UK

‘A Total Waste of Police Time’

Labour Rows Over Drugs Policy as Cannabis Offences Surge

John Lubbock
5 January 2022

London Mayor Sadiq Khan, Metropolitan Police Commissioner Cressida Dick, and Home Secretary Priti Patel. Photo: PA Images/Alamy

New data shows a mounting drugs problem in England and Wales, while Labour and the Conservatives remain committed to status quo solutions, reports John Lubbock

Total recorded drug offences increased in England and Wales by 19% from 2019/20 to 2020/21, with possession of cannabis recording a 21.5% increase, according to data from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) compiled in a new parliamentary report.

“The main drug offence recorded in 2020/21 was ‘possession of cannabis’ (63%), followed by ‘possession of controlled drugs (excluding cannabis)’ (18%), ‘trafficking in controlled drugs’ (18%),” the report states.

The statistics are increasingly relevant amid a disagreement between Labour Party Leader Keir Starmer and Labour Mayor of London Sadiq Khan, who is considering the effective decriminalisation of cannabis and other Class B drugs in a pilot scheme – employing a method known as ‘diversion’ – that will offer young people counselling or “speeding course-style” classes instead of prosecution.

As a Class B drug, the maximum prison sentence for possession of cannabis is currently five years.

14,900 penalty notices for disorder (PNDs) were issued in 2020/21, with possession of cannabis the second most common reason for a PND after a person being ‘drunk and disorderly’. 25% fewer PNDs were issued in 2020/21 than in 2019/20 and 60% fewer than five years ago.

However, while custodial sentences for most crimes have been falling for the past decade, a greater proportion of drug offences are receiving prison sentences.

According to the parliamentary report, between 2008/09 and 2019/20, the proportion of drug offenders receiving a caution fell from 46% to 30%, while the proportion receiving a custodial sentence increased from 9% to 16%. This goes against the general trend for all offences whereby the number of people sentenced immediately to prison is falling.

Average prison sentences for drug offences have also risen. The average sentence for drug trafficking in 2020 was 43.6 months, compared to 3.9 months for possession offences, according to the report. In 2012, 25% of drug offences resulted in prison time of at least three years – which increased to 40% in 2020.

The report also notes that on 30 June 2021, there were just under 14,000 people in prison for drug offences – 16% of the overall prison population. As reported by the Guardian in 2020, “people from Asian and other minority ethnic groups are 1.5 times more likely to go to prison for drugs offences than white people”.

While convictions for drug offences have been increasing, convictions for common assault have been falling since 2015, and only 1.6% of the 50,210 reported rape cases in England and Wales in 2020 led to a conviction.

Statistics also show worsening health outcomes for drug users.

“The number of deaths related to drug poisoning have increased year on year from 2,652 in 2011 to 4,561 in 2020,” the report states. “This represents a 72% increase. 2020 saw a 4% increase in deaths compared to 2019.” Drug misuse accounted for 13% of accidental deaths in 2020.

Old Thinking

These statistics suggest that current drugs policy is not working and contradict the official stance of the Labour Party.

Keir Starmer told journalists at a press conference yesterday: “I’m not in favour of us changing the law or decriminalisation, and I’m very clear about that… I’m not in favour of changing drugs laws.”

The Prime Minister’s spokesperson agreed, saying that “decriminalisation would leave organised criminals in control while risking an increase in drug use, which drives a climate of violence”.

But organised crime is already in control of the illegal drugs trade and reported use of drugs in the UK has been rising since 2013.

According to the ONS, “following a period of falls between year ending December 1995 and year ending March 2013, there was a change in the trend. Between the year ending March 2013 and March 2020, the proportion of adults reporting any drug use in the last year has increased by 15% (16- to 59-year-olds) and 28% (16- to 24-year-olds) respectively”.

Ant Lehane, of the Labour Campaign for Drug Policy Reform, told Byline Times: “As many Labour councils move towards diversionary measures which save police time and reduce reoffending, it is shameful that the Home Office has overseen an increase of over 20% for simple cannabis possession offences.

“This is a total waste of police time, and will place further strain on the criminal justice system which has been decimated by the Tories. It’s time for bold measures such as full decriminalisation. Instead, we are stuck with a Prime Minister who dresses up as a police officer to seem ‘tough on crime’.”

DAVID LAMMY ‘Young People are Dying On Our Streets– We Need to Get On with Legalising Cannabis’

But senior figures in the Conservative and Labour parties currently refuse to treat drug misuse as a health rather than a criminal problem. This is despite polling which shows that the British public has been growing increasingly open to the idea of liberalising drug laws.

According to a 2018 YouGov poll, 43% support legalisation and 41% oppose it, while the remaining 15% don’t know. Another poll in 2019 showed 48% support for legalisation for recreational drug use and 77% support for legalising medical cannabis.

The UK is actually the world’s biggest producer of medical cannabis for export to other countries, but it remains illegal in the UK. A private members’ bill has been put before Parliament which would legalise medical cannabis, proposed by MP Jeff Smith, leader of the Labour Campaign for Drug Policy Reform, but the bill has little realistic chance of passing.

A Home Office spokesperson told Byline Times that “the Government has no plans to decriminalise harmful drugs” and that Sadiq Khan “has no powers to do so and the police are always expected to uphold and enforce the law”.

“Decriminalising drugs would lead to lawlessness and hand over control of our communities to organised criminals, pushing up serious violence and its corrosive impact on mainly young black men in London,” they added.

UK

‘Refugees and Migrants Do Not Come From a Different World’
Malka Al-Haddad
5 January 2022

The cover of 'The Other Side of Hope'

Malka Al-Haddad introduces a new magazine aiming to challenge stereotypes about refugees and migrants by showcasing their writing and editing and building a ‘bridge’ of understanding

The Other Side of Hope: Journeys in Refugee and Immigrant Literature is a new literary journal edited by immigrants and refugees based in the UK. The magazine seeks to break down stereotypes about migrants and refugees by showcasing their writing and aims to support those careers that may have been cut short because of exile and migration.

It was created because there is no other similar literary magazine in the country. This type of publication should have happened years ago but because it didn’t, we made it happen. Arts Council England funded us and we are supported by Journeys Festival International.

As immigrant editors, we believe that people need to understand each other, and this magazine exists to enable people to gain insights into us – our lives, our talents and our stories. It aims to be a bridge that will bring us closer through literature, and we want it to become a home for refugee and immigrant writers of fiction, non-fiction and poetry, and for those writers who know about us and want to support us.

Our first print and online issues have now been published. The annual print issue is available to buy from our website and the online version is free to read.

So far, we have published work from 120 refugee and immigrant writers from across the world in the genres of fiction and poetry, as well as non-fiction, book reviews and author interviews on the theme of migration.

