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22 April 20
Greta Thunberg: Climate Activists Have Not Lost Hope Amid Pandemic. We're Changing How We Organize.
Democracy Now!
Excerpt: "Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg spoke in an Earth Day live stream hosted by the Nobel Prize Museum about how the Fridays for Future school strikes movement she launched is responding to the coronavirus pandemic."
Democracy Now!
Excerpt: "Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg spoke in an Earth Day live stream hosted by the Nobel Prize Museum about how the Fridays for Future school strikes movement she launched is responding to the coronavirus pandemic."
Iranian naval boats. (photo: EPA)
Trump Says He Told Navy to 'Destroy' Iranian Boats Harassing US Ships
Lara Seligman, Politico
Seligman writes: "President Donald Trump abruptly tweeted early today that he has directed the Navy to fire upon Iranian 'gunboats' that 'harass' U.S. ships at sea in a new sign of heightened tensions between Washington and Tehran."
READ MORE
Lara Seligman, Politico
Seligman writes: "President Donald Trump abruptly tweeted early today that he has directed the Navy to fire upon Iranian 'gunboats' that 'harass' U.S. ships at sea in a new sign of heightened tensions between Washington and Tehran."
READ MORE
Sean Hannity in the White House briefing room. (photo: Nicholas Kamm/Getty)
A Disturbing New Study Suggests Sean Hannity Helped Spread the Coronavirus
Zack Beauchamp, Vox
Beauchamp writes: "Throughout the coronavirus pandemic, media critics have warned that the decision from leading Fox News hosts to downplay the outbreak could cost lives. A new study provides statistical evidence that, in the case of Sean Hannity, that's exactly what happened."
Zack Beauchamp, Vox
Beauchamp writes: "Throughout the coronavirus pandemic, media critics have warned that the decision from leading Fox News hosts to downplay the outbreak could cost lives. A new study provides statistical evidence that, in the case of Sean Hannity, that's exactly what happened."
EXCERPTS:
At the time, Hannity’s show was downplaying or ignoring the virus, while fellow Fox host Tucker Carlson was warning viewers about the disease’s risks.
Using both a poll of Fox News viewers over age 55 and publicly available data on television-watching patterns, they calculate that Fox viewers who watched Hannity rather than Carlson were less likely to adhere to social distancing rules, and that areas where more people watched Hannity relative to Carlson had higher local rates of infection and death.
“Greater exposure to Hannity relative to Tucker Carlson Tonight leads to a greater number of COVID-19 cases and deaths,” they write. “A one-standard deviation increase in relative viewership of Hannity relative to Carlson is associated with approximately 30 percent more COVID-19 cases on March 14, and 21 percent more COVID-19 deaths on March 28.”
It seems pretty clear, from the first section, that Carlson took this way more seriously than Hannity. On February 25, Carlson warned that the virus could kill as many as a million Americans. On February 27, Hannity said it was less dangerous than car crashes or the common flu.
Next, the researchers investigated if this difference in tone actually affected the way viewers of the two programs thought about coronavirus. To do so, they conducted a nationally representative survey of 1,045 Republicans aged 55 and up who reported watching Fox News at least once a week. They chose to study this demographic specifically because older Republicans were more likely to watch Fox and because older people in general are more vulnerable to the coronavirus.
An inmate in the maximum security unit of the Cook County Jail presses his hands against the window below a plea for help in Chicago on 10 April. (photo: Tannen Maury/EPA)
Mass Incarceration Could Add 100,000 Deaths to US Coronavirus Toll, Study Finds
Ed Pilkington, Guardian UK
Pilkington writes: "America's addiction to mass incarceration could almost double its number of deaths from coronavirus, with jails acting as incubators of the disease and spreading a further 100,000 fatalities across the US."
Ed Pilkington, Guardian UK
Pilkington writes: "America's addiction to mass incarceration could almost double its number of deaths from coronavirus, with jails acting as incubators of the disease and spreading a further 100,000 fatalities across the US."
EXCERPTS:
The US is truly exceptional among countries grappling with the coronavirus in that no other nation incarcerates people on such a scale, which in turn has critical implications for the threat posed by such an outbreak. The US accounts for 4% of the world’s population, but 21% of its incarcerated population.
The ACLU modeling, developed with epidemiologists from Washington state and the Universities of Tennessee and Pennsylvania, focuses on the 740,000 people held in US jails. Conditions inside such institutions are often even worse than in the notorious prison system and amount to a Covid-19 perfect storm.
There is huge churn in jail populations. On average inmates spend 25 days inside and many just a day or two, creating a revolving door between institutions and surrounding communities which the virus can exploit.
