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07 August 20
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Naomi Klein | How Not to Lose the Lockdown Generation
Naomi Klein, The Intercept
Klein writes: "In the panic about this 'lost generation,' there has been a lot of talk about how there is no work for young people. But that is a lie."
Lessons from the New Deal point the way forward in the era of Covid-19.
icture this: You live in rural Arkansas and tragedy strikes. A family member has fallen ill with that contagious respiratory illness that has already killed so many — but you don’t have enough space in your small home to quarantine them in a room of their own. Your relative’s case doesn’t appear to be life-threatening, but you are terrified that their persistent cough will spread the illness to more vulnerable family members. You call the local public health authority to see if there is room in local hospitals, and they explain that they are all stretched too thin with emergency cases. There are private facilities, but you can’t afford those.
Not to worry, you are told: A crew will be by shortly to set up a sturdy, well-ventilated, portable, tiny house in your yard. Once installed, your family member will be free to convalesce in comfort. You can deliver home-cooked meals to their door and communicate through open windows — and a trained nurse will be by for regular examinations. And no, there will be no charge for the house.
This is not a dispatch from some future functional United States, one with a government capable of caring for its people in the midst of spiraling economic carnage and a public health emergency. It’s a dispatch from this country’s past, a time eight decades ago when it similarly found itself in the two-fisted grip of an even deeper economic crisis (the Great Depression), and a surging contagious respiratory illness (tuberculosis).
Yet the contrast between how U.S. state and federal government met those challenges in the 1930s, and how they are failing so murderously to meet them now, could not be starker. Those tiny houses are just one example, but they are a revelatory one for the sheer number of problems those humble structures attempted to solve at once.
Known as “isolation huts,” the little clapboard houses were distributed to poor families in several states. Small enough to fit on the back of a trailer, they had just enough space for a bed, chair, dresser, and stove, and were outfitted with large screened-in windows and shutters to maximize the flow of fresh air and sunshine — considered essential for TB recovery.
As physical structures, the TB huts were an elegant answer to the public health challenges posed by crowded homes on the one hand and expensive private sanatoriums on the other. If houses were unable to accommodate safe patient quarantines, then the state, with Washington’s help, would just bring an addition to those houses for the duration of the illness.
It’s worth letting that sink in, given the learned helplessness that pervades the U.S. today. For months, the White House hasn’t been able to figure out how to roll out free Covid-19 tests at anything like the scale required, let alone contact tracing, never mind quarantine support for poor families. Yet in the 1930s, during a much more desperate economic time for the country, state and federal agencies cooperated to deliver not just free tests but free houses.
And that is only the beginning of what makes it worth dwelling on the TB huts . The cabins themselves were built by very young men in their late teens and early 20s who were out of work and had signed up for the National Youth Administration. “The State Board of Health furnishes the materials for these cottages and NYA supplies the labor,” explained Betty and Ernest Lindley, authors of a 1938 history of the program. “The total average cost of one hut is $146.28,” or about $2,700 in today’s dollars.
The TB cabins were just one of thousands upon thousands of projects taken on by the 4.5 million young people who joined the NYA: a vast program started in 1935 that paired young people in economic need, who could not find jobs in the private sector, with publicly minded work that needed doing. They gained marketable skills, while earning money that allowed many to stay, or return to, high school or college. Other NYA projects including building some of the country’s most iconic urban parks, repairing thousands of dilapidated schools and outfitting them with playgrounds; and stocking classrooms with desks, lab tables, and maps the young workers had made and painted themselves. NYA workers built huge outdoor pools and artificial lakes, trained to be teaching and nursing aides, and even built entire youth centers and small schools from scratch, often while living together in “resident centers.”
The NYA served as a kind of urban complement to FDR’s better-known youth program, the Civilian Conservation Corps, launched two years earlier. The CCC employed some 3 million young men from poor families to work in forests and farms: planting more than 2 billion trees, shoring up rivers from erosion, and building the infrastructure for hundreds of state parks. They lived together in a network of camps, sent money home to their families, and put on weight at a time when malnutrition was epidemic. Both the NYA and the CCC served a dual purpose: directly helping the young people involved, who found themselves in desperate straights, and meeting the country’s most pressing needs, whether for reforested lands or more hands in hospitals.
