I walk outside of the building.”




The fence protecting a federal courthouse in Portland is a dividing line between radically different world views. The demonstrators outside and the federal agents inside traverse the same mayhem but their experiences could not be more different. (July 27)

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This weekend, journalists for the Associated Press were both outside, with the protesters, and inside the courthouse, with the federal agents, documenting the chaotic fight that has become an unlikely centerpiece of the protest movement gripping America.

The nation is seething with anxiety and deeply divided about the role of police, the value of Black lives and the limits of federal authority in an election season like none other. In Portland, on a single city block owned by the U.S. government, that anxiety has turned to turmoil.

Is this the beginning of the United States transforming into a military state, where federal agents flood the streets and overrule local authorities? Or is it a battle to keep the violence in Portland from becoming the new America, a frightening vision painted by President Donald Trump of what the future will hold without his leadership?

Fear and uncertainty about the answers to those questions have exploded in Portland in a surreal armed conflict that plays out every night.

The chaos in Portland spread this weekend to other cities, from Oakland to Aurora, Colorado, to Richmond, Virginia as the nation reels under its division.





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At 10:15 p.m. in Portland, the protesters made their first foray into conflict: A man tried to climb the fence and was quickly arrested.

Thirty minutes later, the fence rocked and leaned sharply as dozens of protesters pressed their weight against it, some of them throwing their bodies against it at a running start. The fence, designed to absorb the impact from a car going up to 30 mph (48 kph), undulated like a wave and tilted dangerously before springing back.

Behind the front lines, the drummers that had whipped demonstrators up at the fountain regrouped and led the crowd in dancing and chanting.

Monica Arce gyrated to the music and waved her cell phone flashlight in the air with hundreds of others. The professional midwife had left her 14-year-old son at home and joined her sister-in-law, a teacher, to protest the presence of the federal agents and to support Black Lives Matter.

“We are not here being violent or being destructive. We have a positive message — there is nothing to quell here,” she said, referencing Trump’s statement that the agents were there to quell unrest. “The people of Portland are saying, ‘We don’t want this presence here and we don’t think we need them at all.’”

As she spoke, small pods of three to four protesters dressed in black circulated in the crowd, stopping every few minutes to point green laser beams in the eyes of agents posted as lookouts on porticoes on the courthouse’s upper stories. The agents above were silhouetted against the dark sky as dozens of green laser dots and a large spotlight played on the courthouse walls, projected from the back of the crowd.

Thirty minutes later, someone fired a commercial-grade firework inside the fence. Next came a flare and then protesters began using an angle grinder to eat away at the fence. A barrage of items came whizzing into the courthouse: rocks, cans of beans, water bottles, potatoes and rubber bouncy balls that cause the agents to slip and fall.

Within minutes, the federal agents at the fence perimeter fired the first tear gas of the night.

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Green lines cast by protesters' laser pointers cross the darkened lobby of the Mark O. Hatfield U.S. Courthouse as federal officers wait for a possible skirmish with demonstrators Friday, July 24, 2020, in Portland, Ore. (AP Photo/Noah Berger)

Inside the courthouse, it was dark, pitch dark except for one narrow ceiling bulb that cast a cone of light over the stairs.

Without lights, the agents hoped they would be better protected from people in the crowd who were firing metal ball bearings through the windows with sling shots. Thick ribbons of green light from blinding lasers crisscrossed the courthouse lobby, forcing the agents who were resting in between deployments to the fence to duck and weave to protect their eyes.

Agents on scaffolding fired pepper balls through the window slits at the crowd while others sat quietly on marble benches in the lobby, alone or in small groups, and waited for their turn at the fence.

No one talked much over the whir of the industrial fans set up to blow the tear gas back outside. The men who weren’t on the front line sat with helmets in their laps but left their gas masks on so they could breathe, the air still thick with chemical irritants.

Every few minutes, a huge boom from a commercial-grade firework tossed over the fence caused the walls to rattle; the crowd outside cheered as explosions of red, white and green flashed against a thick curtain of yellowish tear gas.