Add to that churn the bald fact that there are almost 11m admissions into US jails each year – one every three seconds – and the potential for jails to act as vectors of disease is evident.
The projection that mass incarceration could cause an extra 99,000 deaths is almost certainly an undercount, as the researchers did not take into account either prisons or immigration detention centers. Those institutions have a more sedentary population but are still highly vulnerable to contagion.
Just how easily coronavirus can spread behind bars is illustrated in Ohio, where more than 1,800 prisoners at the Marion correctional institution have tested positive – 73% of the total prison number. Across the state as a whole, one in five confirmed Covid-19 cases are among incarcerated inmates.
In Cook county jail in Chicago, almost 400 inmates have tested positive and six have died. About 225 staff have also tested positive and one correctional officer has died.
Only 5% of more than 10m arrests in the US each year are for violent offences. Most people ending up in jail are there for low-level infractions, including failure to meet bail terms.
Some states and jails have made inroads in tackling the crisis. Colorado has reduced its jail population by 31% since the pandemic began, Los Angeles county by 25% and even Republican-leaning Kentucky by 28%.
A soldier walks among cubicles being prepared at the Jacob K. Javits Convention Center in Manhattan on April 3. (photo: Andrew Kelly/Reuters)
A Mysterious Blood-Clotting Complication Is Killing Coronavirus Patients
Ariana Eunjung Cha, The Washington Post
Excerpt: "Once thought a relatively straightforward respiratory virus, covid-19 is proving to be much more frightening."
Ariana Eunjung Cha, The Washington Post
Excerpt: "Once thought a relatively straightforward respiratory virus, covid-19 is proving to be much more frightening."
EXCERPT:
One month ago, as the country went into lockdown to prepare for the first wave of coronavirus cases, many doctors felt confident they knew what they were dealing with. Based on early reports, covid-19 appeared to be a standard variety respiratory virus, albeit a contagious and lethal one with no vaccine and no treatment. But they’ve since become increasingly convinced covid-19 attacks not only the lungs, but also the kidneys, heart, intestines, liver and brain.
Many doctors also are reporting bizarre, unsettling cases that don’t seem to follow the textbooks they’ve trained on. They describe patients with startlingly low oxygen levels — so low that they would normally be unconscious or near death — talking and swiping on their phones. Asymptomatic pregnant women suddenly in cardiac arrest. Patients who by all conventional measures seem to have mild disease deteriorating within minutes and dying at home.
With no clear patterns in terms of age or chronic conditions, some scientists hypothesize that at least some of these abnormalities may be explained by severe changes in patients’ blood.
The concern is so acute some doctor groups have raised the controversial possibility of giving preventive blood thinners to everyone with covid-19 — even those well enough to endure their illness at home.
Blood clots, in which the red liquid turns gel-like, appear to be the opposite of what occurs in Ebola, Dengue, Lassa and other hemorrhagic fevers that lead to uncontrolled bleeding. But they actually are part of the same phenomenon — and can have similarly devastating consequences.
Autopsies have shown some people’s lungs fill with hundreds of microclots. Errant blood clots of a larger size can break off and travel to the brain or heart, causing a stroke or heart attack. On Saturday, Broadway actor Nick Cordero, 41, had his right leg amputated after being infected with the novel coronavirus and suffering from clots that blocked blood from getting to his toes.
Senior White House policy advisor. (photo: Win McNamee/Getty)
This Is Still Happening: Stephen Miller
Jeremy Stahl, Slate
Stahl writes: "It's very hard to capture all of the damage Miller has done while serving at the White House in a single list, but here is an effort to summarize his work."
Jeremy Stahl, Slate
Stahl writes: "It's very hard to capture all of the damage Miller has done while serving at the White House in a single list, but here is an effort to summarize his work."
EXCERPT:
A roundup of Trump administration malfeasance, Part 7.
his Is Still Happening is a feature in which Slate will attempt to offer an update on senior-level administration corruption, what could be done to bring the officials to account, and what Democrats are doing in response (generally, nothing). The seventh installment is about the racist troll who designs Donald Trump’s violent and (often) unlawful immigration policies, Stephen Miller.
The Official: Stephen Miller, senior advisor to the president
What Is Still Happening: On Monday, President Donald Trump announced plans to use the COVID-19 pandemic as an excuse to issue an executive order “to temporarily suspend immigration into the United States.” As the possible contours of the plan have begun to slowly trickle out, one thing about it is clear: It is the brainchild of Stephen Miller, the senior adviser to Trump who has crafted the president’s most extreme, brutal, and illegal immigration policies, from Trump’s notorious first Muslim ban to family separation. The New York Times initially reported that the plan “was being coordinated by Stephen Miller, the architect of the president’s immigration agenda.”
