Police have clashed with protesters on the streets of Minneapolis amid outrage over the death of an unarmed black man in police custody. George Floyd died after an officer knelt on his neck for several minutes. Large crowds gathered in the city on Tuesday night and police in riot gear fired teargas and rubber bullets at demonstrators
Wednesday, May 27, 2020
George Floyd could not breathe. We must fight police violence until our last breath
The Minnesota police department that killed George Floyd has been violent and racist since its inception. Can we really have faith in reform?
Derecka Purnell Wed 27 May 2020
Photograph: Craig Lassig/EPA
‘Why have we dismissed police abolition as a viable option for a transformative society?’
White police officer Derek Chauvin pinned George Floyd to the concrete as he hollered that he could not breathe. George screamed. Screamed for his mother. Screamed for his breath. For his life.
For many watching the footage, George’s cries echoed Eric Garner’s “I can’t breathe.” New York police department officer Daniel Pantaleo killed Garner a couple of weeks before a Ferguson police officer killed Michael Brown. George’s plea reminds me of another black man shot by police: Eric Harris. In 2015, Tulsa reserve deputy Robert Bates told Harris “fuck your breath”. That same year, Fairfax county law enforcement tased Natasha McKenna four times while she sought help during a mental health crisis. As they were brutalizing her, she said, “You promised you wouldn’t kill me.” For me, the image of the white officer kneeling into George’s back reminds me most of Freddie Gray. Baltimore police severed Gray’s spine through an intentional rough ride in the back of a police van.
George, like Dreasjon Reed, Breonna Taylor and other black people killed by police this year, should be alive and breathing. This cycle – murder, protest, calls for justice, non-indictments – is revelatory. We must join others to reduce police power before, during and after these viral killings. Police reform is not enough. We need abolition.
In recent years, news stories broke about how Immigrations and Customs Enforcement use raids, detentions and deportations to threaten immigrants in the US. Calls to “Abolish Ice” could be heard from the streets to the halls of Congress. Ironically, there were no calls to have more Latino and black Ice agents. Mayors did not call for community-driven deportation or raids, like we see for community policing. Non-profits did not call to strengthen relationships between border patrol and immigrants; cities did not fund Ice and ice-cream trucks to pass out treats to immigrant children. Liberals did not point out that there were good apples and bad apples in border patrol enforcement. These programs cannot reform Ice, nor can they reform police.
If we can understand that the calls to abolish Ice actually means that this country needs a new, transformational immigration system, then why dismiss police abolition as a viable option for a transformative society?
One major difference is the mainstream narrative around dreamers: immigrants hoping for a better life and fleeing persecution and violence in their homeland. To be clear, the fight for immigrant justice is crucial and inseparable from the fight against racial police violence. Immigrants, especially undocumented black immigrants, are vulnerable to police violence and face the risk of prison, deportation and death. Yet black Americans, like indigenous and First Nations people, represent particular reminders that white settlers looted land, committed genocide and enslaved people to build a democracy. As a result, black and indigenous bodies remain a public nuisance to be disappeared, exploited, imprisoned and killed by white people and police alike. They want us to live in constant fear of those possibilities for a reason. Thus, black resistance matters, against police and white supremacy alike.
Abolitionist organizers in Minnesota are informed by a history of resistance that dates back to 1867 when the Minneapolis police department was first formed to surveil black people and Native Americans. Since then, MPD has murdered or beaten black people “savagely” for acts ranging from inviting white women to a dance to refusing to “move on”. Per a report by MPD150, the Minneapolis police department has garnered several accolades over time, including the nation’s most homophobic police department at one point. In recent memory, officers in the city arrested black people at rates 10 times higher than white people for the same offenses.
After a Minneapolis police department officer shot and killed Jamar Clark in 2015, activists occupied their local police department for more than two weeks. This activism spurred organizing that continued after the cameras went away. Through struggle, organizations like MPD150 and Reclaim the Block pushed the mayor and city council to shift more than $1m from police departments to communities. Unquestionably, this organizing since 2015 influenced the mayor’s unprecedented decision to ensure that the police chief fired all four officers responsible for George Floyd’s killing, almost immediately after it happened.
The story is not over. On Tuesday night, MPD teargassed and shot rubber bullets at protesters who took to the streets to decry the murder. The fact that residents were willing to risk their lives during a global pandemic to protest against this injustice demonstrates that the race is not given to the swift nor the strong, but to the organizers who resist until the end.
Derecka Purnell is a movement lawyer, activist and Guardian US columnist.
George Floyd killing: sister says police officers should be charged with murder
Floyd was killed by police in incident captured on video, where an officer knelt on his neck for nine minutes as he lay on the ground
Joanna Walters in New York
@Joannawalters13
Wed 27 May 2020 16.05 BSTFirst published on Wed 27 May 2020 13.30 BS
The sister of George Floyd, the black man killed by police in Minneapolis after an incident captured on video in which an officer knelt on his neck as he lay on the ground, has called for those involved in his death to be charged with murder.
Bridget Floyd said on Wednesday morning that the officers, who were fired on Tuesday, “should be in jail for murder”.
George Floyd, 46, died on Monday. The FBI and authorities in Minnesota have launched investigations into his death. The officer who knelt on Floyd’s neck is white.
Bridget Floyd struggled to hold back tears as she spoke to NBC’s Today show about the family’s shock and grief.
She said: “Me and my family are taking this very, very hard. It’s very heartbreaking, it’s very disturbing.”
Huge protests took place in Minneapolis on Tuesday night. Police in riot gear fired teargas and rubber bullets into the crowd.
In the footage that emerged of Floyd’s violent detention, he can be heard to shout “I cannot breathe” and “Don’t kill me!” He then becomes motionless, eyes closed, face-first on the road.
On Tuesday evening, the mother of Eric Garner condemned Floyd’s killing. Garner was killed in New York City in July 2014 by a police officer who placed him in an illegal chokehold.
Gwen Carr said: “I was horrified to learn about the death of George Floyd, and to hear him utter the same dying declaration as my son Eric. I offer my deepest condolences to the Floyd family, and I stand with them in their fight to get justice for George.”
She said: “It’s painful but true that black lives continue to be destroyed by police officers in many communities across our country. They keep killing us. and it’s the same story again and again.”
Garner’s death became a focal point for national conversations on race and policing and Garner’s last words, “I can’t breathe”, were chanted by protesters across the US.
Play Video
1:34 Minneapolis police fire teargas at protesters after death of George Floyd – video
On Wednesday, a fresh video clip emerged showing officers initially wrestling Floyd out of his car. The footage, broadcast by local station KMSP, shows the police trying to handcuff and arrest Floyd.
Alex Lehnert(@AlexLehnertFox9)
New video sent to us shows the moment George Floyd was removed from his vehicle and handcuffed on 38th and Chicago.
Video courtesy of Christopher Belfrey pic.twitter.com/MiIIula4sAMay 26, 2020
Civil rights lawyer Ben Crump, who spoke alongside Bridget Floyd on Wednesday, said additional video footage “which hasn’t been seen yet” by the public or the authorities had been sent to him by other bystanders and from business surveillance cameras.
Crump said that in some ways, the use of “violent, lethal and excessive force” on Floyd was more disturbing than the treatment of Garner, even, because the officer is seen kneeling on Floyd’s neck for up to nine minutes.
“Nine minutes, while he was begging to breathe and begging for his life,” Crump told Today.
He said he hoped the killing would be a tipping point for the fairness of the US justice system.
“There cannot be two justice systems, one for black America and one for white America.”
Bridget Floyd said the firing of four officers, whose names have not been released, needed to be followed with stronger action.
She said: “I would like for these officers to be charged with murder, because that’s exactly what they did. They murdered my brother. He was crying for help.”
Leading athletes, including LeBron James, Lewis Hamilton and Colin Kaepernick, have expressed their anger and grief over the death of George Floyd.
James, who has spoken out against police brutality in the past, compared the police officer’s stance during the killing of Floyd with Colin Kaepernick’s peaceful protest in 2016, during which he knelt during the national anthem, sparking a wave of similar action in solidarity across different sports to highlight racial injustice and related incidences of police brutality in the US.
The US should stop blocking vital IMF funds for poorer countries
New SDR allocations issued by the IMF could help developing economies cope with the looming economic crisis.
by Rick Rowden MAY 27,2020
IMF Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva speaks during a conference hosted by the Vatican on economic solidarity on February 5, 2020 [File: Reuters/Remo Casilli]
Helpful steps were taken to provide assistance to developing countries grappling with the economic fallout from the COVID-19 crisis at the "virtual" spring meetings of the World Bank Group and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) from April 14 to 17, and at the Group of 20 (G20) summit that took place a few weeks earlier.
