YIP-PIE 

Whatever Happened to Pieing Powerful People in the Face?

An absurd comedy routine became a dearly beloved tool for activists.

BY ROSSI ANASTOPOULO

DEC 31, 2022



This article is adapted with permission from Sweet Land of Liberty: A History of America in 11 Pies by Rossi Anastopoulo. Copyright © 2022 by Rossi Anastopoulo. Published by Abrams Press.

Moe Howard of the Three Stooges supposedly had his own secret recipe for the pies he famously threw in people’s faces. “A vat of whipped cream, marshmallow sauce and pumpkin filling,” the executive director of the International Clown Hall of Fame and Research Center claimed in an article for the Washington Post. “That made it very gooey. It really stuck to the target’s face.”

The Stooges weren’t the only pie-throwing experts with a favored recipe.

Decades later, the San Francisco-based Biotic Baking Brigade (BBB)—who described themselves as “flan-archists”—started throwing pies at people, becoming one of the most prominent and prolific pastry protest groups of the late 20th century and early aughts. The group cautioned against using cherry pies because the effect could look like blood, which might cause unnecessary alarm. (Such a result could sometimes be desired, though; it was specifically recommended as a “great choice for a homophobic preacher or neo-Nazi Klansman.”)

Instead, “using some variation of a cream pie is your best bet,” they recommended in their 2004 cookbook Pie Any Means Necessary. “Leaving the pie-ee with a face full of light-colored goop not only accomplishes your goal more effectively, it also communicates what’s going on better. This can also help avoid situations where you get your ass kicked.”

Ah, pie-ing people. You just don’t see it as much as you used to. For a while there, practically anyone who was anyone in power got pied in protest at one point or another. Famous pie-ees include Bill Gates, Sylvester Stallone (reportedly a good sport about it), San Francisco mayor Willie Brown (reportedly not), Andy Warhol (simply because he had met the Shah of Iran) and Phyllis Schlafly.

The BBB was a big part of this political pieing movement, which began in 1970 and grew to involve activists around the world, until it petered out around 2011. The group pied people whose greed and corruption ran unchecked (so-called “titans of power”), a cohort that included politicians, executives, government officials, and assorted capitalists. The philosophy was simple: use pieing as a way to hold people that the BBB saws as destructive accountable—and raise awareness of their misdeeds. Members emphasized homemade pies whenever possible, and preferred ​them to be vegan and organic, in alignment with broader counterculture protest ideals of the ’80s and ’90s. Their tofu cream pie recipe, specifically meant for throwing, is made with ingredients including sucanat, almond butter, and maple syrup. It pointedly rejects whipped cream, which members described as “that late-twentieth-century, nutritionally void, environmentally wasteful decorative product.”

The modern-day pie protest movement was launched (literally and figuratively) by “counterculture guru and drug culture mastermind” Thomas King Forçade. Most prominently known as the founder of High Times magazine, a drug-culture magazine read by four million people at its height, Forçade was also involved with the Youth International Party of the late 1960s, whose members were known as “Yippies.” One of Forçade’s most publicized stunts came in May 1970, when he spoke before the President’s Commission on Obscenity and Pornography on behalf of the Underground Press Syndicate, a network of countercultural media outlets that he ran. Taking the stand, Forçade denounced the commission, then proceeded to launch a custard pie (some accounts have described it as a “cottage cheese pie”) into the face of Otto N. Larsen, a professor at the University of Washington who was part of the commission. He capped things off by shouting, “Pie power!”

Forçade’s actions inspired others to raise their pie plates in protest. One such activist was Pat Small, a man referred to in a 1972 Miami Herald article as “the world’s most celebrated pie-thrower.” Small was a member of Forçade’s Underground Press Syndicate and the leader of the Zippie faction of the Youth International Party, a breakaway group in Miami. His most prominent hit was throwing a pie at Miami Beach councilman Harold Rosen (the weapon itself was alternately identified as a pumpkin tart and a cream pie) in protest of a decision to deny protestors a campsite during the Democratic National Convention in 1972—an action that was later described by the press as “the splat heard ’round the world.” Small was subsequently sentenced to ninety days in jail for creating a disturbance, and as a result of his sentencing, a group of local Zippies organized a “pie-in” at Miami Beach municipal court that featured an assortment of peach, cherry, and banana pies to communicate their outrage.

It wasn’t just Small who took up the pie plate from Forçade—radical activists around the U.S. seized on pieing as their newest form of protest, inspired by the ridiculous, humorous stunts by other Yippie leaders like Abbie Hoffman as well as other modes of guerrilla theater. Rex Weiner, a buddy of Thomas Forçade’s who was also involved with High Times, decided to put his own spin on the pie-in-the-face genre and started a service through which people could pay for pie hits on the victim of their choice. When it came to flavors, his agents offered several choices including chocolate cream and lemon meringue.

From Weiner’s business, which he called Agents of Pie-Kill, came one of the most prominent pie-tossers in history: Aron “Pieman” Kay. He was deliberate about his pie selection, often tailoring the pie itself to the target or occasion. The first pie he ever threw was a cherry pie (as he later said, “Get it? It was my pie virginity.”) When he hit New York mayor Abraham Beame, it was with “an apple crumb pie because he was a crummy politician in the Big Apple,” said Kay. As for former CIA director William Colby, “he got a Bavarian chocolate and blueberry cream cheese pie because he was the big cheese of the CIA,” Kay recalled. And lastly, there was Edward Teller, the “Father of the A-Bomb.” In 1983, he got a face full of pastry that “was a mushroom and tofu pie—mushroom for all the mushroom clouds.”

There is a science to selecting which type of pie to throw at someone, and the British grocery chain Tesco tested their pies in 1999 for this express purpose after pie-tossing reached a fever pitch in Britain. The grocery chain organized a whole excursion to a school gym outside of London, where employees launched pies at each other to see which varieties were the best for throwing. Criteria for evaluation included how well they flew through the air and the mess they left upon impact. The ultimate goal, according to a Tesco spokesperson, was to “not make an absolute mess, but a nice, polite mess.” Their final recommendations after such extensive scientific research? Egg custard, lemon meringue, and fruit pies.