This magazine is hugely important because it provides the opportunity to hear the voices of refugees and migrants, and for them to exhibit their literary and artistic talents in describing their experiences and telling their stories. It is an opportunity to build bridges with others who do not know about the experiences of refugees and are unaware of the wealth of talent within immigrant communities.

It is important to unite people through the literary cultures of the world because we live in a world of division and distance from others. We extend a message of love and understanding to others – our world needs cultural exchange, people need to listen to each other and learn what is good in each other’s cultures.

We hope this magazine will go some way to achieving this. It is an opportunity to love each other, acknowledge each other and understand each other, so that our world can one day live in peace.

We are exhausted by wars and conflicts, and we must stop the madness of hatred and the madness of racism, because continuing the cycle of war and conflict will bring destruction to all. We must unite for peace and live in harmony, understanding and acceptance of each other.

We are refugees and immigrants, we did not come from a different world.

Malka Al-Haddad is the poetry editor of the ‘Other Side of Hope’

Hardeep Matharu speaks to Romanian-born Labour county councillor Dr Alex Bulat about damaging political narratives around migration, the insidious nature of British prejudice and why she has always felt more at home in the UK

If Someone Told Me to Go Back and Live In Romania, I Would Really Struggle’

Hardeep Matharu

22 December 2021

Labour Cambridgeshire county councillor Dr Alex Bulat. Photo: Dr Alex Bulat

People with negative views towards migrants should put themselves in their shoes and ask themselves how they would feel if British people studying and working in other parts of Europe were scapegoated and stereotyped by politicians, the press and public, a Romanian-born Cambridge county councillor has told Byline Times.

Dr Alex Bulat first came to the UK aged three for seven months when her father – at that time a junior doctor – was invited to work in an NHS hospital in Leeds.

Having moved back here to study aged 18, she is now a Labour representative on Cambridgeshire County Council, as well as the co-founder of Migrants4Labour group and the co-chair of the Young Europeans Network at the 3 Million – a campaigning group to protect pre-Brexit rights for EU citizens.

Speaking to Byline Times, she said that one of the key aspects missing from politicised debates about migration – which could challenge people to reconsider their negative views in a constructive way – is people “seeing themselves in that situation”.

“Would they say similarly about British people living, working and studying in Spain?,” she asked. “What if the Spanish Government said those same horrible things about British people. Would they be happy? Of course not – therefore we’re not happy that those things are said about Romanians in the UK.”

Although Dr Bulat was very young when she first came to Britain, she said she always had a sense of wanting to return because of her early memories of the UK being “very welcoming”, diverse and “tolerant” – a view she admits has been “challenged at various points in my journey later on”.

“When I came here as a child, I didn’t really know anyone, I couldn’t really communicate for the first days,” she told Byline Times. “But all the children were really welcoming and we all made very good friends. I had this impression of the UK as being a very welcoming place, which was also a very multi-ethnic group.

“I grew up in a very white Romanian area and the only people who were migrants were the students who came for medical school from Turkey, Greece and other nearby countries. So, I didn’t grow up in a multicultural environment but that’s what I liked about the UK – a very tolerant country, which welcomes all cultures. So, I had only a completely positive image of the UK as a country.”

The Story of Brexit isthe Story of Empire

Why Did Asian Immigrants Vote to Leave the EU?
Hardeep Matharu

In 2012, aged 18, she moved to the UK to study a sociology and media studies degree at Sussex University. She then went on to complete a Master’s degree at Cambridge University and a PhD at University College London on political sociology and migration studies. Brexit and the weaponisation of migration – now a central pillar in the Vote Leave Government’s ‘culture war’ agenda – has served as the backdrop of her time in the UK.

Politically disengaged when she arrived, Dr Bulat said that changed when debates around the 2016 EU Referendum started. “It was the first moment when I realised that decisions in this country will affect me directly – if the vote goes to leave the EU then this will ultimately affect my rights in the country so I should pay attention to politics,” she said.

After the referendum result, she volunteered to advise Romanian migrants in the UK about their rights, at a time people were “scared”, “confused” and didn’t know what to do.

“One of the things I will always remember was that I was watching the referendum results on the TV in college with other students and one of my French colleagues said – after we found out the result – that it was the first time she felt like a migrant in the UK,” she told Byline Times. “I asked her ‘what do you mean?’ because I always felt as such or I have been made to feel as such.”

The 27-year-old said that the reaction to her presence in the UK has always been mixed and that this didn’t really change with the EU Referendum.

“In my first months in the UK, I do remember people asking me where am I from and some people would be ‘lovely, I’ve been to Romania’ or ‘I have Romanian friends’, but some people were quite negative,” she said. “They were saying the usual stereotypes about coming here to steal jobs or benefits or Romanians being criminals or negative views about the Romanian Roma community. It was not that I was always perceived as positive and then Brexit happened and, suddenly, I became this undesirable migrant.

“But I also speak from the perspective of a Romanian and Romanians have always had quite a negative image in the UK. The worst moment for me was actually 2014 because Romanians were suddenly given full rights to work in the UK and I remember all the tabloid media – especially on the right like the Daily Mail, Daily Express and so on – having the big headlines about ‘millions of Romanians invading the UK, coming to flood the job market’.”

She said that it took her time to understand the under-the-surface, insidious nature of prejudice which operates in Britain, whereby “some people have negative views towards migrants but they didn’t express them openly”, and believes that “Brexit often offered a platform for some people to express them more openly”.

“Growing up in Romania, some of my neighbours and people quite close to me, had negative views about migration and I grew up in quite a monocultural society,” she said. “So often you hear quite xenophobic or racist views but in Romania they were always, always expressed very openly without any shame. So then people could say ‘that’s wrong’ or debate it, but it was never hidden.

“And that’s what I realised [in the UK] when I was in conversations where people were like ‘it’s not about you, you’re okay, you’re studying, I’m not racist, it’s the others’ and I realised that there was something, culturally, I hadn’t understood before. The more I lived in the UK, the more I understood the nuances of this. When I arrived here, I thought if no one says anything negative to my face it means they’re okay with me, but that’s not always the case.”

Putting party politics aside, what she finds most upsetting about the leadership of the likes of Boris Johnson, Priti Patel and Michael Gove is their detachment from the impact of their decisions on real people’s lives. For her, one example of this was their promise, before the 2016 referendum, that the rights of EU citizens in the UK would be secure – before later announcing that they would need to apply for settled status. Another is Boris Johnson not knowing that most migrants have ‘no recourse to public funds’ and therefore cannot claim benefits.

“A lot of the people in power in government right now are not interested in, let alone have, that lived experience,” Dr Bulat told Byline Times. “They don’t actually listen to the people who are affected by their policies. A hostile policy gets created but then a lot of the people involved have no idea how it will impact people on a day-to-day basis. It is disappointing to see people in politics who are very far removed from the realities.”

