Gov. Sarah Huckabee- Sanders' Latinx Ban wades into community's generational rift


Sarah Huckabee Sanders Latinx Ban

This image provided by Makhi Brasfield, shows Angel Castillo Reyes. Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders is tapping into a debate that's sharply divided Latinos with her decision to ban most state agencies from using the gender neutral term Latinx. Sanders this month signed an order banning the term by agencies. It was one of her first acts as governor.

 (Makhi Brasfield via AP


ANDREW DeMILLO and CLAIRE SAVAGE
Sun, January 22, 2023 

LITTLE ROCK, Ark. (AP) — One of Sarah Huckabee Sanders' first acts as Arkansas governor was to ban most state agencies from using the gender-neutral term Latinx, tapping into a debate that's divided Hispanics along generational lines.

Sanders called the word “culturally insensitive” in an order that's prompted complaints from some critics who view it as yet another attack by Republicans on the LGBTQ community. Yet her move may have limited impact, given that the word does not appear to be widely used in Arkansas government.

It was among several orders the 40-year-old former White House press secretary signed within hours of taking office office that were cheered by conservatives, including restrictions on teaching critical race theory in public schools and banning TikTok on state devices. The Latinx prohibition gives agencies 60 days to revise written materials to comply.

“One of the things as governor that I will not permit is the government using culturally insensitive words," Sanders said as she signed the order.

Sanders' order adds to the debate over a word that's found little widespread support among Latinos and even prompted backlash from some Democrats. It comes as Republicans have sought to rally around culture war issues. They also are seeking to make inroads with Latino voters, but fell short of the major shifts some in the party were hoping for in last year’s elections.

The term Latinx was coined in recent years as a gender-neutral alternative to Latino and Latina, since all nouns in the Spanish language are gendered. Many in the LGBTQ Latino community have embraced the word, but it has been slow to catch on more widely, with some Latino figures calling the term unnecessary.

The League of United Latin American Citizens, the oldest Latino civil rights group in the U.S., announced in 2021 that it would no longer use the term Latinx. The group declined to comment on Sanders' order.

Democratic U.S. Rep. Ruben Gallego from Arizona also said that year his staff was not allowed to use the term in official communications.

“When Latino politicos use the term it is largely to appease white rich progressives who think that is the term we use," Gallego tweeted in 2021.

The Log Cabin Republicans, which represents LGBT members of the party, praised Sanders' order.

“The term Latinx is just another misguided product of the modern left’s relentless obsession with stripping gender from American life, an obsession that LGBT conservatives fight back against daily," Charles Moran, the group's president, said in a statement.

Sanders' order doesn’t apply to the state’s institutes of higher education or other state agencies considered constitutionally independent, such as the Arkansas Department of Transportation. It also allows the governor to grant exemptions for the word’s use.

Several state agencies said they were reviewing their forms to make sure they would comply. Health Department spokeswoman Meg Mirivel said two jobs that had been unofficially called the Latinx public information coordinator and the Latinx outreach coordinator will continue to work with the Latino community but will no longer include Latinx in their titles.

Sanders isn't the first governor to ban or restrict the use of certain words. Democratic Gov. Kathy Hochul last year signed a bill in New York removing from state education law the word “incorrigible," a term that critics had called sexist and racist.

In 2015, then-Florida Gov. Rick Scott was criticized after former officials said they were instructed to not use the terms “climate change” and “global warming." Scott, a Republican who now serves in the Senate, denied he banned the terms.

Critics of Sanders' order have said that just because the term isn't universal among Spanish speakers, that doesn't mean it's insensitive to use.

“Language is constantly evolving,” said Manuel Hernandez, head of the Latino LGBTQ group Association of Latinos/as/xs Motivating Action. “We don’t speak Old English. I’ve never met someone who says ‘thy.’”

Hernandez called Sanders' order “an attempt to erase" the LGBTQ Latino community.

Sanders signed the order the day after Arkansas lawmakers kicked off a session that's already included newly proposed restrictions on the LGBTQ community. One bill would classify drag shows as adult-oriented businesses, and another would ban transgender people from using bathrooms at K-12 schools that align with their gender identity.

Sanders has also said she would support legislation similar to Florida's law that forbids instruction on sexual orientation and gender identity in kindergarten through third grade. Critics have dubbed it the “Don't Say Gay” law.

Sanders’ executive order banning Latinx cites a 2020 report from Pew Research Center, which found that 1 in 4 U.S. Hispanics have heard the term “Latinx,” but just 3% use it.

Age is an important factor. Hispanics ages 18-29 are six times more likely than older generations to have heard of the term — 42% compared with 7% of those ages 65 or older, Pew found.

Its popularity has risen since 2016, but remains below Latina, Latino and Hispanic, according to the report.

“If you’re trying to categorize a community with the term that they seemingly are rejecting or in some cases are even openly hostile against, it makes sense that that term would in essence, go the way of the dodo, which Latinx seems to have done," said Fernand Amandi, president of Bendixen & Amandi, a multilingual public opinion research firm.

Among those using the term is Angel Castillo Reyes, a 21-year-old nonbinary student at the University of Arkansas who uses the pronouns they/them. Castillo Reyes uses both Latinx and “Latine," another gender-neutral term that's been used by some in the Latino community to describe their ethnic identity.

“I appreciate those terms because I know it doesn’t come from a sense of wanting to divide," Castillo Reyes said. “It comes from the sense of wanting to unite."

Conversations with older Latino people about gender neutrality can be difficult, Castillo Reyes said. Their parents, who are evangelical Pentecostal Christians, find the terms “ridiculous.”

Castillo Reyes criticized Sanders' order as unnecessary, but said they think it will offer an opportunity to discuss the need for gender-neutral terms with a wider community.

“Now that I know Spanish can be used in a way that is inclusive, it’s like, ‘Wow, I never thought this was possible,’” they said.

___

Savage reported from Chicago and is a corps member for the Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on undercovered issues.

NEXT; BIBLE BURNING!

Protests in Stockholm, including Koran-burning, draw strong condemnation from Turkey

Sat, January 21, 2023 

STOCKHOLM (Reuters) -Protests in Stockholm on Saturday against Turkey and Sweden's bid to join NATO, including the burning of a copy of the Koran, sharply heightened tensions with Turkey at a time when the Nordic country needs Ankara's backing to gain entry to the military alliance.

"We condemn in the strongest possible terms the vile attack on our holy book ... Permitting this anti-Islam act, which targets Muslims and insults our sacred values, under the guise of freedom of expression is completely unacceptable," the Turkish Foreign Ministry said.

Its statement was issued after an anti-immigrant politician from the far-right fringe burned a copy of the Koran near the Turkish Embassy. The Turkish ministry urged Sweden to take necessary actions against the perpetrators and invited all countries to take concrete steps against Islamophobia.

A separate protest took place in the city supporting Kurds and against Sweden's bid to join NATO. A group of pro-Turkish demonstrators also held a rally outside the embassy. All three events had police permits.

Swedish Foreign Minister Tobias Billstrom said that Islamophobic provocations were appalling.

"Sweden has a far-reaching freedom of expression, but it does not imply that the Swedish Government, or myself, support the opinions expressed," Billstrom said on Twitter.

The Koran-burning was carried out by Rasmus Paludan, leader of Danish far-right political party Hard Line. Paludan, who also has Swedish citizenship, has held a number of demonstrations in the past where he has burned the Koran.

Paludan could not immediately be reached by email for a comment. In the permit he obtained from police, it says his protest was held against Islam and what it called Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan's attempt to influence freedom of expression in Sweden.