Of course, the prominence of this movement begs the question: Why pie?

American history professor Alexander Bloom told the New York Times in a 2000 story on the uptick in pieing: “Pies defuse the anger and identify the target as a clown. If someone dumped feces or blood or mock toxic waste on you, that would be a lot more threatening.” This idea echoes a term once used to describe pieing: “carnival humor.”

But there’s a deeper element to the whole joke that pie, by its very nature, gets at. “Pie is goopy, a treat, and meant to be served in moderation,” wrote Ben Paynter in his 2017 deep dive on the history of pieing for Fast Company, “How Pie Became a Powerful Punchline in Political Provocation.” As Paynter pointed out, “When weaponized, it becomes a comedic way to exert power over someone—you just gave them too much of a good thing, in a way they can’t control—making it clear that not everyone takes that person or their agenda so seriously.”

In addition, some pie-tossers cited the activist handbook Rules for Radicals to explain their reasoning behind pie, citing author Saul Alinsky’s assertion that “ridicule is [hu]man’s most potent weapon. It is almost impossible to counter-attack ridicule. It also infuriates the opposition, who then react to your advantage.”

Nothing, it seems, is more ridiculous—and humiliating—than the surprise of a custard-covered face.

Powerful people have been pied for all kinds of political reasons. But there is an underlying message to the action—no matter the intended statement.

One prominent member of the Canadian pie protest group Les Entartistes, who went by the codename Pope-Tart, summed it up nicely in 1999 to a reporter for Montreal’s Gazette: “The pie gives power back to the people because so many feel powerless in the face of big politicians and industrialists.” He added: “The pie delivers a human political message. What we’re trying to say is, ‘You work for us. You can’t be too big for your britches or you’ll get a pie in the face.’”

The BBB also explained that pies provide a certain visual punctuation in their book Pie Any Means Necessary: “If we hold a rally in demonstration-jaded San Francisco, the media usually will not cover it. If we write letters to the editor, they don’t get printed. However, the visual of a pie in the face makes a sizable chink in the media armor through which we can then put forth the reasons why a figure deserved to be pied in the first place. It allows us to communicate our message beyond what traditional means allow.”

Sweet Land of Liberty: A History of America in 11 Pies

By Rossi Anastopoulo. Abrams Press.

CRIMINAL CAPITALI$M

77 members of the 117th Congress violated a federal conflicts-of-interest and financial transparency law

Madison Hall
Dec 31, 2022


77 members of Congress violated the STOCK Act in the 117th session of Congress.

The Stop Trading on Congressional Knowledge Act of 2012 is designed to curb insider trading and requires timely disclosure of financial trades.

This term, Congress debated restricting its members from trading individual stocks, however, no bills were brought to a vote.

Seventy-seven members of the 117th session of Congress violated a federal conflicts-of-interest and financial disclosure law, according to a review of congressional financial disclosures by Insider and other news outlets.

The law — the Stop Trading on Congressional Knowledge Act of 2012, also known as the STOCK Act — passed in 2012 under President Barack Obama following insider trading scandals that rocked Congress. The STOCK Act notably requires members of Congress to report trades they made, or made by their spouses or dependent children, within 45 days or risk a financial slap on the wrist — the standard penalty for such a violation is $200.

But a decade on, Republican and Democratic lawmakers alike routinely violate the STOCK Act: 40 Republicans and 37 Democrats in the current Congress violated the law, per Insider's tally.

Some members of Congress violated the law more egregiously than others. GOP Rep. Pat Fallon of Texas, for example, violated the STOCK Act multiple times and waited months to disclose up to $17 million in trades. Democratic Rep. Tom Suozzi of New York repeatedly failed to file reports on time across nearly 300 personal financial transactions.

The House Committee on Ethics ultimately absolved Suozzi and Fallon from being penalized for violating the STOCK Act — the committee found that there was not "clear evidence" either congressman committed "knowing or willful" violations of the act. This, despite a referral from the independent Office of Congressional Ethics, which conducted its own investigation and unanimously concluded earlier this year that there was "substantial reason to believe" Fallon and Suozzi violated the STOCK Act.
Congressional stock trading ban?

In December 2021, following a question from Insider's Bryan Metzger, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi rejected the idea of preventing members of Congress from trading individual stocks.

"We are a free-market economy. They should be able to participate in that," Pelosi said.

Pelosi's answer quickly led to criticism from Democratic and Republican members of Congress. It also led some members to draft their own legislation banning the practice, such as Democratic Sens. Mark Kelly and Jon Ossoff, as well as Republican Sen. Josh Hawley.

"Year after year, politicians somehow manage to outperform the market, buying and selling millions in stocks of companies they're supposed to be regulating," Hawley said. "Wall Street and Big Tech work hand-in-hand with elected officials to enrich each other at the expense of the country. Here's something we can do: ban all members of Congress from trading stocks and force those who do to pay their proceeds back to the American people. It's time to stop turning a blind eye to Washington profiteering."

After months of waiting, Democratic leadership wrote and sponsored its own bill banning members of Congress, their families, and dependent children from trading individual stocks. Democratic leaders, however, punted a vote on the bill until after the 2022 midterm elections.

Now, with little time left in the legislative session, the bill is poised to die.

With Republicans taking control of the House, there is a possibility for a stock trading ban to receive a resurgence in support. House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy said prior to the midterm elections that he was open to such a ban. Since it became clear that Republicans will control the House next legislative term, however, McCarthy — who is likely to become the next House speaker — has been silent on the topic.

Conflicted Congress

In late 2021, Insider endeavored to digitize each member of Congress' financial records, leading its reporters to pore over the data to find numerous unreported conflicts of interest from several members of Congress as part of its "Conflicted Congress" investigation.

This includes lawmakers who shape US defense policy while simultaneously holding shares of defense companies and legislators who actively traded stocks in companies that make COVID-19 vaccines at the height of the pandemic.

As part of the investigation, Insider also found that at least 182 high-ranking congressional staffers also violated the STOCK Act with late and overdue disclosures.

