25 August 20
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25 August 20
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RSN: Marc Ash | Greetings From a Mandatory Evacuation Zone
Marc Ash, Reader Supported News
Ash writes: "A Mandatory Evacuation Order (MEO) was issued for our area on Saturday morning. I had already packed my car with everything I could fit into it."
an refused to evacuate, retreated into vineyard …” Listening to firefighter radio communications is an excellent way to stay up to date on the wildfire in your area. That particular communication said a lot about what is happening in Sonoma County, California right now.
A Mandatory Evacuation Order (MEO) was issued for our area on Saturday morning. I had already packed my car with everything I could fit into it. One complicating factor was my chickens. I have a small organic chicken farm in Sonoma County near the Russian River. I distribute organic eggs to local low-income residents. 48 chickens can feed a lot of people.
In a wildfire evacuation situation at a farm, standard procedure is to open all animal enclosures before leaving. The theory is that it gives the animals a chance to flee and evade the fire rather than remain trapped in the fire’s path. It’s a good idea with horses, but chickens are not God’s brightest creatures, and they don’t always fare well in fires.
That’s the drill that is supposed to be followed, so I followed it. I loaded up the remainder of my possessions, including my Cockatoo Blackie, into my car and headed out.
In 2017, during the Tubbs fire, a woman who was part of our local chicken chat group was forced to flee her home and her chickens. She was not allowed to go back into the area to check on them or care for them. I managed, with the help of a small local rescue farm, to get in and rescue 12 surviving chickens and 2 cats. She did not forget that act of kindness.
Now, four years later, she and her husband have rebuilt, and they offered me and Blackie a place to stay. It was a wonderful offer, but after one night I was sick with worry over what was happening at my home farm. I starting checking the weather reports, and the wind was cooperating. Light, westerly ocean breezes were holding up the progress of the fire. I decided to try to return home.
The first roadblock I came to was manned by San Francisco sheriff’s deputies. To be blunt, SF law enforcement is a lot more democratic than Sonoma law enforcement. They wanted to see my resident ID, cautioned me that situation was still dangerous, and let me through. Blackie and I made it back home. I was very relieved to find my chickens frightened but largely unharmed. One chicken is still missing, but all the others are safe and accounted for.
The fire is still burning about 3 miles away in rugged, mountainous terrain. The wind has held up its progress and looks to continue to do so for the next few days. Right now, it’s a waiting and watching game. I have full phone and internet services. I can work.
Interestingly, the local birds are still around, but the normally abundant squirrels have vanished. They apparently don’t need text message alerts to know when to evacuate.
Holding down the fort behind the evacuation line in Sonoma County, California.
Marc Ash is the founder and former Executive Director of Truthout, and is now founder and Editor of Reader Supported News.
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.
Protests erupted nationwide on Aug. 24 following the police-involved shooting of Jacob Blake who was shot multiple times as he tried to enter his car. (photo: Joshua Lott/WP)
ALSO SEE: Kenosha Delayed Body Cameras for Years
Before Blake Shooting
Police Fire Teargas During Second Night of Protest Over Shooting of Jacob Blake
Adam Gabbatt, Guardian UK
Gabbatt writes: "Anger over the shooting of a Black man by police spilled into the streets of Kenosha for a second night Monday, with police again firing teargas at hundreds of protesters who defied a curfew to demonstrate in the city."
Kenosha police fire teargas at demonstrators shouting ‘no justice, no peace’ over the shooting of Blake, who is black, on Sunday
acob Blake, the black man shot by police in Kenosha, has been paralyzed from the waist down, his father said, as protesters in the Wisconsin city were met with police using teargas and flash-bang grenades on Monday night.
Kenosha became the latest flashpoint in a summer of racial unrest in the US after footage of police shooting Blake apparently in the back, as he leaned into his SUV with his three children inside, circulated widely on social media on Sunday. The 29-year-old remains in hospital.