Several Arab countries including Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Kuwait denounced the Koran-burning. "Saudi Arabia calls for spreading the values of dialogue, tolerance, and coexistence, and rejects hatred and extremism," the Saudi Foreign Ministry said in a statement.

Sweden and Finland applied last year to join NATO following Russia's invasion of Ukraine but all 30 member states must approve their bids. Turkey has said Sweden in particular must first take a clearer stance against what it sees as terrorists, mainly Kurdish militants and a group it blames for a 2016 coup attempt.

At the demonstration to protest Sweden's NATO bid and to show support for Kurds, speakers stood in front of a large red banner reading "We are all PKK", referring to the Kurdistan Workers Party that is outlawed in Turkey, Sweden, and the United States among other countries, and addressed several hundred pro-Kurdish and left-wing supporters.

"We will continue our opposition to the Swedish NATO application," Thomas Pettersson, spokesperson for Alliance Against NATO and one of organizers of the demonstration, told Reuters.

Police said the situation was calm at all three demonstrations.

In Istanbul, people in a group of around 200 protesters set fire to a Swedish flag in front of the Swedish consulate in response to the burning of the Koran.

SWEDISH MINISTER'S VISIT CANCELLED

Earlier on Saturday, Turkey said that due to lack of measures to restrict protests, it had cancelled a planned visit to Ankara by the Swedish defence minister.

Jonson said separately that he and Akar had met on Friday during a gathering of Western allies in Germany and had decided to postpone the planned meeting.

Turkish Defence Minister Hulusi Akar said he had discussed with Erdogan the lack of measures to restrict protests in Sweden against Turkey and had conveyed Ankara's reaction to Jonson on the sidelines of a meeting of the Ukraine Defence Contact Group.

"It is unacceptable not to make a move or react to these (protests). The necessary things needed to be done, measures should have been taken," Akar said, according to a statement by Turkish Defence Ministry.

Turkey's Foreign Ministry had already summoned Sweden's ambassador on Friday over the planned protests.

Finland and Sweden signed a three-way agreement with Turkey in 2022 aimed at overcoming Ankara's objections to their membership of NATO. Sweden says it has fulfilled its part of the memorandum but Turkey is demanding more, including the extradition of 130 people it deems to be terrorists.

(Reporting by Omer Berberoglu, Ezgi Erkoyun and Bulent Usta in Istanbul and Niklas Pollard and Simon Johnson in StockholmAdditional reporting by Moaz Abd-Alaziz in CairoWriting by Ezgi Erkoyun and Niklas PollardEditing by Toby Chopra and Frances Kerry)

THE ORIGINS OF ANTIFA

Vintage Chicago Tribune: In 1977, Skokie was a refuge for thousands of Holocaust survivors. Then a group of self-styled Nazis planned a march.

Ron Grossman, Chicago Tribune
Sun, January 22, 2023 

Decades after the liberation of the Auschwitz death camp on Jan. 27, 1945, revealed the magnitude of the Holocaust, an epilogue was witnessed halfway around the world.

“It has come to my attention that on May 1 there is going to be a Nazi parade held in front of the village hall,” a member of the public said at a 1977 meeting of Skokie’s village trustees. “As a Nazi survivor during the Second World War, I’d like to know what you gentlemen are going to do about it.”

By an unlikely chain of events, the fate of a Chicago suburb had been linked to that of Jews who escaped a European genocide.

Until World War II, Chicago’s North Shore was largely off limits to Jews. Property deeds provided that they were only to be sold to white Christians. But Skokie had undeveloped land that homebuilders hoped to capitalize on.

So during the pent-up housing demand of the postwar years, those developers got the word out to residents of Chicago’s Jewish neighborhoods that Skokie was open to them.

The town’s Jewish population grew exponentially. By contrast, in neighboring Evanston, subsequently to become a liberal community, Jews only got property for a synagogue with the aid of Unitarians, who quietly bought it for them.

Meanwhile, Holocaust survivors were looking for someplace to rebuild their lives. Immediately after the war, some had returned to their Polish hometowns. But that ended abruptly when more than 40 Jews were killed during a pogrom that began in Kielce and spread to other cities in 1946.

“Reports of apparently systematic attacks on Jews attributed by the government to fascist elements are received every day,” the Tribune reported in a dispatch from Warsaw. “They tell of bandits who board trains and trolley cars in suburban districts, strip and rob Jews and drag them away to be murdered.”

The U.S. wasn’t interested in taking in survivors, so they languished in displaced persons camps — some formerly Nazi concentration camps.

“We survivors had so much trouble to come to the U.S.,” recalled Erna Gans, founder of the Skokie Holocaust Memorial, in 1994. “The American authorities questioned and re-questioned us. Our concentration camp guards went through with no problem at all.”

When the neo-Nazis announced their march in Skokie, its population was about 60,000, an estimated half of whom were Jewish. Approximately 7,000 residents were thought to be Holocaust survivors. Its mayor said it was largest concentration of Hitler’s victims outside of Israel.

Howard Reich, the former Tribune music critic, recalled what attracted survivors, like his parents, to Skokie.

“In this little town, barely 10 miles square, on Chicago’s northern border, survivors could find blintzes and bialys at innumerable Jewish delis, buy kosher meats at butcher shops where everyone spoke Yiddish and stroll on High Holy Days to services at storefront shuls without fear of harassment,” Reich wrote in Moment magazine in 2010.

That landscape also appealed to Frank Collin as a way to promote his antisemitic ideology. He was the leader of a small neo-Nazi group with headquarters on the Southwest Side, and an enigma to his family. “We don’t know how or when it started,” Gertrude Hardyman, Collin’s grandmother, told the Tribune. “It’s a mystery.”

Collin’s father was a German Jew who survived the Dachau concentration camp, she explained.

Skokie’s authorities were sure of one thing about Collin: Given the village’s demographics, he and his followers shouldn’t be allowed to march in Nazi uniforms carrying flags emblazoned with the swastika that flew over Auschwitz.

Ordinances prohibiting that event were quickly enacted. Just as quickly, civil libertarians cried foul.

“As a Jew, I abhor the fuss being raised in Skokie by members of the Jewish ethnic community,” Sheldon Waxman wrote in a letter to the editor. “People should know, by now, that free speech defuses the ticking time bomb of hatred.”

The Jewish War Veterans organization said they would mount a counter demonstration. Others said that would give the neo-Nazis the publicity they were seeking. Better to stay off the streets.

“But there was a time we were told to stay at home when the Nazis marched through the streets,” Gans said. “That won’t happen again.”

In her youth, the strategy of the European Jewish leaders was to avoid confrontations with Hitler’s followers. Eventually the German people would be tired of his antics. Rule of law would be restored, and life would return to normal for Jews.

Instead, the Holocaust followed.

Illinois Gov. Jim Thompson agreed that the Nazi march wasn’t simply an extension of Collin’s constitutional right to freely speak his mind.

When the American Civil Liberties Union agreed to represent Collin, a philosophical dispute became a knockdown, drag-out battle.

“It was inevitable that the ACLU would defend the 1st Amendment in Skokie,” its director David Hamlin wrote in a Tribune op-ed. “The ACLU is more than 55 years old, and it has defended the 1st amendment vigorously through out its history.”

In fact, the organization was simultaneously trying to keep its dirty linen from being aired in public.

Hamlin objected to the release of ACLU files showing that during the red-baiting of the 1940s, its officials, “had systematically provided the FBI with information on their own organization and some of its own members.” Instead of defending Communists, the ACLU had squealed on them.

