It’s possible that I shall make an ass of myself. But in that case one can always get out of it with a little dialectic. I have, of course, so worded my proposition as to be right either way (K.Marx, Letter to F.Engels on the Indian Mutiny)
Saturday, March 14, 2020
Ethiopia's Ambo city: 'From freedom to repression under Abiy Ahmed'
Image copyrightGETTY IMAGESImage captionAbiy Ahmed drew a huge crowd when he visited Ambo city in his first week in office
Under Ethiopian Prime Minister and Nobel Peace Prize winner Abiy Ahmed, the city of Ambo has turned from being a symbol of freedom into a symbol of repression, as the security forces try to curb the growth of ethnically inspired rebel and opposition groups that threaten his "coming together" vision.
Ambo, which has a large student population because of its university, was at the centre of mass protests that saw Mr Abiy rise to power in April 2018 with a promise to end decades of authoritarian rule in a nation with more than 100 million people belonging to at least 80 ethnic groups.
Getty Images
Ambo is where we are going to build the statue of our liberty, our New York"
Most of Ambo's residents are Oromos - and the protests were largely driven by anger that despite being Ethiopia's largest ethnic group, they were marginalised from political and economic power, with no Oromo ever serving as prime minister.
Acknowledging Ambo's role in bringing about change during a visit to the city within days of becoming the first Oromo to hold the prime minister's post, Mr Abiy said: "Ambo is where we are going to build the statue of our liberty, our New York."
At a fund-raising event in February 2019, the prime minister sold his watch for 5m birr (about $155,000, £120,000) to kick-start development in the city.
It was a further indication of the huge political significance he attached to Ambo, traditionally regarded as a stronghold of the Oromo Liberation Front (OLF), a former rebel group which laid down arms following peace talks with Mr Abiy.
Image copyrightGETTY IMAGESImage captionStudents were at the forefront of demands for change
But a year later, there are few signs of development in Ambo, which is about 100km (60 miles) west of the capital Addis Ababa. Instead, residents are once again complaining of a return of police brutality, with young men being randomly beaten up or detained as they go about their daily lives.
'I was lucky'
I witnessed some of this during a visit to Ambo.
In one instance about six policemen forced two young men to kneel in front of pedestrians, before kicking them and hitting them with sticks.
In another instance, two young men were forcibly taken to a police station. Their elbows were tied behind their backs. One of them pleaded, in vain, with the officers to untie him.
No-one dared to intervene for fear that the police would assault them too.
BBC
I saw policemen walk around with scissors, giving haircuts to young men perceived to have long hair or afros"
The policemen were from the regional force - and their numbers were swelled last Sunday when hundreds more graduated, raising fears that the crackdown will intensify ahead of the general election slated for August. That is the first time that Mr Abiy will face the voters since the ruling coalition chose him as prime minister to order to quell the nationwide protests.
I also saw policemen walking around Ambo with scissors, giving haircuts on the spot to young men whom they perceive to have long hair or afros.
They considered my hair to be an afro but I was lucky - they let me off with a warning to chop it off myself, which I did not do as I was going to leave Ambo in two days' time.
'I was unable to access the internet'
Police just assume that men with such looks are troublemakers and supporters of rebel leader Kumsa Diriba, who they see as a major threat to western Oromia's stability and Mr Abiy's vision of forcing a new sense of national unity, known as "coming together" .
Image copyrightSOCIAL MEDIAImage captionRebel commander Kumsa Diriba refuses to make peace with the government
Having spurned Mr Abiy's peace overtures in 2018, Mr Kumsa, who is also known as Jaal Maro, is continuing to push for the "liberation" of Oromia from his forest hideout in the remote west.
He split from the OLF, the biggest Oromo rebel group, after it decided to turn into a political party, taking with him an unspecified number of fighters under his command.
The government suspects that Mr Kumsa's rebels have infiltrated Ambo, and were responsible for the bomb blast at a pro-Abiy rally held last month to show that the prime minister still commands significant support in the city.
