07 July 20
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07 July 20
RSN: Harvey Wasserman | America Should Vote This Fall in Our Downtown Sports Arenas
Harvey Wasserman, Reader Supported News
Wasserman writes: "There is a critical solution to where America can vote during the pandemic - and beyond."
Harvey Wasserman, Reader Supported News
Wasserman writes: "There is a critical solution to where America can vote during the pandemic - and beyond."
As we saw this spring in Wisconsin, Georgia, and elsewhere, insecure surroundings, long lines, and dangerous, dreadfully anti-democratic physical conditions at our traditional voting centers have plagued our elections. The situation has been especially horrendous during the COVID-19 pandemic, especially with the stripping of local precinct centers. Such travesties threaten – once again – to undermine our 2020 choice.
But there are safe, centrally located, high-profile locations with plenty of parking and conveniences that can make this fall’s voting experience far more secure.
They are the sports arenas that house our basketball and hockey teams, both college and professional. There are limitations. But they provide an obvious alternative to the tiny, cramped, disastrous voting centers we’ve seen in this year’s primaries.
The Atlanta Hawks are leading the way. The team has graciously offered its massive 21,000-seat downtown stadium for the fall 2020 election. It is a brilliant breakthrough idea that should be embraced in every US city, town, and county. Those smaller communities that don’t have professional basketball or hockey teams do have college and high school stadia that can serve the same function.
Everybody knows where these arenas are located. They all have plenty of parking. The outdoor lots can accommodate massive ballot drop boxes and drive-through voting options.
The parking areas can be easily secured, and weapons must be banned from the arenas, eliminating anticipated threats from gun-toting vigilantes aiming to intimidate voters.
For citizens who don’t want to mail their ballots or drop them off in repositories, or who need to come in personally to deal with registration, ballot surrender, and other issues, there will be no more long lines. They can check in at the door and get a number. Then, with masks and social distancing, they can comfortably sit anywhere in the arena. When their number comes up, it can flash on the scoreboard.
In the age of Vote By Mail, most sports arenas should be big enough to accommodate all the precincts in any given county. Most big urban areas have a second or third big arena that could be available for backup if needed.
The internal scoreboards can direct every voter to their proper precinct table. Once the ballots are marked and completed by the voter, there will be no need to move them elsewhere to be tallied, thus making the protection and counting process far more secure. Ballots received by voters in the mail can be returned by mail straight to the arenas, deposited in the drop boxes, or brought in personally for surrender and substitution. All ballots, even in very large metropolitan areas, can therefore be easily secured in a single centralized location.
For citizens who don’t have their own transportation, bus and individual pickup services should be provided. Within the stadia, there should be plenty of easily distanced seating, restroom facilities, and work areas. Though the capacities should accommodate the voting public, there will have to be limitations on how full they can get. In big cities, the use of a second arena might be needed (though that seems unlikely, especially with VBM).
Protected from the weather, voters can come to the arenas without fear of standing for hours in the heat, cold, rain, or snow. The indoor spaces need to be heavily sanitized and ventilated. Masks must be required. Internet services can be provided, with passcodes posted on the scoreboards. Food services can be made available.
Overall, these big public spaces should allow America’s citizenry to fulfill its electoral duties in dignity and grace, as befits a working democracy.
Elizabeth Warren has proposed that November 3 – Election Day – be made a national holiday. This would allow the public to avoid missing work should the waits stretch out too long. In fact, the arena/polling stations should also be open the Saturday, Sunday, and Monday before Tuesday’s voting day. With that range of opportunity, we can all celebrate the power of public control over our government in ways that befit a functional democracy.
For too many years, in too many places, the American voting experience has been dangerous, degrading, and anti-democratic. Especially during this pandemic, the process must be transformed from the deadly ordeals we witnessed this spring in Wisconsin, Georgia, and elsewhere into a convenient, communal, functional celebration of our nation’s democratic ideals.
We are indebted for this idea to the Atlanta Hawks, who’ve offered their stadium to serve as a shrine of democracy in a critical swing state marred by a long history of violent racism and electoral manipulation.
This fall, in every American city, town, and county, we should be able to cast our ballots in safety, comfort, and dignity.
We must accept no less. See you in the arenas!
Completion of Harvey Wasserman’s People’s Spiral of US History awaits Trump’s departure at solartopia.org. He co-convenes the weekly Emergency Election Protection Zoom, which you can join by contacting him at solartopia.org. His radio show is at prn.fm and KPFK/Pacifica 90.7 fm, Los Angeles.
