CDC Investigating SD Pork Processing Plant, Single Biggest COVID-19 Hot Spot in U.S.

HEADLINE APR 17, 2020

In South Dakota, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is investigating one of the largest pork processing plants in the world, where cases of COVID-19 related to the factory have surged to at least 730. The Smithfield plant in Sioux Falls is now the biggest single coronavirus hot spot in the United States. The mayor of Sioux Falls has ordered residents to shelter in place, after Republican Governor Kristi Noem refused to issue a statewide remain-at-home order.

THIS IS THE RESULT OF REPUBLICAN POLICIES FROM REAGANS DAYS WHEN THEY ALLOWED MEAT PACKING TO BREAK UNION CONTRACTS AND BRING IN FOREIGN WORKERS ON SO CALLED PERMIT WORK, WHICH MEANT THEY PAID THEM MINIMUM WAGE OR BELOW!!!!!!  BUT THE WORKERS OF COURSE STAYED AND DID NOT GO BACK, TO MEXICO, ECUADOR, GUATAMALA, ETC. 

REAGAN REDUCED RED TAPE BY REMOVING SAFETY REGULATIONS, REDUCING INSPECTIONS AND INSPECTORS AND ALLOWING THE INDUSTRY TO VOLUNTARILY SELF REGULATE WITHIN A YEAR THERE WAS A VIRULENT E-COLI BREAKOUT IN THE USA THAT THEY ATTEMPTED TO CLAIM CAME FROM CANADIAN BEEF. IT HAPPENED AGAIN A YEAR LATER WITH JACK IN THE BOX RESTAURANTS THE CANADIAN BEEF TROPE DID NOT WORK THAT TIME.

THIS WAS THE RESTRUCTURING OF THE MEAT PACKING INDUSTRY IN NORTH AMERICA, CANADA WAS IMPACTED AS WELL, AS CONSOLIDATION IN THE INDUSTRY MEANT FEWER AND FEWER PLAYERS UNTIL TODAY THE BIGGEST MONOPOLY MEAT PACKER IN NORTH AMERICA IS JBS FROM BRAZIL.

THIS IS NOT THE ONLY PLANT IN THE AMERICAN FARMING BELT, AND IT IS NOT THE ONLY ONE THAT WILL BE IMPACTED.

FOR MORE ON THIS SEE 

SEE  

https://plawiuk.blogspot.com/search?q=SMITHFIELD

https://plawiuk.blogspot.com/search?q=TYSON

https://plawiuk.blogspot.com/search?q=MEAT+PACKING

https://plawiuk.blogspot.com/search?q=COVID19

https://plawiuk.blogspot.com/search?q=JBS

Deaths of Inequality: AOC on Black and Latinx Communities at Epicenter of Epicenter of the Pandemic

STORY APRIL 07, 2020

GUEST
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez
U.S. congressmember for New York’s 14th Congressional District.

LINKS
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez on Twitter

As COVID-19 deaths spike in African-American and immigrant communities, almost a third of New York City’s infections are in Queens, one of the most diverse places in the world, and many in the hardest-hit neighborhoods are undocumented and working-class. We speak with Congressmember Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who represents the neighborhoods at the epicenter of the epicenter of the coronavirus pandemic, about how the Trump administration’s response to the pandemic is causing “deaths of incompetence,” “deaths of science denial” and “deaths of inequality.”

Transcript
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.


AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now! I’m Amy Goodman, with Juan González. I’m broadcasting from New York; he’s in New Jersey. Here in New York, the coronavirus death toll has nearly reached 5,000. We’re spending the rest of the hour with U.S. Congressmember Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who represents the neighborhoods that have been called the “epicenter of the epicenter” of the coronavirus pandemic here in New York City: Queens and the Bronx. Almost a third of the city’s COVID-19 cases are in Queens, which has been called the most diverse place in the world. Many of the hardest-hit neighborhoods in those neighborhoods are undocumented, working-class, working-poor. In Elmhurst, Queens, more than two-thirds of residents were born outside of the United States. The majority are black and Latinx. Queens has more COVID-19 cases than any other borough, yet it has fewer hospitals than its neighbors, with only three major medical centers. The New York Times reports, “Queens has 1.5 hospital beds per 1,000 people, compared to 5.3 in Manhattan.”

Congressmember Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s district also includes Rikers Island jail, where at least one prisoner has died of complications of COVID-19. Hundreds have tested positive. Rikers currently holds just over 5,000 people, many there for parole violations or serving less than a year for a low-level offense. Many are there in pretrial detention; they simply don’t have money for bail.

On Friday, Congressmember Ocasio-Cortez tweeted, quote, ”COVID deaths are disproportionately spiking in Black + Brown communities. Why? Because the chronic toll of redlining, environmental racism, wealth gap, etc. ARE underlying health conditions. Inequality is a comorbidity. COVID relief should be drafted with a lens of reparations,” she wrote.

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez joins us now. Thank you so much for being with us, Congressmember Ocasio-Cortez. Can you start out by talking about your district? We have heard a lot about Elmhurst Hospital, as we should. The doctors and the nurses, like so many around the country, and the sanitation workers in these hospitals are not properly protected. We have not heard as much — and there may be a deep connection here — about the community that it serves. In just the last week, I’ve heard about three men — two Mexican brothers who died in their home, not even in the hospital, their bodies just recently taken out; a third died in the hospital — but fears of even going to hospitals, knowing what could happen to them, who have been hard-working members of our communities for so many years. Talk about your community.

REP. ALEXANDRIA OCASIO-CORTEZ: Yes. No, thank you, and thank you for the opportunity to discuss the actual community surrounding Elmhurst Hospital and Elmhurst, Queens. This is one of the most working-class and, as you mentioned, blackest and brownest communities in New York City. It is extraordinarily dense. Even for New York City, it is a very dense and densely populated community.

It’s no surprise that, you know, in the wake of this pandemic, right after the Trump administration announced its public charge rule, which basically said, if you are undocumented and seek public services, public healthcare, SNAP, WIC, etc., then you will be essentially put on a fast track to either denial of citizenship or outright deportation — and so, now that we have this pandemic and it is hardest-hitting in communities that are heavily immigrant and also with strong historically black communities, as well, that people are either afraid to go to Elmhurst Hospital out of the cost or out of sheer fear that they will be put in the public charge list.