 Opinion China’s covid explosion shows why we need a genomic early warning radar

By the Editorial Board

December 31, 2022 

The U.S. government’s decision to require inbound air passengers from China to show a negative test for the coronavirus starting Jan. 5 might reassure the public, but is probably of limited practical use. It might delay transmission of a new variant, although China is now afflicted mostly with omicron, which is already widespread in the United States and elsewhere. A second decision announced Wednesday by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is more significant and underscores the urgent need for genomic viral surveillance.

That second decision was to expand the traveler-based genomic surveillance program, or TGS, which can detect and characterize new variants of the virus that causes covid-19. The program takes nasal swabs, volunteered by travelers at major U.S. international airports, and tests them for the coronavirus. If the coronavirus is detected, the virus genome is sequenced to identify any new variants. The samples are kept anonymous. On Wednesday, the CDC expanded it to Los Angeles and Seattle, for a total of seven airports, covering 500 flights from at least 30 countries, including about 290 weekly flights from China and surrounding areas. About 80,000 travelers participated from November 2021 to December 2022. The program has also begun aircraft lavatory wastewater surveillance. This effort ought to be expanded into a national and eventually global radar system keeping watch for emerging viruses and bacteria.

Even the current, limited sentinel has value, especially at this moment. China is undergoing an explosion of cases after the abrupt lifting of its “zero covid” policy. Its elderly are under-vaccinated, and the population lacks natural immunity to omicron. The danger is that its escalating toll of infections could generate new variants that might be more transmissible or cause more severe disease, and thus become a threat to the entire world. However, because China refuses to be transparent about the cases, deaths and genomics, the only way to detect variants is to be vigilant outside its borders.

When two flights landed in Milan this week from China, Italian health authorities reported that half the passengers tested positive for the coronavirus. Fortunately, subsequent sequencing showed they were infected with omicron, not a new variant. On Thursday, the European Center for Disease Prevention and Control said the variants spreading in China are already circulating in Europe, which has built up both natural and vaccination immunity.

But China is not the only worry. Variants can emerge from anywhere. An aggressive new offspring of omicron, XBB.1.5, is taking hold in New York and the Northeast. CDC models say the XBB variants represent about 40.5 percent of the total infections in the country. According to epidemiologist Katelyn Jetelina, XBB.1.5 appears to be similar to others in terms of being evasive of immune systems; it has more capability to stick to human cells, but in laboratory tests, it is not yet clear that it is more transmissible.

Tighter scrutiny of passengers coming from China is a short-term measure that can buy time. In the longer run, the nation and the world need to build a system of early warning by viral genomic surveillance.

The Post’s View | About the Editorial Board

Editorials represent the views of The Post as an institution, as determined through debate among members of the Editorial Board, based in the Opinions section and separate from the newsroom.

Members of the Editorial Board and areas of focus: Opinion Editor David Shipley; Deputy Opinion Editor Karen Tumulty; Associate Opinion Editor Stephen Stromberg (national politics and policy, legal affairs, energy, the environment, health care); Associate Editor Jonathan Capehart (national politics); Lee Hockstader (immigration; issues affecting Virginia and Maryland); David E. Hoffman (global public health); James Hohmann (domestic policy and electoral politics, including the White House, Congress and governors); Charles Lane (foreign affairs, national security, international economics); Heather Long (economics); Associate Editor Ruth Marcus; and Molly Roberts (technology and society).

In Rural California, Farmworkers Fend for Themselves for Health Care

DAVID BACON

Mother Jones

DECEMBER 31, 2022

Agricultural laborers spray against insects and weeds inside the orchards of a fruit farm in Mesa, California.

Bret Stirton/ Getty

This piece was published originally by Capital & Main. You can read their full series on the struggle for farmworker health care in California, Ill Harvest, here.

Carmen Hernandez lives in a small home on Chateau Fresno Avenue, one of the three streets that make up Lanare, a tiny unincorporated settlement in the San Joaquin Valley. The street’s name sounds more appropriate to an upscale housing development. In reality it is a potholed tarmac lane leading into the countryside from the highway.

In Lanare live the descendants of its original African American founders, excluded by racial covenants from renting or buying homes in surrounding cities. Here they rub shoulders with their Mexican neighbors — the farmworkers who make up the valley’s agricultural workforce.

Hernandez’s house sits behind a white-painted fence of bricks and wrought iron, and a neat lawn dotted with a few small trees. On the other side of the road are the pistachio trees that make her home almost uninhabitable four times each year.

Just before the nuts are harvested in September, a tractor drags a tank with long arms down the rows, spraying a thick fog of pesticide into the trees. Quickly the chemical travels across the dozen yards between the orchard and Hernandez’s house. During other times of the year, the spray rig lays down weed killer, or a chemical that causes leaves to drop from the branches after harvest. Fertilizer is another evil-smelling chemical the neighbors have to contend with. The families on Chateau Fresno don’t let their kids play outside much anyway, but when the spray is in the air, they make sure to keep them inside.

One might ask, why did Hernandez build a house across the street from such dangers? She didn’t. When Self-Help Enterprises helped Lanare’s low-income families to build homes they’d never otherwise have been able to afford, the field across the street grew cotton or wheat. Those crops also use a lot of chemicals in California’s industrial agriculture system, but when pistachio trees were planted eight years ago, the contamination grew by an order of magnitude.

“Why did the state or county let them do this?” Hernandez asks. “They don’t even put up notices to warn us.” She’s asked the tractor driver what the chemicals are, but he doesn’t know. “He doesn’t even know the name of the owner of the orchard. He’s just hired by a labor contractor.”

For farmworkers, Hernandez’s predicament is familiar. PolicyLink’s 2013 study “California Unincorporated: Mapping Disadvantaged Communities in the San Joaquin Valley” found that over 300,000 people live in small, unincorporated communities spread across rural valleys where California’s agricultural wealth is produced. For them, living in a town like Lanare is a double threat to their health. Farm laborers work and live in a chemical soup, a source of interrelated health problems. And because their homes are in remote rural areas, getting adequate health care creates additional obstacles.

