29 September 20
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Paul Krugman | Trump's Stalinist Approach to Science
Paul Krugman, The New York Times
Krugman writes: "Lysenko was a Soviet agronomist who decided that modern genetics was all wrong [...] He even denied that genes existed, while insisting that long-discredited views about evolution were actually right."
Bully and ignore the experts, and send in the quacks.
ately I’ve found myself thinking about Trofim Lysenko.
Who? Lysenko was a Soviet agronomist who decided that modern genetics was all wrong, indeed contrary to Marxist-Leninist principles. He even denied that genes existed, while insisting that long-discredited views about evolution were actually right. Real scientists marveled at his ignorance.
But Joseph Stalin liked him, so Lysenko’s views became official doctrine, and scientists who refused to endorse them were sent to labor camps or executed. Lysenkoism became the basis for much of the Soviet Union’s agricultural policy, eventually contributing to the disastrous famines of the 1930s.
Does all of this sound a bit familiar given recent events in America?
Donald Trump. (photo: Scott Olson/Getty Images)
Nathan Robinson | Trump's Tax Avoidance Is a National Disgrace. Don't Let Him Blame 'the System'
Nathan Robinson, Guardian UK
Excerpt: "Americans paid for Trump's $73m tax refund - and he's laughing all the way to the bank."
ell, now we know why Donald Trump didn’t want the public to see his tax returns. A New York Times investigation looking at years of previously undisclosed documents found that Trump used countless maneuvers to avoid having to pay federal income tax. He ended up paying $750 total in 2016 despite hundreds of millions of dollars in income from The Apprentice and his various companies and licensing arrangements. Many years he paid nothing at all, and even received an income tax refund of $72.9m, which included millions in interest, straight from the federal treasury to Trump’s pocket.
The New York Times paints a picture of an elaborate shell game in which losses from some of his companies are used to wipe out tax liabilities elsewhere. It is not always clear how much of his “losses” are real losses rather than creative accounting, but the Times suggests that Trump may be both living large on hundreds of millions in annual income and overseeing distressed and unprofitable businesses.
We had known some of this already. Trump had admitted publicly that he used a $916m loss reported on his 1995 tax return to avoid paying any federal income tax for years. Trump’s former attorney Michael Cohen testified last year that he remembered Trump “showing him a huge check from the US Treasury some years earlier” and commenting “that he could not believe how stupid the government was for giving someone like him that much money back”. But now we have stark confirmation of the facts: Trump is a billionaire who doesn’t pay his taxes, leaving the financial responsibility for funding the government to ordinary working people. It’s a national disgrace.
Trump will, of course, spin all of this as simply sound business practice. He has previously said that tax avoidance makes him “smart”, and that he is simply taking advantage of perfectly legal and legitimate loopholes. Indeed, some Americans might be inclined to see it the same way. Everyone gets to pay as little in tax as they can get away with under the law, if Trump has found a way to pay nothing, that’s a problem with the system rather than with him.
There are a few reasons why we shouldn’t dismiss it like this, though.
First, the New York Times not only showed that Trump didn’t pay taxes, but it also revealed that some of the methods he used may have bordered on the criminal. The usual distinction made between “tax avoidance” (legal) and “tax evasion” (illegal) is murky in Trump’s case, and the Times reports that the IRS has been looking into his questionable refund and the New York attorney general has been investigating whether he inflated land appraisals to increase his deductions. In his returns, there are allegedly questionable “consulting” fees that seem to have been paid to his children and then claimed as business expenses, thus reducing his liability. Much of Trump’s lavish lifestyle is treated as a business expense. This is easy to claim, since much of his “business” consists of “being Donald Trump”. So he wrote off $70,000 of hairstyling as a business expense. If he is selling a brand, and the brand is “hedonistic self-indulgence”, then, as the Times put it, “everything that feeds the image … can be written off.”
A particularly egregious instance of bending the law stands out. In 1996, Trump bought a 50,000 sq ft historic mansion in Westchester county, which is surrounded by nature preserves. Trump threatened to develop the property and the people in surrounding towns objected, so instead he agreed not to develop it in exchange for a “$21.1m charitable tax deduction” for land preservation. Trump then classified the mansion as an investment rather than a residence so that he could reduce his property taxes, even though it appears the Trump family did indeed live in it.
So it may not just be that Trump is a businessman with unusually shrewd accountants. He might be exactly what he looks like: a tax cheat. The New York Times reports that most similarly wealthy people pay far more than Trump in taxes. Hell, I pay far more than Trump in taxes, and I edit a tiny print magazine. This could be more a case of fraud than cleverness, even if the law has not yet caught up with Trump.