The shooting drew condemnation from the Democratic governor, Tony Evers, who called out 125 members of the national guard on Monday. As the protests stretched beyond the 8pm curfew police and protesters clashed, and some among the protesters lit fires, threw bottles and shot fireworks at law enforcement guarding the courthouse.
Blake’s father, also called Jacob Blake, told the Chicago Sun Times his son has “eight holes” in his body and is paralysed from the waist down. It is unclear if the paralysis is permanent.
“What justified all those shots?” Blake’s father said. “What justified doing that in front of my grandsons? What are we doing?”
Protesters poured into the streets of Kenosha for the second night running on Monday, some defying an 8pm curfew.
Police first fired teargas about 30 minutes after the curfew took effect, to disperse protesters who chanted, “no justice, no peace” as they confronted a line of officers who wore protective gear and stood shoulder-to-shoulder in front of the courthouse entrance.
The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported that some people lit fireworks and threw them at law enforcement. Sheriff’s deputies responded with smoke bombs and flash-bang grenades, the newspaper said.
Several buildings in Kenosha were set on fire, including a Wisconsin department of corrections building.
According to the Wisconsin State Journal some businesses along Kenosha’s Main Street had windows broken. The Journal reported that a group of what appeared to be counter-protesters, some carrying guns and one wearing a red Make America Great Again hat, were present at the protest.
Tensions had flared earlier on Monday after a news conference with the Kenosha mayor, John Antarmian, originally to be held in a park, was moved inside the city’s public safety building. Hundreds of protesters rushed to the building and a door was snapped off its hinges before police in riot gear pepper-sprayed the crowd, which included a photographer from the Associated Press.
The man who said he recorded the cellphone video, 22-year-old Raysean White, said he saw Blake scuffling with three officers and heard them yell, “Drop the knife! Drop the knife!” before the gunfire started.
He said he did not see a knife in Blake’s hands.
The governor said he had seen no information to suggest Blake had a knife or other weapon, but that the case was still being investigated by the state justice department.
Police in Kenosha, a former auto manufacturing city of 100,000 people midway between Milwaukee and Chicago, said they were responding to a call about a domestic dispute when they encountered Blake on Sunday.
They did not say whether Blake was armed or why police opened fire, they released no details on the dispute, and they did not immediately disclose the race of the three officers at the scene.
The officers were placed on administrative leave, standard practice in a shooting by police. Authorities released no details about the officers and did not immediately respond to requests for their service records.
Evers was quick to condemn the bloodshed, saying that while not all details were known, what we knew for certain is that he was not the first black man or person to have been shot, injured or killed at the hands of individuals in law enforcement in the state or country.
The Democratic presidential nominee, Joe Biden, said the officers must be held accountable.
“This morning, the nation wakes up yet again with grief and outrage that yet another black American is a victim of excessive force,” he said, just over two months before election day in a country already roiled by the recent deaths of George Floyd in Minneapolis, Rayshard Brooks in Atlanta and Breonna Taylor in Louisville, Kentucky. “Those shots pierce the soul of our nation,” Biden said.
Republicans and the police union accused politicians of rushing to judgment, reflecting the deep partisan divide in Wisconsin, a key presidential battleground state.
Wisconsin Republican members also decried the violent protests, echoing the law-and-order theme that Donald Trump has been using in his re-election campaign.
“As always, the video currently circulating does not capture all the intricacies of a highly dynamic incident,” Pete Deates, the president of the Kenosha police union, said in a statement. He called the governor’s statement wholly irresponsible.
The shooting happened around 5pm on Sunday and was captured from across the street on the video posted online. Kenosha police do not have body cameras but do wear body microphones.
The footage shows Blake walking from the sidewalk around the front of his SUV to his driver-side door as officers followed him with their guns pointed and shouting at him. As Blake opened the door and leaned into the SUV, an officer grabbed his shirt from behind and opened fire while Blake has his back turned.
Seven shots can be heard, though it is not clear how many struck Blake or how many officers fired.