Many ACLU members were outraged at the ACLU’s defense of neo-Nazis. “Without the free help of the ACLU these despicable people would be relegated to muttering among themselves instead of seeing the name of their party in the headlines of the major newspapers of the country,” a Northfield resident said in a letter to the Tribune

 “Therefore I want my name removed from ACLU membership rolls.”

By August of 1977, 700 to 1,000 local members had resigned. Plus 2,000 from other chapters, Hamlin reported. Shortly, he stepped down.

Some objected to the objectors. Congressman Abner Mikva, a prominent liberal who favored banning the march, was chastised by a Northwestern University professor who also, as the Tribune reported, expressed, “sympathy for residents of the heavily Jewish suburb who will be distraught if the march takes place.”

The ACLU got a court order allowing a Nazi march in Marquette Park on Chicago’s Southwest Side, but that further antagonized the organized Jewish community, as the Tribune reported: “The Public Affairs Committee (of the Jewish United Fund) will not in any manner condone, aid, or abet the promotion of Nazi or any other racist doctrine in Skokie or any other community.”

The most poignant memory of the contorted affair was George Baum’s. “My interest in the Nazis’ march is personal. It recalls a march under different circumstances,” he noted in an August 1977 Tribune op-ed.

In 1945, Baum was freed by Russian soldiers from the Terezin concentration camp, a way-station en route to Auschwitz’s gas chambers. Of the 15,000 Jewish children who had been imprisoned there, by some estimates fewer than 150 survived.

As their Nazi guards were being marched away fellow inmates, shrunken by starvation and dressed in rags, pummeled them until the Russians said it was enough.

“How can one hate, when hate has brought so much suffering? How can one keep his own sanity if he adopts the insanes’ ways?” Baum recalled asking himself as a 12-year old.

“Today I still understand the question. But the answers still elude me, as they have eluded mankind.”

U$A

‘Assassinated in cold blood’: Eco-activist killed protesting Georgia’s ‘Cop City’


2.5k
Timothy Pratt in Atlanta

THE GUARDIAN
Sat, January 21, 2023

Belkis Terán spoke with her child, Manuel, nearly every day by WhatsApp from her home in Panama City, Panama. She also had names and numbers for some of Manuel’s friends, in case she didn’t hear from the 26-year-old who was protesting “Cop City”, a planned gigantic training facility being built in a wooded area near Atlanta, Georgia.

So by midweek, when she hadn’t received a message from Atlanta since Monday, she began to worry. Thursday around noon, a friend of Manuel’s – whose chosen name was “Tortuguita,” or “Little Turtle” – messaged her with condolences. “I’m so sorry,” they wrote. “For what?” she asked.

Related: The US activists holed up in treehouses to block $90m ‘Cop City’

Terán wound up discovering that on Wednesday around 9.04am, an as-yet unnamed officer or officers had shot and killed her son. The shooting occurred in an operation involving dozens of officers from Atlanta police, Dekalb county police, Georgia state patrol, the Georgia bureau of investigation and the FBI.

The killing has stunned and shocked not only Tortuguita’s family and friends, but also the environmental and social justice movement in Georgia and across the United States. Circumstances surrounding the incident are still unclear and there are demands for a thorough investigation into the killing and how it could have happened.

The police apparently found Manuel in a tent in the South River forest south-east of Atlanta, taking part in a protest now in its second year, against plans to build a $90m police and fire department training facility on the land and, separately, a film studio.

Officials say Manuel shot first at a state trooper “without warning” and an officer or officers returned fire, but they have produced no evidence for the claim. The trooper was described as stable and in hospital Thursday.

The shooting is “unprecedented” in the history of US environmental activism, according to experts.

The GBI, which operates under Republican governor Brian Kemp’s orders, has released scant information and on Thursday night told the Guardian no body-cam footage of the shooting exists. At least a half-dozen other protesters who were in the forest at the time have communicated to other activists that one, single series of shots could be heard. They believe the state trooper could have been shot by another officer, or by his own firearm.

Meanwhile, both Terán and local activists are looking into legal action, and Manuel’s mother told the Guardian: “I will go to the US to defend Manuel’s memory … I’m convinced that he was assassinated in cold blood.”

The incident was the latest in a ramping-up of law enforcement raids on the forest in recent months.

Protests had begun in late 2021, after the then Atlanta mayor, Keisha Lance Bottoms, announced plans for the training center. The forest had been named in city plans four years earlier as a key part of efforts to maintain Atlanta’s renowned tree canopy as a buffer against global warming, and to create what would have been the metro area’s largest park.

Most of the residents in neighborhoods around the forest are Black and municipal planning has neglected the area for decades. The plans to preserve the forest and make it a historic public amenity were adopted in 2017 as part of Atlanta’s city charter, or constitution. But the Atlanta city council wound up approving the training center anyway, and a movement to “Stop Cop City” began in response.

A series of editorials and news stories lambasting the activists began in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, the area’s largest daily paper. At least a dozen articles in the last year-plus failed to mention that Alex Taylor, CEO of the paper’s owner, Cox Enterprises, was also raising funds on behalf of the Atlanta police foundation, the main agency behind the training center.

At some point, Kemp and other civic leaders began referring to the protesters as “terrorists”, in response to acts of vandalism such as burning construction vehicles or spray-painting corporate offices linked to the project.

In an interview with this reporter last fall, Tortuguita was discussing how some Muscogee (Creek) people interested in protecting the forest as well felt that leaving a burnt vehicle at one of its entrances was not a good idea, and was an alienating presence in nature. The activist seemed understanding of both sides and critical of violence.

“Some of us [forest defenders] are rowdy gringos,” Tortuguita said. “They’re just against the state. Still, I don’t know how you can connect to anything if that’s your entire political analysis.”

Police raids on the forest intensified until 14 December, when a half-dozen “forest defenders” were arrested and charged with “domestic terrorism” under state law – another unprecedented development in US environmental activism, said Lauren Regan, founder of the Civil Liberties Defense Center, who has a quarter-century’s experience defending environmental protestors charged with federal terrorism sentencing enhancements and others.

Seven more activists were arrested and received the same charges the day Manuel was killed.

State killings of environmental activists are common in other countries 

... but it’s never happened in the US

Keith Woodhouse

Regan and Keith Woodhouse, professor of history at Northwestern University and author of The Ecocentrists: A History of Radical Environmentalism, both said there has never been a case where law enforcement has shot and killed an environmental activist engaged in an attempt to protect a forest from being razed and developed.

“Killings of environmental activists by the state are depressingly common in other countries, like Brazil, Honduras, Nigeria,” said Woodhouse. “But this has never happened in the US.”

Manuel’s older brother, Daniel Esteban Paez, found himself in the middle of this unfortunate historical moment Thursday. “They killed my sibling,” he said on answering the phone. “I’m in a whole new world now.”

Paez, 31, was the only family member to speak extensively with GBI officials, after calling them Thursday in an attempt to get answers about what had happened. No one representing Georgia law enforcement had reached out to Belkis by Thursday afternoon. “I quickly found out, they’re not investigating the death of Manuel – they’re investigating Manuel,” Paez said.

A navy veteran, Paez said the GBI official asked him such questions as “Does Manuel often carry weapons?” and “Has Manuel done protesting in the past?”

