North Korea investment guide in South promotes 'potential opportunities'

KPMG in South Korea released a new North Korea investment manual Monday that includes case studies of the Kaesong Industrial Complex, a jointly operated factory park in the North that was shuttered in 2016. File Photo by Keizo Mori/UPI | License Photo

Nov. 16 (UPI) -- A Big Four accounting firm has issued a new North Korea investment guide, a first-of-its-kind assessment of the country that caters to South Korean companies.

Samjong KPMG, part of KPMG International, issued the first "Practical Guide to Investment in North Korea" in partnership with local law firm Bae, Kim & Lee, also known as Taepyeongyang, Yonhap and the South Korean newspaper Herald Business reported Monday.





The two firms say the guide was published to prepare for an era of full-scale inter-Korea economic cooperation. North and South Korea have not held working-level talks this year.

According to Samjong KPMG, the book includes information on the North Korean economy, laws and policies in North Korea's special economic zones, as well as information on "potential opportunities." The guide also includes a special section on North Korean real estate, labor and trade.

Case studies of the Kaesong Industrial Complex, a North Korea-based factory park, are included. The shutdown of Kaesong in 2016 led to a $1.3 billion loss, according to a South Korean businesses association in 2017.

The accounting firm said the book is the first "practical reference" to be published in the South that includes information on the North's investment environment. The firm has been operating a North Korea business support center since 2014, and has provided legal services in the area of inter-Korea economic cooperation since 2002.

Kim Kyo-tae, chief executive of KPMG in Korea, said the firm hopes the book can provide foundational principles for "active business between North and South" in the future.

Kim Sung-jin, law partner at Taepyeongyang, said North Korea opportunities come with risks, but the country "cannot be dismissed," because of the "blue ocean of opportunities" it offers for South Korean companies.

"Firms must secure expertise," Kim Sung-jin said, according to Herald Business.

In 2018, chief executives of South Korea's top corporations, including Samsung Group, traveled to Pyongyang with South Korean President Moon Jae-in. Moon at the time proposed transforming the two economies by opening up trade and infrastructure links.

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Report: Japan, South Korea reach preliminary pact on forced wartime labor

Japan's Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga and South Korean President Moon Jae-in are moving closer to resolving past disputes, according to a South Korean press report Monday.

 File Photo by Keizo Mori/UPI | License Photo

Nov. 16 (UPI) -- South Korea and Japan could be in the early stages of a landmark deal that addresses the issue of forced wartime laborers following a two-year standoff.

Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga and South Korean President Moon Jae-in have arrived at a preliminary agreement to "compensate" Korean laborers forcibly recruited to work for little to no pay during World War II at Japanese factories and coal mines, South Korea's Yonhap TV reported Monday.

Tokyo and Seoul have begun to take more concrete steps toward resuming high-level communications. Senior level diplomats recently met in Seoul, and South Korean lawmakers traveled to Tokyo to meet with Suga on Friday. South Korean spy chief Park Jie-won also met with the Japanese prime minister last week.

Moon, who was unable to strike a deal with former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, drew attention in South Korea on Saturday, when during an ASEAN+3 summit he addressed only Suga by name.

"In particular, it's a pleasure to meet you, Prime Minister Suga of Japan," Moon said, according the presidential Blue House.

The two leaders may share common interests. According to Yonhap TV, Moon is keen to resume inter-Korea dialogue, and Suga has said he would not rule out inviting North Korean leader Kim Jong Un to next year's rescheduled 2020 Tokyo Olympics. The two governments could be working on a major deal to restart diplomacy using next year's Summer Games as an opportunity, the report says.

Japan's Olympic prospects are brightening after the head of the International Olympic Committee said he is "very confident" spectators can attend the Games, Japan's Jiji Press reported Monday.

North Korea has shown little interest in dialogue with Japan. Tokyo has said resolving the issue of Japanese abductees taken to the North is of the highest priority, but Pyongyang has said all kidnapped victims were returned in 2002.

CHRISTIAN PEDERASTY 
Nearly 90,000 file sex abuse charges against Boy Scouts

Nov. 16 (UPI) -- Nearly 90,000 people filed sex abuse claims against Boy Scouts of America as a deadline in the group's federal bankruptcy case arrived Monday.

The case is the largest-ever child sex abuse case involving a single national organization and far exceeds the number of plaintiffs the Irving, Tex.-based Boy Scouts expected. The organization filed for bankruptcy while facing 275 lawsuits in state and federal courts and another 1,400 potential claims.

"We are devastated by the number of lives impacted by past abuse in Scouting and moved by the bravery of those who came forward," the Boy Scouts said in a statement. "The response we have seen from survivors has been gut-wrenching. We are deeply sorry."

Claims have accelerated in recent weeks as those who failed to file before the deadline would be barred from filing a suit against the Boy Scouts of America in the future

"Even for me, who probably has been doing this since the beginning, I couldn't see it coming. Not these numbers," said Paul Mones, who tried a landmark 2010 case that resulted in $19.9 million in damages and forced the Boy Scouts to release more than 20,000 confidential documents that became known as the "perversion files."

The files showed that the Boy Scouts tracked suspected and known abusers but consistently failed to report them to authorities or notify the public of their findings.

In February, the Boy Scouts filed for Chapter 11 Bankruptcy in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the District of Delaware to restructure its finances to compensate victims harmed while under the organization's care.

The organization has since engaged in court battles with insurers, which have argued they shouldn't be required to pay claims related to abuse that could have been prevented.

Other cases have sought to determine what assets are included in the Boy Scouts' estate and available for victim settlements.

RELATED Vatican: Pope John Paul II knew of sex abuse claims against cardinal


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AT THE TIME OF THESE CRIMES THE BOY SCOUTS WERE A SELF AVOWED CHRSITIAN YOUTH GROUP

FBI: 

Hate crime murders surged to record high in 2019


Police officers respond to a shooting at a Walmart in El Paso, Texas, on August 3, 2019, that resulted in the deaths of 23 people. According to FBI data, 2019's 51 hate crime murders was the highest on record. Photo by Ivan Pierre Aguirre/EPA-EFE

Nov. 16 (UPI) -- Killings classified as hate crimes skyrocketed by more than 100% to a record high last year as all forms of hate crime continue to rise throughout the country, according to data released Monday by the FBI.

The FBI data shows there were 51 murders last year that were reported as hate crimes, up 113% percent from the 24 in 2018 and the most since the bureau started compiling such data after Congress passed the Hate Crimes Statistics Act in 1990.

Last year was also the fourth consecutive increase in hate crime murders, according to the FBI data.

In total, there were 7,314 reported hate crime incidents in 2019, an increase of some 200 such incidents from 2018. Last year also represented the fifth increase in six years.