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These unincorporated towns, however, are also often organized communities. Grassroots groups deal with the social determinants of health, from air pollution to water scarcity and contamination. Their experience gave them a head start when the pandemic hit. They were often better able to respond to the needs of farmworkers than the government or large health care institutions.

Living in the Chemical Soup

According to the Environmental Protection Agency, the San Joaquin Valley has some of the worst air quality in the United States. One study in BioMed Research International found “Seasonal agricultural workers are exposed to the worst conditions of working groups” and called asthma “an important health problem among seasonal agricultural workers.”

Children living in this environment suffer asthma as well. In the Imperial Valley, one of the poorest counties in California, 12,000 children have asthma, and go to the emergency room for it at twice the rate of the other kids in the state. Residents of that valley’s unincorporated communities, like Seeley and Heber, live in the same proximity to the fields as Carmen Hernandez does in Lanare.

The relationship between illness and chemical contamination is often hard to pin down. Nevertheless, the connection to living in small towns where pesticides, fertilizers and dust are in the air and water seems obvious to many residents.

Rosario Reyes and Wilfredo Navares lived their married lives in Poplar, another small community in the southern San Joaquin Valley surrounded by orchards and grape vineyards. She remembers that when her husband’s doctor told him that he had amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, commonly known as ALS or Lou Gehrig’s disease, the first question she asked was whether he worked in the fields.

“He believed it came from the chemicals he was exposed to during his 31 years as a farmworker,” Reyes says. “He worked with weed killers like Roundup, and there wasn’t much known about it then. He knew the dangers in general, but he had to earn a living. Before he got ALS he never really got any health care.”

As his incurable disease progressed, Navares gradually lost the ability to control the muscles responsible for walking, talking and eating. For two years Reyes couldn’t work. “I had to bathe and dress him like a baby,” she says. At the end, before Navares died, Medi-Cal covered his medical visits. “But with or without it, he would have died just the same.”

Reyes has asthma and diabetes, and got COVID-19 last year. She’s 59, the age when people begin to think of retiring. But Reyes had to go back to work, even though it will likely prejudice her health. “I don’t have papers,” she explains. “Even though we were married, they won’t give me his Social Security.”

How Many, and How Unequal?

Farmworkers looking for environmental solutions and better health care first confront a major problem. The state doesn’t really know how many people make their living from agricultural labor in California.

According to researcher Ed Kissam, “population estimates in the American Community Survey that determine the allocation of federal and state funding for more than 300 programs are very low.” The ACS, he added, is a long survey that only one-third of the households in farmworker communities answer. While Kissam said it shows about 350,000 agricultural workers in California, Zachariah Rutledge of Michigan State University reported an annual average of 882,000 California farmworkers between 2018 and 2021. About 550,000 are field workers or processing and packing-shed workers, according to Kissam’s estimate. “This is the low-income, predominantly immigrant, often undocumented Latino population facing barriers to accessing health care,” says Kissam.

Kissam points out that the rural agricultural workforce is very diverse in terms of income and immigration status. “About 300,000 work in the San Joaquin Valley alone,” he says, “and live with another 350,000 family members. Most are long-term settled immigrants, in low-income households that include undocumented immigrants. Their eligibility is compromised for a broad range of social programs because they’re conditioned on immigration status. Almost a quarter of legally authorized farmworkers interviewed in the National Agricultural Workers Survey in California lacked health insurance and almost two-thirds of undocumented farmworkers lacked it.”

A study by Kissam in September 2020 showed that COVID-19 cases in 25 farmworker communities overall were about 2.5 times higher than the state average.

Farmworker communities were particularly vulnerable to COVID-19 when the pandemic started, at a much greater rate than people living in urban areas. By August 2020 Tulare County’s COVID-19 infection rate (1.96% of the population infected) was much greater, per capita, than that of large cities like San Francisco or Sacramento.

The per capita income of a county resident was $22,092 in 2020, compared to a U.S. average of $35,384. In unincorporated towns like Poplar and Lanare, poverty forces people to live closer together to share rent and living costs, making social distancing difficult. “The strategy of ‘doubling up’ to afford a place to live is ubiquitous in farmworker communities throughout the San Joaquin Valley,” Kissam says. Traveling to and from the fields in crowded cars or buses also places workers in close proximity.

People go to work because they can’t afford not to go. A day without pay can be difficult; a week could be ruinous. “Undocumented farmworkers with mild cases of COVID-19 are also reluctant to self-isolate,” Kissam adds, “because they’re ineligible for both unemployment insurance and CARES Act–funded pandemic assistance. In addition, people worry about the government using personal information for immigrant enforcement.” As a result, Dr. Alicia Riley reported that deaths of people employed in agriculture were about 1.6 times the average in 2020.


The Pandemic Comes to Lanare

In Lanare, the pandemic arrived after years of a crisis affecting the community’s water. The water under Lanare contains arsenic, which occurs naturally in the San Joaquin Valley’s arid, alkaline soil. When residents dug wells, Sam White remembers, county authorities minimized the danger. “We’d complain and they’d tell us to boil the water. They say arsenic cuts your life span by two years,” he says. Indeed, arsenic exposures can cause rashes and even in small doses have been linked to Alzheimer’s. “My mother had all that.”

Connie and Charlie Hammond live in a small house next to the highway. “My mom had a lot of illnesses that I think were connected to arsenic. We’d have to take her to Fresno [28 miles away], although at the end she went to a clinic in Riverdale [4 miles away] before she died.”

Eventually a water treatment plant was built to remove the arsenic, but it only ran for a few months before the local water company went broke. Nearly 40% of Lanare’s residents live below the poverty line and could not pay the bills. They organized Community United in Lanare and finally got the state to step in and dig new wells. After a year, the water was declared free of arsenic, but it smells and leaves a residue on sinks and toilets. Residents say no one will drink it.

Meanwhile the water table keeps dropping. The Hammonds, who moved across the highway a few years ago, had their well go dry. “Our neighbor ran out first, and we helped them. Then ours ran out a month ago,” Connie Hammond says. “Having water would certainly make our health better. We’re fortunate to have kids who bring us water, but not having it causes a lot of stress, especially for seniors like us.”