Like all New Deal programs, the NYA and CCC were stained by racial segregation and discrimination. And the gender roles were — let’s just say that the girls discovered they could sew, can, and heal; and the boys discovered they could plant, build, and weld. Black girls in particular were streamed into domestic work.
Yet the scale of these two programs, which together altered the lives of well over 7 million young people over the course of a decade, puts contemporary governments to shame. Today, millions upon millions of young people are beginning their adulthood with the ground collapsing beneath their feet. The service jobs so many young adults depend on for rent and to pay off student debt have vanished. Many of the industries they had hoped to enter are firing, not hiring. Internships and apprenticeships have been canceled via mass emails, and promised job offers have been revoked.
These economic losses, combined with the decision of many colleges and universities to close residences and move online, have abruptly severed countless young adults from their support systems, pushed many into homelessness, and others back into their childhood bedrooms. Many of the homes young people now find themselves in are under severe economic strain and are not safe or welcoming, with LGBTQ youth at heightened risk.
All of this is layered on top of the pain of the virus itself, which has spread grief and loss through millions of families. And that is now mixing with the trauma of tremendous police violence directed at crowds of mostly young Black Lives Matter demonstrators, compounding the murderous events that precipitated the protests in the first place. In the background, as always, is the shadow of climate breakdown, not to mention the fact that when members of this generation first heard terms like “lockdown” and “shelter in place” related to the pandemic, many of their minds immediately turned to the terrorizing active shooter drills U.S. schools have had them practicing since early childhood.
It should be little wonder, then, that depression, anxiety, and addiction are ravaging young lives.
According to a survey conducted by National Center for Health Statistics and the Census Bureau last month, 53 percent of people aged 18-29 reported symptoms of anxiety and/or depression. Fifty-three percent. That’s more than 13 percentage points higher than the rest of the population, which itself was off the charts compared with this time last year.
And that still may be a dramatic undercount. Mental Health America, part of the National Health Council, released a report in June based on surveys of nearly 5 million Americans. It found that “younger populations including teens and young adults (25<) are being hit particularly hard” by the pandemic, with 90 percent “experiencing symptoms of depression.”
Some of that suffering is finding expression in another invisible crisis of the Covid era: a dramatic increase in drug overdoses, with some parts of the country reporting increases over last year of 50 percent. It should all be a reminder that when we talk about being in the midst of a cataclysm on par with the Great Depression, it isn’t only GDP and employment rates that are depressed. Huge numbers of people are depressed as well, particularly young people.
This is, of course, a global crisis. U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres recently warned that the world faces “a generational catastrophe that could waste untold human potential, undermine decades of progress, and exacerbate entrenched inequalities.” In a video message, he said, “We are at a defining moment for the world’s children and young people. The decisions that governments and partners take now will have lasting impact on hundreds of millions of young people, and on the development prospects of countries for decades to come.”
As in the 1930s, this generation is already being referred to as a “lost generation” — but compared to the Great Depression, almost nothing is being done to find them, certainly not at the governmental level in the U.S. There are no ambitious and creative programs being designed to offer steady income beyond expanded summer job programs, and nothing designed to arm them with useful skills for the Covid and climate change era. All Washington has offered is a temporary break on student loan repayments, set to expire this fall.
Young people are discussed, of course. But it is almost exclusively to shame them for Covid partying. Or to debate (usually in their absence) the question of whether or not they will be permitted to learn in-person in classrooms, or whether they will have to stay home, glued to screens. Yet what the Depression era teaches us is that these are not the only possible futures we should be considering for people in their late teens and 20s, especially as we come to grips with the reality that Covid-19 is going to be reshaping our world for a long time to come. Young people can do more than go to school or stay home; they can also contribute enormously to the healing of their communities.