It’s true that Trump benefited from a system that rewards those who can afford the most creative accountants. We obviously won’t fix the problem by encouraging Donald Trump to feel ashamed of himself, or even by voting him out of office. But Trump is not a mere passive beneficiary of a broken set of rules. The billionaires don’t just exploit the loopholes. They also make them through pushing for ever-expanding exemptions from the tax burden they would otherwise pay. In Trump’s case, it is true in the most literal sense that he made the rules he benefits from. Trump’s major legislative initiative was a whole new tax cut tilted toward giving wealthy people like himself even more favorable treatment. It’s one thing to pay only your legal minimum but understand that the system is unfair. It’s quite another to be actively trying to make that system more grotesquely unequal.
Americans should be disgusted that Trump paid sums ranging from $750 to nothing in federal income taxes. Both his own behavior and the system that made it possible are outrageous. After all, when billionaires don’t pay their taxes, the rest of us have to cover the gaps. When you look at your own tax bill, understand that it could be lower if super-wealthy people like Trump weren’t trying to shift the burden onto everyone else. You paid for Trump’s $73m tax refund and he’s laughing all the way to the bank.
The Times investigation shows us both a system that is corrupted and the way the president has made every sketchy maneuver possible to avoid contributing to the public good. Anyone who believes the rich should pay their fair share should realize that the situation will only grow worse so long as Trump holds power.
A demonstrator holds a sign with the image of Breonna Taylor. (photo: Jason Connolly/AFP/Getty Images)
Kentucky AG to Make Breonna Taylor Grand Jury Recordings Available, After Juror Demands Release
Danika Fears, The Daily Beast
Fears writes: "Kentucky Attorney General Daniel Cameron will make recordings available of the secret proceedings that led to no charges in the death of Breonna Taylor."
“The Grand Jury is meant to be a secretive body,” but it is “apparent that the public interest in this case isn’t going to allow that to happen,” a statement from his office read. The recordings will be released Wednesday.
“The full story and absolute truth of how this matter was handled from beginning to end is now an issue of great public interest and has become a large part of the discussion of public trust throughout the country,” an attorney for the unnamed juror wrote in the court documents. The lawsuit accuses Cameron of “failing to answer specific questions regarding the charges presented.” “Attorney General Cameron attempted to make it very clear that the grand jury alone made the decision on who and what to charge based solely on the evidence presented to them,” the motion says. “Using the grand jurors as a shield to deflect accountability and responsibility for these decisions only sows more seeds of doubt in the process while leaving a cold chill down the spines of future jurors.”
The three officers involved in the raid on Taylor’s apartment have not been charged for her death. Only former detective Brett Hankison was indicted by the grand jury, but for firing shots that hit neighboring apartments.
A patient hospitalized with COVID-19. (photo: BioSpace)
The US Ranks at the Top of the World's Coronavirus Death Toll of More Than 1 Million
Madeline Holcombe, CNN
Holcombe writes: "More than 1 million people have died worldwide from Covid-19, and the United States accounts for more than 20% of the death toll."
In less than nine months, the death toll jumped from one coronavirus-related death -- in Wuhan, China, on January 9 -- to 1,002,628 early Tuesday, according to data from Johns Hopkins University. The US has been hit hard by the virus, with almost 7.2 million reported infections and more than 205,000 deaths.
With recent spikes in US cases, health experts warn things could soon get worse.
Only 20 states are holding steady when it comes to the average of daily new cases compared to last week, while 23 are reporting increases: Alabama, Alaska, Colorado, Idaho, Indiana, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, North Carolina, North Dakota, Oregon, South Carolina, South Dakota, Utah, Vermont, Washington, Wisconsin and Wyoming.
Seven states show downward trends: Arizona, Florida, Georgia, Maryland, Rhode Island, Texas and Virginia.
Fall and winter promise to drive more people indoors and bring about flu season, and experts say Americans need to be consistent in following guidelines. Mask wearing, social distancing and avoiding large crowds will be key, experts say, along with authorities increasing testing as infections surge again.
Worldwide, the US dubiously ranks No. 1 in the total number of reported deaths and fifth per 100,000 people.
Johns Hopkins' tally shows the US, Brazil, India and Mexico account for more than 50% of coronavirus deaths.
Some states fight spikes while others ease restrictions
As trends vary across the US, some local leaders are stepping back toward normal while others are clamping down on efforts to combat the virus' spread.
Chicago bars, restaurants, gyms and personal services will be allowed to expand service Thursday because of "sufficient progress in the fight against Covid-19," Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot said Monday.