While fighting for water, Lanare faced the onset of the pandemic and hunger among residents isolated in their homes. Community United in Lanare was already distributing food several times a month when the lockdown began. “We were handing out food to 150 families,” Lanare food bank volunteer Isabel Solorio recalls, “and the number doubled and kept growing. The stores were empty. In Raisin City and Laton [other unincorporated communities], they were afraid and stopped their distributions. We didn’t.”

Due to a shortage in protective equipment, Solorio and other women sewed their own masks. “A hundred people got the virus here and three died,” she says. Community United in Lanare asked the Leadership Counsel for Justice and Accountability in Fresno for help because the county was unable to provide adequate testing or vaccinations, says Solorio. They used their relationships with health authorities and elected officials, she adds, to get the state to set up a mobile testing and vaccination station.

“We asked for priority — farmworkers first,” she recalls. “Four or five hundred came the first day. You could tell by their boots they were coming from the fields. We were the first people to give vaccinations, before the local clinics, and we were distributing food at the same time. Since then we must have tested and vaccinated thousands of people.”

Poplar’s Organizing Project

In the summer Poplar is the center of the valley’s oppressive heat, where the temperature soars to over 110 degrees. Almost none of its homes have air conditioning, and swamp coolers, used to chill off, also produce mold. The resulting respiratory problems are complicated by the almond harvest. “There’s dust over everything and in everyone’s lungs,” says Arturo Rodriguez, co-director of the Larry Itliong Resource Center. “It’s hard just to breathe.”

Rodriguez and co-director Mari Perez-Ruiz opened the center on June 15, 2020, and by June 19 they started food distributions. When they had problems getting food from the local food bank, they convinced a county supervisor to give them two pallets of groceries every week from the food he had available.

When the pandemic started, several residents died. “Often three generations live in small houses or trailers where there’s no space to quarantine,” Rodriguez says. “Our harvest season used to last nine months, and now, with growers bringing in more H-2A workers, people living here get only four months of work. Local farmworkers feared not having enough work to feed their families, so they went to work even when they were sick. Often several family members work in the same crew, and they were afraid to report anything to the boss, because then everyone in the family would have to stay home.”

The center got some computers donated and built booths where people could go online to get telehealth advice. “When the pandemic began, the service providers closed. We stayed open,” Perez-Ruiz says. “We were one of the first to provide free testing. We coordinated with Tulare County to do free events, and gave out PPE [personal protective equipment] and clothing with food. We had to push, so we were a little loud. But our first event had 600 families.”

In January 2021 the vaccines came. The center became a site, and has vaccinated over 5,000 people in total, providing test kits and shots at the same time. “We’re an organizing project, and our campaigns are led by the community,” Perez-Ruiz says. “The county spent a hundred thousand dollars, and we only spent a few hundred, but we vaccinated more people.”

Poor But Organized

Unincorporated communities may be poor, but they’re often organized. Those organizations fighting for basic social services like water before the pandemic became vehicles for fighting the virus. The residents and activists involved see a lesson for improving community access to health care generally.

“In Poplar, just to make a doctor’s visit to a clinic in Porterville [12 miles away] you have to give up your whole day,” Rodriguez says. “That’s why Picho [his uncle Wilfredo Navarez] never went. And if the husband has to use the car to get to work, [the wife] and kids can’t go.”

The Larry Itliong Resource Center partnered with Dr. Omar Guzman, a physician who grew up in Woodville, a nearby community, where he returned to practice after medical school. Every month he comes to the center, bringing medical students, in a mobile clinic called Street Medicine. He organizes screenings, brings in mental health professionals and visits encampments of unhoused people on the Tule River. His young colleagues even drive into Visalia, 30 miles away, to pick up baby formula. At the end of clinic day, they gather in the center to talk about the needs of rural communities.

“People I grew up with haven’t seen a doctor in a very long time,” Rodriguez says. “Health care in our communities isn’t proactive. People don’t get regular checkups — [they] just go when there’s an emergency. The infrastructure of healthcare has failed them. So this is a way to change.”

Ed Kissam believes that the model for health care serving small farmworker communities has to be community based. “Community centers are established, widely trusted resources for farmworker families,” he explains. “County/clinic partnerships are very useful in reducing language and access barriers that keep some people, including farmworkers, from being tested and treated.”

He argues for a critical assessment of the pandemic’s lessons. “The system was slower in expanding to outlying farmworker communities than in setting up testing sites in urban areas,” he cautions. “Structural factors and social determinants of health have been the primary factors in the virus’ spread. If we look at the real-world dynamics of life in farmworker communities, and respond thoughtfully and innovatively, we can overcome many barriers.”

In Lanare, Isabel Solorio would like to see mobile testing and vaccination clinics become a way to give farmworker families much broader access to care. “We need a clinic bus with all the equipment for everything from mammograms to dentists and optometrists. Our kids are ashamed to say they can’t see in school because they know their parents don’t have money for glasses, so everything is blurry and they fall behind. Why can’t they get free ones here in Lanare and stay in school? And if people can control their asthma with a mobile clinic here, isn’t that a lower cost for the government than ambulances and visits to the emergency room? So the clinic should come to the people instead of people coming to the clinic.”

But service by itself is not enough, she believes. “Why was Lanare prepared when the county wasn’t? When the water stopped, who came to help us? We helped ourselves by learning to organize. That showed us we can change other things too. We pay taxes, and we have a right to survive.”

REVISIONIST HISTORY
Antietam: The Deadliest One-Day Battle In U.S. History
ByChristian Orr

Civil War Era Cannon Firing. Image Credit: Creative Commons.

As my fellow American Civil War buffs undoubtedly already know, this year marked the 160th anniversary of the Battle of Antietam, or as Southrons prefer to call it, the Battle of Sharpsburg.

The September 17, 1862 engagement was the deadliest one-day battle in American military history. Indeed, freelance journalist and author Ronald H. Bailey chose The Bloodiest Day as the title of his excellent 1984 book on the subject; the book, part of the Time-Life Books series on the Civil War, was my own introduction to Antietam, back at the tender age of 10.