While guest hosting Intercepted this week, I dug into what it would take to launch youth employment programs on the scale on the NYA and CCC — programs that, like their predecessors, addressed broad social needs while giving young people cash, skills training, and opportunities to work and possibly live in each other’s company. Put another way: What are the modern day equivalents of the home-delivered, NYA-built tuberculosis isolation hut?
Delving back in the history of New Deal youth programs, I was struck by how many of its projects have direct application to today’s most urgent needs. For instance, the NYA made huge and historic contributions to the country’s educational infrastructure, with a particular emphasis on low-income school districts, while training many young women as teaching assistants. It also provided significant reinforcements for an ailing public health system, training battalions of young people to serve as nursing aides in public hospitals.
It’s easy to imagine how similar programs today could simultaneously address the youth unemployment crisis and play a significant role in battling the virus. As just one example: We sure could use some of those nursing aides if there is a new surge of the virus this winter. A New York Times investigation last month quoted several doctors and nurses who are convinced that significant numbers of the Covid-19 deaths that took place in New York’s public hospitals could have been prevented if they had been adequately staffed. In emergency rooms where the patient-to-nurse ratio should not have been higher than 4 to 1, one public hospital was trying to get by with 23 to 1; others weren’t doing much better. Nightmare stories have emerged of disoriented patients pulling themselves off of oxygen machines and other vital equipment, trying to get up, and with no one there to stop them, dying alone. More nurses would have made all the difference.
Then there are the public schools, similarly understaffed after decades of cutbacks, that will be trying to enforce social distancing this year. If we weren’t in such a rush to get back to a bleak and diminished version of “normal,” there would be time for a NYA-style program to train thousands of young adults to help reduce class sizes and supervise kids in outdoor education programs.
And since we know that the safest place to gather is still outdoors, some college-age students could pick up the work begun by the NYA and expand the national infrastructure of trails, picnic areas, outdoor pools, campsites, urban parks, and wilderness trails. Thousands more could be enrolled in a rebooted CCC to restore forests and wetlands, helping draw planet-warming carbon out of the atmosphere.
Creating these kinds of programs would be complex, and costly. But the individual and collective benefits would be immeasurable. And as was the case during the Great Depression, many young people would be given the chance to do something they desperately want and need to do right now: Get the hell out of their childhood homes and live with their peers.
On Intercepted, I spoke about this prospect with Neil Maher, professor of history at Rutgers University–Newark and the author of a definitive history of the Civilian Conservation Corps, “Nature’s New Deal.” He told me that in his research into the CCC, he came across many participants describing their time in the program as a kind of sleepaway camp or even an outdoor university: a unique chance to live collectively, away from their families and the city, and become adults. But unlike so many actual university campuses that can’t reopen safely — given the daily commutes of faculty, staff, and many students — modern-day CCC-inspired camps could be designed as Covid “bubbles.”
The program would have to test participants on the way in, quarantine anyone who tested positive for two weeks, and then everyone would stay at the camp until the job was done (or at least their part of it). It could be that rare triple win: Heal some of the damage done to our ravaged planet, offer an economic and social lifeline to people in need, and design what might be one of the most Covid-safe workplaces around.
In the panic about this “lost generation,” there has been a lot of talk about how there is no work for young people. But that is a lie. There is no end of meaningful work that desperately needs doing — in our schools, hospitals, and on the land. We just need to create the jobs.
View of the waterfront from Vancouver Island, British Columbia, Canada. (photo: Mark Goodnow/Getty)
Canada Sends Patrols to 'Prevent Caravans of Americans' From Surging Across the Border
Peter Wade, Rolling Stone
Wade writes: "Since March, the U.S.-Canada border has been closed to all but essential traffic in an effort to contain the spread of the coronavirus. But Americans being Americans, they are flouting the new regulations in the pursuit of their usual summer fun."