RELATED McCabe: FBI believed Trump posed 'danger to national security'

A hate crime is defined as a criminal offense that is motivated by the offender's bias against a race, religion, disability, sexual orientation, ethnicity, gender or gender identity. Some crimes are motivated by more than one bias, the FBI said.

"When one individual is targeted by a hate crime, it hurts the whole community -- that's why people are feeling vulnerable and afraid," Anti-Defamation League CEO Jonathan Greenblatt said in a statement on the statistics' release.

Among the 8,552 victims of hate crimes last year, the majority at 57.6% were targeted because of race, ethnicity or ancestry followed by 20.1% because of religion, 16.7% because of sexual orientation, 2.7% because of gender identity, 2% because of disability and 0.9% because of gender.

Hate crimes targeting Jewish and Hispanic people rose 14% and 9%, respectively, with hate crimes targeting people based on their gender identity rising 18% last year after surging 41% a year earlier.

The Southern Poverty Law Center, a non-profit civil rights legal advocacy organization, said in a statement that the increases in hate crimes reflect "a growing threat of violence from the extreme right."

Of the 51 hate crime murders committed last year, some two dozen were attributed to attacks that were planned to incite further violence, such as the El Paso Walmart shooting that killed 23 people, the center said.

"These racist ideas are not a political anomaly but rather the most extreme outgrowth of a White supremacist political culture," the center said. "That racism, anti-Hispanic sentiment, antisemitism and homophobia remain pressing problems in the U.S. is reflected in the 2019 hate crime increases."

The data also shows surging hate crime incidents despite the 15,588 law enforcement agencies that voluntarily submitted their data represent a significant drop from the 16,039 agencies that participated in 2018 and the 16,149 in 2017.

The New York-based ADL, a Jewish non-profit organization that fights all forms of hate, described the FBI's annual report as providing "the most comprehensive snapshot" of bias-motivated crimes but the lack of agencies reporting under tabulates the true number of such crimes being committed.

"The total severity of the impact and damage caused by hate crimes cannot be fully measured without complete participation in the FBI's data collection process," Greenblatt said, calling on Congress and law enforcement agencies to improve data collection and reporting of hate crimes.

Greenblatt said 2019's increase may be the product of improved reporting but that local law enforcement agencies across the country still need to improve training in order to remove barriers that prevent victims of hate crimes from coming forward.

"In this pivotal moment in our national conversation about the importance of justice for communities of color, religious minorities and the LGBTQ+ community, we must make combating hate crimes a top priority," he said.

The Southern Poverty Law Center mirrored this call, urging the Biden administration to mandate the federal collection of hate crime data and move funding to the Department of Education aimed at preventing extremism and to build a curriculum on structural racism.

ICE Is Trying To Deport Immigrant Women Who Witnessed Alleged Misconduct By A Gynecologist, Attorneys Say

"It's as if ICE is trying to clear house before the new administration comes in by deporting as many of these witnesses as soon as possible."

Adolfo Flores BuzzFeed News Reporter
Last updated on November 11, 2020

TNS / Reuters
Women from a nearby immigration detention center were taken to Irwin County Hospital for what they say were unnecessary procedures.

Attorneys and advocates working with immigrant women who allege they underwent overly aggressive, unwanted, or medically unnecessary gynecological procedures in ICE detention said federal investigators are excluding witnesses and setting them up to be deported.

The number of immigrant women who allege they underwent nonconsensual or medically unnecessary gynecological procedures at the hands of Mahendra Amin while detained at the Irwin County Detention Center in Ocilla, Georgia, has grown to at least 43. Of those, 17 women remain detained and only one has received a request by federal investigators to be interviewed, according to Caitlin Lowell, a law student at Columbia Law School's Immigrants’ Rights Clinic who is working with this group of detainees.

Seven of the 17 women are set to be deported by ICE in the next two weeks without speaking with investigators, Lowell said.

"It's as if ICE is trying to clear house before the new administration comes in by deporting as many of these witnesses as soon as possible," Lowell told BuzzFeed News. "At a bare minimum, any woman ICE has a record showing they received medical care by Dr. Amin and are alleging nonconsent or medically unnecessary surgeries or procedures should be interviewed, and that hasn’t happened.”

In a statement, ICE said any implication that the federal immigration enforcement agency has been attempting to impede the investigation by conducting deportations of those being interviewed is "completely false.”

But that leaves out women who attorneys said were victims of the gynecologist who have not been interviewed or who the Justice Department may choose to not interview, Lowell said.

The current setup, Lowell said, allows the federal government, which is investigating allegations of abuse done to women while under its care, to deport potential witnesses.

Since the whistleblower complaint that included allegations about unwanted gynecological procedures was filed with the Department of Homeland Security's (DHS) Office of Inspector General (OIG) in September, at least six women who allege they were victims of Amin have been deported, according to Lowell. Four spoke briefly with the Justice Department and two did not.

One woman, Lowell said, had her deportation hold removed right after she conducted one interview with investigators during which she didn't go over everything. The woman had a second interview Tuesday, but Lowell was told her deportation is still scheduled for an unknown date.

In a statement, ICE said it was fully cooperating with the investigation being conducted by DHS OIG and the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division.

"ICE has been notifying the DHS OIG...about any planned transfers or removals of Irwin detainees who were former patients of Dr. Amin, and is fully supporting the efforts by both the DHS OIG and DOJ Civil Rights Division," a spokesperson for the federal agency said.

Amin has denied the allegations through his attorney and did not respond to an immediate request for comment.


Jeff Amy / AP
Dawn Wooten (left), a nurse at Irwin County Detention Center in Ocilla, Georgia, speaks at a news conference.

BuzzFeed News previously reported on women who said Amin conducted medical procedures on them without their consent.

Elora Mukherjee, director of Columbia Law School's Immigrants’ Rights Clinic who is working with women at the Irwin County Detention Center, said the deportations and attempted removals make it less likely victims and witnesses will want to cooperate with investigators because they fear retaliation.

Earlier this month, the Intercept reported that Alma Bowman — an ICE detainee who has been a key witness for lawyers and journalists of Amin performing the allegedly unnecessary or overly aggressive procedures — was nearly deported.

VICE News also reported that another potential witness in the investigation into Amin was almost deported last week until Rep. Hank Johnson, a Georgia Democrat, intervened.

Not only should the women not be deported, Mukherjee said, but the government should also give those who participate in the investigation a document they need to apply for a special visa for victims of crimes in exchange for providing information against Amin. The "U visa" gives undocumented immigrants who report crimes and work with law enforcement a path to permanent residency.

In order to apply for the visa, immigrants must obtain certification from law enforcement that they've been helpful to authorities in prosecuting their abuser.

Mukherjee said lawyers have asked the federal government repeatedly for law enforcement certifications for the women who are cooperating in the investigation, but they haven't received them.