Ramiro Ramírez walks into the Eli Jackson Cemetery where his ancestors are buried in San Juan, Texas, on November 6, 2018. (photo: Verónica G. Cárdenas/The Intercept)
Border Wall Construction Set to Begin Near Historic Cemeteries in South Texas
Melissa del Bosque, The Intercept
Excerpt: "The Trump administration broke ground next to a church and gravesites that are part of an important chapter in the history of the Underground Railroad."
he Trump administration has broken ground on the construction of an 18-foot steel and concrete border wall next to the oldest Protestant church in South Texas and two historic cemeteries, which are part of an important yet little-known chapter in the history of slavery and the Underground Railroad.
Congress exempted the Eli Jackson Cemetery and the Jackson Ranch Church and Cemetery from border wall construction in the 2020 appropriations bill, but the administration has chosen to go ahead with building the wall there anyway, skirting congressional intent and “not following the spirit of the law,” according to U.S. Rep. Henry Cuellar, D-Laredo, who authored the language protecting the sites.
The church and cemeteries are part of a ranching settlement founded in 1857 by Nathaniel Jackson, a white plantation owner, and Matilda Hicks, a former slave, along with the couple’s adult children, their relatives, and 11 freed slaves. The Jacksons provided refuge to escaped slaves in the small town of Pharr, near McAllen, Texas, and helped ferry them across the river to freedom in Mexico, where slavery had been abolished.
For the past three years, Sylvia Ramírez, a Jackson family descendant, and her brother Dr. Ramiro Ramírez, as well as relatives of other families buried in the two cemeteries, have been lobbying members of Congress to save the sites, which are registered with the Texas Historical Commission. In March 2019, the Ramírez family joined with other border residents and advocates in a lawsuit against the administration to stop wall construction from disturbing or destroying the cemeteries.
“We filed the lawsuit, and then we got the good news about the exemption,” said Ramírez. “And we were hoping that that meant the property would not be touched.”
Still, Ramírez said that she and others kept a close eye on the cemeteries and church, watching for any signs of construction starting in the area. “We’ve been observant and vigilant,” she said. “Because the government doesn’t tell us anything.”
In the last two weeks, she said, their worst fears came true, when a family member noticed heavy machinery staged near the cemeteries and large swaths of land nearby that had been bulldozed and cleared. Alarmed, Ramírez asked their lawyer, Sarah Burt, an attorney for Earthjustice, to contact the government.
Burt said she received an email reply on Monday, August 17, from the Justice Department saying that construction would begin “in the next two weeks.”
The Justice Department wrote that the wall wouldn’t pass through either cemetery, Burt said, but would be built on a levee that abuts the two cemeteries and on land being acquired from private owners. According to the email, the government had “nearly completed the land acquisition process.”
Despite these assurances, Burt said the government has not shared a finalized plan or spoken to the Ramírez family and other landowners about how the wall will impact the cemeteries, the church, and several homes nearby. Of greatest concern is a 150-foot enforcement zone that runs alongside the wall, which consists of an all-weather road, light towers, cameras, and other technology. The Eli Jackson Cemetery backs up against the levee, while the Jackson Ranch Church and Cemetery is about 100 feet away.
Sylvia Ramírez said she reached out to a U.S. Customs and Border Protection liaison about the enforcement zone and he told her that the government was considering a reduced enforcement zone in the area of the cemeteries. But Ramírez said she hasn’t seen anything official. And she’s worried about the digging and heavy machinery around old burial sites, many of which, due to their age, have no headstone or marker. “It’s horrifying to think of,” she said. “And for whatever reason, they’re just not willing to share information with us.” CBP did not respond to requests for comment from The Intercept.
On Tuesday, before a campaign rally in Yuma, Arizona, Trump received an update on the border wall. Flanked by the Army Corps of Engineers and CBP, he touted his construction of nearly 300 miles along the southern border. “You know, you don’t hear about the wall anymore because we won,” Trump said. “When you win — if you’re us — you never hear about it again. And we have page after page of achievement that you never hear of anymore.”