"Over the past six months, we have asked so much of our business community, but each time, our businesses have stepped up to the plate," she said in a news release. "This next step in our reopening is good news for business owners as well as the communities they serve and the thousands of residents that work for them."
Hard-hit California is seeing coronavirus positivity rate, hospitalizations and new cases trending downward, Gov. Gavin Newsom said Monday, but he cautioned the numbers could pick back up if residents don't remain vigilant.
Meanwhile, New York will release guidance this week to reopen "Covid-safe" homeless shelters, noting a rise in cases among homeless encampments, Gov. Andrew Cuomo said. Cases are also rising at an "alarming" rate in parts of Brooklyn and Queens, the New York City Health Department said.
New Jersey is set to receive 2.6 million rapid coronavirus tests from the federal government to help fight spikes in cases.
Coronavirus and children
Children account for about 10% of coronavirus cases, but people should still pay attention to virus spread in that age group, said Dr. Anthony Fauci, a member of the White House Coronavirus Task Force.
"Children do get infected, and we'd better be careful about just dismissing infection in children," Fauci said, adding it's unclear the degree to which they transmit the virus.
Some studies suggest they don't spread it as "efficiently" as adults, said Fauci, who is director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.
"It's an evolving situation," he said. "You have got to keep an open mind when it comes to an issue like what the role of children is in transmission."
Covid-19 cases among ages 12 to 17 well outpaced the cases in children ages 5 to 11, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said in a report published Monday.
The report included data on 277,285 laboratory-confirmed cases among school-age children in the US from March 1 to September 19. Among the cases, 37% were in children ages 5 to 11 and 63% were in adolescents.
The data might underestimate the true incidence of disease among school-age children, as testing was often prioritized for people with symptoms, and those without symptoms may not have been tested, the researchers noted.
United States Postal Service worker. (photo: Paul Ratje/AFP/Getty Images)
Postal Service Workforce, Flattened by the Pandemic, Quietly Resists DeJoy's Changes
Antonia Noori Farzan, Jennifer Hassan, Brittany Shammas, Miriam Berger, Lateshia Beachum and Kim Bellware, The Washington Post
Excerpt: "This summer, as controversial new procedures at the U.S. Postal Service snarled the nation's mail delivery and stirred fears of how the agency would handle the election, rank-and-file workers quietly began to resist."
Mechanics in New York drew out the dismantling and removal of mail-sorting machines until their supervisor gave up on the order. In Michigan, a group of letter carriers did an end run around a supervisor’s directive to leave election mail behind, starting their routes late to sift through it. In Ohio, postal clerks culled prescriptions and benefit checks from bins of stalled mail to make sure they were delivered, while some carriers ran late items out on their own time. In Pennsylvania, some postal workers looked for any excuse — a missed turn, heavy traffic, a rowdy dog — to buy enough time to finish their daily rounds.
“I can’t see any postal worker not bending those rules,” one Philadelphia staffer said in an interview.
With the Postal Service expected to play a historic role in this year’s election, some of the agency’s 630,000 workers say they feel a responsibility to counteract cost-cutting changes from their new boss, Postmaster General Louis DeJoy, that they blame for the mail slowdowns. They question whether DeJoy — a top Republican fundraiser and booster of President Trump — is politicizing the institution in service to a president who has actively tried to sow distrust of mail-in voting, insisting without evidence that it will lead to massive fraud.
DeJoy insists the operational shifts were not politically motivated, emphasizing that he inherited an agency on the verge of financial collapse. At the time of his arrival in June, the Postal Service also was trying to fend off a takeover by Trump’s Treasury Department, according to internal Postal Service documents. Its workforce was getting flattened by the pandemic as a result of surging absences and package volumes, and its biggest customer, Amazon, was threatening to pull its multibillion-dollar business.
With a mandate to stabilize the Postal Service’s balance sheet, especially its $160.9 billion deficit, DeJoy imposed stricter dispatch schedules on transport trucks that prohibited late and extra trips, forcing workers to leave mail behind. Managers cracked down on overtime, though DeJoy contends they did so of their own accord. He also declined to reinstall hundreds of mail-sorting machines and blue collection boxes removed under his watch. Though he put some of these efforts on hold after public backlash, and four federal judges have since issued temporary injunctions on all operational changes, DeJoy has deeper cuts in store. He told lawmakers last month to expect “dramatic” changes after the November election, including reductions in service and price increases for Americans in rural areas.
DeJoy’s approach marks a fundamental shift, experts say, modeling the agency as more business enterprise than government service. But it also has profound implications for employees in the form of heavier workloads and lost overtime.