While the certification that would allow them to start the process for the "U visa" doesn't guarantee protection from deportation, it's more than the women currently have.

"It's really appalling," Mukherjee told BuzzFeed News. "They're scared of retaliation, they've seen what's happened to other women. And when they're coming forward, the investigators will not provide them with protection. It's outrageous."

Yanira — a 36-year-old Mexican woman who asked only to be referred to by her first name for privacy reasons — said she was scheduled to be deported on Monday morning, a few days after federal investigators were notified that she and 16 other women currently in ICE detention underwent nonconsensual and physically aggressive gynecological procedures performed by Amin.

She was on a tarmac about to be put on a flight when her deportation was prevented by her Columbia legal team, stopping her from returning to a country she hasn't been to since she was 3.

Yanira had been transferred from jail to ICE detention on Dec. 26, 2019, after pleading guilty to a minor drug charge. Before the transfer, she had undergone a hysterectomy procedure and soon began suffering from hot flashes and fatigue. She put in a request for medicine to control her symptoms.


The first time she saw Amin was on Feb. 6, 2020, according to court documents. Amin told that her wanted to perform a vaginal ultrasound. Afterward, Amin put several gloved fingers inside of her vagina. It felt too deep and caused her burning pain, she said. BuzzFeed News reviewed medical files that confirm Amin conducted an ultrasound that day.

Yanira said she repeatedly said "no," but that Amin didn't stop. For two days after the examination, Yanira said she bled and had discharge. She was in pain for seven days and had to take painkillers.

On Sept. 8, 2020, Yanira saw Amin again for a refill for the medication he prescribed her previously. A nurse told Yanira she needed to have a Pap smear and told her to undress. The Pap smear was painful. Afterward, as Yanira was cleaning herself up, she noticed she was bleeding and said Amin didn't put lubricant on the metal device used to open her vagina.

"It broke through the skin a bit and rubbed it raw. The force he used in it was just shoving it up in there and was why I felt so sore and so swollen," Yanira told BuzzFeed News.

Yanira said she bled for about two days after and was in pain for about a week. She said she had to take ibuprofen she bought from the commissary to lessen the pain.

"I want to speak with investigators because I don't believe the way we were treated was right and ICE needs to learn how to give us proper treatment," Yanira said. "We're human beings with feelings, with families we care about. We are not animals."

Not only does Yanira hope to speak with investigators but also hopes she will be released into the US in order to see her 11-year-old daughter who has developed depression and anxiety attacks since her mom was imprisoned.

Yanira has a hearing on Friday before a federal judge who will hear arguments on the temporary restraining order her legal team filed to stop her deportation. The lawsuit said Yanira has a First Amendment right to speak with investigators about the abuse she suffered at the hands of ICE and its contractors.

"If I were to get deported, I don't think I would be able to speak to investigators about what happened and tell people how this doctor actually mistreated me," she said.






MORE ON THIS

Immigrant Women Detained By ICE Said A Gynecologist Performed Procedures Without Their Consent Adolfo Flores · Sept. 24, 2020

Despite Outrage Over Gynecological Procedures At An ICE Facility, A Detainee Says Conditions Haven't Changed Adolfo Flores · Oct. 7, 2020

Women Detained By ICE Told Members Of Congress They Underwent Unwanted Medical Procedures Adolfo Flores · Sept. 26, 2020

TOPICS IN THIS ARTICLE
Immigration

Adolfo Flores is a reporter for BuzzFeed News and is based in McAllen, Texas..

THIRD WORLD USA
Her Disability Check Wasn't Enough To Live On. The Pandemic Took Away Her Other Options To Get By.

America’s safety net for people with disabilities was never secure. In the pandemic, it’s failing them.

Venessa Wong BuzzFeed News Reporter
Posted on November 11, 2020

Rachell Sumpter for BuzzFeed News

Chelsy knew something was seriously wrong with her health after she suddenly fell asleep while driving with her infant daughter in the backseat. It was her first major narcoleptic event — she was in her mid-twenties — and “it was absolutely the most terrifying moment in my whole life,” she said. By chance, she was at a stoplight, her foot stayed on the brake, and no one was hurt. She awoke to a cacophony of horns, and “I absolutely lost my mind.”

She underwent a long succession of tests. Chelsy was diagnosed with a number of conditions: episodic sleep disorder, insomnia, chronic fatigue, and fibromyalgia. She continued to feel terrible. It took more than a year before she was diagnosed with primary immunodeficiency disorder, a genetic condition that weakens the immune system. Her daughter, who also experienced some health challenges, had it as well. They both saw their conditions progress to common variable immune deficiency (CVID).


Her illness eventually made it impossible for Chelsy to work full time. She missed 70 of the 200 days she had been scheduled to work at a childcare center because she kept getting sick. Bronchitis would turn into pneumonia. One cold bled into the next. “That’s the thing about immune deficiencies. You almost never get just one infection,” she said. “You start out with something, some catalyzing event. It can be as simple as just having allergies. Then because your body is weakened … opportunistic infections take hold in other areas, or just kind of piggyback or bloom, and your body absolutely has nothing to fight it with.”

Chelsy confronted the difficult reality that at age 30, she was very sick, and it would impact her ability to work. And “I started realizing how incredibly the odds were stacked against me,” she said, “by no fault or choosing of my own.” Not only did she have to learn how to tackle life with these medical disorders, she also had to tackle America's benefits system, which would prove to be just as much of a battle.

“I really feel so strongly that if anybody who had to walk in my shoes — to be in my 20s with a child and imagine all of the great, amazing life I thought I had ahead of me, and then suddenly find out, no, I'm really sick, and I'm not ever getting better, ever; I'm going to progressively get worse, and my health will diminish little by little until I'm a shell of a person or dead, whichever comes first. If people had to go through that or if that were a reality that a lot of people had to witness, I don't think most people would be so crass,” she said in an interview with BuzzFeed News.


Getting help was a long fight, and when it finally came, it wasn’t enough. It took more than a year for her to win approval for disability benefits from the Social Security Administration, which manages the program. Even then, her and her daughter’s combined benefit each month was less than $1,000, so she needed to find a way to supplement her benefits with extra income, especially after she and her husband divorced.

She found part-time work at a contract post office run from a quiet hardware store outside of Denver and freelanced as a journalist. The post office paid close to minimum wage, offered no benefits, and she still got sick — a lot — but her boss understood her medical needs, and the job filled the gap where the disability checks fell short, allowing her to buy medicine, groceries, and gas. She got engaged again; they bought a house. “It’s not like I've ever drawn my disability check, and then just kicked my feet up,” she said. “But my body can only do so much, and it will only ever be able to do so much.” For the last seven years, Chelsy and her daughter got by this way, if barely.

Then the coronavirus arrived.