The family is Venezuelan in origin, but now lives in the US and Panama, Paez said. Less than 24 hours into discovering the death of his sibling, Paez also said he “had no idea Manuel was so well-regarded and loved by so many”. He was referring to events and messages ranging from an Atlanta candlelight vigil Wednesday night to messages of solidarity being sent on social media from across the US and world.

Belkis Terán, meanwhile, is trying to get an emergency appointment at the US Embassy in Panama to renew her tourist visa, which expired in November. “I’m going to clear Manuel’s name. They killed him … like they tear down trees in the forest – a forest Manuel loved with passion.”

THIRD WORLD U$A

‘I had no choice’: For many homeless people, O’Hare has become a nighttime refuge

Adriana Pérez, Chicago Tribune
Sun, January 22, 2023

Norbert Pikula, 77, had been sleeping on a friend’s sofa every night for the last six months. But when his friend was admitted to the hospital a few weeks ago, Pikula’s fragile world turned upside down and he had nowhere to sleep.

So now he uses his senior citizen CTA pass to ride to O’Hare International Airport and spend the night there. His situation mirrors that of countless other homeless people who sleep at the airport to stay warm and safe during the winter.

“I had no choice,” Pikula told the Tribune on Thursday. He was on his way to open a bank account after eating his usual weekday lunch at Providence Soup Kitchen in St. Stanislaus Kostka Catholic Church.

According to a report from the Chicago Coalition for the Homeless, an estimated 65,611 people experienced homelessness in Chicago in 2020, an estimate different from that offered by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development because it takes into account people living doubled up or temporarily staying with others.

And while sheltering at the airport isn’t new, said Jessica Dubuar, director of health and specialty services of Haymarket Center, which has conducted outreach operations out of O’Hare to address homelessness in public transportation since 1990, the steadily increasing number of people doing it is.

“We saw over 600 unique individuals that we engaged with. We also had almost 14,000 encounters with them throughout the calendar year,” she said. Compared with previous years, that number illustrates an uptick: In 2021, there were 11,196 recorded encounters. In 2020 — the beginning of the pandemic — saw 12,270 encounters. In 2019, they recorded 9,975 encounters. In 2018, it was 8,132.

“This is not a new situation at the airport. It’s one that many organizations and city departments have been aware of and have been devoting resources to for 30 plus years,” Dubuar said. “As the years have gone on, we definitely see a pattern of the number of folks who are coming to the airport — I would even just call it a spike in the numbers of folks that we’re seeing at the airport when the weather turns cold.”

Advocates offer a couple of reasons for why more people are seeking shelter at O’Hare. Sarah Boone of the Chicago Housing Initiative who created a GoFundMe to help Pikula raise money, said there are three realities facing the homeless population right now: the number of beds in homeless shelters was decreased at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic and never restored, migrants who have recently arrived in Chicago are increasingly using homeless shelters as well, and homeless shelters across the city are overwhelmed.

And on the ground at O’Hare, workers offer another possible explanation. Jessy Pearl, a Transportation Security Administration agent who works at the airport, said she has noticed an uptick in the homeless population sheltering there since Delta Air Lines moved out of Terminal 2 and into Terminal 5.

“There’s more homeless people — more activity is concentrated at Terminal 2, since there’s less passenger traffic,” especially in the early afternoon, Pearl told the Tribune. “I’ve worked at the airport long enough to know that more homeless people have been around the CTA and arrivals area ever since the pandemic started. More so lately, since Delta moved to Terminal 5.”

According to a statement by the Chicago Department of Aviation (CDA), which manages O’Hare, the department is “aware of the increasing population of unsheltered individuals at O’Hare International Airport. It’s a common occurrence at this airport and airports nationwide when temperatures drop in the winter months. Airport leadership and staff on the ground continue collaboration with the Department of Family and Support Services (DFSS) and their delegate agencies to provide 24/7 outreach to unsheltered residents at O’Hare.

“Outreach professionals engage with individuals experiencing homelessness at O’Hare and conduct needs assessments. If the individual chooses to accept assistance, outreach professionals connect them with appropriate services and shelters, including necessary referrals and transportation. The CDA is committed to working with fellow city departments and community partners to support those in need and connect them with all available resources in Chicago.”

Pikula has been sleeping at the airport for the last two weeks or so, said Boone. And he’s been carrying around his belongings all day as he moves around the city. “I think it’s wearing on him,” she added.

Boone said she met Pikula at Holy Trinity Russian Orthodox Cathedral in Ukrainian Village where free food is offered on Saturdays. Her organization shows up to soup kitchens and places where there’s free food to connect homeless people with necessary services in the city and tend to their needs.

“I tried to get him to go to the hospital across the street, because you can go to the ER to call the shelters. And he didn’t want to do that because the wait is so long,” Boone said. “So we tried calling 311. And he kind of just said he’d prefer to be at the airport than at the shelters. So then I went home and I just thought about it. And I was like, we should do a GoFundMe. I’ve never done this before. But what if it works?”

With approximately 100 donations, the campaign had raised over $4,900 as of Friday afternoon out of a $9,800 goal.

Pikula said he is looking for a more permanent housing situation than couch surfing or spending nights at O’Hare. He’s hoping to find a studio or one-bedroom apartment in Wicker Park, Logan Square, Avondale or Garfield Park. That’s where his friends from the soup kitchens he visits live, so he wants to be close by.

A Polish American who grew up in Chicago, Pikula previously worked as a baker and security guard. He is on the waiting list for senior Chicago Housing Authority housing and subsidized Catholic Charities senior apartments. So far, he has had no luck finding a place to live.

During the pandemic, many homeless people turned to the CTA for shelter, and service providers set up at the Forest Park Blue Line station. But as the effects of the pandemic continue to limit housing, needs at the other end of the line also became evident.

Off the Blue Line O’Hare stop, to the left, a sign for the Haymarket Center O’Hare Outreach sticks out of the wall. A man was waiting to go in Thursday morning as he charged his cellphone.

The program assists homeless clients and passengers seeking shelter at the airport. It also approaches issues regarding alcohol and substance abuse, housing and income. Dubuar described what a client may find in the 24/7 office at O’Hare.

“We have a number of resources available on site from, food and coffee, water, hand sanitizer, masks ... those things. We also have clothing available, hygiene products and a few other things,” she said. “What we’ll also do is invite people to come in and sit down and talk to us. And we do a small assessment with them, exploring all sorts of things from health care, mental health care, substance use, benefits and IDs and all of those things.”

The O’Hare Outreach program is funded by the Chicago Department of Aviation and carried out in cooperation with the Department of Family Support Services and a host of other community partners, such as shelter providers, substance use treatment providers and — importantly — housing programs.

“The complexity of the (needs of) folks we’re seeing has increased and, (in) the number of encounters, that’s really where you see that reflected,” Dubuar said. “This isn’t just a ‘somebody needs a sandwich today’ and that’s it, that’s all they needed. Because I think that we have folks, their needs are complex and navigating through these systems is hard and they need as much support as they can possibly get.”

While Dubuar couldn’t confirm whether there is a more concentrated homeless population in specific airport terminals, she said it’s possible that changes in the airport complex layout influence where homeless people spend their time.

“Individuals who come to the airport for shelter do learn the system and do see when there are construction projects or changes to how the space is being monitored with our partners from CPD and the Department of Aviation,” she said. “And so it is it is highly possible that there are going to be some folks who are visible because certain areas are under construction or maybe not being monitored as much as possible.”

On Friday morning, as the sun rose, a few scattered people in O’Hare’s Terminal 2 rustled in their sleep. They were slowly waking up. Some of them might have had canceled or delayed flights. Others, though, were homeless and had sought a warm place to spend the night.