The rebels, via their supporters and anonymous accounts, have also been slowly gaining a profile on social media in an attempt to raise discontent against the government, especially through the circulation of the names of victims of alleged brutality by the security forces.
The government's attempt to keep a lid on dissent has led to frequent internet shutdowns in much of western Oromia since January, and in some areas people cannot even make or receive phone calls. This is despite the fact that Mr Abiy has promised to liberalise the telecom sector and end the monopoly of state-owned Ethio Telecom.
In an interview with BBC Afaan Oromoo, the deputy chief of staff of Ethiopia's Defence Force, Gen Berhanu Jula, hinted that the shutdowns were linked to military operations to dismantle camps under Mr Kumsa's control, while a senior official of Mr Abiy's newly formed Prosperity Party (PP), Taye Dendea, denied that innocent people were victims of the security force operation.
"The government has no reason to target civilians, we care about our people more than anyone else," Mr Taye told BBC Afaan Oromoo.
In Ambo, I was unable to access the internet over my mobile phone throughout my three-week stay. On the two occasions I went to an internet cafe, it had poor broadband connection and I had to wait for a long time before I could check my emails and social media accounts.
Residents suspect that apart from government concerns about the rebels, the shutdowns are intended to limit political campaigning and starve young people of news ahead of the general election.
Residents point out that Jawar Mohammed - who is probably the most prominent and controversial Ethiopian social media activist - is now also making life difficult for the prime minister.
Image copyrightGETTY IMAGESImage captionSocial media activist Jawar Mohammed has joined an opposition party
When exiled in the US, Mr Jawar used Facebook effectively to get Oromos on to the streets to rise against the former government.
Having returned to Ethiopia after Mr Abiy took power, he briefly became a supporter of the prime minister but is now a fierce opponent.
Nobel laureate booed
Mr Jawar put out a video on Facebook soon after Mr Abiy was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in October, accusing the government of trying to remove his guards from his home in Addis Ababa as part of a ploy to orchestrate an attack on him.
Despite government denials of any such plan, Mr Jawar's supporters staged protests against Mr Abiy in parts of Oromia - in one instance, burning copies of the prime minister's newly published book, which outlines his "coming together" vision.
When Mr Abiy subsequently visited Ambo for a meeting with selected guests in a hotel, pro-Jawar youths staged a protest and booed the prime minister, who had been awarded the Nobel prize for his "decisive initiative" to end the border conflict with Eritrea, and for the "important reforms" he had initiated in Ethiopia with a pledge to "strengthen democracy".
Getty Images Key facts: Abiy Ahmed Bornto a Muslim father and a Christian mother on 15 August 1976 Joined the armed struggle against the Marxist Derg regime in 1990 Served as a UN peacekeeper in Rwanda in 1995 Entered politics in 2010 Became prime minister in 2018 Won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2019
Source: BBC
Jawar has joined the Oromo Federalist Congress (OFC), which has formed an alliance with the OLF and the Oromo National Party (ONP) to contest the election on what is expected to be a strong ethno-nationalist ticket.
In Oromia, it is likely to pose the biggest electoral challenge to Mr Abiy's PP, which was launched in December after a merger of eight of the nine regional parties which make up Ethiopia's ruling coalition.
Mr Abiy hopes that the PP will foster national unity and keep ethnic nationalism in check.
But he has taken a huge risk as the mass protests that propelled him to power were not just about political freedom - but also about the right of each group to express their ethnic identities more freely and to have greater autonomy for their regions.
So, as far as ethno-nationalists in Ambo and elsewhere in Oromia are concerned, Mr Abiy has sold out.
Worrying for the Nobel laureate, Defence Minister Lemma Megersa, a fellow Oromo with political clout, also expressed doubts about the PP's formation in November, though party officials say he and Mr Abiy have been ironing out their differences since then.
"The merger is not right and timely, as we are in transition, we are on borrowed time. Dissolving the regional party to which the public entrusted their demands is betraying them," Mr Lemma said at the time.