This is why she entered politics – to get issues such as immigration, from the viewpoint of migrants, on the agenda. “If you don’t have those voices in politics, change will be very, very slow,” she added.
Hardeep Matharu explores Priti Patel’s hardline approach towards other immigrants on Byline TV

The response to her political role has been mainly positive. “I never encountered anyone questioning my right to stand for election, my accent or where I’m from,” she said. “But I represent an area in Cambridge which is a very multicultural city, it is very different politically from the rest of the country.”

Online, Dr Bulat finds it’s a different story. “I encounter a lot of racist, xenophobic comments online. The classic ‘why should you have the right to stand for office when you weren’t born in the UK?’ or ‘obviously she wants to be in politics to bring more migrants in’ to just very personal, negative comments about me as a person. When people are not in front of you, and don’t have to say those things to your face, I think that makes a difference.”

One of the main narratives on migration in Britain, according to the councillor, is that migrants will be tolerated rather than welcomed. Even during the Coronavirus crisis, she says, a political choice was made to side-line their contributions.

“A lot of the press debate is ‘well, of course we want doctors and nurses and students – we just don’t want those low-skilled migrants’,” she told Byline Times. “And we have seen how this completely shifted in COVID times, when so many of our politicians suddenly realised that, actually, our hospitals can’t function without doctors, but they also can’t function without cleaners. So, the previously low-skilled, low-paid, undesirable people became the ‘key workers’ – but we still don’t hear a lot about migrant key workers.”

Having obtained settle status, Dr Bulat is also now a British citizen. When she first told friends she was applying for it, some of them asked her: “Why would you want to be a citizen of a country that treats migrants so badly?” But she sees her identity as very much connected to Britain.

“For me, it’s not only a practicality – you feel safer with citizenship – although I’m not so sure with this Borders and Nationality Bill now, but I genuinely consider myself part of the UK and having both British and Romanian citizenship reflects my identity,” she said.

“Growing up in Romania, I never particularly felt attached to a certain nationality. I’m not the person who follows all the Romanian traditions. I do post a message for the Romanian national day and so on, but I’m not the person who eats the traditional food and participates in all the Romanian events and celebrations. I was a bit remote from that even growing up. I felt differently from how my other colleagues or friends did.

“When I moved here, I came with the intention to move permanently. I think this does shape your identity. Because if you come with the intention of ‘this is the country I chose to live in and I will do everything possible to stay here and build my life and career here’, then everything works along those lines.

“All of my life is here. I’ve never worked in Romania, ever. So, if someone said to go theI would really struggle.”

Donald Trump’s supporters couldn’t overturn the election, but they still might destroy America

WASHINGTON—A year ago on Capitol Hill, it felt like the end of something. Or of some things.

The long, unbroken tradition of the peaceful transfer of power that George Washington invented and Ronald Reagan had memorably bragged was central to America’s greatness was an obvious casualty amid the violence and chaos and screaming lunatic weirdness of Jan. 6, 2021. And with it, maybe, the smug sense of exceptionalism that has long made Americans so certain that their democracy could never be seriously threatened by wannabe strongmen and the mobs they inspire.

But as the riot ended, it felt like the end of still more than that. As the tear gas and smoke bombs dissipated, the riot put down, the insurrectionists dispersed and Congress resumed its historic business of certifying the election, a fever seemed to have broken. A kind of twisted, howling madness that had gripped American politics through the vector of Donald Trump’s takeover of the Republican Party — a stew of white resentment, cartoonish conspiracy theories and thuggishly authoritarian impulses — had shown what it was capable of becoming: not just a personality-driven political phenomenon, but an actual threat to American democracy.

It was, essentially, what Trump and his supporters had been promising, fairly plainly and for a long time. Many observers — including me — had written commentaries that wondered if something like this was coming. Like so many unprecedented episodes of Trump’s presidency, you could say it was shocking without really being surprising to anyone who had been paying attention. But a lot of Americans — including those long rumoured to be ready to act as “guard rails,” the figures of the centrist and Republican establishment leadership — had steadfastly refused to pay attention, dismissing talk of a threat to democratic traditions as fantastical products of “Trump derangement syndrome.”

The deranged scene Trump brought to the Capitol on Jan. 6 seemed to dispel such casual dismissals. Trump’s vice-president, Mike Pence, made a show of carrying on the vote certification that very night. Longtime Trump sycophants like Sen. Lindsay Graham said they were through. Sen. Mitch McConnell publicly blamed the outgoing president.

Trump was kicked off of Twitter as corporate donors abandoned Republicans. There was a wave of panicked or disgusted resignations from the White House. There was a second impeachment on the way, and the sense that McConnell and his caucus might actually vote to convict this time. A new president was on the way in, promising the nominally modest but still far-off goal of normalcy.

At the time, it felt like history’s page was turning, that a bizarre and scary chapter full of dangerous portents was ending.

With the benefit of a year’s hindsight, it’s fair to say that didn’t turn out to the be case.

The next pages may have begun a new chapter, but they largely continued the same plot lines on a similar trajectory, and the portents of danger seem more menacing than ever. I am currently reading two much-discussed books released this week — about which I’ll write more soon — with the words “civil war” in their titles, each weighing the likelihood of the U.S. descending into such a conflict. They capture the zeitgeist: in an Axios/Momentive poll released this week, a majority of Americans say the country is more divided than ever before — and 57 per cent think more events like the Capitol riot are likely to happen soon.

But here is one of the most telling results of that poll: one year after Jan. 6, 2021, only 55 per cent of Americans believe President Joe Biden legitimately won the election. That is depressingly close to the percentage of voters (51.3) who voted for Biden. Trump’s big lie, the one that inspired the insurrectionist assault on the Capitol a year ago, has prevailed against all evidence for a huge chunk of the public, including the roughly 75 per cent of Republicans who doubt the legitimacy of Biden’s presidency.

Trump himself has recast the Capitol riot as a glorious protest against the “real insurrection” that he says happened on election day, and has portrayed the rioters as martyrs and political prisoners. Most of the Republicans who seemed ready to abandon him in the aftermath of the Capitol storming have either come back to his side or fallen silent. Those like Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger, who serve on the House of Representatives’ Jan. 6 commission and refuse to stop speaking about the danger of Trump’s culpability for that day, have been essentially exiled from the party.

As much as — or perhaps even more than—before, it is Trump’s party.

Moreover, Republican-led state governments have been rewriting rules to further ensure majorities for themselves, to restrict voting in ways that seem likely to suppress Democratic constituencies, and to give partisan political figures power over federal election results and the authority to overturn them. Election authorities who stood up to Trump’s attempts to fraudulently overturn his election loss are being hounded out of office and replaced by Trump loyalists.