A police officer approached a person who was lying by the windows in the arrivals area of Terminal 2. He asked if they were OK. “Just try not to fall sleep,” he said. “Stay awake.”

Pikula and other homeless people will likely keep searching for a more stable situation than sleeping at the airport every night. Even as they seek support services, though, continuing to sleep at the airport seems, in Pikula’s words, the only option in terms of surviving cold winter nights.

“I’ll be honest with you, my life has not been rosy,” Pikula said. “It’s been a fighting life.”

It’s hard to say how long it takes, on average, for a homeless person in Chicago to find stable housing, Dubuar said.

“As with most social services, benefits and resources, it’s about eligibility and availability,” she said. “Sometimes it’s a matter of the stars aligning.”

Chicago Tribune’s Rosemary Sobol contributed.

adperez@chicagotribune.com

18 Countries That Produce the Most Nuclear Energy


Insider Monkey Team
Sat, January 21, 2023

In this article, we take a look at 18 countries that produce the most nuclear energy. 

Nuclear energy has its positives and negatives.

In terms of its positives, nuclear energy is very reliable and zero carbon. According to the Office of Nuclear Energy, nuclear was the most reliable energy source in America in 2021 given nuclear power plants operated at full capacity more than 92% of the time. Given it doesn't emit greenhouse gases, nuclear also provided half of America's carbon free electricity in 2021.

Furthermore, the nuclear energy industry supports around half a million jobs in the U.S. and contributes $60 billion to American GDP each year. The industry helps U.S. national security and maintains American global leadership in the peaceful use of nuclear technologies

Nuclear power plants also don't need that much land in terms of the energy it generates as opposed to wind or solar. Emma Derr of the Nuclear Energy Institute writes, "Nuclear energy pairs perfectly with renewables such as wind and solar to create a reliable, clean energy system. It provides carbon-free, around-the-clock power to fill the gaps when the sun isn’t shining or the wind isn’t blowing. Nuclear also complements renewables because it generates more power with less land—31 times less than solar facilities and 173 times less than wind farms. Wind and solar farms are located where wind and sunlight are abundantly available and require sprawling amounts of land for turbines and panels, whereas nuclear energy is contained to nuclear power plants. A nuclear energy facility has a small area footprint, requiring about 1.3 square miles per 1,000 megawatts of energy."

In terms of its negatives, nuclear power plants cost a lot of money upfront and take a lot of time to build which could lead to cost overruns. If designed incorrectly, nuclear power plants could lead to environmental and societal disasters such as Chernobyl and Fukushima. Nuclear power plants also generate radioactive waste that's tough to dispose safely.

Leading Nations in the Peaceful Use of Nuclear Energy

Many of the leading nations in the world have adopted nuclear energy as part of its energy mix.

Nuclear energy in the United States, for example, helps power plants avoid emitting over 470 million metric tons of carbon annually, which is about the same as removing 100 million cars off the road.

Nuclear energy is also big in other countries such as France, where nuclear power accounts for the majority of the total electricity generated. Given the country's substantial nuclear generation, France is one of the leading industrialized nations in terms of low carbon emissions per capita.

Essential Part of the World's Energy Mix

Nuclear fission energy will remain an essential part of the world's energy mix in the next few decades.

According to International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA)'s high case projection, total world nuclear generating capacity could more than double to 873 gigawatts net electrical by 2050, versus existing levels of around 390 gigawatts net electrical. In the agency's low case scenario, nuclear generating capacity remains about the same.

Given the need to reduce carbon emissions, nuclear fission energy could remain useful for the next few decades until fusion energy eventually becomes economical.

In terms of fusion, which is also a nuclear process, experts are hoping that the technology will become economically viable sometime in the 2030's. Given the immense technological challenges of nuclear fusion, however, scientists have a lot of work ahead of them and it's not clear when the challenges will be solved.

Methodology

For our list of 18 Countries That Produce the Most Nuclear Energy, we used the IAEA's nuclear share of electricity generation in 2021 list and we ranked them by TWh of nuclear production.

For those of you interested, also check out 12 Most Advanced Countries in Renewable Energy.

18 Countries That Produce the Most Nuclear Energy

#18 Pakistan
2021 Nuclear Production, TWh: 15.83

Pakistan has six existing operating nuclear power plants that collectively generated 15.83 TWh of nuclear power in 2021 which is around 8% of the country's total electricity generated. Given the rising electricity prices and the country's dependence on fossil fuels, nuclear energy has been one way for Pakistan to diversify its energy mix.

#17 Switzerland
2021 Nuclear Production, TWh: 18.59

Although it has a population of 8.7 million people, Switzerland is a major producer of nuclear power given the country's nuclear production of 18.59 TWh across 4 nuclear reactors in 2021. With its nuclear production, nuclear accounts for around 36% of total electricity generated while hydropower accounts for around 52% of total electricity generated. In the future, however, Switzerland plans to eventually phase out nuclear in favor of other renewables.

#16 Finland
2021 Nuclear Production, TWh: 22.65

Finland is another country with a relatively small population where nuclear energy accounts for a substantial percentage of the country's electricity generation mix. With a population of 5.541 million, Finland generated 22.65 TWh of nuclear power in 2021, accounting for about a third of the total electricity generation for the year.

#15 Czech Republic
2021 Nuclear Production, TWh: 29.04

The Czech Republic ranks #15 on our list of 18 Countries That Produce the Most Nuclear Energy given its nuclear production of 29.04 TWh across 6 reactors in 2021. Given its production, nuclear accounts for around one third of the country's total electricity generation. For the future, the government plans to substantially increase nuclear capacity by 2040.

#14 India
2021 Nuclear Production, TWh: 39.76

India is one of the fastest growing countries in the world whose energy needs are increasing every year. As a result, India's government has committed to growing its nuclear power capacity to help meet its needs. The country's nuclear power generation has more than doubled from 2000 to 39.76 TWh in 2021 and nuclear energy generation is expected to increase further in the future.

#13 United Kingdom
2021 Nuclear Production, TWh: 41.79

The United Kingdom generated 41.79 TWh of nuclear power in 2021, accounting for around 15% of the country's electricity generation. Although many of the country's existing capacity is expected to retire by the end of the decade, the country has a new generation of nuclear plants that's being built. In terms of the future, the government plans to have nuclear account for 25% of total electricity generated by 2050.

#12 Belgium
2021 Nuclear Production, TWh: 47.96

Belgium generated 47.96 TWh of nuclear power in 2021 or 52.4% of the country's total electricity generated. Although nuclear is a big part of the country's energy mix, Belgium originally had plans to withdraw from nuclear in 2025. Given the war in Ukraine, however, the country has since decided to continue to generate nuclear energy in two nuclear reactors for another 10 years.

#11 Sweden
2021 Nuclear Production, TWh: 51.43

Sweden ranks #11 on our list of 18 Countries That Produce the Most Nuclear Energy given it produced 51.43 TWh of nuclear power in 2021, which accounts for around 40% of the country's electricity needs. For the future, Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson recently said the country is looking to potentially expand its nuclear power generation to offset Sweden's reliance on renewables whose output can vary.

#10 Spain
2021 Nuclear Production, TWh: 54.22

Given the country's push for more renewables, Spain's government is planning to phase out nuclear energy by 2035. Under its National Energy and Climate Plan 2021-2030, the Spanish government plans to gradually decommission nuclear power capacity to 3GW at the end of the decade as renewable energy costs continue to decline and as grid technology improves. As of 2021, Spain nevertheless generated 54.22 TWh of nuclear power, accounting for 21% of electricity generation.