These steps included temporary debt-relief and new emergency lending facilities for developing and emerging market economies. Yet one important step that was not taken was a decision for the IMF to issue a new allocation of its international reserve currency, Special Drawing Rights (SDRs), as a fast way of providing low-cost emergency assistance to developing countries to help them address the economic fallout from the COVID-19 crisis.
A new allocation of SDRs would have the effect of automatically increasing the foreign currency reserves of developing countries, enabling them to borrow at lower interest rates, engage in more affordable emergency fiscal stimulus spending and buy needed imports. The last time the IMF issued a new allocation of SDRs was in 2009 during the global financial crisis. Then, the fund allocated $250bn in new SDRs to assist developing countries to weather the storm.
A host of European and African leaders, eminent economists and even IMF Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva herself had been calling for a sizable new SDR allocation in the weeks leading up to the IMF and World Bank meetings.
However, despite such calls, the United States appeared to reject the proposal.
In an official statement issued on April 16, US Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin argued that using existing IMF lending facilities would be more efficient in providing assistance to developing countries than issuing a new SDR allocation.
These existing facilities, however, are unlikely to be able to meet the financial needs of developing countries during this pandemic. The total IMF resources currently amount to $1.3 trillion and only half is available for lending. According to Managing Director Georgieva's "very conservative" estimate, at least $2.5 trillion is needed to assist the world's 165 low-income and emerging economies.
In his statement on the issue, Mnuchin also argued that nearly 70 percent of the funds created with new SDRs would go to the G20 countries, most of which "do not need and would not use additional SDRs to respond to the crisis".
While correct in the absolute sense, a major new issuance of SDRs would still be extremely helpful to developing countries because of the proportionately much smaller sizes of their economies. For example, the $250bn SDR allocation in 2009 proved incredibly helpful for low-income countries in sub-Saharan Africa, and projections indicate a new allocation of $500bn in SDRs would amount to the equivalent of 7-8 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) for low-income countries such as Liberia or South Sudan.
Thus, both of the Treasury secretary’s arguments for rejecting a new issuance of SDRs are not compelling.
A report by Reuters published a day before Mnuchin's statement suggested that the US is opposed to new SDR allocations because such a move would benefit all 189 members of the IMF, including countries the US views as adversaries, such as Iran, Venezuela, and even China. The US Treasury declined to comment on the report.
However, there is still support in the US for a new allocation of SDRs.
For example, on April 21, Representatives Jan Schakowsky, Jesus "Chuy" García, Mark Takano, and 13 other co-sponsors introduced the Robust International Response to Pandemic Act (HR6581), which instructs the US representative to the IMF to support the issuing of $3 trillion in SDRs as part of forthcoming coronavirus legislation to ensure that developing countries will be adequately supported by the IMF and other international financial institutions during this unprecedented global crisis.
There are at least three important reasons why the US should reconsider its position.
First, what happens in the developing world is increasingly important for the entire global economy, even the richest countries. Whereas developing economies accounted for only about 18 percent of global GDP in the 1980s, today they comprise nearly 41 percent (60 percent if adjusted for purchasing power).
Second, despite the temporary debt relief proposed, it will still be difficult for companies and governments in developing countries to raise new funds in current market conditions, and will be nearly impossible for them to roll over their foreign currency-denominated debt in international capital markets. With already nearly $100bn in investment capital having been pulled out of emerging markets this year (four times as much as during the 2008 global financial crisis), such conditions could easily lead to large-scale sovereign debt defaults that could spark contagion in global financial markets. In other words, if developing countries go down, it could wreak havoc across the entire global economy.
Third, and most worrisome, tens of millions are facing sudden economic and food insecurity without any unemployment insurance. In such countries, the unvarnished calculation is that more people could potentially die of food insecurity and related chaos resulting from the economic slowdown than from the novel coronavirus itself. The United Nations' World Food Programme warned on April 21 that the number of people facing acute food insecurity could double in 2020, to 265 million, and that, "The pandemic and lockdown measures combined with rising unemployment and limited access to food could lead to violence and conflict."
Security experts have warned that such violence could lead to new waves of mass migration towards wealthier countries and other calamities. The Africa Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has warned the pandemic could be a "national-security crisis first, an economic crisis second, and a health crisis third".
For all of these reasons, the US should support a new allocation of SDRs at the IMF as the best way to help developing countries survive the economic fallout of the COVID-19 crisis. In this unprecedented and historic moment, the US should do everything possible to enable developing countries to engage in fiscal stimulus programmes to sustain their national economies - and thereby keep afloat the global economy upon which we all depend.
The views expressed in this article are the author's own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera's editorial stance.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Rick Rowden is Adjunct Professorial Lecturer in the School of International Studies, American University, Washington DC.
Helpful steps were taken to provide assistance to developing countries grappling with the economic fallout from the COVID-19 crisis at the "virtual" spring meetings of the World Bank Group and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) from April 14 to 17, and at the Group of 20 (G20) summit that took place a few weeks earlier.
These steps included temporary debt-relief and new emergency lending facilities for developing and emerging market economies. Yet one important step that was not taken was a decision for the IMF to issue a new allocation of its international reserve currency, Special Drawing Rights (SDRs), as a fast way of providing low-cost emergency assistance to developing countries to help them address the economic fallout from the COVID-19 crisis.
A new allocation of SDRs would have the effect of automatically increasing the foreign currency reserves of developing countries, enabling them to borrow at lower interest rates, engage in more affordable emergency fiscal stimulus spending and buy needed imports. The last time the IMF issued a new allocation of SDRs was in 2009 during the global financial crisis. Then, the fund allocated $250bn in new SDRs to assist developing countries to weather the storm.
A host of European and African leaders, eminent economists and even IMF Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva herself had been calling for a sizable new SDR allocation in the weeks leading up to the IMF and World Bank meetings.
However, despite such calls, the United States appeared to reject the proposal.
In an official statement issued on April 16, US Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin argued that using existing IMF lending facilities would be more efficient in providing assistance to developing countries than issuing a new SDR allocation.
These existing facilities, however, are unlikely to be able to meet the financial needs of developing countries during this pandemic. The total IMF resources currently amount to $1.3 trillion and only half is available for lending. According to Managing Director Georgieva's "very conservative" estimate, at least $2.5 trillion is needed to assist the world's 165 low-income and emerging economies.
In his statement on the issue, Mnuchin also argued that nearly 70 percent of the funds created with new SDRs would go to the G20 countries, most of which "do not need and would not use additional SDRs to respond to the crisis".
While correct in the absolute sense, a major new issuance of SDRs would still be extremely helpful to developing countries because of the proportionately much smaller sizes of their economies. For example, the $250bn SDR allocation in 2009 proved incredibly helpful for low-income countries in sub-Saharan Africa, and projections indicate a new allocation of $500bn in SDRs would amount to the equivalent of 7-8 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) for low-income countries such as Liberia or South Sudan.
Thus, both of the Treasury secretary’s arguments for rejecting a new issuance of SDRs are not compelling.
A report by Reuters published a day before Mnuchin's statement suggested that the US is opposed to new SDR allocations because such a move would benefit all 189 members of the IMF, including countries the US views as adversaries, such as Iran, Venezuela, and even China. The US Treasury declined to comment on the report.
However, there is still support in the US for a new allocation of SDRs.
For example, on April 21, Representatives Jan Schakowsky, Jesus "Chuy" García, Mark Takano, and 13 other co-sponsors introduced the Robust International Response to Pandemic Act (HR6581), which instructs the US representative to the IMF to support the issuing of $3 trillion in SDRs as part of forthcoming coronavirus legislation to ensure that developing countries will be adequately supported by the IMF and other international financial institutions during this unprecedented global crisis.
There are at least three important reasons why the US should reconsider its position.
First, what happens in the developing world is increasingly important for the entire global economy, even the richest countries. Whereas developing economies accounted for only about 18 percent of global GDP in the 1980s, today they comprise nearly 41 percent (60 percent if adjusted for purchasing power).
Second, despite the temporary debt relief proposed, it will still be difficult for companies and governments in developing countries to raise new funds in current market conditions, and will be nearly impossible for them to roll over their foreign currency-denominated debt in international capital markets. With already nearly $100bn in investment capital having been pulled out of emerging markets this year (four times as much as during the 2008 global financial crisis), such conditions could easily lead to large-scale sovereign debt defaults that could spark contagion in global financial markets. In other words, if developing countries go down, it could wreak havoc across the entire global economy.
Third, and most worrisome, tens of millions are facing sudden economic and food insecurity without any unemployment insurance. In such countries, the unvarnished calculation is that more people could potentially die of food insecurity and related chaos resulting from the economic slowdown than from the novel coronavirus itself. The United Nations' World Food Programme warned on April 21 that the number of people facing acute food insecurity could double in 2020, to 265 million, and that, "The pandemic and lockdown measures combined with rising unemployment and limited access to food could lead to violence and conflict."