Now, after we pushed the Trump administration, we were able to secure — we were able to secure confirmation from the administration that they would not refer COVID-related cases and treat them under the public charge rule, but there’s so much confusion already that many members are scared to go. These are the same people who are preparing our food. They’re the same people who stock our grocery shelves. They’re the same people who deliver our goods. And the idea that we can deny them care, as though the pandemic will not affect just in greater ways because of that, is naive, and it’s unscientific.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Congresswoman, I wanted to ask you about this enormous racial and ethnic disparity in the cases and especially in the deaths that are occurring. As you mentioned and as Amy mentioned earlier, the areas of Elmhurst, Jackson Heights and Corona are the epicenter of the epicenter. But the Bronx, a portion of which you also represent — your congressional district stretches out there — has also been hard hit. According to the — as of 10:59 last night, according to the tracker that the city website produces for New York City every day, there were 679 people, Bronx residents, who had died of coronavirus. That’s more than twice as many as have died in Manhattan — only 302 in Manhattan — even though the Bronx is significantly smaller in population than Manhattan. And you’ve got a situation where the Bronx is 16% of the population of the city, but it represents 24% of all the deaths. So we have a situation here where, even in Brooklyn, the areas of Brooklyn where most residents are dying are in North Brooklyn in black and brown communities. How do you assess the city and the state’s response to what is clearly a disparate impact of this epidemic?

REP. ALEXANDRIA OCASIO-CORTEZ: Yes. Well, as I had mentioned earlier, inequality, environmental racism, these are preexisting conditions. And when you have a pandemic, similar to what we saw with Hurricane Maria, when you have a natural disaster or an event like a pandemic hit communities that have already been ravaged by weakened healthcare systems, weakened infrastructure — the South Bronx has one of the highest childhood asthma rates in the country. When we talk about environmental racism, we’re talking about illegal dumping. We’re talking about concentrating waste sites and concentrating highways and trucking zones through the poorest communities in the country, and the blackest communities and the brownest communities. And so, we already have an issue of extreme and acute concentration of respiratory illnesses in the Bronx. That is largely due to the trucking that comes through here, through the environmental inequalities that come through here.

And so, when you have the Cross Bronx Expressway, which was a notorious project of racism by Robert Moses, the way that he tried to concentrate and push these communities and design these communities through, when you have the toll of health inequities, and, on top of that, these are our frontline workers, where you see our frontline workers living are where you see — are the same places where you are seeing COVID cases spiking. Black and brown workers are overwhelmingly part of this frontline. They are the grocery store workers. They are the delivery workers. They are hospital workers, including janitorial staff. And so, when you have this pandemic layer on top of it, when you pair that to the unequal access to care, when you pair that with ratios of hospital beds far lower than more affluent communities, this is what you get.

And so, when it comes to the city’s response, you know, I believe that the city is doing absolutely everything that it can, but we also have to acknowledge that there are two entirely different starting lines that these communities are starting with. And so, we’ve been working very hard, but also, when we don’t push for things like rent and — full rent and mortgage moratoriums, you push these workers to go outside, because they feel a pressure to make their rent. And they may go out and take work. They may take work under the table in order to make ends meet. And so, without this economic relief, it also adds to the public health issues that we currently face.

AMY GOODMAN: After break, we’re going to talk with you about the stimulus package, about what you’ve called the “corporate slush fund,” that $500 billion, and how it will be monitored. But I want to ask you about another area of your district, which also goes to you as a congressmember dealing with prisons and jails all over the country, but Rikers Island, the whole jail system there in New York — what, Rikers Island, 4,600, 5,000, in the New York City jail system. Are people still being sent there for pretrial detention simply because they don’t have enough money to post to stay out of jail? And what’s happening? We see hundreds of both prisoners and staff have tested positive. There’s already been a death. What about the calls for decarceration, for releasing prisoners, not only at Rikers, but then around the country now? Tell us where they stand.

REP. ALEXANDRIA OCASIO-CORTEZ: Yes. We’ve been approaching and we’ve been calling very strongly on the governor and the mayor to take a strong decarceral approach to Rikers. That first death — you know, not that any death on Rikers is merited, no matter what anyone has done, but that first death wasn’t even for a criminal offense. It was for a simple parole violation that was noncriminal in nature. And so, what we’re seeing here is that the city is packing Rikers with individuals, and they know it’s a tinderbox. It’s a tinderbox for the workers. It’s a tinderbox for incarcerated people.

And we have to demand — not just in Rikers, but across the country, we need to increase our demands for elderly clemency, to end pretrial detention as much as possible, to make sure that we not arresting people for low-level arrests. We’ve been placing inquiries to see if there are people being moved to Rikers. We believe that the mayor is trying to take off low-level arrests, but there are still so many individuals that do not belong there.

And that also goes for our immigration detention facilities. ICE was — knowing that this pandemic was coming, knowing everything that was happening, ICE was still conducting raids in sanctuary cities. And, you know, this is part of a larger political project by the president to punish those cities that act as sanctuary cities for immigrants. And so, ICE, as well, is knowingly packing these detention facilities with people who, again, have not committed crimes but are merely there for civil proceeding reasons and who are merely awaiting a court date.

And so, there’s no reason that these jails should be filled. There’s no reason that they should be packed. We must pursue a decarceral agenda in order to really fulfill our responsibility as public servants.

AMY GOODMAN: Can I ask you, just before we go to break, Congressmember — you confronted an ICE agent at LaGuardia Airport — if you could talk about this, what exactly was happening — who was transporting immigrant children? Can you explain what happened?

REP. ALEXANDRIA OCASIO-CORTEZ: Yes. So, this happened several weeks ago. I got a call in the evening from our local — one of our local immigration community organizations, New Sanctuary Coalition. And they had gotten a tip from a worker that ICE was transporting six minors, six children, into New York City from a different — you know, from Texas. And we were extraordinarily concerned, and so we decided to hop into a car, drove straight to LaGuardia Airport, and I just waited at the gate. And after some time, an ICE agent came out with six young boys.

And they were being transported into New York City. This was after the pandemic had erupted. This was after the Pentagon already started banning much domestic travel for members. And here we have ICE transporting children into a pandemic zone, into the most concentrated area of the most concentrated city. They were flying into LaGuardia. They weren’t even flying into JFK or Newark. They were flying into the shadow of East Elmhurst — or, Elmhurst Hospital.

And so, you know, I confronted the agent. They were transporting these children into ORR facilities here in New York City where staffers have been confirmed to have COVID-19 cases. And after inquiring, we started to make a lot of noise about this. ICE, since then, has started to place some restrictions, but not nearly enough, to protect these children and to protect all immigrants in our system.

AMY GOODMAN: Last month, a reporter asked Trump if undocumented immigrants are welcome at testing sites, and can they be tested without fear of being reported to immigration authorities. This is what President Trump said.


PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: The answer is, yes, we will do those tests, because I think, in that case, it’s important. I think that if — you could call — you could say “illegal alien.” You could say “illegal immigrant.” You could say whatever you want to use your definition of what you’re talking about. We’re all talking about the same thing. Yes, we will test that person, because I think it’s important that we test that person. And we don’t want to send that person back into wherever we’re going to be sending the person, whether it’s another country or someplace else, because, you know, we’re now bringing them right out of our country. But, yeah, we will test those people.