Campaigners protest during a climate change action day on September 20, 2019 in Edinburgh, Scotland. (photo: Jeff J. Mitchell/Getty)
Earth Day Is More Important Now Than Ever. Here's How the Climate Movement Is Getting Organized.
Christine MacDonald, In These Times
Excerpt: "Activists and organizations are finding ways to comfort people, share information and resources, train new activists, and push progressive solutions to our current crises, while mutual aid efforts have grown."
Christine MacDonald, In These Times
Excerpt: "Activists and organizations are finding ways to comfort people, share information and resources, train new activists, and push progressive solutions to our current crises, while mutual aid efforts have grown."
he 50th anniversary of Earth Day is Wednesday, taking place in the very same week demand for oil cratered so badly that prices nosedived until they were briefly trading in negative numbers. In normal times, these two colliding historic events would be reason for climate activists to rejoice. But these are COVID times. And, while this week’s events are prompting plenty of reflection, the future seems riskier and less certain than ever.
Some supporters of a Green New Deal say with oil prices so low, now would be a great time to nationalize oil, end drilling and rebuild a stronger economy fueled by clean and renewable energy. “This moment is a perfect example of the need to loudly agitate for nationalization of the oil industry with a permanent majority equity stake for the explicit political purpose of unwinding it as rapidly as possible,” said Sean Estelle, a National Political Committee member of Democratic Socialists of America. “It's never been a better moment to crush a poisonous and destructive industry that has hurtled us into a huge climate crisis, and instead invest in a green economy and retraining for all workers that would be affected by this shift.”
On the one hand, President Trump, who has denied the existence of climate change, has used the pandemic to roll back environmental law and push ahead with unpopular pipeline construction in an attempt to lock the country into the climate-changing fossil fuel economy for decades to come. Fellow Republican and friend of Big Oil, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), meanwhile, blocked even the modest renewable energy stimulus the Democrats sought to include in last month’s $2 trillion bailout, while both parties’ lawmakers saw fit to send billions of dollars to large corporations with relatively few strings attached.
Even as the oil industry fights to keep its stranglehold on our future, the last two years have seen an unprecedented surge in climate activism, leading to the Green New Deal, a proposed way out of the climate crisis that would put environmental justice at the forefront of adaptation, ensuring healthcare for all, strong labor and union protections, and good jobs in the new economy to replace ones that disappear as fossil fuels and other polluting industries give way to a new green economy. Now, as the COVID-19 pandemic has provided a preview of how climate change is expected to create similar disruptions to supply chains and how social safety nets will fail, environmental justice activists have countered with the People’s Bailout and Green Stimulus. Both propose addressing pandemic’s economic fallout by supporting working people, rather than giving away billions more to corporations.
But if COVID-19 has laid bare inequities that climate change will only stoke, a considerable challenge is figuring out how to convince a divided and overwhelmed public of the very real risks of putting off climate action this year, at a time when scientists say we have less than a decade left to bring down emissions and head of dangerous natural tipping points. “We don't have much time at all,” Bill McKibben, the author and cofounder of 350.org, said. “We probably shouldn't just forego one of those years.”
With so many people seriously ill and others out of work and worried about paying the rent while the economy languishes in a recession, climate activists have exchanged street protests for three days of Earth Day Live online activities, starting Wednesday. The star-studded rally and concert, which will be captured via livestream, will include panel discussions, teach-ins and poetry readings. The first Earth Day in 1970 brought 20 million Americans into the streets to demand environmental protections that led federal laws that clean up U.S. rivers and harbors, crack down on industrial polluters and protect endangered species—many of the same laws that Trump has targeted for removal since taking office. The Earth Day Network, with a mission to “diversify, educate and activate the environmental movement worldwide,” has been convening the global environmental day ever since. In recent decades the enormous affair with activities in more than 190 countries has come under criticism for being captured by its corporate sponsors, a fact that today’s edgier youth climate flank of the movement has been intent on changing.
Organizers hope to attract more people to the climate movement, even as they worry that online agitating is a tepid replacement for massive street protest. “It does feel much harder to galvanize people to take action because there is just inherently less collective power in joining a mass livestream than joining thousands of people in the streets,” said Naina Agrawal-Hardin, a 17-year-old high school junior from Ann Arbor and an organizer with the Sunrise Movement.