For Mr Abiy's supporters, he offers the best hope of getting Ethiopia's myriad ethnic groups to work together, and avoid the country's disintegration.
They are confident that he will demonstrate his popularity by leading the PP to victory in the election, though its legitimacy is bound to be questioned if the crackdown in Ambo continues.
Emiliano Sala crash: Pilot Ibbotson 'not licensed for flight'
By Jenny Johnson & Kayley Thomas BBC News13 March 2020
Related Topics Emiliano Sala death Emiliano Sala: Catalogue of errors led to plane crash
The pilot of the plane that crashed killing footballer Emiliano Sala was not licensed to fly the aircraft, a report has found.
Sala, 28, and pilot David Ibbotson died in the crash in the English Channel, two days after the Argentine signed for Cardiff City in January 2019.
The Air Accidents Investigation Branch published its findings on Friday.
It said Sala would have been "deeply unconscious" from carbon monoxide poisoning at the time.
Chief Inspector of Air Accidents Crispin Orr said it had been a "long and complex" investigation, and the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) was probing whether there had been breaches of the Air Navigation Order.
The Sala family said they were "grateful" the report had been published but said it left "many questions" to be answered at the upcoming inquest.
"It is crucial that the information held by the police and which went into compiling this report now be made available to the coroner and in turn to the family," they added in a statement.
They said they "remain distraught by their loss" but were determined to "find the full truth of how and why he died".
Cardiff City FC said the club was "encouraged to read that the CAA is determined to tackle illegal activities by pursuing those involved".
Sala was travelling from Nantes, in France, to Cardiff on 21 January 2019, when the single-engine Piper Malibu N264DB aircraft in which he was travelling lost contact with air traffic control north of Guernsey.
Mr Ibbotson lost control of the plane while descending to avoid cloud and he was probably also affected by carbon monoxide, the Air Accidents Investigation Branch (AAIB) concluded.
The plane began to break up in mid-air as the pilot tried to regain control, investigators found.
His efforts to pull up from its final dive caused the tail fin and then the outer edges of both wings to shear off before it hit the sea near Guernsey at an estimated 270mph (434kph).
Image copyrightDAVID IBBOTSONImage captionDavid Ibbotson's body has not been found
The AAIB report found Mr Ibbotson, 59, of Crowle in North Lincolnshire, was not qualified to fly at night and was inexperienced at using the plane's instruments, rather than flying by sight.
His rating for that type of aircraft had expired in November 2018, invalidating his licence for flying that plane.
"Significant evidence" was found that Mr Ibbotson had been expecting to be paid for the flight, despite not being licensed to carry passengers.
The investigation concluded that "neither the plane nor the pilot had the required licences or permissions to operate commercially".
The plane's autopilot had been diagnosed as having an intermittent fault and should have been labelled "inoperative". 'I'm scared'
Sala was heading to his first training session with Cardiff City since signing for them in a £15m deal.
A voice message to close friends in Argentina, in which he says, "I'm in a plane that seems to be falling apart," and ending, "I'm scared," was sent while the plane was taxiing on the runway.
The plane took off from Nantes Atlantique Airport at 19:15 GMT on 21 January.
It disappeared from radar 22 nautical miles north of Guernsey about an hour later.
Image copyright AAIB
The final radar trace of the aircraft was recorded at 2016:34 hours
Sala's body was found in the plane wreckage on the seabed in early February. A post-mortem examination found he died from head and trunk injuries.
Mr Ibbotson's body has never been found.
Dave Edwards, chief executive of the Air Charter Association, said of the findings: "This flight was clearly an illegal charter, something we've said for a long time needs to stop.
"I think what's most sad is that there were probably about seven opportunities throughout the sequence where this flight could have stopped, and in a commercial environment it would have stopped, but in this case it just carried on through those levels until the ultimate moment of impact.
"Everything that could go wrong sadly did go wrong."
Radar and simulator evidence, photographs and video footage of the wreckage enabled investigators to piece together its trajectory in the four-and-a-half minutes between the pilot's final contact with air traffic control and the moment when it crashed.