AMY GOODMAN: Wow! I mean, so there you have President Trump talking about, “Yeah, test them before you send them out.” Overall, your response to President Trump, his antagonism against any kind of criticism, the well-known, documented lack of tests, lack of PPE, protective gear for people who work in hospitals, and now this, saying, “Sure, test them before we deport them”?

REP. ALEXANDRIA OCASIO-CORTEZ: Well, overall, you know, not just President Trump, but this entire administration, knew what was coming. Trump knew this pandemic was coming. The military knew this pandemic was coming. The CDC knew this pandemic was coming. HHS, Health and Human Services, knew this pandemic was coming. And there was a structural, but also universal, refusal to acknowledge and, more importantly, to act.

And this pandemic is — you know, and the casualties that we are seeing are, again, not just due to coronavirus. There are people dying unnecessarily. As you mentioned earlier, there are people not just dying in hospitals. In New York City alone, we are seeing 200 to 300 people dying in their homes a day — per day in New York City, inside their homes, in addition to the hospitalizations. These numbers that you’re seeing, all in all, many of them are confirmed coronavirus cases. As you mentioned, many people do not have access to tests, so a lot of these deaths that you are seeing, there are many more that are uncounted, that are being counted as pneumonia or being counted as other causes of death, because those people were not able to get a COVID-19 test.

And so, these additional deaths, many of them are unnecessary. They are deaths of incompetence. They are deaths of science denial. They are deaths of inequality. And so, it’s important for us to acknowledge how unnecessary the level of crisis that we are at right now, that is due to the incompetence of this administration, that is due to the lack of responsiveness of this administration.

And when it comes to the particular cruelty to undocumented immigrants, it is also a form of denial of the fact that many of these undocumented people pay taxes, they fund our public schools, and they fund the very public health system that they are being denied access to right now, through the billions of dollars of taxes that they pay. Billions more, by the way — these undocumented workers pay billions more in taxes than Facebook does, than Amazon does and than many other corporations do. And so, when it comes to contributions to our public systems, they do far more than these corporations do. And it’s extraordinarily important that they have safe access to our public health system.

And by the way, it shouldn’t just be for COVID-19 cases. Our public health system should be free at the point of service for every single person in this country. There are folks that are saying, “Oh, you’ll get paid sick leave if it’s COVID-19-related,” as we’re seeing with Amazon. They’ll take your fever. If you don’t have a test, then you will not be paid — you will not receive paid sick leave. We should have universal systems where every person can see the doctor free of charge when they need to see it, so that they can get the care that they need. That is what it means to live in an advanced and modern and humane society. And so long as we don’t do that, we have not earned the right to call ourselves one.

AMY GOODMAN: We are speaking to Congressmember Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. We’ll be back with her in 30 seconds.

[break]

AMY GOODMAN: That is Dr. Elvis Francois singing John Lennon’s “Imagine.” He’s from the Mayo Clinic.

The original content of this program is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License. Please attribute legal copies of this work to democracynow.org 

SEE  https://plawiuk.blogspot.com/search?q=AOC

CHOMSKY GREW A BEARD
“Gangster in the White House”: Noam Chomsky on COVID-19, WHO, China, Gaza and Global Capitalism

STORY APRIL 17, 2020

GUEST
Noam Chomsky
world-renowned political dissident, linguist and author. He is a laureate professor in the Department of Linguistics at the University of Arizona and professor emeritus at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he taught for more than 50 years.

We continue our conversation with world-renowned political dissident, linguist and author Noam Chomsky. He responds to President Trump’s cuts to U.S. support for the World Health Organization and the surge in deaths in the United States to another record high, and discusses conditions in Gaza, the rise of authoritarianism around the world, and the progressive response. “This is typical behavior of autocrats and dictators. When you make colossal errors which are killing thousands of people, find somebody else to blame,” say Chomsky. “In the United States, it’s unfortunately the case, for well over a century, century and a half, that it’s always easy to blame the 'yellow peril.'”

Transcript
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.


AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The Quarantine Report. I’m Amy Goodman. The death rate from the coronavirus pandemic continues to accelerate, with worldwide confirmed deaths topping 145,000. In the United States, deaths surged to another record high Thursday, nearly doubling to surpass the previous record set just a day before, at 4,591, U.S. residents died over a single 24-hour period.

Well, today we continue my conversation with Noam Chomsky, the world-renowned political dissident, linguist and author of more than a hundred books. He’s a laureate professor in the Department of Linguistics at the University of Arizona, Tucson, and professor emeritus at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he taught for more than half a century. Professor Chomsky joined us last week from his home in Tucson, Arizona, where he is sheltering in place his wife Valeria. We spoke just after President Donald Trump foreshadowed this week’s announcement that he would cut off U.S. support for the World Health Organization. This is Trump addressing reporters last week.


REPORTER 1: Is the time to freeze funding to the WHO during a pandemic of this magnitude?


PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: No, maybe not. I mean, I’m not saying I’m going to do it, but we’re going to look at it.

REPORTER 2: You did say that you’re going to do it.

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: We give a tremendous — no, I didn’t. I said we’re going to look at it. We’re going to investigate it. We’re going to look at it.

AMY GOODMAN: Can you talk about what he’s threatening to do right now? First they reject the WHO tests, that would have been critical, and now saying they’re going to defund the World Health Organization.

NOAM CHOMSKY: Well, this is typical behavior of autocrats and dictators. When you make colossal errors which are killing thousands of people, find somebody else to blame. And in the United States, it’s unfortunately the case, for well over a century, century and a half, that it’s always easy to blame the “yellow peril.” The yellow — “They’re coming after us.” We’ve seen this all through my life, in fact way before. So, blame the World Health Organization, blame China, claim that the World Health Organization has insidious relations with China, is practically working for them. And that sells to a population that’s been deeply indoctrinated for a long time, way back to the Chinese Exclusion Acts in the 19th century, to say, “Yeah, those yellow barbarians are coming over to destroy us.” That’s almost instinctive.

And it’s backed up by the echo chamber, so, you know, say, Rush Limbaugh. Science is one of the four corners of deceit, along with the media, academia — I forget one of the others, but they’re the four corners of deceit. They live on deceit. You keep driving that into people’s heads. They say, “Why should we believe anything? Why should we believe the news? It’s just fake news. They’re all trying to destroy our savior, our president, the greatest president ever.”

I’m old enough to remember as a child listening to Hitler’s speeches over the radio, Nuremberg rallies. I couldn’t understand the words, but the tone and the reaction of the crowd, the adoring crowd, was very clear and very frightening. We know what it led to. It’s hard to — it comes to mind at once when you listen to Trump’s ravings and the crowd. I don’t suggest that he’s anything like Hitler. Hitler had an ideology, horrible ideology, not only massacring all the Jews and 30 million Slavs and the Roma, and conquering much of the world, but also an internal ideology: The state, under control of the Nazi Party, should control every aspect of life, should even control the business community. That’s not the world we’re in. In fact, it’s almost the opposite, business controlling the government. And as far as Trump is concerned, the only detectable ideology is pure narcissism. Me, that’s the ideology. As long as I am smart enough to keep serving the real masters, pour money into the pockets of the very wealthy and the corporate sector, and they’ll let you get away with your antics.