At the event, Lt. Gen. Todd Semonite of the Army Corps of Engineers claimed the administration was currently building at a pace of “over 10 miles a week; over 2 miles a day.”
Trump vetoed a bipartisan agreement for $1.375 billion to fund 55 miles of new wall in February 2019, then declared a national emergency, requiring the Department of Defense to reallocate $6.1 billion in funds to the wall’s construction, and the Treasury Forfeiture Fund to provide up to $600 million.
“Three hundred … are already in right now, basically,” said Semonite during the event in Yuma. “There’s another 300 that are being built right now in every — all along places across these four states. Forty-nine different projects are all going in the ground. And then the last 133 are in design and acquisition. We’re writing the contracts; we’re designing it.”
Trump is in a hurry, Cuellar said, because with the exception of 5 miles, all of the wall Trump has built has either replaced or reinforced border fences constructed under Bush and Obama.
With the election looming, the Trump administration has escalated its construction timeline, Cuellar said, in many cases granting lucrative contracts to construction companies without having rights to the land on which the wall will be built, and abusing the Real ID Act to waive environmental assessments and other federal requirements to speed up construction.
“They’re trying to meet the president’s goals of building new miles,” Cuellar said. “And trying to obligate the next administration by entering into these contracts now. You can see what they’re doing. In my hometown of Laredo, they don’t own the land. They haven’t condemned the land, but they have already awarded the contracts.”
Because of a binational treaty with Mexico that prevents building any type of structure in the Rio Grande floodplain that would push floodwaters into either country, much of Trump’s new construction can only happen north of the Rio Grande levee, which is up to a mile from the actual river in Texas. This means that the wall’s construction not only directly impacts homes and businesses, but also nature preserves and important cultural and heritage sites like the Eli Jackson Cemetery and the Jackson Ranch Church and Cemetery.
In January 2019, during the longest government shutdown in U.S. history spurred by Trump’s demand for $5.7 billion to build the border wall, Cuellar was appointed to help negotiate a bipartisan solution. Cuellar, who is vice chair of the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Homeland Security, said he fought to exempt five important environmental and historical sites in the path of the wall, including La Lomita, a 19th-century Catholic chapel, and the Rio Grande Valley-Bentsen State Park. “Literally, the last thing that got negotiated on that agreement was my language,” he said. “I was getting calls from the chief of staff at the White House and from the secretary of homeland security saying, ‘Hey, you’re holding up the process.’”
There was a lot of pressure to let the exemptions go, he said, even from some Democrats, who did not represent border communities. “I said no, we gotta have this language to protect these areas.”
In the next appropriations bill, Cuellar said, he added “historic cemeteries” to the list. He wanted the exemption language to apply to “within one mile” of the exempted sites, but he could not get Republicans to agree to it. “That would have solved a lot of our problems today,” he said.
What the Trump administration is doing now, Cuellar said, is technically following the letter of the law, “but not the spirit of my intent.” They are not building “within” but “next to and around the sites,” he said, which are “sensitive and controversial” for border communities. “Don’t build it a foot away, you know, even though you’re abiding by the law. I call it poking the bear in the eye.”
With the Real ID Act waivers, lack of notification to landowners, and secret contracts, Cuellar said, it’s difficult for anyone — even himself — to understand what’s happening with the current border wall construction. “I’m the vice chair of Homeland Security Appropriations and I have requested the contracts many times and never seen them,” he said.
Sylvia Ramírez said she and her family members are examining their legal options to stop the construction. Even if the wall doesn’t touch the cemeteries, they will still be on the south side of the barrier and cut off from the rest of the United States, where flooding could be exacerbated by the construction. They have not been told how they will be able to access the church and cemeteries after the wall is completed. “We’re not happy that we’re on the south side of it,” she said. “It’s not acceptable to me, and it never will be.”