Image copyrightAAIB Image
Photographs of the plane's wreckage show the damage done to the aircraft
They believe carbon monoxide (CO) was leaking into the cabin through the plane's heating system from the exhaust.
Toxicology tests on Sala's blood found sufficient levels to cause a seizure, heart attack or unconsciousness.
"The pathologist considered he would almost certainly have been deeply unconscious at impact," the report states.
But it is thought Mr Ibbotson was still conscious and flying the plane in the final moments of the flight.
The AAIB's report includes a number of recommendations for aviation regulatory bodies, including a call for audible CO detectors to be fitted in all planes.
A pre-inquest review is scheduled to be held at Bournemouth Coroner's Court on Monday. Analysis by Kayley Thomas, BBC Wales News
After the revelation last summer about fatal levels of CO in Emiliano Sala's blood, one of the lingering questions about this crash has been what about the pilot?
Surely David Ibbotson would have been subjected to similar levels of CO, making it impossible for him to fly the plane? No, says the AAIB.
While the pilot's body has never been found, investigators say previous plane crashes show the poisonous gas affects people differently, adding that the evidence suggests Mr Ibbotson must have been affected at the lower end of the spectrum.
The AAIB wants all single-engine piston planes to be fitted with CO detectors, but regulators have been reticent, saying plane design and regular inspections mitigate for CO poisoning.
The plane had a visual inspection of its exhaust 11 flying hours before the crash, on the basis of it being used privately.
Had it been licensed to take paying passengers, as it did on this flight, it would have needed a more rigorous pressure test of its exhaust to check for cracks or leaks.
That still might not have revealed a potential problem, but a cheap CO detector would have alerted the pilot to the presence of the deadly gas in his cabin at the first instance.
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Canadian and Italian kidnapped in Burkina Faso turn up safe in Mali
Image copyrightAFP/GETTY IMAGESImage captionLuca Tacchetto (left) and Édith Blais have not publicly spoken about their escape
A Canadian woman and an Italian man kidnapped in Burkina Faso in 2018 are said to be in good health and spirits after arriving in neighbouring Mali.
Édith Blais and Luca Tacchetto, both in their 30s, apparently escaped and were picked up by UN forces before being transferred to Mali's capital, Bamako.
They appeared bemused when officials greeted them with elbows, before the pair were told of new social etiquette measures to help curb coronavirus.
Mali said no ransom had been paid.
None of the many jihadist groups in the region has claimed responsibility for the kidnapping.
Plans are now being made to repatriate the couple.
In a statement, Canadian Foreign Minister François-Philippe Champagne said that "Canada is very relieved" that the pair "are now free from captivity".
He thanked the governments of Burkina Faso and Mali, as well as the UN mission in Mali and other partners for "their assistance and co-operation over the past year in this matter".
The pair were wearing clothes of the regional Tuareg people and apparently stopped a passing car and told the driver to take them to the nearest UN post, according to AFP news agency.
However, Ms Blais and Mr Tacchetto have not publicly spoken about how they escaped captivity.
They disappeared on 15 December 2018 in the city of Bobo-Dioulasso.
At the time they were travelling in Western Africa and were making their way to Togo for a humanitarian project.
Canada has issued travel advice for Burkina Faso, due to terrorism and kidnapping.
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MARTIAL LAW Here is how Trump could abuse his new powers now that he has declared a national emergency
President Donald Trump has officially declared the coronavirus pandemic a national emergency. In doing so, be potentially unlocks federal funding to numerous regional outbreaks, much to the relief of state health officials around the country.
But there is a dark side. According to Politico’s Josh Gerstein, a national emergency declaration also grants Trump a broad package of new executive powers — some of which are clearly ripe for abuse against the American people.