It’s pretty striking to see what happened at the Davos conference this January. That’s the meeting of the people who are called the “masters of the universe” — CEOs of the major corporations, you know, big media stars and so on. They get together in Davos once a year, congratulate each other on how wonderful they are, put on a pose of dedicated humanists who couldn’t do — you know, just totally devoted to the welfare of the people of the world. “You’re safe leaving your fate in our hands because we’re such good guys.”

Trump came along and gave the keynote address. They don’t like Trump. His vulgarity is incompatible with the image that they’re trying to project of cultivated humanism. But they wildly applauded him, lustily applauded every word, because they know that he does recognize which pockets you have to fill with dollars and how to do it. And as long as he does that, as long as he serves his major constituency, they’ll let him get away with the antics — in fact, like it, because he mobilizes a crowd that will back policies like his legislative achievements. Main one is a tax scam that pours money into the hands of the corporate coffers and harms everyone else. The deregulation is great for business. They love it. They can destroy the environment and harm people as much as they want. Very harmful to the population.

You cut back on pollution constraints, on auto emission regulations, what happens? People die of pollution, of mercury poisoning. The waters are poisoned. And the world, it goes, is facing disaster. You’re accelerating the disaster. As I said, even in the February 10th budget, while cutting back on protection against diseases in the midst of a raging pandemic, increases funding for fossil fuel production, which is going to destroy us all. Of course, a lot more money for the Pentagon and for his famous wall. But that’s the world we’re living in — here, not everywhere. As I said, the Asian countries have been acting sensibly. New Zealand actually seems to have killed it also. Taiwan is doing very well. In Europe, Germany has maybe the lowest death rate in the world, Norway, as well. There are ways to react.

And there are ways to try to destroy everything — what President Trump is leading, with the support of the Murdoch echo chamber, Fox News and others. And amazingly, this conjuring act is working. So, with one hand, you raise your hand to heaven: “I’m the chosen one. I’m your savior. I’m going to rebuild America, make it great again for you, because I’m the servant. I’m the loyal servant of the working class,” and so on. Meanwhile, with the other hand, you’re stabbing them all in the back. And to carry this off is an act of political genius. You have to recognize that serious talent is involved, whether intuitive or conscious planning. It’s devastating. We’ve seen it before. We see it now in dictators, autocrats, sociopaths who happen to get into leadership positions. And it’s now happening in the richest, most important country in world history.

AMY GOODMAN: So, you have this situation in the United States where the economy has been brought to a standstill because of the absolute catastrophe of this pandemic, that people have to isolate — although isolation is a luxury. For so many essential workers, they have to come out into this pandemic and face enormous threat to their own lives. If you can talk about whether you see this pandemic perhaps threatening global capitalism overall or shoring it up, and how the trillions of dollars that are being put into these stimulus packages are going to simply intensify inequality or actually going to help people at the bottom?

NOAM CHOMSKY: That’s a choice, not an inevitability. I mean, the corporate sector is working hard to plan for a future of the kind that you’re describing. The question is whether popular organizations will be able to impose enough pressure to make sure that this doesn’t happen.

And there are ways. Take the corporate — what you just described. The corporations right now are hiding their copies of Ayn Rand and rushing to the nanny state and asking for benefits from the public to overcome the results of their criminal behavior. What have they been doing for the last years? Profits have been going sky high. They’ve been indulging in an orgy of stock buybacks, which are devices to increase the wealth for the rich shareholders and for management while undermining the productive capacity of the enterprise at a huge scale, setting their offices somewhere in a little room in Ireland so they don’t have to pay taxes, using tax havens. This is not small change. This is tens of trillions of dollars, robbing the taxpayer. Does that have to be the case?

Take the current giveaway to corporations. It should be accompanied by conditionalities — term we’re familiar with from the IMF. They should be required to ensure that there will be no more use of tax havens, there will be no more stock buybacks, period. If they don’t do that, with a firm guarantee, no money from the public.

Is that utopian? Not at all. That was the law, and the law was enforced, up until Ronald Reagan, who turned on the spigot to rob as much as you like, with Milton Friedman and other luminaries in the background telling him, “That’s liberty.” “Liberty” means rob the public massively by things like tax havens and stock buybacks. So there’s nothing utopian about these conditions. It says, “Let’s go back to a period of pretty much regimented capitalism,” which developed since Roosevelt, was carried through ’til the ’70s, when it began to erode, and, with Reagan, just ended.

There should be further conditionalities, should be working people should be placed — part of management should be representatives of workers. Is that impossible? No, it’s done in other countries, Germany, for example. There should be a requirement that they guarantee a living wage — not just minimum wage, a living wage. That’s a conditionality that can be imposed.

Now, we can move further and recognize — notice that all of this is pre-Trump. Trump is taking a failing, lethal system and turning it into a monstrosity, but the roots were before him. Just think back to the reason why the pandemic occurred in the first place. Drug companies are following capitalist logic. They don’t want to do anything. The neoliberal hammer says the government can’t do anything the way it did in the past. You’re caught in a vise. Then comes along Trump and makes it incomparably worse. But the roots of the crisis are pre-Trump.

The same with the healthcare system. Like we know that — everyone knows — they should know the basic facts. It’s an international scandal: twice the costs of comparable countries, some of the worst outcomes. The costs were recently estimated by a study in The Lancet, one of the world’s leading medical journals. They estimated that the costs, the annual — annual costs to Americans are close to half a trillion dollars and 68,000 lives lost. That’s not so small.

AMY GOODMAN: World-renowned political dissident, linguist and author Noam Chomsky. When we come back, he’ll discuss conditions in Gaza during the pandemic, and the rise of authoritarianism around the world, and the progressive response. Stay with us.

[break]

AMY GOODMAN: The Puerto Rican rapper Residente, performing the “Quarantine Edition” of his new song “René.” This version includes his mom and about 30 other musicians who joined him from their homes.

This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The Quarantine Report. I’m Amy Goodman, as we return to Part 2 of our conversation with Noam Chomsky, world-renowned linguist, political dissident and author. I asked him about Gaza, one of the most densely populated places on Earth, where at least 13 cases of COVID-19 have been reported. The World Health Organization reports there are just 87 ventilators for Gaza’s 2 million residents. Nearly 300 cases and two deaths have been confirmed in the West Bank. This is Professor Chomsky.

AMY GOODMAN: If you can talk for a moment, globally, about what’s happening on an issue that has been close to your heart for decades, and that is the Occupied Territories, Gaza and the West Bank, what it means for a place like Gaza, called by the U.N. and people around the world a kind of “open-air prison” of almost 2 million people, what the pandemic could mean there?