Courtesy Chelsy
Chelsy has an immunodeficiency disorder, making it difficult to work during the pandemic.

Chelsy, now 41, left her job at the post office for her family’s safety, but the result has been financially devastating. She is ineligible for unemployment benefits, despite losing her job, because she receives disability benefits, she learned from a local Social Security office near Denver. (The requirements for the two programs are at odds with each other: To collect disability benefits, a person must be unable to work; to collect unemployment benefits, a person must be ready and willing to work.) Her freelance work dried up. Her search for employment that would allow her to stay home, so far, has gone nowhere. By September, the $3,000 Chelsy had in savings at the start of the year was entirely gone. And in November, her ex-husband, who pays a “small, but helpful” amount of child support every month, lost his job.

The country’s disability safety net was never adequate to support many of the people who rely on it, and throughout the pandemic, it has failed those like Chelsy who are now unable to find ways to make up the shortfall. She still has medical expenses to pay. Chelsy said while the government’s Social Security Disability Insurance provides necessary aid, it was never possible to survive on it alone, making it hard for recipients like her to get by if they lose their supplementary earnings.

“I've done essentially everything, adjusted every knob and dial to try and maximize and make our finances work as best as possible, and trimmed every bit of fat. And as of last month, I am officially out of money,” she said. “I have nothing left for the rest of the year.”

Social Security offices have been closed since March, which disability experts say has caused applications from people who need help to plummet. Unemployment remains high. There’s little else Chelsy can do until the country’s crises are under control. “In the short term, I need money. But I can't go back to my job at the post office without risking not only my life, but my daughter's life. That's just 100% not a risk I'm willing to take.”


Courtesy Chelsy
Chelsy and her daughter at a hospital.

The SSDI program “doesn’t provide the kind of protection or opportunities that we would hope,” said Pennsylvania Sen. Bob Casey in an interview with BuzzFeed News. Casey has proposed various legislation to increase support for people with disabilities. “There's no question that there are a mountain of people that, in many cases, are and could fall through the cracks because of the economic impact of the pandemic.”

Chelsy’s fiancé is picking up more of the bills now, but without her extra earnings from work or unemployment benefits, the numbers aren’t working out. They’ve listed their possessions for sale online. They’re talking about selling the house now.

When Chelsy thinks of America’s disability system, she said, “In my mind, I imagine it like being on a trapeze. We’re all on a trapeze and we believe that disability or unemployment or things like that are a safety net that’s just underneath us. We all pay into it, and we can access it when we need. But the net is not as high as we think; it’s not going to cushion us well before we hit the ground. It’s situated just 6 inches off of the ground. So when you land in that, you’re pretty much already there. And it is going to hurt when you fall into it.”

In 2019, disability benefits were paid to almost 10 million people, according to the Social Security Administration. About 38% of recipients earned less than $1,000 per month and about 1 in 4 were living in poverty. Many are very sick: The leading reason recipients exit the program within the first few years of getting their benefits is not that they return to work; it is, sadly, death.

Disability benefits in the US are hard to get and hard to live on — unlike prevailing stereotypes about the program — and they have been at risk of being further tightened.

Overall, only about one-third of all disability applicants are approved. With the average monthly benefit at $1,258, recipients quickly find that the program is really designed to only provide “partial wage replacement,” said Kathleen Romig, a senior policy analyst at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities and a former policy analyst at the SSA.

If an applicant appeals an initial denial (3 out of 4 initial applications are denied), the wait for a final decision from the court is long — for many, too long. From 2008 through 2019, nearly 110,000 people died before receiving a decision about their appeal, according to the Government Accountability Office. From 2014 to 2019, 48,000 people filed for bankruptcy awaiting a decision. The waiting doesn’t end there. After an application is approved, there is a five-month “waiting period” starting from when the SSA determines the disability began, for which a person does not collect any benefits. There is also a 24-month waiting period from the start of SSDI payments to get Medicare.


Courtesy Chelsy
Medical records and bills are organized in Chelsy's home.

A survey by Allsup, a company that helps people navigate the SSDI system, found that during this long process, people’s “disability gets worse; they lose their health care coverage from their employer; they deplete their 401(k) and retirement funds; they borrow money from their family; and their incidence of depression and anxiety increases, which complicates their disability,” said Mary Dale Walters, a senior vice president for Allsup.

The pandemic has created an urgent need to reevaluate these wait times, said Casey, who is trying to eliminate this requirement. “When they put in waiting periods, they were designed to save on costs. But when you’re in the middle of this kind of public health emergency, and all the economic trauma that comes from it, it doesn’t make a lot of sense,” he said.

Chelsy knows all too well what it’s like to wait. In 2009, she applied for disability immediately after leaving her job at the childcare center. Her initial application was denied. She appealed, and it took a year and a half and the help of a lawyer before an administrative law judge granted her approval during a roughly 15-minute hearing.


“This was after hours of me calling and dealing with Social Security. This is after years of my health crisis unfolding, and then I get 15 minutes in front of a judge — I cried the entire time. The judge asked me, ‘Why are you crying?’ And I couldn’t even articulate how desperate I was, how scared I was that he was going to deny me, and how much was riding on it,” Chelsy said. “Fifteen minutes changed my whole life. And it felt like the most arbitrary and ridiculous process ever once it was done.”

She’s come to the conclusion that the rules for disability “aren’t written to really help anyone” in normal times, let alone during a pandemic, she said. About 44% of younger disability recipients are near or below poverty, according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. One factor is a person’s monthly payment is calculated based on their earnings before receiving disability. People like Chelsy who began collecting at a relatively young age, when their earnings were low, may only be entitled to a small and unlivable benefit amount.

Chelsy’s monthly disability check was roughly $700 per month after paying for Medicare, and her daughter received about $100. Even with Medicare, she was paying $80 per month for just one of the eight medications she takes every day, she said.


Chelsy needed to earn extra income, but she couldn’t make too much. There is a cap on how much a recipient can earn from work if they want to continue collecting disability benefits — in 2020, benefits stop if a recipient earns more than $1,260 a month from work, and the limit can be lower based on a person’s benefit amount. So “even if they’re working, they’re really economically vulnerable,” Romig said.

This is the paradox of SSDI: Applicants must prove they are unable to work in order to get disability benefits, but once they are approved, the system is set up to try to get them back to work again. In this way, it functions as more of a “short-term safety net,” said Allsup’s Walters.


the paradox of SSDI: Applicants must prove they are unable to work in order to get disability benefits, but once they are approved, the system is set up to try to get them back to work again. In this way, it functions as more of a “short-term safety net,” said Allsup’s Walters.


Courtesy Chelsy



Yet the majority of applicants, who are denied, never even land in this safety net, and “the fact is, most of them are pretty sick,” said Romig. “They might not meet the criteria, but they're not doing that great and they're not able to work very much and they really suffer. They have a hard time financially and medically.”