READ MORE
U.S. District Court Judge Carlton W. Reeves. (photo: Sanjay Suchak/UVA Communications)
Judge's Blistering Opinion Says Courts Have Placed Police Beyond Accountability
Justin Jouvenal, The Washington Post
Jouvenal writes: "The federal judge made clear in his blistering opinion that he thought Clarence Jamison was doing nothing more than driving a Mercedes as a Black man when he was stopped by a White Mississippi police officer."
A federal judge in Mississippi said a White police officer’s stop of a Black driver was a miscarriage of justice, but he still dismissed the man’s civil suit because of a controversial legal doctrine.
he federal judge made clear in his blistering opinion that he thought Clarence Jamison was doing nothing more than driving a Mercedes as a Black man when he was stopped by a White Mississippi police officer. The officer detained Jamison for nearly two hours, tore his car apart looking for drugs and left him on the side of the road when nothing was found.
U.S. District Court Judge Carlton W. Reeves placed the 2013 case alongside others that have sparked outrage, citing the deaths of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor at the hands of police. He lamented that thousands had lost their lives to police use-of-force and countless others had been subject to misconduct by officers.
Even so, Reeves dismissed Jamison’s civil suit arguing that Richland police officer Nick McClendon had violated his rights. In an opinion released Monday, Reeves wrote that the case was a miscarriage of justice, but that his hands were tied by a once-obscure legal doctrine that is coming under increasing fire as the nation reckons with how to hold police responsible for misdeeds: qualified immunity.
Qualified immunity shields government officials from personal civil liability for carrying out their duties, unless the official violates a statutory or constitutional right clearly established by a previous case. The idea is to allow government officials wide latitude to do their jobs without being hamstrung by frequent and costly litigation.
But Reeves in his ruling and other critics claim that judges have effectively walled police officers off from accountability. He urged the Supreme Court to take up cases challenging qualified immunity. Some state legislatures are examining bills to weaken qualified immunity as well in the wake of Floyd’s killing, and activists have targeted it as a major goal for police overhaul.
“Under that law, the officer who transformed a short traffic stop into an almost two-hour, life-altering ordeal is entitled to qualified immunity,” wrote Reeves, who presides in the Southern District of Mississippi. “But let us not be fooled by legal jargon. Immunity is not exoneration. And the harm in this case to one man sheds light on the harm done to the nation by this manufactured doctrine.”
Reeves, who was nominated to the bench in 2010 by President Barack Obama, has not shied away from sharp opinions. He generated headlines last year when he likened President Trump’s attacks on the judiciary to those in previous decades by the Ku Klux Klan.
McClendon and his attorney did not respond to requests for comment. The Richland Police Department, where he works, declined to comment on the ruling.
Jamison was driving home to South Carolina from a vacation in Arizona when he was stopped by McClendon on July 29, 2013, according to the opinion. McClendon testified that he pulled Jamison over in Pelahatchie, Miss., because Jamison’s temporary tag was folded over so he couldn’t make out his license plate number.
McClendon testified that he ran Jamison’s driver’s license and plates before asking the driver if he could search his car for drugs or other contraband. McClendon said Jamison quickly agreed, but Jamison testified that McClendon asked him five times to search his car and told him falsely that he had received a call that there were 10 kilos of cocaine in the vehicle.
Feeling tired of the conversation, Jamison agreed to the search as long as he could watch what was going on, he testified during proceedings in the lawsuit.
McClendon testified that he found nothing during an extensive search, before using a dog to sniff the vehicle. After 1 hour 50 minutes, McClendon finally departed.
Jamison testified that he got an estimate that the search caused $4,000 worth of damage to the car — his convertible top had to be replaced and his seats restitched.
Jamison eventually sued McClendon and others, claiming that his constitutional rights were violated because the search was illegal and he was racially profiled.
But one by one, judges ruled that Jamison’s claims against McClendon had to be dismissed because of qualified immunity. Reeves’s ruling issued Monday was the final one, despite his misgivings. Over 72 pages, he traced the origins of qualified immunity in Reconstruction and how it has evolved to the current day. He cited a litany of cases where he thought the doctrine had thwarted justice.