NOAM CHOMSKY: It’s almost impossible to think about. Gaza is 2 million people who are in the — living in a prison, open-air prison, under constant attack. Israel, which is the occupying power, recognized by everyone in the world except Israel — Israel is imposing — has been imposing very harsh sanctions ever since the Palestinians made the mistake of carrying out the first free election in the Arab world and electing the wrong people. The United States and Israel came down on them like a ton of bricks.

Israel’s policy, as was explained by Dov Weissglas, the person in charge of the withdrawal of Israeli troops, the withdrawal of the settlers and imposition of the new regime — he explained frankly, “We are putting the people of Gaza on a diet, just enough to keep them alive,” meaning wouldn’t look good if they all die, but not anything more than that. So, not a piece of chocolate or a toy for a child. That’s out. Just enough to stay alive. And if you have a serious health problem, maybe you can apply to go to the hospital in East Jerusalem. Maybe after a couple of weeks, you’ll be allowed to go. Maybe a child is allowed to go, but his mother is not allowed to come.

If the pandemic — there are now a couple of cases in Gaza. If that extends, it’s a total disaster. International institutions have pointed out that by 2020 — that’s now — Gaza will probably become barely livable. About 95% of the water is totally polluted. The place is a disaster. And Trump has made sure that it will get worse. He withdrew funding from the support systems for Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank — UNRWA, killed the funding; Palestinian hospitals, killed the funding. And he had a reason. They weren’t praising him enough. They weren’t respectful of the god, so, therefore, we’ll strangle them, even when they’re barely surviving under a harsh and brutal regime.

Incidentally, this extends to Palestinians in Israel, as well. Human rights activists in Israel pointed out recently — there’s articles about it in Haaretz — that Israel finally began to set up a few drive-by testing areas only in Jewish areas, not in the areas with Palestinian population. And to make sure that the intended results would follow, they announced it only in Hebrew, not in Arabic, so Palestinians wouldn’t even know. Well, that’s within Israel. In the Occupied Territories, far worse.

And the Trump hammer came in saying, “We’re not even going to give you a penny, because you’re not respectful enough of me.” I don’t know how to describe this kind of thing. I can’t find words for it.

AMY GOODMAN: Noam Chomsky, what do you think is required in an international response to stop the rise of authoritarianism in response to this pandemic? For example, in the Philippines, where the authoritarian leader, Trump ally, Duterte, talks about killing people; the massive crackdown, without support of the people of India, 1.3 billion people, with Narendra Modi. President Trump was in India as the pandemic was taking off, never saying a word about it, packing a stadium of 100,000 people. You have Orbán in Hungary, who is now ruling by decree. What would it take to turn that around to be a progressive response?

NOAM CHOMSKY: Well, actually, what’s happening, to the extent that you can find some coherent policy in the madness in the White House, one thing does emerge with considerable clarity — namely, an effort to construct an international of the most reactionary states and oppressive states, led by the gangster in the White House. Now, this is taking shape.

I can run through it, but since you mentioned India, Modi, who is a Hindu nationalist extremist, is systematically moving to destroy Indian secular democracy and to crush the Muslim population. What’s happening in Kashmir is horrifying. It was bad enough before, now getting much worse. Same with the Muslim population, a huge population in India. The current lockdown is almost — you can almost describe it as genocidal. Modi gave, I think, a four-hour warning saying total lockdown. That’s over a billion people. Some of them have nowhere to go. People in the informal economy, which is a huge number of people, are just cast out. “Go walk back to your village,” which may be a thousand miles away. “Die on the roadside.” This is a huge catastrophe in the making, right on top of the strong efforts to impose the ultra-right Hindutva doctrines that are at the core of Modi’s thinking and background.

What’s happening in — quite apart from this, India — in fact, South Asia generally — is going to become unlivable pretty soon, if current climate policies persist. Last summer, the temperature in Rajasthan went up to 50 degrees centigrade. And it’s increasing. There’s hundreds of millions of people in India that don’t have access to water. It’s going to get much worse, could lead to a nuclear war between the two powers that basically rely on the same water resources, which are declining under global warming: Pakistan and India. I mean, the horror story that’s developing is, again, indescribable. You can’t find words for it. And some people are cheering about it, like Donald Trump and his friend Bolsonaro in Brazil, a couple of other sociopaths.

But how do you counter a reactionary international? By developing a Progressive International. And there are steps to that. They don’t get much publicity, but this — I think it’s this coming December, there will be a formal announcement of what has been in process for some time. Yanis Varoufakis, the founder and leading figure in DiEM25, the progressive movement in Europe, very important — Varoufakis and Bernie Sanders came out with a declaration calling for a Progressive International to combat and, we hope, overcome the reactionary international based in the White House.

Now, if you look at the level of states, this looks like an extremely unequal competition. But states are not the only things that exist. If you look at the level of people, it’s not impossible. It’s possible to construct a Progressive International based on people, ranging from the organized political groups that have been proliferating, that have gotten a huge shot in the arm from the Sanders campaign, ranging from them to self-help mutual aid, self-help organizations that are rising in communities all over the world, in the most impoverished areas of Brazil, for example, and even this astonishing fact that I mentioned, that the murderous crime gangs are taking responsibility for bringing some form of decent protection against the pandemic in the favelas, the miserable slums, in Rio. All of this is happening on the popular level. If it expands and develops, if people don’t just give up in despair but work to change the world, as they’ve done in the past under much worse conditions, if they do that, there’s a chance for a Progressive International.

And notice, bear in mind, that there are also striking cases of internationalism, progressive internationalism, at the state level. So, take a look at the European Union. The rich countries in Europe, like Germany, have recently given us a lesson in just what the union means. Right? Germany is managing pretty well. They probably have the lowest death rate in the world, in organized society. Right next door, northern Italy is suffering miserably. Is Germany giving them any aid? No. In fact, Germany even blocked the effort to develop euro bonds, general bonds in Europe which could be used to alleviate the suffering in the countries under the worst conditions. But fortunately for Italy, it can look across the Atlantic for aid from the superpower on the Western Hemisphere, Cuba. Cuba is, once again, as before, exhibiting extraordinary internationalism, sending doctors to Italy. Germany won’t do it, but Cuba can. China is providing material aid. So, these are steps towards progressive internationalism at the state level.

AMY GOODMAN: World-renowned political dissident, linguist and author Noam Chomsky, laureate professor in the Department of Linguistics at the University of Arizona, Tucson, professor emeritus at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he taught for more than half a century. Noam Chomsky joined us last week from his home in Tucson, Arizona, where he’s sheltering in place with his wife Valeria. Go to our website at Democracy Now! to see Part 1 of our conversation.

When we come back, a new policy at New York’s public hospitals requires medical workers who call in sick to produce a doctor’s note. Stay with us.

