RSN: James Baldwin | Letter From a Region in My Mind

31 May 20

It's Live on the HomePage Now:
Reader Supported News

A Knife’s Edge on Funding - Every day is a new, very consequential battle for the basic funding RSN needs to survive. The hard, cold reality is that if we loose our intensity on funding even for a day, we won’t have any funding. Match our intensity. Please. - Marc Ash, Founder Reader Supported News

Sure, I'll make a donation!

---

James Baldwin | Letter From a Region in My Mind

James Baldwin, The New Yorker
Baldwin writes: "Whatever white people do not know about Negroes reveals, precisely and inexorably, what they do not know about themselves."
READ MORE

Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh and Chief Justice John Roberts arrive to hear President Donald Trump deliver the State of the Union address in the House chamber on February 4, 2020 in Washington, D.C. (photo: Getty Images)

Roberts Upholds COVID-19 Restrictions on Churches, Scolds Kavanaugh
Mark Joseph Stern, Slate
Stern writes: "Friday at midnight, the Supreme Court rejected a church's challenge to California's COVID-19 restrictions by a 5-4 vote, with Chief Justice John Roberts joining the liberals."


EXCERPT:

SCOTUS’ late-night order in South Bay United Pentecostal Church v. Newsom divided the justices into two camps: those who acknowledge reality, and those who ignore it to score ideological points. The case began when a California church accused Gov. Gavin Newsom of violating its religious freedom. Newsom’s current COVID-19 policy limits attendance at houses of worship to 25 percent of building capacity or a maximum of 100 attendees, whichever is lower. At the same time, it allows certain secular businesses, like grocery stores, to operate under looser guidelines, allowing more people to enter. The church claimed this disparate treatment between churches and commercial establishments runs afoul of the First Amendment.

As Roberts noted, however, California does not impose uniform rules on all places where people assemble. The state does strictly limit church attendance. But it applies “similar or more severe restrictions” to “lectures, concerts, movie showings, spectator sports, and theatrical performances.” So the question for the court is less constitutional than scientific: From an epidemiological perspective, are churches more like grocery stores or concerts? And that, the chief justice concluded, is a question for lawmakers, not federal judges.

“The precise question of when restrictions on particular social activities should be lifted during the pandemic,” Roberts declared, “is a dynamic and fact-intensive matter subject to reasonable disagreement.” The Constitution leaves such decisions “to the politically accountable officials of the state,” whose decisions “should not be subject to second-guessing” by judges who lack “background, competence, and expertise to assess public health.” Multiple coronavirus outbreaks in California have been traced back to religious services. California has good reason to treat churches more like concerts—where people “congregate in large groups” and “remain in close proximity for extended periods”—than grocery stores, where they can social distance. For courts, that should be the end of the matter.

Kavanaugh, in dissent, viewed the case through a different lens. Whereas Roberts began by noting that COVID-19 has “killed thousands of people in California and more than 100,000 nationwide,” Kavanaugh crafted a narrative of invidious religious discrimination. His dissent reads like a brief by the church, not a judicial opinion. Kavanaugh alleged that Newsom’s order “indisputably discriminates against religion” in violation of the free exercise clause. For support, the justice insisted that “comparable secular businesses,” like grocery stores and pharmacies, “are not subject” to the same restrictions imposed on churches. California must have a “compelling justification” for this disparate treatment, and he saw none.

READ MORE

Protest against police abuse. (photo: Caitlin Ochs/Reuters)

Seattle Cop Caught on Video With Knee on Protester's Neck
Barbie Latza Nadeau, The Daily Beast
Nadeau writes: "A police officer in Seattle was caught on video Saturday night with his knee on the neck of a protester, in the same position used by former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin, who has since been charged with murdering George Floyd. "

READ MORE

People wait to receive a food bank donation at the Barclays Center in New York. (photo: Stephanie Keith/Getty Images)

'People Are Going to Go Hungry': Pandemic Effects Could Leave 54 Million Americans Without Food
Nina Lakhani, Guardian UK
Lakhani writes: "A record number of Americans face hunger this year as the catastrophic economic fallout caused by the coronavirus pandemic looks set to leave tens of millions of people unable to buy enough food to feed their families."
READ MORE

Overhead view of a farm in Iowa. (image: Kecia Doolittle)

Animal Rights Activists Uncover the Locations of Thousands of Factory Farms

Alleen Brown, The Intercept

Brown writes: "Animal rights activists published an interactive map on Sunday revealing the locations of more than 27,500 farms and animal agriculture facilities, including 5,812 identified using satellite imagery, many of which do not appear in public records."