In interviews, 15 Postal Service workers and local union leaders in eight states described a deep decline in morale since DeJoy made clear his intent to retool the Postal Service — with little input from the heavily unionized workforce — that have fixed intense public and congressional scrutiny on the agency. They also say they are prepared to defy directives that would limit how they do their jobs.
Most of the workers interviewed for this report spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were acting against agency guidance. Last month, an internal Postal Service memo warned employees not to speak to journalists and to be wary of customers who ask “a series of questions.”
The Postal Service’s dire financial situation, coupled with mounting political pressure, and worries about an election in which nearly 180 million Americans are eligible to vote by mail, has begun to overwhelm its workforce.
“People are burned out,” one New Jersey letter carrier said. “I haven’t been this burned out in a long time, and I’ve been doing this a long time. We’ve never had a summer like this. I tell my customers, ‘Call your congressman, because I’m being told not to deliver your mail.’ ”
‘Every piece, every day’
New postal workers are introduced to the agency’s unofficial motto within their first days on the job: “Every piece, every day.” It’s referenced so frequently that “EPED” is shorthand to work faster, or longer, when mail piles up. Any conscious effort to delay mail is, under federal law, punishable by fine and as much as five years of imprisonment.
Many postal workers see the changes that have slowed mail as violating the spirit, if not the letter, of that law.
They view themselves as couriers of prescription medications, paychecks, bills and more, and also as neighbors to the people on their routes, checking in on elderly residents and delivering life’s necessities. The coronavirus pandemic has only magnified that sense of responsibility, they say.
“You look at the news and you get worried,” said one Philadelphia postal worker. “Are we going to be the end-all, be-all of election integrity and covid response for this country? Having your own personal problems, too, it all adds up. I think it’s really starting to get to people, both newer and seasoned veterans of the job.”
Since his June 15 start, DeJoy has focused on shoring up the Postal Service’s finances. Despite surging package volumes during the pandemic, the agency has been losing ground on first-class and marketing mail — its most profitable products — for years.
“The thing is, right now the size of their hole is so big and continuing to grow, there is no one silver bullet to fix this,” said Kenneth John, president of the Postal Policy Associates consultancy and a former senior analyst at the Government Accountability Office. “They’ve done a lot of the low-hanging fruit already, so you’re left with a set of really difficult choices. You’re left with really big changes.”
What’s more, he added, DeJoy’s efforts can close only a relatively small portion of the agency’s deficit. “You’re either left with these difficult choices and big changes, or ultimately, Congress is going to need to pay for it.”
Much of the Postal Service’s financial difficulty is structural: Congress reorganized the agency in 1970 and essentially ordered it to operate as both a public service and business. As such, it is supposed to be self-sustaining without benefit of taxpayer funding. But the passage of the 2006 Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act mandated that it prepay employees’ retirement and health-care benefits, an obligation held by few other government agencies, let alone private companies. Today, retiree costs account for nearly three-fourths, or $119.3 billion, of its deficit.
Because the Postal Service lacks revenue streams divorced from mail volumes, nearly any cost-cutting maneuver would almost certainly hurt service, an issue that draws heaps of congressional attention even as lawmakers have put off substantial postal reform. But some of DeJoy’s changes go right to the heart of the agency’s operations. Some flexibility in delivery schedules, such as allowing late or extra delivery trips, ensures that mail arrives on time, experts say, and prevents backlogs.
Postal leaders have long relied on overtime to keep the mail moving, as it is more cost efficient than expanding payroll. That supplemental income is a boon for many workers — comprising nearly 10 percent of all work hours within any given pay period — but an albatross for agency finances. Yet government watchdog groups, including the Postal Service’s Office of Inspector General, have identified overtime as a potential source of cost savings.
“If it means you’re going to hire more workers, there are going to be more families that have a family-sustaining union job, that’s fine with us,” said Mark Dimondstein, president of the American Postal Workers Union (APWU), which represents more than 200,000 current and retired postal employees. “If it means you’re going to cut out overtime and, therefore, the people are not going to get the service that they need and deserve, then it’s horrible.”
The cost-cutting efforts have led to multiday delays in communities all over the country. As of the final week of August — five weeks after DeJoy’s changes took effect — on-time delivery rates for first-class mail had declined from more than 90 percent to roughly 85 percent, according to Postal Service data provided to Congress. For periodicals, they went from 80 percent to 75 percent.
John Barger, a Republican member of the Postal Service’s governing board, told the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee this month that DeJoy’s changes were starting to “bear fruit” and that the board was pleased with his performance. “The board is tickled pink,” he said.