“Federal law gives Trump vast emergency powers in times of pandemic,” wrote Gerstein. “He could direct the quarantine of people arriving in the United States who exhibit certain symptoms or even if they’re just suspected of having the virus. He could have the federal government detain individuals if their illness might wind up crossing state lines. And under regulations revised and reissued just before Trump entered office, the government can stop and seize any plane, train or automobile to stymie the spread of contagious disease. Some even interpret the statute as meaning a president could deploy the military to cordon off a city or state.”
Many experts appear to be aware of the risk of giving Trump such powers.
“We can’t divorce this from the context of a president who has shown a willingness to abuse emergency power,” said the Brennan Center for Justice’s Elizabeth Goitein.
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) similarly warned of what could happen. “As other steps are considered, the president must not overstep his authority or indulge his autocratic tendencies for purposes not truly related to this public health crisis.”
‘Revolting sycophancy’: Retired general rains hell on Mike Pence for ‘devotion’ to Trump as pandemic spreads
Vice President Mike Pence got a severe scolding from retired four-star General Barry McCaffrey on Saturday morning for his fawning praise of Donald Trump during a Rose Garden press conference to address the coronavirus pandemic.
Taking to Twitter, the former cabinet official who served under President Bill Clinton lashed out the whole Trump administration for undermining U.S. national security with the handling of the health crisis while targetting Pence by name.
On Twitter, he wrote, “The Public Health Care system at Federal and State level has atrophied in the past thirty years. It is a crucial leg of US national security. It will take 5 years to reimagine and resource an appropriate capability. Corona virus is just the latest disaster.” Defend democracy. Click to invest in courageous progressive journalism today.
He then added, “Revolting sycophancy by Pence and others in the Administration to Trump. There are eerie echos of ‘supreme leader’ adulation to all of this. That Trump tolerates or needs this kind of faux devotion is dangerous in a democracy.”
You can see his tweets below:
The Public Health Care system at Federal and State level has atrophied in the past thirty years. It is a crucial leg of US national security. It will take 5 years to reimagine and resource an appropriate capability. Corona virus is just the latest disaster. https://t.co/lyixA83cwg
Revolting sycophancy by Pence and others in the Administration to Trump. There are eerie echos of “supreme leader” adulation to all of this. That Trump tolerates or needs this kind of faux devotion is dangerous in a democracy. https://t.co/jjFgdGeTj1
There will be deaths and those deaths will have been avoidable.
President Donald Trump’s Friday afternoon press conference announcing a national emergency over the coronavirus pandemic was an astonishing self-congratulatory exercise in awful oratory, but it was also a grotesque snapshot into the decrepit world of Donald Trump.
For a moment just ignore all of Trump’s figurative elbow-rubbing and back-slapping, literal hand-shaking, infomercialization, Disneyization, and commercialization of a global pandemic in which now Americans are no longer citizens but “consumers.”
When a top fed govt official refers to all of us as “consumers” at an announcement at the White House of a national emergency declaration due to a global pandemic. pic.twitter.com/7IRwcjZThw — Andy Manar (@AndyManar) March 13, 2020
Ignore the false claims and all-too-real coverups Trump painted. Ignore Trump’s total lack of interest in the virus and his total interest in creating income streams for his corporate sponsors, like Google and CVS.
Focus for a moment on this extremely important fact: President Donald Trump shut down the White House Pandemic Office in 2018, and less than two years later America and the world are struggling through a global health emergency that Trump’s own administration says could kill 5.1 million people in this country alone.
Friday afternoon PBS NewsHour White House correspondent Yamiche Alcindor asked President Trump about shutting down that office.
His response was not just offensive and unpresidential, it was filled with lies.
“You said you don’t take responsibility [for slow response to coronavirus] but you did disband the White House Pandemic Office,” Alcindor asked President Trump. “So, what responsibility do you take to that? And the officials that worked in that office said that you — that the White House lost valuable time because that office was disbanded? What do you make of that?”
“Well, I just think it’s a nasty question,” Trump responded, weaponizing a word he regularly uses when speaking about women. “What we’ve done is — and Tony had said numerous times that we saved thousands of lives because of the quick closing. And when you say me, I didn’t do it. We have a group of people.”