In 2020, nearly a decade after first being approved for SSDI, Chelsy and her daughter’s combined monthly disability benefits are about $975. The cost-of-living adjustment to her benefit over the years has been infinitesimal. Her fiancé added her to his health insurance so she would no longer have to buy Medicare.

Chelsy dreams of things she can do to get out of the disability system, to make enough money to support herself: land a book deal, secure lots of freelance work. “I would give anything to not be part of the Social Security disability program. Anything,” she said. But for her, every day feels like having a flu that won’t end: body aches, weakness, headaches. Her body can’t work full time, not for long. Chelsy grew quiet. “I can’t physically do more. That was a really hard and very bitter pill to swallow because this whole situation happened when I was so young. I didn't really have the opportunity to go and try. I had just graduated from college when I started getting sick. And so, I get emotional because I want to be hopeful that yes, someday, I will not need [disability benefits]. But with each passing year that my body struggles more and more, I feel like it becomes less and less of a possibility. I have to ask myself, I'm 41 years old, what is it going to look like in 10 years or 20 years? That’s the hardest thing for me to face: What does my future look like? I don’t really see a lot of of hope. There's no cure.”

As the third wave of the coronavirus spreads across the country and skyrockets in her home state of Colorado, Chelsy is keeping busy at home with the many responsibilities of parenthood and applying for jobs. She is trying to learn audiobook narration and podcasting as another potential source of income that would allow her to work from home. The recent wildfires in Colorado triggered her allergies, which led to a sinus and ear infection, and then developed into strep throat, which she treated with antibiotics.

Her teenage daughter has been out of school and largely stayed home during the pandemic, aside from a six- to eight-hour visit to the immunologist office every three weeks for immunoglobulin infusions, which cost $15,000 per treatment, paid for by insurance. They recently learned she will need these treatments for the rest of her life. “She and I were devastated,” Chelsy said. “I felt guilt and shame for cursing her with this broken immune system, and fear, because how will she function independently as an adult with this burden hanging over her head?”

The coronavirus precludes most aspects of their former life. Last May, her daughter was hospitalized with pneumonia, strep throat, and an upper respiratory infection. “She very nearly died,” Chelsy said. She survived but, like her mother, she is always at risk, and mitigating that risk is hard. She cannot, for example, have certain vaccinations for things like meningitis or HPV, which may cause infection. It’s not clear how risky it will be for them to get vaccinated whenever a product for COVID-19 might become available.

When the coronavirus first started spreading, Chelsy’s daughter “had a total breakdown. She’s like, I’ve never had a boyfriend. I’ve never had sex. I never got to graduate high school, or go to college, or get married, or have a job, or drive by myself. It really felt to her like the world was ending,” Chelsy recalled. “She had that break of spirit of, like, ‘Well, do I even care? I feel like I’m living on borrowed time anyway.’”

All Chelsy could do was try to pass onto her young daughter a sense of hope and strength, despite the unstoppable decline of her health, despite knowing there is no cure for their condition. “You just have to survive this in order to get to those things,” Chelsy told her. “Life happens all around us and there is beauty, even in the awful, even in the chaotic … There’s always the other side of it, and nothing is going to last forever. We just have to survive long enough to see that. What that takes is just continuing to have dreams, and have goals, and have aspirations, and not allow ourselves to be stripped of those things because things are hard, and because we're scared.” ●

Venessa Wong is a reporter for BuzzFeed News and is based in New York.

Republican Senator's Adviser Formerly Served As Editor Of Neo-Confederate Magazine

One of South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham's longtime advisers was the editor-in-chief of a neo-Confederate magazine — a magazine Graham gave an interview to in 1999. In an interview with BuzzFeed News, the adviser disavows his former views.

Posted on March 11, 2015

Southern Partisan/Courtesy of The Bancroft Library/University of California, Berkeley

Richard Quinn has been quoted in the press as South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham's longtime political adviser and his consultant and pollster. But there's another title that Quinn once held: neo-Confederate magazine editor.

From early 1980s until the early 2000s, Quinn's name stood on the masthead as the editor-in-chief of the Southern Partisan, formerly one of the country's leading neo-Confederate magazines (it still exists in a barebones online version). Quinn has tried to distance himself from the magazine in the past (he says he doesn't like the term neo-Confederate), and after being contacted by BuzzFeed News, repudiated his past views and those of the magazine.

It was in his capacity as editor that Quinn wrote that Martin Luther King Jr.'s role in the Civil Rights movement was "to lead his people into a perpetual dependence on the welfare state, a terrible bondage of body and soul." He called Nelson Mandela a "terrorist" and a "bad egg." He wrote positively of David Duke's election: "What better way to reject politics as usual than to elect a maverick like David Duke?" In one column, he called Martin Luther King Day's purpose "vitriolic and profane."

Today, Quinn says he's come to admire King and Mandela. "I wrote some things on the wrong side of history," he told BuzzFeed News.

He had previously spoken of the columns with regret in 2001, when the issue of Quinn's past came up while serving as an adviser to John McCain's presidential campaign.

Since 1993, Graham has paid Quinn and the consulting firm he's operated at least hundreds of thousands of dollars. Graham's campaign paid his firm more than $200,000 last cycle alone. Quinn downplayed that money to BuzzFeed News, calling it a "cheap shot" to link it directly to him; he noted that only a fraction went to his firm, and much of the money was spent on work for Graham.

"I've been with (Graham) since he ran for Congress in '93, and whatever Lindsey does this cycle, I'll be in his corner," Quinn said in one interview last year.

In 1999, Graham himself did a lengthy question and answer with the Southern Partisan on his life and the Clinton impeachment. A spokesman for Graham said they were waiting to comment until after this story was published.

Quinn's writings, which garnered press 15 years ago (with occasional rehashes from liberal bloggers sometimes taking quotes out of context) during the McCain campaign, have done little harm to his reputation or that of his well-regarded consulting firm.

He maintained to BuzzFeed News that he didn't do much work for the Southern Partisan. He said he regarded it as a client of his consulting firm and said it was a mistake to appear on the masthead. He said fellow editors did most of the work.


Southern Partisan/Courtesy of The Bancroft Library/University of California, Berkeley

Quinn did write for the magazine, though.

"...[M]assive evidence suggests that slave families were rarely separated," Quinn wrote in a 1983 column for the magazine, discussing a Newsweek article that described the break up of a slave family. "Efforts were made uniformly across the South to keep families together (in part because good morale was good for business). The record also shows that many freed slaves stayed South, kept close ties with their former owners and found for themselves a life altogether more satisfying than their cousins who ended up sleeping with rats in Harlem."

In another column from that year, Quinn said Martin Luther King Day "should have been rejected because its purpose is vitriolic and profane."