“Thanks to the great work and dedication of our employees, our service performance continues to improve,” a Postal Service spokesman said in an emailed statement to The Post.
But some workers vividly recalled scenes of mail and packages piling up, days at a time, this summer during the worst stretches of the transition. Postal workers in Michigan and Iowa described seeing entire pallets of boxes go unsorted and sit outdoors in the rain or summer heat. Sometimes the smell of rotting food attracted swarms of flies, they said.
At the Royal Palm Processing and Distribution Center in Opa-locka, Fla., massive stacks of marketing mail sat untouched for 43 days, according to local union officials.
“You know, it’s just disheartening,” said Dana Coletti, president of the American Postal Workers Union Local 230 in Manchester, N.H.
Four federal courts have also found DeJoy’s changes to be unlawful. Judges in Washington state, New York, Pennsylvania and the District of Columbia all held that the Postal Service should have sought an advisory opinion from the Postal Regulatory Commission — a process that would have allowed for public comment — before instituting the new policies. The judges blocked the Postal Service from pursuing DeJoy’s plans, and lawyers representing 19 states and a group of voters who brought the suit are in negotiations with the Postal Service over a potential settlement.
‘The stakes definitely feel higher’
The long mail delays made some postal workers think more about the role they’d be playing come election season.
The Pennsylvania primary in early June provided a taste of what was to come, said the Philadelphia worker. Though the pandemic was the biggest worry at the time, “we had a lot of issues. There were people at the plant that weren’t coming in or were sick. We were seeing delays with that. So now we’re looking at this [general election] and going, ‘Oh, jeez, this is not going to be good.’ The stakes definitely feel higher, especially given what this election really means.”
In Michigan, one postal worker considered the removal of public mailboxes, which are subject to periodic checks to ensure they are being used, as disproportionately affecting people of color. When a collection box is removed in a wealthy suburb, residents have the time and resources to push back, said the carrier, who is Black. But when it’s removed in a racially diverse working-class neighborhood, it’s just another government service that’s been clawed back.
“It’s kind of like everything else. It wasn’t built for us,” the worker said of the Postal Service and its relationship with Black people.
DeJoy’s background — he’s donated more than $2 million to the Trump campaign and GOP causes since 2016 — doesn’t help matters, the postal worker said, and makes him feel as though the Republican Party has co-opted the Postal Service.
Taken together, Trump’s repeated attacks on mail-in voting, his connection with DeJoy, and DeJoy’s operational changes look too conspicuous to be coincidental, the carrier said, even if DeJoy has stated publicly that he’d stand up to the president when necessary. Some postal workers say the pushback has to start with them to show that DeJoy’s instructions go against the mail service’s operational and ethical mandates. Plus, they say, they are legally bound to ensure the timely delivery of mail.
In New York, one mechanic expressed dismay that he is surrounded by a “bunch of yes men” who are simply going to follow orders.
“It’s disheartening to hear from my boss that he wants me to do something that could very potentially cripple the system. It’s disheartening to hear that people think we’re going to fail. We handle this kind of volume all the time,” he said of the election. “But if they do these things with delivery times and we get high volume around holiday season and the election, it will fail. No question. It will fail. We should get the ballots out. We really should, but all it would take is one person in a nice shiny suit to say, ‘Leave those ballots, take the other mail.’ And everyone would say, ‘Yes sir.’
“There’s a point where I got angry. I’m not happy at all that I’m being politicized. I’m literally trying to do my job, and they’re telling me that I can’t.”
‘Don’t do anything illegal, unsafe, immoral’
DeJoy on Aug. 18 suspended parts of his cost-cutting program after congressional and public blowback — much of it on social media, where images of mailbox removals were met with suspicion and outrage. But it was too late for most of the 671 mail-sorting machines that had been tapped for dismantling and removal across 49 states, D.C. and Puerto Rico.
The agency said that the massive machines, representing close to 10 percent of its inventory and capable of sorting 21.4 million pieces of paper mail per hour, had been earmarked long before DeJoy and that their decommissioning was simply a reflection of Americans’ diminishing use for letters and growing reliance on package delivery. But many workers saw it as further erosion of a finely calibrated infrastructure, one with real ramifications for customers who rely on the agency for their prescription medications and other crucial deliveries.