A year ago, as I stood on the Capitol steps while the rioters rampaged, one of them said, “This could be the start of something.” Another replied, “Oh, it is. Today changes everything.” I wrote then that the change might be different than what they were expecting, that it might be the end of the indulgence of Trump.

One year later, it seems like the rioters were right. Their message has been embraced by many Americans, and their larger goals are now being pursued by other means. Their attack on the Capitol wasn’t the end of their attack on American democracy. And so the insurrection continues.

Opinion: The false prophets who inspired the violence on Jan. 6





By Joe ScarboroughColumnist
Today at 5:57 p.m. EST



My grandmother’s faith in God sustained her as she struggled to raise her family through the Great Depression, said goodbye to her teenage son as he left for World War II and buried her husband a decade later.

The sounds of Billy Graham’s crusades would fill my grandmom’s Georgia home in the 1970s. A decade later, Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker’s “PTL Club” would win her loyalty, as well as her monthly tithes. My parents gently tried warning her that the “PTL” stars were scam artists less interested in her spiritual welfare than in her monthly Social Security checks. Even after being treated rudely by Tammy Faye in a chance encounter, Grandmom kept sending money the Bakkers’ way as they built their empire on the backs of working-class Christians. The dreadful pair’s get-rich schemes leveraged Americans’ love of God for cold, hard cash.

Looking back on the events of Jan. 6, perhaps we should focus more on the false prophets who inspired the violence of that day than the rioters we still highlight on video loops.

Those who beat cops with American flags should serve long jail sentences. But the most important lesson from that tragic day may come from deconstructing how plutocrats and trust-fund babies deployed propaganda campaigns to push that bloodthirsty mob up the Capitol steps.

The “big lie” bloodletting happened at the behest of a slumlord’s son, who inherited more than $400 million and used his presidency to undermine citizens’ faith in their country. His anti-American poison was spread through the arteries of one foreign family’s media empire and soon metastasized across the American heartland.

Just as the Bakkers used the Gospel of Jesus Christ to prey on gullible viewers, these right-wing billionaires and their allies are trying to brainwash millions of Americans into believing the U.S. government is deploying Afghanistan War helicopters to launch domestic attacks against them, that the FBI is purging patriots from society and that the “deep state” staged the Jan. 6 riot as a “false flag” to strip citizens of their constitutional rights.

These hate-filled hysterics spewed against the United States have been punctuated by verbal assaults targeting military heroes, the slandering of the U.S. intelligence community and a barrage of fire against the nation’s democratic voting system that would make Vladimir Putin blush with pride. These are the kind of anti-American screeds that fueled the Capitol riot, and they have been preached with increasing intensity since that tragic day.

The targets of their misinformation campaign now await trial or languish in jail while the authors of these phony crises sleep comfortably in their marbled mansions and beachside resorts. They are free to travel the world on their super yachts or private jets while Jan. 6 defendants beg for their freedom in federal court.

What a dichotomy between these plutocrats and the working-class populists they duped into doing their bidding on Jan. 6. The divide between the propaganda they preach and the policies they pursue has become just as stark over the past two decades. Republicans have spent the 21st century embracing a populist brand while tailoring their policies to help the super rich. The result has helped drive perhaps the greatest wealth redistribution in world history, at the expense of the middle class.

Maybe that explains why every Republican presidential nominee this century has come from the United States’ most powerful families and graduated from the country’s most elite universities. Their fathers ran automobile companies, Midwest industrial states, the United States Navy, New York real estate empires and the country itself. I can hear the voice of my grandmom saying, “To whom much is given, much is expected.” While we have not inherited the wealth and power of these American oligarchs, we have been given a republic. Let us spend the next year doing what we can to save it.



Opinion by Joe ScarboroughJoe Scarborough, a former Republican congressman from Florida, hosts the MSNBC show “Morning Joe." Twitter

Parents Spent More Time With Kids During Pandemic But Stress Was High, Census Survey Shows

BY AYUMI DAVIS ON 1/5/22

A new survey from the U.S. Census Bureau indicated that while parents spent more time with their children during the pandemic, stress was high.

"Families knew before the pandemic that they were overstressed. Kids had so many places to be. Parents were juggling an awful lot," said Roma Walsh, co-director of the Chicago Center for Family Health at the University of Chicago, in a phone interview, according to The Associated Press. "The pandemic made people not go to work, and our kids were home. It really helped parents to say, 'Hey, wait a minute. We are able to have real family time together that we weren't before.'"

The Survey of Income and Program Participation's findings were based on interviews with one parent from 22,000 households within the first four months of the pandemic in the U.S.

The Census Bureau released a report on the survey this week in which they noted that a large number of people did not respond to the survey. In addition, many of the parents in the survey were older, married, educated, foreign-born, and above the poverty level, compared to years past.

The survey did not measure the long-term effects of the pandemic, so it's unclear if the parents continued to spend more time with their children.

The survey discovered that the percentage of meals parents shared with their kids increased from 84 percent to 85 percent from 2018 to 2020 for "reference parents." For other parents, their proportion of meals shared with kids went up from 56 percent to 63 percent, the survey showed.

The pandemic also taxed many families. Job losses, financial worries, social isolation, the death of loved ones, virtual learning, and childcare and elder care demands hit hard, Walsh said, AP reported

The Survey of Income and Program Participation’s findings were based on interviews with one parent from 22,000 households within the first four months of the pandemic in the U.S. Here, Karen Albicy bonds with her daughter Kaia while waiting for her PCR test to process at George Bush Intercontinental Airport on December 3, 2021, in Houston, Texas.

BRANDON BELL/GETTY IMAGES

During the first several months of the pandemic in the U.S., Dina Levy made her young daughter and son go on walks with her three times a day.

They kicked a soccer ball around at the nearby high school. The children, then 11 and 8, created an obstacle course out of chalk and the three timed each other running through it. They also ate all their meals together.

Levy is among scores of parents who indicated in a new survey from the U.S. Census Bureau that they spent more time eating, reading and playing with their children from March to June 2020, when coronavirus-lockdowns were at their most intense, than they had in previous years.

"With school and work, you split up and go your own way for the day, but during coronavirus, we were a unit," said Levy, an attorney who lives in New Jersey. "It really was, I don't want to say worthwhile since this pandemic has been so awful for so many people, but there was a lot of value to us as a family."

The report found that outings with children decreased for parents because of travel restrictions and lockdowns, dropping from 85 percent in 2018 and 87 percent in 2019 to 82 percent in 2020. The drop was starkest for solo parents, going from 86 percent in 2019 to 75 percent in 2020, according to the survey.