A mere 1,000-word article can’t do justice to a full-scale analysis of this battle, so I’ll keep this piece focused on two aspects: (1) some outside-the-box viewpoints on Union Army Maj. Gen. George Brinton McClellan’s performance during the battle, and (2) the heroism of the famed Irish Brigade.
Some Contrarian Views on Gen. McClellan

Civil War buffs already know the prevailing conventional wisdom about Antietam: it was Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee’s first attempt to take the war to Northern soil – specifically the state of Maryland – whilst Gen. McClellan had a grand opportunity to not only halt Lee’s invasion but to indeed destroy the Army of Northern Virginia for good, thanks to the fortuitous discovery by two of “Little Mac’s” soldiers of a mislaid copy of Lee’s detailed battle plans – Special Order 191 – wrapped around three cigars.

After intense fighting and horrendous casualties on both sides, the battle ended in a tactical stalemate but a strategic victory for the North; yet this victory was incomplete because McClellan was timid and plagued with “the slows” and therefore failed to finish off Lee, which prompted a frustrated Abraham Lincoln to cashier McClellan in favor of Maj. Gen. Ambrose Burnside (whose own enduring legacy was the inspiration for the creation of the term “sideburns”); the dual silver lining behind the cloud of this incomplete Union victory was (1) enabling Lincoln to issue the Emancipation Proclamation and therefore claim the moral high ground in the war and (2) forestalling British and French diplomatic recognition of Confederate independence.

But some scholarly experts dare to offer some contrarian viewpoints on “Little Mac” and his conduct in the battle. My friend Justin Mayhue, retired battalion chief of the Hagerstown (Maryland) Fire Department, is now a superb battlefield tour guide for both Antietam and Harper’s Ferry. (I’ve taken Justin’s Antietam tour, and he is simply excellent; I can’t recommend him highly enough!) Here’s Justin’s perspective on the much-maligned Union general:

“At Antietam, McClellan was the aggressor. Critics claim he overestimated the enemy strength. If that is the case then he was attacking an enemy he thought outnumbered himself. Critics want to call the battle a draw. However, Lee left overnight of the 18th and crossed the Potomac just like at Gettysburg. Everything he had hoped to gain he lost. Antietam, just like Gettysburg, are [sic] Union victories.”

Chief Mayhue’s sentiments were shared by the late Prof. Joseph L. Harsh in his 1999 book Taken at the Flood: Robert E. Lee and Confederate Strategy in the Maryland Campaign of 1862. Yet another staunch defense of “Young Napoleon” comes from Gene Thorp, former graphics editor for The Washington Post, who wrote in 2012:

“This narrow victory changed the course of the war … Yet history has not been kind to McClellan … Contrary to what most of the literature will tell you, McClellan was not a hesitant fool. He did his best under challenging conditions … The army he drove back was not much smaller than his own. He did it without proper cavalry support, with his superiors hoping to oust him and with a significant portion of his army untrained. And as it turns out, he inflicted more damage on Lee’s army than anyone suspected.”

Regarding that last sentence about “more damage,” if one were to look at Antietam’s grim casualty figures as a morbid “scoreboard,” one might deem the battle to be a tactical victory for the South: Federal losses amounted to 2,108 killed, 9,549 wounded, and 753 missing, for a total of 12,410; Confederate losses were 1,546 killed, 7,752 wounded, and 1,018 missing, for a tally of 10,316.

However, proportionately speaking, the South suffered far worse, as Lee lost one-fourth of his beloved Army of Northern Virginia, and his officer corps was decimated. In particular, the 226-man 1st Texas suffered a casualty rate of 82.3 percent, the highest percentage lost in the battle of any regiment during the entire war. There was a damn good reason that Lee chose to retreat.

 
The Irish Brigade

Going back to Mr. Mayhue’s amazing Antietam battlefield tour, my personal favorite part of the tour – admittedly due to my own proud Celtic ancestry – is the monument to the Irish Brigade, commanded by the hardy Brig. Gen. Thomas Meagher, a former Irish freedom fighter. While the Irish Brigade fought in every major campaign of the Army of the Potomac, it was at Antietam that the outfit truly immortalized itself. As described by the National Park Service info page:

“As it formed at the edge of a cornfield Father William Corby, Chaplain rode along the line, giving absolution to the soldiers. The 69th New York occupied the right then the 29th Massachusetts, the 63rd and 88th New York crossing the cornfield, the command encountered a rail fence which was torn down under severe fire an opposing Confederate column advanced within 300 paces of the brigade. After several volleys, the Irish Brigade charged with fixed bayonets. At 30 paces it poured buck and ball into General George B. Anderson’s Brigade (2nd, 4th, 14th and 30th North Carolina Infantry Regiments) which fell back to ‘Bloody Lane.’ After fierce combat its ammunition exhausted the Irish Brigade was relieved.”

Methinks it fitting to conclude this article with the Irish Brigade’s battle cry: “Faugh a Ballagh (Clear The Way)!”



Image: Creative Commons from U.S. Civil War.


WRITTEN BY Christian Orr
Expert Biography: Christian D. Orr is a former Air Force Security Forces officer, Federal law enforcement officer, and private military contractor (with assignments worked in Iraq, the United Arab Emirates, Kosovo, Japan, Germany, and the Pentagon). Chris holds a B.A. in International Relations from the University of Southern California (USC) and an M.A. in Intelligence Studies (concentration in Terrorism Studies) from American Military University (AMU). He has also been published in The Daily Torch and The Journal of Intelligence and Cyber Security. Last but not least, he is a Companion of the Order of the Naval Order of the United States (NOUS). In his spare time, he enjoys shooting, dining out, cigars, Irish and British pubs, travel, USC Trojans college football, and Washington DC professional sports.

Plastics recycling doesn’t work, despite industry myths, former EPA official says

Daniel Villarreal, New Civil Rights Movement
December 31, 2022

Plastic Bottles (AFP)

"Plastic recycling does not work and will never work," wrote former EPA regional administrator Judith Enck and chemical engineer Jan Dell in a recent Atlantic article.