Security experts have warned that such violence could lead to new waves of mass migration towards wealthier countries and other calamities. The Africa Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has warned the pandemic could be a "national-security crisis first, an economic crisis second, and a health crisis third".
For all of these reasons, the US should support a new allocation of SDRs at the IMF as the best way to help developing countries survive the economic fallout of the COVID-19 crisis. In this unprecedented and historic moment, the US should do everything possible to enable developing countries to engage in fiscal stimulus programmes to sustain their national economies - and thereby keep afloat the global economy upon which we all depend.
The views expressed in this article are the author's own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera's editorial stance.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Rick Rowden is Adjunct Professorial Lecturer in the School of International Studies, American University, Washington DC.
THIRD WORLD USA
Why has Navajo Nation been so hit hard by the coronavirus?
Navajo Nation has the highest per capita infection rate in US, highlighting centuries of neglect, native leaders say.
Why has Navajo Nation been so hit hard by the coronavirus?
Navajo Nation has the highest per capita infection rate in US, highlighting centuries of neglect, native leaders say.
by Creede Newton
Navajo Nation leaders announced last week that it had the highest per capita COVID-19 infection rate in the United States, outpacing hot spots like New York. The grim statistic highlights the historical failings of the US government, Navajo leaders say.
There were 4,794 cases out of the Navajo Nation's 173,000 residents as of Monday, according to Navajo Nation authorities, and that number could rise as testing increases. At least 157 people have died.
Navajo Nation President Jonathan Nez said in a Monday press release that "14.6 percent of our citizens have been tested so far. The Navajo Nation continues to test at a higher rate per capita than any state in the country."
The Navajo Nation government has issued emergency measures: Masks are required in public, and total lockdown curfews are implemented over the weekends to inhibit movement in an effort to stem the virus' spread.
Compounding the problem are the high rates of heart disease, diabetes and obesity on the reservation.
About 30 percent of homes on the Navajo Nation are also without running water. This presents challenges to meet Centers for Disease Control guidelines, including the thorough washing of hands.
"You got the feds, you got everybody saying, 'Wash your hands with soap and water,' but our people are still hauling water. Here's a great opportunity for us to get running water to the Navajo people," Nez said at a digital town hall meeting on May 12.
Raynelle Hoskie attaches a hose to a water pump to fill tanks in her truck outside a tribal office on the Navajo reservation in Tuba City, Arizona [File: Carolyn Kaster/AP Photo]
For Mark Charles, a member of the Navajo Nation who is running as an independent for US president in 2020, it is important to understand why the Navajo Nation faces these issues.
"It's a problem 250 years in the making, going back to how this nation was founded. The ethnic cleansing and genocidal policies … that's where the problem lies," Chares told Al Jazeera.
The reason "healthcare is poor, treaties are not being upheld", according to Charles, who is running a campaign on creating a nation "for all people".
Generational discrimination
The Navajo Nation is a 71,000 square kilometre (27,413 square mile) semi-autonomous territory spanning three US states - Arizona, New Mexico, and Utah. It essentially serves as a reservation for the over 350,000 Navajo people who live there.
The Dine, as the Navajo call themselves, faced a long history of displacement and dispossession as the US expanded west in the 19th century, with conflicts and forced relocations common.
Only Native American running for US presidency (2:16)
It culminated in the 1864 "Long Walk", when the Navajo were forcibly removed from their traditional homelands in present-day Arizona and Western New Mexico and forced to walk over 500 kilometres (310 miles) to Fort Sumner in eastern New Mexico, where they were kept in internment camps.
The Long Walk and the wars that preceded it decimated the Navajo. Many died along the way from exposure, starvation, exhaustion and violence from the US troops that escorted them.
The Navajo population went from roughly 25,000 to between 5,000 and 8,000, according to estimates.
The Navajo signed a treaty with the US government in 1868 which established a sovereign Navajo Nation that was still dependent on Washington.
As with many Indigenous peoples, the treaty between the US and the Navajo promised funding for healthcare, infrastructure - including that which contributes to water access - and other important areas.
However, the US government has continually failed to uphold agreements with the Navajo Nation, Charles claimed, citing a lack of funding for healthcare and infrastructure that has contributed to the challenges faced by the Navajo Nation.
"The infrastructure is never fixed. The treaty is never honoured", Charles said.
Underfunded
The Navajo, like other federally recognised tribes, are provided healthcare by the Indian Health Service (IHS), a US government agency. The IHS operates largely on reservations, but also maintains facilities in nearby communities.
But the IHS has been accused of "unacceptable" care.
"What we've found is simply horrifying and unacceptable. In my view, the information provided to this committee and witness first-hand can be summed up in one word: malpractice," Wyoming Republican Senator John Barrasso, who was then chairman of the Senate Committee on Indian Affairs, said at a hearing on the IHS in 2016.
A member of the Navajo Nation, receives his monthly water delivery in the town of Thoreau [Spencer Platt/Getty Images/AFP]
But the IHS has been chronically underfunded, presenting challenges to operations.
"The number of doctors, nurses, and dentists is insufficient," according to a report on the IHS prepared for the Interior Department cited by US media. "Because of small appropriations, the salaries for the personnel in health work are materially below those paid by the government in its other activities concerned with public health and medical relief."
The Trump administration has made increased funding for the IHS a priority, and the coronavirus pandemic has spurred this effort, according to IHS officials.
"President Trump has prioritised the health and well-being of American Indians and Alaska Natives throughout his presidency and the COVID-19 crisis," Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar said in a statement emailed to Al Jazeera.
Congress allotted tribal nations eight billion dollars in total for tribes in the $2.2 trillion CARES Act passed in March. The majority of the funds allotted for the IHS has been distributed, while other funds for Indigenous governments meant to lessen the economic impact of the pandemic were delayed by court cases.
The Navajo Nation had received roughly $600m of these funds by May 6, Nez confirmed to local media.
On May 22, Azar announced the Trump administration is "making a targeted allocation from the funds Congress provided to send $500 million to Indian healthcare facilities.
"Combined with other funding, supplies, and flexibility around telehealth, we are working with tribal governments to do everything we can to support heroic Indian healthcare workers and protect Indian Country from COVID-19", Azar said.
Indigenous resilience
For his part, Nez has claimed the US has "forgotten" about the Navajo Nation, although they are US citizens. But the "curve is flattening" on the Navajo Nation, Nez said in the release.
"Testing, contact tracing, and the public health orders that were implemented months ago requiring protective masks in public and weekend lockdowns are working and flattening the curve".
For Charles, the Navajo running for president, this is largely thanks to the efforts of the Navajo themselves.
"I applaud President Nez and the work that the entire Navajo Nation is doing. I recognise that it is because of this 250 year of this unreconciled injustice" that the situation has gotten to this point, Charles said.
"I call on the government to immediately begin to honour treaties that were signed and to begin to build true nation-to-nation relationships with Indigenous nations."
SOURCE: AL JAZEERA NEWS
Navajo Nation leaders announced last week that it had the highest per capita COVID-19 infection rate in the United States, outpacing hot spots like New York. The grim statistic highlights the historical failings of the US government, Navajo leaders say.
There were 4,794 cases out of the Navajo Nation's 173,000 residents as of Monday, according to Navajo Nation authorities, and that number could rise as testing increases. At least 157 people have died.
Navajo Nation President Jonathan Nez said in a Monday press release that "14.6 percent of our citizens have been tested so far. The Navajo Nation continues to test at a higher rate per capita than any state in the country."
The Navajo Nation government has issued emergency measures: Masks are required in public, and total lockdown curfews are implemented over the weekends to inhibit movement in an effort to stem the virus' spread.
Compounding the problem are the high rates of heart disease, diabetes and obesity on the reservation.
About 30 percent of homes on the Navajo Nation are also without running water. This presents challenges to meet Centers for Disease Control guidelines, including the thorough washing of hands.
"You got the feds, you got everybody saying, 'Wash your hands with soap and water,' but our people are still hauling water. Here's a great opportunity for us to get running water to the Navajo people," Nez said at a digital town hall meeting on May 12.
Raynelle Hoskie attaches a hose to a water pump to fill tanks in her truck outside a tribal office on the Navajo reservation in Tuba City, Arizona [File: Carolyn Kaster/AP Photo]
For Mark Charles, a member of the Navajo Nation who is running as an independent for US president in 2020, it is important to understand why the Navajo Nation faces these issues.
"It's a problem 250 years in the making, going back to how this nation was founded. The ethnic cleansing and genocidal policies … that's where the problem lies," Chares told Al Jazeera.