A basket contains objects hurled at federal officers guarding the Mark O. Hatfield U.S. Courthouse by protesters, Friday, July 24, 2020, in Portland, Ore. (AP Photo/Noah Berger)

A federal officer, left, monitors security camera feeds while helping to keep protesters away from the Mark O. Hatfield U.S. Courthouse on Friday, July 24, 2020, in Portland, Ore. (AP Photo/Noah Berger)

The Federal Protective Service, U.S. Marshals Service and U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents were tired and frustrated. They didn’t want to confront the crowd; they just wanted to go home. For weeks, the chaos at the courthouse had flipped their sleep schedules, turned their family lives upside down and left them scared each night that they would be hit by a firework or flare or blinded by a laser. Many were sent from out of town to reinforce the local agents — some are members of an elite Border Patrol tactical team sent in as reinforcements. But others were already stationed there and said they had chosen to live in the Portland area and call it home.

“You see a lot of commentary on social media about, ‘Well, they’re wearing protective gear so that it’s not going to hurt them.’ Okay, I’ll put the same protective gear on you and I’ll throw a brick at your head and you tell me if you feel comfortable with that,” said a senior U.S. Marshals Service official who’s overseeing the response in Portland.

“They can put out 10 seconds of something (on social media) that unfolded over several minutes, and those are the 10 seconds that look bad for us, whereas the rest of it would look bad for everybody,” he said, speaking of the protesters. “They use what serves their narrative.”





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Outside, a young woman with long blond hair wearing a halter top and jeans who had been gassed threw up in the gutter.

The tear gas pushed back the people assailing the fence and throwing fireworks at agents, but tendrils of acrid smoke also seeped deep into a park across from the courthouse.

The vapors, indiscriminate, hit a man biking past, a middle school teacher, a musician, a volunteer medic and dozens of others who’d been far back in the protest crowd dancing to the drums and chanting.

“I think what people fail to realize is, us in Portland, we’re still playing defense so anything we do, it’s a defensive maneuver. We are protecting ourselves at the very most and each other,” said Eli Deschera, 21.

“I think that using chemical warfare on civilians is anything but protecting and serving, which is what they’re supposed to be doing,” said Deschera, of Portland.

One of the people at the very front of the fence was Travis Rogers. The former U.S. Air Force veteran recently quit his job as a Medicaid case manager, in part because he would have been fired anyway if he got arrested.

Demonstrators march during a Black Lives Matter protest Friday, July 24, 2020, in Portland, Ore. (AP Photo/Marcio Jose Sanchez)

On this night, Rogers wore a helmet and carried a blue shield made out of the side of a plastic barrel. Like most days, he spent most of the protest trying to take down the fence and screaming at the federal agents guarding it, asking them to explore their conscience.

After six years working for the military, Rogers said he felt better equipped than many to find talking points that might make the agents think about their mission more critically.

“I think it is a good idea to try to plant some seeds in their heads for ... them to go home and sleep on. These are people’s kids and mothers and wives and daughters that they’re gassing and they’re going to have to go home to THEIR mothers and wives and daughters,” said Rogers, as explosive booms echoed around him. “I try to encourage them to think about the fact that they’re on the wrong side of history and that they will not be treated so kindly.”

But anything Rogers said was lost in the thunderous noise, the booms of fireworks and tear gas canisters whisking his words away into the chaos of the night.

Federal officers move toward demonstrators during a Black Lives Matter protest at the Mark O. Hatfield U.S. Courthouse early Saturday, July 25, 2020, in Portland, Ore. (AP Photo/Marcio Jose Sanchez)

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The firework came whizzing over the fence so fast that the agent didn’t have time to move.

It exploded with a boom, leaving his hearing deadened and bloody gashes on both forearms. Stunned, with help from his cohorts, he stripped to his boxer shorts and a black T-shirt so his wounds could be examined and photographed for evidence.

He told his fellow agents he was more worried about his hearing than about the gouges and burns on his arms.

By the end of the night, five other federal agents would be injured, including another who got a concussion when he was hit in the head with a commercial-grade firework. One agent was hospitalized. Several agents have lingering vision problems from the lasers.

After each night of protest, they seize dozens of homemade shields, slingshots, blocks of wood and chunks of concrete.

“My friends have been hit in the head with hammers. I know people who have been shot with fireworks. It’s disgusting,” said the Deputy U.S. Marshal who’s been at the courthouse for weeks. “I’ve never thought I’d have to walk around in my office building wearing a gas mask to go sit in front of my computer.”