“It bothers me, because I like to do my job. Some of us do this for 20 years,” said the New Jersey letter carrier. “You see kids grow up from babies and watch them get married. They see you in Wawa, and they buy you a coffee. They say, ‘This is my mailman, he’s a great guy.’ Now they say, ‘Where’s my mail?’ ”
Postal workers’ responses varied from insubordination to small acts of neighborly heroism. In Florida, one manager told of instructing employees to meticulously document their hours and what happens to mail to uphold accountability standards. There are forms for reporting late or undeliverable mail and to record overtime, though several postal workers say supervisors have downplayed the need to complete them in recent weeks.
“What I try to tell people is this: Yes, if you get an instruction, you should follow the instructions of your supervisor,” the manager said. “But every manual says the same thing: Don’t do anything illegal, unsafe, immoral. Well, my manager knows that if he doesn’t want mail to be reported late, to keep the mail out of my building.”
Last month in New York, machinists were ordered to remove sorting machines and use spare parts to augment another, one of the workers said. The person told supervisors that such a move wouldn’t help; the enlarged sorter would be able to collate mail into more carriers’ routes, but it also would process letters more slowly than two machines doing the job simultaneously. When his supervisor told him to repeat the process for another set of machines, the machinist and colleagues balked and drew out the steps required to implement the change. Eventually, superiors gave up on the order.
By then, House and Senate committees had called emergency hearings to cross-examine DeJoy over his relationship with Trump and his operational changes. “I am not engaged in sabotaging the election,” DeJoy testified before the House Oversight Committee on Aug. 24. Days earlier, he told a Senate panel he planned to vote by mail.
In Toledo, mail is shipped to the Michigan Metroplex outside Detroit for processing. When items arrive too late for the trucks headed to Michigan, a manager not eligible for overtime will hop into a Postal Service van and transport that mail separately, said Martin Ramirez, president of the APWU Local 170. That way, the Toledo offices won’t log overtime hours, even though that worker still puts in extra time.
“This is the dancing between the raindrops,” Ramirez said.
As Toledo’s trucks arrive at distribution centers, clerks scan the wire racks carrying the mail to try to spot medications, checks and bills, said Jennifer Lemke, the clerk craft director at Local 170. Even if the day’s mail gets delayed, Lemke and other clerks will retrieve essential items and send them off with carriers.
When angry customers call the post office or come to the retail window, Lemke said, she apologizes for mail delays, then sends for the local postmaster.
“I will put it off on the people that are causing the damage,” she said.
“My message to [local union members] is: You do what you can to satisfy the customer,” Ramirez said. “Look, we’re going to fight from national on down. I don’t need you losing your job.”
Lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender rights have become a hot button issue in Poland. (photo: AFP)
Poland LGBT: Diplomats From 50 Countries Call for End to Discrimination
BBC
Excerpt: "Ambassadors from around the world have called for the rights of gay and transgender people to be respected in Poland, where many towns have declared themselves free of 'LGBT ideology.'"
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Quannah Chasinghorse. (photo: Keri Oberly)
Meet the 18-Year-Old Championing Indigenous Rights in Alaska
Maia Wikler, YES! Magazine
Excerpt: "Quannah Chasinghorse is continuing the legacy of Gwich'in women working to protect the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge."
id someone lose their dog?” Quannah Chasinghorse jokes, pointing at a large moose in her neighbor’s snow-covered yard. At -40 degrees Fahrenheit, it is a typical winter’s day in Fairbanks, Alaska. Chasinghorse, an 18-year-old Han Gwich’in and Oglala Lakota youth, is curled up on the couch, wearing a shirt emblazoned with the slogan “Protect the Arctic, Defend the Sacred.”
It is a rare moment of rest for Chasinghorse. In the past year, she has traveled coast to coast, advocating to protect her homelands from the desecration of oil drilling, with her mother, Jody Potts, who is Han Gwich’in and a tribal member of the Native Village of Eagle. Her mother also serves as the regional director for Native Movement and is a board member with the Alaska Wilderness League. This mother-daughter duo represents the decadeslong fight to protect their state’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.
The refuge is hailed for its immense ecosystem of nearly 20 million protected acres, with sweeping tundra, glacial-fed rivers, and mountain ranges providing a sanctuary for wildlife, especially the 200,000-strong porcupine caribou herd, as of 2018. Before the region was deemed a wilderness refuge by the federal government, in 1960, it was known by the Gwich’in as “Iizhik Gwats’an Gwandaii Goodlit,” meaning “the sacred place where life begins.” This ancestral name refers to the calving grounds for the porcupine caribou on the coastal plain, whose migratory path the once-nomadic Gwich’in followed, and still guides the Gwich’in today. This region has been home to local Indigenous communities for millennia, and their lives, culture, and identities are inextricably tied to the well-being of the land. “What impacts the caribou, impacts the Gwich’in,” says Bernadette Demientieff, who is Gwichyaa Zhee Gwich’in, and the executive director of the Gwich’in Steering Committee.