But “people are really struggling to get food on the table or they just lost their job. That’s a very different circumstance than business as usual. So it’s been tough” to adapt Earth Day plans to today’s pandemic realities, she said. “How can we not be tone deaf and really lean into a narrative that encompasses both the pain people are feeling right now and the imminent looming climate crisis?”
Local groups have embarked in similar online pivots. In the San Francisco Bay area, the environmental justice organization Youth Vs. Apocalypse was also forced to scrap its original Earth Day plans to mobilize even more than the 40,000 people who took to San Francisco’s streets last September for the global climate strike. After long hours of coalition building, determining the march route and applying for permits, 15-year-old activist Sarah Goody recalls the sense of dejection she and her fellow organizers felt one evening last month when they realized they were going to have to call the whole thing off, because there could be no street protests in a pandemic. “That was hard but after sitting with it for a few days,” Goody says, “the amount of incredible ideas (for moving the protests online) was really inspiring.”
Like Sunrise and other groups, Goody’s organization is also using pandemic Earth Day to build their organizations internally and reach out to frontline communities, seeking to broaden their coalition by drawing parallels to between the economic and social fallout of coronavirus crisis and climate change.
“In this pandemic we are seeing the government bailing out big companies instead of poor people and the middleclass. We feel that the climate crisis—and also coronavirus—disproportionately affects communities of color and lower class. And the big oil industry and corporations treat migrant communities, indigenous communities, and communities of color and lower class as if they were disposable,” said Goody, whose organization runs environmental justice clubs at 10 Bay Area schools.
Solidarity is taking on a whole new meaning this year—albeit online. Activists and organizations are finding ways to comfort people, share information and resources, train new activists, and push progressive solutions to both crises, while mutual aid efforts have grown. The Indigenous Environmental Network has launched a Covid-19 Mutual Aid Fund for struggling organizers and organizations right now. Goody’s group has launched its own local mutual aid effort using social networks and will use social media challenges during the three-day digital action to continue its campaigns targeting fossil fuel companies and their investors using hashtags such as #NoOneIsDisposable.
In the Chicagoland area, meanwhile, a coalition of unions, immigrant rights organizations and community groups was already planning Earth Day to May Day, a series of protests and other street actions fighting for economic rights and the environment. They had been expecting an even bigger turnout this year, when the pandemic outbreak forced organizers to move the protests online. Between these two “social justice holidays,” the 67 organizations, which include workers’ centers, immigrant rights groups, and mainline environmental organizations like the Sierra Club, will continue to their push for solutions that prioritize working people and the planet over corporations, and hold politicians accountable—two goals that have emerged as a unifying mantra of many of this year’s Earth Day events.
While online activism may not create the same results as street mobilizations, there are some upsides, according to Roberto Jesus Clack, associate director of the Joliet, Ill.-based Warehouse Workers for Justice, part of the Earth Day to May Day Coalition.
“It can be pretty easy to build an audience quickly through online organizing,” said Clack, whose center works at Amazon, Walmart and other warehouses in the Chicagoland area. “A lot of the time, it would take sending a TV crew or something like that. Now you just have to hit a link or two and you can hear about an issue.”
With warehouses considered essential to keeping the country’s supply chains running, Clack said he and his coworkers have been busy supporting warehouse workers, including some who have gone on strike in recent weeks to protest unsafe working conditions. Typically it takes numerous face-to-face conversations to organize a workplace.
But with many essential workers fearfully heading into workplaces without face masks, health coverage, or paid leave if they get sick, and so many others furloughed or laid off and sitting at home with time on their hands, Clack said, organizing can go more quickly. After all, life or death matters are on the line and so many working people are fired up, he said. But he worries the most vulnerable are being left out. “There’s definitely a portion of the movement (without good Internet access) that we’re missing out on right now. It’s going to be extremely difficult,” he said. “There are serious ways that (the pandemic) obstructs us from organizing.”
The Earth Day to May Day actions grew out of earlier alliances between people-centered and environment-centered groups, such as their coalition to block the controversial NorthPoint Development business park project that the Joliet mayor and City Council voted to push forward last week, even as opponents charged them with using the pandemic to overrule public dissent.
“We see the same corporate actors that really drive down workplace standards are also contributing hugely to climate change,” he said. “We have problems with the same people and we have to come together” right now, said Clack, who compares today’s pandemic-induced economic troubles to the 2008 financial crisis that gave way to, among other things, Occupy Wall Street. He’s upbeat on what this will mean for future protests.
“It’s unclear when we’ll be able to hit the streets again,” he said, “but I think that the movement we see emerge is going to be pretty unprecedented.”
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