“Just as the Supreme Court swept away the doctrine of ‘separate but equal,’ so too should it eliminate the doctrine of qualified immunity,” Reeves wrote.
Jamison did not respond to requests for an interview, and his attorney declined to comment, but he testified in the case that he was shaken by the incident. He recalled being disturbed after seeing a report of a man who was shot by police after a traffic stop.
“I don’t watch the news no more,” Jamison told a judge.
Sen. Bernie Sanders. (photo: Kena Betancur/Getty)
Bernie Sanders Unveiled a Plan to Tax the 'Obscene Wealth Gains' of Billionaires During the Pandemic
Joseph Zeballos-Roig, Business Insider
Zeballos-Roig writes: "Democratic Sen. Bernie Sanders rolled out a plan on Tuesday to tax the 'obscene wealth gains' of billionaires during the coronavirus pandemic - and use the generated revenue to guarantee healthcare for every American for a year."
READ MORE
Mary Trump. (photo: ZUMA Wire)
"The World's Most Dangerous Man": Mary Trump on Her Uncle, President Trump, and Why He Must Be Ousted
Democracy Now!
Excerpt: "Mary Trump discusses her book 'Too Much and Never Enough: How My Family Created the World's Most Dangerous Man,' in which she describes his upbringing in a dysfunctional family that fostered his greed, cruelty and racist and sexist behaviors - which he is now inflicting on the world."
Former president of Ecuador Rafael Correa, 2013. (photo: Wikimedia)
Ecuador's Neoliberal Government Is Trying to Ban Rafael Correa From the 2021 Elections
Denis Rogatyuk, Jacobin
Rogatyuk writes: "Former president Rafael Correa is Ecuador's most popular politician - yet LenÃn Moreno's government is trying to ban his party from standing in next year's elections. Faced with a mass uprising against IMF-backed reforms and disgust at his mishandling of COVID-19, president Moreno is using phony lawsuits to thwart the democratic process."
Former president Rafael Correa is Ecuador’s most popular politician — yet LenÃn Moreno’s government is trying to ban his party from standing in next year’s elections. Faced with a mass uprising against IMF-backed reforms and disgust at his mishandling of COVID-19, president Moreno is using phony lawsuits to thwart the democratic process.
n recent weeks, the lawfare waged against Ecuador’s former president Rafael Correa reached new levels of viciousness — and desperation. On July 20, Ecuador’s national court ratified its previous decision sentencing Correa to eight years in prison in the “Bribes Case,” alleging that the left-wing president had operated a web of corruption during his time in government.
This came only the day after a decision by the National Electoral Council and the comptroller general, Pablo Celi — each aligned to LenÃn Moreno’s neoliberal government — to deregister Correa’s electoral front and block it from participating in the 2021 general election. Last week, this decision was itself overturned by the Electoral Contention Court, but further legal moves against the party are expected.
Despite the Moreno regime’s eagerness to bend electoral laws and legal proceedings in order to thwart the country’s most popular leader, Correa’s own core of supporters has remained intact. July 8 saw the birth of a new coalition that incorporated the leaders and supporters of his Citizens’ Revolution, together with other forces opposed to the Moreno regime. Since its launch four weeks ago, this Unión por la Esperanza (Unity for Hope) coalition has attracted social movements, smaller left-wing organizations, indigenous groups, and students’ and women’s collectives under its banner.
At the same time, the government faces fresh instability with the resignation of Otto Sonnenholzner as vice president and his replacement by MarÃa Alejandra Muñoz. While a number of other ministers have also tended their resignation to Moreno, Sonnenholzner’s exit has marks the first time in Ecuadorian history that three vice presidents have been replaced in a single presidential term. His resignation has been accompanied by increasing rumors that he intends to challenge for the presidency at the 2021 elections. Together with the worsening socio-economic situation and unending waves of COVID-19 cases across the country, Ecuador finds itself on the path to becoming a failed state.