Reader Supported News is the Publication of Origin for this work. Permission to republish is freely granted with credit and a link back to Reader Supported News.
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Hands typing on a computer keyboard. (photo: hamburg_berlin/Shutterstock)
ICE to Deny Foreign Student Visas for Colleges Teaching Online This Fall
Elliot Hannon, Slate
Hannon writes: "The Trump administration announced a new set of immigration guidelines Monday that would bar many foreign college students from coming to - or remaining in - the U.S. this fall if they attend a college that will move teaching online."
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Elliot Hannon, Slate
Hannon writes: "The Trump administration announced a new set of immigration guidelines Monday that would bar many foreign college students from coming to - or remaining in - the U.S. this fall if they attend a college that will move teaching online."
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A protest against the Dakota Access Pipeline. (photo: Getty Images)
Court Rules Dakota Access Pipeline Must Be Emptied for Now
Laurel Wamsley, NPR
Wamsley writes: "A federal judge has ruled that the controversial Dakota Access Pipeline must be emptied for now while the Army Corps of Engineers produces an environmental review."
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Laurel Wamsley, NPR
Wamsley writes: "A federal judge has ruled that the controversial Dakota Access Pipeline must be emptied for now while the Army Corps of Engineers produces an environmental review."
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Protesters, organized by All of Us, gather after Yugeshwar Gaindarpersaud was taken into custody after an officer appeared to kneel on his neck in an incident captured on video Monday morning, in Schenectady. (photo: Erica Miller/Gazette)
Protests Reignite After New Video Shows New York Cop Kneeling on Man's Neck
Jamie Ross, The Daily Beast
Ross writes: "Protesters gathered outside Schenectady police headquarters in New York state Monday night after a video appeared to show a city police officer kneeling on a man's neck."
Jamie Ross, The Daily Beast
Ross writes: "Protesters gathered outside Schenectady police headquarters in New York state Monday night after a video appeared to show a city police officer kneeling on a man's neck."
The coronavirus pandemic shuttered nearly every school in the United States in March, and many institutions moved learning online. (photo: Wilfredo Lee/AP)
Florida Orders All Schools to Reopen for Fall, Despite Soaring COVID-19 Cases
Moriah Balingit, The Washington Post
Balingit writes: "Florida's top school official issued a sweeping executive order Monday requiring all schools in the state to reopen their buildings for in-person instruction for the coming school year, even as coronavirus cases in the state continued to rise."
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Moriah Balingit, The Washington Post
Balingit writes: "Florida's top school official issued a sweeping executive order Monday requiring all schools in the state to reopen their buildings for in-person instruction for the coming school year, even as coronavirus cases in the state continued to rise."
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Laila Soueif. (photo: DN!)
Egyptian Activist Laila Soueif on Jailing of Her Children and the Fight Against Authoritarianism
Democracy Now!
Excerpt: "As the government of President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi grapples with the pandemic, it's cracked down, arresting doctors, journalists, lawyers who dare to speak out. Today, we take a look at one family who's been particularly targeted, arguably the most prominent activist family in Egypt."
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Democracy Now!
Excerpt: "As the government of President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi grapples with the pandemic, it's cracked down, arresting doctors, journalists, lawyers who dare to speak out. Today, we take a look at one family who's been particularly targeted, arguably the most prominent activist family in Egypt."
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A wildfire burning in the Santa Catalina Mountains looms over homes in Oro Valley, Arizona. (photo: Kelly Presnell/AP)
Navajo Nation Faces Twin Threats as Wildfires Spread During Pandemic
Cody Nelson, Guardian UK
Nelson writes: "The Wood Springs 2 fire arrived at Michelle Johnson's home a week ago."
he Wood Springs 2 fire arrived at Michelle Johnson’s home a week ago. Ash from the 13,000-acre wildfire that burned five miles away rained on her land, with thick smoke billowing above the house she shares with her husband and children.
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Cody Nelson, Guardian UK
Nelson writes: "The Wood Springs 2 fire arrived at Michelle Johnson's home a week ago."
Hit hard by Covid-19, Arizona faces heightened danger from smoke, flames and possible evacuations
he Wood Springs 2 fire arrived at Michelle Johnson’s home a week ago. Ash from the 13,000-acre wildfire that burned five miles away rained on her land, with thick smoke billowing above the house she shares with her husband and children.