"The key point is families have experienced extreme stress and strain over the course of this prolonged pandemic," Walsh said. She said her research showed that families do best when they share positive values, take a creative approach to problem-solving, and have the flexibility to adapt.

"Those families that can pull together and practice resilience are doing well, and it actually strengthens their bonds," she said.

That was certainly the case for Eugene Brusilovskiy, a statistician living in suburban Philadelphia. He said the pandemic allowed him to be with his daughter, who was born during the early months of the virus's spread. Since he was working from home, he and his wife decided not to put her in day care as originally planned.

"I was involved in every routine, everything from feeding her to changing her diapers," Brusilovskiy said. "I was able to spend real quality time, to go on walks and watch all of those first milestones that I wouldn't have been able to do otherwise."

Although many people are limiting their activities now with the Omicron-driven resurgence of the coronavirus, it's possible that once schools reopened in 2021 and kids returned to their extracurricular pursuits, parents fell back into earlier habits, said Melissa Milkie, a University of Toronto sociologist.

"Still, some families might have experienced eating more dinners together and reading as something they pushed to 'keep' even beyond those early months of the pandemic," Milkie said.

For Levy, the downside of all the meals with her kids was the intense cleanup.

"It drove me crazy," she said. "It was tons and tons of dirty dishes."

Still, that wasn't enough to diminish the once-in-a-lifetime sense of togetherness she was able to forge with her children.

"It was time we had never spent together," Levy said, "and probably never will again."

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

The Heat: U.S. reports 1 million covid cases in a single day

People wait in line to receive a Covid-19 test on January 4, 2022, in New York. – The US recorded more than 1 million Covid-19 cases on January 3, 2022, according to data from Johns Hopkins University, as the Omicron variant continues to spread at a blistering pace. Johns Hopkins also reported 1,688 deaths for the same period, a day after top US pandemic advisor Anthony Fauci had said the country is experiencing “almost a vertical increase” in Covid-19 cases but the peak may be only weeks away. (Photo by ANGELA WEISS / AFP)

Published January 5, 2022 at 3:54 PM

On Monday, the United States set another grim coronavirus milestone: more than 1 million new cases reported in a single day.

The spike is stark. The Omicron variant is infecting people at alarming rates. President Joe Biden addressed the staggering numbers.

CGTN White Correspondent Nathan King has more.

To discuss:

• Dr. Peter Chin-Hong is a professor of medicine and an infectious disease specialist at the University of California.
• Dr. Ziyad Al-Aly is the Director of the Clinical Epidemiology Center at the Veteran Affairs Saint Louis Health Care System.
• Dr. Georges Benjamin is the Executive Director of the American Public Health Association.
• Joseph Williams is Senior Managing Editor for Color of Change.

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Can $1 billion really fix a meat industry dominated by just four companies?


by Jessica Fu

01.05.2022

Mario Tama/Getty Images



The Biden administration’s newly announced investment in small, independent processors is intended to level the playing field. But without addressing the root causes of market concentration, critics fear it may have limited impact.


The Biden-Harris Administration announced on Monday that it would dedicate $1 billion from the $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan to curb consolidation and boost competition in the livestock industry, which it blames for rising prices at the grocery store.

The plan was well received by farm groups and some supporters of stronger antitrust laws, including organizations like the Farm Action and the Open Markets Institute. But it also received pushback from some of the very factions the move was intended to please. For cattle ranchers and anti-monopoly advocates who’ve long been concerned that a tiny handful of global food corporations control prices on both ends of the supply chain, the news represented a missed opportunity to address the root causes of industry concentration.

To understand these divergent responses, and why “consolidation”—a decades-long trend that narrowed the market to a small group of processing giants—has become a newly urgent flashpoint amid persistent supply chain frustrations, you need to know how the meat industry became so concentrated in the first place, and how the White House plan fits into that larger picture.

Big Meat: Big problem?

Beef prices have jumped an eye-popping 21 percent over the past year, according to the Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) latest food price outlook report; prices for pork increased by almost 17 percent and poultry by more than 8 percent in the same period. White House economic advisors last month estimated that meat is the single biggest contributor to rising food costs right now, accounting for a quarter of total price increases.

At the same time as meat’s gotten more expensive, cattle prices have gone down. In theory, that shouldn’t happen—and critics say the concentrated power of a small cohort of multinational meatpackers is to blame.

The Big Four are beautifully positioned to take advantage of supply chain chaos.

Today, the so-called “Big Four” beef processing companies—which include Tyson Foods, JBS, Cargill, and Marfrig—control around 85 percent of feedlot cattle in the U.S. (Beef has seen the fastest rate of consolidation compared to poultry and pork). In recent years, producers have accused these companies of engaging in anti-competitive business practices, like depressing live cattle prices through restrictive contracts or artificially restricted supply, while simultaneously reaping record profits.

The coronavirus pandemic has highlighted how this dynamic can play out under extreme circumstances: Outbreak-related shutdowns in the early spring of 2020 caused backlogs of live animals with nowhere to go for slaughter, tanking the prices big packers pay to ranchers for their animals. Meanwhile, on the other end of the supply chain, the resulting inventory shortages at grocery stores drove up the cost of meat for consumers. These concurrent trends meant that the “meat margin”—that is, the difference between what processors pay for livestock and what they charge for meat—widened significantly, leading to soaring profits.

In other words, the Big Four are beautifully positioned to take advantage of supply chain chaos: disruptions led to historically low cattle prices, but spooked consumers have proven willing to pay more to stockpile their freezers with meat.

How did we get the “Big Four?”

Economists measure consolidation using what is called the “four-firm concentration ratio,” which refers to the market share controlled by the four biggest companies in any given industry. In 1977, the four biggest beef packers controlled just 25 percent of the market, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. Within 15 years, that number had jumped to 71 percent—a nearly threefold increase. Today, that number hovers around 85 percent.

James MacDonald, a University of Maryland agricultural economics professor who has conducted research on meat industry concentration, said that two important factors drove what he described as a “dramatic” rate of consolidation in the industry in the 1970s and 1980s: economies of scale and lower wages.

“In beef packing, an important driver was that large firms realized they could reduce processing costs by building much bigger plants,” he said. Another key factor was a series of labor fights that resulted in lower wages for the meatpacking workers employed by those companies that were rapidly expanding, further accelerating their dominance within a consolidating industry.



“In beef packing, an important driver was that large firms realized they could reduce processing costs by building much bigger plants.”


“Through the early 1980s, there was a series of labor battles, strikes, lockouts, plant closures,” MacDonald said. “In a very short period of time, the average production worker wage in meatpacking fell very sharply, [particularly] in the larger plants, because that’s really where they broke the unions.” Average hourly wages in the largest meatpacking plants fell by almost 15 percent in the decade between 1982 and 1992.