A Legal Case That Reeks of Desperation
The campaign of political persecution against Correa arguably tops those already instigated against other left-wing leaders in Latin America like Lula da Silva in Brazil, Cristina Kirchner in Argentina, and his own former vice president Jorge Glas. It stands out for its sheer absurdity, the blatant lack of due process and the neoliberal regime’s naked cynicism in pressing outlandish charges.
The National Justice Court Tribune (TCNJ) ratified the eight-year jail sentence against Correa on July 20 after the rejection of an appeal by Correa’s legal team, headed by Fausto JarrÃn. The prosecution, headed by attorney general Diana Salazar, has consistently alleged that the former president operated a “web of corruption” during his last term in office from 2013–17, with his then-party Alianza PAIS serving as the front organization to receive bribes of up to $7.8 million from private firms like notorious Brazilian construction giant Odebrecht.
The prosecution has consistently focused on just one piece of alleged material evidence — $6,000 that Correa borrowed from the presidential fund and then paid back. Prior to this sentencing, Correa has faced twenty-five other charges ranging from bribery to corruption and even kidnapping.
As with the “Bribes Case,” Correa’s legal team and allies have consistently pointed to the lack of any substantial evidence or due process, violations of Ecuador’s penal code, and refusal to admit key pieces of evidence that contradict the testimonies against Correa.
Jorge Glas, Correa’s vice president during his last term in office, was similarly persecuted in a legal case that lacks any respect for his rights. The proceedings have been full of irregularities, such as the lack of any right of appeal, a higher-than-normal sentence, and a transfer to a maximum security prison despite evidence of his deteriorating health.
At the same time, other historic leaders of the Citizens’ Revolution piloted by Correa have found themselves persecuted by Moreno’s authoritarian regime. Former foreign minister Ricardo Patiño, the former national assembly president Gabriela Rivadeneira, and former constituent assembly member Sofia Espin have all been forced to seek asylum in Mexico. Others like Virgilio Hernández and the current prefect of Pichincha, Paola Pabón, were arrested and imprisoned for several months after the mass indigenous-led uprising against Moreno’s International Monetary Fund (IMF)–backed austerity reforms in October 2019.
The persecution against Correa and his allies has long been centered around stopping them from participating in the presidential elections scheduled for February 2021. However, the electoral strength of Correa and the Citizens’ Revolution (estimated at between 35 and 40 percent of the electorate) effectively makes it Ecuador’s strongest political movement, regardless of its leaders’ status. Only through the elimination of its legal political representation can the Moreno regime and its right-wing allies prevent, or at least forestall, its return to power.
Electoral Fraud
Ever since the initial breakup of the Alianza PAIS party in October 2017 and the creation of the Citizens’ Revolution movement, the Moreno regime and its allies within the judiciary have consistently tried to bury the legacy of correÃsmo, in particular by blocking it from registering to stand for election.
The first attempts came in January 2018, when Correa and the twenty-nine members of Ecuador’s National Assembly that supported him attempted to form the “Citizens’ Revolution” electoral list. This was rejected by the electoral council on the grounds that this phrase was already used by “another movement” (most likely the Moreno-aligned remnant of Alianza PAIS, a party which once included both him and Correa).
Following this, Correa’s supporters attempted to register under the name of “Alfarist Revolution” using the name of the leader of Ecuador’s liberal revolution, Eloy Alfaro, president from 1895–1901 and 1906–1911. This was also rejected as misleading, on the grounds that Alfaro belonged to the liberal political tradition — not the socialist one.
Unable to register their own party name, Correa and his allies linked up with the minor National Accord Movement in May 2018, with Ricardo Patiño being elected as its new secretary. However, following an internal conflict with the existing leadership — a faction which refused to recognize the new Correa-aligned elements — this organization was also abandoned.
Finally, in December 2018, an agreement was reached between the Citizens’ Revolution movement and Fuerza Compromiso Social (FCS), previously led by Moreno ally Ivan Espinel, for the Citizens’ Revolution movement leaders to be integrated into the party and participate in the 2019 local elections.