“It would be like fog,” Johnson said. “You couldn’t open the doors and when I would come outside, I would start coughing.”
Johnson lives in Sawmill, Arizona, a small, rural community on the Navajo Nation in the north-eastern part of the state. The Wood Springs 2 fire is raging about five miles away, and in recent days it appeared to have calmed down, Johnson said. But as it bears down on Navajo communities in Arizona’s north-east, it is exacerbating the region’s already fierce challenges amid Covid-19.
In Arizona and New Mexico, indigenous people have been dying from coronavirus at disproportionate rates. The Navajo Nation has been ravaged by Covid-19 since the pandemic began.
Indigenous people make up 3.9% of the population in Arizona but account for nearly 20% of Covid-19 deaths, according to the APM Research Lab. Sawmill is located in Arizona’s Apache county, a rural corner of the state that, with just over 71,000 people and more than 2,400 Covid-19 infections, has seen more than three confirmed cases for every 100 people.
“Covid-19 is hitting Sawmill pretty good,” said Wilson Stewart Jr, a Navajo Nation council delegate for Sawmill and other tribal communities in the area. “You have to really watch yourself when you go there.”
Smoke from wildfires could worsen those death rates. Research during the pandemic has linked short- and long-term air pollution exposure with increased chances of Covid-19 complications and death.
Sawmill has not only seen smoke from the Wood Springs 2 fire, but also from a string of larger blazes in southern Arizona that have been burning for weeks. Their smoke blew north-west toward Sawmill and beyond – creating a giant plume that covered much of Colorado and the Four Corners region.
Federal wildfire authorities are warning people who have Covid-19 or are recovering from it near Wood Springs 2 to stay inside.
Bracing for evacuation
Residents are also worried about the rapidly spreading fire potentially forcing them out of their homes.
The Wood Springs 2 fire was first reported on 27 June after lightning struck the dry ground outside Sawmill. An initial report showed the fire at 60 acres. But it grew to over 10,000 acres within a week and crept ever nearer to the town and the nearby community of Fluted Rock.
The fire was 51% contained as of Monday, amid hot and dry conditions that are expected to persist. Fire authorities said on Monday that Sawmill was no longer on “high alert”, but Fluted Rock still was. In addition, the Navajo Nation president, Jonathan Nez, has issued an executive order closing the fire area to the public.
More than 400 fire personnel are working to contain the blaze, but the rapid growth has had people scrambling to make plans in case the situation gets worse.
“We are telling residents of Sawmill and Fluted Rock to be on high alert and to prepare in the event that they need to be evacuated,” said Chantel Herrick, a spokesperson for the local bureau of Indian affairs fire management office, adding that people should check with their local Navajo chapters for details.
Although Sawmill is a year-round residence, people from other towns have summer camps near Fluted Rock where they keep cattle, sheep and horses. Already, four livestock corrals and another building have been destroyed by the fire, according to local fire officials.
Stewart, in his role as a Navajo Nation council delegate, is tasked with figuring out what such an evacuation might look like.
“I did tell the community members: if you need to evacuate,” he said, “your lives are more important than your livestock.”
Johnson and her family keep horses, sheep, chickens and dogs on their property. When the fire began encroaching on their land, they had no plan for getting every person and animal to safety.
“It was scary,” she said. “We didn’t know what to do. It was just me and the kids,” because her husband was at work.
Johnson has since made arrangements to have her uncle help get the family and their animals to safety, if needed. But if things got bad quickly, she said, “we probably would have to pack up what we could and just leave.”
As for the rest of the region’s population, Stewart has been making plans for where they would go. For now, the plan is to send people to facilities in Window Rock, Arizona. People who have tested positive for Covid-19 would go to tents near the hospital there.
Everyone else would go to the school nearby. Stewart said the hospital told him there would be albuterol stocked to treat respiratory issues from the smoke, as well as anxiety medication and counselors. “You can never be too prepared,” he said.
However, gathering scores of people together inside a school building poses a clear Covid-19 transmission risk. Stewart said the plan was to take everyone’s temperature before they entered the school shelter as a precaution.
If an evacuation is ordered, he said, it was tough to say what would happen but he was trying to be responsive to the people he represents.
“With this Covid and this fire now,” Stewart said, “the only thing we can do is pray and help each other.”
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