'The practice, while meant to stop the spread of COVID-19, was described by clinicians and health care ethicists as racial profiling.' (photo: Lisa Larson-Walker/ProPublica/Jamie Coupaud/Unsplash)
Federal Investigation Finds Hospital Violated Patients' Rights by Profiling, Separating Native Mothers and Newborns
Bryant Furlow, ProPublica
Furlow writes: "A prominent women's hospital [in Albuquerque] violated patients' rights by singling out pregnant Native American women for COVID-19 testing and separating them from their newborns without adequate consent until test results became available."
READ MORE
Campaigners picket the White House in 1917. (photo: Library of Congress)
What Women's Suffrage Owes to Indigenous Culture
Bridget Quinn, YES! Magazine
Quinn writes: "For the Seneca and all the tribes of the Haudenosaunee Confederacy, power resided with the people. All the people."
READ MORE
Health officials administer the polio vaccine in Maiduguri, Nigeria. (photo: Sunday Alamba/AP)
Africa Now Free of Wild Poliovirus, but Polio Threat Remains
Cara Anna, Associated Press
Anna writes: "Health authorities on Tuesday are expected to declare the African continent free of the wild poliovirus after decades of effort, though cases of vaccine-derived polio are still sparking outbreaks of the paralyzing disease in more than a dozen countries."
The declaration would leave Pakistan and neighboring Afghanistan as the only countries thought to still have the wild poliovirus, with vaccination efforts against the highly infectious, water-borne disease complicated by insecurity and attacks on health workers.
The announcement by the African Regional Certification Commission for Polio Eradication comes after no cases have been reported for four years. Polio once paralyzed some 75,000 children a year across Africa.
Health authorities see the declaration as a rare glint of good news in Africa amid the coronavirus pandemic, an Ebola outbreak in western Congo and the persistent deadly challenges of malaria, HIV and tuberculosis.
The World Health Organization says it is just the second time a virus has been eradicated in Africa, after the elimination of smallpox four decades ago.
But sometimes patchy surveillance across the vast continent of 1.3 billion people raises the possibility that scattered cases of the wild poliovirus still remain, undetected.
The final push to combat the wild poliovirus focused largely on northern Nigeria, where the Boko Haram Islamic extremist group has carried out a deadly insurgency for more than a decade. Health workers at times carried out vaccinations on the margins of the insecurity, putting their lives at risk.
Africa’s last reported case of the wild poliovirus was in Nigeria in 2016. The country a year earlier had been removed from the global list of polio-endemic nations, a step toward being declared polio-free, but new cases were then reported in children in the north — a stark example of the difficulties in combating the disease.
This new declaration doesn’t mean Africa is polio-free. Cases remain of the so-called vaccine-derived polio virus, which is a rare mutated form of the weakened but live virus contained in the oral polio vaccine.
That mutated virus can spark crippling polio outbreaks, and 16 African countries are currently experiencing one: Angola, Benin, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Central African Republic, Chad, Ivory Coast, Congo, Ethiopia, Guinea, Ghana, Mali, Niger, Nigeria, Togo and Zambia.
Health authorities have warned that the coronavirus pandemic has disrupted vaccination work in many countries across Africa, leaving more children vulnerable to infection.
In April, WHO and its partners reluctantly recommended a temporary halt to mass polio immunization campaigns, recognizing the move could lead to a resurgence of the disease. In May, they reported that 46 campaigns to vaccinate children against polio had been suspended in 38 countries, mostly in Africa, as a result of the coronavirus pandemic.
Eradicating polio requires more than 90% of children being immunized, typically in mass campaigns involving millions of health workers that would break social distancing guidelines needed to stop the spread of COVID-19.
Health officials had initially aimed to wipe out polio by 2000, a deadline repeatedly pushed back and missed. Even now in northeastern Nigeria, thousands of children remain out of reach of health workers carrying out vaccinations.