[break]

AMY GOODMAN: “Lean on Me” by Bill Withers. The legendary singer-songwriter Bill Withers died last month at the age of 81 from heart complications. We were showing, during that music break, nurses dancing around the world to give strength to each other, themselves and their patients.

The original content of this program is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License. Please attribute legal copies of this work to democracynow.org. 

#KAKISTOCRACY

Donald Trump wants to rule over a corrupt regime forever


April 17, 2020 By Chauncey Devega, Salon


Donald Trump is not a supervillain from a comic book. He is a simple man, almost primal in his drives and impulses. For those who choose to see the world as it actually exists, there is no great mystery about what Trump wants: His goal is to be president forever and to use the power of the office to enrich himself and his inner circle, while taking revenge on anyone and everyone who dare to oppose him, or who he thinks has wrong

This article first appeared in Salon.

After nearly four years of Trump’s public contempt for the rule of law, democracy, the Constitution and norms of human decency, there are still too many Americans — especially among the news media and pundit class — in a state of denial about the reality of this dire situation.

They have forgotten the wisdom of Occam’s razor: the simplest explanation is more likely than not the correct one. This is orders of magnitude true in the case of Donald Trump, very simple man and de facto American emperor.

Seeing opportunity in the coronavirus pandemic, Donald Trump has repeatedly shown the American people and the world who he really is.


The most recent example: During a “coronavirus briefing” on Wednesday, Trump threatened to adjourn both houses of Congress — a brazen attack on the Constitution and the rule of law — unless that body surrendered to his will by immediately appointing his handpicked nominees to key government positions.

In 2017, Yale historian Timothy Snyder, author of the New York Times bestseller “On Tyranny,” warned the public about Trump’s obvious plan to use a crisis to suspend democracy and the Constitution. Here’s what he told me then:

Let me make just two points. The first is that I think it’s pretty much inevitable that they will try. The reason I think that is that the conventional ways of being popular are not working out for them. The conventional way to be popular or to be legitimate in this country is to have some policies, to grow your popularity ratings and to win some elections. I don’t think 2018 is looking very good for the Republicans along those conventional lines — not just because the president is historically unpopular. It’s also because neither the White House nor Congress have any policies which the majority of the public like.

This means they could be seduced by the notion of getting into a new rhythm of politics, one that does not depend upon popular policies and electoral cycles.

Whether it works or not depends upon whether when something terrible happens to this country, we are aware that the main significance of it is whether or not we are going to be more or less free citizens in the future.

My gut feeling is that Trump and his administration will try and that it won’t work. Not so much because we are so great but because we have a little bit of time to prepare. I also think that there are enough people and enough agencies of the government who have also thought about this and would not necessarily go along.


On Tuesday, Donald Trump declared that he had “total authority” over the country’s governors and the individual states they were elected to lead. In making that declaration Trump also threatened to force the country’s governors to cease social distancing and other rules put in place to slow down the spread of the coronavirus pandemic. His argument, of course, is that those restrictions are damaging “the economy” and therefore Trump’s chances of being re-elected in 2020 (assuming a presidential election even takes place).

After a public outcry Trump walked back his position, saying that he will “be authorizing each individual governor of each individual state to implement a reopening.”

Of course, Trump does not have any such power under America’s federal system of government. Such a fact is of little importance: Like other authoritarians, he is testing and breaking political norms so that he can shatter them later.

Such rule-breaking behavior has been an ongoing theme of Trump’s rule.

Trump has repeatedly “joked” that he will not leave office, publicly solicited the interference of hostile foreign powers to help him steal the 2020 election, and has threatened the Democratic Party, the news media and others who dare to oppose him with imprisonment (or worse) for “treason.”


Donald Trump is also trying to defund the U.S. Postal Service, perhaps to prevent mail-in voting. Such an outcome will force the American people — and Democratic voters most of all — to wait in line where they may well be exposed to the coronavirus. Refusing to permit mail-in voting during the coronavirus pandemic will clearly suppress voter turnout, an outcome that will help Trump remain in office. Shutting down the Postal Service will all but guarantee, arguably, that Trump will win a second term.

Trump has also refused to send lifesaving ventilators and other much-needed medical equipment to states or localities run by Democrats. Instead, he’s distributing urgently needed equipment like a dictator or mafia boss, as rewards to his court and other sycophants. In essence, Trump is intentionally hurting and killing those Americans who he deems to be “disloyal” to him and his regime.

In a recent essay for The Atlantic, Kristy Parker and Yascha Mounk warned that Trump’s blatant use of the authoritarian’s playbook during the coronavirus crisis will create an opportunity to further undermine American democracy:


Recent history shows that authoritarian populists engage in six categories of assaults on democracy, of which seizing raw executive power is but one. As president, Trump has engaged in each of these behaviors: spreading disinformation, quashing dissent, politicizing independent institutions, amassing executive power, delegitimizing communities, and corrupting elections….

Now, these same tendencies are shaping President Trump’s response to the current pandemic…. Perhaps the only authoritarian play Trump hasn’t yet made is corrupting the upcoming election with the pandemic as an excuse. But we are in the early days of this crisis, and the prospects for him to do so — or to abuse his powers in other ways — are manifold.

Why do so many members of the news media, the chattering class and the public en masse continue to treat Donald Trump and his threats to democracy and the rule of law as “jokes” performed by an incompetent buffoon who deserves mockery? (Which is truly a waste of energy, since Trump has proven himself to be a malignant narcissist with no sense of shame.)


Moreover, why do so many of these same people still believe that Trump’s defeat is somehow inevitable, or that there will definitely be a presidential election in November?

In a previous essay for Salon, I described these people as the “hope peddlers”:

[T]he people who tell the public that everything will be OK, that the danger of the Trump regime has been somehow exaggerated, that matters are not as dire or extreme as they appear and that a return to “normalcy” is “inevitable” if we somehow muddle through the present moment.

The hope peddlers are so personally, emotionally and financially invested in “the system” that they are existentially incapable of admitting that Donald Trump and his regime are authoritarians and white neo-fascists who represent an existential threat to the United States of America.

The hope peddlers are also engaged in fantastical thinking where they truly believe that if they repeatedly disseminate narratives about nonexistent Democratic Party victories against Donald Trump’s regime, such victories will somehow magically appear through sheer force of will.

Some of the other people who cannot admit to themselves (and the public) what and who Donald Trump really is are still stuck in the bargaining and denial stages of grief. Approaching the end of Trump’s fourth year in office, such people are lost and may never come to terms with America’s horrible reality as failed democracy fully run by neoliberal gangster capitalists, white neo-fascists and Christian nationalists.


Other Americans who are still stuck in the stages of grief about the age of Trump are behaving like children hiding under the bed from monsters. Children do not yet know that human monsters are real, and that hiding from them will bring no salvation. Adults have no excuse for engaging in such fallacious thinking.
Then there are others who do not understand the difference between hope and optimism. Activist and science fiction writer Cory Doctorow explained this in a 2016 essay:

Hope is why you tread water if your ship sinks in the open sea: Not because you have any real chance of being picked up, but because everyone who was picked up kicked until the rescue came.