“It’s your administration,” Alcindor reminded the president.
“I could ask, perhaps — my administration, but I could perhaps ask Tony about that, because I don’t know anything about it,” Trump claimed. “I mean, you say we did that. I don’t know anything about it.”
Yamiche questions the President on not taking responsibility vs. his decision to disband the White House pandemic team… The President pleads ignorance as a defense pic.twitter.com/LmTZUPc0Y5 — Acyn Torabi (@Acyn) March 13, 2020
Trump is lying, and here’s how we know.
First of all, as U.S. Senator Sherrod Brown (D-OH) said on Twitter Friday afternoon, when Trump closed the Pandemics Office Brown sent him this letter “demanding answers.”
“I didn’t do it.” “I don’t know anything about it.”
Those are lies, and they’re lies to hide the fact that President Donald Trump is responsible for the United States’ horrific handling of the coronavirus pandemic. There will be deaths and those deaths will have been avoidable had he pushed for the testing he repeatedly, even now, tries to suppress, and had he not shuttered the Pandemics Office.
I suppose we owe Jerry Falwell Jr. a debt of gratitude. I’m serious.
Falwell is the son of the late Jerry Falwell, the man most responsible for bringing fundamentalist Christianity out of the political wilderness during Ronald Reagan’s presidency. Junior, along with Franklin Graham, himself a scion of a religious dynasty, is perhaps the president’s greatest champion among white evangelical Christians.
He appeared on “Fox & Friends” yesterday. Among other things, he accused Donald Trump’s enemies, including the press, of hyping COVID-19, the new strain of the coronavirus spreading around the world, panicking global markets and closing down entertainment and cultural events here and elsewhere. He, like Tom Cotton, the fascist senator from Arkansas, believes the disease outbreak can be blamed on totalitarian regimes in the east. For Cotton, that’s China. For Falwell, that’s North Korea. (While Falwell was on air, the president announced a state of national emergency related to the outbreak, undermining his and Cotton’s search for a scapegoat for his sake.)
Falwell’s demagoguery isn’t what we should be thankful for. What we should be thankful for is his confessing, without appearing to know it, that a pillar of “principled conservatism” in the United States is no pillar at all. Not in practice. Once you see that this pillar rests on a bed of sand, rather than constitutional bedrock, you start seeing other “conservative principles” do, too. “States’ rights,” “gun rights,” “the right to life” and even “religious freedom” are nearly always about something other than what they seem to be. Falwell and his ideological confederates can’t be honest about it, though. If they were, they’d lose. Dishonesty, fraudulence and bad faith are central to their aims. What would Jesus do? Not that.
Here’s some context, courtesy of the Christian Science Monitor (my italics):
“As in many states, residents in parts of rural, conservative Virginia say they seem to inhabit an increasingly different daily reality than that of urban and suburban districts. That feeling of separation was compounded by last November’s Democratic sweep of the state’s elected offices. Now residents in Frederick County are mulling a radical proposal: seceding from Virginia and joining neighboring West Virginia.”
Apparently Falwell is part of the effort. He’s the head of something called “Vaxit,” according to Fox & Friends. Whether that’s a real organization I have no idea, but that’s not what I’m most interested in. I’m most interested in expressing gratitude to the good reverend for admitting that “states’ rights” have nothing to do with conservatism.
Think about it.
If the principle of “states’ rights” meant what conservatives have said it meant to them, not one of them, not Jerry Falwell Jr. nor anyone calling him or herself a “principled conservative,” would dare suggest that a county secede from a state. If states are sovereign, as conservatives have alleged since Strom Thurmond ran as a Dixiecrat in 1948, calling for a county to secede from a state is traitorous. If “states’ rights” are as sacred as conservatives have said they are, the idea of secession is an abomination. In saying counties should leave the state as casually as ordering unsweet tea with his burger and fries, the Rev. Falwell told us without knowing he was telling us that conservatism in theory is authoritarianism in practice. It cannot and will not tolerate democratic change, despite change coming with the blessing of the majority. If the majority rules, Falwell and his confederates will abandon commitments to democracy.