The reason "healthcare is poor, treaties are not being upheld", according to Charles, who is running a campaign on creating a nation "for all people".
Generational discrimination
The Navajo Nation is a 71,000 square kilometre (27,413 square mile) semi-autonomous territory spanning three US states - Arizona, New Mexico, and Utah. It essentially serves as a reservation for the over 350,000 Navajo people who live there.
The Dine, as the Navajo call themselves, faced a long history of displacement and dispossession as the US expanded west in the 19th century, with conflicts and forced relocations common.
Only Native American running for US presidency (2:16)
It culminated in the 1864 "Long Walk", when the Navajo were forcibly removed from their traditional homelands in present-day Arizona and Western New Mexico and forced to walk over 500 kilometres (310 miles) to Fort Sumner in eastern New Mexico, where they were kept in internment camps.
The Long Walk and the wars that preceded it decimated the Navajo. Many died along the way from exposure, starvation, exhaustion and violence from the US troops that escorted them.
The Navajo population went from roughly 25,000 to between 5,000 and 8,000, according to estimates.
The Navajo signed a treaty with the US government in 1868 which established a sovereign Navajo Nation that was still dependent on Washington.
As with many Indigenous peoples, the treaty between the US and the Navajo promised funding for healthcare, infrastructure - including that which contributes to water access - and other important areas.
However, the US government has continually failed to uphold agreements with the Navajo Nation, Charles claimed, citing a lack of funding for healthcare and infrastructure that has contributed to the challenges faced by the Navajo Nation.
"The infrastructure is never fixed. The treaty is never honoured", Charles said.
Underfunded
The Navajo, like other federally recognised tribes, are provided healthcare by the Indian Health Service (IHS), a US government agency. The IHS operates largely on reservations, but also maintains facilities in nearby communities.
But the IHS has been accused of "unacceptable" care.
"What we've found is simply horrifying and unacceptable. In my view, the information provided to this committee and witness first-hand can be summed up in one word: malpractice," Wyoming Republican Senator John Barrasso, who was then chairman of the Senate Committee on Indian Affairs, said at a hearing on the IHS in 2016.
A member of the Navajo Nation, receives his monthly water delivery in the town of Thoreau [Spencer Platt/Getty Images/AFP]
But the IHS has been chronically underfunded, presenting challenges to operations.
"The number of doctors, nurses, and dentists is insufficient," according to a report on the IHS prepared for the Interior Department cited by US media. "Because of small appropriations, the salaries for the personnel in health work are materially below those paid by the government in its other activities concerned with public health and medical relief."
The Trump administration has made increased funding for the IHS a priority, and the coronavirus pandemic has spurred this effort, according to IHS officials.
"President Trump has prioritised the health and well-being of American Indians and Alaska Natives throughout his presidency and the COVID-19 crisis," Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar said in a statement emailed to Al Jazeera.
Congress allotted tribal nations eight billion dollars in total for tribes in the $2.2 trillion CARES Act passed in March. The majority of the funds allotted for the IHS has been distributed, while other funds for Indigenous governments meant to lessen the economic impact of the pandemic were delayed by court cases.
The Navajo Nation had received roughly $600m of these funds by May 6, Nez confirmed to local media.
On May 22, Azar announced the Trump administration is "making a targeted allocation from the funds Congress provided to send $500 million to Indian healthcare facilities.
"Combined with other funding, supplies, and flexibility around telehealth, we are working with tribal governments to do everything we can to support heroic Indian healthcare workers and protect Indian Country from COVID-19", Azar said.
Indigenous resilience
For his part, Nez has claimed the US has "forgotten" about the Navajo Nation, although they are US citizens. But the "curve is flattening" on the Navajo Nation, Nez said in the release.
"Testing, contact tracing, and the public health orders that were implemented months ago requiring protective masks in public and weekend lockdowns are working and flattening the curve".
For Charles, the Navajo running for president, this is largely thanks to the efforts of the Navajo themselves.
"I applaud President Nez and the work that the entire Navajo Nation is doing. I recognise that it is because of this 250 year of this unreconciled injustice" that the situation has gotten to this point, Charles said.
"I call on the government to immediately begin to honour treaties that were signed and to begin to build true nation-to-nation relationships with Indigenous nations."
SOURCE: AL JAZEERA NEWS
ILO chief: Workers in informal economy face 'utter destitution'
As COVID-19 shutdowns spike unemployment, the labour body's Guy Ryder discusses how governments can protect workers.
23 May 2020
The coronavirus pandemic has changed the way we live.
Nearly every country in the world has been affected. There have already been millions of infections, and hundreds of thousands of deaths.
And while scientists work on developing a vaccine, governments are focusing on reducing the number of infections through social distancing and other preventive measures.
But these restrictions have brought with them countless financial losses across the globe. The coronavirus recession is considered to be the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression of 1929.
As COVID-19 measures halt international trade, shut down airports and leave businesses bankrupt, tens of millions of people have lost their jobs. And for many, being unemployed in the middle of a pandemic means not only losing their income but also losing access to healthcare.
So, how can governments protect their workers and rebuild their economies?
The director-general of the International Labour Organization (ILO), Guy Ryder, talks to Al Jazeera.
23 May 2020
The coronavirus pandemic has changed the way we live.
Nearly every country in the world has been affected. There have already been millions of infections, and hundreds of thousands of deaths.
And while scientists work on developing a vaccine, governments are focusing on reducing the number of infections through social distancing and other preventive measures.
But these restrictions have brought with them countless financial losses across the globe. The coronavirus recession is considered to be the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression of 1929.
As COVID-19 measures halt international trade, shut down airports and leave businesses bankrupt, tens of millions of people have lost their jobs. And for many, being unemployed in the middle of a pandemic means not only losing their income but also losing access to healthcare.
So, how can governments protect their workers and rebuild their economies?
The director-general of the International Labour Organization (ILO), Guy Ryder, talks to Al Jazeera.
We are eating shrimp in record numbers. But for how much longer?
Shrimpers have a long and proud cultural tradition in the US – one that is now under threat from all sides
Megan Mayhew Bergman Wed 27 May 2020
‘
The decline of the shrimping industry has been death by a thousand cuts.’ Illustration: Good Wives and Warriors
Captain Wynn Gale – a fifth-generation Georgia shrimper – is on the side of the road on an April morning, selling shrimp at the same street corner where his dad sold shrimp.
“How’s the pandemic treating you?” I ask.
“Sales have dropped off by about two-thirds. No out-of-towners coming through on the I-95. No local traffic.” He sighs. “I’m going to tough it out. I can survive with what I’m selling. But that’s all I’m doing. Most shrimpers don’t have 401k retirement plans, you know?”
Gale would rather be out on his boat, a 1953 trawler he had for nine years but recently sold to a man in North Carolina. “It made me good money, but I couldn’t find a crew! You just can’t find anyone who wants to work shrimp boats any more. Most of ’em are on drugs. Give ’em a check and they’re gone.” He has a small boat he can run himself now.
In the past, shrimping was an admirable vocation. Gale first got out on a shrimp boat when he was 12. “Mama wouldn’t let me go any earlier, but from 12 years on out – every weekend I wasn’t in school or summer vacation I was on a shrimp boat.” He spent the next 20 years learning from his dad, who shrimped for 45 years.
“What was an average day like?” I ask.
“I’d leave about 4.30 in the morning and get to the dragging grounds about 6.30, maybe 7am. I’d put out in daylight, make three or four drags that day. The latest I’d be out would be 4pm,” he says. “Look,” he tells me. “What I’m doing right here, right now, selling shrimp on this corner – it sucks. It’s way better out there on the water. It’s where I’ve lived all my life. If I wasn’t in the ocean, I was in the river running trout lines and catching catfish, or fishing for shad in winter.”
•••
Americans eat more shrimp than ever – an average of 4.4lb per person – but not all of America’s shrimpers are thriving. Nearly 90% of America’s shrimp comes from overseas, farmed in Asia and Central America, where working conditions and meat quality can be repugnant. It is increasingly rare for fresh, wild-caught, chemical-free shrimp to reach an American consumer’s plate.
Off the coast of Georgia, fishermen harvested about 2.61m lb of shrimp in 2019, a haul valued more than $11m. Shrimping is deeply ingrained in culture there, but Georgia’s fishermen are facing significant challenges: an ageing workforce, low prices per pound, climate change and black gill disease, leading many to wonder if the industry will survive.
These days, depending on the season, Gale can get $3 to $5.50 per lb of shrimp. “Back in the 1980s and 1990s,” he says, “we were selling the same size shrimp for $8 a pound. We have good years – but most of the time we have bad years now.”
Bryan Fluech, the associate marine extension director at Marine Extension and Georgia Sea Grant, uses the term “graying of the fleet” when talking about the future of shrimping in Georgia.