#9 Japan
2021 Nuclear Production, TWh: 61.3

Given it has to import much of its energy needs, nuclear energy has been a strategic priority for Japan's government since the 1973, and up until 2011, nuclear generated 30% of the country's electricity. Given the Fukushima nuclear disaster in 2011, however, public sentiment in the country shifted and Japan's government is now planning for nuclear to account for 20% to 22% of the country's electricity by the end of the decade. In 2021, Japan generated 61.3 TWh of energy from the nuclear reactors that have gained approval to restart.

#8 Germany
2021 Nuclear Production, TWh: 65.44

Before 2011, nuclear was a big part of Germany's energy mix with nuclear energy accounting for around one quarter of the nation's electricity generated. After the Fukushima nuclear disaster in Japan, however, Germany's government has reduced the country's reliance on nuclear. In 2021, the country generated 65.44 TWh of nuclear power and in 2022, nuclear supplied around 6% of Germany's electricity.

#7 Ukraine
2021 Nuclear Production, TWh: 81.13

Ukraine generated 81.13 TWh of nuclear power in 2021, which supplied around half of the country's energy needs. Given the current war in Ukraine, however, the country's nuclear production might not be as high as it was in 2021. A substantial part of the country's grid needs to be fixed, and some of the country's reactors are offline.

#6 Canada
2021 Nuclear Production, TWh: 86.78

Canada produced 86.78 TWh of nuclear energy in 2021, supplying about 15% of the country's electricity needs. In addition to being one of the largest producers of nuclear energy, Canada is also a leader in nuclear power technology and uranium exports. Given its resources, Canada has the third largest uranium reserves globally and the country is the world's second largest exporter of uranium.

#5 South Korea
2021 Nuclear Production, TWh: 150.46

South Korea is an industrialized nation that generated 150.46 TWh of nuclear power in 2021, which is around one third of the total electricity generated for the year. Given it doesn’t have many fossil fuel resources, the country is a major importer of energy with about 98% of fossil fuels consumed being imported. To reduce its dependence on fossil fuels and to also lower its carbon emissions, South Korea has increased its nuclear power capacity substantially in the past few decades.

#4 Russia
2021 Nuclear Production, TWh: 208.44

Russia is one of the leaders in nuclear energy given its nuclear production of 208.44 TWh in 2021. Given its substantial nuclear energy industry, Russia is a leading exporter of nuclear power plants with the country’s companies helping build 15 reactors abroad since 2012. The country is also a leading uranium exporter given its substantial uranium resources.

#3 France
2021 Nuclear Production, TWh: 363.39

France is a leader in nuclear energy given it gets around 70% of its total electricity generated from 56 reactors in the country. Thanks to nuclear, over 92% of the country’s electricity comes from low carbon sources, which ranks France as one of the leaders in sustainable energy. In 2021, the country generated over 363 TWh of nuclear production.


#2 China
2021 Nuclear Production, TWh: 383.21

China is the world’s second largest producer of nuclear power with nuclear production of 383.21 TWh in 2021. Given the country’s substantial economic growth in recent decades, the country has built a number of nuclear reactors since 2000 and the country plans on building many new ones in the future. According to Bloomberg, China plans to build at minimum 150 new reactors over the next 15 years, or more than the rest of the world combined has built over the last 35 years.


#1 United States
2021 Nuclear Production, TWh: 771.64

The United States ranks #1 on our list of 18 Countries That Produce the Most Nuclear Energy given its nuclear production of 771.64 TWh in 2021 which is around 20% of the total electricity generated in the country for the year. In terms of generation, the United States produces its nuclear power from 92 nuclear reactors across 53 power plants.

Although the United States has many nuclear reactors, the country isn’t building many new ones given that nuclear reactors can cost $5 billion to $10 billion to build versus wind and solar which is far cheaper and more competitive than grid energy in many places.

The December Omnibus Bill's Little Secret: It Was Also a Giant Health Bill

Margot Sanger-Katz
Sun, January 22, 2023 

The giant spending bill passed by Congress last month kept the government open. But it also quietly rewrote huge areas of health policy: Hundreds of pages of legislation were devoted to new health care programs.

The legislation included major policy areas that committees had been hammering away at all year behind the scenes — such as a big package designed to improve the nation’s readiness for the next big pandemic. It also included items that Republicans had been championing during the election season — such as an extension of telemedicine coverage in Medicare. And it included small policy measures that some legislators have wanted to pass for years, such as requiring Medicare to cover compression garments for patients with lymphedema.

Although the bill was primarily designed to fund existing government programs, a lot of health policy hitched a ride.

Big, “must-pass” bills such as the $1.7 trillion omnibus often attract unrelated policy measures that would be hard to pass alone. But the scope of the health care legislation in last month’s bill is unusual. At the end of 2022, congressional leaders decided to do something that staff members call “clearing the decks,” adding all the potentially bipartisan health policy legislation that was ready and written. There turned out to be a lot to clear.

The midterm election also played a role. Many lawmakers saw that the incoming Republican House majority would be far less likely to pass another big spending bill, and so the omnibus was widely viewed as a last legislative hurrah.

In fact, the new House leadership has pledged to avoid this sort of omnibus legislation in the future. House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., has agreed to move smaller spending bills one at a time, and to allow lawmakers to propose amendments to each on the House floor. That process would make it much more difficult to combine future spending bills with unrelated policy measures, like a package in the bill that aims to modernize the country’s mental health system.

The coming change made the omnibus bill a critical opportunity to pass pieces of legislation that might have withered in the new Congress. Many of the health measures weren’t controversial enough to stop the omnibus from passing as one big bill. They might not have all succeeded on their own, however.

Several retiring senators were eager to use the bill to pass favored measures and cement their legacies. Among departing senior Republicans were Richard Burr of North Carolina, who was the ranking member of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee; Roy Blunt of Missouri, who was ranking member on the Senate Appropriations health subcommittee; and Richard Shelby of Alabama, vice chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee. Legacies were also meaningful for the retiring Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., who was the chair of Appropriations, as well as Nancy Pelosi, who was giving up her position as the top House Democrat.

Burr had been working all year with his Democratic counterpart to develop a pandemic preparedness package known as the Prevent Pandemics Act. That legislation passed as part of the spending bill.

Sen. Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., the minority leader, had signaled earlier in the year that he hoped for a relatively modest spending bill. But he did not stand in the way of the giant bill in the end.

“Probably a lot of the driver was, ‘Let’s resolve it and accept the reality of a lot of stagnation we’ll see in the next Congress,’” said Drew Keyes, a senior policy analyst at the Paragon Health Institute and a former staff member on the Republican Study Committee. He was critical of the size and scope of the bill, especially given the limited debate on many of its provisions. But he said he understood why it came together: “We saw a lot of pieces that felt like this is the last opportunity.”

Some convoluted budget math made it possible for lawmakers to pass expansions of Medicaid without appearing to cost much money, an opportunity that was likely to disappear over time. By scheduling an end date for an expensive pandemic policy, Congress could then use the projected savings to pay for expanded Medicaid benefits for children, postpartum mothers and residents of U.S. territories.

The bill requires states to keep children signed up for at least a year at a time, and extends funding for the Children’s Health Insurance Program. It also sets up a series of policies meant to discourage states from automatically dumping large numbers of adult enrollees after the end of an emergency policy that protected enrollments during the pandemic. The provisions reflected a long-standing interest by Pelosi in broadening health coverage through the Affordable Care Act and other means.