Federal officers prepare for a possible skirmish with protesters at the Mark O. Hatfield U.S. Courthouse early Saturday, July 25, 2020, in Portland, Ore. (AP Photo/Noah Berger)



A federal officer displays wounds for a law enforcement photographer to document after a skirmish with protesters at the Mark O. Hatfield U.S. Courthouse early Saturday, July 25, 2020, in Portland, Ore. (AP Photo/Noah Berger)

After a night of facing off against protesters, a deputy U.S. marshal takes a break on a rooftop terrace at the Mark O. Hatfield U.S. Courthouse on Sunday morning, July 26, 2020, in Portland, Ore. (AP Photo/Noah Berger)


A federal officer waits to be called up to assist in handling protesters in the darkened lobby of the Mark O. Hatfield U.S. Courthouse on Friday, July 24, 2020, in Portland, Ore. (AP Photo/Noah Berger)

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Outside, hundreds of protesters surged back from the courthouse with each new round of tear gas, dumped saline solution and water into their stinging eyes, vomited or doubled over to catch their breath, then regrouped to march back to the fence.

“Stay together, stay tight! We do this every night!” they chanted.

The protesters’ numbers, however, were half what they had been just a few hours before. Tear gas seeped in even around the edges of the gas masks many of the remaining protesters, journalists and legal observers wore. Paper and fabric masks that most people wore to protect from the coronavirus got soaked in gas from the air, causing the fabric to burn the skin. Even an apple one protester ate as a midnight snack tasted “spicy” because of the chemicals coating its skin.

“I was just standing right on the corner ... listening to the music and kind of didn’t even see it coming. I mean, there wasn’t any announcement or anything like that,” said middle school teacher Azure Akamay, who was coughing so hard from tear gas that she could barely speak. “By the time I just got to this corner here, I basically couldn’t see.”

In the very front, those with gas masks formed a wall against the tear gas and pepper balls with shields and umbrellas. Protesters who began wielding leaf blowers to push the gas back on the federal agents several days ago found that now the agents, too, had leaf blowers.

Kennedy Verrett, a composer and music teacher, had been teargassed twice and was ready to go home. He had to be up early the next day to teach piano lessons but planned to be back for again another night.

“When you are sent to protect property ....” he said of the agents, trailing off. “My ancestors were once property. No one protected them. Tear gas is nothing when you have lived in America as a Black man for 40 years.”

Somewhere, a bell tower chimed midnight — even though it was 12:38 a.m. — and a trumpet plaintively played the taps as munitions whizzed through the air.

The whole world seemed upside-down.

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Federal officers advance on protesters during a Black Lives Matter demonstration at the Mark O. Hatfield U.S. Courthouse on Saturday, July 25, 2020, in Portland, Ore. (AP Photo/Marcio Jose Sanchez)

It was 2:30 a.m. A large bonfire was burning in front of the courthouse. Protesters were nose-to-nose with federal agents at the fence. A woman with a megaphone screamed obscenities through the wire.

Tear gas canisters bounced and rolled in the street, their payload fizzing out into the air before protesters picked them up and hurled them back over the fence at the agents, who held their ground.

A woman weaved through the crowd of the few hundred people who remained and told someone on the phone, “We’ve reached some kind of stand-off, I think.”

When the federal agents finally came, they came with force. A line of agents marched in lock step down Third Street, pushing the crowd in front of them with tear gas and pepper balls. People scattered and small groups roamed the downtown as tear gas choked the air.

In less than two hours, it would be daylight.

“I finally get outside at 7 a.m., after being in the building since 3 p.m. the day prior, and I look east and I’m like, ’Oh, the world’s normal over there and people are driving to work and the city is clean and functioning,” said the Deputy U.S. Marshal. “And I look out on the street and it looks like downtown Baghdad.”

The battle over, the agents and the demonstrators gathered their things and headed to bed, protesters and protectors sleeping in the same city — perhaps even on the same street — resting up for the next night’s fight.

For at nightfall, it would all begin again.

A protester carries an umbrella as federal police officers deploy tear gas during a Black Lives Matter protest at the Mark O. Hatfield U.S. Courthouse early Saturday, July 25, 2020, in Portland, Ore. (AP Photo/Marcio Jose Sanchez)

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Balsamo reported from inside the courthouse with the federal agents; Flaccus reported from outside with the protesters. Associated Press writer Sara Cline in Salem, Oregon; Associated Press photographers Noah Berger and Marcio Sanchez in Portland, Oregon; and Associated Press video journalist Aron Ranen in Portland, Oregon all contributed to this report.

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Follow Gillian Flaccus on Twitter at @gflaccus and Mike Balsamo at @MikeBalsamo1.