"King's memory represents, more than anything else, the idea that institutional arrangement — laws, ordinances and tradition — should be subordinated to the individual's conscience," wrote Quinn. "The brand of civil disobedience he preached (and for which he is remembered) exhorts his followers to regard social reform as a process to be carried out in the streets."

He concluded: "Ignoring the real heroes in our nation's life, the blacks have chosen a man who represents not their emancipation, not their sacrifices and bravery in service to their country; rather, they have chosen a man whose role in history was to lead his people into a perpetual dependence on the welfare state, a terrible bondage of body and soul."

In the interview with BuzzFeed News, Quinn said today he believes King's strategy of civil disobedience worked, and he's come to admire his philosophy.

"By today's standard he was a moderate... I admire him," Quinn said.

In a column on David Duke's election to the Louisiana House of Representatives in 1989, Quinn called Duke a complex man, and attacked the "smug media celebrities who had planned to make giblet gravy" out of his appearances on TV.

"David Duke didn't quite comply with their carefully cultivated stereotype of the Southern redneck," he wrote. "He wasn't fat or illiterate. He didn't even chew tobacco. Duke turned out to be smoothly polished and articulate, with a quick smile and a clean-cut almost innocent look. Under tough interrogation by the best in the business, he handled himself pretty well."

He wrote positively of Duke's agenda and said his election was a rejection of politics as usual.

"What a better way to reject politics as usual than to elect a maverick like David Duke? What better way to tweak the nose of the establishment?"

In 1990, Quinn wrote negatively about Nelson Mandela, whom he called a "terrorist" and a "bad egg" and said his visit to the United States "demonstrated that the opinion industry in America has also made a mockery of the First Amendment."

"How many people out there across the face of America are well aware that Mandela is a bad egg, maybe even say so in the comfort and security of their homes, but are afraid to express their real opinions publicly," wrote Quinn.

"After all, Mr. Mandela was put in jail 27 years ago – not because of his humanitarian philosophy – but because he was a terrorist who openly advocated (and personally committed) violence against the government," he added.

In the interview with BuzzFeed News, Quinn argued many of his views from the 1980s were mainstream at the time. He said his column wasn't "a defense of David Duke" but of "the voters of his district" who elected the former Klan leader to the Louisiana State House. Quinn also said he's come to admire Mandela, saying the details of Mandela's early life "are no longer relevant."

Beyond the magazine, Quinn also entered the fray on some Confederate-related issues.

In 1999, when South Carolina was debating keep the Confederate battle flag over the statehouse, Quinn was one of a number of those quoted in an Associated Press article as flag defenders arguing blacks fought for the confederacy. His son, a state legislator at the time, also took an active role in the debate.

"Tens of thousands of blacks took an active military role for the south," said the elder Quinn according to the AP.

An article he wrote for Partisan slammed the tireless "militant groups" seeking to redefine the Confederate flag.

"Tirelessly militant groups are out there who seek to define the Confederate battle flag as a symbol of hate, no better than the Swastika. Their goal is to rape history and make Southerners ashamed of their past. We must employ all the strategic skill we can muster to prevent them from winning this defining battle. Losing, while persuading ourselves that we are wrapped in the glorious cause is not the answer. We must find a way to win."

The article called Quinn "a founder" of the magazine. Quinn today said that was a mistake. He said he only wrote his column when the magazine needed to fill space.

"I expressed views 15 to 20 years ago I no longer hold," Quinn told BuzzFeed News. "In a fair world you're writing a story that shouldn't be written."

An Associated Press report in 2001 described Quinn as the part owner of the Partisan. Corporation filings with the state of South Carolina filed in 1986 also listed Quinn as the registered agent for the Partisan.

Quinn's past neo-Confederate views and magazine editing have been long-known. In 2000, People for the American Way (which provided BuzzFeed News with original copies of the Southern Partisan on request) asked McCain's presidential campaign to fire Quinn in a letter for his past work with the Southern Partisan. It briefly became an issue during the campaign.

At the time, then-Bush campaign spokesman Ari Fleischer said Quinn's writings were "offensive." McCain stood by Quinn and said he had never read his writing. He cited Quinn's work for Ronald Reagan, Strom Thurmond, and others.

Quinn at the time also tried to distance himself from the magazine's content.

''I am not the working day-to-day editor of Southern Partisan,'' he told the New York Times in 2000. ''My title as editor in chief is purely honorary. Frankly, I do not personally read the articles before they are printed, and I certainly disagree with many of the opinions expressed by others on the pages of the magazine.''

The Southern Partisan wrote an editorial in late 1999 that claimed some quotes from other authors were taken out-of-context (it does seem some of the quotes from 1999 were taken out-of-context), but the editorial didn't contest anything Quinn had written.

By 2001, Quinn's name was off the masthead on the website. The Associated Press reported at the time that it was because the association with the magazine was damaging his clients.

Quinn said he couldn't remember when he stopped editing for the Southern Partisan, although he once wrote of being in the office of the magazine in 1993. Quinn today called that "speaking loosely" saying the "office" at the Partisan was the desk of a Partisan colleague at his consulting firm.

"I kept trying to get someone else to edit because I didn't want to do it," Quinn said.

Years before, however, in 1988, a Washington Post story noted the magazine in an article about Quinn's work as a speechwriter for Pat Robertson's campaign. In that article, Quinn defended the magazine:

"The magazine is about the soul of the South," said Quinn in 1988. "There are traditions for respect for the land, family integrity and honor, a strong belief in God and the power of prayer . . . The South has historically been given the guilt of slavery. People seem to forget that slavery was an economic transaction, shipped in through Northern ports and sold to Southern planters . . . To understand the Old South it's much more important to understand religion."

In 1999, Graham spoke with the Southern Partisan for a lengthy question-and-answer interview on his life and time in Congress. The interview did not touch on any neo-Confederate topics, and Quinn told BuzzFeed News that he was not present for the interview (Quinn said the magazine also interviewed other people such as Willard Scott, Trent Lott, Walter Williams, John Ashcroft, John Shelton Reed, Patrick McSweeeny, and Thad Cochran).

The issue that Graham's interview ran in featured full-page ads for the book Was Jefferson Davis Right?, and an anti-George W. Bush article slamming him for speaking even mildly supportively of gay rights by pledging to hire openly-gay people to his administration. An opinion column on the page following Graham's interview attacked the theory of evolution and another article called for removing children from all public schools.


That issue's "General Store Catalogue" featured a cotton t-shirt labeled "I have a dream" on the front, and featuring an image of a Confederate flag flying over the White House. A shirt labeled "Lincoln's Worst Nightmare" on the front featured southern flags with the words "A States Rights Republican Majority From Dixie" imprinted on the back.

Quinn said the catalogue was a revenue-raising project for the magazine, he said he didn't even know of the store at a time.