Together, MacDonald said, those factors helped the biggest packers to become very large and cost-efficient, while making it harder for smaller packers to compete—setting the stage for the concentrated industry we see today.

What would the White House plan do to curb consolidation?

A lot—at least according to the White House. Its billion-dollar aid package will include $375 million in grants for independent processing plants (which it expects to pay out through the spring and summer of this year); $375 million in loan support; $100 million to fund worker safety and training programs; $50 million in research and development, and $100 million in subsidies to help small processing plants cover inspection costs.

But critics of the plan argue that the White House largely excluded from its announcement a concrete timeline by which it would enforce the robust competition laws that already exist.

In 1921, Congress passed the Packers and Stockyards Act, a set of laws aimed at protecting producers from anti-competitive practices on the part of meatpackers, like unequal treatment and price manipulation. In 2016, the Obama administration promulgated a set of rules under the act that would have given farmers and ranchers an avenue for legal recourse against those unfair practices, and outlawed delayed payment and economic retaliation, among other things. Those reforms were later rolled back under the Trump administration. In June of last year, USDA announced that it had begun working to reinstate them and to strengthen its enforcement actions under the Packers and Stockyards Act. That hasn’t yet happened, though—and now, six months later, supporters of these protections are scratching their heads, wondering when the agency will actually take action.



“USDA is going to essentially establish a hotline so cattle producers could continue complaining about potentially anti-competitive practices to a regulatory agency that hasn’t done anything about all of the previous complaints that have been filed.”


Monday’s announcement provided little clarity. Instead, USDA committed that it would, within 30 days, set up a tip line through which farmers and ranchers could file complaints about unfair practices. The agency would then refer them to the Department of Justice for investigation “as appropriate”—a far cry from the decisive steps that anti-monopoly advocates were hoping for.

“They’re going to essentially establish a hotline so cattle producers could continue complaining about potentially anti-competitive practices to a regulatory agency that hasn’t done anything about all of the previous complaints that have been filed,” said Bill Bullard, president and CEO of Ranchers-Cattlemen Action Legal Fund United Stockgrowers of America (R-CALF USA). In 2019, R-CALF USA filed a lawsuit against the Big Four, alleging anti-competitive business practices. An amended version of the case is currently in discovery.

Who’s getting excited?

Owners of independent meat processing plants, obviously, as well as many livestock producers. In July, USDA received more than 400 comments from industry stakeholders, including farmers, ranchers, and processing companies, many of them largely enthusiastic about federal funding to expand meat processing capacity, worker training, and infrastructure investments.

Monday’s announcement was also warmly received by multiple lawmakers and organizations, including those that have advocated for greater scrutiny of meatpacking giants.



“We must get to the bottom of why farmers and ranchers continue to receive low payments while families across America endure rising meat prices.”


“For too long, our meat and poultry supply chain has been over reliant on a handful of large-scale companies that dominate the market,” wrote Representative Chellie Pingree, the Democratic congresswoman from Maine, in a press release. (Pingree has previously sponsored legislation that would provide funding for small processors.) “The Biden-Harris Administration’s action plan […] will work to create a more competitive and resilient meat and poultry sector and is a win for local farmers and small businesses, the market, consumers, and hungry Americans.”

Bigger groups like the Farm Bureau also welcomed the announcement.

“American Farm Bureau Federation appreciates the Biden administration’s continued work to ensure a fair and competitive meat processing system,” read a statement from president Zippy Duvall. “We must get to the bottom of why farmers and ranchers continue to receive low payments while families across America endure rising meat prices.”

Who’s not having it?

Those who believe that an influx of funding can’t fix a system rigged against small- and mid-scale processors. From an economic standpoint, said Darren Hudson, a professor of agricultural economics at Texas Tech University, who has researched concentration in agriculture, a $1 billion investment is unlikely to effect any significant, long-term change in the meat supply chain.

“It’s a horrible idea,” he said. “Subsidizing small processors isn’t going to solve any real problems. In a short run it might prop up or encourage some small processors to engage in meat processing [….] But unless they’re operating at a cost that’s equivalent to or very near what the major processors are, they won’t be able to compete over the long run.”

What’s an alternative?

Hudson’s sentiment was echoed by Austin Frerick, deputy director of the antitrust-oriented Thurman Arnold Project at Yale University, who called the plan “naive.” Going a step further, Frerick said that focusing resources solely on supporting small processors, instead of scrutinizing the practices of packing giants, meant USDA was missing the forest for the trees.

“They understand the issue, they want to pretend to have a solution, but they don’t want to actually do anything meaningful here or they don’t want to actually grapple with this industry, grapple with this corporate power that’s run amok,” he said.

Short of addressing the root causes of market concentration, any independent processors subsidized by federal dollars would still face the same economic challenges that pushed their predecessors out of business in the first place.

Like Bullard, Frerick said it would be far more effective to just enforce the Packers and Stockyards Act. Short of addressing the root causes of market concentration, any independent processors subsidized by federal dollars would still face the same economic challenges that pushed their predecessors out of business in the first place.

Since the 1980s, the meatpacking industry has undergone a series of mergers, in which larger packers edged out or bought up smaller competitors, usually those on the financial brink due to downward economic pressure that the bigger processors could exert. Frerick said he wouldn’t be surprised to see another wave of similar acquisitions between the Big Four and their smaller, subsidized competitors when the federal funding dries up.

“They’re throwing all this money at these plants,” Frerick said. “I just expect that in a few years they’ll go broke and then the big companies will buy them for pennies on the dollar.”


Jessica Fu is a staff writer for The Counter. She previously worked for The Stranger, Seattle's alt-weekly newspaper. Her reporting has won awards from the Association of Food Journalists and the Newswomen’s Club of New York.

One year after Jan. 6 — a Jewish look back

Arno Rosenfeld, Jacob Kornbluh and Mira Fox

January 5, 2022Photo-illustration by Mira Fox

In the hours leading up to the storming of the U.S. Capitol one year ago today, antisemitic rhetoric swirled through the crowds that had gathered in D.C. in an attempt to overturn the 2020 presidential election.

“We are standing up to the evil globalists such as George Soros,” a former Breitbart News reporter told a group gathered the night before the riot. And just hours before the Capitol was breached, Rep. Mary Miller, an Illinois Republican, praised Nazi leader Adolf Hitler.

The antisemitic vitriol on the internet prior to the attack on the Capitol was more intense and abundant, infecting the online communities that spread conspiracy theories about President Donald Trump winning the 2020 election – a lie that came to be shared by more than three-quarters of Republican voters.