MORE PHOTOS HERE

https://apnews.com/1dd1bb39093a3691f4e78093787ab877

WAIT WHAT?

US Attorney: Feds will stay in Portland until attacks end

IT'S THE FEDS CAUSING THE VIOLENCE, 

AND ENCOURAGING IT

THEY ARE RIOT COPS CREATING A RIOT


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A demonstrator shouts slogans using a bullhorn next to a group of military veterans during a Black Lives Matter protest at the Mark O. Hatfield United States Courthouse Sunday, July 26, 2020, in Portland, Ore. (AP Photo/Marcio Jose Sanchez)


DISARM, DEMILITARIZE, DEFUND

PORTLAND, Ore. (AP) — Federal militarized officers will remain in Portland until attacks on the U.S. courthouse cease, a top official said Monday after a night of violence. And more officers may soon be on the way.

“It is not a solution to tell federal officers to leave when there continues to be attacks on federal property and personnel. We are not leaving the building unprotected to be destroyed by people intent on doing so,” U.S. Attorney Billy Williams told a telephonic news conference.

Local and state officials said the federal officers are unwelcome. The mayor of Portland and five other cities appealed Monday to Congress to make it illegal for the federal government to deploy militarized federal agents to cities that don’t want them.

“This administration’s egregious use of federal force on cities over the objections of local authorities should never happen,” the mayors of Portland, Seattle, Chicago, Kansas City Albuquerque and Washington D.C. wrote to leaders of the U.S. House and Senate.

The mayors want Congress to require consultation with and consent from local authorities before federal deployments; require visible identification at all times on federal agents and vehicles unless on an undercover mission authorized by the local U.S. attorney; and limit federal agents’ activities to protecting federal property.




The city has had nightly protests for two months since the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis in May. President Donald Trump said he sent federal agents to Portland to halt the unrest but state and local officials said they are making the situation worse.
Full Coverage: Racial injustice

Trump’s deployment of the federal officers over the July 4 weekend fanned the flames of the Black Lives Matter protest movement here. The number of protesters had dwindled to perhaps less than 100 right before the deployment, and now has swelled to the thousands.

Early Monday, U.S. agents repeatedly fired tear gas, flash bangs and pepper balls at protesters outside the federal courthouse in downtown Portland. Some protesters had climbed over the fence surrounding the courthouse, while others shot fireworks, banged on the fence and projected lights on the building.

Trump said Monday on Twitter that the federal properties in Portland “wouldn’t last a day” without the presence of the federal agents.

The majority of those participating in the daily demonstrations have been peaceful. But a few protesters have been pelting officers with objects and trying to tear down fencing protecting the Mark O. Hatfield United States Courthouse.


At a press conference with two other federal officials, Williams, whose office is inside the courthouse, called on peaceful protesters, community and business leaders and people of faith to not allow violence to occur in their presence and leave downtown before violence starts. He said federal agents have made 83 arrests.

Demonstrations in support of racial justice and police reform in other cities around the U.S. were marred by violence over the weekend. Protesters set fire to an Oakland, California, courthouse; vehicles were set ablaze in Richmond, Virginia; an armed protester was shot and killed in Austin, Texas; and two people were shot and wounded in Aurora, Colorado, after a car drove through a protest.

The U.S. Marshals Service has lined up about 100 people they could send, either to strengthen the forces there or relieve officers who have been working for weeks, agency spokesperson Drew Wade said.

Kris Cline, principal deputy director of the Federal Protective Service, told the news conference that an incident commander discusses with Department of Homeland Security and Department of Justice teams at the courthouse what force requirements are needed every night.

Cline refused to discuss the number of officers that are currently present or if more are arriving.

Some protesters have accused Portland Mayor Ted Wheeler of hypocrisy for speaking out against the federal presence because, under his watch, Portland police have used tear gas and other riot-control weapons on protesters, including peaceful ones.

Cline said Portland police should take over from the federal officers the job of dispersing protesters from the courthouse area.

“If the Portland Police Bureau were able to do what they typically do, they would be able to clear this out for this disturbance and we would leave our officers inside the building and not be visible,” Cline said.

He said relations between the federal officers, some of whom live in Portland, and Portland police were good, but told reporters he was surprised when the police would not help remove protesters who were blocking an Immigration and Customs Enforcement building in 2018.