Once you abandon democracy—once you open the door to treason—there’s no end in sight. Once it seceded, “the Confederacy began to deny states’ rights,” wrote James W. Loewen in Lies My Teacher Told Me. “Jefferson Davis denounced states’ rights as destructive to the Confederacy. The mountainous counties in western Virginia bolted to the Union. Confederate troops had to occupy east Tennessee to keep it from emulating West Virginia. Winn Parish, Louisiana, refused to secede from the Union. Winston County, Alabama, declared itself the Free State of Winston. Unionist farmers and woodsmen in Jones County, Mississippi, declared the Free State of Jones.” By February 1864, Davis despaired: “Public meetings of treasonable character, in the name of state sovereignty, are being held.” Thus states’ rights as an ideology was contradictory and could not mobilize the white South for the long haul.
What mobilized the white South was the defense of slavery. Falwell and his new breed of confederate aren’t doing that, of course, but the spirit of treason, if not the act of treason, is the same. Conservatives tell us they prefer slow and gradual change, and stand united against radical attempts to bring it swiftly. But that’s not their true face. Conservatism in practice is a radical ideology reserving the right to betray its stated principles, and to betray community and brotherhood, if it doesn’t get what it wants.
Thanks to Jerry Falwell Jr., that’s now easy to see.
Schools scramble to feed students after coronavirus closures
Students line up in the cafeteria for lunch at Lincoln High School in Dallas, Friday, March 13, 2020. During the coming extended spring break school closures, this cafeteria and a few others in the Dallas Independent School District will be providing lunches to students despite the closure of the school. (AP Photo/LM Otero)
ELK GROVE, Calif. (AP) — Kiyana Esco needs free school lunches and breakfasts to feed her six children. But with schools shutting down over coronavirus concerns, she’s scrambling to pick up the meals, care for her kids and keep her job.
Esco, a single mother who was just promoted to manager at a Dollar Tree, fears she’ll be fired because she can’t work following school closures in Elk Grove, the fifth-largest district in California. She’s among the parents who are relying on school leaders as they look for ways to keep millions of America’s poorest children from going hungry.
While schools across the U.S. close their doors to try to prevent the spread of the new virus, they’re cobbling together arrangements for grab-and-go lunch bags or setting up delivery routes. Congress is considering making it easier for school meals to be passed out at places like food banks as schools shut down in a growing list of states that included Ohio, Maryland, Michigan, Illinois, Virginia, Oregon, Washington, New Mexico, and South Dakota.
Major cities like Los Angeles, San Francisco, Houston, Philadelphia and Washington, D.C., also announced school closures.
Even though most patients infected with the virus have only mild or moderate symptoms such as a fever or cold, school closures are widely accepted as a key way to slow the spread.
Some large districts, including New York City, were staying open for now, with concerns over their mission to provide free or reduced-cost meals to hundreds of thousands of students from lower-income families.
But others, like Los Angeles and San Diego, which had held out on shutting down for the same reasons, on Friday announced they would close.
“There is evidence the virus is already present in the communities we serve, and our efforts now must be aimed at preventing its spread,” Los Angeles Superintendent Austin Beutner and San Diego Superintendent Cindy Marten said in a joint statement.
The urgent decisions have left schools and cities scrambling to figure out how to make sure students don’t go hungry. Local officials have been publishing lists of sites where meals will be distributed within their counties and cities.
In the U.S., more than two-thirds of the 31 million students who regularly eat school lunches, or 22 million, depend on a free or reduced-price school lunch as a main source of their daily nutrition, according to the School Nutrition Association.
The U.S. Agriculture Department oversees food programs in schools, but it has restrictions on how students can get their subsidized meals, and currently can offer only limited waivers to states that allow schools to offer grab-and-go options. Advocates and states are pressing the agency to ease some rules, but USDA leaders say it’s up to lawmakers to loosen eligibility.