The result was a relative success, as the party mobilized millions of votes and scored important victories in the provinces of Pichincha and Manabà (the country’s second and third most populous, respectively) despite the hostility of the private and public media, and the ongoing persecution against Correa. Despite, or perhaps due to, these successes, the Moreno regime continued to look for new ways of preventing Correa and his allies from participating in the key 2021 presidential elections.
This attempt escalated in early 2020 with the “Bribes Case” ruling in March and its ratification in July. This threatens to block Correa from holding public office for the next twenty-five years, although there may be further appeals given the continued campaign by Correa’s legal team. In early July, Pablo Celi demanded that the National Electoral Council eliminate FCS from the list of legal political parties, along with three other minor parties.
Although the Ecuadorian constitution explicitly prohibits the comptroller from influencing the decision of the electoral council, this has not stopped Moreno allies from doing so. There followed a game of legal ping-pong between the Electoral Contentions Court (TCE, the judicial body that oversees the implementation of electoral laws) and the National Electoral Council (CNE), the former initially rejecting the latter’s appeal to proscribe the party.
Under pressure from both Attorney General Diana Salazar and Pablo Celi, the CNE resolved to eliminate FCS on July 19, unless Correa and his team could appeal the decision and present the required evidence to maintain the party’s legal status.
Since then, the legal ping-pong has ensued between the TCE and the CNE. The TCE rejected the proscription of FCS twice between mid-July and early August. However, the efforts to prevent the participation of the pro-Correa electoral front are likely to continue up until the election campaign in February 2021.
A New Hope?
In this sense, it seems there is no end to the lawfare against Correa and his party. Yet even if the regime succeeds in eliminating FCS, their efforts to target this organization may have already been proven in vain. The Unity for Hope coalition was founded at the start of July in an online meeting between Correa and other representatives of the Citizens’ Revolution, as well as various progressive organizations, social movements, and individuals opposed to Moreno.
Apart from Correa’s Citizens’ Revolution movement, the new coalition involves the Democratic Center led by journalist and former prefect of Guayas, Jimmy Jairala, who was aligned with Correa’s government from 2013 to 2017; the Permanent Forum of Ecuadorian Women; the Confederation of Indigenous Peoples and Peasant Organizations (FEI) driven by José Agualsaca MP; the National Patriotic Front led by former ambassador to Brazil, Horacio Sevilla; and SurGente led by Correa’s former minister of labor, Leonardo Berrezueta. In a recent interview with El Ciudadano, Ricardo Patiño mentioned over twenty other political and social movements seeking to join the coalition.
Although there are no details regarding the possible candidates for president and vice president, the former leaders of the Citizens’ Revolution are likely to be featured prominently.
The formation of Unity for Hope, as well as the wider socio-economic circumstances, bear some resemblance to the first formation of Alianza PAIS before the 2006 presidential elections, with some of the key popular demands being the formation of a constituent assembly and a new constitution.
Each case is marked by a deep institutional crisis, an economic crisis compounded by the implementation of a harsh IMF program, and the spontaneous rise of a mass anti-austerity movement. We saw this with the indigenous revolt in October 2019, as with the Forajidos uprising in 2005, where indigenous and urban social movements overthrew president Lucio Gutiérrez following the implementation of IMF-backed socio-economic reforms.
Yet the opposition is not united. The Pachakutik party, which has traditionally claimed to represent the country’s indigenous population through the Confederation of Indigenous Nationalities of Ecuador (CONAIE), has so far vehemently opposed any formal cooperation with Correa and his movements.
This is primarily based on two factors — the history of the movement’s conflicts with the Correa administration, and its own recent alignment with traditional right-wing forces, the most prominent example of which was its electoral alliance with conservative tycoon Guillermo Lasso, during the 2017 elections.
More disappointingly, Leonidas Iza, the indigenous leader from the province of Pichincha and one of the key organizers of the October 2019 revolt, recently claimed that “correismo is not a representative of the Left [in Ecuador] and instead favours the large [economic] power groups” — a reference to their long-standing claims that Correa’s government was not radical enough in dealing with large corporations (particularly in the mining sector).