“Shrimp are the Cheetos of the sea,” Fluech tells me. “Everything eats them. But people need to remember: that shrimp didn’t just show up in a Publix.
“The decline of the shrimping industry has been death by a thousand cuts,” Fluech says. “The cost for maintaining a boat is up, and the boats are getting older. Sustainable fishing practices are expensive to implement. The younger generation doesn’t want to work on a shrimping vessel, and captains tell me they can’t find a reliable workforce. The cost of ice and fuel might rise, but the profit on shrimp doesn’t. Plus, our guys are competing with foreign markets.”
“A lot has changed,” Gale tells me. “We’re losing our infrastructure. Lost our big block ice plant that had given ice since the 1940s. Can’t hardly find anybody to build nets any more.”
Fluech professes enormous respect for the shrimpers still operating in Georgia’s waters. “Let me tell you – MacGyver [the TV adventurer hero] has nothing on Georgia shrimpers. They are so resourceful. You can’t just be a good shrimper any more. You’ve got to be a welder, a businessman and a direct marketer too.”
“People love to say that they’re all about local food,” Fluech adds. “And you’ll see a shrimping boat on every tourism brochure, but commercial waterfronts have changed. People don’t like the look of a working dock. There’s only one left in Brunswick, which means the fishermen have to take those prices or go out on their own. We say we like authentic experiences, but we’re losing them.”
•••
You can see the old reverence for Georgia’s shrimpers in the Blessing of the Fleet ceremonies, which still happen along the coast in towns like Brunswick and Darien at the end of March, as the fleet readies itself for the season.
Ships with beautiful names like the Lady Raven, Flying Cloud, Bernice II, Liberty Bell and Sundown arrive at the ceremony decorated with lights and streamers. A crowd gathers, and a minister – often waving a toilet brush spray-painted gold, and flanked by the Knights of Columbus – offers a blessing into the microphone. Shrimping is a dangerous vocation, after all, and every year there are injuries, drownings and boats that don’t return.
This year’s ceremony was postponed due to the pandemic. The cancellation feels like the latest knock in a long and difficult fight.
Once celebrated, many shrimpers feel vilified as they face mounting regulations aimed at preserving other species, like sea turtles. In the 1980s, before turtle excluder devices (TEDs) were prevalent, shrimp nets were responsible for more than 10,000 sea turtle deaths annually in the south-east. In 1989, when regulations tightened, shrimpers created a 500-boat blockade in the Gulf coast, raising skull and crossbones flags and even ramming Coast Guard ships.
In Georgia, tension between scientists and fishermen is amplified by black gill disease, which affects a shrimp’s respiratory system. The shrimp’s immune response causes the visible blackening of the gills, and results in lethargy, potential death and sometimes the collapse of an entire fishery.
Black gill is an expensive problem. In 2019, the commerce department distributed over $1m to commercial shrimpers and researchers because of the 2013 white shrimp fishery failure.
Black gill is, however, more pervasive than ever. Gale reports that it’s starting earlier in the year, beginning in May instead of August, and continuing throughout fall. Though it has been around since the 1990s, researchers believe the disease is worsening with climate change.
Climate change will continue to wreak further havoc on the industry – changing the salinity of the water, shifting the distribution of shrimp – female shrimp need colder water to spawn. Warmer winters appear to predict a smaller annual shrimp harvest, and may not kill the bacteria responsible for black gill.
Keeping shrimp fisheries healthy, and livelihoods possible, requires intense collaboration between fishermen and scientists. Otherwise, foreign markets with cheap labor and unsustainable practices will take over the market share entirely.
“We have to look for the cooperative path,” Fluech says, emphasizing how helpful it can be when shrimpers help with data collection and reporting. He currently works with five to eight shrimpers each season; the fishermen help report black gill using an online tracking app.
One of the best historical examples of this cooperative path is fisherman Sinkey Boone, who hailed from a long line of shrimpers in Darien. Boone created the first turtle excluder device in the late 1960s, called the Georgia Jumper, which allowed turtles – an oxygen-breathing species – to escape trawler nets so they wouldn’t drown.
Scientists and fishermen may seem at odds, but collaboration is possible, and perhaps imperative.
“Me and the shrimpers may not agree on everything, but I respect the hell out of them,” says Fluech.
•••
Gale agrees with the saying that shrimpers never retire. “We fish till we fall out and die,” he says. “I’ve seen men fish right on until their 80s and 90s. I know an old man right now who’s got to be 85 and he outworks anybody I know – still climbs up in the rigging. Diabetic and still goes.”
I hear stories about poisonous snakes tangled in anchor lines, boats on fire, near-sinkings, and a man in his 70s impaled by his own equipment who hardly survived, but broke out of the hospital to get back on his boat a few days later.
“Once fishing’s in your blood, and you get used to it, you just don’t want to do anything else,” Gale says.
“I’d still work for my daddy,” Gale tells me. “He just knew where the shrimp would be – it was absolutely amazing. He knew the tide cycles, what the weather meant. You could set your watch to it. Another fisherman could make that same pass and miss them.”
In 1979, the government issued 1,471 commercial trawling licenses in Georgia – but only 253 in 2014. If the decline in Georgia’s shrimping continues, the ripple effect will be felt in the local economy, on dinner plates, during seasonal festivals, and on the horizon line, where many are used to seeing early morning trawlers. Frozen foreign shrimp and farmed shrimp – known as aquaculture – are the likely future.
“Do I think there will always be shrimpers in Georgia?” Fluech asks me. “I hope so. You have to be an eternal optimist in this business.”
Captain Wynn Gale – a fifth-generation Georgia shrimper – is on the side of the road on an April morning, selling shrimp at the same street corner where his dad sold shrimp.
“How’s the pandemic treating you?” I ask.
“Sales have dropped off by about two-thirds. No out-of-towners coming through on the I-95. No local traffic.” He sighs. “I’m going to tough it out. I can survive with what I’m selling. But that’s all I’m doing. Most shrimpers don’t have 401k retirement plans, you know?”
Gale would rather be out on his boat, a 1953 trawler he had for nine years but recently sold to a man in North Carolina. “It made me good money, but I couldn’t find a crew! You just can’t find anyone who wants to work shrimp boats any more. Most of ’em are on drugs. Give ’em a check and they’re gone.” He has a small boat he can run himself now.
In the past, shrimping was an admirable vocation. Gale first got out on a shrimp boat when he was 12. “Mama wouldn’t let me go any earlier, but from 12 years on out – every weekend I wasn’t in school or summer vacation I was on a shrimp boat.” He spent the next 20 years learning from his dad, who shrimped for 45 years.
“What was an average day like?” I ask.
“I’d leave about 4.30 in the morning and get to the dragging grounds about 6.30, maybe 7am. I’d put out in daylight, make three or four drags that day. The latest I’d be out would be 4pm,” he says. “Look,” he tells me. “What I’m doing right here, right now, selling shrimp on this corner – it sucks. It’s way better out there on the water. It’s where I’ve lived all my life. If I wasn’t in the ocean, I was in the river running trout lines and catching catfish, or fishing for shad in winter.”
•••
Americans eat more shrimp than ever – an average of 4.4lb per person – but not all of America’s shrimpers are thriving. Nearly 90% of America’s shrimp comes from overseas, farmed in Asia and Central America, where working conditions and meat quality can be repugnant. It is increasingly rare for fresh, wild-caught, chemical-free shrimp to reach an American consumer’s plate.
Off the coast of Georgia, fishermen harvested about 2.61m lb of shrimp in 2019, a haul valued more than $11m. Shrimping is deeply ingrained in culture there, but Georgia’s fishermen are facing significant challenges: an ageing workforce, low prices per pound, climate change and black gill disease, leading many to wonder if the industry will survive.
These days, depending on the season, Gale can get $3 to $5.50 per lb of shrimp. “Back in the 1980s and 1990s,” he says, “we were selling the same size shrimp for $8 a pound. We have good years – but most of the time we have bad years now.”
Bryan Fluech, the associate marine extension director at Marine Extension and Georgia Sea Grant, uses the term “graying of the fleet” when talking about the future of shrimping in Georgia.
“Shrimp are the Cheetos of the sea,” Fluech tells me. “Everything eats them. But people need to remember: that shrimp didn’t just show up in a Publix.
“The decline of the shrimping industry has been death by a thousand cuts,” Fluech says. “The cost for maintaining a boat is up, and the boats are getting older. Sustainable fishing practices are expensive to implement. The younger generation doesn’t want to work on a shrimping vessel, and captains tell me they can’t find a reliable workforce. The cost of ice and fuel might rise, but the profit on shrimp doesn’t. Plus, our guys are competing with foreign markets.”