Southern Partisan/Courtesy of The Bancroft Library/University of California, Berkeley


"I agree the South was wrong on slavery," Quinn told the Washington Post in 2001. "But that's not to say the South was wrong to defend states' rights. Or to fight the centralization of power in Washington."

Quinn told BuzzFeed News he didn't endorse or agree with many things which appeared in the magazine. He said it would be unfair to judge him or his clients by their contents, just as it would be unfair to judge the Washington Post's editor by everything that appeared on the editorial page.


A collection of writings (many of which were cover stories) from the magazine during Quinn's tenure, published in the book put out by the magazine's former publisher (with the introduction by Quinn). The book, So Good A Cause, A Decade of Southern Partisan, has essays like "John C. Calhoun Vindicated," "The World After the South Won," "The Dark Side of Abraham Lincoln," "The Truth about Jefferson Davis," and "Why Yankees Won't (And Can't) Leave the South Alone."

"The World After the South Won" a 1984 article by Sheldon Vanauken imagines Great Britain intervening on the side of the Confederacy, and a Confederate victory in the war. The article portrays Confederate soldiers helping defeat Germany in World War I, and attacks "the barbarism of Generals Sherman and Sheridan and 'Beast' Butler."

Arguing that slavery would have eventually ended by being phased out in the late 1800s ("all slaves born after the last day of 1879 would be free; and the Confederacy thereupon [would have] embarked on that benign programme of slowly raising the Negro to the limits of his ability") it attacks "the sinister Emancipation Proclamation of President Lincoln — an invitation to the slaves to rise against their masters…"

"The Dark Side of Abraham Lincoln," by a 1985 article by Tom Landess further argues that Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation for propaganda purposes, and to encourage slaves towards violence against Southern women and children left unchaperoned on the home-front. According to the article, the Proclamation was designed "to send a message to Southern slaves who might be willing to rise against households without males to defend them."

The author goes on to complain about "political exploitation and...such discriminatory legislation as the Voting Rights Acts of 1965 and gratuitous renewal in 1984. Those laws are bad not so much because of their severe provisions but because they assume that the integrated South deserves punitive treatment while the still-segregated North does not. And for that kind of moral abuse we can thank Abraham Lincoln."

An article, "Why the South Fought," in 1984 by Sheldon Vanauken, speaks romantically of the cause of the Confederacy. It likewise argues that slavery would have been ultimately phased out of the Confederacy.

"It fought for a way of life based upon slavery, not for slavery — an essential distinction, for squirearchy could have been based on serfdom or tenantry and have been fought for — and against — all the same. To say that the South's cause — freedom — was stained by slavery is to say that the cause of the Greeks at Marathon was stained by slavery."

Another article, "Nathan Bedford Forrest and the Death of Heroes," in 1984 by J.O. Tate, attempted to downplay Forrest's association with the early Ku Klux Klan arguing that a distinction should be made between the post-Civil War KKK and that of the 1920s.

"Sinister legends and contemporary apprehensions aren't helpful in understanding the context in which the first Klan was formed: disorder, violence, 'Union Leagues,' Federal occupation. But there is a distinction to be made between the first Klan and the xenophobic Klan of the 1920s and today."


The book, So Good A Cause, is dedicated to professor M.E. Bradford. Bradford himself wrote for the Partisan, and Quinn's introduction to the book describes Bradford's involvement in the magazine, and Quinn's sadness to learn of his death.

In an article in the March 1992 issue of Texas Monthly, Bradford is quoted as telling the author: "I am not a scientific racist. I don't believe that Negroes are genetically inferior. But history shows that blacks have had a hard time in this country, that they are kind of a fifth wheel. That's just an observation of fact."

Today, Quinn considered himself to be "a mainstream southern conservative." He added, "it really hurts me" BuzzFeed News was writing the story or linking it to Graham.

Here's Quinn's column and the articles noted in the story.

Southern Partisan and Quinn PDF

Andrew Kaczynski is a political reporter for BuzzFeed News and is based in New York.


Ilan Ben-Meir is a political reporter for BuzzFeed News and is based in New York.

IT STARTED AT STANDING ROCK

Native American Voters In Arizona Showed Up In Force For Biden As COVID-19 Ravaged Tribal Nations

“This is us saying: COVID-19 is a monster that has come into our communities and devastated our people, but we’re still going to show up,” one citizen of the Navajo Nation told BuzzFeed News.

Clarissa-Jan Lim

BuzzFeed News Reporter
Posted on November 13, 2020

Talia Mayden / HUMAN
Native Americans go to vote by horseback at the Navajo County early voting location.

This has been a catastrophic year for the Navajo Nation. The coronavirus pandemic has spread like wildfire through the sprawling reservation, infecting thousands and killing hundreds. Still, Diné, the Navajo people, voted in huge numbers this election, and largely in favor of Joe Biden, helping turn Arizona, a longtime deep red state, blue.

For Allie Young, a 30-year-old activist and citizen of the Navajo Nation, it's been emotional to watch her community vote in force despite these challenges.

“I feel the only word that comes to mind is proud,” she told BuzzFeed News. “Thinking about the pandemic and how we’ve been impacted because of the decisions from our elected officials — it feels like we put our foot down and we’re saying, ‘We’re gonna be involved in these conversations; we’re going to make sure that we have a seat at the table and that we’re represented.’”

Young, who cofounded Protect the Sacred, a Navajo youth advocacy group, had worked hard to get out the vote in her community. In the weeks leading up to Election Day, she organized several “Ride to the Polls” events to encourage her fellow Diné to go to polling stations on horseback and vote. She was heartened to see dozens of riders join her voting campaign; she was even more appreciative that they were participating in an election that would determine the future of the country in the midst of a pandemic that has ravaged not just her family — her uncle had COVID-19, and several extended family members have died from the virus — but also her people.

“This is us saying: COVID-19 is a monster that has come into our communities and devastated our people — but we’re still going to show up, and it’s not going to get the best of us,” she said.


Across Arizona, there have been nearly 270,000 COVID-19 cases and more than 6,200 deaths to date. And Navajo Nation, the biggest Native American reservation in the US, which spans three states — although the majority of its land sits within Arizona’s borders — has seen more than 12,000 COVID-19 cases and 596 deaths.

Despite the tribal government imposing some of the country’s strictest safety precautions, the Navajo Nation had a higher infection rate per capita than any state in the US in May, including New York, which at the time was the epicenter of the pandemic. Doctors Without Borders, an international organization that sends medical aid to parts of the world stricken by war, famine, and natural disasters, even dispatched a team to the Navajo Nation to help with the crisis.

Now, six months later, the reservation is entering its second wave of the pandemic. Navajo health officials are preparing for “uncontrolled community spread” of the virus, Navajo President Jonathan Nez and the Navajo Health Department’s Jill Jim told local news outlet KOAT on election week.