Antisemitic conspiracies flew before extremists breached U.S. Capitol

Arno Rosenfeld January 6, 2021

The most prominent of those conspiracies was QAnon, a sprawling series of beliefs that included accusations that celebrities and Democratic politicians were running a satanic pedophile ring. It helped propel many of those implicated in the attack to Washington on Jan. 6. To many Jews, its falsehoods seemed eerily familiar.

“QAnon is, to a great extent, repackaged blood libel,” David Walsh, a researcher at the University of Virginia, said in an interview at the time. Most Jewish Americans, in a September poll, said that white supremacists, Trump and conservative media bear considerable blame for the insurrection.

Few Jews have been identified among the hundreds who mobbed the Capitol, although some Jewish Trump supporters were elsewhere in D.C. that weekend. They included Heshy Tischler, an Orthodox radio host and far right provocateur who cheered on a fellow protestor carrying a shofar during one of the outdoor rallies on Jan. 6.

“He’s going to blow the shofar for moshiach — or no, for Trump?” Tischler asked. “Go ahead, blow it!”

The violence at the Capitol that day was not focused on Jews.

Still, the events of Jan. 6 were laced with Jewish connections. One year later, here is the Forward’s look at some of the better and lesser-known figures with Jewish ties to that day – from the man who wore the “Camp Auschwitz” sweatshirt to a woman who lives in the shadow of the Capitol to a member of Congress still battling threats to free elections.
The congressman in mourning


Photo by Getty Images
Representative Jamie Raskin is comforted by Senator Amy Klobuchar, a Minnesota Democrat, as she leaves a joint session of Congress to count the Electoral College votes of the 2020 presidential election in the House Chamber in Washington, D.C., U.S., on Wednesday, Jan. 6, 2021.

On Jan. 6, the day after his son’s funeral, and only a week after his death by suicide, Rep. Jamie Raskin was in the Capitol, helping to certify the election; his daughter and son-in-law had come along to watch. And then the building was attacked, the family forced to hide separately, and Raskin afraid he might lose yet another child in the span of a week.

Yet the Maryland Democrat said he found strength in that trauma, and went on to lead the impeachment effort against then-President Trump, accusing him of inciting the attack.

Though he knew the role might bring death threats and violence, Raskin forged ahead; “I personally felt no fear, because the very worst thing that ever could have happened to me had already happened to me,” he told NPR. A former professor of constitutional law, Raskin’s robust defense of democracy, though doomed, was moving to many. He also spoke personally, recounting his promise to his daughter that the Capitol would be safe the next time she visited, and her response, devastating to him, that she never wanted to return.


In new memoir, Jamie Raskin recalls chaos and confusion of Jan. 6 insurrectionI

rene Katz Connelly  January 4, 2022

In the year since the multiple tragedies, Raskin has written a searing memoir, “Unthinkable,” about the insurrection and his son’s death, which he said is the main driver of his public service. Raskin now sits on the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack, and is also working to reform the Electoral College.

“If a person can grow through unthinkable trauma and loss,” Raskin wrote in his new book, “perhaps a nation may, too.”

A neighbor to the chaos

Laurie Solnik lives 12 blocks from the Capitol and spent Jan. 6 watching the events unfold on her television with her family. “We all agreed we were just going to hunker down,” Solnik recalled. But her mind went to dark places. She said the fencing, police barricades and National Guard troops that followed the violence triggered thoughts of her parent’s experience during the Holocaust, when both survived Nazi concentration camps.

I’m getting over it.”

“I knew in my head this was different: nobody is trying to kill me,” Solnik said. “But it felt the same – as if a roundup was coming.”


Photo by Steve Kolb
National Guard members assemble in a park across the street from Laurie Solnik’s home in the Capitol Hill neighborhood of Washington, D.C., following the Jan. 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol.

Solnik, 68, is active in Hill Havurah, which is the closest synagogue to the Capitol – it meets less than two blocks away. Solnik said that after seeing protesters attack Black churches in D.C. during the previous year, she worried that her own Jewish community could be a target in the future. A year later, with her Capitol Hill neighborhood returned more or less to normal – no more imposing fencing or soldiers in camouflage milling about – Solnik said she is more relaxed.

“I guess I’m getting over it,” she said.


In court for mobbing the Capitol, they compared themselves to persecuted Jews

Louis Keene January 5, 2022

The ‘Camp Auschwitz’ sweatshirt guy


By ITV

A man wearing a “Camp Auschwitz” shirt stands among a mob of far-right demonstrators who stormed the US Capitol Wednesday.

Among the hundreds of protesters arrested for their role in storming the Capitol, Robert Keith Packer may be the best known to Jewish audiences.

Packer, with long hair and a raggedy beard, wore a “Camp Auschwitz” sweatshirt as he broke into the Capitol on Jan. 6, becoming the posterboy for antisemitic undercurrents running through the crowd. He was arrested several days later after a convenience store clerk near Newport News, Virginia., where Packer lives, told law enforcement that he was a regular customer.

Police found a trove of Nazi paraphernalia at Packer’s home, and charged him with illegally entering the Capitol and disorderly conduct. Packer pleaded not guilty in February but his trial has been repeatedly delayed and his next court hearing – scheduled for Jan. 26 – is expected to involve a plea agreement. An attorney for Packer did not respond to a request for comment. He remains free on bail.


Police found lots of Nazi paraphernalia at home of ‘Camp Auschwitz’ suspect

Arno Rosenfeld May 27, 2021

The judge’s son

Aaron Mostofsky’s participation in the Capitol insurrection stunned many. The Orthodox Jew, son of Brooklyn Supreme Court Justice Steven Mostofsky, traveled from New York City and was photographed inside the Capitol wearing animal furs, a bulletproof vest and a riot shield emblazoned with the U.S. Capitol Police logo. A bewildered-looking Mostofsky was interviewed on video by the New York Post, telling the reporter that “we were cheated” and that 10 million more people voted for Trump than tallies showed.



This meme of Aaron Mostofsky was included in the criminal case brought against him by the Department of Justice for entering the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.

In a private Instagram conversation revealed by prosecutors, Mostofsky wrote to an acquaintance of his time in the Capitol: “It was like I’m here now how did I get there.”

Mostofsky was charged with four crimes, including theft of government property and disrupting government business. He has pleaded not guilty and his trial is scheduled for March. He remains free on bail, though he is required to notify the court if he leaves New York City.


Hasidim bearing chocolate and gratitude

Image by Courtesy

Disgusted and saddened by the Jan. 6 assault on the Capitol, Aron Weider and Alexander Rapaport – two Hasidic friends from New York – felt helpless from 200 miles away. But the bravery of the Capitol Police and the National Guard that day inspired them to make the trip to D.C. two weeks later – for the inauguration of President Biden.