“A lot has changed,” Gale tells me. “We’re losing our infrastructure. Lost our big block ice plant that had given ice since the 1940s. Can’t hardly find anybody to build nets any more.”
Fluech professes enormous respect for the shrimpers still operating in Georgia’s waters. “Let me tell you – MacGyver [the TV adventurer hero] has nothing on Georgia shrimpers. They are so resourceful. You can’t just be a good shrimper any more. You’ve got to be a welder, a businessman and a direct marketer too.”
“People love to say that they’re all about local food,” Fluech adds. “And you’ll see a shrimping boat on every tourism brochure, but commercial waterfronts have changed. People don’t like the look of a working dock. There’s only one left in Brunswick, which means the fishermen have to take those prices or go out on their own. We say we like authentic experiences, but we’re losing them.”
•••
You can see the old reverence for Georgia’s shrimpers in the Blessing of the Fleet ceremonies, which still happen along the coast in towns like Brunswick and Darien at the end of March, as the fleet readies itself for the season.
Ships with beautiful names like the Lady Raven, Flying Cloud, Bernice II, Liberty Bell and Sundown arrive at the ceremony decorated with lights and streamers. A crowd gathers, and a minister – often waving a toilet brush spray-painted gold, and flanked by the Knights of Columbus – offers a blessing into the microphone. Shrimping is a dangerous vocation, after all, and every year there are injuries, drownings and boats that don’t return.
This year’s ceremony was postponed due to the pandemic. The cancellation feels like the latest knock in a long and difficult fight.
Once celebrated, many shrimpers feel vilified as they face mounting regulations aimed at preserving other species, like sea turtles. In the 1980s, before turtle excluder devices (TEDs) were prevalent, shrimp nets were responsible for more than 10,000 sea turtle deaths annually in the south-east. In 1989, when regulations tightened, shrimpers created a 500-boat blockade in the Gulf coast, raising skull and crossbones flags and even ramming Coast Guard ships.
In Georgia, tension between scientists and fishermen is amplified by black gill disease, which affects a shrimp’s respiratory system. The shrimp’s immune response causes the visible blackening of the gills, and results in lethargy, potential death and sometimes the collapse of an entire fishery.
Black gill is an expensive problem. In 2019, the commerce department distributed over $1m to commercial shrimpers and researchers because of the 2013 white shrimp fishery failure.
Black gill is, however, more pervasive than ever. Gale reports that it’s starting earlier in the year, beginning in May instead of August, and continuing throughout fall. Though it has been around since the 1990s, researchers believe the disease is worsening with climate change.
Climate change will continue to wreak further havoc on the industry – changing the salinity of the water, shifting the distribution of shrimp – female shrimp need colder water to spawn. Warmer winters appear to predict a smaller annual shrimp harvest, and may not kill the bacteria responsible for black gill.
Keeping shrimp fisheries healthy, and livelihoods possible, requires intense collaboration between fishermen and scientists. Otherwise, foreign markets with cheap labor and unsustainable practices will take over the market share entirely.
“We have to look for the cooperative path,” Fluech says, emphasizing how helpful it can be when shrimpers help with data collection and reporting. He currently works with five to eight shrimpers each season; the fishermen help report black gill using an online tracking app.
One of the best historical examples of this cooperative path is fisherman Sinkey Boone, who hailed from a long line of shrimpers in Darien. Boone created the first turtle excluder device in the late 1960s, called the Georgia Jumper, which allowed turtles – an oxygen-breathing species – to escape trawler nets so they wouldn’t drown.
Scientists and fishermen may seem at odds, but collaboration is possible, and perhaps imperative.
“Me and the shrimpers may not agree on everything, but I respect the hell out of them,” says Fluech.
•••
Gale agrees with the saying that shrimpers never retire. “We fish till we fall out and die,” he says. “I’ve seen men fish right on until their 80s and 90s. I know an old man right now who’s got to be 85 and he outworks anybody I know – still climbs up in the rigging. Diabetic and still goes.”
I hear stories about poisonous snakes tangled in anchor lines, boats on fire, near-sinkings, and a man in his 70s impaled by his own equipment who hardly survived, but broke out of the hospital to get back on his boat a few days later.
“Once fishing’s in your blood, and you get used to it, you just don’t want to do anything else,” Gale says.
“I’d still work for my daddy,” Gale tells me. “He just knew where the shrimp would be – it was absolutely amazing. He knew the tide cycles, what the weather meant. You could set your watch to it. Another fisherman could make that same pass and miss them.”
In 1979, the government issued 1,471 commercial trawling licenses in Georgia – but only 253 in 2014. If the decline in Georgia’s shrimping continues, the ripple effect will be felt in the local economy, on dinner plates, during seasonal festivals, and on the horizon line, where many are used to seeing early morning trawlers. Frozen foreign shrimp and farmed shrimp – known as aquaculture – are the likely future.
“Do I think there will always be shrimpers in Georgia?” Fluech asks me. “I hope so. You have to be an eternal optimist in this business.”
Democrats are fueling a corporate counter-revolution against progressivesDavid Sirota
Democrats in Washington are not just passively failing to mount an opposition to Trump. They are actively helping Republicans
Tue 26 May 2020
Perhaps this is a temporary stall-out – a fleeting moment of retreat in a two-steps-forward-one-step-back trajectory. After all, polls continue to show that from workers’ rights to universal healthcare, a majority of Americans support a progressive policy agenda.
The problem, though, is that Democrats in Washington are not just passively failing to mount a strong opposition to Donald Trump – they are actively helping Republicans try to fortify the obstacles to long-term progressive change well after this emergency subsides.
This corporate counter-revolution is easiest to see in Democrats’ enthusiastic support for Republicans’ legislative response to the coronavirus crisis. Democrats’ entire 2018 electoral campaign told America that the opposition party needed to win back Congress in order to block Trump’s regressive agenda. And yet, when the Republicans proposed a bill to let Trump’s appointees dole out government cash to their corporate allies with no strings attached, this same opposition party mustered not a single recorded vote against the package. Not one.
Thanks to that, Trump appointees and the Federal Reserve can now hand out $4tn to politically connected corporations as they lay waste to our economy and steamroll progressive reforms. Private equity firms and fossil fuel companies get new tax breaks as they buy elections and try to lock in permanent climate change.
These bailouts were part of a larger legislative package that included good things like expanded unemployment benefits – and so you could argue that Democrats simply had to swallow a bitter pill and vote yes. Except, they subsequently proposed their own standalone legislation that would further strengthen the corporate opponents of progressive reform.
Coronavirus: the week explained - sign up for our email newsletter
For example, there is the Democrats’ push to alter the so-called paycheck protection program (PPP). Those loans were designed to help employees of mom-and-pop enterprises throughout the country. House Democrats’ new stimulus legislation would open up the small business lending program to what they call “small nonprofits”, but their language was crafted to provide the forgivable loans to industry trade associations. Those lobby groups represent the planet’s biggest corporations – and their political action committees have delivered more than $191m of campaign cash to lawmakers in the last two decades.
Democrats have pitched their legislation as a “message” bill that declares their values – and in this case, they are reassuring Washington power-players that money meant for workers at neighborhood restaurants, local shops and other mom-and-pop concerns can be raided by the front groups representing giant drug companies, health insurers and Wall Street firms. If the legislation passes, it would not merely be an epic tale of greed – the new funding stream for corporate lobbying groups would bolster the very forces that make sure federal policy disempowers workers, maximizes private profit and generally protects the ruling class.
The tragedy is we’re already moving in that wrong direction, and chances to change the dynamic don't come around often
It’s an even worse story on healthcare. As 43 million Americans face the prospect of losing private health insurance, Democrats had a huge opportunity. After Trump himself suggested he wanted the government to pay healthcare providers directly for treating uninsured Covid-19 patients, they could have called his bluff and passed existing legislation to expand a Medicare program that provides actual medical care. Instead, House Democrats passed a bill to support lightly regulated private insurance marketplaces and to subsidize existing private insurance plans through a Rube Goldberg machine known as Cobr
Taken together, the spectacle was more confirmation that whatever resistance exists in the nation’s capital, it is so often performance art, rather than anything real.
“Outside groups and House lawmakers need to work together to build a populist bloc – probably inclusive of moderate Democrats and perhaps even an occasional Republican – who will stand united to force votes to ensure that our economy does right by ordinary people,” said David Segal of Demand Progress, pointing to news of a potential Democratic coalition to buck the party’s leadership and support a plan to float businesses’ payrolls through the crisis. “We must make sure that America does not go in the wrong direction and become even more inequitable because we let unemployment soar, compel cities and states to implement austerity, force small businesses to shutter and let large corporations backstopped by the Fed roll them up.”