Kicking is a necessary (but insufficient) precondition for survival. There’s a special kind of hope: the desperate hope we have for people who are depending upon us. If your ship sinks in open water and your child can’t kick for herself, you’ll wrap her arms around your neck and kick twice as hard for both of you.

Hope involves taking agency and control over one’s own destiny and then taking action to achieve that goal. Optimism is passive. Optimism is also assuming that someone else will do the hard work and that you can be a type of free rider for other people’s labor and struggle and sacrifices.

Optimism will not defeat Donald Trump and his authoritarian assault on American democracy and freedom. It is hope made real by the hope warriors which will defeat Donald Trump and his movement.

Donald Trump may not be a supervillain. But defeating him does require that the Fourth Estate and good Americans embrace alternative ways of thinking.
These new guidelines are:
Do not assume that Donald Trump is telling the truth. He has repeatedly shown himself at least 16,000 times to be a habitual liar.

Do not assume that Donald Trump is a decent human being, acting in the best interests of the country. He has repeatedly shown himself to be a corrupt, self-interested person who has no love for the United States and its people.

Do not assume that Donald Trump is an emotionally, intellectually or mentally healthy and normal human being. He has repeatedly shown that he is an obvious malignant narcissist, likely sociopath and apparent cult leader.

Stop assuming that Donald Trump is anything other than what he has shown himself to be. There is no alternate explanation for Trump’s evil behavior. Trump is not kidding; Trump means what he says.

The American people in general, and especially the members of the media class, should have learned these rules four years ago, and internalized them. With Election Day 2020 only a few months away, it is almost too late.

Tell Kenney to STOP firing workers and start helping to save Albertans’ lives

This week Kenney claimed to be concerned about unemployment, warning that Alberta headed for 25% unemployment, yet he is making a bad situation worse. The UCP fired 25,000 education workers and their budget is causing job losses in government, post-secondary institutions and municipalities. 

Use our email tool to tell Kenney to STOP firing workers and start helping to save Albertans’ lives.  If you haven't yet, sign up for our #KenneysCuts campaign to join the fight.

Employment statistics for March are brutal. But next month will be worse, especially for Alberta.

For our province, the worse is yet to come. And our provincial government’s determination to pursue austerity in the middle of an unprecedented recession will make a bad situation much worse.

Read our news release.

As Other Leaders Support Public Workers, Kenney Kicks Them When They’re Down

Ontario's premier said he wouldn't lay off public sector workers in this time of need and Quebec's premier just gave 300,000 health care workers raises. While other provinces are rallying to support their citizens during the COVID-19 pandemic, Alberta’s UCP government is using the crisis as a pretext to pursue an ideological agenda of shrinking and privatizing public services. Read AFL president Gil McGowan's editorial.

UCP is using the pandemic to make “outrageous” ideological changes to workplace rules

This week, the UCP also proposed changes to the Employment Standards Code that will give employers unnecessary and outrageous advantages. Among other changes, they will remove the 24-hour written notice of a shift change at a time when notices for employees will be all the more important. Such a change will be particularly difficult for working people with family members at home. With in-school classes cancelled and child care centres open only for essential service workers, like front-line health care staff, it will be extremely difficult, if not impossible, for parents to find options for child care if their shift changes at a moment’s notice.

Read our news release.

---

Child care is an essential service for Albertans during this crisis, and always

COVID-19 has shown that the UCP needs to shift their focus from cutting and de-regulating child care, to instead creating a universal system for Albertans.

Read our news release and then email your MLA. 

Workers in 'Essential Workplaces' Deserve Presumptive WCB Coverage, says AFL

We sent a letter to the WCB to work with us to adapt to support workers and employers during the COVID-19 pandemic by providing presumptive coverage to all workers that are deemed essential by the provincial government.

Read our news release.

SLAUGHTER ON TENTH AVENUE

BEYOND BALLET INTO MODERN DANCE 
Here is the full 'Slaughter on tenth Avenue' sequence from the 1939 BW
version of 'On Your Toes' with Vera Zorina and Eddie Albert. This recording is from a showing on BBC television (UK) in 1988. The copy is from an old VHS tape.
YOUTUBE COMMENTS
pattie capet
3 years ago
She is exquisite.  Everything -- Balanchine's choreography, the camera direction, the great music by Richard Rodgers -- but most of all, the great Vera Zorina herself.

donereally
2 years ago
this is stunning on so many levels. thank you so much for uploading and editing the way you have. brilliant. the camera work here is incredible. in 1939!? the crazy camera angles. the sexuality of the shots. the theatricality. it so honors the theatrical piece, yet it completely lives on film. Balanchine's genius work is so thrilling. and to give a woman that much sex and sexuality! in 1936 originally! women didn't wear pants in public regularly for almost another 30 years! it is radical! as is the sex of the choreography! zorina is magnificent. and eddie albert?? i had no idea! and he's excellent. sexy even. thank you again for posting. wowie. wow.

Vera-Ellen and Gene Kelly performing in the tragic ballet "Slaughter On Tenth Avenue" from the 1948 movie "Words and Music".
1948 WAS A YEAR OUT OF TIME IT WAS UNLIKE ANY OTHER CULTURAL
MOMENT IN AMERICAN UNTIL 1966-1968


JOHN WILSON ORCHESTRA 2012
THE EVER POPULAR AM RADIO VERSION FROM THE SIXTIES THE VENTURES.....LIVE IN JAPAN 1965
 

Coronavirus job losses hit these 10 states the hardest

Zack Guzman Senior Writer,Yahoo Finance•April 16, 2020

The number of jobs lost due to the coronavirus shutdown continue to mount, with the latest weekly total of Americans applying for unemployment benefits topping 5.24 million.

The latest swath of applications brings the total amount of jobless claims to 22 million over the last four weeks, more than wiping out the 20 million jobs added over the last decade.

But some states have been feeling the impact of job losses more than others. A Yahoo Finance review of jobless claims data from the U.S. Department of Labor reveals that Michigan and the South has been particularly hard hit since the coronavirus pandemic brought the country’s economy to a grinding halt.

Comparing each state’s average weekly jobless claims totals over the last three weeks to the week before shutdowns started occurring, reveals Michigan, Georgia, and Alabama to be the top states showing the largest percentage spike in citizens applying for unemployment benefits. Each state saw jobless claims spike more than 5,000% versus the week ending March 14.

Averaging out unemployment claims over the last three weeks versus before the coronavirus pandemic hit the U.S. shows that Michigan, Georgia, and Alabama were hit with the highest spike in people applying for unemployment benefits.