The writers note that the U.S. recycling rate for post-consumer plastic waste in 2021 was about 5 percent, and that past recycling rates have included plastic waste that was shipped to China and mostly left un-recycled.

Compare this with the U.S.’s high recycling rate of paper, 68 percent, and the problem becomes clear.

The difficulty of plastics recycling has to do with the material itself, the authors write.

"There are thousands of different plastics, each with its own composition and characteristics," they write. "They all include different chemical additives and colorants that cannot be recycled together, making it impossible to sort the trillions of pieces of plastics into separate types for processing."

"Collecting, sorting, transporting, and reprocessing plastic waste is exorbitantly expensive," the authors write.

A single fast-food meal can contain many different types of plastics being used in various bags, cups, lids, containers, and cutlery, all of which can't be recycled together.

Plastics can also contain or absorb toxins that are either unsafe for recycling into food-grade packaging or that are released into the atmosphere when burned, harming nearby ecosystems and communities.

Despite all this, the plastic industry has perpetuated the "myth" that plastics are recyclable, the authors write, in order to continue selling the material without having to take accountability for the waste it creates.

The authors suggest that communities pass legislation to reduce the use of single-use plastics, preferring reusable bottles and food ware in order to reduce waste.

"And we should all keep recycling our paper, boxes, cans, and glass, because that actually works," the authors added.

Farewell To The Senate’s Biggest Climate Denier

Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-Okla.) leaves behind a legacy of climate disinformation, and a small army of pro-industry contrarians.

By Chris D'Angelo
Dec 31, 2022, 

Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-Okla.), one of Congress' staunchest climate change deniers, is set to retire Jan. 3 after 28 years in the U.S. Senate.
JOSHUA ROBERTS VIA REUTERS

Search for Jim Inhofe on Google, and you’ll immediately see pictures of the Republican senator from Oklahoma proudly holding a snowball on the floor of the U.S. Senate.

Inhofe’s career in elected office spans nearly six decades, but the snowball is perhaps his most famous stunt — one of pure, unabashed climate idiocy that will follow him long after he vacates his senate seat.

Inhofe, 87, will retire in early January after nearly three decades in the Senate. He leaves behind a legacy of climate denial that might be laughable if it weren’t so embarrassing and dangerous. There are few members of Congress who have done more to sow public doubt about the mounting, deadly impacts of fossil fuel-driven planetary warming, or to block policies and regulations meant to confront the threat.

It was late February 2015 and snow had blanketed Washington, D.C. Speaking on the Senate floor, Inhofe produced a snowball from a plastic bag — proof, he argued, that global warming is not real.

“We keep hearing that 2014 has been the warmest year on record,” he said, gripping the softball-sized chunk of frozen water. “You know what this is? It’s a snowball, that’s just from outside here. So it’s very, very cold out. Very unseasonal.”

“Here Mr. President, catch this,” Inhofe said, tossing it to the sitting Senate president. The senator spent the next 20 minutes doing what he’s done his entire career: peddling the sort of climate disinformation that would make his fossil fuel industry donors blush.

Inhofe’s views go far beyond skepticism about the magnitude of the global threat. He’s dismissed global warming as “the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people” and called for climate scientists to be criminally prosecuted. He’s accused the Environmental Protection Agency of “brainwashing our kids” with “propaganda” about climate change. And he’s characterized carbon dioxide — the main driver of planetary warming — as nothing more than “a form of fertilizer to grow things.”

In his 2012 book about climate change, titled The Greatest Hoax, he wrote, “[T]his is what a lot of alarmists forget: God is still up there, and He promised to maintain the seasons and that cold and heat would never cease as long as the earth remains.” As the longtime former chairman of the powerful Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, he made a habit of calling the most prominent climate contrarians as expert witnesses.

Inhofe continued to shamelessly carry the torch even after many fossil fuel interests began to distance themselves from outright climate denial.

“There is no proof that President Biden’s climate fantasy is real,” he said in a video posted to Twitter in July.



For his efforts, the oil and gas industry rewarded Inhofe mightily. Over his long career in Congress, first in the House and then the Senate, oil and gas interests donated a whopping $2.32 million — more than any other industry, according to data compiled by OpenSecrets.com. Only eight members of Congress have received more fossil fuel money.

Like other seasoned deniers, Inhofe is a master cherry picker. When convenient, he conflates weather and climate to make his argument — the snowball stunt being a prime example. He parrots the favorite climate denier talking point that “the climate is constantly changing,” ignoring an undeniable mountain of research about the cause and speed of the current crisis. And he casts aside the work of reputable climate scientists around the globe while spotlighting an increasingly fringe group of contrarian scientists.

Inhofe has been described as “the original climate-denier in chief” and “one of the world’s most vociferous climate skeptics.”

In his farewell speech last month, Inhofe touted his efforts to chip away at climate action and environmental protections.

“It’s no shock to anyone that The Washington Post has dubbed me public enemy No. 1 for the radical environmentalists for decades now,” he boasted. “For much of my time in the Senate, I was the chair and ranking member of the Environment and Public Works Committee. Throughout that time, I pushed back against the Obama administration’s far-left policies that sought to upend the lives of Oklahomans, like the Paris Climate Agreement, the Waters of the U.S. Rule, the Clean Power Plan, and many others.”

“These policies were really about giving Washington bureaucrats sweeping control over the lives of millions of Americans,” he said. “We are debating a lot of these same issues today, and I expect these disagreements will continue long into the future.”

Climate change is a long settled scientific fact. But thanks in no small part to Inhofe, Americans will be forced to continue sifting through a mountain of climate misinformation and disinformation.

Inhofe’s legacy includes churning out a small army of like-minded skeptics and industry allies. E&E News identified at least 30 former Inhofe staffers now working in powerful positions in energy and environment — alumni that the publication wrote “stand to continue dominating right-wing environmental spaces for years.” These include Andrew Wheeler, the Trump-era EPA chief and current top environmental adviser to Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin (R); Marc Morano, the founder and executive director of climate denial website Climate Depot; and Mandy Gunasekara, a former Trump EPA official and current candidate for Mississippi’s Public Service Commission.