Sunday evening, Portland police responded to a shooting at a park close to the site of the overnight protests. Two people were detained and later released, police said Monday morning. The person who was shot went to the hospital in a private vehicle and was treated for a non-life-threatening wound.

Also late Sunday, police said someone pointed out a bag in the same park, where officers found loaded rifle magazines and Molotov cocktails. The shooting was not related to the items, police said. It was not clear whether the shooting or the material found in the bag was connected to the protests.

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Associated Press writer Mike Balsamo contributed to this report from Washington. Selsky reported from Salem, Oregon.

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Follow Andrew Selsky on Twitter at https://twitter.com/andrewselsky

Virus-linked hunger tied to 10,000 child deaths each month


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One-month old Haboue Solange Boue, awaiting medical care for severe malnutrition, is held by her mother, Danssanin Lanizou, 30, at the feeding center of the main hospital in the town of Hounde, Tuy Province, in southwestern Burkina Faso on Thursday, June 11, 2020. With the markets closed because of coronavirus restrictions, her family sold fewer vegetables. Lanizou is too malnourished to nurse her. (AP Photo/Sam Mednick)

HOUNDE, Burkina Faso (AP) — The lean season is coming for Burkina Faso’s children. And this time, the long wait for the harvest is bringing a hunger more ferocious than most have ever known.

That hunger is already stalking Haboue Solange Boue, an infant who has lost half her former body weight of 5.5 pounds (2.5 kilograms) in the last month. With the markets closed because of coronavirus restrictions, her family sold fewer vegetables. Her mother is too malnourished to nurse her.

“My child,” Danssanin Lanizou whispers, choking back tears as she unwraps a blanket to reveal her baby’s protruding ribs. The infant whimpers soundlessly.

All around the world, the coronavirus and its restrictions are pushing already hungry communities over the edge, cutting off meager farms from markets and isolating villages from food and medical aid. Virus-linked hunger is leading to the deaths of 10,000 more children a month over the first year of the pandemic, according to an urgent call to action from the United Nations shared with The Associated Press ahead of its publication in the Lancet medical journal.

Further, more than 550,000 additional children each month are being struck by what is called wasting, according to the U.N. — malnutrition that manifests in spindly limbs and distended bellies. Over a year, that’s up 6.7 million from last year’s total of 47 million. Wasting and stunting can permanently damage children physically and mentally, transforming individual tragedies into a generational catastrophe.

“The food security effects of the COVID crisis are going to reflect many years from now,” said Dr. Francesco Branca, the World Health Organization head of nutrition. “There is going to be a societal effect.”

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This story was produced with the support of the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting.

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In Burkina Faso, for example, one in five young children is chronically malnourished. Food prices have spiked, and 12 million of the country’s 20 million residents don’t get enough to eat.

Lanizou’s husband, Yakouaran Boue, used to sell onions to buy seeds and fertilizer, but then the markets closed. Even now, a 50-kilogram bag of onions sells for a dollar less, which means less seed to plant for next year.

“I’m worried that this year we won’t have enough food to feed her,” he said, staring down at his daughter over his wife’s shoulder. “I’m afraid she’s going to die.”
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From Latin America to South Asia to sub-Saharan Africa, more families than ever are staring down a future without enough food. The analysis published Monday found about 128,000 more young children will die over the first 12 months of the virus.

In April, World Food Program head David Beasley warned that the coronavirus economy would cause global famines “of biblical proportions” this year. There are different stages of what is known as food insecurity; famine is officially declared when, along with other measures, 30% of the population suffers from wasting.

The agency estimated in February that one in every three people in Venezuela was already going hungry, as inflation rendered many salaries nearly worthless and forced millions to flee abroad. Then the virus arrived.

“The parents of the children are without work,” said Annelise Mirabal, who works with a foundation that helps malnourished children in Maracaibo, the city in Venezuela thus far hardest hit by the pandemic. “How are they going to feed their kids?”

Girls push children in a cart near the market in the town of Hounde, Tuy Province, in southwestern Burkina Faso on Thursday, June 11, 2020. (AP Photo/Sam Mednick)

These days, many new patients are the children of migrants who are making long journeys back to Venezuela from Peru, Ecuador or Colombia, where their families became jobless and unable to buy food during the pandemic. Others are the children of migrants who are still abroad and have not been able to send back money for more food.