Indiana, New Hampshire, and Virginia also saw sustained jobless claims over the past month, all averaging a more than 4,000% increase to unemployment claims compared to the week ended March 14. If it’s any consolation, all of the top six states that were hit the hardest showed a decline in jobless claims in the latest report compared to the week prior.

North Carolina, Kentucky, and Louisiana rounded out the top 10 states enduring the sharpest percentage spike in jobless claims over the period analyzed.

Economists expect more unemployment claims in weeks to come as businesses remain shuttered. Making maters worse, the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) that was put in place to help businesses keep employees on their payrolls announced Thursday that it had exhausted the $349 billion it was allocated. Some, including Shark Tank’s Barbara Corcoran, have critiqued the program for not allocating funds efficiently to businesses in need.

FORWARD TO THE PAST

           

BACKWARDS TO THE FUTURE

For Asian Americans Like Me, Fighting Racism During The Pandemic Is An Act Of Survival

Marina Fang April 14, 2020 HUFFINGTON POST

I was in fourth grade when my family moved to the suburbs of Pittsburgh, where I would go on to spend my formative years. When my mother and I went to register at my local elementary school, the receptionist beamed when I spoke.

“You speak such good English,” she said, after my mother spoke first, in her accented English, having learned most of it after moving to the U.S. in her mid-30s.

“I was born here,” I replied.

At age 8, I don’t think I considered this interaction racist. I don’t know if I had the vocabulary to describe it or place it. I don’t remember if I turned it over in my head the way I do now as an adult.

The memory comes back to me a lot, most recently this weekend, when I was listening to New Yorker reporter Jiayang Fan describe a similar incident during her childhood with her mother, who was ridiculed at a suburban shopping mall for her accented English. Fan similarly recalls not knowing what to do with it, but feeling humiliated while her mother laughed it off, trying to minimize it.

Inside, I probably felt humiliated, too. But I probably smiled back at the receptionist, as we are so often taught to do as Asians — and especially as an Asian girl. Smile, nod, don’t speak up, don’t make a fuss, don’t create waves, let it go, just work hard.

Today, I understand that this was a microaggression. What do we do with these incidents like when I got ridiculed for my “weird” tea eggs for lunch; or when I got mistaken for other Asian classmates (and these days, other Asian co-workers); or when the fishmonger at my mother’s suburban supermarket pretends to not understand her? It’s not being called a “chink” or a “gook,” or being spit on or assaulted on a bus or stabbed at the store when a global crisis happens to originate in a country where people happen to look like you.

They fall under what writer Cathy Park Hong calls “minor feelings,” in her recent collection of essays of the same name, defining them as:

the racialized range of emotions that are negative, dysphoric, and therefore untelegenic, built from the sediments of everyday racial experience and the irritant of having one’s perception of reality constantly questioned or dismissed. Minor feelings arise, for instance, upon hearing a slight, knowing it’s racial, and being told, Oh, that’s all in your head.

What do we do when these actions aren’t overt racism, but they nevertheless sour and fester into something bigger and more insidious?

The answer isn’t to minimize them or dismiss them as innocent mistakes. “People are just ignorant, but they mean well!” we’re told.

The answer isn’t to smile, nod, and let it go. If we don’t speak up, don’t make a fuss, don’t create waves, we continue to make ourselves invisible. If we just work hard, prove that we’re a “good” immigrant, “show [our] American-ness,” we reinforce the stereotypes that persist about us.

Because these microaggressions eventually sour and fester into being called a “chink” or a “gook,” or being spit on or assaulted on a bus or stabbed at the store when a global crisis happens to originate in a country where people look like you. They eventually sour and fester into racist and nativist rhetoric and policies from the highest levels, the biggest megaphones.

Before the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommended that everyone wear masks outdoors to protect against COVID-19, my mother repeatedly recommended that I wear a mask. I was afraid to do so, afraid it would make me a target, given the growing number of racist attacks against Asian Americans — but I was also afraid to tell her, afraid of whether or not she’d understand.

I don’t know what the best answer is to deal with everyday racism or the anticipation of it. Yes, we tell ourselves to call out racism the next time it happens. Yes, it’s vital to have allies, especially in heightened times like this — and in turn, for Asian Americans to be allies for other people of color in fighting institutionalized racism and white supremacy.

Jessica Wong, of Fall River, Mass., front left, Jenny Chiang, of Medford, Mass., center, and Sheila Vo, of Boston, from the state's Asian American Commission, stand together during a protest, March 12, on the steps of the Statehouse in Boston. Asian American leaders in Massachusetts condemned what they say is racism, fear-mongering and misinformation aimed at Asian communities amid the widening coronavirus pandemic that originated in China. (Photo: ASSOCIATED PRESS)

But sometimes, it’s difficult to call out racism in the moment. Sometimes, I still find myself freezing up when it happens, or not immediately recognizing it as racism, or questioning whether it is — and then berating myself after, when it’s too late to do anything.

I thought about all of this again while watching Netflix’s “Tigertail,” the new film from “Master of None” co-creator Alan Yang, who poignantly explored intergenerational trauma between Asian immigrant parents and their children. The gorgeously shot “Tigertail” expands on the pain of what goes unspoken between parents and their children. Some of that pain can stem from the pressures the former put on the latter, often subconsciously projecting onto us their pains and struggles, having been hardened by the experience of cobbling together a new existence in a new country.

Tzi Ma, who gave a similarly soulful performance in last year’s “The Farewell,” plays Pin-Jui, who immigrated to the U.S. from Taiwan as a young man. In one scene, after his daughter Angela performs a mortifying piano recital, Pin-Jui berates her for crying about it in the car.

“Crying never solves anything,” he tells Angela, echoing a scene at the beginning of the film, when Pin-Jui is a kid in Taiwan. His grandmother scolds him for crying, lecturing him to “be strong” and “never let anyone see you cry.”

Adult Angela (Christine Ko) becomes estranged from him, and a taciturn Pin-Jui struggles with not knowing how to talk to her and connect with her emotionally, despite sharing some of the same struggles. In one scene, he invites her to lunch, but they eat in silence.

As a teenager, I harbored a lot of anger toward my parents for not having the emotional vocabulary to recognize and comprehend racism, for telling me to not make a big deal out of it. But now I think they were doing the best they could with what they had, having had to reinvent themselves in a new country with a culture they couldn’t understand. It’s also a country with a history of racism toward generations of Asian Americans that rarely gets taught in school — including the insidious model minority trope that reinforces these stereotypes: Smile, nod, don’t speak up, don’t make a fuss, don’t create waves, let it go, and just work hard. It’s the same impulse, the same social conditioning that made them caution me to not become a journalist and to choose something less risky and uncertain and more stable and routine.

For my parents’ generation, minimizing pain and avoiding tension was a mechanism for survival. For their kids who grew up in America — as difficult and as draining as it is, especially in these unnerving times — calling out racism, documenting it, processing it and making art about it is our mechanism for survival.