Several measures now pending in Congress would offer a nationwide waiver so school meals can be offered in a wide variety of settings, such as food banks, and allow the USDA to grant waiver requests expanding eligibility even if they resulted in added costs to the government.
Late Friday, the House overwhelmingly passed a coronavirus aid package that authorizes the USDA to allow states to provide food stamps to families whose children miss out on free or reduced-price meals when schools are closed because of the outbreak.
Under the deal negotiated by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and the Trump administration, families will be eligible for the assistance if a child’s school is closed for at least five consecutive days. The measure now goes to the Senate, where it is expected to be approved early next week.
Meanwhile, states and school districts pushed forward with their own plans.
Seattle Public Schools set up tents to provide food outside the first two schools it closed earlier this week. But after canceling classes at all 104 campuses Wednesday, the 55,000-student district won’t be able to set up dozens of sites for sack lunches for all schools until Monday, spokesman Tim Robinson said.
New Mexico, which has the nation’s second-highest rate of childhood poverty, decided it would close all schools but leave most of their cafeterias open. It’s preparing to deliver meals to children who can’t get to them, Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham said.
“Kids are going to school today; Monday they’re closed. That’s hard,” she said. “But I will make the decisions that protect the entire state and (arrange) the wrap-around services and supports that make families and businesses as whole as we can.”
States including Oregon and Ohio, meanwhile, obtained waivers to allow districts to give out grab-and-go meals or provide other assistance, such as grocery store gift cards, to lower-income students.
And in Phoenix, where multiple districts announced they would close for at least two weeks, local food banks that stepped up when “Red for Ed” protests shuttered schools in 2018 prepared to fill the void again.
United Food Bank, in the Phoenix suburb of Mesa, handed out emergency food bags Friday morning at its weekly “help yourself” distribution event.
Spokesman Tyson Nansel said he saw a noticeable uptick in demand for the bags of milk, frozen meat, green peppers, fruit, canned soup and ramen. The event normally takes place in a warehouse, but gloved volunteers instead gathered outside and loaded the food into recipients’ cars.
“We just had a lot of people who were very grateful we were doing it today,” Nansel said.
Despite the efforts, many parents still worried and wondered how long the situation would last.
“This doesn’t calm down until May, right?” Sophia Saelee said of the outbreak. On Tuesday, she was among dozens of parents who picked up meals for their kids from Valley High School south of Sacramento in Elk Grove, where the school district was one of the first in the nation to close Monday because a student’s family tested positive for the virus. A day later, schools there began offering drive-thru breakfast and lunch giveaways at a dozen campuses, handing out more than 2,100 meals.
Saelee said her schedule wasn’t interrupted because she works in the evenings, but when she starts an office job next month, it could be trickier.
For Esco, it hasn’t been easy to juggle. She drove to Valley High School this week to pick up free meals, uncertain if she would lose her job because she was looking after her children.
“Let’s just say I didn’t expect it to turn my whole schedule upside down,” she said.
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Yen reported from Washington. Associated Press writers Kantele Franko in Columbus, Ohio, Terry Tang in Phoenix, Gillian Flaccus in Portland, Oregon, and Morgan Lee in Santa Fe., N.M. contributed to this report.
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The Associated Press receives support for health and science coverage from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Department of Science Education. The AP is solely responsible for all content.
AP
AP PHOTOS: Unsettled Tokyo in black and white SEE MORE HERE https://apnews.com/f4da60283d0e10d71528e04560a8b1cb A caricature artist wears a mask jokingly layered with a drawing of exaggerated lips while working in her shop in Tokyo, March 8, 2020. (AP Photo/Jae C. Hong)
A mannequin wears a mask at a souvenir shop near Sensoj Temple in Tokyo, March 8, 2020. (AP Photo/Jae C. Hong)
A couple embrace while waiting at a pedestrian crossing in
Tokyo, March 7, 2020. (AP Photo/Jae C. Hong)
A commuter wearing a gas mask pauses for photos outside a train
station in Tokyo, Friday, March 6, 2020. (AP Photo/Jae C. Hong)
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