With the Big Sur Basin Complex Fire burning in the background, a California condor takes off along a deserted highway. (photo: Orville Myers/Monterey County Herald
Wildfires Hit California's Redwoods and Condors, but There's Still Hope
Lauren Sommer, NPR
Sommer writes: "At 3 a.m. on Friday morning, biologist Kelly Sorenson was awake, nervously watching the live webcam feed of a California condor nest on the Big Sur coast. He could see a 5-month-old chick, still unable to fly, as the flames of the Dolan Fire came into view."
"It was just terrifying," Sorenson said. "Having the live-streaming webcams was both a blessing and a nightmare because we had to watch the fire as it burned through the canyon."
California's massive wildfires have burned more than 1,000 homes and buildings over the last week, destroying irreplaceable possessions and memories for some residents. At the same time, the fires are also threatening some of the state's rare ecosystems and wildlife.
Biologists are watching closely as the blazes encroach on old-growth redwood trees in Northern and Central California, where some giants are more than 1,000 years old and are known by individual names. While some seem to have been spared, Big Basin State Park — the oldest state park in California — saw significant fire damage.
Still, biologists say there are reasons to be hopeful, because redwoods have incredibly thick bark that can withstand wildfires. Even fully charred trees can sprout again.
The larger question is whether ecosystems can fully bounce back after extreme fires given that the climate change, already driving the current wildfires, can also make recovery difficult through heat stress and drought.
For the endangered California condors, recovery is still tenuous. In 1987, just 27 birds remained. Scientists brought them into captivity to begin a breeding program. Today, there are about 100 condors free-flying on California's Central Coast. The Ventana Wildlife Society, where Sorenson is executive director, has been carefully tracking and releasing them.
The massive birds, with a 9-foot wingspan, are still threatened by lead poisoning since they feed on the carcasses of animals that have lead bullet fragments from hunters.
Of the eight condor nests with chicks this year, Sorenson says five are within the fire zone.
"Even just four or five birds would be a huge loss," says Sorenson. "It's just really nerve-wracking now, not knowing."
Still, Sorenson is hopeful some chicks made it. In 2008, condor chicks survived a wildfire in Big Sur, protected by the tall redwood trees they nested in.
"We were convinced there was no way the chicks could survive the fire," he said. "Sure enough, a chick survived and we named it Phoenix."
Redwood trees are built to survive fires, insulated by bark up to a foot thick. While lightning-caused fires aren't as common in coastal redwood habitat as they are elsewhere in California, burning is still a natural cycle in the ecosystem. Native American tribes often set regular fires to shape the landscape and encourage certain plants to grow.
"Because of their resilience, I feel a lot more hopeful than super worried about the trees," said Kristen Shive, director of science for Save the Redwoods League. "The trees really are so incredibly tough when it comes to fire. Most of them will persist and survive."
Even trees that look significantly scorched are still alive and can regrow from their base. Many of the largest redwood trees growing today show burn scars.
"If a fire is hot enough to consume the entire crown of a tree, in a pine tree, that tree is most likely dead," Shive said. "But in redwoods, they have these buds that lie dormant under their bark and they can sprout after the fire."
Still, the younger generation of redwood trees may be more at risk. Around 95% of California's redwoods were logged, so the majority growing today are newer, "second-growth" trees. Those forests tend to be denser, allowing wildfires to burn hotter and spread more easily.
Much like other California landscapes, vegetation in some redwood forests is heavier than it used to be. As wildfires were suppressed in the modern era of firefighting and Native American tribes were removed by settlers from their land, there were fewer regular fires to clear out the forest floor.
Shive says setting controlled or "prescribed" fires in redwood forests will be even more essential as the climate warms, to prevent wildfires from doing too much damage. While redwoods are able to bounce back, they're already stressed by hotter temperatures and drought at the southern end of their range, potentially interfering with their recovery.
"We still need to be setting these forests up to be as fire-resilient as possible, since, as we've seen in this last week, this warmer and drier future is already upon us and it's going to get worse," she said.
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