“Every day we receive a malnourished child,” said Dr. Francisco Nieto, who works in a hospital in the border state of Tachira. He added that they look “like children we haven’t seen in a long time in Venezuela,” alluding to those in famines in parts of Africa.

In May, Nieto recalled, after two months of quarantine in Venezuela, 18-month-old twins arrived at his hospital with bodies bloated from malnutrition. The children’s mother was jobless and living with her own mother. She told the doctor she had only been able to feed them a simple drink made with boiled bananas.

“Not even a cracker? Some chicken?” he asked.

“Nothing,” the children’s grandmother responded.

When doctors tried to treat them, one of the boys developed “refeeding syndrome,” where food can result in metabolic abnormalities. Eight days later, he died.

Nieto said aid groups have provided some relief, but their work has been limited by COVID-19 quarantines. A home set up in Tachira to receive malnourished children after they are released from the hospital is no longer in operation. So now children are sent directly back to their families, many of whom are still unable to feed them properly.

“It’s very frustrating,” Nieto said. “The children get lost.”


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The rise in child deaths worldwide would reverse global progress for the first time in decades. Deaths of children younger than 5 had declined steadily since 1980, to 5.3 million around the world in 2018, according to a UNICEF report. About 45 percent of the deaths were due to undernutrition.

The leaders of four international agencies — the World Health Organization, UNICEF, the World Food Program and the Food and Agriculture Organization — have called for at least $2.4 billion immediately to address hunger. Even more than the money, restrictions on movement need to be eased so that families can seek treatment, said Victor Aguayo, the head of UNICEF’s nutrition program.

“By having schools closed, by having primary health care services disrupted, by having nutritional programs dysfunctional, we are also creating harm,” Aguayo said. He cited as an example the near-global suspension of Vitamin A supplements, which are a crucial way to bolster developing immune systems.

In Afghanistan, restrictions on movement prevent many families from bringing their malnourished children to hospitals for food and aid just when they need it most. The Indira Gandhi hospital in the capital, Kabul, has seen only three or four malnourished children, said specialist Nematullah Amiri.

In this Aug. 26, 2019 photo, mothers hold their babies suffering from malnutrition as they wait at a UNICEF clinic in Jabal Saraj, north of Kabul, Afghanistan.(AP Photo/Rafiq Maqbool)

“Transportation between Kabul and the provinces was not allowed regularly and also people were afraid of coronavirus,” Amiri explained. Last year, 10 times as many malnourished children filled the ward. The same is true of hospital beds in multiple countries, according to Médecins Sans Frontières.

Afghanistan is now in a red zone of hunger, with severe childhood malnutrition spiking from 690,000 in January to 780,000 — a 13% increase, according to UNICEF. Food prices have risen by more than 15%, and a recent study by Johns Hopkins University indicated an additional 13,000 Afghans younger than 5 could die.

Four in 10 Afghan children are already stunted. Stunting happens when families live on a cheap diet of grains or potatoes, with supply chains in disarray and money scarce. Most stunted children never catch up, dampening the productivity of poor countries, according to a report released this month by the Chatham House think tank.

In Yemen, restrictions on movement have also blocked the distribution of aid, along with the stalling of salaries and price hikes. The Arab world’s poorest country is suffering further from a fall in remittances and a huge drop in funding from humanitarian agencies.

Yemen is now on the brink of famine, according to the Famine Early Warning Systems Network, which uses surveys, satellite data and weather mapping to pinpoint the places most in need. A UNICEF report predicted that the number of malnourished children could reach 2.4 million by the end of the year, a 20% increase.

Days after 7-month-old baby Issa Ibrahim left a medical center in the impoverished northern district of Hajjah, he succumbed to severe acute malnutrition. His mother found the body on July 7, lifeless and cold.

Fatma Nasser, a 34-year-old mother of seven, is among three million displaced people in Yemen who don’t have enough money to feed themselves or their children. She lives on one meal a day. Ibrahim Nasser, the father, lost his only source of income, fishing, after roads to the sea were closed because of the coronavirus.

The mother’s milk dried up, and the baby lived on formula. But doctors say families tend to use less milk powder to save money, and babies don’t usually get enough nutrition.

“It’s God’s will,” the mother said. “We can say nothing.”

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In this Nov. 25, 2019 file photo, Osmery Vargas, who is malnourished, cries in a hammock as she and her 7-year-old sister Yasmery Vargas wait for their mother to return from begging in the street for money and food in Maracaibo, Venezuela. (AP Photo/Rodrigo Abd)

Some of the worst hunger still occurs in sub-Saharan Africa. In Sudan, 9.6 million people are living from one meal to the next in acute food insecurity — a 65% increase from the same time last year.