EXCERPTS:

The map is meant to offer a rare bird’s-eye view of the scale of the industry, while also providing a research tool for activist investigators. Kecia Doolittle, the leader of the team that created the map, is an animal rights activist who has participated in a number of farm investigations herself. Footage uncovered by Doolittle and others over the years has revealed conditions such as overcrowding; wounded, sick, and dead animals left in pens with the living; painful procedures like tail removal and castration without anesthesia; and physical abuse by farmers, at times resulting in boycotts or criminal charges.

Most recently, as The Intercept reported on Friday, activists with the organization Direct Action Everywhere captured footage of a harrowing mass kill method called ventilation shutdown. The closure of meatpacking plants due to Covid-19 outbreaks has left farmers with nowhere to take mature livestock; in response, they have exterminated millions of animals. One particularly torturous tactic involves corralling pigs into a barn, closing the doors and windows, and shutting down the ventilation system. “This causes the buildup of excessive temperature and moisture from body heat and respiration of the animals and results in death from hyperthermia,” according to guidelines from the American Association of Swine Veterinarians, which endorses ventilation shutdown in “constrained circumstances.”

Doolittle said that despite her knowledge of the industry’s brutal practices, this method caught her off guard. “I didn’t believe it was real,” she said. To Doolittle, the use of ventilation shutdown should be a call to action, and more than images are needed. “There’s already lots of bad pictures of pigs on the internet,” she said. She hopes the Project Counterglow map will be a place where activists can share information and tactics, feeding a movement of smaller-scale farm investigations carried out as acts of civil disobedience.

CAFOs have implications when it comes to Covid-19 as well. Respiratory problems linked to factory farming like lung disease and asthma are risk factors for more severe coronavirus symptoms, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The fact that many Covid-19 patients are contracting secondary bacterial infections makes the presence of antibiotic-resistant bacteria in pig farming communities all the more worrisome, Baron noted.

READ MORE

Women maintain a safe physical distance outside a bank as they wait to collect their pensions during a government-imposed nationwide lockdown in Bhopal. (photo: Gagan Nayar/AFP)

India's Victims of 1984 Bhopal Gas Tragedy Are Dying of Coronavirus
Al Jazeera
Excerpt: "Victims of a horrifying 1984 gas leak in the Indian city of Bhopal, who have long suffered the debilitating fallout of the world's worst industrial disaster, are now dying from the novel coronavirus, with relatives and activists accusing the government of abandoning them and withholding treatment."

EXCERPT:

'Collapsed system'

The 1984 disaster left deep scars across the city of 1.8 million.

Government statistics compiled after 1994 say at least 100,000 people living near the plant suffered ailments including respiratory and kidney problems, and cancer.

Gas-affected mothers gave birth to infants with congenital disorders. Children fell ill from polluted groundwater.

A $470m settlement inked in 1989 only provided compensation to some 5,000 people, campaigners say.

The government in 2012 filed a legal petition seeking further damages from US chemical giant Dow Chemicals, which now owns Union Carbide.

The state's Bhopal Gas Tragedy Relief and Rehabilitation department director Ved Prakash told AFP that thermal screening was now being carried out on gas victims who have COVID-19 symptoms or are vulnerable, "so that they can be isolated and quarantined".

But Dhingra said the move - which reflects India's push to largely limit testing to people with acute respiratory infections, cough and fever - would sound a death knell for gas victims.

"They have to test ... instead of just screening patients who are high-risk. By the time they turn symptomatic, it will be too late.

"The entire system has collapsed and the most vulnerable are paying with their lives."

READ MORE

The destruction of a significant Aboriginal site is not an isolated incident. (photo: Puutu Kunti Kurrama and Pinikura Aboriginal Corporation)

Rio Tinto Blasted Away an Ancient Aboriginal Site. Here's Why That Was Allowed
Samantha Hepburn, The Conversation
Hepburn writes: "In the expansion of its iron ore mine in Western Pilbara, Rio Tinto blasted the Juukan Gorge 1 and 2 - Aboriginal rock shelters dating back 46,000 years. These sites had deep historical and cultural significance."

EXCERPT:

The mining blast caused significant distress to the Puutu Kunti Kurrama traditional land owners. It's an irretrievable loss for future generations.

Aboriginal cultural heritage is a fundamental part of Aboriginal community life and cultural identity. It has global significance, and forms an important component of the heritage of all Australians.

But the destruction of a culturally significant Aboriginal site is not an isolated incident. Rio Tinto was acting within the law.

In 2013, Rio Tinto was given ministerial consent to damage the Juukan Gorge caves. One year later, an archaeological dig unearthed incredible artefacts, such as a 4,000-year-old plait of human hair, and evidence that the site was much older than originally thought.

But state laws let Rio Tinto charge ahead nevertheless. This failure to put timely and adequate regulatory safeguards in place reveals a disregard and a disrespect for sacred Aboriginal sites.

READ MORE

---

Contribute to RSN 

Update My Monthly Donation