In addition to the expiring funding sources, there was a “time-limited coalition behind some of those policies,” said Matthew Fiedler, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, who was tracking the Medicaid provisions.

Crucially, most of the bill’s health measures had bipartisan support in Congress. Even though Democrats held majorities in both the House and Senate, the bill needed 10 Republican Senate votes to overcome a legislative filibuster. It got far more — the omnibus passed the Senate by a 68–29 margin. (In the House, where Republicans were less involved in negotiations over the bill since their votes were not needed, a greater share voted against it. The final vote was 225–201.)

The consequence of all this deck clearing is that it may be a quiet Congress for new health legislation. There are a few health funding programs that will need to be renewed, including funding for programs to combat opioid addiction and overdoses, and one to subsidize hospitals that treat uninsured patients.

But beyond those must-pass items (which may or may not pass in the end), don’t expect too much.

Democrats already achieved much of their health care agenda earlier in the year, when they passed legislation to allow Medicare to limit the prices of some prescription drugs, expanded subsidies for Americans who buy their own insurance, and added new health benefits for veterans.

McCarthy did have some plans for modest health care measures with a chance of becoming law, including extended Medicare coverage for telemedicine. But that passed in the omnibus, leaving him without a lot of concrete health policy goals beyond oversight into the performance of pandemic programs.

The remaining wish list for Democrats includes measures to broaden Medicare benefits or expand abortion rights — things they could not pass even when they controlled the House. As part of concessions with right-wing lawmakers to secure the speakership, McCarthy has promised Republicans in the House will propose substantial spending cuts to balance the budget in a decade, a goal that would be impossible without cuts to some or all of the major health entitlement programs — Medicare, Medicaid and Obamacare. But those would never advance with Democrats controlling the Senate and White House.

That means the omnibus was an unexpectedly meaty health care bill. There may not be another one for a while.

© 2023 The New York Times Company

Peru closes Machu Picchu as protesters arrested in Lima

Sat, January 21, 2023


Peru closed the Inca citadel of Machu Picchu Saturday amid steady anti-government protests, stranding hundreds of tourists for hours, as authorities expelled protesters from a Lima university where they have been holed up as part of the crisis engulfing this divided country.

Protests demanding the resignation of Peruvian President Dina Boluarte have been ongoing since early December, leaving 46 people dead and prompting the government to impose a state of emergency in violence-hit areas.

This crisis triggered by the ouster of leftist Indigenous president Pedro Castillo last month stems largely from a gaping inequity between Peru's urban elite and poor rural Indigenous people in the Andean region who saw him as one of their own and working to make their lives better.

Authorities announced Saturday yet another protester had died following demonstrations Friday in the town of Ilave in that Andean region in the south.

Video footage from Ilave that went viral on social media shows police shooting right at a crowd of Indigenous demonstrators in the town square. Enraged protesters responded by setting fire to a police station, local media reported.

Clashes between police and the crowd in that town near Lake Titicaca and the border with Bolivia left 10 people injured, hospital officials said.

Prior to the closing of Machu Picchu, rail services to the site had already been suspended due to damage to the track by demonstrators. The only way to get up to the popular tourist site is by train.

At least 400 people, including 300 foreigners, were stranded at the foot of the site, in the town of Aguas Calientes, and pleading to be evacuated.

Rescue teams later evacuated 418 tourists, the Tourism Ministry said in a Twitter post accompanied by pictures of a train and seated travelers.

"The closure of the Inca trails network and the Machu Picchu citadel has been ordered due to the social situation and to preserve the safety of visitors," the Ministry of Culture said in a Saturday statement.

Tourism is vital for Peru's economy, representing between three to four percent of the country's GDP.

- 'I'm worried' -

In Lima, where two days of mass mobilization by demonstrators from the country's poor Andean region had seemingly concluded, the situation Saturday remained tense.

As night fell hundreds more protesters gathered in the city, mainly around the Congress building.

During the day security forces used an armored vehicle to breach the gate of the University of San Marcos in the city's downtown, in an attempt to expel protesters who have been sleeping there.

A large contingent of police searched occupants, sometimes forcing them to lie on the ground, AFP journalists observed.

Interior Minister Vicente Romero Canal N television that police intervened after university authorities said some of the squatters were committing crimes. He did not specify what these were.

Around 200 people were arrested, said Alfonso Barrenechea, a spokesman for the prosecutor's office.

Protesters are trying to keep up pressure on the Peruvian government, defying a state of emergency that now covers almost one-third of the country.

The European Union on Saturday condemned the chaos and the "very large number of casualties," calling for a peaceful political solution in Peru.

The protests were sparked when former president Castillo, a rural schoolteacher, was removed from office and arrested on December 7 after attempting to dissolve the country's legislature and rule by decree, amid multiple corruption investigations.

Among the 46 dead since the protests began, 45 were protesters and one was a police officer.

lcj-pgf/bfm/dw/caw

Losing their religion: why US churches are on the decline

Adam Gabbatt
Sun, January 22, 2023 

Photograph: Ed Jones/AFP/Getty Images

Churches are closing at rapid numbers in the US, researchers say, as congregations dwindle across the country and a younger generation of Americans abandon Christianity altogether – even as faith continues to dominate American politics.

As the US adjusts to an increasingly non-religious population, thousands of churches are closing each year in the country – a figure that experts believe may have accelerated since the Covid-19 pandemic.

Related: Friend of Satan: how Lucien Greaves and his Satanic Temple                   are fighting the religious right

The situation means some hard decisions for pastors, who have to decide when a dwindling congregation is no longer sustainable. But it has also created a boom market for those wanting to buy churches, with former houses of worship now finding new life.

About 4,500 Protestant churches closed in 2019, the last year data is available, with about 3,000 new churches opening, according to Lifeway Research. It was the first time the number of churches in the US hadn’t grown since the evangelical firm started studying the topic. With the pandemic speeding up a broader trend of Americans turning away from Christianity, researchers say the closures will only have accelerated.

“The closures, even for a temporary period of time, impacted a lot of churches. People breaking that habit of attending church means a lot of churches had to work hard to get people back to attending again,” said Scott McConnell, executive director at Lifeway Research.

“In the last three years, all signs are pointing to a continued pace of closures probably similar to 2019 or possibly higher, as there’s been a really rapid rise in American individuals who say they’re not religious.”

Protestant pastors reported that typical church attendance is only 85% of pre-pandemic levels, McConnell said, while research by the Survey Center on American Life and the University of Chicago found that in spring 2022 67% of Americans reported attending church at least once a year, compared with 75% before the pandemic.

But while Covid-19 may have accelerated the decline, there is a broader, long-running trend of people moving away from religion. In 2017 Lifeway surveyed young adults aged between 18 and 22 who had attended church regularly, for at least a year during high school. The firm found that seven out of 10 had stopped attending church regularly.

The younger generation just doesn’t feel like they’re being accepted in a church environment or some of their choices aren’t being accepted
Scott McConnell, Lifeway Research

Some of the reasons were “logistical”, McConnell said, as people moved away for college or started jobs which made it difficult to attend church.

“But some of the other answers are not so much logistics. One of the top answers was church members seem to be judgmental or hypocritical,” McConnell said.

“And so the younger generation just doesn’t feel like they’re being accepted in a church environment or some of their choices aren’t being accepted by those at church.”

About a quarter of the young adults who dropped out of church said they disagreed with their church’s stance on political and social issues, McConnell said.