The tragedy is that we’re already moving in that wrong direction, and chances to change the political dynamic do not come around often. As Barack Obama’s former chief of staff Rahm Emanuel (now an investment banker and TV talking head) said more than a decade ago during the financial crisis: “Never allow a good crisis to go to waste – it’s an opportunity to do the things you once thought were impossible.”
Billionaires and corporations are clearly following that advice, aiming to use the pandemic to grow their wealth and political power in previously unfathomable ways. It would be better if the opposition party put up a real fight – or at least refused to be complicit in postponing progress for yet another generation.
David Sirota is a Guardian US columnist and Jacobin editor at large who served as Bernie Sanders’ presidential campaign speechwriter. He also publishes Too Much Information newsletter.
Democrats in Washington are not just passively failing to mount an opposition to Trump. They are actively helping Republicans
Tue 26 May 2020
‘This corporate counterrevolution is easiest to see in Democrats’ enthusiastic support for Republicans’ legislative response to the coronavirus crisis.’ Photograph: Michael Brochstein/Sopa Images/Rex/Shutterstock
These are bleak days for America’s progressive movement. The Democratic primary process handed the party’s nomination to the candidate with the most conservative record. Corporate-friendly politicians like the New York governor, Andrew Cuomo, are using the pandemic to brandish their images and install billionaires to run things. Progressive lawmakers in Congress are being steamrolled, even by their own party’s leadership. And a recession is battering the state and local budgets that fund progressive priorities like education and the social safety net.
Joe Biden pushed to embrace radicalism of FDR by scale of economic crisis
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/may/22/joe-biden-radicalism-fdr-economic-crisis-coronavirus
These are bleak days for America’s progressive movement. The Democratic primary process handed the party’s nomination to the candidate with the most conservative record. Corporate-friendly politicians like the New York governor, Andrew Cuomo, are using the pandemic to brandish their images and install billionaires to run things. Progressive lawmakers in Congress are being steamrolled, even by their own party’s leadership. And a recession is battering the state and local budgets that fund progressive priorities like education and the social safety net.
Joe Biden pushed to embrace radicalism of FDR by scale of economic crisis
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/may/22/joe-biden-radicalism-fdr-economic-crisis-coronavirus
Perhaps this is a temporary stall-out – a fleeting moment of retreat in a two-steps-forward-one-step-back trajectory. After all, polls continue to show that from workers’ rights to universal healthcare, a majority of Americans support a progressive policy agenda.
The problem, though, is that Democrats in Washington are not just passively failing to mount a strong opposition to Donald Trump – they are actively helping Republicans try to fortify the obstacles to long-term progressive change well after this emergency subsides.
This corporate counter-revolution is easiest to see in Democrats’ enthusiastic support for Republicans’ legislative response to the coronavirus crisis. Democrats’ entire 2018 electoral campaign told America that the opposition party needed to win back Congress in order to block Trump’s regressive agenda. And yet, when the Republicans proposed a bill to let Trump’s appointees dole out government cash to their corporate allies with no strings attached, this same opposition party mustered not a single recorded vote against the package. Not one.
Thanks to that, Trump appointees and the Federal Reserve can now hand out $4tn to politically connected corporations as they lay waste to our economy and steamroll progressive reforms. Private equity firms and fossil fuel companies get new tax breaks as they buy elections and try to lock in permanent climate change.
These bailouts were part of a larger legislative package that included good things like expanded unemployment benefits – and so you could argue that Democrats simply had to swallow a bitter pill and vote yes. Except, they subsequently proposed their own standalone legislation that would further strengthen the corporate opponents of progressive reform.
Coronavirus: the week explained - sign up for our email newsletter
For example, there is the Democrats’ push to alter the so-called paycheck protection program (PPP). Those loans were designed to help employees of mom-and-pop enterprises throughout the country. House Democrats’ new stimulus legislation would open up the small business lending program to what they call “small nonprofits”, but their language was crafted to provide the forgivable loans to industry trade associations. Those lobby groups represent the planet’s biggest corporations – and their political action committees have delivered more than $191m of campaign cash to lawmakers in the last two decades.
Democrats have pitched their legislation as a “message” bill that declares their values – and in this case, they are reassuring Washington power-players that money meant for workers at neighborhood restaurants, local shops and other mom-and-pop concerns can be raided by the front groups representing giant drug companies, health insurers and Wall Street firms. If the legislation passes, it would not merely be an epic tale of greed – the new funding stream for corporate lobbying groups would bolster the very forces that make sure federal policy disempowers workers, maximizes private profit and generally protects the ruling class.
The tragedy is we’re already moving in that wrong direction, and chances to change the dynamic don't come around often
It’s an even worse story on healthcare. As 43 million Americans face the prospect of losing private health insurance, Democrats had a huge opportunity. After Trump himself suggested he wanted the government to pay healthcare providers directly for treating uninsured Covid-19 patients, they could have called his bluff and passed existing legislation to expand a Medicare program that provides actual medical care. Instead, House Democrats passed a bill to support lightly regulated private insurance marketplaces and to subsidize existing private insurance plans through a Rube Goldberg machine known as Cobr
Taken together, the spectacle was more confirmation that whatever resistance exists in the nation’s capital, it is so often performance art, rather than anything real.
“Outside groups and House lawmakers need to work together to build a populist bloc – probably inclusive of moderate Democrats and perhaps even an occasional Republican – who will stand united to force votes to ensure that our economy does right by ordinary people,” said David Segal of Demand Progress, pointing to news of a potential Democratic coalition to buck the party’s leadership and support a plan to float businesses’ payrolls through the crisis. “We must make sure that America does not go in the wrong direction and become even more inequitable because we let unemployment soar, compel cities and states to implement austerity, force small businesses to shutter and let large corporations backstopped by the Fed roll them up.”
The tragedy is that we’re already moving in that wrong direction, and chances to change the political dynamic do not come around often. As Barack Obama’s former chief of staff Rahm Emanuel (now an investment banker and TV talking head) said more than a decade ago during the financial crisis: “Never allow a good crisis to go to waste – it’s an opportunity to do the things you once thought were impossible.”
Billionaires and corporations are clearly following that advice, aiming to use the pandemic to grow their wealth and political power in previously unfathomable ways. It would be better if the opposition party put up a real fight – or at least refused to be complicit in postponing progress for yet another generation.
David Sirota is a Guardian US columnist and Jacobin editor at large who served as Bernie Sanders’ presidential campaign speechwriter. He also publishes Too Much Information newsletter.
Ancient Roman mosaic floor discovered under vines in Italy
Pristine ‘archaeological treasure’ near Verona may date to 3rd century AD, say experts
Angela Giuffrida
Pristine ‘archaeological treasure’ near Verona may date to 3rd century AD, say experts
Angela Giuffrida
Rome correspondent THE GUARDIAN
Wed 27 May 2020
The mosaic was found a few metres beneath a row of vines a week after work resumed after the coronavirus lockdown. Photograph: Comune di Negrar di Valpolicella
A perfectly preserved ancient Roman mosaic floor has been discovered near the northern Italian city of Verona.
Archaeologists were astonished by the find as it came almost a century after the remains of a villa, believed to date to the 3rd century AD, were unearthed in a hilly area above the town of Negrar di Valpolicella.
After the discovery in 1922, the site was mostly left abandoned until a team from the Superintendent of Archaeology, Fine Arts and Landscape of Verona resumed digging last summer. The team returned to the site in October and again in February before the excavation was suspended because of the coronavirus pandemic.
The mosaic was found a few metres beneath a row of vines a week after work got going again.
“After countless decades of failed attempts, part of the floor and foundations of the Roman villa located north of Verona, discovered by scholars a century ago, has finally been brought to light,” authorities from Negrar di Valpolicella wrote on the town’s Facebook page.
“The superintendent will now liaise with the owners of the area and municipality to identify the most appropriate ways of making this archaeological treasure, which has always been hidden beneath our feet, available and accessible.”
Roberto Grison, the mayor of Negrar di Valpolicella, told the local newspaper L’Arena: “We believe a cultural site of this value deserves attention and should be enhanced. For this reason, together with the superintendent and those in charge of agricultural funds, we will find a way to make this treasure enjoyable.”
Paving stones dating back 2,000 years were also discovered after a sinkhole opened in front of the Pantheon in Rome during the coronavirus lockdown.
The seven travertine slabs were found 2.5 metres beneath Piazza della Rotonda. Although sinkholes are a common problem in Rome, fortunately the usually packed square was empty at the time the pavement collapsed in April.
Italy’s cultural sites are slowly coming back to life, with the archaeological park of Pompeii reopening on Tuesday. The park reopened with security measures in place, including temperature checks, while the entrance price has been reduced to €5.