Few tourists or well-wishers were allowed inside a vast security zone surrounding the Capitol for the inauguration, but that wasn’t where Weider, the founder of a Borough Park soup kitchen, and Rapaport, a Rockland County legislator, were headed. With a van packed with $10,000 worth of toiletries, energy drinks, energy bars and chocolates – paid for by a D.C. security firm – the two drove around the perimeter of the secured area, handing out goodies to members of the National Guard, who were pulling 12-hour shifts in cold weather and taking their breaks in parking garages.

‘We brought you some love from Brooklyn,’” Rapaport told the troops, who often asked for selfies with these unexpected gift-bearers.


Meet the Hasidim who went to DC after Jan. 6 to give thanks — and chocolate — to the National Guard

Jacob Kornbluh January 4, 2022

Wieder’s four grandparents were rescued by the 3rd Infantry Division of the U.S. Army during the liberation of the Dora-Mittelbau concentration camp in 1945. “I will never miss an opportunity to say thank you to you guys and what you are standing for,” he said. Rapaport said that as shaken as he was on Jan. 6, he felt more hopeful with the transition of power on Inauguration Day. He returned to D.C. days later after restocking the van in New York.

Both he and Wieder said that they hoped that their obviously Jewish appearance sent a message to all who saw them in Washington, that “the Jewish people support our servicemen and women and value the stability of our nation.”


‘We knew this day was coming’: Jews react to storming of Capitol building

Irene Katz Connelly and PJ Grisar   January 6, 2021


Authors


Mira Fox

Mira Fox is a reporter at the Forward. Get in touch at fox@forward.com or on Twitter @miraefox.


Arno Rosenfeld

Arno Rosenfeld is a staff writer for the Forward, where he covers U.S. politics and American Jewish institutions. You can reach him at arno@forward.com and follow him on Twitter @arnorosenfeld.


Jacob Kornbluh

Jacob Kornbluh is the Forward’s senior political reporter. Follow him on Twitter @jacobkornbluh or email kornbluh@forward.com.

What happened to the nonbelief channel at Patheos?

(RNS) — Bloggers were advised they could stay at Patheos so long as they stop writing negative or critical posts on religion or politics and instead focus on how to live a good life within their own worldview. They left.

January 4, 2022
By Yonat Shimron


(RNS) — Visitors to Patheos, the multifaith media platform that hosts commentary from writers in many of the world’s religions, may have noticed some changes lately.

Its nonreligious channel has become an empty hulk, bereft of most of the familiar names that once occupied the space, including its most popular blogger, Hemant Mehta, the “Friendly Atheist.”

Mehta and 14 other nonreligious bloggers, along with the channel manager, have decamped to a new site, OnlySky Media, set to launch later this month.

The changes come amid new surveys showing the number of people who are religiously unaffiliated has exploded in recent years, rising to 29% of the U.S. population, up from 19% in 2011. These “nones,” a catchall for a host of groups, including atheists, agnostics, humanists and just plain secularists, have established multiple service and advocacy organizations to serve this growing segment of the population. But there is no media platform solely dedicated to those who are not part of traditional religions.

RELATED: Poll: America growing more secular by the year

Efforts to reach Patheos’ management team were unsuccessful, but the departing bloggers and their channel manager, Dale McGowan, said that about a year ago, Patheos decided to change its editorial direction. Bloggers were advised they could stay at Patheos so long as they stopped writing negative or critical posts on religion or politics and instead focused on how to live a good life within their own worldview.

“The writing on the wall was that unless you’re prepared to say nice things about religion you need to find a new outlet,” said Mehta, who has written for Patheos since 2011, often posting multiple times a day, with a special focus on stories about religious hypocrisy.

Some 20 bloggers left the site in the last days of 2021. On Tuesday (Jan. 4), the top story on the homepage read, “Don’t Stop Believing: Faith for the New Year.”

Patheos is owned by BN Media, which last year created a new umbrella organization called Radiant. It includes Patheos, the lifestyle site Beliefnet and three other wellness and spirituality platforms with a mission of helping people “live their most fulfilled lives.”

Beliefnet, once a vigorous journalistic site, underwent a similar transformation after it was twice acquired, first by the Fox Entertainment Group in 2007 and later BN Media, where it became an inspirational site focusing on spirituality, health and wellness.

“What they were asking of us was not compatible with the editorial tone we had taken until then,” said Adam Lee, who wrote the “Daylight Atheism” blog for Patheos. “Many of us felt this would require an editorial shift to such an extent as to make our blogs unrecognizable.”

McGowan said he was told last March that Patheos wanted to rebrand.

“This was a business decision to position themselves for the long term,” said McGowan. It may have been hard for Patheos to attract advertising among religious businesses while at the same time providing a forum for atheists to criticize religion, he said.

McGowan, the author of 10 books about nonreligious life, including “Parenting Beyond Belief,” had already been talking with investors about creating a new platform for nonreligious people.

“When Patheos announced this change in direction, we realized it was an opportunity to provide a soft landing for some of these bloggers,” he said.

Fifteen Patheos bloggers agreed to join OnlySky, where McGowan is now chief content officer.

The new media platform is envisioned as a site that combines storytelling and commentary exploring the breadth of the human experience from a secular point of view, said Shawn Hardin, its founder and CEO.

A Bay Area entrepreneur who has created several media products for AOL, Yahoo and NBC, among others, Hardin said he envisions a space that explores a wide range of secular values.

“We think the unaffiliated are a woefully underserved segment of the population,” Hardin said. “We’re pretty optimistic about our opportunity to build a business that meets the interest of the audience and can invest in its own growth.”

(The name of the new media venture was inspired by John Lennon’s song “Imagine,” which envisions a world without heaven or hell — “above us only sky.”)

Author Hemant Mehta. Photo by Steve Greiner, courtesy of Mehta

A key will be creating a sense of community for a diverse set of people who are searching for meaning and want to connect with others on a similar path. Whether nonreligious Americans want community is not yet clear.

The Sunday Assembly movement, which tried to create local congregations for nonbelievers, had 70 congregations in the U.S. and the United Kingdom. About half have shut down or gone dormant.

Beyond polls indicating their growing numbers, little is known about the nonreligious or whether they want to engage on issues as a group.

“There are people passionate about secularism, atheism and agnosticism, perhaps because they don’t like what they see about religion in the news,” said Diane Winston, professor of religion and media at the University of Southern California. “But that’s a small minority of the people who make up the unaffiliated or disaffiliated. A lot of those people don’t care one way or another.”

Mehta, however, said he had high hopes.

“There aren’t any media outlets that cater specifically to atheists,” he said. “All the other atheist specific blogging networks are run by volunteers and people who are passionate about the subject but don’t do business-savvy anything, so they falter and die. This one has digital expertise.”

RELATED: The Sunday Assembly hopes to organize a godless future. It’s not easy.