Indian Country as a whole has been hit especially hard by the virus. Served by a chronically underfunded Indian Health Service, a federal agency within the Department of Health and Human Services, tribal governments had to fight to obtain sorely needed COVID-19 funding relief that the Trump administration delayed distributing.


In July, six tribal nations had higher case rates per capita than any US state, according to the UCLA American Indian Studies Center. The virus is especially deadly among older people, a factor that has been particularly destructive considering the role of Native elders as protectors of their cultural knowledge and traditions.


Talia Mayden / HUMAN
A Biden campaign sign is seen near a spraypainted "VOTE!" sign in Arizona.

Many Native American reservations occupy vast, rural swaths of land, and residents often lack access to basic resources like clean water, internet, or reliable transportation. One in three Native Americans live in poverty, and voter turnout among Indigenous voters has historically been lower than that of other racial or ethnic groups, partly due to the burden of casting a ballot.

“If you’re Native [on a reservation], you gotta drive 40 miles, and hopefully the ballot will be there, and hopefully it will reach the secretary of state on time,” said O.J. Semans, an enrolled member of the Rosebud Sioux Tribe in South Dakota and the cofounder of the Native voter advocacy group Four Directions.


People of color across the country have long been disenfranchised at the ballot box, but those issues are “magnified in Indian Country because of the distance, the poverty, the transportation, the roads,” he told BuzzFeed News.

Considering the long-standing barriers that Native American voters have faced at the polls, and the added safety fears due to the pandemic, seeing them turn out, especially in Arizona, is nothing short of remarkable, Semans said.

“I’m really happy with the turnout based upon the inconveniences that Natives had to face in order to participate,” he said.

Even before Election Day, Arizona was inching toward a milestone: By Oct. 30, the last day of early voting in the state, election officials had received 2.3 million ballots. When Decision Desk HQ called Arizona on Wednesday night, more than 3.3 million votes had been processed — a record number for the state, according to the Arizona secretary of state’s election data. The turnout numbers in Arizona were reflected across the country; both Biden and Trump have received more popular votes than any other candidate in history; the president-elect is about 5 million votes ahead of the current president, and his lead is expected to widen as more are tallied.


Talia Mayden / HUMAN
Allie Young takes a selfie just before casting her ballot at the Navajo County early voting-location.

The number of votes processed so far in the three counties where the Navajo Nation is located altogether show that Biden has won by a larger margin than Hillary Clinton did in 2016: He holds a commanding majority of the vote in Apache (more than half of the county is Navajo Nation) and Coconino counties, though Navajo County, where there is a big Mormon population, went to Trump. (The Hopi tribe is also in Apache and Navajo counties.)

It’s not just the Navajo Nation, either. Native Americans are spread out in reservations across Arizona, as well as in metropolitan areas, and the results show that they have overwhelmingly voted for Biden.

Shondiin Silversmith⁷@DiinSilversmith

With a lot of talk about Native voting in Arizona. I thought I would share 2 maps. The left is a map showcasing all 22 tribes in the state. The right an updated 2020 voting results maps by precinct. This give you an idea of how Indigenous communities voted in the 2020 election.

04:36 PM - 06 Nov 2020

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According to an ABC15 map of the election results by precinct, tribal communities have made up a formidable base of support for Biden in the state. A majority of the blue spots on the map, besides metropolitan areas like Phoenix and Tucson, are where tribal nations are located: Navajo Nation and the Hopi in the northeast, White Mountain Apache and San Carlos Apache tribes in the east, the Pascua Yaqui Tribe outside Tucson, Tohono O'odham Nation (whose sacred burial ground the Trump administration desecrated and blew up to make way for the president’s border wall) to the south, Yuma County’s Cocopah Indian Tribe and Fort Yuma Quechan Indian Tribe in the southwest, the Hualapai Tribe in the northwest, and the Colorado River Indian Tribes in the wes


Semans also pointed out that the sizable Native American population in Maricopa County — 2.8% of its residents identify as Indigenous, according to census numbers — where Trump has performed better with mail ballots there (though not enough to beat Biden) than he has in other states.

“We have a lot of urban Indians in Maricopa County,” Semans said, pointing to the Indian Health Service office in Phoenix, which oversees programs in Arizona, Nevada, and Utah.

The Native vote, including in the Navajo Nation, is not a monolith; even the Navajo government leaders openly supported different candidates — its president, Jonathan Nez, endorsed Biden, and its vice president, Myron Lizer, endorsed Trump at the Republican National Convention. But Semans said Indian Country tends to lean left despite Democratic candidates historically having ignored and failed Native American voters to their detriment.

“I can tell you that for being the most left out by the Democratic Party, there has been no race more loyal to the Democratic Party,” Semans said. “Throughout Indian Country, they’ve always been Democratic strongholds but completely ignored.”

A lot has been made of Arizona flipping blue in this election. A crucial battleground state, Arizona has long remained just out of reach for Democratic presidential candidates vying for its 11 electoral votes. President Bill Clinton was the last Democratic candidate who won the state during his reelection bid in 1996. "The Grand Canyon State" has since been a reliable stronghold for Republican presidential candidates, including Trump, who beat Hillary Clinton by a 3.5% margin in 2016.

But the state has seen a significant demographic shift in the past few decades, and the population in its cities and surrounding suburban areas has ballooned. Arizona’s Latino population has more than doubled, according to Pew’s numbers; in recent years, grassroots Latino groups, spurred by an opposition to Trump, have built a massive organizing effort to turn out the vote for Biden this year.


Latino voters have been widely and deservedly credited for flipping Arizona blue. But Native American voters in Arizona, which has 22 tribes and the country’s third-highest population of Indigenous people, have also been acknowledged for their role in handing Biden the state.

Young, who is planning a victory horseback ride next week in honor of Biden winning Arizona, said she has never seen Native American voters recognized more by the media and the public than in the past week since the election ended.

“The way that people are thanking Native people [and] the Navajo Nation, which for me is more personal and hits close. It is my home,” she said about voters who lifted Biden to victory in Arizona. “It is emotional for me and my people. We’re always invisible in this country, in our own homelands. So it feels really nice to be acknowledged right now.”

She also wants people to change their notions of who Arizonans are and what they look like — and understand that it’s not just a state where conservative white people go to retire.


“Arizona is filled with so many diverse communities,” she said. “People think Arizona is filled with retired, white conservatives. We’re gonna prove them wrong. We‘re gonna reclaim how we show up to the polls, and we’re gonna reclaim Arizona — because Arizona has Indigenous DNA.” ●


Talia Mayden / HUMAN
A donkey is guided behind a group of Native Americans on horseback on their way to vote.




Clarissa-Jan Lim is a reporter and editor at BuzzFeed News. She is based in New York