The Arctic, dubbed ground zero for climate change, is warming at a rate twice as fast as the rest of the world. The region is at even greater risk since the unprecedented decision by the Trump administration and congressional Republicans to open the refuge’s coastal plain to oil and gas development. In August, the Interior Department formally announced its leasing program to open about 1.57 million acres of the refuge to drilling, NPR reported.
But Gwich’in women are leading an intergenerational movement to defend the refuge from oil rigs and wells, all while championing Indigenous rights and justice for missing and murdered Indigenous women. When Demientieff travels to Washington, D.C., to advocate for her people and land, Gwich’in youth join her as part of the official Youth Council. “Each of them are hunters and fishers,” she explains, “and they all know how to survive off the land. They all have something to share.”
Since she was 17, Chasinghorse has joined Demientieff to speak with senators on Capitol Hill as a member of the Youth Council. She credits the teachings of elders and women in her life for her sense of purpose: “My mom has always taught me to remember who you are and where you come from.” As Chasinghorse wrote in a poem that she shares with Teen Vogue: “I’m from the beaded moose hide in modern clothes, from the smell of sage and taste of fry bread. I am from the fireweed trails. From the birch trees I used to climb, whose limbs I remember as though they were my own. I’m from the mushing, hunting, fishing, and berry picking trips, from the family of traditions. I’m from the potlatches and the legends our elders tell.”
“The reason I am the way I am is because my mom, grandma, and aunties have always taught me not to take sh*t from [any]one. To do the best for our people, sticking up for our rights and our lands. I’ve learned a lot from the women in my life,” says Chasinghorse. Her mom explains that Chasinghorse was raised in the movement, where over the years, during sweat ceremonies, she heard her mother and the powerful women in her “auntie squad” talk about activism and the fight for the land.
For four generations, the Gwich’in have fought to honor their ancestral vow to care for the porcupine caribou herd and nurture the land for future generations. “Our ancestors made a promise to protect this land, so we have to keep that promise and our way of life,” says Kaila Druck, a 16-year-old member of the Youth Council. Many youth, like Chasinghorse and Kaila, leave their villages to attend school in Fairbanks, but families continue to return to their fish camps and villages several times a year.
On a blustery March day, I set out with Chasinghorse’s family to their fish camp along the Yukon River. After a treacherous three-hour drive in winter conditions along the Dalton Highway, we reach a juncture where the journey continues on snowmobiles over the frozen river. Locals refer to the highway as “the Haul Road,” Potts explains, because it opened the remote area for workers to haul oil industry materials up to the oil fields in Prudhoe Bay. As we weave across the frozen tundra, we witness a landscape of mesmerizing Arctic colors: the glacial-blue sky, the ground blanketed in bright snow, ashen gray-black swamp spruce and birch trees dusted in white powder. Climate change is rapidly altering this landscape. The locals call the spruce and birch “drunken trees,” because of their twisting, toppling forms caused by melting permafrost. The mountains and sloping hillsides are marked with swaths of tree spires blackened by wildfires that continue to worsen from record-breaking summer heat. As we near the river at nightfall, the Trans-Alaska Pipeline snakes alongside us—a stark reminder of the fossil fuel industry’s threatening presence on the land.
Under an ink-black sky saturated in stars, we unload the snowmobiles and navigate a faint snow trail along the river. “My grandmother picked this piece of land during the land allotments because of the cranberry bushes and the river,” says Potts’ partner, Jamey, as we arrive. “In 2003, the wildfires burned the cabin to the ground, and I’ve been rebuilding the place since.”
Over steaming bowls of moose stew, Potts shares memories of the village: “I would come home from my shift at night and that’s when I would mush. It would be -40, and that’s when it’s the most quiet. It’s too cold even for wind. The kids would be in bed and I would be hooking up the dogs out front, when I would hear the door open and Quannah would come running outside to join me. She was 9. I always had a caribou hide for her. She would bundle up in the sled and we would talk as the dogs wove through trees. I get choked up every time I share that story. I just loved the sound, the crunching of the snow, the dogs breathing. It is so peaceful, mushing out on the land.”
Endless stories are told at fish camp, often about the greed and exploitation of sport hunters who collect moose and caribous’ large antlers only, leaving the carcasses to rot. “It’s our food, which is what hurts us so bad,” Potts explains. These everyday encounters of greed and disrespect are also the stories of climate change—the notion that the natural world is for the taking without responsibility or reciprocity.