It remains to be seen if Pachakutik would repeat its disastrous electoral strategy of 2017 and align with the Right or recognize the need for a popular front against neoliberalism, and the return of a socialist government to power.
The strategy of the two major right-wing political alliances — the Social Christian Party and the CREO alliance led by Lasso — also remains unclear, as both of them have, in one way or another, supported Moreno’s economic policies and aligned against Correa.
No Clear Future
While the Moreno administration’s legal apparatus has proved itself to be efficient in keeping its political opponents on the sidelines, the same cannot be said of its handling of the COVID-19 pandemic, the economy, or even its own institutions.
Indeed, the abrupt resignation of vice-president Otto Sonnenholzner was accompanied by those of foreign minister José Valencia, and secretary of communication, Gustavo Isch (the fifth resignation from that post in three years). At the same time, the official COVID-19 statistics stood at 83,193 active cases at the end of July and 5,623 dead — yet, the real numbers are potentially much higher due to the devastation that the outbreak caused in the city of Guayaquil throughout April and May. Finally, the IMF-recommended reforms and austerity remain in place and continue to be implemented by the Moreno regime, despite potential damage to the pressured health care system.
This overall political and economic crisis in the country is creating an unprecedented power vacuum, with the government’s future highly uncertain just six months before elections. Through attempting to eliminate Rafael Correa’s legacy and the electoral path for his return, Moreno and his allies have also incarcerated, purged, and exiled the political leaders most capable of handling the current crisis.
For his part, Correa promises to fill the vacuum of authority with a popular government based on the ideas of Sumak Kawsay (Good Living), as opposed to repression and austerity. The latter is the time-honored course of action historically favored by authoritarian governments across the continent. For Ecuador’s sake, we can only hope Moreno doesn’t succeed in doing the same.
Eureka Sound on Ellesmere Island in the Canadian Arctic. (photo: Michael Studinger/NASA)
Ice Caps Formed During Little Ice Age Roughly 5,000 Years Ago Completely Disappear From Canada
Li Cohen, CBS News
Cohen writes: "Two ancient ice caps in Canada have completely melted - two years earlier than scientists predicted."
NASA satellite imagery captured the disappearance of the St. Patrick Bay ice caps, which date back roughly 5,000 years to the Little Ice Age, the National Snow and Ice Data Center said in a statement.
The ice caps were located on the Hazen Plateau of northeastern Ellesmere Island in Nunavut, Canada, the country's northernmost territory.
Mark Serreze, director of the National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC), said he first visited the ice caps in 1982 to conduct research as part of his graduate studies at the University of Massachusetts. Upon that first visit, "they seemed like such a permanent fixture of the landscape," he said in the statement.
"To watch them die in less than 40 years just blows me away," Serreze added.
The St. Patrick Bay ice caps made up half of the ice caps on the Hazen Plateau. Although the remaining caps are at a higher elevation and "faring better," scientists say their "demise is imminent as well."
In 2017, Serreze published research about the ice caps that warned of their ultimate disappearance. He had predicted that they would last until 2022 — an estimate that was supported by information gathered by NASA's Advanced Spaceborne Thermal Emission and Reflection Radiometer (ASTER).
Images included in the 2017 research show that there was a significant decrease in the size of the ice caps from 2001 to 2014. In 2015, the larger ice cap of the two covered 7% of the area it did in 1959, and the smaller one covered just 6% of its 1959 size. By 2016, both caps had been reduced to 5% of their original size.
"We've long known that as climate change takes hold, the effects would be especially pronounced in the Arctic," Serreze said. "But the death of those two little caps that I once knew so well has made climate change very personal. All that's left are some photographs and a lot of memories."
While the caps likely would have disappeared on their own eventually, the NSIDC said that fossil fuel burning has contributed to their decline by warming the Arctic in recent decades.
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