The Colosseum will reopen on 1 June, with visitors obliged to buy tickets online, wear face masks and have their temperature checked before entering.
A perfectly preserved ancient Roman mosaic floor has been discovered near the northern Italian city of Verona.
Archaeologists were astonished by the find as it came almost a century after the remains of a villa, believed to date to the 3rd century AD, were unearthed in a hilly area above the town of Negrar di Valpolicella.
After the discovery in 1922, the site was mostly left abandoned until a team from the Superintendent of Archaeology, Fine Arts and Landscape of Verona resumed digging last summer. The team returned to the site in October and again in February before the excavation was suspended because of the coronavirus pandemic.
The mosaic was found a few metres beneath a row of vines a week after work got going again.
“After countless decades of failed attempts, part of the floor and foundations of the Roman villa located north of Verona, discovered by scholars a century ago, has finally been brought to light,” authorities from Negrar di Valpolicella wrote on the town’s Facebook page.
“The superintendent will now liaise with the owners of the area and municipality to identify the most appropriate ways of making this archaeological treasure, which has always been hidden beneath our feet, available and accessible.”
Roberto Grison, the mayor of Negrar di Valpolicella, told the local newspaper L’Arena: “We believe a cultural site of this value deserves attention and should be enhanced. For this reason, together with the superintendent and those in charge of agricultural funds, we will find a way to make this treasure enjoyable.”
Paving stones dating back 2,000 years were also discovered after a sinkhole opened in front of the Pantheon in Rome during the coronavirus lockdown.
The seven travertine slabs were found 2.5 metres beneath Piazza della Rotonda. Although sinkholes are a common problem in Rome, fortunately the usually packed square was empty at the time the pavement collapsed in April.
Italy’s cultural sites are slowly coming back to life, with the archaeological park of Pompeii reopening on Tuesday. The park reopened with security measures in place, including temperature checks, while the entrance price has been reduced to €5.
The Colosseum will reopen on 1 June, with visitors obliged to buy tickets online, wear face masks and have their temperature checked before entering.
Sydney braces for rat ‘plague’ after Covid-19 forces hungry rodents to turn to cannibalism
Suburban rat infestations surge after city-dwelling rodents run out of food
Naaman Zhou THE GUARDIAN Wed 27 May 2020
Prof Peter Banks, a rodent expert from the University of Sydney, said the same thing had already happened in Australia.
Banks said that cannibalism would have happened “within days” of our restrictions being enacted, as city-dwelling rats ran out of food.
“We locked down and stopped using the city and closed restaurants quite rapidly, and that was quite long ago,” he told Guardian Australia. “The rats have to eat immediately, so this would have happened days after, because the rats are so food stressed.
“They are so dependent on our garbage and our spilt food. The rats we have in the centre of Sydney are the same species as in New York … They are wholly dependent on us. If they produce babies they can’t support, they kill them. Or one of their relatives comes in and kills them.
“They will eat other rats that die, for sure. It’s hard to say whether they will go and kill another rat. They will not let a meal of another rat go by.”
AT LEAST WE DON'T HAVE TO WORRY ABOUT RATS
Milton said this had driven rats into new areas.
“They have moved into the suburbs, closer to residential now,” he said. “We are having a big spike in residential rodent control.
“It’s got colder quicker this year as well. It is coming on to winter where they need somewhere warm to sleep. They usually get into roof voids in people’s houses, because they can climb up brick walls or they can leap from overhanging trees above peoples’ houses. They can leap about three or four foot.”
However, Banks said that people should not worry about hordes of rats in their homes, as the overall rat population would have dropped under lockdown.
“Rats are probably the big losers from Covid-19,” he said. “The rat population would have been knocked down a lot. It will probably be a pretty typical winter. There are not going to be waves of rats running across the suburbs trying to get into people’s houses.
“But people will be seeing them in houses now, because that is the only place where there is food. If we leave bins out , they will thrive off that.”
Both he and Milton predicted city rat levels would swiftly rebound once offices and restaurants opened again, and people went back to work.
“They respond to food within days,” Banks said. “If you give them a burst of food, that can turn into babies in three weeks’ time, no worries. They usually go through a winter lull, so that is not normally their breeding time. But if we are out in springtime or late winter, out there spilling food, they will be there to exploit it.”
Milton agreed.
“There will probably be a new plague of rats take over the city,” he said. “But a lot of the ones that are left unattended in suburbia will stay there. They usually eat dog food and all that, because people leave dog kibble out all night. They’ve got ready made meals really.”
Banks said that rats would “be back”.
“What they do is, the adults just stop having babies. The mortality rates will go up, but there will be survivors. There will be some who get by. Those will keep the population going, so once the garbage comes back, those survivors will repopulate the urban rats again. Breeding will go up, they will have bigger litters. They’ll be back.”
Suburban rat infestations surge after city-dwelling rodents run out of food
Naaman Zhou THE GUARDIAN Wed 27 May 2020
The sudden drop-off in food and rubbish in our cities is exacerbating suburban rat infestations. Photograph: Sanjay Kanojia/AFP via Getty Images
Empty offices and restaurants in the city of Sydney are driving hungry rats into homes and suburbs, and the loosening of restrictions could create “a new rat plague”, according to a leading rat-catcher.
As city centres have closed due to the Covid-19 pandemic, suburban rat infestations have spiked, according to Geoff Milton, a Sydney rat-catcher with 35 years’ experience.
Rats naturally seek out houses during winter, and the sudden drop-off in food and rubbish in our cities is exacerbating the problem. Calls about suburban rats have risen 30% compared with the same time last year, Milton told Guardian Australia.In the US, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have also warned that New York rats had become more “unusual or aggressive”, and began eating each other due to a lack of food.
Empty offices and restaurants in the city of Sydney are driving hungry rats into homes and suburbs, and the loosening of restrictions could create “a new rat plague”, according to a leading rat-catcher.
As city centres have closed due to the Covid-19 pandemic, suburban rat infestations have spiked, according to Geoff Milton, a Sydney rat-catcher with 35 years’ experience.
Rats naturally seek out houses during winter, and the sudden drop-off in food and rubbish in our cities is exacerbating the problem. Calls about suburban rats have risen 30% compared with the same time last year, Milton told Guardian Australia.In the US, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have also warned that New York rats had become more “unusual or aggressive”, and began eating each other due to a lack of food.
Prof Peter Banks, a rodent expert from the University of Sydney, said the same thing had already happened in Australia.
Banks said that cannibalism would have happened “within days” of our restrictions being enacted, as city-dwelling rats ran out of food.
“We locked down and stopped using the city and closed restaurants quite rapidly, and that was quite long ago,” he told Guardian Australia. “The rats have to eat immediately, so this would have happened days after, because the rats are so food stressed.
“They are so dependent on our garbage and our spilt food. The rats we have in the centre of Sydney are the same species as in New York … They are wholly dependent on us. If they produce babies they can’t support, they kill them. Or one of their relatives comes in and kills them.
“They will eat other rats that die, for sure. It’s hard to say whether they will go and kill another rat. They will not let a meal of another rat go by.”
Milton said this had driven rats into new areas.
“They have moved into the suburbs, closer to residential now,” he said. “We are having a big spike in residential rodent control.
“It’s got colder quicker this year as well. It is coming on to winter where they need somewhere warm to sleep. They usually get into roof voids in people’s houses, because they can climb up brick walls or they can leap from overhanging trees above peoples’ houses. They can leap about three or four foot.”
However, Banks said that people should not worry about hordes of rats in their homes, as the overall rat population would have dropped under lockdown.
“Rats are probably the big losers from Covid-19,” he said. “The rat population would have been knocked down a lot. It will probably be a pretty typical winter. There are not going to be waves of rats running across the suburbs trying to get into people’s houses.
“But people will be seeing them in houses now, because that is the only place where there is food. If we leave bins out , they will thrive off that.”
Both he and Milton predicted city rat levels would swiftly rebound once offices and restaurants opened again, and people went back to work.
“They respond to food within days,” Banks said. “If you give them a burst of food, that can turn into babies in three weeks’ time, no worries. They usually go through a winter lull, so that is not normally their breeding time. But if we are out in springtime or late winter, out there spilling food, they will be there to exploit it.”
Milton agreed.
“There will probably be a new plague of rats take over the city,” he said. “But a lot of the ones that are left unattended in suburbia will stay there. They usually eat dog food and all that, because people leave dog kibble out all night. They’ve got ready made meals really.”
Banks said that rats would “be back”.
“What they do is, the adults just stop having babies. The mortality rates will go up, but there will be survivors. There will be some who get by. Those will keep the population going, so once the garbage comes back, those survivors will repopulate the urban rats again. Breeding will go up, they will have bigger litters. They’ll be back.”
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