A study by Pew Research found that the number of Americans who identified as Christian was 64% in 2020, with 30% of the US population being classed as “religiously unaffiliated”. About 6% of Americans identified with Judaism, Islam, Hinduism and Buddhism.

“Since the 1990s, large numbers of Americans have left Christianity to join the growing ranks of US adults who describe their religious identity as atheist, agnostic or ‘nothing in particular’,” Pew wrote.

“This accelerating trend is reshaping the US religious landscape.”

In 1972 92% of Americans said they were Christian, Pew reported, but by 2070 that number will drop to below 50% – and the number of “religiously unaffiliated” Americans – or ‘nones’ will probably outnumber those adhering to Christianity.

Stephen Bullivant, author of Nonverts: The Making of Ex-Christian America and professor of theology and the sociology of religion at St Mary’s University, said in the Christian world it had been a generational change.

While grandparents might have been regular churchgoers, their children would say they believe in God, but not go to church regularly. By the time millennials came round, they had little experience or relationship with churchgoing or religion.

In the Catholic church, in particular, the sexual abuse scandal may have driven away people who had only a tenuous connection to the faith.

“The other thing is the pandemic,” Bullivant said.

“A lot of people who were weakly attached, to suddenly have months of not going, they’re then thinking: ‘Well we don’t really need to go,’ or ‘We’ve found something else to do,’ or thinking: ‘It was hard enough dragging the kids along then, we really ought to start going again … next week.’”

Bullivant said most other countries saw a move away from religion earlier than the US, but the US had particular circumstances that slowed things down.

“Canada, Britain, France, Australia, New Zealand, the nones rise much earlier, the wake of the 1960s the baby boom generation, this kind of big, growing separation of kind of traditional Christian moral morality,” Bullivant said.

“What happens in America that I think dampens down the rise of the nones is the cold war. Because in America, unlike in Britain, there’s a very explicit kind of ‘Christian America’ versus godless communism framing, and to be non-religious is to be un-American.

“I think that dampens it down until you get the millennial generation for whom the cold war is just a vague memory from their early childhood.”

When people leave, congregations dwindle. And when that gets to a critical point, churches close. That has led to a flood of churches available for sale, and a range of opportunities for the once holy buildings.

Brian Dolehide, managing director of AD Advisors, a real estate company that specializes in church sales, said the last 10 years had seen a spike in sales. Frequently churches become housing or care homes, while some of the churches are bought by other churches wanting to expand.

But selling a church isn’t like selling a house or a business. Frequently the sellers want a buyer who plans to use the church for a good cause: Dolehide said he had recently sold a church in El Paso which is now used as housing for recent immigrants, and a convent in Pittsburgh which will be used as affordable housing.

“The faith-based transaction is so different in so many ways from the for-profit transaction. We’re not looking to profit from our transactions, we’re looking for the best use that reflects the last 50 years or 100 years use if possible.”

The closures aren’t spread evenly through the country.

In Texas, John Muzyka said there were fewer churches for sale than at any point in the last 15 years. He believes that is partly down to Texas’s response to the pandemic, where the governor allowed churches to open in May 2020, even when the number of new Covid cases was extremely high.

“I would say if a church stayed closed for more than a year, it was really hard to get those people to come back. When you were closed for three months, you were able to get over it,” Muzyka said.

That aside, closures are often due to a failure of churches to adapt.

“A church will go through a life cycle. At some point, maybe the congregation ages out, maybe they stop reaching young families.

“If the church ages and doesn’t reach young people, or the demographics change and they don’t figure out how to reach the new demographic, that church ends up closing.

“Yes, there’s financial pressures that will close a church, but oftentimes, it’s more that they didn’t figure out how to change when the community changed, or they didn’t have enough young people to continue the congregation for the next generation.”

COWBUNGA (WO)MAN
Big waves to deliver storied Hawaii surf contest The Eddie

Sat, January 21, 2023 



HONOLULU (AP) — One of the world’s most prestigious and storied surfing contests is expected to be held Sunday in Hawaii for the first time in seven years.

And this year female surfers will be competing alongside the men for the first time in the 39-year history of The Eddie Aikau Big Wave Invitational.

The event — alternatively known simply as The Eddie — is a one-day contest held in Waimea Bay on Oahu’s North Shore only when the surf is consistently large enough during the winter big wave surfing season from mid-December through mid-March. The wind, the tides and the direction of the swell also have to be just right.

“Large enough” means 20 feet (6 meters) by Hawaii measurements. That's equivalent to about 40 feet (12 meters) when measured by methods used in the rest of the U.S. Before this year, conditions have only aligned for it to be held nine times since the initial competition in 1984.

Organizer Clyde Aikau said at a news conference Friday that he was expecting waves to reach 25-30 feet (7.6-9 meters) by Hawaii measurements or 50-60 feet (15-18 meters) on the national scale.

“Yes, The Eddie will go on Sunday,” he said.

Other places around the world have big wave surfing events: Mavericks in California, Nazare in Portugal and Peahi on Hawaii's Maui Island. But author Stuart Coleman says The Eddie is distinguished by how it honors Eddie Aikau, a legendary Native Hawaiian waterman, for his selflessness, courage and sacrifice.

“What makes this contest the most unique is that it’s in memory of a particular individual who really has transcended his time and place when he lived,” said Coleman, who wrote “Eddie Would Go,” a biography of Aikau.

Edward Ryon Makuahanai Aikau rose to prominence as the first lifeguard hired by Honolulu to work on Oahu’s North Shore and was revered for saving over 500 people during his career. He’s also famous for surfing towering waves that no one else would dare ride.

Aikau died in 1978 at the age of 31 during an expedition to sail a traditional Polynesian voyaging canoe from Honolulu to Tahiti. Just hours out of port, the giant double-hulled canoe known as the Hokulea took on water and overturned in stormy weather. Aikau volunteered to paddle several miles to nearby Lanai Island on his surfboard to get help for the rest of the crew but was never seen again.

The U.S. Coast Guard rescued the remaining crew a few hours later after being alerted by a commercial plane that spotted the canoe.

Coleman said The Eddie is about the best of big wave surfing and the best of Hawaiian culture.

“They always say at the opening ceremony, where they gather to launch the holding period, ’This is not just a contest. We’re not surfing against each other. We’re surfing in the spirit of Eddie,”′ Coleman said.

This year organizers have invited 40 competitors and 18 alternates from around the world, including Kelly Slater, who has won a record 11 world surfing titles. John John Florence, who hails from the North Shore and who has won two back-to-back world titles, has also been asked to join.

Keala Kennelly of Kauai, a women's big wave surf champion, is among the female invitees.

Mindy Pennybacker, a surf columnist for the Honolulu Star-Advertiser and author of the upcoming book “Surfing Sisterhood Hawaii: Wahine Reclaiming the Waves” said there's long been an assumption that Waimea was too dangerous for women and they couldn't surf there.

She said they've had to fight to be included and have meanwhile shown that they could handle big waves in spots around the world.

“To see women — not only women surfing Waimea but women and men sharing the same event together, with mutual respect and equality — I’m just really thrilled at the thought,” Pennybacker said.

The contest is expected to attract tens of thousands of spectators to the two-lane highway winding through the North Shore and the small towns that dot the coastal community.

Kathleen Pahinui, the chairperson of the North Shore Neighborhood Board, said it will be good for businesses, restaurants and shops. She urged visitors to carpool and take the bus because the roads will be congested.

“I wish all the participants the best of luck," she said.

Audrey Mcavoy, The Associated Press