On our last day, Chasinghorse and I snowshoe across the river. Crystallized snowflakes shimmer gold in the sunlight, twisting into tendrils that rise with the wind and fall back on the river. Chasinghorse and I watch in awe. She talks about the sense of peace she feels here, knowing her family has lived this way, in love with the land, for generations. “I walk in two completely different worlds,” she says. “When I’m away from the land, I feel like I’m hiding a part of myself; I can’t act too Native. When I’m out here, I’m more connected to myself. I’m strong on these lands.”
Since the outbreak of the coronavirus pandemic, living off the land has become more critical than ever for the Gwich’in. Kaila and Demientieff tell me that the pandemic has caused a shortage of flights that usually import food into remote villages. At the same time, climate change is affecting hunting, fishing, and berry seasons, they say. Circumstances are dire. “I feel like right now we are deprived of our traditions and what we love the most with the pandemic,” Kaila says. “We haven’t been able to hunt this year in Fort Yukon; people were barely able to fish. Some people went out for weeks and returned only with five fish. That’s all we live off of. My whole family depends on living off of food from the land; moose, fish, and berries sustain us all winter. This year we won’t have much.” She continues, “Growing up, I was always told we should not destroy the land. The elders always said we will fully depend on the land one day. Now, with the pandemic, I can see what the elders mean.”
Despite these overwhelming challenges, the Gwich’in continue to protect the Arctic Refuge. Demientieff, of the Gwich’in Steering Committee, has spent the past several years organizing meetings with representatives of major banks to urge them not to finance oil drilling in the Arctic. Chasinghorse joined her for a meeting in New York City, and says she moved financial executives to tears with her story. Their efforts paid off: Deutsche Bank, Goldman Sachs, Wells Fargo, Citi, JPMorgan Chase, and Morgan Stanley—five of the biggest American banks—have committed to no longer backing Arctic drilling projects. Republican lawmakers tried to claim that this decision discriminated against Native Alaskans, and even unsuccessfully asked Trump to make Arctic oil funding a condition of pandemic relief. Still, in June, the Trump administration announced plans to open up 82% of an Alaska nature reserve for oil and gas leasing.
The Gwich’in maintain drilling in the refuge would be akin to cultural genocide as it would devastate the caribou, their primary source of survival. How could the caribou survive seismic blasts, oil rigs, oil spills, loud machinery, and migratory routes severed by haul roads and pipelines? With a rapidly melting permafrost that collapses the ground and drying tundra that spurs wildfires, the Arctic cannot bear the slightest risk of industrial disaster on its already fragile lands. The Arctic is not simply ground zero for climate change because of record-breaking heat, accelerated permafrost, and glacier melt, it’s also a landscape that represents the larger story of climate change. This is a land fraught with a history of Indigenous displacement and dispossession, and ongoing colonial violence driven by insatiable corporate greed. These are the systemic forces driving the climate crisis.
And yet a deep, ancestral love spanning thousands of years fuels the Gwich’in in their intergenerational fight to protect the refuge. “We need more Indigenous youth to believe in themselves and have people believe in them,” says Chasinghorse. “The more I fought, the more I healed. Know you have power. It is connected to the land and ancestors. We’re all fighting the same fight.”
The cataclysmic shifts caused by the climate crisis and pandemic can create opportunity for change that is parallel in magnitude. To paraphrase writer Terry Tempest Williams’s book on erosion, our undoing may be our becoming. The power of the youth vote is reason to hope. In the upcoming election, 1 in 10 voters will be Gen Z. The Brookings Institution reported that Gen Z and millennials “now comprise a greater share of the eligible voting population than has ever been the case. It’s about the same share of eligible voters as baby boomers and their elders—generations that voted for Trump in 2016 and for Republican candidates against President Obama.” It has been reported that by 2030 “millennials and their juniors will make up more than half [of] not just the population, but of all eligible voters.”
At the young age of 18, Chasinghorse, like many other youth in her community, has already dedicated her life to honoring her ancestors and fighting for future generations. As we pack up to leave fish camp, she shares what this fight means to her, while Potts braids her hair. “I’m not an environmentalist; I’m an Indigenous youth trying to stick up for our ways of life,” Chasinghorse says. “They’re just tearing up more land, destroying more water, and in the end, when all of the oil is extracted out of Alaska, what are they going to do? We need to reconnect and rebuild our relationship to the land. If all of this were to be destroyed from drilling and oil spills, I don’t know how I would feel connected anymore. I don’t want that taken from us.”
Potts looks at her daughter and says, “And that’s why we’ll fight, right? We are continuing on.”
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