Lockdowns across Sudanese provinces, as around the world, have dried up work and incomes for millions. The global economic downturn has brought supply chains to a standstill, and restrictions on public transport have disrupted agricultural production. With inflation hitting 136%, prices for basic goods have more than tripled.

“It has never been easy but now we are starving, eating grass, weeds, just plants from the earth,” said Ibrahim Youssef, director of the Kalma camp for internally displaced people in war-ravaged south Darfur.

Long before the pandemic hit, Sudan’s economy had plummeted, especially after the oil-rich south seceded in 2011. Decades of economic mismanagement under Omar al-Bashir led to a surge in food prices, and the transitional government now in power has struggled to stop the tailspin.

Natural disasters are making the situation even worse. The country’s production of grain has dropped by 57% compared to last year, largely due to pests and seasonal floods. And swarms of desert locusts have already infested three Sudanese provinces, threatening more losses to farmers.

Internally displaced people in the restive provinces of Darfur, Kassala and Kordofan have been hit hardest, and the poorest say they can barely afford one meal a day.

“I don’t have the basics I need to survive,” said Zakaria Yehia Abdullah, 67, a farmer in the Krinding camp in West Darfur, who hasn’t worked the fields since authorities imposed a partial lockdown in April and local militias escalated attacks. “That means the 10 people counting on me can’t survive either.”

Before the pandemic and lockdown, his family ate three meals a day, sometimes with bread, or they’d add butter to porridge. Now they are down to just one meal, in the morning, of “millet porridge” — water mixed with grain. He said the hunger is showing “in my children’s faces.”

Adam Haroun, a Krinding camp official, recorded nine deaths linked with malnutrition, otherwise a rare occurrence, over the past two months — five newborns and four older adults, he said.

To mitigate the crisis, the government, with support from the World Bank, is rolling out a $1.9 billion cash transfer program to Sudan’s neediest families. But many residents of Sudan’s long-neglected regions remain skeptical that authorities can alleviate their suffering.

“The hunger here is not any normal hunger,” said Adam Gomaa, a local activist in Kabkabiya, North Darfur, who helps run displacement camps in the area.

Back in Burkina Faso, COVID-19 restrictions are also hitting hard, keeping families like that of 14-year-old Nafissetou Niampa from the market. Niampa lay face down on a bed at the Yalgado Ouedraogo University Hospital in the capital, Ouagadougou, fanned by her mother. The teenager has a heart condition that affects her breathing and now is shedding weight as well.

“Before the disease we didn’t have anything,” said Aminata Mande, her mother. “Now with the disease we don’t have anything also.”

Burkina Faso was already facing a growing food crisis, with rising violence linked to militants cutting families off from their farms. With the advent of the coronavirus, the government closed markets, restricted movement and shut down public transport, making it much harder for traders to buy and sell food.

While malnutrition deaths routinely rise during the four-month wait for the next harvest in October, this year is worse than anyone can remember, according to physicians and aid workers. On the World Food Program’s hunger map, nearly all of Burkina Faso is a red zone of need.

Even though the Tuy province produces the most corn in the country, food there is not reaching those who need it most. In Tuy between March and April, the number of underweight newborns increased by 40%, signifying that the mothers were most likely malnourished during pregnancy, said Joseph Ouattara, chief doctor at the hospital in the small town of Hounde.

Child deaths due to malnutrition are also escalating. In a normal year, an average of 19 children die from malnutrition in Tuy. But in the first five and a half months of this year alone, the number of children dying from what appears to be malnutrition is already up to 20 just at the province’s central hospital in the main town of Hounde.

Ernestine Belembongo, a 37-year-old trader with a stand at the Hounde market, was unable to buy or sell food for weeks, so there has been no fish or meat for her five children since March. Her 3-year-old daughter is swiftly losing weight, and even though most of the COVID-19 restrictions have been lifted, Belembongo still serves her family only grain.

“I’m worried about the lean season,” she said. “I have many kids and no money.”

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Hinnant reported from Paris. Contributors include Christine Armario in Bogota, Colombia; Fazel Rahman in Kabul, Afghanistan; Issa Mohammed in Al-Hanabiya, Yemen; and Isabel DeBre in Cairo.