“I want to take a second to say thank you to all of my current and former staff. They are hanging around out here now,” Inhofe said during his farewell address. “I lovingly call my former staff the ‘has-beens.’ It is somewhat of a mark of honor. To all of you, thank you, you’re all about to be has-beens.”

State Papers: US senator Jesse Helms wanted Sinn Féin branded a terrorist organisation if ceasefire broke down

Senator Jesse Helms with U2 front man Bono in 2005

December 31 2022 

Firebrand US Senator Jesse Helms demanded that President Bill Clinton designate both the IRA and Sinn Féin as terrorist organisations if the renewed IRA ceasefire was ever broken.

The demand by the conservative North Carolina senator came after “a less than helpful” security briefing from the US Embassy in London.

The revelation came in secret documents released as part of the State Archive.

A confidential note from the Irish Embassy in Washington, dated October 21 1997, briefed Department of Foreign Affairs officials in Dublin on a letter sent by Sen Helms to President Clinton.

As the Northern Ireland peace process neared a highly sensitive time with the IRA confirming a renewed ceasefire on July 20 1997, the letter was viewed with some concern by Irish diplomats.

“You will note that the senator draws heavily on a security status report received from the US Embassy in London,” it advised.

“The document states that the threat level in London ‘stems from bombings in the UK attributed to the Provisional IRA. The report is quoted as as suggesting that, despite the ceasefire, ‘the danger.... of injury by being in the vicinity of a bombing remains a risk’.”

Irish diplomats noted that the security briefing from the US Embassy in London came as part of a routine request.

“Larry Butler of the NSC confirmed that it is standard practice for US Embassies to provide such security reports on overseas locations in response to requests from Congressional committees.

“He (Butler) was not aware of the Helms letter when I mentioned it, but was inclined to regard the material from the US Embassy in London as standard output from the security and protection side of the Embassy.

“It will be recalled that there have been occasions in the past when the Embassy’s interventions have been less than helpful.

“It was at least ironic that this (sloppy formulation) was now being used as a stick with which to beat the administration’s own carefully thought through position.”

Irish officials noted that Sen Helms’ key demand was that President Clinton give an assurance that if the IRA ceasefire was broken in future, both the PIRA and Sinn Féin would be designated as terrorist organisations by the US.

Sen Helms was one of the most conservative of Republican senators and adopted far-right positions on civil rights, environmentalism, disability rights, abortion, gay rights and Latin America.

He retired in 2003 as the longest-serving senator in North Carolina history and is credited as one of those most responsible for the resurgent conservatism across the US.

Xi Jinping suggests dissent is OK, while internet videos are removed from Weibo

By Nick Squires
January 1, 2023 — 

Xi Jinping suggested it was acceptable for citizens to disagree with China’s government in his first public remarks since protests prompted a U-turn on Beijing’s zero-COVID policies.


Chinese President Xi Jinping delivers a New Year address in Beijing, on Saturday, December 31. AP

In his televised New Year’s address, China’s president called for unity as the battle against the pandemic entered a “new phase”.

He praised healthcare workers for “bravely sticking to their posts” and said the government had “adapted” its COVID response while following the science.

Beijing lifted swaths of coronavirus restrictions three weeks ago after anti-lockdown protests in major cities.

“Everyone is holding on with great fortitude,” Xi said, “and the light of hope is right in front of us.”

As he called for unity, the 69-year-old appeared to endorse divergent views on major policy issues. “Ours is a big country,” he said. “It is only natural for different people to have different concerns or hold different views on the same issue.”


Chinese President Xi Jinping and Russian President Vladimir Putin (left) appear on screen during a meeting via video link in Beijing on Friday, December 30. AP

The remarks contrasted with Beijing’s censorship of online criticism of the government’s COVID response.

Yesterday, a popular video highlighting the difficulties facing ordinary people during lockdowns was removed from social networking site Weibo.

The public has also been blocked from sharing videos related to the wave of new infections.

Clips of long lines outside funeral homes, overwhelmed ICUs and patients being treated on the road outside hospitals have fuelled global concern.

International experts are sceptical of the official data – on Friday, for instance, China reported just one COVID death.

British-based health data firm Airfinity said on Thursday about 9000 people in China were probably dying each day from the virus. Cumulative deaths since December 1 have likely reached 100,000, with infections totalling 18.6 million, it said.

Xi largely avoided addressing the other major problems facing China, including a slowing economy, unemployment and tensions with the US.

However, he alluded to the war in Ukraine by saying “the world is not at peace”.

On Friday, Xi held a virtual meeting with Russia’s President Vladimir Putin, in which he was quoted as describing the Ukraine war as a “crisis”.

Animal Farm, by George Orwell

https://archive.org › download › Animal Farm by ...

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by G Orwell · Cited by 2928 — Rumours of a wonderful farm, where the human beings had been turned out and the animals managed their own affairs, continued to circulate in vague and distorted ...

108 pages

Tamil Civil Society demands release of Tamil Political Prisoners before Sri Lanka's Independence Day

Tamil Civil Society demands release of Tamil Political Prisoners before Sri Lanka's Independence Day

 30 December 2022

Speaking before a media conference in Jaffna, the organiser of the Voice of the Voiceless, M. Komagan, has demanded to release of all Tamil political prisoners before Sri Lanka's independence day on 4 February 2023.

Despite the armed conflict ending over a decade ago, Tamil political prisoners have not been able to integrate into society and as a result, this has barred reconciliation. An immediate first step towards this goal would be the release of 32 Tamil political prisoners.

Komagan noted that whilst the Tamil representative had initially raised the issue of political prisoners, there is concern that this focus has waned. Komagan demands that Tamil political representatives uphold this cause.

He further notes that whilst the case of 19 prisoners are pending in court, there is an expectation for the release of more under a presidential pardon. This follows a statement from the Tamil National Alliance which maintains that an agreement on the release of land and political prisoners has been secured.

Read more here: An agreement to release land and Tamil political prisoners - MA Sumanthiran